Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multitarget Initiation, Tracking and Termination Using Bayesian Monte Carlo Methods

In this paper, we present an online approach for joint initiation/termination and tracking for multiple targets with multiple sensors using sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods. There are several main contributions in the paper. The first contribution is the extension of the deterministic initiation and termination method proposed by the authors' previous publications to a full SMC context in which track initiation/termination are executed with sampling methods. In effect, the dimensions of the particles are variable. In addition, we also integrate a Markov random field (MRF) motion model with the framework to enable efficient and accurate tracking for interacting targets and to avoid potential track coalescence problems. With the employment of multiple sensors, a centralized tracking strategy is adopted, where the observations from all active sensors are fused together for target initiation/termination and tracking and a set of global tracks is maintained. Intra-and inter-sensor clusters are constructed, comprised of closely spaced observations either in time for single sensors or from distinct sensors at a single time, that can increase the reliability when proposing new tracks for initiation. Computer simulations demonstrate that the proposed approach is robust in joint initiation/termination and tracking of multiple manoeuvring targets even when the environment is hostile with high-clutter rates and low target detection probabilities. The integration of the MRF framework into the proposed methods improves robustness in handling close target interactions when the observation noise is high.
LOCALIZATION BASED SEPARATION OF MOVING AUDIO SOURCES FROM STEREO MIXTURES BY ADAPTIVE BEAMFORMING

The separation of moving audio sources from their mixtures is practically more useful as well as challenging in the area of source separation. In this paper, a microphone pair is used to capture the signals of multiple moving audio sources. It is assumed that the sources are static within a small time slot. Then localization based separation from the mixtures is obtained by applying adaptive beamforming within that slot. A coherence based source localization method is proposed here. When the sources are moving randomly, it is obvious to arise a permutation problem among the sources separated from the successive time slots. A data- adaptive audio source discrimination method is introduced to resolve such problem. Then the overall separation is obtained by concatenating the sources segregated from consecutive time slots. The experimental results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.
The Relationship Between University Students' Epistemological Beliefs and Teaching/Learning Conceptions

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the Epistemological Beliefs and Teaching/Learning Conceptions of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th-grade students in the departments of Physical Education and Sports Teaching, Coaching Education, Sports Management and Recreation Education in the School of Physical Education and Sports in Erciyes University. The research population consists of randomly selected 706 students of the School of Physical Education and Sports. In the study, Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire (Aypay, 2012) and Teaching/Learning Conceptions Questionnaire (Aypay, 2011) were used as data collecting tools. Data obtained through Personal Information Form, Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire and Teaching/Learning Conceptions Questionnaire were statistically analyzed using SPSS 20.0 package program. Candidates’ personal information and inventory total points and factor points were presented by identifying frequency (f) and percentage (%) values. To indicate the relationship between the scores obtained from the questionnaires, Pearson Moment Product Correlation analysis (r) was conducted while multiple regression analysis was performed to determine whether the points are predictive of each other. (β) Consequently, it was found that the Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire subdimensions Learning Process and Learning Effort positively influence the constructivist teaching/learning conceptions of the students of the School of Physical Education and Sports while the subdimensions Learning Process and Certainty of Knowledge positively affect the students' traditional teaching/learning conceptions. According to these results, it is considered that students will take an active role in the learning process and the constructivist education and training processes will develop and contribute to the new generation constructivist education and training process while performing the teaching profession.
Graph-Parallel Entity Resolution using LSH & IMM

In this paper we describe graph-based parallel algorithms for entity resolution that improve over the map-reduce approach. We compare two approaches to parallelize a Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH) accelerated,IterativeMatch-Merge (IMM) entity resolution technique: BCP, where records hashed together are compared at a single node/reducer, vs an alternative mechanism (RCP) where comparison load is better distributed across processors especially in the presence of severely skewed bucket sizes. We analyze the BCP and RCP approaches analytically as well as empirically using a large synthetically generated dataset. We generalize the lessons learned from our experience and submit that the RCP approach is also applicable in many similar applications that rely on LSH or related grouping strategies to minimize pair-wise comparisons.
Aprepitant: the evidence for its place in the prevention of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting

Introduction: Chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) represents a significant burden on patients and healthcare systems. Despite the introduction of serotonin antagonists, many patients still experience CINV, particularly delayed symptoms occurring more than 24 hours after chemotherapy. Aprepitant is a selective neurokinin-1 (NK1) receptor antagonist approved for use with other antiemetics to prevent CINV caused by moderately to highly emetogenic chemotherapy. Aims: To review the evidence underlying the use of aprepitant to prevent CINV. Evidence review: In patients receiving moderately and highly emetogenic chemotherapy, adding aprepitant to standard antiemetic therapy with dexamethasone and a serotonin antagonist significantly improved control of CINV. The degree of control of delayed CINV was particularly pronounced, and effectiveness was more likely to be maintained in multiple cycles compared with standard therapy. Nausea was generally less frequent among patients taking aprepitant. More patients receiving aprepitant were satisfied with their treatment and reported minimal/no impact of CINV on daily activities. Aprepitant appears to be well tolerated, with fatigue being the most commonly reported adverse event. The drug is an inhibitor and inducer of cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A4, resulting in contraindications and caution with some concomitant medication. Limited economic evidence suggests that a proportion of the acquisition cost of aprepitant may be offset by savings in overall direct costs of managing CINV. Place in therapy: The evidence supports the recommended use of aprepitant in clinical guidelines for the prevention of CINV due to highly emetogenic chemotherapy, and its recently approved role in regimens with moderate risk. It is particularly useful for delayed symptoms.
An Image Authentication Scheme for Halftone Images Based upon Error Diffusion

In this paper, we present an image authentication scheme for halftone images based on the error diffusion technique. Our scheme converts a gray-level image into a halftone image by using the error diffusion technique and embeds the authentication codes in the obtained halftone image at the same time. From the experimental results, our proposed scheme can detect the tampered places according to the embedded authentication codes. Besides, the visual quality of the stego halftone image in our scheme is satisfactory.
Glass Formation, Chemical Properties and Surface Analysis of Cu-Based Bulk Metallic Glasses

This paper reviews the influence of alloying elements Mo, Nb, Ta and Ni on glass formation and corrosion resistance of Cu-based bulk metallic glasses (BMGs). In order to obtain basic knowledge for application to the industry, corrosion resistance of the Cu–Hf–Ti–(Mo, Nb, Ta, Ni) and Cu–Zr–Ag–Al–(Nb) bulk glassy alloy systems in various solutions are reported in this work. Moreover, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis is performed to clarify the surface-related chemical characteristics of the alloy before and after immersion in the solutions; this has lead to a better understanding of the correlation between the surface composition and the corrosion resistance.
Using Visual Latencies to Improve Image Segmentation

An artificial neural network model is proposed that combines several aspects taken from physiological observations (oscillations, synchronizations) with a visual latency mechanism in order to achieve an improved analysis of visual scenes. The network consists of two parts. In the lower layers that contain no lateral connections the propagation velocity of the activity of the units depends on the contrast of the individual objects in the scene. In the upper layers lateral connections are used to achieve synchronization between corresponding image parts. This architecture assures that the activity that arises in response to a scene containing objects with different contrast is spread out over several layers in the network. Thereby adjacent objects with different contrast will be separated and synchronization occurs in the upper layers without mutual disturbance between different objects. A comparison with a one-layer network shows that synchronization in the latency dependent multilayer net is indeed achieved much faster as soon as more than five objects have to be recognized. In addition, it is shown that the network is highly robust against noise in the stimuli or variations in the propagation delays (latencies), respectively. For a consistent analysis of a visual scene the different features of an individual object have to be recognized as belonging together and separated from other objects. This study shows that temporal differences, naturally introduced by stimulus latencies in every biological sensory system, can strongly improve the performance and allow for an analysis of more complex scenes.
Advanced Meta-PSO

One issue in applying PSO is to find a good working set of parameters. The standard settings are often work sufficiently but don¿t exhaust the possibilities of PSO. This paper proposes an extended Meta-PSO approach to optimize the PSO parameters as well as the neighborhood topology for a given problem by PSO itself. It is applied to four typical benchmark functions known from literature. The good results indicate that PSO is capable of optimizing itself.
Blind Estimation and Compensation of IQ imbalance in OFDM system

The presence of In-phase and Quadrature-phase (IQ) imbalance caused by the local oscillators in the direct-conversion Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing OFDM) transceiver system severely degrade the performance of the communication system by increasing the bit error rate (BER). In this paper, a Blind Least Square Estimation (LSE) based "1 step" scheme is proposed to estimate and compensate for the IQ imbalance caused by the receiver of OFDM systems. Several computer simulations via MATLAB were performed to ensure the performance of the proposed method. Simulations show that the proposed technique outperforms the existing method.
Detailed body shapes from flash photographs

We present a technique that enables capture of detailed body shapes for clothing and footwear design using off-the-shelf equipment. The main components of our acquisition system are a standard flash-equipped digital camera and a calibration plate. Detailed 3D shapes are recovered from flash photographs using multi-view version of photometric stereo. The key idea is to obtain lighting variation by moving the camera itself widely such that photometric stereo can be performed with a built-in flash, which is not achievable with traditional methods. To recover a body model from photographs, we employ a deformable model. Starting from a template mesh, we first deform this to fit a sparse set of markers and then silhouettes in the images. Finally, we refine the mesh to agree with normals estimated from shading using a novel efficient multi-view photometric stereo algorithm based on the deformation gradient fitting. Experimental results obtained using real and synthetic images show that the method provides an accurate model for clothing and footwear design merely using a digital camera. We also present a method for creating a customized shoe-last model from a captured foot model.
Analysis and Design of Optical Reflectors Based on a Series of Ring Resonators

In this paper, a design approach of optical reflectors based on multiple ring resonators is presented. The analysis and design are based on the scattering matrix method and it can be applied to a structure for the optical reflector with any number of ring resonators. The effect of transmission losses inside the rings on the spectral performance of optical reflectors based on ring resonators is highlighted.
Forecasting Recessions Using the Yield Curve

We compare forecasts of recessions using four different specifications of the probit model: a time invariant conditionally independent version; a business cycle specific conditionally independent model; a time invariant probit with autocorrelated errors; and a business cycle specific probit with autocorrelated errors. The more sophisticated versions of the model take into account some of the potential underlying causes of the documented predictive instability of the yield curve. We find strong evidence in favour of the more sophisticated specification, which allows for multiple breakpoints across business cycles and autocorrelation. We also develop a new approach to the construction of real time forecasting of recession probabilities. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Subarcsecond Resolution Near-Infrared Study of Seyfert and “Normal” Galaxies. II. Morphology

We present a detailed study of the bar fraction in the CfA sample of Seyfert galaxies and in a carefully selected control sample of nonactive galaxies to investigate the relation between the presence of bars and of nuclear activity. To avoid the problems related to bar classification in the Third Reference Catalogue (RC3), e.g., subjectivity, low resolution, and contamination by dust, we have developed an objective bar classification method, which we conservatively apply to our new subarcsecond resolution near-infrared (NIR) imaging data set discussed in the first paper in this series. We are able to use stringent criteria based on radial profiles of ellipticity and major axis position angle to determine the presence of a bar and its axial ratio. Concentrating on noninteracting galaxies in our sample for which morphological information can be obtained, we find that Seyfert hosts are barred more often (79% ± 7.5%) than the nonactive galaxies in our control sample (59% ± 9%), a result which is at the ~2.5 σ significance level. The fraction of nonaxisymmetric hosts becomes even larger when interacting galaxies are taken into account. We discuss the implications of this result for the fueling of central activity by large-scale bars. This paper improves on previous work by means of imaging at higher spatial resolution and by the use of a set of stringent criteria for bar presence and confirms that the use of NIR is superior to optical imaging for detection of bars in disk galaxies.
Java quality assurance by detecting code smells

Software inspection is a known technique for improving software quality. It involves carefully examining the code, the design, and the documentation of software and checking these for aspects that are known to be potentially problematic based on past experience. Code smells are a metaphor to describe patterns that are generally associated with bad design and bad programming practices. Originally, code smells are used to find the places in software that could benefit from refactoring. In this paper we investigate how the quality of code can be automatically assessed by checking for the presence of code smells and how this approach can contribute to automatic code inspection. We present an approach for the automatic detection and visualization of code smells and discuss how this approach can be used in the design of a software inspection tool. We illustrate the feasibility of our approach with the development of jCOSMO, a prototype code smell browser that detects and visualizes code smells in JAVA source code. Finally, we show how this tool was applied in a case study.
Advanced Corneal Cross-Linking System with Fluorescence Dosimetry

Purpose. This paper describes an advanced system that combines corneal cross-linking with riboflavin with fluorescence dosimetry, the ability to measure riboflavin diffusion within the cornea both before and during UVA treatment. Methods and Results. A corneal cross-linking system utilizing a digital micromirror device (DMD) was assembled and used to measure diffusion coefficients of 0.1% riboflavin in 20% dextran in porcine eyes. A value of (3.3 ± 0.2) × 10−7 cm2/s was obtained for the stroma. Diffusion coefficients for the transepithelial formulation of 0.1% riboflavin in 0.44% saline and 0.02% BAK were also measured to be 4.7 ± 0.3 × 10−8 cm2/s for epithelium only and (4.6 ± 0.4) × 10−7 cm2/s for stroma only. Riboflavin consumption during a UVA treatment was also demonstrated. Conclusion. A new advanced corneal cross-linking system with fluorescence dosimetry of riboflavin has been demonstrated. It is hoped that this method may play a significant role in determining the underlying mechanisms of corneal cross-linking and assist with the development of additional riboflavin formulations. Moreover, dosimetry may prove valuable in providing a method to account for the biological differences between individuals, potentially informing cornea-specific UVA treatment doses in real time.
Understanding Temporal Query Intent

Understanding the temporal orientation of web search queries is an important issue for the success of information access systems. In this paper, we propose a multi-objective ensemble learning solution that (1) allows to accurately classify queries along their temporal intent and (2) identifies a set of performing solutions thus offering a wide range of possible applications. Experiments show that correct representation of the problem can lead to great classification improvements when compared to recent state-of-the-art solutions and baseline ensemble techniques.
Genie chains and the degrees of freedom of the K-user MIMO interference channel

We explore the degrees of freedom (DoF) of the K >; 3 user M<sub>T</sub> × M<sub>R</sub> MIMO Gaussian interference channel where each transmitter is equipped with M<sub>T</sub> and each receiver is equipped with M<sub>R</sub> antennas. Expressing the DoF characterization as a function of the ratio γ = M/N, where M = min(M<sub>T</sub>, M<sub>R</sub>) and N = max(M<sub>T</sub>, M<sub>R</sub>), we find that when γ ≤ γ<sub>o</sub> = K-1/K(K-2) = γ<sub>o</sub>, the DoF value per user is piecewise linear depending on M and N alternately, similar to the DoF characterization for K = 3 which has been previously obtained. The regime γ >; γ<sub>o</sub>, which is the dominant regime for K >; 3 users and is not encountered in the K = 3 user setting, is the main focus of this paper. Our DoF results in this regime are obtained through a novel “genie chains” approach, which is the main contribution of this work. It is a chain of mappings from genie signals provided to a receiver to the exposed signal spaces at that receiver, which then serve as the genie signals for the next receiver in the chain, until an acceptable genie with the required number of dimensions is obtained, essentially converting an information theoretic problem into a linear algebra problem.
Working within an aesthetic of relationality: theoretical considerations of embodiment, imagination and foolishness as part of theatre making about dementia

ABSTRACT Through this paper, I consider how we might be aesthetically and relationally accountable in creating research-informed theatre through the conceptual frame of an aesthetic of relationality, and in-depth considerations of the theoretical notions embodiment, imagination and foolishness (as vulnerability-bravery). Through the example of Cracked: new light on dementia, of which I am the playwright and director, I consider the ways artist-researchers foolishly and imaginatively engage in exploration from the starting point their own bodies, as socially, culturally and historically situated. I additionally extend these considerations towards a vision for how we might engage with persons with dementia beyond the tragic.
Design and Power Flow Analysis of Electrical System Using Electrical Transient and Program Software

Power flow analysis is a numerical way of study of behavior of flow of electric power in an interconnected system. In order to meet the growing demands of electrical energy in an optimum way, there is a need to upgrade existing systems or to install new systems. Therefore, planning of new installations and determination of best operating conditions of existing systems need power flow analysis. In this way, cost/benefit ratio for both suppliers and customers is maintained. This research involves the design and power flow analysis of IEEE-14 bus system. Newton Raphson method is applied for better efficiency and reduced computational time. Simulation analysis is conducted in ETAP software because of its excessive used in real life systems.
Assessing Collaborative Problem Solving Through Automated Technologies

Today, proficiency in collaborative problem solving (CPS) is necessary for success in both college and workplace, as well as the ability to perform that collaboration in various settings. At the same time, structuring computer-based CPS assessment, specifically for large-scale programs, is challenging. In order to perform standardized assessment of CPS skills on an individual level, each student should be matched with various types of group members, should be tested on a variety of CPS skills, and must apply the skills in varied contexts. One solution to this standardization is to use computer-based agents to serve as the collaborators in the interactions. The aim of this study was to explore students’ performance in human-to-agent (H-A), compared to human-to-human (H-H) CPS assessment tasks. A sample of 14-year olds across three countries participated in the study. Students in both H-H and H-A modes were able to collaborate and communicate by using identical methods and resources. However, while in the H-A mode, students collaborated with a simulated computerdriven partner and in the H-H mode students collaborated with another student to solve a problem. This study is among the first of its kind to investigate systematically students’ CPS performance in H-A and H-H standardized assessment settings. Directions for future research are discussed in terms of their implications to large-scale assessment programs, teaching and learning.