Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative Performance Analysis of Intel (R) Xeon Phi (TM), GPU, and CPU: A Case Study from Microscopy Image Analysis

We study and characterize the performance of operations in an important class of applications on GPUs and Many Integrated Core (MIC) architectures. Our work is motivated by applications that analyze low-dimensional spatial datasets captured by high resolution sensors, such as image datasets obtained from whole slide tissue specimens using microscopy scanners. Common operations in these applications involve the detection and extraction of objects (object segmentation), the computation of features of each extracted object (feature computation), and characterization of objects based on these features (object classification). In this work, we have identify the data access and computation patterns of operations in the object segmentation and feature computation categories. We systematically implement and evaluate the performance of these operations on modern CPUs, GPUs, and MIC systems for a microscopy image analysis application. Our results show that the performance on a MIC of operations that perform regular data access is comparable or sometimes better than that on a GPU. On the other hand, GPUs are significantly more efficient than MICs for operations that access data irregularly. This is a result of the low performance of MICs when it comes to random data access. We also have examined the coordinated use of MICs and CPUs. Our experiments show that using a performance aware task strategy for scheduling application operations improves performance about 1.29× over a first-come-first-served strategy. This allows applications to obtain high performance efficiency on CPU-MIC systems - the example application attained an efficiency of 84% on 192 nodes (3072 CPU cores and 192 MICs).
Simulating Nonlinear Deformations of Solar Sail Membranes Using Explicit Time Integration

In this study, the explicit time integration method is employed to predict deformation of highly flexible solar sail structural components. The nonlinear static analysis of a highly flexible ribbon structure is presented to demonstrate the need for having the explicit time integration method in the analysis toolbox for solar sail. Static analyses of the ribbon structure produce ambiquous results whereas the explicit time integration method determines the correct results. Extensive benchmarking examples are also presented to build confidence in the use of the explicit method. Previously determined nonlinear wrinkling deformations of solar sail membranes are found by the explicit method. As the explicit method is known to often require more computational time than nonlinear static methods, a study on mass scaling was also conducted. The computational times are reported for the nonlinear static and explicit time integration solutions to calibrate the advantage of using mass scaling for these problems.
A fiber-optic liquid sensor for simultaneously measuring refractive index, surface tension, contact angle and viscosity

A novel fiber-optic liquid sensor was proposed for simultaneously measuring some liquid properties such as concentration, refractive index, surface tension, contact angle and viscosity. Based on the effect of surface tension, tested liquid around fiber probe was pulled upward by the probe. When the balance between the surface tension and gravity was broken, a liquid drop was formed on the end face of the probe. The liquid drop can be regarded as a plane-convex lens, and the light transmission path was affected by the geometrical parameters and refractive index of the drop. The liquid samples (alcohol, water, oil and sucrose) were analyzed using FDLAT. The experimental results indicated that FDLAT can be used for liquid testing and monitoring.
Micro-Macro Description for Elastoplasticity of Materials with Lamellar Microstructure Using Anisotropic Eshelby Tensor

The elastoplastic behavior of dual-phase materials with lamellar microstructure is analyzed using a micro-macro approach. It involves the Hill's self-consistent scheme incorporating general anisotropic Eshelby tensor, and it can take into account both inherent and plastic deformation induced anisotropies. A high-precision numerical algorithm related to rotational ellipsoidal inclusion and anisotropic Eshelby tensors is developed. The elastoplastic behavior of both macroscopically anisotropic and isotropic materials is analyzed and compared with the result using isotropic Eshelby tensor. It shows that the difference between the result with an isotropic Eshelby tensor and that with an anisotropic Eshelby tensor is negligible if plastic deformation is not severe. The effect of the shape of the ellipsoidal lamellar inclusion on the material responses, the computation time and the convergence of numerical processes are also investigated. It shows that the convergence of the numerical process with a general anisotropic Eshelby tensor is as good as that with an isotropic Eshelby tensor, but for the former the computation time is much more. The shape of the ellipsoidal inclusion also strongly affects the computation time.
Suppression of slice selection axis motion artifacts in MRI

Patient motion during data acquisition in magnetic resonance imaging causes artifacts in the reconstructed image, which for two-dimensional Fourier transform imaging techniques appear as blurring and ghost repetitions of the moving structures. T. Mitsa et al. (1990) proposed a technique for suppressing artifacts from periodic motion along the slice selection axis. A different approach to the same problem is presented which is not restricted to periodic motion. The algorithm is verified using a simulated phantom and motion. It is also shown to perform well in the presence of noise and motion within the imaging plane.
Pseudomonas stutzeri YPL-1 Genetic Transformation and Antifungal Mechanism against Fusarium solani, an Agent of Plant Root Rot

An actively antagonistic bacterium that could be used as a biocontrol agent against Fusarium solani, which causes root rots with considerable losses in many important crops, was isolated from a ginseng rhizosphere and identified as a strain of Pseudomonas stutzeri. In several biochemical tests with culture filtrates of P. stutzeri YPL-1 and in mutational analyses of antifungal activities of reinforced or defective mutants, we found that the anti-F. solani mechanism of the bacterium may involve a lytic enzyme rather than a toxic substance or antibiotic. P. stutzeri YPL-1 produced extracellular chitinase and laminarinase when grown on different polymers such as chitin, laminarin, or F. solani mycelium. These lytic extracellular enzymes markedly inhibited mycelial growth rather than spore germination and also caused lysis of F. solani mycelia and germ tubes. Scanning electron microscopy revealed degradation of the F. solani mycelium. Abnormal hyphal swelling and retreating were caused by the lysing agents from P. stutzeri YPL-1, and a penetration hole was formed on the hyphae in the region of interaction with the bacterium; the walls of this region were rapidly lysed, causing leakage of protoplasm. Genetically bred P. stutzeri YPL-1 was obtained by transformation of the bacterium with a broad-host-range vector, pKT230. Also, the best conditions for the transformation were investigated.
Effects of Hippotherapy on Psychosocial Aspects in Children With Cerebral Palsy and Their Caregivers: A Pilot Study

Objective To investigate the effects of hippotherapy on psychosocial and emotional parameters in children with cerebral palsy (CP) and their caregivers. Methods Eight children with CP were recruited (three males and five females; mean age, 7.3 years; Gross Motor Function Classification System levels 1–3). Hippotherapy sessions were conducted for 30 minutes once weekly for 10 consecutive weeks in an indoor riding arena. The Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM), Pediatric Balance Scale (PBS), and the Korean version of the Modified Barthel Index were evaluated. All children were evaluated by the Children's Depression Inventory, Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children, State Anxiety Inventory for Children, Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale, and the Korean-Satisfaction with Life Scale (K-SWLS). Their caregivers were evaluated with the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck Anxiety Inventory, and the K-SWLS. We assessed children and their caregivers with the same parameters immediately after hippotherapy. Results Significant improvements on the GMFM, dimension E in the GMFM, and the PBS were observed after hippotherapy compared with the baseline assessment (p<0.05). However, no improvements were detected in the psychosocial or emotional parameters in children with CP or their caregivers. None of the participants showed any adverse effects or accidents during the 10 weeks hippotherapy program. Conclusions Hippotherapy was safe and effectively improved gross motor and balance domains in children with CP. However, no improvements were observed in psychosocial or emotional parameters.
History of Coronary Angiography

Diagnostic cardiac catheterization is recommended whenever it is clinically important to define the presence of cardiac disease that cannot be evaluated adequately by noninvasive techniques. Because the risk of a major complication from cardiac catheterization is less than 1% with mortality of less than 0.08%, many doctors can perform the catheterization safely now. We discuss the history of coronary angiography.
Method slots: supporting methods, events, and advices by a single language construct

To simplify the constructs that programmers have to learn for using paradigms, we extend methods to a new language construct, a method slot, to support both the event-handler paradigm and the aspect paradigm. A method slot is an object's property that can keep more than one function closure and be called like a method. We also propose a Java-based language, DominoJ, which replaces methods in Java with method slots, and explain the behavior of method slots and the operators. Then we evaluate the coverage of expressive ability of method slots by comparing DominoJ with other languages in detail. The feasibility of method slots is shown as well by implementing a prototype compiler and running a preliminary microbenchmark for it.
Through two different lenses: a tool for new perspectives into context

With the advent of ubicomp, designers of interactive systems face a growing need for research methods that enable them to understand aspects of context. Existing methods have already employed visual media as a means to analyse context. Utilizing the capabilities of modern smartphones, we present 'BehindTheCamera' (BTC) that goes beyond traditional photography by adding another perspective through the simultaneous use of front and back cameras. A thematic analysis of the results of a field study involving 30 people working in pairs revealed six categories of BTC use: Conventional Use, Sense of Location, Facial Tagging, Social Interaction, User Perspective, Technical Perspective. We argue these contribute understandings of context in three ways: humoticons showing the emotional valence of situations; perspective axes through the two cameras connecting distinct aspects of the context; and narrative arcs about potential interactions.
Diffusion Phenomenon of a Pollutant Flowing into a Lagoon

In this paper it is presented a mathematical model in the context of physics/transport/diffusion/dispersion about a contaminant that is a product of wood fiber cooking in a pulp cellulose plant, which is currently being thrown in a lagoon that does not have any water treatment process. The objective is improving the environmental conditions prevailing according to an environmental technology program of water treatment process required by the Government of Mexico through regulations and certifications in water treatment industries, and the prediction of the involvement of the contaminant in fishes from the Lagoon.
Modeling GaN: Powerful but Challenging

As GaN technology has developed, first in research laboratories and more recently in multiple commercial device manufacturers, the demand for improved nonlinear models has grown alongside the device process improvements. The need for improved models for GaN is twofold: first, GaN devices have unique nuances in behavior to be addressed; second, there is a desire for improved accuracy to take full advantage of the performance wins to be gained by GaN HEMT performance in the areas of high efficiency and high-power operation.
Antialiasing for automultiscopic 3D displays

Automultiscopic displays show stereoscopic images that can be viewed from any viewpoint without special glasses. They hold great promise for the future of television and digital entertainment. However, the image quality on these 3D displays is currently not sufficient to appeal to the mass market. In this paper, we extend the frequency analysis of light fields to address some of the major issues in 3D cinematography for automultiscopic displays. First, we derive the bandwidth of 3D displays using ray-space analysis, and we introduce a method to quantify display depth of field. We show that this approach provides solid foundations to analyze and distinguish various aspects of aliasing. We then present an anti-aliasing technique for automultiscopic displays by combining a reconstruction and a display prefilter. Next, we show how to reparameterize multi-view inputs to optimally match the depth of field of a display to improve the image quality. Finally, we present guidelines for 3D content acquisition, such as optimal multi-view camera configuration and placement.
Microwave detection of corrosion under paint and composite laminate coatings

Microwave and millimeter wave nondestructive methods using open-ended sensors have shown great potential for detecting minute thickness variations in laminate structures, in particular those backed by a conducting plate. Similarly, slight variations in the composition of dielectric materials may also be detected using a set of optimal parameters which include the standoff distance and the frequency of operation. In this paper the potential of using an open- ended rectangular waveguide for detecting the presence of rust under common paint and composite laminate coatings will be demonstrated. An experimental scanned image of a steel specimen with an area of induced corrosion will also be shown.
The ‘Indigenous Native Peasant’ Trinity: Imagining a Plurinational Community in Evo Morales's Bolivia

Over the last two decades Latin America has been a laboratory for the implementation of new models of state and citizenship. In Bolivia the (neo)liberal multicultural paradigm dominant in the 1990s has recently been replaced by a plurinational paradigm, which implies a deepening of the decentralization process and the strengthening of rights for traditionally marginalized social sectors. This paper describes the process of construction of a plurinational ‘imagined community’ and, in particular, of one of its core narratives: The ‘indigenous native peasant’. I argue that the negotiation of this collective identity and its inclusion as one of the core ideas in the new constitution is the result of a contingent strategy in response to a highly conflictive scenario, which has not been, however, able to trigger a change in the way people identify themselves. Yet in recent years, social movements’ identities have been shaped by centrifugal forces. These forces should be understood as the result of a process of collective actors’ adaptation to institutional and regulatory reforms and contribute to explaining the increase of new intrasocietal conflicts linked to the redefinition of citizenship and territorial boundaries.
Learning the Structure of Task-Oriented Conversations from the Corpus of In-Domain Dialogs

Acquiring domain-specific knowledge necessary for creating a dialog system in a new task-oriented domain is a time consuming task that requires domain expertise. This dissertation explores the feasibility of using a machine learning approach to infer the required domain-specific information automatically from in-domain conversations. In order to achieve this goal, two problems need to be addressed: 1) creating a dialog representation that is suitable for representing the required domain-specific information, and 2) developing a machine learning approach that uses this representation to capture information from a corpus of in-domain conversations. In order to solve the first problem, I propose a form-based dialog structure representation incorporating a three-level structure of task, sub-task, and concept. These components are observable in human dialogs. In terms of representation, tasks and subtasks are represented by forms while concepts are slots in a form. The notion of form is generalized as a repository of related pieces of information so that it can be applied to various types of task-oriented domains. Dialog structure analysis and an annotation experiment are used to demonstrate that the form-based representation has all the required properties: sufficiency, generality, and learnability. The proposed representation is applied to six disparate task-oriented domains (air travel planning, bus schedule inquiry, map reading, UAV flight simulation, meeting, and tutoring). While the formbased approach shows some limitations, it is sufficient to model important phenomena in dissimilar types of task-oriented dialogs, and thus has both sufficiency and generality. The annotation experiment shows that the form-based dialog structure representation can be applied reliably by novice annotators which implies that the representation is unambiguous and learnable. For the second problem, inferring the form-based dialog structure representation from a corpus of in-domain conversations, I divide this dialog structure acquisition problem into two sub-problems, concept identification and form identification, to make the problem tractable. In order to identify a set of domain concepts, two unsupervised concept clustering approaches are investigated: statistical-based clustering and knowledge-based clustering. For most statistical-based clustering algorithms, we are able to find automatic stopping criteria that yield close to optimal results. The statistical-based approaches, which utilize word co-occurrence statistics such as mutual information and
An autonomic and permissionless Android covert channel

Demand for mobile devices continues to experience worldwide growth. Within the U.S., there is a significant shift away from broadband usage towards Smartphones as the primary Internet entry point for consumers. Although technological advancements have helped fuel demand for greater features and functionality to enhance the user experience, they have also drawn attention from malicious actors seeking to access and exfiltrate increasingly available sensitive and content rich personalized information. In traditional Android based exfiltration channels, the application engaged in information acquisition is granted permission to execute off-board communications. This tactic increases the possibility of detection by applications designed to identify this form of behavior. In this paper, we sever the acquisition / exfiltration bundling by assigning independent responsibilities to two apps communicating via a stealthy, permissionless, self-configuring and self-optimizing ultrasonic bridge. We present a framework for analyzing channel feasibility and performance, and apply it to 28 popular mobile devices. We demonstrate basic channel capability on 13 devices, achieving in certain cases, Bit Error Rates lower than 10−4 and Shannon capacity approaching 14 bps. We further demonstrate two performance boosting solutions that build on these results: a multichannel implementation which improves performance by nearly 80% and; a single channel Amplitude Shift Keying solution that increases capacity three-fold.
Making evildoers pay: resource-competitive broadcast in sensor networks

Consider a time-slotted, single-hop, wireless sensor network consisting of <i>n</i> correct devices and and <i>f</i>•<i>n</i> Byzantine devices where <i>f</i>≥0 is any constant; the Byzantine devices may or may not outnumber the correct ones. There exists a trusted sender Alice who wishes to deliver a message <i>m</i> over a single channel to the correct devices. There is also an evil user Carol who controls the Byzantine devices and uses them to disrupt the communication channel. For a constant <i>k</i>≥2, the correct and Byzantine devices each possess a meager energy budget of <i>O</i>(<i>n</i><sup>1/<i>k</i></sup>), Alice and Carol each possess a limited budget of <i>Õ</i>(<i>n</i><sup>1/<i>k</i></sup>), and sending or listening in a slot incurs unit cost. This setup captures the inherent challenges of guaranteeing communication despite scarce resources and attacks on the network. Given this Alice versus Carol scenario, we ask: Is communication of <i>m</i> feasible and, if so, at what cost? We develop a protocol which, for an arbitrarily small constant <i>ε</i>>0, ensures that at least (1-ε)<i>n</i> correct devices receive <i>m</i> with high probability. Furthermore, if Carol's devices expend <i>T</i> energy jamming the channel, then Alice and the correct devices each spend only <i>Õ</i>(<i>T</i><sup>1/(<i>k</i>+1)</sup>). In other words, delaying the transmission of <i>m</i> forces a jamming adversary to rapidly deplete its energy supply and, consequently, cease attacks on the network.
Fast and stable animation of cloth with an approximated implicit method

Realistic animation of soft objects such as cloth is essential for plausible character animation. Many techniques have been proposed for the simulation of soft objects, and most of them are based on numerical integration. Among the techniques, the implicit integration method is the most likely technique for real time environments, since it allows large time steps for cloth simulation by ensuring the stability of systems. However the most critical flaw of the implicit method is that it involves a large linear system. The paper presents a fast animation technique for animating soft objects based on a mass-spring model with an approximated implicit method which does not involve linear system solving. The proposed technique stably updates the state of n mass-points in O(n) time when the number of total springs are O(n). Because the mass-spring model shows a superelastic effect, the excessively deformed springs (i.e., super-elongated springs) should be adjusted for reality. The paper presents an efficient inverse dynamics process to adjust the super-elongated springs.
PATTERNS IN PHYLOGENETIC TREE BALANCE WITH VARIABLE AND EVOLVING SPECIATION RATES

Aspects of phylogenetic tree shape, and in particular tree balance, provide clues to the workings of the macroevolutionary process. I use a simulation approach to explore patterns in tree balance for several models of the evolutionary process under which speciation rates vary through the history of diversifying clades. I demonstrate that when speciation rates depend on an evolving trait of individuals, and are therefore “heritable” along evolutionary lineages, the resulting phylogenies become imbalanced. However, imbalance also results from some (but not all) models of “nonheritable” speciation rate variation. The degree of imbalance increases with the magnitude of speciation rate variation, and then for gradual evolution (but not punctuated equilibria) reaches an asymptote short of the theoretical maximum. Very high levels of rate variation are required to produce imbalance matching that found in real data (estimated phylogenies from the systematic literature). I discuss implications of the simulation results for our understanding of macroevolution.