Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recursive and Fast Recursive Capon Spectral Estimators

The Capon algorithm, which was originally proposed for wavenumber estimation in array signal processing, has become a powerful tool for spectral analysis. Over several decades, a significant amount of research attention has been devoted to the estimation of the Capon spectrum. Most of the developed algorithms thus far, however, rely on the direct computation of the inverse of the input correlation (or covariance) matrix, which can be computationally very expensive particularly when the dimension of the matrix is large. This paper deals with fast and efficient algorithms in computing the Capon spectrum. Inspired from the recursive idea established in adaptive signal processing theory, we first derive a recursive Capon algorithm. This new algorithm does not require an explicit matrix inversion, and hence it is more efficient to implement than the direct-inverse approach. We then develop a fast version of the recursive algorithm based on techniques used in fast recursive least-squares adaptive algorithms. This new fast algorithm can further reduce the complexity of the recursive Capon algorithm by an order of magnitude. Although our focus is on the Capon spectral estimation, the ideas shown in this paper can also be generalized and applied to other applications. To illustrate this, we will show how to apply the recursive idea to the estimation of the magnitude squared coherence function, which plays an important role for problems like time-delay estimation, signal-to-noise ratio estimation, and doubletalk detection in echo cancellation.
Approaches to Radar Signal Processing

The goal of modern radar signal processing is to improve the accuracy and dependability of detection and measurement in radar systems. In addition to the desired signals, radar systems receive interference and noise signals, many of which can be quite strong. The receiver and associated elements also generate noise. Signals that are desirable in one system may interfere in another. Digital processors are used for accuracy and resolution. 10 references.
Healing Effects of Pet Robots at an Elderly-Care Facility

A pet robot, similar to the popular AIBO (Artificial Intelligence robot) is emerging onto the domestic scene. These robots exist primarily for in-home entertainment, and they are known to create healing effects through their interactions with humans. However, there is a lack of practical research into what kinds of relationships exist between these robots and human beings, what kinds of influence the robots have, and other such questions. This paper discusses the kinds of effects that robots can have on human beings, and examines whether humans’ lives can be enriched if these robots play the role of not only a robotic pet but also a life partner of sorts. It also investigates how robots are useful for residents of elderly-care facilities, using a commercially available pet robot that looks like a real cat.
An occupancy grid based SLAM method

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is an active area of research. SLAM algorithms should allow the robot to start its movement from a random position in an unknown environment and to build the map of the area while knowing its own position relative to the map. Thus, at the end of the mapping task robot should be able to return where it has started. Especially in real time applications, using limited sensor data, there are still many problems to be conquered. In this study a probabilistic occupancy grid approach is proposed to build the map of an unknown environment. The method tested both in a simulation environment and on a real robot. Although there are some improvements to be made, the initial results are promising.
Collaborating with parents during intervention with parental agreement: Practitioner perspectives on procedural justice

Aims and significance: The study aims to build knowledge about how practitioners work with parents to address the care and protection of children without a court order. In particular, it uses a procedural justice lens to gain insight into the nature and quality of practitioner-parent relationships during intervention with parental agreement. Procedural justice relates to the quality of treatment that people receive from an authority during decision-making processes and it has been associated with increased trust, cooperation and compliance in a variety of regulatory settings (Tyler, 2006). Method: In Queensland (Australia), where this study takes place, ‘Intervention with Parental Agreement’ (IPA), is a legislated alternative to court orders to address the care and protection needs of children. This paper explores the findings from in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 30 practitioners involved in IPA practice. Respondents were drawn from the child protection authority and tertiary family support services that work with IPAclients. Respondents were drawn from both the metropolitan and rural context. Findings: The thematic analysis revealed that whilst respondents believed that they demonstrated behaviours consistent with procedural justice, three factors were perceived to shape the extent to which it was evident in their practice: 1) time to work with families; 2) office culture; and 3) parent characteristics. The analysis also highlighted that practitioners were motivated by both internal and external factors to engage with parents in procedurally fair ways. Three main motivations were identified: 1) imposed expectations; 2) professional motivations; and 3) personal factors.
Hand-Tracking for Human-Robot Interaction with Explicit Occlusion Handling

The task of simultaneously tracking the threedimensional positions of both hands in a human-robot interaction scenario imposes significant challenges on the tracking application. In this diploma thesis, I focus on the problem of occlusion handling using particle filters. I show how disparity information can be used to improve the stability of the tracked trajectory in three-dimensional space. In addition, I present fast methods for tracking failure detection and automatic initialization. To conclude my diploma thesis, I demonstrate how the tracker can be used in gesture recognition tasks focusing on both the trajectory as well as the configuration.
Degree and Sobolev spaces

Let $u$ belong (for example) to $W^{1,n+1}(S^n\times \Lambda, S^n)_{\lambda\in\Lambda}$ where $\Lambda$ is a connected open set in ${\mathbb R}^k$. For a.e. the map $x\mapsto u(x,\lambda)$ is continuous from $S^n$ into $S^n$ and therefore its (Brouwer) degree is well defined. We prove that this degree is independent of $\lambda$ a.e. in $\Lambda$. This result is extended to a more general setting, as well to fractional Sobolev spaces $W^{s,p}$ with $sp\geq n+1$.
Visibility of control in adaptive systems

Adaptive systems respond to changes in their internal state or external environment with guidance from an underlying control system. ULS systems are particularly likely to require dynamic adaptation because of their decentralized control and the large number of independent stakeholders whose actions are integral to the system's behavior. Adaptation may take various forms, but the system structure will almost inevitably include one or more closed feedback loops. We argue that adaptability is a characteristic of a solution, not of a problem, and that the feedback loop governing control of adaptability should be explicit in design and analysis and either explicit or clearly traceable in implementation.
Implications of a New Temperature Scale for Halo Dwarfs on LiBeB and Chemical Evolution

Big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the cosmic baryon density from cosmic microwave background anisotropies together predict a primordial 7Li abundance a factor of 2-3 higher than that observed in galactic halo dwarf stars. A recent analysis of 7Li observations in halo stars, using significantly higher surface temperature for these stars, found a higher Li plateau abundance. These results go a long way toward resolving the discrepancy with BBN. Here we examine the implications of the higher surface temperatures on the abundances of Be and B that are thought to have been produced in galactic cosmic-ray nucleosynthesis by spallation of CNO together with Li (produced in α + α collisions). While the Be abundance is not overly sensitive to the surface temperature, the derived B abundances and more importantly the derived oxygen abundances are very temperature-dependent. If the new temperature scale is correct, the implied increased abundances of these elements pose a serious challenge to models of galactic cosmic-ray nucleosynthesis and galactic chemical evolution.
Spatial Color-to-Grayscale Transform Preserving Chrominance Edge Information

A color image sent to a monochrome output device must undergo a color-to-grayscale transformation. Such a transform typically retains the luminance channel or a derivative thereof. A problem with this approach is that the distinction between two different colors of similar luminance is lost. This loss can be particularly objectionable if the two colors are spatially adjacent. The paper describes a color-tograyscale transformation technique that locally preserves distinction between adjacent colors by introducing highfrequency chrominance information into the luminance channel. This is accomplished by applying a spatial highpass filter to the chrominance channels, weighting the output with a luminance-dependent term; and adding the result to the luminance channel. The outcome of this is that luminance variations are introduced into the image only in those regions containing high-frequency chrominance information. Regions with smoothly varying chrominance undergo little enhancement, and in particular, grayscale input is passed through without alteration. The spatially adaptive nature of the algorithm readily distinguishes it from standard approaches that apply global or pixelwise transformations. Also, preference experiments demonstrate the superior qualitative performance of the proposed approach over standard techniques.
Increased Cortical Inhibition in Autism-Linked Neuroligin-3R451C Mice Is Due in Part to Loss of Endocannabinoid Signaling

A single, maternally inherited, X-linked point mutation leading to an arginine to cysteine substitution at amino acid 451 (R451C) of Neuroligin 3 (NLGN3R451C) is a likely cause of autism in two brothers. Knockin mice expressing the Nlgn3R451C mutation in place of wild-type Nlgn3 demonstrate increased inhibitory synaptic strength in somatosensory cortex, resulting in an excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) imbalance that is potentially relevant for autism-associated behavioral deficits characteristic of these mice. We have replicated the increase in evoked inhibitory postsynaptic currents (eIPSCs) onto layer II/III cortical pyramidal neurons. We also find that increased frequency of spontaneous mIPSCs in Nlgn3R451C mice occurs in the absence of action potential-driven transmission. This suggests the E/I imbalance is due to changes at the synapse level, as opposed to the network level. Next, we use paired whole-cell recordings in an attempt to identify specific interneuron subtypes affected by the Nlgn3R451C mutation. Curiously, we observe no change in the amplitude of cell-to-cell, unitary IPSCs (uIPSCs) from parvalbumin-positive (PV) or somatostatin-positive (SOM) interneurons onto pyramidal neurons. We also observe no change in the number or density of PV and SOM interneurons in LII/III of somatosensory cortex. This effectively rules out a role for these particular interneurons in the increased inhibitory synaptic transmission, pointing to perhaps alternative interneuron subtypes. Lastly, impaired endocannabinoid signaling has been implicated in hippocampal synaptic dysfunction in Nlgn3R451C mice, but has not been investigated at cortical synapses. We find that bath application of the CB1 antagonist, AM 251 in WT mice eliminates the Nlgn3R451C increase in eIPSC amplitude and mIPSC frequency, indicating that increased inhibitory transmission in mutant mice is due, at least in part, to a loss of endocannabinoid signaling through CB1 receptors likely acting at interneurons other than PV or SOM.
Applying Transfer Learning to the Implementation of an Interactive FAQ Search System

In information retrieval field, keyword retrieval is general. But when a user inputs inappropriate keyword in keyword retrieval, he/she cannot find the contents which the user wants. There are various contents today, so finding an appropriate keyword becomes difficult. So interactive search, through which users dialog with a system to retrieve the contents, is needed In keyword retrieval on FAQ search systems, users who are not familiar with the domain or products cannot find appropriate keywords. So the users dialog with call center operatives to search FAQ. But it is impossible for call center operatives to work all day and the educational cost for call center operatives is high. Based on the situation above, this research focused following problem dialog control in an interactive FAQ search system In FAQ search, FAQs are attached with attribute values and the FAQ search is done in order to get attribute values. The system can get a FAQ as the result of FAQ search through asking all attribute values to the user. But when the number of attributes gets larger, it is difficult for a user to answer all attribute values. One method to reduce the amount of questions is to use dialog scenario. But the cost of creating dialog scenario gets higher if the number of attributes or the number of FAQs gets larger. Addition of new FAQs to an interactive FAQ search system Now we think about an interactive FAQ search system about some products. When new version of the products is released, new FAQs corresponding to the new version have to be added to an interactive FAQ search system. If dialog scenario for controlling dialog of an interactive FAQ search system is used, it's necessary to create dialog scenario once again when new FAQs are added. On the other hand, when machine learning for dialog control is used, dialog log between users and call center operatives becomes training data. But dialog log about new FAQs between users and call center operatives does not exist. It is possible to create dialog log through dialog about new FAQs between users and call ii center operatives. But the cost of creating dialog log is problematic. In this research, we used the model called Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) to solve the first problem. POMDP gives the system reward for the system action and learn the policy which maximizes the total expected reward. It …
Syntactic Rules of Extracting Test Cases from Software Requirements

Software testing has been one of the important area for software engineering to contribute high quality software. Decision table testing is a general technique to develop test cases from information about conditions and actions from software requirements. Extracting conditions and actions from requirements is the key for efficient decision table testing. We propose, experiment upon, and evaluate the syntactic rules of conditions and actions for automatic software test cases generation. Our approach uses natural language processing to select sentences from the requirements on the basis of syntactic similarity, and then to determines conditions and actions through dependency and case analysis. Experiments revealed that F-measure reached from 0.70 to 0.77 for different style of descriptions. The results on case studies further demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique.
Inhibition of Fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase by Aminoimidazole Carboxamide Ribotide Prevents Growth of Salmonella enterica purH Mutants on Glycerol*

The enzyme fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase (FBP) is key regulatory point in gluconeogenesis. Mutants of Salmonella enterica lacking purH accumulate 5-amino-4-imidazole carboxamide ribotide (AICAR) and are unable to utilize glycerol as sole carbon and energy sources. The work described here demonstrates this lack of growth is due to inhibition of FBP by AICAR. Mutant alleles of fbp that restore growth on glycerol encode proteins resistant to inhibition by AICAR and the allosteric regulator AMP. This is the first report of biochemical characterization of substitutions causing AMP resistance in a bacterial FBP. Inhibition of FBP activity by AICAR occurs at physiologically relevant concentrations and may represent a form of regulation of gluconeogenic flux in Salmonella enterica.
The observed and predicted spatial distribution of Milky Way satellite galaxies

ABSTRACT We review evidence that the census of Milky Way satellites similar to those knownmay be incomplete at low latitude due to obscuration and in the outer halo due to adecreasing sensitivity to dwarf satellites with distance. We evaluate the possible im-pact that incompleteness has on comparisons with substructure models by estimatingcorrections to the known number of dwarfs using empirical and theoretical models.Under the assumption that the true distribution of Milky Way satellites is uniformwith latitude, we estimate a 33% incompleteness in the total number of dwarfs due toobscuration at low latitude. Similarly, if the radial distribution of Milky Way satellitesmatches that of M31, or that of the oldest sub-halos or the most massive sub-halosin a simulation, then we estimate a total number of Milky Way dwarfs ranging from1 – 3 times the known population. Although the true level of incompleteness is quiteuncertain, the fact that our extrapolations yield average total numbers of MW dwarfsthat are realistically 1.5 – 2 times the known population, shows that incompletenessneeds to be taken seriously when comparing to models of dwarf galaxy formation.Interestingly, the radial distribution of the oldest sub-halos in a ΛCDM simulation ofa Milky Way-like galaxy possess a close match to the observed distribution of M31’ssatellites, which suggests that reionization may be an important factor controlling theobservability of sub-halos. We also assess the prospects for a new SDSS search forMilky Way satellites to constrain the possible incompleteness in the outer halo.Key words: galaxies: haloes — galaxies: Local Group — galaxies: dwarf — methods:N-body simulations
Blockade of 5-HT2A Receptors May Mediate or Modulate Part of the Immobility Produced by Inhaled Anesthetics

Many inhaled anesthetics block the in vitro effect of the excitatory neurotransmitter serotonin on the 5-HT2A receptor, supporting the view that this receptor might mediate the capacity of inhaled anesthetics to produce immobility during noxious stimulation (i.e., would underlie MAC, the minimum alveolar concentration required to suppress movement in response to a noxious stimulus in 50% of subjects). In the present investigation in rats, we found that intrathecal administration of the 5HT-2A blocker, ketanserin, can decrease isoflurane MAC. This effect, presumably mediated by blockade of serotonin transmission in the spinal cord, reaches a maximum of 20%–25%. An additional decrease (to 60%) may be obtained by IV infusion of ketanserin, and presumably this decrease results from ketanserin’s actions on supraspinal centers. The IV doses of ketanserin that decreased MAC were approximately 100 &mgr;g · kg−1 · min−1 in rats, compared with usual clinical doses of 1.25 &mgr;g · kg−1 · min−1 in humans. These results indicate that 5HT2A receptors are in the neural circuitry influencing isoflurane MAC. These results, together with the blocking action of isoflurane on expressed 5HT2A receptors, strengthen the case for a role for 5HT2A receptors to isoflurane-induced immobility. However, because MAC for isoflurane is predominantly determined in the spinal cord, this result is consistent at most with a minor contribution of these receptors to the immobilizing action of isoflurane.
Two Fundamental Limits on Dataflow Multiprocessing

This paper examines the argument for dataflow architectures in "Two Fundamental Issues in Multiprocessing[5]. " We observe two key problems. First, the justification of extensive multithreading is based on an overly simplistic view of the storage hierarchy. Second the local greedy scheduling policy embodied in dataflow is inadequate in many circumstances. A more realistic model of the storage hierarchy imposes significant constraints on the scheduling of computation and requires a degree of parsimony in the scheduling policy. In particular, it is important to establish a scheduling hierarchy that reflects the underlying storage hierarchy. However, even with this improvement, simple local scheduling policies are unlikely to be adequate.
ATM shared-memory switching architectures

ATM will provide flexibility in bandwidth allocation and will allow a network to carry heterogeneous services ranging from narrowband to wideband services. The challenge is to build fast packet switches able to match the high speeds of the input links and the high performance requirements imposed. The CCITT has standardized the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) as the multiplexing and switching principle for the broadband integrated services digital network (B-ISDN). ATM is a packet and connection-oriented transfer mode based on statistical time division multiplexing techniques. The information flow is organized in fixed-size packets called cells, consisting of a user information field (48 octets) and a header (5 octets). The primary use of the header tag is to identify cells belonging to the same virtual channel and to make routing possible. Cell sequence on a virtual channel is preserved, a very low cell loss probability must be guaranteed (< 10/sup -/12), and intensive error and flow control protocols are provided at the edges of the network. <<ETX>>
How Law and Institutions Shape Financial Contracts: The Case of Bank Loans

Legal and institutional differences shape the ownership and terms of bank loans across the world. We show that under strong creditor protection, loans have more concentrated ownership, longer maturities, and lower interest rates. Moreover, the impact of creditor rights on loans depends on borrower characteristics such as the size and tangibility of assets. Foreign banks appear especially sensitive to the legal and institutional environment, with their ownership declining relative to domestic banks as creditor protection falls. Our multidimensional empirical model paints a more complete picture of how financial contracts respond to the legal and institutional environment than existing studies.
Effect of altitude on the genetic structure of an Alpine grass, Poa hiemata.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The persistence of plants inhabiting restricted alpine areas under climate change will depend upon many factors including levels of genetic variation in adaptive traits, population structure, and breeding system. METHODS Using microsatellite markers, the genetic structure of populations of a relatively common alpine grass, Poa hiemata, is examined across three altitudinal gradients within the restricted Australian alpine zone where this species has previously been shown to exhibit local adaptation across a narrow altitudinal gradient. KEY RESULTS Genetic variation across six microsatellite markers revealed genetic structuring along altitudinal transects, and a reduction in genetic variation at high and low altitude extremes relative to sites central within transects. There was less genetic variation among transect sites compared with altitudinal gradients within transects, even though distances among transects were relatively larger. Central sites within transects were less differentiated than those at extremes. CONCLUSIONS These patterns suggest higher rates of gene flow among sites at similar altitudes than along transects, a process that could assist altitudinal adaptation. Patterns of spatial autocorrelation and isolation by distance changed with altitude and may reflect altered patterns of dispersal via pollen and/or seed. There was evidence for selfing and clonality in neighbouring plants. Levels of gene flow along transects were insufficient to prevent adaptive changes in morphological traits, given previously measured levels of selection.