Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimizing curvature sensor placement for fast, accurate shape sensing of continuum robots

Robot control requires the rapid computation of robot shape, which for continuum robots typically involves solving complex mechanics-based models. Furthermore, shape computation based on kinematic input variables can be inaccurate due to parameter errors and model simplification. An alternate approach is to compute the shape in real-time from a set of sensors positioned along the length of the robot that provide measurements of local curvature, e.g., optical fiber Bragg gratings. This paper proposes a general framework for selecting the number and placement of such sensors with respect to arclength so as to compute the forward kinematic solution accurately and quickly. The approach is based on defining numerically-efficient shape reconstruction models parameterized by sensor number and location. Optimization techniques are used to find the sensor locations that minimize shape and tip error between a reconstruction model and a mechanics-based model. As a specific example, several reconstruction models are proposed and compared for concentric tube robots. These results indicate that the choice of reconstruction model as well as sensor placement can have a substantial effect on robot shape estimation.
Teacher Evaluation: Improvement, Accountability, and Effective Learning

—Reviewed by I'atricia M Domhart, Butler Senior High School, Hutler, Pennsylvania. Maeroff documents the course of the CHART program, which sought to im prove teaching in the arts and humani ties and to empower teachers. The au thor describes how the program brought together public sch<x>l educa tors and corporate and university per sonnel. He uses three guiding princi ples, "status, knowledge, and access to power," in evaluating the extent of teachers' empowerment. Maeroffs in tensity gives life to a wealth of data. This work offers anecdotes—for ex ample, the story of the teacher forced to conduct class in a restroom and the effects of giving teachers business cards—but also acknowledges the many complicated factors of school life. Presented clearly are the pitfalls— including bureaucratic paralysis, the insecurities of superintendents and principals, the impact of school boards, and the still hazy role of the unions—that complicate the path to reform. The goals of the CHART project were reached, and the book concludes with descriptions of nine projects that demonstrably improved both the teaching of the humanities and the lives of teachers This book bears such strong testi mony to the power of classroom teachers that it ultimately raises a dis turbing question If teachers can wield influence, earn respect, and act profes sionally, then why are they content to wait for "empowerment" to be be stowed upon them? Available from the Teachers College Press, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, for $11.95, Continuing to Learn: A Guidebook for Teacher Development Susan Loucks-ttorsley Andover, Mass The Regional Laboratory for Educational Improvement of the Northeast ______and Islands, 1987______
IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Analog and Digital Signal Processing

| Four-quadrant synapse stuu In our rst treatments of single-transistor synapses ((1], 2]; elaborated in 3]), we presented the electron-tunneling, hot-electron{injection, and multiplicative behavior of these devices. We used a feedback connguration to characterize the tunneling and hot-electron injection phenomena in these synapses 3]. We also derived an eeective learning rule, but we did not consider any speciic ways that these synapses could be used in a network. Our presentation of the autozeroing oating-gate ampliier (AFGA) 5], 6] showed the rst circuit applications of a single-transistor synapse with continuous oxide currents. In another paper , we generalized the AFGA synapse connguration to consider the behaviors that emerge when single-transistor synapses are coupled together to form various continuous-time learning networks 7]. This paper began to consider these oating-gate devices as continuous-time circuit elements. This paper presents the next fundament a oating-gate synapse that computes four-quadrant products of its input and weight value, and computes a four-quadrant correlation of the input and output or error function variables. *** need to say something of why four-qudrant computations are important, why they are diicult, etc. *** Four quadrant operation is essential in most adaptive lter and neural network applications. Biological synapses have only seem to have two-quadrant behavior, but . ** make this paragraph smaller ** Our oating-gate synapses possess ve important necessary to build adap-tive analog VLSI systems 1], 4]. First, in the absence of learning, the weight is stored permanently; because the oating gate is surrounded by SiO 2 , charge leakage is negligible. Second, when operated with subthreshold currents, the synapse's output current is the product of the input signal with the synaptic weight. Third, the synapse requires minimal area, because it comprises only one or two transistors. Fourth, the synapse dissipates a minimal amount of power, because it operates at subthreshold current levels. Fifth, the synapse implements a learning rule for modifying the weight on the oating gate; the form of this rule depends on how various error signals are fed back to the oating gate. In Section I, we review the source-degenerated pFET synapse, and present the operating conditions that we will (a) (b) Fig. 1. The source-degenerated (s-d) pFET synapse. (a) Circuit diagram of the s-d pFET synapse. The s-d pFET synapse is comprised of a pFET single-transistor synapse and the x diode element, which provides feedback to the source terminal. This feedback results in a weaker exponential …
A Neuro Fuzzy approach for Facial Expression Recognition using LBP Histograms

Facial expression analysis plays a significant role for human computer interaction. Automatic analysis of human facial expression is still a challenging problem with many applications. In this paper, we propose neuro-fuzzy based automatic facial expression recognition system to recognize the human facial expressions like happy, fear, sad, angry, disgust and surprise. Initially facial image is segmented into three regions from which the uniform Local Binary Pattern (LBP) texture features distributions are extracted and represented as a histogram descriptor. The facial expressions are recognized using Multiple Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (MANFIS). The proposed system designed and tested with JAFFE face database. The proposed model reports 95.29% of classification accuracy.
Real-Time Hierarchical Binary-Scene Voxelization

Volumetric representations provide the localization of shapes in space. When such representation is created on the fly from the geometry, it becomes very useful for a wide range of applications (constructive solid geometry (CSG), shape repair, collision detection, etc. Using the advanced functionalities provided by recent GPUs (geometry shaders, 32-bit integer texture format and bitwise operators), we show how to compute a robust scene voxelization and octree construction in a few milliseconds from any hardware-supported rasterizable geometry. Our hierarchical volumetric representation is thus especially well-suited for hierarchical computation of fully dynamic scenes.
Watch the target! Effects in the affective misattribution procedure become weaker (but not eliminated) when participants are motivated to provide accurate responses to the target

Previous research showed that priming effects in the affective misattribution procedure (AMP) are unaffected by direct warnings to avoid an influence of the primes. The present research examined whether a priming influence is diminished by task procedures that encourage accurate judgments of the targets. Participants were motivated to categorize the affective meaning of nonsense targets accurately by being made to believe that a true word was presented in each trial and by providing feedback on (allegedly) incorrect responses. This condition produced robust priming effects. Priming was however reduced and less reliable relative to more typical AMP conditions in which participants guessed the meaning of openly presented nonsense targets. Affective judgments of nonsense targets were not affected by advance knowledge of the response mapping during the priming phase, which argues against a response-priming explanation of AMP effects. These findings show that affective primes influence evaluative judgments even in conditions in which the motivation to provide accurate responses is high and a priming of motor responses is not possible. Priming effects were however weaker with high accuracy motivation, suggesting that a focus on accurate judgments is an effective strategy to control for an unwanted priming influence in the AMP.
Progressive engineering of a homing endonuclease genome editing reagent for the murine X-linked immunodeficiency locus

LAGLIDADG homing endonucleases (LHEs) are compact endonucleases with 20–22 bp recognition sites, and thus are ideal scaffolds for engineering site-specific DNA cleavage enzymes for genome editing applications. Here, we describe a general approach to LHE engineering that combines rational design with directed evolution, using a yeast surface display high-throughput cleavage selection. This approach was employed to alter the binding and cleavage specificity of the I-Anil LHE to recognize a mutation in the mouse Bruton tyrosine kinase (Btk) gene causative for mouse X-linked immunodeficiency (XID)—a model of human X-linked agammaglobulinemia (XLA). The required re-targeting of I-AniI involved progressive resculpting of the DNA contact interface to accommodate nine base differences from the native cleavage sequence. The enzyme emerging from the progressive engineering process was specific for the XID mutant allele versus the wild-type (WT) allele, and exhibited activity equivalent to WT I-AniI in vitro and in cellulo reporter assays. Fusion of the enzyme to a site-specific DNA binding domain of transcription activator-like effector (TALE) resulted in a further enhancement of gene editing efficiency. These results illustrate the potential of LHE enzymes as specific and efficient tools for therapeutic genome engineering.
Integrating viewpoints into newspaper opinion mining for a media response analysis

Opinion Mining in newspaper articles is very interesting for media monitoring, because the results can represent the foundation for many analyses such as a Media Response Analysis. But for these kinds of analyses we need to know the viewpoint for an extracted sentiment. In this paper we apply various commonly used approaches for sentiment analysis and expand research by analysing the specific point of view and viewpoint features. The evaluation on real world datasets of German Media Response Analyses in contrast to a state-of-the-art method illustrates that our approach provide the assignment of a point of view for a given statement. Furthermore, we show how the features can increase the performance of existing solutions and how the viewpoints influence the polarity of sentiment.
Photobleaching as a factor controlling spectral characteristics of chromophoric dissolved organic matter in open ocean

Chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) ubiquitously occurs in marine environments and plays a sig- nificant role in the marine biogeochemical cycles. Basin scale distributions of CDOM have recently been surveyed in the global ocean and indicate that quantity and quality of oceanic CDOM are mainly controlled by in situ production and photobleaching. However, factors controlling the spec- tral parameters of CDOM in the UV region, i.e., spectral slope of CDOM determined at 275-295 nm (S275 295) and the ratio of two spectral slope parameters (SR); the ratio of S275 295 to S350 400, have not been well documented. To evaluate the factor controlling the spectral characteristics of CDOM in the UV region in the open ocean, we determined the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of CDOM in the subarctic and subtropical surface waters (5-300 m) of the western North Pacific. Absorption coefficients at 320 nm in the subarctic region were higher than those in the subtropi- cal region throughout surface waters, suggesting that magni- tudes of photobleaching were different between the two re- gions. The values of S275 295 and SR were also higher in the subtropical region than the subarctic region. The dark microbial incubation showed biodegradation of DOM little affected S275 295, but slightly decreased SR. On the other hand, increases in S275 295 and relative stableness of SR were observed during photo-irradiation incubations respectively. These experimental results indicated that photobleaching of CDOM mainly induced qualitative differences in CDOM at UV region between the subarctic and subtropical surface wa- ters. The results of this study imply that S275 295 can be used as a tracer of photochemical history of CDOM in the open ocean.
Integrated Capacitance-Resistance Model for Characterizing Waterflooded Reservoirs

Capacitance-resistance modeling of petroleum reservoirs has been used successfully to analyze transient behavior of petroleum reservoirs both onshore and offshore. This paper presents a linear reservoir model that provides advantages over the nonlinear capacitance-resistance model: convex objective function, efficient solution, and direct estimation of confidence limits on model parameters. The proposed procedure uses a constrained linear multivariate regression to infer preferential permeability trends and fractures in a waterflooded reservoir. The relationship between interwell- connectivities and interwell-distance between injector-producer well-pairs was also investigated.
(Un)doing occupational citizenship : sex workers' experiences of everyday violence and resistance in Lima, Peru

Sex workers face extensive violence and poor access to justice, at the intersections of criminalisation, multiple stigmas and inequalities. This topic has received little attention in Peru, where sex work is legal within licensed venues but where the majority of people work in the legally ambiguous space of “clandestine” prostitution―subject to municipal by-laws and police repression. Here I present analyses generated via a participatory qualitative study, conducted collaboratively with Peruvian sex-worker, gay and transgender rights activists, which explored everyday violence and resistance in the lives of people who sell sex in central Lima. I argue that publicised police and serenazgo (citizen-safety) raids not only pose direct threats of violence, extortion, arrest and disclosure to sex workers, but they also work to perform ‘moral, safe and healthy’ spaces for morally-conforming citizens while casting sex workers as ‘out-of-place’ in and beyond these spaces. Yet sex workers rework these spaces, through evasion, discretion, and social, economic and affective relations, to protect their income and themselves, in a broader landscape of physical and economic insecurity. At times they make overt claims to occupy and generate income through these spaces unconditionally―acts of occupational citizenship that constitute them as citizens despite their not being treated as such by the state. Yet these acts are not without risks of further violence and arrest, and they are complicated both by the potential for dominant institutions (e.g. public health, media) to amplify or mute their claims, and by the workings of stigma management. Participants’ tendency to emphasise particular aspects of their identities―as respectable citizens and responsible workers― resisted certain normative constructions of sex work(ers), gender, sexuality, class and race, but reproduced others, thus recasting but not necessarily contesting boundaries between in-place citizens and out-of-place others. I discuss implications for sex work policy, public health practice, and collective action.
Severity of Infantile Nystagmus Syndrome-Like Ocular Motor Phenotype Is Linked to the Extent of the Underlying Optic Nerve Projection Defect in Zebrafish belladonna Mutant

Infantile nystagmus syndrome (INS), formerly known as congenital nystagmus, is an ocular motor disorder in humans characterized by spontaneous eye oscillations (SOs) and, in several cases, reversed optokinetic response (OKR). Its etiology and pathomechanism is largely unknown, but misrouting of the optic nerve has been observed in some patients. Likewise, optic nerve misrouting, a reversed OKR and SOs with INS-like waveforms are observed in zebrafish belladonna (bel) mutants. We aimed to investigate whether and how misrouting of the optic nerve correlates with the ocular motor behaviors in bel larvae. OKR and SOs were quantified and subsequently the optic nerve fibers were stained with fluorescent lipophilic dyes. Eye velocity during OKR was reduced in larvae with few misprojecting optic nerve fibers and reversed in larvae with a substantial fraction of misprojecting fibers. All larvae with reversed OKR also displayed SOs. A stronger reversed OKR correlated with more frequent SOs. Since we did not find a correlation between additional retinal defects and ocular motor behavior, we suggest that axon misrouting is in fact origin of INS in the zebrafish animal model. Depending on the ratio between misprojecting ipsilateral and correctly projecting contralateral fibers, the negative feedback loop normally regulating OKR can turn into a positive loop, resulting in an increase in retinal slip. Our data not only give new insights into the etiology of INS but may also be of interest for studies on how the brain deals with and adapts to conflicting inputs.
Efficient Distributed Medium Access

Consider a wireless network of n nodes represented by a graph G=(V, E) where an edge (i,j) models the fact that transmissions of i and j interfere with each other, i.e. simultaneous transmissions of i and j become unsuccessful. Hence it is required that at each time instance a set of non-interfering nodes (corresponding to an independent set in G) access the wireless medium. To utilize wireless resources efficiently, it is required to arbitrate the access of medium among interfering nodes properly. Moreover, to be of practical use, such a mechanism is required to be totally distributed as well as simple. As the main result of this paper, we provide such a medium access algorithm. It is randomized, totally distributed and simple: each node attempts to access medium at each time with probability that is a function of its local information. We establish efficiency of the algorithm by showing that the corresponding network Markov chain is positive recurrent as long as the demand imposed on the network can be supported by the wireless network (using any algorithm). In that sense, the proposed algorithm is optimal in terms of utilizing wireless resources. The algorithm is oblivious to the network graph structure, in contrast with the so-called `polynomial back-off' algorithm by Hastad-Leighton-Rogoff (STOC '87, SICOMP '96) that is established to be optimal for the complete graph and bipartite graphs (by Goldberg-MacKenzie (SODA '96, JCSS '99)).
Inverse Problem Methodology for the Measurement of the Electromagnetic Parameters Using MLP Neural Network

(cid:3) Abstract — This paper presents an approach which is based on the use of supervised feed forward neural network, namely multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network and finite element method (FEM) to solve the inverse problem of parameters identification. The approach is used to identify unknown parameters of ferromagnetic materials. The methodology used in this study consists in the simulation of a large number of parameters in a material under test, using the finite element method (FEM). Both variations in relative magnetic permeability and electrical conductivity of the material under test are considered. Then, the obtained results are used to generate a set of vectors for the training of MLP neural network. Finally, the obtained neural network is used to evaluate a group of new materials, simulated by the FEM, but not belonging to the original dataset. Noisy data, added to the probe measurements is used to enhance the robustness of the method. The reached results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach, and encourage future works on this subject. in the electrical conductivity, performing at least 300 finite elements simulations.
ALLOCATING AND SCHEDULING HARD REAL-TIME TASKS ON A PARALLEL PROCESSING PLATFORM

This paper addresses the issues of scheduling and allocation/configuration of a point-topoint parallel system, for safety-critical hard real-time systems. Three specific topics are considered: an analysable computational model that has sufficient expressive power whilst retaining flexibility for allocation; a scheduling approach that allows the worst case response times for each system’s transactions to be calculated; and an allocation algorithm, based on the use of simulated annealing, that allow system level configuration to be undertaken. The DIA (Data Interaction Architecture) is used as an example parallel processing platform. A sizable case study is analysed to show the applicability of the techniques proposed.
Is CD 133 a biomarker for cancer stem cells of colorectal cancer and brain tumors ? A meta-analysis

Background: CD133 has been used to identify normal and cancer stem cells from several different tissues. Nowadays some researchers have reported that CD133 expression was not restricted to cancer stem cells (CSCs) of colorectal cancer and brain tumors, and CD133-negative subsets could also initiate tumors. We therefore performed a meta-analysis to assess the value of CD133 as a biomarker of CSCs for colorectal cancer and brain tumors. Methods: A Medline search was performed to identify relevant studies for the analysis. The meta-analysis was done using RevMan 5.0 software. Outcome measures were colony formation rate and xenotransplanted tumor formation rate. Results: Fifteen identified studies were available for analysis. For in vitro tests, there were no significant differences in the colony formation rates between CD133-positive and CD133-negative cells for colorectal cancer and brain tumors. For in vivo tests, the xenotransplanted tumor formation rate showed a significant difference between CD133-positive cells and CD133-negative cells in colorectal cancer only, corresponding to a risk difference of 0.40 (95%CI: 0.07, 0.73). Samples (cell lines versus tissues), applied biomarkers (combined versus single), and injection site were included as factors in sensitivity analyses, but the results were very inconsistent. Conclusions: CD133 may not be suitable as a universe biomarker in identifying CSCs of colorectal cancer and brain tumors. Additional studies are necessary to further delineate its role.