Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficiency Improvement in Monte Carlo Localization through Topological Information

Monte Carlo localization is known to be one of the most reliable methods for pose estimation of a mobile robot. Many studies have been conducted to improve performance of MCL. Although MCL is capable of estimating the robot pose when the initial pose of a robot is not given, it takes much time for convergence because a large number of random samples are required, especially for the large-scale environment. For practical implementation of MCL, therefore, it is desirable to reduce the number of samples without affecting the localization performance. This paper presents a novel approach to reduce the number of samples used in the particle filter for efficient implementation of MCL. To this end, the topological information is extracted in real time through the thinning algorithm from the range data of a laser scanner. The topological map is first created from the given grid map of the environment. The robot scans the local environment and generates a local topological map. The robot then navigates along this local topological edge, which coincides with the global topological map obtained off-line from the given global grid map. By constraining the robot's motion on this local edge, random samples are drawn only around the neighborhood of the topological edge rather than over the entire free space. Hence the sample size required for MCL can be drastically reduced, thereby reducing computational time for the MCL process. A series of experiments based on this proposed MCL/TI show that the number of samples can be reduced considerably, and thus the time required for pose estimation can be substantially decreased
PsyToolkit

This article reviews PsyToolkit, a free web-based service designed for setting up, running, and analyzing online questionnaires and reaction-time (RT) experiments. It comes with extensive documentation, videos, lessons, and libraries of free-to-use psychological scales and RT experiments. It provides an elaborate interactive environment to use (or modify) the existing questionnaires and experiments from the PsyToolkit library or to design new studies. Once users have set up their study, they can recruit participants for online participation, and data can be downloaded in spreadsheet format after collection. This article provides examples of how questionnaires and RT experiments can be set up using the website. The PsyToolkit links to online questionnaires and experiments, and these links can easily be embedded in social media networks for participant recruitment, including Amazon's Mechanical Turk. PsyToolkit’s exhaustive documentation enables students to work independently. This article finishes with pedagogical considerations.
Emotion work in black and white: Transracial adoption and the process of racial socialization

Abstract In this chapter, we use the concepts of emotional labor or emotion work to examine the experiences of transracial families – white families rearing Black adoptees. We focus on the emotion work done by the parents to inculcate and develop positive racial identities for their adoptive children as their adoptees experience racial mistreatment. We also use the concept of white racial framing to examine strategies for effectively coping with racial mistreatment. African Americans have more emotion work than the members of dominant group because of their status as stigmatized minorities in American society. African Americans adopted by white families have even greater emotion work because they tend to have the extra burden of living in predominately white communities where there are fewer people of color to serve as positive role models in the socialization process.
User Models , Intelligent Interface Agents and Expert Systems

The proliferation of user modeling as a means of accurately capturing the beliefs, desires, and intent of users is apparent. We present a dynamic, uncertainty-based user model knowledge representation for use in an intelligent interface agent called GESIA. GESIA’s numerical uncertainty management representation, which has its roots in Bayesian networks, not only dynamically captures and models user behavior, but it also dynamically captures and models uncertainty in the agent’s reasoning process. We critically discuss the construction of user models, relating their construction with user intent and the relevancy of observable properties in the user’s “world. ” Our agent’s usefulness is demonstrated in the domain of a generic expert system shell called PESKI.
Invariant-manifold approach to the stabilization of feedforward nonlinear systems having uncertain dead-zone inputs

This paper examines adaptive control of a special class of feedforward nonlinear systems having unknown and symmetric dead-zone input. The design strategy is based on the combination of the invariant-manifold stabilization technique with the classical adaptive compensation method. Simulation results showed that the presence of symmetric dead-zone inputs in the system dynamics can be handled even for arbitrary large dead-zone parameters.
Theranostic profiling for actionable aberrations in advanced high risk osteosarcoma with aggressive biology reveals high molecular diversity: the human fingerprint hypothesis

The survival of patients with advanced osteosarcoma is poor with limited therapeutic options. There is an urgent need for new targeted therapies based on biomarkers. Recently, theranostic molecular profiling services for cancer patients by CLIA-certified commercial companies as well as in-house profiling in academic medical centers have expanded exponentially. We evaluated molecular profiles of patients with advanced osteosarcoma whose tumor tissue had been analyzed by one of the following methods: 1. 182-gene next-generation exome sequencing (Foundation Medicine, Boston, MA), 2. Immunohistochemistry (IHC)/PCR-based panel (CARIS Target Now, Irving, Tx), 3. Comparative genome hybridization (Oncopath, San Antonio, TX). 4. Single-gene PCR assays, PTEN IHC (MDACC CLIA), 5. UT Houston morphoproteomics (Houston, TX). The most common actionable aberrations occur in the PI3K/PTEN/ mTOR pathway. No patterns in genomic alterations beyond the above are readily identifiable, and suggest both high molecular diversity in osteosarcoma and the need for more analyses to define distinct subgroups of osteosarcoma defined by genomic alterations. Based on our preliminary observations we hypothesize that the biology of aggressive and the metastatic phenotype osteosarcoma at the molecular level is similar to human fingerprints, in that no two tumors are identical. Further large scale analyses of osteosarcoma samples are warranted to test this hypothesis.
Ethnic differences in respiratory impairment

Objective Spirometric Z scores by lambda-mu-sigma (LMS) rigorously account for age-related changes in lung function. Recently, the Global Lung Function Initiative (GLI) expanded LMS spirometric Z scores to multiple ethnicities. Hence, in aging populations, the GLI provides an opportunity to rigorously evaluate ethnic differences in respiratory impairment, including airflow limitation and restrictive pattern. Methods Using data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, including participants aged 40–80, we evaluated ethnic differences in GLI-defined respiratory impairment, including prevalence and associations with mortality and respiratory symptoms. Results Among 3506 white Americans, 1860 African Americans and 1749 Mexican Americans, the prevalence of airflow limitation was 15.1% (13.9% to 16.4%), 12.4% (10.7% to 14.0%) and 8.2% (6.7% to 9.8%), and restrictive pattern was 5.6% (4.6% to 6.5%), 8.0% (6.9% to 9.0%) and 5.7% (4.5% to 6.9%), respectively. Airflow limitation was associated with mortality in white Americans, African Americans and Mexican Americans—adjusted HR (aHR) 1.66 (1.23 to 2.25), 1.60 (1.09 to 2.36) and 1.80 (1.17 to 2.76), respectively, but associated with respiratory symptoms only in white Americans—adjusted OR (aOR) 2.15 (1.70 to 2.73). Restrictive pattern was associated with mortality but only in white Americans and African Americans—aHR 2.56 (1.84 to 3.55) and 3.23 (2.06 to 5.05), and associated with respiratory symptoms but only in white Americans and Mexican Americans—aOR 2.16 (1.51 to 3.07) and 2.12 (1.45 to 3.08), respectively. Conclusions In an aging population, we found ethnic differences in GLI-defined respiratory impairment. In particular, African Americans had high rates of respiratory impairment that were associated with mortality but not respiratory symptoms.
MOUSSE: Scaling modelling and verification to complex Heterogeneous Embedded Systems evolution

This work proposes an advanced methodology based on an open source virtual prototyping framework for verification of complex Heterogeneous Embedded Systems (HES). It supports early rapid modelling of complex HES through smooth refinements, an open interface based on IP-XACT extensions for secure composition of HES components, and automatic testbench generation over different abstraction levels.
Alveolar Type II Cells Escape Stress Failure Caused by Tonic Stretch through Transient Focal Adhesion Disassembly

Mechanical ventilation-induced excessive stretch of alveoli is reported to induce cellular stress failure and subsequent lung injury, and is therefore an injurious factor to the lung. Avoiding cellular stress failure is crucial to ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) treatment. In the present study, primary rat alveolar type II (ATII) cells were isolated to evaluate their viability and the mechanism of their survival under tonic stretch. By the annexin V/ PI staining and flow cytometry assay, we demonstrated that tonic stretch-induced cell death is an immediate injury of mechanical stress. In addition, immunofluorescence and immunoblots assay showed that the cells experienced an expansion-contraction-reexpansion process, accompanied by partial focal adhesion (FA) disassembly during contraction. Manipulation of integrin adherent affinity by altering bivalent cation levels in the culture medium and applying an integrin neutralizing antibody showed that facilitated adhesion affinity promoted cell death under tonic stretch, while lower level of adhesion protected the cells from stretch-induced stress failure. Finally, a simplified numerical model was established to reveal that adequate disassembly of FAs reduced the forces transmitting throughout the cell. Taken together, these results indicate that ATII cells escape stress failure caused by tonic stretch via active cell morphological remodeling, during which cells transiently disassemble FAs to unload mechanical forces.
A Gray-Radiation Aquaplanet Moist GCM. Part I: Static Stability and Eddy Scale

Abstract In this paper, a simplified moist general circulation model is developed and used to study changes in the atmospheric general circulation as the water vapor content of the atmosphere is altered. The key elements of the model physics are gray radiative transfer, in which water vapor and other constituents have no effect on radiative fluxes, a simple diffusive boundary layer with prognostic depth, and a mixed layer aquaplanet surface boundary condition. This GCM can be integrated stably without a convection parameterization, with large-scale condensation only, and this study focuses on this simplest version of the model. These simplifications provide a useful framework in which to focus on the interplay between latent heat release and large-scale dynamics. In this paper, the authors study the role of moisture in determining the tropospheric static stability and midlatitude eddy scale. In a companion paper, the effects of moisture on energy transports by baroclinic eddies are discussed. The authors .
Failure Tolerant Routing and Data Management in Sensor Networks Using VCP

— Virtual Cord Protocol (VCP) is an efficient, virtual relative position based routing protocol used in sensor networks. For ensuring an efficient and failure tolerant routing and data management, it exploits virtual coordinates in wireless networks. VCP maintains a virtual cord that interconnects all nodes in the sensor network. The operations of VCP are similar to a Distributed Hash Table (DHT). It provides the data managing support using DHT services. Moreover it supports service discovery using indirections. In this paper, it analyzes the performance of AODV routing in wireless network. After that the wireless network replaces AODV with VCP for achieving better routing efficiency and managing the data. The simulation results show that VCP is able to find paths close to the shortest path with very low overhead. To improve failure handling, VCP is expanded with data replication mechanisms.
Experimental Study of the Optimum Operating Conditions of a Pilot-Scale Tribo-Aero-Electrostatic Separator for Mixed Granular Solids

Mixed granular insulating materials can be electrostatically separated by tribocharging them in a fluidized bed affected by an electric field orthogonally oriented to the direction of the fluidization air. The aim of this paper is to optimize the operating conditions of a novel pilot-scale tribo-aero-electrostatic separator, i.e., maximize the total mass of the granules collected at the two electrodes that generate the electric field. The mixture to be separated was composed of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and high impact polystyrene (HIPS) originating from the recycling of waste electric and electronic equipment. A set of experiments carried out for two durations (30 and 60 s), at two values of ambient relative humidity ( and ), pointed out that the separation becomes efficient beyond a certain value of the initial mass of the mixtures. The experimental design methodology and commercial software MODDE 5.0 were then employed for investigating the effects of two control variables of the industrial process: the speed of the metallic conveyors that serve as high-voltage electrodes and the humidity of ambient air. The effectiveness of separation was found to depend significantly on the latter factor. Surface-potential-decay measurements performed on charged layers of the two sorts of particles facilitate the interpretation of separation results: At high , in contact with an electrode, the ABS granules lose their charge faster than the less hydrophilic HIPS granules. As a consequence, fewer ABS granules are collected at the exit of the tribo-aero-electrostatic separator.
Incomplete resolution of references in Eclipse

In the Eclipse JDT, the Java reference resolution rules are applied as fully as possible, thereby either determining the unique target for a given reference or signalling that the reference cannot be resolved. However, a variety of development tasks require the manipulation of code for which incomplete resolution of references is both possible and useful. This paper motivates the need for incomplete resolution during a software reuse-and-integration task and the difficulties that result. A proof-of-concept implementation is described that is used as a basis for reuse tool support and that can be used for other transformation tools.
On the capacity region of wireless relay networks

Network capacity is a key characteristic to evaluate the performance of wireless networks. The capacity of wireless ad hoc network that is a rising network model has been discussed widely. The goal of this paper is to study about the capacity of wireless relay network. We assume that at most n/sub s/ source nodes transmitting signal simultaneously in the network and derive the upper and lower bound on the capacity of this kind network model. Finally, the capacity region of wireless relay network by simulations in the idealized condition is given.
Comparison between Adaptive Double-Threshold Based Energy Detection and Cyclostationary Detection Technique for Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio is the key technology for future wireless communication. Spectrum sensing is one of the most important functions in cognitive radio (CR) applications. It involves the detection of primary user (PU) transmissions on a preassigned frequency band. PU licensed band can be sensed via appropriate spectrum sensing techniques. In this paper, we propose an energy detector utilizing adaptive double-threshold (ED_ADT) for spectrum sensing. Using simulations, a comparative analysis of the Adaptive Double-Threshold Based Energy Detection and Cyclostationary feature detection technique has been carried out in terms of probability of detection alarm (Pd), and total error probability (Pe). Numerical results show that proposed ED_ADT scheme outperforms cyclostationary feature detection by 44.1 % at - 8 dB signal to noise ratio (SNR) in terms of probability of detection alarm (Pd).
Cortactin and dynamin are required for the clathrin-independent endocytosis of γc cytokine receptor

Endocytosis is critical for many cellular functions. We show that endocytosis of the common γc cytokine receptor is clathrin independent by using a dominant-negative mutant of Eps15 or RNA interference to knock down clathrin heavy chain. This pathway is synaptojanin independent and requires the GTPase dynamin. In addition, this process requires actin polymerization. To further characterize the function of dynamin in clathrin-independent endocytosis, in particular its connection with the actin cytoskeleton, we focused on dynamin-binding proteins that interact with F-actin. We compared the involvement of these proteins in the clathrin-dependent and -independent pathways. Thus, we observed that intersectin, syndapin, and mAbp1, which are necessary for the uptake of transferrin (Tf), a marker of the clathrin route, are not required for γc receptor endocytosis. Strikingly, cortactin is needed for both γc and Tf internalizations. These results reveal the ubiquitous action of cortactin in internalization processes and suggest its role as a linker between actin dynamics and clathrin-dependent and -independent endocytosis.
Joint Caching and Routing for Greening Computer Networks with Renewable Energy Sources

The Internet is emerging as a major contributor to the global carbon emission as it consumes in the US alone more energy than that consumed by all of the automotive industry. Content distribution as video on demand represents the majority of the Internet traffic. Therefore, in order to reduce the carbon footprint of the Internet, greener methods for content delivery have to be employed. In this paper, we allow the intermediate nodes to be powered by renewable energy sources, i.e., solar or wind. We also assume that these nodes have a storage capability and can store some of the packets to serve future requests without going back to the source of the contents. Under this model, we formulate the problem of minimizing the brown energy usage, while satisfying the users requests. The problem is formulated as a mixed Integer Linear program. We use a relaxation technique and heuristics to find an efficient solution within 10% of the optimal one in a fast way. We also show that when we code the data, the problem can be formulated using a linear program, which can be computed very fast. Our simulation results show that our optimization framework saves about 40%-90% of the energy consumed by the traditional non-energy aware shortest path routing method.
Do technical skills correlate with non-technical skills in crisis resource management: a simulation study

Background Both technical skills (TS) and non-technical skills (NTS) are key to ensuring patient safety in acute care practice and effective crisis management. These skills are often taught and assessed separately. We hypothesized that TS and NTS are not independent of each other, and we aimed to evaluate the relationship between TS and NTS during a simulated intraoperative crisis scenario. Methods This study was a retrospective analysis of performances from a previously published work. After institutional ethics approval, 50 anaesthesiology residents managed a simulated crisis scenario of an intraoperative cardiac arrest secondary to a malignant arrhythmia. We used a modified Delphi approach to design a TS checklist, specific for the management of a malignant arrhythmia requiring defibrillation. All scenarios were recorded. Each performance was analysed by four independent experts. For each performance, two experts independently rated the technical performance using the TS checklist, and two other experts independently rated NTS using the Anaesthetists' Non-Technical Skills score. Results TS and NTS were significantly correlated to each other (r=0.45, P<0.05). Conclusions During a simulated 5 min resuscitation requiring crisis resource management, our results indicate that TS and NTS are related to one another. This research provides the basis for future studies evaluating the nature of this relationship, the influence of NTS training on the performance of TS, and to determine whether NTS are generic and transferrable between crises that require different TS.
A Genomewide Screen for Suppressors of Alu-Mediated Rearrangements Reveals a Role for PIF1

Alu-mediated rearrangement of tumor suppressor genes occurs frequently during carcinogenesis. In breast cancer, this mechanism contributes to loss of the wild-type BRCA1 allele in inherited disease and to loss of heterozygosity in sporadic cancer. To identify genes required for suppression of Alu-mediated recombination we performed a genomewide screen of a collection of 4672 yeast gene deletion mutants using a direct repeat recombination assay. The primary screen and subsequent analysis identified 12 candidate genes including TSA, ELG1, and RRM3, which are known to play a significant role in maintaining genomic stability. Genetic analysis of the corresponding human homologs was performed in sporadic breast tumors and in inherited BRCA1-associated carcinomas. Sequencing of these genes in high risk breast cancer families revealed a potential role for the helicase PIF1 in cancer predisposition. PIF1 variant L319P was identified in three breast cancer families; importantly, this variant, which is predicted to be functionally damaging, was not identified in a large series of controls nor has it been reported in either dbSNP or the 1000 Genomes Project. In Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Pfh1 is required to maintain both mitochondrial and nuclear genomic integrity. Functional studies in yeast of human PIF1 L319P revealed that this variant cannot complement the essential functions of Pfh1 in either the nucleus or mitochondria. Our results provide a global view of nonessential genes involved in suppressing Alu-mediated recombination and implicate variation in PIF1 in breast cancer predisposition.