Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Techniques and Applications for Persistent Backgrounding in a Humanoid Torso Robot

One of the most basic capabilities for an agent with a vision system is to recognize its own surroundings. Yet surprisingly, despite the ease of doing so, many robots store little or no record of their own visual surroundings. This paper explores the utility of keeping the simplest possible persistent record of the environment of a stationary torso robot, in the form of a collection of images captured from various pan-tilt angles around the robot. We demonstrate that this particularly simple process of storing background images can be useful for a variety of tasks, and can relieve the system designer of certain requirements as well. We explore three uses for such a record: auto-calibration, novel object detection with a moving camera, and developing attentional saliency maps.
Efficient removal of unwanted signals in NMR spectra using the filter diagonalization method

It is often desirable to selectively remove corrupting or uninteresting signals from complex NMR spectra without disturbing overlapping or nearby signals. For biofluids in particular, removal of solvent and urea signals is important for retaining quantitative accuracy in NMR‐based metabonomics. This article presents a novel algorithm for efficient filtering of unwanted signals using the filter diagonalization method (FDM). Unwanted signals are modeled in the time domain using FDM. This modeled signal is subtracted from the original free induction decay. The resulting corrected signal is then processed using established workflow. The algorithm is found to be reliable and fast. By eliminating large, broad, uninteresting signals, many spectra can be subjected to fully automated absolute value processing, allowing objective preparation of spectra for pattern recognition analysis. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Ultra-Precision Cutting of Brittle Materials with Ultrasonic Vibrated Diamond Tool

The influence of the ultrasonic vibrated diamond tool on the transition of ductile cutting to brittle cutting of the glasses is investigated by facing turning. It is understood that the critical depth of cut for the ductile cutting of the brittle materials is increased obviously by the ultrasonic vibrated diamond tool. The optical quality surface of the glasses is obtained, the surface roughness of which is less than0.03m. Finally, the relation between the roughness of machined surface and the cutting distance is studied experimentally.
Human pose tracking in low dimensional space enhanced by limb correction

This paper proposes a two-level 3D human pose tracking method for a specific action captured by several cameras. The generation of pose estimates relies on fitting a 3D articulated model on a Visual Hull generated from the input images. First, an initial pose estimate is constrained by a low dimensional manifold learnt by Temporal Laplacian Eigenmaps. Then, an improved global pose is calculated by refining individual limb poses. The validation of our method uses a public standard dataset and demonstrates its accurate and computational efficiency.
Eliminating cache conflict misses through XOR-based placement functions

This paper makes the case for the use of XOR-based placement functions for cache memories. It shows that these XOR-mapping schemes can eliminate many conflict misses for direct-mapped and victim caches and practically all of them for (pseudo) two-way associative organizations. The paper evaluates the performance of XOR-mapping schemes for a number of different cache organizations: direct-mapped, set-associative, victim, hash-rehash, column-associative and skewed-associative. It also proposes novel replacement policies for some of these cache organizations. In particular, it presents a low-cost implementation of a pure LRU replacement policy which demonstrates a significant improvement over the pseudo-LRU replacement previously proposed. The paper shows that for a 8 Kbyte data cache, XOR-mapping schemes approximately halve the miss ratio for two-way associative and column-associative organizations. Skewed-associative caches, which already make use of XOR-mapping functions, can benefit from the LRU replacement and also from the use of more sophisticated mapping functions. For two-way associative, columnassociative and two-way skewed-associative organizations, XORmapping schemes achieve a miss ratio that is not higher than 1.10 times that of a fully-associative cache. XOR mapping schemes also provide a very significant reduction in the miss ratio for the other cache organizations, including the direct-mapped cache. Ultimately, the conclusion of this study is that XOR-based placement functions unequivocally provide highly significant performance benefits to most cache organizations.
Hierarchically Clustered P2P Streaming System

Peer-to-peer video streaming has been gaining popularity. However, it is still challenging to manage a P2P system efficiently to support high video playback rate. In this paper, we propose HCPS - Hierarchically Clustered P2P Streaming system that can support a streaming rate approaching the optimum upper bound with short delay, yet is simple enough to be implemented in practice. In HCPS, the peers are grouped into clusters and a hierarchy is formed among clusters to retrieve video data from the source server. By actively balancing the uploading capacities among clusters, and executing the perfect scheduling algorithm [1] within each cluster, the system resource can be fully utilized. The simulation experiments driven by the traces collected from a real P2P streaming system demonstrate the effectiveness of HCPS.
Meta-Prediction for Collective Classification

When data instances are inter-related, as are nodes in a social network or hyperlink graph, algorithms for collective classification (CC) can significantly improve accuracy. Recently, an algorithm for CC named Cautious ICA (ICAC) was shown to improve accuracy compared to the popular ICA algorithm. ICAC improves performance by initially favoring its more confident predictions during collective inference. In this paper, we introduce ICAMC, a new algorithm that outperforms ICAC when the attributes that describe each node are not highly predictive. ICAMC learns a meta-classifier that identifies which node label predictions are most likely to be correct. We show that this approach significantly increases accuracy on a range of real and synthetic data sets. We also describe new features for the meta-classifier and demonstrate that a simple search can identify an effective feature set that increases accuracy.
AGENT-BASED SUPPLY CHAIN SIMULATION: TOWARDS AN ORGANIZATION-ORIENTED METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK

The Supply Chain (SC) organizational structure, and related management policies, is an important fac- tor that can be adjusted to improve the SC performance, which consequently has to be taken into account in the SC modeling and simulation. In the context of an agent-based SC simulation, this paper addresses a new methodological framework, organizationally oriented, which permits modeling and simulation of such SC organizational aspects, al- lowing observables of different levels of details while reproducing the SC behavior according to desired observables. This methodological framework is structured according to two main abstraction levels, a conceptual level and an op- erational level. At the conceptual level, a Conceptual Role Organizational Model (CROM) is produced, and then re- fined into a Conceptual Agent Organizational Model (CAOM). At operational level, CAOM model is translated into an OPerational Agent Model (OPAM) which will be implemented and simulated in a specific agent based software archi- tecture briefly introduced in this paper.
Get in My Belly: Food Preferences Trigger Approach and Avoidant Postural Asymmetries

Appetitive motivational states are fundamental neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying healthy and abnormal eating behavior, though their dynamic influence on food-related behavior is unknown. The present study examined whether personal food-related preferences would activate approach and avoidance systems, modulating spontaneous postural sway toward and away from food items. Participants stood on a balance board that collected real-time data regarding postural sway along two axes (x, y) while they viewed a series of images depicting food items varying in nutritional value and individual preferences. Overall, participants showed reliable postural sway toward highly preferred and away from highly non-preferred items. This effect became more pronounced over time; sway along the mediolateral axis showed no reliable variation by preference. Results carry implications for two-factor (homeostatic versus hedonic) neurobehavioral theories of hunger and appetitive motivation, and carry applied clinical implications for the measurement and management of abnormal eating behavior.
Transfer Learning from APP Domain to News Domain for Dual Cold-Start Recommendation

News recommendation has been a must-have service for most mobile device users to know what has happened in the world. In this paper, we focus on recommending latest news articles to new users, which consists of the new user coldstart challenge and the new item (i.e., news article) coldstart challenge, and is thus termed as dual cold-start recommendation (DCSR). As a response, we propose a solution called neighborhood-based transfer learning (NTL) for this new problem. Specifically, in order to address the new user cold-start challenge, we propose a cross-domain preference assumption, i.e., users with similar app-installation behaviors are likely to have similar tastes in news articles, and then transfer the knowledge of neighborhood of the coldstart users from an APP domain to a news domain. For the new item cold-start challenge, we design a category-level preference to replace the traditional item-level preference because the latter is not applicable for the new items in our problem. We then conduct empirical studies on a real industry data with both users’ app-installation behaviors and news-reading behaviors, and find that our NTL is able to deliver the news articles more accurately than other methods on different ranking-oriented evaluation metrics.
Estimating Matching Games with Transfers

I explore the estimation of transferable utility matching games, encompassing many-to-many matching, marriage and matching with trading networks (trades). I introduce a matching maximum score estimator that does not suffer from a computational curse of dimensionality in the number of agents in a matching market. I apply the estimator to data on the car parts supplied by automotive suppliers to estimate the returns from different portfolios of parts to suppliers and automotive assemblers.
Optical properties of unprotected and protected sputtered silver films: Surface morphology vs. UV/VIS reflectance

Abstract The optical properties of opaque sputtered silver films are investigated and related to their surface morphology. As reference, an evaporated sample produced by thermal flash evaporation has been studied, too. Standard optical and electrical characterizations as well as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray reflectometry have been carried out with unprotected silver films directly after deposition and reveal strong correlations between the corresponding characterization results. The aging behavior of the normal incidence reflectance has been studied over a time period of 36 weeks. Protected silver mirrors have been prepared by sputtering using silica and alumina as the protective coating. It is shown by model calculations that the main spectral features occurring in the reflectance spectra of as-deposited unprotected coatings, unprotected coatings after aging, and protected coatings can be reproduced assuming a rough silver surface covered by a corresponding ultrathin absorbing interface layer or overlayer.
mTOR Inhibition Rejuvenates the Aging Gingival Fibroblasts through Alleviating Oxidative Stress

The aging periodontium may be vulnerable to periodontal pathogens and poor response to inflammation and susceptible to tumorigenesis. Human gingival fibroblasts (hGFs) through continuously replicative culture served as an in vitro surrogate for aging. To investigate the effects of the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibition on the aging gingiva, we stimulated the high-passage hGFs with rapamycin (20 nmol/L) for 3 days and 30 days. The cellular and biological changes were examined by immunofluorescence, real-time PCR, ELISA, Western blotting, and flow cytometry. The data demonstrated that the inhibition of mTOR signaling led to fewer senescence-associated beta-galactosidase- (SA-β-Gal-) positive cells, delayed the onset of senescence, preserved the capability of proliferation, and lowered the expression levels of relevant senescence-associated markers, such as p16INK4a, p21CIP1a, interleukin-6 (IL-6), and IL-8. In addition, when infected by prominent periodontal pathogens, Porphyromonas gingivalis (ATCC 33277), rapamycin-pretreated groups decreased the expression of inflammatory cytokines (IL-6 and IL-8) compared with the control group. mTOR inhibition upregulated the gene expression of antioxidant components (Cat, Sod2, and Prdx3; P < 0.05) and consequently neutralized the excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS). In conclusion, our results indicated that mTOR inhibition might rejuvenate the aging gingiva to some extent and relieve inflammation through eliminating oxidative stress.
Translation Quality-Based Supplementary Data Selection by Incremental Update of Translation Models

Supplementary data selection from out-of-domain or related-domain data is a well established technique in domain adaptation of statistical machine translation. The selection criteria for such data are mostly based on measures of similarity with available in-domain data, but not directly in terms of translation quality. In this paper, we present a technique for selecting supplementary data to improve translation performance, directly in terms of translation quality, measured by automatic evaluation metric scores. Batches of data selected from out-of-domain corpora are incrementally added to an existing baseline system and evaluated in terms of translation quality on a development set. A batch is selected only if its inclusion improves translation quality. To assist the process, we present a novel translation model merging technique that allows rapid retraining of the translation models with incremental data. When incorporated into the ‘in-domain’ translation models, the final cumulatively selected datasets are found to provide statistically significant improvements for a number of different supplementary datasets. Furthermore, the translation model merging technique is found to perform on a par with state-of-the-art methods of phrase-table combination.
Trinity: a distributed graph engine on a memory cloud

Computations performed by graph algorithms are data driven, and require a high degree of random data access. Despite the great progresses made in disk technology, it still cannot provide the level of efficient random access required by graph computation. On the other hand, memory-based approaches usually do not scale due to the capacity limit of single machines. In this paper, we introduce Trinity, a general purpose graph engine over a distributed memory cloud. Through optimized memory management and network communication, Trinity supports fast graph exploration as well as efficient parallel computing. In particular, Trinity leverages graph access patterns in both online and offline computation to optimize memory and communication for best performance. These enable Trinity to support efficient online query processing and offline analytics on large graphs with just a few commodity machines. Furthermore, Trinity provides a high level specification language called TSL for users to declare data schema and communication protocols, which brings great ease-of-use for general purpose graph management and computing. Our experiments show Trinity's performance in both low latency graph queries as well as high throughput graph analytics on web-scale, billion-node graphs.
Laser cladding of rail steel with Co–Cr

Degradation and subsequent failure of rail tracks are commonly caused by rolling contact fatigue among other mechanisms of wear. Rail crossings are known to exhibit more of these failures due to increased localised traffic and environmental conditions. A high proportion of the costs associated with the repair of rail tracks was due to the rolling contact fatigue phenomenon. In order to mitigate these costs, laser cladding of worn regions has been proposed for the repair of used tracks in situ to limit the need for them to be replaced and for the preservice protection of newly rolled rails and cast crossings. A Co–Cr, Stellite 6, alloy is chosen to demonstrate repair and also surface coating/protection of R260 rail steel. Results showed that cladded Stellite 6 possessed improved hardness, good tribological performance and excellent workhardening ability when compared with rail steel. These demonstrate laser cladding as a viable solution for repair worn rail track.
Validation of the integrated upward–horizontal–downward wicking test for providing intensive properties of textile fabrics

Traditional wicking tests provide information that is specific to the test fluid, apparatus, and conditions. As a result, this information cannot be used to make predictions about wicking rates beyond the respective test parameters. In contrast, a new upward–horizontal–downward (UHD) wicking test has been presented that provides intensive properties of fabrics in the form of permeability (k) and effective capillary radius (R c) as functions of saturation (S). The UHD test was developed using water as the test fluid. If the k–S–R c relationships are truly intrinsic to a given fabric, then they should not depend on the test fluid. Here, we conducted the UHD test on a knit fabric using three different test fluids characterized by different surface tensions, densities, and viscosities: dodecane, tetradecane, and hexadecane. All fluids fall on the same k vs. S and k vs. R c curves, proving that these curves are intrinsic characteristics of the fabric. We then used the k–S–R c properties to successfully predict the in-plane horizontal and downward wicking rates of two different fluids, octanol and water, in the fabric. These results validate the UHD wicking test as a method for providing intensive properties of textile fabrics which can then be used for predicting wicking rates.
Numerical simulations of epitaxial growth process in MOVPE reactor as a tool for design of modern semiconductors for high power electronics

In the present study numerical simulations of epitaxial growth of gallium nitride in Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy reactor AIX-200/4RF-S is addressed. Epitaxial growth means crystal growth that progresses while inheriting the laminar structure and the orientation of substrate crystals. One of the technological problems is to obtain homogeneous growth rate over the main deposit area. Since there are many agents influencing reaction on crystal area such as temperature, pressure, gas flow or reactor geometry, it is difficult to design optimal process. According to the fact that it's impossible to determine experimentally the exact distribution of heat and mass transfer inside the reactor during crystal growth, modeling is the only solution to understand the process precisely. Numerical simulations allow to understand the epitaxial process by calculation of heat and mass transfer distribution during growth of gallium nitride. Including chemical reactions in numerical model allows to calculate the growth rate of the substrate and estimate the optimal process conditions for obtaining the most homogeneous product.
Calculation of Efficiencies of a Ship Power Plant Operating with Waste Heat Recovery through Combined Heat and Power Production

The aim of this research was to investigate the possibility of a combined heat & power (CHP) plant, using the waste heat from a Suezmax-size oil tanker’s main engine, to meet all heating and electricity requirements during navigation. After considering various configurations, a standard propulsion engine operating at maximum efficiency, combined with a supercritical Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) system, was selected to supply the auxiliary power, using R245fa or R123 as the working fluid. The system analysis showed that such a plant can meet all heat and electrical power requirements at full load, with the need to burn only a small amount of supplementary fuel in a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) when the main engine operates at part load. Therefore, it is possible to increase the overall thermal efficiency of the ship’s power plant by more than 5% when the main engine operates at 65% or more of its specified maximum continuous rating ( SMCR ).
SPIROU: constrained exploration for mechanical motion design

Mechanisms are ubiquitous in our daily lives, and the motion they are able to transmit is often a critical part of their function. While fabrication from a virtual model can be done relatively easily in a fab lab, creating or customizing a model according to functional specifications remains a challenging task. We focus on a fascinating application: drawing machines. Devices such as the popular Spirograph can easily generate intricate patterns from an assembly of simple mechanical elements. Designing such machines, however, is made particularly tedious by the complex influence each configuration parameter has on the final drawing. We propose a novel constrained exploration method that enables a user to easily explore feasible drawings by directly indicating pattern preferences at different levels of control. The user starts by selecting a target pattern with the help of construction lines and rough sketching, and then fine-tunes it by prescribing geometric features of interest directly on the drawing. The designed pattern can then be directly realized with an easy-to-fabricate drawing machine. The key technical challenge is to allow the user to effectively explore the high dimensional configuration space of such fabricable machines. To this end, we propose a novel method that dynamically reparameterizes the local configuration space in order to allow the user to explore drawing variations while preserving user-specified feature constraints. We tested our framework on several examples, conducted a user study, and fabricated a sample of the designed examples.
Antibodies to Ehrlichia equi in dogs from the northeastern United States.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether dogs living in tickinfested areas of the northeastern United States had been exposed to Ehrlichia equi, an etiologic agent of granulocytic ehrlichiosis. DESIGN Analyses of dog sera. ANIMALS 106 ill dogs and 12 clinically normal dogs. PROCEDURE Antibodies to E equi were detected by indirect fluorescent antibody staining methods and western blot analyses. RESULTS 10 of 106 (9.4%) sera tested from ill, privately owned dogs living in tick-infested areas of Connecticut and New York state had antibodies to E equi, a member of the E phagocytophila genogroup. Titration end points ranged from 1:80 to 1:1,280. Immunoblots revealed antibodies to proteins of E equi having molecular masses of predominantly 29, 40, 44, 105, 120, and 160 kd. There was good agreement between results of serologic testing methods, but use of the human isolate (NCH-1 strain) in western blot analyses detected 2 additional seropositive dogs found to be negative by indirect fluorescent antibody staining methods with the MRK strain. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS Dogs living in areas where ixodes scapularis is abundant may be exposed to multiple pathogens, such as E equi or Borrelia burgdorferi. Although mild or subclinical infections with E equi may develop, dogs with marked leukopenia, thrombocytopenia, or anemia should be viewed as possibly having ehrlichiosis. Laboratory diagnosis should include examinations for morulae in granulocytes or monocytes in addition to serologic analyses.