Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perceptual Evaluation of Motion Editing for Realistic Throwing Animations

Animation budget constraints during the development of a game often call for the use of a limited set of generic motions. Editing operations are thus generally required to animate virtual characters with a sufficient level of variety. Evaluating the perceptual plausibility of edited animations can therefore contribute greatly towards producing visually plausible animations. In this article, we study observers’ sensitivity to manipulations of overarm and underarm biological throwing animations. In the first experiment, we modified the release velocity of the ball while leaving the motion of the virtual thrower and the angle of release of the ball unchanged. In the second experiment, we evaluated the possibility of further modifying throwing animations by simultaneously editing the motion of the thrower and the release velocity of the ball, using dynamic time warping. In both experiments, we found that participants perceived shortened underarm throws to be particularly unnatural. We also found that modifying the thrower's motion in addition to modifying the release velocity of the ball does not significantly improve the perceptual plausibility of edited throwing animations. In the third experiment, we modified the angle of release of the ball while leaving the magnitude of release velocity and the motion of the thrower unchanged, and found that this editing operation is efficient for improving the perceptual plausibility of shortened underarm throws. Finally, in Experiment 4, we replaced the virtual human thrower with a mechanical throwing device (a ramp) and found the opposite pattern of sensitivity to modifications of the release velocity, indicating that biological and physical throws are subject to different perceptual rules. Our results provide valuable guidelines for developers of games and virtual reality applications by specifying thresholds for the perceptual plausibility of throwing manipulations while also providing several interesting insights for researchers in visual perception of biological motion.
Vulnerability Discovery with Attack Injection

The increasing reliance put on networked computer systems demands higher levels of dependability. This is even more relevant as new threats and forms of attack are constantly being revealed, compromising the security of systems. This paper addresses this problem by presenting an attack injection methodology for the automatic discovery of vulnerabilities in software components. The proposed methodology, implemented in AJECT, follows an approach similar to hackers and security analysts to discover vulnerabilities in network-connected servers. AJECT uses a specification of the server's communication protocol and predefined test case generation algorithms to automatically create a large number of attacks. Then, while it injects these attacks through the network, it monitors the execution of the server in the target system and the responses returned to the clients. The observation of an unexpected behavior suggests the presence of a vulnerability that was triggered by some particular attack (or group of attacks). This attack can then be used to reproduce the anomaly and to assist the removal of the error. To assess the usefulness of this approach, several attack injection campaigns were performed with 16 publicly available POP and IMAP servers. The results show that AJECT could effectively be used to locate vulnerabilities, even on well-known servers tested throughout the years.
Surprises in the orbital magnetic moment and g factor of the dynamic Jahn-Teller ion C60-

We calculate the magnetic susceptibility and g factor of the isolated ${\mathrm{C}}_{60}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}}$ ion at zero temperature, with a proper treatment of the dynamical Jahn-Teller effect, the associated orbital angular momentum, the Ham-reduced gyromagnetic ratio, and the molecular spin-orbit coupling. A number of surprises emerge. First, the predicted molecular spin-orbit splitting is two orders of magnitude smaller than in the bare carbon atom, due to the large radius of curvature of the molecule. Second, this reduced spin-orbit splitting is comparable to Zeeman energies, for instance, in X-band electron paramagnetic resonance at 3.39 kGauss, and a field dependence of the g factor is predicted. Third, the orbital gyromagnetic factor is strongly reduced by vibron coupling, and so therefore are the effective weak-field g factors of all low-lying states. In particular, the ground-state doublet of ${\mathrm{C}}_{60}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}}$ is predicted to show a negative g factor of \ensuremath{\sim}-0.1. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
Autonomous Interpretation of the Microstructure of Steels and Special Alloys

The main objective of presented research is an attempt of application of techniques taken from a dynamically developing field of image analysis based on Artificial Intelligence, particularly on Deep Learning, in classification of steel microstructures. Our research focused on developing and implementation of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) for classification of different types of steel microstructure photographs received from the light microscopy at the TU Bergakademie, Freiberg. First, brief presentation of the idea of the system based on DCNN is given. Next, the results of tests of developed classification system on 8 different types (classes) of microstructure of the following different steel grades: C15, C45, C60, C80, V33, X70 and carbide free steel. The DCNN based classification systems require numerous training data and the system accuracy strongly depend on the size of these data. Therefore, created data set of numerous micrograph images of different types of microstructure (33283 photographs) gave the opportunity to develop high precision classification systems and segmentation routines, reaching the accuracy of 99.8%. Presented results confirm, that DCNN can be a useful tool in microstructure classification.
Pattern Discovery and Computational Mechanics

Computational mechanics is a method for discovering, describing and quantifying patterns, using tools from statistical physics. It contructs optimal, minimal models of stochastic processes and their underlying causal structures. These models tell us about the intrinsic computation embedded within a process -- how it stores and transforms information. Here we summarize the mathematics of computational mechanics, especially recent optimality and uniqueness results. We also expound the principles and motivations underlying computational mechanics, emphasizing its connections to the minimum description length principle, PAC theory, and other aspects of machine learning.
On the Use of Small Microphone Arrays for Wave Field Synthesis Auralization

The synthesis of a captured sound field with preservation of its perceptual properties is called auralization. Data-based Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) auralization makes use of a set of measured impulse responses along an array of microphone positions. However, a considerable array size must be employed for having an appropriate angular resolution. In this paper, we explore the possibilities of time-frequency analysis for WFS auralization using the signals acquired from an array of closely-spaced microphones. The aim is to reproduce in WFS a sound scene captured by a small microphone array, while preserving the spatial impression of the original sound. To this end, time-frequency Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) estimates are used to obtain a set of directional audio components extracted from the recorded microphone signals. These components are later synthesized as spatially distributed plane waves using WFS. Additionally, high-power components are synthesized as point sources to improve localization stability for multiple listeners or when listeners move inside the listening area.
A Systematic Framework to Optimize Launch Times of Web Apps

Web Applications typically have longer launch times compared to native applications, especially upon device boot up or if the browser is not already running in the background. In this paper, we propose an approach to speed up the launch time for web applications, by considering the user's usage of web applications and pre-launching the predicted web applications. We provide implementation details of our model and perform experiments on various web applications to measure the effectiveness of the framework for fast launch of the applications after the device boots.
Roles of the Board in Amateur Sport Organizations

Limited empirical data on the roles associated with boards of directors in nonprofit organizations are available, yet understanding the work of boards is vital to ensure the roles desired by organizational members and the roles required by the organization are being fulfilled. The roles or functions of boards in nonprofit organizations, as found in the management literature, were used to explore the roles associated with a sample of nonprofit amateur sport organizations. Data were generated from a survey of executive directors, volunteer presidents, and volunteer board members of sport organizations housed at Ontario's Provincial Sport Centre in Toronto. The survey data yielded a 4-factor subscale providing support for a theoretical perspective in assessing roles of the board in mission, planning, executive director, and community relations areas. Similarities and differences of respondents by gender and position on ratings of importance and performance for the board roles were explored with implications .
Extraction of Lexical Translations from Non-Aligned Corpora

A method for extracting lexical translations from non-aligned corpora is proposed to cope with the unavailability of large aligned corpus. The assumption that "translations of two co-occurring words in a source language also co-occur in the target language" is adopted and represented in the stochastic matrix formulation. The translation matrix provides the co-occurring information translated from the source into the target. This translated co-occurring information should resemble that of the original in the target when the ambiguity of the translational relation is resolved. An algorithm to obtain the best translation matrix is introduced. Some experiments were performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the ambiguity resolution and the refinement of the dictionary.
Reachability computations for constrained discrete-time systems with state-and input-dependent disturbances

This paper presents new results that permit the computation of the set of states that can be robustly steered, using state feedback, to a given target set in a finite number of steps. It is assumed that the system is discrete-time, nonlinear, time-invariant and subject to mixed constraints on the state and input. A persistent disturbance, dependent on the current state and input, acts on the system. The results in this paper generalize previously published results that are not able to address state-input dependent disturbances. The application of the results to the computation of the maximal robustly controlled invariant set is briefly discussed. It is shown how polyhedral algebra, linear programming and computational geometry may be employed for set computations relevant to the analysis of linear and piecewise affine systems with additive state disturbances. Some simple examples are given to demonstrate that convexity of the robustly controllable sets cannot be guaranteed even if all relevant sets are convex and the system is linear.
Urinary kidney injury molecule 1 and incidence of heart failure in elderly men

There is growing recognition of the clinical importance of cardiorenal syndrome—the bidirectional interplay between kidney and cardiac dysfunction. Yet, the role of kidney tubular damage in the development of heart failure is less studied. The objective of this study was to investigate whether urinary kidney injury molecule (KIM)‐1, a specific marker of tubular damage, predisposes to an increased heart failure risk.
Nested Association Mapping for Identification of Functional Markers

Identification of functional markers (FMs) provides information about the genetic architecture underlying complex traits. An approach that combines the strengths of linkage and association mapping, referred to as nested association mapping (NAM), has been proposed to identify FMs in many plant species. The ability to identify and resolve FMs for complex traits depends upon a number of factors including frequency of FM alleles, magnitudes of their genetic effects, disequilibrium among functional and nonfunctional markers, statistical analysis methods, and mating design. The statistical characteristics of power, accuracy, and precision to identify FMs with a NAM population were investigated using three simulation studies. The simulated data sets utilized publicly available genetic sequences and simulated FMs were identified using least-squares variable selection methods. Results indicate that FMs with simple additive genetic effects that contribute at least 5% to the phenotypic variability in at least five segregating families of a NAM population consisting of recombinant inbred progeny derived from 28 matings with a single reference inbred will have adequate power to accurately and precisely identify FMs. This resolution and power are possible even for genetic architectures consisting of disequilibrium among multiple functional and nonfunctional markers in the same genomic region, although the resolution of FMs will deteriorate rapidly if more than two FMs are tightly linked within the same amplicon. Finally, nested mating designs involving several reference parents will have a greater likelihood of resolving FMs than single reference designs.
Catadioptric omni-direction vision system based on laser illumination

Vision sensing, especially omni-directional vision can provide rich environmental information for mobile robots. However, there are several challenges in modeling and image processing of omni-directional vision, such as serious distortion and complicate image contents. This paper investigates laser structured lights based omni-directional vision, and develops the general relation between the image plane and laser plane with different convex mirrors. Therefore, the scene depth information can be obtained for map building. Simulation results show the measurement sensitivity of the four vision system. Environment measurement experiments were conducted on a mobile robot platform with the presented vision system, and the experimental results verify the vision system.
Amperometric Biosensor Based on Diamine Oxidase/Platinum Nanoparticles/Graphene/Chitosan Modified Screen-Printed Carbon Electrode for Histamine Detection

This work describes the development and optimization studies of a novel biosensor employed in the detection and quantification of histamine in freshwater fish samples. The proposed biosensor is based on a modified carbon screen-printed electrode with diamineoxidase, graphene and platinum nanoparticles, which detects the hydrogen peroxide formed by the chemical process biocatalysed by the enzyme diamine oxidase and immobilized onto the nanostructurated surface of the receptor element. The amperometric measurements with the biosensor have been implemented in buffer solution of pH 7.4, applying an optimal low potential of +0.4 V. The novel biosensor shows high sensitivity (0.0631 μA·μM), low detection limit (2.54 × 10−8 M) and a broad linear domain from 0.1 to 300 μM. The applicability in natural complex samples and the analytical parameters of this enzyme sensor have been performed in the quantification of histamine in freshwater fish. An excellent correlation among results achieved with the developed biosensor and results found with the standard method for all freshwater fish samples has been achieved.
A Certified Thread Library for Multithreaded User Programs

Ensuring the safety of multithreaded software is a task both important and challenging. Currently, most ap- proaches focus on the safety of multithreaded programs rather than the runtime based on which those concurrent programs run. In order to fundamentally solve this problem, a method of ensuring the safety of the runtime should be de- veloped. Such a runtime could be organized as a thread library typically. This paper presents the development and certification of a simple but realistic thread library. The thread library provides common multi-threading features such as dynamic thread creation, termination and joining as well. This li- brary also carries machine-checkable proof which guaran- tees the library does not violate the safety policies. This paper also presents an approach to link the library to exist- ing certified multithreaded user programs to form an inte- grated foundational proof-carrying code (FPCC) package. Comparing with the uncertified libraries, our work makes multithreaded applications much more reliable.
Hepatocyte growth factor induces proliferation and differentiation of multipotent and erythroid hemopoietic progenitors

Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is a mesenchymal derived growth factor known to induce proliferation and "scattering" of epithelial and endothelial cells. Its receptor is the tyrosine kinase encoded by the c- MET protooncogene. Here we show that highly purified recombinant HGF stimulates hemopoietic progenitors to form colonies in vitro. In the presence of erythropoietin, picomolar concentrations of HGF induced the formation of erythroid burst-forming unit colonies from CD34-positive cells purified from human bone marrow, peripheral blood, or umbilical cord blood. The growth stimulatory activity was restricted to the erythroid lineage. HGF also stimulated the formation of multipotent CFU- GEMM colonies. This effect is synergized by stem cell factor, the ligand of the tyrosine kinase receptor encoded by the c-KIT protooncogene, which is active on early hemopoietic progenitors. By flow cytometry analysis, the receptor for HGF was found to be expressed on the cell surface in a fraction of CD34+ progenitors. Moreover, in situ hybridization experiments showed that HGF receptor mRNA is highly expressed in embryonic erythroid cells (megaloblasts). HGF mRNA was also found to be produced in the embryonal liver. These data show that HGF plays a direct role in the control of proliferation and differentiation of erythroid progenitors, and they suggest that it may be one of the long-sought mediators of paracrine interactions between stromal and hemopoietic cells within the hemopoietic microenvironment.
Staphylococcus aureus genetic loci impacting growth and survival in multiple infection environments

The Gram‐positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus infects diverse tissues and causes a wide spectrum of diseases, suggesting that it possesses a repertoire of distinct molecular mechanisms promoting bacterial survival in disparate in vivo environments. Signature‐tag transposon mutagenesis screening of a 1520‐member library identified numerous S. aureus genetic loci affecting growth and survival in four complementary animal infection models including mouse abscess, bacteraemia and wound and rabbit endocarditis. Of a total of 237 in vivo attenuated mutants identified by the murine models, less than 10% showed attenuation in all three models, emphasizing the advantage of screening in diverse disease environments. The largest gene class identified by these analyses encoded peptide and amino acid transporters, some of which were important for S. aureus survival in all animal infection models tested. The identification of staphylococcal loci affecting growth, persistence and virulence in multiple tissue environments provides insight into the complexities of human infection and on the molecular mechanisms that could be targeted by new antibacterial therapies.
Non-regenerative full distributed space-time codes in cooperative relaying networks

Distributed space-time codes (DSTC) are often used in cooperative relaying networks whose relays can support a single antenna due to the limited physical size. In this paper, full DSTC protocol in which there is a data exchange between relays before forwarding signals to destination is proposed to improve the performance of a cooperative relaying system. A lower bound for the average symbol error probability (ASEP) of full DSTC cooperative relaying system in a Rayleigh fading environment is provided. In the case when the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of the relay-relay link is much greater than that of the source-relay link, the upper bound on ASEP of this system is also derived. From the simulations, we show that the average SNR gain of full DSTC system over DSTC system is 3.8dB and the maximum SNR gain is 5dB when the relay-relay distance is small and the relays are in the middle of the source and the destination. The effect of the distance between the relays shows that the performance does not degrade so much as the distance between relays is lower than a half of the source-destination distance. Moreover, we also show that when the error synchronization range is lower than 0.5, the impact of the transmission synchronization error of the relay-destination link on the performance is not considerable.
Sialendoscope-assisted transoral removal of hilo-parenchymal sub-mandibular stones: surgical results and subjective scores

SUMMARY It has been suggested that a conservative trans-oral approach to proximal and hilo-parenchymal submandibular stones (HPSMS) is a valid alternative to the more frequently used sialadenectomy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the surgical, ultrasonographic and patients' subjective outcomes of results of the trans-oral removal of HPSMS. Between January 2003 and September 2015, sialendoscope-assisted trans-oral surgery was used to remove symptomatic, large (> 7 mm), fixed and palpable HPSMS from 479 patients under general anaesthesia. All patients were followed clinically and ultrasonographically to investigate symptom relief and recurrence of stones, and were telephonically interviewed to assess saliva-related subjective outcomes with a questionnaire. Stones were successfully removed from 472 patients (98.5%); the seven failures (1.5%) concerned pure parenchymal stones. One year after the procedure, 408 patients (85.1%) were symptom free, 59 (12.3%) had recurrent obstructive symptoms and 12 (2.6%) had recurrent infections. Of the 54 patients who developed a recurrent stone (11.2%), 52 underwent a second procedure: 29 interventional sialendoscopies, two sialendoscope-assisted intra-corporeal pneumatic lithotripsy, eight secondary transoral surgery to remove residual stones, six a cycle of extra-corporeal lithotripsy and seven submandibular sialadenectomy. Most patients (75.2%) reported mild surgery-related pain. The symptoms of 454 patients (94.8%) improved after adjunctive treatment and, at the end of follow-up, the affected gland was preserved in 98.5% of patients. A sialendoscope-assisted trans-oral removal of large HPSMS is a safe, effective, conservative surgical procedure, and functional preservation of the main duct and parenchyma of the obstructed gland allows sialendoscopic access through the natural ostium in case of recurrence. Combining a trans-oral approach with other minimally invasive, conservative procedures ensures symptomatic relief and salivary duct system clearance in the majority of patients.
A NEW METHODOLOGY FOR SPATIOTEMPORAL GAME DESIGN

We propose a new formal approach for the design process of computer games, which involves the modeling of spatiotemporal relationships. Logical and temporal transactions are modeled using Petri Nets and topological relationships of the game universe by hypergraphs. For splicing these structures, we introduce connections which relate hyperedge replacement with the reachability tree of the Petri Net. By using these constructs flexible changes and the validation of certain properties of the missions can be accomplished.