Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Signal processing and analyzing works of art

In examining paintings, art historians use a wide variety of physico-chemical methods to determine, for example, the paints, the ground (canvas primer) and any underdrawing the artist used. However, the art world has been little touched by signal processing algorithms. Our work develops algorithms to examine x-ray images of paintings, not to analyze the artist's brushstrokes but to characterize the weave of the canvas that supports the painting. The physics of radiography indicates that linear processing of the x-rays is most appropriate. Our spectral analysis algorithms have an accuracy superior to human spot-measurements and have the advantage that, through "short-space" Fourier analysis, they can be readily applied to entire x-rays. We have found that variations in the manufacturing process create a unique pattern of horizontal and vertical thread density variations in the bolts of canvas produced. In addition, we measure the thread angles, providing a way to determine the presence of cusping and to infer the location of the tacks used to stretch the canvas on a frame during the priming process. We have developed weave matching software that employs a new correlation measure to find paintings that share canvas weave characteristics. Using a corpus of over 290 paintings attributed to Vincent van Gogh, we have found several weave match cliques that we believe will refine the art historical record and provide more insight into the artist's creative processes.
Adaptive coding for time-varying channels using outdated fading estimates

The idea of using knowledge of the current channel fading values to optimize the transmitted signal in wireless communication systems has attracted substantial research attention. However, the practicality of this adaptive signaling has been questioned due to the variation of the wireless channel over time, which results in a different channel at the time of data transmission than at the time of channel estimation. By characterizing the effects of fading channel variation on the adaptive signaling paradigm, it is demonstrated here that these misgivings are well founded, as the channel variation greatly alters the nature of the problem. The main goal of this paper is to employ this characterization of the effects of the channel variation to design adaptive signaling schemes that are effective for the time-varying channel. The design of uncoded adaptive quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) systems is considered first, and it demonstrates the need to consider the channel variation in system design. This is followed by the main contribution of this paper; using only a single outdated fading estimate when neither the Doppler frequency nor the exact shape of the autocorrelation function of the channel fading process is known, adaptive trellis-coded modulation schemes are designed that can provide a significant increase in bandwidth efficiency over their nonadaptive counterparts on time-varying channels.
Effect of lameness on follicular dynamics in postpartum anestrous crossbred cows.

SOOD, P., A. S. NANDA, N. SINGH: Effect of lameness on follicular dynamics in postpartum anestrous crossbred cows. Vet. arhiv 79, 531-542, 2009. ABSTRACT Lameness affects the reproductive performance of cows. It is not clear whether follicular dynamics is involved. Ovarian ultrasonography was performed once daily in eight non lame (N) and 11 lame (L) cows for a period of 30 days each. Recurrent follicular waves could be detected every 8.3 ± 0.4 and 7.6 ± 0.5 days, respectively, in the N and L cows. There were no appreciable differences in the day of selection (Day 2.3 ± 0.2 versus Day 2.8 ± 0.2), maximum diameters (8.9 ± 0.6 mm versus 9.2 ± 0.5 mm) and certain characteristics pertaining to growth, static and regression of the dominant follicles (DFs) in the N versus the L cows. The L cows, however, had a tendency to have a higher number (P<0.10) as well as treatment by day interaction (P<0.05) for the identifi ed (detectable for more than one consecutive day) and unidentifi ed (detectable for one day only) small follicles (>3≤5 mm). In conclusion, lameness did not affect the DFs that developed but failed to ovulate, but more the number of small follicles, both identifi ed and unidentifi ed, hints at some perturbance in the follicular characteristics of lame cows that needs to be addressed in the light of the mechanisms governing follicular dynamics.
A Distributed Area-Based Guiding Navigation Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

One of the major applications of wireless sensor networks is guiding navigation service whose goal is to find a way to guide moving objects across a hazardous region covered by sensors. Sensor networks maintain safe paths by which the moving objects can be guided safely to exits. In this paper, we propose a distributed guiding navigation protocol for constructing area-to-area optimal guiding paths that do not traverse through the hazardous areas and to guide the moving objects to escape from this area safely and quickly. Our protocol also allows multiple exits and multiple emergency events in the sensor networks. Moreover, we propose a load-dispersion algorithm including an additional AP layer for moving objects registration and path assignment in multi-exits scenario. Hence, the moving objects can be properly dispersed to multiple paths leading to multiple exits to avoid congestion in the same exit. Simulation results show that our protocol can guide moving objects along shorter paths to reach nearest exits and operate in different scenarios or environments.
SPECpower_ssj2008: driving server energy efficiency

SPECpower_ssj2008 [1] is the first industry-standard SPEC [2] benchmark that evaluates the power and performance characteristics of volume server-class and multi-node class computers. This poster-paper gives an overview of the benchmark that defines the server power measurement standards [8] in the same way SPEC have done for performance.
Active gripping impedance force control with dual fingers hand

To further decrease the grasping damages with robot hand, active gripping impedance force control algorithm with dual fingers hand was developed based on dynamic coordination of force and position control Active impedance control and position PID control strategy with dual fingers were adopted in scheme. The change between actual gripping force acquired from the sensors and the setting one were as input command to impedance filters, and its signal output was used to revise position command of finger controllers. Simulation results show that, the dynamic coordination of gripping force and position can be pre-planned according to control requirements, with which can make fingers fast track the real time revised trajectory and realize dynamic tracking control of gripping force. Fast motion and force control with dual fingers are coordinated to reduce the grasping damages, so it has a wide range of industrial application prospect in automation grasping and assembly.
Asparagus Spears as a Model to Study Heteroxylan Biosynthesis during Secondary Wall Development

Garden asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.) is a commercially important crop species utilized for its excellent source of vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber. However, after harvest the tissue hardens and its quality rapidly deteriorates because spear cell walls become rigidified due to lignification and substantial increases in heteroxylan content. This latter observation prompted us to investigate the in vitro xylan xylosyltransferase (XylT) activity in asparagus. The current model system for studying heteroxylan biosynthesis, Arabidopsis, whilst a powerful genetic system, displays relatively low xylan XylT activity in in vitro microsomal preparations compared with garden asparagus therefore hampering our ability to study the molecular mechanism(s) of heteroxylan assembly. Here, we analyzed physiological and biochemical changes of garden asparagus spears stored at 4 °C after harvest and detected a high level of xylan XylT activity that accounts for this increased heteroxylan. The xylan XylT catalytic activity is at least thirteen-fold higher than that reported for previously published species, including Arabidopsis and grasses. A biochemical assay was optimized and up to seven successive Xyl residues were incorporated to extend the xylotetraose (Xyl4) acceptor backbone. To further elucidate the xylan biosynthesis mechanism, we used RNA-seq to generate an Asparagus reference transcriptome and identified five putative xylan biosynthetic genes (AoIRX9, AoIRX9-L, AoIRX10, AoIRX14_A, AoIRX14_B) with AoIRX9 having an expression profile that is distinct from the other genes. We propose that Asparagus provides an ideal biochemical system to investigate the biochemical aspects of heteroxylan biosynthesis and also offers the additional benefit of being able to study the lignification process during plant stem maturation.
Crop Area Assessment Using Sub-pixel Classification with a Neural Network Trained for a Reference Year

Reliable and timely information on location and extent of crop areas is important for crop production forecasting, for decision support related to agri-environmental land use planning and management and for various scientific purposes. We investigated the possibility to estimate cropped areas from short and long time series of NDVI-imagery of low spatial resolution (SPOT-VEGETATION), by means of sub-pixel classification using neural networks (NN). We paid particular attention to verifying whether NN, trained for a particular agricultural season can be used to soft-classify time series of imagery of other seasons. To this end, separate networks were trained using reference data of 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 for March-to-May and March-to-October VEGETATION-NDVI-time series. Each of the resulting calibrated networks was then applied to the three other seasons. The region of Flanders in Belgium was selected as the test zone, because of the availability of excellent reference data in the form of a vectorial GIS with the boundaries and cover type of the large majority of agricultural fields. The result of the subpixel classification are a set of Area Fraction Images (AFIs). Each AFI contains for each 1 km-pixel the estimated area proportion occupied by one cover type (crops or other land use). The AFIs were validated at three different levels: the 1 km-pixel, the municipality and the agro-statistical district. In general, the neural networks trained for a certain year, provide more accurate overall results when applied on the image data of the same year, as compared to the time series of a year other then the training year. This is true at the pixel, municipal and regional level, although accuracy measures strongly improve with increasing aggregation. There is no major variability of the obtained accuracies over the various years. Long post-harvest time series outperform the short pre-harvest ones. Performance for individual land use classes and crops is variable too. Application of once-calibrated NN for other seasons cannot be recommended, even at higher spatial aggregation levels.
Behaviour recognition of ground vehicle using airborne monitoring of unmanned aerial vehicles

This paper proposes a behaviour recognition methodology for ground vehicles moving within road traffic using unmanned aerial vehicles in order to identify suspicious or abnormal behaviour. With the target information acquired by unmanned aerial vehicles and estimated by filtering techniques, ground vehicle behaviour is first classified into representative driving modes, and then a string pattern matching theory is applied to detect suspicious behaviours in the driving mode history. Furthermore, a fuzzy decision-making process is developed to systematically exploit all available information obtained from a complex environment and confirm the characteristic of behaviour, while considering spatiotemporal environment factors as well as several aspects of behaviours. To verify the feasibility and benefits of the proposed approach, numerical simulations on moving ground vehicles are performed using realistic car trajectory data from an off-the-shelf traffic simulation software.
Metamaterial Mechanisms

Recently, researchers started to engineer not only the outer shape of objects, but also their internal microstructure. Such objects, typically based on 3D cell grids, are also known as metamaterials. Metamaterials have been used, for example, to create materials with soft and hard regions. So far, metamaterials were understood as materials-we want to think of them as machines. We demonstrate metamaterial objects that perform a mechanical function. Such metamaterial mechanisms consist of a single block of material the cells of which play together in a well-defined way in order to achieve macroscopic movement. Our metamaterial door latch, for example, transforms the rotary movement of its handle into a linear motion of the latch. Our metamaterial Jansen walker consists of a single block of cells-that can walk. The key element behind our metamaterial mechanisms is a specialized type of cell, the only ability of which is to shear. In order to allow users to create metamaterial mechanisms efficiently we implemented a specialized 3D editor. It allows users to place different types of cells, including the shear cell, thereby allowing users to add mechanical functionality to their objects. To help users verify their designs during editing, our editor allows users to apply forces and simulates how the object deforms in response.
Low energy pion-pion elastic scattering in the Sakai-Sugimoto model

We have considered the holographic large N{sub c} QCD model proposed by Sakai and Sugimoto and evaluated the non-Abelian DBI-action on the D8-brane up to ({alpha}{sup '}){sup 4} terms. Restricting to the pion sector, these corrections give rise to four derivative contact terms for the pion field. We derive the Weinberg's phenemenological Lagrangian. The coefficients of the four derivative terms are determined in terms of g{sub YM}{sup 2}. The low energy pion-pion scattering amplitudes are evaluated. Numerical results are presented with the choice of M{sub KK}=0.94 GeV and N{sub c}=11. The results are compared with the amplitudes calculated using the experimental phase shifts. The agreement with the experimental data is found to be satisfactory.
Distinct Axonemal Processes Underlie Spontaneous and Stimulated Airway Ciliary Activity

Cilia are small organelles protruding from the cell surface that beat synchronously, producing biological transport. Despite intense research for over a century, the mechanisms underlying ciliary beating are still not well understood. Even the nature of the cytosolic molecules required for spontaneous and stimulated beating is debatable. In an effort to resolve fundamental questions related to cilia beating, we developed a method that integrates the whole-cell mode of the patch-clamp technique with ciliary beat frequency measurements on a single cell. This method enables to control the composition of the intracellular solution while the cilia remain intact, thus providing a unique tool to simultaneously investigate the biochemical and physiological mechanism of ciliary beating. Thus far, we investigated whether the spontaneous and stimulated states of cilia beating are controlled by the same intracellular molecular mechanisms. It was found that: (a) MgATP was sufficient to support spontaneous beating. (b) Ca2+ alone or Ca2+-calmodulin at concentrations as high as 1 μM could not alter ciliary beating. (c) In the absence of Ca2+, cyclic nucleotides produced a moderate rise in ciliary beating while in the presence of Ca2+ robust enhancement was observed. These results suggest that the axonemal machinery can function in at least two different modes.
Small-area estimation and prioritizing communities for tobacco control efforts in Massachusetts.

OBJECTIVES We developed a method to evaluate geographic and temporal variations in community-level risk factors and prevalence estimates, and used that method to identify communities in Massachusetts that should be considered high priority communities for smoking interventions. METHODS We integrated individual-level data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from 1999 to 2005 with community-level data in Massachusetts. We used small-area estimation models to assess the associations of adults' smoking status with both individual- and community-level characteristics and to estimate community-specific smoking prevalence in 398 communities. We classified communities into 8 groups according to their prevalence estimates, the precision of the estimates, and temporal trends. RESULTS Community-level prevalence of current cigarette smoking among adults ranged from 5% to 36% in 2005 and declined in all but 16 (4%) communities between 1999 and 2005. However, less than 15% of the communities met the national prevalence goal of 12% or less. High smoking prevalence remained in communities with lower income, higher percentage of blue-collar workers, and higher density of tobacco outlets. CONCLUSIONS Prioritizing communities for intervention can be accomplished through the use of small-area estimation models. In Massachusetts, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities have high smoking prevalence rates and should be of high priority to those working to control tobacco use.
Supplier‐assembler network structure and capability improvement of suppliers in newly emerging Vietnam's motorcycle industry

Summary By analyzing five in‐depth case studies of suppliers in newly emerging Vietnam's motorcycle industry, this paper explores the differences in patterns and processes of capability improvement of suppliers who participate in different kinds of supplier‐assembler network with different structures (arm‐length or embedded). The paper finds the correlation between the kinds of suppliers’ capabilities improved and the structure of networks they participate in. While suppliers in arm‐length networks can improve more upstream capabilities (structure design, process design), suppliers in embedded networks can improve more downstream capabilities (process design, process setup, process maintenance and delivery control). Two capability improvement patterns of firms in newly emerging economy are indicated. The first pattern is asymmetrical improvement, either upstream or downstream capabilities, by participating in either arm‐length or embedded networks. This pattern obstructs the suppliers to meet the requirements of new buyers who come from different kinds of network. The second pattern is symmetrical improvement by joining both arm‐length and embedded networks.
Electrically small antennas design challenges

The Electrically Small Antennas (ESAs) perform well compared to larger antennas under matched conditions. In this paper, we study the difficulties in achieving a good design of an ESA matched to 50 O system. These difficulties are summarized in three topics: First, the Quality (Q) factor of an ESA, in general, is high and cannot be less than the Chu limit. The Q factor of an antenna is inversely proportional to the bandwidth of the antenna so this will impose a limit on the bandwidth of the antenna. Second, losses are always there in the impedance matching network, these losses associated with the matching network can dominate the small radiation resistance of an ESA which will degrade the efficiency of the ESA. Third, we are limited by the Fano-Bode gain-bandwidth limit when using the lossless passive matching network techniques. To overcome these issues, several solutions are presented briefly, either we try to alter the shape of the ESA so as to make the Q factor of the antenna close to the optimum lower limit or to use the concept of non-Foster matching networks to overcome the Fano-Bode limit. Finally, we design a four-arm meander line folded monopole which is considered an ESA at 1 GHz; it is shown that this design is matched to 50 Ω with low quality factor.
Iterators and encapsulation

Iterators are an important object oriented design pattern, providing sequential access to the state stored in other objects. Precisely because iterators need to access the state of other objects, iterators' design can be at odds with the encapsulation provided by object oriented languages. We present a range of designs for iterator objects, showing how different designs have different encapsulation properties. Studying a range of different iterators can help programmers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of particular designs, and also illustrates some of the issues in the design of encapsulation mechanisms in programming languages.
A new method of normal approximation. I. Geometric central limit theorems

We introduce a new version of Stein's method that reduces a large class of normal approximation problems to variance bounding exercises, thus making a connection between central limit theorems and concentration of measure. Unlike Skorokhod embeddings, the object whose variance has to be bounded has an explicit formula that makes it possible to carry out the program more easily. As an application, we derive a general CLT for functions that are obtained as combinations of many local contributions, where the definition of `local' itself depends on the data. Several examples are given, including the solution to a nearest-neighbor CLT problem posed by Peter Bickel.
Efficient algorithms for large-scale local triangle counting

In this article, we study the problem of approximate local triangle counting in large graphs. Namely, given a large graph G=(V,E) we want to estimate as accurately as possible the number of triangles incident to every node v∈ V in the graph. We consider the question both for undirected and directed graphs. The problem of computing the global number of triangles in a graph has been considered before, but to our knowledge this is the first contribution that addresses the problem of approximate local triangle counting with a focus on the efficiency issues arising in massive graphs and that also considers the directed case. The distribution of the local number of triangles and the related local clustering coefficient can be used in many interesting applications. For example, we show that the measures we compute can help detect the presence of spamming activity in large-scale Web graphs, as well as to provide useful features for content quality assessment in social networks. For computing the local number of triangles (undirected and directed), we propose two approximation algorithms, which are based on the idea of min-wise independent permutations [Broder et al. 1998]. Our algorithms operate in a semi-streaming fashion, using O(|V|) space in main memory and performing O(log |V|) sequential scans over the edges of the graph. The first algorithm we describe in this article also uses O(|E|) space of external memory during computation, while the second algorithm uses only main memory. We present the theoretical analysis as well as experimental results on large graphs, demonstrating the practical efficiency of our approach.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Phase diagram of the non-Hermitian asymmetric XXZ spin chain

The low-lying excitations of the asymmetric XXZ spin chain are derived explicitly in the antiferromagnetic regime through the Bethe ansatz. It is found that a massless and conformal invariant phase with central charge c = 1 is separated from a massive phase by a line on which the low-lying excitations surprisingly scale with the lattice length as . The mass gap vanishes with an exponent as one approaches the massless phase. The connection with the asymmetric six-vertex model and some physical consequences are discussed.