Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AN IMPROVED SCHEME FOR PARAMETER ESTIMATION OF G° DISTRIBUTION MODEL IN HIGH-RESOLUTION SAR IMAGES

Statistical modeling of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images is of great importance for speckle noise flltering, target detection and classiflcation, etc. Moreover, it can provide a comprehensive understanding of terrain electromagnetics scattering mechanism. Over the past three decades, many sophisticated models have been developed for SAR images, such as Rayleigh, Gamma, K and G etc. The G 0 distribution is a special form of the G model, which can model the speckle ∞uctuations of many classes of objects like homogeneous, heterogeneous and extremely heterogeneous ones, and is widely used in SAR images interpretation. However, as many improvements have been performed on SAR sensors, the traditional parameter estimation methods of the G 0 distribution may be not su-cient, notably in high resolution SAR images. They cannot arrive at a solution frequently when modeling regions in high resolution SAR images, especially the extremely homogeneous regions. In order to deal with this problem, this paper proposes an improved parameter estimation scheme of the G 0 distribution, which combines the classical moment estimation with the mellin transform. To quantitatively assess the fltting precision of the proposed method, we adopt the Kullback- Leibler (KL) distance, Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test and Mean Square Error (MSE) as similarity measurements. The advantage of this proposed parameter estimation method becomes evident through the analysis of a variety of areas (ground vegetation, trees and buildings) in two high resolution SAR images.
When Social Media Meets Scholarly Publishing

Reputation has always been important in academia, but given the rise of social media, it has become a much more complex topic. Professional reputation, based upon factors like publications, might now be influenced by personal reputation, based upon factors like tweets and Facebook posts. Nowhere is this interaction more visible than in the recent decision of LinkedIn, a professional networking site best known as a job-hunting tool, to buy Pulse, a news aggregator (Isaac 2013). The purchase potentially obliterated the line between news-gathering and social networking, uniting the two into a single concept. LinkedIn users will not be using social media to locate news so much as they will find news integrated into social media. For LinkedIn users, there probably will be no easy way to separate one’s online persona (or one of one’s online personas) from one’s news consumption. While LinkedIn is not an academic institution, the trend is occurring across academia. Witness the rise of Academia.edu, a social networking site for academics and their work. There is also a social component to many citation management tools, like Mendeley, citeulike, and Zotero. Not to mention the social element that’s a part of products like Commons in a Box, a closed, self-hosted social network product for universities. Although it’s thought of as a private industry issue, social media is an increasingly important part of life in the academy. This is evident in the rise of the altmetrics movement, which is attempting to measure the reach of scholarly work using newer social media tools, rather than traditional methods, like citation impact and Hirsch number. A 2012 editorial from Nature Materials examined the phenomenon, announcing “although spontaneous reviews from readers and novel altmetrics are welcomed complimentary evaluation tools, they will not replace a thorough scientific quality assessment of papers and scientists through a
An improved illumination model for shaded display

To accurately render a two-dimensional image of a three-dimensional scene, global illumination information that affects the intensity of each pixel of the image must be known at the time the intensity is calculated. In a simplified form, this information is stored in a tree of “rays” extending from the viewer to the first surface encountered and from there to other surfaces and to the light sources. A visible surface algorithm creates this tree for each pixel of the display and passes it to the shader. The shader then traverses the tree to determine the intensity of the light received by the viewer. Consideration of all of these factors allows the shader to accurately simulate true reflection, shadows, and refraction, as well as the effects simulated by conventional shaders. Anti-aliasing is included as an integral part of the visibility calculations. Surfaces displayed include curved as well as polygonal surfaces.
An as-level approach to network traffic analysis and modelling

The exponential growth of internet traffic over the last twenty years presents a real challenge to ISP looking to ensure a reliable and efficient service to their customers. Network traffic is far from being straightforward to predict and a deep understanding of the routing domains is a first requirement to achieve proper management of the traffic. This paper focuses on the monitoring and characterisation of traffic for a European Tier-2 operator (Post Luxembourg). It aims, at first, to provide a thorough analysis of the traffic passing through the network using a Netflow collection process. Secondly, it provides a first approach to model the AS-level traffic using a time-series analysis approach.
Social Conditions for Stress: Young People's Experience of Doing GCSEs.

This article describes and analyses the experiences of 1516 year-olds in the East Midlands of England in relation to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). In particular, it focuses on the way that GCSEs constitute a new and distinct source of stress in the already stressful lives of young people. Using data from Economic and Social Research Council funded research involving a large-scale questionnaire survey, focus groups and interviews, it is argued that, when doing GCSEs in years 10 and 11 at school, the stress experienced by young people can be linked to the social conditions of late modernity. In this social context there is a tendency to approach GCSEs from a self-centred and instrumental perspective, which emphasises the need for good results in terms of their utility for getting a job or continuing in education, and their value in relation to self-identity and self-worth. Seen in this light, the stress stems from the fact that GCSEs constitute a fateful moment in the life trajecto.
The incredible (and sometimes incredulous) child witness: Child eyewitnesses' sensitivity to source credibility cues.

Witnesses who receive misleading postevent information usually perform more poorly on memory tests than do witnesses who receive only unbiased information. This effect is especially pronounced for young children. For adults, the credibility of the source of the misleading information moderates this effect; misinformation presented by a credible source impairs performance to a greater degree than does misinformation presented by a noncredible source. In the present experiment, preschool children listened to a story accompanied by several illustrations. Later, they watched a videotape ofa child, a credible adult, or a discredited adult answering questions about the story. For some children, the person in the videotape provided misleading information. The children's memory reports were impaired only when misinformation was presented by the credible adult, indicating that even young children are sensitive to source credibility cues.
Task allocation for distributed stream processing

There is a growing demand for live, on-the-fly processing of increasingly large amounts of data. In order to ensure the timely and reliable processing of streaming data, a variety of distributed stream processing architectures and platforms have been developed, which handle the fundamental tasks of (dynamically) assigning processing tasks to the currently available physical resources and routing streaming data between these resources. However, while there are plenty of platforms offering such functionality, the theory behind it is not well understood. In particular, it is unclear how to best allocate the processing tasks to the given resources. In this paper, we establish a theoretical foundation by formally defining a task allocation problem for distributed stream processing, which we prove to be NP-hard. Furthermore, we propose an approximation algorithm for the class of series-parallel decomposable graphs, which captures a broad range of common stream processing applications. The algorithm achieves a constant-factor approximation under the assumptions that the number of resources scales at least logarithmically with the number of computational tasks and the computational cost of the tasks dominates the cost of communication.
Cloud Services Gateway: A Tool for Exposing Private Services to the Public Cloud with Fine-grained Control

By enabling users to allocate computing resources on demand, cheaply, and in an elastic manner, Cloud Computing has made large computation resources available to small and medium size organizations. However, using the Cloud requires users to place their computations, data, or both in a shared data center own by an outsider. This sharing has raised many security concerns. Such concerns are much apparent with use cases like health informatics, where the security of the information is critical and imposed by government regulations. We propose a hybrid approach to solve this problem, where only computations are moved to the public domains while keeping the data within the private network, and computations may access data through a set of services that expose data following the Principle of Least Privilege. Such architectures will, however, require computations in the cloud to connect to the local network that holds the data, and the obvious solution: that is opening up ports in the organizational firewall could potentially create security loopholes. As an alternative, we propose Cloud Services Gateway (CSG), which enable users to selectively expose their private services that reside inside a firewall to outside clients while maintaining fine grained control. This paper motivates hybrid Cloud architectures and presents the architecture and design decisions of Cloud Services Gateway.
Stories on the Skin: Tattoo Culture at a South Florida university

This paper describes a multidisciplinary creative and research project at a South Florida public university. “Stories on the Skin: Tattoo Culture at FAU” has explored and presented tattoos as a shared cultural experience, rather than as a symptom, or a fad. Considering relevant scholarship in various disciplines, tattoo emerges as a repository of memories and a site of affirmations, but also a significant form of creative self-expression beyond temporary fashion. Proposing a positive value to connecting mind and body, story and skin, the project offers a model for other universities to engage a diverse student body in the complexities of living an embodied self in a virtual world. It also offers a way to open the minds of those who would discriminate. It is not about promoting, but about understanding, this moment of ink, deploying the arts and humanities for the sake of self-knowledge and tolerance.
Individual Differences in Brand Schematicity

Brand schematicity refers to a generalized consumer predisposition to process information using brand schema. This research uses schema theory to build the theoretical groundwork for brand schematicity and reports seven studies conducted to measure, validate, and establish the nature of the construct. Studies 1 and 2 pertain to a scale developed to measure brand schematicity, Study 3 measures the construct using response times, and Study 4 situates the construct in a nomological network of associated constructs. Studies 5 and 6 test the predictive validity of the brand schematicity construct, and Study 7 uses memory clustering to provide evidence of the schematic nature of the construct that represents an inherent difference in the way consumers organize and utilize brand information. These investigations establish the validity of brand schematicity and its associated scale, as well as reveal that brand schematicity influences the role of brand concept consistency in brand extension evaluations, suggesting the possible moderating role of the construct in a wide variety of brand-related relationships.
Ethnographic performance: a change agent for drama teaching and learning

This article considers the ways in which an ethnographic performance can be an effective means of data generation, analysis and presentation for a researcher working in collaboration with drama teachers and students in an educational setting. The creation of the ethnodramatic play was part of a three-year Ph.D. educational ethnography conducted by the researcher in the Drama department of an inner-city co-educational government school in Melbourne, Australia. The researcher mapped the development of the play including how the drama teachers and their students collaborated on its development by providing feedback as it was being written and performed. The topic of the play was boys' participation in drama in a co-educational learning environment, how they ‘performed’ gender in the classes and how this affected, and was affected by, the drama teachers, the female students and other males in the class. The article examines how the development of the ethnodramatic play was a transformative experience for the school community. The ethnodramatic process affected a change for the better in the work habits of the teachers and how some of their students viewed their participation in the drama classes.
Involvement of MAP3K8 and miR-17-5p in Poor Virologic Response to Interferon-Based Combination Therapy for Chronic Hepatitis C

Despite advances in chronic hepatitis C treatment, a proportion of patients respond poorly to treatment. This study aimed to explore hepatic mRNA and microRNA signatures involved in hepatitis C treatment resistance. Global hepatic mRNA and microRNA expression profiles were compared using microarray data between treatment responses. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction validated the gene signatures from 130 patients who were infected with hepatitis C virus genotype 1b and treated with pegylated interferon-alpha and ribavirin combination therapy. The correlation between mRNA and microRNA was evaluated using in silico analysis and in vitro siRNA and microRNA inhibition/overexpression experiments. Multivariate regression analysis identified that the independent variables IL28B SNP rs8099917, hsa-miR-122-5p, hsa-miR-17-5p, and MAP3K8 were significantly associated with a poor virologic response. MAP3K8 and miR-17-5p expression were inversely correlated with treatment response. Furthermore, miR-17-5p repressed HCV production by targeting MAP3K8. Collectively, the data suggest that several molecules and the inverse correlation between mRNA and microRNA contributed to a host genetic refractory hepatitis C treatment response.
Fear of annihilation in subjects at risk of psychosis: A pilot study

Most reports on people at risk of psychosis focus on differences in baseline measures between those who go on to develop psychosis and those who remain non-psychotic. Due to the clinical status of subjects in these studies, the aim of the present study is to illuminate clinically important and under-researched characteristics of the group of subjects at risk of psychosis as a whole. This article reports on a cross-sectional study, comparing the level of annihilation anxiety in subjects at risk of psychosis with two control groups: healthy controls and schizophrenia patients. The level of annihilation anxiety is assessed with the Hurvich Experience Inventory-50. The study shows that subjects at risk of psychosis experience annihilation anxiety significantly more than do healthy controls, and at least as much as psychotic patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. This signals the need for immediate clinical intervention in this population. The high level of annihilation anxiety is likely to interfere with the working alliance, thus clinicians should provide an ambience of safety and transparency. In addition, interventions for subjects at risk of psychosis should aim to reduce the level of anxiety, e.g. through psychotherapy. The study warrants further investigations of clinically important characteristics of the group of subjects at risk of psychosis as a whole
3D Shape Extraction Using Photographic Tomography with Its Applications

Tomographic imaging is a technique for exploration of a cross-section of an inspected object without destruction. Normally, the input data, known as the projections, are gathered by repeatedly radiating coherent waveform through the object in a number of viewpoints, and receiving by an array of corresponding detector in the opposite position. In this research, as a replacement of radiographs, the series of photographs taken around the opaque object under the ambient light is completely served as the projections. From the process of tomography, the outcome is the stack of pseudo cross-sectional image. Not the internal of cross section is authentic, but the edge or contour is valid. Several applications can implicitly take advantages from the stack of contour, for instance, 3D true-colored modelling and geometric measurements. Nevertheless, the process has a problem to extract the highly concave-shape object due to the blind of camera by the occluded patches.
Discovery of a trans-Dichloroethene-Respiring Dehalogenimonas Species in the 1,1,2,2-Tetrachloroethane-Dechlorinating WBC-2 Consortium

ABSTRACT The WBC-2 consortium is an organohalide-respiring anaerobic microbial enrichment culture capable of dechlorinating 1,1,2,2-tetrachloroethane (TeCA) to ethene. In the WBC-2 culture, TeCA is first transformed to trans-dichloroethene (tDCE) by dichloroelimination; tDCE is subsequently transformed to vinyl chloride (VC) and then to ethene by hydrogenolysis. Analysis of 16S rRNA gene clone libraries from culture DNA revealed sequences from three putative dechlorinating organisms belonging to Dehalococcoides, Dehalobacter, and Dehalogenimonas genera. Quantitative PCR primers were designed for each of these sequences, and their abundance was quantified in enrichment cultures over time. These data revealed that complete dechlorination of TeCA to ethene involves all three organisms. Dehalobacter spp. grew during the dihaloelimination of TeCA to tDCE, while Dehalococcoides and Dehalogenimonas spp. grew during hydrogenolysis of tDCE to ethene. This is the first time a genus other than Dehalococcoides has been implicated in dechlorination of tDCE to VC.
Current Conditions and Problems of Conservation and Inheritance of Identity Among Thai-Sikhs

This research is aimed at investigating the current conditions and problems of conservation and inheritance among Thai Sikhs in metropolitan Bangkok. Data was gathered by means of interview, observation, group discussion, and workshop. The study area was comprised of Pahurat, PraNakorn District, Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, PraNakorn District, and Im-Amporn Village, Bangkok Yai District. The results show that the most important aspects of Thai-Sikh identity that must be conserved are the 5 sacred symbols, fundamental teachings, religious ceremonies, the Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha religious building, the Sri Guru Singh Sabha Association and the Punjabi language. Currently, Thai-Sikh identity is clear and well-maintainedin Bangkok society. However, problemsare caused by westernization and adoption of modern cultural practices from other societies. This leads to the neglect of traditional Thai Sikh lifestyle. The suggested solutions include raising awareness of identity conservation among Thai Sikhs, which requires the cooperation of the government and private sectors. Training and activities must also be arranged, which new Thai-Sikh generations can learn from and participate in.
Communication Theory and Research in the Age of New Media: A Conversation from the CM Café

The Communication Monographs Café has become a neighborhood fixture*a spot for conversation about ideas that are circulating in the discipline and that have the potential for shaping scholarship in the future. The first opening of the Café (published in Volume 78, Issue 2) featured a conversation about social justice and public scholarship. Six months later (Volume 78, Issue 4) another group of scholars gathered at the Café to discuss the issues of materiality and knowledge, particularly in organizational communication and communication technology. In the last month of 2011, the doors of the CM Café were once again flung open. This time, the scholars who strolled in came to discuss the ways in which our scholarship can consider the rapidly changing media landscape of the twenty-first century. An eclectic mix of media scholars came to the Café: Nancy Baym (University of Kansas), Scott Campbell (University of Michigan), Heather Horst (RMIT University), Sri Kalyanaraman (University of North Carolina), Mary Beth Oliver (Pennsylvania State University), Eric Rothenbuhler (Ohio University), and René Weber (University of California Santa Barbara). As before, the CM Café was facilitated through a private group on Facebook, and though many of the scholars attending were already active Facebook users, several signed up especially to engage in this discussion about new media. The setting of the Café allowed participants to drop in and out of the conversation, post their own questions as desired, and take each other down new paths as ideas diverged and converged. In spite of busy end-of-semester schedules, travel, and a car accident, the exchange was stimulating and enlightening. In contrast to previous openings of the Café, the discussion that developed regarding communication theory and research in the age of new media was a relatively linear one*there were twists and turns, of course, but much of the interaction proceeded on one thread on the Facebook page. This recounting of the conversation, then, will begin with that thread headed with my opening question: ‘‘So, to begin, what do we mean when we talk about ‘‘new media’’*social networks? mobile telephony? global media? Further, what can we say is really new (theoretically as well as technically) in the study of new media? ’’
Motion pattern discrimination for soft robots with morphologically flexible sensors

Robots composed of soft materials can achieve high deformability and conformity with unstructured and dynamic environments due to their body mechanics. However, it is challenging to gather desirable information about these robots' behaviors as conventional sensory systems are not designed to detect infinite degrees of freedom on continuum bodies. This paper presents a technical method to sensorize a soft elastic body by using conductive thermoplastic elastomer (CTPE) based strain gauge sensors. Due to its thermoplastic nature, CTPE based sensors can be fabricated in flexible sizes and shapes and integrated into the soft elastic bodies. We analyze soft elastic deformations and extract strain vectors to find finite unique regions on continuum surfaces. Then we use these regions to design the morphologies of our fiber shaped CTPE sensors to discriminate soft robotic behaviors. To demonstrate our approach and show how the programmable sensor morphologies discriminate different motion patterns, we have built a soft elastic prismatic silicone (E = 1.31MPa) block and designed two sensors to discriminate serpentine and twisting patterns.