Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robot Collaboration for Simultaneous Map Building and Localization

Collaboration has been acknowledged as an excellent tool to compensate for limitations and shortcoming of individuals in order to achieve complex tasks. Yet, robotics collaboration has been recognized as an independent entity on its own within robotics community as suggested by the emerging literature and the growing applications like RoboCup, FIRA competitions (Kitaneo, 1997), autonomous vehicles for space/submarine exploration (Todd and Pomerleau, 1996). This promises a leading future for this field in a medium term. However, the development of effective collaboration schemes is subject to several challenges. This concerns aspects related to robot localization (absolute and/or relative localization), environment map building, sensor modelling and fusion, game-theoretic scenarios, collaboration/cooperation modes, user’s interface and control modes, among others, see, for instance, (Mataric, 1998). This chapter aims to contribute at least to the first two aspects of the aforementioned challenges where the issue of dynamic localization and map building using two miniature Khepera® robots is tackled. An extendedKalman filter based approach is developed and implemented in order to model the state of the robot and various observations as well as to determine and update the positioning estimates of both robots together with the identified landmarks in the environment. A virtual representation of the map and robots is also put forward using OpenGL for 3D representation. While the developed interface uses enhanced help capabilities in case of unsafe or non-tolerated manipulations by the user. The issue of mobile localization and map building has been a challenging issue that faced the robotics community since the eighties due the debatable issues related to the state and observation modelling, map initialization and building, and convergence of the estimation process, among others. This led to the development of several techniques to overcome the above challenges. Since the pioneering work of Smith and Cheesman (1986), a bridge from geometrical features and stochastic models has been established, which led to a variety of algorithms, mainly using Kalman filter (Geb, 1986) or its variants, whose feasibility and satisfactory performances have been demonstrated both from theoretical and practical perspectives through the convergence properties of the algorithms and the successful applications. The concept of robot localization and map building is often referred to as SLAM (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping), in which both the environment map represented as a set of landmarks and the robot states are estimated simultaneously by augmenting the state vector to
Graphical Models forLearning Dynamical

Dynamical systems are used to model physical phenomena whose state changes over time. This paper provides a characterization of dy-namical systems in terms of graphical models. This characterization makes explicit the structure in dynamical systems and suggests algorithms to exploit this structure computationally. Using this characterization we point out the similarities between existing models and learning algorithms. We link previous work in learning dynamical systems to current theory and practice in learning Bayesian networks. We establish the connection between techniques in computer science concerned with inferring nite automata and those in physics concerned with recovering the dynamics of nonlinear dynamical systems.
Mitochondrial Disulfide Relay: Redox-regulated Protein Import into the Intermembrane Space*

99% of all mitochondrial proteins are synthesized in the cytosol, from where they are imported into mitochondria. In contrast to matrix proteins, many proteins of the intermembrane space (IMS) lack presequences and are imported in an oxidation-driven reaction by the mitochondrial disulfide relay. Incoming polypeptides are recognized and oxidized by the IMS-located receptor Mia40. Reoxidation of Mia40 is facilitated by the sulfhydryl oxidase Erv1 and the respiratory chain. Although structurally unrelated, the mitochondrial disulfide relay functionally resembles the Dsb (disufide bond) system of the bacterial periplasm, the compartment from which the IMS was derived 2 billion years ago.
Co-Contraction and Passive Forces Facilitate Load Compensation of Aimed Limb Movements

Vertebrates and arthropods are both capable of load compensation during aimed limb movements, such as reaching and grooming. We measured the kinematics and activity of individual motoneurons in loaded and unloaded leg movements in an insect. To evaluate the role of active and passive musculoskeletal properties in aiming and load compensation, we used a neuromechanical model of the femur–tibia joint that transformed measured extensor and flexor motoneuron spikes into joint kinematics. The model comprises three steps: first, an activation dynamics module that determines the time course of isometric force; second, a pair of antagonistic muscle models that determine the joint torque; and third, a forward dynamics simulation that calculates the movement of the limb. The muscles were modeled in five variants, differing in the presence or absence of force–length–velocity characteristics of the contractile element, a parallel passive elastic element, and passive joint damping. Each variant was optimized to yield the best simulation of measured behavior. Passive muscle force and viscous joint damping were sufficient and necessary to simulate the observed movements. Elastic or damping properties of the active contractile element could not replace passive elements. Passive elastic forces were similar in magnitude to active forces caused by muscle contraction, generating substantial joint stiffness. Antagonistic muscles co-contract, although there was no motoneuronal coactivation, because of slow dynamics of muscle activation. We quantified how co-contraction simplified load compensation by demonstrating that a small variation of the motoneuronal input caused a large change in joint torque.
Structure and Stability of Keplerian Magnetohydrodynamic Jets

MHD jet equilibria that depend on source properties are obtained using a simplified model for stationary, axisymmetric and rotating magnetized outflows (Lery et al.). The present rotation laws are more complex than previously considered and include a Keplerian disc. The ensuing jets have a dense, current-carrying central core surrounded by an outer collar with a return current. The intermediate part of the jet is almost current-free and is magnetically dominated. Most of the momentum is located around the axis in the dense core, and this region is likely to dominate the dynamics of the jet. We address the linear stability and the nonlinear development of instabilities for our models using both analytical and 2.5 dimensional numerical simulations. The instabilities seen in the simulations develop with a wavelength and growth time that are well matched by the stability analysis. The modes explored in this work may provide a natural explanation for knots observed in astrophysical jets.
Magnetic Helicity Conservation and Astrophysical Dynamos

We construct a magnetic helicity conserving dynamo theory that incorporates a calculated magnetic helicity current. In this model the fluid helicity plays a small role in large-scale magnetic field generation. Instead, the dynamo process is dominated by a new quantity, derived from asymmetries in the second derivative of the velocity correlation function, closely related to the "twist and fold" dynamo model. The turbulent damping term is, as expected, almost unchanged. Numerical simulations with a spatially constant fluid helicity and vanishing resistivity are not expected to generate large-scale fields in equipartition with the turbulent energy density. The prospects for driving a fast dynamo under these circumstances are uncertain, but if it is possible, then the field must be largely force-free. On the other hand, there is an efficient analog to the α-Ω dynamo. Systems whose turbulence is driven by some anisotropic local instability in a shearing flow, like real stars and accretion disks, and some computer simulations may successfully drive the generation of strong large-scale magnetic fields, provided that ∂rΩ⟨∂θvzωθ⟩ > 0. We show that this criterion is usually satisfied. Such dynamos will include a persistent, spatially coherent vertical magnetic helicity current with the same sign as -∂rΩ, that is, positive for an accretion disk and negative for the Sun. We comment on the role of random magnetic helicity currents in storing turbulent energy in a disordered magnetic field, which will generate an equipartition, disordered field in a turbulent medium, and also a declining long-wavelength tail to the power spectrum. As a result, calculations of the Galactic "seed" field are largely irrelevant.
A 60 GHz 25% tuning range frequency generator with implicit divider based on third harmonic extraction with 182 dBc/Hz FoM

A 60 GHz frequency generator with implicit ÷3 divider is proposed in this work to improve the system-level efficiency and phase noise. A third-harmonic boosting technique is utilized to simultaneously generate 20GHz and sufficiently strong 60 GHz signals in order to avoid any divider operating at 60 GHz. The prototype is fabricated in 40nm CMOS and exhibits a phase noise of -100 dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset from 60 GHz carrier and 25% tuning range. The phase noise and FoMT (figure-of-merit with tuning range) are improved by 5 dB and 4.6 dB, respectively, compared to state-of-the-art.
Infinite detail and emulation in an ontologically minimized HCI

By default, we attempt to define practical areas of technological endeavor as “applications. ” For example, the applied psychology of human-computer interaction has characteristically been defined in terms of the methods and concepts basic psychology can provide. This has not worked well. An alternative approach is to begin from a characterization of current practice, to take seriously the requirements of the domain of endeavor, and to define areas of “science” and “application” as possible and appropriate in that context.
The role of faith-based NGOs in social development: Invisible empowerment

This article makes an attempt to assess the process and outcomes of faith-based non-governmental organizations’ (FBNGOs) interventions toward community empowerment in social development. Data are derived from contemporary literature using a Qualitative Interpretative Meta-Synthesis (QIMS). Results show that there are very few publications that directly examine the contributions of FBNGOs toward community empowerment. There are some publications which indirectly examine the role of the components of community empowerment, such as community participation, community capacity building, local leadership development, or community resource mobilization, though these are mostly concentrated in Western and African countries. After 9/11, much literature has shown that the role of Islamic NGOs has emerged as a significant aspect in social development discourse. The findings will be of interest to policymakers, donors, and development practitioners.
Persuasive Precedents

Stories can be a powerful vehicle of persuasion. We typically use stories to link known events into coherent wholes. One way to establish coherence is to appeal to past examples, real or fictitious. These examples can be chosen and critiqued using legal case-based reasoning (CBR) techniques. In this paper, we apply these techniques to factual stories, assessing a story about the facts using precedents. We thus show how legal reasoning in a CBR model is equally applicable to reasoning with factual stories.
SANALDA: A Source Authenticating Network Architecture Limiting DoS Attacks

We present a novel and incrementally deployable network architecture, aiming at preventing IP spoofing and DoS attacks. Our design prevents forged IP packets from entering the network and accessing the destination service, while assuring simple and fast access to compliant users. Our system enforces user authentication on the IP level, periodically stamping each IP packet with a unique, identity-based signature of the sender. Spoofed packets are detected as soon as they arrive at the source authenticating router, by detecting discrepancies between signatures in the packet headers and their declared IP address or by checking special markings. In addition, we use capabilities to enable the receivers to decide which senders are allowed to send traffic. Hence, our architecture limits the impact of DoS attacks, which use either spoofed or non-spoofed IP traffic. To the best of our knowledge, no prior work has used Identity Based Signatures for IP host authentication. We propose an IBS-based solution that addresses a broad range of network vulnerabilities. We implemented our design as a router module to measure the associated performance degradation and demonstrate its potential for Internet-wide deployment.
A tunable internal antenna based on composite right/left handed transmission line for mobile handset application

A compact tunable internal antenna using a composite right/left handed transmission line (CRLH-TL) for personal communication handset application is presented in this paper. The antenna consists of two lumped inductors, and a variable capacitor to adjust the resonant frequency by controlling the DC bias voltage. Simulation results show that the required frequency can be tuned nearly from 1.8GHz to 2.5GHz with the return loss below −10dB. Overall size of the antenna is 40mm*10mm*0.8mm.
Retrieval of 3D Articulated Objects Using a Graph-based Representation

Most of the approaches which address the problem of 3D object retrieval, use global descriptors of the objects which fail to consistently compensate for the intra-class variability of articulated objects. In this paper, a retrieval methodology is presented which is based upon a graph-based object representation. This is composed of a meaningful new mesh segmentation along with a graph matching between the graph of the query object and each of the graphs that correspond to the objects of the 3D object database. The graph matching algorithm is based on the Earth Mover's Distance (EMD) similarity measure which is calculated using a new ground distance assignment. The superior performance of the proposed methodology is shown after an extensive experimentation comprising alternative descriptors for the constituent components of the 3D object as well as comparison with state of the art retrieval algorithms.
Attitudes of educators and teachers regarding the implementation of inclusion in regular preschools and primary schools

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HRM Practices and Organizational Commitment: A Study about IT Employees from Chinese Private-Owned Enterprises

Due to the high turnover rates and costs, organizations of information technology (IT) industry have shifted from perceiving employees as a replaceable workforce to seeing them as a valued asset. Attracting, managing and retaining valuable employees become urgent to Chinese private-owned IT enterprises in this competitive environment. The aim of this paper was to distinguish the perceptions of Chinese employees on HRM practices adopted by private-owned IT enterprises and investigated the effect of these practices on organizational commitment using the sample of 610 IT employees in total. Results of exploratory factor analysis indicated that there were 4 dimensions, labeled information sharing, training and development, recruitment and selection, and compensation management, reflecting perceived HRM practices of private-owned IT enterprises. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the dimensionality. The hypotheses that the above practices had positive effect on IT employees' organizational commitment were partially supported by hierarchical regression analysis.
Virtual Arbitrage Pricing Theory

We generalize the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) to include the contribution of virtual arbitrage opportunities. We model the arbitrage return by a stochastic process. The latter is incorporated in the APT framework to calculate the correction to the APT due to the virtual arbitrage opportunities. The resulting relations reduce to the APT for an infinitely fast market reaction or in the case where the virtual arbitrage is absent. Corrections to the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) are also derived.
SGT toolbox: a playground for spectral graph theory

We present an interactive toolbox application we have developed to enable users to gain an intuitive understanding of the “meaning” of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of graph-related matrices. In addition, we explore spectral embeddings and the effects of graph altering algorithms on the eigenvalues of a graph. Furthermore, we examine Luby’s fast distributed randomized algorithm for finding a maximal independent set (MIS) of a network of nodes. We compare different graph classes with respect to how many rounds the algorithm takes to complete on them on average. We suggest that certain graph classes exhibit a logarithmic lower bound for this number of rounds. Lastly, we prove a logarithmic upper bound for zmax, the largest distance from any vertex to its nearest MIS vertex after one round of Luby’s algorithm, once for path graphs and then for all graphs in general.
A general bound for the limiting distribution of Breitung ’ s statistic ∗ December 21 , 2007

We consider Breitung's (2002) statistic ξ n which provides a nonparametric test of the I(1) hypothesis. If ξ denotes the limit in distribution of ξ n as n → ∞, we prove (Theorem 1) that 0 ≤ ξ ≤ 1/π 2 , a result that holds under any assumption on the underlying random variables. The result is a special case of a more general result (Theorem 3), which we prove using the so-called " cotangent trick " associated with Cauchy's residue theorem.
Prevalence and risk factors for carriage of ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae in Amsterdam

Objectives The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of carriage of ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae (ESBL-E) in a representative sample of the general adult Dutch community, to identify risk factors and to gain understanding of the epidemiology of these resistant strains. Methods Adults enrolled in five general practices in Amsterdam were approached by postal mail and asked to fill in a questionnaire and to collect a faecal sample. Samples were analysed for the presence of ESBL-E. ESBL genes were characterized by PCR and sequencing. Strains were typed using MLST and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and plasmids were identified by PCR-based replicon typing. Risk factors for carriage were investigated by multivariate analysis. Results ESBL-E were found in 145/1695 (8.6%) samples; 91% were Escherichia coli. Most ESBL genes were of the CTX-M group (blaCTX-M-1 and blaCTX-M-15). MLST ST131 was predominant and mainly associated with CTX-M-15-producing E. coli. One isolate with reduced susceptibility to ertapenem produced OXA-48. In multivariate analyses, use of antimicrobial agents, use of antacids and travel to Africa, Asia and Northern America were associated with carriage of ESBL-E, in particular strains with blaCTX-M-14/15. Conclusions This study showed a high prevalence of ESBL-E carriage in the general Dutch community. Also, outside hospitals, the use of antibiotics was a risk factor; interestingly, use of antacids increased the risk of carriage. A major risk factor in the general population was travel to countries outside Europe, in particular to Asia, Africa and Northern America.
Event-based text mining for biology and functional genomics

The assessment of genome function requires a mapping between genome-derived entities and biochemical reactions, and the biomedical literature represents a rich source of information about reactions between biological components. However, the increasingly rapid growth in the volume of literature provides both a challenge and an opportunity for researchers to isolate information about reactions of interest in a timely and efficient manner. In response, recent text mining research in the biology domain has been largely focused on the identification and extraction of ‘events’, i.e. categorised, structured representations of relationships between biochemical entities, from the literature. Functional genomics analyses necessarily encompass events as so defined. Automatic event extraction systems facilitate the development of sophisticated semantic search applications, allowing researchers to formulate structured queries over extracted events, so as to specify the exact types of reactions to be retrieved. This article provides an overview of recent research into event extraction. We cover annotated corpora on which systems are trained, systems that achieve state-of-the-art performance and details of the community shared tasks that have been instrumental in increasing the quality, coverage and scalability of recent systems. Finally, several concrete applications of event extraction are covered, together with emerging directions of research.
Debunking Sentiment Lexicons: A Case of Domain-Specific Sentiment Classification for Croatian

Sentiment lexicons are widely used as an intuitive and inexpensive way of tackling sentiment classification, often within a simple lexicon word-counting approach or as part of a supervised model. However, it is an open question whether these approaches can compete with supervised models that use only word-representation features. We address this question in the context of domain-specific sentiment classification for Croatian. We experiment with the graph-based acquisition of sentiment lexicons, analyze their quality, and investigate how effectively they can be used in sentiment classification. Our results indicate that, even with as few as 500 labeled instances, a supervised model substantially outperforms a word-counting model. We also observe that adding lexicon-based features does not significantly improve supervised sentiment classification.
Subunits of IgM Reconstitute Defective Contact Sensitivity in B-1 Cell-Deficient xid Mice: κ Light Chains Recruit T Cells Independent of Complement1

The elicitation of contact sensitivity (CS) to local skin challenge with the hapten trinitrophenyl (TNP) chloride requires an early process that is necessary for local recruitment of CS-effector T cells. This is called CS initiation and is due to the B-1 subset of B cells activated at immunization to produce circulating IgM Ab. At challenge, the IgM binds hapten Ag in a complex that locally activates C to generate C5a that aids in T cell recruitment. In this study, we present evidence that CS initiation is indeed mediated by C-activating classic IgM anti-TNP pentamer. We further demonstrate the involvement of IgM subunits derived either from hybridomas or from lymphoid cells of actively immunized mice. Thus, reduced and alkylated anti-TNP IgM also initiates CS, likely due to generated H chain-L chain dimers, as does a mixture of separated H and L chains that still could weakly bind hapten, but could not activate C. Remarkably, anti-TNP κ L chains alone mediated CS initiation that was C-independent, but was dependent on mast cells. Thus, B-1 cell-mediated CS initiation required for T cell recruitment is due to activation of C by specific IgM pentamer, and also subunits of IgM, while κ L chains act via another C-independent but mast cell-dependent pathway.
A Comprehensive Model of the Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition

This paper sponsored by the NSFC 70702020, summarized previous opportunity recognition literature with two main approaches. According to the integrated approach, the authors provided a new comprehensive model of the entrepreneurial opportunity recognition characterized as one sort of entrepreneurial innovation process. Four stages comprised in the new model were described in details. In the end, several contextual factors were mentioned in order to increase the holistic validity of the model.