Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simultaneous state and input estimation with application to a two-link robotic system

This paper addresses the problem of estimating simultaneously the state and input of a nonlinear system with application to a two link robotic manipulator - the Pendubot. The system nonlinearity comprises a Lipschitz function with respect to the state, and a nonlinear term, which is a function of both the state and input. It is shown that under some conditions, an observer can be designed to estimate simultaneously the system's state and input. Simulation and experimental results, obtained around the inverted equilibrium position, are presented to demonstrate the validity of the approach.
An Integrated AC Choke Design for Common-Mode Current Suppression in Neutral-Connected Power Converter Systems

This paper presents an integrated ac choke that incorporates the common-mode (CM) suppression function into a three-phase differential-mode (DM) inductor. The proposed choke, together with other filter components, provides a transformerless solution to issues caused by the switching CM voltage in neutral-connected power converter systems. The required high CM-to-DM inductance ratio is generated by different magnetic paths in the novel structure. An approach based on magnetic circuit calculation can be applied to the weight-minimized design in which a reasonably small core loss confirms the choke's heat dissipation capability. The existence and uniqueness of the optimization are proven by a design example and analysis. Comparison to separate DM and CM inductors demonstrates the benefits of integration: the iron and copper material savings, the volume and weight reduction, and overall system efficiency improvement. The finite element method is used to tune the design parameters with which a prototype is implemented. The simulation and experimental results of the prototype in a voltage source converter verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the integrated choke.
The Relationship of Sleep Duration with Obesity and Sarcopenia in Community-Dwelling Older Adults

Background: Numerous studies have reported the relationship between sleep duration and obesity in elderly adults; however, little is known about the relationship of sleep duration and sarcopenia. Objective: We examined the relationship of sleep duration with obesity and sarcopenia in community-dwelling older adults. Methods: A total of 488 community-dwelling adults (224 men and 264 women) aged ≥65 years were included in the analysis. Self-reported sleep duration and anthropometric data were collected. Skeletal muscle mass was estimated using the predicted equation from a bioelectrical impedance analysis measurement. Obesity and sarcopenia were defined according to the body mass index and the skeletal muscle mass index, respectively. Results: The association between sleep duration and sarcopenia exhibited a U shape in older adults. Compared to adults with 6-8 h of sleep, adults with <6 h of sleep had a nearly 3-fold increased likelihood of sarcopenia (odds ratio, OR: 2.76, 95% confidence interval, CI: 1.28-5.96), while adults with ≥8 h of sleep had a nearly 2-fold increased risk of sarcopenia (OR: 1.89, 95% CI: 1.01-3.54). Older adults with a sleep duration <6 h were more prone to obesity (OR: 2.15, 95% CI: 1.08−4.30). After gender stratification, the association between obesity and short sleep duration was more robust in women. Conclusion: There were significant associations of sleep duration with either obesity or sarcopenia in community-dwelling older adults. Gender differences in these associations were also observed.
Scheduling Multiprocessor Tasks with Genetic Algorithms

In the multiprocessor scheduling problem, a given program is to be scheduled in a given multiprocessor system such that the program's execution time is minimized. This problem being very hard to solve exactly, many heuristic methods for finding a suboptimal schedule exist. We propose a new combined approach, where a genetic algorithm is improved with the introduction of some knowledge about the scheduling problem represented by the use of a list heuristic in the crossover and mutation genetic operations. This knowledge-augmented genetic approach is empirically compared with a "pure" genetic algorithm and with a "pure" list heuristic, both from the literature. Results of the experiments carried out with synthetic instances of the scheduling problem show that our knowledge-augmented algorithm produces much better results in terms of quality of solutions, although being slower in terms of execution time.
Solving the Richardson equations close to the critical points

We study the Richardson equations close to the critical values of the pairing strength gc, where the occurrence of divergences precludes numerical solutions. We derive a set of equations for determining the critical g values and the non-collapsing pair energies. Studying the behaviour of the solutions close to the critical points, we develop a procedure to solve numerically the Richardson equations for arbitrary coupling strength.
Applying Similarity Measures for Automatic Lemmatization: a Case Study for Modern Greek and English

This paper addresses the problem of automatic induction of the normalized form (lemma) of regular and mildly irregular words with no direct supervision using language-independent algorithms. More specifically, two string distance metric models (i.e. the Levenshtein Edit Distance algorithm and the Dice Coefficient similarity measure) were employed in order to deal with the automatic word lemmatization task by combining two alignment models based on the string similarity and the most frequent inflectional suffixes. The performance of the proposed model has been evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively. Experiments were performed for the Modern Greek and English languages and the results, which are set within the state-of-the-art, have showed that the proposed model is robust (for a variety of languages) and computationally efficient. The proposed model may be useful as a pre-processing tool to various language engineering and text mining applications such as spell-checkers, electronic dictionaries, morphological analyzers etc.
Practice Effects on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test–64 Card Version Across 12 Months

The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST: Heaton, Chelune, Talley, Kay, & Curtiss, 1993) is among the most commonly administered measures of executive function. Recently, a short form of the test was developed (WCST–64: Kongs, Thompson, Iverson, & Heaton, 2000), and it affords psychometric properties commensurate with the full version of the test. Yet, similar to other measures of executive function, relatively little is known concerning the effects of repeated administration on the WCST–64. Towards this end, 53 men (age M = 32.38) were administered the WCST–64 twice over 12 months, and scores on several indices improved significantly during this interval. Suggestions concerning the use of these measures in longitudinal research designs and clinical follow-up examinations are offered, and reliable change indices concerning these measures are included.
Interlock Collapsing ALU's

A device capable of executing interlocked fixed point arithmetic logic unit (ALU) instructions in parallel with other instructions causing the execution interlock is presented. The device incorporates the design of a 3-1 ALU and can execute two's complement, unsigned binary, and binary logical operations. It is shown that status for ALU operations using a 3-1 ALU can be determined in a parallel fashion, resulting in the compliance of the proposed device with predetermined architectural behavior of single instruction execution. The device requires no more logic stages than does a 3-1 binary adder using a carry-save adder (CSA) followed by a carry-lookahead adder (CLA) design. Design considerations using a commonly available CMOS technology are also reported, indicating that the device will not increase the machine cycle of an implementation. It is suggested that the device can maintain full architectural compatibility. >
The Influence of Organizational Trust and Organizational Mindfulness on ERP Systems Usage

This paper examines how organizational trust and organizational mindfulness shape enterprise resource planning (ERP) system usage. We focus on five dimensions of trust: competence, openness and honesty, concern for employees, reliability, and identification. Drawing on organizational trust and organizational mindfulness theories, we argue that perception of organizational trust among ERP users might explain ERP system usage. We also predict that organizational mindfulness among ERP users positively influences ERP system usage. Our study draws on a total of 231 questionnaires collected from ERP system users across the United States. The results suggest that organizational trust dimensions (namely, competence, concern for employees, and identification) affect ERP system usage. Consistent with the theory, the results also support the idea that organizational trust (i.e., competence, openness and honesty, concern for employees, and identification) create supportive infrastructure-enabling organizational mindfulness. Finally, the study shows key antecedents of organizational mindfulness and underscores the importance of organizational mindfulness as a way of encouraging ERP system usage.
Online Social Advertising via Influential Endorsers

In recent years, many Web-based services such as Facebook and MySpace have been making great progress and creating new opportunities. Because online advertising is the main business model for social networking sites, in this paper we propose a social endorser-based advertising system formulated on network influence and user preference analyses. By utilizing the social network and user preference analysis techniques, the theories of dynamic social influence and celebrity endorsement are realized in the proposed advertising approach. Experiments show that our mechanism significantly improves advertising effectiveness and efficiency and outperforms other advertising approaches.
Execution time Validation of the mathematical models of a electric motor in Soft Real Time simulation

This paper presents the simulation and comparison of models of first and second order of an electrical machine, in Soft Real Time. First, it describes the real-time systems and their classification. After is considered the electromechanical circuit of a Series wound DC motor, for obtaining the first and second order equations which represent the system (In continuous time and discrete time). The models obtained are simulated in SIMULINK and their parameters (electric current and angular speed) are compared between them for obtaining the relative error. Once compared the responses of the models, the execution time of the finite difference models is obtained and compared with data acquisition device execution time.
Halofilum ochraceum gen. nov., sp. nov., a gammaproteobacterium isolated from a marine solar saltern.

A Gram-stain-negative, oxidase-negative, catalase-positive, facultative anaerobe, designated XJ16T, was isolated from a marine solar saltern on the coast of Weihai, China. Cells of strain XJ16T were long and rod-shaped. The colonies were ochre in colour and were able to reduce nitrate to nitrite. Optimal growth occurred at 33-37 °C (range, 20-45 °C) and in the presence of 8-10 % (w/v) NaCl (range, 2-20 %). The pH range for growth was found to be 6.5-9.5, with optimum growth at pH 7.5-8.0. Phylogenetic analysis based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence demonstrated that strain XJ16T was related to the phylum Proteobacteria. The most closely related neighbours were species of the genus Thioalkalivibrio, and the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain XJ16T shared 93.1 % similarity with that of Thioalkalivibrio sulfidiphilus HL-EbGr7T and 93.0 % similarity with that of Thioalkalivibrio denitrificans ALJDT. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 65.9 mol% (HPLC). The sole respiratory quinone was Q-8, and the predominant cellular fatty acids (>10 %) were iso-C15 : 0 2-OH/C16 : 1ω7c, C18 : 0 and C16 : 0 10-CH3. The predominant polar lipids in strain XJ16T were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylcholine. Based on these phylogenetic, physiological and biochemical characteristics, strain XJ16T should be classified representing a novel species of a new genus within the family Ectothiorhodospiraceae, for which the name Halofilum ochraceum gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of the type species is XJ16T (=KCTC 42259T=MCCC 1H00120T=CICC 23817T).
Slicing Fine-Grained Code Change History

SUMMARY Change-aware development environments can automatically record ﬁne-grained code changes on a program and allow programmers to replay the recorded changes in chronological order. However, since they do not always need to replay all the code changes to investigate how a particular entity of the program has been changed, they often eliminate several code changes of no interest by manually skipping them in replaying. This skipping action is an obstacle that makes many programmers hesitate when they use existing replaying tools. This paper proposes a slicing mechanism that automatically removes manually skipped code changes from the whole history of past code changes and extracts only those necessary to build a particular class member of a Java program. In this mechanism, ﬁne-grained code changes are represented by edit operations recorded on the source code of a program and dependencies among edit operations are formalized. The paper also presents a running tool that slices the operation history and replays its resulting slices. With this tool, programmers can avoid replaying nonessential edit operations for the construction of class members that they want to understand. Experimental results show that the tool o ﬀ ered improvements over conventional replaying tools with respect to the reduction of the number of edit operations needed to be examined and over history ﬁltering tools with respect to the accuracy of edit operations to be replayed.
Robot Localisation and 3D Position Estimation Using a Free-Moving Camera and Cascaded Convolutional Neural Networks

Many works in collaborative robotics and human-robot interaction focuses on identifying and predicting human behaviour while considering the information about the robot itself as given. This can be the case when sensors and the robot are calibrated in relation to each other and often the reconfiguration of the system is not possible, or extra manual work is required. We present a deep learning based approach to remove the constraint of having the need for the robot and the vision sensor to be fixed and calibrated in relation to each other. The system learns the visual cues of the robot body and is able to localise it, as well as estimate the position of robot joints in 3D space by just using a 2D color image. The method uses a cascaded convolutional neural network, and we present the structure of the network, describe our own collected dataset, explain the network training and achieved results. A fully trained system shows promising results in providing an accurate mask of where the robot is located and a good estimate of its joints positions in 3D. The accuracy is not good enough for visual servoing applications yet, however, it can be sufficient for general safety and some collaborative tasks not requiring very high precision. The main benefit of our method is the possibility of the vision sensor to move freely. This allows it to be mounted on moving objects, for example, a body of the person or a mobile robot working in the same environment as the robots are operating in.
Laboratory investigations on the role of sediment surface and groundwater chemistry in transport of bacteria through a contaminated sandy aquifer

The effects of pH and sediment surface characteristics on sorption of indigenous groundwater bacteria were determined using contaminated and uncontaminated aquifer material from Cape Cod, MA. Over the pH range of the aquifer (5 -7), the extent of bacterial sorption onto sediment in uncontaminated gro undwater was strongly pH-dependent, but relatively pH -insensitive in contaminated groundwater from the site. Bacterial sorption was also affected by the presence of oxyhydroxide coatings (iron, aluminum, and manganese). Surface coating effects were most pronounced in uncontaminated groundwater (pH 6.4 at 10 oC. Desorption of attached bacteria (up to 14% of the total number of labeled cells added) occurred in both field and laboratory experiments upon adjustment of groundwater to pH 8. The dependence of bact erial sorption upon environmental conditions suggests that bacterial immobilization could change substantially over relatively short distances in contaminated, sandy aquifers and that effects caused by changes in groundwater geochemistry can be significant .
Modeling and Analysis of HVDC Converter by Three-Phase Dynamic Phasor

A three-phase dynamic phasor (TPDP) model of high-voltage direct current (HVDC) systems, especially the converter, is proposed. The proposed model can rapidly solve the dynamic characteristics of the converter for symmetrical and asymmetrical operating conditions: 1) the symmetrical faults occur at the ac side or the dc side and 2) the asymmetrical faults occur at the ac side of the converter. Switch functions are used to indicate the commutation process of the converter. By using the sequence component method, it is observed that the vd should contain the 0th and 2nd components and ia,ib,ic should contain the 1st and 3rd components. The TPDP model of the HVDC converter is proposed based on these observations. The interface and the details to establish the proposed model are presented and a method to represent the commutation failure in the TPDP model is also proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed model is effective and acceptable.
Participation of latino women in clinical practice for prevention of breast cancer: A case of application of the communitary preparation model

resumen En este trabajo se muestra como se utiliza la evaluacion de la prepa-racion comunitaria para potenciar la participacion de mujeres latinas en ensayos clinicos de prevencion del cancer de mama. La experiencia se refiere a dos comunidades rurales y dos comunidades urbanas en Colorado (Estados Unidos). Tradicionalmente los problemas de participacion de las minorias etnicas en este tipo de programas preventivos se han explicado recurriendo a factores individuales. Sin embargo, hay factores comunitarios, tales como el clima, el lideraz-go, los recursos, el conocimiento y el esfuerzo de la comunidad, que pueden influir en la escasa participacion de las mujeres en este tipo de ensayos. Para evaluar la disposicion para el cambio comunitario se entrevisto a lideres e informantes clave sobre la disponibilidad de su comunidad para la participacion de las mujeres latinas en activi-dades de prevencion. Los resultados mostraron bajos niveles en las cuatro comunidades evaluadas. En ese contexto, se ofrecen algunas recomendaciones. El caso sirve para ilustrar el funcionamiento de un modelo basado en niveles, desarrollado por Oetting
Charging coverage for energy replenishment in wireless sensor networks

The energy of sensors is critical to the performance of any battery operated wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The new emerging wireless power transfer technology can potentially relieve the energy intension of WSNs. To effectively replenish the energy of sensors, in this paper, we investigate the minimum charging coverage problem, which aims to recharge a set of sensors in a given area with the minimum number of wireless chargers. We introduce a partition algorithm to address this charging coverage challenge, and through theoretical analysis, we prove that the proposed algorithm can develop a solution close to the optimal one with guaranteed approximation ratio.
Isolation, Identification and Antibacterial Susceptibility of Staphylococcus spp. Associated with the Mobile Phones of University Students.

From May 2014 to February 2015, 319 university students (male, n=173; female n=146) of 18 to 24 years of age who carried mobile phones or computer tablets were selected as subjects. Staphylococcus spp. were detected in 101 of 319 samples (31.7%). In the present study, 11 strains of S. aureus were isolated and identified, not all of which were methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Overall, 14 species were identified, with 11 strains (10.9%) of S. xylosus being isolated at the highest frequency. Following this were eight strains (7.9%) of S. cohnii and seven strains (6.9%) each of S. capitis and S. haemolyticus. Staphylococcus spp. isolation was performed with bacterial samples obtained from the mobile phones of 22 specific subjects (males, n=12; females, n=10). Staphylococcus spp. isolation was performed on days -1, 7 and 30 of the experiment. Staphylococcus spp. were positively detected one or more times in 12 subjects (54.5%). In one subject (8.3%), all three tests were positive. Furthermore, two tests were positive in three (25.0%). In the eight remaining subjects (66.7%) Staphylococcus spp. were detected only once. For the three abovementioned tests, we investigated the pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns of the strains derived from the mobile phone and from the fingers of three subjects in whom the same bacterial species were isolated twice. From the cases with similarities between strains derived from the fingers and the mobile phones and cases, with consistency in the strains derived from the mobile phone at different times, commonality was observed in the strains derived from the fingers and mobile phones along with chronological uniformity in the strains derived from the mobile phones. A total of 101 Staphylococcus spp. strains were isolated from mobile phones. According to drug susceptibility tests, 99 strains (98.0%) were found to have some degree of resistance to drugs (excluding one strain each of S. aureus and S. haemolyticus). Among these, the strain that showed the highest level of drug resistance was one strain (1.0%) of Staphylococcus spp. , which showed resistance to nine drugs. The strain that showed the second highest level of drug resistance was one strain (1.0%) of S. caprea, which showed resistance to seven drugs. In this manner, the drug-resistant tendencies of Staphylococcus spp. isolated from mobile phones were observed.
Multicell Cooperative Scheduling for Two-Tier Cellular Networks

Cellular wireless network architectures employing a tiered structure, consisting of traditional macro-cells and small-cells, have attracted much attention recently because of their potential to dramatically increase network capacity. These architectures can reduce the distances of transmit-receiver pairs, thus enhancing radio link qualities. However, a tiered cell deployment could incur severe cochannel interference. Prior work for single-tier networks has proposed coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmission, which includes joint transmission, as a possible solution for overcoming the rate limitations induced by cochannel interference. Because users in each cell experience various interference conditions, each cell needs to support single transmission (in which only one cell transmits to a single user) and joint transmission. In a conventional implementation, a particular combination of transmissions over the entire network is fixed in advance for each time slot and opportunistic scheduling chooses one of the users supported by each transmission. However, when the number of users to be scheduled is small, the throughput improvement from opportunistic scheduling becomes limited. To overcome this problem, we propose a cumulative distribution function-based scheduling scheme which jointly chooses the transmitter set and the corresponding scheduled users in a two-tier network. It is shown that the throughput performance can be improved compared to those of the fixed slot resource allocation scheme because more users "compete" for slot resources.