Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Image denoise based on Curvelet transform

The Curvelet transform is a new transform for image processing which has being developed for last years. It makes the line as a basic cell for transforming, so it is able to represent smooth and edge parts of image with sparsity. Curvelet transform can provide stable, efficient, and near-optimal representation of otherwise smooth objects discontinuities along smooth curves. It is a multiscale transform which is more adapt to the image processing after wavelet transform.
Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty in India, 1957-2005

This note, employing a GARCH model, finds a positive and significant relationship between the level and variability of monthly inflation in India in the period 1957-2005, with causation running from inflation to uncertainty about future inflation, as hypothesized by Friedman. To the extent that inflation uncertainty has negative output effects, this strengthens the case for the central bank to focus on price stability as one of the prime objectives of monetary policy.
Technical Note TN-61 Interpreting the Battery Lifetime of the Itsy Version 2 . 4

Several previous studies have been performed which evaluate the power consumption of the Itsy pocket computer version 2, developed at Compaq Computer Corporation’s Western Research Laboratory (WRL). Attempts have been made by others to use the data from these studies to characterize the behavior of the Lithium-ion battery used for the Itsy. Although our previous studies correctly characterize the lifetime of the Itsy handheld under the various loads studied, they do not accurately characterize the lifetime of the battery, due to an artifact of the Itsy battery-fault sensing circuit. This technical note provides an additional study and then compares the results from that study to artificial load experiments performed directly on the Itsy battery. This new data is better suited to building a model of the battery lifetime.
Power-Check: An Energy-Efficient Checkpointing Framework for HPC Clusters

Checkpoint-restart is a predominantly used reactive fault-tolerance mechanism for applications running on HPC systems. While there are innumerable studies in literature that have analyzed, and optimized for, the performance and scalability of a variety of check pointing protocols, not much research has been done from an energy or power perspective. The limited number of studies conducted along this line have primarily analyzed and modeled power and energy usage during check pointing phases. Applications running on future exascale machines will be constrained by a power envelope, and it is not only important to understand the behavior of check pointing systems under such an envelope but to also adopt techniques that can leverage power capping capabilities exposed by the OS to achieve energy savings without forsaking performance. In this paper, we address the problem of marginal energy benefits with significant performance degradation due to naive application of power capping around check pointing phases by proposing a novel power-aware check pointing framework -- Power-Check. By use of data funnelling mechanisms and selective core power-capping, Power-Check makes efficient use of the I/O and CPU subsystem. Evaluations with application kernels show that Power-Check can yield as much as 48% reduction in the amount of energy consumed during a checkpoint, while improving the check pointing performance by 14%.
Outcome Comparison between Laparoscopic and Open Appendectomy: Evidence from a Nationwide Population-Based Study

Background Mounting evidence supports the use of laparoscopic techniques for the treatment of simple appendicitis. However, most of the advantages of these techniques are of limited clinical relevance. This study compares the treatment outcomes of laparoscopic appendectomies and open appendectomies performed in Taiwan. Methods This study uses data from the 2007 to 2009 Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. The study sample included 65,339 patients, hospitalized with a discharge diagnosis of acute appendicitis (33.8% underwent laparoscopic appendectomy). A generalized estimated equation (GEE) was performed to explore the relationship between the use of laparoscopy and 30-day re-admission. Hierarchical linear regressions were performed to examine the relationship between the use of laparoscopy, the length of stay (LOS), and the cost per discharge. Results A significantly lower proportion of patients undergoing laparoscopic appendectomies were re-admitted within 30 days of their index appendectomy, in comparison to patients undergoing open appendectomies (0.66% versus 1.925, p<0.001). Compared with patients undergoing open appendectomies, patients undergoing laparoscopic appendectomies had a shorter LOS (4.01 versus 5.33 days, p<0.001) and a higher cost per discharge (NT$40,554 versus NT$38,509, p<0.001. In 2007, the average exchange rate was US$1 = NT$31.0). GEE revealed that the odds ratio of 30-day readmission for patients undergoing laparoscopic appendectomy was 0.38 (95% CI = 0.33–0.46) that of patients undergoing open appendectomies, after adjusting for surgeon, hospital, and patient characteristics, as well as for the clustering effect of particular surgeons and the propensity score. Conclusion This study found that laparoscopic appendectomies had a lower 30-day re-admission rate, and a shorter LOS, but a slightly higher cost per discharge than open appendectomies.
Reduced Training Time for Reinforcement Learning with Hidden State

Real robots with real sensors are not omniscient. When a robot's next course of action depends on information that is hidden from the sensors because of problems such as occlusion, restricted range, bounded eld of view and limited attention, we say the robot suuers from the hidden state problem. State identiication techniques use history information to uncover hidden state. Previous approaches to encoding history include: nite state machines Chrisman, 1992; McCallum, 1992a], recurrent neural networks Lin and Mitchell, 1992] and genetic programming with indexed memory Teller, 1994]. A chief disadvantage of all these techniques is their long training time. This paper presents instance-based state identiication, a new approach to hidden state reinforcement learning that learns with much fewer training steps. Noting that gathering world experience is often relatively more expensive than computation and storage, the approach applies instance-based (or \memory-based") learning to history sequences. The rst implementation of this approach, called Nearest Sequence Memory learns with an order of magnitude fewer steps than several previous approaches. A reinforcement learning agent suuers from the hidden state problem if at any time the agent's state representation is missing information needed to determine the next correct action, that is, if the agent's state representation is non-Markovian with respect to actions and utility. The hidden state problem arises as a case of perceptual aliasing: the mapping between states of the world and sensations of the agent is not one-to-one White-head and Ballard, 1991]. If the agent's perceptual system produces the same outputs for two world states in which diierent actions are required, and if the agent's state representation consists only of its percepts, then the agent will fail to choose correct actions. There are many reasons that important features could be hidden from a robot's perception: sensors have noise, limited range and limited eld of view; occlu-sions hide areas from sensing; limited funds and space prevent equipping the robot with all desired sensors; an exhaustible power supply deters the robot from using all sensors all the time; and the robot has limited computational resources for turning raw sensor data into usable percepts. 1.1 Stateless Agents One solution to the hidden state problem is simply to avoid passing through the perceptually aliased states. This is the approach taken in Whitehead's Lion algorithm Whitehead, 1992]. Whenever the agent nds a state that delivers inconsistent reward, it sets that state's utility so low that the policy will …
Characterization and Modeling of Microstrip Transmission Lines with Slow-Wave Effect

We propose a modeling methodology to determine the optimum dimensions of slots in ground shield metal of slow-wave transmission lines. We induce a mutual inductance between a signal conductor and return ground current paths to express an equivalent inductance of the transmission line. The model's accuracy is confirmed by characterization of a fabricated transmission line TEG.
Nanoscale palladium metallization of DNA

A magnetite colloid was prepared in alkaline solution according to the procedure published by Massart [11]. An aqueous solution containing 2.3 g (8.5 mmol) FeCl 3 ×6H 2 O in 4 mL H 2 O and 1.69 g (4.3 mmol) Fe(NH 4) 2 (SO 4) 2 in 1 mL of 2 M HCl, was added to 50 mL of 1 M (CH 3) 4 NOH×5H 2 O. The resulting black suspension was stirred for 1 h at room temperature and then sonicated in an ultrasonic bath for 1 h. The colloid was then centrifuged at 20 000 g for 1 h. The supernatant was decanted and the slurry resuspended in 20 mL water by sonication before being passed through a 0.2 mm pore cellulose nitrate membrane. A titanium dioxide sol was prepared by hydrolysis of titanium tetraiso-propoxide under a nitrogen atmosphere following the procedure described by O'Regan et al. [12]. 25 mL of titanium tetraisopropoxide was mixed with 4 mL of isopropanol in a dropping-funnel under a nitrogen atmosphere. This mixture was added slowly over a period of 5 min to 150 mL of vigorously stirred double-distilled, deionized water in a 250 mL three-neck flask equipped with heater, thermometer and stirrer. Ten minutes after the final alkoxide addition, 1 mL of 69 % HNO 3 was added. The white hydrolysis mixture was then stirred for 8 h at 80 C to remove the isopropanol, filtered through a 0.2 mm pore cellulose nitrate membrane, and sonicated for 1 h to produce a stable colloidal solution with a bluish-white coloration. Preparation of the Composites and Method of Calcination: Typically, a sample of the sliced copolymer gel (ca. 5 mm thick) was added to the colloidal sol and left for the desired period of time. The colloid-loaded gels were removed, washed with water and allowed to dry in air. Thermogravi-metric analysis (TGA) measurements were made using a NETZSCH STA 409EP machine. Samples were heated under air in an alumina crucible to a final temperature of 800 C at a rate of 5 K/min. Large samples of the miner-alized gels were calcined by heating to a temperature of 450 or 500 C in a Carbolite furnace (type ELF11/6) at a heating rate of 1 C min ±1. Analytical Methods: The morphology of the copolymer gel in the water-swollen state was examined using a Jeol 6310 SEM equipped with a cryo-stage and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX). …
On the elasticity in the dynamic decoupling of hybrid force/velocity control in the contour tracking task

The paper investigates the decoupling of an explicit hybrid force/velocity control of robot manipulators employed in the contour tracking task of objects of unknown shape taking into account the elastic model of the contact and of the robot. The proposed controller allows the achievement of the decoupling of the normal force and tangential velocity control loops and can be expressed as a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) time-varying proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.
A Dual Inverter Fed Four-Level Open-End Winding Induction Motor Drive With a Nested Rectifier-Inverter

A four-level inverter drive could be obtained by feeding an open-end winding induction motor by two two-level inverters from either side with unequal dc-link voltages, which are in the ratio of 2:1. This inverter modulation scheme is capable of producing 64 space-vector combinations. Some of the space vector combinations could result in the overcharging of the dc-link capacitor corresponding to the inverter operating with the lower voltage. In this paper, a new power circuit topology is proposed, in which, a rectifier-inverter combination is nested within a conventional two-level inverter configuration. The output of the conventional two-level inverter feeds one end of the open-end winding induction motor, while the output of the nested rectifier-inverter combination feeds the other end. The total dc-link voltage needed in the proposed topology is only 77% of the one needed in the conventional multilevel inverters. Also, the problem of zero-sequence current, commonly encountered in open-end winding induction motor drives, is avoided by resorting to a decoupled space vector modulation PWM scheme, which eliminates the zero-sequence voltage of the dual-inverter system by forcing the sampled average of the zero sequence voltage of individual inverters to zero.
Adaptive robot control for human-dominant interactions using a general task function

When humans and a robot manipulator are sharing the same workspace, the robot is required to interact with the humans in addition to performing the standard robot tasks. Due to the different natures of the robot tasks and interaction tasks, different controllers are required when the task is switched from one to another. However, few results have been obtained in integrating the robot task and the interaction task using one general controller. In this paper, a general task function is employed so that different task requirements can be specified by changing certain task parameters instead of the controller. A simple active role allocation is developed such that when the human is outside the robots workspace, the robot performs the desired robot task and when the human enters the workspace, the robot interacts with human in a way or behaviour as specified by the human. The stability of overall system which integrates both the robot task and interaction task is shown by using Lyapunov like analysis. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the performance of proposed controller.
Dispersal and Longevity of Mass-Released, Sterilized Mexican Fruit Flies (Diptera: Tephritidae)

Trap-back experiments using McPhail traps were conducted to study dispersal and longevity of mass-released, sterile Mexican fruit flies, Anastrepha ludens (Loew). The flies were released at 3 ecologically different sites in northern Mexico. Some flies were recaptured up to 9 km from the release point. However , standard distance was estimated using a regression model that indicated 240 m was the typical dispersal distance. The life expectancy of the released flies from the time of release varied from 5 to 10 d. Greatest longevity, up to 22 wk, occurred during the winter months.
Segmentation of FLIR Images Based on Background Suppression

Image segmentation is the most important key in tracking processing of infrared imaging precise guidance. For the segmentation of forward-looking infrared (FLIR) images, a new method was proposed, which uses Wiener filter to suppress background and enhance target, then uses the C-V model to perform segmentation. The C-V model was improved on segmentation ability and precision. A new energy constructing method was proposed that using multi-characteristic information to divide homogeneity region in image. Experimental result shows that the presented method can more effectively and integrally extract the target than the method of traditional C-V model under low contrast condition, and reduce the influence of background greatly.
Why Public Administration

In recent years, there has been much criticism of organizations in general and governmental organizations in particular. Economists (and others) argue that human behavior in organizations, like all other human behavior, is driven by self-interest, and hence appropriate mechanisms are required to link that self-interest, expressed in the profit motive, to broader social goals and needs. The only effective mechanisms for achieving this linkage, their argument continues, arc economic markets, Adam Smiths "invisible hand. " For this reason, it is said, the activities of society aimed at satisfying its economic needs, as well as its needs for public order and for various kinds of public goods and services, should be satisfied, to the maximum degree possible, through privately owned business firms operating in competitive markets. Privatization is the target to be aimed at. I find this argument badly flawed. First, its major motivational premise is simply false. Human beings make most of their decisions, not in terms of individual self-interest, but in terms of the perceived interests of the groups, families, organizations, ethnic groups, and national states with which they identify and to whom they are loyal. The "invisible hand" is attached much more strongly to organizational identification than to a more narrowly defined self-interest. As a consequence, the belief that the profit motive is the only reliable motive for welding organizational actions to social needs is wrong. What is essential to make the weld is that organizations must use only those resources that they can induce society (through the market or through democratic processes) to appropriate to them in exchange for their services. Second, if identification, and not economic self-interest in the narrower sense, is the driving motive in organizational behavior, then the argument that privatization will always (or even usually) increase productivity and efficiency is equally wrong. Such empirical evidence as we have on the relative efficiency of private and public organizations shows no consistent superiority of one over the other. It does show consistent and predictable inefficiencies of organizations when they arc not subjected to the discipline of the na in their external dealings (for example, in conditions of monopoly, or when subsidies are available and manipulable). And evidence also shows that the goals of organizations will be strongly influenced by the sources of their revenues and by the ways in winch their productivity is measured. Of course, it is not enough that a society work efficiently and productively, We also expect a society to distribute goods and services fairly, however vigorously we may debate and disagree about the criteria of fairness. …
Characterizing the emergence of a technological field: Expectations, agendas and networks in Lab-on-a-chip technologies

Abstract In this paper we develop and use mapping tools to investigate emerging technological fields by studying the dynamics of expectations, agenda building and early networks. In our approach, expectations describe shared beliefs with regard to prospective entities and positions. Agendas are sets of priorities present to guide the actors in their work. The structure that arises as a result of the actions and interactions of actors is the emerging network. For emerging technologies these processes are susceptible to change and the technological paths that may arise are still easy to influence. We propose that not only looking at expectation dynamics, but also including agenda setting and networks dynamics is essential in order to successfully capture the complexities of the emergence of technological paths. A major challenge for this work lies in unveiling the socio-technical dynamics leading to path emergence. For this purpose we investigate the phenomena of irreversibilities that emerge during the ongoing interactions of researchers, institutes, policy makers and firms. With these aspects in mind, we will use a broadened view of expectation dynamics in order to arrive at an improved understanding of the building blocks of path emergence. We illustrate our approach with a case study of Lab-on-a-chip technology for medical and pharmaceutical applications.
Social Effects in Science: Modelling Agents for a Better Scientific Practice

Science is a fundamental human activity and we trust its results because it has several error-correcting mechanisms. Its is subject to experimental tests that are replicated by independent parts. Given the huge amount of information available, scientists have to rely on the reports of others. This makes it possible for social effects to influence the scientific community. Here, an Opinion Dynamics agent model is proposed to describe this situation. The influence of Nature through experiments is described as an external field that acts on the experimental agents. We will see that the retirement of old scientists can be fundamental in the acceptance of a new theory. We will also investigate the interplay between social influence and observations. This will allow us to gain insight in the problem of when social effects can have negligible effects in the conclusions of a scientific community and when we should worry about them.
Effectiveness of silhouette rendering algorithms in terrain visualisation

Silhouette Rendering Algorithms have been successfully used in various applications such as communicating shape and cartoon rendering.This paper explores how effective silhouette rendering algorithms could be used in terrain visualisation. This approach has been implemented in a 3D modelling system to create a new method of displaying and viewing terrain data in an artistic style. Real terrain data has been used to test the effectiveness of the algorithm.The resulting terrain images are closer to human drawn illustration than to shaded images.
The Molybdenum Cofactor Biosynthetic Protein Cnx1 Complements Molybdate-Repairable Mutants, Transfers Molybdenum to the Metal Binding Pterin, and Is Associated with the Cytoskeleton

Molybdenum (Mo) plays an essential role in the active site of all eukaryotic Mo-containing enzymes. In plants, Mo enzymes are important for nitrate assimilation, phytohormone synthesis, and purine catabolism. Mo is bound to a unique metal binding pterin (molybdopterin [MPT]), thereby forming the active Mo cofactor (Moco), which is highly conserved in eukaryotes, eubacteria, and archaebacteria. Here, we describe the function of the two-domain protein Cnx1 from Arabidopsis in the final step of Moco biosynthesis. Cnx1 is constitutively expressed in all organs and in plants grown on different nitrogen sources. Mo-repairable cnxA mutants from Nicotiana plumbaginifolia accumulate MPT and show altered Cnx1 expression. Transformation of cnxA mutants and the corresponding Arabidopsis chl-6 mutant with cnx1 cDNA resulted in functional reconstitution of their Moco deficiency. We also identified a point mutation in the Cnx1 E domain of Arabidopsis chl-6 that causes the molybdate-repairable phenotype. Recombinant Cnx1 protein is capable of synthesizing Moco. The G domain binds and activates MPT, whereas the E domain is essential for activating Mo. In addition, Cnx1 binds to the cytoskeleton in the same way that its mammalian homolog gephyrin does in neuronal cells, which suggests a hypothetical model for anchoring the Moco-synthetic machinery by Cnx1 in plant cells.
A Novel Technique for the Selection of Speech Segments for Speaker Verification

This paper presents a novel selection technique to discard portions of speech that result in poor discrimination ability in speaker verification tasks. Theory supporting the significance of a sub-segmental selection procedure for test segments, prior to making decisions, is also developed. This approach has the ability to reduce the effect of the regions of the feature space that are not fully modeled by the speaker adaptation algorithm. The proposed technique utilises the frame-based score of the claimed and impostor speakers to select the most discriminative parts of the test segment. The frame selection technique, together with score normalisation, is evaluated on male and female speaker populations separately. Compared with a baseline system using both CMS and variance normalization, the proposed segment selection technique brings 6% , 18% relative reductions in error rate for female speakers, while for male speakers a more significant relative error rate reduction of 10%, 20% is achieved, in terms of EER and minimum DCF respectively.