Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Motion synchronization with predefined rhythms for humanoid robot

In order to make a humanoid robot to resemble a human, individual behaviours are created based on simple primitive rules. These behaviours will be synchronized together to perform a more useful tasks. In this work, various robot behaviours that are required to play soccer using simple primitive rules are developed and these individual behaviours will be synchronized together so that the humanoid robot is able to play soccer autonomously. The behaviours created are separated into two categories namely object detection behaviours and motion behaviours. In object detection behaviours consists of Red Ball Detection which uses primitive rules of colour blob segmentation and depth estimation through trigonometric properties whereas Goal Post Detection uses the primitive rule of grid-based segmentation pattern learning and recognition. In motion behaviours consists of Scoring, Kip Up and Diving which uses the primitive rule of support polygon and centre of mass. Once these behaviours are designed and created, it is synchronized into two different roles namely player and keeper.
Cryptographic Test Correction

Multiple choice questionnaires (MCQs) are an assessment procedure invented in 1914. Today, they're widely used in education, opinion polls, and elections. When we first encountered MCQs in the university environment, we faced the daunting challenge of having to grade 600 of them. This article explores the possibility of safely transferring part of an MCQ's correction burden to the examinee - in this case, students - when sophisticated technological means such as optical character recognition systems aren't available. The MCQ grader uses a scoring algorithm C to compute the student's final mark. We call such a procedure a cryptographic test correction (CTC) scheme.
Generating Code and Documentation from Lightweight Abstract Grammars

Abstract grammars are used in papers when toy languages are described. For the development of language processing tools it is also useful to have a short and explicit description of the abstract grammar of the language being processed. This paper presents a little language for expressing lightweight abstract grammars, a little language for writing templates that refer to the information in the abstract grammar, and the tool to process these. The tool generates, for example, code for the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) data structures, a table view and a graphical view of the abstract grammar.
Optimum Sequence Estimation for Non-Gaussian Channels with Intersymbol Interference

In 1972, Forney proposed a maximum likelihood sequence estimator for digital PAM (pulse amplitude modulated) signals in the presence of nite intersymbol interference (ISI) and additive white Gaussian noise. This optimum scheme involves passing the received signal through a so-called whitened linear matched lter, sampling the lter output at the symbol rate, and processing the resulting sequence of samples using the Viterbi algorithm to estimate the transmitted sequence. In this paper, we derive a maximum likelihood sequence estimator for PAM signals in the presence of nite ISI, when the additive noise consists of i.i. d. samples following an arbitrary non-Gaussian distribution. Our optimal estimator consists of a so-called vector Viterbi algorithm that operates directly on the samples, many per symbol interval, of the (unnl-tered) received signal. We apply this algorithm to the special case of Laplacian noise, and obtain a particularly elegant receiver structure which is simple to implement.
Harmonic differentials and infinite geodesic joining two punctures on a Riemann surface

Let M be a hyperbolic Riemann surface of finite volume. The harmonic dual form to an infinite geodesic joining two punctures on M is obtained in two different ways. First of all, using the degeneration of hyperbolic Eisenstein series, it is made explicit in terms of these. Secondly, generalizing the construction of Kudla and Millson to the case of an infinite geodesic joining two punctures, we give an automorphic realization of this harmonic form.
Detection of the tau-margin and application to autonomous control of a flying robot

In this paper, we focus on the concept of time to contact and propose a simple sensor system for detecting the time to contact, and apply it to autonomous control of a flying robot. To discuss the effectiveness of the proposed sensor system and a controller using the sensor system, we develop a flying robot simply without CPU(s) or high spec sensors. We employ only 5 CdS cells and simple analogue circuits for controlling it, and we realize behaviour for chasing a moving light bulb with stable flying. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed sensor system and flying robot, simulations and experiments have been conducted and chasing behaviours have been realized.
Sequence and expression of a constitutive, facilitated glucose transporter (GLUT1) in Atlantic cod Gadus morhua

SUMMARY A putative glucose transporter, GLUT1, is reported for Atlantic cod Gadus morhua. A combination of RT-PCR, RLM-RACE and genome walking were used to articulate a 4560 bp cDNA (GenBank accession number AY526497). It contains a 149 bp 5′ UTR, a 1470 bp open reading frame and a 2941 bp 3′ UTR. At the nucleotide level, the cod GLUT1 ORF shares 78.2% sequence identity to human GLUT1 and the deduced amino acid sequence clusters with GLUT1s from rainbow trout and carp. GLUT1 transcript is highly expressed in brain, gill, heart and kidney and expressed to a lower level in at least six other tissues. Expression is evident immediately upon fertilization of eggs. Six hours of hypoxia at 40% DO2 did not alter expression levels in brain, gill, heart or kidney. The level of expression is not substantially altered in heart during low temperature challenge, although there is a suggestion that colder temperature could lead to lower levels of expression, consistent with the concept that the cold-acclimated heart has a reduced dependence upon glucose as a metabolic fuel. Two months of starvation did not significantly alter the level of expression of GLUT1 in heart. This is in marked contrast to the rat heart where fasting leads to a substantial decrease in GLUT1 levels. Overall, there is a ubiquitous tissue distribution of GLUT1, consistent with other species, and the level of gene expression, especially in heart, is relatively constant over a range of physiological conditions.
Common Membership and Effective Corporate Governance: Evidence from Audit and Compensation Committees

Manuscript Type. Empirical. Research Question/Issue. This study examines the factors associated with the presence of the same directors across the compensation committee and the audit committee in US firms, and whether such common membership enhances or undermines effective governance. Research Findings/Insights. Using 4,572 firm‐year observations in the US during fiscal years 2004–2008, the results show that common membership is more likely to occur in firms with weak corporate governance and in firms lacking financial and committee resources, and is not associated with firms having a high demand for coordination between compensation and audit committees. We also find that firms with common membership have poorer earnings quality and weaker pay‐performance sensitivity than other firms. Theoretical/Academic Implications. Our study is one of the first to propose theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on the determinants as well as the consequences of common membership across compensation and audit committees. We fill the gap in the literature by examining the interplay between these committees. Practitioner/Policy Implications. This study offers practical implications for corporations. The findings indicate that common membership is not employed to fulfill the coordinative role between audit and compensation committees and can put the effectiveness of audit and compensation committees at risk. Therefore, firms who intend to strengthen compensation practices or improve financial reporting quality should re‐examine their committee structures to ensure proper task separation.
The Roots of Islamist Armed Struggle, 1968-2007

This contribution studies the influence of poor politico-economic factors, unfavorable demographic conditions, state failure, modernization, secularization, globalization and the perceived dependency of the Islamic world from the West on the onset of armed Islamist activity for 155 countries between 1968 and 2007. Its empirical findings show that the onset of militant Islamism is robustly associated with the discrimination of Islamic minorities, state weakness, the presence of large (secular and possibly predatory) governments, military dependence from the U.S., external cultural influences and the availability of a large pool of potential recruits (as indicated by a large, Muslim population). Poor economic conditions, modernization and authoritarianism share no association with the onset of Islamist militancy. The latter findings imply that democratic reforms and economic development while often advocated countering Islamist violence appear to be rather ineffective tools of conflict prevention.
Comparison of dancing humanoid upper bodies

This paper provides a comparative study of the human motion imitation of twenty humanoid upper body structures. Human dance motion is used as a case study in motion imitation. The error between the desired humanoid posture and the actual posture attained is used to determine how well each humanoid imitates the human motion. Factors such as the number of joints, the range of joint motion, and location of the joints are investigated to determine their effects on the motion imitation results. It is found that the waist flexion joint and shoulder girdle joints are highly important for human motion imitation of humanoid upper bodies.
Differential Axial Requirements for Lunatic Fringe and Hes7 Transcription during Mouse Somitogenesis

Vertebrate segmentation is regulated by the “segmentation clock”, which drives cyclic expression of several genes in the caudal presomitic mesoderm (PSM). One such gene is Lunatic fringe (Lfng), which encodes a modifier of Notch signalling, and which is also expressed in a stripe at the cranial end of the PSM, adjacent to the newly forming somite border. We have investigated the functional requirements for these modes of Lfng expression during somitogenesis by generating mice in which Lfng is expressed in the cranial stripe but strongly reduced in the caudal PSM, and find that requirements for Lfng activity alter during axial growth. Formation of cervical, thoracic and lumbar somites/vertebrae, but not sacral and adjacent tail somites/vertebrae, depends on caudal, cyclic Lfng expression. Indeed, the sacral region segments normally in the complete absence of Lfng and shows a reduced requirement for another oscillating gene, Hes7, indicating that the architecture of the clock alters as segmentation progresses. We present evidence that Lfng controls dorsal-ventral axis specification in the tail, and also suggest that Lfng controls the expression or activity of a long-range signal that regulates axial extension.
Managing Corrective Actions to Closure in Open Source Software Test Process

In assessing test process maturity, one of the goals is to manage disciplinary issues. Managing corrective actions to closure is known to aid software quality assurance, in general, and testing process activities, in particular. In this paper, a framework for software testing assessment, namely OSS-TPA, that aims to evaluate corrective actions in OSS test process, is proposed. The OSS-TPA framework is based on earlier studies and relies on a conceptual model for test process activities in OSS development. Using success factors in OSS development, the relationship between the maturity of managing corrective actions and the adoption of OSS is investigated.
An Empirical Study of the Ad Auction Game in the Trading Agent Competition

The contribution of this thesis is developing a top performing Ad Auction agent for the Trading Agent Competition (TAC). This agent models the users populations using particle filters, based on a Nearest Neighbor estimator (instead of game specific parameters). It also uses a simple and effective bid optimization algorithm, that applies the equimarginal principal combined with perplexity-based regularization. In addition, We study the empirical behavior of TAC-AA agents. We investigate the robustness of the agents to changes in the environment, and show that most agents, especially the top-scoring ones, are surprisingly robust. Furthermore, using the actual logs, we derive for each agent a strategic fingerprint and show that it almost uniquely identifies it, and that it is strongly related to its profit and robustness.
Exercise and Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Supplementation for the Treatment of Hepatic Steatosis in Hyperphagic OLETF Rats

Background and Aims. This study examined if exercise and omega-3 fatty acid (n3PUFA) supplementation is an effective treatment for hepatic steatosis in obese, hyperphagic Otsuka Long-Evans Tokushima Fatty (OLETF) rats. Methods. Male OLETF rats were divided into 4 groups (n = 8/group): (1) remained sedentary (SED), (2) access to running wheels; (EX) (3) a diet supplemented with 3% of energy from fish oil (n3PUFA-SED); and (4) n3PUFA supplementation plus EX (n3PUFA+EX). The 8 week treatments began at 13 weeks, when hepatic steatosis is present in OLETF-SED rats. Results. EX alone lowered hepatic triglyceride (TAG) while, in contrast, n3PUFAs failed to lower hepatic TAG and blunted the ability of EX to decrease hepatic TAG levels in n3PUFAs+EX. Insulin sensitivity was improved in EX animals, to a lesser extent in n3PUFA+EX rats, and did not differ between n3PUFA-SED and SED rats. Only the EX group displayed higher complete hepatic fatty acid oxidation (FAO) to CO2 and carnitine palmitoyl transferase-1 activity. EX also lowered hepatic fatty acid synthase protein while both EX and n3PUFA+EX decreased stearoyl CoA desaturase-1 protein. Conclusions. Exercise lowers hepatic steatosis through increased complete hepatic FAO, insulin sensitivity, and reduced expression of de novo fatty acid synthesis proteins while n3PUFAs had no effect.
A Neuro-genetic ensemble Short Term Forecasting Framework for Anomaly Intrusion Prediction

Information systems are one of the most rapidly changing and vulnerable systems, where security is a major issue. The number of security-breaking attempts originated inside the organizations is increasing steadily. Attacks made in this way, usually done by "authorized" users of the system, cannot be immediately traced. As the idea of filtering the traffic at the entrance door, by using firewalls and the like, is not completely successful, the use of intrusion detection systems should be considered to increase the defense capacity of an information system. This paper presents a framework for a statistical anomaly prediction system using a neuro-genetic forecasting model, which predicts unauthorized invasions of user, based on previous observations and takes further action before intrusion occurs. We propose an evolutionary time-series model for adaptive network intrusion forecasting where the ANN (Artificial Neural Network) is trained using genetic algorithm. The learning of the ANN is formulated as a weight optimization problem. The experimental results show that the combination strategy (neuro-genetic) can quicken the learning speed of the network and improve the predicting precision compared to the traditional ANN (Back Propagation Network). A comparative evaluation of the proposed neuro-genetic model with the traditional back-propagation, on audit data set provided by MIT Lincoln labs, has been presented and a better prediction accuracy has been observed.
Time-Bound, Thread-Based Live Migration of Virtual Machines

Live migration of virtual machines is the ability to move running virtual machines between two computers with minimal downtime. Although various migration mechanisms such as pre-copy, post-copy, and state compression have been proposed, they may suffer long migration times when the migrating virtual machines run large computation and memory intensive workloads. This paper presents the design and implementation of a novel Time-bound, thread-based Live Migration (TLM) mechanism, where additional threads are added to the pre-copy live migration algorithm to handle virtual machine state transfers within a bounded time period. In the time-bound principle, the upper-bound migration time of a virtual machine is proportional to the size of the virtual machine's memory. We propose a CPU over-committing mechanism to minimize migration downtime and avoid performance impacts to other virtual machines when the migration threads are in operation. We have implemented a prototype implementation of TLM on KVM, and conducted experiments by migrating virtual machines running a number of Class D OpenMP and MPI NAS parallel benchmarks. Experimental results showed the following: (i) TLM finished live migration in a bounded time period. Users are able to measure progress of migration operation. (ii) The CPU over-committing mechanism can be used to minimize live migration downtime. However, communication performance of virtual machines during live migration also declined as the number of over-committed CPUs reduced. The patterns of decline depended on execution behaviors of the applications on the virtual machines. (iii) The execution time increases of the OpenMP and MPI versions of the MG and IS benchmarks in our experiments were approximately equal to the migration times of TLM. (iv) We evaluated our CPU over-committing mechanism against the auto-convergence mechanism recently developed in kvm-1.6. We found that both mechanisms have their pros and cons, and their performance results are varied with application. Based on these results, we believe that the TLM design is practical for live migration of virtual machines running memory-intensive workloads, and the time-bound principle is an important new feature for pre-copy live migration optimization.
Management Consulting Issues in Australia – A Context Case Study

Dominion over the management consulting profession worldwide has passed in recent times from multinational accounting firms to multinational Information Technology firms. This transition coincides with a period of major change in the practice of management consulting. Yet, very little research has been done into the issues faced by management consultants. This paper reports a preliminary empirical investigation aimed at identifying these issues. From review of the literature and from interviews of State Chapter Presidents of the Institute of Management Consultants in Australia, the study identifies twenty-one issues around three categories: (1) the changing Client Environment, (2) the changing Client-Consultant Relationship, and (3) the changing Consultant Environment.
Distributed precoding design for MIMO interference channels

This paper addresses distributed precoding design for MIMO interference networks, where multiple MIMO links share the same bandwidth. In our proposed design, the precoding matrix for an individual link is given as the product of two matrices obtained in two sequential steps. In particular, the first matrix is derived by maximizing the desired signal power given the leakage power as a penalty and the second matrix is obtained by suppressing the interference among data streams belonging to one link (inter-stream interference). Comparing to the naive precoding design, where each transmitter selfishly employs waterfilling transmission scheme, the achievable rate achieved by our proposed two-step precoding design increases as the SNR increases. Moreover, the performance gain of our proposed precoding design over the naive design depends on the available spatial degrees-of-freedom.
Does poverty entrap ?

We test whether income dynamics over 30 years in rural Indian villages suggest the presence of a poverty trap. A weighted dynamic panel estimate using rainfall as an instrument for lagged income addresses measurement error, attrition bias, and the inherent endogeneity of lagged income while allowing the steady state of income to vary across individuals. Estimates of the model provide robust evidence of a low-level steady state equilibrium but, consistent with other studies, no evidence of a poverty trap. Schooling substantially increases a person’s steady state income, however, implying that education provides one secure escape from poverty. ∗Authors contact: stefan.dercon@economics.ox. ac.uk and j.s. shapiro@lse.ac.uk. We thank Reena Badiani for extensive and insightful help in preparing and processing the data.
Safe Navigation on a Mobile Robot using Local and Temporal Visual Cues

An open challenge to the widespread deployment of mobile robots in the real-world is the ability to operate autonomously in dynamic environments. Such autonomous operation requires full utilization of the relevant sensory inputs to adapt to environmental changes. Despite being a rich source of information, vision is however, still under-utilized in robot domains because of the sensitivity to environmental changes and the computational complexity of visual input processing algorithms. This paper enables a mobile robot to better utilize the visual input to navigate safely in dynamic environments—it describes a novel algorithm that: (a) uses local image gradient cues to characterize target objects reliably and efficiently; and (b) uses temporal correspondence of visual cues for robust localization and tracking of environmental obstacles. Furthermore, the information extracted from these visual cues is merged effectively with information obtained from other visual cues and range sensors, using autonomously learned error models of the different information processing schemes. All algorithms are fully implemented and tested on a humanoid robot in dynamic indoor environments.