Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Web-Based Remote Assistance to Overcome Robot Perceptual Limitations ∗

This paper addresses the problem of overcoming visual perception limitations in service robots with remote assistance from human users. In particular, consider a scenario where a user requests the robot to perform some task that requires a perceptual ability, e.g., check if a specific mug, “my mug,” is in the lab or in an office, but the robot may not know how to recognize that object. We propose to equip the robots with the abilities to: (i) identify their own perceptual limitations, (ii) autonomously and remotely query human users for assistance, and (iii) learn new object descriptors from the interaction with humans. We successfully developed a complete initial version of our approach on our CoBot service mobile robot. The interaction with the user builds upon our previously developed semiautonomous telepresence image sharing and control. The user can now further identify the object and the robot can save the descriptor and use it in future situations. We illustrate our work with the task of learning to identify an object in the environment, and to report its presence to a user. Our ongoing work includes addressing a dynamic interaction between the robot and the remote user for visual focus of attention and different object viewing, as well as the effective storage, labeling, accessing, and sharing of multiple learned object descriptors, in particular among robots. Our goal is also to contribute the learned knowledge to crowd-robotics efforts.
DynIMS: A Dynamic Memory Controller for In-memory Storage on HPC Systems

In order to boost the performance of data-intensive computing on HPC systems, in-memory computing frameworks, such as Apache Spark and Flink, use local DRAM for data storage. Optimizing the memory allocation to data storage is critical to delivering performance to traditional HPC compute jobs and throughput to data-intensive applications sharing the HPC resources. Current practices that statically configure in-memory storage may leave inadequate space for compute jobs or lose the opportunity to utilize more available space for data-intensive applications. In this paper, we explore techniques to dynamically adjust in-memory storage and make the right amount of space for compute jobs. We have developed a dynamic memory controller, DynIMS, which infers memory demands of compute tasks online and employs a feedback-based control model to adapt the capacity of in-memory storage. We test DynIMS using mixed HPCC and Spark workloads on a HPC cluster. Experimental results show that DynIMS can achieve up to 5X performance improvement compared to systems with static memory allocations.
The Goal Paves the Way

To cope with a changing work world, organizations look for job applicants who rate high on career adaptability. The present study investigates whether leadership influences employees’ career adaptability. Specifically, we investigated whether inspirational motivation fosters career adaptability and whether employees’ future temporal focus mediates this impact. With a time lag of 3 months, 766 employees working in various branches answered two questionnaires. Inspirational motivation by their leaders predicted employee career adaptability, mediated by employee future temporal focus. Findings yield implications for personnel recruitment and development.
Cost and other barriers to public access computing in developing countries

Public access to computers and the Internet can play an important role in social and economic development if it effectively helps to meet the needs of underserved populations. Public access venues such as libraries, telecentres and cybercafés are sometimes free, and sometimes charge user fees. User fees can be an important barrier to use of public access venues, especially among underserved communities in developing countries. This paper analyzes the role of user fees and other critical barriers in the use of computers in public access venues in 25 developing countries around the world. Results of this study suggest that digital literacy of staff and local relevance of content may be more important than fees in determining user preference for public access venues. These findings are important to public libraries, which tend to offer free services, but where perceptions of digital literacy of staff and locally relevant content tend to be lowest, compared to telecentres and cybercafés, according to the results of this study. More attention to digital literacy of staff and availability of locally relevant content may be more important than free services to meet the information needs of underserved populations.
Dynamic Analysis for Video Based Smoke Detection

In recent years, video based fire detection technologies received much attentions from both industrial and academic world. Since smoke is usually generated before flames and can be observed from a great distance, it is an important feature for many early fire alarm system. In this paper, a video based smoke detection system is developed for the surveillance of early fire. Besides traditional color and texture features of the video smoke, the authors proposed a combination of block based Inter-Frame Difference (BIFD) and LBP-TOP to analyze the dynamic characteristics of the smoke. In order to reduce the false alarms, the Smoke Histogram Image (SHI) is constructed to register the recent classification results of candidate smoke blocks. SVM is employed to evaluate the performance of the propose features in the classification of candidate smoke blocks. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve better accuracy and less false alarm compared with the state-of-the-art technologies.
Evaluation of the insulin resistance syndrome in 5- to 10-year-old overweight/obese African-American children.

OBJECTIVE To characterize the insulin sensitivity of overweight and obese 5- to 10-year-old (Tanner stage 1-3) African-American children screened for participation in a diabetes prevention study and to identify the association of insulin sensitivity with obesity, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Measures of insulin resistance (homeostasis model assessment) and insulin sensitivity (Matsuda and DeFronzo's whole-body insulin sensitivity) were calculated from a 2-h oral glucose tolerance test in 137 African-American children recruited into a diabetes prevention study. Measures of lipids (LDL, HDL, total cholesterol, and triglycerides), blood pressure, and body composition were obtained for a subset of the children. RESULTS In response to a glucose challenge, girls and older and heavier children produced significantly more insulin. As BMI increased, there was a statistically significant decrease in insulin sensitivity, particularly in girls. Insulin sensitivity was inversely correlated with increases in blood pressure, triglycerides, subcutaneous fat, the percentage of total body fat, and Tanner stage, but it was not correlated with LDL and HDL. CONCLUSIONS Reduced insulin sensitivity and the cluster of risk factors known as the insulin resistance syndrome (IRS) are already apparent in these overweight African-American children. Young African-American girls, in particular, already show evidence of hyperinsulinemia in response to a glucose load, suggesting that the early stages of metabolic decompensation that lead to type 2 diabetes are already occurring. Monitoring of those risk factors known to be part of IRS should become part of routine medical care for overweight or obese African-American children.
Simulating Shared Memory in Real Time: On the Computation Power of Reconfigurable Architectures

Abstract We consider randomized simulations of shared memory on a distributed memory machine (DMM) where thenprocessors and thenmemory modules of the DMM are connected via a reconfigurable architecture. We first present a randomized simulation of a CRCW PRAM on a reconfigurable DMM having a complete reconfigurable interconnection. It guarantees delay O (log *n), with high probability. Next we study a reconfigurable mesh DMM (RM-DMM). Here thenprocessors andnmodules are connected via ann×nreconfigurable mesh. It was already known that ann×mreconfigurable mesh can simulate in constant time ann-processor CRCW PRAM with shared memory of sizem. In this paper we present a randomized step by step simulation of a CRCW PRAM with arbitrarily large shared memory on an RM-DMM. It guarantees constant delay with high probability, i.e., it simulates in real time. Finally we prove a lower bound showing that sizeΩ(n2) for the reconfigurable mesh is necessary for real time simulations.
Breaking Down Barriers and Building Bridges: Transformative Practices in Community- and School-Based Urban Teacher Preparation

Attracting and retaining high-quality teachers is especially challenging in urban districts. It is in these communities where teacher candidates must begin their preparation. This article provides a conceptual framework and programmatic examples used to develop a community-based urban teacher preparation model within a third hybrid space where community scholars, school practitioners, and university faculty come together to create a “pipeline” of community-minded teachers committed to teaching in their communities. Bridging the gap between content-based preparation at universities and culturally situated pedagogical training within the very urban classrooms where teachers are likely to be hired results in teachers with higher levels of self-efficacy, agency, and confidence. In turn, this positively affects teacher persistence, resilience, and higher rates of retention over time.
State Variable Approach to Carrier Phase Recovery and Fine Automatic Gain Control on Flat Fading Channels

Figure 2.2 — Doppler power spectrum in a strongly irregular scattering environment composed of 3-5 storey high concrete buildings in the vicinity of the receiver [E IEEE, 1991]. Figure 2.5 — Stochastic model of the fading process, including short-term and (in part) long-term variability.
Tavern proximity, tavern density and socio-economic status as predictors of assault occurrence within New Zealand: a temporal comparison

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how the associations between tavern proximity, tavern density and area unit socio-economic status with assault occurrence vary in a temporal sense. Using New Zealand Police data specifying the day, time and location of assaults in 2016 and Ministry of Justice data specifying the location of on-licenced taverns, we construct logistic regression models to determine how well tavern proximity, tavern density and socio-economic status predict the occurrence of assaults at peak (Fri 22:00–Sat 03:00 and Sat 22:00–Sun 03:00) and off-peak times. An equal-sized sample of traffic generators (public venues whose primary function is not the sale of alcohol) is constructed and similar procedures applied. We find that tavern proximity and tavern density are stronger predictors of assault occurrence at peak, compared to off-peak, times. Conversely, socio-economic status is a better predictor of assault occurrence at off-peak times. We also find that whilst tavern proximity and density are stronger predictors of assault occurrence relative to traffic generator proximity and density at peak times, the opposite is true at off-peak times. These results suggest that in order to minimise alcohol-related harm, there is a need for policy-makers to take into account the temporal nature of these relationships.
Classification of Types of Stuttering Symptoms Based on Brain Activity

Among the non-fluencies seen in speech, some are more typical (MT) of stuttering speakers, whereas others are less typical (LT) and are common to both stuttering and fluent speakers. No neuroimaging work has evaluated the neural basis for grouping these symptom types. Another long-debated issue is which type (LT, MT) whole-word repetitions (WWR) should be placed in. In this study, a sentence completion task was performed by twenty stuttering patients who were scanned using an event-related design. This task elicited stuttering in these patients. Each stuttered trial from each patient was sorted into the MT or LT types with WWR put aside. Pattern classification was employed to train a patient-specific single trial model to automatically classify each trial as MT or LT using the corresponding fMRI data. This model was then validated by using test data that were independent of the training data. In a subsequent analysis, the classification model, just established, was used to determine which type the WWR should be placed in. The results showed that the LT and the MT could be separated with high accuracy based on their brain activity. The brain regions that made most contribution to the separation of the types were: the left inferior frontal cortex and bilateral precuneus, both of which showed higher activity in the MT than in the LT; and the left putamen and right cerebellum which showed the opposite activity pattern. The results also showed that the brain activity for WWR was more similar to that of the LT and fluent speech than to that of the MT. These findings provide a neurological basis for separating the MT and the LT types, and support the widely-used MT/LT symptom grouping scheme. In addition, WWR play a similar role as the LT, and thus should be placed in the LT type.
Wireless traffic modeling and prediction using seasonal ARIMA models

Seasonal ARIMA model is a good traffic model capable of capturing the behavior of a network traffic stream. In this paper, we give a general expression of seasonal ARIMA models with two periodicities and provide procedures to model and to predict traffic using seasonal ARIMA models. Our feasibility study experiments showed that seasonal ARIMA models could be used to model and predict actual wireless traffic such as GSM traffic in China.
Measuring risk and utility of anonymized data using information theory

Before releasing anonymized microdata (individual data) it is essential to evaluate whether: i) their utility is high enough for their release to make sense; ii) the risk that the anonymized data result in disclosure of respondent identity or respondent attribute values is low enough. Utility and disclosure risk measures are used for the above evaluation, which normally lack a common theoretical framework allowing to trade off utility and risk in a consistent way. We explore in this paper the use of information-theoretic measures based on the notion of mutual information.
The Point Partition Numbers of Closed 2-Manifolds

Let M be a closed 2-manifold. The chromatic number of M is defined to be the maximum chromatic number of all graphs which can be imbedded in M. The famous Four Colour Conjecture states that the chromatic number of the sphere is four. One of the oddities of mathematics is that the chromatic number of the familiar sphere is still unknown, although the chromatic number of every other closed 2-manifold, whether oiientable or non-orientable, is known. In 1959, Ringel published in [6] his proof that the chromatic number of the closed non-orientable 2-manifold of genus y (y > 0) is [|(7+V(l+24y))] if y # 2, and the chromatic number of the Klein bottle (y = 2) is six. More recently, Ringel and Youngs in [7], 1968, announced their solution to the long-standing Heawood Map-Colouring Conjecture: The chromatic number of the closed orientable 2-manifold of genus y (y > 0) is [i(7 +V(l + 48y))]. A colouring number for graphs closely related to the chromatic number is the point-arboricity (see [2]). The point-arboricity of the closed 2-manifold M is defined to be the maximum point-arboricity of all graphs which can be imbedded in M. In 1969, Kronk showed in [4] that the point-arboricity of the closed orientable 2-manifold of genus y (y > 0) is [i(9+VO+48y))]. Chartrand and Kronk, also in 1969, proved in [1] that the point-arboricity of the sphere is three. The similarity of the three results mentioned above suggested the generalization treated in this paper.
A Supervisory Power-Splitting Approach for a New Ultracapacitor–Battery Vehicle Deploying Two Propulsion Machines

Electrification of performance vehicles brings several challenges, such as the necessity of high-power sources, which can satisfy the power requirements during acceleration and efficiently retrieve energy during deceleration without performance and life cycle deterioration of such sources. In addition, the limited space under the hood for these vehicles eliminates the possibility of utilizing large volume high-power propulsion machines. This paper proposes a fuzzy logic supervisory wavelet-transform frequency decoupling-based energy management strategy implemented on a new powertrain deploying two propulsion machines rated at different powers with a hybrid battery/ultracapacitor (UC) energy storage system (ESS). The proposed control and energy management strategy guarantees that battery and UC provide the base and transient-free powers, respectively, while state of charge (SOC) of UC is maintained at an optimal value. The torque demand is split among the propulsion machines by solving the formulated unconstrained optimization problem. With the proposed hybrid ESS and energy/power decoupling strategy, power density of the ESS can be increased, vehicle performance can be improved, and battery lifetime can be prolonged.
Monolingual and Bilingual Concept Visualization from Corpora

As well as identifying relevant information, a successful information management system must be able to present its findings in terms which are familiar to the user, which is especially challenging when the incoming information is in a foreign language (Levow et al., 2001). We demonstrate techniques which attempt to address this challenge by placing terms in an abstract 'information space' based on their occurrences in text corpora, and then allowing a user to visualize local regions of this information space. Words are plotted in a 2-dimensional picture so that related words are close together and whole classes of similar words occur in recognizable clusters which sometimes clearly signify a particular meaning. As well as giving a clear view of which concepts are related in a particular document collection, this technique also helps a user to interpret unknown words.
"Relatedness, external linkages and innovation"

This paper has two main objectives. First, it estimates the impact of related and unrelated variety of European regions’ knowledge structure on their patenting activity. Second, it looks at the role of technological relatedness and extra-local knowledge acquisitions for local innovative activity. Specifically, it assesses how external technological relatedness affects regional innovation performance. Results confirm the strong relevance of related variety for regional innovation; whereas the impact of unrelated variety seems relevant only for the generation of breakthrough innovations. The study also shows that external knowledge flows have a higher impact, the higher the similarity between these flows and the extant local knowledge base.
The Most Distant Structure of Galaxies Known: A Protocluster at z = 4.1

Imaging and spectroscopy with the Very Large Telescope have revealed 20 Lyα emitters within a projected distance of 1.3 Mpc and 600 km s-1 of the luminous radio galaxy TN J1338-1942 at z = 4.1. Compared to the field density of Lyα emitters, this implies an overdensity on the order of 15. The structure has a projected size of at least 2.7 × 1.8 Mpc and a velocity dispersion of 325 km s-1, which makes it the most distant structure known. Using the galaxy overdensity and assuming a bias parameter b = 3-5, the mass is estimated to be ~1015 M☉. The radio galaxy itself is surrounded by an uniquely asymmetric Lyα halo. Taken together with our previous data on PKS 1138-262 at z ~ 2.16, these results suggest that luminous radio sources are excellent tracers of high-density regions in the early universe, which evolve into present-day clusters. The statistics of bright radio sources and of concentrations in the Lyman break galaxy population are consistent with the picture that each of those concentrations harbors an active or passive luminous radio source.
FlowVisor: A Network Virtualization Layer

Network virtualization has long been a goal of of the network research community. With it, multiple isolated logical networks each with potentially different addressing and forwarding mechanisms can share the same physical infrastructure. Typically this is achieved by taking advantage of the flexibility of software (e.g. [20, 23]) or by duplicating components in (often specialized) hardware[19]. In this paper we present a new approach to switch virtualization in which the same hardware forwarding plane can be shared among multiple logical networks, each with distinct forwarding logic. We use this switch-level virtualization to build a research platform which allows multiple network experiments to run side-by-side with production traffic while still providing isolation and hardware forwarding speeds. We also show that this approach is compatible with commodity switching chipsets and does not require the use of programmable hardware such as FPGAs or network processors. We build and deploy this virtualization platform on our own production network and demonstrate its use in practice by running five experiments simultaneously within a campus network. Further, we quantify the overhead of our approach and evaluate the completeness of the isolation between virtual slices.
The HIV-1 Rev Protein Enhances Encapsidation of Unspliced and Spliced, RRE-Containing Lentiviral Vector RNA

Background During the RNA encapsidation process of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) viral genomic, unspliced RNA (gRNA) is preferentially incorporated into assembling virions. However, a certain amount of spliced viral transcripts can also be detected in viral particles. Recently, we observed that nuclear export of HIV and lentiviral vector gRNA by Rev is required for efficient encapsidation. Since singly-spliced HIV transcripts also contain the Rev-response element (RRE), we investigated if the encapsidation efficiency of RRE-containing spliced HIV-vector transcripts is also increased by the viral Rev protein. Findings Starting with a lentiviral vector imitating the splicing pattern of HIV, we constructed vectors that express an unspliced transcript either identical in sequence to the singly-spliced or the fully-spliced RNA of the parental construct. After transfection of the different lentiviral vectors cytoplasmic and virion-associated RNA levels and vector titers were determined in the presence and absence of Rev. Rev enhanced the infectious titer of vectors containing an RRE 6 to 37-fold. Furthermore, Rev strongly increased encapsidation efficiencies of all RRE-containing transcripts up to 200-fold. However, a good correlation between encapsidation efficiency and lentiviral vector titer could only be observed for the gRNA. The infectious titer of the vector encoding the fully-spliced RNA without RRE as well as the encapsidation efficiency of all transcripts lacking the RRE was not influenced by Rev. Interestingly, the splicing process itself did not seem to interfere with packaging, since the encapsidation efficiencies of the same RNA expressed either by splicing or as an unspliced transcript did not differ significantly. Conclusions Rev-mediated nuclear export enhances the encapsidation efficiency of RRE-containing lentiviral vector RNAs independently of whether they have been spliced or not.