Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Object Proposal Generation for Unsupervised Object Localization

Object proposals has become the preprocessing in many vision pipelines especially in object localization systems. While with the development and widespread of proposal localization, it is hard to decide which method is more suitable for object detection. In this paper we provide detailed understanding about differences of five object proposal methods. And we provide a set of evaluation metrics and use these metrics to compare and evaluate the recall situation of these object proposal methods. Using the ground-truth instance for exploring unsupervised object localization on PASCAL VOC 2007, MSRA10K and Object Discovery datasets. Our experimental analysis demonstrates that the performance of these methods depends on the number of candidates and the threshold of recall, meanwhile the methods that generate the candidates with scores perform better than those methods that do not with scores. Our findings show the advantages and disadvantages of these methods, and provide insights and metrics to motivate the evaluation of object proposal methods.
Movie Success Prediction using Machine Learning Algorithms and their Comparison

The number of movies produced in the world is growing at an exponential rate and success rate of movie is of utmost importance since billions of dollars are invested in the making of each of these movies. In such a scenario, prior knowledge about the success or failure of a particular movie and what factor affect the movie success will benefit the production houses since these predictions will give them a fair idea of how to go about with the advertising and campaigning, which itself is an expensive affair altogether. So, the prediction of the success of a movie is very essential to the film industry. In this proposed research, we give our detailed analysis of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and predict the IMDb score. This database contains categorical and numerical information such as IMDb score, director, gross, budget and so on and so forth. This research proposes a way to predict how successful a movie will be prior to its arrival at the box office instead of listening to critics and others on whether a movie will be successful or not. The proposed research provides a quite efficient approach to predict IMDb score on IMDb Movie Dataset. We will try to unveil the important factors influencing the score of IMDb Movie Data. We have used different algorithms in the research work for analysis but among all Random forest gave the best prediction accuracy which is better in comparison to the previous studies. In the exploratory analysis we found that number of voted users, number of critics for reviews, number of Facebook likes, duration of the movie and gross collection of movie affect the IMDb score strongly. Drama and Biopic movies are best in genres.
A Model Predictive Controller With Switched Tracking Error for Autonomous Vehicle Path Tracking

Autonomous vehicle path tracking accuracy and vehicle stability can hardly be accomplished by one fixed control frame in various conditions due to the changing vehicle dynamics. This paper presents a model predictive control (MPC) path-tracking controller with switched tracking error, which reduces the lateral tracking deviation and maintains vehicle stability for both normal and high-speed conditions. The design begins by comparing the performance of three MPC controllers with different tracking error. The analyzing results indicate that in the steady-state condition the controller with the velocity heading deviation as the tracking error significantly improves the tracking accuracy. Meanwhile, in the transient condition, by substituting the steady-state sideslip for real-time sideslip to compute the velocity heading deviation, the tracking overshoot can be reduced. To combine the strengths of these two methods, an MPC controller with switched tracking error is designed to improve the performance in both steady-state and transient conditions. The regime condition of a vehicle maneuver and the switching instant are determined by a fuzzy-logic-based condition classifier. Both normal and aggressive driving scenarios with the vehicle lateral and longitudinal acceleration combination of 5 m/s2 and 8 m/s2 are designed to test the proposed controller through CarSim-Simulink platform. The simulation results show the improved performance of the MPC controller with switched tracking error both in tracking accuracy and vehicle stability in both scenarios.
Situation Aware Computing with Wearable Computers

For most computer systems even virtual reality systems sensing techniques are a means of getting input directly from the user However wearable sensors and computers o er a unique opportunity to re direct sensing technology towards recovering more general user context Wearable computers have the potential to see as the user sees hear as the user hears and experience the life of the user in a rst person sense This increase in contextual and user information may lead to more intelligent and uid interfaces that use the physical world as part of the interface Wearable computers are excellent platforms for contextually aware applications but these applications are also necessary to use wearables to their fullest Wearables are more than just highly portable computers they perform useful work even while the wearer isn t directly interacting with the system In such environments the user needs to concentrate on his environment not on the computer interface so the wearable needs to use information from the wearer s context to be the least distracting For example imagine an interface which is aware of the user s location while being in the subway the system might alert him with a spoken summary of an e mail However during a conversation the wearable computer may present the name of a potential caller unobtrusively in the user s head up display or simply forward the call to voicemail The importance of context in communication and interface can not be overstated Phys ical environment time of day mental state and the model each conversant has of the other participants can be critical in conveying necessary information and mood An anecdote from Nicholas Negroponte s book Being Digital Negroponte illustrates this point
Establishing Trust and Relationships through Video Conferencing in Virtual Collaborations: An Experience Report on a Global Software Engineering Course

The rise of globalization in software engineering places a responsibility on educators to adequately prepare students for the unique challenges and demands of Global Software Engineering. Experiential Learning (EL) is an approach to teaching that emphasizes learning by doing. It can potentially enhance student engagement and, therefore, learning in GSE courses. In this paper, we present our findings based on student reflections about their first experience of virtual collaboration with a guest lecturer in a GSE course. In particular, we report on the challenges and learnings for students during this virtual meeting where they reflect on the importance of a pre-established relationship with the facilitator in cross-site communication. We compare our findings from student reflections with those shared by practitioners in our previous study about the challenges of distributed collaboration. We observed that both students and practitioners consider trust, goodwill, and a good relationship as important aspects in distributed communication and collaboration. Furthermore, we highlight that participating in even a single virtual meeting can help the students experience some of the challenges in GSE. We also provide the implications of such student experiences for the educators planning future GSE courses.
Adam Smith's View of History: Consistent or Paradoxical?

The conventional interpretation of Adam Smith is that he is a prophet of commercialism. The liberal capitalist reading of Smith is consistent with the view that history culminates in commercial society. The first part of the article develops this optimistic interpretation of Smith's view of history. Smith implies that commercial society is the end of history because (1) it supplies the ends of nature that he identifies; (2) it is inevitable; and (3) it is permanent. The second part of the article shows that Smith has some dark moments in his writings where he seems to reject completely such teleological notions. In this more civic humanist mood he confesses that commercial society does not supply the ends of nature, nor is it inevitable, nor is it permanent. Both views exist in Smith and the commentator is forced to choose between passages in Smith's work in order to support a particular interpretation of the former's view of history.
Apelin attenuates hyperoxic lung and heart injury in neonatal rats.

RATIONALE Apelin, a potent vasodilator and angiogenic factor, may be a novel therapeutic agent in neonatal chronic lung disease, including bronchopulmonary dysplasia. OBJECTIVES To determine the beneficial effect of apelin in neonatal rats with hyperoxia-induced lung injury, a model for premature infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia. METHODS The cardiopulmonary effects of apelin treatment (62 μg/kg/d) were studied in neonatal rats by exposure to 100% oxygen, using two treatment strategies: early concurrent treatment during continuous exposure to hyperoxia for 10 days and late treatment and recovery in which treatment was started on Day 6 after hyperoxic injury for 9 days and continued during the 9-day recovery period. We investigated in both models the role of the nitric oxide-cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) pathway in apelin treatment by specific inhibition of the nitric oxide synthase activity with N(ω)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME, 25 mg/kg/d). MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Parameters investigated include survival, lung and heart histopathology, pulmonary fibrin deposition and inflammation, alveolar vascular leakage, lung cGMP levels, right ventricular hypertrophy, and differential mRNA expression in lung and heart tissue. Prophylactic treatment with apelin improved alveolarization and angiogenesis, increased lung cGMP levels, and reduced pulmonary fibrin deposition, inflammation, septum thickness, arteriolar wall thickness, and right ventricular hypertrophy. These beneficial effects were completely absent in the presence of L-NAME. In the injury-recovery model apelin also improved alveolarization and angiogenesis, reduced arteriolar wall thickness, and attenuated right ventricular hypertrophy. CONCLUSIONS Apelin reduces pulmonary inflammation, fibrin deposition, and right ventricular hypertrophy, and partially restores alveolarization in rat pups with neonatal hyperoxic lung injury via a nitric oxide synthase-dependent mechanism.
Experimental approach to identify source of radiation noise over Si and SiC power modules

Continually dynamic characteristics of semiconductor power chips (say chips) for inverter use have been studied and improved to reduce loss and to downsize chip area, but it implies that radiation noise has been increasing. This paper shows one of experimental approach to identify source of radiation noise over inverter system with power device by visualizing near field magnetic field and FFT processed noise voltage from antenna with comparing two devices installing all Si chips and all SiC chips.
Patterns of Adaptation of Chinese Postgraduate Students in the United Kingdom

International students coming to the United Kingdom have to adapt to academic cultural differences as well as general cultural differences. Questionnaires were administered to 257 Chinese postgraduate students on anticipated and actually experienced difficulties and on perceived differences between Chinese and U.K. academic cultures before departure, soon after arrival, and about 6 months after arrival. Some participants (n = 45) responded to questionnaires at three stages; others responded at just one or two stages. A sample of the 45 students (n = 28) were interviewed about their pre-departure expectations and post-arrival experiences. Patterns of adaptation over time differed in relation to general life, social life, and study life. A major finding was the different patterns of specifically academic adaptation of students who came in groups and those who came individually.
Using internet-based on-line assessment: A case study

Abstract This paper describes the background, design process, and implementation problems encountered during the first year of use of an asynchronous internet-based on-line assessment system on an introductory accounting course. The on-line assessment system was both summative and formative in nature and was designed to encourage and reinforce the learning of basic principles. The paper reports a positive correlation between student performance in the on-line assessments and in their final examination. It concludes with a list of issues to be considered when embarking on a venture of this sort.
Dealing with Disputes: The Influence of Individualism-Collectivism

Abstract Research concerned with the influence of the individualism-collectivism value dimension on procedural preferences for conflict resolution has suggested that harmony-enhancing procedures such as mediation and negotiation are more preferred in collectivist than in individualist societies, whereas the reverse is the case for competitive procedures such as arbitration. However, almost all collectivist samples have been drawn from Asian societies, where unique values that may independently influence preference, such as the Confucian work dynamism, have been identified. The generality of this research was investigated; university students from Canada (an individualistic society) and Nigeria (a non-Asian collectivist society) were asked to indicate their preferences for certain adversary and nonadversary procedures and to complete C. H. Hui's (1988) Individualism-Collectivism scale. The results were not in line with previous research: Not only did Canadian subjects show a clear preference for negotiatio.
Defensive Player Classification in the National Basketball Association

The National Basketball Association(NBA) has expanded their data gathering and have heavily invested in new technologies to gather advanced performance metrics on players. This expanded data set allows analysts to use unique performance metrics in models to estimate and classify player performance. Instead of grouping players together based on physical attributes and positions played, analysts can group together players that play similar to each other based on these tracked metrics. Existing methods for player classification have typically used offensive metrics for clustering [1]. There have been attempts to classify players using past defensive metrics, but the lack of quality metrics has not produced promising results. The classifications presented in the paper use newly introduced defensive metrics to find different defensive positions for each player. Without knowing the number of categories that players can be cast into, Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) can be applied to find the optimal number of clusters. In the model presented, five different defensive player types can be identified.
Agile Practices: The Impact on Trust in Software Project Teams

Agile software development involves self-managing teams that are empowered and responsible for meeting project goals in whatever way they deem suitable. Managers must place more trust in such teams than they do in teams following more traditional development methodologies. The authors highlight how the use of agile practices can enhance trust amongst agile team members. They also present challenges that agile teams can face as a result of using agile practices. Their results are based on the findings from three case studies of agile software development teams.
Industrializing the Residential Construction Site Phase Iv: Production Simulation Acknowledgements Rudi Luyendijk Was a Significant Contributor to Chapter Two

Disclaimer The statements and conclusions contained in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The authors have made every effort to verify the accuracy and appropriateness of the report's content. However, no guarantee of the accuracy or completeness of the information or acceptability for compliance with any industry standard or mandatory requirement of any code, law, or regulation is either offered or implied. The products and systems described in the report are included only as examples of some available choices. No endorsement, recommendation, or evaluation of these products or their use is given or implied. Preface Millions of homes are constructed annually in the United States, resulting in a home ownership rate that has reached record highs in the last few years. This demand for new houses has greatly benefited the home building industry, which has implemented and used several design and construction improvements to keep up with the tremendous need for new homes in America's cities and towns. Yet most of these productions improvements focused on customization of individual houses rather than on the production process for a wide number of houses. To gain insight into the main principles underlying production improvement, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began to fund research in an area known as " industrializing the residential construction site. " Four years ago, a new research focus examined ways to automate the home construction process, improve construction work flows, and practically coordinate construction sites. Researchers identified five areas for transforming the construction site in the first year of the research program. Of these five, HUD chose " information integration " as the enabling form of knowledge key to transforming the residential construction site from a craft-based traditional model to an information-driven manufacturing model. In year two, researchers focused on studying the flow, filtering, and timely availability of information. Research results indicated that the residential construction industry requires a coherent information integration strategy that will facilitate the meaningful flow of information as well as the effective provision of information management to all levels within the enterprise. In year three, researchers studied the production framing process in detail and identified production bottlenecks at the interfaces between craft and mass production and between documents and subcontractors. It was found that the residential construction industry is laden with paperwork that …
Robust Cooperative Formation Control of Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Robust cooperative formation control is investigated in this paper for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles in close formation flight to save energy. A novel cooperative control method is developed. The concept of virtual structure is employed to resolve the difficulty in designing virtual leaders for a large number of UAVs in formation flight. To improve the transient performance, desired trajectories are passed through a group of cooperative filters to generate smooth reference signals, namely the states of the virtual leaders. Model uncertainties due to aerodynamic couplings among UAVs are estimated and compensated using uncertainty and disturbance observers. The entire design, therefore, contains three major components: cooperative filters for motion planning, baseline cooperative control, and uncertainty and disturbance observation. The proposed formation controller could at least secure ultimate bounded control performance for formation tracking. If certain conditions are satisfied, asymptotic formation tracking control could be obtained. Major contributions of this paper lie in two aspects: 1) the difficulty in designing virtual leaders is resolved in terms of the virtual structure concept; 2) a robust cooperative controller is proposed for close formation flight of a large number of UAVs suffering from aerodynamic couplings in between. The efficiency of the proposed design will be demonstrated using numerical simulations of five UAVs in close formation flight.
Obesity & osteoarthritis

The most significant impact of obesity on the musculoskeletal system is associated with osteoarthritis (OA), a disabling degenerative joint disorder characterized by pain, decreased mobility and negative impact on quality of life. OA pathogenesis relates to both excessive joint loading and altered biomechanical patterns together with hormonal and cytokine dysregulation. Obesity is associated with the incidence and progression of OA of both weight-bearing and non weight-bearing joints, to rate of joint replacements as well as operative complications. Weight loss in OA can impart clinically significant improvements in pain and delay progression of joint structural damage. Further work is required to determine the relative contributions of mechanical and metabolic factors in the pathogenesis of OA.
Assessment of wheelchair driving performance in a virtual reality-based simulator

Abstract Objective To develop a virtual reality (VR)-based simulator that can assist clinicians in performing standardized wheelchair driving assessments. Design A completely within-subjects repeated measures design. Methods Participants drove their wheelchairs along a virtual driving circuit modeled after the Power Mobility Road Test (PMRT) and in a hallway with decreasing width. The virtual simulator was displayed on computer screen and VR screens and participants interacted with it using a set of instrumented rollers and a wheelchair joystick. Driving performances of participants were estimated and compared using quantitative metrics from the simulator. Qualitative ratings from two experienced clinicians were used to estimate intra- and inter-rater reliability. Results Ten regular wheelchair users (seven men, three women; mean age ± SD, 39.5 ± 15.39 years) participated. The virtual PMRT scores from the two clinicians show high inter-rater reliability (78–90%) and high intra-rater reliability (71–90%) for all test conditions. More research is required to explore user preferences and effectiveness of the two control methods (rollers and mathematical model) and the display screens. Conclusions The virtual driving simulator seems to be a promising tool for wheelchair driving assessment that clinicians can use to supplement their real-world evaluations.
A New Mobile and Hybrid Desalination Unit with Solar Energy and Enhanced Reverse Osmosis

Currently, water is facing a crisis because of population growth and climate change. Hence, desalination is a solution to the water scarcity, which threatens the world. Reverse Osmosis (RO), the most used technique for desalination, is based on the use of a specific membrane for the desalination without phase change of water. Unfortunately, this process, usually based on fossil fuels, requires a lot of energy. In rural areas, especially non-electrified ones, the desalination problem is more important. As a result, the rural population suffers from the scarcity of drinking water despite the availability of lakes and brackish water. This paper proposes a new hybrid and mobile unit, which will be used in Morocco for brackish water desalination, based on photovoltaic and thermal solar energy. It deploys an enhanced Reverse Osmosis technique to optimize the electrical energy produced by photovoltaic (PV) panels by using a thermal system.