Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On quantization of log-likelihood ratios for maximum mutual information

We consider mutual-information-optimal quantization of log-likelihood ratios (LLRs). An efficient algorithm is presented for the design of LLR quantizers based either on the unconditional LLR distribution or on LLR samples. In the latter case, a small number of samples is sufficient and no training data are required. Therefore, our algorithm can be used to design LLR quantizers during data transmission. The proposed algorithm is reminiscent of the famous Lloyd-Max algorithm and is not restricted to any particular LLR distribution.
Design, development and characterisation of a FPGA platform for multi-motor electric vehicle control

Two three-phase squirrel-cage induction motors are used as a propulsion system of an electric vehicle (EV). A simple XC3S1000 FPGA is used to simultaneously control both electric motors, with field oriented control and space vector modulation techniques. To electronically distribute the torque between the two electric motors, a simple, yet effective, strategy based on a uniform torque distribution has been implemented. Experimental results obtained with a multi-motor EV prototype demonstrate the proper operation of the proposed system.
User Experience of Physical-Digital Object Systems : Implications for Representation and Infrastructure

In this paper we articulate a design space for smart object systems. We describe two instances in this design space. The first instance, called the Palette, is a tangible user interface for giving multimedia slideshow presentations. The Palette research system became the CardGear product released by Fuji Xerox. The second is a design we are currently implementing to support workflow in a systems engineering organization. The ArticuulatedStickies research system uses a ‘posti-it’ style smart objects to provide easy manipulation and visibility of production tasks assigned to a group of engineers.
Universal portfolio algorithms in realistic-outcome markets

Universal portfolio algorithms find investment strategies competitive against any CRP (constant rebalanced portfolio) for each and every market sequence. This work studies the problem of competitiveness over a subset of realistic, non-pathological, market sequences observed in many settings, e.g., high-frequency trading. Competitive investment in this setting will be shown to be more an extension of the easier universal 0–1 loss problem than of universal gambling (or coding). Analysis of realism-agnostic investment algorithms will show that they perform much better on in-hindsight realistic sequences than previously demonstrated. We suggest that this implies that the study of realistic universal portfolio algorithms must involve a comparison to a stronger adversary than the CRP adversary: an adversary that rebalances a portfolio often enough to avoid pathological sequences, but not so frequently that transaction costs dominate.
Association Between Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke at the Workplace and Risk for Developing a Colorectal Adenoma: A Cross-Sectional Study

Purpose A colorectal adenoma (CRA) is a well-defined precursor to colorectal cancer (CRC). Additionally, smoking is a potent risk factor for developing a CRA, as well as CRC. However, the association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and the risk for developing a CRA has not yet been fully evaluated in epidemiologic studies. We performed a cross-sectional analysis on the association between exposure to ETS at the workplace and the risk for developing a CRA. Methods The study was conducted on subjects who had undergone a colonoscopy at a health promotion center from January 2012 to December 2012. After descriptive analyses, overall and subgroup analyses by smoking status were performed by using a multivariate logistic regression. Results Among the 1,129 participants, 300 (26.6%) were diagnosed as having CRAs. Exposure to ETS was found to be associated with CRAs in all subjects (fully adjusted odds ratio [OR], 1.95; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.08–2.44; P = 0.001). In the subgroup analysis, exposure to ETS in former smokers increased the risk for developing a CRA (fully adjusted OR, 4.44; 95% CI, 2.07–9.51; P < 0.001). Conclusion Exposure to occupational ETS at the workplace, independent of the other factors, was associated with increased risk for developing a CRA in all subjects and in former smokers. Further retrospective studies with large sample sizes may be necessary to clarify the causal effect of this relationship.
Cloud Computing based Livestock Monitoring and Disease Forecasting System

Cloud computing, an internet-based computing technology, is a web-based software service of calling and using programs placed in the internet utility data server via computer or mobile phone according to user's need. In this thesis, web-based cloud computing technology will be applied to livestock farms to develop livestock monitoring and disease forecasting system at existing livestock or apply to system that has already been developed. The proposed system uses column-oriented database Hadoop HBase to store and manage livestock environment & livestock database and implements livestock environment monitoring and facilities control through the parallel processing via MapReduce model. Since the proposed system is web-based, there is no server development cost when internet is connected, and livestock data is managed at the main server to efficiently and convenient manage livestock.
Introducing difficulty-levels in pronunciation learning

This paper presents a method to introduce the notion of a student selected difﬁculty level for the task of pronunciation learning of a second language. Three difﬁculty levels, novice, acceptable and native , are constructed using a tri-/bi-and uni-gram language model each using a speciﬁc set of broad phonetic groups determined using underspeciﬁcation. The evaluation of the experiment is based on a target language of American English where Nigerian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Syrian, Pakistani and Portuguese students participate. The results show that the addition of difﬁculty levels returns speciﬁc mis-pronunciation information for a student indicating what pronunciation practice is required before they go to the next difﬁculty level.
Gender matters: From L1 grammar to L2 semantics*

The study investigates the effects of grammatical gender on bilingual processing. Native speakers of Russian (a gendered language) learning English and monolingual English controls performed a self-paced reading task in English (a non-gendered language). As predicted, bilingual speakers showed delayed latencies to gendered pronouns (he or she) that were incongruent with the noun's grammatical gender in Russian, indicating that first language (L1) grammatical gender assignment can be interpreted as biological gender in nonnative (L2) processing. The L1 gender bias was only found in sentences containing animate, but not inanimate, nouns. These results speak against the syntactic mechanism being solely responsible for gender biases, but rather support a semantic transfer account due to coactivation of linguistic and conceptual features as proposed in the sex and gender hypothesis (SAGH, Vigliocco, Vinson, Paganelli & Dworzynski, 2005). Overall, the study provides clear evidence for the L1 grammatical gender bias in bilingual processing, albeit constrained by animacy.
Opinions of Pre-service Teachers on Online Discussion Environments

Do online discussion environments provide affective opportunities to the pre-service teachers? What are the opinions and the expectations of the pre-service teachers to create more affective online discussion environments that motived the online participation? Departing from these questions, this research aimed to present some suggestions to create more affective online discussion environments that motived the online participation. The study data were collected from focus group interviews of pre-service teachers who have experience on online learning
Quiescent Observations of the WZ Sagittae–Type Dwarf Nova PQ Andromedae

We have obtained time series optical spectra of the cataclysmic variable PQ And in quiescence. The spectra show a white dwarf continuum with narrow Balmer emission superimposed over strong Balmer absorption. The emission lines have blue and red components whose strength changes with time. An analysis of the Hα emission line implies a short orbital period below the period gap. Given its lack of accretion disk features, its large and infrequent outbursts, and an orbital period below the period gap, PQ And is probably a low accretion rate object similar to WZ Sge. In addition, white dwarf model fits imply that PQ And is an excellent ZZ Cet candidate.
Supplement to “ Catching Shaped Microwave Photons with 99 . 4 % Absorption Efficiency ”

J. Wenner, Yi Yin, Yu Chen, R. Barends, B. Chiaro, E. Jeffrey, J. Kelly, A. Megrant, J. Mutus, C. Neill, P. J. J. O’Malley, P. Roushan, D. Sank, A. Vainsencher, T. C. White, Alexander N. Korotkov, A. N. Cleland, and John M. Martinis Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China Department of Materials, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA and Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Riverside, California 92521, USA
Multivariate Mixture Model for Myocardial Segmentation Combining Multi-Source Images

The author proposes a method for simultaneous registration and segmentation of multi-source images, using the multivariate mixture model (MvMM) and maximum of log-likelihood (LL) framework. Specifically, the method is applied to the problem of myocardial segmentation combining the complementary information from multi-sequence (MS) cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) images. For the image misalignment and incongruent data, the MvMM is formulated with transformations and is further generalized for dealing with the hetero-coverage multi-modality images (HC-MMIs). The segmentation of MvMM is performed in a virtual common space, to which all the images and misaligned slices are simultaneously registered. Furthermore, this common space can be divided into a number of sub-regions, each of which contains congruent data, thus the HC-MMIs can be modeled using a set of conventional MvMMs. Results show that MvMM obtained significantly better performance compared to the conventional approaches and demonstrated good potential for scar quantification as well as myocardial segmentation. The generalized MvMM has also demonstrated better robustness in the incongruent data, where some images may not fully cover the region of interest, and the full coverage can only be reconstructed combining the images from multiple sources.
A logic-based tool for interactive generation and dramatization of stories

A key issue in interactive storytelling is how to generate stories which are, at the same time, interesting and coherent. On the one hand, it is desirable to provide means for the user to intervene in the story. On the other hand, it is necessary to guarantee that user intervention will not introduce events that violate the rules of the intended genre. This paper describes LOGTELL, a tool we have been developing for interactively generating and dramatizing stories. We focus on the specification of a formal logic model for events and characters' behaviour. Based on the model, the user can interact with the tool at various levels, obtaining a variety of stories agreeable to individual tastes, within the imposed coherence requirements. The system alternates stages of goal inference, planning, user intervention and 3D visualization. Our experiments have shown that the system can be used not only for entertainment but also to help in the creation and adaptation of stories in conformity with a specified genre.
Diverse Dimension Decomposition of an Itemset Space

We introduce the problem of diverse dimension decomposition in transactional databases. A dimension is a set of mutually-exclusive item sets, and our problem is to find a decomposition of the item set space into dimensions, which are orthogonal to each other, and that provide high coverage of the input database. The mining framework we propose effectively represents a dimensionality-reducing transformation from the space of all items to the space of orthogonal dimensions. Our approach relies on information-theoretic concepts, and we are able to formulate the dimension-finding problem with a single objective function that simultaneously captures constraints on coverage, exclusivity and orthogonality. We describe an efficient greedy method for finding diverse dimensions from transactional databases. The experimental evaluation of the proposed approach using two real datasets, flickr and delicious, demonstrates the effectiveness of our solution. Although we are motivated by the applications in the collaborative tagging domain, we believe that the mining task we introduce in this paper is general enough to be useful in other application domains.
A review of active filters for power quality improvement

Active filtering of electric power has now become a mature technology for harmonic and reactive power compensation in two-wire (single phase), three-wire (three phase without neutral), and four-wire (three phase with neutral) AC power networks with nonlinear loads. This paper presents a comprehensive review of active filter (AF) configurations, control strategies, selection of components, other related economic and technical considerations, and their selection for specific applications. It is aimed at providing a broad perspective on the status of AF technology to researchers and application engineers dealing with power quality issues. A list of more than 200 research publications on the subject is also appended for a quick reference.
Towards efficient biped robots

Presents the energy analysis of a bipedal walking system. The main goal is to understand the movement strategies in walking and to search for the optimal locomotion variables that minimise a cost function related to energy. Three different indices are proposed: mean absolute power, mean power dispersion and mean power lost. In order to accomplish this goal in the description and analysis of the motion we use a set of locomotion variables, namely: step length, hip height, hip ripple, hip offset, foot clearance and link lengths. Based on these variables and their influence on the energy flow, the performance measures are discussed and the results compared with those observed in nature.
PhnW-PhnX Pathway in Dinoflagellates Not Functional to Utilize Extracellular Phosphonates

Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient for marine phytoplankton but its preferred form, dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP), is often limited in the euphotic zone of the ocean. Many phytoplankton species have developed the ability to utilize dissolved organic phosphorus (DOP) such as phosphoesters or phosphonates. Phosphonates are characterized by the stable C-P bond and its utilization is known to rely on either a C-P lyase pathway or C–P hydrolase pathways in bacteria. In this study by transcriptomic analysis we detected the genes encoding the C-P hydrolase pathway enzymes PhnW and PhnX in Karlodinium veneficum and other dinoflagellates. However, we found that these dinoflagellates are unable to utilize the presumably dominant type of phosphonate in the ocean, 2-aminoethylphosphonic acid (2-AEP), under the antibiotic-treated condition. In accordance, our RT-qPCR and proteomic analyses of K. veneficum grown on 2-AEP showed no up-regulation of PhnW and PhnX at both transcriptional and translational levels. Nevertheless, the genes related to phosphonate biosynthesis and utilization were widely found in dinoflagellates. Taken together our results suggest that the PhnW-PhnX pathway in dinoflagellates may serve for intracellular phosphonate metabolism instead of scavenging environmental phosphonates.
Bmi231 – Final Report – Paul Godden Machine Learning for Genome-wide Association Studies: a Critical Review Introduction and Background

The finalisation of the Human Genome Project in April 2003, when a complete sequence was published for the first time, created the potential to identify a large set of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the entire genome. Consequently, this has opened the door to possibilities for great improvements in diagnosis and therapeutics (Hirschorn & Daly 2005). In the years following the Human Genome Project, genome-wide association (GWA) studies have resulted in identification of a large number of disease-susceptibility loci for several complex diseases, many of which have been successfully replicated in subsequent studies. These results have provided insight into the way these alleles relate to multifactorial traits and the resulting novel biological insights will hopefully lead to clinical advances that will change the way such diseases are managed. However, while the vast amounts of biological data hold much promise, many of the SNPs that have been discovered actually have relatively small effects upon disease susceptibility. There remains a need for improved methods of analysis in order to extract the most useful clinical information from the data (McCarthy et al. 2008). GWA studies are typically performed according to a case-control approach. Essentially, this methodology analyses the genotype from large numbers of individuals: the case group have the disease or trait under examination, while the members of the control group do not. The studies involve thousands of individuals, and examine hundreds of thousands of SNP loci – usually across the entire human genome. Each group is genotyped for a number of known SNPs and, typically, statistical analysis is performed upon the results. A typical assumption is that associated loci are in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with other variants that cause disease, or that variants occurring at particular loci are associated with changes in biological function, such as suppression of proteins known to create tumour suppression. These differing functional changes are hypothesised to result in disease susceptibility.
Behavioural and Neuronal Correlates of Long-term Contextual Memory for Cocaine: Relevance to Craving and Relapse

Relapse is the single greatest barrier to recovery from addiction. Long-term memories for drug experience and associated contextual cues can provoke craving and resumption of drug use, particularly when a reminder of a highly charged context is encountered. In this thesis, three key questions related to the maintenance of long-term memory for drug-associated contexts are addressed: (1) Are Pavlovian conditioned associations between cocaine experience and the context in which it occurred maintained in long-term memory after extended periods of abstinence? (2) Are regions of the mesocorticolimbic circuitry, namely the nucleus accumbens and amygdala, differentially activated by retrieval of Pavlovian conditioned associations as time passes after cocaine experience? (3) Do neurons of the nucleus accumbens and amygdala show changes in dendritic architecture that reflect the impact of chronic cocaine exposure, which may underlie the maintenance of Pavlovian and/or instrumental drug-conditioned associations? Results confirm that Pavlovian conditioned memory for a cocaine-associated context is maintained in the long-term, becoming increasingly resilient over time. However, maintenance of these contextual associations is not accompanied by gross changes in dendritic architecture in neurons of the nucleus accumbens or amygdala within the timeframe examined. Nonetheless, iii these brain regions, along with the prefrontal cortex, are differentially activated by retrieval of Pavlovian conditioned associations after brief versus extended periods of abstinence. Together, these results emphasize a distinct contribution of Pavlovian memory processes, beyond instrumental and operant drug memory processes, in the long-term maintenance of addiction.
Oil Painting Assistance Using Projected Light: Bridging the Gap Between Digital and Physical Art

This paper presents a novel interactive system for guiding artists to paint using traditional media and tools. The enabling technology is a multi-projector display capable of controlling the appearance of an artist’s canvas. Artists are guided by this display-on-canvas to execute painting techniques. The artist paints according to a linear process of painting by numbers, one layer at a time. Each layer is painted using a set of interaction modes. Preview mode shows the entire layer as the current painting goal. Blank mode shows the state of the painting. Color selection mode displays where to paint a certain color, orientation mode shows how to paint it, and texture highlight mode enhances the texture of the paint following its application. These interaction modes enable the novice to focus on painting sub-tasks in order to simplify the painting process while providing technical guidance ranging from high-level composition to detailed brushwork. In addition to assisting artists for painting, we discuss how our system could be extended to sculpture, woodwork, and other areas of the fine arts. CR Categories: H.5. 1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems—Artificial, augmented, and virtual realities; H.5. 2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces—Interaction Styles I.4. 1 [Image Processing and Computer Vision]: Digitization and Image Capture—Radiometry
Screening of Lactic Acid Bacteria Strains Isolated from Some Nigerian Fermented Foods for EPS Production

2 Abstract: This study was embarked upon to obtain laboratory strains of lactic acid bacteria from some traditional fermented foods, with potential for the production of exopolysaccharides (EPSs), which is an important factor in assuring the proper consistency and texture of fermented food. One hundred and fifteen strains of Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) were isolated and characterized from some fermented dairy ("Nono", "Fura", Yogurt, "Wara") and non-dairy foods ("Ogi" and "Fufu"). Lactic acid bacteria species identified were L. fermentum, L.casei, L.plantarum, L. brevis, L.cellobiosus, L. delbrueckii, L.coryniformis, L. coprophilus, L.gensenii, L. lechmanii and Leu paramesenteroides. 103 LAB isolates were screened for their EPS producing activity. The investigation in the screening for EPS synthesis by LAB isolated from dairy and non dairy product showed that more than 50% of the studied L.plantarum strains are active producers of Exopolysaccharide while 40% of the studied L.fermentum, 50% of L.delbrueckii, Leu. mesenteroides ssp dextranicum, 20% of Leu.mesenteroides ssp mesenteroides, Leu. gelidium, 10% of L.casei, L. cellobiosus, Leu. amelbiosum, Lact. plantarum, Lact. piscium respectively are active producer of exopolysaccharides. The L casei ssp pseudoplantarum, L.casei ssp tolerans, Leu. mesenteroides ssp hordinae, Leu. pseudoplantarum Lact. raffinolactis, Lact. lactis ssp cremoris manifest poor production activity while Lact. raftinolactis and Lact.gravieae did not reveal any exopolysaccharides activity. Their EPS ranged between 01.00-196.0 mg l 1 respectively.