Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RoboCupRescue 2010-Robot League Team RescueRobots Freiburg ( Germany )

This paper describes the software and hardware system developed by the University of Freiburg team of search and rescue robots for the Ro boCup Rescue 2010 competition. This system is an extension to the software that finishe d in first place the 2005 and 2006 autonomy challenge, focusing on two key areas: autonomous navigation and manipulation. Our team, consisting mainly of students, originates from the former CS Freiburg team (RoboCupSoccer) , th ResQ Freiburg team (RoboCupRescue Simulation), and RescueRobots Freibu rg teams ’05 and ’06.
Checkpoints, hotspots and standalones: placing smart services over time and place

From the user's point of view Ubicomp and smart environments have been researched especially in the home setting. Nevertheless, papers discussing the relationship of situated interaction and context are few. Effect of context on interaction has been mostly investigated in the mobile setting. To work towards filling this gap, this paper presents a set of interaction profiles for digital services placed in an environment. The main focus of this paper is on deployment of interaction with various smart services in various indoor places. Motivation for this study stems from the need to understand interaction in and with the environment in order to better design smart environments. To this end we analyzed 30 hand-drawn maps of three different indoor spaces with user designed smart service placements and interactions. The results indicate how multi-level, structural, activity and attention data can be combined in interaction profiles. Interaction profiles found in this work are checkpoint, hotspot, standalone, remote and object, which each represent a unique combination of physical structure, service content and preferred interaction method. These profiles and cognitive map data can be used to support smart environment design.
What Difference Do Ethical Leaders Make? Exploring the Mediating Role of Interpersonal Justice and the Moderating Role of Public Service Motivation

ABSTRACT Public management scholars have lamented the lack of research examining the influence of ethical leadership on employee behaviors in the public sector. Using a multi-source dataset of 196 public employees in 44 work units, we sought to address this gap by examining how and when ethical leadership influences employee job performance (i.e., task performance and citizenship behaviors). Drawing on social exchange theory, we propose that ethical leadership behavior exhibited by supervisors will influence perceptions of interpersonal justice, which, in turn, will positively impact employee job performance. In addition, we hypothesize that the effect of interpersonal justice perceptions will be moderated by public service motivation. Our findings reveal that the influence of ethical leadership was fully mediated by perceptions of interpersonal justice. This influence, in turn, was moderated by public service motivation, such that those with lower public service motivation were most strongly affected by interpersonal justice perceptions. The findings provide support for our proposed moderated mediation model. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.
Achieving Determinism in SystemVerilog 3.1 Scheduling Semantics

The SystemVerilog 3.1 language initiative includes the requirement to bring together design, testbench, and assertion-based descriptions into a consistent, backward compatible, evolutionary language standard that achieves determinism and common semantics across the spectrum of design and verification tools. This paper describes the algorithm proposed for the new scheduling semantics that meets these demanding requirements. This algorithm achieves predictable and consistent results across design and verification tools. This proposal has been donated to the Accellera SystemVerilog 3.1 standardization technical committees. Standardization of this new algorithm will extend these benefits to users of other tools.
Small Non-coding RNAs Associated with Viral Infectious Diseases of Veterinary Importance: Potential Clinical Applications

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) represent a class of small non-coding RNA (sncRNA) molecules that can regulate mRNAs by inducing their degradation or by blocking translation. Considering that miRNAs are ubiquitous, stable, and conserved across animal species, it seems feasible to exploit them for clinical applications. Unlike in human viral diseases, where some miRNA-based molecules have progressed to clinical application, in veterinary medicine, this concept is just starting to come into view. Clinically, miRNAs could represent powerful diagnostic tools to pinpoint animal viral diseases and/or prognostic tools to follow up disease progression or remission. Additionally, the possible consequences of miRNA dysregulation make them potential therapeutic targets and open the possibilities to use them as tools to generate viral disease-resistant livestock. This review presents an update of preclinical studies on using sncRNAs to combat viral diseases that affect pet and farm animals. Moreover, we discuss the possibilities and challenges of bringing these bench-based discoveries to the veterinary clinic.
Social and Economic Factors and Negro Voter Registration in the South

The vote is widely considered the southern Negro's most important weapon in his struggle for full citizenship and social and economic equality. It is argued that “political rights pave the way to all others. ” Once Negroes in the South vote in substantial numbers, white politicians will prove responsive to the desires of the Negro community. Also, federal action on voting will be met with less resistance from the white South—and southerners in Congress—than action involving schools, jobs, or housing. Such, at least, seems to have been the reasoning behind the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, both of which deal primarily with the right to vote. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and his predecessor, Herbert Brownell, are both reported to believe that the vote provides the southern Negro with his most effective means of advancing toward equality, and recent actions of the Justice Department seem to reflect this view. Many Negro leaders share this belief in the over-riding importance of the vote. Hundreds of Negro registration drives have been held in southern cities and counties since 1957. Martin Luther King, usually considered an advocate of non-violent direct action, recently remarked that the most significant step Negroes can take is in the “direction of the voting booths. ” The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, historically identified with courtroom attacks on segregation, is now enthusiastically committed to a “battle of the ballots. ” In March, 1962, the Southern Regional Council announced receipt of foundation grants of $325,000 to initiate a major program to increase Negro voter registration in the South. The Congress of Racial Equality, the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee are among the organizations now participating in the actual registration drives.
Integrative Literature Review: Concept Mapping: A Strategy to Support the Development of Practice, Research, and Theory Within Human Resource Development

The purpose of this integrative literature review is to summarize research on concept mapping and to offer ideas on how concept mapping can facilitate practice, research, and theory development within human resource development. In this review, more than 300 articles, written in both English and Spanish, presented at two different concept mapping conferences were reviewed. Six researchers reviewed the articles and created a matrix outlining the research studies, the methods, the findings, and the implications. This matrix was then used to conduct an in-depth analysis and identify six overall themes of the research presented. These themes were identified as (a) teaching and learning, (b) assessment and scoring, (c) knowledge development, (d) software development, (e) professional development, and (f) research methods. Finally, the identified themes were used to advance implications for the use of concept mapping within human resource development.
The development of an instrument to measure quality of vision: the Quality of Vision (QoV) questionnaire.

PURPOSE To develop an instrument to measure subjective quality of vision: the Quality of Vision (QoV) questionnaire. METHODS A 30-item instrument was designed with 10 symptoms rated in each of three scales (frequency, severity, and bothersome). The QoV was completed by 900 subjects in groups of spectacle wearers, contact lens wearers, and those having had laser refractive surgery, intraocular refractive surgery, or eye disease and investigated with Rasch analysis and traditional statistics. Validity and reliability were assessed by Rasch fit statistics, principal components analysis (PCA), person separation, differential item functioning (DIF), item targeting, construct validity (correlation with visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, total root mean square [RMS] higher order aberrations [HOA]), and test-retest reliability (two-way random intraclass correlation coefficients [ICC] and 95% repeatability coefficients [R(c)]). RESULTS Rasch analysis demonstrated good precision, reliability, and internal consistency for all three scales (mean square infit and outfit within 0.81-1.27; PCA >60% variance explained by the principal component; person separation 2.08, 2.10, and 2.01 respectively; and minimal DIF). Construct validity was indicated by strong correlations with visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and RMS HOA. Test-retest reliability was evidenced by a minimum ICC of 0.867 and a minimum 95% R(c) of 1.55 units. CONCLUSIONS The QoV Questionnaire consists of a Rasch-tested, linear-scaled, 30-item instrument on three scales providing a QoV score in terms of symptom frequency, severity, and bothersome. It is suitable for measuring QoV in patients with all types of refractive correction, eye surgery, and eye disease that cause QoV problems.
The Effect of Superstructures Connected to Implants with Different Surface Properties on the Surrounding Bone

The objective of this study was to investigate how the connection of superstructures to implants with different surface properties affects the surrounding bone. The right and left mandibular premolars and molars of 5 dogs were extracted. After 12 weeks, a machined implant was placed mesially and an anodized implant was placed distally on one side of the edentulous jaw, with the positions reversed on the opposite side. Twelve weeks after implantation, splinted superstructures were set to the implants. At 24 weeks after implantation, the implant stability quotient (ISQ) was measured, radiographs were obtained. Removal torque values were measured and histologic observation was performed. The ISQ values at 24 weeks after implantation were not significantly different between the groups. The removal torque values were significantly different between the distal anodized and distal machined implants (p < 0.05). From 12 to 24 weeks, marginal bone losses were not significantly different between the groups. Fluorescent observation of tissue samples revealed bone-remodeling activity around all of the implants. The results of this study suggest that when implants with different surface properties are connected, machined implants at the most distal sites might be a potential risk factor for implant-bone binding.
On the DoF Region of the K-user MISO Broadcast Channel with Hybrid CSIT

An outer bound for the degrees of freedom (DoF) region of the K-user multiple-input single-output (MISO) broadcast channel (BC) is developed under the hybrid channel state information at transmitter (CSIT) model, in which the transmitter has instantaneous CSIT of channels to a subset of the receivers and delayed CSIT of channels to the rest of the receivers. For the 3-user MISO BC, when the transmitter has instantaneous CSIT of the channel to one receiver and delayed CSIT of channels to the other two, two new communication schemes are designed, which are able to achieve the DoF tuple of $\left(1,\frac{1}{3},\frac{1}{3}\right)$, with a sum DoF of $\frac{5}{3}$, that is greater than the sum DoF achievable only with delayed CSIT. Another communication scheme showing the benefit of the alternating CSIT model is also developed, to obtain the DoF tuple of $\left(1,\frac{4}{9},\frac{4}{9}\right)$ for the 3-user MISO BC.
KDOQI Hypertension, Dyslipidemia, and Diabetes Care Guidelines and Current Care Patterns in the United States CKD Population: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999–2004

Background/Aims: National Kidney Foundation Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (KDOQI) guidelines aim to slow chronic kidney disease (CKD) progression and reduce morbidity and mortality. This study aimed to assess current CKD population health and adherence to recommendations in National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999–2004 participants aged ≥20 years (n = 14,213). Methods: We assessed hypertension and dyslipidemia management and diabetes control, stratified by CKD status and prior history of cardiovascular disease (CVD), to ascertain awareness, treatment, and control. Results: Hypertension was likelier among participants with than without CKD regardless of CVD history, but awareness, treatment, and control were not. Hypertensive participants with CKD were less likely than those without to be taking angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin receptor-blocking agents. Of participants with no CVD history, high cholesterol was likelier among those with CKD stages 3–4 than among those without CDK, but awareness and treatment were less likely; of participants with CVD history, high cholesterol was less likely among those with than without CKD, and awareness and treatment were as likely. Diabetes control was less likely among diabetic participants with early-stage CKD than without CKD, but not significantly different between late-stage and non-CKD participants. Conclusions: The study timeframe coincided with or pre-dated release of KDOQI guidelines. Many opportunities for improvement in CKD patient care are evident. Future releases of NHANES data could be used to assess whether improvement occurs.
Detecting gross alignment errors in the Spoken British National Corpus

The paper presents methods for evaluating the accuracy of alignments between transcriptions and audio recordings. The methods have been applied to the Spoken British National Corpus, which is an extensive and varied corpus of natural unscripted speech. Early results show good agreement with human ratings of alignment accuracy. The methods also provide an indication of the location of likely alignment problems; this should allow efficient manual examination of large corpora. Automatic checking of such alignments is crucial when analysing any very large corpus, since even the best current speech alignment systems will occasionally make serious errors. The methods described here use a hybrid approach based on statistics of the speech signal itself, statistics of the labels being evaluated, and statistics linking the two. Index Terms: ASPA, HMM, phonetic, transcription, label, segment, alignment, accuracy, quality assessment, error detection
Errors in Estimated Temporal Tracer Trends Due to Changes in the Historical Observation Network: A Case Study of Oxygen Trends in the Southern Ocean

Several models predict large and potentially abrupt ocean circulation changes due to anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions. These circulation changes drive-in the models-considerable oceanic oxygen trend. A sound estimate of the observed oxygen trends can hence be a powerful tool to constrain predictions of future changes in oceanic deepwater formation, heat and carbon dioxide uptake. Estimating decadal scale oxygen trends is, however, a nontrivial task and previous studies have come to contradicting conclusions. One key potential problem is that changes in the historical observation network might introduce considerable errors. Here we estimate the likely magnitude of these errors for a subset of the available observations in the Southern Ocean. We test three common data analysis methods south of Australia and focus on the decadal-scale trends between the 1970's and the 1990's. Specifically, we estimate errors due to sparsely sampled observations using a known signal (the time invariant, temporally averaged, World Ocean Atlas 2001) as a negative control. The crossover analysis and the objective analysis methods are for less prone to spatial sampling location biases than the area averaging method. Subject to numerous caveats, we find that errors due to sparse sampling for the area averaging method are on the order of several micro-moles . for the crossover and the objective analysis method, these errors are much smaller. For the analyzed example, the biases due to changes in the spatial design of the historical observation network are relatively small compared to the tends predicted by many model simulations. This raises the possibility to use historic oxygen trends to constrain model simulations, even in sparsely sampled ocean basins.
Myeloid Differentiation Factor 88-dependent Post-transcriptional Regulation of Cyclooxygenase-2 Expression by CpG DNA

The immune stimulatory unmethylated CpG motifs present in bacterial DNA (CpG DNA) induce expression of cyclooxygenase-2 (cox-2). The present study demonstrates that CpG DNA can up-regulate cox-2 expression by post-transcriptional mechanisms in RAW264.7 cells. To determine the CpG DNA-mediated signaling pathway that post-transcriptionally regulates cox-2 expression, a cox-2 translational reporter (COX2–3′-UTR-luciferase) was generated by inserting sequences within the 3′-untranslated region (UTR) of cox-2 to the 3′ end of the luciferase gene under control of the SV40 promoter. CpG DNA-induced COX2–3′-UTR-luciferase activity was completely inhibited by an endosomal acidification inhibitor chloroquine, a Toll-like receptor 9 antagonist inhibitory CpG DNA, or overexpression of a dominant negative (DN) form of MyD88. However, overexpression of DN-IRAK-1 or DN-TRAF6 resulted in substantial, but not complete, inhibition of the CpG DNA-induced COX2–3′-UTR-luciferase activity. Activation of all three MAPKs (ERK, p38, and JNK) was required for optimal COX2–3′-UTR-luciferase activity induced by CpG DNA. Overexpression of DN-TRAF6 suppressed CpG DNA-mediated activation of p38 and JNK, but not ERK, explaining the partial inhibitory effects of DN-TRAF6 on CpG DNA-induced COX2–3′-UTR-luciferase activity. Co-expression of DN-TRAF6 and N17Ras completely inhibited CpG DNA-induced COX2–3′-UTR-luciferase activity, indicating the involvement of Ras in CpG DNA-mediated ERK and COX2–3′-UTR regulation. Collectively, our results suggest that MyD88 and MAPKs play a key regulatory role in CpG DNA-mediated cox-2 expression at the post-transcriptional level and that TRAF6 is a diverging point in the Toll-like receptor 9-signaling pathway for CpG DNA-mediated MAPK activation.
On Efficient Deadlock Avoidance for Distributive Recursive Processes

We study deadlock avoidance for resource allocation in distributed systems. While a general solution of distributed deadlock avoidance is considered impractical, we propose an efficient solution of the important particular case where the possible sequences of remote calls, modeled as call graphs, are known a-priori. The algorithm presented here generalizes to recursive processes our earlier work on deadlock avoidance for non-recursive call-graphs. An essential part of this generalization is that when a new process is created, it announces the recursive depth corresponding to the number of times a recursive call can be performed in any possible sequence of remote invocations.
Scalar field cosmology in three-dimensions

We study an analytical solution to the Einstein's equations in 2 + 1-dimensions. The space-time is dynamical and has a line symmetry. The matter content is a minimally coupled, massless, scalar field. Depending on the value of certain parameters, this solution represents three distinct space-times. The first one is at space-time. Then, we have a big bang model with a negative curvature scalar and a real scalar field. The last case is a big bang model with event horizons where the curvature scalar vanishes and the scalar field changes from real to purely imaginary.
E-Health Interventions for Suicide Prevention

Many people at risk of suicide do not seek help before an attempt, and do not remain connected to health services following an attempt. E-health interventions are now being considered as a means to identify at-risk individuals, offer self-help through web interventions or to deliver proactive interventions in response to individuals’ posts on social media. In this article, we examine research studies which focus on these three aspects of suicide and the internet: the use of online screening for suicide, the effectiveness of e-health interventions aimed to manage suicidal thoughts, and newer studies which aim to proactively intervene when individuals at risk of suicide are identified by their social media postings. We conclude that online screening may have a role, although there is a need for additional robust controlled research to establish whether suicide screening can effectively reduce suicide-related outcomes, and in what settings online screening might be most effective. The effectiveness of Internet interventions may be increased if these interventions are designed to specifically target suicidal thoughts, rather than associated conditions such as depression. The evidence for the use of intervention practices using social media is possible, although validity, feasibility and implementation remains highly uncertain.
Testing the Usability of Visual Languages: A Web-Based Methodology

Since loops in data-flow visual languages (Hils 1992) may be difficult to understand (Green and Petre 1996), we decided to test the usability of the solutions we devised for VIPERS, a data-flow visual language developed at the University of Pavia (Ghittori, Mosconi and Porta 1998). To get useful indications, we opted for a comparative analysis, also referring to the well-known data-flow language LabView (Vose 1986), where iterative constructs are implemented according to a totally different philosophy.
The Impact of National Culture on Control in IS Offshoring Projects

To our best knowledge, this is the first quantitative study on the impact of the supplier‘s national culture on the client‘s choice of control modes in IS offshoring projects. A survey-based field study was conducted, using a client-supplier matched pair as the unit of analysis. This approach allowed for the examination of the direct control relationship within 46 unique matched pairs. The study results offer empirical evidence that the supplier‘s national culture (i.e., power distance and time perception) affects the client‘s choice of controls in IS offshoring projects. However, the supplier‘s cultural background seems to play a less important role than suggested by prior research. These results (1) adapt previous research to the IS offshoring context, (2) enhance prior findings by establishing a more detailed understanding about the cultural influence on the exercise of controls as well as by confirming the significance of project size–an influencing factor that has previously shown mixed results, and (3) incorporate new constructs and measures in developing an integrated model that should be broadly applicable to other IS project contexts.