Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real-Time Gaze Holding in Binocular Robot Vision

Using a binocular, maneuverable visual system, a robot that holds its gaze on a visual target can enjoy improved visual perception and performance in interacting with the world. This dissertation examines the problem of holding gaze on a moving object from a moving platform, without requiring the ability to recognize the target. A novel aspect of the approach taken is the use of controlled camera movements to simplify the visual processing necessary to keep the cameras locked on the target. A gaze holding system on the Rochester robot's binocular head demonstrates this approach. Even while the robot is moving, the cameras are able to track an object that rotates and moves in three dimensions. The key observation is that visual fixation can help separate an object of interest from distracting surroundings. Camera vergence produces a horopter (surface of zero stereo disparity) in the scene. Binocular features with no disparity can be extracted with a simple filter, showing the object's location in the image. Similarly, an object that is being tracked will be imaged near the center of the field of view, so spatially-localized processing helps concentrate on the target. Rochester's binocular robot exploits these observations. The vergence and smooth tracking systems cooperate to hold the cameras on an object moving in three dimensions. The vergence system changes the vergence angle of the cameras to drive the disparity of the target to zero, relying on the tracking system to keep the target in the central field of view. The tracking system centers the cameras on the zero-disparity signals, relying on the vergence system to hold vergence on the target. Instead of requiring a way to recognize the target, the system relies on active control of camera movements and binocular fixation segmentation.
Home matters: The role of home in property enactment on Norwegian smallholdings

The article argues that geographies of home add important perspectives for analysing property enactment on Norwegian smallholdings. Characteristics of smallholdings as homes are described, and it is demonstrated that ‘home matters’ in terms of how property owners’ senses of home affect how properties become enacted. In conformity with recent theories in legal geography, the article demonstrates that these socio-spatial relationships conflict with the dominant ownership model which permeates public policy initiatives. The ownership model assumes a single owner motivated by self-regarding behaviour and maximising economic benefits. The article, however, reveals a deep sense of home and place attachment relating to Norwegian smallholdings, and this influences how smallholdings as properties become enacted, and thus, how legal instruments aiming at affecting people's behaviour are responded to. The article draws upon empirical research conducted among current and former owners of smallholdings in four Norwegian local authority districts.
Osteoporosis Treatment: When to Discontinue and When to Re-start

A number of effective therapies for the treatment of osteoporosis have become available in recent years. However, uncertainty exists regarding their long-term use and effectiveness. Bisphosphonate treatment, unlike hormone replacement, denosumab or teriparatide, is associated with benefits extended even after treatment discontinuation. The extended benefits are most apparent for alendronate (ALN) and zoledronate (ZOL). A drug holiday might be considered in patients at low-moderate risk and who have been fully compliant with treatment, and who have had a response to treatment. In patients at low-moderate risk of fractures the decision to consider a drug holiday should be balanced also with the safety profile of each treatment.
Growth of crustose lichens: a review

Abstract. Crustose species are the slowest growing of all lichens. Their slow growth and longevity, especially of the yellow‐green Rhizocarpon group, has made them important for surface‐exposure dating (lichenometry). This review considers various aspects of the growth of crustose lichens revealed by direct measurement including: 1) early growth and development; 2) radial growth rates (RGR, mm yr−1); 3) the growth rate–size curve; and 4) the influence of environmental factors. Many crustose species comprise discrete areolae that contain the algal partner growing on the surface of a non‐lichenized fungal hypothallus. Recent data suggest that ‘primary’ areolae may develop from free‐living algal cells on the substratum while ‘secondary’ areolae develop from zoospores produced within the thallus. In more extreme environments, the RGR of crustose species may be exceptionally slow but considerably faster rates of growth have been recorded under more favourable conditions. The growth curves of crustose lichens with a marginal hypothallus may differ from the ‘asymptotic’ type of curve recorded in foliose and placodioid species; the latter are characterized by a phase of increasing RGR to a maximum and may be followed by a phase of decreasing growth. The decline in RGR in larger thalli may be attributable to a reduction in the efficiency of translocation of carbohydrate to the thallus margin or to an increased allocation of carbon to support mature ‘reproductive’ areolae. Crustose species have a low RGR accompanied by a low demand for nutrients and an increased allocation of carbon for stress resistance; therefore enabling colonization of more extreme environments.
Gene therapy for lysosomal storage disorders

Gene therapy has become the next frontier in the treatment and potential cure of many disorders that are refractive to current therapies. The lysosomal storage disorders (LSDs) collectively constitute one of the largest groups of inherited metabolic disorders. Propelled by the exciting success of enzyme replacement therapies applied to LSDs without neuropathology, the development of effective gene therapy protocols for the LSDs is underway. For the LSDs with neuropathology, in particular, it has become clear that gene therapy is at present one of only a few therapeutic options with the potential for success. Studies summarised in this review indicate that gene therapy using a variety of vectors both in vivo and ex vivo have shown great promise for the treatment of these diseases. However, several problems require serious attention before it will be feasible to embark on human gene therapy trials.
Of Lempel-Ziv-Welch parses with refillable gaps

We consider gapped variants of classical data compression paradigms (Ziv, J. and Lempel, A.,1977, 1978; Welch, T.A., 1984). In the original algorithm, phrases are identified and stored in a dictionary on-the-fly as the text-file is scanned. The entries in the dictionary are then matched against the incoming string, thereby determining the next codeword, and this gives the method an inherently linear-time implementation. In our variants, the phrases used in compression are selected among suitably chosen strings of intermittently solid and wild characters produced by the autocorrelation of the source-string, in a way that still preserves linearity of time. At the receiver, gaps can be filled back exactly, interpolated, or left blank, so that lossless, as well as lossy, implementations are possible. However, the focus of the paper is on lossy variants.
Personal Robust Navigation in Challenging Applications

Personal navigation has grown rapidly with the introduction of ubiquitous computing and the new generation of smart phones. Appropriate localisation is nowadays a central element for many applications and mobile services. However the proper estimation of the user's location remains a challenge. This paper presents an innovative concept for accurate and reliable positioning in challenging applications. It consists of three components: an absolute geographical reference, the hybridisation of complementary technologies and specific motion models. Two different applications illustrate this concept: urban displacement of blind people and guidance of firefighters. The validity of the concept is assessed with indoor experimental results. Finally the conclusion gives a prospective view of robust personal navigation.
Identification in the presence of symmetry: oscillator networks

Obtaining an accurate quantitative model for a given dynamical system is of central importance in many areas of systems theory, including control theory. In many applications, the basic structural features of the system model can be determined from a consideration of the physical laws which govern the system behavior, so that what remains is parametric system identification, that is, determining the values of the parameters in the model using measurements of inputs and outputs. We focus in particular on adaptive parameter identification (G. Goodwin and K. Sin, 1984; S. Sastry and M. Bodson, 1989), since this approach has proven to be compatible with a great many system theoretic objectives (e.g., model based prediction and control). We begin an investigation of the role that structural properties such as symmetry play in the problem of system identification. For definiteness, we concentrate on determining the values of coupling parameters from observed outputs of systems of coupled oscillators. The techniques are of more general applicability, but by keeping the physical system simple and definite, the effects of symmetry in the analysis can be clearly seen.
No Fire Without Smoke ; Smoke Rendering and Light Interaction for Real-Time Computer Graphics

Realism in computer graphics depends upon digitally representing what we see in the world with careful attention to detail, which usually requires a high degree of complexity in modelling the scene. With some computer graphics applications developers have to limit the complexity of the scene to allow the application to run in real-time on modern consumer grade graphics hardware. This trade-off between realism and performance means that new techniques are continually being developed, the aim of which is to improve the realism of a scene without compromising the real-time performance. Shadows provide an important visual clue to where objects are positioned in a computergenerated scene, because without shadowing objects can look like they are floating above the ground. Rendering shadows becomes even more important when translucent media, such as smoke, is rendered. Without shadowing smoke can look like it is not part of a scene and without position or shape, appearing as unrealistic. This thesis charts our investigation of methods for modelling computer generated smoke, techniques for global lighting, and the shadowing of solid objects. We examine the rendering of smoke, its interaction with lighting, and how visually plausible shadows can be added to smoke. We describe and discuss a novel method for casting shadows through a GPU-based particle system from an opaque solid object. We also describe a new approach for ambient lighting, which we refer to as Surface-Curvature Ambient Occlusion (SCAO), taking advantage of the geometry shader in the Direct3D 10 programmable graphics pipeline.
An Enhanced MPPT Method Combining Fractional-Order and Fuzzy Logic Control

A fractional-order fuzzy logic control (FOFLC) method for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) in a photovoltaic (PV) system is presented. By combining the robustness of fuzzy logic with the accuracy of fractional order, the proposed method can improve the tracking accuracy in weather variations compared with the conventional fuzzy MPPT. First, the fractional-order factor is carefully selected according to the dynamic range of the fuzzy controller. It takes a bigger alpha factor in the first place to expand the fuzzy domain and shortens the time of searching for the MPP. When the maximum power point is approached, it uses a smaller the alpha factor to contract the fuzzy domain and eliminates the oscillations at the MPP. Therefore, the FOFLC in a PV system has rapid dynamic responses under environment variations and high tracking accuracy of the maximum power point. Second, MATLAB/Simulink software is employed to simulate a PV power system and verify the proposed algorithm by various simulations. The enhanced MPPT algorithm has been implemented on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) board. Finally, a boost dc–dc converter experiment has been carried out to evaluate the system performance. The simulation and experiment results show that this method can improve the transient and steady-state performance simultaneously.
Managing Risks in Just-In-Sequence Supply Networks: Exploratory Evidence From Automakers

Today's automakers are under an enormous price and cost pressure arising from both increasing competition and complexity of operations. One way to deal with this challenge is to outsource value creation to the supply network (SN), which then assumes the responsibility for producing variant-specific modules and delivering them just-in-sequence (JIS). This results in tightly coupled buyer-supplier relationships that operate with short reaction times and are characterized by high time dependency and minimal buffers. It increases the risk exposure of buyers to disturbances in their SNs and failures propagate quickly, causing production disruptions. Based on data collected at 14 car-manufacturing plants located in Germany, this research provides an overview and exploratory evidence of current JIS market practice and proposes ways of actively managing the risks inherent in JIS SNs.
An Efficient FPGA Implementation of Principle Component Analysis based Network Intrusion Detection System

Modern network intrusion detection systems (NIDSs) use anomaly detection to capture malicious attacks. Since such connections are described by large set of dimensions, processing these huge amounts of network data becomes extremely slow. To solve this time-efficiency problem, statistical methods like principal component analysis (PCA) can be used to reduce the dimensionality of the network data. In this paper, we design and implement an efficient FPGA architecture for Principal Component Analysis to be used in NIDSs. Moreover, using representative network intrusion traces, we show that our architecture correctly classifies attacks with detection rates exceeding 99.9% and false alarm rates as low as 1.95%. Our implementation on a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA platform provides a core throughput of up to 24.72 Gbps, clocking at a frequency of 96.56 MHz.
A Tool/Database Interface for Multi-Level Analyses

Depending on the nature of a linguistic theory, empirical investigations of its soundness may focus on corpus studies related to lexical, syntactic, semantic or other phenomena. Especially work in research networks usually comprises analyses of different levels of description, where each one must be as reliable as possible when the same sentences and texts are investigated under very different perspectives. This paper describes an infrastructure that interfaces an analysis tool for multi-level annotation with a generic relational database. It supports three dimensions of analysis-handling and thereby builds an integrated environment for quality assurance in corpus based linguistic analysis: a vertical dimension relating analysis components in a pipeline, a horizontal dimension taking alternative results of the same analysis level into account and a temporal dimension to follow up cases where analyses for the same input have been produced with different versions of a tool. As an example we give a detailed description of a typical workflow for the vertical dimension.
A lumped transfer function model for High Pressure Gas Pipelines

In this paper a lumped transfer function (TF) model is derived for High Pressure Natural Gas Pipelines. Departing from a nonlinear partial differential equation (PDE) model a high order continuous state space (SS) linear model is obtained using a finite difference method. An infinite order TF is calculated from the SS representation and finally is approximated by a compact non-rational function. This model is compared with SIMONE®, a commercial simulator of gas transport and distribution, using a case study, and both exhibit a similar accuracy.
HIGH-RATE PHASE COHERENT ACOUSTIC COMMUNICATION: A REVIEW OF A DECADE O F RESEARCH AND A PER SPECTIVE ON FUTURE CHALLENGES

Slightly more than 10 years ago the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Northeastern University published a new algorithm for multi-channel adaptive equalization along with results of using that algorithm to successfully decode long-range, high-rate, acoustic communication transmissions. In the years since the authors have built on this foundation to improve and adapt the core algorithm for different acoustic environments and applications, incorpo rating Doppler compensation, selectable filter update algorithms, and error-correction capability. The resulting structures are used as the core for receivers operating in a multi-user environment, and for reception of multiple, simultaneous data streams in a MIMO environment. Significant challenges remain, in particular, selection of equalizer parameters (for example, the number of filter taps) based on acoustic channel conditions to optimize receiver performance in a time-varying environment. New approach es to receivers include channel estimation with the goal of both faster adaptation and receiver parameter self-optimization.
Impact of Irrigation Regimes on Growth, Yield and Water Use Efficiency of Sweet Pepper

Field experiment was conducted in the Department of Soil and Water Engineering, PAU, Ludhiana. In the experiments, drip and furrow irrigation methods were used and their effects on growth and yields of the sweet pepper were observed using split plot design. The irrigation treatments were, drip irrigation with IW/CPE ratio of 0.60(I1), drip irrigation with IW/ CPE ratio of 0.75(I2), drip irrigation with IW/CPE ratio of 0.90(I3), furrow irrigation with paired row planting (I4) and furrow irrigation with single row planting (I5). The dry matter accumulation, number of fruit per plant, fruit size, total yield and water use efficiency were observed highest in I2 treatments. The highest plant height and leaf area index were observed in I3 treatment. The minimum number of days to flowering, fruit initiation and fruit maturity were observed I1 treatments. There were significant effects of irrigation on leaf area index, plant height, dry matter accumulation, number of days to flowering, fruit initiation, fruit maturity, fruit girth, number of fruit per plant, fruit length, yield and WUE. Best drip irrigated treatment I2 gave an increase of 30.67% over I4 and an increase of 33.74% over I5. The percentage of water saving for drip irrigation treatment I1, I2 and I3 were 51.01%, 39.72% and 28.73% respectively over the furrow irrigation treatment. Irrigation treatment I2 gives maximum yield and highest WUE.
Focused fluid flow and Ozark Mississippi Valley-type deposits

Field relations confirm that a tectonic link exists between the Appalachian-Ouachita orogeny and the Mississippi Valley-type Pb-Zn deposits of the Ozarks. Fluids were expelled from both the Reelfoot rift and the Arkoma basin into structurally controlled hydrologic domains. These two source areas fed different fluids into at least six domains and account for regional differences in the ore deposits. Movement of fluids out of the Reelfoot rift also indicates that a foreland basin is not a prerequisite for the migration of fluids. Seismic pumping and distal fluid focusing along faults appears to be the most plausible mechanism to move hot, reactive fluids through a carbonate terrane to a site of ore deposition.
An analysis of young ocean depth, gravity and global residual topography

The variation of ocean depth with age in the absence of crustal thickening and dynamic support places valuable constraints on the thermal and rheological properties of the lithosphere and asthenosphere. We have attempted to estimate this variation using a global data set of shiptracks, with particular emphasis on young ocean floor. In this respect, this paper extends a previous study published in this journal by the same authors, which concentrated on the older parts of the ocean basins. We find that, prior to 80 Ma, subsidence patterns are reasonably consistent, with gradients of 325 ± 20 m Ma −1/2 and zero-age depths of 2600 ± 200 m. There is a strong inverse correlation between zero-age depth and the gradient of depth with the square root of age which is unrelated to local variations in dynamic support. Global depth-age trends to 160 Ma are not significantly different to those for the individual ocean basins. Within corridors of similar basement age, gravity–topography correlations are consistently 30 ± 5 mGal km−1. Simple isostatic theory and numerical modelling of mantle plumes suggests that, if the minimum depth of convection is defined by the base of the mechanical boundary layer, the admittance should be a function of plate age. The observation that it is not implies that the active convective upwelling beneath young lithosphere ceases at the same depth as it does beneath old oceanic plates. This result is consistent with geochemical modelling of melts near mid-ocean ridges. We have examined the relationship between residual topography and gravity worldwide, and have found that good spatial correlations are restricted to the Atlantic, North Pacific and youngest Indian ocean basins. By contrast, residual topography and gravity are poorly or negatively correlated in the South and young North Pacific Ocean and in the older Indian Ocean. Away from regions of thick crust and flexure, histograms of residual topography and gravity have symmetric distributions about zero. We then use this residual topography to estimate the volume and buoyancy flux of seven major plume swells. In Hawaii, the clear correlation between melt and swell volumes in discrete age corridors is evidence that the horizontal velocity of the hot plume material far downstream from the plume is similar to the plate spreading velocity and that the plume pulses over time. Finally, comparison with seismic tomographic models suggests that the long-wavelength (>2000 km) residual topographic and gravity anomalies have an origin deeper than 250 km. This result is consistent with observations that the admittance is approximately constant at wavelengths longer than 800 km.
Comparison of four diagnostic methods for detection of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus

Background and Objectives Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a well-known pathogen with a worldwide distribution. Given the increasing rate of MRSA infections, implementing of reliable, accurate and rapid testing for diagnosis of MRSA is necessary. The aim of this study was to compare four diagnostic methods for detection of MRSA isolates. Materials and Methods From December 2012 to April 2014, 120 S. aureus isolates were collected from three hospitals affiliated with Tehran University of Medical Sciences. MRSA isolates were detected by four different methods including cefoxitin disc diffusion test, oxacillin disc diffusion test, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of oxacillin as determined by MIC test strip, and mecA detection by PCR. Results Out of 120 S. aureus isolates, cefoxitin disc diffusion test, oxacillin disc diffusion test and MIC test strip identified 60 (50%), 48 (40%), 55 (45.83%) isolates as MRSA, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity for oxacillin disc diffusion, cefoxitin disc diffusion and MIC of oxacillin were 80% and 100%, 100% and 100%, and 91.6% and 100%, respectively. Conclusion Cefoxitin disc diffusion test is reliable substitute for detection of MRSA in clinical laboratory where MIC detection and molecular methods are not accessible.