Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Data-Efficient Multirobot, Multitask Transfer Learning for Trajectory Tracking

Transfer learning has the potential to reduce the burden of data collection and to decrease the unavoidable risks of the training phase. In this letter, we introduce a multirobot, multitask transfer learning framework that allows a system to complete a task by learning from a few demonstrations of another task executed on another system. We focus on the trajectory tracking problem where each trajectory represents a different task, since many robotic tasks can be described as a trajectory tracking problem. The proposed multirobot transfer learning framework is based on a combined ${\mathcal{L}_1}$ adaptive control and an iterative learning control approach. The key idea is that the adaptive controller forces dynamically different systems to behave as a specified reference model. The proposed multitask transfer learning framework uses theoretical control results (e.g., the concept of vector relative degree) to learn a map from desired trajectories to the inputs that make the system track these trajectories with high accuracy. This map is used to calculate the inputs for a new, unseen trajectory. Experimental results using two different quadrotor platforms and six different trajectories show that, on average, the proposed framework reduces the first-iteration tracking error by 74% when information from tracking a different single trajectory on a different quadrotor is utilized.
Three‐directional acceleration phase mapping of myocardial function

An optimized acceleration encoded phase contrast method termed “acceleration phase mapping” for the assessment of regional myocardial function is presented. Based on an efficient gradient waveform design using two‐sided encoding for in vivo three‐directional acceleration mapping, echo and repetition times TE = 12–14 ms and TR = 15–17 ms for low accelerations sensitivity aenc = 5–8 m/s2 were achieved. In addition to phantom validation, the technique was applied in a study with 10 healthy volunteers at 1.5T and 3T to evaluate its feasibility to assess regional myocardial acceleration at 1.5T and 3T. Results of the acceleration measurements were compared with the temporal derivative of myocardial velocities from three‐directional velocity encoded standard phase contrast MRI in the same volunteers. The feasibility to assess myocardial acceleration along the radial, circumferential, and longitudinal direction of the left ventricle was demonstrated. Despite improved signal‐to‐noise‐ratio at 3T (34% increase compared with 1.5T), image quality with respect to susceptibility artifacts was better 1.5T compared with 3T. Analysis of global and regional left ventricular acceleration showed characteristic patterns of systolic and diastolic acceleration and deceleration. Comparisons of directly measured and derived myocardial acceleration dynamics over the cardiac cycle revealed good correlation (r = 0.45–0.68, P < 0.01) between both methods. Magn Reson Med, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Linear Time Clustering for High Dimensional Mixtures of Gaussian Clouds

Clustering mixtures of Gaussian distributions is a fundamental and challenging problem that is ubiquitous in various high-dimensional data processing tasks. While state-of-the-art work on learning Gaussian mixture models has focused primarily on improving separation bounds and their generalization to arbitrary classes of mixture models, less emphasis has been paid to practical computational efficiency of the proposed solutions. In this paper, we propose a novel and highly efficient clustering algorithm for $n$ points drawn from a mixture of two arbitrary Gaussian distributions in $\mathbb{R}^p$. The algorithm involves performing random 1-dimensional projections until a direction is found that yields a user-specified clustering error $e$. For a 1-dimensional separation parameter $\gamma$ satisfying $\gamma=Q^{-1}(e)$, the expected number of such projections is shown to be bounded by $o(\ln p)$, when $\gamma$ satisfies $\gamma\leq c\sqrt{\ln{\ln{p}}}$, with $c$ as the separability parameter of the two Gaussians in $\mathbb{R}^p$. Consequently, the expected overall running time of the algorithm is linear in $n$ and quasi-linear in $p$ at $o(\ln{p})O(np)$, and the sample complexity is independent of $p$. This result stands in contrast to prior works which provide polynomial, with at-best quadratic, running time in $p$ and $n$. We show that our bound on the expected number of 1-dimensional projections extends to the case of three or more Gaussian components, and we present a generalization of our results to mixture distributions beyond the Gaussian model.
APC/CFzr/Cdh1 promotes cell cycle progression during the Drosophila endocycle

The endocycle is a commonly observed variant cell cycle in which cells undergo repeated rounds of DNA replication with no intervening mitosis. How the cell cycle machinery is modified to transform a mitotic cycle into endocycle has long been a matter of interest. In both plants and animals, the transition from the mitotic cycle to the endocycle requires Fzr/Cdh1, a positive regulator of the Anaphase-Promoting Complex/Cyclosome (APC/C). However, because many of its targets are transcriptionally downregulated upon entry into the endocycle, it remains unclear whether the APC/C functions beyond the mitotic/endocycle boundary. Here, we report that APC/CFzr/Cdh1 activity is required to promote the G/S oscillation of the Drosophila endocycle. We demonstrate that compromising APC/C activity, after cells have entered the endocycle, inhibits DNA replication and results in the accumulation of multiple APC/C targets, including the mitotic cyclins and Geminin. Notably, our data suggest that the activity of APC/CFzr/Cdh1 during the endocycle is not continuous but is cyclic, as demonstrated by the APC/C-dependent oscillation of the pre-replication complex component Orc1. Taken together, our data suggest a model in which the cyclic activity of APC/CFzr/Cdh1 during the Drosophila endocycle is driven by the periodic inhibition of Fzr/Cdh1 by Cyclin E/Cdk2. We propose that, as is observed in mitotic cycles, during endocycles, APC/CFzr/Cdh1 functions to reduce the levels of the mitotic cyclins and Geminin in order to facilitate the relicensing of DNA replication origins and cell cycle progression.
Targeted sequencing analysis of ACVR2A gene identifies novel risk variants associated with preeclampsia

Abstract Background: Preeclampsia (PE) is the most common complication of pregnancy that remains to be a major cause of maternal and fetal mortality. Prediction and early diagnosis of PE would allow for timely initiation of preventive therapy. According to recent studies of ACVR2A gene polymorphism is associated with PE, but it is still unclear whether these findings reflect specific pathogenetic mechanisms of this disease. Methods: We performed targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) sequencing of ACVR2A gene by means of Ion Torrent Personal Genome machine (PGM) Sequencer. A genetic analysis of patients with PE and control group was performed. Bioinformatics analysis using Polyphen2 (Boston, MA), SIFT (La Jolla, CA), and SnpSift software were used. To select genetic markers in PE patients two additive models and score analysis were applied. Results: Based on the score analysis, we detected two substitutions (rs145399059 and rs17692648) and one insertion insAA at position 148642724 that were associated with PE in our cohorts. We also detected a variant rs17742573 that can be considered as protective against preeclampsia. Conclusions: Our data suggest that some variants in ACVR2A gene are associated with PE. But more studies are required to reveal the role of ACVR2A gene in the pathogenesis of this disease during pregnancy.
Sensitive permittivity detector for dielectric samples at 120 GHz

This work describes a dielectric sensing system applying a 120 GHz electrical interferometer for contactless permittivity measurements. The applied IC was fabricated in a 130 nm SiGe process featuring an ft and fmax of 240 GHz and 330 GHz. The on-chip system contains a 120 GHz VCO with a tuning range of 7 GHz featuring a divide-by-64 circuit to enable external PLL operation. An important feature of the IC is high-precision and high-resolution phase shifting based on a slow-wave transmission lines approach with digital control. This allows for direct digital readout ability. The on chip power detector provides DC output signals giving the opportunity to record transfer functions of the interferometer. It enables sample emulation capability by phase shift inducement in the measurement as well as a reference transmission line. The motherboard of the system provides PLL stabilization for frequency sweeps. The proposed approach is capable of automated dielectric monitoring by phase compensation.
Filling Insertion by Rapier: A Kinematic Model

A model of rapier filling insertion, using two half-width rapiers and end transfer, is proposed and its implications analyzed. Normalized forms of the critical characteristics that impose constraints on the system are evaluated. In particular, filling pickup velocity and the maximum velocity and maximum acceleration of the rapier are considered. The effects are examined of the parameters of the model, and of the form of generating function used to specify the rapier motion, on these normalized characteristics. The influence of the critical characteristics on the relation between working width and loom speed is then considered. The forms of width-speed relation implied by the limiting values of the critical characteristics are determined and compared with the form of this relation in practice.
Investigations on Tribological Mechanisms of Graphene Oxide and Oxidized Wood-Derived Nanocarbons as Water-Based Lubricating Additives

Graphene oxide (GO) contains graphitic single-layered sheets, while oxidized wood-based nanocarbon (oWNC) is composed of graphitic nanoshells. Since both materials are thoroughly oxidized with many oxygen-containing functional groups, both GOs and oWNCs form stable dispersions in water. We found that lubrication by dispersions of GOs and oWNCs in water resulted in very low friction coefficients below 0.04 with only slight plate surface wear using a steel plate and tungsten carbide ball. After lubrication, thick tribofilms are formed on the sliding surfaces, which would decrease the friction. In this study, in order to clarify the tribological mechanisms that result in such low friction coefficients, we have performed tribological tests and analyzed the tribofilms formed by dispersions of GO in water using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) with an optical data storage system, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The GO tribofilm is composed of many carbons and some oxygen, derived from the disordered and aggregated GO sheets. The GO tribofilm have higher hardness and hydrophilic properties than the steel plates, which would provide low friction and wear. It is found that both the GO tribofilm and GOs are necessary to achieve the lowest possible coefficient of friction. It is likely that the oWNC tribofilm has similar friction and wear decreasing effects to that of the GO dispersion.
Normalization method for online learning on radio access technology identification in cognitive radio

The identification of Radio Access Technology (RAT) of Primary User (PU) by Secondly User (SU) is important to avoid interference for spectrum sharing techniques using Cognitive Radio (CR). RATs have become more diversified with the introduction of various kinds of services using wireless communication. Therefore, it is desirable that a RAT identification system, which can easily cope with the diversification of RATs, is applied to cognitive radio. The purpose of this study is to identify multiple RATs in the same frequency band by using online learning. In order to improve the identification accuracy of RATs with similar features, we proposed a normalization method for radio features extracted from the signal's spectrogram. We evaluated the RAT classifier created using the proposed method by calculating the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve and the identification accuracy. The results of the ROC curve revealed that the proposed method is effective for some supervised learning. Moreover, the results of the identification accuracy revealed that it could improve the identification accuracy for multiple RATs on the same frequency by nearly 40%.
Engaging parents of children with and without asthma in smoking-specific parenting: results from a 3-year Randomized Controlled Trial evaluation.

The present study evaluated long-term effects of a home-based smoking prevention program targeting smoking-specific parenting in families with children with and without asthma. A total of 1398 non-smoking children (mean age 10.1) participated, of which 197 (14.1%) were diagnosed with asthma. Families were blinded to group assignment. The intervention group (n = 684) received booklets with assignments that actively encouraged parents to engage in smoking-specific parenting strategies. Control families (n = 714) received booklets containing basic information about youth smoking. Latent growth curve modeling was used to calculate intercepts and slopes to examine whether there was change in the different parenting aspects over the study period. Regression analyses were used to examine whether a possible change was different for intervention and control condition families with and without a child with asthma. For those smoking-specific parenting aspects that changed over time, families in the intervention and control condition increased similarly. Families with a child with asthma did not engage in parenting at higher levels due to the intervention program than parents of non-asthmatic children. This prevention program did not affect smoking-specific parenting in the Netherlands. Future prevention research could focus on other risk factors for smoking initiation among adolescents with asthma. TRIAL REGISTRATION Netherlands Trial Register NTR1465.
Sodium thiosulfate delays the progression of coronary artery calcification in haemodialysis patients.

BACKGROUND Coronary artery calcification (CAC) is prevalent among haemodialysis patients and predicts cardiovascular mortality. In addition to modifying traditional cardiovascular risk factors, therapy aimed at lowering serum phosphate and calcium-phosphate product has been advocated. Sodium thiosulfate, through its chelating property, removes calcium from precipitated minerals decreasing calcification burden in calcific uraemic arteriolopathy and soft tissue calcification. The effect of sodium thiosulfate on CAC in haemodialysis patients has never been studied. METHODS Eighty-seven stable chronic haemodialysis patients underwent multi-row spiral computed tomography and bone mineral density (BMD) measurement. Patients with a CAC score >or=300 were included to receive intravenous sodium thiosulfate infusion twice weekly post-haemodialysis for 4 months. CAC and BMD were re-evaluated at the end of the treatment course. RESULTS Progression of CAC occurred in 25% and 63% of the patients in the treatment and control group, respectively (P = 0.03). CAC score was unchanged in the treatment group but increased significantly in the control group. BMD of the total hip declined significantly in the treatment group. In multivariate analysis adjusted for factors that influenced CAC progression, therapy with sodium thiosulfate was an independent protective factor (odds ratio = 0.05, P = 0.04). Major side effects were persistent anorexia and metabolic acidosis. CONCLUSIONS The effect of sodium thiosulfate in delaying the progression of CAC is encouraging and will require a larger study. Determination of the safe therapeutic window is necessary in order to avoid bone demineralization.
Detecting mammographically occult cancer in women with dense breasts using Radon Cumulative Distribution Transform: a preliminary analysis

We propose using novel imaging biomarkers for detecting mammographically-occult (MO) cancer in women with dense breast tissue. MO cancer indicates visually occluded, or very subtle, cancer that radiologists fail to recognize as a sign of cancer. We used the Radon Cumulative Distribution Transform (RCDT) as a novel image transformation to project the difference between left and right mammograms into a space, increasing the detectability of occult cancer. We used a dataset of 617 screening full-field digital mammograms (FFDMs) of 238 women with dense breast tissue. Among 238 women, 173 were normal with 2 – 4 consecutive screening mammograms, 552 normal mammograms in total, and the remaining 65 women had an MO cancer with a negative screening mammogram. We used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to find representative patterns in normal mammograms in the RCDT space. We projected all mammograms to the space constructed by the first 30 eigenvectors of the RCDT of normal cases. Under 10-fold crossvalidation, we conducted quantitative feature analysis to classify normal mammograms and mammograms with MO cancer. We used receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to evaluate the classifier’s output using the area under the ROC curve (AUC) as the figure of merit. Four eigenvectors were selected via a feature selection method. The mean and standard deviation of the AUC of the trained classifier on the test set were 0.74 and 0.08, respectively. In conclusion, we utilized imaging biomarkers to highlight differences between left and right mammograms to detect MO cancer using novel imaging transformation.
Impacts of Current and Projected Oil Palm Plantation Expansion on Air Quality Over Southeast Asia

Abstract. Over recent decades oil palm plantations have rapidly expanded across Southeast Asia (SEA). According to the United Nations, oil palm production in SEA increased by a factor of 3 from 1995 to 2010. We investigate the impacts of current (2010) and near-term future (2020) projected oil palm expansion in SEA on surface–atmosphere exchange and the resulting air quality in the region. For this purpose, we use satellite data, high-resolution land maps, and the chemical transport model GEOS-Chem. Relative to a no oil palm plantation scenario (∼ 1990), overall simulated isoprene emissions in the region increased by 13 % due to oil palm plantations in 2010 and a further 11 % in the near-term future. In addition, the expansion of palm plantations leads to local increases in ozone deposition velocities of up to 20 %. The net result of these changes is that oil palm expansion in SEA increases surface O3 by up to 3.5 ppbv over dense urban regions, and in the near-term future could rise more than 4.5 ppbv above baseline levels. Biogenic secondary organic aerosol loadings also increase by up to 1 µg m−3 due to oil palm expansion, and could increase by a further 2.5 µg m−3 in the near-term future. Our analysis indicates that while the impact of recent oil palm expansion on air quality in the region has been significant, the retrieval error and sensitivity of the current constellation of satellite measurements limit our ability to observe these impacts from space. Oil palm expansion is likely to continue to degrade air quality in the region in the coming decade and hinder efforts to achieve air quality regulations in major urban areas such as Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
Effect of feed intake level and dietary protein content on the body temperature of pigs housed under thermo neutral conditions

Feed intake and diet composition appear to affect the body temperature of pigs. Two trials were conducted to analyse the effect of feed intake level and dietary protein content on the intestinal temperature (IT) of pigs housed under thermo neutral conditions. Ten pigs (64.1 ± 1.3 kg initial body weight) fitted with an ileal cannula were used. A thermometer set to register the IT at 5-min intervals was implanted into the ileum through the cannula. In both trials, the ambient temperature ranged from 19.1 to 21.6°C and the pigs were fed at 07:00 and 19:00 hr (same amount each time). In trial 1, the pigs were fed daily 1.2 or 1.8 kg of a wheat-soybean meal diet. The IT followed a similar pattern along a 24-hr period regardless the feed intake level. The IT rapidly increased up to 0.61 and 0.74°C after the morning meal and up to 0.53 and 0.47°C after the evening meal in pigs fed 1.2 and 1.8 kg/d respectively. The postprandial IT was higher in pigs fed 1.8 kg after each meal (p < .05). In trial 2, pigs were fed daily 1.8 kg of a low (11%) or a high (22%) crude protein diet. The IT followed a similar pattern along the 24-hr period regardless the dietary protein level. The postprandial IT did not differ between pigs fed the low protein or the high protein (p > .10). The IT rapidly increased up to 0.66 and 0.62°C after the morning meal in pigs fed the high- and low-protein diet (p < .05), but there was no change after the evening meal (p > .10). In conclusion, the feed intake level affected the IT of pigs housed under TN conditions, but the dietary protein content had no effect.
The language of geometry: Fast comprehension of geometrical primitives and rules in human adults and preschoolers

During language processing, humans form complex embedded representations from sequential inputs. Here, we ask whether a “geometrical language” with recursive embedding also underlies the human ability to encode sequences of spatial locations. We introduce a novel paradigm in which subjects are exposed to a sequence of spatial locations on an octagon, and are asked to predict future locations. The sequences vary in complexity according to a well-defined language comprising elementary primitives and recursive rules. A detailed analysis of error patterns indicates that primitives of symmetry and rotation are spontaneously detected and used by adults, preschoolers, and adult members of an indigene group in the Amazon, the Munduruku, who have a restricted numerical and geometrical lexicon and limited access to schooling. Furthermore, subjects readily combine these geometrical primitives into hierarchically organized expressions. By evaluating a large set of such combinations, we obtained a first view of the language needed to account for the representation of visuospatial sequences in humans, and conclude that they encode visuospatial sequences by minimizing the complexity of the structured expressions that capture them.
High anthropogenic carbon content in the eastern Mediterranean

This work presents data of dichlorodifluoromethane (CFC-12), dissolved inorganic carbon and total alkalinity from a cruise to the Mediterranean Sea during October–November 2001, with the main focus on the CFC-12 data and on the eastern basin. Using the transit time distribution method, the anthropogenic carbon concentrations in the basin were estimated. Results were cross-checked with a back-calculation technique. The entire water column of the Mediterranean Sea contains anthropogenic CO2, with minimum concentrations of 20.5 μmol kg−1 (error range: 16.9–27.1 μmol kg−1) in the most eastern part of the basin at intermediate depths, where the waters' mean age is >130 yr. Column inventories of up to 154 mol m−2 (132–179 mol m−2) are found and a total inventory of 1.7 Pg (1.3–2.1 Pg) of anthropogenic carbon in the Mediterranean Sea was estimated. There is a net flux of 38 Tg yr−1 (30–47 Tg yr−1) of dissolved inorganic carbon through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic Ocean and an opposite net flux of 3.5 Tg yr−1 (−1.8–9.2 Tg yr−1) of anthropogenic carbon into the Mediterranean Sea.