Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Closed-loop controller for a bio-inspired multi-fingered underactuated prosthesis

The paper presents a controller for a multi-fingered underactuated prosthetic hand based on tendon transmission. The control architecture is implemented in two subsequent and different phases. The first one is the pre-shaping of the hand, based on the grasp type is implemented by stand-alone motion controllers using PID position control algorithms. The desired force closure value is calculated according to the pre-shape measured tendons tension and to the grasping force. In the second phase, the involved fingers rapidly close around the object to perform a balanced distribution of the forces within the hand, as it happens in the human hand. The controller is thus able to perform successfully many stable grasps. An overview of the hardware architecture and the results in terms of grasping capabilities based on Cutkosky grasp taxonomy are also presented
Predicting Health-Utility Scores From the Cervical Spine Outcomes Questionnaire in a Multicenter Nationwide Study of Anterior Cervical Spine Surgery

Study Design. Cross-sectional analysis of the Cervical Spine Research Society Outcomes Study, a longitudinal multicenter cohort study. Objective. To provide a statistical model for estimating health utility from the Cervical Spine Outcomes Questionnaire (CSOQ) domain scores. Summary of Background Data. There is consensus among health-policy researchers that the results of economic evaluations of health can be reported in quality-adjusted life-years (QALY). The CSOQ is a condition-specific instrument that assesses individuals across several domains, including neck and arm/shoulder pain and psychological distress. Methods. The CSOQ and 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) were prospectively administered before surgery (within 4 weeks) and after surgery (at 3, 6, and 24 months) to individuals undergoing anterior cervical decompression and fusion for degenerative disc disease of the cervical spine. Using methods reported by Brazier et al, health utility (SF-6D) was estimated using the SF-36. Regression analyses were used on a training dataset (n = 164) to compute the SF-6D from the domain scores of the CSOQ. A validation dataset (n = 328) was used to estimate the SF-6D for comparison to the calculated health utility from the SF-36. Results. Domain scores were moderately correlated with health utility (SF-6D) (P < 0.001) with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.48 to 0.70. The regression equation to predict SF-6D on the basis of CSOQ domain scores and patient age using the training dataset accounted for 65% of the variation in health utility. In the validation dataset, predicted SF-6D was positively correlated with observed SF-6D (r = 0.680, P < 0.001). Conclusion. Our findings show that the CSOQ's domain scores can be used to estimate health-utility scores among those undergoing elective anterior cervical decompression and fusion for cervical degenerative disc disease. The ability to assess health utility, coupled with the psychometric properties of the CSOQ, should increase the clinical utility of this patient-reported outcomes instrument.
The new revolution in toxicology: The good, the bad, and the ugly

In 2007, the United States National Academy of Sciences issued a report entitled Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy. The report reviewed the state of the science and outlined a strategy for the future of toxicity testing. One of the more significant components of the vision established by the report was an emphasis on toxicity testing in human rather than animal systems. In the context of drug development, it is critical that the tools used to accomplish this strategy are maximally capable of evaluating human risk. Since 2007, many advances toward implementation of this vision have been achieved, particularly with regard to safety assessment of new chemical entities intended for pharmaceutical use.
A strongly polynomial algorithm for generalized flow maximization

A strongly polynomial algorithm is given for the generalized flow maximization problem. It uses a new variant of the scaling technique, called continuous scaling. The main measure of progress is that within a strongly polynomial number of steps, an arc can be identified that must be tight in every dual optimal solution, and thus can be contracted.
Semantic Grid Platform in Support of Engineering Virtual Organisations

The EU project InteliGrid (2004-2007) combined and extended the state-of-the-art research and technologies in the areas of semantic interoperability, virtual organisations and grid technology to provide diverse engineering industries with a collaboration platform for flexible, secure, robust, interoperable, pay-perdemand access to information, communication and processing infrastructure. This paper describes the system architecture and the technical aspects of the developed platform as well as the key components it offers, including services for document management, access to product model servers and utilisation of high-performance computing infrastructure.
Extraction of Named Entities from Tables in Gene Mutation Literature

We investigate the challenge of extracting information about genetic mutations from tables, an important source of information in scientific papers. We use various machine learning algorithms and feature sets, and evaluate performance in extracting fields associated with an existing handcreated database of mutations. We then show how classifying tabular information can be leveraged for the task of named entity detection for mutations.
Intracluster Ion Molecule Reactions Following the Generation of Mg+ Within Polar Clusters

In this work we investigated the intracluster ion molecule reactions following the generation of Mg+ within the polar clusters (water, methanol, ether and acetonitrile), using time of flight mass spectrometry. In the case of Mg+/water and Mg+/methanol, dehydrogenation reactions are observed after the addition of five molecules. However, no dehydrogenation reactions are observed in the case of Mg+/ether or Mg+/acetonitrile clusters. This confirms the role of the H atom in (O–H) in the dehydrogenation reaction, and rules out any contribution from the H atom in the CH3 group. In addition, the magic numbers in the time of flight (TOF) mass spectra of the Mg+Xn clusters (X = H2O, CH3OH, CH3OCH3 and CH3CN) have been investigated. Finally, the role of ground electronic magnesium ion Mg+(2S1/2), and excited electronic magnesium ion Mg+(2P1/2) in the dehydrogenation reaction were investigated using Ion Mobility Mass spectrometry. The results offer direct evidence confirming the absence of the electronically excited, Mg+(2P1/2).
Weblog as a personal thinking space

While weblogs have been conceptualised as personal thinking spaces since their early days, those uses have not been studied in detail. The purpose of this paper is to explore how a weblog can contribute to the process of developing ideas in a long-term complex project. To do so I use autoethnography to reconstruct my personal blogging practices in relation to developing PhD ideas from two perspectives. I first discuss my practices of using a weblog as a personal information management tool and then analyse its uses at different stages in the process of working on a PhD dissertation: dealing with fuzzy insights, sense-making and turning ideas into a dissertation text. The findings illustrate that next to supporting thinking in a way private notebooks do, a weblog might serve similar roles as papers on one's office desk: dealing with emerging insights and difficult to categorise ideas, while at the same time creating opportunities for accidental feedback and impressing those who drop by.
Object Recognition Technique based on Level Set Method and Neural Network

The Object recognition is the task of finding and labeling parts of a two-dimensional (2D) image of a scene that correspond to objects in the scene. In this paper, we have proposed an efficient approach using level set method for extracting object shape contour and convex hull as a shape invariant features to the Feed forward Neural Network classifier for object recognition. We extracted the shape contour by level set method. Then, we have obtained invariant shape feature, convex hull of the objects. This convex hull set serves as a pattern for the Neural Network. Initially Feed forward neural network trained on the odd data set and tested on even data set. Our approach is evaluated on the Amsterdam Library of Object Images collection, a large collection of object images containing 1000 objects recorded under various imaging circumstances. The experimental results clearly demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms. The proposed method is shown to be effective under a wide variety of imaging conditions.
Obtained by Combinatorial Cloning Single-Chain IgE Antibody Fragments Grass Pollen Allergen Phl p 1 Revealed with High-Density IgE Recognition of the Major

The timothy grass pollen allergen Phl p 1 belongs to the group 1 of highly cross-reactive grass pollen allergens with a molecular mass of ∼ 25–30 kDa. Group 1 allergens are recognized by >95% of grass pollen allergic patients. We investigated the IgE recognition of Phl p 1 using allergen-speciﬁc IgE-derived single-chain variable Ab fragments (IgE-ScFvs) isolated from a combinatorial library constructed from PBMCs of a grass pollen–allergic patient. IgE-ScFvs reacted with recombinant Phl p 1 and natural group 1 grass pollen allergens. Using synthetic Phl p 1–derived peptides, the binding sites of two ScFvs were mapped to the N terminus of the allergen. In surface plasmon resonance experiments they showed comparable high-afﬁnity binding to Phl p 1 as a complete human IgE-derived Ab recognizing the allergens’ C terminus. In a set of surface plasmon resonance experiments simultaneous allergen recognition of all three binders was demonstrated. Even in the presence of the three binders, allergic patients’ polyclonal IgE reacted with Phl p 1, indicating high-density IgE recognition of the Phl p 1 allergen. Our results show that multiple IgE Abs can bind with high density to Phl p 1, which may explain the high allergenic activity and sensitizing capacity of this allergen. The Journal of Immunology , 2015, 194: 000–000. allergic patients. IgE-derived single-chain variable fragments (ScFvs) speciﬁc for Phl p 1 were isolated by combinatorial cloning from a grass pollen–allergic patient. Binding sites for the IgE-derived ScFvs were mapped and visualized on the three-dimensional structure of the allergen. The simultaneous high-afﬁnity binding of the IgE-derived ScFvs was shown in surface plasmon resonance (SPR) experiments. Our study indicates that Phl p 1 bears a high number of distinct IgE epitopes providing a possible explanation for its high sensitizing potential and allergenic activity. incubated with from Phl p 1–allergic 1:5 in PBST 0.5% (w/v) BSA for 3 h at Bound IgE Abs were detected with alkaline phosphatase–conjugated anti-human IgE Abs (BD Pharmingen) using al- kaline phosphatase substrate for development (Sigma-Aldrich). Optical densities corresponding to bound IgE were measured as described above for ELISA experiments. Results represent means of duplicates with error bars indicating SD. To investigate possible effects of Phl p 1–speciﬁc patients’ IgE on the binding of ScFvs to Phl p 1, coincubation experiments were performed. Aliquots of 50 ng recombinant Phl p 1 per well were coated and blocked as described for the ELISA experiments. Wells were then incubated with a 20-fold molar excess of an equimolar mixture of puriﬁed ScFv F8 and ScFv A8 overnight at 4˚C. After overnight incubation, sera from Phl p patients diluted 1:5 in PBST 0.5% BSAwere added for 3 h at 37˚C. Bound ScFvs were detected anti-His tag and anti-E tag Abs, respectively, as ELISA experiments.
Cloning of deoxynucleoside monophosphate kinase genes and biosynthesis of deoxynucleoside diphosphates

The genes encoding four deoxynucleoside monophosphate kinase (dNMP kinase) enzymes, including ADK1 for deoxyadenylate monophosphate kinase (AK), GUK1 for deoxyguanylate monophosphate kinase (GK), URA6 for deoxycytidylate monophosphate kinase (CK), and CDC8 for deoxythymidylate monophosphate kinase (TK), were isolated from the genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae ATCC 2610 strain and cloned into E. coli strain BL21(DE3). Four recombinant plasmids, pET17b‐JB1 containing ADK1, pET17b‐JB2 containing GUK1, pET17b‐JB3 containing URA6, and pET17b‐JB4 containing CDC8, were constructed and transformed into E. coli strain for over‐expression of AK, GK, CK, and TK. The amino acid sequences of these enzymes were analyzed and a putative conserved peptide sequence for the ATP active site was proposed. The four deoxynucleoside diphosphates (dNDP) including deoxyadenosine diphosphate (dADP), deoxyguanosine diphosphate (dGDP), deoxycytidine diphosphate (dCDP), and deoxythymidine diphosphate (dTDP), were synthesized from the corresponding deoxynucleoside monophosphates (dNMP) using the purified AK, GK, CK, and TK, respectively. The effects of pH and magnesium ion concentration on the dNDP biosynthesis were found to be important. A kinetic model for the synthetic reactions of dNDP was developed based on the Bi–Bi random rapid equilibrium mechanism. The kinetic parameters including the maximum reaction velocity and Michaelis–Menten constants were experimentally determined. The study on dNDP biosynthesis reported in this article are important to the proposed bioprocess for production of deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dNTP) that are used as precursors for in vitro DNA synthesis. There is a significant advantage of using enzymatic biosyntheses of dNDP as compared to the chemical method that has been in commercial use. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, inc.
Letter to the editor: Phosphorus as predictive factor for erectile dysfunction in middle aged men: A cross sectional study in Korea; Methodological issues to avoid prediction fallacy

To the editor: We read the paper written by Min et al. [1] and published in Investigative and Clinical Urology in 2016. The authors aimed to study the effect of serum phosphorus on erectile dysfunction (ED) and the relationship with other clinical variables. It was concluded that phosphorus is a significant predictor of ED and a strong factor that can be modified in middle age. However, although this was a valuable investigation and its findings were very interesting, some methodological issues should be considered. First, Min et al. [1] evaluated the predictive performance of serum phosphorus on ED in a cross-sectional study, whereas longitudinal studies are most important for making assumptions for clinical prediction models [2]. In other words, the temporality assumption (the dependent variable has to occur after the independent variable) must be ensured in the prediction model. Thus, prediction models resulting from cross-sectional designs can be misleading [2,3]. Second, considering the predictive performance of serum phosphorus on ED to be significant is an optimistic interpretation. The internal and external validation of the Letter to the editor: Phosphorus as predictive factor for erectile dysfunction in middle aged men: A cross sectional study in Korea; Methodological issues to avoid prediction fallacy
Delay and Redundancy in Lossless Source Coding

The penalty incurred by imposing a finite delay constraint in lossless source coding of a memoryless source is investigated. It is well known that for the so-called block-to-variable and variable-to-variable codes, the redundancy decays at best polynomially with the delay, where in this case the delay is identified with the source block length or maximal source phrase length, respectively. In stark contrast, it is shown that for sequential codes (e.g., a delay-limited arithmetic code) the redundancy can be made to decay exponentially with the delay constraint. The corresponding redundancy-delay exponent is shown to be at least as good as the Rényi entropy of order 2 of the source, but (for almost all sources) not better than a quantity depending on the minimal source symbol probability and the alphabet size.
Appearance Based Object Modeling using Texture Database: Acquisition Compression and Rendering

Image-based object modeling can be used to compose photorealistic images of modeled objects for various rendering conditions, such as viewpoint, light directions, etc. However, it is challenging to acquire the large number of object images required for all combinations of capturing parameters and to then handle the resulting huge data sets for the model. This paper presents a novel modeling method for acquiring and preserving appearances of objects. Using a specialized capturing platform, we first acquire objects' geometrical information and their complete 4D indexed texture sets, or bi-directional texture functions (BTF) in a highly automated manner. Then we compress the acquired texture database using tensor product expansion. The compressed texture database facilitates rendering objects with arbitrary viewpoints, illumination, and deformation.
Description and future trends of ICT solutions offered towards independent living: the case of LLM project

Due to the increasing elderly population, healthcare systems able to promote independent living are regarded as an emerging market. Despite the significant advances aiming to support senior citizens, several issues have to be addressed in order to enable older people to live independently and to form living cells of our society. Aiming to contribute to the research of elderly care, this paper reports the open issues that should be taken into consideration in order to provide a technological solution towards Ambient Assistive Living (AAL). After reviewing the most prominent European funded projects, it presents an example of integrated elderly healthcare platform and finally attempts to highlight the future trends which should be employed in order to face with success the social and financial phenomenon of ageing population.
Building detection and radar footprint reconstruction from single VHR SAR images

The development of methods for the automatic detection and reconstruction of building radar footprints fromsingle very high resolution (VHR) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is a difficult task for two main reasons: i) the very high complexity of VHR SAR images; and ii) the need to develop efficient algorithms that can be applied to large images in order to be used in real applications. In this paper we present a novel method for automatic building detection, which also reconstructs the 2D radar footprint of the detected buildings. The method is based on the extraction of a set of low-level features from the images and on their combination in more structured primitives. Then the semantic meaning of primitives is used for the definition of building candidates and for the radar footprint reconstruction. In order to process large VHR SAR images, the method has been implemented on a computer cluster. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method using a large TerraSAR-X spotlight scene.
GReplica: A Web-based Data Grid Replica Management System

In wide-area distributed computing systems, it is often desirable to create remote copies (replicas) of files. File replication can be used to reduce access latency, improve data locality, and/or increase robustness, scalability and performance for distributed applications. In this paper, we describe a Web-based data grid replica management system (we call it GReplica) developed in Globus Toolkit.
Development of a stable isotope approach for the inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry determination of oxidized metallothionein in biological materials.

The use of isotope dilution analysis (IDA) with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for the determination of oxidized metallothionein (MT) by a Cd-saturation method is investigated. The method developed here is a modification of an earlier methodology which used a radioactive Cd isotope ((109)Cd). While retaining the many advantages of this previous approach, the procedure presented here uses stable isotope ratio measurements ((114)Cd/(111)Cd) for the determination of MT. Experimental parameters governing the instrumental precision and accuracy for isotope ratio measurements of Cd by ICP-MS were characterized. Systematic errors, including mass bias, detector dead time, and spectroscopic interferences, could be easily corrected. The isotope dilution ICP-MS method was validated by the determination of very low levels of cadmium in biological certified reference materials (NIST SRM 2670 freeze-dried urine, IAEA H-8 horse kidney, and BCR TP-25 lichens). Finally, the IDA procedure was evaluated for the determination of oxidized MT by a Cd-saturation method previously developed using radioactive (109)Cd. The final procedure was applied to the quantification of MT in Long-Evans Cinnamon rat liver cytosol samples and the results were compared with data obtained for the same samples using the reference (109)Cd methodology. A good agreement between the analytical values obtained by both methods was observed.
A new approach to visual servoing in robotics

Vision-based control in robotics based on considering a vision system as a specific sensor dedicated to a task and included in a control servo loop is described. Once the necessary modeling stage is performed, the framework becomes one of automatic control, and stability and robustness questions arise. State-of-the-art visual servoing is reviewed, and the basic concepts for modeling the concerned interactions are given. The interaction screw is thus defined in a general way, and the application to images follows. Starting from the concept of task function, the general framework of the control is described, and stability results are recalled. The concept of the hybrid task is presented and then applied to visual sensors. Simulation and experimental results are presented, and guidelines for future work are drawn in the conclusion. >
Single quantum dot tracking based on perceptual Grouping using minimal paths in a spatiotemporal volume

Semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are new fluorescent probes with great promise for ultrasensitive biological imaging. When detected at the single-molecule level, QD-tagged molecules can be observed and tracked in the membrane of live cells over unprecedented durations. The motion of these individual molecules, recorded in sequences of fluorescence images, can reveal aspects of the dynamics of cellular processes that remain hidden in conventional ensemble imaging. Due to QD complex optical properties, such as fluorescence intermittency, the quantitative analysis of these sequences is, however, challenging and requires advanced algorithms. We present here a novel approach, which, instead of a frame by frame analysis, is based on perceptual grouping in a spatiotemporal volume. By applying a detection process based on an image fluorescence model, we first obtain an unstructured set of points. Individual molecular trajectories are then considered as minimal paths in a Riemannian metric derived from the fluorescence image stack. These paths are computed with a variant of the fast marching method and few parameters are required. We demonstrate the ability of our algorithm to track intermittent objects both in sequences of synthetic data and in experimental measurements obtained with individual QD-tagged receptors in the membrane of live neurons. While developed for tracking QDs, this method can, however, be used with any fluorescent probes.