Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of interaction and orientation method in welding simulator for welding training using augmented reality

This paper presents a method of interaction and orientation that can be implemented in welding simulator and will be used for basic welding training. In welding process there are many factors that can affect the welding results. One of them is the orientation angle and interaction distance between plate and torch. Therefore, a method to find an angle and a distance between plate and welding torch so then it can be used as a part of the welding simulator was developed. The required components are webcam in laptop used as a video tracking device, two sets of marker, and ARToolKit as software library. After the interaction and orientation method was successfully built, a measurement for the interaction method to get a relation between actual distance and virtual distance was performed. The result will receive a comparison value from 27 to 28 pixels per centimeter with specified limitation. Then for orientation method, standard deviation and root mean square error (RMSE) of an angle was measured. This is the first stage of development in welding simulator. Further development is required to get a more advanced welding simulator.
Inside the Bureaucracy : Principals , Agents and Bureaucratic Strategy

Agency theory is premised on relationships between strategic principals and strategic agents. Although applications of agency theory to political control of the bureaucracy have long focused on the sophisticated strategies of political institutions, most have ignored the strategic behaviors bureaucrats use to counter political principals’ attempts at control. This study reintroduces a strategic bureaucracy to principal-agent models to investigate a moral hazard, organizational cheating. Organizational cheating allows bureaucrats to meet the demands of political principals by maximizing desired outputs, while at the same time engaging in behaviors inconsistent with the spirit of guidelines established by political principals. Using a large sample of school districts in a pooled time series, we find the propensity to cheat is driven by low resource levels, heavy task demands, transaction costs, and norms that institutionalize cheating in bureaucratic processes. This cheating is institutionalized in organizational rules and results in better scores on evaluative criteria used to assess the organization. To better understand the relationship between political principals and their agents, models of political control of the bureaucracy should devote more attention to understanding the sophisticated strategies bureaucrats can use to produce the outcomes requested by political principals.
2D and 3D level-set algorithms on GPU

Locating object boundaries, modeling shapes is still an interesting and important task in many applications such as computer vision, object detection, image segmentation and tracking. In this paper we show the implementation of 2D and 3D algorithms based on the level sets using the advantages residing in today's common GPUs. One main goal of this paper is to contribute a development and give one new local-parallel implementation of a fast level set based algorithm via the locally organized processing elements and memory. This algorithm can model and detect any object with arbitrary complex shape and can be applied to situations where no or very few a priori information is available. Our accelerated implementation can handle more initial curves and surfaces which can fuse or merge according to the requirements. This might be a good base to achieve fast and robust detection, segmentation or tracking in medical or autonomous tasks.
A Dual-Band Circularly Polarized Stub Loaded Microstrip Patch Antenna for GPS Applications

A single-feed low-profile and easy to fabricate circularly polarized microstrip patch antenna has been developed for GPS applications. For dual frequency operation, four slots are etched near edges of the patch and a crossed slot etched in the center for generating circular polarization. In order to reducing the frequency ratio of two frequency bands of the antenna, the patch is loaded by four short circuit microstrip stubs. The paper reports several simulation results that confirm the desired characteristics of the antenna. Using stub loading, the frequency ratio of two bands of the antenna can be, even, reduced to 1.1.
Error estimation and adjoint based refinement for an adjoint consistent DG discretisation of the compressible Euler equations

Adjoint consistency in addition to consistency is the key requirement for discontinuous Galerkin discretisations to be of optimal order in L2 as well as measured in terms of target functionals. We provide a general framework for analysing adjoint consistency and introduce consistent modifications of target functionals. This framework is then used to derive an adjoint consistent discontinuous Galerkin discretisation of the compressible Euler equations. We demonstrate the effect of adjoint consistency on the accuracy of the flow solution, the smoothness of the discrete adjoint solution and the a posteriori error estimation with respect to aerodynamical force coefficients on locally refined meshes.
The Proximal Average: Basic Theory

The recently introduced proximal average of two convex functions is a convex function with many useful properties. In this paper, we introduce and systematically study the proximal average for finitely many convex functions. The basic properties of the proximal average with respect to the standard convex-analytical notions (domain, Fenchel conjugate, subdifferential, proximal mapping, epi-continuity, and others) are provided and illustrated by several examples.
The Relationship of Metabolic Syndrome with Stress, Coronary Heart Disease and Pulmonary Function - An Occupational Cohort-Based Study

Background and Aims Higher levels of stress impact the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and coronary heart disease. The association between MetS, impaired pulmonary function and low level of physical activity is still pending assessment in the subjects exposed to stress. The study aimed to examine whether higher levels of stress might be related to MetS and the plaque presence, as well as whether MetS might affect pulmonary function. Design and Methods The study embraced 235 police officers (mean age 40.97 years) from the south of Poland. The anthropometrics and biochemical variables were measured; MetS was diagnosed using the International Diabetes Federation criteria. Computed tomography coronary angiography of coronary arteries, exercise ECG, measurements of brachial flow-mediated dilation, and carotid artery intima-media thickness were completed. In order to measure the self-perception of stress, 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) was applied. Pulmonary function and physical activity levels were also addressed. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were applied to determine the relationships between: 1/ incidence of coronary plaque and MetS per se, MetS components and the number of classical cardiovascular risk factors, 2/ perceived stress and MetS, 3/ MetS and pulmonary function parameters. Results Coronary artery atherosclerosis was less associated with MetS (OR = 2.62, 95%CI 1.24–5.52; p = 0.011) than with a co-existence of classical cardiovascular risk factors (OR = 5.67, 95% CI 1.07–29.85, p = 0.03; for 3 risk factors and OR = 9.05; 95% CI 1.24–66.23, p = 0.02; for 6 risk factors, respectively). Perceived stress increased MetS prevalence (OR = 1.07, 95% CI 1.03–1.13; p = 0.03), and impacted coronary plaque prevalence (OR = 1.05, 95% CI 1.001–1.10; p = 0.04). Leisure-time physical activity reduced the chances of developing MetS (OR = 0.98 95% CI 0.96–0.99; p = 0.02). MetS subjects had significantly lower values of certain pulmonary function parameters. Conclusions Exposure to job-specific stress among police officers increased the prevalence of MetS and impacted coronary plaque presence. MetS subjects had worse pulmonary function parameters. Early-stage, comprehensive therapeutic intervention may reduce overall risk of cardiovascular events and prevent pulmonary function impairment in this specific occupational population.
A Phase-Locked Loop With Injection-Locked Frequency Multiplier in 0.18-$\mu{\hbox{m}}$  CMOS for $V$ -Band Applications

In this paper, a novel CMOS phase-locked loop (PLL) integrated with an injection-locked frequency multiplier (ILFM) that generates the V-band output signal is proposed. Since the proposed ILFM can generate the fifth-order harmonic frequency of the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) output, the operational frequency of the VCO can be reduced to only one-fifth of the desired frequency. With the loop gain smaller than unity in the ILFM, the output frequency range of the proposed PLL is from 53.04 to 58.0 GHz. The PLL is designed and fabricated in 0.18-mum CMOS technology. The measured phase noises at 1- and 10-MHz offset from the carrier are -85.2 and -90.9 dBc/Hz, respectively. The reference spur level of -40.16 dBc is measured. The dc power dissipation of the fabricated PLL is 35.7 mW under a 1.8-V supply. It can be seen that the advantages of lower power dissipation and similar phase noise can be achieved in the proposed PLL structure. It is suitable for low-power and high-performance V-band applications.
On infrastructure network design with agent-based modelling

We have developed an agent-based model to optimize green-field network design in an industrial area. We aim to capture some of the deep uncertainties surrounding infrastructure design by modelling it developing specific ant colony optimizations. Hence, we propose a variety of extensions to our existing work, first ideas on how to realize them and three cases to explicate our ideas. One case is the design of a CO2 pipeline network in Rotterdam industrial area. First simulation results have shown the relevance of the approach.
Concurrent Non-Malleable Commitments from One-way Functions

We show the existence of concurrent non-malleable commitments based on the existence one-way functions. Our proof of security only requires the use of black-box techniques, and additionally provides an arguably simplified proof of the existence of even stand-alone secure non-malleable commitments. Cornell University, E-Mail: huijia@cs.cornell. edu Cornell University, E-Mail: rafael@cs.cornell. edu Cornell University, E-Mail: vmuthu@cs.cornell. edu
Simultaneous Multiwavelength Observations of Magnetic Activity in Ultracool Dwarfs. I. The Complex Behavior of the M8.5 Dwarf TVLM 513–46546

We present the first simultaneous radio, X-ray, ultraviolet, and optical spectroscopic observations of the M8.5 dwarf TVLM 513–46546, with a duration of 9 hr. These observations are part of a program to study the origin of magnetic activity in ultracool dwarfs, and its impact on chromospheric and coronal emission. Here we detect steady quiescent radio emission superposed with multiple short-duration, highly polarized flares; there is no evidence for periodic bursts previously reported for this object, indicating their transient nature. We also detect soft X-ray emission, with LX/Lbol ≈ 10−5.1, the faintest to date for any object later than M5, and a possible X-ray flare. TVLM 513–46546 continues the trend of severe violation of the radio/X-ray correlation in ultracool dwarfs, by nearly 4 orders of magnitude. From the optical spectroscopy we find that the Balmer line luminosity exceeds the X-ray luminosity by a factor of a few, ruling out chromospheric heating by coronal X-ray emission. More importantly, we detect sinusoidal Hα and Hβ equivalent width light curves with a period of 2 hr, matching the rotation period of TVLM 513–46546. This behavior points to a corotating chromospheric hot spot or an extended magnetic structure, with a covering fraction of about 50%. This feature may be transitory based on the apparent decline in light-curve peak during the four observed maxima. From the radio data we infer a large-scale and steady magnetic field of ~102 G. A large-scale field is also required by the sinusoidal Balmer line emission. The radio flares, on the other hand, are produced in a component of the field with a strength of ~3 kG and a likely multipolar configuration. The overall lack of correlation between the various activity indicators suggests that the short-duration radio flares do not have a strong influence on the chromosphere and corona, and that the chromospheric emission is not the result of coronal heating.
Bayesian Nets for Life Cycle Cost Forecasting

Plant and system operators are looking for reliable products meeting high technical requirements while providing maximum economic benefit throughout the life cycle. Calculating life cycle costs different operating conditions have to be considered to provide reliable decision making assistance. If data for a direct probability measurement may not be available, expert knowledge needs to be considered. The model presented enables a combination of expert knowledge and collected lifetime data to be used for estimating product operational costs. Modelling costs this way, the plausibility of a given statement can be updated in the light of new information to produce a more accurate cost estimation.
A new class of nonseparable and nonstationary covariance models for wind fields

Abstract : Classical geostatistical methods are powerful tools to study the spatial-temporal structure of stationary processes. Separability is also a common assumption to avoid many of the problems of space and time modeling. This subclass of separable spatial-temporal processes has several advantages, including rapid fitting and simple extensions of many techniques developed and successfully used in time series analyses and geostatistics. However, in real applications spatial-temporal processes are rarely stationary and separable; then an important extension of these traditional geostatistical methods is to processes that have a nonstationary and nonseparable covariance. In this work, some new approaches to estimate and model nonstationarity and nonseparability are presented. The most important scientific contributions of the research proposed here are; the estimation of the complex spatial-temporal dependence of environmental processes in general situations (nonstationarity, anisotropy, nonseparability), and the introduction of flexible models for spatial prediction of environmental processes. We apply the statistical methods proposed here to model the spatial-temporal patterns of wind fields, and for wind field mapping, which combines numerical meteorological model output with observational data. The data used in this phase of the research came from the subregion surrounding and including the Chesapeake Bay for July 2002. The ability to accurately forecast wind speed and direction in coastal locations is critical for support of shipping, marine recreational activities, and national security issues related to contaminant transport.
A critical success factors model for IS implementation: Development and validation of a structural model using PLS

The delivery of high quality health services is among the most important government policies in healthcare; it is demonstrated via the significant investment committed to expand the sector. In order to provide quality health services, Hospital Information Systems (HIS) development and adoption has to be initiated; though evidence has shown that implementing HIS is not easy. To ensure continuous successful implementation, the understanding and determination of HIS implementation factors has become a crucial consideration for health providers. This study, instigated to alleviate this problem, identified critical factors that influence HIS implementation and examined structured indicators to measure HIS implementation. Conceptually, it extends theory by reframing the critical success factors that influence HIS implementation. Empirically, it confirms that PLS path modelling can be used to estimate the parameters of a higher order construct. Finally, the study concludes by discussing the conceptual contribution and practical implications.
Intake and Dietary Food Sources of Fibre in Spain: Differences with Regard to the Prevalence of Excess Body Weight and Abdominal Obesity in Adults of the ANIBES Study

The aim was to study the intake and food sources of fibre in a representative sample of Spanish adults and to analyse its association with excess body weight and abdominal obesity. A sample of 1655 adults (18–64 years) from the ANIBES (“Anthropometric data, macronutrients and micronutrients intake, practice of physical activity, socioeconomic data and lifestyles”) cross-sectional study was analysed. Fibre intake and dietary food sources were determined by using a three-day dietary record. Misreporters were identified using the protocol of the European Food Safety Authority. Mean (standard deviation) fibre intake was 12.59 (5.66) g/day in the whole sample and 15.88 (6.29) g/day in the plausible reporters. Mean fibre intake, both in the whole sample and the plausible reporters, was below the adequate intake established by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the Institute of Medicine of the United States (IOM). Main fibre dietary food sources were grains, followed by vegetables, fruits, and pulses. In the whole sample, considering sex, and after adjusting for age and physical activity, mean (standard error) fibre intake (adjusted by energy intake) was higher in subjects who had normal weight (NW) 13.40 (0.184) g/day, without abdominal obesity 13.56 (0.192) g/day or without excess body weight and/or abdominal obesity 13.56 (0.207) g/day compared to those who were overweight (OW) 12.31 (0.195) g/day, p < 0.001 or obese (OB) 11.83 (0.266) g/day, p < 0.001, with abdominal obesity 12.09 (0.157) g/day, p < 0.001 or with excess body weight and/or abdominal obesity 12.22 (0.148) g/day, p < 0.001. There were no significant differences in relation with the fibre intake according to the body mass index (BMI), presence or absence of abdominal obesity or excess body weight and/or abdominal obesity in the plausible reporters. Fibre from afternoon snacks was higher in subjects with NW (6.92%) and without abdominal obesity (6.97%) or without excess body weight and/or abdominal obesity (7.20%), than those with OW (5.30%), p < 0.05 or OB (4.79%), p < 0.05, with abdominal obesity (5.18%), p < 0.01, or with excess body weight and/or abdominal obesity (5.21%), p < 0.01, in the whole sample. Conversely, these differences were not observed in the plausible reporters. The present study demonstrates an insufficient fibre intake both in the whole sample and in the plausible reporters and confirms its association with excess body weight and abdominal obesity only when the whole sample was considered.
Fault mitigation by means of dynamic partial reconfiguration of Virtex-5 FPGAs

This paper presents a technique to mitigated SEU faults on Virtex-5 FPGAs through the use of dynamic partial reconfiguration. The key idea is to reconfigure the damaged part of the configuration bitstream in order to repair the bitstream and, thus, the overlying architecture. To this end, we propose a design flow and a set of tools that allow us to manipulate the bitstream generation. As case study, we present an application using an AES encryption coprocessor, a fault detection system constantly verifying system integrity and repairing faults, and an independent program injecting faults to validate the system.
An Exploratory Analysis of Twitter Keyword-Hashtag Networks and Knowledge Discovery Applications

The emergence of social media has impacted the way people think, communicate, behave, learn, and conduct research. In recent years, a large number of studies have analyzed and modeled this social phenomena. Driven by commercial and social interests, social media has become an attractive subject for researchers. Accordingly, new models, algorithms, and applications to address specific domains and solve distinct problems have erupted. In this thesis, we propose a novel network model and a path mining algorithm called HashnetMiner to discover implicit knowledge that is not easily exposed using other network models. Our experiments using HashnetMiner have demonstrated anecdotal evidence of drug-drug interactions when applied to a drug reaction context. The proposed research comprises three parts built upon the common theme of utilizing hashtags in tweets. 1. Digital Recruitment on Twitter. We build an expert system shell for two different studies: (1) a nicotine patch study where the system reads streams of tweets in real time and decides whether to recruit the senders to participate in the study, and (2) an environmental health study where the system identifies individuals who can participate in a survey using Twitter. 2. Does Social Media Big Data Make the World Smaller? This work provides an exploratory analysis of large-scale keyword-hashtag networks (K-H) generated from Twitter. We use two different measures, (1) the number of vertices that connect any two keywords, and (2) the eccentricity of keyword vertices, a well-known centrality and shortest path measure. Our analysis shows that K-H networks conform to the phenomenon of the shrinking world and expose hidden paths among concepts. 3. We pose the following biomedical web science question: Can patterns identified in Twitter hashtags provide clinicians with a powerful tool to extrapolate a new medical therapies and/or drugs? We present a systematic network mining method HashnetMiner, that operates on networks of medical concepts and hashtags. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effort to present Biomedical Web Science models and algorithms that address such a question by means of data mining and knowledge discovery using hashtag-based networks.
New Counting Codes for Distributed Video Coding

This paper introduces a new counting code. Its design was motivated by distributed video coding where, for decoding, error correction methods are applied to improve predictions. Those error corrections sometimes fail which results in decoded values worse than the initial prediction. Our code exploits the fact that bit errors are relatively unlikely events: more than a few bit errors in a decoded pixel value are rare. With a carefully designed counting code combined with a prediction those bit errors can be corrected and sometimes the original pixel value recovered. The error correction improves significantly. Our new code not only maximizes the Hamming distance between adjacent (or "near 1") codewords but also between nearby (for example "near 2") codewords. This is why our code is significantly different from the well-known maximal counting sequences which have maximal average Hamming distance. Fortunately, the new counting code can be derived from Gray Codes for every code word length (i.e. bit depth).
Rainier: A Cloud based Programming Framework for Collaborative Sensing Applications

We envision a future where sensing capabilities are incorporated into a large number of commercial and social systems. Such a future may not be too distant – mobile phones are already equipped with a variety of sensors, while newer home appliances, ofﬁces, and automobiles are beginning to adopt similar trends. We believe that such proliferation of sensors lends itself to a new class of powerful, collaborative sensing applications. In an attempt to catalyze these possibilities, we observe the need for a software development environment that can natively support platform heterogeneity and collaboration. We propose Rainier , a programming framework in the cloud for collaborative sensing applications over heterogeneous devices. Rainier’s core philosophy lies in decoupling platform-independent application logic from platform-dependent sensing. By exporting the logic to the cloud (with virtual access to the sensors), Rainier creates a single software development environment that can dynamically harness scattered sensors in the wild.