Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-Hierarchical Modeling of Driving Behavior Using Dynamics-Based Mode Segmentation

This paper presents a new hierarchical mode segmentation of the observed driving behavioral data based on the multi-level abstraction of the underlying dynamics. By synthesizing the ideas of a feature vector definition revealing the dynamical characteristics and an unsupervised clustering technique, the hierarchical mode segmentation is achieved. The identified mode can be regarded as a kind of symbol in the abstract model of the behavior. Second, the grammatical inference technique is introduced to develop the context-dependent grammar of the behavior, i.e., the symbolic dynamics of the human behavior. In addition, the behavior prediction based on the obtained symbolic model is performed. The proposed framework enables us to make a bridge between the signal space and the symbolic space in the understanding of the human behavior.
The Pronto QA System at TREC 2007: Harvesting Hyponyms, Using Nominalisation Patterns, and Computing Answer Cardinality

The backbone of the Pronto QA system is linguistically-principled: Combinatory Categorial Grammar is used to generate syntactic analyses of questions and potential answer snippets, and Discourse Representation Theory is employed as semantic formalism to match the meanings of questions and answers. The key idea of the Pronto system is to use semantics to prune answer candidates, thereby exploiting lexical resources such as WordNet and NomLex to facilitate the selection of answers. The system performed well at TREC-2007 on factoid-questions with an answer accuracy of 22%, a score higher than the median accuracy score of all participating systems.
A Simultaneous Balanced Truncation Approach to Model Reduction of Switched Linear Systems

This paper deals with model reduction by balanced truncation of switched linear systems (SLS). We consider switched linear systems whose dynamics, depending on the switching signal, switches between finitely many linear systems with a common state space. These linear systems are called the modes of the SLS. The idea is to seek for conditions under which there exists a single state space transformation that brings all modes of the SLS in balanced coordinates. As a measure of reachability and observability of the state components of the SLS, we take the average of the diagonal gramians. We then perform balanced truncation by discarding the state components corresponding to the smallest diagonal elements of this average balanced gramian. In order to carry out this program, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which a finite collection of linear systems with common state space can be balanced by a single state space transformation. Among other things, we derive sufficient conditions under which global uniform exponential stability of the SLS is preserved under simultaneous balanced truncation. Likewise, we derive conditions for preservation of positive realness or bounded realness of the SLS. Finally, in case that the conditions for simultaneous balancing do not hold, or we simply do not want to check these conditions, we propose to compute a suitable state space transformation on the basis of minimization of an overall cost function associated with the modes of the SLS. We show that in case our conditions do hold, this transformation is in fact simultaneously balancing, bringing us back to the original method described in this paper.
Landscapes of ethical issues of emerging ICT applications in Europe

A central problem of the attempt to bring to bear ethical ideas to technology, in particular information and communication technology is that it tends to arrive too late. It would clearly be desirable to have a better understanding of future technological developments in order to allow ethical considerations to influence design and implementations of technology. At the same time, the unavoidable contingency of future developments provides a fundamental limit to what we can know about the future. The current paper explores how this problem can be addressed. It provides a framework of technical developments that one can reasonably expect to materialise in the medium term future (10 to 15 years) and ethical issues that are currently expected to arise. This is done by analysing current European research funding documents with a view to exploring the trends, purposes, applications, artefacts, ethical issues, and governance structures that the European Commission foresees. The overall aim of the paper is to provide the conceptual basis of this framework.
Dirac-Maxwell solitons

Detailed analysis of the coupled Dirac-Maxwell equations and the structure of their solutions is presented. Numerical solutions of the field equations in the case of spherical symmetry with negligible gravitational self-interaction reveal the existence of families of solitons with electric-field dominance that are completely determined by the observed charge and mass of the underlying particles. A soliton is found which has the charge and mass of the electron as well as a charge radius of ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}23} \mathrm{m}. $ This is well within the present experimentally determined upper limit of $\ensuremath{\simeq}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}18} \mathrm{m}. $ Properties of these particles as well as possible extension to the work herein are discussed.
Robust Endpoint Detection for Speech Recognition Based on Discriminative Feature Extraction

Accurate endpoint detection is important for improving the speech recognition capability. This paper proposes a novel endpoint detection method which combines energy-based and likelihood ratio-based voice activity detection (VAD) criteria, where the likelihood ratio is calculated with speech/non-speech Gaussian mixture models (GMMs). Moreover, the proposed method introduces the discriminative feature extraction technique (DFE) in order to improve the speech/non-speech classification. The DFE is used in the training of parameters required for calculating the likelihood ratio. Experimental results have shown that the proposed endpointer achieves good performance compared to an energy-based endpointer in terms of start-of-speech (SOS) and end-of-speech (EOS) detections. Due to the improvement of the endpointer, the performance of automatic speech recognition (ASR) has also been improved
Stability of Inter domain Routing Protocol with Regressive Peak Contour

Safety of BGP and its convergence does not include stable routing in terms of various operational features of BGP such as route flap damping, MRAI timers etc. This paper shows these features can cause router to send pseudo advertisement of less preferred path and in a simple network scenario the pseudo advertisement of less preferred paths can result in situation where it can take more time to converge to stable routing. A model PRP is discussed so that impact of pseudo advertisement on BGP safety can be examined with necessary and sufficient condition.
Low-level Teamwork Hybridization for P-metaheuristics: A review and comparison

Inspired by nature, many types of Population based metaheuristics or P-metaheuristics is cropping out of research labs to help solve real life problems. Since every metaheuristics has its own strength and weaknesses, hybridizing the algorithms can sometimes produce better results. To this date of literature, Low-level Teamwork Hybridization is considered as an effective and popular method for hybridization of P-metaheuristics. In many cases however, the approach might prove to be quite complicated. The hybridization often requires metaheuristics internal structure modification in order for the different algorithms to fit well together. Another difficulty is in determining which strategies to be retained and which to be dropped or replaced in each of the metaheuristic algorithms. This paper provides a general abstraction for P-metaheuristics and describes the main P-metaheuristics components that are suitable candidates for hybridization. The review and comparative study of several implementations of Low-level Teamwork Hybridization is also presented.
A modeling architecture for the orchestration of service components in factory automation

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a paradigm for software development that has been increasingly adopted for factory automation. In SOA, services are independently developed and a central engine orchestrates their functional behavior according to the process workflow. If on one hand this orchestration is required to maximize performance and productivity, i.e., the software is required to be maximally permissive, on the other hand, implementing a service orchestrator is a creative task which cannot be totally automated. Furthermore, industrial processes tend to be very large, making it difficult to empirically provide in-advance quality guarantees for industrial SOA-based applications. In this paper, we show how maximally permissive and deadlock-free service orchestrators can be implemented. We propose a model for each activity that compose a SOA programming language. Then, we show how pieces of a workflow can be individually represented by combining activity models. Afterwards, we specify the logical behavior of the workflow in order to organize those pieces and reproduce the orchestration effect. By using controllability concepts, we finally compute from the orchestrator a version of it that formally provides certain quality guarantees. Examples illustrate the approach.
Scattering matrices of volcanic ash particles of Mount St. Helens, Redoubt, and Mount Spurr Volcanoes

[1] We present measurements of the whole scattering matrix as a function of the scattering angle at a wavelength of 632.8 nm in the scattering angle range 3°–174° of randomly oriented particles taken from seven samples of volcanic ashes corresponding to four different volcanic eruptions: the 18 May 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption, the 1989–1990 Redoubt eruption, and the 18 August and 17 September 1992 Mount Spurr eruptions. The samples were collected at different distances from the vent. The samples studied contain large mass fractions of fine particles and were chosen to represent ash that could remain in the atmosphere for at least hours or days. They include fine ashfall samples that fell at a variety of distances from the volcano and pyroclastic flows that retained their fine fractions. Together, they represent a range of ashes likely to remain in the atmosphere in volcanic clouds following eruptions from convergent plate boundary volcanoes, Earth's most important group of explosive sources of ash. All measured scattering matrix elements are confined to rather limited domains when plotted as functions of the scattering angle following the general trends presented by irregular mineral particles. This similarity in the scattering behavior justifies the construction of an average scattering matrix for volcanic ash particles as a function of the scattering angle. To facilitate the use of the average scattering matrix for multiple-scattering calculations with polarization included, we present a synthetic scattering matrix based on the average scattering matrix for volcanic ashes and the assumption that the diffraction forward scattering peak is the same for randomly oriented nonspherical particles and projected-surface-area-equivalent spheres. This synthetic scattering matrix is normalized so that the average of its 1-1 element over all directions equals unity. It is available in the full range from 0° to 180° and can be used, for example, for interpretation of remote-sensing data after a volcanic eruption when the actual properties of the volcanic ash are not known. The measured results for the Mount St. Helens sample have been compared with results of Lorenz-Mie calculations for projected-surface-area-equivalent spheres with the refractive index of the Mount St. Helens particles. We find strong differences between measured and calculated values.
The peculiar B-type supergiant HD 327083 ?

Coud e spectroscopic data of a poorly-studied peculiar supergiant, HD 327083, are presented. H and H line proles have been tted employing a non-LTE code adequate for spherically expanding atmospheres. Line ts lead to estimates of physical parameters. These parameters suggest that HD 327083 may be close to the Luminous Blue Variable phase but it is also possible that it could be a B(e) Supergiant.
Data Management in Voronoi-Based P2P Gaming

This paper proposes a fully distributed architecture to support massively multiplayer games (MMGs) on a peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay network. P2P networks provide a scalable and robust solution for MMGs. Furthermore, similarly to real world interactions, MMG players interact with their surrounding, i.e., with visible players and objects in the virtual world. Thus, self-organization of peers based on their visibility property is essential for efficient overlay network support in MMGs. Also, the overlay network must be re-organized consistently in the face of players' position changes. In this paper, we achieve these goals by designing a peer-to-peer overlay network based on the Voronoi diagram. Each player has a responsibility region that includes nearby objects, and is responsible for updates' dissemination occurring in this region to provide game state consistency among the players who are concerned by the updates. As a proof of concept, we simulated a simple game application to demonstrate the feasibility of our architecture.
The LOFAR radio environment

Aims: This paper discusses the spectral occupancy for performing radio astronomy with the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR), with a focus on imaging observations. Methods: We have analysed the radio-frequency interference (RFI) situation in two 24-h surveys with Dutch LOFAR stations, covering 30-78 MHz with low-band antennas and 115-163 MHz with high-band antennas. This is a subset of the full frequency range of LOFAR. The surveys have been observed with a 0.76 kHz / 1 s resolution. Results: We measured the RFI occupancy in the low and high frequency sets to be 1.8% and 3.2% respectively. These values are found to be representative values for the LOFAR radio environment. Between day and night, there is no significant difference in the radio environment. We find that lowering the current observational time and frequency resolutions of LOFAR results in a slight loss of flagging accuracy. At LOFAR's nominal resolution of 0.76 kHz and 1 s, the false-positives rate is about 0.5%. This rate increases approximately linearly when decreasing the data frequency resolution. Conclusions: Currently, by using an automated RFI detection strategy, the LOFAR radio environment poses no perceivable problems for sensitive observing. It remains to be seen if this is still true for very deep observations that integrate over tens of nights, but the situation looks promising. Reasons for the low impact of RFI are the high spectral and time resolution of LOFAR; accurate detection methods; strong filters and high receiver linearity; and the proximity of the antennas to the ground. We discuss some strategies that can be used once low-level RFI starts to become apparent. It is important that the frequency range of LOFAR remains free of broadband interference, such as DAB stations and windmills.
Quantifying Uncertainty in Concentration Output Generated by Atmospheric and Diffusion Models

A frequent problem encountered in air-pollution meteorology is how to quantify uncertainty in concentration data produced by atmospheric transport and diffusion models (ATDM). Sources of uncertainty can arise from many model inputs (e.g., different weather or model settings). One of the primary sources of uncertainty arises from error in the horizontal wind data used by models to calculate advection and diffusion of pollutants. Since winds are a critical model input in determining source-to-sampler transport and ultimately the predicted concentrations, it is very important to assess the uncertainties due to these data. This paper will describe a system called CLUES (Concentration Level Uncertainty Ensemble System), which has been developed to provide information about the uncertainty in concentration output generated by atmospheric transport and diffusion models.
A model for stock price forecasting based on ARMA systems

The Prediction of the future values of a stock market signal on the basis of its past and present data series, is one of the most necessities of all financial applications. In this study, one special stock market signal is considered and analyzed using “ARMA” model with different number of poles and zeros, in order to estimate the values for the next days` prices. The estimated and the actual data for the next day is compared and the amount of error for each system is calculated, resulting into selection of most efficient model.
Conjugate filter approach for shock capturing

This paper introduces a new scheme for the numerical computation involving shock waves. The essence of the scheme is to adaptively implement a conjugate low-pass filter to effectively remove the accumulated numerical errors produced by a set of high-pass filters. The advantages of using such an adaptive algorithm are its controllable accuracy, relatively low cost and easy implementation. Numerical examples in one and two space dimensions are presented to illustrate the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Prognostic validity of the Timed Up-and-Go test, a modified Get-Up-and-Go test, staff's global judgement and fall history in evaluating fall risk in residential care facilities.

OBJECTIVES to evaluate and compare the prognostic validity relative to falls of the Timed Up-and-Go test (TUG), a modified Get-Up-and-Go test (GUG-m), staff's judgement of global rating of fall risk (GLORF) and fall history among frail older people. DESIGN cohort study, 6-month prospective follow-up for falls. PARTICIPANTS 183 frail persons living in residential care facilities in Sweden, mean age 84 years, 73% women. METHODS the occurrence of falls during the follow-up period were compared to the following assessments at baseline: the TUG at normal speed; the GUG-m, a rating of fall risk scored from 1 (no risk) to 5 (very high risk); the GLORF, staff's rating of fall risk as 'high' or 'low'; a history of falls in the previous 6 months. These assessment tools were evaluated using sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative likelihood ratios (LR(+) to rule in and LR(-) to rule out a high fall risk). RESULTS 53% of the participants fell at least once. Various cut-off values of the TUG (12, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 s) and the GUG-m showed LR(+) between 0.9 and 2.6 and LR(-) between 0.1 and 1.0. The GLORF showed an LR(+) of 2.8 and an LR(-) of 0.6 and fall history showed an LR(+) of 2.4 and an LR(-) of 0.6. CONCLUSIONS in this population of frail older people, staff judgement of their residents' fall risk as well as previous falls both appear superior to the performance-based measures TUG and GUG-m in ruling in a high fall risk. A TUG score of less than 15 s gives guidance in ruling out a high fall risk but insufficient information in ruling in such a risk. The grading of fall risk by GUG-m appears of very limited value.
High Speed 3D Reconstruction by Video Image Pipeline Processing and Division of Spatio-Temporal Space

A high speed 3D reconstruction method using multiple video cameras is presented. The video cameras are set to surround the real 3D space where people exist. Reconstructed 3D space is displayed in voxel format and a user can see the space from any viewpoint with a VR viewer. We implemented a prototype system that can work out the 3D reconstruction with the speed of 7.2 fps in 560ms delay.
Experimental comparison of qualitative inverse scattering methods

Qualitative inverse scattering theory offers a group of highly theoretical methods that aims to extract physical properties of inaccessible targets. Although there are various methods depending on quite different principles which can be ultimately classified as qualitative inverse scattering methods, such methods share some common characteristics. In general, these methods are only capable of determining the shape of imaged objects and do not provide any information about electrical properties. Compared to nonlinear optimization methods, they have a simple and stable nature which offers many advantages, such as easy implementation and requiring less computational resources. In this work, we compare the performances of two well known qualitative inverse scattering algorithms which are linear sampling (LSM) and factorization methods (FM). For this purpose, we setup experimental configurations inside an anechoic chamber and investigate the performances of these methods by means of scattered field measurements. Our results indicate that both methods have quite similar reconstructions.
Implementation of augmented reality in cricket for ball tracking and automated decision making for no ball

Technology is an absolute necessity in the world of sport these days. It has been implemented to develop various techniques that are used to learn new strategies and hence excel in sports. The judicious use of technology could improve performance of the players, prevalent coaching methods, match analysis and prevent controversial umpiring. So, the primary objective of this research is to attain the following goals: 1) An automated multidimensional visual system that would prevent wrong interpretations due to perspective errors. 2) Simulate the pre and post match activity in a computerized graphics system for game and performance analysis of a certain team, player or playing conditions. 3) Approximating the trajectory of ball from multiple dimensions and comparing the predicted path with the actual path. This research paper presents the implementation of augmented reality in cricket using multi valued automated decision making to detect no ball and wide ball. The trajectory approximation is then used to gather information on variations in pitch and to train the players about the spin and swing of the ball.
The Effects of Prenatal Protein Restriction on β-Adrenergic Signalling of the Adult Rat Heart during Ischaemia Reperfusion

A maternal low-protein diet (MLP) fed during pregnancy leads to hypertension in adult rat offspring. Hypertension is a major risk factor for ischaemic heart disease. This study examined the capacity of hearts from MLP-exposed offspring to recover from myocardial ischaemia-reperfusion (IR) and related this to cardiac expression of β-adrenergic receptors (β-AR) and their associated G proteins. Pregnant rats were fed control (CON) or MLP diets (n = 12 each group) throughout pregnancy. When aged 6 months, hearts from offspring underwent Langendorff cannulation to assess contractile function during baseline perfusion, 30 min ischemia and 60 min reperfusion. CON male hearts demonstrated impaired recovery in left ventricular pressure (LVP) and dP/dt max (P < 0.01) during reperfusion when compared to MLP male hearts. Maternal diet had no effect on female hearts to recover from IR. MLP males exhibited greater membrane expression of β 2-AR following reperfusion and urinary excretion of noradrenaline and dopamine was lower in MLP and CON female rats versus CON males. In conclusion, the improved cardiac recovery in MLP male offspring following IR was attributed to greater membrane expression of β 2-AR and reduced noradrenaline and dopamine levels. In contrast, females exhibiting both decreased membrane expression of β 2-AR and catecholamine levels were protected from IR injury.