Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predictive Control for Multi-Robot Observation of Multiple Moving Targets Based on Discrete-Continuous Linear Models

Abstract The observation of multiple moving targets by cooperating mobile robots is a key problem in many security, surveillance and service applications. In essence, this problem is characterized by a tight coupling of target allocation and continuous trajectory planning. Optimal control of the multi-robot system generally neither permits to neglect physical motion dynamics nor to decouple or successively process target assignment and trajectory planning. In this paper, a numerically robust and stable model-predictive control strategy for solving the problem in the case of discrete-time double-integrator dynamics is presented. Optimization based on linear mixed logical dynamical system models allows for a flexible weighting of different aspects and optimal control inputs for settings of moderate size can be computed in real-time. By simulating sets of randomly generated situations, one can determine a maximum problem size solvable in real-time in terms of the number of considered robots, targets, and length of the prediction horizon. Based on this information, a decentralized control approach is proposed.
Direct and indirect effects of procedural justice on cooperation and compliance: evidence from South Korea

Abstract Procedural justice now plays an important role in the study of policing. While most empirical research on the effects of procedural justice has been carried out in Western countries, there has been little empirical research on its effects in East Asia, where authority dynamics are thought to differ from those in the West. Using a sample of 301 South Korean citizens, this study examines the direct and indirect effects of procedural justice and other factors on cooperation and compliance with police and the law. The results show that procedural justice has a significant, positive direct effect on obligation to obey, but not on cooperation or compliance. Procedural justice has a significant, positive indirect effect on cooperation via obligation to obey, but it does not have a significant indirect effect on compliance. We discuss the implications of these results for procedural justice theory and its applications in different settings, including East Asia.
A Fuzzy Similarity Measure for XML Documents

The growth of the Internet has resulted in the rapid growth of using XML for data representation and exchange over the Web. Finding the similarity of XML documents is a significant research task in order to effectively control and retrieve information over the web. In this paper, we propose a new approach for determining similarity of XML documents by considering their content and structure. The similarity is computed by using the Sorensen–Dice’s coefficient and fuzzy intersection. We experimentally demonstrate the accuracy of the similarity method using real data sets. Keywords-component; XML document similarity, fuzzy set, string matching.
EfficientDirectRendering ofDeformingSurfaces via SharedSubdivisionTrees

In this paper we present a subdivision-based approach to rasterize implicit surfaces embedded in volumetric Bézier patches undergoing a nonlinear deformation. Subdividing a given patch into simpler patches to perform the surface rasterization task is numerically robust, and allows guaranteeing visual accuracy even in the presence of geometric degeneracies. However, due to its memory requirements and slow convergence rates, subdivision is challenging to be used in an interactive environment. Unlike previous methods employing subdivision, our approach is based on the idea where for a given patch only one subdivision tree is maintained and shared among pixels. Furthermore, as the geometry of the object changes from frame to frame, a flexible data structure is proposed to manage the geometrically varying Bézier patches. The resulting algorithm is general and maps well to parallel computing platforms such as CUDA. We demonstrate on a variety of representative graphics and visualization examples that our GPU scheme scales well and achieves up to real-time performance on consumer-level graphics cards by guaranteeing visual accuracy.
Vulnerability Ontology for web applications to predict and classify attacks

Web application security is the major security concern for e-business and information sharing communities. Research showed that more than 75% attacks are being deployed at application layer and almost 90% applications are vulnerable to attacks. Conventional methods of vulnerability and attack prevention and detection are ineffective to provide complete security solution at application level. In this paper, we propose an ontology based approach for effective defenses against the application level vulnerabilities and attacks. The proposed system is an ontology based attack prediction system which infers from the query of the user and classifies the web application attacks. It suggests methods for prevention and countermeasures for the inferred attacks. It also provides ranking and the priority in which the attacks can be encountered with a better defense.
The Split Bregman Method for Image Diffusion on Implicit Surfaces

Image diffusion on implicit surfaces is solved by the concepts of intrinsic gradient and intrinsic divergence along with the expression of implicit surfaces using zero level set of a continuous signed distance function. But the finite difference scheme of the relevant gradient descent equations is complex and its computation efficiency is low. The Split Bregman algorithm for the nonlinear variational image diffusion on implicit surfaces is designed by introducing auxiliary variables and Bregman iterative parameters, which transforms the previous energy functional minimization problem to solving some simple Poisson equations and some soft threshold formulas. The generalized TV model, PM model and Char bonnier model are implemented as examples to validate the proposed algorithm in image denoising and in painting on implicit surfaces and demonstrate its simplicity and efficiency.
The Need for Focused Literacy Training in the Medical School Curriculum: A Cross-Sectional Study of Undergraduate Students

Introduction. Medical education programs have increasingly included compulsory research skills components but rarely include explicit academic literacy instruction for medical research. This article presents results from a project that developed methods of bridging the gap between textbook literacy and scientific literacy in a setting where English coexists with the local language. Methods. A paper-based, revised version of a validated self-report instrument (32 questions) designed to assess readers’ metacognitive awareness and perceived use of academic reading strategies was used to collect information about medical students’ awareness of reading strategies in English for academic purposes. Results. Students reported a total overall average of 3.25 (scale 1–5) for reading strategy use, falling within a medium range for usage. They reported using problem-solving reading strategies to the greatest extent (3.76), with global reading strategies (3.29) being second, and support reading strategies (2.85) to the least extent. Based on the data, a curricular intervention was designed to support critical reading of empirical literature in English. Conclusion. The results from this study suggest the need for inclusion of focused training on academic and scientific literacy, in particular, strategy instruction in relation to foreign language reading comprehension skills in medical school curricula.
Inverse infrastructures: Coordination in self-organizing systems

The paper argues that a new category of infrastructures is emerging, user-driven, self-organizing and with de-centralized control: inverse infrastructures (IIs). IIs are not well-understood. Moreover, they represent a paradigm shift in infrastructure development. Their bottom-up development shows tension with the current socio-institutional framework for infrastructures. Internationally infrastructure laws and policies are based on a top-down and centralized view of infrastructures. Regulation is based on a control paradigm that does not fit the characteristics of inverse infrastructures and has no ways to deal with them. Policy (re)design is needed in the face of inverse infrastructure emergence.
Droid permission miner: Mining prominent permissions for Android malware analysis

In this paper, we propose static analysis of android malware files by mining prominent permissions. The proposed technique is implemented by extracting permissions from 436 . apk files. Feature pruning is carried out to investigate the impact of feature length on accuracy. The prominent features that give way to lesser misclassification are determined using Bi-Normal Separation (BNS) and Mutual Information (MI) feature selection techniques. Results suggest that Droid permission miner can be used for preliminary classification of Android package files.
Integrating Multiple Forms of Multithreaded Execution on SMT Processors: A Quantitative Study with Scientific Workloads

Most scientiﬁc applications have high degrees of parallelism and thread-level parallel execution appears to be a natural choice for executing these applications on systems composed of SMT processors. Unfortu-nately, contention for shared resources limits the performance advantages of multithreading on current SMT processors, thus leading to marginal utilization of multiple hardware threads and even slowdown due to multithreading. We show, through a rigorous evaluation with hardware monitoring counters on a real multi-SMT system, that in traditionally scalable parallel applications conﬂicting resource requirements are – due to the high degree of resource sharing – accountable for deeply suboptimal performance. Motivated by this observation, we investigate the use of alternative forms of multithreaded execution, including adaptive thread throttling and speculative runahead execution, to make better use of the resources of SMT processors. Alongside the evaluation, we propose new methods to integrate these techniques into the same binary to maximize performance on multi-SMT systems. Our study shows that combining adaptive throttling and speculative precomputation with regular thread-level parallelization leads to signiﬁcant performance improvements in parallel codes which suffer from inter-thread interference and contention on SMTs.
An Ultrasound Doppler Technique for the Noninvasive Determination of the Pressure Gradient in the Bjork-Shiley Mitral Valve

SUMMARY The accuracy in determining the pressure gradient in the Bjork-Shiley mitral implant from noninvasive ultrasound Doppler data was explored in nine adult patients. Manometric and ultrasound data were collected simultaneously, and identical diastolic periods were used to compare the manometric gradient (APM) with the gradient obtained from ultrasound data (APu). In the nine patients the mean diastolic value of APM ranged from 2-12.5 mm Hg and the difference between the mean diastolic values of APM and APu was 0.3 ± 1.0 mm Hg (SD). The results of the investigation indicated that the method is accurate and reliable in the noninvasive determination of the mean diastolic gradient in the Bjork-Shiley mitral implant.
Multidimensional representation of System Dynamics simulation models

System Dynamics is an approach with a long tradition used for modelling and simulation of complex system. Early, a conceptual modelling language was applied to bridge the dasialinguistic gappsila between the natural language of the model users and the targeted simulation language. Despite the maturity of the modelling approach, up to today no linguistic definitions (linguistic metamodel) exists for the used languages, resulting in non complying language extensions and the lack of reasonable combination with other modelling languages, e.g. for use in Business Intelligence Systems. This paper aims at the development of a linguistic definition of the language used in SD modelling in terms of a linguistic metamodel. Further, the metamodel based extension and combination of modelling languages is demonstrated by relating the SD language to multidimensional data modelling. Finally, an application example from the domain of performance measurement is given to illustrate the findings.
THE UBISENSE SMART SPACE PLATFORM Pete Steggles

Ubisense has developed a platform for building Smart Space applications. The platform addresses the key requirements for building Smart Spaces: accurate 3D positioning, scalable real-time performance, development and deployment tools. This paper deepens the key requirements and describes how the Ubisense platform components meets them. The demonstration exemplifies the smart space platform by tracking players in a game application
A distributed code for color in natural scenes derived from center-surround filtered cone signals

In the retina of trichromatic primates, chromatic information is encoded in an opponent fashion and transmitted to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and visual cortex via parallel pathways. Chromatic selectivities of neurons in the LGN form two separate clusters, corresponding to two classes of cone opponency. In the visual cortex, however, the chromatic selectivities are more distributed, which is in accordance with a population code for color. Previous studies of cone signals in natural scenes typically found opponent codes with chromatic selectivities corresponding to two directions in color space. Here we investigated how the non-linear spatio-chromatic filtering in the retina influences the encoding of color signals. Cone signals were derived from hyper-spectral images of natural scenes and preprocessed by center-surround filtering and rectification, resulting in parallel ON and OFF channels. Independent Component Analysis (ICA) on these signals yielded a highly sparse code with basis functions that showed spatio-chromatic selectivities. In contrast to previous analyses of linear transformations of cone signals, chromatic selectivities were not restricted to two main chromatic axes, but were more continuously distributed in color space, similar to the population code of color in the early visual cortex. Our results indicate that spatio-chromatic processing in the retina leads to a more distributed and more efficient code for natural scenes.
Myeloid nuclear differentiation antigen, neutrophil apoptosis and sepsis

Sepsis and septic shock are characterized by prolonged inflammation and delayed resolution, which are associated with suppression of neutrophil apoptosis. The role of the intrinsic apoptotic pathway and intracellular factors in regulation of neutrophil apoptosis remain incompletely understood. We previously reported that the nuclear factor MNDA (myeloid nuclear differentiation antigen) is fundamental to execution of the constitutive neutrophil death program. During neutrophil apoptosis MNDA is cleaved by caspases and relocated to the cytoplasm. However, when challenged with known mediators of sepsis, human neutrophils of healthy donors or neutrophils from patients with sepsis exhibited impaired MNDA relocation/cleavage parallel with myeloid cell leukemia-1 (MCL-1) accumulation and suppression of apoptosis. MNDA knockdown in a model cell line indicated that upon induction of apoptosis, MNDA promotes proteasomal degradation of MCL-1, thereby aggravating mitochondrial dysfunction. Thus, MNDA is central to a novel nucleus-mitochondrion circuit that promotes progression of apoptosis. Disruption of this circuit contributes to neutrophil longevity, thereby identifying MNDA as a potential therapeutic target in sepsis and other inflammatory pathologies.
Publication of Little Lion Scientific R & D , Islamabad PAKISTAN DATA BATTLE ON THE DIGITAL FIELD BETWEEN HORSE CAVALRY AND INTERLOPERS

In this paper a novel steganographic method has been proposed to improve the security of embedded data with high capacity and imperceptible visual quality, the proposed method is based on four-pixel block differencing, modified LSB substitution and Knights tour. Secret data is embedded randomly using knights tour in each 8×8 pixels block of cover image and n-bit modified LSB substitution has been used to improve the quality of stego image, where n is decided by the level to which the average difference value falls into, then it employs readjustment procedure to reduce the perceptual distortion. The proposed method adaptively embeds the secret data into cover image by differentiating the edge and smooth areas, so that more number of secret bits can be embedded without making any perceptual distortion. Results show that our proposed method has provided greater security with high embedding capacity and a better image quality.
Costs, benefits and redundant mechanisms of adaption to chronic low-dose stress in yeast

ABSTRACT All organisms live in changeable, stressful environments. It has been reported that exposure to low-dose stresses or poisons can improve fitness. However, examining the effects of chronic low-dose chemical exposure is challenging. To address this issue we used temperature sensitive mutations affecting the yeast cell division cycle to induce low-dose stress for 40 generation times, or more. We examined cdc13-1 mutants, defective in telomere function, and cdc15-2 mutants, defective in mitotic kinase activity. We found that each stress induced similar adaptive responses. Stress-exposed cells became resistant to higher levels of stress but less fit, in comparison with unstressed cells, in conditions of low stress. The costs and benefits of adaptation to chronic stress were reversible. In the cdc13-1 context we tested the effects of Rad9, a central player in the response to telomere defects, Exo1, a nuclease that degrades defective telomeres, and Msn2 and Msn4, 2 transcription factors that contribute to the environmental stress response. We also observed, as expected, that Rad9 and Exo1 modulated the response of cells to stress. In addition we observed that adaptation to stress could still occur in these contexts, with associated costs and benefits. We conclude that functionally redundant cellular networks control the adaptive responses to low dose chronic stress. Our data suggests that if organisms adapt to low dose stress it is helpful if stress continues or increases but harmful should stress levels reduce.
Direct and bystander killing of sarcomas by novel cytosine deaminase fusion gene.

Soft tissue and bone sarcomas of the extremities can be difficult to eradicate, and standard treatment may require limb amputation. New therapies to decrease tumor size could improve the effectiveness of treatment and decrease the frequency of limb amputation. Cytosine deaminase (CD)-based gene therapy has been shown to be effective in decreasing growth of solid tumors when animals with CD-expressing tumor cells are treated with 5 fluorocytosine (5FC), an inert prodrug that is converted to 5-fluorouracil (5FU) by CD. In this investigation, we used a novel CD-containing fusion gene to determine whether CD-based gene therapy affected soft tissue or bone sarcomas. The novel fusion gene (NGFR-CD) encodes for a protein with extracellular and transmembrane domains of human nerve growth factor receptor (NGFR) and cytoplasmic CD. Murine 2472 (2) sarcoma cells were transduced with fusion genes containing either the bacterial (NGFR-(b)CD) or yeast (NGFR-(y)CD) CD gene. 5FC treatment killed NGFR-(b)CD- and NGFR-(y)CD-transduced sarcoma cells in vitro through direct and bystander effects (P < 0.01). In contrast, 5FC treatment of mice with s.c. 2NGFR-(b)CD or 2NGFR-(y)CD tumors affected only 2NGFR-(y)CD tumors. 5FC had no effect on growth of NGFR-(b)CD tumors but caused significant decrease in the size of 2NGFR-(y)CD tumors (51 +/- 60 versus 938 +/- 767 mm(3), treated versus control, P < 0.01). Evaluation of bystander killing in vivo revealed significant tumor killing, with a 5-fold reduction in s.c. tumor volume evident in saline versus 5FC-treated mice when tumors were comprised of 90% 2472 cells and 10% 2NGFR-(y)CD selected for fluorescence-activated cell sorting (P < 0.01). Bone sarcomas were eliminated in 9 of 10 5FC-treated mice, compared with 11.8 +/- 6.0 mm(2) in saline-treated mice (P < 0.002). In addition, 5FC treatment of bone sarcomas caused a significant reduction in cancer-induced bone destruction (P < 0.002) and resulted in a reduction in the number of osteoclasts. Finally, 5FC treatment had no effect on animal weight or survival, whereas doses of 5FU providing equivalent tumor reduction as 5FC resulted in treatment-associated deaths and significant weight loss (P < 0.001).
Image Retrieval Using Block Color Characteristics and Spatial Pattern Correlation

We propose a new content-based image retrieval using a block color co-occurrence matrix (BCCM) and pattern correlogram. In the proposed pattern correlogram method, after block-divided image is classified into 48 patterns with respect to the change of the RGB color of the image, joint probability between the same pattern from the surrounding blocks existing at the fixed distance and the center pattern is calculated. Experimental results show that the proposed method can outperform the conventional methods.
Biometric personal identification based on iris patterns

A new system for personal identification based on iris patterns is presented in this paper. It is composed of iris image acquisition, image preprocessing, feature extraction and classifier design. The algorithm for iris feature extraction is based on texture analysis using multichannel Gabor filtering and wavelet transform. Compared with existing methods, our method employs the rich 2D information of the iris and is translation, rotation, and scale invariant.
Adaptive robust clustering with proximity-based merging for video-summary

To allow efficient browsing of large image collection, we have to provide a summary of its visual content. We present in this paper a new robust approach to categorize image databases: Adaptive Robust Competition with Proximity-Based Merging (ARC-M). This algorithm relies on a non-supervised database categorization, coupled with a selection of prototypes in each resulting category. Each image is represented by a high-dimensional vector in the feature space. A principal component analysis is performed for every feature to reduce dimensionality. Then, clustering is performed in challenging conditions by minimizing a Competitive Agglomeration objective function with an extra noise cluster to collect outliers. Agglomeration is improved by a merging process based on cluster proximity verification.
Personalized Faceted Query Expansion

Search engines provide advanced functionalities to let the user put constraints on document facets. These functionalities can be helpful if they are applied properly, however the average user often does not take advantage of them. Instead of waiting for a user to issue a complex query, we propose to expand automatically from a free text query into a semistructured query using pseudo-relevance feedback. To tailor the expanded query to the user’s information need, a large amount of information on the user’s local computer or personal device is used to generate pseudo-relevant documents for query expansion. We developed a personalized search engine called “YoooYooo” that is based on this concept. The search engine recommends the expanded query to the user as facet constraints and allows the user to take the control of the personalized search. Preliminary experimental results showed a statistically significant improvement over Google and Yahoo.