Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Connectivity-based virtual potential field localization in wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, the connectivity-based localization protocols are widely studied due to low cost and no requirement for special hardware. Many connectivity-based algorithms rely on distance estimation between nodes according to their hop count, which often yields large errors in anisotropic sensor network. In this paper, we propose a virtual potential field algorithm, in which the estimated positions of unknown nodes are iteratively adjusted by eliminating the inconsistency to the connectivity constraint. Unlike current connectivity-based algorithms, VPF effectively exploits the connectivity constraint information, regardless of distance estimation between nodes, thus achieving high localization accuracy in both isotropic and anisotropic sensor networks. Simulation results show that VPF improves the localization accuracy by an average of 47% compared with MDS in isotropic network, and 42% compared with PDM in anisotropic network. As a refinement procedure, the average improvement factor of VPF is 56% and 50%, based on MDS and PDM respectively.
TEXTURING LONG PLANAR SURFACES WITH IMPRECISE CAMERA POSES FOR INDOOR 3 D MODELING

Automated 3D modeling of building interiors is useful in applications such as virtual reality and environment mapping. Texture mapping walls is an important step in visualizing the results of an indoor 3D modeling system. Methods to localize the camera in the 3D scene often are not pixel accurate, meaning that when multiple images are used for texture mapping there are seams and discontinuities between these images. Several approaches to this problem have been proposed but each suffer from a distinct problem of error accumulation for long chains of images, such as those from a long corridor. We propose a new approach to texture mapping planar surfaces that eliminates discontinuities between images but does not suffer from error accumulation for long chains. We validate this approach using images from several long hallways with data generated by a human operated backpack 3D indoor modeling system.
Anthropometric Measures and Physical Activity and the Risk of Lung Cancer in Never-Smokers: A Prospective Cohort Study

Worldwide, lung cancer in never-smokers is ranked the seventh most common cause of cancer death; however, the etiology of lung cancer in never-smokers is unclear. We investigated associations for body mass index (BMI) at various ages, waist circumference, hip circumference, and physical activity with lung cancer in 158,415 never-smokers of the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. Multivariable hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated from Cox proportional hazards models. Over 11 years of follow-up, 532 lung cancer cases occurred. The risk estimate for obese (BMI≥30 kg/m2) participants at baseline was 1.21 (95%CI = 0.95–1.53) relative to those with a normal BMI between 18.5≤BMI<25.0. Overweight (25.0≤BMI<30.0) at age 18 (HRoverweight-vs-normal = 1.51;95%CI = 1.01–2.26) and time spent sitting (HR≥3 hrs-vs-<3 hrs = 1.32;95%CI = 1.00–1.73) was each associated with lung cancer after adjustment for baseline BMI, as was waist (HRQ4-vs-Q1 = 1.75;95%CI = 1.09–2.79) and hip circumference (HRQ4-vs-Q1 = 0.62;95%CI = 0.39–0.99), after mutual adjustment for each other and baseline BMI. No associations were observed for vigorous activity or television watching. In summary, using a large prospective cohort study, we found no evidence that BMI at baseline or middle age was associated with decreased lung cancer risk in never smokers. If anything, we observed some evidence for positive associations with a larger BMI or waist circumference.
Ultra-Thin Asphalt Pavement Layer Interface Detection and Time Delay Estimation Based on MUSIC

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a non-destructive and non-intrusive subsurface investigation equipment which has been widely used in the field of civil engineering. Some challenges which GPR encountered for pavement subsurface inspection are: 1)GPR signal are easily corrupted by noise; 2) commercial GPR whose resolution is depended on system bandwidth, is not suitable for ultra-thin thickness estimation. This paper focus on using super-resolution MUSIC algorithm for ultra-thin pavement layer-interface detection and time-delay estimation compared to threshold detector and match filter.The results based on the simulation data under different conditions and measured GPR data are also presented.
The Interaction between Quality Control and Production

A real options model of resource extraction is considered where management controls both the extraction rates as well as the quality of extracted material earmarked for processing into final product. The minimum quality of material acceptable for processing is called the cutoff grade. If the cutoff is too high, much of the extracted material will go to waste exacting an opportunity cost. If the cutoff is too low, then input capacity constraints will be fully utilized, but with poor revenues at output. The optimal strategy finds a balance between these considerations. It is found that the opportunity costs associated with extracting the marginal unit of resource play a crucial role in finding the optimal strategic balance. Particularly important is the realization that such opportunity costs have a structure analogous to a European call option on the commodity in question. The model is developed in the presence of input and output processing stage constraints, and the set of candidate optimal policies is identified. Simulations are then used to expound on the nature of the optimal policies and the important role played by the opportunity costs.
Cross‐layer approach for an air interface of GEO satellite communication networks

Satellite communications play a significant role in supporting next‐generation IP‐based networks. To deploy state‐of‐the‐art satellite technologies supporting media‐rich applications, efficient utilization of radio resources and end‐to‐end Quality of Service support are mandatory requirements. The study of satellite communication constraints such as attenuation, propagation delays, fading is very critical to support user service level agreements. Adaptive resource management, advanced modulation and coding techniques and congestion control algorithms must be jointly conceived. Transport protocols need to address the impact on end‐to‐end system performance due to lower layer protocols. In this paper, we focus on cross‐layer adaptation and interaction analysis. In particular, we refer to TCP and lower layers in a geostationary‐based network architecture, assuming transport protocol enhancements such as TCP NewReno, SACK, Westwood+ and Hybla. At the physical layer, modulations and coding considered include BPSK and QPSK with convolutional coder/Viterbi decoder. The interest of this study is in evaluating the impact of two different transmission mode selection techniques: one scheme selects between the two modes on the basis of the layer 2 packer error rate performance (non‐cross‐layer method); while, the other technique selects the transmission mode on the basis of the TCP goodput performance (cross‐layer method). Our simulation results demonstrate that the second scheme permits the significant improvement of the end‐to‐end performance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Knowledge sharing: moving away from the obsession with best practices

Purpose – How companies can become better at knowing what they know, and share what they know have in recent years become dominant fields of research within knowledge management. The literature focuses on why people share knowledge, or why they fail to share knowledge, whilst the discussion of what they actually share has been pinned down to the concept of best practices. In this paper it is argued that there is more to knowledge sharing than the sharing of best practices. Knowledge sharing is more than the closing of performance gaps and the sharing of stocks of knowledge – knowledge sharing is also about bridging situations of organizational interdependencies and thereby supporting ongoing organizational activities.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is both theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, the concept of organizational interdependence is applied to create a conceptual framework encompassing four types of knowledge to be shared. The theoretical framework is applied on a case company to empi.
A Soft Error Tolerant 10T SRAM Bit-Cell With Differential Read Capability

We propose a quad-node ten transistor (10 T) soft error robust SRAM cell that offers differential read operation for robust sensing. The cell exhibits larger noise margin in sub-0.45 V regime and 26% less leakage current than the traditional soft error tolerant 12 T DICE SRAM cell. When compared to a conventional 6 T SRAM cell, the proposed cell offers similar noise margin as the 6 T cell at half the supply voltage, thus significantly saving the leakage power. In addition, the cell exhibits 98% lower soft error rate than the 6 T cell in accelerated neutron radiation tests carried out at TRIUMF on a 32-kb SRAM implemented in 90-nm CMOS technology.
The Edge Factor in Early Word Segmentation: Utterance-Level Prosody Enables Word Form Extraction by 6-Month-Olds

Past research has shown that English learners begin segmenting words from speech by 7.5 months of age. However, more recent research has begun to show that, in some situations, infants may exhibit rudimentary segmentation capabilities at an earlier age. Here, we report on four perceptual experiments and a corpus analysis further investigating the initial emergence of segmentation capabilities. In Experiments 1 and 2, 6-month-olds were familiarized with passages containing target words located either utterance medially or at utterance edges. Only those infants familiarized with passages containing target words aligned with utterance edges exhibited evidence of segmentation. In Experiments 3 and 4, 6-month-olds recognized familiarized words when they were presented in a new acoustically distinct voice (male rather than female), but not when they were presented in a phonologically altered manner (missing the initial segment). Finally, we report corpus analyses examining how often different word types occur at utterance boundaries in different registers. Our findings suggest that edge-aligned words likely play a key role in infants’ early segmentation attempts, and also converge with recent reports suggesting that 6-month-olds’ have already started building a rudimentary lexicon.
An approach for detecting encrypted insider attacks on OpenFlow SDN Networks

Data traffic on the Internet is growing continuously due to the high number of connected devices and increased number of applications and transactions performed online. To ensure information security, integrity and confidentiality, cryptography is applied over transmitted or stored data. Hence, even if an attacker capture data packets, its reading is hampered or not even possible. However, an attacker can also use cryptography to mask an attack in order to avoid detection, for example, by an Intrusion Detection System (IDS). Recent studies in network technologies introduced a new paradigm called Software Defined Networking (SDN). By decoupling data and control plans, the SDN architecture allows centralizing the network management, intelligence and control into a single point, called Controller. The OpenFlow protocol, widely adopted in SDN, provides specific messages to get statistical information of an OpenFlow switch. A Controller can request this information, which enables the development of new IDS models to detect encrypted attacks. In this work, we intend to identify encrypted insider attacks in SDN by developing a new IDS approach that can detect encrypted attacks.
Memory Reconsolidation and Extinction Have Distinct Temporal and Biochemical Signatures

Memory retrieval is not a passive phenomenon. Instead, it triggers a number of processes that either reinforce or alter stored information. Retrieval is thought to activate a second memory consolidation cascade (reconsolidation) that requires protein synthesis. Here, we show that the temporal dynamics of memory reconsolidation are dependent on the strength and age of the memory, such that younger and weaker memories are more easily reconsolidated than older and stronger memories. We also report that reconsolidation and extinction, two opposing processes triggered by memory retrieval, have distinct biochemical signatures: pharmacological antagonism of either cannabinoid receptor 1 or L-type voltage-gated calcium channels blocks extinction but not reconsolidation. These studies demonstrate the dynamic nature of memory processing after retrieval and represent a first step toward a molecular dissection of underlying mechanisms.
Palmprint recognition method using Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform and Local Binary Pattern Histogram

In the paper, we combine the Local Binary Pattern Histogram (LBPH) approach with Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform (DT-CWT) to propose a new method, DT-CWT based LBPH, for palmprint recognition. The approximate shift invariant property of the DT-CWT and its good directional selectively in 2D make it a very appealing choice for palmprint recognition. LBPH is a powerful texture description method, which considers both shape and texture information to represent image. By combining these two tools, we don't need to train samples to construct a palmprint model, which is not like some methods based on subspace discriminant analysis or statistical learning. In the approach, the dual-tree complex wavelet features are divided into small regions from which LBPH are extracted, and the all the sub-histograms are concatenated into a single feature histogram effectively representing the palmprint image. Our experimental results on our palmprint database show the proposed method outperform other considered methods.
Understanding the Lexical Simplification Needs of Non-Native Speakers of English

We report three user studies in which the Lexical Simplification needs of non-native English speakers are investigated. Our analyses feature valuable new insight on the relationship between the non-natives’ notion of complexity and various morphological, semantic and lexical word properties. Some of our findings contradict long-standing misconceptions about word simplicity. The data produced in our studies consists of 211,564 annotations made by 1,100 volunteers, which we hope will guide forthcoming research on Text Simplification for non-native speakers of English.
Improving Semantic Similarity for Pairs of Short Biomedical Texts with Concept Definitions and Ontology Structure

Finding semantic similarity between short biomedical texts, such as article abstracts or experiment descriptions, may provide important information for health researchers. This paper presents a method for calculating text similarity in the biomedical context. The method implements a pairwise concept semantic similarity measure that uses concept definitions and ontology structure. The respective results have demonstrated an improved performance in comparison with a previous version of the method using lexical-based measures as similarity function, as well as with other alternative tools for measuring text similarity.
Constructing Digital Library Information Platform Based On Cloud Computing

With the development of cloud computing, more and more fields are leveraging it for application revolution. As the information resources of university libraries are becoming digital and networked, the portal of university libraries is now the important source of information and services. However, the access of information and services becomes harder because of the massive data resources and services. Besides, the cost on collection expenditure, network devices and resources integration is also increasing. To this end, we propose to construct a digital library information platform using cloud computing technique. Specifically, in his paper, we propose a reference architecture of a cloud based digital library information platform, and then focus on the resource allocation component. In our experiment, we evaluate the efficiency of our resource allocation algorithm.
An Examination of What Principals Do to Create a Positive School Climate for Teachers in Elementary Schools and How Teachers Perceive Those Efforts

AN EXAMINATION OF WHAT PRINCIPALS DO TO CREATE A POSITIVE SCHOOL CLIMATE FOR TEACHERS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND HOW TEACHERS PERCEIVE THOSE EFFORTS By Carol Anne H. Ziolkowski, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2015 Director: Whitney Sherman Newcomb, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Educational Leadership School of Education This qualitative study of elementary school climate explored the actions principals take to create or maintain a positive school climate for their teachers and teachers’ perceptions of those efforts. The study included individual interviews of four elementary school principals to determine what they intentionally did to create or maintain a positive school climate. Next, focus group interviews of general education teachers from within the four participating schools were conducted to determine how teachers perceived the efforts of the principals. The findings in three of the four schools indicated several discrepancies between perceptions of the participating principals and teachers. While teachers acknowledged and appreciated some of the efforts of the principals, the teachers did not recognize those efforts as contributing to the climate of the school. The participants of the fourth school shared perceptions that the efforts of the principal had created a positive school climate. The principal maintained an open-door policy and built strong relationships with faculty members. The teachers perceived those efforts as contributing to the positive climate of the school.
Yardstick Competition to Tame the Leviathan

This papers analyzes the disciplining role of elections under asymmetric information when voters have to rely on relative performance evaluation to tame the Leviathan. If elections are held in different regions, voters are able to reduce political rents below the Leviathan outcome by carrying out adequate retrospective voting strategies. The paper compares a multi-candidate model to a two-party system with either independent or coordinated policies in the various regions. In general, voters are worse off in the two-party system. However, it is shown that the power of voters is strengthened in some sense by the two-party system if each party has a uniform leadership which determines policies in all regions.
Introduction of Novel Tool for Human Identification Based on Dental Image Matching

— Forensic dentistry involves the identification of people based on their dental recorded mainly available as radiograph images. An automated dental identification system consists of two main groups: Feature Extraction and Feature Matching. Here we are present new tool for human identification based on dental information and some image processing algorithm. In this paper, first we applied the ISEF algorithm on the dental image data base and get silent features likes contour, artificial prosthesis, number of cupids, etc. is extracted from the radiographs. Then applied different threshold values on these extracted dental images and get feature matching of different dental images and using in this information show that human identification is done easy base on dental images.
Anterior cingulate cortex: An fMRI analysis of conflict specificity and functional differentiation

In this event‐related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we provide evidence that the role of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in cognitive control may not be unitary, as the responses of different ACC subregions vary depending upon the nature of task‐irrelevant information. More specifically, using the color‐word Stroop task (congruent, incongruent, and neutral trial types), we examined the degree to which increases in neural activity within ACC are specific to conditions of conflict, as posited by the conflict monitoring theory (Botvinick et al. [1999]: Rev Neurosci 10:49–57; Carter et al. [ 1998 ]: Science 280:747–749). Although incongruent and congruent trials both involve two competing sources of color information (color word and ink color), only incongruent trials involve a direct conflict between task‐relevant and task‐irrelevant information. Although the anterior division of the ACC rostral zone exhibited conflict specific increases in neural activity (i.e., incongruent > congruent = neutral), the posterior division exhibited a more generalized pattern, increasing whenever the task‐irrelevant information was color related, regardless of whether it was conflicting (i.e., incongruent and congruent > neutral). Our data thus suggest a possible functional differentiation within the ACC. As such, it is unlikely that the role of the ACC in cognitive control will be able to be accommodated by a single unifying theory. Hum Brain Mapp, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Online real-time path planning for mobile robots based on wireless sensor network under unknown environment

Utilizing the advantages of wireless sensor network, sensor fusion for building occupancy grid map using probabilistic sensor model and ant colony algorithm using bionic swarm intelligence, an online real-time path planning algorithm for mobile nodes under unknown dynamic environment is proposed through three level planning control strategy. A practical implementation has been carried out to demonstrate the enhanced efficiency and accuracy of the proposed algorithm. Index Terms Wireless Sensor Network; Online Real-time Path Planning; Multi-sensor Fusion; Ant Colony algorithm; swarm intelligence; Probabilistic Map Building