Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Localization of Indoor Mobile Robot Using Minimum Variance Unbiased FIR Filter

The demand of indoor localization has recently grown quickly in industries. In general, a localization system is required to be reliable, fast, and have high accuracy. In this paper, the ultrawideband (UWB) technique is combined with the inertial navigation sensor (INS) to form a coupled UWB/INS localization framework, which inherits the advantages from both components. A minimum variance unbiased finite impulse response (MVU FIR) method is then applied to obtain accurate position and velocity estimations from noisy measurements. Two experiments and several simulations are conducted. Compared with the traditional Kalman filter (KF) and particle filter, the MVU FIR filter exhibits better immunity to the errors about a priori knowledge of noise variances. It can handle the kidnapped problem, and recover from some extreme failures satisfactorily. Moreover, the MVU FIR filtering algorithm is fast and easily implementable. Its online computational time is even lower than that of the KF, which is favorable in localization applications.Note to Practitioners—For indoor robot localization, an effective filtering algorithm can improve the accuracy significantly. Existing and commonly used filtering approaches suffer from weak robustness to the imprecise a priori knowledge of noise variances used, unsatisfied performance when dealing with sudden behaviors of robot, and large online computational load. This paper suggests a new practical method to estimate the current state using finite past measurements with a finite impulse response filter gain computed off-line. By testing it within the coupled ultrawideband/inertial navigation sensor localization framework under different operating conditions, we demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively overcome the above problems, providing fast, accurate, and reliable estimation in a practical environment.
Development and testing of a measure designed to assess the quality of care transitions

Abstract Background To improve the quality of care delivered to older persons receiving care across multiple settings, interventions are needed. However, the absence of a patient-centred measure specifically designed to assess this care has constrained innovation. Objective To develop a rigorously designed and tested measure, the Care Transition Measure (CTM). Setting A large, integrated managed care organisation in Colorado with approximately 55,000 members over the age of 65 years. Participants Patients 65 years and older who were recently discharged from hospital and received subsequent skilled nursing care in a facility or in the home. Methods Six focus groups of older persons and their caregivers (n=49) were established. Standard qualitative analytic techniques were applied to written transcripts and four key domains were identified: (1) information transfer; (2) patient and caregiver preparation; (3) self-management support; and (4) empowerment to assert preferences. Specific CTM items were developed, pilot tested, and refined. Psychometric testing, conducted in a different population but selected using the same entry criteria (n=60), included content and construct validity, intra-item variation, and floor/ceiling properties. Results Older patients and clinicians found the measure to be highly relevant and comprehensive (i.e. content validity). Construct validity was assessed by comparing items from the CTM to selected items from a measure developed by Hendriks and colleagues (Medical Care 2001; 39(3): 270–283). Inter-item Spearman correlations ranged 0.388–0.594. No significant floor or ceiling effects were detected. Conclusions The CTM was developed with substantial input from older patients and their caregivers. Psychometric testing suggested that the measure was valid. The CTM may serve to fill an important gap in health system performance evaluation by measuring the quality of care delivered across settings.
Appearance Descriptors for Person Re-identification: a Comprehensive Review

In video-surveillance, person re- identication is the task of recognising whether an individual has already been observed over a network of cameras. Typically, this is achieved by exploiting the clothing appearance, as classical biometric traits like the face are impractical in real-world video surveil- lance scenarios. Clothing appearance is represented by means of low-level local and/or global features of the image, usually extracted according to some part- based body model to treat dierent body parts (e.g. torso and legs) independently. This paper provides a comprehensive review of current approaches to build appearance descriptors for person re-identication. The most relevant techniques are described in detail, and categorised according to the body models and features used. The aim of this work is to provide a structured body of knowledge and a starting point for researchers willing to conduct novel investigations on this challenging topic.
The World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) Guidelines for the Biological Treatment of Bipolar Disorders: Acute and long-term treatment of mixed states in bipolar disorder

Abstract Objectives: Although clinically highly relevant, the recognition and treatment of bipolar mixed states has played only an underpart in recent guidelines. This WFSBP guideline has been developed to supply a systematic overview of all scientific evidence pertaining to the acute and long-term treatment of bipolar mixed states in adults. Methods: Material used for these guidelines is based on a systematic literature search using various data bases. Their scientific rigour was categorised into six levels of evidence (A–F), and different grades of recommendation to ensure practicability were assigned. We examined data pertaining to the acute treatment of manic and depressive symptoms in bipolar mixed patients, as well as data pertaining to the prevention of mixed recurrences after an index episode of any type, or recurrence of any type after a mixed index episode. Results: Manic symptoms in bipolar mixed states appeared responsive to treatment with several atypical antipsychotics, the best evidence resting with olanzapine. For depressive symptoms, addition of ziprasidone to treatment as usual may be beneficial; however, the evidence base is much more limited than for the treatment of manic symptoms. Besides olanzapine and quetiapine, valproate and lithium should also be considered for recurrence prevention. Limitations: The concept of mixed states changed over time, and recently became much more comprehensive with the release of DSM-5. As a consequence, studies in bipolar mixed patients targeted slightly different bipolar subpopulations. In addition, trial designs in acute and maintenance treatment also advanced in recent years in response to regulatory demands. Conclusions: Current treatment recommendations are still based on limited evidence, and there is a clear demand for confirmative studies adopting the DSM-5 specifier with mixed features concept.
Gingival recession and root caries in the ageing population: a critical evaluation of treatments

AIM To review evidence for the treatments of gingival recession and root caries in older populations. MATERIALS & METHODS A systematic approach was adopted to identify reviews and articles to allow us to evaluate the treatments for gingival recession and root caries. Searches were performed in PubMed, Medline and Embase, the Cochrane trials register and bibliographies of European and World Workshops. OBSERVATIONS Gingival recession: We identified no articles that focussed specifically on older populations. Conversely, no evidence suggested that Miller class I and II lesions should be managed differently in older patients when compared to younger cohorts. Six systematic reviews included older patients and suggested that connective tissue grafts are the treatment of choice, alone or in combination with enamel matrix derivative. Root caries can be controlled at the population level by daily brushing with fluoride-containing toothpastes, whilst active decay may be inactivated using professional application of fluoride varnishes/solutions or self-applied high-fluoride toothpaste. Active root caries lesions that cannot be cleaned properly by the patient may be restored by minimally invasive techniques. CONCLUSIONS Gingival recession and root caries will become more prevalent as patients retain their teeth for longer. Whilst surgical (gingival recession) and non-operative approaches (root caries) currently appear to be favoured, more evidence is needed to identify the most appropriate strategies for older people.
The 5-year incidence and progression of hearing loss: the epidemiology of hearing loss study.

CONTEXT Hearing impairment affects many older adults, but the incidence is unknown. OBJECTIVE To determine the 5-year incidence and progression of hearing impairment. DESIGN A longitudinal, population-based study of adults aged 48 to 92 years at baseline examination. Hearing sensitivity was measured twice, 5 years apart. SETTING Testing was conducted at the Beaver Dam Community Hospital, Beaver Dam, Wis. PARTICIPANTS A total of 1636 participants without hearing loss and 1085 participants with hearing loss at the baseline examination in 1993-1995 were reexamined in 1998-2000. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The examinations included otoscopy, screening tympanometry, and tone air- and bone-conduction audiometry. Incidence of hearing impairment was defined as a pure-tone average (PTA) of thresholds at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz (PTA 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz) greater than 25 dB HL (hearing level) in either ear at follow-up among those without hearing loss at baseline. Progression was defined as a change of more than 5 dB in the PTA 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz among those with hearing loss at baseline. RESULTS The 5-year incidence of hearing impairment was 21%. More than half of those with hearing loss at baseline experienced a decline in hearing. Age was an important risk factor for both incidence and progression. Male sex, occupation, and education were associated with the incidence of hearing loss after adjusting for age. CONCLUSIONS Older adults have a high risk of developing hearing loss. Among those with hearing loss, most experience further declines in hearing sensitivity over time. These data indicate that hearing impairment is an important public health problem and underscore the need for appropriate hearing screening and treatment.
Female entrepreneurship in China: opportunity- or necessity-based?

The paper investigates the inequalities within entrepreneurship which are hindering Chinese socio-economic development. We take an institutionalist and gender-based approach. We establish the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic development and create a historical framework from which we examine contemporary female entrepreneurship. We find that females in China often engage in entrepreneurship in the informal sector, where average income is lower. Females are more likely than men to engage in necessity-based entrepreneurship rather than opportunity-based entrepreneurship in China. Therefore, the overall increase in female entrepreneurship in China in recent years does not necessarily imply improvement in living standards for those women. The paper demonstrates that different classes of entrepreneurs face different barriers, and that females need targeted assistance so that the gender gap in entrepreneurship can be reduced. Government should take responsibility for deconstructing social and cultural barriers to women through policy initiatives, as well as promoting women's entrepreneurial training and capital formation. There is also a key role for the non-governmental sector and international organisations to play in educating government, businesses, and workers, as well as pressuring and/or coordinating them where needed.
Stenotrophomonas maltophilia: an Emerging Global Opportunistic Pathogen

SUMMARY Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is an emerging multidrug-resistant global opportunistic pathogen. The increasing incidence of nosocomial and community-acquired S. maltophilia infections is of particular concern for immunocompromised individuals, as this bacterial pathogen is associated with a significant fatality/case ratio. S. maltophilia is an environmental bacterium found in aqueous habitats, including plant rhizospheres, animals, foods, and water sources. Infections of S. maltophilia can occur in a range of organs and tissues; the organism is commonly found in respiratory tract infections. This review summarizes the current literature and presents S. maltophilia as an organism with various molecular mechanisms used for colonization and infection. S. maltophilia can be recovered from polymicrobial infections, most notably from the respiratory tract of cystic fibrosis patients, as a cocolonizer with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Recent evidence of cell-cell communication between these pathogens has implications for the development of novel pharmacological therapies. Animal models of S. maltophilia infection have provided useful information about the type of host immune response induced by this opportunistic pathogen. Current and emerging treatments for patients infected with S. maltophilia are discussed.
Toward understanding the relationship between personality and well-being states and traits.

OBJECTIVE Although there is a robust connection between dispositional personality traits and well-being, relatively little research has comprehensively examined the ways in which all Big Five personality states are associated with short-term experiences of well-being within individuals. We address three central questions about the nature of the relationship between personality and well-being states: First, to what extent do personality and well-being states covary within individuals? Second, to what extent do personality and well-being states influence one another within individuals? Finally, are these within-person relationships moderated by dispositional personality traits and well-being? METHOD Two experience sampling studies (N = 161 and N = 146) were conducted over 2 weeks. RESULTS Across both studies, all Big Five personality states were correlated with short-term experiences of well-being within individuals. Individuals were more extraverted, emotionally stable, conscientious, agreeable, and open in moments when they experienced higher well-being (greater self-esteem, life satisfaction and positive affect, and less negative affect). Moreover, personality and well-being states dynamically influenced one another over time within individuals, and these associations were not generally moderated by dispositional traits or well-being. CONCLUSIONS Behavior and well-being are interconnected within the context of the Big Five model of personality.
Experimental Characterization of Canola Oil Emulsion Combustion in a Modified Furnace

Experimental Characterization of Canola Oil Emulsion Combustion in a Modified Furnace. (May 2011) Shreyas Bhimani, B.E. , Charotar Institute of Technology Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Jorge Alvarado Vegetable oils have been researched as alternative source of energy for many years because they have proven themselves as efficient fuel sources for diesel engines when used in the form of biodiesel, vegetable oil–diesel blends, vegetable oil-waterdiesel blends and mixtures thereof. However, very few studies involving the use of emulsified low grade alcohols in straight vegetable oils, as fuels for combustion have been published. Even, the published literature involves the use of emulsified fuels only for compression ignition diesel engines. Through this project, an attempt has been made to suggest the use of alcohol-in-vegetable oil emulsions (AVOE) as an alternate fuel in stationary burners like electric utility boiler producing steam for electricity generation and more dynamic systems like diesel engines. The main goal of this study is to understand the effect of the combustion of different methanol-in-canola oil emulsions, swirl angle and equivalence ratio on the emission levels of NOx, unburned hydrocarbons (UHC), CO and CO2. The 30 kW furnace facility available at Coal and Biomass Energy Laboratory at Texas A&M University was modified using a twin fluid atomizer, a swirler and a new
The rationale for Janus kinase inhibitors for the treatment of spondyloarthritis

Abstract The pathogenesis of SpA is multifactorial and involves a range of immune cell types and cytokines, many of which utilize Janus kinase (JAK) pathways for signaling. In this review, we summarize the animal and pre-clinical data that have demonstrated the effects of JAK blockade on the underlying molecular mechanisms of SpA and provide a rationale for JAK inhibition for the treatment of SpA. We also review the available clinical trial data evaluating JAK inhibitors tofacitinib, baricitinib, peficitinib, filgotinib and upadacitinib in PsA, AS and related inflammatory diseases, which have demonstrated the efficacy of these agents across a range of SpA-associated disease manifestations. The available clinical trial data, supported by pre-clinical animal model studies demonstrate that JAK inhibition is a promising therapeutic strategy for the treatment of SpA and may offer the potential for improvements in multiple articular and extra-articular disease manifestations of PsA and AS.
An advanced search engine for patent analytics in medicinal chemistry

Patent collections contain an important amount of medical-related knowledge, but existing tools were reported to lack of useful functionalities. We present here the development of TWINC, an advanced search engine dedicated to patent retrieval in the domain of health and life sciences. Our tool embeds two search modes: an ad hoc search to retrieve relevant patents given a short query and a related patent search to retrieve similar patents given a patent. Both search modes rely on tuning experiments performed during several patent retrieval competitions. Moreover, TWINC is enhanced with interactive modules, such as chemical query expansion, which is of prior importance to cope with various ways of naming biomedical entities. While the related patent search showed promising performances, the ad-hoc search resulted in fairly contrasted results. Nonetheless, TWINC performed well during the Chemathlon task of the PatOlympics competition and experts appreciated its usability.
Gait regeneration for recognition

Gait recognition has potential to recognize subject in CCTV footages thanks to robustness against image resolution. In the CCTV footage, several body-regions of subjects are, however, often un-observable because of occlusions and/or cutting off caused by limited field of view, and therefore, recognition must be done from a pair of partially observed data. The most popular approach to recognition from partially observed data is matching the data from common observable region. This approach, however, cannot be applied in the cases where the matching pair has no common observable region. We therefore, propose an approach to enable recognition even from the pair with no common observable region. In the proposed approach, we reconstruct entire gait feature from a partial gait feature extracted from the observable region using a subspace-based method, and match the reconstructed entire gait features for recognition. We evaluate the proposed approach against two different datasets. In the best case, the proposed approach achieves recognition accuracy with EER of 16.2% from such a pair.
Iterative Learning Procedure With Reinforcement for High-Accuracy Force Tracking in Robotized Tasks

The paper focuses on industrial interaction robotics tasks, investigating a control approach involving multiples learning levels for training the manipulator to execute a repetitive (partially) changeable task, accurately controlling the interaction. Based on compliance control, the proposed approach consists of two main control levels: 1) iterative friction learning compensation controller with reinforcement and 2) iterative force-tracking learning controller with reinforcement. The learning algorithms rely on the iterative learning and reinforcement learning procedures to automatize the controllers parameters tuning. The proposed procedure has been applied to an automotive industrial assembly task. A standard industrial UR 10 Universal Robot has been used, equipped by a compliant pneumatic gripper and a force/torque sensor at the robot end-effector.
Chemical Detection of Leukocytes in Urine by Means of a New Multiple Test Strip

The performance of the leukocyte test area of the new multiple urine test strip, Multistix-10-SG, was evaluated in both field trials and model experiments. The detection limit was found to be adequate for routine purposes. Unspecific reactions are rare and generally indicated by the results of the other test areas.
Cover Letter: a Cover Letter Must Accompany the Submitted Manuscript Stating That the on the Consistency Rule in Causal Inference

paper and the data have not previously been published, either in whole or in part (unless as an abstract), and that no similar paper is in press or under review elsewhere. The cover letter should also state potential conflicts of interest that could raise questions about a paper's credibility if disclosed later. (See above.) Any closely-related papers by the authors (including manuscripts that are published, in press, or under review) should be sent to the journal editorial office, as described above. The cover letter should make clear the independent contribution of the submitted paper. * I am grateful to Sander Greenland for bringing this topic to my attention and for his advice in writing this note. Abstract In two recent communications, Cole and Frangakis (2009) 1 and VanderWeele (2009) 2 conclude that the consistency rule used in causal inference is an assumption that precludes any side-effects of treatment/exposure modalities on the outcomes of interest. They further develop auxiliary notation to make this assumption formal and explicit. I argue that the consistency rule is a theorem in the logic of counterfactuals and need not be altered. Instead, warnings of potential side-effects should be embodied in modeling practices that facilitate explicit and transparent encoding of all causal assumptions.
Trust Amongst Rogues? A Hypergraph Approach for Comparing Clandestine Trust Networks in MMOGs

Gold farming and real money trade refer to a set of illicit practices in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) whereby players accumulate virtual resources to sell for “real world” money. Prior work has examined trade relationships formed by gold farmers but not the trust relationships which exist between members of these organizations. We adopt a hypergraph approach to model the multi-modal relationships of gold farmers granting other players permission to use and modify objects they own. We argue these permissions reflect underlying trust relationships which can be analyzed using network analysis methods. We compare farmers’ trust networks to the trust networks of both unidentified farmers and typical players. Our results demonstrate that gold farmers’ networks are different from trust networks of normal players whereby farmers trust highly-central non-farmer players but not each other. These findings have implications for augmenting detection methods and re-evaluating theories of clandestine behavior.