Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hierarchical traffic control for partially decentralized coordination of multi AGV systems in industrial environments

This paper deals with decentralized coordination of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). We propose a hierarchical traffic control algorithm, that implements path planning on a two layer architecture. The high-level layer describes the topological relationships among different areas of the environment. In the low-level layer, each area includes a set of fixed routes, along which the AGVs have to move. An algorithm is also introduced for the automatic definition of the route map itself. The coordination among the AGVs is obtained exploiting shared resources (i.e. centralized information) and local negotiation (i.e. decentralized coordination). The proposed strategy is validated by means of simulations using real plant.
The Meanings of Stress

The concept of meaning plays a central role in major conceptualizations of the stress process, yet it remains underanalyzed by sociologists. In this article, the author proposes a series of research questions that place meaning construction at the center of the stress process. The questions are motivated by a review of limitations of prior approaches to analyzing meaning: appraisals, narrative ratings, social context, and respondents’ personal meanings. These approaches use meaning to improve the prediction of stress outcomes but neglect their social origins. Two new lines of research on meaning are proposed to address this limitation: the structural and cultural origins of meaning and the process of meaning negotiation. These lines of research broaden the view of the “social” in social stress research and allow a more comprehensive understanding of the processes through which social arrangements affect personal distress.
Synergistic Activity of Colistin and Ceftazidime against Multiantibiotic-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa in an In Vitro Pharmacodynamic Model

ABSTRACT Despite the marketing of a series of new antibiotics for antibiotic-resistant gram-positive bacteria, no new agents for multiple-antibiotic-resistant gram-negative infections will be available for quite some time. Clinicians will need to find more effective ways to utilize available agents. Colistin is an older but novel antibiotic that fell into disfavor with clinicians some time ago yet still retains a very favorable antibacterial spectrum, especially for Pseudomonas and Acinetobacter spp. Time-kill curves for two strains of multiantibiotic-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa were generated after exposure to colistin alone or in combination with ceftazidime or ciprofloxacin in an in vitro pharmacodynamic model. MICs of colistin, ceftazidime, ciprofloxacin, piperacillin-tazobactam, imipenem, and tobramycin were 0.125, ≥32, >4, >128/4, 16, and >16 mg/liter, respectively. Colistin showed rapid, apparently concentration-dependent bactericidal activity at concentrations between 3 and 200 mg/liter. We were unable to detect increased colistin activity at concentrations above 18 mg/liter due to extremely rapid killing. The combination of colistin and ceftazidime was synergistic (defined as at least a 2-log10 drop in CFU per milliliter from the count obtained with the more active agent) at 24 h. Adding ciprofloxacin to colistin did not enhance antibiotic activity. These data suggest that the antibacterial effect of colistin combined with ceftazidime can be maximized at a peak concentration of ≤18 mg/liter.
Science in support of the Deepwater Horizon response

This introduction to the Special Feature presents the context for science during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response, summarizes how scientific knowledge was integrated across disciplines and statutory responsibilities, identifies areas where scientific information was accurate and where it was not, and considers lessons learned and recommendations for future research and response. Scientific information was integrated within and across federal and state agencies, with input from nongovernmental scientists, across a diverse portfolio of needs—stopping the flow of oil, estimating the amount of oil, capturing and recovering the oil, tracking and forecasting surface oil, protecting coastal and oceanic wildlife and habitat, managing fisheries, and protecting the safety of seafood. Disciplines involved included atmospheric, oceanographic, biogeochemical, ecological, health, biological, and chemical sciences, physics, geology, and mechanical and chemical engineering. Platforms ranged from satellites and planes to ships, buoys, gliders, and remotely operated vehicles to laboratories and computer simulations. The unprecedented response effort depended directly on intense and extensive scientific and engineering data, information, and advice. Many valuable lessons were learned that should be applied to future events.
Story Management Technologies for Organizational Learning

The stories told among members of an organization are an effective instrument for knowledge socialization, the sharing of experiences through social mechanisms. However, the utility of stories for organizational learning is limited due to the difficulties in acquiring stories that are relevant to the practices of an organization, identifying the learning goals that these stories serve, and delivering these stories to the right people and the right time in a manner that best facilitates learning. In this paper we outline a vision for story-based organizational learning in the future, and describe three areas where intelligent technologies can be applied to automate story management practices in support of organizational learning. First, we describe automated story capture technologies that identify narratives of people’s experiences within the context of a larger discourse. Second, we describe automated retrieval technologies that identify stories that are relevant to specific educational needs. Third, we describe how stories can be transformed into effective story-based learning environments with minimal development costs.
On the Impact of Incentives in eMule {Analysis and Measurements of a Popular File-Sharing Application}

Motivated by the popularity of content distribution and file sharing applications that nowadays dominate Internet traffic, we focus on the incentive mechanism of a very popular, yet not very well studied, peer-to-peer application, eMule. In our work, we recognize that the incentive scheme of eMule is more sophisticated than current alternatives (e.g., BitTorrent) as it uses a general, priority-based, time-dependent queuing discipline to differentiate service among cooperative users and free-riders. In this paper, we describe a general model of such an incentive mechanism and analyze its properties in terms of application performance. We validate our model using both numerical simulations (when analytical techniques become prohibitive) and with a measurement campaign of the live eMule system. Our results, in addition to validating our model, indicate that the incentive scheme of eMule suffers from starvation. Therefore, we present an alternative scheme that mitigates this problem, and validate it through numerical simulations and a second measurement campaign.
Grid-Based Models for Dynamic Environments

The majority of existing approaches to mobile robot mapping assume that the world is static, an assumption which does not hold in most practical application domains. In this paper we present a probabilistic grid-based approach for modeling dynamic environments representing both, the occupancy and the dynamics of the corresponding area. We describe the environment as a spatial grid and use a hidden Markov model to represent the occupancy state and state transition probabilities of each grid cell. Our approach updates the occupancy state as observations become available. We describe an offline and an online technique to estimate the transition probabilities of the model from observed data. Experimental results show that our model is better suited for representing dynamic environments than standard occupancy grids. Furthermore, the results show that the explicit representation of the environment dynamics can be used to improve robot navigation.
Intergenerational mobility in britain: New evidence from the british household panel survey

© Cambridge University Press 2004 and 2009. In this chapter, we analyse the degree of intergenerational mobility in Britain using a data source that has never been used before for this purpose: the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the period 1991–99. Examination of this issue is, at present, limited by the short life of the survey – indeed, the first wave of data of the BHPS was collected in 1991. Nonetheless, such data allow us to make two distinct contributions. The first is substantive and refers to a better understanding (and measurement) of social mobility in Britain for a large sample of individuals from several cohorts and different backgrounds. This can be achieved by employing a measure of socio-economic position that is commonly used in sociology, the Hope–Goldthorpe score of occupational prestige. The results from this analysis are interesting in their own right, and may help integrate the findings that have emerged from sociology and economics in the recent past. The second contribution is methodological, and suggestive of the potentials that the BHPS offers for future research in this and related areas. This goal is achieved by matching parents to their young adult children who are in the labor market, and allows us to examine mobility using measures of economic position that are more conventional for economists, such as earnings and income. Although the estimates are far from conclusive, they are suggestive of avenues for future research.
Facilitating dialog in the game-based learning classroom: Teacher challenges reconstructing professional identity

Despite widespread interest in the use of digital games to engage students and enhance the quality of student learning, the teacher’s perspective has been less extensively studied. The challenges that teachers face when enacting authentic game-based learning predicated on dialogic pedagogy in the classroom offer powerful opportunities for professional learning despite potentially engendering stressful experiences. In this paper, we draw on the conceptual frame of dilemmatic spaces to theorise and document challenges teachers encounter when learning to enact dialogic facilitation in a game-based learning curriculum. Based on coded interview data drawn from nine teachers, our findings suggest that teachers wrestle with tensions engendered by habituated modes of classroom teaching and the need to redefine power relations with students. They experience a gap between their existing professional practice when they embark on the curriculum—their being—and striving to perform the role of an effective dialogic teacher—their becoming. The (re)construction of teacher identity that emerges is contingent on how teachers respond to continuing professional development as well as how they deal with challenges they face in the classroom. Keywords: dialog, dilemma, game-based learning, performance, identity, becoming I Must Not Prepare ! Relax. Breathe. Be yourself. This time I went unprepared. Or so I managed to convince myself. I didn’t go through any readings this time, didn’t run through how the discussion should go in my head but merely decided on an anchor for the discussion. These were some points raised during the discussion; “Money can buy everything”, “the teacher betrayed us”, “everyone started to attack us”, “we need to build up resources”, “we need to be prepared”. Each time a point was raised, my mind went into overdrive thinking of ways to bring the discussion “back on track”. Turned out, it was a rather weak attempt to “yank” the discussion back to where I’d wanted it to go. The discussion became disjointed and in my opinion, had failed rather miserably again. Instead of being a point of reference, the anchor became the yoke. (Teacher’s blog entry, reflecting on a game-based learning lesson) Chee, Mehrotra and Ong
GIGANTEA – an emerging story

GIGANTEA (GI) is a plant specific nuclear protein and functions in diverse physiological processes such as flowering time regulation, light signaling, hypocotyl elongation, control of circadian rhythm, sucrose signaling, starch accumulation, chlorophyll accumulation, transpiration, herbicide tolerance, cold tolerance, drought tolerance, and miRNA processing. It has been five decades since its discovery but the biochemical function of GI and its different domains are still unclear. Although it is known that both GI transcript and GI protein are clock controlled, the regulation of its abundance and functions at the molecular level are still some of the unexplored areas of intensive research. Since GI has many important pleotropic functions as described above scattered through literature, it is worthwhile and about time to encapsulate the available information in a concise review. Therefore, in this review, we are making an attempt to summarize (i) the various interconnected roles that GI possibly plays in the fine-tuning of plant development, and (ii) the known mutations of GI that have been instrumental in understanding its role in distinct physiological processes.
The Nature and Dynamics of Relevance and Valence Appraisals: Theoretical Advances and Recent Evidence

Appraisal theories of emotion have had a strong impact on the development of theory and experimental research in the domain of the affective sciences. While there is generally a high degree of convergence between theorists in this tradition, some central issues are open to debate. In this contribution three issues have been chosen for discussion: (a) varieties of relevance detection, (b) varieties of valence appraisal, and (c) sequential-cumulative effects of appraisal results. In addressing these issues, new theoretical ideas are suggested and an update of recent research on the sequence of appraisal processes is provided. Special emphasis is placed on nonverbal signatures of appraisal processes.
Use of somatic embryogenesis as a vehicle for cotton transformation

Cotton has been aptly described as the prosperity plant owing to its unrivalled economic importance as a source of feedstock, food and oil, as well as raw material for diverse industrial applications, ranging from textile and footwear to automobiles, energy, medical and pharmaceutical. As such, over 180 million people of the world depend on its production for livelihood. However, cotton production is grossly hampered, and has long been peaked in many regions where it is being grown. Without prejudice to the genetic improvement already made by conventional breeding with respect to yield and quality over the years, genetic transformation is arguably the last recourse for further development of cotton, especially with respect to the prevailing production constraints of insect pests, weeds, environmental stresses and diseases. This review therefore focuses on the use of somatic embryogenesis as a vehicle for cotton genetic transformation. It indeed attempts to overview the challenges of cotton transformation with respect to narrow genetic base coupled with the recalcitrant nature of the crop species, as well as the research success achieved so far. It then discusses the underlying mechanisms of somatic embryogenesis as well as the current constraints and various strategies being used to overcome them; all with the aim of motivating interest groups to initiate research activities in cotton biotechnology and to strive for its optimization for further genetic improvement. Key words: Somatic embryos, genetic transformation, plant regeneration, genetic regulation, classical breeding.
Partners With Power: Social Transformation of the Large Law Firm

Partners with Power, by Robert L. Nelson, is a fascinating analysis of the present condition of the largest law firms in the United States and should be required reading for their managing partners. Illuminated by statistics illustrating the methods and manners of large law firm organization and operation, it contains a wealth of detail about the ways in which the largest firms have bureaucratized themselves to meet the demands of their corporate and institutional clients and to remain profitable. Perhaps the most valuable feature of Nelson's book is his comparative analysis of four large Chicago-based firms (with true names carefully concealed), and how each, in its own way, deals with management and professional issues in light of its particular heritage and professional style. The range stretches from one firm whose partners "resemble barons in a feudal system" to another whose partners, in good bureaucratic style, serve as "governors" willing to trade privilege and independence for administrative efficiency. Nelson takes a less optimistic view than did Irwin Smigel in his studies, begun in the late 1950s and published in the mid 1960s. Smigel concluded that large law firms maintained a commitment to the practice of law as something more than a mere business. As lawyers and officers of the Court, they were, he found, paying homage to the highest ideals of the legal system in their professional and public lives. Such elite lawyers, Smigel maintained, would guide America's great businesses along responsible lines of corporate conduct. This, indeed, had been the progressive role envisioned by the original founders of the.arge law firms such as Paul D. Cravath in New York and Reginald Heber Smith in Bos-
Exploratory Study of Decision-Making in Low-Income Couples

This report focuses on the role of partners and spouses in the decision-making processes of social service clients. Using survey data, direct observation of couple interactions, and physiological measurement, findings suggest that the decisions of individuals receiving public assistanceâ€”married or unmarriedâ€”are affected by their partners. If confirmed by future research, these results have implications for the delivery, content, and outcome measurement of social services for low-income families.
A Streaming Real-Time Web Observatory Architecture for Monitoring the Health of Social Machines

Over the past years, streaming Web services have become popular, with many of the top Web platforms now offering near real-time streams of user and machine activity. In light of this, Web Observatories now are faced with the challenge of being able to process and republish real-time, big data, Web streams, whilst maintaining access control and data consistency. In this paper we describe the architecture used in the Southampton Web Observatory to harvest, process, and serve real-time Web streams.
Baumol's disease.

Baumol’s disease in the Netherlands Dick Brus* Later studies often confirmed the lagging productivity of labour as the main cause of the growth in services employment, but not the only one. For example, Inman (1985) finds shat the high income elasticity of services matters, as well as the fact that economic growth is accompanied by specialisation, leading to a rise of the share of services contracted out. In this article we assess whether Baumol’s disease also holds for the Netherlands. To do justice to the highly divergent activities in the market services sector, we also investigate in more detail the development in market services output and employment.
An Advance Lean Production System In Industry To Improve Flexibility And Quality In manufacturing By Implementation Of FMS & Green Manufacturing

Many of industries are going to stand in the market in front of their competitor with a lot of industrial growth and good quality of product. But in this race they don’t think about the flexibility in customer relation or satisfaction as well as operational flexibility. Lean manufacturing provide the use of everything for industrial growth and Flexible manufacturing system gives the direction with customer satisfaction and overall flexibility in the operation. These both systems provide a good efficiency and maximum customer satisfaction. The Green manufacturing used with these both systems; FMS & LMS, for aim of to give a environmental and health friendly output. These systems are the new inventions for advance future with a overall efficient systems. In this paper we focus on the better way of producing high quality of products with a lot of flexible manufacturing and also to focus that the system will be follow green manufacturing. Keywords— Lean manufacturing, Flexible manufacturing system, green manufacturing, Elements of lean manufacturing system, and implementation of LMS & FMS.
Statistical voice activity detection using a multiple observation likelihood ratio test

Currently, there are technology barriers inhibiting speech processing systems that work in extremely noisy conditions from meeting the demands of modern applications. This letter presents a new voice activity detector (VAD) for improving speech detection robustness in noisy environments and the performance of speech recognition systems. The algorithm defines an optimum likelihood ratio test (LRT) involving multiple and independent observations. The so-defined decision rule reports significant improvements in speech/nonspeech discrimination accuracy over existing VAD methods that are defined on a single observation and need empirically tuned hangover mechanisms. The algorithm has an inherent delay that, for several applications, including robust speech recognition, does not represent a serious implementation obstacle. An analysis of the overlap between the distributions of the decision variable shows the improved robustness of the proposed approach by means of a clear reduction of the classification error as the number of observations is increased. The proposed strategy is also compared to different VAD methods, including the G.729, AMR, and AFE standards, as well as recently reported algorithms showing a sustained advantage in speech/nonspeech detection accuracy and speech recognition performance.