Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An efficient approach to bathymetric SLAM

In this paper we propose an approach to SLAM suitable for bathymetric mapping by an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). AUVs typically do not have access to GPS while underway and the survey areas of interest are unlikely to contain features that can easily be identified and tracked using bathymetric sonar. We demonstrate how the uncertainty in the vehicle state can be modeled using a particle filter and an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), where each particle maintains a 2D depth map to model the seafloor. Efficient methods for maintaining and resampling the joint maps and particles using Distributed Particle Mapping are then described. Our algorithm was tested using field data collected by an AUV equipped with multibeam sonar. The results achieved by Bathymetric distributed Particle SLAM (BPSLAM) demonstrate how observations of the seafloor structure improve the estimated trajectory and resulting map when compared to dead reckoning fused with USBL observations, the best navigation solution during the trials. Furthermore, the computational run time to deliver these results falls well below the total mission time, providing the potential for the algorithm to be implemented in real time.
Dust distribution during reionization

Context. The dust produced by the first generation of stars will be a foreground to cosmic microwave background. Aims. In order to evaluate the effect of this early dust, we calculate the power spectrum of the dust emission anisotropies and compare it with the sensitivity limit of the Planck satellite. Methods. The spatial distribution of the dust is estimated through the distribution of dark matter. Results. At small angular scales (� 1000) the dust signal is found to be noticeable with the Planck detector for certain values of dust lifetime and production rates. The dust signal is also compared to sensitivities of other instruments. The early dust emission anisotropies are finally compared to those of local dust and they are found to be similar in magnitude at mm wavelengths.
Quantitative Methods in Regional Science 1 QUANTITATIVE METHODS FOR IDENTIFICATION OF REGIONAL CLUSTERS IN ROMANIA 1

The main goal of this paper is to describe some methods, that make use of employment data and that allow to measure to what the companies are spatially proximate. Specifically, we will outline the most prominent spatial concentration quotients that have been suggested in the literature to analyse the degree to which companies of the same sector are proximate (spatial concentration). We apply the methods on the employment statistics available for Romania’s counties.
Modelling the spectral energy distribution of galaxies. I. Radiation fields and grain heating in the edge-on spiral NGC 891

We describe a new tool for the analysis of the UV to the sub-millimeter (sub-mm) spectral energy distribution (SED) of spiral galaxies. We use a consistent treatment of grain heating and emission, solve the radiation transfer problem for a finite disk and bulge, and self-consistently calculate the stochastic heating of grains placed in the resulting radiation field. We use this tool to analyse the well-studied nearby edge- on spiral galaxy NGC 891. First we investigate whether the old stellar population in NGC 891, along with a reasonable assumption about the young stellar population, can account for the heating of the dust and the observed far-infrared and sub- mm emission. The dust distribution is taken from the model of Xilouris et al. (1999), who used only optical and near-infrared observations to determine it. We have found that such a simple model cannot reproduce the SED of NGC 891, especially in the sub-mm range. It underestimates by a factor of 2-4 the observed sub-mm flux. A number of possible explanations exist for the missing sub-mm flux. We investigate a few of them and demonstrate that one can reproduce the observed SED in the far-infrared and the sub-mm quite well, as well as the observed radial profile at 850 m. For the models calculated we give the relative proportion of the dust radiation powered by the old and young stellar popula- tions as a function of FIR/sub-mm wavelength. In all models we find that the dust is predominantly heated by the young stellar population.
The Direct Computation of Height from ShadingYvan

We present a method of recovering shape from shading that solves directly for the surface height. By using a discrete formulation of the problem, we are able to achieve good convergence behavior by employing numerical solution techniques more powerful than gradient descent methods derived from variational calculus. Because we directly solve for height, we avoid the problem of nding an integrable surface maximally consistent with surface orientation. Furthermore, since we do not need additional constraints to make the problem well posed, we use a smoothness constraint only to drive the system towards a good solution; the weight of the smoothness term is eventually reduced to near zero. Also, by solving directly for height, we can use stereo processing to provide initial and boundary conditions. Our shape from shading technique, as well as its relation to stereo, is demonstrated on both synthetic and real imagery.
Demystifying the Semantics of Relevant Objects in Scholarly Collections: A Probabilistic Approach

Efforts to make highly specialized knowledge accessible through scientific digital libraries need to go beyond mere bibliographic metadata, since here information search is mostly entity-centric. Previous work has realized this trend and developed different methods to recognize and (to some degree even automatically) annotate several important types of entities: genes and proteins, chemical structures and molecules, or drug names to name but a few. Moreover, such entities are often crossreferenced with entries in curated databases. However, several questions still remain to be answered: Given a scientific discipline what are the important entities? How can they be automatically identified? Are really all of them relevant, i.e. do all of them carry deeper semantics for assessing a publication? How can they be represented, described, and subsequently annotated? How can they be used for search tasks? In this work we focus on answering some of these questions. We claim that to bring the use of scientific digital libraries to the next level we must find treat topic-specific entities as first class citizens and deeply integrate their semantics into the search process. To support this we propose a novel probabilistic approach that not only successfully provides a solution to the integration problem, but also demonstrates how to leverage the knowledge encoded in entities and provide insights to explore the use of our approach in different scenarios. Finally, we show how our results can benefit information providers.
IBM's Statistical Question Answering System-TREC 11

Abstract : In this paper, we document our efforts to extend our statistical question answering system for TREC-11. We incorporated a web search feature, and novel extensions of statistical machine translation as well as extracting lexical patterns for exact answers from a supervised corpus. Without modification to our base set of thirty-one categories, we were able to achieve a confidence weighted score of 0.455 and an accuracy of 29%. We improved our model on selecting exact answers by insisting on exact answers in the training corpus and this resulted in a 7% gain on TREC-11 but a much larger gain of 46% on TREC-10.
An Oscillatory Half-linear Differential Equation

A second-order half-linear ordinary diierential equation of the type (1) (jy 0 j ? 1 y 0) 0 + q(t)jyj ? 1 y = 0 is considered on an unbounded interval. A simple oscillation condition for (1) is given in such a way that an explicit asymptotic formula for the distribution of zeros of its solutions can also be established. We consider the second-order half-linear diierential equation (1) (jy 0 j ? 1 y 0) 0 + q(t)jyj ? 1 y = 0; t a; where > 0 is a constant and q : a; 1) ! (0; 1) is a continuously diierentiable function. Our attention is directed to the case where all solutions of (1) are oscillatory. In this case the equation (1) is said to be oscillatory. Prototypes of oscillatory equations of the type (1) are the generalized harmonic oscillator (2) (jy 0 j ? 1 y 0) 0 + jyj ? 1 y = 0 and the generalized Euler equation (3) (jy 0 j ? 1 y 0) 0 + t ? 1 jyj ? 1 y = 0 with > =(+ 1) +1. From among various oscillation criteria for (1) we choose the one due to Elbert 2; Theorem 7]: (4) Z 1 t +1 q(t) ? (+1) +1 t dt = 1; which gives rise to a simpler condition (5) lim inf t! 1 t +1 q(t) > (+ 1) +1 1991 Mathematics Subject Classiication: 34C10.
Myocardial electrophysiological, contractile and metabolic properties of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: Insights from modelling

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is characterised by cellular dysfunction, asymmetric left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy, ventricular arrhythmias and sudden death. HCM is associated with mutations in sarcomeric proteins and is usually transmitted as an autosomal-dominant trait. The aim of this in silico study was to investigate the mechanisms by which HCM alters electrophysiological activity, contractility and energy metabolism regulation at the single cell and organ levels. We developed a human ventricular, electromechanical, mitochondrial energetics (EMME) myocyte model incorporating electrophysiology, metabolism and force generation. The model was validated by its ability to reproduce the experimentally observed kinetic properties of human HCM induced by a) remodelling of several ion channels and Ca2+ handling proteins arising from altered Ca2+ /calmodulin kinase 11 (CAMKlI) signaling pathways; and b) increased Ca2+ sensitivity of the myofilament proteins. Our simulation results showed energy metabolism was impaired, as indicated by a decreased phosphocreatine to ATP ratio (-9%) and there was energy expenditure beyond supply. 3D EMME human L V model simulation incorporating septal hypertrophy showed ejection fraction was not significantly altered but contractile efficiency was reduced.
A New Algorithm for Frequent Itemsets Mining Based on Apriori and FP-Tree

Frequent item sets mining plays an important role in association rules mining. The apriori algorithm and the FP-growth algorithm are the most famous algorithms, existing frequent item sets mining algorithms are almost improved based on the two algorithms respectively and suffer from many problems when mining massive transctional datasets. In this paper, a new algorithm named APFT is proposed, it combines the Apriori algorithm and FP-tree structure which proposed in FP-growth algorithm. The advantage of APFT is that it dosen’t need to generate conditional pattern bases and sub- conditional pattern tree recursively. And the results of the experiments show that it works faster than Apriori and almost as fast as FP-growth.
EEG Coherence in Alzheimer's Disease

Background : EEG coherence can be used to evaluate the functional cortical connections and to get information about the synchronization of the regional cortical activity. We studied EEG coherence in patients affected by clinically probable Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in order to quantify the modifications in the cortico-cortical or cortico-subcortical connections. Methods : The EEGs were recorded in 62 AD patients and in 30 normal age-matched subjects from 16 electrodes with linked-ears reference. Spectral parameters and coherence were calculated by a multichannel autoregres sive model using 20 artifact-free 2-sec epoch in normal controls and AD patients. Results : In AD patients, alpha coher ence in frontal field and theta, alpha interhemispheric coherence was significantly decreased, whereas alpha, beta coher ence in posterior field was significantly increased. Some electrodes in the anterior field showed significant negative cor relation with MMSE, whereas other electrodes in the posterior field showed significant positive correlation with MMSE. Conclusions : This study suggests that coherence is a useful tool for understanding electrophysiologic change of AD and for correlating with the severity of cognitive dysfunction. And these coherence changes can be interpreted as the effects of neuronal loss and neocortical disconnection. J Korean Neurol Assoc 21(2):163~168, 2003
The next generation of GUIDAR technology

The next generation of Guided Radar (GUIDAR) is based on Ultra Wide Band (UWB) radar signal processing. Just as spread spectrum technology has revolutionized the communications industry, UWB is dramatically changing radar signal processing. These advanced signal-processing techniques are adapted to leaky coaxial cable technology in the next generation GUIDAR to provide new features and enhanced performance. At the core of the new technology is an ultra high-speed digital correlator implemented in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). Complementary orthogonal codes based on Golay codes are used to produce thumbtack correlation functions simultaneously in multiple range bins. The net result is "near continuous wave (CW)" performance in forty to eighty 11.6-meter long-range bins with targets located within one meter along the length of cable. This is a dramatic improvement over the 3% duty cycle of the original GUIDAR and the typical 100 to 200 meter long zones of current CW leaky cable sensors. Orthogonal complementary codes are transmitted on each of two leaky coaxial cables. The response from two parallel receive cables is fed to a full synchronous detection receiver. The orthogonal nature of the code allows the composite coded pulse response to be de-multiplexed into the independent response for each of the two cables. This ultra-high speed correlation process involves the addition and subtraction of the sampled in-phase and quadrature-phase responses to the multiple range bin accumulators at 10 million samples per second.
A Measurement Study of a Peer-to-Peer Video-on-Demand System

Despite strong interest in P2P video-on-demand (VoD) services, existing studies are mostly based on simulation and focus on areas such as overlay topology. Little is known about the effectiveness of P2P in VoD systems and the end user experience. In this paper we present a comprehensive study of these issues using the two-month logs from a deployed experimental P2P VoD system over CERNET 1 . Our key findings are: (1) the key factor is the popularity of channels and a moderate number of concurrent users can derive satisfactory user experience. However, good network bandwidth at peers and adequate server provisioning are critical. (2) a simple prefetching algorithm can be effective to improve random seeks. Overall, we believe that it is feasible to provide a costeffective P2P VoD service with acceptable user experience, and there is a fundamental tradeoff between good experience and system scalability.
An improvement of OLSR using fuzzy logic based MPR selection

Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) is a well-known proactive routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks. OLSR reduces the number of control messages by using MPRs to forward topology control messages as compared with typical proactive protocols. Since OLSR does not consider the node mobility and signal strength condition for the MPR (MultiPoint Relays) selection, OLSR cannot work well in a highly mobile and lossy network. In this paper, we propose a protocol which improves OLSR by taking into account the node mobility and signal strength in the selection of MPRs. We use network simulations to evaluate the proposed protocol's performance.
Psychedelics and the Human Receptorome

We currently understand the mental effects of psychedelics to be caused by agonism or partial agonism of 5-HT2A (and possibly 5-HT2C) receptors, and we understand that psychedelic drugs, especially phenylalkylamines, are fairly selective for these two receptors. This manuscript is a reference work on the receptor affinity pharmacology of psychedelic drugs. New data is presented on the affinity of twenty-five psychedelic drugs at fifty-one receptors, transporters, and ion channels, assayed by the National Institute of Mental Health – Psychoactive Drug Screening Program (NIMH-PDSP). In addition, comparable data gathered from the literature on ten additional drugs is also presented (mostly assayed by the NIMH-PDSP). A new method is introduced for normalizing affinity (Ki) data that factors out potency so that the multi-receptor affinity profiles of different drugs can be directly compared and contrasted. The method is then used to compare the thirty-five drugs in graphical and tabular form. It is shown that psychedelic drugs, especially phenylalkylamines, are not as selective as generally believed, interacting with forty-two of forty-nine broadly assayed sites. The thirty-five drugs of the study have very diverse patterns of interaction with different classes of receptors, emphasizing eighteen different receptors. This diversity of receptor interaction may underlie the qualitative diversity of these drugs. It should be possible to use this diverse set of drugs as probes into the roles played by the various receptor systems in the human mind.
The Efficient Market Hypothesis Testing on the Prague Stock Exchange

We have shown that in the period of 1995-1997 the weak form Efficient Market Hypothesis does not apply to the Prague Stock Exchange. This conclusion is supported especially by the magnitude of autocorrelation between subsequent returns. Due to this result, the confirmation and analysis of heteroskedasticity can be considered as the most important contribution of this article. We used GARCH (1,1) model to eliminate heteroskedasticity. Normalized residuals obtained from this estimate are indeed homoskedastic, but the hypothesis of normality was rejected.
E ff ects of Intangible Capital on Firm Performance ∗

The main objective of this research is to examine the effect of intangible capital on the market value of the firm via the Tobin’s Q ratio. Intangible capital is represented with different accounting variables, which were selected on the basis of agency cost and signalling theories. The empirical model is tested in firm-level panel data for UK and Japan. The model is applied in both static and dynamic specifications. The dynamics of the model were studied to analyse the effect of adjustment costs of Tobin’s Q. An attempt was made to determine the effect of technological development of rivals on market value. A comparison of three different estimators: OLS, Within and the GMM, is pursued to analyse the effects of different panel data techniques. The results showed a significant role of intangible capital in influencing the market value of the firm.
Constrained discriminative mapping transforms for unsupervised speaker adaptation

Discriminative mapping transforms (DMTs) is an approach to robustly adding discriminative training to unsupervised linear adaptation transforms. In unsupervised adaptation DMTs are more robust to unreliable transcriptions than directly estimating adaptation transforms in a discriminative fashion. They were previously proposed for use with MLLR transforms with the associated need to explicitly transform the model parameters. In this work the DMT is extended to CMLLR transforms. As these operate in the feature space, it is only necessary to apply a different linear transform at the front-end rather than modifying the model parameters. This is useful for rapidly changing speakers/environments. The performance of DMTs with CMLLR was evaluated on the WSJ 20k task. Experimental results show that DMTs based on constrained linear transforms yield 3% to 6% relative gain over MLE transforms in unsupervised speaker adaptation.
Efficient eye corner and gaze detection for sclera recognition under relaxed imaging constraints

Sclera recognition has provoked research interest recently due to the distinctive properties of its blood vessels. However, segmenting noisy sclera areas in eye images under relaxed imaging constraints, such as different gaze directions, capturing on-the-move and at-a-distance, has not been extensively investigated. In our previous work, we proposed a novel method for sclera segmentation under unconstrained image conditions with a drawback being that the eye gaze direction is manually labeled for each image. Therefore, we propose a robust method for automatic eye corner and gaze detection. The proposed method involves two levels of eye corners verification to minimize eye corner point misclassification when noisy eye images are introduced. Moreover, gaze direction estimation is achieved through the pixel properties of the sclera area. Experimental results in on-the-move and at-a-distance contexts with multiple eye gaze directions using the UBIRIS.v2 database show a significant improvement in terms of accuracy and gaze detection rates.
The apprenticeship of Philippe Pinel: a new document, "observations of Citizen Pussin on the insane".

Philippe Pinel is usually pictured in histories of psychiatry and of medicine as the man who first liberated the insane from their chains. The document presented here, discovered in 1978 in the Archives nationales in Paris, reveals the crucial role of Jean-Baptiste Pussin, the "governor" of mental patients at Bicetre. It was Pussin who initiated Pinel to psychological methods (the famous traitement moral) in dealing with hospitalized mental patients. Further, in 1797, Pussin first replaced chains with straitjackets. Pinel later obtained Pussin's transfer to the Salpetriere to help him reorganize that huge hospital.
SGNET: A Worldwide Deployable Framework to Support the Analysis of Malware Threat Models

The dependability community has expressed a growing interest in the recent years for the effects of malicious, external, operational faults in computing systems, ie. intrusions. The term intrusion tolerance has been introduced to emphasize the need to go beyond what classical fault tolerant systems were able to offer. Unfortunately, as opposed to well understood accidental faults, the domain is still lacking sound data sets and models to offer rationales in the design of intrusion tolerant solutions. In this paper, we describe a framework similar in its spirit to so called honey- farms but built in a way that makes its large-scale deployment easily feasible. Furthermore, it offers a very rich level of interaction with the attackers without suffering from the drawbacks of expensive high interaction systems. The system is described, a prototype is presented as well as some preliminary results that highlight the feasibility as well as the usefulness of the approach.
Fall 2006 Introduction @bullet Efficient System Level Design by Optimizing Systemc Simulation Time @bullet Ensemble Learning with Local Experts @bullet Fragment Allocation in Distributed Database Systems @bullet Cost Optimization in Production Line: a Genetic Algorithm Approach @bullet M/m/1 Queue H

This paper presents a new method for designing asynchronous sequential circuits. The inspiration for this method is derived from the traditional synchronous design method. We introduce a new component which is used as a building block for sequential parts of asynchronous circuits. This new component is similar to the old Flip-Flop but it has the ability to handle signal edges asynchronously. The building block enables the designer to use HDLs and common synthesis tools. Eventually, a designer can use our method to automate the asynchronous sequential circuit design.
Colloid-Bound Catalysts for Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymerization: A Combination of Homogenous and Heterogeneous Properties.

Tailor-made thiols allow a ruthenium-based catalyst for ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) to be tethered to bulk gold surfaces and to gold colloids (see picture). The functionalized gold colloids combine the properties of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalyst systems. Tethering of the catalyst leads to a pronounced increase in its catalytic activity.