Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prokiwii: A Projected Portable Interface for Enriching Object Scenarios with Kinect and Wii Remote

In this paper we present an intuitive interaction technique for everyday objects. We propose a system that allows the user to interact with everyday objects, and use them to make smart scenarios. We enrich the objects with a portable projected interface that is supported by 3D accelerometer in order to build novel user object interaction scenarios. Moreover, we present double crossing as an interaction technique for manipulating finger interface. We conducted experiment to test the applicability of the proposed system with different applications. Our results showed that the proposed system has a lot of potentials to enrich different domains of applications like object data storage, education Montessori cubes and smart shopping goods.
Text Independent Speaker Verification using Enhanced Sorted Gaussian Mixture Model

In this work we study an enhanced sorting function for the recently developed sorted GMM, which is computationally efficient method for implementing the Gaussian mixture model universal background model (GMM-UBM) scheme. The sorted GMM employ partial search and thus has lower computational complexity and relaxed memory requirements when compared to the well-known tree-structured GMM of the same model order. Experimental evaluation of the sorted GMM and its enhanced version was performed on two databases: (1) clean speech in Farsi recorded from TV broadcasts, and (2) telephone quality speech in english (NIST 2002 SRE one-speaker detection data). The enhanced sorting scheme outperformed the original one, primarily for cases where very high acceleration rates were targeted, in scenarios where there was match between training and testing conditions. However, in mismatched train-test conditions the original sorted GMM performed better. Finally, the sorted GMM proved 14 times faster than the baseline system at the cost of only 0.43 increase in equal error rate.
Age-Related Impairment of Ultrasonic Vocalization in Tau.P301L Mice: Possible Implication for Progressive Language Disorders

Background Tauopathies, including Alzheimer's Disease, are the most frequent neurodegenerative diseases in elderly people and cause various cognitive, behavioural and motor defects, but also progressive language disorders. For communication and social interactions, mice produce ultrasonic vocalization (USV) via expiratory airflow through the larynx. We examined USV of Tau.P301L mice, a mouse model for tauopathy expressing human mutant tau protein and developing cognitive, motor and upper airway defects. Methodology/Principal Findings At age 4–5 months, Tau.P301L mice had normal USV, normal expiratory airflow and no brainstem tauopathy. At age 8–10 months, Tau.P301L mice presented impaired USV, reduced expiratory airflow and severe tauopathy in the periaqueductal gray, Kolliker-Fuse and retroambiguus nuclei. Tauopathy in these nuclei that control upper airway function and vocalization correlates well with the USV impairment of old Tau.P301L mice. Conclusions In a mouse model for tauopathy, we report for the first time an age-related impairment of USV that correlates with tauopathy in midbrain and brainstem areas controlling vocalization. The vocalization disorder of old Tau.P301L mice could be, at least in part, reminiscent of language disorders of elderly suffering tauopathy.
The Evolution of L and T Dwarfs in Color-Magnitude Diagrams

We present new evolution sequences for very low mass stars, brown dwarfs, and giant planets and use them to explore a variety of influences on the evolution of these objects. While the predicted adiabatic evolution of luminosity with time is very similar to results of previous work, the remaining disagreements reveal the magnitude of current uncertainty in brown dwarf evolution theory. We discuss the sources of those differences and argue for the importance of the surface boundary condition provided by atmosphere models including clouds. The L- to T-type ultracool dwarf transition can be accommodated within the Ackerman and Marley cloud model by varying the cloud sedimentation parameter. We develop a simple model for the evolution across the L/T transition. By combining the evolution calculation and our atmosphere models, we generate colors and magnitudes of synthetic populations of ultracool dwarfs in the field and in Galactic clusters. We focus on near-infrared color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) and on the nature of the “second parameter” that is responsible for the scatter of colors along the Teff sequence. Instead of a single second parameter we find that variations in metallicity and cloud parameters, unresolved binaries, and possibly a relatively young population all play a role in defining the spread of brown dwarfs along the cooling sequence. We also find that the transition from cloudy L dwarfs to cloudless T dwarfs slows down the evolution and causes a pileup of substellar objects in the transition region, in contradiction with previous studies. However, the same model is applied to the Pleiades brown dwarf sequence with less success. Taken at face value, the present Pleiades data suggest that the L/T transition occurs at lower Teff for lower gravity objects, such as those found in young Galactic clusters. The simulated populations of brown dwarfs also reveal that the phase of deuterium burning produces a distinctive feature in CMDs that should be detectable in ~50-100 Myr old clusters.
Effects of surface forcing on the seasonal cycle of the eastern equatorial Pacific

The roles of zonal and meridional wind stress and of surface heat flux in the seasonal cycle of sea surface temperature (SST) are examined with a primitive equation (PE) model of the tropical Pacific Ocean. While a variety of previous numerical and observational studies have examined the seasonal cycle of SST in the eastern tropical Pacific, it is noteworthy that different mechanisms have been invoked as primary in each case and different conclusions have been reached regarding the relative importance of the various components of surface forcing. Here, we perform a series of numerical experiments in which different components of the surface forcing are eliminated and the resulting upper ocean variability is compared with that of the climatological experiment. The model used for these experiments reproduces a realistic climatological seasonal cycle, in which SST emerges as an independent quantity. We find that the different cases all produce qualitatively reasonable seasonal cycles of SST, though only the most complete model is also able to reproduce the seasonal cycle of near surface currents, tropical instability waves (TIWs), and net surface heat fluxes consistent with historical observations. These results indicate that simply reproducing a qualitatively accurate seasonal cycle of SST does not necessarily allow meaningful conclusions to be made about the relative importance of the different components of surface forcing. The results described here also suggest that a model simulation must at least reproduce all the documented near surface kinematic features of the equatorial Pacific cold tongue region reasonably well, before accurate inferences can be made from model experiments. This provides useful guidelines to current efforts to develop and evaluate more complex fully coupled air-sea models and shows that results for simple or intermediate ocean models that do not have this level of fidelity to the observations will be difficult to interpret. 1. NOAA/PMEL, 7600 Sand Point Way, Seattle, Washington, 98115, U.S.A. 2. Corresponding author. email: andy.chiodi@noaa.gov 3. Present address: Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA, Princeton, New Jersey, 08542, U.S.A.
Magnetically Separable and Recyclable Fe3O4-Supported Ag Nanocatalysts for Reduction of Nitro Compounds and Selective Hydration of Nitriles to Amides in Water

As hybrid nanostructures have become more important in many fields of chemistry, Ag nanoparticles (NPs) are being increasingly immobilized onto Fe3O4 microspheres in situ. Structural characterization reveals that the Ag NPs are uniformly immobilized in the Fe3O4 microsphere-based supports. Moreover, Ag NPs are more stable in the hybrid structure than in the naked state and show high catalytic activity for the reduction of nitro compounds and hydration of nitriles to amides in water. The Fe3O4 microspheres were recycled several times using an external magnet.
Exploiting Criticality to Reduce Branch Misprediction Penalties

Conditional control instructions (branches) have long been a bottleneck for microprocessors. To overcome this bottleneck architects are now predicting the direction and target of branches. However, while years of research has led to increasing accuracy of branch prediction, the penalty of a branch misprediction has been increasing do to increasing pipeline depths. In this paper, we attempt to use a small cache to reduce the penalty of branch mispredictions, allowing for more aggressive pipelining and clock cycle scaling. Based on Brian Fields and Ras Bodik's previous work on criticality, we conduct an in-depth analysis on branch mispredictions' impact on the performance of a modern microprocessor. We introduce a criteria called “critical D chains” that identifies the branches that will be most harmful if mispredicted. Once the most important branches are identified, we reduce the branch misprediction penalty by using a small trace cache and using predicted criticality as the basis for our replacement policy. Our cache resulted in small, but noticeable gains, leading us to believe that with more engineering work, the concept of long critical D chains can be used to effectively decrease the affect of branch mispredictions on overall IPC (Instructions per Cycle).
3 D LASER SYSTEM FOR SHELL DIMENSION MEASUREMENT DURING FORGING

Measuring the dimensions of large hot metallic shells during forging is very important in order to decide when to stop the forging process. However, it is a difficult and dangerous operation for the blacksmiths due to the high temperature of the shell that ranges from 700°C to 1200°C depending on at which stage in the forging process the measurement is done. The earlier the measurement is done, the higher is the temperature, and the later it is done the lower is the temperature due to the fact that the shell cools down with time. In order to improve the working conditions, for the safety of the blacksmiths, and for a faster and more accurate measurement, a system based on two commercially available Time Of Flight (TOF) laser scanners for the measurement of cylindrical shell diameters during the forging process has been developed. The advantages of using laser scanners are that they can be placed very far from the hot shell, more than 15 meters, while at the same time giving an accurate point cloud from which 3D views of the shell can be reconstructed and diameter measurements done. Moreover, better dimensional measurement accuracy is achieved in less time with the laser system than with the conventional method using a large ruler. The system has been successfully used to measure the diameter of cold and hot cylindrical metallic shells.
An algorithm for locating microseismic events

Monitoring seismic activity in mines, produced by high stress faults in the vicinity of the mining operations, is an important issue for mine safety. A seismic event produces a short-time duration acoustic pressure wave that travels through the rock. This low-energy seismic activity in mines is typically referred to as microseismic events. The location of a microseismic event can be estimated using the pressure wave signals recorded at a set of sensors distributed throughout the mine. The classical process for locating a radiating source involves two steps: an estimation of the time difference of arrival between all sensor pairs followed by the localization, requiring the solution of a set of non-linear equations. This traditional localization process has limited success when applied to microseismic events, since they have a short-time duration, and thus generating accurate arrival time estimates is a challenging task in a noisy environment. An alternate approach to traditional localization, that avoids time-delay estimation, is to search over a grid of hypothesized source locations to find the one that best explains the observed measurements. Here, this approach is used with a performance function that is the greatest energy calculated from the sum of the sensor signals, each of which is time-shifted by an amount consistent with the hypothesized location of the event. The result is a very robust algorithm that works well with short-time duration signals and given the recent advances in low-cost computational power can be implemented in real time. The paper describes the location algorithm. Results are presented for computer generated signals as well as actual signals produced by a microseismic event that occurred one kilometer below the surface in a potash mine near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
The constant radiance term

The proposed method accelerates the computation of multiple interreflections in non-diffuse environments or the solution of the rendering equation. The method is suited for closed environments. It is a generalization of the constant radiosity step introduced for diffuse environments and does not require geometrical or visibility information, nor the calculation of form factors. A constant radiance is extracted from the solution in every surface point and every direction. We choose this constant value so that the average selfemitted power of the residuum problem is zero. The self-emitting term of the residuum problem can either be positive or negative. Direction dependency is determined by the albedo function of the characteristic BRDF of the surface. This function can easily be pretabulated and it is used frequently throughout this paper. The residuum problem can be solved faster or with reduced variance by all known non-diffuse methods: different versions of distribution ray tracing, proper methods of radiosity, and hybrid solutions. The acceleration achieved by the proposed method can be significant for bright environments.
0 60 90 57 v 1 2 1 Se p 20 06 Integrable Models From Twisted Half Loop Algebras

This paper is devoted to the construction of new integrable quantum-mechanical models based on certain subalgebras of the half loop algebra of gl N . Various results about these subalgebras are proven by presenting them in the notation of the St Petersburg school. These results are then used to demonstrate the integrability, and find the symmetries, of two types of physical system: twisted Gaudin magnets, and Calogero-type models of particles on several half-lines meeting at a point. nc501@york.ac. uk charlesyoung@cantab.net
of IL-2-Inducible T Cell Kinase Activation-Induced Cell Death in the Absence Defective Fas Ligand Expression and

The Tec family tyrosine kinase, IL-2-inducible T cell kinase (Itk), plays an important role in TCR signaling. Studies of T cells from Itk-deﬁcient mice have demonstrated that Itk is critical for the activation of phospholipase-C (cid:1) 1, leading to calcium mobilization in response to TCR stimulation. This biochemical defect results in reduced IL-2 production by Itk-deﬁcient T cells. To further characterize the downstream effects of the Itk deﬁciency, we crossed Itk (cid:2) / (cid:2) mice to a TCR-transgenic line and examined T cell responses to stimulation by peptide plus APC. These studies show that Itk is required for maximal activation of early growth responses 2 and 3 and Fas ligand transcription after TCR stimulation. These transcriptional defects lead to reduced activation-induced cell death of stimulated Itk (cid:2) / (cid:2) T cells, both in vitro and in vivo. Together these studies deﬁne an important role for Itk in TCR signaling, leading to cytokine gene expression and activation-induced cell death. The Journal of Immunology, 2002, 168: 2163–2172.
Auto-extracting Paraphrases of Letter-word Phrases in Live Texts

In this paper we will discuss the Auto-extraction of paraphrases of letter-word phrases in live Chinese texts. The paper discusses the modes of conventional dictionaries firstly, and then gives the principles of paraphrase of letter-word phrases; with an analysis of the examples of letter-word phrases paraphrases secondly, and then gives their formalized denotations and presents an auto-recognizing algorithm for bilingual synonymous letter-word phrases; lastly, based on the labeled result of our auto-labeling software of letter-word phrase, uses the vector space distance to extract the paraphrase of letter-word phrases in live Chinese texts.
Interferometric SAR Coherence Models for Characterization of Hemiboreal Forests Using TanDEM-X Data

In this study, four models describing the interferometric coherence of the forest vegetation layer are proposed and compared with the TanDEM-X data. Our focus is on developing tools for hemiboreal forest height estimation from single-pol interferometric SAR measurements, suitable for wide area forest mapping with limited a priori information. The multi-temporal set of 19 TanDEM-X interferometric pairs and the 90th percentile forest height maps are derived from Airborne LiDAR Scanning (ALS), covering an area of 2211 ha of forests over Estonia. Three semi-empirical models along with the Random Volume over Ground (RVoG) model are examined for applicable parameter ranges and model performance under various conditions for over 3000 forest stands. This study shows that all four models performed well in describing the relationship between forest height and interferometric coherence. Use of an advanced model with multiple parameters is not always justified when modeling the volume decorrelation in the boreal and hemiboreal forests. The proposed set of semi-empirical models, show higher robustness compared to a more advanced RVoG model under a range of seasonal and environmental conditions during data acquisition. We also examine the dynamic range of parameters that different models can take and propose optimal conditions for forest stand height inversion for operationally-feasible scenarios.
Physiological Temperatures Reduce the Rate of Vesicle Pool Depletion and Short-Term Depression via an Acceleration of Vesicle Recruitment

The timing and strength of synaptic transmission is profoundly dependent on temperature. However, the temperature dependence of the multiple mechanisms that contribute to short-term synaptic plasticity is poorly understood. Here, we use voltage-clamp recordings to quantify the temperature dependence of exocytosis at the calyx of Held synapse. EPSC and miniature EPSC amplitudes were larger at physiological temperature, but quantal content during low-frequency (0.05 Hz) stimulation was constant after temperature jumps from 22–24°C to 35–37°C. The initial degree of EPSC depression during 100 Hz stimuli trains was unchanged with temperature, as were estimates of release probability and vesicle pool size. In contrast, physiological temperatures dramatically relieved depression measured after 40 stimuli at 100 Hz by increasing twofold the rate of recovery from depression. Presynaptic calyx recordings revealed that physiological temperature increased capacitance jumps resulting from 0.5 and 1 ms depolarizations by increasing Ca2+ influx. When Ca2+ entry was equalized at the two temperatures, exocytosis exhibited little temperature dependence for brief depolarizations. However, in response to longer depolarizations, raising temperature increased a slow phase of exocytosis, without affecting overall Ca2+ entry or the size of the readily releasable pool of vesicles. Higher temperatures also increased the rate of presynaptic Ca2+ current inactivation; nevertheless, the degree of steady-state EPSC depression was greatly reduced. Our results thus suggest that changes in steady-state EPSCs during stimulus trains at physiological temperature reflect larger quantal amplitudes and faster refilling of synaptic vesicle pools, leading to reduced short-term depression during prolonged high-frequency firing.
Incremental, distributed single-linkage hierarchical clustering algorithm using mapreduce

Single-linkage hierarchical clustering is one of the prominent and widely-used data mining techniques for its informative representation of clustering results. However, the parallelization of this algorithm is challenging as it exhibits inherent data dependency during the hierarchical tree construction. Moreover, in many modern applications, new data is continuously added into the already huge datasets. It would be impractical to reapply the clustering algorithm on the augmented datasets from scratch. In this paper, we propose a unified algorithm which can not only cluster the large dataset, but also incorporate the newly arrived data incrementally. More specifically, we formulate the single-linkage hierarchical clustering problem as a Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) construction problem on a complete graph. The algorithm decomposes the complete graph into a set of non-overlapped subgraphs, computes the intermediate sub-MSTs for each subgraph in parallel, and merges all the sub-MSTs to achieve the final solution. In addition, the same framework can treat the incremental data insertion as a separate data subset and integrate it nicely with the existing solution. We implement the unified algorithm by employing MapReduce framework. Using both synthetic and real-world datasets containing up to millions of high-dimensional points, we show that the proposed algorithm achieves a scalable speedup up to 200 on 300 computer cores for the base dataset and a speedup up to 120 for the dataset with maximum 5% random insertion.
Testing and Comparing Tachyon Inflation to Single Standard Field Inflation

We compare the standard single scalar field inflationary predictions with those of an inflationary phase driven by a tachyon field. A slow-roll formalism is defined for tachyon inflation and we derive the spectra of scalar and tensor perturbations as well as the consistency relations. At lowest order the predictions of standard and tachyon inflation are the same. Higher order deviations are present and their observational relevance is discussed. We discuss the observational consequences of some typical inflationary tachyon potentials and compare them with recent data. All the models predict a negative and very small running of the scalar spectral index, and they consistently lie within the 1$\sigma$ contour of the data set. However, the regime of blue scalar spectral index and large gravity waves is not explored by these models.