Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fuzzy Distance Sensor Data Integration and Interpretation

An approach to distance sensor data integration that obtains a robust interpretation of the robot environment is presented in this paper. This approach consists in obtaining patterns of fuzzy distance zones from sensor readings; comparing these patterns in order to detect non-working sensors; and integrating the patterns obtained by each kind of sensor in order to obtain a final pattern that detects obstacles of any sort. A dissimilarity measure between fuzzy sets has been defined and applied to this approach. Moreover, an algorithm to classify orientation reference systems (built by corners detected in the robot world) as open or closed is also presented. The final pattern of fuzzy distances, resulting from the integration process, is used to extract the important reference systems when a glass wall is included in the robot environment. Finally, our approach has been tested in an ActivMedia Pioneer 2 dx mobile robot using the Player/Stage as the control interface and promising results have been obtained.
Modeling of Buffer Storage in Video Transmission

In video applications, the storage requirement is considerably large and hence they require large amount of network resources for their transmission. For transmitting the videos through a physical channel, there are two types of channelization-constant bandwidth and variable bandwidth channelization. It has been reported that using variable bandwidth channelization the buffer storage requirement is less than that of constant bandwidth channelization. Therefore, using variable bandwidth channelization a stochastic model is proposed for estimating the buffer storage so that the continuous delivery of the video data can be provided to the users.
PRAME Is a Golgi-Targeted Protein That Associates with the Elongin BC Complex and Is Upregulated by Interferon-Gamma and Bacterial PAMPs

Preferentially expressed antigen in melanoma (PRAME) has been described as a cancer-testis antigen and is associated with leukaemias and solid tumours. Here we show that PRAME gene transcription in leukaemic cell lines is rapidly induced by exposure of cells to bacterial PAMPs (pathogen associated molecular patterns) in combination with type 2 interferon (IFNγ). Treatment of HL60 cells with lipopolysaccharide or peptidoglycan in combination with IFNγ resulted in a rapid and transient induction of PRAME transcription, and increased association of PRAME transcripts with polysomes. Moreover, treatment with PAMPs/IFNγ also modulated the subcellular localisation of PRAME proteins in HL60 and U937 cells, resulting in targeting of cytoplasmic PRAME to the Golgi. Affinity purification studies revealed that PRAME associates with Elongin B and Elongin C, components of Cullin E3 ubiquitin ligase complexes. This occurs via direct interaction of PRAME with Elongin C, and PRAME colocalises with Elongins in the Golgi after PAMP/IFNγ treatment. PRAME was also found to co-immunoprecipitate core histones, consistent with its partial localisation to the nucleus, and was found to bind directly to histone H3 in vitro. Thus, PRAME is upregulated by signalling pathways that are activated in response to infection/inflammation, and its product may have dual functions as a histone-binding protein, and in directing ubiquitylation of target proteins for processing in the Golgi.
A 50-Gene Intrinsic Subtype Classifier for Prognosis and Prediction of Benefit from Adjuvant Tamoxifen

Purpose: Gene expression profiling classifies breast cancer into intrinsic subtypes based on the biology of the underlying disease pathways. We have used material from a prospective randomized trial of tamoxifen versus placebo in premenopausal women with primary breast cancer (NCIC CTG MA.12) to evaluate the prognostic and predictive significance of intrinsic subtypes identified by both the PAM50 gene set and by immunohistochemistry. Experimental Design: Total RNA from 398 of 672 (59%) patients was available for intrinsic subtyping with a quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (qRT-PCR) 50-gene predictor (PAM50) for luminal A, luminal B, HER-2–enriched, and basal-like subtypes. A tissue microarray was also constructed from 492 of 672 (73%) of the study population to assess a panel of six immunohistochemical IHC antibodies to define the same intrinsic subtypes. Results: Classification into intrinsic subtypes by the PAM50 assay was prognostic for both disease-free survival (DFS; P = 0.0003) and overall survival (OS; P = 0.0002), whereas classification by the IHC panel was not. Luminal subtype by PAM50 was predictive of tamoxifen benefit [DFS: HR, 0.52; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.32–0.86 vs. HR, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.50–1.29 for nonluminal subtypes], although the interaction test was not significant (P = 0.24), whereas neither subtyping by central immunohistochemistry nor by local estrogen receptor (ER) or progesterone receptor (PR) status were predictive. Risk of relapse (ROR) modeling with the PAM50 assay produced a continuous risk score in both node-negative and node-positive disease. Conclusions: In the MA.12 study, intrinsic subtype classification by qRT-PCR with the PAM50 assay was superior to IHC profiling for both prognosis and prediction of benefit from adjuvant tamoxifen. Clin Cancer Res; 18(16); 4465–72. ©2012 AACR.
Time-invariant LDPC convolutional codes

Spatially coupled codes have been shown to achieve the capacity for a large class of channels universally. Many variants of such codes have been introduced to date. We discuss a further such variant that is particularly simple and is determined by a very small number of parameters. More precisely, we consider and ensemble of time-invariant low-density parity-check convolutional codes with very large constraint lengths. We show via simulations that, despite their extreme simplicity, such codes still show the threshold saturation behavior known from the spatially coupled codes discussed in the literature. Further, we show how the size of the typical minimum stopping set is related to basic parameters of the code. Due to their simplicity and good performance, these codes might be attractive from an implementation perspective.
Increased likelihood of induced seismicity in highly overpressured shale formations

S U M M A R Y Fluid-injection processes such as disposal of saltwater or hydraulic fracturing can induce earthquakes by increasing pore pressure and/or shear stress on faults. Natural processes, including transformation of organic material (kerogen) into hydrocarbon and cracking to produce gas, can similarly cause fluid overpressure. Here, we document two examples from the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin where earthquakes induced by hydraulic fracturing are strongly clustered within areas characterized by pore-pressure gradient in excess of 15 kPa m−1. Despite extensive hydraulic-fracturing activity associated with resource development, induced earthquakes are virtually absent in the Montney and Duvernay Formations elsewhere. Statistical analysis suggests a negligible probability that this spatial correlation developed by chance. This implies that, in addition to known factors such as anthropogenic pore-pressure increase and proximity to critically stressed faults, high in situ overpressure of shale formations may also represent a controlling factor for inducing earthquakes by hydraulic fracturing. On a geological timescale, natural pore-pressure generation may lead to fault-slip episodes that regulate the magnitude of formation overpressure.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors in clinical trials

Immunology-based therapy is rapidly developing into an effective treatment option for a surprising range of cancers. We have learned over the last decade that powerful immunologic effector cells may be blocked by inhibitory regulatory pathways controlled by specific molecules often called “immune checkpoints. ” These checkpoints serve to control or turn off the immune response when it is no longer needed to prevent tissue injury and autoimmunity. Cancer cells have learned or evolved to use these mechanisms to evade immune control and elimination. The development of a new therapeutic class of drugs that inhibit these inhibitory pathways has recently emerged as a potent strategy in oncology. Three sets of agents have emerged in clinical trials exploiting this strategy. These agents are antibody-based therapies targeting cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA4), programmed cell death 1 (PD-1), and programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1). These inhibitors of immune inhibition have demonstrated extensive activity as single agents and in combinations. Clinical responses have been seen in melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, non-small cell lung cancer, and several other tumor types. Despite the autoimmune or inflammatory immune-mediated adverse effects which have been seen, the responses and overall survival benefits exhibited thus far warrant further clinical development.
Conceptual model for the specification of the quality properties of the Critical Business Process

Critical Business Processes (CBP) and the study of the aspects that allow to specify formally their properties, it has now become a subject of extensive research. Because of the multiplicity of elements involved in the treatment of CBP and its definition has evolved over time in this article provides a historical review of the concepts related to the formal specification of the properties of the CBP and proposes some models based conceptual definitions on this topic. Additionally, we introduce the definition of verifiable properties of the CBP. This article is part of a research in progress that aims to facilitate the process of formal specification of the properties of the CBP.
Hip fracture mortality and morbidity--can we do better?

AIMS To determine the mortality and morbidity from fractures of the neck of femur in Christchurch Hospital and to determine the extent that hip fracture patients are investigated and treated for osteoporosis. METHODS All patients treated for a fractured hip at Christchurch Hospitals between May 1998 and April 1999 were identified. Their radiographs were reviewed and each fracture was classified. Dates of death were recorded where applicable. Surviving patients were contacted at least twelve months after their fracture and asked questions relating to functional outcome following surgery. The numbers of patients who had ever had a bone density scan, treatment for osteoporosis and/or a measurement of vitamin D were recorded. RESULTS There were 331 fractures among 329 patients (242 women, 87 men), mean age of 79.7 (standard deviation 10.5) years. Twelve-month mortality was 26%. Men had a higher mortality rate than women for all fracture types that was independent of age. Follow up of the 231 surviving patients 12-24 months later revealed 27% still had pain and 60% had worsened mobility that they attributed to the fracture. Worsened mobility affected people living at home more than people living in institutional care. 32 people (15%) had had a vitamin D concentration measured and in 22 of these (69%) levels were below the reference range. CONCLUSIONS The mortality and morbidity after hip fracture is high, especially in men. There were few significant correlates with greater morbidity except for fixation by hemi arthroplasty. More attention to hip fracture prevention is needed. Few subjects were on any therapy for osteoporosis other than calcium supplements. Vitamin D deficiency is an important but under-recognised condition.
Incorporating Agreements on Service Options into BPEL-based Services

To achieve flexibility in service-oriented computing, applied values of service options, such as required payment and application-specific quality values, should be determined and agreed for every pair of a service provider and a consumer, by matching both requirements or negotiating with each other. This work proposes a framework for development of agents that provide Web services with service agreements determined for every unit of service provision. The proposed framework supports lifecycle management of service agreements, namely, implementation of the preliminary process to build agreements. It also supports implementation of service processes that change its behavior according to the established agreements. The framework makes use of BPEL, a standard language to specify a process that implements Web services, and thus facilitate to incorporate additional mechanisms regarding service options into a common approach for development of Web services
The 3D object recognition with environmental adaptability based on VFH descriptor and region growing segmentation

3D object recognition is a basic research in the machine vision field. Microsoft KINECT V2 is utilized to collect external environmental information. The point cloud file is obtained after processing the collected information. In order to filter the point cloud and obtain point cloud model of a single object in the environment after region growing segmentation, the point cloud is applied to point cloud library. Then, the VFH descriptor of the point cloud model is calculated. After inputting point cloud model of the trained target, the point cloud model with the minimum CHI square distance between the VFH descriptor of the target and VFH descriptor of the point cloud model can be found. The 3D object corresponding to the found model is the identified object. For the 3D object recognition in an unfamiliar environment, the algorithm of 3D object recognition with environmental adaptability is proposed. After the 3D object recognition system built, the physical verification is conducted about the proposed algorithm. Giving the target model, the system successfully identifies the 3D object in the unfamiliar environment, that demonstrates the correctness of the algorithm.
Dispersion complexity-entropy curves: An effective method to characterize the structures of nonlinear time series.

The complexity-entropy curve (CEC) is a valuable tool for characterizing the structure of time series and finds broad application across various research fields. Despite its widespread usage, the original permutation complexity-entropy curve (PCEC), which is founded on permutation entropy (PE), exhibits a notable limitation: its inability to take the means and amplitudes of time series into considerations. This oversight can lead to inaccuracies in differentiating time series. In this paper, drawing inspiration from dispersion entropy (DE), we propose the dispersion complexity-entropy curve (DCEC) to enhance the capability of CEC in uncovering the concealed structures within nonlinear time series. Our approach initiates with simulated data including the logistic map, color noises, and various chaotic systems. The outcomes of our simulated experiments consistently showcase the effectiveness of DCEC in distinguishing nonlinear time series with diverse characteristics. Furthermore, we extend the application of DCEC to real-world data, thereby asserting its practical utility. A novel approach is proposed, wherein DCEC-based feature extraction is combined with multivariate support vector machine for the diagnosis of various types of bearing faults. This combination achieved a high accuracy rate in our experiments. Additionally, we employ DCEC to assess stock indices from different countries and periods, thereby facilitating an analysis of the complexity inherent in financial markets. Our findings reveal significant insights into the dynamic regularities and distinct structures of these indices, offering a novel perspective for analyzing financial time series. Collectively, these applications underscore the potential of DCEC as an effective tool for the nonlinear time series analysis.
Decision tree-based simultaneous clustering of phonetic contexts, dimensions, and state positions for acoustic modeling

In recent years, context-dependent hidden Markov model, typically triphones and continuous density HMMs are often used. The use of triphones results in too many free-parameters in a system, hence it is difficult to estimate the model which is statistically reliable. Therefore, various parameter clustering techniques have been proposed. The use of Phonetic Decision Trees (P-DT) based state-tying technique is a good solution to this problem. However, state-tying technique cannot construct proper context-dependent sharing structure and cannot assign proper number of free-parameter for each dimension. In this paper, Phonetic and Dimensional Decision Trees (PD-DT) is proposed by introducing the MDL-based dimensional-split technique into P-DT. Furthermore, by incorpolating questions about state positions into PD-DT, Phonetic, Dimensional and State positional Decision Trees (PDS-DT) is defined. In speaker-independent continuous speech recognition experiments, proposed technique achieved about 13%–15% error reduction over P-DT based state-tying technique.
Risk Adjustment of Ischemic Stroke Outcomes for Comparing Hospital Performance: A Statement for Healthcare Professionals From the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association

Background and Purpose— Stroke is the fourth-leading cause of death and a leading cause of long-term major disability in the United States. Measuring outcomes after stroke has important policy implications. The primary goals of this consensus statement are to (1) review statistical considerations when evaluating models that define hospital performance in providing stroke care; (2) discuss the benefits, limitations, and potential unintended consequences of using various outcome measures when evaluating the quality of ischemic stroke care at the hospital level; (3) summarize the evidence on the role of specific clinical and administrative variables, including patient preferences, in risk-adjusted models of ischemic stroke outcomes; (4) provide recommendations on the minimum list of variables that should be included in risk adjustment of ischemic stroke outcomes for comparisons of quality at the hospital level; and (5) provide recommendations for further research. Methods and Results— This statement gives an overview of statistical considerations for the evaluation of hospital-level outcomes after stroke and provides a systematic review of the literature for the following outcome measures for ischemic stroke at 30 days: functional outcomes, mortality, and readmissions. Data on outcomes after stroke have primarily involved studies conducted at an individual patient level rather than a hospital level. On the basis of the available information, the following factors should be included in all hospital-level risk-adjustment models: age, sex, stroke severity, comorbid conditions, and vascular risk factors. Because stroke severity is the most important prognostic factor for individual patients and appears to be a significant predictor of hospital-level performance for 30-day mortality, inclusion of a stroke severity measure in risk-adjustment models for 30-day outcome measures is recommended. Risk-adjustment models that do not include stroke severity or other recommended variables must provide comparable classification of hospital performance as models that include these variables. Stroke severity and other variables that are included in risk-adjustment models should be standardized across sites, so that their reliability and accuracy are equivalent. There is a pressing need for research in multiple areas to better identify methods and metrics to evaluate outcomes of stroke care. Conclusions— There are a number of important methodological challenges in undertaking risk-adjusted outcome comparisons to assess the quality of stroke care in different hospitals. It is important for stakeholders to recognize these challenges and for there to be a concerted approach to improving the methods for quality assessment and improvement.
Mechanisms and biological importance of photon-induced bystander responses: do they have an impact on low-dose radiation responses

Abstract Elucidating the biological effect of low linear energy transfer (LET), low-dose and/or low-dose-rate ionizing radiation is essential in ensuring radiation safety. Over the past two decades, non-targeted effects, which are not only a direct consequence of radiation-induced initial lesions produced in cellular DNA but also of intra- and inter-cellular communications involving both targeted and non-targeted cells, have been reported and are currently defining a new paradigm in radiation biology. These effects include radiation-induced adaptive response, low-dose hypersensitivity, genomic instability, and radiation-induced bystander response (RIBR). RIBR is generally defined as a cellular response that is induced in non-irradiated cells that receive bystander signals from directly irradiated cells. RIBR could thus play an important biological role in low-dose irradiation conditions. However, this suggestion was mainly based on findings obtained using high-LET charged-particle radiations. The human population (especially the Japanese, who are exposed to lower doses of radon than the world average) is more frequently exposed to low-LET photons (X-rays or γ-rays) than to high-LET charged-particle radiation on a daily basis. There are currently a growing number of reports describing a distinguishing feature between photon-induced bystander response and high-LET RIBR. In particular, photon-induced bystander response is strongly influenced by irradiation dose, the irradiated region of the targeted cells, and p53 status. The present review focuses on the photon-induced bystander response, and discusses its impact on the low-dose radiation effect.
Interpolação de dados agromeorológicos em duas densidades amostrais no norte de Minas Gerais

As obtenções de dados meteorológicos de estações agrometeorológicas muitas vezes são em número reduzido e dificultam o estudo de variabilidade espacial. O objetivo deste trabalho foi verificar a variabilidade espacial utilizando duas densidades de pontos amostrais, uma com cinco pontos relativos às estações do INMET (Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia) e outra quando acrescidos 11 pontos das estações instaladas pela Embrapa totalizando 16 estações na região norte do Estado de Minas Gerais. Os dados meteorológicos mensais utilizados, para a interpolação nas duas densidades amostrais de cinco pontos (estações do INMET) e de 16 pontos (estações do INMET e da Embrapa) para os anos de 2013 e 2014, foram: a radiação solar global incidente (RG), a temperatura do ar (Ta) e a evapotranspiração de referência (ET0). Foram realizadas a estatística descritiva e análise geoestatística. A densidade amostral com cinco pontos das estações do INMET foi insuficiente para análise de variabilidade espacial e o incremento na densidade amostral decorrente das 11 estações da Embrapa permitiu um ganho na representação espacial dos dados meteorológicos usados para obtenção da evapotranspiração, gerando mapas de krigagem com contornos melhor definidos e em maior número, contribuindo, portanto, com o monitoramento dos agros-ecossistemas nos municípios do norte de Minas Gerais.