Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
QuadricSLAM: Dual Quadrics as SLAM Landmarks

Research in Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) is increasingly moving towards richer world representations involving objects and high level features that enable a semantic model of the world for robots, potentially leading to a more meaningful set of robot-world interactions. Many of these advances are grounded in state-of-the-art computer vision techniques primarily developed in the context of image-based benchmark datasets, leaving several challenges to be addressed in adapting them for use in robotics. In this paper, we derive a SLAM formulation that uses dual quadrics as 3D landmark representations, exploiting their ability to compactly represent the size, position and orientation of an object, and show how 2D bounding boxes (such as those typically obtained from visual object detection systems) can directly constrain the quadric parameters via a novel geometric error formulation. We develop a sensor model for deep-learned object detectors that addresses the challenge of partial object detections often encountered in robotics applications, and demonstrate how to jointly estimate the camera pose and constrained dual quadric parameters in factor graph based SLAM with a general perspective camera.
Indie or Mainstream? Tensions and Nuances between the Alternative and the Mainstream in Indie Games

L’emergencia dels indie games com a producte comercial des de l’any 2008 es un repte fonamental per als estudis contemporanis del videojoc. Quan encara no tenim una clara definicio de l’ indie game , la popularitat i la comercialitat d’aquests videojocs fan que sigui mes complex conceptualitzar-los. Lluny de constituir un model de videojoc «pur», completament separat de l’esfera mainstream , els indie games presenten sovint hibridacions i ambiguitats entre el que es alternatiu i el que es predominant. En aquest sentit, aquest article preten questionar la conceptualitzacio nitida dels indie games com un genere oposat als videojocs mainstream , explorant les multiples tensions i matisos entre el que es alternatiu i el que es predominant que es poden identificar en els processos de produccio, la cultura i el disseny dels videojocs indie . La primera part de l’article se centra en aspectes de produccio i distribucio, com tambe en la construccio cultural i la legitimacio artistica de l’ indie game . A continuacio, s’analitza el disseny dels indie games inspirat en Kellner (1995) i basat en la retorica procedimental (Bogost, 2006; Flanagan i Nissenbaum, 2014). Aquesta analisi s’aplica als indie games que tenen exit comercial, considerant-los un objecte d’estudi particularment interessant per a explorar i entendre la cultura contemporania per mitja de les friccions entre cultura hegemonica i contracultura, progressisme i conservadorisme, capitalisme i anticapitalisme, i la manera com es conceben aquestes nocions.
Exhumation of the Inyo Mountains, California: Implications for the timing of extension along the western boundary of the Basin and Range Province and distribution of dextral fault slip rates across the eastern California shear zone

New geologic mapping, tectonic geomorphologic, 10Be terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide, and (U‐Th)/He zircon and apatite thermochronometric data provide the first numerical constraints on late Cretaceous to late Quaternary exhumation of the Inyo Mountains and vertical slip and horizontal extension rates across the eastern Inyo fault zone, California. The east‐dipping eastern Inyo fault zone bounds the eastern flank of the Inyo Mountains, a prominent geomorphic feature within the western Basin and Range Province and eastern California shear zone. (U‐Th)/He zircon and apatite thermochronometry yield age patterns across the range that are interpreted as indicating: (1) two episodes of moderate to rapid exhumation associated with Laramide deformation during the late Cretaceous/early Tertiary; (2) development of a slowly eroding surface during a prolonged period from early Eocene to middle Miocene; (3) rapid cooling, exhumation, and initiation of normal slip along the eastern Inyo fault zone, accommodated by westward tilting of the Inyo Mountains block, at 15.6 Ma; and (4) rapid cooling, exhumation, and renewed normal slip along the eastern Inyo fault zone at 2.8 Ma. Fault slip continues today as indicated by fault scarps that cut late Pleistocene alluvial fan surfaces. The second episode of normal slip at 2.8 Ma also signals onset of dextral slip along the Hunter Mountain fault, yielding a Pliocene dextral slip rate of 3.3 ± 1.0 mm/a, where a is years. Summing this dextral slip rate with estimated dextral slip rates along the Owens Valley, Death Valley, and Stateline faults yields a net geologic dextral slip rate across the eastern California shear zone of 9.3 + 2.2/–1.4 to 9.8 + 1.4/–1.0 mm/a.
Inhibition of hepatitis B virus in HepG 2 . 2 . 15 by indirubin through suppression of a polypyrimidine tract-binding protein

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection continues to be a public health burden worldwide. With the current treatment strategy, a limited number of patients achieve “functional cure”. There is a need for novel therapeutic approaches that enable resolution of HBV. In our study, HepG2.2. 15 cell lines were used as an in vitro cellular model to assess the antiviral activity of indirubin. The cytotoxicity of indirubin was detected by 3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyl-2-H-tetrazolium bromide. HBsAg and HBeAg in the cell culture were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and HBV DNA secretion was measured by real-time fluorescence quantification PCR. The intracellular HBsAg was detected. To demonstrated the mechanisms underlying the anti-HBV activity of indirubin, western blotting and qRT-PCR were performed to detected the expression levels of a polypyrimidine tract-binding protein (PTB). The role of indirubin from Isatisindigotica extracts presented low cytotoxicity. The results demonstrated indirubin effectively reduced the secretion of HBV antigen (HBsAg and HBeAg), and suppressed HBV DNA secretion. In addition, indirubin significantly reduced intracellular HBsAg. Furthermore, indirubin significantly reduced the protein level of PTB. This study is the first to demonstrate that indirubin possesses anti-viral ability and the mechanism may be through down regulating the polypyrimidine tract-binding protein. It could be used as a potential treatment against HBV infection targeting the host factor.
Ten Years of EMU: Convergence, Divergence and New Policy Priorities

As the tenth anniversary of EMU is approaching, a debate is underway as to whether the single currency has promoted or hindered convergence among the countries of the Euro Area. On the one hand, there is wide agreement that asymmetric shocks have subsided after the creation of the single currency, but if one moves to examine the catching-up process between the more and less affluent countries of the Euro Area, the evidence is waning. Another worrying development in the Euro Area is the emergence of unprecedented current account deficits in the southern Euro Area countries, while the northern ones enjoy substantial surpluses. To counter these new imbalances, new well-framed policy priorities are required in the Euro Area that put more emphasis on convergence and competitiveness than before.
Field Research Strategies in Urban Legal Studies

The subject matter of field research in urban legal studies is as broad or as narrow as we choose to define the field. The chief concern of this paper is research strategies. What type of research is a law school capable of doing? What type of research is appropriate-for a professional school that is part of a university and for a student body that is growing increasingly bored and frustrated at what it regards as an irrelevant curriculum? In this paper, I plan to discuss three types of research strategies: (a) law-in-action; (b) the scientific study of law; and (c) action-demonstration. I realize that there are considerable difficulties with this classification. All of the approaches are empirical in the sense that the primary focus is what is actually going on in the real world. In practice, the three strategies are quite similar in that they often use the same methodological techniques and are used interchangeably for particular problems. Law-in-action and the scientific study of law, for instance, live comfortably within the field of sociology of law. Indeed, perhaps it is more accurate to consider the variations between these strategies relatively minor, as differences in degree, rather than to classify the strategies as separate approaches. For the purpose of his paper, however, I do want to treat the three strategies separately, giving polar or "pure" examples, since I believe that each possesses different strengths and weaknesses, requires different sorts of training, and raises somewhat distinct issues for legal research.
Advances in reproductive control technology

It is clear that an inexpensive and non-surgical method of permanent contraception would be of enormous benefit in reducing these populations. Reproductive control is considered a more sensible, humane and ethical management approach than allowing young to be born and then later spending valuable resources to capture and euthanase them. However, the ethics of using a particular method of population control will depend on its humaneness, its safety and its effectiveness compared to other available methods. These factors have to be weighed against euthanasia or just doing nothing.
Memory Clinic Model for Underserved Populations in a Patient-Centered Medical Home

Memory clinics are lacking in the state of Hawaii, access to dementia assessment is limited. The objective of this study was to establish a culturally appropriate model of Memory Clinic in a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) and assess the impact on healthcare utilization. An inter-professional team of geriatrician, geriatric medicine fellows, gerontologist, psychiatrist, lawyer, interpreters, and dietician provided comprehensive dementia assessment in a group visit setting. This clinic was conducted once a month in partnership with the geriatric medicine fellowship continuity clinic. The goals of the Memory Clinic were comprehensive dementia assessment and caregiver empowerment irrespective of the ability to pay. The Memory Clinic was conducted in a federally qualified health center setting of a PCMH. Over a period of two years, 51 patients were seen. Average age was 75 years and 67% were women. Seventy-five percent were Filipino ethnicity followed by Micronesians, Samoans and other Asians. Fifty percent had completed advance care directives, with copies filed in the electronic health record. Sixty-five percent had Medicare; of these 27% had both Medicare and Medicaid. There was no significant reduction in emergency room or hospital visits among the participants. The rate of foster home or care home placement did not increase significantly over time, with 87.5% of seniors were still able to live at home. The Memory Clinic in a primary care setting improved access to dementia care. Interprofessional teams in a PCMH are highly effective in care coordination for persons with mild cognitive impairment and dementia.
Paradigm as a method in the political science

Following Thomas Kuhn’s notions toward fundamental sciences has been very useful for scientists and his notions presented a new perception of the science progress and forgetting some of the scientific frameworks. When Thomas Kohn paid attention to the history of science, he noticed that there was another possible meaning for science rather than its traditional meaning. Since humanities confront various methods, theories, and scientific laws, the political science passes its scientific progress process along with other sciences. In between, paradigm plays an important role in scientific evolutions as a scientific method. Social and political thinkers saved politics from limits of positivism with the help of Kuhn’s paradigm. Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm is a new method to know sciences, therefore, the process of accepting a paradigm in the political science is accepted with considerations. In fact, the political science has taken a step from pre-science period to normal science, and then from normal science to evolutionary science. In the present paper, the processes of producing political science, accepting paradigms, and turning it into a scientific method have been studied. The purpose is to determine paradigm as a methodology not only for fundamental sciences but also for other sciences.
1 THE IMPACT OF ALLIANCE MANAGEMENT CAPABILITIES ON ALLIANCE ATTRIBUTES AND PERFORMANCE : A LITERATURE

The literature on alliances has identified a variety of inter-firm antecedents of performance, including information and knowledge sharing among partners, shared partner understanding, and a focus on collective objectives. Recent studies have focused on alliance management capabilities (AMC)—firms’ abilities to capture, share, store, and apply alliance management knowledge—as an important antecedent of performance. In this paper, we review 90 studies on AMC and make two important contributions to the literature. First, our review provides an overview of and classification scheme for the different types of AMC to better organise the diverse empirical findings that have been presented in the literature. In our novel classification, we distinguish between general and partner-specific AMC and between AMC stored within the firm and within the alliance. Second, consistent with the dynamic capabilities perspective, we offer a more detailed understanding of why AMC improve performance by highlighting the intermediate impact of AMC on alliance attributes. In particular, our review demonstrates how the different categories of AMC influence alliances in terms of information and knowledge sharing among partners, shared partner understanding, and the pursuit of collective goals. Our review also demonstrates that these attributes improve performance. We note promising avenues for future empirical research that involve combining our classification scheme with research on the impact of AMC on alliance attributes and performance.
Nonlinear Modeling and Neural Network Analysis for EEG Brain-computer Interface

This research explores some of the most recent advances in Electroencephalography-based Braincomputer interface algorithms, and provides some benchmark data with which to compare algorithms given the same data constraints. The three algorithms with focus in this research are filter bank common spatial patterns, wavelet-based feature extractors, and convolutional neural networks. Of these methods tested, only the FBCSP algorithm provides satisfactory results, but it is hypothesized that future work regarding the other two techniques could provide better results, either separately or in conjunction with the FBCSP algorithm.
What underlies the black-white infant mortality gap ? The importance of birth weight , behavior , environment , and health care

The infant mortality rate for babies born to black mothers is over twice that of their white counterparts. This holds in the general population as well as in subgroups such as married college educated mothers. Much of the literature and policy focus attributes the racial infant mortality gap to differences in birth weight distributions (the "birth weight hypothesis"), because mortality rates conditional on birth weight are similar across races and black infants tend to have lighter birth weights. I use a set of decomposition exercises to determine the importance of birth weight, socioeconomic status, health behavior-, and health care-related variables in explaining the mortality gap. Differences in socioeconomic and prenatal care covariates explain a small fraction of the black-white birth weight gap but more than 80% of the mortality gap. This, along with other evidence, indicates that the birth weight hypothesis is not a sufficient explanation for the black-white mortality gap. There is greater scope for policy intervention than the hypothesis would suggest.
How microsatellite diversity helps to understand the domestication history of melon.

Melon (Cucumis melo L.) population structure remains incomplete because of the sampling weakness in some botanical groups and for wild melons. The purpose of this study was to assess the genetic subdivisions in melon germplasm using a more representative sampling of the worldwide diversity and to investigate the localization of melon domestication and diversification. To reach this objective, a set of 20 microsatellite markers was used to genotype 713 accessions including 635 cultivated and feral melons, 66 wild melons and 12 relative Cucumis sp. A two-level structure in melon was revealed using population genetics statistics, clustering methods with genetic distances and Bayesian assignment method. Accessions split into two groups, fitting very well the subspecies melo and agrestis. Agrestis group was clearly substructured according to geographical origins, with African, Far-Eastern and Indian subgroups. The substructure of melo group was less resolute and the four clusters obtained grouped together several botanical groups originating from Europe, America, Middle East or Central Asia. African and Asian wild Cucumis melo were assigned to two distinct clusters in agrestis group, each with cultivated melons from the same respective geographical origin, suggesting that melon was domesticated twice. The domestication of wild African melon would have had a weak impact on the diversification of cultivated melon, producing only Sudanese tibish and seinat types. The domestication of wild Asian melon, probably in India, would have first produced Indian cultivated melons and then be at the origin of Far-Eastern melons. Introduction of Eastern melons in the West and successive breeding activities may have then produced melo ssp. These findings are consistent with recent data on the Cucumis genus structure and origin, and with the high frequency of resistance genes found in melon Indian accessions. Cucurbitaceae 2012, Proceedings of the Xth EUCARPIA meeting on genetics and breeding of Cucurbitaceae (eds. Sari, Solmaz and Aras) Antalya (Turkey), October 15-18th, 2012
Varying image description tasks: spoken versus written descriptions

Automatic image description systems are commonly trained and evaluated on written image descriptions. At the same time, these systems are often used to provide spoken descriptions (e.g. for visually impaired users) through apps like TapTapSee or Seeing AI. This is not a problem, as long as spoken and written descriptions are very similar. However, linguistic research suggests that spoken language often differs from written language. These differences are not regular, and vary from context to context. Therefore, this paper investigates whether there are differences between written and spoken image descriptions, even if they are elicited through similar tasks. We compare descriptions produced in two languages (English and Dutch), and in both languages observe substantial differences between spoken and written descriptions. Future research should see if users prefer the spoken over the written style and, if so, aim to emulate spoken descriptions.
A Fast and Shorter Path Finding Method for Maze Images by Image Processing Techniques and Graph Theory

There are a lot of studies about shortest path algorithms. In the previous study, we showed that an A* search algorithm outperformed Dijkstra's to solve maze in terms of a search time. In this paper, to solve maze more quickly, we propose a fast and shorter path finding method based on the image processing techniques and graph theory. The experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to an A* search algorithm. In particular, the proposed method is more effective when the maze image size is large. 
Trophic-level determinants of biomass accumulation in marine ecosystems

Metrics representative of key ecosystem processes are required for monitoring and understanding system dynamics, as a function of ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM). Useful properties of such indicators should include the ability to capture the range of variation in ecosystem responses to a range of pressures, including anthropogenic (e.g. exploitation pressures) and environmental (e.g. climate pressures), as well as indirect effects (e.g. those related to food web processes). Examining modifications in ecological processes induced by structural changes, however, requires caution because of the inherent uncertainty, long feedback times, and highly nonlinear ecosystem responses to external perturbations. Yet trophodynamic indicators are able to capture important changes in marine ecosystem function as community structures have been altered. One promising family of such metrics explores the changing biomass accumulation in the middle trophic levels (TLs) of marine ecosystems. Here we compared cumulative biomass curves across TLs for a range of northern hemisphere temperate and boreal ecosystems. Our results con- firm that sigmoidal patterns are consistent across different ecosystems and, on a broad scale, can be used to detect factors that most influence shifts in the cumulative biomassTL curves. We con- clude that the sigmoidal relationship of biomass accumulation curves over TLs could be another possible indicator useful for the implementation of EBFM.
Insights into the process of changing sourcing strategies

Purpose – The aim of this article is to identify the motivations driving the process of changing sourcing strategy from single sourcing to multiple sourcing or vice versa.Design/methodology/approach – Ten cases of sourcing strategy change were investigated. A qualitative research method is used to uncover the richness of these change processes.Findings – Most of the advantages and disadvantages stated in the literature were confirmed. Identical objectives (cost cutting and quality improvement) were present in all cases, although changes took place in opposite directions. Contextual factors, such as standardisation and supplier base reduction efforts shape purchasing strategy more than previously thought. The dynamic nature of the product lifecycle also seems to be an important determinant.Research limitations/implications – Although the results of qualitative case study research can only be “generalised” in a limited way, the case details help to identify the dynamics of sourcing strategy switches and to .
Healthy Bangladeshi individuals having lower high-density lipoprotein cholesterol level compared to age-, gender-, and body mass index-matched Japanese individuals: A pilot study -

Background: Bangladeshi population is characterized by highest mortality and morbidity due to coronary artery diseases (CADs). Though some determinants of CAD have been identified, they were not completely elucidated. In this study, we aimed to compare high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol between Bangladeshi and Japanese adults to explore the cause of higher CAD prevalence in Bangladeshi population. Materials and Methods: Fasting blood samples were collected from 34 apparently healthy Bangladeshi adults and age-, sex-, and body mass index (BMI)-matched 34 apparently healthy Japanese adults. Fasting plasma glucose, total cholesterol (TC), HDL cholesterol and triglycerides (TGs), and other biochemical parameters were measured by standard spectrophotometric methods, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol was calculated by Friedewalds formula. Results: The mean age of Bangladeshi and Japanese adults were 35.21 ± 7.83 and 34.77 ± 8.12 years, respectively. The mean values of TC, HDL cholesterol, TGs, and LDL cholesterol were 183 ± 36 versus 182 ± 31 mg/dL (P = 0.911), 43 ± 8 versus 53 ± 11 mg/dL (P = 0.001), 111 ± 25 versus 110 ± 27 mg/dL (P = 0.966), and 150 ± 116 versus 95 ± 68 mg/dL (P = 0.021) in Bangladeshi versus Japanese adults, respectively. HDL cholesterol in Bangladeshi adults was 10.3 mg/dL lower compared to Japanese adults. Conclusion: This study reveals that HDL cholesterol is lower in Bangladeshi adults compared to Japanese adults, which may be partly associated with higher CAD in this population.