Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Information Loss and Anti-Aliasing Filters in Multirate Systems

This work investigates the information loss in a decimation system, i.e., in a downsampler preceded by an anti-aliasing filter. It is shown that, without a specific signal model in mind, the anti-aliasing filter cannot reduce information loss, while, e.g., for a simple signal-plus-noise model it can. For the Gaussian case, the optimal anti-aliasing filter is shown to coincide with the one obtained from energetic considerations. For a non-Gaussian signal corrupted by Gaussian noise, the Gaussian assumption yields an upper bound on the information loss, justifying filter design principles based on second-order statistics from an information-theoretic point-of-view.
Analysis of ISDB-Tb signal propagation in indoor environments

This work presents an analysis of signal propagation in an indoor environment. Three empirical models were implemented: Modified Keenan-Motley, Log-Distance and Linear Attenuation. The simulation delivers a coverage map showing the reception power in the corresponding area, whose results are validated with experimental data acquired with a low cost test environment.
CHIMP, the CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform

We have developed the CHIMP (CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform) robot as a platform for executing complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human‐engineered environments. CHIMP has a near‐human form factor, work‐envelope, strength, and dexterity to work effectively in these environments. It avoids the need for complex control by maintaining static rather than dynamic stability. Utilizing various sensors embedded in the robot's head, CHIMP generates full three‐dimensional representations of its environment and transmits these models to a human operator to achieve latency‐free situational awareness. This awareness is used to visualize the robot within its environment and preview candidate free‐space motions. Operators using CHIMP are able to select between task, workspace, and joint space control modes to trade between speed and generality. Thus, they are able to perform remote tasks quickly, confidently, and reliably, due to the overall design of the robot and software. CHIMP's hardware was designed, built, and tested over 15 months leading up to the DARPA Robotics Challenge. The software was developed in parallel using surrogate hardware and simulation tools. Over a six‐week span prior to the DRC Trials, the software was ported to the robot, the system was debugged, and the tasks were practiced continuously. Given the aggressive schedule leading to the DRC Trials, development of CHIMP focused primarily on manipulation tasks. Nonetheless, our team finished 3rd out of 16. With an upcoming year to develop new software for CHIMP, we look forward to improving the robot's capability and increasing its speed to compete in the DRC Finals.
The Inner Voice of Aging

THE INNER VOICE OF AGING THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA AT OMAHA This study investigated what gives older persons meaning in their lives and the role of spirituality in that meaning. The study focused on the direction of their lives, the sense of purpose in life, both from a formal religious belief and from the sense of ideals held by the individual. The study utilized qualitative methods. The ten subjects were selected from referral by others interviewed and by people met during the course of the last two years. Those interviewed ranged in age from 65 to 92 years; two were male; nine were Caucasian, and most were middle class. Only three of the ten interviewed were comparatively healthy, but all have purpose to their lives. For most, that purpose is to help others or family or to be actively engaged in causes and issues. Most of them lead full, happy lives. In very unique ways, all expressed the importance of some type of spirituality (not necessarily church-centered), and were aware of God or a higher being, often basing their life philosophy on devotion to that higher being. The themes of their lives were, for the most part, family, the manner in which they had faced and borne early life and late life losses, life-long learning, being active, companionship, spirituality and religion, volunteerism, and active advocacy.
An Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Learning Classification Rules

Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm has been applied to data mining recently. Aiming at Ant Miner, a classification rule learning algorithm based on ACO, this paper presents an enhanced Ant Miner, which includes two main contributions. Firstly, a rule punishing operator is employed to reduce the number of rules and the number of conditions. Secondly, an adaptive state transition rule and a mutation operator are applied to the algorithm to speed up the convergence rate. The results of experiments on some data sets demonstrate that the enhanced Ant-Miner can quickly discover better classification rules which have roughly competitive predicative accuracy and short rules
Review Active Shape Models - Part II: Image Search and Classification

In this paper we review and investigate a method capable of modeling the different appearance of objects in images that is due to natural shape variations, varying lighting conditions, 3D pose and others. Objects are represented by well-defined landmark points and shape variations are modeled using a principal component analysis. Also, gray level variations are being modeled. The first part of the paper describes the shape and gray scale modeling in some detail. The second part describes an iterative algorithm which deforms an initial model to fit data in ways that are consistent with shape variations found in previously acquired training data. An application to image classification is outlined.
Development of hepatocytes from embryonic stem cells after transfection with the HNF‐3β gene

We have attempted to generate embryonic stem (ES) cell‐derived hepatocytes expressing liver‐specific functional properties by use of ES cell technology. It was found that ES cells are allowed to differentiate into hepatocytes possessing high metabolic activities when hepatocyte nuclear factor (HNF)‐3β‐transfected ES cells are cultured in α‐MEM medium supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) and fibroblast growth factor (FGF)‐2 in the three‐dimensional cell culture system at 5% CO2. The differentiated cells induced albumin, triacylglycerol, urea, and glycogen synthesis as well as further expression of metabolic proteins and serum factors as markers of hepatocytic differentiation for at least 4 months. The cells differentiated from HNF‐3β‐transfected ES cells also had hepatocyte‐like ultrastructural characteristics, including several endoplasmic reticula, mitochondrion, and glycogen. Our findings indicate that generation of hepatocytes maintaining high metabolic functions developed from mouse ES cells will facilitate the study of the basic mechanism for hepatogenesis and will certainly provide new opportunities for tissue transplantation.
Generating Device-specific GPU Code for Local Operators in Medical Imaging

To cope with the complexity of programming GPU accelerators for medical imaging computations, we developed a framework to describe image processing kernels in a domain-specific language, which is embedded into C++. The description uses decoupled access/execute metadata, which allow the programmer to specify both execution constraints and memory access patterns of kernels. A source-to-source compiler translates this high-level description into low-level CUDA and Open CL code with automatic support for boundary handling and filter masks. Taking the annotated metadata and the characteristics of the parallel GPU execution model into account, two-layered parallel implementations - utilizing SPMD and MPMD parallelism - are generated. An abstract hardware model of graphics card architectures allows to model GPUs of multiple vendors like AMD and NVIDIA, and to generate device-specific code for multiple targets. It is shown that the generated code is faster than manual implementations and those relying on hardware support for boundary handling. Implementations from Rapid Mind, a commercial framework for GPU programming, are outperformed and similar results achieved compared to the GPU backend of the widely used image processing library Open CV.
Adaptive Waveform Design for Separated Transmit/Receive ULA-MIMO Radar

The colocated uniform linear array (ULA) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar has been demonstrated to provide enhanced performance in theory. Similar to a bistatic radar, performance of the separated transmit/receive (STR) ULA-MIMO radar is affected not only by the transmitted multiple orthogonal waveforms, but also by the position of the target. In this correspondence, the ambiguity function of the STR-ULA-MIMO radar is investigated and the corresponding range-velocity ambiguity function (RVAF) is deduced. The range and velocity resolution of RVAF for the STR-ULA-MIMO radar is discussed. Because the shape of RVAF for the STR-ULA-MIMO radar is related to the position of the target, a new algorithm for adaptively designing the orthogonal frequency-hopping waveforms according to the position of the target is proposed. This algorithm improves the range and velocity resolution and the integrated sidelobe level (ISL) of the matched filter output at the corresponding position.
Breast Cancer Assessment and Diagnosis using Particle Swarm Optimization

A binary Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization;BPSO/DPSO was proposed and successfully applied to the classification risk of Wisconsin-breast-cancer data set. Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death among the women in many parts of the world. In 2007, approximately 178,480 women in the United States will be found to have invasive breast cancer. However, the medical technology has been improved and causing declination of the mortality in breast cancer in the past decade. This has been possible owing to earlier diagnosis and improved treatment. Hence, the purpose of this study was to separate from a population of patients who had and had not breast cancer. This study proposed the methodology for data mining that the fundamental of concept was in terms of the standard PSO called Discrete PSO. The novel PSO in which each particle was coded in positive integer numbers and has a feasible system structure. Based on the obtained results, our research used the two rules to improve the accuracy to 96.995%, sensitivity to 100% and specificity to 95.83%. The results compared with the previous research that showed the improvement of accuracy at the same number of rules. In this research we have got high quality results which can be used as reference for hospital decision making and research workers.
Methodologies Choice and Adoption : Using Diffusion of Innovations as the Theoretical Framework

This goal of this paper is to represent the method choice and adoption factors in two organizations over the 43 years period. General theoretical framework, chosen research approach, the research problems concerning method choice, implementation and use (adoption), the research methodology, related research and historical background of the organizations are represented. Methods for validity and reliability checking of the data sources are checked. The method choice using the theory of Diffusion of Innovations is taken as a focal point in this research.
Computational Finishing of Large Sequence Contigs Reveals Interspersed Nested Repeats and Gene Islands in the rf1-Associated Region of Maize1[W][OA]

The architecture of grass genomes varies on multiple levels. Large long terminal repeat retrotransposon clusters occupy significant portions of the intergenic regions, and islands of protein-encoding genes are interspersed among the repeat clusters. Hence, advanced assembly techniques are required to obtain completely finished genomes as well as to investigate gene and transposable element distributions. To characterize the organization and distribution of repeat clusters and gene islands across large grass genomes, we present 961- and 594-kb contiguous sequence contigs associated with the rf1 (for restorer of fertility1) locus in the near-centromeric region of maize (Zea mays) chromosome 3. We present two methods for computational finishing of highly repetitive bacterial artificial chromosome clones that have proved successful to close all sequence gaps caused by transposable element insertions. Sixteen repeat clusters were observed, ranging in length from 23 to 155 kb. These repeat clusters are almost exclusively long terminal repeat retrotransposons, of which the paleontology of insertion varies throughout the cluster. Gene islands contain from one to four predicted genes, resulting in a gene density of one gene per 16 kb in gene islands and one gene per 111 kb over the entire sequenced region. The two sequence contigs, when compared with the rice (Oryza sativa) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) genomes, retain gene colinearity of 50% and 71%, respectively, and 70% and 100%, respectively, for high-confidence gene models. Collinear genes on single gene islands show that while most expansion of the maize genome has occurred in the repeat clusters, gene islands are not immune and have experienced growth in both intragene and intergene locations.
Medicinally Important Phytochemicals: An Untapped Research Avenue

The past decade has witnessed a tremendous resurgence in the interest and use of medicinal plants. The beneficial medicinal effects of plant materials typically result from the combinations of secondary products present in them known as phytochemicals. Phytochemicals are biologically active, naturally occurring chemical compounds found in fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, tea and seeds that promote human health and prevent diseases. The therapeutic effects of these medicinal plants can justifiably be attributed to, among others, the phytochemicals in them especially the flavonoids, alkaloids, sterols, terpenoids, phenolic acids, stilbenes, lignans, tannins and saponins. The abundance of scientific evidence indicates that such bioactive compounds have biological properties such as antioxidant activity, antimicrobial effect, modulation of detoxification enzymes, stimulation of the immune system, decrease of platelet aggregation and modulation of hormonemetabolism and anticancer property. This paper avails a review of medicinally important plant-derived compounds that can be used in design of more efficacious therapeutic agents against many communicable and non-communicable diseases.
Condorcet Jury Theorem in a Spatial Model of Elections

In this paper, we study conditions under which the Condorcet Jury Theorem extends to the spatial model of elections. In the model, individuals with ideal points distributed over a unidimensional policy space vote over two alternatives, the location of one of which is uncertain. By employing the techniques used in Bhattacharya (2013), we identify the entire set of symmetric equilibria for almost every voting rule. If there is uncertainty about whether the outcome induced by the policy alternative is to the right or to the left of the status quo, then an election produces three outcomes, exactly one of which is full information equivalent. In the other two equilibria, the status quo always wins. This Â…finding provides a novel explanation for status quo bias in referenda and the growing incumbent advantage in US elections.
Gravitational waves from newly born, hot neutron stars

We study the gravitational radiation associated with the non-radial oscillations of newly born, hot neutron stars. The frequencies and damping times of the relevant quasi-normal modes are computed for two different models of a proto-neutron star, at different times of evolution, from its birth until it settles down as a cold neutron star. We find that the oscillation properties of proto-neutron stars are remarkably different from those of their cold, old descendants, and that this affects the characteristic features of the gravitational signal emitted during the postcollapse evolution. The consequences on the observability of these signals by resonant-mass and interferometric detectors are analysed. We find that gravitational waves from the pulsations of a newborn proto-neutron star in the Galaxy could be detected with a signal-to-noise ratio of 5 by the first-generation interferometers, if the energy stored in the modes is greater than
A METHODOLOGY FOR THE EVALUATION OF WEB GRAPH MODELS AND A TEST CASE

Valid models of the WWW are important for creating WWW-like representations, upon which new algorithms and applications for searching, indexing, compression etc. can be tested, but also for predicting the evolution of the web and the emergence of important new phenomena. In this study we introduce a validation process for web-graph models and use it to analyze the behavior of the Exponential Growth Copying Model, which has been explicitly designed to model the WWW. We study the effect of individual parameters on its effectiveness, suggest appropriate parameter values for the creation of web-like graphs and indicate inherent deficiencies of the model.
Fe b 20 09 A supersymmetric reduced model with a symmetry based on Filippov algebra

A generalization of the reduced model of super Yang-Mills theory obtained by replacing the Lie algebra structure to Filippov n-algebra structure is studied. Conditions for the reduced action to be supersymmetric are examined. Other than the n = 2 case which is the ordinary Lie algebra case, it is found that n = 3, D = 4, t = 2 case preserves supersymmetry, where D is the dimension of the target space-time and t is the number of its time-like directions. Relation to what we call Nmin = 2 supermembrane action is also discussed. e-mail address: furuuchi@phys.cts. nthu.edu. tw e-mail address: tomino@phys.cts. nthu.edu. tw
On finite symmetries of simply connected four-manifolds

For most positive integer pairs $(a,b)$, the topological space $#a{\mathbb C \mathbb P}^2#b{\bar{\mathbb C \mathbb P^2}}$ is shown to admit infinitely many inequivalent smooth structures which dissolve upon performing a single connected sum with $S^2\times S^2$. This is then used to construct infinitely many non-equivalent smooth free actions of suitable finite groups on the connected sum $#a{\mathbb C \mathbb P}^2#b{\bar{\mathbb C \mathbb P^2}}$. We then investigate the behavior of the sign of the Yamabe invariant for the resulting finite covers, and observe that these constructions provide many new counter-examples to the $4$-dimensional Rosenberg Conjecture.
Debate-induced Opinion Change

In this article, we focus on the extent and sources of attitude change produced by the second 1996 presidential debate. First, we test the magnitude of attitude change brought about by the 1996 debate. Next, we focus on the role of candidate status, testing whether the viewers' opinions toward the challenger are more variable than viewers' opinions toward the incumbent. Finally, we ascertain the specific aspects of each candidate's performance that spurred opinion change. Using a panel design, we interviewed a live audience and a television audience of the second presidential debate in 1996. We find that the debate did lead many viewers to alter their attitudes toward the candidates, the viewers' attitudes toward Bob Dole were more variable than their attitudes toward Bill Clinton, and stylistic concerns were more important to viewers than political considerations.
Discrete bispectral Darboux transformations from Jacobi operators

We construct families of bispectral difference operators of the form a(n)T + b(n) + c(n)T -1 where T is the shift operator. They are obtained as discrete Darboux transformations from appropriate extensions of Jacobi operators. We conjecture that along with operators previously constructed by Grunbaum, Haine, Horozov and Iliev they exhaust all bispectral regular (i.e., a(n) ¬= 0, c(n) ¬= 0, Vn E Z) operators of the form above.
DNA fingerprinting analysis of coagulase negative staphylococci implicated in catheter related bloodstream infections

Aims: The epidemiological assessment of cases of coagulase negative staphylococcal catheter related bloodstream infection. Methods: Two hundred and thirty patients with suspected catheter related bloodstream infection were evaluated over a two year period. Central venous catheters were cultured both endoluminally and extraluminally. Peripheral blood, catheter hubs, skin entry, and skin control sites were also cultured. Pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) was used to DNA fingerprint coagulase negative staphylococci isolated from patients with presumptive catheter related bloodstream infection. Results: Sixty cases of catheter related bloodstream infection were identified, 21 of which were attributed to coagulase negative staphylococci. Two hundred and ninety four separate isolates of coagulase negative staphylococci from the 21 cases of catheter related bloodstream infection were subjected to PFGE (mean of 14 for each case). Catheter related bloodstream infection was only confirmed by PFGE analysis in 16 of the 21 cases because in the remaining five cases peripheral blood and central venous catheter coagulase negative staphylococci isolates were different. Skin entry, control skin, and central venous catheter hub isolates matched peripheral blood isolates in six, four, and seven cases, respectively. Coagulase negative staphylococci isolates could not be cultured from the patients’ own skin in seven cases of catheter related bloodstream infection. Central venous catheter lumens were colonised in all cases of catheter related bloodstream infection compared with 44–81% of cases that had positive external surface catheter tip cultures, depending on the threshold used to define significant growth. Conclusions: Catheter related bloodstream infection as a result of coagulase negative staphylococci may be over stated in about a quarter of cases, unless a discriminatory technique is used to fingerprint isolates. No single, simplistic route of bacterial contamination of central venous catheters was identified, but endoluminal catheter colonisation is invariably present in cases of catheter related bloodstream infection.
Feed-forward learning with frequency adaptation towards the control of series elastic actuators

In this paper, a novel method towards approaching perfect tracking performance in periodic motions for robotic joints with serial elastic actuators, is proposed. The method is in an adaptive feed-forward scheme which has the ability to learn the required controlling signal, leading to reduced tracking error. Ordinary learning feed-forward methods do not have the capability of learning frequency of the motion; but here the method first learns the frequency of a motion adaptively and then basis functions are created based on the learned frequency. Finally the magnitudes of the injected basis functions are found and the tracking error will be lowered. In the simulations the effectiveness of the proposed method for a two DOF planar manipulator is verified. The results for two cases of tracking linear and circular periodic trajectories of end-effector prove satisfactory.