Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real-Time Human-Robot Interaction for a Service Robot Based on 3D Human Activity Recognition and Human-like Decision Mechanism

This paper describes the development of a real-time Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) system for a service robot based on 3D human activity recognition and human-like decision mechanism. The Human-Robot Interactive (HRI) system, which allows one person to interact with a service robot using natural body language, collects sequences of 3D skeleton joints comprising rich human movement information about the user via Microsoft Kinect. This information is used to train a three-layer Long-Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network for human action recognition. The robot understands user intent based on an online LSTM network test, and responds to the user via movements of the robotic arm or chassis. Furthermore, the human-like decision mechanism is also fused into this process, which allows the robot to instinctively decide whether to interrupt the current task according to task priority. The framework of the overall system is established on the Robot Operating System (ROS) platform. The real-life activity interaction between our service robot and the user was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of developed HRI system.
Polymer‐Passivated Inorganic Cesium Lead Mixed‐Halide Perovskites for Stable and Efficient Solar Cells with High Open‐Circuit Voltage over 1.3 V

Cesium‐based trihalide perovskites have been demonstrated as promising light absorbers for photovoltaic applications due to their superb composition stability. However, the large energy losses (Eloss) observed in inorganic perovskite solar cells has become a major hindrance impairing the ultimate efficiency. Here, an effective and reproducible method of modifying the interface between a CsPbI2Br absorber and polythiophene hole‐acceptor to minimize the Eloss is reported. It is demonstrated that polythiophene, deposited on the top of CsPbI2Br, can significantly reduce electron‐hole recombination within the perovskite, which is due to the electronic passivation of surface defect states. In addition, the interfacial properties are improved by a simple annealing process, leading to significantly reduced energy disorder in polythiophene and enhanced hole‐injection into the hole‐acceptor. Consequently, one of the highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 12.02% from a reverse scan in inorganic mixed‐halide perovskite solar cells is obtained. Modifying the perovskite films with annealing polythiophene enables an open‐circuit voltage (VOC) of up to 1.32 V and Eloss of down to 0.5 eV, which both are the optimal values reported among cesium‐lead mixed‐halide perovskite solar cells to date. This method provides a new route to further improve the efficiency of perovskite solar cells by minimizing the Eloss.
Threonine requirements of different broiler genotypes.

The objectives of this work were to study the responses of one Leghorn and two broiler stocks and sexes to different levels of Thr and to estimate their requirements for this amino acid. All experiments were conducted with birds from 1 to 18 d of age. Body weight gain (BWG) and feed consumption were measured on the eighteenth day, and feed conversion ratio (FCR) was calculated. At Day 18, three birds per replicate were killed, and liver and fat pads were collected and weighed. The data were analyzed by the general linear model and nonlinear model procedures of SAS software, and the broken-line linear model was used to estimate Thr requirements of chicks. Experiment 1 had a 5 x 3 factorial design with five levels of Thr (0.63, 0.70, 0.77, 0.84, and 0.91% of the diet), two broiler genotypes (Arbor Acres Classic and High Yield), and one Leghorn genotype (Hy-line W-36), with three replicate pens of eight male birds each. The basal diet was composed of corn, peanut meal (PNM), poultry by-product meal, poultry fat, DL-Met, L-Lys, and L-Ile (23% CP and 3.2 kcal/g of ME). The Leghorn chicks did not respond to Thr supplementation, indicating their requirement was < or = 0.63%. High Yield birds had better BWG and FCR than Classic. The BWG and FCR were reduced more in Classic than High Yield strains by the lowest Thr level. The percentage of liver was higher in the Classic than High Yield strain broilers with Thr supplementation. The second experiment (2 x 2 x 2 factorial design) was conducted to evaluate the effects of two levels of Thr (0.63 and 0.90%), two levels of Ile (0.72 and 0.90%), and two broiler strains (as Experiment 1). There were no responses to Ile for any parameters measured. Experiment 3 (6 x 2 factorial design, corn, PNM-based basal diet) had six Thr levels (0.63, 0.67, 0.71, 0.75, 0.79, and 0.83%) and two broiler strains (as Experiment 1), with four replicate pens of eight male birds each. The High Yield strain broilers grew significantly better at the lowest Thr level, but performance was similar at the higher Thr levels (significant interaction, P = 0.018). FCR was affected by Thr level but not by strain. The Thr requirement of the Classic strain broilers was 0.69 +/- 0.01% for BWG and 0.68 +/- 0.01% for FCR. The Thr requirement of the High Yield strain broilers was 0.68 +/- 0.01% for BWG and 0.69 +/- 0.01% for FCR. The Thr requirements of male versus female High Yield strain broilers were evaluated in a 6 x 2 factorial design, with six Thr levels (Experiment 4), with four replicate pens of eight birds each. Males and females had the same performance and carcass composition results (P > 0.05), except for percentage abdominal fat pads. The Thr requirement was 0.71 +/- 0.01% for BWG and 0.71 +/- 0.01% for FCR for the males and 0.72 +/- 0.008% for BWG and 0.71 +/- 0.001% for FCR for females. Excellent performance was observed from the corn- and PNM-based diet supplemented to contain 0.72% Thr. The Thr requirements of High Yield and Classic broilers (males and females) were similar and greater than for the Leghorn strain studied.
Influence of synthetic sodium aluminosilicate on laying hens fed different phosphorus levels.

Two 28-day experiments were conducted utilizing 360 and 180 Leghorn-type hens, 60 and 40 wk of age in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. In both experiments, a corn-soybean meal basal diet containing no supplemental P was formulated. Dicalcium phosphate was added to the basal diet to supply 0, . 05, and . 13% supplemental P in Experiment 1 and 0, . 13, and . 35% supplemental P in Experiment 2. In both experiments, diets were fed with 0 and . 75% synthetic sodium aluminosilicate (SAS). The basal diet was calculated to contain . 30% P. In Experiment 1, egg production was significantly increased by the addition of . 13% supplemental P. When SAS was added to each diet, a decline in egg production and feed consumption was observed. Egg specific gravity increased and egg weight decreased in the presence of SAS. In Experiment 2, egg production was significantly depressed by SAS in the absence of supplemental P and returned to normal with supplemental P. Feed consumption was significantly depressed by adding SAS to diets containing 0 to . 13% supplemental P but not to diets containing . 35% supplemental P. Egg weight decreased and specific gravity increased when SAS was supplemented to the diet. Data from these two experiments indicate that adequate P intake is advised when using SAS because feed consumption, egg production, and egg weight were decreased in the presence of SAS.
ASSET: Analysis of Sequences of Synchronous Events in Massively Parallel Spike Trains

With the ability to observe the activity from large numbers of neurons simultaneously using modern recording technologies, the chance to identify sub-networks involved in coordinated processing increases. Sequences of synchronous spike events (SSEs) constitute one type of such coordinated spiking that propagates activity in a temporally precise manner. The synfire chain was proposed as one potential model for such network processing. Previous work introduced a method for visualization of SSEs in massively parallel spike trains, based on an intersection matrix that contains in each entry the degree of overlap of active neurons in two corresponding time bins. Repeated SSEs are reflected in the matrix as diagonal structures of high overlap values. The method as such, however, leaves the task of identifying these diagonal structures to visual inspection rather than to a quantitative analysis. Here we present ASSET (Analysis of Sequences of Synchronous EvenTs), an improved, fully automated method which determines diagonal structures in the intersection matrix by a robust mathematical procedure. The method consists of a sequence of steps that i) assess which entries in the matrix potentially belong to a diagonal structure, ii) cluster these entries into individual diagonal structures and iii) determine the neurons composing the associated SSEs. We employ parallel point processes generated by stochastic simulations as test data to demonstrate the performance of the method under a wide range of realistic scenarios, including different types of non-stationarity of the spiking activity and different correlation structures. Finally, the ability of the method to discover SSEs is demonstrated on complex data from large network simulations with embedded synfire chains. Thus, ASSET represents an effective and efficient tool to analyze massively parallel spike data for temporal sequences of synchronous activity.
Selection for four-week body weight in Japanese quail under two nutritional environments.

Abstract THEORETICALLY the response to artificial selection proceeds at a decreasing rate until the limits to selection are reached. While Roberts (1966) discussed the limits to artificial selection for body weight in the mouse, comparable information for other species is unavailable. Realized heritabilities of 0.30 (Siegel, 1962) and 0.40 (Jaap, 1963) have been reported for short-term responses (four to five generations) to selection for 8-week body weight in chickens. Maloney et al. (1963, 1967) obtained realized estimates for 12-week body weight of 0.34 and 0.42 through 10 and 15 generations of selection, respectively. Eleven generations of selection for 8-week body weight yielded realized heritability estimates of 0.29 and 0.21 for two populations derived from crosses among commercial broiler stocks (Dev et al., 1969). While these estimates are in accord with a summary by Siegel (1962) of 176 published heritability estimates of body weights for chickens 6 to 12 weeks of age,…
Modification of growth and development of muscles of poultry.

Growth curves of selected and unselected lines of broilers and Japanese quail show that chicks respond to selection for 8-week or 4-week body mass, respectively, by increasing the exponential growth rate during the first 2 weeks after hatching. Comparative studies indicate that growth rate varies among species of birds according to adult body mass, developmental maturity of the chick at hatching, and the postnatal growth increments of the skeletal muscles of the legs. Differentiation of tissues leading to mature function apparently precludes embryonic function and decreases proliferation and growth. Precocial species, such as the domestic fowl, grow only one-quarter as fast, on average, as altricial species of the same size, whose chicks are less mature at hatching and depend more on parental care for food, warmth, and protection. Among precocial species, those whose legs have the smallest postnatal growth increments grow most rapidly overall. The domestic fowl is among the slowest growing of precocial species. Although diet quality may limit growth rate, this should not be a factor in selection programs, because high quality diets can be provided. Rate of food assimilation apparently also is limiting, but it can be increased experimentally by force feeding and presumably is sufficiently selectable so as not to limit breeding programs designed to increase growth rate. The response of broilers and quail to selection of body mass apparently affects the rate of proliferation of skeletal muscles during the early posthatching period. Muscle quality is not affected. There is inconclusive evidence of a shift in muscle cell nuclei from differentiated to proliferative pools in selected lines. Furthermore, selected broilers apparently are less capable than unselected chicks of generating body heat, which requires functional skeletal muscle during the first week posthatching. Growth performance of broilers might be increased beyond present levels by selecting directly for reduced or delayed maturity (e.g., thermogenesis, flight) of chicks during the first 2 weeks and by selecting smaller legs in adult birds. Any attempt to formulate a selection program on these ideas would require additional basic research and might be thwarted by economic considerations or by offsetting selection caused by phenotypic responses that strain certain functional relationships in the growing chick.
Development of a One-Step Multiplex PCR Assay for Differential Detection of Major Mycobacterium Species

ABSTRACT The prevalence of tuberculosis continues to be high, and nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) infection has also emerged worldwide. Moreover, differential and accurate identification of mycobacteria to the species or subspecies level is an unmet clinical need. Here, we developed a one-step multiplex PCR assay using whole-genome analysis and bioinformatics to identify novel molecular targets. The aims of this assay were to (i) discriminate between the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) and NTM using rv0577 or RD750, (ii) differentiate M. tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) from MTBC using RD9, (iii) selectively identify the widespread M. tuberculosis Beijing genotype by targeting mtbk_20680, and (iv) simultaneously detect five clinically important NTM (M. avium, M. intracellulare, M. abscessus, M. massiliense, and M. kansasii) by targeting IS1311, DT1, mass_3210, and mkan_rs12360. An initial evaluation of the multiplex PCR assay using reference strains demonstrated 100% specificity for the targeted Mycobacterium species. Analytical sensitivity ranged from 1 to 10 pg for extracted DNA and was 103 and 104 CFU for pure cultures and nonhomogenized artificial sputum cultures, respectively, of the targeted species. The accuracy of the multiplex PCR assay was further evaluated using 55 reference strains and 94 mycobacterial clinical isolates. Spoligotyping, multilocus sequence analysis, and a commercial real-time PCR assay were employed as standard assays to evaluate the multiplex PCR assay with clinical M. tuberculosis and NTM isolates. The PCR assay displayed 100% identification agreement with the standard assays. Our multiplex PCR assay is a simple, convenient, and reliable technique for differential identification of MTBC, M. tuberculosis, M. tuberculosis Beijing genotype, and major NTM species.
Overtesting and undertesting in primary care: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Health systems are currently subject to unprecedented financial strains. Inappropriate test use wastes finite health resources (overuse) and delays diagnoses and treatment (underuse). As most patient care is provided in primary care, it represents an ideal setting to mitigate waste. Objective To identify overuse and underuse of diagnostic tests in primary care. Design Systematic review and meta-analysis. Data sources and eligibility criteria We searched MEDLINE and Embase from January 1999 to October 2017 for studies that measured the inappropriateness of any diagnostic test (measured against a national or international guideline) ordered for adult patients in primary care. Results We included 357 171 patients from 63 studies in 15 countries. We extracted 103 measures of inappropriateness (41 underuse and 62 overuse) from included studies for 47 different diagnostic tests. The overall rate of inappropriate diagnostic test ordering varied substantially (0.2%–100%)%). 17 tests were underused >50% of the time. Of these, echocardiography (n=4 measures) was consistently underused (between 54% and 89%, n=4). There was large variation in the rate of inappropriate underuse of pulmonary function tests (38%–78%, n=8). Eleven tests were inappropriately overused >50% of the time. Echocardiography was consistently overused (77%–92%), whereas inappropriate overuse of urinary cultures, upper endoscopy and colonoscopy varied widely, from 36% to 77% (n=3), 10%–54% (n=10) and 8%–52% (n=2), respectively. Conclusions There is marked variation in the appropriate use of diagnostic tests in primary care. Specifically, the use of echocardiography (both underuse and overuse) is consistently poor. There is substantial variation in the rate of inappropriate underuse of pulmonary function tests and the overuse of upper endoscopy, urinary cultures and colonoscopy. PROSPERO registration number CRD42016048832.
Positive allosteric modulation of &agr;-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid glutamate receptors differentially modulates the behavioural effects of citalopram in mouse models of antidepressant and anxiolytic action

Drugs that increase monoamine neurotransmission are effective in both anxiety and depression. The therapeutic effects of monoamine-based antidepressant drugs may involve indirect effects on neurotransmission through &agr;-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid glutamate receptors (AMPAR). Thus, chronic antidepressant treatment increases AMPAR-mediated neurotransmission and AMPAR-positive allosteric modulators have shown antidepressant-like efficacy in rodents. Here, the effect of enhanced AMPAR neurotransmission on the antidepressant-like and anxiolytic-like actions of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor citalopram (0–10 mg/kg) was investigated in mice using the AMPAR-positive allosteric modulator LY451646 (0–3 mg/kg). Antidepressant-like effects were assessed using the forced-swim test (FST), whereas anxiolytic-like effects were tested using the elevated zero maze (EZM) and the marble burying test. LY451646 (3 mg/kg) increased swim distance in the FST and a subactive dose of LY451646 (1 mg/kg) enhanced the effect of citalopram in the FST. In the EZM, LY451646 (3 mg/kg) did not show anxiogenic effects alone, but blocked the anxiolytic-like action of citalopram in the EZM, as reflected by an increase in the latency to enter the open areas and a decrease in the number of entries and time spent in the open areas in citalopram-treated mice. In the marble burying test, LY451646 (3 mg/kg) showed no effect alone, but significantly attenuated the anxiolytic-like effect of citalopram (1.25–2.5 mg/kg) by increasing the number of marbles buried in citalopram-treated mice. These results suggest that AMPAR neurotransmission plays opposite roles in anxiety and depression as AMPAR potentiation facilitated the antidepressant-like effects of citalopram while attenuating its anxiolytic-like effect. These findings have ramifications in the search for AMPAR-based novel anxiolytic and antidepressant treatments.
Relative contributions of genetics and environment to turkey improvement.

Abstract PHENOTYPIC changes (improvements) which occur over a period of years may be subdivided into a genetic and an environmental component through the use of randombred control populations. Recently, randombred control populations have been used in an attempt to hold the genetics constant and measure environmental change over years (Kinney et al., 1968; Merritt, 1968; and Kinney and Lowe, 1968). Genetic changes in a control flock may result from random changes of gene frequency due to genetic sampling or “genetic drift” and directional changes due to natural selection (Gowe et al., 1959). With additive gene action, the expected drift variance of the mean is equal to 2F σg2 where F is the inbreeding coefficient and σg2 is the additive genetic variance in the character concerned. This is equal to σg2/Ne drift variance per generation. Ne is the effective number of parents (Gowe et al., 1959). Thus, from the above, the larger…
Polisis: Automated Analysis and Presentation of Privacy Policies Using Deep Learning

Privacy policies are the primary channel through which companies inform users about their data collection and sharing practices. In their current form, policies remain long and difficult to comprehend, thus merely serving the goal of legally protecting the companies. Short notices based on information extracted from privacy policies have been shown to be useful and more usable, but face a significant scalability hurdle, given the number of policies and their evolution over time. Companies, users, researchers, and regulators still lack usable and scalable tools to cope with the breadth and depth of privacy policies. To address these hurdles, we propose Polisis, an automated framework for privacy Policies analysis. It enables scalable, dynamic, and multi-dimensional queries on privacy policies. At the core of Polisis is a privacy-centric language model, built with 130K privacy policies, and a novel hierarchy of neural network classifiers that caters to the high-level aspects and the fine-grained details of privacy practices. We demonstrate Polisis's modularity and utility with two robust applications that support structured and free-form querying. The structured querying application is the automated assignment of privacy icons from the privacy policies. With Polisis, we can achieve an accuracy of 88.4% on this task, when evaluated against earlier annotations by a group of three legal experts. The second application is PriBot, the first free-form Question Answering about Privacy policies. We show that PriBot can produce a correct answer among its top-3 results for 82% of the test questions.
Preliminary Study on Chicken Feather Protein–Based Wood Adhesives

Abstract The objective of this preliminary study was to partially replace phenol in the synthesis of phenol-formaldehyde resin with feather protein. Feather protein–based resins, which contained one part feather protein and two parts phenol, were formulated under the conditions of two feather protein hydrolysis methods (with and without presence of phenol during hydrolysis), two formaldehyde/phenol molar ratios (1.8 and 2.0), and three pH levels (9.5, 10.5, and 11.5). Southern pine fiberboard bonded with feather protein–based resins was fabricated and bending strength, bending stiffness, internal bonding strength, and percent thickness swell were evaluated. Results indicated that the test parameters all significantly affected resin quality. The resin formulated with feather protein hydrolyzed in the presence of phenol, using a F/P ratio of 2.0, and at a pH of 10.5 performed as well as the neat PF resin. Based on our findings, feather protein is a potential cost-effective material for the production of PF-type adhesive resins.
Prevalence of Campylobacter jejuni in eggs and poultry meat in New York State.

The presence of Campylobacter jejuni was tested for but not isolated from any of 276 eggs sampled from 23 egg farms in New York State. The presence of C. jejuni was evaluated in broilers, kosher broilers, spent layers, Peking ducks, and turkeys. Four of five poultry dressing plants tested showed positive growth of C. jejuni on the 25-carcass samples at various stages of processing. Twenty to 100% of live birds sampled contained C. jejuni on the skin but 90 to 100% were contaminated after scalding and defeathering operations from contaminated birds and equipment. A three to four-fold increase in carcass contamination was observed after evisceration. The number of C. jejuni on the carcasses decreased after washing and chilling. The organisms did not survive the salting, rinsing, and chilling operations in a kosher processing plant. Several pieces of equipment, i.e., shackles, eviscerating troughs, and cooling tanks were contaminated with C. jejuni. This study illustrates how C. jejuni may be transmitted from the live bird to the final poultry product.