Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anthropogenic noise compromises antipredator behaviour in European eels

Increases in noise‐generating human activities since the Industrial Revolution have changed the acoustic landscape of many terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Anthropogenic noise is now recognized as a major pollutant of international concern, and recent studies have demonstrated impacts on, for instance, hearing thresholds, communication, movement and foraging in a range of species. However, consequences for survival and reproductive success are difficult to ascertain. Using a series of laboratory‐based experiments and an open‐water test with the same methodology, we show that acoustic disturbance can compromise antipredator behaviour – which directly affects survival likelihood – and explore potential underlying mechanisms. Juvenile European eels (Anguilla anguilla) exposed to additional noise (playback of recordings of ships passing through harbours), rather than control conditions (playback of recordings from the same harbours without ships), performed less well in two simulated predation paradigms. Eels were 50% less likely and 25% slower to startle to an ‘ambush predator’ and were caught more than twice as quickly by a ‘pursuit predator’. Furthermore, eels experiencing additional noise had diminished spatial performance and elevated ventilation and metabolic rates (indicators of stress) compared with control individuals. Our results suggest that acoustic disturbance could have important physiological and behavioural impacts on animals, compromising life‐or‐death responses.
Increased Rhodamine 123 Uptake by Carcinoma Cells 1

The total cellular content of the fluorescent mitochondrialspecific dye rhodamine 123 (Rh-123) was quantified by butanol extraction as a function of time of exposure and dose for a variety of cell lines. These results were compared with observa tions made by fluorescence microscopy on dye localization and mitochondrial morphology. There appeared to be two categories of cell types based on Rh-123 uptake: those which progressively accumulate the dye, such as Ehrlich ascites tumor cells, carci noma-derived lines MCF-7, PaCa-2, EJ, HeLa, and normal fibroblast line CCL 64; and those which appear to equilibrate with the extracellular dye within 1 h of incubation in Rh-123 (1 M9/ml) with a minimal level of uptake, such as the normal epithelialderived lines CV-1 and MDCK and the transformed fibroblast line 64F3. Within the first category, the absolute value of uptake per cell correlated with the concentration of Rh-123 in the medium and with the period of exposure to the dye up to a point of apparent cellular saturation. The length of time required for apparent saturation depended on the cell type. In the second category equilibration was very early, and the total uptake was a function of the extracellular concentration of Rh-123. This probably does not represent a saturation level of dye content in the non-accumulating, low uptake cell lines. Fluorescence mi croscopy revealed that Rh-123 localization was initially mitochondrial-specific for all of the cell lines examined. Over time, alterations in mitochondrial morphology and cytoplasmic fluores cence were observed in the high uptake cell lines but not in the minimal uptake cell lines. Incubation of the high uptake HeLa cell line with the mitochondrial membrane potential inhibitor ptrifluoromethoxyphenylhydrazone substantially decreased Rh123 uptake. These observations may indicate a transformationrelated characteristic of carcinoma cell mitochondria. It may be possible to exploit the mechanism responsible for the progres sive accumulation of Rh-123 by carcinoma-derived cell types for chemotherapeutic approaches to certain types of carcinomas.
POLYMERIZATION OF STYRENE IN SUPERCRITICAL CO2-SWOLLEN POLY(CHLOROTRIFLUOROETHYLENE)

The heterogeneous (solid/supercritical fluid solution) free-radical polymerization of styrene in supercritical carbon dioxide-swollen poly(chlorotrifluoroethylene) (PCTFE) polymer film (63 mil) has been studied as an approach to polymer blend preparation. Decompression followed by thermal initiation using AIBN or tert-butyl perbenzoate yields polymer blends with the polystyrene trapped inside the matrix polymer. Polymerization prior to decompression yields more extensively modified products. Polystyrene content and the distribution of polystyrene in the blend can be controlled by adjusting the concentration of styrene in the supercritical fluid or by controlling the time that the PCTFE film is in contact with the fluid. The control imparted is consistent with the phase behavior and absorption kinetics of the styrene-CO 2 -PCTFE system. Transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) indicate that the polystyrene exists as discrete phase-segregated regions throughout the thickness of the PCTFE film. Thermal analysis of blends and infrared data from extraction experiments indicate that radical grafting reactions do not occur to any significant extent. EDX data indicate that blends with composition gradients of adjustable degrees of severity can be produced by using soaking periods of shorter duration than is required to achieve equilibrium solubility of the monomer in the substrate.
Curve Crossing for the Reflected Process

Let R_n = max0<=j<=n S_j − S_n be a random walk S_n reflected in its maximum. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for finiteness of passage times of Rn above horizontal or certain curved (power law) boundaries. Necessary and sufficient conditions are also given for the finiteness of the expected passage time of R_n above linear and square root boundaries.
Biological Crystallography Structure Determination of Human Semaphorin 4d as an Example of the Use of Mad in Non-optimal Cases

Semaphorins are an important class of signalling molecules involved in axon guidance, immune function and angiogenesis. They are characterized by having an extracellular sema domain of about 500 residues. The steps involved in the determination of the structure of human semaphorin 4D are described here as a case study of selenium MAD phasing in a difficult case with low symmetry, moderate diffraction and low selenium content. A particular feature of this study was the large number of diffraction images required to give data of sufficient quality for structure determination and these data are re-analyzed here to investigate the effects of radiation damage on eventual data quality and to suggest strategies for successful MAD phasing in similar difficult cases.
Reinforcement Learning Methods to Enable Automatic Tuning of Legged Robots

Bio-inspired legged robots have demonstrated the capability to walk and run across a wide variety of terrains, such as those found after a natural disaster. However, the survival of victims of natural disasters depends on the speed at which these robots can travel. This paper describes the need for adaptive gait tuning on an eight-legged robot, which will enable it to adjust its gait parameters to increase the speed at which it navigates difficult and varying terrains. Specifically, we characterize the robot’s performance on varied terrains and use the results to inform the implementation of a finite-difference policy gradient reinforcement learning algorithm. We compare the robot’s performance under hand-tuned policies with the performance under the reinforcement learning algorithm, and finally, suggest improvements to the presented policy search process.
A Customizable Wearable Robust 3D Printed Bionic Arm: Muscle Controlled

In this research paper, customizable wearable robust 3D printed bionic arm been designed and implemented for a right arm. An experimental test has been conducted for a person who has been born without a right arm. A control of a 9 DOF hand is accomplished successfully using EMG signals acquired by MYO armband. Different gestures are recognized and mapped to control different movements of the hand. Basic daily activities have been accomplished after training of that person. The arm is a lightweight for daily use for long time. The cost of the arm is cheap compared to available solutions available on the market.
A Nine Month Report on Progress Towards a Framework for Evaluating Advanced Search Interfaces considering Information Retrieval and Human Computer Interaction

This is a nine month progress report detailing my research into supporting users in their search for information, where the questions, results or even their environment requires functionality beyond the scope of keyword search alone. While keyword search environments, such as Google, have become the familiar standard for search on the web, research has shown that users, who may not know which keywords to use, adopt coping strategies because they have no other methods to express their query (Pirolli and Card, 1995). Typically, these coping strategies involve submitting tentative queries with general keywords to learn more about the meta-data, to inform a more specific keyword search later. More recently, the term Exploratory Search has been used to describe search environments that provide alternative search functionality for when users may have poorly defined goals or complex questions, have insufficient pre-search knowledge, or may be using a system with poorly defined or unpredictable indexing (White et al., 2006a). While early exploratory search interfaces have been developing for some time (Hearst, 2000), recent reports have discussed the need to find metrics for evaluating their success (White et al., 2006b). As these more interactive models of search provide increasingly versatile combinations of functions, Marchionini suggests that such success is not achieved by simply adding more features but by combining them to produce synergetic designs(Marchionini, 2006). To evaluate exploratory search interfaces, designs need to be measured in terms of their support for known search tactics. The research below investigates the history of Information Retrieval (IR) research into the human element of interactive search, to develop a framework that produces a measure for such support. Then, the weaknesses of rich search designs can be identified and mitigated, before they are put forward for complex and expensive user studies. This report describes the progress of this investigation into using InformationSeeking models of users, their needs and their search behaviour, to design a
The Gis Manual Geo-ontologies 12.2 Ontology and Ontologies

In order to understand how people see the world and how, ultimately, mental conceptualizations of the comprehended geographic features are represented in a computer system, we must develop abstraction paradigms. The result of the abstraction process is a general view of the process from the real object to its computer representation. Different levels of abstraction allow the development of specific tools for the different types of problems at each level. Creating a solid conceptual model is at the foundation of system design practice. Lately, ontologies were brought into the discussion on modeling. For instance, Guarino (1998, p. 10) says that “every (symbolic) information system (IS) has its own ontology, since it ascribes meaning to the symbols used according to a particular view of the world. ” Wand and Weber (2004, p. v) argue that since theories of ontology are tools that help us describe a specific world (i.e., the target of an IS), “our information systems will only be as good as our ontologies. ” The subject of ontology also is an important field of research in geographic information science (Mark 1993; Frank 1997; Smith and Mark 1998; Bittner and Winter 1999; Rodríguez et al. 1999; Bishr and Kuhn 2000; Câmara et al. 2000; Frank 2001; Kuhn 2001; Kavouras et al. 2005). Ontologies have been used as a means of knowledge-sharing among different user communities, thus improving interoperability among different geographic databases. Information can be integrated based primarily on its meaning by integrating ontologies that are linked to sources of geographic information. The use of an ontology, translated into an active, information-system component, leads to Ontology-Driven Information Systems (ODIS) (Guarino 1998) and, in the specific case of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), it leads to what is called Ontology-Driven Geographic Information Systems (ODGIS) (Fonseca and Egenhofer 1999). In GIS, the use of ontologies is diverse. They can be used to deal with aerial images (Câmara et al. 2001) or with urban systems (Fonseca et al. 2000), for instance. Ontologies are theories that use a specific vocabulary to describe entities, classes, properties and functions related to a certain view of the world. They can be a simple taxonomy, a lexicon or a thesaurus, or even a fully axiomatized theory (Gruber 1995; Guarino and Giaretta 1995).
Overeating in Early Postnatal Ontogenesis Forms Metabolic Memory and Reduces Lifespan

We investigated the role of metabolic memory in a choice of strategies for adaptation to stress influences. We used a model of rat overeating in early ontogenesis from birth to 21 days of life and investigated the maintenance of formed metabolic pattern in later ontogenesis. The following characteristics were measured: somatometric indicators, resistance of animals to a temperature stress of 32aµC, thyroxin and triiodothyronine content in blood serum, NO-synthase activity, the content of lipid hydroperoxides and antioxidant enzymes in different organs in animals of 3, 20 and 31 months of age under standard conditions of maintenance in control animals and after overeating in the early ontogenesis. It is shown that the metabolic pattern formed on the background of overeating from birth to 21 days remains until the later stages of ontogeny. The forming metabolic pattern is characterized by elevated content of thyroxin, increase of NO-synthase activity in various tissues and particularly in the brain, a small increase of lipid hydroperoxides and reduced antioxidant activity of some enzymes. Animals that overeated in the early ontogenesis, are characterized by lower resistance to high temperatures and shorter life expectancy compared to the animals contained in the standard terms.
A new method for individual tree measurement from airborne LiDAR

This paper presents a new method for individual tree measurement from Airborne LiDAR data. This method involves 3 steps; 1) individual tree crown delineation based on density of high points (DHP), 2) tree filtering, and 3) measurement of tree trunk diameter at breast height (DBH). In the second step, a special tree filtering algorithm is introduced which combines a histogram analysis and region growing (RG) segmentation method. In forest area, undergrowth vegetation is considered as noise and it should be removed to ease the DBH measurement process of trees. The DBH measurement on point cloud is done based on two steps; 1) three-dimensional line fitted on points of tree trunk, and 2) histogram analysis of distances between points and the line. It shows that more than 60% trees are successfully filtered and compared to the actual DBH measurement in the field the DBH estimations on point cloud have the root mean square error of 0.18 m.
Online driver's drowsiness estimation using domain adaptation with model fusion

Drowsy driving is a pervasive problem among drivers, and is also an important contributor to motor vehicle accidents. It is very important to be able to estimate a driver's drowsiness level online so that preventative actions could be taken to avoid accidents. However, because of large individual differences, it is very challenging to design an estimation algorithm whose parameters fit all subjects. Some subject-specific calibration data must be used to tailor the algorithm for each new subject. This paper proposes a domain adaptation with model fusion (DAMF) online drowsiness estimation approach using EEG signals. By making use of EEG data from other subjects in a transfer learning framework, DAMF requires very little subject-specific calibration data, which significantly increases its utility in practice. We demonstrate using a simulated driving experiment and 15 subjects that DAMF can achieve much better performance than several other approaches.
Fuzzy decision tree, linguistic rules and fuzzy knowledge-based network: generation and evaluation

A fuzzy knowledge-based network is developed based on the linguistic rules extracted from a fuzzy decision tree. A scheme for automatic linguistic discretization of continuous attributes, based on quantiles, is formulated. A novel concept for measuring the goodness of a decision tree, in terms of its compactness (size) and efficient performance, is introduced. Linguistic rules are quantitatively evaluated using new indices. The rules are mapped to a fuzzy knowledge-based network, incorporating the frequency of samples and depth of the attributes in the decision tree. New fuzziness measures, in terms of class memberships, are used at the node level of the tree to take care of overlapping classes. The effectiveness of the system, in terms of recognition scores, structure of decision tree, performance of rules, and network size, is extensively demonstrated on three sets of real-life data.
Object Detection Via Structural Feature Selection and Shape Model

In this paper, we propose an approach for object detection via structural feature selection and part-based shape model. It automatically learns a shape model from cluttered training images without need to explicitly use bounding boxes on objects. Our approach first builds a class-specific codebook of local contour features, and then generates structural feature descriptors by combining context shape information. These descriptors are robust to both within-class variations and scale changes. Through exploring pairwise image matching using fast earth mover's distance, feature weights can be iteratively updated. Those discriminative foreground features are assigned high weights and then selected to build a part-based shape model. Finally, object detection is performed by matching each testing image with this model. Experiments show that the proposed method is very effective. It has achieved comparable performance to the state-of-the-art shape-based detection methods, but requires much less training information.
Complete Title and Authors MAPRM : A Probabilistic Roadmap Planner with Sampling on the Medial Axis of the Free Space [ 2 ]

The method presented in this research paper takes advantage of the fact that the Medial Axis of the Configuration Space is a Strong Deformation Retract (SDR) of the whole Configuration Space, i.e., a path exists for two configurations if and only if there exists a homotopic path for their images in the Medial Axis. This research paper presents mathematical properties of the Medial Axis for a configuration space modeled as the closed union of disjoint polygons on a plane (2D). It also explains why there are some configurations (non-convex vertices) that cannot be mapped to the medial axis in a continuous way as to obtain an SDR of the original configuration space. The algorithm consists on using a Uniform Sampler to get initial configurations , and then retracts each of them to the Medial Axis of the C-Space. After generating the desired number of samples, it connects the different nodes, and then the Roadmap is ready for queries. The interesting part, however, is the retraction of a given configuration q to the medial axis. This is done by finding the closest configuration q c to q in the boundary set of the Free Space δ(Q f ree) and moving q away from the obstacle surface along the vector − → qq c until q c changes or is not unique anymore. At that point q will be on the medial axis. The mathematical results for this method show that this method does increase the number of samples in narrow passages in such a way that it does not depend on the size of the narrow passage, but the size and shape of the obstacles around it. More accurately, the probability might not increase as much for a given narrow passage, if the medial axis of the obstacle bounding it is very close to its surface. This happens because the probability changes from P r(A) = µ(N) µ(Q f ree) to P r(A) = µ(N)+µ(V N) µ(Q) , where A is the event of sampling the Narrow Passage N using PRM, A is the event of sampling N using MAPRM, µ is a function that maps a set to its volume, and V N is the set of points in the obstacle around N that are also mapped to the Medial Axis in N. This paper also presents an adaptation of the method to a free-flying rigid object in three dimensions. …
AGRIS and AtRegNet. A Platform to Link cis-Regulatory Elements and Transcription Factors into Regulatory Networks1[W][OA]

Gene regulatory pathways converge at the level of transcription, where interactions among regulatory genes and between regulators and target genes result in the establishment of spatiotemporal patterns of gene expression. The growing identification of direct target genes for key transcription factors (TFs) through traditional and high-throughput experimental approaches has facilitated the elucidation of regulatory networks at the genome level. To integrate this information into a Web-based knowledgebase, we have developed the Arabidopsis Gene Regulatory Information Server (AGRIS). AGRIS, which contains all Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) promoter sequences, TFs, and their target genes and functions, provides the scientific community with a platform to establish regulatory networks. AGRIS currently houses three linked databases: AtcisDB (Arabidopsis thaliana cis-regulatory database), AtTFDB (Arabidopsis thaliana transcription factor database), and AtRegNet (Arabidopsis thaliana regulatory network). AtTFDB contains 1,690 Arabidopsis TFs and their sequences (protein and DNA) grouped into 50 (October 2005) families with information on available mutants in the corresponding genes. AtcisDB consists of 25,806 (September 2005) promoter sequences of annotated Arabidopsis genes with a description of putative cis-regulatory elements. AtRegNet links, in direct interactions, several hundred genes with the TFs that control their expression. The current release of AtRegNet contains a total of 187 (September 2005) direct targets for 66 TFs. AGRIS can be accessed at http://Arabidopsis.med.ohio-state.edu.
Fuzzy Logic That Determines Sky Conditions as a Key Component of a Smart Irrigation System

The economic and environmental need of using the right amount of water for irrigation has led to the development of different technological systems, such as simple automatic solutions that activate the irrigation process at well-defined times. The main disadvantage of those systems is that they do not consider the actual amounts of water needed by the crops nor the meteorological variables that influence their development. An alternative to the use of automatic systems is the use of smart irrigation systems that focus on the actual dosage of water needed by the crops. In the development of this project, the design and implementation of a smart irrigation system are carried out through the sensing of soil moisture and meteorological variables. That information is used to implement a smart control scheme, which manages the flow of water for irrigation. One of the novel ideas in this work is the realization of a fuzzy logic system that determines the prevailing sky conditions in the area, which obtained an accuracy of 76.92%. The amount of water needed for each crop can be determined by an agronomic design, and a comparison of the amount of water required by the smart irrigation system and gravity irrigation was performed, obtaining estimated savings of 68%. The obtained results serve as a proof of concept for a novel system that could have a beneficial social and environmental impact in agriculture.