Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visual motion processing and human tracking behavior

The accurate visual tracking of a moving object is a human fundamental skill that allows to reduce the relative slip and instability of the object's image on the retina, thus granting a stable, high-quality vision. In order to optimize tracking performance across time, a quick estimate of the object's global motion properties needs to be fed to the oculomotor system and dynamically updated. Concurrently, performance can be greatly improved in terms of latency and accuracy by taking into account predictive cues, especially under variable conditions of visibility and in presence of ambiguous retinal information. Here, we review several recent studies focusing on the integration of retinal and extra-retinal information for the control of human smooth pursuit. By dynamically probing the tracking performance with well established paradigms in the visual perception and oculomotor literature we provide the basis to test theoretical hypotheses within the framework of dynamic probabilistic inference. We will in particular present the applications of these results in light of state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms.
An Application of Energy and Exergy Analysis in Industrial Sector of India

The present article is dedicated for evaluating the industrial sector in terms of energetic and exergetic aspects. In this regard, energy and exergy utilization efficiencies during the period 2005-2011 are assessed based on real data obtained from Energy statistics of India. Sectoral energy and exergy analyses are conducted to study the variations of energy and exergy efficiencies, overall energy and exergy efficiencies for the entire sub-sector are found to be in the range of 67.23% to 77.83%. When compared with other neighbouring countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Turkey, the Indian industrial sector is the more efficient. Such difference is inevitable due to the proper use of fossil-fuel resources. It is concluded that the present technique and associated analysis is beneficial for analyzing sectoral energy and exergy utilization in India and provides the information on how efficiently energy is used. It is also helpful to establish standards to facilitate application in industry and in other processes for a successful energy planning towards sustainable development. Keywords—Energy; Exergy; Efficiency; Sectoral energy use; Industrial sector of India.
The Effects of Enforced, Rapid Deceleration on Performance in a Multiple Sprint Test

&NA; Lakomy, J., and D.T. Haydon. The effects of enforced, rapid deceleration on performance in a multiple sprint test. J. Strength Cond. Res. 18(3):579–583. 2004. —The nature of multiple sprint sports such as soccer, hockey, and rugby is such that deceleration plays an important part in the movement patterns of players during a game and training. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of deceleration on fatigue during repeated sprint efforts. A group of 18 elite field hockey players (all men) performed a running repeated sprint ability test (6 × 40 m using maximal effort and departing every 30 seconds). In one condition, there was no deceleration zone, and in the second condition, the test had a deceleration component (rapid deceleration to a stop within 6 m of the end of each sprint). Sprint times under each condition were compared using a repeatedmeasures analysis of variance. No significant difference was seen between the 2 conditions for mean sprint times (p > 0.05) or for the mean fatigue index (p > 0.05). However, results showed a divergent trend, and further analysis extrapolating the data for an increased number of sprints showed that a significant difference (p < 0.05) would have been seen at the 11th sprint. Although this study found that the deceleration zone had little effect on the 6‐sprint protocol, it was clear that the deceleration component would have shown an effect, giving rise to greater fatigue and slower sprint times, if the number of sprints had been increased. The implications are that deceleration training should be introduced into general fitness training programs for those competing in multiple sprint sports.
Associations of Trunk Fat Depots with Insulin Resistance, β Cell Function and Glycaemia - A Multiple Technique Study

Objective Central (truncal) adiposity is associated strongly with insulin resistance and diabetes. There are very few reports comparing methods of trunk fat measurement in their ability to predict glycaemia and insulin resistance. We report a comparative analysis of different trunk fat measurements in predicting glycaemia and insulin resistance in middle aged Indian men. Materials and Methods Trunk fat measurements were performed using anthropometry, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and computed tomography (CT) on 128 men. Additional measurements were taken to characterise insulin resistance (Matsuda index) and beta cell function (Insulinogenic Index), glycaemia (fasting and 120 min glucose concentrations). Using residual approach we compared the ability of different trunk fat measurement techniques to predict insulin resistance, beta cell function and glycaemia. Results There was a strong association between trunk fat measures from each technique with glycaemia and insulin resistance indices but not with the Insulinogenic Index. Insulin resistance and glycaemia, were best predicted using anthropometric measurements, notably by waist circumference and subscapular skinfold thickness. Neither MRI measures of trunk or visceral fat nor DXA trunk fat added significantly. CT liver density contributed to some extent to predict insulin resistance and 120 min glucose after anthropometric measurements. Conclusions Our results suggest that, in Indian men, anthropometric measurements are good predictors of glycaemia and insulin resistance. Other complex measurements such as MRI, DXA and CT make only a small addition to the prediction. This finding supports the application of anthropometry for determining trunk fat in clinical and epidemiological settings.
What Future Australian Professors in Economics and Business Think: Results from twin surveys of PhD students

ii ABSTRACT Who are the PhD students in Economics and Business in Australia? What do these future Australian economics professors think about common economic issues and university economics education? This paper investigates these questions by using data from twin surveys of would-be professors. The results indicate that PhD candidates surveyed hold a relatively reserved attitude towards the market-oriented ideas. Regarding economics education, they evaluate quantitative units (such as mathematics, statistics and econometrics units) very important, in addition to macroeconomics and microeconomics. The paper also compares these results with those of Australian economic professors and reports several interesting contrasts.
Sources of social integration in sorority women who live in residence halls

THESIS: Sources of Social Integration in Sorority Women Who Live in Residence Halls STUDENT: Molly Salisbury DEGREE: Master of Arts COLLEGE: Teachers College DATE: May, 2014 PAGES: 86 College students find belonging at institutions in multiple ways. For college women, the relationships they form through their involvements are important in their social integration. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the social integration experiences of sorority women who live in residence halls. This study was grounded in qualitative, phenomenological methodology. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with sorority women living in the residence halls who were at least sophomores. The researcher found sorority women had positive experiences of community and enriched relationship opportunities through their involvement in their sororities and residence halls. The women studied referenced the few relationships they made with the other people who lived near them in the residence hall. While these relationships were important to them, they were not as important as the relationships formed with their sisters in their sorority. Sisterhood provides a deeper, more meaningful connection shared through the bond of ritual and tradition. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research were also suggested.
A framework for analyzing contagion in assortative banking networks

We introduce a probabilistic framework that represents stylized banking networks with the aim of predicting the size of contagion events. Most previous work on random financial networks assumes independent connections between banks, whereas our framework explicitly allows for (dis)assortative edge probabilities (i.e., a tendency for small banks to link to large banks). We analyze default cascades triggered by shocking the network and find that the cascade can be understood as an explicit iterated mapping on a set of edge probabilities that converges to a fixed point. We derive a cascade condition, analogous to the basic reproduction number R0 in epidemic modelling, that characterizes whether or not a single initially defaulted bank can trigger a cascade that extends to a finite fraction of the infinite network. This cascade condition is an easily computed measure of the systemic risk inherent in a given banking network topology. We use percolation theory for random networks to derive a formula for the frequency of global cascades. These analytical results are shown to provide limited quantitative agreement with Monte Carlo simulation studies of finite-sized networks. We show that edge-assortativity, the propensity of nodes to connect to similar nodes, can have a strong effect on the level of systemic risk as measured by the cascade condition. However, the effect of assortativity on systemic risk is subtle, and we propose a simple graph theoretic quantity, which we call the graph-assortativity coefficient, that can be used to assess systemic risk.
On dynamics and voltage control of the Modular Multilevel Converter

This paper discusses the impact of modulation on stability issues of the Modular Multilevel Converter (M2C). The main idea is to describe the operation of this converter system mathematically, and suggest a control method that offers stable operation in the whole operation range. A possible approach is to as­sume a continuous model, where all the modules in each arm are represented by variable voltage sources, and as a result, all pulse width modulation effects are disregarded. After simulating this model and test­ing different control methods, useful conclusions on the operation of the M2C have been extracted. The control methods are then implemented on a model with discrete half-bridge modules, in order to compare the results and to validate the continuous model approach. When assuring that this model functions as expected, the goal of this paper is to conclude into a self-stabilizing voltage controller. A controller is proposed, which eliminates circulating currents between the phase legs and balances the arm voltages regardless of the imposed alteranting current.
Fast Graph Drawing Algorithm Revealing Networks Cores

Graph is a powerful tool to model relationships between elements and has been widely used in different research areas. Size and complexity of newly acquired graphs prohibit manual representations and urge a need for automatic visualization methods. We are interested with the node-links diagram which represents each node as a glyph and edge as a line between the corresponding nodes. % We present a novel layout algorithm that emphasizes the cores of very large networks (up to several hundred thousand of nodes and million of edges) in few seconds or minutes. Our method uses a hierarchical coreness decomposition of the graph and a combination of existing layout algorithms according to the clusters topologies. Area-aware drawing algorithms which produce node overlap-free drawings are used to reduce the visual clutter. Edges are bundled along the hierarchy of clusters to highlight the network communities and reduce edge visual clutter. % We validated our approach by comparing our method against one of the fastest method of the state of the art on a benchmark of 23 large graphs extracted from various sources. We have statistically proved that our method performs faster while providing meaningful results.
Subspace-based preceding vehicle detection

In this paper, a vision-based preceding vehicle detection scheme using the statistical information of the vehicles and non-vehicles obtained is presented. K clusters are created using the simple K -means clustering algorithm. The partitions are recomputed using the nested subspacing concept. Mahalanobis distance based measure is used for grouping the image patterns and recognizing the vehicles. The performance of the proposed vehicle detection scheme is compared with that of Multi-Clustered Modified Quadratic Discriminant Function (MC-MQDF) method of preceding vehicle detection. Experimental results prove that the proposed scheme is more suitable for a reliable driver assistance system.
Awareness-Driven Phase Transitions in Very Large Scale Distributed Systems

Recent research in the field of complex networks has shown that - beyond microscopic structural qualities - global statistical parameters are sufficient to describe a surprising number of their macroscopic properties. This article argues that such statistical parameters can be monitored by nodes in a decentralized and efficient way. The so achieved awareness of a network's global parameters can be used by nodes for actively influencing them to optimize relevant characteristics of the overall network. For such an adaptation, the network-analogy of "phase transitions" in physical systems can be used. In this article the general concept of such an awareness-driven statistical adaptation is presented using power law networks as an example. For this important class of networks practical algorithms are introduced. Based on recent advances in reliable power law fitting, a gossip scheme has been developed which is suitable to make individual nodes aware of a power law network's critical exponent. In order to influence this parameter, decentralized reconnection rules are presented. The combination of both strategies facilitates a feedback control of large scale systems' emergent power law properties.
Compressed sensing method for human activity sensing using mobile phone accelerometers

This paper presents the first complete design to apply the compressed sensing (CS) theory to activity sensor data gathering for smart phones. Today, most of the mobile phones are equipped with multiple sensors, such as cameras, GPS, and accelerometers. By exploiting the sensing features, we capture many different events and share them over the mobile network. One of the most important challenges for such a participatory sensing system is to reduce the battery consumption of the mobile device. We overcome this challenge by reducing the communication data, without introducing intensive computation at mobile terminals. The CS technique consists of very simple matrix operations at the mobile side, and CPU-intensive reconstruction is performed on the resource-rich machine on the network side. Since CS is a lossy compression technique, the reconstructed signal contains errors depending on the degree of sparseness of the original signal. We evaluated the proposed method by using a large amount of real activity data consisting of six basic activities performed by 90 test subjects. We also implemented our method on the iPhone/iPod platform and showed that our method can reduce power consumption by approximately 16% as compared with ZIP compression, while maintaining the error below 10%.
Metrology for a Sustainable Development September , 17 – 22 , 2006 , Rio de Janeiro , Brazil TIME-VARYING BUTTERWORTH FILTERS WITH COMPENSATED G ROUP DELAY

This paper presents the concept of time-varying Butterworth filters with linear phase response. The compensation of the phase characteristics is carried out with the aid of the phase shifter system. The paper shows that it is possible to shorten the transient state in low-pass phasecompensated analog filters by varying in time selected parameters. This paper contains simulation results of the proposed filters and comparison with the classic circuits.
The Relationships among School Counselors' Multicultural Competence, Demographic Data and Ethical Decision-Making.

principles can ignore the potential harm to particular individuals arising from a given decision” (p.149). Although there is research available examining the various ethical issues facing school counselors, until now, there had not been research examining the relationships among school counselors’ multicultural competence, demographic data and ethical decision-making ability. This research explored school counselors’ ethical decision-making ability utilizing The Ethical Decision-Making Scale Revised (EDMS-R) and The Multicultural Counseling Competence and Training SurveyRevised, School Counselor Version (MCCTS-R). This chapter includes the following information: brief review of literature, principle findings, discussion, which includes implications for future research, and a summary. First, a brief review of the literature is presented including highlights from chapter three. Next, a detailed discussion of the study findings and statement of the research questions and hypotheses are included. The conclusions are presented, followed by implications and recommendations that address the potential issues related to the outcome of the research and ethical decision-making in school counselors. The conclusions are followed by recommendations for future research in the area of multicultural competence and ethical decision-making in school counselors. Lastly, a summary is provided regarding the potential considerations that influence the ethical decision-making ability of school counselors.
Effects of Acute Direct Current Stimulation : Somatic and Synaptic Terminal Effects Running title : Somatic and Terminal Origin of DCS Effects

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique to modulate cortical excitability. Although increased/decreased excitability under the anode/cathode electrode is nominally associated with membrane depolarization/hyperpolarization, which cellular compartments (somas, dendrites, axons and their terminals) mediate changes in cortical excitability remains unaddressed. Here we consider the acute effects of direct current stimulation on excitatory synaptic efficacy. Using multi-scale computational models and rat cortical brain slices we show: 1) Typical tDCS montages produce predominantly tangential (relative to the cortical surface) direction currents (4-12 times radial direction currents), even directly under electrodes. 2) Radial current flow (parallel to the somatodendritic axis) modulates synaptic efficacy consistent with somatic polarization, with depolarization facilitating synaptic efficacy. 3) Tangential current flow (perpendicular to the somatodendritic axis) modulates synaptic efficacy acutely (during stimulation) in an afferent pathway specific manner that is consistent with terminal polarization, with hyperpolarization facilitating synaptic efficacy. 4) Maximal polarization during uniform direct current stimulation is expected at distal (branch length is >3 times the membrane length constant) synaptic terminals, independent of and 2-3 times more susceptible than pyramidal neuron somas. We conclude that
Identification of digital modulation types using the wavelet transform

Automatic identification of the digital modulation type of a signal has found applications in many areas, including electronic warfare, surveillance and threat analysis. This paper studies the use of wavelet transform to distinguish QAM signal, PSK signal and FSK signal. The approach is to use the wavelet transform to extract the transient characteristics in a digital modulation signal, and apply the distinct pattern in wavelet transform domain for simple identification. The relevant statistics for optimum threshold selection are derived under the condition that the input noise is additive white Gaussian. The performance of the identification scheme is investigated through simulations. When the CNR is greater than 5 dB, the percentage of correct identification is about 97% with 50 observation symbols.
Behavior Observation-Based Dynamic Analysis for Componentized Internet Applications

This paper proposes a reusable software dynamic analysis methodology for componentized Internet applications, which is composed of two important parts: execution model construction and runtime behavior analysis. Firstly, the related concepts of behavior observation are presented. Secondly, according to the behavior observations extracted from running applications, the multi benchmarking behavior model and runtime component interaction model are constructed. Then, by means of the multi benchmarking behavior model, a software behavior analysis method is proposed to detect functional and performance anomaly, and to locate the aging or failure components. Finally, using the component interaction model, a failure propagation algorithm is proposed to localize the failure. The proposed models and methods have been applied to JPetStore which is a typical J2EE application. The experimental results show that it is effective, and a good solution for locating failure component and localizing failure in software rejuvenation decision and recovery phases.
Squid Pen Chitin Chitooligomers as Food Colorants Absorbers

One of the most promising applications of chitosanase is the conversion of chitinous biowaste into bioactive chitooligomers (COS). TKU033 chitosanase was induced from squid pen powder (SPP)-containing Bacillus cereus TKU033 medium and purified by ammonium sulfate precipitation and column chromatography. The enzyme was relatively more thermostable in the presence of the substrate and had an activity of 93% at 50 °C in a pH 5 buffer solution for 60 min. Furthermore, the enzyme used for the COS preparation was also studied. The enzyme products revealed various mixtures of COS that with different degrees of polymerization (DP), ranging from three to nine. In the culture medium, the fermented SPP was recovered, and it displayed a better adsorption rate (up to 96%) for the disperse dyes than the water-soluble food colorants, Allura Red AC (R40) and Tartrazne (Y4). Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopic (FT-IR) analysis proved that the adsorption of the dyes onto fermented SPP was a physical adsorption. Results also showed that fermented SPP was a favorable adsorber and could be employed as low-cost alternative for dye removal in wastewater treatment.
Surviving Congestion in Geo-Distributed Storage Systems

We present Vivace, a key-value storage system for web applications that span many geographically-distributed sites. Vivace provides strong consistency and replicates data across sites for access locality and disaster tolerance. Vivace is designed to cope well with network congestion across sites, which occurs because the bandwidth across sites is smaller than within sites. To deal with congestion, Vivace relies on two novel algorithms that prioritize a small amount of critical data to avoid delays due to congestion. We evaluate Vivace to show its feasibility and effectiveness.