Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing and Generating Robust Plans with Partial Domain Models

Most current planners assume complete domain models and focus on generating plans that are correct with respect to them. Unfortunately, assuming model completeness is unrealistic in the real world, where domain modeling remains a hard, labor-intensive and errorprone task. While domain experts cannot guarantee completeness, often they are able to circumscribe the incompleteness of the model by providing annotations as to which parts of the domain model may be incomplete. In such cases, the goal of planning would be to generate plans that are robust with respect to any known incompleteness of the domain. Doing this requires both a formal framework for assessing plan robustness and a methodology for guiding a planner’s search towards robust plans. In this paper we formalize the notion of plan robustness with respect to a partial domain model, show a way of reducing exact robustness assessment to model-counting, and describe methods of approximately assessing plan robustness. We propose a heuristic search approach using model-counting techniques on top of the FF planner to generate plans that are not only correct but also robust, and present experimental results showing the effectiveness of this approach.
Social cognition and executive function in borderline personality disorder: evidence of altered cognitive processes

Introduction. Social cognition (SC) and executive function (EF) research in borderline personality disorder (BPD) has proven to be controversial and lack of sufficient information about deficit patterns. Objective. Assess the contribution of SC and EF in the socio-emotional and cognitive patterns in BPD, as well as investigate the possible relationships between SC, EF, and clinic features in BPD. Method. The study evaluated 20 females with BPD in ambulatory hospitalization and 20 healthy women in social cognition (“Reading the mind through the eyes” and the IOWA gambling task) and executive function (with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, verbal fluency tasks; digit spam test and numbers-and-letters of the WAIS-III, Trail Making Test Form A and B). Results. The results show statistically-significant differences for the tasks evaluated in social cognition, the theory of mind (u: 181, p < .001**), and the IOWA gambling task, score IOWA 4 (p < .004*), and IOWA 5 p < . 003*); and executive functioning, for example in the Wisconsin card sorting test, WCST1 were found (p < .003*), WCST2 (p < .004*), WCST3 (p < .018*) or WCST4 (p < .003*). Digit span test and verbal fluency had significant differences compared to controls. Discussion and conclusion. The subdomains evaluated would be good endophenotypes as well as specific cognitive processes for research and rehabilitation.
The Value Of Personal Information Online: Results From Three Stated Preference Discrete Choice Experiments In The UK

This paper proposes the application of a widely used approach, known as stated preference discrete choice experiments, to estimate the value of personal information in three real-life contexts and situations. The paper develops three experiments describing hypothetical situations in which respondents considered varying aspects of their personal information (e.g. storage, sharing with third parties) when (a) purchasing online a product, (b) a service or (c) conducting pure search online. The survey was carried out with sample quotas pre-specified in order to match the profile of the Internetuser population in the UK with respect to gender, age group, geographical area of residence and personal annual income. The results from the experiment provide new insights in the value and influence of attributes of personal information when conducting online transactions. In particular, main results show that there was little interest by respondents to pay in order to introduce control over their personal data, that the extend of sharing of personal information with third parties was seen the most important aspect when choosing online retailers and search engines, and that an unspecified duration of data storage was received as badly as the data storage beyond several years for online retailers and worse than shorter durations.
Formation of coated vesicles from coated pits in broken A431 cells

Biochemical and morphological techniques were used to demonstrate the early steps in the endocytosis of transferrin in broken A431 cells. After binding 125I-transferrin, the cells were broken by scraping and then warmed. 125I-transferrin became inaccessible to exogenous anti- transferrin antibody providing a measure of the internalization process. Parallel morphological experiments using transferrin coupled to horseradish peroxidase confirmed internalization in broken cells. The process was characterized and compared with endocytosis in intact cells and showed many similar features. The system was used to show that both the appearance of new coated pits and the scission of coated pits to form coated vesicles were dependent on the addition of cytosol and ATP whereas invagination of pits was dependent on neither.
People perception of autonomous vehicles: Legal and ethical issues

self-driving or autonomous cars have achieved a great milestone that now they are commercially available as the Waymo Company emerged from Google autonomous car has started its service in suburbs of Phoenix from December 2018. Autonomous cars are able to sense their surrounding environment and their control system is able to interpret that information to identify navigation paths, road barriers and traffic signals. The journey of autonomous cars produced many questions regarding legal and ethical issues of autonomous cars. These cars combine a variety of information from its sensors including radars, lidar, sonar, GPS and odometry for real-time decision making. In this article, we have reviewed the literature to understand primary questions related to liability, ethics, and legal issues. From the last six years, 523 papers were selected, which were further shortlisted on the basis of relevance. Finally, 84 papers were shortlisted to conclude the discussion on tort liability, products, and strict liability. The utilitarianism, deontological and virtue ethics theories were discussed in terms of writing ethical code for designing autonomous cars. These cars are expected to decrease accidents by centralized traffic system through inter-vehicle communication. Furthermore, an online survey of 2021 participants was conducted in five different countries to understand perception and trust on different autonomy levels in self-driving cars. The participants showed their level of trust from a safety perspective, their concern about one time cost in the start, need of legislation by local governments and fear of rising in unemployment due to autonomous cars. The results indicate mix perception where people want this technology but are concerned about legal and ethical implications. The paper is helpful for researchers, manufacturers and law enforcement agencies in the implementation of autonomous cars.
Large scale movement analysis from WiFi based location data

Understanding and modeling the way humans move in urban contexts is beneficial for many applications. The recent advances on positioning technologies, namely those based on the ubiquity of wireless networks, is facilitating the observation of people for human motion analysis. In this paper we present the result of a large scale work conducted to study the human mobility in a University's campuses. The study was conducted along several months, using data collected from thousands of users that freely moved inside the numerous buildings existent in two University campuses and a few other buildings in the city center. A Wi-Fi infrastructure of more than 550 access points provides Internet access to the academic community. We tracked the user movements by logging the devices connected to each access point. Based on that data, an analysis process that highlights the relationships between space features and human motion has been developed. In this paper we introduce the concepts of “place connectivity” and “flow across a boundary” to model these relationships. Results show the mobility patterns detected, which are the attraction places along the day, and what places are more strongly connected. This paper also includes an analysis of the short and long term movements between places. With this study we extended our understanding of the life in the campus, enabling us to feel the campus “pulse”.
Leveraging Crowdsourcing to Detect Improper Tasks in Crowdsourcing Marketplaces

Controlling the quality of tasks is a major challenge in crowdsourcing marketplaces. Most of the existing crowdsourcing services prohibit requesters from posting illegal or objectionable tasks. Operators in the marketplaces have to monitor the tasks continuously to find such improper tasks; however, it is too expensive to manually investigate each task. In this paper, we present the reports of our trial study on automatic detection of improper tasks to support the monitoring of activities by marketplace operators. We perform experiments using real task data from a commercial crowdsourcing marketplace and show that the classifier trained by the operator judgments achieves high accuracy in detecting improper tasks. In addition, to reduce the annotation costs of the operator and improve the classification accuracy, we consider the use of crowdsourcing for task annotation. We hire a group of crowdsourcing (non-expert) workers to monitor posted tasks, and incorporate their judgments into the training data of the classifier. By applying quality control techniques to handle the variability in worker reliability, our results show that the use of non-expert judgments by crowdsourcing workers in combination with expert judgments improves the accuracy of detecting improper crowdsourcing tasks.
Gravitational lensing as a probe of compact object populations in the galaxy

Aims. The population of solitary compact objects in the Galaxy is very difficult to investigate. In this paper we examine the possibility of using microlensing searches to detect and to analyze the properties of solitary black holes and neutron stars. Methods. Evolution of single and binary stars is followed using the StarTrack population synthesis code. The spatial distribution of compact objects in the Galaxy is determined by propagating them in the Galactic gravitational potential. Lensing events are found by tracing individual stars and compact objects. Results. We find that compact object lensing events are concentrated in a region with a radius of ≈5 degrees around the Galactic center. The distribution of masses of the lenses for the models we consider differs, but only slightly, from the underlying mass distribution of compact objects. The expected detection rates are of the order of a few per year.
The variability of root cohesion as an influence on shallow landslide susceptibility in the Oregon Coast Range

Decades of quantitative measurement indicate that roots can mechanically reinforce shallow soils in forested landscapes. Forests, however, have variations in vegetation species and age which can dominate the local stability of landslide-initiation sites. To assess the influence of this variability on root cohesion we examined scarps of landslides triggered during large storms in February and November of 1996 in the Oregon Coast Range and hand-dug soil pits on stable ground. At 41 sites we estimated the cohesive reinforcement to soil due to roots by determining the tensile strength, species, depth, orientation, relative health, and the density of roots 1 mm in diameter within a measured soil area. We found that median lateral root cohesion ranges from 6.823.2 kPa in industrial forests with significant understory and deciduous vegetation to 25.694.3 kPa in natural forests dominated by coniferous vegetation. Lateral root cohesion in clearcuts is uniformly 10 kPa. Some 100-year-old industrial forests have s.
Improved power quality zeta converter fed switch reluctance motor drive

This paper deals with the power factor correction (PFC) based zeta converter-fed switch reluctance motor (SRM) drive as a cost effective solution for low power applications. The speed of SRM is controlled by varying the DC-bus voltage appearing across the midpoint converter used for a 4-phase SRM. The zeta converter is designed in continuous inductor current mode, to regulate the DC output voltage and to improve the power quality of AC mains. Total harmonic distortion (THD) at AC mains current when SRM is fed by diode bridge rectifier is observed 70% to 80% which is brought down to less than 5% as per the IEEE- 519 standard for power quality.
A Diagnostic Approach for Advanced Tracking of Commercial Vehicles With Time Window Constraints

In this paper, we introduce a fleet supervision system used to monitor on-road evolutions of commercial transport vehicles. This monitoring is accomplished by the automatic dispatch, during crossing of a tracking location, of information issued from the localization system on the vehicle. This information can be sent to a server through a direct Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol connection in a general packet radio service network (GPRS) or through a satellite network. The information is provided by the system to some allowed users via an Internet website. The fleet supervision system also enables analyzing messages sent by vehicles to identify differences between real data and planned data. We are more particularly interested in the diagnostics of delays, which can take place during deliveries. In fact, while crossing already fixed tracking locations, these delays are detected as early as possible, and their consequences are predicted so that corrective or preventive actions are undertaken as soon as possible.
Distributed on-line schedule adaptation for balanced slot allocation in Bluetooth scatternets and

In this paper we propose an algorithm for design and on the fly modification of the schedule of an ad-hoc wireless network in order to provide fair service guarantees under topological changes. The primary objective is to derive a distributed coordination method for schedule construction and modification for any wireless ad-hoc network that operates under a schedule where the transmissions at each slot are explicitly specified over a time period of length T. First we introduce a fluid model of the system where the conflict avoidance requirements of neighboring links are relaxed while the aspect of local channel sharing is captured. In that model we propose an algorithm where the nodes asynchronously re-adjust the rates allocated to their adjacent links based only on local information. We prove that from any initial condition the algorithm finds the max-min fair rate allocation in the fluid model. Hence if the iteration is performed constantly the rate allocation will track the optimal even in regimes of constant topology changes. Then we consider the slotted system and propose a modification method that applies directly on the slotted schedule, emulating the effect of the rate re-adjustment iteration of the fluid model. Through extensive experiments in networks with time varying topologies we show that the latter algorithm achieves balanced rate allocation in the actual slotted system that are very close to the max-min fair rates. The experiments show also that the algorithm is very robust on topology variations, with very good tracking properties of the max-min fair rate allocation.
Aboriginal sovereignty, ‘crime’ and criminology

ABSTRACT This is a review essay of Chris Cunneen and Juan Tauri’s Indigenous Criminology, the publication of which coincides with a series of scandals and mounting inquiries into Indigenous justice issues around the globe. The publication of this important and timely work warrants reflection on the place of Indigenous issues within Australian criminology and their importance for the development of global criminologies. In the face of rising Indigenous incarceration rates, criminologists must ask some unsettling questions: has criminology as a discipline failed Indigenous Peoples? And, if so, how can we do things differently? To what degree has criminology been complicit in the rising rates of Indigenous incarceration internationally? And what, if anything, does criminology have to offer the crises in criminal justice which have been the experience of Indigenous Peoples around the globe?
Aspergillus fumigatus Stimulates Leukocyte Adhesion Molecules and Cytokine Production by Endothelial Cells In Vitro and during Invasive Pulmonary Disease

ABSTRACT Invasive aspergillosis is characterized by hyphal invasion of the blood vessels, which contributes to the pathogenesis of this disease. During this angioinvasion, Aspergillus fumigatus interacts with the endothelial cell lining of the blood vessels. We investigated the response of vascular endothelial cells to A. fumigatus infection in vitro and in mouse models of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis. Infection with hyphae, but not with conidia, stimulated endothelial cells to synthesize E-selectin, vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1), interleukin 8, and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) in vitro. Killed hyphae induced approximately 40% less stimulation than did live hyphae. Endothelial cell stimulation required contact between the hyphae and endothelial cells but not endocytosis of the organisms. Studies with ΔgliP and ΔstuA null mutants of A. fumigatus indicated that the extent of endothelial cell stimulation was not influenced by gliotoxin or other StuA-dependent factors synthesized by A. fumigatus. In neutropenic mice infected with wild-type A. fumigatus, increased pulmonary expression of E-selectin, cytokine-induced neutrophil chemoattractant (KC), and TNF-α occurred only when neutropenia had resolved. In nonneutropenic mice immunosuppressed with corticosteroids, A. fumigatus stimulated earlier pulmonary expression of E-selectin, VCAM-1, and KC, while expression of intercellular adhesion molecule 1 and TNF-α was suppressed. In both mouse models, expression of E-selectin and KC was associated with high pulmonary fungal burden, angioinvasion, and neutrophil adherence to endothelial cells. Therefore, the expression of leukocyte adhesion molecules and secretion of proinflammatory cytokines by endothelial cells in response to A. fumigatus could enhance the host defense against this organism by contributing to the recruitment of activated leukocytes to sites of angioinvasion.
An Integrated Forecasting and Regularization Framework for Light Rail Transit Systems

In recent years, with half the world's population living in towns and cities and most of them relying heavily on public transport to meet their mobility needs, efficient and effective public transport operations have become critical to sustainable economic and social development. Nowadays, Light Rail Transit Systems (LRTSs) are considered to be the most promising technological approach to satisfy these needs, i.e. to ensure efficient and reliable urban mobility. However, LRTSs are subject to frequent minor disrupted transit operations, often caused by stochastic variations of passenger demand at stations and traffic conditions on the service routes, which increase passenger waiting times discouraging them from using the transit system. Although these minor disruptions usually last no longer than a few minutes, they can degrade the level of service significantly on a short headway service. In this paper the authors propose a real-time disruption control model for LRTSs based on an integrated quantitative forecasting and regularization approach. The forecasting component relies on Artificial Neural Networks, a non-parametric computational model that has proved to be particularly efficient for the forecasting task in several applicative domains. The regularization engine involves the formulation of a constrained mathematical programming problem which can be solved quickly and, therefore, is well suited for real-time disruption control. The conceptual model is applied to a case study concerning the transit line number 7 operating in the urban area of Milan. To validate the proposed forecasting and regularization framework an experimental plan has been designed and performed under different traffic and passengers demand fluctuation conditions. The results of the simulation study witness the efficacy of the overall approach to forecast and regularize the considered LRTSs.
Lipid Nanovectors to Deliver RNA Oligonucleotides in Cancer

The growing knowledge on the mechanisms of gene silencing and gene regulation by non-coding RNAs (ncRNA), mainly small interfering RNA (siRNA) and microRNA (miRNA), is providing a significant boost to the development of new therapeutic strategies for the treatment of cancer. However, the design of RNA-based therapeutics is hampered by biopharmaceutical issues, thus requiring the use of suitable delivery strategies. In this regards, lipid nanovectors have been successfully investigated to deliver RNA in different forms of cancer. Compared to other biomaterials, lipids offer advantages such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, easy production, low cost, limited toxicity and immunogenicity. The possibility to formulate these materials in the form of nanovectors allows overcoming biopharmaceutical issues associated to the therapeutic use of RNA, with the possibility to target tumors. This review takes stock of the main lipid nanovectors proposed to deliver ncRNA. For each considered delivery strategy, the rational design and the most meaningful in vitro and in vivo results are reported and discussed.
Prime Compilation of Non-Clausal Formulae

Formula compilation by generation of prime implicates or implicants finds a wide range of applications in AI. Recent work on formula compilation by prime implicate/implicant generation often assumes a Conjunctive/Disjunctive Normal Form (CNF/DNF) representation. However, in many settings propositional formulae are naturally expressed in non-clausal form. Despite a large body of work on compilation of non-clausal formulae, in practice existing approaches can only be applied to fairly small formulae, containing at most a few hundred variables. This paper describes two novel approaches for the compilation of non-clausal formulae either with prime implicants or implicates, that is based on propositional Satisfiability (SAT) solving. These novel algorithms also find application when computing all prime implicates of a CNF formula. The proposed approach is shown to allow the compilation of non-clausal formulae of size significantly larger than existing approaches.
Effect of Water Nutrient Pollution on Long-Term Corrosion of 90:10 Copper Nickel Alloy

Due to their good corrosion resistance, copper and copper alloys such as 90:10 Cu-Ni are used extensively in high-quality marine and industrial piping systems and also in marine, urban, and industrial environments. Their corrosion loss and pitting behaviour tends to follow a bi-modal trend rather than the classic power law. Field data for 90:10 copper nickel immersed in natural seawater are used to explore the effect of water pollution and in particular the availability of critical nutrients for microbiologically induced corrosion. It is shown, qualitatively, that increased dissolved inorganic nitrogen increases corrosion predominantly in the second, long-term, mode of the model. Other, less pronounced, influences are salinity and dissolved oxygen concentration.