Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Harmony search and OPF based hybrid approach for optimal placement of multiple DG units

Distribution system loss reduction is one of the prime objectives for planning of distributed generation. To minimize losses, optimal sizing and siting of distributed generators (DGs) is critically important. In this paper, nonlinear and non-convex optimization problem of DG placement is solved using a hybrid method in which optimal power flow (OPF) algorithm is integrated with Improved Harmony Search (IHS). The hybrid approach is implemented for optimal placement of single and multiple DG units capable of delivering either real or both real and reactive power. In the proposed formulation, the potential locations are obtained by heuristic technique due to the nonmonotonic solution surface. The optimal capacity in terms of real and reactive power is obtained by solving OPF. The proposed optimization approach is tested on IEEE 33-bus distribution system. The results of proposed formulations are compared with Improved Analytical (IA) and PSO techniques. Improved solutions with faster convergence rate confirms the potential of proposed hybrid formulation.
Modal Parameters Identification with Particle Swarm Optimization

The paper presents method of the modal parameters identification based on the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. The basic PSO algorithm is modified in order to achieve fast convergence and low estimation error of identified parameters values. The procedure of identification as well as algorithm modifications are presented and some simple examples for the SISO systems are provided. Results are compared with the results obtained for Least Square Complex Exponential (LSCE) method.
NDT of a Nickel Coated Inconel Specimen Using by the Complex Induced Current - Magnetic Flux Leakage Method and Linearly Integrated Hall Sensor Array

Nondestructive testing (NDT) by using the electromagnetic methods are useful for detecting cracks on the surface and subsurface of the metal. However, when the material contains both ferromagnetic and paramagnetic materials, it is difficult for NDT to detect and analyze cracks using this method. In addition the existence of a partial ferromagnetic material can be incorrectly characterized as a crack in the several cases. On the other hand a large crack has sometimes been misunderstood as a partially magnetized region. Inconel 600 is an important material in atomic energy plant. A nickel film is coated when a crack a appears on an Inconel substrate. Cracks are difficult to detect on the combined material of an Inconel substrate with a nickel film, which are paramagnetic and ferromagnetic material respectively. In this paper, a scan type magnetic camera, which uses a complex induced current-magnetic flux leakage (CIC-MFL) method as a magnetic source and a linearly integrated Hall sensor array (LIHaS) on a wafer as the magnetic sensors, was examined for its ability to detect cracks on the combined material. The evaluation probability of a crack is discussed. In addition the detection probability of the minimum depth was reported.
Ballistic Limit Velocity For Continuous Fiber Polymeric Composite Materials and Polymers Through Experimental and Numerical Methods

Composite materials are often subject to harsh operating environments which may include impact from errant projectiles of various geometries traveling at specific velocities and trajectories. Experimentalists seek to establish the ballistic limit velocity of the composite material where the composite absorbs all of the energy of the projectile traveling at an initial velocity. An analytical approach for the impact event can be difficult to reliably establish the ballistic limit of a particular composite material due to the nonlinear response including rate dependency and post-failure behavior. The finite element method has shown to be capable of modeling the impact event. However many available material models require calibration from the experimental impact tests. The goal of the present research is to develop and implement an efficient finite element simulation of the composite material under impact which does not require calibration. A general orthotropic viscoplastic material model will be presented. The viscoplastic model utilizes a more generalized form of plastic potential than previous works in that it allows plasticity to occur in the fiber direction. The model represents the nonlinear post-failure behavior through the Continuum Damage Mechanics framework by utilizing an energy balance approach. Additionally a smeared crack model algorithm is utilized to reduce the mesh dependency inherent to finite element solutions. The material model was implemented for the explicit integration solver in LS-DYNA. An implicit return mapping algorithm was utilized to integrate the material model response for each load step. The material model was validated using data from published impact testing and material characterization. The finite element simulations show that the material model is able to predict the ballistic limit velocity within a reasonable margin.
Artificial human face recognition via Daubechies wavelet transform and SVM

This work presents an approach for applying face recognition to non-biological entities (avatars) in virtual worlds to achieve authentication. Massively multiplayer online games involve virtual worlds which require avatar identification to avoid fraud. First, virtual worlds and avatars are briefly discussed. Next, the concepts of facial biometrics and the face recognition systems are presented. Later, support vector machines and wavelet transforms are introduced as classification tools. Finally, the dataset and the designed biometric system are described with the obtained results.
Back and forth between guarded and modal logics

Guarded fixed point logic /spl mu/GF extends the guarded fragment by means of least and greatest fixed points, and thus plays the same role within the domain of guarded logics as the modal /spl mu/-calculus plays within the modal domain. We provide a semantic characterisation of /spl mu/GF within an appropriate fragment of second-order logic, in terms of invariance under guarded bisimulation. The corresponding characterisation of the modal /spl mu/-calculus, due to D. Janin and I. Walukiewicz (1999), is lifted from the modal to the guarded domain by means of model theoretic translations. At the methodological level, these translations make the intuitive analogy between modal and guarded logics available as a tool in the analysis of the guarded domain.
Predicting the consequence of action in digital control state spaces

The objective of this dissertation is to shed light on some fundamental impediments in learning control laws in continuous state spaces. In particular, if one wants to build artificial devices capable to learn motor tasks the same way they learn to classify signals and images, one needs to establish control rules that do not necessitate comparisons between quantities of the surrounding space. We propose, in that context, to take inspiration from the " end effector control " principle, as suggested by neuroscience studies, as opposed to the " displacement control " principle used in the classical control theory.
A general approximation technique for constrained forest problems

We present a general approximation technique for a large class of graph problems. Our technique mostly applies to problems of covering, at minimum cost, the vertices of a graph with trees, cycles or paths satisfying certain requirements. In particular, many basic combinatorial optimization problems fit in this framework, including the shortest path, minimum spanning tree, minimum-weight perfect matching, traveling salesman and Steiner tree problems. Our technique produces approximation algorithms that run in <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>2</supscrpt> log <italic>n</italic>) time and come within a factor of 2 of optimal for most of these problems. For instance, we obtain a 2-approximation algorithm for the minimum-weight perfect matching problem under the triangle inequality. Our running time of <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>2</supscrpt> log <italic>n</italic>) time compares favorably with the best strongly polynomial exact algorithms running in <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>3</supscrpt>) time for dense graphs. A similar result is obtained for the 2-matching problem and its variants.We also derive the first approximation algorithms for many NP-complete problems, including the non-fixed point-to-point connection problem, the exact path partitioning problem and complex location-design problems. Moreover, for the prize-collecting traveling salesman or Steiner tree problems, we obtain 2-approximation algorithms, therefore improving the previously best-known performance guarantees of 2.5 and 3, respectively [4].
Implementing vertical resolution and in-situ manipulation of samples within a scanning electron microscope : the Nanofinger®

This thesis is about the development of a tool to implement vertical resolution within a scanning electron microscope (SEM). This becomes necessary as due to the principle of an SEM it is only possible to get vertical resolution by proper focussing, which is limited to some micrometers. As it is important to get access to height information of a sample during several processes in the SEM, especially when performing nanomanipulation, an additional tool is inserted into the SEM to provide the missing information. This so called Nanofinger R © was originally invented by Klocke Nanotechnik GmbH in Aachen. It is mounted on a three-axis manipulator and operates similar to an atomic force microscope (AFM) to perform linescans on a given structure or to simply retrieve surface coordinates at certain positions on the sample. As the former Nanofinger R © did not fulfill the requirements, a new concept to improve the Nanofinger R © was established. The new Nanofinger R © was realized to operate in the SEM. To succeed in this project, first, the issues of the old Nanofinger R © have been investigated to develop a concept for the improvements. In the following part of this thesis, the development and construction of the new Nanofinger R © is described. This includes the new scanhead as well as the fabrication of the sensors. The most important aspect of the optimization is the achieved vertical resolution. The noise in der vertical direction is 1 nm, limited by the manipulator. Moreover, structures of 2 nm could be resolved. A slim geometry with a height of 3 mm allows the operation of the Nanofinger R © at low working distances under the SEM. Also, the Nanofinger R © can be operated easier than before, allowing users with little knowledge about the AFM to use the Nanofinger R ©. This includes a distinct resonance spectrum of the sensors and a simple tip exchange. Besides of the hardware, also the software was improved to add additional functionality to the Nanofinger R ©. This is a feedback loop which is directly designed for this special tool. Moreover, the electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) mode was implemented. To demonstrate the improved performance of the new Nanofinger R © beyond the quality of the aquired linescans, local anodic oxidation (LAO) of graphene achieved with the Nanofinger R © is shown in chapter 5. After a brief overview of LAO of graphene, the sample preparation of monolayer graphene on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is described. Attention was paid on investigating graphene within the SEM without contaminating the sample. The oxidation of graphene was successfully performed under vacuum conditions, achieving a linewidth down to 50 nm. The LAO was done within the SEM, supplying additional water up to a pressure of 3× 10−5 mbar and a tip sample voltage of 10 V. Insulation of the cuts has been shown by directly contacting the graphene with the Nanofinger R © and by doing EFM measurements within the SEM.
Trajectory planning for monocular SLAM systems

This paper proposes a novel method of integrating planning with Monocular Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems. Monocular SLAM, typically referred to as VSLAM systems in literature consists of recovering trajectory estimates of the camera and stationary world features from a single moving camera. Such VSLAM systems are significantly more difficult than SLAM performed with depth sensors, such as using an accurate Laser Range Finder (LRF). When the camera motion is subject to steep changes in orientation, tracked features over the previous instances are lost, making VSLAM estimates highly unreliable, erroneous that cannot be recovered. Most often a complete breakdown occurs, which entails a new sequence of images to be captured from a fresh camera trajectory. Herein we propose an optimization based path planning formulation for such VSLAM systems that reduces occurence of such errors through paths that are not subject to high orientation changes. Further we plan a velocity profile over the path that prevents features from getting significantly displaced over successive images, often considered a critical criteria for robust feature tracking. The velocity profile is computed using the novel concept of non linear time scaling proposed in our earlier work. The VSLAM system is also sufficiently innovated to provide for dense mapping over planar segments. The efficacy of the formulation is verified over real experiments on a camera mounted robot.
An exploration of error quotient in multiple contexts

Data-driven metrics based on students' progress, code or behaviour are touted as a pathway to revolutionizing education. Even simple heuristics, like the recurrence of the same error in subsequent compilations, have the potential to identify students in difficulty, leading to targeted interventions, alterations in teaching, and improved counseling. However, although more complex and effective metrics have been explored in the literature, they have largely been developed and validated in narrow contexts. In this work, we investigate the application of the Error Quotient (EQ), a metric based on debugging of syntax errors, in a varied set of contexts, including courses taught in C, Java, and Python and courses that use sets of short, online exercises. We perform an exploration of the EQ parameters to determine the EQ algorithm's sensitivity to its context and identify factors in our contexts that have an impact on the process students use to generate code.
Which Noun Phrases Denote Which Concepts?

Resolving polysemy and synonymy is required for high-quality information extraction. We present ConceptResolver, a component for the Never-Ending Language Learner (NELL) (Carlson et al., 2010) that handles both phenomena by identifying the latent concepts that noun phrases refer to. ConceptResolver performs both word sense induction and synonym resolution on relations extracted from text using an ontology and a small amount of labeled data. Domain knowledge (the ontology) guides concept creation by defining a set of possible semantic types for concepts. Word sense induction is performed by inferring a set of semantic types for each noun phrase. Synonym detection exploits redundant information to train several domain-specific synonym classifiers in a semi-supervised fashion. When ConceptResolver is run on NELL's knowledge base, 87% of the word senses it creates correspond to real-world concepts, and 85% of noun phrases that it suggests refer to the same concept are indeed synonyms.
Learning to Play Minigolf: A Dynamical System-Based Approach

A current trend in robotics is to define robot motions so that they can be easily adopted to situations beyond those for which the motion was originally designed. In this work, we show how the challenging task of playing minigolf can be efficiently tackled by first learning a basic hitting motion model, and then learning to adapt it to different situations. We model the basic hitting motion with an autonomous dynamical systems, and solve the problem of learning the parameters of the model from a set of demonstrations through a constrained optimization. To hit the ball with the appropriate hitting angle and speed, a nonlinear model of the hitting parameters is estimated based on a set of examples of good hitting parameters. We compare two statistical methods, Gaussian Process Regression and Gaussian Mixture Regression in the context of inferring the hitting parameters for the minigolf task. We demonstrate the generalization ability of the model in various situations. We validate our approach on the 7 Degrees of Freedom (DoF) Barrett WAM arm and 6-DoF Katana arm in both simulated and real environments.
Contrast-induced nephropathy: the sin of primary percutaneous coronary intervention?

This editorial refers to ‘Contrast-induced acute kidney injury after primary percutaneous coronary intervention: results from the HORIZONS-AMI substudy’[†][1], by A. Narula et al. , on page 1533 Contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) also described at acute kidney injury (AKI) is an acute renal failure occurring within the days after exposure to intravascular radiographic contrast material that is not attributable to other causes. It is the third most common cause of hospital-acquired renal failure, after decreased renal perfusion and use of nephrotoxic medications.1 More than 70 years after the first description of a fatal renal function impairment following the use of radiographic contrast media,2 CIN still represents a major and unmet clinical challenge, as this potential complication is associated with a prolonged hospitalization stay, a higher hospitalization cost, and a significant increase in morbidity and mortality.3,4 Unfortunately, after many years of research, the mechanisms of CIN remain poorly understood, although several mechanisms were identified, revealing a complex multifactorial physiopathology with a high interindividual variability of the nephrotoxic effect of contrast media. Indeed, it is speculated that CIN might occur mostly in patients with pre-existing vulnerability of the renal medullary circulation, in response to stimuli disrupting the balance between the high metabolic needs of the tubular segments of the renal medulla and their hypoxic environment. In patients presenting with an acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), the situation becomes even more complex as we have, in addition to the toxicity of contrast media, a clinical situation mixing a high thrombogenic state, a burst of inflammation due to the myocardial damage, and a potential decrease in blood flow to the kidneys through vasoconstriction or haemodynamic instability (see Figure 1 ). Figure 1 Physiopathology of contrast-induced nephropathy in acute myocardial infarction. The most common manifestation of … [1]: #fn-2
Human-body shadowing effects on indoor MIMO-OFDM channels at 5.2 GHz

Pedestrian movement is known to cause significant effects on indoor MIMO channels. In this paper, a statistical characterization of the indoor MIMO-OFDM channel subject to pedestrian movement is reported. The experiment used 4 sending and 4 receiving antennas and 114 sub-carriers at 5.2 GHz. Measurement scenarios varied from zero to ten pedestrians walking randomly between transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) arrays. The empirical cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the received fading envelope fits the Ricean distribution with K factors ranging from 7 dB to 15 dB, for the 10 pedestrians and vacant scenarios respectively. In general, as the number of pedestrians increase, the CDF slope tends to decrease proportionally. Furthermore, as the number of pedestrians increase, increasing multipath contribution, the dynamic range of channel capacity increases proportionally. These results are consistent with measurement results obtained in controlled scenarios for a fixed narrowband Single-Input Single-Output (SISO) link at 5.2 GHz in previous work. The described empirical characterization provides an insight into the prediction of human-body shadowing effects for indoor MIMO-OFDM channels at 5.2 GHz.
Surgery wait times and specialty services for insured and uninsured breast cancer patients: does hospital safety net status matter?

OBJECTIVE To determine whether safety net and non-safety net hospitals influence inpatient breast cancer care in insured and uninsured women and in white and African American women. DATA SOURCES Six years of Virginia Cancer Registry and Virginia Health Information discharge data were linked and supplemented with American Hospital Association data. STUDY DESIGN Hierarchical generalized linear models and linear probability regression models were used to estimate the relationship between hospital safety net status, the explanatory variables, and the days from diagnosis to mastectomy and the likelihood of breast reconstruction. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS The time between diagnosis and surgery was longer in safety net hospitals for all patients, regardless of insurance source. Medicaid insured and uninsured women were approximately 20 percent less likely to receive reconstruction than privately insured women. African American women were less likely to receive reconstruction than white women. CONCLUSIONS Following the implementation of health reform, disparities may potentially worsen if safety net hospitals' burden of care increases without commensurate increases in reimbursement and staffing levels. This study also suggests that Medicaid expansions may not improve outcomes in inpatient breast cancer care within the safety net system.
Detection of Firewall Policy Anomalies in Real-time Distributed Network Security Appliances

With the advent of emerging technologies like cloud computing, the security of confidential data is of prime importance. Firewalls are widely used as the most basic security device used to protect a network from unauthorized access and network intrusions. Network Administrators define some rules to filter incoming and outgoing packets which form the security policy of the firewall. The large size of firewall policies create complex interactions between policies of the same firewall as well as between multiple firewalls. In this paper, we extend the currently known classification for firewall policy anomalies. Further, we propose a tool which obtains these rules from security devices in real-time environment, detects the anomalies present in them according to the underlying network topology and propagates the consistent rules with the consent of administrator. Currently, the tool can only be used with Cisco security devices; however, it can be extended to incorporate the syntax of other vendor’s devices as well.
Motion planning for two 3D-Dubins vehicles with distance constraint

In this paper we consider the motion planning problem for a 3D-Dubins system consisting of a pair of Dubins vehicles moving in a 3D space while maintaining constant distance. We provide a motion planning algorithm and sufficient conditions on the initial and final configurations that guarantee the existence of admissible controls, moving a first step towards the complete controllability characterization of such type of systems. Results obtained in this paper are particularly relevant in order to solve formation control problem for multiple robots as aerial or underwater vehicles, which move in 3D spaces. Simulation results demonstrate the feasibility of the motion planning algorithm proposed in this paper.