Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AUGMENTED REALITY PLATFORMS FOR VIRTUAL FITTING ROOMS

Multi-sensor body scanners combined with new algorithms and social media technologies have started a revolutionary shift away from the classic desktop paradigm and into the direction of intuitive, “natural interaction” where people interface with the technological world through hand gestures, speech and body language. This article reviews recent examples of Virtual Fitting Rooms (VFRs) and supporting technologies which facilitate the shopping experience by letting customers to try-on apparel and/or mixand-match accessories without being physically present in the retail shop. These platforms are not only powerful decision tools for the on-line shopper, but also contribute to the fun factor of in-store shopping. Using depth scanning techniques, VFRs can create accurate 3D models of shoppers and meaningfully query retail digital catalogs, filter out non-fitting items and allow customers assess the styling and matching aspects in real time. In addition, omnipresent social networking features allow sending photos or videos of the shopper wearing the apparel for quick feedback. The quality of service provided by current VFRs is sufficiently high to boost sales but also minimize returns due to improper fit.
Specific phosphorylation of Torpedo 43K rapsyn by endogenous kinase(s) with thiamine triphosphate as the phosphate donor

43K rapsyn is a peripheral protein specifically associated with the nicotinic acetylcho‐line receptor (nAChR) present in the postsynaptic membrane of the neuromuscular junction and of the electrocyte, and is essential for its clustering. Here, we demonstrate a novel specific phosphorylation of 43K rapsyn by endogenous protein kinase(s) present in Torpedo electrocyte nAChR‐rich membranes and identify thiamine triphosphate (TTP) as the phosphate donor. In the presence of Mg2+ and [γ‐32Ρ]‐TTP, 43K rapsyn is specifically phosphorylated with a 32P‐half‐maximal incorporation at ~5–25 μΜ TTP. The presence of TTP in the cytosol and of 43K rapsyn at the cytoplasmic face of the postsynaptic membrane, together with TTP‐dependent phosphor‐ylation of 43K rapsyn without added exokinases, suggests that TTP‐dependent‐43K‐rapsyn phosphor‐ylation may occur in vivo. In addition, phosphoamino acid and chemical stability analysis suggests that the residues phosphorylated are predominantly histi‐dines. Inhibition of phosphorylation by Zn2+ suggests a possible control of 43K rapsyn phosphorylation state by its zinc finger domain. Endogenous kinase(s) present in rodent brain membranes can also use [γ‐32P]‐TTP as a phosphodonor. The use of a phosphodonor (TTP) belonging to the thiamine family but not to the classical (ATP, GTP) purine triphosphate family represents a novel phosphorylation pathway possibly important for synaptic proteins. —Nghiêm, H. ‐O. , Bettendorff, L. , Changeux, J.‐P. Specific phosphorylation of Torpedo 43K rapsyn by endogenous kinase(s) with thiamine triphosphate as the phosphate donor. FASEB J. 14, 543–554 (2000)
Exploiting Implicit Parallelism in Dynamic Array Programming Languages

We have built an interpreter for the array programming language J. The interpreter exploits implicit data parallelism in the language to achieve good parallel speedups on a variety of benchmark applications. Many array programming languages operate on entire arrays without the need to write loops. Writing without loops simplifies the programs. Array programs without loops allow an interpreter to parallelize the execution of the code without complex analysis or input from the programmer. The J programming language includes the usual idioms of operations on arrays of the same size and shape, where the operations can often be performed in parallel for each individual item of the operands. Another opportunity comes from Js reduction operations, where suitable operations can be performed in parallel for all the items of an operand. J has a notion of verb rank, which allows programmers to simplify programs by declaring how operations are applied to operands. The verb rank mechanism allows us to extract further parallelism. Our implementation of an implicitly parallelizing interpreter for J is written entirely in Java. We have written the interpreter in a framework that produces native code for the interpreter, giving good scalar performance. The interpreter itself is responsible for exploiting the parallelism available in the applications. Our results show we attain good parallel speed-up on a variety of benchmarks, including near perfect linear speed-up on inherently parallel benchmarks. We believe that the lessons learned from our approach to exploiting data parallelism in an interpreter can be applied to other interpreted languages as well.
Analog transmission of correlated sources over spatially correlated fading SIMO MAC

In this work, we study the application of analog Joint Source Channel Coding (JSCC) techniques for the transmission of correlated information over fading Multiple Access Channels (MACs) using multiple receive antennas. We consider the distributed encoding of the user information with two different analog JSCC schemes: module-like mappings and uncoded transmission. We evaluate the performance of these mappings for independent and spatially correlated MACs. In the fist case, the obtained results show that the utilization of module-like mappings outperforms the uncoded scheme. However, in the second scenario the uncoded transmission of correlated data over spatially correlated MAC achieves superior performance than that of analog schemes with module-like mappings, and even it exceeds the theoretical optimal performance of schemes based on source-channel separation in the low Signal-to-Noise Ratio regime.
K-nearest neighbor search for fuzzy objects

The K-Nearest Neighbor search (kNN) problem has been investigated extensively in the past due to its broad range of applications. In this paper we study this problem in the context of fuzzy objects that have indeterministic boundaries. Fuzzy objects play an important role in many areas, such as biomedical image databases and GIS. Existing research on fuzzy objects mainly focuses on modelling basic fuzzy object types and operations, leaving the processing of more advanced queries such as kNN query untouched. In this paper, we propose two new kinds of kNN queries for fuzzy objects, Ad-hoc kNN query (AKNN) and Range kNN query (RKNN), to find the k nearest objects qualifying at a probability threshold or within a probability range. For efficient AKNN query processing, we optimize the basic best-first search algorithm by deriving more accurate approximations for the distance function between fuzzy objects and the query object. To improve the performance of RKNN search, effective pruning rules are developed to significantly reduce the search space and further speed up the candidate refinement process. The efficiency of our proposed algorithms as well as the optimization techniques are verified with an extensive set of experiments using both synthetic and real datasets.
Using Wide Range of Features for Author profiling

Predicting an author’s age, gender and personality traits by analyzing his/her documents is important in forensics, marketing and resolving authorship disputes. Our system combines different styles, lexicons, topics, familial tokens and different categories of character n-grams as features to build a logistic regression model for four different languages: English, Spanish, Italian and Dutch. With this model, we obtained global ranking scores of 0.6623, 0.6547, 0.7411, 0.7662 for English, Spanish, Italian and Dutch languages respectively.
Regulatory Uncertainty and Opportunity Seeking: The Climate Change Clean Development Case

Regulatory uncertainty has been inherent to climate change in the absence of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol and with ongoing policy discussions on how to proceed. To facilitate steps to help address the issue, many companies have called for more certainty and a stable policy framework. What has remained underexposed, however, is that, besides having clear disadvantages, regulatory uncertainty may also benefit some companies if they recognize the opportunities of flux and move early. This lack of attention may be due to the fact that disadvantages are easier to pin-point and study than opportunities, also because companies tend to be much more open and explicit in emphasizing problems as they publicly seek political support or financial redress, while keeping strategic opportunities for themselves. Despite these practical difficulties of data collection, the relevance of opportunities related to regulatory uncertainty is very high, for managers but also for policy-makers and academics. To shed some more light on the phenomenon, this article explores regulatory uncertainty and opportunity seeking for the climate change clean development case. It unravels opportunities that have emerged for different types of companies, including utilities, banks, project development & carbon offset companies, brokers, exchanges, consultants, auditors and legal services providers. The article also shows how opportunities have evolved over the years, and have varied for different types of companies, related to fluctuations in the degree of uncertainty and the evolution of clean development projects and the related carbon market.
Uncover What You See in Your Images: The InfoAlbum approach

This paper presents InfoAlbum, a novel prototype for image centric information collection, where the goal is to automatically provide the user with information about i) the object or event depicted in an image, and ii) the location where the image was taken. The system aims at improving the image viewing experience by presenting supplementary information such as location names, tags, weather condition at image capture time, placement on map, geographically nearby images, Wikipedia articles and web pages. The information is automatically collected from various sources on the Internet based on the image metadata gps latitude/longitude values, date/time of image capture and a category keyword provided by the user. Collected information is presented to the user, and can also be stored and later used during image retrieval.
Implementation of Fir Filter Using a Novel modulo Adder for 2 n - 2 k -1 Residue Number System

Modular adder is used in Residue Number System (RNS) addition. Moduli set with the form of 2 n -2 k - 1(1≤ k≤ n-2) can offer excellent balance among the RNS channels for multi-channel RNS processing. In this paper, a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter using a novel algorithm and its Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) implementation structure are proposed for modulo 2 n -2 k -1 adder. In the Modular adder algorithm, parallel prefix operation and carry correction techniques are adopted to eliminate the re-computation of carries. Any existing parallel prefix structure can be used in the novel modulo adder. Thus, we can get flexible tradeoff between area and delay. This paper presents FIR filter implementation with modulo 2 n -2 k -1 adder and n +1. These2 n -1 and 2 n +1 adders are based on parallel prefix and carry correction respectively. Some modulo 2 n -2 n-2 -1 adder based on the technique of carry offset, which is only required to obtain the carry information of A+B. In order to find the carries for addition each carry is modified to the utmost carry(4). By using carry computation,the block corrects the carries further in the proposed modulo adder. In this paper, the modulo adder 2 n -2 k -1 is based on the carry correction and parallel prefix addition is proposed. This modulo adder is divided into four units pre-processing unit, the prefix computation unit, the carry correction unit, and the sum computation unit. This paper is organized as follows: section II describes the RNS background and arithmetic operation. Section III describesthe novelmodulo2 n -2 k -1 adder and it's self-testing. Section IV describesthe application of modulo adder in FIR filter. In section V simulation results and comparisons are presented and in section VI conclusion are listed.
Mastering Transfer Function Specification by using VolumePro Technology

A new user-interface paradigm for the specification of transfer functions is presented. The specification is usually a difficult task as mapping information for a number of different domains (data range, color, opacity, etc.) has to be defined. In the presented approach, the definition of the mapping information can be realized independently for each property domain. A set of specification tools is provided for each domain, enabling users with different levels of experience or demanding time restrictions to choose an appropriate approach for their needs. Real-time feedback during the manipulation of parameters has been proven to be crucial to the specification. An interactive direct-volume-rendering display is realized by utilizing dedicated hardware acceleration.
Examining Interdependencies and Constraints in Co-Creation

This paper reports on the first year of a three-year-long co-creation project with older adults. We focus our analysis on one particular workshop in which participants stopped designing and began to think about promoting the app we were co-creating. The workshop proved uniquely important for examining assumptions we had made about how and why the co-creation process would be successful. This paper concedes flaws in these assumptions and in the execution of the methodology as a way of illuminating dynamics that act on research projects in ways that are antithetical to effective co-creation. Reporting on the unexpected results of our participant engagements, we reveal new insights into the challenges in executing co-creation methodology.
AMR field trial on underground power distribution line using BPLC

This paper is concerned with the result of AMR (Automatic Meter Reading) test field experiment, which was constructed by using power lines from MV (Medium Voltage) and LV (Low Voltage) test fields of underground power distribution line. 75 households from 7 multiplex houses in Ansan-si Choji-dong were selected as objects of study, and the test field was constructed in which the power usage could be observed in real time, and the possibility of constructing a network using BPLC in both the MV and LV test fields of the underground power distribution line was verified. In the underground MV test field, the network is constructed using a BPLC (Broad PLC) repeater and a neutral inductive coupler, and in the underground LV test field, the network is constructed using a BPLC modem and three phase capacitor couplers. The places in the MV and LV test fields where the BPLC modem is installed are composed so that the power usage can be observed in real time, by using AMR server program. This paper shows that AMR using BPLC is possible in the underground power distribution line, and shows that PLC can play an important role in the construction of AMR system in the future.
A new look at leadership in collaborative networks: process catalysts

It is now argued that the network approach with its horizontal orientation operates differently to conventional management, which is internally focused and directed at arranging an organisation’s resources with the aim of achieving goals in an efficient manner. To manage is to bring about and/or accomplish goals. In contrast, to lead is to influence, guide, build commitment, and convince others of a vision. The tasks of management and leadership overlap. However, whereas leadership is identified as an important aspect of conventional management, within collaborative network management, leadership becomes a much more critical and interlinked component. There are a variety of leadership theories identified in conventional management, including transformational and charismatic leaders and distributive leadership. Although these theories apply to some types of networks, they do not apply completely to collaborative networks. Collaborative networks, with its unique characteristics require fresh leadership skills. Drawing on two collaborative network case studies this paper examines the impact of these unique characteristics on the concept of leadership. The critical characteristics of these types of networks are the interdependence of the participants, the emphasis on process rather than only on achieving tasks and the need for systems change. Based on these characteristics a new concept of leadership called “process catalysts”, is presented.
An Adaptive Background Subtraction Method Based on Kernel Density Estimation

In this paper, a pixel-based background modeling method, which uses nonparametric kernel density estimation, is proposed. To reduce the burden of image storage, we modify the original KDE method by using the first frame to initialize it and update it subsequently at every frame by controlling the learning rate according to the situations. We apply an adaptive threshold method based on image changes to effectively subtract the dynamic backgrounds. The devised scheme allows the proposed method to automatically adapt to various environments and effectively extract the foreground. The method presented here exhibits good performance and is suitable for dynamic background environments. The algorithm is tested on various video sequences and compared with other state-of-the-art background subtraction methods so as to verify its performance.
Kameleo: Design of a new Platform-as-a-Service for flexible data management

Data is abundantly present in today's world and the amount of data we generate continues to grow. The representation and structure of this data, however, differs greatly depending on the software or platform. The wide variety of software available shows there is no one optimal way to model data for all software, but when you want to deploy software in the cloud using a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider, you are restricted to the data model chosen by the provider. We propose Kameleo, a new Platform-as-a-Service able to support several data models. This provides software developed by the customers with an optimal data model even when the requirements of the software change. In order to evaluate the platform, we compared three multitenancy models using a basic webshop application. Results show a clear difference in performance between the models.
Removing gender signature from fingerprints

The need of sharing fingerprint image data in many emerging applications raises concerns about the protection of privacy. It has become possible to use automated algorithms for inferring soft biometrics from fingerprint images. Even if we cannot uniquely match the person to an existing fingerprint, revealing their age or gender may lead to undesirable consequences. Our research is focused on de-identifying fingerprint images in order to obfuscate soft biometrics. In this paper, we first discuss a general framework for soft biometrics fingerprint de-identification. We implemented the framework to reduce the risk of successful estimation of gender from fingerprint images using ad-hoc image filtering. We evaluate the proposed approach through experiments using a data set of rolled fingerprints collected at West Virginia University. Results show the proposed method is effective in preventing gender estimation from fingerprint images.
Co-operative handover in 3G System Architecture Evolution

This paper outlines the challenges and possible solutions for mobility management between 3GPP and non-3GPP access systems. Given the differences between technologies and mobility principles in 3GPP and non-3GPP access networks it is feasible to implement the mobility features between 3GPP and non-3GPP networks in a stepwise approach. This allows on one hand an early market entry of a basic solution and on the other hand a later enhancement aiming at co-operative handover decisions and context aware mobility. The latter enables a mobile node to change point of network attachment in a secure and seamless fashion. In order to enable short term deployment of mobility over heterogeneous access networks, mobile IPv4 and mobile IPv6 should be introduced with some additional changes for the handover of non-real-time traffic and non-co-operative handover. In a further step, an enhanced mobility solution shall be introduced which supports a preparation phase including possible pre-authentication before the handover of the transmission path. In conjunction with this approach it is proposed to enable coordination on handover decision between the mobile node and the evolved packet core network.
A Survey on Security Issues in Wireless Networks

We study the security provided by various types of Wireless N etworks in perspective of using that information in designing a secure personal envir o ment which may contain networks based on different standards. Typically in wired networks, the security issues are left to the application developer and the layers below do not provide an y support. In wireless networks, the security issues are considered in designing link and phy sical layers. Hence, it would be interesting to study the level of security provided by these lower layers and ways to exploit them in designing a layer for providing security across the w hole personal network. We will study IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless LANs, Bluetooth and IrDA.
ToleratingLatency by PrefetchingJavaObjects BrendonCahoon KathrynMcKinley

In recentyears,processorspeedhasbecomeincreasingly fasterthan memoryspeed. One techniquefor improving memoryperformanceis dataprefetchingwhich is successful in array-basedcodesbut only now areresearchers applying to pointer-basedcodes.In thispaper , weevaluateadata prefetchingtechnique,calledgreedyprefetching,for toleratinglatency in Javaprograms.In greedyprefetching,when a loopor recursi vemethodupdatesanobjecto, weprefetch objectsto which o refers. We describeinterand intraprocedural algorithmsfor computingobjectstoprefetchand we presentpreliminaryresultsshowing its effectivenesson afew, smallJavaprograms.Althoughprefetchingimproves performance, thereis significantroomfor further improvement.
Constraining Disk Parameters of Be Stars using Narrowband H α Interferometry with the NPOI

Interferometric observations of two well-known Be stars, γ Cas and φ Per, were collected and analyzed to determine the spatial characteristics of their circumstellar regions. The observations were obtained using the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer equipped with custom-made narrowband filters. The filters isolate the Hα emission line from the nearby continuum radiation, which results in an increased contrast between the interferometric signature due to the Hα-emitting circumstellar region and the central star. Because the narrowband filters do not significantly attenuate the continuum radiation at wavelengths 50 nm or more away from the line, the interferometric signal in the Hα channel is calibrated with respect to the continuum channels. The observations used in this study represent the highest spatial resolution measurements of the Hα-emitting regions of Be stars obtained to date. These observations allow us to demonstrate for the first time that the intensity distribution in the circumstellar region of a Be star cannot be represented by uniform disk or ring-like structures, whereas a Gaussian intensity distribution appears to be fully consistent with our observations. Michelson Postdoctoral Fellow. US Naval Observatory, Flagstaff Station, 10391 W. Naval Observatory Rd., Flagstaff, AZ 86001-8521 NVI, Inc., 7257 Hanover Parkway, Suite D, Greenbelt, MD 20770 Remote Sensing Division, Code 7210, Naval Research Laboratory, 4555 Overlook Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20375 US Naval Observatory, 3450 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20392-5420 Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, N6A 3K7, Canada Lowell Observatory, 1400 West Mars Hill Road, Flagstaff, AZ, 86001