Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cooperative Stabilization of a Class of LTI Plants With Distributed Observers

Over the last decades, the cooperative design of complex networked systems has received an increasing attention in real-world engineering practices. Traditionally, each node in the network is assumed to obtain the same signal. However, each agent often possesses different measurement due to the observability or configuration of the systems. To solve the stabilization problem in this case, we aim to establish a unified framework for the cooperative control of complex network with distributed observers. In detail, different from the traditional centralized design, this paper initiates a cooperative approach by only using the local information of the networked systems. In allusion to the three kinds of representative networks, this paper establishes some sufficient or necessary conditions for the existence of network parameters that guarantee the stabilization of the LTI plants. Moreover, some corresponding algorithms are developed to find the suitable parameters of networked observers. Last but not least, numerical simulations are also provided to verify the above theoretical results.
Optimized Generation of Stereoscopic CGI Films by 3D Image Warping

The generation of a stereoscopic animation film requires doubling the rendering times and hence the cost. In this paper, we address this problem and propose an automatic system for generating a stereo pair from a given image and its depth map. Although several solutions exist in the literature, the high standards of image quality required in the context of a professional animation studio forced us to develop specially crafted algorithms that avoid artefacts caused by occlusions, anti‐aliasing filters, etc. This paper describes all the algorithms involved in our system and provides their GPU implementation. The proposed system has been tested with real‐life working scenarios. Our experiments show that the second view of the stereoscopic pair can be computed with as little as 15% of the effort of the original image while guaranteeing a similar quality.
A context-aware system for personalized and accessible pedestrian paths

This work presents mPASS (mobile Pervasive Accessibility Social Sensing), a social and ubiquitous context aware system to provide users with personalized and accessible pedestrian paths and maps. In order to collect a complete data set, our system gathers information from different sources: sensing, crowdsourcing and data produced by local authors and disability organizations. Gathered information are tailored to user's needs and preferences on the basis of his/her context, defined by his/her location, his/her profile and quality of data about the personalized path. To support the effectiveness of our approach, we have developed a prototype, which is described in this paper, together with some results of the context-based adaptation.
Sort order preserving data compression for extended alphabets

The compression method is based on composing phrases from symbols. The authors extend the sort-order property to parsing models, i.e. to Variable-to-Fixed Length codes, or a static Ziv-Lempel algorithm, or alternatively a Tunstall algorithm for an adjoint source. The parsed phrases comprising the original storage data units have the same position in the sort ordering as the original units themselves. The VFL result may be further compressed by use of Variable-to-Variable Length techniques based on the relative frequencies of the parsed phrases. The sort-order property is facilitated by an 'end of record' symbol and requires a new zilch symbol. <<ETX>>
A Mode-Superposed Microstrip Patch Antenna and Its Yagi Array With High Front-to-Back Ratio

A new microstrip patch antenna with a linear superposition of its even and odd modes is proposed for a high front-to-back (F/B) ratio. With the mode superposition, the patch antenna has its main beam in the forward quadrant space and an inherent high F/B ratio. The antenna exhibits a vertical polarization in the ground plane. With a low profile, the patch antenna generates a wide impedance bandwidth though a relatively narrow radiation bandwidth (F/B > 15 dB). In order to have a wider radiation bandwidth with a high F/B ratio, a vertically polarized Yagi array antenna is constructed based on the patch antenna, with an electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure as a reflector and a quarter-wavelength patch antenna as a director. (The employment of the EBG structure is helpful for the enhancement of the F/B ratio, but it increases the array size on the other hand.) Measured results show that the constructed Yagi array antenna with a low profile of 0.025 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\lambda_{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> achieves an impedance bandwidth of 11.5% (4.83–5.42 GHz) for <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\vert {S}_{{11}} \vert$ </tex-math></inline-formula> < −10 dB. Moreover, it has a wide radiation bandwidth of 10.1% (4.90–5.42 GHz), in which the F/B ratio is higher than 15 dB and the gain is from 8.5 to 9.5 dBi.
New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind: Naturalism and dualism in the study of language and mind

The terms of the title can be understood in various ways, along with the frameworks in which they are embedded. I would like to outline interpretations that I think are useful and proper, and to suggest a more general thesis, which would require much more comprehensive argument: that there is no coherent alternative to proceeding in this way for the range of issues addressed, and that other endeavors in roughly the same realm are clarified and facilitated if understood as extensions of the approach outlined. Deflating the terms Putting “language” aside for the moment, let's begin by taking the other terms of the title in ways that are innocent of far-reaching implications, specifically, divorced from any metaphysical connotations. Take the term “mind” or, as a preliminary, “mental. ” Consider how we use such terms as “chemical,” “optical,” or “electrical. ” Certain phenomena, events, processes, and states are called “chemical” (etc.), but no meta-physical divide is suggested by that usage. These are just various aspects of the world that we select as a focus of attention for the purposes of inquiry and exposition. I will understand the term “mental” in much the same way, with something like its traditional coverage, but without metaphysical import and with no suggestion that it would make any sense to try to identify the true criterion or mark of the mental.
Distributed Collision-Resolvable Medium Access Control for Wireless LANs with Interference Cancellation Support

Medium access control is critical in wireless networks for efficient spectrum utilization. In this paper, we introduce a novel collision resolution method based on the technique of known interference cancellation, and propose a new MAC protocol named as CR-MAC, in which AP tries to decode all the collided data packets by combining partial retransmissions and known interference cancellation. As the collided transmissions are fully utilized, less retransmission is required, especially in a crowded network. The NS-2simulation and MATLAB numerical results show that, under various network settings, CR-MAC performs much better than the IEEE 802.11 DCF in terms of the aggregation throughput and the expected packet delay.
Urbanicity, income, and academic and behavioral functioning across childhood: Longitudinal associations and mediating mechanisms

Economic disparities in academic and behavioral functioning are well documented in the U.S. Compared to more advantaged peers, low-income children begin kindergarten with fewer of the competencies that undergird school success. These disparities persist or grow as children age and ultimately relate to low educational attainment, worse psychological functioning, and intergenerational transmission of poverty in adulthood. In addressing income gaps in development, we must consider the changing geography of poverty. The last several decades have seen increases in the number of low-income families residing in suburbs and small towns, while poverty rates in urban centers and rural communities have remained high. Currently, low- income children are dispersed across communities spanning the urban-rural continuum. Urban, suburban, and rural areas represent unique contexts for development, which may alter relations between income and academic and behavioral functioning. In a series of studies using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998- 1999 (N≈16,000) and data from the Early Steps Multisite Study of 731 low-income families with children, this dissertation explores (1) whether links between family income and achievement and behavior problems at kindergarten entry differ by urbanicity; (2) whether links between income and growth/decline in achievement and behavior problems across elementary school differ by urbanicity; and (3) the processes that explain why economic disadvantage is differentially related to development across urbanicity. Results show that income gaps in kindergarten achievement are attenuated in rural areas and exacerbated in urban cities. Conversely, economic disparities in externalizing problems at kindergarten are largest in rural areas and small cities and relatively small in large urban cities and suburbs. Looking from kindergarten through fifth grade, income is more strongly linked to achievement growth and is more predictive of decreased risk of elevated behavior problems in rural areas and small cities compared to large cities and suburbs. Finally, within a sample of disadvantaged 5-year-olds, findings suggest that low-income rural children have better academic skills and fewer behavior problems than peers in urban areas, and this is partially explained by comparatively lower levels of pollution and neighborhood danger experienced by low-income rural children and families.
A .NET framework for an integrated fault diagnosis and failure prognosis architecture

This paper presents a . NET framework as the integrating software platform linking all constituent modules of the fault diagnosis and failure prognosis architecture. The inherent characteristics of the . NET framework provide the proposed system with a generic architecture for fault diagnosis and failure prognosis for a variety of applications. Functioning as data processing, feature extraction, fault diagnosis and failure prognosis, the corresponding modules in the system are built as . NET components that are developed separately and independently in any of the . NET languages. With the use of Bayesian estimation theory, a generic particle-filtering-based framework is integrated in the system for fault diagnosis and failure prognosis. The system is tested in two different applications — bearing spalling fault diagnosis and failure prognosis and brushless DC motor turn-to-turn winding fault diagnosis. The results suggest that the system is capable of meeting performance requirements specified by both the developer and the user for a variety of engineering systems.
Inside the planning fallacy: The causes and consequences of optimistic time predictions.

Individuals, organizations, and governments all commonly plan projects and estimate when they will be completed. Kahneman and Tversky (1979) suggested that such estimates tend to be optimistic because planners rely on their best-case plans for a current project even though similar tasks in the past have typically run late. As a result of this planning fallacy, predicted completion times for specific future tasks tend to be more optimistic than can be justified by the actual completion times or by the predictors' general beliefs about the amount of time such tasks usually take. Anecdotal evidence of the planning fallacy abounds. The history of grand construction projects is rife with optimistic and even unrealistic predictions (Hall, 1980), yet current planners seem to be unaffected by this bleak history. One recent example is the Denver International Airport, which opened 16 months late in 1995 with a construction-related cost overrun of $3.1 billion; when interest payments are added, the total cost is 300% greater than initially projected. The Eurofighter, a joint defense project of a number of European countries, was scheduled to go into service in 1997 with a total project cost of 20 billion Eurodollars; it is currently expected to be in service in 2002 with a total cost of some 45 billion Eurodollars. One of the most ambitious regional mega-projects is Boston's Central Artery/Tunnel expressway project, originally scheduled to open in 1999. The project is currently forecast to open 5 years late and double the original budget.
Biological redundancy of endogenous GPCR ligands in the gut and the potential for endogenous functional selectivity

This review focuses on the existence and function of multiple endogenous agonists of the somatostatin and opioid receptors with an emphasis on their expression in the gastrointestinal tract. These agonists generally arise from the proteolytic cleavage of prepropeptides during peptide maturation or from degradation of peptides by extracellular or intracellular endopeptidases. In other examples, endogenous peptide agonists for the same G protein-coupled receptors can be products of distinct genes but contain high sequence homology. This apparent biological redundancy has recently been challenged by the realization that different ligands may engender distinct receptor conformations linked to different intracellular signaling profiles and, as such the existence of distinct ligands may underlie mechanisms to finely tune physiological responses. We propose that further characterization of signaling pathways activated by these endogenous ligands will provide invaluable insight into the mechanisms governing biased agonism. Moreover, these ligands may prove useful in the design of novel therapeutic tools to target distinct signaling pathways, thereby favoring desirable effects and limiting detrimental on-target effects. Finally we will discuss the limitations of this area of research and we will highlight the difficulties that need to be addressed when examining endogenous bias in tissues and in animals.
Extensive Structural Renovation of Retrogenes in the Evolution of the Populus Genome1[W][OA]

Retroposition, as an important copy mechanism for generating new genes, was believed to play a negligible role in plants. As a representative dicot, the genomic sequences of Populus (poplar; Populus trichocarpa) provide an opportunity to investigate this issue. We identified 106 retrogenes and found the majority (89%) of them are associated with functional signatures in sequence evolution, transcription, and (or) translation. Remarkably, examination of gene structures revealed extensive structural renovation of these retrogenes: we identified 18 (17%) of them undergoing either chimerization to form new chimerical genes and (or) intronization (transformation into intron sequences of previously exonic sequences) to generate new intron-containing genes. Such a change might occur at a high speed, considering eight out of 18 such cases occurred recently after divergence between Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and Populus. This pattern also exists in Arabidopsis, with 15 intronized retrogenes occurring after the divergence between Arabidopsis and papaya (Carica papaya). Thus, the frequency of intronization in dicots revealed its importance as a mechanism in the evolution of exon-intron structure. In addition, we also examined the potential impact of the Populus nascent sex determination system on the chromosomal distribution of retrogenes and did not observe any significant effects of the extremely young sex chromosomes.
High Speed Clock and Data Recovery Techniques

This thesis presents two contributions in the area of high speed clock and data recovery systems. These contributions are focused on the fast phase recovery and adaptive equalization techniques.The first contribution of this thesis is an adaptive engine for a 2x blind sampling receiver. The proposed adaptation engine is able to find the phase-dependent DFE coefficients of the receiver on the fly. The second contribution is a burst-mode clock and data recovery architecture which uses an analog phase interpolator. The proposed burst-mode CDR is capable of locking to the first data transition it receives. The phase interpolator uses the inherent timing information in the data transition to rotate the phase of a reference clock and align it with the incoming data edge. The feasibility of the concept is demonstrated through fabrication and measurements.
Architecture-aware optimization targeting multithreaded stream computing

Optimizing program execution targeted for Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) can be very challenging. Our ability to efficiently map serial code to a GPU or stream processing platform is a time consuming task and is greatly hampered by a lack of detail about the underlying hardware. Programmers are left to attempt trial and error to produce optimized codes. Recent publication of the underlying instruction set architecture (ISA) of the AMD/ATI GPU has allowed researchers to begin to propose aggressive optimizations. In this work, we present an optimization methodology that utilizes this information to accelerate programs on AMD/ATI GPUs. We start by defining optimization spaces that guide our work. We begin with disassembled machine code and collect program statistics provided by the AMD Graphics Shader Analyzer (GSA) profiling toolset. We explore optimizations targeting three different computing resources: 1) ALUs, 2) fetch bandwidth, and 3) thread usage, and present optimization techniques that consider how to better utilize each resource. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed optimization approach on an AMD Radeon HD3870 GPU using the Brook+ stream programming language. We describe our optimizations using two commonly-used GPGPU applications that present very different program characteristics and optimization spaces: matrix multiplication and back-projection for medical image reconstruction. Our results show that optimized code can improve performance by 1.45x--6.7x as compared to unoptimized code run on the same GPU platform. The speedup obtained with our optimized implementations are 882x (matrix multiply) and 19x (back-projection) faster as compared with serial implementations run on an Intel 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo with a 2 GB main memory.
Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility Policy in the European Union: A Discursive Institutionalist Analysis

Using a discursive institutionalist framework, this article analyses and assesses the recent development of EU CSR (corporate social responsibility) policy, focusing particularly on its evolution during the past decade. In so doing, the article scrutinizes the interactive processes associated with the policy construction at the EU level and explores the main sets of ideas that competed for acceptance. The analysis exposes the degree to which the ‘voluntary’ approach prevails over the ‘regulated’ mode of policy implementation. The data captured trigger a re‐examination of some persistent, broader questions about the merits and deficiencies in EU policy‐making.
Fault diagnosis of a sensor network

This paper proposes a novel fault diagnosis scheme for a sensor network of a cascade, parallel and feedback combination of subsystems. The objective is to detect and isolate a fault in any of the subsystems and measurement sensors which are subject to disturbances and measurement noise. A bank of Kalman filters (KF) is employed to detect and isolate faults. Each KF is driven by either a pair (a) of consecutive sensor measurements or (b) of a reference input and a measurement. It is shown that the KF residual is an indicator of a fault in subsystems and sensors located in the path between the pair of the KF's input. The simple and efficient procedure proposed here analyzes each of the associate paths and leads to the fault detection and isolation. The scheme is successfully evaluated on several simulated examples and a physical fluid system exemplified by a benchmarked laboratory-scale two-tank system to detect and isolate faults including sensor, actuator and leakage ones.
Regulation of the dnaK operon of Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) is governed by HspR, an autoregulatory repressor protein

The dnaK operon of Streptomyces coelicolor contains four genes (5'-dnaK-grpE-dnaJ-hspR). The fourth gene encodes a novel heat shock protein, HspR, which appears so far to be unique to the high-G+C actinomycete group of bacteria. HspR binds with high specificity to three inverted repeat sequences in the promoter region of the S. coelicolor dnaK operon, strongly suggesting a direct role for HspR in heat shock gene regulation. Here we present genetic and biochemical evidence that HspR is the repressor of the dnaK operon. Disruption of hspR leads to high-level constitutive transcription of the dnaK operon. Parallel transcriptional analyses of groESL1 and groEL2 expression demonstrated that heat shock regulation of the groE genes was essentially unaffected in an hspR null mutant, although the basal (uninduced) level of groEL2 transcription was slightly elevated compared with the wild type. The results of HspR titration experiments, where the dnaK operon promoter region was cloned at ca. 50 copies per chromosome, were consistent with the prediction that HspR functions as a negative autoregulator. His-tagged HspR, overproduced and purified from Escherichia coli, was shown to repress transcription from the dnaK operon promoter in vitro, providing additional evidence for the proposal that HspR directly regulates transcription of the dnaK operon. These studies indicate that there are at least two transcriptional mechanisms for controlling heat shock genes in S. coelicolor--one controlling the dnaK operon and another controlling the groE genes.
Pull or Push? Octopuses Solve a Puzzle Problem

Octopuses have large brains and exhibit complex behaviors, but relatively little is known about their cognitive abilities. Here we present data from a five-level learning and problem-solving experiment. Seven octopuses (Octopus vulgaris) were first trained to open an L shaped container to retrieve food (level 0). After learning the initial task all animals followed the same experimental protocol, first they had to retrieve this L shaped container, presented at the same orientation, through a tight fitting hole in a clear Perspex partition (level 1). This required the octopuses to perform both pull and release or push actions. After reaching criterion the animals advanced to the next stage of the test, which would be a different consistent orientation of the object (level 2) at the start of the trial, an opaque barrier (level 3) or a random orientation of the object (level 4). All octopuses were successful in reaching criterion in all levels of the task. At the onset of each new level the performance of the animals dropped, shown as an increase in working times. However, they adapted quickly so that overall working times were not significantly different between levels. Our findings indicate that octopuses show behavioral flexibility by quickly adapting to a change in a task. This can be compared to tests in other species where subjects had to conduct actions comprised of a set of motor actions that cannot be understood by a simple learning rule alone.