Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automated Pose Estimation for the Assessment of Dynamic Knee Valgus and Risk of Knee Injury during the Single Leg Squat

Many clinical assessment protocols rely on the evaluation of functional movement tests such as the Single Leg Squat (SLS), which are often assessed visually. Visual assessment is subjective and depends on the experience of the clinician. Developing a reliable automatic human motion tracking and assessment system can improve the accuracy of SLS clinical assessments and provide objective results that can be tracked and monitored over time to guide rehabilitation and determine an individual’s response to an intervention. In this study, an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) based method for automated assessment of squat quality is proposed to provide clinicians with a quantitative measure of SLS performance. First, an automated pose estimation method is applied to SLS motion data. A set of three IMUs is used to estimate the joint angles, velocities and accelerations of the squatting leg. To tackle noisy sensor measurements and gyro drift, a 7 degree of freedom (DOF) kinematic model of the lower leg was applied together with a constant acceleration assumption to approximate the angular velocity and linear acceleration at each sensor location. The kinematic model predictions of the angular velocity and linear acceleration and sensor measurements were fused via an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The position, velocity, and acceleration of each DOF were defined as the states to be estimated by the EKF. The pose estimation results showed successful extraction of joint angles with an average RMS error of 3.2◦, 5.5◦, 7◦ compared to joint angles estimated from motion capture for the ankle, knee, and hip joints, respectively. For this estimation, the required parameters for the kinematic model, including information about the sensor placement and orientation as well as the kinematic link lengths, were extracted from the marker data. However, in clinical applications of the proposed method, when marker data is not available, these parameters need to be measured. Measuring these parameters is time consuming in the clinical setting, which limits application of IMUs for clinical purposes. With the motivation to make this procedure easier and faster, a method for approximating the parameters using placement assumptions and body measures was described. A sensitivity analysis was performed to detect those parameters which most affect pose estimation accuracy. The sensitivity analysis results revealed that sensor orientation is the most critical factor for accurate pose estimation. In this thesis, a simple and easy to use method is proposed for sensor orientation calibration, based on a systematic placement of sensors and using gyroscope information for orientation estimation. This protocol was evaluated experimentally and pose estimation error with approximated parameters before and after applying the calibration protocol were compared. The comparison results showed that the estimate of the sensor orientation increases the pose estimation accuracy by 6.5◦ for the
Masterarbeit Robot assistance for collaborative task execution

Nowadays highly accurate and mobile robots are able to perceive and manipulate their environment. Such robots can be used to assist humans in everyday tasks to reduce their workload. As a consequence, communication and interaction between humans and robots is becoming more important. In this thesis we present a system for human-robot collaboration for on-table tasks. The system is implemented for the PR2 research and development platform. Using the robot’s depth sensor the objects on a table are detected and tracked during task execution. We analyzed on-table tasks in general and used the system to implement three different example tasks: a task that requires the human and the robot to order blocks by color, a task where a bridge is built and a task with a joint action. Additionally, we implemented five action-selection strategies for the robot: proactive, autonomous, reactive, human-requested and human-commands. We conducted a user study to compare the interaction modes during the bridge task and to evaluate the usage of the system in a real scenario. The answers of the participants indicate that for the bridge-building task, people prefer to interact with a robot using the proactive, autonomous or human-commands action-selection strategy rather than with the reactive or the human-requested strategy. The user study demonstrates that the system is useful for tabletop human-robot interaction with a real robot. Furthermore, the system can serve as a basis for further investigations in the area of human-robot interaction.
Real-time simulation of 3D smoke on GPU

In this paper, we investigate the fluid simulation on GPU, and implement real time smoke animation based on GPU by numerically solving Navier-Stokes equation. Based on Navier-Stokes equation, we discuss the details of the method, "Stable Fluids". This scheme makes implementation on the GPU simple, because there is a straightforward mapping between grid cells and voxels in a 3D texture. After optimizing, this method not only fit to GPU, but also is steady and realistic greatly.
AN OVERVIEW AND IDEAS ON AUTONOMOUS ROBOT PATH PLANNING ALGORITHMS

Robot Path Planning refers to the task of obtaining a continuous path through the free configuration space, Cfree, of some robot from an initial to a goal configuration. This Report reviews the progress in this field, with particular focus on the Rapidly Exploring Random Tree (RRT) and the Artificial Potential Fields approaches. Some theoretical results regarding RRTs are proved, motivating a modification in the RRT approach to include local biasing and a new scheme for vertex selection.
Determinants of specialization and the role of trade costs

The trade theory suggests that productivities, factor endowments, trade costs, and tastes determine the pattern of trade and specialization around the world. This paper empirically investigates the relative importance of these determinants by using the innovative general equilibrium model of trade that is distinguished by its use of the Eaton-Kortum methodology to explain intra-industry trade. Trade costs are shown to be the key determinant of trade and specialization. First and foremost, they reduce the geographical range of comparative advantage, forcing it to be determined within a neighborhood of a country instead of the whole world. Second, trade costs strongly link preferences with specialization. Third, because trade costs vary across industries, they a¤ect comparative advantage by inuencing the relative costs of goods of one country in another. Industry-level productivities and di¤erences in tastes have the secondand third-largest e¤ects on the pattern of trade and specialization. Factor endowments and rm-level productivities have the smallest e¤ects. The paper also nds that the e¤ects of various determinants of trade vary with country income. Most interestingly, the e¤ect of factor endowments is much greater in the poorer countries than in the richer ones.
Determining how risk effects predator-prey interactions of marine communities in the nearshore environment of South Bimini, The Bahamas

3 Introduction.4 Predator-Prey Interaction.8 Protective Habitat.11 Predators around Bimini.12 Sharks.12 Barracudas.13 Prey around Bimini.14 Baited Remote Underwater Video Surveys.14 Advantages.16 Disadvantages.17 Hypothesis and Objectives.19 Methods.21 Study Area . 21 Instrumentation.26 Dataset.27 Data analysis.28 Composition.28 Abundance.28 Environmental Parameters.29 Results.29 Hypothesis 1Variation in Prey Richness and Abundance.29 Hypothesis 2North and South Site Prey Assemblages.31 Hypothesis 3Prey Behavior by Predator Species.36 Hypothesis 4Environmental Effects on Community Composition.37 Discussion.41 Abundance and Composition.42 Risk Behavior.43 Direct Observation.44 Environmental Influence.45 Future DirectionsNext Steps.48 Conclusion.48 Acknowledgements.49 References.50
L G ] 8 A ug 2 01 0 Semi-Supervised Kernel PCA

We present three generalisations of Kernel Principal Components Analysis (KPCA) which incorporate knowledge of the class labels of a subset of the data points. The first, MV-KPCA, penalises within class variances similar to Fisher discriminant analysis. The second, LSKPCA is a hybrid of least squares regression and kernel PCA. The final LR-KPCA is an iteratively reweighted version of the previous which achieves a sigmoid loss function on the labeled points. We provide a theoretical risk bound as well as illustrative experiments on real and toy data sets.
Design principles and guidelines for targeted security awareness

Key aspects that weaken users’ ability to use security are often related to the difficulty of comprehending the features/notifications within the interfaces of applications, inconsistency in the interfaces, and not receiving appropriate guidance or adequate security information. This often leads to confusion, limiting a users’ ability to comprehend the risk, thus leaving them to make uninformed decisions that may lead to compromise of their IT system or abandoning attempts to address security altogether. This research has consequently focused upon supporting the user by ensuring that security guidance and feedback is available during the task in hand, providing effective information to help them make the right decision at the right time. This has led to introducing a targeted security awareness raising approach. A series of proposed design principles for security features are considered to enhance the users’ experience and can be implemented to maximize the users’ awareness of the security threats. In addition, they can be used to provide the necessary security information and security recommendations without directing the user to make a specific choice. To study the effectiveness of the proposed design principles and guidelines, existing applications have been examined in order to evaluate their consistency with these recommendations and have identified scope for improvement, which would in turn assist user awareness via a more targeted approach. This is illustrated through an example where the design principles and guidelines are applied to the appearance of email notifications that aim to assist users in spotting phishing threats. The results of the experimental work conducted during this research suggest that user behaviour can be positively influenced purely through the provision of additional information, and better choices can be made even if the system does not provide any further enforcement. In addition, the findings demonstrate that the abstraction of design principles and guidelines allows the lessons to be transferred to other contexts. Furthermore, following and applying the guidelines enables subtle but relevant refinements to the user interface. Considering the application of this security lesson more broadly, guidance and feedback/nudges should be provided by default.
Study of a Lifted-Jet Flame using a Stereoscopic PIV System

Three components of the velocity field at the base of a lifted flame have been measured using stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (SPIV). The validity of applying the SPIV technique in the presence of a flame has been assessed. It has been found that the change of the index of refraction due to the presence of the flame, when compared to a non-reacting flow, can distort the PIV image as much as 1 pixel. However, the distortion between consecutive PIV images could be greatly minimized if the time delay between the two images is within the order of milliseconds. In this work, the instantaneous and the ensemble averaged three-component velocity and the turbulent quantities at the flame base of a lifted flame have been measured. Complex three-dimensional structures are observed at the flame base including the meandering in both in and out of plane directions. Conditional axial velocity measurements at the flame base show similar results (mean speed of 2.4SL, where SL is the laminar flame speed) with previous measurements. However, highest velocities in the radial and azimuthal directions are on the order of 2~3SL, which implies a possible role of these velocity components in flame stabilization. The turbulent kinetic energy distribution shows a sudden reduction when the flow encounters the flame base, which is thought to be due to the stabilizing effect of heat release.
DESIGN OPTIMIZATION OF ALUMINUM HINGE PARTS FOR LIGHTWEIGHT VEHICLES: PERFORMANCE, DURABILITY AND MANUFACTURABILITY

Today, global energy demand and the importance of sustainable environment are growing rapidly. Thus, producing fuel-saving and energy-efficient vehicles in the automotive industry has become a priority target. While becoming conscious of consume fuel, reducing the weight of the vehicle for fuel saving have been studied and shown to be necessary. Much effort is currently being aimed at reducing the weight of vehicles in order to improve fuel efficiency and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The automotive industries visualize that a multi-material vehicle parts are one of critical factors to succeed this aim. It can be achieved by replacing materials with high strength steel and aluminum alloys in the vehicle. It must be done without compromising the performance or the safety of the vehicle by using an appropriate material at the right position. The future opportunities for new lightweight vehicle parts have been investigated by using topology optimization methods. And also finite element analyses (FEA) is an important tool for achieving it since it decreases prototyping costs and time. Vehicles have different door systems and one of the important parts of them is hinge. Door hinges are a key product in the automotive industry. The function of automotive door hinge is not only to close, open, and keep the open angle of the door but also to reduce traumas for passengers in the car when a vital accident occurs. An automotive door hinge is mainly composed of four elements, mobile part, fixed part, hinge body and link. In this study, an approach for FEA and re-design process for automotive door hinge link is presented. Hinge link is made of mild steel, currently. Structural analyses are applied on hinge link by using Hyperworks. The boundary conditions, which are used in the analysis, are determined according to the data from test bench. After evaluation of the FEA results, this part was manufactured by aluminum alloy with the same design for lightweighting. The new prototype hinge link was performed fatigue test and failed. Besides, FEA results showed that higher stress occurred on it. Therefore, the hinge link was completely re-designed by using topology optimization methods. Topology optimization was performed in solidThinking Inspire. By applying topology optimization three different models were created. The most strength design was selected accordingly the FEA results. To verify the analyses results prototype hinge link was conducted fatigue tests. The results indicated that, the new design of the hinge link which made of aluminum provided the desired safety condition and nearly 60% weight reduction was achieved.
Printed in the United Kingdom Language Independent Recommender Agent

This paper presents a new “Language Independent Recommender Agent” (LIRA), using information distributed over any text-source pair on the web about candidate items. While existing review-based recommendation systems learn the features of candidate items and users’ preferences, they do not handle varying perspectives of users on those features. LIRA constructs agents for each user, which run regression algorithms on texts from different sources and builds trust relations.The key advantages of LIRA can be listed as : LIRA does not require reviews from target users, LIRA calculates trust values based on prediction accuracy instead of social connections or rating similarity, LIRA does not require the reviews to come from the same community or peer user group. Since ratings of the reviewers are not necessary for LIRA, we can collect and use reviews from different sources (web pages, professional critiques), as long as we know the corresponding item and source of that text. Since LIRA does not combine text from different sources, texts from different sources are not required to be in the same language. LIRA can utilize text from multiple languages, as long as sources are consistent with their language usage.
Transformations in the Si-OCa system : Silicon-calcium via solar energy

The production of silicon-calcium alloy is energy intensive (> 10,000 kWh/t). This means that energy cost has a relevant influence in the price of the alloy. The utilization of concentrated solar energy in the synthesis of siliconcalcium alloy is proposed in this paper. Metallurgical quality silicon and limestone are used as starting materials (25 wt.%, 50 wt.% and 75wt.% Si). After a 12min treatment under power values of around 1 kW and without using special atmosphere, silicon-calcium was detected in all samples, although mixed with the products of reaction (Ca3Si2O7, Ca10O25Si6, SiO2). This last question means that there was not proper separation metal-slag, and it should be improved in future investigations. However, the basic knowledge presented in this paper could be of great interest for an industrial process based on the solar energy. This way, the energy costs could be reduced, the pollutant emissions could be minimized, and the competitiveness of the ferroalloys industry could
Edinburgh Explorer Variation in experiences of nature across gradients of tree cover in compact and sprawling cities

nature (measured using the Nature Relatedness scale) vary across this same gradient of nature availability. Despite climatic and cultural differences we found substantial similarities between the two locations. Lower levels of neighbourhood tree cover were associated with a reduced frequency of visits to private and public green spaces, and a similar pattern was found for the duration of time spent in private and public green spaces for Brisbane. Residents of both urban areas showed similar levels of nature relatedness, and there was a weak but positive association between tree cover and Nature Relatedness. These results suggest that regardless of the style of urban design, maintaining the availability of nature close to home is a critical step to protect people’s experiences of nature and their desire to seek out those experiences.
Feature Visualisation of Classification of Diabetic Retinopathy Using a Convolutional Neural Network

© 2019 for this paper by its authors. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have been demonstrated to achieve state-of-the-art results on complex computer vision tasks, including medical image diagnosis of Diabetic Retinopathy (DR). CNNs are powerful because they determine relevant image features automatically. However, the current inability to demonstrate what these features are has led to CNNs being considered to be 'black box' methods whose results should not be trusted. This paper presents a method for identifying the learned features of a CNN and applies it in the context of the diagnosis of DR in fundus images using the well-known DenseNet. We train the CNN to diagnose and determine the severity of DR and then successfully extract feature maps from the CNN which identify the regions and features of the images which have led most strongly to the CNN prediction. This feature extraction process has great potential, particularly for encouraging confidence in CNN approaches from users and clinicians, and can aid in the further development of CNN methods. There is also potential for determining previously unidentified features which may contribute to a classification.
Efficient Raw Signal Generation Based on Equivalent Scatterer and Subaperture Processing for SAR with Arbitrary Motion

An efficient SAR raw signal generation method based on equivalent scatterer and subaperture processing is proposed in this paper. It considers the radar’s motion track, which can obtain the precise raw signal for the real SAR. First, the imaging geometry with arbitrary motion is established, and then the scene is divided into several equidistant rings. Based on the equivalent scatterer model, the approximate expression of the SAR system transfer function is derived, thus each pulse’s raw signal can be generated by the convolution of the transmitted signal and system transfer function, performed by the fast Fourier transform (FFT). To further improve the simulation efficiency, the subaperture and polar subscene processing is used. The system transfer function of pulses for the same subaperture is calculated simultaneously by the weighted sum of all subscenes’ equivalent backscattering coefficient in the same equidistant ring, performed by the nonuniform FFT (NUFFT). The method only involves the FFT, NUFFT and complex multiplication operations, which means the easier implementation and higher efficiency. Simulation results are given to prove the validity of this method.
Mitochondrial DNA Variation of Tai Speaking Peoples in Northern Thailand

The genetic structure and genetic affinity of Tai ethnic populations in northern Thailand has never been investigated, therefore their biological ancestor as well as their history is not clearly resolved. In this study, we examined the D-loop fragment of the mitochondrial DNA in 496 unrelated individuals belonging to 4 Tai ethnic groups from 10 villages: 4 Yuan, 4 Lue, 1 Yong and 1 Khuen. Based on a comparison of 522- bp sequences at the position 16048-16569, 195 distinct haplotypes defined by 130 polymorphic sites were distinguished. Of these, 154 types were unique to their respective populations, whereas 41 were shared by two or more populations. The studied Tai populations showed evidence of demographic expansion with corresponding estimated expansion times of more than 66,000 years before the present. During historical migration and settlement, intensive genetic drift and founder effects left their imprint as population differentiation. Genetic affinity among the populations was not consistent with their linguistic classification. The Yuan or Khon Muang in northern Thailand exhibited a close relationship to the Tai groups in South and Southeast China, which supported the immigrant hypothesis and their ancestor's origin. However, an admixture between the Khon Muang and the Lawa and Mon, the long existing populations of northern Thailand, needs to be investigated.
Cystatin C as a marker of Cardio metabolic disorder in obese South Indian individuals

Background: Human obesity is strongly associated with cardio metabolic disease. Cystatin C is a naturally occurring protease inhibitor and marker of cardiovascular disease. The main objective of present study was to estimate the serum levels of Cystatin C in individuals with normal BMI, and obese, aged between 18-39 Yrs and to compare the levels of serum Cystatin C among these individuals and to correlate the levels of serum Cystatin C with cardio metabolic risk factors. Material & Methods: The study population was taken from healthy volunteers of Mysore city, aged between 1839 years of either sex. The study population was divided into 2 groups based on BMI. Each group contains sample size of 45. Fasting serum sample was analyzed for Blood glucose, Total cholesterol, Total Triglycerides, Direct HDL cholesterol, Direct LDL Cholesterol by enzymatic method and serum Cystatin-C by immunoturbidimetric method using auto analyser. Results: The serum Cystatin C levels was significantly increased in obese groups, p value<0.001. The mean serum Cystatin C levels in normal BMI group was 0.78±0.03, and in Obese group is 1.15±0.09. In the study serum Cystatin C showed a positive correlation with serum glucose(r=0.61) serum triglycerides (r=0.7), Atherogenic index of plasma (AIP) (r=0.80), TCHOL: HDL (r=0.71), HDL: LDL (r=0.70) respectively and negative correlation with serum HDL (r=-0.52) Conclusion: Serum Cystatin C could serve as a good predictive marker of preclinical cardio metabolic disorder in obese individuals.