Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic Signal Segmentation using the Fractal Dimension and Weighted Moving Average Filter

: In many applications of the signal processing such as automatic analysis of EEG signal, it is needed that signal is split to smaller parts that each part has the same statistical characterizations such as the amplitude and frequency. This act has been called signal segmentation. In this paper, the signal is initially filtered by weighted moving average (WMA). Not only WMA can emphasize recent events which this act is very important in the signal segmentation, but it can also detect important underlying unadulterated from of the time series by attenuating its short-term variations. After filtering the signal, fractal dimension (FD) of the signal is computed and used as a feature for automatic segmentation of the signal. The proposed method has been applied on the synthetic and real EEG signals and then, this method has been compared with improved nonlinear energy operator (INLEO) method which is known as a good method for segmenting a signal. The simulation results indicate that these proposed techniques have greater accuracy compared with previous methods.
Actively-compliant locomotion control with the hydraulic quadruped robot on rough terrain

This paper is authored to describe a control framework that is designated for hydraulically actuated quadruped robot to trot on rough terrain. In order to succeed in trotting on rough terrain, two controllers are synthesized: i) Dual Length Linear Inverted Pendulum Method (DLLIPM), ii) Active Compliance Control. The first controller computes the hydraulic quadruped robot's trajectory, which not only effectively reduces the energy dissipation, but also promotes the workspace utilization. The second controller, in the meantime, utilizes the force sensors which are located at the bottom of the feet to calculate the joint displacements that are associated with ground reaction force errors, using admittance blocks. In addition to position feedback, these joint displacements are inserted to the position control loop and then updates the orientation input. In doing so, the hydraulic quadruped robot can perform the given locomotion task in an actively-compliant manner. Using the proposed frame work, the overall control performance is tested by hydraulic quadruped robot on rough terrain via simulation and the results turn out to be positive.
The trouble with transparency: Reconnecting ethics, integrity, epistemology, and power

Tracing the afterlife of our explorative article on marriages of Dutch-speaking women travelling to areas held by jihadist movements in Syria, we analyze the harm the celebration of transparency may do. Through an auto-ethnographic reflection, we address how the demand for transparency was used in a media hype that engendered parliamentary questions and an external reflection audit. To understand the appeal to transparency, we argue for the need to relate anthropological ethics to epistemological concerns, and to link transparency to power. Whereas anthropological research needs some level of trust and confidentiality, the quest for transparency starts from distrust and an impetus to control. Neoliberal forms of public management make universities vulnerable to external pressure, with anthropology as an interpretative discipline that values complexity an easy target. Researchers who are recognizably Muslim are exposed to particular harm as heightened ethno-nationalism and an anti-Islam political climate produce them as a category already ‘under suspicion’.
Rotation-invariant Iris Recognition - Boosting 1D Spatial-domain Signatures to 2D

An iris recognition algorithm based on 1D spatial domain signatures is improved by extending template data from mean vectors to 2D histogram information. EER and shape of the FAR curve is clearly improved as compared to the original algorithm, while rotation invariance and the low computational demand is maintained. The employment of the proposed scheme remains limited to the similarity ranking scenario due to its overall FAR/FRR behaviour.
Semantic Similarity Calculation Method using Information Contents-based Edge Weighting

In this paper, we propose Semantic Similarity calculation measurement using INformation contents on EdGEs of ontology (SSINEGE) which is a hybrid edgeand information contents-based methodology. SSINEGE is devised to solve the limitation of the applying the same weighted edges by edgebased similarity. So, SSINEGE adopts information-contents theory to calculate the varied weights of edges. The varied weighted edges by SSINEGE can also solve a problem with the same degree of similarity for all pairs of concepts that are sharing a same Least Common Subsumer (LCS). To minimize the overlapped information-contents on the weighted, SSINEGE adopts the conceptual path between concepts instead of depths of the ontology. To verify the superiority of SSINEGE, we compared SSINEGE with widely used four similarity measurements including Leacock and Chodorow. We conducted two kinds of evaluations: first is calculation of similarity using the varied edge-weighting and second is for the discriminative capability using conceptual distances between comparative concepts. To verify the superiority of SSINEGE, we compared the calculated similarities of SSINEGE with Leacock and Chodorow. As the results, we verified that the calculated similarity of SSINEGE is significantly increased than the other comparatives.
Spatially resolved extended phase graphs: Modeling and design of multipulse sequences with parallel transmission

A spatially resolved extended phase graph (SR‐EPG) framework is proposed for prediction of echo amplitudes in the presence of spatially variable radio frequency (RF) fields. The method may be used to examine any regularly repeating pulse sequence and provides a design framework for parallel transmission (PTx) systems; in this work signal homogeneity in static pseudo‐steady state (SPSS) turbo spin echo (TSE) imaging was investigated. Building on SR‐EPG calculations with PTx, a dynamic RF‐shimming approach is proposed in which, RF pulse amplitudes and phases are optimized on a per channel and per pulse basis to yield the desired signal response for all echoes. Results show significant improvements over “static” RF shimming (in which the relative amplitude/phase of the PTx channels are fixed for all pulses). SPSS‐TSE imaging using dynamic RF shimming resulted in excellent image quality, both in phantoms and in vivo, and confirmed SR‐EPG predictions. Magn Reson Med, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Polarimetric Characterization and Temporal Stability Analysis of Urban Target Scattering

This paper studies the polarimetric-dispersion properties of urban targets and their evolution along time in terms of the geometrical configuration. The relations between target geometry and the scattering behavior have been defined through the analysis of large stacks of simulated images. Scattering maps and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images have been synthesized with the numerical tool GRaphical Electromagnetic COmputing SAR for different qualitative models of two real buildings. Ground-based SAR (GB-SAR) data acquired in a subsidence measurement campaign has been used to assess the simulator's realism. These data have permitted the identification of the critical simulation parameters and their range of recommended values for realistic simulations. In the context of very high resolution images, the results derived from this study may be crucial for making progress in urban-image postprocessing. As the different resolution cells comprise few scattering centers showing a quasi-deterministic scattering behavior, nonprobabilistic models based on target's geometry seem more suited for scattering modeling. In these models, the geometry-scattering (GS) links precisely inferred from simulated images can be very important. In addition to change detection and land classification, GS models may help in improving the interpretation of subsidence results with differential interferometry. Certainly, new processing algorithms can be developed exploiting the available scattering data with more physical sense. In addition, they can take more advantage of the fine resolution and polarimetric capabilities of the new sensors, like TerraSAR-X or RADARSAT-2.
Does the Volatility of Economic Variables Change Over the Business Cycle ? A Time Series Approach

This paper offers a time series investigation into whether the conditional variance of two key macroeconomic indicators for the U.S. economy exhibits statistically significant asymmetry across the business cycle. Such asymmetry in the conditional variance is suggested both by recent studies of plant-level data on job creation and job destruction and theories of macroeconomic fluctuations which emphasize the interaction between aggregate shocks and sector and firm specific allocative shocks. The conditional variance of these series is modeled by allowing for various types of ARCH effects. Using these variance measures as estimates of the volatility of the business cycle, the results of the paper strongly suggest that recessions are more volatile than expansions.
Hepatocarcinogenesis in Hepatitis B Virus Transgenic Mice Structurally and Functionally Intact during Multiple Oncogenes and Tumor Suppressor Genes Are Updated

In the current study we sought to elucidate the molecular mechanisms which might contribute to hepatocarcinogenesis in a hepatitis B virus (HBV) envelope transgenic mouse model in which chronic hepatocellular injury and inflammation lead to regenerative hyperplasia and eventually to the development of chromosomal abnormalities and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), thereby reiterating many of the pathophysiological events that occur prior to the development of HCC in chronic HBV infection in humans. We have previously demonstrated that HBV enve lope gene expression is decreased in regenerating hepatocytes and preneoplastic nodules early in the disease process and that expression of afetoprotein and the multidrug transporter gene mar-Ill is activated in the tumors that develop in this model, but not prior to tumor development. In the current study, we examined the structure and expression of a large panel of dominant acting oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes in the liver at all stages of the disease process in order to determine the extent to which they contribute to hepatocarcinogenesis in these transgenic mice. To our surprise, no changes were observed in the structure or function of any of these genes, many of which are commonly activated in other rodent models of hepatocarcinogenesis but rarely activated in human HCC. These findings suggest that the HBV transgenic mouse model is different from most other rodent models of hepatocarcinogenesis and that it may relate more closely to the events involved in HBV-induced human hepatocarcinogenesis, where generalized chromosomal abnormal ities are common, while structural and functional changes in most of the commonly studied positive-acting oncogenes examined herein are not. Since p53 and RB mutations have recently been reported to be late events in human hepatocarcinogenesis, the structural integrity of the KH locus and the absence of pS3 mutations in the HBV transgenic mouse model suggest that they may represent a relatively early stage of hepatocellular tumorigenesis and that further manipulation of this model is warranted in order to more fully reproduce the molecular-genetic events that char acterize HBV-induced HCC in humans.
An efficient color image denoising method for Gaussian and impulsive noises with blur removal

This paper is about the restoration of color image which is blurred and degraded by Gaussian and impulsive noise. The proposed method uses adaptive median filters with structural information are used to find the impulsive noise pixels. The total variation minimization algorithm is used to remove the Gaussian noise and blurring and restores the image. This proposed method will restore the image very effectively with preserving the structural information and fine details. ere all three degradation problems are dealt with, and by using Conditional Signal Adaptive Median Filter we received more competitive result in comparison with existing methods
Conceptual Differences Among Functional Size Measurement Methods

Although functional size measurement (FSM) methods have gone a long way, they still provide challenges for software managers. A major challenge is related to the comparison of the well established FSM methods. This paper identifies the conceptual similarities and differences among Mkll FPA, COSMIC FFP and IFPUG FPA methods based on a case study, which involves implementation of the methods to measure the functional size of a military inventory management project integrated with a document management system.
Discursive Construction of Usability Work in the Cultural Context of Software Product Development

Users should be involved in the interactive systems development. However, involving users is often difficult and rare, especially in the product development context, referring to the development of commercial software products or systems. This paper critically examines user involvement in the cultural context of three software product development organizations. User involvement is indirect and labeled as usability work. Empirical, qualitative material has been gathered from the organizations during three years time. A set of discourses constructing usability work and its cultural context are identified by following a poststructuralist, Foucauldian approach. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Comparative Performability Evaluation of RB, NVP and SCOP

An adaptive scheme for software fault-tolerance is evaluated from the point of view of performability, comparing it with previously published analyses of the more popular schemes, recovery blocks and multiple version programming. In the case considered, this adaptive scheme, "Self-Configuring Optimistic Programming" (SCOP), is equivalent to N-version programming in terms of the probability of delivering correct results, but achieves better performance by delaying the execution of some of the variants until it is made necessary by an error. We discuss, by mean of an example, the application of modelling to realistic problems in fault-tolerant design.
Design and Development of a Unified framework for Secure Group Communications

††† Summary Many emerging network applications (e.g. teleconference, information services, distributed interactive simulation and collaborative network) are based on a group communications model. As a result, securing group communications, i.e., providing confidentiality, authenticity, and integrity of messages delivered between group members, will become networking issue. A secure group is a triple (U, K, R) where U denotes a set of users, K a set of keys held by the users, and R is a user-key relation. Secure groups are specified using key graphs. Three rekeying strategies: user-oriented, key-oriented, and group-oriented for securely distributing rekey messages after a join or leave are designed. Protocols for joining and leaving secure groups are designed and implemented. The rekeying strategies and join or leave protocols are implemented in a key server. This paper deals with design and development of a unified framework for secure group communications which implements join/leave protocols for all three rekeying strategies. The strategy is worked on client/server basis in a hierarchical fashion, structured as a tree with the server at the root and groups forming the nodes ending up in clients. The height of the tree has been kept as constant (=3). Because of this height, join and leave operations will become easier. Public key cryptosystem has been used for encryption, decryption of rekey messages, and original messages (key length=1024bits). Behavior of the system for user-oriented, keyoriented, and group-oriented rekeying strategies is experimented and reported in this paper. Our implementation of secure group communications provides authentication, confidentiality and integrity of the messages delivered between the group members.
A Formal Semantics for UML Activity Diagrams - Formalising Workflow Models

In this report we define a formal execution semantics for UML activity diagrams that is appropriate for workflow modelling. Our workflow models express software requirements and therefore assume a perfect implementation. In our semantics, software state changes do not take time. It is based upon the Statemate semantics of statecharts, extended with some transactional properties to deal with data manipulation. Our semantics also deals with real time and with multiple state instances. We first give an informal description of our semantics and then formalise this in terms of labelled transition systems. We compare our semantics with other semantics for UML activity diagrams and workflow modelling by analysing the different choices made in those semantics.
Power-aware real-time task scheduling with feedback control for mobile robots

As most mobile robots are powered by batteries, their energy and operation times are limited. Therefore, how to extend the lifespan of the batteries becomes an important problem. In this paper, by applying PID feedback control based on the power model of batteries of mobile robot systems, we propose a power-aware real-time task scheduling technique with feedback control to optimize the lifespan of batteries. In our technique, based on EDF(Earliest Deadline First) scheduling strategy, we first evaluate the scalability of the schedule in the next sampling period, then calculate the regulation of frequency profile by PID control, and finally regulate the quantity of frequency profile on the schedule. We have implemented our technique and conduct experiments using a set of benchmarks. Compared with the EDF and DVS-EDF algorithm [14], the experimental results show that our technique can effectively expends the lifespan of the battery without performance penalty.
Parents' perception and willingness to maintain provider care continuity for their children under universal health coverage

Background Provider continuity of care (COC) is closely related to patient outcome in pediatrics. However, no study has investigated how parents perceive the importance of COC and whether their perceptions affect their willingness to make effort to maintain good provider COC for their children under universal health coverage. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted between August 2017 and February 2018 across 6 different practices: 2 medical centers, 2 regional hospitals, 1 district hospital, and 1 clinic (n = 825). Parents' and caregivers' perceptions and perceived value of COC were evaluated using 7 items. The contingent valuation method was used to estimate willingness to pay and spend time. Results Of all respondents, only 47% (n = 394) were willing to spend >30 minutes to have their children see the regular physician if the regular physician relocated. Approximately 38% (n = 302) respondents were willing to pay more than New Taiwan Dollar (NT$) 300 per month to maintain provider COC. The perception that high COC is important was associated with willingness to spend more time for maintaining high provider COC. Conclusion Parents' perception of COC does not affect their willingness to pay for maintaining high provider COC for their children but affects their willingness to spend more time to maintain COC.
The Parameter Selection System of Vehicle Overall Design Based on Cooperation and Specialty

The process of parameter choosing in vehicle overall design is a process of collaboration design, and is also a process of group decision optimization. The degree of cooperation and level of experts become the crucial standards in Computer Supported Collaborative Design because many decision-makers participating in the design process have different expertise and goals. This paper describes vehicle overall design parameter selection with a Multi-Objective Decision-Making optimization model, presents the concepts of non-cooperation degree and non-specialty degree, and uses entropy to describe the model. Furthermore, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is employed to resolve the model and to get optimal parameter. In addition, we propose an effective expert system based on the model and actual design process. Finally, the effect of the non-cooperation degree and non-specialty degree on the result is discussed and the sensitivity of the proposed system analyzed in this paper.
From Closed to Contestable Markets: Product Differentiation in Indian Durable Consumer Goods Industry

We examine the most likely strategy of product differentiation by newly entering multinational firms when market reforms begin in a developing economy. We argue that incumbents in a non contestable protected market do not have the usual advantages of an incumbent as in a standard sequential entry model of contestable markets. In this context we use a model of vertical product differentiation to argue that a new entrant will choose a higher quality product and a higher price given the income distribution profile brought in by the market reforms. We test the propositions empirically on the basis of firm level panel data for five Indian durable consumer goods industries.
On mixing and convergence rates for a family of Markov processes approximating SDEs

We study a class of Markov processes of the type which are approximations of the SDE: where F : Rd → Rd is a Borel function, and (ξn ) are i.i. d. random variables with zero mean. Upper estimates for β-mixing and convergence rates in the range from the weakest polynomial to exponential to a (unique) invariant measure are established on the base of the stochastic calculus of variations under certain assumptions on smoothness of F, on the density of ξn , and under some recurrence conditions.
The p75 Neurotrophin Receptor Negatively Modulates Dendrite Complexity and Spine Density in Hippocampal Neurons

The correlation between functional and structural neuronal plasticity is by now well documented. However, the molecular mechanisms translating patterns of neuronal activity into specific changes in the structure of neurons remain unclear. Neurotrophins can be released in an activity-dependent manner, and they are capable of controlling both neuronal morphology and functional synaptic changes. They are thus attractive molecules to be studied in the context of synaptic plasticity. In the CNS, most of the work so far has focused on the role of BDNF and of its tyrosine kinase B receptor (TrkB), but relatively little is known about the function of the pan-neurotrophin receptor p75NTR. In this study, we show in loss-of-function experiments that postnatal hippocampal pyramidal cells in two mutant lines of p75NTR have a higher spine density and greater dendritic complexity than wild-type (WT) mice. Conversely, in a gain-of-function approach, p75NTR overexpression in WT neurons significantly reduces dendritic complexity, as well as spine density in all dendritic compartments. These results show that p75NTR negatively modulates dendritic morphology in adult hippocampal pyramidal neurons and documents a new case of functional antagonism between Trk and p75NTR signaling.