Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Examining the ability of one-class classifier to ensure the spectral smoothness of concatenated units

We present initial experiments with one-class classification, aimed at replacing the “classic” heuristics-based measures used to estimate the smoothness of units concatenated together within unit selection speech synthesizers. A set of spectral feature distances was computed between neighbouring frames in natural speech recordings, i.e. those representing natural joins, from which the per-vowel classifier was trained. For the evaluation, we carried out ad-hoc listening tests collecting several examples of smooth and discontinuous joins, against which the classifier is tested. In addition, we also plugged the classifier into our TTS system to verify that the technique is capable of replacing the classic approach in the generic unit selection procedure.
Slip-based traction control system with an on-line road condition estimation for electric vehicles

In this paper a slip-based traction control system (TCS) with an on-line road condition estimation is presented. The system is designed for a car with in-wheel electric motors, so that estimation and control are implemented independently for each wheel thus enabling the optimal friction coefficient for every wheel, even if they are on different surfaces or have different tire characteristics. A road condition is approximated using a function which is estimated in the real-time and used as the input to the TCS. The design of the presented TCS is based on the wheel slip ratio, controlled to it's optimal value by a PI controller and with the addition of a feedforward branch for the transition response speed up. The non-linear model of a small three-wheeled electric car, comprising the hardware in the loop, is used for the system testing.
The onset of general relativity: gravitationally redshifted emission lines

We study and quantify gravitational redshift by means of relativistic ray tracing simulations of emission lines. The emitter model is based on thin, Keplerian rotating rings in the equatorial plane of a rotating black hole. Emission lines are characterised by a generalized fully relativistic Doppler factor or redshift associated with the line core. Two modes of gravitational redshift, shift and distortion, become stronger with the emitting region closer to the Kerr black hole. Shifts of the line cores reveal an effect at levels of 0.0015 to 60% at gravitational radii ranging from 105 to 2. The corresponding Doppler factors range from 0.999985 to 0.4048. Line shape distortion by strong gravity, i.e. very skewed and asymmetric lines occur at radii smaller than roughly ten gravitational radii. Gravitational redshift decreases with distance to the black hole but remains finite due to the asymptotical flatness of black hole space–time. The onset of gravitational redshift can be tested observationally with sufficient spectral resolution. Assuming a resolving power of ∼100000, yielding a resolution of ≈0.1 A for optical and near-infrared broad emission lines, the gravitational redshift can be probed out to approximately 75000 gravitational radii. In general, gravitational redshift is an indicator of black hole mass and spin as well as for the inclination angle of the emitter, e.g. an accretion disk. We suggest to do multi-wavelength observations because all redshifted features should point towards the same central mass. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Polarization properties of four-wave mixing in strained semiconductor optical amplifiers

We present a theoretical and experimental study of the polarization properties of the four-wave mixing susceptibility of highly-strained multiquantum-well optical amplifiers and show how the intensity and polarization of the four-wave mixing signal depend on the polarization of the input waves. We demonstrate the validity of our model by generating a wavelength-converted signal having a polarization orthogonal to that of the pump wave at the output of the amplifier. In addition, we discuss the possibility of making the conversion efficiency independent of the input signal polarization by proper selection of the pump polarization.
Area efficient modified vedic multiplier

This paper describes the design of high speed Vedic multiplier that uses the techniques of Vedic mathematics based on 16 sutras (algorithms) to improve the performance. In this paper the efficiency of Urdhva Tiryagbhyam (vertical and crosswise) Vedic method for multiplication which is different from the process of normal multiplication is presented. Urdhva-Tiryagbhyam is the most efficient algorithm that gives minimum delay for multiplication for all types of numbers irrespective of their size. Vedic multiplier is coded in Verilog HDL and stimulated and synthesized by using XILINX software 12.2 on Spartan 3E kit. Further the design of array multiplier is compared with the proposed multiplier in terms of delay, memory and power consumption.
eProS—a database and toolbox for investigating protein sequence–structure–function relationships through energy profiles

Gaining information about structural and functional features of newly identified proteins is often a difficult task. This information is crucial for understanding sequence–structure–function relationships of target proteins and, thus, essential in comprehending the mechanisms and dynamics of the molecular systems of interest. Using protein energy profiles is a novel approach that can contribute in addressing such problems. An energy profile corresponds to the sequence of energy values that are derived from a coarse-grained energy model. Energy profiles can be computed from protein structures or predicted from sequences. As shown, correspondences and dissimilarities in energy profiles can be applied for investigations of protein mechanics and dynamics. We developed eProS (energy profile suite, freely available at http://bioservices.hs-mittweida.de/Epros/), a database that provides ∼76 000 pre-calculated energy profiles as well as a toolbox for addressing numerous problems of structure biology. Energy profiles can be browsed, visualized, calculated from an uploaded structure or predicted from sequence. Furthermore, it is possible to align energy profiles of interest or compare them with all entries in the eProS database to identify significantly similar energy profiles and, thus, possibly relevant structural and functional relationships. Additionally, annotations and cross-links from numerous sources provide a broad view of potential biological correspondences.
QUASISTATIC EVOLUTION FOR CAM-CLAY PLASTICITY: EXAMPLES OF SPATIALLY HOMOGENEOUS SOLUTIONS

We study a quasistatic evolution problem for Cam-Clay plasticity under a special loading program which leads to spatially homogeneous solutions. Under some initial conditions, the solutions exhibit a softening behavior and time discontinuities. The behavior of the solutions at the jump times is studied by a viscous approximation.
Research of liquid CT image de-noising based on improved NL-means algorithm

The terrorist incidents in recent years have promoted the computed tomography(CT) technologies for liquid explosives detection in civil aviation. The motivation of X-ray CT application for liquid explosive detection is to identify and classify liquids filled in bottles without opening. In the liquid computed tomography system for security inspection, because of the presence of all kinds of noises such as quantum noise, electron noise and so on, the system performance and liquid CT image quality are degraded so as to influence the statistical calculation of CT number. Compared with the current main de-noising methods, non-local means(NL-Means) de-noising algorithm proposed by Buades provides the advantage of convenience in design for implementation, which estimates noise-free pixel intensity as a weighted average of all pixel in the image and weights proportionally to the similarity between the pixel being proposed and its local neighborhood items. Unfortunately, it is prone to produce "staircasing effect" on image having nonzero tone gradients. In this paper an improved NL-Means algorithm was proposed in detail, which mainly changed de-noising key role of the weighted kernel function. The experiment result indicated that the improved NL-Means de-noising algorithm could suppress CT image noise effectively and simultaneously preserved the spatial resolution.
Hybridizing Evolutionary Testing with Artificial Immune Systems and Local Search

Search-based test data generation has been a considerably active research field recently. Several local and global search approaches have been proposed, but the investigation of artificial immune system (AIS) algorithms has been extremely limited. Our earlier results from testing six Java classes, exploiting a genetic algorithm (GA) to measure data- flow coverage, helped us identify a number of problematic test scenarios. We subsequently proposed a novel approach for the utilization of clonal selection. This paper investigates whether the properties of this algorithm (memory, combination of local and global search) can be beneficial in our effort to address these problems, by presenting comparative experimental results from the utilization of a GA (combined with AIS and simple local search (LS)) to test the same classes. Our findings suggest that the hybridized approaches usually outperform the GA, and there are scenarios for which the hybridization with LS is more suited than the more sophisticated AIS algorithm.
Utility of a Violence Screening Tool to Predict Recidivism in Offenders with Schizophrenia: A Total Forensic Cohort Study

The aim of the present study was to investigate the utility of the screening tool developed by Wootton and colleagues (2008) to predict recidivism in a total cohort of offenders diagnosed with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. The sample consisted of violent (including sexual) offenders between the ages of 18 to 65 years with ICD-10 diagnoses of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, affective psychosis, and delusional disorder, sentenced either to court-ordered therapy or at least 10 month’s prison and discharged into the community (N = 34). The instrument was found to be useful in prospectively identifying low-risk individuals and retrospectively discriminating recidivists. Albeit the adaptation of the screening tool may have some usefulness when identifying low-risk individuals, caution is warranted when used in forensic samples.
Lazy Transfer Learning

The concept of Transfer Learning frequently rises when one has already acquired a general-purpose classifier (e.g. human hand-writing recognizer) and want to enhance it on a similar but slightly different task (John’s hand-writing recognition). In this paper, we focus on a “lazy” setting where an accurate general purpose probabilistic classifier is already given and the transfer algorithm is executed afterwards. We propose a novel methodology to estimate the class-posterior ratio using a sparse parametric model. The new classifier therefore is obtained by multiplying the existing classifier with the approximated posterior ratio. We show the proposed method can achieve promising results through numerical and real-world experiments of text corpus and hand-writing digits classification.
Serum proprotein convertase subtilisin kexin type 9 is correlated directly with serum LDL cholesterol.

BACKGROUND Proprotein convertase subtilisin kexin type 9 (PCSK9) is gaining attention as a key regulator of serum LDL-cholesterol (LDLC). This novel serine protease causes the degradation of hepatic LDL receptors by an unknown mechanism. In humans, gain-of-function mutations in the PCSK9 gene cause a form of familial hypercholesterolemia, whereas loss-of-function mutations result in significantly decreased LDLC and decreased cardiovascular risk. Relatively little is known about PCSK9 in human serum. METHODS We used recombinant human PCSK9 protein and 2 different anti-PCSK9 monoclonal antibodies to build a sandwich ELISA. We measured PCSK9 and lipids in 55 human serum samples and correlated the results. We used the anti-PCSK9 antibodies to assay lipoprotein particle fractions separated by sequential flotation ultracentrifugation. RESULTS Serum concentrations of PCSK9 ranged from 11 to 115 microg/L and were directly correlated with serum concentrations of LDLC (r = 0.45, P = 0.001) and total cholesterol (r = 0.50, P = 0.0003), but not with triglycerides (r = 0.15, P = 0.28) or HDL cholesterol concentrations (r = 0.13, P = 0.36). PCSK9 was not detectable in any lipoprotein particle fraction, including LDL. CONCLUSIONS PCSK9 is present in human serum, likely not associated with specific lipoprotein particles. The circulating concentrations of human PCSK9 are directly correlated with LDL and total cholesterol concentrations.
TRIBAC: Discovering Interpretable Clusters and Latent Structures in Graphs

Graphs are a powerful representation of relational data, such as social and biological networks. Often, these entities form groups and are organised according to a latent structure. However, these groupings and structures are generally unknown and it can be difficult to identify them. Graph clustering is an important type of approach used to discover these vertex groups and the latent structure within graphs. One type of approach for graph clustering is non-negative matrix factorisation However, the formulations of existing factorisation approaches can be overly relaxed and their groupings and results consequently difficult to interpret, may fail to discover the true latent structure and groupings, and converge to extreme solutions. In this paper, we propose a new formulation of the graph clustering problem that results in clusterings that are easy to interpret. Combined with a novel algorithm, the clusterings are also more accurate than state-of-the-art algorithms for both synthetic and real datasets.
New inner and outer bounds for the discrete memoryless cognitive interference channel and some capacity results

The cognitive interference channel is an interference channel in which one transmitter is non-causally provided with the message of the other transmitter. This channel model has been extensively studied in the past years and capacity results for certain classes of channels have been proved. In this paper we present new inner and outer bounds for the capacity region of the cognitive interference channel as well as new capacity results. Previously proposed outer bounds are expressed in terms of auxiliary random variables for which no cardinality constraint is known. Consequently it is not possible to evaluate such outer bounds explicitly for a given channel model. The outer bound we derive is based on an idea originally devised by Sato for the broadcast channel and does not contain auxiliary random variables, allowing it to be more easily evaluated. The inner bound we derive is the largest known to date and is explicitly shown to include all previously proposed achievable rate regions. This comparison highlights which features of the transmission scheme - which includes rate-splitting, superposition coding, a broadcast channel-like binning scheme, and Gel'fand Pinsker coding - are most effective in approaching capacity. We next present new capacity results for a class of discrete memoryless channels that we term the "better cognitive decoding regime" which includes all previously known regimes in which capacity results have been derived as special cases. Finally, we determine the capacity region of the semi-deterministic cognitive interference channel, in which the signal at the cognitive receiver is a deterministic function of the channel inputs.
Optimal coverage control for net-drone handover

Traditional aerial networks by UAV have several issues such as limited battery capacity and frequent handover caused by time-varying aerial environment. In particular, failure of resolving the handover issue will induce not only unsuccessful seamless handover but also frequent handover attempts. In this paper, an effective coverage decision algorithm is proposed, which aims at providing seamless handover and thus establishing a fully connected aerial network. We further calculate the seamless handover success probability and the false handover initiation probability to evaluate the proposed coverage decision algorithm. We conduct simulation study in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. Our simulation results show that the proposed scheme is promising for aerial networks.
Heterogeneity Driven Circular Formation

Controlling and coordinating multiple robots to form a desired pattern is a fundamental problem in multi-robot systems. In this paper, we study the problem of pattern formation for a heterogenous group of robots. A distributed control algorithm for forming a multi-layered circular shell without explicit robot communication is presented. The algorithm is based on the concept of artificial force field that takes into account the observable heterogeneity. The algorithm works under limited sensory range constraint. Preliminary simulation results are presented confirming effectiveness of the presented approach.
On Decision Procedures for Ordered Collections

We describe a decision procedure for a logic that supports 1) finite collections of elements (sets or multisets), 2) the cardinality operator, 3) a total order relation on elements, and 4) min and max operators on entire collections. Among the applications of this logic are 1) reasoning about the externally observable behavior of data structures such as random access priority queues, 2) specifying witness functions for synthesis problems of set algebra, and 3) reasoning about constraints on orderings arising in termination proofs.
Biased Random Walk Model to Estimate Routing Performance in Sensor Networks

Les reseaux de capteurs sans fils sont constitues d'un grand nombre de noeuds assujettis a de severes contraintes en terme d'energie, de capacite de traitement et de communication. Dans ce contexte, afin de reduire la complexite, un des defis majeurs rencontres dans ce type de reseau est le calcul des routes et la mise en oeuvre de schemas de routage efficaces tout en minimisant la quantite d'information utilisee sur l'etat du systeme. De nombreux travaux ont etudie ce compromis de facon qualitative ou grâce a des simulations. Nous proposons un modele base sur la theorie de la marche aleatoire pour estimer analytiquement ce compromis en considerant plus particulierement l'influence du degre de connaissance de l'etat du systeme que possede un noeud sur le temps moyen de collecte dans un reseau de capteurs sans fils.
The ESTER phase II evaluation campaign for the rich transcription of French broadcast news

This paper gives the final results of the ESTER evaluation campaign which started in 2003 and ended in January 2005. The aim of this campaign was to evaluate automatic broadcast news rich transcription systems for the French language. The evaluation tasks were divided into three main categories: orthographic transcription, event detection and tracking (e.g. speech vs. music, speaker tracking), and information extraction. The last one, limited to named entity detection in this evaluation, was a preliminary test. The paper reports on protocols and gives the results obtained in the campaign.
A new CMOS image sensor readout structure for 3D integrated imagers

This paper presents a new CMOS image sensor (CIS) structure and ADC design for three-dimensional (3D) integrated imagers. A modular design of CIS sub-array is proposed with new readout and control scheme. It needs only one micro-bump (µbump) per sub-array, instead of per-pixel or per-column, to release the design rule restriction of the 3D stacking process. The proposed readout structure with in-pixel two-dimensional decoding function achieves a high spatial resolution without degrading the frame rate performance. A 10b time-interleaved asynchronous successive approximation register (SAR) ADC was also implemented within 300µmx150µm for array readout. A prototype chip with four sub-arrays (4×192×128 pixels) and a pixel size of 2.8×2.8 um2 was fabricated using TSMC 0.18um CIS process. The experimental results demonstrate the parallel output images of 4 modules successfully with 100fps. It shows that the array is expandable by modular sub-array design and is expected to achieve 100fps at multi-mega imaging for high-speed HDTV camera applications. The measured DNL, INL, and power consumption of the SAR ADC are +0.59/−0.41 LSB, +1.32/−0.73 LSB, and 130 µW respectively.
1 Memory Synthesis for Low Power

In this paper, we show how proper data placement in off chip memory and loop tiling can be used to enhance cache performance – number of cycles and energy consumption. While the reduction in the number of cycles is spectacular (~5X), the reduction in the energy consumption is modest (~2X). The data placement procedure consists of assigning specific cache lines to each array in the application program and then placing arrays in the off chip memory such that the amount of unused space is as small as possible. The procedure for assignment of specific cache lines is based on an analysis of access patterns and ensures significant reduction in the number of conflict misses.
Exposing Twitter Users to Contrarian News

Polarized topics often spark discussion and debate on social media. Recent studies have shown that polarized debates have a specific clustered structure in the endorsement net- work, which indicates that users direct their endorsements mostly to ideas they already agree with. Understanding these polarized discussions and exposing social media users to content that broadens their views is of paramount importance. The contribution of this demonstration is two-fold. (i) A tool to visualize retweet networks about controversial issues on Twitter. By using our visualization, users can understand how polarized discussions are shaped on Twitter, and explore the positions of the various actors. (ii) A solution to reduce polarization of such discussions. We do so by exposing users to information which presents a contrarian point of view. Users can visually inspect our recommendations and understand why and how these would play out in terms of the retweet network. Our demo (this https URL homepage) provides one of the first steps in developing automated tools that help users explore, and possibly escape, their echo chambers. The ideas in the demo can also help content providers design tools to broaden their reach to people with different political and ideological backgrounds.
Mobile Cross Reality for cultural heritage

Widespread adoption of smartphones and tablets has enabled people to multiplex their physical reality, where they engage in face-to-face social interaction, with Web-based social networks and apps, whilst emerging 3D Web technologies hold promise for networks of parallel 3D virtual environments to emerge. Although current technologies allow this multiplexing of physical reality and 2D Web, in a situation called PolySocial Reality, the same cannot yet be achieved with 3D content. Cross Reality was proposed to address this issue; however so far it has focused on the use of fixed links between physical and virtual environments in closed lab settings, limiting investigation of the explorative and social aspects. This paper presents an architecture and implementation that addresses these shortcomings using a tablet computer and the Pangolin virtual world viewer to provide a mobile interface to a corresponding 3D virtual environment. Motivation for this project stemmed from a desire to enable students to interact with existing virtual reconstructions of cultural heritage sites in tandem with exploration of the corresponding real locations, avoiding the adverse temporal separation caused otherwise by interacting with the virtual content only within the classroom. The accuracy of GPS tracking emerged as a constraint on this style of interaction.