Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Suivi visuel par filtrage particulaire : application à l'interaction Homme-robot

Cette these porte sur la detection et le suivi de personnes ainsi que la reconnaissance de gestes elementaires a partir du flot video d'une camera couleur embarquee sur le robot. Le filtrage particulaire tres adapte dans ce contexte permet de combiner/fusionner aisement differentes sources de mesures. Nous proposons ici differents schemas de filtrage, ou l'information visuelle est prise en compte dans les fonctions d'importance et de vraisemblance au moyen de primitives forme, couleur et mouvement image. Nous evaluons alors quelles combinaisons de primitives visuelles et d'algorithmes de filtrage repondent au mieux aux modalites d'interaction envisagees pour notre robot "guide de musee. Notre derniere contribution porte sur la reconnaissance de gestes symboliques permettant de communiquer avec le robot. Une strategie de filtrage particulaire efficace est proposee afin de suivre et reconnaitre simultanement des configurations de la main et des dynamiques gestuelles dans le flot video.
A thermodynamically consistent finite strain micro-sphere framework for phase-transformations

We extend a thermodynamically consistent finite strain micro-sphere framework elaborated by Carol et al. towards the modelling of phase-transformations to allow for the simulation of polycrystalline solids such as, e.g., shape memory alloys and shape memory polymers undergoing large deformations. The considered phase-transformation mechanism is based on statistical physics and allows the consideration of an arbitrary number of solid material phases. The specifically constructed, non-quadratic Helmholtz free energy functions considered in every micro-plane of the micro-sphere framework are extended to include individual Bain-type transformation strains for each of the phases. The total strains acting in each material phase are multiplicatively decomposed into elastic strains and transformation strains. (Less)
Cointegration and Dynamic Linkages of International Stock Markets: An Emerging Market Perspective

This study investigates the long-run relationships and short-run dynamic linkages between the stock exchange of Egypt and its counterparts in Group of Seven (G7) countries, prior to and following the tragic events of September 2001, utilizing Johansen’s cointegration and variance decomposition analyses. The empirical results show, inter alia, that : (i) The Egyptian stock exchange appears to share no pairwise long-run cointegration relationships with its counterparts in the G7 countries across the pre- and post-attack periods, with the UK stock exchange being the only exception in the pre-attack period. (ii) The price variation in the Egyptian stock market over the pre- and post-attack periods is predominantly accounted for by its own innovations. (iii) Lastly, the September 2001 attack and its worldwide repercussions seem to exert no conspicuous impact on the behavior of the Egyptian stock exchange, implying that the latter tends to stand aloof from global events.
Montmorillonite-Supported Fe/Ni Bimetallic Nanoparticles for Removal of Cr(VI) from Wastewater

Cr(VI) is one of the most dangerous heavy metal contaminants and its removal is a great challenge throughout the world. With a nanometer length scale (1-100nm) and large specific surface area, higher reducing ability and activity, stronger adsorption property, better mobility than bulk or microscale iron particles, nanoscale zerovalent iron (nZVI) has shown great promise for removal of Cr(VI) from wastewater. Despite its merits, resulting from large specific surface area and intrinsic magnetic interaction, high reduction ability as well as ultrafine size, nZVI is troubled by aggregation and oxidation from the degraded system, reducing its reduction ability and limiting its application. To overcome these drawbacks, Fe/Ni bimetallic nanoparticles were synthesized by classic sodium borohydride solution reduction method to enhance the reactivity of nZVI. Furthermore, montmorillonite (Mt), which is often used as an effective protective reagent and support as well, was used to achieve well disperse of nZVI. The preparation of the composites was achieved by a simple route. This study has shown that for Mt-supported Fe/Ni bimetallic nanoparticles are promising materials for removal of Cr(VI) from wastewater.
Short-term wind speed forecasting using ARIMA model

The massive integration of wind power into the power system increasingly calls for better short-term wind speed forecasting which helps transmission system operators to balance the power systems with less reserve capacities. The time series analysis methods are often used to analyze the wind speed variability. The time series are defined as a sequence of observations ordered in time. Statistical methods described in this paper are based on the prediction of future wind speed data depending on the historical observations. This allows us to find a sufficiently good model for the wind speed prediction. The paper addresses a short-term wind speed forecasting ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) model. This method was applied for a number of different prediction problems, including the short term wind speed forecasts. It is seen as an early time series methodology with well-known limitations in wind speed forecasting, mainly because of insufficient accuracies of the hourly forecasts for the second half of the day-ahead forecasting period. The authors attempt to find the maximum effectiveness of the model aiming to find: (1) how the identification of the optimal model structure improves the forecasting results and (2) what accuracy increase can be gained by reidentification of the structure for a new wind weather season. Both historical and synthetic wind speed data representing the sample locality in the Baltic region were used to run the model. The model structure is defined by rows p, d, q and length of retrospective data period. The structure parameters p (Autoregressive component, AR) and q (Moving Average component, MA) were determined by the Partial Auto-Correlation Function (PACF) and Auto-Correlation Function (ACF), respectively. The model’s forecasting accuracy is based on the root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and mean absolute error (MAE). The results allowed to establish the optimal model structure and the length of the input/retrospective period. The quantitative study revealed that identification of the optimal model structure gives significant accuracy improvement against casual structures for 6–8 h forecast lead time, but a season-specific structure is not appropriate for the entire year period. Based on the conducted calculations, we propose to couple the ARIMA model with any more effective method into a hybrid model.
Dynamic Political Economy of Redistribution Policy : The Role of Education Costs

This paper focuses on how education costs affect the political determination of redistribution policy via individual decision making on education. For cases of high costs, there are multiple equilibria: the poor-majority equilibrium featured by the minority of highly educated individuals and a high level of redistribution, and the rich-majority equilibrium featured by the majority of highly educated individuals and a low level of redistribution. For cases of low costs, there is a unique rich-majority equilibrium featured by the majority of highly educated individuals and a high level of redistribution.
Detecting Linguistic Markers for Radical Violence in Social Media

Lone-wolf terrorism is a threat to the security of modern society, as was tragically shown in Norway on July 22, 2011, when Anders Behring Breivik carried out two terrorist attacks that resulted in a total of 77 deaths. Since lone wolves are acting on their own, information about them cannot be collected using traditional police methods such as infiltration or wiretapping. One way to attempt to discover them before it is too late is to search for various “weak signals” on the Internet, such as digital traces left in extremist web forums. With the right tools and techniques, such traces can be collected and analyzed. In this work, we focus on tools and techniques that can be used to detect weak signals in the form of linguistic markers for potential lone wolf terrorism.
Does the 6-minute walk test predicts functional capacity in a sample of elderly women? A pilot-study

Introduction: Functional capacity is the capacity to conduct daily activities in an independent way. It can be estimated with the 6-minutes’ walk test (6MWT) and other validated functional tests. Objectives: Verify associations between functional capacity measured with two different instruments (6MWT and Composite Physical Function (CPF) scale) and levels of physical activity and between those and characterization variables. Methods: This sample consisted of 30 apparently healthy elderly women from Loures municipality. Essentially they should be independent and community-dwelling. Characterization data were collected, containing characterization of physical activity levels and anthropometric data. Functional capacity was assessed with CPF scale and distance walked by the 6MWT. Results were analysed using a SPSS v21.0 through correlation tests. Results: The walked distance in 6MWT was positively associated with height (r = 0.406; p = 0.026), physical activity level (r = 0.594; p = 0.001) and functional capacity (r = 0.682; p = 0.000). For each point more obtained in CPF, the distance walked increases on average by 7.5 meters. Relatively to sedentary participants, being insufficiently active increases, on average, the distance walked in 85.8 meters; and being active increases, on average, the distance walked in 108.8 meters. No other associations were observed in our sample. Conclusion: Based on the collected sample, walked distance in 6MWT has a high correlation with results in CPF scale, so this test can be used to predict functional capacity. More attention should be taken to promote strategies to increase walking in older adults.
Lending Organization and Credit Supply During the Crisis

A recent strand of the literature shows that the adoption of different lending technologies is associated with heterogeneous credit policies and performance. Using a unique Bank of Italy's survey, specifically designed to capture some organizational features and the lending techniques adopted by Italian banks, this paper analyses the link between organization of the lending process and the dynamics of credit granted to different kinds of firms after the financial crisis, in order to investigate how this heterogeneity affected the credit slowdown in 2009-10 following the Lehman Brothers' collapse. Since low economic growth and tight liquidity may lower both loan demand and supply, disentangling the impact of credit demand from changes in lending policies is crucial to correctly identify the effect of more structural factors, such as organizational characteristics. Evidence suggests that short-term variations in credit demand are positively correlated to firms' credit growth rate, in line with the recent literature on business cycles. Bank performance and riskiness indicators show that sounder institutions, especially among large banks, had more room left to expand their risky assets, while capital ratio seems to be not relevant per se. Focusing on the banking organizational channel, the simple adoption of scoring is irrelevant for the dynamics of credit granted both to small and large firms, while its actual usage as a crucial factor to evaluate customers' creditworthiness negatively affects bank credit growth rate. At the same time, decentralization of decision-making power to loan branch manager (LBM) fosters credit expansion, with a significant effect on both small and large firms. During the crisis period, and differently from previous evidence, the tenure of the LBM negatively affects credit dynamics for all kinds of borrowing firms. This apparently counterintuitive result suggests that the economic downturn could have exacerbated the agency costs and the risk that a LBM and the local economic community might collude at the expenses of the goals of the bank as a whole. Consequently, a faster turnover should be used to reduce asymmetric information between CEOs and local managers and to monitor their behaviour, in order to prevent loss of control over decisions in a more uncertain economic context, even though this might discourage soft information gathering. Anticipating this policy may also have promoted particular caution by long-standing local branch managers, in order to favour good reporting on the real wealth of borrowing firms.
Polymer-noble metal nanocomposites: Review

Polymer-noble metal nanocomposites have been extensively investigated due to their potential ability to provide materials with novel mechanical, electronic or chemical behaviour for technological applications. Many preparative procedures have been proposed and detailed characterizations have been carried out on conducting polymer-noble metal nanocomposites; thanks to the rapid improvement in analytical techniques on surface and nanoscale materials. This review focuses on the preparation, characterization of polymer-noble metal nanocomposites and some potential areas for applications such as sensors, batteries (fuel cells) and capacitors.
DISCOVERIES ON GRAPTOLITES BY X-RAY STUDIES

The X-ray method has been used for analysing pyritized graptolites with the purpose of finding traces of the unknown soft parts. The investigated material comprises mainly Llandoverian graptolites from Bornholm, Denmark, which occur in dark grey shales and frequently are pyritized. The graptolites are generally uniformly filled with pyrite throughout the rhabdosomes. However, at a few horizons from the· cllphus Zone, pyrite is observed specially concentrated in the distal part of the thecal tubes, both in diplograptids and monograptids. In other specimens from the same horizon pyrite is found in rOUIjded concentrations just outside the thecal apertures. Continuous extraskeletal pyrite is rare, but is nevertheless found (preferapiy ar­ ound the distal parts of some Retiolites rhabdosomes). The pyrite replacements within the thecae and outside the thecal mouths have almost equal form and size throughout each rhabdosome, and may have replaced decaying soft parts. Howeyer, with the present material it has not been possible to clarify any exact structures.
Multi-task multiple kernel learning reveals relevant frequency bands for critical areas localization in focal epilepsy

The localization of epileptic zone in pharmacoresistant focal epileptic patients is a daunting task, typically performed by medical experts through visual inspection over neural recordings. For a finer localization of the epileptogenic areas and a deeper understanding of the pathology both the identification of pathogenical biomarkers and the automatic characterization of epileptic signals are desirable. In this work we present a data integration learning method based on multi-level representation of stereo-electroencephalography recordings and multiple kernel learning. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to tackle both aspects simultaneously, as our approach is devised to classify critical and non-critical recordings while detecting the most discriminative frequency bands. The learning pipeline is applied to a data set of 18 patients for a total of 2347 neural recordings analyzed by medical experts. Without any prior knowledge assumption, the data-driven method reveals the most discriminative frequency bands for the localization of epileptic areas in the high-frequency spectrum (≥ 80 Hz) while showing high performance metric scores (mean balanced accuracy of 0.89 ± 0.03). The promising results may represent a starting point for the automatic search of clinical biomarkers of epileptogenicity.
Large‐area spatially explicit estimates of tropical soil carbon stocks and response to land‐cover change

Studies of tropical soil organic carbon (SOC) response to deforestation present conflicting results, confounding estimates of the regional effects of land‐cover change on carbon storage. We calculated the change in SOC stocks due to deforestation through 1996 for the state of Rondônia, Brazil, in the southwestern Amazon basin. Whereas the net change in SOC for the state as a whole was slightly negative (−0.5% or −5012 Gg), spatially explicit maps suggest dramatic local changes, ranging from −76% to +74%, with outliers as high as +330%. The direction and magnitude of change in SOC following forest clearing is related to original forest soil carbon and pH, which in turn provides a general measure for overall nutrient availability and possible toxicities. When native soil carbon is high, SOC decreases in response to land‐cover conversion from forest to pasture; conversely, low soil carbon and low soil fertility lead to gains in carbon under pasture. Mapping variability, rather than relying on large‐area averages, illustrates why results from individual field sites have been contradictory.
Global Asset Pricing: Is There a Role for Long-run Consumption Risk?

We estimate long-run consumption-based asset pricing models using a comprehensive set of international test assets, including broad equity market portfolios, international value/growth portfolios, and international bond portfolios. We find that differences in returns across assets within a country are sometimes (and most prominently for the U.S.) better captured by the assets' exposure to long-run consumption risk as opposed to their exposure to one-period changes in consumption (the canonical consumption CAPM). Across countries, however, exposure to long-run consumption risk does not provide a better fit than the canonical consumption CAPM. Thus, when characterizing the cross-country distribution of returns, long-run consumption risk does not seem to play any particular role, even if long-run risk is important for explaining the cross section of expected returns in the U.S. Furthermore, we show that consumption growth is more predictable over short to medium-run horizons than over longer horizons and that empirical evidence of a declining risk aversion parameter estimate in long-run risk models has to be interpreted with care.
The Payne: Self-consistent ab initio Fitting of Stellar Spectra

We present The Payne, a general method for the precise and simultaneous determination of numerous stellar labels from observed spectra, based on fitting physical spectral models. The Payne combines a number of important methodological aspects: it exploits the information from much of the available spectral range; it fits all labels (stellar parameters and elemental abundances) simultaneously; it uses spectral models, where the structure of the atmosphere and the radiative transport are consistently calculated to reflect the stellar labels. At its core The Payne has an approach to accurate and precise interpolation and prediction of the spectrum in high-dimensional label space that is flexible and robust, yet based on only a moderate number of ab initio models ( for 25 labels). With a simple neural-net-like functional form and a suitable choice of training labels, this interpolation yields a spectral flux prediction good to 10−3 rms across a wide range of Teff and (including dwarfs and giants). We illustrate the power of this approach by applying it to the APOGEE DR14 data set, drawing on Kurucz models with recently improved line lists: without recalibration, we obtain physically sensible stellar parameters as well as 15 elemental abundances that appear to be more precise than the published APOGEE DR14 values. In short, The Payne is an approach that for the first time combines all these key ingredients, necessary for progress toward optimal modeling of survey spectra; and it leads to both precise and accurate estimates of stellar labels, based on physical models and without “recalibration. ” Both the codes and catalog are made publicly available online.
RAD-HARD LUMINOSITY MONITORING FOR THE LHC*

Luminosity measurements at the high luminosity points of the LHC are very challenging due to the extremely high radiation levels in the order of 180 MGy/yr. We have designed an ionization chamber that uses a flowing inorganic gas mixture and a combination of metals and ceramics. With such a choice, an additional challenge is achieving the necessary speed to be able to resolve bunchby-bunch luminosity data. We present the design, analysis and experimental results of the early demonstration tests of this device.
Mechanism of endocarp-imposed constraints of germination of Lannea microcarpa seeds

Abstract Lannea microcarpa, a multipurpose tree species from the dry African savanna, sheds seeds that often display inhibition of germination. The underlying mechanism was investigated using seeds processed from fully matured fruits collected from natural stands in Burkina Faso. Germination of fresh seeds was variable (16–28%), while they did not germinate after drying and rehydration. Mechanical scarification of the endocarp at the proximal end of the seeds increased germination to 83–94%. Scarification on the distal end led to delayed radicle emergence through the produced hole in c. 40% of the seeds. The endocarp was permeable to water and respiratory gases. Increased water content in scarified seeds was associated with radicle extension during germination. Intact and scarified non-germinated seeds displayed a moderate rate of respiration with respiratory quotient (RQ) values of c. 1. Respiration increased and RQ decreased to c. 0.7 with radicle emergence. Ethylene evolution peaked in both intact and scarified seeds at the beginning of incubation and then decreased to low values. Inhibition of ethylene production by 1–5 mM 2-amino-ethoxyvinylglycine (AVG) caused only a partial decrease of germination of the scarified seeds. Intact non-germinated seeds gradually lost viability during incubation at 30°C, but could be rescued by delayed scarification before day 15 of incubation. It is concluded that radicle emergence in dry L. microcarpa seeds is inhibited only mechanically. The mechanical properties of the endocarp are attributed to irreversible structural changes of the lignin–hemicellulose complex, which occur during drying.