Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Photogrammetric documentation and digital representation of the Macedonian Palace in Vergina-Aegae

In this paper, the photogrammetric procedure and the development of a G.I. S. application for the digital documentation of the Macedonian Palace in the archaeological site of Vergina-Aegeae in northern Greece are described. Within this framework, the focus is targeted towards the use of UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) for the production of high resolution orthoimages, essential for the interpretation, detection and measurement of archeological features. The advantages of model helicopters are seen in their ability to operate close to the object, to be flexible in navigation and in viewing directions. For the acquisition of the aerial images in the area of the 4 B.C. Palace in Vergina-Aegeae, a flight planning prior to fieldwork and a careful acquisition of the images was required to ensure successful postprocessing. The images were downloaded and processed already in the field in order to ensure good image quality, sufficient overlap between them and avoid large scale differences as well. The photogrammetric image processing of the data, comprising of the tie point measurement, bundle adjustment, DSM and orthophoto generation was done with the commercial software package LPS (Leica Photogrammetry Suite, Leica Geosystems), which offers functionalities for a complete photogrammetric working process. The resulting accuracy was acceptable for the 1:100 mapping. In addition to the above, within the general framework of the project, the development of a G.I. S. application with the commercial software package ArcGIS is described.
Estimating Propensity Parameters Using Google PageRank and Genetic Algorithms

Stochastic Boolean networks, or more generally, stochastic discrete networks, are an important class of computational models for molecular interaction networks. The stochasticity stems from the updating schedule. Standard updating schedules include the synchronous update, where all the nodes are updated at the same time, and the asynchronous update where a random node is updated at each time step. The former produces a deterministic dynamics while the latter a stochastic dynamics. A more general stochastic setting considers propensity parameters for updating each node. Stochastic Discrete Dynamical Systems (SDDS) are a modeling framework that considers two propensity parameters for updating each node and uses one when the update has a positive impact on the variable, that is, when the update causes the variable to increase its value, and uses the other when the update has a negative impact, that is, when the update causes it to decrease its value. This framework offers additional features for simulations but also adds a complexity in parameter estimation of the propensities. This paper presents a method for estimating the propensity parameters for SDDS. The method is based on adding noise to the system using the Google PageRank approach to make the system ergodic and thus guaranteeing the existence of a stationary distribution. Then with the use of a genetic algorithm, the propensity parameters are estimated. Approximation techniques that make the search algorithms efficient are also presented and Matlab/Octave code to test the algorithms are available at http://www.ms.uky.edu/~dmu228/GeneticAlg/Code.html.
Transient Receptor Potential Channel Activation Causes a Novel Form of [Ca 2+]i Oscillations and Is Not Involved in Capacitative Ca 2+ Entry in Glial Cells

Astrocytes express transient receptor potential channels (TRPCs), which have been implicated in Ca 2+ influx triggered by intracellular Ca 2+ stores depletion, a phenomenon known as capacitative Ca 2+ entry. We studied the properties of capacitative Ca 2+ entry in astrocytes by means of single-cell Ca 2+ imaging with the aim of understanding the involvement of TRPCs in this function. We found that, in astrocytes, capacitative Ca 2+ entry is not attributable to TRPC opening because the TRPC-permeable ions Sr2+ and Ba2+ do not enter astrocytes during capacitative Ca 2+ entry. Instead, natively expressed oleyl-acetyl-glycerol (OAG) (a structural analog of DAG) -sensitive TRPCs, when activated, initiate oscillations of cytosolic Ca 2+ concentration ([Ca 2+]i) pharmacologically and molecularly consistent with TRPC3 activation. OAG-induced [Ca 2+]i oscillations are not affected by inhibition of inositol trisphosphate (InsP3) production or blockade of the InsP3 receptor, therefore representing a novel form of [Ca 2+]i signaling. Instead, high [Ca 2+]i inhibited oscillations, by closing the OAG-sensitive channel. Also, treatment of astrocytes with antisense against TRPC3 caused a consistent decrease of the cells responding to OAG. Exogenous OAG but not endogenous DAG seems to activate TRPC3. In conclusion, in glial cells, natively expressed TRPC3s mediates a novel form of Ca 2+ signaling, distinct from capacitative Ca 2+ entry, which suggests a specific signaling function for this channel in glial cells.
The University of Birmingham ( Live System ) The IASB standard-setting process : Participation and perceptions of financial statement users

The interests of users of financial statements are, in theory, paramount to accounting standard-setters. However, there is a dearth of research into users’ participation in, and influence on, the process of setting accounting standards. The enhanced status now accorded to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) offers the opportunity to examine these issues in a new regulatory context. This study reports the results of a questionnaire survey of the perceptions of, and participation in, the IASB process of a sample of UK investment management firms. The findings suggest that these firms’ participation is not as low as is often inferred from the public record of comment letters. In particular, a considerable number of firms participate through representative report user organisations such as the Investment Management Association. Other findings suggest that the major factor inhibiting investment firms from participating is the cost of lobbying, not complacency that the IASB is ‘on their side’ and will naturally safeguard their interests. Moreover, the respondents consider the accounting profession and the European and US accounting standard-setters to be the dominant interest groups in the IASB standardsetting process. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A Note Concerning the Turbulent Boundary Layer Drag at Large Reynolds Numbers

Author(s): Barenblatt, GI; Chorin, AJ; Prostokishin, VM | Abstract: A correlation is obtained for the drag coefficient $c '_f$ of the turbulent boundary layer as a function of the effective boundary layer Reynolds number $Re$ that we previously introduced. A comparison is performed also with another correlation for the drag coefficient as a function of the traditional Reynolds number $Re_{\th}$, based on the momentum thickness of the boundary layer proposed recently by R.D. Watson, R.M. Hall and J.B. Anders (NASA Langley Research Center) on the basis of different set of experimental data. We show that the correlation obtained by us agrees with experimental data from the Illinois Institute of Technology, but is incompatible with the data obtained in the Royal Institute of Technology at Stockholm. On the other hand, both sets of data are in disagreement with the Langley correlation.
Compass gait control with switched reference partial feedback linearization

Passive Dynamic Walking overcomes elegantly several drawbacks of the high gain position control approach to generate bipedal gait of robots. In this scenario the Limit Cycle Walking concept leads to the generation of high energetically efficient gait. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the implementation of an ex-novo controller - based on switched reference partial feedback linearization - can increase the basin of attraction of a Limit Walking Cycle. The simulation has been performed on a compass gait model. The controller simulation and the mechanical model description have been defined through a range of initial conditions for the state variables. The results demonstrated that the controller was able to increase the basin of attraction of the compass gait model with respect to the passive system. The novel controller has a low computational load, which makes it a perfect candidate for the implementation on real prototypes.
An Introduction to Synchronous Grammars

Synchronous context-free grammars are a generalization of context-free grammars (CFGs) that generate pairs of related strings instead of single strings. Thus they are useful in many situations where one might want to specify a recursive relationship between two languages. Originally, they were developed in the late 1960s for programming-language compilation [1]. In natural language processing, they have been used for machine translation [19, 20, 3] and (less commonly, perhaps) semantic interpretation. As a preview, consider the following English sentence and its (admittedly somewhat unnatural) equivalent in Japanese (with English glosses):
Design and optimization of a haptic manipulator using series-parallel mechanism

This paper presents design and optimization of an 8-DOF haptic manipulator using series-parallel mechanism. Parallel mechanism is designed to control 3-DOF translation input parameters and transfer the feedback force to the operator. Series mechanism is a 4-DOF quadruple-axial concurrent redundant mechanism, controlling three orientation angles. Forward and inverse kinematic analyses have been performed and the jacobian matrix is derived. Operating performance indexes such as global conditioning index, global kinematic performance fluctuant index and workspaces are evaluated to find optimal parameters in design stage.
Interaction of Gamma-Herpesvirus Genome Maintenance Proteins with Cellular Chromatin

The capacity of gamma-herpesviruses to establish lifelong infections is dependent on the expression of genome maintenance proteins (GMPs) that tether the viral episomes to cellular chromatin and allow their persistence in latently infected proliferating cells. Here we have characterized the chromatin interaction of GMPs encoded by viruses belonging to the genera Lymphocryptovirus (LCV) and Rhadinovirus (RHV). We found that, in addition to a similar diffuse nuclear localization and comparable detergent resistant interaction with chromatin in transfected cells, all GMPs shared the capacity to promote the decondensation of heterochromatin in the A03-1 reporter cell line. They differed, however, in their mobility measured by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP), and in the capacity to recruit accessory molecules required for the chromatin remodeling function. While the AT-hook containing GMPs of LCVs were highly mobile, a great variability was observed among GMPs encoded by RHV, ranging from virtually immobile to significantly reduced mobility compared to LCV GMPs. Only the RHV GMPs recruited the bromo- and extra terminal domain (BET) proteins BRD2 and BRD4 to the site of chromatin remodeling. These findings suggest that differences in the mode of interaction with cellular chromatin may underlie different strategies adopted by these viruses for reprogramming of the host cells during latency.
Taming Asynchrony for Attractor Detection in Large Boolean Networks

Boolean networks is a well-established formalism for modelling biological systems. A vital challenge for analyzing a Boolean network is to identify all the attractors. This becomes more challenging for large asynchronous Boolean networks, due to the asynchronous scheme. Existing methods are prohibited due to the well-known state-space explosion problem in large Boolean networks. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by proposing a SCC-based decomposition method. We prove the correctness of our proposed method and demonstrate its efficiency with two real-life biological networks.
VARSHA: Variation and reliability-aware application scheduling with adaptive parallelism in the dark-silicon era

With deeper technology scaling accompanied by a worsening power-wall, an increasing proportion of chip area on a chip multiprocessor (CMP) is expected to be occupied by dark-silicon. At the same time, design challenges due to process variations and soft-errors in integrated circuits are projected to become even more severe. In this work, we propose a novel framework that leverages the knowledge of variations on the chip to perform runtime application mapping and dynamic voltage scaling to optimize system performance and energy, while satisfying dark-silicon power-constraints of the chip as well as application-specific performance and reliability constraints. Our experimental results show average savings of 35%-80% in application service-times and 13%-15% in energy consumption, compared to the state-of-the-art.
Smoothed particle hydrodynamics for galaxy‐formation simulations: improved treatments of multiphase gas, of star formation and of supernovae feedback

We investigate a new implementation of the smoothed particle hydrodynamics technique designed to improve the realism with which galaxy formation can be simulated. In situations where cooling leads to the coexistence of phases of very different density and temperature, our method substantially reduces artificial overcooling near phase boundaries, prevents the exclusion of hot gas from the vicinity of cold ‘clouds’ and allows relative motion of the two phases at each point. We demonstrate the numerical stability of our scheme in the presence of extremely steep density and temperature gradients, as well as in strong accretion shocks and cooling flows. In addition, we present new implementations of star formation and feedback which simulate the effect of energy injection into multiphase gas more successfully than previous schemes. Our feedback recipes deposit thermal energy separately in cold dense gas and hot diffuse gas, and can explicitly re-inject cold gas into the hot phase. They make it possible to dampen star formation effectively, to reheat cold gas, and to drive outflows into the galaxy halo and beyond. We show feedback effects to be strongest in small-mass objects where much of the gas can be expelled. After idealized tests, we carry out a first low-resolution study of galaxy formation in a �-cold dark matter universe. Feedback results in substantial and massdependent reductions in the total baryonic mass gathered on to the final object as well as in significant modulation of the star formation history.
Single-graph multiple flows: Energy efficient design alternative for GPGPUs

We present the single-graph multiple-flows (SGMF) architecture that combines coarse-grain reconfigurable computing with dynamic dataflow to deliver massive thread-level parallelism. The CUDA-compatible SGMF architecture is positioned as an energy efficient design alternative for GPGPUs. The architecture maps a compute kernel, represented as a dataflow graph, onto a coarse-grain reconfigurable fabric composed of a grid of interconnected functional units. Each unit dynamically schedules instances of the same static instruction originating from different CUDA threads. The dynamically scheduled functional units enable streaming the data of multiple threads (or graph flows, in SGMF parlance) through the grid. The combination of statically mapped instructions and direct communication between functional units obviate the need for afull instruction pipeline and a centralized register file, whose energy overheads burden GPGPUs. We show that the SGMF architecture delivers performance comparable to that of contemporary GPGPUs while consuming ~57% less energy on average.
Linear approximation for energy and throughput optimization in Wireless Sensor Networks

The focus of this paper is to analyze and assess the performance of various optimization techniques in the effort to determine the maximum lifetime of the nodes and the throughput in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) environment while being able to meet the network's application specific design requirements. We formulated the initial objective of the optimization problem as a nonlinear function and solved an instance of the problem in its original form using LOQO [7]. The objective function is then relaxed to assume simplified formulations based on certain assumptions in order to be solved using Geometric Programming (GP) and Linear Programming (LP) techniques with specific solvers, namely CVX and GGPLAB in Matlab. The main findings of this study reveal that there exists a tradeoff in the solutions obtained between performance accuracy and computational complexity. The resulting energy and delay minimization approach is shown to be able to support the various WSN application requirements.
BE AWARE OF THE SQUAD: LESSONS LEARNT FROM 50 CONCURRENT ENGINEERING STUDIES FOR SPACE SYSTEMS

Early design studies, especially for advanced projects, are often considered as not-so-relevant and far from reality since the outcome is usually and “solely” a set of documents covering the overall system trades, presentations describing the related design evolution, Excel sheets providing the major system budgets and a set of 3D-drawings showing the preliminary configuration and accommodation of the spacecraft. Compared to critical procurement, integrating and testing activities, the pre-development phases – although doubtlessly very interesting for everyone - are not always sufficiently prestigious in the engineering world. However, in the last years there is an increasing effort noticeable in putting more effort into structuring and improving space development projects right from the beginning by applying various systems engineering methodologies. These include also Concurrent Engineering (CE), a collaborative, iterative and communicative approach in which all relevant disciplines including the customer, work simultaneously together in a guided and typically co-located manner. The principal engineering tasks within such an activity are clear, but the additional component of constant and intensive interaction amongst the domain representatives could create e.g. misunderstandings, irritations, displeasures and eventually a suboptimal design solution. Although the advantages of such CE studies, such as quality increase, time and cost decrease as well as mutual education of team members, far outweigh the risk carried by the elevated social component, one has to carefully be aware of the squad to guide the project in the right direction, particularly in such an early stage. As of today, the Institute of Space Systems of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has performed about 50 CE studies, mainly lasting one to three weeks, with many different internal and external teams for exploration and satellite missions as well as launch vehicle design. During these activities, the authors have identified several basic rules for successful studies, mainly related to reducing formality, providing transparency, facilitating honesty and engaging well-balanced data sharing. The present paper describes our lessons learnt, focusing on the various communication means which are necessary within a comprehensive group of engineers and scientists, and points out the potentials and dangers when treating team members in front of others during plenary workshop sessions or before and afterwards. It summarises a set of Dos and Don’ts which should be taken into account when conducting such interdisciplinary and often multi-cultural events, in order to seriously improve the envisaged design and moreover, to elaborate on the reputation of early system studies.
A novel Boot-Trapping algorithm of enhancing Gnutella cluster

Based on the territorial continuity of IP addresses, this paper proposes an enhanced Boot-Trapping algorithm. It constructs a Patricia Tree which reflects the topology of the physical network, and collects information of the online Ultra Peers. By providing an UltraPeer physical network nearby for a LeafPeer, it can improve the proximity between the overlay network and the physical network, the aggregation of the Gnutella, and achieve higher search efficiency.
An interface to implement NUMA policies in the Xen hypervisor

While virtualization only introduces a small overhead on machines with few cores, this is not the case on larger ones. Most of the overhead on the latter machines is caused by the Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) architecture they are using. In order to reduce this overhead, this paper shows how NUMA placement heuristics can be implemented inside Xen. With an evaluation of 29 applications on a 48-core machine, we show that the NUMA placement heuristics can multiply the performance of 9 applications by more than 2.
Quantitative computed tomography measurements of emphysema for diagnosing asthma-chronic obstructive pulmonary disease overlap syndrome

Background The diagnostic criteria of asthma–COPD overlap syndrome (ACOS) are controversial. Emphysema is characteristic of COPD and usually does not exist in typical asthma patients. Emphysema in patients with asthma suggests the coexistence of COPD. Quantitative computed tomography (CT) allows repeated evaluation of emphysema noninvasively. We investigated the value of quantitative CT measurements of emphysema in the diagnosis of ACOS. Methods This study included 404 participants; 151 asthma patients, 125 COPD patients, and 128 normal control subjects. All the participants underwent pulmonary function tests and a high-resolution CT scan. Emphysema measurements were taken with an Airway Inspector software. The asthma patients were divided into high and low emphysema index (EI) groups based on the percentage of low attenuation areas less than −950 Hounsfield units. The characteristics of asthma patients with high EI were compared with those having low EI or COPD. Results The normal value of percentage of low attenuation areas less than −950 Hounsfield units in Chinese aged >40 years was 2.79%±2.37%. COPD patients indicated more severe emphysema and more upper-zone-predominant distribution of emphysema than asthma patients or controls. Thirty-two (21.2%) of the 151 asthma patients had high EI. Compared with asthma patients with low EI, those with high EI were significantly older, more likely to be male, had more pack-years of smoking, had more upper-zone-predominant distribution of emphysema, and had greater airflow limitation. There were no significant differences in sex ratios, pack-years of smoking, airflow limitation, or emphysema distribution between asthma patients with high EI and COPD patients. A greater number of acute exacerbations were seen in asthma patients with high EI compared with those with low EI or COPD. Conclusion Asthma patients with high EI fulfill the features of ACOS, as described in the Global Initiative for Asthma and Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease guidelines. Quantitative CT measurements of emphysema may help in diagnosing ACOS.