Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Grasp recognition and mapping on humanoid robots

In this paper, we present a system for vision-based grasp recognition, mapping and execution on a humanoid robot to provide an intuitive and natural communication channel between humans and humanoids. This channel enables a human user to teach a robot how to grasp an object. The system comprises three components: human upper body motion capture system which provides the approaching direction towards an object, hand pose estimation and grasp recognition system, which provides the grasp type performed by the human as well as a grasp mapping and execution system for grasp reproduction on a humanoid robot with five-fingered hands. All three components are real-time and markerless. Once an object is reached, the hand posture is estimated, including hand orientation and grasp type. For the execution on a robot, hand posture and approach movement are mapped and optimized according to the kinematic limitations of the robot. Experimental results are performed on the humanoid robot ARMAR-IIIb.
Stability analysis for a type of T-S fuzzy control systems using integral quadratic constraints

Recently, the well-known circle criterion and Popov criterion are introduced to investigate the stability of a type of T-S fuzzy control systems. Although both the two corresponding stability conditions have elegant graphical interpretations, the relation of them is not well studied. In this paper, we try to explain the two conditions by a new unified stability condition, which is based on the integral quadratic constrains (IQCs). In addition, the proposed method is less conservative than the circle criterion and Popov criterion based methods. A numerical example is given to demonstrate how to use this criterion in analyzing the T-S fuzzy control systems.
Sensitivity Enhancement in Si Nanophotonic Waveguides Used for Refractive Index Sensing

A comparative study is given for the sensitivity of several typical Si nanophotonic waveguides, including SOI (silicon-on-insulator) nanowires, nanoslot waveguides, suspended Si nanowires, and nanofibers. The cases for gas sensing (ncl ~ 1.0) and liquid sensing (ncl ~ 1.33) are considered. When using SOI nanowires (with a SiO2 buffer layer), the sensitivity for liquid sensing (S ~ 0.55) is higher than that for gas sensing (S ~ 0.35) due to lower asymmetry in the vertical direction. By using SOI nanoslot waveguides, suspended Si nanowires, and Si nanofibers, one could achieve a higher sensitivity compared to sensing with a free-space beam (S = 1.0). The sensitivity for gas sensing is higher than that for liquid sensing due to the higher index-contrast. The waveguide sensitivity of an optimized suspended Si nanowire for gas sensing is as high as 1.5, which is much higher than that of a SOI nanoslot waveguide. Furthermore, the optimal design has very large tolerance to the core width variation due to the fabrication error (∆w ~ ±50 nm). In contrast, a Si nanofiber could also give a very high sensitivity (e.g., ~1.43) while the fabrication tolerance is very small (i.e., ∆w < ±5 nm). The comparative study shows that suspended Si nanowire is a good choice to achieve ultra-high waveguide sensitivity.
Effects of Formulations and Processing Parameters on Foam Morphologies in the Direct Extrusion Foaming of Polypropylene using a Single-screw Extruder

The direct extrusion foaming process of low-density polypropylene (PP) in a typical single-screw extruder is researched. Effects of five variables on the volume expansion behavior and cellular morphologies are investigated. They are three kinds of polypropylene with different melt flow rates (MFRs), two kinds of chemical blowing agents, cross-linking modification method and blending modification method, two operating parameters (the screw speed and the die temperature), and die shapes. The experimental results prove that: the lower the MFR (from 0.45 to 10 g/10 min), the better the PP foamed; use of azodicarbonamide as the blowing agent helps to achieve PP foam with larger volume expansion, while use of endothermic foaming agent EPIcor 882 results in rigid foams with lower foaming ratios; melt strength can be effectively promoted, and low-density PP foam can be produced by proper addition of cross-linking agents or blending agents properly; low die temperatures (about 155 C) and high screw speeds (from 16 to 48 rpm) are beneficial to foaming; high die pressure in some range is good for foaming, so the die in which it is easy to establish high die pressure such as the filament die, is good for low-density foams.
Capture and modeling of non-linear heterogeneous soft tissue

This paper introduces a data-driven representation and modeling technique for simulating non-linear heterogeneous soft tissue. It simplifies the construction of convincing deformable models by avoiding complex selection and tuning of physical material parameters, yet retaining the richness of non-linear heterogeneous behavior. We acquire a set of example deformations of a real object, and represent each of them as a spatially varying stress-strain relationship in a finite-element model. We then model the material by non-linear interpolation of these stress-strain relationships in strain-space. Our method relies on a simple-to-build capture system and an efficient run-time simulation algorithm based on incremental loading, making it suitable for interactive computer graphics applications. We present the results of our approach for several non-linear materials and biological soft tissue, with accurate agreement of our model to the measured data.
Exploring the Power Flow Solution Space Boundary

A knowledge of the structure of the boundary of solutions of the power flow problem is important when analyzing the robustness of operating points. This paper proposes a predictor-corrector technique to assist in exploring that structure. Points on the solution boundary satisfy the power flow equations together with an equation that forces the power flow Jacobian to be singular. Curves of such points result from freeing two parameters of the system. The proposed technique follows those curves. A simple example is used to illustrate the complex nature of the power flow solution space.
Differential Effect of Neuropeptides on Excitatory Synaptic Transmission in Human Epileptic Hippocampus

Development of novel disease-modifying treatment strategies for neurological disorders, which at present have no cure, represents a major challenge for today's neurology. Translation of findings from animal models to humans represents an unresolved gap in most of the preclinical studies. Gene therapy is an evolving innovative approach that may prove useful for clinical applications. In animal models of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), gene therapy treatments based on viral vectors encoding NPY or galanin have been shown to effectively suppress seizures. However, how this translates to human TLE remains unknown. A unique possibility to validate these animal studies is provided by a surgical therapeutic approach, whereby resected epileptic tissue from temporal lobes of pharmacoresistant patients are available for neurophysiological studies in vitro. To test whether NPY and galanin have antiepileptic actions in human epileptic tissue as well, we applied these neuropeptides directly to human hippocampal slices in vitro. NPY strongly decreased stimulation-induced EPSPs in dentate gyrus and CA1 (up to 30 and 55%, respectively) via Y2 receptors, while galanin had no significant effect. Receptor autoradiographic binding revealed the presence of both NPY and galanin receptors, while functional receptor binding was only detected for NPY, suggesting that galanin receptor signaling may be impaired. These results underline the importance of validating findings from animal studies in human brain tissue, and advocate for NPY as a more appropriate candidate than galanin for future gene therapy trials in pharmacoresistant TLE patients.
Cloning of TC-1 (C8orf4), a novel gene found to be overexpressed in thyroid cancer.

A novel gene highly expressed in thyroid cancer, designated TC-1 (thyroid cancer-1), was cloned from suppression subtractive hybridization between papillary thyroid carcinoma and its surrounding normal thyroid tissue. Overexpression of TC-1 in thyroid cancer was confirmed in 15/16 paired samples by RT-PCR and Northern analysis. Ubiquitously expressed in human tissues, the TC-1 sequence showed no homology to any known gene, but matched a cluster of ESTs. After alignment of our sequence with the ESTs, the missing transcription start site was obtained by 5'-RACE and verified by primer extension analysis. The full-length mRNA sequence of 1327 bp has an open reading frame of 321 bp, which encodes a highly conserved protein. Three regulatory motifs were identified at the expected positions within 1 kb of the 5' flanking sequence obtained by genome walking. Using fluorescence in situ hybridization, TC-1 was localized to chromosome 8p11.2. The overexpression of TC-1 in papillary carcinoma suggests that it may have an important role in thyroid carcinogenesis.
Bayesian Models of Human Sentence Processing

Human language processing relies on many kinds of linguistic knowledge, and is sensitive to their frequency, including lexical frequencies (Tyler, 1984; Salasoo & Pisoni, 1985; Marslen-Wilson, 1990; Zwitserlood, 1989; Simpson & Burgess, 1985), idiom frequencies (d’Arcais, 1993), phonological neighborhood frequencies (Luce, Pisoni, & Goldﬁnger, 1990), subcate-gorization frequencies (Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Kello, 1993), and thematic role frequencies (Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Gar-nsey, 1994; Garnsey, Pearlmutter, Myers, & Lotocky, 1997). But while we know that each of these knowledge sources must be probabilistic, we know very little about exactly how these probabilistic knowledge sources are combined. This paper proposes the use of Bayesian decision trees in modeling the probabilistic, evidential nature of human sentence processing. Our method reiﬁes conditional independence assertions implicit in sign-based linguistic theories and describes interactions among features without requiring additional assumptions about modularity. We show that our Bayesian approach successfully models psycholinguistic results on evidence combination in human lexical, idiomatic, and syntactic/semantic processing.
NFVPerf: Online performance monitoring and bottleneck detection for NFV

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a new trend in networking, where network functions are moving from custom hardware appliances to software implementations running on virtual machines (VMs) hosted on commodity hardware. While the benefits of NFV such as cost reduction and increased agility are well understood, doubts still exist on whether a software implementation can match up to the high performance that hardware appliances deliver. In this context, network operators would benefit from frameworks that monitor performance and identify bottlenecks in Virtual Network Function (VNF) implementations obtained from vendors. While several techniques already exist to identify performance issues in cloud-based applications, most of them either use hardware resource utilizations to identify hot-spots (making them incapable of detecting non-hardware performance bottlenecks) or rely on application specific measurements (which may not be exposed by VNFs to vendors always). This paper describes NFVPerf, a performance monitoring and bottleneck detection tool for NFV. NFVPerf works as part of a cloud that hosts a NFV deployment, and takes a configuration file specifying the basic architecture of the VNF as input. It sniffs packets on all VM-to-VM communication paths, computes per-hop throughputs and delays, and uses these “black-box” measurements alone to identify performance bottlenecks (including software bottlenecks) in real time, without requiring any instrumentation of the VNF. Further, NFVPerf can be customized to any VNF implementations with just configuration changes. Our evaluation of NFVPerf shows that it can monitor performance and identify bottlenecks in an NFV deployment, with high accuracy and minimal overhead. We believe that a system like NFVPerf would form a great addition to cloud management systems in the era of NFV.
Near-Optimal Distributed Scheduling Algorithms for Regular Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are normally characterized by resource challenged nodes. Since communication costs the most in terms of energy in these networks, minimizing this overhead is important. We consider minimum length node scheduling in regular multi-hop wireless sensor networks. We present collision-free decentralized scheduling algorithms based on TDMA with spatial reuse that do not use message passing, this saving communication overhead. We develop the algorithms using graph-based k-hop interference model and show that the schedule complexity in regular networks is independent of the number of nodes and varies quadratically with k which is typically a very small number. We follow it by characterizing feasibility regions in the SINR parameter space where the constant complexity continues to hold while simultaneously satisfying the SINR criteria. Using simulation, we evaluate the efficiency of our solution on random network deployments.
MyJVM: a 100% pure Java customizable Java Virtual Machine

Numerous research works propose Java extensions. Most of these works try to solve a precise problem and offer ad-hoc solutions to achieve their goal: language extensions, preprocessors implementation, modifications of the compiler, of the bytecode or of the virtual machine behavior. Most of this changes could be implemented in a common framework by extending a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Unfortunately, most JVM are not freely available or difficult to manage and/or to extend, and explicit use of their particular features implies a loss of portability. In this paper, we present an open Java Virtual Machine (100% pure Java) designed to be easily extensible (at compile-time and at run-time) by Java programmers.
Perceptual data hiding exploiting between-coefficient contrast masking

This paper proposes a novel data hiding scheme in which a payload is embedded into the discrete cosine transform domain. The characteristics of the Human Visual System (HVS) with respect to image fruition have been exploited to adapt the strength of the embedded data and integrated in the design of a digital image watermarking system. By using an HVS-inspired image quality metric, we study the relation between the amount of data that can be embedded and the resulting perceived quality. This study allows one to increase the robustness of the watermarked image without damaging the perceived quality, or, as alternative, to reduce the impairments produced by the watermarking process given a fixed embedding strength. Experimental results show the effectiveness and the robustness of the proposed solution.
Correlation-aware virtual machine allocation for energy-efficient datacenters

Server consolidation plays a key role to mitigate the continuous power increase of datacenters. The recent advent of scale-out applications (e.g., web search, MapReduce, etc.) necessitate the revisit of existing server consolidation solutions due to distinctively different characteristics compared to traditional high-performance computing (HPC), i.e., user interactive, latency critical, and operations on large data sets split across a number of servers. This paper presents a power saving solution for datacenters that especially targets the distinctive characteristics of the scale-out applications. More specifically, we take into account correlation information of core utilization among virtual machines (VMs) in server consolidation to lower actual peak server utilization. Then, we utilize this reduction to achieve further power savings by aggressively-yet-safely lowering the server operating voltage and frequency level. We have validated the effectiveness of the proposed solution using 1) multiple clusters of real-life scale-out application workloads based web search and 2) utilization traces obtained from real datacenter setups. According to our experiments, the proposed solution provides up to 13.7% power savings with up to 15.6% improvement of Quality-of-Service (QoS) compared to existing correlation-aware VM allocation schemes for datacenters.
Le transfert adaptatif en apprentissage par renforcement : application à la simulation de schéma de jeux tactiques. (Adaptative transfer in reinforcement learning : application for simulation of game situations)

A possible way to accelerate reinforcement learning process is to guide the exploration process using prior domain knowledge. This called knowledge transfer, and most transfer algorithms are based on an implicit assumption. They suppose that prior knowledge has a good quality for the current task. If this condition is not true, the learning process will be worse than standard reinforcement learning algorithm (negative transfer). This thesis put forwards some transfer algorithms to avoid this problem, whose can adapts learning process to prior knowledge quality. More precisely, we introduce a parameter called transfer rate, which controls how much prior knowledge will be used. In addition, we propose to optimize the transfer rate in order to make the best use of this policy. Thus, the proposed algorithms provide some robustness, working for all prior knowledge quality level, which was not the case with previous approaches. These algorithms are evaluated in two different problems: a toy problem (the gridworld), and a real complex one (a coach assistant tool). The latter application offers a coach to seize tactical patterns with a graphical interface, and then allows agents to view players doing the same patterns. To meet within a reasonable time, the request of the coach. The reinforcement learning alone is not enough, and transfer our algorithms have been applied to this area with success
Transplantation of Circulating Endothelial Progenitor Cells Restores Endothelial Function of Denuded Rabbit Carotid Arteries

Background and Purpose— Circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) play an important role in repair of injured vascular endothelium and neovascularization. The present study was designed to determine the effect of EPCs transplantation on the regeneration of endothelium and recovery of endothelial function in denuded carotid arteries. Methods— Isolated mononuclear cells from rabbit peripheral blood were cultured in endothelial growth medium for 7 days, yielding EPCs. A rabbit model of common carotid artery denudation by passage of a deflated balloon catheter was used to evaluate the effects of EPCs on endothelial regeneration and vasomotor function. Immediately after denudation, autologous EPCs (105 cells in 200 μL saline) or 200 μL saline alone (control) were administered into the lumen of injured artery. Results— Four weeks after transplantation, fluorescence-labeled colonies of EPCs were found in the vessel wall. Local transplantation of EPCs as compared with saline administration accelerated endothelialization and significantly improved endothelium-dependent relaxation when assessed 4 weeks after denudation (n=4 to 5, P<0.05). Transplantation of EPCs did not affect vasomotor function of arterial smooth muscle cells. Protein array analysis of conditioned media obtained from cultured EPCs demonstrated the ability of these cells to produce and release a number of proangiogenic cytokines. Conclusions— We conclude that local delivery of cultured circulating EPCs into the lumen of denuded carotid arteries accelerates endothelialization and improves endothelial function. Paracrine effects of EPCs may contribute to regenerative properties of EPCs.
Combining abstraction with Byzantine fault-tolerance

This thesis describes a technique to build replicated services that combines Byzantine fault tolerance with work on abstract data types. Tolerating Byzantine faults is important because software errors are a major cause of outages and they can make faulty replicas behave arbitrarily. Abstraction hides implementation details to enable the reuse of existing service implementations and to improve the ability to mask software errors. We improve resilience to software errors by enabling the recovery of faulty replicas using state stored in replicas with distinct implementations; using an opportunistic N-version programming technique that runs distinct, off-the-shelf implementations at each replica to reduce the probability of common mode failures; and periodically repairing each replica using an abstract view of the state stored by the correct replicas in the group, which improves tolerance to faults due to software aging. We have built two replicated services that demonstrate the use of this technique. The first is an NFS service where each replica runs a different off-the-shelf file system implementation. The second is a replicated version of the Thor object-oriented database. In this case, the methodology enabled reuse of the existing database code, which is non-deterministic. These examples suggest that our technique can be used in practice: Our performance results show that the replicated systems perform comparably to their original, non-replicated versions. Furthermore, both implementations required only a modest amount of new code, which reduces the likelihood of introducing more errors and keeps the monetary cost of using our technique low. Thesis Supervisor: Barbara Liskov Title: Ford Professor of Engineering Para o meu av6 VItor Hugo o poeta J um fingidor Finge tdo completamente Que chega afingir que e dor A dor que deveras sente. Fernando Pessoa, Autopsicografia To my grandfather Vitor Hugo The poet is a pretender He pretends so absolutely He manages to pretend a pain From the real pain he feels. Fernando Pessoa, Self-Psychography
European Conference on Information Systems ( ECIS ) 5-15-2012 IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES FOR INFORMATION SECURITY AWARENESS INITIATIVES IN E-GOVERNMENT

With the widespread adoption of electronic government services, there has been a need to ensure a seamless flow of information across public sector organizations, while at the same time, maintaining confidentiality, integrity and availability. Governments have put in place various initiatives and programs including information security awareness to provide the needed understanding on how public sector employees can maintain security and privacy. Nonetheless, the implementation of such initiatives often faces a number of challenges that impede further take-up of e-government services. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the challenges contributing towards the success of information security awareness initiatives implementation in the context of e-government. Political, organizational, social as well as technological challenges have been utilized in a conceptual framework to signify such challenges in e-government projects. An empirical case study conducted in a public sector organization in Greece was exploited in this research to reflect on these challenges. While, the results from this empirical study confirm the role of the identified challenges for the implementation of security awareness programs in e-government, it has been noticed that awareness programmers often pursue different targets of preserving security and privacy, which sometimes results in adding more complexity to the organization.
Journal of Modern Applied StatisticalMethods A Two and More Independent Factor Form of the Wilcoxon-Mann-Witney Test, Extendable to Other Permutation-Based Tests

The Wilcoxon-Mann-Witney test is extended to account for a second independent factor. The new test statistic’s probability mass function and normal approximation are derived. Critical-values for balanced, unbalanced, and large sample designs are given. The immediate extension of this method to a wide range of non-parametric tests is explained.