Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coordinated Multiagent Teams and Sliding Autonomy for Large-Scale Assembly

Recent research in human-robot interaction has investigated the concept of Sliding, or Adjustable, Autonomy, a mode of operation bridging the gap between explicit teleoperation and complete robot autonomy. This work has largely been in single-agent domains-involving only one human and one robot-and has not examined the issues that arise in multiagent domains. We discuss the issues involved in adapting Sliding Autonomy concepts to coordinated multiagent teams. In our approach, remote human operators have the ability to join, or leave, the team at will to assist the autonomous agents with their tasks (or aspects of their tasks) while not disrupting the team's coordination. Agents model their own and the human operator's performance on subtasks to enable them to determine when to request help from the operator. To validate our approach, we present the results of two experiments. The first evaluates the human/multirobot team's performance under four different collaboration strategies including complete teleoperation, pure autonomy, and two distinct versions of Sliding Autonomy. The second experiment compares a variety of user interface configurations to investigate how quickly a human operator can attain situational awareness when asked to help. The results of these studies support our belief that by incorporating a remote human operator into multiagent teams, the team as a whole becomes more robust and efficient
Necrotizing pancreatitis: new definitions and a new era in surgical management.

BACKGROUND Necrotizing pancreatitis is a challenging condition that requires surgical treatment commonly and is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. Over the past decade, new definitions have been developed for standardization of severity of acute and necrotizing pancreatitis, and new management techniques have emerged based on prospective, randomized clinical trials. METHODS Review of English-language literature. RESULTS A new international classification of acute pancreatitis has been developed by PANCREA (Pancreatitis Across Nations Clinical Research and Education Alliance) to replace the Atlanta Classification. It is based on the actual local (whether pancreatic necrosis is present or not, whether it is sterile or infected) and systemic determinants (whether organ failure is present or not, whether it is transient or persistent) of severity. Early management requires goal-directed fluid resuscitation (with avoidance of over-resuscitation and abdominal compartment syndrome), assessment of severity of pancreatitis, diagnostic computed tomography (CT) imaging to assess for necrotizing pancreatitis, consideration of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) for biliary pancreatitis and early enteral nutrition support. Antibiotic prophylaxis is not recommended. Therapeutic antibiotics are required for treatment of documented infected pancreatic necrosis. The initial treatment of infected pancreatic necrosis is percutaneous catheter or endoscopic (transgastric/transduodenal) drainage with a second drain placement as required. Lack of clinical improvement after these initial procedures warrants consideration of minimally invasive techniques for pancreatic necrosectomy including video-assisted retroperitoneal debridement (VARD), minimally invasive retroperitoneal pancreatectomy (MIRP), or transluminal direct endoscopic necrosectomy (DEN). Open necrosectomy is associated with substantial morbidity, but to date no randomized trial has documented superiority of either minimally invasive or open surgical technique. Additional trials are underway to address this. CONCLUSIONS Severe acute and necrotizing pancreatitis requires a multi-disciplinary treatment strategy that must be individualized for each patient. Optimal treatment of necrotizing pancreatitis now requires a staged, multi-disciplinary, minimally invasive "step-up" approach that includes a team of interventional radiologists, therapeutic endoscopists, and surgeons.
Flickr Distance: A Relationship Measure for Visual Concepts

This paper proposes the Flickr Distance (FD) to measure the visual correlation between concepts. For each concept, a collection of related images are obtained from the Flickr website. We assume that each concept consists of several states, e.g., different views, different semantics, etc., which are considered as latent topics. Then a latent topic visual language model (LTVLM) is built to capture these states. The Flickr distance between two concepts is defined as the Jensen-Shannon (J-S) divergence between their LTVLM. Differently from traditional conceptual distance measurements, which are based on Web textual documents, FD is based on the visual information. Comparing with the WordNet distance, FD can easily scale up with the increasing size of the conceptual corpus. Comparing with the Google Distance (NGD) and Tag Concurrence Distance (TCD), FD uses the visual information and can properly measure the conceptual relations. We apply FD to multimedia-related tasks and find methods based on FD significantly outperform those based on NGD and TCD. With the FD measurement, we also construct a large-scale visual conceptual network (VCNet) to store the knowledge of conceptual relationship. Experiments show that FD is more coherent to human cognition and it also outperforms text-based distances in real-world applications.
Why Have a Quality Management Program?

This volume of International Anesthesiology Clinics is dedicated to quality improvement (QI) in anesthesiology. Central to this theme is the idea that any anesthesiology department or practice group requires an organized QI program. In 2013, this is both a professional and a practical expectation. This chapter will explore the reasons why this is so, beginning with the definition of some important terms and concepts. Quality in health care is a slippery concept. As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously noted about obscenity in 1964 “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it y” For most practitioners, “quality health care” might be defined by effectively treating disease while avoiding complications. For administrators, this definition is a good start, but this must also include the notion of value: outcomes obtained divided by the cost to attain them. For national leaders, one might add the idea of preserving health through preventive care, rather than just treating a disease. For patients, prevention, effectiveness, safety, and cost are important but so are respect for privacy, clear communications, ease of use, and overall trust. Given this multifaceted definition of quality, it is not surprising that quality management (QM) or QI programs are similarly heterogeneous. Some operate at the level of health systems, some at the facility level, some for practices, and some are focused on individual providers. For purposes of this chapter, however, we are going to focus on the level of the anesthesiology practice group or department. This is because individual anesthesiologists rarely work in isolation but are almost always part of a larger group. Data from the National Anesthesia Clinical Outcomes Registry (NACOR; see Chapter 5 for more details) show that
Complete Genome Sequence of the Prototype Lactic Acid Bacterium Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris MG1363

ABSTRACT Lactococcus lactis is of great importance for the nutrition of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. This paper describes the genome sequence of Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris MG1363, the lactococcal strain most intensively studied throughout the world. The 2,529,478-bp genome contains 81 pseudogenes and encodes 2,436 proteins. Of the 530 unique proteins, 47 belong to the COG (clusters of orthologous groups) functional category “carbohydrate metabolism and transport,” by far the largest category of novel proteins in comparison with L. lactis subsp. lactis IL1403. Nearly one-fifth of the 71 insertion elements are concentrated in a specific 56-kb region. This integration hot-spot region carries genes that are typically associated with lactococcal plasmids and a repeat sequence specifically found on plasmids and in the “lateral gene transfer hot spot” in the genome of Streptococcus thermophilus. Although the parent of L. lactis MG1363 was used to demonstrate lysogeny in Lactococcus, L. lactis MG1363 carries four remnant/satellite phages and two apparently complete prophages. The availability of the L. lactis MG1363 genome sequence will reinforce its status as the prototype among lactic acid bacteria through facilitation of further applied and fundamental research.
System architecture and deployment scenarios for SESAME: Small cEllS coodinAtion for Multi-tenancy and Edge services

The surge of the Internet traffic with exabytes of data flowing over operators' mobile networks has created the need to rethink the paradigms behind the design of the mobile network architecture. The inadequacy of the 4G UMTS Long term Evolution (LTE) and even of its advanced version LTE-A is evident, considering that the traffic will be extremely heterogeneous in the near future and ranging from 4K resolution TV to machine-type communications. To keep up with these changes, academia, industries and EU institutions have now engaged in the quest for new 5G technology. In this paper we present the innovative system design, concepts and visions developed by the 5G PPP H2020 project SESAME (Small cEllS coordinAtion for Multi-tenancy and Edge services). The innovation of SESAME is manifold: i) combine the key 5G small cells with cloud technology, ii) promote and develop the concept of Small Cells-as-a-Service (SCaaS), iii) bring computing and storage power at the mobile network edge through the development of non-x86 ARM technology enabled micro-servers, and iv) address a large number of scenarios and use cases applying mobile edge computing.
Autumn photosynthetic decline and growth cessation in seedlings of white spruce are decoupled under warming and photoperiod manipulations.

Climate warming is expected to increase the seasonal duration of photosynthetic carbon fixation and tree growth in high-latitude forests. However, photoperiod, a crucial cue for seasonality, will remain constant, which may constrain tree responses to warming. We investigated the effects of temperature and photoperiod on weekly changes in photosynthetic capacity, leaf biochemistry and growth in seedlings of a boreal evergreen conifer, white spruce [Picea glauca (Moench) Voss]. Warming delayed autumn declines in photosynthetic capacity, extending the period when seedlings had high carbon uptake. While photoperiod was correlated with photosynthetic capacity, short photoperiods did not constrain the maintenance of high photosynthetic capacity under warming. Rubisco concentration dynamics were affected by temperature but not photoperiod, while leaf pigment concentrations were unaffected by treatments. Respiration rates at 25 °C were stimulated by photoperiod, although respiration at the growth temperatures was increased in warming treatments. Seedling growth was stimulated by increased photoperiod and suppressed by warming. We demonstrate that temperature is a stronger control on the seasonal timing of photosynthetic down-regulation than is photoperiod. Thus, while warming can stimulate carbon uptake in boreal conifers, the extra carbon may be directed towards respiration rather than biomass, potentially limiting carbon sequestration under climate change.
The contribution of the rat prelimbic-infralimbic areas to different forms of task switching.

The experiments examined the effects of prelimbic-infralimbic inactivation in rats on the acquisition and reversal learning of different discrimination tasks: 2- or 4-choice odor discrimination in Experiments 1 and 2, the shift from 2-choice odor discrimination to 2-choice place discrimination in Experiment 3, and the shift from 2-choice place to 2-choice odor discrimination in Experiment 4. Infusions of 2% bupivacaine did not impair performance in the odor discrimination tests. Prelimbic-infralimbic inactivation did not impair acquisition but did impair the shift from an odor to a place discrimination and vice versa. Analysis of the errors revealed that the deficit was due to perseveration of the previously learned strategy. The selective deficits observed in the odor-place tests suggest that the prelimbic-infralimbic areas enable behavioral flexibility when conditions demand inhibiting the use of one type of attribute information and learning a new type of attribute information.
Mining temporal patterns of transport behaviour for predicting future transport usage

information systems which are centred on the individual transport user. Especially, in dense urban cities where it is hard to oversee complex transport networks that are subject to frequent changes, maintenance and construction works, travellers want to be proactively notified about disruptions and traffic incidents relevant to their future behaviour. In this paper, we show how to mine characteristic patterns of the transport routines of urban bus riders for the design of novel travel information system that have the ability to understand forthcoming travel needs of individual users. We leverage on travel histories collected from automated fare collection system (AFC) to extract features of personal transport usage and study their predictive power to forecast whether people access public transport services on a future day or not.
Closed-Loop Artificial Pancreas Systems: Physiological Input to Enhance Next-Generation Devices

To provide an understanding of both the preclinical and clinical aspects of closed-loop artificial pancreas systems, we provide a discussion of this topic as part of this two-part Bench to Clinic narrative. Here, the Bench narrative provides an in-depth understanding of insulin-glucose-glucagon physiology in conditions that mimic the free-living situation to the extent possible in type 1 diabetes that will help refine and improve future closed-loop system algorithms. In the Clinic narrative, Doyle and colleagues compare and evaluate technology used in current closed-loop studies to gain further momentum toward outpatient trials and eventual approval for widespread use.
Cerebral Blood Flow Regulation by Nitric Oxide: Recent Advances

Nitric oxide (NO) is undoubtedly quite an important intercellular messenger in cerebral and peripheral hemodynamics. This molecule, formed by constitutive isomers of NO synthase, endothelial nitric-oxide synthase, and neuronal nitric-oxide synthase, plays pivotal roles in the regulation of cerebral blood flow and cell viability and in the protection of nerve cells or fibers against pathogenic factors associated with cerebral ischemia, trauma, and hemorrhage. Cerebral blood flow is increased and cerebral vascular resistance is decreased by NO derived from endothelial cells, autonomic nitrergic nerves, or brain neurons under resting and stimulated conditions. Somatosensory stimulation also evokes cerebral vasodilatation mediated by neurogenic NO. Oxygen and carbon dioxide alter cerebral blood flow and vascular tone mainly via constitutively formed NO. Endothelial dysfunction impairs cerebral hemodynamics by reducing the bioavailability of NO and increasing the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The NO-ROS interaction is an important issue in discussing blood flow and cell viability in the brain. Recent studies on brain circulation provide quite useful information concerning the physiological roles of NO produced by constitutive isoforms of nitric-oxide synthase and how NO may promote cerebral pathogenesis under certain conditions, including cerebral ischemia/stroke, cerebral vasospasm after subarachnoid hemorrhage, and brain injury. This information would contribute to better understanding of cerebral hemodynamic regulation and its dysfunction and to development of novel therapeutic measures to treat diseases of the central nervous system.
A Sorry Tale - A Study of Women's Participation in IT Higher Education in Australia

This paper examines long term changes in the participation of women in professionally accredited computing degree programs. It reports on the results of three intensive Australia-wide studies of the situation in the mid 1980s, in 1992 and in the late 1990s. The early study painted a detailed and rather depressing picture of women’s representation in IT education. It also identified barriers to improvement in the discipline itself, the teaching institutions, and for individuals. The intervening years have seen many attempts to address these barriers in respect of both the attraction to and retention of women in IT courses. The current paper summarises the Australia wide studies and then draws upon recent localised data in contrasting environments and larger scale literature to explore how little things have changed as a result of these intervention programs.
Divergent Picornavirus from a Turkey with Gastrointestinal Disease

ABSTRACT A novel picornavirus, turkey avisivirus (TuASV), was identified from the feces of turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) with gastrointestinal disease from a farm in Indiana. Its genome organization is as follows: 5′ untranslated region (UTR)IRES-II [VP0, VP3, VP1, 2A, 2B, 2C, 3A, 3B, 3Cpro, 3Dpol] 3′ UTR-poly(A). TuASV shares only 34% (P1), 36% (P2), and 35% (P3) amino acid identities with avihepatoviruses, indicating that it potentially represents a novel picornavirus genus.
Historical Review of the Fluid-Percussion TBI Model

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major health concern worldwide. Laboratory studies utilizing animal models of TBI are essential for addressing pathological mechanisms of brain injury and development of innovative treatments. Over the past 75 years, pioneering head injury researchers have devised and tested a number of fluid percussive methods to reproduce the concussive clinical syndrome in animals. The fluid-percussion brain injury technique has evolved from early investigations that applied a generalized loading of the brain to more recent computer-controlled systems. Of the many preclinical TBI models, the fluid-percussion technique is one of the most extensively characterized and widely used models. Some of the most important advances involved the development of the Stalhammer device to produce concussion in cats and the later characterization of this device for application in rodents. The goal of this historical review is to provide readers with an appreciation for the time and effort expended by the pioneering researchers who have led to today’s state of the art fluid-percussion animal models of TBI.
Hybrid EEG-NIRS based BCI for quadcopter control

In this paper, we have proposed a novel control strategy for a quadcopter control using brain signals. A brain-computer interface (BCI) technology is developed using hybrid electroencephalography - near-infrared spectroscopy (EEG-NIRS) system and two commands are used to operate the quadcopter. An active brain signal upon the user's own will is generated using a motor imagery task and a reactive brain signal is generated by visual flickering of light. The reactive command is used for the triggering control of the quadcopter and the active command is used to navigate the quadcopter in the forward direction. Linear discriminant analysis is used to classify the brain activity in offline environment. The results indicate that the proposed scheme is suitable for the BCI control applications.
A New Homogeneity Inter-Clusters Measure in SemiSupervised Clustering

Many studies in data mining have proposed a new learning called semi-Supervised. Such type of learning combines unlabeled and labeled data which are hard to obtain. However, in unsupervised methods, the only unlabeled data are used. The problem of significance and the effectiveness of semi-supervised clustering results is becoming of main importance. This paper pursues the thesis that muchgreater accuracy can be achieved in such clustering by improving the similarity computing. Hence, we introduce a new approach of semisupervised clustering using an innovative new homogeneity measure of generated clusters. Our experimental results demonstrate significantly improved accuracy as a result.
Survival and Movement of Fecal Indicator Bacteria in Soil under Conditions of Saturated Flow 1

Antibiotic-resistant fecal bacteria were used to monitor the degree of movement and subsequent ground water contamination by septictank effluent discharged into a drainfield under saturated conditions. Two pits of different depths were constructed to simulate drainfield beds, and ground water samples were removed during 32-day sampling intervals from sampling wells installed at set distances from each inoculation pit. The bacteria added to the deep pit were released into a B2t horizon which contained a higher clay content than the A horizon in which the shallower pit was installed. Streptomycin-resistant strains of Escherichia coli and Streptococcusfaecalis amended to each pit site moved in a directional manner, required more time to reach sampling wells when inoculated into the deeper of the two pits, and moved relatively long distances when considering that the area where the sites were located had only a 2o70 slope. Bacterial numbers peaked in the sampling wells in association with major rainfall patterns and the populations required longer periods to peak in the wells furthest from the inoculation pits. The results indicated that antibiotic-resistant bacteria eliminated the problem of differentiating between the amended bacteria and those nonresistant strains already in the soil, and the potential is excellent for including this type of microbiological procedure for assessing the suitability of a soil site for septic-tank and waste water drainfield installations.
A hardware-software co-design model for real-time 3D image computation using active laser range finders: a case study

Real-time 3D image computation can be slowed-down by the re-mapping process of optical positions to 3D coordinates. This re-mapping process usually includes the calculation of heavy trigonometric functions. In this paper, we introduce a hardware-software codesign model, which aims to compute a 3D image with respect to time-cost constraints. Simulation results are presented to show the speed-up achieved by the proposed model over a pure software-based implementation.
Alternative Approaches in Multi-label Neutral Zone Classification Problems

Various multi-label classification algorithms are broadly developed in the literature. Each of these existing methods has different strengths and drawbacks, and very few attempts have been performed to address the uncertainty. Recently, neutral zone classifiers have been presented to deal with ambiguous data to improve the accuracy of the estimated classification results by trading off the relatively high penalty of an incorrect classification with a lower penalty for remaining neutral about class membership. The existing neutral zone methods was developed to construct multiple single-label classifiers for multi-label data. In this work, we present different classification alternatives for multi-label data using a standard logistic regression model, a generalized linear mixed model and Markov random field to relax the current underlying assumptions. The proposed neutral zone classification methods are implemented and tested on simulation data sets and on the biological data set. Their results suggest that our proposed classification approaches are useful alternatives for practical application when working with multi-label data.