Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Proximal augmented Lagrangian method for convex optimization with linear inequality constraints

The augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) provides a classical benchmark for solving convex optimization problem with linear equality constraints: min{θ(x) ∣∣ Ax = b, x ∈ X} . In practice, the proximal regularized version of ALM, by adding an additional positive-definite quadratic proximal term to the estimation of primal variables, is often implemented to tackle many problems and its convergence has been well studied in literature. The most recent study reveals an interesting fact that the positive definite regularization term is not required to ensure the convergence of the proximal regularized ALM, which hence results in an indefinite regularized proximal ALM and larger step-size for speeding up convergence. In this work, we propose a novel indefinite regularized ALM framework to study the linear inequality constrained convex optimization problem: min{θ(x) ∣∣ Ax ≥ b, x ∈ X}. The new methods enjoy great advantages in two folds: for the first method, it linearizes the core subproblem of ALM, and the relaxation of indefinite proximal regularization allows bigger step size to potentially reduce required convergence iterations; for second method, it does not require estimating the maximum eigenvalue of ATA, and has a same computational complexity with ALM;. Moreover, we establish the global convergence theory of the proposed methods and show its worst-case O(1/t) convergence rate. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the introduced indefinite linearized augmented Lagrangian method is efficient in solving practical problems, such as SVM and image segmentation.
Pole Balancing and Thermal Management in Multiterminal HVdc Grids Using Single H-Bridge-Based Current Flow Controllers

Current flow controllers (CFCs) are power electronics-based devices that may remove some technical barriers preventing multiterminal high-voltage direct current (MTdc) grid deployment. In this paper, an interline CFC topology is investigated. The single H-bridge CFC (1B-CFC) alters the grid power flow by transferring power between neighboring dc lines. The operation and control of a 1B-CFC under a single modulation scheme is presented. A control strategy has been proposed to provide pole balancing support during imbalance conditions. Small-scale prototypes have been developed to demonstrate the functionality and operational range of the device. To this end, an experimental MTdc grid test-rig has been employed. It is shown that a 1B-CFC could be used to limit the dc line current and, additionally, it can be employed to enable asymmetrical tapping of dc lines. For completeness, the performance of the device has been experimentally validated under line overloading, pole imbalance conditions, and a pole-to-pole dc fault.
Defense Techniques Against Cyber Attacks on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones serve a wide range of applications from surveillance to combat missions. UAVs carry, collect, or communicate sensitive information which becomes a target for the attacks. Securing the communication network between the operator and the UAV is therefore crucial. So far, the networks used in most UAV applications are static, which allows more time and opportunity for the adversary to perform cyber-attacks on the UAV. In this paper we propose to study Moving Target Defense (MTD) technique against cyber-attacks on the drones including wireless network encryption and intrusion detection system. MTD technique change the static nature of the systems to increase both the difficulty and the cost (effort, time, and resources) of mounting attacks. For illustration purpose, a well-known cyberattack is performed on a popular commercial drone and results are presented to show the network vulnerabilities, damages caused due to the attacks and defense techniques to prevent the attacks.
Spatio-temporal detectors for face detection in video

Face detection is the rst step in many video applications such as video surveillance, facial expression analysis, face tracking and face recognition. Several algorithms have been proposed to this task, but most of them are based on techniques for still images, not considering the spatio-temporal information available in a video. In this paper two spatio-temporal face detectors are developed and evaluated on the challenging YouTube Faces database. The obtained results are compared with those obtained by two frame-based approaches.
Simulation of bio-inspired micro-swimmers with varying material composition

A simulation of a bio-inspired micro-swimmer excited with traveling soundwaves is presented. Four designs are presented to realize a variation in material composition, inducing acoustic and structural asymmetry in the swimmer to maximize the amount of propulsion. The designs are simulated with the COMSOL Multi-Physics FEM-application. From structural analysis eigenfrequencies and mode shapes of the swimmer are determined and acoustic excitation is shown to induce the same response in the swimmer. In acoustofluidic analysis a perturbation approach is used to decouple first and second order effects. Propulsive force was found to be maximized at eigenfrequency. Future applications of the swimmer include targeted drug delivery and non-invasive surgery.
Factors influencing crosslink formation in muscle tissue

Factors influencing crosslink formation in muscle tissue Maricica Pacurari The objectives of this study were to determine the effect of the crosslink breaker ALT-711 on the concentration of soluble collagen, as well as its effectiveness on meat tenderness. Final body weights were not affected by treatments. Muscle tenderness was higher (p<0.05) for TB, SS, BF, ST, and LT (p<0.10) for A-maturity animals compared to control and ALT-711 treated animals. No consistent ALT-711 effect on shear force measurements was found. Shear force increased linearly with age BF, R=0.94; SM, R=0.81; LL, R=0.77; SS, R=0.63; LT, R=0.32; TB, R=0.37; ST, R=0.40. Total collagen content was not different (p>0.10) between A-maturity, control and ALT-711 treated animals. However, the concentration of soluble collagen was higher (p<0.05) for A-maturity group. Insoluble collagen content was higher (p<0.05) for longissimus thoracis, biceps femoris, and (p<0.10) for supraspinatus of control animals. Muscle soluble collagen content decreased linearly as chronological age increased LT R=0.98; LL R=0.92; TB R=0.99; BF R=0.99; ST R=0.95; SM R=0.99; SS R=0.36. The soluble collagen percentage was higher for ALT-711 treated animals compared to control animals. ALT-711 tended to increase muscle soluble collagen content of aged cattle. ALT711 may be an effective age-related collagen crosslink breaker. However, ALT-711 may not be used to improve meat quality of aged cattle.
A Stealthier Partitioning Attack against Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network

Network adversaries, such as malicious transit autonomous systems (ASes), have been shown to be capable of partitioning the Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer network via routing-level attacks; e.g., a network adversary exploits a BGP vulnerability and performs a prefix hijacking attack (viz. Apostolaki et al. [3]). Due to the nature of BGP operation, such a hijacking is globally observable and thus enables immediate detection of the attack and the identification of the perpetrator. In this paper, we present a stealthier attack, which we call the EREBUS attack, that partitions the Bitcoin network without any routing manipulations, which makes the attack undetectable to control-plane and even to data-plane detectors. The novel aspect of EREBUS is that it makes the adversary AS a natural man-in-the-middle network of all the peer connections of one or more targeted Bitcoin nodes by patiently influencing the targeted nodes’ peering decision. We show that affecting the peering decision of a Bitcoin node, which is believed to be infeasible after a series of bug patches against the earlier Eclipse attack [29], is possible for the network adversary that can use abundant network address resources (e.g., spoofing millions of IP addresses in many other ASes) reliably for an extended period of time at a negligible cost. The EREBUS attack is readily available for large ASes, such as Tier-1 and large Tier-2 ASes, against the vast majority of 10K public Bitcoin nodes with only about 520 bit/s of attack traffic rate per targeted Bitcoin node and a modest (e.g., 5–6 weeks) attack execution period. The EREBUS attack can be mounted by nation-state adversaries who would be willing to execute sophisticated attack strategies patiently to compromise cryptocurrencies (e.g., control the consensus, take down a cryptocurrency, censor transactions). As the attack exploits the topological advantage of being a network adversary but not the specific vulnerabilities of Bitcoin core, no quick patches seem to be available. We discuss that some naive solutions (e.g., whitelisting, rate-limiting) are ineffective and third-party proxy solutions may worsen the Bitcoin’s centralization problem. We provide some suggested modifications to the Bitcoin core and show that they effectively make the EREBUS attack significantly harder; yet, their non-trivial changes to the Bitcoin’s network operation (e.g., peering dynamics, propagation delays) should be examined thoroughly before their wide deployment.
Programming 3D Applications with HTML5 and WebGL: 3D Animation and Visualization for Web Pages

Create high-performance, visually stunning 3D applications for the Web, using HTML5 and related technologies such as CSS3 and WebGLthe emerging web graphics standard. With this book, youll learn how to use the tools, frameworks, and libraries for building 3D models and animations, mind-blowing visual effects, and advanced user interaction in both desktop and mobile browsers.In two partsFoundations and Application Development Techniquesauthor Tony Parisi provides a thorough grounding in theory and practice for designing everything from a simple 3D product viewer to immersive games and interactive training systems. Ideal for developers with Javascript and HTML experience.Explore HTML5 APIs and related technologies for creating 3D web graphics, including WebGL, Canvas, and CSSWork with the popular JavaScript 3D rendering and animation libraries Three.js and Tween.jsDelve into the 3D content creation pipeline, and the modeling and animation tools for creating killer 3D contentLook into several game engines and frameworks for building 3D applications, including the authors Vizi frameworkCreate 3D environments with multiple objects and complex interaction, using examples and supporting codeExamine the issues involved in building WebGL-based 3D applications for mobile browsers
Model Predictive Control using DeltaV of the Quadruple Tank Process .

Model predictive control is widely used in process industries for multivariable systems. The Quadruple Tank Process (QTP), a 2-input, 2-output system is presented. The strong interactions between the input and output variables make this process very challenging to control. Using first principle, a non-linear model of the QTP was developed. The major objective in this work is to investigate the use of the MPC strategy in DeltaV to control the Quadruple tank. A model of the process must be present before MPC can be implemented. DeltaV MPC creates a step response model of the process using input and output data of the process. The modelling technique in DeltaV (step response modelling) didn’t give a correct representation the Quadruple tank process. To compare this modelling technique, the subspace system identification method (DSR) was used. The DSR method produces state space model matrices from known input and output data. Validation results for the DSR showed the modelling results were more accurate when compared to the modelling technique in DeltaV. The mean square error was used as a basis of comparing these two methods. All simulations were done using input and output data logged from the real plant. The default setting of the generated controller in DeltaV MPC didn’t give good tracking because of the poor models of the process. Tuning of this controller was done to improve performance. To achieve better control results of the QTP, the state space model identified by the DSR method was also used in the implementation of MPC using MATLAB. This resulted in a more robust controller. DeltaV MPC was used to control a SISO system (2-tank process), and much better results were achieved when compared to the MIMO system (QTP) The DSR system identification method was compared with the model prediction strategy in DeltaV MPC for both the MIMO and SISO systems, and the DSR showed better results especially in the MIMO systems. But overall, the DSR gave better results for both the MIMO and the SISO systemsUniversity College of Southeast Norway accepts no responsibility for results and conclusions presented in this report.
SPEECH ENHANCEMENT : AN INVESTIGATION WITH RAW WAVEFORM

Speech enhancement has a vast amount of demand in many areas. Previous works were usually formulated using timefrequency representations. Time-frequency representation has two limitations: firstly, it is a trade-off to choose between time and frequency resolutions; secondly, phase information is usually discarded and is very difficult to work with. This project serves as an investigation for building a system that operates on raw audio waveforms directly. We proposed a lattice-ladder structured neural networks with gated dilated convolutional layers as its basic building block. We performed training on the dataset we built, with a lot of operations for data augmentation. We evaluated this system with unseen speeches, unseen noises with unseen room impulse response. Our results indicate that this approach is able to produce better speech for low input quality. Due to limited time and resources and high computational burden, many properties of this kind of systems are still remained for further investigation.
Kimo - A Serious Game for Childhood and Juvenile Cancer Learning

Currently, games are not strictly associated with player fun. There are those that have been developed to serve as a learning tool, including on health-related topics. Thus, the present paper presents the connection between serious games and oncological medical treatments for children and adolescents. With this, it is possible to observe the relationship between games and children learning, and how this relationship can aid in medical treatment and reaction to the disease. In addition, the use of Virtual Reality (VR) is verified as a tool to provide immersion and interactivity between game and player. Based on this, a serious game for children with cancer, named Kimo, is presented and contains features that help players gain knowledge about their condition and the necessary medical procedures. The game consists of three phases that refer to one of the daily activities in the hospital environment. They are: medication, food and hygiene. So one idea is to show players how activities are not processed.
Riemannian Loss for Image Restoration

Deep neural networks are widely used for image restoration, however the loss criteration is usually set as l2.ll2 penalizes larger errors, which is unstable for outliers. To avoid the disadvantages, l1 is utilized as a more robust and well behaved loss. This paper proposes a novel loss function for restoration networks, which measures geodesic distance in Riemannian manifold and exploits the outstanding properties of l1. Different from l1 and l2 loss which reflects pixel distance, our loss in Riemannian reflects the structure distance of image. The proposed loss not only preserves the robutness of l1 loss, but also reflects the image contrasts. Experimental results on image super resolution and compressed sensing show that our proposed loss function achieves more accurate reconstructions, according to both the objective and perceptual qualities.
Research on sentence sentiment classification based on Chinese sentiment word table

This paper presents the weighted linear combination method for the sentence sentiment classification based on Chinese sentiment word table.In proposed method,firstly,Chinese sentiment word table is constructed by using five existing dictionaries, secondly,automatically identifying method is explored for the sentence sentiment classification using the weighted linear combination method.The experiment results indicate that the F value of sentence sentiment classification with word language granularity reaches 78.2%,and adding the negative phrase to language granularity,the F value of sentence sentiment classification has increased by 4.14%.
The Processes Driving an Ember Storm

A form of fire spread that has sometimes been called an ‘ember storm’ is examined, in which the main vector of fire spread is the ignition of numerous spotfires by embers or firebrands. By taking spotfires to grow as elliptical shapes under the influence of wind, the processes from ember production to spotting can be assembled into an averaged continuum model. The model is not valid in the limit of relatively rare spotting but for fires in which spreading involves frequent ignition of new spotfires it amounts to relatively simple bookkeeping of the mean number of spotfires, their perimeter, the area burnt and the transport and deposition of lofted embers. The basic ingredients in the model are outlined and we examine the way in which the average spread rate of an ember storm depends on such things as the rate of ember production within the flaming perimeter, the transport of embers and their propensity for igniting fresh vegetation when they land. Key factors are the wind-speed and what may be called the mean spotting time, or the time it takes for any one spotfire to lead to the ignition of another. A single similarity solution describes steady spread over all parameter ranges, requiring one numerical calculation to predict all steady ember storm spread rates, when dominated by frequent spotting. In more detail, two dimensionless quantities are revealed in the examination of the model. These are τ = te ts = mean ember lifetime mean spotting time and λ = `e `s = mean ember transport distance mean ember storm thickness (1) in which the mean spotting time ts is the average time it takes for one spotfire to grow and produce enough embers to generate a new spotfire; the mean ember storm thickness `s is the characteristic distance that the overall ember storm moves, ahead of the centroid movement of individual spotfires, during the spotting time. The ember lifetime te is the characteristic survival time of lofted embers (lost through extinction and landing) and the mean ember transport distance `e is the distance that they are transported by the wind, during this time, ahead of the mean movement of the ember storm. For a steadily spreading ember storm the dimensionless ember transport distance λ takes a characteristic value of λ = λ̄ ≈ 0.305 · · · . The mean spread rate of the ember storm is then given by Re = τw + λ̄c τ + λ̄ ≈ w te te + 0.3 ts (2) where w is the effective mean wind speed and c is the mean speed of the centroid of a spotfire. This result should hold well when τw is large compared with the centroid speed c, this being a condition that ensures that numerous spotfires are formed and that these dominate the spread of the fire—this is required for an ember storm to be present. Otherwise, spotting is more rare and it generates more occasional additions to the forward motion of the fire; results for mean fire spread with occasional spotting will be addressed in a separate publication.
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES OF POLISH PRODUCTIVE ENTERPRISES

Organizing next to planning, staffing and organizat ional development is the key function of top management in any organization. To work effectively in organizations managers must have clear understandin g of the organizational structure. Viewing an organization chart on a piece of paper, one sees only configuration of positions, job duties, and lines o f authority among the parts of an organization. However, organizational structures can be far more complex than that. By organizational structure one means t hree distinct but related things. In the first place, the division of labour in the organization: dividing work into task or roles such as operations, logistics an d transportation, and training, and recombining them into administrative units, e.g . branches, departments, bureaus or divisions according to mission, function , a d/or region. This is the organization's administrative structure the struc ture depicted in organization charts, including tables of organization and equipm ent. In the second place, it is the distribution of authority and responsibility to individuals within the organization. This is the organization's responsibi lity structure. In the third place, it is the organization's system of measuring a d evaluating performance how it organizes information on inputs, costs, acti vities, and outputs. This is the organization's account or control structure. An acc ount structure should be oriented to administrative units or responsibility centers optimally to both, since the information provided by these accounts ca n be used both to coordinate unit activities and to control the behavior of resp onsibility center managers or to some analytically relevant construct [12,p.52-56 ]. The form and configuration of the organizational structure are determined by m any factors. Technology plays an essential role in productive enterprises. Qualification of the specific features of Polish productive enterprises’ organiza tion l structures is the goal of this paper. It has been achieved based on research’ s results of 79 productive enterprises.
User-Centered Assistive Robotics for Production-Human-Robot Interaction Concepts in the AssistMe project

In this paper we present results of the AssistMe project which aims at enabling close human-robot cooperation in production processes. AssistMe develops and evaluates different means of interaction for programming and using a robot-based assistive system through a multistage user-centered design process. Together with two industrial companies humanrobot cooperation scenarios are evaluated in two entirely different application areas. One field of application is the assembly of automotive combustion engines while the other one treats the machining (polishing) of casting moulds. In this paper we describe the overall project methodology, followed by a description of the selected use case and a detailed outline of the first two expansion stages. The paper closes with an overview on the results of the first two rounds of user trials and gives an outlook on the next expansion stage of the human-robot cooperation scenario.
1 PLURAL FORM AND PERFORMANCE : SOME PRELIMINARY FINDINGS FROM US FRANCHISING NETWORKS IN THE HOTEL AND RESTAURANT SECTORS

Plural form networks, i.e. networks in which franchised units and company-owned units coexist, is now a common choice of most of the franchisors, whatever the industry in which they have their activities and whatever the country in which they have their operations. Many authors have contributed to better understand this particular organizational form, and highlighted its advantages in terms of network management. But, so far, the superiority of the plural form has been very rarely demonstrated in terms of performance, even if authors such as Combs et al. (2004a) and Watson et al. (2005) have nevertheless insisted on the need for research focusing on performance in franchising. The purpose of the present paper is therefore to explore the influence of the plural form on network performance. The empirical study deals with 123 US networks from the restaurant and hotel industries. The findings show that large networks having a high percentage of company-owned units and expanding outside their domestic market perform better than the other networks.