Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design of Optimal Hybrid Position/Force Controller for a Robot Manipulator Using Neural Networks

The application of quadratic optimization and sliding-mode approach is considered for hybrid position and force control of a robot manipulator. The dynamic model of the manipulator is transformed into a state-space model to contain two sets of state variables, where one describes the constrained motion and the other describes the unconstrained motion. The optimal feedback control law is derived solving matrix differential Riccati equation, which is obtained using Hamilton Jacobi Bellman optimization. The optimal feedback control law is shown to be globally exponentially stable using Lyapunov function approach. The dynamic model uncertainties are compensated with a feedforward neural network. The neural network requires no preliminary offline training and is trained with online weight tuning algorithms that guarantee small errors and bounded control signals. The application of the derived control law is demonstrated through simulation with a 4-DOF robot manipulator to track an elliptical planar constrained surface while applying the desired force on the surface.
Learning a lightweight robust deterministic parser

We describe a method for automatically learning a parser from labeled, bracketed corpora that results in a fast, robust, lightweight parser that is suitable for real-time dialog systems and similar applications. Unlike ordinary parsers, all grammatical knowledge is captured in the learned decision trees, so no explicit phrase-structuregrammar is needed. Anothercharacteristic of the architecture is robustness, since the input need not (cid:12)t pre-speci(cid:12)ed productions. Even without using speci(cid:12)c lexical features, we have achieved re-spectable labeled bracket accuracies of about 81% precision and 82% recall. Processing speed is more than 500 words per CPU second. We keep the parameter space small (in comparison to other statistically learned parsers) by using only part-of-speech tags and constituent labels as features. Without any optimization, the decision trees consume only 6M of memory, making it possible to run on platforms with limited memory. The learning method is readily applicable to other languages. Preliminary experiments on a Chinese corpus (which contains about 3000 sentences from Chinese primary school text) have yielded results comparable to that for English.
Interstellar abundances in the neutral and ionized gas of NGC 604

Aims. We present FUSE spectra of the giant H ii region NGC 604 in the spiral galaxy M 33. Chemical abundances are tentatively derived from far-UV absorption lines and compared to those derived from optical emission lines. Methods. Absorption lines from neutral hydrogen and heavy elements were observed against the continuum provided by the young massive stars embedded in the H ii region. We derived the column densities of H i, N i, O i, Si ii, P ii, Ar i, and Fe ii, fitting the line profiles with either a single component or several components. We used CLOUDY to correct for contamination from the ionized gas. Archival HST/ STIS spectra across NGC 604 allowed us to investigate how inhomogeneities affect the final H i column density. Results. Kinematics show that the neutral gas is physically related to the H ii region. The STIS spectra reveal H i column density fluctuations up to 1 dex across NCG 604. Nevertheless, we find that the H i column density determined from the global STIS spectrum does not differ significantly from the average over the individual sightlines. Our net results using the column densities derived with FUSE , assuming a single component, show that N, O, Si, and Ar are apparently underabundant in the neutral phase by a factor of ${\sim} $10 or more with respect to the ionized phase, while Fe is the same. However, we discuss the possibility that the absorption lines are made of individual unresolved components, and find that only P ii, Ar i, and Fe ii lines should not be affected by the presence of hidden saturated components, while N i, O i, and Si ii might be much more affected. Conclusions. If N, O, and Si are actually underabundant in the neutral gas of NGC 604 with respect to the ionized gas, this would confirm earlier results obtained for the blue compact dwarfs, and their interpretations. However, a deeper analysis focused on P, Ar, and Fe mitigates the above conclusion and indicates that the neutral gas and ionized gas could have similar abundances.
High‐Performance Direct Methanol Fuel Cells with Precious‐Metal‐Free Cathode

Direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) hold great promise for applications ranging from portable power for electronics to transportation. However, apart from the high costs, current Pt‐based cathodes in DMFCs suffer significantly from performance loss due to severe methanol crossover from anode to cathode. The migrated methanol in cathodes tends to contaminate Pt active sites through yielding a mixed potential region resulting from oxygen reduction reaction and methanol oxidation reaction. Therefore, highly methanol‐tolerant cathodes must be developed before DMFC technologies become viable. The newly developed reduced graphene oxide (rGO)‐based Fe‐N‐C cathode exhibits high methanol tolerance and exceeds the performance of current Pt cathodes, as evidenced by both rotating disk electrode and DMFC tests. While the morphology of 2D rGO is largely preserved, the resulting Fe‐N‐rGO catalyst provides a more unique porous structure. DMFC tests with various methanol concentrations are systematically studied using the best performing Fe‐N‐rGO catalyst. At feed concentrations greater than 2.0 m, the obtained DMFC performance from the Fe‐N‐rGO cathode is found to start exceeding that of a Pt/C cathode. This work will open a new avenue to use nonprecious metal cathode for advanced DMFC technologies with increased performance and at significantly reduced cost.
Computation mapping for multi-level storage cache hierarchies

Improving I/O performance is an important issue for many data-intensive, large-scale parallel applications. Although storage caches are used for improving I/O latencies of parallel applications, most of the prior work has focused on the management and partitioning of cache space. In particular, the compiler's role in taking advantage of multilevel storage caches has been largely unexplored. The main contribution of this paper is a shared-storage, cache-aware loop iteration distribution (iteration-to-processor mapping) scheme for I/O-intensive applications that manipulate disk-resident data sets. The proposed scheme is compiler directed and can be tuned to target any multilevel storage cache hierarchy. At the core of our scheme lies an iterative strategy that clusters loop iterations based on the underlying storage cache hierarchy and on the way these different storage caches in the hierarchy are shared by different processors. We tested this mapping scheme using a set of eight I/O-intensive application programs. The results collected so far are promising. Our proposed scheme improves the I/O performance of the tested applications by 26.3% on average, and this improvement leads to an average 18.9% reduction in the overall execution latencies of these applications. Moreover, our scheme performs significantly better than a state-of-the-art (but storage-cache- hierarchy agnostic) data locality optimization scheme. We also present an enhancement to our baseline implementation that performs local scheduling once the loop iteration distribution is performed. We observe that applying this enhancement improves I/O latency and total execution time further by 30.7% and 21.9%, respectively.
The Use of Weblogs in Higher Education: Benefits and Barriers

Weblogs are personal web pages written in chronological order and maintained through a specific software that helps their administration. From an educational point of view, weblogs are the development of traditional learning logs for students and teachers, whether as a complement to traditional lectures or as a e-learning tool. The importance of these applications has increased due to the changes in the classroom dynamics that Bologna will bring shortly to the European Higher Education Area, which entail the substitution of conventional education for autonomous learning. Also, the number of Open Universities and virtual–environment courses offered by traditional Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), potential users of weblogs, has boosted in the last decade. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the scarce knowledge that HEIs have regarding the functionality of weblogs as tools for enhancing the teaching-learning process, specially in terms of identifying the barriers and benefits that the deployment of these tools may present. To do so, both a theoretical and practical approach have been employed. First, the paper establishes an explanation about the anatomy of weblogs. Second, possible uses of weblogs in HEIs are discussed and classified according to the users’ perspective. Finally, from these experiences, the main benefits provided by weblogs are shown, as well as the possible barriers that may jeopardise its use.
Improved Joint Domain Localized STAP algorithm based on mainbeam clutter cancellation

The Joint Domain Localized (JDL) Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) algorithm is a relatively effective beam-Doppler domain method when there is no array element error, which is implemented in a Localized Processing Region (LPR) formed by using the spatial and temporal steering vectors. However, when there are array element errors in the system, the performance of the clutter suppression by JDL algorithm would significantly degrade if the LPR was not effectively expanded in the spatial domain. In order to enhance the system robustness to the array element errors, an improved JDL algorithm is proposed in this paper. In the proposed algorithm, the mainbeam clutter cancellation of the Moving Target Indicate (MTI) technique is firstly applied to pre-filter the mainbeam clutter, and then the traditional JDL processing is implemented to suppress the residual clutter. According to the simulations based on the theoretical data and the Mountaintop database, it is found that the improved JDL algorithm can produce much better performance than the traditional JDL algorithm.
Cognitive and Affective Antecedents of Consumers’ Satisfaction: A Systematic Review of two Research Approaches

The study of consumers’ satisfaction has generated empirical research in the last few decades, with new challenges, such as a specific lens on online consumers’ satisfaction. During the last decades, two well-differentiated research traditions can be observed: cognitive and affective. A wide range of antecedents of consumers’ satisfaction has been proposed. The present contribution empirical research conducted under these two perspectives to determine which variables are related to satisfaction, the direction of these relationships, and the differences between the two dominant approaches. We conducted a systematic review of 104 empirical studies on consumers’ satisfaction published between 1975 and 2017. The findings showed that both the cognitive and the affective tradition yield statistically significant precursors of satisfaction. A comparison between empirical studies exploring consumers’ satisfaction in traditional versus by Internet purchasing behavior showed an increasing relevance of cognitive facets in traditional consumer behavior. Empirical evidence exploring differences between consumers’ satisfaction with purchasing goods versus hiring services showed that both cognitive and affective predictors strongly impact when services are hired versus consuming goods. This article concludes with a discussion of these results and their implications.
Slow charge movement in mammalian skeletal muscle

Voltage-dependent charge movements were measured in the rat omohyoid muscle with the three-microelectrode voltage-clamp technique. Contraction was abolished with hypertonic sucrose. The standard (ON- OFF) protocol for eliciting charge movements was to depolarize the fiber from -90 mV to a variable test potential (V) and then repolarize the fiber to -90 mV. The quantity of charge moved saturated at test potentials of approximately 0 mV. The steady state dependence of the amount of charge that moves as a function of test potential could be well fitted by the Boltzmann relation: Q = Qmax/(1 + exp[-(V - V)/k]), where Qmax is the maximum charge that can be moved, V is the potential at which half the charge moves, and k is a constant. At 15 degrees C, these values were Qmax = 28.5 nC/microF, V = -34.2 mV, and k = 8.7 mV. Qmax, k, and V exhibited little temperature dependence over the range 7- 25 degrees C. "Stepped OFF" charge movements were elicited by depolarizing the fiber from -90 mV to a fixed conditioning level that moved nearly all the mobile charge (0 mV), and then repolarizing the fiber to varying test potentials. The sum of the charge that moved when the fiber was depolarized directly from -90 mV to a given test potential and the stepped OFF charge that moved when the fiber was repolarized to the same test potential had at all test potentials a value close to Qmax for that fiber. In nearly all cases, the decay phase of ON, OFF, and stepped OFF charge movements could be well fitted with a single exponential. The time constant, tau decay, for an ON charge movement at a given test potential was comparable to tau decay for a stepped OFF charge movement at the same test potential. Tau decay had a bell-shaped dependence on membrane potential: it was slowest at a potential near V (the midpoint of the steady state charge distribution) and became symmetrically faster on either side of this potential. Raising the temperature from 7 to 15 degrees C caused tau decay to become faster by about the same proportion at all potentials, with a Q10 averaging 2.16. Raising the temperature from 15 to 25 degrees C caused tau decay to become faster at potentials near V, but not at potentials farther away. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Universität Stuttgart Fachbereich Mathematik Lieb-Thirring inequalities for geometrically induced bound states

We prove new inequalities of the Lieb-Thirring type on the eigenvalues of Schrödinger operators in wave guides with local perturbations. The estimates are optimal in the weak-coupling case. To illustrate their applications, we consider, in particular, a straight strip and a straight circular tube with either mixed boundary conditions or boundary deformations.
Whole-mount specimens in the analysis of en bloc samples obtained from revisions of resurfacing hip implants

Background Modern metal-on-metal hip resurfacing implants are being increasingly used for young and active patients, although the long-term outcome and failure mechanisms of these implants are still unknown. In this consecutive revision case series, early failures of femoral implants (at < 4 years) were studied. Methods 3 revisions were done due to a fracture of the femoral neck and 1 due to loosening and varus position of the femoral component. Femoral heads were removed en bloc 2–46 months after the primary operation, embedded in methylmethacrylate, sectioned, stained, and analyzed as whole-mount specimens in 4 55–62-year-old patients with osteoarthritis. Results Histopathology was characterized by new but also partly healed trabecular microfractures, bone demineralization, cysts, metallosis, and abnormal formation of new woven bone. All samples displayed signs of notching, osteoporosis, and aseptic necrosis, which seemed to have been the main reason for the subsequent development and symptoms of the patients and revision operations of the hips. Interpretation Based on these early revision cases, it appears that aseptic necrosis is a common cause of early loosening of resurfacing hip implants.
Modeling and optimizing tensile strength and yield point on steel bar by artificial neural network with evolutionary algorithm

The artificial neural network (ANN) with Taguchi-genetic evolutionary algorithm (TGEA) is combined to construct the steel bar model and optimize the factors of steel bar. The TGEA in the ANN is to find the most suitable weight of neuron combination and the optimal combination of influencing factors. In the experiment, the steel bar model is constructed by the TGEA-based ANN, and the TGEA is utilized to optimize all process parameters.
Exploring Supervised Methods for Temporal Link Prediction in Heterogeneous Social Networks

In the link prediction problem, formulated as a binary classification problem, we want to classify each pair of disconnected nodes in the network whether they will be connected by a link in the future. We study link formation in social networks with two types of links over several time periods. To solve the link prediction problem, we follow the approach of counting 3-node graphlets and suggest three extensions to the original method. By performing experiments on two real-world social networks we show that the new methods have a predictive power, however, network evolution cannot be explained by one specific feature at all time points. We also observe that some network properties can point at features which are more effective for temporal link prediction.
Iterative Closed-Loop Phase-Aware Single-Channel Speech Enhancement

Many short-time Fourier transform (STFT) based single-channel speech enhancement algorithms are focused on estimating the clean speech spectral amplitude from the noisy observed signal in order to suppress the additive noise. To this end, they utilize the noisy amplitude information and the corresponding a priori and a posteriori SNRs while they employ the observed noisy phase when reconstructing enhanced speech signal. This paper presents two contributions: i) reconsidering the relation between the phase group delay deviation and phase deviation, and ii) proposing a closed-loop single-channel speech enhancement approach to estimate both amplitude and phase spectra of the speech signal. To this end, we combine a group-delay based phase estimator with a phase-aware amplitude estimator in a closed loop design. Our experimental results on various noise scenarios show considerable improvement in the objective perceived signal quality obtained by the proposed iterative phase-aware approach compared to conventional Wiener filtering which uses the noisy phase in signal reconstruction.
A Survey of Large Molecules of Biological Interest toward Selected High-Mass Star-forming Regions

We have surveyed the high-mass Galactic star-forming regions G19.61-0.23, G45.47+0.05, and W75N for interstellar methanol (CH3OH), formic acid (HCOOH), acetic acid (CH3COOH), methyl formate (HCOOCH3), methyl cyanide (CH3CN), and ethyl cyanide (CH3CH2CN) with the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association Array. From our observations, we have detected two new sources of interstellar HCOOH toward the hot core regions G19.61-0.23 and W75N. We have also made the first detections of CH3CH2CN and HCOOCH3 toward G19.61-0.23. The relative HCOOH/HCOOCH3 abundance ratio toward G19.61-0.23 is 0.18, which is comparable to the abundance ratios found by Liu and colleagues toward Sgr B2(N-LMH), Orion, and W51 (~0.10). We have made the first detection of HCOOCH3 toward W75N. The relative HCOOH/HCOOCH3 abundance ratio toward W75N is 0.26, which is more than twice as large as the abundance ratios found by Liu and colleagues. Furthermore, the hot core regions around W75N show a chemical differentiation between the O and N cores similar to what is seen toward the Orion Hot Core and Compact Ridge and W3(OH) and W3(H2O). It is also apparent from our observations that the high-mass star-forming region G45.47+0.05 does not contain any compact hot molecular core (HMC), and as a consequence its chemistry may be similar to that of cold dark clouds. Finally, the formation of CH3COOH appears to favor HMCs with well-mixed N and O, despite the fact that CH3COOH does not contain a N atom. If proved to be true, this is an important constraint on CH3COOH formation and possibly other structurally similar biomolecules.
A prototype of an integrated blood pressure and electrocardiogram device for multi-parameter physiologic monitoring

We present a prototype of an integrated blood pressure (BP) and electrocardiogram (ECG) device for multi-parameter physiologic monitoring. A standard BP pressure cuff and an ordinary wristband have been modified to incorporate in them dry ECG electrodes made of thin conductive fabric. The modified BP cuff and wristband are coupled with commercially available hardware and software to harvest simultaneous arterial pulse wave and ECG data from the arm and wrist of the other hand. Software has been written for assessing multiple physiologic parameters from the harvested pulse wave and ECG signals. We provide an initial validation of the performance of our prototype by conducting a study on six healthy subjects.
myKaryoView: A Light-Weight Client for Visualization of Genomic Data

The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) is a protocol for easy sharing and integration of biological annotations. In order to visualize feature annotations in a genomic context a client is required. Here we present myKaryoView, a simple light-weight DAS tool for visualization of genomic annotation. myKaryoView has been specifically configured to help analyse data derived from personal genomics, although it can also be used as a generic genome browser visualization. Several well-known data sources are provided to facilitate comparison of known genes and normal variation regions. The navigation experience is enhanced by simultaneous rendering of different levels of detail across chromosomes. A simple interface is provided to allow searches for any SNP, gene or chromosomal region. User-defined DAS data sources may also be added when querying the system. We demonstrate myKaryoView capabilities for adding user-defined sources with a set of genetic profiles of family-related individuals downloaded directly from 23andMe. myKaryoView is a web tool for visualization of genomic data specifically designed for direct-to-consumer genomic data that uses publicly available data distributed throughout the Internet. It does not require data to be held locally and it is capable of rendering any feature as long as it conforms to DAS specifications. Configuration and addition of sources to myKaryoView can be done through the interface. Here we show a proof of principle of myKaryoView's ability to display personal genomics data with 23andMe genome data sources. The tool is available at: http://mykaryoview.com.
Image Filtering and Enhancement Based on Adaptive Triangular Meshes

In the procedure of image sampling, acquisition, coding and transmission, all images in different degrees may be polluted by noise, which lowers image quality. Image filtering aims at noise suppression and image enhancement sets itself a goal of improving visual effect by a series of techniques and enhancing image sharpness in order to transfer images into the forms that are more suitable for a person or a machine to analysis and processing. This paper proposes an optimal algorithm for image filtering and enhancement operations based on adaptive triangular meshes. Experimental results show that these operations directly working upon adaptive triangular meshes that represent gray-level images are significantly more efficient than their pixel-to-pixel counterparts. The execution upon triangular meshes is two orders of magnitude faster than the execution upon the original images.