Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fuzzy sliding mode autopilot design for nonminimum phase and nonlinear UAV

The fuzzy sliding mode control based on the multi-objective genetic algorithm is proposed to design the altitude autopilot of a UAV. This case presents an interesting challenge due to non-minimum phase characteristic, nonlinearities and uncertainties of the altitude to elevator relation. The response of this autopilot is investigated through various criteria such as time response characteristics, robustness with respect to parametric uncertainties, and robustness with respect to unmodeled dynamics. The parametric robustness is investigated with reduction in significant longitudinal stability coefficients. Also, a nonlinear model in presence of the coupling terms is used to investigate the robustness with respect to unmodeled dynamics. In spite of a designed classic autopilot, it is shown by simulation that combining of the sliding mode control robustness and the fuzzy logic control independence of system model can guarantee the acceptable robust performance and stability with respect to unmodeled dynamics and parametric uncertainty, while the number of FSMC rules is smaller than that for the conventional fuzzy logic control.
Investigating the structural characteristics of cascades on Tumblr

Online social network platforms provide built-in functionalities that allow users to share information through their social connections. The study of information diffusion focusses on analysing how the spread of information enables us to understand the ways that users behave and interact online. Information diffusion manifests itself on social networks in the form of cascades of information, which are structural representations of diffusion events. The characteristics of information diffusion differ between online social networks partly depending on the capabilities of each. Tumblr is an online social network platform; it allows users to reblog more than once, to add a comment with a reblog, and to delete reblogs which presents certain challenges in the study of diffusion on this network. In this paper, we will identify and address those challenges, and we will examine the effects of these functionalities on users' behaviour and consequently on the structural characteristics of cascades on Tumblr.
An improved methodology for ARN crossing waypoints location problem

The optimization of air route network (ARN) is an effective method to improve the transmission ability of air traffic flow. One crucial issue in optimizing the national ARN is the crossing waypoints location problem (CWLP), which determines the airspace capacity, airspace safety and flight efficiency. However, the existing works always focus on one or two aspects regardless of the airspace capacity, which is the measurement of maximum transmission ability and directly determines the availability of ARN in practice. In this paper, we fully investigate the three key factors above in ARN design and formulate a triple-objectives model to solve the CWLP. Furthermore, due to challenges brought by the multi-objectives model and the large scale of CWLP, a multi-objective optimization algorithm based on comprehensive learning particle swarm optimization (CLPSO) is proposed, known as MOCLPSO. The experiments on the national ARN of China redesign are implemented which show the better performance of MOCLPSO compared with two conventional optimization algorithms that are NSGA-II and MOEA/D.
FlowBlocks: a multi-touch ui for crowd interaction

Multi-touch technology lends itself to collaborative crowd interaction (CI). However, common tap-operated widgets are impractical for CI, since they are susceptible to accidental touches and interference from other users. We present a novel multi-touch interface called FlowBlocks in which every UI action is invoked through a small sequence of user actions: dragging parametric UI-Blocks, and dropping them over operational UI-Docks. The FlowBlocks approach is advantageous for CI because it a) makes accidental touches inconsequential; and b) introduces design parameters for mutual awareness, concurrent input, and conflict management. FlowBlocks was successfully used on the floor of a busy natural history museum. We present the complete design space and describe a year-long iterative design and evaluation process which employed the Rapid Iterative Test and Evaluation (RITE) method in a museum setting.
Web derived pronunciations for spoken term detection

Indexing and retrieval of speech content in various forms such as broadcast news, customer care data and on-line media has gained a lot of interest for a wide range of applications, from customer analytics to on-line media search. For most retrieval applications, the speech content is typically first converted to a lexical or phonetic representation using automatic speech recognition (ASR). The first step in searching through indexes built on these representations is the generation of pronunciations for named entities and foreign language query terms. This paper summarizes the results of the work conducted during the 2008 JHU Summer Workshop by the Multilingual Spoken Term Detection team, on mining the web for pronunciations and analyzing their impact on spoken term detection. We will first present methods to use the vast amount of pronunciation information available on the Web, in the form of IPA and ad-hoc transcriptions. We describe techniques for extracting candidate pronunciations from Web pages and associating them with orthographic words, filtering out poorly extracted pronunciations, normalizing IPA pronunciations to better conform to a common transcription standard, and generating phonemic representations from ad-hoc transcriptions. We then present an analysis of the effectiveness of using these pronunciations to represent Out-Of-Vocabulary (OOV) query terms on the performance of a spoken term detection (STD) system. We will provide comparisons of Web pronunciations against automated techniques for pronunciation generation as well as pronunciations generated by human experts. Our results cover a range of speech indexes based on lattices, confusion networks and one-best transcriptions at both word and word fragments levels.
Morphologic and Functional Correlates of Synaptic Pathology in the Cathepsin D Knockout Mouse Model of Congenital Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis

Abstract Mutations in the cathepsin D (CTSD) gene cause an aggressive neurodegenerative disease (congenital neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis) that leads to early death. Recent evidence suggests that presynaptic abnormalities play a major role in the pathogenesis of CTSD deficiencies. To identify the early events that lead to synaptic alterations, we investigated synaptic ultrastructure and function in presymptomatic CTSD knockout (Ctsd−/−) mice. Electron microscopy revealed that there were significantly greater numbers of readily releasable synaptic vesicles present in Ctsd−/− mice than in wild-type control mice as early as postnatal day 16. The size of this synaptic vesicle pool continued to increase with disease progression in the hippocampus and thalamus of the Ctsd−/− mice. Electrophysiology revealed a markedly decreased frequency of miniature excitatory postsynaptic currents (mEPSCs) with no effect on paired-pulse modulation of the evoked excitatory post synaptic potentials in the hippocampus of Ctsd−/− mice. The reduced mEPSCs frequency was observed before the appearance of epilepsy or any morphologic sign of synaptic degeneration. Taken together, these data indicate that CTSD is required for normal synaptic function and that a failure in synaptic trafficking or recycling may bean early and important pathologic mechanism in Ctsd−/− mice; thesepresynaptic abnormalities may initiate synaptic degeneration in advance of subsequent neuronal loss.
Efficient Sparse Voxel Octrees

In this paper, we examine the possibilities of using voxel representations as a generic way for expressing complex and feature-rich geometry on current and future GPUs. We present in detail a compact data structure for storing voxels and an efficient algorithm for performing ray casts using this structure. We augment the voxel data with novel contour information that increases geometric resolution, allows more compact encoding of smooth surfaces, and accelerates ray casts. We also employ a novel normal compression format for storing high-precision object-space normals. Finally, we present a variable-radius postprocess filtering technique for smoothing out blockiness caused by discrete sampling of shading attributes. Based on benchmark results, we show that our voxel representation is competitive with triangle-based representations in terms of ray casting performance, while allowing tremendously greater geometric detail and unique shading information for every voxel. Our voxel codebase is open sourced and available at http://code.google. com/p/efficient-sparse-voxel-octrees/.
Serum-derived vitronectin influences the pericellular distribution of type 1 plasminogen activator inhibitor

Bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAEs) were used as a model system to study the nature and origin of protein(s) in the extracellular matrix that bind to type 1 plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI-1). Matrix samples were fractionated by SDS-PAGE and analyzed by PAI-1 ligand binding and by immunoblotting using antibodies to vitronectin (Vn). PAI- 1 bound primarily to two Vn-related polypeptides of Mr 63,000 and 57,000, and both of these partially degraded polypeptides were present in the culture serum. Radiolabeling experiments failed to detect significant Vn biosynthesis by BAEs (less than 0.03% of total), or by human umbilical vein endothelial cells and HT 1080 cells. The binding of PAI-1 to Vn was relatively specific since direct binding studies failed to demonstrate significant interactions between PAI-1 and other matrix proteins (e.g., fibronectin, type IV collagen, laminin, or matrigel). Kinetic studies indicate that PAI-1 rapidly accumulates in the matrix when BAEs are plated on Vn, appearing in the conditioned medium only after a significant lag period (1-2 h). However, no PAI-1 was detected in the matrix when the cells were plated on fibronectin- coated dishes, and there was no lag period for PAI-1 accumulation in the medium. These results indicate that PAI-1 binds specifically to serum-derived Vn in the matrix, and suggest that the composition of both the matrix and serum itself may influence the pericellular distribution of this important inhibitor.
Asymptotics of Plancherel measures for symmetric groups

1.1. Plancherel measures. Given a finite group G, by the corresponding Plancherel measure we mean the probability measure on the set G∧ of irreducible representations of G which assigns to a representation π ∈ G∧ the weight (dim π)/|G|. For the symmetric group S(n), the set S(n)∧ is the set of partitions λ of the number n, which we shall identify with Young diagrams with n squares throughout this paper. The Plancherel measure on partitions λ arises naturally in representation– theoretic, combinatorial, and probabilistic problems. For example, the Plancherel distribution of the first part of a partition coincides with the distribution of the longest increasing subsequence of a uniformly distributed random permutation [31]. We denote the Plancherel measure on partitions of n by Mn,
SIMULATIONS OF AN ALPHA-EFFECT DUE TO MAGNETIC BUOYANCY

Three-dimensional simulations of a thermally stably stratified gas with a localized layer of toroidal magnetic field are carried out. The magnetic field gives rise to a magnetic buoyancy instability. Due to the presence of rotation the resulting fluid motions are helical and lead to an -effect, i.e. to a component of the electromotive force in the direction of the mean magnetic field. The value of is estimated during the exponential growth phase of the instability. The mean vertical transport velocity of the magnetic field is also calculated. It is found that varies with latitude and its value is positive in the northern hemisphere.
A Concise Forwarding Information Base for Scalable and Fast Flat Name Switching

Forwarding information base (FIB) scalability is a fundamental problem of numerous new network architectures that propose to use location-independent network names. We propose Concise, a FIB design that uses very little memory to support fast query of a large number of location-independent names. Concise makes use of minimal perfect hashing and relies on the SDN framework and supports fast name classification. Our conceptual contribution of Concise is to optimize the memory efficiency and query speed in the data plane and move the relatively complex construction and update components to the resource-rich control plane. We implemented Concise on three platforms. Experimental results show that Concise uses significantly smaller memory to achieve faster query speed compared to existing FIBs for flat name switching.
Using Declarative Descriptions to Model User Interfaces with MASTERMIND

MASTERMIND (MM) [1] is a research project in the area of model-b ased user interfaces. It is a joint effort of the Graphics, Vi sualization, and Usability Center (GVU) of the Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) and t he Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern Califor nia. This chapter describes the model-based user-interface technology developed at GT and h ow it can be applied to designing a web browser. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are difficult to const ruct and, consequently, suffer from high costs. The research question that M ASTERMIND seeks to address is the extent to which automatic generation of GUIs from declarative descriptions can reduce costs and enforce design principles. If, in addition, the declarative descriptions are broken into separate components, called models, modularity of the specification is improved, and advanced features such as des ign critics, context sensitive help, and dynamic reconfiguration are enabled. MASTERMIND supports designers. Their job is to design user interfaces for software systems. They may or may not participate in the design of the software systems themselves. There may be more than one design er, and the designers may be broken into teams. Furthermore, the teams may be di vide along functional lines, with, for example, one team responsible for screen lay out, one for dialogue, and one for application software. Multiple designers require modulari zation and integration. Given a declarative specification mechanism, this impl ies strong support for consistency checking among the parts of a design.
Herp depletion arrests the S phase of the cell cycle and increases estradiol synthesis in mouse granulosa cells

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response has been implicated in the development, atresia and luteinization of ovarian follicles. However, there have been few reports concerning the role of Herp, an ER stress-induced protein, in follicular development. The present study aims to detect the distribution and cyclic variations of Herp during the estrous cycle and to reveal the roles of Herp in regulating the cell cycle, apoptosis and steroid hormone biosynthesis in mouse granulosa cells. In this study, immunohistochemistry staining showed that Herp expression was primarily in the granulosa cells and oocytes. Furthermore, we constructed recombinant lentiviral vectors for Herp short hairpin interfering RNA (shRNA) expression; immunofluorescence staining, real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and western blot analysis revealed that Herp was successfully knocked down. Flow cytometry showed that knockdown of Herp arrested granulosa cells at the S phase of the cell cycle. More importantly, ELISA analysis revealed that Herp knockdown significantly upregulated the concentration of estradiol (E2) in the culture supernatants. RT-qPCR was performed to determine the regulatory mechanism of Herp knockdown in the cell cycle, and in steroid synthesis, RT-qPCR analysis revealed that Herp knockdown upregulated the mRNA expression of steroidogenic enzymes (Cyp19a1) and downregulated metabolic enzymes (Cyp1b1) and cell cycle factors (cyclin A1, cyclin B1 and cyclin D2). These results suggest that Herp may regulate the cell cycle and hormone secretions in mouse granulosa cells. The present study helps to elucidate the physiological functions of Herp as they relate to reproduction.
Human Limb Delineation and Joint Position Recovery Using Localized Boundary Models

We outline the development of a self-initializing kinematic tracker that automatically discovers its part appearance models from a video sequence. Through its unique combination of an existing global joint estimation technique and a robust physical deformation based local search method, the tracker is demonstrated as a novel approach to recovering 2D human joint locations and limb outlines from video sequences. Appearance models are discovered and employed through a novel use of the deformable organisms framework which we have extended to the temporal domain. Quantitative and qualitative results for a set of five test videos are provided. The results demonstrate an overall improvement in tracking performance and that the method is relatively insensitive to initialization, an important consideration in gradient descent-style search algorithms.
Hierarchical Action Control Technique Based on Prediction Time for Autonomous Omni-Directional Mobile Robots

This paper proposes a multi time scale behavior control method for autonomous omni-directional mobile robot. As for motion planning, there are many problems to solve such as pass planning for a goal, moving by obstacle avoidance, keeping away from danger, and so on. The method is based on virtual potential field method. For each problem having a time scale, the corresponding module is constructed and virtual potential field is generated. Virtual force calculated from each potential field is used for generating the velocity command. The numerical simulations were carried out to verify the usefulness of the proposed method. From the results, it was confirmed that the robot can reach the destination without colliding with the static and moving obstacles by using the proposed method.
Impact of Event Reputation on the Sponsor's Sentiment

Firms sponsor the events for improving their image and strengthening their presence in market. As a commercial activity, sponsorship is largely used by corporates to reach new markets, increase awareness, and improve their image. Due to extensive use of social media by users and firms, Social media provides good opportunity to measure the effectiveness of sponsorship activities of firms. Sponsor's valence can be taken as measure for assessing the effectiveness of the sponsorship on social media. In this study, we aim to examine the impact of event reputation on the sponsoring firm's sentiment on social media. For achieving this, we selected two events: one with good reputation and second with bad reputation. Using twitter platform, we tracked the sentiment of those sponsors to see the effect of sponsorship and event reputation on sponsor's sentiment.
Influenza virus replication in lung epithelial cells depends on redox-sensitive pathways activated by NOX4-derived ROS

An overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) mediated by NADPH oxidase 2 (NOX2) has been related to airway inflammation typical of influenza infection. Virus‐induced oxidative stress may also control viral replication, but the mechanisms underlying ROS production, as well as their role in activating intracellular pathways and specific steps of viral life cycle under redox control have to be fully elucidated. In this study, we demonstrate that influenza A virus infection of lung epithelial cells causes a significant ROS increase that depends mainly on NOX4, which is upregulated at both mRNA and protein levels, while the expression of NOX2, the primary source of ROS in inflammatory cells, is downregulated. Inhibition of NOX4 activity through chemical inhibitors or RNA silencing blocks the ROS increase, prevents MAPK phosphorylation, and inhibits viral ribonucleoprotein (vRNP) nuclear export and viral release. Overall these data, obtained in cell lines and primary culture, describe a so far unrecognized role for NOX4‐derived ROS in activating redox‐regulated intracellular pathways during influenza virus infection and highlight their relevance in controlling specific steps of viral replication in epithelial cells. Pharmacological modulation of NOX4‐mediated ROS production may open the way for new therapeutic approaches to fighting influenza by targeting cell and not the virus.
Crowdsourced saliency for mining robotically gathered 3D maps using multitouch interaction on smartphones and tablets

This paper presents a system for crowdsourcing saliency interest points for robotically gathered 3D maps rendered on smartphones and tablets. An app was created that is capable of interactively rendering 3D reconstructions gathered with an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. Through hundreds of thousands of logged user interactions with the models we attempt to data-mine salient interest points. To this end we propose two models for calculating saliency from human interaction with the data. The first uses the view frustum of the camera to track the amount of time points are on screen. The second treats the camera's path as a time series and uses a Hidden Markov model to learn the classification of salient and non-salient points. To provide a comparison to existing techniques, several traditional visual saliency approaches are applied to orthographic views of the models' photo-texturing. The results of all approaches are validated with human attention ground truth gathered using a remote gaze-tracking system that recorded the locations of the person's attention while exploring the models.
Grammar Checker Features for Author Identification and Author Profiling Notebook for PAN at CLEF 2013

Our work on author identification and author profiling is based on the question: Can the number and the types of grammatical errors serve as indica- tors for a specific author or a group of people? In order to detect the grammatical errors we base our approach on the output of the open-source library Language- Tool. In the case of the author identification we transform the problem into a statistical test, where an unknown document is written by another author when the distribution of grammatical errors deviated from documents of a reference corpus. For author profiling we implemented an instance based classification ap- proach, namely a k-NN classifier, in combination with a Language Model where a text is assigned to a specific age or gender group where the according reference corpus contains the closest match. In the evaluation we found that for both sce- narios grammatical errors do perform better than the baseline and do capture an aspect of a writing style, which is not contained in more traditional features, like stylometric features or word n-grams.
Tissue factor-targeted lidamycin inhibits growth and metastasis of colon carcinoma

Colon cancer is the third most common cancer in the world. The overexpression of tissue factor (TF) in colon cancer cells makes it an ideal target for colon cancer therapy. The purpose of the present study was to develop a TF-targeting energized fusion protein, mlFVII-LDP-AE, which is composed of a mouse Factor VII light chain (mlFVII) as the targeting domain conjugated to the highly cytotoxic antibiotic lidamycin (LDM, LDP-AE) as the effector domain. The potential efficacy of mlFVII-LDP-AE for mouse colon cancer therapy was tested in a mouse colon cancer subcutaneous xenograft model and a live metastasis model in BALB/c mice. mlFVII-LDP-AE showed a tumor growth inhibition rate of 91.2% (at a dose of 0.8 mg/kg) and a tumor metastasis inhibition rate of 84.7% (at a dose of 0.6 mg/kg). The results showed that mlFVII-LDP-AE was able to effectively inhibit the growth and metastasis of mouse colon cancer. As human TF and FVII have features similar to those of mice, human FVII light chain (hlFVII)-targeted LDM (hlFVII-LDP-AE) may be expected to have therapeutic potential for human colon cancer.