Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of drone swarm formations in 3D scene reconstruction

Swarms of unmanned autonomous vehicles adopt effective algorithms to control their localization and formation. These strategies grant safe and collision-free navigation, control the positioning of drones, and automatize their motion according to the final task. This paper investigates how formations affect the reconstruction accuracy of a swarm of drones patrolling a 3D environment. Considering that the swarm configuration is significantly constrained by the geometry of the scene, experimental results show that it is possible to overcome the limitations of an ineffective configuration by exploiting camera-in-view side information.
S plane control based on parameters optimization with simulated annealing for underwater vehicle

Nonlinearity of underwater vehicles(UVs) and complexity of working environments make the precise control of AUVs difficult for some of the intelligent operations. Based on the analysis of fuzzy control and combined with the form of PID control, S plane control is a simple and effective method, but parameters must be manually set for its controller. Improved simulated annealing algorithm is introduced to S plane control method to optimize the controller's parameters automatically. The feasibility and advantages of the algorithm has been demonstrated by simulation results.
On the evaluation of document analysis components by recall, precision, and accuracy

In document analysis, it is common to prove the usefulness of a component by an experimental evaluation. By applying the respective algorithms to a test sample, effectiveness measures such as recall, precision, and accuracy are computed. The goal of such an evaluation is two-fold: on the one hand it shows that the absolute effectiveness of the algorithm is acceptable for practical use. On the other hand the evaluation can prove that the algorithm has a better or worse effectiveness than another algorithm. We argue that the experimental evaluation on relative small test sets-as is very common in document analysis has to be taken with extreme care from a statistical point of view. In fact, it is surprising how weak statements derived from such evaluations are.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: A note on the perturbative properties of BPS operators

We discuss the perturbative behaviour of the 1/2 BPS operators in = 2 SCFT on the example of two very similar quadrilinear composite operators made out of hypermultiplets. An explicit one-loop computation shows that one of them is protected while the other acquires an anomalous dimension. Although both operators are superconformal primaries in the free case, the quantum corrections make the latter become a 1/2 BPS descendant of the Konishi multiplet, while the former remains primary. The comparative study of these two operators at higher orders may be helpful in understanding the quantum properties of the Konishi multiplet.
Private Equity and Basel II Dion Bongaerts

This study investigates the consistency of Basel II and the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD) by comparing capital charges for private equity investments under the RWA and the internal model approach. We use a structural model on a proprietary dataset of leveraged buy-outs (LBOs). The structure of LBOs requires us to modify the standard structural model to make it applicable in practice. The results support capital charges lower than Basel II RWA, but not as low as CRD RWA. A sensitivity analysis shows that this nding is robust to parameter uncertainty and stress scenarios. Finally, we discuss policy implications of our ndings. JEL codes: G21, G28, G32
Continuous user identification via touch and movement behavioral biometrics

With the increased popularity of smartphones, various security threats and privacy leakages targeting them are discovered and investigated. In this work, we present SilentSense, a framework to authenticate users silently and transparently by exploiting dynamics mined from the user touch behavior biometrics and the micro-movement of the device caused by user's screen-touch actions. We build a “touch-based biometrics” model of the owner by extracting some principle features, and then verify whether the current user is the owner or guest/attacker. When using the smartphone, some unique operating dynamics of the user is detected and learnt by collecting the sensor data and touch events silently. When users are mobile, the micro-movement of mobile devices caused by touch is suppressed by that due to the large scale user-movement which will render the touch-based biometrics ineffective. To address this, we integrate a movement-based biometrics for each user with previous touch-based biometrics. We conduct extensive evaluations of our approaches on the Android smartphone, we show that the user identification accuracy is over 99%.
Environment Control to Improve Recombinant Protein Yields in Plants Based on Agrobacterium-Mediated Transient Gene Expression

Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression systems enable plants to produce a wide range of recombinant proteins on a rapid timescale. To achieve economically feasible upstream production and downstream processing, two yield parameters should be considered: (1) recombinant protein content per unit biomass and (2) recombinant protein productivity per unit area–time at the end of the upstream production. Because environmental factors in the upstream production have impacts on these parameters, environment control is important to maximize the recombinant protein yield. In this review, we summarize the effects of pre- and postinoculation environmental factors in the upstream production on the yield parameters and discuss the basic concept of environment control for plant-based transient expression systems. Preinoculation environmental factors associated with planting density, light quality, and nutrient supply affect plant characteristics, such as biomass and morphology, which in turn affect recombinant protein content and productivity. Accordingly, environment control for such plant characteristics has significant implications to achieve a high yield. On the other hand, postinoculation environmental factors, such as temperature, light intensity, and humidity, have been shown to affect recombinant protein content. Considering that recombinant protein production in Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression systems is a result of a series of complex biological events starting from T-DNA transfer from Agrobacterium tumefaciens to protein biosynthesis and accumulation in leaf tissue, we propose that dynamic environment control during the postinoculation process, i.e., changing environmental conditions at an appropriate timing for each event, may be a promising approach to obtain a high yield. Detailed descriptions of plant growth conditions and careful examination of environmental effects will significantly contribute to our knowledge to stably obtain high recombinant protein content and productivity, thus enhancing the utility of plant-based transient expression systems as recombinant protein factories.
Kinetic equations for long-wavelength excitations of the quark-gluon plasma.

We show that longwavelength excitations of the quark-gluon plasma are described by simple kinetic equations which represent the exact equations of motion at leading order in $ g. $ Properties of the so-called \lq\lq hard thermal loops\rq\rq , i.e. the dominant contributions to amplitudes with soft external lines, find in this approach a natural explanation. In particular, their generating functional appears here as the effective action describing longwavelength excitations of the plasma. ----- Dans cette lettre, les auteurs poursuivent leur etude des excitations de grande longueur d'onde dans les plasmas ultrarelativistes, et generalisent les resultats obtenus pour l'electrodynamique aux theories de jauge non abeliennes. Ils montrent qu'a l'ordre dominant dans un developpement dans la constante de couplage et a haute temperature, les equations du mouvement decrivant ces modes se reduisent a un systeme couple d'equations de champ moyen (bosoniques et fermioniques) et d'equations cinetiques, qui generalisent l'equation de Vlasov. Cette approche met en lumiere la nature collective et semi-classique des degres de liberte correspondants. Les equations obtenues permettent en particulier de retrouver tres simplement certaines proprietes remarquables des amplitudes de Feynman a haute temperature obtenues par une analyse diagrammatique laborieuse. \vskip 20mm \hfill {Jean-Yves Ollitrault}
Adaptive regional feedback control of robotic manipulator with uncertain kinematics and depth information

While much progress has been achieved in task-space control of robot, existing task-space sensory feedback control methods fail when the sensor is out of working range. In this paper, we propose an adaptive regional feedback control strategy that enables the robot to start from an initial position outside the field of view and leave the field of view during the movement. The robot kinematics is partitioned into a known internal portion and an unknown external portion. Cartesian-space feedback is used for region reaching control of the known portion and vision feedback is used for tracking control of the unknown portion. The dual feedback information is integrated into a unified controller without designing multiple controllers and switching between them. We shall show that the adaptive controller can transit smoothly from Cartesian-space feedback to vision feedback in the presence of uncertainties in robot dynamics, kinematics and depth information. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed control method.
Character strengths and service leadership

Abstract Character strengths refer to the moral aspects of personality that have multiple dimensions. As a basic requirement of a service leader, character strengths provide the most inherent power for fulfilling different tasks and pursuing continuous development. In this paper, a lecture that aims to foster character strengths in undergraduate students is introduced. The theoretical foundation of the lecture on character strengths is first presented, including the concepts and theories related to character strengths, their relevance to service leadership and methods to promote the development of character strengths. The basic content and activities designed for this particular lecture are then outlined for the reader to have an overall view of the lecture. Finally, reflection on the role of the lecturer in the cultivation of character strengths in students and additional topics for consideration are highlighted.
Intelligent congestion control for ABR service in ATM networks

The emergence of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology has generated new challenging problems for computer network designers. One of these challenges lies in the efficient management of ATM traffic so that the communication bandwidth of the network can be optimally utilized. Considerable standardization efforts in recent ATM Forum activities have been centered on the traffic management of available bit rate (ABR) service. In this paper, we examine congestion control schemes for ABR service in ATM networks. We describe a rate-based scheme that is now referred to by the ATM Forum as 'intelligent congestion control' and is currently considered as one of the most promising approaches. Moreover, we present analytical and simulation results illustrating the characteristics of the proposed scheme.
Monetary Policy, Asset Prices and Macroeconomic Conditions : A Panel-Var Study

This paper studies the relationships between inflation, economic activity, credit, monetary policy, and residential property and equity prices in 17 OECD countries, using quarterly data for 1986-2006. Using a panel VAR, we find plausible and significant responses to a monetary policy shock. Shocks to asset prices have a positive, significant effect on GDP and credit after three to four quarters, whereas prices start to increase much later. We also consider the transmission of US shocks from the US to the other economies. While monetary policy shocks are transmitted internationally, other shocks are not, perhaps because of the form of coefficient restrictions used.
A Note on Construct Validity of the Anchoring Method in PISA 2012

We examine construct validity of the anchoring method used with 12 noncognitive scales from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 project. This method combines individuals’ responses to vignettes and self-rated scores based on Likert-type items. It has been reported that the use of anchoring vignettes can reverse country-level correlations between academic achievement scores and noncognitive measures from negative to positive, and therefore align them with the typically reported individual-level correlations. Using the PISA 2012 data, we show that construct validity of this approach may be open to question because the anchored scales produce a different set of latent dimensions in comparison with nonanchored scales, even though both scales were created from the same set of individual responses. We also demonstrate that only one of three vignettes may be responsible for the resolution of the “paradox” highlighting that the choice of vignettes may be more important than what was previously reported.
3,4-Dideoxyglucosone-3-ene as a mediator of peritoneal demesothelization.

BACKGROUND The mesothelium contributes significantly to the functional, structural and homeostatic properties of the peritoneum. Bioincompatible peritoneal dialysis solutions contribute to mesothelial cell loss during chronic peritoneal dialysis. Cell death has been implicated in mesothelial cell loss, but the molecular mechanisms have not been adequately characterized. We now report the modulation of mesothelial cell death by the glucose degradation product 3,4-dideoxyglucosone-3-ene (3,4-DGE). METHODS Human mesothelial cells were cultured from the effluents of stable dialysis patients. Apoptosis was quantified in cultured mesothelial cells and in peritoneal effluents. Confocal microscopy and inhibitors were used to assess molecular mechanisms. RESULTS Peritoneal dialysis solutions with a high content of both glucose and glucose degradation products, but not those with low glucose degradation product content, induced mesothelial cell apoptosis and loss of cell viability in culture and in vivo. 3,4-DGE also induced mesothelial cell apoptosis. Apoptosis induced by peritoneal dialysis solutions and 3,4-DGE was associated with oligomerization of Bax at mitochondria and caspase activation. Bax antagonism prevented caspase activation, apoptosis and cell death. The pancaspase inhibitor zVAD was also protective. CONCLUSION 3,4-DGE and peritoneal dialysis solutions with a high content in glucose degradation products induce mesothelial cell apoptosis by a Bax-dependent mechanism. This could contribute to chronic demesothelization in peritoneal dialysis.
Where does Information come from? Corpus Analysis for Automatic Abstracting

We report on our study of a corpus of abstracts and parent documents to determinate which structural parts of the parent document are used to extract useful information for an abstract. The results give us a sound basis for automatic abstracting of research articles. Our method for automatic abstracting, called selective analysis, is intended to produce user-oriented abstracts which are indicative in the essential content of the document and informative in the user's interest.
Light-cone sum rules for B ---> pi form factors revisited

We reconsider and update the QCD light-cone sum rules for B → π form factors. The gluon radiative corrections to the twist-2 and twist-3 terms in the correlation functions are calculated. The b-quark mass is employed, instead of the one-loop pole mass used in the previous analyses. The light-cone sum rule for f+Bπ(q2) is fitted to the measured q2-distribution in B → πlνl, fixing the input parameters with the largest uncertainty: the Gegenbauer moments of the pion distribution amplitude. For the B → π vector form factor at zero momentum transfer we predict f+Bπ(0) = 0.26+0.04−0.03. Combining it with the value of the product |Vubf+Bπ(0)| extracted from experiment, we obtain |Vub| = (3.5±0.4±0.2±0.1) × 10−3. In addition, the scalar and penguin B → π form factors f0Bπ(q2) and fTBπ(q2) are calculated.
Bug report recommendation for code inspection

Large software projects such as Mozilla Firefox and Eclipse own more than ten thousand bug reports that have been reported but left unresolved. To utilize such a great amount of unresolved bug reports and accelerate bug detection and removal, we propose to a way recommend programmers a bug report that is likely to contain failure descriptions related to a source file being inspected. We employ the vector space model (VSM) to make a relevancy ranking of bug reports to a given source file. The result of an experiment using data of three open source software projects showed that the accuracies of recommendations ranged from 21.74% to 60.05% in terms of the percentage of recommendations that contained relevant bug reports in a top 10 recommended list.
Undercomplete Independent Component Analysis for Signal Separation and Dimension Reduction

We introduce undercomplete independent component analysis (uICA), a method for extracting K signals from M K mixtures of N M source signals. The mixtures x = (x 1 ; : : :; x M) T are formed from a linear combination of the independent source signals s = (s 1 ; : : :; s N) T using an M N mixing matrix A, so that x = As. For the case N = K = M, Bell and Sejnowski Bell and Sejnowski, 1995] showed that a square N N unmixing matrix W can be found by maximising the joint entropy of M signals (Y 1 ; : : :; Y N) T = (Wx), where is a monotonic, non-linear function. Using a similar approach, we show that a K M unmix-ing matrix W can be used to recover K M signals (s 1 ; : : :; s K) T by maximising the joint entropy of K signals Y = (Wx). The matrix W is essentially a pseudo-inverse of the M N mixing matrix A. A diierent and widely used method for reducing the size of W is to perform principal component analysis (PCA) on the data set, and to use only the L principal components with the largest eigenvalues as input to ICA. This results in an L L unmixing matrix W. However, there is no a priori reason to assume that independent components exist in only the L-D subspace deened by the L principal components with largest eigenvectors. Thus, discarding some eigenvectors may also corrupt or discard independent components. In contrast, uICA does not discard any independent components in the data set, and can extract between 1 and M signals from x. The method is demonstrated on mixtures of high kurtosis (speech and music) and Gaussian signals.
Block oriented model order reduction of interconnected systems

Unintended and parasitic coupling effects are becoming more relevant in currently designed, small-scale/highfrequency RFICs. Electromagnetic (EM) based procedures must be used to generate accurate models for proper verification of system behaviour. But these EM methodologies may take advantage of structural sub-system organization as well as information inherent to the IC physical layout, to improve their efficiency. Model order reduction techniques, required for fast and accurate evaluation and simulation of such models, must address and may benefit from the provided hierarchical information. System-based interconnection techniques can handle some of these situations, but suffer from some drawbacks when applied to complete EM models. We will present an alternative methodology, based on similar principles, that overcomes the limitations of such approaches. The procedure, based on structure-preserving model order reduction techniques, is proved to be a generalization of the interconnected system based framework. Further improvements that allow a trade off between global error and block size, and thus allow a better control on the reduction, will be also presented.
Opportunistic Network-Coded Cooperation in Wireless Networks

This paper proposed an opportunistic network-coded cooperation (ONCC) scheme suitable for multiple unicast transmission pairs in a single-cell wireless network. In contrast to existing work related to network-coded cooperation where the relay always performs network-coding-and-forwarding to help those transmitting terminals, ONCC is opportunistic because the relay decides whether or not to help do cooperation for a source-destination s-d pair based upon limited feedback from the destination. It does not assist a transmission pair unless the feedback indicates failure of the direct transmission between the source and the destination. For a wireless system composed of two s-d pairs and a relay, systematic performance analysis of ONCC was presented in terms of diversity-multiplexing tradeoff and system outage probability. ONCC is proved to be able to achieve an optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff which corresponds to the transmit diversity bound in the high-SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) regime. This means that ONCC makes more efficient use of the degrees of freedom of the channel than those protocols where an s-d pair is always be assisted by cooperative communication. Moreover, it shows that under a fixed system energy constraint, ONCC provides a reduced system outage probability while maintaining an increased expected spectral efficiency at the same time compared with incremental relaying protocol, which is similar to ONCC in "opportunistic" property but different from ONCC in that it does not exploit network coding technology.
Investigating the Influence of Knowledge Management Practices on Organizational Performance: An Empirical Study

The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of knowledge management practices on organizational performance in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) using structural equation modeling (SEM). A number of 282 senior managers from these enterprises were chosen using simple random sampling and the data were analyzed with the structural equation model. The results showed that knowledge acquisition, knowledge storage, knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, and knowledge implementation have significant factor loading on knowledge management; and also productivity, financial performance, staff performance, innovation, work relationships, and customer satisfaction have significant factor loading on organizational performance. Finally, the results of this study suggest that knowledge management practices directly influence the organizational performance of SMEs.
Discovery of an open cluster with a possible physical association with a planetary nebula

We report the discovery of a new open cluster (OC) in the Galaxy at (, =- 167°0 and b = -1°0. Its field includes the planetary nebula (PN) PK 167-0.1. We study the possible associations of the PN/OC pairs NGC 2818/2818A, NGC2438/M46 (NGC 2437), PK6+2.5/NGC6469, as well as of the PN PK 167-0.1 with New Cluster 1. The analyses are based on near-infrared colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) and stellar radial density profiles. NGC 6469 is located in a heavily contaminated bulge field. The CMD morphology, especially for the latter two cases, is defined with a field-star decontamination algorithm applied to the 2MASS J, H and K s photometry. Field decontamination for the OCs NGC 2818A and M 46 produced better defined CMDs and more accurate cluster parameters than in the literature. Those pieces of evidence point to M46 as physically associated with the PN NGC 2438. The same occurs for the OC NGC 2818A and the PN NGC 2818; however, previous radial velocity arguments indicate that they are not associated. The OC NGC 6469 does not appear to be associated with the PN PK6+2.5, which probably belongs to the bulge. Finally, the distance of the OC New Cluster 1 is consistent with a physical association with the PN PK 167-0.1.