Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Autonomous mobile robot navigation in uneven and unstructured indoor environments

Robots are increasingly operating in indoor environments designed for and shared with people. However, robots working safely and autonomously in uneven and unstructured environments still face great challenges. Many modern indoor environments are designed with wheelchair accessibility in mind. This presents an opportunity for wheeled robots to navigate through sloped areas while avoiding staircases. In this paper, we present an integrated software and hardware system for autonomous mobile robot navigation in uneven and unstructured indoor environments. This modular and reusable software framework incorporates capabilities of perception and navigation. Our robot first builds a 3D OctoMap representation for the uneven environment with the 3D mapping using wheel odometry, 2D laser and RGB-D data. Then we project multilayer 2D occupancy maps from OctoMap to generate the the traversable map based on layer differences. The safe traversable map serves as the input for efficient autonomous navigation. Furthermore, we employ a variable step size Rapidly Exploring Random Trees that could adjust the step size automatically, eliminating tuning step sizes according to environments. We conduct extensive experiments in simulation and real-world, demonstrating the efficacy and efficiency of our system. (Supplemented video link: https://youtu.be/6XJWcsH1fk0).
Sustainable agriculture in the Blue Nile Basin: land and watershed management practices in Ethiopia

Abstract The trade-off between short-term welfare and long-term agricultural development in the highlands of Ethiopia represents a challenge to successful economic development in a predominantly agriculture-based economy. We employ nearest neighbor and kernel-based matching techniques to measure the impact of sustainable land and watershed management (SLWM) on the value of production at the plot level. Analysis suggests that plots that received SLWM investments (terraces, bunds, check dams) within the first study period (1992–2002) had a 24 per cent higher value of production in 2010. In addition, continuous treatment effects analysis provides a robustness check and suggests that plots with existing SLWM infrastructure have a positive and increasing value of production seven years after construction. Although value of production increases over time, net benefits may not outweigh costs, and mechanisms to incentivize maintenance may be needed.
An Empirical Analysis of Household Vulnerability in Rural China

ABSTRACT Based on a set of household survey data, this paper is among the first to analyze vulnerability in rural China. In particular, cohort analysis is introduced to explore the relationship between vulnerability and diversification and the education–vulnerability nexus. Empirical results indicate that, contrary to earlier findings, diversification into non-agriculture activities is found to exert little effects on vulnerability, and that education is an important determinant of vulnerability in rural China.
Parents--to help or hinder pain memories in children.

Memory is defined as “the store of things learned and retained from an organism’s activity or experience as evidenced by modification of structure or behavior or by recall and recognition” and reflects the formation of neuronal assemblies of previously experienced stimuli. Pain memories relate to somatosensory events experienced by an individual either at the time of the painful event or as a consequence of ongoing pain. As such, contextual influences can contribute considerably to the process of encoding and retrieval. Although the neurobiology of pain memories is not well-defined, the hippocampus, well known to be involved in memory, is significantly involved in chronic pain conditions (eg, migraine) and in the transition to the chronic pain state. Moreover, memory for pain is susceptible to distortion over time with maladaptive memory traces implicated in the development and maintenance of pain. Emerging research has focused on identifying specific vulnerabilities that result in these negative outcomes. In this volume ofPAIN, Noel et al. present an interesting data set related to this issue in their article: Remembering pain after surgery: A longitudinal examination of the role of pain catastrophizing in children’s and parents’ recall.
Institutional Change and the Financialisation of Pensions in Europe

Pension reform in European political economies has increased the institutional proximity of local pension arrangements and emerging retirement-income institutions with the prospects of global financial markets and conventional investment practice. Applying new institutional theory to case studies of pension reforms in Finland, Germany and France, we find that this increasing relational proximity is deeply embedded in existing institutional practices typical of each political economy, simultaneously supporting continuity and change. This suggests that the linearity inherent in debates over convergence and divergence in comparative capitalism needs to move to more multidimensional understandings of political–economic variety more sensitive to agency in order to grasp what is ultimately occurring as political economies transform and interact, particularly under conditions of financialisation.
Rethinking ethical leadership, social capital and customer relationship.

Purpose – Practical wisdom from Chinese classical traditions is still an enlightening resource for contemporary management. Based in traditional Chinese perspectives, this paper aims to explore the influence of ethical leadership and social capital on customer relationship.Design/methodology/approach – The authors conduct a survey of senior executives in 215 Chinese companies. Structural model testing and hierarchical regressions are used to analyze the data.Findings – The empirical analysis affirms the authors' hypotheses that both ethical leadership and social capital have significant influence on customer relationship.Research limitations/implications – The results imply that traditional Chinese perspectives on contemporary management research have a potentially important impact.Practical implications – It may also be valuable for Chinese firms to incorporate classical traditions into their daily practice: to enhance ethical leadership and obtain more social capital.Originality/value – This study is a .
The impact of medical malpractice insurance cost on physician behaviour: The role of income and tort signal effects

The paper examines the impact of medical malpractice insurance cost on physician behaviour. Changes in malpractice insurance premiums can potentially influence physician behaviour directly through income effects from changes in medical practice earnings, and indirectly through tort signal effects that indicate exposure to malpractice risk. A structural model of the physician/firm is estimated to assess the significance, magnitude, and relative importance of income and tort signal effects of premium changes on physician time allocation and service supply. Using data on solo practice physicians, evidence is found of both income and tort signal effects for primary care physicians and surgeons. Results also indicate that income effects have a relatively larger impact on measures of physician behaviour such as services provided and fees, while tort signal effects, which reflect defensive measures, have a much smaller impact.
Preference changes among American youth: family work and goods aspirations 1976-86.

This article examines trends and differentials by sex in both absolute and relative preferences among American young adults from 1976 to 1986. If one considers marriage and family formation preferences alone the desires of American youth to marry and have children changed very little over this period. When one shifts from absolute to relative preferences desires for goods for oneself have increased substantially and for leisure and goods for ones children moderately. Considered in this context the stability in marriage and family preferences implies a shift in relative preferences against children. This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (see Population Index Vol. 56 No. 3 Fall 1990 p. 420). (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA) (EXCERPT)
The Impact of Single-family Mortgage Foreclosures on Neighborhood Crime

Foreclosures of single-family mortgages have increased dramatically in many parts of the US in recent years. Much of this has been tied to the rise of higher-risk subprime mortgage lending. Debates concerning mortgage regulation, as well as around other residential finance policies and practices, hinge critically on the social as well as personal costs of loan default and foreclosure. This paper examines the impact of foreclosures of single-family mortgages on levels of violent and property crime at the neighborhood level. Using data on foreclosures, neighborhood characteristics, and crime, the study found that higher foreclosure levels do contribute to higher levels of violent crime. The results for property crime are not statistically significant. A standard deviation increase in the foreclosure rate (about 2.8 foreclosures for every 100 owner-occupied properties in one year) corresponds to an increase in neighborhood violent crime of approximately 6.7 per cent. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.
DIGIT: A Novel Gene Finding Program by Combining Gene-Finders

We have developed a general purpose algorithm which finds genes by combining plural existing gene-finders. The algorithm has been implemented into a novel gene-finder named DIGIT. An outline of the algorithm is as follows. First, existing gene-finders are applied to an uncharacterized genomic sequence (input sequence). Next, DIGIT produces all possible exons from the results of gene-finders, and assigns them their exon types, reading frames and exon scores. Finally, DIGIT searches a set of exons whose additive score is maximized under their reading frame constraints. Bayesian procedure and a hidden Markov model are used to infer exon scores and search the exon set, respectively. We have designed DIGIT so as to combine the results of FGENESH, GENSCAN and HMMgene, and have assessed its prediction accuracy by using recently compiled benchmark data sets. For all data sets, DIGIT successfully discarded many false-positive exons predicted by individual gene-finders and yielded remarkable improvements in sensitivity and specificity at the gene level compared with the best gene level accuracies achieved by any single gene-finder.
The whys, how tos, and pitfalls of user studies

Members of the SIGGRAPH community are both consumers and producers of algorithms that make images and techniques that let us interact with visual applications. This course explains the essential role of user studies in insuring that algorithms, products, and content are effective for their intended purposes. The course introduces user studies through real examples and case studies that highlight good practices and warn of mistakes that can compromise evaluation. The cases are chosen to demonstrate the range of the application of user studies in computer graphics (for examle, in developing better algorithms and in evaluating images and interaction techniques. The first part of the course summarizes the different types of studies that are appropriate at different times during development of a user-interface technique. The second part uses examples from the evaluation of graphics to illustrate the different techniques that can be used to assess perceived image quality and preference. It includes some well-known techniques such as ranking and introduces novel concepts such as maximum-likelihood difference scaling. The third part reviews how eye tracking can support user studies. Eye tracking is useful as an interaction device in virtual environments, but it can also be a helpful tool in usability testing and evaluation of algorithms and techniques. It can collect and analyze additional data that can not be measured explicitly using questionnaires.
Inversion of real time spot prices in the direction of real power flow in a transmission line

Summary form only given, as follows. An increasing number of electricity markets employing some form of spot pricing. However, limited experience of the behaviour of spot prices exists. This paper introduces and investigates one particular aspect of pricing behaviour observed in the New Zealand spot market, known as "price inversion". Spot prices are generally calculated using some form of OPF or power-flow software. The phenomena of price inversion is investigated using the DC power-flow implemented in the New Zealand spot market, and using a full AC power-flow. Price inversion is shown to be dependent on the physical characteristics of the power system. The economic implications of price inversion are also discussed.
The Economics of Price Discrimination

This book offers a theoretical and unified explanation of how prices are determined in practice. Pricing, as observed in real life, turns out to be almost discriminatory. Four broad areas are covered: the spatial pricing of bulky products (Part I); the intertemporal pricing of storable goods, exhaustible resources, new durables, and nonstorable goods and services (Part II); two-part tariffs, commodity bundling, tie-ins, and nonlinear prices in general (Part III); and pricing of goods of different quality (Part IV). Each essay contains an introductory chapter describing the business practices that are to be rationalized and evaluated. This is the first unified treatment of a recent and growing body of literature in the 'new industrial organization' field. It fills the gap between textbook microeconomics and real-life antitrust cases. The treatment is as nontechnical and down to earth as possible to permit a wide audience for this comprehensive discussion of industrial pricing.
Effectiveness of palivizumab in children with childhood interstitial lung disease: The French experience

There is a lack of evidence concerning the effectiveness of immunoprophylaxis with palivizumab in children with childhood interstitial lung disease (chILD). In this retrospective study, we evaluated the effectiveness of palivizumab for decreasing the rate of RSV‐related hospitalizations in children under the age of 24 months with chILD treated with corticosteroids.
Fiscal Capacity and Tax Effort of the American States: Trends and Issues

The author examines the historic context of state taxing power and fiscal capacity, and the current efforts of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations to measure fiscal capacity and tax effort using a Representative Tax System (RTS). The two most commonly used methods of distributing federal aid to states are population and personal income, both incomplete measures of fiscal capacity. RTS estimates how much revenue each state and its localities would raise if it levied the national average tax rate for commonly used state and local taxes. The author considers the strengths and weakness of RTS as a measure of fiscal capacity and examines state rankings and trends since 1975.
The divergent roles of alternatively activated macrophages in helminthic infections

Macrophages play crucial roles in the immune response, as they can initiate, modulate and also be final effector cells during immune responses to infections. Macrophages are derived from myeloid precursor cells in bone marrow and are widely distributed in every tissue of the body. Over the past 10 years, the concepts about macrophage activation have clearly changed; macrophages are not called activated or inactivated as they used to be. These changes in the concept of macrophage response is the result of many in vitro and in vivo studies, but the major support for the current concept of alternatively activated macrophages (AAMφ) comes from parasitic helminth infections. Parasitic helminths have developed complex mechanisms to evade and modulate host immunity. Infections with these parasites induce strong polarized Th2‐type immune responses frequently associated with impaired T‐cell proliferative responses to parasitic or unrelated antigens. Given the recent advances in understanding the immunoregulatory capabilities of helminthic infections, it has been suggested that macrophages can be a target for immunomodulation. Furthermore, they become altered when a host experiences chronic exposure to helminth parasites or their by‐products, which favour the induction of AAMφ. How AAMφ participate in modulating host immunity during helminth infections and what their roles are in clearing or favouring parasite survival remains elusive. Here we review the most recent advances in the literature on AAMφ at the host–parasite interface, including three classes of helminths: nematodes (Brugia, Nippostrongylus, Litomosoides, Heligmosomoides), trematodes (Schistosoma, Fasciola) and cestodes (Taenia, Echinococcus, Hymenolepis).
A probability model for evaluating the bias and precision of influenza vaccine effectiveness estimates from case-control studies

SUMMARY As influenza vaccination is now widely recommended, randomized clinical trials are no longer ethical in many populations. Therefore, observational studies on patients seeking medical care for acute respiratory illnesses (ARIs) are a popular option for estimating influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE). We developed a probability model for evaluating and comparing bias and precision of estimates of VE against symptomatic influenza from two commonly used case-control study designs: the test-negative design and the traditional case-control design. We show that when vaccination does not affect the probability of developing non-influenza ARI then VE estimates from test-negative design studies are unbiased even if vaccinees and non-vaccinees have different probabilities of seeking medical care against ARI, as long as the ratio of these probabilities is the same for illnesses resulting from influenza and non-influenza infections. Our numerical results suggest that in general, estimates from the test-negative design have smaller bias compared to estimates from the traditional case-control design as long as the probability of non-influenza ARI is similar among vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. We did not find consistent differences between the standard errors of the estimates from the two study designs.
An isolation enhanced ultra-wideband semi-ring monopole MIMO antenna

In this paper, a two element semi-ring ultra-wideband (UWB) MIMO antenna is presented. The antenna is designed on a low cost FR4 material having a substrate size of 50×90×1.52mm3. The antenna covers 1.8-10.6GHz with minimum realized gain and total efficiency of 1.5dBi and 66%, respectively, at 1.8GHz. The size of each radiator is 24×12mm2. Isolation between antenna elements is enhanced by using a fork shaped structure and found to be more than 10dB over the whole operating region. The envelop correlation co-efficient is calculated from the far field radiation pattern and found to be less than 0.2 across the operating band.
Cellular distribution of transferrin, ferritin, and iron in normal and aged human brains

The iron transport protein, transferrin, and the iron storage protein ferritin were examined immunohistochemically along with iron in a number of brain regions from normal and aged humans. Two age groups were examined: a middle‐aged group (28–49 years), and an older group (60‐90 years). Transferrin, ferritin, and iron are found throughout all brain regions examined, predominantly in the perikaryal cytoplasm of cells that are small and round, fitting the description of oligodendrocytes. These cells are present in the optic nerve and in both the gray and white matter of the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and olfactory bulb in both age groups. Ferritin is also found in microglial cells in the gray matter of most of these brain regions. In the subcortical regions examined (corpus striatum, hippocampus, amygdala), in addition to oligodendrocytes, astrocytes can frequently be observed that contain transferrin, ferritin, and iron. There is an age‐related alteration in cell labeling: astrocytes in both gray and white matter contained transferrin in the oldest age group, whereas in the younger group the subcortical transferrin immunoreactivity was confined mostly to oligodendrocytes. Ferritin in the subcortical brain regions is also present in astrocytes but is primarily confined to those in the gray matter, even in the oldest age group. Iron is found predominantly in oligodendrocytes, although a few iron‐positive astrocytes and microglia can be identified. These results indicate that (1) normally oligodendrocytes contain much of the iron and iron‐binding proteins found in the brain; and (2) an increase in age is associated with altered cellular distribution of iron‐binding proteins, but the altered distribution is specific to glial cells. These results suggest glial cells may have previously undescribed functions related to metal regulation and sequestration.
Poxvirus vectors as HIV/AIDS vaccines in humans

The RV144 phase III clinical trial with the combination of the poxvirus vector ALVAC and the HIV gp120 protein has taught us that a vaccine against HIV/AIDS is possible but further improvements are still needed. Although the HIV protective effect of RV144 was modest (31.2%), these encouraging results reinforce the use of poxvirus vectors as HIV/AIDS vaccine candidates. In this review we focus on the prophylactic clinical studies thus far performed with the more widely studied poxvirus vectors, ALVAC, MVA, NYVAC and fowlpox expressing HIV antigens. We describe the characteristics of each vector administered either alone or in combination with other vectors, with emphasis on the immune parameters evaluated in healthy volunteers, percentage of responders and triggering of humoral and T cell responses. Some of these immunogens induced broad, polyfunctional and long-lasting CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses to HIV-1 antigens in most volunteers, with preference for effector memory T cells, and neutralizing antibodies, immune parameters that might be relevant in protection. Finally, we consider improvements in immunogenicity of the poxvirus vectors by the selective deletion of viral immunomodulatory genes and insertion of host range genes in the poxvirus genome. Overall, the poxvirus vectors have proven to be excellent HIV/AIDS vaccine candidates, with distinct behavior among them, and the future implementation will be dictated by their optimized immune profile in clinical trials.
FACTORS AFFECTING CONSUMERS’ BELIEFS ABOUT AQUACULTURE

Beliefs about food harvesting methods have increased their importance in consumer's purchase decisions since the beginning of the new century. This article tests different factors that may affect consumers’ beliefs and attitudes towards aquaculture as a method for food production. Individual's demographic characteristics, place of purchase and generic advertising credibility, are the factors whose effects were tested using two independent samples in consecutive years. A factor index from a set of scales recording different beliefs about aquaculture and its products is used as the dependent variable in two linear models testing for significant relations in both years. Educational level, retail format and advertising credibility appear to be the major factors affecting the scores of the beliefs’ index in all samples.