Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Grid Recognition-Based Calibration Algorithm for Measuring System

To achieve the calibration parameters of vision measurement system, this paper presents a new camera calibration method based on grid recognition. The calibration is implemented by acquiring the corresponding relations between the world coordinates and pixel coordinates of the planar gridding target image captured by camera. Meanwhile, the pixel coordinates of the target image are detected separately by getting the binary image with the Otsu binarization algorithm, recognizing the target grid point using the improved hit-or-miss transform (HMT), removing the interferences according to the geometrical features of the grid, correcting the system distortion by the least square fitting and bilinear interpolation algorithm, and achieving the accurate pixel coordinates finally. The precision, feasibility, and reliability are verified by experiments, results shows that the proposed camera calibration method is suitable for image measurement systems, displacement measurement systems and other engineering applications.
An Overview of the Traditional Authorship Attribution Subtask

This paper describes the Traditional Authorship Attribution subtask of the PAN/CLEF 2012 workshop. As a followup to our subtask at PAN/CLEF 2011 (Amsterdam), we established a new corpus for analysis for 2012 (Rome). The new corpus differed in several ways from the previous subtask: – Both the number and size of documents were decreased – The documents were taken from a different genre (fiction, represented by the Feedbooks.com site) – The documents were no longer marked up extensively – A new sub-sub-task was added : Authorship clustering. In this new problem (related to Òintrinsic plagiarismÓ) participants were given a text of mixed authorship and asked to determine which paragraphs came from which authors. The resulting corpus consisted of eight problems, including three closed-class authorship attribution problems, three open-class (the set of correct answers included Ònone of the aboveÓ), and two clustering problems. Twenty-five teams participated in this subtask from many different parts of the world. Detailed results are available on the Web at pan.webis. de and will be discussed in detail at the PAN/CLEF 2012 meeting in September.
Specifying superscalar microprocessors in Hawk

Hawk is a language for the speci cation of microprocessors at the microarchitectural level. In this paper we use Hawk to specify a modern microarchitecture based on the Intel P6 with features such as speculation, register renaming, and superscalar out-of-order execution. We show that parametric polymorphism, type-classes, higher-order functions, lazy evaluation, and the state monad are key to Hawk's concision and clarity.
Dynamic Pricing under Finite Space Demand Uncertainty: A Multi-Armed Bandit with Dependent Arms

We consider a dynamic pricing problem under unknown demand models. In this problem a seller offers prices to a stream of customers and observes either success or failure in each sale attempt. The underlying demand model is unknown to the seller and can take one of N possible forms. In this paper, we show that this problem can be formulated as a multi-armed bandit with dependent arms. We propose a dynamic pricing policy based on the likelihood ratio test. We show that the proposed policy achieves complete learning, i.e., it offers a bounded regret where regret is defined as the revenue loss with respect to the case with a known demand model. This is in sharp contrast with the logarithmic growing regret in multi-armed bandit with independent arms.
Phrasal stress in Beijing Mandarin disyllabic phrases

Mandarin Chinese has been claimed to have phrasal stress which falls on a nonhead constituent: on the modifier in a modifier-noun phrase, and on the object in a verb-object phrase (MODNh and VhOBJ, respectively; the subscript h stands for head, and the stressed constituent is underlined). This NONHEAD STRESS RULE is motivated by the greater information load carried by the nonhead than its syntactic head (Duanmu 2007). Taking NONHEAD STRESS RULE as a point of departure, the current study investigated Mandarin phrasal stress by using focus as a diagnostic tool. Fifteen pairs of homophonous disyllabic phrases, each consisting of a MODNh phrase and a VhOBJ phrase, were elicited under both BROADFOCUS and NARROWFOCUS. The phonetic correlates of phrasal stress—duration and F0—were measured. The hypotheses tested was that the nonheads have phrasal stress. Accordingly, the predictions were that (i) the nonheads will have greater duration and greater F0 measurements under both focus conditions, and that (ii) the increase of duration and F0 measurements on the nonheads will be greater under NARROWFOCUS. The results showed that at the phrase level, a MODNh and a homophonous VhOBJ differed significantly in duration ratio and F0 measurements, consistent with the interpretation that MODNh exhibits initial stress and VhOBJ exhibits final stress. However, there also existed cross-stimulus variation, which is argued to be idiosyncratic rather than random. In sum, it is concluded that NONHEAD STRESS RULE, despite being a weak universal, is an important component to Mandarin Prosody, and underlies the contrastive stress patterns of MODNh and VhOBJ.
[Homocysteine and cognitive functions in bipolar depression].

AIM The aim of the study was to evaluate a relationship between concentrations of hoocysteine (HCY), vitamin B12 and folic acid and disturbances of cognitive functions during acute episode of bipolar depression. METHODS 116 patients were studied (93 women, 23 men), aged 20-78 (mean 51±13) years during acute episode of bipolar depression. Depression was evaluated by the 17-item Hamilton's Depression Rating Scale (HDRS). The following tests measuring cognitive functions were applied: Trail Making Test, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Stroop Test and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised. In all patients, the measurements of serum homocysteine, vitamin B12 and folic acid were carried out. RESULTS Hyperhomocystemia (HCY>15μM/l) was detected in 41 patients (35%), more frequently in men (52%) than in women (31%). Patients with hyperhomocysteinemia achieved worse results in sub-tests of WAIS-R (verbal understanding and perceptional organization). In men, negative correlation was found between HCY concentration and number of errors in Stroop Test, and WCST (total errors and non-perseverative errors). In women with bipolar disorder, type II, negative correlation between HCY concentration and time of Stroop Test, and between vitamin B12 concentration and number of errors in Stroop Test, were demonstrated. In the whole group and in men, there was positive correlation between higher folic acid concentration and the number of errors in Stroop Test. CONCLUSIONS The results obtained show higher HCY concentration in considerable proportion of patients with bipolar depression, especially in men. They also confirm a connect between high homocysteine concentration and worse performance in some neuropsychological tests. Such relationship was more marked in men.
Testing Effort : An Assessment Through Fuzzy Criteria Approach

Software Testing is an important process of software development which is performed to support and enhance reliability and quality of the software. It consists of estimating testing effort, selecting suitable test team, designing test cases, executing the software with those test cases and examining the results produced by those executions. Studies indicate that 40-50 percent of the cost of software development is devoted to testing, with the percentage for testing critical software being even higher. This paper makes an attempt to estimate reliable software testing effort using fuzzy logic. The paper deals with the features of the Software Testing Effort (STE) estimation problem by proposing a novel Fuzzy model by integrating COCOMO, fuzzy logic and weighing techniques, Test Effort Drivers (TEDs) into a single platform. In this model triangular membership functions with monotonic constraints have been chosen, which finally achieve good generalization. The proposed model is finally validated with a case study of an Organization. Another feature of the present model is that it allows for continuous rating values and therefore avoids the problem of similar projects having large variances in cost estimations. © 2011 World Academic Press, UK. All rights reserved.
Novel agonists for serotonin 5-HT7 receptors reverse metabotropic glutamate receptor-mediated long-term depression in the hippocampus of wild-type and Fmr1 KO mice, a model of Fragile X Syndrome

Serotonin 5-HT7 receptors are expressed in the hippocampus and modulate the excitability of hippocampal neurons. We have previously shown that 5-HT7 receptors modulate glutamate-mediated hippocampal synaptic transmission and long-term synaptic plasticity. In particular, we have shown that activation of 5-HT7 receptors reversed metabotropic glutamate receptor-mediated long-term depression (mGluR-LTD) in wild-type (wt) and in Fmr1 KO mice, a mouse model of Fragile X Syndrome in which mGluR-LTD is abnormally enhanced, suggesting that 5-HT7 receptor agonists might be envisaged as a novel therapeutic strategy for Fragile X Syndrome. In this perspective, we have characterized the basic in vitro pharmacokinetic properties of novel molecules with high binding affinity and selectivity for 5-HT7 receptors and we have tested their effects on synaptic plasticity using patch clamp on acute hippocampal slices. Here we show that LP-211, a high affinity selective agonist of 5-HT7 receptors, reverses mGluR-LTD in wt and Fmr1 KO mice, correcting a synaptic malfunction in the mouse model of Fragile X Syndrome. Among novel putative agonists of 5-HT7 receptors, the compound BA-10 displayed improved affinity and selectivity for 5-HT7 receptors and improved in vitro pharmacokinetic properties with respect to LP-211. BA-10 significantly reversed mGluR-LTD in the CA3-CA1 synapse in wt and Fmr1KO mice, indicating that BA-10 behaved as a highly effective agonist of 5-HT7 receptors and reduced exaggerated mGluR-LTD in a mouse model of Fragile X Syndrome. On the other side, the compounds RA-7 and PM-20, respectively arising from in vivo metabolism of LP-211 and BA-10, had no effect on mGluR-LTD thus did not behave as agonists of 5-HT7 receptors in our conditions. The present results provide information about the structure-activity relationship of novel 5-HT7 receptor agonists and indicate that LP-211 and BA-10 might be used as novel pharmacological tools for the therapy of Fragile X Syndrome.
Enhancing the real-time capability of the Linux kernel

Linux has become one of the most popular UNIX operating systems. Commercial support for Linux and adoption of Linux in real world applications have now started to emerge. Some of the applications have strict real-time requirements. We discuss how to make Linux a real-time operating system. The real-time capability is achieved by three new kernel mechanisms. We port a microtimer into the kernel. We adopt the time-driven scheduling paradigm and implement a time-driven scheduler in the Linux kernel. Finally, we insert preemption points in the kernel to make it more preemptable so that real-time jobs may experience shorter blockings. Our approach is general and may be used to enhance the real-time capability of other non-real-time operating systems as well.
Finger on the pulse: identifying deprivation using transit flow analysis

A common metaphor to describe the movement of people within a city is that of blood flowing through the veins of a living organism. We often speak of the 'pulse of the city' when referring to flow patterns we observe. Here we extend this metaphor by hypothesising that by monitoring the flow of people through a city we can assess the city's health, as a nurse takes a patient's heart-rate and blood pressure during a routine health check. Using an automated fare collection dataset of journeys made on the London rail system, we build a classification model that identifies areas of high deprivation as measured by the Indices of Multiple Deprivation, and achieve a precision, sensitivity and specificity of 0.805, 0.733 and 0.810, respectively. We conclude with a discussion of the potential benefits this work provides to city planning, policymaking, and citizen engagement initiatives.
Hybrid Clustering of Text Mining and Bibliometrics Applied to Journal Sets

To obtain correlated and complementary information contained in text mining and bibliometrics, hybrid clustering to incorporate textual content and citation information has become a popular strategy. In this paper, we propose a new computational framework of integrating text mining and bibliometrics to provide a mapping of journal sets. Two different approaches of hybrid clustering methods are applied in this paper. The first category is ensemble clustering, which combines different clustering results obtained from individual data into a consolidated clustering result. The second category is kernel fusion, which maps heterogeneous data sets into the kernel space and combines the kernel matrices for clustering. Kernels can be combined either averagely, or by an optimized weighted linear combination model. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive kernel K-means clustering algorithm to combine textual content and citation information for clustering. The proposed algorithm is systematically compared with other methods on a clustering problem of 1869 journals published in 2002-2006. Based on several validation indices, the experimental results demonstrate that our hybrid clustering strategy is able to provide clustering result as well as the best individual data source.
Endogenous Urotensin II Selectively Modulates Erectile Function through eNOS

Background Urotensin II (U-II) is a cyclic peptide originally isolated from the neurosecretory system of the teleost fish and subsequently found in other species, including man. U-II was identified as the natural ligand of a G-protein coupled receptor, namely UT receptor. U-II and UT receptor are expressed in a variety of peripheral organs and especially in cardiovascular tissue. Recent evidence indicates the involvement of U-II/UT pathway in penile function in human, but the molecular mechanism is still unclear. On these bases the aim of this study is to investigate the mechanism(s) of U-II-induced relaxation in human corpus cavernosum and its relationship with L-arginine/Nitric oxide (NO) pathway. Methodology/Principal Findings Human corpus cavernosum tissue was obtained following in male-to-female transsexuals undergoing surgical procedure for sex reassignment. Quantitative RT-PCR clearly demonstrated the U-II expression in human corpus cavernosum. U-II (0.1 nM–10 µM) challenge in human corpus cavernosum induced a significant increase in NO production as revealed by fluorometric analysis. NO generation was coupled to a marked increase in the ratio eNOS phosphorilated/eNOS as determined by western blot analysis. A functional study in human corpus cavernosum strips was performed to asses eNOS involvement in U-II-induced relaxation by using a pharmacological modulation. Pre-treatment with both wortmannin or geldanamycinin (inhibitors of eNOS phosphorylation and heath shock protein 90 recruitment, respectively) significantly reduced U-II-induced relaxation (0.1 nM–10 µM) in human corpus cavernosum strips. Finally, a co-immunoprecipitation study demonstrated that UT receptor and eNOS co-immunoprecipitate following U-II challenge of human corpus cavernosum tissue. Conclusion/Significance U-II is endogenously synthesized and locally released in human corpus cavernosum. U-II elicited penile erection through eNOS activation. Thus, U-II/UT pathway may represent a novel therapeutical target in erectile dysfunction.
City-Climber: A New Generation Wall-Climbing Robots

An increasing interest in the development of special climbing robots has been witnessed in last decade. Motivations are typically to increase the operation efficiency in dangerous environments or difficult-to-access places, and to protect human health and safety in hazardous tasks. Climbing robots with the ability to maneuver on vertical surfaces are currently being strongly requested by various industries and military authorities in order to perform dangerous operations such as inspection of high-rise buildings, spray painting and sand blasting of gas tanks, maintenance of nuclear facilities, aircraft inspection, surveillance and reconnaissance, assistance in fire fighting and rescue operations, etc. Such capabilities of climbing robots would not only allow them to replace human workers in those dangerous duties but also eliminate costly scaffolding.
Leveraging enzyme structure-function relationships for functional inference and experimental design: the structure-function linkage database.

The study of mechanistically diverse enzyme superfamilies-collections of enzymes that perform different overall reactions but share both a common fold and a distinct mechanistic step performed by key conserved residues-helps elucidate the structure-function relationships of enzymes. We have developed a resource, the structure-function linkage database (SFLD), to analyze these structure-function relationships. Unique to the SFLD is its hierarchical classification scheme based on linking the specific partial reactions (or other chemical capabilities) that are conserved at the superfamily, subgroup, and family levels with the conserved structural elements that mediate them. We present the results of analyses using the SFLD in correcting misannotations, guiding protein engineering experiments, and elucidating the function of recently solved enzyme structures from the structural genomics initiative. The SFLD is freely accessible at http://sfld.rbvi. ucsf.edu.
Chronic Effects of Different Resistance Training Exercise Orders on Flexibility in Elite Judo Athletes

Abstract The aim of this study was to examine the effects of twelve weeks of resistance training with different exercise orders (upper limbs and lower limbs vs. lower limbs and upper limbs) on flexibility levels in elite judo athletes. Thirtynine male athletes were randomly divided into 3 groups as follows: G1 (n = 13), G2 (n = 13), and CG (n = 13). The flexibility was assessed on 8 joint movements: shoulder flexion and shoulder extension, shoulder abduction and shoulder adduction, trunk flexion and trunk extension, and hip flexion and hip extension. Two-way repeated measures ANOVAs (time [pre-experimental vs. post-experimental] × group [G1 vs. G2 vs. CG]) were used to compare the differences between pre- and post-test situations and the differences among groups. The results from the within-group (pre vs. post) comparisons demonstrated significant increases (p < 0.05) in the range of motion of 3.93 and 5.96% for G1 and G2 training groups, respectively, in all joints. No significant changes (p > 0.05) were observed for the CG. The results from the between-group comparisons demonstrated no significant differences (p > 0.05) in the range of motion between G1post vs. G2post (1.15%). Although both exercise orders (from upper to lower limbs and from lower to upper limbs) increased flexibility, no significant variations were observed between the different exercise orders. Nevertheless, these findings demonstrate that flexibility gains could be obtained with a resistance training program, and thus, more time can be devoted to sports-specific judo training.
Multiplexed Pulsed Transmit and Receive RF Measurement System for Active Phased Array Testing

Radar antennas are typically required to operate in using various transmit and receive conditions, depending on the particular radar mode. In active antenna applications, these modes may require different antenna operating parameters, which currently dictate testing the antenna independently in transmit and receive using different test system configurations. In testing highlyintegrated active arrays, electrical and thermal considerations make it desirable to test the antenna in its nominal Tx/Rx (Transmit/Receive) operating mode as opposed to transmit-only or receive-only. An extension to the NSI Panther 9100 RF measurement system has been developed to support multiplexed transmit and receive, pulse-mode measurements with different measurement parameters during the course of a single data acquisition. This capability allows pulsed transmit and receive tests to be interleaved using a single measurement setup, reducing overall test time and improving the real-world accuracy of the test results.
A New Input Method of Computers with One CCD Camera: Virtual Keyboard

We propose a keyboard-style input method of computers with one compact CCD camera. The proposed method is called Virtual Keyboard. Virtual Keyboard economizes the input devices’ space of computers. In addition, it provides customisability for users. We discuss the motivation of researching the Virtual Keyboard, its flexibility and applicability. We describe our current research status of the Virtual Keyboard, and envisage its future.
A New Design for 7:2 Compressors

High order compressors play a specific role in realizing high speed multipliers. By increasing the demand for fast multiplication process, high order compressors have attracted many researchers to this field. In this paper a new implementation for 7:2 compressors, based on the conventional architecture, is proposed. According to the results, the design presented achieves a remarkable improvement in terms of speed (especially in low voltages) and power consumption over the best counterpart. This accomplishment is the direct result of shortening the critical delay path in the proposed circuit design. As the simulation results demonstrate, the structure presented here has improved the power consumption from minimum 0.07% (at supply voltage = 3.5 volt) through maximum 11% (at 1.2 volt), and the speed of the circuit from minimum 19% (at 3.5 volt) through maximum 23% (at 1.2 volt). HSPICE is the circuit simulator used, and the technology being used for simulations is 0.25 mum technology.
Logarithmic hardness of the directed congestion minimization problem

We show that for any constant ε > 0, there is no Ω(log<sup>1-ε</sup>M)-approximation algorithm for the directed congestion minimization problem on networks of size M unless NP ⊆ ZPTIME(n<sup>polylog n</sup>). This bound is almost tight given the O(log M/ log log M)-approximation via randomized rounding due to Raghavan and Thompson.
Modelling of Low Level Ionic Current Sensing Micro-tip

Sensing of electrical quantities e.g. current and charges at micro and nano level is a challenging task for the researchers. Most of the electrical quantities produced as a result of natural phenomenon are very small and need infinitesimally small sensors to be detected. The authors of this paper are developing an appropriate micro/nano array sensor that is capable of sensing ionic currents in sweat fluid secreted from sweat pores on the finger ridges. In this paper, we have presented the results of preliminary modelling studies of vertically aligned single ionic current sensing tip with 5μm in diameter and 10μm in height. Effect of ionic current and current density response of sensing tip is discussed.