Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Object retrieval using configurations of salient regions

In this paper, we describe an approach for retrieving a ranked list of images containing the same object as the query. Images in the corpus are primitively represented by a set of salient region descriptors so that the retrieval approach can works despite of changes in scale, illumination, and partial occlusion. Based on the sparse frequency vector representation method, we have improved the bag-of-features method to integrate the spatial co-occurrence information into the image representation. Instead of using the spatial configuration as a further verification stage following a prior filter stage, our method integrates the spatial information into the image representation and merges two stages in order to speed up the retrieval performance. To efficiently use the spatial configurations of salient regions, we propose a practical method to explore the content of image and flexibly cluster the salient regions into groups of neighbours. And the combination of information from the local co-occurrence of salient regions with the sparse frequency vector representation method is a major contribution of our work. Experiment results on a ground-truth dataset and complexity comparison are provided to demonstrate the advantage of our way of using spatial information for object retrieval work.
Distributing Labels on Infinite Trees

Sturmian words are infinite binary words with many equivalent definitions: They have a minimal factor complexity among all aperiodic sequences; they are balanced sequences (the labels 0 and 1 are as evenly istributed as possible) and they can be constructed using a mechanical definition. All this properties make them good candidates for being extremal points in scheduling problems over two processors. In this paper, we consider the problem of generalizing Sturmian words to trees. The problem is to evenly distribute labels 0 and 1 over infinite trees. We show that (strongly) balanced trees exist and can also be constructed using a mechanical process as long as the tree is irrational. Such trees also have a minimal factor complexity. Therefore they bring the hope that extremal scheduling properties of Sturmian words can be extended to such trees, as least partially. Such possible extensions are illustrated by one such example.
Public Opinion and National Security in Western Europe: Consensus Lost?

Crisis or consensus? - public opinion and national security in Western Europe the ambiguous politics of parity - power and deterrence in European opinion collision and collusion - the public, nuclear weapons and arms control the three pillars of Western security - public opinion and the NATO alliance old politics and new politics - the public and defence spending two track - continuity, change and consensus in the politics of European security. Appendices: statistical significance between subsamples a note on sources of public opinion data.
Disabilities and Labour Market Earnings in Australia

This research examines the effect of disability status on the labour market earnings of males and females in Australia. The results indicate that disabilities have a large impact on labour earnings, however, this impact is not uniform across disabilities or between males and females for the same disability. Disfigurement or deformity disabilities, for example, have a significant impact on female earnings but appear largely insignificant for male earnings. In contrast, blackouts, fits and loss of consciousness have a strong effect on male earnings and a much weaker effect on female earnings. Overall, emotional and nervous conditions appear to have the largest impact on both female and male labour market earnings.
The Accuracy of the Non-continuous I Test for One- Dimensional Arrays with References Created by Induction Variables

One-dimensional arrays with subscripts formed by induction variables in real programs appear quite frequently. For most famous data dependence testing methods, checking if integer-valued solutions exist for one-dimensional arrays with references created by induction variable is very difficult. The I test, which is a refined combination of the GCD and Banerjee tests, is an efficient and precise data dependence testing technique to compute if integer-valued solutions exist for one-dimensional arrays with constant bounds and single increments. In this paper, the non-continuous I test, which is an extension of the I test, is proposed to figure out whether there are integer-valued solutions for one-dimensional arrays with constant bounds and non-sing ularincrements or not. Experiments with the benchmarks that have been cited from Livermore and Vector Loop, reveal that there are definitive results for 67 pairs of one- dimensional arrays that were tested. 1 a X a X a X a X a n n n n        
Tail equivalence for some time-shared systems

Many of recent studies have proved the tail equivalence result for Egalitarian Processor Sharing system: [EQUATION], where B (resp. V) is service requirement (resp. sojourn time) of a customer; for PS, g = 1 - ρ. In this paper, we consider time-shared systems in which the server capacity is shared by existing customers in proportion to (dynamic) weights assigned to customers. We consider two systems, 1) in which the weight of a customer depends on it Age (attained service), and 2) in which the weight depends on the residual processing time (RPT). We allow for a parameterized family of weight functions such that the weight associated with a customer that has received a service (or, has a RPT) of x units is ω(x) = xα for some -∞ < α < ∞. We then study the sojourn time of a customer under such scheduling discipline and provide conditions on α for tail equivalence to hold true, and also give the value of g as a function of α.
A populous intermediate-age open cluster and evidence of an embedded cluster among the FSR globular cluster candidates

We study the nature of the globular cluster (GC) candidates FSR 1603 and FSR 1755 selected from the catalogue of Froebrich, Scholz & Raftery. Their properties are investigated with Two-Micron All-Sky Survey field-star decontaminated photometry, which is used to build colour‐magnitude diagrams (CMDs) and stellar radial density profiles. FSR 1603 has the open cluster Ruprecht 101 as optical counterpart, and we show it to be a massive intermediate-age cluster. Relevant parameters of FSR 1603 are the age ≈1 Gyr, distance from the Sun d� ≈ 2.7 kpc, Galactocentric distance RGC ≈ 6.4 kpc, core radius RC ≈ 1.1 pc, mass function slope χ ≈ 1.8, observed stellar mass (for stars with mass in the range 1.27 m 2.03 M� ) Mobs ≈ (5)
Robust PSS design using H∞ loop shaping method over variations in inertia constant of SMIB system

Low frequency oscillations are one of the major problems which can adversely affect stability of power system. In order to repress this problem; usually a power system stabilizer is used. Performance of Conventional Power System Stabilizer (CPSS) will degrade due to any deviation from its quiescent operating state. Variations in system inertia constant; significantly play a role in causing the low frequency oscillations; which in turn affect the power system frequency. The inertia constant also affects the manner in which a disturbed system regains its steady state. So a robust PSS is required to achieve a good frequency stability for single machine infinite bus (SMIB) system; which can attain robustness against variations in inertia constant. This paper elucidates the; H∞ loop shaping method to design a PSS for a simplified Heffron-Phillips model of SMIB system. Designed robust PSS ensures the robustness of the system against parameter variation in inertia constant. It also ensures the stability and has superior oscillation damping capacity against system inertia constant.
Towards a non-conformity detection method between conceptual and business process models

The lack of conformity between the actions performed in a business process and the structure defined in the conceptual model for information systems has become a frequent concern in organizations. If this lack of conformity is identified at early stages, it becomes less expensive to be corrected. The aim of this paper is to present a method for detecting the nonconformity between information systems' conceptual models and business process models. Such detection is performed through animation of the objects specified in the conceptual model based on the related descriptions set in the business process model. The proposed method includes a tool that interoperates with the USE tool, which analyzes the structural violations defined in the conceptual model.
Performance of Time-Varying Correlation Estimation Methods

This study evaluates and compares alternative time series correlation modeling techniques, using a broad database of 33 variables and 467 asset pairs in nine different asset classes. For each pair of assets a time-varying moving window correlation (MWC) is computed from different moving itional correlation (DCC) time series model, first documenting the closeness of various MWC estimates to DCC, and next evaluating the effectiveness of the models in a portfolio context. We consider four statistical measures of closeness to DCC. According to the concordance correlation coefficient, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic, and the sign agreement test, across all asset pairs under consideration, the shorter to intermediate moving windows (252 days and below) tend to lie closest to DCC; whereas for the mean square error measure, longer windows tend to best match DCC. However, there are some patterns distinct to certain asset classes such as equity and credit, in which both mean square error and concordance correlation coefficient measures of closeness suggest that MWC match DCC estimates at shorter moving windows. In the portfolio management context, the economic closeness test based on 2,802 monthly rebalanced two-asset portfolios shows that generally MWCs are closer to DCC at the longer window lengths.
Probability Distribution Functions Based Face Recognition System Using Discrete Wavelet Subbands

Face recognition has recently been the centre of attention of many researchers (Jain et al. 2004). The earliest work in digital face recognition was reported by Bledsoe in 1964. Statistical face recognition systems such as principal component analysis (PCA) based eigenfaces introduced by Turk and Pentland in 1991, attracted lots of attention. Fisherfaces method based on linear discriminant analysis was introduced later on by Belhumeur et al. (1997). Many of these methods are based on grey scale images; however colour images are increasingly being used since they add additional biometric information for face recognition (Marcel and Bengio, 381). PDFs obtained from different colour channels of a face image can be considered as the signature of the face, which can be used to represent the face image in a low dimensional space (Demirel and Anbarjafari, VISSAP 2008). Images with small changes in translation, rotation and illumination still possess high correlation in their corresponding PDFs. PDF of an image is a normalized version of an image histogram which have been used in many image processing applications such as object detection (Laptev, 2006) and face recognition (Yoo and Oh, 1999; Rodriguez and Marcel, 2006; Demirel and Anbarjafari, IEEE Signal Processing Letter, 2008). Nowadays, wavelets have been used quite frequently in image processing. It has been used for feature extraction (Wang and chen, 2006), denoising (Starck et al., 2002), compression (Lamard et al. 2005), and face recognition (Liu et al., 2007; Demirel et al., 2008). The decomposition of images into different frequency ranges permits the isolation of the frequency components introduced by “intrinsic deformations” or “extrinsic factors” into certain subbands (Dai and Yan, 2007). This process results in isolating small changes in an image mainly in high frequency subband images. Hence discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is a suitable tool to be used for designing pose invariant face recognition system. Another important issue in face recognition system is face localization. There are several methods for this task such as skin tone based face localization for face segmentation. Skin is
Performance Analysis of the Decentralized Eigendecomposition and ESPRIT Algorithm

In this paper, we consider performance analysis of the decentralized power method for the eigendecomposition of the sample covariance matrix based on the averaging consensus protocol. An analytical expression of the second order statistics of the eigenvectors obtained from the decentralized power method, which is required for computing the mean square error (MSE) of subspace-based estimators, is presented. We show that the decentralized power method is not an asymptotically consistent estimator of the eigenvectors of the true measurement covariance matrix unless the averaging consensus protocol is carried out over an infinitely large number of iterations. Moreover, we introduce the decentralized ESPRIT algorithm which yields fully decentralized direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimates. Based on the performance analysis of the decentralized power method, we derive an analytical expression of the MSE of DOA estimators using the decentralized ESPRIT algorithm. The validity of our asymptotic results is demonstrated by simulations.
A comparison of microelectrodes for a visual cortical prosthesis using finite element analysis

Altering the geometry of microelectrodes for use in a cortical neural prosthesis modifies the electric field generated in tissue, thereby affecting electrode efficacy and tissue damage. Commonly, electrodes with an active region located at the tip (“conical” electrodes) are used for stimulation of cortex but there is argument to believe this geometry may not be the best. Here we use finite element analysis to compare the electric fields generated by three types of electrodes, a conical electrode with exposed active tip, an annular electrode with active area located up away from the tip, and a striped annular electrode where the active annular region has bands of insulation interrupting the full active region. The results indicate that the current density on the surface of the conical electrodes can be up to 10 times greater than the current density on the annular electrodes of the same height, which may increase the propensity for tissue damage. However choosing the most efficient electrode geometry in order to reduce power consumption is dependent on the distance of the electrode to the target neurons. If neurons are located within 10 μm of the electrode, then a small conical electrode would be more power efficient. On the other hand if the target neuron is greater than 500 μm away—as happens normally when insertion of an array of electrodes into cortex results in a “kill zone” around each electrode due to insertion damage and inflammatory responses—then a large annular electrode would be more efficient.
The Impact of Blood Pressure on Kidney Function in the Elderly: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background/Aims: Intensive blood pressure (BP) target decreases blood perfusion of kidneys that attenuates the benefits of BP treatment in elderly hypertensive individuals. The optimal BP goal for renal function in the hypertensive elderly has been unclear. We investigated the impact of BP on renal function to define the appropriate BP target in the elderly. Methods: A total of 28,258 elderly subjects were categorized into normotensive (Norm), hypotensive (Hypo) and hypertensive (Hyper) groups according to BP levels. Systolic, diastolic and pulse BP (SBP, DBP and PBP) were further stratified by 10 mmHg. Blood urea nitrogen, serum creatinine, uric acid, glomerular filtration rate (GFR), renal insufficiency prevalence (RIP) and proteinuria prevalence (PP) were compared among different groups and BP strata. The RIP and PP in the elderly with obesity, hyperlipidemia or diabetes in Norm, Hypo and Hyper groups were evaluated. Results: GFR in Hypo and Hyper groups was significantly lower than that in Norm group. The RIP and PP was higher in Hypo and Hyper groups than that in the Norm group. Proteinuria became more prevalent when SBP was >140 mmHg or <90 mmHg. DBP>80mmHg increased PP while DBP<70 mmHg increased RIP. PBP>60 mmHg led to an increased RIP and PP. Obesity or hyperlipidemia only combined with hypertension caused a significantly increased RIP and PP. Diabetes independent of hypertension contributed to higher RIP and PP. Conclusions: The most beneficial BP target for kidney function in the elderly may be SBP of 90-140 mmHg and DBP of 70-80 mmHg. PBP <60 mmHg may be appropriate.
Change in the moving bodymind : quantitative results from a pilot study on the use of the bodymind approach (BMA) to psychotherapeutic group work with patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUSs)

Abstract Background: This article reports quantitative results from a pilot study in primary care (PC) undertaken from 2004–2007. The intervention programme, derived from movement psychotherapy, was termed ‘Learning groups: the BodyMind approach (BMA),’ and emphasised a verbal and non-verbal integrated model, awareness of the inter-relationship between body and mind and a self-managing framework. Aim: To evaluate systematically the outcomes of a 12-week group BMA intervention programme with patients suffering from anxiety/depression with at least one chronic (over two years) medically unexplained symptom (MUS), another term for a psychosomatic condition or somatoform disorder. Method: A mixed method was applied to a single-case design. Outcome measures completed at baseline, mid-, post- intervention and three-month follow-up were the Measure Yourself Medical Outcome Profile (MYMOP) and the Counselling Outcome Routine Evaluation (CORE). Results: Increased activity levels and well-being; more effective copi.
A local trust model based on time influence function in P2P networks

In peer-to-peer network environment, there is no centralized management authority to be relied on, so the service provider and service requester have to establish some assessment model, and evaluate the dynamic behavior of others, then choose more credible trusted entities to interact. Only in this way can they ensure security, safety and reliable decisions. On the basis of EigenTrust model, a local trust value computation model considering time effect function is put forward, and it reduces the network overhead, increases the binding force of malicious nodes, and makes the trust value computation model more reliable and accurate. Simulation experiments show that the improved model proposed in this paper greatly reduces the network overhead indeed, and transaction success rate of nodes is higher than EigenTrust model in the presence of malicious nodes in the P2P system.
Automatic differentiation as a tool in engineering design

Automatic Differentiation (AD) is a tool that systematically implements the chain rule of differentiation to obtain the derivatives of functions calculated by computer programs. In this paper, it is assessed as a tool for engineering design. The paper discusses the forward and reverse modes of AD, their computing requirements, as well as approaches to implementing AD. It continues with the application of two different tools to two medium-size structural analysis problems to generate sensitivity information typically necessary in an optimization or design situation. The paper concludes with the observation that AD is to be preferred to finite differencing in most cases, as long as sufficient computer storage is available; in some instances, AD may be the alternative to consider in lieu of analytical sensitivity analysis.
Top-Down Visual Saliency Detection in Optical Satellite Images Based on Local Adaptive Regression Kernel

This paper proposes a novel top-down visual saliency detection method for optical satellite images using local adaptive regression kernels. This method provides a saliency map by measuring the likeness of image patches to a given single template image. The local adaptive regression kernel (LARK) is used as a descriptor to extract feature and compare against analogous feature from the target image. A multi-scale pyramid of the target image is constructed to cope with large-scale variations. In addition, accounting for rotation variations, the histogram of kernel orientation is employed to estimate the rotation angle of image patch, and then comparison is performed after rotating the patch by the estimated angle. Moreover, we use the bounded partial correlation (BPC) to compare features between image patches and the template so as to rapidly generate the saliency map. Experiments were performed in optical satellite images to find airplanes, and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective and robust in complex scenes.
Monetary Conditions Index for India

The authors attempt to construct a monetary conditions index (MCI) for India in order to take both interest rate and exchange rate channels simultaneously into consideration while evaluating the stance of monetary policy and evolving monetary conditions. The paper also constructs a "broad" MCI which incorporates credit growth as an additional indicator of monetary conditions. Since the index is constructed using differences between actual and an â€œarbitrarilyâ€ chosen base period, the index only represents a relative degree of change and not an absolute measure. No significance is usually attached to the level of the index and it should not be interpreted too mechanistically. [RBI Occassional Papers, Winter 2006].
Identification and Analysis of a Novel Heparin-Binding Glycoprotein Encoded by Human Herpesvirus 7

ABSTRACT Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) and HHV-7 are closely related betaherpesviruses that encode a number of genes with no known counterparts in other herpesviruses. The product of one such gene is the HHV-6 glycoprotein gp82-105, which is a major virion component and a target for neutralizing antibodies. A 1.7-kb cDNA clone from HHV-7 was identified which contains a large open reading frame capable of encoding a predicted primary translational product of 468 amino acids (54 kDa) with 13 cysteine residues and 9 potential N-linked glycosylation sites. This putative protein, which we have termed gp65, was homologous to HHV-6 gp105 (30% identity) and contained a single potential membrane-spanning domain located near its amino terminus. Comparison of the cDNA sequence with that of the viral genome revealed that the gene encoding gp65 contains eight exons, spanning almost 6 kb of the viral genome at the right (3′) end of the HHV-7 genome. Northern (RNA) blot analysis with poly(A)+ RNA from HHV-7-infected cells revealed that the cDNA insert hybridized to a single major RNA species of 1.7 kb. Antiserum raised against a purified, recombinant form of gp65 recognized a protein of roughly 65 kDa in sucrose density gradient-purified HHV-7 preparations; treatment with PNGase F reduced this glycoprotein to a putative precursor of approximately 50 kDa. Gp65-specific antiserum also neutralized the infectivity of HHV-7, while matched preimmune serum did not do so. Finally, analysis of the biochemical properties of recombinant gp65 revealed a specific interaction with heparin and heparan sulfate proteoglycans and not with closely related molecules such as N-acetylheparin and de-N-sulfated heparin. At least two domains of the protein were found to contribute to heparin binding. Taken together, these findings suggest that HHV-7 gp65 may contribute to viral attachment to cell surface proteoglycans.