Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Filter Design for Directional Multiresolution Decomposition INVITED

In this paper we discuss recent developments on design tools and methods for multidimensional filter banks in the context of directional multiresolution representations. Due to the inherent non-separability of the filters and the lack of multi-dimensional factorization tools, one generally has to overcome factorization by indirect methods. One such method is the mapping technique. In the context of contourlets we review methods for designing filters with directional vanishing moments (DVM). The DVM property is crucial in guaranteeing the non-linear approximation efficacy of contourlets. Our approach allows for easy design of two-channel linearphase filter banks with DVM of any order. Next we study the design via mapping of nonsubsampled filter banks. Our methodology allows for a fast implementation through ladder steps. The proposed design is then used to construct the nonsubsampled contourlet transform which is particularly efficiently in image denoising, as experiments in this paper show.
An Assessment of the Kenyan Journalism Training and Gaps Filled by Other Professionals: A Study of Selected Fm Radio Stations

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine whether gaps exist in the Kenyan journalism training thatare now filled by other professionals.Materials and methods: The three study sites were local FM radio stations - Radio Citizen, Radio Jambo, and Radio Maisha. Using a 2014 Media Council of Kenya study of radio talk shows in Kenya as a background,the thesis placed more emphasis on the radio presenters and their content. The study applied Social Responsibility Theory which posits that media should be more responsible and accountable to the society. The study employed a descriptive survey using qualitative and quantitative approaches. In this study, four presenters, two key personnel from the Media Council of Kenya were interviewed. as well as a sample of their radio talk show content.Results: The media council of Kenya lacked the capacity to ensure that only trained radio broadcast journalists were hired by media houses. In addition, despite MCK having developed a curriculum for middle level journalism training institutions, its impact in standardising training had been negligible.Recommendations: The study recommended improvement of the journalism curriculum as well as embracing of the MCK curriculum by middle level colleges. Key words: journalism, gaps, training, other professionals
A Specification Coverage Metric Using a Dynamic Invariant Detector

Traditional coverage metrics measure the ability of test cases to fully exercise the source code. The assumption is that fully covered code will better test the correct behavior of the software. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the software will meet its specification. In this paper, we present a new coverage metric which measures the ability of the test cases to fully exercise the specificationof the software. Our approach allows the developer to iteratively develop and elaborate the test suite and the specification together. We infer a specification from the execution of the software for the given test cases. If the test cases are inadequate, the specification will be inaccurate, and if the code is incorrect, the inferred specification will be incorrect. The tester can then refine the test suite or repair the software to improve the resulting specification. To evaluate this approach we applied it to three Java classes and their associated test suites. For each of the three classes, our method revealed incorrect and missing invariants in our specification, which implied limitations in our test suite. We were subsequently able to improve the test suite (and specification) by adding appropriate test cases. After applying our method several times, all incorrect invariants were removed, and our final test suite was more complete than the original.
High Energy High Intensity Hadron Beams

The Large Hadron Collider, presently in construction at CERN, will be filled through a set of high performance proton accelerators providing the high brightness beam needed to reach the foreseen luminosity. Although this difficult project has top priority and uses most of the CERN resources, it is nevertheless time investigating improvements of the proton accelerator complex for physical cases beyond the LHC expectations. The needs of multiple physics communities have to be taken into account, as well as the necessity of consolidating the installations while keeping high reliability. This paper starts from the analysis and proposals made by the “High Intensity Proton” (HIP) working group [1, 2] to improve the performances of the PS and the SPS complex and better match the users requests in a staged scenario at short and medium term, and complement it, addressing the main possibilities beyond that horizon.
Constrained Submodular Minimization Towards Missing Labels and Class Imbalance in Multi-label Learning ( Supplementary Material )

Copyright c © 2016, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. edges among instances EX for each class (building connections between the entries within the same row, for every row of Z); last, we copy the edges among classes EC for each instance (building connections between the entries within the same column, for every column of Z). di 6= ∑mn j W(i, j): if (i, j) ∈ EX , then di = dX (̂i), with î being the instance index (i.e., the column index of Z) corresponding to the node i in G; similarly, if (i, j) ∈ EC , then di = dC (̂i). That means we normalize W(i, j) by the sum of instance-level neighbors (in the same column) or class-level neighbors (in the same row), rather than the sum of all neighbors. As a result, this problem is a partially normalized graph-cut problem. Interestingly, the formulation in (3) is exactly the same as that of the standard GSSL problem (Zhu 2006). The only difference is that L is not a normalized Laplacian matrix in (3). Please see Lemma 1.
Stipple Placement using Distance in a Weighted Graph

We present a stipple placement method which provides extra emphasis to image features, especially edges. Our algorithm transforms an image into a regular graph, with edge weights given by the local gradient magnitude of the input image. Then, a variant of Disjkstra's algorithm is used to place stipples: new stipples are placed along the frontier, which tends to be aligned with image edges. The resulting stipple distribution approximates a blue noise distribution, but emphasizes edges from the input image. We also show how irregular mosaics can be organized and the mosaic tiles shaped using the same underlying mechanism.
Adaptive Hypermedia Systems : A review of adaptivity variables

Adaptive hypermedia systems (AHS) offer an alternative to the traditional “one-size-fitsall” hypermedia and Web systems by adapting to the goals, interests, and knowledge of individual users represented in the individual user models. This paper serves as a review of all different variables reported in the literature that have been used in AHS.
Induction of A . fumigatus-specific CD 4 + T-cells in patients recovering from invasive aspergillosis by

Publisher's Disclaimer. E-publishing ahead of print is increasingly important for the rapid dissemination of science. Haematologica is, therefore, E-publishing PDF files of an early version of manuscripts that have completed a regular peer review and have been accepted for publication. E-publishing of this PDF file has been approved by the authors. After having E-published Ahead of Print, manuscripts will then undergo technical and English editing, typesetting, proof correction and be presented for the authors' final approval; the final version of the manuscript will then appear in print on a regular issue of the journal. All legal disclaimers that apply to the journal also pertain to this production process. Abstract Patients after allogeneic stem cell transplantation are at risk for invasive aspergillosis, especially during neutropenia. Recent data suggest that an impaired T-cell immune reconstitution post-transplantation plays an important role in this increased risk. In this study we investigated whether Aspergillus-specific T-cells are involved in the recovery from invasive aspergillosis by analyzing the Aspergillus-specific T-cell response in patients with invasive aspergillosis. In 9 patients with improvement of their aspergillus infection, we identified Crf1-or Catalase1-specific T-cells on the basis of CD154 expression and IFNγ production by stimulating with overlapping peptides of A.fumigatus proteins Crf1 and Catalase1. These Aspergillus-specific T-cells were induced at the moment of regression of aspergillus lesions. Crf1-and Catalase1-specific T-cells, sorted on the basis of CD154 expression at the peak of the immune response, had a Thelper1 phenotype and recognized a variety of T-cell epitopes. In contrast, in 2 patients with progressive invasive aspergillosis no Crf1-or Catalase1-specific T-cells were identified. These data indicate that presence of Aspergillus-specific T-cells with a Thelper1 phenotype correlates with clearance of aspergillus infection.
Geometric spherical networks for Visual Data processing

The main goal of this work is to develop a geometric neural network which can be used as an interface between sensors and robot mechanisms. For this goal we have developed two new geometric network called Spherical Radial Basis Function Network and Spherical General Regression Network using the conformal geometric algebra framework. The motivation to use circles or spheres as activation functions is due to the fact that the sphere is the computational unity of the conformal geometric algebra, as a result these Networks can be advantageously used as interface between the sensor domain and the robotic mechanism so that all the computing can be done in the same mathematical framework. In fact, there will be no need to abandon the system for the interpolation or reconstruction using this network. This article presents the design principles and a comparison with a standard Radial Basis Function Network and a standard General regression Neural Network. In the area of medical robotics the use of haptics is quite common. This is an interesting domain to apply our network for capturing data with a haptic device and using spheres reconstruct automatically the shape of a human organ. As we shown in other works, the differential robot kinematics can be formulated using lines, planes and spheres using geometric algebra, having the organ tissue modelled also with spheres with the networks, this helps greatly to related the perceptual and the mechanical devices and ensure their control. We show reconstruction results of an organ using both Networks.
Analysis of polarimetric scattering in a paddy rice canopy using an automatic radar scatterometer system

The objectives of this study were to investigate the temporal behavior of radar backscatter from paddy rice using a polarimetric scatterometer system and analyze scattering characteristics of paddy rice growth using decomposition method. We obtained the data continuously in every 10 minutes by using an L-, C — and X-band automatic radar scatterometer measurement system. The season-long backscattering coefficients from transplanting to harvesting stages were compared with rice growth parameters. Backscattering coefficients of all bands with polarization gradually increased in accordance with rice growth and decreased owing to the reduction of LAI and fresh biomass. In the decomposition, single bounce was the dominant factor at all stages and in all bands and Beta component of pauli decomposition in L-band significantly appeared after heading stage. It found that L-band related to double bounce scattering according to rice growth.
Inter-rater and test–retest (between-sessions) reliability of the 4-Skills Scan for dutch elementary school children

ABSTRACT In The Netherlands, the 4-Skills Scan is an instrument for physical education teachers to assess gross motor skills of elementary school children. Little is known about its reliability. Therefore, in this study the test–retest and inter-rater reliability was determined. Respectively, 624 and 557 Dutch 6- to 12-year-old children were analyzed for test re-test and inter-rater reliability. All tests took place within the school setting. The outcome measure was age-expected motor performance (in years). Results showed a small practice effect of . 24 years for re-test sessions and assessment of motor skills was possible with acceptable precision (standard error of measurement = .67 years). Overall, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was . 93 (95% confidence interval: .92–.95) for test–retest reliability and . 97 for inter-rater reliability. For the repeated measures, the smallest detectable change (SDC) was 1.84 and limits of agreement were –1.60 and 2.08 years. It can be concluded that the 4-Skills Scan is a reliable instrument to assess gross motor skills in elementary school children.
Back to the green valley: how to rejuvenate an S0 galaxy through minor mergers

About half of the S0 galaxies in the nearby Universe show signatures of recent or ongoing star formation. Whether these S0 galaxies were rejuvenated by the accretion of fresh gas is still controversial. We study minor mergers of a gas-rich dwarf galaxy with an S0 galaxy, by means of N-body smoothed-particle hydrodynamics simulations. We find that minor mergers trigger episodes of star formation in the S0 galaxy, lasting for ~10 Gyr. One of the most important fingerprints of the merger is the formation of a gas ring in the S0 galaxy. The ring is reminiscent of the orbit of the satellite galaxy, and its lifetime depends on the merger properties: polar and counter-rotating satellite galaxies induce the formation of long-lived smooth gas rings.
Time well spent

Time-biased gain provides a general framework for predicting user performance on information retrieval systems, capturing the impact of the user's interaction with the system's interface. Our prior work investigated an instantiation of time-biased gain aimed at traditional search interfaces utilizing clickable result summaries, with gain realized from the recognition of relevant documents. In this paper, we examine additional properties of time-biased gain, demonstrating how it generalizes effectiveness measures from across the field of information retrieval. We explore a new instantiation of time-biased gain, applicable to systems where the user judges the quality of their experience by the amount of time well spent. Rather than the single number produced by traditional effectiveness measures, time-biased gain models user variability and produces a distribution of gain on a per-query basis. With this distribution, we can observe performance differences at the user level. We apply bootstrap sampling to estimate confidence intervals across multiple queries.
Rodent Models of Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease/Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis

Research in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), has been limited by the availability of suitable models for this disease. A number of rodent models have been described in which the relevant liver pathology develops in an appropriate metabolic context. These models are promising tools for researchers investigating one of the key issues of NASH: not so much why steatosis occurs, but what causes the transition from simple steatosis to the inflammatory, progressive fibrosing condition of steatohepatitis. The different rodent models can be classified into two large groups. The first includes models in which the disease is acquired after dietary or pharmacological manipulation, and the second, genetically modified models in which liver disease develops spontaneously. To date, no single rodent model has encompassed the full spectrum of human disease progression, but individual models can imitate particular characteristics of human disease. Therefore, it is important that researchers choose the appropriate rodent models. The purpose of the present review is to discuss the metabolic abnormalities present in the currently available rodent models of NAFLD, summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of the established models and the key findings that have furthered our understanding of the disease’s pathogenesis.
A Framework for Attention-Based Implicit Interaction on Mobile Screens

We propose to keep track of the user's attention during interaction with a small display screen, and use that attention history for later interface adaptation. A framework for attention-based implicit interaction is described that consists of attention measuring, mapping, logging, aggregation, interpretation, and interface adaptation. The framework is exemplified by an interaction method described in previous work: the GeoGazemarks approach.
Resource Allocation for Cognitive Relaying Network

— In this paper, the problem of wireless resource allocation in OFDMA-based cognitive relaying network is investigated. The objective is maximizing the throughput of primary users in a system in which cognitive users act as a relay for primary users. In our proposed scheme, while primary users achieved desire rate, they dedicate some subcarrier for cognitive users. Considering the benefits of cognitive radio and cooperative relaying, the studied problem is formulated as nonlinear optimization problem. Finally, the performance of the proposed resource allocation algorithms is studied through simulation results which illustrate performance improvement of primary users.
The Open University ’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Searching biomedical ontologies based on content

As more ontologies become publicly available, finding the “right” ontologies becomes much harder. In this paper, we introduce a new ontology search technique which is based on corpus analysis. In particular, we look at the case when users search for ontologies relevant to a particular topic (e.g., an ontology about anatomy). Our experiments demonstrate that using our method for query expansion improves retrieval results by a 113%, compared to the tools that search only for the user query terms and consider only class and property names.
Distributed Failure Prognosis of Discrete Event Systems With Bounded-Delay Communications

The task of failure prognosis requires the prediction of impending failures. This technical note formulates and studies the problem of distributed prognosis of discrete event systems, where the local prognosers exchange their observations for the sake of arriving at a prognostic decision. The observations are exchanged over communication channels that introduce bounded delays. A property of joint-prognosability is introduced to capture the condition under which any failure can be predicted by some local prognoser prior to its occurrence. We provide an algorithm to check the joint-prognosability property.
Simultaneous Estimation of Texture Map and Pseudo Illumination from Multiple Views

We consider the problem of simultaneously estimating surface texture map and the pseudo illumination, which is the combined effect of illumination and surface BRDF, given the object geometry and its calibrated images taken from multiple viewpoints. We derive the bilinear reflection equa tion that relates the texture albedos and the pseudo illumination to the surface reflectance. The reflection equation takes into account the diffuse/specular reflection, and cas ting shadows. The ambiguities in estimations are resolved by grouping surface points of the same albedo into a single cluster and performing the estimation for the cluster joint ly. A modified mean shift color clustering algorithm is used for this purpose. We estimate the pseudo illumination, the diffuse and specular albedos of each cluster by solving iteratively a system of bilinear equations. Experimental result s on synthetic and real objects are provided.
Scaling strategies for symmetric rank-one method in solving unconstrained optimization problems

Symmetric rank-one update (SR1) is known to have good numerical performance among the quasi-Newton methods for solving unconstrained optimization problems as evident from the recent study of Farzin et al. (2011), However, it is well known that the SR1 update may not preserve positive definiteness even when updated from a positive definite approximation and can be undefined with zero denominator. In this paper, we propose some scaling strategies to overcome these well known shortcomings of the SR1 update. Numerical experiment showed that the proposed strategies are very competitive, encouraging and have exhibited a clear improvement in the numerical performance over SR1 algorithms with some existing strategies in avoiding zero denominator and preserving positive-definiteness. Mathematics Subject Classification: 65H11, 65K05
Joint probabilistic data association filter for partially unresolved target groups

In many surveillance problems the observed objects are so closely spaced that they cannot always be resolved by the sensor(s). Typical examples for partially unresolved measurements are the surveillance of aircraft in formation, and convoy tracking for ground surveillance. Ignoring the limited sensor resolution in a tracking system may lead to degraded tracking performance, in particular unwanted track-losses. In this paper, we further discuss a recently presented extension of the resolution model by Koch and van Keuk to the case of arbitrary object numbers, and it is shown how that model can be incorporated into the Joint Probabilistic Data Association Filter (JPDAF). Further, through simulations of a ground target tracking scenario, it is shown how the incorporation of the resolution model improves tracking performance when targets are partially unresolved.
Bargaining with Interdependent Values, Experience Effects and the Coase Conjecture.

We study dynamic bargaining with asymmetric information and interdependent values. We show that as the gap between the cost and value of the weakest type shrinks to zero, the continuous time limit of equilibria changes dramatically from rare bursts of trade with long periods of inactivity to a smooth screening down the demand function, independent of the distribution. If we interpret the model as a durable goods problem with experience curve effects, then the monopoly problem is consistent with perfect competition. In other words, even though the monopoly outcome is inefficient, it converges to the competitive equilibrium outcome as the commitment power disappears. The competitive equilibrium is inefficient because of the positive externality caused by the experience effects.