Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A STUDY OF AN INVERSION TECHNIQUE FOR APPLICATION IN SEA ICE INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

For global monitoring, satellite remote sensing is a useful tool to cover wide area of earth surface for large scale observation. However, the correct interpretation of satellite images remains a challenging problem and the retrieval of earth related information from the processing and analysis of the satellite data requires the development of suitable artificial intelligence based technique. In this paper, an inverse model to retrieve sea ice thickness from active microwave remote sensing data is presented. The inverse model is a combination of an improved forward model using Radiative Transfer Theory that implements the Dense Medium Phase and Amplitude Correction Theory (DMPACT) and the Levenberg-Marquardt Optimization algorithm. The inverse model functions by interpreting a set of input data using the mentioned forward model and adjusting the wanted parameter accordingly using optimization. Through this adjustment, the sea ice thickness is estimated. Data from ground truth measurements carried out in Ross Island, Antarctica together with radar backscatter data extracted from purchased satellite images, are used as inputs during the simulations. The obtained sea ice thickness is then compared with the measured data to verify its accuracy. The results show promise towards the use of the inverse model to retrieve sea ice thickness from actual conditions in the polar region.
An enhanced pulse width modulator with adaptive duty cycle and frequency control

A digitally controlled pulse width modulator (PWM), targeting on-chip power management applications is proposed in this paper. A current starved ring oscillator, with digitally controlled current source based headers and footers, is used to provide a versatile duty cycle and an accurate frequency control. The proposed circuit achieves i) a controlled duty cycle that can vary between 20% and 90% and ii) a compensation circuit that guarantees a constant duty cycle under process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations. A fast response time of 5 ns - 20 ns with a fine duty cycle granularity has been achieved through the proposed control techniques. The circuit operates at a frequency range of 500 MHz - 1.66 GHz and is implemented with a 22 nm CMOS predictive technology model.
Design of blind distributed UFIR filter based on average consensus for WSNs

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) often operate under harsh conditions requiring robustness from the estimator. This paper develops a distributed unbiased finite impulse response (UFIR) filter based on average consensus as a more robust alternative to the Kalman filter (KF). Unlike the distributed KF, the distributed UFIR filter typically requires only one consensus filter and completely ignores the noise statistics and initial values. As an example, we consider a vehicle travelling along a circular trajectory under unpredictable impacts and errors in the noise statistics. Better performance of the UFIR filter is demonstrated under diverse operation conditions.
A survey on TCP-friendly congestion control

New trends in communication, in particular the deployment of multicast and real-time audio/video streaming applications, are likely to increase the percentage of non-TCP traffic in the Internet. These applications rarely perform congestion control in a TCP-friendly manner; they do not share the available bandwidth fairly with applications built on TCP, such as Web browsers, FTP, or e-mail clients. The Internet community strongly fears that the current evolution could lead to congestion collapse and starvation of TCP traffic. For this reason, TCP-friendly protocols are being developed that behave fairly with respect to coexistent TCP flows. We present a survey of current approaches to TCP friendliness and discuss their characteristics. Both unicast and multicast congestion control protocols are examined, and an evaluation of the different approaches is presented.
Effect of influenza vaccination of healthcare personnel on morbidity and mortality among patients: systematic review and grading of evidence.

BACKGROUND Influenza vaccination of healthcare personnel (HCP) is recommended in >40 countries. However, there is controversy surrounding the evidence that HCP vaccination reduces morbidity and mortality among patients. Key factors for developing evidence-based recommendations include quality of evidence, balance of benefits and harms, and values and preferences. METHODS We conducted a systematic review of randomized trials, cohort studies, and case-control studies published through June 2012 to evaluate the effect of HCP influenza vaccination on mortality, hospitalization, and influenza cases in patients of healthcare facilities. We pooled trial results using meta-analysis and assessed evidence quality using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. RESULTS We identified 4 cluster randomized trials and 4 observational studies conducted in long-term care or hospital settings. Pooled risk ratios across trials for all-cause mortality and influenza-like illness were 0.71 (95% confidence interval [CI], .59-.85) and 0.58 (95% CI, .46-.73), respectively; pooled estimates for all-cause hospitalization and laboratory-confirmed influenza were not statistically significant. The cohort and case-control studies indicated significant protective associations for influenza-like illness and laboratory-confirmed influenza. No studies reported harms to patients. Using GRADE, the quality of the evidence for the effect of HCP vaccination on mortality and influenza cases in patients was moderate and low, respectively. The evidence quality for the effect of HCP vaccination on patient hospitalization was low. The overall evidence quality was moderate. CONCLUSIONS The quality of evidence is higher for mortality than for other outcomes. HCP influenza vaccination can enhance patient safety.
Predictors of Readmission in Heart Failure Patients Vary by Cause of Readmission: Hospital-Level Cause-Specific Readmission Rates Show No Correlation

Heart failure (HF) is a common condition with an associated high mortality and morbidity. Many patients are elderly and comorbidity is common. Readmission metrics typically combine all causes and look at 30 days, an arbitrary period. Less is known about other follow-up lengths, whether the predictors change over time or if combining all causes of readmission loses key information. We used national linked English data on 74,629 patients discharged alive from their first (index) HF admission during 2008-10. Following them up within the data set for a year, we found that several predictors for readmission for HF differ from those for other causes and that the effect of length of stay is complicated. This is reflected in the lack of correlation in hospital-level rates for HF and non-HF causes. This suggests that heart failure patients are not always managed holistically. Consideration should be given to stratifying by readmission cause.
New Submillimeter Limits on Dust in the 55 Cancri Planetary System

We present new, high-sensitivity submillimeter observations toward 55 Cancri, a nearby G8 star with one, or possibly two, known planetary companion(s). Our 850 μm map, obtained with the Submillimeter Common-User Bolometric Array on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, shows three peaks of emission at the 2.5 mJy level in the vicinity of the star's position. However, the observed peaks are 25''-40'' away from the star, and a deep R-band optical image reveals faint point sources that coincide with two of the submillimeter peaks. Thus, we do not find evidence of dust emission spatially associated with 55 Cancri. The excess 60 μm emission detected with the Infrared Space Observatory may originate from one or more of the 850 μm peaks that we attribute to background sources. Our new results, together with the Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS coronagraphic images in the near-infrared, place stringent limits on the amount of dust in this planetary system and argue against the existence of a detectable circumstellar dust disk around 55 Cnc.
Oral pressure therapy for treatment of obstructive sleep apnea: clinical feasibility

Purpose This feasibility study examined the initial-use safety and effectiveness of a new noninvasive oral pressure therapy (OPT) system developed to treat obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Methods The OPT system consists of a console that connects with flexible tubing to a premanufactured polymer mouthpiece. Through the mouthpiece, a pump in the console creates oral vacuum intended to move the soft palate anteriorly to decrease obstruction of the airway during sleep. The mouthpiece was produced in ten different sizes to accommodate a range of oral dimensions. Subjects with OSA in this single-center, single-night study underwent a polysomnography (PSG) study at baseline, followed by PSG during use of OPT. Results Fifty-six men and 20 women, aged 50.8 ± 12.0 years (mean ± standard deviation [SD]), had OSA with apnea–hypopnea indices (AHI) greater than five events per hour at baseline. Body weight averaged 98.0 ± 18.2 kg (mean ± SD), body mass index ranged from 22.6 kg/m2 to 57.9 kg/m2 and averaged 32.5 ± 5.8 kg/m2 (mean ± SD). OPT was generally well tolerated without any serious adverse events. Baseline AHI was 38.7 ± 27.5 events/hour (mean ± SD) and was reduced with treatment to 24.6 ± 25.7 events/hour (P < 0.001, Cohen’s d 0.53). Treatment produced AHI less than or equal to ten events/hour in 38% of the subjects. Oxygen desaturation index was 30.1 ± 23.7 events/hour at baseline versus 15.8 ± 19.1 events/hour with treatment (P < 0.001, Cohen’s d 0.66). The minimum oxygen saturation increased with treatment from 77.9 ± 8.3 to 82.2 ± 7.9 (P < 0.001, Cohen’s d 0.53). Stage-N1 sleep shifts, total sleep-stage shifts, and awakenings were significantly reduced with treatment. Conclusion This single-center, single-night feasibility study demonstrates that OPT can improve OSA in certain subjects identifiable by PSG during systematic usage. In appropriately responsive patients, OPT shows potential as a clinically useful new alternative for treatment of OSA without the need for custom manufacture of an oral device component.
Three problems about dynamic convex hulls

We present three results related to dynamic convex hulls: A fully dynamic data structure for maintaining a set of n points in the plane so that we can find the edges of the convex hull intersecting a query line, with expected query and amortized update time O(log1+εn) for an arbitrarily small constant ε>0. This improves the previous bound of O(log3/2n). A fully dynamic data structure for maintaining a set of n points in the plane to support halfplane range reporting queries in O(log n + k) time with O(polylog, n) expected amortized update time. A similar result holds for 3-dimensional orthogonal range reporting. For 3-dimensional halfspace range reporting, the query time increases to O(log2 n/log log n + k). A semi-online dynamic data structure for maintaining a set of n line segments in the plane, so that we can decide whether a query line segment lies completely above the lower envelope, with query time O(log n) and amortized update time O(nε). As a corollary, we can solve the following problem in O(n1+ε) time: given a triangulated terrain in 3-d of size n, identify all faces that are partially visible from a fixed viewpoint.
Longitudinal contributions of executive functioning and visual-spatial skills to mathematics learning in young Chinese children

Abstract One hundred sixty-five Hong Kong Chinese children were administered measures of early mathematics, visual-spatial skills, and executive functioning (working memory, inhibition, shifting, updating) once in kindergarten (mean age = 62.80 months, SD = 3.74) and again in first grade (mean age = 77.25 months, SD = 4.60). In kindergarten, visual-spatial skills, inhibition, shifting, and working memory were all uniquely associated with concurrent mathematics performance; in first grade, only working memory and visual-spatial skills were significantly related to concurrent mathematics abilities. Furthermore, working memory and visual-spatial skills in kindergarten predicted 19% of the variance in children’s mathematics performance in first grade, beyond the autoregressive effects of mathematics performance in kindergarten as well as demographic variables. Findings highlight the importance of working memory and visual-spatial skills for young Chinese children in mastering mathematics.
Electrical Impedance Tomography reconstruction using ℓ1 norms for data and image terms

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) calculates the internal conductivity distribution within a body from current simulation and voltage measurements on the body surface. Two main technical difficulties of EIT are its low spatial resolution and sensitivity to measurement errors. Image reconstruction using ℓ<inf>1</inf> norms allows addressing both difficulties, in comparison to traditional reconstruction using ℓ<inf>2</inf> norms. A ℓ<inf>1</inf> norm on the data residue term reduces the sensitivity to measurement errors, while the ℓ<inf>1</inf> norm on the image prior reduces edge blurring. This paper proposes and tests a general lagged diffusivity type iterative method for EIT reconstructions ℓ<inf>1</inf> and ℓ<inf>2</inf> minimizations can be flexibly chosen on the data residue and/or image prior parts. Results show the flexibility of the algorithm and the merits of the ℓ<inf>1</inf> solution.
Supervised rank aggregation

This paper is concerned with rank aggregation, the task of combining the ranking results of individual rankers at meta-search. Previously, rank aggregation was performed mainly by means of unsupervised learning. To further enhance ranking accuracies, we propose employing supervised learning to perform the task, using labeled data. We refer to the approach as Supervised Rank Aggregation. We set up a general framework for conducting Supervised Rank Aggregation, in which learning is formalized an optimization which minimizes disagreements between ranking results and the labeled data. As case study, we focus on Markov Chain based rank aggregation in this paper. The optimization for Markov Chain based methods is not a convex optimization problem, however, and thus is hard to solve. We prove that we can transform the optimization problem into that of Semidefinite Programming and solve it efficiently. Experimental results on meta-searches show that Supervised Rank Aggregation can significantly outperform existing unsupervised methods.
Integration of Model-based and Model-free Cues for Visual Object Tracking in 3D

Vision is one of the most powerful sensory modalities in robotics, allowing operation in dynamic envi ronments. One of our long-term research interests is mobile manipulation, where precise location of the target object is commonly required during task execution. Recently, a number of approaches have been proposed for real-time 3D tracking and most of them utilize an edge (wireframe) model of the target. However, the use of an edge model has significant problems in complex scenes due to occlusions and multiple responses, especially in terms of initialization. In this paper, we propose a new tracking method based on integration of model-based cues with automatically generated model-free cues, in order to improve tracking accuracy and to avoid weaknesses of edge based tracking. The integration is performed in a Kalman filter framework that operates in real-time. Experimental evaluation shows that the inclusion of model-free cues offers superior performance.
Identification of an unmanned helicopter system using optimised neural network structure

A method for offline system identification to model the attitude dynamics of an unmanned helicopter using neural network techniques has been developed. The processed test data obtained from various test flights were used to train a neural network ARX (autoregressive structure with extra inputs) using Levenberg-Marquardt computation. An optimised network structure was obtained using a combination of cross validation, correlation analysis, Lipschitz criterion and weights regularisation methods to ensure good generalisation ability of the model. Satisfactory correlation analysis results were achieved which indicated that the offline model using the proposed methods contain all information about the dynamics of the system. The proposed methods would allow users to design a better prediction model with the aid of the correlation analysis from estimation theory. The results show that the proposed method is effective in modelling the coupled UAS helicopter dynamics with acceptable accuracy.
Shared Risk Resource Groups and Colored Graph : Polynomial and Fixed Parameter Tractable Optimisation Problems

The notion of Shared Risk Resource Groups (SRRG) has been introduced to capture survivability issues when a set of resources of the network may failed simultaneously. The reliability of a connection therefore depends on the number of SRRGs through which it is routed in the network. This number has thus to be minimized. The theory of survivable network design relies on basic combinatorial objects that are rather easy to compute in the classical graph models: shortest path, minimum cut, or spanning tree. Unfortunatly, in the SRRG context these combinatorial objects are NP-hard and hard to approximate in the general case. But some combinatorial optimization problems turn out to be solvable in polynomial time when the SRRGs satisfy certain structural properties, namely the star property [27] and the span 1 property [9]. However, these notions have been proposed for different modelings of the network, respectively the multi-colored graphs and the colored graphs. In this paper, we extend these notions to characterize new cases in which these optimization problems that can be solved in polynomial time or that are fixed parameter tractable.
PhySig: Incorporating Physical Products with Digital Signage in Shopping Environments

In this paper, we propose the concepts, design guidelines, and implementation details of PhySig, a novel interactive in-store shopping experience that annotates information about products, which are physically located in the store, by a projector and enables shared content between the products and mobile devices. Multiple users access the system from their own mobile devices to move a cursor projected on the wall or floor of the store to select an item and obtain additional information associated with the item in the projected space. They can also download the information to their mobile devices or upload their related content, including comments, reviews, or photos, of the item. In short, PhySig is an example of how to extend and combine digital signage with the surrounding physical environment.
Prospective and Retrospective Provenance Collection in Scientific Workflow Environments

Provenance, a record of the derivation history of scientific results, is critical for scientific workflows to support reproducibility, result interpretation, and problem diagnosis. Both prospective provenance, which captures an abstract workflow specification as a recipe for future data derivation, and retrospective provenance, which captures past workflow execution and data derivation information, provide important contextual information for the comprehensive analysis of scientific results. In this paper, we explore and design: i) a provenance model that models both prospective and retrospective provenance as an extension to the Open Provenance Model (OPM), which only models retrospective provenance; ii) a provenance collection framework to collect both prospective and retrospective provenance according to our model; iii) a relational provenance store to store, reason, and query prospective and retrospective provenance, which is captured via the proposed provenance collection framework. An experimental study is performed to show the performance of our provenance store using provenance queries for the Third Provenance Challenge. While most existing systems use an internal proprietary provenance model and develop an import/export facility to convert between the proprietary model and OPM, our provenance collection framework and provenance store feature the native support of OPM.
A generic approach to generate opinion lists of phrases for opinion mining applications

In this paper we present an approach to generate lists of opinion bearing phrases with their opinion values in a continuous range between -- 1 and 1. Opinion phrases that are considered include single adjectives as well as adjective-based phrases with an arbitrary number of words. The opinion values are derived from user review titles and star ratings, as both can be regarded as summaries of the user's opinion about the product under review. Phrases are organized in trees with the opinion bearing adjective as tree root. For trees with missing branches, opinion values then can be calculated using trees with similar branches but different roots. An example list is produced and compared to existing opinion lists.
Using Genetics and Morphology to Examine Species Diversity of Old World Bats: Report of a Recent Collection from Malaysia

A three-week field survey was conducted to sample bat species diversity in Malaysia. The survey sampled five localities during August 2006, including one in Peninsular Malaysia and four in Borneo. A total of 259 specimens representing at least 50 species were recorded. Three sampling nights were spent at each locality; four harp traps and 15 mist nets were set most nights. The highest species diversity was recorded in Mount Penrisen (Borneo) with 27 species, whereas the lowest diversity was at Monggis Sub Station and Bako National Park (Borneo) with 13 species each. We added four new geographic records for Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo: Arielulus cuprosus, Hesperoptenus tomesi, Kerivoula lenis, and Myotis adversus; and the second record of Hipposideros doriae in Sarawak. Other findings included a colony of earwigs collected from an Eonycteris major and the documentation of highly developed facial glands on male Hipposideros ater and H. galeritus. Species were identified using traditional skin and skull characteristics as well as mitochondrial cytochrome-b gene sequences that were compared to existing GenBank records. This multifaceted approach, using genetic and morphological identifications, has provided greater resolution to species identification as well as a better understanding of the diversification of Old World Bats from Malaysia. Although in most cases genetic data validated the present taxonomy, there were still a number of cases of cryptic species suggesting an underestimation of the actual biodiversity. This study has demonstrated the value of genetic data in providing an independent test for species boundaries among the 50 species of bats collected (about 40% of the known Malaysian bat fauna).
Report on the programming language Haskell: a non-strict, purely functional language version 1.2

"Some half dozen persons have written technically on combinatory logic, and most of these, including ourselves, have published something erroneous. Since some of our fellow sinners are among the most careful and competent logicians on the contemporary scene, we regard this as evidence that the subject is refractory. Thus fullness of exposition is necessory for accurary; and excessive condensation would be false economy here, even more than it is ordinarily. "