Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Fuzzy Output Feedback Control for Switched Nonlinear Systems With Unmodeled Dynamics

This paper investigates a robust adaptive fuzzy control stabilization problem for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with arbitrary switching signals that use an observer-based output feedback scheme. The considered switched nonlinear systems possess the unstructured uncertainties, unmodeled dynamics, and without requiring the states being available for measurement. A state observer which is independent of switching signals is designed to solve the problem of unmeasured states. Fuzzy logic systems are used to identify unknown lumped nonlinear functions so that the problem of unstructured uncertainties can be solved. By combining adaptive backstepping design principle and small-gain approach, a novel robust adaptive fuzzy output feedback stabilization control approach is developed. The stability of the closed-loop system is proved via the common Lyapunov function theory and small-gain theorem. Finally, the simulation results are given to demonstrate the validity and performance of the proposed control strategy.
Dynamics of Industry and Innovation: Organizations, Networks and Systems Complexity, Networks and Knowledge Flow the Flow of Complex Knowledge Complexity and Access to a Template

Because knowledge plays an important role in the creation of wealth, economic actors often wish to skew the flow of knowledge in their favor. Managers seek to spread knowledge widely within their organization but prevent its diffusion to rivals. Regional planners promote knowledge diffusion within a local economy but not beyond it. We ask, when will knowledge developed in one area of dense social connections – such as a firm, a geographic locale, or a technological community – tend to diffuse to the edge of that area but not beyond it? Marrying social network theory with a view of knowledge transfer as a search process, we argue that the degree of knowledge inequality across social boundaries depends crucially on the nature * All parties contributed equally to this research. We appreciate the helpful comments of School's Division of Research provided financial support. All errors remain our own. of the knowledge at hand. Simple knowledge diffuses readily across boundaries because outsiders with poor connections to the source of the knowledge can compensate for their limited access with unaided local search. Complex knowledge resists diffusion even within the social circles in which it originated. With knowledge of moderate complexity, however, high-fidelity transmission along social networks combined with local search allows insiders to reproduce and extend knowledge generated elsewhere within the social boundaries, while interdependencies stymie outsiders who rely more heavily on unaided search. Our core proposition, then, is that knowledge inequality across social boundaries reaches its maximum for knowledge of moderate complexity. To test this hypothesis, we examine patent data and compare citation rates across three types of social boundaries: within versus outside the firm, geographically near to versus far from the inventor, and internal versus external to the technological class. We find robust support for the proposition and discuss the important implications of our findings for managers and policy makers who aim to heighten or diminish knowledge inequality. 1 The flow of knowledge plays a central role in a wide variety of fields (for a review, see Rogers, 1995). Sociologists began investigating diffusion processes – and the importance of social structure to those processes – to understand the adoption patterns of agricultural and medical innovations (Ryan and Gross, 1943; Coleman, Katz and Menzel, 1957). To students of technology management, information transmission first arises as an important issue in the context of technology transfers within the firm (Allen, 1977; Teece, 1977), but …
Immunohistochemical and Immunocytochemical Localization of Amylase in Rat Parotid Glands and von Ebner’s Glands by Ion Etching-Immunoscanning Electron Microscopy

The distribution of amylase in rat parotid glands and von Ebner’s glands was examined using ion etching-immunoscanning electron microscopy, which enables both light and electron microscopic observations of identical semi-thin resin sections immunolabeled with anti-α-amylase and immunogold in association with silver enhancement. At the light microscopic level, most acinar secretory granules (SG) and striated duct secretions of parotid glands were strongly stained dark brown. In von Ebner’s glands, acinar SG and duct secretions were weakly to strongly stained light to dark brown. At the electron microscopic level, labeling was observed as bright gold-silver particles. The labeling intensity of acinar SG of parotid glands was higher than that of von Ebner’s glands. In parotid glands, weak labeling of SG in transitional cells between acini and intercalated ducts, very weak labeling of SG in intercalated ducts, and strong labeling of striated duct secretions were observed. In von Ebner’s glands, the secretions and some SG of interlobular ducts were strongly labeled compared to those of intralobular ducts and SG of acini. Less amylase was synthesized in von Ebner’s acini compared to parotid acini, whereas von Ebner’s ducts may secrete significantly more amylase to modify saliva than parotid ducts.
Measurement and Modeling of the Land Mobile Satellite Channel at Ku-Band

This paper presents the results of a measurement campaign conducted in the winter of 2002 around the city of Munich in southern Germany. The primary goal was to evaluate the link performance of the land mobile satellite channel at Ku-band and to characterize the temporal behavior of the channel to help in the evaluation of different fade mitigation techniques for future mobile satellite systems that aim at employing this frequency band. To achieve this objective, first- and second-order channel statistics will be presented, the outage probability of the channel analyzed, and a Markov-chain-based narrowband channel model proposed.
A Comparison of Closed-Loop Control Algorithms for Regulating Electrically Stimulated Knee Movements in Individuals With Spinal Cord Injury

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is the most commonly used technology for improving motor function in individuals who have spinal cord injury. Despite the wide range of FES applications reported in the literature, few electrical stimulation systems that can generate meaningful functional outcomes are currently available for use outside research laboratories. We tested proportional-integral-derivative, gain scheduling, and sliding mode control closed-loop control algorithms in a simulation of electrically induced knee extension against gravity to uncover some of the reasons why closed-loop control is not being more widely used in real-world FES systems. We also subjected the simulated FES system to muscle fatigue, muscle spasms, and the effects of muscle retraining. All of the controllers exhibited significantly degraded performance when these real-world nonlinear effects were included in the simulation. Moreover, all of the controllers were sensitive to variation in the parameters of the muscle recruitment function, which are subject to change during real-world FES use. We suggest several ways to improve the performance of closed-loop control algorithms for use in FES applications. We believe that closed-loop controllers have an important place in future FES applications, but the performance of these algorithms must be greatly improved before they can be implemented in real-world systems.
There All Along? A Preliminary Meta-Analysis of the Moderating Gender Effects in Technology Acceptance Research

Technology acceptance is one of the most extensive streams of research in the information systems literature. Building on previous work, it has recently been proposed that the gender of information system users moderates the relationships between intention to use a technology and its most important determinants, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. A better understanding of the magnitude of this effect and its implications seems important in the development of practical applications of the theory, such as those related to training and motivational interventions. This research reports on a preliminary meta-analysis of extant literature in mainstream journals employing the proportion of men and women in the studies as an indicator of the expected relationships. An explanation of this approach is provided, and preliminary results are discussed.
Example-based control of human motion

In human motion control applications, the mapping between a control specification and an appropriate target motion often defies an explicit encoding. We present a method that allows such a mapping to be defined by example, given that the control specification is recorded motion. Our method begins by building a database of semantically meaningful instances of the mapping, each of which is represented by synchronized segments of control and target motion. A dynamic programming algorithm can then be used to interpret an input control specification in terms of mapping instances. This interpretation induces a sequence of target segments from the database, which is concatenated to create the appropriate target motion. We evaluate our method on two examples of indirect control. In the first, we synthesize a walking human character that follows a sampled trajectory. In the second, we generate a synthetic partner for a dancer whose motion is acquired through motion capture.
A related paper has been accepted for publication in NeuroImage )

We discuss model-free analysis of multi-subject or multi-session FMRI data by extending the single-session Probabilistic Independent Component Analysis model (PICA; [2]) to higher dimensions. This results in a threeway decomposition which represents the different signals and artefacts present in the data, in terms of their temporal, spatial and subject-dependent variations. The technique is derived from and compared with Parallel Factor Analysis (PARAFAC; [11]). Using simulated data as well as data from multi-session and multi-subject FMRI studies we demonstrate that the tensor-PICA approach is able to efficiently and accurately extract signals of interest in the spatial, temporal and subject/session domain. The final decompositions improve upon PARAFAC results in terms of greater accuracy, reduced interference between the different estimated sources (reduced cross-talk), robustness (against deviations of the data from modelling assumptions and against overfitting) and computational speed. On real FMRI ’activation’ data, the tensor-PICA approach is able to extract plausible activation maps, time courses and session/subject modes as well as provide a rich description of additional processes of interest such as image artefacts or secondary activation patterns. The resulting data decomposition gives simple and useful representations of multi-subject/multi-session FMRI data that can aid the interpretation and optimisation of group FMRI studies beyond what can be achieved using model-based analysis techniques.
Role of MicroRNA Profile Modifications in Hepatitis C Virus-Related Mixed Cryoglobulinemia

Hepatitis C virus infection is closely related to lymphoproliferative disorders (LPDs), including mixed cryoglobulinemia (MC) and some lymphomas. Modification of the expression of specific microRNAs (miRNAs) has been associated with different autoimmune diseases and/or LPDs. No data exist about the modifications in miRNA expression in HCV-associated LPDs. The aim of this study was to analyze the expression levels of a panel of miRNAs previously associated with autoimmune/LPDs in a large population of HCV patients with and without MC or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), to identify potential markers of evolution of HCV infection. PBMC expression of miR-Let-7d, miR-16, miR-21, miR-26b, miR-146a and miR-155 was evaluated by real-time PCR in 167 HCV patients (75 with MC [MC-HCV], 11 with HCV-associated NHL [NHL-HCV], 81 without LPD [HCV]) and in 35 healthy subjects (HS). A significant increase in miR-21 (p<0.001), miR-16 (p<0.01) and miR-155 (p<0.01) expression was detected in PBMCs from only NHL patients whereas a significant decrease in miR-26b was detected in both MC and NHL subjects (p<0.01) when compared to HS and HCV groups. A restoration of miR-26b levels was observed in the post-treatment PBMCs of 35 HCV-MC patients experiencing complete virological and clinical response following antiviral therapy. This study, for the first time, shows that specific microRNAs in PBMC from HCV patients who developed MC and/or NHL are modulated differently. The specific, reversible downregulation of miR-26b strongly suggests the key role it plays in the pathogenesis of HCV-related LPDs and its usefulness as a biomarker of the evolution of HCV infection to these disorders.
Lesions of the C 1 catecholaminergic neurons of the ventrolateral medulla in rats using anti-D b H-saporin

Madden, Christopher J., Satoru Ito, Linda Rinaman, Ronald G. Wiley, and Alan F. Sved. Lesions of the C1 catecholaminergic neurons of the ventrolateral medulla in rats using anti-DbH-saporin. Am. J. Physiol. 277 (Regulatory Integrative Comp. Physiol. 46): R1063–R1075, 1999. — Phenylethanolamine-N-methyltransferase (PNMT)-containing neurons in the rostral ventrolateral medulla (RVLM) are believed to play a role in cardiovascular regulation. To determine whether injection of anti-dopamine b-hydroxylase (DbH)saporin directly into the RVLM in rats could selectively destroy these cells and thereby provide an approach for evaluating their role in cardiovascular regulation, we studied rats 2 wk after unilateral injection of 21 ng anti-DbH-saporin into the RVLM. There was an ,90% reduction in the number of PNMT-positive neurons in the RVLM, although the number of non-C1, spinally projecting barosensitive neurons of this area was not altered. The A5 cell group was the only other population of DbH-containing cells that was significantly depleted. The depressor response evoked by injection of tyramine into the RVLM was abolished by prior injection of toxin. The pressor response evoked by injection of glutamate into the RVLM was attenuated ipsilateral to the toxin injection but was potentiated contralateral to the toxin injection. Thus anti-DbH-saporin can be used to make selective lesions of PNMT-containing cells, allowing for the evaluation of their role in cardiovascular regulation.
Cervical pedicle morphometry in a Latin American population

AbstractThe goal of this study was to conduct a detailed computed tomography (CT) assessment in the Brazilian population of the screw starting point, trajectory, and dimensions of pedicle in the cervical spine.Two hundred consecutive patients were retrospectively evaluated using cervical spine CT, with imaging reconstruction of each cervical vertebrae in the axial plane with 2 mm, and in sagittal reconstructions with 3 mm. Parameters in axial plane included the pedicle width (PW), pedicle axis length (PAL), pedicle transverse angle (PTA), and the distance from the entry point to the point between the lamina and spinous process (DEP). Measurements in the sagittal plane involved the pedicle height (PH) and the pedicle sagittal angle (PSA). The mean PW and PH were smaller in females than in males in all cervical vertebrae, but there were no significant differences of PTA among genders. PSA ranged from 15.2° to 23.7°. Mean values of PAL and DEP had a tendency to decrease from the proximal to distal cervical vertebrae. PW was <4 mm in 7.5% of men (C3) and 25% of women (C3), and <4.5 mm in 20% (C3 male) and 66% (C3 female). The intra- and inter-observer reliability were very good for the tomographic measurement of PW, and good for PH. For PAL, the intraobserver reliability was good, but the interobserver reliability varied from moderate to good. Considering PTA and PSA, the intraobserver reliability was good, but the interobserver reliability moderate for PTA and poor or fair for PSA. DEP measurements showed poor intraobserver reliability, and poor or moderate interobserver reliability.Our results presented similar trend of previous studies, but the frequency of patients with PW <4.5 mm in our population is higher, suggesting an increased risk during the attempting of transpedicular screw technique.
Local Monotonic Attention Mechanism for End-to-End Speech And Language Processing

Recently, encoder-decoder neural networks have shown impressive performance on many sequence-related tasks. The architecture commonly uses an attentional mechanism which allows the model to learn alignments between the source and the target sequence. Most attentional mechanisms used today is based on a global attention property which requires a computation of a weighted summarization of the whole input sequence generated by encoder states. However, it is computationally expensive and often produces misalignment on the longer input sequence. Furthermore, it does not fit with monotonous or left-to-right nature in several tasks, such as automatic speech recognition (ASR), grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P), etc. In this paper, we propose a novel attention mechanism that has local and monotonic properties. Various ways to control those properties are also explored. Experimental results on ASR, G2P and machine translation between two languages with similar sentence structures, demonstrate that the proposed encoder-decoder model with local monotonic attention could achieve significant performance improvements and reduce the computational complexity in comparison with the one that used the standard global attention architecture.
Fear, Anger, and Risk Preference Reversals: An Experimental Study on a Chinese Sample

Fear and anger are basic emotions of the same valence which differ in terms of their certainty and control dimensions according to the Appraisal Tendency Framework, a theory addressing the relationship between specific emotions, and judgments and choices. Past research based on the Appraisal Theory revealed contradictory results for risky choice decision-making. However, these conclusions were drawn from Western samples (e.g., North American). Considering potential cultural differences, the present study aims to investigate whether the Appraisal Tendency hypothesis yields the same results in a Chinese sample. Our first study explores how dispositional fear and anger influence risk preferences through a classic virtual “Asia Disease Problem” task and the second study investigates how induced fear and anger influence risk preferences through an incentive-compatible task. Consistent with previous research, our results reveal that induced fear and anger have differential effects on risky decisions: angry participants prefer the risk-seeking option, whereas fearful participants prefer a risk-averse option. However, we find no associations between dispositional fear (or anger) and risky decisions.
Functional brain mapping during free viewing of natural scenes

Previous imaging studies have used mostly perceptually abstracted, idealized, or static stimuli to show segregation of function in the cerebral cortex. We wanted to learn whether functional segregation is maintained during more natural, complex, and dynamic conditions when many features have to be processed simultaneously, and identify regions whose activity correlates with the perception of specific features. To achieve this, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity when human observers viewed freely dynamic natural scenes (a James Bond movie). The intensity with which they perceived different features (color, faces, language, and human bodies) was assessed psychometrically in separate sessions. In all subjects different features were perceived with a high degree of independence over time. We found that the perception of each feature correlated with activity in separate, specialized areas whose activity also varied independently. We conclude that even in natural conditions, when many features have to be processed simultaneously, functional specialization is preserved. Our method thus opens a new way of brain mapping, which allows the localization of a multitude of brain areas based on a single experiment using uncontrolled, natural stimuli. Furthermore, our results show that the intensity of activity in a specialized area is linearly correlated with the intensity of its perceptual experience. This leads us to suggest that each specialized area is directly responsible for the creation of a feature‐specific conscious percept (a microconsciousness). Hum. Brain Mapp. 21:75–83, 2004. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
File based GRID thread implementation in the .NET-based Alchemi Framework

Now a day, grid computing is considered as one of the emerging technology in which jobs are distributed across the network or Internet. Among the several software toolkits those help us to implement a grid environment, Alchemi is widely used and open source toolkit that runs on the Windows operating system in the . NET Framework. The node which requests an application to be performed is called owner. The node that receives the requested application and sends result back to the owner is called manager. An application is divided into many threads and theses threads are then submitted to other nodes called executor. The executors execute the thread(s) which is assigned to them and return the result to the Manager after successful completion of execution. During the execution, if any thread fails to complete, then the task is rescheduled to other executor from its initial state. But if we can save the last execution point as well as the results and transfer that information to the manager, we can complete the same job in less time. Based on this principle, in this paper, we have proposed file based grid thread implementation technique that stores the results of a thread during its execution. In case of any failure, the thread restarts from its last saved value rather than starting from its initial point.
Arterial and cardiac aging: major shareholders in cardiovascular disease enterprises: Part I: aging arteries: a "set up" for vascular disease.

Our population is aging; in the United States today there are 35 million people 65 years of age or older. That number will double by the year 2030 (Figure 1). Although epidemiological studies have discovered that lipid levels, diabetes, sedentary lifestyle, and genetic factors are risk factors for coronary disease, hypertension, congestive heart failure, and stroke, the quintessential cardiovascular diseases within our society, advancing age unequivocally confers the major risk. The incidence and prevalence of these diseases increase steeply with advancing age (Figure 2). Not only does clinically overt cardiovascular disease increase dramatically with aging, but so do subclinical or occult diseases, such as silent coronary atherosclerosis. Figure 3 (top) shows that a substantial percentage of older, community-dwelling, otherwise healthy volunteers have evidence of inducible ischemia during combined thallium/ECG treadmill stress testing, and their prognosis is poor compared with their counterparts without subclinical coronary disease (Figure 3, bottom). Figure 1. The demographic imperative. Numbers of persons 65 years of age or older (light bars) and 85 years of age or older in the United States from 1900 through 2030. Data taken from the US Census Bureau data with projections for 2030. Figure 2. A, Prevalence of hypertension, defined as systolic blood pressure ≥140, diastolic blood pressure ≥90, or current use of medication for purposes of treating high blood pressure. Data are based on National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III (1988–1991) (Burt VL, Whelton P, Roccella EJ, et al. Prevalence of hypertension in the US adult population: results from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-1991. Hypertension . 1995;25:305–313). B, Incidence of atherothrombotic stroke (per 1000 subjects per year) by age in men (light bars) and women (dark bars) from the Framingham Heart Study. Data from Wolf PA. Lewis A. Conner lecture: contributions of epidemiology to the …