Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real-time 3D simultaneous localization and map-building for a dynamic walking humanoid robot

In this paper, we develop an onboard real-time 3D visual simultaneous localization and mapping system for a dynamic walking humanoid robot. With the constraints of processing and real-time operation, the system uses a lightweight localization and mapping approach based around the well-known extended Kalman filter but that features a robust and real-time relocalization system able to allow loop-closing and robust localization in 6D. The robot is controlled by torque references at the joints using its dynamic properties. This results in more energy efficient motion but also in lager movement than the one found in a conventional ZMP-based humanoid which carefully maintains the position of the center of mass on the plane. These more agile motions pose challenges for a visual mapping system having to operate in real time. The developed system features a combination of stereo camera, robust visual descriptors, and motion model switching to compensate for the larger motion and uncertainty. We provide practical implementation details of the system and methods, and test on the real humanoid robot. We compare our results with motion obtained with a motion capture system.
off-State Avalanche-Breakdown-Induced on-Resistance Degradation in Lateral DMOS Transistors

In this letter, on-resistance RON degradation in lateral double-diffused MOS transistors is observed when the device is operated under off-state avalanche-breakdown condition. Although interface states and positive oxide-trapped charges are created near the drain, interface-state generation is identified to be the main degradation mechanism. Technology computer-aided design simulation suggests that the driving force of damage is breakdown-induced hole injection. Experimental data show that RON degradation has the tendency to saturate, in agreement with the saturation of interface-state generation and oxide-trapped charges data extracted by charge-pumping measurement.
Direct observation of feedout-related mass oscillations in plastic targets.

"Feedout" means the transfer of mass perturbations from the rear to the front surface of a driven target. When a planar shock wave breaks out at a rippled rear surface of the target, a lateral pressure gradient drives sonic waves in a rippled rarefaction wave propagating back to the front surface. This process redistributes mass in the volume of the target, forming the feedout-generated seed for ablative Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability. We report the first direct experimental observation of areal-mass oscillation associated with feedout, followed by the onset of exponential RT growth.
Markov decision Processes with fractional costs

Certain methods for constructing embedded Markov decision processes (MDPs) lead to performance measures that are the ratio of two long-run averages. For such MDPs with finite state and action spaces and under an ergodicity assumption, this note presents algorithms for computing optimal policies based on policy iterations, linear programming, value iterations and Q-learning.
Reduced bootstrap for the median

In this paper we study a modified bootstrap that consists of only considering those bootstrap samples satisfying k1 ≤ νn ≤ k2, for some 1 ≤ k1 ≤ k2 ≤ n, where νn is the number of distinct original observations in the bootstrap sample. We call it reduced bootstrap, since it only uses a portion of the set of all possible bootstrap samples. We show that, under some conditions on k1 and k2, the reduced bootstrap consistently estimates the distribution and the variance of the sample median. Unlike the ordinary bootstrap, the reduced bootstrap variance estimator does not require conditions on the population generating the data to be a consistent estimator, but does rely an adequate choice of k1 and k2. Since several choices of k1 and k2 yield consistent estimators, we compare the finite sample performance of the corresponding estimators through a simulation study. The simulation study also considers consistent variance estimators proposed by other authors.
Design and Modeling of a Clutch Actuator System With Self-Energizing Mechanism

The engineering technology for automotive systems is currently edging toward improving fuel economy. Transmission is one of the major parts to determine overall energy efficiency. The goal of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of a new clutch actuator in order to increase power transmitting efficiency. The new clutch actuator has self-energizing mechanism to amplify the normal force applied on the contact surfaces for the engagement. It allows the clutch module to consume less amount of energy for actuating the overall system. The equations of motion of the clutch mechanism coupled with a dc motor are represented to capture the essential dynamics. By using the proposed model, a model-based position-tracking controller is developed for the engagement of the clutch. Also, passivity analysis of the actuator system is performed to prevent the clutch from being stuck. Finally, the self-energizing effect and torque transmissibility of the proposed system and motion controller are validated experimentally.
Analysis of heat gain reduction through roof by providing coconut shell insulation for typical Indian climate

Energy saved is energy generated. The power consumption for comfortable housing is ever increasing, which is adding addition burden to the power crisis of the world. Typical Indian housing has concrete roofing of 150 mm thick reinforced cement concrete (RCC) with or without weathering course (WC) of 75-100 mm thick lime brick mortar. To provide affordable comfortable living, a new method of insulation with naturally available material, coconut shell is used, which reduce the major heat gain through the roof of the building. This concept is more economical and easy to adapt in almost all residential buildings. The transient heat transfers across various types of roof structures for typical Indian climatic conditions were studied using fundamental principles of heat transfer using Mat Lab software. The energy savings obtained with coconut shell insulation of roof is found to be 40-85% when compared with conventional RCC roof due to the presence of air in the coconut shell insulation.
Generalized elastic flow rerouting scheme

The present study deals with Elastic Flow Rerouting (EFR)—an original traffic restoration strategy for protecting traffic flows in communication networks (including wireless networks) against multiple link failures. EFR aims at alleviating the trade‐off between practicability of traffic restoration and the cost of network resources observed in existing networking solutions. We present an extension of EFR capable of managing multiple partial link failures. We describe EFR and its extension, formulate the EFR related optimization problems, and discuss approaches for their resolution. We also discuss numerical results illustrating effectiveness of EFR in terms of the link capacity cost. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 66(4), 267–281 2015
Elliptochloris bilobata var. corticola var. nov. (Trebouxiophyceae, Chlorophyta), a novel subaerial coccal green alga

We investigated a previously unidentified subaerial corticolous strain of the genus Elliptochloris Tschermak-Woess. The alga shares the generic morphological characters with Elliptochloris bilobata, the type species of the genus, but it has a thicker cell wall of adult globular cells, different chloroplast structure and it also differs in shape of elliptical autospores. The differences of the autospore shape between both species were evaluated using landmark-based geometric morphometrics. The 18S rDNA gene sequence of the new alga forms a monophyletic clade with the authentic strain of E. bilobata within the green algal class Trebouxiophyceae close to representatives of the genus Coccomyxa. We describe the new alga as Elliptochloris bilobata var. corticola var. nov.
Cognitive rehabilitation treatment for mental slowness in conversion disorder: A case report

Abstract Cognitive rehabilitation treatment (CRT) has been described in patients with brain injury, but it has not been attempted in cases of cognitive dysfunction without organic cause. This case report describes CRT of neurocognitive impairment in a 54-year-old female patient with conversion disorder (CD). She experienced difficulties with regard to speaking, motor function, and pain symptoms, which developed after stressful life circumstances. Baseline neuropsychological assessment (NPA) showed mental slowness and impaired (working) memory. Time Pressure Management (TPM) was used as CRT to teach the patient a compensatory strategy to overcome mental slowness in 12 sessions. During treatment, physical symptoms were monitored with the Physical Symptom Questionnaire (LKV), and mental slowness with the Mental Slowness Questionnaire (MSQ). After treatment, the LKV score dropped from 85 to 47, indicating 54% treatment response. Mental slowness showed improvement based on the MSQ and was confirmed by an NPA after treatment. Other neurocognitive functions improved as well and the motoric CD symptoms subsided. This case report suggests that improvement of mental slowness, as well as motor CD symptoms, can be achieved by TPM in non-organic neurocognitive impairment in CD. This finding has not been described in the literature. Further research is warranted to explore the efficacy of TPM in CD.
Phosphorylation of tyrosine 182 of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase correlates with the protection of preconditioning in the rabbit heart.

p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) is known to be activated after exposure to endotoxin, osmotic and environmental stress, and, most recently, during ischemia/reperfusion. We investigated whether ischemic preconditioning also causes phosphorylation of the activation sites on p38 MAPK. Three groups of isolated rabbit hearts were studied. Control hearts experienced 30 min of ischemia only. The second group was preconditioned with 5 min of global ischemia and 10 min of reperfusion. Group 3 was also ischemically preconditioned, but in the presence of 100 microM 8-(p-sulfophenyl)theophylline (SPT). Transmural left ventricular biopsies were taken before and during the long ischemic period. Western blot analysis with either p38 MAPK or phospho-specific p38 MAPK (Tyr-182) antibodies showed a decreased phosphorylation during ischemia in non-preconditioned hearts, but phosphorylation was enhanced several fold after 10 and 20 min of ischemia in preconditioned hearts. Furthermore, when protection from ischemic preconditioning was blocked by SPT, increased phosphorylation of p38 MAPK during ischemia was not present. Therefore the phosphorylation of p38 MAPK at tyrosine 182, which is required for the kinase's activation, occurred during ischemia only when protection from preconditioning was evident. In a second study, changes in osmotic fragility were measured during simulated ischemia in rabbit cardiomyocytes. Reduced fragility in ischemically preconditioned myocytes could be completely abolished by the specific p38 MAPK inhibitor SB-203580. In contrast, anisomycin, an activator of p38 MAPK and JUN kinase pathways, was found to be as protective as ischemic preconditioning. We conclude that p38 MAPK phosphorylation correlates with preconditioning's protection, and that its activation may be an important step in the signal transduction cascade of ischemic preconditioning.
Novel Functional Task-Based Gait Assistance Control of Lower Extremity Assistive Device for Level Walking

A novel approach to functional task-based gait assistance control architecture and its preliminary evaluations are presented. This approach utilizes a finite state machine to implement a gait period detector to estimate the current gait period of the user among the six major periods. Furthermore, an impedance-based controller is used to produce the functional gait assistance at the hip and the knee joint in each detected gait period. This is the first experimental trial to offer gait assistance based on gait period functionality. The goal of this controller is to assist the gait of the impaired persons in order to reduce the walking efforts in their daily living. The performance of this approach is investigated on a single-leg lower extremity assistive device with a group of healthy subjects walking on a treadmill. Joint kinematics, assistive torques from assisted trial, and heart rates from all trials are recorded. Preliminary evaluation shows that this approach is capable of providing functional task gait assistance at hip and knee joint of the subject under varying walking speeds during level walking. In particular, at a constant speed of 1 km/h with five healthy subjects, when assisted with the device, it reduces their heart rate to statistically resemble the free-walking heart rates. Additionally, it decreases their physical efforts to substantially improve their performance, compared with their unassisted conditions.
Benefit finding, affective reactions to diabetes stress, and diabetes management among early adolescents.

OBJECTIVE To examine whether benefit finding was associated with better adjustment among adolescents with diabetes by buffering negative affective reactions to diabetes stress and by promoting positive affective reactions. DESIGN Early adolescents aged 10-14 with Type 1 diabetes (n = 252) described recent diabetes stressors, affective reactions, and perceived coping effectiveness. They also completed measures of benefit finding, depressive symptoms, and adherence. Metabolic control (i.e., HbA1c) was obtained from medical records. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The main outcome measures were perceived coping effectiveness, depressive symptoms, adherence, and HbA1c. RESULTS Benefit finding was associated with lower depressive symptoms, higher perceived coping effectiveness and better adherence, and with higher positive as well as negative affective reactions to diabetes stress. Benefit finding interacted with negative affective reactions to predict depressive symptoms and HbA1c. Negative affective reactions to stress were associated with poorer adjustment among those with low benefit finding, but were unrelated or more weakly related to poor adjustment among those with high benefit finding. Positive affective reactions did not mediate associations between benefit finding and any outcome. CONCLUSIONS Consistent with a stress-buffering process, benefit finding may be a resource that buffers the disruptive aspects of negative affective reactions to stress for adolescents' diabetes management.
Evaluation of a nutrient starvation model of Mycobacterium tuberculosis persistence by gene and protein expression profiling

The search for new TB drugs that rapidly and effectively sterilize the tissues and are thus able to shorten the duration of chemotherapy from the current 6 months has been hampered by a lack of understanding of the metabolism of the bacterium when in a ‘persistent’ or latent form. Little is known about the condition in which the bacilli survive, although laboratory models have shown that Mycobacterium tuberculosis can exist in a non‐growing, drug‐resistant state that may mimic persistence in vivo. Using nutrient starvation, we have established a model in which M. tuberculosis arrests growth, decreases its respiration rate and is resistant to isoniazid, rifampicin and metronidazole. We have used microarray and proteome analysis to investigate the response of M. tuberculosis to nutrient starvation. Proteome analysis of 6‐week‐starved cultures revealed the induction of several proteins. Microarray analysis enabled us to monitor gene expression during adaptation to nutrient starvation and confirmed the changes seen at the protein level. This has provided evidence for slowdown of the transcription apparatus, energy metabolism, lipid biosynthesis and cell division in addition to induction of the stringent response and several other genes that may play a role in maintaining long‐term survival within the host. Thus, we have generated a model with which we can search for agents active against persistent M. tuberculosis and revealed a number of potential targets expressed under these conditions.
Modeling Correlation between QoS Attributes for Trust Computation in Cloud Computing Environments

This paper introduces an approach that handleswith the trustworthy cloud service selection issue in Cloudcomputing environments. Despite the fact that most of theexisting trust systems consider several QoS attributes for trustcomputing, none of them did consider the correlation that mayexist among these attributes. However, we demonstrate in thispaper that the integration of correlation between QoS attributesin trust computing significantly helps to solve many issues suchas predicting missing assessment, detecting malicious feedbacksand improving the accuracy of trust values. The main goal ofthis paper is to show the significance of correlation betweenthose attributes for trust computing. To do that, we proposecombining both the popular Naïve Bayes model and the ngramMarkov model to design a more efficient trust model forcloud environments. Our proposed trust model also takes intoaccount the user's requirements, aggregates both the qualitativeand quantitative assessment, and considers several sources whencomputing cloud services' trust values. Experimental results showthat our proposed approach outperforms the traditional Naïve Bayes trust models.
Cell Attachment and Motility on Materials Modified by Surface‐active RGD‐containing Peptides

The development of materials for use in the fabrication of implantable medical devices was initially based on the concept of using materials that were refractile to cell interaction. It has become increasingly clear, however, that the relatively inert nature of materials seen in vitro does not translate to devices implanted for long periods of time. In addition, material surfaces can elicit varying types of cell responses, some resulting in adverse resctions. This has prompted an effort to create or modify materials in ways that promote controlled cell response at the material surface. ' One such strategy for creating a cell interactive surface of a biomaterial involves the use of adsorbed extracellular matrix proteins (ECM) to provide specific signals for cell attachment.2 This method has been refined by the use of short synthetic peptides containing the cell-binding domains of ECM proteins6 One sequence that functions well as a cell-binding site is the tripeptide ArgGly-Asp (RGD), originally isolated as the cell-binding domain of fibronectin. ' The RGD sequence has been identified as a cell-binding domain in a number of other ECM proteins, each of which is recognized by distinct cell-surface receptors, termed in tegr in~ . ~ ' The observation that cell attachment can be directed to surfaces modified with small synthetic RGD-containing peptides has provided the incentive to modify and fabricate the sequence into biomaterials. A number of investigators have created cell attachment-competent surfaces by covalently coupling RGD peptides to materials, such as glycophase glass,s polyacrylamide? ethylene-acrylic acid copolymer,I0 polyethylene terephthalate," polytetrafluoroethylene,'2 and polyvinyl alcohol. The RGD sequence has also been used to modify the base monomer of polyurethane and thus form a material having sites for cell attachment throughout the material.I4 The use of covalent methods to immobilize the bioactive species is somewhat limited due to the constraints imposed by the material surface chemistry as well as the difficulties associated with modifying complex prefabricated medical devices. An alternative approach to modify the surface of a material involves the use of adsorptive interactions to bind molecules to the surface. This has proved successful for the immobilization of block copolymers that act to inhibit protein adsorption to blood-contacting biomaterial~. '~ We used a similar strategy to create RGD-containing peptides having a stretch of hydrophobic amino acids that mediate the interaction
The virtual compact range

This paper describes the results achieved from a computer simulation of the VHF behavior of a compact range using the XLCAT (X-Window Large Chamber Analysis Tool) simulation software. With this capability, it should be possible to make and test proposed improvements to chamber performance before proceeding with actual chamber modifications. This paper takes a first step toward application of the XLCAT software, namely, comparison of simulated results to measurements. Data taken on the Wright Laboratory (WL) RCS compact range at VHF is compared to quiet zone amplitude and phase results from the simulation. Based on the agreement achieved, the simulation was considered successful.
Does antiretroviral treatment reduce case fatality among HIV-positive patients with tuberculosis in Malawi?

SETTING Thyolo district, Malawi. OBJECTIVES To report on 1) case fatality among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive tuberculosis (TB) patients while on anti-tuberculosis treatment and 2) whether antiretroviral treatment (ART) initiated during the continuation phase of TB treatment reduces case fatality. DESIGN Retrospective cohort analysis. METHODS Comparative analysis of treatment outcomes for TB patients registered between January and December 2004. RESULTS Of 983 newly registered TB patients receiving diagnostic HIV testing, 658 (67%) were HIV-positive. A total of 132 (20%) patients died during the 8-month course of anti-tuberculosis treatment, of whom 82 (62%) died within the first 2 months of treatment when ART was not provided (cumulative incidence 3.0, 95%CI 2.5-3.6 per 100 person-years). A total of 576 TB patients started the continuation phase of anti-tuberculosis treatment, 180 (31%) of whom were started on ART. The case-fatality rate per 100 person-years was not significantly different for patients on ART (1.0, 95%CI 0.6-1.7) and those without ART (1.2, 95%CI 0.9-1.7, adjusted hazard ratio 0.86, 95%CI 0.4-1.6, P = 0.6) CONCLUSIONS ART provided in the continuation phase of TB treatment does not have a significant impact on reducing case fatality. Reasons for this and possible measures to reduce high case fatality in the initial phase of TB treatment are discussed.