Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reverse KLD-Sampling for Measuring Uncertainty in Rao-Blackwellized Particle Filters SLAM

( ) / 0 0 0 obs obs I EM N if N EMMI otherwise > >  =   The information I(EM) can be computed from the entropy of the expected map, whereas the EMMI is obtained including the number of observed cells Nobs that are present in the map: We assume that the quality of map building process depends on the approximation of the position belief. If particles are drawn from a discrete distribution, with support over kt bins, at each time step we compute the probability 1-t of having a divergence less than  between the true distribution p and our particle-based representation of pose belief xt : p
The Body at the Funeral: Imagery and Commemoration at Notre-Dame, Paris, about 1304–18

In the early fourteenth century, two funeral images of prominent clergy members were incorporated into the preexisting obituary text of the cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris. Virtually unrecognized by scholars except in the occasional stylistic analysis, these illuminations are in fact important evidence of the Crucial role of the physical body in memorial strategies. When these images are resituated in their liturgical context, it becomes evident that images fail to wholly take the body's place in fourteenth-century commemorative practices.
Multi-level Caching in Distributed File Systems or Your cache ain't nuthin' but trash

We are investigating the potential for a hierarchy of intermediate file servers to address scaling problems in increasingly large distributed file systems. To this end, we have run trace-driven simulations based on data from DEC-SRC and our own data collection to determine the potential of caching-only intermediate servers. The degree of sharing among clients is central to the effectiveness of an intermediate server. This turns out to be quite low in the traces available to us. All told, fewer than 10% of block accesses are to files shared by more than one file system client. Our simulations show that even with an infinite cache at an intermediate server, cache hit rates are disappointingly low. For client caches as small as 20M, we observe hit rates under 19%. As client cache sizes increase, the hit rate at an intermediate server approaches the degree of sharing among all clients. On the other hand, the intermediate server does appear to be effective in boosting the performance and scalability of upstream file servers by substantially reducing the request rate presented to them.
Quantitative data and graphics on lexical specificity and index readability: the case of Wikipedia

This paper is part of a wider corpus based study focused on Web encyclopedias (Elia 2008). It is built on and extends the comparative analysis of Emigh and Herring (2005). In particular, attention is focused on the English edition of Wikipedia. A quantitative analysis compares Wikipedia vs. Britannica encyclopedic entries. Linguistic features such as type/token ratio, word and sentence length, and Index of Readability are analyzed. The findings show to what extent collaboratively produced Wikipedia entries are readable and standardized in a way not very dissimilar from those produced by experts in the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Keys words: Online Encyclopedias, Index of Redability, Discourse Analysis, Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, Quantitative Analysis
Allocation and Scheduling using Linear Programming in the SPIRAL Compiler

Today’s compilers are usually doing register allocation and scheduling in two different passes, with the first pass imposing constraints to the second pass. Different studies [1] have proposed integer linear programming (ILP) to get an optimal solution to those problems but compilation time usually increases exponentially, thus only small codes can be scheduled this way. However, under some conditions [2], the integer linear programming constraints can be relaxed to linear programming (LP) whose response time is polynomial instead of exponential. Our project involves implementing an LP scheduler/allocator within the SPIRAL compiler. SPIRAL is a Carnegie Mellon University project that generates competitive code entirely autonomously for digital signal processing algorithms and other numerical kernels. When asking for a specific transform, SPIRAL will create a platform specific search space (e.g. taking into account simdization and parallelization) and look for the best implementation. The SPIRAL compiler we will be using takes a simple language as input (loops, additions, multiplications, no pointers) and will be setup to produce fully unrolled SSE code. Preliminary work by Yevgen Voronenko on Integer Linear Programming has shown potential for significant performance gains for DFTs. However, the algorithm’s response latency is not tolerable for large block sizes. We will attempt to reformulate ILP equations to Linear Programming equations, and use an LP solver to compile larger block sizes in reasonable time, while maintaining the performance improvement offered by the ILP algorithm. References
L'expertise et la lutte contre la fraude monétique

Le montant annuel de la fraude europeenne a la carte de paiement se monte a plus d’1,5 milliard d’euros. Cette manne aiguise l’appetit des groupes criminels qui exploitent la moindre faille de la monetique (ecosysteme de la carte de paiement). Les cinq principaux acteurs de la monetique (porteurs, emetteurs, accepteurs, acquereurs et systemes de paiement) s’appuient pourtant sur des systemes et reseaux normalises dont la securite est encadree par des standards internationaux contraignants. Neanmoins, la fraude monetique ne cesse de progresser alors que les moyens de lutte (etatiques, collaboratifs ou individuels) restent limites.Apres etude de la fraude monetique, cette these propose differentes actions (passives,reactives et proactives) visant a ameliorer la lutte contre la fraude monetique. D’abord,il convient de mieux connaitre la fraude en etudiant la provenance des donnees volees et plus seulement leur usage. Ensuite l’expertise de ces fraudes doit etre amelioree, en developpant par exemple une captation du progres scientifique. Une expertise qui doit etre en partie transmise aux enqueteurs afin qu’ils puissent conduire leurs enquetes. Enquetes qui peuvent etre dynamisees par des operations reactives associant investigateurs et sachants techniques. Enfin, de maniere proactive, les enquetes et analyses de demain doivent etre facilitees par les technologies monetiques concues aujourd’hui.
Creating a common syntactic dictionary of English

COMLEX Syntax is a 38,000 head word English dictionary containing detailed information about syntactic features and complements, and is intended for use in natural language processing. It has been prepared at New York University under funding from the Linguistic Data Consortium, and will be available (unencumbered) to members of the Consortium, for both research and commercial purposes.
Supporting real-time concurrency

Concurrent real-time applications are complicated since both timing and consistency constraints must be met for correct performance. Furthermore, techniques to enforce these two forms of constraints are often incompatible. For instance, priority-driven preemptive scheduling, which is optimal for meeting timing constraints in some systems, may leave a shared resource's state inconsistent. On the other hand, mutual exclusion techniques that ensure the consistency of shared resources are not well-suited to meeting timing constraints. This dissertation develops concepts and programming language constructs for facilitating the enforcement of both real-time and consistency constraints in applications with concurrency. Our programming paradigm combines an object-based paradigm for the specification of shared resources, and a distributed transaction-based paradigm for the specification of application processes. Resources provide abstract views of shared system entities, such as devices and data structures. Each resource has a state and defines a set of actions that can be invoked by processes to examine or change its state. A resource also specifies scheduling constraints on the execution of its actions to ensure the maintenance of its state's consistency. Processes access resources by invoking actions and express precedence, consistency and timing constraints on action invocations. The implementation of our language constructs with real-time scheduling and locking for concurrency control is also described, including a novel deadlock prevention technique. The utility of the constructs are demonstrated in two ways. First, we describe their use to solve a general concurrent real-time problem called timed atomic commitment. We then describe how they were used to program a graphic simulation of two robot arms coordinating to pick up a moving object under timing constraints.
A New Encoding Decoding Scheme for Text Compression with Embedded Security

In today's communication world, finding out and improving the means of better channel utilization, as well as providing the security of data transmitted are the key issues. For some data types, e.g. text, full (lossless) data recovery might also be required. Therefore, a lossless compression algorithm that is reasonably fast and secure enough would meet the needs of many in the networking environments. While standard compression tools (e.g. gzip of Unix and pkzip of Windows platforms) achieve compression rates at around 3 bpc (bits per character) for text type of data, they are poor at security. This study presents the design and implementation of a new encoding/decoding scheme to offer compression and security at the same time. For that, the scheme combines compression with encryption. To address the security issue, encoding is made through an Encoding matrix generated by a Pseudo Random Number Generator. This encoding already provides an initial compression. It then uses Arithmetic Coding to further compress the text. For further security, an iterative encoding scheme is proposed and implemented. The results obtained are encouraging in terms of both compression and security.
A multistrategy approach for digital text categorization

The goal of the research described here is to develop a multistrategy classifier system that can be used for document categorization. The system automatically discovers classification patterns by applying several empirical learning methods to different representations for preclassified documents. The learners work in a parallel manner, where each learner carries out its own feature selection based on evolutionary techniques and then obtains a classification model. In classifying documents, the system combines the predictions of the learners by applying evolutionary techniques as well. The system relies on a modular , flexible architecture that makes no assumptions about the design of learners or the number of learners available and guarantees the independence of the thematic domain.
Exploiting the miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements insertion polymorphisms as an efficient DNA marker system for genome analysis and evolutionary studies in wheat and related species

Transposable elements (TEs) constitute ~80% of the complex bread wheat genome and contribute significantly to wheat evolution and environmental adaptation. We studied 52 TE insertion polymorphism markers to ascertain their efficiency as a robust DNA marker system for genetic studies in wheat and related species. Significant variation was found in miniature inverted-repeat transposable element (MITE) insertions in relation to ploidy with the highest number of “full site” insertions occurring in the hexaploids (32.6 ± 3.8), while the tetraploid and diploid progenitors had 22.3 ± 0.6 and 15.0 ± 3.5 “full sites,” respectively, which suggested a recent rapid activation of these transposons after the formation of wheat. Constructed phylogenetic trees were consistent with the evolutionary history of these species which clustered mainly according to ploidy and genome types (SS, AA, DD, AABB, and AABBDD). The synthetic hexaploids sub-clustered near the tetraploid species from which they were re-synthesized. Preliminary genotyping in 104 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) showed predominantly 1:1 segregation for simplex markers, with four of these markers already integrated into our current DArT-and SNP-based linkage map. The MITE insertions also showed stability with no single excision observed. The MITE insertion site polymorphisms uncovered in this study are very promising as high-potential evolutionary markers for genomic studies in wheat.
Advances in hierarchical real-time systems: incrementality, optimality, and multiprocessor clustering

Component-based engineering is a popular design strategy for multi-functional and complex real-time systems; it decomposes the system into simpler components and then composes them using interfaces that hide internal complexities. Since components also have time-constrained resource demand, this design leads to hierarchical real-time systems that share resources under a scheduling hierarchy. Due to resource-constrained operating environments, schedulability analysis of such hierarchical systems - analysis to verify satisfaction of component timing constraints - is an important problem that must be addressed in the design phase. Additionally, to preserve the principles of component-based engineering, this analysis must be compositional, i.e., system schedulability must be determined by composing interfaces that abstractly represent component resource requirements. This dissertation addresses two problems pertaining to compositional schedulability analysis. First, it develops analysis techniques that are also incremental; analysis is independent of the order in which component interfaces are composed. This allows interfaces to be reused for efficient, on-the-fly verification of changes to components. Second, it addresses the problem of resource wastage in compositional analysis. It develops a new component interface whose resource utilization is better than existing interfaces. It also characterizes the notion of optimal resource utilization for hierarchical systems, and determines conditions under which this optimality can be achieved. Finally, it demonstrates the effectiveness of these techniques on data sets obtained from avionics systems. With increasing popularity of multiprocessor-based embedded real-time systems, development of scheduling algorithms for multiprocessors is gaining importance. Algorithms that manage platform parallelism either by splitting it into multiple uniprocessors (partitioned scheduling), or by allowing demand to freely migrate across the platform (global scheduling), have been developed. In-spite of a reasonable success with these algorithms, many scheduling problems still remain open. Towards addressing them, this dissertation proposes a novel scheduling technique that virtualizes demand allocation through a two-level scheduling hierarchy. This technique supports more general demand distributions across the platform in comparison to existing algorithms, and hence provides a finer control over platform parallelism.
Specification And Compilation Of Timed Systems

This thesis presents a framework for the speci cation and compilation of modules in a system that uses di erent synchronization paradigms. These timed systems are described by using timed handshaking expansions (HSE) and a standard hardware description language, namely VHDL. Synthesizable subsets of these languages are de ned to include constructs for describing timing behaviors, as well as, sequencing, concurrency, choice and looping. A new formal semantic model, timed event/level structures, is used to de ne the behaviors speci ed by the synthesizable subsets. A compiler is developed to translate the HSE and VHDL speci cations to timed event/level structures. This compiler is integrated into ATACS, a synthesis tool for timed circuits. Finally we demonstrate our methodology on a practical example, an asynchronous implementation of the Maxlist algorithm.
Pushpin computing : a platform for distributed sensor networks

A hardware and software platform has been designed and implemented for modeling, testing, and deploying distributed peer-to-peer sensor networks comprised of many identical nodes. Each node possesses the tangible affordances of a commonplace pushpin to meet ease-ofuse and power considerations. The sensing, computational, and communication abilities of a "Pushpin", as well as a "Pushpin" operating system supporting mobile computational processes are treated in detail. Example applications and future work are discussed. Thesis Supervisor: Joseph A. Paradiso Title: Principal Research Scientist, M.I. T. Media Laboratory
Characterizing location of spotted lanternfly egg masses in wooded habitat during early invasion stages

The spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae), is an invasive planthopper from Asia that is estimated to have spread 17 km/yr since it's initial detection in Pennsylvania in 2014. Lycorma delicatula is a pest to the agricultural and forestry industries in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, in part due to its highly polyphagous nature. Current detection relies on visual observations, unbaited traps, or eDNA surveillance in its primary hosts, including grape and hardwoods. These approaches narrow the surveillance area by concentrating on known host plants but could be further refined to narrow the search parameters from the 100+ known host plants. Because L. delicatula appears to have a strong population buildup in wooded areas, we evaluated the relationship between egg mass presence and habitat characteristics in wooded habitats adjacent to vineyards in New Jersey at six farms within the first two years of L. delicatula detection. Habitat characteristics included distance from wood edge, and presence of a critical host plant Ailanthus altissima, and presence of Vitis spp. within 4.5 m. We identified a significant relationship between egg mass presence and Vitis spp. with an 88% probability of finding an egg mass close to a wild grapevine, dropping to 9% where grapes were absent. During the early invasion stages when this research was conducted, a two-year delay from initial detection in wooded habitats to nymphal presence in the vineyard was observed.
Managing documentation for software reuse

Software development involves the creation and maintenance of various kinds of documents. These documents serve as a communication medium between the members of a development team, and between the development team as a whole and the end user. Software reuse relies upon (and includes reusing) documentation of past software products. Issues of documentation completeness, consistency, and accessibility, recognized by many researchers as crucial to the success of large software development projects are even more critical to software reuse. In this paper we describe the documentation management aspects of a sofware development/reuse tool called SoftClass. We propose a model of software documents that enabled us to relate the structure of documents to the strucutre of software components being documented. The relation of our work to current trends in hypertext-based software documentation management is briefly discussed
Multispectral and hyperspectral imaging technologies in conservation: current research and potential applications

Abstract Spectral imaging technology, which records simultaneously spectral and spatial information about an object, was initially developed for remote sensing and has since been successfully applied to other areas of research. Although relatively new to the field of conservation, this non-invasive method of investigation has already provided promising results in the analysis of paintings and written documents, the characterization of materials and digital documentation. This article reviews the published literature relating to the application of multispectral and hyperspectral imaging for the study and conservation of works of art and presents some new perspectives offered by this innovative and fast-developing technology.
Debugging standard ML

Traditional "source-level" debuggers for compiled languages actually operate at machine level, which makes them complex, difficult to port, and intolerant of compiler optimization. For type-safe languages, however, debugging support can be provided without reference to the underlying machine, by adding instrumentation to program source code before compilation. Because the instrumented code is (almost) ordinary source, it can be processed by the ordinary compiler. The debugger is thus independent from the underlying hardware and runtime system, and from the optimization strategies used by the compiler. This dissertation describes the design and implementation of instrumentation-based debuggers for the Standard ML of New Jersey compiler. Three systems are described: a simple debugger with ordinary variable display and breakpoint facilities, a debugger supporting--and taking internal advantage of--reverse execution, and a debugger for ML Threads, a concurrent extension of ML running on multiprocessors. A formal operational semantics for a subset of ML is used to define debugging operations precisely, and to provide a basis for determining the concrete types of polymorphic variables at runtime. Debugger performance measurements are presented for a range of real programs.
Behavioral building blocks for autonomous agents: description, identification, and learning

The broad problem I address in this dissertation is design of autonomous agents that can efficiently learn how to achieve desired behaviors in large, complex environments. I focus on one essential design component: the ability to form new behavioral units, or skills, from existing ones. I propose a characterization of a useful class of skills in terms of general properties of an agent's interaction with its environment—in contrast to specific properties of a particular environment—and I introduce methods that can be used to identify and acquire such skills autonomously.
Nonparametric Functional Data Analysis: Theory and Practice (Springer Series in Statistics)

Introduction to functional nonparametric statistics. - Some functional datasets and associated statistical problematics. - What is a well adapted space for functional data? - Local weighting of functional variables. - Functional nonparametric prediction methodologies. - Some selected asymptotics. - Computational issues. - Nonparametric supervised classification for functional data. - Nonparametric unsupervised classification for functional data. - Mixing, nonparametric and functional statistics. - Some selected asymptotics. - Application to continuous time processes prediction. - Small ball probabilities, semi-metric spaces and nonparametric statistics. - Conclusion and perspectives.
Conceptual Modeling in OneSAF Objective System (OOS)

The combination of a cooling and conditioning unit for a material web to which ink is applied on at least one side thereof, having a multiplicity of chill rolls arranged in a housing at least approximately vertically above one another, utilizing the height of the housing, the material web being guidable around the chill rolls along a web path extending at least approximately vertically, and a dryer disposed upline from the cooling and conditioning unit for drying the material web, includes a material web outlet formed in the dryer, and a material web inlet formed in the cooling and conditioning unit, the cooling and conditioning unit being disposed immediately downline of the dryer in a manner that the material web leaving the dryer outlet immediately enters the inlet formed in the cooling and conditioning unit.