Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Need to Represent Raindrop Size Spectra as Normalized Gamma Distributions for the Interpretation of Polarization Radar Observations

Polarization radar techniques essentially rely on detecting the oblateness of raindrops to provide a measure of mean raindrop size and then using this information to give a better estimate of rainfall rate R than is available from radar reflectivity Z alone. To derive rainfall rates from these new parameters such as differential reflectivity ZDR and specific differential phase shift KDP and to gauge their performance, it is necessary to know the range of naturally occurring raindrop size spectra. A three parameter gamma function is in widespread use, with the three variables No, Do, and m providing a measure of drop concentration, mean size, and spectral shape, respectively. It has become standard practice to derive the range of these three variables in rain by comparing the 69 published values of the constants a and b in the empirical relationships Z 5 aRb with the values of a and b obtained when R and Z are derived by integrating the appropriately weighted gamma function. The relationships in common use both for inferring R from Z, ZDR, and KDP, and for developing attenuation correction routines have been derived from a best fit through the values obtained by cycling over these predicted ranges of No, Do, and m. It is pointed out that this derivation of the predicted range of No, Do, and m arises using a flawed logic for a particular nonnormalized form of the gamma function, and it is shown that the predicted ranges give rise to some very unrealistic drop spectra, including many with high rainfall and very small drop sizes. It is suggested that attenuation correction routines relying on differential phase may be suspect and the commonly used relationships between rainfall rate and Z, ZDR, and KDP need to be reexamined. When more realistic drop shapes are also used, it may be that published relationships for deriving R from Z and ZDR are in error by over a factor of 2; a new equation is proposed that, in the absence of hail and attenuation, should yield values of R accurate to 25%, provided that ZDR can be estimated to 0.2 dB and Z is calibrated to 1 dB. Relationships of the form R 5 a , with b 5 1.15, are in widespread use, but more realistic drop spectra and drop shapes b KDP yield a value of b closer to 1.4, similar to the exponent in Z‐R relationships. In accord, although KDP has the advantage of insensitivity to hail, it may have the same sensitivity to variations in drop spectra as Z does. In addition, the higher value of the exponent b implies that the proposed use of the total phase shift to give the path-integrated total rainfall is also questionable. However, the consistency of Z, ZDR, and KDP in rain can be used to provide absolute calibration of Z to 0.5 dB (12%), and when it fails it indicates that hail is present, in which case a relationship of the form KDP 5 aR1.4 should be used. The technique should work at S, C, and X band, but, in all cases, paths should be chosen so that the total phase shift is not large enough to introduce significant attenuation of Z and ZDR.
High Quality PTM Acquisition: Reflection Transformation Imaging for Large Objects

Reflection Transformation Imaging has proved to be a powerful method to acquire and represent the 3D reflectance properties of an object, displaying them as a 2D image. Recently, Polynomial Texture Maps (PTM), which are relightable images created from a set of photos of the object taken under several different lighting conditions, have been used in Cultural Heritage field to document and virtually inspect several sets of small objects, such as cuneiform tablets and coins. In this paper we explore the possibility of producing high quality PTM of medium or large size objects. The aim is to analyze the acquisition pipeline, resolving all the issues related to the size of the object, and the conditions of acquisition. We will discuss issues regarding acquisition planning and data gathering. We also present a new tool to interactively browse high resolution PTMs. Moreover, we perform some quality assessment considerations, in order to study the degradation of quality of the PTMs respect to the number and position of lights used to acquire the PTM. The results of our acquisition system are presented with some examples of PTMs of large artifacts like a sarcophagus of 2.4 × 1 m size. PTM can be a good alternative to 3D scanning for capturing and representing certain class of objects, like bas-relieves, having lower costs in terms of acquisition equipment and data processing time.
Determination of the number of writing variants with an HMM based cursive word recognition system

An important parameter for building a cursive script model is the number of different, relevant letter writing variants. An algorithm performing this task automatically by optimizing the number of letter models in an HMM-based script recognition system is presented. The algorithm iteratively modified selected letter models; for selection, quality measures like HMM distance and emission weight entropy are developed, and their correlation with recognition performance is shown. Theoretical measures for the selection of overall model complexity are presented, but best results are obtained by direct selection criteria: likelihood and recognition rate of training data. With the optimized models, an average improvement in recognition rate of up to 5.8 percent could be achieved.
Naval Mine Countermeasure Missions

Undersea operations using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) provide a different and in some ways a more challenging problem than tasks for unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles. In particular, in undersea operations, communication windows are restricted, and bandwidth is limited. Consequently, coordination among agents is correspondingly more difficult. In traditional approaches, a central planner initially assigns subtasks to a set of AUVs to achieve the team goal. However, those initial task assignments may become inefficient during real-time execution because of the real-world issues such as failures. Therefore, initial task allocations are usually subject to change if efficiency is a high concern. Reallocations are needed and should be performed in a distributed manner. To provide such flexibility, we propose a distributed auction-based cooperation framework, distributed and efficient multirobot-cooperation framework (DEMiR-CF), which is an online dynamic task allocation (reallocation) system that aims to achieve a team goal while using resources effectively. DEMiR-CF, with integrated task scheduling and execution capabilities, can also respond to and recover from real-time contingencies such as communication failures, delays, range limitations, and robot failures.
Standards-Based Semantic Middleware

We describe a novel semantics-based architecture for standards-based approaches to interoperable applications. The paper includes our experiences in prototyping the proposed architecture and demonstrating the resulting semantic middleware capability. This capability enabled legacy applications with heterogeneous interfaces to communicate in an interoperable fashion. An industrial scenario was used to showcase the new features of the architecture.
Syntax-based Simultaneous Translation through Prediction of Unseen Syntactic Constituents

Simultaneous translation is a method to reduce the latency of communication through machine translation (MT) by dividing the input into short segments before performing translation. However, short segments pose problems for syntaxbased translation methods, as it is difficult to generate accurate parse trees for sub-sentential segments. In this paper, we perform the first experiments applying syntax-based SMT to simultaneous translation, and propose two methods to prevent degradations in accuracy: a method to predict unseen syntactic constituents that help generate complete parse trees, and a method that waits for more input when the current utterance is not enough to generate a fluent translation. Experiments on English-Japanese translation show that the proposed methods allow for improvements in accuracy, particularly with regards to word order of the target sentences.
Screening for Mice that Remember Incorrectly

The memory mechanism carries information forward in time. Screening for genetic distortions in this information (screening for changes in the content of memory) is likely to do a better job of distinguishing between genetic effects on memory mechanisms and genetic effects on performance mechanisms than screening for changes in the strength of learned behavior. The peak procedure is the most commonly used screen for duration memory. Mice give peak data strikingly similar to data from the rat and the pigeon. The data, however, favor a model in which the decision criterion for starting the response (putting the head into the hole) and stopping the response are independently determined. For reasons we explain, this prevents the estimation of scalar memory error and memory variability from simple peak data.
Design of optimal engine for cognitive radio parameters based on the DUGA

Cognitive radio is an intelligent wireless communication system, which can dynamically adjust its parameters depending on environment change and service demands to improve system performance. As the parameter adjustment of CR is a typical multi-objective optimization problem, this paper proposes a scheme of CR-optimized engine based on the Discrete Uniform Genetic Algorithm (DUGA), considering the optimization of joint PHY layer and MAC layer. DUGA can select non-dominated population by calculating individual crowding distance. Some operations, such as discrete uniform distribution, crossover, mutation, and gradual iteration, are applied to achieve population diversity and rapid convergence. The engine is embedded into the CR node to achieve the optimizations. The results show that the performance of the DUGA is better than the typical NNIA through testing in MATLAB, besides, the engine can effectively improve the CR system performance under the NS2 simulation.
The Schur Cone and the Cone of Log Concavity

Let $\{h_1,h_2,. \}$ be a set of algebraically independent variables. We ask which vectors are extreme in the cone generated by $h_ih_j-h_{i+1}h_{j-1}$ ($i\geq j>0$) and $h_i$ ($i>0$). We call this cone the cone of log concavity. More generally, we ask which vectors are extreme in the cone generated by Schur functions of partitions with $k$ or fewer parts. We give a conjecture for which vectors are extreme in the cone of log concavity. We prove the characterization in one direction and give partial results in the other direction.
Automatic Advertisement Ratings

The goal of this project is to explore a system that automatically generates objective scores, or rankings, for both video and image advertisements. For the image advertisements, the use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) is explored and compared to baseline methods such as, hand-crafted features and Support Vector Machines (SVMs). For the video advertisements, a different approach is taken. Annotated attributes and mid-level visual concept representations are employed to understand how a specific concept affects an advertisement. This is achieved through the use of Ranking SVM. Additionally, an approach similar to that of the image advertisements SVMs is applied.
Quality Modelling for Software Product Lines

In today's embedded software systems development, non-functional requirements (e.g., dependability, maintainability) become more and more important. Simultaneously the increasing pressure for developing software in shorter time and at a lower cost pushes software industry towards product lines solutions. To support product lines for high quality embedded software, quality models are needed. In this paper we investigate to which extent existing quality modelling approaches facilitate high quality software product lines. First, we define several requirements for an appropriate quality model. Then, we use those requirements to review the existing quality modelling approaches. We conclude from the review that no single quality model fulfils all of our requirements. However, several approaches contain valuable characteristics. Based upon those characteristics we propose the Prometheus approach. Prometheus is a goal-oriented method that integrates qualitative and qualitative approaches to quality control. The method starts quality modelling early in the software lifecycle and is reusable across product lines.
Radiation Parameterization for Three-Dimensional Inhomogeneous Cirrus Clouds: Application to Climate Models

A three-dimensional (3D) radiative transfer model has been developed to simulate the transfer of solar and thermal infrared radiation in inhomogeneous cirrus clouds. The model utilizes a diffusion approximation approach (four-term expansion in the intensity) for application to inhomogeneous media, employing Cartesian coordinates. The extinction coefficient, single-scattering albedo, and asymmetry factor are functions of spatial position and wavelength and are parameterized in terms of the ice water content and mean effective ice crystal size. The correlated k-distribution method is employed for incorporation of gaseous absorption in multiple-scattering atmospheres. Delta-function adjustment is used to account for the strong forward-diffraction nature in the phase function of ice particles to enhance computational accuracy. Comparisons of the model results with those from plane-parallel (PP) and other 3D models show reasonable agreement for both broadband and monochromatic results. Three-dimensional flux and heating/cooling rate fields are presented for a number of cirrus cases in which the ice water content and ice crystal size are prescribed. The PP method is shown to be a good approximation under the homogeneous condition when the cloud horizontal dimension is much larger than the cloud thickness. As the horizontal dimension decreases, clouds produce less infrared warming at the bottom as well as less cooling at the top, while more solar heating is generated within the cloud. For inhomogeneous cases, upwelling and downwelling fluxes display patterns corresponding to the extinction coefficient field. Cloud inhomogeneity also plays an important role in determining both solar and IR heating rate distributions. The radiation parameterization is applied to potential cloud configurations generated from GCMs to investigate broken clouds and cloud-overlapping effects on the domain-averaged heating rates. Clouds with maximum overlap tend to produce less heating than those with random overlap. For the prescribed cloud configurations designed in this paper, broken clouds show more solar heating as well as more IR cooling as compared with a continuous cloud field.
Sulfatide-Hsp70 Interaction Promotes Hsp70 Clustering and Stabilizes Binding to Unfolded Protein

The 70-kDa heat shock protein (Hsp70), one of the major stress-inducible molecular chaperones, is localized not only in the cytosol, but also in extracellular milieu in mammals. Hsp70 interacts with various cell surface glycolipids including sulfatide (3'-sulfogalactosphingolipid). However, the molecular mechanism, as well as the biological relevance, underlying the glycolipid-Hsp70 interaction is unknown. Here we report that sulfatide promotes Hsp70 oligomerization through the N-terminal ATPase domain, which stabilizes the binding of Hsp70 to unfolded protein in vitro. We find that the Hsp70 oligomer has apparent molecular masses ranging from 440 kDa to greater than 669 kDa. The C-terminal peptide-binding domain is dispensable for the sulfatide-induced oligomer formation. The oligomer formation is impaired in the presence of ATP, while the Hsp70 oligomer, once formed, is unable to bind to ATP. These results suggest that sulfatide locks Hsp70 in a high-affinity state to unfolded proteins by clustering the peptide-binding domain and blocking the binding to ATP that induces the dissociation of Hsp70 from protein substrates.
Gender, work, and power: The case of women in coaching*

This paper examines women's experience of power in coaching. Data are taken from interviews with forty-nine women coaches. Respondents resist an attribution of power to coaching. They prefer to view the position as one of influence, meaning that the coach-athlete relationship should be cooperative and empowering. This alternative view, however, is not realized in coaches' practice. The discussion suggests that the limits to women coaches' ability to realize an alternative conception of power lie in their acceptance of the dominant ideology of sport that stresses production and in their relative powerlessness within the institution.
White Matter Hyperintensities and Cognitive Dysfunction in Patients With Infratentorial Stroke

Objective To determine whether cognitive function is associated with white matter hyperintensities (WMH) in patients with infratentorial stroke. Methods This was a retrospective, cross-sectional study. Twenty-four first-ever infratentorial stroke patients between 18 and 60 years of age were enrolled. WMH was evaluated by the Fazekas scale and the Scheltens scale. Cognitive functions were assessed using the Korean Mini-Mental Status Examination (K-MMSE), Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test, and the Seoul Computerized Neuropsychological Test Battery (SCNT) at one month after stroke. All participants were divided into two groups based on the presence of WMH (no-WMH group and WMH group). General characteristics and cognitive functions were compared between the groups. Results There were no significant differences in general characteristics, such as age, stroke type, hypertension history, and education level between the two groups. However, K-MMSE in the WMH group was significantly lower compared to the no-WMH group (p<0.05). The verbal learning test score in SCNT was significantly higher in the no-WMH group compared to the WMH group (p<0.05). Executive function in the no-WMH group tended to be higher compared to the WMH group. Conclusion Impairment of cognitive function in patients with infratentorial stroke appeared to be associated with WMH. WMH should be carefully evaluated during rehabilitation of infratentorial stroke patients.
Mining On-line Sources for Definition Knowledge

Finding definitions in huge text collections is a challenging problem, not only because of the many ways in which definitions can be conveyed in natural language texts but also because the definiendum (i.e., the thing to be defined) has not, on its own, enough discriminative power to allow selection of definition-bearing passages from the collection. We have developed a method that uses already available external sources to gather knowledge about the “definiendum” before trying to define it using the given text collection. This knowledge consists of lists of relevant secondary terms that frequently co-occur with the definiendum in definition-bearing passages or “definiens”. External sources used to gather secondary terms are an on-line enyclopedia, a lexical database and the Web. These secondary terms together with the definiendum are used to select passages from the text collection performing information retrieval. Further linguistic analysis is carried out on each passage to extract definition strings from the passages using a number of criteria including the presence of main and secondary terms or definition patterns.
An Improved Medium Field Multivariate Public Key Cryptosystem

The medium field equation (MFE) multivariate public key encryption scheme has the advantages that it uses medium sized field extensions, which makes it encryption or decryption faster. However, it can not resists the second order linearization equation (SOLE) attack presented by Ding, et al in 2007 PKC conference. An improved MFE scheme is proposed in this paper. It not only resist the SOLE attack but also the previously known attack methods. What's more, an idea is presented. Substitute for a system of quadratic polynomials which operated in a big extension field, we can improve the degree properly over a smaller extension field to obtain stronger security and faster implementation.
Indexing personal image collections: a flexible, scalable solution

The growth of personal image collections has boosted the creation of many applications, many of which depend on the existence of fast schemes to match similar image descriptors. In this paper we present multicurves, a new indexing method for multimedia descriptors, able to handle high dimensionalities (100 dimensions and over) and large databases (millions of descriptors). The technique allows a fast implementation of approximate kNN search, and deals easily with data updating (insertions and deletions). The index is based on the simultaneous use of several moderate-dimensional space-filling curves. The combined effect of having more than one curve, and reducing the dimensionality of each individual curve allows overcoming undesirable boundary effects. In empirical evaluations, the method compares favorably with state-of-the-art methods, especially when the constraints of secondary storage are considered.
Calibration algorithm for current-output R-2R ladders

The paper presents a new calibration algorithm for current-output R-2R ladders. The widely used R-2R ladders are easy to realise as an integrated circuit, but the resistance tolerances limit their linearity properties. However, it is possible to achieve higher linearity with self-calibration techniques. A formerly published calibration algorithm by Cutkosky is available for the so-called Cutkosky R-2R ladders. A similar algorithm can be applied to the current-output ladders, which are widely used as MDAC or DAC. In the paper the Cutkosky divider is shortly discussed, and then a new description of the inverse ladder is presented as a basis of the calibration algorithm. The calibration algorithm is discussed in details, and the error budget is analysed. A simulator was also written to verify the theory.
Protection against indirect overflow attacks on pointers

Buffer overflow has accounted for a large fraction of Internet based attacks since 1988. Many solutions have been proposed to protect against a direct stack smashing attack overwriting a return address. Here, we target indirect buffer overflow attacks that overflow a buffer in memory to repoint a function pointer to the attacker's program. This type of attack could bypass most of the current stack protection mechanisms. Our proposed approach encrypts a function pointer before it is put into the memory and decrypts it before it is taken from the memory. Each function pointer is encrypted with a unique key that is randomized by the loader/linker for each program run. This leads to two desirable properties: (1) orthogonality of key space, (2) zero incremental knowledge gain for the adversary between two attacks on two different program runs. The key space orthogonality does not allow a one key compromise to propagate to other function pointers. The "zero knowledge gain" forces the adversary to compromise all (or most of) the keys in the same run. This is difficult since loader/linker based key randomization leads to a 232 iteration brute force attack on each key for a 32-bit architecture. This scheme was incorporated into GCC-3.0 on RedHat 7.0 Linux distribution. The performance overhead of this scheme is below 4.5% on Apache Web server version 1.3. 22 with WebStone 2.5 as benchmark.