Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GPU-based collision detection for sampling-based motion planning

This paper presents GPU-based collision detection method that accelerates collision queries for sampling-based motion planning. This approach uses many-core GPUs. To take advantage of a many-core GPU, kinematic and collision detection is calculated by the GPU. The experimental results indicate that this approach can result in a ten-fold faster performance than when using a CPU.
BMP Receptor Signaling Is Required for Postnatal Maintenance of Articular Cartilage

Articular cartilage plays an essential role in health and mobility, but is frequently damaged or lost in millions of people that develop arthritis. The molecular mechanisms that create and maintain this thin layer of cartilage that covers the surface of bones in joint regions are poorly understood, in part because tools to manipulate gene expression specifically in this tissue have not been available. Here we use regulatory information from the mouse Gdf5 gene (a bone morphogenetic protein [BMP] family member) to develop new mouse lines that can be used to either activate or inactivate genes specifically in developing joints. Expression of Cre recombinase from Gdf5 bacterial artificial chromosome clones leads to specific activation or inactivation of floxed target genes in developing joints, including early joint interzones, adult articular cartilage, and the joint capsule. We have used this system to test the role of BMP receptor signaling in joint development. Mice with null mutations in Bmpr1a are known to die early in embryogenesis with multiple defects. However, combining a floxed Bmpr1a allele with the Gdf5-Cre driver bypasses this embryonic lethality, and leads to birth and postnatal development of mice missing the Bmpr1a gene in articular regions. Most joints in the body form normally in the absence of Bmpr1a receptor function. However, articular cartilage within the joints gradually wears away in receptor-deficient mice after birth in a process resembling human osteoarthritis. Gdf5-Cre mice provide a general system that can be used to test the role of genes in articular regions. BMP receptor signaling is required not only for early development and creation of multiple tissues, but also for ongoing maintenance of articular cartilage after birth. Genetic variation in the strength of BMP receptor signaling may be an important risk factor in human osteoarthritis, and treatments that mimic or augment BMP receptor signaling should be investigated as a possible therapeutic strategy for maintaining the health of joint linings.
Speed of Lexical Activation in Nonfluent Broca's Aphasia and Fluent Wernicke's Aphasia

Rapid, automatic access to lexical/semantic knowledge is critical in supporting the tight temporal constraints of on-line sentence comprehension. Based on findings of "abnormal" lexical priming in nonfluent aphasics, the question of disrupted automatic lexical activation has been the focus of many recent efforts to understand their impaired sentence comprehension capabilities. The picture that emerges from this literature is, however, unclear. Nonfluent Broca's aphasic patients show inconsistent, not absent, lexical priming, and there is little consensus about the conditions under which they do and do not prime. The most parsimonious explanation for the variable findings from priming studies to date is that the primary disturbance in Broca's lexical activation has something to do with speed of activation. Broca's aphasic patients prime when sufficient time is allowed for activation to spread among associates. To examine this "slowed activation" hypothesis, the time course of lexical activation was examined using a list priming paradigm. Temporal delays between successive words ranged from 300 to 2100 msec. One nonfluent Broca's aphasic patient and one fluent Wernicke's patient were tested. Both patients displayed abnormal priming patterns, though of different sorts. In contrast to elderly subjects, who prime at relatively short interstimulus intervals (ISIs) beginning at 500 msec, the Broca's aphasic subject showed reliable automatic priming but only at a long ISI of 1500 msec. That is, this subject retained the ability to access lexical information automatically if allowed sufficient time to do so, a finding that may help explain disrupted comprehension of normally rapid conversational speech. The Wernicke's aphasic subject, in contrast, showed normally rapid initial activation but continued to show priming over an abnormally long range of delays, from 300 msec through 1100 msec. This protracted priming suggests failure to dampen activation and might explain the semantic confusion exhibited by fluent Wernicke's patients.
Does software design complexity have effects on defects

Empirical analysis is an important area in software engineering. One of the ways to ensure the quality of any software is to measure the software using statistical analysis of various metrics from empirical data. The emergence of various open source software repositories has contributed tremendously to the advancement in the empirical software engineering research. This paper presents an empirical analysis using a set of metrics such as Structural, Data, Procedure and System Complexity, as well as Class Size on open source data. The results show that only CBO is significant in predicting defects.
Applied Stochastic Differential Equations

The topic of this book is stochastic differential equations (SDEs). As their name suggests, they really are differential equations that produce a different “answer” or solution trajectory each time they are solved. This peculiar behaviour gives them properties that are useful in modeling of uncertainties in a wide range of applications, but at the same time it complicates the rigorous mathematical treatment of SDEs. The emphasis of the book is on applied rather than theoretical aspects of SDEs and, therefore, we have chosen to structure the book in a way that we believe supports learning SDEs from an applied point of view. In the following, we briefly outline the purposes of each of the remaining chapters and explain how the chapters are connected to each other. In the chapters, we have attempted to provide a wide selection of examples of the practical application of theoretical and methodological results. Each chapter (except for the Introduction and Epilogue) also contains a representative set of analytic and hands-on exercises that can be used for testing and deepening understanding of the topics. Chapter 2 is a brief outline of concepts and solutions methods for deterministic ordinary differential equations (ODEs). We especially emphasize solution methods for linear ODEs, because the methods translate quite easily to SDEs. We also examine commonly used numerical methods such as the Euler method and Runge–Kutta methods, which we extend to SDEs in the later chapters. Chapter 3 starts with a number of motivating examples of SDEs found in physics, engineering, finance, and other applications. It turns out that in a modeling sense, SDEs can be regarded as noise-driven ODEs, but this notion should not be taken too far. The aim of the rest of the chapter is to show where things start to go wrong. Roughly speaking, with linear SDEs we are quite safe with this kind of thinking, but anything beyond them will not work.
IMPACT OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE ON INTERNET FINANCIAL REPORTING IN A GROWING ECONOMY: THE CASE OF NIGERIA

The study aims at examining the impact of corporate governance on IFR among listed banks in Nigeria. The review of literatures reveal that IFR is one of the most efficient means of communication with investors and the practices of corporate governance by firms also influence their level of disclosures made through the internet. A quantitative research was carried out where the relationship between corporate governance variables and IFR was empirically examined. The corporate governance variables used for analyzing the impact of corporate governance on IFR include shareholders’ voting right, percentage of management ownership, percentage of block ownership and percentage of independent directors. The data on the top ten listed banks in Nigeria was collected from secondary sources from year 2010 to 2015. The findings suggest that the measures of corporate governance have significant influence on the level of IFR of banks in Nigeria, it also shows that shareholders’ voting right, percentage of independent directors and banks size have significant positive impact on the IFR of banks. The result of the regression analysis show that a negative relationship exists between managerial ownership and block ownership with IFR of Nigerian Banks. It is recommended that listed Nigerian banks should make frequent disclosures of financial information on their websites if they have high shareholder equity as source of fund in capital structure and also to attract investors and show transparency .
Challenges of Action Research: Insights From Language Institutes

Action research is a small-scale intervention in the functioning of the real world to address practitioners’ own issues and carry out a close examination of the effects of such an intervention. Classroom-based research, or action research, can be the viable solution to some pandemic academic sluggishness and scientific apathy. However, the erroneous impression that research is an elite discipline belonging to certain talented or conversely boring individuals who always constrain themselves to their desks dissuades some teachers from engaging with action research in the local contexts. This small scale qualitative study was an attempt to investigate the reasons that hamper the Iranian EFL teachers teaching in language institutes to do action research. To this end, a total of 12 Iranian EFL teachers (8 females and 4 males) were chosen through the convenience sampling procedure to take part in the study. The semistructured individual interviews were used to gather the data. Results of the content analysis revealed that such factors as (a) attitude toward action research, (b) lack of fund and support, (c) lack of cooperation among colleagues, and (d) lack of knowledge and confidence in doing action research led to the teachers’ apathy in regard to doing action research.
ON THE PASSIVITY OF A ONE-LINK RIGID MASTER – FLEXIBLE SLAVE MANIPULATOR

Abstract This paper discusses the passivity of a one degree-of-freedom rigid master – flexible slave (RMFS) manipulator. First of all, nonlinear motion equations of the RMFS system is derived as a distributed parameter system by using the Hamilton's principle. Applied the symmetric bilateral control to the RMFS system, the passivity of the system in the positioning operation is proved by using a Lyapunov function related to the total energy. Moreover, the steady states in pushing operation to an environment is discussed, then the passivity of the system in the neighborhood of the desired state is proved.
Arctic Ocean Ice Thickness: Modes of Variability and the Best Locations from Which to Monitor Them

Abstract Model simulations of Arctic sea ice and ocean systems are used to determine the major spatial and temporal modes of variability in the ice thickness. A coupled ice–ocean model is forced with daily NCEP–NCAR reanalysis surface air pressure and surface air temperature fields for the period 1951–2003 with the analysis of the results performed for the 51-yr period 1953–2003. Ice concentration data and ice velocity data (beginning in 1979) are assimilated to further constrain the simulations to match the observed conditions. The simulated ice thins over the study period with the area of greatest thinning in a band from the Laptev Sea across the Pole to Fram Strait. The thinning rate is greatest since 1988. The major spatial modes of variability were determined with empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) for the ice thickness within the Arctic Ocean. The first three EOFs account for 30%, 18%, and 15%, respectively, of the annual mean ice thickness variance. The first EOF is a nearly basinwide pattern, a.
Analytical modeling of disk-type piezoelectric variable friction tactile displays

This paper presents analytical modeling of disk-type Variable Friction Tactile Displays (VFTD) producing squeeze-film air damping elicited by ultrasonic flexural standing waves of piezoelectric-glass composites. Energy-based Lagrangian mechanics was employed to derive the system dynamic equations of motion of the VFTD vibrating at its fundamental mode. The coefficient of mode shape function and the accumulated electric charge on a piezoelectric element were adopted as two generalized coordinates for the Lagrangian formulation. The derived analytical models can predict undamped free and forced vibrations of VFTDs with hinged or clamped edges. The issues of open-circuit and short-circuit fundamental frequencies and the electromechanical coupling coefficients for several VFTDs with different dimensions were discussed for the optimal design of vibration-induced tactile displays. The theoretical fundamental frequencies were compared with experimental results for the verification of the proposed analytical model.
Memory Reference Locality in Binary Search Trees Helsinki University Of

Balanced binary search trees are widely used main memory index structures. They provide for logarithmic cost for searching, insertion, deletion, and eecient ordered scanning of keys. Long term trends in computer technology have emphasized the eeect of memory reference locality on algorithm performance. For example, the search performance of large structurally equivalent binary trees can double if nodes are located optimally in memory relative to each other. Unfortunately the traditional Random Access Memory (RAM) model cannot distinguish algorithms with good memory reference locality from algorithms with poor memory reference locality. We therefore deene a new memory model, the Modular Block Cache (MBC) memory model, and present some mathematical tools to be used with it. We analyze the behavior of searches in b-way trees in the MBC model. The analysis is used to compare T-trees, B-trees, various memory layouts of binary trees, and the eeect of various placements of keys and data. In this thesis, we will also present two new methods to improve the memory reference locality of binary search trees. Periodic relocation rebuilds the tree so that the nodes are located optimally in memory. AB-trees are based on representing the internal structure of B-tree nodes with AVL-trees instead of an arrays. We will discuss the advantages and drawbacks of these methods and discuss their feasibility in various circumstances.
FILTRATION, DIFFUSION, AND MOLECULAR SIEVING THROUGH POROUS CELLULOSE MEMBRANES

1. A study has been made of the diffusion and filtration of a graded series of molecules (including tritium-labelled water, urea, glucose, antipyrine, sucrose, raffinose, and hemoglobin) in aqueous solution through porous cellulose membranes of three degrees of porosity. 2. Experimental results were in close agreement with predictions based on the membrane pore theory of Pappenheimer et al. (1,2). Restriction to molecular diffusion is a function of pore radius and molecular radius described by equation (11) in the text. Molecular sieving during ultrafiltration is a function of total pore area per unit path length, pore radius, molecular radius, and filtration rate given by equations (16) and (19). 3. Estimates of average pore radius made by means of this theory were considerably larger than estimates made by the method of Elford and Ferry (3) (Table II). Sources of error in the latter method are discussed and a new method of membrane calibration is proposed in which the total cross-sectional area of the pores is measured by direct diffusion of isotope-labelled water. 4. Steady-state osmotic pressures of solutions of sucrose and raffinose measured during molecular sieving through cellulose membranes were found to be close to the "ideal" osmotic pressures calculated by van't Hoff's law. Thus the present experimental data support the methods used by Pappenheimer et al. in their studies on living capillary walls as well as their theory of membrane pore permeability.
A single layer multi-resonant 1×4 series fed high gain microstrip patch array antenna for L-Band and C-Band applications

This paper describes a design of 1×4 series fed Microstrip Patch Antenna Array for multi-resonance applications such as GPS devices, WCDMA (1910-2190 MHz) and WLAN. This antenna array consists of patch elements using a single layer RT/Duroid 5880 substrate with transformer coupled impedance matching network, which provides high gain of 9.583dB and efficiency 96.08%. This antenna array has good performance in terms of antenna gain, directivity, return losses ,VSWR, Characteristics impedance, liner polarization, Band width and efficiency over the frequency range for L band C band applications. WLAN working at IEEE 802.11a employ 5.15-5.35 GHz for lower WLAN and 5.725-5.825GHz for higher band WLAN.
Unconscious Biometrics for Continuous User Verification

In user management system, continuous or successive (on-demand) authentication is required to prevent identity theft. In particular, biometrics of which data are unconsciously presented to authentication systems is necessary. In this paper, brain waves and intra-palm propagation signals are introducedas biometrics and their verification performancesusing actually measured data are presented.
Interstellar Scintillation and Scattering of Micro-arc-second AGN

The discovery of the first quasar 3C 273 led directly to the discovery of their variability at optical and radio wavelengths. We review the radio variability observations, in particular the variability found at frequencies below 1 GHz, as well as those exhibiting intra-day variability (IDV) at cm wavelengths. Observations have shown that IDV arises principally from scintillation caused by scattering in the ionized interstellar medium of our Galaxy. The sensitivity of interstellar scintillation towards source angular sizes has provided a powerful tool for studying the most compact components of radio-loud AGN at microarcsecond and milliarcsecond scale resolution.
Revisiting Cagean Composition Methodology with a Modern Computational Implementation

The American experimental tradition in music emphasizes a process-oriented ‐ rather than goal-oriented ‐ composition style. According to this tradition, the composition process is considered an experiment beginning with a problem resolved by the composer. The noted experimental composer John Cage believed that the artist’s role in composition should be one of coexistence, as opposed to the traditional view of directly controlling the process. Consequently, Cage developed methods of composing that upheld this philosophy by utilizing musical charts and the IC hing ,a lso known as the Chinese Book of Changes. This project investigates these methods and models them via an interactive computer system to explore the use of modern interfaces in experimental composition.
Study of Large-Scale Data Visualization Project

Research and development for visualization technologies carried out by Advanced Perception Research Group of the Earth Simulator Center in the fiscal year 2008 are reported. In terms of YYView, a semi-interactive visualization and making animation system for large scale simulation data, two kinds of functions are newly developed. One is a function for multi-viewing function, which enables us to set a lot of different view volumes automatically, and the other is for re-editing camera path, which enables us to edit camera path parameters numerically on the key frame table. Armada, a software rendering version of MovieMaker, our parallel visualization program, is improved for plural scalar data visualization. For VFIVE, our virtual reality visualization program, several visualization functions are added. We are currently promoting VFIVE to each laboratory.
A Heuristic Variable Grid Solution Method for POMDPs

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are an appealing tool for modeling planning problems under uncertainty. They incorporate stochastic action and sensor descriptions and easily capture goal oriented and process onented tasks. Unfortunately, POMDPs are very difficult to solve. Exact methods cannot handle problems with much more than 10 states, so approximate methods must be used. In this paper, we describe a simple variable-grid solution method which yields good results on relatively large problems with modest computational effort.
Overconvergent Eichler–Shimura isomorphisms

Abstract Given a prime $p\gt 2$ , an integer $h\geq 0$ , and a wide open disk $U$ in the weight space $ \mathcal{W} $ of ${\mathbf{GL} }_{2} $ , we construct a Hecke–Galois-equivariant morphism ${ \Psi }_{U}^{(h)} $ from the space of analytic families of overconvergent modular symbols over $U$ with bounded slope $\leq h$ , to the corresponding space of analytic families of overconvergent modular forms, all with ${ \mathbb{C} }_{p} $ -coefficients. We show that there is a finite subset $Z$ of $U$ for which this morphism induces a $p$ -adic analytic family of isomorphisms relating overconvergent modular symbols of weight $k$ and slope $\leq h$ to overconvergent modular forms of weight $k+ 2$ and slope $\leq h$ .
Highly Efficient Gang Scheduling Implementation

A new and more highly efficient gang scheduling implementation technique is the basis for this paper. Network preemption, in which network interface contexts are saved and restored, has already been proposed to enable parallel applications to perform efficent user-level communication. This network preemption technique can be used to for detecting global state, such as deadlock, of a parallel program execution. A gang scheduler, SCore-D, using the network preemption technique is implemented with PM, a user-level communication library. This paper evaluates network preemption gang scheduling overhead using eight NAS parallel benchmark programs. The results of this evaluation illustrate that the saving and restoring network contexts occupies almost half of the total gang scheduling overhead. A new mechanism, having multiple network contexts and merely switching the context pointers without saving and restoring the network contexts, is proposed. The NAS parallel benchmark evaluation shows that gang scheduling overhead is almost halved. The maximum gang scheduling overhead among benchmark programs is less than 10%, with a 40msec time slice on 64 single-way PentiumPros, connected by Myrinet to form a PC cluster. The numbers of secondary cache misses are counted, and it is found that network preemption with multiple network contexts is more cache-effective than a single network context. The observed scheduling overhead for applications running on 64 nodes can only be a small percent of the execution time. The gang scheduling overheads of switching two NAS parallel benchmark programs are also evaluated. The additional overheads are less than 2% in most cases, with a 100msec time slice on 64 nodes. This slightly higher scheduling overheads than for switching a single parallel process comes from more frequent cache misses. This paper contributes the following findings; i) gang scheduling overhead with network preemption can be sufficiently low, ii) proposed network preemption with multiple network contexts is more cache-effective than a single network context, and, iii) network preemption can be applied to detect global states of user parallel processes. SCore-D gang scheduler realized by network preemption can utilize processor resources by the detecting the global state of user parallel processes. Network preemption with multiple contexts exhibits highly efficient gang scheduling. The combination of low scheduling overhead and the global state detection mechanism achieves an interactive parallel programming where parallel program development and the production run of parallel programs can be mixed freely.