Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FRUIT TREE MODELS : SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

Models are used extensively in research, in the social sciences [e.g. economics] as well as in the physical, chemical and biological sciences. As a preliminary definition one could think of a model as an attempt to describe a certain process or system through the use of a simplified representation, preferably a quantitative mathematical expression, that focuses on a relatively few key variables that control the process or system.
The survey for the exact and optimal state observers in Hilbert spaces

The problems of design of state observers for exact (non-asymptotic) reconstruction of the state with finite observation window are surveyed. The general optimal exact observer theory in function Hilbert spaces is recalled. The new discrete exact observer is presented. The importance of consideration of both output and input disturbances for optimal observation is pointed.
A Computerized Dictionary : Le trésor de la langue française informatisé (TLFi)

This paper presents one of the main computerized resources of the research Laboratory ATILF (Analyse et traitement informatique de la langue francaise) available via the Web: the computerized dictionary TLFi (Tresor de la langue francaise informatise). Its highly detailed XML structure (over 3,6 million tags) is powered by Stella: the extended capacities and potentialities of this software allows high level queries as well as hypernavigation through and between different databases.
Toward Software Synthesis for Distributed Applications

This paper describes Sage, a software environment supporting software development, synthesis, and testing for distributed computing applications. While the principal domain of interest is applications that must be fault-tolerant (i.e., be able to withstand the failure of some of the participants) Sage is not limited to this; it can be extended to distributed applications with no criticality requirements and to those with security requirements. Sage mechanically applies specialized knowledge-theoretic analyses to a distributed application's high-level specification to automatically derive the necessary communication between the participants in the computation. In particular, Sage implements the results of Chandy and Misra [2] and mimics the analyses of others [9, 10, 12, 15] which have previously only been performed theoretically. Sage applies these results to strategies commonly used by programmers of distributed applications, and commonly provided by packaged subsystems for distributed computing (also called "middleware"), to derive and synthesize correct, efficient solutions.
Compliant Interaction of a Domestic Service Robot with a Human and the Environment

A new service robot designed for cleaning tasks in home environments is introduced. Robot systems will work directly with people in there areas, thus placing a central importance on making interactions between people and machines as natural as possible. The main focus of this paper is to introduce to the system’s design and control. In this context a new kind of hybrid force/position controller for the mobile manipulator will be presented. The compliant motion performed by this controller allows the robot to execute interaction tasks both with the environment and with the user and this make it easy to be used by non-experts. A table cleaning and a path teaching are two example of such a kind of tasks that will be performed from the robot in order to validate experimentally the results of the paper.
Are we studying consciousness yet ?

Is ‘Tucson’ turning too tame, as the reviewer of the last ‘Tucson’ conference Charles Whitehead (JCS, 2004, 11:12) feared? Or is it still wild and wonderful and weird as my earlier review in 2002 reported (JCS, 2002, 9:7)? Stay tuned! Some 850 souls, psyches, animae, selves, and/or reflexive-beings (I’m not sure how many of each) attended the seventh biennial Tucson ‘Toward a Science of Consciousness’ conference; about 550 paying guests and some 300 students. Some students gave papers and posters and asked great questions (again I’m not sure how many of each! ). Since one of the steps in developing a science of consciousness is to develop courses and students, the presence of so many students might be the greatest triumph of this conference — whether tame or weird. Tucson hosted the usual array of pre-conference workshops on Monday and Tuesday, on philosophical theories of consciousness, William James’ contributions, visual neuroscience, empathy and ethics, entangled minds, reading EEGs, brain imaging, psychoanalysis, contemplation, skilful introspection, quantum aspects of consciousness, virtual environments, synaesthesia, and two methodological workshops: teaching consciousness and a guide for conference presenters (the latter by the erstwhile guide of my review). One wonders if Anthony offered a workshop just to make sure that there were at
Natural Killer Cell Recognition of Melanoma: New Clues for a More Effective Immunotherapy

Natural killer (NK) cells participate in the early immune response against melanoma and also contribute to the development of an adequate adaptive immune response by their crosstalk with dendritic cells and cytokine secretion. Melanoma resistance to conventional therapies together with its high immunogenicity justifies the development of novel therapies aimed to stimulate effective immune responses against melanoma. However, melanoma cells frequently escape to CD8 T cell recognition by the down-regulation of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules. In this scenario, NK cells emerge as potential candidates for melanoma immunotherapy due to their capacity to recognize and destroy melanoma cells expressing low levels of MHC class I molecules. In addition, the possibility to combine immune checkpoint blockade with other NK cell potentiating strategies (e.g., cytokine induction of activating receptors) has opened new perspectives in the potential use of adoptive NK cell-based immunotherapy in melanoma.
Exploring Core Designs for Chip Multiprocessors

The era of billion transistor chips is fast approaching, and the emerging trend is to use these transistors to integrate multiple processors onto a single chip. In this paper, we explore the core design for a chip multiprocessor (CMP). We have found that out-of-order cores provide better absolute performance than in-order cores, both for commercial and scientific workloads. In general, it takes twice as many in-order cores to equal the performance of out-of-order cores. However, when we consider the die area required for each type of core, we find that in-order cores perform twice as well as out-of-order cores in half the space. Therefore, we believe future CMPs should use in-order cores.
Bounded control of network connectivity in multi-agent systems

A distributed control law that guarantees connectivity maintenance in a network of multiple mobile agents is presented. The control law, which lets the agents perform formation manoeuvres, respects sensor limitations by allowing each agent to only take into account agents within its sensing radius. In contrast to previous approaches to the problem, the proposed control law does not attain infinite values whenever an edge of the communication graph tends to be lost. This is achieved via the use of decentralised navigation functions, which are bounded potential fields. The navigation functions are defined to take into account the connectivity maintenance objective. The authors first treat the case of connectivity maintenance for a static communication graph and then extend the result to the case of dynamic graphs. The results are illustrated on a formation control problem.
A corrosion prediction model for oil and gas pipeline using CMARPGA

Pipelines are used as a medium to transport the oil, however, low maintenance causing not only the loss of the material itself but as well to the surrounding people and environment. In order to tackle the incidents, experts are assigned and experiments are conducted to analyze the source of the leakage. The leakage is often triggered by either natural disaster such as earthquake or human negligence such as low maintenance of oil pipeline. Natural disaster is unpredictable and it is difficult to prevent; therefore, researches are carried out in detecting corrosion of transmission pipelines. In this research, a new oil pipeline corrosion prediction model is proposed. An associative classification technique named classification based on multiple association rules is applied in the proposed prediction model. This proposed prediction model named CMARGA is then enhanced by using genetic algorithm in order build an optimum decision tree. The decision tree is said optimum in term of the genetic algorithm is used to examine the correlation between a group of association rules instead of using one single rule in predicting a case. The prediction model, CMARGA is tested against 15 datasets from UCI machine learning which yielded average accuracy of 80.2041%. After the validation, CMARGA is then tested against a simulated oil pipeline corrosion dataset consist of partial pressure carbon dioxide, velocity, and temperature. A good result of 96.6667% accuracy as single run validation is achieved; while, 96.0% accuracy obtained when runs through tenth cross validation.
Intravitreal injection of AAV2 transduces macaque inner retina.

PURPOSE Adeno-associated virus serotype 2 (AAV2) has been shown to be effective in transducing inner retinal neurons after intravitreal injection in several species. However, results in nonprimates may not be predictive of transduction in the human inner retina, because of differences in eye size and the specialized morphology of the high-acuity human fovea. This was a study of inner retina transduction in the macaque, a primate with ocular characteristics most similar to that of humans. METHODS In vivo imaging and histology were used to examine GFP expression in the macaque inner retina after intravitreal injection of AAV vectors containing five distinct promoters. RESULTS AAV2 produced pronounced GFP expression in inner retinal cells of the fovea, no expression in the central retina beyond the fovea, and variable expression in the peripheral retina. AAV2 vector incorporating the neuronal promoter human connexin 36 (hCx36) transduced ganglion cells within a dense annulus around the fovea center, whereas AAV2 containing the ubiquitous promoter hybrid cytomegalovirus (CMV) enhancer/chicken-β-actin (CBA) transduced both Müller and ganglion cells in a dense circular disc centered on the fovea. With three shorter promoters--human synapsin (hSYN) and the shortened CBA and hCx36 promoters (smCBA and hCx36sh)--AAV2 produced visible transduction, as seen in fundus images, only when the retina was altered by ganglion cell loss or enzymatic vitreolysis. CONCLUSIONS The results in the macaque suggest that intravitreal injection of AAV2 would produce high levels of gene expression at the human fovea, important in retinal gene therapy, but not in the central retina beyond the fovea.
MODELING AND PROTOTYPING COLLABORATIVE SOFTWARE PROCESSES P �

The correct and timely creation of systems for coordination of group work depends on the ability to express analyze and experiment with protocols for managing multiple work threads We present an evolution of the Trellis model that provides a for mal basis for prototyping the coordination structure of a collaboration system Like its predecessor the new Trellis model has the nicely exploitable duality of being both graph formalism and parallel automaton The automaton semantics provide dynamic information about the interactions of agents in a collaboration the graph structure forms the basis for the static link structure of a hyperdocument We give several analysis techniques for the model and demonstrate its use by expressing the interaction structure of some common forms of collaborative system This work is partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers IRI and IRI and by the Software Engineering Research Center Univer sity of Florida and Purdue University
An Interactive Symbolic-Numeric Interface to Parallel ELLPACK for Building General PDE Solvers

In this paper we describe an interactive symbolic-numeric interface framework (editor) to the ELLPACK partial differential equation (PDE) system for building PDE solvers for a much broader range of applications. The domain of applicability of ELLPACK and its parallel version (j /ELLPACK) is restricted to second order linear elliptic boundary value problems. This editor allows the specification of nonlinear initial and boundary value PDE problems. The editor applies hybrid symbolic-numeric techniques at the PDE problem levello automatically reduce them to a sequence of linear elliptic POEs. The result of this preprocessing is recorded in the form of an ELLPACK program. Several examples are presented to demonstrate the functionality and applicability of this interface framework, and the efficiency of the underlying solution methods.
Swallowing disorders in nursing home residents: how can the problem be explained?

Background The swallowing mechanism changes significantly as people age, even in the absence of chronic diseases. Presbyphagia, a term that refers to aging-related changes in the swallowing mechanism, may be linked to many health conditions and presents itself in distinct ways. Swallowing disorders are also identified as a major problem amongst the elderly population living in nursing homes. Methods The study sought to determine the prevalence of swallowing disorders in nursing home residents, to identify the relationship between self-perceived swallowing disorders, cognitive functions, autonomy, and depression, and also to analyze which variables explain the score of the Dysphagia Self-Test (DST). For this purpose, the researchers chose to apply a survey conveying questions on demographic aspects, general health, eating and feeding, as well as instruments to assess functional performance and the 3 ounce Water Swallow Test. Results The sample consisted of 272 elderly people living in eight nursing homes in Portugal. Six did not sign the informed consent form. Of the total, 29% were totally dependent, 33% were depressed, 45% had cognitive impairment, and 38% needed help with feeding. About 43% of the individuals reported having problems related to eating. Regarding the DST, 40% showed signs of dysphagia. With respect to the 3 ounce Water Swallow Test, 38% revealed at least one of the symptoms, wet voice being the most prevalent. Correlation measures showed that age had no linear association with the DST score although correlation with the Barthel Index and Mini Mental State Examination was found to be significant. A linear regression model was estimated with the DST score as the dependent variable and the MMSE and BI scores, gender, age, education, the Geriatric Depression Scale score, 3 ounce Water Swallow Test, and diagnosed conditions (such as neurological disorder, dementia, and cardiorespiratory problems) as explaining variables. Conclusion Results showed a high prevalence of dysphagia signs amongst a nursing home population. For the purpose of the present study, both a subjective and an objective assessment were applied. Results pointed to a significant statistical relation between objective and subjective measures, thus indicating that a self-perception test should be included in the assessment of swallowing disorders in a nursing home population. Notwithstanding, it should not be used as a single or principal measure as it is influenced by the individuals’ cognitive condition.
Seeing speech in space and time: psychological and neurological findings

Unlike heard speech, some aspects of seen speech can be processed independently of their dynamic (temporal) characteristics. The extent to which speechreading may be supported, separately, by visual mechanisms for the analysis of still and moving events is considered in relation to some experimental findings with normal speaker/viewers, to results with neurological patients with circumscribed lesions to parts of the visual system that support the perception of movement, and to cortical imaging studies.
UNIVERSITY VALUE FOR SUSTAINABILITY. REFLECTIONS FROM A CASE STUDY

Numa fase caracterizada por mudancas politicas internacionais e nacionais, crises socioeconomicas, emergencias ambientais, mudancas estruturais do sistema de instrucao superior, os papeis das universidades na sociedade assumem novo significado e conteudos adicionais. O documento examina o papel no qual as universidades podem atuar, para favorecer e acompanhar os processos locais de desenvolvimento sustentavel, segundo os resultados de uma sondagem realizada numa pequena universidade italiana, a Universidade da regiao Molise. A investigacao examinou o parecer do pessoal interno, e das partes externas envolvidas, sobre a identidade, os papeis e os valores que a Universidade da regiao Molise desenvolve no territorio, na sociedade, no desenvolvimento local sustentavel. O caso de estudo evidencia a importância do envolvimento das partes num processo continuo de identificacao e de concriacao de valores para a sustentabilidade.
Real-time visual detection of early manmade fire

The detection of early manmade fire carries profound meaning in warning systems to prevent fire-related terrorist attacks. Despite a large number of work on fire detection in the computer vision literature, there is no specific method for early stage manmade fire detection, our best knowledge. Compared to traditional fire detection, there is less information on early stage man-made fire for detection, because of the small scale and short appearance. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed by combining the characteristics of fire with human activity. Experimental comparisons have shown that our algorithm has outperformed the state-of-the-art fire detection methods, as the initial combustion is considered.
The Pharmacogenomics of Anti-Hypertensive Therapy

Hypertension is a major public health problem, but measures to reduce blood pressure and thus cardiovascular risk are complicated by the high prevalence of treatment resistance, despite the availability of multiple drugs. Drug side-effects contribute considerably to suboptimal blood pressure control. Clinicians must often rely on empirical methods to match patients with effective drug treatment. Hypertension pharmacogenomics seeks to find genetic predictors of response to drugs that lower blood pressure and to translate this knowledge into clinical practice. In this review we summarise the current status of hypertension pharmacogenetics from monogenic hypertension to essential hypertension and discuss the issues that need to be considered in a hypertension pharmacogenomic study.
Kernel machines for uncalibrated visual servoing of robots

A new modelling method of image Jacobian estimation is presented for uncalibrated visual servoing of robots, in which a kernel recursive least squares (KRLS) technique is used for non-linear mapping between target image features and robot joint angles, and an image Jacobian expression is derived from the KRLS algorithm with gaussian kernel. The simulations of robot visual servoing with eye-in-hand camera configuration are conducted using the KRLS Jacobian estimator and the same are compared with SVR and LS-SVM Jacobian estimators. The simulation results have shown that the robot visual servoing converges at the desired goal and KRLS is proved to be a better choice.
Britain-out and Trump-in: a discursive institutionalist analysis of the British referendum on the EU and the US presidential election

ABSTRACT Adding discursive institutionalism to the political science toolkit is key to understanding the victory of the forces pushing the UK to exit from the EU and for Trump's election in the US. The contextualized analysis of the substantive content of agents' ideas enables us to explore the ideational root causes of discontent, including economic neo-liberalism, social liberalism, and political mistrust. The examination of the discursive dynamics of policy coordination and political communication calls attention to agents' rhetorical strategies, the circulation of ideas in discursive communities, and the role of ideational leaders along with that of the public and the media in a post-truth era. Discursive institutionalism also lends insight into questions of power, including how ideational agents have been able to use their persuasive power through ideas to channel people's anger while challenging experts' power over ideas as they upended the long-standing power in ideas of the liberal order.
Foreign accentedness revisited: Canadian and Singaporean raters’ perception of Japanese-accented English

ABSTRACT The current study examined how two groups of native speakers – monolingual Canadians and multilingual Singaporeans – differentially perceive foreign accentedness in spontaneous second language (L2) speech. The Singaporean raters, who had exposure to various models of English and also spoke multiple L2s on a daily basis, demonstrated more lenient accent scores than the Canadian raters, who used North American English as their primary language of communication. Both of them used a similar processing strategy to make such accentedness judgements – drawing exclusively on the phonological aspects of L2 speech without taking into account the appropriate/complex use of L2 lexicogrammar.
Structuration theory and conception-reality gaps: addressing cause and effect of implementation outcomes in health care information systems

The implementation of health information systems is known to be complex and challenging. To facilitate the introduction of IS in health care, research should investigate the way IS affects human actions and organizational structures and the reasons it affects them that way. Studying the dynamic relationship between cause and effect could help make better design and implementation decisions to achieve desired outcomes. Two theories are presented to help investigate the 'what' and 'why' of implementation. Structuration theory introduces the notion of the interdependency between human actions and organizational structures. Heeks' theory of conception-reality gaps helps illuminate the causes of an implementation outcome. The two theories guide a case study of the implementation of health information systems in primary care clinics in Greece. The paper describes the two theories and how they may inform health care information systems research. It illustrates its points using examples from the field.
Bootstrapping bilinear models of Simple Vehicles

Learning and adaptivity will play a large role in robotics in the future. Two questions are open: (1) in principle, how much it is possible to learn; and (2) in practice, how much should an agent be able to learn. The bootstrapping scenario describes the extreme case in which agents need to learn “everything” from scratch, including a torque-to-pixels model for its robotic body. This paper considers the bootstrapping problem for a subset of the set of all robots. The Simple Vehicles are an idealization of mobile robots equipped with a set of “canonical” exteroceptive sensors: the camera, the range finder and the field sampler. The sensorimotor dynamics of these sensors are derived and shown to be surprising similar. These sensorimotor dynamics are well approximated by a class of nonlinear systems that assume an instantaneous bilinear relation among observations, commands, and changes in the observations. The bilinear approximation is sufficient to guarantee success in the task of generalized “servoing”: driving the observations to a given goal snapshot. Simulations and experiments substantiate the theoretical results. This is the first instance of a bootstrapping agent that can learn the model of the dynamics of a relatively large universe of systems and use the models to solve well-defined tasks, with no parameter tuning or hand-designed features.