Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal Interferometric Maneuvers for Distributed Telescopes

The scienti c community has proposed several missions to expand our knowledge about the universe, its formation and search for distant Earth-like planets. Most of the present space-based observation missions have reached angular resolution limits, therefore the potential bene ts concerning angular resolution and intensity that can be reaped from the realization of interferometry within a distributed satellite telescope have led to the proposal of several multi-spacecraft systems. Among these missions synthetic imaging space based interferometers, consisting of multiple telescope apertures ying in controlled formation in order to combine received information from each of the otilla members are nowadays the subject of interesting research. The objective of synthesizing images with high angular resolution, low ambiguity and high intensity is always a tradeo with the whole fuel consumption of the mission. As a consequence, this research focuses on the design of interferometric maneuvers and optimal interferometric controllers balancing image performance and energy consumption. The rest part of the thesis presents the optimization and design process of coordinated spiral maneuvers due to their interferometric interest when lling the frequency plane of the observed image. On the other hand, the second part of this work focuses in the resolution of an optimal control problem within the LQ framework, to determine the optimal imaging recon gurations of a formation ying system. Its objective is to balance the quality of the celestial observation and the usage of fuel, which are the key aspects of any space-based observation mission. This study concerning implementability and performance of interferometric maneuvers will lead towards the enlargement of mission lifetime and exibility of the system conserving acceptable quality observations.
Correlation between Quadriceps Endurance and Adduction Moment in Medial Knee Osteoarthritis

It is not clear whether the strength or endurance of thigh muscles (quadriceps and hamstring) is positively or negatively correlated with the adduction moment of osteoarthritic knees. This study therefore assessed the relationships between the strength and endurance of the quadriceps and hamstring muscles and adduction moment in osteoarthritic knees and evaluated predictors of the adduction moment. The study cohort comprised 35 patients with unilateral medial osteoarthritis and varus deformity who were candidates for open wedge osteotomy. The maximal torque (60°/sec) and total work (180°/sec) of the quadriceps and hamstring muscles and knee adduction moment were evaluated using an isokinetic testing device and gait analysis system. The total work of the quadriceps (r = 0.429, P = 0.037) and hamstring (r = 0.426, P = 0.045) muscles at 180°/sec each correlated with knee adduction moment. Preoperative varus deformity was positively correlated with adduction moment (r = 0.421, P = 0.041). Multiple linear regression analysis showed that quadriceps endurance at 180°/sec was the only factor independently associated with adduction moment (β = 0.790, P = 0.032). The adduction moment of osteoarthritic knees correlated with the endurance, but not the strength, of the quadriceps muscle. However, knee adduction moment did not correlate with the strength or endurance of the hamstring muscle.
Elongational Viscosity and Foaming Behavior of PP Modified by Electron Irradiation or Nanotube Addition

In this study, two different routes were chosen which are expected to influence the elongational viscosity and, thus, the foaming behavior of polypropylene (PP). Electron irradiation of a linear PP was performed at room temperature using different doses. Enhanced long-chain branching was observed with increased irradiation dose. In addition, a linear PP was filled with 5 wt% multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) by melt mixing at 200 °C. These modified PP materials were investigated with respect to their shear and elongational behavior. After foaming, irradiated PP led to an expansion factor which is about 60% higher than that of the non-irradiated product. In case of PP filled with 5 wt% MWNT the value of the expansion factor is about 70% higher than that of pure PP expanded under the same conditions. The cell structure is much finer in both cases as compared to unmodified PP.
Expresso and chips: creating a next generation microarray experiment management system

Expresso is an experiment management system that is designed to assist biologists in planning, executing, and interpreting microarray experiments. It serves as a unifying framework to study data-driven application composition systems, as envisaged under the NSF Next Generation Software (NGS) program. Physical and analytical stages of the microarray process are mirrored in Expresso with computational models from biophysics, molecular biology, biochemistry, robotics, image processing, statistics, and knowledge representation. These models are pushed deeper (earlier) into the design process to help avoid costly design errors and to provide, as needed, surrogate functions for the traditional stages of microarray experiments. In this paper, we describe ongoing work in the design of Expresso, with specific reference to application composition, application optimization, experiment protocol design, and 'closing the loop. '.
Topological localization using Wi-Fi and vision merged into FABMAP framework

This paper introduces a topological localization algorithm that uses visual and Wi-Fi data. Its main contribution is a novel way of merging data from these sensors. By making Wi-Fi signature suited to FABMAP algorithm, it develops an early-fusion framework that solves global localization and kidnapped robot problem. The resulting algorithm is tested and compared to FABMAP visual localization, over data acquired by a Pepper robot in an office building. Several constraints were applied during acquisition to make the experiment fitted to real-life scenarios. Without any tuning, early-fusion surpasses the performances of visual localization by a significant margin: 94% of estimated localizations are less than 5m away from ground truth compared to 81% with visual localization.
Predictors of hearing loss self-management in older adults

Abstract Purpose: To determine the factor structure of a clinical tool for the assessment of hearing loss self-management, and to identify predictors of the total score on the assessment and the extracted factor scores. Materials and methods: Hearing loss self-management assessments were conducted with 62 older adults. The factor structure of the assessment was determined by exploratory factor analysis. Multiple linear regression analyses identified significant contributors to the total score and to each of the extracted factors. Results: Three factors were identified, each representing a distinct domain of hearing loss self-management: Actions, Psychosocial Behaviours, and Knowledge. The most common significant predictor was hearing health care experience, which predicted self-management overall and in the Actions and Knowledge domains. Health literacy predicted hearing loss self-management overall and in the Psychosocial Behaviours domain. Actions were additionally predicted by hearing aid self-efficacy and gender, Psychosocial Behaviours by health locus of control, and Knowledge by age. Conclusions: The results of the factor analysis suggested that hearing loss self-management is a multidimensional construct. Each domain of hearing loss self-management was influenced by different contextual factors. Subsequent interventions to improve hearing loss self-management should therefore be domain-specific and tailored to relevant contextual factors. Implications for rehabilitation Hearing loss is a chronic health condition that requires on-going self-management of its effects on everyday life. Hearing loss self-management is multidimensional and encompasses the domains of Actions, Psychosocial Behaviours, and Knowledge. Different contextual factors influence each hearing loss self-management domain, including previous experience receiving hearing health care services, health literacy, hearing aid self-efficacy, health locus of control, age, and gender. Audiological rehabilitation programs should thus ensure that interventions to improve hearing loss self-management are domain- and context-specific.
ROM-based finite state machines with PLA address modifiers

An effective method for the synthesis of address modifiers in sequential circuits is described. The method, based on serial decomposition, substantially reduces the address modifier circuit complexity for a given microprogram memory size. It can be used effectively for PMS based designs and for full custom designs. The method was implemented in C++ on a PC. It was tested on standard finite state machine (FSM) benchmarks. Results indicate that for a wide range of cases the method gives a substantial (more than 50%) reduction of required ROM capacity, which may result in a saving of the silicon area in the actual full custom implementation. <<ETX>>
Epitaxy: Physical Principles and Technical Implementation

I. Basic Concepts. - 1. Introduction. - 2. Homo- and Heteroepitaxial Crystallization Phenomena. - 3. Application Areas of Epitaxially Grown Layer Structures. - II. Technical Implementation. - 4. Solid Phase Epitaxy. - 5. Liquid Phase Epitaxy. - 6. Vapor Phase Epitaxy. - 7. Molecular Beam Epitaxy. - 8. Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy. - III. In-situ Analysis of the Growth Processes. - 9. In-situ Analysis of Species and Transport. - 10. In-situ Surface Analysis. - IV. Physics of Epitaxy. - 11. Thermodynamic Aspects. - 12. Atomistic Aspects. - 13. Quantum Mechanical Aspects. - V. Heteroepitaxy. - 14. Heteroepitaxy Growth Phenomena. - 15. Material-Related Problems of Heteroepitaxy. - 16. Closing Remarks. - References. - List of Abbreviations. - List of Metalorganic Precursors.
Breakdown voltage improvement and analysis of GaN HEMTs through field plate inclusion and substrate removal

Extensive studies have concluded that breakdown mechanisms in Gallium Nitride (GaN) High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMT) can be improved by substrate reduction and the addition of field plate (FP) on their structures. A theoretical analysis of the FP effects on the HEMT is carried out by modeling the electric fields inside the structure. The electric field model is deduced by solving the potential in the heterostructure, which should satisfy the Poisson equation. A comprehensive physics-based model of a common HEMT provides the base comparison to conduct two analyses: 1) a reduction of the silicon substrate and 2) the addition of different FPs. The electric field distribution across the source, gate, and drain is analyzed for each geometric case in order determine the breakdown voltage origin as well as their I-V characteristic curves.
Corrosion Influence on Bond between Steel and Concrete

Corrosion of metals in concrete is a continually growing, multibillion-dollar problem, affecting construction, transportation, and many other types of infrastructure worldwide. The influence of corrosion on bond between the reinforcing steel and concrete was studied using a preliminary series of tests on 14 tension specimens, each 100 mm in diameter and 1 m long, and reinforced with one No. 20 bar. The specimens were subjected to accelerated corrosion by immersion in a 5% NaCl solution and subjected to a voltage of 5 v. The relative bond effectiveness of the embedded bars at different stages of corrosion was determined based on the details of the transverse and longitudinal splitting cracks. The bond strength was observed to decrease rapidly with an increase in the corrosion level, dropping from a 9% decrease in the average bond stress for a steel weight loss of 4% to a bond stress decrease of 92% for a weight loss of 17.5%. The latter represented a case of severe corrosion, involving deterioration of the bar ribs.
Extracting Pre-ordering Rules from Chunk-based Dependency Trees for Japanese-to-English Translation

Word ordering remains as an essential problem for translating between languages with substantial structural differences, such as SOV and SVO languages. In this paper, we propose to use source chunk-based dependency trees to extract pre-ordering rules, which are customized for translating from Japanese (SOV) to English (SVO). In order to obtain a finegrained classification of the reordering phenomena, Japanese function words and punctuation marks are included in the pre-ordering rules as additional lexical clues. We further prune the pre-ordering rule set by referring the predicate-argument structures of the target language side. Experimental results are reported for large-scale Japanese-to-English translation, showing a significant improvement of 1.48 BLEU points compared with the baseline SMT system.
Compliance Control of Tele-Robot

Compliance control is essential for tasks involving interaction of the robot with the environment with contact forces e.g. sliding on an inclined plane, drawing on a rigid surface, opening the lid of a box etc. Pure position control is not sufficient for such tasks since a small variation in relative position at the contact surface may generate large contact forces which may damage the environment or manipulator itself. Compliant motion may be produced either by passive mechanical compliance built in to the manipulator, or by an active compliance implemented in the control servo loop. The second method, involving position and force control of the manipulator end-effector in mutually orthogonal directions, has been the focus of this work. In this work "Compliance Control Algorithm" module has been developed which takes the task as the input and generate Position Path and Force Profile. These aforementioned paths and profiles are further given to a Hybrid Controller to achieve compliant motion. The algorithm has been tested by developing a code for the Compliance algorithm and using a PUMA560® dynamic model in MATLAB®. Selected tasks have been performed in simulation to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. Subsequently, the algorithm has also been implemented on Tele--Robot, developed by DRHR, BARC. The results obtained from the Tele-robot system indicate the successful completion of some planned tasks which required simultaneous position and force-control. The results show that the method achieves stable and accurate control of force and position trajectories for a variety of test conditions.
Joint Structured Learning and Predictions under Logical Constraints in Conditional Random Fields

This paper is concerned with structured machine learning, in a supervised machine learning context. It discusses how to make joint structured learning on interdependent objects of different nature, as well as how to enforce logical con-straints when predicting labels. We explain how this need arose in a Document Understanding task. We then discuss a general extension to Conditional Random Field (CRF) for this purpose and present the contributed open source implementation on top of the open source PyStruct library. We evaluate its performance on a publicly available dataset.
Whole Exome Sequencing Reveals DYSF, FKTN, and ISPD Mutations in Congenital Muscular Dystrophy Without Brain or Eye Involvement

Background Congenital muscular dystrophies (CMDs) are a genetically and clinically heterogeneous group of neuromuscular disorders. Several genes encoding extracellular matrix, nuclear envelope, sarcolemmal proteins and glycosylation enzymes have been implicated in CMDs. The large overlap of clinical presentations due to mutations in different genes poses a challenge for clinicians in determining disease etiology for each patient. Objective We investigated the use of whole exome sequencing (WES) in identifying the genetic cause of disease in 5 CMD patients from 3 families who presented with highly similar clinical features, including early-onset rapidly progressive weakness without brain or eye abnormalities. Methods Whole exome sequencing was performed on DNA from affected individuals. Potential functional impacts of mutations were investigated by immunostaining on available muscle biopsies. Results Pathogenic mutations in 3 different genes, DYSF, FKTN, and ISPD were identified in each family. Mutation in DYSF led to absence of dysferlin protein in patient muscle. Mutations in ISPD led to impaired ISDP function, as demonstrated by deficiency of α-dystroglycan glycosylation in patient muscle. Conclusions This study highlights the benefit of unbiased genomic approaches in molecular diagnosis of neuromuscular disorders with high clinical heterogeneity, such as the phenotypes observed in our patients. Our results suggest that dysferlin deficiency should be in the differential diagnosis of congenital and rapidly progressive muscular dystrophy, and therefore dysferlin antibody should be in the standard immunohistochemistry panel for muscle biopsies in cases with suspected CMD.
Semiconducting YBCO bolometers for uncooled IR detection

Amorphous semiconducting Y-Ba-Cu-O is attractive as the temperature sensitive element for uncooled IR bolometers and pyroelectric detectors. Thin films can be easily fabricated by RF magnetron sputtering at room temperature from a composite target. It is compatible with micromachining techniques for the fabrication of thermally isolated structures. As a bolometer, Y-Ba-Cu-O possesses a relatively high temperature coefficient of resistance of 3.5% K-1 near room temperature. This paper will present the IR characteristics of 40-micrometer X 40-micrometer microbolometer arrays fabricated in thermal isolation structures. These detectors are aimed at thermal imaging at 10-micrometer wavelength. Recently, self-supporting YBaCuO pixels have been developed. In this case, the Y-Ba-Cu-O thin film pixel requires no underlying bridge material to provide structural support. The Y-Ba-Cu-O thin film is supported solely by the electrode arms. Responsivity and detectivity greater than 4 X 103 V/W and 108 cmHz1/2/W respectively have been measured in these detectors. The development of large area 1.5-mm and 0.4- mm square YBaCuO bolometers for NASA's global warming studies in low-orbiting satellites will also be presented. These large area detectors require large optical bandwidths covering the 0.3-micrometer to 100-micrometer wavelength band.
Biogenic gold nanoparticles: As a potential candidate for brain tumor directed drug delivery

Abstract Gold nanoparticles have tremendous application in the area of nanotechnology that raises new possibility in the treatment of brain tumor. These nanoparticles can be used for selectively gaining access to tumor due to their small size and modifiability. Gold nanoparticles are functionalized with various molecules such as anticancer drug, transferrin and monoclonal antibody to produce nanocarriers. These nanocarriers have ability to deliver the drug at targeted site. Transferrin crosses the blood-brain barrier because of the receptor-mediated endocytosis. The monoclonal antibody facilitates the release of anticancer drug at targeted sites. This approach of delivery saves the normal cells surrounding the tumor.
Low-Rank Matrix Completion to Reconstruct Incomplete Rendering Images

Path tracing provides photo-realistic rendering in many applications but intermediate previsualization often suffers from distracting noise. Since the fundamental underlying problem is insufficient samples, we exploit the coherence of the visual signal to reconstruct missing samples, using a low-rank matrix completion framework. We present novel methods to construct low rank matrices for incomplete images including missing pixel, missing sub-pixel, and multi-frame scenarios. A convolutional neural network provides fast pre-completion for initialising missing values, and subsequent weighted nuclear norm minimisation (WNNM) with a parameter adjustment strategy (PAWNNM) efficiently recovers missing values even in high frequency details. The result shows better visual quality than recent methods including compressed sensing based reconstruction.
Side lobe and grating lobe suppression in stepped frequency pulse train using multi-objective optimization algorithms

Linear Frequency Modulated (LFM) pulses are used in radar because of its good range resolution capability. Range resolution can be further improve by introducing a frequency step between consecutive pulses. Resultant signal is known as Stepped Frequency Pulse Train (SFPT). When the product of pulse duration and frequency step become more than one, Autocorrelation Function (ACF) of SFPT shows undesirable peaks, known as grating lobes. Along with grating lobe, the higher side lobes present in the vicinity of main lobe, either can hides the small targets or can cause the false alarm detection. Also, the wide main lobe width deteriorates the range resolution capability of the signal. Many analytic techniques have been proposed in the literature to select the SFPT parameter to suppress the grating lobe, without paying much attention to side lobe and main lobe width. In this paper we have compared three Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO) algorithms to find the optimized parameter of SFPT. The optimization problem is studied in two ways: In first we have taken objective of minimization of grating lobes and peak side lobe level. In second problem, we aimed to minimize the main lobe width, which improves the resolution. Simulations are carried out for different range of parameter values and the result show the potential of the MOO approach.
Compensatory Changes Accompanying Chronic Forced Use of the Nondominant Hand by Unilateral Amputees

Amputation of the dominant hand forces patients to use the nondominant hand exclusively, including for tasks (e.g., writing and drawing) that were formerly the sole domain of the dominant hand. The behavioral and neurological effects of this chronic forced use of the nondominant hand remain largely unknown. Yet, these effects may shed light on the potential to compensate for degradation or loss of dominant hand function, as well as the mechanisms that support motor learning under conditions of very long-term training. We used a novel precision drawing task and fMRI to investigate 8 adult human amputees with chronic (mean 33 years) unilateral dominant (right) hand absence, and right-handed matched controls (8 for fMRI, 19 for behavior). Amputees' precision drawing performances with their left hands reached levels of smoothness (associated with left hemisphere control), acceleration time (associated with right hemisphere control), and speed equivalent to controls' right hands, whereas accuracy maintained a level comparable with controls' left hands. This compensation is supported by an experience-dependent shift from heavy reliance on the dorsodorsal parietofrontal pathway (feedback control) to the ventrodorsal pathway and prefrontal regions involved in the cognitive control of goal-directed actions. Relative to controls, amputees also showed increased activity within the former cortical sensorimotor hand territory in the left (ipsilateral) hemisphere. These data demonstrate that, with chronic and exclusive forced use, the speed and quality of nondominant hand precision endpoint control in drawing can achieve levels nearly comparable with the dominant hand.
Chiral photonic bandgap microcavities doped with single colloidal semiconductor quantum dots

Various single colloidal quantum dots were investigated in chiral liquid crystal 1-D photonic bandgap microcavities for visible and telecom wavelengths. The microcavity environment provides circular polarization of definite handedness. Narrow, circularly-polarized microcavity resonances of 3-5 nm width were observed on the band edges of the stopbands.