Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Per-Pixel Mirror-Based Acquisition Method for video compressive sensing

High-speed videos are essential to many types of scientific investigations. However, using high-speed cameras to directly acquire these videos is prohibitively expensive in many circumstances. This paper proposes a compressive sensing-based method for obtaining high-speed videos using low-speed cameras, which we call the Per-Pixel Mirror-Based Acquisition Method. The proposed technique is light efficient and generates time-independent samples. We compare the reconstruction results of the proposed technique with other techniques available in the literature in terms of signal-to-error (SER) ratios, for natural and synthetic videos. For the tested real videos, the proposed method provided an improvement in SER ranging from 3 to 28 dB, with respect to known techniques such as the flutter shutter and the per-pixel shutter. The actual improvement is higher for higher levels of sparsity in the used transformed representations and for lower used sub-sampling rates.
PHYLOGENETIC COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF LIFE‐HISTORY VARIATION AMONG POPULATIONS OF THE LIZARD SCELOPORUS UNDULATUS:AN EXAMPLE AND PROGNOSIS

Abstract Over the past 15 years, phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) have become standard in the study of life‐history evolution. To date, most studies have focused on variation among species or higher taxonomic levels, generally revealing the presence of significant phylogenetic effects as well as residual variation potentially attributable to adaptive evolution. Recently, population‐level phylogenetic hypotheses have become available for many species, making it possible to apply PCMs directly to the level at which experiments are typically used to test adaptive hypotheses. In this study, we present the results of PCMs applied to life‐history variation among populations of the widespread and well‐studied lizard Sceloporus undulatus. Using S. undulatus (which may represent four closely related species) as an example, we explore the benefits of using PCMs at the population level, as well as consider the importance of several thorny methodological problems including but not limited to nonindependence of populations, lack of sufficient variation in traits, and the typically small sample sizes dictated by the difficulty of collecting detailed demographic data. We show that phylogenetic effects on life‐history variation among populations of S. undulatus appear to be unimportant, and that several classic trade‐offs expected by theory and revealed by many interspecific comparisons are absent. Our results suggest that PCMs applied to variation in life‐history traits below the species level may be of limited value, but more studies like ours are needed to draw a general conclusion. Finally, we discuss several outstanding problems that face studies seeking to apply PCMs below the species level.
Alert Based Monitoring of Stock Trading Systems

Nowadays stocks are traded electronically instead of manually with an open outcry approach. As a result, business activities of investment banking organizations rely heavily on the availability of their trading systems. Any system failure will directly affect their business and in turn damage their reputation. Due to the complexity of the business, trading of stock requires services provided by many systems even within the same company. Any failure of a single system may stop the business. However, the monitoring of many systems simultaneously is not an easy task. This paper proposes a Web service approach to monitor all the systems related to stock trading within an investment banking organization. We develop a model for specifying how to detect potential system problems quickly, how to escalate the issues to relevant parities on time with an alert mechanism, and how to manage system outages properly
Highly efficient energy excitation transfer in light-harvesting complexes: The fundamental role of n

Excitation transfer through interacting systems plays an important role in many areas of physics, chemistry, and biology. The uncontrollable interaction of the transmission network with a noisy environment is usually assumed to deteriorate its transport capacity, especially so when the system is fundamentally quantum mechanical. Here we identify key mechanisms through which noise such as dephasing, perhaps counter intuitively, may actually aid transport through a dissipative network by opening up additional pathways for excitation transfer. We show that these are processes that lead to the inhibition of destructive interference and exploitation of line broadening effects. We illustrate how these mechanisms operate on a fully connected network by developing a powerful analytical technique that identifies the invariant (excitation trapping) subspaces of a given Hamiltonian. Finally, we show how these principles can explain the remarkable efficiency and robustness of excitation energy transfer from the light-harvesting chlorosomes to the bacterial reaction center in photosynthetic complexes and present a numerical analysis of excitation transport across the Fenna-Matthew-Olson (FMO) complex together with a brief analysis of its entanglement properties. Our results show that, in general, it is the careful interplay of quantum mechanical features and the unavoidable environmental noise that will lead to an optimal system performance.
The effect of head rotation on efficiency of ventilation and cuff pressure using the PLMA in pediatric patients

Background This study examined whether changing the head position from neutral to side can affect expiratory tidal volume (TV) and cuff pressure when the appropriate sizes of a Proseal™ Laryngeal Mask Airway (PLMA)-depending on the body weight -are used in pediatric patients during pressure controlled ventilation (PCV). Methods Seventy-seven children (5-30 kg) were divided into three groups according to their body weight, PLMA#1.5 (group I, n = 24), #2 (group II, n = 26), and #2.5 (group III, n = 27). After anesthesia induction, a PLMA was placed with a cuff-pressure of 60 cmH2O. The TV and existence of leakage at the peak inspiratory pressure (PIP) of 20 cmH2O, and the appropriate PIP for TV 10 ml/kg were examined. Upon head rotation to the left side, the TV, PIP, cuff pressure changes, and the appropriate PIP to achieve a TV 10 ml/kg were evaluated. Results Head rotation of 45 degrees to the left side during PCV caused a significant increase in cuff pressure and a decrease in TV, and there was no definite leakage. Changes in PIP and TV were similar in the three groups. The cuff pressure increased but there was no significant difference between the three groups. Conclusions Although cuff pressure and TV of the PLMA were changed significantly after turning the head from the neutral position to the side, a re-adjustment of the cuff pressure and PIP to maintain a TV of 10 ml/kg can make the placed PLMA useful and successful in pediatric patients under general anesthesia.
Signal processing challenges for radio astronomical arrays

Current and future radio telescopes, in particular the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), are envisaged to produce large images (> 108 pixels) with over 60 dB dynamic range. This poses a number of image reconstruction and technological challenges, which will require novel approaches to image reconstruction and design of data processing systems. In this paper, we sketch the limitations of current algorithms by extrapolating their computational requirements to future radio telescopes as well as by discussing their imaging limitations. We discuss a number of potential research directions to cope with these challenges.
Skeletal Shape Abstraction from Examples

Learning a class prototype from a set of exemplars is an important challenge facing researchers in object categorization. Although the problem is receiving growing interest, most approaches assume a one-to-one correspondence among local features, restricting their ability to learn true abstractions of a shape. In this paper, we present a new technique for learning an abstract shape prototype from a set of exemplars whose features are in many-to-many correspondence. Focusing on the domain of 2D shape, we represent a silhouette as a medial axis graph whose nodes correspond to "partsrdquo defined by medial branches and whose edges connect adjacent parts. Given a pair of medial axis graphs, we establish a many-to-many correspondence between their nodes to find correspondences among articulating parts. Based on these correspondences, we recover the abstracted medial axis graph along with the positional and radial attributes associated with its nodes. We evaluate the abstracted prototypes in the context of a recognition task.
Centre De Referència En Economia Analítica Barcelona Economics Working Paper Series Contractual Design and Public-private Parternships for Hospitals Contractual Design and Public-private Parternships for Hospitals *

Recently the Portuguese Government announced the launching of public private partnerships to build hospitals with the distinctive feature that both infrastructure construction and the clinical activities management will be awarded to a private party. Accordingly there appear coordination issues that are novel in the design of PPP contracts. We explore the conditions allowing for the optimal design contracts design under several some plausible scenarios.
Selecting Appropriate Happiness Measures and Malleability: A Review

Happiness is everyone’s ultimate goal for having a meaningful and better life. To some, it means not something that easy to achieve but need a persistence effort to improve one’s life. However, very little empirical paper can be claim to be the most appropriate happiness measures. This study specifically attempts to 1) perform systematic review of identifying the concept of happiness in broader perspectives, 2) investigating the adequate information regarding the most frequently used happiness measures based on past studies and 3) make some conclusion based on findings. Computer search using systematic review procedures was grounded based on literature search namely a few search engines: Google Scholar, EBSCOHOST, open access academic journals by using predefined keywords in databases. The findings revealed a total of 15 potential instruments are used for measuring happiness and subjective wellbeing. These instruments consist of two perspectives which comprised of multi item and single item scale. This review found that lack of evidence should not be interpreted as implying lack of practice used. In conclusion, this study is also adequately as powered studies targeted as to proof the appropriate happiness measures using composite or single item scale for measuring happiness.
Resilience and Protective Factors in Older Adults

Evidence suggests resilience promotes successful aging in place and protective factors promote resilience. This study sought to investigate whether or not the combination of three protective factors, physical health, social support, and self-efficacy are all of equal importance in predicting resilience among Marin County older adults, or if some individual protective factors have a greater impact on resilience than the others. Fifty-eight participants ages 62 and higher were recruited from senior community programs and personal contacts. Four self-report questionnaires were completed by the participants in this exploratory, cross-sectional, quantitative design. SPSS was used for a descriptive and multivariate analyses to investigate the relationship between the key variables. Of the three protective factors combined, self-efficacy was the greatest predictor of resilience R2 = . 279, F(3,48) = 6.207, p < . 01; B = 1.735, β = . 495, p < . 01. The remaining protective factors both were found to predict self-efficacy, physical health (R2 = .312, F(2,51) = 11.55, p < . 001; B= . 588, β = . 356, p < . 01) and social support (R2 = .312, F(2,51) = 11.5, p < . 001; B= . 756, β = . 317, p < . 05). In conclusion, self-efficacy is an important predictor of resilience in older adults. Social support and physical health support selfefficacy. Incorporation of physical activity and social participation during occupational therapy intervention will increase self-efficacy, and therefore, increase resilience.
What are Strategies in Delay Games? Borel Determinacy for Games with Lookahead

We investigate determinacy of delay games with Borel winning conditions, infinite-duration two-player games in which one player may delay her moves to obtain a lookahead on her opponent's moves. First, we prove determinacy of such games with respect to a fixed evolution of the lookahead. However, strategies in such games may depend on information about the evolution. Thus, we introduce different notions of universal strategies for both players, which are evolution-independent, and determine the exact amount of information a universal strategy needs about the history of a play and the evolution of the lookahead to be winning. In particular, we show that delay games with Borel winning conditions are determined with respect to universal strategies. Finally, we consider decidability problems, e.g., "Does a player have a universal winning strategy for delay games with a given winning condition? ", for omega-regular and omega-context-free winning conditions.
Prediction Equations for Body-fat Percentage in Indian Infants and Young Children Using Skinfold Thickness and Mid-arm Circumference

The objective of the study was to develop prediction equations for fat-mass percentage in infants in India based on skinfold thickness, mid-arm circumference, and age. Skinfold thicknesses and mid-arm circumference of 46 apparently-healthy infants (27 girls and 19 boys), aged 6–24 months, from among the urban poor attending a well baby clinic of a hospital in Kolkata were measured. Their body-fat percentage was measured using the D2O dilution technique as the reference method. Equations for body-fat percentage were developed using a stepwise forward regression model using skinfold thicknesses, mid-arm circumference, and age as independent variables, and the body-fat percentage was derived by D2O dilution as the dependent variable. The new prediction equations are: body-fat percentage=-69.26+5.76×B-0.33×T2+5.40×M+0.01×A2 for girls and body-fat percentage=-8.75+3.73×B+2.57×S for boys, where B=biceps skinfold thickness, T=triceps skinfold thickness, and S=suprailiac skinfold thickness all in mm, M=mid-arm circumference in cm, and A=age in month. Using the D2O dilution technique, the means (SD) of the calculated body-fat percentage were 17.11 (7.25) for girls and 16.93 (6.62) for boys and, using the new prediction equations, these were 17.11 (6.25) for girls and 16.93 (6.02) for boys. The mean of the differences of paired values in body-fat percentage was zero. The mean (SD) of the differences of paired values for body-fat percentage derived by the D2O technique and the new equations, applied on an independent sample of 23 infants (11 girls and 12 boys) were -0.93 (6.56) for girls and 1.14 (2.43) for boys; the 95% confidence limits of the differences of paired values for body-fat percentage were -2.03 to +3.89 for girls and -0.26 to +2.54 for boys. Given that the trajectories of growth during infancy and childhood are a major risk factor for a group of diseases in adulthood, including coronary heart disease and diabetes, these predictive equations should be useful in field studies.
Poisson actions and scattering theory for integrable systems

Conservation laws, heirarchies, scattering theory and Backlund transformations are known to be the building blocks of integrable partial differential equations. We identify these as facets of a theory of Poisson group actions, and apply the theory to the ZS-AKNS nxn heirarchy (which includes the non-linear Schrodinger equation, modified KdV, and the n-wave equation). We first find a simple model Poisson group action that contains flows for systems with a Lax pair whose terms all decay on R. Backlund transformations and flows arise from subgroups of this single Poisson group. For the ZS-AKNS nxn heirarchy defined by a constant a ∈ u(n), the simple model is no longer correct. The a determines two separate Poisson structures. The flows come from the Poisson action of the centralizer Ha of a in the dual Poisson group (due to the behavior of e at infinity). When a has distinct eigenvalues, Ha is abelian and it acts symplectically. The phase space of these flows is the space Sa of left cosets of the centralizer of a in D−, where D− is a certain loop group. The group D− contains both a Poisson subgroup corresponding to the continuous scattering data, and a rational loop group corresponding to the discrete scattering data. The Ha-action is the right dressing action on Sa. Backlund transformations arise from the action of the simple rational loops on Sa by right multiplication. Various geometric equations arise from appropriate choice of a and restrictions of the phase space and flows. In particuar, we discuss applications to the sine-Gordon equation, harmonic maps, Schrodinger flows on symmetric spaces, Darboux orthogonal coordinates, and isometric immersions of one space-form in another. 1 Research supported in part by NSF Grant DMS 9626130 2 Research supported in part by Sid Richardson Regents’ Chair Funds, University of Texas system
A Novel qPCR Assay for the Detection of African Animal Trypanosomosis in Trypanotolerant and Trypanosusceptible Cattle Breeds

This study was conducted to (i) determine the prevalence of African Animal Trypanosomosis (AAT) in tsetse challenged areas, (ii) compare conventional with qPCR detection systems and (iii) evaluate the host genetic background and biology as risk factors. AAT prevalence studies are often confronted with low levels of parasitaemia. Hence, we designed a novel qPCR assay using primers and species specific probes amplifying the Internal Transcribed Spacer 1 (ITS1) gene. Thereby all three AAT species could be detected simultaneously. 368 individuals from three cattle types (Baoulé, Zebu and hybrids) originating from 72 farms in Burkina Faso were analysed. Farmers were interviewed and morphometric measurements of the cattle taken. A chi-squared test and a logistic regression model were calculated to detect associations with infection. In our study, the overall rate of prevalence detected with the novel qPCR assay was 11.14%. Compared to conventional PCR we identified a concordance of 91.30%. We tested 41 animals positive for trypanosome DNA, five animals showed multiple infections. Zebus were twice as often infected (21.74%) compared to Baoulé (9.70%) and hybrids (9.57%). Trypanosoma vivax is the dominant species (9.24%), as compared to T. congolense (2.44%) and T. brucei (0.82%). The chi-squared tests linking the infection events to the breeds (Zebu vs. Baoulé and Zebu vs. hybrids) were on the border of significance. No significant association with other tested parameters could be detected. We introduce a novel qPCR technique for the fast, sensitive and simultaneous detection of the three AAT species. Our results suggest that associations with breed and infection exist since Zebu cattle are more likely to be infected compared to Baoulé and hybrids. Indigenous taurine cattle breeds, like the Baoulé, therefore provide a unique and valuable genetic resource.
Sliding mode online learning for flight control applications in unmanned aerial systems

Implementing adaptive flight control strategies into unmanned aerial systems (UAS) contains a high potential to improve the degree of automation. This is especially the case regarding automatic operation under difficult atmospheric conditions or even system failures. A neural control strategy enables the UAS to improve its flight characteristics and to respond to unknown, non-linear flight conditions. Here, a learning flight control system for a fixed-wing UAS is realised using a systematic two-stage approach by firstly implementing a sustainable offline-trained basic knowledge and subsequently improving these characteristics during flight. Within the automated offline-step large groups of neural networks are trained with the required behaviour, which is derived from measured data. This phase shows that the necessary learning task can be achieved by multi-layered feedforward-networks. The training success of all networks is then evaluated with statistical methods and networks are selected for online application. The online learning step is realised with a control architecture comprising a neural network controller and a neural observer which predicts the system's dynamics and delivers the training signal for the contoller network. An important element of the control strategy is to determine a consistent error signal for the online training of the neural controller. This is done by backpropagation of a measured error through the inverse dynamics of the observer network. Since the inverse dynamics have to be very precise in order to train the controller adequately, a stable sliding mode control (SMC) algorithm for network training is introduced. This online adptive algorithm significantly improves the observer's charcteristics and with it the system's performance.
Evaluation of the FBDM framework design method

Résumé : Cet article présente des travaux pertinents à la réutilisation architecturale. D’une part, il présente la méthode de conception de frameworks FBDM (Framework Based Design Method). D’autre part, il évalue FBDM à travers une étude de cas dans le domaine des éditeurs graphiques. La méthode FBDM offre un langage de conception, un processus de conception et un outil CASE. Le langage de FBDM est un profile UML, qui étend UML avec des annotations graphiques afin de distinguer entre le noyau du framework et les points de variation. Le processus de conception de FBDM génère un framework d’une manière semiautomatique en unifiant un ensemble d’applications dans le domaine du framework; le développeur du framework doit décider de la complétude de quelques relations faisant partie des points de variation. La méthode FBDM est évaluée à travers un framework d’éditeurs graphiques. Elle compare le framework généré par FBDM avec le framework populaire JHotDraw. De plus, l’évaluation utilise des métriques de conception pour examiner la qualité du framework généré et l’apport de la notation de FBDM.
Task estimation of upper-limb using EEG and EMG signals

Many kinds of wearable robots have been proposed. In the control of those robots, surface electromyogram (sEMG) signals are widely used in order to estimate a user's motion intention. However, EMG signals that are needed to estimate a user's motion are not always available with all users. On the other hand, in recent years, an electroencephalogram (EEG) signal that is measured through an electrode on the scalp is used to control robots. It is not easy to estimate a user's motion-intention from measured EEG signals in comparison with sEMG signals in which the increase or decrease of the signals relates closely to the motion. In this study, an electric artificial arm for above elbow amputees is controlled based on EMG and EEG signals. An EEG-based control method is proposed to control the forearm and wrist motions of an electric artificial arm in this paper. The target position of the hand is estimated based on the EEG signals, the shoulder and elbow motions. In the proposed method, the target position is selected based on the shoulder and elbow motions, then EEG signals are used to judge whether the selected target position based on the shoulder and elbow motions is correct.