av 10 Breaths Back to Love with Kamal Ravikant By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 26 Feb 2020 14:15:09 +0000 Kamal Ravikant was in a dark place. After four years of pouring his heart, soul, and money into his tech startup, it blew up. He lost everything – including himself. In a moment of desperation, a vow deep within came to the surface: to love himself. Though it was a bit of a foreign concept, he set out to undo the misery in his head through the lens of love. The practice Kamal formed became the self-published book: Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. It sold over a half a million copies and is now newly expanded. In our conversation Kamal shares his ruthlessly practical way he unwound the negative thoughts and more importantly, made it last. In our conversation we explore: Mindset as a practice, including the 7 minute meditation Kamal uses to break old mental patterns Kamal shares his advice in getting unstuck, including giving yourself time to simply live Our brain is a monkey gone bananas. Pain, joy, loneliness, love are a universal part of the human condition such that no matter our individual circumstance we are all trying to tame it. and much more… Enjoy! FOLLOW KAMAL: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast […] The post 10 Breaths Back to Love with Kamal Ravikant appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography. Full Article chasejarvisLIVE Podcast breath meditation mindset writer
av Scurry: A Race-To-Finish Scavenger Hunt App By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 26 Mar 2020 13:58:00 -0400 We have a lot of traditions here at Viget, many of which you may have read about - TTT, FLF, Pointless Weekend. There are others, but you have to be an insider for more information on those. Pointless Weekend is one of our favorite traditions, though. It’s been around over a decade and some pretty fun work has come out of it over the years, like Storyboard, Baby Bookie, and Short Order. At a high level, we take 48 hours to build a tool, experiment, or stunt as a team, across all four of our offices. These projects are entirely separate from our client work and we use them to try out new technologies, explore roles on the team, and stress-test our processes. The first step for a Pointless Weekend is assembling the teams. We had two teams this year, with a record number of participants. You can read about TrailBuddy, what the other team built, here. The Scurry team was split between the DC and Durham offices, so all meetings were held via Hangout. Once we were assembled, we set out to understand the constraints and the goals of our Pointless Project. We went into this weekend with an extra pep in our step, as we were determined to build something for the upcoming Viget 20th anniversary TTT this summer. Here’s what we knew we wanted: An activity all Vigets could do together, where they could create memories, and share broadly on socialSomething that we could use in a spotty network at C Lazy U Ranch in ColoradoA product we can share with others: corporate groups, families and friends, schools, bachelor/ette parties We landed on a scavenger hunt native app, which we named Scurry (Scavenger + Hurry = Scurry. Brilliant, right?). There are already a few scavenger apps available, so we set out to create something that was Quick and easy to set up huntsFree and intuitive for usersA nice combination of trivia and activitiesSocial! We wanted to enable teams to share photos and progress One of the main reasons we have Pointless Weekends is to test out new technologies and processes. In that vein, we tried out Notion as our central organizing tool - we used it for user journeys, data modeling, and even writing tickets, which we typically use Github for. We tested out Notion as our primary tool, writing tickets and tracking progress. When we built the app, we needed to prepare for spotty network service, as internet connectivity isn’t guaranteed at C Lazy U Ranch – where our Viget20 celebration will be. A Progressive Web Application (PWA) didn't make sense for our tech requirements, so we chose the route of creating a native application. There are a number of options available to build native applications. But, as we were looking to make as much progress as possible in 48-hours, we chose one of our favorite frameworks: React Native. React Native allows developers to build true, cross-platform native applications, using some of our favorite technologies: javascript, the React framework, and a native-specific variant of CSS. We decided on the turn-key solution Expo. Expo has extra tooling allowing for easy development, deployment, and debugging. This is a snap shot of our app and Expo. Our frontend developers were able to immediately dive in making screens and styling components, and quickly made the mockups in Whimsical a reality. On the backend, we used the supported library to connect to the backend datastore, Firebase. Firebase is a hosted solution for data storage, with key features built-in like authentication, realtime updates, and offline support. Our backend developer worked behind the frontend developers hooking those views up to live data. Both of these tools, Expo and Firebase, were easy to use and allowed us to focus on building a working application quickly, rather than being mired in setup or bespoke solutions to common problems. Whimsical is one of our favorite tools for building out mockups of an app. We made impressive progress in our 48-hour sprint, but there’s still some work to do. We have some additional features we hope to add before TTT, which will require additional testing and refining. For now, stay tuned and sign up for our newsletter. We’ll be sure to share when Scurry is ready for the world! Full Article News & Culture
av Unsolved Zoom Mysteries: Why We Have to Say “You’re Muted” So Much By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 09:36:00 -0400 Video conference tools are an indispensable part of the Plague Times. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and their compatriots are keeping us close and connected in a physically distanced world. As tech-savvy folks with years of cross-office collaboration, we’ve laughed at the sketches and memes about vidconf mishaps. We practice good Zoomiquette, including muting ourselves when we’re not talking. Yet even we can’t escape one vidconf pitfall. (There but for the grace of Zoom go I.) On nearly every vidconf, someone starts to talk, and then someone else says: “Oop, you’re muted.” And, inevitably: “Oop, you’re still muted.” That’s right: we’re trying to follow Zoomiquette by muting, but then we forget or struggle to unmute when we do want to talk. In this post, I’ll share my theories for why the You’re Muted Problems are so pervasive, using Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom as examples. Spoiler alert: While I hope this will help you be more mindful of the problem, I can’t offer a good solution. It still happens to me. All. The. Time. Skip the why and go straight to the vidconf app keyboard shortcuts you should memorize right now. Why we don't realize we’re muted before talking Why does this keep happening?!? Simply put: UX and design decisions make it harder to remember that you’re muted before you start to talk. Here’s a common scenario: You haven’t talked for a bit, so you haven’t interacted with the Zoom screen for a few seconds. Then you start to talk — and that’s when someone tells you, “You’re muted.” We forget so easily in these scenarios because when our mouse has been idle for a few seconds, the apps hide or downplay the UI elements that tell us we’re muted. Zoom and Teams are the worst offenders: Zoom hides both the toolbar with the main in-app controls (the big mute button) and the mute status indicator on your video pane thumbnail.Teams hides the toolbar, and doesn't show a mute status indicator on your video thumbnail in the first place. Meet is only slightly better: Meet hides the toolbar, and shows only a small mute status icon in your video thumbnail. Even when our mouse is active, the apps’ subtle approach to muted state UI can make it easy to forget that we’re muted: Teams is the worst offender: The mute button is an icon rather than words.The muted-state icon's styling could be confused with unmuted state: Teams does not follow the common pattern of using red to denote muted state.The mute button is not differentiated in visual hierarchy from all the other controls.As mentioned above, Teams never shows a secondary mute status indicator. Zoom is a bit better, but still makes it pretty easy to forget that you’re muted: Pros:Zoom is the only app to use words on the mute button, in this case to denote the button action (rather than the muted state).The muted-state icon’s styling (red line) is less likely to be confused with the unmuted-state icon.Cons:The mute button’s placement (bottom left corner of the page) is easy to overlook.The mute button is not differentiated in visual hierarchy from the other toolbar buttons — and Zoom has a lot of toolbar buttons, especially when logged in as host.The secondary mute status indicator is a small icon.The mute button’s muted-state icon is styled slightly differently from the secondary mute status indicator. Potential Cons:While words denote the button action, only an icon denotes the muted state. Meet is probably the clearest of the three apps, but still has pitfalls: Pros:The mute button is visually prominent in the UI: It’s clearly differentiated in the visual hierarchy relative to other controls (styled as a primary button); is a large button; and is placed closer to the center of the controls bar.The muted-state icon’s styling (red fill) is less likely to be confused with the unmuted-state icon.Cons:Uses only an icon rather than words to denote the muted state.Unrelated Con:While the mute button is visually prominent, it’s also placed next to the hang-up button. So in Meet’s active state you might be less likely to forget you’re muted … but more likely to accidentally hang up when trying to unmute. 😬 I know modern app design leans toward minimalism. There’s often good rationale to use icons rather than words, or to de-emphasize controls and indicators when not in use. But again: This happens on basically every call! Often multiple times per call!! And we’re supposed to be tech-savvy!!! Imagine what it’s like for the tens of millions of vidconf newbs. I would argue that “knowing your muted state” has turned out to be a major vidconf user need. At this point, it’s certainly worth rethinking UX patterns for. Why we keep unsuccessfully unmuting once we realize we’re muted So we can blame the You’re Muted Problem on UX and design. But what causes the You’re Still Muted Problem? Once we know we’re muted, why do we sometimes fail to unmute before talking again? This one is more complicated — and definitely more speculative. To start making sense of this scenario, here’s the sequence I’m guessing most commonly plays out (I did this a couple times before I became aware of it): The crucial part is when the person tries to unmute by pressing the keyboard Volume On/Off key. If that’s in fact what’s happening (again, this is just a hypothesis), I’m guessing they did that because when someone says “You’re muted” or “I can’t hear you,” our subconscious thought process is: “Oh, Audio is Off. Press the keyboard key that I usually press when I want to change Audio Off to Audio On.” There are two traps in this reflexive thought process: First, the keyboard volume keys control the speaker volume, not the microphone volume. (More specifically, they control the system sound output settings, rather than the system sound input settings or the vidconf app’s sound input settings.)In fact, there isn’t a keyboard key to control the microphone volume. You can’t unmute your mic via a dedicated keyboard key, the way that you can turn the speaker volume on/off via a keyboard key while watching a movie or listening to music. Second, I think we reflexively press the keyboard key anyway because our mental model of the keyboard audio keys is just: Audio. Not microphone vs. speaker. This fuzzy mental model makes sense: There’s only one set of keyboard keys related to audio, so why would I think to distinguish between microphone and speaker? So my best guess is hardware design causes the You’re Still Muted Problem. After all, keyboard designs are from a pre-Zoom era, when the average person rarely used the computer’s microphone.If that is the cause, one potential solution is for hardware manufacturers to start including dedicated keys to control microphone volume: Video conference keyboard shortcuts you should memorize right now Let me know if you have other theories for the You’re Still Muted Problem! In the meantime, the best alternative is to learn all of the vidconf app keyboard shortcuts for muting/unmuting: MeetMac: Command(⌘) + DWindows: Control + DTeamsMac: Command(⌘) + Shift + MWindows: Ctrl + Shift + MZoomMac: Command(⌘) + Shift + AWindows: Alt + AHold Spacebar: Temporarily unmute Other vidconf apps not included in my analysis: Cisco Webex MeetingsMac: Ctrl + Alt + MWindows: Ctrl + Shift + M GoToMeeting Mac: No keyboard shortcut? Windows: Ctrl + Alt + A Bonus protip from Jackson Fox: If you use multiple vidconf apps, pick a keyboard shortcut that you like and manually change each app’s mute/unmute shortcut to that. Then you only have to remember one shortcut! Full Article Process User Experience
av Leaving Lightroom behind By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 28 Dec 2017 13:08:27 +0000 As I stated in my Best of 2017 post, I didn’t get to take many photos this year – which also multiple times throughout the year made me think: why am I paying so much money for Lightroom for how […] Full Article Processing Software Thoughts
av C’était le calme avant la tempête… By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 13 Mar 2020 20:44:36 +0000 St-Donat, Bas-St-Laurent, Québec Full Article aérienne Hiver Paysage St-Donat hiver rural village
av Arthur packets for $G_2$ and perverse sheaves on cubics. (arXiv:2005.02438v2 [math.RT] UPDATED) By arxiv.org Published On :: This paper begins the project of defining Arthur packets of all unipotent representations for the $p$-adic exceptional group $G_2$. Here we treat the most interesting case by defining and computing Arthur packets with component group $S_3$. We also show that the distributions attached to these packets are stable, subject to a hypothesis. This is done using a self-contained microlocal analysis of simple equivariant perverse sheaves on the moduli space of homogeneous cubics in two variables. In forthcoming work we will treat the remaining unipotent representations and their endoscopic classification and strengthen our result on stability. Full Article
av Weak-strong uniqueness for an elastic plate interacting with the Navier Stokes equation. (arXiv:2003.04049v2 [math.AP] UPDATED) By arxiv.org Published On :: We show weak-strong uniqueness and stability results for the motion of a two or three dimensional fluid governed by the Navier-Stokes equation interacting with a flexible, elastic plate of Koiter type. The plate is situated at the top of the fluid and as such determines the variable part of a time changing domain (that is hence a part of the solution) containing the fluid. The uniqueness result is a consequence of a stability estimate where the difference of two solutions is estimated by the distance of the initial values and outer forces. For that we introduce a methodology that overcomes the problem that the two (variable in time) domains of the fluid velocities and pressures are not the same. The estimate holds under the assumption that one of the two weak solutions possesses some additional higher regularity. The additional regularity is exclusively requested for the velocity of one of the solutions resembling the celebrated Ladyzhenskaya-Prodi-Serrin conditions in the framework of variable domains. Full Article
av Solitary wave solutions and global well-posedness for a coupled system of gKdV equations. (arXiv:2002.09531v2 [math.AP] UPDATED) By arxiv.org Published On :: In this work we consider the initial-value problem associated with a coupled system of generalized Korteweg-de Vries equations. We present a relationship between the best constant for a Gagliardo-Nirenberg type inequality and a criterion for the existence of global solutions in the energy space. We prove that such a constant is directly related to the existence problem of solitary-wave solutions with minimal mass, the so called ground state solutions. To guarantee the existence of ground states we use a variational method. Full Article
av On the automorphic sheaves for GSp_4. (arXiv:1901.04447v6 [math.RT] UPDATED) By arxiv.org Published On :: In this paper we first review the setting for the geometric Langlands functoriality and establish a result for the `backward' functoriality functor. We illustrate this by known examples of the geometric theta-lifting. We then apply the above result to obtain new Hecke eigen-sheaves. The most important application is a construction of the automorphic sheaf for G=GSp_4 attached to a G^L-local system on a curve X such that its standard representation is an irreducible local system of rank 4 on X. Full Article
av On the asymptotic behavior of solutions to the Vlasov-Poisson system. (arXiv:2005.03617v1 [math.AP]) By arxiv.org Published On :: We prove small data modified scattering for the Vlasov-Poisson system in dimension $d=3$ using a method inspired from dispersive analysis. In particular, we identify a simple asymptotic dynamic related to the scattering mass. Full Article
av A Model for Optimal Human Navigation with Stochastic Effects. (arXiv:2005.03615v1 [math.OC]) By arxiv.org Published On :: We present a method for optimal path planning of human walking paths in mountainous terrain, using a control theoretic formulation and a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. Previous models for human navigation were entirely deterministic, assuming perfect knowledge of the ambient elevation data and human walking velocity as a function of local slope of the terrain. Our model includes a stochastic component which can account for uncertainty in the problem, and thus includes a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation with viscosity. We discuss the model in the presence and absence of stochastic effects, and suggest numerical methods for simulating the model. We discuss two different notions of an optimal path when there is uncertainty in the problem. Finally, we compare the optimal paths suggested by the model at different levels of uncertainty, and observe that as the size of the uncertainty tends to zero (and thus the viscosity in the equation tends to zero), the optimal path tends toward the deterministic optimal path. Full Article
av Asymptotic behavior of Wronskian polynomials that are factorized via $p$-cores and $p$-quotients. (arXiv:2005.03516v1 [math.CA]) By arxiv.org Published On :: In this paper we consider Wronskian polynomials labeled by partitions that can be factorized via the combinatorial concepts of $p$-cores and $p$-quotients. We obtain the asymptotic behavior for these polynomials when the $p$-quotient is fixed while the size of the $p$-core grows to infinity. For this purpose, we associate the $p$-core with its characteristic vector and let all entries of this vector simultaneously tend to infinity. This result generalizes the Wronskian Hermite setting which is recovered when $p=2$. Full Article
av The formation of trapped surfaces in the gravitational collapse of spherically symmetric scalar fields with a positive cosmological constant. (arXiv:2005.03434v1 [gr-qc]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Given spherically symmetric characteristic initial data for the Einstein-scalar field system with a positive cosmological constant, we provide a criterion, in terms of the dimensionless size and dimensionless renormalized mass content of an annular region of the data, for the formation of a future trapped surface. This corresponds to an extension of Christodoulou's classical criterion by the inclusion of the cosmological term. Full Article
av Generalized Cauchy-Kovalevskaya extension and plane wave decompositions in superspace. (arXiv:2005.03160v1 [math-ph]) By arxiv.org Published On :: The aim of this paper is to obtain a generalized CK-extension theorem in superspace for the bi-axial Dirac operator. In the classical commuting case, this result can be written as a power series of Bessel type of certain differential operators acting on a single initial function. In the superspace setting, novel structures appear in the cases of negative even superdimensions. In these cases, the CK-extension depends on two initial functions on which two power series of differential operators act. These series are not only of Bessel type but they give rise to an additional structure in terms of Appell polynomials. This pattern also is present in the structure of the Pizzetti formula, which describes integration over the supersphere in terms of differential operators. We make this relation explicit by studying the decomposition of the generalized CK-extension into plane waves integrated over the supersphere. Moreover, these results are applied to obtain a decomposition of the Cauchy kernel in superspace into monogenic plane waves, which shall be useful for inverting the super Radon transform. Full Article
av Improved RawNet with Feature Map Scaling for Text-independent Speaker Verification using Raw Waveforms. (arXiv:2004.00526v2 [eess.AS] UPDATED) By arxiv.org Published On :: Recent advances in deep learning have facilitated the design of speaker verification systems that directly input raw waveforms. For example, RawNet extracts speaker embeddings from raw waveforms, which simplifies the process pipeline and demonstrates competitive performance. In this study, we improve RawNet by scaling feature maps using various methods. The proposed mechanism utilizes a scale vector that adopts a sigmoid non-linear function. It refers to a vector with dimensionality equal to the number of filters in a given feature map. Using a scale vector, we propose to scale the feature map multiplicatively, additively, or both. In addition, we investigate replacing the first convolution layer with the sinc-convolution layer of SincNet. Experiments performed on the VoxCeleb1 evaluation dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, and the best performing system reduces the equal error rate by half compared to the original RawNet. Expanded evaluation results obtained using the VoxCeleb1-E and VoxCeleb-H protocols marginally outperform existing state-of-the-art systems. Full Article
av A Fast and Accurate Algorithm for Spherical Harmonic Analysis on HEALPix Grids with Applications to the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. (arXiv:1904.10514v4 [math.NA] UPDATED) By arxiv.org Published On :: The Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelation (HEALPix) scheme is used extensively in astrophysics for data collection and analysis on the sphere. The scheme was originally designed for studying the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, which represents the first light to travel during the early stages of the universe's development and gives the strongest evidence for the Big Bang theory to date. Refined analysis of the CMB angular power spectrum can lead to revolutionary developments in understanding the nature of dark matter and dark energy. In this paper, we present a new method for performing spherical harmonic analysis for HEALPix data, which is a central component to computing and analyzing the angular power spectrum of the massive CMB data sets. The method uses a novel combination of a non-uniform fast Fourier transform, the double Fourier sphere method, and Slevinsky's fast spherical harmonic transform (Slevinsky, 2019). For a HEALPix grid with $N$ pixels (points), the computational complexity of the method is $mathcal{O}(Nlog^2 N)$, with an initial set-up cost of $mathcal{O}(N^{3/2}log N)$. This compares favorably with $mathcal{O}(N^{3/2})$ runtime complexity of the current methods available in the HEALPix software when multiple maps need to be analyzed at the same time. Using numerical experiments, we demonstrate that the new method also appears to provide better accuracy over the entire angular power spectrum of synthetic data when compared to the current methods, with a convergence rate at least two times higher. Full Article
av Asymptotic expansions of eigenvalues by both the Crouzeix-Raviart and enriched Crouzeix-Raviart elements. (arXiv:1902.09524v2 [math.NA] UPDATED) By arxiv.org Published On :: Asymptotic expansions are derived for eigenvalues produced by both the Crouzeix-Raviart element and the enriched Crouzeix--Raviart element. The expansions are optimal in the sense that extrapolation eigenvalues based on them admit a fourth order convergence provided that exact eigenfunctions are smooth enough. The major challenge in establishing the expansions comes from the fact that the canonical interpolation of both nonconforming elements lacks a crucial superclose property, and the nonconformity of both elements. The main idea is to employ the relation between the lowest-order mixed Raviart--Thomas element and the two nonconforming elements, and consequently make use of the superclose property of the canonical interpolation of the lowest-order mixed Raviart--Thomas element. To overcome the difficulty caused by the nonconformity, the commuting property of the canonical interpolation operators of both nonconforming elements is further used, which turns the consistency error problem into an interpolation error problem. Then, a series of new results are obtained to show the final expansions. Full Article
av Using hierarchical matrices in the solution of the time-fractional heat equation by multigrid waveform relaxation. (arXiv:1706.07632v3 [math.NA] UPDATED) By arxiv.org Published On :: This work deals with the efficient numerical solution of the time-fractional heat equation discretized on non-uniform temporal meshes. Non-uniform grids are essential to capture the singularities of "typical" solutions of time-fractional problems. We propose an efficient space-time multigrid method based on the waveform relaxation technique, which accounts for the nonlocal character of the fractional differential operator. To maintain an optimal complexity, which can be obtained for the case of uniform grids, we approximate the coefficient matrix corresponding to the temporal discretization by its hierarchical matrix (${cal H}$-matrix) representation. In particular, the proposed method has a computational cost of ${cal O}(k N M log(M))$, where $M$ is the number of time steps, $N$ is the number of spatial grid points, and $k$ is a parameter which controls the accuracy of the ${cal H}$-matrix approximation. The efficiency and the good convergence of the algorithm, which can be theoretically justified by a semi-algebraic mode analysis, are demonstrated through numerical experiments in both one- and two-dimensional spaces. Full Article
av Computing with bricks and mortar: Classification of waveforms with a doped concrete blocks. (arXiv:2005.03498v1 [cs.ET]) By arxiv.org Published On :: We present results showing the capability of concrete-based information processing substrate in the signal classification task in accordance with in materio computing paradigm. As the Reservoir Computing is a suitable model for describing embedded in materio computation, we propose that this type of presented basic construction unit can be used as a source for "reservoir of states" necessary for simple tuning of the readout layer. In that perspective, buildings constructed from computing concrete could function as a highly parallel information processor for smart architecture. We present an electrical characterization of the set of samples with different additive concentrations followed by a dynamical analysis of selected specimens showing fingerprints of memfractive properties. Moreover, on the basis of obtained parameters, classification of the signal waveform shapes can be performed in scenarios explicitly tuned for a given device terminal. Full Article
av Algorithmic Averaging for Studying Periodic Orbits of Planar Differential Systems. (arXiv:2005.03487v1 [cs.SC]) By arxiv.org Published On :: One of the main open problems in the qualitative theory of real planar differential systems is the study of limit cycles. In this article, we present an algorithmic approach for detecting how many limit cycles can bifurcate from the periodic orbits of a given polynomial differential center when it is perturbed inside a class of polynomial differential systems via the averaging method. We propose four symbolic algorithms to implement the averaging method. The first algorithm is based on the change of polar coordinates that allows one to transform a considered differential system to the normal form of averaging. The second algorithm is used to derive the solutions of certain differential systems associated to the unperturbed term of the normal of averaging. The third algorithm exploits the partial Bell polynomials and allows one to compute the integral formula of the averaged functions at any order. The last algorithm is based on the aforementioned algorithms and determines the exact expressions of the averaged functions for the considered differential systems. The implementation of our algorithms is discussed and evaluated using several examples. The experimental results have extended the existing relevant results for certain classes of differential systems. Full Article
av Detection and Feeder Identification of the High Impedance Fault at Distribution Networks Based on Synchronous Waveform Distortions. (arXiv:2005.03411v1 [eess.SY]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Diagnosis of high impedance fault (HIF) is a challenge for nowadays distribution network protections. The fault current of a HIF is much lower than that of a normal load, and fault feature is significantly affected by fault scenarios. A detection and feeder identification algorithm for HIFs is proposed in this paper, based on the high-resolution and synchronous waveform data. In the algorithm, an interval slope is defined to describe the waveform distortions, which guarantees a uniform feature description under various HIF nonlinearities and noise interferences. For three typical types of network neutrals, i.e.,isolated neutral, resonant neutral, and low-resistor-earthed neutral, differences of the distorted components between the zero-sequence currents of healthy and faulty feeders are mathematically deduced, respectively. As a result, the proposed criterion, which is based on the distortion relationships between zero-sequence currents of feeders and the zero-sequence voltage at the substation, is theoretically supported. 28 HIFs grounded to various materials are tested in a 10kV distribution networkwith three neutral types, and are utilized to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Full Article
av AutoSOS: Towards Multi-UAV Systems Supporting Maritime Search and Rescue with Lightweight AI and Edge Computing. (arXiv:2005.03409v1 [cs.RO]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Rescue vessels are the main actors in maritime safety and rescue operations. At the same time, aerial drones bring a significant advantage into this scenario. This paper presents the research directions of the AutoSOS project, where we work in the development of an autonomous multi-robot search and rescue assistance platform capable of sensor fusion and object detection in embedded devices using novel lightweight AI models. The platform is meant to perform reconnaissance missions for initial assessment of the environment using novel adaptive deep learning algorithms that efficiently use the available sensors and computational resources on drones and rescue vessel. When drones find potential objects, they will send their sensor data to the vessel to verity the findings with increased accuracy. The actual rescue and treatment operation are left as the responsibility of the rescue personnel. The drones will autonomously reconfigure their spatial distribution to enable multi-hop communication, when a direct connection between a drone transmitting information and the vessel is unavailable. Full Article
av Playing Minecraft with Behavioural Cloning. (arXiv:2005.03374v1 [cs.AI]) By arxiv.org Published On :: MineRL 2019 competition challenged participants to train sample-efficient agents to play Minecraft, by using a dataset of human gameplay and a limit number of steps the environment. We approached this task with behavioural cloning by predicting what actions human players would take, and reached fifth place in the final ranking. Despite being a simple algorithm, we observed the performance of such an approach can vary significantly, based on when the training is stopped. In this paper, we detail our submission to the competition, run further experiments to study how performance varied over training and study how different engineering decisions affected these results. Full Article
av Scoring Root Necrosis in Cassava Using Semantic Segmentation. (arXiv:2005.03367v1 [eess.IV]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Cassava a major food crop in many parts of Africa, has majorly been affected by Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD). The disease affects tuberous roots and presents symptoms that include a yellow/brown, dry, corky necrosis within the starch-bearing tissues. Cassava breeders currently depend on visual inspection to score necrosis in roots based on a qualitative score which is quite subjective. In this paper we present an approach to automate root necrosis scoring using deep convolutional neural networks with semantic segmentation. Our experiments show that the UNet model performs this task with high accuracy achieving a mean Intersection over Union (IoU) of 0.90 on the test set. This method provides a means to use a quantitative measure for necrosis scoring on root cross-sections. This is done by segmentation and classifying the necrotized and non-necrotized pixels of cassava root cross-sections without any additional feature engineering. Full Article
av Wavelet Integrated CNNs for Noise-Robust Image Classification. (arXiv:2005.03337v1 [cs.CV]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are generally prone to noise interruptions, i.e., small image noise can cause drastic changes in the output. To suppress the noise effect to the final predication, we enhance CNNs by replacing max-pooling, strided-convolution, and average-pooling with Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). We present general DWT and Inverse DWT (IDWT) layers applicable to various wavelets like Haar, Daubechies, and Cohen, etc., and design wavelet integrated CNNs (WaveCNets) using these layers for image classification. In WaveCNets, feature maps are decomposed into the low-frequency and high-frequency components during the down-sampling. The low-frequency component stores main information including the basic object structures, which is transmitted into the subsequent layers to extract robust high-level features. The high-frequency components, containing most of the data noise, are dropped during inference to improve the noise-robustness of the WaveCNets. Our experimental results on ImageNet and ImageNet-C (the noisy version of ImageNet) show that WaveCNets, the wavelet integrated versions of VGG, ResNets, and DenseNet, achieve higher accuracy and better noise-robustness than their vanilla versions. Full Article
av Crop Aggregating for short utterances speaker verification using raw waveforms. (arXiv:2005.03329v1 [eess.AS]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Most studies on speaker verification systems focus on long-duration utterances, which are composed of sufficient phonetic information. However, the performances of these systems are known to degrade when short-duration utterances are inputted due to the lack of phonetic information as compared to the long utterances. In this paper, we propose a method that compensates for the performance degradation of speaker verification for short utterances, referred to as "crop aggregating". The proposed method adopts an ensemble-based design to improve the stability and accuracy of speaker verification systems. The proposed method segments an input utterance into several short utterances and then aggregates the segment embeddings extracted from the segmented inputs to compose a speaker embedding. Then, this method simultaneously trains the segment embeddings and the aggregated speaker embedding. In addition, we also modified the teacher-student learning method for the proposed method. Experimental results on different input duration using the VoxCeleb1 test set demonstrate that the proposed technique improves speaker verification performance by about 45.37% relatively compared to the baseline system with 1-second test utterance condition. Full Article
av Diagnosis of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) with Structured Latent Multi-View Representation Learning. (arXiv:2005.03227v1 [eess.IV]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Recently, the outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly across the world. Due to the large number of affected patients and heavy labor for doctors, computer-aided diagnosis with machine learning algorithm is urgently needed, and could largely reduce the efforts of clinicians and accelerate the diagnosis process. Chest computed tomography (CT) has been recognized as an informative tool for diagnosis of the disease. In this study, we propose to conduct the diagnosis of COVID-19 with a series of features extracted from CT images. To fully explore multiple features describing CT images from different views, a unified latent representation is learned which can completely encode information from different aspects of features and is endowed with promising class structure for separability. Specifically, the completeness is guaranteed with a group of backward neural networks (each for one type of features), while by using class labels the representation is enforced to be compact within COVID-19/community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and also a large margin is guaranteed between different types of pneumonia. In this way, our model can well avoid overfitting compared to the case of directly projecting highdimensional features into classes. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms all comparison methods, and rather stable performances are observed when varying the numbers of training data. Full Article
av Multi-dimensional Avikainen's estimates. (arXiv:2005.03219v1 [math.PR]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Avikainen proved the estimate $mathbb{E}[|f(X)-f(widehat{X})|^{q}] leq C(p,q) mathbb{E}[|X-widehat{X}|^{p}]^{frac{1}{p+1}} $ for $p,q in [1,infty)$, one-dimensional random variables $X$ with the bounded density function and $widehat{X}$, and a function $f$ of bounded variation in $mathbb{R}$. In this article, we will provide multi-dimensional analogues of this estimate for functions of bounded variation in $mathbb{R}^{d}$, Orlicz-Sobolev spaces, Sobolev spaces with variable exponents and fractional Sobolev spaces. The main idea of our arguments is to use Hardy-Littlewood maximal estimates and pointwise characterizations of these function spaces. We will apply main statements to numerical analysis on irregular functionals of a solution to stochastic differential equations based on the Euler-Maruyama scheme and the multilevel Monte Carlo method, and to estimates of the $L^{2}$-time regularity of decoupled forward-backward stochastic differential equations with irregular terminal conditions. Full Article
av An Optimal Control Theory for the Traveling Salesman Problem and Its Variants. (arXiv:2005.03186v1 [math.OC]) By arxiv.org Published On :: We show that the traveling salesman problem (TSP) and its many variants may be modeled as functional optimization problems over a graph. In this formulation, all vertices and arcs of the graph are functionals; i.e., a mapping from a space of measurable functions to the field of real numbers. Many variants of the TSP, such as those with neighborhoods, with forbidden neighborhoods, with time-windows and with profits, can all be framed under this construct. In sharp contrast to their discrete-optimization counterparts, the modeling constructs presented in this paper represent a fundamentally new domain of analysis and computation for TSPs and their variants. Beyond its apparent mathematical unification of a class of problems in graph theory, the main advantage of the new approach is that it facilitates the modeling of certain application-specific problems in their home space of measurable functions. Consequently, certain elements of economic system theory such as dynamical models and continuous-time cost/profit functionals can be directly incorporated in the new optimization problem formulation. Furthermore, subtour elimination constraints, prevalent in discrete optimization formulations, are naturally enforced through continuity requirements. The price for the new modeling framework is nonsmooth functionals. Although a number of theoretical issues remain open in the proposed mathematical framework, we demonstrate the computational viability of the new modeling constructs over a sample set of problems to illustrate the rapid production of end-to-end TSP solutions to extensively-constrained practical problems. Full Article
av Avoiding 5/4-powers on the alphabet of nonnegative integers. (arXiv:2005.03158v1 [math.CO]) By arxiv.org Published On :: We identify the structure of the lexicographically least word avoiding 5/4-powers on the alphabet of nonnegative integers. Specifically, we show that this word has the form $p au(varphi(z) varphi^2(z) cdots)$ where $p, z$ are finite words, $varphi$ is a 6-uniform morphism, and $ au$ is a coding. This description yields a recurrence for the $i$th letter, which we use to prove that the sequence of letters is 6-regular with rank 188. More generally, we prove $k$-regularity for a sequence satisfying a recurrence of the same type. Full Article
av Robust Trajectory and Transmit Power Optimization for Secure UAV-Enabled Cognitive Radio Networks. (arXiv:2005.03091v1 [cs.IT]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Cognitive radio is a promising technology to improve spectral efficiency. However, the secure performance of a secondary network achieved by using physical layer security techniques is limited by its transmit power and channel fading. In order to tackle this issue, a cognitive unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication network is studied by exploiting the high flexibility of a UAV and the possibility of establishing line-of-sight links. The average secrecy rate of the secondary network is maximized by robustly optimizing the UAV's trajectory and transmit power. Our problem formulation takes into account two practical inaccurate location estimation cases, namely, the worst case and the outage-constrained case. In order to solve those challenging non-convex problems, an iterative algorithm based on $mathcal{S}$-Procedure is proposed for the worst case while an iterative algorithm based on Bernstein-type inequalities is proposed for the outage-constrained case. The proposed algorithms can obtain effective suboptimal solutions of the corresponding problems. Our simulation results demonstrate that the algorithm under the outage-constrained case can achieve a higher average secrecy rate with a low computational complexity compared to that of the algorithm under the worst case. Moreover, the proposed schemes can improve the secure communication performance significantly compared to other benchmark schemes. Full Article
av Diagnosing the Environment Bias in Vision-and-Language Navigation. (arXiv:2005.03086v1 [cs.CL]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) requires an agent to follow natural-language instructions, explore the given environments, and reach the desired target locations. These step-by-step navigational instructions are crucial when the agent is navigating new environments about which it has no prior knowledge. Most recent works that study VLN observe a significant performance drop when tested on unseen environments (i.e., environments not used in training), indicating that the neural agent models are highly biased towards training environments. Although this issue is considered as one of the major challenges in VLN research, it is still under-studied and needs a clearer explanation. In this work, we design novel diagnosis experiments via environment re-splitting and feature replacement, looking into possible reasons for this environment bias. We observe that neither the language nor the underlying navigational graph, but the low-level visual appearance conveyed by ResNet features directly affects the agent model and contributes to this environment bias in results. According to this observation, we explore several kinds of semantic representations that contain less low-level visual information, hence the agent learned with these features could be better generalized to unseen testing environments. Without modifying the baseline agent model and its training method, our explored semantic features significantly decrease the performance gaps between seen and unseen on multiple datasets (i.e. R2R, R4R, and CVDN) and achieve competitive unseen results to previous state-of-the-art models. Our code and features are available at: https://github.com/zhangybzbo/EnvBiasVLN Full Article
av AVAC: A Machine Learning based Adaptive RRAM Variability-Aware Controller for Edge Devices. (arXiv:2005.03077v1 [eess.SY]) By arxiv.org Published On :: Recently, the Edge Computing paradigm has gained significant popularity both in industry and academia. Researchers now increasingly target to improve performance and reduce energy consumption of such devices. Some recent efforts focus on using emerging RRAM technologies for improving energy efficiency, thanks to their no leakage property and high integration density. As the complexity and dynamism of applications supported by such devices escalate, it has become difficult to maintain ideal performance by static RRAM controllers. Machine Learning provides a promising solution for this, and hence, this work focuses on extending such controllers to allow dynamic parameter updates. In this work we propose an Adaptive RRAM Variability-Aware Controller, AVAC, which periodically updates Wait Buffer and batch sizes using on-the-fly learning models and gradient ascent. AVAC allows Edge devices to adapt to different applications and their stages, to improve computation performance and reduce energy consumption. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed model can provide up to 29% increase in performance and 19% decrease in energy, compared to static controllers, using traces of real-life healthcare applications on a Raspberry-Pi based Edge deployment. Full Article
av 5 Best Practices for Breadcrumb Navigation By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Sat, 21 Sep 2019 13:00:01 +0000 Breadcrumbs are a subtle element of a website that helps improve usability and navigation. They’re a utility that often receives little acknowledgment; however, breadcrumbs can have a large impact and provide a plethora of benefits, such as lowering bounce rate, increasing conversions, and improving user satisfaction. Imagine you’re in a regular grocery store, except […] The post 5 Best Practices for Breadcrumb Navigation appeared first on WebFX Blog. Full Article Web Design
av Is Your Website a Failure? 3 Reasons Sites Fail (And How to Save Yours) By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 08 Oct 2019 13:00:05 +0000 Traffic isn’t great, online sales are even worse, and let’s not talk about the lack of phone calls. Everyone, including you, is wondering the same thing — is your website a failure? Not yet, and not if you have anything to say about it. While a failing website can seem like a problem without a […] The post Is Your Website a Failure? 3 Reasons Sites Fail (And How to Save Yours) appeared first on WebFX Blog. Full Article Web Design
av What is a Favicon? [+4 Tips for Creating an Impactful Favicon] By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 15:40:14 +0000 When you bookmark pages on the web, it’s challenging to remember the name of the page. As you dive back into your bookmarks to find it, you see a small icon next to the page. You recognize the icon and realize it’s the website you viewed prior. This icon, known as a favicon, is small, […] The post What is a Favicon? [+4 Tips for Creating an Impactful Favicon] appeared first on WebFX Blog. Full Article Web Design
av Need a Website? 6 Reasons to Have a Website for Your Business By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Sat, 22 Feb 2020 14:24:37 +0000 Did you know that over 70% of people will research a company on the web before deciding to buy or visit, yet 46% of small businesses in the U.S. don’t have a website? If you don’t have a site, people can’t research your company and determine if you’re a good fit for their needs. If […] The post Need a Website? 6 Reasons to Have a Website for Your Business appeared first on WebFX Blog. Full Article Web Design
av The Complete Tutorial on the Top 5 Ways to Query Your Relational Database in JavaScript - Part 2 By dzone.com Published On :: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 20:58:05 GMT Welcome back! In the first part of this series, we looked at a very "low-level" way to interact with a relational database by sending it raw SQL strings and retrieving the results. We created a very simple Express application that we can use as an example and deployed it on Heroku with a Postgres database. In this part, we're going to examine a few libraries which build on top of that foundation, adding layers of abstraction that let you read and manipulate database data in a more "JavaScript-like" way. Full Article javascript tutorial sql heroku orm postgres relational database database tutorial bookshelf
av In Washington's rural pot shops, the effects of the coronavirus scare can be dramatic By www.inlander.com Published On :: Thu, 16 Apr 2020 01:30:00 -0700 The Cannabis Issue During normal times, I-90 Green House is like a destination resort for marijuana lovers.… Full Article Cannabis Issue
av Regional summer camps hope the pandemic doesn't put activities on pause, but have backup plans ready if it does By www.inlander.com Published On :: Thu, 30 Apr 2020 04:00:00 -0700 [IMAGE-1]After having their school year totally disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, a return to some semblance of normalcy come summer is all many school-age kids and their families are looking forward to. For many, this anticipation includes annual summer camp traditions, from sleep-away adventures on the lake to fun-filled day camps for arts, learning or team sports.… Full Article Summer Camps
av Key Missteps at the CDC Have Set Back Its Ability to Detect the Potential Spread of Coronavirus By www.inlander.com Published On :: Fri, 28 Feb 2020 06:25:49 -0800 The CDC designed a flawed test for COVID-19, then took weeks to figure out a fix so state and local labs could use it. New York still doesn’t trust the test’s accuracy By Caroline Chen, Marshall Allen, Lexi Churchill and Isaac Arnsdorf Propublica… Full Article News/Nation & World
av Coronavirus update: UW busy with testing, new guidelines for visiting grandma and other COVID-19 headlines By www.inlander.com Published On :: Tue, 10 Mar 2020 12:53:00 -0700 Coronavirus Family Tree The University of Washington Virology lab, which is testing samples for coronavirus, tweeted last night.… Full Article News/Local News
av With a new coronavirus sweeping the world, how much should you really worry? By www.inlander.com Published On :: Wed, 11 Mar 2020 15:25:00 -0700 Since late last year, a new coronavirus, now dubbed COVID-19, has been sweeping the globe, sickening more than 114,000 with flu- and cold-like symptoms and killing more than 4,000 so far.… Full Article News/Local News
av Should I quarantine because of coronavirus? It depends on who you ask By www.inlander.com Published On :: Thu, 12 Mar 2020 10:34:00 -0700 Agencies, local authorities and national governments do not agree on who should be quarantined or what that should actually look like. Here’s what we do know. By Maya Miller, Caroline Chen and Joshua Kaplan ProPublica People who have been exposed to the coronavirus are being given incomplete or misleading information about whether they should quarantine themselves, exposing major gaps in the public health response to the pandemic and illuminating disagreement among officials about how useful the tactic even is at this point in the disease’s spread.… Full Article News/Nation & World
av How South Korea scaled coronavirus testing while the U.S. fell dangerously behind By www.inlander.com Published On :: Sun, 15 Mar 2020 09:05:00 -0700 By learning from a MERS outbreak in 2015, South Korea was prepared and acted swiftly to ramp up testing when the new coronavirus appeared there. Meanwhile, the U.S., plagued by delay and dysfunction, wasted its advantage. By Stephen Engelberg, Lisa Song and Lydia DePillis ProPublica… Full Article News/Nation & World
av Coronavirus: The latest news on COVID-19 By www.inlander.com Published On :: Thu, 19 Mar 2020 12:26:00 -0700 We at the Inlander are committed to keeping people informed and connected throughout the coronavirus outbreak. We'll continue to update this page with the latest headlines.… Full Article News/Local News
av The cruelest part of the coronavirus: It's cut us off from community and solace By www.inlander.com Published On :: Mon, 23 Mar 2020 11:57:00 -0700 There’s a cliche that always follows a big tragedy — something we say after natural disasters, economic collapses, school shootings, acts of terrorisms.… Full Article Comment/Columns & Letters
av These are are our neighbors. These are readers. These are the people we're all trying to save. By www.inlander.com Published On :: Thu, 26 Mar 2020 01:30:00 -0700 How the coronavirus outbreak has upended people's lives across the Inland Northwest The numbers don't lie.… Full Article News/Local News
av Rationing Protective Gear Means Checking on Coronavirus Patients Less Often. This Can Be Deadly By www.inlander.com Published On :: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:51:13 -0700 Low on essential supplies and fearing they’ll get sick, doctors and nurses told ProPublica in-person care for coronavirus patients has been scaled back. In some cases, it’s causing serious harm. By Joshua Kaplan, Lizzie Presser and Maya Miller, ProPublica Every morning, between 7 and 8, at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, several coronavirus patients are pronounced dead.… Full Article News/Nation & World
av Privacy is disappearing faster than we realize, and the coronavirus isn't helping By www.inlander.com Published On :: Thu, 23 Apr 2020 01:28:00 -0700 The apps and devices you use are conducting surveillance with your every move Sure, you lock your home, and you probably don't share your deepest secrets with random strangers.… Full Article News/Local News