Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Haptic Device Design and Teleoperation Control Algorithms for Mobile Manipulators

The increasing need of teleoperated robotic systems implies more and more often to use, as slave devices, mobile platforms (terrestrial, aerial or underwater) with integrated manipulation capabilities, provided e.g. by robotic arms with proper grasping/manipulation tools. Despite this, the research activity in teleoperation of robotic systems has mainly focused on the control of either fixed-base manipulators or mobile robots, non considering the integration of these two types of systems in a single device. Such a combined robotic devices are usually referred to as mobile manipulators: systems composed by both a robotic manipulator and a mobile platform (on which the arm is mounted) whose purpose is to enlarge the manipulator’s workspace. The combination of a mobile platform and a serial manipulator creates redundancy: a particular point in the space can be reached by moving the manipulator, by moving the mobile platform, or by a combined motion of both. A synchronized motion of both devices need then to be addressed. Although specific haptic devices explicitly oriented to the control of mobile manipulators need to be designed, there are no commercial solution yet. For this reason it is often necessary to control such as combined systems with traditional haptic devices not specifically oriented to the control of mobile manipulators. The research activity presented in this Ph.D. thesis focuses in the first place on the design of a teleoperation control scheme which allows the simultaneous control of both the manipulator and the mobile platform by means of a single haptic device characterized by fixed base and an open kinematic chain. Secondly the design of a novel cable-drive haptic devices has been faced. Investigating the use of twisted strings actuation in force rendering is the most interesting challenge of the latter activity.
Causas y factores asociados a los errores de conciliación en servicios médicos y quirúrgicos

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the main causes of errors of medication reconciliation at hospital admission in medical and surgical department and establish factors associated with medication reconciliation errors. Material and method: Cross-sectional study. We included all patients admitted to two services and two surgical for a month. To determine the presence of error reconciliation, the pharmacist compared the medication history interview by the order physician. The factors associated with errors were identified by multivariate logistic regression analysis. Results: 221 patients were included, of which 58.4% had at least one error reconciliation. We detected 629 discrepancies, 339 (53.9%) reconciliation errors. The incidence of errors in medical services was 24.3% and in the surgical services 43.0% (p <0.001) in both groups being most prevalent error of omission (46.2% and 50.8%). Regarding factors associated, the equation determines that patients older than 65 years, polymedicated and taking oral antidiabetic are more likely to have an error with a sensibility of 75.2% and a specificity of 68.5%. Conclusion: There is a high rate of error reconciliation in medical and surgical patients, which confirms the need to implement a strategy to reduce these errors. Given the difficulty of applying the process to all patients, the strategy must be directed to patients who are at increased risk of error.
Dry versus Wet EEG electrode systems in Motor Imagery Classification

Inês Domingos , Fani Deligianni 1 and Guang-Zhong Yang 1 The Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Imperial College London, UK Abstract Motor imagery (MI) classification performance is important in developing robust brain computer interface environments for neuro-rehabilitation of patients and robotic prosthesis control. To bring this technology to everyday use relatively new EEG acquisition systems have been developed. These systems are highly portable, wireless and they are based on dry, active electrodes, which does not require the use of conductive gel. As a result they are more prone to interference via noise sources that are commonly around and their signal-to-noise ratio may be low. Here, we device a number of motor imagery tasks along with actual movements of the limbs and compare the classification performance of a dry 16-channel and a wet, 32channel, wireless EEG system. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of home use of dry electrode systems with a small number of sensors.
Fast 3D Semantic Mapping on Naturalistic Road Scenes

Fast 3D reconstruction with semantic information on road scenes is of great requirements for autonomous navigation. It involves issues of geometry and appearance in the field of computer vision. In this work, we propose a method of fast 3D semantic mapping based on the monocular vision. At present, due to the inexpensive price and easy installation, monocular cameras are widely equipped on recent vehicles for the advanced driver assistance and it is possible to acquire semantic information and 3D map. The monocular visual sequence is used to estimate the camera pose, calculate the depth, predict the semantic segmentation, and finally realize the 3D semantic mapping by combination of the techniques of localization, mapping and scene parsing. Our method recovers the 3D semantic mapping by incrementally transferring 2D semantic information to 3D point cloud. And a global optimization is explored to improve the accuracy of the semantic mapping in light of the spatial consistency. In our framework, there is no need to make semantic inference on each frame of the sequence, since the mesh data with semantic information is corresponding to sparse reference frames. It saves amounts of the computational cost and allows our mapping system to perform online. We evaluate the system on naturalistic road scenes, e.g., KITTI and observe a significant speed-up in the inference stage by labeling on the mesh.
Automatic Text Summarization using Fuzzy C-Means Clustering

Automatic text summarization process has been significantly explored throughout the years to cope with the staggering increase of virtual data. Text summarization process is commonly divided into two areas-Extractive and Abstractive. Extractive summarization processes largely depend on sentence extraction techniques- implementing graph models or sentence-based models. In this paper, a sentence-based model has been proposed where the sentence ranking procedure adopts fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering, an unsupervised classification method, for sentence extraction purpose. The sentence scoring task relies on five key features, including Topic Sentence which is the first novelty of the proposed model. Furthermore, C-Means clustering is a soft-computing technique that is usually used for pattern recognition tasks but can be improved significantly by hard clustering the membership of the elements which has not been regarded in similar processes in any of the previous works, adding to the novelty of the presented model. Standard summary evaluation techniques have been used to gauge the precision, recall and f-measure of the proposed FCM model and have been compared with different summarizers from different perspectives. The outcome shows that the FCM model surpasses the previous approaches significantly.
A Parallelizable Framework for Segmenting Piecewise Signals

Piecewise signals appear in many application fields. Here, we propose a framework for segmenting such signals based on the modeling of each piece using a parametric probability distribution. The proposed framework first models the segmentation as an optimization problem with sparsity regularization. Then, an algorithm based on dynamic programming is utilized for finding the optimal solution. However, dynamic programming often suffers from a heavy computational burden. Therefore, we further show that the proposed framework is parallelizable and propose using GPU-based parallel computing to accelerate the computation. This approach is highly desirable for the analysis of large volumes of data that are ubiquitous. The experiments on both the simulated and real genomic datasets from the next-generation sequencing demonstrate an improved performance in terms of both segmentation quality and computational speed.
Reduction of the visual impact of overhead transmission line systems through utilisation of line surge arresters as lightning protection

Reduction of the visual impact of overhead transmission line systems through utilisation of line surge arresters as lightning protectionThe main reason for the increasing public resistance to overhead transmission line systems in Denmark is the impact on the environment with emphasis on the visual aspect. Therefore the Danish Transmission System Operator Energinet.dk is currently carrying out a research project, in cooperation with the Technical University of Denmark, on how to lessen the visual impact of 400 kV overhead line transmission systems. In this paper omission of shield wires combined with installation of a suitable number of line surge arresters is investigated as a possible alternative to transmission lines equipped with shielding wires thereby reducing tower height, allowing more compact designs of towers thus minimizing the visual environment impact of the lines. Omission of shield wires in the system and instead utilizing a larger number of surge arresters in the (upper) phases of an overhead line without reduction in line performance and lightning protection of the nearest substations requires thorough modelling of the new line including all electrical parameters necessary for performance evaluation under all conditions. In this paper, explicit use of line surge arresters as lightning protection on the line will be investigated by transient simulations on a 400 kV line with either shield wires or line surge arresters. These simulations will also be used to estimate number and location of the line surge arresters in the line to ensure a satisfactory performance of the line when omitting shield wires in the tower top. The simulation model will consist of a line section modelled in PSCAD/EMTDC as a distributed frequency dependent parameter line. Based on results from numerical simulations it is shown that line surge arresters can be used instead of shield wires however this has consequences with respect to the performance of the line and the required protection level in substations. The use of line surge arresters gives the possibility to decrease the height of towers thereby improving the visual impression of the overhead line transmission systems. However the usage of line surge arresters will, dependent upon line surge arrester placement, result in a denser visual impression of the tower top. The results will be discussed in particular with respect to possible future tower top geometries.
Pressure Prediction of Electronic, Anisotropic Elastic, Optical, and Thermal Properties of Quaternary (M2/3Ti1/3)3AlC2 (M = Cr, Mo, and Ti)

The electronic, mechanical, anisotropic elastic, optical, and thermal properties of quaternary (M2/3Ti1/3)3AlC2 (M = Cr, Mo, and Ti) under different pressure are systematically investigated by first-principles calculations. The bonding characteristics of these compounds are the mixture of metallic and covalent bonds. With an increase of pressure, the heights of total density of states (TDOS) for these compounds decrease at Fermi level. The highest volume compressibility among three compounds is Mo2TiAlC2 for its smallest relative volume decline. The relative bond lengths are decreasing when the pressure increases. The bulk and shear modulus of the one doped with Cr or Mo are larger than those of Ti3AlC2 with pressure increasing. With an increase of pressure, the anisotropy of these compounds also increases. Moreover, Mo2TiAlC2 has the biggest anisotropy among the three compounds. The results of optical functions indicate that the reflectivity of the three compounds is high in visible-ultraviolet region up to ~10.5 eV under ambient pressure and increasing constantly when under pressure. Mo2TiAlC2 has the highest loss function. The calculated sound velocity and Debye temperature show that they all increase with pressure. of the three compounds is also calculated.
Working Paper A Fluid Model of Dynamic Pricing and Inventory Management for Make-to-Stock Manufacturing Systems by S .

In this paper, we introduce a fluid model of dynamic pricing and inventory management for make-to-stock manufacturing systems. Instead of considering a traditional model that is based on how price affects demand, we consider a model that relies on how price and level of inventory affect the time a unit of product remains in inventory. Our motivation is based on the observation that in inventory systems, a unit of product incurs a delay before being sold. This delay depends on the unit price of the product, prices of competitors, and the level of inventory of this product. Moreover, delay data is not hard to acquire and is internally controlled and monitored by the manufacturer. It is interesting to notice that this delay is similar to travel times incurred in a transportation network. The model of this paper includes joint pricing, production and inventory decisions in a competitive, capacitated multi-product dynamic environment. In particular, in this paper we (i) introduce a model for dynamic pricing and inventory control that uses delay rather then demand data and establish connections with traditional demand models, (ii) study analytical properties of this model, (iii) establish conditions under which the model has a solution and finally, (iv) establish an algorithm that solves efficiently a discretized version of the model.
Transect width and missed observations in counting muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) from fixed-wing aircraft

While conductioning muskox-censuses (Ovibos moschatus) in winter in Jameson Land, NE Greenland, from a fixed-wing aircraft, we examined the width of transects covered. We used a laser range-finder binocular for measuring the distance to observed groups. We found that 1000 m was a reasonable limit for observing a high proportion of the muskoxen present even though it was possible to observe muskoxen from 4000 m or even more. Using two observers on the right side of the aircraft each speaking into a tape recorder with an automatic time signal, we recorded observations and performed a double-observer experiment. By matching the group sizes and perpendicular distances with times of observation we could compare observations of the two observers. We found that both observers missed up to 25% of muskoxen within a 2000 m transect width. The main reasons for missing animals is difficulty in obtaining reference points in snow covered landscape and fatigue of the observers. Calibration of estimated distances using read-outs from the laser-range finder is an adequate method of obtaining distance data for line transect calculations. Our double-observer experiment demonstrated that even groups close to the transect are easily missed.
Experiment 1 : Observational learning of space-valence associations Method

Right-handers tend to associate “good” with the right side of space and “bad” with the left. This implicit association appears to arise from the way people perform actions, more or less fluently, with their right and left hands. Here we tested whether observing manual actions performed with greater or lesser fluency can affect observers’ space-valence associations. In two experiments, we assigned one participant (the actor) to perform a bimanual fine motor task while another participant (the observer) watched. Actors were assigned to wear a ski glove on either the right or left hand, which made performing the actions on this side of space disfluent. In Experiment 1, observers stood behind the actors, sharing their spatial perspective. After motor training, both actors and observers tended to associate “good” with the side of the actors’ free hand and “bad” with the side of the gloved hand. To determine whether observers’ space-valence associations were computed from their own perspectives or the actors’, in Experiment 2 we asked the observer to stand face-to-face with the actor, reversing their spatial perspectives. After motor training, both actors and observers associated “good” with the side of space where disfluent actions had occurred from their own egocentric spatial perspectives; if “good” was associated with the actor’s right-hand side it was likely to be associated with the observer’s left-hand side. Results show that vicarious experiences of motor fluency can shape valence judgments, and that observers spontaneously encode the locations of fluent and disfluent actions in egocentric spatial coordinates.
Application of the relocation-error distribution on geomagnetic databases. Analyses on the «Historical Italian Geomagnetic Data Catalogue»

The reliability of the Historical Italian Geomagnetic Data Catalogue, comprising 536 directions and 393 inten- sities, has been assessed by comparing the historical geomagnetic measurements with the GUFM1 model pre- dictions. Such measurements were assessed at three selected relocation centres. For all the data contained in the Catalogue it has been calculated the discrepancy between the relocated data and the GUFM1-model prediction at the relocation centres. There is a correlation between relocation distance and the mean discrepancy. The up- per limit of discrepancy assumable as relocation error has been selected using error distributions previously cal- culated using geomagnetic field models. Angular and intensity threshold lines have been slightly shifted upwards to account for the estimated error of GUFM1 model itself at the considered region, mainly due to the crustal field. The Italian database proved to contain reliable data, as only a very low percentage of data (namely 14 di- rections and 20 intensities) can be considered anomalous. Possible explanations for such questionable data are suggested. All the remaining data of this catalogue could thus be added to the databases used to produce region- al or global geomagnetic models.
Interacting effects of identity, size, and winter severity determine temporal consistency of offspring phenotype

Offspring size can strongly influence offspring fitness; however, the importance of female identity to offspring size determination is poorly understood, despite the potential for identity effects to drive offspring size adaptation and population dynamics. We tracked reproductive investment (skein mass) and mean egg diameter, mass, and density produced by individual female yellow perch (Perca flavescens) over four spawning years to determine the influences of maternal identity, size, and winter severity to reproductive trait variation. Individual identity significantly influenced egg diameter and mass, but did not affect egg density or skein mass. All egg traits were negatively influenced by winter severity prior to spawning, and egg mass and diameter were also negatively related to maternal size. Our results suggest that individual effects can comprise a large amount of the intrapopulation variation in reproductive traits in populations, which may be unaccounted for in studies examining only environmental or phenotypic effects. Accounting for potential identity effects would likely improve our understanding of constraints on offspring size plasticity and potential responses of offspring size in populations experiencing environmental change.
September 1994 LIDS-P-2267 A HYBRID INCREMENTAL GRADIENT METHOD 1 FOR LEAST SQUARES PROBLEMS

The LMS method for linear least squares problems differs from the steepest descent method in that it processes data blocks one-by-one, with intermediate adjustment of the parameter vector under optimization. This mode of operation often leads to faster convergence when far from the eventual limit, and to slower (sublinear) convergence when close to the optimal solution. We embed both LMS and steepest descent, as well as other intermediate methods, within a oneparameter class of algorithms, and we propose a hybrid method that combines the faster early convergence rate of LMS with the faster ultimate linear convergence rate of steepest descent. 1 Research supported by NSF under Grant 9300494-DMI. 2 Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, M.I. T. , Cambridge, Mass. , 02139.1
The tennis serve technology based on the AHP evaluation of consistency check

Tennis athlete's technology, this paper carries on the analysis to extract the comprehensive evaluation of tennis athletes technology under the two big index and the corresponding index of 11 measures of small, use AHP (analytic hierarchy process) set up a class hierarchy, and aimed at the structure judgment matrix is constructed by applying the method of paired compared, on the basis of the overall consistency check model is introduced. In the use of AHP method in this paper, the sports ability of athletes at the same time, the design of the weight of the judgment matrix algorithm and the algorithm of overall consistency check, implement the actual parameters of four excellent tennis athletes in the world the AHP analysis obtained four players serve technology advantages and disadvantages, and through the consistency check.
Validation of Reference Genes for Real Time PCR Normalization in Milk Somatic Cells of Holstein Dairy Cattle

Real time-qPCR is the most reliable method for evaluation of mRNA expression levels. However, to obtain accurate results, selection of suitable reference genes is necessary for normalizing the real-time qPCR data. The aim of this research was to validate the expression stability of three potential reference genes (ACTB, GAPDH and UXT) in milk somatic cells of Holstein dairy cattle under different lactation stages. For this purpose two types of milk samples from eighteen healthy cows at three lactation stages (early, middle and late of lactation cycle) and four mastitic cows were included in this experiment. Total RNA was extracted from the milk somatic cells and then cDNA was synthesized. Real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) performed for actb, gapdh and UXT genes as candidate reference genes. Then, the real-time PCR results were analyzed with BestKeeper program. The evaluation of selected genes by real-time PCR revealed that all genes were expressed in the healthy and mastitic dairy cows. In addition, the UXT and GADPH genes displayed the lowest and highest values of expression level, respectively. The ACTB gene was considered as the most suitable internal controls as it was stably expressed in milk somatic cells regardless of dairy cows conditions. Taken together, our results could help to select suitable reference gene for the normalization of expression levels in milk somatic cells of dairy cattle.
LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2 formed homodimers to play physiological functions in Arabidopsis thaliana

Receptor-like kinases (RLKs), an important family that plant cell sense and transmit extracellular signals, are fundamental to plant cell life and play critical roles in various biological processes, such as response to abiotic stress, development and hormonal response. Among RLKs, the lectin receptor-like kinases (LecRLKs) possess a characteristic extracellular carbohydrate-binding lectin domain and play important roles in plant immune, stress and hormone responses. However, little is known about the genes LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2 of LecRLK family up to now. Here, we founded that LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2 were localized in plasma membrane and played the physiological roles by forming a homodimer. Real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR analysis of the expression level of LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2 in response to exogenous ABA, MeJA, SA, NaCl, mannitol and dehydration suggested that LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2 may play important roles in response to various stresses. It will lay a good foundation for further studies on physiological functions of LecRKIII.1 and LecRKIII.2.