Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visual Semantic Robot Navigation in Indoor Environments

This work proposes a robot navigation framework based on semantic information extracted from visual data. The robot rather than navigating by following a sequence of metric poses, is able to reach its targets by activating behaviors described by natural language (e.g. get out of the room, follow the corridor, and then enter the room at the right). The system operates without prior map knowledge or a metric representation. This type of navigation is inspired from humans, where places are not described in terms of a global map but with semantic information. One of the advantages of this representation is that the system is able to recover from errors occurring in case of conflicts with the current context. E.g. a corridor-centering behavior activated inside a room.
New model multilevel inverter using Nearest Level Control Technique

In this paper a new 11 level multi inverter topology introduced by the NearestLevel Control method. By this topology we are reducing the switches for the reduction of switching losses and harmonic distortions. The reduction of power switches in the topology leads to the minimization of size and cost of the system. The new topology is compared to the different techniques present and this model is controlled by Pulse Width Modulation. The performance of this 11 level multi inverter topology is higher in the power applications where it is simulated in the MATLAB. The results are verified and compared to the various techniques.
Real-time Speed Limit Traffic Sign Detection System for Robust Automotive Environments

This paper describes a hardware-oriented algorithm and its conceptual implementation in a real-time speed limit traffic sign detection system on an automotive-oriented field-programmable gate array (FPGA). It solves the training and color dependence problems found in other research, which saw reduced recognition accuracy under unlearned conditions when color has changed. The algorithm is applicable to various platforms, such as color or grayscale cameras, high-resolution (4K) or low-resolution (VGA) cameras, and high-end or low-end FPGAs. It is also robust under various conditions, such as daytime, night time, and on rainy nights, and is adaptable to various countries’ speed limit traffic sign systems. The speed limit traffic sign candidates on each grayscale video frame are detected through two simple computational stages using global luminosity and local pixel direction. Pipeline implementation using results-sharing on overlap, application of a RAM-based shift register, and optimization of scan window sizes results in a small but highperformance implementation. The proposed system matches the processing speed requirement for a 60 fps system. The speed limit traffic sign recognition system achieves better than 98% accuracy in detection and recognition, even under difficult conditions such as rainy nights, and is implementable on the low-end, low-cost Xilinx Zynq automotive Z7020 FPGA.
Computing Transport Properties of Molecular and Ionic Fluids Using Atomistic Simulations

by Manish Sushil Kelkar The journey of thousand miles begins with one step. Lao Tsze [in ‘The Simple Way’] We report the results of first atomistic simulation study to compute the thermal conductivity of ionic liquid as well as the effect of water content on the transport properties (such as viscosity and thermal conductivity) of these liquids. Atomistic simulations are conducted to examine the dependence of the transport properties of ionic liquids (1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide and 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium ethylsulfate) on temperature and water content. A nonequilibrium molecular dynamics procedure is utilized along with an established fixed charge force field. It is found that the simulations quantitatively capture the temperature dependence of the viscosity. They also qualitatively capture the drop in viscosity that occurs with increasing water content. Using mixture viscosity models, it is shown that the relative drop in viscosity with water content is actually less than that which would be predicted for an ideal system. This finding is at odds with the popular notion that small amounts of water cause an Manish Sushil Kelkar unusually large drop in the viscosity of ionic liquids. The simulations suggest that due to preferential association of water with anions and the formation of water clusters, the excess molar volume is negative. This means that dissolved water is actually less effective at lowering the viscosity of these mixtures when compared to a solute obeying ideal mixing behavior. The experimental results for thermal conductivity of 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium ethylsulfate were not yet available but the simulation results were in good agreement with the experimental results of other ionic liquids. Classical atomistic simulations are also used to compute the enthalpy of vaporization of a series of ionic liquids comprised of the 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium cations paired with the bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide anion. The calculations show that the enthalpy of vaporization is the lowest for neutral ion pairs. Nonneutral clusters have much higher vaporization enthalpies than their neutral counterparts, and thus are not expected to make up a significant fraction of volatile species. The enthalpy of vaporization increases slightly as the cation alkyl chain length increases and as temperature decreases.
Applying a New Parallelized Version of PSO Algorithm for Electrical Power Transmission

In this paper, the optimization of an electric power transmission material is presented giving specific consideration on material configuration and characteristics. The nature of electric power transmission networks makes it hard to manage. Thus, giving need for optimization. So the problem of optimization of electric power transmission as considered in this paper is improving the performance and reliability of the electricity pylon; the objective is to maximize resistance to load while reducing material usage and cost. For this purpose, we suggest a new version of PSO algorithm that allows the amelioration of its performance by introducing its parallelization associated to the concept of evolutionary neighborhoods. According to the experimental results, the proposed method is effective and outperforms basic PSO in terms of solution quality, accuracy, constraint handling, and time consuming.
A COMPARISON BETWEEN 2D PLATE CALIBRATION AND WAND CALIBRATION FOR 3D KINEMATIC SYSTEMS

Compared to a 2D plate camera calibration and a traditional 3D calibration cage, it is generally regarded that a wand-based camera calibration of 3D photogrammetric systems is more user-friendly. Not surprisingly, nowadays commercially available 3D kinematic systems for a human motion analysis are offering almost exclusively a wand calibration. Still a 2D calibration plate is continuously used in a number of other applications and it has potential advantages over the wand. However, there appears to be no published work comparing a 2D plate and a wand calibration, at least when it comes to the commercially available 3D kinematic systems. Therefore, in this work we compared a 2D plate calibration and wand calibration for a typical and very popular 3D kinematic system. We demonstrated that there was basically no difference in the reconstruction accuracy and additionally most qualitative issues were, as a rule, favorable to a wand calibration.
Saving Lives by Saving Time: Association between Measurement Scale and Time to Complete Safety Attitudes Questionnaire

In our recent article, we showed two different approaches to providing more efficiency in administering the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ): One was to reveal items conveying a small amount of information so that they could be removed from the survey questionnaire without compromising its validity [1]; the other was to adopt different levels of measurement, such as a 3-point Likert scale and simple agree/disagree (dichotomized) scale. The former approach does not need any more explanation, but the latter requires empirical evidence. The different response options provide valid estimates of safety culture compared to the previously used 5-point Likert scale. With the help of item response theory, we carefully reached the tentative conclusion that a simpler scale can provide almost equivalent culture estimates to the original scale [2]. However, for the second approach of using simpler response options, a missing link remained—namely, whether such collapsed response options really reduce the time required to complete the survey. Without such an understanding, any discussion on efficiency of different response options is meaningless. To answer the question, we conducted this simple study; we applied different response options to SAQ and measured the time the participating healthcare professionals needed to complete the questionnaire. We are aware of the issues caused by measurement scale changes, especially qualitative aspects such as how people react differently when faced with different response options. Most of those issues were addressed in our previous article [2]. Thus, we intentionally neglected those theoretical issues and focused exclusively on the time required to finish the survey when using different response options: a 5-point Likert scale (1=disagree strongly, 2=disagree slightly, 3=neutral, 4=agree slightly, 5=agree strongly), a 3-point Likert scale (1=disagree, 2=neutral, 3=agree), and a dichotomized scale (0=disagree, 1=agree).
Ranking of Database Query Results Based on Concept Hierarchies

Search queries on biomedical databases, such as PubMed, often return a large number of results, only a small subset of which is relevant to the user. Ranking and categorization, which can also be combined, have been proposed to alleviate this information overload problem. Results categorization for biomedical databases is the focus of this work. A natural way to organize biomedical citations is according to their MeSH annotations. MeSH is a comprehensive concept hierarchy used by PubMed. In this paper, we present the BioNav system, a novel search interface that enables the user to navigate large number of query results by organizing them using the MeSH concept hierarchy. First, the query results are organized into a navigation tree. At each node expansion step, BioNav reveals only a small subset of the concept nodes, selected such that the expected user navigation cost is minimized. In contrast, previous works expand the hierarchy in a predefined static manner, without navigation cost modeling. We show that the problem of selecting the best concepts to reveal at each node expansion is NPcomplete and propose an efficient heuristic as well as a feasible optimal algorithm for relatively small trees. We show experimentally that BioNav outperforms state-of-the-art categorization systems with respect to the user navigation cost. We have implemented BioNav for the MEDLINE database at http://db.cse. buffalo.edu/bionav.
Discrete-time LQ optimal repetitive control

LQ optimal repetitive control is developed in a single-input single-output discrete-time signal/system framework. For a given plant and a stabilizing controller, the LQ optimal repetitive control system can be obtained by the addition of a plug-in unit to the existing control system. The overall behaviour (stochastic behaviour, stability robustness etc.) of the new system can be improved by the appropriate choice/tuning of the design parameters.
On the Optimality of Repetition Coding among Rate-1 DC-offset STBCs for MIMO Optical Wireless Communications

In this paper, an optical wireless multiple-input multiple-output communication system employing intensity-modulation direct-detection is considered. The performance of direct current offset spacetime block codes (DC-STBC) is studied in terms of pairwise error probability (PEP). It is shown that among the class of DC-STBCs, the worst-case PEP corresponding to the minimum distance between two codewords is minimized by repetition coding (RC), under both electrical and optical individual power constraints. It follows that, under these constraints, RC is optimal among all DC-STBCs in terms of worst-case PEP for static channels and also for varying channels under any turbulence statistics. This result agrees with previously published numerical results showing the superiority of RC in such systems. It also agrees with previously published theoretical results under log-normal turbulence, and further extends this to arbitrary turbulence statistics. This shows the redundancy of the time-dimension of the DC-STBC in this system. This is further extended to sum power constraints with static and turbulent channels, where it is also shown that the time dimension is redundant, and the optimal DCSTBC has a spatial beamforming structure. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the difference in performance for systems with different numbers of receiving apertures and different throughput.
Correlation and regression analysis in sorghum under different levels of nitrogen

An experiment was conducted with sorghum varieties and different levels of nitrogen to study the correlation between traits and to study the effect of these traits on grain yield to define which traits can be considered as selection criteria for yield improvement in sorghum. A factorial irrigated field experiment was carried out in R.C. B.D. layout with three replications in Iraq, four sorghum varieties (AlKhir, Enkath, Kafir, and Rabeh) were planted under three levels of nitrogen (80,100,120) kg/h manually in 2016 at two sites. After harvest, correlation and regression analysis were studied between grain yield as the dependent variable and each of the following traits as independent variables (dry and green fodder weight, leaf area index, plant height, stem diameter, grain number and grain weight, nitrogen level). Results showed that all studied traits except grain weight were highly significantly correlated with grain yield, and about 35% of variation in grain yield could be explained by the level of nitrogen fertilizer, and also showed that plant height and dry and green fodder weight were the major contributors towards grain yield since these traits explained about (57, 52, 50)% respectively of the variation of grain yield, followed by stem diameter and grain number then leaf area index, which might be a good traits to breeders for developing high yielding cultivars in sorghum.
Bit commitment protocol based on random oblivious transfer via quantum channel

Constructing oblivious transfer and bit commitment protocols based on channel’s quantum nature to achieve statistical security has always been a basic aspect of quantum cryptography. Here we put forward a scheme to reach this goal. The idea is constructing first a random oblivious transfer (R-OT, an extension of Rabin’s OT) protocol based on non-orthogonal states transmission over a quantum channel, then, as that usually do in modern cryptography, we construct a one-out-of-two oblivious transfer protocol on top of the ROT protocol. Finally, we present a bit commitment protocol based on the one-out-of-two OT protocol, and show that it is statistically secure both in concealing and binding.
Linear and nonlinear characteristics of the silicon CMOS monolithic 50-Ω microwave and RF control element

Radio-frequency (RF) control elements using silicon CMOS technology are investigated as an alternative to traditional PIN diode and GaAs MESFET control devices. Silicon CMOS RF control elements are attractive because of their potential in all-silicon monolithic CMOS solutions for completely integrated baseband and RF functions in low-cost wireless systems. Results of the study show that silicon CMOS switches can be designed to rival the insertion loss and isolation of gallium arsenide switches at low frequencies. Data are presented that show less than 1 dB insertion loss and isolation of greater than 50 dB at low frequencies for a variety of silicon CMOS fabrication technologies. A model for a distortion intercept point in MOS switches is presented and validated with experimental measurements.
Dynamic Optimization of Active Queue Management Router s to Improve Queue Stability

This paper aims to introduce the numerical methods for solving the optimal control theory to model bufferbloat problem. Mathematical tools are useful to provide insight for system engineers and users to understand better about what we are facing right now while experiment in a large-scale testbed can encourage us to implement in realistic scenario. In this paper, we introduce a survey of the numerical methods for solving the optimal control problem. We propose the dynamic optimization sweeping algorithm for optimal control of the active queue management. Simulation results in network simulator ns2 demonstrate that our proposed algorithm can obtain the stability faster than the others while still maintain a short queue length (≈10 packets) and low delay experience for arriving packets (0.4 seconds).
Semiotic Analysis of Computer Visualization

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the semiotic approach to form theory of com‐ puter visualization. Such theory should be the foundation of design, development, and evaluations of visualization systems. The “direct” semiotic analysis of visualization is defined and the scheme of the analysis is considered. This analysis reveals “who is who” in the process of the visualization semiosis and helps in design and development of the real visualization systems. The analysis allows to describe the problems arising at devel ‐ opments of specialized systems in terms of the semiotics and showing how this analysis can serve as a tool for the visualization systems design. It is important to analyze the sign nature of the human‐computer interface and the visualization. Such conceptions as computer metaphor, metaphor action, and metaphor formula are defined. The properties of metaphors are analyzed with a view to possible usage of metaphors for specific appli ‐ cations. The properties are considered by the example of the hierarchical sequence of the natural Room‐Building‐City (Landscape) metaphors. Also the properties of the molecule metaphor are considered in the context of software visualization systems. In conclusion, some approaches to the theory of computer visualization are outlined.
Collaborative active learning

The goal of supervised learning is to learn a function that allows to accurately predict the output for previously unseen inputs. A function is learned from the training data, consisting of inputs and outputs from the unknown target function. A popular phrase in computer science Garbage in, Garbage Out summarizes well the importance of the training data in the learning process. The goal of this dissertation is to ensure that the acquired training data is useful. The training data (needed by the supervised learning) may not be available in advance. A common way of acquiring the training data is by specifying the inputs and obtaining the corresponding outputs from the target function. However, obtaining training output values often incurs a cost (in terms of money, e ort, time, availability, etc.). In order to ensure that obtained training data is useful, training input points (for which the output values will be obtained) are selected as to maximize the accuracy of the learned function (referred to as active learning (AL)). The task of AL is often performed in isolation, i.e. the function's model (e.g., the type and number of basis functions) is selected and then the training data is obtained for it. However, we are often not sure whether a given model would allow us to approximate the target function well and therefore may also consider other candidate models. In addition, the training data from other target functions may also be available at no cost (referred to as collaborative settings). Therefore we investigate how active learning could be performed not in isolation, but in collaboration with multiple candidate models (Active Learning with Model Selection) and data from multiple target functions (Active Learning in Collaborative Settings). Active Learning with Model Selection The task of selecting the function's model (e.g., the type and number of basis functions) shares the same goal as AL improving the accuracy of the learned model. If AL and model selection (MS) are performed at the same
Method of infrared image processing for non-uniformity correction

The present invention includes the steps of receiving an input image (I Comprising: an input image, and on the basis of the column vector component (V The vector of values and based on a product of a scale factor and the first step of generating the column offset values (α. V Determining, based on the input image, and a 2D covariance matrix (I Step for generating a pixel offset values And to a method of image processing includes a column and a pixel offset step of generating an image (I
FONT AUTOMATIC GENERATION SYSTEM BASED ON COLLABORATIVE FILTERING

: In this paper, we propose a font automatic generation system based on collaborative filtering. The proposed system consists of Kansei converter and user interface. Kansei converter receives Kansei words and outputs parameters. In the font generation system, the parameters express the shape of the font. We propose weighted GRNN for the Kansei converter. Weighted GRNN is a new technique that takes in the principle of the collaborative ﬁltering. The system weights a neuron by similarity between users. Kansei converter adds a random number last and outputs multiple candidates. The candidate of multiple fonts is learned in what is chosen by the user. The user interface is interactive. That means that the usage phase and the learning phase are uniﬁed. The system can learn the sensitivity of a user with a little burden by this interface. In addition, data gathering is easy for the provider of the system. The following properties about the proposed method are obtained from the experiments. (1) A user can easily make the font that is reflected the sensitivity of the user individual. (2) Data gathering for the system is easy because of the unified user interface. The user evaluation of the proposed system is better than the conventional system.
Student-focused virtual histology education: Do new scenarios and digital technology matter?

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Innovative changes have become a critical part of teaching when resources are limited. In this study, we examined whether the student-oriented teaching method, when powered by virtual microscopy, improves histology learning compared to traditional microscope-based studies. Anonymous and voluntary post-course surveys were administered to students and essays were processed for content analysis. Google Analytics was used to obtain accurate Internet usage monitoring for WEBMICROSCOPE®. Using SPSS statistics, the examination scores for 2016 were compared to those of previous year, when the course was taught with a traditional-microscope-based model. The results demonstrated that the new teaching scenario was an effective tool, based on the mean examination scores in 2016 compared to the identical groups in 2015. The survey analysis showed that the students benefited more from using WEBMICROSCOPE® and that they frequently gained access to the Web server when they were not in class. The new scenario helped clarify the concept of histology for most of the students and was generally appreciated during teamwork-based histology classes. Students perceived that the use of the digital technology significantly influenced their confidence in learning the fundamentals of histology. In addition, changing to the new teaching scenario powered by WEBMICROSCOPE® improved the students’ motivation to participate in discussions and better understand the concept of Histology between the 2015 and 2016 academic years. Finally, these changes all had a positive impact on the students’ attention and satisfaction.