Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A neuromorphic controller for a robotic vehicle equipped with a dynamic vision sensor

Neuromorphic electronic systems exhibit advantageous characteristics, in terms of low energy consumption and low response latency, which can be useful in robotic applications that require compact and low power embedded computing resources. However, these neuromorphic circuits still face significant limitations that make their usage challenging: these include low precision, variability of components, sensitivity to noise and temperature drifts, as well as the currently limited number of neurons and synapses that are typically emulated on a single chip. In this paper, we show how it is possible to achieve functional robot control strategies using a mixed signal analog/digital neuromorphic processor interfaced to a mobile robotic platform equipped with an event-based dynamic vision sensor. We provide a proof of concept implementation of obstacle avoidance and target acquisition using biologically plausible spiking neural networks directly emulated by the neuromorphic hardware. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a working spike-based neuromorphic robotic controller in this type of hardware which illustrates the feasibility, as well as limitations, of this approach.
Implementation of the multiple point principle in the two-Higgs doublet model of type II

The multiple point principle (MPP) is applied to the nonsupersymmetric two-Higgs doublet extension of the standard model (SM). The existence of a large set of degenerate vacua at some high energy scale caused by the MPP results in a few relations between Higgs self-coupling constants which can be examined at future colliders. The numerical analysis reveals that these MPP conditions constrain the mass of the SM-like Higgs boson to lie below 180 GeV for a wide set of MPP scales {lambda} and tan{beta}.
Improving acoustic based keyword spotting using LVCSR lattices

This paper investigates detection of English keywords in a conversational scenario using a combination of acoustic and LVCSR based keyword spotting systems. Acoustic KWS systems search predefined words in parameterized spoken data. Corresponding confidences are represented by likelihood ratios given the keyword models and a background model. First, due to the especially high number of false-alarms, the acoustic KWS system is augmented with confidence measures estimated from corresponding LVCSR lattices. Then, various strategies to combine scores estimated by the acoustic and several LVCSR based KWS systems are explored. We show that a linear regression based combination significantly outperforms other (model-based) techniques. Due to that, the relative number of false-alarms of the combined KWS system decreased by more than 50% compared to the acoustic KWS system. Finally, an attention is also paid to the complexities of the KWS systems enabling them to potentially be exploited in real-detection tasks.
Cognitive functioning and the inhibition of alcohol-induced aggression.

OBJECTIVE A highly replicable research finding is that alcohol intoxication tends to induce aggressive responding. Recent research investigating the role of cognitive function in this relationship has shown that individuals who perform poorly on certain cognitive tasks have difficulty responding to contingencies to inhibit aggression, while high performers do not. High performers, however, do show increased aggression while intoxicated. This study investigated whether subjects with above average cognitive functioning would, when intoxicated, inhibit aggression in order to attain monetary reward. METHOD Men (N = 43), aged 18-30, selected on the basis of high performance on a neuropsychological test putatively assessing function of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the spatial conditional associative learning task, participated in a modified version of the Taylor Aggression Task. Half the subjects were acutely alcohol intoxicated, the other half were sober. Furthermore, half the subjects in each of these groups received contingent monetary reward for choosing lower shocks. Aggression was defined as shock intensity delivered to a sham opponent. RESULTS Contrary to the hypothesis, intoxicated subjects, even though significantly impaired cognitively relative to their nonintoxicated peers (F = 4.29, 1/41 df, p < .05), appeared to have no difficulty inhibiting their aggression in order to gain monetary reward. That is, there was no difference between intoxicated and nonintoxicated subjects on the dependent variable, shock intensity, when contingent money was available (F = .01, 1/20 df, p = .935). CONCLUSION This finding provides further evidence that alcohol-induced aggression is not a uniform phenomenon, and it suggests a neuropsychological mechanism that may mediate the relationship. It may be that individuals with above average cognitive abilities retain sufficient residual functioning to inhibit aggressive responding, even when acutely alcohol intoxicated.
Multiple Transmitter Localization and Whitespace Identification Using Randomly Deployed Binary Sensors

This paper analyzes the limiting behavior of the uncertainty in localizing an unknown number of transmitters within a given geographical area. The set-up consists of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${n}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> binary sensors that are deployed uniformly at random locations within the area. These sensors detect for the presence of a transmitter within their radio range, and their individual decisions are combined to estimate the number of transmitters as well as their locations. With the mean sum absolute error in transmitter localization as the metric, the optimal scaling of the radio range and the necessary minimum transmitter separation is determined, as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${n}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> gets large. It is shown that both the localization error and the radio range optimally scale as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ {\log (n)/n}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. The analysis is extended to the case of unreliable sensors, where, surprisingly, the optimal scaling is found to still be <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\log (n)/n}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. The cognitive radio problem of identifying the available whitespace, i.e., the regions that do not contain any transmitter, emerges as a special case. Finally, the optimal distribution of sensor deployment is determined, given the distribution of the transmitters. Simulation results illustrate the significant performance benefit that can be obtained by optimally scaling the radio range, compared to existing fixed sensing range based designs.
PET Quantification of Tau Pathology in Human Brain with 11C-PBB3

Tau accumulation in the brain is a pathologic hallmark of Alzheimer disease and other tauopathies. Quantitative visualization of tau pathology in humans can be a powerful method as a diagnostic aid and for monitoring potential therapeutic interventions. We established methods of PET quantification of tau pathology with 11C-PBB3 (2-((1E,3E)-4-(6-(11C-methylamino)pyridin-3-yl)buta-1,3-dienyl) benzo[d]thiazol-6-ol), considering its radiometabolite entering the brain. Methods: Seven Alzheimer disease patients and 7 healthy subjects underwent dynamic 11C-PBB3 PET scanning. Arterial blood was sampled to obtain the parent and metabolite input functions. Quantification of 11C-PBB3 binding was performed using dual-input models that take the brain metabolite activity into consideration, traditional single-input models without such considerations, and the reference tissue model (MRTMO) and standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR). The cerebellar cortex was used as the reference tissue for all methods. Results: The dual-input graphical models estimated binding parameter (BPND*) stably (∼0.36 in high-binding regions). The MRTMO BPND* matched the corresponding BPND* by the dual-input graphical model (r2 = 1.00). SUVR minus 1 correlated well with MRTMO BPND* (r2 > 0.97). However, BPND by the single-input models did not correlate with BPND* by the dual-input graphical model (r2 = 0.04). Conclusion: The dual-input graphical model BPND* is consistent with the reference tissue BPND* and SUVR-1, suggesting that these parameters can accurately quantify binding of 11C-PBB3 despite the entry of its radiometabolites into the brain.
From systems of discrete dislocations to a continuous field description: stresses and averaging aspects

Metal plasticity is governed by the motion of dislocations, and predicting the interactions and resulting collective motion of dislocations is a major task in understanding and modeling plastically deforming materials. This task has, despite all the efforts and advances of the last few decades, not yet been fully accomplished. The reason for this is that discrete models which describe the dislocation system with high accuracy are only computationally feasible for small systems, small strains, and high strain rates. Classical continuum models do not suffer from these restrictions but lack sufficiently detailed information about dislocation microstructure. In this paper we present the steps that are needed for averaging systems of discrete dislocations toward a continuous and hence more efficient representation. Our main emphasis lies on investigating the effects of averaging on the description of stress fields and dislocation interactions. We show how the evolution of continuous dislocation fields can then be appropriately described by a dislocation density-based model and validate our results by comparison with discrete dislocation dynamic simulations.
Evaluating silver tracks conductivity on flexible surfaces

The development of electric circuit fabrication on flexible polymer substrates has attracted significant interest as a pathway to low-cost, comfortable movement and large-area electronics among direct printing techniques. The term electronic textiles, or e-textiles, are used to denote the class of fabric structures that integrate electronic elements with textiles and can sense changes in its environment and respond to it. This new class of wearable electronic systems is being designed to meet new and innovative applications in the military, public safety, healthcare, space exploration, sports and consumer fitness fields. In this paper the inkjet printing technique (office thermal inkjet printer) was used as a simple method to chemically deposit silver Nanoparticles (85–300 nm) to the flexible surface. It is done by ejection of silver nitrate and ascorbic acid as a reducing agent to attain nanometals on the surface. Ink concentration and repeating the printing sequence of each ink determines molar ratio ejection of ink and is found to be necessary to be evaluated in order to attain the highest level of conductivity. The main purpose of this work is to gain the highest conductive printed tracks by using statistical design of experiment method on the fabric surface by applying inkjet technique. By optimizing the mentioned parameters, the highest conductivity of printed flexible tracks on the surface of paper is gained 8.0635 × 105 S/m and the result for polyester fabric is obtained 1.2417 × 104 S/m whereas metallic silver wire has a conductivity of 6.173 × 107 S/m.
Risk factors for breast cancer

EDITOR,—Like Richard J Cook and David L Sackett1 and many others,2 3 we are enthusiastic about the advantages of using the “number to treat” as a clinically useful measure of the effect of treatment. It is not, however, a universal panacea. In research into health services in which the unit of treatment or intervention and cost is a group or population …
Let's all get up and walk to the North Pole: design and evaluation of a mobile wellness application

Mobile wellness applications can motivate people to exercise more because of their ubiquitous presence and suitable technological possibilities. Wellness applications utilize several factors that can increase physical activity levels of users, e.g., data tracking, social sharing and playfulness. We describe the design and evaluation of a mobile-phone based wellness application addressing social sharing and playfulness. In our user study with 37 participants we focus on presentation of physical activity data as a virtual trip on a map-based game world. The findings reveal design implications that support users to be motivated in doing the physical exercise, including setting departure and destination places and viewing up-to-date progress between them. The virtual trip was considered an understandable, concrete and interesting analogy. The familiarity of the map of the home country as the game world was liked because it added concreteness and understandability to the achievements.
Improving Data Center Network Utilization Using Near-Optimal Traffic Engineering

Equal cost multiple path (ECMP) forwarding is the most prevalent multipath routing used in data center (DC) networks today. However, it fails to exploit increased path diversity that can be provided by traffic engineering techniques through the assignment of nonuniform link weights to optimize network resource usage. To this extent, constructing a routing algorithm that provides path diversity over nonuniform link weights (i.e., unequal cost links), simplicity in path discovery and optimality in minimizing maximum link utilization (MLU) is nontrivial. In this paper, we have implemented and evaluated the Penalizing Exponential Flow-spliTing (PEFT) algorithm in a cloud DC environment based on two dominant topologies, canonical and fat tree. In addition, we have proposed a new cloud DC topology which, with only a marginal modification of the current canonical tree DC architecture, can further reduce MLU and increase overall network capacity utilization through PEFT routing.
Broadening of the T-Cell Repertoire to HIV-1 Gag p24 by Vaccination of HLA-A2/DR Transgenic Mice with Overlapping Peptides in the CAF05 Adjuvant

Induction of broad T-cell immune responses is regarded as critical for vaccines against the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) which exhibit high diversity and, therefore, focus has been on inducing cytotoxic CD8 T-cell responses against the more conserved parts of the virus, such as the Gag protein. Herein, we have used the p24 protein which contains a range of conserved T-cell epitopes. We demonstrate that a vaccine of HIV-1 subtype B consensus group-specific antigen (Gag) p24 protein with the CD8-inducing liposomal cationic adjuvant formulation (CAF) 05, induces both CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses in CB6F1 mice. The adjuvanted vaccine also induced functional antigen-specific cytotoxicity in vivo. Furthermore, we found that when fragmenting the Gag p24 protein into overlapping Gag p24 peptides, a broader T-cell epitope specificity was induced in the humanized human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-A2/DR-transgenic mouse model. Thus, combining overlapping Gag p24 peptides with CAF05 appears to be a promising and simple strategy for inducing broader T-cell responses to multiple conserved epitopes which will be relevant for both prophylactic and therapeutic HIV-1 vaccines.
'Capturing the relations between metacognition, self-explanation, and analogical comparison: An exploration of two methodologies'

Metacognitive processes such as monitoring and control and sense-making processes such as self-explanation and analogical comparison are each hypothesized to result in effective problem solving, learning and transfer (Chi et al., 1994; Alfieri, et al., 2013; Zepeda et al., 2015). However, little work has examined how these processes relate to one another and their associated learning outcomes. In this study we explored two methodologies to measure and relate these processes to one another by investigating students verbal protocols and task-based self-reports during a learning task. We investigated (1) whether specific metacognitive skills are more likely to occur before, during, or after self-explanation and analogical comparison, (2) individual differences in students’ use of these skills, and (3) whether specific skills results in better learning outcomes. Results from these analyses and their implications will be discussed.
Safe and dependable physical human-robot interaction in anthropic domains: State of the art and challenges

In the immediate future, metrics related to safety and dependability have to be found in order to successfully introduce robots in everyday environments. The crucial issues needed to tackle the problem of a safe and dependable physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) were addressed in the EURON Perspective Research Project PHRIDOM (Physical Human- Robot Interaction in Anthropic Domains), aimed at charting the new "territory" of pHRI. While there are certainly also "cognitive" issues involved, due to the human perception of the robot (and vice versa), and other objective metrics related to fault detection and isolation, the discussion in this paper will focus on the peculiar aspects of "physical" interaction with robots. In particular, safety and dependability will be the underlying evaluation criteria for mechanical design, actuation, and control architectures. Mechanical and control issues will be discussed with emphasis on techniques that provide safety in an intrinsic way or by means of control components. Attention will be devoted to dependability, mainly related to sensors, control architectures, and fault handling and tolerance. After PHRIDOM, a novel research project has been launched under the Information Society Technologies Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission. This "Specific Targeted Research or Innovation" project is dedicated to "Physical Human-Robot Interaction: depENDability and Safety" (PHRIENDS). PHRIENDS is about developing key components of the next generation of robots, including industrial robots and assist devices, designed to share the environment and to physically interact with people. The philosophy of the project proposes an integrated approach to the co-design of robots for safe physical interaction with humans, which revolutionizes the classical approach for designing industrial robots – rigid design for accuracy, active control for safety – by creating a new paradigm: design robots that are intrinsically safe, and control them to deliver performance. This paper presents the state of the art in the field as surveyed by the PHRIDOM project, as well as it enlightens a number of challenges that will be undertaken within the PHRIENDS project.
The effect of esculentoside A on lupus nephritis-prone BXSB mice

Introduction EsA was reported to have the effect of modulating immune response, cell proliferation and apoptosis as well as anti-inflammatory effects in acute and chronic experimental models. However, the effects of EsA on LN remain poorly understood. To investigate the roles of EsA in LN, the effects of EsA were tested on BXSB mice, a SLE model, in which male SB/Le mice and female C57BL/6 mice were hybridized through recombinant inbred species. Material and methods Twenty four BXSB mice were divided into three groups. After 4 weeks, blood samples, urine samples and kidney tissues were collected. Measurement of cytokine levels was carried out using sandwich ELISA reagent kits. Apoptotic scores were obtained with a TUNEL assay. PCNA and Caspase-3 mRNA was detected using the In Situ Hybridization Detection Kit. Results The results demonstrated that compared with the control group, EsA administration markedly controlled urine protein excretion, improved renal function, alleviated kidney damage and promoted the apoptosis of glomerular intrinsic cells and renal tubular epithelial cells in animals of the treated group (p < 0.05). Meanwhile, EsA reduced the serum IL-6 and TNF-α levels (p < 0.05), inhibited the expression of PCNA and promoted the expression of caspase-3, Fas and FasL in animals of the treated group (p < 0.05). The effects of EsA on BXSB mice were similar to dexamethasone. Conclusions All these findings indicated that EsA might play significant roles in the treatment of BXSB mice through modulation of inflammatory cytokines, inhibition of renal cell proliferation and induction of apoptosis. The special targets of EsA in lupus nephritis are worth further exploration.
Characterization of Mach-Zehnder interferometer-based photonic crystal fiber sensors

We propose a new design of Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZI) structure assembled with two arms composed of 400nm-diameter-hole-modified silica photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) and immersed in solvent solution. The proposed design is found to enhance considerably the sensitivity. A highly-sensitive versatile interferometry technique is used to determine the phase shift from both arms and consequently the specimen’s information can be retrieved. The proposed sensor was first tested when considering the specimen to be analyzed with different concentrations for a probing light of 325 nm. The sensitivity of detecting the benzene solutions in water reaches 9 rad/μm which is much higher compared to what was achieved in photonic nanowires. Then, the detection of corn oil into olive oil is achieved with high sensitivity of 14.7 rad/μm demonstrating that the sensor is capable of detecting a RI variation of 4×10-7 in only 1-mm sensitive area- length. Thus, the proposed MZI-based PCF-sensor shows to be very attractive for compact, flexible and high sensitive biochemical sensing.
Vaccination preserves CD4 memory T cells during acute simian immunodeficiency virus challenge

Acute simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)/human immunodeficiency virus infection is accompanied by a massive destruction of CD4 memory T cells across all the tissue compartments. These early events set the course toward disease progression and immunodeficiency. Here, we demonstrate that prior vaccination reduces this destruction during acute SIV Mac251 infection, leading to better survival and long-term outcome. Systemic vaccination with a DNA-prime recombinant adenovirus boost regimen preserved memory CD4 T cells throughout the body. The vaccine regimen induced broad CD4 and CD8 T cell responses in all tissues examined and, importantly, induced antibodies that neutralized the primary isolate of SIV used for challenge. Finally, we demonstrate that the extent of preservation of the CD4 memory compartment during the acute phase provides a strong predictor for subsequent progression to death. Our data provide a mechanism to explain clinical observations that acute-phase viral loads predict long-term disease progression and underscore the need for interventions that protect against early destruction of CD4 memory T cells during acute infection.
Performance of operational radiosonde humidity sensors in direct comparison with a chilled mirror dew‐point hygrometer and its climate implication

This study evaluates performance of humidity sensors in two widely used operational radiosondes, Vaisala and Sippican (formally VIZ), in comparison with a research quality, and potentially more accurate, chilled mirror dew‐point hygrometer named “Snow White”. A research radiosonde system carrying the Snow White (SW) hygrometer was deployed in the Oklahoma panhandle and at Dodge City, KS during the International H2O Project (IHOP_2002). A total of sixteen sondes were launched with either Vaisala RS80 or Sippican VIZ‐B2 radiosondes on the same balloons. Comparisons of humidity data from the SW with Vaisala and Sippican data show that (a) Vaisala RS80‐H agrees with the SW very well in the middle and lower troposphere, but has dry biases in the upper troposphere (UT), (b) Sippican carbon hygristor (CH) has time‐lag errors throughout the troposphere and fails to respond to humidity changes in the UT, sometimes even in the middle troposphere, and (c) the SW can detect cirrus clouds near the tropopause and possibly estimate their ice water content (IWC). The failure of CH in the UT results in significant and artificial humidity shifts in radiosonde climate records at stations where a transition from VIZ to Vaisala radiosondes has occurred.