Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust Bipedal Locomotion on Unknown Terrain by Hongkai Dai

A wide variety of bipedal robots have been constructed with the goal of achieving natural and efficient walking in outdoor environments. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of general schemes enabling the robots to reject terrain disturbances. In this thesis, two approaches are presented to enhance the performance of bipedal robots walking on modest terrain. The first approach searches for a walking gait that is intrinsically easily stabilized. The second approach constructs a robust controller to steer the robot towards the designated walking gait. Mathematically, the problem is modeled as rejecting the uncertainty in the guard function of a hybrid nonlinear system. Two metrics are proposed to quantify the robustness of such systems. The first metric concerns the ‘average performance’ of a robot walking over a stochastic terrain. The expected LQR costto-go for the post-impact states is chosen to measure the difficulty of steering those perturbed states back to the desired trajectory. A nonlinear programming problem is formulated to search for a trajectory which takes the least effort to stabilize. The second metric deals with the ‘worst case performance’, and defines the L2 gain for the linearization of the hybrid nonlinear system around a nominal periodic trajectory. In order to reduce the L2 gain, an iterative optimization scheme is presented. In each iteration, the algorithm solves a semidefinite programming problem to find the quadratic storage function and integrates a periodic differential Riccati equation to compute the linear controller. The simulation results demonstrate that both metrics are correlated to the actual number of steps the robot can traverse on the rough terrain without falling down. By optimizing these two metrics, the robot can walk a much longer distance over the unknown landscape. Thesis Supervisor: Russ Tedrake Title: Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Fungal populations in air and materials in a flood simulation study.

Air quality was measured in a building subjected to flooding conditions analogous to that which occurred during Hurricane Katrina. This building was flooded to a depth of 0.61 m above the floor with pond water and maintained at that level for 3 wk. After the floodwater was drained, the building remained closed for an additional 3 wk. Immediately on opening, air samples were obtained and analyzed for fungal spores. Dry and wet material components of the building wall were analyzed for the presence of mold fungi by both culture and molecular techniques. Additional air samples were taken after a 30-da drying period and then after remediation of the building. The air measurements demonstrated the presence of high concentrations of indoor mold spores when the building was initially entered. Aspergillus/Penicillium were the dominate air molds. Fiberglass batt insulation supported the greatest concentration of culturable fungi, compared with other wall materials, followed by the paper facings of gypsum board and plywood sheathing. The solid wood stud, vinyl siding, and house wrap all supported low concentrations of culturable mold. After drying, the spore air contamination diminished more than 10-fold and the species of fungi on the materials drastically changed. After remediation, the spores inside the structure nearly matched those outside with respect to type and concentration.
Direct sub-word confidence estimation with hidden-state conditional random fields

The estimation of accurate confidence scores for sub-word-level units within automatic speech recognition (ASR) system transcriptions is investigated in this work. This is achieved through the application of linear-chain and hidden-state conditional random field (CRF) models to the task. A method for evaluating the significance of results quoted in terms of the normalised cross entropy (NCE) is also introduced. Instead of using sub-word-level information to improve wordlevel confidence scores, sub-word and word-level predictor features are combined to improve the accuracy of confidence scores in each sub-word being correct. The use of CRFs to model transitions between consecutive correct/incorrect sub-words yields large performance improvements. The scale of these gains is shown to increase further with the application of hidden-state CRFs. This is attributed to the fact that the hidden states make it possible for longer-span runs of consecutive correct/incorrect sub-words to be modelled, with these runs also not being constrained by word-level boundaries.
A case of allergic contact dermatitis to clavulanic acid

dermatitis to clavulanic acid Young Hoon Kim 1 , Joo Yeon Ko 1 , Yong Seok Kim 1 Young Suck Ro 1 1 Department of Dermatology, Hanyang University Hospital, Haengdang-dong, Sungdong-ku, Seoul 133-792, Korea Correspondence to Young Suck Ro, MD, PhD Department of Dermatology Hanyang University Hospital Haengdang-dong, Sungdong-ku Seoul 133-792 Korea Tel: +82 2 2290 8441 Fax: +82 2 2291 9619 e-mail: romio@hanyang.ac. kr Copyright © Blackwell Munksgaard 2008
Right ventricular systolic function in hypertensive heart failure

Background Heart failure (HF) is a major cause of cardiovascular admissions and hypertensive heart failure (HHF) is the most common cause of HF admissions in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria inclusive. Right ventricular (RV) dysfunction is being increasingly recognized in HF and found to be an independent predictor of adverse outcomes in HF. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of RV systolic dysfunction in HHF by several echocardiographic parameters. Methodology One hundred subjects with HHF were recruited consecutively into the study along with 50 age and sex-matched controls. All study participants gave written informed consent, and had a full physical examination, blood investigations, 12-lead electrocardiogram, and transthoracic echocardiography. RV systolic function was assessed in all subjects using different methods based on the American Society of Echocardiography guidelines for echocardiographic assessment of the right heart in adults. This included tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE), RV myocardial performance index (MPI), and RV systolic excursion velocity by tissue Doppler (S′). Results RV systolic dysfunction was found in 53% of subjects with HHF by TAPSE, 56% by RV MPI, and 48% by tissue Doppler systolic excursion S′. RV systolic dysfunction increased with reducing left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in subjects with HHF. Conclusion A high proportion of subjects with HHF were found to have RV systolic functional abnormalities using TAPSE, RV MPI, and RV S′. Prevalence of RV systolic dysfunction increased with reducing LVEF.
The Effect of Individual Movement on Host-Parasite Interactions

In this paper, we study the effect of susceptible hosts movements on parasites invasion and host persistence and extinction. The results indicate that it is more easier for parasites to invade if increase the movement rate of susceptible hosts. But, reduce the chance of host extinction. Index Terms—Pair approximation, Individual movement, Population persistence and Extinction ✦
Pozzolanic and cementitious materials

Sources of production and utilization rate chemical and physical characteristics mechanisms by which mineral admixtures improve properties of concrete effect of mineral admixtures on properties of fresh concrete effect of mineral admixtures on properties of hardened concrete durability aspects of concrete containing mineral admixtures selection of materials and mixture proportions standard specifications. (Part contents).
Evaluation of Coronary Artery Calcification by Multi-detector Row Computed Tomography for the Detection of Coronary Artery Stenosis in Japanese Patients

BACKGROUND: The development of an efficient noninvasive examination to detect coronary atherosclerosis is needed as a strategy to prevent coronary heart disease. To evaluate the usefulness of calcium score measured by multi-detector row computed tomography (MDCT), we compared calcium score derived from MDCT with findings of coronary artery stenosis assessed by coronary angiography (CAG). METHODS: In 108 patients (94 men, 14 women; average age, 65.7 years), we performed unenhanced CT scans and calculated coronary artery calcium score in 259 vessels without previous intervention and severe motion artifact to determine the correlation with the degree of coronary stenosis by CAG. RESULTS: The sensitivity and the specificity of calcification (calcium score 0.1+) for severe stenosis (75+%) were 89% and 43%, respectively. All four vessels with calcium score 1000+ had a severe stenosis. The areas under the receiver operating characteristics curve of calcium score for severe stenosis were 0.80 ± 0.04, indicating the efficacy of this technique. CONCLUSIONS: Coronary artery calcification and calcium score determined by MDCT were associated with coronary arteries with severe stenosis. This technique appears to be useful for the evaluation of coronary atherosclerosis.
Body Image and Female Sexual Functioning and Behavior: A Review

Knowledge in the research fields of body image and sexuality has significantly increased in the last decade. In this review, data from 57 studies were compiled for a review of empirical evidence regarding the association between sexuality and body image among healthy women. The overall conclusion is that body image issues can affect all domains of sexual functioning. Cognitions and self-consciousness seem to be key factors in understanding the complex relationships between women's body image and sexuality. Body evaluations and cognitions not only interfere with sexual responses and experiences during sexual activity, but also with sexual behavior, sexual avoidance, and risky sexual behavior.
Game AI : The Possible Bridge between Ambient and Artificial Intelligence

A critical role for the development of Ambient Intelligence will be played by Artificial Intelligence. Within its latest approach, Artificial Intelligence is considered as being embedded into an environment and measured by the success or failure of its interactions. The basic idea behind this approach is captured by the model of an intelligent agent: the agent receives information from the environment with its sensors and subsequently performs actions that change the environment’s current state. From this perspective, the challenges faced by autonomous agents are similar to the challenges humans accomplish every day. One example is given by the annually held RoboCup competitions, where robots compete in a football game but also fight for the rescue of civilians in a simulated large-scale disaster simulation. Further, the latest generation of game engines shows clearly that the trend leads towards more realistic physics simulations, agent centered perception, and complex player interactions due to the rapidly increasing degrees of freedom that digital characters obtain. This new freedom requests another quality of the player's environment, a quality of ambient intelligence that appears both plausible and in real time. This intelligence has, for example, to control more than 40 facial muscles of digital characters while they interact with humans, but also to control a team of digital characters for the support of human players. The chapter discusses how methods from RoboCup might contribute to make Artificial Intelligence more “natural” improving both the performance and plausibility of its digital characters. Furthermore, it describes state-of-the-art game engines and discuss the challenge but also the opportunity they are offering to Artificial Intelligence research.
Nanoporous alumina wire templates for surrounding-gate nanowire transistors

Aluminium wires are electrochemically sculptured into bi-directional templates for the templated growth and contacting of nanowires as three terminal devices. The use of this nanostructured template is demonstrated by a ZnO nanowire surrounding-gate field-effect transistor. This bottom-up approach to a 3D nanowire transistor is unique in that it can be almost entirely fabricated in a beaker using aqueous, room temperature electrochemistry. The fabrication procedures and preliminary device characteristics of this new approach to nanowire transistors are shown.
Improved Patient Survival Using a Modified Resuscitation Protocol for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

Background— Cardiac arrest continues to have poor survival in the United States. Recent studies have questioned current practice in resuscitation. Our emergency medical services system made significant changes to the adult cardiac arrest resuscitation protocol, including minimizing chest compression interruptions, increasing the ratio of compressions to ventilation, deemphasizing or delaying intubation, and advocating chest compressions before initial countershock. Methods and Results— This retrospective observational cohort study reviewed all adult primary ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia cardiac arrests 36 months before and 12 months after the protocol change. Primary outcome was survival to discharge; secondary outcomes were return of spontaneous circulation and cerebral performance category. Survival of out-of-hospital arrest of presumed primary cardiac origin improved from 7.5% (82 of 1097) in the historical cohort to 13.9% (47 of 339) in the revised protocol cohort (odds ratio, 1.80; 95% confidence interval, 1.19 to 2.70). Similar increases in return of spontaneous circulation were achieved for the subset of witnessed cardiac arrest patients with initial rhythm of ventricular fibrillation from 37.8% (54 of 143) to 59.6% (34 of 57) (odds ratio, 2.44; 95% confidence interval, 1.24 to 4.80). Survival to hospital discharge also improved from an unadjusted survival rate of 22.4% (32 of 143) to 43.9% (25 of 57) (odds ratio, 2.71; 95% confidence interval, 1.34 to 1.59) with the protocol. Of the 25 survivors, 88% (n=22) had favorable cerebral performance categories on discharge. Conclusions— The changes to our prehospital protocol for adult cardiac arrest that optimized chest compressions and reduced disruptions increased the return of spontaneous circulation and survival to discharge in our patient population. These changes should be further evaluated for improving survival of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients.
Exploiting unbalanced specialized comparable corpora for bilingual lexicon extraction†

Abstract The main work in bilingual lexicon extraction from comparable corpora is based on the implicit hypothesis that corpora are balanced in terms of size. However, the historical context-based projection method is relatively insensitive to the size of each part of the comparable corpus. Within this context, we have carried out a study on the influence of unbalanced specialized comparable corpora and on the quality of bilingual terminology extraction by doing different experiments. Moreover, we have introduced a strategy into the context-based projection method to re-estimate word co-occurrence observations. This is done by using smoothing or prediction techniques that boost the observations of word co-occurrences which are mainly useful for the smallest part of an unbalanced comparable corpus. Our results show that the use of unbalanced specialized comparable corpora results in a significant improvement in the quality of extracted lexicons.
Distributed representation-based spoken word sense induction

Spoken Term Detection (STD) or Keyword Search (KWS) techniques can locate keyword instances but do not differentiate between meanings. Spoken Word Sense Induction (SWSI) differentiates target instances by clustering according to context, providing a more useful result. In this paper we present a fully unsupervised SWSI approach based on distributed representations of spoken utterances. We compare this approach to several others, including the state-of-the-art Hierarchical Dirichlet Process (HDP). To determine how ASR performance affects SWSI, we used three different levels of Word Error Rate (WER), 40%, 20% and 0%; 40% WER is representative of online video, 0% of text. We show that the distributed representation approach outperforms all other approaches, regardless of the WER. Although LDA-based approaches do well on clean data, they degrade significantly with WER. Paradoxically, lower WER does not guarantee better SWSI performance, due to the influence of common locutions.
Requirement for expert histopathological assessment of ovarian cancer and borderline tumours

The distinction between borderline ovarian tumours (BOT) and ovarian carcinoma is made by histopathological assessment. Of 64 patients managed according to institutional BOT protocols, 27 (42%) had been referred with a diagnosis of ovarian carcinoma that was subsequently changed to BOT following histopathological review. The 70% 6-year event-free survival of the patients with a revised diagnosis was not significantly different from those who were referred with a diagnosis of BOT. This change in diagnosis is important as it avoids the need for chemotherapy for most patients and results in patients receiving appropriate information concerning prognosis. Interestingly, 24 patients (38.1%) reported a family history of epithelial cancer, a finding that has not been reported previously. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
Research Article: The Effect of Infectiousness, Duration of Sickness, and Chance of Recovery on a Population: A Simulation Study

Abstract. Mathematical modeling has become a mainstream approach in scientific research when it is not feasible to design adequate experimentation. Agent based modeling provides rapid assessments of possible scenarios, especially in epidemiological studies where the goal is to carry out quick and effective preventive steps when an infection breaks out. In this paper, the relationships between infectiousness, chance of recovery, duration of a micro-parasitic disease, and the population dynamics of the host via parameter sweeps in a simple model system were analyzed. A disease with a very low infection rate is unable to spread in the population, unless the population density is high and the duration of the sickness is long. In cases of low recovery rates the number of sick and immune individuals showed a maximum value at 30% infectiousness. As the size of the population decreases, the population density decreases, and therefore, the transmission rate decreases as well. This effect leads to a new equilibrium population size, where the number of births and deaths will be balanced, and a large proportion of the population has acquired immunity. Based on these simulation models, the dynamic properties of populations contribute to the resilience of illness due to infections from micro-parasitic diseases.
Coverage Control Inspired by Bacterial Chemotaxis

This paper considers distributed control of multi-agent systems, inspired by chemotaxis of bacteria. The chemotaxis is the biological phenomenon that organisms sense the concentration of a chemical in an environment and move toward or away from the highest concentration point. The problem considered here is a coverage problem, i.e., a problem of finding distributed controllers to steer agents so that they are placed uniformly on a given space. As a solution to this problem, we propose distributed controllers based on the mechanism of the chemotaxis. With the proposed controllers, each agent performs forward movement or random rotation depending on the difference between the current achievement degree of the coverage and the previous one. The performance of the proposed controllers is demonstrated by a numerical experiment. This result shows that multi-agent coordination in a distributed manner can be achieved by using the mechanism of the chemotaxis.
EVOLUTION OF RESISTANCE TO A MULTIPLE‐HERBIVORE COMMUNITY: GENETIC CORRELATIONS, DIFFUSE COEVOLUTION, AND CONSTRAINTS ON THE PLANT'S RESPONSE TO SELECTION

Although plants are generally attacked by a community of several species of herbivores, relatively little is known about the strength of natural selection for resistance in multiple‐herbivore communities—particularly how the strength of selection differs among herbivores that feed on different plant organs or how strongly genetic correlations in resistance affect the evolutionary responses of the plant. Here, we report on a field study measuring natural selection for resistance in a diverse community of herbivores of Solanum carolinense. Using linear phenotypic‐selection analyses, we found that directional selection acted to increase resistance to seven species. Selection was strongest to increase resistance to fruit feeders, followed by flower feeders, then leaf feeders. Selection favored a decrease in resistance to a stem borer. Bootstrapping analyses showed that the plant population contained significant genetic variation for each of 14 measured resistance traits and significant covariances in one‐third of the pairwise combinations of resistance traits. These genetic covariances reduced the plant's overall predicted evolutionary response for resistance against the herbivore community by about 60%. Diffuse (co)evolution was widespread in this community, and the diffuse interactions had an overwhelmingly constraining (rather than facilitative) effect on the plant's evolution of resistance.
Myosin‐II negatively regulates minor process extension and the temporal development of neuronal polarity

The earliest stage in the development of neuronal polarity is characterized by extension of undifferentiated “minor processes” (MPs), which subsequently differentiate into the axon and dendrites. We investigated the role of the myosin II motor protein in MP extension using forebrain and hippocampal neuron cultures. Chronic treatment of neurons with the myosin II ATPase inhibitor blebbistatin increased MP length, which was also seen in myosin IIB knockouts. Through live‐cell imaging, we demonstrate that myosin II inhibition triggers rapid minor process extension to a maximum length range. Myosin II activity is determined by phosphorylation of its regulatory light chains (rMLC) and mediated by myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) or RhoA‐kinase (ROCK). Pharmacological inhibition of MLCK or ROCK increased MP length moderately, with combined inhibition of these kinases resulting in an additive increase in MP length similar to the effect of direct inhibition of myosin II. Selective inhibition of RhoA signaling upstream of ROCK, with cell‐permeable C3 transferase, increased both the length and number of MPs. To determine whether myosin II affected development of neuronal polarity, MP differentiation was examined in cultures treated with direct or indirect myosin II inhibitors. Significantly, inhibition of myosin II, MLCK, or ROCK accelerated the development of neuronal polarity. Increased myosin II activity, through constitutively active MLCK or RhoA, decreased both the length and number of MPs and, consequently, delayed or abolished the development of neuronal polarity. Together, these data indicate that myosin II negatively regulates MP extension, and the developmental time course for axonogenesis. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol, 2009