Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Management of visual signal loss during image based visual servoing

In this paper, we address the problem of the total visual features loss during visual servoing. We present a new method allowing to reconstruct these features even if the image is completely unavailable. The proposed method has been developed for a 6 degree-of-freedom (DOF) calibrated camera and a static landmark of interest which can be characterized by point features. It relies on a predictor/corrector pair coupled with a depth estimation algorithm. Numerous simulation results are provided and show the relevance of the proposed approach.
The Impact on Emergency Department Utilization and Patient Flows after Integrating with a General Practitioner Cooperative: An Observational Study

Introduction. A new model, an emergency care access point (ECAP) for after-hours emergency care, is emerging in The Netherlands. This study assessed the effect on emergency department (ED) utilization and patient flows. Methods. Routinely recorded clinical ED patient data, covering a six-year period, was collected. Segmented regression analysis was used to analyze after-hours changes over time. Results. 59.182 patients attended the ED before the start of the ECAP and 51.513 patients after, a decrease of 13%. Self-referred ED patients decreased 99.5% (OR 0.003; 95% CI 0.002–0.004). Referred patients increased by 213.4% and ED hospital admissions increased by 20.2%. A planned outpatient follow-up increased by 5.8% (OR 1.968 95% CI 1.870–2.071). The latter changed from fewer contacts to more contacts (OR 1.015 95% CI 1.013–1.017). Consultations at the regional genereral practitioner cooperative (GPC) increased by 26.0% (183.782 versus 232.246). Conclusion. ECAP implementation resulted in a decrease in ED utilization, a near absence of self-referring patients, and a higher probability of hospital admission and clinical follow-up. This suggests either an increase of ED patients with a higher acuity or a lower threshold of admitting referred patients compared to self-referred patients. Overall, increased collaboration with after-hours primary care and emergency care seemed to optimize ED utilization.
Conventional antipsychotic prescription in unipolar depression, II: withdrawing conventional antipsychotics in unipolar, nonpsychotic patients.

BACKGROUND In a Hull and Holderness Community NHS Trust audit of prescribing in unipolar depression, 55 patients were identified as taking a redundant conventional antipsychotic with no apparent diagnostic indication. Concerns regarding these patients' polypharmacy, duration of treatment, and risk of long-term or undetected side effects led to their being contacted with a view to the discontinuation of conventional antipsychotic treatment. METHOD All case notes were scrutinized to validate, as far as possible, the diagnosis of unipolar depression without psychotic features. Patients were invited for a review of their medication. Ratings of symptoms (Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale), depression (Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression), motor side effects (Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale), and personal function (Independent Living Skills Survey) were made before and after conventional antipsychotic discontinuation. The study was conducted Autumn 1999-Spring 2000. RESULTS None of the 55 patients were deemed to present comorbid depression secondary to any other diagnosis. One patient could not be contacted; 14 patients, who tended to be older, refused the review. Of the remaining 40 who were seen, 25 had already discontinued antipsychotic treatment; their chronicity of illness was half that of the 15 patients continuing antipsychotic treatment. However, only 11 of these 25 patients had their medications discontinued under consultant psychiatrist supervision following the audit; 14 patients had stopped medication of their own volition, or for unclear reasons. Of the remaining 15 patients, 13 had their conventional antipsychotic discontinued by us. There were clinically and statistically significant improvements in symptoms and side effects after antipsychotic treatment was discontinued, and a statistically significant improvement in personal health care function. CONCLUSION In this small sample, discontinuation of nonindicated conventional antipsychotic treatment was associated with clear benefits. Conventional antipsychotics should be used with caution in nonpsychotic depressed patients, particularly in the long term. Reluctance to discontinue medication in more chronic patients may be misplaced.
Relationship between Neural Rhythm Generation Disorders and Physical Disabilities in Parkinson’s Disease Patients’ Walking

Walking is generated by the interaction between neural rhythmic and physical activities. In fact, Parkinson’s disease (PD), which is an example of disease, causes not only neural rhythm generation disorders but also physical disabilities. However, the relationship between neural rhythm generation disorders and physical disabilities has not been determined. The aim of this study was to identify the mechanism of gait rhythm generation. In former research, neural rhythm generation disorders in PD patients’ walking were characterized by stride intervals, which are more variable and fluctuate randomly. The variability and fluctuation property were quantified using the coefficient of variation (CV) and scaling exponent α. Conversely, because walking is a dynamic process, postural reflex disorder (PRD) is considered the best way to estimate physical disabilities in walking. Therefore, we classified the severity of PRD using CV and α. Specifically, PD patients and healthy elderly were classified into three groups: no-PRD, mild-PRD, and obvious-PRD. We compared the contributions of CV and α to the accuracy of this classification. In this study, 45 PD patients and 17 healthy elderly people walked 200 m. The severity of PRD was determined using the modified Hoehn–Yahr scale (mH-Y). People with mH-Y scores of 2.5 and 3 had mild-PRD and obvious-PRD, respectively. As a result, CV differentiated no-PRD from PRD, indicating the correlation between CV and PRD. Considering that PRD is independent of neural rhythm generation, this result suggests the existence of feedback process from physical activities to neural rhythmic activities. Moreover, α differentiated obvious-PRD from mild-PRD. Considering α reflects the intensity of interaction between factors, this result suggests the change of the interaction. Therefore, the interaction between neural rhythmic and physical activities is thought to plays an important role for gait rhythm generation. These characteristics have potential to evaluate the symptoms of PD.
Methods for studying family visitors in art museums: A cross-disciplinary review of current research

Abstract This paper examines current trends in family studies research, details the methodological and topical perspectives that are emerging, and reflects on how these findings could be integrated to provide a more coherent approach to researching the leisure, learning and recreational aspects of family visitors to art museums. Research findings from disciplines such as sociology, ethnography, education, design and marketing are of interest to the field of visitor studies, and this paper contributes to the wider research agenda by providing an overview of family research methods from a range of other disciplines, as well as those used within visitor studies. Over the last decade, there has been a growth of research in family learning in science museums, leading to an emerging disciplinary matrix, whilst many aspects of family visits to art museums remain relatively unexplored. The paper discusses the problems of gathering meaningful data from adults and children in family groups, and concludes by suggesting that a challenge for art museums is to learn from what is happening in other areas of cultural research into families, and to develop a framework for research which builds on the methodological strengths and practical experience of robust studies.
The Impact of Shifting From “How Teachers Teach” to “How Children Learn”

Abstract The authors report the results of a 5-year study in which a university worked collaboratively with a public school district to redesign teacher education and professional development, and to raise student achievement. The university sought to field base their teacher education program; the public school district attempted to improve faculty development. The collaborative goal of the university and school district was to improve education in the public school and thereby raise student achievement. In a collaborative effort, university faculty, public school teachers, and university pre-service teachers used shared decision making to enhance the learning of public school students. Thus, the focus of planning for university seminars and public school staff development shifted to fit the needs of public school students. The collaborative's vision was based on education practices that (a) were developmentally appropriate, (b) valued cultural and linguistic diversity, and (c) recognized the social nature of learning. Results suggest that the efforts of the collaboration produced heightened awareness/sensitivity for teachers, improved teacher performance, and substantially increased levels of student achievement in reading, writing, and mathematics.
Prefetching for visual data exploration

Modern computer applications, from business decision support to scientific data analysis, utilize data visualization tools to support exploratory activities. Visual exploration tools typically do not scale well when applied to huge data sets, partially because being interactive necessitates real-time responses. However, we observe that interactive visual explorations exhibit several properties that can be exploited for data access optimization, including locality of exploration, contiguous queries, and significant delays between user operations. We thus apply semantic caching of active query sets on the client side to exploit some of the above characteristics. We also introduce several prefetching strategies, each exploiting characteristics of our visual exploration environment. We have incorporated caching and prefetching strategies into XmdvTool, a public-domain tool for visual exploration of multivariate data sets. Experimental studies using synthetic as well as real user traces are conducted. Our results demonstrate that these proposed optimization techniques achieve significant performance improvements in our exploratory analysis system.
Thinking in Terms of Design Decisions When Developing Maturity Models

To measure dedicated aspects of â€œmaturityâ€ , a range of maturity models have been developed in the field of information systems by practitioners and academics over the past years. Despite its broad proliferation, the concept has not escaped criticism. Unnecessary bureaucracy, poor theoretical foundation, and the impression of a falsified certainty to achieve success are a few examples. As there is a significant lack of knowledge on how to design theoretically sound and widely accepted maturity models, in this paper, the author opens the discussion on design decisions when developing these models. Based on analogy and informed arguments, the author synthesizes a generic but adjuvant framework that consists of five common design steps and eighteen decision parameters that help practitioners as well as researchers in the development of maturity models.
A Bistable Switch Mechanism for Stem Cell Domain Nucleation in the Shoot Apical Meristem

In plants, the stem cells residing in shoot apical meristems (SAM) give rise to above-ground tissues (Aichinger et al., 2012). Hence, the maintenance of stem cell niches is of central importance to a plant's continued growth and development (Fletcher and Meyerowitz, 2000; Gordon et al., 2009). For the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana, the genetic determinants of stem cell growth, division, and localization have been identified, and negative feedback between a homeodomain transcription factor, WUSCHEL (WUS), and a receptor kinase, CLAVATA (CLV), is known to play a crucial role in controlling the reservoir of stem cells in the central domain of a SAM. The morphology of plant stems and floral organs is controlled in large part by the size and stability of SAMs, which is controlled, in turn, by spatiotemporal patterns of WUS and CLV expression in meristems. For example, loss of restrictive signals in clv mutants of Arabidopsis leads to enlargement of shoot and floral meristems, resulting in extra floral organs and club-shaped siliques (Jonsson et al., 2005). The size, localization and stability of stem cell domains should be determined, in principle, by the interactions of WUS and CLV proteins, especially by their propensities to diffuse through the domain and by the rates of the molecular reactions that control their activities. Within this paradigm, reaction-diffusion (RD) models of WUS-CLV interactions have been popular mathematical models of SAM dynamics (Jonsson et al., 2005; Hohm et al., 2010; Fujita et al., 2011). In RD models, the spontaneous generation of inhomogeneous distributions of WUS and CLV in SAM domains is usually attributed to mechanisms based on a “Turing” instability (Turing, 1952; Segel and Jackson, 1972). The generic RD equations for spatiotemporal changes in the concentrations, u(x,t) and v(x,t), of two interacting proteins are ∂u∂t=f(u,v)+Du∂2u∂x2, ∂v∂t=g(u,v)+Dv∂2v∂x2, where f(u,v) and g(u,v) are nonlinear functions describing their local chemical interactions. A unique, uniform, steady-state solution, u(x,t) = u0 = constant and v(x,t) = v0, of these equations can become unstable with respect to small, non-uniform perturbations, u(x,t) = u0 + eλt·δu·cos(qx) and v(x,t) = v0 + eλt·δv·cos(qx), δu > Du, generating standing waves of wavelength l ≈ 2π/qcrit in the simulations of the RD system (Gierer and Meinhardt, 1972; Murray, 2003). At present, the diffusive lengths of CLV and WUS in SAMs have not been determined, and there is no evidence to suggest that the Turing condition (diffusivity of CLV >> diffusivity of WUS) is satisfied in the central zone of a SAM.
Forecasting of Cut Christmas Trees with Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)

The establishment of Christmas tree plantations over the last 50 years in Greece has provided an additional income for the inhabitants of certain mountainous and semi-mountainous regions of the country and contributed to their development. In this paper is used a neural network which combined with ARIMA which makes forecast of number of actually cut Christmas trees until the year 2015.
Woman A buse in Dating Relationships: The Contribution of Male Peer Support*

The relationship between male peer support and premarital woman abuse is evaluated by integrating three bodies of knowledge, namely, woman abuse, social support, and reference others. Using data from a convenience sample of male undergraduate students, this study tests four hypotheses derived from a male peer support model. The findings support the model relating male peer group dynamics and woman abuse in university dating relationships.
Styles and stereotypes: The linguistic negotiation of identity among Laotian American youth

Pragmatics 14:2/3.127-147 (2004) International Pragmatics Association DOI: 10.1075/prag.14. 2-3.02buc STYLES AND STEREOTYPES: THE LINGUISTIC NEGOTIATION OF IDENTITY AMONG LAOTIAN AMERICAN YOUTH 1 Mary Bucholtz Abstract The article examines how two Laotian American teenage girls in a multiracial California high school take divergent pathways through two contrasting stereotypes of Southeast Asian Americans: The model- minority nerd and the dangerous gangster. The two girls, both first-generation immigrants, each draw on contrasting linguistic and youth-cultural practices to align themselves to some degree with one of these stereotypes while distancing themselves from the other. The absence of an ethnically marked variety of Asian American English does not prevent the construction of Asian American identities; instead, speakers make use of locally available linguistic resources in their everyday speech practices, including African American Vernacular English and youth slang, to produce linguistic and cultural styles that position them partly inside and partly outside of the school’s binary black/white racial ideology. The article argues that linguistic resources need not be distinctive either between or within ethnic groups in order to produce social identities. Keywords: Identity, Youth, Race, Gender, English, Asian Americans 1. Introduction Within the last decade or so, an outpouring of research on East, South, and Southeast Asian immigrants to the United States and their descendants has documented the diverse experiences of the extremely varied groups assigned to the category of “Asian American. ” Until very recently, linguistic contributions to this scholarly undertaking primarily tended to be from the perspective either of applied linguistics or of the sociology of language, with the emphasis on acquisition of English by the immigrant generation on the one hand and maintenance and shift of the heritage language by second and later generations on the other. Despite the utility of such research, what these studies often leave out is a careful consideration of language and identity, and particularly how English may become a semiotic resource for establishing new forms of identity within the racial landscape of the United States. For Asian Americans, who in the U.S. context are racialized as nonwhite, this identity project is complicated by the need to navigate the hegemonic U.S. model of race as a dichotomy between blackness An earlier version of this article was presented at the panel “Relationality: Constructing the Self against the Other in Asian Pacific America” organized by Adrienne Lo and Angela Reyes at the 2003 American Anthropological Association meeting in Chicago. I am grateful to Adrienne and Angie for inviting me to participate in the panel, for their enthusiasm for this project, and for their patience during its gestation. Thanks are also due to Susan Gal for extremely useful feedback on the oral version and to Mara Henderson for transcription assistance. All remaining weaknesses are my own responsibility.
Development and validation of a questionnaire for measuring behavior and temperament traits in pet dogs.

OBJECTIVE To develop and validate a questionnaire to assess behavior and temperament traits of pet dogs. DESIGN Cross-sectional survey of dog owners. Animals-1,851 dogs belonging to clients of a veterinary teaching hospital or members of national breed clubs and 203 dogs examined by canine behavior practitioners because of behavior problems. PROCEDURE Owners were asked to complete a questionnaire consisting of 152 items eliciting information on how dogs responded to specific events and situations in their usual environment. Data from completed questionnaires were subjected to factor analysis, and the resulting factors were tested for reliability and validity. RESULTS Factor analysis yielded 11 factors from 68 of the original questionnaire items that together accounted for 57% of the common variance in questionnaire item scores. Reliability was acceptable for all but 1 of these factors. Behavior problems in 200 of the 203 dogs with behavior problems could be assigned to 7 diagnostic categories that matched 7 of the factors identified during factor analysis of questionnaire responses. Dogs assigned to particular diagnostic categories had significantly higher scores for corresponding questionnaire factors than did those assigned to unrelated diagnostic categories, indicating that the factors were valid. Validity of the remaining 4 factors could not be examined because of a lack of information on dogs with behavior problems related to these factors. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Findings suggest that the resulting 68-item questionnaire is a reliable and valid method of assessing behavior and temperament traits in dogs. The questionnaire may be useful in screening dogs for behavior problems and in evaluating the clinical effects of various treatments for behavior problems.
EMVS: Event-based Multi-View Stereo

Event cameras are bio-inspired vision sensors that output pixel-level brightness changes instead of standard intensity frames. They offer significant advantages over standard cameras, namely a very high dynamic range, no motion blur, and a latency in the order of microseconds. However, because the output is composed of a sequence of asynchronous events rather than actual intensity images, traditional vision algorithms cannot be applied, so that a paradigm shift is needed. We introduce the problem of Event-based Multi-View Stereo (EMVS) for event cameras and propose a solution to it. Unlike traditional MVS methods, which address the problem of estimating dense 3D structure from a set of known viewpoints, EMVS estimates semi-dense 3D structure from an event camera with known trajectory. Our EMVS solution elegantly exploits two inherent properties of an event camera: (i) its ability to respond to scene edges—which naturally provide semidense geometric information without any pre-processing operation—and (ii) the fact that it provides continuous measurements as the sensor moves. Despite its simplicity (it can be implemented in a few lines of code), our algorithm is able to produce accurate, semidense depth maps. We successfully validate our method on both synthetic and real data. Our method is computationally very efficient and runs in real-time on a CPU.
Drive: Dynamic Routing of Independent Vehicles

We present DRIVE (Dynamic Routing of Independent VEhicles), a planning module to be incorporated in a decision support system for the direct transportation at Van Gend and Loos BV. Van Gend and Loos BV is the largest company providing road transportation in the Benelux, with about 1400 vehicles transporting 160,000 packages from thousands of senders to tens of thousands of addressees per day. The heart of DRIVE is a branch-and-price algorithm. Approximation and incomplete optimization techniques as well as a sophisticated column management scheme have been employed to create the right balance between solution speed and solution quality. DRIVE has been tested by simulating a dynamic planning environment with real-life data and has produced very encouraging results.
A System Level Fine-Grained Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling for Portable Embedded Systems with Multiple Frequency Adjustable Components

This paper presents a system level dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) technique targeted toward non realtime applications running on a portable embedded system with multiple frequency-adjustable components. The key idea is to balance the frequency of processor core and memory. Some applications may be I/O bound, some may be CPU bound, and the others may be Memory bound. The proposed DVFS technique relies on pre-collected statistical information of different applications to calculate the expected workload for each coming time slice, and then, it adjusts the frequency of processor core, memory, and system bus to meet the timing constraints(with acceptable penalty) and achieves the maximum energy saving. The proposed technique has been tested on the PXA27x (XScale based) [8] embedded platform and the result was exciting, the processor energy saving can achieve up to 70% in memory bound applications, and the timing performance degradation was less than 5%. In CPU bound applications, the energy saving is relatively small, about 20~40%.