Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sequential and Simultaneous Algorithms to Solve the Collision-Free Trajectory Planning Problem for Industrial Robots – Impact of Interpolation Functions and the Characteristics of the Actuators on Robot Performance

Trajectory planning for robots is a very important issue in those industrial activities which have been automated. The introduction of robots into industry seeks to upgrade not only the standards of quality but also productivity as the working time is increased and the useless or wasted time is reduced. Therefore, trajectory planning has an important role to play in achieving these objectives (the motion of robot arms will have an influence on the work done). Formally, the trajectory planning problem aims to find the force inputs (control 憲岫建岻) to move the actuators so that the robot follows a trajectory 圏岫建岻 that enables it to go from the initial configuration to the final one while avoiding obstacles. This is also known as the complete motion planning problem compared with the path planning problem in which the temporal evolution of motion is neglected. An important part of obtaining an efficient trajectory plan lies with both the interpolation function used to help obtain the trajectory and the robot actuators. Ultimately actuators will generate the robot motion, and it is very important for robot behavior to be smooth. Therefore, the trajectory planning algorithms should take into account the characteristics of the actuators without forgetting the interpolation functions which also have an impact on the resulting motion. As well as smooth robot motion, it is also necessary to monitor some working parameters to verify the efficiency of the process, because most of the time the user seeks to optimize certain objective functions. Among the most important working parameters and variables are the time required to get the trajectory done, the input torques, the energy consumed and the power transmitted. The kinematic properties of the robot s links, such as the velocities, accelerations and jerks are also important. The trajectory algorithm should also not overlook the presence of possible obstacles in the workspace. Therefore it is very important to model both the workspace and the obstacles efficiently. The quality of the collision avoidance procedure will depend on this modelization.
Accountable Anonymity: A Proxy Re-Encryption Based Anonymous Communication System

While several well-developed anonymous services have been made available on-line to protect Internet user's privacy, we have seen that due to the lack of accountability, they have often been exploited by criminals to conduct various illegal activities (e.g., sharing child pornography materials, sending threatening emails, etc.) against innocent people in both cyberspace and physical world. There is an immediate need for building accountability within anonymous systems. In this paper, we show that although accountability appears to be contradictory to and may impair anonymity, it is technically feasible to combine anonymity and accountability into one framework, namely Accountable Anonymity. To our knowledge, this is one of the first attempts trying to achieve both accountability and anonymity. We propose an efficient proxy re-encryption based design that allows normal activities to be done in anonymous manner, while keeping malicious/criminal operations accountable at the same time. Formal security analysis and prototype implementation demonstrate that our scheme is not only immune to well-known attacks against anonymity and accountability, but also able to provide non-frameability and confidentiality along with Accountable Anonymity.
A REAL–TIME AND ANY–TIME APPROACH FOR A DIALOG SYSTEM

In this paper we present a knowledge based approach to a speech understanding and dialog system which possesses any–time and real–time capabilities. Knowledge is represented by means of a semantic–network formalism; the concept–centered knowledge base is automatically compiled into a fine–grained network which allows an efficient exploitation of parallelism. The interpretation problem is defined as a combinatorial optimization problem and solved by means of iterative optimization methods. By using iterative methods, any–time capabilities are provided since after each iteration step a (sub–)optimal solution is always available. At the moment, the real–time factor for interpreting an initial user’s utterance is 0.7.
Design decisions influencing the UltraSPARC's instruction fetch architecture

Designing a modern microprocessor is a complex task that demands careful balance between cycle time, cycle-per-instruction and area costs. In particular, the instruction fetch unit greatly affects the performance of a multi-issue processor. It must provide adequate bandwidth to sustain peak instruction issue rate and must predict future instruction sequences with high accuracy. In the UltraSPARC prefetch and dispatch unit design, we examined a technique that combined two prediction methods: predictive set-associative cache and in-cache prediction. This combination was compared with alternative designs such as direct-mapped and set-associative caches, and a branch history table and a branch target buffer. We chose the combined prediction technique for its fast cycle time, lower cycle-per-instruction, and lower area costs. This paper summarizes the trade-off decisions made in the design of the UltraSPARC instruction prefetch and dispatch unit.
WORKING PAPER – PLEASE DO NOT CITE Teacher Salary Structure and the Decision to Teach in Public Schools : An Analysis of Recent College Graduates

“. college graduates with high test scores are less likely to take jobs, employed teachers with high test scores are less likely to stay, and former teachers with high test scores are less likely to return. ” – Murnane, et al, 1991. In this paper, we explore the structure of compensation for women who recently graduated from college to assess the opportunity costs of entering the teaching profession. Using the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, we estimate separate wage regressions for public school teachers and those employed outside the teaching profession. We account for selfselection into occupation and endogenous wages using the Heckman two-step correction. The structure of salaries in teaching is such that women with stronger demonstrated academic skills and technical majors face greater opportunity costs to enter the teaching profession. Furthermore, structural probit estimates indicate that opportunity cost influences the probability of entering the teaching profession.
Novelty and diversity enhancement and evaluation in recommender systems and information retrieval

The development and evaluation of Information Retrieval and Recommender Systems has traditionally focused on the relevance and accuracy of retrieved documents and recommendations, respectively. However, there is an increasing realization that accuracy alone might be a sub-optimal strategy for a successful user experience. Properties such as novelty and diversity have been explored in both fields for assessing and enhancing the usefulness of search results and recommendations. In this doctoral research we study the assessment and enhancement of both properties in the confluence of Information Retrieval and Recommender Systems.
Experiences of Instant Messaging in Global Software Development Projects: A Multiple Case Study

Instant messaging (IM) has become a significant tool for communication in global software development (GSD) projects. In this paper, we describe experiences of IM use based on 39 semi-structured interviews of participants in six GSD projects. Our results indicate that in successful projects, IM use was more wide-spread and systematical. IM status information was used to assess availability, even though the information was not always up-to-date. IM was used to facilitate multitasking and communication with multiple people simultaneously, and as a side channel in meetings. Many considered the communication initiation barrier lower for IM than for other synchronous communication media, such as the telephone. Saving the transcripts from significant discussions and decisions made during IM sessions was considered important, and failure to do so systematically was a major driving force to use other media, such as email, instead of instant messaging.
Quantifying regularity in morphological processes : An ongoing study on nominalization in German

Nominalization is a highly productive process of derivation in many languages, and often there are multiple nominalization patterns for a verbal base that are associated with (more or less) subtly different semantics. In German, two nominalization patterns are particularly prominent in that they are applicable to a broad range of verbal bases: nominal infinitives (NI, evaluieren, “to evaluate” → das Evaluieren, “the evaluating”) and -ung deverbal nouns (UNG, evaluieren, “to evaluate” → die Evaluierung, “the evaluation”). At a general level, the semantics of UNGs and NIs can be considered quite similar. This is not only because they are transpositional, i.e., they change the part-of-speech of the base term, but also because of the tight relation between the action/event denoted by the base verb and the corresponding nominalizations. The study presented in this abstract proposes to investigate the distinction between UNGs and NIs with methods from distributional semantics that capture the meaning shifts associated with the two nominalization patterns. We hypothesize that despite the shared syntactic features, the meaning shifts of UNGs and NIs are markedly different on the distributional level. Furthermore, we place the comparison between the two nominalization processes within the broader theoretical perspective of a graded distinction between inflection and derivation. In particular, we hypothesize that while the distributional behavior of UNGs places them close to the derivation extreme of the derivation/inflection continuum, NIs pattern with the cases of inflection. To support this claim, we compare the nominalizations to two landmarks: a clear case of inflection, namely present participles (evaluierend, “evaluating”) and an unequivocal case of derivation, namely agent nouns (der Evaluierer, “the evaluator”).
Interpolation and range extrapolation of HRTFs [head related transfer functions]

The head related transfer function (HRTF) characterizes the scattering properties of a person's anatomy (especially the pinnae, head and torso), and exhibits considerable person-to-person variability. It is usually measured as a part of a tedious experiment, and this leads to the function being sampled at a few angular locations. When the HRTF is needed at intermediate angles, its value must be interpolated. Further, its range dependence is also neglected, which is invalid for nearby sources. Since the HRTF arises from a scattering process, it can be characterized as a solution of a scattering problem. In this paper, we show that by taking this viewpoint and performing some analysis we can express the HRTF in terms of a series of multipole solutions of the Helmholtz equation. This approach leads to a natural solution to the problem of HRTF interpolation. Furthermore, we show that the range-dependence of the HRTF in the near-field can also be obtained by extrapolation from measurements at one range.
Statistical Estimation in Varying-Coefficient Models

Statistical Estimation in Varying-Coe cient Models Jianqing Fan Department of Statistics University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3260 Wenyang Zhang Department of Statistics The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, Hong Kong Abstract Varying-coe cient models are a useful extension of the classical linear models. The appeal of these models is that the coe cient functions can easily be estimated via a simple local regression. This yields a simple one-step estimation procedure. We show that such a one-step method can not be optimal when di erent coe cient functions admit di erent degrees of smoothness. This drawback can be repaired by using our proposed two-step estimation procedure. The asymptotic mean-squared errors for the two-step procedure is obtained and is shown to achieve the optimal rate of convergence. A few simulation studies show that the gain by the two-step procedure can be quite substantial. The methodology is illustrated by an application to an environmental dataset. KEY WORDS : Varying-coe cient models, local linear t, optimal rate of convergence, mean squared errors. SHORT TITLE : Varying Coe cients Models. 1 Introduction 1.1 background Driven by many sophisticated applications and fueled by modern computing power, many useful data-analytic modeling techniques have been proposed to relax traditional parametric models and to exploit possible hidden structure. For an introduction to these techniques, see the books by Hastie and Tibshirani 1990, Green and Silverman 1994, Wand and Jones 1995 and Fan and Gijbels 1996, among others. In dealing with high-dimensional data, many powerful approaches have been incorporated to avoid so-called curse of dimensionality . Examples includes additive modeling Breiman and Friedman, 1995; Hastie and Tibshirani 1990, low-dimensional interaction modeling Friedman 1991, Gu and Wahba, 1992, Stone et al. 1997, multiple-index models Hardle and Stoker 1990, Li 1991, and partially linear models Wahba 1984; Green and Silverman 1994, and their hybrids Carroll et al. 1997, Fan et al. 1997, Heckman et al. 1997, among others. Di erent models explore di erent aspects of high-dimensional data and incorporate di erent prior knowledge into Partially supported by NSF Grant DMS-9503135 and an NSA Grant 96-1-0015.
Color‐space distortions following long‐term occupational exposure to mercury vapor

Color vision was examined in subjects with long‐term occupational exposure to mercury (Hg) vapor. The color vision impairment was assessed by employing a quantitative measure of distortion of individual and group perceptual color spaces. Hg subjects (n = 18; 42.1 ± 6.5 years old; exposure time = 10.4 ± 5.0 years; time away from the exposure source = 6.8 ± 4.6 years) and controls (n = 18; 46.1 ± 8.4 years old) were examined using two arrangement tests, D‐15 and D‐15d, in the traditional way, and also in a triadic procedure. From each subject’s ‘odd‐one‐out’ choices, matrices of inter‐cap subjective dissimilarities were derived and processed by non‐metric multidimensional scaling (MDS). D‐15d results differed significantly between the Hg‐group and the control group (p < 0.05), with the impairment predominantly along the tritan axis. 2D perceptual color spaces, individual and group, were reconstructed, with the dimensions interpreted as the red‐green (RG) and the blue‐yellow (BY) systems. When color configurations from the Hg‐group were compared to those of the controls, they presented more fluctuations along both chromatic dimensions, indicating a statistically significant difference along the BY axis. In conclusion, the present findings confirm that color vision impairments persist in subjects that have received long‐term occupational exposure to Hg‐vapor although, at the time of testing, they were presenting mean urinary concentration within the normal range for non‐exposed individuals. Considering the advantages of the triadic procedure in clinical evaluation of acquired color vision deficiencies, further studies should attempt to verify and/or improve its efficacy.
Rapid vocal tract length normalization using maximum likelihood estimation

Recently, vocal tract length normalization (VTLN) techniques have been developed for speaker normalization in speech recognition. This paper proposes a new VTLN method, in which the vocal tract length is normalized in the cepstrum space by means of linear mapping whose parameter is derived using maximumlikelihood estimation. The computational costs of this method are much lower than that of such conventional methods as ML-VTLN, in which the parameter for mapping is selected from among several parameters. Further, the new method offers greater precision in determining parameters for individual speakers. Experimental use of the method resulted in an error reduction rate of 7.1%. A combination of the proposed method with cepstrum mean normalization (CMN) method was also examined and found to reduce the error rate even more, by 14.6%.
BASIC SYMPLECTIC GEOMETRY FOR p-BRANES WITH THICKNESS IN A CURVED BACKGROUND

We show that the Witten covariant phase space for p-branes with thickness in an arbitrary background is endowed of a symplectic potential, which although is not important to the dynamics of the system, plays a relevant role on the phase space, allowing us to generate a symplectic structure for the theory and therefore give a covariant description of canonical formalism for quantization.
Multi-objective Cross-Layer Algorithm for Routing over Wireless Sensor Networks

With Wireless Sensor Networks popularity growth, numerous cross-layer routing protocols have been proposed. These proposals are mainly designed to address the limitations in energy resources of the sensor nodes. However, advances in technology have led to a wide variety of possible applications with many different requirements. The routing protocol should not only take into account the energy resources but it also should be able to adapt to different application requirements making different routing decisions. Here we present a flexible cross-layer algorithm based on a cost function to provide multi-objective adaptability to existing routing protocols that aims to balance the requirements of multiple applications and the resource constrained sensor network nodes. Computer simulations and real hardware experiments demonstrate that the cross layer algorithm applied over a collection protocol improves the performance for different application requirements and shows that energy resources are conserved through dynamic parameter tuning.
Elevated pregnancy losses at high and low extremes of maternal glucose in early normal and diabetic pregnancy: evidence for a protective adaptation in diabetes.

OBJECTIVE Early pregnancy losses increase with marked hyperglycemia in diabetic pregnancy. However, mean loss rates do not differ from those of nondiabetic pregnancy. This observation might be explained by increased fetal losses at the extremes of glycemia in diabetic and nondiabetic pregnancy. To test this hypothesis, we examined relationships of proximate measures of prior glycemia, glycated protein and fructosamine, to pregnancy loss. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 389 diabetic and 429 nondiabetic pregnant subjects participated in the Diabetes In Early Pregnancy study. Glycated protein and fructosamine measurements were standardized as multiples of control values for each center (Z score). The logarithm of odds of pregnancy loss were plotted against Z scores and tested by logistic models. RESULTS Mean pregnancy loss rates were 12% in diabetic and 13% in normal pregnancies. However, over six intervals of glycated protein in diabetic pregnancy, fetal loss rates at the upper and lower extremes (24 and 33%, respectively) were approximately threefold higher than the four intervening rates (8-14%). The odds ratio of pregnancy loss for these extreme intervals to the intervening intervals is 3.0 (P = 0.01). Nondiabetic losses showed a similar pattern. In confirmation, logit pregnancy losses were increased in a J-shaped curve at the glycemic extremes in normal (P < 0.019) and diabetic (P < 0.015) pregnancy. The upper glycemic extreme in diabetic pregnancy was two- to fivefold higher than in control pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS Pregnancy losses are increased at the extremes of glycemia in both normal and diabetic pregnancy but at higher levels in diabetic pregnancy. The data suggest defensive adaptations against hyperglycemia in diabetic pregnancy.
Stochastic Models of Computer Communication Systems

(Read before the Royal Statistical Society at a meeting organized by the Research Section on Wednesday, May 8th, 1985, Professor J. B. Copas in the Chair) SUMMARY This paper describes some examples of the stochastic models found useful in the design and analysis of advanced computer and communication systems. Our major theme might be termed the control of contention. As illustrations of this theme we discuss concurrency control procedures for databases, dynamic channel assignment for cellular radio, and random access schemes for the control of a broadcast channel. We emphasize asymptotic properties of product-form distributions and we present some new results on the stability of acknowledgement based random access schemes. This paper is intended to describe to the Society some examples of the stochastic models found useful in the design and analysis of advanced computer and communication systems. The examples chosen are broadly concerned with what might be termed the control of contention, and an attempt has been made to provide enough of the technical background to motivate the models considered. In Section 2 we describe a probabilistic model, due to Mitra (1985), for conflicts anlong tran- sactions in a database. Such conflicts can arise in distributed computer systems, where to ensure the consistency of a database it is often necessary to forbid the concurrent execution of transactions involving common items: a transaction must then contend with other transactions for access to the items it requires. Mitra (1985) has shown that his model can be used to answer some important design questions concerning concurrency control procedures which use exclusive and non-exclusive locks. Mitra's results are based upon a product-form solution; we indicate how his asymptotic formulae can be extended beyond the range of light traffic and the assumption of an unstructured database. In Section 3 we discuss one of the many interesting problems which arise in connection with cellular radio. Cellular radio makes efficient use of a limited number of radio channels by allowing the repeated reuse of each channel in sufficiently separated spatial regions. The topic we consider is contention between different regions for the use of dynamically assigned channels. Everitt and Macfadyen (1983) have described an analytically tractable method of dynamic channel assign- ment, which they term the maximum packing strategy. Again a product form solution is involved: from this it is easy to obtain asymptotic formulae applicable in light traffic. These formulae establish the advantage of the strategy over a fixed channel assignment for low enough loss pro- babilities, but the advantage disappears as traffic and the number of channels increase. The real potential of dynamic schemes is their ability to cope automatically with traffic intensities which fluctuate in space and time.
Discrete Vector Potentials for Nonsimply Connected Three-Dimensional Domains

In this paper, we focus on the representation of a divergence-free vector field, defined, on a connected nonsimply connected domain $\Omega \subset \R^3$ with a connected boundary $\Gamma$, by its curl and its normal component on the boundary. The considered problem is discretized with H(curl)- and H(div)-conforming finite elements. In order to ensure the uniqueness of the vector potential, we propose a spanning tree methodology to identify the independent edges. The topological features of the domain under consideration are analyzed here by means of the homology groups of first and second order.