Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MODELING AND PREDICTION OF HUMAN DRIVER BEHAVIOR

Knowledge of the current and future driving context could facilitate the interaction between human driver and advanced driver assistance systems. A driver's intended actions (the future context) can be inferred from a number of sources, including the driver's current control actions, their visual scanning behavior, and the traffic environment surrounding them. In an approach similar to hidden Markov models, the intended actions (e.g., to turn or change lanes) are modeled as a sequence of internal mental states, each with a characteristic pattern of behavior and environmental state. By observing the temporal patterns of these features, it is possible to determine which action the drivers are beginning or intending to execute. This approach has been successfully demonstrated in a variety of simulated driving conditions for a wide range of driver actions including emergency maneuvers. In these studies, only the control actions of the driver (i.e., steering and acceleration actions) were used to infer the driver's state. We are presently exploring the use of the driver's visual scanning behavior as another source of information about the driver's state. Visual scanning behavior offers the additional advantage of prediction of driver actions since scanning generally takes place in areas ahead of the current car position.
Development of a pneumatic-electromagnetic hybrid linear actuator with an integrated structure

Conventional hybrid actuators can achieve a better force/torque bandwidth than a single principle actuator without losing back-drivability. However, hybrid actuators occupy space at least equal to the sum of the volumes of two or more actuators and multiple transmissions consisting of timing belts, gears, links, tendons, or Bowden-cables. Designs in which space and structural elements of a hybrid actuator are integrated have not been sufficiently studied. This paper presents an original development work on the design of an integrated pneumatic-electromagnetic hybrid linear actuator (iPEHLA). In the integrated design, hybrid components of an air cylinder and a linear motor were arranged around a single shaft, and the pneumatic and electromagnetic actuators shared the same moving parts (i.e., piston and moving part) and internal cylindrical spaces (i.e., cylinder and stator). Consequently, space required was less than the sum of the volumes of the two actuators. To verify the feasibility of this novel integrated design, the iPEHLA was designed and prototyped by modifying parts of a commercially available pneumatic cylinder integrated with electromagnetic components. The performances of the iPEHLA under pneumatic actuation and hybrid actuation were compared with respect to a feedforward friction compensation. The experimental results demonstrated that the novel design maintained its hybrid properties.
Control of Biogenic Amines in Food—Existing and Emerging Approaches

Biogenic amines have been reported in a variety of foods, such as fish, meat, cheese, vegetables, and wines. They are described as low molecular weight organic bases with aliphatic, aromatic, and heterocyclic structures. The most common biogenic amines found in foods are histamine, tyramine, cadaverine, 2-phenylethylamine, spermine, spermidine, putrescine, tryptamine, and agmatine. In addition octopamine and dopamine have been found in meat and meat products and fish. The formation of biogenic amines in food by the microbial decarboxylation of amino acids can result in consumers suffering allergic reactions, characterized by difficulty in breathing, itching, rash, vomiting, fever, and hypertension. Traditionally, biogenic amine formation in food has been prevented, primarily by limiting microbial growth through chilling and freezing. However, for many fishing based subsistence populations, such measures are not practical. Therefore, secondary control measures to prevent biogenic amine formation in foods or to reduce their levels once formed need to be considered as alternatives. Such approaches to limit microbial growth may include hydrostatic pressures, irradiation, controlled atmosphere packaging, or the use of food additives. Histamine may potentially be degraded by the use of bacterial amine oxidase or amine-negative bacteria. Only some will be cost-effective and practical for use in subsistence populations.
Customers' Decision-Making Styles and their Preference for Sales Strategies: Conceptual Examination and an Empirical Study

The primary purpose of this paper is to examine business customers' decisionmaking styles and the impact these styles have on the selection of a sales strategy for the selling firm. The paper reports the results of a survey of 109 customers of a high-technology firm. We first determine the decision-making styles of business customers and then examine the relationship between customers' decision-making styles and their preference for different sales strategies. The results indicate that business customers can be grouped based on their decisionmaking styles. Also, the decision-making style of the firm was reflected in the decision-making styles of individuals. Three decision-making styles with distinct preferences for sales strategies emerged from this analysis: entrepreneurial, planning, and bureaucratic. Customers demonstrating different decisionmaking styles were also found to be different in their demographic characteristics. The results provide directions for future theoretical investigations and applications in segmentation and sales management.
guacamole - An extensible scene graph and rendering framework based on deferred shading

In this paper, we present guacamole, a novel open source software framework for developing virtual-reality applications. It features a lightweight scene graph combined with a versatile deferred shading pipeline. In our deferred renderer, the geometry processing is decoupled from subsequent shading stages. This allows us to use the same flexible materials for various geometry types. Materials consist of multiple programmable shading stages and user-defined attributes. In contrast to other deferred shading implementations, our renderer automatically infers and generates the necessary buffer configurations and shader programs. We demonstrate the extensibility of our pipeline by showing how we added rendering support for non-polygonal data such as trimmed NURBS and volume data. Furthermore, guacamole features many state-of-the-art post-processing effects such as ambient occlusion or volumetric light. Our framework is also capable of rendering on multiple GPUs for the support of multi-screen displays and multi-user applications.
Influence of channel and ChannelFree™ processing technology on the vocal parameters in hearing-impaired individuals

Abstract Introduction: Hearing is the most important sense, as it controls an individual’s both comprehension and production. One of the most important aspects that disturbs the voice throughout speech is hearing as it provides essential feedback for control. The deficit of feedback can be substituted by the use of amplification in such patients with hearing loss (HL). Hence, the current study was aimed to study the effect of HL on vocal parameters in individuals with HL and to study the influence of hearing aid signal processing on vocal parameters. Method: Sixteen male subjects of the age range 18–70 years with sensorineural HL participated and underwent a preamplification voice evaluation using the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP) software followed by different amplifications with different signal processing. Results: The results revealed that there is a significant difference in the voice parameters with and without a hearing aid for both 3-channel and ChannelFree™ (p<0.05). No significant difference was observed when the voice parameter was compared between the two hearing aids. Conclusion: The voice analysis from the current study revealed that amplification brought a change in the vocal parameters but on the negative side. This infers the importance of auditory feedback during vocalization. Also, acclimatization of the hearing aids plays a major role in influencing the changes in the voice parameters of the hearing aid individuals.
Event Feature and Personality-Event - Ontology Based for Classifying Chinese Web Pages

In recent years, more and more experts find that events have more semantic means than any other features, such as, characters, terms and concepts. This paper described a method which used event features to classify Chinese web pages talking about personality in SVM classifier. Firstly, we explained how to represent Chinese documents by event features. Secondly, we constructed event ontology about personality information. We called this event ontology as Personality Event Ontology (PEOnt). Finally, an experiment was presented. This experiment showed that our approach results had an improved classification in terms of precision and recall. This improvement, however, come at a cost in a low features vector space’s dimensionality due to the event features and event ontology used.
Non‐planar 3D crack growth by the extended finite element and level sets—Part I: Mechanical model

A methodology for solving three‐dimensional crack problems with geometries that are independent of the mesh is described. The method is based on the extended finite element method, in which the crack discontinuity is introduced as a Heaviside step function via a partition of unity. In addition, branch functions are introduced for all elements containing the crack front. The branch functions include asymptotic near‐tip fields that improve the accuracy of the method. The crack geometry is described by two signed distance functions, which in turn can be defined by nodal values. Consequently, no explicit representation of the crack is needed. Examples for three‐dimensional elastostatic problems are given and compared to analytic and benchmark solutions. The method is readily extendable to inelastic fracture problems. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Analysis of an electromechanical generator implanted in a human total knee prosthesis

This paper describes a miniaturized electromechanical generator, integrable in a human total knee prosthesis, in which the mechanical energy, related to the knee joint movement, is converted into electrical energy. This device has been conceived in order to power an autonomous sensor system, integrated into the prosthesis, able to monitor the loads on the articular surfaces and to transmit those outside the body.
Practical Application of Antidiabetic Efficacy of Lycium barbarum Polysaccharide in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

Lycium barbarum polysaccharide (LBP) has traditionally been used in Chinese medicine as a chief ingredient of L. barbarum (wolf berry/goji berry) for the treatment of various diseases with the symptoms of frequent drinking and urination. This study was conducted as a randomized, controlled clinical trial. A total of 67 patients with type 2 diabetes (30 in control group and 37 in LBP group) were enrolled in this prospective, randomized, double-blind study (administration at 300mg/day body weight). In order to observe the hypoglycemic and lipid-lowering activity of LBP in patients with type 2 diabetes after dinner, various tests were conducted between control and LBP intervention groups in 3 months. Although, the study had small sample size and short follow-up, significant findings were observed. The results of our study indicated a remarkable protective effect of LBP in patients with type 2 diabetes. Serum glucose was found to be significantly decreased and insulinogenic index increased during OMTT after 3 months administration of LBP. LBP also increased HDL levels in patients with type 2 diabetes. It showed more obvious hypoglycemic efficacy for those people who did not take any hypoglycemic medicine compared to patients taking hypoglycemic medicines. This study showed LBP to be a good potential treatment aided-agent for type 2 diabetes.
Networks-on-Chip: Emerging Research Topics and Novel Ideas

Networks-on-chip (NoCs) are being devoted intensive research efforts by R&D institutions all around the word, and it is our pleasure to host in this special issue the latest contributions on key design issues at different levels of abstraction , namely, physical link design, architecture design and optimization, performance and power characterization, and design technology. Applying the networking concept to on-chip communication is part of the breakthrough solutions urged by the advances in silicon manufacturing technology (which keeps scaling well beyond 100 nm), by increased time-to-market pressures and by the growing computing requirements of current and future embedded applications. In fact, scalable computation horsepower has been traditionally provided through an increase of clock frequency of mono-lithic processor cores at each technology node. This trend is, however, running into the barriers of nanoscale technologies , such as heating levels beyond the capability of state-of-the-art packaging and cooling technologies, limited scaling of memory access times and the von Neumann bottleneck. These limitations are being increasingly overcome by breaking up functions into concurrent tasks, assigning them to parallel computational units and operating them at a lower frequency than monolithic cores. This approach paves the way for energy-efficient massively parallel chip-level computation architectures, which are at the core of multiprocessor system-on-chip (MPSoC) technology. This trend has profound implications on the communication architecture as well, since the communication requirements of an increasing number of processor cores have to be accommodated by the system interconnect. In contrast , state-of-the-art interconnect fabrics will soon incur severe scalability limitations. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors foresees that they will represent the limiting factor for performance and power consumption in next generation SoCs. In the last few years, a number of advances in on-chip interconnect architectures have tried to relieve the limitations of the communication subsystem. First, more parallel topologies have been proposed to increase the amount of delivered bandwidth, such as partial or full crossbars. However, scalability limitations of crossbar-based interconnection fabrics are well known, and they will not be a long-term solution. Second, new communication protocols have been developed, aiming at a more effective exploitation of the available bandwidth. AMBA 3.0 AXI and the open-core protocol (OCP) are examples thereof. Interestingly, these latest protocols provide support for point-to-point communication only (e.g., an IP core with a bus or directly with another IP core) and do not provide any specification on the interconnect fabric, which can (almost) freely evolve …
Micro Contacts and Micro Manipulationwith MEMS Actuator

As improvements in fabrication technology for MEMS (micro electro mechanical systems) increase the availability and diversity of these micromachines, engineers are deening a growing number of tasks to which they can be put. The idea of carrying out tasks using coordinated systems of MEMS units motivates the development of automated, algorithmic methods for modeling, designing and controlling these devices. Parts contacts and parts handling at the micro scale pose new challenges to roboticists: With decreasing scale, forces proportional to the volume of objects (such as weight or inertia) decrease in comparison to surface forces (such as friction and sticking forces). We brieey describe these forces and discuss their eeects on micro parts handling. Then we give an overview of our work on micro manipulation strategies. We describe how arrays of MEMS devices can move and position tiny parts, such as integrated circuit chips, in exible and predictable ways by oscillatory or ciliary action. The theory of programmable force elds can model the contacts between parts and large numbers of microscopic actuators, leading to algorithms for various types of micromanipulation that require no sensing of where the part is. Experiments support the theory.
CanvoX: High-resolution VR Painting in Large Volumetric Canvas

With virtual reality, digital painting on 2D canvases is now being extended to 3D spaces. Tilt Brush and Oculus Quill are widely accepted among artists as tools that pave the way to a new form of art - 3D emmersive painting. Current 3D painting systems are only a start, emitting textured triangular geometries. In this paper, we advance this new art of 3D painting to 3D volumetric painting that enables an artist to draw a huge scene with full control of spatial color fields. Inspired by the fact that 2D paintings often use vast space to paint background and small but detailed space for foreground, we claim that supporting a large canvas in varying detail is essential for 3D painting. In order to help artists focus and audiences to navigate the large canvas space, we provide small artist-defined areas, called rooms, that serve as beacons for artist-suggested scales, spaces, locations for intended appreciation view of the painting. Artists and audiences can easily transport themselves between different rooms. Technically, our canvas is represented as an array of deep octrees of depth 24 or higher, built on CPU for volume painting and on GPU for volume rendering using accurate ray casting. In CPU side, we design an efficient iterative algorithm to refine or coarsen octree, as a result of volumetric painting strokes, at highly interactive rates, and update the corresponding GPU textures. Then we use GPU-based ray casting algorithms to render the volumetric painting result. We explore precision issues stemming from ray-casting the octree of high depth, and provide a new analysis and verification. From our experimental results as well as the positive feedback from the participating artists, we strongly believe that our new 3D volume painting system can open up a new possibility for VR-driven digital art medium to professional artists as well as to novice users.
Initial healthcare and coping preferences are associated with outcome 1 year after whiplash trauma: a multicentre 1-year follow-up study

Objective Individuals exposed to whiplash collisions have to cope with the stressful event as well as early physical symptoms. As in other chronic pain conditions, coping has been associated with outcome after whiplash. In this study, our aim was to examine whether initial coping preferences were associated with the development of chronic whiplash. Design Prospective study. Setting Primary care. Methods 740 acute whiplash patients were recruited from emergency units and general practitioners after car collisions in Denmark. Within 10 days postinjury, participants were asked what they believed could help them get better. At 12-month follow-up, the level of neck pain and capability to work was obtained. Whether coping preferences (baseline) were associated with outcome was investigated using multiple regression analyses. Results Persistent neck pain was most strongly associated with preferring medications (mean difference=1.24 (95% CI 0.67 to 1.82)) and sickness absence (mean difference=1.18 (95% CI 0.53 to 1.82)). Reduced work capability was most strongly associated with preferring medications (OR=3.53 (95% CI 2.13 to 5.86)), sickness absence (OR=3.05 (95% CI 1.80 to 5.17)) and being referred to a physiotherapist/chiropractor (OR=3.03 (95% CI 1.33 to 6.91)). Active coping was associated with better outcomes: Participants preferring to change their lifestyle were protected against reduced work capability (OR=0.11 (95% CI 0.01 to 0.78)). Individuals who wanted to keep living as usual only (no other preference reported) were protected against neck pain (mean difference −1.62 (95% CI −2.39 to −0.84)) and reduced work capability (OR=0.09 (95% CI 0.01 to 0.64)). Conclusions A simple nine-item measure of coping preferences is associated with the development of chronic neck pain and reduced capability to work following whiplash trauma and may be used to identify individuals at risk of poor recovery.
SIGNIFICANCE OF POWER AND POLITICS: ITS INFLUENCE ON ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR TOWARDS EFFICACY

Organizational behavior is immediately concerned with the theoretical and human side of management. Manager can influence the behavior in pursuing to reach organizational effectiveness and it is true that the Power and politics are human aspects of behavior and necessary drives of results in organizations. Politics is always concerned with power and power is defined as the ability to influence the existing energy or resources for definite goals and objectives. Organizational politics is known as exploration of person agenda; in an organization without observe result on the organizations. It must be understood that the modern organizations are mostly political systems; some very specific strategies can be identified to help members of organization to maintain their power base. Previous literature on the topic of organizational behavior has highlighted the significance of group, interactive behavior, informal organizations, communication, conflict, and leadership. Power and politics have not obtained sufficient response to be known as a significant vibrant in the organizational behavior. Max Weber defined Power influence behavior as the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite confrontation”. Fred Luthans, (1983) said that the essential issue of today’s management is with the use of skill and people to accomplish the organizational goals effectively. Barett and Bass (1976) said that the industrial and organizational psychology is equipped within exclusive cultural perspective. Etzioni (1968) stated three bases of Power. This observation also decreases the variables to clarify organizational behavior. The major issue is the decreasing output in the organization and the good management is needed to handle it, if the organization is effective in producing goods and services is considered as successful. This research paper is an effort to study the significance of power and politics in organizational behavior as backing elements in organizational competence and success.
Lake warming favours small-sized planktonic diatom species

Diatoms contribute to a substantial portion of primary production in the oceans and many lakes. Owing to their relatively heavy cell walls and high nutrient requirements, planktonic diatoms are expected to decrease with climate warming because of reduced nutrient redistribution and increasing sinking velocities. Using a historical dataset, this study shows that diatoms were able to maintain their biovolume with increasing stratification in Lake Tahoe over the last decades; however, the diatom community structure changed. Increased stratification and reduced nitrogen to phosphorus ratios selected for small-celled diatoms, particularly within the Cyclotella genus. An empirical model showed that a shift in phytoplankton species composition and cell size was consistent within different depth strata, indicating that altered nutrient concentrations were not responsible for the change. The increase in small-celled species was sufficient to decrease the average diatom size and thus sinking velocity, which strongly influences energy transfer through the food web and carbon cycling. Our results show that within the diverse group of diatoms, small-sized species with a high surface area to volume ratio were able to adapt to a decrease in mixing intensity, supporting the hypotheses that abiotic drivers affect the size structure of planktonic communities and that warmer climate favours small-sized diatom cells.