Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An improved result for observer-based H∞ fuzzy control

This paper deals with the observer-based Hinfin control problem for T-S fuzzy systems. By Lyapunov stability and the three index combination technique, a new nonlinear matrix inequality condition for the existence of an observer-based Hinfin controller is derived. To solve controllers with LMI algorithms, a set of LMI conditions which are necessary and sufficient to the derived nonlinear condition are developed as well. It can be shown that the present result is more relaxed than the existing ones and includes them as special cases.
Improving Speaker Diarization

This paper describes the LIMSI speaker diarization system used in the RT-04F evaluation. The RT-04F system builds upon the LIMSI baseline data partitioner, which is used in the broadcast news transcription system. This partitioner provides a high cluster purity but has a tendency to split the data from a speaker into several clusters when there is a large quantity of data for the speaker. In the RT-03S evaluation the baseline partitioner had a 24.5% diarization error rate. Several improvements to the baseline diarization system have been made. A standard Bayesian information criterion (BIC) agglomerative clustering has been integrated replacing the iterative Gaussian mixture model (GMM) clustering; a local BIC criterion is used for comparing single Gaussians with full covariance matrices. A second clustering stage has been added, making use of a speaker identification method: maximum a posteriori adaptation of a ref- erence GMM with 128 Gaussians. A final post-processing stage refines the segment boundaries using the output of the transcrip- tion system. Compared to the best configuration baseline system for this task, the improved system reduces the speaker error time by over 75% on the development data. On evaluation data, a 8.5% overall diarization error rate was obtained, a 60% reduction in error compared to the baseline.
Influence of nanomechanical properties on single-electron tunneling: A vibrating single-electron transistor

We describe single-electron tunneling through molecular structures under the influence of nanomechanical excitations. We develop a full quantum-mechanical model, which includes charging effects and dissipation, and apply it to the vibrating C60 single-electron transistor experiment by Park et al. (Nature, 407 (2000) 57). We find good agreement and argue vibrations to be essential to molecular electronic systems. We propose a mechanism to realize negative differential conductance using local bosonic excitations.
High spectral efficiency OFDM based on complex wavelet packets

We proposed a novel type of CO-OFDM based on the recently developed dual-tree complex WPT (DT-CWPT). In particular, polarization mode dispersion (PMD) can be compensated by digital signal processing using a DT-CWPT which is characterized by a single-side band. Numerical simulations show that the 1 Tb/s single-channel CO-OFDM transmission over the distance of 1800 km with the spectral efficiency (SE) of 7.88 bit/s/Hz can be realized.
An FPGA based hardware accelerator for real time video segmentation system

Video Segmentation is the basic requirement for applications such as video surveillance, traffic management and medical imaging. The high computation power must be provided to support this operation. This paper discuss on design and implementation of hardware accelerator for video segmentation. The algorithm of Sobel edge detection operator is used to develop this hardware accelerator. To develop hardware accelerator datapath architecture the management of memory access is deployed and architecture based pipeline are made with the potential improvements in acceleration to the read data pixel from memory. In addition, a finite state machine is used to ensure the hardware accelerator controls the sequence of derivative computation, the write and read operations. System Integration uses NIOS II processor and Avalon bus interfacing. The hardware accelerator design was implemented on an Altera FPGA development board and has managed to achieve a video rate of 30 frames per second as required by NTSC standard definition video. The architecture core for memory access has succeeded to reduce memory bandwidth utility by 75%.
Legislatures as spin glasses

I present a method for partitioning legislatures into subsets of legislators that vote in a similar fashion by modelling legislatures as Potts spin glasses. I apply the method to find partitions of the UK House of Commons and the US Senate. I explain how the method is related to methods designed to find partitions of networks into densely connected subsets of nodes.
Quantum measurements and the Abelian Stabilizer Problem

We present a polynomial quantum algorithm for the Abelian stabilizer problem which includes both factoring and the discrete logarithm. Thus we extend famous Shor’s results [7]. Our method is based on a procedure for measuring an eigenvalue of a unitary operator. Another application of this procedure is a polynomial quantum Fourier transform algorithm for an arbitrary finite Abelian group. The paper also contains a rather detailed introduction to the theory of quantum computation.
HEVC-compliant Tile-based Streaming of Panoramic Video for Virtual Reality Applications

Delivering wide-angle and high-resolution spherical panoramic video content entails a high streaming bitrate. This imposes challenges when panorama clips are consumed in virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMD). The reason is that the HMDs typically require high spatial and temporal fidelity contents and strict low-latency in order to guarantee the user's sense of presence while using them. In order to alleviate the problem, we propose to store two versions of the same video content at different resolutions, each divided into multiple tiles using the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard. According to the user's present viewport, a set of tiles is transmitted in the highest captured resolution, while the remaining parts are transmitted from the low-resolution version of the same content. In order to enable randomly choosing different combinations, the tile sets are encoded to be independently decodable. We further study the trade-off in the choice of tiling scheme and its impact on compression and streaming bitrate performances. The results indicate streaming bitrate saving from 30% to 40%, depending on the selected tiling scheme, when compared to streaming the entire video content.
Map Production from An Active Object Database, Using Dynamic Representation and Automated Generalisation

AbstractMap production has been seen previously as a standalone task, compiling information together from various sources to produce a particular cartographic product. This traditional view is now challenged by the availability of new environments which bring together databasing, object data modelling, image analysis, active agent behaviour and automated cartography to produce a unified flowline for production of multiple maps, charts, and geospatial data. This paper overviews the capabilities of a modern map production application built around an object-oriented geospatial database, and specifically highlights its capabilities for active representation, multiple geometry and automated generalisation, in order to explore the benefits and future directions of active object mapping.
Hashing with Generalized Nyström Approximation

Hashing, which involves learning binary codes to embed high-dimensional data into a similarity-preserving low-dimensional Hamming space, is often formulated as linear dimensionality reduction followed by binary quantization. Linear dimensionality reduction, based on maximum variance formulation, requires leading eigenvectors of data covariance or graph Laplacian matrix. Computing leading singular vectors or eigenvectors in the case of high-dimension and large sample size, is a main bottleneck in most of data-driven hashing methods. In this paper we address the use of generalized Nystrom method where a subset of rows and columns are used to approximately compute leading singular vectors of the data matrix, in order to improve the scalability of hashing methods in the case of high-dimensional data with large sample size. Especially we validate the useful behavior of generalized Nystrom approximation with uniform sampling, in the case of a recently-developed hashing method based on principal component analysis (PCA) followed by an iterative quantization, referred to as PCA+ITQ, developed by Gong and Lazebnik. We compare the performance of generalized Nystrom approximation with uniform and non-uniform sampling, to the full singular value decomposition (SVD) method, confirming that the uniform sampling improves the computational and space complexities dramatically, while the performance is not much sacrificed. In addition we present low-rank approximation error bounds for generalized Nystrom approximation with uniform sampling, which is not a trivial extension of available results on the non-uniform sampling case.
In-hand manipulation using gravity and controlled slip

In this work we propose a sliding mode controller for in-hand manipulation that repositions a tool in the robot's hand by using gravity and controlling the slippage of the tool. In our approach, the robot holds the tool with a pinch grasp and we model the system as a link attached to the gripper via a passive revolute joint with friction, i.e., the grasp only affords rotational motions of the tool around a given axis of rotation. The robot controls the slippage by varying the opening between the fingers in order to allow the tool to move to the desired angular position following a reference trajectory. We show experimentally how the proposed controller achieves convergence to the desired tool orientation under variations of the tool's inertial parameters.
Real-Time Visual SLAM with Resilience to Erratic Motion

Simultaneous localisation and mapping using a single camera becomes difficult when erratic motions violate predictive motion models. This problem needs to be addressed when visual SLAM algorithms are transferred from robots or mobile vehicles onto hand-held or wearable devices. In this paper we describe a novel SLAM extension to a camera localisation algorithm based on particle filtering which provides resilience to erratic motion. The mapping component is based on auxiliary unscented Kalman filters coupled to the main particle filter via measurement covariances. This coupling allows the system to survive unpredictable motions such as camera shake, and enables a return to full SLAM operation once normal motion resumes. We present results demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach when operating within a desktop environment.
{32 () Feature Lattices and Maximum Entropy Models Ref:mach1379-rm Editor: Ray Mooney

The maximum entropy framework has proved to be expressive and powerful for statistical language modelling, but it suuers from the computational expensiveness of model building. The iterative scaling algorithm that is used for parameter estimation is rather slow while the feature selection process might require parameters for many candidate features to be estimated many times. In this paper we present a novel approach for building maximum entropy models. Our approach uses a feature collocation lattice as a feature generation engine and selects candidate features without resorting to iterative scaling but instead through our own frequency redistribution algorithm. After the candidate features have been selected we use iterative scaling to estimate a fully saturated model for the maximal (factorial) feature space and then start to relax (eliminate) the most speciic features. During constraint relaxation we always have a fully t maximum en-tropy model, so we rank the constraints on the basis of their weights in the model. Therefore we don't have to use iterative scaling for the constraint ranking. Another important improvement in the eeciency of the model search is that we can use the weights of the old model as the initial values for the weights in the estimation of the new one since the simpliied model deviates from its larger model only in a small number of constraints. This has proved to decrease the number of required iterations about tenfold. The proposed method is especially suitable for the tasks of Natural Language Modelling because it can successfully deal with data sparseness, overcome the assumption of independence, and deal with overlapping knowledge sources. In terms of practical results we discuss how our method has been applied to several language modelling tasks including document categorization, sentence boundary disambiguation, and part-of-speech tagging.
Chiral Kernel : Taking into account stereoisomerism

Graph kernels provides a framework combining machine learning and graph theory. However, kernels based upon the molecular graph, which can not distinguish stereoisomers, are unable to predict properties which differs among stereoisomers. This article presents a graph kernel which takes into account chirality, and is used (in combination with a classical graph kernel) to predict the optical rotation of molecules.
Positive feedback of elevated CO 2 on soil respiration in late autumn and winter

Abstract. Soil respiration of terrestrial ecosystems, a major component in the global carbon cycle is affected by elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. However, seasonal differences of feedback effects of elevated CO2 have rarely been studied. At the Giesen Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (GiFACE) site, the effects of +20% above ambient CO2 concentration have been investigated since 1998 in a temperate grassland ecosystem. We defined five distinct annual seasons, with respect to management practices and phenological cycles. For a period of 3 years (2008–2010), weekly measurements of soil respiration were carried out with a survey chamber on vegetation-free subplots. The results revealed a pronounced and repeated increase of soil respiration under elevated CO2 during late autumn and winter dormancy. Increased CO2 losses during the autumn season (September–October) were 15.7% higher and during the winter season (November–March) were 17.4% higher compared to respiration from ambient CO2 plots. However, during spring time and summer, which are characterized by strong above- and below-ground plant growth, no significant change in soil respiration was observed at the GiFACE site under elevated CO2. This suggests (1) that soil respiration measurements, carried out only during the growing season under elevated CO2 may underestimate the true soil-respiratory CO2 loss (i.e. overestimate the C sequestered), and (2) that additional C assimilated by plants during the growing season and transferred below-ground will quickly be lost via enhanced heterotrophic respiration outside the main growing season.
Developing a Deep Brain Stimulation Neuromodulation Network for Parkinson Disease, Essential Tremor, and Dystonia: Report of a Quality Improvement Project

Objective To develop a process to improve patient outcomes from deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery for Parkinson disease (PD), essential tremor (ET), and dystonia. Methods We employed standard quality improvement methodology using the Plan-Do-Study-Act process to improve patient selection, surgical DBS lead implantation, postoperative programming, and ongoing assessment of patient outcomes. Results The result of this quality improvement process was the development of a neuromodulation network. The key aspect of this program is rigorous patient assessment of both motor and non-motor outcomes tracked longitudinally using a REDCap database. We describe how this information is used to identify problems and to initiate Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles to address them. Preliminary outcomes data is presented for the cohort of PD and ET patients who have received surgery since the creation of the neuromodulation network. Conclusions Careful outcomes tracking is essential to ensure quality in a complex therapeutic endeavor like DBS surgery for movement disorders. The REDCap database system is well suited to store outcomes data for the purpose of ongoing quality assurance monitoring.
The experience of investigation for detectives

The thesis presents a qualitative research study on how police detectives experience, understand, and think about the process of doing serious and complex criminal investigations. The data was collected using a semi- structured, in-depth interview with a group of sixty-four experienced police investigators from Australia, New Zealand, various State Police Services in America and the FBI. The empirical research methodology of phenomenography was employed to gather and analysis the interview transcripts for this group of detectives. The aim of this phenomenographic approach was to elicit the variation in the investigative experience both within individual detectives and between detectives in the group studied. Upon analysis, the variation in this group of detectives' conceptions about doing a criminal investigation was captured in a set of four hierarchically ordered and qualitatively different categories of description. These four categories reflect particular cognitive styles or preferred ways of investigative thinking that experienced investigators rely upon throughout the investigative process. The four 'Investigative Thinking Styles' start with the application of the 'Method' style of investigative thinking, through to the 'Challenge' style, and then onto the 'Skill' style, and finally up to and including the 'Risk' thinking style. These four styles constitute a theoretical model of investigation that has important practical implications for the recruitment, selection, and training of investigating officers as well as for the case management of investigations and the use of investigative teams for major crime investigations.
The effect of coating in increasing the critical size of islands on a compliant substrate

A flexible electronic system may consist of a polymeric substrate and an array of stiff islands, on which devices are fabricated. When the substrate is stretched, the devices on the islands experience small strains but the islands may debond if they exceed a critical size. The authors show that a thin layer of polymer coating, covering the islands and the substrate, can markedly increase the critical island size.
Simultaneous expression of neuronal and glial properties by chick ciliary ganglion cells during development

Autoradiographic methods were used to show that non-neuronal cells from dissociated chick ciliary ganglia grown in cell culture for 1 day exhibit high affinity uptake for norepinephrine (NE) and/or specific receptors for nerve growth factor (NGF). Using immunofluorescence procedures, it was demonstrated that these cells reacted neither with the neuron-specific marker tetanus toxin nor with antibodies to the fibroblast marker fibronectin. The cells were, however, positive for 04 antigen, which is present on Schwann cells and oligodendrocytes and is recognized by a monoclonal antibody (Schachner, M., S. K. KIm, and R. Zehnle (1981) Dev. Biol. 83: 328–338). At all stages studied between embryonic day 6 (E6) and embryonic day 14 (E14), about 80% of the non- neuronal cells were positive for 04 antigen, the other non-neuronal cells being identified as fibroblasts or fibroblast-like cells by staining with antibodies to fibronectin. The proportion of cells with NGF receptors and cells with NE uptake decreased during development between E6 and E14. The percentage of 04-positive cells which have NGF receptors decreased from about 95% at E6 to about 35% at E14. The proportion of 04-positive cells with NE uptake decreased from about 57% at E6 to about 15% at E14. Thus, a considerable proportion of the non- neuronal cell population in embryonic ciliary ganglia displays neuronal properties. We suggest that those cells exhibiting biochemical properties of both differentiated glial cells and neurons are precursor cells which have the potential to develop either into glial cells or neurons.
Probing a Gamma-Ray Burst Progenitor at a Redshift of z = 2: A Comprehensive Observing Campaign of the Afterglow of GRB 030226

We report results from a comprehensive follow-up observing campaign of the afterglow of GRB 030226, including VLT spectroscopy, VLT polarimetry, and Chandra X-ray observations. In addition, we present BOOTES-1 wide-field observations at the time of the occurrence of the burst. First observations at ESO started 0.2 days after the event when the gamma ray burst (GRB) afterglow was at a magnitude of R ∼ 19 and continued until the afterglow had faded below the detection threshold (R > 26). No underlying host galaxy was found. The optical light curve shows a break around 0.8 days after the burst, which is achromatic within the observational errors, supporting the view that it was due to a jetted explosion. Close to the break time the degree of linear polarization of the afterglow light was less than 1.1%, which favors a uniform-jet model rather than a structured one. VLT spectra show two absorption line systems at redshifts z = 1.962 ± 0.001 and 1.986 ± 0.001, placing the lower limit for the redshift of the GRB close to 2. We emphasize that the kinematics and the composition of the absorbing clouds responsible for these line systems are very similar to those observed in the afterglow of GRB 021004. This corroborates the picture in which at least some GRBs are physically related to the explosion of a Wolf-Rayet star.
A Compact Rotary Series Elastic Actuator for Human Assistive Systems

Precise and large torque generation, back drivability, low output impedance, and compactness of hardware are important requirements for human assistive robots. In this paper, a compact rotary series elastic actuator (cRSEA) is designed considering these requirements. To magnify the torque generated by an electric motor in the limited space of the compact device, a worm gear is utilized. However, the actual torque amplification ratio provided by the worm gear is different from the nominal speed reduction ratio due to friction, which makes the controller design challenging. In this paper, the friction effect is considered in the model of cRSEA, and a robust control algorithm is designed to precisely control the torque output in the presence of nonlinearities such as the friction. The mechanical design and dynamic model of the proposed device and the design of a robust control algorithm are discussed, and actuation performance is verified by experiments. Experimental results with a human subject are also presented to show the performance of the cRSEA while interacting with humans.
All you need is loan ∗ The role of credit constraints on the cleansing effect of recessions VERY PRELIMINARY

We provide a measure of the cleansing effect of recessions in a model where heterogeneous firms face financial constraints and endogenously exit the market. Firms that survive recessions are either the most productive or those with the highest net worth. We show that credit constraints mitigate the cleansing effect of recessions as they induce productive firms with low net worth to exit. However, despite this selection distortion, the average productivity rises more during a recession the more stringent are credit frictions. Credit constraints amplify the aggregate output loss during a recession as they lead to excessive destruction of firms.