Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NLM Denoising Method with Adaptive Center Pixel Weights

The non-local means (NLM) is an effective and popular denoising method that adjusts each pixel value with a weighted average of all pixels in the entire image. However, the center pixel weights (CPW) in the traditional NLM method and its variances are unitary, and thus the importance of the center pixel is overestimated for the noise point, which cannot effectively remove noises. To address this problem, we propose an adaptive CPW for NLM method. In order to effectively distinguish edges from regions and noises, a new edge indicator is constructed to identify the local characteristic of each pixel. Based on the proposed edge indicator, we construct an adaptive CPW that can be tuned adaptively according to each pixel's local feature. Experimental results show that the propose d method is superior to the state-of-the-art methods in both the edge preservation and noise suppression.
Resource Provisioning for AJAX Web applications

Most of the nowadays popular web applications are enriched with AJAX techniques that offer a better experience than classical applications. However, these techniques greatly impact the server’s performance because of their complex features. Regardless their complexity, web applications should ensure the achievement of the imposed performance target even in the presence of workload variations or flash crowds. For this objective to be reached, they should be able to reprovision on-the-fly and with minimal costs their resources. This thesis explores the challenges that AJAX features create for resource provisioning by identifying the aspects that greatly impact the web server’s performance in this situation. Moreover, this thesis designs performance models for AJAX web applications that can be further used by resource provisioning algorithms to determine the optimal configuration of the web server according to the workload.
The Structure of School: Teachers and Authority.

MFO1 /PCO2 Plus Postage. Bureaucracy; Elementary Secondary Education; *Participative Decision Making; *Power Structure; *Professional Autonomy; *School Organization; *Teacher Role; Teaching (Occupation) While history helps to trace the development of the American public school as a bureaucratic institution and the role of teachers within that institution, a more sociological view helps to clarify the authority relationships within the school and the teacher's role within that structure. It is the teacher's willingness to claim autonomy based solely upon the ability to make instructional decisions in a single classroom, in isolation from colleagues, that helps reinforce the bureaucratic school structure and the teacher's own very limited role in the school's authority structure. Decisions are made by those in management positions, but teachers do not work together to evolve curricular or other school-wide decisions. This results in the teacher becoming more an alienated worker in the system than an independent professional. Since the schools attract few teachers who desire to participate in the life of the school, it is easy for the school to establish a reward structure that strengthens the institutional hierarchy. Teachers should engage in a great deal of job-related discussion and share in decisions regarding instructional programs and curricula. To the degree that this participation does not take place, the institution is deprived of the collective wisdom of its members, and each of its members is deprived of the opportunity to develop professionally. (JD) ***. ******************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** THE STRUCTURE OF SCHOOL: TEACHERS AND AUTHORITY Robert E. Feir Pennsylvania Department of Education 1111 papor was prepared for presentation to the annual meeting of American Educational. Research Association in Chicago, April. 2, 1985 "JA! 1.04,,I.MMInil()M111,11\i ,ION Ill MA rf_141A1 FIAh NI IN GRANTFL) NY ( C :() 1111 t nIII.A11! )N.41 IFl ',()IIIVH; MF(MMATIC)N (A:N1THIFMCC 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE THE STRUCTURE OF SCHOOL: TEACHERS AND AUTHORITY* Robert E. Feir**
Amarillo National Resource Center for Plutonium Literature Review: Phytoaccumulation of Chromium, Uranium, and Plutonium in Plant Systems and Plutonium in Plant Systems in Collaboration with Amarillo National Resource Center for Plutonium Phytoremediation: a General Review

expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DOE. Phytoremediation is an integrated multidisciplinary approach to the cleanup of contaminated soils, which combines the disciplines of plant physiology, soil chemistry, and soil microbiology. Metal hyperaccumulator plants are attracting increasing attention because of their potential application in decontamination of metal-polluted soils. Traditional engineering technologies may be too expensive for the remediation of most sites. Removal of metals from these soils using accumulator plants is the goal of phytoremediation (Baker et al. emphasis of this review has been placed on chromium (Cr), plutonium (Pu), and uranium (U). With the exception of Cr, these metals and their decay products exhibit two problems, specifically, radiation dose hazards and their chemical toxicity. The radiation hazard introduces the need for special precautions in reclamation beyond that associated with non-radioactive metals. The uptake of beneficial metals by plants occurs predominantly by way of channels, pores, and transporters in the root plasma membrane. Plants characteristically exhibit a remarkable capacity to absorb what they need and exclude what they don't need. But most vascular plants absorb toxic and heavy metals through their roots to some extent, though to varying degrees, from negligible to substantial. Sometimes absorption occurs because of the 2 chemical similarity between beneficial and toxic metals. Some plants utilize exclusion mechanisms, where there is a reduced uptake by the roots or a restricted transport of the metal from root to shoot. At the other extreme, hyperaccumulator plants absorb and concentrate metals in both roots and shoots (Baker, 1981). Some plant species endemic to metalliferrous soils accumulate metals in percent concentrations in the leaf dry matter (Brooks et al., 1977). The term 'hyperaccumulator' was introduced by Brooks et al. (1977) for plants growing on serpentine sites that are capable of concentrating nickel (Ni) to more than 1000 µg g-1 (0.1 percent) in their leaves on a dry matter basis. A concentration of 1000 µg g-1 has also been used to delineate exceptional uptake of copper (Cu), cobalt (Co), and lead (Pb). The delineation level is raised to 10,000 µg g-1 (1.0 percent) for zinc (Zn) and manganese (Mn) because of greater background concentrations of these metals in soil.
An Infrastructure for Service Oriented Sensor Networks

Emerging wireless technologies enable ubiquitous access to networked services. Integration of wireless technologies into sensor and actuator nodes provides the means for remote access and control. However, ad hoc deployment of nodes complicates the process of finding, selecting and using these in a meaningful way. The use of a service discovery framework enables nodes to present themselves and the resources they hold. In this paper, we review the applicability of a number of well-known service discovery protocols in the context of networked nodes. Multicast DNS and Service Discovery (mDNS-SD) stands out with its auto-configuration, distributed architecture, sharing of resources, and wide area access. For wireless battery operated and resource constrained nodes, we seek to integrate SD and power management techniques. This leads us to a standards based infrastructure for service oriented sensor networks where; 1) nodes collaborate in an ad hoc fashion by using SD techniques to discover (and announce) resources locally and over the public Internet, 2) nodes preserve power through aggressive utilization of low power (sleep) modes, while yet being reachable for clients according to defined schemas, and 3) clients may access and configure nodes, and (if possible) access sleeping nodes by implicit wake-up procedures. To demonstrate the proposed infrastructure a complete experimental setup has been devised featuring; Bluetooth enabled nodes, lightweight implementations of mDNS-SD and communication stacks, Internet access through cellular/wired gateways, together with a public DNS server. Our experiments verify that mDNS-SD can be effectively deployed on small wireless sensor and actuator nodes and provides the basis of a service oriented infrastructure for low power sensor networks.
Controlled spectral unmixing using extended Support Vector Machines

This paper presents an improved spectral unmixing framework for remote sensing data interpretation. Instead of unmixing every pixel in an image into a fixed set of endmembers, approaches of adaptive subsets of endmember selection for individual pixels are presented which can improve the performance of spectral unmixing. An integrated hard and soft classification map is then generated by applying the mixture analysis based on extended Support Vector Machines. The proposed treatment is effective and easy to implement. Unmixing is more reliable with the controlled mixture model. It can cope with the endmembers' spectral variation as a result of system noise encountered during data collection from the space. Experiments were conducted with Landsat ETM data and satisfactory results were achieved.
Gravity and Localized Migration

I construct a simple gravity model of migration that explains the majority of variation in Mexico-US bilateral migrant stock sizes at the relatively localized state-state level. Relying on a novel dataset that permits the linking of Mexican migrants' US states of residence with Mexican states of origin, I show that the gravity model provides an important framework for examining the determinants of migration at the localized level, specifically addressing the choice of states of residence within the destination country by migrants spread across varied states of the origin country. This explicit inclusion of state (rather than national) characteristics allows for greater accuracy in measuring the potential determinants of migration within the gravity model, including the distance and mass variables fundamental to the gravitational relationship.
Adaptive rateless coding under partial information

We present novel rateless codes that generalize and outperform LT codes (with respect to overall communication and computation complexity) when some input symbols are already available at the decoding host. This case can occur in data synchronization scenarios, or where feedback is provided or can be inferred from transmission channel models. We provide analysis and experimental evidence of this improvement, and demonstrate the efficiency of the new code through implementation on highly constrained sensor devices.
Bidirectional Diffusion Algorithm for Image Enhancement with Local Feature

To deal with the problem that the partial differential equation on image enhancement causes the edge blurring, block effect and ringing effect and so on, a new bidirectional diffusion model based on local features, which smooths the flat region and sharpens the edge in image, is presented. According to the edge features, the presented model chooses the different diffusion methods, that is to say, the non-edge is denoised by the forward diffusion in normal direction and the forward diffusion in tangential direction, while the edge is sharpened by the backward diffusion in normal direction and the forward diffusion in tangential direction. Through the simulation experiments, the model can not only better preserve the image feature, but also more obviously improve the defect contrast.
Over the rainbow: information design for low-resolution urban displays

To what extent can information be successfully communicated through a media façade and what are the relevant parameters? In this paper, we focus on the issue of information design for media façades, which is not often discussed separately. As a thought experiment, we propose homing in on this topic as a core domain for the deployment of low-resolution, ambient displays in the city. We discuss the advantages and limitations of five techniques for encoding information: color, movement, text, images, and shape. Though designers may not always be aiming to convey explicit information, onlookers may still seek additional layers of meaning and end-users may re-appropriate an infrastructure over time. Two examples from our recent practice, a series of single-pixel wayfinding beacons and a low-resolution media façade, serve to illustrate these techniques. By linking the broad notions of 'content' and 'meaning' to a set of purpose-driven and actionable parameters, we invite designers to scrutinize the low-level communication processes facilitated by media architecture.
Estimating range, velocity, and direction with a radar array

We present maximum likelihood (ML) methods for active estimation of range (time delay), velocity (Doppler shift), and direction of a point target with a radar array in spatially correlated noise with unknown covariance. We consider structured and unstructured array response models and compute the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) for the time delay, Doppler shift, and direction of arrival. We derive ambiguity functions for the above models and discuss the relationship between identifiability, ambiguity, and the Fisher information matrix.
Hierarchical video object segmentation

In this paper, we propose a general video object segmentation framework which views object segmentation from a unified Bayesian perspective and optimizes the MAP formulated problem in a progressive manner. Based on object detection and tracking results, a three-level hierarchical video object segmentation approach is presented. At the first level, an offline learned segmentor is applied to each object tracking result of current frame to get a coarse segmentation. At the second level, the coarse segmentation is updated into an intermediate segmentation by a temporal model which propagates the fine segmentation of previous frame to current frame based on a discriminative feature points voting process. At the third level, the intermediate segmentation is refined by an iterative procedure which uses online collected color-and-shape information to get the final result. We apply the approach to pedestrian segmentation on many challenging datasets that demonstrates its effectiveness.
Solving Coverage Problem in Wireless Camera-Based Sensor Networks by Using Genetic Algorithm

wireless camera-based sensor networks have emerged as an important class of sensor-based distributed intelligent systems. Camera-based sensor networks consist of large number of low-power camera nodes to monitor a general environment such as airports, museums, traffic control, military applications and etc. The camera nodes get information from a monitored environment, performing distributed and cooperation processing of their collected data. Using multiple cameras in the network provides different views of the scene, which increases the reliability of the captured events. The large number of image data produced by the cameras considering the network’s resource restriction like bandwidth and energy consumption. Wireless camera-based sensor networks have many challenges and one of the important problems in cameras field of view is the coverage. The main contribution of this paper is to show the ability of genetic algorithm to solve coverage problem in wireless camera-based sensor networks. Simulation result of the presented method shows the better coverage ratio compared with the self-orientation algorithm which is appeared in 2008.
EUROPA: a generic framework for developing spoken dialogue systems

Voice interfaces are not popular since they are neither useful nor user-friendly for non-specialist users. In this paper, EUROPA, a new framework for developing spoken dialogue systems, is introduced. In developing EUROPA, the authors focused on three points : (1) acceptance of spoken language, (2) portability in terms of domain and task, and (3) practical performance of the applied system. The framework is applied to prototyping a car navigation system called MINOS. MINOS is built on a portable PC, can process over 700 words of recognition vocabulary, and is able to respond to a user’s question within a few seconds.
SELF ANNOTATED RASTER IMAGE

Thenewembeddingmethodofannotationsintorasterimagesispresentedinthearticle.Themethod combines the principles of watermarking and steganography. Using the method proposed it is possible to attach the information to the raster image and bind it to a specified object or region of the image. The JPEG2000 raster images coding standard is used as base to realize the embedding and extracting scheme of image data. The proposed scheme targeted to mobile environments and evaluate their limits. The article reviewes the existing methods of embedding for metadata and annotations; the principles of information embedding and extracting for JPEG2000 images. The main requirements for annotation scheme are defined. Embedding principles and logical structures are analyzed. These requirements are practically adopted for the new method of annotations embedding into the raster image, evaluating the JPEG2000 requirements. The scheme is tested practically and the results of these experiments are presented.
Power Management for High-Performance Applications on Network-on-Chip-Based Multiprocessors

Since the end of the Megahertz Race, the main factor in improving processor performance has been the increase of the number of cores integrated on a single chip. While four-, six- and eight-core processors are standard today, future designs with even higher core counts encounter scalability problems concerning the on-chip interconnect and power dissipation. For the interconnect problem, regular tile-based designs that employ a Network-on-Chip to provide inter-core connectivity have been proposed as solution. To mitigate the power consumption issue, we present a system for exploiting idle time in high-performance applications by reducing a core's frequency, thus saving power without affecting performance. The system relies on annotation of synchronizing communication calls and has been shown to reduce the energy requirements of considered applications by 20-30%, while introducing negligible overhead in terms of runtime.
A Computational Study of Incremental Projection Learning in Neural Networks

One of the essences of supervised learning in neural network is generalization capability. It is an ability to give an accurate result for data that are not learned in learning process. One of supervised learning method that theoretically guarantees the optimal generalization capability is projection learning. The method was formulated as inverse problem from functional analytic point of view in reproducing kernel Hilbert space. This paper will describe a computational study to the incremental projection learning in neural networks, called incremental projection generalizing neural networks, for solving function approximation problem. The study is done based on computer simulations of a mathematics function as test problem. Aspects of study focus on model selection, generalization capability and number of neurons in hidden layer.
Efficacy of a potassium-competitive acid blocker for improving symptoms in patients with reflux esophagitis, non-erosive reflux disease, and functional dyspepsia

The aim of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of a potassium-competitive acid blocker (PCAB) named vonoprazan (VPZ) for improving symptoms in patients with reflux esophagitis (RE), non-erosive reflux disease (NERD), and functional dyspepsia (FD). A hospital-based, retrospective study of outpatients in our department (Department of Gastroenterology, University of Juntendo, Tokyo, Japan) between March 2015 and August 2016 was performed. The patients who were experiencing heartburn, acid regurgitation, gastric pain, and/or a heavy feeling in the stomach of at least moderate severity at baseline were treated with 20 mg VPZ once daily for 4 weeks. The patients completed the global overall symptom (GOS) scale to determine their symptom severity at baseline and after the 4 week treatment period. The proportions of patients with RE, NERD, and FD achieving improvement of their symptoms, defined as a GOS scale score of 1 (‘no problem’) or 2 (‘minimal problem’), were evaluated. During 4 weeks of VPZ therapy, changes in the gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) score, which was defined as the total points for heartburn and acid regurgitation on the GOS scale in patients with RE and NERD, and in the FD score, which was defined as the total points for gastric pain and a heavy feeling in the stomach on the GOS scale in patients with FD, were also evaluated. A total of 88 eligible cases were included in the present study, comprising 20 patients with RE, 25 patients with NERD, and 43 patients with FD. The rates of symptomatic improvement in patients with RE, NERD, and FD were 75.0, 60.0, and 48.8%, respectively. For the patients who were first administered VPZ, the rates of symptomatic improvement were 90.9, 66.7, and 58.8% in patients with RE, NERD, and FD, respectively. For those patients who were resistant to 8 weeks of proton pump inhibitor therapy, the rates of symptomatic improvement were 55.6, 53.8, and 42.3% in patients with RE, NERD, and FD, respectively. The GERD score in patients with RE and NERD, and the FD score in FD patients, were decreased after 4 weeks of VPZ therapy (P<0.01). In patients with RE, NERD and FD, the possibility that PCAB may be used as a novel therapeutic drug was suggested. However, the number of study subjects was small; therefore, further, larger and prospective studies are required.
Cognition, emotion and trust: A comparative analysis of Cambodia’s perceived and projected online image

A comparative analysis of information on Cambodia as a tourist destination published on official tourism websites and amateur travel blogs suggests that there are substantial differences in the way Cambodia’s destination marketers and commercial enterprises promote the destination and the way travel bloggers perceive it and write about it. Cambodia’s projected online image elicited through the analysis of official tourism websites consists of mainly cognitive image elements (knowledge and beliefs about Cambodia), whereas its perceived image obtained from amateur travel blogs contains both cognitive and affective (feelings and attitudes towards Cambodia) image elements. Furthermore, the ‘friend’-style relationship that the reader develops with the travel blogger can be attributed to personal projections and thus induces an element of trust not established between the reader and the websites. Findings suggest that a lack of perceived trust among destination marketers and an increased level of trust among authors of user-generated content (UGC) and their readers has led to destination marketers being at a distinct disadvantage compared with their blogging colleagues. The use of affective evaluations of destinations by bloggers alongside their perceived credibility is likely to weigh more heavily in consumer’s decision-making process than promotional material presented by the likes of tourist boards and commercial enterprises. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.