Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Eye-in-Hand/Eye-to-Hand Multi-Camera Visual Servoing

A position-based visual servoing algorithm using an hybrid eye-in-hand/eye-to-hand multi-camera configuration is presented in this paper. Based on an extended Kalman filter, this approach exploits the data provided by all the cameras without "a priori" discrimination, allowing real-time object pose estimation. A suitable algorithm is in charge of selecting an optimal subset of image features on the basis of the desired task and of the current configuration of the workspace. Only this subset is considered for feature extraction, thus ensuring a computational cost independent of the number of cameras. Experimental results are reported to demonstrate the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed technique.
Starting Out: qualitative perspectives of new graduate nurses and nurse leaders on transition to practice

AIM To describe new graduate nurses' transition experiences in Canadian healthcare settings by exploring the perspectives of new graduate nurses and nurse leaders in unit level roles. BACKGROUND Supporting successful transition to practice is key to retaining new graduate nurses in the workforce and meeting future demand for healthcare services. METHOD A descriptive qualitative study using inductive content analysis of focus group and interview data from 42 new graduate nurses and 28 nurse leaders from seven Canadian provinces. RESULTS New graduate nurses and nurse leaders identified similar factors that facilitate the transition to practice including formal orientation programmes, unit cultures that encourage constructive feedback and supportive mentors. Impediments including unanticipated changes to orientation length, inadequate staffing, uncivil unit cultures and heavy workloads. CONCLUSIONS The results show that new graduate nurses need access to transition support and resources and that nurse leaders often face organisational constraints in being able to support new graduate nurses. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT Organisations should ensure that nurse leaders have the resources they need to support the positive transition of new graduate nurses including adequate staffing and realistic workloads for both experienced and new nurses. Nurse leaders should work to create unit cultures that foster learning by encouraging new graduate nurses to ask questions and seek feedback without fear of criticism or incivility.
Ethanol-induced mast cell-mediated inflammation leads to increased susceptibility of intestinal tumorigenesis in the APC Δ468 min mouse model of colon cancer.

BACKGROUND Chronic and frequent alcohol (ethanol [EtOH]) intake has been associated with an increased incidence of several types of cancers including breast, mouth, throat, esophageal, stomach, and colorectal (CRC). The underlying mechanism of this deleterious carcinogenic effect of alcohol has not been clearly established but inflammation may be 1 unifying feature of these cancers. We have recently shown that intestinal mast cells play a central role in intestinal carcinogenesis. In this study, we tested our hypothesis that mast cell-mediated inflammation is 1 underlying mechanism by which chronic alcohol promotes intestinal tumorigenesis. METHODS APC(Δ468) mice were fed either an alcohol-containing Nanji liquid diet or isocaloric dextrose-containing Nanji diet for 10 weeks and then sacrificed to collect small and large intestine samples. Assessments of tumor number and size as well as mast cell number and mast cell activity and histology score for invasion were compared between Control (dextrose-fed) and alcohol-fed APC(∆468) mice. The effect of alcohol on mast cell-mediated tumor migration was also assessed using an in vitro migration assay. RESULTS Alcohol feeding increased both polyp number and size within both the small and the large intestines of APC(∆468) mice. Only alcohol-fed mice showed evidence of tumor invasion. Chronic alcohol feeding also resulted in an increased mast cell number and activity in tumor stroma and invading borders. In vitro migration assay showed that alcohol significantly increases mast cell-mediated tumor migration in vitro. CONCLUSIONS Our data show that chronic alcohol intake promotes: (i) intestinal tumorigenesis and tumor invasion in genetically susceptible mice; (ii) increases in polyp-associated mast cells; and (iii) mast cell-mediated tumor migration in vitro. Both our in vivo and in vitro studies suggest that mast cell-mediated inflammation could be 1 mechanism by which alcohol promotes carcinogenesis.
Deep Neural Network Bottleneck Feature for Acoustic Scene Classification

Bottleneck features have been shown to be effective in improving the accuracy of speaker recognition, language identification and automatic speech recognition. However, few works have focused on bottleneck features for acoustic scene classification. This report proposes a novel acoustic scene feature extraction using bottleneck features derived from a Deep Neural Network (DNN). On the official development set with our settings, a feature set that includes bottleneck features and Perceptual Linear Prediction (PLP) feature shows a best accuracy rate.
Insights into variation across children based on longitudinal Dutch data on phonological acquisition

Spontaneous child language data are often extremely variable: the same child may utter words in many different ways even during the same session (within child variation) and children often differ in the way they produce particular structures (across child variation), leading to different learning paths for different children. This paper focuses on across child variation and discusses three phenomena, previously studied in isolation: the acquisition of complex word-initial clusters, the acquisition of word-final consonant clusters and the acquisition of manner of articulation features. After briefly summarizing the main findings reported in previous research based on the Dutch CLPF (Clara Levelt – Paula Fikkert) corpus of longitudinal language production data of twelve monolingual Dutch children, we report on our investigation of the various developmental patterns regarding the three phenomena, arguing that the different learning paths are at least in part dependent on each other and reveal the use of different learning strategies.
Contemporary Mathematics Asian Options under Multiscale Stochastic Volatility

We study the problem of pricing arithmetic Asian options when the underlying is driven by stochastic volatility models with two well-separated characteristic time scales. The inherently path-dependent feature of Asian options can be efficiently treated by applying a change of numeraire, introduced by Vercer. In our previous work on pricing Asian options, the volatility is modeled by a fast mean-reverting process. A singular perturbation expansion is used to derive an approximation for option prices. In this paper, we consider an additional slowly varying volatility factor so that the pricing partial differential equation becomes four-dimensional. Using the singular-regular perturbation technique introduced by Fouque-Papanicolaou-Sircar-Solna, we show that the four-dimensional pricing partial differential equation can be approximated by solving a pair of one-dimensional partial differential equations, which takes into account the full term structure of implied volatility.
Comparison between Minimum Classification Error training and Relevance Vector Machine

Discriminative training aims at constructing a classifier that is of small scale but has high classification power. One type, Minimum Classification Error (MCE) training, has been used widely in pattern recognition, especially in the speech recognition field. In parallel with this, Relevance Vector Machine (RVM) has attracted many researchers' interest, based on its potential for alleviating the scalability problem of Support Vector Machine (SVM). It has been reported that RVM achieves high classification accuracy with a limited amount of classifier parameters, i.e., relevance vectors. Comparison studies between MCE training and SVM have been done, but not so much between MCE training and RVM. Motivated by this, we conduct theoretical and experimental comparisons of MCE training and RVM. Results show that MCE training is better suited to the development of small-scale but highly discriminative classifiers than its counterpart.
Analyzing the Transfemoral Amputee Gait using Inertial Sensors - Identifying Gait Parameters for Investigating the Symmetry of Gait - A Pilot Study

The amputation of a lower limb is a drastic event and it completely changes the life of the person. Current development of prosthesis is already advanced, but most of the affected persons suffer from changes in the gait which are visible to the general public. The gait of transfemoral amputees was investigated in the laboratory environment and is called asymmetric due to different facts: shorter step length, smaller velocity and smaller cadence. The use of mobile inertial sensors can be supportive in the rehabilitation process of these patients. That is why a pilot study is conducted to evaluate the gait of transfemoral amputees and compare their gait parameters with those of the healthy subjects. The purpose of the investigation is to identify gait parameters showing the asymmetric properties of the amputees gait. Eight parameters seem to be distinctive
Menthol vs nonmenthol cigarettes: effects on smoking behavior.

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to examine intraindividual differences in smoking behavior between smoking regular and mentholated cigarettes. METHODS Healthy male smokers (n = 29) smoked either a regular or a mentholated cigarette in two separate sessions 1 week apart. Commercial brands with comparable tar, nicotine, and CO content were used. Smoking behavior was constrained by fixed 15-second interpuff intervals, but puff volume and number of puffs were unconstrained. RESULTS When smoking the non-mentholated brand of cigarettes, participants smoked 22% more puffs and had 13% higher mean volumes per puff than they did when smoking the mentholated brand of cigarettes. The aggregate 39% excess exposure to cigarette smoke in the regular-cigarette condition was not accompanied by commensurate excesses in expired carbon monoxide or in physiological measures normally correlated with nicotine exposure. CONCLUSIONS These findings parallel differences in physiological correlates of exposure to nicotine found in cross-sectional comparisons of African-American and White smokers and are consistent with the results of emerging laboratory investigations.
Solving the Periodic Maintenance Scheduling Problem via Genetic Algorithm to Balance Workforce Levels and Maintenance Cost

Problem statement: In this article we address the multi-objective Per iodic Maintenance Scheduling Problem (PMSP) of scheduling a set of cyclic maintenance operations for a given set of machines through a specified planning period to min imize the total variance of workforce levels measured in man-hours and maintenance costs with equal weights. Approach: The article proposed a mixed integer non-linear math programming model and a linearised model for the PMSP. Also, we proposed a Genetic Algorithm (GA) for solving the p roblem using a new genome representation considered as a new addition to the maintenance sch eduling literature. The algorithms were compared on a set of representative test problems. Results: The developed GA proves its capability and superiority to find good solutions for the PMSP and outperforms solutions found by the commercial optimization package CPLEX. The results indicated that the developed algorithms were able to identify optimal solutions for small size problems up to 5 machines and 6 planning periods.The GAs defined solutions in 22 seconds con suming less than two kilobytes with a reliability of 0.84 while the nonlinear and linear models consumes on average 705 and 37 kilobytes respectively. Conclusion: The developed GA could define solutions of averag e performance of 0.34 and 0.8 for the linearized algorithm compared with lower bound defined by the nonlinear math programming model. We hope to expand the developed algorithms for integrating maintenance planning and aggregate production planning problems.
Heart, body, and soul: impact of church-based smoking cessation interventions on readiness to quit.

BACKGROUND Given the relatively low spontaneous quit rates and poor treatment outcomes among African American smokers, this study was designed to evaluate the effects of a multimodal culturally relevant intervention for smoking behavior change compared with a self-help strategy among urban African Americans in Baltimore churches. METHOD This randomized controlled trial in urban African American churches used the stages of change model to compare the effectiveness of two interventions in moving smokers along a continuum toward smoking cessation. Twenty-two churches were randomly assigned to either an intensive culturally specific intervention or a minimal self-help intervention. Smokers were interviewed at baseline church health fairs and at a 1-year follow-up. Self-reported quitters at follow-up were evaluated using saliva cotinine and exhaled carbon monoxide levels (CO). Stages of change were measured by applying a standardized stages of change instrument to individual interview response sequences. Analysis compared the two intervention groups at 1-year follow-up with baseline stages. Outcomes included quit rates and positive progress along the stages of change. RESULTS Multiple logistic regression results, controlling for intrachurch correlation and demographic and baseline smoking characteristics, showed that the multimodal cultural intervention group was more likely to make positive progress along the stages of change continuum, compared with self-help intervention group (OR = 1.68; P = 0.04). Church denomination and intervention status interacted in the multivariate model; Baptists in the intensive intervention were three times (OR = 3.23; P = 0.010) more likely to make progress than all the other denomination groups. CONCLUSION The multimodal culturally relevant intervention was more likely than a self-help intervention to positively influence smoking behavior. This is the first community-based intervention study to report progress along the stages of change as a process-oriented measure of success. It is notable that a spiritually based model focusing on environmental sanctions was more likely than a standard church disseminated self-help intervention to positively influence smoking behavior in an urban African American population.
Research on an Authentication Algorithm for an Electronic Attendance System in the Constructing of a Smart Campus

This paper presents a proposal for a large-scale lecture authentication algorithm for an electronic attendance system. The utilization rate for existing electronic attendance systems is low. Because it couldn't solve the problems that occur by special conditions of university such as vicarious attendance, bottlenecking during attendance check-in, and attendees departure at intermission. The most important things are not the authentication problems or errors on the technical issues. Instead, issues are related to attempts to check attendance simultaneously by a number of students, failure to prevent vicarious attendance, and the uncertainties of students remaining in the classroom following check-in. The authentication algorithm of the proposed system uses smartphone in attendance check. So it will save time and prevent bottlenecks as large numbers of students will not need to stand in line to check-in their attendance in the wall-mounted attendance device. And, it will minimize, if not eliminate, students who might leave at intermission. Because the instructor can verify attendance many times with the simplicity of the attendance check verification procedure and the short authentication time. Thus, the proposed algorithm will facilitate the implementation of a smart electronic attendance system in the construction of the smart campus.
An Adaptive Waiting Time Priority Scheduler for the Proportional Di erentiation Model

Recent research on the proportional di erentiation model has shown that the waiting time priority scheduler approximates the proportional delay di erentiation model in heavy load conditions independently from the class load distribution. In this paper we propose an adaptive parameterization scheme, in order to meet the di erentiation requirements in moderate load conditions. Furthermore, we show the feasibility limits of the waiting time priority scheduler in supporting the proportional delay di erentiation model.
Adjunctive ablation strategies improve the efficacy of pulmonary vein isolation in non-paroxysmal atrial fibrillation: a systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Background: Pulmonary vein (PV) isolation (PVI) has suboptimal outcomes in patients with non-paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF). Adjunctive strategies employed to ablate non-PV triggers have shown favorable outcomes. Aims: To delineate the incremental benefit of adjunctive ablation in patients with non-paroxysmal AF through a meta-analysis. Methods and results: Database searches through August 2016 identified five non-randomized and seven randomized controlled trials (enrolling 1694 patients). The adjunctive strategies employed for non-PV ablation included focal impulse and rotor modulation; empirical linear lines, ablation of complex fractionated atrial electrograms and ganglionated plexi. The risk ratio (RR) for AF recurrence, calculated with random effects meta-analysis showed a 36% reduction of AF recurrence at a median follow up of 12 months (RR: 0.64, 95% Confidence interval: 0.48 to 0.85; p = 0.003). The benefits persisted during longer follow up when assessed in subgroup analysis. Conclusions: Addition of adjunctive ablation to PVI improves outcomes.
Bioavailability of resveratrol

This paper reviews our current understanding of the absorption, bioavailability, and metabolism of resveratrol, with an emphasis on humans. The oral absorption of resveratrol in humans is about 75% and is thought to occur mainly by transepithelial diffusion. Extensive metabolism in the intestine and liver results in an oral bioavailability considerably less than 1%. Dose escalation and repeated dose administration of resveratrol does not appear to alter this significantly. Metabolic studies, both in plasma and in urine, have revealed major metabolites to be glucuronides and sulfates of resveratrol. However, reduced dihydroresveratrol conjugates, in addition to highly polar unknown products, may account for as much as 50% of an oral resveratrol dose. Although major sites of metabolism include the intestine and liver (as expected), colonic bacterial metabolism may be more important than previously thought. Deconjugation enzymes such as β‐glucuronidase and sulfatase, as well as specific tissue accumulation of resveratrol, may enhance resveratrol efficacy at target sites. Resveratrol analogs, such as methylated derivatives with improved bioavailability, may be important in future research.
Sensitive detection of Majorana fermions based on a hybrid spin–microcantilever via enhanced spin resonance spectrum

Motivated by recent experimental progress towards the detection and manipulation of Majorana fermions in ferromagnetic atomic chains on a superconductor, we present a novel proposal based on a single-crystal diamond (SCD) microcantilever with a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center spin embedded in ultrapure diamond substrate to probe Majorana fermions in an all-optical domain. With this scheme, a possible distinct Majorana signature is investigated via the electron spin resonance spectrum. In the proposal, the SCD microcantilever behaves as a phonon cavity and is robust for detecting of Majorana fermions, while the NV center spin can be considered as a sensitive probe. Further, the vibration of the microcantilever will enhance the coupling effect, which makes the Majorana fermions more sensitive to detection and the well-established optical NV spin readout technology will certainly promote the detection. This proposed method may provide a potential supplement for the detection of Majorana fermions.
Classification of spatiotemporal hemodynamics from brain perfusion MR images using expectation‐maximization estimation with finite mixture of multivariate gaussian distributions

The ability to cluster different perfusion compartments in the brain is critical for analyzing brain perfusion. This study presents a method based on a mixture of multivariate Gaussians (MoMG) and the expectation‐maximization (EM) algorithm to dissect various perfusion compartments from dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) MR images so that each compartment comprises pixels of similar signal‐time curves. This EM‐based method provides an objective way to 1) delineate an area to serve as the in‐plane arterial input function (AIF) of the feeding artery for adjacent tissues to better quantify the relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV), relative cerebral blood flow (rCBF), and mean transit time (MTT); 2) demarcate regions with abnormal perfusion derangement to facilitate diagnosis; and 3) obtain parametric maps with supplementary information, such as temporal scenarios and recirculation of contrast agent. Results from normal subjects show that perfusion cascade manifests (in order of appearance) the arteries, gray matter (GM), white matter (WM), veins and sinuses, and choroid plexus mixed with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The averaged rCBV, rCBF, and MTT ratios between GM and WM are in good agreement with those in the literature. Results from a patient with cerebral arteriovenous malformation (CAVM) showed distinct spatiotemporal characteristics between perfusion patterns, which allowed differentiation between pathological and nonpathological areas. Magn Reson Med 57:181–191, 2007. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Philip of Macedon's Early Interventions in Thessaly (358–352 B.C.)

In his stimulating article on this topic Mr. Christopher Ehrhardt sought to show that there is no good reason to believe in any intervention by Philip of Macedon in Thessaly earlier than his campaign of 353. The second half of his paper is devoted to the date of Philip's capture of Pagasae, which Diodorus appears to put in the Athenian archon year 354/3 after the fall of Methone, a date adopted by most modern interpreters accepting the emendation for the unidentifiable in the text of Diodorus. Ehrhardt shows well the difficulties of believing in any capture of Pagasae, the port of Pherae, earlier than the capture of Pherae itself (in 352), and concludes that the emendation is to be rejected. In this I think he is right, and I am joining him in dating the capture of Pagasae in 352 after Pherae itself had fallen. The first half of his paper, however, rejecting all the evidence suggesting other interventions by Philip in Thessaly earlier than 353, is much harder to accept, for two reasons: