Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Color Image Analysis With An Intrinsic Reflection Model

In this paper, we present an approach to color image understanding that can be used to segment and analyze surfaces with color variations due to highlights and shading. We begin with a theory -the Dichromatic Reflection Model - that relates the reflected light from dielectric materials, such as plastic, to fundamental physical reflection processes, and describes the color of the reflected light as a linear combination of the color of the light due to surface reflection (highlights) and body reflection (object color). This dichromatic theory is used in an algorithm that separates a color image into two parts: an image of just the highlights, and the original image with the highlights removed. In the past, we have applied this method to hand- segmented images. This paper shows how to perform automatic segmentation by applying this theory in stages to identify the object and highlight colors, The result is a combination of segmentation and reflection analysis that is better than traditional heuristic segmentation methods and provides important physical information about the surface geometry and material properties at the same time. This line of research can lead to physics-based image understanding methods that are both more reliable and more useful than traditional methods.
Polymer Nanocomposites Containing Anisotropic Metal Nanostructures as Internal Strain Indicators

Polymer/metal nanocomposite containing intrinsically anisotropic metal nanostructures such as metal nanorods and nanowires appeared extremely more sensitive and responsive to mechanical stimuli than nanocomposites containing spherical nanoparticles. After uniaxial stretching of the supporting polymer matrix (poly(vinyl alcohol)), the elongated silver nanostructures embedded at low concentration into the polymer matrix (<1 wt % of Ag) assume the direction of the drawing, yielding materials with a strong dichroic response of the absorption behavior. Accordingly, the film changed its color when observed under linearly polarized light already at moderate drawings. The results obtained suggest that nanocomposite films have potential in applications such as color polarizing filters, radiation responsive polymeric objects and smart flexible films in packaging applications.
Bayesian Inferences for Object Detection

Moghaddam et al. (Moghaddam and Pentland, 1997) first proposed to perform object detection by modelling the marginal probability density function (pdf) of high dimensional features of appearance. Based on gaussian hypotheses, their approach is however not robust to outliers that can occur in images due, for instance, to cluttered backgrounds or partial occlusions. In (Dahyot et al., 2004), robustness has been improved by using better priors for the distribution of the errors encountered in the observations. Because the marginal pdf was not analytically available, the Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) pdf was used instead for detection (Dahyot et al., 2004). If both pdfs, marginal and MAP, are proportional under gaussian assumptions (MacKay, 1995), and therefore perform equivalently, we aim in this paper to compare both densities (marginal and MAP) for object detection using the same robust priors.
Movie Money: Understanding Hollywood's (Creative) Accounting Practices

Movie Money unravels, demystifies, and clearly explains the film industry's unique, arcane, "creative" accounting practices. It examines a film's various revenue-generating and revenue-consuming components and presents numerous film-industry definitions of "gross" and "net" profits and the many ways in which these figures are calculated. It also provides in depth discussions of the various aspects of profit participation - terminology, accounting practices, and deal practices - along with chapters on audits, claims, and negotiating tips and tricks. Movie Money is a must-read for all film producers, directors, writers, and actors.
NADPH oxidase mediated oxidative stress in hepatic fibrogenesis

NADPH oxidase (NOX) is a multicomponent enzyme complex that generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) in response to a wide range of stimuli. ROS is involved as key secondary messengers in numerous signaling pathways, and NADPH oxidases complex has been increasingly recognized as key elements of intracellular signaling of hepatic fibrogenesis. In the liver, NADPH oxidase is functionally expressed both in the phagocytic form and in the non-phagocytic form. The non-phagocytic NADPH oxidase complex is structurally and functionally similar to the phagocytic NADPH, resulting in reduction of molecular oxygen to generate superoxide. There are six homologous NOX proteins in the non-phagocytic forms of NADPH oxidase. An emerging concept is that both phagocytic and nonphagocytic NADPH oxidase components in hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) mediate hepatic fibrosis, suggesting its potential role as a pharmacological target for anti-fibrotic therapy. The molecular components and signaling pathways of various NADPH oxidase homologues that are critical for the fibrotic activity in HSCs need to be more clearly identified.
Liposomes: A short Review

Liposomes have a vast range of uses that have always been widened and improved upon since it was first noted that it was able to selfassemble into vesicles. These arrangements are found in many different shapes as well as sizes depending on the lipid composition. Liposomes are often being used to transport molecular cargos such as deoxyribose nucleotide for therapeutic benefits. Due to varied scientific applications of liposomes, they are under extensive investigation as drug carriers for enhancing the delivery of therapeutical agents. As a result of new developments in liposome technology, many liposome- based drug formulations are being investigated, and lately some of them have been approved for clinical use.
Estimating household fuel oil/kerosine, natural gas, and LPG prices by census region

The purpose of this research is to estimate individual fuel prices within the residential sector. The data from four US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, residential energy consumption surveys were used to estimate the models. For a number of important fuel types - fuel oil, natural gas, and liquefied petroleum gas - the estimation presents a problem because these fuels are not used by all households. Estimates obtained by using only data in which observed fuel prices are present would be biased. A correction for this self-selection bias is needed for estimating prices of these fuels. A literature search identified no past studies on application of the selectivity model for estimating prices of residential fuel oil/kerosine, natural gas, and liquefied petroleum gas. This report describes selectivity models that utilize the Dubin/McFadden correction method for estimating prices of residential fuel oil/kerosine, natural gas, and liquefied petroleum gas in the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West census regions. Statistically significant explanatory variables are identified and discussed in each of the models. This new application of the selectivity model should be of interest to energy policy makers, researchers, and academicians.
WLC39-6: Sum Rate Maximization and Transmit Power Minimization for Multi-User Orthogonal Space Division Multiplexing

We demonstrate that receive antenna selection (RAS) provides significant increase in the achievable sum rates for multi-user MIMO wireless downlinks that employ block diagonalization (BD) to achieve orthogonal space division multiplexing (OSDM), where each user terminal has one or more antennas. Although dropping one or more receive antennas at a user terminal reduces its capacity and correspondingly, the system sum capacity, judicious RAS improves the projected channel spatial mode gains and provides additional degrees of freedom to all other terminals within the BD-OSDM context. In this way there is mutual benefit to be shared among users when RAS is applied to all users and numerical results show significant sum rate gains despite sum capacity loss due to RAS. In many cases, users with reduced array sizes also enjoy increased channel rates. When projected virtual channels are used as a means of spatial mode allocation, this RAS concept is also beneficial and may be referred to as spatial mode selection (SMS). RAS/SMS is therefore a necessary first step in any resource allocation and power control exercise for BD-OSDM. Further, the same RAS/SMS algorithms for sum rate maximization also provide a systematic means of resource allocation and power control. To avoid exhaustive RAS search, which has exponential complexity, efficient RAS algorithms with linear complexity and near optimal performance are proposed.
A Rapid and Efficient Method for Plasmid Transformation of Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli

A rapid and efficient method for plasmid transformation of Klebsiella pneumoniae MSal and Escherichia coli K 12 has been developed. The method, which uses a freeze-thaw cycle in the presence of CaCl, to facilitate DNA uptake, is substantially more efficient for K. pneumoniae MSal than the conventional transformation procedure for E. coli. The simplicity and speed of the method makes it very attractive for routine transformation of K. pneumoniae M5al and E. coli K12.
Accuracy and efficiency of flow computations with turbulence models of k-e type

The accuracy and efficiency of flow computations with two-equation statistical turbulence models of ktype, which are widely used in engineering practice, is investigated. With respect to wall boundary treatment special emphasis is paid to lowReynolds-number approaches directly resolving viscous sublayers. The standard wall functions approach is considered for comparison. As a basic flow solver a parallel multi-grid finite-volume method of second order with implicit time discretization is employed, which for laminar has cases turned out to work rather efficiently with respect to accuracy and computational performance. The investigations involve statistically steady and unsteady flow situations. By considering representative test cases various aspects of the components of the numerical scheme determining the accuracy and efficiency of the computations are studied.
Functional Demarcation of a Border Between Areas V6 and V6A in the Superior Parietal Gyrus of the Macaque Monkey

We have compared physiological data recorded from three alert macaque monkeys with separate observations of local connectivity, to locate and characterize the functional border between two related but distinct visual areas on the caudal face of the superior parietal gyrus. We refer to these areas as V6 and V6A. They occupy almost the entire extent of the anterior bank of the parieto‐occipital sulcus, V6A being the more dorsal. These two areas are strongly interconnected. Anatomically, we have defined the border as the point at which labelled axon terminals first adopt a recognizably ‘descending’ pattern in their laminar characteristics, after injections of wheatgerm agglutinin‐horseradish peroxidase into the dorsal half of the gyrus (in presumptive V6A). A similar principle was used to recognize the same border by the pattern of input from area V5, except that in this case the relevant transition in laminar characteristics is that between an ‘intermediate’ pattern (in V6) and an ‘ascending’ pattern (in V6A). V6A was found to be distinct from V6 in a number of its physiological properties. Unlike V6, it contains visually unresponsive cells as well as units with craniotopic receptive fields (‘real‐position’ cells), units tuned to very slow stimulus speeds, units with complex visual selectivities and units with activity related to attention. V6A was also found to have a larger mean receptive field size and scatter than V6. By contrast, response properties related to the basic orientation and direction of moving bar stimuli were indistinguishable between V6 and V6A, as was the influence of gaze direction on cell activity in the two areas. Two‐dimensional maps of the recording sites allowed reconstruction of the V6/V6A border. For comparison, the anatomical results were rendered on two‐dimensional maps of identical format to those used to summarize the physiological data. After normalizing for relative size, the physiological and connectional estimates of the border between V6 and V6A were found to coincide, at least within the range of individual variation between hemispheres. An architectonic map in the same format was also made from a hemisphere stained for myelin and Nissl substance. Area PO, defined by its general density of myelination was not distinct in this material, but several architectural features were traceable and one of these was also found to approximate the V6/V6A border. The particular criteria that distinguish V6 from V6A differ from a recent description of areas PO and POd in the Cebus monkey; we believe it most likely that PO and POd together may correspond to V6.
A Bayesian Learning Automaton for Solving Two-Armed Bernoulli Bandit Problems

The two-armed Bernoulli bandit (TABB) problem is a classical optimization problem where an agent sequentially pulls one of two arms attached to a gambling machine, with each pull resulting either in a reward or a penalty. The reward probabilities of each arm are unknown, and thus one must balance between exploiting existing knowledge about the arms, and obtaining new information. In the last decades, several computationally efficient algorithms for tackling this problem have emerged, with learning automata (LA) being known for their ¿-optimality, and confidence interval based for logarithmically growing regret. Applications include treatment selection in clinical trials, route selection in adaptive routing, and plan exploration in games like Go. The TABB has also been extensively studied from a Bayesian perspective, however, in general, such analysis leads to computationally inefficient solution policies. This paper introduces the Bayesian learning automaton (BLA). The BLA is inherently Bayesian in nature, yet relies simply on counting rewards/penalties and on random sampling from a pair of twin beta distributions. Furthermore, we report that BLA is self-correcting and converges to only pulling the optimal arm with probability 1. Extensive experiments demonstrate that, in contrast to most LA, BLA does not rely on external learning speed/accuracy control. It also outperforms recently proposed confidence interval based algorithms. We thus believe that BLA opens up for improved performance in a number of applications,and that it forms the basis for a new avenue of research.
ALIRS: A High Scalability and High Cache Hit Ratio Replacement Algorithm

Nowadays, many systems face to the problem of sharp increase in user data. In order to get efficient access to data, they need a cache system that adopts a replacement algorithm which has both high cache hit ratio and high scalability. However, the mainstream replacement algorithms, which are just like a seesaw between high scalability and high cache hit ratio, cannot get both of the two features satisfactorily. In this paper, we propose a replacement algorithm called ALIRS which is based on LIRS to solve this problem. In our replacement algorithm, the idea is different from the mainstream solutions to improve the scalability. We use parallel computing and Actor concurrency model to hide the expensive cost of replacement operations, which significantly improve the scalability. Furthermore, this idea does not hurt the cache hit ratio of original LIRS at all. We describe the idea and some details in this paper. Experimental results show that ALIRS has both high cache hit ratio and high scalability.
3D orientation tracking based on unscented Kalman filtering of accelerometer and magnetometer data

Orientation estimation can be executed by comparing the output of a 3D accelerometer and a 3D magnetometer with respectively gravity and local magnetic field vectors. For this purpose, an unscented Kalman filter was designed and tested. However, accelerometers also measure motion other than gravity, resulting in an error when estimating orientation directly from their output signals. Therefore, extra filters are added and the input parameters of the Kalman filter are dynamically varied, in order to reduce the effect of motion. Simulations are performed to tune the filter parameters for minimal motion influence without hampering actual orientation tracking. Satisfactory orientation tracking is performed with the filter using actual sensor nodes.
Wet paper codes and the dual distance in steganography

In 1998 Crandall introduced a method based on coding theory to secretly embed a message in a digital support such as an image. Later Fridrich et al. improved this method to minimize the distortion introduced by the embedding; a process called wet paper. However, as previously emphasized in the literature, this method can fail during the embedding step. Here we find sufficient and necessary conditions to guarantee a successful embedding by studying the dual distance of a linear code. Since these results are essentially of combinatorial nature, they can be generalized to systematic codes, a large family containing all linear codes. We also compute the exact number of solutions and point out the relationship between wet paper codes and orthogonal arrays.
Performance Analysis of Wrong-Path Data Cache Accesses

The performance of today's high-end microprocessors continues to grow. This increase in performance is due in part to the use of speculative, out-of-order execution, coupled with highly accurate branch prediction. However, even with branch prediction accuracies over 90%, many instructions are executed unnecessarily from the wrong path. This wrong-path execution results in cache pollution and unnecessary bus traffic. We use an extended version of the SimpleScalar simulation tool to model an out-of-order, 4-way issue processor. First, we use various branch confidence mechanisms to determine if a data access is likely on a mispredicted path or not. Next, we sort the data cache accesses using these confidence mechanisms and compare the “inherent re-usability” of data that is marked either “low confidence” (i.e. likely on the wrong path) to those marked “high confidence” (i.e. likely on the correct path). Finally, with the assistance of small buffers associated with the first level data cache, we try to increase this re-usability factor by preventing low confidencedata accesses from being written into the data cache. We discuss the effectiveness of this technique as well as the behavior and reuse of speculative data.
Environments for the Construction and Use of Task Models

Task models are useful because they support the design and evaluation of interactive systems from the point of view of the intended users. Unfortunately, they are also difficult to build. To help alleviate this problem, tools have been built that aid in the construction of task models in a variety of ways, in the hope that designers will be encouraged to build explicit task models and reap the benefits of their use and reuse. This chapter will review the range of tools that have been built, and, as an example, will discuss ISOLDE, an environment that integrates an heterogeneous set of such tools and supports the construction, use, and reuse of task models.
A Bat Algorithm with Mutation for UCAV Path Planning

Path planning for uninhabited combat air vehicle (UCAV) is a complicated high dimension optimization problem, which mainly centralizes on optimizing the flight route considering the different kinds of constrains under complicated battle field environments. Original bat algorithm (BA) is used to solve the UCAV path planning problem. Furthermore, a new bat algorithm with mutation (BAM) is proposed to solve the UCAV path planning problem, and a modification is applied to mutate between bats during the process of the new solutions updating. Then, the UCAV can find the safe path by connecting the chosen nodes of the coordinates while avoiding the threat areas and costing minimum fuel. This new approach can accelerate the global convergence speed while preserving the strong robustness of the basic BA. The realization procedure for original BA and this improved metaheuristic approach BAM is also presented. To prove the performance of this proposed metaheuristic method, BAM is compared with BA and other population-based optimization methods, such as ACO, BBO, DE, ES, GA, PBIL, PSO, and SGA. The experiment shows that the proposed approach is more effective and feasible in UCAV path planning than the other models.
Phonetic-context mapping in language identification

This paper deals with the problem of exploiting informa- tion from a wide phonetic context for the purpose of language identi(cid:12)cation. Two approaches to language model- ing are presented here: 1) modi(cid:12)ed bigrams with a con-text-mapping matrix and 2) language models based on bi- nary decision trees. Both models were incorporated in a phonotactic language identi(cid:12)er with a double-bigram de- coding architecture and were shown to consistently im-prove the performance of standard bigrams. Measured on the NIST’95 evaluation set, the described system outperforms the state-of-the-art phonotactic components and is, at the same time, computationally less expensive.
Investigating Accuracy of Tilting Operation on Wrist-worn Devices with Touchscreens

The tilting operation has been shown to be useful in expanding the input vocabulary of a small device; therefore, this operation could also be useful in expanding the input vocabulary of wrist-worn devices. In this study, in order to explore new design guidelines of GUI and operation methods for smartwatches, we have investigated the accuracy of the tilting operation for smartwatches. We conducted an experiment using a cursor whose position is determined according to the direction and angle of tilt. The result shows that the deviation in the x-axis (i.e., the inclination of the arm) direction ranges from -0.10 degrees to +0.07 degrees and from -0.10 degrees to +0.07 degrees under Seating and Standing condition, respectively; the deviation in the y-axis (i.e., the rotation of the wrist) direction from -0.12 degrees to +0.10 degrees and from -0.12 degrees to +0.09 degrees.
Resource Oriented Architecture and REST

In light of the emerging discussion on Resource Oriented Architectures (ROA) and REST technology platform as solutions for Spatial Data distributed Infrastructures, the aim of this document is capture Resource Oriented Architectures principles and assess the feasibility as well as the advantages of using such approach compared with Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). Although most of the comments are domain independent we will use the INSPIRE (and the OGC services) infrastructure that is currently based on a SOA as domain for the comparative analysis. How to obtain EU publications Our priced publications are available from EU Bookshop (http://bookshop.europa.eu), where you can place an order with the sales agent of your choice. The Publications Office has a worldwide network of sales agents. You can obtain their contact details by sending a fax to (352) 29 29-42758. The mission of the JRC is to provide customer-driven scientific and technical support for the conception, development, implementation and monitoring of EU policies. As a service of the European Commission, the JRC functions as a reference centre of science and technology for the Union. Close to the policy-making process, it serves the common interest of the Member States, while being independent of special interests, whether private or national. LB -N A -2397-EN -C