Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The creativity mechanisms in embodied agents: An explanatory model

In his recent writings, David Deutsch has argued that no progress in AGI is possible unless a breakthrough in philosophy will occur - a new epistemological theory explaining how brains create explanatory knowledge will be found. The purpose of the present paper is to present first ideas leading to such a theory within the framework of a high-level model of an embodied cognitive agent. In order to support creativity an agent must have the ability to draw and understand analogies which may be used in its otherwise standard reasoning processes in place of facts that served as the basis of the analogy. The use of analogies may then lead to the derivation of new explanatory knowledge in form of conjectures that can further become a subject of criticism, testing and adjustment or rejection. In the respective creative processes embodiment plays an indispensable role. We show that the existing model of an embodied cognitive agent designed recently by the author can serve as an explanatory model elucidating the mechanisms of creativity. Technically, the process of drawing analogies and their use in derivations of explanations can be seen as a means of mining new knowledge originally rooted in the environment. This can boost the computational power of cognitive systems above that of the classical Turing systems.
Efficient Security Based Energy Conservative Scheme for Wireless Ad hoc Networks

For ad hoc networks energy conservation is most important. Utilizing the available limited amount of energy in the available network in the most efficient and reliable way is perhaps the greatest challenge faced by an ad-hoc network. Although there have been lots of protocols proposed to deal with this problem faced, however they do not provide a complete and energy efficient network. In this paper, we develop energy consumption scheme along with security measures that take into account energy consumption due to data packets, control packets and retransmission. We verify that our scheme match the actual energy consumption much better than existing models by simulation. In addition, we demonstrate that a minimum energy routing protocol based on an accurate scheme of ours performs much better than those based on existing models. Keyboards: Power control, Energy efficiency, Wireless networks, Routing,
Numerical studies on wavelength-selective all-optical switching using optical bistability in nonlinear chalcogenide FBGs

In this paper, temporal and spectral characteristics of uniform nonlinear fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) are investigated in detail using numerical solutions of nonlinear coupled mode equations. The acquired data are considered in terms of using nonlinear FBGs as wavelength converters and all-optical on-off switches in WDM optical networks. The numerical experiments are focused on transmission properties of FBGs based on nonlinear chalcogenide glasses which are suitable candidates due to their strong third-order optical nonlinearities.
Tongue Kinematics during Utterances Elicited with the SLIP Technique

In the past years, there have been an increasing number of instrumental investigations as to the nature of speech production errors, prompted by the concern that decades of transcription-based speech error data may be tainted by perceptual biases. While all of these instrumental studies suggest that errors are not, as previously thought, necessarily a matter of all-or-none, it is unclear what implications these studies have for phonological encoding as a cognitive process. Due to their repetition-based design, the ill-formed errors obtained in these studies may be articulation errors rather than cognitive planning errors. The present study reports for the first time tongue movement data collected during an error elicitation study based on the SLIP technique, which has traditionally been hypothesized to elicit errors at the phonological planning level. Results indicate that tongue kinematics during errors in the present task are comparable to those found in errorful utterances in repetition tasks. The findings are interpreted within a dynamic model of speech production as errors in phasing between the interacting consonant gestures.
The time course of consonant and vowel processing during word recognition

In a recent study using a masked priming lexical decision task, New, Araujo, and Nazzi found priming of targets by primes sharing consonants (jalu-JOLI) but not by primes sharing vowels (vobi-JOLI). To examine the orthographic or phonological/lexical nature of this consonantal bias, and to determine whether vocalic priming can be obtained under different presentation conditions, we manipulated the duration of prime presentation. Experiment 1 examined masked priming effects for consonant- or vowel-related primes with 33 ms prime durations, while Experiments 2 and 3 examined masked priming effects with longer prime processing times (66 ms or 50 + 16 ms). Results replicated the relative advantage of consonant over vocalic priming, and established that the consonant bias was not at the orthographic level but rather at the phonological and lexical levels. Furthermore, primes sharing vowels with the target showed inhibition for longer processing times. The implications of these findings for models of visual word recognition are discussed.
Evorobot 1 . 1 User Manual

Evorobot (http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/evorobot/simulator.html) is a software for running evolutionary robotics experiments. It allows to replicate many of the experiments described in (Nolfi S. and Floreano D. [2000]. Evolutionary Robotics: The Biology, Intelligence, and Technology of Self-Organizing Machines. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books) and to run your own experiments. Evorobot runs on Windows95/98 and Windows NT. Source files are written in C and C++ and can be re-compiled with Microsoft Visual C 4.0 or higher. Evorobot allows you to run evolutionary experiments in simulation or on a real robot. To run evolutionary experiments on the real robot or to test individuals evolved in simulation on the real robot you need a Khepera robot. Khepera was designed and built at the Laboratory of Microprocessors and Interfaces, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (Mondada et al., 1993) and is currently distributed and supported by K-Team S.A. (www.k-team.com). Evorobot has been developed by Stefano Nolfi and is copyrighted (or "copylefted", to use the term introduced by the Free Software Foundation) and is covered by the GNU General Public License. This means that it may be used, copied, modified, or redistributed for free. However, any redistribution (of the original or modified code) should adhere to the General Public Licence terms, and copies should acknowledge the original author and be subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License. Sources, binaries and documentation files of Evorobot are freely available at http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/evorobot. The evorobot package consist of a zipped file evorobot.zip that contains the executable (evorobot.exe), the user manual in postscript (manual10.ps), the source files (*.c, *.h, *.rc files), and a set of sample files (*.cf, *.env, *.sam) that will allow you to easily replicate the experiments described in section 2 and to familiarize with the program. My ability to support Evorobot is limited, and I cannot guarantee that all bugs will be promptly fixed (although obviously it is in my interest to fix serious bugs which limit the software's usefulness). Bugs should be reported by sending email to: nolfi@ip.rm.cnr.it.
A Study on EMG-Based Human Motion Prediction for Power Assist Exoskeletons

A power-assist exoskeleton robot, which is directly attached to the user's body and assist the motion in accordance with the user's intension, is one of the most effective human assist robots for the physically weak persons. Many studies on power-assist robots have been carried out to help the motion of physically weak persons such as disabled, injured, and/or elderly persons. EMG-based control (i.e., control based on the skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals of the user) is one of the most effective control methods for the power-assist robots, since EMG signals of user's muscles directly reflect the user's motion intension. However, the EMG-based control is not easy to be realized because of many reasons. The paper presents an effective human motion prediction method from the EMG signals using a neuro-fuzzy technique for the control of power-assist exoskeleton robots.
Genomic Characterization of a Novel Virus of the Family Tymoviridae Isolated from Mosquitoes

Background The family Tymoviridae comprises three plant virus genera, including Tymovirus, Marafivirus, and Maculavirus, which are found in most parts of the world and cause severe agricultural losses. We describe a putatively novel member of the family Tymoviridae, which is isolated from mosquitoes (Culex spp.), referred to as CuTLV. Methods and Results The CuTLV was isolated by cell culture, which replicates and causes cytopathic effects in Aedes albopictus C6/36 cells, but not in mammalian BHK-21 or Vero cells. The complete 6471 nucleotide sequence of CuTLV was determined. The genome of CuTLV is predicted to contain three open reading frames (ORFs). The largest ORF1 is 5307 nucleotides (nt) in length and encodes a putative polypeptide of 1769 amino acids (aa), which contains the conserved motifs for the methyltransferase (MTR), Tymovirus endopeptidase (PRO), helicase (HEL), and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) of the replication-associated proteins (RPs) of positive-stranded RNA viruses. In contrast, the ORF1 sequence does not contain the so-called “tymobox” or “marafibox”, the conserved subgenomic RNA promoter present in all tymoviruses or marafiviruses, respectively. ORF2 and ORF3 putatively encode a 248-aa coat protein (CP) and a proline-rich 149-aa polypeptide. The whole genomic nucleotide identity of CuTLV with other members of family Tymoviridae ranged from 46.2% (ChiYMV) to 52.4% (GFkV). Phylogenetic analysis based on the putative RP and CP genes of CuTLV demonstrated that the virus is most closely related to viruses in the genus Maculavirus. Conclusions The CuTLV is a novel virus related to members of the family Tymoviridae, with molecular characters that are distinct from those of tymoviruses, marafiviruses, and other maculaviruses or macula-like viruses. This is the first report of the isolation of a Tymoviridae-like virus from mosquitoes. Further investigations are required to clarify the origin, replication strategy, and the public health or agricultural importance of the CuTLV.
An EM-based MAP detector for CPM signals transmitted over frequency-flat fading channels

In this paper the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm for maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation of a random vector is applied to the problem of symbol detection for CPM signals transmitted over time-selective Rayleigh fading channels. This results in a soft-in soft-out (SISO) detection algorithm suitable for iterative detection/decoding schemes. Simulation results show that the error performance provided by the proposed solution is very close to that of a MAP detector endowed with an ideal knowledge of the channel state.
Palmprint Recognition Based on 2-Dimension PCA

PCA (principal component analysis) is a successful feature detection method for pattern recognition. It is the optimal dimension compression technique based on second-order information, in the sense of mean-square error. It deals with image vector whose dimension is usually high. 2DPCA is a novel PCA method for image matrix, and it can calculate the covariance matrix more precise. In this paper we combined the new 2DPCA method and PCA to palmprint recognition, and first we apply 2DPCA to the image matrix and we make an improvement in the selection of principal components. We select the principal component that is better for classification. Then we apply 1DPCA to the projected vectors for dimension reduction. At last we apply the method to PolyU palmprint database. The experiment result shows that our method got more recognition rate with lower dimensions
A Dual -‐ Mesh Framework for Turbulence Modeling : Application to Flow Around a Circular Cylinder

To overcome this difficulty, various hybrid LES/RANS approaches have been developed, where RANS (Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes) equations are solved in the near-wall region while LES is only conducted in the free-shear region away from the wall [Fröhlich and von Terzi 2008]. One of the methods to address this issue is a consistent framework for turbulence modeling, where the filtered and Reynolds-averaged equations are solved simultaneously in the entire domain [Xiao and Jenny 2011]. To ensure consistency between the two solutions, additional drift terms are added to the corresponding equations. This approach leads to very clean conditions at the LES/RANS interfaces. According to this framework, a hybrid solver for incompressible turbulent flows has been implemented based on the open source CFD platform OpenFOAM [OpenFOAM 2011] taking advantage of its existing LES and RANS solvers as well as its field operation capabilities. The solver has been tested on plane channel flows and flow over periodic hills. To further validate the new simulation framework, the flow around a circular cylinder is investigated with the hybrid solver in this study.
A technique for arthroscopic all-inside suturing in the wrist

A technique for arthroscopic all-inside suturing in the wrist is presented. The procedure allows placement of the knot inside the joint without additional incisions. We have applied it in cases of dorsal, foveal and coronal tears of the triangular fibrocartilage. No special instrument is required apart from a Tuohy needle.
Diversity-Multiplexing Trade-Off of Half-Duplex Single Relay Networks

The diversity-multiplexing trade-off (DMT) of half-duplex single-relay networks is computed analytically, where all the channels in the networks are assumed to be quasi-static flat-fading channels with independent Rayleigh distributions. We have computed DMT of dynamic quantize-map-and-forward (DQMF) strategy analytically, which has the optimal DMT for half-duplex single-relay networks with local channel state information. As a result, the optimal listening time of the relay in the DQMF strategy as a function of the source-relay channel realization can also be determined using our solution.
Real time extraction of Visual Evoked Potentials

On-line Information maximization (Infomax) algorithm for blind signal separation is based on single observation sample, it can track real time change of mixing system adaptively. To overcome the problem of misadjustment in steady state, we present an improved on-line Infomax algorithm with preprocessing rule of 2nd and 4th order statistical decorrelations, adaptive step size technique, and we apply them to real time extraction of Visual Evoked Potentials (VEP). The results of simulation and application experiment show that the proposed method improves the convergence performance and effect of blind signal separation. This algorithm can perform real time reinforcing and parameter extraction of VEP effectively on the premise of smaller vision stimuli.
Cooperative Resource Management in a IaaS

Virtualized IaaS generally rely on a server consolidation system to pack virtual machines (VMs) on as few servers as possible, for energy saving. However, two situations are not taken into account, and could enhance consolidation. First, since the managed VMs can be of various sizes (small, medium, large, etc.), VMs packing can be obstructed when sizes don't fit available spaces on servers. Therefore, we would need to "split" such VMs. Second, two VMs which host replicas of the same application server (for scalability) could be "fusion Ned" when they are located on the same physical server, in order to reduce virtualization overhead and VMs memory footprint. Split and fusion operations lead to the management of elastic VMs and requires cooperation between the application level and the provider level, as they impact management at both levels. In this paper, we propose a IaaS resource management system which implements elastic VMs based on split/fusion operations and cooperative management. We show its benefit with a set of experiments.
Global Convergence Property of the Affine Scaling Methods for Primal Degenerate Linear Programming Problems

In this paper we investigate the global convergence property of the affine scaling method under the assumption of dual nondegeneracy. The behavior of the method near degenerate vertices is analyzed in detail on the basis of the equivalence between the affine scaling methods for homogeneous LP problems and Karmarkar's method. It is shown that the step-size 1/8, where the displacement vector is normalized with respect to the distance in the scaled space, is sufficient to guarantee the global convergence for dual nondegenerate LP problems. The result can be regarded as a counterpart to Dikin's global convergence result on the affine scaling method assuming primal nondegeneracy. 0. Introduction. Since Karmarkar [9] proposed the projective scaling method for linear programming in 1984, a number of interior point methods have been proposed and implemented. The primal affine scaling method for the standard form linear programming problems [4, 6, 19] and the dual affine scaling method [1] for the dual standard form linear programming problems are simplified variants of Karmarkar's method, in which the affine scaling transformation is used in place of the projective transformation. Since the methods are simple and conceptually easier to understand, many researchers are dealing with their implementation and now several promising results [1, 2, 10, 12] are reported. Though the primal and the dual affine scaling method apply to different forms of linear programming problems and their iterative formulae appear different, we can derive one from the other, so that they are mathematically equivalent. As opposed to the simplicity of the methods and the promising experimental results, there are several basic questions to be answered from the viewpoint of theory. One of the most interesting open problems may be whether or not they are polynomial-time algorithms. It was shown by Megiddo and Shub [11] that the trajectory of the continuous version of the primal affine scaling method may visit the neighborhoods of all the vertices of the Klee-Minty cube, and hence many of the researchers feel that the methods do not have the polynomial property. The global convergence property is a weaker, but a more fundamental property that should be guaranteed in any algorithm for continuous optimization. However, the existence of degenerate problems makes the problem difficult, and hence still no proof is given for the global convergence of these affine scaling methods in the case where both primal and dual degeneracy take place. All the known global convergence results are dealing with the primal affine scaling method and assume primal nonde
Agents for Recognizing and Responding to the Behaviour of an Elder

We are building an agent-oriented system to aid elderly people to live longer in their homes, increasing the duration of their independence from round-the-clock care while maintaining important social connectedness and reducing caregiver burden. Independent LifeStyle Assistant TM (I.L.S.A.) is a multiagent system that in- corporates a unified sensing model, probabilistically derived situation awareness, hierarchical task network response planning, real-time action selection control, complex coordination, and machine learning. This pa- per describes I.L. S.A's agents and present a scenario of the information flow.
Enhancing Person Re-identification by Robust Structural Metric Learning

Person re-identification has become an important but also challenging task for video surveillance systems as it aims to match people across non-overlapping camera views. So far, most successful methods either focus on robust feature representation or sophisticated learners. Recently, metric learning has been applied in this task which aims to find a suitable feature subspace for matching samples from different cameras. However, most metric learning approaches rely on either pair wise or triplet-based distance comparison, which can be easily over-fitting in large scale and high dimension learning situation. Meanwhile, the performance of these methods can significantly decrease when the extracted features contain noisy information. In this paper, we propose a robust structural metric learning model for person re-identification with two main advantages: 1) it applies loss functions at the level of rankings rather than pair wise distances, 2) the proposed model is also robust to noisy information of the extracted features. The approach is verified on two available public datasets, and experimental results show that our method can get state-of-the-art performance.
Topological representation and analysis method for multi-port and multi-orientation docking modular robots

For MSR robots to successfully configure from one configuration into another, the control system must be able to visualize the current structure of the robot, which cannot be done without appropriate information about each module's docking status. Although the type of information required to visualize the structure of a MSR robot differs with the physical design of the modules, there are essential information that are commonly required, such as docking orientation and identity of neighboring modules. This paper presents a novel multi-port and multi-orientation modular robot, and a representation method that can uniquely represent the geometric structure of a group of connected modules and to analyze the number of "reconfigurable DOF" within the structure. The proposed method uses labeled planar graphs and incidence matrices to describe the docking status of the modules within the structure, which helps to effectively encode the data in computer understandable expressions. In addition to the work in configuration analysis, an innovative mechanism for detecting the orientation of each docking port is also presented.
Stem cell therapy for heart diseases.

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Despite the advances in medical and catheter-based therapy for acute myocardial infarction the 1-year mortality remains as high as 13% and the 5-year prognosis for patients with heart failure remains as high as 50%. Left ventricular systolic dysfunction, a major determinant of prognosis, is associated with significant loss of cardiomyocytes which was previously thought to be irreversible as the heart was considered a post-mitotic organ. SOURCES OF DATA Review of literature published in peer reviewed journals and ClinicalTrials.Gov website. AREAS OF AGREEMENT There is now growing evidence that the human heart is capable of undergoing repair and in recent years there has been an increase in basic and clinical research with the aim of harnessing the regenerative properties of stem cells in order to facilitate restoration of myocardial function. AREAS OF CONTROVERSY The mechanisms of action of cell therapy with regards to cardiac repair remain unsatisfactorily understood and the magnitude of benefit demonstrated in animal models is yet to be fully translated in humans. GROWING POINTS The number of clinical trials continues to increase and include treating patients with acute myocardial infarction and chronic heart failure secondary to ischaemic heart disease or dilated cardiomyopathy. AREAS TIMELY FOR DEVELOPING RESEARCH The future of this field of research will require closer collaboration between scientists and clinicians to understand how cell therapy works and to define the ideal cell type and method of delivery to be able to derive maximum benefit.