Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hough transform 1 Hough transform

The Hough transform (/ˈhʌf/) is a feature extraction technique used in image analysis, computer vision, and digital image processing. [1] The purpose of the technique is to find imperfect instances of objects within a certain class of shapes by a voting procedure. This voting procedure is carried out in a parameter space, from which object candidates are obtained as local maxima in a so-called accumulator space that is explicitly constructed by the algorithm for computing the Hough transform. The classical Hough transform was concerned with the identification of lines in the image, but later the Hough transform has been extended to identifying positions of arbitrary shapes, most commonly circles or ellipses. The Hough transform as it is universally used today was invented by Richard Duda and Peter Hart in 1972, who called it a "generalized Hough transform" [2] after the related 1962 patent of Paul Hough. [3] The transform was popularized in the computer vision community by Dana H. Ballard through a 1981 journal article titled "Generalizing the Hough transform to detect arbitrary shapes". Theory In automated analysis of digital images, a subproblem often arises of detecting simple shapes, such as straight lines, circles or ellipses. In many cases an edge detector can be used as a pre-processing stage to obtain image points or image pixels that are on the desired curve in the image space. Due to imperfections in either the image data or the edge detector, however, there may be missing points or pixels on the desired curves as well as spatial deviations between the ideal line/circle/ellipse and the noisy edge points as they are obtained from the edge detector. For these reasons, it is often non-trivial to group the extracted edge features to an appropriate set of lines, circles or ellipses. The purpose of the Hough transform is to address this problem by making it possible to perform groupings of edge points into object candidates by performing an explicit voting procedure over a set of parameterized image objects (Shapiro and Stockman, 304). The simplest case of Hough transform is the linear transform for detecting straight lines. In the image space, the straight line can be described as y = mx + b and can be graphically plotted for each pair of image points (x, y). In the Hough transform, a main idea is to consider the characteristics of the straight line not as image points (x 1 …
Direct power control of DSTATCOMs for voltage flicker mitigation

Distribution static synchronous compensators (DSTATCOMs) are a viable solution for improving power quality in distribution systems, including mitigation for temporary interruptions, voltage dips, harmonics and voltage flicker. Conventional DSTATCOMs are implemented using two cascaded loops, an AC current control loop and a DC-bus voltage loop. This paper proposes an alternative control structure based on the simultaneous control of line current and DC-link voltage by means of instantaneous power control. The instantaneous real and imaginary power calculation is derived and explained. Requirements for flicker and harmonic mitigation are identified. The controller is implemented using two hysteresis comparators and an optimum switching table. The features of the proposed technique are illustrated by means of simulation and experimental results. Advantages include a simple and robust control structure, and better tracking of load fluctuations and/or harmonics.
Effects of Nonrectangular Electrodes and Temperature in LiNbO3 Based Optical Modulators

The effects of electrodes geometry and temperature on high frequency RF transmission characteristics are simulated versus LiNbO 3 layer thickness, inter-electrode gap, and optical waveguide parameters. On the other hand, we focused on the optimization of the electro-optic modulator parameters where the effective index plays an essential role in the evaluation of the bandwidth structure. Therefore, a theoretical analysis of the capacitance, the characteristic impedance and the effective index determine how to increase the bandwidth. The study of the variation of the effective index versus temperature shows a net drift, which affects the quality of transmission. Moreover, an approximate estimate of S- parameters shows the sensitivity of reflection and transmission ratios upon temperature. The interaction optical-microwave is also analyzed using Laplace equation and Finite Element Method.
Immigrant Parenting: A New Framework of Understanding

ABSTRACT This article presents a new orienting framework for understanding immigrant parenting. The framework was developed and tested through a qualitative research study that involved 50 focus group interviews with immigrant parents who have resided in Canada for less than 3 years. The article begins by reviewing the existing parenting models found in academic literature and noting the limitations of these models. Next it describes the components of our constructed framework for understanding immigrant parenting. The article ends with the presentation of research results based on a large focus group data with 317 newcomer parents to Canada.
On the order of unimodular matrices modulo integers

Assuming the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis, we prove the following: If b is an integer greater than one, then the multiplicative order of b modulo N is larger than N^(1-\epsilon) for all N in a density one subset of the integers. If A is a hyperbolic unimodular matrix with integer coefficients, then the order of A modulo p is greater than p^(1-\epsilon) for all p in a density one subset of the primes. Moreover, the order of A modulo N is greater than N^(1-\epsilon) for all N in a density one subset of the integers.
A Novel Angiopoietin-2 Selective Fully Human Antibody with Potent Anti-Tumoral and Anti-Angiogenic Efficacy and Superior Side Effect Profile Compared to Pan-Angiopoietin-1/-2 Inhibitors

There is increasing experimental evidence for an important role of Angiopoietin-2 (Ang-2) in tumor angiogenesis and progression. In addition, Ang-2 is up-regulated in many cancer types and correlated with poor prognosis. To investigate the functional role of Ang-2 inhibition in tumor development and progression, we generated novel fully human antibodies that neutralize specifically the binding of Ang-2 to its receptor Tie2. The selected antibodies LC06 and LC08 recognize both rodent and human Ang-2 with high affinity, but LC06 shows a higher selectivity for Ang-2 over Ang-1 compared to LC08 which can be considered an Ang-2/Ang-1 cross-reactive antibody. Our data demonstrate that Ang-2 blockade results in potent tumor growth inhibition and pronounced tumor necrosis in subcutaneous and orthotopic tumor models. These effects are attended with a reduction of intratumoral microvessel density and tumor vessels characterized by fewer branches and increased pericyte coverage. Furthermore, anti-Ang-2 treatment strongly inhibits the dissemination of tumor cells to the lungs. Interestingly, in contrast to the Ang-2/Ang-1 cross-reactive antibody LC08 that leads to a regression of physiological vessels in the mouse trachea, the inhibition with the selective anti-Ang-2 antibody LC06 appears to be largely restricted to tumor vasculature without obvious effects on normal vasculature. Taken together, these data provide strong evidence for the selective Ang-2 antibody LC06 as promising new therapeutic agent for the treatment of various cancers.
Boron Isotopes as an Artificial Tracer

A field study was conducted using a combination of intrinsic and artificial tracers to estimate travel times and dilution during transport of infiltrate from a reclaimed water infiltration basin to nearby monitoring wells. A major study objective was to validate boric acid enriched in 10B as an artificial tracer. Basin 10E at the Rio Hondo Spreading Grounds in Whittier, California, was the site of the test. The basin normally receives a mixture of treated municipal waste water, purchased State Project water, and local runoff from the San Gabriel River. Approximately 3.5 kg of 10B‐enriched boric acid was dispersed among 2.05 × 105 m3 of basin water to initiate the experiment. The resultant median δ11B in the infiltration basin was −71‰. Prior to tracer addition, the basin water had an intrinsic δ11B of +2‰. Local monitoring wells that were used to assess travel times had δ11B values of +5‰ and +8‰ at the time of tracer addition. Analytic results supported an assumption that boron is conserved during ground water transport and that boron enriched in 10B is a useful artificial tracer. Several intrinsic tracers were used to reinforce the boric acid tracer findings. These included stable isotopes of oxygen (δ18O) and hydrogen (δD), sulfate concentration, and the boron to chloride ratio. Xenon isotopes, 136Xe and 124Xe, also supported boron isotope results. Xenon isotopes were added to the recharge basin as dissolved gases by investigators from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
New Mechanism of Nonequilibrium Polymer Adsorption

Nonequilibrium states of surface composition can be extremely long-lived when polymer chains adsorb competitively. In a model system (polymethylmethacrylate adsorbed from CCl4 onto oxidized silicon previously saturated with polystyrene), it is shown that a weakly adsorbing polymer was sterically pinned to a surface by a more strongly adsorbing polymer. The dynamical evolution of the surface composition was strongly nonexponential in time and non-Arrhenius in temperature; the phenomenology is analogous to bulk glasses. This interpretation offers a new mechanism to explain why weakly adsorbing chains may bind to surfaces, as well as a direction in which to look for a method to release them.
Typology of Perfectionism in a Group of Mathematically Gifted Czech Adolescents Over One Decade

This study assessed differences in Parker’s typology of perfectionism (healthy perfectionist, unhealthy perfectionist, and nonperfectionist). We compared the results from previous research with follow-up 2005 and 2010 data collected from highly gifted Czech mathematicians aged 12 to 16 years. The study examined whether the same three types/clusters of perfectionists emerge for three cohorts (2000, 2005, and 2010) and whether these clusters differ in other characteristics of perfectionism. Data from 2005 and 2010 cohorts showed healthy and unhealthy perfectionism types and a mixed maladaptive-adaptive type characterized by high scores on both adaptive and maladaptive FMPS dimensions. According to Dixon, Lapsley, and Hanchon, this mixed type reflects a recently described “pervasive” type of unhealthy perfectionism. Possible causes for failing to detect this type in earlier samples of talented Czech students are discussed. Both unhealthy and mixed types of perfectionism, which are the focus of our research, seem to be on the rise.
Stimulus Control of Defensive Behaviors of Garter Snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis): Effects of Eye Spots and Movement

The purpose of these experiments was to examine the effects of eye spots and stimulus movement as mediators of antipredator responses in garter snakes. In Experiment 1, 13 Eastern garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) at 6-8 weeks of age were confronted with a series of threatening models that varied in the configuration of the eyes (artificial glass eyes, circular black spots, elongated black bars, or no eyespots). There were significant differences in the number of strikes elicited by the models, and the model with realistic glass eyes elicited the most strikes. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of erratic and consistent stimulus movement on defensive behavior in 12 garter snakes at 12-16 weeks of age. The snakes delivered significantly more strikes to an erratically moving model than to a model oscillated at a regular rate. Animals of most species are prey for other animals, and it is critical that they can identify potential predators at a distance. Although a wide variety of cues are used in predator recognition (e.g., Edmunds, 1974; Endler, 1986), the involvement of visual cues has received most attention. (See Curio, 1993, for a comprehensive review.) Eyes and eyelike markings play a particularly important role in interactions between predator and prey. For example, eyelike stimuli have been shown to prolong tonic immobility in a number of species under laboratory conditions (e.g., Gagliardi, Gallup, & Boren, 1976; Gallup, 1971; Hennig, 1977) and produce increased flight distances in animals tested in nature (Burger, Gochfeld & Murray, 1991, 1992). Despite the apparent importance of the eyes of predators as a trigger of defensive responses, there has been little research on the role of eye markings as releasers of defensive behavior in snakes. Burghardt and Greene (1988) found that direct gaze by a human experimenter potentiated deathfeigning response in neonate hog-nosed snakes. Herzog and Bern (1992) recently reported that juvenile garter snakes direct a disproportionate number of strikes toward the eyes of predator models. Herzog, Bowers, and Burghardt (1989) found that the size and movement of a threat stimulus affect antipredator responses of neonate and juvenile garter snakes and that realistic models elicited higher levels of defensive strikes than nonrealistic models. In this study we examine the role of eye markings in mediating antipredator responses. In Experiment 1, we tested the hypothesis that eyespots would enhance a model's ability to
A New Design Method for the Passive Damped LCL and LLCL Filter-Based Single-Phase Grid-Tied Inverter

A higher order passive power filter (LLCL filter) for the grid-tied inverter is becoming attractive for industrial applications due to the possibility to reduce the cost of the copper and the magnetic material. However, similar to the conventional LCL filter, the grid-tied inverter is facing control challenges. An active or a passive damping measure can be adopted to suppress the possible resonances between the grid and the inverter. For an application with a stiff grid, a passive damping method is often preferred for its simpleness and low cost. This paper introduces a new passive damping scheme with low power loss for the LLCL filter. Also, a simple engineering design criterion is proposed to find the optimized damping resistor value, which is both effective for the LCL filter and the LLCL filter. The control analysis and the power loss comparison for different filter cases are given. All these are verified through the experiments on a 2-kW single-phase grid-tied inverter prototype using proportional resonant controllers. It is concluded that, compared with the LCL filter, the proposed passive damped LLCL filter can not only save the total filter inductance and reduce the volume of the filter but also reduce the damping power losses for a stiff grid application.
Action Research: a field perspective

Abstract Classroom action research can be valuable as a form of staff development at the in‐service and pre‐service levels. This paper gives an overview of classroom action research and describes a classroom teacher's efforts to promote more cooperation among the children in her classroom through her participation in action research. She also describes the partnership of reflection and support that develops when action research projects are undertaken by the student teachers in her classroom. This paper provides a concrete example of how action research can be used to enhance the day to day work of teaching and student teaching.
Shared leadership in projects: a matter of substance over style

Purpose – This paper aims to advance understanding of the conditions under which shared leadership would contribute to successful outcomes in projects and factors associated with its development.Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper that draws on existing research on shared leadership in teams and the literature on the characteristics of soft projects, to put forward a number of testable propositions to form the basis of future research in this area.Findings – The assumptions underpinning style perspectives of leadership and their usefulness for projects are called into question given the ambiguity and complexity with which the majority of projects now have to contend. Instead, shared project leadership is suggested to be better suited to respond to the dynamic and changing circumstances characteristic of most projects.Research limitations/implications – Three major areas of research are proposed that focus on external factors enabling shared leadership, internal factors enabling shared.
Developing a decision support system for tobacco use counselling using primary care physicians.

BACKGROUND Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) have the potential to improve adherence to guidelines, but only if they are designed to work in the complex environment of ambulatory clinics as otherwise physicians may not use them. OBJECTIVE To gain input from primary care physicians in designing a CDSS for smoking cessation to ensure that the design is appropriate to a clinical environment before attempts to test this CDSS in a clinical trial. This approach is of general interest to those designing similar systems. Design and approach: We employed an iterative ethnographic process that used multiple evaluation methods to understand physician preferences and workflow integration. Using results from our prior survey of physicians and clinic managers, we developed a prototype CDSS, validated content and design with an expert panel, and then subjected it to usability testing by physicians, followed by iterative design changes based on their feedback. We then performed clinical testing with individual patients, and conducted field tests of the CDSS in two primary care clinics during which four physicians used it for routine patient visits. RESULTS The CDSS prototype was substantially modified through these cycles of usability and clinical testing, including removing a potentially fatal design flaw. During field tests in primary care clinics, physicians incorporated the final CDSS prototype into their workflow, and used it to assist in smoking cessation interventions up to eight times daily. CONCLUSIONS A multi-method evaluation process utilising primary care physicians proved useful for developing a CDSS that was acceptable to physicians and patients, and feasible to use in their clinical environment.
On the practice of ignoring center‐patient interactions in evaluating hospital performance

We evaluate the performance of medical centers based on a continuous or binary patient outcome (e.g., 30‐day mortality). Common practice adjusts for differences in patient mix through outcome regression models, which include patient‐specific baseline covariates (e.g., age and disease stage) besides center effects. Because a large number of centers may need to be evaluated, the typical model postulates that the effect of a center on outcome is constant over patient characteristics. This may be violated, for example, when some centers are specialized in children or geriatric patients. Including interactions between certain patient characteristics and the many fixed center effects in the model increases the risk for overfitting, however, and could imply a loss of power for detecting centers with deviating mortality. Therefore, we assess how the common practice of ignoring such interactions impacts the bias and precision of directly and indirectly standardized risks. The reassuring conclusion is that the common practice of working with the main effects of a center has minor impact on hospital evaluation, unless some centers actually perform substantially better on a specific group of patients and there is strong confounding through the corresponding patient characteristic. The bias is then driven by an interplay of the relative center size, the overlap between covariate distributions, and the magnitude of the interaction effect. Interestingly, the bias on indirectly standardized risks is smaller than on directly standardized risks. We illustrate our findings by simulation and in an analysis of 30‐day mortality on Riksstroke. © 2015 The Authors. Statistics in Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
LAPACK WORKING NOTE 167: SUBSET COMPUTATIONS WITH THE MRRR ALGORITHM

Abstract. The main advantage of inverse iteration over the QR algorithm and Divide & Conquer for the symmetric tridiagonal eigenproblem is that subsets of eigenpairs can be computed at reduced cost. The MRRR algorithm (MRRR = Multiple Relatively Robust Representations) is a clever variant of inverse iteration without the need for reorthogonalization. stegr, the current version of MRRR in LAPACK 3.0, does not allow for subset computations. The next release of stegr is designed to compute a (sub-)set of k eigenpairs with O(kn) operations. Because of the special way in which eigenvectors are computed, MRRR subset computations are more complicated than when using inverse iteration. Unlike the latter, MRRR sometimes cannot ignore the unwanted part of the spectrum. We describe the problems with what we call ’false singletons’. These are eigenvalues that appear to be isolated with respect to the wanted eigenvalues but in fact belong to a tight cluster of unwanted eigenvalues. This paper analyzes these complications and ways to deal with them.
Recommendations on blood pressure measurement.

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State of the Art of Adaptivity in E-Learning Platforms

Adaptivity has been an important research topic during the past two decades, especially in the field of e-learning. This paper deals with the question of whether and to what extent adaptivity is actually being used in e-learning systems. It describes the state of the art of adaptivity features and gives an overview on the most frequently used learning management systems (LMSs) as well as on a number of research projects and systems providing adaptivity.
Spatio-temporal indexing for large multimedia applications

Multimedia applications usually involve a large number of multimedia objects (texts, images, sounds, etc.). Spatial and temporal relationships among these objects should be efficiently supported and retrieved within a multimedia authoring tool. In this paper, we present several spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal relationships of interest, and propose efficient indexing schemes, based on multidimensional (spatial) data structures, for large multimedia applications that involve thousands of objects. Evaluation models of the proposed schemes are also presented, as well as hints for the selection of the most appropriate one, according to the multimedia author's requirements.
Measurement of partner compatibility: further validation and refinement of the CQ test

Abstract The Compatibility Quotient (CQ) was developed to assess the degree of similarity within an established or potential couple across domains likely to be important in determining long-term happiness. Validity was supported by correlations with Locke–Wallace Marital Adjustment scores and norms presented that enabled CQ scores to be arranged on a normal curve similar to that used for IQ (intelligence) ratings. Here we replicate the validity findings with an independent, larger and more representative sample of British couples (N = 204), compare item validities with ratings of perceived importance of the various issues, and consider the claims of five new items for inclusion within the CQ. A revised (Mark 2) CQ questionnaire consisting of 25 revised items is recommended for future use.