Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Invariance of Second-Order Modes of Linear Continuous-Time Systems under Typical Frequency Transformations

This paper discusses the behavior of the second-order modes (Hankel singular values) of linear continuous-time systems under typical frequency transformations, such as lowpass-lowpass, lowpass-highpass, lowpass-bandpass, and lowpass-bandstop transformations. Our main result establishes the fact that the second-order modes are invariant under any of these typical frequency transformations. This means that any transformed system that is generated from a prototype system has the same second-order modes as those of the prototype system. We achieve the derivation of this result by describing the state-space equations and the controllability/observability Gramians of transformed systems.
The dialogue of engagement : an enquiry into the role of stakeholders in quality management theory

This chapter provides an overview of the research including its context, the conceptual framework, the research question, the methodology used and an outline of the structure of the thesis. The research is concerned with the way in which an organisation engages with its stakeholders. It does this by investigating the way in which one public sector organisation sought to develop and introduce a significant change to the way in which services were delivered within the protected areas that it manages. As the question concerns the way that an organisation dealt with a controversial strategy, the phenomenon of interest – stakeholder engagement – is viewed from the perspective of management. The focus is on the way in which those responsible for determining and implementing strategy – managers – undertook this engagement. Taking this perspective therefore places the issue squarely within the context of the quality of management and the role that stakeholder engagement plays in this. The conceptual framework established for the research is that of quality management which itself is undergoing substantial change as its attempts to adapt to the changing circumstances of modern organisations. Despite extensive interest and research amongst general management scholars, the quality management literature has only recently recognised the potential role of stakeholders in determining management quality. By looking at the phenomenon in a particular way, the current research provided an opportunity to contribute to our understanding of stakeholder engagement practices and their influence of organisational success. As an example of interpretive research concerned with only one particular case, the focus is on theoretical generalization. Consequently, a considerable part of the thesis is spent addressing the question of management quality from the perspective of its theoretical underpinnings. This is opportune as scholars have recently suggested that for the quality movement to itself survive, it needs to move from its current atheoretical formulation to one that is firmly linked to the broader management literature and stated in theoretical terms. The phenomenon of stakeholder engagement is therefore addressed in a way that contributes to this broad endeavour.
3 D Video Sprites

image processing, digital video processing, image based rendering, computer graphics Here we introduce the concept of a 3D video sprite. We outline an approach for their automatic creation and manipulation. 3D sprites consists of a number of synchronous video streams and mark up information that allows virtual viewpoints with respect to a live action video to be rendered and combined with traditional 3D virtual environments. As such they constitute a form of image based rendering.
Towards a Unified Framework of IR Tasks and Strategies

A lock system controls exiting and entering of personnel, particularly in public and commercial structures by means of an alarm and a panic bar and key system to operate a lock through a series of interlocking controls including an internal panic bar, an internal key lock, an external key lock and a supplemental manual control. Four modes of operation are provided in which the panic bar is at all times operative and the alarm is selectively operative to provide, in addition to panic bar actuation or in combination therewith, authorized passage, authorized exit only, free passage in both directions and free exit only.
Antigenic shift and increased incidence of meningococcal disease.

BACKGROUND The incidence of serogroup C and Y meningococcal disease increased in the United States during the 1990s. The cyclical nature of endemic meningococcal disease remains unexplained. The purpose of this study was to investigate the mechanisms associated with the increase in the incidence of meningococcal disease. METHODS We characterized an increasing incidence of invasive serogroup C and Y meningococcal disease using population-based surveillance from 1992 through 2001. Isolates were characterized by multilocus sequence typing and antigen sequence typing of 3 outer membrane protein (OMP) genes: porA variable regions (VRs) 1 and 2, porB, and fetA VR. RESULTS For both serogroups, OMP antigenic shifts were associated with increased incidence of meningococcal disease. For serogroup Y, antigenic shift occurred through amino acid substitutions at all 3 OMPs--PorA VR 1 and 2, PorB, and FetA VR. For serogroup C, antigenic shift involved amino acid substitutions at FetA VR and, in some cases, deletion of the porA gene. On the basis of deduced amino acid sequences, the antigenic changes likely occurred by horizontal gene transfer. CONCLUSIONS Antigenic shifts were associated with increased incidence of serogroup C and serogroup Y meningococcal disease. For serogroup Y, the changes involved all OMP genes that were studied. Increases in the incidence of meningococcal disease may be caused, in part, by antigenic shift.
The assessment of neural injury following open heart surgery by physiological tremor analysis

Introduction The appearance of post-operative cognitive dysfunction as a result of open heart surgery has been proven by several studies. Focal and/or sporadic neuron damage emerging in the central nervous system may not only appear as cognitive dysfunction, but might strongly influence features of physiological tremor. Material and methods We investigated 110 patients (age: 34-73 years; 76 male, 34 female; 51 coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), 25 valve replacement, 25 combined open heart surgery, 9 off-pump CABG) before surgery and after open-heart surgery on the 3rd to 5th post-operative day. The assessment of the physiological tremor analysis was performed with our newly developed equipment based on the Analog Devices ADXL 320 JPC integrated accelerometer chip. Recordings were stored on a PC and spectral analysis was performed by fast Fourier transformation (FFT). We compared power integrals in the 1-4 Hz, 4-8 Hz and 8-12 Hz frequency ranges and these were statistically assessed by the Wilcoxon rank correlation test. Results We found significant changes in the power spectrum of physiological tremor. The spectrum in the 8-12 Hz range (neuronal oscillation) decreased and a shift was recognised to the lower spectrum (p < 0.01). The magnitude of the shift was not significantly higher for females than for males (p < 0.157). We found no significant difference between the shift and the cross-clamp or perfusion time (p < 0.6450). Conclusions The assessment of physiological tremor by means of our novel, feasible method may provide a deeper insight into the mechanism of central nervous system damage associated with open heart surgery.
Automatically generating multilingual, semantically enhanced, descriptions of digital audio and video objects on the Web

Every day, millions of new images, videos and audios are uploaded to the web. However, unlike text-based content, audio and video objects cannot be indexed by search engines. Thus, much valuable multimedia content stay unreachable for a great majority of online users. To overcome this problem we introduce a technique that automatically generates semantically enhanced descriptions of audio and video objects. The goal is to facilitate indexing and retrieval of the objects with the help of traditional search engines. Basically, the technique automatically generates static Web pages that describe the content of the digital audio and video objects, organized in such a way as to facilitate locating segments of the audio or video that correspond to the descriptions. The technique is a mashup of Web services that also provides translation of the descriptions and semantic enhancement. We thoroughly analyzed the click-data comparing accesses to the digital content before and after the automatic generation of the descriptions. The outcomes suggest that the technique significantly improve the retrieval of items, not only in terms of visibility, but also brings down language barriers, by supporting multilingual access.
Fault tolerant dual-motor drives: Sizing of power electronic

This paper analyzes two dual-motor fault-tolerant topologies. The first one supplies independently both machines while the second one connects them in series for reducing the number of transistors. For a given DC-link voltage, the converter component sizing is based on the peak current obtained in the normal and degraded modes.
A Study of Cloning in the Linux SCSI Drivers

To date, most research on software code cloning has concentrated on detection and analysis techniques and their evaluation, and most empirical studies of cloning have investigated cloning within single system versions. In this paper, we present the results of a longitudinal study of cloning among the SCSI drivers for the Linux operating system that spans 16 years of evolution. We have chosen the SCSI driver subsystem as a test subject as it is known that cloning has been embraced by these developers as a design practice: when a new SCSI card comes out that is similar to an old one, but different enough to warrant its own implementation, a new driver may be cloned from an existing one. We discuss the results of our qualitative and quantitative analyses, including how the layered architecture of the SCSI subsystem seems to have affected the use of cloning as a design tool, the likelihood of consistent and inconsistent change over time, and the predictive power of using cloning between two independent driver implementations to model the similarity between two target devices.
Liquid simulation with mesh-based surface tracking

Animating detailed liquid surfaces has always been a challenge for computer graphics researchers and visual effects artists. Over the past few years, researchers in this field have focused on mesh-based surface tracking to synthesize extremely detailed liquid surfaces as efficiently as possible. This course provides a solid understanding of the steps required to create a fluid simulator with a mesh-based liquid surface. The course begins with an overview of several existing liquid-surface-tracking techniques and the pros and cons of each method. Then it explains how to embed a triangle mesh into a finite-difference-based fluid simulator and describes several methods for allowing the liquid surface to merge together or break apart. The final section showcases the benefits and further applications of a mesh-based liquid surface, highlighting state-of-the-art methods for tracking colors and textures, maintaining liquid volume, preserving small surface features, and simulating realistic surface-tension waves.
Neural network based uniformity profile control of linear chemical-mechanical planarization

In this paper a neural network based uniformity controller is developed for the linear chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) process. The control law utilizes the metrology measurements of the wafer uniformity profile and tunes the pressures of different air-bearing zones on Lam linear CMP polishers. A feedforward neural network is used to self-learn the CMP process model and a direct inverse control with neural network is utilized to regulate the process to the target. Simulation and experimental results are presented to illustrate the control system performance. Compared with the results by using statistical surface response methods (SRM), the proposed control system can give more accurate uniformity profiles and more flexibility.
Epidemiology of Viral-associated Acute Lower Respiratory Tract Infection Among Children <5 Years of Age in a High HIV Prevalence Setting, South Africa, 2009–2012

Background: Data on the epidemiology of viral-associated acute lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) from high HIV prevalence settings are limited. We aimed to describe LRTI hospitalizations among South African children aged <5 years. Methods: We prospectively enrolled hospitalized children with physician-diagnosed LRTI from 5 sites in 4 provinces from 2009 to 2012. Using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), nasopharyngeal aspirates were tested for 10 viruses and blood for pneumococcal DNA. Incidence was estimated at 1 site with available population denominators. Results: We enrolled 8723 children aged <5 years with LRTI, including 64% <12 months. The case-fatality ratio was 2% (150/8512). HIV prevalence among tested children was 12% (705/5964). The overall prevalence of respiratory viruses identified was 78% (6517/8393), including 37% rhinovirus, 26% respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), 7% influenza and 5% human metapneumovirus. Four percent (253/6612) tested positive for pneumococcus. The annual incidence of LRTI hospitalization ranged from 2530 to 3173/100,000 population and was highest in infants (8446–10532/100,000). LRTI incidence was 1.1 to 3.0-fold greater in HIV-infected than HIV-uninfected children. In multivariable analysis, compared to HIV-uninfected children, HIV-infected children were more likely to require supplemental-oxygen [odds ratio (OR): 1.3, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.1–1.7)], be hospitalized >7 days (OR: 3.8, 95% CI: 2.8–5.0) and had a higher case-fatality ratio (OR: 4.2, 95% CI: 2.6–6.8). In multivariable analysis, HIV-infection (OR: 3.7, 95% CI: 2.2–6.1), pneumococcal coinfection (OR: 2.4, 95% CI: 1.1–5.6), mechanical ventilation (OR: 6.9, 95% CI: 2.7–17.6) and receipt of supplemental-oxygen (OR: 27.3, 95% CI: 13.2–55.9) were associated with death. Conclusions: HIV-infection was associated with an increased risk of LRTI hospitalization and death. A viral pathogen, commonly RSV, was identified in a high proportion of LRTI cases.
DETERMINING VOLATILITY SURFACES AND OPTION VALUES FROM AN IMPLIED VOLATILITY SMILE

AbstractUsing only the implied volatility smile of a single maturity T and an assumption of path-independence, we analytically determine the risk-neutral stock price process and the local volatility surface up to an arbitrary horizon T′ ≥ T. Our path-independence assumption requires that each positive future stock price St is a function of only time t and the level Wt of the driving standard Brownian motion (SBM) for all t ∈ (0, T′). Using the T-maturity option prices, we identify this stock pricing function and thereby analytically determine the risk-neutral process for stock prices. Our path-independence assumption also implies that local volatility is a function of the stock price and time which can be explicitly represented in terms of the known stock pricing function. Finally, we derive analytic valuation formulae for standard and exotic options which are consistent with the observed T-maturity smile.
Steerable Random Fields

In contrast to traditional Markov random field (MRF) models, we develop a steerable random field (SRF) in which the field potentials are defined in terms of filter responses that are steered to the local image structure. In particular, we use the structure tensor to obtain derivative responses that are either aligned with, or orthogonal to, the predominant local image structure, and analyze the statistics of these steered filter responses in natural images. Clique potentials are defined over steered filter responses using a Gaussian scale mixture model and are learned from training data. The SRF model connects random field models with anisotropic regularization and provides a statistical motivation for the latter. We demonstrate that steering the random field to the local image structure improves image denoising and inpainting performance compared with traditional pairwise MRFs.
SI-PRON : a Comprehensive Pronunciation Lexicon for Slovenian

We present the efforts involved in designing SI-PRON, a comprehensive machine-readable pronunciation lexicon for Slovenian. It has been built from two sources and contains all the lemmas from the Dictionary of Standard Slovenian (SSKJ), the most frequent inflected word forms found in contemporary Slovenian texts, and a first pass of inflected word forms derived from SSKJ lemmas. The lexicon file contains the orthography, corresponding pronunciations, lemmas and morphosyntactic descriptors of lexical entries in a format based on requirements defined by the W3C Voice Browser Activity. The current version of the SI-PRON pronunciation lexicon contains over 1.4 million lexical entries. The word list determination procedure, the generation and validation of phonetic transcriptions, and the lexicon format are described in the paper. Along with Onomastica, SI-PRON presents a valuable language resource for linguistic studies and research of speech technologies for Slovenian. The lexicon is already being used by the Proteus Slovenian text-to-speech synthesis system and for generating audio samples of the SSKJ headwords. SI-PRON: slovar izgovorjav slovenskih besed Naglasno mesto predstavlja zlog, na katerem ima beseda tonsko ali jakostno izrazitost. Glede na besedno obliko poznamo stalno mesto naglasa, kot npr. v francoščini na zadnjem zlogu, delno omejeno mesto naglasa, kot npr. v hrvaščini, kjer zadnji zlog ni nikoli naglašen, ter prosto mesto naglasa. Za slovenski jezik je značilno prosto mesto naglasa, saj se ta lahko pojavi na prvem, zadnjem, predzadnjem ali predpredzadnjem zlogu. Prav tako ima lahko posamezna beseda več mest naglasa. Mesto naglasa je določeno za vsako besedo posebej in se ga naučimo hkrati z učenjem jezika in besed. Slovar izgovarjav, ki vsebuje fonetične prepise besed, vključno z oznakami za naglasno mesto, je nujno potreben jezikovni vir za razvoj jezikovno-tehnoloških izdelkov ter za jezikoslovno študije. Za slovenski jezik so bili zgrajeni številni slovarji izgovarjav, noben izmed njih pa ne pokriva celotnega besedišča iz Slovarja slovenskega knjižnega jezika. V prispevku predstavljamo postopek pridobivanja SI-PRON slovarja izgovarjav za slovenske besede, ki so zbrane v SSKJ. Seznam osnovnih besednih oblik smo razširili s številnimi pregibnimi oblikami. Skupaj z Onomastico predstavlja SI-PRON dragocen jezikovni vir za izgradnjo govornih aplikacij. Vgrajen je bil v sintetizator govora za slovenski jezik, Proteus, prav tako je bil uporabljen za izgradnjo zvočnih podob gesel SSKJ, ki so predstavljene na spletni različici slovarja SSKJ, na strani http://bos.zrc-
Performance Analysis and Optimization of Map Only Left Outer Join

We studied the characteristics of HDFS, Distributed Cache and how algorithms of left outer join on map side had been implemented on the Hadoop platform. For the purpose of performance optimization we inspected several methods to control amount of map task. Further, according to the result of the experiment, we adjusted critical parameters. Based on these we significantly improved performance in comparison to other existing implementations and experiments.
Soft-tissue facial anthropometry in three dimensions: from anatomical landmarks to digital morphology in research, clinics and forensic anthropology

Summary – The quantitative assessment of the dimensions of human facial soft-tissue structures (eyes, nose, mouth and lips, chin, ears), their reciprocal spatial positions and relative proportions, has an interdisciplinary perspective: anatomical and anthropometric descriptions, medical evaluations (clinical genetics, orthodontics, maxillo-facial and plastic surgery), forensic medicine, they all need reference three-dimensional data collected on healthy, normal individuals selected for sex, age, ethnic group, to be compared to those obtained on the single individual. The data collection technique should be non-invasive, fast, as simple as possible, performed directly on the subjects using low-cost instruments. Data should be collected in digital format, so to allow the creation of computerized data bases, and the use of the computerized techniques of visualization and simulation of treatment. Independent of classic direct anthropometry, various three-dimensional image analyzers are increasingly being used in clinical investigations and research. The instruments can be divided into two main categories: optical, non contact digitizers, and contact instruments. The first kind of instruments (mainly, laser scanners and stereophotogrammetric devices) perform a fast digitization of the face, providing a detailed analysis of the soft-tissue surface. Contact instruments (electromagnetic and electromechanic digitizers) use a landmark representation of the soft-tissue facial surface. Landmark coordinates are coupled to a mathematical and geometric model of the face, and angles, distances and ratios similar to those measured in conventional anthropometry can be obtained. Additionally, multivariate methods of analysis, obtained either from geometric morphometry or from other analytical methods, could be used. Optical instruments provide a larger amount of information but they cannot assess all the actual anatomical landmarks obtained by contact instruments. Motion artifacts are more common with contact instruments, but they can be easily transported, and they are less expensive. Overall, contact instruments seem sufficiently reliable, simple and fast to be used also in a clinical context, thus providing useful quantitative information to allow a better patient care, without submitting the subjects to potentially harmful procedures.
Automatic modulation classification using stacked sparse auto-encoders

Automatic modulation classification (AMC) plays a key role in cognitive radar, cognitive radio and some other civilian and military fields to identify the type of modulation. In this paper, a deep learning based modulation classification method is developed for discriminating digital modulated signals. This proposed method uses a stacked sparse auto-encoders to extract features from ambiguity function (AF) images of signals. The obtained features are fed into a softmax regression classifier in order to output reliable classification. The scheme has the capability to recognize 7 popular modulations including ASK, PSK, QAM, FSK, MSK, LFM, and OFDM. Experimental results show that, compared to some existing methods, the proposed method has a relatively higher accuracy and greatly improves the classification performance in low SNR situations.
Human video object watermarking based on Hu moments

A novel video object based watermarking scheme is proposed in this paper, providing copyright protection of the semantic content. To achieve this goal, an adaptive two-dimensional Gaussian model of skin color distribution is initially used in order to detect face and body regions within the initial image. An invariant watermark is then designed and tested against attacks using invariant Hu moments. The proposed algorithms have the advantages of being robust, computationally efficient, and overheads transmitted to the decoder side are very low. Performance of the proposed object based watermarking system is tested under various signal distortions such as JPEG lossy compression, blurring, filtering and cropping, Experimental results on real life images indicate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed scheme.