Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intuitive linguistic Joint Object Reference in Human-Robot Interaction: Human Spatial Reference Systems and Function-Based Categorization for Symbol Grounding

The visionary goal of an easy to use service robot implies intuitive styles of interaction between humans and robots. Such natural interaction can only be achieved if means are found to bridge the gap between the forms of object perception and spatial knowledge maintained by such robots, and the forms of language, used by humans, to communicate such knowledge. Part of bridging this gap consists of allowing user and robot to establish joint reference on objects in the environment - without forcing the user to use unnatural means for object reference. We present an approach to establishing joint object reference which makes use of natural object classification and a computational model of basic intrinsic and relative reference systems. Our object recognition approach assigns natural categories (e.g. "desk", "chair", "table") to new objects based on their functional design. With basic objects within the environment classified, we can then make use of a computational reference model, to process natural projective relations (e.g. "the briefcase to the left of the chair"), allowing users to refer to objects which cannot be classified reliably by the recognition system alone.
How Many Parameters Actually Affect the Mobility of Conjugated Polymers?

We describe charge transport along a polymer chain with a generic theoretical model depending in principle on tens of parameters, reflecting the chemistry of the material. The charge carrier states are obtained from a model Hamiltonian that incorporates different types of disorder and electronic structure (e.g., the difference between homo- and copolymer). The hopping rate between these states is described with a general rate expression, which contains the rates most used in the literature as special cases. We demonstrate that the steady state charge mobility in the limit of low charge density and low field ultimately depends on only two parameters: an effective structural disorder and an effective electron-phonon coupling, weighted by the size of the monomer. The results support the experimental observation [N. I. Craciun, J. Wildeman, and P. W. M. Blom, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 056601 (2008)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.100. 056601] that the mobility in a broad range of (polymeric) semiconductors follows a universal behavior, insensitive to the chemical detail.
Performance variability, impulsivity errors and the impact of incentives as gender-independent endophenotypes for ADHD.

BACKGROUND Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common and highly heritable child psychiatric disorders. There is strong evidence that children with ADHD show slower and more variable responses in tasks such as Go/Nogo tapping aspects of executive functions like sustained attention and response control which may be modulated by motivational factors and/or state-regulation processes. The aim of this study was (1) to determine if these executive functions may constitute an endophenotype for ADHD; (2) to investigate for the first time whether known modulators of these executive functions may also be familial; and (3) to explore whether gender has an impact on these measures. METHODS Two hundred and five children with ADHD combined type, 173 nonaffected biological siblings and 53 controls with no known family history of ADHD were examined using a Go/Nogo task in the framework of a multi-centre study. Performance-measures and modulating effects of event-rate and incentives were examined. Shared familial effects on these measures were assessed, and the influence of gender was tested. RESULTS Children with ADHD responded more slowly and variably than nonaffected siblings or controls. Nonaffected siblings showed intermediate scores for reaction-time variability, false alarms and omission errors under fast and slow event-rates. A slower event-rate did not lead to reduced performance specific to ADHD. In the incentive condition, mean reaction-times speeded up and became less variable only in children with ADHD and their nonaffected siblings, while accuracy was improved in all groups. Males responded faster, but also committed more false alarms. There were no interactions of group by gender. CONCLUSIONS Reaction-time variability and accuracy parameters could be useful neuropsychological endophenotypes for ADHD. Performance-modulating effects of incentives suggested a familially driven motivational dysfunction which may play an important role on etiologic pathways and treatment approaches for ADHD. The effects of gender were independent of familial effects or ADHD-status, which in turn suggests that the proposed endophenotypes are independent of gender.
Finite element models of natural fibers and their composites: A review

Finite element method has been widely applied in modeling natural fibers and natural fiber reinforced composites. This paper is a comprehensive review of finite element models of natural fibers and natural fiber reinforced composites, focusing on the micromechanical properties (strength, deformation, failure, and damage), thermal properties (thermal conductivity), and macro shape deformation (stress–strain and fracture). Representative volume element model is the most popular homogenization-based multi-scale constitutive method used in the finite element method to investigate the effect of microstructures on the mechanical and thermal properties of natural fibers and natural fiber reinforced composites. The representative volume element models of natural fibers and natural fiber reinforced composites at various length scales are discussed, including two types of geometrical modeling methods, the computer-based modeling method and the image-based modeling method. Their modeling efficiency and accuracy are also discussed.
Assembly and disassembly of a retinal cholinergic network

Abstract In the few weeks prior to the onset of vision, the retina undergoes a dramatic transformation. Neurons migrate into position and target appropriate synaptic partners to assemble the circuits that mediate vision. During this period of development, the retina is not silent but rather assembles and disassembles a series of transient circuits that use distinct mechanisms to generate spontaneous correlated activity called retinal waves. During the first postnatal week, this transient circuit is comprised of reciprocal cholinergic connections between starburst amacrine cells. A few days before the eyes open, these cholinergic connections are eliminated as the glutamatergic circuits involved in processing visual information are formed. Here, we discuss the assembly and disassembly of this transient cholinergic network and the role it plays in various aspects of retinal development.
Prediction models for complications in trauma patients

Because the death rate among the total trauma population is low, other performance indicators in addition to the classical dependent variable mortality are required to assess the overall quality of trauma care. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a prediction model for the occurrence of complications that can be used to adjust a measure of quality of trauma care for case mix.
Crystal structure of a junction between two Z-DNA helices

The double helix of DNA, when composed of dinucleotide purine-pyrimidine repeats, can adopt a left-handed helical structure called Z-DNA. For reasons not entirely understood, such dinucleotide repeats in genomic sequences have been associated with genomic instability leading to cancer. Adoption of the left-handed conformation results in the formation of conformational junctions: A B-to-Z junction is formed at the boundaries of the helix, whereas a Z-to-Z junction is commonly formed in sequences where the dinucleotide repeat is interrupted by single base insertions or deletions that bring neighboring helices out of phase. B-Z junctions are shown to result in exposed nucleotides vulnerable to chemical or enzymatic modification. Here we describe the three-dimensional structure of a Z-Z junction stabilized by Zα, the Z-DNA binding domain of the RNA editing enzyme ADAR1. We show that the junction structure consists of a single base pair and leads to partial or full disruption of the helical stacking. The junction region allows intercalating agents to insert themselves into the left-handed helix, which is otherwise resistant to intercalation. However, unlike a B-Z junction, in this structure the bases are not fully extruded, and the stacking between the two left-handed helices is not continuous.
Collective Trauma Transmission and Traumatic Reactions Among Descendants of Armenian Refugees

Background: It has been suggested, mainly by case reports, that the collective trauma generated by mass calamities may be transmitted to, and have long-lasting effects on, new generations. Aims: To investigate the psychological impact on contemporary Armenians of traumatic events suffered by Armenians during the period 1914—1918. Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study investigating demographic and cultural characteristics of a population of 689 people of Armenian origin, residents of Greece and Cyprus. Subjects were recruited during a range of Armenian cultural, athletic or charitable events. The participants completed a version of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (Self-Rating) Scale and a questionnaire including ad hoc questions regarding their relationship to the Armenian community, their attitudes and their source of information about the 1914—1918 events. Results: Over a third (35.7%) of participants presented at least sub-clinical forms of such reactions during long periods of their lives. Women, older people, participants with a close relative lost during the events and those with strong connections to the Armenian community were more vulnerable. Conclusion: The results are indicative of a long-lasting (though gradually fading) cross-generational traumatizing effect of the discussed events. Clinicians having to deal with patients belonging to cultural or ethnic groups that suffered persecutions in the past should take into account the probable effects caused by a trauma-transmission mechanism.
14-3-3 Binding to Ataxin-1(ATXN1) Regulates Its Dephosphorylation at Ser-776 and Transport to the Nucleus*

Background: Phosphorylation at Ser-776 of the polyglutamine disease-associated protein Ataxin-1 modulates its function. Results: 14-3-3 binding stabilizes Ataxin-1 by blocking dephosphorylation of pS776 and impedes Ataxin-1 transport to the nucleus. Conclusion: 14-3-3 must disassociate from Ataxin-1 for its transport to the nucleus. Significance: 14-3-3 regulates Ataxin-1 function by protecting phosphorylation of Ser-776 and Ataxin-1 entry into the nucleus. Spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA1) is a lethal neurodegenerative disorder caused by expansion of a polyglutamine tract in ATXN1. A prominent site of pathology in SCA1 is cerebellar Purkinje neurons where mutant ATXN1 must enter the nucleus to cause disease. In SCA1, phosphorylation of ATXN1 at Ser-776 modulates disease. Interestingly, Ser-776 is located within a region of ATXN1 that harbors several functional motifs including binding sites for 14-3-3, and splicing factors RBM17 and U2AF65. The interaction of ATXN1 with these proteins is thought to be regulated by the phosphorylation status of Ser-776. In addition, Ser-776 is adjacent to the NLS in ATXN1. Although pS776-ATXN1 is enriched in nuclear extracts of cerebellar cells, the vast majority of 14-3-3 is in the cytoplasmic fraction. We found that dephosphorylation of cytoplasmic pS776-ATXN1 is blocked by virtue of it being in a complex with 14-3-3. In addition, data suggest that binding of 14-3-3 to cytoplasmic ATXN1 impeded its transport to the nucleus, suggesting that 14-3-3 must disassociate from ATXN1 for transport of ATXN1 to the nucleus. Consistent with this hypothesis is the observation that once in the nucleus pS776 is able to be dephosphorylated. Evidence is presented that PP2A is the pS776-ATXN1 phosphatase in the mammalian cerebellum. In the nucleus, we propose that dephosphorylation of pS776-ATXN1 by PP2A regulates the interaction of ATXN1 with the splicing factors RBM17 and U2AF65.
ALTERNATIVE ARCHITECTURE FOR SOLUTION PROCESSED THIN FILM SOLAR MATERIALS

Boyne, Robert W. M.S., Purdue University, August 2016. Alternative Architecture for Solution Processed Thin Film Solar Materials. Major Professor: Rakesh Agrawal. A variety of competing semiconductor materials are used to create p-n solar cells. Currently silicon solar cells dominate more than 90% of the solar market. The major competitors to silicon solar cells are inorganic thin-film solar cells, mainly cadmium telluride and copper indium gallium sulfide. These materials evolved from initial devices based off of cadmium sulfide. All of the non-silicon commercial cells still use cadmium sulfide in their production, which is of concern due to the toxicity of cadmium and limits their application, especially in Europe due to the E.U. Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive. If these devices are to remain market competitive, increased cost efficiency and the removal of cadmium are necessary. First, the cadmium sulfide layers were optimized for nanoparticle CZTS devices, and an in situ measurement apparatus was developed to monitor the deposition thickness during processing. While photons absorbed into cadmium sulfide show low quantum efficiencies, increasing the thickness of the cadmium sulfide buffer layer from 50 to 70nm increased the open circuit voltage and reduced shunting, with only negligible loss in current density, yielding more efficient devices. This agrees with work done on
Black Holes and Galaxy Dynamics

The consequences of nuclear black holes for the structure and dynamics of stellar spheroids are reviewed. Slow growth of a black hole in a pre-existing core produces a steep power-law density profile similar to the cusps seen in faint elliptical galaxies. The weaker cusps in bright ellipticals may result from ejection of stars by a coalescing black-hole binary; there is marginal kinematical evidence for such a process having occurred in M87. Stellar orbits in a triaxial nucleus are mostly regular at radii where the gravitational force is dominated by the black hole; however the orbital shapes are not conducive to reinforcing the triaxial figure, hence nuclei are likely to be approximately axisymmetric. In triaxial potentials, a ``zone of chaos'' extends outward to a radius where the enclosed stellar mass is roughly 100 times the mass of the black hole; in this chaotic zone, no regular, box-like orbits exist. At larger radii, the phase space in triaxial potentials is complex, consisting of stochastic orbits as well as regular orbits associated with stable resonances. Figure rotation tends to increase the degree of stochasticity. Both test-particle integrations and N-body simulations suggest that a triaxial galaxy responds globally to the presence of a central mass concentration by evolving toward more axisymmetric shapes; the evolution occurs rapidly when the mass of the central object exceeds roughly 2% of the mass in stars. The lack of significant triaxiality in most early-type galaxies may be a consequence of orbital evolution induced by nuclear black holes.
A Tale of Two Architectures: A Dual-Citizenship Integration of Natural Language and the Cognitive Map

Vulcan and DIARC are two robot architectures with very different capabilities: Vulcan uses rich spatial representations to facilitate navigation capabilities in real-world, campus-like environments, while DIARC uses high-level cognitive representations to facilitate human-like tasking through natural language. In this work, we show how the integration of Vulcan and DIARC enables not only the capabilities of the two individual architectures, but new synergistic capabilities as well, as each architecture leverages the strengths of the other. This integration presents interesting challenges, as DIARC and Vulcan are implemented in distinct multi-agent system middlewares. Accordingly, a second major contribution of this paper is the Vulcan-ADE Development Environment (VADE): a novel multi-agent system framework comprised of both (1) software agents belonging to a single robot architecture and implemented in a single multi-agent system middleware, and (2) "Dual-Citizen" agents that belong to both robot architectures and that use elements of both multi-agent system middlewares. As one example application, we demonstrate the implementation of the new joint architecture and novel multi-agent system framework on a robotic wheelchair, and show how this integration advances the state-of-the-art for NL-enabled wheelchairs.
Histochemical Characteristics of Sonic Muscle Fibers in Tigerperch, Terapon jarbua

fibers in tigerperch, Terapon jarbua. Zoological Studies 37(1): 56-62. Histochemical typing of sonic muscle fibers was investigated in tigerperch (Terapon jarbua) by examining the glycogen and lipid contents to determine the energy source, and the activities of the oxidative enzymes SDH, NADH-TR, LDH, and mATPase (with alkaline and acid preincubation) to identify metabolic pattern. The presence of abundant glycogen and little lipid provides the muscle fibers with potential fuel as the energy source and thus supports the designation of sonic muscle as fast oxidative glycolytic fibers. The majority of sonic muscle fibers are type IIa, which suggests that they are metabolically adapted for rapid contraction and fatigue resistance. A minority of sonic muscle fibers are type IIc; these are scattered in the muscle core and show higher responses to oxidative enzymes than do IIa fibers.
A prototype dance training support system with motion capture and mixed reality technologies

The mixed reality technology, with which scenes of the real world and the virtual world generated by CG are merged in real time, has been drawing considerable attention in the fields of entertainment, manufacturing, and so on. This work presents a prototype support system for dance training and education with the mixed reality technology and motion capture. Several functions which are thought to be significant for dance education, training and learning are devised and evaluated. Some user interface functions for this kind of new interactive systems are also proposed.
Auctions with Endogenous Selling

The seminal paper by Milgrom and Weber (1982) ranks the expected revenues of several auction mechanisms, taking the decision to sell as exogenous. We endogenize the sale decision. The owner decides whether or not to sell, trading off the conditional expected revenue against his own use value, and buyers take into account the information contained in the owner’s sale decision. We show that revenue ranking implies volume and welfare ranking under certain general conditions. We use this to show that, with affiliated signals, English auctions have larger expected price, volume, and welfare than secondprice auctions, which in turn have larger expected price, volume, and welfare than first-price auctions.
Evidence of Infection with H4 and H11 Avian Influenza Viruses among Lebanese Chicken Growers

Human infections with H5, H7, and H9 avian influenza viruses are well documented. Exposure to poultry is the most important risk factor for humans becoming infected with these viruses. Data on human infection with other low pathogenicity avian influenza viruses is sparse but suggests that such infections may occur. Lebanon is a Mediterranean country lying under two major migratory birds flyways and is home to many wild and domestic bird species. Previous reports from this country demonstrated that low pathogenicity avian influenza viruses are in circulation but highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses were not reported. In order to study the extent of human infection with avian influenza viruses in Lebanon, we carried out a seroprevalence cross-sectional study into which 200 poultry-exposed individuals and 50 non-exposed controls were enrolled. We obtained their sera and tested it for the presence of antibodies against avian influenza viruses types H4 through H16 and used a questionnaire to collect exposure data. Our microneutralization assay results suggested that backyard poultry growers may have been previously infected with H4 and H11 avian influenza viruses. We confirmed these results by using a horse red blood cells hemagglutination inhibition assay. Our data also showed that farmers with antibodies against each virus type clustered in a small geographic area suggesting that unrecognized outbreaks among birds may have led to these human infections. In conclusion, this study suggests that occupational exposure to chicken is a risk factor for infection with avian influenza especially among backyard growers and that H4 and H11 influenza viruses may possess the ability to cross the species barrier to infect humans.
Chromosomal Macrodomains and Associated Proteins: Implications for DNA Organization and Replication in Gram Negative Bacteria

The Escherichia coli chromosome is organized into four macrodomains, the function and organisation of which are poorly understood. In this review we focus on the MatP, SeqA, and SlmA proteins that have recently been identified as the first examples of factors with macrodomain-specific DNA-binding properties. In particular, we review the evidence that these factors contribute towards the control of chromosome replication and segregation by specifically targeting subregions of the genome and contributing towards their unique properties. Genome sequence analysis of multiple related bacteria, including pathogenic species, reveals that macrodomain-specific distribution of SeqA, SlmA, and MatP is conserved, suggesting common principles of chromosome organisation in these organisms. This discovery of proteins with macrodomain-specific binding properties hints that there are other proteins with similar specificity yet to be unveiled. We discuss the roles of the proteins identified to date as well as strategies that may be employed to discover new factors.
A novel approach to on-line handwriting recognition based on bidirectional long short-term memory networks

In this paper we introduce a new connectionist approach to on-line handwriting recognition and address in particular the problem of recognizing handwritten whiteboard notes. The approach uses a bidirectional recurrent neural network with the long short-term memory architecture. We use a recently introduced objective function, known as Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC), that directly trains the network to label unsegmented sequence data. Our new system achieves a word recognition rate of 74.0%, compared with 65.4% using a previously developed HMMbased recognition system.
People Tracking with Mobile Robots Using Sample-Based Joint Probabilistic Data Association Filters

One of the goals in the field of mobile robotics is the development of mobile platforms which operate in populated environments. For many tasks it is therefore highly desirable that a robot can track the positions of the humans in its surrounding. In this paper we introduce sample-based joint probabilistic data association filters as a new algorithm to track multiple moving objects. Our method applies Bayesian filtering to adapt the tracking process to the number of objects in the perceptual range of the robot. The approach has been implemented and tested on a real robot using laser-range data. We present experiments illustrating that our algorithm is able to robustly keep track of multiple people. The experiments furthermore show that the approach outperforms other techniques developed so far.