Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recognition of Grip-Patterns by Using Capacitive Touch Sensors

A novel and intuitive way of accessing applications of mobile devices is presented. The key idea is to use grip-pattern, which is naturally produced when a user tries to use the mobile device, as a clue to determine an application to be launched. To this end, a capacitive touch sensor system is carefully designed and installed underneath the housing of the mobile device to capture the information of the user's grip-pattern. The captured data is then recognized by a minimum distance classifier and a naive Bayes classifier. The recognition test is performed to validate the feasibility of the proposed user interface system
Data-Driven Approaches to Demand Response: Studies on Thermostatically Controlled Loads and Electric Vehicles

This dissertation presents a set of studies that use data collected on thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) and electric vehicles (EVs) to (i) understand and improve their participation in demand response (DR) strategies, and (ii) quantify their capabilities as DR providers. First, we focus on TCLs and formulate a centralized control scenario in which a large, heterogeneous population of TCLs are controlled to provide ancillary services. We investigate the system-level bene ts that such a control scenario can impart, and focus on evaluating modeling strategies that capture TCL population dynamics when disturbances to individual TCLs are considered. We then discuss the upstream communication requirements from the TCLs to the main controller and the characteristics of the underlying cyberinfrastructure, and argue that end users will prefer a strategy in which they do not have to share real-time information with the centralized controller. Using measurements obtained at a neighborhood-level load aggregation point, we develop state estimation techniques to replace the need for upstream information exchange between individual end use loads and the controller. Our results have important policy implications for appliance standards and the participation of loads in DR services. We show that the proposed aggregate TCL modeling strategy better captures the dynamics of an aggregate TCL population with no additional computational burden in comparison to state-of-the-art strategies. We also show that if individual thermal parameters of TCLs are available to the main controller, the controller can improve on its knowledge of the state of the TCL population using measurements obtained from a neighborhood-level load aggregation point. Following our study of TCLs, we focus on centralized control of an aggregation of commercial EV charging stations. We investigate the bene ts of managed EV charging to di erent stakeholders engaged in the reliable operation of the power grid. To do this, we leverage data collected from smart devices to overcome limiting assumptions commonly made in the literature regarding: (i) driving patterns, driver behavior and driver types; (ii) the scalability of a limited number of simulated vehicles to represent di erent load aggregation points in the power system with di erent customer characteristics; and (iii) the charging pro le of EVs. As part of this study, we investigate the relationship between the EV infrastructure availability, EV load exibility and bene ts to stakeholders, a relationship which has implications for future improvements to DR programs. We show that managed EV charging can decrease the contribution of EV charging loads to the system peak load by approximately 40%, and reductions up to 24% in the monthly bills are possible for EV aggregations.
Lossless embedded compression algorithm with context-based error compensation for video application

With the increase of image resolution in video application, the memory bandwidth is a critical problem in video coding. An embedded compression algorithm is a technique that can compress the frame data when stored in memory. It is possible to reduce memory requirements. In this paper, we propose a lossless embedded compression algorithm with context-based error compensation to reduce the memory bandwidth requirement. Experimental results have shown at least 50% memory bandwidth reduction on average and the data reduction ratio of the proposed algorithm is up to 5% higher than previously proposed lossless embedded compression algorithm [2].
BDD-Constrained A ∗ Search: A Fast Method for Solving Constrained DAG Shortest-Path Problems

This paper deals with the constrained DAG shortest path problem (CDSP), which ﬁnds the shortest path on a given directed acyclic graph (DAG) under any logical constraints posed on taken edges. There exists a previous work that uses binary decision diagrams (BDDs) to represent the logical constraints, and traverses the input DAG and the BDD simultaneously. The time complexity of this BDD-based method is derived from BDD size, and tends to be fast only when BDDs are small. However, since it does not prioritize the search order, there is considerable room for improvement, particularly for large BDDs. We combine the well-known A ∗ search with the BDD-based method synergistically, and implement several novel heuristic functions. The key insight here is that the ‘shortest path’ in the BDD is a solution of a relaxed problem, just as the shortest path in the DAG is. Experiments, particularly practical machine learning applications, show that the proposed method deceases search time by up to 2 orders of magnitude, with the speciﬁc result that it is 2,000 times faster than a commercial solver.
Universal Performance Prediction for Gated and Free-Running Geiger-Mode Avalanche Photodiodes

This letter proposes a universal discrete-time recurrence (UDR) method to predict the response performance of Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes (GM-APDs), where performance prediction for a free-running GM-APD is realized beyond the gate-limit assumption for the first time. The dead time effect is summarized as the discrete-time correlation law, and the afterpulsing is first incorporated in the performance prediction theory as an equivalent noise source. Simulations with appropriate parameters verified the high accuracy and low calculation-time requirements of the UDR method.
Separation of Lymphocytes of Rat Bone Marrow by Combined Glass‐Wool Filtration and. Dextran‐Gradient Centrifugation

The two‐step separation of rat bone marrow involving glass‐wool filtration combined with dextran‐gradient centrifugation yields viable cell suspensions composed predominantly of lymphocytes with a minimum of contamination by granulocytes (less than 10 per cent). Because filtration of rat bone marrow through glass wool removes the larger marrow cells and most of the immature forms of the red cell series, it is useful as a first step in the separation of lymphocytes from bone marrow.
Dynamic correlations, estimation risk, and porfolio management during the financial crisis

We evaluate alternative multivariate models of dynamic correlations in terms of realized out-of-sample Sharpe ratios for an active portfolio manager who rebalances a portfolio of international equities on a daily basis. The evaluation period covers the recent financial crisis which was marked by increased volatility and correlations across international stock markets. Our results show that international correlations fluctuate considerably from day to day, but we find no evidence of decoupling between emerging and developed stock markets. We also find that the recursively updated dynamic correlation models display remarkably stable parameter estimates over time, but that none yields statistically better portfolio performances than the naive diversification benchmark strategy. The results clearly show the erosive effects of model estimation risk and transactions costs, the benefits of limiting short sales, and the far greater importance of including a risk-free security in the asset mix whether or not market turbulence is high.
Wiki et Web Sémantique

Le concept de wiki a dix ans cette annee mais a connu recemment un grand succes grâce a Wikipedia. Cependant, dans le monde des intranets, plusieurs etudes ont prouve que l'utilisation des wikis est sujette a discussion et l'acceptation de tels outils de collaboration ouverts et peu structures n'est pas evidente. Differentes raisons peuvent expliquer ce manque d'acceptation : des raisons sociales (la culture de l'entreprise n'est pas compatible avec un tel systeme ouvert), mais egalement d'usage (le wiki n'est pas assez structure pour y naviguer et pour trouver l'information appropriee, l'apprentissage du langage de redaction du wiki est un frein aux contributions, etc.). Nous presentons ici SweetWiki , un moteur de wiki reconciliant deux tendances du futur Web : un Web augmente par des metadonnees et un Web d'applications sociales ou chaque utilisateur est un acteur et un fournisseur actif. Les utilisateurs du wiki peuvent librement entrer des tags sur ses pages et leurs constituants et un mecanisme d'auto-completion suggere des tags compatibles existants. En annotant semantiquement les ressources du wiki et en reifiant le modele meme du wiki, SweetWiki fournit des fonctionnalites de structuration, de raisonnement et de requetes sur le wiki. Tagguer est facilite et motive par l'affichage en temps reel du nombre de pages liees aux tags suggeres.
MEASURING SERVICE QUALITY USING ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP) IN THE LIFE INSURANCE INDUSTRY IN MANADO

Life insurance industries become a very competitive and attractive. They not only focuses product but focus on maintaining service quality especially in manado. There two major life insurance in manado that is PT. Allianz life insurance and PT. Prudential life assurance. Each life insurance must to survive and gain profit through satisfy their customer in different way. This study aimed to find out who is the performer life insurance in relation with service quality using analytical hierarchy process and to identify the strength and weaknesses point of each life insurance trough the questioner that given to the customer that have experience with those two life insurance.AHP is a method for ranking decision alternative and selecting the best one when the decision maker has multiple objectives, or criteria, on which to base the decision. The result shows that the best performer life insurance relation with service quality in manado is Allianz. Overall the criteria that given Allianz is the best performer life insurance in relation with service quality measurement model and the most preferred life insurance over Prudential. Since Allianz as the best performer in service quality but not consistently, Allianz has keep maintaining their performance in services so that they can keep dominate the market. And Prudential has to re-evaluate, find innovative products and gave the best service to the customer. Keywords: service quality, life insurance, analytical hierarchy process
Thin Al 2 O 3 barrier coatings grown on bio-based packaging materials by atomic layer deposition

Growing environmental concerns related to the use of synthetic non-biodegradable polymers in the packaging industry have led to the need for new, especially biobased, materials. Currently, petroleum-based synthetic polymers are widely used due to their relatively low cost and high performance. Biodegradable plastics and fibre-based materials have been proposed as a solution to the waste problems related to these synthetic polymers. Fibre-based packaging materials have many advantages over their non-biodegradable competitors, such as stiffness vs. weight ratio and recyclability. However, poor barrier properties and sensitivity to moisture are the main challenges restricting their use. Application of a thin coating layer is one way to overcome these problems and to improve the barrier properties of such materials. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a well suited technique for depositing thin inorganic coatings onto temperature-sensitive materials such as polymer-coated boards and papers and polymer films. In the present work, thin and highly uniform Al2O3 coatings were deposited at relatively low temperatures of 80, 100 and 130 °C onto various bio-based polymeric materials employing the ALD technique. The study demonstrates that a 25-nm-thick ALD-grown Al2O3 coating significantly enhances the oxygen and water vapour barrier performance of these materials. Promising barrier properties were obtained with polylactide-coated board, hemicellulose-coated board as well as various biopolymer (polylactide, pectin and nanofibrillated cellulose) films after coating with a 25-nm-thick Al2O3 layer. Thin Al2O3 coatings can improve the properties of biopolymers, enabling the use of these renewable polymers in the production of high-performance materials for demanding food and pharmaceutical packaging applications. The future roll-toroll ALD technology for coating polymers with inorganic thin films will increase the industrial potential of these materials and could lead to further opportunities for their commercialization.
Online Video–Based Resistance Training Improves the Physical Capacity of Junior Basketball Athletes

Abstract Klusemann, MJ, Pyne, DB, Fay, T, and Drinkwater, EJ. Online Video–Based Resistance Training Improves the Physical Capacity of Junior Basketball Athletes. J Strength Cond Res 26(10): 2677–2684, 2012—Junior basketball athletes require a well-designed resistance training program to improve their physical development. Lack of expert supervision and resistance training in junior development pathways may be overcome by implementing an online video–based program. The aim of this study was to compare the magnitude of improvement (change) in physical performance and strength and functional movement patterns of junior basketball athletes using either a fully supervised or an online video–based resistance training program. Thirty-eight junior basketball athletes (males, n = 17; age, 14 ± 1 year; height, 1.79 ± 0.10 m; mass, 67 ± 12 kg; females, n = 21; age, 15 ± 1 year; height, 1.70 ± 0.07 m; mass, 62 ± 8 kg) were randomly assigned into a supervised resistance training group (SG, n = 13), video training group (VG, n = 13) or control group (CG, n = 12) and participated in a 6-week controlled experimental trial. Pre- and posttesting included measures of physical performance (20-m sprint, step-in vertical jump, agility, sit and reach, line drill, and Yo-Yo intermittent recovery level 1), strength (15 s push-up and pull-up), and functional movement screening (FMS). Both SG and VG achieved 3–5% ± 2–4% (mean ± 90% confidence limits) greater improvements in several physical performance measures (vertical jump height, 20-m sprint time, and Yo-Yo endurance performance) and a 28 ± 21% greater improvement in push-up strength compared with the CG. The SG attained substantially larger gains in FMS scores over both the VG (12 ± 10%) and CG (13 ± 8%). Video-based training appears to be a viable option to improve physical performance and strength in junior basketball athletes. Qualified supervision is recommended to improve functional movement patterns in junior athletes.
Stabilization of peptides for intracellular applications by phosphoramidate-linked polyethylene glycol chains.

PEG intracellularly! Although long known to enhance residence half-life of peptides in serum and lysates, the effect of PEGylation on biological probes in cells has received only limited attention. Here it is shown that phosphoramidate-linked PEGylated proapoptotic peptides display a dramatically increased stability in Jurkat cell lysate and a homogenous intracellular distribution as well as high apoptotic activity after introduction into cells.
Peculiar Photoconductivity in High-Power Semi-Insulating GaAs Photoconductive Semiconductor Switch

A photoconductive semiconductor switch (PCSS) with a gap of 0.018 m was fabricated from semi-insulating (SI) GaAs and tested under different bias voltages by using a laser at a wavelength of 1064 nm for triggering. The peculiar photoconductivity in high-power SI GaAs PCSS is reported. The PCSS operates in linear mode at bias voltages of 4 and 6 kV, because the waveform of photocurrent is similar to that of laser pulse. As the bias voltage increases, the full-width at half-maximum of photocurrents also increases, and the PCSS undergoes transition from linear to nonlinear mode. The switch behaved nonlinearly at a bias voltage of 10 kV, with obvious lock-on in photocurrent waveform. However, with bias voltages above 10 kV, the photocurrents increase instead of staying on a constant value, and a two-stage rise of photocurrents is observed. In both linear and nonlinear modes, photocurrents have the same full pulse duration at different bias voltages.
Mining and analysing social network in the oil business : Twitter sentiment analysis and prediction approaches

Twitter is a rich source of data for opinion mining and sentiment analysis that companies can use to improve their strategy with the public and stakeholders. However, extracting and analysing information from unstructured text remains a hard task. The aim of this research is to investigate the use of Twitter by “controversial” companies and other users. In particular, it looks at the nature of positive and negative sentiment towards oil companies and shows how this relates to cultural effects and the network structure. This has required the evaluation of existing automated methods for sentiment analysis and the development of improved methods based on user classification. The research showed that tweets about oil companies were noisy enough to affect the accuracy. In this thesis, we analysed data collected from Twitter and investigated the variance that arises from using an automated sentiment analysis tool versus crowd sourced human classification. Our particular interest lay in understanding how users’ motivation to post messages affected the accuracy of sentiment polarity. The dataset used Tweets originating from two of the world’s leading oil companies, BP America and Saudi Aramco, and other users that follow and mention them, representing Western and Middle Eastern countries respectively. Our results show that the two methods yield significantly different positive, natural and negative classifications depending on culture and the relationship of the poster of the tweet to the two companies. This motivated the investigation of the relationship between sentiment and user groups extracted by applying machine learning classifiers. Finally, clustering based on similarities in the network structure was used to connect user groups, and a novel technique to improve the sentiment accuracy was proposed. The analytical technique used here provided structured and valuable information for oil companies and has applications to other controversial domains.
A Novel Phenanthrene Dioxygenase fromNocardioides sp. Strain KP7: Expression inEscherichia coli

ABSTRACT Nocardioides sp. strain KP7 grows on phenanthrene but not on naphthalene. This organism degrades phenanthrene via 1-hydroxy-2-naphthoate, o-phthalate, and protocatechuate. The genes responsible for the degradation of phenanthrene too-phthalate (phd) were found by Southern hybridization to reside on the chromosome. A 10.6-kb DNA fragment containing eight phd genes was cloned and sequenced. ThephdA, phdB, phdC, andphdD genes, which encode the α and β subunits of the oxygenase component, a ferredoxin, and a ferredoxin reductase, respectively, of phenanthrene dioxygenase were identified. The gene cluster, phdAB, was located 8.3 kb downstream of the previously characterized phdK gene, which encodes 2-carboxybenzaldehyde dehydrogenase. The phdCD gene cluster was located 2.9 kb downstream of the phdB gene. PhdA and PhdB exhibited moderate (less than 60%) sequence identity to the α and β subunits of other ring-hydroxylating dioxygenases. The PhdC sequence showed features of a [3Fe-4S] or [4Fe-4S] type of ferredoxin, not of the [2Fe-2S] type of ferredoxin that has been found in most of the reported ring-hydroxylating dioxygenases. PhdD also showed moderate (less than 40%) sequence identity to known reductases. The phdABCD genes were expressed poorly inEscherichia coli, even when placed under the control of strong promoters. The introduction of a Shine-Dalgarno sequence upstream of each initiation codon of the phdABCD genes improved their expression in E. coli. E. colicells carrying phdBCD or phdACD exhibited no phenanthrene-degrading activity, and those carrying phdABDor phdABC exhibited phenanthrene-degrading activity which was significantly less than that in cells carrying thephdABCD genes. It was thus concluded that all of thephdABCD genes are necessary for the efficient expression of phenanthrene-degrading activity. The genetic organization of thephd genes, the phylogenetically diverged positions of these genes, and an unusual type of ferredoxin component suggest phenanthrene dioxygenase in Nocardioides sp. strain KP7 to be a new class of aromatic ring-hydroxylating dioxygenases.
State-space modelling of modular multilevel converters for constant variables in steady-state

This paper presents an approach for obtaining a dynamic model of a Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) where all state variables settle at a constant point of equilibrium during steady-state operation. The resulting model can be expressed as a steady-state time-invariant (SSTI) state-space model, which can be linearized for assessment of small-signal stability by eigenvalue analysis or can be utilized for applying advanced control methods. The proposed modelling approach relies on an aggregated voltage-based representation of the internal capacitor dynamics of the MMC, and the derivation is based on the application of three Park transformations at different frequencies (+ω, -2ω and +3ω). The presented voltage-based modelling is suitable when the MMC insertion indexes for the modulation of the individual arms are calculated directly from the controller output references, without compensating for the dynamic variations and continuous oscillations in the internal capacitor voltages of the individual arms. Time-domain simulations with comparison to established MMC models are presented to verify that the proposed state-space model is accurately representing the dynamics of an MMC.
Flow Visualization Tools for Image Analysis of Capillary Networks

Objective: Video recordings of red blood cell (RBC) flow through capillary networks contain a considerable amount of information pertaining to oxygen transport through the microcirculation. Image analysis of these video recordings has been widely used to determine RBC dynamics (velocity, lineal density and supply rate) and oxygenation (Brunner et al., 2000; Ellis et al., 1990, 1992; Ellsworth et al., 1987; Klyscz et al., 1997; Pries 1988). However, not all capillaries in a given field of view are suitable for image analysis. Typically, capillary segments that are relatively straight and in sharp focus, and exhibit flow of individual RBCs that are well separated by plasma gaps, are good candidates for analysis. We have developed several image processing tools to aid in the selection of such capillaries for analysis and to obtain quick overviews of RBC flow through the microcirculation.