Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A coordinate-free approach to tracing the coupler curves of pin-jointed linkages

In general, high-order coupler curves of plane mechanisms cannot be properly traced by standard predictor-corrector algorithms due to drifting problems and the presence of singularities. Instead of focusing on finding better algorithms for tracing curves, a simple coordinate-free method that first traces these curves in a distance space and then maps them onto the mechanism workspace is proposed. Tracing a coupler curve in the proposed distance space is much simpler because (a) the equation of this curve in this space can be straightforwardly obtained from a sequence of bilaterations; and (b) the curve in this space naturally decomposes into branches in which the signs of the oriented areas of the triangles involved in the aforementioned bilaterations remain constant. A surjective mapping permits to map the thus traced curves onto the workspace of the mechanism. The advantages of this two-step method are exemplified by tracing the coupler curves of a double butterfly linkage, curves that can reach order 48.
A quantitative approach to measure women’s sexual function using electromyography: A preliminary study of the Kegel exercise

Background Currently, the reference standard used to clinically assess sexual function among women is a qualitative questionnaire. Hence, a generalised and quantitative measurement tool needs to be available as an alternative. This study investigated whether an electromyography (EMG) measurement tecnique could be used to help quantify women’s sexual function. Material/Methods A preliminary intervention study was conducted on 12 female subjects, who were randomised into a control (n=6) and an intervention (n=6) group. Intervention involved a set regimen of pelvic floor muscle exercises (Kegel) and the control group did not have any treatment. All subjects were asked to answer a validated, self-rated Pelvic Organ Prolapse/Urinary Incontinence Sexual Function Questionnaire (PISQ). EMG measurements of the pelvic floor muscles (PFM) and the abdominal muscles were taken from all women at recruitment and 8 weeks after study commencement. Results After 8 weeks, most of the subjects in the control group did not display any noted positive difference in either PISQ score (4/6) or in their muscle strength (4/6). However, a noted progressive difference were observed in subjects who were placed in the Kegel group; PISQ score (5/6) and muscles strength (4/6). Conclusions The noted difference in the Kegel group subjects was that if progress is observed in the sexual function, improvement is also observed in the strength of at least 2 types of muscles (either abdominal or PFM muscles). Thus, EMG measurement is a potential technique to quantify the changes in female sexual function. Further work will be conducted to validate this assumption.
InfoMax Control for Acoustic Exploration of Objects by a Mobile Robot

Recently, information gain has been proposed as a candidate intrinsic motivation for lifelong learning agents that may not always have a specific task. In the InfoMax control framework, reinforcement learning is used to find a control policy for a POMDP in which movement and sensing actions are selected to reduce Shannon entropy as quickly as possible. In this study, we implement InfoMax control on a robot which can move between objects and perform sound-producing manipulations on them. We formulate a novel latent variable mixture model for acoustic similarities and learn InfoMax polices that allow the robot to rapidly reduce uncertainty about the categories of the objects in a room. We find that InfoMax with our improved acoustic model leads to policies which lead to high classification accuracy. Interestingly, we also find that with an insufficient model, the InfoMax policy eventually learns to "bury its head in the sand" to avoid getting additional evidence that might increase uncertainty. We discuss the implications of this finding for InfoMax as a principle of intrinsic motivation in lifelong learning agents.
Prevention of Obesity and Insulin Resistance by Estrogens Requires ERα Activation Function-2 (ERαAF-2), Whereas ERαAF-1 Is Dispensable

The beneficial metabolic actions of estrogen-based therapies are mainly mediated by estrogen receptor α (ERα), a nuclear receptor that regulates gene transcription through two activation functions (AFs): AF-1 and AF-2. Using mouse models deleted electively for ERαAF-1 (ERαAF-1°) or ERαAF-2 (ERαAF-2°), we determined their respective roles in the actions of estrogens on body composition and glucose homeostasis in response to either a normal diet or a high-fat diet (HFD). ERαAF-2° males and females developed accelerated weight gain, massive adiposity, severe insulin resistance, and glucose intolerance—quite reminiscent of the phenotype observed in mice deleted for the entire ERα protein (ERα−/−). In striking contrast, ERαAF-1° and wild-type (wt) mice shared a similar metabolic phenotype. Accordingly, 17β-estradiol administration regulated key metabolic genes in insulin-sensitive tissues and conferred a strong protection against HFD-induced metabolic disturbances in wt and ERαAF-1° ovariectomized mice, whereas these actions were totally abrogated in ERαAF-2° and ERα−/− mice. Thus, whereas both AFs have been previously shown to contribute to endometrial and breast cancer cell proliferation, the protective effect of estrogens against obesity and insulin resistance depends on ERαAF-2 but not ERαAF-1, thereby delineating new options for selective modulation of ERα.
Acrolein Induces Heme Oxygenase-1 through PKC-d and PI 3 K in Human Bronchial Epithelial Cells

Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) catalyzes the rate limiting reaction of heme metabolism and plays critical roles in resistance to oxidative stress and other cellular functions. It is well known that HO-1 is induced in response to various stresses; however, the signaling pathways involved remain incompletely elucidated. Acrolein is an a,b-unsaturated aldehyde present in cigarette smoke and also a product of lipid peroxidation. In this investigation we studied HO-1 induction in response to acrolein and determined the signaling pathways involved in human bronchial epithelial cells (HBE1 cells). We demonstrated that acrolein significantly increased the HO-1 mRNA content and promoter activity. Acrolein-mediated HO-1 induction was significantly attenuated by pan–protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitors RO318220, staurosporine, and PKC-d selective inhibitor rottlerin and PKC-d small interfering RNA. The HO-1 induction was also decreased by phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitors LY294002 and wortmannin. No significant effects on HO-1 induction were observed with the pretreatment of mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway inhibitors PD98059 (ERK), SB203580 (p38MAPK) and JNKi, and conventional and atypical PKC inhibitors. Furthermore, Nrf2 silencing significantly attenuated the HO-1 induction by acrolein. Inhibition of PKC-d significantly decreased acroleinmediated Nrf2 nuclear translocation, though inhibition of PI3K had no effect. Taken together, our results indicate that acrolein upregulatesHO-1expressionthroughbothPKC-d and PI3Kpathways in HBE1 cells; PKC-d appears to regulateHO-1 inductionvia modulating Nrf2 nuclear translocation, while PI3K may work through targeting on downstream signaling molecules other than Nrf2.
Verification of UML Statechart Models of Embedded Systems

The test and verification are essential phases of any system development. With the enlargement of the size and complexity of the system under development the importance of these tasks increases. Traditionally the system development is divided into DQDO\VLVV GHVLJQ and LPSOHPHQWDWLRQ phases regardless of the development process applied (Fig. 1). The system development process is typically accompanied by the occurrence of design and implementation faults. To avoid these faults the implementation phase is followed by a WHVW phase. The test phase is intended to recover the differences between the GHVLJQ and the LPSOHPHQWHGGV\VWHP, i.e. to find the faults that arise in the implementation phase. The activities of the test phase include WHVWWFDVHHGHILQLWLRQ and WHVWWFDVHHH[HFXWLRQ. The test phase can substantially be accelerated by the automation of these activities. The automation of test case execution on the basis of the design is often supported by CASE tools [1]. The automated definition of the test cases could be implemented only in the case when the design itself is described by a formal model [3,4]. These automated tools are essential in the development of large systems since they can efficiently accelerate the execution of the time-consuming testing. The faults of implementation can be discovered by the test phase, however, the faults of the design may remain undiscovered. In order to recognize these faults, the development process has to be completed by the GHVLJQQ YHULILFDWLRQ phase. The goal of design verification is to find the faults in the design itself. The fault may be instantiated as an LQFRQVLVWHQWWGHVLJQ or as an
Provenance of e-Science Experiments - Experience from Bioinformatics

Like experiments performed at a laboratory bench, the data associated with an e-Science experiment are of reduced value if other scientists are not able to identify the origin, or provenance, of those data. Provenance information is essential if experiments are to be validated and verified by others, or even by those who originally performed them. In this article, we give an overview of our initial work on the provenance of bioinformatics e-Science experiments within myGrid. We use two kinds of provenance: the derivation path of information and annotation. We show how this kind of provenance can be delivered within the myGrid demonstrator WorkBench and we explore how the resulting Webs of experimental data holdings can be mined for useful information and presentations for the e-Scientist.
Fast semi-automatic semantic annotation for spoken dialog systems

This paper describes a bootstrapping methodology for semi– automatic semantic annotation of a “mini–corpus” that is conventionally annotated manually to train an initial parser used in natural language understanding (NLU) systems. We propose to cast the problem of semantic annotation as a classification problem: each word is assigned a unique set of semantic tag(s) and/or label(s) from the universal tag/label set. This approach enables “local” semantic annotation resulting in partially annotated sentences. The proposed method reduces the annotation time and cost that forms a major bottleneck in the development of NLU systems. We present a set of experiments conducted on the medical domain “mini– corpus” that contains 10K hand–annotated sentences. Three annotation methods are compared: parser (baseline), similarity and classification–based annotations. The support vector machine (SVM) based classification scheme is shown to outperform both similarity and parsed–based annotation.
Host Distributions of Uncultivated Fecal Bacteroidales Bacteria Reveal Genetic Markers for Fecal Source Identification

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine host distribution patterns among fecal bacteria in the order Bacteroidales, with the goal of using endemic sequences as markers for fecal source identification in aquatic environments. We analyzed Bacteroidales 16S rRNA gene sequences from the feces of eight hosts: human, bovine, pig, horse, dog, cat, gull, and elk. Recovered sequences did not match database sequences, indicating high levels of uncultivated diversity. The analysis revealed both endemic and cosmopolitan distributions among the eight hosts. Ruminant, pig, and horse sequences tended to form host- or host group-specific clusters in a phylogenetic tree, while human, dog, cat, and gull sequences clustered together almost exclusively. Many of the human, dog, cat, and gull sequences fell within a large branch containing cultivated species from the genus Bacteroides. Most of the cultivated Bacteroides species had very close matches with multiple hosts and thus may not be useful targets for fecal source identification. A large branch containing cultivated members of the genus Prevotella included cloned sequences that were not closely related to cultivated Prevotella species. Most ruminant sequences formed clusters separate from the branches containing Bacteroides and Prevotella species. Host-specific sequences were identified for pigs and horses and were used to design PCR primers to identify pig and horse sources of fecal pollution in water. The primers successfully amplified fecal DNAs from their target hosts and did not amplify fecal DNAs from other species. Fecal bacteria endemic to the host species may result from evolution in different types of digestive systems.
Multisensory Decision-Making in Rats and Humans

We report a novel multisensory decision task designed to encourage subjects to combine information across both time and sensory modalities. We presented subjects, humans and rats, with multisensory event streams, consisting of a series of brief auditory and/or visual events. Subjects made judgments about whether the event rate of these streams was high or low. We have three main findings. First, we report that subjects can combine multisensory information over time to improve judgments about whether a fluctuating rate is high or low. Importantly, the improvement we observed was frequently close to, or better than, the statistically optimal prediction. Second, we found that subjects showed a clear multisensory enhancement both when the inputs in each modality were redundant and when they provided independent evidence about the rate. This latter finding suggests a model where event rates are estimated separately for each modality and fused at a later stage. Finally, because a similar multisensory enhancement was observed in both humans and rats, we conclude that the ability to optimally exploit sequentially presented multisensory information is not restricted to a particular species.
3D Visualization and Animation of Crowd Simulation Using a Game Engine

Crowd simulation is an essential component of military training and operations. In this paper, we present an approach for generating 3D visualizations and animations from simulation results in the area of agent-based crowd simulation for military operations. The main contribution is to create a simulation bridge between a federated agent-based crowd simulation architecture and a game engine to drive the visualization and animation of virtual crowd in a 3-dimentional space. In our simulation bridge framework, we present a method for data acquisition to create the virtual environment. An interfacing methodology is introduced between the 3D virtual environment maps and the federated agent-based crowd simulator. Our method comprises of converting the 3D maps to multi-level 2D maps to feed the 2D agent-based crowd simulator’s virtual world representation. A tool was implemented for defining objects in the virtual environment based on 2D maps and a color coder scheme. Our bridge framework makes use of a game engine as the visualization medium. The 3D virtual environment maps are reconstructed within the game engine and human avatars are created to simulate the agents. Motion, expression and behavioral animations are attached to each virtual agent. At run-time, data is fed from the 2D crowd simulator to our framework via an event-driven file buffer. Virtual agents are created at run-time based on the social aspects of the crowd composition. Behavioral animation is triggered on each agent based on the commands represented in the simulation results. Our framework also provides visualization of emergency situations and makes use of particle dynamics to generate more realistic visuals of disaster situations and human crowd behavior in an emergency situation.
P3HT:PCPDTBT:PCBM Multi- polymer single layer solar cells

Figure 1: Energy levels for materials used in solar cells, and the path electrons and holes take at a polymer:PCBM interface. All energies are negative, with bandgaps included in green. Author’s Abstract— OPV efficiencies are limited by their narrow absorption; rather than using tandem architecture to overcome this obstacle, our group combined P3HT and PCPDTBT into a single layer BHJ solar cell that achieved 2.0% PCE. This is 33% higher than the pure P3HT control from this group, proving that multi-polymer solar cells have the potential to outperform their single-polymer components.
A method for interference cancellation in automotive radar

In this paper a method for interference detection and cancellation for automotive radar systems is proposed. With the growing amount of vehicles equipped with radar sensors, interference mitigation techniques are getting more and more important to maintain good interoperability. Based on the time domain signal of a 76 GHz chirp sequence radar the interfering signals of FMCW radar sensors are identified. This is performed by image processing methods applied to the time-frequency-image. With the maximally stable extremal regions algorithm the interference pattern in the signal is identified. Once the disturbed samples are known they are zeroed. To avoid any ringing effects in the processed radar image the neighborhood of affected samples is smoothed using a raised cosine window. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated on real world measurements. The method reveals weak scattering centers of the vehicle, which are occluded by interference otherwise.
INFLUENCING PHYSICIANS ’ PRESCRIBING DECISIONS THROUGH DETAILING , SAMPLES , PRIOR AUTHORIZATIONS AND PATIENT COPAYS

Acknowledgements: Saif Rathore and Caleb Alexander made essential contributions to the design of the physician survey and experiment and provided invaluable clinical expertise. Andrew Ching, Claudio Lucarelli, Andrea Morales and Sungho Park provided insights about early drafts of this article, as did participants at the 2010 American Society of Health Economists Conference and Annual Health Economics Conference. Kirsten Axelsen and staff at Pfizer Inc. provided generous support for the project. Harris Interactive implemented the survey and participated in its design. Survey and other data costs were funded by Pfizer Inc.
Dereverberation robust to speaker's azimuthal orientation in multi-channel human-robot communication

The acoustical dynamics of reverberation in an enclosed environment poses a problem to human-robot communication. Any change in the azimuthal orientation of the speaker contributes to unpredictable acoustical activity resulting in a degradation in the performance of the automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. Thus, dereverberation techniques need to address this issue prior to ASR. Dereverberation in multi-channel applications primarily evolves in the adoption of a suitable reverberant model that results to a computationally feasible solution and at the same time yields an accurate estimate of the harmful reflections (i.e., late reflection) for effective suppression. In this paper we address this problem by introducing a hybrid method based on multi-channel processing on a singlechannel reverberant model platform. The proposed method is capable of accurate signal estimation, a property inherent to a multi-channel system, and at the same time bears the computational efficiency derived from single-channel reverberant model approach. The proposed method is summarized as follows; First, multi-channel sound-source processing is employed to obtain the full reverberant and the late reflection signal estimates. Then, equalization is employed to update the late reflection estimate reflective of the change in azimuth prior to dereverberation. The equalization parameters for azimuthal change are obtained through an offline optimization procedure. Experimental evaluation in an actual human-robot communication environment shows that the proposed method outperforms existing methods in terms of robustness in the ASR performance.
Posteriorgram based approaches in keyword search

In this work, two different keyword search (KWS) methods are proposed in order to improve the existing KWS system which is based on large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR) and weighted finite state transducers (WFST). In the first method, a symbolic index is generated by applying vector quantization to the posteriorgram representation of the audio and then WFST based search is performed. In the second method, KWS was done with the subsequence dynamic time warping (sDTW) algorithm which is commonly used in the query-by-example spoken term detection (QbE-STD) tasks. As a result of the experiments, it has been observed that when combined with the existing KWS system, the proposed systems improve the performance especially for the out-of-vocabulary (OOV) queries.
Advances in Wound-Healing Assays for Probing Collective Cell Migration

Collective cell migration plays essential roles in a wide spectrum of biological processes, such as embryogenesis, tissue regeneration, and cancer metastasis. Numerous wound-healing assays based on mechanical, chemical, optical, and electrical approaches have been developed to create model “wounds” in cell monolayers to study the collective cell migration processes. These approaches can result in different microenvironments for cells to migrate and possess diverse assay characteristics in terms of simplicity, throughput, reproducibility, and multiplexability. In this review, we provide an overview of advances in wound-healing assays and discuss their advantages and limitations in studying collective cell migration.
Predicting Failure of Developmental Gold Mining Projects

We investigate firm level financial and non-financial information and their association with project failure for a sample of pre-production gold development firms. We choose pre-revenue generating ‘single project’ mining companies, since project failure is synonymous with company failure for these firms. The setting is interesting due to the high information asymmetry and limitations of the GAAP-based Altman Z-score in this context. We apply a definition of project failure and compare both financial and non-financial predictors. Failure is found to be driven by whether the deposit is open pit or underground, and whether cash cost of production is disclosed at feasibility completion.
A dynamic texture model for imaging through turbulence

In this paper we address the problem of recovering an image from a sequence of distorted versions of it, where the distortion is caused by what is commonly referred to as ground-level turbulence. In mathematical terms, such distortion can be seen as the cumulative effect of a time-dependent anisoplanatic (space-variant) blur and a time-dependent deformation of the image domain. We introduce a statistical dynamic model for the generation of turbulence based on the dynamic texture approach. We expand the model to include the unknown image as part of the unobserved state and apply Kalman filtering to estimate such state. This operation yields a blurry image where the blurring kernel is effectively space invariant: this is verified empirically and described analytically in terms of the class of employed kernels. Applying blind nonlocal Total Variation (NL-TV) deconvolution yields a sharp final result.