Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MPEG-4 compatible stereoscopic sequence codec for stereo broadcasting

This paper presents an efficient joint disparity-motion estimation algorithm and a fast motion estimation algorithm in an MPEG-4 compatible stereoscopic sequence codec for 3D broadcasting. In stereoscopic sequence coding, the critical problems to be solved are double bandwidth and computational complexity. However, the previous trials to reduce coding bits have increased computational complexity. In this paper, we try to implement fast algorithms for stereoscopic sequences while maintaining high coding efficiency. Joint disparity-motion estimation can increase coding efficiency and reduce the computational complexity of the stereoscopic codec by using the relationship between the disparity and motion fields. The disparity vectors are estimated by using the left and right motion vectors and the previous disparity vectors in each time frame. In order to obtain more accurate disparity vectors, we employ the spatial prediction process after joint estimation. From joint estimation and spatial prediction, we can obtain the accurately predicted disparity vectors and then increase the coding efficiency from those predicted vectors. Moreover, we propose a fast motion estimation algorithm which utilizes correlation between the motion vectors of the neighboring blocks. We confirmed that the PSNR of the proposed method is 1.0-2.0 dB higher than ones of conventional methods. In addition, the processing time is reduced by almost 1/10.
Flight testing of an structured H-infinity controller: An EU-Japan collaborative experience

This article presents the results from the first flight campaign undertaken within the frame of a collaborative EU-Japan project aimed towards the technological maturation of advanced aircraft guidance, navigation and control techniques. A control design (developed and flight tested by JAXA several years ago) was selected as the baseline system and objectives. This baseline design was based on a two degrees-of-freedom structure aimed at gust suppression in the feedback part and handling qualities model-matching objectives in the feedforward part. A newly developed controller uses this legacy interconnection and objectives and applies the Structured H-infinity control design approach with the goal to demonstrate the latter's potential to fulfill the same objectives while reducing the controller's dimension. The flight tests results presented show that this was successful and that both controllers' behavior are mostly indistinguishable, but with the new controller at half the dimension of the baseline.
17 Surrogate-Based Optimization

Surrogate-based optimization (Queipo et al. 2005, Simpson et al. 2008) represents a class of optimization methodologies that make use of surrogate modeling techniques to quickly find the local or global optima. It provides us a novel optimization framework in which the conventional optimization algorithms, e.g. gradient-based or evolutionary algorithms are used for sub-optimization(s). Surrogate modeling techniques are of particular interest for engineering design when high-fidelity, thus expensive analysis codes (e.g. Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) or Computational Structural Dynamics (CSD)) are used. They can be used to greatly improve the design efficiency and be very helpful in finding global optima, filtering numerical noise, realizing parallel design optimization and integrating simulation codes of different disciplines into a process chain. Here the term “surrogate model” has the same meaning as “response surface model”, “metamodel”, “approximation model”, “emulator” etc. This chapter aims to give an overview of existing surrogate modeling techniques and issues about how to use them for optimization.
TraA, TraC and TraD autorepress two divergent quorum‐regulated promoters near the transfer origin of the Ti plasmid of Agrobacterium tumefaciens

Whole‐genome transcriptional profiling experiments were performed to identify the complete set of TraR‐regulated genes in isogenic A. tumefaciens strains containing an octopine‐type or nopaline‐type Ti plasmid. Most of the known TraR‐regulated genes as well as a number of new inducible genes were identified. Surprisingly, some known members of this regulon showed both weaker induction and weak levels of expression than we had predicted based upon earlier studies. In particular, traA was expressed at surprisingly weak levels. Genetic analysis showed that the traAFBH operon is repressed by formation of a putative relaxosome at oriT consisting the TraA, TraC and TraD. These proteins also repressed the divergent traCDGyci operon. TraA was essential for oriT processing, and both TraC and TraD were necessary for the efficient processing, although some processing occurred in their absence. Likewise, Ti plasmid conjugation required TraA, TraF and TraG, and occurred at reduced levels in the absence of TraC or TraD. TraA preferentially acted in cis in repressing the traA and traC promoters and in the processing of oriT, which explains the very high activity of plasmid‐borne traA–lacZ fusions reported in previous studies.
Finite Element Analysis of Inductor Core Loss Under DC Bias Conditions

Finite element analysis is a popular way to analyze magnetic core loss in complex core structures. However, accurate calculation of the inductor core loss under dc bias conditions is still a challenge, as magnetic properties such as permeability and core-loss density change when a dc premagnetization is present, especially for saturable cores. This paper proposes a method that can accurately calculate the inductor's loss when it works under dc bias current conditions. The method utilizes an effective and simple material model built by curve-fitting the measurement data. To prove the accuracy of this approach, planar inductors built with low-temperature co-fired ceramic ferrite are simulated, and the calculated core losses are experimentally verified.
Nomenclature for factors of the HLA system, updated on January 2017

The following sequences have been submitted to the Nomenclature Committee since the December 2016 nomenclature update and, following agreed policy, have been assigned official allele designations (Marsh et al. (2010)). Full details of all sequences will be published in a forthcoming report. Below are listed the newly assigned sequences (Table 1) and confirmations of previously reported sequences (Table 2). The accession number of each sequence is given and these can be used to retrieve the sequence files from the EMBL, GenBank or DDBJ data libraries. Although accession numbers have been assigned by the data libraries and most sequences are already available, there is still the possibility that an author may not yet have allowed the sequence to be released; in such a case, you will have to contact the submitting author directly. Additional information pertaining to new sequences is often included in the publications describing these alleles; a listing of recent publications that describe new HLA sequences is given in Table 3. All new and confirmatory sequences should now be submitted directly to the WHO Nomenclature Committee for Factors of the HLA System via the IMGT/HLA Database using the sequence submission tool provided Robinson et al. (2013). The IMGT/HLA Database may be accessed via the World Wide Web at: www.ebi. ac.uk/ipd/imgt/hla
Malware Detection by Eating a Whole EXE

In this work we introduce malware detection from raw byte sequences as a fruitful research area to the larger machine learning community. Building a neural network for such a problem presents a number of interesting challenges that have not occurred in tasks such as image processing or NLP. In particular, we note that detection from raw bytes presents a sequence problem with over two million time steps and a problem where batch normalization appear to hinder the learning process. We present our initial work in building a solution to tackle this problem, which has linear complexity dependence on the sequence length, and allows for interpretable sub-regions of the binary to be identified. In doing so we will discuss the many challenges in building a neural network to process data at this scale, and the methods we used to work around them.
Robust Segmentation of cluttered scenes using RGB-Z images

With the availability of commercial depth sensors such as the Kinect, there is a body of work using the depth information provided by the Kinect to segment images of scenes [1][6]. In this project we try to segment cluttered scenes by augmenting color information in images with depth cues from the Kinect data. In this milestone, our major focus was to study the literature in the RGBZ domain, implement code to replicate the method in [4], and try different modifications in order to make the method perform better.
Dynamic modeling and improved control of DFIG under unbalanced and distorted grid voltage conditions

This paper presents an enhanced control strategy for the DFIG-based wind turbines under unbalanced and distorted grid voltage conditions. An integrated mathematical model of DFIG is set up, based on which four alternative control targets and their corresponding rotor current references are calculated and assigned. A novel current controller, consisting of a conventional PI regulator and a dual-frequency resonant compensator, tuned at twice and six times the grid frequency, is designed to regulate the fundamental and the fifth- and seventh-order harmonic components simultaneously. Simulation studies verify the effectiveness of the suggested control strategies in improving the fault ride through capability of a DFIG system under such adverse grid voltage conditions.
Creativity–decision processes: the case of Italian luxury fashion

This study analyzes Italian knitwear manufacturers that operate in international consumer and business markets, and assesses the different forms of competition that exist between them. The purpose of the research is to analyze the different positioning of these firms within the chain of production that they belong to. A framework is proposed to study firms that deal with fashion, that operate in different competitive contexts and that have to launch new products frequently. Sweater manufacturers adopt marketing strategies that are based on a constant growth of marketing capacity (specialized and structural), in order to allow them to enjoy a leading role in micro-segments of world markets. Through multiple case studies, this paper provides a deeper understanding of the strategic decisions regarding marketing and productive activities. The purpose of the paper is to describe and discuss how the integration of intra-organizational competence affects the creative processes of firms. The paper contributes to research on creativity through discussing the issue in the context of interaction and provides many implications for management practice and avenues for future academic research.
Examining U.S. Food Retailers’ Decisions to Procure Local and Organic Produce From Farmer Direct-to-Retail Supply Chains

U.S. food retailing is a competitive sector that has undergone rapid changes. The U.S. market for organic products has expanded rapidly over the last decade, while local foods have become a more visible marketing strategy. Studies focusing on the marketing of these products by retailers are sparse and generally qualitative. This article is the first quantitative examination of the connection between the local and organic retailing. A sample selection model is used with data from a 2008 national survey of organic retailers to study supplier interactions and company characteristics that influence a retailer’s decision to procure local organic produce directly from farmers, and the rate at which they procure these products. The results show that the number of years a store has sold organic products and the size of the company, as well as aspects prioritized in choosing suppliers and past problems interacting with local suppliers, affect the outcomes.
Exploring Reputation Differences in Information Systems Groups

Abstract This article examines the difference in reputation of two Information Systems (IS) groups within the same company. The company is a mid-sized insurance company in a large Midwestern city in the United States, and the two IS groups are from different divisions within the company. The two cases identify the IS governance structure and IS coordination techniques used by the divisions. We then discuss how the structure chosen and the coordination techniques used impacted the relationship between the end-users and the IS groups. We also examine the relationship between the working relationship of the two groups and the reputation of the IS group. Because IS governance structure and coordination techniques did not appear to fully explain the large discrepancies in end-users’ perceptions of the two IS groups, the cases also discuss organizational behavior theories. The effect of such elements as size, external environment, and leadership in the division is discussed in relation to the differing reputations of the IS groups.
Portable Luminescence Based Fiber Optic Probe for REE Detection and Quantification

A novel luminescence-based sensor was developed for the rapid, <italic>insitu</italic> detection and quantification of rare earth elements for potential applications in waste recovery. The device has the capability to detect <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{g}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>/L (part-per billion) concentrations of several rare earths in aqueous solution within 1 min, and it is portable given a physical dimension of less than 1/2 m<sup>3</sup>. Whereas, conventional table-top devices used for this type of analysis are bulky and have high costs, in addition to the typical two week long processing times for laboratory analyses of rare earths. The rapid return of results that this portable and rugged device provides can save the end user the cost of inaction during recovery or mining operations, potentially allowing for “in line” monitoring or rapid field sampling. Luminescence sensitizers were used to lower the limit of detection of the rare earths in comparison with direct excitation, by approximately an order of magnitude. Examples of luminescence sensitizers tested include M(CN)<sub>2</sub> (where M = Ag, Au, Cu) and 2,2 bipyridine.
Disentangling the Relation between Ownership Concentration and Corporate Performance in Emerging Markets: A Meta-Analysis

The relation between ownership concentration and firm performance has attracted much interest, yet yielded many inconsistent empirical results. It is still not known that whether there exists a common population correlation between ownership concentration and firm performance in countries with similar ownership structures and institutional environments, and what contribute to the conflicting empirical findings. Using meta-analysis, we construct a comprehensive database of 313 correlations and their corresponding study characteristics obtained from 27 primary studies, which investigate the relation between ownership concentration and firm performance in emerging markets. We first assess whether there is a homogeneous ownership concentration-performance correlation, and then use meta-regressions to investigate factors that may moderate the correlation. Although the aggregated statistics suggest a modest positive relation between ownership concentration and firm performance, our homogeneity test rejects the
Mouse models of ocular diseases

The Jackson Laboratory, having the world's largest collection of mouse mutant stocks and genetically diverse inbred strains, is an ideal place to discover genetically determined eye variations and disorders. In this paper, we list and describe mouse models for ocular research available from Mouse Eye Mutant Resource at The Jackson Laboratory. While screening mouse strains and stocks at The Jackson Laboratory (TJL) for genetic mouse models of human ocular disorders, we have identified numerous spontaneous or naturally occurring mutants. We characterized these mutants using serial indirect ophthalmoscopy, fundus photography, electroretinography (ERG) and histology, and performed genetic analysis including linkage studies and gene identification. Utilizing ophthalmoscopy, electroretinography, and histology, to date we have discovered 109 new disorders affecting all aspects of the eye including the lid, cornea, iris, lens, and retina, resulting in corneal disorders, glaucoma, cataracts, and retinal degenerations. The number of known serious or disabling eye diseases in humans is large and affects millions of people each year. Yet research on these diseases frequently is limited by the obvious restrictions on studying pathophysiologic processes in the human eye. Likewise, many human ocular diseases are genetic in origin, but appropriate families often are not readily available for genetic studies. Mouse models of inherited ocular disease provide powerful tools for rapid genetic analysis, characterization, and gene identification. Because of the great similarity among mammalian genomes, these findings in mice have direct relevance to the homologous human conditions.
Implementation of the watershed method in the HSI color space for the face extraction

The color segmentation is an important preprocessing step in the face detection methods. In this paper we present effective face color segmentation in the HSI (Hue, saturation and intensity) space. We propose to modify the merging algorithm of the catchment basins obtained by the watershed segmentation method by adding a criterion based on the relevance of the Hue component. The obtained experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
Underlying cause of death in incident unprovoked seizures in the urban community of Northern Manhattan, New York City

We determined underlying cause‐specific mortality for incident unprovoked seizures from Northern Manhattan, New York City. We calculated the case fatality, proportionate mortality, and the underlying cause‐specific standardized mortality ratios (SMRs), with U.S. death rates as the standard. Thirty‐two deaths were observed between 2003 and 2007 among 209 participants. Case fatality was significantly lower for idiopathic/cryptogenic seizures versus symptomatic seizures. About 31.3% of the deaths were attributed to malignant neoplasms, 25.0% to diseases of the heart, 15.6% to influenza and pneumonia, 3.1% to cerebrovascular diseases, and 25.0% to other causes. Significant SMRs were observed for all causes (SMR = 1.6), influenza and pneumonia (SMR = 7.1), and malignant neoplasms (SMR = 2.9). Younger cases (<65 years) had increased SMRs for all causes, malignant neoplasms, and other causes. Older cases (≥65 years) had increased SMRs for influenza and pneumonia. Underlying cause of death paralleled the underlying cause of seizure in patients with symptomatic etiologies.
Effects of Extrinsic Attributes on Perceived Quality, Customer Value, and Behavioral Intentions in B2B Settings: A Comparison Across Goods and Service Industries

ABSTRACT The traditional formulation of customer value is a trade off of benefits and sacrifices, with intrinsic quality typically being the primary benefit, and price typically being the primary sacrifice. While additional sacrifices have been proposed in the literature (e.g., time and effort), we explore three additional benefits, the extrinsic attributes of industry leadership, innovation, and customer focus and their effects on a hierarchical quality-value-intention system. Data gathered from two distinct business-to-business domains, one goods and one services, showed that extrinsic attributes impacted elements of the quality-value-intention system. It was also found that quality and customer focus (an extrinsic attribute) differed in their effects across goods and services contexts. Managerial implications are discussed for creating customer perceived value in goods and services industries.
How does Managers' Leadership Styles Influence Institutional CSR activities? Employees Perspective

The primary purpose of writing this paper was to explore the impact of transformational and transactional leadership styles of managers as prospective antecedents of the firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices. A large-scale survey had been conducted to collect data from employees of several organizations in Pakistan. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the proposed hypotheses in the conceptual model. Findings revealed that transformational leadership style is positively associated with Employee CSR perception whereas transactional leadership showed an insignificant relationship with employee CSR perception. The results implied that to strengthen an organization’s CSR activities the managers should employ transformational leadership along with transactional leadership.
A simultaneous execution scheme for database caching

Database caching techniques promise to improve the performance and scalability of clientserver database applications. The task of a cache is to accept requests of clients and to compute them locally on behalf of the server. The content of a cache is filled dynamically based on the application and users’ data domain of interest. If data is missing or concurrent access has to be controlled, the computation of the request is completed at the central server. As a result, applications benefit from quick responses of a cache and load is taken from the server. The dynamic nature of a cache, the need of transactional consistency, and the complex nature of a request make database caching a challenging field of research. This thesis presents a novel approach to the shared and parallel execution of stored procedure code between a cache and the server. Every commercial database product provides such stored procedures that are coded in a complete programming language. Given a request in form of such a procedure, we introduce the concept of split twin transactions that logically split the procedure code into two parts, say A and B, such that A is executed at the cache and B at the server in a simultaneous and parallel manner. Furthermore, we analyse the procedure code to detect suitable parts. To the best of our knowledge, this has not yet been addressed by any existing approaches. Within a detailed case study, we show that our novel scheme improves the performance of existing caching approaches. Furthermore, we demonstrate that different load conditions of the system require different sizes of the parts A and B to gain maximal performance. As a result, we extend database caching by a new dimension of optimization, namely by splitting of the procedure code into A and B. To solve this problem of dynamically balancing the code execution between cache and server, we define the maximum performance of a database cache over time and propose a stochastic model to capture the average execution time of a procedure. Based on the execution frequencies of primitive database operations, the model allows us to partially predict the response times for different sizes of A and B, hence providing a partial solution to the optimization problem.
Anti-M3 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor antibodies in patients with Sjögren’s syndrome

Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) is an autoimmune disease that affects exocrine glands including salivary and lacrimal glands. Recently, autoantibodies against muscarinic acetylcholine receptor M3 (M3R) have been detected in serum from 9 to 100 % of patients with SS in addition to anti-SS-A and anti-SS-B antibodies. These observations suggest the possibility that anti-M3R antibodies could serve as a new diagnostic test in patients with SS. Some anti-M3R antibodies are directly responsible for salivary underproduction in patients with SS. Thus, strategies designed to eliminate such pathogenic antibodies could help cure SS sufferers. In this review, we summarize the current state of knowledge of anti-M3R autoantibodies in patients with SS and the correlation between B cell epitopes and the function of anti-M3R antibodies.