Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Influence of Discrimination Strategy on the JND in Human Haptic Perception of Manipulator Stiffness

To better design and evaluate simulator control loading systems, humans’ JND in the haptic perception of manipulator stiﬀness was investigated. To assess changes in such a mechanical property, humans must infer the change through changes in perceived contact force and/or manipulator displacement. To study the relative roles of these two perceptions, we measured stiﬀness JNDs of seven participants through a forced-choice stiﬀness discrimination procedure, on three conditions which we referred to as the force, displacement and free conditions. In the force condition, the manipulator displacement was ﬁxed and subjects could only base their stiﬀness discrimination on changes in the contact force, and likewise in the displacement condition, discrimination was on the basis of changes in the manipulator displacement while the contact force was ﬁxed. In the free condition subjects could uses either or both force and displacement cues to discriminate between diﬀerent stiﬀness settings. The lowest stiﬀness JND was observed in the force condition, followed by a similar results from the free condition. The highest JND level and a poor consistency of results among individuals were obtained in the displacement condition. Subjects indicated that their stiﬀness discrimination in the free condition was based on the force comparison. To validate this ﬁnding, we used two models, one assumed force diﬀerences as a criterion for detection and the other assumed the displacement, to estimate the experimental results. Model comparisons indicated that subject’s stiﬀness discrimination is largely based on detection of force diﬀerences.
Aesthetic Score Assessment based on Generic Features in Digital Photography Sidra

Digital photography is not mere work of taking simple photographs; rather it is a responsible work of art and skills. Aesthetically pleasing photographs are developed for best aesthetic quality score. Aesthetic quality measurement is well studied topic in research as digital photography has become more popular in the recent decades. Aesthetic photographs attract the viewers with their good composition, colors, well-balanced exposures, simplicity, and emotional meanings etc. The important consideration of discrimination between aesthetically pleasing and displeasing photographs is how to measure aesthetics of photographs. The said task is very subjective as everybody has their own taste, thoughts, emotions, mood and likings towards certain things. For automatically measuring the aesthetic quality of digital photographs we extract generic features. These features perform well to discriminate the pleasing photographs from displeasing photographs by assigning them high or low aesthetic scores accordingly. For training the system and testing the performance, we have taken the total of 250 photographs from public online databases. We have chosen the high aesthetic score photographs as well as low aesthetic score photographs rated by human user ratings in the range of [2.5 to 6.5] out of 7. Then, we compared the average human user ratings with our proposed methods. The overall system accuracy is around 83% which gives the promising results in terms of approximation to human user
Do Attention Heads in BERT Track Syntactic Dependencies?

We investigate the extent to which individual attention heads in pretrained transformer language models, such as BERT and RoBERTa, implicitly capture syntactic dependency relations. We employ two methods---taking the maximum attention weight and computing the maximum spanning tree---to extract implicit dependency relations from the attention weights of each layer/head, and compare them to the ground-truth Universal Dependency (UD) trees. We show that, for some UD relation types, there exist heads that can recover the dependency type significantly better than baselines on parsed English text, suggesting that some self-attention heads act as a proxy for syntactic structure. We also analyze BERT fine-tuned on two datasets---the syntax-oriented CoLA and the semantics-oriented MNLI---to investigate whether fine-tuning affects the patterns of their self-attention, but we do not observe substantial differences in the overall dependency relations extracted using our methods. Our results suggest that these models have some specialist attention heads that track individual dependency types, but no generalist head that performs holistic parsing significantly better than a trivial baseline, and that analyzing attention weights directly may not reveal much of the syntactic knowledge that BERT-style models are known to learn.
The experimental study of aerodynamic characteristics with wing flexibility for hawkmoth-like wings in hovering flight

An experimental study on flapping wing flexibility in hovering flight has been conducted to investigate the wing flexibility for insect-inspired flapping Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). Hawkmoth-like wing models, derived from Manduca sexta, were made of Polycarbonate (PC) sheet with a spanwise length of 200 mm and an aspect ratio of 6.18. For the distributions of wing flexibility, the wing thickness was selected as the design variable: rigid wing (3 mm-thick) and flexible wings (2, 1, 0.8, 0.5, 0.35, 0.2, and 0.1 mm-thick). In the experiment, the wing models were constrained to the symmetrical and sinusoidal flapping motions with sweeping and rotating amplitudes of 120° and 90° in water tank with size of 3.5 m×1.0 m×1.1 m. Aerodynamic force and flow structures for flapping the wing were measured using a six-axis force/torque sensor and a high speed camera with a laser using Digital Particle Image Velocimetry (DPIV). To compare the flow structures of flexible wings with rigid wing, they were captured at the same chordwise cross-section as the rigid wing, 50% of wing length. Based on the experimental results, vortices and aerodynamic force. Consequently, the wing with thickness of 0.8 mm has better aerodynamic characteristics than other wings in hovering flight. This finding will be instrumental in identifying the range of wing flexibilities that improves the aerodynamic efficiency for the development of insect-inspired flapping MAVs.
Design of High Speed Area Efficient IEEE 754 Floating Point Multiplier

Basically multipliers are the functional blocks and core of the all digital signal processors (DSPs). The speed of multipliers is used to determine the speed of the DSPs. This paper deals with design of High speed Area efficient IEEE 754 double precision Floating Point Multiplier using Vedic mathematics. The mantissa is designed using the UrdhvaTiryakbhyam sutra of Vedic Mathematics replacing the carry save multiplier. The exponent is determined using ripple carry adder. Design implementation targets signed multiplication. The proposed architecture is designed, simulated and synthesized using Xilinx tools.
Applying the Systems Approach

The systems approach relates to both the dynamics of problem resolution and stakeholder value over time, as well as to the levels of system relationship, detailed management, and the engineering activities this implies. This article builds on the concepts introduced in Overview of the Systems Approach topic. It is part of the Systems Approach Applied to Engineered Systems knowledge area (KA), which describes, primarily through five groups of activities, the application of an approach based around systems thinking to engineered system contexts throughout their lives.
Comparative Study of Calcium Content on in vitro Biological and Antibacterial Properties of Silicon-Based Bioglass

The major aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of CaO content on in vitro hydroxyapatite formation, MC3T3 cells cytotoxicity and proliferation as well as antibacterial efficiency of sol-gel derived SiO2–CaO–P2O5 ternary system. For this purpose, first two grades of bioactive glass (BG); BG-58s (mol%: 60%SiO2– 36%CaO–4%P2O5) and BG-68s (mol%: 70%SiO2–26%CaO– 4%P2O5)) were synthesized by sol-gel method. Second, the effect of CaO content in their composition on in vitro bioactivity was investigated by soaking the BG-58s and BG-68s powders in simulated body fluid (SBF) for time periods up to 14 days and followed by characterization inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. Additionally, live/dead staining, 3(4,5dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT), and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity assays were conducted respectively, as qualitatively and quantitatively assess for cell viability, proliferation and differentiations of MC3T3 cells in presence of 58s and 68s BGs. Results showed that BG-58s with higher CaO content showed higher in vitro bioactivity with respect to BG-68s. Moreover, the dissolution rate was inversely proportional to oxygen density of the BG. Live/dead assay revealed that both 58s and 68s increased the mean number live cells which were in good accordance with MTT assay. Furthermore, BG-58s showed more potential antibacterial activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria. Taken together, BG-58s with enhanced MC3T3 cells proliferation and ALP activity, acceptable bioactivity and significant high antibacterial effect against MRSA bacteria is suggested as a suitable candidate in order to further functionalizing for delivery of therapeutic ions and growth factors in bone tissue engineering. Keywords—Antibacterial, bioactive glass, hydroxyapatite, proliferation, sol-gel processes.
C C ] 3 J un 2 01 6 On Alternation and the Union Theorem

Under the assumption P= Σ 2 , we prove a new variant of the Union Theorem of McCreight and Meyer for the class Σ 2 . This yields a union function F which is computable in time F (n) for some constant c and satisfies P = DTIME(F ) = Σ2(F ) = Σ p 2 with respect to a subfamily (S̃i) of Σ2-machines. We show that this subfamily does not change the complexity classes P and Σ 2 . Moreover, a padding construction shows that this also implies DTIME(F ) = Σ2(F ). On the other hand, we prove a variant of Gupta’s result who showed that DTIME(t) ( Σ2(t) for time-constructible functions t(n). Our variant of this result holds with respect to the subfamily (S̃i) of Σ2-machines. We show that these two results contradict each other. Hence the assumption P= Σ 2 cannot hold.
Perspectives on the Future of Nature in Europe : Visualisation

The use of visualisation in landscape planning is very common. However, its contribution to the creation of large-scale scenario studies is underestimated. For the Nature Outlook, several visualisation techniques were used; both in participatory scenario building and to inspire stakeholders in thinking about the future of nature in Europe. Photographs, icons, thematic maps, artist impressions, posters and films were created and used in various phases of the study. Interactive scenario workshops benefited from combined visualisation techniques because the disadvantages of one technique are compensated by another. Visualisation helped to structure information and keep participants on track during discussions, and inspired participants to create their preferred future. In dissemination, visualisation helped to explain future storylines in a compelling and attractive way.
Introducing Innovation Readiness Levels – A Framework to Evaluate Innovation Efforts

When developing new products, it is important to be able to evaluate their readiness as this helps organizations manage three major challenges of product development, performance, schedule, and budget. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) discovered this in 1990 and developed a nine-level framework to measure the progression of technology development, Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs). The framework has since then been adopted by many different industries, among them OEMs. However, there are more aspects of the innovation process than just technology. Research topics such as user centered design and business model innovation has lately gained much attention, indicating that user and business aspects of the innovation are important. Therefore, the purpose of his thesis was to propose a framework to evaluate the readiness of business, user and technology aspects. To do so, a case study was performed at the Swedish OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) Husqvarna Group, a global producer of equipment for garden and park care, as well as for the construction industry. A literature study was performed to create an understanding of the current knowledge on the topic. Semi structured interviews were used to investigate how innovation is performed at the researched company. The result from these interviews was contrasted with the results from interviews at four other Swedish OEMs, to increase external validity. Lastly the findings were validated through focus group interviews at Husqvarna Group. The case study resulted in the identification of important steps when developing viable, desirable, and feasible products. From these, the nine most important for business and user was identified and frameworks for business and user readiness respectively were developed, along with attainment criteria for each level. The findings showed that the TRL framework still holds relevance, however the attainment criteria were adjusted to better suit OEMs. Together these three frameworks create the Innovation Readiness Level (IRL) framework.
Geometric decorrelation in acoustic tools for surveying the seaﬂoor

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Geometric decorrelation in acoustic tools for surveying the seafloor Pierre Cervenka
Feature-Based Object Tracking Using Spatial Matching of Differential Directional-Edge Images

A robust object tracking system has been developed based on the directional edge information extracted from a video sequence. By introducing the concept of the differential directional-edge image (DDEI), a map of edge flags produced from the difference of two consecutive edge images, the information from background has been effectively removed. As a result, the algorithm is robust against the influence of cluttered background, as well as illumination change and speed variation. In addition, in order to enhance the robustness against the shape transformation and partial occlusion occurring during the object movement, adaptive algorithms have been developed and integrated in the system. The basic operation of the algorithm is the spatial matching of differential directional-edge histograms, which is compatible to direct VLSI hardware implementation, making it possible to build a real-time responding system. The performance of the proposed object tracking system has been demonstrated by computer simulation using video sequences including a variety of disturbances.
REGARDING TYPES OF SYNESTHESIA AND COLOR-MUSIC ART

Day S I i (sean.day@tridciiiic. h . . ) • . Congenital synesthesia is a neurological condition in which s t i m u l i in . sensory input mode produces perception in one or more additional modei ! • • are over 55 different types of synesthesia. This article focuses on types u l > . \n»i thesia involving music as the «inducer» and for which some visual aspa i r, ilnresulting "concurrent". There are at least ten different types of «music to mini synesthesia. So, which type(s) do we use for visual additions to a musical pirn <> light-music? There are two main factors involved: the colors, and the spn . i •• which they appear. What we seek is actually significantly different than ;in , i « • H rate depiction of real neurological synesthesia. For our light-show, we aiv l « n . ( off not to try to duplicate any synesthete's actual set; we would do better 10 i n i i i f an artificial set of colors.
Behavioural biometric identification based on human computer interaction

As we become increasingly dependent on information systems, personal identification and profiling systems have received an increasing interest, either for reasons of personali- sation or security. Biometric profiling is one means of identification which can be achieved by analysing something the user is or does (e.g., a fingerprint, signature, face, voice). This Ph.D. research focuses on behavioural biometrics, a subset of biometrics that is concerned with the patterns of conscious or unconscious behaviour of a person, involving their style, preference, skills, knowledge, motor-skills in any domain. In this work I explore the cre- ation of user profiles to be applied in dynamic user identification based on the biometric pat- terns observed during normal Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) by continuously logging and tracking the corresponding computer events. Unlike most of the biometrics systems that need special hardware devices (e.g. finger print reader), HCI-based identification sys- tems can be implemented using regular input devices (mouse or keyboard) and they do not require the user to perform specific tasks to train the system. Specifically, three components are studied in-depth: mouse dynamics, keystrokes dynamics and GUI based user behaviour. In this work I will describe my research on HCI-based behavioural biometrics, discuss the features and models I proposed for each component along with the result of experiments. In addition, I will describe the methodology and datasets I gathered using my LoggerMan application that has been developed specifically to passively gather behavioural biometric data for evaluation. Results show that normal Human-Computer Interaction reveals behavioural information with discriminative power sufficient to be used for user modelling for identification purposes.
Supervised Learning for Link Prediction in Social Networks Link prediction

Link prediction is an estimation problem that has drawn a great deal of attention in recent years. In this work, a supervised learning approach is adopted to perform link prediction on data retrieved from Facebook. The specific goal, then, is to estimate the probability of two users to become friends in order to recommend them to one another whenever this probability turns out to be sufficiently high. On social platforms like Facebook, friendship recommendation is clearly a crucial ingredient since, when properly implemented, it plays a key role in determining the network growth. The contribution of this work consists in performing friendship recommendation on Facebook using a supervised learning approach that takes explicitly into account vertices’ attributes; that is, all the personal information that users make available on their profiles. Abstract La link prediction ha attirato molta attenzione negli ultimi anni. In questo lavoro, un approccio di apprendimento supervisionato viene utilizzato per fare link prediction su dati provenienti da Facebook. L’obiettivo è quindi quello di stimare la probabilità che due utenti diventino amici, in modo da suggerire gli uni agli altri quanto tale probabilità è alta. La raccomandazione delle amicizie è un problema molto importante poiché il suo corretto funzionamento è fondamentale per la crescita delle reti, che è l’obiettivo primario di siti come Facebook. Il contributo di questo lavoro è quello di fare ciò utilizzando un approccio di apprendimento supervisionato che prenda esplicitamente in considerazione anche gli attributi dei vertici, ovvero le informazioni personali che gli utenti inseriscono nel proprio profilo.
DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF AN OPEN APPROACH TO ACOUSTICAL MARINE BENTHIC HABITAT CLASSIFICATION AND MAPPING

Knowledge of benthic habitats plays a key role in the establishment of strategies for sustainable exploitation of marine resources (Botsford et al. 1997, Vallega 1999). Acoustic surveys have been widely used in seabed classification studies (Brown et al. 2002, Caddell 1998, Greenstreet et al. 1997, Legendre et al. 2002; Tuck et al. 1998), but a unified and standadized methodology has not been developed. Our aim is to develop an open protocol, using a combination of acoustic tools, statistical data analysis and groundtruthing for the identification, description and classification of marine benthic habitats. The output from this procedure will be used as input in a GIS, aiming for an efficient use in marine resource management.Acoustic waves produced by transducers travel through the water column producing a backscatter every time they reach a transition between two different acoustic impedance materials. These backscatter waves give us information on the water column. The impinging wave and the element or medium that produced the wave, characterize the backscatter. Two different frequency impinging waves will result in different backscatters, giving different information on various characteristics of the target. Due to the strength loss and transformation on the impinging wave once it has backscattered first on the bottom and then on the sea surface, the energy values from the bottom reflection will contain information on every element of the floor, while those from the surface reflection will consist just on information on the highest acoustic impedance elements of the bottom.
Visualizing distances between light field and geometry using projective texture mapping

Visualizing spatial relations between geometryenhanced light fields and other geometric objects can be expedient in a wide range of applications, and provide valuable information to the viewer. In this paper, a method is presented that allows visualizing the distance between some geometric objects and an unstructured lumigraph implementation. For that purpose, it uses a technique related to hardware shadow mapping, or in a broader sense, projective texture mapping. Making use of recent graphics hardware, the method is fast enough to allow interactive frame rates. It also makes use of the data structures provided by the unstructured lumigraph, and requires almost no additional pre-processing steps. The distance visualization works independent of the current view, only depending on the current light field image, and thus providing very accurate results for the measured distances. Furthermore, it provides support for semi-transparent geometry.
Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics

Broadband acoustic signals around 1 kHz propagate through shallow water oceanic waveguides of ~100 m in depth and ~2 km in range as multiple ray-like wavefronts. These acoustic arrivals can be characterized by the following observables: travel-time (TT), direction-of-arrival (DOA) and direction-of-departure (DOD). By applying double-beamforming on the point-to-point signals recorded between two sourcereceiver arrays, the acoustic contribution of each arrival can be separated from the multi-reverberated data and the TT, DOA and DOD observable variations are accurately measured. This study deals with the use of time-angle sensitivity kernels (TASK) to estimate the observable variations induced by sound speed perturbations in the waveguide. This approach is based on the first order Born approximation and takes into account the finite-frequency effects associated with wave propagation. The robustness the TASK approach is analyzed and compared to numerical parabolic equation simulations involving different sound speed perturbations. For example, parameters such as the perturbation location, the value and shape of the perturbation in the waveguide are modified. The combination of several perturbations and the influence of the source-receiver array apertures on the TT, DOA and DOD estimates are also studied.