Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analytical Representation of Contours N 00014

The interpretation and recognition of noisy contours, such as silhouettes, have proven to be difficult. One obstacle to the solution of these problems has been the lack of a robust representation for contours. In this paper, we present an analytical representation for contours. The contour is represented by a set of pairwise tangent circular arcs. The advantage of such an approach is that mathematical properties such as orientation and curvature are explicitly represented. We introduce a smoothing criterion for the contour that optimizes the tradeoff between the complexity of the contour and proximity of the data points. The complexity measure is the number of extrema of curvature present in the contour. The smoothing criterion leads us to a true scale-space for contours. We describe the computation of the contour representation as well as the computation of relevant properties of the contour. We consider the potential application of the representation, the smoothing paradigm, and the scale-space to contour interpretation and recognition. Copyright @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992 This report describes research done at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support for the laboratory's artificial intelligence research is provided in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense under Office of Naval Research contract N00014-91-J-4038. 93-01676 II llllhI liii tll IN 93 28 0 1 5
Hybrid Method for the Formation of Biocomposites on the Surface of Stainless Steel Implants

This study reports a hybrid method which allows the formation of biocomposites on stainless steel implants. The main idea of the method is to create multilayer coatings consisting of titanium primer layer and a microarc calcium-phosphate coating. The titanium layer is deposited from plasma of continuous vacuum-arc discharge, and calcium-phosphate coating is formed by the microarc oxidation technique. The purpose of the hybrid method is to combine the properties of good strength stainless steel with high bioactivity of calcium-phosphate coating. This paper describes the chemical composition, morphology characteristics, adhesion and the ability of the formed biocomposites to stimulate the processes of osteoinduction. It is expedient to use such biocomposites for implants which carry heavy loads and are intended for long-term use, e.g. total knee endoprosthesis.
Typical and Extremal Linear Programs

Viewed geometrically, the simplex algorithm on a (primally and dually non-degenerate) linear program traces a monotone edge path from the starting vertex to the (unique) optimum. Which path it takes depends on the pivot rule. In this paper we survey geometric and combinatorial aspects of the situation: How do “real” linear programs and their polyhedra look like? How long can simplex paths be in the worst case? Do short paths always exist? Can we expect randomized pivot rules (such as Random Edge) or deterministic rules (such as Zadeh’s rule) to find short paths? MSC 2000. 90C05, 52B11
Pattern formation by swimming microorganisms

In still water, the motion of many species of bacteria and algae is biased in a particular direction by the action of gravity or the presence of oxygen, light, or nutrients. A sufficiently dense population of such organisms alters the motion of the fluid in which the organisms are suspended which in turn alters their behavior, leading to a fluid instability known as bioconvection. In this paper, I discuss experimental observations of bioconvection and models that have been proposed to describe it. The emergence of the bioconvective instability from the equations of fluid mechanics and those describing organism behavior is demonstrated. Pattern formation and the existence of topological phase transitions are discussed.
Moringa Leaf Extract Ameliorates Cerebral Cortex Tissue Damage in STZ-Induced Diabetes Condition

Moringa oleifera is a plant that has huge nutritional and phytomedicinal values particularly due to its rich nutrients, antioxidants and medicinal phytochemicals. This investigation examined the effect of Moringa oleifera leaf extract on the histology of the prefrontal cortex of STZ induced diabetic adult Wistar rat; and the accompanying effects on diabetes-related disorders associated with lipid peroxidation (MDA) and the blood sugar of STZ induced diabetic Wistar rat. Thirty Wistar rats [n=30] were divided into three groups of ten animals each. Group 1 animals served as the control group (non-diabetic) and were simply fed ad libitum; Group 2 animals were administered 65 mg/kg of streptozotocin to induce diabetes and 200 mg/kg of moringa leaf extract to observe the effects of the latter; Group 3 were administered 65 mg/kg of streptozotocin to serve as the untreated diabetic group. Experiment lasted six weeks and the blood sugar level and animal health were duly Original Research Article Omotoso et al; JAMPS, 5(3): 1-7, 2016; Article no.JAMPS. 15989 2 monitored. The animals were euthanized at the end of six weeks and the brain tissues were excised and processed using the haematoxylin and eosin technique. Diabetic animals were hyperglycemic and had cortical neuronal morphological distortions and histoarchitectural disruptions indicating brain tissue damage. Moringa leaf extract was potent in controlling the blood glucose level in STZinduced diabetes murine models; it also ameliorated the damaging effects or consequences of the diabetic conditions on the neurons morphology and relative volume and distribution in the cortical tissue.
Molecular hydrogen in the damped Lyman α system towards GRB 120815A at z = 2.36

We present the discovery of molecular hydrogen (H2), including the presence of vibrationally-excited H2* in the optical spectrum of the afterglow of GRB 120815A at z = 2.36 obtained with X-shooter at the VLT. Simultaneous photometric broad-band data from GROND and X-ray observations by Swift/XRT place further constraints on the amount and nature of dust along the sightline. The galactic environment of GRB 120815A is characterized by a strong DLA with log(N(H i)/cm-2) = 21.95 ± 0.10, prominent H2 absorption in the Lyman-Werner bands (log (N(H2)/cm-2) = 20.54 ± 0.13) and thus a molecular gas fraction log f(H2) = -1.14 ± 0.15. The distance d between the absorbing neutral gas and GRB 120815A is constrained via photo-excitation modeling of fine-structure and meta-stable transitions of Fe ii and Ni ii to d = 0.5 ± 0.1 kpc. The DLA metallicity ([Zn/H] = -1.15 ± 0.12), visual extinction (AV ≲ 0.15 mag) and dust depletion ([Zn/Fe] = 1.01 ± 0.10) are intermediate between the values of well-studied, H2-deficient GRB-DLAs observed at high spectral resolution, and the approximately solar metallicity, highly-obscured and H2-rich GRB 080607 sightline. With respect to N(H i), metallicity, as well as dust-extinction and depletion, GRB 120815A is fairly representative of the average properties of GRB-DLAs. This demonstrates that molecular hydrogen is present in at least a fraction of the more typical GRB-DLAs, and H2 and H2* are probably more wide-spread among GRB-selected systems than the few examples of previous detections would suggest. Because H2* transitions are located redwards of the Lyman α absorption, H2* opens a second route for positive searches for molecular absorption also in GRB afterglows at lower redshifts and observed at lower spectral resolution. Further detections of molecular gas in GRB-DLAs would allow statistical studies, and, coupled with host follow-up and sub-mm spectroscopy, provide unprecedented insights into the process and conditions of star-formation at high redshift.
The Pass-Through from Market Interest Rates to Bank Lending Rates in Germany

The terms and conditions on which bank loans are made to non-financial firms and households play a key role in the transmission of monetary policy. This paper analyses the relationship between German bank lending rates and both money market and capital market rates in the 1990s. This study reveals evidence of structural differences in the interest rate pass-through across German banks. The speed at which bank lending rates adjust to changes in market rates is related to a credit institution's size, its refinancing conditions and the extent of its business with non-banks. Large banks and banks with few savings deposits adjust their lending rates to market terms more quickly than other banks, possibly because their scope for setting interest rates is comparatively narrow. A fairly small amount of long-term business with non-bank customers, indicating the importance of relationship banking, also leads to a faster lending rate pass-through. In the short run, lending rates are stickier for banks that are largely able to cover their long-term loans to non-banks by corresponding deposits from such clients. Finally, the lending rates charged on corporate loans at a number of banks - especially those for current account credit - respond only gradually to changes in market rates. By smoothing their rates, banks appear to accept temporary fluctuations in their loan mark-up. This, in turn, tends to retard monetary policy transmission via bank rates. In the long-run relationship between lending and market rates, however, apart from a constant bank-specific mark-up, there are, in most cases, no differences across banks. This suggests that a similar long-run pass-through obtains for all interest rate reporting banks, irrespective of the adjustment process.
Web-scale Integration One Step at a Time

In this paper, we take the position that a flexible and agile integration infrastructure that harmoniously and transparently oscillates between and supports different levels of integration – loose or partial integration on one end of the spectrum and tight or full integration on the other end of the spectrum – is essential for achieving large Web scale integration. Furthermore, domain knowledge provided by users/domain experts is essential for improving the quality of integration between resources. We posit Web 2.0 or “social Web” technologies, can be brought to bear to facilitate implicit user-driven, web-scale integration at different levels. In this paper, we presentESpace, a prototype for a pay-as-you-go integration framework that supports loosely to tightly integrated resources within the same infrastructure, where loose integration is supported in the sense of pulling resources on the web together, based on the tag meta-information associated with them, and tight integration is a representation of classic schema-matching based integration techniques. This is but the first step in enabling web-scale pay-as-you-go integration by providing fine-grained analysis and integrating substructures within resources – achieving tighter integration for select resources on the user’s behest.
Variation in life history characteristics and morphology of sockeye salmon in the Kvichak River system, Bristol Bay, Alaska

Abstract Sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka spawn in many streams and along lake beaches of the Kvichak River system in Alaska, but fry from the distinct spawning areas reside in a common nursery habitat, Iliamna Lake. In addition, Kvichak River subpopulations have similar dates of adult entry into fresh water, similar migration distances, and similar spawning dates. These similarities in rearing environments and migratory timing enabled us to test the hypothesis that differences in spawning and incubation habitat alone can promote differentiation in traits associated with reproductive success. River-spawning sockeye salmon tended to be larger at age and older than those spawning along island beaches. Females from rivers were more fecund but had smaller eggs than the beach-spawning females. Males from beaches were deeper-bodied and (in one comparison) had relatively longer lower jaws than males from rivers. The tendency of river-spawning females to mature later than beach spawners may be related to a highe.
Embedded Extended Visual Cryptography Schemes

A visual cryptography scheme (VCS) is a kind of secret sharing scheme which allows the encoding of a secret image into shares distributed to participants. The beauty of such a scheme is that a set of qualified participants is able to recover the secret image without any cryptographic knowledge and computation devices. An extended visual cryptography scheme (EVCS) is a kind of VCS which consists of meaningful shares (compared to the random shares of traditional VCS). In this paper, we propose a construction of EVCS which is realized by embedding random shares into meaningful covering shares, and we call it the embedded EVCS. Experimental results compare some of the well-known EVCSs proposed in recent years systematically, and show that the proposed embedded EVCS has competitive visual quality compared with many of the well-known EVCSs in the literature. In addition, it has many specific advantages against these well-known EVCSs, respectively. INTRODUCTION: THE basic principle of the visual cryptography scheme (VCS) was first introduced by Naor and Shamir. VCS is a kind of secret sharing scheme that focuses on sharing secret images. The idea of the visual cryptography model proposed in is to split a secret image into two random shares (printed on transparencies) which separately reveals no information about the secret image other than the size of the secret image. The secret image can be reconstructed by stacking the two shares. The underlying operation of this scheme is logical operation OR. We call a VCS with random shares the traditional VCS or simply the VCS. In general, a traditional VCS takes a secret image as input, and outputs shares that satisfy two conditions: 1) any qualified subset of shares can recover the secret image; 2) any forbidden subset of shares cannot obtain any information of the secret image other than the size of the secret image. An example of traditional (2,2)VCS can be found in Fig. 1, where, generally speaking, a –VCS means any out of shares could recover the secret image. In the scheme of Fig. 1, shares (a) and (b) are distributed to two participants secretly, and each participant cannot get any information about the secret image, but after stacking shares (a) and (b), the secret image can be observed visually by the participants. VCS has many special applications, for example, transmitting military orders to soldiers who may have no cryptographic knowledge or computation devices in the battle field. Many other applications of VCS, other than its original objective (i.e., sharing secret image), have been found, for example, authentication and identification, watermarking and transmitting passwords etc. The associated secret sharing problem and its physical properties such as contrast, pixel expansion, and color were extensively studied by researchers worldwide. For example, showed constructions of threshold VCS with perfect reconstruction of the black pixels. Furthermore, Eisen et al. proposed a construction of threshold VCS for specified whiteness levels of the recovered pixels.
Pathogenicity of a baculovirus infection causing white spot syndrome in cultured penaeid shrimp in Taiwan

Outbreaks of a disease causing serious losses among populations of cultured penaeid shrimp, including Penaeus monodon, P japonicus and P penicillatus, in Taiwan are characterized by obvious white spots on the carapace, appendages and the inside surface of the body. For this reason, we propose the name 'white spot syndrome' (WSS). Healthy juvenile kuruma shrimp P japonjcus were exposed by immersion to epidermal filtrate from diseased P japonicus and L? monodon which exhibited marked white spot signs. These experimentally infected shrimp resembled the spontaneously infected ones. Cumulative mortalities reached 100% within 5 to 7 d and were significantly affected by catching and temperature stress. A non-occluded rod-shaped viral particle was found by electron microscopy in the epidermis of both spontaneously and experimentally infected kuruma shrimp. Virions were enveloped, 330 + 20 nm in length and 87 * 7 nm in diameter. The close resemblance in external signs and viral morphology between spontaneously diseased and experimentally infected shrimp indicated that the rod-shaped virus may be the main causative agent of the disease characterized by white spot syndrome in Taiwan.
Fiscal Policy, Wages, and Jobs in the U.S

This paper empirically investigates the fiscal policy effects on labor market conditions, employing an array of structural vector autoregressive models for the post-war U.S. data from 1960:I to 2017:II. Fiscal spending shocks increase jobs in the government sector at the cost of private sector jobs, resulting in net losses to the total employment. Private wages increase insignificantly in the short-run, while government wages rise significantly and persistently in response to the fiscal shock. Consequently, the wage gap across the two sectors widens in response to the fiscal shock. The wage shock yields significantly positive responses of corporate profits in the long-run as it enhances productivity, which supports wage-led growth models. On the other hand, I report negligible in-sample and out-of-sample predictive contents for private jobs and wages from corporate profits, meaning that there's virtually no evidence of the trickle-down effect, which is essential for profit-led growth models.
Land-use characterisation using Google Street View pictures and OpenStreetMap

This paper presents a study on the use of freely available, geo-referenced pictures from Google Street View to model and predict land-use at the urban-objects scale. This task is traditionally done manually and via photointerpretation, which is very time consuming. We propose to use a machine learning approach based on deep learning and to model land-use directly from both the pictures available from Google Street View and OpenStreetMap annotations. Because of the large availability of these two data sources, the proposed approach is scalable to cities around the globe and presents the possibility of frequent updates of the map. As base information, we use features extracted from single pictures around the object of interest; these features are issued from pre-trained convolutional neural networks. Then, we train various classifiers (Linear and RBF support vector machines, multi layer perceptron) and compare their performances. We report on a study over the city of Paris,France, where we observed that pictures coming from both inside and outside the urban-objects capture distinct, but complementary features.
Ionospheric disturbances of the 2007 Bengkulu and the 2005 Nias earthquakes, Sumatra, observed with a regional GPS network

We studied ionospheric disturbances associated with the two large earthquakes in Sumatra, Indonesia, namely, the 2007 Bengkulu and the 2005 Nias earthquakes, by measuring the total electron contents (TEC) using a regional network of global positioning system (GPS) receivers. We first focus on coseismic ionospheric disturbances (CIDs) of the Bengkulu earthquake (Mw 8.5). They appeared 11–16 min after the earthquake and propagated northward as fast as ~0.7 km/s, consistent with the sound speed at the ionospheric F layer height. Resonant oscillation of TEC with a frequency of ~5 mHz continued for at least 30 min after the earthquake. The largest aftershock (Mw 7.9) also showed clear CIDs similar to the main shock. A CID propagating with the Rayleigh wave velocity was not observed, possibly because the station distribution did not favor the radiation pattern of the surface waves. This earthquake, which occurred during a period of quiet geomagnetic activity, also showed clear preseismic TEC anomalies similar to those before the 2011 Tohoku‐Oki earthquake. The positive and negative anomalies started 30–60 min before the earthquake to the north and the south of the fault region, respectively. On the other hand, we did not find any long‐term TEC anomalies within 4–5 days before the earthquake. Co‐ and preseismic ionospheric anomalies of the 2005 Nias earthquake (Mw 8.6) were, however, masked by strong plasma bubble signatures, and we could not even discuss the presence or absence of CIDs and preseismic TEC changes for this earthquake.
Random recursive constructions: asymptotic geometric and topological properties

We study some notions of "random recursive constructions" in Euclidean m-space which lead almost surely to a particular type of topological object; e.g., Cantor set, Sierpiriski curve or Menger curve. We demonstrate that associated with each such construction is a "universal" number a such that almost surely the random object has Hausdorff dimension a. This number is the expected value of the sum of some ratios which in the deterministic case yields Moran's formula. We introduce the notion of a "random recursive construction" and prove several basic facts about such constructions. We give specific examples which lead to random Cantor sets, Sierpinski curves or Menger universal curves. It is perhaps best to begin with a specific example of such a construction. To this end, let us make some notation. Let N be the set of positive integers and R the real numbers. If S is a set, let 5* be the set of all finite sequences of elements of S including 0, the empty sequence. If a = (ai,., an) and ß — (bi,., bm) are elements of S, then |q| = n, the length of a, and a * ß = (ai,. ,an,bi,. ,bm). Now, consider the following construction of a Cantor subset of [0,1], the unit interval. (Of course, by a Cantor set we mean a compact, perfect, 0-dimensional metric space.) Set J® = [0,1] and, by recursion, if Ja = [a,b], for a G {0,1}*, then set Jo-,0 = [a,a + x(b — a)] and JCT*i = [o + y(b — a), b], where the point (x, y) is chosen from the triangular region A = {(s,t) | 0 < s < t < 1} according to the uniform distribution. It follows from the results given in this paper that with probability one, the set K = f] (J ̂ n [ct6{0,1}TM is a Cantor set and the Hausdorff dimension of K, dimH(K), is (\/Ï7 3)/2. The paper is organized into four sections. In §1, we define the notion of a random construction and prove a few basic facts concerning such a construction. We demonstrate that with each construction there is a number a such that with probability one the object constructed has Hausdorff dimension < a. In this section, we relate our results to some deterministic results of P. A. P. Moran [15]. In §2 (Theorem 2.1), we show that certain commonly occurring constructions have finite moments of all orders. This result is necessary for our proof that with probability one the Hausdorff dimension is a. Received by the editors December 27, 1984 and, in revised form, July 9, 1985. 1980 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 54H20, 60B05; Secondary 28C10.