Search

Single‐molecular organic photovoltaics (SMOPVs), which are based on monadic systems containing donor (D) and acceptor (A) molecule blocks that facilitate exciton dissociation, offer obvious advantages over binary or multicomponent bulk‐heterojunction (BHJ) systems, including simplified cell fabrication, stabilized morphology of the D/A interface, and extended device operation lifetime. However, limited by the development of A blocks, the power conversion efficiency (PCE, ≈5%) of SMOPVs based on molecular D–A dyads still lags conventional BHJ OPVs (over 19%). Herein, by introducing a narrow‐bandgap A–DA'D–A conjugated backbone as the A‐block, combined with the linear D‐block BDT‐3T‐R and flexible alkyl chain linker, two molecular dyads, SM‐1Y (one D‐block and one A‐block) and SM‐2Y (one D‐block and two A‐blocks), are designed and developed. Due to superior absorption spectra and better molecular stacking compared to SY‐1Y, SM‐2Y‐based SMOPV delivers a PCE of 8.13%, which is the highest value in the SMOPV reported thus far. Note that both SM‐1Y and SM‐2Y devices show much better storage and photostability stability as compared to the control BDT‐3T‐C6:Y18‐C3 binary system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the conceptual design, operation principle, dynamic modeling, and simulation results of a discrete incremental hydraulic positioning system (DIHPS) intended for use in high-precision, heavy-load industrial automation solutions. An original solution for precise incremental step positioning using DIHPS is proposed, comprising an n-step linear double-acting hydraulic actuator (HA) with a double rod, cylinder sleeve with outflow gaps, binary valves (BVs) bleed-off into the tank, and fixed throttle valves (TRVs) at the inlets of the actuator chambers. The discrete incremental shift of the HA is determined by controlling the opening and closing of the individual BVs, and the step shift of the HA piston stops at the opening location of the BV. A dynamic model of incremental step shift for DIHPS is developed, considering the behavior and relationships of its individual elements. A dynamic model of HA with and without a hydropneumatic accumulator (HPA) is presented. HPA has been shown to effectively dampen piston vibrations and pressure peaks at the HA stop position. The design assumptions, dynamic models, and discrete incremental positioning of the DIHPS are verified by simulation tests and assessed with quantitative indicators. Innovative DIHPSs have significant practical potential in the discrete incremental positioning of heavy loads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we considered the random binary contingency tables with non-uniform margin. More precisely, for parameters n; δ;B;C, let X = (Xij) with Xij 2 f0; 1g denote the uniform sample from the set of ([nδ] + n)-dimensional binary matrices whose first [nδ] rows and columns have margin [BCn] and the remaining n columns and rows have margin [Cn]. Various asymptotic properties of X as n ≥ 1 were obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhorning's pressure transmission theory was invalidated by simultaneous pressures at equivalent points inside and outside bladder/urethra during midurethral slings[5] which recorded pressure increases of up to 170% higher during coughing in urethra than abdomen, despite massive urine loss on coughing. Dysfunction: Lax or weak ligaments weaken the muscles which contract against them which cannot close urethra (incontinence), open it (obstructed micturition) or control micturition by bilateral stretching of vagina by the three opposite muscle forces to support "N" (urge incontinence, "OAB"). [Extracted from the article]

A backdoor in a finite-domain CSP instance is a set of variables where each possible instantiation moves the instance into a polynomial-time solvable class. Backdoors have found many applications in artificial intelligence and elsewhere, and the algorithmic problem of finding such backdoors has consequently been intensively studied. Sioutis and Janhunen have proposed a generalised backdoor concept suitable for infinite-domain CSP instances over binary constraints. We generalise their concept into a large class of CSPs that allow for higher-arity constraints. We show that this kind of infinite-domain backdoors have many of the positive computational properties that finite-domain backdoors have: the associated computational problems are fixed parameter tractable whenever the underlying constraint language is finite. On the other hand, we show that infinite languages make the problems considerably harder: the general backdoor detection problem is W[2]-hard and fixed-parameter tractability is ruled out under standard complexity-theoretic assumptions. We demonstrate that backdoors may have suboptimal behaviour on binary constraints--this is detrimental from an AI perspective where binary constraints are predominant in, for instance, spatiotemporal applications. In response to this, we introduce sidedoors as an alternative to backdoors. The fundamental computational problems for sidedoors remain fixed-parameter tractable for finite constraint language (possibly also containing non-binary relations). Moreover, the sidedoor approach has appealing computational properties that sometimes leads to faster algorithms than the backdoor approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enclaves, such as those enabled by Intel SGX, offer a hardware primitive for shielding user-level applications from the OS. While enclaves are a useful starting point, code running in the enclave requires additional checks whenever control or data is transferred to/from the untrusted OS. The enclave-OS interface on SGX, however, can be extremely large if we wish to run existing unmodified binaries inside enclaves. This article presents Ratel, a dynamic binary translation engine running inside SGX enclaves on Linux. Ratel offers complete interposition, the ability to interpose on all executed instructions in the enclave and monitor all interactions with the OS. Instruction-level interposition offers a general foundation for implementing a large variety of inline security monitors in thefuture. We take a principled approach in explaining why complete interposition on SGX is challenging. We draw attention to five design decisions in SGX that create fundamental trade-offs between performance and ensuring complete interposition, and we explain how to resolve them in the favor of complete interposition. To illustrate the utility of the Ratel framework, we present the first attempt to offer binary compatibility with existing software on SGX. We report that Ratel offers binary compatibility with over 200 programs we tested, including micro-benchmarks and real applications, such as Linux shell utilities. Runtimes for two programming languages, namely, Python and R, tested with standard benchmarks work out-of-the-box on Ratel without any specialized handling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The physical properties of C 4 A 3 $-C 2 S (ye´elimite-belite) clinker system will change with the proportion of C 4 A 3 $ or C 2 S, but the effect of mineral proportion change on hydration mechanism is not systematic and unclear. The C 4 A 3 $-C 2 S binary system was established by experiments, and its hydration process was characterized. The kinetic response of C 4 A 3 $-C 2 S binary hydration system was studied by Kondo model. The results showed that the change of design mineral ratio directly affects the hydration process and the hydration mechanism. The experiment and analysis show that when the design mineral ratio of C 2 S was lower than 65 wt%, the dominant factor of hydration was mainly controlled by nucleation mechanism (The hydration acceleration period is particularly significant), and when the ratio of C 2 S was higher, it would be controlled by diffusion mechanism. The precise value of the boundary reaction control is between 65 wt% (design mineral ratio of C 2 S) to 75 wt%. Only when the hydration kinetics of the binary system is controlled by the diffusion mechanism, the CH product can be stably crystallized. The classical Kondo model is suitable for the C 4 A 3 $-C 2 S hydration system. • The classical Kondo model is suitable for the C4A3$-C2S hydration system. • When C2S lower than 65 wt%, the hydration was controlled by nucleation mechanism. • When C2S was higher(AP: C2S≥75 wt%), it would be controlled by diffusion mechanism. • Mechanism presents similar evolution in acceleration, deceleration and steady periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The anoxic redox control binary system plays an important role in the response to oxygen as a signal in the environment. In particular, phosphorylated ArcA, as a global transcription factor, binds to the promoter regions of its target genes to regulate the expression of aerobic and anaerobic metabolism genes. However, the function of ArcA in Plesiomonas shigelloides is unknown. Results: In the present study, P. shigelloides was used as the research object. The differences in growth, motility, biofilm formation, and virulence between the WT strain and the ΔarcA isogenic deletion mutant strain were compared. The data showed that the absence of arcA not only caused growth retardation of P. shigelloides in the log phase, but also greatly reduced the glucose utilization in M9 medium before the stationary phase. The motility of the ΔarcA mutant strain was either greatly reduced when grown in swim agar, or basically lost when grown in swarm agar. The electrophoretic mobility shift assay results showed that ArcA bound to the promoter regions of the flaK, rpoN, and cheV genes, indicating that ArcA directly regulates the expression of these three motility-related genes in P. shigelloides. Meanwhile, the ability of the ΔarcA strain to infect Caco-2 cells was reduced by 40%; on the contrary, its biofilm formation was enhanced. Furthermore, the complementation of the WT arcA gene from pBAD33-arcA+ was constructed and all of the above features of the pBAD33-arcA+ complemented strain were restored to the WT level. Conclusions: We showed the effect of ArcA on the growth, motility, biofilm formation, and virulence of Plesiomonas shigelloides, and demonstrated that ArcA functions as a positive regulator controls the motility of P. shigelloides by directly regulating the expression of flaK, rpoN and cheV genes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Needle-like electromagnetic field has various advantages for the applications in high-resolution imaging, Raman spectroscopy, as well as long-distance optical transportation. The realization of such field often requires high numerical aperture (NA) objective lens and the transmission masks. We demonstrate an ultralong needle-like focus in the optical range produced with an ordinary lens. This is achieved by focusing a symmetric Airy beam (SAB) generated via binary spectral modulation with a digital micromirror device. Such amplitude modulation technique is able to shape traditional Airy beams, SABs, as well as the dynamic transition modes between the one-dimensional and two-dimensional (2D) symmetric Airy modes. The created 2D SAB was characterized through measurement of the propagating fields with one of the four main lobes blocked by an opaque mask. The 2D SAB was verified to exhibit self-healing property against propagation with the obstructed major lobe reconstructed after a certain distance. We further produced an elongated focal line by concentrating the SAB via lenses with different NAs and achieved an ultralong longitudinal needle focus. The produced long needle focus will be applied in optical, chemical, and biological sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is on broadcast and agreement in asynchronous message-passing systems made up of n processes, and where up to t processes may have a Byzantine Behavior. Its first contribution is a powerful, yet simple, all-to-all broadcast communication abstraction suited to binary values. This abstraction, which copes with up to t < n/3 Byzantine processes, allows each process to broadcast a binary value, and obtain a set of values such that (1) no value broadcast only by Byzantine processes can belong to the set of a correct process, and (2) if the set obtained by a correct process contains a single value v, then the set obtained by any correct process contains v. The second contribution of this article is a new round-based asynchronous consensus algorithm that copes with up to t < n/3 Byzantine processes. This algorithm is based on the previous binary broadcast abstraction and a weak common coin. In addition to being signature-free and optimal with respect to the value of t, this consensus algorithm has several noteworthy properties: the expected number of rounds to decide is constant; each round is composed of a constant number of communication steps and involves O(n²) messages; each message is composed of a round number plus a constant number of bits. Moreover, the algorithm tolerates message reordering by the adversary (i.e., the Byzantine processes). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iris recognition occupies an important rank among the biometric types of approaches as a result of its accuracy and efficiency. The aim of this paper is to suggest a developed system for iris identification based on the fusion of scale invariant feature transforms (SIFT) along with local binary patterns of features extraction. Several steps have been applied. Firstly, any image type was converted to grayscale. Secondly, localization of the iris was achieved using circular Hough transform. Thirdly, the normalization to convert the polar value to Cartesian using Daugman’s rubber sheet models, followed by histogram equalization to enhance the iris region. Finally, the features were extracted by utilizing the scale invariant feature transformation and local binary pattern. Some sigma and threshold values were used for feature extraction, which achieved the highest rate of recognition. The programming was implemented by using MATLAB 2013. The matching was performed by applying the city block distance. The iris recognition system was built with the use of iris images for 30 individuals in the CASIA v4. 0 database. Every individual has 20 captures for left and right, with a total of 600 pictures. The main findings showed that the values of recognition rates in the proposed system are 98.67% for left eyes and 96.66% for right eyes, among thirty subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the design and operation principle of a multisensory converter of binary mechanical signals to electrical signals are considered; the device is based on a fiber-optic digital-to-analog converter consisting of a kit of optical attenuators and a fiber-optic adder unit. A generalized mathematical model of the multisensory converter operation is developed. The model combines particular mathematical models of operation of a fiber-optic digital-to-analog converter, photo amplifier, and double-integration voltage-to-digit converter. The model is presented in the form of analytical equations for defining the output electric code based on the bit digits of the input mechanical code, considering a complex of constructive, sheet-oriented, and power-related parameters of the converter. The conversion of the frequency signals into codes is analyzed. The algorithm is developed for the numerical analysis of the mathematical model of operation of the investigated device, providing values of the maximum permissible instrumental errors in the manufacture of converter elements, while ensuring the full reliability of the device operation. The presented results can be used in the development of multisensory converters of binary displacements of control systems and the control and monitoring of energy-saturated objects, for which high noise immunity, electrical neutrality, low chemical activity, and information security are crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, motivated by [F. Vetro, Filomat, 29:9 (2015), 2011-2020] we present some fixed point results for a class of nonexpansive self-mappings and multi-valued mappings in the framework of b-metric spaces. Our results generalize and improve the consequences of [ Khojasteh et al. Abstract and Applied Analysis, vol. 2014, Article ID 325840, 5 pages, 2014.] and [F. Vetro, Filomat, 29:9 (2015), 2011-2020]. Some examples are provided to illustrate our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss the interplay between a slow continuous drift of temperature, which induces continuous phase separation, and the nonlinear diffusion term in the [lowercase_phi_synonym]4-model for phase separation of a binary mixture. This leads to a bound for the stability of diffusive demixing. It is demonstrated that the same findings apply in other models, except for slight modifications of the bound. In practice stable diffusive demixing can only be achieved when special precautions are taken in experiments on real mixtures. Therefore, the recent observations on complex dynamical behavior in such systems should be considered as a new challenge for understanding generic features of phase-separating systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The zero-temperature phase diagram of binary mixtures of like-charge particles interacting via a screened Coulomb pair potential is calculated as a function of composition and charge ratio. The potential energy obtained by a Lekner summation is minimized among a variety of candidate two-dimensional crystals. A wealth of different stable crystal structures is identified including A, B, AB2, A2B, and AB4 structures [A (B) particles correspond to large (small) charge.] Their elementary cells consist of triangular, square, or rhombic lattices of the A particles with a basis comprising various structures of A and B particles. For small charge asymmetry there are no intermediate crystals besides the pure A and B triangular crystals. The predicted structures are detectable in experiments on confined mixtures of like-charge colloids or dusty plasma sheets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on intensification of codified binary systems and social networks suffering from all sorts of social inequality and violence which being more than a detail in the landscape.

Abstract This work addresses bubble deformability and binary breakup induced by turbulent fluctuations in liquid dispersion. In order to explore the dynamic process of bubble-eddy interaction, a theoretical model considering the surface deformation, is proposed through dimensional analysis in this work. Our model indicates that the bubble deformability depends on two key factors: the size ratio between the turbulent structure and the mother bubble, and the Weber number. Binary breakup of one single bubble is described through the degree of the surface deformation, and the effect of breakage constraints on it is investigated. It is found that equal-size breakage is dominated by the energy constraint, while most unequal-size breakage is dominated by the force constraint. The characteristic sizes of effective colliding eddies contributing to the bubble breakup process are computed based on the change of the surface energy. This work not only overcomes the sensitivity of the breakup models for turbulent dispersion systems to these parameters, but also gives good predication of bubble deformability in two-phase turbulent flow. Highlights • A theoretical model for bubble deformability was proposed. • Energy and force criteria were responsible for equal-size and unequal-size breakages, respectively. • Characteristic sizes of colliding eddies in breakup were determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many investigators are interested in combining biomarkers to predict a binary outcome or detect underlying disease. This endeavor is complicated by the fact that many biomarker studies involve data from multiple centers. Depending upon the relationship between center, the biomarkers, and the target of prediction, care must be taken when constructing and evaluating combinations of biomarkers. We introduce a taxonomy to describe the role of center and consider how a biomarker combination should be constructed and evaluated. We show that ignoring center, which is frequently done by clinical researchers, is often not appropriate. The limited statistical literature proposes using random intercept logistic regression models, an approach that we demonstrate is generally inadequate and may be misleading. We instead propose using fixed intercept logistic regression, which appropriately accounts for center without relying on untenable assumptions. After constructing the biomarker combination, we recommend using performance measures that account for the multicenter nature of the data, namely the center-adjusted area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. We apply these methods to data from a multicenter study of acute kidney injury after cardiac surgery. Appropriately accounting for center, both in construction and evaluation, may increase the likelihood of identifying clinically useful biomarker combinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germany, 1935: the engineer Konrad Zuse (1910–1995), in the living room of his Berlin house, devotes himself to the design and construction of a binary, programmable machine, the Z1, capable of processing data in a fast and efficient way. While building his machines, he also started to devise a conceptual and notational system for writing 'programs' to execute applications much more complex than the basic arithmetic calculations. He delved deep into the study of formal logic in order to work out his "computation plan", the Plankalkül. Although the Plan Calculus didn't exercise much impact on German post-World War hardships, it displays all the traits currently recognized as standard features of modern programming languages. The aim of the present study is to highlight the general purpose and technical specifics of this language, its historical and scientific background, and the philosophical inspiration leading Konrad Zuse to employ the predicate logic in the formalization of the "computation projects" for his machines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every channel can be expressed as a convex combination of deterministic channels with each deterministic channel corresponding to one particular intrinsic state. Such convex combinations are, in general, not unique, each giving rise to a specific intrinsic-state distribution. In this paper, we study the maximum and minimum capacities of a channel when the realization of its intrinsic state is causally available at the encoder and/or the decoder. Several conclusive results are obtained for binary-input channels and binary-output channels. By-products of our investigation include a generalization of the Birkhoff–von Neumann theorem and a condition on the uselessness of causal state information at the encoder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper is concerned with a kinetic model of a Vlasov–Fokker–Planck system used to describe the evolution of two species of particles interacting through a potential and a thermal reservoir at given temperature. We prove that at low temperature, the homogeneous equilibrium is dynamically unstable under certain perturbations. Our work is motivated by a problem arising in [4]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study voting games on binary issues, where voters hold an objective over the outcome of the collective decision and are allowed, before the vote takes place, to negotiate their ballots with the other participants. We analyse the voters' rational behaviour in the resulting two-phase game when ballots are aggregated via non-manipulable rules and, more specifically, quota rules. We show under what conditions undesirable equilibria can be removed and desirable ones sustained as a consequence of the pre-vote phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a unit vector control law by output feedback to solve the problem of global exact output tracking for a class of multivariable uncertain plants with nonlinear disturbances. In order to face the nonuniform arbitrary relative degree obstacle, we extend our earlier estimation scheme based on global finite‐time differentiators using dynamic gains to a multivariable architecture. A diagonally stable condition over the system high‐frequency gain (HFG) matrix has to be assumed. Preserving the simplicity of its mono variable framework, variable gain super‐twisting algorithm (STA) is employed to obtain the robust and exact multivariable differentiator. Moreover, state‐norm observers for the unmeasured state variables are constructed to upper bound the disturbances as well as to update the differentiator gains, being both state dependent. Uniform global exponential stability and ultimate exact tracking are proved. As an alternative to chattering alleviation, we appeal to the Emelyanov's concept of binary control in order to obtain a continuous control signal replacing the unit vector function in the controller by a high‐gain gradient adaptive law with parameter projection. As shown in the existing literature for mono variable systems, the proposed multiparameter binary‐adaptive formulation tends to the unit vector control as the adaptation gain increases to infinity, also smoothing the transition from adaptive to sliding mode control. A numerical example is portrayed to illustrate the potentialities of the developed multivariable techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, mixed radix conversion (MRC)-based residue number system (RNS)-to-binary converters for two new three-moduli sets {2 k − 3 , 2 k − 2 , 2 k − 1 } and {2 k + 1 , 2 k + 2 , 2 k + 3 } which are derived from the moduli set {2 m + 1 , 2 m , 2 m − 1 } are presented. These have the advantage of having one modulus of the form 2 k − 1 or 2 k + 1 simplifying computations in one residue channel. The proposed reverse converters are evaluated and compared with state-of-the-art reverse converters proposed in literature for other three-moduli sets regarding hardware requirement and conversion time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Robust and scalable design method is developed for ternary separations. • Multiple variables are optimized for the desired yield without simulations. • Design method enables 800 times higher productivity than literature values. • Long columns and high ligand concentrations favor high productivity. • The productivity is limited by selectivity weighted composition factor. Abstract A constant-pattern design method for separating ternary mixtures using ligand-assisted displacement chromatography was developed for non-ideal systems. The general correlation for the minimum column length required to achieve the constant–pattern state for binary separations from our previous study was extended to ternary separations. Additionally, an equation for the yield of a target component as a function of key dimensionless groups was derived based on the constant-pattern mass transfer zone lengths. The column length and operating velocity solved from the two equations ensured the yields and the constant–pattern state for the target components. A selectivity weighted composition factor was developed to allow the design method to specify a minimum target yield for one or multiple components. The design method was verified using simulations and experiments for different targeted yields (70–95%), ligand concentrations (0.03–0.06 M), and feed compositions (1/12–5/6). The targeted yields were achieved or exceeded in all cases tested. The minimum column length required to achieve a constant pattern-state and the productivity of LAD are limited by the lowest selectivity or by a minority component with a low concentration in the feed, even when it does not have the lowest selectivity. Sacrificing the yields of minor components can increase the total productivity significantly. The productivities achieved using this design method are 839 times higher than literature results for ternary separations with the same purity and similar yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Many technical systems like manufacturing plants or software applications generate large event sequences. Knowing the temporal relationship between events is important for gaining insights into the status and behavior of the system. This paper proposes a novel approach for identifying the time lag between different event types. This identification task is formulated as a binary integer optimization problem that can be solved efficiently and close to optimality by means of a linear programming approximation. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated on synthetic and real-world event sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the techniques related to part family formation require precise numerical data for parts' features. However, in many situations, the parts' features are too ill-defined and are too complex to be susceptible to analysis by traditional discrete methods. In such cases, this information could be best described using phrases in a natural language. Fuzzy set theory has proved to be a viable alternative to break down barriers between fuzzy human thinking and the machines that accept only precise numerical data. This paper suggests an approach based on fuzzy linguistics to quantify parts feature information for part family formation problem which is traditionally addressed through conventional binary coding structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Binary neural networks (BNNs) are promising to deliver accuracy comparable to conventional deep neural networks at a fraction of the cost in terms of memory and energy. In this paper, we introduce the XNOR neural engine (XNE), a fully digital configurable hardware accelerator IP for BNNs, integrated within a microcontroller unit (MCU) equipped with an autonomous I/O subsystem and hybrid SRAM/standard cell memory. The XNE is able to fully compute convolutional and dense layers in autonomy or in cooperation with the core in the MCU to realize more complex behaviors. We show post-synthesis results in 65- and 22-nm technology for the XNE IP and post-layout results in 22 nm for the full MCU indicating that this system can drop the energy cost per binary operation to 21.6 fJ per operation at 0.4 V, and at the same time is flexible and performant enough to execute state-of-the-art BNN topologies such as ResNet-34 in less than 2.2 mJ per frame at 8.9 frames/s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supercritical fl uid chromatography (SFC) and hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) are suitable for screening very polar trace organic compounds in environmental water samples. The polarity range of separable compounds in SFC is as broad as the polarity range of the serial coupling of reversed-phase liquid chromatography and HILIC (reversed-phase LC-HILIC). In this article the orthogonality of SFC and reversed-phase LC-HILIC is assessed. It is shown that both techniques are highly orthogonal and complementary. The parallel use of the two techniques offers additional benefi ts for the compound monitoring of, for example, pharmaceuticals in surface waters, or the identifi cation of unknown compounds in complex samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents reverse converters for dynamic ranges (DRs) up to 10n+1 achieved with horizontal and vertical extensions of the traditional three-moduli set {2n,2n-1,2n+1}. The proposed approach results in increased parallelism with a smaller number of bits per channel. An arithmetic application is considered to show that the proposed converter scales better with an increasing number of residue operations per channel, confirming the practical applications of the moduli set and reverse converter. Experimental results suggest that the proposed architecture outperforms the best reverse converters in the related state of the art, with equivalent DR, presenting speedup of 2.09 times, and average reductions of 62.00 and 45.20% in area and power consumption, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second part of this two-paper series presents the extended formulation for the lifted multiyear multistage robust transmission expansion planning model introduced in the first part. The proposed planning approach is successfully tested on the Garver 6-bus and on a 118-bus+118-bus test system with different input settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this work is to solve the problem of representing an entire video using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) features for human action recognition. Recently, due to insufficient GPU memory, it has been difficult to take the whole video as the input of the CNN for end-to-end learning. A typical method is to use sampled video frames as inputs and corresponding labels as supervision. One major issue of this popular approach is that the local samples may not contain the information indicated by the global labels and sufficient motion information. To address this issue, we propose a binary hashing method to enhance the local feature extractors. First, we extract the local features and aggregate them into global features using maximum/minimum pooling. Second, we use the binary hashing method to capture the motion features. Finally, we concatenate the hashing features with global features using different normalization methods to train the classifier. Experimental results on the JHMDB and MPII-Cooking datasets show that, for these new local features, binary hashing mapping on the sparsely sampled features led to significant performance improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specifications for complex engineering systems are typically decomposed into specifications for individual subsystems in a manner that ensures they are implementable and simpler to develop further. We describe a method to algorithmically construct component specifications that implement a given specification when assembled. By eliminating variables that are irrelevant to realizability of each component, we simplify the specifications and reduce the amount of information necessary for operation. We parametrize the information flow between components by introducing parameters that select whether each variable is visible to a component. The decomposition algorithm identifies which variables can be hidden while preserving realizability and ensuring correct composition, and these are eliminated from component specifications by quantification and conversion of binary decision diagrams to formulas. The resulting specifications describe component viewpoints with full information with respect to the remaining variables, which is essential for tractable algorithmic synthesis of implementations. The specifications are written in TLA+, with liveness properties restricted to an implication of conjoined recurrence properties, known as GR(1). We define an operator for forming open systems from closed systems, based on a variant of the “while-plus” operator. This operator simplifies the writing of specifications that are realizable without being vacuous. To convert the generated specifications from binary decision diagrams to readable formulas over integer variables, we symbolically solve a minimal covering problem. We show with examples how the method can be applied to obtain contracts that formalize the hierarchical structure of system design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed the unprecedented efforts of visual representation for enabling various efficient and effective multimedia applications. In this paper, we propose a novel visual representation learning framework, which generates efficient semantic hash codes for visual samples by substantially exploring concepts, semantic attributes as well as their inter-correlations. Specifically, we construct a conceptual space, where the semantic knowledge of concepts and attributes is embedded. Then, we develop an effective on-line feature coding scheme for visual objects by leveraging the inter-concept relationships through the intermediate representative power of attributes. The code process is formulated as an overlapping group lasso problem, which can be efficiently solved. Finally, we may binarize the visual representation to generate efficient hash codes. Extensive experiments have been conducted to illustrate the superiority of our proposed framework on visual retrieval task as compared to state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an Independent Binary Model (IBM) is proposed. It is aimed at estimating cell probabilities in an r x c contingency table when some of the cells have zero count. Existing methods in this situation are either subjective or based on arbitrary decision of the researcher. The IBM is applied to sets of simulated data for various combinations of categorical variables. It is pointed out that the IBM could be an alternative for such situations especially when the result is needed for further analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Informatics in Education is the property of Informatics in Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We combine experimental visualization with numerical simulation to explore the hydrodynamic shear-driven binary collision of double emulsion droplets. Two typical colliding motions, passing-over motion and reversing motion, are found and identified by quantitatively characterizing the corresponding detailed motion trajectory and morphology development. Compared with the ordinary single-phase droplets, double emulsion droplets are demonstrated to exhibit similar motion trajectories but different deformation development during the binary collision process, which arise from an additional interaction induced by the inner droplet. Especially, we clarify that two typical colliding motions are determined by the competitions among the drag of passing-flow region and the entrainment from reversing-flow and vortex regions in the matrix fluid, which are significantly affected by the dimensionless shear stress ( Ca ) and confinement degree of shear flow ( Co ). With the increasing Co , the colliding motion of binary double emulsion droplets transits from the passing-over to reversing, owing to that the entrainment of the reversing-flow region turns to play a dominant role. The drag of the ambient passing-flow in the matrix fluid is increased by enlarging Ca , resulting in the emergence of passing-over motion of the colliding droplets. Accordingly, a regime diagram is provided to quantitatively recognize the corresponding regime of these two typical colliding motions, as a function of Ca and Co . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The separation and recovery of the greenhouse gases CHF3 and CHClF2 from emissions is essential to avoid adverse environmental effects. Nanoporous carbons are excellent candidates for the capture of CHF3. However, little research has been done on the effect of pore size on the adsorption capacity and selectivity of CHClF2 over CHF3 in nanoporous carbon materials. The effect of the pore size on the competitive adsorption of a binary CHF3-CHClF2 mixture in graphitic slit pores has been investigated using a combination of Monte Carlo simulations and breakthrough curve experiments over a wide range of pressures and temperatures. The entropy changes have a considerable effect on selectivity of CHClF2 over CHF3 because the size of the adsorbate molecule is close to the effective height of the pores; conversely, adsorption energy has a significant impact. The selectivity of CHClF2 over CHF3 at 0.05-1.0 MPa increases in the order 19.47 < 16.62 < 13.20 < 11.77 < 8.30 < 5.17 < 5.67 Å. The mechanisms for adsorption and the selectivity of CHClF2 over CHF3 were determined, as were the effects of pore size and pressure on adsorption energy and adsorption entropy. This combination of methods provides an effective strategy for the design and screening of adsorbent materials for CHF3-CHClF2 separation and recovery applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visible light communication (VLC) can provide data transmission via the illumination light emitting diodes (LED). This paper introduces a new model to analyze the bit error rate (BER) of binary phase modulation in VLC for an arbitrary modulation depth and data duty cycle while taking into account both the Gaussian and signal-dependent shot noise. The impact of the driver design on the BER and its impact on ripple have not been considered in detail before. We compare two different LED driver schemes, namely directly adapting the driver control loop and binary shunting. We address data rate, BER, and power efficiency, for which we propose to use the extra energy per symbol above unmodulated light. We further introduce an analysis of the effect that (truncated) ripple interference has in the (matched or other) filter of the receiver. Ripple causes a harmful interference in VLC, and thus a BER expression is derived to include its effect. Two approximations are proposed to model the ripple interference, and their accuracies are compared by simulations. A low-pass filtering is proposed to alleviate the impact of ripple interference in VLC system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper studies the number conservation behavior of binary asynchronous cellular automata (ACAs). We consider here a-asynchronous update scheme. It is, however, shown in the beginning of the study that no binary CA (except identity rule), in general, can be claimed as number conserving under asynchronous update. We then introduce the idea of probabilistic number conservation of ACAs. We find a set of binary ACAs which are probabilistic number conserving ACAs. We observe that these ACAs are not dependent on any specific value of a. Further, some additional ACAs have been found which have a tendency to conserve the expected number of 1s of the seeds having density 0.5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hybrid optimization technique based on the integration of binary successive approach (BSA) and civilized swarm optimization (CSO) has been proposed to solve profit based unit commitment (PBUC) problem. Since, PBUC is a mixed integer problem, hence to deal with binary and continuous variables, BSA and CSO technique has been employed, respectively. The BSA is based on evolutionary search and search process is initiated with random base point of the hypercube. The each base point further generates two more corner points of the hypercube. The search moves toward the point having better objective function value, and continues until the search has reached to the last branch of BSA tree. This strategy reduces the computational burden while searching the optimal unit status. The generation schedule from the committed unit is searched by CSO technique. The CSO is an integrated technique of PSO and society civilized algorithm (SCA) technique. Since, PSO has good exploration capability and SCA technique is emerging to improve the exploitation capability of the algorithm. Three PBUC test systems have been undertaken and obtained results have been compared with published results and found satisfactory. Further, Wilcoxon signed rank test is applied to investigate statistical performance of the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the max-min ki-partitioning problem that asks for an assignment of n jobs to m parallel machines so that the minimum machine completion time is maximized and the number of jobs on each machine does not exceed a machine-dependent cardinality limit ki(i=1,…,m). We propose different preprocessing as well as lifting procedures and derive several upper bound arguments. Furthermore, we introduce suited construction heuristics as well as an effective dynamic programming based improvement procedure. Results of a comprehensive computational study on a large set of randomly generated instances indicate that our algorithm quickly finds (near-)optimal solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic building segmentation from aerial imagery is an important and challenging task because of the variety of backgrounds, building textures and imaging conditions. Currently, research using variant types of fully convolutional networks (FCNs) has largely improved the performance of this task. However, pursuing more accurate segmentation results is still critical for further applications such as automatic mapping. In this study, a multi-constraint fully convolutional network (MC-FCN) model is proposed to perform end-to-end building segmentation. Our MC-FCN model consists of a bottom-up/top-down fully convolutional architecture and multi-constraints that are computed between the binary cross entropy of prediction and the corresponding ground truth. Since more constraints are applied to optimize the parameters of the intermediate layers, the multi-scale feature representation of the model is further enhanced, and hence higher performance can be achieved. The experiments on a very-high-resolution aerial image dataset covering 18 km2 and more than 17,000 buildings indicate that our method performs well in the building segmentation task. The proposed MC-FCN method significantly outperforms the classic FCN method and the adaptive boosting method using features extracted by the histogram of oriented gradients. Compared with the state-of-the-art U-Net model, MC-FCN gains 3.2% (0.833 vs. 0.807) and 2.2% (0.893 vs. 0.874) relative improvements of Jaccard index and kappa coefficient with the cost of only 1.8% increment of the model-training time. In addition, the sensitivity analysis demonstrates that constraints at different positions have inconsistent impact on the performance of the MC-FCN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of the current degradation state of an industrial component and the prediction of its future evolution is a fundamental step for the development of condition-based and predictive maintenance approaches. The objective of the present work is to propose a general method for extracting a health indicator to measure the amount of component degradation from a set of signals measured during operation. The proposed method is based on the combined use of feature extraction techniques, such as Empirical Mode Decomposition and Auto-Associative Kernel Regression, and a multi-objective Binary Differential Evolution (BDE) algorithm for selecting the subset of features optimal for the definition of the health indicator. The objectives of the optimization are desired characteristics of the health indicator, such as monotonicity, trendability and prognosability. A case study is considered, concerning the prediction of the remaining useful life of turbofan engines. The obtained results confirm that the method is capable of extracting health indicators suitable for accurate prognostics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a weighted online sequential extreme learning machine with kernels (WOS-ELMK) for class imbalance learning (CIL). The existing online sequential extreme learning machine (OS-ELM) methods for CIL use random feature mapping. WOS-ELMK is the first OS-ELM method which uses kernel mapping for online class imbalance learning. The kernel mapping avoids the non-optimal hidden node problem associated with weighted OS-ELM (WOS-ELM) and other existing OS-ELM methods for CIL. WOS-ELMK tackles both the binary class and multiclass imbalance problems in one-by-one as well as chunk-by-chunk learning modes. For imbalanced big data streams, a fixed size window scheme is also implemented for WOS-ELMK. We empirically show that WOS-ELMK obtains superior performance in general than some recently proposed CIL approaches on 17 binary class and 8 multiclass imbalanced datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A deterministic finite automaton (DFA) separates two strings w and x if it accepts w and rejects x . The minimum number of states required for a DFA to separate w and x is denoted by sep ( w , x ) . The present paper shows that the difference | sep ( w , x ) − sep ( w R , x R ) | is unbounded for a binary alphabet; here w R stands for the mirror image of w . This solves an open problem stated in Demaine et al. (2011) [2] . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]