Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improved Genetic Algorithms Based Path planning of Mobile Robot Under Dynamic Unknown Environment

Aiming at path planning of mobile robot under part of dynamic unknown environment, there are some shortages in the aspects of produce of initial population and the structure of specific genetic operator in current used genetic algorithms. In this paper, using the position feedback and forecast of moving direction of obstacle, we present a new method of robot path planning based on improved genetic algorithms combined with numerical potential field. The problem of path planning and avoiding obstacles under dynamic environment was resolved by path re-planning. The shape of obstacle is not limited, and the research is close to the real work environment of robot. The specific genetic operator, fitness function and real coded were designed in this paper. The simulation instances under multi various complex dynamic environments verify that our algorithm of robot path planning is high efficient, and the operation speed and accuracy are improved
Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Modulates Nociceptive Sensory Inputs and NMDA-Evoked Responses in the Rat Spinal Cord

Central sensitization, the hyperexcitability of spinal processing that often accompanies peripheral injury, is a major component of many persistent pain states. Here we report that the neurotrophin, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), is a modulator of excitability within the spinal cord and contributes to the mechanism of central sensitization. BDNF, localized in primary sensory neuron cell bodies and central terminals, potentiates nociceptive spinal reflex responses in an in vitro spinal cord preparation and induces c-fos expression in dorsal horn neurons. NMDA receptor-mediated responses, known as a major contributor to central sensitization, were significantly enhanced by exogenous BDNF. Systemic NGF treatment, a procedure that mimics peripheral inflammatory states, raises BDNF levels in sensory neurons and increases nociceptive spinal reflex excitability. This increased central excitability is reduced by trkB-IgG, a BDNF “antagonist. ” We also show directly that inflammatory pain-related behavior depends on BDNF release in vivo. Thus behavioral nociceptive responses induced by intraplantar formalin and by intraplantar carageenan are significantly attenuated by trkB-IgG. Hence BDNF is appropriately localized and regulated in inflammatory states and is sufficient and necessary for the expression of central sensitization in the spinal cord. We propose that BDNF may function as a modulator of central sensitization in pathological states, and our results suggest that pharmacological antagonism of BDNF may prove an effective and novel analgesic strategy for the treatment of persistent inflammatory pain states.
A high reliability and low latency routing algorithm in cognitive wireless mesh networks

A channel utility value computing CUVC algorithm is proposed. The channel utility value contains channel usage probability and channel stability. A high reliability and low latency wireless link weight computing algorithm RL2W is proposed. On this basis, a high reliability and low latency routing and spectrum allocation algorithm based on dynamic programming in cognitive wireless mesh networks HRL2A is proposed. High reliability and low latency route is the objective of HRL2A. Firstly, HRL2A computes the channel utility value using CUVC for constructing the high reliability route. Secondly, HRL2A uses the algorithm RL2W computing wireless link weight. Thirdly, the route of high reliability and low latency is constructed based on dynamic programming, and the wireless link channel is allocated. Simulation results show that HRL2A algorithm can achieve expectation goal. The construction route not only has higher reliability, but also has lower latency. The throughput has been increased.
Relationships between somatic growth and cognitive functioning in young children with sickle cell disease.

OBJECTIVE Children with sickle cell disease (SCD) exhibit poor somatic growth due to nutritional and metabolic effects, but potential relationships between growth and other areas of development are unclear. We examined whether growth is related to cognition and whether growth might be one marker of neurocognitive risk. METHODS Sixty-four children with SCD and eighty-one demographically similar controls, ages 4 to 8 years, completed cognitive and anthropometric measures. RESULTS Height-for-age partially accounted for cognitive decrements related to SCD on all cognitive measures. Higher body-mass-index was a significant predictor of higher visual-motor and academic achievement scores in children with SCD, but not in controls. CONCLUSIONS In some children with SCD, especially those with HbSS and Hb Sbeta(0), low height-for-age may help to explain neurocognitive risk. Higher body-mass-index may be related to better cognitive outcomes in children with SCD. Nutrition deficits in SCD could explain the association between somatic growth and cognitive deficits.
A Multicompartment Approach - Diatoms, Macrophytes, Benthic Macroinvertebrates and Fish - To Assess the Impact of Toxic Industrial Releases on a Small French River

The River Luzou flows through a sandy substrate in the South West of France. According to the results of two assessment surveys, the Water Agency appraised that this river may not achieve the good ecological status by 2015 as required by the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC). This ecosystem is impacted by industrial effluents (organic matter, metals and aromatic compounds). In order to assess and characterize the impact, this study aimed to combine a set of taxonomic and non-taxonomic metrics for diatoms, macrophytes, macroinvertebrates and fish along the up- to downstream gradient of the river. Diversity metrics, biological indices, biological and ecological traits were determined for the four biological quality elements (BQE). Various quantitative metrics (biomass estimates) were also calculated for diatom communities. The results were compared to physicochemical analysis. Biological measurements were more informative than physicochemical analysis, in the context of the study. Biological responses indicated both the contamination of water and its intensity. Diversity metrics and biological indices strongly decreased with pollution for all BQE but diatoms. Convergent trait selection with pollution was observed among BQE: reproduction, colonization strategies, or trophic regime were clearly modified at impaired sites. Taxon size and relation to the substrate diverged among biological compartments. Multiple anthropogenic pollution calls for alternate assessment methods of rivers' health. Our study exemplifies the fact that, in the case of complex contaminations, biological indicators can be more informative for environmental risk, than a wide screening of contaminants by chemical analysis alone. The combination of diverse biological compartments provided a refined diagnostic about the nature (general mode of action) and intensity of the contamination.
The application of tools and techniques in a unified service design theory

This research focuses on the execution-oriented back end of new service development. It reviews extensively existing theories of service design and the tools and techniques used at the design stage. Based on a review of the work from several well-known service-research academicians, this research unifies the state-of-the-art thinking on service design by proposing three tracks of activities. To make the design process more effective and efficient, we also classify the tools and techniques identified in the literature according to the three tracks.
Cinétique de croissance d'une cheminée fluidisée par modélisation DEM-LBM

Au-dela d’un certain seuil, un ecoulement fluide ascendant a debit constant, injecte a travers une section de petite dimension, parvient a generer une fluidisation sur toute la hauteur d’une couche de grain, le long d’une cheminee fluidisee. La fluidisation est amorcee a proximite directe de l’injection puis la zone fluidisee croit progressivement vers le haut jusqu’a la surface superieure de l’empilement granulaire. Nous presentons ici des resultats numeriques pour cette cinetique de croissance de cheminee fluidisee dans un lit granulaire immerge en s’appuyant sur une simulation bidimensionnelle couplant la Methode aux Elements Discrets et la Methode Lattice Boltzmann (DEM-LBM). Une etude parametrique a ete menee et une analyse dimensionnelle nous a permis de proposer des lois d’echelle pour le seuil de fluidisation et pour la taux de croissance de la zone fluidisee.
Association between perceived weight discrimination and physical activity: a population-based study among English middle-aged and older adults

Objective To examine the association between perceived weight discrimination and physical activity in a large population-based sample. Design Data were from 2423 men and 3057 women aged ≥50 years participating in Wave 5 (2010/11) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Participants reported experiences of weight discrimination in everyday life and frequency of light, moderate and vigorous physical activities. We used logistic regression to test associations between perceived weight discrimination and physical activity, controlling for age, sex, socioeconomic status and body mass index (BMI). Results Perceived weight discrimination was associated with almost 60% higher odds of being inactive (OR 1.59, 95% CI 1.05 to 2.40, p=.028) and 30% lower odds of engaging in moderate or vigorous activity at least once a week (OR 0.70, 95% CI 0.53 to 0.94, p=.017). Conclusions Independent of BMI, individuals who perceive unfair treatment on the basis of their weight are less physically active than those who do not perceive discrimination. This has important implications for the health and well-being of individuals who experience weight-based discrimination, and may also contribute to a cycle of weight gain and further mistreatment.
Glenohumeral Range of Motion Deficits and Posterior Shoulder Tightness in Throwers with Pathologic Internal Impingement

Background Alterations in glenohumeral range of motion, including increased posterior shoulder tightness and glenohumeral internal rotation deficit that exceeds the accompanying external rotation gain, are suggested contributors to throwing-related shoulder injuries such as pathologic internal impingement. Yet these contributors have not been identified in throwers with internal impingement. Hypothesis Throwers with pathologic internal impingement will exhibit significantly increased posterior shoulder tightness and glenohumeral internal rotation deficit without significantly increased external rotation gain. Study Design Case control study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods Eleven throwing athletes with pathologic internal impingement diagnosed using both clinical examination and a magnetic resonance arthrogram were demographically matched with 11 control throwers who had no history of upper extremity injury. Passive glenohumeral internal and external rotation were measured bilaterally with standard goniometry at 90 ° of humeral abduction and elbow flexion. Bilateral differences in glenohumeral range of motion were used to calculate glenohumeral internal rotation deficit and external rotation gain. Posterior shoulder tightness was quantified as the bilateral difference in passive shoulder horizontal adduction with the scapula retracted and the shoulder at 90 ° of elevation. Comparisons were made between groups with dependent t-tests (P< .05). Results The throwing athletes with internal impingement demonstrated signif icantly greater glenohumeral internal rotation deficit (P= .03) and posterior shoulder tightness (P= .03) compared with the control subjects. No significant differences were observed in external rotation gain between groups (P= .16). Clinical Relevance These findings could indicate that a tightening of the posterior elements of the shoulder (capsule, rotator cuff) may contribute to impingement. The results suggest that management should include stretching to restore flexibility to the posterior shoulder.
Performance evaluation of Datagram Congestion Control Protocol in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is proposed for the efficient servicing of multimedia traffic flows in Internet and it does not make use of any congestion control mechanism. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is working on development of a protocol standard that is suited to the needs of multimedia applications, known as the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) [6]. DCCP combines the end-to-end transport and congestion control semantics of TCP with the low-delay unreliable service provided by UDP. DCCP performance over the wired network with bursty traffic has been tested and has shown that DCCP holds promise as a wired network transport protocol [4]. However, to the best of our knowledge, the working of DCCP over Mobile Ad hoc Networks has not been evaluated. In this paper, we have evaluated the performance of DCCP over Mobile Ad Hoc Networks [10]. The two congestion control schemes made available under DCCP (TCP-like - CCID2 and TFRC - CCID3) were evaluated in a simulation environment, comparing with TCP considering throughput, end-to-end delay and packet loss as metrics [7,8]. Our results show that DCCP achieves considerably better throughput than TCP.
Lower thigh design of detailed musculoskeletal humanoid “Kenshiro”

In order to know human dynamics, humanoid as a human body simulator is increasing its importance. Such humanoid is expected to have human musculoskeletal structure as close as possible. From this viewpoint, we are trying to create new musculoskeletal humanoid which has detailed human imitating structure, such as bi-articular muscle, muscle arrangement, joint structure and so on. In this paper, we address the design of lower thigh. The concepts of the thigh include leg configuration, new knee joint and link, and artificial muscle arrangements, especially knee joint structure imitating human flexible motion. The knee joint has yaw axis DOF and its locking mechanism which is usually simplified in robotics. Finally, we conduct extension, flexion and rotation as basic experiment to confirm the joint characteristics. Also, we conduct rotation experiment in the ground state to confirm the contribution of yaw axis DOF for human-like motion.
Dynamics of climatic and anthropogenic stressors in risking island-char livelihoods: a case of northwestern Bangladesh

ABSTRACT Livelihood in developing countries draws grave attention to the climatic and anthropogenic stressors that contribute to risk the livelihood despite diversification, and thus wane people’s adaptive capacity and capabilities to cope with unanticipated shocks. Following stratified purposive sampling techniques, a total of nine focus group sessions were performed at three island-chars of Mahishkhocha union in Lalmonirhat district, from February to May in 2013, and explores current livelihood practices and likely risks. The analysis explores evolving risks sprouted from climatic stressors including riverbank erosion, flooding, cold wave, erratic rainfalls and droughts that contribute to livelihood disturbances and slothful processes of sustainable livelihood renewal. The findings suggest that risks are compounded by anthropogenic stressors classifying into state and non-state engagements across manifold institutional scales and policy arrangements, providing insight for promoting rural livelihoods through different actors, formal and informal institutions. Despite challenges to addressing likely risks at different scales, this research demonstrates how public policies can elevate adverse conditions for the emergence of sustainable livelihood pathways.
Isotopic Investigation of Contemporary and Historic Changes in Penguin Trophic Niches and Carrying Capacity of the Southern Indian Ocean

A temperature-defined regime shift occurred in the 1970s in the southern Indian Ocean, with simultaneous severe decreases in many predator populations. We tested a possible biological link between the regime shift and predator declines by measuring historic and contemporary feather isotopic signatures of seven penguin species with contrasted foraging strategies and inhabiting a large latitudinal range. We first showed that contemporary penguin isotopic variations and chlorophyll a concentration were positively correlated, suggesting the usefulness of predator δ13C values to track temporal changes in the ecosystem carrying capacity and its associated coupling to consumers. Having controlled for the Suess effect and for increase CO2 in seawater, δ13C values of Antarctic penguins and of king penguins did not change over time, while δ13C of other subantarctic and subtropical species were lower in the 1970s. The data therefore suggest a decrease in ecosystem carrying capacity of the southern Indian Ocean during the temperature regime-shift in subtropical and subantarctic waters but not in the vicinity of the Polar Front and in southward high-Antarctic waters. The resulting lower secondary productivity could be the main driving force explaining the decline of subtropical and subantarctic (but not Antarctic) penguins that occurred in the 1970s. Feather δ15N values did not show a consistent temporal trend among species, suggesting no major change in penguins’ diet. This study highlights the usefulness of developing long-term tissue sampling and data bases on isotopic signature of key marine organisms to track potential changes in their isotopic niches and in the carrying capacity of the environment.
Formal Foundations For Software Defined Networks

• Two-tiered architecture: An SDN “program” has two distinct components: the controller program itself and the packetprocessing rules installed on switches. These pieces have intricate dependencies that make reasoning difficult—e.g., installing or removing a rule can prevent the controller from receiving future network events. Hence, a programmer must reason about the behavior of the controller program, the rules on switches, and the interactions between the two via asynchronous messages.
Strategies for ICT use in the public sector in the least developed countries: a cross-country analysis

The adoption and effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has the potential to yield significant benefits in the least developed countries (LDCs), which are recognized as the most vulnerable in the international community. The aim of this study was to investigate strategies to advance the use of ICT in the public sector in LDCs, with the aim of improving services and outcomes for government and citizens. A multi-level framework for analysis was developed, consistent with a structuration-type theoretical approach. A meta-analysis of data gathered in a UN study of egovernment readiness was performed, focussing on the developing countries that have greatly improved their relative positions recently. In general, the findings support the multi-level approach. At the national level, a low level of economic development, poor infrastructure and political unrest are inhibitors of public sector ICT progress. At a base level, access by individuals and organizations to ICT tools and IT-related education is necessary for e-government to be feasible. Some strategies were observed to be linked to progress with e-government across a number of developing countries: leadership and willingness to initiate change within the government sector, an incremental, step-by-step approach to development, and some sensitivity to local and cultural needs.
Hydrogen-bonding motifs in 4-carboxyphenylammonium nitrate and perchlorate monohydrate, and in bis(4-carboxyphenylammonium) sulfate.

In the title compounds, C7H8NO2+. NO3-, (I), C7H8NO2+. ClO4-. H2O, (II), and 2C7H8NO2+. SO4(2-), (III), the carboxyl planes of the 4-carboxyphenylammonium cations are twisted from the aromatic plane. A homonuclear C(8) hydrogen-bonding motif of 4-carboxyphenylammonium cations is observed in both (I) and (II), leading to ;head-to-tail' layers. The cations in (III) form carboxyl group dimers, making a graph-set motif of R2(2)(8). In all the structures, anions connect the cationic layers and an infinite chain running along the c axis is observed, having the C2(2)(6) graph-set motif. Interestingly, in (II), the anions are connected through weak hydrogen bonds involving the water molecules, leading to a graph-set motif of R4(4)(12). Alternate hydrophobic and hydrophilic layers are observed in all three compounds as a result of the column-like arrangement of the aromatic rings of the cations and the anions. Furthermore, in (I), head-to-tail N-H.O interactions and interactions linking the cations and anions form an R6(4)(16) hydrogen-bonding motif, resulting in a pseudo-inversion centre at (1/2, 1/2, 0).
The Control of Natural Motion in Mechanical Systems

This paper concerns a simple extension of Lord Kelvin's observation that energy decays in a dissipative mechanical system. The global limit behavior ofsuch systems can be made essentially equivalent to that of much simpler gradient systems by the introduction of a "navigationfunction" in the role of an artificial field. This recourse to the mechanical system's natural motion helps transform the open-ended problem of autonomous machine design into the more structured problem of finding an appropriate "cost function" in the many situations that the goal may be encoded as a setpoint problem with configuration constraints. This paper offers a unified exposition of some recent results [13, 12, 15] heretofore scattered throughout a more mathematically oriented literature that strengthen our original suggestion [8, 9] concerning the utility of controlling natural motion as a means of simultaneously encoding, planning and effecting tasks in mechanical systems. The chief theoretical insight, Theorem 2, is a global global version of Lord Kelvin's century old result on the dissipation of total energy. Establishing this extension yields a rather general design principlethe notion of a navigation function-that seems to have useful application in a variety of settings. Roughly speaking, it offers a checklist of criteria for achieving the strongest possible convergence properties allowed on a configuration space by a smooth and bounded force/torque control strategy. Some simple examples introduced here may aid the exposition of these ideas. A sequel [10] to this paper illustrates how the ideas may be applied in more realistic settings. This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn. edu/ese_papers/470