Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cooperative Task Allocation for Multi-Robot Systems Based on Multi-Objective Ant Colony System

This paper proposes a novel multi-objective ant colony system (MOACS) approach to solve the cooperative task allocation problem of multi-robot systems. The task allocation problem is formulated as a multi-objective multiple traveling salesman problem (MTSP). The objectives are to minimize the total and maximum cost of the robotic vehicles so that the workload of each vehicle could be balanced. The time cost matrices of the salesmen are different and asymmetric due to the different flight speeds of vehicles and executing time of tasks. Based on the single-objective ant colony system (ACS), a novel solution construction method and a novel pheromone update rule are proposed. At each step in the solution construction phase, the ant with minimum cost has the biggest chance to add an unassigned task to balance the workload of each vehicle, while the ant with maximum cost also has a bigger chance than any other ants to add an unassigned task to find better Pareto front. The minimum value of the pheromone is limited in the pheromone update phase, which is helpful in avoiding fast convergence and local optima. Extensive simulation results suggest that the proposed MOACS has better performance and effectiveness than the existing non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) and multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO). Hardware-in-the-loop experiments on multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) also show that compared with NSGA-II and MOPSO, the maximum and total flight distance of the UAVs with the proposed MOACS are decreased by up to 28.46% and 26.34%, respectively, while the maximum and total time used to finish all tasks are decreased by up to 23.86% and 17.94%.
A Wideband High-Voltage Power Amplifier Post-Linearizer for Medical Ultrasound Transducers

The medical ultrasound transducer is a principal component in ultrasound systems, as it significantly influences system performance. The high-voltage power amplifier (HVPA) is the key ultrasound transmitter component and interfaces with the medical ultrasound transducer. Therefore, the performance of the HVPA critically affects the echo signal quality of the ultrasound transducer. As they are inherently non-linear devices, harmonic distortion of echo signals generated by the ultrasound transducers would critically deteriorate the echo signal quality in ultrasound systems. The primary aim of this research is to integrate a novel post-linearizer into the HVPA to suppress harmonic distortion in medical ultrasound transducers. Moreover, this study is based on the assumption that linearizing the HVPA could reduce the harmonic distortion components of the echo signals. The developed HVPA with post-linearizer was tested in an ultrasound microscopy system in order to demonstrate the harmonic suppression capability on the echo signal generated by the ultrasound transducer. When 10 MHz, 5-cycle, 26 dBm input power was sent to the HVPA with and without the post-linearizer circuits, the measured second-, third-, fourth- and fifth- harmonic distortions of a 10 MHz transducer with the post-linearizer (−13.11 dB, −10.81 dB, −16.33 dB, and −22.78 dB) were suppressed to a greater degree than those of the same transducer without the post-linearizer (−4.58 dB, −8.87 dB, −10.51 dB, and −15.31 dB). Therefore, we conclude that the addition of the post-linearizer to the HVPA is a potentially useful electronic technique for improving echo signal quality in medical ultrasound transducers.
The Best of Two Worlds: A Systematic Review on Combining Real and Virtual Experiments in Science Education

Conducting experiments fosters conceptual understanding in science education. In various studies, combinations of real (hands-on) and virtual (computer-simulated) experiments have been shown to be especially helpful for gaining conceptual understanding. The present systematic review, based on 42 experimental studies, focuses on the following: (1) What is the relative effectiveness of combining real and virtual experiments compared with a single type of experimentation? (2) Which sequence of real and virtual experiments is most effective? The results indicate that (1) in most cases combinations of real and virtual experiments promote conceptual understanding better than a single type of experimentation, and (2) there is no evidence for the superiority of a particular sequence. We conclude that for combining real and virtual experiments, apart from the individual affordances and the learning objectives of the different experiment types, especially their specific function for the learning task must be considered.
A Shared Control Design for Steering Assistance System Considering Driver Behaviors

With the rapid development of advanced driver assistance systems, driver-automation cooperative control becomes more challenging due to the uncertainty of driver behaviors. To this end, this paper proposes a shared control approach to assist drivers in path-tracking and collision avoidance. A high-fidelity CarSim vehicle model embedded driver simulator is built to collect the driver data, based on which the normalized steering angle input and the time to collision are defined to quantify the driving performance. Then, these performance indices are employed to develop the fuzzy controller and determine the control authority for the steering assistance system (SAS). A multi-constraints model predictive control is designed to follow the desired path, and simultaneously ensure the vehicle stability. Different from the traditional constraints handling method, the state constraint is transformed into the input constraint considering the nonlinearity. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified with two less experienced drivers. The test results show that the path-tracking performance and vehicle stability can be guaranteed with less control effort.
Accumulated litter, nutrient stock and decomposition in an Atlantic Forest fragment

Litter dynamics is one of the fundamental processes for the growth and maintenance of native forest fragments, being considered the main pathway for nutrient cycling in forests. Therefore, studies on accumulated litter and nutrient content provide information for a better understanding of nutrient dynamics. The aim of the study was to evaluate leaf litter and nutrient stock in different seasons and the instantaneous rate of decomposition in an Atlantic Forest Fragment over two years. Litter sampling was carried out in 12 permanent plots with dimensions of 20 m x 50 m. Litter dry mass and nutrient concentration were determined. The average annual accumulation of litter was 5269 kg ha-1. There was no statistically significant difference in the amount of litter between seasons. There was a statistically significant difference in the contents of N, P, K Ca and Mg between the different seasons. Nutrient stocks were 123.3, 92.8, 13.2, 11.8, 9.6, 3.0 kg ha-1 year-1 for Ca, N, Mg, S, K and P respectively. The total of nutrients in the accumulated litter was 253.7 kg ha-1 year-1. The litter renewal time was 281 days. The times required for 50% and 95% litter decomposition were 196 and 850 days. The average litter stocks, nutrients and decomposition are in line with other studies, indicating that the Atlantic Forest fragment seasonal semi-deciduous presents indicators of nutrient cycling. These results show that the ecosystem is sustainable from the point of view of cycling and nutrient release. Keywords: ecosystem functions, nutrient cycling, secondary succession.
Ultrasound Examination of Unilateral Seminoma in a Salernitano Stallion

Simple Summary An 18-year-old Salernitano stallion was presented for enlargement of the left testicle with no other clinical signs. Sonoelastographic examination showed parenchymal changes with deformation of the normal testis, appearing with an irregular profile. Unilateral orchiectomy was performed. Considering gross, microscopic and immunohistochemical findings, a definitive diagnosis of diffuse seminoma was made. Three months later, follow-up assessment showed no evidence of recurrence, preserved reproductive abilities or fertility, but did show reduced testosterone levels. Abstract An 18-year-old Salernitano stallion developed a progressive enlargement of the left testicle over eight months. An ultrasound evaluation was performed, along with a hormonal profile. A histopathological evaluation of the testis was performed after unilateral orchiectomy. On B-mode ultrasound examination, testicular parenchyma was characterized by the loss of internal structure, with the presence of multiple coalescing, nodular, well-defined and heterogeneous lesions with capsule deformity, appearing with an irregular profile. On dissection, the testicular parenchyma bulged over the cut section, confirming the increase in size. Microscopically, the lesion consisted mainly of large, densely packed, polygonal-to-round-shaped neoplastic cells. Mitotic figures were plentiful and frequently atypical; further microscopic features included apoptosis and necrosis. At immunohistochemistry, the entire neoplasm showed strong and diffuse immunolabeling for vimentin, while CD117-specific immunoreactivity was only observed in scattered clusters of neoplastic cells. Based on the gross, microscopic and IHC findings, a diagnosis of diffuse seminoma was made. Three months later, a follow-up examination showed no evidence of recurrence and the preservation of reproductive abilities. The case presented shows an unusual ultrasonographic pattern for seminoma and the basis of the correlation between the characteristics of the sonoelastographic examination and histological diagnosis.
Free to play

The first thing you notice when the educators and three and four year old children embark on their weekly walk is that the cold rainy weather just doesn't stop them. They all bundle up in jackets, hats, gloves and gumboots. This walk takes place at the Cornish Campus of St. Leonard's College in Bangholme, Victoria. The school is set on 80 hectares of natural bush setting which is home to a chook pen, orchards, a small farm, a lake, an island, a bird hide, wetlands and more.
Remote monitoring technology and servitised strategies – factors characterising the organisational application

This paper introduces factors that characterise the organisational application of remote monitoring technology (RMT) for servitised strategies. Factors were developed through in-depth case studies of four manufacturers operating in aerospace, industrial equipment, marine and transportation sector. They suggest a very complex, multi-levelled, multifaceted and circular relationship between RMT and servitisation. When unfolding this relationship we need to consider: the value proposition, nature of the product and its hierarchical position in the customer’s business, RMT functionality, type and amount of data required, and a number of other factors that either complement or constrain the use of RMT. By providing the necessary lenses, the proposed factors can help in exploring this complexity. One such exploration questions our understanding of outcome-based contracting.
A report of a South African university’s management of undergraduate nursing students’ teaching and learning following the COVID-19 interruptions

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic exposed an absence of blueprints to avert an education disaster. In South Africa, in line with Alert Level-5, adhering to lockdown restrictions, higher education institutions (HEIs) closed, necessitating the transition to online teaching and learning. The HEIs, inclusive of the nursing discipline, needed to develop comprehensive plans and a rigorous follow-up scheme in order to ensure that faculty and students made proper use of virtual platforms and simultaneously met regulatory body requirements, thus ensuring that ‘no student and faculty were left behind’. The responses varied from one HEI to another. The objective of this study was to present how a South African nursing education faculty managed teaching and learning following COVID-19-related interruptions. This included an HEI in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Donabedian’s tripartite model, comprising structure, process and outcome, provides the organising structure to present the faculty and university’s approach to meet the desired outcome of saving the 2020 academic year. The Structures’ and Processes’ components of Donabedian’s tripartite model influenced both intended and unintended outcomes. In 3 months, what might have been argued as impossible, a 4-year undergraduate nursing programme was transitioned from a traditional approach to fully virtual remote teaching and learning. Thus, the 2020 academic year was saved. Contribution This article offers guidance to HEIs on how to continue teaching and learning in contexts where education is interrupted.
What is Public Engagement and How Does it Help to Address Climate Change? A Review of Climate Communication Research

ABSTRACT This article examines the conceptualization of public engagement in research on climate communication. The review focuses on how public engagement is defined and how its relation to societal change and communication is thematized. In the majority of the reviewed work the term public engagement is used without being explicitly defined. Public engagement, communication, and societal change are approached predominantly from a psychological perspective that emphasizes personal engagement with climate change. The processes that connect what people personally think, feel, and do about climate change to the societal change required adequately to address the issue are rarely elaborated. Communication is predominantly approached as a pragmatic tool that can be used to address climate change rather than an object of theorization. The review concludes with a discussion of sociologically oriented research on climate communication.
Required Elements in tRNA for Methylation by the Eukaryotic tRNA (Guanine-N2-) Methyltransferase (Trm11-Trm112 Complex)

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae Trm11 and Trm112 complex (Trm11-Trm112) methylates the 2-amino group of guanosine at position 10 in tRNA and forms N2-methylguanosine. To determine the elements required in tRNA for methylation by Trm11-Trm112, we prepared 60 tRNA transcript variants and tested them for methylation by Trm11-Trm112. The results show that the precursor tRNA is not a substrate for Trm11-Trm112. Furthermore, the CCA terminus is essential for methylation by Trm11-Trm112, and Trm11-Trm112 also only methylates tRNAs with a regular-size variable region. In addition, the G10-C25 base pair is required for methylation by Trm11-Trm112. The data also demonstrated that Trm11-Trm112 recognizes the anticodon-loop and that U38 in tRNAAla acts negatively in terms of methylation. Likewise, the U32-A38 base pair in tRNACys negatively affects methylation. The only exception in our in vitro study was tRNAValAAC1. Our experiments showed that the tRNAValAAC1 transcript was slowly methylated by Trm11-Trm112. However, position 10 in this tRNA was reported to be unmodified G. We purified tRNAValAAC1 from wild-type and trm11 gene deletion strains and confirmed that a portion of tRNAValAAC1 is methylated by Trm11-Trm112 in S. cerevisiae. Thus, our study explains the m2G10 modification pattern of all S. cerevisiae class I tRNAs and elucidates the Trm11-Trm112 binding sites.
Enhanced heat resistance of Listeria innocua as a surrogate of Listeria monocytogenes after sublethal heat treatment

Its ability to survive under different environmental conditions makes Listeria monocytogenes a critical concern for food safety. When the microorganisms are exposed to sublethal heat treatment above their optimum growth temperature, they increase stress adaptation for further heat treatments. In order to investigate heat stress resistance of L. monocytogenes, L. innocua as a surrogate was exposed to sublethal heat at 46 °C for 30 and 60 min, prior to heat treatment at 60 °C. There was no significant difference in D60°C values between samples exposed to sublethal heat for 30 min and non-pre-heat-treated samples (control) (P > 0.05). In comparison, sublethal heat treatment for 60 min caused a significant increase in D60°C values compared to control samples (P < 0.05). Additionally, cluster analysis of mass spectra obtained from MALDI-TOF was analysed by discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) for sublethal heat treatment at 46 °C for 30 min and control group to check stress response at the proteomic level. However, differentiation of stress responses by distinct clusters was not revealing.
A Panel Data Analysis into the Impact of Regulations and Supervision on the African Banking Profitability and Risk Profile

This paper investigated the effect of banking regulations and supervision on the profitability and risk profile of banks in selected African countries over the period 2009 to 2019. The study focused on 33 banks operating across 9 African countries, namely South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Tunisia, Egypt, Namibia, Zambia, Nigeria and Ghana, as representative of the continent. It includes data from some of the major economies in the continent such as South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt to ensure that regulatory and supervisory developments in the continent are analysed appropriately. The analyses of the various interrelations were done using dynamic panel data modelling, Cointegration, and error correlation modelling approaches using Eviews statistical software. The study uses an unbalanced panel of commercial banks in the selected countries to estimate the model with both the return on equity and the return on assets as proxies for profitability. Overall, evidence shows that a well-regulated, stable and supervised banking sector is critical in the sustainable economic growth of the prospective economies. The findings of the study, however, provide an interesting outcome, in contrast to other studies, highlighting that the coefficient of the capital adequacy ratio is negative and statistically not significant to the profitability. This reflects the weak financial conditions in most African countries. The negative and statistically insignificant capital adequacy ratio could also be a reflection of the unacceptable risk profile of banks in the continent. Besides the literature reflecting that adjustment in the inflation rate improves banks’ profitability, this study contrasts with this view, a further reflection of the uniqueness of the banks operating environment in the continent. This output cautions banks in Africa on the profile of risks that they should take as this could impact negatively on their profitability during periods of increasing inflation. This again offers important policy implications for regulators of banks and policymakers in Africa regarding the regulations and supervisory frameworks that relate to on boarding of clients and management of the loan portfolios.
Resonant Tunneling and Two‐dimensional Gate Transistors

In this chapter, a new type of field-effect transistors is considered with a gate and a channel on a basis of two-dimensional systems of carriers. The key point of the device is that the systems are different. In particular, they are formed in different quantum wells or valleys of the carriers spectrum. Due to this difference, the coherent tunneling is reduced and inelastic tunneling requires additional excitations with significant momentum and energy. This decreases the tunneling rate significantly. For example, the intervalley tunneling rate is less than intravalley that in 9 orders of magnitude in GaAs/AlAs heterostructures. The two-dimensional character also can decrease the tunnel probability in a wide voltage range. Influence of further miniaturization will be discussed for the new types of the transistors.
A Comparative Study of Bot Detection Techniques With an Application in Twitter Covid-19 Discourse

Bot Detection is crucial in a world where Online Social Networks (OSNs) play a pivotal role in our lives as public communication channels. This task becomes highly relevant in crises like the Covid-19 pandemic when there is a growing risk of proliferation of automated accounts designed to produce misinformation content. To address this issue, we first introduce a comparison between supervised Bot Detection models using Data Selection. The techniques used to develop the bot detection models use features such as the tweets’ metadata or accounts’ Digital Fingerprint. The techniques implemented in this work proved effective in detecting bots with different behaviors. Social Fingerprint-based methods have been found to be effective with bots that behave in a coordinated manner. Furthermore, all these approaches have produced excellent results compared to the Botometer v3. Second, we present and discuss a case study related to the Covid-19 pandemic that analyses the differences in the discourse between bots and humans on Twitter, a platform used worldwide to express opinions and engage in dialogue in a public arena. While bots and humans generally express themselves alike, the tweets’ content and sentiment analysis reveal some dissimilitudes, especially in tweets concerning President Trump. When the discourse switches to pandemic management by Trump, sentiment-related values display a drastic difference, showing that tweets generated by bots have a predominantly negative attitude. However, according to our findings, while automated accounts are numerous and active in discussing controversial issues, they usually do not seem to increase exposure to negative and inflammatory content for human users.
Brazilian phonoaudiology telepractice before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose: to analyze the use of digital resources by Brazilian phonoaudiologists before and during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: cross-sectional study carried out with a representative sample of Brazilian phonoaudiologists, with at least one year of practical experience. An online question naire consisting of 28 questions divided into eight sections was prepared. Data were analyzed and are reported as absolute and relative frequency regarding the variables: respondent’s age, highest degree and years of experience; weekly working hours; region of the country; type of service and area of expertise; use of digital means before and during the pandemic and willingness to use the same kind of resource after the pandemic. Results: telehealth technologies were used by 90% of phonoaudiologists in Brazil since before the COVID-19 pandemic. A change in the profile of technologies used was observed: after the pandemic, videoconferences gained more use in contact with patients compared to the pre-pandemic period even though contact via mobile phone and instant messaging applications are the most used, both before and during the pandemic. Conclusion: the study’s findings demonstrate that 90% of phonoaudiologists who answered the questionnaire in Brazil used and still make use of telehealth technologies to contact patients.
TAGE-SC-L Branch Predictors Again

Outline In this study, we explore the performance limits of these TAGE-SC-L predictors for respectively 8Kbytes and 64Kbytes of storage budget. For a 8KB storage budget, our submitted predictor used most of its storage budget on the TAGE predictor, features a very small loop predictor LP and a neural statistical cor-rector exploiting global history path and very limited local history. The submitted 8Kbytes predictor achieves 4.991 MPKI on the CBP-5 train traces. With a larger storage budget, one can invest more significant storage budget in the adjunct predictors. The submitted 512Kbits TAGE-SC-L predictor features a TAGE predictor, a loop predictor LP and a quite complex (57 Kbits) neural statistical corrector that exploits various form of local histories , global branch history, IMLI counter [12]. The submitted 64KB TAGE-SC-L predictor achieves 3.986 MPKI on the CBP-5 train traces.