Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Near-Field Photometric Stereo in Ambient Light

Shape recovery from shading information has recently regained importance due to the improvement towards making the Photometric Stereo technique more reliable in terms of appearance of reflective objects. However, although more advanced models have been lately proposed, 3D scanners based on this technology do not provide reliable reconstructions as long as the considered irradiance equation neglects any additive bias. Depending on the context, such bias assumes different physical meanings. For example, in murky water it is known as saturated backscattered effect or for acquisition in pure air medium it is known as ambient light. Although the theoretical part covers both cases, this work mostly focuses on the pure air acquisition case. Indeed, we present a new approach based on ratios of differences of images where an exhaustive set of physical features are tackled while dealing with Photometric Stereo acquisition with considerable importance for the ambient light. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to recover the shape from Photometric Stereo considering simultaneously perspective viewing geometry, non-linear light propagation, both specular and diffuse reflectance plus the additive bias of the ambient light. Proof of concept is provided by showing experimental results on synthetic and real data.
Toward Low-latency Iterative Decoding of QLDPC Codes Under Circuit-Level Noise

We introduce a sliding window decoder based on belief propagation (BP) with guided decimation for the purposes of decoding quantum low-density parity-check codes in the presence of circuit-level noise. Windowed decoding keeps the decoding complexity reasonable when, as is typically the case, repeated rounds of syndrome extraction are required to decode. Within each window, we employ several rounds of BP with decimation of the variable node that we expect to be the most likely to flip in each round, Furthermore, we employ ensemble decoding to keep both decimation options (guesses) open in a small number of chosen rounds. We term the resulting decoder BP with guided decimation guessing (GDG). Applied to bivariate bicycle codes, GDG achieves a similar logical error rate as BP with an additional OSD post-processing stage (BP+OSD) and combination-sweep of order 10. For a window size of three syndrome cycles, a multi-threaded CPU implementation of GDG achieves a worst-case decoding latency of 3ms per window for the [[144,12,12]] code.
Ever the twain shall meet

Purpose – To explore how selected principles of Chinese philosophy and complexity theory can be synthesized into a model for human and organizational behavior that is more accurate and appropriate to global markets than either traditional eastern or western models.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a model of human and organizational behavior based on similarities between elements of Chinese philosophy and complexity theory.Findings – Several of the respective principles of Chinese philosophy and complexity theory – the Chinese transformational cycle and complexity's cycle of attractors, for instance – are strikingly similar, suggesting that their commonalities are universals of human experience resting underneath their surface differences. By playing those similar principles off against each other, one can develop a model of human and organizational behavior that transcends both east and west, a model highly valuable to business people operating in global markets.Practical implications – Th.
Challenges while Updating Planning Parameters of an ERP System and How a Simulation-Based Support System Can Support Material Planners

In an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, production planning is influenced by a variety of parameters. Previous investigations show that setting parameter values is highly relevant to a company’s target system. Parameter settings should be checked and adjusted, e.g., after a change in environmental factors, by material planners. In practice, updating the parameters is difficult due to several reasons. This paper presents a simulation-based decision support system, which helps material planners in all stages of decision-making processes. It will present the system prototype’s user interface and the results of applying the system to a case study.
Non-Linear Matter Power Spectrum Modeling in Interacting Dark Energy Cosmologies

Understanding the behavior of the matter power spectrum on non-linear scales beyond the $\Lambda$CDM model is crucial for accurately predicting the large-scale structure (LSS) of the Universe in non-standard cosmologies. In this work, we present an analysis of the non-linear matter power spectrum within the framework of interacting dark energy-dark matter cosmologies (IDE). We employ N-body simulations and theoretical models to investigate the impact of IDE on these non-linear scales. Beginning with N-body simulations characterized by a fixed parameter space delineated by prior observational research, we adeptly fit the simulated spectra with a simple parametric function, achieving accuracy within 5\%. Subsequently, we refine a modified halo model tailored to the IDE cosmology, exhibiting exceptional precision in fitting the simulations down to scales of approximately 1 h/Mpc. To assess the model's robustness, we conduct a forecast analysis for the Euclid survey, employing our refined model. We find that the coupling parameter $\xi$ will be constrained to $\sigma(\xi) = 0.0046$. This marks a significant improvement by an order of magnitude compared to any other current observational tests documented in the literature. These primary findings pave the way for a novel preliminary approach, enabling the utilization of IDE models for observational constraints concerning LSS data on non-linear scales.
Time Changes with the Embodiment of Another’s Body Posture

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the perception of presentation durations of pictures of different body postures was distorted as function of the embodied movement that originally produced these postures. Participants were presented with two pictures, one with a low-arousal body posture judged to require no movement and the other with a high-arousal body posture judged to require considerable movement. In a temporal bisection task with two ranges of standard durations (0.4/1.6 s and 2/8 s), the participants had to judge whether the presentation duration of each of the pictures was more similar to the short or to the long standard duration. The results showed that the duration was judged longer for the posture requiring more movement than for the posture requiring less movement. However the magnitude of this overestimation was relatively greater for the range of short durations than for that of longer durations. Further analyses suggest that this lengthening effect was mediated by an arousal effect of limited duration on the speed of the internal clock system.
Older Husbands as Caregivers

The purpose of this study, based on Pearlin et al.'s model, was to determine the factors associated with the health of older husband caregivers and with their intention to end home caregiving for their wives. The results showed subjective stressors to be associated with outcomes. Role overload was linked to psychological distress and to lower self-perceived health, whereas role captivity was associated with psychological distress and the intention to end home caregiving. The likelihood of ceasing home caregiving increased when caregivers reported high relational deprivation. A high percentage of the variance in psychological distress was explained (51%). The quality of prior husband-wife relationships, the frequency of disruptive behaviors, family conflicts, and self-efficacy were associated with this variable. Selfefficacy had a mediating effect between subjective stressors and psychological distress, whereas the number of services received had a moderating effect on the intention to end home caregiving among husbands with high role captivity. This study provides avenues for interventions sensitive to male caregivers.
PROBCAST: A Web-Based Portal to Mesoscale Probabilistic Forecasts

Abstract This paper describes the University of Washington Probability Forecast (PROBCAST), a Web-based portal to probabilistic weather predictions over the Pacific Northwest. PROBCAST products are derived from the output of a mesoscale ensemble system run at the University of Washington, with the fields being postprocessed using Bayesian model averaging to produce sharp and reliable probabilistic predictions of temperature and precipitation. Based on research by University of Washington psychologists and human-interface specialists, a Web site has been constructed that allows for access to key elements of the probabilistic information produced by the system. The design approach of the PROBCAST system is explained in this paper as well as some of the challenges for future development. PROBCAST is intended to be a prototype for the kind of probabilistic forecast interface that could be used throughout the nation.
Complexity and Ambiguity in Environmental Design

Abstract Simplicity and clarity in the intent of much of environmental design is questioned from a number of points of view. Among other work, recent psychological research shows that humans prefer ambiguous, complex patterns in their visual fields and that this seems a fundamental perceptual preference, applying even to infants and laboratory animals. The overall finding in this area of research is that there is an optimal range of perceptual input preferred generally by subjects with both too simple and chaotically complex visual fields disliked. Building in open–ended, complex, involved, allusive ways is suggested to be more psychologically satisfying than the traditional simplicity and control of the environment sought by many designers. The thinking of a number of designers and writers on urban problems is examined and shown to support this hypothesis.
Humanized Culture of Periosteal Progenitors in Allogeneic Serum Enhances Osteogenic Differentiation and In Vivo Bone Formation

The translation of stem cell‐based regenerative solutions from the laboratory to the clinic is often hindered by the culture conditions used to expand cell populations. Although fetal bovine serum (FBS) is widely used, regulatory bodies and safety concerns encourage alternative, xeno‐free culturing practices. In an attempt to apply this approach to a bone‐forming combination product of human periosteal progenitors (human periosteum derived cells) on a clinically used calcium phosphate carrier, FBS was substituted for human allogeneic serum (hAS) during cell expansion. It was found that cell proliferation was increased in hAS along with an apparent commitment to the osteogenic lineage, indicated by enhanced Runx2 expression, as well as alkaline phosphatase activity and matrix mineralization. Following analysis of signaling pathways, it was found that interferon‐mediated signaling was downregulated, whereas JAK‐STAT signaling was upregulated. STAT3 phosphorylation was enhanced in hAS‐cultured human periosteum derived cells, inhibition of which ablated the proliferative effect of hAS. Furthermore, following in vivo implantation of hAS‐cultured cells on NuOss scaffolds, enhanced bone formation was observed compared with FBS (71% increase, p < .001). Interestingly, the de novo‐formed bone appeared to have a higher ratio of immature regions to mature regions, indicating that after 8 weeks implantation, tissue‐formation processes were continuing. Integration of the implant with the environment appeared to be altered, with a decrease in calcium phosphate grain size and surface area, indicative of accelerated resorption. This study highlights the advantages of using humanized culture conditions for the expansion of human periosteal progenitors intended for bone regeneration.
Roseibium aquae sp. nov., isolated from a saline lake.

A Gram-staining-negative bacterium, strain DSG-S4-2(T), was isolated from Dasugan Lake, a saline lake (salinity 3.1%, w/v) in Qaidam basin, Qinghai, China and its taxonomic position was determined by using a polyphasic approach. Cells of strain DSG-S4-2(T) were non-spore-forming rods, 0.5-0.8 µm wide and 1.2-3.8 µm long and motile by means of a single polar flagellum. Strain DSG-S4-2(T) was strictly heterotrophic and aerobic, catalase-positive and oxidase-negative. PufLM and coxL genes were present, bacteriochlorophyll a (BChl a) and a carotenoid pigment were produced. Growth was observed in the presence of 0-8.0% (w/v) NaCl (optimum, 1.0-2.0%), at 20-40 °C (optimum, 35 °C) and pH 6.5-10.5 (optimum, pH 7.5-8.0). Strain DSG-S4-2(T) contained Q-10 as the sole respiratory quinone. The polar lipids contained two aminolipids, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylmonomethylethanolamine, sulphoquinovosyldiacylglyceride, phosphatidylcholine and some unknown phospholipids, like the other members of the genus Roseibium. The predominant fatty acid (>70%) was summed feature 8 (C(18 : 1)ω7c and/or C(18 : 1)ω6c). The DNA G+C content was 61.4 mol% (determined from melting temperature). Phylogenetic trees (neighbour-joining, maximum-likelihood and maximum-parsimony) based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain DSG-S4-2(T) was associated with the members of the genus Roseibium, with highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to Roseibium denhamense OCh 254(T) (96.3%) and Roseibium hamelinense OCh 368(T) (96.3%). Based on the data presented above, it is concluded that strain DSG-S4-2(T) represents a novel species of the genus Roseibium, for which the name Roseibium aquae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is DSG-S4-2(T) ( = CGMCC 1.12426(T) = JCM 19310(T)).
High Recall, Small Data: The Challenges of Within-System Evaluation in a Live Legal Search System

This paper illustrates some challenges of common ranking evaluation methods for legal information retrieval (IR). We show these challenges with log data from a live legal search system and two user studies. We provide an overview of aspects of legal IR, and the implications of these aspects for the expected challenges of common evaluation methods: test collections based on explicit and implicit feedback, user surveys, and A/B testing. Next, we illustrate the challenges of common evaluation methods using data from a live, commercial, legal search engine. We specifically focus on methods for monitoring the effectiveness of (continuous) changes to document ranking by a single IR system over time. We show how the combination of characteristics in legal IR systems and limited user data can lead to challenges that cause the common evaluation methods discussed to be sub-optimal. In our future work we will therefore focus on less common evaluation methods, such as cost-based evaluation models.
ON THE SPACE COMPLEXITY OF DIRECTED GRAPH REACHABILITY

Graph reachability problems are fundamental to the study of complexity classes. It is well known that the reachability problem for general directed graphs is known to be complete for non-deterministic logspace (NL). Various restrictions of graph reach-ability are known to capture low level complexity classes. Recently, in a breakthrough result, it was shown that reachability problem for undirected graphs is complete for deterministic logspace (L). In this thesis we investigate the space complexity of reachability problem for directed planar graphs (denoted by PlanarReach). A graph is planar if it can be drawn on a plane without any crossing edges. Planar graphs are an important and natural subclass of general graphs and are well studied in graph theory. However, the space complexity of reachability problem for directed planar graphs is not yet well understood. It is not known whether PlanarReach is complete for NL. On the other hand researchers did not know any upper bound better than NL for this problem. We make progress on identifying the space complexity of PlanarReach. We show that PlanarReach can be decided in unambigous logspace (UL). UL is the class of problems that are decidable by a nondeterministic logspace machine with atmost one accepting path. As UL is a subclass of NL, our result improves the previously known best upper bound of NL for PlanarReach. We also extend our technique to show that reachability problem for a certain generalization of directed planar graphs (directed graphs with O(log n) crossing number) can also be decided in unambiguous logarithmic space. 4 Acknowledgements First and foremost I thank Dr. Vinodchandran Variyam, my advisor for his support and motivation and without whose guidance this thesis would not have been possible. I would like to thank Dr. Richard Sincovec, Dr. Jitender S. Deogun and Dr. Pavan Aduri for their input and serving on my committee. I would like to thank my colleague, Chris Bourke for his contribution and perpetual help. I would also like to thank the Department of Computer Science and Engineering here at UNL for supporting me during my study at UNL. I would also like to thank Dr. V. Arvind, Institute of Mathematical Sciences, who introduced and motivated me to pursue research in theoretical computer science. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for providing me with constant strength and determination.
Enhanced Bayesian Personalized Ranking for Robust Hard Negative Sampling in Recommender Systems

In implicit collaborative filtering, hard negative mining techniques are developed to accelerate and enhance the recommendation model learning. However, the inadvertent selection of false negatives remains a major concern in hard negative sampling, as these false negatives can provide incorrect information and mislead the model learning. To date, only a small number of studies have been committed to solve the false negative problem, primarily focusing on designing sophisticated sampling algorithms to filter false negatives. In contrast, this paper shifts its focus to refining the loss function. We find that the original Bayesian Personalized Ranking (BPR), initially designed for uniform negative sampling, is inadequate in adapting to hard sampling scenarios. Hence, we introduce an enhanced Bayesian Personalized Ranking objective, named as Hard-BPR, which is specifically crafted for dynamic hard negative sampling to mitigate the influence of false negatives. This method is simple yet efficient for real-world deployment. Extensive experiments conducted on three real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our approach, along with the enhanced ability to distinguish false negatives.
J-CRe3: A Japanese Conversation Dataset for Real-world Reference Resolution

Understanding expressions that refer to the physical world is crucial for such human-assisting systems in the real world, as robots that must perform actions that are expected by users. In real-world reference resolution, a system must ground the verbal information that appears in user interactions to the visual information observed in egocentric views. To this end, we propose a multimodal reference resolution task and construct a Japanese Conversation dataset for Real-world Reference Resolution (J-CRe3). Our dataset contains egocentric video and dialogue audio of real-world conversations between two people acting as a master and an assistant robot at home. The dataset is annotated with crossmodal tags between phrases in the utterances and the object bounding boxes in the video frames. These tags include indirect reference relations, such as predicate-argument structures and bridging references as well as direct reference relations. We also constructed an experimental model and clarified the challenges in multimodal reference resolution tasks.
First-, Second-, and Third-Generation Family Firms: A Comparison

SAGE wishes to inform readers that the article titled “Bahavioral [sic] Characteristics of Entrepreneurs in the Gujrat, Gujranawala and Slalkot Industrial Clusters of Pakistan: A Comparisn [sic] of First, Second and Third Generation Family Firms,” by Shahid Qureshi, Sarfraz A. Mian, and Arif Iqbal Rana, published in Volume 1, Issue 2 (November 2010) of International Journal of Business and Social Science included substantial excerpts from this article, “First-, Second-, and Third-Generation Family Firms: A Comparison,” by Matthew C. Sonfield and Robert N. Lussier, Volume XVII, Number 3 (September 2004) of Family Business Review, without appropriate attribution to Drs. Sonfield and Lussier or authorization of the authors or SAGE. Numerous requests made by SAGE to the editor of International Journal of Business and Social Science to address the inappropriate use of this article have gone unanswered. SAGE has additionally been informed by the lead author of the IJBSS article, Shahid Qureshi, that Sarfraz A. Mian and Arif Iqbal Rana did not participate in the authorship of the IJBSS article, and authorship of the article was completed by Dr. Qureshi alone. There has been limited prior research into generational differences among family businesses. This study compared first-, second-, and third-generation family firms. Contrary to much of the current literature, only two significant differences were found when testing 11 hypotheses. As hypothesized, first-generation family businesses do less succession planning than second- and third-generation family firms, and there are no differences between first-, second-, and third- generation firms with regard to the influence of the firm's founder. Also, first-generation firms had the highest use of equity versus debt financing. Although not tested as a hypothesis, demographic analysis indicated fewer first-generation firms using the corporation form of ownership. Analysis of covariance indicated no spurious relationships existing in the hypotheses.
Enhanced voltage buffer compensation technique for two-stage CMOS operational amplifiers

This paper presents a novel compensation scheme for two-stage CMOS operational amplifiers. The proposed solution is based on voltage-buffer compensation, but uses a gain stage in the feedback compensation path. An additional degree of freedom is introduced and a wider separation of the first two poles is achieved. A compensation procedure is proposed to benefit from these advantages. The proposed compensation technique allows achieving a K-times higher gain-bandwidth product with a K2-times smaller compensation capacitor (where K is the gain of the additional gain stage) with respect to conventional Miller and voltage-buffer compensation. The scheme was analyzed theoretically and simulated in standard 0.35 μm high-voltage CMOS technology. Simulation results show a design where a gain-bandwidth product about 7-times higher was obtained with a compensation capacitor reduced by a factor of about 50.
Prioritizing stakeholder concerns in environmental risk management

The management of environmental programmes often involves several stakeholders with diverse, and often conflicting, concerns. This paper proposes a methodology for the assessment of stakeholder preferences regarding a number of objectives of environmental restoration activities, such as the minimization of costs and of the impact on human health and safety. This methodology is based on an analytic/deliberative process that starts with pairwise comparisons of these objectives using questionnaires that the stakeholders complete. This input is used to produce a first set of relative weights using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (the analytic part). This set, as well as possible inconsistencies of the stakeholder assessments, is discussed with the stakeholders to correct inconsistencies and revise the weights (the deliberative part). The stakeholders always have the final word regarding the relative weights. Insights gained from a case study are also presented. The feedback from the stakeholders participating in this exercise was positive.