Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hierarchical polygon tiling with coverage masks

Contact author at greene@apple.com, Apple Computer, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014 We present a novel polygon tiling algorithm in which recursive subdivision of image space is driven by coverage masks that classify a convex polygon as inside, outside, or intersecting cells in an image hierarchy. This approach permits Warnock-style subdivision with its logarithmic search properties to be driven very efficiently by bit-mask operations. The resulting hierarchical polygon tiling algorithm performs subdivision and visibility computations very rapidly while only visiting cells in the image hierarchy that are crossed by visible edges in the output image. Visible samples are never overwritten. At 512 512 resolution, the algorithm tiles as rapidly as traditional incremental scan conversion, and at high resolution (e.g. 4096 4096) it is much faster, making it well suited to antialiasing by oversampling and filtering. For densely occluded scenes, we combine hierarchical tiling with the hierarchical visibility algorithm to enable hierarchical object-space culling. When we tested this combination on a densely occluded model, it computed visibility on a 4096 4096 grid as rapidly as hierarchical z-buffering [Greene-Kass-Miller93] tiled a 512 512 grid, and it effectively antialiased scenes containing hundreds of thousands of visible polygons. The algorithm requires strict front-toback traversal of polygons, so we represent a scene as a BSP tree or as an octree of BSP trees. When maintaining depth order of polygons is not convenient, we combine hierarchical tiling with hierarchical z-buffering, resorting to z-buffering only in regions of the screen where the closest object is not encountered first. I.3. 7 [Computer Graphics]: ThreeDimensional Graphics and Realism Hidden line/surface removal; I.3. 3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation. tiling, coverage mask, antialiasing, visibility, BSP tree, octree, recursive subdivision.
Anomaly Detection from Distributed Flight Record Data for Aircraft Health Management

Detecting anomalous behavior from terabytes of flight record data has emerged as a crucial component for many systems for Aircraft Health Management. Very often, flight record data collected from various aircraft cannot be directly aggregated for anomaly analysis due to the proprietary nature of the data. This paper proposes a novel general framework for anomaly detection from distributed data sources that cannot be directly merged. In the proposed method, anomaly detection algorithm is first applied to data from individual aircraft and then their results are combined. We investigated eleven semi supervised anomaly detection algorithms, as well as four methods for combining anomaly detection results. Our experiments performed on simulated data have shown that particular anomaly detection algorithms and combining methods are more suitable for the task of distributed anomaly detection than others.
Communication Challenges in Requirements Elicitation and the Use of the Repertory Grid Technique

Requirements elicitation is a central and critical activity in the systems analysis and design process. This paper explores the nature of the challenges that confront analysts and their clients during requirements elicitation. A review of the literature highlights communication as a persistent locus of concern among systems analysts, users and procurers. The paper presents a classification of communication challenges that arise during the requirements elicitation process. Empirical evidence from a brief case study is used to illustrate the scope and impact of these communication challenges and to present a complementary approach to requirements elicitation. The paper introduces the Repertory Grid technique as a means to ameliorate some of the communication issues that persist, particularly in projects where information systems support specialized work. The paper is written in the form of a case tutorial, providing insight into the contribution of the Repertory Grid technique to requirements elicitation.
Pain Following Stroke: A Population-Based Follow-Up Study

Background and Purpose Chronic pain is increasingly recognized as a consequence of stroke. This study aimed to describe the prevalence and pain types of new onset chronic pain (“novel pain”) in patients with stroke compared with a randomly selected reference group from the general population and to identify factors associated with pain development in stroke patients. Methods In a population-based follow-up design, development of chronic pain after stroke was assessed by a questionnaire sent to consecutive stroke patients, registered in a Danish national stroke database, two years after their stroke. A randomly selected sex- and age-matched reference group from the same catchment area received a similar questionnaire about development of new types of chronic pain in the same time period. A total of 608 stroke patients and 519 reference subjects were included in the study. Results Development of novel pain was reported by 39.0% of stroke patients and 28.9% of reference subjects (OR 1.57, CI 1.21-2.04), and was associated with low age and depression in a multivariate model. Daily intake of pain medication for novel pain was reported by 15.3% and 9.4% of the stroke and reference population, respectively. Novel headache, shoulder pain, pain from increased muscle stiffness, and other types of novel pain were more common in stroke patients, whereas joint pain was equally common in the two groups. Conclusions Development of chronic pain is more common in stroke patients compared with sex- and age-matched reference subjects. Evaluation of post-stroke pain should be part of stroke follow-up.
Approach to a Theory of Software Evolution and Software Process

Many of the results of these studies have been published over the past few years. They may be found at the FEAST web site. As part of the investigation, the projects obtained evolution data on a number of systems from its collaborators ICL, Logica, Matra-BAE, MoD-DERA and BT (FEAST/2). Similar data was also received from Lucent Technologies through the good offices of Professor Dewayne Perry, who, together with Professor Wlad Turski, are EPSRC Senior Visiting Fellows to the projects. The release-based systems studied had each been evolved in a sequence of from 15 to 30 releases over some eight to twenty years. Models and analysis of the data and interpretation of the results revealed striking similarities in the evolutionary patterns and long term growth trends of these systems. Moreover the patterns and trends now observed were strikingly similar to those of OS/360 and several other systems studied in the 70s [15]. This despite the fact that the systems studied were developed and evolved by different organisations, addressed different application areas and implemented distinct architectures using different languages. Moreover the systems studied differed in their size by up to two orders of magnitude and in the number of persons involved in their evolution by even more. Since the day to day control of the evolution process was in the hands of humans, differences between the several systems in their short term evolutionary behaviour was to be expected. The similarity of their long term behaviour, however, would have come as a surprise had it not been anticipated by the 70s and 80 interpretation of the initial OS/360 observations, their subsequent phenomenological interpretation and the encapsulation of the observations and their interpretations in a set of laws of software evolution [3,4,5,6,13] prepared the investigators for such commonality. Thus the FEAST/1 results were seen as further support for six of the eight laws and supported many of the other conclusions that had been reached. The new evidence did, however, suggest some minor changes to the wording of the laws [15]. While, over a period of fifteen years, the laws were being developed no thought was given to any relationship between them. Each aspect of the observed behaviour was seen as characterising some attribute of industrial team development and maintenance of software systems and captured in a law. For example, signs of self-stabilisation in the evolutionary behaviour were regarded as symptomatic of the behaviour of …
On the Feasibility of (Practical) Commercial Anonymous Cloud Storage

Current de facto standard payment and billing models for commercial cloud storage services provide a plethora of information to the cloud provider about its clients. This leads to a hostile environment when seen from a privacy perspective. Motivated by recently leaked facts about large scale governmental surveillance efforts as well as the lack of privacy-preserving measures in existing commercial cloud storage services, in this paper, we investigate the feasibility of so called anonymous cloud storage services which require user payment (which we call commercial anonymous cloud storage). Anonymity in this context can be seen as the absence of information to uniquely identify a provider's client that is storing and manipulating data at the provider while at the same time still allowing fair billing, for both, the clients and the cloud provider. Although encrypting data prior to outsourcing helps to protect data privacy and can be achieved without the cloud provider's consent, the issues we are interested in, do not seem to be achievable that easily. However, while various measures for the latter issue, i.e., realizing access privacy, have been studied in the past, the role of privacy in context of billing and payment for cloud storage has, until now, remained unexplored. We therefore introduce an abstract model for commercial cloud storage services to define various types of anonymous cloud storage, study several payment and billing models for cloud storage services and their impact on the anonymity of the service's clients. Moreover, we discuss several solutions to provide anonymity within the different models. Our findings highlight the importance of anonymous payment for the practical deployment of commercial privacy-friendly cloud storage services. Furthermore, we provide directions for future work in some settings, i.e., when anonymous payment is not available, as interesting open challenges.
Perlecan is critical for heart stability.

AIMS Perlecan is a heparansulfate proteoglycan found in basement membranes, cartilage, and several mesenchymal tissues that form during development, tumour growth, and tissue repair. Loss-of-function mutations in the perlecan gene in mice are associated with embryonic lethality caused primarily by cardiac abnormalities probably due to hemopericards. The aim of the present study was to investigate the mechanism underlying the early embryonic lethality and the pathophysiological relevance of perlecan for heart function. METHODS AND RESULTS Perlecan-deficient murine embryonic stem cells were used to investigate the myofibrillar network and the electrophysiological properties of single cardiomyocytes. The mechanical stability of the developing perlecan-deficient mouse hearts was analysed by microinjecting fluorescent-labelled dextran. Maturation and formation of basement membranes and cell-cell contacts were investigated by electron microscopy, immunohistochemistry, and western blotting. Sarcomere formation and cellular functional properties were unaffected in perlecan-deficient cardiomyocytes. However, the intraventricular dye injection experiments revealed mechanical instability of the early embryonic mouse heart muscle wall before embryonic day 10.5 (E10.5). Accordingly, perlecan-null embryonic hearts contained lower amounts of the critical basement membrane components, collagen IV and laminins. Furthermore, basement membranes were absent in perlecan-null cardiomoycytes whereas adherens junctions formed and matured around E9.5. Infarcted hearts from perlecan heterozygous mice displayed reduced heart function when compared with wild-type hearts. CONCLUSION We propose that perlecan plays an important role in maintaining the integrity during cardiac development and is important for heart function in the adult heart after injury.
Network of automated vehicles: The AutoNet2030 vision

AutoNet2030 – Co-operative Systems in Support of Networked Automated Driving by 2030 – is a European project connecting two domains of intensive research: cooperative systems for Intelligent Transportation Systems and Automated Driving. Given the latest developments in the standardization of vehicular communications, vehicles will soon be wirelessly connected, enabling cooperation among them and with the infrastructure. At the same time, some vehicles will offer very advanced driving assistance systems, ranging from Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (C-ACC) to full automation. The research issues addressed in AutoNet2030 are as follows: how can all these vehicles with different capabilities most efficiently cooperate to increase safety and fluidity of the traffic system? What kind of information should be exchanged? Which organization (e.g. centralized or distributed) is the best? The purpose of this paper is to introduce the vision and concepts underlying the AutoNet2030 project and the direction of this ongoing research work.
Extending cognitive work analysis to manufacturing scheduling

This paper discusses the challenges of applying tools associated with cognitive work analysis to a domain that is quite different from the process control domain in which cognitive work analysis was developed. The context of the paper is the design of a decision support system to aid scheduling of tasks within a manufacturing domain typical of job shops. The constraints in the supervisory control of a discrete manufacturing system are more intentional than physical. The paper explores the problems that arise with an intentional system and discusses how they might be overcome.
Lymphadenectomy can be omitted for low-risk endometrial cancer based on preoperative assessments

Objective According to the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics staging, some surgeons perform lymphadenectomy in all patients with early stage endometrial cancer to enable the accurate staging. However, there are some risks to lymphadenectomy such as lower limb lymphedema. The aim of this study was to investigate whether preoperative assessment is useful to select the patients in whom lymphadenectomy can be safely omitted. Methods We evaluated the risk of lymph node metastasis (LNM) using LNM score (histological grade, tumor volume measured in magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], and serum CA-125), myometrial invasion and extrautrerine spread assessed by MRI. Fifty-six patients of which LNM score was 0 and myometrial invasion was less than 50% were consecutively enrolled in the study in which a lymphadenectomy was initially intended not to perform. We analyzed several histological findings and investigated the recurrence rate and overall survival. Results Fifty-one patients underwent surgery without lymphadenectomy. Five (8.9%) who had obvious myometrial invasion intraoperatively underwent systematic lymphadenectomy. One (1.8%) with endometrial cancer which was considered to arise from adenomyosis had para-aortic LNM. Negative predictive value of deep myometrial invasion was 96.4% (54/56). During the mean follow-up period of 55 months, one patient with deep myometrial invasion who refused an adjuvant therapy had tumor recurrence. The overall survival rate was 100% during the study period. Conclusion This preoperative assessment is useful to select the early stage endometrial cancer patients without risk of LNM and to safely omit lymphadenectomy.
NT2OD online: bringing natural text 2 object diagram to the web

Formalizing textual scenario descriptions by deriving object diagrams from them requires the world knowledge of a software developer. The modeling decisions he makes in the process remain in his head unless he discusses them with others. Although this is an important step in the software development process there is near to no tool support for this. With NT2OD Online we will guide him through the process, suggest modeling decisions and keep track of his decisions to reuse them later. Ultimately, we plan to learn crowd sourced modeling decisions and apply them to new textual scenarios. In this idea paper we present the current state of NT2OD and the plans we have for it.
Determinants of Micro and Small Enterprises’ Access to Finance

In developing countries, micro and small enterprises (MSEs) have a dynamic role and serve as engines through which the growth objectives of developing countries can be achieved. The MSE sector has been instrumental in bringing about economic transition by providing goods and services, which are of adequate quality and are reasonably priced, to a large number of people, and by effectively using the skills and talents of a large number of people without requiring high-level training, large sums of capital or sophisticated technology. However access to finance remains to be a major problem hampering MSEs from playing their constructive role in the economy. The main objective of this study was to assess the major determinants of access to finance by using semi structured questionnaire administered to 134 randomly selected MSEs in Asella. Binary logistic regression was used to identify major determinants of access to credit from formal financial institutions and test the hypotheses. The result of the study revealed that age of operator, educational level, and possession of fixed asset, employment size, lending procedure and loan repayment period are significant factors that affect MSEs’ access to credit. MSEs run by operators of >40 years of age, that have reached TVET/College and above, which possess fixed asset, with > 6 employees are more likely to access credit from formal financial institutions than MSEs run by operators of 31-35 years of age, with no formal education, do not have fixed asset and with 1-2 employees. In addition, MSEs run by operators who have negative attitude towards lending procedure and loan repayment period of formal financial institutions are less likely to access credit than those which do not. Considering the role MSEs in employment generation, income generation and poverty alleviation, all stakeholders (government and non-governmental institutions) have responsibilities to facilitate sufficient access of finance for MSEs. Key w ords : Access, Credit, Education, Fixed asset, Size, lending procedure.
Stability and nonlinear adjustment of vortices in Keplerian flows

Aims. We investigate the stability, nonlinear development and equilibrium structure of vortices in a background shearing Keplerian flow Methods. We make use of high-resolution global two-dimensional compressible hydrodynamic simulations. We introduce the concept of nonlinear adjustment to describe the transition of unbalanced vortical fields to a long-lived configuration. Results. We discuss the conditions under which vortical perturbations evolve into long-lived persistent structures and we describe the properties of these equilibrium vortices. The properties of equilibrium vortices appear to be independent from the initial conditions and depend only on the local disk parameters. In particular we find that the ratio of the vortex size to the local disk scale height increases with the decrease of the sound speed, reaching values well above the unity. The process of spiral density wave generation by the vortex, discussed in our previous work, appear to maintain its efficiency also at nonlinear amplitudes and we observe the formation of spiral shocks attached to the vortex. The shocks may have important consequences on the long term vortex evolution and possibly on the global disk dynamics. Conclusions. Our study strengthens the arguments in favor of anticyclonic vortices as the candidates for the promotion of planetary formation. Hydrodynamic shocks that are an intrinsic property of persistent vortices in compressible Keplerian flows are an important contributor to the overall balance. These shocks support vortices against viscous dissipation by generating local potential vorticity and should be responsible for the eventual fate of the persistent anticyclonic vortices. Numerical codes have be able to resolve shock waves to describe the vortex dynamics correctly.
Visualizing source code in 3D Maya software

In this paper is clarify the summaries codes for programmers through three-dimensional shapes, and clearly programmers and developers, scholars and researchers in the field of software engineering, as well as researchers from the representative about threedimensional forms. Through a three-dimensional drawing on a Maya scripts which are based on drawing shapes and three-dimensional stereoscopic show every part of the code, for example, classes, methods, coherence and homogeneity , In these drawings and show clearly and useful.
Optical-Flow Perspective Invariant Registration

In this paper we examine the causes of one of the major shortcomings of current natural feature registration approaches, failure to register when the camera's view approaches parallel to the marker. The methods used by current registration algorithms in the attempt to overcome this problem are reviewed, and a novel tracking based approach called the Optical-flow Perspective Invariant Registration Augmentation (OPIRA) is presented which significantly improves the range of registration. A thorough evaluation of OPIRA is conducted using an external ground truth, showing the improvements possible when combined with leading natural feature registration algorithms such as SIFT, SURF and Ferns.
Behavioral/systems/cognitive Behavioral Sensitization to Cocaine Is Associated with Increased Ampa Receptor Surface Expression in the Nucleus Accumbens

Regulation of AMPA receptor trafficking is important for many forms of neuronal plasticity. In this study, a protein cross-linking assay was used to evaluate the contribution of AMPA receptor trafficking to plasticity associated with behavioral sensitization, an animal model of drug addiction. Cross-linking was used to distinguish between cell surface and intracellular AMPA receptors in nucleus accumbens (NAc) tissue obtained from rats treated repeatedly with saline or cocaine. Surface/intracellular (S/I) ratios for glutamate receptor 1 (GluR1) and GluR2/3 subunits were increased 21 d after the last injection in cocaine-sensitized rats but not rats that failed to sensitize, and the magnitude of the S/I ratio for cocaine-sensitized rats was positively correlated with the magnitude of behavioral sensitization. At the 1 d withdrawal time, cocaine did not alter S/I ratios, and there was no correlation between S/I ratios and behavioral sensitization. The majority of surface-expressed GluR1 detected with this assay was associated with synapses, based on coimmunoprecipitation with postsynaptic density protein of 95 kDa. These findings suggest that behavioral sensitization to cocaine is associated with a slowly developing redistribution of AMPA receptors to the surface of NAc neurons. Motor execution of drug-seeking responses depends on activation of AMPA receptors on NAc neurons by glutamate afferents originating in cortical and limbic regions. We propose that drug-seeking responses are more effectively triggered in cocaine-sensitized rats because of increased cell surface expression of AMPA receptors.
Granulometry Using Image Transformation Techniques

In this paper, we presentour preliminary studyon using transformation-based techniquesfor performinggranulometry analysis. We examinespecificallythe problemof the particlesizeanalysisin oil sandimages.In contrastto conventional methodsof size analysis,we avoid the difficult stepof image segmentationand derive information about the sizedistribution of the particles in the images directly by thetransformationtechniquesof Fourier analysisand scale-spacedecomposition.We havetestedour techniques onbothsimulatedartificial dataandreal videoimages,and demonstr atedthefeasibilityof theproposedapproaches.