Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating a Denoising Approach to an Improved Otsu Segmentation on Cell Images

Image denoising provides an opportunity to minimize unwanted signal from any image in order to improve its interpretation by either human or machine. In the medical context, image denoising serves as a critical element of image processing as it helps to improve the quality of data presented for manual or automatic diagnosis. While there exist a number of image denoising methods such as the median, diffusion and Gaussian filtering, selecting a suitable one for cell segmentation may be challenging as one is tasked with ensuring adopted denoising method preserves critical object structures, like boundaries, while at the same time minimizing noise. In this paper, we discuss two popular denoising methods (diffusion filtering and Gaussian filtering) and investigates their significance, in improving the accuracy of segmented cell images, both individually and by their combinations. Experiment carried out on public and private datasets of cell images indicates an improved segmentation accuracy when cell images are first denoised with the combination of diffusion and Gaussian filtering as against individual denoising methods.
Modul Pendamping Pembelajaran Tematik Berbasis Kearifan Lokal Blitar di Kelas IV SD

Mengenalkan kearifan lokal daerah kepada peserta didik perlu untuk dilakukan. Pengenalan kearifan lokal dapat didukung dengan adanya sumber belajar berupa bahan ajar. Informasi dapat diperoleh oleh peserta didik secara mandiri, salah satunya melalai modul pendamping. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian dan pengembangan dengan menggunakan jenis pendekatan ADDIE yaitu analisis, perancangan, pengembangan, penerapan, evaluasi. Tujuan pengembangan ini adalah untuk menghasilkan produk modul pendamping tematik yaitu Modul Tematik Tema Daerah Tempat Tinggalku Berbasis Kearifan Lokal Blitar. Hasil validasi ahli bahan ajar modul pendamping yang dikembangkan yaitu dengan tingkat kevalidan 96,66% dari aspek materi, 90% dalam aspek bahan ajar, dan 90% dalam aspek pembelajaran. Berdasarkan hasil tersebut, pengembangan ini menghasilkan produk berupa bahan ajar modul pendamping pembelajaran tematik berbasis kearifan lokal Blitar yang menonjolkan kondisi wilayah, sejarah, kesenian, kegiatan ekonomi, dan tempat wisata yang dilengkapi dengan cerita rakyat dari Blitar, latihan soal, tes mandiri serta soal evaluasi dengan kriteria sangat valid, sangat baik, sangat menarik dan sangat bermanfaat sehingga dapat meningkatkan motivasi dan membantu pembelajaran di kelas IV SD.
String Searching Using External Memory

The amount of String data around the world is constantly growing. As more of it accumulates, methods to search through it, and at higher capacities needs to be continually improved. This thesis analyzes string searching solutions that: support dynamic updates, support prefix searching, and can perform well using external memory. These solutions are compared against each other using different types of string data while performing various operations. The strengths and weaknesses of each solution is then identified and discussed.
Unit root tests

Unit roots are nonstationary autoregressive (AR) or autoregressive moving average (ARMA) time series processes which may include an intercept and/or a trend. These processes are used often in economics and finance, but can also be found in other scientific fields. Unit root tests address the null hypothesis of a unit root, and an alternative hypothesis of a stationary (or trend stationary) time series. Critical values for unit root tests are typically derived via simulation of limiting distributions expressed as functionals of Brownian motions. The critical values for the Dickey Fuller unit root test with a constant and linear trend are derived via simulation in the R language. Simulation studies are presented showing that linear regressions with unit root processes often produce spurious results. Additional simulation studies are reviewed providing statistical evidence that near‐unit roots can often result in spurious cointegration relationships. Various unit root tests are presented, including ones that allow for structural breaks in intercept and/or trend. Threshold unit root tests are introduced. Simulation studies are used to compare the unit root tests under various scenarios. The case where the analyzed time series may have stationary and nonstationary segments is also considered. WIREs Comput Stat 2017, 9:e1396. doi: 10.1002/wics.1396
TESTING THE ADEQUACY FOR A GENERAL LINEAR ERRORS-IN-VARIABLES MODEL

In testing the adequacy of a regression model, the conditional expectation of the residuals given the observed covariate is often employed to construct lack-of- t tests. However, in the errors-in-variables model, the resiudal is biased and cannot be used directly. In this paper, by correcting for the bias, we suggest lack-of-t tests of score type for a general linear errors-in-variables model. The polynomial model is a special case. The tests are asymptotically chi-squared under the null hypothesis. The choice of scores involved in the test statistics and the power properties are investigated. A simulation study shows that the tests perform well. Application to two data sets is also made. The approach can readily be extended to handle general parametric models.
KELAYAKAN MULTIMEDIA INTERAKTIF BERBASIS BLENDED LEARNING PADA MATERI POKOK KIMIA UNSUR (FEASIBILITY OF INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA-BASED BLENDED LEARNING IN SUBJECT MATTER CHEMICAL ELEMENTS)

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui kelayakan multimedia interaktif berbasis blended learning yang dikembangkan sebagai media pembelajaran pada materi pokok kimia unsur. Kelayakan tersebut ditinjau dari kevalidan meliputi kualitas isi dan tujuan, kualitas instruksional, dan kualitas teknis. Jenis penelitian yang digunakan merupakan penelitian pengembangan (developmental research). Prosedur pada penelitian ini mengacu pada desain R&D yang dilakukan hanya sebatas pada uji coba awal. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa multimedia interaktif berbasis blended learning pada materi pokok kimia unsur layak digunakan sebagai media pembelajaran. Hal ini ditunjukkan dari hasil persentase penilaian rata-rata sebesar 81% ditinjau dari kualitas isi dan tujuan, kualitas instruksional serta kualitas teknis sehingga media dinyatakan valid. Kata kunci : Multimedia Interaktif, Blended Learning, Kimia Unsur This study aims to determine the feasibility of interactive multimedia-based blended learning that developed as a learning media in subject matter chemical elements. The feasibility is reviewed the validity include the quality of content and objectives, quality of instructional, and technical quality. This type of research is developmental research. The procedures in this study refers to R & D design that carried out only restricted to preliminary field test. The results showed that the interactive multimedia-based blended learning in subject matter chemical element was feasible as a learning media. It showed from percentage 81% based content and objectives quality, instructional quality and technical quality so the media was valid. Keywords : Interactive Multimedia, Blended Learning, Chemical Elements
Ray tracing large distributed datasets using ray caches

Most large scale simulations now produce datasets that can be significantly larger than can typically be stored in memory on a visualization system. Visualization algorithms then become ineffective and stall since the data must be paged to disk. Recently, in-situ visualization has received renewed attention for visualizing large datasets that are distributed among many processors during a simulation. It takes advantage of the fact that the full dataset is already in main memory, distributed among multiple processors. Visualization in this environment then requires communication which can be more expensive than disk access. The goal of this thesis was to develop an in-situ visualization technique using ray tracing that employs ray caches to reduce communication overhead. Ray caches attempt to replace a communication operation with a less expensive cache search operation. A prototype implemented on Sharcnet shows ray caching can significantly improve overall performance at a small cost to image quality.
Field Guide to the Flower Flies of Northeastern North America, by Jeffrey H. Skevington, Michelle M. Locke, Andrew D. Young, Kevin Moran, William J. Crins and Stephen A. Marshall

This is a beautiful book, big enough to include multiple photographs of all the known, and until recently, a few unknown flower flies, yet small enough to be carried into the field in a largish pocket or small satchel. The general introduction describes the book’s layout and how to use it most efficiently. Techniques on observing and trapping these flies and how to record your data are also included. Identification poin­ ters, including a reference to an online Key to the Genera of Nearctic Syrphidae (Miranda et al. 2013), give the reader a good start to determining the species. The book ends with a thorough glossary and several very useful diagrams illustrating much used anatomy. Prior to the species accounts is a two­page spread illustrating the differences among the four subfamilies of flower flies. Having never attempted to key out one of these flies to species before, I used this two­ page spread, largely with success. One then goes to the colour­coded section of the book for the appropriate subfamily to find their insect. And herein lies the one issue I have with this guide. Because there is no further key to identify the species, the reader may have to flip through quite a number of pages before finding their fly. The online Key to the Genera of Nearctic Syrphidae, co­authored by four of the six authors of this book as well as two others, should be downloaded and used in conjunction with the guide to identify your specimen to species. The species accounts are well done. There are two per double­page spread, with text on the left and images on the right, allowing for rapid flipping while you’re trying to find your fly. There is always a dorsal view and lateral view, sometimes more than one if the species is dimorphic. Other salient features, such as wing venation, facial structure, or leg characteristics are also shown, as needed, and nicely magnified. All the photographs are at least adequate, but most are crisp, often beautiful shots. The text includes a size range, but the silhouette of the fly presented with each species gives a more rapid indication of size. An interesting series of icons that I’ve not seen before tells the reader if the insect can typically be identified by the unaided eye (surprisingly many), a hand lens or, ultimately, if a microscope will be needed. A map showing records, and usually a range estimate as well, does not restrict itself to the geographic scope of this book, but includes all of North America. The text includes flight times, abundance, and identification tips; I couldn’t think of anything else that a field guide should have. Overall, this is a very nice book that, in conjunction with the online key, will do its job quite well.
Middleware Architecture for Sensing as a Service

The Internet of Things is a concept that envisions the world as a smart space in which physical objects embedded with sensors, actuators, and network connectivity can communicate and react to their surroundings. Recent advancements in information and communication technologies make it possible to make the IoT vision a reality. However, IoT devices and consumers of data from these IoT devices can be owned by different entities which make IoT data sharing a real challenge. Sensing as a Service is a concept that is influenced by the cloud computing term “Every Thing as a Service”. Sensing as a Service enables sensor data sharing. Sensing as a Service middleware enables IoT applications to access data generated by sensing devices owned by other entities. IoT applications are charged by the Sensing as a Service middleware for the amount of sensor data they use. This thesis addresses the architectural design of a cloud-based Sensing as Service middleware. The middleware enables sensor owners to sell their sensor data through the Internet. IoT applications can collect, and analyze sensors through the middleware API. We propose multitenancy algorithms for the middleware resource management. In addition, we propose a SQL-Like language that can be used by IoT applications for sensing service discovery, and sensor stream analytics. The evaluation of the middleware implementation shows the effectiveness of the algorithms.
Modelling and Simulation of Single Phase Multilevel Inverter with Minimum Power Devices and DC Sources

The Multilevel inverter (MLI) are the preferred choice in industry for the application of medium and high power application. Though multilevel inverter has a number of favour and also has disadvantages in the way of achieving the higher levels because of using more amount of semiconductor devices. This may lean towards to increase the installation cost and area. Hence to overthrown this problem the new multilevel inverter is introduced with minimum number of power electronic components. The proposed method is appropriate for high power application with minimum quantity of devices. Phase disposition PWM technique is used for switching signal generation. The results are validated using MATLAB/Simulink and it is implemented in SPARTAN6 FPGA Kit.
SSO-A: The First Large Commercial Dedicated Rideshare Mission

In 2015 Spaceflight initiated a dramatic new vision: buy a full Falcon 9 and fill it totally with Rideshare spacecraft. There was to be no ‘prime’ satellite. There was the potential for ‘co-lead’ status for a couple of customers, but otherwise it was an egalitarian mission. This mission was dubbed SSO-A for ‘Sun Synchronous Orbit – A” with “A” standing for the first of a planned series of such launches. The integration of the spacecraft onto the Integrated Payload Stack (IPS) will likely be occurring during or soon after the SmallSat conference. The subsystems have been designed to deploy 80+ spacecraft, ranging from 0.25U CubeSats to 300+ kg MicroSats. They will be deployed from three different free-flying structures: an Upper Free Flyer (UFF), a Lower Free Flyer (LFF), and the Falcon 9 upper stage. In addition to the Falcon 9 avionics, the separation commands will come from two independent sets of avionics on the UFF and LFF. The major challenge of this effort has been the ‘herding of the cats’ to get dozens of spacecraft prepared for one launch. The experience of coordinating such a complex mission has resulted in new approaches to streamlining mission integration processes – necessity is the mother of invention!
Towards Practical Data Secrecy in Modern Operating Systems.

NADKARNI, ADWAIT PRAVIN. Towards Practical Data Secrecy in Modern Operating Systems. (Under the direction of Dr. William Enck.) Modern commodity operating systems such as Android, iOS, and Windows 8 have changed the way consumers interact with computing devices. On these operating systems, third-party applications provide tremendous functionality for creating, processing, managing, and sharing user data. Moreover, users can complete complex tasks by stringing together purpose-specific third-party applications (e.g., an email application, a document viewer, a barcode scanner). However, while user-directed information sharing among applications provides value, it exposes user data to the risk of accidental or malicious exfiltration from the device. In this dissertation, we explore the design, enforcement and specification of security policies for preventing unauthorized disclosure of user data. First, we consider the policy expressibility requirements of applications for protecting their application-specific data. We demonstrate the feasibility of our policies for preventing accidental disclosure of data through the design and implementation of the Aquifer policy framework for Android. Second, we describe how information flow control enforcement can be made both secure as well as practical, by defining the primitive of lazy polyinstantiation. We design and implement the Weir system, which integrates lazy polyinstantiation into Android, and demonstrates practical and secure information flow control enforcement with unmodified applications. Finally, we motivate the need for user-specific security policy specification, and describe a novel approach for predicting security policies based on examples. The lessons learned from these techniques motivate the treatment of user-directed sharing as a first-class security problem, and lay the groundwork for involving the user in specifying user data security policies. © Copyright 2017 by Adwait Pravin Nadkarni
A new approach on Early Estimation of Vineyard Yield: Site specific counting of berries by using a Smartphone

Early yield estimation needs to be more accurate in order to increase profitability of vineyards. Common methods for yield estimation are based on a random sampling of the vineyard. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach based on the use of a Smartphone. This device allows to take samples in a site specific management way, and to collect data quickly and without operator bias. For each collecting point, a picture taken thanks to the Smartphone is automatically processed, and the number of berries is calculated. All the results are georeferenced thank to the GPS receiver.
Effect of Board Diversity on Sustainability Reporting in Nigeria: A Study of Beverage Manufacturing Firms

The study examines the effect of board diversity on sustainability reporting in Nigeria. The specific objectives of the study is to ascertain the effect of board size, board gender diversity and board independence on sustainability reporting among brewery manufacturing firms. The research employs ex – post facto design. Regression analysis was used for the panel data analysis in order to establish relationship between sustainability reporting and board diversity. The study discovered that board gender diversity does not significantly affect sustainability reporting. It is amazing that the number of women on board of directors is as low as one (1) while the number of man counterpart is ten (10) especially in Champion Brewery Nigeria Plc. However, the maximum number of females on board of directors among the sample companies is three (3). The study recommends that number of women on the board of directors in brewery manufacturing industry should be increased.
Responses and proposed changes to referees for gmd-2017-278

We appreciate both you and the two anonymous reviewers giving our work (ID: gmd-2017-278) positive comments and giving us the chance to make a further modification of our manuscript. We have carefully modified the manuscript according to the suggestions and comments provided by the reviewers and hope our modification could meet with the requirement of GMD. Following are the responds to the reviewers’ suggestions and comments one by one (all suggestions and comments are colored in red, and our proposed changes to the manuscript are colored blue). At the end of this file we attached the comparison between the newest edition and the original edition. Response to Anonymous Referee #1:
A Robust Simplified Dynamic Observer-Based Backstepping Control of Six-Phase Induction Motor for Marine Vessels Applications

This article presents a robust simplified dynamic observer-based backstepping control (RSDO-BSC) and direct torque control (DTC) synthesized with duty cycle control strategy of a six-phase induction motor (6PIM) for marine vessels applications. RSDO-BSC and DTC are employed to estimate the rotor speed, while the DTC is utilized to accomplish enhanced steady-state torque performance via accurate inputs applied to the switching table of the six-phase inverter. Furthermore, by using the duty cycle control approach, the loss components in the subspace are disregarded via the appropriate choice of virtual voltage vectors. Consequently, the 6PIM torque ripples and the current harmonics are significantly reduced. First, both the flux and the torque are decoupled using Lyapunov theory on a 6PIM two-axis mathematical model represented in the stationary reference frame. The 6PIM actual stator voltages are acquired from the dc-link voltage via the space vector pulsewidth modulated inverter. Subsequently, when the 6PIM is loaded under the rated speed, a rapid search approach is used to maximize the 6PIM efficiency. A 750-W 6PIM drive test setup employs a dSPACE 1104 for real-time implementation. The proposed RSDO-BSC performance is experimentally investigated at different speed commands, load disturbance, and low speed command with low load torque conditions.
Improve Speech Enhancement Using Weiner Filtering

Speech enhancement aims to improve speech quality by using various algorithms. It may sound simple, but what is meant by the word quality. It can be at least clarity and intelligibility, pleasantness, or compatibility with some other method in speech processing. Wiener filter are rather simple and workable, but after the estimation of the background noise, one neglects the fact that the signal is actually speech. Furthermore, the phase component of the signal is left untouched. However, this is perhaps not such a bad problem; after all, human ear is not very sensitive to phase changes. The third restriction in spectral subtraction methods is the processing of the speech signal in frames, so the Proceeding from one frame to another must be handled with care to avoid discontinuities. Noise reduction is a key-point of speech enhancement systems in hands-free communications. A number of techniques have been already developed in the frequency domain such as an optimal short-time spectral amplitude estimator proposed by Ephraim and Malah including the estimation of the a priori signal-to-noise ratio. This approach reduces significantly the disturbing noise and provides enhanced speech with colorless residual noise. In this paper, we propose a technique based on a Wiener filtering under uncertainty of signal presence in the noisy observation. Two different estimators of the a priori signal-to-noise ratio are tested and compared. The main interest of this approach comes from its low complexity. In this paper we demonstrate the application of weiner filter for a speech signal using Matlab 7.1 and signal processing toolbox.
A Hierarchical Model for Device Placement

We introduce a hierarchical model for efficient placement of computational graphs onto hardware devices, especially in heterogeneous environments with a mixture of CPUs, GPUs, and other computational devices. Our method learns to assign graph operations to groups and to allocate those groups to available devices. The grouping and device allocations are learned jointly. The proposed method is trained with policy gradient and requires no human intervention. Experiments with widely-used computer vision and natural language models show that our algorithm can find optimized, non-trivial placements for TensorFlow computational graphs with over 80,000 operations. In addition, our approach outperforms placements by human experts as well as a previous state-of-the-art placement method based on deep reinforcement learning. Our method achieves runtime reductions of up to 60.6% per training step when applied to models such as Neural Machine Translation.