Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Field and service applications - An autonomous straddle carrier for movement of shipping containers - From Research to Operational Autonomous Systems

This article describes the development and implementation of an autonomous straddle carrier (AutoStrad) for the movement of shipping containers in a port environment. In this article, we describe the vehicle and the control, navigation, safety, and pilot functions, which enable autonomous operation. The description of the implementation of the complete system also addresses issues of operational safety, scheduling, and planning of operations, interfaces to quay-side cranes, and road-side hauler vehicles. The complete production system, consisting of 18 autonomous straddle carriers, has been in continuous operation for the past two years at the Port of Brisbane, Australia. This article concludes by distilling some of the key technical and commercial lessons learned in moving from a concept through prototype to fully operational system.
Caise 2015 Doctoral Consortium Program Committee Members Caise Phd Award towards a Framework for Feature Deduplication during Software the Use Case of Commissioning Processes in the Automobile Industry

In the automobile industry, commissioning process models describe the end-of-line manufacturing and testing of vehicles. Due to the increase of electronic components in modern vehicles, the process models tend to become more complex. At the same the number of different model series is constantly increasing leading to a larger amount of process models. The increase in process models and complexity lead to higher cost for the process design and decrease the quality of the individual process model. In this Ph.D. project we want to support process modeling. First, by developing a framework to test if a given process model fulfills all properties required (process verification). Second, we want to support the process design by approaches for a semiautomatic generation of process models (process synthesis). Third, for process verification and process synthesis one needs a specification of the allowed behavior of the process models.
An algorithm of pornographic image detection

Real-time detection of pornographic images can effectively prevent pornographic images from spreading on the Internet. The methods of detection mainly focus on the identification of skin region. To overcome the disadvantages of traditional algorithms, in this paper, we propose a skin model based on the combination of YIQ, YUV, and HSV. In the step of the pre-dealing, we use white balance algorithm to achieve better skin area. Then, texture model based on Gray Level Co-Matrix (GLCM) and geometric structure of human beings are used to decrease the disruptions of the background region similar with the skin area. The features which extracted from the last images dealt by color and texture model are input into Support Vector Machines (SVM), through which the pornographic images and assorted control images are classified successfully. An experiment using 400 pornographic images and 400 assorted control images is carried out. Experimental results show that the algorithm of skin texture- based and feather-based detection has perfect performances, and the detection rate can reach 88.89%.
Genetic Characteristics of the Coxsackievirus A24 Variant Causing Outbreaks of Acute Hemorrhagic Conjunctivitis in Jiangsu, China, 2010

During September 2010, an outbreak of acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis reemerged in Jiangsu, three years after the nationwide epidemic in China in 2007. In total, 2409 cases were reported, 2118 of which were reported in September; 79.8% of those affected were students or teachers, with a median age of 16 years. To identify and demonstrate the genetic characteristics of the etiological agent, 52 conjunctival swabs were randomly collected from four different cities. After detection and isolation, 43 patients were positive for coxsackievirus A24 variant according to PCR and 20 according to culture isolation. Neither adenovirus nor EV70 was detected. A phylogenetic study of the complete 3Cpro and VP1 regions showed that the Jiangsu isolates clustered into a new lineage, GIV-C5, with two uniform amino-acid mutations that distinguished them from all previous strains. Another new cluster, GIV-C4, formed by Indian isolates from 2007 and Brazilian isolates from 2009, was also identified in this study. Interestingly, our isolates shared greatest homology with the GIV-C4 strains, not with the isolates that were responsible for the nationwide acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis epidemic in China in 2007. Although all our isolates were closely related, they could be differentiated into two subclusters within GIV-C5. In conclusion, our study suggests that a new cluster of coxsackievirus A24 variant that had already evolved into diverse strains was associated with the acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis outbreaks in Jiangsu in September 2010. These viruses might have originated from the virus isolated in India in 2007, rather than from the epidemic strains isolated in China in 2007.
Extended Partial-Order Dynamic Backtracking Algorithm for Dynamically Changed Environments

Unlike constructive approaches in which a partial assignment to the variables is incrementally extended, repair approaches start with an inconsistent assignment (e.g. old solution) and search through the space of possible repairs. In this paper, we propose an Extended Partial-order Dynamic Backtracking (EPDB) algorithm for dynamically changed environments. The EPDB allows dynamic CSPs to be dealt efficiently according to based-repair heuristic approaches. A past solution can be repaired using retroactive data structures: safety conditions and no goods, saved previously in Partial-order Dynamic Backtracking process. We evaluate our algorithm on synthetic and real problems, and experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the original algorithm PDB, in terms of run-time and constraints checks.
Engineering and Scientific Subroutine Library Release 3 for IBM ES/3090 Vector Multiprocessors

This technical note should be read in conjunction with the paper by McComb and Schmidt 1 which describes the Engineering and Scientific Subroutine Library through Release 2. In this technical note, which is an addendum to that paper, we briefly describe some of the new features in Release 3 and indicate some of the techniques used to optimize vector and parallel performance.
Use of Framingham risk score and new biomarkers to predict cardiovascular mortality in older people: population based observational cohort study

Objectives To investigate the performance of classic risk factors, and of some new biomarkers, in predicting cardiovascular mortality in very old people from the general population with no history of cardiovascular disease. Design The Leiden 85-plus Study (1997-2004) is an observational prospective cohort study with 5 years of follow-up. Setting General population of the city of Leiden, the Netherlands. Participants Population based sample of participants aged 85 years (215 women and 87 men) with no history of cardiovascular disease; no other exclusion criteria. Main measurements Cause specific mortality was registered during follow-up. All classic risk factors included in the Framingham risk score (sex, systolic blood pressure, total and high density lipoprotein cholesterol, diabetes mellitus, smoking and electrocardiogram based left ventricular hypertrophy), as well as plasma concentrations of the new biomarkers homocysteine, folic acid, C reactive protein, and interleukin 6, were assessed at baseline. Results During follow-up, 108 of the 302 participants died; 32% (35/108) of deaths were from cardiovascular causes. Classic risk factors did not predict cardiovascular mortality when used in the Framingham risk score (area under receiver operating characteristic curve 0.53, 95% confidence interval 0.42 to 0.63) or in a newly calibrated model (0.53, 0.43 to 0.64). Of the new biomarkers studied, homocysteine had most predictive power (0.65, 0.55 to 0.75). Entering any additional risk factor or combination of factors into the homocysteine prediction model did not increase its discriminative power. Conclusions In very old people from the general population with no history of cardiovascular disease, concentrations of homocysteine alone can accurately identify those at high risk of cardiovascular mortality, whereas classic risk factors included in the Framingham risk score do not. These preliminary findings warrant validation in a separate cohort.
Polish N-Grams and Their Correction Process

Word n-gram statistics collected from over 1 300 000 000 words are presented. Eventhough they were collected from various good sources, they contain several types of errors. The paper focuses on the process of partly supervised correction of the n- grams. Types of errors are described as well as our software allowing efficient and fast corrections.
Confirmation of deafness in infancy

AIM To assess delay in confirming hearing impairment in infants identified by universal neonatal screening and to investigate the causes. PATIENTS Infants identified from 25 199 babies screened from January 1992 to December 1997. METHODS A two stage transient evoked oto-acoustic emission test (TEOAE), with a threshold auditory brainstem response (ABR) recording undertaken on those who failed. The screen identified infants with a permanent congenital hearing impairment (PCHI) averaging 40 dBnHL or worse in the best ear. Those with less impairment were also ascertained. The positive predictive value (PPV) of the ABR test and measures of delay between identification and eventual diagnosis were analysed. RESULTS A targeted PCHI was found in 1.18/1000 neonates. The PPV of the ABR for confirming a targeted PCHI was 100% when the ABR threshold was ⩾ 80 dBnHL. Nine of 11 infants with this threshold had severe or profound permanent deafness. The delay from ABR to audiological certainty was about 1 month—diagnosis was confirmed around 3 months. There was uncertainty when the ABR was 40–80 dBnHL. The PPV was 60% and 8% when the ABR thresholds were 70 dBnHL and 50 dBnHL, respectively. 85 of 111 infants with ABR thresholds in this range had a temporary conductive impairment. Their early diagnosis depended upon the type and degree of hearing impairment and diagnosis was delayed to about 8 months in these infants. CONCLUSIONS Hearing impairments identified by universal screening are delayed in all but those with severe or profound bilateral PCHI. This delay can be reduced by applying in early infancy a battery of audiological tests and requires further exploration. Key messages Useful implementation of universal neonatal hearing screens depends on the ability to confirm both the type and degree of deafness in early infancy Screening may be relatively straightforward but audiological diagnosis at this age is not Severe or profound deafness can be identified in early infancy with minimal delay but moderate deafness is confirmed on average at 8 months Targeting moderate deafness in early infancy demands that audiological tests are developed to confirm a permanent hearing impairment in those identified by the screen
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHARMACY & LIFE SCIENCES Antimicrobial activity study of ethanolic extract of Boerhaavia diffusa whole plant

The search for antimicrobial agents has continued t o be concentrated on the lower plants, fungi and ba cteria. Less research has focused on higher plants although iden tified plant compounds like emetine, berberine quin ine still find specialized uses. Secondary metabolites of higher p lants serve as defense agent against microorganisms . Some screenings have yielded good result and few of thes e have proceeded to give active antimicrobial compo unds like polygodial, anethol, himejima, crytolepine, etc. Th e present work is carried out on the Boerhaavia dif fusa whole plant on the basis of the literature obtained from the Ethno medicinal documentation. The common name is Punarnava and it is found wild throughout India mos tly in Himalayan valleys. Keeping in view the treme ndous ethno medicinal use of Boerhaavia diffusa it was aimed to scientifically validate the antimi crobial property of Boerhaavia diffusa whole plant.
Bio economy’s institutional and policy framework for the sustainable development of nature´s ecosystems

This paper has the purpose to offer an institutional and policy framework for the analysis of bio economy implications of sustainable development of nature´s ecosystems. It begins reviewing the elements of bio economics to focus on the research trends methods to support the basic bio-economy method and methodology. Bio-economy is characterized by the creation and efficient use of natural and biological resources, raw materials and capabilities in sustainable infrastructures aimed for the bio production of goods, bio services, bio energy, bio health, etc. to achieve sustainable lifestyles, wealth and economic growth. Finally, this paper supports the argument that bio-economy indicates the limit of the socioeconomic activity for which a biological system could be used without destroying the necessary conditions for its regeneration and therefore its sustainability.
Detecting mass-mailing worm infected hosts by mining DNS traffic data

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a critical infrastructure in the Internet; thus, monitoring its traffic, and protecting DNS from malicious activities are important for security in cyberspace. However, it is often difficult to determine whether a DNS query is caused by malicious or normal activity, because information available in DNS traffic is limited.We focus on the activities of mass-mailing worms and propose a method to detect hosts infected by mass-mailing worms by mining DNS traffic data. Our method begins with a small amount of a priori knowledge about a signature query. By assuming that queries sent by most hosts that have sent the signature query of worms have been sent by worm behavior, we detect infected hosts using Bayesian estimation.We apply our method to DNS traffic data captured at one of the largest commercial Internet Service Providers in Japan, and the experimental result indicates that an 89% reduction of mail exchange queries can be achieved with the method.
Soybean-Derived Phosphatidylserine Improves Memory Function of the Elderly Japanese Subjects with Memory Complaints

Soybean-derived phosphatidylserine (Soy-PS) is a phosphatidylserine made from soybean lecithin by enzymatic reaction with L-serine. A double-blind, randomized controlled study was conducted to investigate the effects of Soy-PS on the cognitive functions of the elderly Japanese subjects with memory complaints. Seventy-eight elderly people with mild cognitive impairment (50–69 years old) were randomly allocated to take Soy-PS (100 mg, 300 mg/day) or placebo for 6 months. As a result, there was no difference in blood markers and vital signs during Soy-PS treatment and any side effect caused by Soy-PS treatment was not observed. Neuropsychological test scores were similarly increased in all groups including placebo group. However, in the subjects with relatively low score at baseline, the memory scores in PS treated groups were significantly increased against the baseline, while those of placebo group remained unchanged. And the memory improvements in Soy-PS-treated groups were mostly attributed to the increase in delayed verbal recall, a memory ability attenuated in the earliest stage of dementia. In conclusion, Soy-PS used in this study is considered as safety food ingredient and 6 months of Soy-PS supplementation could improve the memory functions of the elderly with memory complaints.
Roles of the Protruding Loop of Factor B Essential for the Localization of Lipoproteins (LolB) in the Anchoring of Bacterial Triacylated Proteins to the Outer Membrane*

Background: LolB accepts lipoproteins from LolA and anchors them to the inner leaflet of outer membranes. Results: Membrane targeting of lipoproteins is defective in several mutants with substitutions of Leu-68 of LolB. Conclusion: The protruding loop of LolB plays critical roles in the membrane anchoring activity. Significance: A possible mechanism for the last step of lipoprotein sorting is proposed. The Lol system comprising five Lol proteins, LolA through LolE, sorts Escherichia coli lipoproteins to outer membranes. The LolCDE complex, an ATP binding cassette transporter in inner membranes, releases outer membrane-specific lipoproteins in an ATP-dependent manner, causing formation of the LolA-lipoprotein complex in the periplasm. LolA transports lipoproteins through the periplasm to LolB on outer membranes. LolB is itself a lipoprotein anchored to outer membranes, although the membrane anchor is functionally dispensable. LolB then localizes lipoproteins to outer membranes through largely unknown mechanisms. The crystal structure of LolB is similar to that of LolA, and it possesses a hydrophobic cavity that accommodates acyl chains of lipoproteins. To elucidate the molecular function of LolB, a periplasmic version of LolB, mLolB, was mutagenized at various conserved residues. Despite the lack of acyl chains, most defective mutants were insoluble. However, a derivative with glutamate in place of leucine 68 was soluble and unable to localize lipoproteins to outer membranes. This leucine is present in a loop protruding from mLolB into an aqueous environment, and no analogous loop is present in LolA. Thus, leucine 68 was replaced with other residues. Replacement by acidic, but not hydrophobic, residues generated for the first time mLolB derivatives that can accept but cannot localize lipoproteins to outer membranes. Moreover, deletion of the leucine with neighboring residues impaired the lipoprotein receptor activity. Based on these observations, the roles of the protruding loop of LolB in the last step of lipoprotein sorting are discussed.
The upstream activating sequence for L-leucine gene regulation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The upstream activating sequence (UAS) conferring leucine-specific regulation of transcription in Saccharomyces cerevisiae was identified by analysis of the LEU2 promoter and by comparison to other genes regulated by leucine. The UAS was localized with deletions and cloned synthetic DNA. Point mutations and sequence rearrangements were used to identify important basepairs and to construct an improved UAS with increased regulation and expression. The improved UAS contains a core ten basepair, GC-rich, palindromic sequence, which is sufficient to confer minimal levels of activation and regulation, within a 36 basepair palindromic sequence which confers maximal activation and regulation. Deletions downstream of the UAS indicated that the UAS must act in conjunction with at least one other site, perhaps a TATAA region, in order to confer high levels of activation. Tandem copies of the UAS in front of LEU2 increased expression and regulation. Tandem UAS elements in trans on a multi-copy 2 mu-based plasmid decreased expression and regulation. These results are consistent with a model that the UAS serves as the DNA-binding site for diffusible activation factor(s), possibly the LEU3 gene product.
Speaker identification by lipreading

This paper describes a new approach for speaker identification based on lipreading. Visual features are extracted from image sequences of the talking face and consist of shape parameters which describe the lip boundary and intensity parameters which describe the grey-level distribution of the mouth area. Intensity information is based on principal component analysis using eigenspaces which deform with the shape model. The extracted parameters account for both, speech dependent and speaker dependent information. We built spatio-temporal speaker models based on these features, using HMMs with mixtures of Gaussians. Promising results were obtained for text dependent and text independent speaker identification tests performed on a small video database.
Towards Neural Acceleration for General-Purpose Approximate Computing

Energy efficiency is becoming crucial to realizing the benefits of technology scaling. We introduce a new class of low-power accelerators called Neural Processing Units (NPUs). Instead of being programmed, NPUs learn to behave like general-purpose code written in an imperative language. After a training phase, NPUs mimic the original code with acceptable accuracy. We describe an NPU-augmented architecture design incorporating a digital neural network implementation and a mechanism for invoking it from the main core. Simulation results show average speedups and energy savings both on the order of 2× with little quality loss for programs from diverse domains including signal processing, gaming, graphics, compression, machine learning, and image processing.
An Investigation of Recurrent Neural Architectures for Drug Name Recognition

Drug name recognition (DNR) is an essential step in the Pharmacovigilance (PV) pipeline. DNR aims to find drug name mentions in unstructured biomedical texts and classify them into predefined categories. State-of-the-art DNR approaches heavily rely on hand crafted features and domain specific resources which are difficult to collect and tune. For this reason, this paper investigates the effectiveness of contemporary recurrent neural architectures - the Elman and Jordan networks and the bidirectional LSTM with CRF decoding - at performing DNR straight from the text. The experimental results achieved on the authoritative SemEval-2013 Task 9.1 benchmarks show that the bidirectional LSTM-CRF ranks closely to highly-dedicated, hand-crafted systems.
CFA2: A Context-Free Approach to Control-Flow Analysis

In a functional language, the dominant control-flow mechanism is function call and return. Most higher-order flow analyses, including k-CFA, do not handle call and return well: they remember only a bounded number of pending calls because they approximate programs with control-flow graphs. Call/return mismatch introduces precision-degrading spurious control-flow paths and increases the analysis time. We describe CFA2, the first flow analysis with precise call/return matching in the presence of higher-order functions and tail calls. We formulate CFA2 as an abstract interpretation of programs in continuation passing style and describe a sound and complete summarization algorithm for our abstract semantics. A preliminary evaluation shows that CFA2 gives more accurate data-flow information than 0CFA and 1CFA.
A novel multi-RTGC scheduling problem based on genetic algorithm

In the storage yard, the scheduling of gantry cranes plays an important role in improving the efficiency of container terminal. This paper mainly addresses the scheduling problem of multiple RTGCs when containers in the terminal yard need to be intensively transported to hinterland. In order that all container tasks can be completed in the shortest time, our objective is to find the optimal RTGC scheduling, which means that it must be decided how to allocate the tasks to be handled to each RTGC and how to arrange for any RTGC the servicing sequence of the tasks so that all the tasks could be handled as soon as possible. Firstly a mixed integer programming model is proposed to formulate the problem which is an NP-hard problem. In the model, the precedence relations between tasks are taken into account. Then according to complexity of the problem, the genetic algorithm is utilized to solve it. Computational experiments show that the proposed approaches are applicable to solve this difficult but essential terminal operation problem.