Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The identification of nonlinear discrete-time fading-memory systems using neural network models

A fading-memory system is a system that tends to forget its input asymptotically over time. It has been shown that discrete-time fading-memory systems can be uniformly approximated arbitrarily closely over a set of bounded input sequences simply by uniformly approximating sufficiently closely either the external or internal representation of the system. In other words, the problem of uniformly approximating a fading-memory system reduces to the problem of uniformly approximating continuous real-valued functions on compact sets. The perceptron is a parametric model that realizes a set of continuous real-valued functions that is uniformly dense in the set of all continuous real-valued functions. Using the perceptron to uniformly approximate the external and internal representations of a discrete-time fading-memory system results, respectively, in simple finite-memory and infinite-memory parametric system models. Algorithms for estimating the model parameters that yield a best approximation to a given fading-memory system are discussed. An application to nonlinear noise cancellation in telephone systems is presented. >
Offspring size at weaning affects survival to recruitment and reproductive performance of primiparous gray seals

Offspring size affects survival and subsequent reproduction in many organisms. However, studies of offspring size in large mammals are often limited to effects on juveniles because of the difficulty of following individuals to maturity. We used data from a long-term study of individually marked gray seals (Halichoerus grypus; Fabricius, 1791) to test the hypothesis that larger offspring have higher survival to recruitment and are larger and more successful primiparous mothers than smaller offspring. Between 1998 and 2002, 1182 newly weaned female pups were branded with unique permanent marks on Sable Island, Canada. Each year through 2012, all branded females returning to the breeding colony were identified in weekly censuses and a subset were captured and measured. Females that survived were significantly longer offspring than those not sighted, indicating size-selective mortality between weaning and recruitment. The probability of female survival to recruitment varied among cohorts and increased nonlinearly with body mass at weaning. Beyond 51.5 kg (mean population weaning mass) weaning mass did not influence the probability of survival. The probability of female survival to recruitment increased monotonically with body length at weaning. Body length at primiparity was positively related to her body length and mass at weaning. Three-day postpartum mass (proxy for birth mass) of firstborn pups was also positively related to body length of females when they were weaned. However, females that were longer or heavier when they were weaned did not wean heavier firstborn offspring.
Generating ‘Distributed’ Referring Expressions: an Initial Report

• Di Eugenio and Penstein Ros6 were partially supported by Carnegie Mellon Faculty Development Fund # 1-13709. LIn the appropriate context, (la) could also be interpreted as asking H to bring the ironing board into the basement, where S is (or will be, at the time H executes the action). We currently neglect this possibility. down to the basement is a substep in the plan that achieves bring S the ironing board. In these examples, the referring expression in the NP is not sufficient to uniquely identify the intended referent, but it is its linguistic context that adds other necessary constraints. This is the reason why we call these referring expressions distributed. To our knowledge, while many researchers have worked on generating referring expressions, e.g. [Appelt, 1985], [Kronfeld, 1990], [Dale, 1992], [Pattabhiraman and Cercone, 1990], 2 distributed referring expressions have not been addressed yet. Note that the whole linguistic context must be taken into account while generating (lc): this is shown by the redundant and infelicitous
Optimal management of local energy trading in future smart microgrid via pricing

In this paper, we investigate optimal management of local energy trading in future smart micro-grid (SMG) via pricing. In SMG, energy consumers and providers, in addition to trading with utility company, can also perform local energy trading controlled by a local trading manager (LTM) for reaping benefits. We first quantify the benefits achieved by the consumers and providers from local trading and then formulate a two-layered optimization framework to investigate i) how the energy consumers and providers maximize their benefits via appropriately adjusting their local trading decisions in response to the LTM's pricing, and ii) how the LTM adjusts its price in local market to benefit the consumers and providers as much as possible while guaranteeing a required gain for itself. We propose two algorithms to solve the layered optimization problem and perform numerical experiments with practical data set to validate the proposed local trading model and the algorithms.
ON APPLICABILITY OF DEADLOCK PREVENTION POLICIES WITH UNCONTROLLABLE AND UNOBSERVABLE TRANSITIONS

In deadlock prevention, much work has been done under the assumption that all the transitions are controllable and observable. This paper develops a method to decide whether a deadlock prevention policy is applicable to a plant with uncontrollable and unobservable transitions. By solving a set of linear programming problems, a set of critical controllable transitions and a set of critical observable transitions are obtained. A sufficient and necessary condition is developed, under which a deadlock prevention policy is still applicable when there exist uncontrollable and unobservable transitions. It is concluded that a deadlock prevention policy is applicable if and only if the transitions in the set of critical controllable transitions are controllable and the transitions in the set of critical observable transitions are observable.
Formal Methods in Software Product Lines : Concepts , Survey , and Guidelines

Based upon our survey of the literature, software product lines is a fertile research field for the application of formal methods. Most computer scientists and software practitioners, including software product lines researchers, are not exploiting the powerful tools and techniques available in modern formal methods. This paper (i) summarizes the core of modern applied formal methods, (ii) discusses software product lines from a formal methods point-of-view, (iii) surveys the application of formal methods to software product lines research, and, most importantly, (iv) highlights key research opportunities and challenges for joint work between formal methods and software product lines researchers.
Systems Genetics of the Lateral Septal Nucleus in Mouse: Heritability, Genetic Control, and Covariation with Behavioral and Morphological Traits

The lateral septum has strong efferent projections to hypothalamic and midbrain regions, and has been associated with modulation of social behavior, anxiety, fear conditioning, memory-related behaviors, and the mesolimbic reward pathways. Understanding natural variation of lateral septal anatomy and function, as well as its genetic modulation, may provide important insights into individual differences in these evolutionarily important functions. Here we address these issues by using efficient and unbiased stereological probes to estimate the volume of the lateral septum in the BXD line of recombinant inbred mice. Lateral septum volume is a highly variable trait, with a 2.5-fold difference among animals. We find that this trait covaries with a number of behavioral and physiological phenotypes, many of which have already been associated with behaviors modulated by the lateral septum, such as spatial learning, anxiety, and reward-seeking. Heritability of lateral septal volume is moderate (h 2 = 0.52), and much of the heritable variation is caused by a locus on the distal portion of chromosome (Chr) 1. Composite interval analysis identified a secondary interval on Chr 2 that works additively with the Chr 1 locus to increase lateral septum volume. Using bioinformatic resources, we identified plausible candidate genes in both intervals that may influence the volume of this key nucleus, as well as associated behaviors.
Design of Artificial Finger Skin Having Ridges and Distributed Tactile Sensors

An artificial elastic finger for grasping an object, which we call an “artificial finger skin” is designed. Characteristics of the artificial finger skin are as follows: First, it has ridges at the surface and tactile sensors distributed underneath the ridges same as finger of human. Second, it has a curved surface in broad perspective. Third, it is made of an elastic silicone rubber so as to transform elastic deformation to the sensors. A Finite Element (FE) model of the artificial finger skin is made to conduct a dynamic contact analysis using a FE method in order to design the artificial finger skin in detail. As a result, it is confirmed that the designed artificial finger skin can detect partial incipient slippage of the ridge that occurs at the edge of the contact surface even when the weight and friction condition between the artificial finger skin and grasping object are changed.
Anesthetic Management and Surgical Site Infections in Total Hip or Knee Replacement: A Population-based Study

Background:Epidural or spinal anesthesia involves several mechanisms hypothesized to reduce risk of surgical site infections (SSIs) during this decisive period. This study aims to compare the risk of SSI within 30 days of surgery for patients receiving total hip or knee replacement under general anesthesia versus those under epidural or spinal anesthesia. Methods:We used the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database of Taiwan. A total of 3,081 patients who underwent primary total hip or knee replacement from 2002 to 2006 were included in the study. Multivariate logistic regression and propensity score analyses were carried out to explore the relationship between method of surgical anesthesia and SSI occurring within 30 days of surgery. Results:Of the 3,081 sampled patients, 56 patients (1.8%) had 30-day SSIs; 33 (2.8% of all under general anesthesia) of them had general anesthesia, and 23 (1.2% of all under epidural or spinal anesthesia) had epidural or spinal anesthesia (P = 0.002). The odds of SSI for patients receiving total hip or knee replacement under general anesthesia were 2.21 (95% CI = 1.25–3.90, P = 0.007) times higher than those who had the same procedure under epidural or spinal anesthesia, after adjusting for the patient's age, sex, the year of surgery, comorbidities, surgeon's age, and hospital teaching status. Conclusions:Total hip or knee replacement under general anesthesia is associated with higher risk of SSI compared with epidural or spinal anesthesia. Our results support the evolving concept of long-term consequences of anesthesia and emphasize the anesthesiologist's role in preventing SSIs.
"They misunderestimated me"

List of Papers This thesis is based on the following papers, which are referred to in the text by their Roman numerals. (2008) Axon-bearing and axon-less horizontal cell subtypes are generated consecutively during chick retinal development from progenitors that are sensitive to follistatin. (2009) Horizontal cell progenitors arrest in G2-phase and undergo terminal mitosis on the vitreal side of the chick retina. The terminal mitosis of chicken retinal horizontal cells is preceded by a G2-phase arrest that relies on the cyclin B1-Cdk1 complex but is independent of DNA damage. (Submitted to The Journal of Neuroscience) inhibits ganglion cell fate by downregulating Atoh7 and drives the specification of all horizontal cell subtypes in the chick retina. (Submitted to Developmental Biology) (2011) FoxN4 is sufficient for commitment to the retinal horizontal cell fate and is able to instigate differentiation programs in neural progenitors. (Manuscript) Reprints were made with permission from the respective publishers. Cover image depicts a co-labeling of Lim1 (Red) and Isl1 (Green) in the peripheral st24 chicken retina with nuclei visualized by DAPI.
Smart Teddy Bear a vision-based story teller

Young children need their parents' love and care but their parents are not always available to tell them stories. This motivates our proposal of a Smart Teddy Bear, a vision-based story teller, to assist young children in their social-emotional growth. When a young child wants to listen to a story, he or she simply opens any page in that book before a Smart Teddy Bear and the system automatically recognizes which book is of interest and plays the corresponding audio story. Our proposed system is based on the Bag-of-Words model. We propose to eliminate too small visual features and to downscale an image up to 1/16 of its original size to remove up to 70% of unnecessary visual features. Furthermore we ensemble results of multiple lightweight SVM classifiers to boost the overall accuracy. Experimental results show that our system achieves the accuracy of 99.33% with 40 books containing 1369 different pages. We propose the Smart Teddy Bears help children enjoy audio books in a new exciting way through attractive interactions with their lovely toys.
Reducing the effects of artificial light interference in wireless infrared transmission systems

The performance of wireless infrared transmission systems for indoor use is severely impaired by the noise and interference induced by natural and artificial ambient light. In order to combat the effects of ambient light on the system performance, both optical filtering and electrical filtering is usually adopted. However, even when resorting to these techniques, the optical power penalty imposed by the interference may be very large. In particular, the interference produced by fluorescent lamps driven by electronic ballasts imposes very large optical power penalties on systems operating at data rates up to a few tens of Mbps. In this paper, a different technique to overcome the penalty induced by artificial light interference is analysed. This technique explores the different optical spectra of the transmitted signal and the artificial light and the characteristics of optical filtering to cancel the interfering signal. Some aspects of its implementation are also discussed. The results obtained with this approach are shown to be much better than those obtained through electrical high-pass filtering. (10 pages)
A comparison of biased simulation schemes for stochastic volatility models

Using an Euler discretization to simulate a mean-reverting CEV process gives rise to the problem that while the process itself is guaranteed to be nonnegative, the discretization is not. Although an exact and efficient simulation algorithm exists for this process, at present this is not the case for the CEV-SV stochastic volatility model, with the Heston model as a special case, where the variance is modelled as a mean-reverting CEV process. Consequently, when using an Euler discretization, one must carefully think about how to fix negative variances. Our contribution is threefold. Firstly, we unify all Euler fixes into a single general framework. Secondly, we introduce the new full truncation scheme, tailored to minimize the positive bias found when pricing European options. Thirdly and finally, we numerically compare all Euler fixes to recent quasi-second order schemes of Kahl and Jäckel, and Ninomiya and Victoir, as well as to the exact scheme of Broadie and Kaya. The choice of fix is found to be extremely important. The full truncation scheme outperforms all considered biased schemes in terms of bias and root-mean-squared error.
Revolution 89 or ''Distributing UNIX Brings it Back to its Original Virtues''

The need to handle distributed computing in a general manner leads us to structure our operating systems functions in a much more modular way than it is done in today’s systems such as current UNIX kernels, and to provide facilities for dynamic reconfiguration so the system can be adapted to the variety of configurations needed in a distributed system. When applied to the UNIX kernel, such a "restructuring" leads to same kind of "revolution" that UNIX performed on the operating systems of the 70’s, i.e., to extract from the operating system all functions that can better be performed outside, and to leave in the kernel only those generic services that are necessary to provide higher level services, such as high level file access methods, command languages (shell) or system administration functions.
Environmental Risk Assessment of Fluctuating Diazinon Concentrations in an Urban and Agricultural Catchment Using Toxicokinetic–Toxicodynamic Modeling

Temporally resolved environmental risk assessment of fluctuating concentrations of micropollutants is presented. We separated the prediction of toxicity over time from the extrapolation from one to many species and from acute to sublethal effects. A toxicokinetic–toxicodynamic (TKTD) model predicted toxicity caused by fluctuating concentrations of diazinon, measured by time-resolved sampling over 108 days from three locations in a stream network, representing urban, agricultural and mixed land use. We calculated extrapolation factors to quantify variation in toxicity among species and effect types based on available toxicity data, while correcting for different test durations with the TKTD model. Sampling from the distribution of extrapolation factors and prediction of time-resolved toxicity with the TKTD model facilitated subsequent calculation of the risk of undesired toxic events. Approximately one-fifth of aquatic organisms were at risk and fluctuating concentrations were more toxic than their averages. Contribution of urban and agricultural sources of diazinon to the overall risk varied. Thus using fixed concentrations as water quality criteria appears overly simplistic because it ignores the temporal dimension of toxicity. However, the improved prediction of toxicity for fluctuating concentrations may be small compared to uncertainty due to limited diversity of toxicity data to base the extrapolation factors on.
Psicopatología y factores de riesgo durante la residencia

Results. The prevalence of mental disorders was high (49%), but they were generally not very severe. They were associated with the wish to quit the profession and lack of time for social and familiar relationships. In the discriminant analysis, the psychopathology was mainly associated with traits “Neuroticism”, “Self-reproach” and “Distancing” behaviors, personal psychic antecedents, and stress levels resulting mainly from aspects of the training itself.
Unsteady outflow models for cosmological gamma-ray bursts

The 'event' that triggers a gamma-ray burst cannot last for more than a few seconds. This is, however, long compared with the dynamical timescale of a compact stellar-mass object (approximately 10 (exp-3) s). Energy is assumed to be released as an outflow with high mean Lorentz factor Gamma. But a compact stellar-mass collapse or merger is, realistically, likely to generate a mass (or energy) flux that is unsteady on some timescales in the range 10(exp -3) - 10 s. If Gamma fluctuates by a factor of approximately 2 around its mean value, relative motions within the outflowing material will themselves (in the comoving frame) be relativistic, and can give rise to internal shocks. For Gamma approximately 10(exp 2), the resultant dissipation occurs outside the 'photosphere' and can convert a substantial fraction of the overall outflow energy into nonthermal radiation. This suggests a mechanism for cosmological bursts that demands less extreme assumptions (in respect of Gamma-values, freedom from baryonic contamination, etc.) than earlier proposals.
Enhanced Mpeg-4 Low Delay AAC - Low Bitrate High Quality Communication

The MPEG-4 Low Delay Advanced Audio Coding (AAC-LD) scheme has recently evolved into a popular algorithm for audio communication. It produces excellent audio quality at bitrates between 64 kbit/s and 48 kbit/s per channel. This paper introduces an enhancement to AAC-LD which reduces the bitrate demand by 25-33%. This is achieved by adding both a delay-optimized version of the Spectral Band Replication (SBR) tool and by utilizing a dedicated low delay filterbank. The introduced techniques maintain the high audio quality and offer an algorithmic delay low enough for use in two way communication systems. This paper describes the coder enhancements including a detailed discussion of algorithmic delay issues, a performance assessment and possible applications.
Comparative Analysis of the Static and Dynamic Mechanical Eggshell Behaviour of a Chicken Egg

A chicken egg is an already packaged food. An important quality aspect of the packaging material is the mechanical strength of the eggshell. A commonly used technique for the measurement of the shell strength is the quasi-static, non-destructive compression of an egg between two parallel steel plates. The slope of the force-deformation curve is a measure for the stiffness of the shell and for the eggshell strength. However this method is tedious and the required equipment is expensive. An alternative method has been developed based on the vibration behaviour of the egg after impact excitation. A dynamic stiffness parameter, kdyn , is defined which is based on a mathematical mass-spring model of the dynamic behaviour of the egg. Moderate correlations are found between kstat and kdyn. A finite element model of the static and dynamic eggshell behaviour is developed in order to understand better the relationships between the two parameters. The influence of the different material and structural on the mechanical eggshell behaviour is analysed by performing a sensitivity analysis on each single parameter. These results are used to interprete the experimentally observed relationships.
other metazoa and Drosophila Evidence of abundant stop codon readthrough in Material

Genome Res. November , 2011 21: 1929-1943 Brian J. Parker, Ida Moltke, Adam Roth, et al. analysis of vertebrate genomes New families of human regulatory RNA structures identified by comparative Genome Res. November , 2011 21: 1916-1928 Michael F. Lin, Pouya Kheradpour, Stefan Washietl, et al. functions in 29 mammalian genomes Locating protein-coding sequences under selection for additional, overlapping
Scattering, trapped modes and guided waves in waveguides and diffraction gratings

We suggest the numerical approach to detect eigenfrequencies of trapped modes in waveguides or guided waves in diffraction gratings. At the same time, the approach works perfectly for computation of systems with finitely many scattering channels. The most attractive example concerns the possibility of control on electron transport in nano-dimensions system consisting of a resonator and finitely many adjoined channels due to external variable electric field.
La destruction des périkaryas de la formation réticulée mésencéphalique et de l'hypothalamus postérieur n'entraîne pas de troubles majeurs de l'éveil chez le chat

Des micro-injections d'acide ibotenique ont ete realisees au niveau de la formation reticulee mesencephalique et de l'hypothalamus posterieur chez le chat. Cette technique a entraine une destruction presque totale des perikaryas et de ces structures, mais aucun trouble majeur de l'eveil cortical ou comportemental
CSM-420 A Survey - Human Movement Tracking and Stroke Rehabilitation

This technical report reviews recent progress in human movement tracking systems in general, and patient rehabilitation in particular. Major achievements in previous working systems are summarized. Meanwhile, problems in motion tracking that remain open are highlighted along with possible solutions. Finally, discussion is made regarding challenges which remain and a design specification is proposed for a potential tracking system.