Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Obstacle avoidance via B-spline parametrizations of flat trajectories

This paper considers the collision avoidance problem in a multi-agent multi-obstacle framework. The originality in solving this intensively studied problem resides in the proposed geometrical view combined with differential flatness for trajectory generation and B-splines for the flat output parametrization. Using some important properties of these theoretical tools we show that the constraints can be validated at all times. Exact and sub-optimal constructions of the collision avoidance optimization problem are provided. The results are validated through extensive simulations over standard autonomous aerial vehicle dynamics.
Enhancement and Validation of Squid's Cache Replacement Policy

Caching in the World Wide Web has been used to enhance the scalability and performance of user access to popular web content. Caches reduce bandwidth demand, improve response times for popular objects, and help reduce the effects of so called "flash crowds". There are several cache implementations available from software and appliance vendors as well as the Squid open source cache software. The cache replacement policy decides which objects will remain in cache and which are evicted to make space for new objects. The choice of this policy has an effect on the network bandwidth demand and object hit rate of the cache (which is related to page load time). This paper reports on the implementation and characterization of two newly proposed cache replacement policies in the Squid cache.
Cholesterol, lipid rafts, and disease.

Lipid rafts are dynamic assemblies of proteins and lipids that float freely within the liquid-disordered bilayer of cellular membranes but can also cluster to form larger, ordered platforms. Rafts are receiving increasing attention as devices that regulate membrane function in eukaryotic cells. In this Perspective, we briefly summarize the structure and regulation of lipid rafts before turning to their evident medical importance. Here, we will give some examples of how rafts contribute to our understanding of the pathogenesis of different diseases. For more information on rafts, the interested reader is referred to recent reviews (1, 2). Composition of lipid rafts Lipid rafts have changed our view of membrane organization. Rafts are small platforms, composed of sphingolipids and cholesterol in the outer exoplasmic leaflet, connected to phospholipids and cholesterol in the inner cytoplasmic leaflet of the lipid bilayer. These assemblies are fluid but more ordered and tightly packed than the surrounding bilayer. The difference in packing is due to the saturation of the hydrocarbon chains in raft sphingolipids and phospholipids as compared with the unsaturated state of fatty acids of phospholipids in the liquid-disordered phase (3). Thus, the presence of liquid-ordered microdomains in cells transforms the classical membrane fluid mosaic model of Singer and Nicholson into a more complex system, where proteins and lipid rafts diffuse laterally within a two-dimensional liquid. Membrane proteins are assigned to three categories: those that are mainly found in the rafts, those that are present in the liquid-disordered phase, and those that represent an intermediate state, moving in and out of rafts. Constitutive raft residents include glycophosphatidylinositol-anchored (GPI-anchored) proteins; doubly acylated proteins, such as tyrosine kinases of the Src family, Gα subunits of heterotrimeric G proteins, and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS); cholesterol-linked and palmitate-anchored proteins like Hedgehog (see Jeong and McMahon, this Perspective series, ref. 4); and transmembrane proteins, particularly palmitoylated proteins such as influenza virus hemagglutinin and β-secretase (BACE) (1). Some membrane proteins are regulated raft residents and have a weak affinity for rafts in the unliganded state. After binding to a ligand, they undergo a conformational change and/or become oligomerized. When proteins oligomerize, they increase their raft affinity (5). A peripheral membrane protein, such as a nonreceptor tyrosine kinase, can be reversibly palmitoylated and can lose its raft association after depalmitoylation (6). By these means, the partitioning of proteins in and out of rafts can be tightly regulated.
The Effect of Empathy on Cooperation, Forgiveness, and “Returning Good for Evil” in the Prisoner's Dilemma

Empathy-induced cooperation, forgiveness, and “returning good for evil” in the Prisoner's Dilemma were investigated among Chinese participants. In Study 1, empathy for the partner promoted cooperation in a one-trial Prisoner's Dilemma and fostered forgiveness after the partner's defection. In Study 2, when the partner had defected beforehand in a sequential one-trial Prisoner's Dilemma, empathy manipulation showed no effect on “returning good for evil,” but empathy fostered forgiveness. Expert-rating empathy from the note communication predicted “returning good for evil. ” Males showed more “returning good for evil” than females. Gender difference related to the effect of empathy on “returning good for evil” called for further investigation. The implication to the public personnel management in Chinese organizations was discussed.
Data Association and Track Management for the Gaussian Mixture Probability Hypothesis Density Filter

The Gaussian mixture probability hypothesis density (GM-PHD) recursion is a closed-form solution to the probability hypothesis density (PHD) recursion, which was proposed for jointly estimating the time-varying number of targets and their states from a sequence of noisy measurement sets in the presence of data association uncertainty, clutter, and miss-detection. However the GM-PHD filter does not provide identities of individual target state estimates, that are needed to construct tracks of individual targets. In this paper, we propose a new multi-target tracker based on the GM-PHD filter, which gives the association amongst state estimates of targets over time and provides track labels. Various issues regarding initiating, propagating and terminating tracks are discussed. Furthermore, we also propose a technique for resolving identities of targets in close proximity, which the PHD filter is unable to do on its own.
The Effects of Age, Hearing Loss, and Communication Difficulty on First Impressions

Within a person perception paradigm, young adults (n = 171) evaluated young and older targets with or without hearing loss or communication problems. On anticipated cognitive performance, older targets were rated lower on visual memory and visuospatial skill but higher on wisdom. Targets with normal hearing and communication difficulty were rated as least competent on the cognitive tasks and most socially distant. Furthermore, the lowest wisdom scores were anticipated for normally hearing young targets exhibiting communication problems. The findings showed that adults of any age were judged less severely for communication difficulties if known to use a hearing aid.
A sea ice free summer Arctic within 30 years: An update from CMIP5 models

Three years ago we proposed that the summer Arctic would be nearly sea ice free by the 2030s; “nearly” is interpreted as sea ice extent less than 1.0 million km2. We consider this estimate to be still valid based on projections of updated climate models (CMIP5) and observational data. Similar to previous models (CMIP3), CMIP5 still shows a wide spread in hindcast and projected sea ice loss among different models. Further, there is no consensus in the scientific literature for the cause of such a spread in results for CMIP3 and CMIP5. While CMIP5 model mean sea ice extents are closer to observations than CMIP3, the rates of sea ice reduction in most model runs are slow relative to recent observations. All CMIP5 models do show loss of sea ice due to increased anthropogenic forcing relative to pre‐industrial control runs. Applying the same technique of model selection and extrapolation approach to CMIP5 as we used in our previous paper, the interval range for a nearly sea ice free Arctic is 14 to 36 years, with a median value of 28 years. Relative to a 2007 baseline, this suggests a nearly sea ice free Arctic in the 2030s.
Learning to Segment Speech Using Multiple Cues: A Connectionist Model

Considerable research in language acquisition has addressed the extent to which basic aspects of linguistic structure might be identieed on the basis of probabilistic cues in caregiver speech to children. This type of learning mechanism presents classic learnability issues: there are aspects of language for which the input is thought to provide no evidence, and the evidence that does exist tends to be unreliable. We address these issues in the context of the speciec problem of learning to identify lexical units in speech. A simple recurrent network was trained on a phoneme prediction task. The model was explicitly provided with information about phonemes, relative lexical stress, and boundaries between utterances. Individually these sources of information provide relatively unreliable cues to word boundaries and no direct evidence about actual word boundaries. After training on a large corpus of childdirected speech, the model was able to use these cues to reliably identify word boundaries. The model shows that aspects of linguistic structure that are not overtly marked in the input can be derived by efeciently combining multiple probabilistic cues. Connectionist networks provide a plausible mechanism for acquiring, representing, and combining such probabilistic information.
Verifying cuts as a tool for improving a classifier based on a decision tree

This article is a continuation of previous work, in which a new method of decision tree construction was presented. That method is based on the use of so-called verifying cuts, which can provide knowledge obtained from the attributes frequently eliminated when greedy methods of the choice of singleton best cuts are applied. Till now only one strategy of choosing verifying cuts was examined. It exploits a measure based on a number of pairs of objects discerned by a chosen cut. In this paper, we examine two additional measures used for determining the best verifying cuts. They are based on Gini's Index and Entropy. The paper includes the results of experiments that have been performed on data obtained from biomedical database and machine learning repositories.
The critical events for motor-sensory temporal recalibration

Determining if we, or another agent, were responsible for a sensory event can require an accurate sense of timing. Our sense of appropriate timing relationships must, however, be malleable as there is a variable delay between the physical timing of an event and when sensory signals concerning that event are encoded in the brain. One dramatic demonstration of such malleability involves having people repeatedly press a button thereby causing a beep. If a delay is inserted between button presses and beeps, when it is subsequently taken away beeps can seem to precede the button presses that caused them. For this to occur it is important that people feel they were responsible for instigating the beeps. In terms of their timing, as yet it is not clear what combination of events is important for motor-sensory temporal recalibration. Here, by introducing ballistic reaches of short or longer extent before a button press, we varied the delay between the intention to act and the sensory consequence of that action. This manipulation failed to modulate recalibration magnitude. By contrast, introducing a similarly lengthened delay between button presses and consequent beeps eliminated recalibration. Thus it would seem that the critical timing relationship for motor-sensory temporal recalibration is between tactile signals relating to the completion of an action and the subsequent auditory percept.
Adaptive frequency compounding for speckle reduction

Speckle pattern in medical ultrasound images is generally regarded as one of crucial factors degrading contrast and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). To mitigate the pattern, many commercial ultrasound scanners employ the frequency compounding method in which a radio-frequency (RF) spectrum is divided into two or more sub-bands and subsequently envelopes are extracted from the sub-bands. A compounding image is finally produced by adding the envelopes. To maximize the compounding effect, the spectrum downshift along imaging depth caused by the frequency-dependent attenuation should be considered when the bandwidth and the center frequency of each sub-band are determined. For this, the paper proposes an adaptive frequency compounding method in which spectral characteristics of RF signals are analyzed. The estimated spectral characteristics are used for the quadrature demodulation (QDM), determination of sub-band width along depth (AFC-SED). The performances of the proposed method were evaluated in terms of the speckle's signal to noise ratio (SSNR) and the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR). Compared with Conventional frequency compounding method (CFC), SSNR and CNR were increased by 0.44 and 0.86 in the case of in-vitro experiment and those were 0.14 and 0.55 for in-vivo experiment. If depth-dependent weighting factors are applied to the proposed method (WAFC-SED), SSNR and CNR were more improved in both cases. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method is more suitable to improve SSNR and CNR than CFC.
Energetics of galactose– and glucose–aromatic amino acid interactions: Implications for binding in galactose‐specific proteins

An aromatic amino acid is present in the binding site of a number of sugar binding proteins. The interaction of the saccharide with the aromatic residue is determined by their relative position as well as orientation. The position‐orientation of the saccharide relative to the aromatic residue was found to vary in different sugar‐binding proteins. In the present study, interaction energies of the complexes of galactose (Gal) and of glucose (Glc) with aromatic residue analogs have been calculated by ab initio density functional (U‐B3LYP/ 6‐31G**) theory. The position‐orientations of the saccharide with respect to the aromatic residue observed in various Gal‐, Glc‐, and mannose–protein complexes were chosen for the interaction energy calculations. The results of these calculations show that galactose can interact with the aromatic residue with similar interaction energies in a number of position‐orientations. The interaction energy of Gal–aromatic residue analog complex in position‐orientations observed for the bound saccharide in Glc/Man–protein complexes is comparable to the Glc–aromatic residue analog complex in the same position‐orientation. In contrast, there is a large variation in interaction energies of complexes of Glc‐ and of Gal‐ with the aromatic residue analog in position‐orientations observed in Gal–protein complexes. Furthermore, the conformation wherein the O6 atom is away from the aromatic residue is preferred for the exocyclic —CH2OH group in Gal–aromatic residue analog complexes. The implications of these results for saccharide binding in Gal‐specific proteins and the possible role of the aromatic amino acid to ensure proper positioning and orientation of galactose in the binding site have been discussed.
Unsupervised Object Segmentation with a Hybrid Graph Model (HGM)

In this work, we address the problem of performing class-specific unsupervised object segmentation, i.e., automatic segmentation without annotated training images. Object segmentation can be regarded as a special data clustering problem where both class-specific information and local texture/color similarities have to be considered. To this end, we propose a hybrid graph model (HGM) that can make effective use of both symmetric and asymmetric relationship among samples. The vertices of a hybrid graph represent the samples and are connected by directed edges and/or undirected ones, which represent the asymmetric and/or symmetric relationship between them, respectively. When applied to object segmentation, vertices are superpixels, the asymmetric relationship is the conditional dependence of occurrence, and the symmetric relationship is the color/texture similarity. By combining the Markov chain formed by the directed subgraph and the minimal cut of the undirected subgraph, the object boundaries can be determined for each image. Using the HGM, we can conveniently achieve simultaneous segmentation and recognition by integrating both top-down and bottom-up information into a unified process. Experiments on 42 object classes (9,415 images in total) show promising results.
General theory of remote gaze estimation using the pupil center and corneal reflections

This paper presents a general theory for the remote estimation of the point-of-gaze (POG) from the coordinates of the centers of the pupil and corneal reflections. Corneal reflections are produced by light sources that illuminate the eye and the centers of the pupil and corneal reflections are estimated in video images from one or more cameras. The general theory covers the full range of possible system configurations. Using one camera and one light source, the POG can be estimated only if the head is completely stationary. Using one camera and multiple light sources, the POG can be estimated with free head movements, following the completion of a multiple-point calibration procedure. When multiple cameras and multiple light sources are used, the POG can be estimated following a simple one-point calibration procedure. Experimental and simulation results suggest that the main sources of gaze estimation errors are the discrepancy between the shape of real corneas and the spherical corneal shape assumed in the general theory, and the noise in the estimation of the centers of the pupil and corneal reflections. A detailed example of a system that uses the general theory to estimate the POG on a computer screen is presented.
Managing Metrics in an Iterative Incremental Development Environment 1

Software development projects that utilize object-oriented techniques often adopt an iterative incremental process model. This process model uses many rapid passes over the fundamental development steps of analysis, design, and implementation to gradually refine the definition of the problem and evolve a solution to that problem. This model has proven useful but it is more difficult to visualize the progress of a project that periodically repeats the same steps.
Social anxiety, evaluative threat and incidental recall of trait words

Subjects high in dispositional social anxiety, as compared to subjects low in it, are found to show better incidental recall of self-descriptive unlikable trait words in a Craik and Tulving paradigm (Study 1) but not likable trait words. This phenomenon is not found when anxiety is experimentally created through exposing subjects to social-evaluative threat (Study 2), and is likely to be a consequence of the negatively biased self-schema in trait-anxious subjects. Anxious self-preoccupation created through experimentally induced evaluative stress results into poor incidental recall of all words (Study 2). The debilitating effect of anxious self-preoccupation seems to be the joint result of reduced attention to task-relevant stimuli in working memory and of reduced accessibility of preexisting cognitive structures in long-term memory. Emotional arousal per se cannot account for the observed performance deficit. The relationship between anxiety, depression, and self-focused attention is discussed.
Late‐Onset Granulomatous Reaction to Artecoll

BACKGROUND Artecoll is permanent filler that is used for the correction of facial wrinkles. It has been used mainly in Europe in the last 9 years. It is a suspension of 25% polymethylmethacrylate microspheres of 30 to 40 microns in diameter and 75% athecollagen. OBJECTIVE To report a side effect of a late-onset granulomatous reaction to Artecoll. METHODS We report the case of a 54-year-old woman who presented with longitudinal hard nodules with slight overlying erythema in the glabella and nasolabial folds 14 months after she was treated with Artecoll injections to her glabellar and nasolabial wrinkles. An excisional biopsy of a glabellar nodule was performed. RESULTS Microscopic examination of hematoxylin and eosin–stained specimen revealed histiocytic granulomas with giant cells and vacuoles, a picture of Artecoll granulomas. Treatment with topical steroids showed no improvement. Intralesional injections of Kenalog caused temporary disappearance of the granulomas. A few months later the nodules reappeared. No further treatment was done. CONCLUSION Artecoll injection to wrinkles of the face can cause delayed granulomatous reaction. This side effect is not reversible and should be addressed in the informed consent.
Grounding, unbalancing and length effects on termination voltages of a twinax cable during bulk current injection

By means of an equivalent SPICE circuit of a two-parallel-wires shielded cable (twinax), the effects on the induced voltages at the cable's terminations during a bulk current injection are studied for different shield's grounding, different cable's asymmetries or unbalancing and different lengths of the cable. The analysis is carried out both in frequency and time domain.
Macros in higher-level languages

The concept of macros, as a tool to extend the expressive capability of a symbolic language by techniques of string substitution, has existed in the lexicon of programming languages for many years. It has been used most effectively in connection with assemblers; in some cases capabilities not too far short of the range commonly attributed to “higher-level languages” have been provided by this means. Attempts to extend higher-level languages by similar tools have, however, not been quite as well received. In this presentation we consider the lessons which have been learned in the course of a six-year experiment with a macro preprocessor for a dialect of ALGOL 60. The factors which we find of interest are those of user convenience, flexibility, efficiency, and syntactic integrity. We attempt to relate these, in the framework of our own experience, to the independent variables of base language power, user orientation, and design goals. It is not our purpose to arrive at any sweeping generalizations; rather, we will content ourselves with drawing tentative conclusions with respect to fruitful avenues of development from a rather limited base with the help of some specific examples.
Shear Stress Regulated Gene Expression and Angiogenesis in Vascular Endothelium

The behavior of vascular EC is greatly altered in sites of pathological angiogenesis, such as a developing tumor or atherosclerotic plaque. Until recently it was thought that this was largely due to abnormal chemical signaling, i.e., endothelial cell chemo transduction, at these sites. However, we now demonstrate that the shear stress intensity encountered by EC can have a profound impact on their gene expression and behavior. We review the growing body of evidence suggesting that mechanotransduction, too, is a major regulator of pathological angiogenesis. This fits with the evolving story of physiological angiogenesis, where a combination of metabolic and mechanical signaling is emerging as the probable mechanism by which tight feedback regulation of angiogenesis is achieved in vivo.