Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A robotic sculpture speaking to people

This video shows the interactive robotic sculpture conceived and realized by the artist Albano Guatti. The robotic part was totally developed by people at the IAS-lab and at IT+Robotics according to Guatti's concept. This work is the result of the meeting of robotics and art. The video shows that the robot is able to locate people in the environment, to navigate toward them avoiding the obstacles and to approach them as a polite waiter will do. In fact, the sculpture represents a waiter and a waitress (actually their suits, the statue do not have a body, they represent empty suits). The waiters chat among them (by play different pre-recorded voice files) while wandering in the environment. Once the robot locates a person and get close to her, it asks the customer one out of different pre-recorded questions. The more likely is: Would you like a drink? , that is the title of the sculpture.
A Model of Chinese Word Sense Disambiguation Based on Combining Rule and Statistics Method

For the existing disadvantage of Word Sense Disambiguation(WSD) research methods, we have analyzed the computability and computational complexity of knowledge Dictionaries with different structure, and chosen “The Grammatical knowledge-base of Contemporary Chinese” and “the Semantic Knowledge-base of Contemporary Chinese” which written by Institute of Computational Linguistics of Peking University, and combined the People’s Daily corpus, which has been tagged word sense on, as knowledge sources for WSD. We obtained statistical knowledge and rules knowledge, which are needed by the Chinese Word Sense Disambiguation, from the selected knowledge sources, and adopted a approach of combining rule and statistics to construct the model of Word Sense Disambiguation. It has achieved a satisfactory effect of WSD.
Sequential Bayesian Optimisation for Spatial-Temporal Monitoring

Bayesian Optimisation has received considerable attention in recent years as a general methodology to find the maximum of costly-to-evaluate objective functions. Most existing BO work focuses on where to gather a set of samples without giving special consideration to the sampling sequence, or the costs or constraints associated with that sequence. However, in real-world sequential decision problems such as robotics, the order in which samples are gathered is paramount, especially when the robot needs to optimise a temporally non-stationary objective function. Additionally, the state of the environment and sensing platform determine the type and cost of samples that can be gathered. To address these issues, we formulate Sequential Bayesian Optimisation (SBO) with side-state information within a Partially Observed Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework that can accommodate discrete and continuous observation spaces. We build on previous work using Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and Upper Confidence bound for Trees (UCT) for POMDPs and extend it to work with continuous state and observation spaces. Through a series of experiments on monitoring a spatial-temporal process with a mobile robot, we show that our UCT-based SBO POMDP optimisation outperforms myopic and non-myopic alternatives.
The effects of strength exercise and walking on lumbar function, pain level, and body composition in chronic back pain patients

The beneficial effects of a strength exercise program and a combined exercise program of strength training plus walking were examined in overweight with chronic back pain patients. The participants were randomly placed in the strength exercise group (SEG, n=15), combined exercise group (CEG, n=15), and control group (CG, n=6). All subjects performed exercise twice per week, 50 min per session with a professional instructors for 12 weeks. In order to evaluate exercise intervention effects, lumbar function was measured by back strength and flexibility. Roland-Morris disability questionnaire (RMDQ) and visual analogue scale (VAS) were used to evaluate pain level. Fat and muscle mass were measured to compare body composition changes. All measurements were performed before and after 12 weeks of exercise program. Lumbar function: Back strength was significantly different over time, and significant time×group differences were found between SEG and CG and, CEG and CG. Pain disorder degree: VAS showed a significant group difference, and significant time×group differences were shown between SEG and CG, and CEG and CG. Also, RMDG showed a significant difference between CEG and CG. Body composition: Fat mass was significantly different over time×group between SEG and CG. In conclusion, participating in strength and walking exercises were beneficial to improve lumbar function. Also, the combined exercise program was more effective for reducing pain levels than the strength exercise. Finally, fat mass was reduced in this study and this may play a possible role in the improvement of lumbar function and reduction in low back pain.
The Power of Woman in Weiner’s Little Earthquakes

This research aimed to explain the power of women as a good wife and mother to face many problems in their life. It applies psychological Maslow’s theory, who proposes five steps of Hierarchy of Needs covering Psychological Needs, Safety Needs, Belongingness and Love Needs, Esteem Needs, and Self-Actualization. This research used descriptive qualitative method which used to analysis and explained how the psychological theory was applied in literary work focused on character analysis in this novel. The data in this research were taken from the dialogue and narration of the novel. The finding of analysis indicates that there are four mothers struggling to fulfill their needs in life. They are Becky, Kelly, Ayinde, and Lia. Based on the novel, those of characters have a lot of problems in their life. Not only problems, as human they also have kind of needs. To analyze their needs, the researcher connected with Hierarchy of needs by Maslow and found that they can fulfill all the steps start from Psychological, Safety, Belongingness, Esteem, and the high step is Self-Actualization. In spite of they need struggling which is not easy. But from their intention, support from each other called sisterhood, and love form people around them, they can solve their problem and fulfilled their needs.
A biologically inspired miniature biped climbing robot

Inspired by the motion patterns of inchworms, a miniature biped climbing robot is developed with modularization method for some tedious and dangerous high-rise tasks. This inchworm-like mini-robot consists of several modules including I-typed joint modules, T-typed joint modules, and gripper modules, which are all driven by small RC servo motors. In this paper, the development of the robot prototype with biomimetic and modular methods is presented, and two feasible gaits of the mini-robot are proposed for climbing poles, trees and trusses. The climbing ability of such biped robot is verified through simple experiments. It is shown that the locomotion function of some biped climbing animals such as inchworms can be easily implemented by simple mechatronic systems.
The bioload and aflatoxin content of market garri from some selected states in southern Nigeria: public health significance.

BACKGROUND Garri is consumed by several millions of people in the West African sub-region and in Nigeria in particular, regardless of ethnicity and socio-economic class. However, production and handling methods have not been standardized, resulting in a product with varying quality and safety indices hence varying public health concern. OBJECTIVES To investigate the microbial contamination level, presence, prevalence and distribution of aflatoxins B₁, B₂, G₁ and G₂ in market garri with the aim of developing useful indices for safe handling and acceptable public health standards. METHODS A total of 300 samples comprising of 30 samples each from various market in both urban and rural settings were randomly collected using sterile polyethylene bags. These were analysed for microbiological quality and aflatoxins content using standard procedures. RESULTS Eight bacteria genera (Bacillus, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Pseudomonas, Clostridium, Salmonella Klebsiella and Coliforms groups) genera and six fungi genera (Aspergillus, Penicillium, Rhizopus, Botrytls, Fusarium and Cladosporium) were detected and isolated. Aflatoxins B₁, B₂, G₁ and G₂ were detected in varying concentrations amongst the samples analysed within and amongst the states investigated with an average occurrence rate of 17.5% CONCLUSION Market garri was found to contain high bioload with vast array of micro-organisms and aflatoxins in all the states investigated. Results are useful in developing and establishing public health standards for the production and safe handling of garri.
When Organizations Speak: Isomorphism and Organizational Language *

This work was supported in part by the center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University (http://www.casos.ece.cmu.edu ), the National Science Foundation Grant No. ITR/IM IIS-0081219 and an NSF Dissertation Grant on Organizational Isomorphism. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the National Science Foundation or the U.S. government.
Unistroke Gesture Recognition Through Polyline Approximation and Alignment

We present a novel gesture recognizer suitable for fast prototyping of gesture-based applications. The recognizer uses a nearest neighbor approach, and requires a small number of samples for each class. The similarity between two gestures is calculated through a three steps procedure: firstly, each gesture is approximated to a polyline, in order to extract its main movements; then, the two polylines are aligned to obtain an equal number of segments from both of them; lastly, the distance is found by summing the contribution of each pair of segments. We tested the recognizer on two different datasets and found that it performs more accurately than a state-of-art method.
Constructing ω-stable Structures : Model Completeness

The projective plane of [2] is model complete in a language with additional constant symbols. The infinite rank bicolored field of [14] is not model complete. The finite rank bicolored fields of [4, 6] are model complete. More generally, the finite rank expansions of a strongly minimal set obtained by adding a ‘random’ unary predicate are almost strongly minimal and model complete provided the strongly minimal set is ‘well-behaved’ and admits ‘exactly rank k formulas’. The last notion is a geometric condition on strongly minimal sets formalized in this paper. There are a number of variants of the ‘Hrushovski construction’ [10] which produce ωstable or even א1-categorical theories. All of them result in theories which are nearly model complete (all formulas are equivalent to a Boolean combination of existential formulas); some result in model complete theories (all formulas are equivalent to existential formulas). These ‘quantifier elimination’ results are closely connected to complexity of the axiomatization of the theory. Every model complete theory is ∀∃-axiomatizable; a theorem of Lindstrom [11] asserts every ∀∃-theory that is categorical in some infinite power is model complete. One of the intriguing features of the Hrushovski construction and the associated Shelah-Spencer random graph was that theories constructed for some other purposes naturally arose with ∗e-mail: jbaldwin@uic.edu. Partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0100594. †email: kholland@math.niu. edu. Partially supported by NSF grant DMS 0203747.
Fragment urbanism: Politics at the margins of the city

Fragmentation is a keyword in the history of critical urban thought. Yet the products of fragmentation – the fragments themselves – tend to receive less attention. In this paper, I develop a politics of urban fragments as a contribution to debates both in urban theory and in urban poverty and inequality. I examine inadequate and broken material fragments on the economic margins of the urban global South, and ask how they become differently politicized in cities. I develop a three-fold framework for understanding the politics of fragments: attending to, generative translation and surveying wholes. I build these arguments through a focus on a fundamental provision – urban sanitation – drawing on research in Mumbai in particular, as well as Cape Town, and connecting those instances to research on urban poverty, politics and fragmentation.
Increase in endocervical CD4 lymphocytes among women with nonulcerative sexually transmitted diseases.

To assess associations of nonulcerative sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-susceptible leukocytes on female genital mucosa, cervicovaginal specimens from 32 HIV-negative STD clinic patients with gonorrhea, chlamydial infection, or trichomoniasis were compared with specimens from 32 clinic patients without these infections. Twenty-eight patients had single infections (15 gonorrhea, 10 chlamydial infection, 3 trichomoniasis), and 4 had dual infections. A saline vaginal wash and saline suspensions of vaginal wall scrapings, ectocervical scrapings, and endocervical brushings were analyzed by flow cytometry. Specimens from the endocervix had the highest proportions of lymphocytes, monocytes, and Langerhans' cells. The median number of endocervical CD4 lymphocytes/10,000 cells was greater among patients with STDs than among those without (476 vs. 245; P < .001). These data suggest that the endocervix may have a particularly important role in heterosexual HIV transmission and that nonulcerative STDs may facilitate HIV transmission by increasing the presence of CD4 lymphocytes at this site.
Multi-Hop Over-The-Air Reprogramming of Wireless Sensor Networks using Fuzzy Control and Fountain Codes

In multi-hop wireless sensor networks the need for remote reprogramming is created by evolving application requirements and software errors. In this context, resource-awareness, time-efficiency, and the integration of appropriate security solutions are keys to the success and acceptance of a code update mechanism. To satisfy this demand, this work provides a dependable data dissemination protocol for time-efficient and secure code updates in large-scale wireless sensor networks. The multi-hop propagation scheme is based on security-enhanced fountain codes and means from fuzzy control theory. In a simulation study our approach was found to perform substantially faster than the current de-facto standard Deluge. The applied distributed fuzzy control strategy allowed mitigating the hidden-terminal problem.
An Efficient Procedure for Removing Random-Valued Impulse Noise in Images

In this letter, we present an efficient algorithm for the removal of random-valued impulse noise from a corrupted image by using a reference image. The proposed method uses a statistic of rank-ordered relative differences to identify pixels which are likely to be corrupted by impulse noise. Once a noisy pixel is identified, its value is restored by a simple weighted mean filter. Simulation results indicate that our algorithm provides a significant improvement over many other existing techniques.
Dynamic information integration using object deputy model

The current existing biological information integration systems provide only the static view and they are not flexible to support dynamic integration. Previous dynamic integration only considers the creation and restructuring of metadata, while the cross-references between data/metadata cannot be expressed. We propose a approach by adopting the deputy mechanism for dynamic integration, which can implement on-demand scale information integration. An important application of the system is to enhance traditional information architecture and mapping queries within peer-to-peer and other integration framework. The two phase optimization paradigm is also introduced and the sub-fragments of queries with correlation information can be pushed into source engines. The experiment result shows that our model can provide better performance for dynamic information integration.
Kalman-filter algorithm and PMUs for state estimation of distribution networks

Availability of data from Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs), characterized by their high accuracy to measure node voltage phasors, allows a simplification of the State Estimation (SE) problems. In this paper Iterated Kaiman Filter (IKF) algorithm, as a new method, has been used for SE of a test Active Distributed Network (ADN) integrating PMU measurements. In order to validate the results, Weighted Least Squares (WLS) method, as a common way for SE problems, is simulated. In this case study, IEEE 13-bus test system is used with considering one Distributed Generation (DG). Simulation results show the proper performance of the IKF method.
Critical Role of a Ferritin-Like Protein in the Control of Listeria monocytogenes Cell Envelope Structure and Stability under β-lactam Pressure

The human pathogen Listeria monocytogenes is susceptible to the β-lactam antibiotics penicillin G and ampicillin, and these are the drugs of choice for the treatment of listerial infections. However, these antibiotics exert only a bacteriostatic effect on this bacterium and consequently, L. monocytogenes is regarded as β-lactam tolerant. It is widely accepted that the phenomenon of bacterial tolerance to β-lactams is due to the lack of adequate autolysin activity, but the mechanisms of L. monocytogenes tolerance to this class of antibiotics are poorly characterized. A ferritin-like protein (Fri) was recently identified as a mediator of β-lactam tolerance in L. monocytogenes, but its function in this process remains unknown. The present study was undertaken to improve our understanding of L. monocytogenes tolerance to β-lactams and to characterize the role of Fri in this phenomenon. A comparative physiological analysis of wild-type L. monocytogenes and a fri deletion mutant provided evidence of a multilevel mechanism controlling autolysin activity in cells grown under β-lactam pressure, which leads to a reduction in the level and/or activity of cell wall-associated autolysins. This is accompanied by increases in the amount of teichoic acids, cell wall thickness and cell envelope integrity of L. monocytogenes grown in the presence of penicillin G, and provides the basis for the innate β-lactam tolerance of this bacterium. Furthermore, this study revealed the inability of the L. monocytogenes Δ fri mutant to deplete autolysins from the cell wall, to adjust the content of teichoic acids and to maintain their D-alanylation at the correct level when treated with penicillin G, thus providing further evidence that Fri is involved in the control of L. monocytogenes cell envelope structure and stability under β-lactam pressure.
Silicon-Organic Hybrid (SOH) devices for nonlinear optical signal processing

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) is a promising material system for dense on-chip integration of both silicon photonic and electronic devices. The high refractive index of silicon enables strong light confinement and compact lowloss devices at telecommunication wavelengths. In addition, on-chip nonlinear optical signal processing becomes feasible, because the third-order nonlinear susceptibility chi(3) of silicon is about 200 times that of glass, and because the tight light confinement enhances the nonlinear response. However, for many applications it would be desirable to have even stronger nonlinearities, and to exploit second-order chi(2)-nonlinearities which are negligibly small in mono-crystalline silicon. On the other hand, many organic materials are highly nonlinear, but have only a low refractive index. Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) systems combine the strengths of both materials resulting in extremely large effective nonlinearities. We report on the design of a 100 Gbit/s / 1 V modulator based on an 80 mum long slow-light SOI photonic crystal slot waveguide filled with a chi(2)-nonlinear organic material. Further, we demonstrate demultiplexing of a 120 Gbit/s signal to 10 Gbit/s with four-wave mixing in a 6 mm long SOI slot waveguide, on which an organic highly chi(3)-nonlinear material was deposited with a molecular beam.
Sampling Signals from a Union of Subspaces

The single linear vector space assumption is widely used in modeling the signal classes, mainly due to its simplicity and mathematical tractability. In certain signals, a union of subspaces can be a more appropriate model. This paper provides a new perspective for signal sampling by considering signals from a union of subspaces instead of a single space.
Effectiveness of dynamic reconfiguration of path protection for Carrier's backbone network

Path protection is essential in a carrier's backbone transport network that requires high reliability. Furthermore, it is preferable for a carrier to repair failed facilities as quickly as possible because path protection is not effective against multiple failures, which impair both primary and secondary paths at the same time. To reduce the operating expenditure involved in quick repair, a dynamic reconfiguration of path protection was proposed and its performance was evaluated in a scenario where failure occurs on a link-by-link basis. For this study, we evaluated the amount of bandwidth necessary for the dynamic reconfiguration of path protection in realistic failure scenarios, in which some paths accommodated in a link are impaired due to failure of a transponder module. Through simulation experiments, we confirm that the success ratio of dynamic reconfiguration of path protection amounts to 72% in case that half the capacity of a transponder is available as a backup on every link and 83% in case full capacity of a transponder is available as a backup on every link.
A conditional mutation in Arabidopsis thaliana separase induces chromosome non-disjunction, aberrant morphogenesis and cyclin B1;1 stability

The caspase family protease, separase, is required at anaphase onset to cleave the cohesin complex, which joins sister chromatids. However, among eukaryotes, separases have acquired novel functions. Here, we show that Arabidopsis thaliana radially swollen 4 (rsw4), a temperature-sensitive mutant isolated previously on the basis of root swelling, harbors a mutation in At4g22970, the A. thaliana separase. Loss of separase function in rsw4 at the restrictive temperature is indicated by the widespread failure of replicated chromosomes to disjoin. Surprisingly, rsw4 has neither pronounced cell cycle arrest nor anomalous spindle formation, which occur in other eukaryotes upon loss of separase activity. However, rsw4 roots have disorganized cortical microtubules and accumulate the mitosis-specific cyclin, cyclin B1;1, excessive levels of which have been associated with altered microtubules and morphology. Cyclin B1;1 also accumulates in certain backgrounds in response to DNA damage, but we find no evidence for aberrant responses to DNA damage in rsw4. Our characterization of rsw4 leads us to hypothesize that plant separase, in addition to cleaving cohesin, regulates cyclin B1;1, with profound ramifications for morphogenesis.