Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Radiosity Methods Driven by Human Perception

Despite its popularity among researchers the radiosity method still suffers some disadvantage over other global illumination methods. Usual implementations of the radiosity method use criteria based on radiometric values to drive the computation — to decide about sufficient mesh quality or to estimate the error of the simulation process and to decide when the simulation can be safely terminated. This is absolutely correct for the case of radiometric simulation, when the user is interested in actual values of radiometric quantities. On the other hand, the radiosity method is very often used just to generate pictures for the human observer and those pictures are not required to be the results of correct physical simulations, they just have to look the same. The results of research on human visual performance and visual signal processing can be built into the image synthesis algorithm itself under some circumstances and guarantee that no effort will be spent on computing changes that are only marginally important for the human observer. In the area of image processing, perceptual error metrics are used for image comparison and image coding that enable to better predict the differences between two images as opposed to the perceptually inappropriate and widely used meansquared error metrics. Tone reproduction operators known from image synthesis make it possible to map a bright scale of image luminances onto a narrow scale of CRT luminances in such a way that the perceived CRT image produces the same mental image as the original image. Perceptually-driven radiosity algorithms exist, which use various methods to control the optimum density of the finite-element mesh defining the scene that is being rendered, to include only visible discontinuity lines into this mesh, and to predict the convergence of the method. We will describe an hierarchical extension to the Monte Carlo radiosity that keeps the accuracy of the solution high only in the area immediately visible from the point of observation. We will also present a comparison of different perceptual and radiometric termination criteria for a view-independent version of Monte Carlo radiosity.
Economic disadvantage and transitional outcomes: a study of young people from low-income families in Hong Kong

This study draws on data from focus groups involving 50 young people from low-income families in Hong Kong to investigate their school-to-work experiences. In line with the ecological–developmental perspective, our results show that contextual influences, including lower levels of parental involvement and lack of opportunities for further education or skill development, constrain both the formulation and pursuit of educational and career goals. In contrast, service use and supportive interactions with parents and non-family adults were found to help young people find a career direction and foster more adaptive transition. Furthermore, our results indicate a striking difference in intrapersonal agency and coping styles between youths who were attending further education or engaged in jobs with career advancement opportunities and those who were not. We discuss the implications of our findings, both for future research and for policy development to enhance the school-to-work transition of economically disadvantaged young people.
Dynamics of the Galactic Bulge Using Planetary Nebulae

Evidence for a bar at the center of the Milky Way triggered a renewed enthusiasm for dynamical modeling of the Galactic bar-bulge. Our goal is to compare the kinematics of a sample of tracers, planetary nebulae, widely distributed over the bulge with the corresponding kinematics for a range of models of the inner Galaxy. Three of these models are N-body barred systems arising from the instabilities of a stellar disk (Sellwood, Fux, and Kalnajs), and one is a Schwarzschild system constructed to represent the three-dimensional distribution of the COBE/DIRBE near-IR light and then evolved as an N-body system for a few dynamical times (Zhao). For the comparison of our data with the models, we use a new technique developed by Saha. The procedure finds the parameters of each model, i.e., the solar galactocentric distance R0 in model units, the orientation angle ϕ, the velocity scale (in km s-1 per model unit), and the solar tangential velocity that best fit the data.
SPEX: Streamed and Progressive Evaluation of XPath

Streams are preferable over data stored in memory in contexts where data is too large or volatile, or a standard approach to data processing based on storing is too time or space consuming. Emerging applications such as publish-subscribe systems, data monitoring in sensor networks, financial and traffic monitoring, and routing of MPEG-7 call for querying streams. In many such applications, XML streams are arguably more appropriate than flat streams, for they convey (possibly unbounded) unranked ordered trees with labeled nodes. However, the flexibility enabled by XML streams in data modeling makes query evaluation different from traditional settings and challenging. This paper describes SPEX, a streamed and progressive evaluation of XML Path Language (XPath). SPEX compiles queries into networks of simple and independent transducers and processes XML streams with polynomial combined complexity. This makes SPEX especially suitable for implementation on devices with low memory and simple logic as used, for example, in mobile computing.
Low-Input Power-Level CMOS RF Energy-Harvesting Front End

RF energy-harvesting front ends consist of LC matching networks and RF rectifiers. The minimum detectable power (sensitivity) is dependent on the losses of both parts. In this paper, RF energy-harvesting sensitivity limits at steady state and design tradeoffs for matching networks and rectifiers are introduced. These limits and tradeoffs are examined for standard CMOS 0.18-μm technology. Two designs, one with off-chip matching network and the other with on-chip matching network, are presented, compared, and measured for an output voltage of 1 V. The sensitivity of the off-chip design is -27.3 dBm while taking 180 × 90 μm2 die area and off-chip high quality inductor and capacitor, which takes an extra 7.28 mm2 printed circuit board area. The fully integrated on-chip design has a sensitivity of -21.7 dBm while taking 820 × 450 μm2 die area. The sensitivity of the former proved superior while the latter is more attractive in terms of compactness, low cost, and easier tunability.
The Promise of Intravaginal Rings for Prevention: User Perceptions of Biomechanical Properties and Implications for Prevention Product Development

Intravaginal rings (IVRs) are currently under investigation as devices for the delivery of agents to protect against the sexual transmission of HIV and STIs, as well as pregnancy. To assist product developers in creating highly acceptable rings, we sought to identify characteristics that intravaginal ring users consider when making decisions about ring use or non-use. We conducted four semi-structured focus groups with 21 women (aged 18–45) who reported using an IVR in the past 12 months. Participants manipulated four prototype rings in their hands, discussed ring materials, dimensionality, and “behavior,” and shared perceptions and appraisals. Five salient ring characteristics were identified: 1) appearance of the rings’ surfaces, 2) tactile sensations of the cylinder material, 3) materials properties, 4) diameter of the cylinder, and 5) ring circumference. Pliability (or flexibility) was generally considered the most important mechanical property. Several ring properties (e.g., porousness, dimensionality) were associated with perceptions of efficacy. Women also revealed user behaviors that may impact the effectiveness of certain drugs, such as removing, rinsing and re-inserting the ring while bathing, and removing the ring during sexual encounters. As product developers explore IVRs as prevention delivery systems, it is critical to balance product materials and dimensions with use parameters to optimize drug delivery and the user experience. It is also critical to consider how user behaviors (e.g., removing the ring) might impact drug delivery.
Laevo: a temporal desktop interface for integrated knowledge work

Prior studies show that knowledge work is characterized by highly interlinked practices, including task, file and window management. However, existing personal information management tools primarily focus on a limited subset of knowledge work, forcing users to perform additional manual configuration work to integrate the different tools they use. In order to understand tool usage, we review literature on how users' activities are created and evolve over time as part of knowledge worker practices. From this we derive the activity life cycle, a conceptual framework describing the different states and transitions of an activity. The life cycle is used to inform the design of Laevo, a temporal activity-centric desktop interface for personal knowledge work. Laevo allows users to structure work within dedicated workspaces, managed on a timeline. Through a centralized notification system which doubles as a to-do list, incoming interruptions can be handled. Our field study indicates how highlighting the temporal nature of activities results in lightweight scalable activity management, while making users more aware about their ongoing and planned work.
The time of consumers: A review of researches and perspectives

This article provides a synthesis of the research on consumer time. Based on a systematic review of studies from the past 25 years, it offers an original interpretative framework by grouping consumer time into two categories. In the first, the studies on ‘resource time’ reveal that time is perceived differently according to situational and individual antecedents. In the second, the research on ‘personality trait time’ presents time from a global (where time is perceived as a whole), comparative (comparing several time zones) or selective (positioned in a precise time zone) perspective, which is characterised according to the depth to which the time variable is anchored in an individual’s personality. Although this categorisation sheds light on the concept of consumer time, it was not possible to establish a unified theoretical anchoring. This research argues in favour of decompartmentalising the different approaches and methodologies.
Book Review Self-learning Control of Finite Markov Chains 1 Problem Formulation

This book presents a collection of work on algorithms for learning in Markov decision processes. The problem addressed is very similar in spirit to “the reinforcement learning problem,” which has become a central topic in artificial intelligence (see, e.g., [8]). However, the book reflects an entirely different thread of research, and there has been surprisingly little interaction between this and the reinforcement learning thread. A primary objective of this book review is to encourage a cross-fertilization of ideas.
How to Identify Pre-Protostellar Cores

We have observed the HCO+ J = 3-2 line toward 17 starless cores selected from the list of Ward-Thompson and coworkers. Six of these cores have line asymmetries indicative of collapse. The excess of blue-skewed profiles over red-skewed profiles is at least as large as that found in samples of Class 0 and early Class I sources. The observed line profiles have the same narrow line widths and small peak temperatures predicted for young sources in evolutionary models, but the blue/red ratios, like those of older sources, are higher than models predict. The infall signature also occurs over large scales, suggesting that these cores have overall inward motions. We have divided these starless cores into two groups based on the continuum photometry of Ward-Thompson and coworkers and our HCO+ data. We find stronger HCO+ emission among the cores detected in the submillimeter, and all the blue-skewed line profiles are in this group, supporting the suggestion of Ward-Thompson and coworkers that these are the pre-protostellar cores.
Detection of Stationary Foreground Objects Using Multiple Nonparametric Background-Foreground Models on a Finite State Machine

There is a huge proliferation of surveillance systems that require strategies for detecting different kinds of stationary foreground objects (e.g., unattended packages or illegally parked vehicles). As these strategies must be able to detect foreground objects remaining static in crowd scenarios, regardless of how long they have not been moving, several algorithms for detecting different kinds of such foreground objects have been developed over the last decades. This paper presents an efficient and high-quality strategy to detect stationary foreground objects, which is able to detect not only completely static objects but also partially static ones. Three parallel nonparametric detectors with different absorption rates are used to detect currently moving foreground objects, short-term stationary foreground objects, and long-term stationary foreground objects. The results of the detectors are fed into a novel finite state machine that classifies the pixels among background, moving foreground objects, stationary foreground objects, occluded stationary foreground objects, and uncovered background. Results show that the proposed detection strategy is not only able to achieve high quality in several challenging situations but it also improves upon previous strategies.
Boron diffusion in Si, SiGe, and SiGeC

We have used the process simulator ISE-FLOOPS to implement a model describing the diffusion behaviors of boron and carbon in silicon and silicon germanium. The model has been tested against a wide range of sample structures and experimental conditions in published work, and proven to successfully simulate all common phenomena involving boron and carbon in SiGe systems. In particular, we consider the reduction of transient enhanced diffusion of boron due to localized carbon concentrations in SiGeC. The model takes into account carbon diffusion according to both the kickout and Frank-Turnbull mechanisms for diffusion, the effect of boron-interstitial clusters, {311} defects, and interstitial capture by substitutional carbon
Supercritically accreting stellar mass black holes as ultraluminous X-ray sources

We derive the luminosity‐temperature relation for the supercritically accreting black holes (BHs) and compare it to the data on ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). At super-Eddington accretion rates, an outflow forms within the spherization radius. We construct the accretion disc model accounting for the advection and the outflow, and compute characteristic disc temperatures. The bolometric luminosity exceeds the Eddington luminosity LEdd by a logarithmic factor 1 + 0. 6l n˙ m (where ˙ m is the accretion rate in Eddington units) and the wind kinetic luminosity is close to LEdd. The apparent luminosity for the face-on observer is 2‐7 times higher because of geometrical beaming. Such an observer has a direct view of the inner hot accretion disc, which has a peak temperature Tmax of a few keV in stellar mass BHs. The emitted spectrum extends as a power law FE ∝ E −1 down to the temperature at the spherization radius Tsp ≈ ˙ m −1/2 keV. We associate T max with a few keV spectral components and Tsp with the soft, 0.1‐0.2 keV components observed in ULXs. An edge-on observer sees only the soft emission from the extended envelope, with the photosphere radius exceeding the spherization radius by orders of magnitude. The dependence of the photosphere temperature on luminosity is consistent with that observed in the super-Eddington accreting BHs SS 433 and V4641 Sgr. Strong outflows combined with the large intrinsic X-ray luminosity of the central BH explain naturally the presence of the photoionized nebulae around ULXs. An excellent agreement between the model and the observational data strongly argues in favour of ULXs being supercritically accreting, stellar mass BHs similar to SS 433, but viewed close to the symmetric axis.
Augmented reality flavors: gustatory display based on edible marker and cross-modal interaction

The main contribution of this paper is to realize computer generated augmented flavors and establish a method to integrate gustatory information into computer human interactions. There are several reasons for the scarcity of research on gustatory information. One reason is that taste sensations are affected by a number of factors, such as vision, olfaction and memories. This produces a complex cognition mechanism for a user's gustatory sensation, and makes it difficult to build up a gustatory display which produces a specific taste on demand. Our hypothesis is that the complexity of gustatory sensation can be applied to the realization of a "Pseudo-gustatory" display that presents the desired flavors by means of a cross-modal effect elicited by visual and olfactory augmented reality. We propose the Edible Marker system, which can detect the state [number/shape/6-degree-of-freedom (DOF) coordinate] of each piece of bitten or divided food in real time, and the "Pseudo-gustation" method to change the perceived taste of food by changing its appearance and scent. We construct "MetaCookie+" as an implementation and discuss its validity through an exploratory study.
Small-bowel tumors: epidemiologic and clinical characteristics of 1260 cases from the connecticut tumor registry.

OBJECTIVE To examine the epidemiology and clinical characteristics of small-bowel cancer. DESIGN Patients with small-bowel tumors reported between 1980 and 2000, studied retrospectively. SETTING Data from the Connecticut Tumor Registry. PATIENTS One thousand sixty small-bowel cancer cases: 628 men (49.84%) and 632 women (50.16%). Mean age at presentation was 65.2 years. RESULTS The most common location of small-bowel tumors was the ileum (374 cases; 29.7%), followed by the duodenum (320 cases; 25.4%) and the jejunum (193 cases; 15.3%). In 367 patient cases (29.1%: 192 men [30.6%] and 175 women [27.7%]), a prior or subsequent tumor of the gastrointestinal tract was reported. The most prevalent histologic type was carcinoid (417 cases; 33%), followed by adenocarcinoma (341 cases; 27%) and lymphoma (205 cases; 16.3%). The patient population was predominantly white (1159 patients; 92%), followed by African American patients (91 patients; 7.2%). Stratification by consecutive 7-year intervals showed the following: from 1980 to 1986, there were 10.5 cases per 100 000 individuals; from 1987 to 1993, there were 13.05 cases per 100 000 individuals; and from 1994 to 2000, there were 14.86 cases per 100 000 individuals. Men comprised 44.8% of cases from 1980 to 1986, 50.2% of cases from 1987 to 1993, and 53.3% of cases from 1994 to 2000. African American patients accounted for 7.5% of all cases from 1980 to 1986, 5.8% from 1986 to 1993, and 8.2% of cases from 1994 to 2000. In 1106 patients (87.7%), the primary therapy was surgical, including intestinal bypass, radical excision, excisional biopsy, and subtotal or total excision. CONCLUSIONS The incidence of small-bowel tumors in Connecticut has increased during the past 2 decades, with the highest rate of increase in men. Carcinoid tumors are the most common small intestinal cancers identified histologically, followed by adenocarcinomas. The former seems to be more frequently seen in the ileum, the latter in the duodenum. Surgery is the treatment of choice for the cure or palliation of small-bowel cancers.
Quality of language models for distributed information retrieval

Collections used in distributed information retrieval (DIR) are often described by unigram language models, composed of simple term-probability statistics. In most cases, this information is not directly available from constituent collections and must be estimated by the DIR tool itself from a sample of documents. Factors affecting the quality of such estimates are not well understood, and nor is the impact of estimate quality. Several measures of quality for unigram language models have been described, and three are used here to investigate how the quality of a model changes given document samples of differing size or quality. I show that although all models improve given larger samples, those built with more biased samples are of significantly lower quality; and that one of the three measures, Kullback-Leibler divergence, best describes model quality. Finally, it is shown that model quality has an impact on the effectiveness of standard server selection algorithms.
PARENTAL INFLUENCES ON SELF-ESTEEM OF EARLY ADOLESCENTS: A MULTIRACIAL SAMPLE FROM SELANGOR, MALAYSIA

Background: This cross-sectional study aims to determine the association between sociodemographic characteristics, parenting style, and self-esteem among early adolescents. Materials and Methods: A total of 716 early adolescents aged 10–11 years attending primary schools in Selangor state, Malaysia were enrolled in this study. Perceived parenting style and self-esteem were assessed through the self-administered Parenting Characteristics questionnaire and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, respectively. Pearson’s product-moment correlation and one-way ANOVA were employed to determine the bivariate relationships between socio-demographic characteristics and parenting style with self-esteem. Multiple linear regression analysis was utilized to determine the factors that significantly contributed to self-esteem of the respondents. Result: The results revealed that the predominant parenting style practiced by respondents’ fathers was authoritarian (44.4%), while that by respondents’ mothers was authoritative (38.2%). Ethnicity, paternal parenting style, and maternal parenting style were significantly associated with self-esteem of the respondents in the bivariate analyses. No associations were found between age, gender, paternal and maternal educational level, monthly household income, and self-esteem. Results of the multiple linear regression model demonstrated that being Chinese (β=-0.29), being Indian (β=-0.12), authoritative father (β=0.15), authoritative mother (β=0.16), and permissive mother (β=0.13) were significantly associated with selfesteem among the respondents (R=0.14). Conclusion: These findings suggest that being Malay, authoritative, and permissive parenting positively influenced the self-esteem of early adolescents. Further research should be conducted to assess the interaction effects between ethnicity and parenting style on selfesteem in early adolescents.
School Discipline Policies, Perceptions of Justice, and In-School Delinquency

School crime has been a national issue for nearly 40 years and remains a concern for students, administrators, parents, and the public. Schools engage in numerous strategies aimed at curbing crime, ranging from harsh disciplinary practices to proactive strategies focused on gaining student compliance. This study examines the impact of disciplinary practices on in-school delinquency, while also considering the influence of students’ perceptions of injustice. Using student- and school-level data from the Rural Substance Abuse and Violence Project and hierarchical Poisson regression analyses, findings reveal that students’ perceptions of injustice were significantly related to in-school delinquency, while proactive and reactive discipline practices, spanning the punitiveness continuum, were not. The findings provide tentative guidance for school-based discipline management policies and practices.