Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Observer experience and Antarctic minke whale sighting ability in IWC/IDCR-SOWER surveys

The relationship between observer experience and the number of minke whale schools sighted on International Whaling Commission/International Decade of Cetacean Research-Southern Ocean Whale and Ecosystem Research (IWC/IDCR-SOWER) surveys from 1993/94 to 1998/99 is investigated for Independent Observer (IO) mode survey. Observer experience is defined as the number of past sightings surveys in which the observer participated. During the third circumpolar set of surveys (from 1991/92 onwards), about half of the observers had participated in fewer than five previous sightings surveys. Based upon the QAIC model selection criterion, the observers are classified into two groups depending on their experience: ‘Beginners’ (0-4 surveys) and ‘Experts’ ( > 4). The sighting rate for minke whale schools by Beginners is estimated to be 42% lower than that by Expert observers. Furthermore, perpendicular distances to the sightings do not show significant differences in relation to observer experience. These results jointly indicate that the probability of detection on the trackline, g(0), may be less than one when Beginners are amongst those observing. Abundance estimation for minke whales in IO mode involves the sightings made by triple observer combinations, with two observers in the barrel and one observer in the Independent Observer Platform (IOP) all searching simultaneously. Surprisingly, given the result above, no significant trend in sighting rate with the combined experience of this three-observer combination is detected. This might be an artifact of small sample size for some observer combinations, such as Experts in all platforms. When observer combinations in the barrel are pooled across, the estimated trend in the sighting rate with combined observer experience becomes steeper. Furthermore, when like-minke sightings are also taken into account, the trend becomes steeper still. In this case, when observations are pooled across observer combinations in the barrel, a model for sighting rate that includes an observer effect is selected in terms of the QAIC criteria. These analyses thus provide suggestive evidence that the introduction of Beginner observers during the third circumpolar set of surveys may have reduced g(0) and hence negatively biased abundance estimates for minke whales, both in absolute terms and compared with estimates from the second circumpolar set of surveys.
Robust fault estimation for linear parameter-varying time-delay systems

This paper addresses the robust fault estimation problem for a class of linear parameter-varying (LPV) systems with time delays. It is assumed that the state-space data depend affinely on the time-varying parameters that can be measured in real-time and the time-delay is unknown but with bounded variation rates. As an alternative to robust residual generation in FDI, this paper is concerned with the development of a robust fault estimator which has the same parameter dependence as the plant, can be characterized via a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) and has robustness to exogenous disturbance and plant time-delay. To demonstrate the proposed method, an illustrative example is provided.
Experimental Indications of Three-dimensional Galois Representations from the Cohomology of SL(3, Z)

Conjecturally, any “algebraic” automorphic represent ation on GL(n) should have an n-d imensional Galois representation attached. Many examples of algebraic automorphic representations come from the cohomology over C of congruence subgroups of GL(n, Z). On the other hand, the first author has conjectured that for any Hecke eigenclass in the mod p cohomology of a congruence subgroup of GL(n Z) there should be In attached n-dimensional Galois representation. By computer, we found Heeke eigenclasses in the mod p co-homology of certain congruence subgroups of SL(3, Z). In a range of examples, we then found a Galois representation (uniquely determined up to isomorphism by our data) that seemed to be attac hed to the Hecke eigenclass.
Energy-efficient vision on the PULP platform for ultra-low power parallel computing

Many-core architectures structured as fabrics of tightly-coupled clusters have shown promising results on embedded computer vision benchmarks, providing state-of-art performance with a reduced power budget. We propose PULP (Parallel processing Ultra-Low Power platform), an architecture built on clusters of tightly-coupled OpenRISC ISA cores, with advanced techniques for fast performance and energy scalability that exploit the capabilities of the STMicroelectronics UTB FD-SOI 28nm technology. As a use case for PULP, we show that a computationally demanding vision kernel based on Convolutional Neural Networks can be quickly and efficiently switched from a low power, low frame-rate operating point to a high frame-rate one when a detection is performed. Our results show that PULP performance can be scaled over a 1x-354x range, with a peak performance/power efficiency of 211 GOPS/W.
Seeing and Being Seen

This paper, based on a hermeneutic literature review, explores eye contact in psychotherapy from three different perspectives: mother-infant research, neurosciences and psychoanalytic psychotherapists’ writing. The authors subsequently explore their own experiences and synthesise their findings to recommend the use of eye contact as an intentional and necessary psychotherapeutic tool. Whakarāpopotonga Ko tēnei tuhinga, whakapapahia nei i runga i te whakamāramatanga arotake tuhinga, he tūhuranga whakamau kanohi mai i ngā tirohanga e toru i roto i ngā whakaoranga hinengaro; te rangahau whāea-pēpi, pūtaiao mate ioio me ngā tuhinga tātarihanga hinengaro ā ngā kaiwhakaora hinengaro. Whai muri mai ka tūhurahia e ngā kaituhi ō rātau ake whēako ka hono i ngā hua ki te whakahau kia tautokohia te whakamau kanohi hai taumahi whakaora hinengaro mārire.
Yeasts associated with the New Zealand Nothofagus honeydew system

New Zealand honeydew beech forests are the only natural ecosystem where large quantities of above-ground labile carbon are added year-round. Microbes can potentially play an important role in the flux of nutrients through food webs; because of their potential for specialisation to sugar-rich niches we tested for the presence of yeasts in the honeydew system. We found at least two abundant species (Hanseniaspora osmophila and Candida railenensis), as well as two species (Zygosaccharomyces cidri and Z rouxii) likely present at lower frequencies. Only Candida railenensis is known to be associated with Nothofagus, but the other species are associated with fruits and winemaking/fermentation. These other species found in honeydew may be indigenous, but it is also possible that they represent microbial examples of invasive species and consequently add to the considerable list of human-introduced species that have invaded New Zealand's ecosystem. Â© New Zealand Ecological Society.
PAHs in circumstellar disks around Herbig Ae/Be stars

We investigate the presence and properties of PAHs on the surface of circumstellar disks around Herbig Ae/Be stars by comparing the predictions of disk models with observations. We present results of a radiation transfer code for disks heated by the central star, in hydrostatic equilibrium in the vertical direction (flared disks). The dust is a mixture of large grains in thermal equilibrium, transiently heated small grains and PAHs. Special attention is given to the influence of the stellar, disk and PAH properties on the strength of the PAH emission lines and their spatial distribution. The models predict an infrared SED showing PAH features at 3.3, 6.2, 7.7, and 11.3 µm clearly visible above the continuum, and with some of them very strong. The PAH emission, spatially extended, comes mostly from the outer disk region (R ∼ 100 AU) while the continuum emission at similar wavelengths, mostly due to warm large grains, is confined to the innermost disk regions (R ∼ few AU). We compare the model results to infrared observations from ISO and ground-based telescopes of some thirty Herbig Ae/Be stars. Most of the observed PAH features in objects with spectral type later than B9 are well described by our disk models and we discuss in some detail the PAH characteristics one can derive from the existing data. Objects with strong radiation field (generally earlier than about B9) have the 3.3 µm feature (often the only one observed) much weaker than predicted, and we discuss possible explanations (dissipation of the disk, photoevaporation or modification of the PAH properties).
Digital city Kyoto

The concept of digital cities is to build an arena in which people in regional communities can interact and share knowledge , experiences, and mutual interests. Digital cities integrate urban information (both achievable and real time) and create public spaces in the Inter-net for people living/visiting the cities. Digital cities are being developed all over the world [7]. Why do regional information spaces attract people given this era of globalization? The Internet has triggered global businesses, but at the same time enables us to create rich information spaces for everyday life. While the Internet makes research and businesses global, life is inherently local. Business requires homogeneity to allow global competition, while life is heterogeneous reflecting the different cultural backgrounds. Business applications require standard protocols to overcome differences, but we do not need any standard for our life. If there are differences, we need to support cross-cultural communications. The rapid advance of Internet technologies makes any prediction rather suspect. Digital cities will change together with the computer and communication technologies. No digital city can remain at its current status. Given this qualification, we visit several digital cities around the world and then review their goals, architecture, and technologies for a better understanding of their current status and future. We first turn to digital cities in the U.S. When we perform a " digital city " search, we find many instances created by America Online. AOL provides locally focused online network services for several hundred cities and the number is growing. Each AOL digital city delivers locally relevant news, community resources, entertainment, and commerce. Unlike general search engines aimed at retrieving information around the world, digital cities focus on local information. Besides those information services , AOL provides local advertising opportunities for vertical markets including auto, real estate, employment, and health. AOL digital cities are very homogeneous as a result of pursuing economic efficiency. In Europe, however, more than 100 local authorities started different digital cities in the last eight years. The topics include telematic applications, car-free cities, and so on. The European Digital Cities Conference started in 1994 to discuss a wide variety of topics [9]. Digital City Amsterdam, for example, was built eight year ago [12] as a platform for various community networks and thus focuses particularly on social interaction among citizens. This digital city was first created for communication between the municipal council and citizens. All communication was presented …
Foreclosing Modifications: How Servicer Incentives Discourage Loan Modifications

Abstract: Despite record losses to investors, homeowners, and surrounding communities, the foreclosure crisis continues to swell. Many commentators have urged an increase in the number of loan modifications as a solution to the foreclosure crisis. The Obama Administration created a program specifically designed to encourage modifications. Yet, the number of foreclosures continues to outpace modifications. One reason foreclosures outpace modifications is that the mortgage-modification decision maker's incentives generally favor a foreclosure over a modification. The decision maker is not the investor or the lender, but a separate entity, the servicer. The servicer's main function is to collect and process payments from homeowners, and servicers do not necessarily have any ownership interest in the loan. Servicers, unlike investors, generally recover all their hard costs after a foreclosure, even if the home sells for less than the mortgage loan balance. Servicers may even make money from foreclosures through charging borrowers and investors fees that are ultimately recouped from the loan pool. Existing regulatory guidance could be improved to facilitate modifications. Investors need increased transparency to hold servicers accountable for failing to make modifications when it is in the investors' best interests to make modifications. Fundamentally, servicers must be required to make modifications when doing so would benefit the trust as a whole. INTRODUCTION 758 I. THE FRAMEWORK OF MORTGAGE SERVICING IMPEDES MODIFICATIONS 762 A. The Mortgage Market Has Evolved Into Fragmented Ownership 762 B. Decision Making Is Divorced from Ownership for Most Home Loans 764 1. Who Is a Servicer? 765 2. Investors Seldom Can or Do Influence the Servicer's Actions on Loan Modifications 768 3. Servicers Make Modifications that Benefit Themselves, Not Investors or Homeowners 770 C. Third Parties Constrain Servicer Discretion 772 1 . Credit Rating Agencies and Bond Insurers Exercise Influence over Servicers 772 2. The FASB Accounting Rules Regulate Servicer Performance 775 II. CHOOSING BETWEEN FORECLOSURES AND MODIFICATIONS: THE BALANCE OF SERVICER INCENTIVES DISCOURAGES MODIFICATIONS 776 A. The Cost-Benefit Analysis of a Foreclosure or a Modification 776 B. Servicers Are Not Prevented from Modifying Loans by Securitization Contracts or Tax and Accounting Rules . 781 1 . Investor Contracts Do Not Prevent Most Loan Modifications 782 2. The Accounting Rules Do Not Prevent Modification of Loans in Default 785 C. Some Features of the Accounting Rules and Investor Contracts Can Discourage Sustainable Modifications . 788 1 . FASB Requirements for the Immediate Recognition of Loss Discourage Permanent Modifications 788 2. The Troubled Debt Restructuring Rules Discourage Sustainable Modifications 791 3. Dual-Track Provisions in Investor Contracts Hinder Modifications 794 4. Repurchase Agreements Encourage Servicers to Pursue Short-Term Forbearance Agreements over Permanent Modifications. …
Evaluating the Impact of Spatial Ability in Virtual and Real World Environments

Survey agencies in the United States continue to move many map-based surveys from paper to handheld computers. With large highly diverse workforces, it is necessary to test software with a diverse population. The present work examines the performance of participants grouped by their level of spatial visualization. The participants were tested in either the field or in a fully immersive virtual environment. The methodology of the study is explained. The performance of the participants in the two environments is modeled with least squares regression. Results of the study are presented and discussed.
A Methodology for Virtual Human Animation

We propose a method to animate a 3D virtual human generating keyframes of the model and interpolating to achieve a realistic animation. The first two steps refer to the human modeling, the rigging and the skinning. The third step deals with the human in a programming environment to obtain the animation by quadratic interpolation and consists of the parallel version to display the human movements. The method has shown to produce real animations of an articulated object in an easy and fast manner, optimizing the memory usage of the GPU parallel implementation.
Increasing the effective egocentric field of view with proprioceptive and tactile feedback

Multimodality often exhibits synergistic effects: each modality compliments and compensates for other modalities in transferring coherent, unambiguous, and enriched information for higher interaction efficiency and improved sense of presence. In this paper, we explore one such phenomenon: a positive interaction among the geometric field of view, proprioceptive interaction, and tactile feedback. We hypothesize that, with proprioceptive interaction and tactile feedback, the geometric field of view and thus visibility can be increased such that it is larger than the physical field of view, without causing a significant distortion in the user's distance perception. This, in turn, would further help operation of the overall multimodal interaction scheme as the user is more likely to receive the multimodal feedback simultaneously. We tested our hypothesis with an experiment to measure the user's change in distance perception according to different values of egocentric geometric field of view and feedback conditions. Our experimental results have shown that, when coupled with physical interaction, the GFOV could be increased by up to 170 percent of the physical field of view without introducing significant distortion in distance perception. Second, when tactile feedback was introduced, in addition to visual and proprioceptive cues, the GFOV could be increased by up to 200 percent. The results offer a useful guideline for effectively utilizing of modality compensation and building multimodal interfaces for close range spatial tasks in virtual environments. In addition, it demonstrates one way to overcome the shortcomings of the narrow (physical) fields of views of most contemporary HMDs.
A white-box policy analysis and its efficient implementation

In policy composition frameworks, such as XACML, composite policies can be formed by the application of policy composition algorithms (PCAs), which combine authorization decisions of component policies. Understanding the behaviour of composite policies is a non-trivial endeavour, but instrumental in the engineering of correct access control policies. Existing policy analyses take a black-box approach, in which the global behaviour of the composite policy is assessed. A black-box approach is useful for detecting the presence of erroneous behaviour, but not particularly useful for locating the source of the error. In this work, we propose a white-box policy analysis, known as Decision in Context (DIC), that assesses the behaviour of component policies situated in a composite policy. We show that the DIC query can be applied to facilitate policy change impact analysis, break-glass reduction analysis, dead policy identification, as well as the pruning of redundant subpolicies. For generality, the DIC query is defined in an XACML-style policy composition framework that is agnostic of the underlying access control model. The DIC query is implemented via a reduction to either propositional satisfiability (SAT) or pseudo boolean satisfiability (PBS) instances, after which standard solvers can be invoked to complete the evaluation. Empirical analyses have been conducted to compare the relative efficiency of the SAT and PBS encodings. The latter is found to be a more effective encoding, especially for composite policies containing majority-voting PCAs.
Enhanced Sampling of Multidimensional Free-Energy Landscapes Using Adaptive Biasing Forces

We propose an adaptive biasing algorithm aimed at enhancing the sampling of multimodal measures by Langevin dynamics. The underlying idea consists in generalizing the standard adaptive biasing force method commonly used in conjunction with molecular dynamics to handle in a more effective fashion multidimensional reaction coordinates. The proposed approach is anticipated to be particularly useful for reaction coordinates, the components of which are weakly coupled, as illuminated in a mathematical analysis of the long-time convergence of the algorithm. The strength as well as the intrinsic limitation of the method are discussed and illustrated in two realistic test cases.
Off the grid : breaking the raster scan paradigm in 3 scanning probe microscopy by image reconstruction from 4 position sensor data 5 6

22 We present Sensor Inpainting, a new operation mode for scanning probe microscopy that 23 uses advanced image processing techniques to render images based on position sensor 24 data. Sensor Inpainting frees scanning probe microscopy from the paradigm of raster 25 scanning, the scan waveforms do not need to fall on a grid, and the scanner is no longer 26 required to be at a specific location at a given time for each data point. This drastically 27 reduces the engineering effort of position control and enables the use of scan waveforms 28 that are better suited for the high inertia nanopositioners of scanned probe microscopy. 29 While in raster scanning, typically only trace or retrace images are used for display, in 30 Archimedean spiral scans 100% of the data can be displayed and at least a twofold 31 increase in temporal or spatial resolution is achieved. In Sensor Inpainting, the sampling 32 rate and grid size of the final generated image are independent variables. Sampling data a 33 factor of two higher in the fast scan direction and displaying on a grid with around twice 34 as many pixels as samples produces the best representations of the data. 35 36 2
Maps-based angular PDFs used as prior maps for FootSLAM

FootSLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) is a new technology that addresses the indoor mapping and positioning challenge that relies only on sensors that the person carries. In this paper, we propose to use maps-based angular Probability Density Functions (PDFs), using prior knowledge of the building layout as prior maps for FootSLAM and show how they can be integrated into the FootSLAM weight update. The angular PDFs - that represent PDFs for a human step direction at a given location - are derived from a diffusion algorithm based on maps. The advantage of using prior maps is that the FootSLAM algorithm reaches convergence faster and more accurately.
Tensor fusion of social structural and functional analytics over Neo4j

For large directed graphs ranking vertices is an algorithmic as well as a computational challenge. Also it is a cornerstone problem in fields so diverse such as online social media, combinatorial optimization, deep learning, econometrics, and computational neuroscience. Gell-point centrality metric is a common case of structural vertex ranking which can be efficiently computed through power method. This paper proposes harmonic centrality, also a structural ranking which can be computed equally efficiently. When the graph represents a network, both methods are oblivious to its functionality. To address that issue, a tensor based methodology is proposed for combining functional characteristics with these structural metrics. As a concrete demonstration, the tensor fusion methodology was implemented in Java over Neo4j and Tensor toolbox and was applied to a Twitter subgraph. The functional features were directly related to affective computing, while the hashtags in this subgraph were relared to a current controversial political topic, namely #brexit.
Fault-Tolerant Non-interference Extended Version

This paper is about ensuring security in unreliable systems. We study systems which are subject to transient faults – soft errors that cause stored values to be corrupted. The classic problem of fault tolerance is to modify a system so that it works despite a limited number of faults. We introduce a novel variant of this problem. Instead of demanding that the system works despite faults, we simply require that it remains secure: wrong answers may be given but secrets will not be revealed. We develop a software-based technique to achieve this faulttolerant non-interference property. The method is defined on a simple assembly language, and guarantees security for any assembly program provided as input. The security property is defined on top of a formal model that encompasses both the fault-prone machine and the faulty environment. A precise characterization of the class of programs for which the method guarantees transparency is provided.