Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cascaded MPPT control with adaptive voltage controller applied to boost converters for PV applications

Dc-dc boost converters have been widely employed at input stage of photovoltaic (PV) inverters. Since PV system dynamic depend on solar irradiance, temperature and operation point of I-V curve, its small-signal models changes significantly. Most applications of this converter apply a bulk input capacitance to reduce the impact of PV module's behavior on control system dynamics. However, conventional approaches cannot achieve fast dynamic response for any operation point using a current control strategy to limit the power processed by the converter. This manuscript proposes a cascaded control structure complying with all these requirements. It is composed of a non-linear current controller and an adaptive voltage controller with fast detection of the system model. Experimental results are carried out to validate the proposed technique.
FBK@IWSLT 2007

This paper reports on the participation of FBK (formerly ITC-irst) at the IWSLT 2007 Evaluation. FBK participated in three tasks, namely Chinese-to-English, Japaneseto-English, and Italian-to-English. With respect to last year, translation systems were developed with the Moses Toolkit and theIRSTLM library, both available as open source software. Moreover, several novel ideas were investigated: the use of confusion networks in input to manage ambiguity in punctuation, the estimation of an additional language model by means of the Google’s Web 1T 5-gram collection, the combination of true case and lower case language models, and finally the use of multiple phrase-tables. By working on top of a state-of-the art baseline, experiments showed that the above methods accounted for significant BLEU score improvements.
A polynomial-time approximation scheme for planar multiway cut

Given an undirected graph with edge lengths and a subset of nodes (called the terminals), the multiway cut (also called the multi-terminal cut) problem asks for a subset of edges, with minimum total length, whose removal disconnects each terminal from all others. The problem generalizes minimum s-t cut, but is NP-hard for planar graphs and APX-hard for general graphs [11]. In this paper, we present a PTAS for multiway cut on planar graphs.
A Cross Language Document Retrieval System Based on Semantic Annotation

The paper describes a cross-lingual document retrieval system in the medical domain that employs a controlled vocabulary (UMLS1) in constructing an XML-based intermediary representation into which queries as well as documents are mapped. The system assists in the retrieval of English and German medical scientific abstracts relevant to a German query document (electronic patient record). The modularity of the system allows for deployment in other domains, given appropriate linguistic and semantic resources.
Golgi Fragmentation and Sphingomyelin Transport to Chlamydia trachomatis during Penicillin-Induced Persistence Do Not Depend on the Cytosolic Presence of the Chlamydial Protease CPAF

Chlamydia grows inside a cytosolic vacuole (the inclusion) that is supplied with nutrients by the host through vesicular and non-vesicular transport. It is unclear in many respects how Chlamydia organizes this transport. One model posits that the Chlamydia-induced fragmentation of the Golgi-apparatus is required for normal transport processes to the inclusion and for chlamydial development, and the chlamydial protease CPAF has been controversially implicated in Golgi-fragmentation. We here use a model of penicillin-induced persistence of infection with Chlamydia trachomatis to test this link. Under penicillin-treatment the inclusion grew in size for the first 24 h but after that growth was severely reduced. Penicillin did not reduce the number of infected cells with fragmented Golgi-apparatus, and normal Golgi-fragmentation was found in a CPAF-deficient mutant. Surprisingly, sphingomyelin transport into the inclusion and into the bacteria, as measured by fluorescence accumulation upon addition of labelled ceramide, was not reduced during penicillin-treatment. Thus, both Golgi-fragmentation and transport of sphingomyelin to C. trachomatis still occurred in this model of persistence. The portion of cells in which CPAF was detected in the cytosol, either by immunofluorescence or by immune-electron microscopy, was drastically reduced in cells cultured in the presence of penicillin. These data argue against an essential role of cytosolic CPAF for Golgi-fragmentation or for sphingomyelin transport in chlamydial infection.
Evaluation of the Microbial Contamination of Bangladesh Paper Currency Notes (taka) in Circulation

Bangladesh paper currency, Taka, the legal tender of Bangladesh were surveyed for microbial contaminations. This study was carried out on hundred paper currency notes belong to all-the notes denominations obtained from different chosen occupational groups in Dhaka City, Bangladesh. Identification and characterization revealed active participation of the following species of organisms in the ascending order of percentage as Escherichia coli 58%, Klebsiella 50%, Staphylococcus aureus 25 %, Salmonella 15 %,, Bacillus 9%. Pseudomonas. 7% and 'Vibrio cholerae 5%. One hundred and sixty nine bacterial isolates were recovered belonging to these selected seven species. Currency notes collected from fish sellers, meat sellers, vegetable sellers, food vendors, office workers, students, bus conductors, beggars and shop keepers with 42. sp. respectively. The study suggested that Bangladesh paper currency is commonly contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms and this contamination may play a significant role in the transmission of potentially harmful microorganisms or different diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, skin infections and also poses antibiotic resistant, so great care should be taken during handling of money and the preparation and handling of food to avoid cross contamination. INTRODUCTION Bacteria have been shown to be spread from person to
Two Cases of Mycobacterium microti-Induced Culture-Negative Tuberculosis

ABSTRACT We present descriptions of two human Mycobacterium microti infections: one of a patient with pulmonary disease and one of a patient with osteomyelitis of the hip. Both patients had acid-fast bacilli and a positive Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex PCR from clinical specimens, but mycobacterial cultures remained negative. The microbiological diagnosis was established by molecular methods.
Interactive Intersection Analysis using Trajectory Data

Increasingly large volumes of vehicle trajectory data are becoming available. This data holds the potential to offer detailed insight into important aspects of vehicular transportation and road networks. This insight can in turn be utilized to enable a range of important services. Specifically, we demonstrate a system that is capable of leveraging very large collections of GPS trajectories for enabling interactive analyses of traffic in road intersections, which are often bottlenecks in road networks. These analyses are able to provide detailed insight into the time-varying functioning of intersections, and they offer a solid, data-driven foundation for improving the capacity of intersections and the overall road network. The system enables more cost-effective analyses than what is possible with traditional techniques. Demonstration participants will gain first-hand experience with interactive analyses on top of a database of some 40 billion GPS records capturing more than a billion km of driving.
Bend Faulting at the Edge of a Flat Slab: The 2017 Mw7.1 Puebla‐Morelos, Mexico Earthquake

We present results of a slip model from joint inversion of strong motion and static Global Positioning System data for the Mw7.1 Puebla‐Morelos earthquake. We find that the earthquake nucleates at the bottom of the oceanic crust or within the oceanic mantle with most of the moment release occurring within the oceanic mantle. Given its location at the edge of the flat slab, the earthquake is likely the result of bending stresses occurring at the transition from flat slab subduction to steeply dipping subduction. The event strikes obliquely to the slab, we find a good agreement between the seafloor fabric offshore the source region and the strike of the earthquake. We argue that the event likely reactivated a fault first created during seafloor formation. We hypothesize that large bending‐related events at the edge of the flat slab are more likely in areas of low misalignment between the seafloor fabric and the slab strike where reactivation of preexisting structures is favored. This hypothesis predicts decreased likelihood of bending‐related events northwest of the 2017 source region but also suggests that they should be more likely southeast of the 2017 source region.
A Broadband Omnidirectional Circularly Polarized Antenna

A broadband circularly polarized (CP) antenna is developed with an omnidirectional radiation pattern in the horizontal plane. Four broadband CP rectangular loop elements are employed for broadband omnidirectional CP radiation. The four rectangular loop elements are first printed on a flexible thin dielectric substrate and then rolled into a hollow cylinder. A conducting cylinder is introduced inside the hollow cylinder for achieving desired omnidirectional CP performance. A feeding network consisting of four broadband baluns and an impedance matching circuit is designed to feed the four rectangular loop elements. The omnidirectional CP antenna has a circular cross section with diameter of <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$0.38 \lambda_{0}$</tex> </formula>. Experimental results show that the omnidirectional CP antenna has bandwidths of 41% (1.65–2.5 GHz) for <formula formulatype="inline"> <tex Notation="TeX">${\hbox {axial\ ratio}} < 3$</tex></formula> dB and 45% (1.58–2.5 GHz) for <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">${{\hbox {return\ loss}} > 10}$</tex></formula> dB. The gain variation in the omnidirectional plane is less than 1 dB for the frequency range from 1.65 to 2.5 GHz. Good agreement is obtained between simulated and measured results.
Optimal Task Placement of a Serial Robot Manipulator for Manipulability and Mechanical Power Optimization

Power consumption and accuracy are main aspects to be taken into account in the movement executed by high performance robots. The first aspect is important from the economical point of view, while the second is requested to satisfy technical specifications. Aiming at increasing the robot performance, a strategy that maximizes the manipulator accuracy and minimizes the mechanical power consumption is considered in this work. The end-effector is constrained to follow a predefined path during the optimal task positioning. The proposed strategy defines a relation between mechanical power and manipulability as a key element of the manipulator analysis, establishing a performance index for a rigid body transformation. This transformation is used to compute the optimal task positioning through the optimization of a multicriteria objective function. Numerical simulations regarding a serial robot manipulator demonstrate the viability of the proposed methodology.
Near-Optimal Anytime Coalition Structure Generation

Forming effective coalitions is a major research challenge in the field of multi-agent systems. Central to this endeavour is the problem of determining the best set of agents that should participate in a given team. To this end, in this paper, we present a novel, anytime algorithm for coalition structure generation that is faster than previous anytime algorithms designed for this purpose. Our algorithm can generate solutions that either have a tight bound from the optimal or are optimal (depending on the objective) and works by partitioning the space in terms of a small set of elements that represent structures which contain coalitions of particular sizes. It then performs an online heuristic search that prunes the space and only considers valid and non-redundant coalition structures. We empirically show that we are able to find solutions that are, in the worst case, 99% efficient in 0.0043% of the time to find the optimal value by the state of the art dynamic programming (DP) algorithm (for 20 agents), using 66% less memory.
Novel conductive polypyrrole/zinc oxide/chitosan bionanocomposite: synthesis, characterization, antioxidant, and antibacterial activities

An antibacterial and conductive bionanocomposite (BNC) film consisting of polypyrrole (Ppy), zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles (NPs), and chitosan (CS) was electrochemically synthesized on indium tin oxide (ITO) glass substrate by electrooxidation of 0.1 M pyrrole in aqueous solution containing appropriate amounts of ZnO NPs uniformly dispersed in CS. This method enables the room temperature electrosynthesis of BNC film consisting of ZnO NPs incorporated within the growing Ppy/CS composite. The morphology of Ppy/ZnO/CS BNC was characterized by scanning electron microscopy. ITO–Ppy/CS and ITO–Ppy/ZnO/CS bioelectrodes were characterized using the Fourier transform infrared technique, X-ray diffraction, and thermogravimetric analysis. The electrical conductivity of nanocomposites was investigated by a four-probe method. The prepared nanocomposites were analyzed for antioxidant activity using the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl assay. The results demonstrated that the antioxidant activity of nanocomposites increased remarkably by addition of ZnO NPs. The electrical conductivity of films showed a sudden decrease for lower weight ratios of ZnO NPs (5 wt%), while it was increased gradually for higher ratios (10, 15, and 20 wt%). The nanocomposites were analyzed for antibacterial activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. The results indicated that the synthesized BNC is effective against all of the studied bacteria, and its effectiveness is higher for Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The thermal stability and physical properties of BNC films were increased by an increase in the weight ratio of ZnO NPs, promising novel applications for the electrically conductive polysaccharide-based nanocomposites, particularly those that may exploit the antimicrobial nature of Ppy/ZnO/CS BNCs.
Data dissemination approaches for performance discovery in grid computing systems

A Grid system can be considered as an infrastructure that allows location independent access to the resources and services that are provided by geographically distributed machines and networks. One fundamental operation necessary to support such a system is performance discovery in wide-area networks. Dissemination of resource status information is an important component of any performance discovery algorithm. The data dissemination for performancediscovery in Grid systems has several distinct features and requirements that can be exploited to make the process efficient. Recently, several data dissemination algorithms based on a new concept called the "Grid potential" were proposed. This paper introduces a new algorithm for data dissemination and compares it with previously introduced schemes through simulation studies. The results indicate that the new algorithm further improves the performance of data dissemination.
Rotating line cameras: Epipolar geometry and spatial sampling

Rotating line cameras project 3D scenes on a cylindric surface, where one or multiple rotating sensor lines allow to compose panoramic images line by line. An important special case of such a camera is defined by two lines with symmetric viewing angles with respect to the cylinder’s surface normal. The report analyzes epipolar geometry for the general case of such rotating line cameras, and discusses spatial distributions of (potential) 3D samples for the special symmetric camera architecture. Acknowledgment. The authors acknowledge comments, collaboration or support by various students and colleagues at CITR Auckland and DLR Berlin-Adlershof. report2_HWK. tex; 22/03/2006; 16:56; p.1
Abstract verbs

Existing generation systems use verbs almost exclusively to describe actions/events or to ascribe properties. In doing so, they achieve a direct concrete style of the kind often recommended in style manuals. However in many genres, including academic writing, it is common to find verbs expressing abstract relationships, with events etc. pushed down into nominalisations. This paper illustrates two important classes of abstract verb, one expressing discourse relations, the other expressing participant roles, and discusses some theoretical and practical reasons for studying such verbs and including them in generation systems.
Mobile crowdsensing incentives under participation uncertainty

Mobile crowdsensing applications rely on crowds of contributors who are willing to carry out certain tasks of interest. This willingness varies widely across users and tasks and (monetary) incentives are often engaged to strengthen it or make up for its total absence. These incentives need to carefully account for the highly non-homogeneous response of users to external motivation. We propose a framework that explicitly accounts for the implicit uncertainty about the eventual participation and contributions of users. In the framework, the impact of incentives on the user choice to contribute or not is modeled probabilistically. First, we formulate a convex optimization problem for incentive allocation with the goal of achieving maximum expected quality while taking into account task budget limitations and constraints related to the physical locations of users and tasks. We then propose an iterative algorithm to alleviate the complexity of the original problem with two basic steps: an allocation step that applies incentive allocation to a set of available contributors; and a refinement step that revokes portions of the allocated incentives. We study the performance characteristics of our algorithm by comparing it to a default solver for convex optimization problems.
Inducing Ontology from Flickr Tags

paper, we describe some promising initial results in inducing ontology from the Flickr tag vocabulary, using a subsumption-based model. We describe the utility of faceted ontology as a supplement to a tagging system and present our model and results. We propose a revised, probabilistic model using seed ontologies to induce faceted ontology, and describe how the model can integrate into the logistics of tagging communities.
When past is present: Substitutions of long-term memory for sensory evidence in perceptual judgments

When perception is underdetermined by current sensory inputs, memories for related experiences in the past might fill in missing detail. To evaluate this possibility, we measured the likelihood of relying on long-term memory versus sensory evidence when judging the appearance of an object near the threshold of awareness. Specifically, we associated colors with shapes in long-term memory and then presented the shapes again later in unrelated colors and had observers judge the appearance of the new colors. We found that responses were well characterized as a bimodal mixture of original and current-color representations (vs. an integrated unimodal representation). That is, although irrelevant to judgments of the current color, observers occasionally anchored their responses on the original colors in memory. Moreover, the likelihood of such memory substitutions increased when sensory input was degraded. In fact, they occurred even in the absence of sensory input when observers falsely reported having seen something. Thus, although perceptual judgments intuitively seem to reflect the current state of the environment, they can also unknowingly be dictated by past experiences.
Screening for toxoplasmosis

EDITOR, - Health education probably plays a major part in the prevention of toxoplasma infection in pregnancy.1 The current consensus on antenatal screening in Britain is summed up by a report by a working party of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which concluded that nationwide screening is not appropriate at present.2 Last year the Toxoplasmosis Trust surveyed policy and practice concerning toxoplasmosis in …
Prediction of stopping maneuver considering driver's state

This paper presents how the difference of driving patterns affects prediction of driver's stopping maneuver. Our proposed method has two different driving models based on a driver's state, the model in normal state and the model in hasty state. One of the models is selected depending on a driver's state, and the maneuver is predicted in the selected model. The hidden Markov model (HMM), one of the specific form of dynamic bayesian networks (DBN), was applied for modeling of each driving pattern. For estimation of driver's state, heart rate variability (HRV) based index was used because the index reflects stress level which seems to relate to hasty state. We have carried out a driving experiment with a simulator. As the result of evaluating the pattern in hasty state, the proposed method predicted stopping maneuver earlier than a single model method. To predict driver's maneuver is essential to improve the human-machine interface n driver assistance technologies including a collision-warning system. Our approach is intended to enable more accurate prediction of the maneuver for these systems
Document-based Dirichlet class language model for speech recognition using document-based n-gram events

We propose a document-based Dirichlet class language model (DDCLM) for speech recognition using document-based n-gram events. In this model, the class is conditioned on the immediate history context and the document, and the word is conditioned on the the class and the document in the original DCLM model. In the DCLM model, the class information was obtained from the (n-1) history words of n-gram events of a training corpus. Here, the model uses the count of the n-grams, which are the number of appearances of the n-grams in the corpus. These counts are the sum of the n-gram counts in different documents where they could appear to describe different topics. Therefore, the n-gram counts of the corpus may not yield the proper class information for the histories. We encounter this problem in the DCLM model and propose a DDCLM model that overcomes the above problem by finding the class information for the document-based history context using the document-based n-gram events. We carried out experiments on a continuous speech recognition (CSR) task using the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) corpus and have seen that the proposed approach shows significant perplexity and word error rate (WER) reductions over the other approach.
Finite-sample Analysis of Bellman Residual Minimization

We consider the Bellman residual minimization approach for solving discounted Markov decision problems, where we assume that a generative model of the dynamics and rewards is available. At each policy iteration step, an approximation of the value function for the current policy is obtained by minimizing an empirical Bellman residual defined on a set of n states drawn i.i. d. from a distribution , the immediate rewards, and the next states sampled from the model. Our main result is a generalization bound for the Bellman residual in linear approximation spaces. In particular, we prove that the empirical Bellman residual approaches the true (quadratic) Bellman residual in -norm with a rate of order O(1= √ n). This result implies that minimizing the empirical residual is indeed a sound approach for the minimization of the true Bellman residual which guarantees a good approximation of the value function for each policy. Finally, we derive performance bounds for the resulting approximate policy iteration algorithm in terms of the number of samples n and a measure of how well the function space is able to approximate the sequence of value functions.