Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performances of poly(vinylidene fluoride‐co‐hexafluoropropylene) ultrafiltration membranes modified with poly(vinyl pyrrolidone)

The structure and performance of modified poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVdF-co-HFP) ultra-filtration membranes prepared from casting solutions with different concentrations of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) were investigated in this study. Membrane properties were studied in terms of membrane compaction, pure water flux (PWF), water content (WC), membrane hydraulic resistance (Rm), protein rejection, molecular weight cut-off (MWCO), average pore size, and porosity. PWF, WC, and thermal stability of the blend membranes increased whereas the crystalline nature and mechanical strength of the blend membranes decreased when PVP additive concentration was increased. The contact angle (CA) decreased as the PVP concentration increased in the casting solution, which indicates that the hydro-philicity of the surface increased upon addition of PVP. The average pore size and porosity of the PVdF-co-HFP membrane increased to 42.82 A and 25.12%, respectively, when 7.5 wt% PVP was blended in the casting solution. The MWCO increased from 20 to 45 kDa with an increase in PVP concentration from 0 to 7.5 wt%. The protein separation study revealed that the rejection increased as the protein molecular weight increased. The PVdF-co-HFP/PVP blended membrane prepared from a 7.5 wt% PVP solution had a maximum flux recovery ratio of 74.3%, which explains its better antifouling properties as compared to the neat PVdF-co-HFP membrane. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 55:2482–2492, 2015. © 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers
Data anonymization that leads to the most accurate estimates of statistical characteristics: Fuzzy-motivated approach

To preserve privacy, the original data points (with exact values) are replaced by boxes containing each (inaccessible) data point. This privacy-motivated uncertainty leads to uncertainty in the statistical characteristics computed based on this data. In a previous paper, we described how to minimize this uncertainty under the assumption that we use the same standard statistical estimates for the desired characteristics. In this paper, we show that we can further decrease the resulting uncertainty if we allow fuzzy-motivated weighted estimates, and we explain how to optimally select the corresponding weights.
A New Approach to SMS Steganography using Mathematical Equations

In the era of Information Technology, cyber-crime has always been a worrying issue for online users. Phishing, social engineering, and third party attacks have made people reluctant to share their personal information, even with trusted entities. Messages that are sent via Short Message Service (SMS) are easily copied and hacked by using special software. To enforce the security of sending messages through mobile phones, one solution is SMS steganography. SMS Steganography is a technique that hides a secret message in the SMS. We propose a new approach for SMS steganography that uses a mathematical equation as the stego media in order to transmit the data. With this approach, we can hide up to 35 characters (25%) of a secret message on a single SMS with maximum of 140 characters.
Should oligoarthritis be reclassified? Ultrasound reveals a high prevalence of subclinical disease

Objective: To determine the prevalence of subclinical synovitis using ultrasound (US) imaging of both painful and asymptomatic joints, in patients with early (<12 months), untreated oligoarthritis (⩽5 joints). Methods: Eighty patients underwent a detailed clinical assessment by two physicians. All painful joints were identified, which were immediately scanned by a sonographer. In the last 40 patients, an additional standard group of joints was scanned to establish the prevalence of synovitis in asymptomatic joints. Results: In 80 patients, 644 painful joints (with and without clinical synovitis) were identified and each underwent a US assessment. Of these joints, 185 had clinical synovitis, of which, US detected synovitis in only 79% (147/185). In the other 38 joints US demonstrated tenosynovitis instead of synovitis in 12 joints and possible, but not definite, synovitis in 11 joints. Fifteen joints were, however, normal on US. In 459 joints that were not clinically synovitic, US detected synovitis in 33% (150/459). In 64% (51/80) of patients, US detected synovitis in more joints than clinical examination and in 36% (29/80) of patients, US detected a polyarthritis (>6 joints). Of the 826 asymptomatic (non-painful) joints scanned, 13% (107/826) had US detected synovitis. Conclusion: Sonography detected more synovitis than clinical examination in patients with oligoarthritis. In almost two thirds of patients there was evidence of subclinical disease while one third could be reclassified as polyarticular. These findings suggest that a definition of oligoarthritis based purely on clinical findings may be inappropriate, which may have important implications for disease management.
Performance evaluation of 1‐point‐RANSAC visual odometry

Monocular visual odometry is the process of computing the egomotion of a vehicle purely from images of a single camera. This process involves extracting salient points from consecutive image pairs, matching them, and computing the motion using standard algorithms. This paper analyzes one of the most important steps toward accurate motion computation, which is outlier removal. The random sample consensus (RANSAC) has been established as the standard method for model estimation in the presence of outliers. RANSAC is an iterative method, and the number of iterations necessary to find a correct solution is exponential in the minimum number of data points needed to estimate the model. It is therefore of utmost importance to find the minimal parameterization of the model to estimate. For unconstrained motion [six degrees of freedom (DoF)] of a calibrated camera, this would be five correspondences. In the case of planar motion, the motion model complexity is reduced (three DoF) and can be parameterized with two points. In this paper we show that when the camera is installed on a nonholonomic wheeled vehicle, the model complexity reduces to two DoF and therefore the motion can be parameterized with a single‐point correspondence. Using a single‐feature correspondence for motion estimation is the lowest model parameterization possible and results in the most efficient algorithm for removing outliers, which we call 1‐point RANSAC. To support our method, we run many experiments on both synthetic and real data and compare the performance with state‐of‐the‐art approaches and with different vehicles, both indoors and outdoors. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Tissue Triage and Freezing for Models of Skeletal Muscle Disease

Skeletal muscle is a unique tissue because of its structure and function, which requires specific protocols for tissue collection to obtain optimal results from functional, cellular, molecular, and pathological evaluations. Due to the subtlety of some pathological abnormalities seen in congenital muscle disorders and the potential for fixation to interfere with the recognition of these features, pathological evaluation of frozen muscle is preferable to fixed muscle when evaluating skeletal muscle for congenital muscle disease. Additionally, the potential to produce severe freezing artifacts in muscle requires specific precautions when freezing skeletal muscle for histological examination that are not commonly used when freezing other tissues. This manuscript describes a protocol for rapid freezing of skeletal muscle using isopentane (2-methylbutane) cooled with liquid nitrogen to preserve optimal skeletal muscle morphology. This procedure is also effective for freezing tissue intended for genetic or protein expression studies. Furthermore, we have integrated our freezing protocol into a broader procedure that also describes preferred methods for the short term triage of tissue for (1) single fiber functional studies and (2) myoblast cell culture, with a focus on the minimum effort necessary to collect tissue and transport it to specialized research or reference labs to complete these studies. Overall, this manuscript provides an outline of how fresh tissue can be effectively distributed for a variety of phenotypic studies and thereby provides standard operating procedures (SOPs) for pathological studies related to congenital muscle disease.
Investigation of the spectra of coupled polaritons on the periodically modulated metallic layer and narrow regions of anomalous transparency

The paper deals with the theoretical investigation of plane, normally incident electromagnetic wave transmission through the flat metal folm whose dielectric constant has small periodical sinusoidal modulation in one dimension parallel to the projection of the electric field onto the film surface. The dependencies of the film transmittancy on the parameters of the problem (frequency, modulation depth and absorption) are examined. It is shown that the film transmittancy increases considerably when the conditions for resonance interaction of an incident electromagnetic wave with surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are met. It is found that for small but finite absorption there are two frequencies in the vicinity of which the transmittancy can achieve the values of the order of unity due to resonances on symmetric and antisymmetric (relative to the mean plane) SPP modes. It is shown that for each value of absorption there exists a certain optimal modulation depth, which maximizes the resonance transparency.
Image Retrieval Using Features in Spatial and Frequency Domains Based on Block-Division

In recent years, the demand for image retrieval is increasing due to the development of the information society. There are mainly two categories of image retrieval approaches: TBIR and CBIR. The local binary pattern (LBP) texture method has been reported as a highly robust approach in CBIR studies. In our previous paper [9], we have proposed a novel image retrieval algorithm to improve retrieval accuracy, which using both features obtained from spatial and frequency domains. We added the DCT features as frequency characteristics. In this paper, we propose a block division method in order to improve the retrieval accuracy by adding geometric information. We divide the image area into separate regions relating to the image blocks. Retrieval results with different blocks are first obtained separately and then combined by weighted. Corel database is used for the evaluation of our proposed algorithm. Experimental results show a significantly higher retrieval accuracy compared with previous research.
Detecting and analyzing insecure component usage

Software is commonly built from reusable components that provide desired functionalities. Although component reuse significantly improves software productivity, insecure component usage can lead to security vulnerabilities in client applications. For example, we noticed that widely-used IE-based browsers, such as IE Tab, do not enable important security features that IE enables by default, even though they all use the same browser components. This insecure usage renders these IE-based browsers vulnerable to the attacks blocked by IE. To our knowledge, this important security aspect of component reuse has largely been unexplored. This paper presents the first practical framework for detecting and analyzing vulnerabilities of insecure component usage. Its goal is to enforce and support secure component reuse. Our core approach is based on differential testing and works as follows. Suppose that component C maintains a security policy configuration to block certain malicious behavior. If two clients of component C, say a reference and a test subject, handle the malicious behavior inconsistently, the test subject uses C insecurely. In particular, we model component usage related to a policy based on 1) accesses to the configuration state inside the component and 2) the conditional jumps affected by the data read from the state. We utilize this model to detect inconsistent policy evaluations, which can lead to insecure component usage. We have implemented our technique for Windows applications and used it to detect and analyze insecure usage of popular software components. Our evaluation results show that 1) insecure component usage is a general concern and frequently occurs in widely-used software, and 2) our detection framework is practical and effective at detecting and analyzing insecure component usage. In particular, it detected several serious, new vulnerabilities and helped perform detailed analysis of insecure component usage. We have reported these to the affected software vendors, some of whom have already acknowledged our findings and are actively addressing them.
Chance-Constrained Scheduling via Conflict-Directed Risk Allocation

Temporal uncertainty in large-scale logistics forces one to trade off between lost efficiency through built-in slack and costly replanning when deadlines are missed. Due to the difficulty of reasoning about such likelihoods and consequences, a computational framework is needed to quantify and bound the risk of violating scheduling requirements. This work addresses the chance-constrained scheduling problem, where actions' durations are modeled probabilistically. Our solution method uses conflict-directed risk allocation to efficiently compute a scheduling policy. The key insight, compared to previous work in probabilistic scheduling, is to decouple the reasoning about temporal and risk constraints. This decomposes the problem into a separate master and subproblem, which can be iteratively solved much quicker. Through a set of simulated car-sharing scenarios, it is empirically shown that conflict-directed risk allocation computes solutions nearly an order of magnitude faster than prior art, which considers all constraints in a single lump-sum optimization.
Validity of the Kronecker Model for MIMO Correlated Channels

The goal of this paper is to investigate the validity of the Kronecker model for MIMO correlated channels. First, mathematical and equivalent propagation conditions of validity are detailed. In a second part, we address several areas where the Kronecker model is not valid. We also review the one-ring model and experimental results dealing with the validation of the Kronecker model. Based on these scarce results, the preliminary conclusion is that the Kronecker model might not be valid for arrays larger than 2times2 when antenna correlations are high across both receive and transmit arrays. The paradox is that the Kronecker model has been developed and is being widely used to account for correlation. This is in strong contrast with the popular belief that the Kronecker model is valid in many indoor and outdoor cases
A Time-Warping Pitch Tracking Algorithm Considering Fast f0 Changes

Accurately tracking the fundamental frequency (f0) or pitch in speech data is of great interest in numerous contexts. All currently available pitch tracking algorithms perform a short-term analysis of a speech signal to extract the f0 under the assumption that the pitch does not change within a single analysis frame, a simplification that introduces errors when the f0 changes rather quickly over time. This paper proposes a new algorithm that warps the time axis of an analysis frame to counteract intraframe f0 changes and thus to improve the total tracking results. The algorithm was evaluated on a set of 4718 sentences from 20 speakers (10 male, 10 female) and with added white and babble noise. It was comparative in performance to the state-of-the-art algorithms RAPT and PRAAT to Pitch (ac) under clean conditions and outperformed both of them under noisy conditions.
MULTIPLICATIVE ZAGREB INDICES OF TREES

Let G be a graph with vertex set V (G) and edge set E(G) . The first and second multiplicative Zagreb indices of G are Π1 = ∏ x∈V (G) deg(x) 2 and Π2 = ∏ xy∈E(G) deg(x) deg(y) , respectively, where deg(v) is the degree of the vertex v . Let Tn be the set of trees with n vertices. We determine the elements of Tn , extremal w.r. t. Π1 and Π2 . AMS Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 05C05, 05C35
Fast frequent itemsets generation and Support calculation with FPGAs

Frequent Itemsets are the sets that most likely occurring together. This paper propose a high efficient implementation for frequent itemsets generation and Support calculation based on a systolic array architecture through only one scan of the database. A parallel item-delivering method is introduced to accelerate the generation procedure. Analysis of simulation results illustrates that our method is much more efficient than the software algorithm and other hardware implementations.
Part B 1 ] 1 ( to be evaluated in Step 1 ) Ubiquitous , spatiotemporal , multimodal action recognition Act Now

Action and activity recognition lie at the core of a panoply of scenarios in human machine interaction, ranging from gaming, mobile computing and video retrieval to health monitoring, surveillance, robotics and biometrics. The problem, however, is made really challenging by the inherent variability of motions carrying the same meaning, the unavoidable over-fitting due to limited training sets, and the presence of numerous nuisance factors such as locality, viewpoint, illumination, and occlusions that make real-world deployment extremely difficult. The most successful recent approaches, which mainly classify bags of local features, have reached their limits: only understanding the spatial and temporal structure of human activities can help us to successfully locate and recognise them in a robust and reliable way. We propose here to develop novel frameworks for the integration of spatiotemporal action structure in both generative and discriminative models, pushing for a breakthrough ripe with enormous exploitation potential. A new class of hierarchical part-based discriminative models originally developed for object recognition are reinvented for action localisation and recognition, as a fundamental way of coping with complex activities formed by series of simple actions and addressing the issues with locality and multiple actors. New manifold learning techniques for generative graphical models are developed to tackle the presence of nuisance factors and improve their generalisation power. Finally, novel classes of graphical models able to handle whole convex sets of probabilities are formulated in order to address the issue of overfitting due to the limited size of the training sets. As companies are heavily investing on virtual mice, smart TVs, phones and cars, and range sensors are changing clinical practice and the entertainment industry, the timeliness and potential impact of this project could not be understated.
A Liouville comparison principle for solutions of semilinear parabolic second-order partial differential inequalities

We obtain a new Liouville comparison principle for entire weak solutions $(u,v)$ of semilinear parabolic second-order partial differential inequalities of the form $$ u_t -{\mathcal L}u- |u|^{q-1}u\geq v_t -{\mathcal L}v- |v|^{q-1}v (*) $$ in the half-space ${\mathbb S} = {\mathbb R}^1_+ \times \mathbb R^n$. Here $n\geq 1$, $q>0$ and $$ {\mathcal L}=\sum\limits_{i,j=1}^n\frac{\partial}{{\partial}x_i} [ a_{ij}(t, x) \frac{\partial}{{\partial}x_j}],$$ where $a_{ij}(t,x)$, $i,j=1,. ,n$, are functions defined, measurable and locally bounded in $\mathbb S$, and such that $a_{ij}(t,x)=a_{ji}(t,x)$ and $$ \sum_{i,j=1}^n a_{ij}(t,x)\xi_i\xi_j\geq 0 $$ for almost all $(t,x)\in \mathbb S$ and all $\xi \in \mathbb R^n$. The critical exponents in the Liouville comparison principle obtained, which responsible for the non-existence of non-trivial (i.e., such that $u\not \equiv v$) entire weak solutions to (*) in $\mathbb S$, depend on the behaviour of the coefficients of the operator $\mathcal L$ at infinity. As direct corollaries we obtain a new Fujita comparison principle for entire weak solutions $(u,v)$ of the Cauchy problem for the inequality (*), as well as new Liouville-type and Fujita-type theorems for non-negative entire weak solutions $u$ of the inequality (*) in the case when $v\equiv 0$. All the results obtained are new and sharp.
P‐161: Brightness Improvement of Transflective LCD in a Unified Configuration

The brightness improvement of a transflective liquid crystal display in a unified configuration, having a single‐cell gap and a vertically aligned (VA) liquid crystal (LC) mode, was demonstrated. The photo‐patterned retarder was used to compensate the optical path difference between the transmissive and reflective regions. It was made of a UV‐polymerizable liquid crystal (LC) through a single patterning process. High reflectance and fast response characteristics were achieved in our unified configuration.
Multiplatooning Leaders Positioning and Cooperative Behavior Algorithms of Communicant Automated Vehicles for High Traffic Capacity

Multiplatooning leaders positioning and cooperative behavior strategies are proposed in this paper, to improve the efficiency of a traffic system of communicant automated vehicles evolving on dedicated lanes. Novel algorithms to ensure high traffic capacity are presented and MATLAB/Simulink-based simulation results are reported. In previous research work, we proposed new algorithms to mitigate communication delays effects on platoon string stability using anticipatory information. In this paper we consider constant spacing between platoons' leaders as a fundamental condition to attain high traffic capacity. New algorithms to maintain interplatoon leaders' constant spacing are proposed, as well as novel algorithms allowing vehicles to enter the main track cooperatively. Furthermore, a new set of algorithms to improve safety is also presented. A novel agent-based architecture was developed, in which each vehicle consists of two distinct modules, a leader and a follower. Based on MATLAB/Simulink simulations of several scenarios, the new algorithms are assessed and the simulation results presented, confirming that the proposed algorithms ensure high traffic capacity and vehicle density and avoid traffic congestion. These features were validated through simulations performed on the Simulation for Urban Mobility simulation platform, using a new car-following model implementation [10]. The results proved that the proposed algorithms enable a clear benefit of a platooning system, when compared with bus- and light-rail-based transit systems.