Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design of a Multi-Finger Haptic Interface for Teleoperational Grasping

In this paper the design of a multi-finger force-reflecting haptic interface device for teleoperational grasping is introduced. The haptic interface or “master” controller device is worn on the human operator’s hand and measured human finger positions are used to control the finger positions of a remote grasping manipulator or “slave” device. The slave may be a physical robotic grasping manipulator, or a computer generated representation of a human hand such as used in virtual reality applications. The forces measured by the robotic slave, or calculated for the virtual slave, are presented to the operator’s fingertips through the master providing a means for deeper human sensation of presence and better control of grasping tasks in the slave environments. Design parameters and performance measures for haptic interfaces for teleoperation are discussed. One key performance issue involving the high-speed display of forces during initial contact, especially when interacting with rigid surfaces, is addressed by the present design, reducing slave controller computation requirements and overcoming actuator response time constraints. The design presented utilizes a planar four-bar linkage for each finger, to represent each finger bend motion as a single degree of freedom, and to provide a finger bend resistance force that is substantially perpendicular to the distal finger pad throughout the full 180 degrees of finger bend motion represented. The finger linkage design, in combination with a remote position measurement and force display assembly, provides a very light weight and low inertia system with a large workspace. The concept of a replicated finger is introduced which, in combination with a decoupled actuator and feed forward control, provides improved performance in transparent free motion, and rapid, stable touch sensation of initial contact with rigid surfaces. A distributed computation architecture with a PC based haptic interface controller and associated control algorithms are also discussed.
Market Response to Liquidity Shocks in the Limit Order Book

This report provides empirical evidence that the bid-ask spread and mid-price exhibit strong mean reversion following a liquidity shock in the limit order book. The mean behavior of buy/sell initiated shocks is to increase/decrease the macroscopic mid-price of the security. Linear as well as non-linear models are trained to incorporate pre-shock information for predicting post-shock behavior. However, the features tend to add very little predictive power beyond the statistical mean behavior. We show that this is largely on account of high volatility associated with high priced securities. Defining a measure of error which is normalized by volatility indicates that features do have some intrinsic predictive capability. In this new measure, linear regression, weighted to account for heteroskedasticity, outperforms SVR yielding an efficient prediction algorithm for high frequency data.
Detection of DNA Sequences Refractory to PCR Amplification Using a Biophysical SERRS Assay (Surface Enhanced Resonant Raman Spectroscopy)

The analysis of ancient or processed DNA samples is often a great challenge, because traditional Polymerase Chain Reaction – based amplification is impeded by DNA damage. Blocking lesions such as abasic sites are known to block the bypass of DNA polymerases, thus stopping primer elongation. In the present work, we applied the SERRS-hybridization assay, a fully non-enzymatic method, to the detection of DNA refractory to PCR amplification. This method combines specific hybridization with detection by Surface Enhanced Resonant Raman Scattering (SERRS). It allows the detection of a series of double-stranded DNA molecules containing a varying number of abasic sites on both strands, when PCR failed to detect the most degraded sequences. Our SERRS approach can quickly detect DNA molecules without any need for DNA repair. This assay could be applied as a pre-requisite analysis prior to enzymatic reparation or amplification. A whole new set of samples, both forensic and archaeological, could then deliver information that was not yet available due to a high degree of DNA damage.
Reconciling transactional conflicts with compiler's help

Software transactional memory(STM) is a promising programming paradigm for shared memory multithreaded programs. While STM offers the promise of being less error-prone and more programmer friendly compared to traditional lock-based synchronization, it also needs to be competitive in performance in order for it to be adopted in mainstream software. A major source of performance overheads in STM is transactional aborts. Conflict resolution and aborting a transaction typically happens at the transaction level which has the advantage that it is automatic and application agnostic. However it has a substantial disadvantage in that STM declares the entire transaction as conflicting and hence aborts it and re-executes it fully, instead of partially re-executing only those part(s) of the transaction, which have been affected due to the conflict. This "Re-execute Everything" approach has a significant adverse impact on STM performance. In order to mitigate the abort overheads, we propose a compiler aided Selective Reconciliation STM (SR-STM) scheme, wherein certain transactional conflicts can be reconciled by performing partial re-execution of the transaction. Ours is a selective hybrid approach which uses compiler analysis to identify those data accesses which are legal and profitable candidates for reconciliation and applies partial re-execution only to these candidates selectively while other conflicting data accesses are handled by the default STM approach of abort and full re-execution. We describe the compiler analysis and code transformations required for supporting selective reconciliation. We find that SR-STM is effective in reducing the transactional abort overheads by improving the performance for a set of five STAMP benchmarks by 12.58% on an average and up to 22.34%.
Keystroke Recognition Using WiFi Signals

Keystroke privacy is critical for ensuring the security of computer systems and the privacy of human users as what being typed could be passwords or privacy sensitive information. In this paper, we show for the first time that WiFi signals can also be exploited to recognize keystrokes. The intuition is that while typing a certain key, the hands and fingers of a user move in a unique formation and direction and thus generate a unique pattern in the time-series of Channel State Information (CSI) values, which we call CSI-waveform for that key. In this paper, we propose a WiFi signal based keystroke recognition system called WiKey. WiKey consists of two Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) WiFi devices, a sender (such as a router) and a receiver (such as a laptop). The sender continuously emits signals and the receiver continuously receives signals. When a human subject types on a keyboard, WiKey recognizes the typed keys based on how the CSI values at the WiFi signal receiver end. We implemented the WiKey system using a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND WiFi router and a Lenovo X200 laptop. WiKey achieves more than 97.5\% detection rate for detecting the keystroke and 96.4% recognition accuracy for classifying single keys. In real-world experiments, WiKey can recognize keystrokes in a continuously typed sentence with an accuracy of 93.5%.
Management policy service for distributed systems

Interpreting policy in automated managers facilitates the dynamic change of behaviour of a distributed management system by simply changing policies. This paper describes a management policy notation which can be used to define both authorisation policies (what activities a manager is permitted to do) and obligation policies (the activities a manager must perform). Some example policy specifications are given to demonstrate the notation and the concepts involved. A graphical policy editor is described which permits high level abstract policies to be refined into lower level, implementable policies and maintains derivation and dependency relationships between the different policies. A policy service which stores policies is outlined and its integration within a domain service for grouping policies is explained Outlines are given of implementations of automated managers for interpreting obligation policies and of an access control mechanism for enforcing authorisation policies.
Protective Immunity Conferred by Attenuated aroA Derivatives of Pasteurella multocida B:2 Strains in a Mouse Model of Hemorrhagic Septicemia

ABSTRACT Hemorrhagic septicemia (HS) is a fatal systemic disease of cattle and buffaloes. In South Asia HS is caused by infection with Pasteurella multocida serotype B:2. Some control is achieved with alum-precipitated or oil-adjuvanted killed whole-cell vaccines injected subcutaneously, but these vaccines provide only short-term immunity and require annual administration for effective use. Live attenuated vaccines have the advantage of a natural route of entry into the host, but for live strains to be used as vaccines, the mode of attenuation should be well defined. We constructed aroA attenuated derivatives of two P. multocida serotype B:2 strains by allelic exchange of the native aroA sequence with aroA sequences disrupted with a kanamycin resistance cassette or with marker-free aroA sequences containing an internal deletion. These strains were confirmed to be aroA mutants by PCR and Southern blot analysis, enzyme assay, and lack of growth on minimal medium. The aroA derivatives were highly attenuated for virulence in a mouse model of HS. Mouse challenge experiments showed that intraperitoneal or intranasal vaccination of an aroA strain completely protected mice against challenge with a high dose (>1,000 50% lethal doses) of either the parent strain or the other wild-type B:2 strain. The spread of the parent and the aroA derivatives to different organs was compared when the organisms were inoculated by different routes.
Morbidity and mortality in hypertensive adults with a low ankle/arm blood pressure index.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the relationship between the ankle/arm blood pressure index (AAI, the ratio of ankle to arm systolic blood pressure, a measure of peripheral arterial disease) and short-term cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in older adults with systolic hypertension. DESIGN Prospective cohort study, 1- to 2-year follow-up (mean, 16 months). SETTING Eleven of 16 field centers from the Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly Program. PARTICIPANTS 1537 older men and women with systolic hypertension. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES All-cause mortality, coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, and CHD and CVD morbidity and mortality. RESULTS The AAI was measured at the 1989-1990 clinic examination and was 0.9 or less in 25.5% of 1537 participants. A low AAI was associated with most major CHD and CVD risk factors. In those with a low AAI (< or = 0.9) compared with those with an AAI of more than 0.9, age- and sex-adjusted relative risks for mortality end points at follow-up were as follows: total mortality, 3.8 (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.1 to 6.9); CHD mortality, 3.24 (95% CI, 1.4 to 7.5); and CVD mortality, 3.7 (95% CI, 1.8 to 7.7). For CVD morbidity and mortality, the age- and sex-adjusted relative risk was 2.5 (95% CI, 1.5 to 4.3). After adjustment for baseline CVD and other cardiovascular risk factors, the relative risk for total mortality was 4.1 (95% CI, 2.0 to 8.3) and for CVD morbidity and mortality, 2.4 (95% CI, 1.3 to 4.4). Results were similar when participants with clinical CVD at baseline were excluded. CONCLUSION A low AAI appears to be an important predictor of morbidity and mortality among older adults with systolic hypertension.
Structural constraints to information flow within cortical circuits: a TMS/EEG-dMRI study

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been used for more than 20 years to investigate brain function by perturbing and observing the consequent behavioral, pathophysiological and electrophysiological modulations. These latter, mainly measured by high-density electroencephalography (hd-EEG), revealed signatures of the functional organization in a brain network. In order to unveil the nature and the underlying mechanism of these signatures, we here mapped TMS-induced hd-EEG changes onto changes in information flow and brain structural architecture, using multimodal modeling of source reconstructed TMS/hd-EEG recordings and diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) tractography in a cohort of awake healthy volunteers. We observed that the relationship between information flow and structural connections depend on the stimulation site and on the frequency of the TMS-induced brain rhythms. These findings highlight the importance of taking into account the dynamics of different local oscillations when investigating the mechanisms for integration and segregation of information in the human brain. Our whole-brain analysis sheds light on the function-structure organization of the brain network after TMS, and on the huge variety of information contained in it. TMS/EEG dMRI directed functional connectivity structural connectivity structure-function brain information flow
Color sequences for univariate maps: theory, experiments and principles

Pseudocoloring for presenting univariate map information on a graphic display system is investigated. The kinds of information available in maps are divided into two classes: metric information denotes the quantity stored at each point on the surface, and form information denotes the shape or structure of the surface. Theoretical principles are proposed to predict which color sequences will be effective at conveying value and form information respectively. According to this theory, a scale that approximates the physical spectrum should be good at conveying value information, because of the reduced effects of simultaneous contrast. It should be poor at conveying form information, however, because the brain prefers form information to come through the lightness-processing channel. Conversely, a gray scale should be poor at conveying value information and good at conveying form information, according to the same theory. These predictions are tested in a series of psychophysical experiments that test five color sequences. The results show that simultaneous contrast can be a major source of error when reading maps, but only partially confirm the form hypothesis. Guidelines are given for designing color sequences to be effective in both conveying form and value information. An experimental color sequence is presented to illustrate these guidelines. <<ETX>>
Curiosity-driven learning of traversability affordance on a mobile robot

The concept of affordances, as proposed by J.J. Gibson, refers to the relationship between the organism and its environment and has become popular in autonomous robot control. The learning of affordances in autonomous robots, however, typically requires a large set of training data obtained from the interactions of the robot with its environment. Therefore, the learning process is not only time-consuming, and costly but is also risky since some of the interactions may inflict damage on the robot. In this paper, we study the learning of traversability affordance on a mobile robot and investigate how the number of interactions required can be minimized with minimial degradation on the learning process. Specifically, we propose a two step learning process which consists of bootstrapping and curiosity-based learning phases. In the bootstrapping phase, a small set of initial interaction data are used to find the relevant perceptual features for the affordance, and a support vector machine (SVM) classifier is trained. In the curiosity-driven learning phase, a curiosity band around the decision hyperplane of the SVM is used to decide whether a given interaction opportunity is worth exploring or not. Specifically, if the output of the SVM for a given percept lies within curiosity band, indicating that the classifier is not so certain about the hypothesized effect of the interaction, the robot goes ahead with the interaction, and skips if not. Our studies within a physics-based robot simulator show that the robot can achieve better learning with the proposed curiosity-driven learning method for a fixed number of interactions. The results also show that, for optimum performance, there exists a minimum number of initial interactions to be used for bootstrapping. Finally, the trained classifier with the proposed learning method was also successfully tested on the real robot.
INCREASED PLASMA CONCENTRATION OF N‐TERMINAL β‐LIPOTROPHIN AND UNBOUND CORTISOL DURING PREGNANCY

The plasma concentration of N‐terminal β‐lipotrophin (β‐LPH), total and protein unbound cortisol, progesterone and the transcortin (CBG) binding parameters have been measured in 21 women in the early follicular phase and in 70 pregnant women at various stages of pregnancy. Results showed that the plasma CBG binding capacity and the concentrations of total cortisol and progesterone increased significantly at each trimester of pregnancy while the plasma concentration of unbound cortisol increased significantly only in the 2nd and the 3rd trimesters of pregnancy. In addition, a significant increase of N‐terminal β‐LPH level was observed during the 3rd trimester. By chromatography, it is demonstrated that during the 3rd trimester of pregnancy the β‐LPH/γ‐LPH molar ratio decreases dramatically and that the increase of N‐terminal β‐LPH concentration is mainly due to a two fold increase in γ‐LPH concentration.
New extension of the Kalman filter to nonlinear systems

The Kalman Filter (KF) is one of the most widely used methods for tracking and estimation due to its simplicity, optimality, tractability and robustness. However, the application of the KF to nonlinear systems can be difficult. The most common approach is to use the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) which simply linearizes all nonlinear models so that the traditional linear Kalman filter can be applied. Although the EKF (in its many forms) is a widely used filtering strategy, over thirty years of experience with it has led to a general consensus within the tracking and control community that it is difficult to implement, difficult to tune, and only reliable for systems which are almost linear on the time scale of the update intervals. In this paper a new linear estimator is developed and demonstrated. Using the principle that a set of discretely sampled points can be used to parameterize mean and covariance, the estimator yields performance equivalent to the KF for linear systems yet generalizes elegantly to nonlinear systems without the linearization steps required by the EKF. We show analytically that the expected performance of the new approach is superior to that of the EKF and, in fact, is directly comparable to that of the second order Gauss filter. The method is not restricted to assuming that the distributions of noise sources are Gaussian. We argue that the ease of implementation and more accurate estimation features of the new filter recommend its use over the EKF in virtually all applications.
Locating systematic reviews of test accuracy studies: How five specialist review databases measure up

Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine location of systematic reviews of test accuracy in five specialist review databases: York CRD's DARE and HTA databases, Medion (University of Maastricht), C-EBLM (International Federation of Clinical Chemistry), and the ARIF in-house database (University of Birmingham). Methods: Searches were limited to the period 1996–2006. Test accuracy reviews were located using in-house diagnostic search filters and with help from database producers where databases were not confined to test accuracy reviews. References were coded according to disease area, review purpose, and test application. Ease of use, volume, overlap, and content of databases was noted. Results: A large degree of overlap existed between databases. Medion contained the largest number (n = 672) and the largest number of unique (n = 328) test accuracy references. A combination of three databases identified only 76% of test reviews. All databases were rated as easy to search but varied with respect to timeliness and compatibility with reference management software. Most reviews evaluated test accuracy (85%) but the HTA database had a larger proportion of cost-effectiveness and screening reviews and C-EBLM more reviews addressing early test development. Most reviews were conducted in secondary care settings. Conclusions: Specialist review databases offer an essential addition to general bibliographic databases where application of diagnostic method filters can compromise search sensitivity. Important differences exist between databases in terms of ease of use and content. Our findings raise the question whether the current balance of research setting, in particular the predominance of research on tests used in secondary care, matches the needs of decision makers.
Open calendar sharing and scheduling with CalDAV

Building on a decade of work on calendar standards, the CalDAV protocol promises to unlock the potential of widespread calendar interoperability. It permits calendar sharing over the Web and reduces the coordination cost of scheduling meetings across and within organizational boundaries. The protocol extends the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol-itself, a simple extension of HTTP- to provide services for calendar maintenance, queries, event scheduling, and security.
Design a Hash-Based Control Mechanism in vSwitch for Software-Defined Networking Environment

Unlike a traditional network architecture, a software-defined networking architecture is divided into the control plane and the data plane. Network administrators use the centralized control plane to manage network authority and determine where network traffic is to be sent in the data plane. However, a centralized control structure causes a bottleneck with an overloading flow or under a DDoS attack. Under such conditions, the probability of network misconfiguration may increase rapidly and network performance may decline rapidly. This work paper proposes a hash-based mechanism that operates in the control plane to increase the reliability and scalability of the network. The hash function is utilized to assign incoming packets to queues in the control plane. The controller schedules the queues using a round-robin method to reduce the probability of failure in response to malicious attacks and to reduce transmission delay when network congestion occurs. The experimental results reveal that the proposed mechanism effectively distributes the workload and increases the reliability of the network under high-density data transmission.
Empirical Analysis of the Innovation Phenomena in the Sports Equipment Industry

This article presents the results of a survey conducted in 108 firms in the French sports industry. The inquiry was based on three main themes: research & development, innovation and adoption of new materials. The study has shown a link between the product's life cycle and the structure of the industry. In fact the various levels of achievements reached by sports products have generated various structures among the sectors already mentioned. Slightly declining sectors, like skiing or yachting, are rather concentrated and tend to focus on process innovations. Fast expanding sectors, like snowboard, mountain bike and cycling, are rather atomized and innovate much more on new product and materials.