Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reconstruction of Linearly Parameterized Models from Single Images with a Camera of Unknown Focal Length

This paper deals with the problem of recovering the dimensions of an object and its pose from a single image acquired with a camera of unknown focal length. It is assumed that the object in question can be modeled as a polyhedron where the coordinates of the vertices can be expressed as a linear function of a dimension vector, . The reconstruction program takes as input a set of correspondences between features in the model and features in the image. From this information the program determines an appropriate projection model for the camera (scaled orthographic or perspective), the dimensions of the object, its pose relative to the camera and, in the case of perspective projection, the focal length of the camera. This paper describes how the reconstruction problem can be framed as an optimization over a compact set with low dimension no more than four. This optimization problem can be solved eÆciently by coupling standard non-linear optimization techniques with a multistart method which generates multiple starting points for the optimizer by sampling the parameter space uniformly. The result is an eÆcient, reliable solution system that does not require initial estimates for any of the parameters being estimated.
A conceptual architecture and a framework for dealing with variability in mulsemedia systems

The increasing interest in digital immersive experiences has drawn the attention of researchers into understanding human perception whilst adding sensory effects to multimedia systems such as VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) applications, multimedia players, and games. These so-called mulsemedia—multiple sensorial media—systems are capable of delivering wind, smell, vibration, among others, along with audiovisual content with the aim of enhancing users’ Quality of Experience (QoE) in areas such as entertainment, healthcare, education, culture, and marketing. To support the researchers’ investigation, there have been developed many standalone software solutions and incipient architectural proposals to bind these applications to sensory effects devices, such as wind fans, scent emitters, vibration chairs, etc. These devices, in turn, are constantly evolving, making it difficult to update applications to be compatible with them. There is little or no interoperability between software and hardware in this realm, hindering reuse in other contexts. Every time a mulsemedia application is needed, new software is built mostly from scratch. This model has proven to be demanding, time-consuming, and costly mainly because it requires researchers and developers alike to gain knowledge about new devices, connectivity, communication protocols, and other particulars. The fact is that building such systems imposes a number of challenges and requirements (which are discussed in this thesis) due mainly to their ever-evolving and heterogeneous traits. As a result, few mulsemedia systems have remained reusable to be applied to different research purposes as opposed to the use of open mulsemedia datasets. Therefore, the main contribution of this thesis is a decoupled conceptual architecture to deal with variability of scenarios in mulsemedia delivery systems, which includes recommendations to cope with the variation of end-user applications and sensory effect devices through the support and reuse of even unforeseen communication and connectivity protocols, and sensory effects metadata (SEM). To evaluate it, an open-source and robust mulsemedia framework was developed. Then, a performance assessment was carried out on communication protocols for the integration between event-based applications, whereby temporal restrictions play a role, and the framework. Results indicated statistically significant differences in response time providing directions for optimized integrations. Finally, a user QoE subjective evaluation comparing a monolithic mulsemedia system with this framework was undertaken with results suggesting no evinced statistically significant differences in userperceived QoE between the systems under different aspects. Therefore, it is hoped that this work fosters the area of mulsemedia and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) in the sense that researchers can leverage either the conceptual architecture to design mulsemedia delivery systems or the framework to carry out their experiments.
International Journal of Affective Engineering

This study aims to reveal the attributes of cognitive styles of the African and the East Asian cultures toward understanding cultural basis for perceptual process of product design aesthetics. The study took a cognitivist approach following the categorization task used by Park (2011) based on Chiu’s method (1972). In this study, a web-based research was conducted with participants from Africa (n=35) and Japan (n=35) using natural and artificial objects represented in word triads as stimuli. Based on Nisbett’s (analytic versus holistic thoughts) and Park’s (attribute-oriented and relation-oriented thoughts) cognitive models, the study suggests that difference in cultural cognitive style can shape the perceptual process of aesthetics in product designs. The analysis of the test showed that the African participants showed more tendencies for analyticand attribute-oriented thought than the Japanese respondents. Following this result, the study further seeks to delineate the characteristics of the perceptual process of product design aesthetics among African and Asian cultures. It is expected that this knowledge can foster innovative Kansei approach to design over cultural diversity.
Specifying Context free Grammar for Marathi Sentences

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan Language and forms the official language of state of Maharashtra. It is ranked as the 4 most spoken language in India and 15 most spoken language in the world. When Computational Linguistic is concerned, writing grammar production for a language is a bit difficult because of different gender and number forms. This paper is an effort to write context free grammar for Marathi sentences. CFGs are very much suitable in expressing natural languages as well as programming languages and hence form a major part in field of natural language processing and pattern recognition. This paper highlights the process of specifying CFG for simple Marathi sentences General Terms Context Free Grammar, syntactical analysis, Pattern Recognition, linguistics, Parsing, Natural Language Processing
Java Idioms: Code Blocks and Control Flow.

For example, polymorphism can in principle be used instead of switch statements [Fowler99]. This can significantly reduce the complexity of the using code because it encapsulates the selection of behavior. However, this comes at a price: for every different case a type needs to be defined. The effort and complexity associated with the creation of types makes this approach inapplicable for sufficiently small scopes: obviously, most if statements are not candidates for replacement with polymorphism.
The T1-Auto Inc. Production Part Testing (PPT) Process: A Workflow Automation Success Story

This case describes the development, design, and implementation of a workflow automation system at a tier one automotive supplier, T1-Auto. T1 is a developer and manufacturer of anti-lock brake systems. In 1991, T1-Auto had outsourced its IT department. They retained a management core consisting of the CIO and five managers, but transitioned approximately 80 other members of the department to the outsourcing firm. In 1994, Lotus Notes was installed as the corporate standard e-mail and workflow platform. A team of four Notesdevelopers wrote workflow-based and knowledge management-based applications. Another team of three administrators managed the Notes infrastructure. The first workflow application written at T1-Auto was developed for the Finance department. The finance team quickly realized the workflow benefit of streamlining and tracking the capital expense request process. The Notes development team and the project sponsor, the Controller, worked closely to develop the application. Following this initial success, the power and value of workflow technology caught on quickly at T1-Auto. One of the most successful projects was the Electronic Lab Testing Process described in this paper. The Electronics Lab and Testing System (ELTS) was identified as a Transaction Workflow problem by the IT Lotus Notes team. Because the ELTS involved policies and procedures that crossed many groups and divisions within T1-Auto, and since the process was consistent across the organization, the solution lent itself very well to Lotus Notes. However, while T1-Auto was experiencing rapid growth and the number of tests was increasing, the testing process was prone to communication and coordination errors. As part of their production and product development processes, their electronics laboratory was required to test electronic components that were part of the brake systems. Clearly the testing process was critical to T-1 since delays or errors could adversely affect both product development and production. The case goes on to describe the design and development of the Lotus Notes™ workflow management system. The design description includes process maps for the as-is and the new system. In addition, descriptions of the testing phase, the pilot, and the roll out are included. The case concludes with a discussion of project success factors and planned future enhancements. T1-Auto Inc. is a leading producer of brake components for passenger cars and light trucks. The most significant automotive products manufactured and marketed by T1-Auto are anti-lock braking systems (" ABS "), disc and drum brakes, disc brake rotors, hubs and drums for passenger …
Presence of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) in Soil Irrigated with Municipal Wastewater

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are largely produced, consumed, and detected readily in wastewater effluent. Municipal wastewater land application to managed forests is an important treatment and disposal practice globally, with 86 municipal facilities located in North Carolina. However, the concentrations and transport of PPCPs and their potential impacts in these systems are largely unknown. The objective of this study was to assess PPCPs in forested soils at a municipal land application site in North Carolina, U.S.A. Soil cores were hand-augured at the surface (0-10 cm) and at depth (50-60 cm) along two transects within the wastewater irrigation area and at a reference site outside of the irrigation area. Thirty-three PPCP analytes were targeted using solid-phase extraction (SPE) and concentration, and separated and quantified via liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Relationships between PPCP analyte concentrations and soil characteristics (e.g. soil depth, soil texture, carbon concentration, humic matter content, cation exchange capacity, and pH), were evaluated. From this study, 25 of the 33 targeted PPCP analytes were detected in the soil at very low concentrations (ng/g of soil), indicating leaching and potentially some mitigation by the forest system. Generally, PPCPs were present at higher concentrations in the surface soil. No significant correlations were observed between soil characteristics and the presence and concentration of PPCPs; however, cation exchange capacity and carbon content did positively correlate with the concentration of carbamazepine, a rather persistent chemical detected at every site in only the surface horizon.
Study of Long Range Transported Pollutants in Arctic Soil

In this master thesis, levels of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), total organic carbon (TOC) and potentially long range transported inorganic elements (Cd, Hg and Pb) in surface soil and vegetation have been studied for samples from Svalbard (Norwegian Arctic). 74 soil and 35 vegetation samples were taken at six different sampling sites which provide background levels. For measurement of PCBs in soil a method had been developed for the use of accelerated solvent extraction and gas chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. Different cleanup methods have been tested. Results maintained from a certified laboratory showed abundance of PCB 52 in soil and vegetation samples with a mean of 3,0 ± 1,2 ng/g in soil and 5,9 ± 2,5 ng/g in vegetation. PCB 180 was found for sample sites in Leinstranda (Ny Ålesund). PCB 28 was found in two vegetation samples. Other measured congeners (101, 118, 138, 153) were under the limit of quantification (LOQ= 1 ng/g). A mean concentration of Hg of 155 ± 83 ng/g in soil and 97,4 ± 32,8 ng/g in vegetation was obtained, with significant higher results for sample sites close to Longyearbyen. Hg significantly correlates with S and Cl in soil. Measured Pb levels in soil show a mean of 31,5 ± 10,6 μg/g and seem to result from the soil parent material. Cd levels (mean 0,489 ± 0,295 μg/g in soil) were high correlated with TOC. Higher levels and variation was found for Cd in vegetation samples (0,595 ± 0,371 μg/g).
A (cid:26)xpoint theory for non-monotonic parallelism

This paper studies parallel recursion. The trace speci(cid:26)cation language used in this paper incorporates sequentially, nondeterminism, reactiveness (including in(cid:26)nite traces), three forms of parallelism (including conjunctive, fair-interleaving and synchronous parallelism) and general re-cursion. In order to use Tarski’s theorem to determine the (cid:26)xpoints of recursions, we need to identify a well-founded partial order. Several orders are considered, including a new order called the lexical order , which tends to simulate the execution of a recursion in a similar manner as the Egli-Milner order. A theorem of this paper shows that no appropriate order exists for the language. Tarski’s theorem alone is not enough to determine the (cid:26)xpoints of parallel recursions. Instead of using Tarski’s theorem directly, we reason about the (cid:26)xpoints of terminating and nonterminating behaviours separately. Such reasoning is supported by the laws of a new composition called partition . We propose a (cid:26)xpoint technique called the partitioned ! xpoint , which is the least (cid:26)xpoint of the nonterminating behaviours after the terminating behaviours reach their greatest (cid:26)xpoint. The surprising result is that although a recursion may not be lexical-order monotonic, it must have the partitioned (cid:26)xpoint, which is equal to the least lexical-order (cid:26)xpoint. Since the partitioned (cid:26)xpoint is well de(cid:26)ned in any complete lattice, the results are applicable to various semantic models. Existing (cid:26)xpoint techniques simply become special cases of the partitioned (cid:26)xpoint. For example, an Egli-Milner-monotonic recursion has its least Egli-Milner (cid:26)xpoint, which can be shown to be the same as the partitioned (cid:26)xpoint. The new technique is more general than the least Egli-Milner (cid:26)xpoint in that the partitioned (cid:26)xpoint can be determined even when a recursion is not Egli-Milner monotonic. Examples of non-monotonic recursions are studied. Their partitioned (cid:26)xpoints are shown to be consistent with our intuition.
A 1-km daily soil moisture dataset of China based on in-situ measurement using machine learning

High quality gridded soil moisture products are essential for many Earth system science applications, and they are usually available from remote sensing or model simulations with coarse resolution. Here we present a 1 km resolution longterm dataset of soil moisture derived through machine learning trained with in-situ measurements of 1,789 stations, named as 15 SMCI1.0. Random Forest is used to predict soil moisture using ERA5-land time series, leaf area index, land cover type, topography and soil properties as covariates. SMCI1.0 provides 10-layer soil moisture with 10 cm intervals up to 100 cm deep at daily resolution over the period 2010-2020. Using in-situ soil moisture as the benchmark, two independent experiments are conducted to investigate the estimation accuracy of the SMCI1.0: year-to-year experiment (ubRMSE ranges from 0.041-0.052 and R ranges from 0.883-0.919) and station-to-station experiment (ubRMSE ranges from 0.045-0.051 and 20 R ranges from 0.866-0.893). SMCI1.0 generally has advantages over other gridded soil moisture products, including ERA5Land, SMAP-L4 and SoMo.ml. However, the high errors of soil moisture often located in North China Monsoon Region. Overall, the highly accurate estimations of both the year-to-year and station-to-station experiments ensure the applicability of SMCI1.0 to studies on the spatial-temporal patterns. As SMCI1.0 is based on in-situ data, it can be useful complements of existing model-based and satellite-based datasets for various hydrological, meteorological, and ecological analyses and 25 modeling. The DOI link for the dataset is http://dx.doi. org/10.11888/Terre.tpdc. 272415 (Shangguan et al., 2022).
Too Big to Fail: Some Empirical Evidence on the Causes and Consequences of Public Banking Interventions in the United Kingdom

During the 2007-09 financial crisis, the banking sector received an extraordinary level of public support. In this empirical paper, we examine the determinants of a number of public sector interventions: government funding or central bank liquidity insurance schemes, public capital injections, and nationalisations. We use bank-level data spanning all British and foreign banks operating within the United Kingdom. We use multinomial logit regression techniques and find that a bank’s size, relative to the size of the entire banking system, typically has a large positive and non-linear effect on the probability of public sector intervention for a bank. We also use instrumental variable techniques to show that British interventions helped; there is fragile evidence that the wholesale (non-core) funding of an affected institution increased significantly following capital injection or nationalisation.
Professional Studies 1-1-2012 Enhancing Classroom Learning Experience by Providing Structures to Microblogging-Based Activities

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the STEM Education & Professional Studies at ODU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in STEMPS Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ODU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@odu.edu. Repository Citation Luo, Tian and Gao, Fei, "Enhancing Classroom Learning Experience by Providing Structures to Microblogging-Based Activities" (2012). STEMPS Faculty Publications. Paper 2. http://digitalcommons.odu.edu/stemps_fac_pubs/2
Reassessing the Impact of IT in the Production Function : A Meta-Analysis and Sensitivity Tests

This paper analyzes and extends the growing econometric literature on the economic impact of information technology (IT). I begin with a “meta-analysis” to systematically examine the results of twenty empirical studies and show that much of the observed variation in estimates of the output elasticity of IT is predictable and due to differences in model specification and econometric technique. Using a single dataset for U.S. industries, I then find similar variation across alternative specifications and estimation methods. Most results show a productivity effect from IT-use, but the point estimate of the elasticity is fragile and depends on the details of the estimation. Research Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of New York; phone: 212-720-6633; email: kevin.stiroh@ny.frb. org. I thank Adam Ashcraft, Erik Brynjolfsson, Jason Cummins, John Fernald, Simon Gilchrist, Thomas Hempell, Charlie Himmelberg, Bart Hobijn, two anonymous referees and seminar participants at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the July 2002 NBER Summer Institute for helpful discussions and comments. Paul Edelstein provided excellent research assistance. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve System or the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Risk Evaluation of Information Technology Projects Based on Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchal Process

accompanied by various risks and because of high rate of failure in such projects, managing risks in order to neutralize or at least decrease their effects on the success of the project is strongly essential. In this paper, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) is exploited as a means of risk evaluation methodology to prioritize and organize risk factors faced in IT projects. A real case of IT projects, a project of design and implementation of an integrated information system in a vehicle producing company in Iran is studied. Related risk factors are identified and then expert qualitative judgments about these factors are acquired. Translating these judgments to fuzzy numbers and using them as an input to FAHP, risk factors are then ranked and prioritized by FAHP in order to make project managers aware of more important risks and enable them to adopt suitable measures to deal with these highly devastative risks.
Computation in Gene Networks

We present a biological computing paradigm that is based on genetic regulatory networks. Using a model of gene expression by piece-wise linear diﬀerential equations we show that the evolution of protein concentrations in a cell can be considered as a process of computation. This is demonstrated by showing that this model can simulate memory bounded Turing machines. The simulation is robust with respect to perturbations of the system, an important property for both analog computers and biological systems
Mobile Payment Adoption: An Empirical Investigation on Alipay

The rapid development of mobile technology has introduced a new channel for consumer consumption, in addition to traditional online PC and offline (physical card) payment channels. In this paper, we investigate the determinants and outcomes of mobile channel adoption on consumer consumption behaviors. We utilize a unique data set from one of the largest banks in China, which contains the consumer credit card consumption from PC, offline, and mobile payment channels. The mobile payment channel under study here is from Alipay, which is now the world’s largest mobile payment platform. In our work, we find that both higher service demand and higher local penetration are associated with earlier mobile channel adoption. For the post-adoption behavior analysis, we show that the total transaction amount increases by around 2.4% after the Alipay adoption, and the total transaction frequency increases by around 23.5%. The relationship is even stronger for medium income consumers. Furthermore, we find that Alipay channel acts as a substitute for the offline channel, and as a complement for the PC payment channel. Both substitution and complementarity effects increase over time. Finally, we find that the increased credit card transaction activity and profitability are likely to be driven by hedonic shopping behavior with low value items. Our work aims to bring managerial implications for bank and retail managers on multi-channel management.
Conserving soils: Evaluating permanent planting basins to optimize plant populations of maize and beans

Permanent planting basins (PPBs), as used in conservation farming, is a minimum tillage method. It is easily practiced by small-scale farmers. “You do not need special equipment to start conservation farming; all you need is a hoe and a piece of string” (IIRR and ACTN, 2005). It enhances the capture and storage of rainwater and allows precise nutrient application of limited nutrient resources. The method is widely used in southern Africa (Zambia and Zimbabwe) to reduce the risk of crop failure due to erratic rainfall. PPB, in combination with improved seed and crop residues, creates a mulch cover that reduces evaporation losses and has consistently increased average yields (Twomlow et al., 2006).