Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Symmetries from Uniform Space Covering in Stochastic Discrimination

Studies on ensemble methods for classification suffer from the difficulty of modeling the complementary strengths of the components. Kleinberg’s theory of stochastic discrimination (SD) addresses this rigorously via mathematical notions of enrichment, uniformity, and projectability of a model ensemble. We explain these concepts via a very simple numerical example that captures the basic principles of the SD theory and method. We focus on a fundamental symmetry in point set covering that is the key observation leading to the foundation of the theory. We believe a better understanding of the SD method will lead to developments of better tools for analyzing other ensemble methods.
Restricted Boltzmann Machine with Transformation Units for Laser Image Processing in a Mirror Neuron System Architecture

In the mirror neuron system, the canonical neurons play a role in object shape and observer-object relation recognition. However, there are almost no functional models of canonical neurons towards the integration of these two functions. We attempt to distributed represent the relative position between the object and the robot in a neural network model. Although at present some generative models based on the Restricted Boltzmann Machine can code the image transformation in continuous images, what we need to accomplish in canonical neuron modeling is different from the requirements of modeling transformation in video frames. As a result, we propose a novel model called “Restricted Boltzmann Machine with Transformation Units”, which can represent the relative object positions based on laser images. The laser sensor provides binary and accurate images and can further be connected with other models to construct a unified architecture of the mirror neuron system.
b-Cryptoxanthin from supplements or carotenoid-enhanced maize maintains liver vitamin A in Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) better than or equal to b-carotene supplements

Maize with enhanced provitamin A carotenoids (biofortified), accomplished through conventional plant breeding, maintains vitamin A (VA) status in Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus). Two studies in gerbils compared the VA value of b-cryptoxanthin with b-carotene. Study 1 (n 47) examined oil supplements and study 2 (n 46) used maize with enhanced b-cryptoxanthin and b-carotene. After 4 weeks’ depletion, seven or six gerbils were killed; remaining gerbils were placed into weight-matched groups of 10. In study 1, daily supplements were cottonseed oil, and 35, 35 or 17·5 nmol VA (retinyl acetate), b-cryptoxanthin or b-carotene, respectively, for 3 weeks. In study 2, one group of gerbils was fed a 50% biofortified maize diet which contained 2·9 nmol b-cryptoxanthin and 3·2 nmol b-carotene/g feed. Other groups were given equivalent b-carotene or VA supplements based on prior-day intake from the biofortified maize or oil only for 4 weeks. In study 1, liver retinol was higher in the VA (0·74 (SD 0·11) mmol) and b-cryptoxanthin (0·65 (SD 0·10) mmol) groups than in the b-carotene (0·49 (SD 0·13) mmol) and control (0·41 (SD 0·16) mmol) groups (P,0·05). In study 2, the VA (1·17 (SD 0·19) mmol) and maize (0·71 (SD 0·18) mmol) groups had higher liver retinol than the control (0·42 (SD 0·16) mmol) group (P,0·05), whereas the b-carotene (0·57 (SD 0·21) mmol) group did not. Bioconversion factors (i.e. 2·74mg b-cryptoxanthin and 2·4mg b-carotene equivalents in maize to 1mg retinol) were lower than the Institute of Medicine values.
Post-mission Adjustment Methods of Airborne Laser Scanning Data

Airborne Laser Scanners (ALS) offer high speed, high accuracy and quick deployment in the field. These attributes have contributed to their growing use. To date however, there has been a lack of common calibration methods; especially on the commerical market. Users are often left to develop their own methods which is time consuming and labour intensive. This paper reviews the effects of miscalibration on the derived terrain data, covers current methods of calibration and suggests a new adjustment model that allows for the parameterization of ALS scanner errors. Using data from a Leica Geosystems ALS40, the results of the new adjustment model show that a calibration solution can be obtained without the need of surveyed ground control points. Other results indicate that tie point selection is an important factor on the quality and consistency of the calibration model. CONTACT Kris Morin, Geomatics Engineer Leica Geosystems 10965 Via Frontera San Diego, CA 92128 USA Tel. +1 858 675 3335 Fax + 1 858 675 3345 E-mail: morin@lh-systems.com Web site: http://www.lh-systems.com Dr. Naser El-Sheimy, Chair FIG Commission 5 WG 3 Department of Geomatics Engineering The University of Calgary, Canada 2500 University Drive N.W. Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, CANADA Tel. + 1 403 220 7587 Fax + 1 403 284 1980, E-mail: naser@Geomatics.ucalgary.ca Web site: http://www.geomatics. ucalgary.ca/~nel-shei/
Lift-Based Bidding in Action Predicting AR Lift

Real-time bidding has become one of the largest online advertising markets in the world. Today the bid price per ad impression is typically decided by the expected value of how it can lead to a desired action event to the advertiser. However, this industry standard approach to decide the bid price does not consider the actual effect of the ad shown to the user, which should be measured based on the performance lift among users who have been or have not been exposed to a certain treatment of ads. In this paper, we propose a new bidding strategy and prove that if the bid price is decided based on the performance lift rather than absolute performance value, advertisers can actually gain more action events. We describe the modeling methodology to predict the performance lift and demonstrate the actual performance gain through blind A/B test with real ad campaigns. We also show that to move the demand-side platforms to bid based on performance lift, they should be rewarded based on the relative performance lift they contribute.
Characterization of valuable soybean mutant lines based on the resistance to Fusarium disease and microsatellite markers.

The paper reports the results of the studies on twenty two soybean lines developed via gamma radiation of two soybean varieties, Alina and Zodiac. The new genotypes and parental types were studied for the resistance to the fungi Fusarium spp. attack and manifestation of some biological indices including germination capacity, plant height, shoot and node number, weight of 1000 beans. The valuable lines were also analyzed at a molecular level using microsatellite markers. A distribution phenogram for the mutant lines based on the Jaccard/Tanimoto comparison coefficient was constructed using the UPGMA method.
Simulation-Based Grasp Affordances for the PISA / IIT Softhand

Recently, some research groups came out with a new generation of robotic hands that can be grouped under the name Soft Hands, as suggested in [1]. One of the main characteristic of such prototypes is to afford capabilities that are comparable to human grasping. Indeed, studying human grasping, researchers realized that a correct use and combination of compliance and underactuation can be profitably exploited for designing new robotic hands, both robust to environment interactions, and simple to control. Moreover, the adaptability of these prototypes can be profitably used to increase the range of possible executable task. For example, using soft hands, both the interaction with the object and with the environment, can be in turn used to functionally shape the hand, going beyond its nominal kinematic limits by exploiting structural softness. For this reason, in the field of grasp planning with Soft Hands, they refer to the object to grasp and to the environmental constraints with the collective name of enabling constraints [1]. Soft hands bring to a new challenge in grasp planning. Since the fact that, the low degrees of actuation is compensated exploiting the deformation of the hand through the interactions with objects and the environment, a grasp planner for Soft Hands has now to find the relative hand/object configuration able to achieve the grasp. The adaptive hand behavior, entangled with the complex dynamical interactions between the hand phalanxes and the objects – the object are not fixed during the grasp acquisition – simply cannot be modeled using conventional physics simulators like GraspIt, Open-Rave and OpenGRASP, as the complex routing of a single tendon through all the limbs is a fundamental feature which is, to be best of our knowledge, out of the above physics engines’ capabilities. For this purpose, we modeled the Pisa/IIT SoftHand [2] in ADAMS [3]. Figure 1: Comparison between (a) real and (b) simulated PISA/IIT SoftHand
Playing with Benford's Law

This paper presents a classroom experiment, the simulations, and a research which familiarize the students with the Benford’s Law. This law is widely used in a tax fraud detecting procedures. This paper shows that: i) the Benford’s Law can be useful in extending the simple perception of the probability which is presented at the lectures concerning the risk, ii) can be an excellent example of using data processing for the classroom tasks, iii) by the experience of the fraud detecting technique the students might change their attitude to cheating. The experiment and the prepared R codes can be used in the numerous courses, such as accounting, applied microeconomics, and quantitative methods.
Psychoacoustic contributions to new techniques for the representation of and interaction with multi-media content

This contribution to the ‘Vorkolloquium: Von der Psychoakustik zur Mensch-Maschine Kommunikation’ of the DAGA meeting in 2005 tries to bridge the two poles covered in the title, by showing how psychoacoustic knowledge supports developments in user-system interaction (Mensch-Maschine Kommunikation). It gives some examples from the domain of multi-media technologies, based on recent work performed by the authors at the Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. By emphasizing our own contributions, the choice of topics is of course highly selective and subjective, and due to the space limitations, even the few chosen topics cannot be covered in depth. The interested reader can read more about present-day research in this area in the contributions to the session ‘Music Processing’ elsewhere in these proceedings.
NoN-iNvAsive color restorAtioN of fAded pAiNtiNgs usiNg light from A digitAl projector iNtroductioN

A group of five paintings on canvas known as Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals (1963) has changed color due to the presence of a fugitive red pigment (Lithol Red) in the paint and excessive exposure of the works to natural light in a room with large windows. This project explores the possibility of recreating the original color appearance of the paintings by illuminating them with a digital projector. A camera-projector system controlled by a computer is implemented. With a calibrated camera the painted surface and the projector’s non-linear response are characterized. By comparison with a target image a corrective color image is calculated and projected onto the original paintings. Using this augmented reality approach (Bimber 2005) it is possible to recreate the original color appearance without altering the paintings physically. résumé Un groupe de cinq peintures sur toile de Mark Rothko connues sous le nom de Harvard Murals (1963) ont changé de couleur en raison de la présence d’un pigment rouge fugitif (rouge lithol) dans la peinture et d’une exposition excessive des œuvres à la lumière naturelle, dans une salle dotées de grandes fenêtres. Ce projet explore la possibilité de reconstituer l’apparence de la couleur d’origine des tableaux en les éclairant avec un projecteur numérique. Un système caméra/ projecteur commandé par un ordinateur est mis en place. Avec une caméra calibrée, la surface peinte et la réaction non linéaire du projecteur sont caractérisées. Par comparaison avec une image cible, une image corrective de la couleur est calculée et projetée sur les tableaux originaux. En utilisant cette approche par la réalité augmentée (Bimber Santiago Cuellar Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Harvard Art Museums. Cambridge, MA, USA MIT Media Lab. Cambridge, MA, USA cuellar@media.mit. edu JenS Stenger* Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Harvard Art Museums Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art Harvard Art Museums. Cambridge, MA, USA jens_stenger@harvard.edu rudolph gSChwind Imaging and Media Lab University of Basel. Basel, Switzerland rudolf.gschwind@unibas.ch ankit Mohan MIT Media Lab Cambridge, MA, USA ankit@media.mit. edu YaSuhiro Mukaigawa MIT Media Lab Cambridge, MA, USA Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research Osaka University. Osaka, Japan mukaigaw@am.sanken. osaka-u.ac. jp raMeSh raSkar MIT Media Lab Cambridge, MA, USA raskar@media.mit. edu katherine ereMin Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Harvard Art Museums. Cambridge, MA, USA katherine_eremin@harvard.edu naraYan khandekar Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Harvard Art Museums. Cambridge, MA, USA narayan_khandekar@harvard.edu *Author for correspondence NoN-iNvAsive color restorAtioN of fAded pAiNtiNgs usiNg light from A digitAl projector
1 EFFECTIVENESS OF 6-ISCHEMIC CUFF NEAR 2 INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY MITOCHONDRIAL 3 CAPACTITY TEST 4

Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) has been used to measure muscle mitochondrial 9 capacity. The current method requires as many as 22 short ischemic occlusions to generate a 10 recovery curve for mitochondrial capacity. PURPOSE: To determine the effectiveness of using a 611 occlusion analysis protocol to study muscle mitochondrial capacity. METHOD: Two independent, 12 unidentified data sets were analyzed (bicep n=48, forearm n=41) from previous studies using a NIRS 13 device (Artinis, Ltd.). Both data sets had two recovery tests that included 22 ischemic occlusions. 14 A recovery rate used to indicate mitochondrial capacity was calculated two different ways 15 (simultaneously). Each sample was analyzed with a MATLAB program; with a curve-fit for the 22 16 ischemic occlusions and curve matching for the first six ischemic cuffs and an end resting value. The 17 two resulting rate constants were compared using correlations, both for the two data sets, good and 18 bad fitting data, using the best 5 of 6 points for the 6 cuff approach. RESULTS: The rate constants 19 were not significantly different between the 22 cmuff and 6 cuff for the total data sets: bicep 20 (1.43+0.32min-1, 1.44+0.35min-1, p=0.56), forearm (1.94+0.42min-1, 1.95+0.44min-1, p=0.76). The 21 average bicep rate constants, when compared to each other, had an equation of y=1.07x-0.09, R2=0.90. 22 The average forearm rate constants, when compared to each other, had an equation of 0.98x+0.02, 23 R2=0.93. CONCLUSIONS: The 6-Cuff analysis provided the same results as the longer 22-cuff. The 24 6-cuff approach is both shorter in time and uses less ischemic occlusion periods, increasing the 25 practicality of the NIRS mitochondrial capacity test. 26
Laparoscopic versus open surgery for hepatic cystic echinococcosis : a systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective: To systematically evaluate and compare the efficacy and safety of laparoscopic and conventional surgical treatment of hepatic cystic echinococcosis. Methods: Literature research was carried by using databases of PubMed, Medline, Ovid-Embase and the Cochrane Library with searching phrases “hydatid cyst or echinococcosis”, “liver or hepatic”, “surgery”, ”conventional or open”, “laparoscopic or minimal invasive”. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria detailed above, 7 articles with 999 patients were selected for final analysis. A meta-analysis of feasibility, safety and efficacy were performed on eligible studies with RevMan 5.2 statistical software. Results: A literature search revealed a total of seven publications (2 prospective and 5 retrospective) that met criteria, reporting data from 999 patients. Patients were categorized into laparoscopic group with 212 patients and conventional open surgery group with 787 patients. Meta-analyses indicated significantly lower perioperative morbidity [OR=0.59, 95% CI (0.39, 0.90), P=0.001] and lesser wound related complications [OR=0.34, 95% CI (0.13, 0.91), P=0.03], as well as shorter hospitalization period [MD=-3.44, 95% CI (-4.85, -2.03), P<0.000001] in the laparoscopic group. With regard to mortality, biliary leakage, residual cavity infection or fluid collection, recurrence rate, both therapeutic methods showed no statistical significance.Conclusions: The laparoscopic approach is safe for selected patients. Clinical outcomes are comparable to open surgery; however, further randomized controlled trials are strongly needed to determine a universally accepted result, because the certainty of the evidence is very low.
Microcontroller Based Implementation of Multi-Level Inverter Based Dynamic Voltage Restorer

This paper deals with simulation and implementation of multilevel inverter based Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR). The DVR circuit produces high quality voltage since it uses a nine level inverter. This DVR gives better solution to the voltage sag problem by injecting a voltage with reduced harmonics. DVR controls the voltage applied to the load by injecting voltage of proper amplitude and phase angle. Thus DVR is responsible for restoring quality of voltage derived to the end user.
What Makes Sense? : Searching for Strong WSD Predictors in Croatian

The goal of this research was to investigate and determine position of strong predictors for word sense disambiguation of Croatian nouns. Research was conducted using supervised learning methods and a corpus of around 70 million words. We have concluded that words in the immediate vicinity of an observed lexeme (1-5 words left and right) have the highest discriminative power. We have also measured the applicability and accuracy of the one-sense-per-discourse method and found it to be very successful as well as the impact of sentence boundaries which proved not to be a good criterion for selecting strong predictors.
Increasing * occlusion * Decreasing * consistency *

Common visual recognition tasks such as classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation are rapidly reaching maturity, and given the recent rate of progress, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that techniques for many of these problems will approach human levels of performance in the next few years. In this paper we look to the future: what is the next frontier in visual recognition? We offer one possible answer to this question. We propose a detailed image annotation that captures information beyond the visible pixels and requires complex reasoning about full scene structure. Specifically, we create an amodal segmentation of each image: the full extent of each region is marked, not just the visible pixels. Annotators outline and name all salient regions in the image and specify a partial depth order. The result is a rich scene structure, including visible and occluded portions of each region, figure-ground edge information, semantic labels, and object overlap. We create two datasets for semantic amodal segmentation. First, we label 500 images in the BSDS dataset with multiple annotators per image, allowing us to study the statistics of human annotations. We show that the proposed full scene annotation is surprisingly consistent between annotators, including for regions and edges. Second, we annotate 5000 images from COCO. This larger dataset allows us to explore a number of algorithmic ideas for amodal segmentation and depth ordering. We introduce novel metrics for these tasks, and along with our strong baselines, define concrete new challenges for the community.
Echo State Networks with Trained Feedbacks

Echo State Networks (ESNs) is an approach to the recurrent neural network (RNN) training, based on generating a big random network (reservoir) of sparsely inter-connected neurons and learning only a single layer of output weights from the reservoir as the target function. Despite many advantages of ESNs over gradient based RNN training techniques, they lack the power of learning some complex functions. New findings in dynamical systems theory state, that fixed neural circuits can obtain universal computational qualities if suitable feedbacks (or intermediate units) can be trained. Unfortunately the theory gives no hint on how this can be done. In this report we explore possible directions in which the theoretical findings could be applied to increase the computational power of ESNs. More specifically, we discuss possible options for defining training targets for the feedbacks, present and discuss some empirical results (positive as well as negative) testing the ideas in practice and analyze some problems pointing out to some intrinsic limitations of ESNs. Another contribution of this report is a discussion of many practical issues of training ESNs in particular the ones having feedback connections. We also propose a modification of ESNs called Layered ESNs. This technical report is based on the author’s Master Thesis named "Improving Echo State Networks by Training Intermediate Units".
SSC 00-IX-7 Analysis of Spectrum Band Sharing Between CDMA And Other Systems

__________ Many mobile satellite systems have been proposed to employ Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technique at L/S band. These bands have been allocated to the mobile satellite services on a primary basis since 1992, in addition to the existing services. Therefore, the mobile satellite services will be subject to share spectrum with each other and with existing services. This paper discusses spectrum overlapping for two cases: i)between a CDMA channel and narrowband signal channel; ii)between CDMA channels sharing the same band. Analyses have been performed to increase the overall spectral efficiency in the frequency band, taking into account various factors such as the relative position of overlapping and the amount of overlapping. Positions of optimum overlapping for spectral efficiency are discussed. This spectrum sharing is referred to as a CDMA overlay, and has a potential to enhance both the spectral utilization and the flexibility of that utilization. From the results, the best position of the multiple narrow band signals, to allow sharing spectrum with CDMA signal without loosing significant capacity for both of them, is at the edge of the CDMA channel. Further improvement can be achieved for CDMA system, especially when narrow band signals have more power compared to the CDMA system, by implementing a notch filter at the specific location of the narrow-band signal. For CDMA/CDMA spectrum sharing, the overall spectral efficiency may be increased significantly by carefully choosing the overlapping position. ___________________________________________________________________________ ______ ∗ PhD. Student at Surrey Space Center ∗∗ Senior lecture at Center for Communication Systems Research † Professor and Director of Surrey Space Center
Weak Supervision for Sequence Modeling

Recent methods for aggregating weak supervision sources have succeeded in modeling the accuracies and correlations among all sources using generative models, but most of them are applied to classification problems such as relation extraction. In this project, we applied the weak supervision modeling scheme to sequence modeling, more specifically, the Name Entity Recognition problem.