Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mosaicing of images using unsharp masking algorithm for interest point detection

Image Mosaicing is a method of assembling multiple overlapping images of the same scene into a larger image. The output of the image mosaic will be the union of two input images. In this paper, the detection of interest point is based on unsharp masking technique. This interest point detection algorithm produces an efficient and informative output mosaiced image as compared to other existing interest point detection algorithms. Importance of Image mosaicing can be seen in the field of medical imaging, computer vision, and data from satellites, military automatic target recognition.
Clustering WordNet Senses Utilizing Modified and Novel Similarity Metrics

Introduction We approach the problem of clustering senses in Princeton's WordNet (Fellbaum 1998), a manually created dictionary/thesaurus which attempts to model the structure underlying human concepts. A synset, the fundamental unit in WordNet, is represented by a group of synonyms and a gloss definition, and is connected through a variety of semantic links, such as hypernyms (type-of) or meronyms (part-of), to other synsets. A particular word is associated with one or more synsets, each representing a particular sense of the word. While this electronic database provides an inventory with which to do Word Sense Disambiguation, the fine-grainedness of the senses – which sometimes even humans have trouble distinguishing between has posed a problem in achieving reasonable performance.
Nonuniqueness and structural stability of self-consistent models of elliptical galaxies

(Abridged:) Schwarzschild's method was used to construct equilibrium solutions to the collisionless Boltzmann equation corresponding to a Plummer sphere, which were compared with analytical results to test the robustness of the numerical method and its efficiency in probing the degeneracy of the solution space. The method was then used to construct triaxial equilibria with no known analytical solutions and to study their nonuniqueness. The model that was studied, the triaxial Dehnen potential, contains a central density cusp and admits both regular and chaotic orbits. It was found that, for a weak density cusp, self-consistent models do not exist if the chaotic orbits are assumed to be completely mixed so as to yield a time-independent building-block: only the innermost 65% of the mass can be mixed. In these inner regions, it is possible to obtain alternative solutions that contain significantly different numbers of chaotic orbits, yet yield (at least approximately) the same mass density distribution. However, it is not clear whether these solutions are truly time-independent, since the unmixed chaotic orbits in the outer regions, which do not sample an invariant measure, can cause secular evolution. When using Schwarzschild's method, one must be very careful to sample accessible phase space as comprehensively and as densely as possible, while ensuring that each orbit is a truly time-independent building block. Some of the numerical equilibria were sampled to generate initial conditions for N-body simulations to test the structural stability of the models. Preliminary work showed that no catastrophic evolution takes place, but there is a weak tendency for the configuration to become more nearly axisymmetric over several dynamical times. It is not yet clear whether this tendency is real or a numerical artifact.
Attribute Normalization in Network Intrusion Detection

Anomaly intrusion detection is an important issue in computer network security. As a step of data preprocessing, attribute normalization is essential to detection performance. However, many anomaly detection methods do not normalize attributes before training and detection. Few methods consider to normalize the attributes but the question of which normalization method is more effective still remains. In this paper, we introduce four different schemes of attribute normalization to preprocess the data for anomaly intrusion detection. Three methods, k-NN, PCA as well as SVM, are then employed on the normalized data for comparison of the detection results. KDD Cup 1999 data are used to evaluate the normalization schemes and the detection methods. The systematical evaluation results show that the process of attribute normalization improves a lot the detection performance. The statistical normalization scheme is the best choice for detection if the data set is large.
Exposing duplicated regions affected by reflection, rotation and scaling

A commonly considered image manipulation is to conceal undesirable objects or people in the scene with a region of pixels copied from the same image. Forensic mechanisms aimed at detecting this type of forgeries must also consider other potential types of post-processing, including geometric distortions. In this paper, a new method is proposed to detect duplicated regions, even when the cloned region has undergone reflection, rotation and scaling. The algorithm uses colour-dependent feature vectors to reduce the number of comparisons in the search stage, and one-dimensional (1-D) descriptors, invariant to reflection and rotation, to perform an efficient search in terms of memory usage. Comparison results are presented to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method and two existing schemes.
Development of Program Visualization Systems

The last decade has been a very active period of designing systems for program visualization. Without proper means for describing and evaluating both existing and new systems further develoment may be delayed. Recently, several researchers have been working for creating taxonomies for program visualization systems. During the active period of system development benefits of visualization were often praised without criticism, and scientific references were rarely presented. What do we really know about usefulness of program visualization?
Polyamines and α-Carbonic Anhydrases

Natural products represent a straightforward source for molecular structures bearing a vast array of chemical features and potentially useful for biomedical purposes. Recent examples of this type include the discovery of the coumarins and the polyamine natural products as atypical chemotypes for the inhibition of the metalloenzymes carbonic anhydrases (CAs; EC 4.2.2.1). CA enzymes are established pharmacological targets for important pathologies, which, among others, include glaucoma, hypoxic tumors, and central nervous system (CNS)-affecting diseases. Moreover, they are expressed in many bacteria, fungi and helminths which are the etiological agents of the majority of infectious diseases. In this context, natural products represent the ideal source of new and selective druggable CA modulators for biomedical purposes. Herein we report the state of the art on polyamines of natural origin as well as of synthetic derivatives as inhibitors of human CAs.
MsrB1 (Methionine-R-sulfoxide Reductase 1) Knock-out Mice

Protein oxidation has been linked to accelerated aging and is a contributing factor to many diseases. Methionine residues are particularly susceptible to oxidation, but the resulting mixture of methionine R-sulfoxide (Met-RO) and methionine S-sulfoxide (Met-SO) can be repaired by thioredoxin-dependent enzymes MsrB and MsrA, respectively. Here, we describe a knock-out mouse deficient in selenoprotein MsrB1, the main mammalian MsrB located in the cytosol and nucleus. In these mice, in addition to the deletion of 14-kDa MsrB1, a 5-kDa selenoprotein form was specifically removed. Further studies revealed that the 5-kDa protein occurred in both mouse tissues and human HEK 293 cells; was down-regulated by MsrB1 small interfering RNA, selenium deficiency, and selenocysteine tRNA mutations; and was immunoprecipitated and recognized by MsrB1 antibodies. Specific labeling with 75Se and mass spectrometry analyses revealed that the 5-kDa selenoprotein corresponded to the C-terminal sequence of MsrB1. The MsrB1 knock-out mice lacked both 5- and 14-kDa MsrB1 forms and showed reduced MsrB activity, with the strongest effect seen in liver and kidney. In addition, MsrA activity was decreased by MsrB1 deficiency. Liver and kidney of the MsrB1 knock-out mice also showed increased levels of malondialdehyde, protein carbonyls, protein methionine sulfoxide, and oxidized glutathione as well as reduced levels of free and protein thiols, whereas these parameters were little changed in other organs examined. Overall, this study established an important contribution of MsrB1 to the redox control in mouse liver and kidney and identified a novel form of this protein.
DTIA: An Architecture for Inter-Domain Routing

This paper proposes an architecture for inter-domain routing, called DTIA - Dynamic Topological Information Architecture. DTIA separates the issues of reachability and routing, and this paper addresses the first one. One major requirement has been not to change IP packets and the commercial relations in the Internet. DTIA is based on the knowledge of a static network formed by the Autonomous Systems (AS) and an algorithm to manage link failures. We use the concept of a region as a mechanism to sustain scale. DTIA supports the most important functionalities of BGP: some of them are built in and others can be implemented on top of the reachability level or the routing level. The main concerns we aim to solve are taking advantage of multihoming, increase the robustness in terms of convergence, reduce the churn rate and range of routing events, and due to forwarding packets by AS identifiers and topologic links (as opposed to prefix policy defined) reduce the growth of the routing table.
Calculating Fast Fourier Transform by using parallel software design patterns

Multicore embedded systems introduce new opportunities and challenges. Scaling of computational power is one of the main reasons for a transition to a multicore environment. Parallel design patterns, such as Map Reduce, Task Graph, Thread Pool, Task Parallelism assist to derive a parallel approach for calculating the Fast Fourier Transform. By combining these design patterns, a robust application can be obtained. The key issues for concurrent calculation of a Fast Fourier Transform are determined at a higher level avoiding low-level patch-ups.
Effect of Different Lignocellulosic Diets on Bacterial Microbiota and Hydrolytic Enzyme Activities in the Gut of the Cotton Boll Weevil (Anthonomus grandis)

Cotton boll weevils, Anthonomus grandis, are omnivorous coleopteran that can feed on diets with different compositions, including recalcitrant lignocellulosic materials. We characterized the changes in the prokaryotic community structure and the hydrolytic activities of A. grandis larvae fed on different lignocellulosic diets. A. grandis larvae were fed on three different artificial diets: cottonseed meal (CM), Napier grass (NG) and corn stover (CS). Total DNA was extracted from the gut samples for amplification and sequencing of the V3-V4 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene. Proteobacteria and Firmicutes dominated the gut microbiota followed by Actinobacteria, Spirochaetes and a small number of unclassified phyla in CM and NG microbiomes. In the CS feeding group, members of Spirochaetes were the most prevalent, followed by Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. Bray–Curtis distances showed that the samples from the CS community were clearly separated from those samples of the CM and NG diets. Gut extracts from all three diets exhibited endoglucanase, xylanase, β-glucosidase and pectinase activities. These activities were significantly affected by pH and temperature across different diets. We observed that the larvae reared on a CM showed significantly higher activities than larvae reared on NG and CS. We demonstrated that the intestinal bacterial community structure varies depending on diet composition. Diets with more variable and complex compositions, such as CS, showed higher bacterial diversity and richness than the two other diets. In spite of the detected changes in composition and diversity, we identified a core microbiome shared between the three different lignocellulosic diets. These results suggest that feeding with diets of different lignocellulosic composition could be a viable strategy to discover variants of hemicellulose and cellulose breakdown systems.
Author recognition from lyrics

Music information retrieval has been an important task due to the wide use of internet and related technologies for entertainment. In previous studies, the problem has been considered using the meta-data or melodic content. The use of lyrics in this context is not that common. There is not study either for Turkish songs in this respect. In this study, we discuss the predictability of the author using the text data in a Turkish lyric. To this end, we propose a system that can predict the author using the features extracted from text content. The performance of the system is evaluated on a large data set collected from writers with different music styles.
Testing Non-linear Dependence in the Hedge Fund Industry Testing Non-linear Dependence in the Hedge Fund Industry Testing Non-linear Dependence in the Hedge Fund Industry

(*) Any views expressed in this paper are my own and not necessarily those of the Bank of Spain. I am specially indebted to Enrique Sentana, for his advice, comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to for helpful comments and valuable insights. The input of one anonymous referee has also greatly improved the paper. Of course, all remaining errors are entirely mine. The first versions of this paper were developed while based at CEMFI, with financial support from Fundación Ramón Areces. 2010 The Working Paper Series seeks to disseminate original research in economics and fi nance. All papers have been anonymously refereed. By publishing these papers, the Banco de España aims to contribute to economic analysis and, in particular, to knowledge of the Spanish economy and its international environment. The opinions and analyses in the Working Paper Series are the responsibility of the authors and, therefore, do not necessarily coincide with those of the Banco de España or the Eurosystem. The Banco de España disseminates its main reports and most of its publications via the INTERNET at the following website: http://www.bde. es. Reproduction for educational and non-commercial purposes is permitted provided that the source is acknowledged. Abstract This paper proposes a parsimonious approach to test non-linear dependence on the conditional mean and variance of hedge funds with respect to several market factors. My approach introduces non-linear dependence by means of empirically relevant polynomial functions of the factors. For comparison purposes, I also consider multifactor extensions of tests based on piecewise linear alternatives. I apply these tests to a database of monthly returns on 1,071 hedge funds. I fi nd that non-linear dependence on the mean is highly sensitive to the factors that I consider. However, I obtain a much stronger evidence of non-linear dependence on the conditional variance.
Chaos Mosaic: Fast and Memory Efficient Texture Synthesis

We present a procedural method for synthesizing large textures from an input texture sample. The basis of our algorithm is the chaos mosaic, a technique for synthesizing textures with an even and visually stochastic distribution of the local features of the input sample. The chaos mosaic is fast. For synthesizing textures of the same size and comparable quality, our algorithm is orders of magnitude faster than existing algorithms. On a PC we can synthesize a 512 512 texture from a 64 64 sample in just 0.03 second. More importantly, the chaos mosaic facilitates memory efficient texture rendering through procedural texturing. Like traditional solid texture techniques, the chaos mosaic allows us to synthesize and render synthetic textures that, if stored explicitly as textures, would require prohibitively large amount of storage. As an example, we demonstrate that an 100k 100k synthetic texture can be interactively visualized on a modest PC without suffering from latency. Finally, the chaos mosaic can drastically reduce the bandwidth for interactive 3D graphics delivered across the internet.
ECONSTRUCTION IN W ILD P OPULATIONS F ROM M ICROSATELLITE G ENETIC M ARKERS

New technologies for collecting genotypic data from natura l populations open the possibilities of investigating many fundamental biologic al phenomena, including behavior, mating systems, heritabilities of adaptive traits , kin selection, and dispersal patterns. The power and potential of genotypic information often rests in the ability to reconstruct genealogical relationships among individual s. These relationships include parentage, full and half-sibships, and higher order aspect of pedigrees. Some areas of genealogical inference, such as parentage, have been stu died extensively. Although methods for pedigree inference and kinship analysis exist, most make assumptions that do not hold for wild populations of animals and plants. In this chapter, we focus on the full sibling relationship an d first review existing methods for full sibship reconstructions from microsatell it genetic markers. We then describe our new combinatorial methods for sibling reconst ruction based on simple Department of Biological Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Ch icago, IL 60607. Email: ashley@uic.edu Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chic ago, IL 60607. email: {tanyabw,dasgupta,ssheikh}@cs.uic.edu Department of Industrial Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscatawa y, NJ 08854. email: wchaoval@rci.rutgers. edu 2 Mary V. Ashley, Tanya Y. Berger-Wolf, Isabel C. Caballero et al. Mendelian laws and its extension even in the presence of erro rs in the data. We also describe a generic consensus method for combining sibling r econstruction results from other methods. We present experimental comparison of the be st existing approaches on both biological and simulated data. We discuss relative m erits and drawbacks of existing methods and suggest a practical approach for recon structing sibling relationships in wild populations.
Extending DBpedia with List Structures in Wikipedia Articles

Ontologies are the basis of the Semantic Web. Owing to the cost of their construction and maintenance, however, there is much interest in automating their construction. Wikipedia is considered a promising source of knowledge because of its own characteristics. DBpedia extracts a large amount of ontological information from Wikipedia. However, DBpedia focuses exclusively on infoboxes (i.e., tables summarizing articles), and several works aim at extending DBpedia by using more information from Wikipedia. This paper builds upon this line of work, and focuses on the section titles and list structure to extend DBpedia. We develop an information extraction system using the list structure and extract more than 20 million triples using section titles as predicates. This suggests that there is ample potential to significantly expand the coverage of DBpedia.
An HMM-Based Gesture Recognition Method Trained on Few Samples

This paper addresses the problem of recognizing gestures which are captured using the Kinect sensor in a educational game devoted to the deaf community. Different strategies are evaluated to deal with the problem of having few samples for training. We have experimented a Leave One Out Training and Testing (LOOT) strategy and an HMM-based ensemble of classifiers. A dataset containing 181 videos of gestures related to nine signs commonly used in educational games is introduced, which is available for research purposes. The experimental results have shown that the proposed ensemble-based method is a promising strategy to deal with problems where few training samples are available.
Vertical structure of warming consistent with an upward shift in the middle and upper troposphere

Warming in climate‐change simulations reaches a local maximum in the tropical upper troposphere as expected from moist‐adiabatic lapse rates. But the structure of warming varies between models and differs substantially from moist adiabatic in the extratropics. Here, we relate the vertical profile of warming to the climatological temperature profile using the vertical‐shift transformation (VST). The VST captures much of the intermodel scatter in the ratio of upper‐ to middle‐tropospheric warming in both the extratropics and tropics of simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5). Application of the VST to observed climatological temperatures yields warming ratios that are in the range of what is obtained from the model climatological temperatures, although biases in some model climatologies lead to substantial errors when shifted upward. Radiosonde temperature trends are consistent with an upward shift in recent decades in the Northern Hemisphere, with less‐robust results in the Southern Hemisphere.
Defining Complexity Factors for the Architecture Evaluation Framework

The design and implementation of telecommunication systems is an incremental and iterative process, and system architectures may need to be revised and refined several times during their lifetime. Formal evaluation facilitates the identification of the weak points, where improvements are due in these architectures. In the domain of telecommunications, such evaluation can be based on the Architecture Evaluation Framework (AEF). During the evaluation, a deep understanding of the processes within a system is needed. Meanwhile, the systems being designed are usually complex systems encompassing a large number of components with an intricate pattern of interaction between them. As a result, it is extremely difficult to understand, predict and control the behavior of such systems. Theoretical studies in the field of complex systems describe potential reasons of system complexity, and explain its possible outcomes, as reflected in system structure and behavior. This knowledge may be utilized in architecture evaluation, in order to deepen the understanding of the interactions imposed by the architecture, as well as to extend the understanding of the involved architectural tradeoffs. For this, the complexity factors should be taken into account during the evaluation. However, no such factors are involved in the current version of the AEF. In this paper, the attempt is made to identify how the knowledge about properties of complex systems could be utilized for the evaluation of information system architectures. Based on the theoretical advances in the field of complex systems, a list of the complexity factors to be included in the AEF is compiled. These factors are going to be further refined, as the AEF is employed for evaluating real-world architectures.