Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multiview Cauchy Estimator Feature Embedding for Depth and Inertial Sensor-Based Human Action Recognition

The ever-growing popularity of Kinect and inertial sensors has prompted intensive research efforts on human action recognition. Since human actions were extracted from Kinect and inertial sensors, they can be characterized by multiple feature representations. By encoding the multiview features into a unified space, it could be optimal for human action recognition. In this paper, we propose a new unsupervised feature fusion method termed multiview Cauchy estimator feature embedding (MCEFE) for human action recognition. By minimizing empirical risk, MCEFE integrates the encoded complementary information in multiple views to find the unified data representation and the projection matrices. To enhance robustness to outliers, the Cauchy estimator is imposed on the reconstruction error. Furthermore, ensemble manifold regularization is enforced on the projection matrices to encode the correlations between different views and avoid overfitting. Experiments are conducted on the new Chinese Academy of Sciences—Yunnan University—multimodal human action database to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of MCEFE for human action recognition.
Performance measurements on HEP - a pipelined MIMD computer

A pipelined implementation of MIMD operation is embodied in the HEP computer. This architectural concept should be carefully evaluated now that such a computer is available commercially. This paper studies the degree of utilization of pipelines in the MIMD environment. A detailed analysis of two extreme cases indicates that pipeline utilization is quite high. Although no direct comparisons are made with other computers, the low pipeline idle time in this machine indicates that this architectural technique may be more beneficial in an MIMD machine than in either SISD or SIMD machines.
Elucidation of the Dual Role of Mycobacterial MoeZR in Molybdenum Cofactor Biosynthesis and Cysteine Biosynthesis

The pathway of molybdenum cofactor biosynthesis has been studied in detail by using proteins from Mycobacterium species, which contain several homologs associated with the first steps of Moco biosynthesis. While all Mycobacteria species contain a MoeZR, only some strains have acquired an additional homolog, MoeBR, by horizontal gene transfer. The role of MoeBR and MoeZR was studied in detail for the interaction with the two MoaD-homologs involved in Moco biosynthesis, MoaD1 and MoaD2, in addition to the CysO protein involved in cysteine biosynthesis. We show that both proteins have a role in Moco biosynthesis, while only MoeZR, but not MoeBR, has an additional role in cysteine biosynthesis. MoeZR and MoeBR were able to complement an E. coli moeB mutant strain, but only in conjunction with the Mycobacterial MoaD1 or MoaD2 proteins. Both proteins were able to sulfurate MoaD1 and MoaD2 in vivo, while only MoeZR additionally transferred the sulfur to CysO. Our in vivo studies show that Mycobacteria have acquired several homologs to maintain Moco biosynthesis. MoeZR has a dual role in Moco- and cysteine biosynthesis and is involved in the sulfuration of MoaD and CysO, whereas MoeBR only has a role in Moco biosynthesis, which is not an essential function for Mycobacteria.
USP7 counteracts SCFβTrCP- but not APCCdh1-mediated proteolysis of Claspin

Claspin is an adaptor protein that facilitates the ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3-related (ATR)-mediated phosphorylation and activation of Chk1, a key effector kinase in the DNA damage response. Efficient termination of Chk1 signaling in mitosis and during checkpoint recovery requires SCFβTrCP-dependent destruction of Claspin. Here, we identify the deubiquitylating enzyme ubiquitin-specific protease 7 (USP7) as a novel regulator of Claspin stability. Claspin and USP7 interact in vivo, and USP7 is required to maintain steady-state levels of Claspin. Furthermore, USP7-mediated deubiquitylation markedly prolongs the half-life of Claspin, which in turn increases the magnitude and duration of Chk1 phosphorylation in response to genotoxic stress. Finally, we find that in addition to the M phase–specific, SCFβTrCP-mediated degradation, Claspin is destabilized by the anaphase-promoting complex (APC) and thus remains unstable in G1. Importantly, we demonstrate that USP7 specifically opposes the SCFβTrCP- but not APCCdh1-mediated degradation of Claspin. Thus, Claspin turnover is controlled by multiple ubiquitylation and deubiquitylation activities, which together provide a flexible means to regulate the ATR–Chk1 pathway.
Beyond simulation: designing for uncertainty and robust solutions

Simulation is an increasingly essential tool in the design of our environment, but any model is only as good as the initial assumptions on which it is built. This paper aims to outline some of the limits and potential dangers of reliance on simulation, and suggests how to make our models, and our buildings, more robust with respect to the uncertainty we face in design. It argues that the single analyses provided by most simulations display too precise and too narrow a result to be maximally useful in design, and instead a broader description is required, as might be provided by many differing simulations. Increased computing power now allows this in many areas. Suggestions are made for the further development of simulation tools for design, in that these increased resources should be dedicated not simply to the accuracy of single solutions, but to a bigger picture that takes account of a design's robustness to change, multiple phenomena that cannot be predicted, and the wider range of possible solutions. Methods for doing so, including statistical methods, adaptive modelling, machine learning and pattern recognition algorithms for identifying persistent structures in models, will be identified. We propose a number of avenues for future research and how these fit into design process, particularly in the case of the design of very large buildings.
Optical Topography in Psychiatry: A Chip Off the Old Block or a New Look Beyond the Mind–Brain Frontiers?

Psychiatric conditions that include depression, schizophrenia, and dementia contribute most significantly to overall disability adjusted life years (DALYs), surpassing both cardiovascular disease and cancer (1, 2). Therefore, timely and accurate diagnosis and treatment are crucial in psychiatric disorders, for which the development of specific biomarkers would be of particular importance. Despite advances in the field of Psychiatry with more comprehensive classification and description of diagnostic criteria, a pathophysiologically oriented classification of psychiatric disorders based on neurobiological basis remains elusive. The human brain with its complex integrative functions of cognition, emotional regulation, and executive function is the most challenging object of study in human science. Mental illness occurs as a result of these brain dysfunctions, but they often do not lead to distinct pathologic lesions or tissue damage. Instead, they contribute to complications in synaptic relay, synaptic plasticity, and neural circuit function, in addition to influence by external psychosocial factors. Thus, standard imaging methodologies, such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), would not be adequate to delineate the underlying abnormality contributing to the dysfunction. Our inherent lack of understanding of the mind–brain interface and the difficulty in characterizing mental illness further makes the practice of Psychiatry all the more daunting. Being the only medical specialty without any objective diagnostic tool or marker, the current diagnostic process in Psychiatry is regretfully based on patients’ reports of symptoms, observed behavior, and disease progression, which can introduce subjectivity and bias. Many clinical symptoms are also common to various psychiatric disorders, such as depressive symptoms in unipolar depression, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, etc., thus making it challenging to diagnose complex cases accurately within a limited time frame. This is illustrated by studies in the United States that revealed approximately 70% of bipolar patients were initially misdiagnosed due to polymorphic clinical symptoms (3, 4). It is also not uncommon to find different psychiatrists having deferring opinions about a case due to their unique experiences and training. Therefore, there is an urgent need for specific, objective biomarker-based assessments to guide diagnosis and treatment. The use of such biomarkers could assist clinicians in establishing differential diagnosis, which may improve specific individualized treatment.
Women’s Empowerment and Nonprofit Sector Development

This research makes two main contributions: (a) validates Themudo’s findings of a positive correlation between women’s empowerment and the development of the nonprofit sector by using different forms of empowerment and (b) suggests women’s empowerment causes nonprofit development, thus contributing to the formation of a gender theory. Using women’s economic empowerment by county (n = 3,428) and women’s state-level political empowerment (n = 50), the positive correlation between women’s empowerment, both economic and political, and nonprofit development is confirmed. Next, Granger causality tests (1975-2013, n = 39) suggest women’s political empowerment causes nonprofit development. These results provide insights for further research in nonprofit development and suggest that policies that increase women’s empowerment will also benefit the nonprofit sector.
Molecular properties of (U)LIRGs: CO, HCN, HNC and HCO+

Abstract The observed molecular properties of a sample of FIR-luminous and OH megamaser (OH-MM) galaxies have been investigated. The ratio of high and low-density tracer lines is found to be determined by the progression of the star formation in the system. The HCO+/HCN and HCO+/HNC line ratios are good proxies for the density of the gas, and PDR and XDR sources can be distinguished using the HNC/HCN line ratio. The properties of the OH-MM sources in the sample can be explained by PDR chemistry in gas with densities higher than 105.5cm−3, confirming the classical OH-MM model of IR pumped amplification with (variable) low gains.
Visualizations of leading edge cavitation in an Inducer at different temperatures

Visualizations of the leading edge cavity on a four-bladed inducer working with refrigerant 114 are presented. The evolution of the cavity length with the cavitation number is given for three different temperatures. These data are used to estimate the thermodynamic effect in R114. In addition, the onset of cavitation instabilities (alternate blade cavitation and rotating cavitation) are determined from the analysis of pressure fluctuations. The thermodynamic effect which affects the onset of instabilities is also estimated and compared to the one deduced from visualizations.
Optimal Power Allocation and Load Distribution for Multiple Heterogeneous Multicore Server Processors across Clouds and Data Centers

For multiple heterogeneous multicore server processors across clouds and data centers, the aggregated performance of the cloud of clouds can be optimized by load distribution and balancing. Energy efficiency is one of the most important issues for large-scale server systems in current and future data centers. The multicore processor technology provides new levels of performance and energy efficiency. The present paper aims to develop power and performance constrained load distribution methods for cloud computing in current and future large-scale data centers. In particular, we address the problem of optimal power allocation and load distribution for multiple heterogeneous multicore server processors across clouds and data centers. Our strategy is to formulate optimal power allocation and load distribution for multiple servers in a cloud of clouds as optimization problems, i.e., power constrained performance optimization and performance constrained power optimization. Our research problems in large-scale data centers are well-defined multivariable optimization problems, which explore the power-performance tradeoff by fixing one factor and minimizing the other, from the perspective of optimal load distribution. It is clear that such power and performance optimization is important for a cloud computing provider to efficiently utilize all the available resources. We model a multicore server processor as a queuing system with multiple servers. Our optimization problems are solved for two different models of core speed, where one model assumes that a core runs at zero speed when it is idle, and the other model assumes that a core runs at a constant speed. Our results in this paper provide new theoretical insights into power management and performance optimization in data centers.
A Multilevel FFT Method for the 3-D Capacitance Extraction

We present a new multilevel fast Fourier transform (MLFFT) method and its application for the 3-D structures capacitance extraction. The multilevel octree structure, multilevel interpolation/projection, and subdomain FFTs techniques are employed in the MLFFT. Distinctions between the MLFFT and the conventional FFT-based methods are discussed carefully. Numerical results demonstrate that the MLFFT is more efficient than conventional FFT based methods, especially when analyzing inhomogeneous problems.
Programmable Style for NPR Line Drawing

This paper introduces a programmable approach to non-photorealistic line drawing from 3D models, inspired by programmable shaders in traditional rendering. We propose a new image creation model where all operations are controlled through user-defined procedures. A view map describing all relevant support lines in the drawing and their topological arrangement is first created from the 3D model; a number of style modules operate on this map, by procedurally selecting, chaining or splitting lines, before creating strokes and assigning drawing attributes. The resulting drawing system permits flexible control of all elements of drawing style: first, different style modules can be applied to different types of lines in a view; second, the topology and geometry of strokes are entirely controlled from the programmable modules; and third, stroke attributes are assigned procedurally and can be correlated at will with various scene or view properties. Finally, we propose new density control strategies where strokes can be adapted or omitted to avoid visual clutter. We illustrate the components of our system and show how style modules successfully capture stylized visual characteristics that can be applied across a wide range of models.
Designing Robust Business Processes

A critical challenge to creating effective business processes is making sure that they can operate effectively in environments where 'exceptions' (i.e. process failures) can occur. This paper describes a novel knowledge-based methodology that addresses this challenge, building on an augmentation of the MIT Process Handbook that captures widely-applicable expertise about what kinds of exceptions can occur in business processes and how they can be dealt with.
A Sauropod Braincase from the Pab Formation (Upper Cretaceous, Maastrichtian) of Balochistan, Pakistan

Recent geological and paleontological exploration in the Pab Formation (Upper Cretaceous) of Balochistan Province has uncovered new terrestrial vertebrate remains. Together with Cretaceous vertebrates from India, the Pab vertebrates provide information about the paleobiogeographic history of Indo-Pakistan during its northward migration towards Asia. Vertebrate remains collected from several localities in the Pab Formation include numerous, isolated postcranial bones attributable to titanosaur sauropods and a well-preserved sauropod braincase that is described here. The Pab braincase is referable to Eusauropoda, but it does not preserve characteristics diagnostic of lowerlevel sauropod clades. The Pab braincase is relatively small and diagnosed by a prominent supraoccipital wedge, pronounced proatlantal facets, and a ventrally deflected occipital condyle that forms a 120° angle with the skull roof. Sauropod braincase material collected from Lameta Formation localities in India (Bara Simla, Dongargaon) closely resembles the Pab braincase in size and general morphology and shares one or more of its diagnostic features. The Indian and Pakistani braincases likely represent the same genus or species, which was distributed across Indo-Pakistan during the Cretaceous. Further exploration in both countries will better constrain the distribution of these and other vertebrate fossils, providing a clearer picture of the Cretaceous vertebrate fauna of Indo-Pakistan.
Enhancing Video Games Policy Based on Least-Squares Continuous Action Policy Iteration: Case Study on StarCraft Brood War and Glest RTS Games and the 8 Queens Board Game

With the rapid advent of video games recently and the increasing numbers of players and gamers, only a tough game with high policy, actions, and tactics survives. How the game responds to opponent actions is the key issue of popular games. Many algorithms were proposed to solve this problem such as Least-Squares Policy Iteration (LSPI) and State-Action-Reward-State-Action (SARSA) but they mainly depend on discrete actions, while agents in such a setting have to learn from the consequences of their continuous actions, in order to maximize the total reward over time. So in this paper we proposed a new algorithm based on LSPI called Least-Squares Continuous Action Policy Iteration (LSCAPI). The LSCAPI was implemented and tested on three different games: one board game, the 8 Queens, and two real-time strategy (RTS) games, StarCraft Brood War and Glest. The LSCAPI evaluation proved superiority over LSPI in time, policy learning ability, and effectiveness.
Multimodal talker localization in video conferencing environments

This study proposes a new modular architecture for performing multimodal talker localization in the video conferencing environment. Data streams from sensing devices are decoupled in the beginning, and purpose specific localization methods are used to locate the talker separately. Individual localization results are then combined using data fusion techniques to form the final estimation of the talker's location. The proposed architecture has the advantage of being flexible. Additional localization modality can be added by simply duplicating the functional module in the architecture with a new sensor and its associated localizer. The architecture is tested with three localization modalities: one audio, and two different video localizers. The results demonstrated that the modular architecture successfully yielded a multimodal localization method that outperforms single modal localization methods when the audio and video localizers are used as stand alone localization methods.
IO Tetris: Deep Storage Consolidation for the Cloud via Fine-Grained Workload Analysis

Intelligent workload consolidation in storage systems leads to better Return On Investment (ROI), in terms of more efficient use of data center resources, better Quality of Service (QoS), and lower power consumption. This is particularly significant yet challenging in a cloud environment, in which a large set of different workloads multiplex on a shared, heterogeneous infrastructure. However, the increasing availability of fine grained workload logging facilities allows better insights to be gained from workload profiles. As a consequence, consolidation can be done more deeply, according to a detailed understanding of how well given workloads mix. We describe IO Tetris, which takes a first look at fine-grained consolidation in large-scale storage systems by leveraging temporal patterns found in real-world I/O traces gathered from enterprise storage environments. The core functionality of IO Tetris consists of two stages. A grouping stage performs hierarchical grouping of storage workloads to find complementary groupings that consolidate well together over time and conflicting ones that do not. After that, a migration stage examines the discovered groupings to determine how to maximize resource utilization efficiency while minimizing migration costs. Experiments based on customer I/O traces from a high-end enterprise class IBM storage controller show that a non-trivial number of IO Tetris groupings exist in real-world storage workloads, and that these groupings can be leveraged to achieve better storage consolidation in a cloud setting.
Chronic Wasting Disease in a Wisconsin White-Tailed Deer Farm

In September 2002, chronic wasting disease (CWD), a prion disorder of captive and wild cervids, was diagnosed in a white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) from a captive farm in Wisconsin. The facility was subsequently quarantined, and in January 2006 the remaining 76 deer were depopulated. Sixty animals (79%) were found to be positive by immunohistochemical staining for the abnormal prion protein (PrPCWD)in at least one tissue; the prevalence of positive staining was high even in young deer. Although none of the deer displayed clinical signs suggestive of CWD at depopulation, 49 deer had considerable accumulation of the abnormal prion in the medulla at the level of the obex. Extraneural accumulation of the abnormal protein was observed in 59 deer, with accumulation in the retropharyngeal lymph node in 58of 59 (98%), in the tonsil in 56 of 59 (95%), and in the rectal mucosal lymphoid tissue in 48 of 58 (83%). The retina was positive in 4 deer, all with marked accumulation of prion in the obex. One deer was considered positive for PrPCWD in the brain but not in the extraneural tissue, a novel observation in white-tailed deer. The infection rate in captive deer was 20-fold higher than in wild deer. Although weakly related to infection rates in extraneural tissues, prion genotype was strongly linked to progression of prion accumulation in the obex. Antemortem testing by biopsy of rectoanal mucosal-associated lymphoid tissue (or other peripheral lymphoid tissue) may be a useful adjunct to tonsil biopsy for surveillance in captive herds at risk for CWD infection.
Relative localization with computer vision and UWB range for flying robot formation control

Relative localization is a core problem for swarm robotics since each swarm node must determine where neighboring robots are located to accomplish cooperative tasks such as formation control. In this paper we present a system that performs relative localization between a stationary marker and a flying robot in real-time. Relative distances are obtained using ultra-wide band radio, while a low-cost webcam provide angle measurements. To achieve the latter, we employed the Camshift algorithm and a Kalman filter. We tested our system outdoors during daylight using centimeter-accuracy GPS measurements as ground truth. Three data sets have been collected from a series of experiments and it shows that errors in estimated relative positions are between +/-0.190 m on the x-East axis and +/-0.291 m on the z-North axis at 95% confidence level.
Development and Evaluation of an Experimental Java-based Web Server

This paper compares the architecture of multi-threaded and event-driven web servers and highlights their advantages and disadvantages. Objective of this paper is to present a model of a novel web server architecture based on the best properties of multithreaded and event-driven architectures. Based on this architecture, an experimental java-based hybrid web server is implemented. This paper then evaluates and compares its performance with Apache and μserver for both static and dynamic workloads. The results of the experiments revealed that our experimental web server exhibits better performance than Apache and μserver for static workloads. For dynamic workloads, this web server shows substantial performance improvements as compared to Apache and slightly better performance than μserver web server.