Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of locally suppressed wave sources on helioseismic traveltimes

Wave traveltime shifts in the vicinity of sunspots are typically interpreted as arising predominantly from magnetic fields, flows and local changes in sound speed. We show here that the suppression of granulation related wave sources in a sunspot can also contribute significantly to these shifts, and in some cases, an asymmetry between ingoing and outgoing wave traveltimes. The tight connection between the physical interpretation of traveltimes and source-distribution homogeneity is confirmed. Statistically significant traveltime shifts are recovered upon numerically simulating wave propagation in the presence of a localized decrease in source strength. We also demonstrate that these time shifts are relatively sensitive to the modal damping rates; thus we are only able to place bounds on the magnitude of the effect of suppressed sources. We see a systematic reduction of 10-15 s in p-mode mean traveltimes at short distances (∼6.2 Mm) that could be misinterpreted as arising from a shallow (thickness of 1.5 Mm) increase (∼4 per cent) in the sound speed. At larger travel distances (∼24 Mm), a 6-13 s difference between the ingoing and outgoing wave traveltimes is observed; this could mistakenly be inferred as being caused by flows.
Cyclically k-partite digraphs and k-kernels

Let D be a digraph, V (D) and A(D) will denote the sets of vertices and arcs of D, respectively. A (k, l)-kernel N of D is a k-independent set of vertices (if u, v ∈ N then d(u, v), d(v, u) ≥ k) and l-absorbent (if u ∈ V (D) − N then there exists v ∈ N such that d(u, v) ≤ l). A k-kernel is a (k, k − 1)-kernel. A digraph D is cyclically k-partite if there exists a partition {Vi} i=0 of V (D) such that every arc in D is a ViVi+1-arc (mod k). We give a characterization for an unilateral digraph to be cyclically k-partite through the lengths of directed cycles and directed cycles with one obstruction, in addition we prove that such digraphs always have a k-kernel. A study of some structural properties of cyclically k-partite digraphs is made which bring interesting consequences, e.g., sufficient conditions for a digraph to have k-kernel; a generalization of the well known and important theorem that states if every cycle of a graph G has even length, then G is bipartite (cyclically 2-partite), we prove that if every cycle of a graph G has length ≡ 0 (mod k) then G is cyclically k-partite; and a generalization of another well known result about bipartite digraphs, a strong digraph D is bipartite if and only if every directed cycle has even length, we prove that an unilateral digraphD is bipartite if and only if every directed cycle with at most one obstruction has even length. keywords: digraph, kernel, (k, l)-kernel, k-kernel, cyclically k-partite. AMS Subject Classification: 05C20.
Road extraction in high resolution remote sensing images based on mathematic morphology and snake model

This paper proposes an algorithm for road extraction in high resolution remote sensing images based on mathematic morphology and snake model, which can divide up the area of objective directly from an image and combine with snake model to extract the road. Accordingly, the first step consists in extracting the road area from the high resolution remote sensing image based on morphology. In a second step, get the contour line of the area as the initial contour of Snake to track the road. Experiments turn out that the algorithm is extremely fast in image division and effective in extracting roads in high resolution remote sensing images.
Systemic risk, financial security and the financial holding companies of China

In the context of China's implementation of the mixed operation of financial industry, the financial risks also accumulate and gradually increase. The stability of the banking system play important role in the financial security. We employ the systematic marginal expected loss method to calculate the risk accumulation degree and the contribution rate of each bank in the international financial crisis based on the open market data. We also analyze the systematic risk conduction path and the optimum model of the financial holding companies in China.
A One-Step Approach to Computing a Polytopic Robust Positively Invariant Set

A procedure and theoretical results are presented for the problem of determining a minimal robust positively invariant (RPI) set for a linear discrete-time system subject to unknown, bounded disturbances. The procedure computes, via the solving of a single LP, a polytopic RPI set that is minimal with respect to the family of RPI sets generated from a finite number of inequalities with pre-defined normal vectors.
Use of Low/Mid-Temperature Solar Heat for Thermochemical Upgrading of Energy, Part II: A Novel Zero-Emissions Design (ZE-SOLRGT) of the Solar Chemically-Recuperated Gas-Turbine Power Generation System (SOLRGT) guided by its Exergy Analysis

This paper adds an exergy analysis of the novel SOLRGT solar-assisted power generation system proposed and described in detail in Part I of this study (Zhang and Lior, 2012, "Use of Low/Mid-Temperature Solar Heat for Thermochemical Upgrading of Energy, Part I: Application to a Novel Chemically-Recuperated Gas-Turbine Power Generation (SOLRGT) System," ASME J. Eng. Gas Turbines Power, Accepted. SOLRGT is an intercooled chemically recuperated gas turbine cycle, in which solar thermal energy collected at about 220 degrees C is first transformed into the latent heat of water vapor supplied to a reformer, and then via the reforming reactions to the produced syngas chemical exergy. This integration of this concept of indirect thermochemical upgrading of low/mid temperature solar heat has resulted in a high efficiency novel hybrid power generation system. In Part I it was shown that the solar-driven steam production helps improve both the chemical and thermal recuperation in the system, with both processes contributing to the overall efficiency improvement of about 5.6%-points above that of a comparable intercooled CRGT system without solar assist, and nearly 20% reduction of CO2 emissions. An economic analysis of SOLRGT predicted that the generated electricity cost by the system is about 0.06 $/kWh, and the payback period about 10.7 years (including two years of construction). The exergy analysis of SOLRGT in this (Part II) paper identified that the main potentials for efficiency improvement is in the combustion, the turbine and compressors, and in the flue gas due to its large water vapor content. Guided by this, an improved solar-assisted zero-emissions power generation system configuration with oxy-fuel combustion and CO2 capture, ZE-SOLRGT, is hereby proposed, in which the exergy losses associated with combustion and heat dumping to the environment are reduced significantly. The analysis predicts that this novel system with an 18% solar heat input share has a thermal efficiency of 50.7% and exergy efficiency of 53%, with similar to 100% CO2 capture. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4006086]
Correcting Errors in Speech Recognition with Articulatory Dynamics

We introduce a novel mechanism for incorporating articulatory dynamics into speech recognition with the theory of task dynamics. This system reranks sentence-level hypotheses by the likelihoods of their hypothetical articulatory realizations which are derived from relationships learned with aligned acoustic/articulatory data. Experiments compare this with two baseline systems, namely an acoustic hidden Markov model and a dynamic Bayes network augmented with discretized representations of the vocal tract. Our system based on task dynamics reduces word-error rates significantly by 10.2% relative to the best baseline models.
Biofeedback Intervention for Stress and Anxiety among Nursing Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Purpose. It has been well documented that nursing students across the world experience stress and anxiety throughout their education and training. The purpose of this randomized controlled study is to investigate the impact of biofeedback intervention program on nursing students' levels of stress and anxiety during their first clinical training. Methods. Participants consisted of 60 second-year baccalaureate nursing students. The 30 participants in the biofeedback group received training on how to use the biofeedback device to assist in stress and anxiety management for 5 weeks while the 30 in the control group did not receive any training. Findings. Results indicated that the biofeedback group was able to maintain the stress level while the control group had a significant increase in the stress level over the 5-week period of clinical training. Additionally, the biofeedback group had a significant reduction in anxiety, while the control group had a moderate increase in anxiety. Conclusions. The better the nursing students can manage their stress and anxiety, the more successful they can be in their clinical training. Ultimately, the more psychologically healthy the nursing students are, the more likely they will flourish and graduate to become productive and contributing members of the nursing profession.
6LoWPAN Compressed DTLS for CoAP

Real deployments of the IoT require security. CoAP is being standardized as an application layer protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT). CoAP proposes to use DTLS to provide end-to-end security to protect the IoT. DTLS is a heavyweight protocol and its headers are too long to fit in a single IEEE802.15. 4 MTU. 6LoWPAN provides header compression mechanisms to reduce the size of upper layer headers. 6LoWPAN header compression mechanisms can be used to compress the security headers as well. In this paper we propose 6LoWPAN header compression for DTLS. We link our compressed DTLS with the 6LoWPAN standard using standardized mechanisms. We show that our proposed DTLS compression significantly reduces the number of additional security bits. For example, only for the DTLS Record header that is added in every DTLS packet, the number of additional security bits can be reduced by 62%. Our compressed-DTLS is the first lightweight 6LoWPAN extension for DTLS.
Automatic Identification of Application-Specific Functional Units with Architecturally Visible Storage

Instruction set extensions (ISEs) can be used effectively to accelerate the performance of embedded processors. The critical, and difficult task of ISE selection is often performed manually by designers. A few automatic methods for ISE generation have shown good capabilities, but are still limited in the handling of memory accesses, and so they fail to directly address the memory wall problem. We present here the first ISE identification technique that can automatically identify state-holding application-specific functional units (AFUs) comprehensively, thus being able to eliminate a large portion of memory traffic from cache and main memory. Our cycle-accurate results obtained by the SimpleScalar simulator show that the identified AFUs with architecturally visible storage gain significantly more than previous techniques, and achieve an average speedup of 2.8times over pure software execution. Moreover, the number of required memory-access instructions is reduced by two thirds on average, suggesting corresponding benefits on energy consumption
Energetic cost of producing cyclic muscle force, rather than work, to swing the human leg

SUMMARY We compared two hypothesized energetic costs for swinging the human leg quickly. The first cost is to perform mechanical work on the leg, and the second is to produce muscle force cyclically at high frequencies. Substantial metabolic energy is expended to perform isolated leg swinging, especially at rates greater than the leg's natural pendular frequency. To determine whether the production of muscle force contributes to this cost, we measured oxygen consumption in human subjects (N=6) performing isolated swinging of the leg at frequencies 0.7-1.1 Hz. Amplitude of swing was varied as a function of frequency so that the rate of positive mechanical work performed on the leg remained fixed. We expected that the cost of producing force would increase, in contrast to the cost of performing work. The results showed that average rate of positive mechanical work performed on the leg remained nearly constant as a function of frequency, at 0.073±0.014 W kg-1. Net metabolic rate, however, increased by 53%, from 0.66 W kg-1 to 1.01 W kg-1. Work may be performed on the leg and with a proportional metabolic cost, but it cannot explain the substantial increases observed here. Metabolic energy expenditure appears to increase in proportion with muscle force or torque, and in inverse proportion to duration of force. This energetic cost may be associated with cyclical calcium transport, where rate-limiting of crossbridge attachments may require greater sarcoplasmic calcium concentration at high frequencies of leg swinging to produce the same amplitude of muscle force. It may also be relevant to moving the legs back and forth relative to the body during walking.
International Research International Students’ Proactive Behaviors in the United States: Effects of Information-Seeking Behaviors on School Life

Abstract:Considering the continuous increase of international students, the main goal of this study was to examine how international students’ proactive behaviors, particularly informationseeking behaviors, would impact key emotional outcomes including communication satisfaction with instructors and school–life satisfaction. For this investigation, we developed and tested a systematic model composed of those key factors. Results from structural equation modeling (SEM) supported most of the proposed hypotheses, It was particularly notable that the inquiry of information as a proactive form of communication was positively related to international students’ communication satisfaction with instructors, which ultimately predicts school satisfaction.
Capital Market Development, Competition, Property Rights, and the Value of Insurer Product‐Line Diversification: A Cross‐Country Analysis

In this article, we show that the effect of product diversification on performance is not homogeneous across countries. Diversified insurance companies perform significantly worse than their focused competitors in countries with well‐developed capital markets, high levels of property rights protection, and high levels of competition. In addition, we find that the diversification–performance relationship for insurance companies depends on company size. For large insurers operating in countries with less developed capital markets, diversification significantly increases performance. Our results suggest that the optimal organizational structure may be different for insurers operating in emerging economies than for insurers operating in developed countries.
feature-segmentation-based registration for fast and accurate deep brain stimulation targeting

Objects Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has turned out to be the surgical technique of choice for the treatment of movement disorders, e.g. Parkinsons disease (PD), the usual target being the subthalamic nucleus (STN). The targeting of such a small structure is crucial for the outcome of the surgery. Unfortunately the STN is in general not easily distinguishable in common medical images. Material and Methods Eight bilaterally implanted PD patients were considered (16 STNs). A three-dimensional MR T1-weighted sequence and inversion recovery T2-weighted coronal slices were acquired pre-operatively. We study the influence on the STN location of several surrounding structures through a proposed methodology for the construction of a ground truth and an original validation scheme that allows evaluating performances of different targeting methods. Results The inter-expert variability in identifying the STN location is 1.61 ± 0.29 mm and 1.40 ± 0.38 mm for expert 1 and 2 respectively while the best choice of features using segmentation-based registration gives an error of 1.55 ± 0.73 mm. Conclusions By registering a binary mask of the third and lateral ventricles of the patient with its corresponding binary mask of the atlas we obtain a fast, automatic and accurate pre-operative targeting comparable to the experts variability.
The hyperring: a low-congestion deterministic data structure for distributed environments

In this paper we study the problem of designing searchable concurrent data structures with performance guarantees that can be used in a distributed environment where data elements are stored in a dynamically changing set of nodes. Searchable data structures are data structures that provide three basic operations: INSERT, DELETE, and SEARCH. In addition to searching for an exact match, we demand that for a data structure to be called "searchable", Search also has to be able to search for the closest successor or predecessor of a data item. Such a property has a tremendous advantage over just exact match, because it would allow to implement many data base applications.We are interested in finding a searchable concurrent data structure that has (1) a low degree, (2) requires a small amount of work for INSERT and DELETE operations, and (3) is able to handle concurrent search requests with low congestion and dilation.We present the first deterministic concurrent data structure, called Hyperring, that can fulfill all of these objectives in a polylogarithmic way. In fact, the Hyperring has a degree of O(log n), requires O(log3 n) work for INSERT and DELETE operations, and can handle concurrent search requests to random destinations, one request per node, with congestion and dilation O(log n) w.h. p.Most of the previous solutions for distributed environments are not searchable (in our sense) but only provide exact lookup, and those that are searchable do not have proofs about the congestion caused by concurrent search requests.
Sentence Synthesis Component for Czech

We propose a complex rule-based system for generating Czech sentences out of tectogrammatical trees, as introduced in Functional Generative Description (FGD) and implemented in the Prague Dependency Treebank 2.0 (PDT 2.0). Linguistically relevant phenomena including valency, diathesis, condensation, agreement, word order, punctuation and vocalization have been studied and implemented in Perl using software tools shipped with PDT 2.0. Parallels between generation from the tectogrammatical layer in FGD and deep syntactic representation in Meaning-Text Theory are also briefly sketched.
A 32-GS/s 6-Bit Double-Sampling DAC in InP HBT Technology

This paper describes the circuit design and measured performance of a high-speed digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for a coherent optical transceiver based on digital signal processing (DSP). To achieve a high sampling rate, a novel double-sampling technique was devised. A 6-bit DAC test chip was fabricated with InP HBT technology, which yields a peak ft of 175 GHz and a peak fmax of 260 GHz. Measured DNL and INL were within +0.49/-0.17 LSB and +0.97/-0.06 LSB, respectively. Measured SFDR was 45.0 dB for a sinusoidal output of 72.5 MHz at a sampling rate of 13.5 GS/s, which is the limit of our measurement setup. Ramp-wave output at a sampling rate of 32 GS/s was obtained. Total power consumption was 1.4 W with a supply voltage of -4.0 V. To our knowledge, this is the first 6-bit DAC that can operate at a sampling rate of over 30 GS/s.
A Novel Face Recognition Algorithm with Support Vector Machine Classifier

A novel face recognition algorithm based on Gabor texture information is proposed in this paper. Two strategies to capture it are Gabor Magnitude-based Texture Representation (GMTR) which is characterized by using the Gamma density to model the Gabor magnitude distribution and Gabor Phase-based Texture Representation (GPTR), characterized by using the Generalized Gaussian Density (GGD) to model the Gabor phase distribution. The estimated model parameters serve as texture representation. Experiments are performed on Yale, ORL and FERET databases to validate the feasibility of the method. The results show that GMTR based and GPTR-based SVM classifier both significantly outperform the widely used Gabor energy based systems and other existing subspace methods.
Scene space inference based on stereo vision

This paper provides an intuitive way to inference the space of a scene using stereo cameras. We first segmented the ground out of the image by adaptively learning the ground model in the image. We then used the convex hull to approximate the scene space. Objects within the scene can also be detected with the stereo cameras. Finally, we organized the scene space and the objects within the scene into a graphical model, and then used particle filters to approximate the solution. Experiments were conducted to test the accuracy of the ground segmentation and the precision and recall of object detection within the scene. The precision and recall of object detection was about 50% in our system. With additional tracking of the object, the recall could improve approximately 5%. The result can be considered as prior knowledge for further image tasks, e.g. obstacle avoidance or object recognition.
Selective blockade of astrocytic glutamate transporter GLT‐1 with dihydrokainate prevents neuronal death during ouabain treatment of astrocyte/neuron cocultures

Glutamate (Glu) is a major excitatory neurotransmitter of the mammalian central nervous system and under normal conditions plays an important role in information processing in the brain. Therefore, extracellular Glu is subject to strong homeostasis. Astrocytes in the brain have been considered to be mainly responsible for the clearance of extracellular Glu. In this study, using mixed neuron/astrocyte cultures, we investigated whether astrocytic Glu transporter GLT‐1 is crucial to the survival of neurons under various conditions. Treatment of the mixed cultures with a low concentration of Glu did not produce significant death of neurons. However, cotreatment with dihydrokainate (DHK), a specific blocker of GLT‐1, resulted in significant neuronal death that was suppressed by an antagonist of N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA) receptors. These results suggested that astrocytic GLT‐1 participated in the clearance of extracellular Glu and protected neurons from NMDA receptor‐mediated toxicity. When the cultures were treated with ouabain, an inhibitor of Na+/K+‐ATPase, a low concentration of Glu resulted in massive neuronal death that was also suppressed by cotreatment with an antagonist of NMDA receptors. In this case, however, cotreatment with DHK significantly protected neurons from death, suggesting that GLT‐1 was responsible for the death of neurons. The present study provides evidence suggesting that astrocytes use their Glu transporter GLT‐1 to protect neurons from Glu toxicity, but, ironically, also use GLT‐1 to kill neurons through Glu toxicity depending on their status. GLIA 40:337–349, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
EMACI : A Visual Interface of Multi-Parameters for Interactive Evolutionary Algorithm

This paper proposes a technique for visualizing the progression of evolutionary algorithms such as genetic algorithms (GAs). Our technique supposes that a GA solves optimization problems that maximize target functions with multiple parameters. Then, our technique presents the timevarying parameters during the progression of the GA. The technique applies two-tone pseudo-coloring for the precise representation of changes in parameter values, so that users can understand the behavior of the GA. We also provide a user interface to control the configuration of the GA so that users can obtain the optimal solution earlier. The paper shows experimental results to demonstrate the efficacy of the technique.