Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting and Evaluating Saliency for Simplified Polygonal Models

In this paper, we consider the problem of determining feature saliency for three-dimensional (3D) objects and describe a series of experiments that examined if salient features exist and can be predicted in advance. We attempt to determine salient features by using an eye-tracking device to capture human gaze data and then investigate if the visual fidelity of simplified polygonal models can be improved by emphasizing the detail of salient features identified in this way. To try to evaluate the visual fidelity of the simplified models, a set of naming time, matching time, and forced-choice preference experiments were carried out. We found that perceptually weighted simplification led to a significant increase in visual fidelity for the lower levels of detail (LOD) of the natural objects, but that for the man-made artifacts the opposite was true. We, therefore, conclude that visually prominent features may be predicted in this way for natural objects, but our results show that saliency prediction for synthetic objects is more difficult, perhaps because it is more strongly affected by task. As a further step we carried out some confirmation experiments to examine if the prominent features found during the saliency experiment were actually the features focused upon during the naming, matching, and forced-choice preference tasks. Results demonstrated that the heads of natural objects received a significant amount of attention, especially during the naming task. We hope that our results will lead to new insights into the nature of saliency in 3D graphics.
TRANSCILIARY ORBITOFRONTOZYGOMATIC APPROACH TO LESIONS OF THE ANTERIOR CRANIAL FOSSA

OBJECTIVE Several variations on the supraorbital craniotomy via a forehead or eyebrow incision have been described in the literature in recent years. A modification of this approach, the transciliary orbitofrontozygomatic approach, has been used by the authors as a minimally invasive method of approaching certain intracranial pathologies. The authors present their experience with this technique in 105 consecutive patients with tumors or aneurysms of the anterior cranial fossa. METHODS A transciliary keyhole approach was used in all cases. From June 1998 to June 2005, 37 tumors, 1 cavernous malformation, and 77 anterior circulation aneurysms were treated (67 females, 38 males; age range, 8–77 years) with an orbitofrontozygomatic approach via an eyebrow incision. Patients were followed by the authors at a single institution for 1 year postoperatively. RESULTS Of the 105 patients treated with a transciliary orbitofrontozygomatic approach, 2 (1.9%) developed a cerebrospinal leak. Two other patients (1.9%) very early in the series had persistent forehead asymmetry at 1 year postoperatively. Two patients who underwent surgery for a ruptured aneurysm experienced an intraoperative rupture, which was thought to be unrelated to the exposure. None of the operations had to be converted to a pterional craniotomy. CONCLUSION This approach was used in 105 consecutive patients who underwent operation for either tumors or aneurysms via an eyebrow incision. The transciliary orbitofrontozygomatic approach is associated with low surgical morbidity. Although experience with this technique is still limited, it is a viable alternative in cases in which the pathology resides in the midline or anterior fossa.
Non-Stationary Signal Reconstruction from Level-Crossing Samples using Akima Spline

Pasiūlyta lygio apdorojimo algoritmo modifikacija duomenų kiekiui sumažinti modifikacija. Aptartas signalo atkūrimas is paimtų duomenų. Įvertintas signalo atkūrimo naudojant skirtingus interpoliavimo splainus nasumas. Signalo atstatymo įvertinimas atliktas naudojant tarpusavio koreliacijos koeficientą, taip pat vidutinio kvadratinio nuokrypio ir procentinio kvadratinio nuokrypio skirtumą. Parodyta, kad suspaudimo koeficiento verte 10 galima gauti, kai tarpusavio koreliacijos koeficientas yra 0,92. Il. 7, bibl. 5 (anglų kalba; santraukos anglų ir lietuvių k.). DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.5755/j01.eee. 117.1. 1044
Application of over-complete blind source separation for robust automatic speech recognition

Spoken dialogue based information retrieval systems that are used in mobile environments are becoming popular. However, mobile environment is dynamically changing and there exists many interfering signals. These two effects result in degradation in automatic speech recognition (ASR) accuracy and hence, degradation in performance of spoken dialogue based information retrieval systems. One way to improve the speech recognition accuracy is to separate the intended speech signal from the interference signals and use the enhanced speech signals in recognition. In this paper, we describe a technique that we applied for speech signal enhancement. We also provide the relative improvement in recognition accuracy that we obtained by using such enhanced speech signals in an ASR system. For speech signal enhancement, we apply the Over-complete Blind Source Separation (OCBSS) technique that we developed. For ASR, a continuous speech recognizer was used. In this paper, we also compare the recognition accuracy results of another BSS technique that is based on Independent Component Analysis (ICA) – JADE-ICA with OCBSS. The results indicate that as the complexity of signal separation problem increases i.e., close to real scenarios, the OCBSS provides about 30% better relative improvement in recognition accuracy as compared to JADE-ICA.
Distribution, Microfabric, and Geochemical Characteristics of Siliceous Rocks in Central Orogenic Belt, China: Implications for a Hydrothermal Sedimentation Model

Marine siliceous rocks are widely distributed in the central orogenic belt (COB) of China and have a close connection to the geological evolution and metallogenesis. They display periodic distributions from Mesoproterozoic to Jurassic with positive peaks in the Mesoproterozoic, Cambrian—Ordovician, and Carboniferous—Permian and their deposition is enhanced by the tensional geological settings. The compressional regimes during the Jinning, Caledonian, Hercynian, Indosinian, and Yanshanian orogenies resulted in sudden descent in their distribution. The siliceous rocks of the Bafangshan-Erlihe ore deposit include authigenic quartz, syn-depositional metal sulphides, and scattered carbonate minerals. Their SiO2 content (71.08–95.30%), Ba (42.45–503.0 ppm), and ΣREE (3.28–19.75 ppm) suggest a hydrothermal sedimentation origin. As evidenced by the Al/(Al + Fe + Mn), Sc/Th, (La/Yb)N, and (La/Ce)N ratios and δCe values, the studied siliceous rocks were deposited in a marginal sea basin of a limited ocean. We suggest that the Bafangshan-Erlihe area experienced high- and low-temperature stages of hydrothermal activities. The hydrothermal sediments of the former stage include metal sulphides and silica, while the latter was mainly composed of silica. Despite the hydrothermal sedimentation of the siliceous rocks, minor terrigenous input, magmatism, and biological activity partly contributed to geochemical features deviating from the typical hydrothermal characteristics.
Acquisition of Elastic Models for Interactive Simulation

We present method and implementation to acquire deformable models of elastic objects. The method is based on the Green's functions matrix representation of an elastic solid. In this paper, we present a robust estimation technique for this Green's functions matrix. Robustness is achieved by regularization and a fitting technique which we describe here in detail. The underlying data for estimation are acquired with a robotic measurement system. We describe the UBC Active Measurement System (ACME) as it relates to the deformable model acquisition. In particular, we characterize the ability of ACME to record the global deformation of an object based on our previously presented range-flow technique. We provide results for two elastic objects: a plush toy and a medical physical soft-tissue wrist model.
Volume change and pressure development in muscle during contraction.

Volume change and pressure development in muscle during contraction. 1967. -Volume changes recorded in isometric and isotonic twitches of gastrocnemius muscle are similar to those recorded in sartorius muscle. The major differences are the greater difficulty in approaching isometric recording conditions in the gastrocnemius muscle and the possibility that a portion of the volume change could be due to the compression resulting from internal pressure development. The volume change has been shown to be a function of the length of the muscle and of the amount of tension developed at a given length. Since these factors influence (and are influenced by) the state of the contractile component, it is fair to conclude that at least a portion of the recorded volume changes are a function of the state of the contractile component. There is not sufficient agreement at present concerning the molecular changes accompanying a single twitch of striated muscle to ascribe the volume changes to particular molecular events. gastrocnemius muscle; contractile component; striated muscle I N . 4 RECENT PASER, Baskin and Paolini (4) described the application of a new method of measuring the small volume changes in active muscle to the frog sartorius muscle. This method has now been applied to the more complex case of gastrocnemius muscle, in which the nonparallel arrangement of fibers results in the development of internal pressure during contraction. Such a pressure causes a compression of fluid within the muscle. Hill (6) has estimated this pressure to be approximately 200 mm Hg in muscles of l-2 g weight; the resulting compression would introduce a volume decrease of about 1 X 1 O-" ml. Previous experiments (l-4) using frog sartorius muscle have established the existence of a rapid volume increase followed by a slower decrease during an isometric twitch, as well as a volume increase accompanying shortening during an isotonic twitch. It was not known whether the volume change during contraction of gastrocnemius muscle would be characteristically different from sartorius muscle; it was expected that an additional volume decrease component corresponding to internal pressure development would be observed. Meyerhof (10) f ound the ratio p (the ratio of the area under an isometric twitch length-tension diagram to the product of maximum tension and reference length, an empirical value which estimates the percent of theoretical maximum work attained by the muscle) to be quite different for whole gastrocnemius and sartorius muscles. But Mashimo (9) has measured p …
Spreading Sequence Design Via Perfect-Reconstruction Filter Banks

Digital transmultiplexers, i.e., synthesis/analysis ﬁlter banks, traditionally employed for TDMA to FDMA conversion and vice-versa, provide also a multirate model for channel distortion free DS-CDMA systems, with the synthesis ﬁlter impulse responses playing the role of spreading sequences. Orthogonal ﬁlter banks constitute therefore an appropriate framework for designing new orthogonal codes and have been shown to give rise to codes with improvedperformance compared to classical ones (Gold). This paper investigates the possibility for further improvements via exploiting the additional freedom present in biorthogonal ﬁlter banks.
Sanitization of medical documents using medical support system

Documents are becoming more informative and in emerging world, sensitive information from documents which is shared to any community over electronic network has to be periodically redacted to preserve highly confidential and sensitive information from the access of open users who have access to the documents. However, accurate data hiding is difficult, it is often time consuming process to black out all the sensitive term. Sanitization techniques can be applied to all heterogeneous textual data to manage it comprehensively and precisely. Automated report generation based on templates is made possible by template based execution. To realize efficiency, Sanitization is performed on documents at two levels 1) while at the time of storing it. 2) while delivering to the user to ensure effective utilization of memory space. This system also incorporates doctor - patient mailing features, health calculators, medicine suggestions, doctor portfolios, reports and a scheduler which removes un-necessary data (documents) on timely basis, which takes this Medical Support System approach to design a practical / procedural algorithm for data sanitization.
Multichannel excitation/filter modeling of percussive sounds with application to the piano

Discusses models for sounds of percussive musical instruments such as vibraphones, pianos, and the like. In addition to classical source/filter models, a "multichannel excitation/filter model" is proposed in which a single excitation is used to generate several sounds, for example, five piano tones belonging to the same octave. Techniques for estimating the model parameters are presented along with their application to the sound of a real piano. The experiments demonstrate that it is possible to calculate a single excitation signal that, when fed into different filters, generates very accurate synthetic tones. Finally, a low-cost synthesis method that can be used to generate very natural sounding percussive tones is also proposed. >
Checkpointing Architecture-a revised proposal

Contemporary Grid environments are featured by an increasi ngly growing virtualization and distribution of resources. Such situations impose greater demands on load-ba l ncing and fault-tolerant capabilities. The checkpointrestart mechanism seems to be the most intuitive tool that ca n fulfill the specific requirements. However, as there is still a lack of widely available, production-grade checkpo int-restart tools, the higher level checkpoint-restart se vic s are not well developed yet. One of the goals of the CoreGRID Ne twork of Excellence is to define the high-level checkpoint-restart Grid Service and to locate it among othe r Grid Services. We aim to define both the abstract model of that service and the lower layer interface that will allow the service to cooperate with diverse existing and future checkpoint-restart tools. The paper is the first step on the r oad to this goal. It includes the overall sketch of the architecture of the considered service and its connection w th the actual checkpoint-restart tools.
Effect of clutter topology on multi-hop localizer placement

Accuracy in range-based localization systems can degrade rapidly in the presence of clutter in the environment. This is due to the incidence of Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) distance measurements between the anchors and an unlocalized node. While a large corpus of research work dealt with the scenario where the NLOS distances form a minority of the total distances to anchors, there has been not much research done to handle the situation where a majority or even all distance measurements to anchors are NLOS in nature. In our previous work, we showed that using localizers in a cluttered environment can improve the localization accuracy of a target node even when all the distance measurements are NLOS. Instead of NLOS bias, these techniques suffer residual multi-hop error, which is caused due to the distance overestimate when a multi-hop chain is used instead of the straight-line distance. In this paper, we analyze the effect of clutter topology on the multi-hop error. We use machine learning techniques to estimate the aggregate forms of the multi-hop error for a given clutter topology when only characteristic features of the clutter topology are provided.
XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer Observations of Discrete Soft X-Ray Emission Features from NGC 1068

We present the first high-resolution, soft X-ray spectrum of the prototypical Seyfert 2 galaxy, NGC 1068. This spectrum was obtained with the XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS). Emission lines from H-like and He-like low-Z ions (from C to Si) and Fe L-shell ions dominate the spectrum. Strong, narrow radiative recombination continua (RRCs) for several ions are also present, implying that most of the observed soft X-ray emission arises in low-temperature plasma (kTe ~ a few eV). This plasma is photoionized by the inferred nuclear continuum (obscured along our line of sight), as expected in the unified model of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We find excess emission (compared to pure recombination) in all resonance lines (1s→np) up to the photoelectric edge, demonstrating the importance of photoexcitation as well. We introduce a simple model of a cone of plasma irradiated by the nuclear continuum; the line emission we observe along our line of sight perpendicular to the cone is produced through recombination/radiative cascade following photoionization and radiative decay following photoexcitation. A remarkably good fit is obtained to the H-like and He-like ionic line series, with inferred radial ionic column densities consistent with recent observations of warm absorbers in Seyfert 1 galaxies. Previous Chandra imaging revealed a large (extending out to ~500 pc) ionization cone containing most of the X-ray flux, implying that the warm absorber in NGC 1068 is a large-scale outflow. To explain the ionic column densities, a broad, flat distribution in the logarithm of the ionization parameter (ξ = LX/ner2) is necessary, spanning log ξ = 0-3. This suggests either radially stratified ionization zones, the existence of a broad density distribution (spanning a few orders of magnitude) at each radius, or some combination of both.
A novel architecture for binary comparison using time division de-multiplexing technique

This paper proposes the design of a novel comparator which uses a Time Division De-multiplexing (TDD) unit for binary comparison. The function of the TDD unit is to generate clock pulses in such a pattern that they can be used to trigger one of the two D flip-flops in the proposed comparator architecture, depending on - which of the two numbers being compared is greater. The proposed comparator is simulated using Verilog HDL programming in Xilinx ISE 8.2i platform and its functionality is verified. An application-specific advantage of this architecture is proposed in this paper.
A High Speed VLSI Architecture of Full Search Variable Block Size Motion Estimator for Multiple Reference Frames

In this paper, we propose a novel high speed VLSI architecture of full search-variable block size motion estimator (VBSME) supporting multiple reference frames. In the proposed architecture, four current macrobocks are concurrently compared with a single search window (SW) of the reference frame to find the best matched block.By reusing the SW of the reference frame and scheduling the architecture in pipeline, the proposed architecture can reduce the memory bandwidth and the execution time. Then, 71.73% of local memory size and 69.34% of system memory bandwidth were saved compared with non pipelined-MRFME (NP-MRFME). Under a operating frequency of 162.43 MHz, the architecture can support the real-time processing of 1280times720 picture size at 30 fps. The architecture has been prototyped in Verilog HDL and synthesized by Synopsys Design Compiler with Samsung 0.1 Sum standard cell library.
A new model of central-bank intervention: some examples

Optimal monetary policy is studied, by way of numerical examples, in a model with (i) heterogeneity in the degree to which different people are monitored (have publicly known histories); (ii) idiosyncratic shocks that give rise to heterogeneity in earning and spending realizations; and (iii) central-bank intervention in a “market” in claims or credit in which the participants are those who are heavily monitored. The results serve as counterexamples to two widely held views: optimal policy is unrelated to what makes money important; and, there are simple and well-known principles to guide monetary policy.
New Filter Based Unsupervised Rules for Boolean Blur Metric

This paper presents a simple and novel no reference filter based rules for Boolean blur metric (FBBM) to classify the blurred images from the database of home photos. Our primary goal of this paper is to classify the blurred images rather than measuring degree of blurness in the image or deblur an image. Thus the name given to this approach is Boolean blur metric (BBM). The proposed approach explores new rules based on establishing the unique relationship between the arithmetic mean filter, geometric mean filter and median filter of given image with the help of canny edge detector. The metric uses the disadvantage of arithmetic mean filter and advantage of geometric mean filter and median filers to define Boolean rule. Further, we have shown that the number of canny edge components in filtered images makes difference in defining rule. Finally, the proposed approach is compared with the well known existing no reference perceptual blur metrics to show that existing metrics are not suitable for classification. In addition, the experimental results revealed that the proposed method works even for rotated and scaled images
A weakly-supervised detection of entity central documents in a stream

Filtering a time-ordered corpus for documents that are highly relevant to an entity is a task receiving more and more attention over the years. One application is to reduce the delay between the moment an information about an entity is being first observed and the moment the entity entry in a knowledge base is being updated. Current state-of-the-art approaches are highly supervised and require training examples for each entity monitored. We propose an approach which does not require new training data when processing a new entity. To capture intrinsic characteristics of highly relevant documents our approach relies on three types of features: document centric features, entity profile related features and time features. Evaluated within the framework of the "Knowledge Base Acceleration" track at TREC 2012, it outperforms current state-of-the-art approaches.
A Distributed Positioning System Based on a Predictive Fingerprinting Method Enabling Sub-Metric Precision in IEEE 802.11 Networks

In this paper, we present a distributed positioning system for indoor environment based on a mesh of compact independent anchor nodes. Each node is built of low-cost off-the-shelf components and operates as specialized access points capable of standard connectivity at 2.45 GHz. The key technology for the localization strategy is the switched beam antenna (SBA), which enables a space division multiple access (SDMA) paradigm. The coordinated operation of SBA-equipped anchor nodes constitutes a legacy unmodified IEEE 802.11 network which can exploit the multiplexing mechanism. The latter is the driving force of the estimation strategy, with the positional information obtained as the result of a maximum likelihood algorithm driven by the comparison of a real-time received signal strength indicator (RSSI) with the predicted signal level distribution, which can be estimated and stored without the need of lengthy offline measurement. The signal level prediction is based on a simple propagation model which is effective because benefits of both the elementary antenna radiation beams directivity and the circular polarization operation, two strong aids for the mitigation of the multipath impairment. In turn, these feature make the estimation procedure tolerant to noisy power measurements, hence particularly suitable for cost-effective solutions based on RSSI. Experimental validations demonstrate the performance of a network composed of four anchors arranged in a 2.6 × 3.8 m 2 mesh in a 6 × 7 m 2 office room, and dealing with a single target node. The mean error inside the mesh area is 63 cm while the mean error in the entire room is 1.1 m. Focusing on the cumulative distribution of the error, the 90th percentile value is 1 m considering only the mesh and 1.9 m for the entire room.