Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust force control via disturbance observer

Disturbance observer (DOB), which is one of the key points of acceleration based motion control systems, guarantees robustness of a system by nominalizing real plant and suppressing external disturbances. Besides that, it can be used to estimate external forces/torques by identifying system uncertainties, and it is called as a reaction torque/force observer (RTOB/RFOB) in the literature. RTOB/RFOB has several superiorities over force sensors, and therefore, it has been widely used, specifically in the motion control area, in the last two decades. The main disadvantage of a RTOB/RFOB is that it is affected significantly by the identification of system uncertainties. However, there is no a clear report on the design constraints of RTOB/RFOB based force control systems. This paper shows that not only performance but also robustness and stability of a robust force control system are affected significantly by the identification errors in the design of RTOB/RFOB. A new design criterion which improves stability and performance of RTOB/RFOB based force control systems is proposed. RTOB/RFOB and force sensor based force control systems are compared and simulation results are given to show the validity of the proposed method.
oarse-to-fine dot array marker detection with accurate edge ocalization for stereo visual tracking

We present a coarse-to-fine dot array marker detection algorithm which can extract dot features with high accuracy and low uncertainty. The contribution of this paper is twofold: one is a configurable dot array marker detection framework which enables real-time multi-marker tracking with compact marker size (coarse detection); the other is a closed-form sub-pixel edge localization method including the formulation and the implementation (fine localization). The marker pattern together with the dot contours is detected in a fast but coarse way for efficiency consideration, using simple thresholding and hierarchical contour analysis. If the marker pattern matches with one of predefined marker descriptors, sub-pixel edge point localization of the dot contour is performed within the detected marker region by searching the zero-crossing in the convolution of the marker image with a Laplacian-of-Gaussian (LoG) kernel. A closed-form solution is proposed to localize the “true” edge point in a 3 × 3 neighborhood of a candidate pixel by solving a quartic equation. The dot center is finally extracted by ellipse fitting and re-ordered according to an orientation indicator. The algorithm was evaluated against both synthetic and real image data, and also in real applications where stereo visual trackers were implemented using the proposed marker detection algorithm. Experimental results show that (1) the marker detection algorithm yielded a feature detection error of less than 0.1 pixel with real-time performance; (2) the uncertainties in both localizing static 2-D dot features and 3-D pose tracking were obviously reduced by performing the subpixel localization; and (3) the feasibility of the marker tracking under stereo laparoscopic views was confirmed in an in vivo animal experiment. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Synthesizing Flames and their Spreading

We present a new technique for re synthesis which combines a model for ames with a model for ame spreading. For the ame model, we show that minor changes to traditional particle system techniques exhibit signiicant improvements in realism, with little to no extra rendering costs. For ame spreading, we model physically-based evolution of the boundary between burning and non-burning regions of polygonally deened objects. The resulting new technique provides parameters for explicitly controlling wind or gravity, while simultaneously incorporating properties such as the geometry and ammability of the object being burned. Through the use of these parameters, the resulting re can interact more naturally with the material it is burning, as well as with the surrounding environment .
The relationships of health to affect assessed in both state and trait form: How does age impact the relationships?

Abstract The purpose of this study was to compare the relationships of health to both state and trait affects. A secondary goal was to determine if these relationships are affected by age. Using structural equation modeling, the latent variable health (pain, self-rated health and a count of health conditions) was regressed on the latent variables state and trait positive affects, and state and trait negative affects. Age and sex were treated as covariates. Results indicated that trait negative affect and state positive affect are associated with health, suggesting that multiple processes may account for the affect/health relationship. Furthermore, when age was entered into the model, it was found that age is related to presence of disease, but unrelated to subjective ratings of health.
The Legionella pneumophila response regulator LqsR promotes host cell interactions as an element of the virulence regulatory network controlled by RpoS and LetA

Legionella pneumophila is an opportunistic human pathogen that replicates within environmental amoebae including Acanthamoeba castellanii and Dictyostelium discoideum. The Icm/Dot type IV secretion system promotes phagocytosis and intracellular replication of L. pneumophila in an endoplasmic reticulum‐derived ‘Legionella‐containing vacuole’ (LCV). L. pneumophila adopts a biphasic life cycle consisting of a replicative growth phase and a transmissive (stationary) phase, the latter of which is characterized by the preferential expression of genes required for motility and virulence. A bioinformatic analysis of the L. pneumophila genome revealed a gene cluster homologous to the Vibrio cholerae cqsAS genes, encoding a putative quorum sensing autoinducer synthase (lqsA) and a sensor kinase (lqsS), which flank a novel response regulator (lqsR). We report here that an L. pneumophila lqsR deletion mutant grew in broth with the same rate as wild‐type bacteria, but entered the replicative growth phase earlier. Overexpression of lqsR led to an elongated morphology of the bacteria. The lqsR mutant strain was found to be more salt‐resistant and impaired for intracellular growth in A. castellanii, D. discoideum and macrophages, formation of the ER‐derived LCV and toxicity. Moreover, L. pneumophila lacking LqsR, as well as strains lacking the stationary sigma factor RpoS or the two‐component response regulator LetA, were phagocytosed less efficiently by A. castellanii, D. discoideum or macrophages. The expression of lqsR was dependent on RpoS and, to a lesser extent, also on LetA. DNA microarray experiments revealed that lqsR regulates the expression of genes involved in virulence, motility and cell division, consistent with a role for LqsR in the transition from the replicative to the transmissive (virulent) phase. Our findings indicate that LqsR is a novel pleiotropic regulator involved in RpoS‐ and LetA‐controlled interactions of L. pneumophila with phagocytes.
On the Comparison of Some Fuzzy Clustering Methods for Privacy Preserving Data Mining: Towards the Development of Specific Information Loss Measures

Policy makers and researchers require raw data collected from agencies and companies for their analysis. Nevertheless, any transmission of data to third parties should satisfy some privacy requirements in order to avoid the disclosure of sensitive information. The areas of privacy preserving data mining and statistical disclosure control develop mechanisms for ensuring data privacy. Masking methods are one of such mechanisms. With them, third parties can do computations with a limited risk of disclosure. Disclosure risk and information loss measures have been developed in order to evaluate in which extent data is protected and in which extent data is perturbated. Most of the information loss measures currently existing in the literature are general purpose ones (i. e., not oriented to a particular application). In this work we develop cluster specific information loss measures (for fuzzy clustering). For this purpose we study how to compare the results of fuzzy clustering. I. e. , how to compare fuzzy clusters.
Leptospirosis Serodiagnosis by the Microscopic Agglutination Test

The microscopic agglutination test (MAT) is the gold standard for sero‐diagnosis of leptospirosis because of its unsurpassed diagnostic specificity. It uses panels of live leptospires, ideally recent isolates, representing the circulating serovars from the area where the patient became infected. A dilution series of the patient's serum is mixed with a suspension of live leptospires in microtiter plates. After incubating for about 2 hr at 30°C, results are read under the dark‐field microscope. The titer is the last dilution in which ≥50% of the leptospires have remained agglutinated. Seroconversion or ≥4‐fold titer rise in paired sera is consistent with current leptospirosis. The significance of a titer in a single sample depends on the frequency of residual titers due to past infections and cross‐reacting other diseases in the population. Full standardization of the MAT is not possible, but quality assurance can be achieved by participation in the international MAT proficiency testing scheme. Curr. Protoc. Microbiol. 32:12E.5. 1‐12E.5. 18. © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Vimentin and Notch as biomarkers for breast cancer progression

Breast cancer, the most common spontaneous malignancy diagnosed in women, is a classical model of hormone dependency as it is associated with prolonged exposure to female hormones. Different cytoplasmic proteins are important in the transformation of a normal cell to an invasive tumor cell, and these include vimentin and Notch. To investigate the importance of these two genes and proteins in breast carcinogenesis, we used an in vitro breast cancer model system, in which an immortalized human breast epithelial cell line, MCF-10F, was malignantly transformed by exposure to low doses of high linear energy transfer α particle (150 keV/μm) radiation and subsequent growth in the presence or absence of 17β-estradiol. This model consisted of human breast epithelial cells in different stages of transformation: i) a parental cell line (MCF-10F), ii) an Estrogen cell line (MCF-l0F continuously grown with estradiol at 10−8), iii) a malignant and non-tumorigenic cell line (Alpha3), iv) a malignant and tumorigenic cell line (Alpha5) and v) a Tumor2 cell line derived from a xenograft of the Alpha5 cell line injected into nude mice. Vimentin and Notch showed greater expression in the Alpha5 and Tumor2 cell lines compared with that in the non-tumorigenic cell lines, MCF-10F, Estrogen and Alpha3. In the present study, positive staining for vimentin was found in 21% of cases. Vimentin and Notch protein expression was negative in noninvasive ductal carcinoma biopsies from breast cancer patients. However, positive cell expression was observed in invasive ductal carcinoma biopsies. These biomarkers can be considered important indicators of breast cancer progression and can be added to the diagnostic panel when overall survival is a primary end-point.
Optimally Adjusted Mixture Sampling and Locally Weighted Histogram Analysis

ABSTRACT Consider the two problems of simulating observations and estimating expectations and normalizing constants for multiple distributions. First, we present a self-adjusted mixture sampling method, which accommodates both adaptive serial tempering and a generalized Wang–Landau algorithm. The set of distributions are combined into a labeled mixture, with the mixture weights depending on the initial estimates of log normalizing constants (or free energies). Then, observations are generated by Markov transitions, and free energy estimates are adjusted online by stochastic approximation. We propose two stochastic approximation schemes by Rao–Blackwellization of the scheme commonly used, and derive the optimal choice of a gain matrix, resulting in the minimum asymptotic variance for free energy estimation, in a simple and feasible form. Second, we develop an offline method, locally weighted histogram analysis, for estimating free energies and expectations, using all the simulated data from multiple distributions by either self-adjusted mixture sampling or other sampling algorithms. This method can be computationally much faster, with little sacrifice of statistical efficiency, than a global method currently used, especially when a large number of distributions are involved. We provide both theoretical results and numerical studies to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed methods.
Finding Point Correspondences in Motion Sequences Preserving Affine Structure

In this paper the problem of computing the point correspondences in a sequence of time-varying images of a 3D object undergoing nonrigid (affine) motion is addressed. It is assumed that the images are obtained through affine projections. The correspondences are established only from the analysis of the unknown 3D affine structure of the object, without making use of any attributes of the feature points. It is shown that it is possible to establish the point correspondences uniquely (up to symmetry) in the sense that they yield a unique affine structure of the object and that the computation is possible in polynomial time. Two different algorithms for computing the point correspondences are presented. Results on various real image sequences, including a sequence containing independently moving objects, demonstrate the applicability of the structure based approach to motion correspondence.
Cardiovascular consequences of poor compliance to antihypertensive therapy

Abstract Despite the proven efficacy of current strategies for cardiovascular (CV) risk reduction, a considerable gap remains between the risk reductions achieved in clinical trials and those seen in clinical practice. A major reason for this is poor compliance to medication, which has been extensively documented for antihypertensive therapy. Low adherence results in suboptimal blood pressure control, which is associated with adverse CV outcomes and increased treatment costs. Adverse effects of medication are an important cause of diminished adherence. Angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) may offer better long-term tolerability than other classes of antihypertensive agent, and this is likely to be a major factor in the high levels of adherence and persistence seen with these agents. This could have implications for CV protection, as confirmed by the results of recent clinical trials. Thus, ARBs should be considered as an alternative to angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors in patients at risk of low adherence.
Cultural Differences and Advertising Expression: A Comparative Content Analysis of Japanese and U.S. Magazine Advertising

Abstract American and Japanese print ads were content analyzed to examine how advertising expression and content differed in the two cultures. The degree of emotional appeals, informativeness, and comparativeness of advertising were the dimensions studied. As hypothesized, Japanese ads were evaluated as more emotional and less comparative than American ads. In contrast to a priori notions, Japanese ads were found to contain at least as many information cues as American ads.
A Perturbation-Guided Oscillation Strategy for the Multidimensional Knapsack Problem with Generalized Upper Bound Constraints

The multidimensional knapsack problem with generalized upper bound constraints (re- ferred as GUBMKP) can be seen as a special case of the multidimensional knapsack problem where variables are partitioned into several multiple-choice sets and at most one variable can be cho- sen from each set. To solve the GUBMKP, critical event tabu search oscillates around feasibility boundary. Critical solutions are collected upon crossing the boundary. Trial solutions can be ex- plored around critical solutions. Within this critical event tabu search framework, we develop a perturbation-guided tabu search strategy where the constraint right-hand-sides will be perturbed and restored iteratively throughout the trial solution search at critical events. The strategy considers not only the change of objective function value but also the change of feasibility. Our computational runs show the approach is capable to obtain good solutions within a short period of time.
“Business Growth”—Do Practitioners and Scholars Really Talk about the Same Thing?

The current growth literature has stalled over which measures to use in empirical studies, causing a fragmented theory base. This paper claims that there is a third issue that further curbs efforts in developing a better understanding of business growth. Based on a thorough literature review, a quantitative, and a qualitative study, we find that academic scholars and entrepreneurs do not talk about the same thing when they say “business growth. ” For practitioners, growth is a more complex phenomenon—with a strong emphasis on internal development—which differs from the simplified conceptualization of growth used in empirical studies.
Hints in Low Cost Solutions for Networked Control Systems

The paper presents aspects regarding different possibilities to represent the control problems in networked control systems (NCSs) characterized by variable time delays. The operational computations in linear systems analysis and design for the plants specific to NCSs with emphasis on the transfer functions, rot loci and frequency domain analysis are investigated. Low cost linear and fuzzy control solutions are offered to compensate for the time delays.
IS NGO DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE MISTARGETED? AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACH

Abstract An empirical analysis of the relationship between “objectively assessed need” and the formation of NGOs in Andhra Pradesh, India, suggests that the former is not a significant trigger for the latter. The formation of NGOs appears to be a response to perceptions of need that are so far removed from the local level that they fail to prioritize amongst levels and locations of poverty. In the absence of objective feedback mechanisms, the global—and therefore indiscriminate—perspective of international funding sources may help explain the lack of correspondence between need and NGO location, combined with the inevitably limited and blinkered knowledge of regional disparities that can be obtained through local NGOs. This preliminary “epistemological” approach to the question of the sub-optimal formation of NGOs is buttressed by consideration of the factors that may bring perception, reality, and organizational responses into better alignment when natural disasters occur, namely the factors that make natural disasters compelling news stories, unlike chronic underdevelopment.
Difficult cases in heart failure: the challenge of neurocognitive dysfunction in severe heart failure.

Often ignored, neurocognitive dysfunction in chronic heart failure represents a daunting morbidity progressing to loss of self-reliance. Although the precise mechanisms arbitrating the development of this disorder remain elusive, microembolization and cerebral hypoperfusion are implicated. Other causes of cognitive decline may include prior cardiac surgery, chronic hypertension, sleep disordered breathing, hyperhomocysteinemia, dementia of aging, and more traditional causes such as Alzheimer's disease. The discovery of neurocognitive defects in heart failure must prompt a well-constructed diagnostic evaluation to search for the underlying causes since this process may be at least partially reversible in many cases.
BUILDING EXTRACTION FROM HIGH RESOLUTION COLOR IMAGERY BASED ON EDGE FLOW DRIVEN ACTIVE CONTOUR AND JSEG

: Building extraction and delineation is one of the most salient problems in cartographic features extraction. This paper presents a novel framework for reliable and accurate building extraction from high-resolution color imagery focusing on building boundary delineation and building roof compositional polygon segmentation. Proposed framework consists of three steps. First, anisotropic diffusion and clustering are applied as pre-processing for denoising and color quantization and then building boundary is extracted by active contour driven by edge-flow. Finally, building roof compositional polygons are segmented by JSEG. The framework is tested on a number of buildings and the results are shown. The result shows the completeness and accuracy that this framework can provide for extracting building from a high-resolution color image data set.
Ultrastructure of mononuclear phagocytes developing in liquid bone marrow cultures. A study on peroxidatic activity

Monoblasts, promonocytes, and macrophages in in vitro cultures of murine bone marrow were studied ultrastructurally, with special attention to peroxidatic activity. Monoblasts show peroxidatic activity in the rough endoplasmic reticulum and nuclear envelope as well as in the granules. The presence of peroxidatic activity in the Golgi apparatus could not be determined. Promonocytes have peroxidase-positive rough endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, nuclear envelope, and granules, as previously reported. During culture, cells are formed with peroxidatic activity similar to that of monocytes or exudate macrophages (positive granules; negative Golgi apparatus, RER, and nuclear envelope); we call these cells early macrophages. In addition, transitional macrophages with both positive granules and positive RER, nuclear envelope, negative Golgi apparatus (as in exudate- resident macrophages in vivo), and mature macrophages with peroxidatic activity only in the RER and nuclear envelope (as in resident macrophages in vivo) were found. A considerable number of cells without detectable peroxidatic activity were also encountered. Our finding that macrophages with the peroxidatic pattern of monocytes (early macrophages), exudate-resident macrophages (transitional macrophages), and resident macrophages (mature macrophages), develop in vitro from proliferating precursor cells deriving from the bone marrow, demonstrates once again that resident macrophages in tissues originate from precursor cells in the bone marrow. Therefore, this conclusion can no longer be challenged on the basis of a cytochemical difference between monocytes and exudate macrophages on the one hand and resident macrophages on the other.
Regional disparities in Canadian adult and old-age mortality: A comparative study based on smoothed mortality ratio surfaces and age at death distributions

This paper examines adult and old-age mortality differentials in Canada between 1930 and 2007 at the provincial level, using theCanadian Human Mortality Database and the flexible smoothing P-spline method in two-dimensions well-suited to the study of smallpopulations. Our analysis reveals that provincial disparities in adult mortality in general, and among the elderly population in particular,are substantial in Canada. Moreover, based on the modal age at death and the standard deviation of ages at death above the mode,provincial disparities at older ages have barely reduced over time, despite the great mortality improvements in all provinces since the early 20th century. In the last few years studied, evidence of the shifting mortality regime was found among females in most Western and Central provinces, while all males were still undergoing an old-age mortality compression regime.
Perinatal morphine II: Changes in cortical plasticity

We have previously shown that perinatal exposure to morphine impairs reactive plasticity of serotonin (5‐HT) neurons following selective neonatal lesion (Gorio et al., J Neurosci Res 34:462–471, 1993). This study shows that morphine inhibits also that the compensatory sprouting of intact axons after partial denervation. Neonatal 6‐OHDA injection causes norepinephrine (NE) depletion in the frontal cortex, which triggers a compensatory increase of dopamine, serotonin (5‐HT), and met‐enkephalin content correlated by the increased density of tyrosine hydroxylase– and 5‐HT–positive axons. In perinatal morphine‐treated rats, no compensatory changes are observed after neonatal 6‐OHDA depletion of NE in the frontal cortex. ©1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.