Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discriminative concept learning network: Reveal high-level differential concepts from shallow architecture

A desired capability of deep learning is to understand the high-level, class-specific features via hierarchical features learning. However the training of deep architectures is costly comparing to simple shallow models. Bringing the high-level feature understanding into a simple shallow architecture remains an open question. We proposed a supervised learning algorithm, enabling binary classification along with an intrinsic ability of learning high-level discriminative concepts via a shallow neural network architecture. The physical architecture of the network has one hidden layer (also serving as the output layer) responsible for the classification and an input layer directly identifies the informative features that constitute the high-level differential concepts between the two classes. Compared to other shallow classifiers, we demonstrate its practicability in real world classification problems. We also illustrate the human-understandable, discriminative concepts learned from the two image recognition exercises. Lastly, we show how it is useful in validating the disease-associated genetic variants in human genome as a real diagnostic genomics application.
On the Effect of Technological Progress on Pollution: a New Distortion in an Endogenous Growth Model

We derive a model of endogenous growth with physical capital, human capital and technological progress through quality-ladders. We introduce welfare-decreasing pollution in the model, which can be reduced through the development of cleaner technologies. From the quantitative analysis of the model we show clear evidence that the new externality from technological progress to pollution considered in this model is sufficiently strong to induce underinvestment in R&D as an outcome of the decentralized equilibrium. An important policy implication of the main result of this article is a justification to subsidize the research in cleaner technologies.
Information and Consumer Willingness to Pay for Biofortified Yellow Cassava: Evidence from Experimental Auctions in Nigeria. HarvestPlus Working Paper 13

In this article, we use the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism to estimate consumer demand for biofortified yellow cassava varieties in two states of Nigeria: Imo in the southeast and Oyo in the southwest. These two states exhibit distinct habitual product color preferences for staple food made with cassava. We estimate the effect of nutrition information campaigns and nature of planting material delivery institutions on consumer demand. Willingness to pay estimations account for the effect of product endowment, censoring in bids and nonpayment. In Oyo, consumers are willing to pay a premium for light yellow cassava variety even in the absence of nutrition information. The article finds that nutrition information results in a large and significant price premium for biofortified cassava in both states, and the nature of delivery institution has no significant effect.
Whole genome sequence of Enterobacter ludwigii type strain EN-119 T , isolated from clinical specimens

Enterobacter ludwigii strain EN-119T is the type strain of E. ludwigii, which belongs to the E. cloacae complex (Ecc). This strain was first reported and nominated in 2005 and later been found in many hospitals. In this paper, the whole genome sequencing of this strain was carried out. The total genome size of EN-119T is 4952 770 bp with 4578 coding sequences, 88 tRNAs and 10 rRNAs. The genome sequence of EN-119T is the first whole genome sequence of E. ludwigii, which will further our understanding of Ecc.
Hand-eye Calibration for Robonaut Hand-eye Calibration for Robonaut Final Report Nasa Faculty Fellowship Program – 2003

NASA's Human Space Flight program depends heavily on spacewalks performed by human astronauts. These Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVAs) are risky, expensive, and complex. In collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA is developing a robotic astronaut's assistant called Robonaut that can help reduce human EVA time and workload. This project designed and implemented a hand-eye calibration scheme for Robonaut, Unit A. The intent of this calibration scheme is to improve hand-eye coordination of the robot. The basic approach is to use kinematic and stereo vision measurements, namely the joint angles self-reported by the right arm and 3-D positions of a calibration fixture as measured by vision to estimate the transformation from Robonaut's base coordinate system to its hand coordinate system and to its vision coordinate system. Two methods of gathering data sets have been developed, along with software to support each. In the first, the system observes the robotic arm and neck angles, and measures the 3-D position of a calibration fixture using Robonaut's stereo cameras, and logs these data. In the second, the system drives the arm and neck through a set of prerecorded configurations, and data are again logged. Two variants of the calibration scheme have been developed. The full calibration scheme is a batch procedure that estimates all relevant kinematic parameters of the arm and neck of the robot. The " daily " calibration scheme estimates only joint offsets for each rotational joint on the arm and neck, which are assumed to change from day to day. The schemes have been designed to be automatic and easy to use so that the robot can be fully recalibrated when needed such as after repair, upgrade, etc, and can be partially recalibrated after each power cycle. The system has been implemented on Robonaut Unit A and has been shown to reduce mismatch between kinematically derived positions and visually derived positions from a mean of 13.75cm using the previous calibration to means of 1.72cm using the full calibration procedure and 1.85cm using the " daily " calibration procedure. This improved calibration has already enabled the robot to more accurately reach for and grasp objects that it sees within its workspace. The system has been used to support an autonomous wrench-grasping experiment and significantly improved the workspace positioning of the hand based on visually derived wrench position estimates.
Path loss and delay spread models as functions of antenna height for microcellular system design

Results of wideband path loss and delay spread measurements for two representative microcellular environments in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1900 MHz band are presented. The results provide insight into the statistical distributions of measured path loss by showing the validity of a double regression model with a break point at a distance that has first Fresnel zone clearance for line-of-sight topographies. The variation of delay spread as a function of path loss is investigated, and a simple exponential overbound model is developed. The path loss and delay spread models are then applied to communication system design allowing outage probabilities, based on path loss or delay spread, to be estimated for a given microcell radius. <<ETX>>
Energy Demand and Trade in General Equilibrium: An Eaton-Kortum-Type Structural Model and Counterfactual Analysis

This paper sheds light on the role of the impact of taxes on energy production versus tariffs on imported goods for trade, energy demand, and welfare. For this, we develop a structural Eaton-Kortum type general equilibrium model of international trade which includes an energy sector. We estimate the key parameters of that model and calibrate it to domestic prices and production using data for 34 OECD countries and the rest of the world in the average year between 2000 and 2005. The model helps understanding the interplay between country-specific energy productivity, energy demand, and trade. The energy sector turns out to be an important determinant of the size of welfare gains from trade liberalization. We find that general import tariffs can be an effective instrument to reduce energy demand. For small open economies, taxing imports as an indirect instrument may be even preferable to taxing energy as a direct instrument from a welfare perspective, if countries pursue the goal of reducing energy demand to a specific extent. This is not the case for large countries such as the United States.
EXPERIENCES OF EDM USAGE IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

In the past few years the fastest growing e-business application in construction has been the use of electronic document management systems (often also called project extranets and project webs). This paper first outlines the historical developments of the adoption such systems, and then discusses results from some earlier research. The key issues in taking EDM systems into use are no longer technical or cost-related, but are rather related to business models and psychology. Initial results from an on-going case study with end users of an EDM system in a large construction project are reported. The key results are that users cannot be treated as a homogeneous group but differ considerably in attitudes towards the system, based on previous EDM experience, differing roles in the construction project (designer, contractor, subcontractor) and usage pattern.
Strategic planning and firms' competencies

The traditional strategic model of industrial organization is criticized by the upholders of the theories that regard the resources and competencies of a firm as the source of its competitive advantage. This article presents these new strategic dictates in a critical form, examining the reasons that justify the striking interest being taken by researchers and managers, but also the limits of those principles, some intrinsic others that can be overcome by an integration with tradition. As a consequence, the article presents a framework which attempts to relate the constituent elements that distinguish the two main strategic theories and shows that both must be considered for strategic planning and performance management.
Duality theory for space-time codes over finite fields

We further the study of the duality theory of linear space-time codes over finite fields by showing that the only finite linear ''omnibus'' codes (defined herein) with a duality theory are the column distance codes and the rank codes. We introduce weight enumerators for both these codes and show that they have MacWilliams-type functional equations relating them to the weight enumerators of their duals. We also show that the complete weight enumerator for finite linear sum-of-ranks codes satisfies such a functional equation. We produce an analogue of Gleason's Theorem for formally self-dual linear finite rank codes. Finally, we relate the duality matrices of $n\times n$ linear finite rank codes and length $n$ vector codes under the Hamming metric.
VO2 Kinetics and Metabolic Contributions Whilst Swimming at 95, 100, and 105% of the Velocity at VO2 max

A bioenergetical analysis of swimming at intensities near competitive distances is inexistent. It was aimed to compare the transient VO2 kinetics responses and metabolic contributions whilst swimming at different velocities around VO2max⁡. 12 trained male swimmers performed (i) an incremental protocol to determine the velocity at VO2max⁡ (vVO2max⁡) and (ii) three square wave exercises from rest to 95, 100, and 105% of vVO2max⁡. VO2 was directly measured using a telemetric portable gas analyser and its kinetics analysed through a double-exponential model. Metabolic contributions were assessed through the sum of three energy components. No differences were observed in the fast component response (τ 1—15, 18, and 16 s, A 1—36, 34, and 37 mL · kg−1 · min⁡−1, and Gain—32, 29, and 30 mL · min⁡−1 at 95, 100, and 105% of the vVO2max⁡, resp.) but A2 was higher in 95 and 100% compared to 105% intensity (480.76 ± 247.01, 452.18 ± 217.04, and 147.04 ± 60.40 mL · min⁡−1, resp.). The aerobic energy contribution increased with the time sustained (83 ± 5, 74 ± 6, and 59 ± 7% for 95, 100, and 105%, resp.). The adjustment of the cardiovascular and/or pulmonary systems that determine O2 delivery and diffusion to the exercising muscles did not change with changing intensity, with the exception of VO2 slow component kinetics metabolic profiles.
The role of the histone H2A ubiquitinase Sce in Polycomb repression

Polycomb group (PcG) proteins exist in multiprotein complexes that modify chromatin to repress transcription. Drosophila PcG proteins Sex combs extra (Sce; dRing) and Posterior sex combs (Psc) are core subunits of PRC1-type complexes. The Sce:Psc module acts as an E3 ligase for monoubiquitylation of histone H2A, an activity thought to be crucial for repression by PRC1-type complexes. Here, we created an Sce knockout allele and show that depletion of Sce results in loss of H2A monoubiquitylation in developing Drosophila. Genome-wide profiling identified a set of target genes co-bound by Sce and all other PRC1 subunits. Analyses in mutants lacking individual PRC1 subunits reveals that these target genes comprise two distinct classes. Class I genes are misexpressed in mutants lacking any of the PRC1 subunits. Class II genes are only misexpressed in animals lacking the Psc-Su(z)2 and Polyhomeotic (Ph) subunits but remain stably repressed in the absence of the Sce and Polycomb (Pc) subunits. Repression of class II target genes therefore does not require Sce and H2A monoubiquitylation but might rely on the ability of Psc-Su(z)2 and Ph to inhibit nucleosome remodeling or to compact chromatin. Similarly, Sce does not provide tumor suppressor activity in larval tissues under conditions in which Psc-Su(z)2, Ph and Pc show such activity. Sce and H2A monoubiquitylation are therefore only crucial for repression of a subset of genes and processes regulated by PRC1-type complexes. Sce synergizes with the Polycomb repressive deubiquitinase (PR-DUB) complex to repress transcription at class I genes, suggesting that H2A monoubiquitylation must be appropriately balanced for their transcriptional repression.
Fuzzy Semantic-Based String Similarity for Extrinsic Plagiarism Detection - Lab Report for PAN at CLEF 2010

This report explains our plagiarism detection method using fuzzy semantic-based string similarity approach. The algorithm was developed through four main stages. First is pre-processing which includes tokenisation, stemming and stop words removing. Second is retrieving a list of candidate documents for each suspicious document using shingling and Jaccard coefficient. Suspicious documents are then compared sentence-wise with the associated candidate documents. This stage entails the computation of fuzzy degree of similarity that ranges between two edges: 0 for completely different sentences and 1 for exactly identical sentences. Two sentences are marked as similar (i.e. plagiarised) if they gain a fuzzy similarity score above a certain threshold. The last step is post-processing whereby consecutive sentences are joined to form single paragraphs/sections. Our performance measures on PAN’09 training corpus for external plagiarism detection task (recall=0.3097, precision=0.5424, granularity=7.8867) indicates that about 54% of our detections are correct while we detect only 30% of the plagiarism cases. The performance measures on PAN’10 test collection is less (recall= 0.1259, precision= 0.5761, granularity= 3.5828), due to the fact that our algorithm handles external plagiarism detection but neither intrinsic nor cross-lingual. Although our fuzzy semantic-based method can detect some means of obfuscation, it might not work at all levels. Our future work is to improve it for more detection efficiency and less time complexity. In particular, we need to advance the post-processing stage to gain more ideal granularity.
A system for automated counting of fetal and maternal red blood cells in clinical KB test

The Kleihauer-Betke test (KBT) is a widely used method for measuring fetal-maternal hemorrhage (FMH) in maternal care. In hospitals, KBT is performed by a certified technologist to count a minimum of 2,000 fetal and maternal red blood cells (RBCs) on a blood smear. Manual counting is inherently inconsistent and subjective. This paper presents a system for automated counting and distinguishing fetal and maternal RBCs on clinical KB slides. A custom-adapted hardware platform is used for KB slide scanning and image capturing. Spatial-color pixel classification with spectral clustering is proposed to separate overlapping cells. Optimal clustering number and total cell number are obtained through maximizing cluster validity index. To accurately identify fetal RBCs from maternal RBCs, multiple features including cell size, shape, gradient and saturation difference are used in supervised learning to generate feature vectors, to tackle cell color, shape and contrast variations across clinical KB slides. The results show that the automated system is capable of completing the counting of over 60,000 cells (vs. 2,000 by technologists) within 5 minutes (vs. 15 minutes by technologists). The counting results are highly accurate and correlate strongly with those from benchmarking flow cytometry measurement.
A real-time camera match-moving method for virtual-real synthesis image composition using temporal depth fusion

This paper presented a virtual-real synthesis image composition method, called match-moving, which is suitable for the graphic image composition or the stereoscopic image composition. The proposed method consists of two subsystems for camera tracking and virtue-real preview, respectively. The camera tracking subsystem based on the temporal depth fusion is used to acquire the camera pose and trajectory. In order to compensate the existing noises in dynamic scenes, a priori model is employed while developing a human skeleton detection method and a spatial temporal attention analysis method. The composition of real and virtual objects is performed by a real-time virtual-real synthesis preview system. In exemplary results, the measurement of camera pose has shown that the proposed system was achieved with high accuracy. Our goal is to design an intuitive camera match-moving system to perform a virtual-real synthesis with real-time 3D preview visualization.
The Strong Minimalist Thesis and Bounded Optimality

• The framework may help us to see how, exactly, current Minimalist theory—with its concerns for nding derivational procedures that are efficient, economical and so on—relates to the leading question identi ed above. ∗This note originally developed from discussions in a graduate seminar on “competence and performance” that I co-taught in Fall 2009 at the University of Michigan with Sam Epstein, with support from the Marshall Weinberg Fund for Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences. Please don’t blame Sam or Marshall Weinberg for any nonsense contained here.
Optimal dynamic treatment regimes

Summary. A dynamic treatment regime is a list of decision rules, one per time interval, for how the level of treatment will be tailored through time to an individual's changing status. The goal of this paper is to use experimental or observational data to estimate decision regimes that result in a maximal mean response. To explicate our objective and to state the assumptions, we use the potential outcomes model. The method proposed makes smooth parametric assumptions only on quantities that are directly relevant to the goal of estimating the optimal rules. We illustrate the methodology proposed via a small simulation.
Simulation of real-time explosion smoke based on Simplex-Noise

Classical smoke simulation methods based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are rather expensive that cannot be used in real-time systems. In this paper, a method based on Simplex noise is proposed to achieve high realistic effects of explosion smoke. The colors of the smoke particles are disturbed by 3D Simplex-Noise and faded according to time, the rolling and expanding of the explosion smoke particles are simulated by use of billboard technology and GPU-based particle system. The experiment results show that this method can produce vivid explosion smoke effects in real-time.
Northern flying squirrel densities in fir forests of northeastern California

The northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus) is the primary prey of northern spotted owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) and California spotted owls (S. o. occidentalis) throughout much of the owls' ranges. Flying squirrel abundance patterns, however, are poorly documented. Using capture-recapture techniques to estimate density, we compared flying squirrel densities among 3 types of fir (Abies spp.) forests in Lassen National Forest, northeastern California. We compared densities between 3 each of old and shelterwood-logged fir stands in 1990 and among 4 each of old, shelterwood, and young fir stands in 1991-92. Shelterwood stands had been logged and had undergone site preparation 5 years prior to our study. In 1990 flying squirrel density was greater in old (? = 2.76 squirrels/ha, SE = 0.55) than in shelterwood (? = 0.31 squirrels/ha, SE = 0.11) stands (P = 0.005). In 1991-92 density varied (P = 0.001) among the 3 stand types, averaging 3.29 squirrels/ha (SE = 0.63) in old, 2.28 squirrels/ha (SE = 0.18) in young, and 0.37 squirrels/ ha (SE = 0.17) in shelterwood stands. Body mass of adult males and females and recapture rate did not differ (M, P = 0.438; F, P = 0.983; P = 0.218, respectively) between old and young stands, and percent juveniles captured was greater (P = 0.052) in old than in young stands. Diet analyses were consistent with other studies and indicated that sporocarps of hypogeous fungi were a common food source. Frequency of hypogeous sporocarps was correlated (r s = 0.860, P < 0.001) with flying squirrel density, but cavity density and understory cover were not (P = 0.344 and 0.217, respectively). Flying squirrels were not old-growth specialists; however, low densities in shelterwood stands suggest that heavy logging and intensive site preparation negatively affected flying squirrel populations.
Superselective Targeting Using Multivalent Polymers

Despite their importance for material and life sciences, multivalent interactions between polymers and surfaces remain poorly understood. Combining recent achievements of synthetic chemistry and surface characterization, we have developed a well-defined and highly specific model system based on host/guest interactions. We use this model to study the binding of hyaluronic acid functionalized with host molecules to tunable surfaces displaying different densities of guest molecules. Remarkably, we find that the surface density of bound polymer increases faster than linearly with the surface density of binding sites. Based on predictions from a simple analytical model, we propose that this superselective behavior arises from a combination of enthalpic and entropic effects upon binding of nanoobjects to surfaces, accentuated by the ability of polymer chains to interpenetrate.
Single Document Summarization with Document Expansion

Existing methods for single document summarization usually make use of only the information contained in the specified document. This paper proposes the technique of document expansion to provide more knowledge to help single document summarization. A specified document is expanded to a small document set by adding a few neighbor documents close to the document, and then the graph-ranking based algorithm is applied on the expanded document set for extracting sentences from the single document, by making use of both the within-document relationships between sentences of the specified document and the cross-document relationships between sentences of all documents in the document set. The experimental results on the DUC2002 dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach based on document expansion. The cross-document relationships between sentences in the expanded document set are validated to be very important for single document summarization.