Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Shooting for Smarter Motion Detection in Cameras: Improvements for the Visual Background Extractor Algorithm Using Optical Flow

Motion detection is one of the hot-and difficult-topics in the field of computer vision and image processing. The visual background extractor (ViBe) algorithm has a high calculation speed and a simple implementation, which is suitable for embedded systems. However, it still has some defects with respect to ghost suppression and dynamic background interferences. In this article, a new motion detection method called optical flow ViBe (OF-ViBe) is proposed, which combines the improved ViBe algorithm and motion information. We not only introduce the speed information for removing the ghost and noise points more accurately but also reduce the dynamic background interferences using direction information. The detection results in different videos demonstrate that our method improves the accuracy and robustness of the ViBe algorithm with little additional time cost.
An introduction to Phase-based Minimalist Grammars: why move is Top-Down from Left-to-Right

This paper is an introduction to a grammatical formalism (Phase-based Minimalist Grammar, elaboration of Stabler’s 1997 Minimalist Grammar) that includes a revised version of the standard minimalist structure building operations merge, move and the notion of derivation by phase (Chomsky 1999-2005). The main difference with respect to the standard theory is that these devices strictly operate TopDown and from Left-to-Right. In these pages I will argue that long distance dependencies, such as successive cyclic A'-movement, are better understood within this unconventional (at least within the Minimalist Program) phase-based directional perspective.
Idiopathic Short QT Interval:A New Clinical Syndrome?

In this first clinical report of an idiopathic familial persistently short QT interval (QTI), we describe three members of one family (a 17-year-old female, her 21-year-old brother, and their 51-year-old mother) demonstrating this ECG phenomenon, associated in the 17-year-old with several episodes of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation requiring electrical cardioversion. Similar ECG changes seen in an unrelated 37-year-old patient were associated with sudden cardiac death. Our report also describes other manifestations of abnormal shortening of the QTI and considers the possible arrhythmogenic potential of the short QTI.
Aging in a Changing Society

Preface.Part One: Social Aspects of Gerontology. An Aging Population. The Social World of Older People. Older People and Their Families. Minorities and Cultural Diversity. Part Two: Physical and Psychological Aspects of Gerontology. The Aging Body. Psychological Development. Health and Illness in Later Life. Aging and Mental Health. Older People and the Health Care System. The End of Life. Part Three: Societal Issues and Responses. Economics, Work, and Retirement. Abuse and Neglect. Older People and the Political World. Programs and Services. References.
Differential Benefits of Volunteering Across the Life Course

Objectives. Studies often fail to adequately test the causal relationship between volunteering and well-being. Yet the media and empirical research have focused attention on the impact of volunteering on the well-being of elderly persons. This study addresses two questions: First, does volunteering improve the psychological and physical well-being of elderly persons? Second, do elderly volunteers experience different benefits than younger adults? Methods. Using nationally representative panel data, I assessed the long-term impact of volunteering on the life satisfaction and perceived health of persons aged 60 and over. I then compared ordinary least squares regression results for seniors with those for younger adults. Results. I found that older volunteers experienced greater increases in life satisfaction over time as a result of their volunteer hours than did younger adult volunteers, especially at high rates of volunteering. Older adults experienced greater positive changes in their perceived health than did younger adult volunteers. Discussion. The type of volunteer work in which older and younger adults engage may be part of the reason for these differential effects. But the context in which older and younger adults volunteer and the meaning of their voluntarism are more likely explanations. Researchers should take into account volunteer commitment when studying volunteering's effect on well-being, not simply volunteer role.
A Novel Power Allocation Scheme Under Outage Constraints in NOMA Systems

In this letter, we study a downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) transmission system, where only the average channel state information (CSI) is available at the transmitter. Two criteria in terms of transmit power and user fairness for NOMA systems are used to formulate two optimization problems, subjected to outage probabilistic constraints and the optimal decoding order. We first investigate the optimal decoding order when the transmitter knows only the average CSI, and then, we develop the optimal power allocation schemes in closed form by employing the feature of the NOMA principle for the two problems. Furthermore, the power difference between NOMA systems and OMA systems under outage constraints is obtained.
Actions of NCX, PMCA and SERCA on Short-Term Facilitation and Maintenance of Transmission in Nerve Terminals

Residual Ca 2+ can accumulate in the nerve terminal during repetitive stimulation; thus, the basis for short-term facilitation (STF). The plasmalemmal Na + /Ca 2+ exchanger (NCX), the Ca 2+ -ATPase (PMCA) and the sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum Ca 2+ -ATPase (SERCA) on the endoplasmic reticulum are three important Ca 2+ regulatory processes in controlling (Ca 2+ )i. The role of these (Ca 2+ )i regulators in the development and maintenance of STF was addressed at the neuromuscular junction. When the NCX is compromised by reduced (Na + )o, the EPSP amplitudes decrease, but with KB-R7943 (a reverse blocker of NCX) the amplitude increases. Compromising the PMCA with pH 8.8 produces an increase in EPSP amplitudes, but treatments with carboxyeosin (a blocker of PMCA) produced mixed results. Blocking the SERCA increases EPSP amplitudes. Facilitation was only slighted altered in some conditions with these manipulations. The results support the view that release is not saturated during a plateau phase of STF since the terminal is able to reach a new plateau with higher stimulation frequency or an altered (Ca 2+ )i. Multiple approaches in compromising the NCX and PMCA are presented. These findings are significant because there is a rapid alteration in transmission when compromising Ca 2+ extrusion mechanisms during STF.
The interplay between prosodic phrasing and accentual prominence on articulatory lengthening in Italian

The distribution of preboundary lengthening within the phrase-final word is controversial. In CV syllables immediately preceding a prosodic boundary, the acoustic duration of the syllable onset C is less involved than that of the following rime V in the lengthening phenomenon. Moreover, preboundary lengthening might be extended to the stressed/accented rime within the phrase final word. On the other hand, articulatory constriction gesture for the onset consonant can be lengthened despite not being immediately adjacent to a boundary. In this study, we explore the effects of prosodic boundary and prominence in Italian, at both acoustic and articulatory level. Bilabial consonants in CV onset position were examined. The consonants were inserted in unstressed (word final) and stressed (penultimate vs. antepenultimate) syllables occurring in the vicinity of prosodic boundaries of different levels. In final syllables, the acoustic duration of the onset consonant was not affected by the prosodic boundary manipulation whereas the closing gesture duration showed a pattern of lengthening which was stronger for higher level prosodic boundaries. In non-final syllables, no acoustic/articulatory effect was found for onset consonants but only on the stressed vowels in penultimate position. Structural, phonological and phonetic constraints might be at work in determining preboundary lengthening.
Using GPI-2 for Distributed Memory Paralleliziation of the Caffe Toolbox to Speed up Deep Neural Network Training

Deep Neural Network (DNN) are currently of great inter- est in research and application. The training of these net- works is a compute intensive and time consuming task. To reduce training times to a bearable amount at reasonable cost we extend the popular Caffe toolbox for DNN with an efficient distributed memory communication pattern. To achieve good scalability we emphasize the overlap of computation and communication and prefer fine granu- lar synchronization patterns over global barriers. To im- plement these communication patterns we rely on the the Global address space Programming Interface version 2 (GPI-2) communication library. This interface provides a light-weight set of asynchronous one-sided communica- tion primitives supplemented by non-blocking fine gran- ular data synchronization mechanisms. Therefore, Caf- feGPI is the name of our parallel version of Caffe. First benchmarks demonstrate better scaling behavior com- pared with other extensions, e.g., the Intel TM Caffe. Even within a single symmetric multiprocessing machine with four graphics processing units, the CaffeGPI scales bet- ter than the standard Caffe toolbox. These first results demonstrate that the use of standard High Performance Computing (HPC) hardware is a valid cost saving ap- proach to train large DDNs. I/O is an other bottleneck to work with DDNs in a standard parallel HPC setting, which we will consider in more detail in a forthcoming paper.
The integrated spatial planning for Taichung science park community and leisure development

Over the past few decades, science parks were highlighted as the outcome of policy under tendency of global specialization. However, it lacked comprehensive concept of spatial planning and resulted in the necessity of urban re-planning as way to guide the fusion with surrounding natural and humanity environment. This research focuses on the fast-growing T.C. S.P. (Taichung Science Park) as case study, bases on the viewpoint of integrated spatial planning, explores main issues and strategies for its community development and spatial planning by adopting the mixed research methods.
Resource Allocation for Downlink of 5G Systems with OFDMA under Secrecy Outage Constraints

We consider a fifth generation (5G) cellular system where a base station (BS) aims at sending confidential messages to a number of mobile terminals (MTs), making sure that no information on the messages is leaked to an external eavesdropper. The system uses an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) scheme and we aim at maximizing the weighted sum rate of the messages under constraints on the average transmit power and the secrecy outage probability. The secret messages are separately encoded over each OFDMA sub- channel. We consider a time-sharing approach where each sub- channel can be used by many MTs for different fractions of time. We obtain a convex optimization problem and we are able to establish that in the optimal solution each sub-channel is assigned to a single user for the whole time. Then, we derive a closed-form expression for the allocated power, according to a modified waterfilling algorithm.
An analysis of the factors affecting the career orientation of junior male U.S. Army officers

This thesis developed a model to assess the effects of factors influencing the career orientation of junior male Army officers using the Army portion of the 1985 DOD Officers and Enlisted Personnel Survey Member File. Junior officers were classified as early juniors or late juniors according to their length of service (four months to four years and five to ten years). A multivariate logit regression model was estimated utilizing explanatory variables which were classified into demographic/ personal, environmental, intrinsic or extrinsic categories, to explain career orientation (plans to serve twenty years or more). The results indicate that demographic factors(length of service, commissioning sources) and intrinsic factors(personnel freedom, friendship, coworkers, patriotism, job satisfaction, job training, job security and working conditions) have strong effects on the career orientation of both levels of junior officers. Further, early junior officers are affected by the package of retirement benefits and late junior officers are affected by factors related to family. This study shows that expressed intentions of members can be used as valid indicators of later behavior based on the closeness of the match between intentions and actual behavior. This study should provide guidelines for personnel managers and policy makers to maintain targeted strengths of
Stability and change in the law of the sea : the role of the LOS convention

Preface, Abbreviations, List of Arbitrations, Cases and Judgments, List of Conventions, Treaties and Other International Instruments, Introduction, Alex G. Oude Elferink, Part One The LOS Convention as an International Regime: A Political Science Perspective, The LOS Convention as a Constitutional Regime for the Oceans, Shirley V. Scott, Commentary on Shirley V. Scott "The LOS Convention as a Constitutional Regime for the Oceans", Oran R. Young, Commentary, Richard A. Barnes, Commentary, Rainer Lagoni, Part Two, The role of the General Assembly of the United Nations and the Meeting of States Parties to the LOS Convention in Reviewing its Implementation, The General Assembly and the Meeting of States Parties in the Implementation of the LOS Convention, Tullio Treves, Reviewing Implementation of the LOS Convention and Emerging International Public Law, Ellen Hey, Part Three, The Impact of State Practice on the Jurisdictional Framework Contained in the LOS Convention, The Impact of State Practice on the Jurisdictional Framework contained in the LOS Convention, Robin R. Churchill, The Impact of State Practice on the Jurisdictional Framework Contained in the LOS Convention: A Commentary, Donald R. Rothwell, Commentary, Bernard Blaskiewicz, Commentary, Barbara Kwiatkowska, Commentary, Rainer Lagoni, Part Four Strenghtening the LOS Convention's Regime Through the Adoption of Implementing Agreements, The Practice of International Organzizations and Other Means, Flexibility and Innovation in the Law of the Sea - Will the LOS Convention Amendment Procedures Ever Be Used? , David Freestone and Alex G. Oude Elferink, Commentary, David H. Anderson, Commentary, Richard A. Barnes, Bibliography, Index.
High frequency winding design for planar switch mode transformers

Switch mode power supplies as a mass produced article leave room for optimization especially at the voluminous magnetic components. Hereby planar component designs can reduce the overall height of the power supply and give it a more compact design. Since cores are available in standard sizes the optimal winding layout has to be found. Due to increased parasitic capacitance interleaving is not a good option to reduce losses in the windings at high frequency resonant power supplies. This article presents and evaluates different winding designs for resonant switch mode transformers operating in power supplies with frequencies larger than 500kHz. This article shows that the revolved parallel design performs best of the tested designs under the given conditions. In addition, the revolved design can compete with solutions as planar litz when it comes to value meaning cost and production complexity. Furthermore, the article shows the abilities of a heat measurement prototype.
Three novel types of voltage-dependent calcium channels in rat cerebellar neurons

With the aim of characterizing the functional and pharmacological properties of the different voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels expressed in a given type of CNS neuron, we obtained single Ca2+ channel recordings from rat cerebellar granule cells in primary culture. Our data show that three novel classes of voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels are coexpressed in cerebellar granule cells. They are pharmacologically distinct from dihydropyridine-sensitive L-type and omega-conotoxin- sensitive N-type channels, and their functional properties are different from those of P- and T-type channels. The three novel 21 pS G1-, 15 pS G2-, and 20 pS G3-type Ca2+ channels have similar inactivation properties. They show complete steady-state inactivation at -40 mV and their single-channel average currents have both sustained and decaying components. They differ in activation threshold (-40 mV for G2, -30 mV for G3, and -10 mV for G1, with 90 mM Ba2+ as charge carrier), mean open time (1.2 msec for G2, 1 msec for G3, 0.8 msec for G1), and single-channel currents (at 0 mV: 0.5 pA for G2, 0.8 pA for G3, and 1.4 pA for G1). Together with the previously characterized multiple L-type Ca2+ channels (Forti and Pietrobon, 1993), G1-, G2-, and G3-type channels constitute the large majority of Ca2+ channels of cerebellar granule cells in culture. The low activation threshold of G2- type channels and their inactivation properties suggest that they might be native counterparts of the recently expressed rat brain clone rbE-II (Soong et al., 1993).
NPP VIIRS land surface temperature product validation using worldwide observation networks

Thermal infrared satellite observations of the Earth's surface are key components in estimating the surface skin temperature over global land areas. This work presents validation methodologies to estimate the quantitative uncertainty in Land Surface Temperature (LST) product derived from the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) using ground-based measurements currently made operationally at many field and weather stations around the world. Over heterogeneous surfaces in terms of surface types or biophysical properties (e.g., vegetation density, emissivity), the validation protocol accounts for land surface spatial variability around the ground station. Over sparse vegetation canopies, the methodology accounts for viewing directional effects and sun configuration when validating VIIRS LST products.
Lawyers' Work in the Menendez Brothers' Murder Trial

This research addresses the interactional work by which lawyers interrogate witnesses at trial. In particular, the study examines some videotaped segments of interrogation interchange in the first Menendez brothers' murder trial and analyzes lawyer's work in attempting the impeachment of an adverse witness. The paper finds a lived orderliness of the courtroom that resides in the locally organized material detail of real-time interrogation interchange and practices.
Trauma alarmins as activators of damage‐induced inflammation

A systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) is frequently observed after traumatic injury. The response is sterile and the activating stimulus is tissue damage. Endogenous molecules, called alarmins, are reputed to be released by injured tissues but the precise identity of these mediators is unclear. This review summarizes current preclinical and clinical evidence for trauma alarmins and their role in innate immune activation.
Self-concept of women in advertising across cultures (Russia and Sweden)

Self-concept is a very complex structure that includes feelings and beliefs, which people have about them in relations to other people and objects. Many marketers and researchers found that expression of self has a great influence on customer’s buying behavior and defines her attitudes towards products and services that correspond to her self-concept. This study, which is based on quantitative research with deductive approach, examines a self-concept of women in advertising across cultures. One hundred and sixty respondents from Russia and Sweden in the age from eighteen to thirty have been asked to identify the ideal eye color, hair color, hair length and make-up for a woman in order to look beautiful. Besides that, congruence between advertising images of female beauty and consumer's perception of ideal self in terms of wanting to look like a specific model was tested. After analysis of empirical results, some differences, as well as similarities between two countries have been found. Since the issues of advertising standardization still are in the focus of many studies, findings of this study is another argument in favor of adaptation international advertising campaigns to the specific requirements of local markets in different countries.
Situated Displays vs . Municipal WiFi : Comparing the Interactivity of Two Public Infrastructures

We compare the interactive experiences of two public infrastructures — situated displays and a municipal wireless network — using a conceptual framework of place, experience and embodiment. Using the framework as a point of reference, we can begin to address some inherent design issues in these technologies. Consequently, we argue that urban technologies which take into account their environment and leave room for creativity, add and support existing meaningful experiences in the city. Author
Learning Process Enhancement for Robot Behaviors

— Designing a simulated system and training it to optimize its tasks in simulated environment helps the designers to avoid problems that may appear when designing the system directly in real world. These problems are: time consuming, high cost, high errors percentage and low efficiency and accuracy of the system. The proposed system will investigate and improve the efficiency and accuracy of a simulated robot to choose correct behavior to perform its task. In this paper, machine learning, which uses genetic algorithm, is adopted. This type of machine learning is called genetic-based machine learning in which a distributed classifier system is used to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the robot. Consequently, it helps the robot to achieve optimal action.
DRYING POULTRY MANURE FOR POLLUTION POTENTIAL REDUCTION AND PRODUCTION OF ORGANIC FERTILIZER

Disposal and storage of raw poultry manure has become an environmental problem because of the associated air, water and soil pollution. Poultry manure begins to decompose immediately after excretion giving off ammonia which, in high concentrations, can have adverse eff ects on the health and productivity of birds as wel l as the health of the farm workers. Application to land is the most common way for utilizing poultry manure as a viable source of major plant nutrients and soil conditione r to improve soil tilth and reduce the problems ass ociated with soil compaction. The aim of this study was to inves tigate the effects of drying depth and temperature on the nutritional profile of dried poultry manure and its suitability as a plant fertilizer. Drying temperat ure and manure depth had no significant effects on manure pH, but the loss of ammonia during the drying process decre ased the pH (from 8.4 to 6.4-6.7). Greater nitrogen losses ( 44-55 %) were observed at the deeper manure layer (3 cm) and the higher temperature (60°C) which resulted in a r eduction of N:P:K (from 4.58:1.29:1 to 2.07:1.30:12.57:1.28:1). Drying of poultry manure helped reduc e the presence and offensiveness of odor by 65.3 an d 69.3%, respectively. Drying of poultry manure also achieve d significant reductions in bacteria (65.6-99.8%), yeast and mold (74.1-99.6%) and E. coli (99.97 %). Dried poultry manure can be used as a fertilizer source for p lants because of its high nitrogen, phosphorus and potass ium contents which are essential for plant growth. Other elements (such as calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, cobalt and zinc) which are lacking in commercial fertilizer are also present in manure in significant amounts.