Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kernel Methods on Approximate Infinite-Dimensional Covariance Operators for Image Classification

This paper presents a novel framework for visual object recognition using infinite-dimensional covariance operators of input features in the paradigm of kernel methods on infinite-dimensional Riemannian manifolds. Our formulation provides in particular a rich representation of image features by exploiting their non-linear correlations. Theoretically, we provide a finite-dimensional approximation of the Log-Hilbert-Schmidt (Log-HS) distance between covariance operators that is scalable to large datasets, while maintaining an effective discriminating capability. This allows us to efficiently approximate any continuous shift-invariant kernel defined using the Log-HS distance. At the same time, we prove that the Log-HS inner product between covariance operators is only approximable by its finite-dimensional counterpart in a very limited scenario. Consequently, kernels defined using the Log-HS inner product, such as polynomial kernels, are not scalable in the same way as shift-invariant kernels. Computationally, we apply the approximate Log-HS distance formulation to covariance operators of both handcrafted and convolutional features, exploiting both the expressiveness of these features and the power of the covariance representation. Empirically, we tested our framework on the task of image classification on twelve challenging datasets. In almost all cases, the results obtained outperform other state of the art methods, demonstrating the competitiveness and potential of our framework.
Subspace Information Criterion for Model Selection

The problem of model selection is considerably important for acquiring higher levels of generalization capability in supervised learning. In this article, we propose a new criterion for model selection, the subspace information criterion (SIC), which is a generalization of Mallows's CL. It is assumed that the learning target function belongs to a specified functional Hilbert space and the generalization error is defined as the Hilbert space squared norm of the difference between the learning result function and target function. SIC gives an unbiased estimate of the generalization error so defined. SIC assumes the availability of an unbiased estimate of the target function and the noise covariance matrix, which are generally unknown. A practical calculation method of SIC for least-mean-squares learning is provided under the assumption that the dimension of the Hilbert space is less than the number of training examples. Finally, computer simulations in two examples show that SIC works well even when the number of training examples is small.
Performance analysis of energy efficient clustering protocols for maximising lifetime of wireless sensor networks

Over the last couple of decades, clustering-based protocols are believed to be the best for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because they work on the principle of divide and conquer. In this study, the authors propose and evaluate two new clustering-based protocols for heterogeneous WSNs, which are called single-hop energy-efficient clustering protocol (S-EECP) and multi-hop energy-efficient clustering protocol (M-EECP). In S-EECP, the cluster heads (CHs) are elected by a weighted probability based on the ratio between residual energy of each node and average energy of the network. The nodes with high initial energy and residual energy will have more chances to be elected as CHs than nodes with low energy whereas in M-EECP, the elected CHs communicate the data packets to the base station via multi-hop communication approach. To analyse the lifetime of the network, the authors assume three types of sensor nodes equipped with different battery energy. Finally, simulation results indicate that the authors protocols prolong network lifetime, and achieve load balance among the CHs better than the existing clustering protocols.
A Type-Driven Tensor-Based Semantics for CCG

This paper shows how the tensor-based semantic framework of Coecke et al. can be seamlessly integrated with Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG). The integration follows from the observation that tensors are linear maps, and hence can be manipulated using the combinators of CCG, including type-raising and composition. Given the existence of robust, wide-coverage CCG parsers, this opens up the possibility of a practical, type-driven compositional semantics based on distributional representations.
Performance assessment of automatic crowd detection techniques on airborne images

Real-time monitoring of crowded regions has crucial importance to avoid overload of people in certain areas. Understanding dynamics of large people crowds can also help to estimate future status of public areas. In order to bring an automatic solution to the problem, herein we introduce four different approaches based on keypoint extraction from airborne images. Using four different keypoint extraction methods separately, we form four different probability density functions (pdf) which hold information about density of people. With our experimental results, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these methods in detail. Besides using four different keypoint extraction methods, we also introduce fusion approaches in order to increase the robustness of the algorithm. Our promising experimental results indicate possible usage of the algorithm on real-time on board applications.
Low temperature sintering process for deposition of nano-structured metal for nano IC packaging

This paper presents the study of some nano-sized metal powders, and the processes of depositing these on silicon wafers, for use in nano-structured wafer level interconnects. Nano-powders, /spl sim/50-100 nm, of copper and silver, obtained by electro-explosion of the metal wire, are used in this study. Pastes were obtained by suspension of the nano metallic powder in surfactants, organic carriers and reducing agents. The pastes were printed onto surface-treated silicon wafers and sintered at around 400/spl deg/C. Results show that there is a potential of lowering the sintering temperature to 200/spl deg/C, which would be more ideal for microelectronics applications.
Fuzzy robust fault-tolerant control for networked control systems

This paper presents an approach useful to analyze the fault tolerant problem for the networked control systems(NCSs). A Takagi-Sugeno(T-S) fuzzy model with parametrical uncertainties is used to approximate the T-S model. We designed robust controllers both with the sensor failure and the actuator failure. The robust fault tolerances of the system were proved by Lyapunov function. This method avoid the difficulty of the solving the common matrix. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Chord Recognition Based on Temporal Correlation Support Vector Machine

In this paper, we propose a method called temporal correlation support vector machine (TCSVM) for automatic major-minor chord recognition in audio music. We first use robust principal component analysis to separate the singing voice from the music to reduce the influence of the singing voice and consider the temporal correlations of the chord features. Using robust principal component analysis, we expect the low-rank component of the spectrogram matrix to contain the musical accompaniment and the sparse component to contain the vocal signals. Then, we extract a new logarithmic pitch class profile (LPCP) feature called enhanced LPCP from the low-rank part. To exploit the temporal correlation among the LPCP features of chords, we propose an improved support vector machine algorithm called TCSVM. We perform this study using the MIREX’09 (Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange) Audio Chord Estimation dataset. Furthermore, we conduct comprehensive experiments using different pitch class profile feature vectors to examine the performance of TCSVM. The results of our method are comparable to the state-of-the-art methods that entered the MIREX in 2013 and 2014 for the MIREX’09 Audio Chord Estimation task dataset.
Syntax-Based Translation With Bilingually Lexicalized Synchronous Tree Substitution Grammars

Syntax-based models can significantly improve the translation performance due to their grammatical modeling on one or both language side(s). However, the translation rules such as the non-lexical rule “ VP→(x0x1,VP:x1PP:x0)” in string-to-tree models do not consider any lexicalized information on the source or target side. The rule is so generalized that any subtree rooted at VP can substitute for the nonterminal VP:x1. Because rules containing nonterminals are frequently used when generating the target-side tree structures, there is a risk that rules of this type will potentially be severely misused in decoding due to a lack of lexicalization guidance. In this article, inspired by lexicalized PCFG, which is widely used in monolingual parsing, we propose to upgrade the STSG (synchronous tree substitution grammars)-based syntax translation model with bilingually lexicalized STSG. Using the string-to-tree translation model as a case study, we present generative and discriminative models to integrate lexicalized STSG into the translation model. Both small- and large-scale experiments on Chinese-to-English translation demonstrate that the proposed lexicalized STSG can provide superior rule selection in decoding and substantially improve the translation quality.
Scanning and Sequential Decision Making for Multidimensional Data—Part II: The Noisy Case

We consider the problem of sequential decision making for random fields corrupted by noise. In this scenario, the decision maker observes a noisy version of the data, yet judged with respect to the clean data. In particular, we first consider the problem of scanning and sequentially filtering noisy random fields. In this case, the sequential filter is given the freedom to choose the path over which it traverses the random field (e.g., noisy image or video sequence), thus it is natural to ask what is the best achievable performance and how sensitive this performance is to the choice of the scan. We formally define the problem of scanning and filtering, derive a bound on the best achievable performance, and quantify the excess loss occurring when nonoptimal scanners are used, compared to optimal scanning and filtering. We then discuss the problem of scanning and prediction for noisy random fields. This setting is a natural model for applications such as restoration and coding of noisy images. We formally define the problem of scanning and prediction of a noisy multidimensional array and relate the optimal performance to the clean scandictability defined by Merhav and Weissman. Moreover, bounds on the excess loss due to suboptimal scans are derived, and a universal prediction algorithm is suggested. This paper is the second part of a two-part paper. The first paper dealt with scanning and sequential decision making on noiseless data arrays.
A Deformable Surface Model for Real-Time Water Drop Animation

A water drop behaves differently from a large water body because of its strong viscosity and surface tension under the small scale. Surface tension causes the motion of a water drop to be largely determined by its boundary surface. Meanwhile, viscosity makes the interior of a water drop less relevant to its motion, as the smooth velocity field can be well approximated by an interpolation of the velocity on the boundary. Consequently, we propose a fast deformable surface model to realistically animate water drops and their flowing behaviors on solid surfaces. Our system efficiently simulates water drop motions in a Lagrangian fashion, by reducing 3D fluid dynamics over the whole liquid volume to a deformable surface model. In each time step, the model uses an implicit mean curvature flow operator to produce surface tension effects, a contact angle operator to change droplet shapes on solid surfaces, and a set of mesh connectivity updates to handle topological changes and improve mesh quality over time. Our numerical experiments demonstrate a variety of physically plausible water drop phenomena at a real-time rate, including capillary waves when water drops collide, pinch-off of water jets, and droplets flowing over solid materials. The whole system performs orders-of-magnitude faster than existing simulation approaches that generate comparable water drop effects.
Chinese Abbreviations and Expansion 中文縮寫與還原

The form of abbreviation is commonly used in the Chinese text. For instance, we often transform 路 into This kind of transformation is timesaving and convenient. However, this merit also brings some challenges in Chinese text processing. In keyword-based information retrieval system, using the abbreviated form and the original form as search entry respectively, usually return different results even though both carry the same meaning. In addition, the influences of abbreviation on Chinese word segmentation, automatic documents clustering and weight of terms are obvious. To solve the semantic ambiguity problem in Chinese text processing, we propose an approach to bridge these two forms and construct an abbreviation list automatically without consulting any dictionary. Two major tasks are included in our experiments— finding the best candidate of original forms or abbreviations, and recognizing potential abbreviations and original forms in documents. Besides, there are two kinds of procedures including detecting abbreviation of original forms, and executing expansion of abbreviation. Considering feature selection, it is suggested to combine both nouns and POS rather than only process either of them respectively. Our study shows that the performance of precision with documents from single news category, especially the category of finance, is the best. Thus, our method may be suitable for corpus with static types of words. It is worth further exploring that if the performance could be improved if noise information is removed from contextual information.
Crystal Structure of Quinohemoprotein Alcohol Dehydrogenase from Comamonas testosteroni

Quinoprotein alcohol dehydrogenases are redox enzymes that participate in distinctive catabolic pathways that enable bacteria to grow on various alcohols as the sole source of carbon and energy. The x-ray structure of the quinohemoprotein alcohol dehydrogenase from Comamonas testosteroni has been determined at 1.44 Å resolution. It comprises two domains. The N-terminal domain has a β-propeller fold and binds one pyrroloquinoline quinone cofactor and one calcium ion in the active site. A tetrahydrofuran-2-carboxylic acid molecule is present in the substrate-binding cleft. The position of this oxidation product provides valuable information on the amino acid residues involved in the reaction mechanism and their function. The C-terminal domain is an α-helical type I cytochrome c with His608 and Met647 as heme-iron ligands. This is the first reported structure of an electron transfer system between a quinoprotein alcohol dehydrogenase and cytochrome c. The shortest distance between pyrroloquinoline quinone and heme c is 12.9 Å, one of the longest physiological edge-to-edge distances yet determined between two redox centers. A highly unusual disulfide bond between two adjacent cysteines bridges the redox centers. It appears essential for electron transfer. A water channel delineates a possible pathway for proton transfer from the active site to the solvent.
Human calumenin localizes to the secretory pathway and is secreted to the medium.

Calumenin belongs to a family of multiple EF-hand proteins that include reticulocalbin, ERC-55, and Cab45. Reticulocalbin and ERC-55 localize to the ER due to a C-terminal HDEL retrieval signal. Cab45 contains a HEEF C-terminal sequence and is localized to the Golgi apparatus. The murine homologue of calumenin is reported to be present in the ER due to a C-terminal HDEF retrieval signal. The human homologue differs from the murine at 7 amino acid positions but the HDEF signal is conserved. However, in the cultured human cell lines, HaCaT keratinocytes, normal and transformed MRC-5 fibroblasts, as well as in transfected COS-1 cells, human calumenin could be demonstrated in the ER as well as in the Golgi complex. Especially in MRC-5 cells, a certain heterogeneity was observed, with some of the cells having calumenin localized solely to the ER while in other cells calumenin could be demonstrated in the ER as well as in the Golgi complex. Immunoelectron microscopy of placental syncytiotrophoblast cells showed that a substantial fraction of calumenin is localized in close association with the ER membrane. In addition, the protein may be recovered from the medium of cultured cells in an endoglycosidase H-resistant form, suggesting that the glycosylated protein has been further modified in the Golgi apparatus and secreted to the medium.
Model Summaries for Location-related Images

At present there is no publicly available data set to evaluate the performance of different summarization systems on the task of generating location-related extended image captions. In this paper we describe a corpus of human generated model captions in English and German. We have collected 932 model summaries in English from existing image descriptions and machine translated these summaries into German. We also performed post-editing on the translated German summaries to ensure high quality. Both English and German summaries are evaluated using a readability assessment as in DUC and TAC to assess their quality. Our model summaries performed similar to the ones reported in Dang (2005) and thus are suitable for evaluating automatic summarization systems on the task of generating image descriptions for location related images. In addition, we also investigated whether post-editing of machine-translated model summaries is necessary for automated ROUGE evaluations. We found a high correlation in ROUGE scores between post-edited and non-post-edited model summaries which indicates that the expensive process of post-editing is not necessary.
Association between selenium intake and the risk of pancreatic cancer: a meta-analysis of observational studies

Quantification of the association between the intake of selenium and risk of pancreatic cancer is still conflicting. Thus, we conducted a meta-analysis to summarize the evidence from epidemiological studies of selenium intake with the risk of pancreatic cancer. Pertinent studies were identified by a search of PubMed and Web of Knowledge to July 2016. The random-effect model was used. Sensitivity analysis and publication bias were conducted. Data from six studies including 1424 pancreatic cancer cases were used in this meta-analysis. Pooled results suggested that highest selenium intake amount compared with lowest amount was significantly associated with the risk of pancreatic cancer [summary relative risk (RR)=0.659, 95% confidence interval (CI)=0.489–0.889, I2=47.6%]. The associations were significant both in case–control studies [RR=0.618, 95%CI=0.399–0.956, I2=59.1%] and Americas [RR=0.570, 95%CI=0.357–0.909, I2=65.6%]. No publication bias was found. Our analysis suggested that the higher intake of selenium might reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer.
Data Set - Choice-Based Revenue Management: Data from a Major Hotel Chain

In this paper, we describe data collected from five U.S. properties of a major hotel chain that can be used to benchmark the performance of choice-based revenue management (RM) algorithms. The process used to collect this data illustrates subtle complexities involved in extracting product availability information from current RM systems and sheds new light on practical issues that need to be addressed to successfully implement choice-based RM systems. The data described in this paper is publicly available at the journal's website at http://msom.pubs. informs.org .
Use of Portland Pozzolana Cement to Enhance the Service Life of Reinforced Concrete Exposed to Chloride Attack

AbstractThis paper discusses the improvement expected in the service life of reinforced concrete (RC) structural elements subjected to chloride-rich environments through the use of blended cement. Comparisons are made between concretes with ordinary portland cement (OPC) and fly ash-based portland pozzolana cement (PPC) at three water-to-cement ratios (w/c=0.57, 0.47, and 0.37). Through a comprehensive experimental program, the apparent chloride diffusion coefficient (Dc) and corrosion current density (icorr) were evaluated for these concretes. The study reveals that (1) although service life depends on both initiation and propagation periods, the propagation period is less significant when the severity of the environment is high; and (2) the service life of an RC structure can double if PPC is used instead of OPC when chloride-induced corrosion is critical.
DNA amplification on a PDMS–glass hybrid microchip

In this paper, the development of a hybrid polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)–glass microchip for PCR (polymerase chain reaction) was reported. A novel temperature control strategy was applied for precise temperature control. The microchip was composed of two parts—a PDMS substrate and a glass cover. The PDMS substrate includes a reaction chamber for PCR and two microchannels for the inlet and the outlet of the sample. A glass cover integrating heaters and sensors was bonded to the PDMS substrate. The microchip was produced by molding PDMS against a microfabricated master with comparatively simple and inexpensive methods. PCR was successfully carried out on the PDMS–glass hybrid microchip with a 183 bp target of DNA.
Gene silencing in adult Aedes aegypti mosquitoes through oral delivery of double‐stranded RNA

The induction of the naturally occurring phenomenon of RNA interference (RNAi) to study gene function in insects is now common practice. With appropriately chosen targets, the RNAi pathway has also been exploited for insect control, typically through oral delivery of dsRNA. Adapting current methods to deliver foreign compounds, such as amino acids and pesticides, to mosquitoes through sucrose solutions, we tested whether such an approach could be used in the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti. Using a non‐specific dsRNA construct, we found that adult Ae. aegypti ingested dsRNA through this method and that the ingested dsRNA can be recovered from the mosquitoes post‐feeding. Through the feeding of a species‐specific dsRNA construct against vacuolar ATPase, subunit A, we found that significant gene knockdown could be achieved at 12, 24 and 48 h post‐feeding.