Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A method for edge detection of textile preforms using a light-section sensor for the automated manufacturing of fibre-reinforced plastics

The present work describes a new method to measure the contour position of plane reinforcement fabrics for the manufacturing of structural composite parts. The pursued approach uses optical metrology based on laser light-section technology. In detail, a laser line is projected over the edge of a fabric layer and acquired with a digital camera, which is located under an offset angle to the laser sensor. This leads to a distinctive displacement of the laser line in the acquired image, which is proportional to the distance between the sensor and the fabric layer. The distorted line can be described as a step profile, to which an analytical function is fitted to calculate the horizontal edge position with sub-pixel accuracy. To measure the whole layer position, the edges are scanned with the laser sensor to provide multiple contour points. This allows the interpolation of the object contour. The interpolated contour can be compared with the specified position and dimension of the textile layer. This enables a closed-loop control of the cutting and build-up process of the preform. Thus, an efficient production process of fibre-reinforced plastics through an automated inline measurement is possible.
Mass downsizing and ``top-down'' assembly of early-type galaxies

Aims. We present a new analysis of the rest-frame B -band COMBO-17 and DEEP2 luminosity functions (LFs) of early-type galaxies (ETGs) as a function of luminosity and mass. Our aim is to place new stringent constraints on the evolution of ETGs since $z\sim1$. Methods. We correct the LF( z ) data for the luminosity dimming assuming pure luminosity evolution. However, instead of relying on stellar population synthesis model-dependent assumptions, we adopt the empirical luminosity dimming rate derived from the evolution of the Fundamental Plane of field and cluster massive ETGs. Results. Our results show that the amount of evolution for the ETG population depends critically on the range of luminosity and masses considered. While the number density of luminous (massive) ETGs with $M_{B}(z=0) 10^{11}$ $M_{\odot}$) is nearly constant since $z\sim 0.8$, less luminous galaxies display a deficit which grows with redshift and that can be explained with a gradual population of the ETG “red sequence” by the progressive quenching of star formation in galaxies less massive than ${\sim} 10^{11}~ M_{\odot}$. At each redshift there is a critical mass above which virtually all ETGs appear to be in place, and this fits well in the now popular “downsizing” scenario. However, “downsizing” does not appear to be limited to star formation, but the concept may have to be extended to the mass assembly itself as the build-up of the most massive galaxies preceeds that of the less massive ones. This evolutionary trend is not reproduced by the most recent theoretical simulations even when they successfully reproduce “downsizing” in star formation.
Aspects of prehead and onset: the onset onglide phenomenon

High pitch accents are often accompanied by a small upwardly gliding pitch slope towards the high tone target. In intonation phrase (IP) initial position, particularly when no unstressed syllables precede the accented one, it can be very hard to determine the status of this onglide: it may be connected to a low boundary tone, it may be a leading L tone associated with the onset H*, or it may be a matter of the phonetic implementation of H*. An experiment was devised that focuses on the relation between the prehead, the stretch of unstressed syllables introducing an IP, and the onset, the first accented syllable of an IP. The aim was to display the lefthand environment of the onset by systematically increasing the number of prehead syllables from none to three and observe whether the prehead pitch behavior revealed the nature of the onset onglide. Twenty speakers were asked to read aloud a passage containing twelve test sentences. Results suggest that the onglide movement is associated directly with the H* onset tone and does not spread into the preaccentual environment. Prehead pitch contours appear to be flat and do not interpolate towards the upcoming high pitch accent of the onset. Furthermore, a correlation was shown between the pitch height of the prehead and the one of the onset syllable.
Improving the triaxial bulge model of M31

A detailed hydrodynamical model of the gas flow in the triaxial gravitational potential of the bulge of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) has recently been proposed by Berman, and shown to provide excellent agreement with the CO emission-line velocities observed along its major axis. In the present paper, we confirm the validity of that model by showing that it can also reproduce the CO velocities observed off the major axis – a much more robust test. The CO observations, however, tend to span a wider range of velocities than a direct application of the original model of Berman would suggest. This situation can be improved significantly if the molecular disc is made thicker, a requirement already encountered in dynamical simulations of other spiral galaxies, and typically attributed to a broadening of the molecular layer in galactic fountain-like processes. In the central regions of M31, however, it is unclear whether there actually is a thick molecular disc, or whether broadening the molecular layer is merely an artificial theoretical means of accounting for some disc warping. Other effects not included in the model, such as hydraulic jumps, might also contribute to a widening of the range of velocities.
Integration Properties of Kenyon Cells in the Drosophila melanogaster Mushroom Bodies

The final frontier. These are the enterprises of a Jewish graduate student. His five-year mission: to explore strange new facts, to seek out new data and new techniques, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Acknowledgements No thesis is an island. Although I performed all the experiments in this thesis myself, I could not have done it without the help and support of my friends and colleagues in CSHL. Naturally, I am indebted to my advisor Glenn, for his support when I went through rough times, guidance when I was lost, and patience when I nagged with basic questions. All the Turner lab members were also instrumental with help on different facets of the thesis. Rob Campbell build the odor delivery system and pioneered the 2-photon imaging in the lab, Kyle Honegger helped in designing the MARCM crosses, and Toshihide Hige initiated me into the occult world of whole-cell recordings. I would also like to thank all the members of the 'fly floor' from the Zhong and Dubnau labs, who were all part of a supportive, stimulating and fun working environment. In addition, I would like to thank my committee members, Dubnau who helped me stay on track and provided new perspectives. Finally I would like to thank my family. My parents, for their unvarying encouragement, even though they wished I would opt for a more lucrative profession. And my wife and kids, without whom I would have probably finished the thesis a year earlier-thanks for reminding me there are more important things in life.
Cross-linguistic and Inter-dialectal Differences in Tone Perception by Native Speakers of Three Chinese Dialects and American English 0. Introduction

It is well known that tonal inventories and sandi processes differ considerably across the Chinese surveyed 737 dialect locations and found that northern Chinese dialects tend to have fewer tones. Counting the " entering tones " (i.e. tones carried by syllables checked with a oral or glottal stop), the Northern Mandarin dialects typically have four tones (291 out of 318 dialects), 17 dialects have only three tones and some dialects have five (38 dialects) or six (one dialect) tones. The southern dialects of Wu, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, Northern and Southern Min and Cantonese normally (145 out of 173 dialects) have five or more (up to 9 or 10 in some cases) tones, with the other 28 dialects having four tones. Cheng (1973) also reports that the northern dialects employ larger pitch ranges than southern dialects. The tonal contours also vary across the dialects. Thus, given the experimental results from past studies, there may be dialect-specific patterns in tone perception conditioned by such differences. Using 19 synthesized f0 stimuli (five levels, four rising, four falling, three falling-rising, three rising-falling), 200 speakers/listeners of Mandarin (Taiwan), Cantonese and a dissimilarity judgment task on tonal pairs along an 11-point scale (0 = no difference; 10 = extreme difference), Gandour (1983) found that the tones were rated significantly differently by tone versus nontone language speakers, by Thai vs. Chinese (Mandarin and Southern Min) speakers, and by Cantonese vs. Mandarin and Southern Min speakers. Such differences were attributed in part to differences in the listeners' native tonal inventories. In particular, tone height appeared to be more important for English listeners, while Thai listeners attached most importance to the direction of f0 contour (rising versus falling). When the tone language groups were compared, Cantonese listeners were found to have utilized mainly the dimension of tone levels. Gandour (1981) analyzed confusion data from native listener identification of naturally produced Cantonese tones. He found that the high falling tone was placed midway between the level and the contour tones in the perceptual tone space. He argued that this was because the high falling tone in Cantonese has a high level allotone. Although the allotone was not present in the stimuli, allophony still interfered with listeners' tone perception. The effect of the same allophonic alternation showed up in Gandour's (1983) data, where Cantonese listeners perceived the /44/ (high level) contour to be similar to /53/ (high falling), while Mandarin listeners …
Forward link performance analysis of the CDMA2000∗ 3G1X data system

Performance analysis of data networks based on the code division multiple access (CDMA) air interface including the CDMA2000∗ 3G1X and the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) requires development of new methodologies distinct from those used to analyze voice networks. In this paper, we present a set of analytical and simulation techniques of different complexity that are used to investigate different aspects of data system performance on the forward link. We demonstrate how the static-snapshot simulation model is used to obtain statistically significant system-level results valid for multi-cell wide area network deployment. These simulations are complemented by the dynamic model, which takes into account details of data traffic arrival and resource management algorithms on the air interface. It also provides insight into each individual user's experience under different network loads when running different data applications over the CDMA2000 air interface. Key results of simulation models are verified via theoretical analysis techniques that demonstrate the consistency of the results obtained via different methods.
Fetal lung maturity analysis using ultrasound image features

This pilot study was carried out to find the feasibility of analyzing the maturity of the fetal lung using ultrasound images. Data were collected from normal pregnant women at intervals of two weeks from the gestation age of 24 to 38 weeks. Images were acquired at two centers located at different geographical locations. The total data acquired consisted of 750 images of immature and 250 images of mature class. A region of interest of 64/spl times/64 pixels was used for extracting the features. Various textural features were computed from the fetal lung and liver images. The ratios of fetal lung to liver feature values were investigated as possible indexes for classifying the images into those from mature (reduced pulmonary risk) and immature (possible pulmonary risk) lung. The features used are fractal dimension, lacunarity, and features derived from the histogram of the images. The following classifiers were used to classify the fetal lung images as belonging to mature or immature lung: nearest neighbor, k-nearest neighbor, modified k-nearest neighbor, multilayer perceptron, radial basis function network, and support vector machines. The classification accuracy obtained for the testing set ranges from 73% to 96%.
Maximum Likelihood Analysis of Adaptive Evolution in HIV-1 Gp120 env Gene

Every functional protein appears to have some conserved amino acids which are critically important to the basic structure and function of the protein and thus under purifying selection. Some proteins also have variable amino acids which, when changed, offer a selective advantage, and thus undergo adaptive evolution. These amino acids are also important to the structure and function of the protein, although in a different way. It seems that the selective pressure in every protein varies among sites. Maximum likelihood models developed recently for comparison of silent and replacement nucleotide substitution rates allow for variable selective pressures among amino acid sites, and provide a powerful approach to studying the evolutionary process of protein-coding genes. This paper applies the likelihood models to analyze a data set of 186 HIV-1 gp120 env gene sequences for comparison with a previous analysis of the same data set. The maximum likelihood analysis identified a number of sites under positive selection, some in the conserved regions of the protein.
Do Rainbow Trout and Their Hybrids Outcompete Cutthroat Trout in a Lentic Ecosystem

Much has been written about introduced rainbow trout interbreeding and outcompeting native cutthroat trout. However, the specific mechanisms by which rainbow trout and their hybrids outcompete cutthroat trout have not been thoroughly explored, and most of the published data is limited to lotic ecosystems. Samples of Snake River cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii bouvieri), the rainbow-cutthroat hybrid, the cutbow trout (Onchorhynchus mykiss x clarkii), and rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), were obtained from a lentic ecosystem (Eleven Mile Reservoir, Colorado) by creel surveys conducted from May to October, 2012. The total length and weight of each fish was measured and the relative condition factor of each fish was computed using expected weight from weight-length relationships from the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife (CDPW). Data from the CDPW collected from 2003 ? 2010 in the same lentic ecosystem were used to compute relative condition factors for additional comparison, as was independent creel survey data from 2011. The data was also compared with minimum, 25th percentile, mean, 75th percentile, and maximum weight-length curves generated from independent North American data. Cutthroat trout were plump: the mean relative condition factor of the cutthroat trout was 112.0% (? 1.0%). Cutbow hybrid trout were close to the expected weights with a mean relative condition factor of 99.8% (? 0.6%). Rainbow trout were thinner with a mean relative condition factor of 96.4% (? 1.4%). Comparing mean relative condition factors of CDPW data from earlier years and plotting the 2012 data relative to percentile curves also shows the same trend of cutthroat trout being plumper than expected and rainbow trout being thinner than the cutthroat trout, with the hybrid cutbow trout in between. This data supports the hypothesis that rainbow trout do not outcompete cutthroat trout in lentic ecosystems. Comparison with data from three other Colorado reservoirs also shows that cutthroat trout tend to be more plump than rainbow trout and their hybrids in sympatric lentic ecosystems.
Environmental and social disclosure and data richness in the mining industry

Self-regulation by firms and industries in relation to the environmental impact they cause is not a full substitute for more traditional regulation of environ-mental externalities. However, some self-regulatory efforts do involve very spe-cific actions that serve to reduce externalities for a specific industry and certainly achieve more than the presentation of a responsible image to the world. An example of such efforts that go beyond common claims about “sus-tainable activities”, are seen in the increasing numbers of mining firms that generate and issue environmental reports. While there is as yet no indisputable proof that reporting has a direct effect on environmental performance, this pa-per shows that within a single industry there are wide variations in reporting practices and that sincerity is apparent in the process.
Human Capital and Labor Informality in Chile: A Life-Cycle Approach

Labor informality accounts for nearly 40% of the labor force in Latin America. While a more traditional view sees this phenomenon as a consequence of barriers to mobility resulting from poorly designed labor regulations, recent work provides evidence that individuals choose informal jobs based on their comparative advantage. In this paper, I develop a dynamic life-cycle model estimated with rich Chilean longitudinal data, in which individuals jointly decide on their schooling and labor participation, to investigate the extent to which comparative advantage drives participation in informal labor markets. I find that human capital accumulation and preferences for job amenities explain up to 72% of transitions between the informal and the formal sector while labor market segmentation accounts for 28%. These barriers to mobility are decreasing in education. These results are largely driven by heterogeneous preferences and returns to skills across sectors. For example, more educated individuals assign a higher relative importance to non-wage benefits, particularly in formal jobs, while less educated individuals value more monetary rewards; high ability workers are more productive in the formal sector, while low ability workers are more productive in the informal sector; and unlike labor market experience acquired in informal activities, experience acquired in formal jobs is transferable across sectors. Finally, using the model to simulate the effects of a 20% wage subsidy in formal jobs for young workers, I find that individuals react to labor market expectations and their decisions are persistent. The subsidy would decrease the incentives to informality for both targeted groups and younger workers, while the reduction in informality rates as a consequence of the policy would remain persistent for all the life-cycle.
The Use of Executive Control Processes in Engineering Design by Engineering Students and Professional Engineers.

Brophy, Klein, Portmore, and Rogers (2008) admitted that, as industries are driven by the rapid development of enabling technologies, they must become more flexible and adaptive to remain competitive. This flexibility is achieved through a workforce that can utilize newly available technologies and generate innovations of their own. They further suggested that such technological capability in the workforce can only be possible if students entering higher education are prepared differently at the K-12 level, through programs that target the development of technological literacy. Driven by the goal to improve technological literacy, the Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology (ITEA, 2002) provide a framework for increasing students’ technological literacy at all levels of the K-12 curriculum through the integration of engineering design. In reference to the design component of the Standards for Technology Literacy, Lewis (2005) argued that it is “the single most important content area set forth in the standards, because it is a concept that situates the subject more completely within the domain of engineering” (p. 37). Consistent with its usage in society, engineering design provides an ideal platform for engineering and technology educators to integrate mathematics, science, and technology concepts for students to solve real-world (ill-structured) problems innovatively and creatively.
Topological strings in generalized complex space

A two-dimensional topological sigma-model on a generalized Calabi-Yau target space $X$ is defined. The model is constructed in Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism using only a generalized complex structure $J$ and a pure spinor $\rho$ on $X$. In the present construction the algebra of $Q$-transformations automatically closes off-shell, the model transparently depends only on $J$, the algebra of observables and correlation functions for topologically trivial maps in genus zero are easily defined. The extended moduli space appears naturally. The familiar action of the twisted N=2 CFT can be recovered after a gauge fixing. In the open case, we consider an example of generalized deformation of complex structure by a holomorphic Poisson bivector $\beta$ and recover holomorphic noncommutative Kontsevich $*$-product.
A principled approach to software Engineering Education , or Java considered Harmful

We examine the use of Java as a first programming language, in the light of well-established principles of software engineering, and the increasing concern with correctness, performance, and maintainability. We argue that Java is markedly inferior to Ada or C++ as a language for introductory Computer Science courses, and that its widespread use in the training of tomorrow’s software engineers is counterproductive.
Cognitive emotion regulation in unaffected offspring of schizophrenic patients

Background: Schizophrenic patients are reported to use ‘suppression’ strategy for emotion regulation. Milder levels of psychological issues are observed in first degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia. In this study, we examined usage of cognitive emotion regulation strategies associated with negative emotions in offspring of schizophrenic patients. Method: 20 schizophrenic patients and 20 their offspring were sampled. Cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire and depression, stress, anxiety scales were administered on each participant. Results: The results revealed greater usage of adaptive emotion regulation strategies by offspring and negative strategy by schizophrenic patients. However, under conditions of negative emotions, there is significant reduction in the usage of adaptive coping emotion regulation strategy in the offspring. Conclusion: The results implicate need for strengthening adaptive coping mechanisms under vulnerable conditions of emotional turmoil.
A BIOLOGICALLY INSPIRED METHOD FOR CONCEPTUAL IMITATION USING REINFORCEMENT LEARNING

Learning by imitation can provide agents with a natural and effective means for transferring knowledge when brain-to-brain connection is infeasible. Natural mechanisms for imitation demonstrate strong abstraction and conceptualization capabilities, however, computational models that have been proposed for imitative learning barely address these fundamental features. Inspired by functions of human brain constituents and exploiting ideas enthused by mirror neurons and the multi-store model of memory, we propose a new model for learning by imitation capable of developing relational concepts. In our model, memory gradually organizes sensory data into concepts through reinforcement learning and consolidation, while mirror neurons maintain an extendible repertoire of familiar actions connected to corresponding concepts. We also discuss the relation between modeling behavior of concept-oriented agents in terms of mathematical functions and relevant biological evidence of mirror neurons. Eventually, we evaluate our method in a phoneme acquisition experiment through real interaction with humans.