Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ground Reference Points in Legged Locomotion: Definitions, Biological Trajectories and Control Implications

The zero moment point (ZMP), foot rotation indicator (FRI) and centroidal moment pivot (CMP) are important ground reference points used for motion identification and control in biomechanics and legged robotics. In this paper, we study these reference points for normal human walking, and discuss their applicability in legged machine control. Since the FRI was proposed as an indicator of foot rotation, we hypothesize that the FRI will closely track the ZMP in early single support when the foot remains flat on the ground, but will then significantly diverge from the ZMP in late single support as the foot rolls during heel-off. Additionally, since spin angular momentum has been shown to remain small throughout the walking cycle, we hypothesize that the CMP will never leave the ground support base throughout the entire gait cycle, closely tracking the ZMP. We test these hypotheses using a morphologically realistic human model and kinetic and kinematic gait data measured from ten human subjects walking at self-selected speeds. We find that the mean separation distance between the FRI and ZMP during heel-off is within the accuracy of their measurement (0.1% of foot length). Thus, the FRI point is determined not to be an adequate measure of foot rotational acceleration and a modified FRI point is proposed. Finally, we find that the CMP never leaves the ground support base, and the mean separation distance between the CMP and ZMP is small (14% of foot length), highlighting how closely the human body regulates spin angular momentum in level ground walking.
Modeling small-scale variability in the composition of goshawk habitat on the Kaibab National Forest

We used field data, topographical information (elevation, slope, aspect, landform), and Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery to model forest vegetative types to a 10-m resolution on the Kaibab National Forest in northern Arizona. Forest types were identified by clustering the field data and then using a decision tree based on the spectral characteristics of a Landsat image and topographical information to predict the forest types. Significant variables in the models included raw basal area and proportion of basal area by species. Use of additional variables (canopy closure, understory vegetative height, seedling/sapling presence, and proportion of ground covered by vegetation) did not improve the model. Forest types described by the model included pinyon-juniper, ponderosa pine, ponderosa pine-fir mixes, spruce-dominated mixes, deciduous-dominated mixes, and clearings. Sample-based accuracy assessment accounted for 92.9% of the variability in the vegetation model. Error rates (post-stratified) were weighted by the proportion of area each forest type occupied. Independent validation using double sampling with post-stratification accounted for 74.5% of the estimated variability in the model. Ponderosa pine comprised the largest proportion (55.5%) of vegetative area and contributed the highest accuracy estimate (sample-based: 98.0%; cross-validation: 90.8%) to the overall forest model. Identified sources of error included (1) differentiating between pine-fir and spruce-dominated forest types (sample-based assessment) and (2) distinguishing openings in the forest from deciduous-dominated mixes (double sampling). This model has been used to describe forest structure (basal area, canopy cover, maximum understory vegetative height, presence of seedlings and saplings, and proportion of pine, aspen, spruce and fir basal areas) on the Kaibab National Forest to a 10-m resolution. Models of forest composition and structure will be linked with point-process models and a ranking of territories of northern goshawks with the purpose of identifying determinants of goshawk habitat quality.
Alterations of Glucose-Dependent Insulinotropic Polypeptide and Expression of Genes Involved in Mammary Gland and Adipose Tissue Lipid Metabolism during Pregnancy and Lactation

Gastric inhibitory polypeptide (GIP) is a gut derived peptide with multiple emerging physiological actions. Effects of pregnancy and lactation on GIP secretion and related gene expression were studied in Wistar rats. Pregnancy moderately increased feeding (p<0.05), whilst lactation substantially increased food intake (p<0.01 to p<0.001). Circulating GIP was unchanged during pregnancy, but non-fasting plasma glucose was significantly (p<0.01) decreased and insulin increased (p<0.05). Lactation was associated with elevated circulating GIP concentrations (p<0.001) without change of glucose or insulin. Oral glucose resulted in a significantly (p<0.001) decreased glycaemic excursion despite similar glucose-induced GIP and insulin concentrations in lactating rats. Pregnant rats had a similar glycaemic excursion but exhibited significantly lowered (p<0.05) GIP accompanied by elevated (p<0.001) insulin levels. Pregnant rats exhibited increased (p<0.001) islet numbers and individual islet areas were enlarged (p<0.05). There were no significant differences in islet alpha-cell areas, but all groups of rats displayed co-expression of glucagon and GIP in alpha-cells. Lactating rats exhibited significantly (p<0.01) increased intestinal weight, whereas intestinal GIP stores were significantly (p<0.01) elevated only in pregnant rats. Gene expression studies in lactating rats revealed prominent (p<0.01 to p<0.001) increases in mammary gland expression of genes involved in energy turnover, including GIP-R. GIP was present in intestines and plasma of 17 day old foetal rats, with substantially raised circulating concentrations in neonates throughout the period of lactation/suckling. These data indicate that changes in the secretion and action of GIP play an important role in metabolic adaptations during pregnancy and especially lactation.
Grazing impacts on Mars: A record of lost satellites

Grazing impacts can be identified on the basis of the elongate shape of the resulting crater and a distinctive pattern of ejecta deposits. Over 170 such impact craters larger than 3 km are recognized on Mars, and they represent more than 5% of the total crater population of the ridged plains. In contrast, the moon exhibits only one comparable example larger than 3 km on the maria, a frequency consistent with theoretical estimates for an isotropic influx of impactors. Many Mars grazers appear to occur along great circles. The most recent examples generally impacted in an east-west direction, whereas older grazers impacted in more northerly directions. We interpret the excessive number of grazers and the common impact directions as the result of satellites whose orbits tidally decayed with time. If all orbits originally had small inclinations similar to the orbits of Phobos and Deimos as well as the most recent grazers, then the change in impact direction with time can be explained as the result of shifts in the crust due to changes in the martian moments of inertia. The locations of the projected orbital axes (orbit-pole points) on the martian surface indicate that the geographic poles of Mars originallymore » were situated at lower latitudes. More than 95% of the mass represented by these proposed satellites impacted prior to the emplacement of the volcanic plains of Lunae Planum. The estimated combined mass of grazing impactors would form a satellite at least 225 km in diameter. These results may provide new clues for the origin of Phobos and Deimos and perhaps the angular momentum of Mars. « less
Ieee Transactions on Computational Intelligence and Ai in Games the 2014 General Video Game Playing Competition

—This paper presents the framework, rules, games, controllers and results of the first General Video Game Playing Competition, held at the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games in 2014. The competition proposes the challenge of creating controllers for general video game play, where a single agent must be able to play many different games, some of them unknown to the participants at the time of submitting their entries. This test can be seen as an approximation of General Artificial Intelligence, as the amount of game-dependent heuristics needs to be severely limited. The games employed are stochastic real-time scenarios (where the time budget to provide the next action is measured in milliseconds) with different winning conditions, scoring mechanisms , sprite types and available actions for the player. It is a responsibility of the agents to discover the mechanics of each game, the requirements to obtain a high score and the requisites to finally achieve victory. This paper describes all controllers submitted to the competition, with an in-depth description of four of them by their authors, including the winner and the runner-up entries of the contest. The paper also analyzes the performance of the different approaches submitted, and finally proposes future tracks for the competition.
A rating measure of ADHD-related neuropsychological impairment in children and adolescents: Data from the Cognition and Motivation in Everyday Life (CAMEL) Scale from population and clinical samples

ABSTRACT A new parent-completed questionnaire, the Cognition and Motivation in Everyday Life (CAMEL) scale, was developed to provide a comprehensive assessment of neuropsychological impairment in children related to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across diverse cognitive, motivational and energetic domains. Its psychometric properties were investigated. A total of 60 items were generated to cover a wide range of putative ADHD-related neuropsychological processes. A clinical (n = 142) and community (n = 810) sample of parents with children between 6 and 16 years of age completed the questionnaire. Data on ADHD symptoms were also collected with a commonly-used, validated parent rating scale to explore the associations between CAMEL scores and dimensional measures of child ADHD and conduct problems. Factor analysis identified six factors which we labeled (i) Cognition, (ii) Self-Direction and Organization, (iii) Effort Engagement, (iv) Arousal Regulation, (v) Motivational Responsiveness, and (vi) Cautiousness. Self-Direction and Organization and Arousal Regulation were the strongest predictors for ADHD symptomatology. Self-Direction and Organization was strongly associated with inattention and Arousal Regulation with hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms. Parents distinguished between broad neuropsychological domains in reliable and plausible ways, making distinctions between key aspects of functioning. However, the boundaries between these domains did not map directly onto the distinctions drawn within traditional models of ADHD deficits. Further research is required to examine the predictive validity and cost-effectiveness of the CAMEL scale compared to direct objective testing using laboratory measures in predicting prognosis and treatment outcome.
The effect of perceived involvement on trust in human-robot interaction

Trust serves as a powerful social capacity that can influence the course of a relationship, either spurring a willingness or refusal of one agent to interact with another. As we attempt to build increasingly complex and useful social robots, we must consider what factors will engender such trust and thus benefit human-robot interaction. In this paper we describe a line of inquiry that is investigating how a person's perceived involvement in helping a robot recover from failure affects the person's trust in the robot and in its future actions. We posit that a person's active involvement with a robot, compared with passive observation, will lead to greater trust in the robot.
Notice of RetractionRelationship Study between Interdependence and Relationship Performance in the Marketing Channel

There are different characters in interdependence between members in a marketing channel, which express total interdependence and asymmetry independence. They respectively act on relational behavior between members in a marketing channel, and create different outcomes. The empirical results show that total interdependence has a positive effect on relationship performance, that is, conflict decreases and satisfactions increase, and that asymmetry independence has a reverse effect.
Genomics and computational science for virus research

RNA viruses are highly mutable, yet changes in genomes and proteins would be restricted by the functional and structural constraints inherent in the survival strategies of viruses in nature. Rapidly evolving technologies in genomics and computational science are now opening up a new avenue for elucidating the real picture of diversity of the organism in nature and for studying the principles underlying the maintenance and change of structures, interactions, and functions of biomolecules. The information is essential for understanding the evolutionary dynamics of virus-host interactions in virological, immunological, and epidemiological phenomena and for rationally developing methods to control RNA viruses. In this Research Topic, we present 17 timely articles, consisting of 5 reviews, 3 mini reviews, 7 original researches, 1 hypothesis & theory, and 1 perspective, all of which underscore the challenges and increasing importance of incorporating the new technologies to study RNA viruses and their impacts on hosts.
Stress-induced Protein Phosphatase 2C Is a Negative Regulator of a Mitogen-activated Protein Kinase*

Protein phosphatases of type 2C (PP2Cs) play important roles in eukaryotic signal transduction. In contrast to other eukaryotes, plants such as Arabidopsis have an unusually large group of 69 different PP2C genes. At present, little is known about the functions and substrates of plant PP2Cs. We have previously shown that MP2C, a wound-induced alfalfa PP2C, is a negative regulator of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways in yeast and plants. In this report, we provide evidence that alfalfa salt stress-inducible MAPK (SIMK) and stress-activated MAPK (SAMK) are activated by wounding and that MP2C is a MAPK phosphatase that directly inactivates SIMK but not the wound-activated MAPK, SAMK. SIMK is inactivated through threonine dephosphorylation of the pTEpY motif, which is essential for MAPK activity. Mutant analysis indicated that inactivation of SIMK depends on the catalytic activity of MP2C. A comparison of MP2C with two other PP2Cs, ABI2 and AtP2CHA, revealed that although all three phosphatases have similar activities toward casein as a substrate, only MP2C is able to dephosphorylate and inactivate SIMK. In agreement with the notion that MP2C interacts directly with SIMK, the MAPK was identified as an interacting partner of MP2C in a yeast two-hybrid screen. MP2C can be immunoprecipitated with SIMK in a complex in vivo and shows direct binding to SIMK in vitro in protein interaction assays. Wound-induced MP2C expression correlates with the time window when SIMK is inactivated, corroborating the notion that MP2C is involved in resetting the SIMK signaling pathway.
Theories of modules closed under direct products

Abstract We generalize to theories of modules (complete or not) a result of U. Felgner stating that a complete theory of abelian groups is a Horn theory if and only if it is closed under products. To prove this we show that a reduced product of modules ΠFMi (i ϵ I) is elementarily equivalent to a direct product of ultraproducts of the modules Mi(i ϵ I).
Design and verification of ARGOS Tx/Rx space segment antenna

An innovative Tx/Rx on-board antenna configuration suitable for ARGOS satellite applications has been studied, manufactured and tested. The antenna operates in right hand circular polarization at two narrow band frequencies centred around 402MHz and 466MHz and has an iso-flux type radiation pattern in the angular range from 0° to 63°.
Pseudo-merohedral twinning and noncrystallographic symmetry in orthorhombic crystals of SIVmac239 Nef core domain bound to different-length TCRζ fragments

P212121 crystals of SIV Nef core domain bound to a peptide fragment of the T-cell receptor ζ subunit exhibited noncrystallographic symmetry and nearly perfect pseudo-merohedral twinning simulating tetragonal symmetry. For a different peptide fragment, nontwinned tetragonal crystals were observed but diffracted to lower resolution. The structure was determined after assignment of the top molecular-replacement solutions to various twin or NCS domains followed by refinement under the appropriate twin law.
Evidence for an outflow from the Seyfert galaxy NGC

New observations using narrow band imaging, long-slit spectroscopy and MERLIN observations of the nuclear region of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 4051 have been made. An edge brightened, triangular region of ionized gas extending 420 pc from the centre of the galaxy has been detected. Long-slit spectra of this ionised gas, taken at 1.5 ′′ from the core, show the [O iii] 5007-u emission line to consist of two velocity components, both blue-shifted from the systemic radial velocity, with velocity widths of 140 kms −1 and separated by 120 kms −1 . This region is co-spatial with weak extended radio emission and is suggestive of a centrally driven outflow. The [O iii] 5007-u line spectrum and image of this region have been modelled as an outflowing conical structure at 50 ◦ to the line of sight with a half opening angle of 23 ◦ . In addition to the extended structure, high resolution MERLIN observations of the 18-cm nuclear radio emission reveal a compact (1 ′′ ) radio triple source in PA 73 ◦ . This source is coincident with the HST-imaged emission line structure. These high resolution observations are consistent with a more compact origin of activity (i.e. a Seyfert nucleus) than a starburst region.
BEHAVIOUR BASED CONTROL WITH FUZZY AUTOMATON IN VEHICLE NAVIGATION

From the viewpoint of Behaviour based Control many control tasks can be divided into separate behaviour components. By defining the relevant behaviour components, the actual control action can be constructed based on the individual control actions of the component behaviours. In this case the control action is either related to an individual behaviour component or to a fusion of behaviour components based on their relevance to the actual situation. This paper adapts the concept of fuzzy automaton for achieving the decision related to the relevance of the behaviour components in the task of the navigation of an autonomous vehicle. In the structure applied, the relevance of the behaviour components is approximated by a fuzzy rule interpolation (FRI, namely the FIVE method) based fuzzy automaton. The main reason for the FRI application is the state-transition rule-base simplification of the fuzzy automaton. In case of FRI, sparse rule bases (incomplete rule bases) are acceptable, because derivable rules can be omitted intentionally, saving construction time and reducing the complexity of the state-transition rule-base. The paper also provides a brief overview of Behaviour based Control and fuzzy rule interpolation (FRI). For demonstration purposes the paper gives a simple example of state-transition rulebase construction in case of the vehicle navigation task mentioned.
A gradual scheduling framework for problem size reduction and cross basic block parallelism exploitation in high-level synthesis

In High-level Synthesis, scheduling has a critical impact on the quality of hardware implementation. However, the schedules of different operations are actually having unequal impacts on the Quality of Result. Based on this fact, we propose a novel scheduling framework, which is able to schedule the operations separately according their significance to Quality of Result, to avoid wasting the computational efforts on noncritical operations. Furthermore, the proposed framework supports global code motion, which helps to improve the speed performance of the hardware implementation by distributing the execution time of operations across the their parent BB.
Analysis of full bridge DC-DC converter in power system

Isolated dc-dc converter is widely used in power system, especially in green power applications. Compared with the other circuits, full bridge converter is more suitable for power system, where high power and high voltage are involved. This paper proposes the full bridge converter with the uncontrolled rectifier. Three different operating modes and characteristics are analysed. Besides, this paper studies the impact of transformer's leakage inductance and the value of output inductor on the transformer's input current and transfer power. MATLAB simulation results are also shown to support the analysis.
In Vitro Sensitivities of Plasmodium falciparum to Different Antimalarial Drugs in Uganda

ABSTRACT The control of malaria is challenged by resistance of Plasmodium falciparum to multiple drugs. New combination regimens are now advocated for the treatment of uncomplicated falciparum malaria, but the extent of resistance to newer agents is incompletely understood. We measured the in vitro sensitivity of P. falciparum parasites cultured from children enrolled in a drug efficacy trial in Kampala, Uganda, from 2006 to 2008. Sensitivities were measured by comparing levels of histidine-rich protein-2 in parasites incubated with different concentrations of drugs with those in untreated controls. The cultured parasites exhibited a wide range of sensitivities to chloroquine (CQ); monodesethylamodiaquine (MDAQ), the major active metabolite of amodiaquine; and quinine (QN). Mean 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) results were above standard cutoffs for resistance for CQ and MDAQ. Parasites were generally sensitive to dihydroartemisinin (DHA), lumefantrine (LM), and piperaquine (PQ). For CQ, MDAQ, and QN but not the other drugs, activities against individual strains were highly correlated. We also assessed known resistance-mediating polymorphisms in two putative transporters, pfcrt and pfmdr1. When parasites that were least and most sensitive to each drug were compared, the pfmdr1 86Y mutation was significantly more common in parasites that were most resistant to CQ and MDAQ, and the pfmdr1 D1246Y mutation was significantly more common in parasites that were most resistant to MDAQ and QN. In summary, we demonstrated in parasites from Kampala a range of sensitivities to older drugs; correlation of sensitivities to CQ, MDAQ, and QN; and good activity against nearly all strains for DHA, LM, and PQ.
Macrophage Migration Inhibition in Experimental Diabetes

Abstract To study the cause of increased susceptibility to infections in diabetes, peritoneal macrophages from normal, untreated and insulin-treated diabetic rats were isolated using thioglycollate as an irritant. Alterations in the number of macrophages, their in vitro ability to phagocytose, and migrate from a capillary chamber in response to murine migration inhibition factor (MIF) were investigated. The macrophages from the diabetic rats exhibited decreased sensitivity to MIF and also phagocytic activity with respect to sheep red blood cells. Insulin treatment for 10 to 15 days significantly improved these characteristics toward normal.
Support and rehabilitation of patients with pulmonary expansion deficit by using game therapy

Patients suffering from hypoventilation and pulmonary expansion deficit are at increased risk of developing pulmonary complications such as atelectasis, pneumonia or pleural effusion. These complications can increase the length of stay and spending on health, and generate long-term functional impairment. This study aims to produce a therapeutic alternative to the traditional method of lung re-expansion through incentive spirometry (IS) using the game therapy to build an innovative system. This system makes use of infrared and Bluetooth communication technology to associate the game therapy to EI. At the end of the system implementation, we expect to obtain good adhesion of the patient and the physiotherapists.