Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Na vigation of Nonholonomic Mobile Robot Using Visual Potential Field

In this paper, we develop an algorithm for the navigation of a nonholonomic mobile robot using the visual potential. The robot is equipped with a camera system which dynamically captures the envi- ronment. The visual potential is computed from an image sequence and optical flow computed from successive images captured by the camera mounted on the robot. Our robot selects a local pathway using the vi- sual potential computed from its vision system without any knowledge of a robot workspace. We present experimental results of the obstacle avoidance in the real environment.
Determinants of Response of Pial Arteries to Norepinephrine and Sympathetic Nerve Stimulation

Feline pial arteries larger than 100 μ in diameter constricted in response to cervical sympathetic nerve stimulation or in response to topical application of norepinephrine. Smaller pial arteries were unresponsive to norepinephrine. This unresponsiveness persisted when norepinephrine was dissolved in CSF with high calcium ion concentration, or in CSF with both high calcium ion and zero magnesium ion concentration, or when it was dissolved in the acid fluid used by Wahl et al. and applied by constant infusion or by intermittent application. Comparison of the responses of the larger pial vessels to norepinephrine and to sympathetic nerve stimulation suggests that maximal activation of sympathetic nerves achieves a concentration of released norepinephrine equal to 5.9 × 10-4 M. The constriction of the larger pial vessels in response to sympathetic nerve stimulation could account for modest reductions in cerebral blood flow.
Has Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) co‐evolved with Dothistroma septosporum in Scotland? Evidence for spatial heterogeneity in the susceptibility of native provenances

Spatial heterogeneity in pathogen pressure leads to genetic variation in, and evolution of, disease‐related traits among host populations. In contrast, hosts are expected to be highly susceptible to exotic pathogens as there has been no evolution of defence responses. Host response to pathogens can therefore be an indicator of a novel or endemic pathosystem. Currently, the most significant threat to native British Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) forests is Dothistroma needle blight (DNB) caused by the foliar pathogen Dothistroma septosporum which is presumed to be exotic. A progeny–provenance trial of 6‐year‐old Scots pine, comprising eight native provenances each with four families in six blocks, was translocated in April 2013 to a clear‐fell site in Galloway adjacent to a DNB‐infected forest. Susceptibility to D. septosporum, measured as DNB severity (estimated percentage nongreen current‐year needles), was assessed visually over 2 years (2013–2014 and 2014–2015; two assessments per year). There were highly significant differences in susceptibility among provenances but not among families for each annual assessment. Provenance mean susceptibility to D. septosporum was negatively and significantly associated with water‐related variables at site of origin, potentially due to the evolution of low susceptibility in the host in response to high historical pathogen pressure.
How Are We Apart?: Continuity and Change in the Structure of Ideological Disagreement in the American Public, 1980–2012

Abstract:Even after two decades of intense research, social scientists are still in disagreement over whether the American public is polarized. Starting from the premise that disagreement is multifaceted, this paper attempts to clarify how and which aspects of ideological disagreement have changed over the past few decades. Three major structural features of ideological disagreement that have been discussed under the umbrella term "polarization" are identified from the literature—polarization, partisan sorting, and dimensional alignment—and redefined into analytically distinct and non-overlapping concepts. Two different scaling methods are applied to the American National Election Studies from 1980 to 2012 in order to examine changes in how citizens organize their attitudes regarding concrete political and social issues (operational ideology) and their self-identifications with the ideological labels "liberal" and "conservative" (symbolic ideology). Results show at best mixed evidence of growing polarization. Partisan sorting has increased over time on both symbolic and operational ideology. However, it is mainly the symbolic side on which disagreement across partisan lines is most pronounced. Finally, contrary to the popular notion of a culture war dividing the United States, the public has become less polarized on moral issues, and the moral dimension of citizens' operational ideology has become dealigned from the economic and civil rights dimension over the past decade.
LAGRANGIAN AND LEGENDRIAN VARIETIES AND STABILITY OF THEIR PROJECTIONS

The study of singular Lagrangian and Legendrian varieties was initiated about twenty-five years ago by Arnold when he was investigating singularities in the variational problem of obstacle bypassing [1]. The first examples of such varieties, open swallowtails, were related to the discriminants of the non-crystallographic Coxeter groups [8, 14]. Incorporating these examples into a general context, Givental [8] introduced the notion of stability of Lagrangian and Legendrian varieties with respect to perturbations of symplectic structure and Lagrangian or, respectively, Legendrian projection only, keeping the diffeomorphic type of the variety fixed. Later, in [13], it was shown that this stability notion has an explicit geometrical meaning in terms of generating families, versal deformations of function singularities and inducing mappings. The interest in theory of singular Lagrangian and Legendrian varieties has been growing recently due to its possible applications to Frobenius structures, D-modules and in other areas.
ErmF and ereD Are Responsible for Erythromycin Resistance in Riemerella anatipestifer

To investigate the genetic basis of erythromycin resistance in Riemerella anatipestifer, the MIC to erythromycin of 79 R. anatipestifer isolates from China and one typed strain, ATCC11845, were evaluated. The results showed that 43 of 80 (53.8%) of the tested R. anatipestifer strains showed resistance to erythromycin, and 30 of 43 erythromycin-resistant R. anatipestifer strains carried ermF or ermFU with an MIC in the range of 32–2048 μg/ml, while the other 13 strains carrying the ereD gene exhibited an MIC of 4–16 μg/ml. Of 30 ermF + R. anatipestifer strains, 27 (90.0%) carried the ermFU gene which may have been derived from the CTnDOT-like element, while three other strains carried ermF from transposon Tn4351. Moreover, sequence analysis revealed that ermF, ermFU, and ereD were located within the multiresistance region of the R. anatipestifer genome.
Cirrus optical properties observed with lidar, radiosonde, and satellite over the tropical Indian Ocean during the aerosol‐polluted northeast and clean maritime southwest monsoon

0.25 ± 0.26 (NE) and 0.34 ± 0.29 (SW), 0.12 ± 0.09 km �1 (NE) and 0.12 ± 0.10 km �1 (SW), and 33 ± 9 sr (NE) and 29 ± 11 sr (SW), respectively. A functional dependency of the extinction coefficient of the tropical cirrus on temperature is presented. All findings are compared with several other cirrus lidar observations in the tropics, subtropics, and at midlatitudes. By contrasting the cirrus optical properties of the different seasons, a potential impact of anthropogenic particles on anvil cirrus optical properties was examined. Differences in the cirrus extinction-to-backscatter ratio suggest that NE monsoon anvil cirrus originating from deep-convection cumulus clouds had more irregularly shaped and thus slightly larger ice crystals than respective SW monsoon anvil cirrus. Because the meteorological conditions were found to vary significantly between the seasons, an unambiguous identification of the influence of Asian haze on cirrus optical properties is not possible.
An Indoor Trajectory Comparison Framework for Android Smartphones

We present a powerful distributed framework for comparing trajectories and answering queries of the form: “Report objects (i.e., trajectories) that follow a similar spatiotemporal motion to Q, where Q is some query trajectory”. Each trajectory resides in its entirety in-situ, which is cheaper and more efficient for mobile devices. Our SmartTrace algorithm then deploys a search algorithm that exploits distributed similarity measures to derive the most relevant answers to Q quickly and efficiently. We extend this approach to enable trajectory similarity services indoors by using location dependent information, such as the magnitude of signals emitted by WLAN Access Points.
Anaphora Resolution in Hindi Documents

This paper presents anaphora resolution as a technique of semantic analysis of text documents written in Hindi language. The focus is on texts that mainly employ simple sentences, such as children's stories, short essays, etc. The technique works by locating sentences in the text that are semantically related through anaphors, analyzing their semantics and exploiting the latter for resolving referents of the respective anaphors. The approach used here is based on matching constraints for the grammatical attributes of different words. The algorithm for anaphora resolution has been tested extensively. The accuracy of anaphora resolution is nearly 96% for simple sentences and for compound and complex sentences; the accuracy is of the order of 80%. The causes of the errors are analyzed and possible techniques for improvements are discussed.
Can Institutions Anticipate?

Seite 144 Technikfolgenabschätzung – Theorie und Praxis Nr. 3/4, 12. Jg. , November 2003 Wir beginnen mit zwei Beiträgen, die sich im Wesentlichen auf den Ansatz von Bode beziehen. In ihnen wird aus unterschiedlicher Blickrichtung bezweifelt, ob es überhaupt Sinn macht, Förderkonzepte aus wie auch immer gearteten Gesellschaftstheorien abzuleiten. Die zwei folgenden Arbeiten konzentrieren sich auf den Übergang von TA zu ITA und betonen insbesondere die Differenz von öffentlicher und privatwirtschaftlicher Verwendung der TAbzw. ITA-Forschung. Der letzte Beitrag formuliert aus der Sicht eines mittelständischen Unternehmens Anforderungen an ITA und thematisiert deren Integrationsund Umsetzungsschwierigkeiten aus dem Blickwinkel betrieblicher Praxis.
Mindfulness – seeping through the cracks in the American context of teacher education

ABSTRACT In the context of the United States, we provide our rationale for infusing mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) into a graduate-level teacher education course. In our philosophy and pedagogical approach we attempt to counterbalance an individualistic, divisive, oppressive, and often dehumanising nature of education. Adopting Richard Davidson’s wellness framework, we describe how our use of MBIs, including breathing meditation, heuristics, free-writing, and cogenerative dialogues, may contribute to cultivating components of integrated teacher well-being. Mindfulness is framed as a relational construct and as a part of a toolkit which educators may access in their professional and personal lives. Drawing on data obtained through an end-of-semester feedback survey, we provide a brief analysis of students’ perceptions of the value of mindfulness practices in teacher preparation and beyond.
Associations between the MDM2 promoter P1 polymorphism del1518 (rs3730485) and incidence of cancer of the breast, lung, colon and prostate

The MDM2 promoter region contains several polymorphisms, some of which have been associated with MDM2 expression, cancer risk and age at cancer onset. del1518 (rs3730485) is an indel polymorphism residing in the MDM2 promoter P1 and is in almost complete linkage disequilibrium with the MDM2 promoter P2 polymorphism SNP309T>G (rs2279744). Cancer risk assessments of del1518 have previously been conducted in relatively small Chinese populations only. In this study we assessed the genotype distribution of del1518 among healthy Caucasians, African Americans and Chinese, and we estimated the Odds Ratios (OR) for incident cancer of the breast, colon, lung and prostate (n=7,081) as compared to controls (n=3,749) in a large Caucasian (Norwegian) cohort. We found the genotypes of the del1518 to vary significantly between healthy Caucasians, African-Americans and Chinese (p< 1×10−5). Further, we found a positive association of the del1518 del-allele with risk of colon cancer (dominant model: OR = 1.15; 95 % CI = 1.01 – 1.31). Stratifying according to SNP309 status, this association remained among carriers of the SNP309TG genotype (OR = 1.21; 95 % CI = 1.01 – 1.46), but with no clear association among carriers of the SNP309TT genotype. In conclusion, our findings suggest del1518 to be associated with increased risk of colon cancer.
Joint Detection-Estimation in Functional MRI

Several investigation modalities allow the neuroscientist to probe the operation of the brain both in healthy volunteers and in patients, whether the pathology is neurodegenerative (Alzheimer), psychiatric (schizophrenia) or neurological (AVC, epilepsy). Without going into the details of a taxonomy of imaging modalities, it is noteworthy to give a general overview (see Fig. 1.1) and distinguish those that allow two fundamental questions to be answered in a simplified form: “where” and “when” do brain processes occur? In fact, the brain is a complex structure where specialization and functional integration coexist, so well it would be an illusion to picture cognitive functions as very localized specialized modules. Among the tools of functional neuroimaging, we quickly discuss the following: – functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) consists of measuring in a noninvasive manner, BOLD signals1 which reflects the rate of oxygenation of blood in the brain [OGA 90]. Through a neurovascular response mechanism, the flow of oxygenated blood increases in the regions whose neuronal metabolism increases,
Correlation of low levels of nitrite and high levels of fetal hemoglobin in patients with sickle cell disease at baseline

Background Sickle cell disease is a hemoglobinopathy characterized by hemolytic anemia, increased susceptibility to infections and recurrent vaso-occlusive crises that reduces the quality of life of sufferers. Objective To evaluate the correlation of the levels of lactate dehydrogenase, malonaldehyde and nitrite to fetal hemoglobin in patients with sickle cell disease not under treatment with hydroxyurea in outpatients at a university hospital in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil. Methods Forty-four patients diagnosed with sickle cell disease were enrolled at baseline. Diagnosis was confirmed by evaluating the beta globin gene using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. The concentration of fetal hemoglobin was obtained by high-performance liquid chromatography. Serum levels of nitrite, malonaldehyde and lactate dehydrogenase were measured by biochemical methods. Results Significantly higher levels of lactate dehydrogenase, nitrite and malonaldehyde were observed in patients with sickle cell disease compared to a control group. The study of the correlation between fetal hemoglobin levels and these variables showed a negative correlation with nitrite levels. No correlation was found between fetal hemoglobin and malonaldehyde or lactate dehydrogenase. When the study population was stratified according to fetal hemoglobin levels, a decrease in the levels of nitrite was observed with higher levels of fetal hemoglobin (p-value = 0.0415). Conclusion The results show that, similar to fetal hemoglobin levels, the concentration of nitrite can predict the clinical course of the disease, but should not be used alone as a modulator of prognosis in patients with sickle cell disease.
Comparison of the I-Gel and the Laryngeal Mask Airway Proseal during General Anesthesia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objectives Conflicting results have been reported for the i-gel and the laryngeal mask airway proseal (LMA-P) during general anesthesia. The objective of the current investigation was to compare the efficacy and safety of the i-gel vs. the LMA-P during general anesthesia. Methods Two authors performed searches of MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, and Google Scholar to identify randomized clinical trials that compared the LMA-P with the i-gel during general anesthesia. A meta -analysis was performed using both random and fixed-effect models. Publication bias was evaluated using Begg's funnel plot and Egger's linear regression test. Results Twelve randomized clinical trials met the eligibility criteria. There were no significant differences in insertion success rate at the first attempt (risk ratio [RR] 1.01, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.97, 1.06), ease of insertion (RR 1.14, 95% CI 0.93, 1.39), oropharyngeal leak pressure (OLP) (MD -1.98, 95% CI -5.41, 1.45), quality of fiberoptic view (RR 1.00, 95% CI 0.91, 1.10) and success rate of gastric tube insertion (RR 1.07, 95% CI 0.98, 1.18) between the i-gel and the LMA-P, respectively. The i-gel had a shorter insertion time than the LMA-P (MD -3.99, 95% CI -7.13, -0.84) and a lower incidence of blood staining on the device (RR 0.26, 95% CI 0.14, 0.49), sore throat (RR 0.28, 95% CI 0.15, 0.50) and dysphagia (RR 0.27, 95% CI 0.10, 0.74). Conclusions Both devices were comparable in ease of insertion to insert and both had sufficient OLP to provide a reliable airway. Only a few minor complications were reported. The i-gel was found to have fewer complications (blood staining, sore throat, dysphagia) than the LMA-P and offers certain advantages over the LMA-P in adults under general anesthesia.
Prominence, Augmentation, and Neutralization in Phonology

1. Introduction 1 Certain phonological phenomena, such as the lengthening of vowels in stressed syllables or the attraction of stress to heavy syllables, are best accounted for by means of markedness constraints that make specific reference to strong positions (M/str constraints). However, not just any markedness constraint can be relativized to strong positions. If an ordinary featural markedness constraint such as *MIDV ('output forms do not contain mid vowels') were given an M/str counterpart specific to stressed syllables , *MIDV/σ , the system would predict the existence of languages that have a full vowel inventory in unstressed syllables but ban mid vowels in stressed syllables — an unattested pattern. This paper develops a theory of M/str constraints that correctly allows for those that are empirically attested, while ruling out problematic constraints like the putative *MIDV/σ. The basis of the proposal is the Prominence Condition, a restriction that holds of the universal constraint inventory such that the only legitimate M/str constraints are those that enhance prominence. The discussion proceeds as follows. First, section 2 presents the proposal. Section 3 then gives an analysis of 'augmentation' and 'attraction' phenomena based on prominence enhancing M/str constraints. Section 4 shows why constraints like *MIDV/σ , which are ruled out by the Prominence Condition, would predict unattested language types if they were assumed to be possible constraints. Finally, section 5 presents conceptual and empirical justification for the proposal. 2. M/str constraints and the Prominence Condition In order to account for languages that require vowels in stressed syllables to lengthen or to bear tone, there must be M/str constraints like HEAVYσ/σ , 'Stressed syllables are heavy', 2 and HAVETONE/σ , 'Stressed syllables bear tone' (see section 3 for exam-bers of the UMass Phonology Group, and audiences at BLS 26 and the MIT Phonology Circle for comments and discussion. Any errors are my responsibility. 2 HEAVYσ/σ is equivalent to the Stress-to-Weight Condition (Prince 1990) and is one possible imple
Margin-space integration of MPE loss via differencing of MMI functionals for generalized error-weighted discriminative training

Abstract Using the central observation that margin-based weightedclassiﬁcation error (modeled using Minimum Phone Error(MPE)) corresponds to the derivative with respect to the mar-gin term of margin-based hinge loss (modeled using MaximumMutual Information (MMI)), this article subsumes and extendsmargin-based MPE and MMI within a broader framework inwhich the objective function is an integral of MPE loss over arange of margin values. Applying the Fundamental Theorem ofCalculus,thisintegraliseasilyevaluatedusingﬁnitedifferencesof MMI functionals; lattice-based training using the new crite-rion can then be carried out using differences of MMI gradi-ents. Experimental results comparing the new framework withmargin-based MMI, MCE and MPE on the Corpus of Sponta-neous Japanese and the MIT OpenCourseWare/MIT-World cor-pus are presented. 1. Introduction The ﬁeld of discriminative training for speech recognition haswitnessed considerable activity in recent years. The appeal ofminimizingphoneorworderrorratherthanstringerrorhasmo-tivated a transition from well-known string-level methods suchas MMI and MCE [1][2] to error-weighted approaches, such asMPE [3][4]. More recently, there has been a surge in proposalsfor“largemargin”approachestohiddenMarkovmodel(HMM)design, such as the “large-margin HMM” [5], “soft margin es-timation” [6], and incrementally shifted MCE loss [7]. Sha andSaul [8] made the important proposal that a ﬁne-grained er-ror measure, such as the Hamming distance between candidaterecognition strings, be itself directly incorporated into the mar-gin term for HMM-based learning. It turns out that introducinga margin term that multiplies ﬁne-grained error can easily bebrought to MMI, MCE and MPE based HMM training as well,simply by adding margin-scaled local frame/phone/word errorto lattice arc log-likelihoods during Forward-Backward com-putation [9][10][11]. This approach links the original use ofmargin in the context of machine learning (e.g. Support VectorMachines (SVMs)) with margin in the context of “tried-and-tested” frameworks for large-scale discriminative training withwell-understood methods for HMM optimization on large-scaleASR tasks. Beneﬁts to performance for large-scale tasks havebeen reported for the use of margin in MMI and MPE, thoughit appears the relative gains are larger for MMI than for MPE[10][11]. Aiming at leveraging the beneﬁts of margin use within thecontextofMPE-styleerror-weightedHMMtraining,thisarticlepresents a uniﬁcation of margin-based MMI and MPE trainingbased on a novel concept:
Static Analysis of Distributed Systems with Mobility Specified by Graph Grammars - A Case Study

We consider a distributed system with mobility modelled as a graph transformation system. Then we show that non-secure level processes cannot influence secure level processes, a property formalized as the absence of causal dependencies between such processes. This is done by resorting to an analysis technique for graph transformation systems, called approximated unfolding, based on the construction of an approximation of the unfolding semantics.