Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gaussian Copula–based Regression Models for the Analysis of Mixed Outcomes: An Application on Household's Utilization of Health Services Data

In analyzing most correlated outcomes, the popular multivariate Gaussian distribution is very restrictive and therefore dependence modeling using copulas is nowadays very common to take into account the association among mixed outcomes. In this paper, we use Gaussian copula to construct a joint distribution for three mixed discrete and continuous responses. Our approach entails specifying marginal regression models for the outcomes, and combining them via a copula to form a joint model. Closed form for likelihood function is obtained by considering sampling weights. We also obtain the likelihood function for mixed responses where one of the responses, time to event outcome, may have censored values. Some simulation studies are performed to illustrate the performance of the model. Finally, the model is applied on data involving trivariate mixed outcomes on hospitalization of individuals, based on the survey of household’s utilization of health services.
The ultrastrong coupling regime as a resource for the generation of nonclassical states of light

Depuis l’avenement de la mecanique quantique, l’etude des interactions lumiere-matiere a l’echelle quantique s’est enormement developpee en tant que domaine de recherche. Par exemple, grâce a des predictions theoriques surprenantes, des interactions d’une force sans precedant ont ete demontrees entre de la matiere et des radiations terahertz et microonde. Ces resultats correspondent a un regime dit de couplage ultrafort, atteint lorsque l’energie d’interaction devient comparable aux energies propres de la lumiere et de la matiere lorsque celles-ci n’interagissent pas. Dans ce regime, des proprietes intrigantes peuvent subsister telles que la presence de photons meme lors qu’aucune energie n’est fournie au systeme. Cependant, ces photons ne peuvent, a priori, etre emis du systeme vers l’exterieur de maniere a pouvoir etre mesures et par consequent demontrer ces proprietes.Dans cette these, nous avons etudie ces proprietes intrigantes et propose plusieurs moyens permettant d’y acceder experimentalement. Nous nous sommes appuyes sur plusieurs plate-formes physiques qui sont de bon candidats pour ces etudes, et pour chacun de ces systemes nous avons mis au point un modele mettant en evidence ces proprietes d’une maniere ou d’une autre. De cette facon, nous avons explore le lien entre le regime de couplage ultrafort et la generation d’etats non-classiques de la lumiere. En outre, dans une etude plus ouverte nous avons montre que les interactions lumiere- matiere dans l’une de ces plate-formes peuvent etre utilises pour concevoir des protocols de communication quantique. En plus de montrer un interet fondamental, nos resultats s’inscrivent dans une optique de developpement d’applications pour les technologies quantiques en utilisant differents systemes experimentaux disponibles actuellement
A lightweight autonomous MAV for indoor search and rescue

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have great potentials to be applied for indoor search and rescue missions. In this paper, we propose a modular lightweight design of an autonomous MAV with integrated hardware and software. The MAV is equipped with the 2D laser scanner, camera, mission computer and flight controller, running all the computation onboard in real time. The onboard perception system includes a laser‐based SLAM module and a custom‐designed visual detection module. A dual Kalman filter design provides robust state estimation by multiple sensor fusion. Specifically, the fusion module provides robust altitude measurement in the circumstance of surface changing. In addition, indoor‐outdoor transition is explicitly handled by the fusion module. In order to efficiently navigate through obstacles and adapt to multiple tasks, a task tree‐based mission planning method is seamlessly integrated with path planning and control modules. The MAV is capable of searching and rescuing victims from unknown indoor environments effectively. It was validated by our award‐winning performance at the 2017 International Micro Air Vehicle Competition (IMAV 2017), held in Toulouse, France. The performance video is available on https://youtu.be/8H19ppS_VXM.
A self-verifiable computational visual cryptographic protocol for secure two-dimensional image communication

A visual secret sharing (VSS) scheme is an image encryption technique for the secure transmission of multimedia visual information. A VSS divides the secret into a number of image shares. The shares are distributed to the participants either as meaningless or meaningful shares. VSS has been applied to support secure transmission of military, medical and financial documents and so on. No individual share discloses the secret message. One of the drawbacks of VSS is that if an intruder happens to modify or change the share, the reconstructed secret image cannot be verified for its integrity. Other factors such as security and quality are also considered to be a significant concern. Traditional VSS schemes verify the integrity of the reconstructed image with additional shares, or with a trusted third party. The security of the image integrity also needs to be considered. This article proposes a new self-verifiable computational visual cryptographic protocol (SCVCP) that facilitates a computational model to overcome issues of integrity verification. The SCVCP maintains the secure transmission of meaningful shares without compromising the quality of the reconstructed image. The experimental results show that the SCVCP is secure and robust against quality issues without complex computations. The SCVCP verifies the authenticity of the reconstructed two-dimensional image without any extra shares. The verification ensures the integrity of the secret message at the revealing stage while reconstructing the secret image.
Giant Nonlinear AlGaAs-Doped Glass Photonic Crystal Fibers for Efficient Soliton Generation at Femtojoule Energy

In this paper, a unique semiconductor-doped glass photonic crystal fiber has been designed, which is suitable for soliton propagation at femto-Joule energy. The fiber promises to yield low and uniform anomalous dispersion profile and very large optical nonlinearities $\text{25 211 W}^{ - 1} {\text{km}}^{ - 1}$ at telecommunication wavelength, and, thus, facilitating soliton formation at ultralow energy. The observed magnitude of nonlinearity is the highest reported ever till date in AlGaAs-doped glass. The soliton dynamics has been investigated taking into account of higher order dispersions and nonlinearities. Propagating solitons breadth and experience large frequency shift, this decrease with the increase in the initial pulse width and increase with the increase in pulse energy. Temporal width of solitons oscillates, the frequency and amplitude of oscillations increase with the increase in the value of pulse energy.
Geometric-based Feature Extraction and Classification for Emotion Expressions of 3D Video Film

Feature extraction is the most significant step in the operation of emotion expressions recognition. Discrimination operation of emotion expressions has gained the attention of many researchers in the field of pattern recognition because of its significant impact on the various aspects of applications, especially in the application of human-computer interaction, both for the image or to the video. Based on pattern recognition theory, the process of facial expression recognition can be divided into features extraction operation and classification operation. In this paper, the geometric-based features extraction operation is used for extracting the local characteristics (landmarks) of a set of emotion expressions (anger, happiness, sadness, surprise) for images of BOSPHORUS database as training stage, then the classification operation is done by using of the threshold method (Euclidean distance) between the distances of neutral image and the expression image. The trained system is used for feature extraction and classification for 3D video film (stereoscopic) as testing stage. This method is implemented on 40 3D video films that were recorded, 10 video films for each expression of the four basic emotion; the ratio of discrimination is 85%.
Roteamento e agregação de dados baseado no RSSI em Redes de Sensores Sem Fio

Uma Rede de Sensores Sem Fio (RSSF) consiste em um conjunto de sensores, dispostos em um campo de sensoreamento em contato ou proximos a um evento ou fenomeno a ser sensoreado. Estas redes tem um grande impacto em aplicacoes de monitoramento ambiental tais como medicao de temperatura, luminosidade, movimento e presenca de certos tipos de objetos. Na maioria das aplicacoes para RSSF, os nos sensores possuem limitacoes de energia e largura de banda. Desta forma, tecnicas de reducao do consumo de energia e comunicacao sao necessarias, afim de otimizar o tempo de vida de uma RSSF. Um dos objetivos principais no projeto de uma RSSF e prover a comunicacao de dados entre os nos sensores e o no sink. O desafio e prolongar a vida util da redemantendo uma qualidade na comunicacao e na entrega dos dados. Um dos pontos chaves observados em diversos estudos e que os protocolos de roteamento em RSSFs irao diferir de acordo com a aplicacao e a arquitetura da rede. Recentemente, algoritmos que exploram informacoes geograficas, chamados Algoritmos de Roteamento Geografico, tem sido propostos para o transporte de dados nas RSSFs por serem escalaveis, dinâmicos e possuirem uma alta taxa de entrega de dados. Estes algoritmos se baseiam na posicao fisica dos nos da rede ao inves de seus enderecos para criar rotas em direcao ao no sink. A principal desvantagem destes algoritmos e a necessidade de localizacao, que pode ser custoso em diversos aspectos. Neste trabalho, propomos dois novos algoritmos de roteamento geografico que nao necessitam das informacoes de posicao dos nos enquanto ainda proveem a funcionalidade de agregacao de dados na rede. Nossa proposta tira vantagem da possibilidade de maior alcance de comunicacao do no sink, bem como do indicador de potencia do sinal recebido (RSSI) dos nos sensores para configurar rotas e tempos de agregacao de dados em direcao ao no sink. Os resultados obtidos mostram que os algoritmos propostos reduzem a quantidade de dados redundantes e o numero de transmissoes na rede, enquanto mantem todas as vantagens deste tipo de algoritmo.
Evolution of animals and plants

Fifty years ago James Ritchie declared that “in recent times we are looking in Scotland upon Evolution in its course”. The basis for Ritchie's remark was the large number of distinct taxa which have been described on Scottish islands, mainly on the Outer Hebrides. The most effective ingredient in producing taxonomic distinctiveness is isolation, particularly when the isolated form is founded by a small group of organisms which will almost inevitably differ genetically from its ancestral population. Subsequent adaptation may produce divergence between two related but isolated groups, but the process of differentiation will be fairly slow, since natural selection must depend upon the inherited variation present, never mind consideration of evolutionary ‘cost’, etc. The Inner Hebrides are ecologically very diverse, but the gene-flow between animals and plants living on them and on the mainland of Scotland must be much greater than is the case for Outer Hebridean populations. Notwithstanding, subspecifically distinct races of field mice, voles, shrews, and stoats have been described, and clinal variation shows that adaptive changes have taken place in several bird and lepidopteran species. The Inner Hebrides offer excellent experimental opportunities to measure gene-flow between different islands, and between islands and mainland. It should be possible to estimate some of the evolutionary forces involved in producing species differentiation, as well as in local extinctions.
The Role of Structural Reasoning in the Genesis of Graph Theory

The seminal book on graph theory by Dénes Kőnig, published in the year 1936, collected notions and results from precursory works from the mid to late nineteenth century by Hamilton, Cayley, Sylvester and others. More importantly, Kőnig himself contributed many of his own results that he had obtained in the more than twenty years that he had been working on this subject matter. What is noteworthy is the fact that the fundamentals of what he calls directed graphs are taken almost exhaustively from Paul Hertz' 1922 article on structural reasoning about sentences of the form . This is not a fact that is well known in logical circles, even though Kőnig fully acknowledges this in his book. In view of the numerous trends in the recent decades to describe and explicate logical matters by means of graphs, the fact that it was Hertz' foundation of structural reasoning that informed basic notions of graph theory in the first place is highly significant. The main goal of this paper is to summarize Hertz' article and demonstrate how Kőnig integrates the notions and results presented therein in his book. This is followed by an exposition of how and when Hertz' results were reinvented in terms of graph theory. A critical discussion of the opinion expressed by both Hertz and Kőnig that the more general sentences of the form , introduced by Hertz in a companion article in 1923, cannot be interpreted by graphs concludes this paper.
Two-stage fixed-width and bounded-width confidence interval estimation methodologies for the common correlation in an equi-correlated multivariate normal distribution

Abstract In this article, two-stage and fixed sample size procedures are developed for constructing confidence intervals for the common correlation ρ of an equi-correlated multivariate normal distribution. Two different approaches for estimation are considered, namely, fixed-width and bounded-width interval estimation. In the fixed-width confidence interval estimation problem, a two-stage procedure is developed and the exact distribution of the corresponding stopping variable and the exact coverage probability of the interval estimator are derived. Asymptotic optimality properties such as asymptotic first-order efficiency and asymptotic consistency properties of the two-stage procedure are established. Bounded-width confidence intervals are obtained by applying fixed-accuracy estimation methodologies of Mukhopadhyay and Banerjee (2014, 2015a,b) and Banerjee and Mukhopadhyay (2016) using different transformations on ρ. Both fixed sample size and two-stage sampling methodologies for bounded-width confidence interval estimation of are developed incorporating such transformations. Finally, performances of all the procedures are compared via extensive sets of simulation studies.
Extreme events and non-Kolmogorov $-5/3$ spectra in turbulent flows behind two side-by-side square cylinders

Turbulent flows behind two side-by-side square cylinders with three different gap ratios, namely, $L_{d}/T_{0}=4,$ 6 and 8 ( $L_{d}$ is the separation distance between two cylinders and $T_{0}$ is the cylinder thickness) are investigated by using direct numerical simulations. Depending on the strength of the gap flow, the three cases can generally be characterized into two regimes, one being the weak gap flow regime and the other being the robust gap flow regime. The wake-interaction length scale can only be applied to characterize the spatial evolution of the dual-wake flow in the robust gap flow regime. And only in this regime can the so-called ‘extreme events’ (i.e. non-Gaussian velocity fluctuations with large flatness) be identified. For the case with $L_{d}/T_{0}=6$ , two downstream locations, i.e. $X/T_{0}=6$ and 26, at which the turbulent flows are highly non-Gaussian distributed and approximately Gaussian distributed, respectively, are analysed in detail. A well-defined $-5/3$ energy spectrum can be found in the near-field region (i.e. $X/T_{0}=6$ ), where the turbulent flow is still developing and highly intermittent and Kolmogorov’s universal equilibrium hypothesis does not hold. We confirm that the approximate $-5/3$ power law in the high-frequency range is closely related to the occurrences of the extreme events. As the downstream distance increases, the velocity fluctuations gradually adopt a Gaussian distribution, corresponding to a decrease in the strength of the extreme events. Consequently, the range of the $-5/3$ power law narrows. In the upstream region (i.e. $X/T_{0}=6$ ), the second-order structure function exhibits a power-law exponent close to $1$ , whereas in the far downstream region (i.e. $X/T_{0}=26$ ) the expected $2/3$ power-law exponent appears. The larger exponent at $X/T_{0}=6$ is related to the fact that fluid motions in the intermediate range can directly ‘feel’ the large-scale vortex shedding.
Interval state estimation for uncertain polytopic systems

The aim of this article is the state estimation of uncertain polytopic dynamic systems. The parametric uncertainties affecting the system are time varying, unknown and bounded with known bounds. The objective is to determine the state estimates consisting in the smallest interval containing the real-state value caused by the parametric uncertainties. This set will be characterised by the lower and upper bounds of the state trajectory. Given the uncertainty bounds, the set can be computed by a direct simulation of the system but a more accurate estimation is obtained with a Luenberger-type observer, fed with the system measurements. The proposed observer is designed to minimise the interval width of the estimates. The observer gains are obtained by solving an optimisation problem under LMI constraints. The efficiency of the proposed approach is illustrated by numerical examples.
Sentiment analysis in twitter data using data analytic techniques for predictive modelling

Sentiment analysis refers to the task of natural language processing to determine whether a piece of text contains subjective information and the kind of subjective information it expresses. The subjective information represents the attitude behind the text: positive, negative or neutral. Understanding the opinions behind user-generated content automatically is of great concern. We have made data analysis with huge amount of tweets taken as big data and thereby classifying the polarity of words, sentences or entire documents. We use linear regression for modelling the relationship between a scalar dependent variable Y and one or more explanatory variables (or independent variables) denoted X. We conduct a series of experiments to test the performance of the system.
Nonlinear Compression of Intense Optical Pulses at 1.55 μm by Multiple Plate Continuum Generation

Intense ultrashort laser pulses at 1.55 μm are generated by a home-built light source and compressed to 20 fs by multiple plate continuum (MPC) and Fourier pulse shaping. The entire system consists of three building blocks, responsible for seed generation, optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA), and nonlinear compression. A commercial Yb:KGW amplifier pumps a difference frequency generator and an optical parametric amplifier (OPA) to generate 1 kHz, 44 fs, 10 μJ, carrier-envelope phase stable seed pulses at 1.55 μm. A grating–lens pair stretches the seed pulses to 50 ps by introducing a great amount of normal group delay dispersion (GDD). After that, the chirped pulse energy is boosted to 5 mJ by two OPA stages pumped by a commercial Nd:YAG amplifier (30 mJ, 85 ps). To compress the amplified pulses, a grating pair compressor providing an adequate amount of anomalous GDD is employed. The OPCPA system eventually delivers 3 mJ and 80 fs pulses, limited by the phase-matching bandwidth of nonlinear crystals. To further compress the pulse duration, pulses are sent to an MPC stage, which consisted of nine pieces of 200-μm-thick quartz plates. The OPCPA output spectrum is broadened by four times and compressed to 20 fs (3.6 carrier cycles) by a femtosecond Fourier-transform pulse shaper. The pulses are characterized by polarization gating cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating. Due to the high pondermotive force, an intense and long-wavelength laser system like this is useful in seeding a MeV-level electron accelerator and generating coherent soft X-ray high-harmonic generation.
Patterns and Pattern Sites in HCI: An Analysis

Interest in patterns and pattern languages in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) continues. However, many of the questions and concerns in this area have yet to be addressed. These questions and concerns include lack of empirical evidence to support the claimed benefits, lack of a standard pattern format, and lack of an organizing principle. This paper describes an analysis of the design of pattern websites and their respective patterns. A systematic online search using multiple search engines and multiple search phrases was conducted in attempt to further understand the current state of affairs, including pattern format and organizing principles. The results suggest that the community has yet to adopt a standard pattern format. Although, the essence of Alexander’s patterns was found in most patterns. The findings highlight the progress that we, as a community, have made in some areas, but remind us that there is work to do in other areas.
Phases of N = 1 theories in d = 2 + 1 and non-supersymmetric conformal manifolds, or Is there life beyond holomorphy?

In this thesis we mainly review two works, one regarding three-dimensional N = 1 field theories and the other about an interesting structure which may exist in conformal field theories, known as conformal manifolds. After an Introduction in which we put things into context, we discuss in great detail in chapter 2 the dynamics of a special class of three-dimensional theories, that is N = 1 QCD with non-vanishing Chern-Simons level coupled to one adjoint matter multiplet. The important feature of N = 1 supersymmetric theories in 2 + 1 dimensions is that the Witten index can jump on co-dimension one walls in parameter space, where new vacua come from infinity of field space. We demonstrate that this physics is captured by the two-loop effective potential. Together with the decoupling limit at large masses for matter fields, it allows to formulate a robust conjecture regarding the phase diagram of the theory. Another interesting result is the appearance of metastable supersymmetry breaking vacua for sufficiently small values of Chern-Simons level. The third chapter focuses on the constraints that a conformal field theory should enjoy to admit exactly marginal deformations, i.e. to be part of a conformal manifold. While in two spacetime dimensions conformal manifolds are rather common, their existence in d > 2 is absolutely non-trivial. In fact, in absence of supersymmetry, no single example of a conformal manifold is known in d > 2 dimensions. Using tools from conformal perturbation theory, we derive a sum rule from which one can extract restrictions on the spectrum of low spin and low dimension operators. We then focus on conformal field theories admitting a gravity dual description, and as such a large-N expansion. We discuss the relation between conformal perturbation theory and loop expansion in the bulk, and show how such connection could help in the search for conformal manifolds beyond the planar limit. Our results do not rely on supersymmetry, here, and therefore apply also outside the realm of superconformal field theories. Both chapters end with conclusion and outlook sections.