Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stable Periodic Motions of the Pendubot via Virtual Holonomic Constraints

This paper presents a new control strategy for an underactuated two-link robot, called the Pendubot. The goal is to create stable oscillations of the outer link of the pendubot, which is not directly actuated. We exploit a recently proposed feedback control design strategy, based on motion planning via virtual holonomic constraints. This strategy is shown to be useful for design of regulators for achieving: stable oscillatory motions, a closed-loop-design-based swing-up, and propeller motions.
Distinct regeneration capability of 40 Gbit/s signal impaired with amplitude noise and timing jitter using SOA-based all-optical polarization discriminated switch

We firstly examined reshaping and retiming capability of an SOA-based polarization discriminated switch employing seriously impaired 40 Gbit/s control signal. it was confirmed that the reshaping function of the 3R regenerator contributed to broadening of the threshold-voltage window at the receiver by a factor of 2.1. The timing jitter of 8.5 ps imposed on the control pulse was almost completely corrected after the regeneration. Finally, the Q-factor of 14.9 dB for the control pulse, on which both amplitude noise and timing jitter were imposed, was improved to 15.6 dB after the regeneration. These results indicate that the all-optical 3R regenerator is promising for recovering the impairments of the high-bitrate signal directly in front of the receiver.
Fast recognition of lines in digital images without user-supplied parameters

In this paper a method to detect lines in digital images is introduced. The model used to represent the shape of a line is a second order polynomial function of the row and column coordinates. Line positions are delivered with sub-pixel resolution. A threshold required by the method is estimated from the image data, so that the line detection runs off all-automatic without user-supplied control parameters. The robust estimate of the threshold is applicable to edge detection, too. Since directional information is a distinctive property of linear features, the model takes the line direction into account and makes use of it to classify line ends, to close line gaps, and to narrow lines which are wider than one pixel. Additionally, pixels are recognized where lines converge or cross. The performance of the method is shown using SPOT and TM data as examples.
Protecting Commercial Aviation Against the Shoulder-Fired Missile Threat

This paper discusses how to protect commercial aircraft and airlines from man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS). MANPADS are shoulder fired missiles that are available worldwide, are relatively inexpensive, and offer terrorists the option of bringing down aircraft at any airport. The following topics are covered in the paper: (1) the severity and nature of the threat that terrorist groups might have MANPADS and the possible economic impacts of missile attacks on commercial aircraft in the United States; (2) how the MANPADS threat fits into the broader context of the war on terrorism; (3) tactical and operational aspects of the threat, including options for limiting the access that terrorists have to potential targets and weapons, and potential operating areas in and around major airports; (4) the limitations and characteristics of technical alternatives for aborting missiles after they have been launched; (5) the possible cost of the development, installation and maintenance of selected countermeasure systems and who should pay for them; and (6) recommendations of where to go from here.
Aquatic organism passage at road-stream crossings—synthesis and guidelines for effectiveness monitoring

Restoration and maintenance of passage for aquatic organisms at road-stream crossings represents a major management priority, involving an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. This report has been written, in part, for field biologists who will be undertaking and evaluating the effectiveness of aquatic organism passage restoration projects at road-stream crossings. The report outlines basic methods for evaluating road-stream crossing passage impairment and restoration and discusses under what circumstances and conditions each method will be useful; what questions each method can potentially answer; how to design and implement an evaluation study; and points out the fundamental reality that most evaluation projects will require special funding and partnerships among researchers and resource managers.
CCD camera calibration for underwater laser scanning system

The quality of underwater video photography is limited by the visibility of the water column. Generally speaking, it is difficult to tell the dimension of the target directly from the underwater images. To overcome this problem, one may project a laser stripe onto the target and measure the displacement of the laser scan lines relative to a straight baseline. The displacement reveals the profile of the object at that location. With a calibrated CCD camera, the displacement expressed in pixels can be converted into the dimension of the target in physical units. To obtain a broader view at a closer distance to reduce the influence of suspension particles, a wide-angle lens is usually used. Therefore the image is non-linear and distorted in the corners. Rather than finding out the optical and geometrical parameters of the CCD camera and the environment, the authors propose building several mappings between the world coordinate system and the image frame to cover the scope of the CCD. The authors lay vertical and horizontal grid lines of 5 cm span on an acrylic plate that is aligned with the laser beam scan plane. These grid lines serve as the "longitudes" and "latitudes" of the map. On the captured image, the authors curve-fit the controlled points of the grid lines in pixels. A pair of interpolated longitude and latitude which passes through the target point are used to estimate the location of the point in the world coordinate system. Coins and one bottle of known sizes are used for verification of this approach. The results indicate that the error varies between 1/spl sim/2% measured from a distance of one metre.
Wake Geometry Measurements and Analytical Calculations on a Small-Scale Rotor Model

An experimental investigation was conducted in the Langley 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel to quantify the rotor wake behind a scale model helicopter rotor in forward level flight at one thrust level. The rotor system in this test consisted of a four-bladed fully articulated hub with blades of rectangular planform and an NACA 0012 airfoil section. A laser light sheet, seeded with propylene glycol smoke, was used to visualize the vortex geometry in the flow in planes parallel and perpendicular to the free-stream flow. Quantitative measurements of wake geometric properties, such as vortex location, vertical skew angle, and vortex particle void radius, were obtained as well as convective velocities for blade tip vortices. Comparisons were made between experimental data and four computational method predictions of experimental tip vortex locations, vortex vertical skew angles, and wake geometries. The results of these comparisons highlight difficulties of accurate wake geometry predictions.
Avian gait analysis

Two methods were used in this research. The pedobarograph is a relatively novel method of gait analysis for animals which enables footfall patterns to be recorded, enabling spatial parameters (step length, width and angle) and plantar pressure patterns to be described and measured. A Kistler force plate was then used to measure the three-dimensional ground reaction forces (GRF's) produced during walking. Speed and cadence can be calculated using either system. Gait patterns are described for normal birds, and for different strains of broilers, raised on different feeding regimes. All the gait parameters were very variable, both between birds, and within the same bird, even when bodyweight and speed were controlled for. Despite the high variability, however, significant differences were identified in many of the gait parameters between the different groups. The vertical and craniocaudal GRF's of Brown Leghorns showed similar characteristics to those produced in human walking. The peak vertical forces were of a similar order of magnitude in the birds as in humans (125-150 % bodyweight), and the peak craniocaudal forces, and the rate of change of force, were closely tied to speed. All the GRF's in the birds increased significantly with increasing speed, except for braking rate (which was more variable) and stance time (which decreased significantly). The mediolateral forces were much greater in the birds than have been reported for other species, however, with peaks of 10-22% bodyweight. Analysis of plantar pressures showed that the pressure were concentrated on the digital pads, with the lowest pressure on the metatarsal pad (131 kNm-2), and highest pressure on the medial toe (up to 218 kNm-2). Combined gait analysis and morphometric studies of ad libitum-fed selected broilers identified many ways in which their gait deviated from that of relaxed broilers and Brown Leghorns, in ways which would serve to increase stability and decrease stresses on the skeleton.
Multi-layer meander line polarizer for Ku band

A multi-layered meander line polarizer for Ku band was analysed using the transmission matrix concept and empirical formulas for E and H mode susceptances. The influence of dielectric losses of substrates as well as glue layers have been studied numerically for a 4-section polarizer. The results of experimental verification of the design procedure are also presented with some conclusions concerning the influence of tolerances in meander line fabrication.
Problems with diagnosing early stadia of scoliosis due to discrepancies between ATR and the Cobb angle

Background This research analysed discrepancies between the angle of trunk rotation (ATR) and the Cobb angle, in order to study if the commonly used 7° cut-off threshold for ATR helps diagnose scoliosis. In early stadia of scoliosis in children, ATR and the Cobb angle often disagree, increasing the risk of a false diagnosis: while the former does not suggest scoliosis, the latter does. Methods The study analysed ATR clinical parameters and the Cobb angle in the X-ray pictures of 117 (23 boys and 94 girls, aged 6–17 years) children who had not yet started treatment and whose X-ray pictures showed the Cobb angle of at least 10°, indicating idiopathic scoliosis. The degrees of lumbar lordosis and thoracic kyphosis were measured using the Saunders inclinometer, and back asymmetry was measured with Adam’s forward bend test using the Bunnell scoliometer. In the X-ray pictures, the curvature angle was plotted according to the Cobb method. The patients were stratified based on their age, and their ATRs and Cobb angles were compared. Results Although all the children had the Cobb angle over 10°, in 69 out of 117 (59%), ATR was below 7%. So, using the 7° cut-off threshold rule, scoliosis would not be diagnosed in those children. This shows that the two tests often disagree, suggesting that the 7° cut-off threshold or ATR is ineffective in diagnosing scoliosis. Conclusions To improve the method for diagnosing scoliosis based on ATR, consideration should be given to lowering the 7° ATR cut-off threshold.
Innovative Behavior in Public Sector Services Public Service Motivation and Private Sector Experience

The demand for innovation in public organizations is increasing. In this study, I explore factors that contribute to the innovative behavior of civil servants at the individual level. The theoretical distinction between public and private organizations has long been a subject of debate, and certain characteristics of innovation in public organizations mimic innovation in the private sector, even though the purpose of innovation in public organizations is to secure public goods. In order to examine the innovative behavior of public employees who face such contradictory circumstances, I parameterized the characteristics of each sector, using whether or not the employee had worked in the private sector prior to entering the public service as the characteristic for the private sector and the effect of public service motivation on innovative behavior as the characteristic for the public sector and found that at the individual level, the two are not mutually exclusive.
Wind Energy Handbook

As environmental concerns have focused attention on the generation of electricity from clean and renewable sources wind energy has become the world's fastest growing energy source. The Wind Energy Handbook draws on the authors' collective industrial and academic experience to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of wind energy research and provide a comprehensive treatment of wind energy for electricity generation. Features include: * An authoritative overview of wind turbine technology and wind farm design and development * In-depth examination of the aerodynamics and performance of land-based horizontal axis wind turbines * A survey of alternative machine architectures and an introduction to the design of the key components * Description of the wind resource in terms of wind speed frequency distribution and the structure of turbulence * Coverage of site wind speed prediction techniques * Discussions of wind farm siting constraints and the assessment of environmental impact * The integration of wind farms into the electrical power system, including power quality and system stability * Functions of wind turbine controllers and design and analysis techniques With coverage ranging from practical concerns about component design to the economic importance of sustainable power sources, the Wind Energy Handbook will be an asset to engineers, turbine designers, wind energy consultants and graduate engineering students.
Four dimensions characterizing comprehensive trait judgments of faces

People readily attribute many traits to faces: some look beautiful, some competent, some aggressive. Modern psychological theories argue that the hundreds of different words people use to describe others from their faces are well captured by only two or three dimensions, such as valence and dominance, a highly influential framework that has been the basis for numerous studies across social and developmental psychology, social neuroscience, and engineering applications. However, all prior work has used only a small number of words (12 to 18) to derive underlying dimensions, limiting conclusions to date. Here we employed deep neural networks to select a comprehensive set of 100 words that are representative of the trait words people use to describe faces, and to select a set of 100 faces. In two large-scale, preregistered studies we asked participants to rate the 100 faces on the 100 words (obtaining 2,850,000 ratings from 1,710 participants), and discovered a novel set of four psychological dimensions that best explain trait judgments of faces: warmth, competence, femininity, and youth. We reproduced these four dimensions across different regions around the world, in both aggregated and individual-level data. These results provide a new and most comprehensive characterization of face judgments.
THE USE OF POWER:

The fundamental issue driving educational reform is the redistribution of power. School principals not only use their power to influence the behavior of teachers and students, but they are also affected by using power. This paper presents findings of a study that examined the relationship between principal self-efficacy and the principal's use of various power bases. Phase 1 involved a survey of 121 elementary, middle, and secondary principals in a large metropolitan school district in a western state. In phase 2, 25 principals from the first phase completed a self-efficacy questionnaire, and a random sample of their teachers completed a survey that described their principals' use of power. Findings confirmed the research hypothesis that efficacy was positively related to expert and referent power and negatively related to legitimate, coercive, and reward power. Specifically: (1) principals with higher self-efficacy are more likely to use internally-based power when carrying out their instructional leadership role; . (2) as principal experience increases, so too does the likelihood that principals will use externally-based power; and (3) the longer principals spend in one assignment, the more likely they are to use externally-based power Five tables are included. Contains 34 references. (LMI) *****. ************************************************************ Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ***********************************************************************
Basic Equations for the Modeling of Gallium Nitride (gan) High Electron Mobility Transistors (hemts)

Gallium nitride (GaN) is a most promising wide band-gap semiconductor for use in high-power microwave devices. It has functioned at 320 C, and higher values are well within theoretical limits. By combining four devices, 20 W has been developed at X-band. GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) are unique in that the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) is supported not by intentional doping, but instead by polarization charge developed at the interface between the bulk GaN region and the AlGaN epitaxial layer. The polarization charge is composed of two parts: spontaneous and piezoelectric. This behavior is unlike other semiconductors, and for that reason, no commercially available modeling software exists. The theme of this document is to develop a self-consistent approach to developing the pertinent equations to be solved. A Space Act Agreement, "Effects in AlGaN/GaN HEMT Semiconductors" with Silvaco Data Systems to implement this approach into their existing software for III-V semiconductors, is in place (summer of 2002).
Wideband cyclostationary spectrum sensing and modulation classification

Wideband spectrum sensing is a key enabling functionality for Cognitive Radios (CRs) since it detects unoccupied bands and allows throughput increase. Due to prioritized spectrum sharing between CRs and primary owners of the spectrum, it is not only sufficient to detect occupancy but also distinguish among different users in order to manage interference. To realize this functionality in a practical radio, there are several implementation challenges that we address in this thesis: 1) high computational complexity and energy cost for the detection and classification of a broad range of communication signal types over a wideband spectrum, and 2) impact of wideband receiver impairments including nonlinearities, carrier and sampling offsets, and multipath.The approach we take for joint sensing and classification is based on extracting and processing cyclostationary features of modulated signals. Conventionally, cyclostationary feature detectors are considered as robust detectors under noise uncertainties. However, estimation of cyclic features under constrained sensing time suffers from cyclic frequency offsets resulting from non-synchronous sampling and local oscillator offsets. We propose a new frame-based cyclic feature estimator and optimize its frame length for a given carrier and sampling offset distribution. For identifying signals with unknown parameters in an energy efficient way, we develop a hierarchical reduced complexity cyclostationary-based classification algorithm by optimizing the search of cyclic features. The reduction in complexity and energy cost comes from discretization of feature space based on tolerable frequency offsets for the required classification accuracy. Next, we study the impact of wideband receiver nonlinearities on feature detection and show that performance loss depends on blockers' strengths and modulation types. Based on this result, we devise a compensation algorithm that incorporates modulation classification into intermodulation terms cancellation. Finally, we investigate how the signal sparsity in the cyclic domain can be utilized to reduce the sampling rate requirements via a compressive sensing approach. As a result of the additional sparsity in the cyclic domain, our results show that a compression rate smaller than the conventional Landau rate can be achieved. In summary, this thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of cyclostationarity based sensing and classification under practical signal and radio conditions, and proposes a set of algorithms for a robust performance and energy-efficient implementation.
Relazioni strategiche fra category management e marca commerciale nel processo di differenziazione competitiva dell'insegna

L’articolo esplora le implicazioni gestionali dell’adozione congiunta di category management e private label in funzione della differenziazione competitiva dell’insegna quale obiettivo primario delle odierne politiche di marketing del distributore. La riflessione e riferita al comparto grocery e contiene cenni a recenti esperienze francesi ed italiane, individuando elementi di analogia e diversita tra i rispettivi contesti distributivi, assai differenti per grado di modernizzazione e logiche competitive sistemiche. La valutazione del contributo della gestione per categorie e della marca commerciale alla differenziazione del retailer conduce ad una concezione evolutiva dei rapporti industria-distribuzione, che supera la contrapposizione dialettica tra l’ipotesi di alternativita e sostituzione e di complementarita e convergenza della relazione tra industria e terziario. Il momento conclusivo dell’analisi e rappresentato dalla sistematizzazione degli effetti sinergici del binomio category management-private label sulla capacita distintiva del retailer, supportata da alcuni dati empirici.
Quality Management Practices in Indian ISO 9000 Certified Companies: an Empirical Evaluation

‘Quality’ is one of the challenges Indian companies have encountered during the post-liberalization. ISO 9000 certification by companies represents a strategy to meet this challenge. This study concerns the quality management practices in sixteen ISO 9000 certified companies in India. It aims at evaluating the degree of implementation of eight critical factors of quality management, and their impact on quality performance. It is found that ISO 9000 certification has helped the companies in improving their product quality only marginally. Quality management practices of ISO 9000 companies need further improvement and ISO 9000 quality management systems are to be integrated with TQM for continuous improvement of quality.
Modelling the universal dielectric response in heterogeneous materials using 3-D RC networks

In this paper，a three-dimensional RC networks model has been developed，and the RC networks has been coded，modeled and simulated based on Matlab and C programming language. The complex permittivity of this model has been calculated. The dielectric properties of RC networks containing 54，144，300，540 and 882 components have been computed. It was found that these properties exhibit the anomalous power law dependence on frequency known as the ‘universal dielectric response’ (UDR). The UDR is stable for RC networks containing 300 or more components. When the capacitor is 100nF，10nF，1nF and 100pF，respectively，the simulation results of normalized complex permittivity versus angular frequency for RC networks containing 540 components have been obtained. The relation between normalized complex permittivity and angular frequency for the RC networks containing 540 components in the ratios 4% R-96% C，7% R-93% C，10% R-90% C，16% R-84% C，33% R-67% C have been simulated. The results show that the UDR in heterogeneous materials can be modelled and simulated by 3-D RC networks，and has non-Debye nature.