Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NASA Contractor Report NASA/CR-2005-XXXXXX

Executive Summary Forecasters at the Spaceflight Meteorology Group, 45th Weather Squadron, and National Weather Service in Melbourne, FL use mesoscale numerical weather prediction model output in creating their operational forecasts. These models aid in forecasting weather phenomena that could compromise the safety of launch, landing, and daily ground operations and must produce reasonable weather forecasts in order for their output to be useful in operations. Considering the importance of model forecasts to operations, their accuracy in forecasting critical weather phenomena must be verified to determine their usefulness. The currently-used traditional verification techniques involve an objective point-by-point comparison of model output and observations valid at the same time and location. The resulting statistics can unfairly penalize high-resolution models that make realistic forecasts of a certain phenomena, but are offset from the observations in small time and/or space increments. Manual subjective verification can provide a more valid representation of model performance, but is time-consuming and prone to personal biases. An objective technique that verifies specific meteorological phenomena, much in the way a human would in a subjective evaluation, would likely produce a more realistic assessment of model performance. Such techniques are being developed in the research community. The Applied Meteorology Unit (AMU) was tasked to conduct a literature search to identify phenomenological verification techniques being developed, determine if any are ready to use operationally, and outline the steps needed to implement any operationally-ready techniques into the Advanced Weather Information Processing System (AWIPS). The AMU conducted a search of all literature on the topic of phenomenological-based mesoscale model verification techniques and found 10 different techniques in various stages of development. Six of the techniques were developed to verify precipitation forecasts, one to verify sea breeze forecasts, and three were capable of verifying several phenomena. The AMU also determined the feasibility of transitioning each technique into operations and rated the operational capability of each technique on a subjective 1–10 scale: • 1 indicates that the technique is only in the initial stages of development, • 2–5 indicates that the technique is still undergoing modifications and is not ready for operations, • 6–8 indicates a higher probability of integrating the technique into AWIPS with code modifications, and • 9–10 indicates that the technique was created for AWIPS and is ready for implementation. Eight of the techniques were assigned a rating of 5 or below. The other two received ratings of 6 and 7, and none …
HMM-based text-to-audio-visual speech synthesis

This paper describes a technique for text-to-audio-visual speech synthesis based on hidden Markov models (HMMs), in which lip image sequences are modeled based on image-or pixel-based approach. To reduce the dimensionality of visual speech feature space, we obtain a set of orthogonal vectors (eigenlips) by principal components analysis (PCA), and use a subset of the PCA coefﬁcients and their dynamic features as visual speech parameters. Auditory and visual speech parameters are modeled by HMMs separately, and lip movements are synchronized with auditory speech by using phoneme boundaries of auditory speech for synthesizing lip image sequences. We conﬁrmed that the generated auditory speech and lip image sequences are realistic and synchronized naturally.
Modulation Classification using Cyclostationary Features on Fading Channels

In this study Automatic Modulation Classification (AMC) which is based on cyclostationary property of the modulated signal are discussed and implemented for the purpose of classification. Modulation Classification (MC) is a technique used to make better the overall performance of cognitive radios. Recently Cognitive Radio (CR) plays a key role in the field of communication. CR also used in the development of different wireless application and the exploitation of civilian and military applications. In modulated signals there is cyclostationary property that can be used for the detection of modulation formats. The extraction of cyclostationary features, is used for classification of digital modulation schemes at different values of SNR's, the considered modulation formats are FSK (2-64), PSK (2-64), PAM (2-64) and QAM (2-64) and the channel models considered are AWGN and Rayleigh flat fading. When the receiver, receives the signal it extract the cyclostationary features i-e Spectral Coherence Function (SCF) and Cyclic Domain Profile (CDP) and then uses a multilayer perception which is also known as Feed Forward Back Propagation Neural Network (FFBPNN) for classification of the modulation formats. The performance of proposed algorithm in the form of confusion matrix shows the correct classification accuracy of the considered modulation format. The simulation result shows the performance of proposed algorithm and feature extraction at lower SNR's.
Secondary organic aerosol formation from photochemical aging of light-duty gasoline vehicle exhausts in a smog chamber

Abstract. In China, a rapid increase in passenger vehicles has led to the growing concern of vehicle exhaust as an important source of anthropogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in megacities hard hit by haze. In this study, the SOA formation of emissions from two idling light-duty gasoline vehicles (LDGVs) (Euro 1 and Euro 4) operated in China was investigated in a 30 m3 smog chamber. Five photo-oxidation experiments were carried out at 25 °C with relative humidity at around 50 %. After aging at an OH exposure of 5 × 106 molecules cm−3 h, the formed SOA was 12–259 times as high as primary organic aerosol (POA). The SOA production factors (PF) were 0.001–0.044 g kg−1 fuel, comparable with those from the previous studies at comparable OH exposure. This quite lower OH exposure than that in typical atmospheric conditions might however lead to the underestimation of the SOA formation potential from LDGVs. Effective SOA yields in this study were well fit by a one-product gas-particle partitioning model but quite lower than those of a previous study investigating SOA formation from three idling passenger vehicles (Euro 2–4). Traditional single-ring aromatic precursors and naphthalene could explain 51–90 % of the formed SOA. Unspeciated species such as branched and cyclic alkanes might be the possible precursors for the unexplained SOA. A high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer was used to characterize the chemical composition of SOA. The relationship between f43 (ratio of m/z 43, mostly C2H3O+, to the total signal in mass spectrum) and f44 (mostly CO2+) of the gasoline vehicle exhaust SOA is similar to the ambient semi-volatile oxygenated organic aerosol (SV-OOA). We plot the O : C and H : C molar ratios of SOA in a Van Krevelen diagram. The slopes of ΔH : C / ΔO : C ranged from −0.59 to −0.36, suggesting that the oxidation chemistry in these experiments was a combination of carboxylic acid and alcohol/peroxide formation.
Reuse of fractional waveform libraries for MIMO radar and electronic countermeasures

A fundamental aspect in the hardware-software design of modern radar systems, for example MIMO or Low Probability of Intercept Radar, is to operate in electromagnetically crowded environments. Proper radar waveform design is central to effective solutions in such systems. In this paper cross-interference and waveform reuse for a set of waveform libraries based on the fractional Fourier transform are presented and analysed. The results demonstrate the potential of the novel libraries in increasing the number of available waveforms and for stealth transmissions.
Does Spectatorship Increase Happiness? The Energy Perspective

Based on self-determination theory, the current research examined the effect of team identification on spectators’ energy and happiness. Most importantly, this research attempted to identify a key underlying mechanism of why and when sport spectatorship enhances spectators’ happiness by adapting energy, a new concept to the sport management literature. The results indicate that spectators with high team identification reported a greater level of happiness than those with low team identification only when their team won the game. When the supported team lost the game, spectators with both high and low team identification experienced similar levels of happiness. Furthermore, this study proposed a moderated mediation effect of vitality to provide evidence for the anticipated underlying mechanism. The results of the moderated mediation test indicated that a feeling of vitality mediated the effect of team identification on happiness, but only in the winning game condition. In contrast, in the losing game condi.
Improving Query-Based Summarization Using Document Graphs

Text summarization is an important problem, which has numerous applications. This problem has been extensively studied and many approaches have been proposed in the literature for its solution. One of the most challenging problems in the field of text summarization is generating a user-focused summary based on a query. In this paper, we investigate a new approach that tackles this problem and proposes a new solution using document graphs. We have employed data from Document Understanding Conference 2006 (DUC-2006)
Structural and Functional Abnormalities on Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy

Idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) is a neurologic disorder in which periods of normal neuronal activity are suspended by brief intervals of spontaneous, synchronous spike‐and‐wave discharges and clinical manifestations of seizures. Though the brains of patients appear completely normal on diagnostic imaging, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the 3 Hz synchronous oscillatory features on electroencephalography (EEG) cast little doubt that pathological neuronal function causes the manifestation of seizures. Given our limited ability to study human brains in vivo, the main aim of the research presented here is to show the extent to which emerging MRI techniques can be used to quantify brain abnormalities, even when standard MRI scans reveal no obvious pathology. Emerging MRI acquisition and analysis techniques can be used to identify structural and functional pathology. T1‐weighted MRI scans, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and resting state functional MRI (fMRI) provide an integrated means to study focal and network pathology in IGE. We collected MRI scans from 27 patients with IGE and 27 age‐ and sex‐matched controls. To study cortical abnormalities, we used morphometric measures including cortical thickness and gray‐white contrast comparing IGEs to normal controls. We also studied a cortical functional network, the default mode network (DMN) to determine if widely distributed functional architecture is preserved in generalized epilepsy. Because abnormal activity in the thalamus is thought to be the primary node of pathologic activity in IGE, we performed volumetric studies of the thalamus, correlated volumes with cortical measures and studied the fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (fALFF) in specific thalamic subregions. Finally, DTI was employed to examine the integrity of tracts throughout the brain and tracts connecting the thalamus and prefrontal cortex, which is thought to be preferentially involved in IGE.
A Trust Overlay Architecture and Protocol for Enhanced Protection against Spam

The effectiveness of current anti-spam systems is limited by the ability of spammers to adapt to new filtering techniques and the lack of incentive for mail domains to filter outgoing spam. This paper describes a new approach to spam protection based on distributed trust management. This is motivated by the fact that the SMTP mail infrastructure is managed in a distributed way by a community of mail domain administrators. A trust overlay architecture and a new protocol is presented. The TOP AS protocol specifies how experiences and recommendations are communicated between a spam filter at each mail domain and its associated trust manager, and between trust managers of different mail servers. A technique for improving mail filtering using these trust measures is also described. Initial simulations indicate the potential of this approach to improve rates of false positives and false negatives in anti-spam systems
STUDYING THE MIND FROM THE INSIDE OUT 245 in mathematical terms – in the research reports

Good research requires, among other virtues, (i) methods that yield stable experimental observations without arbitrary (post hoc) assumptions, (ii) logical interpretations of the sources of observations, and (iii) sound inferences to general causal mechanisms explaining experimental results by placing them in larger explanatory contexts. In The New Phrenology, William Uttal examines the research tradition of localization, and finds it deficient in all three virtues, whether based on lesion studies or on new technologies for functional brain imaging. In this paper I consider just the arguments concerning brain imaging, especially functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. I think that Uttal is too harsh in his methodological critique, but correct in his assessment of the conceptual limitations of localist evidence. I propose instead a data-driven test for assessing relative modularity in brain images, and show its use in a secondary analysis of fMRI data from the National fMRI Data Center (www.fmridc.org). Although the analysis is a limited pilot study, it offers additional empirical challenge to localism.
An experimental test of the effect of predation upon behaviour and trait correlations in the threespine stickleback

Benthic and limnetic threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) are a classic example of ecological speciation. Behavioural and armour divergence between these species has been predicted to be the result of divergent selection driven in part by differential predation from cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki). To experimentally test this prediction, we reared split families of benthic–limnetic hybrids in the presence or absence of trout predation. Our results show that the presence of trout had little effect upon stickleback behaviour. We then compared performance in behavioural assays among stickleback that varied in armour to test if armour morphology correlates with behaviour. Our measurements revealed trait correlations between several behaviours and components of armour morphology. Trout predation did not result in an increased correlation between traits, therefore differential trout predation between benthics and limnetics is unlikely to be the cause of these correlations. The presence of trait correlations in advanced generation hybrids suggests that pleiotropy or linkage between genes underlying behaviour and armour morphology may be greater than previously appreciated.
SINR balancing techniques for a cognitive radio relay network with multiple peer-to-peer users

We consider multiple peer-to-peer secondary users that are assisted by multiple multi-antenna relays for mitigating spatial interference and forwarding signals. We propose a joint semidefinite programming and geometric programming based optimization technique to determine optimum relay transceiver matrices and power allocation at the source and the relay so that all users are able to transmit signals simultaneously in the same frequency band while maximizing the balanced signal-to-interference and noise ratio (SINR) of the users and ensuring interference leakage to the primary user is below a specific threshold. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of the mean SINR for different number of relays and transmission power at the relays.
Obstacle recognition for a service mobile robot based on RFID with multi-antenna and stereo vision

In this paper, a novel method of obstacle recognition and localization for mobile robots using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and stereo vision is proposed as it is inexpensive, flexible and easy to use in practical environments. As information about the obstacles or environment can be written in ID tags, the proposed method can detect the obstacles easily and quickly compared with other methods. By considering the probabilistic uncertainty of RFID, we introduce Bayes rule to calculate probability where the ID tag exists. But the accuracy of localization of obstacles is not enough for mobile robot navigation just using one antenna. In this paper, we discuss using multi-antennas to localize obstacle with ID tags. After localizing ID tag, the stereo camera starts to process the image of the region of interest where the obstacle exists. The proposed method does not need to process all the image and easily gets some information about obstacles such as size, and color, and thus decreases the processing computation. This paper introduces the architecture of the proposed method and some experimental results.
COMPUTAÇÃO DISTRIBUÍDA - COMPARATIVO DE DESEMPENHO ENTRE WEB SERVICE E RMI

Servicos de Acesso remoto e Arquitetura Orientada a Servico tem sido muito discutidos nos ultimos anos. Para tanto se torna imprescindivel a avaliacao de desempenho entre as tecnologias desenvolvidas e utilizadas nos dias de hoje. Apresenta-se neste artigo o desenvolvimento de uma aplicacao que faz consulta a um banco de dados corporativo utilizando duas tecnologias de computacao distribuida: Web Services e RMI. O objetivo e produzir, sob as mesmas condicoes, comparacoes de performance entre as duas tecnologias.
Heuristic Based Routing Algorithm for Network on Chip

Deadlocks, livelock, congestion and faults are the four most important factors that reduce the NoC routing efficiency [1]. This paper proposes a new fully adaptive routing protocol for 2D-mesh NoC. It is inspired from the A-star search algorithm and called HRA (Heuristic based Routing Algorithm). The latter is distributed, congestion-aware and fault-tolerant by using only the local information of each router neighbors. HRA does not use VCs (Virtual Channels) but tries to reduce the risk of deadlock by avoiding the 2-nodes and the 4-nodes loops. Results show that HRA ensures a good reliability rate despite of the presence of many faulty links. In addition, it has interesting latencies values in different NoC sizes.
Opaals Project Workpackage 8 Open Source and Open Knowledge Deliverable 8.1: Papers on Basic Characterisation of the Oss 2.0 Phenomenon Title: Open Philosophies for Associative Autopoietic Digital Ecosystems Quality Check 1st Reviewer

Proponents of open source software suggest that it represents a paradigm shift which can solve the ‘software crisis’ (i.e. systems taking too long to develop, costing too much, and not working very well when eventually delivered). They point to the rapid release schedule, the fact that products are usually available without charge, and argue for the high quality and reliability of open source software. Most paradoxically, this ‘silver bullet’ is apparently provided for free by a global community of supremely talented volunteers. However, this characterisation is somewhat of a myth as we illustrate here. We consider the transformation of open source software from its Free Software origins to a more mainstream commercially viable form—OSS 2.0, as we term it. We identify the key differences between this emergent OSS 2.0 model and the initial Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) concept in terms of process and product characteristics. Also, we contend that the OSS 2.0 development process will become less bazaarlike as more rigorous project management elements will be enacted to produce a more professional product. In contrast, the OSS 2.0 product life-cycle will become more bazaar-like as loose federations of companies converge to create a customised and professional ‘whole product’ service. For OSS 2.0, ‘value’ will be the key term, with two of its connotations especially significant – value as in ‘value for money’ and value as in ‘acceptable community values’. Striking an appropriate balance between the two will be key to achieving success in OSS 2.0.
Flapping-wing model for aerial robot

Research of bio-mimetic flying robot mimicking bird or insect is provided. And, application and analysis of flight theory on flying robot in various models is being studied. Design and improvement using relation between flight parameters are suggested. Main actions of flying robot consist of flapping and tilting. The robot is designed and modeled to imitate bird's wing motion, and modeling of wing's motion is carried out using the Matlab/Simulink.
RELEVANCE COMPUTATION FOR KEYWORD SEARCHES OVER STRUCTURED MULTIMEDIA METADATA

Multimedia search engines rely heavily on content analysis algorithms and knowledge management techniques to adequately populate metadata databases. However once this metadata is available, the search engine must work on its own to extract the greatest possible amount of information from the user’s query and map it to the available metadata structure. This paper presents a relevance computation mechanism devised for text-based search engines for multimedia data, in which there is a mismatch between the type of user input (keyword searches) and the metadata model (a structured description of a decomposition of the media), built in a system designed for maximum user simplicity, both at the annotation side and at the end-user side.
A Reconfigurable Virtual Storage Device

This research is motivated by the demands of personalizedstorage devices that fit the quality-of-service needs of each individual user. In particular, the design of a virtual storage device, that consists of multiple heterogeneous storage devices, is proposed with the capability in dynamic reconfiguration to fit the needs of users. A dynamic remapping mechanism is presented with a heap-based data structure to manage the moving of data among component storage devices for performance optimization. A lazy swapping method is then proposed to reduce the mapping overheads. The capability of the proposed design is evaluated with a prototype virtual storage device of a flash drive and a hard drive overan ex2 file system and realistic/generated workloads.
A Facile and Specific Assay for Quantifying MicroRNA by an Optimized RT-qPCR Approach

Background The spatiotemporal expression patterns of microRNAs (miRNAs) are important to the verification of their predicted function. RT-qPCR is the accepted technique for the quantification of miRNA expression; however, stem-loop RT-PCR and poly(T)-adapter assay, the two most frequently used methods, are not very convenient in practice and have poor specificity, respectively. Results We have developed an optimal approach that integrates these two methods and allows specific and rapid detection of tiny amounts of sample RNA and reduces costs relative to other techniques. miRNAs of the same sample are polyuridylated and reverse transcribed into cDNAs using a universal poly(A)-stem-loop RT primer and then used as templates for SYBR® Green real-time PCR. The technique has a dynamic range of eight orders of magnitude with a sensitivity of up to 0.2 fM miRNA or as little as 10 pg of total RNA. Virtually no cross-reaction is observed among the closely-related miRNA family members and with miRNAs that have only a single nucleotide difference in this highly specific assay. The spatial constraint of the stem-loop structure of the modified RT primer allowed detection of miRNAs directly from cell lysates without laborious total RNA isolation, and the poly(U) tail made it possible to use multiplex RT reactions of mRNA and miRNAs in the same run. Conclusions The cost-effective RT-qPCR of miRNAs with poly(A)-stem-loop RT primer is simple to perform and highly specific, which is especially important for samples that are precious and/or difficult to obtain.