Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic Identification of Environment Haptic Properties

Many applications can be imagined for a system that processes sensory information collected during telemanipulation tasks in order to automatically identify properties of the remote environment. These applications include generating model-based simulations for training operators in critical procedures and improving real-time performance in unstructured environments or when time delays are large. This paper explores the research issues involved in developing such an identification system, focusing on properties that can be identified from remote manipulator motion and force data. As a case study, a simple block-stacking task, performed with a teleoperated two-fingered planar hand, is considered. An algorithm is presented that automatically segments the data collected during the task, given only a general description of the temporal sequence of task events. Using the segmented data, the algorithm then successfully estimates the weight, width, height, and coefficient of friction of the two blocks handled during the task. This data is used to calibrate a virtual model incorporating visual and haptic feedback. This case study highlights the broader research issues that must be addressed in automatic property identification.
The impact of chronic illness on the health and well-being of family members.

Examined is the impact of dementia on the physical and mental health of all family members caring for an ill parent/spouse. The sample included 97 spouses of patients diagnosed with either Alzheimer's disease or vascular dementia, 186 offspring, and 97 offspring spouses or "in-laws. " Multiple regression tested the association between severity of the illness and family member health and well-being. Severity was significantly associated with health and well-being for spouses, offspring, and in-laws, regardless of the amount of caregiving, demonstrating the potential cascading effect of the illness through the family. Use of services displayed no direct association with spouse health and well-being, but service utilization interacted with illness severity. The relationship between severity of illness and spouse health was lower under conditions of high service utilization than under conditions of low service utilization.
Atmospheric Circulation Response to an Instantaneous Doubling of Carbon Dioxide. Part I: Model Experiments and Transient Thermal Response in the Troposphere*

AbstractThis study aims to understand the dynamical mechanisms driving the changes in the general circulation of the atmosphere due to increased carbon dioxide (CO2) by looking into the transient step-by-step adjustment of the circulation. The transient atmospheric adjustment is examined using the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Atmosphere Model, version 3, coupled to a slab ocean model, and the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is uniformly and instantaneously doubled. The thermal structure and circulation response is well established after one year of integration, with the magnitudes gradually increasing afterward toward quasi equilibrium. Tropical upper-tropospheric warming occurs in the first month. The expansion of the warming in the mid- and upper troposphere to the subtropics occurs later and is found to be primarily dynamically driven due to the intensification of transient eddy momentum flux convergence and resulting anomalous descending motion in this region. The poleward di.
Effect of Aging and Physical Activity on Left Ventricular Compliance

Background—Left ventricular compliance appears to decrease with aging, which may contribute to the high incidence of heart failure in the elderly. However, whether this change is an inevitable consequence of senescence or rather secondary to reduced physical activity is unknown. Methods and Results—Twelve healthy sedentary seniors (69.8±3 years old; 6 women, 6 men) and 12 Masters athletes (67.8±3 years old; 6 women, 6 men) underwent pulmonary artery catheterization to define Starling and left ventricular pressure-volume curves. Data were compared with those obtained in 14 young but sedentary control subjects (28.9±5 years old; 7 women, 7 men). Pulmonary capillary wedge pressures and left ventricular end-diastolic volumes by use of echocardiography were measured at baseline, during decreased cardiac filling by use of lower-body negative pressure (−15 and −30 mm Hg), and after saline infusion (15 and 30 mL/kg). Stroke volume for any given filling pressure was greater in Masters athletes compared with the age-matched sedentary subjects, whereas contractility, as assessed by preload recruitable stroke work, was similar. There was substantially decreased left ventricular compliance in healthy but sedentary seniors compared with the young control subjects, which resulted in higher cardiac pressures for a given filling volume and higher myocardial wall stress for a given strain. The pressure-volume curve for the Masters athletes was indistinguishable from that of the young, sedentary control subjects. Conclusions—A sedentary lifestyle during healthy aging is associated with decreased left ventricular compliance, leading to diminished diastolic performance. Prolonged, sustained endurance training preserves ventricular compliance with aging and may help to prevent heart failure in the elderly.
ULTRAFAST PROCESSES IN 2D MATERIALS

In this dissertation, we study theoretically ultrafast processes accessible via the interaction of the ultrafast and intense laser pulses with 2D materials. The ultrafast and strong laser pulse has a duration of a few femtoseconds, and the amplitude of the electric field is about several V/Å. We investigate the ultrafast electron dynamics in graphene, on a surface of a 3D topological insulator, and on a surface of a 3D crystalline topological insulator. Due to the gapless structure of graphene, surface states of the 3D topological insulator, and a 3D crystalline topological insulator, the electron dynamics is highly irreversible. The irreversibility of the electron dynamics is characterized by nonzero conduction band population in the reciprocal space after the pulse ends. Unlike graphene, electron dynamics on the surface of the 3D topological insulator is chiral in the presence of a single cycle of a circularly polarized pulse. We define the chirality of electron dynamics using the distribution of the residual conduction band population in the reciprocal space. The chirality of the electron dynamics of a 3D topological insulator is due to a cubic term known as a hexagonal warping term in the low energy Hamiltonian. This warping term breaks down the full rotational symmetry of the crystal to the threefold symmetry. Unlike graphene which has a linear energy dispersion at valleys in its Brillouin zone, the crystalline topological insulator has a quadratic energy dispersion at the M point in its (001) crystal face. The ultrafast electron dynamics on the surface of the crystalline topological insulator is anisotropic, i.e., the distribution of the residual conduction band population changes with the angle of the polarization of the applied linearly polarized pulse. For all different 2D materials studied in this work, applied ultrafast laser pulses generate ultrafast charge currents. The generated ultrafast currents follow the vector potentials of the pulse’s electric fields. The asymmetric profile of the ultrafast electric current produces a nonzero transferred charge which also determines the final polarization of the materials. INDEX WORDS: Ultrafast processes, 2D Material, Graphene, Topological insulator, Crystalline topological insulator, Ultrafast laser pulse, Electron dynamics, Current, Transferred charge, Electric field, Interband transition ULTRAFAST PROCESSES IN 2D MATERIALS
Beetroot and Sodium Nitrate Ameliorate Cardiometabolic Changes in Diet-Induced Obese Hypertensive Rats.

SCOPE Dietary intake of beetroot by humans reduces blood pressure but whether this is caused by nitrate or betanin is not well-defined; neither are effects on other signs of metabolic syndrome. METHODS AND RESULTS Rats fed a high-carbohydrate, high-fat diet (H) for 16 weeks developed abdominal obesity, hypertension, altered cardiovascular and liver structure and function, and impaired glucose tolerance compared to rats fed a corn starch diet (C). H rats treated with ∼16 mg/kg/day of nitrate either from beetroot juice (H+B) or sodium nitrate (H+N) for the last 8 weeks reduced systolic blood pressure by ∼25 mmHg, improved cardiac structure and function, plasma lipid profile and plasma markers of liver function, reduced inflammatory cell infiltration in heart and liver and decreased left ventricular fibrosis. In the left ventricle, H rats increased mRNA expression of connective tissue growth factor (CTGF), monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1), matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2), and adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase-alpha (AMPK-α) and decreased mRNA expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-alpha (PPAR-α); both beetroot and sodium nitrate diet-fed rats decreased CTGF threefold, MCP-1, and MMP-2 twofold, and doubled PPAR-α mRNA expression in left ventricular tissue. CONCLUSION The similar functional and molecular responses to beetroot and sodium nitrate indicate that the nitrate content of beetroot reduced inflammation and improved cardiovascular, liver, and metabolic function in rats with metabolic syndrome, rather than betanin.
Is there a preference for PET or SPECT brain imaging in diagnosing dementia? The views of people with dementia, carers, and healthy controls

ABSTRACT Background: Positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) brain imaging are widely used as diagnostic tools for suspected dementia but no studies have directly compared participant views of the two procedures. We used a range of methods to explore preferences for PET and SPECT. Methods: Patients and controls (and accompanying carers) completed questionnaires immediately after undergoing PET and SPECT brain scans. Pulse rate data were collected during each scan. Scan attributes were prioritized using a card sorting exercise; carers and controls additionally answered willingness to pay (WTP) questions. Results: Few differences were found either between the scans or groups of participants, although carers marginally preferred SPECT. Diagnostic accuracy was prioritized over other scan characteristics. Mean heart rate during both scans was lower than baseline heart rate measured at home (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Most participants viewed PET and SPECT scans as roughly equivalent and did not have a preference for either scan. Carer preference for SPECT is likely to reflect their desire to be with the patient (routine practice for SPECT but not for PET), suggesting that they should be able to accompany vulnerable patients throughout imaging procedures wherever possible. Pulse rate data indicated that brain imaging was no more stressful than a home visit (HV) from a researcher. The data do not support the anecdotal view that PET is a more burdensome procedure and the use of PET or SPECT scans in dementia should be based on diagnostic accuracy of the technique.
Metabolomics to Unveil and Understand Phenotypic Diversity between Pathogen Populations

Leishmaniasis is a debilitating disease caused by the parasite Leishmania. There is extensive clinical polymorphism, including variable responsiveness to treatment. We study Leishmania donovani parasites isolated from visceral leishmaniasis patients in Nepal that responded differently to antimonial treatment due to differing intrinsic drug sensitivity of the parasites. Here, we present a proof-of-principle study in which we applied a metabolomics pipeline specifically developed for L. donovani to characterize the global metabolic differences between antimonial-sensitive and antimonial-resistant L. donovani isolates. Clones of drug-sensitive and drug-resistant parasite isolates from clinical samples were cultured in vitro and harvested for metabolomics analysis. The relative abundance of 340 metabolites was determined by ZIC-HILIC chromatography coupled to LTQ-Orbitrap mass spectrometry. Our measurements cover approximately 20% of the predicted core metabolome of Leishmania and additionally detected a large number of lipids. Drug-sensitive and drug-resistant parasites showed distinct metabolic profiles, and unsupervised clustering and principal component analysis clearly distinguished the two phenotypes. For 100 metabolites, the detected intensity differed more than three-fold between the 2 phenotypes. Many of these were in specific areas of lipid metabolism, suggesting that the membrane composition of the drug-resistant parasites is extensively modified. Untargeted metabolomics has been applied on clinical Leishmania isolates to uncover major metabolic differences between drug-sensitive and drug-resistant isolates. The identified major differences provide novel insights into the mechanisms involved in resistance to antimonial drugs, and facilitate investigations using targeted approaches to unravel the key changes mediating drug resistance.
Poet’s Little Helper: A methodology for computer-based poetry generation. A case study for the Basque language

We present Poet’s Little Helper (PLH), a tool that implements a methodology to generate poetry using minimal language-dependent information. The user only needs to provide a corpus with a set of sentences, a rhyme checker and a syllable-counter. From these building blocks, PLH produces: (1) an exploratory analysis of the suitability of the given corpus for poetry generation. (2) a novel and non-trivial poem grammatically correct under metrical and rhyming constraints. This poem also shows content that is coherent with a topic given by the user. The process of poetry generation is a cycle with three phases: lexical exploratory analysis, semantic exploratory analysis and poem generation. The goal is twofold: on the one hand PLH aims to be a useful open source poem-generator for many languages with minimal effort; on the other hand, analizes how the particularities of each corpus affect in the creation of poems. The presented PHL tool is offered in a public repository. The results of an exper-iment with a corpus of Basque texts is shown.
CBG – A FRAMEWORK FOR INTELLIGENT DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

CBG – “Casebase Generator” is a decision support system recently developed at Department of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Novi Sad. The technology used for implementing this system is Case-Based Reasoning (CBR). CBR is relatively new and promising area of artificial intelligence where every new problem is solved by adapting the solutions of the previously successfully solved problems. In the past few years CBR has become a popular technique for knowledge-based systems in different domains because the experience is included in solving every new problem. The purpose of this system is to be the main engine of some future, more specialized systems. “Case Base Generator” system is partly described in this paper and some future specialization are analyzed.
The convolution inequality for entropy powers

The entropy power of a band-limited random process is the power of white Gaussian noise having the same entropy rate. Shannon's convolution inequality for entropy power states that the entropy power of the sum of two independent random processes is at least the sum of their entropy powers. This paper presents an improved version of Stam's proof of this inequality, which is obtained by mathematical induction from the one-dimensional case.
Digital watermarking based on locally linear embedding

Robustness is one of the crucial issues in digital watermarking. Especially the robustness against geometric distortion and JPEG compression at the same time remains challenging. In this paper, a locally linear embedding (LLE) based watermarking algorithm that is robust against affine transformation is proposed. This algorithm improves the robustness via the intrinsic robustness of the LLE. A random generated watermark is embedded in the coefficients of reconstruction weights of the locally linear embedding. In watermark extraction, the watermark can be extracted almost the same process as the watermark embedding. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed watermarking scheme is more robust than other watermarking algorithms reported in the literature. Specifically, it is robust against almost all affine transform related testing functions in StirMark 3.1. While the approach is presented for gray-level images, it can be applied to color images and video sequences.
Phase Transformations in Duplex Stainless Steel: An Assessment by In Situ X-Ray Diffraction

Duplex stainless steels (commonly known as DSS) are a class of stainless steels with a microstructure formed by two main phases: ferrite and austenite. They are used in a wide range of applications, such as chemical processing, in maritime environments and in the oil and gas industries. In most cases, DSS are chosen based on their strength and corrosion resistance for various environments. When exposed to temperatures above 600°C though, the balance of alloying elements can be modified due to precipitation of various secondary phases, such as sigma (σ) and chi (χ). The sigma phase is typically enriched with Cr and Mo, so its formation can lead to a drastic deterioration in toughness, corrosion resistance, and weldability of duplex stainless steels. To prevent damages to these steels due to the formation of sigma phase, the understanding of such transformation becomes mandatory, not only during the development of these steels but also during their processing. In this research, samples from a lean duplex steel UNS S32304 are subjected to a temperature of 800°C and analyzed in situ by X-ray diffraction. Thus, the kinetics of phase transformations occurring in duplex stainless steels are observed in real time.
Longitudinal FDG-PET features for the classification of Alzheimer's disease

The majority of existing computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) schemes for Alzheimer's disease (AD) rely on the analysis of biomarkers at a single time-point, ignoring the progressive nature of the disorder. Recently, a method was proposed by Gray et al. [1] for the multi-region analysis of longitudinal fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) images which reported classification improvements by using regional signal intensities combined with regional change over a 12 month period. In this paper we extend the approach proposed in [1] to the analysis of the entire brain pattern. Compared to [1], our method uses voxel-wise differences and avoids segmentation of the images into regions of interest. For our study, FDG-PET scans at the baseline and at 12-month follow-up of cognitively normal (CN), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD subjects were retrieved from the Alzheimer's disease neuroimaging initiative (ADNI) database. For both AD and MCI identification, the best classification results were achieved by combining cross-sectional and longitudinal information rather than using only the cross-sectional data. Furthermore, the longitudinal voxel-based analysis outperformed multi-region analysis.
HOW CAN SEXED SEMEN BE USED IN COMMERCIAL BEEF HERDS

Gender selected or sexed semen has been commercially available to the dairy industry for almost a decade. However, sexed semen from beef bulls became commercially available only recently. The availability of sexed semen from beef bulls along with concerns about success of the technology at the ranch level has limited the use of sexed semen in purebred and commercial beef operations. Recent changes in semen availability combined with current studies with sexed beef semen are providing insights to the uses, limitations, opportunities, and challenges of this technology.
EphA1 interacts with integrin-linked kinase and regulates cell morphology and motility

The Eph-ephrin receptor-ligand system is implicated in cell behavior and morphology. EphA1 is the founding member of the Eph receptors, but little is known about its function. Here, we show that activation of EphA1 kinase inhibits cell spreading and migration in a RhoA-ROCK-dependent manner. We also describe a novel interaction between EphA1 and integrin-linked kinase (ILK), a mediator of interactions between integrin and the actin cytoskeleton. The C-terminal sterile α motif (SAM) domain of EphA1 is required and the ankyrin region of ILK is sufficient for the interaction between EphA1 and ILK. The interaction is independent of EphA1 kinase activity but dependent on stimulation of the EphA1 ligand ephrin-A1. Activation of EphA1 kinase resulted in a decrease of ILK activity. Finally, we demonstrated that expression of a kinase-active form of ILK (S343D) rescued the EphA1-mediated spreading defect, and attenuated RhoA activation. These results suggest that EphA1 regulates cell morphology and motility through the ILK-RhoA-ROCK pathway.
Parametrization of all stabilizing compensators for absorbable nonlinear systems

We consider a class of nonlinear systems which are absorbable in a linear differential inclusion (LDI), namely whose trajectories are a subset of an LDI. We show than if such an LDI is stabilizable via a linear compensator then a parametrization of all non-linear stabilizing compensators can be derived. The proposed parametrization is simple and the result is constructive. A meaningful application of the parametrization to the switching compensator problem is proposed.
Peeling defects of cold rolled interstitial-free steel sheet due to inclusion movement

Peeling defects induced by inclusion were investigated by scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive spectrometer. Mechanical parameters of steel matrices and Al2O3 inclusion were studied using nano-indentation. Inclusion movement in the sheet thickness direction during cold rolling was simulated by 2D finite element (FE) method. The boundary conditions of inclusion induced peeling defects were obtained under different inclusion initial position and size. When 10 μm inclusion is located in the position of 1/16 of the sheet thickness direction, it has potential to be the source of peeling defects. While the diameters of inclusion are 50 and 100 μm, the initial position boundaries are 1/10 and 1/9, respectively. The defects around inclusion calculated by FE simulation are consistent with that by experimental results. Finally, the relationship between inclusion position and peeling defects is discussed.
Energy-Efficient Computing Using Adaptive Table Lookup

Table lookup based function computation can significantly save energy consumption. However existing table lookup methods are mostly used in ASIC designs for some fixed functions. The goal of this paper is to enable table lookup computation in general-purpose processors, which requires adaptive lookup tables for different applications. We provide a complete design flow to support this requirement. We propose a novel approach to build the reconfigurable lookup tables based on emerging nonvolatile memories (NVMs), which takes full advantages of NVMs over conventional SRAMs and avoids the limitation of NVMs. We provide compiler support to optimize table resource allocation among functions within a program. We also develop a runtime table manager that can learn from history and improve its arbitration of the limited on-chip table resources among programs.