Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Time-scale Modification using the Phase Vocoder

The phase vocoder has been used as a time-scale-modification tool for several decades. Applying large positive modification factors to different kinds of sounds (time-stretching), the result will always sound “phasy” or “reverberant”. The sound quality can be improved by “locking” the phases. Phase-locking preserves the phase relations around a local maximum in the magnitude spectrum. For large modification factors, locking the entire phase spectrum sounds “rigid”. In this work, the deterministic and stochastic components of a sound are separated in the frequency domain, and only the phases of sinusoids are locked, while the remaining phases are set to random numbers. The deterministic part is detected within a “reduced variance” magnitude spectrum using heuristic conditions. The reduced variance spectrum is calculated by weighting the actual magnitude spectrum, the spectrum of a frame about 11 ms in advance and the reduced variance spectrum 11 ms before the actual spectrum. In this way, the variance of the approximation can be reduced for the peak-detection yielding better results for noise-like signals. For resynthesis, the deterministic magnitudes are combined with the smoothed stochastic magnitudes, and the locked phases are combined with the random phases.
Intelligent Systems for Training Damage Control Assistants

The Navy is shifting its training and education from traditional methods, such as on -site instruction, texts, and observing students uring drills, to computer -supported learning such as web -based nstruction and computer simulations in lieu of live drills. This transition presents the challenge of keeping the best parts of traditional methods of instruction while obtaining the advantages that computers afford. The challenge is more difficult because to maximize savings in manpower, money and time, computer-based learning must be able to teach, evaluate and give feedback to students without any instructor in the loop. A valuable aspect of traditional training methods, in which computers currently fal l short, is the 'mentor/student' relationship: an experienced person discussing a novice's performance with him or her. The mentor gives the student direct, personalized feedback in a setting where the student can ask questions and discuss issues. Most com puter simulations are lacking in this type of interaction. We propose that giving computers the ability to debrief and discuss a student's actions using natural language will more closely simulate this relationship and greatly improve the effectiveness of computer-based learning. To assess this hypothesis, we are utilizing natural language technology to (1) allow students to use a damage control trainer for surface ships by speaking with the simulation system, and (2) to support a subsequent spoken discuss ion with an intelligent tutoring system that provides an after action review of the student's performance. The combined system performs a mentoring function, helping students learn correct actions and avoid 'practicing mistakes'. We are studying the usefulness of this mentoring system for students under training in damage control, and will present results about differences in rate of learning with and without mentoring. An additional benefit of natural language interaction with the computer systems is that students train as they will actually perform on duty.
“We Can’t Handle Things We don’t Know About”: Perceived Neurorehabilitation Needs and Challenges for Malawian Paediatric Cerebral Malaria Survivors

Background: We sought to identify perceptions of neurorehabilitation needs and challenges for paediatric cerebral malaria (CM) survivors post-hospital discharge at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre, Malawi. Methods: An exploratory approach was used to qualitatively investigate current available neurorehabilitation services; investigate the needs of caregivers, CM survivors, providers, and the community; and identify challenges and methods to accessing neurorehabilitation services. Data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews (IDIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs). Results: Eighteen data-gathering sessions were conducted with 38 total participants, including 3 FGDs with 23 primary caregivers, 11 IDIs with healthcare workers at QECH, and 4 IDIs with community-based rehabilitation workers (CRWs). FGDs revealed that caregivers lack important knowledge about CM and fear recurrence of CM in their children. Post-CM children and families experience substantial stigma and sociocultural barriers to integrating into their community and accessing neurorehabilitative care. At a community-level, rehabilitation infrastructure, including trained staff, equipment, and programmes, is extremely limited. Rehabilitation services are inequitably accessible, and community-based rehabilitation remains largely unavailable.Conclusions: There is an urgent need to establish further training of rehabilitation personnel at all levels and to build accessible rehabilitation infrastructure in Malawi for post-CM patients. Additional work is required to expand this study across multiple regions for a holistic understanding of neurorehabilitation needs.
The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening

This title is designed as an accessible scholarly resource with practical information for gardeners. It encompasses a vast range of plants grown on a domestic or commercial scale in private gardens or present in specialist and botanical collections. They are plants grown for ornament, for amenity or for economic use, and they include a vast range of cultivars. Each entry has been written according to the exacting scientific standards. Features include: 50,000 plants described; concise botanical accounts of species in cultivation throughout the world, in line with the latest taxonomic thinking; practical advice on how to grow every plant described; nearly 200 articles on horticultural science and practice, newly commissioned from leading authorities; 175 biographies of figures in horticulture, botany and garden design; fully cross referenced; cumulative bibliography, arranged by subject; botanical and horticultural glossaries - a grammar of gardening; and 3000 specially commissioned line drawings of plants and gardening techniques.
Virtual Reality Aided Mobile C-arm Positioning for Image-Guided Surgery

Image-guided surgery (IGS) is the minimally invasive procedure based on the pre-operative volume in conjunction with intra-operative X-ray images which are commonly captured by mobile C-arms for the confirmation of surgical outcomes. Although currently some commercial navigation systems are employed, one critical issue of such systems is the neglect regarding the radiation exposure to the patient and surgeons. In practice, when one surgical stage is finished, several X-ray images have to be acquired repeatedly by the mobile C-arm to obtain the desired image. Excessive radiation exposure may increase the risk of some complications. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a positioning system for mobile C-arms, and achieve one-time imaging to avoid the additional radiation exposure. In this dissertation, a mobile C-arm positioning system is proposed with the aid of virtual reality (VR). The surface model of patient is reconstructed by a camera mounted on the mobile C-arm. A novel registration method is proposed to align this model and pre-operative volume based on a tracker, so that surgeons can visualize the hidden anatomy directly from the outside view and determine a reference pose of C-arm. Considering the congested operating room, the C-arm is modeled as manipulator with a movable base to maneuver the image intensifier to the desired pose. In the registration procedure above, intensity-based 2D/3D registration is used to transform the pre-operative volume into the coordinate system of tracker. Although it provides a high accuracy, the small capture range hinders its clinical use due to the initial guess. To address such problem, a robust and fast initialization method is proposed based on the automatic tracking based initialization and multi-resolution estimation in frequency domain. This hardware-software integrated approach provides almost optimal transformation parameters for intensity-based registration. To determine the pose of mobile C-arm, high-quality visualization is necessary to locate the pathology in the hidden anatomy. A novel dimensionality reduction method based on sparse representation is proposed for the design of multi-dimensional transfer function in direct volume rendering. It not only achieves the similar performance to the conventional methods, but also owns the capability to deal with the large data sets.
DBS Methodology Study for Biomarker Discovery in LSD

Lysosomal storage diseases (LSDs) are a heterogeneous group of inherited metabolic diseases caused by mutations in genes encoding for proteins involved in the lysosomal degradation of macromolecules. They occur in approximately 1 in 5000 live births and pose a lifelong risk. Therefore, to achieve the maximum benefit from LSDs therapies, a fast and early diagnosis of the disease is required. In this framework, biomarker discovery is a significant factor in disease diagnosis and in predicting its outcomes. On the other hand, the dried blood spot (DBS)based metabolomics platform can open up new pathways for studying non-directional hypothesis approaches to biomarker discovery. This study aims to increase the efficiency of the developed methods for biomarker development in the context of rare diseases, with an improved impact on the reliability of the detected compounds. Thereby, we conducted two independent experiments and integrated them into the screening of the human blood metabolome: (1) comparison of EDTA blood and filter cards in terms of their suitability for metabolomics studies; (2) optimization of the extraction method: a side-by-side comparison of a series of buffers to the best utility to the disease of interest. The findings were compared to previous studies across parameters such as metabolite coverage, sample type suitability, and stability. The results indicate that measurements of metabolites are susceptible to differences in pre-analytical conditions and extraction solvents. This proposed approach can increase the positive rate of the future development of biomarkers. Altogether, the procedure can be easily adapted and applied to other studies, where the limited number of samples is a common barrier.
High Speed Modem Concepts and Demonstrator for Adaptive Coding and Modulation with High Order in Satellite Applications

Within the satellite communications innovation trend, some key issues, such as: • usage of increasingly high frequency bands (e.g., from X, Ku, up to Ka and Q;). • the higher frequency reuse achievable with multi-beam satellite antenna technology; • the increasing satellite RF power becoming available thanks to the platform technology improvement; • the exploitation of Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) techniques in addition to power control to reduce the static link margin and matching the physical layer to the location and time dependent SNIR [1], [2] are shifting the focus from classical satellite modulation schemes, such as QPSK, to higher order M-ary modulation schemes. The latter can provide a higher spectral efficiency and thus the data rate required for either multi-media applications or for applications such as point-to-point high data rate backbone connectivity, and future Earth Observation missions requiring downlink data rates exceeding 1 Gb/s.
Water Powered Bioassay System

Abstract : This project addresses critical technologies, including the acquisition, metering, buffering, delivery and assay for the processing of bio-fluids that enable the complete integration of microfluidic chips into systems. An all-plastic micromachined water-powered pump was first developed that provided a constant rate fluidic delivery of 0.2 1/hr without requiring electrical power. A low-leakage, hole-in-the-wall micro valve was demonstrated that provided fluidic resistance 255 times higher in the closed state than in the open state. A micro-accumulator was designed, fabricated, and demonstrated that repeatedly stored and delivered fluidic pressure and, with a combination of pumps and valves, formed the basic micro fluidic processing unit. The addition of integrated micro dialysis needles and a bioassay system completed the system by providing the capability of extracting interstitial liquid directly from tissue and making a real- time diagnosis. A water-activated micro power battery was constructed and operated that delivered 0.6 V of power, and was demonstrated by driving a 10 kohm resistor for more than one hour. These micro-fluidic components and system integration technologies are leading the way in developing a microsystem to process microfluidics on a single chip.
Optimal Design of Water Distribution Networks A Review

4 A water distribution network consists of pipes, reservoirs, pumps, valves, and other hy5 draulic components and its purpose is to provide reliable service to the customers under 6 various demand conditions. The least cost design of water distribution networks is an opti7 mization problem, which has been solved using linear programming, nonlinear programming, 8 dynamic programming, and heuristic based optimization methods. In this paper, we review 9 the current status of the optimization models in the design of water distribution networks and 10 present recommendations for future research. 11 CE Database Subject Headings: Water distribution systems; Water supply; Network design; Optimization; 12 Algorithms; Reliability 13
MULTIBAND ANTENNA FOR MOBILE HANDSET

Modern cellular phone systems currently operate at a number of frequency bands, the most common being 900MHz, 1.8GHz and 2.0GHz. As mobile phones are becoming smaller it is not feasible to simply equip the handset with an array of antennas, each tuned for a specific frequency band. This has resulted in a demand for antennas that can operate at multiple bands without the need for multiple antennas. The Inverted-F Antenna (IFA) has been demonstrated to be capable of operating at multiple frequencies. Another approach dealing with the ever-diminishing space available on handsets is to conform the antenna. This involves wrapping the microstrip antenna around a cylindrical surface. The results of this approach using the IFA are encouraging, especially in terms of space minimization, bandwidth enhancement and return loss reduction. The purpose of this thesis is to design a conformal antenna for a mobile handset. The first step is to choose a suitable planar triple-band antenna capable of operating at 900MHz, 1.8GHz and 2.0GHz. The antenna that is selected for this thesis is the E shaped planar IFA. This antenna should easily be tuned for correct frequency operation and possess a compact design. The design is created by using, an electromagnetic simulation software package. Once the planar version of the antenna will be simulated, the antenna will then made conformal.
Robust Formation Controller Synthesis with Different Time Delays

In this paper we consider the robust controller synthesis problem for a group of identical agents which have to fulfill a common goal. To achieve this, the agents have the capability to communicate with each other. The communication structure is modeled as a directed graph and is affected by time delays and changes in the communication topology. These time delays differ depending on whether they affect also an agent's own states and not only the communicated states of the other agents. For both cases, a synthesis method that guarantees stability of the formation is proposed. The design of a controller that guarantees stability in the face of self-delays is the main contributio n of this paper and an extension to previous work. A comparison of the controller design method for communication delays with and without self-delays has been carried out by a simulation of a formation flight of quad-rotor helicopters.
Assembly Planning in Constrained Environments: Building Structures with Multiple Mobile Robots

Assembly is a task at which robots excel, but only as long as they operate in well-controlled environments such as factories or assembly lines. This thesis presents a comprehensive planning and execution framework that enables mobile manipulator robots to overcome this limitation and assemble large structures in physically challenging environments. In order to be useful in realistic scenarios, the developed system must be robust to inevitably occurring execution-time failures, generate plans efficiently and scale to large problems including complex structures being assembled by multiple robots. Complex tasks today are approached in one of two fundamental ways: as a problem of sequencing abstract tasks, or as fine-grained motion planning problems. The prior has no problem reasoning about large problems, but lacks understanding of the physical context of the scenario, whereas the latter considers physical reality but lacks the scope for complex scenarios. This thesis develops a graph-based representation that exploits synergies between both methodologies to solve large, physically grounded problems. Beyond planning complex assembly tasks, the fundamental challenge for a useful system lies in its ability to successfully execute the planned task even when unforeseen problems occur during operation. Comprehensive repair and re-planning strategies are essential to avoid terminal failures, and ultimate robustness is achieved by allowing an expert operator to assist with error recovery at the behavioral, executive and planning levels as appropriate. Once assembly plans can be executed reliably, the efficiency of plan generation can be improved both when finding the initial plan, as well as when repair and re-planning become necessary. The techniques presented in this thesis reduce the time required to generate an assembly plan by 2.5 orders of magnitude and more compared to a baseline solution performing best-first search over possible assembly steps. These improvements make the system practical to be applied to larger problems. Hierarchical problem decomposition, as well as computational and physical parallelization, allow the framework to scale to large structures of hundreds or thousands of components being assembled by multiple robots. The comprehensive assembly planning and execution framework developed in this thesis pushes the boundary of what mobile manipulator robots can accomplish in realistic environments. It provides the high-level intelligence necessary to apply low-level capabilities to very large problems, and it includes error recovery strategies to cope with inevitable exceptions while performing complex and challenging tasks.
Beiblatt

Ausschreibung von Schulratsstellen. 34* Ausschreibung einer Sachgebietsleiterstelle an der Regierung von Oberfranken . 34* Besetzung von Direktorenstellen im Bereich der staatlichen Gymnasien und in der Leitung des Bayernkollegs Schweinfurt . 35* Besetzung von Stellen des Ständigen Stellvertreters im Bereich der staatlichen Gymnasien sowie am Bayernkolleg Schweinfurt. 37* Ausschreibung einer Sachgebietsleiterstelle an der Regierung von Unterfranken. 38* Ausschreibung einer Sachgebietsleiterstelle an der Regierung von Schwaben. 39* Auswahlverfahren für die Ausbildungsplätze in der öffentlichen Verwaltung und der Justiz (Ausbildungsbeginn Herbst 2013). 40* Ausschreibung von Referentenstellen an der Regierung von Oberbayern . 40* Ausschreibung einer Sachgebietsleiterstelle an der Regierung von Mittelfranken . 41* 56. Theatertage der Gymnasien in Bayern vom 25. bis 28. Juli 2012 in Landsberg/Lech . 42* Qualifikationsprüfung (II. Lehramtsprüfung) 2013 der Fachlehrer. 44* Offene Stellen. 45*
Functional multinational team leadership and team effectiveness from a dynamic capability perspective.

Multinational teams (MNTs) have traditionally consisted of members from different nationalities, and such teams have attempted to capitalise on the diversity of the members to create innovative solutions. Currently, dynamic capabilities, by which is meant the ability to integrate, coordinate and upgrade capabilities to respond to environmental changes and dynamic demands, have been urged on multinational companies. However, very limited attention has been paid to how functional MNT leaders utilise team capabilities, including the diversity of the members, to enhance team effectiveness in organisational processes. To address that research gap, this study investigates functional MNT leadership skills aligned with dynamic capabilities and McGrath’s Input–Process–Output (IPO) model. First, it explores organisational processes and roles of functional MNT leaders from a perspective of dynamic capabilities. Second, it examines the mediation effect of functional MNT leadership skills by testing the proposed IPO model, and investigates similarities and differences between functional MNTs in two locations, Japan and Germany. The findings show that the right combination of functional MNT leadership skills – intra-team and extra-team relational skills, communication skills, setting clear goals, managing differences of national cultures, and technical competences – is required depending on the type of functional MNT and the location.
Physics-Based Action Planning With Application to Planetary Exploration

This paper describes an action planning method for field robots. The method represents all possible activities of the robot with discrete actions, or action modules. The action modules are assembled into a sequence, or action plan. A successful action plan is one that allows the robot to complete the task without violating any of the physical constraints of the robot or the task. These constraints are verified using physics-based models of the robot and environment. Plans are developed that explicitly consider constraints such as power, actuator saturation, wheel slip, and vehicle stability. The methodology is described in the context of planetary exploration similar to the recent NASA Mars Pathfinder mission. Theoretical analysis, simulation studies, and a laboratory demonstration of the method are presented.
Cmmi For Outsourcing Guidelines For Software Systems And It Acquisition

CMMI for Outsourcing-Hubert F. Hofmann 2007 This definitive introduction to CMMI-ACQ and its use in all phases of technology acquisition explains how CMMI-ACQ combines the SEIs unparalleled knowledge of software process improvement with new techniques developed for GMs $16 billion technology acquisition program. The book reflects the unique insights of four SEI and GM experts who helped create CMMI-ACQ and implemented it for the first time.
How Do Project Manager's View Construction Safety in Australia versus the United States?

This paper investigates differences between the safety cultures in the United States and Australia from the viewpoint of constructor project managers. The authors conducted interviews with the project managers on three large construction projects in both countries to qualitatively examine differences of how safety is considered throughout the construction project lifecycle. The results indicate that while constructability reviews during the design phase occur in both countries, safety is considered as an explicit factor in constructability reviews in Australia, while in the United States safety is considered after this review is completed. It is contended that this difference has a major impact on safety culture.