Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tracking Human Gestures under Field-of-View Constraints

This paper presents a control design for a desktop telepresence robot that guarantees satisfaction of field-of-view (FOV) constraints when dynamically tracking multiple points of interest on a person.The multi-point tracking problem is solved by complementing centroid tracking with local constraint satisfaction that is achieved by local integral barrier functions active only in small regions near the FOV limits. Such a control provides an aggregate view of the points of interest on the person and ensures that none of them goes out of view. A simulation study illustrates the performance of the proposed control in comparison with a conventional control.
Real-Time Catheter Molecular Sensing of Inflammation in Proteolytically Active Atherosclerosis

Background— To enable intravascular detection of inflammation in atherosclerosis, we developed a near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) catheter–based strategy to sense cysteine protease activity during vascular catheterization. Methods and Results— The NIRF catheter design was based on a clinical coronary artery guidewire. In phantom studies of NIRF plaques, blood produced only a mild (<30%) attenuation of the fluorescence signal compared with saline, affirming the favorable optical properties of the NIR window. Catheter evaluation in vivo used atherosclerotic rabbits (n=11). Rabbits received an injection of a cysteine protease–activatable NIRF imaging agent (Prosense750; excitation/emission, 750/770 nm) or saline. Catheter pullbacks through the blood-filled iliac artery detected NIRF signals 24 hours after injection of the probe. In the protease agent group, the in vivo peak plaque target-to-background ratio was 558% greater than controls (6.8±1.9 versus 1.3±0.3, mean±SEM; P<0.05). Ex vivo fluorescence reflectance imaging corroborated these results (target-to-background ratio, 10.3±1.8 for agent versus 1.8±0.3 for saline group; P<0.01). In the protease group only, saline flush–modulated NIRF signal profiles further distinguished atheromata from normal segments in vivo (P<0.01). Good correlation between the in vivo and ex vivo plaque target-to-background ratio was present (r=0.82, P<0.01). Histopathological analyses demonstrated strong NIRF signal in plaques only from the protease agent group. NIRF signals colocalized with immunoreactive macrophages and the cysteine protease cathepsin B. Conclusions— An intravascular fluorescence catheter can detect cysteine protease activity in vessels the size of human coronary arteries in real time with an activatable NIRF agent. This strategy could aid in the detection of inflammation and high-risk plaques in small arteries.
How Verb Subcategorization Frequencies Are Affected By Corpus Choice

The probabilistic relation between verbs and their arguments plays an important role in modern statistical parsers and supertaggers, and in psychological theories of language processing. But these probabilities are computed in very different ways by the two sets of researchers. Computational linguists compute verb subcategorization probabilities from large corpora while psycholinguists compute them from psychological studies (sentence production and completion tasks). Recent studies have found differences between corpus frequencies and psycholinguistic measures. We analyze subcategorization frequencies from four different corpora: psychological sentence production data (Connine et al. 1984), written text (Brown and WSJ), and telephone conversation data (Switchboard). We find two different sources for the differences. Discourse influence is a result of how verb use is affected by different discourse types such as narrative, connected discourse, and single sentence productions. Semantic influence is a result of different corpora using different senses of verbs, which have different subcategorization frequencies. We conclude that verb sense and discourse type play an important role in the frequencies observed in different experimental and corpus based sources of verb subcategorization frequencies.
The yeast nuclear pore complex functionally interacts with components of the spindle assembly checkpoint

Aphysical and functional link between the nuclear pore complex (NPC) and the spindle checkpoint machinery has been established in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We show that two proteins required for the execution of the spindle checkpoint, Mad1p and Mad2p, reside predominantly at the NPC throughout the cell cycle. There they are associated with a subcomplex of nucleoporins containing Nup53p, Nup170p, and Nup157p. The association of the Mad1p–Mad2p complex with the NPC requires Mad1p and is mediated in part by Nup53p. On activation of the spindle checkpoint, we detect changes in the interactions between these proteins, including the release of Mad2p (but not Mad1p) from the NPC and the accumulation of Mad2p at kinetochores. Accompanying these events is the Nup53p-dependent hyperphosphorylation of Mad1p. On the basis of these results and genetic analysis of double mutants, we propose a model in which Mad1p bound to a Nup53p-containing complex sequesters Mad2p at the NPC until its release by activation of the spindle checkpoint. Furthermore, we show that the association of Mad1p with the NPC is not passive and that it plays a role in nuclear transport.
TabletGaze: Unconstrained Appearance-based Gaze Estimation in Mobile Tablets

We study gaze estimation on tablets, our key design goal is uncalibrated gaze estimation using the front-facing camera during natural use of tablets, where the posture and method of holding the tablet is not constrained. We collected the first large unconstrained gaze dataset of tablet users, labeled Rice TabletGaze dataset. The dataset consists of 51 subjects, each with 4 different postures and 35 gaze locations. Subjects vary in race, gender and in their need for prescription glasses, all of which might impact gaze estimation accuracy. Driven by our observations on the collected data, we present a TabletGaze algorithm for automatic gaze estimation using multi-level HoG feature and Random Forests regressor. The TabletGaze algorithm achieves a mean error of 3.17 cm. We perform extensive evaluation on the impact of various factors such as dataset size, race, wearing glasses and user posture on the gaze estimation accuracy and make important observations about the impact of these factors.
Bounds on locally testable codes with unique tests

The Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) is an important open problem in the research of PCPs and hardness of approximation. The conjecture is a strengthening of the PCP Theorem, predicting the existence of a special type of PCP verifiers: 2-query verifiers that only make unique tests. Moreover, the UGC predicts that such PCP verifiers can have almost-perfect completeness and low-soundness. The computational complexity notion of a PCP is closely related to the combinatorial notion of a Locally Testable Code (LTC). LTCs are error-correcting codes with codeword testers that only make a constant number of queries to the tested word. All known PCP constructions use LTCs as building blocks. Furthermore, to obtain PCPs with certain properties, one usually uses LTCs with corresponding properties. In light of the strong connection between PCPs and LTCs, one may conjecture the existence of LTCs with properties similar to the ones required by the UGC. In this work we show limitations on such LTCs: We consider 2-query LTCs with codeword testers that only make unique tests. Roughly speaking, we show that any such LTC with relative distance close to 1, almost-perfect completeness and low-soundness, is of constant size. While our result does not imply anything about the correctness of the UGC, it does show some limitations of unique tests, compared, for example, to projection tests.
Local Loss Optimization in Operator Models: A New Insight into Spectral Learning

This paper re-visits the spectral method for learning latent variable models defined in terms of observable operators. We give a new perspective on the method, showing that operators can be recovered by minimizing a loss defined on a finite subset of the domain. This leads to a derivation of a non-convex optimization similar to the spectral method. We also propose a regularized convex relaxation of this optimization. In practice our experiments show that a continuous regularization parameter (in contrast with the discrete number of states in the original method) allows a better trade-off between accuracy and model complexity. We also prove that in general, a randomized strategy for choosing the local loss succeeds with high probability.
Power Sharing in Politics

After a brief description of a representative selection of power indices and a discussion of the notion of power in collective decision making, the paper discusses the modeling of power of an individual or collective agent as identified with the potential or factual effect the decision of this agent has on the outcome. It demonstrates that the distribution of power is crucially dependent on the procedures resorted to, and not just on the distribution of resources and the majority threshold as captured by the standard power measures. Similarly, it is shown that the selection and formulation of the questions to analyze can be highly relevant when we link power and power measures to causality. The concluding section discusses whether power indices are measures that represent power and ratios of power, or whether they are indicators that point out properties of the cooperative game and the underlying decision situation.
Involvement of Delta/Notch signaling in zebrafish adult pigment stripe patterning

The skin pigment pattern of zebrafish is a good model system in which to study the mechanism of biological pattern formation. Although it is known that interactions between melanophores and xanthophores play a key role in the formation of adult pigment stripes, molecular mechanisms for these interactions remain largely unknown. Here, we show that Delta/Notch signaling contributes to these interactions. Ablation of xanthophores in yellow stripes induced the death of melanophores in black stripes, suggesting that melanophores require a survival signal from distant xanthophores. We found that deltaC and notch1a were expressed by xanthophores and melanophores, respectively. Moreover, inhibition of Delta/Notch signaling killed melanophores, whereas activation of Delta/Notch signaling ectopically in melanophores rescued the survival of these cells, both in the context of pharmacological inhibition of Delta/Notch signaling and after ablation of xanthophores. Finally, we showed by in vivo imaging of cell membranes that melanophores extend long projections towards xanthophores in the yellow stripes. These data suggest that Delta/Notch signaling is responsible for a survival signal provided by xanthophores to melanophores. As cellular projections can enable long-range interaction between membrane-bound ligands and their receptors, we propose that such projections, combined with direct cell-cell contacts, can substitute for the effect of a diffusible factor that would be expected by the conventional reaction-diffusion (Turing) model.
Pneumococcal pneumonia presenting with septic shock: host- and pathogen-related factors and outcomes

Background: Host- and pathogen-related factors associated with septic shock in pneumococcal pneumonia are not well defined. The aim of this study was to identify risk factors for septic shock and to ascertain patient outcomes. Serotypes, genotypes and antibiotic resistance of isolated strains were also analysed. Methods: Observational analysis of a prospective cohort of non-severely immunosuppressed hospitalised adults with pneumococcal pneumonia. Septic shock was defined as a systolic blood pressure of <90 mm Hg and peripheral hypoperfusion with the need for vasopressors for >4 h after fluid replacement. Results: 1041 patients with pneumococcal pneumonia diagnosed by Gram stain and culture of appropriate samples and/or urine antigen test were documented, of whom 114 (10.9%) had septic shock at admission. After adjustment, independent risk factors for shock were current tobacco smoking (OR, 2.11; 95% CI, 1.02 to 4.34; p = 0.044), chronic corticosteroid treatment (OR, 4.45; 95% CI, 1.75 to 11.32; p = 0.002) and serotype 3 (OR, 2.24; 95% CI, 1.12 to 4.475; p = 0.022). No significant differences were found in genotypes and rates of antibiotic resistance. Compared with the remaining patients, patients with septic shock required mechanical ventilation more frequently (37% vs 4%; p<0.001) and had longer length of stay (11 vs 8 days; p<0.001). The early (10% vs 1%; p<0.001) and overall case fatality rates (25% vs 5%; p<0.001) were higher in patients with shock. Conclusions: Septic shock is a frequent complication of pneumococcal pneumonia and causes high morbidity and mortality. Current tobacco smoking, chronic corticosteroid treatment and infection caused by serotype 3 are independent risk factors for this complication.
An RGB-D based social behavior interpretation system for a humanoid social robot

Humanoid social robots that interact with people need to be capable of interpreting the social behavior of their interaction partners in order to respond in a socially appropriate way. In this paper, we present a social behavior interpretation system that enables a humanoid robot to recognize human social behavior by analyzing communicative signals. The system receives the constructed RGB-D scene from a Kinect sensor, extracts information about body gesture and head pose from the scene using Microsoft Kinect SDK, and recognizes eight human social behaviors using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM). We trained the eight-state HMM with a corpus of 35 recorded human-human interaction scenes. The evaluation of the system shows a weighted average recognition rate of 81% for all states.
Influence of renal nerves and sodium balance on the acute antidiuretic effect of bendroflumethiazide in rats with diabetes insipidus.

To examine the role of the renal nerves and sodium depletion for the acute antidiuretic response to bendroflumethiazide (BFTZ; 25 microg/hr) in rats with diabetes insipidus (DI), renal clearance experiments were performed in the following groups of conscious, chronically instrumented male Brattleboro rats with vasopressin-deficient DI: Control (n = 7), BFTZ (n = 9), BFTZ + sodium replacement (n = 7) and BFTZ + chronic bilateral renal denervation (n = 6). Urine flow rate and urinary sodium concentration were measured drop-by-drop with a sodium-sensitive electrode and by collection of urine in vials placed on an electronic balance. This allowed computer driven, servo-controlled, independent i.v. replacement of sodium and fluid losses, respectively. Mean arterial pressure, glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and proximal tubular water and sodium handling, assessed by lithium clearance (C(Li)), were stable in the control group. BFTZ produced a marked antidiuretic response (deltaV = -79%; deltaUrine osmolality = +218%) associated with decreases in GFR (-28%), C(Li) (-62%), free water clearance (-100%) and plasma Na (-5 mM). Fractional water reabsorption was increased by 19% in the proximal tubules and by 7% in segments beyond. Sodium replacement did not modify the fall in GFR or the antidiuresis, but partly prevented the increase in fractional proximal water reabsorption. Bilateral renal denervation did not affect the response to BFTZ. We conclude that the acute antidiuretic effect of BFTZ is independent of sodium balance and renal nerve activity and is elicited by a reduction in GFR accompanied by an increase in fractional water reabsorption in the proximal tubules and in the distal nephron.
Adaptive Autopilot System for Small Ships Employing E-TOP Method and SOM

A phase diagram of error and its derivative is useful to illustrate the state of the control system, where a fixed point at origin stands for a stable state, a point leaving origin an unstable state, a point moving round the origin an oscillatory state, etc. Thus the state of the control system is estimated by the motion of the point in the diagram. When the control system is under a strong or periodic disturbance, the state point moves round the origin staggeringly or periodically. It is difficult to evaluate the state of the control system in such conditions and the appropriate control is hardly realized. The E-TOP (evaluation with trajectory on phase diagram) method, presented by the authors, facilitates extracting the feature parameters from the trajectory in the phase diagram. The feature parameters characterize the behaviour of the control system. The adaptive PID autopilot system employing the E-TOP method is very efficient to evaluate the behaviour of small ships, the attitude of which is easily varied by the waves. However, when the attitude of the ship body is strongly staggering, the adaptive autopilot system cannot work appropriately. To cope with this problem, we propose the advanced E-TOP adaptive PID autopilot system, which employs the self-organizing maps (SOM)[2]. The advantage of this autopilot system to the conventional one is shown by the software simulation.
Zero-Forcing Precoding and Generalized Inverses

We consider the problem of linear zero-forcing precoding design and discuss its relation to the theory of generalized inverses in linear algebra. Special attention is given to a specific generalized inverse known as the pseudo-inverse. We begin with the standard design under the assumption of a total power constraint and prove that precoders based on the pseudo-inverse are optimal among the generalized inverses in this setting. Then, we proceed to examine individual per-antenna power constraints. In this case, the pseudo-inverse is not necessarily the optimal inverse. In fact, finding the optimal matrix is nontrivial and depends on the specific performance measure. We address two common criteria, fairness and throughput, and show that the optimal generalized inverses may be found using standard convex optimization methods. We demonstrate the improved performance offered by our approach using computer simulations.
Adaptive Out-of-Band Interference Suppression for Coexistent Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Systems

Coexistence of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (BT) systems is often necessary in various handheld devices. Due to nonlinearities of radio frequency front-end components, leakage signals from one transmitter to the other transmitter would produce out-of-band (OOB) interference and corrupt adjacent frequency bands outside the spectral masks defined in standards. In this letter, we propose an adaptive OOB interference suppression scheme based on a modified normalized least mean-squared algorithm for coexistent Wi-Fi and BT transceivers. Computer simulation results show that the proposed approach provides pretty good performance in transmitter leakage cancellation and effectively relieves the OOB interference issue.
Single Phase 13-Level D-STATCOM Inverter with Distributed System

Abstract—The global energy consumption is increasing persistently and need for distributed power generation through renewable energy is essential. To meet the power requirements for consumers without any voltage fluctuations and losses, modeling and design of multilevel inverter with Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) capability is presented. The presented inverter is provided with 13-level cascaded H-bridge topology of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBTs) connected along with inbuilt Distributed Static Synchronous Compensators (DSTATCOM). The DSTATCOM device provides control of power factor stability at local feeder lines and the inverter eliminates Total Harmonic Distortion (THD). The 13-level inverter utilizes 52 switches of each H-bridge is fed with single DC sources separately and the Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique is used for switching IGBTs. The control strategy implemented for inverter transmits active power to grid as well as it maintains power factor to be stable with achievement of steady state power transmission. Significant outcome of this project is improvement of output voltage quality with steady state power transmission with low THD. Simulation of inverter with DSTATCOM is performed using MATLAB/Simulink environment. The scaled prototype model of proposed inverter is built and its results were validated with simulated results.
AutoBAP: Automatic Coding of Body Action and Posture Units from Wearable Sensors

Manual annotation of human body movement is an integral part of research on non-verbal communication and computational behaviour analysis but also a very time-consuming and tedious task. In this paper we present AutoBAP, a system that automates the coding of bodily expressions according to the body action and posture (BAP) coding scheme. Our system takes continuous body motion and gaze behaviour data as its input. The data is recorded using a full body motion tracking suit and a wearable eye tracker. From the data our system automatically generates a labelled XML file that can be visualised and edited with off-the-shelf video annotation tools. We evaluate our system in a laboratory-based user study with six participants performing scripted sequences of 184 actions. Results from the user study show that our prototype system is able to annotate 172 out of the 274 labels of the full BAP coding scheme with good agreement with a manual annotator (Cohen's kappa > 0.6).
Error recovery mechanism for grid-based workflow within SLA context

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) serve as a foundation for a reliable and predictable job execution at remote grid sites. In this paper, we describe an error recovery mechanism for workflow within the SLA context, coping with catastrophic failure when one or several High Performance Computing Centers (HPCCs) are detached from the grid system. We propose an algorithm to detect all affected sub-jobs when the error happens and an algorithm to remap those sub-jobs to the remaining healthy HPCCs with makespan optimise. The experiment result shows that our mechanism discovers a higher quality solution in a shorter time period than other existing methods.
Coherence estimation from multilook incoherent SAR imagery

This paper presents an unsupervised method capable to provide estimates of temporal coherence starting from a pair of multilook detected synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of the same scene. The method relies on robust measurements of the temporal correlation of speckle patterns between the two pass dates. To this end, a nonlinear transformation aimed at decorrelating the data across time while retaining the multiplicative noise model is defined as the pixel geometric mean and ratio of the two overlapped images. The temporal correlation coefficient (TCC) of speckle is analytically derived from the noise variances, measured in the transformed pair of images as regression coefficients of local standard deviation to local mean, calculated on homogeneous, i.e., nontextured, pixels. Such pixels are identified based on the observation that homogeneous areas produce clustered scatter-points that are aligned along the regression line. Experiments were carried out on two pairs of multitemporal SAR observations, from the European Remote Sensing 1/2 (ERS-1/2) tandem mission and from the 1994 SIR-C mission. A good fit with the true coherence values was found, irrespective of the presence of textures; when the true coherence was unavailable, the estimated coherence results match the available ground truth data.