Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Microgripper with a Post-Assembly Self-Locking Mechanism

In this work, we report a new design for an electrostatically actuated microgripper with a post-assembly self-locking mechanism. The microgripper arms are driven by rotary comb actuators, enabling the microgripper to grip objects of any size from 0 to 100 μm. The post-assembly mechanism is driven by elastic deformation energy and static electricity to produce self-locking and releasing actions. The mechanism enables the microgripper arms to grip for long periods without continuously applying the external driving signal, which significantly reduces the effects and damage to the gripped objects caused by these external driving signals. The microgripper was fabricated using a Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) wafer with a 30 μm structural layer. Test results show that this gripper achieves a displacement of 100 μm with a driving voltage of 33 V, and a metal wire with a diameter of about 1.6 mil is successfully gripped to demonstrate the feasibility of this post-assembly self-locking mechanism.
Comparative Genomic Paleontology across Plant Kingdom Reveals the Dynamics of TE-Driven Genome Evolution

Long terminal repeat-retrotransposons (LTR-RTs) are the most abundant class of transposable elements (TEs) in plants. They strongly impact the structure, function, and evolution of their host genome, and, in particular, their role in genome size variation has been clearly established. However, the dynamics of the process through which LTR-RTs have differentially shaped plant genomes is still poorly understood because of a lack of comparative studies. Using a new robust and automated family classification procedure, we exhaustively characterized the LTR-RTs in eight plant genomes for which a high-quality sequence is available (i.e., Arabidopsis thaliana, A. lyrata, grapevine, soybean, rice, Brachypodium dystachion, sorghum, and maize). This allowed us to perform a comparative genome-wide study of the retrotranspositional landscape in these eight plant lineages from both monocots and dicots. We show that retrotransposition has recurrently occurred in all plant genomes investigated, regardless their size, and through bursts, rather than a continuous process. Moreover, in each genome, only one or few LTR-RT families have been active in the recent past, and the difference in genome size among the species studied could thus mostly be accounted for by the extent of the latest transpositional burst(s). Following these bursts, LTR-RTs are efficiently eliminated from their host genomes through recombination and deletion, but we show that the removal rate is not lineage specific. These new findings lead us to propose a new model of TE-driven genome evolution in plants.
Situational Opportunity Theories of Crime

Historically speaking, criminological theory tends to pay great attention to identifying the various sources of criminal motivation while downplaying the opportunity to carry out crime in particular situations. However, perspectives that address situational opportunity have gained tremendous traction in the field over the past several decades to the point that there is now a substantial body of theory and research on the issue. This article reviews such theory and research within the context of four overlapping yet distinct lines of inquiry. First, we review scholarship that uses situational opportunity to understand individual victimization. Second, we discuss theory and research that link situational opportunity and high-crime places. Third, we explore scholarship that embraces a multicontextual opportunity perspective to understand crime and victimization events within neighborhood contexts. Fourth, we examine work that integrates situational opportunity into explanations of offending.
Customized SLAs in Cloud Environments

Nowadays, the demand for online storage is increasing. Customers store their data and can retrieve them anytime and from anywhere without having to care about back up and data recovery. SLAs between Cloud providers and customers determine the level of service guaranteed by the former. A customer can be anyone from an individual person to enterprises. Customers have different needs and preferences. Our proposed system permits the creation and enforcement of customized SLAs, where customers choose the requirements that they need fulfilled. The proposed SLAs are associated with content terms pertaining to the nature of the content of the data stored. SLA enforcement is based on rules that are updated in runtime in order to proactively detect possible SLA violations and handle them in an appropriate manner.
Particle Acceleration in Gamma-Ray Burst Jets

The gradual shear acceleration of energetic particles in gamma-ray burst (GRB) jets is considered. Special emphasis is given to the analysis of universal structured jets, and characteristic acceleration timescales are determined for a power-law evolution and a Gaussian evolution of the bulk flow Lorentz factor γb with angle ϕ from the jet axis. The results suggest that local power-law particle distributions may be generated and that higher energy particles are generally concentrated closer to the jet axis. Taking several constraints into account, we show that efficient electron acceleration in gradual shear flows, with maximum particle energy successively decreasing with time, may be possible on scales larger than r ~ 1015 cm, provided the jet magnetic field becomes sufficiently weak and/or decreases rapidly enough with distance, while efficient acceleration of protons to ultrahigh energies >1020 eV may be possible under a wide range of conditions.
Research challenges in business process adaptability

Modern software systems are more and more deployed within moving and continuously changing contexts. It is not easy to consider all the possible contexts configurations/variances at priori, or it is quite cumbersome and error prone to list and program all this variability points at development time. For such a reason different research trends try to develop mechanisms to express, analyse and support the dynamic adaptation of a software system while it is running. Business Processes show today similar characteristics. In order to keep their competitiveness and quality for products and services, organizations need to be able to adapt to changing contexts. Changes have to be reflected in the software systems supporting the corresponding organizational activities. In this paper we report the results of a systematic literature review on Business Process Adaptation. The reviewing process lead us to consider 84 papers from the main digital libraries indexing computer science conferences and journals. From the reading and the systematic analysis of these papers we derived some research trends and challenges which have been considered relevant to be able to cover the main sources of adaptation in the definition of effective Business Processes.
The Young's modulus of high-aspect-ratio carbon/carbon nanotube composite microcantilevers by experimental and modeling validation

This paper reports the Young's modulus of a carbon nanotube (CNT)-reinforced carbon/CNT (C/CNT) composite microcantilevers measured by laser Doppler vibrometer and validated by finite element method. Also, the microfabrication process of the high-aspect-ratio C/CNT microcantilever arrays based on silicon micromolding and pyrolysis is presented in detail. With the in-plane natural resonant frequencies of the microcantilevers measured by a laser Doppler vibrometer, a single degree of freedom (SDoF) model based on Euler-Bernoulli (E-B) beam theory is used to calculate the Young's modulus of this composite. To figure out whether this SDoF model can be applied to these composite microcantilevers, the finite element (FE) simulation of these microcantilevers was performed. The Young's modulus of C/CNT composite microcantilevers fabricated by the pyrolysis process at 600 °C is 9391 MPa, and a good agreement between the results from experiments and FE simulation is obtained.
A Reporter Mutation Approach Shows Incorporation of the “Orphan” Subunit β3 into a Functional Nicotinic Receptor*

We have investigated whether the neuronal nicotinic subunit β3 can participate in the assembly of functional recombinant receptors. Although β3 is expressed in several areas of the central nervous system, it does not form functional receptors when expressed heterologously together with an α or another β nicotinic subunit. We inserted into the human β3 subunit a reporter mutation (V273T), which, if incorporated into a functional receptor, would be expected to increase its agonist sensitivity and maximum response to partial agonists. Expressing the mutant β3V273T inXenopus oocytes together with both the α3 and the β4 subunits resulted in the predicted changes in the properties of the resulting nicotinic receptor when compared with those of α3β4 receptors. This indicated that some of the receptors incorporated the mutant β3 subunit, as part of a “triplet” α3β4 β3 receptor. The proportion of triplet receptors was dependent on the ratios of the α3:β4:β3 cRNA injected. We conclude that, like the related α5 subunit, the β3 subunit can form functional receptors only if expressed together with both α and β subunits.
Object-oriented open implementation of reliable communication protocols

This paper presents a novel architecture for communication protocols that takes advantage of object mobility, allowing applications to specify the behavior of protocols for each individual message. This is achieved by opening the implementation of protocols and letting the application program associate a set of possibly customized meta-objects to every message, separately adapting diierent aspects of the service provided by the protocol.
State transitions in LMC X-3

We carried out a multiwavelenght study of the black-hole candidate LMC X-3 with XMM-Newton. The system showed a transition to a low-hard state, in which the X-ray spectrum was well fitted by a simple power law. It then returned to a high-soft state, characterised by a strong disk-blackbody component. The line-of-sight absorption column density is <~ 4 x 10^{20} cm^{-2} consistent with the foreground Galactic absorption. This rules out wind accretion. We argue that, despite LMC X-3 being a high-mass X-ray binary, Roche-lobe overflow is the main mechanism of mass transfer. From UV/optical observations in the low-hard state, we determine that the companion is a slightly evolved B5 star with a mass M ~ 4.5 M_sun. This is indeed consistent with the secondary star being close to filling its Roche lobe.
Machine learning approach for forecasting crop yield based on climatic parameters

With the impact of climate change in India, majority of the agricultural crops are being badly affected interms of their performance over a period of last two decades. Predicting the crop yield well ahead of its harvest would help the policy makers and farmers for taking appropriate measures for marketing and storage. Such predictions will also help the associated industries for planning the logistics of their business. Several methods of predicting and modeling crop yields have been developed in the past with varying rateof success, as these don't take into account characteristicsoftheweather, a n d aremostly empirical. In the present study a software tool named `Crop Advisor' has been developed as an user friendly web page for predicting the influence of climatic parameters on the crop yields.C4. 5 algorithm is used to find out the most influencing climatic parameter on the crop yields of selected crops in selected districts of Madhya Pradesh. This software provides an indication of relative influence of different climatic parameters on the crop yield, other agro-input parameters responsible for crop yield are not considered in this tool, since, application of these input parameters varies with individual fields in space and time.
Attending to attention: How do people attract, manage, and negotiate attention using mobile devices?

In today’s always-connected world people have an ever-increasing array of ways to stay in touch, often selecting among multiple media that allow for different degrees of attention (e.g., phone calls vs. texting) and may vary in convenience for their interaction partner. In this environment, people must manage their attention to each other. Recent work suggests attention management can be considered as a dyadic negotiation process in which people are continually acting to display their own focus of attention and gather information about others’ focus of attention, and may seek to increase or decrease the current level of attention from their partner. To explore attention management and negotiation on mobile devices, we built a custom application to track people’s SMS and phone call activity. Drawing on log and transcript data, we use qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the details of attention management behavior within specific relationships for a few participants, and then used hierarchical clustering to identify different patterns of attention management in relationships of varying tie strength. Results suggest that attention is managed both implicitly and explicitly, with explicit negotiation more likely when there are conflicts. There are also substantial differences in interaction patterns by tie strength, with phone calls and shorter text response times more common for weaker ties.
Collateral Growth Induced by Common Carotid Artery Occlusion Granulocyte-Macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor Enhances Leptomeningeal

Kenichi Todo, Kazuo Kitagawa, Tsutomu Sasaki, Emi Omura-Matsuoka, Yasukazu Terasaki, Collateral Growth Induced by Common Carotid Artery Occlusion Granulocyte-Macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor Enhances Leptomeningeal Print ISSN: 0039-2499. Online ISSN: 1524-4628 Copyright © 2008 American Heart Association, Inc. All rights reserved. is published by the American Heart Association, 7272 Greenville Avenue, Dallas, TX 75231 Stroke doi: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.107. 503433 2008;39:1875-1882; originally published online April 3, 2008; Stroke. http://stroke.ahajournals. org/content/39/6/1875 World Wide Web at: The online version of this article, along with updated information and services, is located on the
A receiver initiated power control multi-access protocol in wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper, we address the issue of transmission power control (TPC) in wireless ad hoc networks. Power control plays an important role in energy saving and network performance enhancement. However, the existing TPC schemes either face the problem of hidden and exposed terminal or have additional hardware requirements. We propose a novel distributed power control protocol, called Receiver Initiated power control Multi-Access (RIMA) that ideally eliminates the hidden terminal problem and at the same time enjoys the same single-channel, single-transceiver design of nodes in IEEE 802.11 and 802.15 MAC standards. An enhanced version of RIMA is also proposed where reduced power RTS transmission is allowed to improve spatial reuse of the wireless channel. Simulations are performed to demonstrate the enhanced frame loss rate and network delay performance of the proposed approach with respect to a competitive approach, called transmitter initiated power control MAC protocol.
Automatic fall detection based on Doppler radar motion signature

Falling is a common health problem for elderly. It is reported that more than one third of adults 65 and older fall each year in the United States. To address the problem, we are currently developing a Doppler radar-based fall detection system. Doppler radar sensors provide an inexpensive way to recognize human activity. In this paper, we employed mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) to represent the Doppler signatures of various human activities such as walking, bending down, falling, etc. Then we used two different classifiers, SVM and kNN, to automatically detect falls based on the extracted MFCC features. We obtained encouraging classification results on a pilot dataset that contained 109 falls and 341 non-fall human activities.
Evaluation of Antioxidant Properties and Phenolic Composition of Fruit Tea Infusions

The popularity of fruit tea is increasing in the world because of its antioxidant properties and attractive taste. The aim of this study was to determine and compare the antioxidant property and phenolic composition of 16 different fruit teas. The antioxidant property and total phenol content of fruit teas depending on the extraction condition (water temperature) were examined using the ABTS (2,2-azinobis[3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid]) method and the Folin-Ciocalteu method, respectively. The contents of total flavonoid and total anthocyanin of fruit teas was determined by using the UV/Vis spectrophotometric method. The phenolic composition was determined and quantified by using high performance liquid chromatography and photodiode array detection (HPLC-PDA). The highest total phenol content and antioxidant capacity were determined in pomegranate (I). The highest contents of total flavonoid and total anthocyanin were determined in peach (III) and blackberry (I), respectively. Chlorogenic acid, quercetin, myricetin, rutin, rosmarinic acid and ferulic acid were determined in fruit teas. A water temperature of 100 °C was the most effective to extract the highest contents of total phenols, total flavonoids, total anthocyanins and the highest antioxidant capacity in 16 different fruit teas. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of water temperature on the extraction and quantify the various phenolic compounds in fruit teas by HPLC method for industrial application in producing the extracts.
Semi-global stabilization with guaranteed regional performance of linear systems subject to actuator saturation

For a linear system under a given saturated linear feedback, we propose feedback laws that achieve semi-global stabilization on the null controllable region while preserving the performance of the original feedback law in a fixed region. Here, by semi-global stabilization on the null controllable region we mean the design of feedback laws that result in a domain of attraction that includes any a priori given compact subset of the null controllable region. Our design guarantees that the region on which the original performance is preserved would not shrink as the domain of attraction is enlarged by appropriately adjusting the feedback laws. Both continuous-time and discrete-time systems are considered.
ON­LINE CHARACTER RECOGNITION ADAPTIVELY CONTROLLED BY HANDWRITING QUALITY

On­line character recognition which can adapt to handwriting quality is proposed. In character recognition, it is difficult to recognize both clearly and roughly written characters accurately. For Japanese characters, the number of strokes is often slightly varied when characters are written roughly. In a previous method, the ranges of the number of strokes were set widely enough for recognition; however, these ranges were not optimal for clearly written characters. The proposed method controls a distribution model of the number of strokes adaptively according to handwriting quality, and it uses this model for pre­candidate selection and fine classification. Recognition experiments demonstrated that the proposed method has greater recognition accuracy and speed than the previous method. In particular, accuracy was improved from 91.4% to 94.3% and speed was increased by about 50% when recognizing clearly written data.
An IPC protocol and its hardware realization for a high-speed distributed multicomputer system

Multicomputer systems with distributed control form an architecture that simultaneously satisfies such design goals as high performance through parallel operation of VLSI processors, modular extensibility, fault tolerance, and system software simplication. The nodes of the system may be locally concentrated or spatially dispersed as a local network. Applications range from data base-oriented transactional systems to “number crunching. ” The system is service-oriented; that is, it appears to the user as one computer on which parallel processing takes place in the form of cooperating processes. Cooperation is regulated by the unique interprocess communication (IPC) protocol presented in this paper. The high-level protocol is based on the computer/producer model and satisfies all requirements for such a distributed multicomputer system. It is demonstrated that the protocol lends itself toward a straightforward mechanization by dedicated hardware consisting of a cooperation handler, an address transformation and memory guard unit, and bus connection logic. These special hardware resources, assisted by a “local operating system”, form the supervisor of a node. Nodes are connected by a high-speed bus (280M bit/sec). Programming aspects as implied by the IPC protocol are also described.
Serotonergic and serotonin-accumulating neurons in the goldfish retina

Autoradiography of goldfish retinas incubated in micromolar levels of 3H-serotonin displayed 3 kinds of labeled somas in the inner nuclear layer: S1 amacrine cells with heavy labeling, large somas, and a sparse distribution (approximately 93/mm2); S2 amacrine cells with moderate labeling, smaller somas, and a denser distribution (approximately 500/mm2); and a subset of bipolar cells with light labeling, small somas, and a very dense distribution (approximately 4000/mm2). Serotonin-like immunoreactivity was observed only in S1 amacrine cells and their synaptic terminals. Radiolabeled terminals in the inner plexiform layer formed 4 strata that were differentially assigned to the 3 cell types. S1 amacrine cells arborized in sublayers 1 and 5, received inputs from type a1 bipolar cells and amacrine cells, and made synapses on other amacrine cells, type a1 bipolar cells and unidentified processes. Thus, S1 amacrine cells seem to receive significant input from “off-center” pathways. S2 amacrine cells arborized in sublayer 3 and made synapses onto amacrine cells. Labeled bipolar cell terminals were exclusively located in sublayer 2 and were identified as type a2 mixed rod-cone bipolar cells. We conclude that the S1 amacrine cell is truly serotonergic and that radiolabeling of S2 amacrine cells and type a2 bipolar cells is due to cross-specificity for another carrier or processes unrelated to their neurochemical identities. These observations partially reconcile many previous observations on the types, numbers, and synaptologies of teleost retinal neurons identified by different markers for indoleaminergic transmission.
Wavelet-Based Independent Component Analysis For Statistical Shape Modeling

Over the past decade, active shape models have gained increased popularity in medical image analysis. However, despite its widespread, it is now widely accepted that classical shape models using principle component analysis (PCA) is not able to faithfully model the wide range of variations that anatomical structures can undergo. In this paper, we present a new statistical shape model using wavelet transform and independent component analysis (ICA). In an attempt to benefit from the sparsification and approximation power of wavelets, we investigate constructing an ICA-based shape model in a compressed wavelet domain. In order to assess the efficiency of the proposed shape model; experiments were conducted using contours of human vertebrae from X-ray images.
Control postural en niños con parálisis cerebral

The postural control is a fundamental part of the control of movement and the functional performance of someone, in which different physiologic systems are integrated, and can be affected by a pathology producing different and specific deficiencies. The postural control deficiency in children with cerebral palsy is the result of many factors: sensorial integration problems, secondary muscle-body alterations and problems of coordination, approached from motor disorders