Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nonintrusive identification of residential appliances using harmonic analysis

The role of nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM) is to identify the operating schedules of individual appliances and their power consumption from single-point electrical measurements. This paper discusses appliance load monitoring based on the harmonic analysis of the steady-state current, which is specifically suited for identification of nonlinear appliances. The existing harmonic-based NILM methods have limited applicability due to the fact that their complexity increases exponentially with the number of target appliances. In order to overcome this problem, this study suggests the use of the step changes of current harmonic phasors as a feature for appliance detection. The key benefit of the proposed method is that only individual appliance signatures are needed to identify load activities, as opposed to the previous NILM methods that require load signatures with respect to all possible appliance combinations.
People Reported Behavioural Functions and Needs in Neurologically-Based Disabilities: Role of Leisure

Leisure involvement has many components from volunteering, sport, arts and crafts, civic engagement, to tourism. Individuals may acquire a disability as they age or suffer from a disease. How does the persons ability level influence their engagement in volunteering, sport, arts and crafts, civic engagement, to tourism? How does the persons ability level influence their family and their engagement in volunteering, sport, arts and crafts, civic engagement, to tourism? The International Classification of Function (2001) provides an insight to the complexity of a person’s abilities within the person’s lived experience. Individuals with a neurological condition have differing levels of abilities that may influence their possibility of travelling and their use of leisure time . Based upon the literature reviewed and focus groups with people with neurological conditions and their family members, the researchers developed and validated a questionnaire for this study which was comprised of the following sections: I) personal factors; II) behavioural functions rated as: fully independent, partially dependent, or fully dependent from another person; and III) ability to travel. Two hundred and eleven (211) ambulatory persons with neurological-based disability were included in the survey. More than 70%, were assessed at low level of disability by clinicians, but reported dependence in one or more behavioural functions. Discordance between patient and clinician was present in each of the four conditions (multiple sclerosis, Parkinson, peripheral neuropathies and stroke) examined. It appears from the findings of this study that clinical scales do not predict patients’ abilities and their needs to engage in their physical and social environments (tourism). Our questionnaire to verify if it was possible to obtain answers and information that would help understand and find solutions to the real life difficulties of questionnaire respondents: for the purposes of this survey we included, as a model, patients with neurological disabilities. The high response to our survey shows that participation in recreational, leisure, and sport activities is an important factor for people with disabilities, and the results show that our questionnaire is a good tool to identify disability and needs so that new strategies to promote leisure involvement can be assessed for their effectiveness.
Where to go from here? New cross layer techniques for LTE Turbo-Code decoding at high code rates

Abstract. The wide range of code rates and code block sizes supported by todays wireless communication standards, together with the requirement for a throughput in the order of Gbps, necessitates sophisticated and highly parallel channel decoder architectures. Code rates specified in the LTE standard, which uses Turbo-Codes, range up to r=0.94 to maximize the information throughput by transmitting only a minimum amount of parity information, which negatively impacts the error correcting performance. This especially holds for highly parallel hardware architectures. Therefore, the error correcting performance must be traded-off against the degree of parallel processing. State-of-the-art Turbo-Code decoder hardware architectures are optimized on code block level to alleviate this trade-off. In this paper, we follow a cross-layer approach by combining system level knowledge about the rate-matching and the transport block structure in LTE with the bit-level technique of on-the-fly CRC calculation. Thereby, our proposed Turbo-Code decoder hardware architecture achieves coding gains of 0.4–1.8 dB compared to state-of-the-art accross a wide range of code block sizes. For the fully LTE compatible Turbo-Code decoder, we demonstrate a negligible hardware overhead and a resulting high area and energy efficiency and give post place and route synthesis numbers.
A New Method of View-Invariant Human Activity Recognition

We present a new method to recognize human activity under uncertain view. The activity width image which is extracted from the sequence of silhouette is used to represent the activity features. It converts the spatial and temporal pattern to a grey-level image. View difference causes the deformation of activity width images and degradation of recognition accuracy. To solve this problem, we transform the feature images to the new images in the uniform view based on the activity templates using Iterative closet point (ICP). For reducing the complexity, we choose the center line and the contour of the activity width images to register and the affine transformation is adopted to transform. The similarity matrix is used to measure the difference between the transformed feature image and the templates. We evaluate our method on the CASIA database and the results show that our method is simple and efficient. Keywords-human activity recognition; ICP; the activity width image; similarity matrix
Applying evolutionary algorithms for sound based morphogenesis

The research investigates the application of evolutionary computation in relation to sound based morphogenesis. It does so by using the Sabine equation for performance benchmark in the development of the spatial volume and reflectors, effectively creating the architectural expression as a whole. Additional algorithms are created and used to organise the entire set of 200 reflector components and manufacturing constraints based upon the GA studies. An architectural pavilion is created based upon the studies illustrating the applicability of both developed methods and techniques.
MANAGEMENT OF THE WORKING CAPITAL AND FIRM PERFORMANCE IN THE ROMANIAN PHARMACEUTICAL SECTOR

The objective of the study is to reveal the connection between working capital and firm performance, in the case of some selected Romanian pharmaceutical companies, listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange. Regression analysis was performed in order to check our hypothesis. The main conclusion of our study is that there is a negative, but weak relationship between working capital and firm performance. In other words, the shorter the period between production and sale of products, the larger firm’s profitability.
Central Bank Reserves and the Yield Curve at the ZLB

With short term interest rates bounded at zero, monetary policy has aimed at affecting the yield curve at the longer end during the recent years. As the recent literature has shown, the quantitative easing programs conducted by the Federal reserve have significantly lowered long-term yields. This paper adds central bank reserves as a fourth factor to an affine term structure model to estimate the effect of quantitative easing on the yield curve. The cumulative effect on 10-year Treasury securities during the zero lower bound period is estimated to amount to 85 basis points. Of the total effect, one quarter is shown to be due to the liquidity effect and three quarters to the supply effect. To disentangle the two effects, the estimates for the US are compared to estimates for Swiss data because the Swiss national bank did not engage in any government bond purchases.
Supporting Information Analysis of hyperspectral images To assess the spectral similarity between the reflectance spectra of animal and background, the Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) classification analysis of ENVI image analysis software (ITT Visual Information Solutions, Boulder, CO) was performed on

To assess the spectral similarity between the reflectance spectra of animal and background, the Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) classification analysis of ENVI image analysis software (ITT Visual Information Solutions, Boulder, CO) was performed on the HSI-generated data cubes. SAM is a physically-based spectral classification that uses an n-dimensional angle to match pixels to reference spectra. The algorithm determines the spectral similarity between two spectra by calculating the angle between the spectra and treating them as vectors in a space with dimensionality equal to the number of bands. Smaller angles represent closer matches to the reference spectrum. Using the tool for delineating the region of interest (ROI), some represented skin components of cuttlefish were selected, and the reflectance spectra of each ROI were averaged. These averaged ROI spectra were then used as reference spectra to do the SAM classification analysis. Threshold of 0.1 (ENVI default setting) or 0.05 for the maximum acceptable angle (radians) between the reference spectrum vector and the pixel vector was applied to classify the images and to visualize the spectral similarity maps.
Kernel Contraction and Consolidation of Alignment under Ontology Change

Alignment overcomes divergence in the specification of the semantics of vocabularies by different but overlapping ontologies. Therefore, it enhances semantic interoperability for many web based applications. However, ontology change following applications new requirements or new perception of domain knowledges can leads to undesirable knowledge such as inconsistent and therefore to a useless alignment. Ontologies and alignments are encoded in knowledge bases allowing applications to store only some explicit knowledge while they derive implicit ones by applying reasoning services on these knowledge bases. This underlying representation of ontologies and alignments leads us to follow base revision theory to deal with alignment revision under ontology change. For that purpose, we adapt kernel contraction framework to design rational operators and to formulate the set of postulates that characterize each class of these operators. We demonstrate the connection between each class of operators and the set of postulates that characterize them. Finally, we present algorithms to compute alignment kernels and incision functions. Kernels are sets of correspondences responsible of undesirable knowledge following alignment semantics. Incision functions determine the sets of correspondences to eliminate in order to restore alignment consistency or to realize a successful contraction.
Efficient solution of a three-dimensional inverse heat conduction problem in pool boiling

In this paper, we consider a three-dimensional transient inverse heat conduction problem arising in pool boiling experiments, i.e., the reconstruction of the surface heat flux from pointwise temperature observations inside a heater. We show that the inverse problem is ill-posed and utilize Tikhonov regularization and conjugate gradient methods together with a discrepancy stopping rule for a stable solution. We investigate the proper choice of regularization terms, which not only affects stability of the reconstructions but also greatly influences the quality of reconstructions in the case of limited observations. For the numerical solution of the governing partial differential equation, a space-time finite element method is used. This allows us to compute exact gradients for the discretized Tikhonov functional, and enables the use of conjugate gradient methods for the solution of the regularized inverse problem. We discuss further aspects of an efficient implementation, including a multilevel optimization strategy, together with an implementable stopping criterion. Finally, the proposed algorithms are applied to the reconstruction of local boiling heat fluxes from experimental data.
Semantic Expansion of Auto-Generated Scene Descriptions to Solve Robotic Tasks

When a robot is facing object description based tasks, such as “bring me something to drink water”, it has to semantically relate the concepts on the task with the objects it is able to find. This work expands the semantic scope of words in automatically generated scene descriptions and a given task in order to find a proper match for the robot task. An encoder-decoder pipeline that unifies joint image-text embedding models with multimodal neural language models is used to generate scene descriptions. Then the semantics of those descriptions are extended through word vectors. We improve our previous work by expanding the dimension of the object description by adding the option of negating characteristics of the searched object. Finally we show that we are able to find objects that are in the scene and where not directly referred in the task or labeled by the robot using different words.
Organizational Career Growth and Turnover Intention: An Application in Audit Firms in Turkey

This study examined the direct effect of organizational career growth on turnover intention, as well as the buffering influence of organizational commitment on this relationship among auditors in Turkey. Organizational career growth was conceptualized by four factors: career goal progress, professional ability development, promotion speed and remuneration growth. Organizational commitment was conceptualized by three components: Affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment. Data was obtained from 226 auditors from 92 audit firms in Turkey. According to results, organizational career growth dimensions, namely career goal progress, professional ability development, promotion speed and renumeration growth are all negatively related to turnover intention. Besides, it was found that professional ability development and renumeration growth have strong influences on turnover intention. In spite of this, career goal progress and promotion speed had no significant effect on turnover intention. According to the results of hierarchical multiple regression, there is not any buffering effect of organizational commitment (affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment) on the relationship between each of the four dimensions of organizational career growth and turnover intention.
Young clusters and massive black holes as the building blocks of ultra-compact dwarf galaxies

The origin and evolution of ultra-compact dwarf galaxies is a conundrum. Why do we care about the problem. GAIA? The relevance of the massive black hole at the centre of the system is. HST observations reveal regions of a few hundreds of pc in nteracting galaxies such as the Antenn
The Productivity of Health Care and Pharmaceuticals: Quality of Life, Cause

Draft-Confidential The Productivity of Health Care and Pharmaceuticals: Quality of Life, Cause of Death and the Role of Obesity* July 24, 2002 Richard D. Miller, Jr. Center for Naval Analyses and H.E. Frech, III Economics Department University of California, Santa Barbara *Earlier versions were presented in seminars at Curtin University in Perth Australia, June 21, 2001 and at the International Health Economics Association meetings in York, England, July 24, 2001. Thanks are due to the participants of those seminars, especially Harry Bloch, Gavin Mooney, Jeff Petchy, and Sandra Hopkins. This work extends our earlier research, which was supported by a grant from Sciences Po de Paris. We are grateful for support for this research from Pfizer, Merck, AztraZeneca, and Bristol Meyers-Squibb.
Case 2 Lake Baikal: Analyses of SeaWiFS data within the scope of the Paleoclimate project CONTINENT

Within the paleoclimate project CONTINENT we use Sea viewing Wide Field of view Sensor (SeaWiFS) data to assess information on the current behaviour of selected climate proxies in Lake Baikal, Siberia. Suitable proxies include optically-visible water constituents such as algae biomass and suspended terrigenous matter, whose dynamics reflect the present-day climate bioproductivity and the river discharge in the catchment area. Lake Baikal represents a specific bio-optical water type with high local concentrations of organic matter and low algae biomass concentrations. Field data show a remarkable influence of coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM) on the optical properties of Lake Baikal's surface waters. For this case 2 water type, the SeaWiFS Data Analysis System’s (SeaDAS) standard atmospheric correction methods result in a considerable overestimation of pigment concentration. Here we describe how we adapted the SeaDAS software and developed techniques for a regional study on Lake Baikal. The optically interacting water constituents are decorrelated with a Maximum Noise Fraction (MNF) analysis that is a modified Principal Component Analyses (PCA). The resultant SeaWiFS PC maps of terrigenous input and phytoplankton distribution reveal the autochthonous and allochthonous influences on the CONTINENT coring sites.
Influence of Glass Powder on Hydration Kinetics of Composite Cementitious Materials

The influence of glass powder (GP) on hydration kinetics of composite cementitious materials has been investigated by isothermal calorimetry test and hydration kinetics methods in this paper. The hydration heat emission rate and hydration heat decrease gradually while the induction and acceleration period increase with the increase of GP content. According to Krstulovic-Dabic model, the hydration process of composite cementitious materials containing GP is controlled by a variety of complicated reaction mechanisms, which can be divided into three periods: nucleation and crystal growth (NG), phase boundary reaction (I), and diffusion (D). The NG and I process are shortened after incorporating GP.
Effect of dehydration on ruminal degradability of lucerne.

The effects of industrial dehydration and a subsequent compression at high pressures on rumen degradability of lucerne were determined in 3 samples obtained at harvest or after the process of dehydration and compression of this forage. Rumen degradability of dry matter (DM) and nitro- gen (N) was determined by the nylon bag technique in 3 ruminally cannulated wethers. Dehydration reduced effective DM degradability (from 63.4 to 59.4%), which was associated with an increase of both the rumen undegradable fraction (from 30.5 to 33.4%) and the lignin content (from 65.7 to 77.9 g.kg -1 of DM). Effective degradability of N was also reduced by dehydration (from 82.7 to 77.7%), mainly by a decrease in the degradation rate (from 30.8 to 12.4% .h -1 ). The compression process produced a small but significant increase of the solubility of both DM and N, which did not alter the values of effective degradability. lucerne / dehydration / high pressure compression / rumen degradability
Complex structure on the six dimensional sphere from a spontaneous symmetry breaking

Existence of a complex structure on the 6 dimensional sphere is proved in this paper. The proof is based on re-interpreting a hypothetical complex structure as a classical ground state of a Yang–Mills–Higgs-like theory on S6. This classical vacuum solution is then constructed by Fourier expansion (dimensional reduction) from the obvious one of a similar theory on the 14 dimensional exceptional compact Lie group G2.
Effect of gamma irradiation and modified atmosphere packaging on the quality and storage stability of sweet cherry (cv. Misri and Double) under ambient and refrigerated storage conditions

Gamma irradiation in combination with Modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) was tested for maintaining the storage quality and extending shelf life of sweet cherries. Sweet cherry (cv. Misri and Double) after harvest was modified atmosphere packaged and subjected to the irradiation dose of 0.3, 0.6, 0.9, 1.2 1nd 1.5kGy. The treated fruit including control was stored under ambient (temperature 25±2 ◦ C, RH 70%) and refrigerated (temperature 3 ±1 ◦ C, RH 80%) conditions. Irradiation at 1.2 kGy and MAP gave 9 and 28 d extension in shelf life of pear under ambient and refrigerated storage conditions respectively. All combinatory treatments delayed the decaying of fruit during post refrigerated storage, but combination of MAP and 1.2 kGy irradiation proved significantly ( P ≤ 0.05) effective in maintaining the storage quality and delaying the decaying of pear.
Moment-based boundary conditions for lattice Boltzmann simulations of natural convection in cavities

We study a multiple relaxation time lattice Boltzmann model for natural convection with moment-based boundary conditions. The unknown primary variables of the algorithm at a boundary are found by imposing conditions directly upon hydrodynamic moments, which are then translated into conditions for the discrete velocity distribution functions. The method is formulated so that it is consistent with the second order implementation of the discrete velocity Boltzmann equations for fluid flow and temperature. Natural convection in square cavities is studied for Rayleigh numbers ranging from 103 to 108. An excellent agreement with benchmark data is observed and the flow fields are shown to converge with second order accuracy.
Job Tasks and the Gender Wage Gap Among College Graduates

Gender differences in current and past job tasks may be crucial for understanding the gender wage gap. We use novel task data to address well-known measurement concerns, including that standard task measures assume away within-occupation gender differences in tasks. We find that unique measures of task-specific experience, in particular high-skilled information experience, are of particular importance for understanding the substantial widening of the wage gap early in the career. Highlighting the importance of these measures, traditional work-related proxies for gender differences in human capital accumulation are not informative because general work experience is similar by gender for our recent graduates.
Fractal system identification for robust control - the moment approach

In the last decade, several authors focus on fractional-order systems (called also fractal systems), which can describe reality better than classical integer-order models. The fractional-order description is based on generalized fractional order derivative and integral operators. This paper deals with fractional order system identification for the purpose of a robust controller design. The proposed method combines two pieces of information: a priori information and experimental data. Firstly, the class of all admissible process models is defined as the set of all a priori admissible transfer functions which are consistent with experimental data (moments of the system). Using a value set approach, the parameterization of all so called extreme transfer functions (those that are important for robust design) is presented.
Calculating the Characteristic Impedance of Finlines by Transverse Resonance Method

The characteristic impedance of finlines with up to three slots is calculated by a rigorous hybrid-mode analysis which includes the finite metallization thickness and finite depth of the mounting grooves. The transverse resonance principle utilized reduces considerably the order of the involved matrix eigenvalue problem. The propagation constants for the fundamental HE/sub 1/ mode (and EH/sub 0/ mode at related structures), as well as for the higher order modes (up to HE/sub 7/), and the characteristic impedances for the fundamental modes are computed as a function of frequency for the bilateral and unilateral finline, as well as for the unilateral finline with two coupled slots, and an additional slot on the opposite side of the substrate surface. The finite metallization thickness and mounting groove depth considered show significant influence on the behavior of the characteristic impedance.