Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Autonomous navigation experiment for mobile robot based on IHDR algorithm

This paper investigates the robot navigation based on visual servo and learning algorithm. A novel method for image compression and noise reduction is proposed for constructing the IHDR (incremental hierarchical discriminant regression) tree under the real indoor environment. An autonomous learning framework which consists of three parts is constructed in the robot by using the method, i.e. knowledge learning, knowledge retrieval, and online updating. Firstly, we need to drive the robot to move around along with the same path for several times, meanwhile, recording the videos using a fixed camera on the robot. The robot velocity and the videos are recorded at the same frequency. Secondly, by using the IHDR algorithm, the IHDR tree is established through the collected samples, and it is a mapping relationship between input (images information) and output (robot velocity). Finally, the robot could decide to select the corresponding velocity from the knowledge library according to the most matched environment for each online scene to realize robot autonomous navigation. The experiment and simulation results illustrate that the proposed method can be well applied in the robot navigation, and the more repetition of training samples, the better performance of autonomous navigation. Furthermore, this method also has capacity of resisting disturbance even with the Gaussian noise in the images.
Machine learning of visual object categorization: an application of the SUSTAIN model

Formal models of categorization are psychological theories that try to describe the process of categorization in a lawful way, using the language of mathematics. Their mathematical formulation makes it possible for the models to generate precise, quantitative predictions. SUSTAIN (Love, Medin & Gureckis, 2004) is a powerful formal model of categorization that has been used to model a range of human experimental data, describing the process of categorization in terms of an adaptive clustering principle. Love et al. (2004) suggested a possible application of the model in the field of object recognition and categorization. The present study explores this possibility, investigating at the same time the utility of using a formal model of categorization in a typical machine learning task. The image categorization performance of SUSTAIN on a well-known image set is compared with that of a linear Support Vector Machine, confirming the capability of SUSTAIN to perform image categorization with a reasonable accuracy, even if at a rather high computational cost.
Bilingually Motivated Word Segmentation for Statistical Machine Translation

We introduce a bilingually motivated word segmentation approach to languages where word boundaries are not orthographically marked, with application to Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation (PB-SMT). Our approach is motivated from the insight that PB-SMT systems can be improved by optimizing the input representation to reduce the predictive power of translation models. We firstly present an approach to optimize the existing segmentation of both source and target languages for PB-SMT and demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using a Chinese--English MT task, that is, to measure the influence of the segmentation on the performance of PB-SMT systems. We report a 5.44% relative increase in Bleu score and a consistent increase according to other metrics. We then generalize this method for Chinese word segmentation without relying on any segmenters and show that using our segmentation PB-SMT can achieve more consistent state-of-the-art performance across two domains. There are two main advantages of our approach. First of all, it is adapted to the specific translation task at hand by taking the corresponding source (target) language into account. Second, this approach does not rely on manually segmented training data so that it can be automatically adapted for different domains.
Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry Original Paper Electrophysiological Characteristics of Embryonic Stem Cell-derived Cardiomyocytes Are Cell Line-dependent Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry

This is an Open Access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC) (www.karger.com/OA-license), applicable to the online version of the article only. Distribution permitted for non-commercial purposes only. Abstract Background: Modelling of cardiac development, physiology and pharmacology by differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) requires comparability of cardiac differentiation between different ESC lines. To investigate whether the outcome of cardiac differentiation is consistent between different ESC lines, we compared electrophysiological properties of ESC-derived cardiomyocytes (ESC-CMs) of different murine ESC lines. Methods: Two wild-type (D3 and R1) and two transgenic ESC lines (D3/aPIG44 and CGR8/AMPIGX-7) were differentiated under identical culture conditions. The transgenic cell lines expressed enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) and puromycin-N-acetyltransferase under control of the cardiac specific α-myosin heavy chain (αMHC) promoter. Action potentials (APs) were recorded using sharp electrodes and multielectrode arrays in beating clusters of ESC-CMs. Results: Spontaneous AP frequency and AP duration (APD) as well as maximal upstroke velocity differed markedly between unpurified CMs of the four ESC lines. APD heterogeneity was negligible in D3/aPIG44, moderate in D3 and R1 and extensive in CGR8/AMPIGX-7. Interspike intervals calculated from long-term recordings showed a high degree of variability within and between recordings in CGR8/AMPIGX-7, but not in D3/aPIG44. Purification of the αMHC+ population by puromycin treatment posed only minor changes to APD in D3/aPIG44, but significantly shortened APD in CGR8/AMPIGX-7. Conclusion: Electrophysiological properties of ESC-CMs are strongly cell line-dependent and can be influenced by purification of cardiomyocytes by antibiotic selection. Thus, conclusions on cardiac development, physiology and pharmacology derived from single stem cell lines have to be interpreted carefully.
Criteria for Evaluation of Econometric Models

This multi-authored article develops a framework for systematically evaluating large scale econometric models. Reasonably self-contained aspects of model evaluation include parametric evaluation prior to the “release” of the model (model selection, parameter estimation, and pseudo-forecasts and structural stability tests) and evaluation after “release” of the model. Many operational procedures for parametric evaluation are noted ; alternative, ad hoc procedures are necessary in some cases, given the present state of the art. Non-parametric “validation” procedures are then outlined. These include single-variable measures, tracking measures, error decomposition, and cyclical and dynamic properties. A statistical appendix sketches some of the theoretical results used in the paper.
Influence of refractive index gradient on aero-optic imaging deviation

Aero-optical imaging deviation results in the boresight error which adversely affects the airborne imaging applications such as detection, guidance, navigation, and so on. The influence of refractive index gradient on aero-optic imaging deviation was studied. Firstly, The flow fields under different flying conditions were computed by the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes method. Then the Gladstone-Dale relation was used to convert the mean density field into the refractive index field. After that, refractive index gradients whose absolute value below the selected threshold were set to zero and the new refractive index field was reconstructed. At last, ray tracing was performed via the Snell algorithm to obtain deflection angles and gradients along the ray trajectory. The simulation results show that the imaging deviation is closely related to the refractive index gradient, as the gradient increases, the imaging deviation also increases, and the high refractive index gradient region is the main reason for aero-optic imaging deviation.
Fast Algorithm of Open-Closed Loop PD-type Iterative Learning Control for DC motor

A fast algorithm of open-closed loop PD-type iterative learning control (ILC) for a class of nonlinear system is proposed in the paper. In the algorithm, the system's current tracking error and previous tracking error and their differential signals are all used to update the control law meanwhile. At the same time, the control law applies varying proportion parameters, which can be adjusted according to the system's errors. Therefore, the capability of the target tracking is greatly improved. Then the sufficient condition for the convergence of the proposed fast iterative learning algorithms is given. Finally simulation results for DC motor show the validity and feasibility of the proposed algorithm
The right hippocampus leads the bilateral integration of gamma-parsed lateralized information

It is unclear whether the two hippocampal lobes convey similar or different activities and how they cooperate. Spatial discrimination of electric fields in anesthetized rats allowed us to compare the pathway-specific field potentials corresponding to the gamma-paced CA3 output (CA1 Schaffer potentials) and CA3 somatic inhibition within and between sides. Bilateral excitatory Schaffer gamma waves are generally larger and lead from the right hemisphere with only moderate covariation of amplitude, and drive CA1 pyramidal units more strongly than unilateral waves. CA3 waves lock to the ipsilateral Schaffer potentials, although bilateral coherence was weak. Notably, Schaffer activity may run laterally, as seen after the disruption of the connecting pathways. Thus, asymmetric operations promote the entrainment of CA3-autonomous gamma oscillators bilaterally, synchronizing lateralized gamma strings to converge optimally on CA1 targets. The findings support the view that interhippocampal connections integrate different aspects of information that flow through the left and right lobes. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.16658. 001
Editorial: Brain Oscillations and Predictive Coding in the Context of Different Conscious States and Sleep-Wake Cycle: Implications for Decision Making and Psychopathology

Predictive coding (PC) is a neurocognitive concept, according to which the brain does not process the whole qualia of external information, but only residual mismatches occurring between incoming information and an individual, inner model of the world, thus minimizing the free energy (FE) or brain entropy. The original concept comes from the Helmholtz's view of Bayesian brain or unconscious inference (Helmholz, 1878/1971), and has been elaborated in the last decades by Karl Friston in terms of PC functioning at every level of brain anatomic and functional organization and mind-body interaction (Friston, 2010, 2012). While neurophysiologic evidence is increasingly accumulated in support of the PC concept (Friston, 2012), compelling issues remain open. (1) Is PC an evolutionary pathway which we still underscore? (2) Which neurophysiologic mechanisms support the formation, maintenance and consolidation of the inner model determining PC? (3) Whether and how these may be referenced to the “self” in normal and pathological conditions, thus representing an imperative limit of our free will? (4) Is PC continuously modulated by external environmental or internal mental information? This Research Topic features contributions from several leading scholars addressing these issues.
Strategies to Reduce Exclusion among Populations Living in Urban Slum Settlements in Bangladesh

The health and rights of populations living in informal or slum settlements are key development issues of the twenty-first century. As of 2007, the majority of the world's population lives in urban areas. More than one billion of these people, or one in three city-dwellers, live in inadequate housing with no or a few basic resources. In Bangladesh, urban slum settlements tend to be located in low-lying, flood-prone, poorly-drained areas, having limited formal garbage disposal and minimal access to safe water and sanitation. These areas are severely crowded, with 4–5 people living in houses of just over 100 sq feet. These conditions of high density of population and poor sanitation exacerbate the spread of diseases. People living in these areas experience social, economic and political exclusion, which bars them from society's basic resources. This paper overviews policies and actions that impact the level of exclusion of people living in urban slum settlements in Bangladesh, with a focus on improving the health and rights of the urban poor. Despite some strategies adopted to ensure better access to water and health, overall, the country does not have a comprehensive policy for urban slum residents, and the situation remains bleak.
Certus: glimpses of a centre for research-based innovation in software verification and validation

What is gratifying to a software engineering researcher? Three of many possible answers to this question are (a) the in- tellectual exercise in developing/disseminating approaches that address novel challenges (b) recognition from impact in a community of researchers (c) widespread use of novel ideas, including software, in the society at large leading to enhancement of human ability and job creation. A culmina- tion of these sources requires an organizational effort. This article presents glimpses of a research-based innovation cen- tre, Certus, to facilitate such a culmination for software engi- neering researchers. Certus has established a body of knowl- edge, methods and tools for the validation and verication (V&V) of software systems in the local Norwegian indus- try. Certus works in close cooperation with five founding user partners and is hosted by the Simula Research Labo- ratory. We present the organizational structure of Certus and describe how Certus's life and health is planned and evaluated on a regular basis as a research-based innovation centre. We hope that this document will serve as a ba- sis to encourage national/international funding schemes to create call for proposals for long-term research-based inno- vation centres. This, we believe, is one way to justify use of tax payers resources in creating a win-win situation for the triple helix: government, researchers and industry.
A survey on the current practices of software development process in Malaysia

Software quality is becoming increasingly important as our society becomes more dependent on computers. The required levels of quality are not likely to be achieved without giving proper attention to the software development process. Many studies regarding the practices of software development process have been carried out. The focus of these studies is mainly to examine the effectiveness of the practices. Most of studies were conducted in the United States, European countries, India, Japan and are very limited in Asian countries especially in Malaysia. In the view of that, we have carried out a study on the current practices of software development process in Malaysia. In this paper, we have analyzed and discussed the results found from the study. The structured questionnaire approach was used for data collection. The data was analyzed by using basic statistical techniques such as frequency and cross-tabulation. The results of this study have laid out some important points regarding the practices of the software development process in Malaysia. In addition, most of the practitioners were pursuing practices that have been traditionally used by the organizations.Lack of awareness in using good software development practices could be a key factor that contributes to the occurrence of quality in the organizations.Consequently, the results of this study have given us a good problems incentive to prolong our research in the area of software process certification.
Research on Workflow Patterns based on Petri nets

Workflow patterns systematically address workflow requirements, from basic to complex. Some complicated patterns of it were not supported directly by existing workflow management systems and workflow languages. Petri nets perform better when it comes to state-based workflow patterns. However, some patterns are also not easy to map onto Petri nets. This inspired us to develop a new extended workflow net (EWFnet) based on Petri nets for formalizing workflow patterns. EWFnet extended workflow net (WFnet) by adding some mechanisms. EWFnet improved the power of describing dynamic workflow model of WFnet. Control variable was introduced in EWFnet for describing the relevant data of workflow model. In EWFnet, a special transition was introduced for supporting dynamic routing of model. The correctness analysis of EWFnet consists of the analysis of consistent and the analysis of soundness of corresponding WFnet. Finally, an application example was described and analyzed in EWFnet which show its power of description and analysis
Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting of Human Body Heat for Wearable Sensors

The study of thermoelectric energy harvesting on people presented in this paper shows that although power generation is affected by many factors such as ambient temperature, wind speed, clothing thermal insulation, and a person's activity, it does not directly depend on metabolic rate as shown in the experiment. The relevant thermal properties of humans measured at different ambient conditions are reported. Several thermopiles are either attached with a strap directly to the skin or integrated into garments in different locations on human body, and power generation is extensively studied at different ambient conditions. Textile covering thermopiles is found not to essentially decrease power generation. Therefore, a hidden energy harvester is integrated into an office-style shirt and tested on people in real life. It generated power in 5–0.5 mW range at ambient temperatures of 15<formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$^{\circ}{\rm C}$</tex></formula>–27<formula formulatype="inline"> <tex Notation="TeX">$^{\circ}{\rm C}$</tex></formula>, respectively. The thermoelectric shirt with such an energy harvester produces more energy during nine months of use (if worn 10 h/day) than the energy stored in alkaline batteries of the same thickness and weight.
Study on the development strategy of industry cluster of Hengshui

This paper provides an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of promoting industry clusters as an industrial development necessity for Hengshui. Then, using economic statistical analysis, it presents an index system based on industrial development situation of Hengshui. As an industrial competitiveness evaluation system, it filters out the more competitive industries to determine key industries industry of Hengshui city, namely: chemical industry cluster, equipment manufacturing & fabricated metal products industry cluster, textile & garment industry cluster and food processing industry cluster. Finally, policy measures of industrial cluster development are put forward.
History on the Web : Museums, Digital Media and Participation

This chapter examines how one particular museum deals with new media by investigating the ways in which politics of participation are conveyed through two websites. It begins with the proposition that it is neither the museum nor the media per se that sets the conditions for participation, but the socio-technical arrangements they form. Software that provides for discussions among people who share the same interest seems to be congenial to experience-centered hobbies like living history and re-enactment, wheras an interface set up for hypertextual navigation within a set of pre-provided information might be more appropriate for an institution intent on educating the general public. It is argued that both the museum's main website and the investigated on-line forum for historical re-enactors are closed for the airing of contentious political issues. However the internet policy of the media department became a political issue at the museum.
WiSE-MNet: an experimental environment for wireless multimedia sensor networks

We propose a simulation environment for networks for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs), i.e. net- works with sensors capturing complex vectorial data, such as for example video and audio. The proposed simulation environment allows us to model the communication layers, the sensing and distributed applications of a WMSN. This Wireless Simulation Environment for Multimedia Networks (WiSE-MNet) is based on Castalia/Omnet++ and is available as open source to the research community [1]. The environment is designed to be flexible and extensible, and has a simple camera model that enables the simulation of distributed computer-vision algorithms at a high level of abstraction. We demonstrate the effectiveness of WiSE-MNet with a distributed tracking application. (5 pages)
The Origins of JSP and JSD: a Personal Recollection

realised that program design was hard and the results likely to be erroneous. Into the Honeywell programs, which formed a little system for an extremely complex payroll, I wrote some assertions, with run-time tests that halted program execution during production runs. Time constraints didn't allow restarting a run from the beginning of the tape. So for the first few weeks I had the frightening task on several payroll runs of repairing an erroneous program at the operator’s keyboard ─ correcting an error in the suspended program text, adjusting the local state of the program, and sometimes modifying the current and previous tape records ─ before resuming execution. On the Honeywell 400, all this could be done directly from the console typewriter. After several weeks without halts, there seemed to be no more errors. Before leaving the organisation, I replaced the run-time halts by brief diagnostic messages: not because I was sure all the errors had been found, but simply because there would be no-one to handle a halt if one occurred. An uncorrected error might be repaired by clerical adjustments; a halt in a production run would certainly be disastrous. In 1964 I went to work at John Hoskyns and Company, a new consultancy in London. Seeking a more reliable and systematic way of programming, we spent a lot of time thinking about the problems of program design. In those days disk drives were quite new, and most often used to hold sequential files like the tape files that were the standard basis of data processing systems. So program design seemed to be chiefly about sequential processes. Barry Dwyer joined the company in 1966, and Brian Boulter joined soon after. We worked together on improving our design methods. We experimented with top-down decomposition, and with some notions rather similar to coupling and cohesion; but they didn't seem to hold the key to design. Eventually we saw, in somewhat vague terms, that the coding discipline of structured programming invited the adoption of a hierarchical program structure to match the structures of the data files. Sometimes those data structures were mutually incompatible, but we weren’t sure how to handle this difficulty. We also recognised — it was Barry's idea — that backtracking was an important technique, seemingly ignored by everyone else, practitioner or academic, working on program design methodology. A vital stimulus to our work on program design was a project ─ ‘the Microsystem’ ─ that we did for a large insurance broker. The application demanded daily processing of small numbers of many different transaction types, each with its own pattern of access to the many master files. An on-line transaction-based solution was not economically practical at the time; and the low volumes and varied access patterns made it impossible to design an efficient batch system. The Microsystem worked as a dynamically scheduled batch system. Transactions were run against one