Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Session 2-2 : Sensorimotor Coordination 39 Perception , motor learning , and speed adaptation exploiting body dynamics : case studies in a quadruped robot

Animals and humans are constantly faced with a highly dimensional stream of incoming sensory information. At the same time, they have to command their highly complex and multidimensional bodies. Yet, they seamlessly cope with this situation and successfully perform various tasks. For autonomous robots, this poses a challenge: robots performing in the real world are often faced with the curse of dimensionality. In other words, the size of the sensory as well as motor spaces becomes too large for the robot to efficiently cope with them in real time. In this paper, we demonstrate how the curse of dimensionality can be tamed by exploiting the robot’s morphology and interaction with the environment, or the robot’s embodiment (see e.g., [1]). We present three case studies with underactuated quadrupedal robots. In the first case study, we look at terrain detection. While running on different surfaces, the robot generates structured multimodal sensory information that can be used to detect different terrain types. In the second case study, we shift our attention to the motor space: the robot is learning different gaits. The online learning procedure capitalizes on the fact that the robot is underactuated and on a “soft“ control policy. In the third case study, we move one level higher and demonstrate how given an appropriate gait a speed adaptation task can be greatly simplified and learned online.
Cheminformatics and System Chemistry of Cisplatin, Carboplatin, Nedaplatin,Oxaliplatin, Heptaplatin and Lobaplatin as Anti-Cancer Nano Drugs: ACombined Computational and Experimental Study

The anti-cancer Nano drugs Cisplatin, Carboplatin, Nedaplatin, Oxaliplatin, Heptaplatin and Lobaplatin were characterized by 1HNMR, 13CNMR, 31PNMR, Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR), FT-Raman, HR Mass and UV-Vis spectroscopies and also by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), Differential Thermal Analysis-Thermal Gravim Analysis (DTA-TGA), Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDX) and XRay Diffraction (XRD) analysis and crystallography. Ab initio and Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations have been carried out for the title anti-cancer Nano drugs by performing HF, PM3, MM2, MM3, AM1, MP2, MP3, MP4, CCSD, CCSD(T), LDA, BVWN, BLYP and B3LYP levels of theory using the standard 31G, 6-31G*, 6-31+G*, 6-31G(3df, 3pd), 6-311G, 6-311G* and 6-311+G* basis sets of the Gaussian 09. The computational results show that the predicted geometries can well reproduce the structural, thermodynamic and spectroscopic parameters. Predicted vibrational frequencies have been assigned and compared with experimental 1HNMR, 13CNMR, 31PNMR, Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared (ATRFTIR), FT-Raman, HR Mass and UV-Vis spectra and they are supported each other comparison between the experimental and the computational results indicates that ab initio and Density Functional Theory (DFT) HF, PM3, MM2, MM3, AM1, MP2, MP3, MP4, CCSD, CCSD(T), LDA, BVWN, BLYP and B3LYP levels of theory using the standard 31G, 6-31G*, 6-31+G*, 6-31G(3df, 3pd), 6-311G, 6-311G* and 6-311+G* basis sets of the Gaussian 09 are able to provide satisfactory results for predicting dynamic NMR shielding tensors and vibrational frequencies properties. On the basis of vibrational analyses, the structural, thermodynamic and spectroscopic properties of the title anti-cancer Nano drugs at different temperatures have been calculated.
Effects of bisphenol A and triclocarban on brain-specific expression of aromatase in early zebrafish embryos

Estrogen regulates numerous developmental and physiological processes. Most effects are mediated by estrogen receptors (ERs), which function as ligand-regulated transcription factors. Estrogen also regulates the activity of GPR30, a membrane-associated G protein-coupled receptor. Many different types of environmental contaminants can activate ERs; some can bind GPR30 as well. There is growing concern that exposure to some of these compounds, termed xenoestrogens, is interfering with the behavior and reproductive potential of numerous wildlife species, as well as affecting human health. Here, we investigated how two common, environmentally pervasive chemicals affect the in vivo expression of a known estrogen target gene in the brain of developing zebrafish embryos, aromatase AroB, which converts androgens to estrogens. We confirm that, like estrogen, the well-studied xenoestrogen bisphenol A (BPA, a plastics monomer), induces strong brain-specific overexpression of aromatase. Experiments using ER- and GPR30-selective modulators argue that this induction is largely through nuclear ERs. BPA induces dramatic overexpression of AroB RNA in the same subregions of the developing brain as estrogen. The antibacterial triclocarban (TCC) by itself stimulates AroB expression only slightly, but TCC strongly enhances the overexpression of AroB that is induced by exogenous estrogen. Thus, both BPA and TCC have the potential to elevate levels of aromatase and, thereby, levels of endogenous estrogens in the developing brain. In contrast to estrogen, BPA-induced AroB overexpression was suppressed by TCC. These results indicate that exposures to combinations of certain hormonally active pollutants can have outcomes that are not easily predicted from their individual effects.
Determining importance of physiological parameters and methods of their evaluation for classification of pilots psychophysiological condition

At present, several studies exist describing the relevance of human factor in air transport with main focus on pilots and flight safety. Within such studies, monitoring of physiological functions is used. There are lot of physiological parameters and methods of their assessment; however, they are mostly based on principles originating from clinical practice. Yet, sensitivity and specificity of these methods with regard to assessment of aviation professionals — pilots is unknown. Therefore, this paper is oriented towards description of the most common methods for physiological parameters assessment. The paper also describes evaluation methods, which are on experimental level in terms of physiological data evaluation, namely recurrent quantification analysis. Within the research carried out, sample group of pilots was subjected to measurement for evaluation of their psychophysiological condition and performance. Selected evaluation methods were applied on the collected data and importance of those parameters and methods, which provided best classification for level of psychophysiological stress, was evaluated by means of statistical analyses. The results indicate that the most important physiological parameter for psychophysiological condition assessment of pilots is heart electrical activity where the possibility to perform signal processing whilst preserving its importance is provided by linear methods in the time and frequency domain, or alternatively by non-linear methods utilizing recurrent quantification analysis.
Comparison of survival of adolescents and young adults with hematologic malignancies in Osaka, Japan

Abstract The survival gap between adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with hematological malignancies persists in many countries. To determine to what extent it does in Japan, we investigated survival and treatment regimens in 211 Japanese AYAs (15–29 years) in the Osaka Cancer Registry diagnosed during 2001–2005 with hematological malignancies, and compared adolescents (15–19 years) with young adults (20–29 years). AYAs with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) had a poor 5-year survival (44%), particularly young adults (29% vs. 64% in adolescents, p = 0.01). Additional investigation for patients with ALL revealed that only 19% of young adults were treated with pediatric treatment regimens compared with 45% of adolescents (p = 0.05). Our data indicate that we need to focus on young adults with ALL and to consider establishing appropriate cancer care system and guidelines for them in Japan.
Doubly Stochastic Variational Inference for Deep Gaussian Processes

Gaussian processes (GPs) are a good choice for function approximation as they are flexible, robust to over-fitting, and provide well-calibrated predictive uncertainty. Deep Gaussian processes (DGPs) are multi-layer generalisations of GPs, but inference in these models has proved challenging. Existing approaches to inference in DGP models assume approximate posteriors that force independence between the layers, and do not work well in practice. We present a doubly stochastic variational inference algorithm, which does not force independence between layers. With our method of inference we demonstrate that a DGP model can be used effectively on data ranging in size from hundreds to a billion points. We provide strong empirical evidence that our inference scheme for DGPs works well in practice in both classification and regression.
Preferential Utilization of d-Lactate by Shewanella oneidensis

ABSTRACT Shewanella oneidensis couples oxidation of lactate to respiration of many substrates. Here we report that llpR ( l -lactate-positive regulator, SO_3460) encodes a positive regulator of l-lactate utilization distinct from previously studied regulators. We also demonstrate d-lactate inhibition of l-lactate utilization in S. oneidensis, resulting in preferential utilization of the d isomer.
Retinal microcirculation and early mechanisms of hypertension.

The microcirculation plays a critical role in the pathophysiology of hypertension.1,2 The increase in peripheral resistance underlying the raised blood pressure is localized primarily in small arteries (diameter 150 to 300 μm) and arterioles (diameter 10 to 150 μm). The rise in blood pressure causes a further narrowing of small arteries and rarefaction of capillaries and precapillary arterioles, thus creating a vicious cycle. This cycle has been well documented in several animal models of hypertension. However, it has been more difficult to grasp the complete picture in humans, because of technical difficulties to evaluate the microcirculation in vivo. The study of small arteries in humans is based on biopsies usually taken from subcutaneous fat tissue. Using this approach Rizzoni et al3,4 were able to show that small artery narrowing predicts the prevalence of cardiovascular complications in both normotensive and hypertensive individuals. Capillary rarefaction has been assessed in humans using in vivo capillaroscopy of the nailfold microvasculature. The majority of these studies support the hypothesis of capillary rarefaction as an early hallmark of …
High levels of retention in care with streamlined care and universal test and treat in East Africa

Objective:We sought to measure retention in care and identify predictors of nonretention among patients receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) with streamlined delivery during the first year of the ongoing Sustainable East Africa Research on Community Health (SEARCH) ‘test-and-treat’ trial (NCT 01864603) in rural Uganda and Kenya. Design:Prospective cohort of patients in the intervention arm of the SEARCH study. Methods: We measured retention in care at 12 months among HIV-infected adults who linked to care and were offered ART regardless of CD4+ cell count, following community-wide HIV-testing. Kaplan–Meier estimates and Cox proportional hazards modeling were used to calculate the probability of retention at 1 year and identify predictors of nonretention. Results:Among 5683 adults (age ≥15) who linked to care, 95.5% [95% confidence interval (CI): 92.9–98.1%] were retained in care at 12 months. The overall probability of retention at 1 year was 89.3% (95% CI: 87.6–90.7%) among patients newly linking to care and 96.4% (95% CI: 95.8–97.0%) among patients previously in care. Younger age and pre-ART CD4+ cell count below country treatment initiation guidelines were predictors of nonretention among all patients. Among those newly linking, taking more than 30 days to link to care after HIV diagnosis was additionally associated with nonretention at 1 year. HIV viral load suppression at 12 months was observed in 4227 of 4736 (89%) of patients retained with valid viral load results. Conclusion:High retention in care and viral suppression after 1 year were achieved in a streamlined HIV care delivery system in the context of a universal test-and-treat intervention.
Race, socioeconomic factors, and area of residence are associated with asthma prevalence

Asthma prevalence in the United States has been reported to be higher in minority groups such as Blacks and Hispanics. Because a disproportionate number of individuals from such minority groups are of low socioeconomic status (SES), it is unclear how much of the racial/ethnic differences in asthma prevalence is related to low SES. We investigated the effect of SES on the relationship between race/ethnicity and asthma prevalence in a cohort of families with a history of asthma or allergies from the Boston, Massachusetts area. From 499 families, a cohort of 998 parents and 307 children was identified. We used total yearly family income (<$50,000 vs. ≥$50,000), highest level of education (≤high school vs. ≥college), and residence in high‐poverty areas vs. low‐poverty areas as measures of SES.
Bounds and Heuristics for Capacitated Routing Problems

In a capacitated routing problem, the objective is to minimize the total distance travelled by vehicles of limited capacity to serve a set of customers that are located in the Euclidean plane. We develop asymptotically optimal bounds and heuristics for this problem, under the assumption that the capacity of a vehicle is expressed in terms of an upper bound on the number of customers that it can serve. The analysis culminates in an algorithm that, for a given capacity and given (epsilon), will find a solution with relative error at most (epsilon) in time polynomial in the number of customers.
Histamine shock in mice sensitized with Hemophilus pertussis vaccine.

Mayer and Brousseau (6) and Perry and Darsie, Jr. (7) recently reported some very comprehensive studies on anaphylaxis in mice, but the significance of [See table in the PDF file] histamine was not determined. However, in our own experiments it was found that H. pertussis vaccine injected into mice produced a hypersensitivity to histamine, which could be counteracted by the antihistamine agent Bromothen.It has not yet been determined whether the injection of H. pertussis vaccine into man can produce similar effects.
Hepatocyte growth factor in transgenic mice: Effects on hepatocyte growth, liver regeneration and gene expression

Attention has recently been focused on hepatocyte growth factor as a major candidate factor in liver regeneration because it is the most potent known mitogen for hepatocytes in vitro. However, hepatocyte growth factor also displays diverse activities in vitro as scatter factor, as an epithelial morphogen, as a pluripotent mitogen and as a growth inhibitor. Consequently, we developed transgenic mice that expressed hepatocyte growth factor under the control of albumin regulatory sequences to examine its in vivo role in hepatocyte growth. Hepatocytes of these mice expressed increased levels of hepatocyte growth factor as an autocrine growth factor. Hepatocyte growth factor was a potent stimulus for liver repair; the livers of hepatocyte growth factor‐transgenic mice recovered completely in half the time needed for their normal siblings after partial hepatectomy. This transgenic model also enabled us to study the chronic effects of hepatocyte growth factor expression. During several months of observation, the labeling index of hepatocytes in albumin‐hepatocyte growth factor mice was doubled, and liver DNA content was increased compared with that in wild‐type mice. To identify intermediate signaling pathways for hepatocyte growth factor that might regulate this increased growth response, we examined transgenic mice for changes in expression of genes that are known to be regulated during liver regeneration. We found that levels of c‐myc and c‐jun mRNA were increased in the hepatocyte growth factor‐transgenic mice. In additional experiments the increased c‐myc expression was the consequence of increased transcription rates as seen in nuclear run‐on and myc‐CAT reporter gene experiments. We conclude that hepatocyte growth factor increases growth and repair processes when expressed for long periods in the liver and that c‐myc and c‐jun may be important intermediaries in the hepatocyte growth response caused by hepatocyte growth factor. (HEPATOLOGY 1994;19:962–972.)
Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor induced hyperkalaemic paralysis

Secondary hyperkalaemic paralysis is a rare condition often mimicking the Guillain-Barré syndrome. There have been a few case reports of hyperkalaemia caused by renal failure, trauma, and drugs where the presentation has been with muscle weakness. A case of hyperkalaemic paralysis caused by an angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor is reported.
MR hysterosalpingography with an angiographic time-resolved 3D pulse sequence: assessment of tubal patency.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of our study was to determine if tubal patency can be assessed by MR hysterosalpingography (HSG) using a clinically available MR angiographic sequence (3D time-resolved imaging of contrast kinetics [TRICKS]). This capability would enhance the value of MRI in women with infertility. CONCLUSION MR HSG effectively shows tubal patency and can be considered when both conventional HSG and standard MRI are necessary for the evaluation of women with infertility, such as in women with suspected uterine anomalies or extrauterine disease.
Degradation of toluene-2,4-diamine by persulphate: kinetics, intermediates and degradation pathway

In this study, the degradation of toluene-2,4-diamine (TDA) by persulphate (PS) in an aqueous solution at near-neutral pH was examined. The result showed that the degradation rate of TDA increased with increasing PS concentrations. The optimal dosage of PS in the reaction system was determined by efficiency indicator (I) coupling in the consumption of PS and decay half-life of TDA. Calculation showed that 0.74 mM of PS was the most effective dosage for TDA degradation, at that level the maximum I of 24.51 was obtained. PS can oxidize TDA for an extended reaction time period. Under neutral condition without activation, four degradation intermediates, 2,4-diamino-3-hydroxy-5-sulfonicacidtoluene, 2,4-diaminobenzaldehyde, 2,4-bis(vinylamino)benzaldehyde and 3,5-diamino-4-hydroxy-2-pentene, were identified by high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. The tentative degradation pathway of TDA was proposed as well. It was found that hydroxyl radical played an important role in degradation of TDA with the activation of Fe2+, whereas PS anion and sulphate radicals were responsible for the degradation without activation of Fe2+.
A DC-90-GHz 4- $V_{\mathrm{ pp}}$ Modulator Driver in a 0.13- $\mu \text{m}$ SiGe:C BiCMOS Process

In this paper, a linear driver for optical modulators in a 0.13-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> SiGe:C BiCMOS technology with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{T}/f_{\text {max}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of 300/500 GHz is presented. The design is implemented following a distributed amplifier topology in a differential manner. The driver features a small-signal gain of 12.5 dB and a 3-dB bandwidth of 90 GHz and delivers a maximum output amplitude of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$4~V_{\text {pp}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> to a 100-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> differential load. Delivering the maximum output swing, the large-signal gain is 10.5 dB. Time-domain measurements are performed, showing the maximum output swing with ON–OFF keying (OOK) eye-diagrams up to 64 Gb/s and pulse amplitude modulation-4 up to 45 Gbaud (90 Gb/s). Moreover, OOK eye-diagrams up to 120 Gb/s are reported with an output swing of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3~V_{\text {ppd}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Total harmonic distortion measurements are also conducted demonstrating a value of 5% at 1 and 8 GHz up to an input amplitude of 800 mV<sub>ppd</sub>. Using a reduced number of stages in the design, the power dissipation of the integrated circuit is 550 mW, resulting in an output power to power dissipation ratio of 3.6%. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first time a linear driver for optical modulators demonstrates such high bandwidth and efficiency for the demonstrated data-rates.
Neural ventilatory drive during arm and leg exercise.

Three healthy subjects performed 85 and 68 transients from rest to work with arms and legs respectively. The transient ventilatory responses were greater during arm work than during leg work. Estimated from the magnitude of these responses, the neural ventilatory stimulus was responsible for an equal percentage of the steady state exercise hyperpnoea in the two types of work. The percentage declined as load increased. It was concluded that the difference in the steady state ventilatory response to the two types of exercise may partly be explained by a stronger neural stimulus during arm work.
Recursive Estimation of Structure and Motion from Monocular Images

The determination of the 3D motion of a camera and the 3D structure of the scene in which the camera is moving, known as the Structure from Motion (SFM) problem, is a central problem in computer vision. Specifically, the recursive (online) estimation is of major interest for robotics applications such as navigation and mapping. Many problems still hinder the deployment of SFM in real-life applications namely, (1) the robustness to noise, outliers and ambiguous motions, (2) the numerical tractability with a large number of features and (3) the cases of rapidly varying camera velocities. Towards solving those problems, this research presents the following four contributions that can be used individually, together, or combined with other approaches. A motion-only filter is devised by capitalizing on algebraic threading constraints. This filter efficiently integrates information over multiple frames achieving a performance comparable to the best state of the art filters. However, unlike other filter based approaches, it is not affected by large baselines (displacement between camera centers). An approach is introduced to incorporate, with only a small computational overhead, a large number of frame-to-frame features (i.e., features that are matched only in pairs of consecutive frames) in any analytic filter. The computational overhead grows linearly with the number of added frame-to-frame features and the experimental results show an increased accuracy and consistency. A novel filtering approach scalable to accommodate a large number of features is proposed. This approach achieves both the scalability of the state of the art filter in scalability and the accuracy of the state of the art filter in accuracy. A solution to the problem of prediction over large baselines in monocular Bayesian filters is presented. This problem is due to the fact that a simple prediction, using constant velocity models for example, is not suitable for large baselines, and the projections of the 3D points that are in the state vector can not be used in the prediction due to the need of preserving the statistical independence of the prediction and update steps.