Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Teleoperation in surgical robotics – network latency effects on surgical performance

A teleoperated surgical robotic system allows surgical procedures to be conducted across long distances while utilizing wired and wireless communication with a wide spectrum of performance that may affect the outcome. An open architecture portable surgical robotic system (Raven) was developed for both open and minimally invasive surgery. The system has been the subject of an intensive telesurgical experimental protocol aimed at exploring the boundaries of the system and surgeon performance during a series of field experiments in extreme environments (desert and underwater) teleportation between US, Europe, and Japan as well as lab experiments under synthetic fixed time delay. One standard task (block transfer emulating tissue manipulation) of the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) training kit was used for the experimental protocol. Network characterization indicated a typical time delay in the range of 16-172 ms in field experiments. The results of the lab experiments showed that the completion time of the task as well as the length of the tool tip trajectory significantly increased (α< 0.02) as time delay increased in the range of 0-0.5 sec increased. For teleoperation with a time delay of 0.25s and 0.5s the task completion time was lengthened by a factor of 1.45 and 2.04 with respect to no time delay, whereas the length of the tools’ trajectory was increased by a factor of 1.28 and 1.53 with respect to no time delay. There were no statistical differences between experienced surgeons and non-surgeons in the number of errors (block drooping) as well as the completion time and the tool tip path length at different time delays.
Determination reachability index space of positive two-dimensional linear system using digraph-based theory

In this paper, a the new alternative method for determination of a reachability index space has been proposed. The method is based on the digraphs theory. As a solution of the problem of determination of a lower reachability index, the method finds all possible finite paths in the digraphs. By performing complete traversal of the digraphs we are able to reach all the possible lower reachability indices for any number of variables at once. Having determined the lower and upper reachability index, we can determine a reachability index space in an easy way. The proposed method is illustrated with numerical examples.
A 1-V 5 GHz low phase noise LC-VCO using voltage-dividing and bias-level shifting technique

In this paper, we present a 1 V 5.2 GHz VCO using voltage-dividing and bias-level shifting technique to prevent loaded Q-factor degradation and increase oscillation amplitude. The proposed VCO achieves a phase noise of 115.5 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset from a 5.2 GHz carrier frequency with 3 mA bias current from 1.0 V power supply. Tuning range is 450 MHz by changing the control bias from 0 V to 1.0 V.
Polling Systems with Zero Switchover Times: a Heavy-traac Averaging Principle Polling Systems with Zero Switchover Times: a Heavy-traac Averaging Principle

In polling systems, M 2 queues are visited by a single server in cyclic order. These systems model such diverse applications as token-ring communication networks and cyclic production systems. We study polling systems with exhaustive service and zero switchover (walk) times. Under standard heavy-traac assumptions and scalings, the total unnnished work converges to a one-dimensional reeected Brownian motion, whereas the workloads of individual queues change at a rate that becomes innnite in the limit. Although it is impossible to obtain a multidimensional limit process in the usual sense, we obtain anàveraging principle' for the individual workloads. To illustrate the use of this principle, we calculate a heavy-traac estimate of waiting times.
Signalogs: Orthology-Based Identification of Novel Signaling Pathway Components in Three Metazoans

Background Uncovering novel components of signal transduction pathways and their interactions within species is a central task in current biological research. Orthology alignment and functional genomics approaches allow the effective identification of signaling proteins by cross-species data integration. Recently, functional annotation of orthologs was transferred across organisms to predict novel roles for proteins. Despite the wide use of these methods, annotation of complete signaling pathways has not yet been transferred systematically between species. Principal Findings Here we introduce the concept of ‘signalog’ to describe potential novel signaling function of a protein on the basis of the known signaling role(s) of its ortholog(s). To identify signalogs on genomic scale, we systematically transferred signaling pathway annotations among three animal species, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, and humans. Using orthology data from InParanoid and signaling pathway information from the SignaLink database, we predict 88 worm, 92 fly, and 73 human novel signaling components. Furthermore, we developed an on-line tool and an interactive orthology network viewer to allow users to predict and visualize components of orthologous pathways. We verified the novelty of the predicted signalogs by literature search and comparison to known pathway annotations. In C. elegans, 6 out of the predicted novel Notch pathway members were validated experimentally. Our approach predicts signaling roles for 19 human orthodisease proteins and 5 known drug targets, and suggests 14 novel drug target candidates. Conclusions Orthology-based pathway membership prediction between species enables the identification of novel signaling pathway components that we referred to as signalogs. Signalogs can be used to build a comprehensive signaling network in a given species. Such networks may increase the biomedical utilization of C. elegans and D. melanogaster. In humans, signalogs may identify novel drug targets and new signaling mechanisms for approved drugs.
Improving Web Personalization via User Interest Hierarchy and Scoring Techniques

The World Wide Web is rampantly growing, providing users with a vast amount of information from which to search and explore. However, the retrieval of information is rather basic in that search engines often do not make distinctions between users; most search engines provide different users with identical results when their search queries are the same. We assert that this is naive and rather shallow, for the actual users are not identical, suggesting that their desired results are also not exactly the same. For example, if two users each search for “Windows,” maybe they desire two entirely different items: one user is interested in the aptly named operating system while the other is interested in purchasing glass panels through which to look. This scenario demonstrates the importance of learning what a particular user is interested in. Moreover, most current systems now only consider the specific term that a user searches for; however, it would be more appropriate if the system knew some underlying model of what the user is interested in. For example, say a user searches for “travel. ” If the user has previously demonstrated interest in a particular scenic and distant country, it would be more useful to the user if his search results considered these past interests and considered that his traveling inquiries might concern going to that particular country. Additionally, a user’s interest may change over time. For this reason, we desire adaptively learning a user’s interests.
gy p y multiprocessor industrial applications

We present a framework and its supporting simulation tool for modelling and performance analysis of multiprocessor embedded systems. Our framework consists of component-based models for modelling parallel software and multiprocessor hardware, and tools for code generation and performance analysis. The framework component meta-model relies on transaction-level description of hardware and programmer-level description of software where timing properties of the hardware microarchitectures are modelled as annotations in the concurrency meta-model. The framework has the advantage of allowing fast precise and scalable joint analysis of software and hardware performance.
Effects of phosphorus starvation versus limitation on the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus MED4 I: uptake physiology.

Recent measurements of natural populations of the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus indicate this numerically dominant phototroph assimilates phosphorus (P) at significant rates in P-limited oceanic regions. To better understand uptake capabilities of Prochlorococcus under different P stress conditions, uptake kinetic experiments were performed on Prochlorococcus MED4 grown in P-limited chemostats and batch cultures. Our results indicate that MED4 has a small cell-specific Vmax but a high specific affinity (αP ) for P, making it competitive with other marine cyanobacteria at low P concentrations. Additionally, MED4 regulates its uptake kinetics in response to P stress by significantly increasing Vmax and αP for both inorganic and organic P (PO4 and ATP). The Michaelis-Menten constant, KM , for PO4 remained constant under different P stress conditions, whereas the KM for ATP was higher when cells were stressed for PO4 , pointing to additional processes involved in uptake of ATP. MED4 cleaves the PO4 moieties from ATP, likely with a 5'-nucleotidase-like enzyme rather than alkaline phosphatase. MED4 exhibited distinct physiological differences between cells under steady-state P limitation versus those transitioning from P-replete to P-starved conditions. Thus, MED4 employs a variety of strategies to deal with changing P sources in the oceans and displays complexity in P stress acclimation and regulatory mechanisms.
Evaluating the Long-Term Effects of Prisoner Reentry Services on Recidivism: What Types of Services Matter?

We analyzed data collected for a large multi-site evaluation of 12 prisoner reentry programs in 12 states to examine the impact of pre-release services on time to rearrest and number of rearrests up to 56 months post-release for male offenders. A two-stage matching quasi-experimental design was used to define the comparison groups and multivariate models were used to examine the relationships among service and program receipt and recidivism. Participation in the reentry program was associated with longer time to arrest and fewer arrests after release. However, the specific services delivered as part of the program showed modest or inconsistent impacts on recidivism. Services that focused on individual change were more beneficial than services that focused on practical skills and needs. Practitioners should consider careful sequencing of program and service delivery in prison, linking in-prison services to post-release assistance, and evaluating all services and programs for fidelity and effectiveness.
A blood pressure-associated variant of the SLC39A8 gene influences cellular cadmium accumulation and toxicity

Genome-wide association studies have revealed a relationship between inter-individual variation in blood pressure and the single nucleotide polymorphism rs13107325 in the SLC39A8 gene. This gene encodes the ZIP8 protein which co-transports divalent metal cations, including heavy metal cadmium, the accumulation of which has been associated with increased blood pressure. The polymorphism results in two variants of ZIP8 with either an alanine (Ala) or a threonine (Thr) at residue 391. We investigated the functional impact of this variant on protein conformation, cadmium transport, activation of signalling pathways and cell viability in relation to blood pressure regulation. Following incubation with cadmium, higher intracellular cadmium was detected in cultured human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293) expressing heterologous ZIP8-Ala391, compared with HEK293 cells expressing heterologous ZIP8-Thr391. This Ala391-associated cadmium accumulation also increased the phosphorylation of the signal transduction molecule ERK2, activation of the transcription factor NFκB, and reduced cell viability. Similarly, vascular endothelial cells with the Ala/Ala genotype had higher intracellular cadmium concentration and lower cell viability than their Ala/Thr counterpart following cadmium exposure. These results indicate that the ZIP8 Ala391-to-Thr391 substitution has an effect on intracellular cadmium accumulation and cell toxicity, providing a potential mechanistic explanation for the association of this genetic variant with blood pressure.
Extending C 0 to support data parallel operations

There is a trend of ever increasing data parallelism on modern hardware[5]. To date compilers for C and its derivatives have been poor in leveraging this potential parallelism, partially due to the ‘wild west’ style design of C. In this paper we propose and evaluate an array like C0 extension that is inherently parallel. By limiting what operations the programmer can express we can make assumptions about the programmers intent which allows for program transformations to efficiently map programs into vectorized x86. Our implementation of parallel vectors exploits SIMD data parallel instructions in order to exploit modern CPU architectures. In future we could extend these to the GPU and also multiple cores.
An Effective Noise Estimator for Use in Noise Reduction

Conventional noise reduction filtering schemes realize limited improvements of the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) in the low-level noisy images. The flatness degree and the edge information are effectively used to estimate the noise volume. We propose a noise estimator for reducing noise in the AWGN (additive white gaussian noise) corrupted images using three intermediate image maps (FGM(flatness gray map), FIM(flatness index map), NEM(noise estimate map)). The proposed noise estimator is fed into the conventional noise reduction filters as a pre-processor. The performance of noise reduction is tested in the various AWGN corrupted images.
Myosin Synthesis and Degradation during Development of Cardiac Hypertrophy in the Rabbit

Metabolism of left ventricular myosin was studied in rabbits (2.7−3.2 kg) following banding of the ascending aorta (65% occlusion). In 26 rabbits the incorporation of amino acid into myosin was determined 2, 3, 4, 9, and 15 days after either stenosis or sham operation by injecting 3H-lysine (0.5 mc/kg) 4 hours before the animals were killed. In 32 rabbits the same dose of 3H-lysine was injected 24 hours before surgery, and disappearance of isotope from myosin was measured by killing the rabbits after 3, 5, 7, 10, or 16 days. Specific radioactivity of free lysine, myosin, and total proteins was determined in left ventricular samples from each animal. The experimental results indicate that: (1) left ventricular peak systolic pressure increased from 97 to 163 mm Hg; (2) the ratio of left ventricular weight to body weight increased about 16% (3) disappearance of free 3H-lysine was similar in rabbits with aortic stenosis and those with sham operations; (4) after the second day myosin synthesis was greater in rabbits with aortic coarctations, reaching a maximum increase of 117% on the tenth day; (5) synthesis of left ventricular total proteins also reached a maximum of about 56% on the tenth day; (6) the decrease in specific radioactivity of myosin in rabbits with aortic coarctation was slower than it was in sham-operated animals. The experimental results were analyzed by a computerized simulation of myosin metabolism which allowed the rate constant for myosin degradation to be calculated on successive days after coarctation. The best fit to the observed changes in myosin content was obtained when degradation was increased with the increase in synthesis; when degradation was assumed to be unchanged from sham-operated animals or was decreased, myosin content was overestimated. Moreover, these calculations showed that decay in specific radioactivity of labeled myosin was affected very little even by a large (hundredfold) decrease in degradation. It is concluded that the increased myosin content during development of cardiac hypertrophy is primarily a consequence of increased synthesis.
Least-squares iterative PAR reduction for point-to-point large-scale MIMO-OFDM systems

This paper addresses peak-to-average ratio (PAR) reduction in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. We propose a new technique for PAR reduction in point-to-point scenarios. The last eigenchannels of a massive MIMO channel are often very weak. Not using them for data transmission will offer redundancy for PAR reduction. These eigenchannels are used to approximate the peaks which exceed a given target value in a least squares fashion. This approximate exceedence model is then subtracted from the original signal in time domain for PAR reduction. It has been shown through simulation results that a considerable gain can be obtained with the proposed method with marginal increase in the average power and almost negligible loss in the channel capacity.
The Relationship between the Internet Use and Network Capital (Case study: Ardabil Islamic Azad University and Mohagheghe Ardabili University)

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the internet use and network capital among students of Islamic Azad University of Ardabil and Mohagheghe Ardabili University. In this research, Wellman network theory is used as the theoretical framework. According to the necessity and relevance of the topic, the method was survey with interview technique. The study population included all the students of Islamic Azad University of Ardabil (12,500) and Mohagheghe Ardabili University (10236) in year 1394 and the population included 22736 people. The sampling method is clustering and the samples were selected through systematic sampling. Some of the key findings of the research include: The results show that there is a positive relationship between the use of the Internet and network social capital. This means that with the increase of Internet use, the user network social capital also slightly increases. There is a significant relationship between the social use of the Internet and social capital increase. This means that the social use of the Internet increases the user social capital. People who have strong social connections use the Internet to increase their social capital. In general results showed the positive effects (though limited) of Internet on social relations and users social capital network. And Internet is a communication factor that can be a complement for other means of communication.
SUPERCAVITATION RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

For several years, the United States Navy has supported basic research and development involving supercavitating high-speed bodies. Under this program, the theory of high-Mach-number underwater flows has been investigated and first-principles modeling of cavity development and body dynamics have been addressed. To complement these analytical efforts, a sophisticated experimental program has matured.
Deliberate Delays During Robot-to-Human Handovers Improve Compliance With Gaze Communication

As assistive robots become popular in factories and homes, there is greater need for natural, multi-channel communication during collaborative manipulation tasks. Non-verbal communication such as eye gaze can provide information without overloading more taxing channels like speech. However, certain collaborative tasks may draw attention away from these subtle communication modalities. For instance, robot-to-human handovers are primarily manual tasks, and human attention is therefore drawn to robot hands rather than to robot faces during handovers. In this paper, we show that a simple manipulation of a robot’s handover behavior can significantly increase both awareness of the robot’s eye gaze and compliance with that gaze. When eye gaze communication occurs during the robot’s release of an object, delaying object release until the gaze is finished draws attention back to the robot’s head, which increases conscious perception of the robot’s communication. Furthermore, the handover delay increases peoples’ compliance with the robot’s communication over a non-delayed handover, even when compliance results in counterintuitive behavior.
A Suite to Compile and Analyze an LSP Corpus

This paper presents a series of tools for the extraction of specialized corpora from the web and its subsequent analysis mainly with statistical techniques. It is an integrated system of original as well as standard tools and has a modular conception that facilitates its re-integration on different systems. The first part of the paper describes the original techniques, which are devoted to the categorization of documents as relevant or irrelevant to the corpus under construction, considering relevant a specialized document of the selected technical domain. Evaluation figures are provided for the original part, but not for the second part involving the analysis of the corpus, which is composed of algorithms that are well known in the field of Natural Language Processing, such as Kwic search, measures of vocabulary richness, the sorting of n-grams by frequency of occurrence or by measures of statistical association, distribution or similarity.
A Unified Statistical Model for the Identification of English BaseNP

This paper presents a novel statistical model for automatic identification of English baseNP. It uses two steps: the N-best Part-Of-Speech (POS) tagging and baseNP identification given the N-best POS-sequences. Unlike the other approaches where the two steps are separated, we integrate them into a unified statistical framework. Our model also integrates lexical information. Finally, Viterbi algorithm is applied to make global search in the entire sentence, allowing us to obtain linear complexity for the entire process. Compared with other methods using the same testing set, our approach achieves 92.3% in precision and 93.2% in recall. The result is comparable with or better than the previously reported results.
Effect of Slope and Headpond on Passage of American Shad and Blueback Herring through Simple Denil and Deepened Alaska Steeppass Fishways

Abstract Passage and transit time of adult upstream-migrant American shad Alosa sapidissima and blueback herring A. aestivalis were investigated in standard Denil and Alaska steeppass fishways with variable slope and headpond under semicontrolled conditions. Percent of American shad passed per unit time (percent passage) increased with temperature, while time required to ascend from the fishway entrance to the exit (transit time) decreased with increasing temperature for both species. Increasing fishway slope decreased percent passage of American shad, regardless of fishway type. Higher fishway slope decreased percent passage of blueback herring in the steeppass fishway only. Low headpond enhanced percent passage of American shad in the Denil fishway, but decreased percent passage of American shad in the steeppass fishway. Headpond level had no effect on percent passage of blueback herring in either fishway. Because headpond level in the steeppass fishway affected percent passage of American shad but not .
Improved face and feature finding for audio-visual speech recognition in visually challenging environments

Visual information in a speaker's face is known to improve the robustness of automatic speech recognition (ASR). However, most studies in audio-visual ASR have focused on "visually clean" data to benefit ASR in noise. This paper is a follow up on a previous study that investigated audio-visual ASR in visually challenging environments. It focuses on visual speech front end processing, and it proposes an improved, appearance based face and feature detection algorithm that utilizes Gaussian mixture model classifiers. This method is shown to improve the accuracy of face and feature detection, and thus visual speech recognition, over our previously used baseline system. In turn, this translates to improved audio-visual ASR, resulting in a 10% relative reduction of the word-error-rate in noisy speech.