Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visual Odometry Part I: The First 30 Years and Fundamentals

V isual odometry (VO) is the process of estimating the egomotion of an agent (e.g., vehicle, human, and robot) using only the input of a single or multiple cameras attached to it. Application domains include robotics, wearable computing, augmented reality, and automotive. The term VO was coined in 2004 by Nis-ter in his landmark paper [1]. The term was chosen for its similarity to wheel odometry, which incrementally estimates the motion of a vehicle by integrating the number of turns of its wheels over time. Likewise, VO operates by incrementally estimating the pose of the vehicle through examination of the changes that motion induces on the images of its onboard cameras. For VO to work effectively , there should be sufficient illumination in the environment and a static scene with enough texture to allow apparent motion to be extracted. Furthermore, consecutive frames should be captured by ensuring that they have sufficient scene overlap. The advantage of VO with respect to wheel odometry is that VO is not affected by wheel slip in uneven terrain or other adverse conditions. It has been demonstrated that compared to wheel odometry, VO provides more accurate trajectory estimates, with relative position error ranging from 0.1 to 2%. This capability makes VO an interesting supplement to wheel odometry and, additionally, to other navigation systems such as global positioning system (GPS), inertial measurement units (IMUs), and laser odometry (similar to VO, laser odometry estimates the egomotion of a vehicle by scan-matching of consecutive laser scans). In GPS-denied environments, such as underwater and aerial, VO has utmost importance. This two-part tutorial and survey provides a broad introduction to VO and the research that has been under-taken from 1980 to 2011. Although the first two decades witnessed many offline implementations, only in the third decade did real-time working systems flourish, which has led VO to be used on another planet by two Mars-exploration rovers for the first time. Part I (this tutorial) presents a historical review of the first 30 years of research in this field and its fundamentals. After a brief discussion on camera
EBGs — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

UWB antennas with wide rectangular notched-band are proposed in this research. The rectangular notchedband design is realized by placing dual mushroom-type EBG structures on the CPW feeding line. The patches of the EBGs are laid on the back size of the substrate and dead against the CPW feeding line. Shorting pins are utilized to connect the patch and the feeding line. Then, the CPW feeding line operates as ground plane for the EBGs. By tuning the two resonant frequencies of the EBG structures and making them merge with each other, a rectangular notched-band is achieved. Research also found the design methodology has the ability to tune the width and the frequency of the rectangular notched-band by adjusting the EBG parameters. Then, three cases of rectangular notched-band designs to reject the wireless local-area network (WLAN, 5.150-5.825 GHz) interference band and the X-band downlink satellite communication band (660 MHz, 7.10-7.76 GHz) were designed by using different EBG parameters. The design methodology can also be utilized to design rectangular notched-band for other interference bands efficiently. INDEX TERMS Rectangular notched-band, EBG, CPW line, UWB antennas.
Changes in running mechanics during a six hours running race Submission type : original investigation

PURPOSE: To investigate changes in running mechanics during a six hours running race. METHODS: Twelve ultra-runners (age: 41.9±5.8 years; body mass: 68.3±12.6 kg; stature: 1.72±0.09 m) were asked to run as many 874 m flat loops as possible in six hours. Running speed, contact (tc) and aerial (ta) times were measured in the first lap and every 30±2 minutes during the race. Peak vertical ground reaction force (Fmax), stride length (SL), vertical downward displacement of the centre of mass (z), leg length change (L), vertical (kvert) and leg (kleg) stiffness were then estimated. RESULTS: Mean distance covered by the athletes during the race was 62.9±7.9 km; compared to the first lap running speed decreased significantly starting from 4h30’ onward (mean: -5.6±0.3%; p<0.05), while tc increased after 4h30’of running, reaching the maximum difference after 5h30’ (+6.1%, p=0.015). Conversely, kvert decreased after 4h00’ reaching the lowest value after 5h30’ (-6.5%, p=0.008); ta and Fmax decreased after 4h30’ throughout the end of the race (mean: -29.2% and -5.1%, p<0.05, respectively). Finally, SL decreased significantly (-5.1%, p=0.010) during the last hour of the race. CONCLUSIONS: These results show that most changes occurred after 4h continuous self-paced running, suggesting the possible existence of a “time threshold” that could affect performance regardless of absolute running speed.
In vitro protective effect of Pandanus ordoratissimus extract on ultraviolet B (UVB)-induced DNA damage

Pandanus ordoratissimus is an herb which has been widely used in Thai traditional medicines. A number of studies provided experimental evidence indicating that extracts from roots and leaves of P. ordoratissimus had powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. However, the protective effects of extract from P. ordoratissimus flowers on ultraviolet B (UVB)-induced DNA damage have not yet been reported. This study focused on assessing the protective effect of P. odoratissimus extract (POE) against UVB by using human keratinocyte stem cells (KSCs) as an in vitro testing system. The keratinocytes were pre-treated with POE before being assayed for DNA damages caused by UVB (290 to 315 nm). Ascorbyl glucoside and DN-AGE ® , reagents commonly used in cosmetic products to protect the skin against UV exposure due to their abilities to scavenge free radicals, were used as positive controls. The alkaline comet assay was used to quantify DNA damage. Photo-dependent cytogenetic lesions were assessed by the micronucleus test (MNT). It was found that POE effectively reduced the extent of DNA breakages and cytogenetic lesions upon exposure to UVB (erythemal ultraviolet (EUV); 17.09 mJ/cm 2 ). POE significantly decreased tail DNA (TD%), tail length (TL) and micronucleus frequencies (MNFs) which is similar to the protective effects provided by ascorbyl glucoside and DN-AGE ® . Key words : Pandanus odoratissimus, comet assay, micronucleus test.
Transport Properties of the Layer Manganite La1.5Ca1.5Mn2-xFexO7

Layered perovskite manganite ceramics with a nominal chemistry La1.5Ca1. 5Mn2-xFexO7(x = 0.0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5) were prepared using sol-gel method. The manganese ions are highly mixed states of Mn3+ and Mn4+. It is found that the Mn3+/Mn4+ ratio decreases with the Fe doping content increasing. The conductivity and magnetoresistance (MR) were studied. The sample of x = 0.05 shows metal insulator transition (MIT) at 135 K. The MIT peak temperature (Tp) shifts towards higher temperature with increasing applied magnetic field. All the samples can be well fitted to the variable-range hopping (VRH) model. The maximum value of MR (%) [ρ(0) - ρ(H)]/ρ(0) × 100 for x = 0.05 is 34% (105 K, 7 kOe).
Defect study of GaInP/GaAs based heterojunction bipolar transistor emitter layer

Defects in the emitter region of Ga0.51In0. 49P/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) were investigated by means of deep-level transient spectroscopy. Both annealed (635 °C, 5 min) and as grown metalorganic chemical vapor deposition epitaxial wafers were investigated in this study, with an electron trap observed in the HBT emitter space-charge region from both wafers. The deep-level activation energy was determined to be 0.87±0.05 eV below the conduction band, the capture cross section 3×10−14 cm2 and the defect density of the order of 1014 cm−3. This defect was also found to be localized at the emitter–base interface.
Hematological indicators of laying hens kept in different housing systems.

The aim of the study was to compare selected hematological indicators of laying hens kept in three different housing systems (conventional cage, enriched cage according to Europe Council notice 1999/74/EC, and deep litter). The indicators were observed during laying period and the effect of each technology on internal environment indicators of layers was evaluated too. In the experiment 36 ISA BROWN layers were used and they fed complete feeding mixture ad libitum. Blood samples were taken at 22, 28, 35, 41, 47, 52, 58, 66 a 75 weeks of age always between 7.00 and 8.00 AM. The red blood cells count (RBC), hematocrit (Hct), hemoglobin concentration (Hgb) white blood cells-count (WBC) and WBC differential count were determined. The examined values in all groups were in physiological range and non-significant influence of any housing system on the monitored indicators was found.
Coastal New Particle Formation: A Review of the Current State-Of-The-Art

Environmental Context.Atmospheric aerosols play an important role in determining the earth’s radiative budget, climate change and air quality levels. Much effort has been spent on quantifying the impact of aerosols on climate change; however, the largest gap in our knowledge relates to quantifying natural aerosol systems and the new particle formation process associated with these systems. The marine aerosol system is of particular interest due to the 70% ocean coverage of the earth’s surface. Coastal new particle formation events are though to be more frequent and of stronger intensity compared with open ocean events and thus have been studied in detail to identify possible processes leading to open ocean new particle production. Abstract.New particle formation via secondary gas-to-particle conversion processes over the oceans is one of the main mechanisms controlling the marine aerosol number population; however, despite extensive effort over the years, this phenomenon is still not well quantified. Coastal new particle formation events are more frequent than open ocean events and consequently have been studied in greater detail. This review article summarizes the recent studies into coastal new particle formation events and summarizes the linkage of these events to iodine emissions and ultimate particle formation via iodine oxide nucleation processes. The current state of knowledge may be summarized by concluding that, in general, coastal nucleation events are driven by biogenic emissions of iodine vapours that undergo rapid chemical reactions to produce condensable iodine oxides leading to nucleation and growth of new particles. The primary source of the condensable iodine vapours is thought to be molecular iodine (I2). The role of iodine oxides in open-ocean new particle production still remains an open question and is the most pressing next step to undertake.
Impacts of an automatic emergency call system on accident consequences

eCall is an automatic in-vehicle emergency call service developed in the European Union. The benefits of the eCall system are primarily based on the faster relaying of essential initial accident information, such as the type of accident and the precise accident location. The aim of this study was to estimate the impacts of an automatic emergency call system on accident consequences in Finland. The main results indicated that eCall could very probably have prevented 4.6% of the fatalities in accidents involving motor-vehicle occupants. The percentage was higher for accidents involving no vehicles in which the current eCall could be installed. This is probably because the emergency call delays were also longer in these accidents. The results of the case study, case study + phone log and questionnaire show that, in most accidents involving motor-vehicle occupants, the emergency call had been made less than five minutes after the accident. In 4% of the cases the emergency call had been made more than thirty minutes after the accident. For the covering abstract see ITRD E137489.
Optimal convergence rates for sparsity promoting wavelet-regularization in Besov spaces

This paper deals with Tikhonov regularization for linear and nonlinear ill-posed operator equations with wavelet Besov norm penalties. We focus on penalty terms which yield estimators that are sparse with respect to a wavelet frame. Our framework includes, among others, the Radon transform and some nonlinear inverse problems in differential equations with distributed measurements. Using variational source conditions it is shown that such estimators achieve minimax-optimal rates of convergence for finitely smoothing operators in certain Besov balls both for deterministic and for statistical noise models.
An ALMA survey of submillimeter galaxies in the COSMOS field: Multiwavelength counterparts and redshift distribution

We carried out targeted ALMA observations of 129 fields in the COSMOS region at 1.25 mm, detecting 152 galaxies at S/N ≥ 5with an average continuum RMS of 150 μJy. These fields represent a S/N-limited sample of AzTEC/ASTE sources with 1.1 mm S/N≥ 4 over an area of 0.72 square degrees. Given ALMA’s fine resolution and the exceptional spectroscopic and multiwavelength photometric data available in COSMOS, this survey allows us unprecedented power in identifying submillimeter galaxy counterparts and determining their redshifts through spectroscopic or photometric means. In addition to 30 sources with prior spectroscopic redshifts, we identified redshifts for 113 galaxies through photometric methods and an additional nine sources with lower limits, which allowed a statistically robust determination of the redshift distribution. We have resolved 33 AzTEC sources into multi-component systems and our redshifts suggest that nine are likely to be physically associated. Our overall redshift distribution peaks at z ~ 2.0 with a high-redshift tail skewing the median redshift to z = 2.48 ± 0.05. We find that brighter millimeter sources are preferentially found at higher redshifts. Our faintestsources, with S_(1.25 mm) 1.8 mJy, have a median redshift of z = 3.08 ± 0.17. After accounting for spectral energy distribution shape and selection effects, these results are consistent with several previous submillimeter galaxy surveys, and moreover, support the conclusion that the submillimeter galaxy redshift distribution is sensitive to survey depth.
MINIATURIZED MULTILAYER FOLDED SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED WAVEGUIDE BUTLER MATRIX

Recently, substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technol- ogy attracts more and more attention in the development of millimeter- wave integrated beamforming network (BFN) depending on its inher- ent advantages. However, the SIW-based BFN usually has a large cir- cuit size. To overcome this weakness, we propose a novel multi-folded SIW Butler matrix at the center frequency of 60GHz. Two difierent full-wave simulation tools are employed to validate our design. This folded BFN ofiers a number of beneflts, such as highly compact con- flguration, low coupling between adjacent paths, and wide operation bandwidth. For convenient use, the SIW ports can be converted to the microstrip line ports arranged in order through a special broad- band two-layer transition network. Such a miniaturized SIW Butler matrix can reduce the circuit area by more than 60% compared with the conventional single-layer version.
Grazing impacts on litter and soil organic matter in mixed prairie and fescue grassland ecosystems of Alberta.

Impacts of long-term cattle grazing on litter and soil organic matter were assessed in mixed prairie, parkland fescue, and foothills fescue grasslands of Alberta, Canada. Grazing regimes were of light to very heavy intensities, grazed early, late, and continuously during the growing season. Litter and soil organic matter were sampled in O.l-rnz quadrats and removed as live vegetation, standing Utter, fallen litter, and soil organic matter. Litter and organic matter samples were air dried and sorted by size using sieves and an automatic sieve shaker. Organic carbon content was determined by thermal oxidation. Ground cover was determined using point frames, and heights of standing litter and fallen litter were measured. Heavy intensity and/or early season grazing had greater neptive impacts on litter and soil organic matter than did light intensity and/or late season grazing. Under the former regimes there were significant reductions in heights of standing and fallen litter, decreases in live vegetative cover and organic matter mass, and increases in bare ground. More large particle-sized organic matter, particularly standing litter, occurred in controls than in grazed treatments since it would not be removed or trampled by grazing animals. More medium and small particle-sized organic matter occurred in grazed treatments than in ungrazed controls since vegetation likely decomposed more rapidly when it was trampled and broken down as animals grazed.
A herbivore's food landscape: seasonal dynamics and nutritional implications of diet selection by a red deer population in contrasting Alpine habitats

Dietary constraints for large herbivores tend to be most strongly linked to quality of the forage available. In highly seasonal environments, such as mountain areas, both plant quality and available biomass may act as constraints. However, studies addressing the nutritional basis of diet selection of wild large herbivores under harsh conditions in sufficiently large spatial and temporal frameworks are scarce. We studied the functional importance of relative variability in plant quality and biomass for diet selection by a migratory population of Alpine red deer (Cervus elaphus) at the landscape scale and across an annual cycle. Botanical diet composition at plant group level did not show a particular ‘Alpine pattern’ but was similar to known patterns from lowland areas. Sources of variability were season, habitat (either open land or forest) and sex. Red deer foraged selectively in all seasons, and preferences for plant groups were negatively linked to plant abundances. Use and selection of plant groups were associated with high nutritional value (high crude protein and organic matter, low fibre), but partly also with high levels of active tannins. In the cold season, deer made strong nocturnal use of fertilized valley floor meadows offering high-quality grass, but still showed some selection for tannin- and fibre-rich coniferous browse, indicating a need for supplementing grass intake. Altogether, the nutritional value of the diet exceeded that of the forage available in the forested habitat, which was at or below the lower threshold for fulfilling metabolic needs of red deer. High-quality grass on farmed meadows may thus be a critical source of food in mountainous areas during winter.
A promising and simple method to quantify soil/manure mixing on beef feedlot pens

On beef cattle feed pen surfaces, fresh and decayed manure is mixed with base rock or soil (base). Quantifying this mixing has beneficial applications for aspects including nutrient and greenhouse gas budgeting. However, no practical methods exist to quantify mixing. We investigated if measuring element concentrations in: (A) fresh manure, (B) base material, and (C) pen manure offers a promising method to quantify manure/base mixing on pen surfaces. Using three operational beef feedlots as study sites, we targeted carbon (C), and silicon (Si), which are the two most abundant and easily measurable organic and inorganic elements. Our results revealed that C concentrations were strongly (>15 times) and significantly (P 10 times) and significantly (P < 0.01) lower in fresh manure than base material at all three sites. These relative concentrations were not significantly impacted by manure decay, as determined by an 18-week incubation experiment. This suggested that both of these elements are suitable markers for quantifying base/manure mixing on pens. However, due to the chemical change of manure during decay, C was shown to be an imprecise marker of base/manure mixing. By contrast, using Si to estimate base/manure mixing was largely unaffected by manure decay. These findings were confirmed by measuring C and Si concentrations in stockpiled pen surface manure from one of the sites. Using Si concentrations is a promising approach to quantify base/manure mixing on feed pens given that this element is abundantly concentrated in soils and rocks.
Receive Antenna Subsets Selection Based on Orthogonal Componts

Multiple-antenna wireless communication systems have recently attracted significant attention due to their higher capacity and better immunity to fading as compared to systems that employ single-sensor transceiver. Increasing the number of transmit and receive antennas enables to improve system performance but at the price of higher hardware cost and computational burden due to the multiple RF chains. Antenna selection is a low-cost low-complexity alternative to capture many of the advantages of MIMO systems. In this paper, we propose a new antenna selection algorithm with low complexity for wireless multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The new algorithm is based on the orthogonal components of the rows of channel matrix. It achieves almost the same outage capacity as the optimal selection method while keeping lower computational complexity. The simulation results for quasi-static Rayleigh flat fading channel demonstrate the significant performance of the proposed selection algorithm
NON-DESTRUCTIVE METHODS INTO HEALTH MONITORING OF TALL TYPE BUILDINGS OPERATING INTO HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENT

The paper is focusing on selected problems of health monitoring of tall type buildings. The actual problem in structural health monitoring (SHM) is to find the damages and its location by performing some statistical pattern recognition based on the measured data termed as feature extraction. The damage caused by environmental loads should be repaired; otherwise, it will expand with time and might lead to complete system failure. Dynamic parameters, such as velocity, acceleration and displacement, play a significant role in determining the structure dynamics. This paper is focusing on smart wireless sensors application into health monitoring systems of tall type buildings operating into hazardous environment and selected methods for data analysis obtained from the monitoring system. Smart sensors can locally process measured data and transmit only the significant information via wireless communication. As a network, wireless sensors extend the capability. Significant future developments of smart wireless sensors technology in tall type buildings in hazardous environment come by way of multi-disciplinary research efforts encompassing fields such as data analysing, signal processing, structural dynamics, motion and environmental sensing hardware, computational hardware, smart materials, data telemetry and statistical pattern recognition, as well as other fields yet to be defined. Specification issues that require automation of the decision making process in the evaluation of the technical state of the tall type structure have been also discussed.