Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring humanoid robots locomotion capabilities in virtual disaster response scenarios

We study the feasibility of having various humanoid robots undertake some tasks from those challenged by the DARPA's call on disaster operations. Hence, we focus on locomotion tasks that apparently require human-like motor skills to be achieved. We use virtual scenes under the fully-3D-modeled-environment assumption. The robot autonomously plans and executes the motion with a high-level goal specification, such as reaching a global position or a particular contact state. We assess the feasibility according not only to the robot kinematics, but also to whole-body dynamics, non-desired collision avoidance, friction limits, and actuation limits. The results -the controlled motions- are demonstrated in the accompanying video.
Joint Entity and Relation Extraction Using Card-Pyramid Parsing

Both entity and relation extraction can benefit from being performed jointly, allowing each task to correct the errors of the other. We present a new method for joint entity and relation extraction using a graph we call a "card-pyramid. " This graph compactly encodes all possible entities and relations in a sentence, reducing the task of their joint extraction to jointly labeling its nodes. We give an efficient labeling algorithm that is analogous to parsing using dynamic programming. Experimental results show improved results for our joint extraction method compared to a pipelined approach.
Establishing Drug Effects on Electrocorticographic Activity in a Genetic Absence Epilepsy Model: Advances and Pitfalls

The genetic rat models such as rats of the WAG/Rij strain and GAERS were developed as models for generalized genetic epilepsy and in particular for childhood absence epilepsy. These animal models were described in the eighties of the previous century and both models have, among others, face, construct and predictive validity. Both models were and are currently used as models to predict the action of antiepileptic medication and other experimental treatments, to elucidate neurobiological mechanisms of spike-wave discharges and epileptogenesis. Although the electroencephalagram (EEG)/electrocorticogram (ECoG) is imperative for establishing absence seizures and to quantify the for absence epilepsy typical spike-wave discharges, monitoring the animals behavior is equally necessary. Here an overview is given regarding the design of drug evaluation studies, which animals to use, classical and new EEG variables, the monitoring and quantification of the behavior of the rats, some pitfalls regarding the interpretation of the data, and some developments in EEG technology.
An Herbal Formula CGplus Ameliorates Stress-Induced Hepatic Injury in a BALB/c Mouse Model

Introduction Stress is a well-known factor for inflammation in diverse organs/tissues. Stress also leads to liver injury, which was supported by clinical observations and animal studies. We herein investigated the hepatoprotective property of an herbal formula (called as CGplus) consisting of Artemisia gmelinii Weber ex Stechm. (syn, Artemisia iwayomogi Kitamura), Wurfbainia villosa var. xanthioides (Wall. ex Baker) Skornick. & A.D.Poulsen (syn, Amomum xanthioides Wallich), and Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge against stress-induced hepatic damage. Methods Male BALB/c mice were orally administered water extract of CGplus (0, 50, 100, or 200 mg/kg) daily for 5 days, and then subjected to immobilization stress for 6 h on the 5th day. Results Acute immobilization stress elevated remarkably serum concentrations of stress hormones (corticosterone and adrenaline) and two hepatic injury parameters (ALT and AST), while these alterations were significantly attenuated by the administration of CGplus. The increases of oxidative parameters (ROS, NO, lipid peroxidation, and protein carbonyl) and deviation of IL-1β and IL-10 in opposite directions in hepatic tissues were significantly normalized by CGplus. Pre-treatment with CGplus also notably ameliorated the abnormal activation of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), CD14, and lipopolysaccharide-binding protein (LPB) as well as infiltration of neutrophils in hepatic tissues. Conclusion These results suggest that an herbal formula (CGplus) derived from traditional pharmaceutical theory has a potent protective effect against stress-induced hepatic injury via regulation of pro- (IL-1β) and anti-inflammatory (IL-10) cytokines.
Assessing the Quality of Life Among Caregivers of Patients With Haematological Cancer

Background: Studies have demonstrated poor quality of life (QOL) among cancer caregivers, but few studies have evaluated QOL and related psychosocial functioning among caregivers for people with hematologic cancer patients. The disease and its associated treatment can have overwhelming consequences for patients and their informal caregivers mostly close family members. Aim: The aim of the study was to analyze the impact of cancer diagnosis and its treatment in caregivers´ quality of life (QoL) and to observe the association with perceived social support. To compare the chronic myeloid leukemia patients to other leukemia patients caregiver to find differences and understand which aspects of QoL are more impacted. Methods: The current study is on-going study; sample is composed of caregivers of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia patients and acute myeloid leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia and other patient's caregiver from the Department of Hematology, KEM Hospital, Mumbai India. We are using Caregiver Quality of Life Index-Cancer (CQOLC) for measuring quality of life among caregivers of cancer patients and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) for social support. Results: With the small study sample of caregivers of patients mean age 34.78 ± 6.87 with the age range of 27-45 years, 25% of whom were men. Mean QOL score is 78.34 ± 15.53. In regression analysis caregivers education has shown significant t = 5.611, < 0.05. While marital status shown significant value with social support 3.931, 3.872, < 0.01. While CML caregivers had lower scores for the quality of life and less perceived social support. Conclusion: Caregivers of patients with cancer showed increased burden scores and financial issues and less perceived social support. This could be explained by their unique care situation. These caregivers need more attention and additional counseling session for coping with the situation.
Selective caching: a persistent memory approach for multi-dimensional index structures

After the introduction of Persistent Memory in the form of Intel’s Optane DC Persistent Memory on the market in 2019, it has found its way into manifold applications and systems. As Google and other cloud infrastructure providers are starting to incorporate Persistent Memory into their portfolio, it is only logical that cloud applications have to exploit its inherent properties. Persistent Memory can serve as a DRAM substitute, but guarantees persistence at the cost of compromised read/write performance compared to standard DRAM. These properties particularly affect the performance of index structures, since they are subject to frequent updates and queries. However, adapting each and every index structure to exploit the properties of Persistent Memory is tedious. Hence, we require a general technique that hides this access gap, e.g., by using DRAM caching strategies. To exploit Persistent Memory properties for analytical index structures, we propose selective caching. It is based on a mixture of dynamic and static caching of tree nodes in DRAM to reach near-DRAM access speeds for index structures. In this paper, we evaluate selective caching on the OLAP-optimized main-memory index structure Elf, because its memory layout allows for an easy caching. Our experiments show that if configured well, selective caching with a suitable replacement strategy can keep pace with pure DRAM storage of Elf while guaranteeing persistence. These results are also reflected when selective caching is used for parallel workloads.
Investigating Severity Thresholds for Test Smells

Test smells are poor design decisions implemented in test code, which can have an impact on the effectiveness and maintainabil-ity of unit tests. Even though test smell detection tools exist, how to rank the severity of the detected smells is an open research topic. In this work, we aim at investigating the severity rating for four test smells and investigate their perceived impact on test suite maintainability by the developers. To accomplish this, we first analyzed some 1,500 open-source projects to elicit severity thresholds for commonly found test smells. Then, we conducted a study with developers to evaluate our thresholds. We found that (1) current detection rules for certain test smells are considered as too strict by the developers and (2) our newly defined sever-ity thresholds are in line with the participants' perception of how test smells have an impact on the maintainability of a test suite. Preprint [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3744281], data and mate-rial [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3611111].
Calendar Anomalies in the Banking and it Index: The Indian Experience

The present study seeks to inspect the calendar effects in major service sector indices in the Indian securities market. The Banking sector and Information technology sector are identified as the prominent service sectors in the Indian economy. BSE Information Technology Index and BSE Bankex are considered as a proxy for the Information Technology and Banking sector. Period of study is chosen from the year 2010 to 2019 to examine the impact of calendar anomalies post-recession. Daily index returns are considered during the period of study . GARCH family models and OLS regression techniques were utilized for the study. Empirical findings indicate the presence of the January effect and turn of the month effect on the index returns and volatility. The study also suggests the possibility of a weak form of efficiency for the IT sector. Significant volatility persistence is observed in both the indices. The study has benefits for regulators to understand the price movements of the service sector after the global recession and frame their policies accordingly. Investors will benefit from this study for effective portfolio management.
Factors Influencing Backer Funding Intention in Crowdfunding: Psychological Contract Violation Perspective

Literature has highlighted the importance of psychological contract violation (PCV) on employee attitudes and behaviors in an organization. However, few studies have empirically introduced this concept in a crowdfunding context. This study aims to propose a comprehensive framework to examine the effects of perceived product innovation, PCV and trust in a crowdfunding platform on backer attitudes and their funding intentions. Results show that perceived reciprocity for backers and PCV are the most important factors leading to backers’ funding intentions. Moreover, perceived reciprocity channels the effects of perceived product innovation, PCV, and trust in the crowd-funding platform on backers’ funding intention. Both theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.
Automatic test case generation: what if test code quality matters?

Test case generation tools that optimize code coverage have been extensively investigated. Recently, researchers have suggested to add other non-coverage criteria, such as memory consumption or readability, to increase the practical usefulness of generated tests. In this paper, we observe that test code quality metrics, and test cohesion and coupling in particular, are valuable candidates as additional criteria. Indeed, tests with low cohesion and/or high coupling have been shown to have a negative impact on future maintenance activities. In an exploratory investigation we show that most generated tests are indeed affected by poor test code quality. For this reason, we incorporate cohesion and coupling metrics into the main loop of search-based algorithm for test case generation. Through an empirical study we show that our approach is not only able to generate tests that are more cohesive and less coupled, but can (i) increase branch coverage up to 10% when enough time is given to the search and (ii) result in statistically shorter tests.
Bioactive potential of Diadema Mauritius

As a consequence of the alarming rise in antimicrobial resistance, this study aimed at evaluating the bioactive potential of sea urchin extract, Diadema sp. Two different tissues; shells and gonads were used and two drying methods were compared; freeze-drying (FD) and non-FD (NFD). Statistically, significant interaction was observed between the drying methods and solvents used. Compared to the gonadal tissue, NFD methanolic shell extract reported higher extraction yield, 9.13 ± 0.87%. Phenolic content assessed using the Folin–Ciocalteu method was higher in NFD gonadal extract, 688.1 mg gallic acid equivalents/g distilled water. Promising antimicrobial activity was recorded using agar disc diffusion and results confirmed using minimum inhibitory concentration. Among the bacteria used, Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus were more vulnerable, reporting inhibition zone of 16.3 ± 1.37 mm and 17.1 ± 0.23 mm using NFDSM and FDGM extract, respectively. DPPH antioxidant assay showed NFDSM having better activity than the positive control, half maximal inhibitory concentration of 3.77 μg/ml. No significant larvicidal activity was recorded. Diadema sp. are a potential source of novel antimicrobial compounds and suggest its possible use as natural food-grade antioxidant. This study also shows NFD method and methanol as the recommended solvent for maximal bioactivity.
The PhotocalyticalTreatment of Trichloroethylene Using Self-Synthesis Soil Catalyst

Chlorinated organic compounds possess the following potential toxicity characteristics: carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, and teratogenicity. They are, therefore, classified as toxic pollutants in the environment. Among them, trichloroethylene (TCE) is a suspected carcinogen; it is an artificial synthetic substance with the following properties: carcinogenicity, high volatility, and low boiling point. Exposure to TCE will seriously affect the environment and damage human health. In light of the above information, this study used Taiwan’s Ks series soil as a catalyst carrier and exchanged Ti 4+ onto the carrier via ion exchange, whereby a soil catalyst at the nanolevel was formed. Photocatalysis was performed under visible light (sodium light) to degrade TCE in water, in order to explore the mechanism and effect of the soil catalyst on the degradation of TCE. First, this study conducted an X-ray diffraction analysis (X-RD) on the synthesized soil catalyst. The results suggest that the Ks series soil contains vermiculite, a 2:1 clay mineral. Vermiculite has the following properties: a larger surface area, high cation exchange capacity (CEC), and high electrical charge, which make it suitable to use vermiculite as a carrier for the soil catalyst. Furthermore, the results of different percentages of added soil catalysts by weight (wt%) over the degradation of TCE in water suggest higher degradation efficiency when the 0.08 wt% Ks-Ti catalyst was added. As the experimental results show, only a small amount of sodium light could be transferred to the surface of TCE to induce a reaction when over 0.1 wt% soil catalyst was added due to the shielding effect, i.e. adding too much catalyst occupied more of TCE’s light receiving area. As a result, the degradation level of TCE became lower.
Fusion of Range and Stereo Data for High-Resolution Scene-Modeling

This paper addresses the problem of range-stereo fusion, for the construction of high-resolution depth maps. In particular, we combine low-resolution depth data with high-resolution stereo data, in a maximum a posteriori (MAP) formulation. Unlike existing schemes that build on MRF optimizers, we infer the disparity map from a series of local energy minimization problems that are solved hierarchically, by growing sparse initial disparities obtained from the depth data. The accuracy of the method is not compromised, owing to three properties of the data-term in the energy function. First, it incorporates a new correlation function that is capable of providing refined correlations and disparities, via subpixel correction. Second, the correlation scores rely on an adaptive cost aggregation step, based on the depth data. Third, the stereo and depth likelihoods are adaptively fused, based on the scene texture and camera geometry. These properties lead to a more selective growing process which, unlike previous seed-growing methods, avoids the tendency to propagate incorrect disparities. The proposed method gives rise to an intrinsically efficient algorithm, which runs at 3FPS on 2.0 MP images on a standard desktop computer. The strong performance of the new method is established both by quantitative comparisons with state-of-the-art methods, and by qualitative comparisons using real depth-stereo data-sets.
The Association of Irisin with the Progression of Diabetes Mellitus Irisin and Diabetes Progression

Introduction: There is an ongoing debate over the involvement of irisin in the glucose metabolism. In this study, we aimed to see the association of irisin with the markers of glucose intolerance. Materials and Methods: We analyzed the relation of irisin with metabolic markers such as Homeostatic Model Assessment-Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR), insulin, and glucose in 152 subjects, subdivided into normal, impaired glucose tolerance and diabetic subgroups. Results: We found that the irisin levels of individuals with different stages of glucose intolerance did not show any significant difference. There was not any correlation between irisin levels with HOMA-IR. However, we observed a positive and significant correlation between circulating irisin concentrations and 120-minute glucose, 120-minute insulin, and HbA1c levels. Conclusion: The conclusive results of this study are that irisin could be somehow associated with insulin resistance but do not show a significant difference with neither diabetes nor different stages of insulin resistance.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF GHANAIAN STUDENTSATTITUDE AND INTEREST TOWARDS LEARNING MATHEMATICS

This study used non-experimental, quantitative, exploratory, descriptive and inferential methods of statistical analysis to establish student’s mathematics interest and to presents a logistics regression model for the student’s interest in mathematics. Respondents were purposefully and randomly selected from University of education, Winneba Kumasi campus to participate in the research. Student’s questionnaires on interest in mathematics, factors that affect teaching and learning of mathematics were used for the study. Results from 650 students who responded to the various questionnaire items revealed that student’s interest in mathematics is dependent on whether or not students like mathematics as a subject. The teacher’s motivation was also found to positively affect student interest in mathematics as well as the method and approach adopted by the teacher in teaching mathematics. Access to textbooks by students was also found to positively influence the student’s interest.The analysis further reveals that variables such as age, the type of school attended was found to be independent on the student’s interest in mathematics. The paper recommend that further work on the factors and their level of effect of on the student interest should be undertaken.
Graphical display and statistical modeling of temperature changes in tropical and subtropical zones

Climate change, particularly rising temperature, is one of the important environmental problem facing the world today. This study aims to identify trends and patterns of temperature change in tropical and subtropical zones using a statistic model. Data were obtained from the climate research unit from 1973 to 2008, comprising 252 regions of 10 by 10 grid-boxes between latitudes 35 north and south. The data were filtered with a second order autoregressive process to remove autocorrelations between temperature lags. Factor analysis was used to classify monthly average temperature anomalies into larger regions by taking into account the correlation between adjoining regions. Simple linear regression models were then fitted to the data within these larger regions. The result showed that the temperatures in these 15 larger regions have increased the most (by at least 0.065C per decade) in the North Atlantic Ocean and the central and the north of Africa. Lower increases (0.045–0.064C per decade) occurred in Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and the North Pacific Ocean.
ANTHRAX OUTBREAK INVESTIGATION AMONG HUMANS AND ANIMALS IN NORTHERN GHANA: CASE REPORT

Background: Anthrax is a bacterial infection that affects both animals and humans. It is caused by gram positive bacterium, Bacillus anthracis. It is an acute, specific infectious disease of mainly grass eating animals including cattle, sheep, goats and pigs and common in areas where livestock are raised. It affects humans when exposed to the fur, blood or carcass of an infected animal. A single case of anthrax in any given geographical area has the potential to result in an outbreak in both humans and animals if not handled effectively and in a timely manner. Anthrax disease occurrence is irregular in the northern regions of Ghana with yearly outbreaks. Case Study Awoonor-Williams et al.; IJTDH, 12(2): 1-11, 2016; Article no.IJTDH. 22359 2 Case Presentation: We report an outbreak investigation of anthrax in both humans and animals in April, 2013. The outbreak was from Gbengo community in the Bawku West district of Upper East Region of northern Ghana. There were three human deaths due to this particular outbreak, representing a case fatality rate of 0.032 (per 1000 of a total district population 94,034). Laboratory confirmed anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) with a very high case fatality rate (100%) also affected domesticated herbivorous mammals (17 cattle 3 sheep, 2 goats) of all ages and sexes. Conclusion: The case revealed that anthrax outbreaks remain a major problem in northern Ghana with high case fatality rate. It also highlights the importance of forecasting anthrax outbreak. In response, public health action to anthrax control with continued public health programming to avert future outbreaks is needed. In addition, both health systems and veterinary services need to collaborate in anthrax surveillance for early case detection and response to prevent deaths.