Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Advanced Road Scene Image Segmentation and Pavement Evaluation Using Neural Networks

The current project, funded by the Michigan Ohio University Transportation Center for the period 9/1/2009-8/31/2010, continues efforts in designing an image processing based pavement inspection system for the assessment of highway surface conditions. One of the most important tasks in pavement maintenance is pavement surface condition evaluation distress measurement. In order to eliminate the tedious and unreliable manual inspection of pavement surface evaluation, image processing and pattern recognition techniques are used to increase the efficiency and accuracy and decrease the costs of pavement distress measurements. Existing systems for automated pavement defect detection commonly require special devices such as lights, lasers, etc., which dramatically increase the cost and limit the system to certain applications. Therefore, in this report, a low cost automatic pavement distress evaluation approach is presented. This method can provide real-time pavement distress detection as well as evaluation results based on color images captured from a camera installed on a survey vehicle. The entire process consists of two main parts: pavement surface extraction followed by pavement distress detection and classification. In the first part, a novel color segmentation method based on a feed forward neural network is applied to separate the road surface from the background. In the second part, a segmentation technique based on probabilistic relaxation is utilized to separate distress areas from the road surface. The geometrical parameters obtained from the detected distresses are then fed to a neural network based pavement distress classifier in which the defects are classified into different types. Simulation results are given to show that the scheme presented in this report is both effective and reliable on a variety of pavement images.
Warped/composite phenomenology simplified

This is the first of two papers aimed at economically capturing the collider phenomenology of warped extra dimensions with bulk Standard Model fields, where the hierarchy problem is solved non-supersymmetrically. This scenario is related via the AdS/CFT correspondence to that of partial compositeness of the Standard Model. We present a purely four-dimensional, two-sector effective field theory describing the Standard Model fields and just their first Kaluza-Klein/composite excitations. This truncation, while losing some of the explanatory power and precision of the full higher-dimensional warped theory, greatly simplifies phenomenological considerations and computations. We describe the philosophy and explicit construction of our two-sector model, and also derive formulas for residual Higgs fine tuning and electroweak and flavor precision variables to help identify the most motivated parts of the parameter space. We highlight several of the most promising channels for LHC exploration. The present paper focusses on the most minimal scenario, while the companion paper addresses the even richer phenomenology of the minimal scenario of precision gauge coupling unification.
Patients with progressive pseudorheumatoid dysplasia: from clinical diagnosis to molecular studies.

Progressive pseudorheumatoid dysplasia (PPD) is a rare inherited autosomal recessive disease for which no prevalent data have been reported in China. We aimed to identify PPD based on clinical manifestations and imaging analysis of the bony skeleton and then to investigate gene mutations of Wnt1-inducible signaling pathway protein 3 (WISP3) in Chinese patients with PPD. Seven patients (aged 9-49 years) from six unrelated Chinese families all presented with a waddling gait, progressive swelling and restricted joint movements, and all were diagnosed as having PPD according to clinical signs and symptoms, as well as radiographic imaging. The radiographic imaging revealed no erosive arthropathy, but showed platyspondyly, irregular or wedged/ovoid anterior end-plates of the vertebral bodies, coxa vara and widened epiphyses or metaphyses including the femoral head and the metacarpophalangeal and interphalangeal joints. Normal laboratory values were found for the erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein and rheumatoid factors in all patients. Molecular studies revealed that five patients carried c. 624_625insA/c. 729_735delGAGAAAA, c. 624_625insA/c. 866_867insA, c. 866_867 insA/c. 866_867insA, Q46X/C114W and C223G/C114W mutations, respectively. In conclusion, our findings suggest that in order to avoid misdiagnosis, physicians should carefully examine the entire skeleton, including the spine, in addition to the skeletal extremities. Mutation analysis of the WISP3 gene is useful for confirming the clinical and radiographic diagnosis of PPD.
analyzing Reinforcement Learning algorithms using Evolutionary Game Theory

The cover image visualizes several learning trajectories of Lenient Frequency Adjusted Q-learning in the Matching Pennies game, together with the dynamics of its evolutionary model. This image is related to the experiments described in Section 6.1. Acknowledgments A master's thesis is not something that suddenly springs into existence. Not completely unrelated to my research, I came to think of it as a dynamical process, sometimes slow moving, sometimes fast, in one direction or another. Only if you know the governing dynamics, will you know what the end result will be. To extend this metaphor further (again not completely unrelated to my research), thesis writing resembles multi-agent interactions, where you are not on your own, but influenced by a group of people around you. Without these influences, this thesis would not have been anything like it is now. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my two supervisors. Karl, thank you for your support, enthusiasm, and constructive comments during our many meetings. There have been periods that my research did not proceed as well as I hoped, or that I lacked motivation or inspiration; but every time one meeting with you was enough to get me back on track. I hope that we get the chance to continue this fruitful cooperation in the future. Michael, thank you for all your good comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank all my good friends and fellow students at the Department of Knowledge Engineering , for making my time there a very enjoyable one. Furthermore, I thank everyone who supported me in any way during my study, especially my closest friends and family. Without you I would not have been where I am now. As an old saying goes, " the proof of the pudding is in the eating ". Therefore, I hope that you will enjoy reading this thesis as much as I enjoyed the process of writing it. Summary Multi-agent learning plays an increasingly important role in solving complex dynamic problems in to-day's society. Despite its importance, the field of multi-agent learning still lacks a strong theoretical framework. Recently, an evolutionary game theoretic approach to multi-agent reinforcement learning has been proposed as a first step towards such a framework. This thesis contributes by investigating how a better understanding of multi-agent reinforcement learning can be derived from the evolutionary game theoretic analysis, both in homogeneous and heterogeneous …
Governance and Financial Fragility: Evidence from a Cross-Section of Countries

The author explores the role of governance mechanisms as a means of reducing financial fragility. First, he develops a simple theoretical general-equilibrium model in which instability arises due to an agency problem resulting from a conflict of interest between the borrower and lender. In particular, when governance is weak and transaction costs are high, the share of capital assets that creditors can claim as collateral is highly sensitive to shocks. As a result, there is financial fragility, in that the willingness of agents to finance productive investments is sensitive to shocks. Second, using a data set that contains over 90 industrialized and developing economies, the author tests the hypothesis that governance is important in explaining financial fragility (measured as the likelihood of a banking crisis and investment volatility). His results show that institutions, rules, and laws that govern the financial environment are of first-order importance for the stability of financial systems. The author finds that, while better legal systems are particularly important, so are democratic institutions that limit the power of the executive.
Articulated registration of 3D human geometry to X-ray image

A fully automatic 3D-2D articulated registration algorithm for aligning a whole-body human geometry to a 2D X-ray image is presented. Domain prior in the form of a hierarchical model encapsulating the kinematic structure of the human body is exploited. A deformation operator is then defined with respect to the hierarchical model. An iterative search using ICP is performed to estimate the optimal deformation parameters. Empirical results indicate good matching rates of 94% and above. Requiring minimal user intervention, the method is suited for large-scale data acquisition in human anthropometric studies.
Experimental Study of Charge Displacement in Nitride Layer and its Effect on Threshold Voltage Instability of Advanced Flash Memory Devices

The effect of charge displacement in nitride layer of ONO stack in scaled flash cells are experimentally studied by using gate stress measurements. The redistribution of charge is found to follow Poole-Frenkel conduction mechanisms. However, the measurements on scaled devices show significant random telegraph noise. The noise will be even more pronounced in future scaled devices.
Using Parallel Corpora for Cross-language Projection of FrameNet Annotation

We present a method for producing FrameNet-annotated text for non-English text. The method uses sentence-aligned corpora and transfers target words and frame elements using a word aligner. The system was tested on an English-Spanish parallel corpus. On the task of target word projection, the system had a precision of 69% and a recall of 59%. For sentences with non-empty targets, it had a precision of 84% and a recall of 81% on the task of transferring frame elements. The approximate precision of the complete frame element bracketing of Spanish text was around 64%.
Bound states in N = 2 Liouville theory with boundary and deep throat D-branes

We exhibit bound states in the spectrum of non-compact D-branes in N = 2 Liouville conformal field theory. We interpret these states in the study of D-branes in the near-horizon limit of Neveu-Schwarz five-branes spread on a topologically trivial circle. We match semi-classical di-electric and repulsion effects with exact conformal field theory results and describe the fate of D-branes hitting NS5-branes. We also show that the bound states can give rise to massless vector and hyper multiplets in a low-energy gauge theory on D-branes deep inside the throat.
Altitude control of aircraft using coefficient-based policy method

This paper proposes a coefficient-based policy searching method, the direct policy search (DPS), for searching (learning) and construct policies for controlling the altitude of an aircraft. The DPS is a new and efficient reinforcement learning (RL) strategy combined with genetic algorithms (GAs). Specifically, an optimal policy in DPS consists of a set of coefficients which are learned using GA-based RL (GARL). The proposed method for learning optimal policy is demonstrated in controlling the complicated altitude system of a Boeing 747 aircraft whose solution space consists of 20 variables. Simulation results show that this new approach produces competitive performances with the traditional algorithms such as the classical state-feedback algorithm and the pure RL algorithm.
Protein structure prediction with evolutionary algorithms

Evolutionary algorithms have been successfully applied to a variety of molecular structure prediction problems. In this paper we reconsider the design of genetic algorithms that have been applied to a simple protein structure prediction problem. Our analysis considers the impact of several algorithmic factors for this problem: the conformational representation, the energy formulation and the way in which infeasible conformations are penalized. Further we empirically evaluate the impact of these factors on a small set of polymer sequences. Our analysis leads to specific recommendations for both GAs as well as other heuristic methods for solving PSP on the HP model.
A Call for “Trans-action”: The Role of Enacted Stigma in Mediating the Relationship between School Climate and School Attachment among Gender Minority Students

Several studies have highlighted the association between enacted stigma with various mental health and educational disparities among sexual minority students, but fewer have done so with an exclusive gender minority sample and even less have included school attachment as an outcome measure. The purpose of the current analyses is to test the main effects that an LGBTQ-inclusive school context as well as enacted stigma has on school attachment, and whether enacted stigma acts as a mediator. Results show that exposure to enacted stigma is a risk factor for low school attachment, while a supportive LGBTQ-inclusive school climate is a protective one, and that the relationship between an inclusive climate and school attachment is significantly mediated by enacted stigma. Within a theoretically informed lens, these findings represent a notable contribution to educational research in terms of the importance of providing a healthy school environment for gender minority students. Si plusieurs études ont souligné le lien entre la stigmatisation effective et diverses disparités portant sur la santé mentale et l’éducation chez des élèves appartenant à une minorité sexuelle, moins d’entre elles ont porté exclusivement sur un échantillon composé d’une minorité sexuelle et encore moins ont inclus l’intérêt pour l’école parmi les mesures de résultats. L’objectif de nos analyses est d’évaluer les incidences principales qu’ont, d’une part, un contexte scolaire inclusif face à la population LGBTQ et, d’autre part, la stigmatisation effective, sur l’intérêt pour l’école. Nous cherchons également à savoir si la stigmatisation effective joue un rôle de médiateur. Les résultats indiquent que l’exposition à la stigmatisation effective constitue un facteur de risque pour une mauvaise relation avec l’école, qu’un climat scolaire inclusif face à la population LGBTQ est un facteur de protection et que le rapport entre un climat inclusif et l’intérêt pour l’école est modifié considérablement par la stigmatisation effective. Dans une optique fondée sur les théories actuelles, ces résultats représentent une contribution notable à la recherche en éducation en évoquant l’importance de fournir un milieu scolaire sain pour les élèves appartenant à une minorité sexuelle.
Text readability for Arabic as a foreign language

In this study, we evaluate the informativeness of lexical, morphological and semantic features in determining the readability of texts geared towards learners of Arabic as a foreign language. We have gathered low-complexity features with the purpose of establishing a baseline for future research in readability assessment, using freely available natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) tools on a publicly accessible corpus. We tested common classification algorithms, as well as random forests-an ensemble learning method-and report on their results using several evaluation measures for comparability with similar work. Our results suggest that a small set of easily computed features can be indicative of the reading level of a text. Moreover, our findings will serve as a common ground, for ourselves and others, to evaluate and compare the performance of more elaborate techniques and feature sets.
Automatic Extraction of Semantic Classes from SyntacticInformation in Online

This paper addresses the issue of word-sense ambiguity in extraction from machine-readable resources for the construction of large-scale knowledge sources. We describe two experiments: one which took word-sense distinctions into account, resulting in 97.9% accuracy for semantic classiication of verbs based on (Levin, 1993); and one which ignored word-sense distinctions, resulting in 6.3% accuracy. These experiments were dual purpose: (1) to validate the central thesis of the work of (Levin, 1993), i.e., that verb semantics and syntactic behavior are predictably related ; (2) to demonstrate that a 20-fold improvement can be achieved in deriving semantic information from syntactic cues if we rst divide the syntactic cues into distinct groupings that correlate with different word senses. Finally, we show that we can provide eeective acquisition techniques for novel word senses using a combination of online sources.
BSP vs LogP

A quantitative comparison of the BSP and LogP models for parallel computation is developed. Very efficient cross simulations between the two models are derived, showing their substantial equivalence for algorithmic design guided by asymptotic analysis. It is also shown that the two models can be implemented with similar performance on most point-to-point networks. In conclusion, within the limits of our analysis that is mainly of asymptotic nature, BSP and LogP can be viewed as closely related variants within the bandwidth-latency framework for modeling parallel computation. BSP seems somewhat preferable due to greater simplicity and portability, and slightly greater power.
Compromesso astorico: the role of the Senate after the Italian constitutional reform

The article examines the content of the constitutional amendments with respect to the Senate. While symmetric bicameralism would be abolished with respect to policymaking, it would be preserved and even exacerbated with respect to constitutional revisions. The consequences of the first would be a reduction of the number of institutional veto players, which would lead to the facilitation of policy change, and an increase in the power of the government (who is the agenda setter). The content of the new policies remains unknown, as are the economic consequences of the proposed changes. Constitutional revisions would become more difficult, because the ideological distance between the Chamber of Deputies and Senate would be likely to increase (because of the mode of selection of Senators), while article 138, which specifies the requirements for amendment to the constitution, would remain the same. As a result, the role of the Italian Constitutional Court would also likely increase.
Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce Do Online Companies Control the Behavior of Online Consumers?: Exploratory Study on the Impacting Variables from Middle East

The paper aims to design constructs such as internal and external variables and test the impact of the same on online buying behaviour. The constructs focus on the controlling aspect of a company on online consumer purchase. The data were collected from 168 online users and results were tested through simple and multiple linear regression model. The results revealed that both the constructs are consistent and have an impact over online buying behavior. However, the external variables found to have more impact over online purchase that that of the internal variables.
Fair Allocation of Indivisible Goods to Asymmetric Agents

We study fair allocation of indivisible goods to agents with unequal entitlements. Fair allocation has been the subject of many studies in both divisible and indivisible settings. Our emphasis is on the case where the goods are indivisible and agents have unequal entitlements. This problem is a generalization of the work by Procaccia and Wang (2014) wherein the agents are assumed to be symmetric with respect to their entitlements. Although Procaccia and Wang show an almost fair (constant approximation) allocation exists in their setting, our main result is in sharp contrast to their observation. We show that, in some cases with n agents, no allocation can guarantee better than 1/n approximation of a fair allocation when the entitlements are not necessarily equal. Furthermore, we devise a simple algorithm that ensures a 1/n approximation guarantee. Our second result is for a restricted version of the problem where the valuation of every agent for each good is bounded by the total value he wishes to receive in a fair allocation. Although this assumption might seem without loss of generality, we show it enables us to find a 1/2 approximation fair allocation via a greedy algorithm. Finally, we run some experiments on real-world data and show that, in practice, a fair allocation is likely to exist. We also support our experiments by showing positive results for two stochastic variants of the problem, namely stochastic agents and stochastic items.
Predicate-argument reordering based on learning to rank for English-Korean machine translation

In this paper, we propose a method of learning predicate-argument structure reordering, and present its effect on machine translation. The method takes two steps; first, it extracts generalized predicate-argument structure reordering rules using a source sentence parse tree from a parallel corpus. Second, it trains a model based on learning to rank framework to select the most relevant reordering rule based on source language context features. The learned model is used to restructure a source sentence in order to have similar word order with a target sentence. In our experiments on English-to-Korean machine translation, the proposed method achieves significant improvements in BLEU score, from 19.68 to 21.84.
Interface design for older adults with varying cultural attitudes toward uncertainty

This work reports on the design and evaluation of culturally appropriate technology for older adults. Our design context was Cognitive Testing on a Computer (C-TOC): a self-administered computerized test under development, intended to screen older adults for cognitive impairments. Using theory triangulation of cultural attitudes toward uncertainty, we designed two interfaces (one minimal and one rich) for one C-TOC subtest and hypothesized they would be culturally appropriate for older adult Caucasians and East Asians respectively. We ran an experiment with 36 participants to investigate cultural differences in performance, preference and anxiety. We found that Caucasians preferred the interface with minimal elements (i.e. those essential for the primary task) or had no preference. By contrast, East Asians preferred the rich interface augmented with security and learning support and felt less anxious with it than the minimal.