Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Controllable Visual Cues

This project concerns the development of analytical and computational tools for the analysis of dynamic visual processes. In particular, emphasis has been given to the estimation of visual motion for the purpose of control, the estimation of shape from moving images, the estimation of spatio-temporal image statistics for visual modeling, synthesis and recognition. The project is in its final year, and the progress has been documented extensively in the following publications [33, 36, 8, 29, 41, 32, 7, 25, 9, 40, 28, 20, 48, 22, 37, 1, 15, 2, 42, 47, 13, 45, 16, 24, 27, 30, 52, 44, 19, 12, 10, 18, 3, 39, 11, 4, 35, 17, 33, 5, 6, 14, 23, 21, 31, 49, 50, 46, 26, 38, 51, 53, 43, 34]. These include a textbook [34], a Marr Prize-winning manuscript [33] and a Siemens Prize (best paper award at CVPR) manuscript [5], and the first real-time demonstration of a system to estimate 3D structure and motion in real time on commercial off-the-shelf hardware [20]. Many of the results obtained during the course of this project have been incorporated in a new first year graduate course developed at UCLA (CS268, Machine Perception), as well as in a three-day short course outreach to industry and government titled “3D reconstruction from Video” administered through the UCLA extension in the summer of 2002 and 2003.
COSMIC EVOLUTION OF STAR FORMATION ENHANCEMENT IN CLOSE MAJOR-MERGER GALAXY PAIRS SINCE z = 1

The infrared (IR) emission of “M* galaxies” (1010.4 ⩽ Mstar ⩽ 1011.0 M☉) in galaxy pairs, derived using data obtained in Herschel (PEP/HerMES) and Spitzer (S-COSMOS) surveys, is compared to that of single-disk galaxies in well-matched control samples to study the cosmic evolution of the star formation enhancement induced by galaxy–galaxy interaction. Both the mean IR spectral energy distribution and mean IR luminosity of star-forming galaxies (SFGs) in SFG+SFG (S+S) pairs in the redshift bin of 0.6 < z < 1 are consistent with no star formation enhancement. SFGs in S+S pairs in a lower redshift bin of 0.2 < z < 0.6 show marginal evidence for a weak star formation enhancement. Together with the significant and strong sSFR enhancement shown by SFGs in a local sample of S+S pairs (obtained using previously published Spitzer observations), our results reveal a trend for the star formation enhancement in S+S pairs to decrease with increasing redshift. Between z = 0 and z = 1, this decline of interaction-induced star formation enhancement occurs in parallel with the dramatic increase (by a factor of ∼10) of the sSFR of single SFGs, both of which can be explained by the higher gas fraction in higher-z disks. SFGs in mixed pairs (S+E pairs) do not show any significant star formation enhancement at any redshift. The difference between SFGs in S+S pairs and in S+E pairs suggests a modulation of the sSFR by the intergalactic medium (IGM) in the dark matter halos hosting these pairs.
Modelling Cooperative Behaviour for Resource Access in a Compositional Multi-Agent Framework

Modelling and formally specifying agent knowledge required to deal with limited access to resources in a multi-agent situation, is the focus of this paper. Not only the static elements involved but also the dynamic elements, namely the behaviour of the system, is explicitly modelled and specified. It will be shown how this results in a flexible, compositional specification that is applicable to real-world domains. DESIRE, a formal framework for the design and specification of compositional architectures, is employed for this purpose. A task model of an arbitrary par ticipating competitive agent is presented, together with a model of interaction between agents, the formal specifications and a comparison of this knowledge-based approach and other approaches.
Stochastic Behaviour of the Electricity Bid Stack: From Fundamental Drivers to Power Prices

We develop a fundamental model for spot electricity prices, based on stochastic processes for underlying factors (fuel prices, power demand and generation capacity availability), as well as a parametric form for the bid stack function which maps these price drivers to the power price. Using observed bid data, we find high correlations between the movements of bids and the corresponding fuel prices. We fit the model to the PJM and New England markets in the US, and discuss its performance, in terms of capturing key properties of simulated price trajectories, aswell as comparing implied forward prices with observed data.
Can Change of Direction Speed and Reactive Agility Differentiate Female Hockey Players?

This study investigated whether pre-planned change of direction speed (CODS) and reactive agility (RA) of teenage female field hockey players could distinguish playing standard and whether they could be used to predict standard of play. Ten female school/club (SCHOOL) standard players (age 16.9 ± 0.7 yrs) and ten female regional performance centre (REGIONAL) standard players (age 17.0 ± 0.7 yrs) underwent a series of sprints involving change of direction through an electronically timed course under three conditions, 1. pre-planned change of direction (PRE); 2. change of direction initiated by reaction to a light source (LIGHT); 3. change of direction initiated by reaction to a hockey specific stimulus (HOCK). Each participant completed four trials in each condition with the best time used for analysis. REGIONAL players completed the HOCK test more quickly than the SCHOOL players (P=0.05), whereas there were no differences between the groups in the other tests. Logistical regression analysis found that none of the tests could be used as a predictor for standard of play. Although a sports specific agility test was performed quicker by REGIONAL players it was not able to predict standard of play and therefore further development is needed for an efficient sports specific test.
Hybrid Multilevel Converter: Capacitor Voltage Balancing Limits and its Extension

This paper presents theoretical analysis of a network fault tolerant hybrid cascaded multilevel converter when operated as one unit using multilevel pulse width modulation. The analysis establishes the modulation index range where the voltage balance of the H-bridge floating capacitors of the hybrid converter is attainable independent of load power factors. To realize the established modulation range, a new modulation strategy is proposed that exploits third harmonic subtraction modification of the reference voltage in order to extend the regions around zero voltage crossing where the cells capacitor voltage balancing can be achieved, with a minimum number of cells; independent of load power factor. The significance of the proposed modulation strategy is that it permits increased utilization of dc link voltage independent of operating condition over an extended modulation linear range. Therefore this hybrid converter is applicable to real and reactive power applications, with a higher power density than existing multilevel converters. The validity of the theoretical analysis and proposed extended modulation index linear range are confirmed using simulations and experimentations. The presented analysis and proposed modulation linear range extension can be extended to a hybrid converter with a large number of series H-bridge cells.
Research on Fault Tolerant Inverter based Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor Direct Torque Control Drives

This paper investigates the integrated performance of a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) direct torque control (DTC) drive system based on inverter faults. A switch-redundant inverter with fault tolerant capability is introduced to substitute the standard 6-switch 3-phase inverter in the drive system; two 4-switch inverters are reconfigured when open-phase or short-switch faults occur. Modelling of the 4-switch inverters are analyzed, a modified DTC strategy based on these two post-fault 4-switch inverters is proposed for the disturbance-free operation of the PMSM drive. The proposed PMSM DTC system are simulated under both healthy and faulty conditions, integrated simulation results verify that the modified PMSM DTC drive systems under both two 4-switch inverters are able to operate stably and continuously with acceptable performance
MPC CONTROL OF THE REFINING STAGE OF AN ELECTRIC ARC FURNACE

Abstract The aim of this article was to design a MPC controller for the refining stage of an electric arc furnace. A reduced version of the generic EAF model will be used – it simplifies the controller. The carbon content is controllable only in one direction – it can only decrease asymptotically. The goal of the MPC controller will be to steer the temperature to the desired value before the carbon content reaches its target value. A controller design was done with this goal in mind and verified through simulation. The controller was found to be sensitive to plant parameter variations due to its open-loop nature, but can be improved if timely measurements are taken of required variables such as temperature and carbon.
TDRD6 mediates early steps of spliceosome maturation in primary spermatocytes

Tudor containing protein 6 (TDRD6) is a male germ line-specific protein essential for chromatoid body (ChB) structure, elongated spermatid development and male fertility. Here we show that in meiotic prophase I spermatocytes TDRD6 interacts with the key protein arginine methyl transferase PRMT5, which supports splicing. TDRD6 also associates with spliceosomal core protein SmB in the absence of RNA and in an arginine methylation dependent manner. In Tdrd6-/- diplotene spermatocytes PRMT5 association with SmB and arginine dimethylation of SmB are much reduced. TDRD6 deficiency impairs the assembly of spliceosomes, which feature 3.5-fold increased levels of U5 snRNPs. In the nucleus, these deficiencies in spliceosome maturation correlate with decreased numbers of SMN-positive bodies and Cajal bodies involved in nuclear snRNP maturation. Transcriptome analysis of TDRD6-deficient diplotene spermatocytes revealed high numbers of splicing defects such as aberrant usage of intron and exons as well as aberrant representation of splice junctions. Together, this study demonstrates a novel function of TDRD6 in spliceosome maturation and mRNA splicing in prophase I spermatocytes.
Relative Mobility of Human Transferrin Domains Accounts for Its Efficient Recognition and Recycling

Human serum transferrin (hTf) transports ferric ions in the blood stream and inflamed mucosal surfaces with high affinity and delivers them to cells via receptor mediated endocytosis. A typical hTf is folded into two homologous lobes; each lobe is further divided into two similar sized domains. Three different crystal structures of hTf delineate large conformational changes involved in iron binding/dissociation. However, whether the release process follows the same trend at serum (~7.4) and endosomal (~5.6) pH remains unanswered. The specialized role of the two lobes and if communication between them leads to efficient and controlled release is also debated. Here, we study the dynamics of the full structure as well as the separate lobes in different closed, partially open, and open conformations under the nearly neutral pH conditions in the blood serum and the more acidic one in the endosome. The results corroborate experimental observations and underscore the distinguishing effect of pH on the dynamics of hTf. Furthermore, in a total of 2 {\mu}s molecular dynamics simulation of different forms of hTf, residue fluctuations elucidate the cross talk between the two lobes correlated by the peptide linker bridging the two lobes at serum pH, while their correlated motions is lost under endosomal conditions. At serum pH, the presence of even a single iron on either lobe leads C-lobe fluctuations to subside, making it the target for recognition by human cells or hostile bacteria seeking iron sequestration. The N-lobe, on the other hand, has a propensity to open, making iron readily available when needed at regions of serum pH. At endosomal pH, both lobes readily open, making irons available for delivery. The interplay between the relative mobility of the lobes renders efficient mechanism for the recognition and release of hTf at the cell surface, and therefore its recycling in the organism.
Induced Plant Defenses in the Natural Environment: Nicotiana attenuata WRKY3 and WRKY6 Coordinate Responses to Herbivory[W]

A plant-specific family of WRKY transcription factors regulates plant responses to pathogens and abiotic stresses. Here, we identify two insect-responsive WRKY genes in the native tobacco Nicotiana attenuata: WRKY3, whose transcripts accumulate in response to wounding, and WRKY6, whose wound responses are significantly amplified when fatty acid–amino acid conjugates (FACs) in larval oral secretions are introduced into wounds during feeding. WRKY3 is required for WRKY6 elicitation, yet neither is elicited by treatment with the phytohormone wound signal jasmonic acid. Silencing either WRKY3 or WRKY6, or both, by stable transformation makes plants highly vulnerable to herbivores under glasshouse conditions and in their native habitat in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, as shown in three field seasons. This susceptibility is associated with impaired jasmonate (JA) accumulation and impairment of the direct (trypsin proteinase inhibitors) and indirect (volatiles) defenses that JA signaling mediates. The response to wounding and herbivore-specific signals (FACs) demonstrates that these WRKYs help plants to differentiate mechanical wounding from herbivore attack, mediating a plant's herbivore-specific defenses. Differences in responses to single and multiple elicitations indicate an important role of WRKY3 and WRKY6 in potentiating and/or sustaining active JA levels during continuous insect attack.
Regulation of Tumor Growth and Metastasis: The Role of Tumor Microenvironment

The presence of abnormal cells with malignant potential or neoplastic characteristics is a relatively common phenomenon. The interaction of these abnormal cells with their microenvironment is essential for tumor development, protection from the body’s immune or defence mechanisms, later progression and the development of life-threatening or metastatic disease. The tumor microenvironment is a collective term that includes the tumor’s surrounding and supportive stroma, the different effectors of the immune system, blood platelets, hormones and other humoral factors. A better understanding of the interplay between the tumor cells and its microenvironment can provide efficient tools for cancer management, as well as better prevention, screening and risk assessment protocols.
A zooming interface for accurate text input on mobile devices

In this paper, we propose a system which uses two cameras in combination with a touch panel. The cameras detect a continuous finger depth, which realizes zooming in/out the screen together with the finger movement. The system realizes comfortable selection operation of small objects by directly touching enlarged objects. We conducted an experiment and confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method with zooming. In the virtual keyboard application, the number of mistypes with the proposed method was less than half of the number without zooming.
Mobilizing management knowledge in healthcare: Institutional imperatives and professional and organizational mediating effects

Recent changes within UK healthcare have had dramatic consequences for management and put managerial capabilities firmly under the spotlight. Yet, despite extensive research on managers, comparatively little is known about how they acquire and apply their management knowledge and how this is influenced by their professional background and organizational context. Drawing upon work that distinguishes between different forms of knowledge, managers’ mobilization of management knowledge is examined in the light of recent changes in healthcare. Case study evidence is presented from diverse managerial groups across three types of hospital trust (acute, care and specialist). The analysis demonstrates the mediating effects of interactions between professional background and organizational context on knowledge mobilization and highlights how current pressures on public services are reinforcing a reliance on existing management practices, creating enormous challenges for management learning in this sector.
A new class of low-cost three-phase high-quality rectifiers with zero-voltage switching

Several new schemes for constructing three-phase low-harmonic rectifiers are introduced here. These three-phase AC-DC topologies are derived from parent DC-DC power converter topologies. With a single active switch featuring the zero-voltage switching (ZVS) property in addition to the diode-rectifier bridge, the rectifiers are capable of naturally drawing approximately sinusoidal input-current waveforms at nearly unity power factor. Thus, a family of low-cost high-efficiency three-phase high-power-factor rectifiers is obtained. A second power switch can be introduced to improve the current waveshape further. Simulation results are supplied for each of the proposed schemes to demonstrate the validity of the proposed power converters.
Tactile roughness: neural codes that account for psychophysical magnitude estimates

Hypothetical neural codes underlying the sensation of tactile roughness were investigated in a combined psychophysical and neurophysiological study. The stimulus set consisted of plastic surfaces embossed with dot arrays of varying dot diameter and center-to-center spacing. Human subjects explored each surface with the pad of the index finger and reported their subjective sense of roughness magnitude. The same surfaces were scanned across the receptive fields of cutaneous mechanoreceptive afferents in monkeys while recording the evoked action potentials. Hypothetical neural codes for roughness magnitude were computed from the neural response patterns and tested for their ability to account for the psychophysical data. The psychophysical results showed that subjective roughness magnitude is an inverted U-shaped function of dot spacing that peaks near 3.0 mm spacing, and that increased dot diameter produces decreased roughness sensations at all dot spacings. Hypothetical neural codes that do not bear a consistent relationship to roughness magnitude across all of these stimulus conditions can be rejected as the code for roughness. Four types of neural codes were considered. They were based on (1) mean firing rate, (2) general variation in firing rate, (3) short-term temporal variation in firing rate, and (4) local spatial variation in firing rate. Mean firing rate failed to explain the psychophysical results: surfaces that evoked the same firing rate often evoked very different roughness judgments. In contrast, neural codes based on firing-rate variation, especially in slowly adapting afferents, account for the psychophysical results.
Locally cartesian closed categories and type theory

It is well known that for much of the mathematics of topos theory, it is in fact sufficient to use a category C whose slice categories C/A are cartesian closed. In such a category, the notion of a ‘generalized set’, for example an ‘A-indexed set’, is represented by a morphism B → A of C, i.e. by an object of C/A. The point about such a category C is that C is a C-indexed category, and more, is a hyper-doctrine, so that it has a full first order logic associated with it. This logic has some peculiar aspects. For instance, the types are the objects of C and the terms are the morphisms of C. For a given type A, the predicates with a free variable of type A are morphisms into A, and ‘proofs’ are morphisms over A. We see here a certain ‘ambiguity’ between the notions of type, predicate, and term, of object and proof: a term of type A is a morphism into A, which is a predicate over A; a morphism 1 → A can be viewed either as an object of type A or as a proof of the proposition A.
Class numbers in the imaginary quadratic field and the 1/f noise of an electron gas

Partition functions $Z(x)$ of statistical mechanics are generally approximated by integrals. The approximation fails in small cavities or at very low temperature, when the ratio $x$ between the energy quantum and thermal energy is larger or equal to unity. In addition, the exact calculation, which is based on number theoretical concepts, shows excess low frequency noise in thermodynamical quantities, that the continuous approximation fails to predict. It is first shown that Riemann zeta function is essentially the Mellin transform of the partition function $Z(x)$ of the non degenerate (one dimensional) perfect gas. Inverting the transform leads to the conventional perfect gas law. The degeneracy has two aspects. One is related to the wave nature of particles: this is accounted for from quantum statistics, when the de Broglie wavelength exceeds the mean distance between particles. We emphasize here the second aspect which is related to the degeneracy of energy levels. It is given by the number of solutions $r_3(p)$ of the three squares diophantine equation, a highly discontinuous arithmetical function. In the conventional approach the density of states is proportional to the square root of energy, that is $r_3(p)\simeq 2 \pi p^{1/2}$. We found that the exact density of states relates to the class number in the quadratic field $Q(\sqrt{-p})$. One finds $1/f$ noise around the mean value.
New Monoclonal Antibodies to Mesothelin Useful for Immunohistochemistry, Fluorescence-Activated Cell Sorting, Western Blotting, and ELISA

Purpose: Mesothelin is a cell surface protein that is highly expressed in some malignant tumors, and is a promising target for immunotherapy. Recent data suggests that mesothelin is an adhesive protein and may have a role in the metastases of ovarian cancer. Although a few monoclonal antibodies (MAb) to mesothelin have been produced, they have limitations for the study of expression of native mesothelin because of their low affinity or reactivity only with denatured mesothelin protein. We have produced novel MAbs to mesothelin to help study mesothelin function and to develop improved diagnosis and immunotherapy of mesothelin-expressing tumors. Experimental Design: Mesothelin-deficient mice were immunized with plasmid cDNA encoding mesothelin, and boosted with a mesothelin-rabbit IgG Fc fusion protein prior to cell fusion. Hybridomas were screened by an ELISA using plates coated with mesothelin-Fc protein. Results: Seventeen hybridomas producing anti-mesothelin antibodies were established and shown to react with two epitopes on mesothelin. One group reacts with the same epitope as the low affinity antibody K1 that was originally used to identify mesothelin. The other is a new group that reacts with a new epitope. One antibody from each group was chosen for further study and shown to react strongly on ELISA, on immunohistochemistry, and by fluorescence-activated cell sorting on living cells. Conclusion: Our two newly established MAbs, MN and MB, have different and useful properties compared with current antibodies used for the detection of mesothelin by immunohistochemistry, fluorescence-activated cell sorting, ELISA, and Western blotting.
Extraction of Damping Coefficients of Comb Drive by Partitioning

The interaction between MEMS devices and their environmental fluid is a major design consideration. An efficient macro-model technique is developed in this work to study the impact of fluid damping coefficients for moving parts of MEMS. A comb-based accelerometer has been analyzed to demonstrate the methodology. A systemlevel model is created to analyze the device. Damping templates are exported and incorporated into the systemlevel model. Small signal and transient simulations are run to examine the impact of damping coefficients on device performance. The technique has been applied successfully to extract the damping coefficients of a comb-drive based tunneling accelerometer. The method is simple and fast for damping analysis. It can be applied to accelerometer of other shapes and under large deflections as well.