Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Approach for Representing Maps in SLAM Based on Grid Maps and Sparse Matrices

Graphs and matrices are widely used to represent maps in solutions for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Space representation is crucial for map creation, finding the shortest path, planning a trajectory or route, tracking landmarks, etc. The choice of the data structure can present disadvantages such as more memory consumption when using matrices, or, the need of a transforming function to represent a map when graphs (as structure) are applied as structure. This paper propose a representing map using a storing structure that allows dynamic growth and optimization of memory consumption in SLAM. The so-called MPTE-SLAM structure, proposed here, suggests the usage of a sparse matrix of occupancy matrices to represent a map for SLAM. The goal of this approach is to reduce the use of memory (if compared with traditional metric maps also) also having a compact representation suitable for path planning and other tasks for autonomous robots; without the need of a transforming function (if compared with graph based solutions that return a map). This approach allows the addition and updating of values of the sub-matrices quickly and with dynamic growth on the overall map within the structure in the same way graphs permit; also it is suitable for a real-time implementation of solutions for SLAM. For implementation and testing, a non-holonomic mobile robot in an indoor environment was used. The final results showed that the MPTE-SLAM structure uses less memory than metric maps when optimal sub-matrices sizes are applied. Through experimentation an optimal size for submatrices (10x10) was determined; this size yielded a memory consumption less than 4.3 GB in all test experiments; also, it was observed that this approach also has dynamic growth in the structure plus the no-loss of its metric nature which gives it an advantage over graph-based representations.
Implementing Security and Trust in IoT/M2M using Middleware

Machine to Machine (M2M) a sub area of Internet of Things (IoT) will link billions of devices or things distributed around the world using the Internet. These devices when connected exchange information obtained from the environment such as temperature or humidity from industrial or residential control process. Information Security (IS) and Trust are one of the fundamental points for users and the industry to accept the use of these devices with Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability and Authenticity. The key reason is that most of these devices use wireless media especially in residential and smart city environments. The overall goal of this work is to implement a Middleware Security to improve Safety and Security between the control network devices used in IoT/M2M and the Internet for residential or industrial environments. This implementation has been tested with different protocols as CoAP and MQTT, a microcomputer with free Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) implemented in a Raspberry Pi Gateway Access Point (RGAP), Network Address Translator (NAT), IPTable firewall and encryption is part of this implementation for secure data transmission
Multi-UAV Cooperative Target Tracking Method using sparse A search and Standoff tracking algorithms

To solve the problem of cooperative target tracking considering ground moving-targets and threats, a novel approach for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (multi-UAV) cooperative target tracking using sparse $A^{*}$ search and Standoff tracking algorithms is proposed. Firstly, sparse $A^{*}$ search algorithm is introduced to generate multiple paths for UAVs subject to the threats and UAV kinematics constraints. And multi-UAV rendezvous at a predefined formation nearby the moving-target. Then, considering the target tracking distance and relative phase angle constraints, the Standoff tracking algorithm is utilized to generate cooperative tracking paths. Simulation results demonstrate that the multi-UAV cooperative target tracking method can effectively avoid threats and achieve persistent moving-target tracking and monitoring in the mission areas.
Smart Lighting with Autonomous Color Tunability

Smart lighting technologies are very important for high illumination quality and energy-efficiency. In this article, lighting performance controlled by color sensor module has been studied. With simplified system architecture and effective algorithm, the module can be used to obtain precise color and light characteristics for a target area, which can help to tune the specific color rendering property and the intensity of illuminance to an appropriate level automatically for different lighting scenarios. The balance between color preference and color fidelity can be achieved easily with suitable transformation program, and the illuminance information offers a route for governing lighting in high energy-efficiency.
Programming Teaching Using Flowcharts in a Simulated Environment Focused on Introducing Practical OBR

Educational robotics is an approach that uses robotics as a mean to aid in the learning process, fundamentally of more abstract concepts. In the practical OBR – the Brazilian Robotics Olympiad - students from ages 6 to 18 participate by constructing/programming robots, using concepts of physics, mathematics, and programming, in order to understand complex and abstract concepts. In this paper, an approach to aid in introductory programming courses, focused on students that had never had any contact with computer programming, is presented. The approach presents programming concepts using icons and "flowcharts", and a 3D robotics simulator (V-REP), that has free educational use. The Robotic Operating System (ROS) is also used. The programs to control the robot are developed by graphically constructing fluxograms on the visual editor, and then following the execution of programs using the simulated robot, step by step. Experiments were performed with students in order to evaluate the proposed approach, and the students found the proposal intuitive and easy to understand.
Investigation of emission illusion at the angle

Transformation optics devices that create an illusion of a radiation point source at a some distance from a real source are used to confuse radar detectors. Permittivity and permeability of material which stretches radiation source along angular co-ordinate are calculated. Numerical simulation of illusion device was made using the finite element method and the existence of two visible illusions is proved. Influence of material properties of the illusion device and the source position on the illusion effect are studied.
Design and Analysis of CMOS Low Power OTA for Biomedical Applications

This proposed work contributes to the design of Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA) which is used in Cardiac Implantable Medical Devices (IMD) for monitoring heart activities. Nowadays there is a big need in designing a low power and low noise OTA to extend the life time of primary battery. This work proposes the design of amplifier for cardiac Implantable Device, which is used for monitoring the heart pulses with high gain, low noise and low power consumption the designing of low power OTA benefits from voltage to current conversion to achieve a very low power, low noise and high gain for IMD. The proposed OTA is designed in a 45nm CMOS process, the simulation shows that the frequency of the OTA is adjustable in the range of 20KHz and it has the capability of measuring the gain in 51dB, while consuming only 11. 9μW power from 1-V single power supply and an input referred noise of 1. 22μVrms, The proposed OTA's performance has satisfied the required parameters and layout has been designed which is highly suitable for Cardiac IMD.
Biochemical Characterization of a New Oligoalginate Lyase and Its Biotechnological Application in Laminaria japonica Degradation

Oligoalginate lyases catalyze the degradation of alginate polymers and oligomers into monomers, a prerequisite for biotechnological utilizing alginate. In this study, we report the cloning, expression and biochemical characterization of a new polysaccharide lyase (PL) family 17 oligoalginate lyase, OalV17, from the marine bacterium Vibrio sp. SY01. The recombinant OalV17 showed metal ion independent and detergent resistant properties. Furthermore, OalV17 is an exo-type enzyme that yields alginate monomers as the main product and recognizes alginate disaccharides as the minimal substrate. Site-directed mutagenesis followed by kinetic analysis indicates that the residue Arg231 plays a key role in substrate specificity. Furthermore, a rapid and efficient alginate monomer-producing method was developed directly from Laminaria japonica. These results suggest that OalV17 is a potential candidate for saccharification of alginate.
Robust adaptive attitude control for non-rigid spacecraft with quantized control input

In this paper, an adaptive backstepping control scheme is proposed for attitude tracking of non-rigid spacecraft in the presence of input quantization, inertial uncertainty and external disturbance. The control signal for each actuator is quantized by sector-bounded quantizers, including the logarithmic quantizer and the hysteresis quantizer. By describing the impact of quantization in a new affine model and introducing a smooth function and a novel form of the control signal, the influence caused by input quantization and external disturbance is properly compensated for. Moreover, with the aid of the adaptive control technique, our approach can achieve attitude tracking without the explicit knowledge of inertial parameters. Unlike existing attitude control schemes for spacecraft, in this paper, the quantization parameters can be unknown, and the bounds of inertial parameters and disturbance are also not needed. In addition to proving the stability of the closed-loop system, the relationship between the control performance and design parameters is analyzed. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Morphological Determinants of Carbon Nanomaterial-Induced Amyloid Peptide Self-Assembly

Hybridizing carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) with amyloid fibrils—the ordered nanostructures self-assembled by amyloidogenic peptides—has found promising applications in bionanotechology. Understanding fundamental interactions of CNMs with amyloid peptides and uncovering the determinants of their self-assembly structures and dynamics are, therefore, pivotal for enriching and enabling this novel class of hybrid nanomaterials. Here, we applied atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the self-assembly of two amyloid peptides—the amyloidogenic core residues 16-22 of amyloid-β (Aβ16−22) and the non-amyloid-β core of α-synuclein (NACore68−78)—on the surface of carbon nanotubes (CNT) with different sizes and chirality. Our computational results showed that with small radial CNTs, both types of peptides could form β-sheets wrapping around the nanotube surface into a supercoiled morphology. The angle between β-strands and nanotube axes in the supercoil structure depended mainly on the peptide sequence and CNT radius, but also weakly on the CNT chirality. Large radial CNTs and the extreme case of the flat graphene nanosheet, on the other hand, could nucleate amyloid fibrils perpendicular to the surface. Our results provided new insights of hybridizing CNMs with amyloid peptides and also offered a novel approach to manipulate the morphology of CNM-induced amyloid assembly by tuning the surface curvature, peptide sequence, and molecular ratio between peptides and available CNM surface area, which may be useful in engineering nanocomposites with high-order structures.
A Fast Approach for the Structural Design of Frame-Like Fbar Based on 2d Plate Theory

In recent years, film bulk acoustic wave resonators (FBARs) have been successfully utilized in almost every wireless system due to their good performance. To optimize the working performance of FBAR, frame-like structure was previously proposed to suppress the resonances of so-called spurious modes. Another aspect that has impact on the working performance of FBAR is the undesired coupling modes, which were rarely studied due to the lack of proper theoretical tools. In this paper, a fast approach for the structural design of frame-like FBARs is proposed with the use of two-dimensional plate theory. The widely used state-vector approach is applied here and both free and forced vibration results are obtained. The structure size of frame-like FBAR is determined through the analysis of frequency spectra and the results are compared with those obtained with 3D FEM software to ensure the accuracy of our proposed method. Mode shapes and admittance response curves show the suppression ability of spurious modes and the undesired coupling modes in the designed frame-like structure. Results in this paper show that the presented method can work as an effective tool in engineering design process.
Exploring EFs and Math Abilities in Highly Deprived Contexts

Executive functions (EFs)’ development is critically affected by childhood adversity exposure. Although recent studies underlined the deleterious effects of early life stresses on working memory (WM) and inhibitory control, they were scarcely investigated in war context especially in relation with learning abilities. In order to fill this gap, we designed a research with the aim to evaluate EFs together with early math skills. In particular, we conducted a study involving 150 children divided into three groups: 48 Yazidis (Mage = 71 months, SD = 6.59), 47 Syrian refugees (Mage = 68.77 months, SD = 7, age), and 55 Italians (Mage = 68.65 months, SD = 2.88) attending the third year of kindergarten in Italy or inserted in Psyco-Social-Support activities in Iraq. The children were evaluated with a variety of tasks assessing WM, inhibitory control, counting, digit-quantity mapping, and digit naming skills. The results indicated substantial differences both in EFs and early numerical abilities between the deprived groups and the Italian children. Data are discussed in terms of implications for children both exposed to mainstream school environments and living in socio-economically disadvantaged and deprived contexts.
An iterative algorithm for solving an initial boundary value problem of oxygen transport in brain

A non-stationary model of oxygen transport in brain is studied. The model comprises two coupled, non-linear partial differential equations describing the oxygen concentration in the blood and tissue phases. Thus, the model is the so-called continuum one, where the blood and tissue fractions occupy the same spatial domain. A priori estimates of solutions are obtained, and an iterative procedure for finding them is proposed. The convergence of this method to a unique weak solution of the problem is proven. A numerical example illustrates the theoretical analysis.
Distinctive Gene Expression Profiles and Effectors Consistent With Host Specificity in Two Formae Speciales of Marssonina brunnea

The knowledge on the host specificity of a pathogen underlying an interaction is becoming an urgent necessity for global warming. In this study, the gene expression profiles and the roles of effectors in host specificity were integrally characterized with two formae speciales, multigermtubi and monogermtubi, of a hemibiotrophic pathogen Marssonina brunnea when they were infecting respective susceptible poplar hosts. With a functional genome comparison referring to a de novo transcriptome of M. brunnea and Pathogen–Host Interaction database functional annotations, the multigermtubi strain showed abundant and significant differentially expressed unigenes (DEGs) (more than 40%) in colonizing the initial invasion stage and in the necrotrophic stage. The monogermtubi strain induced less than 10% of DEGs in the initial invasion stage but which abruptly increased to more than 80% DEGs in the necrotrophic stage. Both strains induced the least DEGs in the biotrophic stage compared to the initial invasion and necrotrophic stages. The orthologs of the effector genes Ecp6, PemG1, XEG1, ACE1, and Mg3LysM were exclusively induced by one of the two formae speciales depending on the infection stages. Some unigenes homologous to carbohydrate lytic enzyme genes, especially pectate lyases, were notably induced with multigermtubi forma specialis infection but not expressed in the monogermtubi forma specialis at an earlier infection stage. The extraordinary differences in the functional genome level between the two formae speciales of M. brunnea could be fundamental to exploring their host specificity determinant and evolution. This study also firstly provided the fungal transcriptome of the monogermtubi forma specialis for M. brunnea.
Network Servers for Multikernel OS on Manycore Systems

Manycore system hardware has evolved over time and more than 200 core systems are now available. In a manycore environment, multikernel model is best suited for ensuring performance scalability. Multikernel comprises of Light Weight Kernels (LWK) and full weight kernel (FWK). LWK provides scalability and parallelism by minimizing kernel functionality, and compute intensive functionality (such as I/O stack) can be offloaded to the FWK. However, in the case of manycore systems, as the number of LWKs increase with an increase in the application requests, performance bottlenecks can arise as FWK must handle all the requests. In this paper, we focus on the network functions and define the structure of network servers to guarantee performance when multikernel operating system is implemented in manycore environment. Network services should be created organically upon application request to support performance and should also take the core affinity into consideration so that performance in the NUMA architecture is not degraded. Such network servers will be able to provide more functions to a multikernel based operating system through the development of various servers in the future.
The Impacts of Uncertainty Stress on Mental Disorders of Chinese College Students: Evidence From a Nationwide Study

Objectives: This study aimed to examine the relationships between the types of stress and students’ mental health, to distinguish the effects of stressors on mental health problems, and to explore the important role of uncertainty stress on the development of mental disorders in a nationally representative sample of Chinese college students. Methods: A cross-sectional multistage study was conducted. Participants were 11,954 students, who were recruited from 50 Chinese universities located in 43 cities covering 23 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities across China. The Student Daily Stress Questionnaire (SDSQ) was applied to measure the different types of stress, and mental health status was measured using the 12-item Chinese Health Questionnaire (CHQ). Both unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression models were utilized in the statistical analyses. Multilevel analyses were performed to examine the variation of mental disorder at both the individual and university levels. Results: The prevalence of mental disorders was 22.8% (95% CI: 22.0–23.5%). The unadjusted models showed that age, gender, grade, major, and university location and type were the correlates of mental disorders among students. The unadjusted models developed in this research found that study stress, life stress, and uncertainty stress were positively associated with mental disorder. The multilevel logistic regression models showed that uncertainty stress was far more likely to result in students’ mental disorders than study or life stress after controlling for university level. The greater the perceived uncertainty stress, the higher the prevalence of mental disorders. Conclusion: This study provides robust evidence of the impact of uncertainty stress on mental disorders among college students. Compared with life and study stress, more attention should be given to uncertainty stress. The information from this study should be helpful when considering effective mental health policies and interventions among college students in China.
Pyrogenic Carbon Generation From Fire and Forest Restoration Treatments

Pyrogenic carbon (PyC) is a chemically stable form of carbon (C) generated during fire events and is one of the few legacies of fire recorded in soil; however, the significance of this material as a form of C storage in forest ecosystems has received only limited scientific attention, and currently relatively little is known regarding the quantity of PyC generated during forest restoration efforts that include prescribed (Rx) fire. Quantifying the rate of PyC production during fire events is essential to estimating the potential for ecosystem C storage in forest systems where wildfire is a common natural disturbance and Rx fire is used as a fuel management practice. In this paper, we report on the average mass of PyC formation during wildfire and Rx fire events in forest ecosystems through synthesizing data across 12 published studies; and we report empirical data on the mass of PyC generated in a replicated Rx fire study in a ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forest ecosystem of the Rocky Mountain West. Our data synthesis showed that PyC (consisting of PyC from downed wood, O horizon, and mineral soil) was, on average, produced at a rate of 5.2 ± 2.5% of biomass exposed to fire in forest ecosystems, and a single wildfire or Rx fire event generated about 2.2 ± 1.7 Mg C ha−1 in the form of PyC. In our empirical study, we collected O horizon and surface mineral soil (0–10 cm) samples from the Fire and Fire Surrogates study plots in western Montana (treatments: control, thin, burn, thin&burn) that was burned in 2002 and analyzed for PyC content using a wet digestion method. The two Rx fire treatments had significantly higher PyC contents in the O horizon compared to the control. In the thin&burn treatment, PyC was formed at a rate of about 12% of total biomass consumed yielding ~2.24 Mg PyC C ha−1 in the O horizon. Mineral soil PyC contents were not affected by Rx fire. Wildfire and Rx fires generate a substantial amount of PyC which initially resides in the O horizon and serves as a stable form of ecosystem C.
Effect of Chemically Engineered Au/Ag Nanorods on the Optical and Mechanical Properties of Keratin Based Films

In this work we report the preparation and characterization of free-standing keratin-based films containing Au/Ag nanorods. The effect of nanorods surface chemistry on the optical and mechanical properties of keratin composite films is fully investigated. Colloid nanorods confer to the keratin films interesting color effects due to plasmonic absorptions of the metal nanostructures. The presence of metal NRs induces also substantial change in the protein fluorescence emission. In particular, the relative contribution of the ordered-protein aggregates emission is enhanced by the presence of cysteine and thus strictly related to the surface chemistry of nanorods. The presence of more packed supramolecular structures in the films containing metal nanorods (in particular cysteine modified ones) is confirmed by ATR measurements. In addition, the films containing nanorods show a higher Young's modulus compared to keratin alone and again the effect is more pronounced for cysteine modified nanorods. Collectively, the reported results indicate the optical and mechanical properties of keratin composites films are related to a common property and can be tuned simultaneously, paving the way to the optimization and improvement of their performances and enhancing the exploitation of keratin composites in highly technological optoelectronic applications.