Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Supernumerary Robotic Leg Powered by Magnetorheological Actuators to Assist Human Locomotion

Supernumerary robotic limbs are emerging to augment human function. Unlike exoskeletons, these robots provide additional kinematic structures to the user that enable novel human-robot interactions. To assist walking, a supernumerary leg should be compliant to impacts, minimize efforts on users, move quickly when swinging and exert large assistive forces on the ground. Here, we study the potential of a supernumerary leg powered by delocalized magnetorheological clutches (MR leg) to assist walking with three different gaits. Simulations show that the MR leg's low actuation inertia reduces the impact impulse by a factor 4 compared to geared motors and that delocalizing the clutches reduces by half the inertial forces transmitted to the user during swing. An impedance controller receives a reference trajectory based on each ankle's position to move the MR leg in synchrony with the gait cycle. Experiments show that the MR leg can comfortably contact the ground and swing at 3.9 m/s for a 1.4 m/s walk. The MR leg tracks the ankle within 5% of the gait cycle for the leader-follower gait, alternately tracks both ankles for the double gait and contacts the ground in between each step for the three-legged gait. A theoretical upper limit suggests that the average transmitted power in a gait cycle could be 84 W for the leader-follower gait, which is 4 times higher than autonomous ankle exoskeletons.
Influence Maximisation in Social Networks Using Neighbourhood Degree Based Vote-Rank Approach

Group of people sharing their interests and opinions among each other form a social network. Nowadays, this network is enlarging at a rapid rate. Therefore, spreading information in these large networks is a non-trivial task. Influence Maximisation steps up as a possible solution to this complex problem. In Influence Maximisation, we find the $k$ most influential nodes from a set of $n$ nodes such that by converging the information reach on these $k$ nodes, the propagation of information is maximised. There have been several classical centrality measures introduced in the past few years, but there is still scope for improvement. In this paper, we propose ‘neighbourhood degree based vote-rank’ (NDVR) method where each node votes for its neighbour nodes. We initialise each node with a vote value, which is calculated as the average degree of the neighbour of that node. The value of received votes sums up as election score. The node with the highest election score wins the round and is declared influential node. This is followed by an updation phase where the voting value of the neighbour nodes which voted for the influential node in the previous round is decreased depending on the initial vote value and the average degree of the network. This technique of influence maximisation ensures that the regions covered by the previously selected nodes have minimum intersection with the region covered by the current selected node. The proposed method performs favourably against state-of-the-art techniques on several benchmark datasets.
An upper-bound queueing model for Multi-rate Downlink SDMA systems

This paper presents a queueing model that provides a performance upper-bound for Multi-rate Downlink SDMA systems. It is shown that the performance of Downlink SDMA systems depends to a great extent of parameters such as the number of active users, the traffic arrival process, the queue size, the number of antennas and the set of available transmission rates. Using this upper-bound as a reference, the situations in which a Downlink SDMA system is able to near attain the upper-bound performance are discussed.
Chloroplast ultrastructure in leaves of Urtica dioica L. analyzed after high‐pressure freezing and freeze‐substitution and compared with conventional fixation followed by room temperature dehydration

In this article, we report on the adaptation of high‐pressure freezing and freeze‐substitution (HPF‐FS) for ultrastructural analysis of leaf tissue with special emphasis on chloroplasts. To replace the gas in the intercellular spaces, a mixture of water and methanol (MeOH) was employed. We compared three different supplements for FS—osmiumtetroxide, uranyl acetate, and safranin—with regard to the preservation of the ultrastructure of chloroplasts and other cellular compartments. The results show that (i) replacement of air within intercellular spaces by 8% (v/v) MeOH has no influence on the ultrastructure of the chloroplasts, (ii) undulation of membranes frequently observed after conventional preparation of specimens does not occur during chemical fixation but during room temperature dehydration, and (iii) uranyl acetate or osmium tetroxide employed during FS are not superior over safranin. Microsc. Res. Tech. 68:368–376, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Efficient AES-GCM for VPNs using FPGAs

Since its acceptance as the adopted authenticated encryption algorithm, AES-GCM has been utilized in various security-constrained applications. This paper describes the benefits of adding key-synthesized property to AES-GCM using FPGAs. Presented architectures can be used for applications which require encryption and authentication with slow changing keys like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Our architectures were evaluated using Virtex4 and Virtex5 FPGAs. It is shown that the performance of the presented AES-GCM architecture outperforms the previously reported ones.
Atrial fibrillation predictor with reject option using belief functions theory

This paper proposes a novel approach for predicting atrial fibrillation. The novelty of this approach remains in the reject option. Instead of classifying all instances, it rejects ambiguous observations by leaving them with no decision. In other words, three labels are considered: sick, healthy and unknown. Using physiological signals of patients, the proposed approach extracts several features from the signals in real-time. Then, it uses the features as sources of information in the belief functions framework. Due to the information sources, masses are assigned to the labels, and a risk level of being sick is computed. Prediction is assumed ambiguous if the risk level is within the rejection region and the state is unknown; otherwise, a decision is made. The approach is validated using the MIMIC III database. Due to the reject option, the prediction accuracy increases from 59% to around 78%.
Ascending projections from the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus and the adjacent mesopontine tegmentum in the rat

Ascending projections from the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPT) and the surrounding mesopontine tegmentum to the forebrain in the rat are here examined by using both retrograde and anterograde tracing techniques combined with choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) immunohistochemistry. The anterogradely transported lectin Phaseolus vulgaris‐leukoagglutinin (PHA‐L) was iontophoretically injected into the PPT in 12 rats. Anterogradely labelled fibers and varicosities were observed in the thalamic nuclei, confirming the findings of our previous retrograde studies (Hallanger et al: J. Comp. Neurol. 262:105–124, ′87). In addition, PHA‐L‐labelled fibers and varicosities suggestive of terminal fields were observed in the anterior, tuberal, and posterior lateral hypothalamic regions, the ventral pallidum in the region of the nucleus basalis of Meynert, the dorsal and intermediate lateral septal nuclei, and in the central and medial nuclei of the amygdala.
A Structured Representation Framework for TRIZ-Based Chinese Patent Classification via Reinforcement Learning

Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) -based [5] patent classification is essential for patent management and industrial analysis. However, the most research of patent classification are just on English texts and their methods just consider word order but do not use any parse structure, which rely on the word segmentation. In this paper, we propose a new structured representation [11] framework for TRIZ-based Chinese patent classification, which can discover structures automatically and measure structures Our framework uses structured representation model based on reinforcement learning to discover structures. Furthermore, the structured representation model we use lack attention in important structures which may have information memory loss when dealing with long sentences. Therefore, we use attention mechanisms to measure structures that contribute to the patent classification. On 4 TRIZ based classification tasks, our framework significantly outperformed all models in terms of area under curve (AUC) [23] and outperforms Hierarchically Structured LSTM (HS-LSTM) [11]. Moreover, we achieved absolute improvements of 10.08% in performance on "Innovation in product design" classification task in AUC score compared with the state-of-the-art model, bidirectional encoder representation from transformers (BERT) [8].
Final report for AOARD Grant FA23861314139 Activity Recognition in Social Media

In this work, we present a novel approach to analyze crowd behavior at various levels of granularity − individual, group and global. We first model the collective motion of the agents present in the scene by a first order dynamical system. The model learns the spatio-temporal interaction pattern of the crowd which is further analyzed for group detection. The groups are identifiable from the eigenvectors of the interaction matrix of the model and can be recovered by employing a variant of spectral clustering on the eigenvectors. We show that while eigenvectors detect groups, the eigenvalues characterize various group activities such as stationary, walking, splitting and approaching. Finally we classify a crowd video in one of the eight categories by employing a random forest. As an application, the model is used to predict personal space violation.
A study on the impact of Organisational Learning to the effectiveness of Electronic Document Management Systems

Recent studies on Organisational Learning (OL) drive us a re-visit to its impact on system effectiveness. With a strong OL culture, a company can face the challenges of the ever changing environments. The company may also have a better utilisation of an information system. With a survey on 500 companies using an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) in Hong Kong, our results, with 230 valid respondents, proved that the learning orientation of a company does affect the satisfaction of employees using an EDMS and has positive impact on the performance of employees after using the system.
Optoelectronic plethysmography derived breathing parameters can differ between athletes with and without a dysfunctional breathing pattern during exercise

Dysfunctional breathing pattern (DBP) is a term that can be used to describe a collection of breathing disorders in which an individual displays chronic changes in breathing pattern. This can occur with or without another respiratory disorder/disease. Currently, there is no diagnostic method for DBP and it is diagnosed through the exclusion of other pathologies. Optoelectronic plethysmography (OEP) is a 3D motion capture technique which allows for a noninvasive method of measuring the movement of the chest wall, compartmentalizing the torso. The purpose of this study was to investigate if OEP could differ between athletes with and without a dysfunctional breathing pattern during exercise. Forty-seven athletes with a healthy breathing pattern (HBP) and twenty-six athletes with a suspected dysfunctional breathing pattern (DBP) performed an incremental cycle test to volitional exhaustion. Inspiratory time (tI), expiratory time (tE), the phase angle between the left and right side of the pulmonary ribcage (RCpHTA), between the pulmonary and abdominal ribcage (RCpRCaPhase), between the shoulders and the abdominal ribcage (RCaSPhase), and between the shoulders and the pulmonary ribcage (RCpSPhase) were calculated at rest and during high intensity exercise. It was found that each breathing parameters displayed no significant differences between the two groups at rest. However, during high intensity exercise these breathing patterns were found to be significantly different. The DBP group displayed significantly lower values for tI (HBP: 0.9 s, DBP: 0.8 s) and tE (HBP: 1.0 s, DBP: 0.8 s) and significantly higher values for each of the phase angles when compared to the healthy group, including RCpHTA (HBP: 0.0°, DBP: 0.2 °), RCpRCaPhase (HBP: −0.4 °, DBP: 0.5 °), RCaSPhase (HBP: −0.3 °, DBP: 0.5 °), and RCpSPhase (HBP: 0.2 °, DBP: 0.6 °). This indicates that individuals with a DBP took shorter breaths and had greater asynchrony within their breathing pattern during exercise but not at rest. This also demonstrates that OEP is sensitive enough to detect differences between these two group during high intensity exercise.
A computer simulation model for simulating distortion in FETresistors

The power law that governs harmonic distortion states that the second harmonic, when plotted as a function of input power, will have a slope of two on a log scale, and the third harmonic will have a slope of three. This power law is fundamental to the use of intercept points by radio-frequency circuit designers to predict distortion levels from a knowledge of the input signal level. It is shown in this paper that the standard formulation of field effect transistor (FET) models violates this power law for FETs biased at V/sub ds/=0. The problem is shown to arise from discontinuities in the high order derivatives which occur because V/sub gs/and V/sub gd/ are interchanged in the computer models when V/sub ds/ switches sign. A model is presented which does not switch these variables and the new model is shown to follow the correct power law.
Localization of alpha1(I) collagen mRNA in myocardium from the spontaneously hypertensive rat during the transition from compensated hypertrophy to failure.

Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) commonly develop impairment of myocardial function between ages 18-24 months. Isolated muscle studies demonstrate depressed myocardial contractility and increased passive stiffness. Studies of the extracellular matrix in SHR with failure (SHR-F) demonstrate an increased expression of genes encoding extracellular matrix components (ECM), hydroxyproline concentration and fibrosis relative to age-matched non-failing animals. In the present study, tissue sections of hearts from SHR-F, non-failing SHR (SHR-NF) and non-hypertensive Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY) were hybridized with a cDNA probe for alpha1(I) collagen mRNA, which was found by Northern blot analysis to be elevated in SHR-F relative to hearts from control animals. In situ hybridization studies demonstrate increased perivascular and interstitial collagen alpha1(I) gene expression in myocardium from the SHR relative to WKY. In addition, failing hearts from the SHR demonstrate focal alpha1(I) collagen mRNA accumulation in the endocardium and at sites of degenerating single myocardial cells.
Therapeutics targeting CD90-integrin-AMPK-CD133 signal axis in liver cancer

CD90 is used as a marker for cancer stem cell in liver cancer. We aimed to study the mechanism by which CD90 promoted liver cancer progression and identify the new therapeutic targets on CD90 signal pathway. Ectopic expression of CD90 in liver cancer cell lines enhanced anchorage-independent growth and tumor progression. Furthermore, CD90 promoted sphere formation in vitro and upregulated the expression of the cancer stem cell marker CD133. The CD133 expression was higher in CD45-CD90+ cells in liver cancer specimen. The natural carcinogenic molecules TGF-β-1, HGF, and hepatitis B surface antigen increased the expression of CD90 and CD133. Inhibition of CD90 by either shRNA or antibody attenuated the induction of CD133 and anchorage-independent growth. Lentiviral delivery of CD133 shRNA abolished the tumorigenicity induced by CD90. Ectopic expression of CD90 induced mTOR phosphorylation and AMPK dephosphorylation. Mutation of integrin binding-RLD domain in CD90 attenuated the induction of CD133 and anchorage-independent growth. Similar results were observed after silencing β3 integrin. Signaling analyses revealed that AMPK/mTOR and β3 integrin were required for the induction of CD133 and tumor formation by CD90. Importantly, the energy restriction mimetic agent OSU-CG5 reduced the CD90 population in fresh liver tumor sample and repressed the tumor growth. In contrast, sorafenib did not decrease the CD90+ population. In conclusion, the signal axis of CD90-integrin-mTOR/AMPK-CD133 is critical for promoting liver carcinogenesis. Molecules inhibiting the signal axis, including OSU-CG5 and other inhibitors, may serve as potential novel cancer therapeutic targets in liver cancer.
Morphological and functional bases of durophagy in the queen triggerfish, Balistes vetula (Pisces, tetraodontiformes)

Tetraodontiform fishes are characterized by jaws specialized for powerful biting and a diet dominated by hard‐shelled prey. Strong biting by the oral jaws is an unusual feature among teleosts. We present a functional morphological analysis of the feeding mechanism of a representative tetraodontiform, Balistes vetula. As is typical for the order, long, sharp, strong teeth are mounted on the short, robust jaw bones of B. vetula. The neurocranium and suspensorium are enlarged and strengthened to serve as sites of attachment for the greatly hypertrophied adductor mandibulae muscles. Electromyographic recordings made from 11 cranial muscles during feeding revealed four distinct behaviors in the feeding repertoire of B. vetula. Suction is used effectively to capture soft prey and is associated with a motor pattern similar to that reported for many other teleosts. However, when feeding on hard prey, B. vetula directly bit the prey, exhibiting a motor pattern very different from that of suction feeding. During buccal manipulation, repeated cycles of jaw opening and closing (biting) were coupled with rapid movement of the prey in and out of the mouth. Muscle activity during buccal manipulation was similar to that seen during bite‐captures. A blowing behavior was periodically employed during prey handling, as prey were forcefully “spit out” from the mouth, either to reposition them or to separate unwanted material from flesh. The motor pattern used during blowing was distinct from similar behaviors described for other fishes, indicating that this behaviors may be unique to tetraodontiforms. Thus B. vetula combines primitive behaviors and motor patterns (suction feeding and buccal manipulation) with specialized morphology (strong teeth, robust jaws, and hypertrophied adductor muscles) and a novel behavior (blowing) to exploit armored prey such as sea urchins molluscs, and crabs. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
DNN derived filters for processing of modulation spectrum of speech

We propose a novel approach to design modulation frequency filters for the first stage processing of critical band spectrum of speech using deep neural network (DNN). These filters replace conventional modulation frequency filters currently used in state-of-the-art BUT speech recognition system and yield about 10% relative improvement in phoneme recognition accuracy. The resulting filters are consistent with some known temporal properties of higher levels of mammalian auditory processing and suggest more efficient scheme for pre-processing of speech for ASR. Index Terms: deep neural network, convolutive layer, modulation filters, mammalian auditory processing
An Elitist-Based Differential Evolution Algorithm for Multiobjective Clustering

In this paper, we convert the clustering problem with an unknown number of clusters into a multiobjective optimization problem, and propose a novel elitist-based differential evolution algorithm for multiobjective clustering (EDEMC). It aims to minimize the number of clusters and maximize the compactness within clusters simultaneously, and generates a Pareto-optimal set consisted of multiple clustering solutions for different cluster numbers. These two optimization objectives are essential factors for clustering. EDEMC creates and maintains an elitist archive which stores historical best solutions for each number of cluster, and it iteratively optimizes the population with newly designed genetic operations and replenishment strategy. In the end, users could flexibly choose one optimal partitioning of a certain number of clusters by some preferred criteria from the solution set. Experimental results on several datasets illustrate that the proposed method can provide more convergent and diverse solutions in a shorter time.
DISTAG/TBCCd1 Is Required for Basal Cell Fate Determination in Ectocarpus[OPEN]

Mutations in Ectocarpus DISTAG, which encodes a TBCCd1 protein, disrupt the subcellular architecture in the germinating initial cell leading to loss of all basal structures from the developing alga. Brown algae are one of the most developmentally complex groups within the eukaryotes. As in many land plants and animals, their main body axis is established early in development, when the initial cell gives rise to two daughter cells that have apical and basal identities, equivalent to shoot and root identities in land plants, respectively. We show here that mutations in the Ectocarpus DISTAG (DIS) gene lead to loss of basal structures during both the gametophyte and the sporophyte generations. Several abnormalities were observed in the germinating initial cell in dis mutants, including increased cell size, disorganization of the Golgi apparatus, disruption of the microtubule network, and aberrant positioning of the nucleus. DIS encodes a TBCCd1 protein, which has a role in internal cell organization in animals, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and trypanosomes. Our study highlights the key role of subcellular events within the germinating initial cell in the determination of apical/basal cell identities in a brown alga and emphasizes the remarkable functional conservation of TBCCd1 in regulating internal cell organization across extremely distant eukaryotic groups.
Thmuis Revisited: Another Look at the Prayers of Bishop Sarapion

Contemporary estimates of the date, orthodoxy, and literary competence of the compiler of the Prayers of Sarapion have been largely formed by three great liturgical scholars: F. E. Brightman, Bernard Capelle, and Bernard Botte. The combined effect of their work has been to create a picture of Sarapion as (respectively) muddleheaded, avant-garde, and heretical. This picture seems unfair; and this article has the aim of doing something to restore Sarapion's reputation. The name "Sarapion" is used for convenience, without ruling out the possibility that someone else may have been the final editor of the collection. First, Brightman. His edition appeared in the first issues of the Journal of Theological Studies,1 and in it he commented: "The contents of the collection are not arranged in any proper order. " Accordingly he printed the prayers in what he thought to be the most logical order. The prayers are not numbered in the original manuscript, but Brightman gave them numbers in the order of the manuscript, which he placed after the titles and in brackets. F. X. Funk a few years later followed Brightman's order, but added corresponding numbers before the titles, while still quoting the numbers of the manuscript order in brackets.2 As a result, Brightman's order has been generally accepted as definitive, and Funk's numbers are usually quoted for reference (for instance, by Capelle and Botte) as though they were Sarapion's own. It is the contention of this article that, with one simple change, the order of the manuscript is perfectly natural. Its contents may be set out thus: