Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
I Meant to Do That: Determining the Intentions of Action in the Face of Disturbances

Our actions often do not match our intentions when there are external disturbances such as turbulence. We derived a novel modeling approach for determining this motor intent from targeted reaching motions that are disturbed by an unexpected force. First, we demonstrated how to mathematically invert both feedforward (predictive) and feedback controls to obtain an intended trajectory. We next examined the model’s sensitivity to a realistic range of parameter uncertainties, and found that the expected inaccuracy due to all possible parameter mis-estimations was less than typical movement-to-movement variations seen when humans reach to similar targets. The largest sensitivity arose mainly from uncertainty in joint stiffnesses. Humans cannot change their intent until they acquire sensory feedback, therefore we tested the hypothesis that a straight-line intent should be evident for at least the first 120 milliseconds following the onset of a disturbance. As expected, the intended trajectory showed no change from undisturbed reaching for more than 150 milliseconds after the disturbance onset. Beyond this point, however, we detected a change in intent in five out of eight subjects, surprisingly even when the hand is already near the target. Knowing such an intent signal is broadly applicable: enhanced human-machine interaction, the study of impaired intent in neural disorders, the real-time determination (and manipulation) of error in training, and complex systems that embody planning such as brain machine interfaces, team sports, crowds, or swarms. In addition, observing intent as it changes might act as a window into the mechanisms of planning, correction, and learning.
High-energy emission from the starburst galaxy NGC 253

Measurement sensitivity in the energetic -ray region has improved considerably, and is about to increase further in the near future, motivating a de tailed calculation of high-energy (HE: > 100 MeV) and very-high-energy (VHE:> 100 GeV) -ray emission from the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 253. Adopting the convection-diffusion model for energetic electron and proton propagation, and accounting for all the relevant hadronic and leptonic processes, we determine the steady-state energy distributions of thes e particles by a detailed numerical treatment. The electron distribution is directly norma lized by the measured synchrotron radio emission from the central starburst region; a commonl y expected theoretical relation is then used to normalize the proton spectrum in this region. Doing so fully specifies the electron spectrum throughout the galactic disk, and with an assumed spatial profile of the magnetic field, the predicted radio emission from the full di sk matches well the observed spectrum, confirming the validity of our treatment. The resu lting radiative yields of both particles are calculated; the integrated HE and VHE fluxes from t he entire disk are predicted to
A Multithreaded Parallel Global Routing Method with Overlapped Routing Regions

Routing is one of the time-consuming processes in LSI design to connect previously placed terminals. In this study, we propose a multithreaded parallel routing algorithm for LSI design. In the proposed method, first, threads are created and the nets of the target net list are equally distributed to the threads. Sharing the routing regions, each of the threads searches a candidate path of a net in parallel without synchronization. Then, each thread exclusively writes a candidate path to the routing regions as a determined path. Although the exclusive control is necessary when updating the routing regions, this asynchronous parallel routing reduces the wait time of the threads. If a candidate path of a net does not satisfy constraints due to the asynchronous parallel routing, the net is re-routed. We experimentally confirmed that our proposed method running on a PC with eight cores was 7.1 times faster than the sequential execution. In addition, we also confirmed that the routing quality was not degraded compared to the sequential execution.
Swim stress, motion, and deformation of active matter: effect of an external field.

We analyze the stress, dispersion, and average swimming speed of self-propelled particles subjected to an external field that affects their orientation and speed. The swimming trajectory is governed by a competition between the orienting influence (i.e., taxis) associated with the external (e.g., magnetic, gravitational, thermal, nutrient concentration) field versus the effects that randomize the particle orientations (e.g., rotary Brownian motion and/or an intrinsic tumbling mechanism like the flagella of bacteria). The swimmers' motion is characterized by a mean drift velocity and an effective translational diffusivity that becomes anisotropic in the presence of the orienting field. Since the diffusivity yields information about the micromechanical stress, the anisotropy generated by the external field creates a normal stress difference in the recently developed "swim stress" tensor [Takatori, Yan, and Brady, Phys. Rev. Lett. , 2014]. This property can be exploited in the design of soft, compressible materials in which their size, shape, and motion can be manipulated and tuned by loading the material with active swimmers. Since the swimmers exert different normal stresses in different directions, the material can compress/expand, elongate, and translate depending on the external field strength. Such an active system can be used as nano/micromechanical devices and motors. Analytical solutions are corroborated by Brownian dynamics simulations.
A Computer-Aided Audio Effect Setup Procedure for Untrained Users

The number of parameters of modern audio effects easily ranges in the dozens. Expert knowledge is required to understand which parameter change results in a desired effect. Yet, such sound processors are also making their way into consumer products, where they tend to overburden most users. Hence, we propose a procedure to achieve a desired effect without technical expertise based on a black-box genetic optimization strategy: Users are only confronted with a series of comparisons of two differently processed sound examples. Learning from the users’ choices, our software optimizes the parameter settings. We conducted a study on hearing-impaired persons without expert knowledge who used the system to adjust a third-octave equalizer and a multiband compressor to improve the intelligibility of a TV set.
The Gene Ontology Annotation (GOA) Database: sharing knowledge in Uniprot with Gene Ontology

The Gene Ontology Annotation (GOA) database (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/GOA) aims to provide high-quality electronic and manual annotations to the UniProt Knowledgebase (Swiss-Prot, TrEMBL and PIR-PSD) using the standardized vocabulary of the Gene Ontology (GO). As a supplementary archive of GO annotation, GOA promotes a high level of integration of the knowledge represented in UniProt with other databases. This is achieved by converting UniProt annotation into a recognized computational format. GOA provides annotated entries for nearly 60,000 species (GOA-SPTr) and is the largest and most comprehensive open-source contributor of annotations to the GO Consortium annotation effort. By integrating GO annotations from other model organism groups, GOA consolidates specialized knowledge and expertise to ensure the data remain a key reference for up-to-date biological information. Furthermore, the GOA database fully endorses the Human Proteomics Initiative by prioritizing the annotation of proteins likely to benefit human health and disease. In addition to a non-redundant set of annotations to the human proteome (GOA-Human) and monthly releases of its GO annotation for all species (GOA-SPTr), a series of GO mapping files and specific cross-references in other databases are also regularly distributed. GOA can be queried through a simple user-friendly web interface or downloaded in a parsable format via the EBI and GO FTP websites. The GOA data set can be used to enhance the annotation of particular model organism or gene expression data sets, although increasingly it has been used to evaluate GO predictions generated from text mining or protein interaction experiments. In 2004, the GOA team will build on its success and will continue to supplement the functional annotation of UniProt and work towards enhancing the ability of scientists to access all available biological information. Researchers wishing to query or contribute to the GOA project are encouraged to email: goa@ebi.ac.uk.
Single gay fathers via surrogacy: the dialectics between vulnerability and resilience

ABSTRACT The present study focuses on the experiences and constructed meanings of Israeli single gay fathers via surrogacy. Based on the analysis of 11 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with single gay fathers via surrogacy, we show that their parenting experiences are shaped in contradictory ways, allowing them to adopt a reflective position in relation to the dominant familial model. Data from in-depth interviews reveals two themes: The first: presents the influence of social viewpoints on the fathers’ accounts of their families as inherently deficient. The second: describes single gay fathers’ accounts that are dominated by empowerment, free choice and autonomy. These themes articulate the duality between vulnerability to resilience that shapes these fathers’ lived experiences. These findings highlight the complex tension between these men and their social environment concerning the concept of the contingency of couplehood and parenthood and the construction of resilience in single gay fathers’ lives.
REVIEW ARTICLE: Neuronal coding and spiking randomness

Fast information transfer in neuronal systems rests on series of action potentials, the spike trains, conducted along axons. Methods that compare spike trains are crucial for characterizing different neuronal coding schemes. In this paper we review recent results on the notion of spiking randomness, and discuss its properties with respect to the rate and temporal coding schemes. This method is compared with other widely used characteristics of spiking activity, namely the variability of interspike intervals, and it is shown that randomness and variability provide two distinct views. We demonstrate that estimation of spiking randomness from simulated and experimental data is capable of capturing characteristics that would otherwise be difficult to obtain with conventional methods.
FAN: friendship based anonymous routing in wireless social mobile networks of malicious communities

Pocket Switched Networks (PSN) whose main feature is the social-guided movement of users/devices, have attracted the attention of many researchers in the last years, mostly for the common belief to be a key technology in providing innovative services without the need of a fixed network infrastructure. However, the opportunistic and intermittent nature of the contacts among users make it very difficult to design secure and trustworthy services for these networks. In particular, anonymous communication remains among the most difficult services to achieve. In this paper we present FAN (Friendship based ANonymity), a primitive that exploits strong friendship relationships among users to provide source anonymity and sender-receiver unlinkability in Pocket Switched Networks. The primitive is independent of the forwarding mechanism underneath, and therefore, can be coupled with any routing protocol. As shown from our large experimental results with different real data traces, FAN outperforms the TPS scheme, its only rival that provides the same anonymity properties for Pocket Switched Networks, in terms of delay, cost, and network throughput.
An intelligent navigation method for service robots in the smart environment

Autonomous navigation is one of primitive functionalities which service robots should have; nevertheless, the navigation problem for a service robot still has many difficulties because the real environment where service robots should works is so complex and dynamical. This paper proposes a framework of intelligent navigation for service robots based on a semantic map of the smart environment. In the smart environment, the robot can receive his position information from location sensors by sensor networks, and it can eliminate the accumulated localization errors. So the robot can accomplish confidential localization in the dynamic and complex environment. With the topological information in the semantic map, path planning problem can be simple even in the wide and complex spaces, and topological path from semantic map can be divided into several sub goals. Robust navigation can be accomplished by moving towards these sub goals with reactive navigation algorithm which has robust characteristics in the dynamic environments. Our approaches have ascertained the good performance on the localization and the navigation, and the feasibility of these methods could be confirmed with the result of experiments in the real environment.
VIPReader: A Light News Reader for the Visually Impaired Person

Nowadays, the whelming online news information often bewilders the readers, especially the visually impaired persons, who, instead of reading, listen to news articles line by line with the help of a screen reader. Therefore, to improve the news accessibility of these people, we develop a news reader (VIPReader) to assist them with two unique functions, i.e., Multi-document summarisation and ontology-based recommendation. In particular, the summarisation engine of VIPReader generates a summary across several relevant documents to assist a quick view for visually impaired people, and its ontology-based recommendation engine suggests relevant news to visually impaired readers based on concepts of news and user preference. Experiments on visually impaired people show the easy information accessibility of the proposed VIPReader.
Reliability and Validity of the Preschool Science Observation Measure

ABSTRACT Research Findings: Although interest in preschool science is growing, there are few observational measures of science teaching capable of advancing research or supporting professional growth among teachers. To address this gap, the current article presents the development and validation of the Preschool Science Observation Measure (PSOM), which assesses science teaching quality and the content of instruction for structured science lessons in preschool. Within the context of a randomized field trial of a science curriculum, 115 teachers submitted videos of science lessons and 1,003 children ages 4 and 5 years old were assessed on their science skills in the fall and spring. Results indicated adequate range and reliability of PSOM scores. PSOM scores showed moderate positive associations with an observation of teacher–child interactions. Limited positive associations with children’s science outcomes indicated some evidence of predictive validity. Descriptive results from control classrooms indicated wide variability in the content and quality of science teaching in typical preschool classrooms. Practice or Policy: Results support further development and use of the PSOM to evaluate science teaching quality and highlight the need for more research on science in preschool classrooms.
THE INFLUENCE OF PLUS, MINUS AND INTERESTING (PMI) STRATEGY TOWARDS STUDENTSâ€™ SPEAKING ABILITY IN AN INDONESIAN PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOL

Nowadays, the lack of opportunity for students to practice speaking in English classroom makes them difficult to improve their speaking ability. Therefore, this study will address PMI, stands for Plus, Minus and Interesting strategy that can encourage students to speak by thinking the plus, minus and interesting points of the topic. This study used Quasi-Experimental research for the students at second grade of SMP-IT As-Salam Ambon. It is aimed to find out whether the students who are taught by using PMI strategy had better achievement in their speaking ability rather than those who are taught by using Question and Answer strategy. This study was conducted during 8 meetings. First meeting was the pre-test, 6 meetings were the treatment and the last meeting was the post-test. The result reveal that after PMI strategy had been applied, the students in experimental class was significantly had better achievement in speaking ability than the students in control class based on their pre-test and post-test result. Thus, PMI strategy could influence studentsâ€™ speaking ability because it can open the opportunity for the students to elaborate their ideas, to help them make a decision in a short time and to increase their participation in speaking activity.
Cytotoxicity and Oral Acute Toxicity Studies of Lantana camara Leaf Extract

Background: The objective of this study was to investigate the toxicity of Lantana camara methanol extract. Methods: In order to evaluate the toxicity of Lantana camara, the acute toxicity of the methanolic extract on adult mice and cytotoxicity test on Vero cell line were investigated. A fixed large dose of 2 g/kg body weight of L. camara leaf extract was administrated by a single oral gavage according to the OECD procedure. Results: In 2 weeks, L. camara leaf extract showed no obvious acute toxicity. While female mice lost body weight after being treated with single dose of leaf extract in acute toxicity test, male ones lost organ mass, particularly for heart and kidney. The biochemical liver function tests showed significantly elevated TBIL and ALT in the L. camara leaf extract treated female mice group compared with the control group. Cytotoxicity effect of leaf extract of L. camara was estimated through a MTT assay. Cytotoxicity tests on Vero cell line disclosed that leaf extract at concentrations up to 500 µg/mL inhibited the growth of cells 2.5 times less than did Triton 100× 1%. More interestingly, the cytotoxicity initiated to decline at elevated concentrations of this extract. Conclusions: The results of both tests confirm that L. camara shows a pro toxic effect.
Falling detection of lonely elderly people based on NAO humanoid robot

In recent years, elderly people are suffering an increasingly severe problem in their home due to the falls. Falling down is the most common cause of death among the elderly. This paper proposed a falling detection algorithm based on a humanoid robot to monitor and detect the motion of the elderly who live alone. A stream of the videos obtained from the robot cameras are transmitted to the personal computer via Wi-Fi, and then the image data will be analyzed by the MATLAB procedure algorithm, including extracting foreground, eliminating noise from foreground, evaluating Motion History and determining ellipse statistical properties to determine whether a falling has happened. If a fall occurs, the robot will raise an alarm to call for help through microphone. This algorithm will help the elderly receive timely medical treatment in order to minimize the falling risk and the company of NAO will enhance the elderly's sense of security.
Spatiotemporal Averagingmethod for Enhancement of Reverberant Speech

We present a reverberant speech enhancement algorithm which, operating on the linear prediction residual of spatially averaged multi- microphone observations, utilizes temporal averaging of neighbouring larynx cycles. The enhanced larynx cycles are used to design an equalization filter, which is applied in order to dereverberate both voiced and unvoiced speech. The DYPSA algorithm is employed and evaluated for larynx cycle segmentation of reverberant speech. Simulation results show reverberation reduction with up to 5 dB in terms of segmental signal-to-reverberant ratio and 0.34 in terms of normalized Bark spectral distortion score.
Gestational Heat Stress Alters Postnatal Offspring Body Composition Indices and Metabolic Parameters in Pigs

The study objectives were to test the hypothesis that heat stress (HS) during gestational development alters postnatal growth, body composition, and biological response to HS conditions in pigs. To investigate this, 14 first parity crossbred gilts were exposed to one of four environmental treatments (TNTN, TNHS, HSTN, or HSHS) during gestation. TNTN and HSHS dams were exposed to thermal neutral (TN, cyclical 18–22°C) or HS conditions (cyclical 28–34°C) during the entire gestation, respectively. Dams assigned to HSTN and TNHS treatments were heat-stressed for the first or second half of gestation, respectively. Postnatal offspring were exposed to one of two thermal environments for an acute (24 h) or chronic (five weeks) duration in either constant TN (21°C) or HS (35°C) environment. Exposure to chronic HS during their growth phase resulted in decreased longissimus dorsi cross-sectional area (LDA) in offspring from HSHS and HSTN treated dams whereas LDA was larger in offspring from dams in TNTN and TNHS conditions. Irrespective of HS during prepubertal postnatal growth, pigs from dams that experienced HS during the first half of gestation (HSHS and HSTN) had increased (13.9%) subcutaneous fat thickness compared to pigs from dams exposed to TN conditions during the first half of gestation. This metabolic repartitioning towards increased fat deposition in pigs from dams heat-stressed during the first half of gestation was accompanied by elevated blood insulin concentrations (33%; P = 0.01). Together, these results demonstrate HS during the first half of gestation altered metabolic and body composition parameters during future development and in biological responses to a subsequent HS challenge.
International External Quality Assessment Study for Molecular Detection of Lassa Virus

Lassa virus (LASV) is a causative agent of hemorrhagic fever in West Africa. In recent years, it has been imported several times to Europe and North America. The method of choice for early detection of LASV in blood is RT-PCR. Therefore, the European Network for Diagnostics of ‘Imported’ Viral Diseases (ENIVD) performed an external quality assessment (EQA) study for molecular detection of LASV. A proficiency panel of 13 samples containing various concentrations of inactivated LASV strains Josiah, Lib-1580/121, CSF, or AV was prepared. Samples containing the LASV-related lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) and negative sera were included as specificity controls. Twenty-four laboratories from 17 countries (13 European, one African, one Asian, two American countries) participated in the study. Thirteen laboratories (54%) reported correct results, 4 (17%) laboratories reported 1 to 2 false-negative results, and 7 (29%) laboratories reported 3 to 5 false-negative results. This EQA study indicates that most participating laboratories have a good or acceptable performance in molecular detection of LASV. However, several laboratories need to review and improve their diagnostic procedures.
Helping editors choose better seed sets for entity set expansion

Sets of named entities are used heavily at commercial search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Acquiring sets of entities typically consists of combining semi-supervised expansion algorithms with manual cleaning of the resulting expanded sets. In this paper, we study the effects of different seed sets in a state-of-the-art semi-supervised expansion system and show a tremendous variation in expansion performance depending on the choice of seeds. We further show that human editors, in general, provide very bad seed sets, which perform well-below the average random seed set. We identify three factors of seed set composition, namely prototypicality, ambiguity and coverage, and we investigate their effects on expansion performance. Finally, we propose various automatic systems for improving editor-generated seed sets, which seek to remove ambiguous and other error-prone seed instances. An extensive experimental analysis shows that expansion quality, measured in R-precision, can be improved on average by a maximum of 46% by removing the right seeds from a seed set. Our automatic methods outperform the human editors seed sets and on average improve expansion performance by up to 34% over the original seed sets.