Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GPU Ray-Casting for Scalable Terrain Rendering

With the ever increasing resolution of scanned elevation models, geometry throughput on the GPU is becoming a severe performance limitation in 3D terrain rendering. In this paper, we investigate GPU ray-casting as an alternative to overcome this limitation, and we demonstrate its advanced scalability compared to rasterization-based techniques. By integrating ray-casting into a tile-based GPU viewer that effectively reduces bandwidth requirements in out-of-core terrain visualization, we show that the rendering performance for large, high-resolution terrain fields can be increased significantly. We show that a screen-space error below one pixel permits piecewise constant interpolation of initial height samples. Furthermore, we exploit the texture mapping capabilities on recent GPUs to perform deferred anisotropic texture filtering, which allows for the rendering of digital elevation models and corresponding photo textures. In two key experiments we compare GPU-based ray-casting to a rasterizationbased approach in the scope of terrain rendering, and we demonstrate the scalability of the proposed ray-caster with respect to display and data resolution.
RELATIVE QUERY RESULTS RANKING FOR ONLINE USERS IN WEB DATABASES

To handle with the problem of so many-answers replied from an online Web database in response to a relative query, this paper proposes a unique approach to rank the similar query results. Depending upon the on the database workload, we hypothesize how much the user worries about each and every attribute and assigns a specific weight to it. Then, based on the relationship among of different attribute values, a user satisfaction degree ranking method develops, which ranks all the answer tuples according to their satisfaction degree level for the initial query asked. Then, for the tuples with the same satisfaction degree, each undefined attribute value is assigned with a score according to its “importance” to the user, which is used for differentiating these tuples. Finally, the results of preparatory experiment shows effectiveness of the ranking techniques used for better user satisfaction in web-database systems.
Science and technology policies in open economies: the case of Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract Technical change and economic development are unequivocally related. But it still is a matter of debate how to close this loop and, even more, how to design proper policies to stimulate knowledge accumulation and diffusion. Evolutionarists and institutionalists demonstrate -to paraphrase Richard Nelson- that a network of formal and informal threads, embodied in what is called the National Innovation System, links the transformation of industrial structure, the accumulation of technological capabilities and the evolution of innovation policies (Cimoli and Dosi, 1995). Taking an evolutionary perspective, the focus of this paper is on technology policy in Latin America and the Caribbean. Two main issues are addressed. The first is to identify changes in the industrial structure, institutions and technology policies in the context of open economies. The second is to analyze market and non-market mechanisms, and supply-side and demand-side incentives responsible, for technical change and innovation, in order to identify technology policy opportunities for the region. The paper ends calling for pragmatism and coordination in technology policy. The need to go beyond a linear logic in innovation policy models the importance of recognizing the complex nature of knowledge and the quasi club good character it assumes in open economies and the crucial role of institutional building and restructuring are the three key pillars of this reality tailored model of technology policy. Actually, effectiveness of technology policies largely depends on the co-ordination and the co-evolution of its objectives, strategies and instruments with the transformation of production and organizational structures. ""
Mcl-1 Is a Key Regulator of Apoptosis during CNS Development and after DNA Damage

Despite the importance of Mcl-1, an anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family member, in the regulation of apoptosis, little is known regarding its role in nervous system development and injury-induced neuronal cell death. Because germline deletion of Mcl-1 results in peri-implantation lethality, we address the function of Mcl-1 in the nervous system using two different conditional Mcl-1 mouse mutants in the developing nervous system. Here, we show for the first time that Mcl-1 is required for neuronal development. Neural precursors within the ventricular zone and newly committed neurons in the cortical plate express high levels of Mcl-1 throughout cortical neurogenesis. Loss of Mcl-1 in neuronal progenitors results in widespread apoptosis. Double labeling with active caspase 3 and Tuj1 reveals that newly committed Mcl1 deficient neurons undergo apoptosis as they commence migration away from the ventricular zone. Examination of neural progenitor differentiation in vitro demonstrated that cell death in the absence of Mcl1 is cell autonomous. Although conditional deletion of Mcl-1 in cultured neurons does not trigger apoptosis, loss of Mcl-1 sensitizes neurons to an acute DNA damaging insult. Indeed, the rapid reduction of Mcl-1 mRNA and protein levels are early events after DNA damage in neurons, and maintaining high Mcl-1 levels can protect neurons against death. Together, our results are the first to demonstrate the requirement of Mcl-1, an anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family protein, for cortical neurogenesis and the survival of neurons after DNA damage.
Implicit measures of user interests through Geographical region and predicting users' future requests in WWW

Nowadays Web users are facing the problems of information overload and drowning due to the significant and rapid growth in the amount of information and the number of users. As a result, how to provide Web users with more exactly needed information is becoming a critical issue in web-based information retrieval and Web applications. In this work, we aim to address improving the performance of Web information retrieval and Web presentation through developing and employing Web data mining paradigms.
The Quality of Ideas: Measuring Innovation with Multiple Indicators

We model early expectations about the value and technological importance ('quality') of a patented innovation as a latent variable common to a set of four indicators: the number of patent claims, forward citations, backward citations and family size. The model is estimated for four technology areas using a sample of about 8000 U.S. patents applied for during 1960-91. We measure how much noise' each individual indicator contains and construct a more informative, composite measure of quality. The variance in quality', conditional on the four indicators, is just one-third of the unconditional variance. We show the variance reduction generated by subsets of indicators, and find forward citations to be particularly important. Our measure of quality is significantly related to subsequent decisions to renew a patent and to litigate infringements. Using patent and R&D data for 100 U.S. manufacturing firms, we find that adjusting for quality removes much of the apparent decline in research productivity (patent counts per R&D) observed at the aggregate level.
Once You Step Over the First Line, You Become Sensitized to the Next: Towards a Gateway Theory of Online Participation

This article proposes a gateway theory as a promising alternative to the traditional antecedents-based view of online participation. The traditional view contends that people plan their online participation based on some rational motivations, leading to a foreseeable route. We arrived at our proposition through two entrance stories. These stories offer rich descriptions of formative experiences and consequent participation progression. Our proposition of the gateway theory consists of two parts: First, participation occurs with uncertainty, involving trial and error, unknown risks and rewards, and the availability of technology-facilitated services. Second, participation consists of sequences of activities, in which each step sensitizes the person to opportunities previously not acknowledged. Consistent with the metaphor of the gateway, the first encounter may often be the most critical step. We argue that the gateway theory offers major opportunities for future research, particularly in conceptualizing the early stages of an individual’s path of online participation.
Practical Volterra equalizers for wideband satellite communications with TWTA nonlinearities

In this paper we consider the performance of Volterra filters in canceling the severe nonlinear amplitude and phase distortions caused by traveling wave tube (TWT) high power amplifiers (HPAs, TWTAs) typically used on many legacy satellite communication systems. The nonlinear nature of Volterra filters would seem to make them a natural choice for canceling intersymbol interference (ISI) resulting from these distortions. Preliminary results of simulation studies using QPSK with up to 5th-order adaptive Volterra kernels filter are presented. The practical aspect of this work is that we would like to achieve good performance while reducing computational complexity, ultimately making efficient implementation on an FPGA feasible. It was found that an LMS adaptive Volterra filter offered significant ISI reduction only at relatively high SNRs (∼25 dB), while at lower (and more typical) SNRs, improvement was only marginal, as noise tended to dominate the LMS algorithm. Adding a 5th-order Volterra kernel to the linear and 3rd-order LMS kernels offered negligible improvement in performance over the linear and 3rd-order kernels alone.
A new gender detection algorithm considering the non-stationarity of speech signal

This paper presents a new pitch based gender detection algorithm by analyzing the non stationary behavior of speech signal. To find pitch a peak detection algorithm is developed which find the dominant frequencies of vowel part of speech signal and then select the fundamental frequency from them. The evaluation is done on the 200 voice samples by using POC as the accuracy parameter. Gender identification is an important step in speaker and speech recognition system. A gender dependent system reduces the size and complexity of the system. Detecting the gender from the non linguistic characteristics of the voice is well known as gender detection. To extract the gender information from the speech signal we have used a feature called pitch from voiced part of the speech signal. To extract the mentioned feature ‘pitch’ from the speech signal we develop a peak detection algorithm and used standard Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique. Further, this feature is used for the speaker's gender classification.
Attributes of fertile spermatozoa: an update.

The process of fertilization can be imagined as an elegant pas de deux, with its success being dependent upon the precise timing and accuracy of a well-choreographed series of steps between male (spermatozoa) and female (oocytes) gametes. Arguably, perhaps the greatest performer in the fertilization process is the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon must actively overcome numerous obstacles and undergo many dynamic changes in order to achieve its destiny, whereas the oocyte assumes a fairly passive role in events leading to and culminating in fertilization. Some of the prefertilization processes that a mammalian spermatozoon must undergo have been revealed only in the last 10-15 years (e.g., Yanagimachi, 1994; Aitken, 1997), while other aspects still remain somewhat enigmatic. In 1989, Amann published his view of parameters that are requisite for the spermatozoon to be considered fertile, and they are as follows: 1) normal structure of vital functional components; 2) fully functional metabolic pathways for production of sperm motion and for maintenance of membrane potentials, ionic microenvironment, pH, or other cellular functions; 3) motility, to penetrate the cervix and the utero-tubal junction, for departure from storage sites, and to contact and penetrate the oocyte and its vestments; 4) presence of peripheral and/or integral proteins that serve as “survival proteins” to protect the spermatozoa from the hostile environment of the female reproductive tract; 5) appropriate responses to the microenvironment and stimuli provided by the female reproductive tract; 6) proteins essential for recognition and binding of the spermatozoon to the zona pellucida and the vitelline membrane; 7) acrosomal enzymes maintained in proenzyme or inhibited form until the appropriate time for assisting in oocyte vestment penetration; 8) fusible plasma and acrosomal membranes; 9) precise tim-
A Survey on Chinese Speech Recognition

This paper gives a comprehensive survey of the recognition techniques that have been applied to Chinese Speech. Speech Recognition systems for multi-syllable languages such as English have been successfully constructed in the last two decades. In recent years, Chinese speech recognition has become a fast developing area of research. This paper attempts to review and summarize techniques and results and highlight the following areas: the characteristics of Chinese spoken language (especially Mandarin and Cantonese), such characteristics have significant bearing on the approaches taken for recognition; the speech recognition framework based on the bisyllabic and tonal nature of Chinese spoken language; the recognition techniques based on bi-syllabic nature; the recognition of Chinese tones; and techniques based on language processing of words and sentence hypothesis. The results of various techniques are reported, compared and commented upon.
A Bayesian Model for Learning SCFGs with Discontiguous Rules

We describe a nonparametric model and corresponding inference algorithm for learning Synchronous Context Free Grammar derivations for parallel text. The model employs a Pitman-Yor Process prior which uses a novel base distribution over synchronous grammar rules. Through both synthetic grammar induction and statistical machine translation experiments, we show that our model learns complex translational correspondences--- including discontiguous, many-to-many alignments---and produces competitive translation results. Further, inference is efficient and we present results on significantly larger corpora than prior work.
Multi-hypothesis map-matching on 3D navigable maps using raw GPS measurements

For many road transport applications, maps of the environment where the vehicles evolve are available. This information can contribute to the positioning process itself. In this paper, global positioning on navigable maps is formalized in a general Bayesian framework. Using a tight integration of map data, a generic solution to multi-hypothesis map-matching is described. This method is then applied to the use of raw GPS measurements: pseudoranges and Dopplers. State space equations are given and a marginalized particle filter is proposed to solve efficiently the problem. Experimental results are presented and show that this approach can provide good results even if few satellites are visible.
Value-Based Reasoning and Norms 1 Trevor Bench-Capon

Norms are designed to guide choice of actions. Valuebased practical reasoning is an approach to explaining and justifying choice of actions in terms of value preferences. Here we explore how value-based practical reasoning can be related to norms and their evolution. Starting from a basic model of a society and the norms that can arise from it, we consider how additional values, and a more sophisticated model, with more detailed states and a history, and a finer grained description of actions, can accommodate more complex norms, and a correspondingly more complex social order.
Optical spatial solitons: historical overview and recent advances

Solitons, nonlinear self-trapped wavepackets, have been extensively studied in many and diverse branches of physics such as optics, plasmas, condensed matter physics, fluid mechanics, particle physics and even astrophysics. Interestingly, over the past two decades, the field of solitons and related nonlinear phenomena has been substantially advanced and enriched by research and discoveries in nonlinear optics. While optical solitons have been vigorously investigated in both spatial and temporal domains, it is now fair to say that much soliton research has been mainly driven by the work on optical spatial solitons. This is partly due to the fact that although temporal solitons as realized in fiber optic systems are fundamentally one-dimensional entities, the high dimensionality associated with their spatial counterparts has opened up altogether new scientific possibilities in soliton research. Another reason is related to the response time of the nonlinearity. Unlike temporal optical solitons, spatial solitons have been realized by employing a variety of noninstantaneous nonlinearities, ranging from the nonlinearities in photorefractive materials and liquid crystals to the nonlinearities mediated by the thermal effect, thermophoresis and the gradient force in colloidal suspensions. Such a diversity of nonlinear effects has given rise to numerous soliton phenomena that could otherwise not be envisioned, because for decades scientists were of the mindset that solitons must strictly be the exact solutions of the cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation as established for ideal Kerr nonlinear media. As such, the discoveries of optical spatial solitons in different systems and associated new phenomena have stimulated broad interest in soliton research. In particular, the study of incoherent solitons and discrete spatial solitons in optical periodic media not only led to advances in our understanding of fundamental processes in nonlinear optics and photonics, but also had a very important impact on a variety of other disciplines in nonlinear science. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of optical spatial solitons. This review will cover a variety of issues pertaining to self-trapped waves supported by different types of nonlinearities, as well as various families of spatial solitons such as optical lattice solitons and surface solitons. Recent developments in the area of optical spatial solitons, such as 3D light bullets, subwavelength solitons, self-trapping in soft condensed matter and spatial solitons in systems with parity–time symmetry will also be discussed briefly.
IT process improvement: Developing an agile model using the DSR approach

A wide range of models supports process improvement in organizations, nevertheless, the absence of a universal model becomes necessary to combine complementary models. The aim of this work is to design and to evaluate SFramework, a useful model for process improvement, because facilitates the reference models combination. The methodology used is Design Science Research (DSR), which prescribes the design and evaluation phases of the new artifact and use of a set of guidelines for this purpose. The design phase develops an agile structured model with generic phases; so, it can be generalizable. In evaluation phase, a case study based on IT standards and best practices is used; the structure and the content of the required documentation for business continuity process are defined. This study evidences that SFramework is operational and technically feasible and the effort expended in its application is relatively low; therefore, it is applicable for process improvement in environments SME type. Also shows a successful case using DSR and complementary methods.
An Ultra-Broadband Subharmonic Mixer With Distributed Amplifier Using 90-nm CMOS Technology

This paper presents a Ka- to F-band ultra-broadband subharmonic mixer (SHM) using the standard 90-nm CMOS process. The proposed SHM employs a distributed amplifier and antiparallel diode pair configuration to realize wide operation bandwidth from 33 to 103 GHz, low conversion loss from 0.52 to 3.35 dB, good local oscillation (LO)-to-RF isolation greater than 27.7 dB, and high 2LO-to-RF isolation better than 60 dB with a miniature chip dimension of 0.49 mm2 at a 10-dBm LO power level. Using the distributed amplifier technique, the proposed SHM offers significant advantages, such as broad operation bandwidth, good flatness, high port-to-port isolation, and good conversion loss.
A Bursting Radio Transient in the Direction of the Galactic Center

The radio sky is poorly sampled for rapidly varying transients because of the narrow field-of-view of most imaging radio telescopes at cm and shorter wavelengths. The emergence of sensitive long wavelength observations with intrinsically larger fields-of-view are changing this situation, as partly illustrated by our ongoing meter-wavelength monitoring observations and archival studies of the Galactic Center. In this search, we discovered a transient, bursting, radio source in the direction of the Galactic Center, GCRT J1745−3009, with extremely unusual properties. Its flux and rapid variability imply a brightness temperature > 1012 K if it is at a distance > 70 pc, implying that it is a coherent emitter. I will discuss the discovery of the source and the subsequent re-detections, as well as searches for counterparts at other wavelengths, and several proposed models.
Randomized crossover comparison of the proseal with the classic laryngeal mask airway in unparalysed anaesthetized patients.

BACKGROUND The ProSeal is a wire-reinforced laryngeal mask airway with an additional drain tube that leads to the distal tip of the laryngeal cuff. The design should improve the seal with the larynx. METHODS The ProSeal and classic laryngeal mask airways were compared in 180 patients in a randomized crossover study. Patients were anaesthetized without neuromuscular blocking drugs. RESULTS The ProSeal took more time and more attempts to insert successfully than the classic laryngeal mask airway. Insertion was successful on the first attempt in 81% of cases with the ProSeal and 90% with the classic laryngeal mask airway. The ProSeal required more air to achieve an intracuff pressure of 60 cm H2O (6 ml more for size 4 and 12 ml more for size 5). Laryngeal seal pressure was better with the ProSeal than the classic laryngeal mask airway. Median seal pressure was 29 cm H2O with the ProSeal and 18 cm H2O with the classic laryngeal mask airway. Laryngeal seal pressure was greater than 20 cm H2O in 87% of patients with the ProSeal and 41% with the classic laryngeal mask airway. Laryngeal seal pressure was greater than 40 cm H2O in 21% of patients with the ProSeal and in none of the patients with the classic laryngeal mask. Once placed, the ProSeal remained a stable and effective airway. Gastric tube insertion through the drain tube was attempted in 147 cases and was successful in 135 (92%). CONCLUSION The ProSeal is more difficult to insert than the classic laryngeal mask airway but allows positive pressure ventilation more reliably than the classic laryngeal mask airway.
First-order interval type-2 TSK fuzzy logic systems using a hybrid learning algorithm

This article presents a new learning methodology based on a hybrid algorithm for interval type-2 TSK fuzzy logic systems (FLS). Using input-output data pairs during the forward pass of the training process, the interval type-2 TSK FLS output is calculated and the consequent parameters are estimated by recursive least-squares (RLS) method. In the backward pass, the error propagates backward, and the antecedent parameters are estimated by back-propagation (BP) method. The proposed hybrid methodology was used to construct an interval type-2 TSK fuzzy model capable of approximating the behaviour of the steel strip temperature as it is being rolled in an industrial Hot Strip Mill (HSM) and used to predict the transfer bar surface temperature at the finishing Scale Breaker (SB) entry zone. Comparative results show the advantage of the hybrid learning method RLS-BP over BP.