Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recent advance in image search

This paper introduces recent methods for large scale image search. State-of-the-art methods build on the bag-of-features image representation. We ﬁrst analyze bag-of-features in the framework of approximate nearest neighbor search. This shows the sub-optimality of such a representation for matching descriptors and leads us to derive a more precise representation based on 1) Hamming embedding (HE) and 2) weak geometric consistency constraints (WGC). HE provides binary signatures that reﬁne the matching based on visual words. WGC ﬁlters matching descriptors that are not consistent in terms of angle and scale. HE and WGC are integrated within an inverted ﬁle and are e ﬃ ciently exploited for all images, even in the case of very large datasets. Experiments performed on a dataset of one million of images show a signiﬁcant improvement due to the binary signature and the weak geometric consistency constraints, as well as their e ﬃ ciency. Estimation of the full geometric transformation, i.e., a re-ranking step on a short list of images, is complementary to our weak geometric consistency constraints and allows to further improve the accuracy.
Spatial Augmented Reality User Interface for Assistive Robot Manipulation

We present the design of a spatial augmented reality (SAR) system for an assistive robot manipulator mounted to a mobility scooter. Our system is capable of directly designating objects for the system to grasp using a cursor projected into the manipulator’s workspace that can be manipulated with a joystick. It also displays the manip-ulator’s workspace by highlighting surfaces within the reach of the manipulator, and communicating robot intent through highlighting segmented objects that the system intends to grasp. In this paper, we describe current work on the design and implementation of this system, and a user study that is currently in progress that is intended to compare a system implemented using this SAR modality against a more traditional graphical user interface (GUI).
Designing and validating the conceptual model of electronic learning environment management for teachers

Background and Objectives: Managing the e-learning environment means emphasizing on the design and implementation of those strategies that, on one hand, help to fulfill the mission and goals of the education system, and on the other hand, lead to effective learning. This term refers to a new set of knowledge and skills in the field of optimal use of the electronic learning environment advantages and capabilities with a futuristic approach . It aims to prepare the mentality and skill power of learners for the changes and developments that occur as the result of the entry of information and communication technology into the field of education. Since the design and creation of practical and useful models for managing electronic learning environment in education system can play an important role in the realization of educational goals, the current research was conducted with the aim of designing a conceptual model for managing electronic learning environment in schools. Methods: This study was practical by purpose and conducted with a mixed-method approach by means of sequential exploratory design. In a way that by using the qualitative method, firstly the pattern or the research conceptual framework was obtained, and then the desired model was validated by quantitative method. In the qualitative part, the statistical population included university professors of Tehran in the field of educational technology and educational administration. Based on targeted snowball method of sampling and theoretical saturation, 17 people were selected. The data collection tool in the quantitative phase was a semi-structured interview. Participating experts assessed the face and content validity of the quantitative tool and its reliability was calculated by the Holsti’s coefficient as 0.92. In the quantitative part, by census method of sampling, all 114 outstanding teachers, experts and educational technologists of Shahindej Department of Education were selected and finally 103 completed the questionnaires. A researcher-made questionnaire with a 5-point
CEO LONGEVITY AND CORPORATE PERFORMANCE: THEORY AND EVIDENCE ON THE BRIGHT AND DARK SIDES OF LEADERSHIP CONTINUITY

This paper develops a theory to study the political economy of CEO longevity by examining how agreement between the board and the CEO over the value-maximizing choice of projectinvestment action influences the length of CEO tenure and who succeeds the CEO. A key element of the analysis is that the CEO’s entrenchment, rather than being taken as exogenously given, is endogenously determined in equilibrium by a tradeoff between the probability of CEO removal and firm value; higher entrenchment diminishes the probability of the CEO being removed and decreases firm value. The bright side of board-CEO agreement is that higher agreement causes the CEO to entrench less, leading to a higher firm value ex ante. However, the dark side of this agreement is that higher agreement also shields the CEO more from being fired upon bad performance ex post. Moreover, CEOs with higher agreement with their boards are more likely to be succeeded by insiders upon their departures. I find strong empirical support for these predictions of my model. This study also casts doubt on the validity of using CEO longevity as an empirical measure for managerial entrenchment, as has been routinely done in the literature. JEL Classification: G30 ∗PhD student, Olin School of Business, Washington University in St. Louis. Campus Box 1133, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, U.S.A. Email: songf@wustl.edu. I am indebted to Anjan Thakor for his invaluable support and numerous discussions. I am very grateful to Charles Cuny, Mike Faulkender, Armando Gomes, Radha Gopalan, Todd Gormley, Dirk Hackbarth, Ohad Kadan, Lubo Litov, Todd Milbourn, Gordon Phillips, Jun Yang, Guofu Zhou, and seminar participants at Washington University in St. Louis for helpful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are my own. CEO LONGEVITY AND CORPORATE PERFORMANCE: THEORY AND EVIDENCE ON THE BRIGHT AND DARK SIDES OF LEADERSHIP CONTINUITY “Emerson has had only three CEOs in the past fifty years. The third, David Farr, took over in October 2000 at the age of forty-five. There is a very strong possibility, in other words, that the company will have only three CEOs during a stretch of seven decades. ” – Charles F. Knight, Performance Without Compromise, Harvard Business School Press, 2005.
Multi-Server Stable Rendezvous for the Metaverse

When the real world and the digital world meet, they create a shared virtual space called the metaverse, involving multiple virtual communities in which users interact with one another in a highly immersive and interactive fashion. Due to the pressing need for scalability when handling millions of users in the metaverse regardless of the applications and services provided, it is imperative to deploy multiple servers across geographically distributed datacenters around the world. In this paper, we envision, design, and implement a new rendezvous service between a large number of users and a collection of geographically distributed servers, taking into account the latencies and pair-wise network bandwidth between the users and the servers, as well as bandwidth and processing capacity constraints on the servers themselves when handling the users. Our new rendezvous service is designed with simplicity and efficiency as its primary objective, and uses a revised design of the Deferred Acceptance algorithm to guarantee a stable matching between the users in the metaverse and its servers. As a case study, our rendezvous service has been implemented in the context of a federated learning application.
Explaining The Impact of Facade Architectural Components on the Visual Clutter ( Case S tudy : Selected Facades of Tehran )

ABS‌TRACT:‌Nowadays, clutter and visual clutter have become common characteris tics of cities. The main cause of this confusion and visual clutter is the presence of urban facades with an abnormal appearance that s tands out in the city. Meanwhile, the firs t image seen of a building is its facade, which can play a role in creating the order or visual clutter. This heterogeneity is more apparent in the facades of Tehran city, especially in the vicinity of its main s treets, which have the mos t daily passers-by. However, what parts of the facade have caused visual clutter, and what was the mos t colorful visual part of the facade in this context? In the field of visual clutter, urban facades can be as effective as urban walls. Materials, colors, changing s tyles and contexts, different compositions of forms. These can be the factors that create and increase this visual clutter in monographs. In this research, by examining the three s treets that collect garbage in the areas that have had the highes t number of building permits issued in the las t ten years, single facades with visual clutter have been identified, and then by examining the components of these facades, the common characteris tics of each in terms of components have been identified. The composition of the facade was checked. This research shows that additions, materials, colors, and windows have the greates t impact on the visual clutter of urban facades in the examined samples.
BinWrap: Hybrid Protection against Native Node.js Add-ons

Modern applications, written in high-level programming languages, enjoy the security benefits of memory and type safety. Unfortunately, even a single memory-unsafe library can wreak havoc on the rest of an otherwise safe application, nullifying all the security guarantees offered by the high-level language and its managed runtime. We perform a study across the Node.js ecosystem to understand the use patterns of binary add-ons. Taking the identified trends into account, we propose a new hybrid permission model aimed at protecting both a binary add-on and its language-specific wrapper. The permission model is applied all around a native add-on and is enforced through a hybrid language-binary scheme that interposes on accesses to sensitive resources from all parts of the native library. We infer the add-on’s permission set automatically over both its binary and JavaScript sides, via a set of novel program analyses. Applied to a wide variety of native add-ons, we show that our framework, BinWrap, reduces access to sensitive resources, defends against real-world exploits, and imposes an overhead that ranges between 0.71%–10.4%.
Modelling and Analysis of a Class of Metal-Forming Problems

A class of steady-state metal-forming problems, with rigid-plastic, in- compressible, strain-rate dependent material model and nonlocal Coulomb's fric- tion, is considered. Primal, mixed and penalty variational formulations, containing variational inequalities with nonlinear and nondifferentiable terms, are derived and studied. Existence, uniqueness and convergence results are obtained and shortly presented. A priori finite element error estimates are derived and an algorithm, combining the finite element and secant-modulus methods, is utilized to solve an illustrative extrusion problem.
DISSOLUTION KINETICS OF A COPPER OXIDE ORE SAMPLE AND OPTIMIZING THE EFFECTIVE PARAMETERS, USING RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY

In this research work, the leaching behavior of a copper oxide ore sample prepared from the Qaleh-Zari copper mine with a very high grade of 5.4% Cu (malachite and azurite) was investigated to evaluate the effects of significant operating parameters on copper recovery, including sulfuric acid concentration, solid percentage, particle size and agitation speed. Then, response surface methodology (RSM) and central composite design (CCD) were employed to optimize the leaching process and assess interactions between the effective parameters. In order to further analyze the leaching behavior, kinetics of copper dissolution was studied on the basis of the shrinking core models (SCM). The results showed a reduction in the rate of recovery with an increase in the solid percentage and/or particle size. In contrast, any increase in the agitation speed and/or acid concentration was found to improve the recovery. It was remarkable that increasing the sulfuric acid content, beyond a certain level, imposed no significant effect on the recovery. Optimal copper recovery was obtained with a solid percentage, agitation speed, particle size, and sulfuric acid concentration of 25.12%, 586 rpm, 70 μm, and 12.5%, respectively, leading to a recovery of 93.24%. A study on the leaching kinetics indicated that the dissolution rate was controlled by the fluid diffusion from product layer model with 30.71 kJ/mol of activation energy.
Graph Neural Networks for Dynamic Abstraction Sampling

Abstraction Sampling (AS) is an extension of importance sampling inspired by the concept of abstractions in automated planning. An important component of Abstraction Sampling is the abstraction function that determines how nodes are grouped together into abstract states. Existing abstraction functions based on context-based heuristics such as RandCB have been proposed, but may not be good for many problems. In this paper, we demonstrate that the problem of ﬁnding an optimal abstraction function can be framed as a variance minimization optimization problem. We propose a new method for learning abstraction functions parameterized us-ing graph neural networks. Furthermore, we introduce a novel algorithm, Dynamic Abstraction Sampling that is capable of competitive results with respect to existing abstraction functions.
Ocean Heat Content Responses to Changing Anthropogenic Aerosol Forcing Strength: Regional and Multi‐Decadal Variability

The causes of decadal variations in global warming are poorly understood, however it is widely understood that variations in ocean heat content (OHC) are linked with variations in surface warming. To investigate the forced response of OHC to anthropogenic aerosols (AA), we use an ensemble of historical simulations, which were carried out using a range of anthropogenic aerosol forcing magnitudes in a CMIP6-era global circulation model. We find that the centennial scale linear trends in historical OHC are significantly sensitive to AA forcing magnitude (−3.0 ± 0.1 × 10 5 (J m −3 century −1 )/(W m −2 ), R 2 = 0.99), but interannual to multi-decadal variability in global OHC appear largely independent of AA forcing magnitude. Comparison with observations find consistencies in different depth ranges and at different time scales with all but the strongest aerosol forcing magnitude, at least partly due to limited observational accuracy. We find that OHC is sensitive to aerosol forcing magnitude across much of the tropics and sub-tropics, and stronger negative forcing induces more ocean cooling. The polar regions and North Atlantic show the strongest heat content trends, and also show the strongest dependence on aerosol forcing magnitude. However, the OHC response to increasing aerosol forcing magnitude in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean is either dominated by internal variability, or strongly state dependent, showing different behavior in different time periods. Our results suggest the response to aerosols in these regions is a complex combination of influences from ocean transport, atmospheric forcings, and sea ice.
Dampak Ekosistem Digital terhadap

The era of the digital economy as it is today has demanded business people to carry out their business activities online. As a result, buyers will also make purchases online. It has implications for business competition. In this case, Law (UU) No. 5 of 1999 concerning the Prohibition of Monopolistic Practices and Unfair business Competition has not accommodated the impact of the digital economy. So with that, this research has two objectives. The objectives are; First, to know the effect of the digital ecosystem on business competition law in Indonesia. Second, to see the role of the Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) in the digital economy era in the event of unfair business competition. This research uses the type of juridical-normative research. The impact of the digital economy on business competition in Indonesia has resulted in a lot of abuse of the digital platform market. In this case, digital platforms are increasing with vertical business development. This business development increases the ability of digital platforms to collect more data, increase their competitiveness and become online shop owners and application users, so that the dominant position of digital platforms can be abused, for example, discriminating against competitors in retail, exclusivity agreements with consumers, and selling policies. With losses may result in competitors becoming uncompetitive in the market and leaving the market. Responding to these challenges, it is necessary to have a regulation that regulates in a more specific scope. This is because several countries in Europe have revised their business competition law regulations to protect business actors. In addition, as a form of responding to the challenges of the times that have changed the direction of the economy and online business. Of course, the government and business actors must work together to achieve good goals for the parties who will have an impact.
Chapter 4 Epidemics 4 . 1 SIR epidemics with fixed infection times

In the SIR model, individuals are in one of three states: S = susceptible, I = infected, R = removed (cannot be infected). Often this epidemic takes place in a homogeneously mixing population. However, here, we have a graph that gives the social structure of the population; vertices represent individuals and edges a connection. S − I edges become I − I at rate λ, i.e., after a time T with an exponential(λ) distribution: P (T > t) = e−λt. The two versions of the model we consider differ in the length of time individuals remain infected. In the first, infections always last for time 1. In the second, infection times are nonconstant with an exponential(1) distribution being an important spcecial case. In this section we consider the dynamics in which each infection lasts for exactly one unit of time. This case is simple because each edge will be S − I (or I − S) only once. When that happens the infection will be transferred to the other end with probability
The impact of fruit and vegetable waste on economic loss estimation

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Receiving nutrients from fruits and vegetables are essential for public health. However, a large amount of waste is produced during producing, supplying, and consuming these fruits and vegetables. Water, fertilizers and pesticides used for the production of agricultural products can affect the soil and their cultivation environment and finally lead to environmental pollution. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the amount of fruit and vegetable waste caused by corruption and evaluate its economic loss and health damage. METHODS: The data were collected using the observation technique aided by observation tools and weighing tests to physically analyze and determine the quantity and quality of waste from Tehran’s fruit and vegetable distribution centers. In each center, the waste obtained from fruits and vegetables was stored in special waste tanks at the end of the day, and the waste was transported to outside the center by special waste disposal vehicles. The economic loss of unusable fruits and vegetables was calculated according to the weight of their waste in the fields of agricultural product supply. The data were analyzed using statistical software SPSS, ANOVA statistical test, and Excel software. FINDINGS: The results revealed that the amounts of fruit and vegetable wastes were 12 percent and 24 percent, respectively, accounting for a total loss of 54,891,539 USD. The highest quantity of fruit waste (15 percent) was observed in summer, and the economic loss due to fruit waste was higher in this season. Also, the amounts of vegetable waste in summer and spring were equal to 28 percent and 24 percent, respectively, indicating the higher economic loss due to vegetable in these seasons. CONCLUSION: The results showed that the economic loss due to vegetable waste was greater than the economic loss due to fruit waste. The amount of vegetable waste was 24 percent, representing a high economic loss. The generation and disposal of these wastes caused a great economic loss and health problems due to their unpleasant odor, release of leachate into the environment, and landfill pollution. Therefore, it was recommended to follow appropriate production principles and supply operations. Moreover, a comprehensive waste disposal management, as a practical measure, should be used to prevent and control these problems. The use of modern technology in harvesting, transporting and supplying fruits and vegetables could reduce their lesion, and subsequently reduce the economic loss. ARTICLE INFO
Pre-proof Mucoadhesive 3 D printed vaginal ovules to treat endometriosis and fibrotic uterine diseases

Gynaecological health is a neglected field of research that includes conditions such as endometriosis, uterine fibroids, infertility, viral and bacterial infections, and cancers. There is a clinical need to develop dosage forms for gynecological diseases that increase efficacy and reduce side effects and explore new materials with properties tailored to the vaginal mucosa and milieu. Here, we developed a 3D printed semisolid vaginal ovule containing pirfenidone, a repurposed drug candidate for endometriosis. Vaginal drug delivery allows direct targeting of the reproductive organs via the first uterine pass effect, but vaginal dosage forms can be challenging to self-administer and retain in situ for periods of more than 1–3 h. Here, we show that a semisoft alginate-based vaginal suppository manufactured using semisolid extrusion additive manufacturing is superior to vaginal ovules made using standard excipients. The 3D-printed ovule showed a controlled release profile of pirfenidone in vitro in standard and biorelevant release tests, as well as better mucoadhesive properties ex vivo. An exposure time of 24 h of pirfenidone to a monolayer culture of an endometriotic epithelial cell line, 12Z, is necessary to reduce the cells’ metabolic activity, which demonstrates the need for a sustained release formulation of pirfenidone. 3D printing allowed us to formulate mucoadhesive polymers into a semisolid ovule with controlled release of pirfenidone. This work enables further preclinical and clinical studies into vaginally administered pirfenidone to assess its efficacy as a repurposed endometriosis treatment.
Understanding Test Convention Consistency as a Dimension of Test Quality

Unit tests must be readable to help developers understand and debug production code. Most existing test quality metrics assess test code’s ability to detect bugs. Few metrics focus on test code’s readability. One standard approach to improve readability is the consistent application of conventions. In this thesis, we propose and explore test convention consistency as a dimension of test quality. To that end, we conduct a grey literature survey, eliciting 61 Java JUnit test conventions which we organize into a catalogue of 23 test convention classes. The grey literature suggests convention clashes are likely in team projects, despite multiple developers stressing the importance of consistency. Using the catalogue, we develop Teslo, a prototype tool to measure and visualize the test convention consistency of JUnit test suites. Teslo relies on two novel test convention consistency metrics—one accuracy-based, the other entropy-inspired. Finally, we leverage Teslo to investigate how a developer’s participation level relates to the evolution of test convention consistency. We find a significant association between developers with low participation and consistencydegrading commits in 14% of the analyzed test suites. Over 90% of the test suites for which there was no significant association still showed an indication that developers with low participation levels are more likely to degrade consistency.