Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real-time Forest Simulation for a Flight Simulator using a GPU; Graphics Card Acceleration

This paper concerns the real-time simulation of forests for a flight simulator, exploiting the capacities of recent graphics cards. As we will show, these architectures coupled with recent ergonomic environments like CUDA allow C-programmers to implement highly parallelizable algorithms to be executed on GPU, without being specialized in parallel programming. The first results exhibited are quite encouraging and promote these technologies. The algorithm devised can display forests with different tree densities, with performances near real -time, for scenes with about one million trees.
Working Paper Department of Economics Dissolving a Partnership Efficiently

Several partners jointly own an asset that may be traded among them. Each partner has a valuation for the asset; the valuations arc known privately and drawn independently from a common probability distribution. We characterize the set of all incentive-compatible and interim-individually-rational trading mechanisms, and give a simple necessary and sufficient condition for such mechanisms to dissolve the partnership ex post efficiently. A bidding game is constructed that achieves such dissolution whenever it is possible. Despite incomplete information about the valuation of the asset, a partnership can be dissolved ex post efficiently provided no single partner owns too large a share; this contrasts with Myerson and Satterthwaite's result that ex post efficiency cannot be achieved when the asset is owned by a singlf party. "Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and St. Catherine's College, Oxford, respectively. This project was begun at Stanford University and financially supported by the Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Center for Economic Policy Research. We are grateful to David Gold for posing the problem and encouraging its analysis, and to Roger Guesnerie, Christopher Harris, David Kreps, Robert Wilson, and two referees for helpful suggestions.
Universal compressed sensing

In this paper, the problem of developing universal algorithms for noiseless compressed sensing of stochastic processes is studied. First, Rényi's notion of information dimension (ID) is generalized to analog stationary processes. This provides a measure of complexity for such processes and is connected to the number of measurements required for their accurate recovery. Then the so-called Lagrangian minimum entropy pursuit (Lagrangian-MEP) algorithm, originally proposed by Baron et al. as a heuristic universal recovery algorithm, is studied. It is shown that, if the normalized number of randomized measurements is larger than the ID of the source process, for the right set of parameters, asymptotically, the Lagrangian-MEP algorithm recovers any stationary process satisfying some mixing constraints almost losslessly, without having any prior information about the source distribution.
Improving Pothole Recognition through Vision Tracking for Automated Pavement Assessment

Pavement condition assessment is essential when developing road network maintenance programs. In practice, pavement sensing is to a large extent automated when regarding highway networks. Municipal roads, however, are predominantly surveyed manually due to the limited amount of expensive inspection vehicles. As part of a research project that proposes an omnipresent passenger vehicle network for comprehensive and cheap condition surveying of municipal road networks this paper deals with pothole recognition. Existing methods either rely on expensive and high-maintenance range sensors, or make use of acceleration data, which can only provide preliminary and rough condition surveys. In our previous work we created a pothole detection method for pavement images. In this paper we present an improved recognition method for pavement videos that incrementally updates the texture signature for intact pavement regions and uses vision tracking to track detected potholes. The method is tested and results demonstrate its reasonable efficiency.
Conjugative coupling proteins interact with cognate and heterologous VirB10-like proteins while exhibiting specificity for cognate relaxosomes

Conjugative coupling proteins (CPs) are proposed to play a role in connecting the relaxosome to a type IV secretion system (T4SS) during bacterial conjugation. Here we present biochemical and genetic evidence indicating that the prototype CP, TrwB, interacts with both relaxosome and type IV secretion components of plasmid R388. The cytoplasmic domain of TrwB immobilized in an affinity resin retained TrwC and TrwA proteins, the components of R388 relaxosome. By using the bacterial two-hybrid system, a strong interaction was detected between TrwB and TrwE, a core component of the conjugative T4SS. This interaction was lost when the transmembrane domains of either TrwB or TrwE were deleted, thus suggesting that it takes place within the membrane or periplasmic portions of both proteins. We have also analyzed the interactions with components of the related IncN plasmid pKM101. Its CP, TraJ, did not interact with TrwA, suggesting a highly specific interaction with the relaxosome. On the other side, CPs from three different conjugation systems were shown to interact with both their cognate TrwE-like component and the heterologous ones, suggesting that this interaction is less specific. Mating experiments among the three systems confirmed that relaxosome components need their cognate CP for transfer, whereas T4SSs are interchangeable. As a general rule, there is a correlation between the strength of the interaction seen by two-hybrid analysis and the efficiency of transfer.
Automated snippet generation for online advertising

Products, services or brands can be advertised alongside the search results in major search engines, while recently smaller displays on devices like tablets and smartphones have imposed the need for smaller ad texts. In this paper, we propose a method that produces in an automated manner compact text ads (promotional text snippets), given as input a product description webpage (landing page). The challenge is to produce a small comprehensive ad while maintaining at the same time relevance, clarity, and attractiveness. Our method includes the following phases. Initially, it extracts relevant and important n-grams (keywords) given the landing page. The keywords reserved must have a positive meaning in order to have a call-to-action style, thus we attempt sentiment analysis on them. Next, we build an Advertising Language Model to evaluate phrases in terms of their marketing appeal. We experiment with two variations of our method and we show that they outperform all the baseline approaches.
Reading as a Part of Computer Programming. An Ethnomethodological Enquiry

This paper examines reading as done by programmers engaged in software development. Reading is an activity we feel should be of fundamental interest to studies of programming, but the practical achievement of which has not been closely examined. We give examples of programmers reading in pairs, and reading alone, and show reading in both cases to be explainable in terms of shared social practices. These practices are not determined by the code but nor are they purely socially constructed; rather they lie in the linkage be- tween the code and programmers' ways of reading the code. We discuss (1) how features of day-to-day coding work create pertinent occasions for reading a certain piece of code, (2) how programmers order and expect there to be an or- der to code, and (3) how programmers have ways of analysing code in order to make sense of it. This is an ethnomethodological study that draws from ethno- graphic fieldwork at a professional software development company.
Density and entanglement-based clustering of sequence data

Clustering is one of crucial tasks in data processing, and various techniques have been developed for some specific purposes. Sequence data consist of a sequence of data elements each of which has its own predecessor and successor. This paper addresses new clustering methods for sequence data which use the notion of data density and entanglement. The proposed clustering methods weigh the data points based on either their density or entanglement which later affects the location of cluster centroids. The clustering algorithms are extensions of k-means clustering and fuzzy k-means clustering algorithms. Some experiment results are presented to show the behavioral characteristics of the proposed algorithms.
Word Sense Disambiguation With Sublexical Representations Hinrich Schfitze Center for the Study of Language and Information

This paper introduces a new representational scheme for word sense disambiguation. Drawing on work in information retrieval (Latent Semantic Indexing as proposed by [Deerwester et al. 1990]) an efficient method for learning sublezical representations is described: Words and contexts are represented as vectors in a multidimensional space which approximates similarity of collocational patterns. Closeness of words in the space is equivalent to occurrence in similar contexts, thus giving a rough approximation of semantic similarity. The Bayesian classification system AutoClass was then used to perform an unsupervised classification of sublexical representations of contexts of the three ambiguous words interest, suit and plant in a training text. In applying this classification to a test text, AutoClass disamhiguated 90% of all occurrences correctly. Unsupervised classification failed for tank, but a more sophisticated algorithm also achieved a disambiguation rate of 90%.
Predicting sentential semantic compatibility for aggregation in text-to-text generation

We examine the task of aggregation in the context of text-to-text generation. We introduce a new aggregation task which frames the process as grouping input sentence fragments into clusters that are to be expressed as a single output sentence. We extract datasets for this task from a corpus using an automatic extraction process. Based on the results of a user study, we develop two gold-standard clusterings and corresponding evaluation methods for each dataset. We present a hierarchical clustering framework for predicting aggregation decisions on this task, which outperforms several baselines and can serve as a reference in future work.
Bilateral teleoperation control of a quadrotor system with a haptic device: Experimental studies

In this paper, experimental studies of bilateral teleoperation control of a quadrotor system are presented. Not only position control but force control of a quadrotor system is regulated by forming a force controlled loop. The contact force is measured by a load cell mounted on the top of the quadrotor system. The sensed force is used for a haptic device as an operator feels the force. This configuration forms the bilateral teleoperation control system. Contact force of a quadrotor system in the altitude direction is regulated by the command from the master. The quadrotor system is controlled by a master to fly up from the ground to the ceiling, and to maintain desired contact force against the ceiling, and finally to land back on the ground. This experimental work mimics the possible ceiling task performed by a quadrotor system to see the feasibility of applying the force control technique to the quadrotor system. Experimental studies confirm the feasible force control performance.
Variational analysis approach and its applications to robotics

This paper presents a methodology for variational analysis for the control systems emphasize on Robotics. This is achieved by Lagrangian Mechanics and Variational Collision Integrators. Variational techniques are used to analyze the problem of rigid-body dynamics with impacts. Principles of nonsmooth mechanics for rigid bodies are used in both continuous and discrete time, and provide impact models for a variety of collision behaviors. The discrete Euler-Lagrange (E-L) equations that follow from the discrete time analyses yield variational integration schemes for the different impact models. These discrete E-L equations play a vital role in the method of discrete mechanics and optimal control, which generates locally optimal control policies as the solution to equality constrained nonlinear optimization problems.
Indoor & Outdoor location sensing

This paper gives an overall description about indoor and outdoor location sensing. To get the complete idea and how those sensors work, first I present the types of techniques and methods which are used in both, indoor and outdoor localizations. Then, I take a look at the conditions and requirements for selecting a specific system in a given use case. Finally I make a comparison between the most important indoor location systems and take a look when and under what circumstances we may use each of them. For the outdoor location sensing there is an explanation of how to use GPS, which is still the only usable system, and how in the future the competition between GPS, Galileo and GLONASS will be run, and what are the main problems which they face.
Kinect sensor depth data filtering

This paper presents techniques to eliminate flickering pixels and fill irregular shaped patches and gaps in depth information obtained from the Microsoft Kinect. Due to the limitations of the structured light technology used by the Kinect, a significant noise occurs when capturing depth information. The paper proposes an approach based on the Kalman filter and image in-painting techniques in order to improve the temporal stability of the depth map and fill occlusion areas. Depth data from current frame and previous frame are combined. The coefficient of combination responds to the rate of depth map changes. The filtrated depth frames are included iteratively in the filtering process. Finally, the missing depth areas are obtained applying an image in-painting technique based on the fast marching method. The proposed approach can be used as a preprocessing stage before using the depth data for image recognition purposes.
Nonmarine Crenarchaeol in Nevada Hot Springs

ABSTRACT Glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs) are core membrane lipids of the Crenarchaeota. The structurally unusual GDGT crenarchaeol has been proposed as a taxonomically specific biomarker for the marine planktonic group I archaea. It is found ubiquitously in the marine water column and in sediments. In this work, samples of microbial community biomass were obtained from several alkaline and neutral-pH hot springs in Nevada, United States. Lipid extracts of these samples were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Each sample contained GDGTs, and among these compounds was crenarchaeol. The distribution of archaeal lipids in Nevada hot springs did not appear to correlate with temperature, as has been observed in the marine environment. Instead, a significant correlation with the concentration of bicarbonate was observed. Archaeal DNA was analyzed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis. All samples contained 16S rRNA gene sequences which were more strongly related to thermophilic crenarchaeota than to Cenarchaeum symbiosum, a marine nonthermophilic crenarchaeon. The occurrence of crenarchaeol in environments containing sequences affiliated with thermophilic crenarchaeota suggests a wide phenotypic distribution of this compound. The results also indicate that crenarchaeol can no longer be considered an exclusive biomarker for marine species.
Top Ten Needs for Intelligence Analysis Tool Development

A workshop was held to generate ideas about future enhancements to software systems designed to aid intelligence analysts in the analysis process. Workshop participants were working analysts, working members of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Field Intelligence Element. An analyst from the CounterIntelligence Program also participated in the workshop. This paper summarizes the results of the workshop and discusses implications for intelligence analysis software tool development.
Illuminating the Off-Pathway Nature of the Molten Globule Folding Intermediate of an α-β Parallel Protein

Partially folded protein species transiently form during folding of most proteins. Often, these species are molten globules, which may be on- or off-pathway to the native state. Molten globules are ensembles of interconverting protein conformers that have a substantial amount of secondary structure, but lack virtually all tertiary side-chain packing characteristics of natively folded proteins. Due to solvent-exposed hydrophobic groups, molten globules are prone to aggregation, which can have detrimental effects on organisms. The molten globule observed during folding of the 179-residue apoflavodoxin from Azotobacter vinelandii is off-pathway, as it has to unfold before native protein can form. Here, we study folding of apoflavodoxin and characterize its molten globule using fluorescence spectroscopy and Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET). Apoflavodoxin is site-specifically labeled with fluorescent donor and acceptor dyes, utilizing dye-inaccessibility of Cys69 in cofactor-bound protein. Donor (i.e., Alexa Fluor 488) is covalently attached to Cys69 in all apoflavodoxin variants used. Acceptor (i.e., Alexa Fluor 568) is coupled to Cys1, Cys131 and Cys178, respectively. Our FRET data show that apoflavodoxin’s molten globule forms in a non-cooperative manner and that its N-terminal 69 residues fold last. In addition, striking conformational differences between molten globule and native protein are revealed, because the inter-label distances sampled in the 111-residue C-terminal segment of the molten globule are shorter than observed for native apoflavodoxin. Thus, FRET sheds light on the off-pathway nature of the molten globule during folding of an α-β parallel protein.
The clustering and abundance of star-forming and passive galaxies at z∼ 2

We use the UKIRT (United Kingdom Infrared Telescope) Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Ultra-deep survey (UDS), currently the deepest panoramic near-infrared survey, together with deep Subaru optical imaging to measure the clustering, number counts and luminosity function of galaxies at z ∼ 2 selected using the BzK selection technique. We find that both star-forming (sBzK) and passive (pBzK) galaxies, to a magnitude limit of K AB < 23, are strongly clustered. The passive galaxies are the most strongly clustered population, with scalelengths of r 0 = 15.0 +1.9 -2.2 h -1 Mpc compared with r 0 = 6.75 +0.34 -0.37 h -1 Mpc for star-forming galaxies. The direct implication is that passive galaxies inhabit the most massive dark matter haloes, and are thus identified as the progenitors of the most massive galaxies at the present day. In addition, the pBzKs exhibit a sharp flattening and potential turnover in their number counts, in agreement with other recent studies. This plateau cannot be explained by the effects of incompleteness. We conclude that only very massive galaxies are undergoing passive evolution at this early epoch, consistent with the downsizing scenario for galaxy evolution. Assuming a purely passive evolution for the pBzKs from their median redshift to the present day, their luminosity function suggests that only ∼2.5 per cent of present-day massive ellipticals had a pBzK as a main progenitor.
PROVIDING MULTILINGUAL NATURAL LANGUAGE ACCESS TO TOURISM INFORMATION

In this paper we describe an approach for a multilingual natural language query interface that allows the formulation of queries on tourism information like hotel availability. The interface is based on n-gram language identification and a keyword-based query interpretation where natural language analysis is performed for identification of the requested objects. The web-based interface is designed to allow for easy addition of alternative languages and for easy adaptation to other application domains.
How College Enrollment Strategies Affect Student Labor Market Success

Excerpt] This paper analyzes how the composition of an institution’s student body affects the performance of that institution’s students. In particular, we investigate how the average student quality and the dispersion in student quality within the student body affects the future earnings of individual students. We begin in section II by examining the two primary reasons why one’s fellow students would affect future labor market success: peer effects and employer screening. Peer effects are important because one’s peers can augment or detract from human capital accumulation through numerous types of interactions. The literature examining these potential effects is growing, and we summarize the work and relate the findings to our specific question. The second reason, employer screening, captures the role of one’s fellow students in shaping the beliefs of employers about the quality of students at the institution. These beliefs may affect employers’ actions in two manners. First, the level of student quality may affect the intensity by which employers recruit at that institution. Second, the dispersion in student quality may affect the degree to which employers screen by ability when interviewing the institution’s students. We formalize this discussion of employer behavior with a screening model. The analyses in Section II generate several predictions, and we turn next to tests of their validity. After reviewing past research on the topic in Section III, we use the 1982 cohort of the High School and Beyond survey in Section IV to provide additional evidence. Our findings are consistent with much of the previous literature. We find that the level of student quality at an institution is an important determinant of earnings; a 100 point increase in the median SAT is related to a 3 percent increase in a student’s annual earnings. In addition, students with lower SAT scores appear to receive the highest premium from attending an institution with a high median SAT. We do not find that the range in ability of one’s peers is a strong predictor of earnings. While some evidence suggests that that those at the bottom of the institution’s ability distribution suffer a wage penalty from an increased spread in student ability, the relationship is fairly weak and not statistically significant.
The Effect of Ad Customization and Ad Variation on Internet Users' Perceptions of Forced Multiple Advertising Exposures and Attitudes

ABSTRACT What can make multiple forced online advertising exposures be perceived as more acceptable than they presently are to most viewers? This study investigates whether advertising customization and advertising variation influence Internet users' perceptions of multiple ad exposures and affect their attitudes toward the ads and the website in the context of in-stream video ad exposure. Using a 2 (ad customization: ad customization option versus no option) × 2 (ad variation: ad variation versus no ad variation) factorial experiment, the researcher noted that advertising content control through a customization feature was an influential factor that led to positive attitudes toward multiple exposures to the ads. In addition, the results showed the possibility that offering ad variation tended to induce users' positive attitudes with regard to multiple ad exposures. Furthermore, users' perceived intrusiveness of the advertisements and feelings of irritation seemed to play an underlying mechanism in this relationship with regard to the impact of ad variation and ad customization on advertising effectiveness. This study finding has theoretical and practical implications on advertising repetition in the forced online advertising interface.