Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nearest Neighbor-based Rendezvous for Sparsely Connected Mobile Agents

In this paper, a convergent, nearest-neighbor, control protocol is suggested for agents with nontrivial dynamics. The protocol guarantees convergence to a common point in space even if each agent is restricted to communicate with a single nearest neighbor. The neighbor, however, is required to lie outside an arbitrarily small priority zone surrounding the agent. The control protocol consists of two layers interconnected in a provably correct manner. The first layer provides the guidance signal to a rendezvous point assuming that the agents have first-order dynamics. The other layer converts in a decentralized manner the guidance signal to a control signal that suits realistic agents, such as unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and holonomic agents with second-order dynamics.
TOWARDS AUTONOMOUS LONG-RANGE NAVIGATION 'ISAIRAS 2005 CONFERENCE', MUNICH, 5-8 SEPTEMBER 2005

The recent success of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers has demonstrated the important benefits that mobility adds to landed planetary exploration missions. The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has been conducting research in ground control and in autonomous robotics for several years already. One of the target applications is planetary exploration using mobile platforms. The emphasis of our research program is on reactive on-board autonomy software and long-range rover navigation. This paper describes recent activities of the CSA in this area. Key results are described in the areas of terrain modelling, path planning and rover guidance.
Stevia : It ' s Not Just About Calories

The recent review of Stevia [1] contributes to furthering the scientific database of stevia (leaf and extract), steviol glycosides, and steviol and their applications in food and beverages. The article discussed these compounds in relation to perceived pharmacological activity, their potential use as therapeutic agents, and available toxicological and clinical evidence to support safety. While the overall conclusions that steviol glycosides specifically are safe for use in food applications are appropriate, the authors did not adequately differentiate between the results of studies relating to the toxicological, biochemical and pharmacological profiles of uncharacterized stevioside/steviol glycoside preparations (e.g., stevia leaf extracts or stevia leaf preparations) and those from studies conducted on purified preparations of stevioside/steviol glycosides and steviol. Also, the authors cited the conclusions of regulatory authorities with respect to characterized preparations of steviol glycosides to support the safety of stevia extracts/leaf preparations. Finally, the authors do not include the latest positions of regulatory authorities regarding human safety of steviol glycosides.
Comparison of frequency of wound infection: open vs laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

BACKGROUND The objective of this quasi experimental study was to compare the frequency of wound infection between open cholecystectomy (OC) and laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) conducted in Surgical Unit IV, Jinnah Hospital Lahore from June 2005 to January 2006. METHODS 100 patients undergoing elective cholecystectomy for symptomatic gallstones were studied. The patients were allocated in the two groups of 50 each by simple random technique. Group-I underwent OC and Group-II underwent LC. The patients were then followed up for four weeks to pick up signs of wound infection. In case of infection, the degree of infection and the remedial measures done were documented and the results analysed. RESULTS In LC group there was only one case of Class-II wound infection i.e. 2%. In case of OC there were three cases of wound infection i.e. 6%. Out of these, two were of Class-IIl and one of Class-Il. CONCLUSION While there was no wound infection in cases of chronic Cholecystitis in both groups, the frequency of wound infection was three times as common in OC as compared to LC in Acute Cholecystitis/Empyema.
Metabolism of Tanshinone IIA, Cryptotanshinone and Tanshinone I from Radix Salvia Miltiorrhiza in Zebrafish

The study aimed to investigate the potential of zebrafish in imitating mammal phase I metabolism of natural compounds. Three diterpenoid quinones from Radix Salvia miltiorrhiza, namely tanshinone IIA (TIIA), cryptotanshinone (Cry) and tanshinone I (TI) were selected as model compounds, and their metabolites mediated by zebrafish were characterized using a high-performance liquid chromatography coupled ion-trap mass spectrometry (HPLC/IT-MSn) method with electrospray ionization in positive mode. The separation was performed with a Zorbax C-18 column using a binary gradient elution of 0.05% formic acid acetonitrile/0.05% formic acid water. According to the MS spectra and after comparison with reference standards and literature reports, hydroxylation, dehydrogenation or D-ring hydrolysis metabolites of TIIA and Cry but not of TI were characterized, which coincided with those reported using regular in vivo or in vitro metabolic analysis methods, thus verifying that zebrafish can successfully imitate mammalian phase I metabolism which instills further confidence in using zebrafish as a novel and prospective metabolism model.
Age-related changes to the neural correlates of working memory which emerge after midlife

Previous research has indicated that the neural processes which underlie working memory change with age. Both age-related increases and decreases to cortical activity have been reported. This study investigated which stages of working memory are most vulnerable to age-related changes after midlife. To do this we examined age-differences in the 13 Hz steady state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) associated with a spatial working memory delayed response task. Participants were 130 healthy adults separated into a midlife (40–60 years) and an older group (61–82 years). Relative to the midlife group, older adults demonstrated greater bilateral frontal activity during encoding and this pattern of activity was related to better working memory performance. In contrast, evidence of age-related under activation was identified over left frontal regions during retrieval. Findings from this study suggest that after midlife, under-activation of frontal regions during retrieval contributes to age-related decline in working memory performance.
Prosodic correlates of contrastive and non-contrastive themes in German

Semantic theories on focus and information structure assume that there are different accent types for thematic (backwardlooking, known) and rhematic (forward-looking, new) information in languages as English and German. According to Steedman [1], thematic material may only be intonationally marked (= bear a pitch accent), if it “contrasts with a different established or accommodatable” theme [p. 656]. We shall show that intonational marking of themes in German seems rather gradual. Themes in contrastive contexts have a significantly longer stressed vowel, a higher and longer rise which results in a higher and more delayed peak than non-contrastive themes. Moreover, speakers can use different strategies to signal the contrast. Data were elicited by reading short paragraphs with a contrastive and non-contrastive pre-context. The use of many filler texts distracted subjects’ attention from the contrast so that the data may be regarded as highly natural. Implementing these prosodic features in speech synthesis systems might help to avoid unnatural exaggerated prosodic realisations.
The Kendall and Mallows Kernels for Permutations

We show that the widely used Kendall tau correlation coefficient, and the related Mallows kernel, are positive definite kernels for permutations. They offer computationally attractive alternatives to more complex kernels on the symmetric group to learn from rankings, or learn to rank. We show how to extend these kernels to partial rankings, multivariate rankings and uncertain rankings. Examples are presented on how to formulate typical problems of learning from rankings such that they can be solved with state-of-the-art kernel algorithms. We demonstrate promising results on clustering heterogeneous rank data and high-dimensional classification problems in biomedical applications.
Influenza vaccination of pregnant women protects them over two consecutive influenza seasons in a randomized controlled trial

ABSTRACT Background: We assessed the persistence of hemagglutinin inhibition (HAI) antibodies and the vaccine efficacy (VE) of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV3) following vaccination of a cohort of pregnant South African women during a second influenza season. Methods: A cohort of women who participated in a randomized placebo-controlled trial on the safety, immunogenicity and efficacy of IIV3 in 2011 had HAI titers measured in 2012 and were monitored for influenza illness until the end of 2012. Results: The proportion of women with HAI titers ≥1:40 was significantly greater in vaccinees (63%) compared to placebo-recipients (22%; p < 0.001). VE in 2012 was 63.8% (95% confidence interval [95%CI]: −33.7%, 90.2%); combined VE for 2011 and 2012 was 58.3% (95%CI: 0.2%, 82.6%). Conclusion: The majority of women who received IIV3 during pregnancy had HAI titers above the putative threshold for protection against influenza illness one year after vaccination and showed a trend towards protection against influenza disease.
Combined Invariants to Similarity Transformation and to Blur Using Orthogonal Zernike Moments

The derivation of moment invariants has been extensively investigated in the past decades. In this paper, we construct a set of invariants derived from Zernike moments which is simultaneously invariant to similarity transformation and to convolution with circularly symmetric point spread function (PSF). Two main contributions are provided: the theoretical framework for deriving the Zernike moments of a blurred image and the way to construct the combined geometric-blur invariants. The performance of the proposed descriptors is evaluated with various PSFs and similarity transformations. The comparison of the proposed method with the existing ones is also provided in terms of pattern recognition accuracy, template matching and robustness to noise. Experimental results show that the proposed descriptors perform on the overall better.
On the Production of Anorexic Plan Diagrams

A "plan diagram" is a pictorial enumeration of the execution plan choices of a database query optimizer over the relational selectivity space. We have shown recently that, for industrial-strength database engines, these diagrams are often remarkably complex and dense, with a large number of plans covering the space. However, they can often be reduced to much simpler pictures, featuring significantly fewer plans, without materially affecting the query processing quality. Plan reduction has useful implications for the design and usage of query optimizers, including quantifying redundancy in the plan search space, enhancing useability of parametric query optimization, identifying error-resistant and least-expected-cost plans, and minimizing the overheads of multi-plan approaches. We investigate here the plan reduction issue from theoretical, statistical and empirical perspectives. Our analysis shows that optimal plan reduction, w.r. t. minimizing the number of plans, is an NP-hard problem in general, and remains so even for a storage-constrained variant. We then present a greedy reduction algorithm with tight and optimal performance guarantees, whose complexity scales linearly with the number of plans in the diagram for a given resolution. Next, we devise fast estimators for locating the best tradeoff between the reduction in plan cardinality and the impact on query processing quality. Finally, extensive experimentation with a suite of multi-dimensional TPCH-based query templates on industrial-strength optimizers demonstrates that complex plan diagrams easily reduce to "anorexic" (small absolute number of plans) levels incurring only marginal increases in the estimated query processing costs.
Investigating the shape bias in typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorders

Young typically developing (TD) children have been observed to utilize word learning strategies such as the noun bias and shape bias; these improve their efficiency in acquiring and categorizing novel terms. Children using the shape bias extend object labels to new objects of the same shape; thus, the shape bias prompts the categorization of object words based on the global characteristic of shape over local, discrete details. Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) frequently attend to minor details of objects rather than their global structure. Therefore, children with ASD may not use shape bias to acquire new words. Previous research with children with ASD has provided evidence that they parallel TD children in showing a noun bias, but not a shape bias (Tek et al., 2008). However, this sample was small and individual and item differences were not investigated in depth. In an extension of Tek et al. (2008) with twice the sample size and a wider developmental timespan, we tested 32 children with ASD and 35 TD children in a longitudinal study across 20 months using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. Children saw five triads of novel objects (target, shape-match, color-match) in both NoName and Name trials; those who looked longer at the shape-match during the Name trials than the NoName trials demonstrated a shape bias. The TD group showed a significant shape bias at all visits, beginning at 20 months of age while the language-matched ASD group did not show a significant shape bias at any visit. Within the ASD group, though, some children did show a shape bias; these children had larger vocabularies concurrently and longitudinally. Degree of shape bias elicitation varied by item, but did not seem related to perceptual complexity. We conclude that shape does not appear to be an organizing factor for word learning by children with ASD.
Increased Arterial Blood Pressure and Vascular Remodeling in Mice Lacking Salt-Inducible Kinase 1 (SIK1)

Rationale: In human genetic studies a single nucleotide polymorphism within the salt-inducible kinase 1 (SIK1) gene was associated with hypertension. Lower SIK1 activity in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) leads to decreased sodium-potassium ATPase activity, which associates with increased vascular tone. Also, SIK1 participates in a negative feedback mechanism on the transforming growth factor-&bgr;1 signaling and downregulation of SIK1 induces the expression of extracellular matrix remodeling genes. Objective: To evaluate whether reduced expression/activity of SIK1 alone or in combination with elevated salt intake could modify the structure and function of the vasculature, leading to higher blood pressure. Methods and Results: SIK1 knockout (sik1−/−) and wild-type (sik1+/+) mice were challenged to a normal- or chronic high-salt intake (1% NaCl). Under normal-salt conditions, the sik1−/− mice showed increased collagen deposition in the aorta but similar blood pressure compared with the sik1+/+ mice. During high-salt intake, the sik1+/+ mice exhibited an increase in SIK1 expression in the VSMCs layer of the aorta, whereas the sik1−/− mice exhibited upregulated transforming growth factor-&bgr;1 signaling and increased expression of endothelin-1 and genes involved in VSMC contraction, higher systolic blood pressure, and signs of cardiac hypertrophy. In vitro knockdown of SIK1 induced upregulation of collagen in aortic adventitial fibroblasts and enhanced the expression of contractile markers and of endothelin-1 in VSMCs. Conclusions: Vascular SIK1 activation might represent a novel mechanism involved in the prevention of high blood pressure development triggered by high-salt intake through the modulation of the contractile phenotype of VSMCs via transforming growth factor-&bgr;1-signaling inhibition.
Genetic algorithm assisted minimum bit error rate beamforming

A novel genetic algorithm (GA) assisted minimum bit error rate (MBER) beamforming technique is introduced. The performance of the proposed GAs is characterised by the probability density function (PDF) and the mean value of the achievable bit error rate (BER) at the beamformer's output. The results are also compared to the theoretical bounds. It is shown that GAs are suitable for MBER beamforming and that a trade-off between the complexity of the GA and its robustness against system parameter variations can be found.
A Unified Approach to the Design of Clinical Reporting Systems

Abstract: Computer-based Clinical Reporting Systems (CRS) for diagnostic departments that use structured data entry have a number of functional and structural affinities suggesting that a common software architecture for CRS may be defined. Such an architecture should allow easy expandability and reusability of a CRS. We report the development methodology and the architecture of SISCOPE, a CRS originally designed for gastrointestinal endoscopy that is expandable and reusable. Its main components are a patient database, a knowledge base, a reports base, and screen and reporting engines. The knowledge base contains the description of the controlled vocabulary and all the information necessary to control the menu system, and is easily accessed and modified with a conventional text editor. The structure of the controlled vocabulary is formally presented as an entity-relationship diagram. The screen engine drives a dynamic user interface and the reporting engine automatically creates a medical report; both engines operate by following a set of rules and the information contained in the knowledge base. Clinical experience has shown this architecture to be highly flexible and to allow frequent modifications of both the vocabulary and the menu system. This structure provided increased collaboration among development teams, insulating the domain expert from the details of the database, and enabling him to modify the system as necessary and to test the changes immediately. The system has also been reused in several different domains.
Coverage of Alzheimer’s Disease From 1984 to 2008 in Television News and Information Talk Shows in the United States: An Analysis of News Framing

This study examined 1371 TV news transcripts on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) from 6 TV news networks during a 25-year period (1984-2008) employing the news framing perspective. Issues, sources, and episodic-thematic news about AD derived from the news framing perspective were analyzed. Results revealed that AD issues, such as treatments, personal stories, celebrities, and policy increased over time, whereas other issues including facts, causes, signs, and diagnosis received relatively limited news attention. Correlation analyses among episodic-thematic frames, issues, and sources found that episodic-thematic frames were positively linked with such issues as personal stories and policy and sources, including patients and politicians. The results suggest that although TV news covers episodic frames more than thematic ones, both frames can interact with each other to influence personal and social news about AD. Particularly, the role of celebrity affecting AD news at both individual and social levels is salient.
The Interstitial Nucleus of the Posterior Limb of the Anterior Commissure: A Novel Layer of the Central Division of Extended Amygdala

GEORGE F. ALHEID,a,d SARA J. SHAMMAH-LAGNADO,b AND CARLOS A. BELTRAMINOc aDepartment of Physiology and Institute for Neuroscience, Northwestern University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA bDepartment of Physiology and Biophysics, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo 05508-900, Brazil cDepartment of Psychology, University of Córdoba and Istituto de Investigación Médica, Córdoba, Argentina
El Ni�o-Southern Oscillation Displacements of the Western Equatorial Pacific Warm Pool

The western equatorial Pacific warm pool (sea-surface temperatures >29�C) was observed to migrate eastward across the date line during the 1986-1987 El Ni�o-Southern Oscillation event. Direct velocity measurements made in the upper ocean from 1986 to 1988 indicate that this migration was associated with a prolonged reversal in the South Equatorial Current forced by a large-scale relaxation ofthe trade winds. The data suggest that wind-forced zonal advection plays an important role in the thermodynamics of the western Pacific warm pool on interannual time scales.
Human versus porcine mesenchymal stromal cells: phenotype, differentiation potential, immunomodulation and cardiac improvement after transplantation

Although mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have been applied clinically to treat cardiac diseases, it is unclear how and to which extent transplanted MSCs exert their beneficial effects. To address these questions, pre‐clinical MSC administrations are needed for which pigs appear to be the species of choice. This requires the use of porcine cells to prevent immune rejection. However, it is currently unknown to what extent porcine MSCs (pMSCs) resemble human MSCs (hMSCs). Aim of this study was to compare MSC from porcine bone marrow (BM) with human cells for phenotype, multi‐lineage differentiation potential, immune‐modulatory capacity and the effect on cardiac function after transplantation in a mouse model of myocardial infarction. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that pMSC expressed surface antigens also found on hMSC, including CD90, MSCA‐1 (TNAP/W8B2 antigen), CD44, CD29 and SLA class I. Clonogenic outgrowth was significantly enriched following selection of CD271+ cells from BM of human and pig (129 ± 29 and 1961 ± 485 fold, respectively). hMSC and pMSC differentiated comparably into the adipogenic, osteogenic or chondrogenic lineages, although pMSC formed fat much faster than hMSC. Immuno‐modulation, an important feature of hMSC, was clearly demonstrated for pMSC when co‐cultured with porcine peripheral blood cells stimulated with PMA and pIL‐2. Finally, pMSC transplantation after myocardial infarction attenuated adverse remodelling to a similar extent as hMSC when compared to control saline injection. These findings demonstrate that pMSCs have comparable characteristics and functionality with hMSCs, making reliable extrapolation of pre‐clinical pMSC studies into a clinical setting very well possible.
Stealing Machine Learning Models via Prediction APIs

Machine learning (ML) models may be deemed confidential due to their sensitive training data, commercial value, or use in security applications. Increasingly often, confidential ML models are being deployed with publicly accessible query interfaces. ML-as-a-service ("predictive analytics") systems are an example: Some allow users to train models on potentially sensitive data and charge others for access on a pay-per-query basis. The tension between model confidentiality and public access motivates our investigation of model extraction attacks. In such attacks, an adversary with black-box access, but no prior knowledge of an ML model's parameters or training data, aims to duplicate the functionality of (i.e., "steal") the model. Unlike in classical learning theory settings, ML-as-a-service offerings may accept partial feature vectors as inputs and include confidence values with predictions. Given these practices, we show simple, efficient attacks that extract target ML models with near-perfect fidelity for popular model classes including logistic regression, neural networks, and decision trees. We demonstrate these attacks against the online services of BigML and Amazon Machine Learning. We further show that the natural countermeasure of omitting confidence values from model outputs still admits potentially harmful model extraction attacks. Our results highlight the need for careful ML model deployment and new model extraction countermeasures.