Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Color Me Noisy: Example‐based Rendering of Hand‐colored Animations with Temporal Noise Control

We present an example‐based approach to rendering hand‐colored animations which delivers visual richness comparable to real artwork while enabling control over the amount of perceived temporal noise. This is important both for artistic purposes and viewing comfort, but is tedious or even intractable to achieve manually. We analyse typical features of real hand‐colored animations and propose an algorithm that tries to mimic them using only static examples of drawing media. We apply the algorithm to various animations using different drawing media and compare the quality of synthetic results with real artwork. To verify our method perceptually, we conducted experiments confirming that our method delivers distinguishable noise levels and reduces eye strain. Finally, we demonstrate the capabilities of our method to mask imperfections such as shower‐door artifacts.
A Novel Immunoreagent for the Specific and Sensitive Detection of the Explosive Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP)

Triacetone triperoxide (TATP) is a primary explosive, which was used in various terrorist attacks in the past. For the development of biosensors, immunochemical µ-TAS, electronic noses, immunological test kits, or test strips, the availability of antibodies of high quality is crucial. Recently, we presented the successful immunization of mice, based on the design, synthesis, and conjugation of a novel TATP derivative. Here, the long-term immunization of rabbits is shown, which resulted in antibodies of extreme selectivity and more than 1,000 times better affinity in relation to the antibodies from mice. Detection limits below 10 ng L−1 (water) were achieved. The working range covers more than four decades, calculated from a precision profile. The cross-reactivity tests revealed an extraordinary selectivity of the antibodies—not a single compound could be identified as a relevant cross-reactant. The presented immunoreagent might be a major step for the development of highly sensitive and selective TATP detectors particularly for security applications.
Effect of annular slots on the solid conical antenna

The effects of adding annular slots to solid conical antenna is described in this paper. The slots produced stop-bands with anti-resonant frequencies that are inversely proportional to the depth of the slots. The addition of double slots produced two distinct stop-bands. Prototype antennas were fabricated and measured to verify the simulated results.
Evaluating Centering for Sentence Ordering in Two New Domains

This paper builds on recent research investigating sentence ordering in text production by evaluating the Centering-based metrics of coherence employed by Karamanis et al. (2004) using the data of Barzilay and Lapata (2005). This is the first time that Centering is evaluated empirically as a sentence ordering constraint in several domains, verifying the results reported in Karamanis et al.
ESTIMATION OF THE TAIL OFA DISTRIBUTION USING EXTREMEORDER STATISTICSby

SUMMARY For distributions with nite upper endpoint we consider estimation of the upper tail of the distribution using only the r largest observations in a random sample of size n. Of course any results for upper endpoints are readily adapted, via the r smallest observations, to the case of a lower endpoint. This problem has been discussed by several authors; for example, Hall (1982) considered estimation of the endpoint, Smith and Weissman (1985) investigated estimation of endpoint, shape and scale parameters by maximum likelihood, while Weissman (1978) was concerned with estimation of quantiles close to the endpoint of a distribution. To be consistent with Cooke (1979, 1980), we will denote by the upper endpoint of the distribution and a parameter determining the shape of the distribution near we will denote by. Smith and Weissman (1985) investigated by simulation the properties of the maximum likelihood estimators of shape and scale parameters and a lower endpoint, though their results are immediately applicable to the upper endpoint case. It was revealed that the likelihood function often has two maxima or none with respect to when < 1 and, of course, it is known that the procedure fails when 1 since, when a solution of the likelihood equations exists, the estimator of is necessarily less than 1 and hence it cannot be consistent. As a result, even the widely used maximum likelihood procedure of Harter and Moore (1965) for the 3-parameter Weibull distribution is not always consistent and sometimes fails to produce a solution. 1 In stark contrast to the maximum likelihood estimators, the estimators of and presented in this paper always exist and are shown to be consistent and much more eecient. We suggest then, that when estimating endpoint and shape parameters as in this paper and in that of Smith and Weissman (1985), maximum likelihood estimation should be avoided. Nonetheless, under the assumption of a random sample from a 3-parameter Weibull distribution, Cheng and Iles (1987) have shown how the likelihood function can be corrected so that maximum likelihood estimation works quite satisfactorily, while Smith and Naylor (1987) have investigated a Bayesian approach which appears to be superior to maximum likelihood, though with the perennial diiculty of specifying a suitable prior.
Jak se brněnští gymnazisté učí cizí jazyky? Jaké strategieučení používají? Které strategie jsou z hlediska vzdělávacíchvýsledků nejefektivnější?

Výzkum gymnazistů v Brně zjisťoval, jak se studenti uci cizim jazykům, jake strategie uceni použivaji, jake jazyky se uci, jak dlouho, co je motivuje a jak vidi efektivni uceni. Zjisťovano bylo použivani přimých strategii uceni (paměťove, kognitivni, kompenzacni) a nepřimých stra-tegii (metakognitivni, afektivni, socialni) a jejich efektivita. GA406/05/2107.
On the role of the post-starburst phase in the buildup of the red sequence of intermediate-redshift clusters

We present new deep spectroscopic observations of 0.05-0.5 L * galaxies in one cluster (cl1232.5-1250) drawn from the ESO (European Southern Observatory) Distant Cluster Survey (EDisCS) sample, at z = 0.54. The new data extend the spectroscopy already available for this cluster by about 1 mag. The cluster has a large fraction of passive galaxies and exhibits a well-defined and relatively tight colour-magnitude relation. Among spectroscopic members, only six galaxies are classified as 'post-starburst' (k+a). For another EDisCS cluster at similar redshift and with as deep spectroscopy, no member is found to have a k+a spectrum. The low measured numbers of post-starburst systems appear to be inadequate to explain the observed increase of faint red galaxies at lower redshift, even when accounting for the infall of new galaxies on to the cluster. Post-starburst galaxies represent a possible channel to move galaxies from the blue star-forming cloud to the red sequence, but the available data suggest this is not the dominant channel in galaxy clusters. If the galaxies at the faint end of the red sequence in nearby clusters originate from the blue galaxies observed in distant galaxy clusters, the transformation must have occurred primarily through physical processes that do not lead to a post-starburst phase. In addition, our data exclude a large population of k+a galaxies at faint magnitudes, as found in the Coma cluster.
Natural Selection: A Stethoscopic Amphibious Installation.

This paper discusses emergence as a complex behaviour in the sound domain and presents a design strategy that was used in the creation of the sound installation Natural Selection to encourage the perception of sonic emergence. The interactions in Natural Selection are based on an algorithm derived from an innately sonic emergent ecological system found in nature, that of mating choices by female frogs within a calling male frog chorus. This paper outlines the design and implementation of the installation and describes the research behind its design, most notably the notion of embodiment within a sonic environment and its importance to the perception of sonic emergence.
Merchants of Optimism: Agenda-Setting Organizations and the Framing of Performance-Based Funding for Higher Education

ABSTRACT This article explores the diffusion and adoption of performance-based funding policies using framing theory. Specifically, the authors examine the role of philanthropic foundations and policy organizations in generating and exporting performance-based funding in state contexts. Findings from an analysis of policy publications suggest that the organizations analyzed advance a specific policy narrative, while hindering alternative policy options. Analysis of policy adoption in specific state contexts supports this conclusion, indicating that states readily adopt the policy frame advanced by philanthropic foundations and policy organizations and consider few, if any, policy alternatives.
Binary Search Join between an IR System and an RDBMS

Integrating relational database technologies into Web information retrieval enables users to ask complex queries beyond traditional keyword searches over Web pages. One approach to this integration is to have a software layer on top of an information retrieval (IR) system and an RDBMS (relational database management system). A core operation in this top layer is to join the intermediate results from the two underlying systems (called the IR results and the DB results correspondingly) in order to produce the final ranked results for each query. Unfortunately, most conventional join algorithms are inefficient for this operation. In this paper, we propose one simple join algorithm called binary search join (BSJ) for the operation of joining the IR results and the DB results. This algorithm takes advantage of the fact that the IR results are already ranked by relevance and that the DB results are already sorted by the join attribute. It scans the IR results and for each IR result tuple performs a binary search over the DB results. We analytically and empirically study the performance of BSJ in comparison with several conventional join algorithms on a repository of Chinese news Web pages. The experiment results prove that BSJ works best in most cases
Modularity in the new millenium: a panel summary

Parnas' seminal work [2] on separation of concerns in design has led to diverse innovations in programming language design, to support modularity. However, there has been a growing sentiment in many quarters that there are some concerns that stubbornly resist tidy confinement, when using established modularization mechanisms in pro- gramming languages. A diverse set of new approaches have emerged in response: aspects [1], monads [5], mixin lay- ers [3], and multi-dimensional separation of concerns [4]. These approaches arose more or less independently of each other, and have (to varying degrees) developed technical maturity, real-world credibility and strong user bases. We are also now beginning to see strong scholarly comparisions of the intellectual foundations and practical utility of these different aproaches. This panel aims to support this trend. In this panel, we bring together leading experts (Profs. Batory, Kiczales, and Launchbury, and Dr. Tarr) in these different areas. Each represents a particular perspective on how to evolve and adapt the old idea of modularization to deal with new challenges such as security, fault-tolerance, distribution, and auditing. In addition, we also have two pioneering researchers (Profs. Balzer and Parnas) to pro- vide us with a historical perspective on the evolution (sic) of program modularization and evolution techniques. Position statements of some of the panelists follow, pre- sented in alphabetical order of their names:
Design of contactless hand biometric system with relative geometric parameters

The main concern in contactless biometric system is the position of the hand that may vary relatively to camera. This variation of position result in different parameters of hand geometry captured from the same person, in different time, which is a serious problem in identification process. This paper presents a novel contactless biometric verification system based on relative geometric parameters of the hand, as the biometric feature. A webcam captured color image of the hand, which will be transformed into binary image for segmentation, based on thresholding technique. Binary image was extracted to get nine absolute geometrical sizes. The relative geometric parameters derived from ratios between those geometrical sizes were calculated. Feature extraction was processed by scanning technique. Matching was conducted based on match score, which is the output result by feeding relative geometric parameters to backpropagation-trained artificial neural network. Our design provided accuracy of 87.237%, precision of 85.798%, False Match Rate (FMR) of 14.780%, and False Non Match Rate (FNMR) of 10.747%.
An Induction Theorem for Ring Protocols of Processes Described with Predicate/Transition Nets

The veriication of concurrent systems, consisting of many identical nite-state machines, has gained a lot of research interest recently. One reason is the growth of data communication networks, where millions of computers use the same nite-state protocol to communicate with each other. In this report we present an induction theorem for ring protocols, consisting of an arbitrary number of identical processes, described using Pr/T-nets. Applying the proposed method temporal properties of protocols, using addresses in communication, can be veriied. This has not been possible with induction methods published earlier, because the behaviour of the processes, using addresses in rings of diierent sizes, has not been considered identical. Using symmetries of the reachability graph of the Pr/T-net of a veriied system, we abstract the addresses used by the processes away from the observable behaviour of the system, before the identity of the processes is examined. As an example we show that a starvation-free solution to the dining philosophers' problem is correct with any number of philosophers. In addition, we show that the arbitration algorithm of the Frame Synchronized Ring is fair, whatever the number of nodes is in the ring, using the assumption that every node is continuously ready to send. The arbitration algorithm of the FSR cannot be successfully veriied using methods that have been published earlier.
A simple design of DC power system with multiple source-side converters to operate stably underconstant power load

Stability issue of DC bus in power system with multi-sources such as renewable and distributed energy sources is investigated. A simple design with cascade control for individual Buck converter, Boost converter and ICFFB converter to operate stably under constant power load is presented. Integration of these converters into the DC power system and solution for subsystem dynamic interactions are analyzed and verified by simulation.
DIVERSE PROTOSTELLAR EVOLUTIONARY STATES IN THE YOUNG CLUSTER AFGL961

We present arcsecond resolution mid-infrared and millimeter observations of the center of the young stellar cluster AFGL961 in the Rosette molecular cloud. Within 0.2 pc of each other, we find an early B star embedded in a dense core, a neighboring star of similar luminosity with no millimeter counterpart, a protostar that has cleared out a cavity in the circumcluster envelope, and two massive, dense cores with no infrared counterparts. An outflow emanates from one of these cores, indicating a deeply embedded protostar, but the other is starless, bound, and appears to be collapsing. The diversity of states implies either that protostellar evolution is faster in clusters than in isolation or that clusters form via quasi-static rather than dynamic collapse. The existence of a pre-stellar core at the cluster center shows that some star formation continues after and in close proximity to massive, ionizing stars.
A New Image Retrieval Algorithm Based on Sparse Coding

The Bag-of-visual-words (BOVW) model discards image spatial information, and the computing cost is expensive on spatial pyramid matching(SPM) model. Due to sparse coding approach exhibit super performance in information retrieval, hence, we propose a new sparse coding image retrieval algorithm. Using 2 l norm replace 0 l norm in SPM vector quantization. The local information was incorporated into sparse term by local adapter. Sparse coding was transformed into least square convex optimization proplem. Each block was encoded by the k nearest neighbor (KNN) approach, and the coding coefficients were integrated by the max pooling function. Each block required different weight according to the image itself information. Euclidean distance and the cosine theorem were combined with the similarity calculation. Our method is evaluated on the two datasets— Caltech-101 and Corel-1000. Comparing with the BOVW and SPM, the results are shown that the new approach greatly improves the image retrieval accuracy. Keywords-bag of visual words; spatial pyramid matching; sparse coding; image retrieval
Neural Correlates of Enhanced Visual Short-Term Memory for Angry Faces: An fMRI Study

Background Fluid and effective social communication requires that both face identity and emotional expression information are encoded and maintained in visual short-term memory (VSTM) to enable a coherent, ongoing picture of the world and its players. This appears to be of particular evolutionary importance when confronted with potentially threatening displays of emotion - previous research has shown better VSTM for angry versus happy or neutral face identities. Methodology/Principal Findings Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, here we investigated the neural correlates of this angry face benefit in VSTM. Participants were shown between one and four to-be-remembered angry, happy, or neutral faces, and after a short retention delay they stated whether a single probe face had been present or not in the previous display. All faces in any one display expressed the same emotion, and the task required memory for face identity. We find enhanced VSTM for angry face identities and describe the right hemisphere brain network underpinning this effect, which involves the globus pallidus, superior temporal sulcus, and frontal lobe. Increased activity in the globus pallidus was significantly correlated with the angry benefit in VSTM. Areas modulated by emotion were distinct from those modulated by memory load. Conclusions/Significance Our results provide evidence for a key role of the basal ganglia as an interface between emotion and cognition, supported by a frontal, temporal, and occipital network.
Using graphical models for PP attachment

PP attachment has attracted considerable interest the last two decades. The standard set-up has been to extract quadruples of verbs, direct objects, prepositions and prepo-sitional complements from the Wall Street Journal and classify them as either low or high attachments. State-of-the-art results almost equal human performance in the standard set-up. Recently, however, Atterer and Sch¨utze (2007) has questioned this methodology. In this paper, we show that state-of-the-art results can be achieved by simpler means than what has previously been shown, using graphical models, but also that state-of-the-art parsers perform insigniﬁcantly worse than state-of-the-art PP attachment classiﬁers. This questions the usefulness of previous studies of PP attachment, even if the methodology in these studies is sound.
Comparison of Estimators for Spatial Error Models

In Spatial econometrics, many approaches have been developed and compared in order to estimate parameters in spatial models. However, most comparisons are limited to only a few numbers of the true values. In this paper we compare the performances of 5 different approaches in estimating parameters in the spatial error model, corresponding to 19 different values of spatial correlation parameter. Our results indicate that there is no single approach that always performs the best. The approach selection strongly depends on the true values of spatial correlation parameter, and the parameters to be estimated. For estimating spatial correlation parameter in the benchmark case, the ML approach usually performs the best when the spatial correlation is very strong; spatial correlation parameter is close to -1 and 1. For other values of spatial correlation parameter between these 2 extremes, the KPW approach mostly performs significantly better than all other approaches. Moreover, the results are robust, they do not change significantly when the number of observations or the variance changes. Finally, while the runtimes of some approaches do not depend on the number of observations and variances, the ML approach’s runtime increases at an increasing rate with the number of observations.
Chronic Opisthorchis viverrini Infection Changes the Liver Microbiome and Promotes Helicobacter Growth

Adults of Opisthorchis viverrini reside in the biliary system, inducing inflammation of bile ducts and cholangitis, leading to hepatobiliary disease (HBD) including cholangiocarcinoma. O. viverrini infection also has major implications for the bacterial community in bile ducts and liver. To investigate this in chronic O. viverrini infection (≥ 8 months p.i.), bacterial genomic DNA from livers of hamsters and from worms was investigated using culture techniques, PCR for Helicobacter spp. and high-throughput next-generation sequencing targeting the V3-V4 hypervariable regions of prokaryotic 16S rRNA gene. Of a total of 855,046 DNA sequence reads, 417,953 were useable after filtering. Metagenomic analyses assigned these to 93 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) consisting of 80 OTUs of bacteria, including 6 phyla and 42 genera. In the chronic O. viverrini-infected group, bacterial community composition and diversity were significantly increased compared to controls. Sequences of Fusobacterium spp. were the most common (13.81%), followed by Streptococcus luteciae (10.76%), Escherichia coli (10.18%), and Bifidobacterium spp. (0.58%). In addition, Helicobacter pylori (0.17% of sequences) was also identified in the liver of chronic O. viverrini infections, but not in normal liver. The presence of H. pylori was confirmed by PCR and by use of an antibody against bacterial antigen, supporting the metagenomics data. The identities of bacteria cultured for enrichment suggested that chronic O. viverrini infection changes the liver microbiome and promotes Helicobacter spp. growth. There may be synergy between O. viverrini and the liver microbiome in enhancing immune response-mediated hepatobiliary diseases.