Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development and deployment of a new robotics toolbox for education

This paper presents a new toolbox focussed on the teaching of robotic manipulators. The library works under Matlab and has been designed to strengthen the theoretical concepts explained during the theory lectures. The educational approach is focussed on teaching the main concepts through developing math modeling and simulation. In order to do this, the toolbox aims at the fulfillment of a set of practical sessions that allow the students to test most of the concepts of an introductory course in robotic manipulators. In addition, the library possesses features that typically needed the usage of proprietary software, such as the visualization of a realistic 3D representation of commercial robotic arms and the programming of those arms in an industrial language. The practices include the concepts of direct and inverse kinematics, inverse and direct dynamics, path planning and robot programming. As a transversal practice, during the sessions, the student is asked to choose and integrate a new robotic arm in the library, proposing a particular solution to the direct and inverse kinematic problem, as well as the inclusion of other important parameters. The library has been deployed during the last year in bachelor and master studies and has received a nice acceptance. Finally, the library has been assessed in terms of usefulness, design and usage by means of a student survey. In addition, the surveys were designed to establish a relation between the student perception of the system, the time spent on the tool and their learning achievements. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 23:443–454, 2015; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI 10.1002/cae.21615
Recall and recognition memory in patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases

Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases are associated with cognitive impairment, although the pattern of cognitive dysfunction is not identical. We investigated the recall and recognition memory of 18 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) and of 32 patients with probable Alzheimer' disease (AD). In the list‐learning test using Buschke's selective reminding method, PD patients showed superior delayed recognition memory capability compared to AD patients, whereas immediate recall did not differ in the two groups. In the delayed story recall, PD patients were also able to benefit from rehearsal and probe more than AD patients. The results suggest that PD patients are able to bind information better into long‐term storage than are AD patients. This may be due to better function in PD of the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus.
A ROS Multi-Ontology References Service: OWL Reasoners and Application Prototyping Issues

This paper introduces a ROS Multi Ontology References (ARMOR) service, a general-purpose and scalable interface between robot architectures and OWL reasoners. ARMOR addresses synchronisation and communication issues among heterogeneous and distributed software components. As a guiding scenario, we consider a prototyping approach for the use of symbolic reasoning in human-robot interaction applications.
A Simple Test Identifies Selection on Complex Traits

Important traits are often controlled by a large number of genes that each impact a small proportion of total variation; however, the majority of tools in population genomics are designed to identify single genes. Important traits in agricultural, natural, and human populations are increasingly being shown to be under the control of many genes that individually contribute only a small proportion of genetic variation. However, the majority of modern tools in quantitative and population genetics, including genome-wide association studies and selection-mapping protocols, are designed to identify individual genes with large effects. We have developed an approach to identify traits that have been under selection and are controlled by large numbers of loci. In contrast to existing methods, our technique uses additive-effects estimates from all available markers, and relates these estimates to allele-frequency change over time. Using this information, we generate a composite statistic, denoted G^, which can be used to test for significant evidence of selection on a trait. Our test requires pre- and postselection genotypic data but only a single time point with phenotypic information. Simulations demonstrate that G^ is powerful for identifying selection, particularly in situations where the trait being tested is controlled by many genes, which is precisely the scenario where classical approaches for selection mapping are least powerful. We apply this test to breeding populations of maize and chickens, where we demonstrate the successful identification of selection on traits that are documented to have been under selection.
Evidence for an active fibrinolytic system in normal human bone marrow

Normal human bone marrow from patients undergoing heart surgery was analysed quantitatively for components of the fibrinolytic system, using functional and immunological assays. Marrow was found to contain considerable fibrinolytic activity, reflecting high levels of t‐PA (tissue‐type plasminogen activator). The t‐PA was in an active form, despite the presence of the inhibitors PAI‐1 and PAI‐2. Plasminogen and α2‐antiplasmin (α2‐AP) were also present in marrow. The balance of proteases and inhibitors differed dramatically from that observed in plasma, with higher levels of t‐PA, PAI‐1 and PAI‐2, and lower levels of u‐PA (urokinase), plasminogen, α2‐AP and t‐PA‐PAI‐1 complex in bone marrow, and resulted in favourable conditions for fibrinolysis. The presence of plasmin–α2‐AP complex at concentrations of the same order of magnitude as total plasminogen and α2‐AP demonstrated that active generation of plasmin was indeed occurring. A role for the active fibrinolytic system in normal human bone marrow may be the removal of unnecessary fibrin deposits formed in the cavities of the marrow, in order to maintain flow through this tissue.
Input Image Initialization Estimated Gaze Iterative Model Fitting 3

Morphable face models are a powerful tool in computer vision and graphics, but have previously failed to model the eye accurately due to complexities in its material and motion. We present a new multi-part model of the eye that includes a morphable model of the facial eye region, as well as an anatomy-based eyeball model. It is the first morphable model that accurately captures eye region shape, since it was built from high-quality head scans. It is also the first to allow independent movement of the eyeball, since we treat it as a separate part. To showcase our model we present a new method for illuminationand head-pose–invariant gaze estimation from a single RGB image. We fit our model to images through analysis-by-synthesis, solving for eye region shape, texture, eyeball pose, and scene illumination simultaneously. The fitted eyeball pose parameters are then used to estimate gaze direction. Through evaluation on two standard datasets we show that our method generalizes well to both webcam and high-quality camera images, and outperforms the state-ofthe-art CNN method achieving a gaze estimation accuracy of 9.43◦ in the challenging user-independent gaze estimation task.
Back-to-Back Connected Five-Level Diode-Clamped PWM Converters for Motor Drives

This paper addresses a medium-voltage adjustable-speed motor drive consisting of two five-level diode-clamped PWM converters connected back-to-back. It is followed by designing, constructing and testing a 200-V down-scaled model to verify the validity and effectiveness of the medium-voltage motor drive. This down-scaled model has four split dc capacitors equipped with a voltage-balancing circuit using two bidirectional buck-boost choppers. The two five-level converters are based on sinusoidal PWM (SPWM) with a carrier frequency of 3 kHz. The motor tested in this paper is a three-phase four-pole induction motor rated at 200 V, 5.5 kW and 60 Hz. Experimental waveforms show that the four split dc-capacitor voltages are well balanced in any operating conditions, and that the total harmonic distortion (THD) values of the input line current and the output motor current are 3.9% and 3.35%, respectively.
evelopment of a method using multispectral imagery and spatial pattern etrics to quantify stress to wheat fields caused by Diuraphis noxia eorges

The Russian wheat aphid, Diuraphis noxia, is an important pest of winter wheat, Triticum aestivum, and barley, Hordeum vulgare that has caused an annual economic loss estimated at over 1 billion dollars since it first appeared in the United States. The objective of this study was to determine the potential of combining multispectral imagery with spatial pattern recognition to identify and spatially differentiate D.
Global analysis of small RNA and mRNA targets of Hfq

Hfq, a bacterial member of the Sm family of RNA‐binding proteins, is required for the action of many small regulatory RNAs that act by basepairing with target mRNAs. Hfq binds this family of small RNAs efficiently. We have used co‐immunoprecipitation with Hfq and direct detection of the bound RNAs on genomic microarrays to identify members of this small RNA family. This approach was extremely sensitive; even Hfq‐binding small RNAs expressed at low levels were readily detected. At least 15 of 46 known small RNAs in E. coli interact with Hfq. In addition, high signals in other intergenic regions suggested up to 20 previously unidentified small RNAs bind Hfq; five were confirmed by Northern analysis. Strong signals within genes and operons also were detected, some of which correspond to known Hfq targets. Within the argX‐hisR‐leuT‐proM operon, Hfq appears to compete with RNase E and modulate RNA processing and degradation. Thus Hfq immunoprecipitation followed by microarray analysis is a highly effective method for detecting a major class of small RNAs as well as identifying new Hfq functions.
Historical Cohort Study of US Man-Made Vitreous Fiber Production Workers: IV. Quantitative Exposure-Response Analysis of the Nested Case-Control Study of Respiratory System Cancer

As part of the 1992 update of an historical cohort study of 32,110 workers employed for at least 1 year in any of 10 US fiberglass manufacturing plants, a nested case-control study was done in which data on tobacco smoking were obtained for 631 male case subjects with respiratory system cancer (RSC) and 570 control subjects matched on age and year of birth. In this more extensive analysis of the nested case-control data, we provide a detailed assessment of the most prominent findings from the initial report. We expand the scope of the analysis to consider quantitative measures of exposure to respirable fibers (RFib), formaldehyde (FOR), and silica (Sil) and consider these and other exposures together in the same model. We investigate the functional form of possible exposure-response relationships between RSC risk, RFib, and FOR. In addition, we address the statistical issues of collinearity, effect modification, and potential confounding by coexposures. All analyses are adjusted for smoking. Neither measure of exposure to RFib (average intensity of exposure or cumulative exposure) was statistically significantly associated with RSC risk in any of the hundreds of fractional polynomial models considered. This more extensive analysis has substantiated our initial finding of no apparent exposure-response relationship between RSC risk and either cumulative or average intensity of exposure to RFib at the levels experienced by these workers. This study provides some evidence of increased RSC risk among workers at the higher observed levels of average intensity of exposure to FOR and/or Sil. No positive associations were identified between RSC risk and any of the other exposures considered in this case-control study.
A study of abbreviations in the UMLS

Abbreviations are widely used in medicine. The understanding of abbreviations is important for medical language processing and information retrieval systems. The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) contains a large number of abbreviations. We hypothesized that extracting and studying the UMLS abbreviations can be helpful for understanding the characteristics of abbreviations in medicine. In this paper, we describe a method for extracting abbreviations from the UMLS. We evaluated the method and studied the ambiguous nature of the abbreviations. In addition, the coverage of the UMLS abbreviations in medical reports was studied. Using our method, we extracted 163,666 unique (abbreviation, full form) pairs from the UMLS with a precision of 97.5%, and a recall of 96%. The UMLS abbreviations were highly ambiguous: 33.1% of abbreviations with six characters or less had multiple meanings; the average number of different full forms for all abbreviations with six characters or less was 2.28. The coverage of the UMLS abbreviations in medical reports was over 66%.
Differential flatness based control of hybrid power plant based on supercapacitor storage energy for AC distributed system

This paper presents a control law for distributed ac generation supplied by a fuel cell (FC) main source and supercapacitor (SC, auxiliary source). In this paper, a nonlinear control algorithm based on the flatness properties of the system is proposed. Using the flatness property, we propose simple solutions to hybrid energy management and stabilization problems. Unlike a classical cascade control, a single loop control is proposed. A hardware system is implemented in laboratory. The prototype small-scale power plant is composed of a main source FC (80 V, 10 A), and a SC Maxwell technology module (165 F, 48 V). Experimental results substantiate the excellent control scheme during load cycles.
Threshold Voltage Design of UTB SOI SRAM With Improved Stability/Variability for Ultralow Voltage Near Subthreshold Operation

This paper analyzes and compares the stability, margin, performance, and variability of ultrathin-body (UTB) SOI 6T SRAM cells operating near the subthreshold region with different threshold voltage (V<sub>th</sub>) design. Our results indicate that UTB SOI 6T SRAM cell using low V<sub>th</sub> devices (|V<sub>th</sub>| = 0.19 V) shows a comparable read static noise margin (RSNM), 41% improvement in σRSNM, 84% improvement in write static noise margin (WSNM), and 67% improvement in σWSNM as compared with the case using higher V<sub>th</sub> devices (|V<sub>th</sub>| = 0.49 V). As V<sub>th</sub> decreases (work function moves to the band edge), the “cell” access time improves significantly with correspondingly higher standby leakage. For low V<sub>th</sub> devices (|V<sub>th</sub>| = 0.19 V), it is shown that lowering bit-line precharge voltage by 50 mV reduces the standby leakage by 20%. Our study suggests that the lower V<sub>th</sub> devices operating slightly into super-threshold region improve the stability/variability significantly and offer higher performance for ultralow voltage SRAM applications.
What Is Going on Inside the Arrows? Discovering the Hidden Springs in Causal Models

Using Gebharter’s representation, we consider aspects of the problem of discovering the structure of unmeasured submechanisms when the variables in those submechanisms have not been measured. Exploiting an early insight of Sober’s, we provide a correct algorithm for identifying latent, endogenous structure—submechanisms—for a restricted class of structures. The algorithm can be merged with other methods for discovering causal relations among unmeasured variables, and feedback relations between measured variables and unobserved causes can sometimes be learned.
COMPUTER PROGRAMS: d‐novl: a program to simulate overlap between two niche‐based distribution models

d‐novl is a Monte Carlo program designed to generate a null expectation of overlap between two niche‐based distribution models. The user may choose between two growth algorithms: the separated algorithm grows a random number of disjointed growth areas, whereas the number of islands algorithm allows the user to input the desired number of growth areas. The latter algorithm can also be used to grow a single growth area. The resulting probability distribution of expected overlap values can be exported into a spreadsheet for further analysis.
Nutrition and Food Consumption among the Inuit of Nunavik

Over the last decade, significant changes in food consumption patterns have occurred in the traditional Inuit diet, especially since communication and transportation with southern regions were improved. Similar situations have been observed among other Aboriginal populations and it seems that Aboriginal people are vulnerable to nutritional inadequacy and are facing significant increases in nutrition-related health problems. Improving health outcomes for the Inuit population is a priority for public health and addressing this priority involves the surveillance of dietary intakes, nutritional status, dietary attitudes and behaviours, as well as food security. The Nunavik Inuit Health Survey conducted in 2004 allowed for the collection of reliable and up-to-date information about the Inuit diet and for the verification of changes in consumption patterns over the last decade.
An elementary proof of MinVol(Rn) = 0 for n > 3

In this paper, we give an elementary proof of the result that the minimal volumes of R3 and R4 are zero. The approach is to construct a sequence of explicit complete metrics on them such that the sectional curvatures are bounded in absolute value by 1 and the volumes tend to zero. As a direct consequence, we get that MinVol (Rn) = 0 for n > 3.
Making Music with Algorithms: A Case-Study System

19 Computer Music Journal, 23:2, pp. 19–30, Summer 1999 © 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Musicians, perhaps more so than any other group of artists, have always been quick to embrace technology in all its forms. From early attempts at synthesis with the Telharmonium (Roads 1996) to the latest digital-audio workstations (see, for example, Lehrman 1997; Manning 1993), musicians have looked to science to provide them with new and challenging ways of working. One composition method that has benefited greatly from advances in technology is algorithmic composition. Algorithmic composition is by no means new—formal techniques for melody composition date back to at least 1026, when Guido d’Arezzo proposed a scheme that assigned pitches to each vowel sound in a religious text (Loy 1989)—but the advent of affordable and powerful computing resources has meant that more and more people, armed with no more than a little programming knowledge and some musical ideas, have been able to realize their composition algorithms from the comfort of their own desktops. The use of computers as composition generators was pioneered in the mid-1950s by such people as Lejaren Hiller (Hiller and Isaacson 1959), whose 1956 work, The Illiac Suite for String Quartet, is recognized as being the first computer-composed composition. Iannis Xenakis (Xenakis 1960, 1971), although not the first to publish a computer-composed work, had been composing stochastically generated pieces by hand for some time before the premier of The Illiac Suite. Later, Gottfried Koenig developed the Project 1 and 2 composition programs (Koenig 1970a, b). Computer-based algorithmic composition continues the post-war trend toward formalized and systematic composition methods, such as Arnold Schoenberg’s tone-row and Anton Webern’s serialism methods (Roads 1996). Considered thus, it is apparent that the computer is merely a tool for the realization of abstract design constructs, and is best employed as a labor-saving device to free the composer from performing menial calculations by hand. Using a computer, it is possible to preview and test the musical capabilities of many different algorithmic types and judge whether they have the potential to be developed into full-fledged composition systems. This is also the view subscribed to by the authors. Computers in music, and indeed, the algorithmic composition systems themselves, are best thought of as composition tools rather than one-stop music solutions. It was with this in mind that we developed CAMUS 3D, a composition system of our own design that likens the process of music composition to that of pattern propagation. In this article, we introduce the system and show how two classes of algorithms are used to generate musical data.
Tuning of the Microwave Magnetization Dynamics in Dy-Doped Fe65Co35-Based Thin Films

To enhance the damping of microwave magnetization dynamics, we investigate the effect of Dy-doping into Fe65Co35 thin films. The increase of Dy-doping reduces the saturation magnetization substantially. The coercivities decrease largely after Dy-doping, ascribed to the grain refinement. The damping factor increases as expected due to the enhanced orbital-spin coupling by Dy-doping. Other than the high Dy-concentration, the tuning by sputtering gas pressure is also effective in enhancing the damping, avoiding the remarkable decrease of resonance frequency.
A Time-Domain Approach to the Analysis and Modeling of On-Body Propagation Characteristics Using Synchronized Measurements at 2.45 GHz

Modeling of on-body propagation channels is of paramount importance to those wishing to evaluate radio channel performance for wearable devices in body area networks (BANs). Difficulties in modeling arise due to the highly variable channel conditions related to changes in the user's state and local environment. This study characterizes these influences by using time-series analysis to examine and model signal characteristics for on-body radio channels in user stationary and mobile scenarios in four different locations: anechoic chamber, open office area, hallway, and outdoor environment. Autocorrelation and cross-correlation functions are reported and shown to be dependent on body state and surroundings. Autoregressive (AR) transfer functions are used to perform time-series analysis and develop models for fading in various on-body links. Due to the non-Gaussian nature of the logarithmically transformed observed signal envelope in the majority of mobile user states, a simple method for reproducing the fading based on lognormal and Nakagami statistics is proposed. The validity of the AR models is evaluated using hypothesis testing, which is based on the Ljung-Box statistic, and the estimated distributional parameters of the simulator output compared with those from experimental results.
Validity of the impact on participation and autonomy questionnaire: A comparison between two countries

Purpose. To evaluate the cross-cultural validity of the five subscales of the Impact on Participation and Autonomy (IPA) measure and the full 31-item scale. Method. Data from two validation studies (Dutch and English) were pooled (n = 106). Participants (aged 18 – 75), known to rehabilitation services or GP practices, had conditions ranging from minor ailments to significant disability. Validity of the five subscales and the total scale was examined using Rasch analysis (Partial Credit Model). P values smaller than 0.01 were employed to allow for multiple testing. Results. A number of items in all the subscales except ‘Outdoor Autonomy’ needed rescoring. One ‘Indoor Autonomy’ item showed uniform DIF by country and was split by country. One ‘Work and Education’ item displayed uniform and non-uniform DIF by gender. All the subscales fitted the Rasch model and were invariant across country. A 30-item IPA also fitted the Rasch model. Conclusion. The IPA subscales and a 30-item scale are invariant across the two cultures and gender. The IPA can be used validly to assess participation and autonomy in these populations. Further analyses are required to examine whether the IPA is invariant across differing levels of disability and other disease groups not included in this study.