Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recognition of Wall Surfaces from Monocular Imagery for SLAM Applications in Indoor Environments

—Recognition of wall surfaces and other structural line segment features is an important aspect of LASER based Simultaneous Location and Mapping (SLAM) applications. Traditional indoor structural environment modeling algorithms employ schemes such as clustering of point clouds for parameterization and identification of the wall surfaces that serve as features to localize and map the environment of interest. RANSAC based line fitting and Spike detection are two common approaches in this regard. Alternatively, extensions to feature based stereo have also been used, mainly focusing on 3D line descriptions, along with techniques such as half-plane detection, real-plane or facade reconstruction, plane sweeping etc. Noise in the range data (from either LASER or stereo), especially in low texture regions, accidental line/plane grouping under lack of cues for visibility tests, presence of depth edges or discontinuities that are not visible in the 2D image and difficulties in adaptively estimating metrics for clustering can hamper efficiency of practical systems. In order to counter these issues, we propose a novel framework to use monocular imagery of the scene fusing 2D local and global features such as edges, texture and regions to detect wall surfaces and then use the resulting wall segmentation masks to guide the range data clustering. The focus of this paper is on the novel wall surfaces detection algorithm. Accuracy of recognition of wall surfaces is estimated with respect to a number of different material surface types, found in typical indoor environments. Testing on a representative dataset yielded recognition rates in excess of 95%, at 97% wall detection accuracy.
A new adaptive trilateral filter for in-loop filtering

Kesireddy,Akitha M.S., Purdue University, May 2014. A New Adaptive Trilateral Filter for In-loop Filtering. Major Professor: Mohammed El-Sharkawy. HEVC has achieved significant coding efficiency improvement beyond existing video coding standard by employing many new coding tools. Deblocking Filter, Sample Adaptivie Offset and Adaptive Loop Filter (ALF) for in-loop filtering are currently introduced for the HEVC standardization. However these filters are implemented in spatial domain despite the fact of temporal correlation within video sequences. To reduce the artifacts and better align object boundaries in video, a new algorithm in in-loop filtering is proposed. The proposed algorithm is implemented in HM-11.0 software. This proposed algorithm allows an average bitrate reduction of about 0.7% and improves the PSNR of the decoded frames by 0.05%, 0.30% and 0.35% in luminance and chroma.
Seeking Meaning: a process approach to library and information services" Ablex Publishing

List of Figures List of Tables Preface Introduction The Constructive Process in Library and Information Science Theory Learning as a Process The Information Search Process Verification of the Model of the Information Search Process Longitudinal Confirmation of the Information Search Process Uncertainty Principle Roles of Mediators in the Process of Information Seeking Zones of Intervention into the Process of Information Seeking Implementing the Process Approach Information Search Process in the Work Place Process-Oriented Library and Information Services References Author Index Subject Index
Second-Derivative Sequential Quadratic Programming Methods for Nonlinear Optimization

Author(s): Kungurtsev, Vyacheslav | Abstract: Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) methods are a popular and successful class of methods for minimizing a generally nonlinear function subject to nonlinear constraints. Under a standard set of assumptions, conventional SQP methods exhibit a fast rate of local convergence. However, in practice, a conventional SQP method involves solving an indefinite quadratic program (QP), which is NP hard in general. As a result, approximations to the second-derivatives are often used, which can slow the rate of local convergence and reduce the chance that the algorithm will converge to a local minimizer instead of a saddle point. In addition, the standard assumptions required for convergence often do not hold in practice. For such problems, regularized SQP methods, which also require second-derivatives, have been shown to have good local convergence properties; however, there are few regularized SQP methods that exhibit convergence to a minimizer from an arbitrary initial starting point. This thesis considers the formulation, analysis and implementation of SQP methods with the following properties. (i) The solution of an indefinite QP is not required. (ii) Regularization is performed in such a way that global convergence can be established under standard assumptions. (iii) Implementations of the method work well on degenerate problems
Poster Abstract: Next-Generation Prototyping of Sensor Networks

Large-scale deployment of sensor networks is more and more becoming an issue to researchers and industry alike. The recently revised BTnode architecture provides two wireless radios and facilitates the interconnection of heterogeneous devices. Apart from offering interesting new opportunities in using multi-frontend devices in sensor-network research, this architecture is optimally suited for deployment-support networks as introduced in the following.
Pseudo Devices: User-Level Extensions to the Sprite File System

A pseudo-device is a mechanism in the Sprite network file system that lets a user-level server process emulate a file or I/O device. Pseudo-devices are implemented by transparently mapping client operations on the pseudo-device into a request-response exchange with a server process. The interface to pseudo-devices is general enough to be a transport mechanism for a user-level RPC system. It also provides a stream-oriented interface with write-behind and read-ahead for an asynchronous connection between clients and server. Sprite uses pseudo-devices to implement at user level its terminal drivers, the internet protocol suite, and the X-11 window system server. The pseudo-device implementation provides as fast or faster communication, both local and remote, than a UNIX UDP socket connection.
Meeting Structure Annotation: Data and Tools

We present a set of annotations of hierarchical topic segmentations and action item subdialogues collected over 65 meetings from the ICSI and ISL meeting corpora, designed to support automatic meeting understanding and analysis. We describe an architecture for representing, annotating, and analyzing multi-party discourse, including: an ontology of multimodal discourse, a programming interface for that ontology, and an audiovisual toolkit which facilitates browsing and annotating discourse, as well as visualizing and adjusting features for machine learning tasks.
Providing Quality-of-Service Guarantees in Wireless Networks

Providing quality of service (QoS) guarantees is an important objective in the design of the next-generation wireless networks. In this dissertation, we address the QoS provisioning problem from both the network and the end system perspectives. In the first part of the dissertation, we investigate the problem of statistical QoS provisioning from the network perspective. We propose and develop a link-layer channel model termed the effective capacity (EC) model. The effective capacity model captures the effect of channel fading on the queueing behavior of the link, using a computationally simple yet accurate model, and thus, is the critical device we need to design efficient QoS provisioning mechanisms. We call such an approach to channel modeling and QoS provisioning, as effective capacity approach. With the effective capacity approach, we obtain link-layer QoS measures for various scenarios: flat-fading channels, frequency-selective fading channels, multi-link wireless networks, variable-bit-rate sources, packetized traffic, and wireless channels with non-negligible propagation delay. The link-layer QoS measures are characterized by a data rate, delay bound, and delay-bound violation probability triplet. Armed with the EC channel model, we develop simple and efficient schemes for admission control, resource allocation, and scheduling, which can yield substantial capacity gain. We study some of the practical aspects of effective capacity approach, namely, the effect of modulation and channel coding, and robustness against non-stationary channel gain processes. We show how to quantify the effect of practical modulation and channel coding on the effective capacity approach to QoS provisioning. We identify the fundamental tradeoff between power and time diversity in QoS provisioning over fading channels, and propose a novel time-diversity dependent power control scheme to leverage time diversity. In the second part of the dissertation, we focus our attention on QoS support from the
Interactive object selection and matting for video and images

Video segmentation, the process of selecting an object out of a video sequence, is a fundamentally important process for video editing and special effects. However, it remains an unsolved problem due to many difficulties such as large or rapid motions, motion blur, lighting and shadow changes, complex textures, similar colors in the foreground and background, and many others. While the human vision system relies on multiple visual cues and higher-order understanding of the objects involved in order to perceive the segmentation, current algorithms usually depend on a small amount of information to assist a user in selecting a desired object. This causes current methods to often fail for common cases. Because of this, industry still largely relies on humans to trace the object in each frame, a tedious and expensive process. This dissertation investigates methods of segmenting video by propagating the segmentation from frame to frame using multiple cues to maximize the amount of information gained from each user interaction. New and existing methods are incorporated in propagating as much information as possible to a new frame, leveraging multiple cues such as object colors or mixes of colors, color relationships, temporal and spatial coherence, motion, shape, and identifiable points. The cues are weighted and applied on a local basis depending on the reliability of the cue in each region of the image. The reliability of the cues is learned from any corrections the user makes. In this framework, every action of the user is examined and leveraged in an attempt to provide as much information as possible to guarantee a correct segmentation. Propagating segmentation information from frame to frame using multiple cues and learning from the user interaction allows users to more quickly and accurately extract objects from video while exerting less effort. Keywords: Video segmentation, image segmentation, image matting, color modeling
Transmission properties of pair cables

An improved infusion package serves both for the storage of an infusion bag prior to use and for the reception and secure retention of both the infusion bag and surplus infusion liquid after use. The infusion package is of the kind having an infusion bag housed within a container formed from folded panels of flat sheet material, the container including first and second panels joined at respective opposite parallel edges and held in an outwardly bowed convex or pillow shape by overlapping margins that are folded about concave lines extending between the parallel edges, one of said opposed panels having an opening and a third panel located relatively to the one panel by a hinge and closing the opening.
A study of user authentication using mobile phone

The number of different identities and credentials used for authentication towards services on the Internet has increased beyond the manageable. Still, the most common authentication scheme is based on usernames and passwords which are neither secure nor user-friendly. Hence, better solutions for simplified, yet secure authentication, is required in the future. This thesis present an authentication scheme based on a One-Time Password (OTP) MIDlet running on a mobile phone for unified authentication towards any type of service on the Internet. The scheme is described in detail by an analysis and a design model. Based on the analysis and design an implementation of a prototype has been developed using Java. The security aspects of scheme are thoroughly evaluated in a security evaluation which identifies threats, security objectives and possible attacks. The proposed solution offers a strong authentication scheme which can substitute many of the authentication schemes we are using to day. Not only can it replace the standard username/password scheme, but due to its security services it can also replace stronger schemes such as existing OTP and smartcard solutions. Therefore the solution is suitable for many services on the Internet which requires authentication such as Internet banking, corporate intranet, Internet stores and e-Government applications.
Arabic Named Entity Recognition using Conditional Random Fields

The Named Entity Recognition (NER) task consists in determining and classifying proper names within an open-domain text. This Natural Language Processing task proved to be harder for languages with a complex morphology such as the Arabic language. NER was also proved to help Natural Language Processing tasks such as Machine Translation, Information Retrieval and Question Answering to obtain a higher performance. In our previous works we have presented the first and the second version of ANERsys: an Arabic Named Entity Recognition system, whose performance we have succeeded to improve by more than 10 points, from the first to the second version, by adopting a different architecture and using additional information such as Part-Of-Speech tags and Base Phrase Chunks. In this paper, we present a further attempt to enhance the accuracy of ANERsys by changing the probabilistic model from Maximum Entropy to Conditional Random Fields which helped to improve the results significantly.
Parallel Distributed Processing Volume 1: Foundations

1,227,914. A die for laminated films. NORTHERN PETROCHEMICAL CO. 25 April, 1969 [26 April, 1968], No. 21298/69. Heading B5B. [Also in Division F2] A die for the extrusion of laminated plastic tubing is shown in Fig. 1. Material for the inner ply is supplied through tube 18, the conduit 19 the axial tube 20 and the four radial tubes 21 to the annular chamber 22 and material for the outer ply is supplied through the tube 28 and the feed hole 31 to the chamber 30. From chambers 22 and 30 the inner and outer ply materials are delivered to the annular conical chamber 43, in a molten state and flow under conditions of laminar flow to the die mouth 44. A molten laminate is produced in chamber 43 by virtue of the ring 42. Air from the supply 35 is delivered to the interior of the tube so formed via the hydraulic coupling 33, the tube 32, the hydraulic coupling 34 and the outlet 36 in order to inflate and hence support the extruded tubing. A mandrel 14, the rear end of which threadably engages a nut 15 and the forward end of which threadably engages mandrel head 25, fits slidably in the cylindrical die casing 10. The chambers 22, 30, 43 and the ring 42 are formed by shaping of the mandrel, the die casing and the mandrel head. As can be seen from Fig. 1 the thickness of the film, and the relative thicknesses of the plies can be varied by relative axial movements of the mandrel 14, mandrel head 25 and the die casing 10. Other features of the die include a nut 15 for adjusting the mandrel position, holes 26 in the mandrel head to engage a spanner to facilitate the adjustment of the mandrel head and an adapter head 17. A modification of the above die is shown in Fig. 2 (not shown) having the following features: a sleeve (54) which separates the mandrel from the die casing; the use of 0-rings for producing seals and an adjustment which allows the eccentricity of the die head to be varied.
Visualization enhancement by embedding local and global modeling operations in the rendering process

The recent great increase in the availability of powerful computer systems with large memories and storage devices led the way to using memory expensive modalities. Volume graphics is one of these modalities. It requires large amounts of memory for maintaining, and powerful computers to manipulate. Since volume data sets span a three dimensional space, a resolution increase of a volume by some factor n forces storage increase by a factor of $n\sp3. $ Medical applications and scientific applications found the modality of volume graphics attractive because it provides a complete three dimensional representation of space. This representation matches recent innovations in medical acquisition devices, and finite element methods. This dissertation addresses one aspect of volume rendering. It presents methods for increasing the quality and detail of output images without increasing the complexity of the volume data sets. It achieves this task in two families of methods. The two families provide user dependent and user independent tools for deforming the shape of volume models. The user dependent tool requires involvement of the user for generating local deformations in a volume model. Every single deformation requires a direct specification from the user. The user independent method provides a tool for applying global modeling operations on the entire volume data set at once. In this method, the user has to specify one set of inputs, regardless of the complexity of the model. Both the user dependent and the user independent techniques embed modeling operations in the rendering process. Other modeling methods modify the volume model directly into a new volume model. The new model is often more complex than the original one. None of the methods described herein require any modifications to the original model. They operate in the rendering phase thus providing the illusion that we modified the model.
Gérer la tentation en situation d’apprentissage : comparaison de la réévaluation cognitive avec l’obéissance à un ordre

Quand un etudiant se retrouve en situation de tentation, ses parents/professeurs usent frequemment de leur autorite pour le convaincre de persister dans son apprentissage. La presente etude propose une autre strategie : la reevaluation cognitive. Elle consiste a changer la signification de la situation. Quatre-vingt-dix participants ont memorise des informations tout en etant tentes de regarder des images. Compares a ceux qui n’avaient pas effectue de reevaluation ou qui avaient recu l’injonction de bien faire, le groupe ayant reevalue la tâche (1) s’est moins laisse distraire, (2) a ameliore sa performance et (3) a attribue plus de valeur a la tâche.
Performance Comparison of Parallel Bees Algorithm on Rosenbrock Function

The optimization algorithms that imitate nature have acquired much attention principally mechanisms for solving the difficult issues for example the travelling salesman problem (TSP) which is containing routing and scheduling of the tasks. This thesis presents the parallel Bees Algorithm as a new approach for optimizing the last results for the Bees Algorithm. Bees Algorithm is one of the optimization algorithms inspired from the natural foraging ways of the honey bees of finding the best solution. It is a series of activities based on the searching algorithm in order to access the best solutions. It is an iteration algorithm; therefore, it is suffering from slow convergence. The other downside of the Bee Algorithm is that it has needless computation. This means that it spends a long time for the bees algorithm converge the optimum solution. In this study, the parallel bees algorithm technique is proposed for overcoming of this issue. Due to that, this would lead to reduce the required time to get a solution with faster results accuracy than original Bees Algorithm.
Efectos de los fallos en la compra ‘online’ sobre la satisfacción con la página web: análisis de las distintas respuestas según las características demográficas del consumidor

La insatisfaccion del consumidor tras experimentar un fallo en la compra online es el principal motivo de perdida de clientes en Internet. No obstante, no todos los consumidores reaccionan del mismo modo en estas situaciones. El objetivo del presente trabajo es la identificacion de segmentos de consumidores segun su distinta satisfaccion con las compras en Internet, desde la doble perspectiva de haber experimentado un fallo en la compra o no. Sobre una muestra de 397 compradores online, los resultados de este estudio confirman que el efecto de los fallos en la compra sobre la satisfaccion difiere segun el sexo y la edad de los consumidores, lo que ofrece a las empresas que operan en Internet una valiosa informacion para desarrollar estrategias de segmentacion efectivas. ---------- Consumer dissatisfaction after experiencing an online service failure is the main reason for customers abandoning online purchases. However, not all consumers respond to these situations in the same way. The aim of this study is to identify segments of consumers according to their different satisfaction with online shopping, from the dual perspective of having experienced or not, a service failure in the purchase. Results, from a sample of 397 online consumers, confirm that the effect of online service failures in consumer satisfaction differs based on consumers’ gender and age, providing valuable information for online retailers to effectively implement market segmentation strategies.
Biometric Verification at a Self Service Interface

The term biometrics refers to a variety of identification techniques, based on a physical, or behavioural user characteristic. Traditionally, access to ATMs, has been controlled by possession of an artefact (card) and knowledge of a Personal Identification Number (PIN). Biometric verification is a potential alternative. At NCR, investigations into biometrics have been undertaken over a number of years. These investigations have used a variety of methods to gradually acquire a sound understanding of consumers’ issues. Our research has revealed a number of non-trivial issues with the introduction of this type of technology to the general public. We will present some of our findings and general understanding of the public’s attitudes towards and behaviour with, biometrics verification in general and specifically fingerprint at the ATM.
Entorn de suport per al disseny d’activitats formatives basades en l’ús de sistemes de resposta interactiva a les Escoles del Campus Nord

Les tres escoles del Campus Nord utilitzen els comandaments TurningPoint en algunes assignatures, sobretot de la fase inicial. La disponibilitat d’un nombre reduit de comandaments i la necessitat de repartir-los i recollir-los a cada classe limiten l’extensio d’aquesta metodologia. En aquest projecte s’ha desenvolupat un modul de Moodle i un conjunt d’aplicacions que permeten integrar els questionaris interactius a Atenea i utilitzar els telefons intel•ligents (smartphones) o els portatils de l’estudiantat com a comandaments.
Secure and Reliable Wireless Communication through End-to-End-based Solution

In the past few decades, network architectures and protocols are often designed to achieve a high throughput and a low latency. Security was rarely considered during the initial design phases. As a result, many network systems are insecure by design. Once they are widely deployed, the inherent vulnerabilities may be difficult to eliminate due to the prohibitive update cost. In this dissertation, we examine such types of vulnerabilities in various networks and design end-to-end-based solutions that allow end systems to address such loopholes.