Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Fast Hybrid Algorithm of Background Extraction Suitable for the DSP Platform

Abstract The paper introduces background extractions with self-adaptive update algorithm and puts forward an improved algorithm based on histogram statistic combining with multi-frame average. It avoids the image trail-blur phenomena using pure multi-frame method on traffic jam, and has relative low computation complexity comparing with the hybrid Gauss model. It can run on the TI DM642 DSP hardware platform, the experimental image shows the fast extraction speed and gets good background image.
Haptic object recognition with a dextrous hand based on volumetric shape representations

A haptic object recognition methodology suitable for application with a multifingered robot hand is presented. The methodology exploits the peculiar features of robot hands such as their distributed sensoriality and parallel kinematics for fast acquisition of contact data, and is based on volumetric representation models for efficient dynamic integration of the perceived information. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the methodology to non-trivial examples. <<ETX>>
Does the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index explain spatial and temporal variability in sap velocity in temperate forest ecosystems?

Abstract. Understanding the link between vegetation characteristics and tree transpiration is a critical need to facilitate satellite-based transpiration estimation. Many studies use the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), a proxy for tree biophysical characteristics, to estimate evapotranspiration. In this study, we investigated the link between sap velocity and 30 m resolution Landsat-derived NDVI for 20 days during 2 contrasting precipitation years in a temperate deciduous forest catchment. Sap velocity was measured in the Attert catchment in Luxembourg in 25 plots of 20×20 m covering three geologies with sensors installed in two to four trees per plot. The results show that, spatially, sap velocity and NDVI were significantly positively correlated in April, i.e. NDVI successfully captured the pattern of sap velocity during the phase of green-up. After green-up, a significant negative correlation was found during half of the studied days. During a dry period, sap velocity was uncorrelated with NDVI but influenced by geology and aspect. In summary, in our study area, the correlation between sap velocity and NDVI was not constant, but varied with phenology and water availability. The same behaviour was found for the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI). This suggests that methods using NDVI or EVI to predict small-scale variability in (evapo)transpiration should be carefully applied, and that NDVI and EVI cannot be used to scale sap velocity to stand-level transpiration in temperate forest ecosystems.
Efficient Clustering Model for Utilization of Processor's Capacity in Distributed Computing System

Distributed Computing System (DCS) computing plays an important role in computing world where processing load is distributed for computational efficiencies. DCS are designed to facilitate the sharing of resources as well as to reduce communication costs, increase throughput, and decrease delay of services. DCS are motivated by the need for cost reduction in tasks execution. In such applications the quality of the output is proportional to the amount of real-time computations. To meet such challenging computing requirements at electrifying speeds efficient clustering strategies are required for proper utilization of Distributed System. In this paper, we proposed a model for efficient utilization of the processing units in distributed environment and calculated the through of individual processor as 0.339789, 0.371609 and 0.529287 which is far better in comparison to the non clustering model of Sig05.
BaseNPs that contain gene names: domain specificity and genericity

The names of named entities very often occur as constituents of larger noun phrases which denote different types of entity. Understanding the structure of the embedding phrase can be an enormously beneficial first step to enhancing whatever processing is intended to follow the named entity recognition in the first place. In this paper, we examine the integration of general purpose linguistic processors together with domain specific named entity recognition in order to carry out the task of baseNP detection. We report a best F-score of 87.17% on this task. We also report an inter-annotator agreement score of 98.8 Kappa on the task of baseNP annotation of a new data set.
Risk of a Second Breast Cancer Associated with Hormone-Receptor and HER2/neu Status of the First Breast Cancer

Objectives: Hormone-receptor (HR) and HER2/neu-receptor (HER2) status of breast tumors are important indicators for targeted therapies. We examine the association of receptor status and risk for a second breast cancer. Methods: We analyzed data on 106,331 women in the California Cancer Registry whose first cancer is locoregional invasive breast disease, diagnosed from 1999 through 2005, yielding 1,613 second primary breast cancers. Standardized incidence ratios (SIR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to evaluate risk of second tumors, accounting for age at first diagnosis, duration at risk, and race/ethnicity. Results: Among non-Hispanic whites, HR-positive first tumors signal a reduction in risk for second breast cancers (SIR = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.77–0.89) whereas HR-negative status signals elevated risk (SIR = 1.48, 95% CI: 1.29–1.70). Asian/Pacific Islanders, African Americans, and Hispanics are at elevated risk of second breast cancers regardless of HR status of the first tumor. Hispanics with HR-negative first tumors are at greater risk than those with HR-positive disease (HR−: SIR = 3.76, 95% CI: 2.97–4.71; HR+: SIR = 1.86, 95% CI: 1.56–2.20). HER2 status does not differentiate risk for second tumors in any group examined. Conclusions: HR status of a first breast cancer is a marker for risk of a second breast cancer. HER2 status does not seem to be a marker of risk for a second breast cancer. Risk differences across race/ethnic groups by HR status suggest heterogeneity of breast cancers across race/ethnicity. Impact: These data suggest that HR status may be helpful in shaping strategies to reduce risk of a second breast cancer, while HER2 status seems uninformative for this purpose. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 20(2); 389–96. ©2011 AACR.
Proposed score for the self-assessment of an endoscopy department performance in colonoscopy screening

The aim of the paper was to propose a score for performance evaluation in colonoscopy units. Method We proposed a score (CDCD score - Cecal intubation, polyp Detection rate, Cleansing and Documentation of cecal intubation) based on the following parameters that assess the quality of colonoscopy units: total colonoscopies rate, polyp detection rate, rate of cecal intubation photo record, rate of recorded Boston bowel preparation scale (BBPS) (rated 1 to 5 stars). The mean score obtained based on the above mentioned criteria was used as a quality parameter of the endoscopy unit. We applied and calculated this score in all screening colonoscopies performed in our Endoscopy Department during the last 4 years. Results The study group included 856 screening colonoscopies. The rate of total colonoscopies was 92.1% (789/856 cases) and the polyp detection rate was 23.9%. Regarding the quality of bowel preparation, the BBPS was recorded in 51.1% cases. The cecal intubation was photo recorded in 44% of cases. We considered that of the 4 parameters, the highest weight for an excellent quality belonged to the cecal intubation rate, followed by the polyp detection rate, because they evaluate the endoscopic technique, while the other 2 are more administrative. Thus, for the unit’s assessment we used the following equation: UNIT’S QUALITY CDCD SCORE = (3×cecal intubation rate+3×polyp detection rate+1×photo documentation+1×BBPS documentation)/8. Thus, the CDCD Score for our unit was ≈4 stars (3.7 stars). Conclusion The proposed CDCD score may be an objective tool for the quality assessment in different endoscopy units.
The More Human, the Higher the Performance? Examining the Effects of Anthropomorphism on Learning With Media

The inclusion of human-like shapes like arms or faces in rather abstract pictures triggers the tendency of anthropomorphism, which is defined as the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman objects. Anthropomorphism-triggering features in digital learning materials were found to enhance the performance of students. However, the probability of how effective such anthropomorphic features are might be dependent on the degree of the elicited anthropomorphism. In this study, 3 experiments were conducted to examine if varying degrees of anthropomorphism (low vs. medium vs. high) differently affect the learning performance of students. Participants were taken from different class levels; ranging from Class 5 and 6 (Experiment 1) to Class 8 and 9 (Experiment 2), and Class 11 to 13 (Experiment 3). The instructional material covered the topic of blood cell types. Subjective measurements of cognitive load, aesthetics, intrinsic motivation, and valence were included. Results show that an increased degree of anthropomorphism led to significant differences in the learning, intrinsic motivation, and aesthetics scores. The learning results of the 3 experiments were additionally checked by a meta-analysis. On a descriptive level, only students in Class 8 and 9 profited the most from a high degree of anthropomorphism. While students in Class 5 and 6 suffered from a high cognitive load in the high anthropomorphism condition, students in Class 11 to 13 were not as strongly affected by anthropomorphism as the other students. Results are partly explained by differences in prior knowledge.
Toward Continuous, Noninvasive Assessment of Ventricular Function and Hemodynamics: Wearable Ballistocardiography

Ballistocardiography, the measurement of the reaction forces of the body to cardiac ejection of blood, is one of the few techniques available for unobtrusively assessing the mechanical aspects of cardiovascular health outside clinical settings. Recently, multiple experimental studies involving healthy subjects and subjects with various cardiovascular diseases have demonstrated that the ballistocardiogram (BCG) signal can be used to trend cardiac output, contractility, and beat-by-beat ventricular function for arrhythmias. The majority of these studies has been performed with “fixed” BCG instrumentation-such as weighing scales or chairs-rather than wearable measurements. Enabling wearable, and thus continuous, recording of BCG signals would greatly expand the capabilities of the technique; however, BCG signals measured using wearable devices are morphologically dissimilar to measurements from “fixed” instruments, precluding the analysis and interpretation techniques from one domain to be applied to the other. In particular, the time intervals between the electrocardiogram (ECG) and BCG-namely, the R-J interval, a surrogate for measuring contractility changes-are significantly different for the accelerometer compared to a “fixed” BCG measurement. This paper addresses this need for quantitatively normalizing wearable BCG measurement to “fixed” measurements with a systematic experimental approach. With these methods, the same analysis and interpretation techniques developed over the past decade for “fixed” BCG measurement can be successfully translated to wearable measurements.
G/sup SEE/: a Generic Software Exploration Environment

Large software products are very difficult to understand. One way to cope with this problem is to provide tools generating different software views. Unfortunately, there are so many different entity types and relationships in a large software product that building a specific tool for each view is not cost-effective. This paper presents G/sup SEE/ (Generic Software Exploration Environment). G/sup SEE/ consists of an object-oriented framework and a set of customizable tools. Thanks to this environment, only a few lines are needed to produce graphical views from virtually any data source. G/sup SEE/ has been successfully applied to improving the understanding of different software artifacts, including a multi-million lines-of-code (LOC) program.
EVALUATION OF 2D SHAPE LIKENESS FOR SURFACE RECONSTRUCTION

A rotatable drum, which bears beater bars and is intended for use in pulverizing metallurgical slag, is defined by abutting conduits which are welded to one another and to a tubular support. The arrays of conduits, through which a coolant is circulated, is interrupted at a number of locations spaced radially about the support where radially outwardly extending beater bars are welded to the same support. The beater bars are also provided with internal passages through which the coolant is circulated.
Near-infrared spectra of compact planetary nebulae

This paper continues our study of the behaviour of near-infrared helium recombination lines in planetary nebulae. We find that the 1.7007-μm He i line is a good measure of the He i recombination rate, since it varies smoothly with the effective temperature of the central star. We were unable to reproduce the observed data using detailed photoionization models at both low and high effective temperatures, but plausible explanations for the difference exist for both. We therefore conclude that this line could be used as an indicator of the effective temperature in obscured nebulae. We also characterized the nature of the molecular hydrogen emission present in a smaller subset of our sample. The results are consistent with previous data indicating that ultraviolet excitation rather than shocks is the main cause of the molecular hydrogen emission in planetary nebulae.
Establishing Browser Security Guarantees through Formal Shim Verification

Web browsers mediate access to valuable private data in domains ranging from health care to banking. Despite this critical role, attackers routinely exploit browser vulnerabilities to exfiltrate private data and take over the underlying system. We present QUARK, a browser whose kernel has been implemented and verified in Coq. We give a specification of our kernel, show that the implementation satisfies the specification, and finally show that the specification implies several security properties, including tab non-interference, cookie integrity and confidentiality, and address bar integrity.
Worlding Cape Town by design: Encounters with creative cityness

Considering the ongoing global proliferation of the urban ‘creativity fix’ and its inclination to further push local governments towards entrepreneurial governance logics and market-led development imperatives, there is a sustained need to understand how the creative city paradigm is being grounded, renegotiated and put into practice in so-called ‘Southern’ cities. To analyse Cape Town’s creative city trajectory and its eventual emergence as the ‘first African World Design Capital’ in 2014, this article brings together three strands of contemporary urban scholarship. First, it utilizes the notion of ‘worlding’ to foreground the complex and multi-scalar processes that shaped Cape Town’s ‘politics of becoming’ a creative city. Second, it draws on the related and growing body of work that engages with globally mobile urban policies, their modes of circulation, adoption and transformation in different socio-political and spatial contexts. Finally, in using this relational framework to analyse Cape Town’s creative-to-design city journey, it contributes to a ‘second wave’ of scholarship on creative city-making that focuses on understanding its heterogeneous manifestations and varied local effects – that is, the diverse and situated expressions of creative cityness in the broader context of a globalizing cultural political economy. Overall the article suggests that future research has much to gain from understanding the creative city paradigm as a powerful ‘worlding device’ that produces place-based responses, which are as much ambitious and aspirational as they are fragile and necessarily incomplete.
CONSIDERATIONS ON SOME ALGEBRAIC PROPERTIES OF FEYNMAN INTEGRALS

Some algebraic properties of integrals over configuration spaces are investigated in order to better understand quantization and the Connes-Kreimer algebraic approach to renormal- ization. In order to isolate the mathematical-physics interface to quantum field theory independent from the specifics of the various implementations, the sigma model of Kontsevich is investigated in more detail. Due to the convergence of the configuration space integrals, the model allows to study the Feynman rules independently, from an axiomatic point of view, avoiding the intricacies of renormalization, unavoidable within the traditional quantum field theory. As an application, a combinatorial approach to constructing the coecients of formality mor- phisms is suggested, as an alternative to the analytical approach used by Kontsevich. These coe- cients are "Feynman integrals", although not quite typical since they do converge. A second example of "Feynman integrals", defined as state-sum model, is investigated. Inte- gration is understood here as formal categorical integration, or better as a duality structure on the corresponding category. The connection with a related TQFT is mentioned, supplementing the Feynman path integral interpretation of Kontsevich formula.
Rendezvous Points-Based Scalable Content Discovery with Load Balancing

ABSTRACT A Content Dis overy System (CDS) enables ontent onsumers to dis over ontent published by ontent providers via a set of ontent resolvers. Existing solutions to CDS systems have diAE ulties in a hieving both ri h fun tionality and s alability. In this paper, we present a distributed and s alable approa h based on Rendezvous Points (RPs) that eAE iently supports exible sear h of dynami ontents. Our system deploys load balan ing matri es (LBMs) to dynami ally balan e registration and query load a ross resolver nodes to maximize system utilization. Our system utilizes existing hash-based algorithms for ontent and query distribution within the overlay resolver network. We use simulation to validate our design.
Numerical and Categorical Attributes Data Clustering Using K-Modes and Fuzzy K-Modes

Most of the existing clustering approaches are applicable to purely numerical or categorical data only, but not the both. In general, it is a nontrivial task to perform clustering on mixed data composed of numerical and categorical attributes because there exists an awkward gap between the similarity metrics for categorical and numerical data. This paper therefore presents a general clustering framework based on the concept of objectcluster similarity and gives a unified similarity metric which can be simply applied to the data with categorical, numerical, and mixed attributes. This paper proposes a novel initialization method for mixed data which is implemented using K – Modes algorithm and further and iterative fuzzy K – Modes clustering algorithm. Keyword –Clustering, Similarity Metrics, Plasma compatability, Initialization,k-modes ,fuzzy kmodes,exemplers.
Human Face Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Networks

- In this paper, I present a novel hybrid face recognition approach based on a convolutional neural architecture, designed to robustly detect highly variable face patterns. The convolutional network extracts successively larger features in a hierarchical set of layers. With the weights of the trained neural networks there are created kernel windows used for feature extraction in a 3-stage algorithm. I present experimental results illustrating the efficiency of the proposed approach. I use a database of 796 images of 159 individuals from Reims University which contains quite a high degree of variability in expression, pose, and facial details .
Conditional Skewness in Asset Pricing Tests 1265

If asset returns have systematic skewness, expected returns should include rewards for accepting this risk. We formalize this intuition with an asset pricing model that incorporates conditional skewness. Our results show that conditional skewness helps explain the cross-sectional variation of expected returns across assets and is significant even when factors based on size and book-to-market are included. Systematic skewness is economically important and commands a risk premium, on average, of 3.60 percent per year. Our results suggest that the momentum effect is related to systematic skewness. The low expected return momentum portfolios have higher skewness than high expected return portfolios. THE SINGLE FACTOR CAPITAL ASSET PRICING MODEL ~CAPM! of Sharpe ~1964! and Lintner ~1965! has come under recent scrutiny. Tests indicate that the crossasset variation in expected returns cannot be explained by the market beta alone. For example, a growing number of studies show that “fundamental” variables such as size, book-to-market value, and price to earnings ratios account for a sizeable portion of the cross-sectional variation in expected returns ~see, e.g., Chan, Hamao, and Lakonishok ~1991! and Fama and French ~1992! Fama and French ~1995! document the importance of SMB ~the difference between the return on a portfolio of small size stocks and the return on a portfolio of large size stocks! and HML ~the difference between the return on a portfolio of high book-to-market value stocks and the return on a portfolio of low book-to-market value stocks! There are a number of responses to these empirical findings. First, the single-factor CAPM is rejected when the portfolio used to proxy for the market is inefficient ~see Roll ~1977! and Ross ~1977! Roll and Ross ~1994! and Kandel and Stambaugh ~1995! show that even very small deviations from efficiency can produce an insignificant relation between risk and expected returns. Second, Kothari, Shanken, and Sloan ~1995! and Breen and Korajczyk ~1993! argue that there is a survivorship bias in the data used to test these new asset pricing specifications. Third, there are several specification issues. Kim ~1995! and Amihud, Christensen, and Mendelson ~1993! argue that errorsin-variables impact the empirical research. Kan and Zhang ~1997! focus on time-varying risk premia and the ability of insignificant factors to appear * The authors are from Duke University and Georgetown University respectively. We appreciate the comments of Philip Dybvig, Stephen Brown, Alon Brav, S. Viswanathan, and seminar participants at Georgetown, Indiana University, the University of Toronto, the 1996 WFA ~Oregon! , and the AFA ~New Orleans! meetings. We appreciate the helpful comments of an anonymous referee and the detailed suggestions of the editor. THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE • VOL. LV, NO. 3 • JUNE 2000
Design and Development of Multimedia Video Monitoring System Based on Wireless Sensor Network

The nodes of wireless sensor network are mainly responsible for the collection and processing of the information and send to neighboring nodes. The paper presents design and development of multimedia video monitoring system based on wireless sensor network. Video monitoring system is designed to analysis and judgment of target behavior in the scene, so that let the computer correctly understanding of the target behavior analysis and the classification of the target. The wireless sensor network self-organization protocol is analyzed and studied. This paper designs a real-time transmission system of adaptive network video monitoring. FISCO can not only guarantee the arrival of a new node quickly joins, but caused only local changes in network communication structure. The results show that different structures may have different maintenance methods and energy consumption, global and local structure is better than pure global structure type. Copyright © 2013 IFSA.