Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transport-of-Intensity Model for Single-Mask X-ray Differential Phase Contrast Imaging

X-ray phase contrast imaging holds great promise for improving the visibility of light-element materials such as soft tissues and tumors. Single-mask differential phase contrast imaging method stands out as a simple and effective approach to yield differential phase contrast. In this work, we introduce a novel model for a single-mask phase imaging system based on the transport-of-intensity equation. Our model provides an accessible understanding of signal and contrast formation in single-mask X-ray phase imaging, offering a clear perspective on the image formation process, for example, the origin of alternate bright and dark fringes in phase contrast intensity images. Aided by our model, we present an efficient retrieval method that yields differential phase contrast imagery in a single acquisition step. Our model gives insight into the contrast generation and its dependence on the system geometry and imaging parameters in both the initial intensity image as well as in retrieved images. The model validity as well as the proposed retrieval method is demonstrated via both experimental results on a system developed in-house as well as with Monte Carlo simulations. In conclusion, our work not only provides a model for an intuitive visualization of image formation but also offers a method to optimize differential phase imaging setups, holding tremendous promise for advancing medical diagnostics and other applications.
Frequency-Size Statistics of Coastal Soft-Cliff Erosion

Predicting the retreat of a coastal soft cliff is a difficult and uncertain operation, which has both theoretical and practical significance. Recession of soft cliffs occurs through a combination of processes, including slope failures and surface erosion, that are difficult to model jointly. Deterministic models for predicting coastal retreat are hampered by the complex nature of coastal erosion, which is highly nonuniform in space and episodic in time. To overcome these limitations, stochastic approaches have been proposed. These models assume distributions for the size and the time of the recession events. In this paper we investigate the frequency-size statistics of soft-cliff erosion based on two historical datasets of coastal retreat measurements at two sites in England. We find that the two datasets exhibit a similar behavior. The frequency of the recessions decreases with increasing size of the retreat. For small retreats the decrease is slow. For medium to large retreats the decrease is rapid and follows a power law. The frequency-size statistics of soft-cliff erosion is similar to the statistics of medium to large landslide areas, which are also power-law distributed. This is a significant but not conclusive result. More data are needed to confirm this finding.
BHE‐YOLO: Effective Small Target Detector for Aluminum Surface Defect Detection

Aluminum surface defect detection is a critical task to make location and classification predictions about defects in the industrial production process. However, defects complexity and the requirement of rapid production have led to a great challenge for existing detection algorithms. In this work, an effective small target detector named BHE‐YOLO is proposed for aluminum surface defect detection. First, the BiFPN is modified and integrated with YOLOv5s to achieve effective weighted feature fusion and cross‐scale connection. Second, the Hard Swish activation function is applied to better extract defect feature information. Third, the Equalized Focal Loss function is introduced to replace the cross‐entropy formula of the negative sample confidence part of the loss function. Finally, the experiments are carried out on the aluminum profile defect dataset of the Aliyun Tianchi Competition. The results demonstrate that BHE‐YOLO has excellent performance in terms of Precision, Recall, F1 score, and mAP, and its superiority over the typical detection algorithms, especially for small target defects of aluminum surface.
Computational Design of Magnetic Soft Shape-Forming Catheters using the Material Point Method

Magnetic Soft Catheters (MSCs) are capable of miniaturization due to the use of an external magnetic field for actuation. Through careful design of the magnetic elements within the MSC and the external magnetic field, the shape along the full length of the catheter can be precisely controlled. However, modeling of the magnetic-soft material is challenging due to the complex relationship between magnetic and elastic stresses within the material. Approaches based on traditional Finite Element Methods (FEM) lead to high computation time and rely on proprietary implementations. In this work, we showcase the use of our recently presented open-source simulation framework based on the Material Point Method (MPM) for the computational design of magnetic soft catheters to realize arbitrary shapes in 3D, and to facilitate follow-the-leader shape-forming insertion.
Research on the Invisible Cutting Method of Silicon Carbide Using Femtosecond Laser

A new method for cutting silicon carbide wafers using a femtosecond laser has been proposed after studying the mechanism of action. The superiority of this method was established through a comparison with traditional molecular laser cutting on a test bench. The cutting speed and laser peak power were adjusted to determine the best parameters for cutting silicon carbide wafers using femtosecond pulse laser. Using this method can effectively reduce production costs, improve crystal cutting efficiency and quality, and has potential applications in hard and brittle crystal cutting.
METHOD OF EFFICIENT VLSI ARCHITECTURE FOR DECIMATION-INTIME FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM OF REAL-VALUED DATA *

The decimation-in-time (DIT) fast Fourier transform (FFT) very often has advantage over the decimation-in-frequency (DIF) FFT for most real-valued applications, like speech/image/video processing, biomedical signal processing, and time-series analysis, etc., since it does not require any output reordering. Besides, the DIT FFT butterfly involves less computation time than its DIF counterpart. In this paper, we present an efficient architecture for the radix-2 DIT real-valued FFT (RFFT). We present here the necessary mathematical formulation for removing the redundancies in the radix-2 DIT RFFT, and present a formulation to regularize its flow graph to facilitate folded computation with a simple control unit. We propose here a register-based storage design which involves significantly less area at the cost of a little higher latency compared with the conventional RAM-based storage. The address generation for folded in-place DIT RFFT computation with register-based storage is challenging since both read and write operations are performed in the same clock cycle at different locations. Therefore, we present here a simple formulation of address generation for the proposed radix2 DIT RFFT structure.
Microhymenoptera in roadside verges and the potential of arthropod‐friendly mowing for their preservation

The worldwide decline of insects is one of the major challenges for humankind. One of its main drivers is intensive farming, which reduces habitats and food resources for insect populations and causes direct mortality by pesticides. In addition, mowing of grassland poses another threat to insects, especially when it is done frequently, such as in roadside verges. Roadside verges comprise large areas worldwide and can serve as habitats for animals and plants and as corridors to connect populations when they are maintained ecologically, for example when mowing is done arthropod‐friendly and with low frequency. Microhymenoptera are highly diverse, mostly show a parasitoid lifestyle and occur in large numbers in meadows and grasslands. Although they have an important ecological function in regulating their arthropod host populations, they were mostly neglected in studies on the influence of mowing on insects. Therefore, we assessed which families of microhymenoptera occur in roadside verges and meadows, examined if they are affected by the mowing process with a conventional mulching mower, and studied which groups benefit from arthropod‐friendly mowing, using the mowing head Eco 1200 plus from MULAG, and a flushing bar made of track tarpaulin. In our experimental grassland plots, we found specimens of 18 families from the six microhymenoptera superfamilies Chalcidoidea, Ceraphronoidea, Diaprioidea, Ichneumonoidea, Platygastroidea and Proctotrupoidea. Mowing with a conventional mulching mower caused a significant loss of up to 64% for parasitoid Hymenoptera. The Eco 1200 plus showed an arthropod‐friendly effect only on the number of individuals of Chalcidoidea, saving 38% of individuals compared with the conventional mower. The flushing bar showed a significant effect on total number of individuals with a reduction only on Chalcidoidea and a tendency for Ichneumonoidea with 30% and 47%, respectively. Our study demonstrates the detrimental effect of mowing with a conventional mulching mower on microhymenoptera and shows that this effect can be partly reversed for Chalcidoidea and Ichneumonoidea through the arthropod‐friendly mower and a flushing bar. Our study highlights the importance to consider microhymenoptera in the context of insect decline.
Two anthropological assemblages: Maori 'culture areas' and 'adaptation' in New Zealand museums and government policy

In this paper we investigate two anthropological assemblages in Aotearoa/New Zealand in the 1920s and 1930s and how each were used in the adjudication of forms of governmental regulation of Māori populations. We explore the radically different agencements and socio-technical arrangements of people, things and ideas that were formulated within these contexts. Henry Devenish Skinner, curator of the Otago Museum and Anthropology lecturer at the University of Otago, Dunedin, formulated his assemblages based on archaeological fieldwork, ethnology and Wissler’s culture area concept. Indigenous anthropologist Peter Buck and his associates the politicians Āpirana Ngata and Māui Pōmare formulated their distinct assemblages for operating on the Māori social according to living performative culture and anthropological fieldwork. Through these contrasting collecting, fieldwork and ordering regimes, different views of Māori as liberal subjects emerged to articulate ways the Indigenous population could enter into the cultural life of the emerging nation. Indigenous agency was ultimately to become of paramount importance in liberal governance.
Millimeter-Wave Varactor-Less Oscillators: A Tutorial

This brief provides a brief tutorial on the recent advancements and developments invaractor-less frequency tuning techniques for millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) oscillators. Various approaches,includingphase tuning and magnetic tuning methods, are comprehensively analyzed and discussed. Varactor-less frequency tuning principles and design considerations are given. The aim is to offer essential insights and guidelines for the design of wideband,low-phase-noise mm-Wave varactor-less oscillators.
Pretreatment Masseter Muscle Volume Predicts Survival in Locally Advanced Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Patients Treated with Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy

Background and purpose: Muscle loss is a significant indicator of cancer cachexia and is associated with a poor prognosis in cancer patients. Given the absence of comparable studies, the current retrospective study sought to examine the correlation between the total masseter muscle volume (TMMV) before treatment and the survival outcomes in locally advanced nasopharyngeal cancer (LA-NPC) patients who received definitive concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT). Methods: A three-dimensional segmentation model was used to determine the TMMV for each patient by analyzing pre-CCRT magnetic resonance imaging. The optimal TMMV cutoff values were searched using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses. The primary and secondary endpoints were the relationship between the pre-CCRT TMMV measures and overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS), respectively. Results: Ninety-seven patients were included in this study. ROC curve analyses revealed 38.0 cc as the optimal TMMV cutoff: ≤38.00 cc (n = 42) and >38.0 cc (n = 55). Comparisons between the two groups showed that the TMMV>38.0 cc group had significantly longer PFS [Not reached (NR) vs. 28; p < 0.01] and OS (NR vs. 71; p < 0.01) times, respectively. The results of the multivariate analysis demonstrated that the T-stage, N-stage, number of concurrent chemotherapy cycles, and TMMV were independent associates of PFS (p < 0.05 for each) and OS (p < 0.05 for each) outcomes, respectively. Conclusion: The findings of the current retrospective research suggest that pretreatment TMMV is a promising indicator for predicting survival outcomes in LA-NPC patients receiving definitive CCRT.
Data-driven optimal control via linear programming: boundedness guarantees

The linear programming (LP) approach is, together with value iteration and policy iteration, one of the three fundamental methods to solve optimal control problems in a dynamic programming setting. Despite its simple formulation, versatility, and predisposition to be employed in model-free settings, the LP approach has not enjoyed the same popularity as the other methods. The reason is the often poor scalability of the exact LP approach and the difficulty to obtain bounded solutions for a reasonable amount of constraints. We mitigate these issues here, by investigating fundamental geometric features of the LP and developing sufficient conditions to guarantee finite solutions with minimal constraints. In the model-free context, we show that boundedness can be guaranteed by a suitable choice of dataset and objective function.
Modeling Dynamics over Meshes with Gauge Equivariant Nonlinear Message Passing

Data over non-Euclidean manifolds, often discretized as surface meshes, naturally arise in computer graphics and biological and physical systems. In particular, solutions to partial differential equations (PDEs) over manifolds depend critically on the underlying geometry. While graph neural networks have been successfully applied to PDEs, they do not incorporate surface geometry and do not consider local gauge symmetries of the manifold. Alternatively, recent works on gauge equivariant convolutional and attentional architectures on meshes leverage the underlying geometry but underperform in modeling surface PDEs with complex nonlinear dynamics. To address these issues, we introduce a new gauge equivariant architecture using nonlinear message passing. Our novel architecture achieves higher performance than either convolutional or attentional networks on domains with highly complex and nonlinear dynamics. However, similar to the non-mesh case, design trade-offs favor convolutional, attentional, or message passing networks for different tasks; we investigate in which circumstances our message passing method provides the most benefit.
An Improved Relaxation for Oracle-Efficient Adversarial Contextual Bandits

We present an oracle-efficient relaxation for the adversarial contextual bandits problem, where the contexts are sequentially drawn i.i. d from a known distribution and the cost sequence is chosen by an online adversary. Our algorithm has a regret bound of $O(T^{\frac{2}{3}}(K\log(|\Pi|))^{\frac{1}{3}})$ and makes at most $O(K)$ calls per round to an offline optimization oracle, where $K$ denotes the number of actions, $T$ denotes the number of rounds and $\Pi$ denotes the set of policies. This is the first result to improve the prior best bound of $O((TK)^{\frac{2}{3}}(\log(|\Pi|))^{\frac{1}{3}})$ as obtained by Syrgkanis et al. at NeurIPS 2016, and the first to match the original bound of Langford and Zhang at NeurIPS 2007 which was obtained for the stochastic case.
Novel 2-Amino-pyrano[3,2-c]quinoline-3-carbonitrile Derivatives Bearing Benzyloxy Phenyl Moiety as Butyrylcholinesterase Inhibitors: Design, Synthesis, In Vitro Evaluation, and Molecular Docking Studies

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the main form of dementia, is a multifactorial neurodegenerative disease, and several hypotheses have been proposed for its pathogenesis. Among them, cholinergic hypofunction is the main reason and plays a significant role in cognitive impairment. According to this theory, ChE inhibitors improve the performance of the cholinergic system and increase memory function. Thus, this study investigated a novel series of 2-amino-pyrano[3,2-c]quinoline-3-carbonitrile derivatives bearing benzyloxy phenyl moiety as ChE enzyme inhibitors. Methods: The synthesized compounds 6a-o are divided into three series based on benzyloxy phenyl moiety. The structure of all compounds was identified by the NMR (1 H and 13C) and IR spectra. Then, their inhibitory activities against ChE enzymes were evaluated by Ellman’s spectrophotometrical method. The kinetic and molecular docking studies were performed for compound 6l as the most potent butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) inhibitor. Results: The 2-amino-4-(4-((4-fluorobenzyl)oxy)-3-methoxyphenyl)-5-oxo-5,6-dihydro-4H-pyrano[3,2-c] quinoline-3-carbonitrile (6l) demonstrated the best anti-BChE activity with a half maximal inhibitory concentration value of 1.00±0.07. The kinetic and molecular docking studies confirmed that 6l is a mixed inhibitor and binds to both the anionic catalytic site and peripheral anionic site (PAS) of BChE. In silico study approved that the methoxy group on the middle phenyl ring has a significant role in interacting with the PAS of the enzyme. Conclusion: These findings indicated that 2-amino-pyrano[3,2-c]quinoline-3-carbonitrile derivatives bearing benzyloxy phenyl moiety have therapeutic potential as BChE inhibitors in the last stages of AD.
A more than 21-year odyssey of developmental local government in South Africa

This paper is an assessment of 21 years of developmental local government as advocated through the 1998 White Paper on local government. In the 21st century, local governments have developed into hubs for developmental objectives. This suggests that they are now expected to go beyond the fundamentals of providing services. For instance, the agenda of local governments has automatically adopted South Africa's idea of a developmental state that primarily prioritises economic development and the need to consider the most suitable intervention scales. With the implementation of the National Development Plan (NDP) in 2012, South African authorities formalised their intention to pursue a developing state. The authorities' conviction that the developmental state approach is a factor for development is evident from reading the NDP. Because of the vertical connections between regional, sub-regional and local processes of change, strategies must be well-suited to one another, different interventions may be most effective at various spatial scales, and strategy and implementation may also be most effective at particular scales. This study used a multi-site case study as the sole type of research methodology. The study took an exploratory approach, because it constituted contextual research, allowing the researcher to investigate and record research phenomena in line with diverse participant interpretations. The study discovered that despite the ideals outlined in the 1998 White Paper, National Development Plan, and District Development Model, emphasising the influence of the local sphere as closer to citizens, and thus more responsible for their welfare and development, factors such as public participation, a lack of skills, and sub-par infrastructure delivery have negatively impacted developmental local government outcomes. In the end, local government is unable to fulfill its responsibility for development. The paper contends that local government's performance, assessed against its constitutional purposes, hinders the realisation of a progressive state in South Africa against a backdrop of local government incapacity.
Using Behavioral Procedures to Establish an Elementary School Paper Recycling Program

An elementary school recycling program was developed in which students could deliver paper when they arrived at school each day. For a period of eight-months, feedback, goal setting and self-recording conditions were evaluated. The largest quantity of paper was recycled during the goal setting condition and the greatest number of students participated when they recorded their own participation. The impact newspaper recycling had on energy consumption was estimated and the advantage of using the school system as an "agent' for wide scale recycling operations is discussed. Resource recovery is viewed as an important practice for promoting environmental protection. When solid waste is recycled, three important events happen that reduce detrimental environmental impact: 1. energy is saved when new products are manufactured from secondary wastes; 2. the rate at which solid waste accumulates decreases; and, 3. natural resource depletion occurs at a slower rate [1]. Of these three, reducing energy impact may be the most important at a time when energy supplies are rapidly dwindling. Additional energy savings that can result from recycling vary as a function of the collection procedures used in the reclamation process. For example, energy savings of 15 per cent result when solid waste is collected from "curbsides" rather than "backyards" because of the differences in idling time of collection *This manuscript is part of a dissertation submitted by the first author to the Department of Human Development, University of Kansas, in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the Ph.D. degree.
Deep anytime-valid hypothesis testing

We propose a general framework for constructing powerful, sequential hypothesis tests for a large class of nonparametric testing problems. The null hypothesis for these problems is defined in an abstract form using the action of two known operators on the data distribution. This abstraction allows for a unified treatment of several classical tasks, such as two-sample testing, independence testing, and conditional-independence testing, as well as modern problems, such as testing for adversarial robustness of machine learning (ML) models. Our proposed framework has the following advantages over classical batch tests: 1) it continuously monitors online data streams and efficiently aggregates evidence against the null, 2) it provides tight control over the type I error without the need for multiple testing correction, 3) it adapts the sample size requirement to the unknown hardness of the problem. We develop a principled approach of leveraging the representation capability of ML models within the testing-by-betting framework, a game-theoretic approach for designing sequential tests. Empirical results on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate that tests instantiated using our general framework are competitive against specialized baselines on several tasks.