Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic balance of humanoid robot using pose classification with incremental proportional derivative dead-zone control

In the beginning, a dynamic sensing system including the hardware and the low-pass and Kalman filtering is designed. It is then installed at the center of gravity (CoG) of the humanoid robot (HR) and can capture the responses of the pitch and roll axes during the execution of specific task. After the analytic design, a set of desired pitch and roll trajectory for a specific task is achieved. In addition, the 3D coordinates of four tips (i.e., two hands and feet) with respect to the neck and waist centers of HR are computed by the kinematics of 4-DoFs of two arms and 6-DoFs of two legs. Based on these 3D coordinate, the total 36 classes are achieved. Without measuring the contact force of two feet, without unnecessarily interfering the original task, the incremental proportion-derivative dead-zone control of the pitch and roll directions for each class is designed by the control of different suitable motors. It is cost-effective as compared with other methods. Finally, the experiments of continuous walking motion in the presence of external disturbances are presented to evaluate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.
Embedding classical into quantum computation

We describe a simple formalism for generating classes of quantum circuits that are classically efficiently simulatable and show that the efficient simulation of Clifford circuits (Gottesman-Knill theorem) and of matchgate circuits (Valiant's theorem) appear as two special cases. Viewing these simulatable classes as subsets of the space of all quantum computations, we may consider minimal extensions that suffice to regain full quantum computational power, which provides an approach to exploring the efficacy of quantum over classical computation.
Health effects of freshwater bathing among primary school children; Design for a randomised exposure study

Om eventuele gezondheidseffecten van recreatie in zoetwaterplassen die voldoen aan de huidige zwemwaternormen vast te stellen, is grootschalig epidemiologisch onderzoek bij baders nodig. Een opzet wordt beschreven van een onderzoek bij schoolkinderen, dat uiteindelijk tot doel heeft de huidige zwemwaternormen te evalueren. Het betreft een gerandomiseerde expositiestudie, waarvan in de zomer van 1996 een pilot is uitgevoerd om de haalbaarheid van het onderzoek en de gehanteerde onderzoeksmethoden uit te testen. 69 zwemmers en 74 niet-zemmers in de leeftijd van 9-14 jaar namen gedurende twee onderzoeksdagen at random deel aan estafetteraces en trefbal in het water, of aan sport- en spelactiviteiten op de kant. Het zwemwater, dat goedgekeurd was door de provincie, werd op de onderzoeksdag uitvoerig bemonsterd om blootstelling van de zwemmers aan microbiologische waterkwaliteitsparameters vast te stellen. Met behulp van vragenlijsten werd het optreden van gezondheidsklachten nagegaan. Uit de pilotstudie is gebleken dat gezondheidseffecten van recreatie in zoet water kunnen worden bestudeerd bij leerlingen op een basisschool met behulp van geringe wijzigingen in de gepresenteerde onderzoeksopzet. Wel is gebleken dat het onderzoek tijdrovend en complex is en sterk afhankelijk van de bereidheid van scholen en ouders om deel te nemen, alsmede van de weersomstandigheden in de zomer.
Exploring interruption in HRI using Wizard of Oz

We are interested in exploring how robots controlled using Wizard of Oz (WoO) should interrupt humans in various social settings. While there is considerable work on interruption and interruptibility in HCI, little has been done to explore how these concepts will map robotic interaction. As part of our efforts to investigate interruption and interruptibility in HRI we used WoO-based methodology to investigate robot behaviours in a simple interruption scenario. In this report we contribute a design critique that discusses this methodology, and common concerns that could be generalized to other social HRI experiments as well as reflections on our future interruption HRI research
User-assisted similarity estimation for searching related web pages

To utilize the similarity information hidden in the Web graph, we investigate the problem of adaptively retrieving related Web pages with user assistance. Given a definition of similarities between pages, it is intuitive to estimate that any similarity will propagate from page to page, inducing an implicit topical relatedness between pages. In this paper, we extract connected subgraphs from the whole graph that consists of all pairs of pages whose similarity scores are above a given threshold, and then sort the candidates of related pages by a novel rank measure which is based on the combination distances of a flexible hierarchical clustering. Moreover, due to the subjectivity of similarity values, we dynamically supply the ordering list of related pages according to a parameter adjusted by users. We show our approach effectively handles a set of pages originating from three related categories of Web hierarchies, such as Google Directory. The experiments with three similarity measures demonstrate that using in-link information is favorable while using a combination measure of in-links and out-links lowers the precision of identifying similar pages.
Sexualities in World Politics: How LGBTQ claims shape International Relations

Sexualities in World Politics: how LGBTQ claims shape IR, Manuela Picq and Markus Thiel 1. Human rights, LGBT rights & international theory, Anthony Langlois 2. To love or to loathe: modernity, homophobia and LGBT rights, Mike Bosia 3 LGBT & (Dis)United Nations: sexual minorities, international law, and UN politics, Francine D'Amico 4. Exploring transversal and particularistic politics in the European Union's anti-discrimination policy: the role of LGBT politics, Markus Thiel 5. Sexual diffusion and conceptual confusions: homosexualities, muslims cultures and modernity, Momin Rahman 6. Amazon prides: LGBT perspectives on international relations, Manuela L. Picq 7. Between the universal and the particular: the politics of the recognition of LGBT rights in Turkey, Mehmet Sinan Birdal 8. Queering Security Studies in Northern Ireland: Problem, Practice and Practitioner, Sandra McEvoy LGBTQ politics/global politics/international relations, Laura Sjoberg
Biochanin A Promotes Osteogenic but Inhibits Adipogenic Differentiation: Evidence with Primary Adipose-Derived Stem Cells

Biochanin A has promising effects on bone formation in vivo, although the underlying mechanism remains unclear yet. This study therefore aimed to investigate whether biochanin A regulates osteogenic and adipogenic differentiation using primary adipose-derived stem cells. The effects of biochanin A (at a physiologically relevant concentration of 0.1–1 μM) were assessed in vitro using various approaches, including Oil red O staining, Nile red staining, alizarin red S staining, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, flow cytometry, RT-PCR, and western blotting. The results showed that biochanin A significantly suppressed adipocyte differentiation, as demonstrated by the inhibition of cytoplasmic lipid droplet accumulation, along with the inhibition of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ), lipoprotein lipase (LPL), and leptin and osteopontin (OPN) mRNA expression, in a dose-dependent manner. On the other hand, treatment of cells with 0.3 μM biochanin A increased the mineralization and ALP activity, and stimulated the expression of the osteogenic marker genes ALP and osteocalcin (OCN). Furthermore, biochanin A induced the expression of runt-related transcription factor 2 (Runx2), osteoprotegerin (OPG), and Ras homolog gene family, member A (RhoA) proteins. These observations suggest that biochanin A prevents adipogenesis, enhances osteoblast differentiation in mesenchymal stem cells, and has beneficial regulatory effects in bone formation.
RDF Xpress: a flexible expressive RDF search engine

We demonstrate RDF Xpress, a search engine that enables users to effectively retrieve information from large RDF knowledge bases or Linked Data Sources. RDF Xpress provides a search interface where users can combine triple patterns with keywords to form queries. Moreover, RDF Xpress supports automatic query relaxation and returns a ranked list of diverse query results.
Prognostic Value of LGR5 in Colorectal Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

Objective Leucine-rich repeat-containing G protein-coupled receptor 5 (LGR5) has recently been reported to be a marker of cancer stem cells (CSCs) in colorectal cancer (CRC), and the prognostic value of LGR5 in CRC has been evaluated in several studies. However, the conclusions remain controversial. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the association between the expression of LGR5 and the outcome of CRC patients by performing a meta-analysis. Methods We systematically searched for relevant studies published up to February 2014 using the PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE and Wangfang databases. Only articles in which LGR5 expression was detected by immunohistochemistry were included. A meta-analysis was performed using STATA 12.0, and pooled hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to estimate the strength of the association between LGR5 expression and the prognosis of CRC patients. Results A total of 7 studies comprising 1833 CRC patients met the inclusion criteria, including 6 studies comprising 1781 patients for overall survival (OS) and 3 studies comprising 528 patients for disease-free survival (DFS). Our results showed that high LGR5 expression was significantly associated with poor prognosis in terms of OS (HR: 1.87, 95% CI: 1.23–2.84; P = 0.003) and DFS (HR: 2.44, 95% CI: 1.49–3.98; P<0.001). Further subgroup analysis revealed that many factors, including the study region, number of patients, follow-up duration and cutoff value, affected the significance of the association between LGR5 expression and a worse prognosis in patients with CRC. In addition, there was no evidence of publication bias, as suggested by Begg’s and Egger’s tests. Conclusions The present meta-analysis indicated that high LGR5 expression was associated with poor prognosis in patients with CRC and that LGR5 is an efficient prognostic factor in CRC.
How documentation evolves over time

Good source code documentation, especially of programming interfaces, is essential for using and maintaining software components. In this paper, we present the Quasoledo tool that automatically measures the quality of documentation with respect to completeness, quantity, and readability. We applied our set of metrics to the Eclipse project, and benchmarked against the well-documented Java class library. The result of Quasoledo is a map of documentation quality in Eclipse, showing the best documentation for its core components. Additionally, we looked at the evolution of Eclipse and identified batch updates that caused jumps in documentation quality. For Eclipse, only 32.6% of all changes touched documentation.
An Existential Approach to Risk Perception

Existential, or existential‐phenomenological philosophical approaches to the social psychology of risk perception provide a novel framework for understanding issues that are common to all humanity, such as fear of death, freedom and responsibility, isolation and meaninglessness, as these anxieties are a function of existing, or being‐in‐the‐world. These fundamental anxieties can be related theoretically to the ways people perceive risks within social and cultural milieus, and can also be used practically within case studies, as demonstrated in the three examples presented, which examine perceptions of climate change, food‐related risks, and environmental awareness via a mixture of quantitative and qualitative techniques. The discussion focuses on the possible insights that can be gained from taking an existential perspective on risk perception, and relates notions of contemporary technologically‐oriented societies to the existential challenges faced by individuals and societies in the contemporary world.
Simultaneous Learning of Sentence Clustering and Class Prediction for Improved Document Classification

In document classification it is common to represent a document as the so called bag-of-words form, which is essentially a global term distribution indicating how often certain terms appear in a text. Ignoring the spatial statistics (i.e., where in a text they appear) can potentially lead to a suboptimal solution. The key motivation or assumption in this paper is that there may exist underlying segmentation of sentences in a document, and perhaps this partitioning might be intuitively appealing (e.g., each group corresponds to a particular sentiment or gist of arguments). If the segmentation is known somehow, terms belonging to the same/different groups can potentially be treated in an equal/different manner for classification. Based on the idea, we build a novel document classification model comprised of two parts: a sentence tagger that predicts the group labels of sentences, and a classifier that forms the input features as a weighted term frequency vector that is aggregated from all sentences but weighed differently cluster-wise according to the prediction in the first model. We suggest an efficient learning strategy for this model. For several benchmark document classification problems, we demonstrate that the proposed approach yields significantly improved classification performance over several existing algorithms.
Optimized Compressed Sensing via Incoherent Frames Designed by Convex Optimization

The construction of highly incoherent frames, sequences of vectors placed on the unit hyper sphere of a finite dimensional Hilbert space with low correlation between them, has proven very difficult. Algorithms proposed in the past have focused in minimizing the absolute value off-diagonal entries of the Gram matrix of these structures. Recently, a method based on convex optimization that operates directly on the vectors of the frame has been shown to produce promising results. This paper gives a detailed analysis of the optimization problem at the heart of this approach and, based on these insights, proposes a new method that substantially outperforms the initial approach and all current methods in the literature for all types of frames, with low and high redundancy. We give extensive experimental results that show the effectiveness of the proposed method and its application to optimized compressed sensing.
Physically based parallel ray tracer for the Metropolis light transport algorithm on the Tianhe-2 supercomputer

Developing an efficient and highly scalable ray tracer for the Metropolis light transport algorithm is becoming increasingly important as the request for photorealistic images becomes a common trend. Although the Metropolis light transport algorithm has produced some of the most realistic images to date, it usually takes a great amount of time to render an image. The development of an efficient and highly scalable ray tracer for the Metropolis light transport algorithm is hard due in large part to the irregular memory access patterns, the imbalanced workload of light-carrying paths and the complicated mathematical model and complex physical processes. In this paper, we present a highly scalable physically based parallel ray tracer for the Metropolis light transport algorithm. Firstly, we present the idea of snapshot and sub-snapshot, then propose a novel assignment partitioning algorithm for compute nodes and CPU cores since the demand-driven assignment partitioning algorithms don't work. Secondly, we propose a physically based parallel ray racing framework for the Metropolis light transport algorithm, which is based on a master-worker architecture. Finally, we discuss the issue of granularity of the assignment partitioning and some optimization strategies for improving overall performance, then a hybrid scheduling strategy combining a static and dynamic scheduling strategy is described. Experiments show that our physically based ray tracer almost reaches linear speedup by using 26,400 CPU cores on the Tianhe-2 supercomputer. Our ray tracer is more efficient and highly scalable.
The ISRE method for analyzing system requirements with virtual prototypes

Virtual prototyping is a useful approach for refining requirements and testing designs in systems engineering; however, use of virtual reality technology can cause usability problems which can be interpreted as “false positive” requirements errors. The ISRE method guides the analysis of problems encountered during the testing of virtual prototypes and helps assign causes to either genuine design defects or usability issues with Virtual Reality (VR) technology. The method consists of techniques for walkthrough testing, testing with users, causal analysis of observed problems, and design of scenario‐based analysis sessions. A checklist of requirements questions is given, with guidance on scenario‐based testing of virtual prototypes and advice on configuring VR technology to obtain the best results from virtual prototyping sessions. The method is described and its use illustrated with a case study of validating requirements for an aircraft maintenance application. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 7: 123–143, 2004
A Novel Mouse Model of Ischemic Carotid Artery Disease

Background Carotid artery occlusive disease gradually develops over time, eventually leading to cerebral infarction and high mortality rate. Animal models replicating cerebral infarction resulting from carotid artery occlusive disease have thus been developed to test potential novel treatments, which could be subsequently administered clinically. Methods Adult C57BL/6J male mice were subjected to ameroid constrictor (AC) placement to gradually narrow the bilateral common carotid arteries. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) was measured at several time points. At 7 and 28 days post-operation, post-mortem brain samples were analyzed for ischemic changes. Results The mortality rate was 58.8% at 28 days post-operation. Surviving mice with AC showed continuous reduction of CBF by up to 70% of the baseline level at 28 days. Most of the mice (75%) showed multiple cerebral infarctions in the gray and white matter. Non-surviving mice showed critical CBF reduction below 20–30% of the baseline level before death. Conclusion The application of the AC on the bilateral common carotid arteries in mice could offer a reliable model of severe cerebrovascular insufficiency due to carotid artery occlusive disease and may thus be useful in exploring pharmacological intervention in stroke through monitoring survival rate, infarct formation, and CBF profile.
Independence of Contributing Retrieval Strategies in Data Fusion for Effective Information Retrieval

In information retrieval, data fusion is a technique for combining the outputs of more than one retrieval strategy which rank documents for retrieval. One of the observations often made about data fusion in IR is that the fusion together of document rankings from different implementations can yield a level of effectiveness which is better than either of the individual input strategies. This phenomenon has been repeatedly shown in TREC and elsewhere in IR research and it has been found in general that this holds true when the implementations are based on conceptually different approaches. In this paper we explore this hypothesis using a text retrieval application on over 200 Mbytes of Spanish newspaper texts with a fixed set of queries for which relevant documents are known. Using 9 different retrieval strategies used by different groups in TREC-4, we fuse together document rankings in different combinations in an attempt to see whether there is a correlation between the perceived conceptual independence of a document ranking strategy, and the observed improvement or otherwise in retrieval effectiveness from data fusion. Although the application we use for our experiments is text retrieval on Spanish texts, the principles we explore hold true for engineering any kind of information system based on combining the ranked retrieval of objects.
Cortisol Response to Stress in Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Background: Differences in the cortisol response have been reported between children exhibiting the inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive subtypes of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. However, there is no such information about adults. The aim of the present study was to determine the possible differences between the combined and inattentive subtypes in the cortisol response to stress. Methods: Ninety-six adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, 38 inattentive and 58 combined, without any medical or psychiatric comorbidities and 25 healthy controls were included. The Trier Social Stress Test was used to assess physiological stress responses. Clinical data and subjective stress levels, including the Perceived Stress Scale, were also recorded. Results: No significant differences in the cortisol response to the Trier Social Stress Test were found between patients and controls. However, albeit there were no basal differences, lower cortisol levels at 15 (P=.015), 30 (P=.015), and 45 minutes (P=.045) were observed in the combined compared with the inattentive subtype after the stress induction; these differences disappeared 60 minutes after the stress. In contrast, the subjective stress responses showed significant differences between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder patients and controls (P<.001), but no differences were seen between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder subtypes. In turn, subjective stress measures, such as the Perceived Stress Scale, positively correlated with the whole cortisol stress response (P<.027). Conclusions: Both the combined and inattentive attention deficit hyperactivity disorder adults exhibited a normal cortisol response to stress when challenged. Nevertheless, the inattentive patients displayed a higher level of cortisol after stress compared with the combined patients. Despite the differences in the cortisol response, adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder reported high levels of subjective stress in their every-day life.
Effectiveness of Left Atrial Appendage Exclusion Procedures to Reduce the Risk of Stroke: A Systematic Review of the Evidence

Background—Atrial fibrillation is an important cause of cardioembolic stroke. Oral anticoagulants (OAC) reduce stroke risk but increase the risk of serious bleeding. Left atrial appendage (LAA) procedures have been developed to isolate the LAA from circulating blood flow, as an alternative to OAC. We conducted a systematic review of the benefits and harms of surgical and percutaneous LAA exclusion procedures. Methods and Results—We searched multiple data sources, including Ovid MEDLINE, Cochrane, and Embase, through January 7, 2015. Of 2567 citations, 20 primary studies met prespecified inclusion criteria. We abstracted data on patient characteristics, stroke, mortality, and adverse effects. We assessed study quality and graded the strength of evidence using published criteria. Trials found low-strength evidence that percutaneous LAA exclusion confers similar risks of stroke and mortality as continued OAC, but this evidence was limited to the Watchman device in patients eligible for long-term OAC. Observational studies found moderate-strength evidence of serious harms with a variety of percutaneous LAA procedures. There is low-strength evidence that surgical LAA exclusion does not add significant harm during heart surgery for another indication, but evidence on stroke reduction is insufficient. Conclusions—There is limited evidence that the Watchman device may be noninferior to long-term OAC in selected patients. Data on effectiveness of LAA exclusion devices is lacking in patients ineligible for long-term OAC. Percutaneous LAA devices are associated with high rates of procedure-related harms. Although surgical LAA exclusion during heart surgery does not seem to add incremental harm, there is insufficient evidence of benefit.