Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of Optimal Route Search Application based on Simulated Annealing Algoritm and Combined Utility Criterion

— Fast development of industry and trade increases importance of optimal routes’ search. In different cases optimality criterions can essentially differ. Classical traveler-salesman problem considers a shortest path as main optimality criterion. Practice shows that when there is need of taking into consideration other factors, route with shortest distance or time is not always optimal. Applying combined criterion for solving traveler-salesman problem increases possibility of obtaining optimal solution for users with individual preferences. Method of obtaining combined optimality criterion which considers not only distance and time but also speed limitation on different sections of roads, technical characteristic of automobile vehicle, fuel consumption is suggested in this work. It makes it possible to improve trip planning. Suggested approach is used in combination with simulated annealing algorithm. On base of this approach was developed software which functionality allows user to specify priorities (simple or combined), specify cities and choose vehicle type. On base of this information and information which is stored in software database, user is provided with information about optimal route, required time, fuel consumption and in recommended speed. Application scope of developed software includes companies which deliver their own products to users or sales outlets, private use for planning trips.
Detection of circular arcs for content-based retrieval from an image database

Methods are discussed for producing a summary of geometric content for images from a specific geological application, which can be used for content-based retrieval of interesting images from a large database. Using a data set of 100 images, it is shown that a local are detection scheme provides a more concise and hence a better summary of image content than a conventional edge map, while giving a superior performance.
A framework for studying practical production scheduling

The aim of this paper is to present what we believe are the most relevant findings and results regarding practical scheduling in order to define practical production scheduling and create a framework that helps researchers to study the various topics that fall under the umbrella of practical production scheduling and to identify the current state of knowledge for each topic. Studies from different fields were analysed and included in this paper, contributing significant knowledge to build a definition of practical production scheduling. Finally, we discuss the applicability that scheduling, as a task, could have in real companies.
Frequency-Domain Doubly-Iterative Equalization of Continuous Phase Modulation

In this paper, a doubly-iterative receiver with a soft-information-aided frequency-domain minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizer is proposed for coded continuous phase modulation (CPM). Equalization in the frequency-domain provides low computational complexity in long multipath fading channel responses. The front-end equalizer is followed by the soft- input soft-output (SISO) CPM and channel decoders at the back- end. The receiver exploits double turbo processing by employing back-end demodulation/decoding iterations per each equalization iteration to improve the ap rioriinformation for the front-end equalizer. Such processing results in high bit-error rate (BER) performance with less number of equalization iterations, as also shown in the simulation results.
Fast global motion estimation using threshold method

In this paper, a fast global motion estimation method is proposed for video coding. This method can accommodate not only a translational motion model but also a polynomial motion model. It speeds up the procedure of the global motion estimation (GME) by pre-analyzing the characteristics of the block. At the first stage, the smooth region blocks which contribute less to the GME are filtered by using a threshold method based on image intensity. Next, a threshold method based on the discrepancy of the motion vectors is used to exclude the foreground blocks from the GME. From the experimental results, we can conclude that the proposed fast global motion estimation method manages to speed up the processing of estimating the motion vector field while maintaining the coding performance.
Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control

Bridging classical models and modern topics, the Fifth Edition of Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control maintains a balanced presentation of the tools for modeling and analyzing time series. Also describing the latest developments that have occurred in the field over the past decade through applications from areas such as business, finance, and engineering, the Fifth Edition continues to serve as one of the most influential and prominent works on the subject.
Methodology for Selection and Development of TransXML Schemas

NCHRP Project 20-64, TransXML, solicited the development of standard, public domain extensible markup language (XML) schemas for the exchange of transportation data as well as the creation of a framework for the development, validation, dissemination, and extension of current and future schemas. The methodology used for the selection and development of the initial set of TransXML schemas ensured their consistency, cohesiveness, and usefulness. Data flow diagrams of the design and construction process had previously been developed for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. They articulate steps in the design process as well as the flow of data between these steps. The diagrams were analyzed to discover candidate data flows that if supported by standardized XML schemas, could improve the design and construction process. The content and structure of the data identified were then modeled with unified modeling language (UML) class diagrams–roughly one UML package per data flow. Consensus of interested parties was achieved through the project website, including specific agreement on data elements and their associations. For each element, relevant attributes were decided, along with their cardinality and data type. For associations, relationship types, cardinalities, and roles were established. Diagrams for each area were compared to achieve consistency and to identify common elements, the latter being extracted into separate UML packages. XML schemas were then developed, based on the UML packages. The geography markup language (GML) was used as the framework for the schemas, building on predefined GML elements and following GML rules for developing application schemas. Sample applications were developed to demonstrate how the schemas support the data flows.
An adaptive nulling system digital microwave radio

An adaptive antenna preprocessor for an equalized demodulator is described. The adaptive antenna preprocessor is used to spatially null undesired directional interference by linearly combining the signal received by two antennas. A 64-tap adaptive equalizer contained within the digital demodulator is used to remove adjacent channel and intersymbol interference. The adaptive algorithms do not require knowledge of antenna calibration nor prearranged training signals. Instead blind adaptation is used during initial acquisition and decision-directed adaptation is used during tracking. Experimental results have shown that the system is capable of forming a 30-dB null over a 40-MHz-wide interference bandwidth. Time constants overall system in tracking mode have been measured and are of the order of 100 ms.<<ETX>>
Performance Analysis of Telemetering Method using Delayed Frame Time Diversity (DFTD) and Reed-Solomon Code

In this paper, the performance analysis of telemetering method using delayed frame time diversity (DFTD) as the outer code and Reed-Solomon (RS) code as the inner code is described. DFTD is used to transmit a real-time frame together with a time-delayed frame which was saved in the memory during a defined period. The RS code as a kind of FEC (forward error correction) is serially concatenated with DFTD. This method was applied to the design of telemetry units that have been used for flight tests in a communication environment with deep fading. The data of the flight test for four cases with no applied code, with DFTD only, with the RS code only, and with both DFTD and the RS code are used to analyze the performance. The simulation for time-delay suggests the possibility that all frame errors can be removed. And the results of 12 flight tests show the performance superiority of this new method to compare with the RS code only.
Semi-distributed Representations and Catastrophic Forgetting in Connectionist Networks

Abstract A major problem with connectionist networks is that newly-learned information may completely destroy previously-learned information unless the network is continually retrained on the old information. This phenomenon, known as catastrophic forgetting, is unacceptable both for practical purposes and as a model of mind. This paper advances the claim that catastrophic forgetting is in part the result of the overlap of system's distributed representations and can be reduced by reducing this overlap. A simple algorithm, called activation sharpening, is presented that allows a standard feed-forward backpropagation network to develop semi-distributed representations, thereby reducing the problem of catastrophic forgetting. Activation sharpening is discussed in tight of recent work done by other researchers who have experimented with this and other techniques for reducing catastrophic forgetting.
Introduction and overview of scalable video coding (SVC)

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, finished in May, 2003, is now a well-established video-coding standard, and derivative standardization projects are beginning to emerge based on it. The first of these is the so-called Scalable Video Coding (SVC) project. Launched within MPEG about the time that AVC was finishing, it was later moved in 2005 to the Joint Video Team (JVT); the JVT is a joint committee of video experts set up by ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T/VCEG back in 2001 to develop AVC. The SVC project aims to develop a fully scalable video codec based on the AVC codec as its backbone. While several previous scalable codecs have already been standardized before (i.e., in MPEG-2, H.263, MPEG-4), each has seen barriers to deployment, mainly based on inadequate performance against single-rate coding. SVC, due out in 2007, appears on the brink of overcoming those barriers to finally bring scalable coding to fruition. This paper aims at an elementary, general account of its current status, which seems unavailable in the literature.
A Distance Threshold Analysis on Energy Aware Distributed Clustering (EADC) Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks with Non-uniform Node Distribution

Clustering routing protocols are more energy efficient than the other types of routing protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which also improve lifetime, as well as scalability of the network. Energy Aware Distributed Clustering (EADC) is one of the cluster-based routing protocols proposed for network with non-uniform node distribution. The authors introduced a distant threshold to select the nodes which should communicate with Base Station (BS) directly in multi-hop communication. The value of this parameter has a significant impact on the energy consumption and lifetime of the network. However, the presented value for this parameter is not adequate. Thus, in this study a distance threshold analysis is performed on EADC in order to study the impact of different values of threshold parameter on the network. In conclusion, an appropriate range for distance threshold is introduced.
Prokaryotic Diversity of the Tucuruí Hydropower Plant Reservoir in the Brazilian Amazon

To perform the a culture-independent characterization of the microbial diversity observed within a water body in the Amazon, we constructed a library of bacterial and archaeal 16S rRNA genes isolated from environmental samples from the Tucurui Hydroelectric Plant reservoir. The sampling locations included the upstream compartment (MR), which is located 50 km upstream of the dam, and Itupiranga (ITU), which is located upstream on the Tocantins River at the inlet of the reservoir. The bacterial phyla Cyanobacteria (46%), Proteobacteria (12%), Actinobacteria (9%), Bacteroidetes (4%) and Verrucomicrobia (2%) were identified at the MR. Phyla including the Chloroflexi, Acidobacteria, Planctomycetes and TM6 candidate division were observed at a frequency of <2%. The phyla Cyanobacteria (62%), Proteobacteria (5%) and Actinobacteria (7%) were identified at ITU. The archaeal diversity was limited to the Euryarchaeota and Crenarchaeota phyla; the latter was found in greater abundance and mainly consisted of uncultured phylotypes. In both regions, 25% and 95% of the bacteria and archaea, respectively, that were identified were previously unclassified. The phylum Cyanobacteria was almost exclusively represented by the genus Synechococcus sp. ; however, a wide variety of microorganisms from the phylum Proteobacteria were identified from the classes alpha, gamma, delta and beta proteobacteria, with the latter being the most abundant. This study demonstrates that high prokaryotic diversity exists in the Amazonian rivers in addition to the previously reported megadiversity of fauna and flora.
Distribution Statement A: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. Buried Target Detection in FLIR Images Using Shearlet Features

ABSTRACT In this paper we investigate a new approach for representing objects in FLIR images based on shearlets. Similar to wavelets, shearlets represent an affine system for image representation obtained by scaling and translation of a generating function called mother shearlet. U nlike wavelets, the mother shearlet has an extra parameter called shear that allows the shearlet transform to be an isotropic. A nisotropic propert y of the shearlet transform could allow for a better representation of objects with irregular shape. We test o ur representation methodology on Froward looking long wave infrared (LWIR) images obtained from an IR camera installed on a movin g vehicle. Objects of interest (spots) are detected in each frame using a prescreener presented in our previous work. Each spot is then represented using its shearlet features and assigned a confidence coming from a support vector machine classifier. We compare shearlets to various traditional features such as local binary patterns (LPB) and histogram of gradients (HOG). The compa rison is performed on a large dataset that consists of 16 runs at a US Army test site . Keywords: Forward looking IR (FLIR) , shearlets , buried target detection
Reverse time migration with source wavefield reconstruction strategy

The reverse time migration (RTM) imaging condition requires that the source and receiver wavefields must be correlated at the same time. The source wavefield can be fully reconstructed backward in time if proper initial conditions and boundary values are chosen. In this paper, we present a method that can approximately reconstruct the source wavefield backward in time. At the price of losing spatial accuracy near the boundaries, the total amount of data storage can be significantly reduced. We compare two strategies for source wavefield reconstruction with both the constant-density acoustic wave equation and the pseudo-acoustic wave equation in transversely isotropic media. We also give a theoretical comparison of data storage and computation cost between the backpropagation strategies and the optimal checkpointing scheme. Numerical experiments show that the approximate source wavefield reconstruction scheme is feasible for RTM in terms of data storage and computation cost.
Digital watermarking of spectral images in PCA/wavelet-transform domain

Digital imaging continues its triumphal march especially in geoscience and remote sensing. Digital information can be easily processed, manipulated and copied. Thus, the need for document ownership verification arises. In this study, we propose a watermarking method for spectral images. The watermark is embedded in a transform domain of the spectral image. The transform is based on the principal component analysis and on the wavelet transform. With the inverse transforms the watermarked spectral image is reconstructed. The experiments indicate that the watermark is robust against attacks in lossy compression but more sensitive against mean filtering.
Gaussian process modeling of large-scale terrain

Building a model of large-scale terrain that can adequately handle uncertainty and incompleteness in a statistically sound way is a challenging problem. This work proposes the use of Gaussian processes as models of large-scale terrain. The proposed model naturally provides a multiresolution representation of space, incorporates and handles uncertainties aptly, and copes with incompleteness of sensory information. Gaussian process regression techniques are applied to estimate and interpolate (to fill gaps in occluded areas) elevation information across the field. The estimates obtained are the best linear unbiased estimates for the data under consideration. A single nonstationary (neural network) Gaussian process is shown to be powerful enough to model large and complex terrain, effectively handling issues relating to discontinuous data. A local approximation method based on a “moving window” methodology and implemented using k-dimensional (KD)-trees is also proposed. This enables the approach to handle extremely large data sets, thereby completely addressing its scalability issues. Experiments are performed on large-scale data sets taken from real mining applications. These data sets include sparse mine planning data, which are representative of a global positioning system–based survey, as well as dense laser scanner data taken at different mine sites. Further, extensive statistical performance evaluation and benchmarking of the technique has been performed through cross-validation experiments. They conclude that for dense and-or flat data, the proposed approach will perform very competitively with grid-based approaches using standard interpolation techniques and triangulated irregular networks using triangle-based interpolation techniques; for sparse and-or complex data, however, it would significantly outperform them. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Middleware Design and Xml Data Table Creation Relate to Agent-Based Information Release System

This work is concerned with looking for new middleware and xml data tables’ create approach to support agent-based information release system. It solves the problem that how to alternate layout ever-changing data tables those arise in information release system. Its main medium is use borland delphi development platform to develop middleware that can dynamic create different data tables for various types of enterprises so that these enterprises release their information.
Compensation for the demodulated phase errors caused by sampling frequency offset in OFDM systems

OFDM has been successfully adopted in Digital video broadcasting-terrestrial (DVB-T) due to its excellent spectral efficiency and inherent resistance to multipath effect. However, OFDM is a multi-carrier transmission technique and sampling frequency offset (SFO) always exists in OFDM systems. It must be noticed that SFO would result in interference between adjacent sub-carriers (ICI) as well as demodulated phase deviation and seriously degrade performance of demodulation. Therefore, in this paper we propose an adaptive sampling frequency tracking and demodulated phase error compensation scheme based on synchronization symbol information of OFDM signals. We achieved correction of phase errors and solved the problem that OFDM signals cannot be correctly demodulated for complex constellation when SFO exists. In- field test results of the proposed scheme in an ADSL environment indicate great performance improvement of demodulation. type1.
A variable delay line PLL for CPU-coprocessor synchronization

A fully integrated phase-locked loop (PLL) is used to time-align the hi-Z/low-Z transitions of a CMOS CPU and its floating-point coprocessor (FPC), resulting in minimum timing difference (skew) between the two devices at their shared data bus, and decreasing the bus cycle time. The PLL circuit abandons the traditional voltage-controlled oscillator function, instead using a CMOS voltage-controlled delay line to improve noise immunity, ease loop stabilization, and permit dynamically adjustable clock periods. With the PLL enable, measured timing skew between the CPU and FPC is below 1 ns. >
Image processing and data analysis: the multiscale approach

Foreword 1. The wavelet transform 2. Multiresolution support and filtering 3. Deconvolution 4. 1-D signals and Euclidean-based data analysis 5. Geometric registration 6. Disparity analysis and applications in remote sensing 7. Image compression 8. Object detection and point pattern clustering 9. Multiscale vision models Appendix I. Variance stabilisation Appendix II. Software information Acronyms References Index.
Optical measurements of real minefields

This paper presents preliminary analysis of the data from measurements on a minefield in Croatia done in the international cooperation project Airborne Minefield Area Reduction (ARC). Temperature differences above and around suspected mines and minefield indicators, were recorded with a long wave IR camera in 8-9 micrometers , over a time of several days, capturing data under different weather conditions. The data are compared to simulations of land mines, minefield indicators and other objects using a themodynamic FEM model, developed at FOI. Different detection methods are presented and applied to the data.
Robots Social Embodiment in Autonomous Mobile Robotics

This work aims at demonstrating the inherent advantages of embracing a strong notion of social embodiment in designing a real-world robot control architecture with explicit “intelligent” social behaviour between a collective of robots. It develops the current thinking on embodiment beyond the physical by demonstrating the importance of social embodiment. A social framework develops the fundamental social attributes found when more than one robot co-inhabit a physical space. The social metaphors of identity, character, stereotypes and roles are presented and implemented within a real-world social robot paradigm in order to facilitate the realisation of explicit social goals.
Bargaining over Tax Information Exchange May Elsayyad

This paper empirically studies recent treaty signings between tax havens and OECD countries as the outcome of a bargaining process over treaty form. Havens can decide not to sign an agreement, to sign a tax information exchange agreement or to sign a double taxation convention. We use a highly stylized bargaining model to develop testable hypotheses with regards to the type of agreement signed. We show that the main determinants of treaty signing are a havens bargaining power and good governance. We show that it is easier to renegotiate an already existent treaty to include information exchange than to pressure countries with no existent agreement. The author would like to thank Nadja Dwenger, Kai Konrad and Salmai Qari for helpful comments and suggestions. She gratefully acknowledges nancial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through GRK 801. The usual caveat applies. yMax Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, Munich, and Munich Graduate School of Economics, University of Munich. E-mail: may.elsayyad@tax.mpg. de.