Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
One-shot learning and generation of dexterous grasps for novel objects

This paper presents a method for one-shot learning of dexterous grasps and grasp generation for novel objects. A model of each grasp type is learned from a single kinesthetic demonstration and several types are taught. These models are used to select and generate grasps for unfamiliar objects. Both the learning and generation stages use an incomplete point cloud from a depth camera, so no prior model of an object shape is used. The learned model is a product of experts, in which experts are of two types. The first type is a contact model and is a density over the pose of a single hand link relative to the local object surface. The second type is the hand-configuration model and is a density over the whole-hand configuration. Grasp generation for an unfamiliar object optimizes the product of these two model types, generating thousands of grasp candidates in under 30 seconds. The method is robust to incomplete data at both training and testing stages. When several grasp types are considered the method selects the highest-likelihood grasp across all the types. In an experiment, the training set consisted of five different grasps and the test set of 45 previously unseen objects. The success rate of the first-choice grasp is 84.4% or 77.7% if seven views or a single view of the test object are taken, respectively.
Imaging the serotonin 1A receptor using [11C]WAY100635 in healthy controls and major depression

As a neurotransmitter, serotonin (5-HT) is widely used throughout the brain and known to play a role in many processes including emotion and brain development. Of the 15 subtypes of 5-HT receptors, the 1A receptor (5-HT1A) has been implicated in depression and suicide. Using the [carbonyl-11C]WAY100635 ([11C]WAY) ligand and positron emission tomography, we have studied the 5-HT1A receptor, first in a group of healthy controls, then in two separate groups of subjects with major depressive disorder (MDD) (antidepressant exposed and not recently medicated), and, lastly, in a group of subjects remitted from MDD. All MDD subjects were medication-free at the time of scan. We found higher 5-HT1A binding potential (BPF) in MDD subjects not recently exposed to an antidepressant compared with controls and recently medicated MDD subjects; and higher BPF in subjects with the C(-1019)G promoter polymorphism. We replicated these findings in a novel cohort and reconciled our discrepant findings with other groups using alternate quantification techniques. We also reported higher BPF in subjects remitted from a major depressive episode than in controls. From this work, we proposed a temporal model in which 5-HT1A BPF may be a trait abnormality of MDD. To further explore the genetic components of MDD and utility of 5-HT1A imaging as a potential tool for biomarker or treatment response prediction, these findings should be replicated in a larger cohort using the [11C]CUMI-101 agonist tracer.
Solving the 1980s' Velocity Puzzle: A Progress Report

HE velocity of money measures the relationship between nominal income and the money stock. In its simplest form , the quantity theory of money states that nomtiinal income is equal to the money stock multiplied by its velocity. If velocity is reasonably stable, changes in the money stock have predictable consequences on nominal income; if the money stock is controllable as well, the quantity theory has useful imnplications for' economic policy. The relationship between money growth and inflation can he derived from the quantity theory framework by " breaking LII) " nominal income into its two components — the price level and r'eal output. Thus, the stability of the money-price link, holding real output constant, is also related closely to the stability of velocity. For over' a third of a centtuy — from 1946 to 1981 — the growth of the velocity of money, measured as the ratio of gross national product GNP) to the narrow money stock MU, was stable. Its stability contributed Courtenay C. Stone is a senior economist and Daniel L. Thornton is a research officer at the Federal Reserve Bankot St. Louis. Rosemarie V Mueller provided research assistance. The authors would also like to thank Michael Darby for helpful suggestions on an earlier draft. 'The money stock need not be perfectly controllable; neither, for that matter, must velocity be constant. Movements in velocity (or its growth), however, must be explainable by the behavior of the variables that influence it. This idea, fundamental to macroeconomic policy, was developed by Friedman (1956). See Thornton (1983) for a discussion of the role of velocity for policy purposes. to the rise of mnonetarism and the adoption of mone— tan' aggregate targets by the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world. Its stability also resulted in two empirically based r'ules of thumb that came to be used fair'ly successfully as guides to money growth's effects on income and inflation. Now, how-ever', analysts believe that these rules have failed to explain the course of income and inflation during the 1980s, due to a relatively sudden and unanticipated drop in velocity. Given the important role that velocity plays in economic and policy analysis, it is not surprising that considerable effor't has been devoted to solving this velocity puzzle. tinfortunately, these efforts have produced a welter' of competing and occasionally confusing explanations. To bring some or'der to this disarr'av, this article highlights …
An Examination of Reading Skills and Reading Outcomes for Youth Involved in a Crime Prevention Program

ABSTRACT This study examined the incidence of reading impairments, the reading profiles, and the outcomes of a reading intervention for youth involved in a comprehensive crime prevention program. Rates of reading impairments were between 55% and 61%. Reading profiles for participants with reading comprehension impairments showed deficits in phonological decoding and word reading similar to a comparison group without behavioral risks. A subset of the prevention program participants and an age- and reading level–matched comparison group received a phonology- and word-focused reading intervention. Following the intervention, both groups showed reliable and academically meaningful improvements on word- and text-level reading outcomes. The comparison group tended to have higher scores on reading comprehension; however, both groups made significant gains in this area. The reading profiles and positive outcomes in this study suggest that word-focused reading remediation will be effective for youth at imminent risk for antisocial conduct and involvement with the criminal justice system.
Prefronto-Cerebellar Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Improves Sleep Quality in Euthymic Bipolar Patients: A Brief Report

Introduction. Sleep problems are common in bipolar disorder (BD) and may persist during the euthymic phase of the disease. The aim of the study was to improve sleep quality of euthymic BD patients through the administration of prefronto-cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Methods. 25 euthymic outpatients with a diagnosis of BD Type I or II have been enrolled in the study. tDCS montage was as follows: cathode on the right cerebellar cortex and anode over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC); the intensity of stimulation was set at 2 mA and delivered for 20 min/die for 3 consecutive weeks. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to assess sleep quality at baseline and after the tDCS treatment. Results. PSQI total score and all PSQI subdomains, with the exception of “sleep medication,” significantly improved after treatment. Discussion. This is the first study where a positive effect of tDCS on the quality of sleep in euthymic BD patients has been reported. As both prefrontal cortex and cerebellum may play a role in regulating sleep processes, concomitant cathodal (inhibitory) stimulation of cerebellum and anodal (excitatory) stimulation of DLPFC may have the potential to modulate prefrontal-thalamic-cerebellar circuits leading to improvements of sleep quality.
An Approach to Rapid Prototyping of Mobile Applications

The ongoing advances in mobile application programming interfaces and frameworks make it easier to develop this type of applications. However, the design of mobile user interfaces and prototypes that enable advanced interaction styles still requires improvement. In this paper, we describe an approach for rapid prototyping of mobile applications. Here, we fall back on reusing existing tools and applications.
XML View Materialization with Deferred Incremental Refresh: the Case of a Restricted Class of Views

A view mechanism can provide a user with an appropriate portion of a database through data filtering and aggregation. Views are often materialized for query performance improvement, and in that case, their consistency needs to be maintained against updates of the underlying data. They can be either recomputed or incrementally refreshed by reflecting only the relevant updates. With the emergence of XML as the standard for data exchange on the Web, active research is under way on efficient storing and querying of XML documents with the DBMS. In this paper, we investigate the materialization of XML views and their incremental refresh for the case of a restricted class of views. The object-relational DBMS is employed to store XML documents and their materialized views, and the update log is used for deferred view refresh. Algorithms for checking a logged update's relevance to a view and for generating the optimized SQL statements to refresh the materialized view stored in an object-relational database through scanning of the update log are described. Experimental results show that our approach can be very effective in providing views of a large-scale XML warehouse on the Web.
3-D Face Reconstruction Using RBF and B Spline Method

3-D specific face model construction by way of 2-D face image is an active topic in 3-D face modeling research. In this paper, stereoscopic sense of vision is used to reconstruct 3-D feature points. Then multi-layer and multi-region RBF (radial basis function) based on feature points of frontal and profile face image is adopted for reconstructing the generic face model to get 3-D specific face model with visible organ characters. Moreover, B spline is used in 3-D face curve reconstruction. Then the near face global texture is mapped onto the reconstructed specific face model and the 3-D realistic specific human face model is obtained. Experiments show that the method is easy for constructing near face global texture, in which the reconstructed specific face model is natural and realistic, and can be used for realistic specific face modeling in facial animation.
A steerable 28 GHz array antenna using branch line coupler

This paper provides details on the design of a beam steerable array antenna for mobile applications at 28 GHz frequency band. The array is designed using a Rogers RT/duroid 5880 substrate material of 0.254 mm thickness and dielectric constant of 2.2. The designed antenna is fed by a 2 × 2 Butler matrix (BM) which also serve as a beam former to obtain the beam scanning of from -16 to 16 degrees. The 6-element array realized a peak gain of 14 dBi at the designed frequency and a wideband that cover 63 % of the frequency range. The designed antenna is applicable to 28 GHz frequency band proposed for future generation mobile communications.
The Chromobacterium violaceum ArsR Arsenite Repressor Exerts Tighter Control on Its Cognate Promoter Than the Escherichia coli System

Environmental bacteria are endowed with several regulatory systems that have potential applications in biotechnology. In this report, we characterize the arsenic biosensing features of the ars response system from Chromobacterium violaceum in the heterologous host Escherichia coli. We show that the native Pars/arsR system of C. violaceum outperforms the chromosomal ars copy of E. coli when exposed to micromolar concentrations of arsenite. To understand the molecular basis of this phenomenon, we analyzed the interaction between ArsR regulators and their promoter target sites as well as induction of the system at saturating concentrations of the regulators. In vivo titration experiments indicate that ArsR from C. violaceum has stronger binding affinity for its target promoter than the regulator from E. coli does. Additionally, arsenite induction experiments at saturating regulator concentration demonstrates that although the Pars/arsR system from E. coli displays a gradual response to increasing concentration of the inducer, the system from C. violaceum has a steeper response with a stronger promoter induction after a given arsenite threshold. Taken together, these data demonstrate the characterization of a novel arsenic response element from an environmental bacterium with potentially enhanced performance that could be further explored for the construction of an arsenic biosensor.
A 3'UTR Polymorphism of IL-6R Is Associated with Chinese Pediatric Tuberculosis

Background. IL-6 is a proinflammatory cytokine that plays a critical role in host defense against tuberculosis (TB). Genetic polymorphisms of IL-6 and its receptor IL-6R had been discussed in adult TB recently. However, their role in pediatric TB is still unclear. Due to the obvious differences in TB pathophysiology in children, which may also reflect differences in genetic background, further association studies in pediatric populations are needed. Methods. A case-control study was carried out in a Chinese pediatric population including 353 TB patients and 400 healthy controls. Tag-SNPs of IL-6 and IL-6R genes were selected by Haploview software, genotyped using MassArray, and analyzed statistically. Results. One polymorphism, rs2229238, in the 3'UTR region of IL-6R was observed to be associated with increased resistance to TB (adjusted P = 0.03). The rs2229238 T allele contributed to a reduced risk to TB in recessive heritable model (OR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.35–0.78). Conclusions. By tag-SNP genotyping based case-control study, we identified a genetic polymorphism in the IL-6R 3'UTR that regulates host resistance to pediatric TB in a Chinese population.
A virtual memory foundation for scalable deterministic parallelism

Recent deterministic execution environments promise efficient program replay and bug reproduction, but their scalability is currently limited by strictly hierarchical synchronization models or serialized thread scheduling mechanisms. To address these issues, we introduce a single-producer multiple-consumer (SPMC) virtual memory foundation for deterministic parallelism, which supports non-hierarchical synchronization without serialized thread scheduling. An extension to the Determinator microkernel, supporting SPMC memory regions, offers threads and processes scalable "peer-to-peer" communication while preserving the kernel's existing guarantee of system-enforced determinism. DetMP, a deterministic userlevel message passing API modeled on MPI, illustrates one way to build convenient application-level parallel programming abstractions atop the SPMC foundation. Preliminary results suggest that DetMP atop SPMC may be realistic and useful, achieving near-ideal speedup for parallel matrix multiplication, and good scaling for IS, in all cases ensuring strict determinism.
On Maximizing IP-SAN Throughput over TCP Connections with Automatic Parallelism Tuning for Long-Fat Networks

In this paper, we propose BDL-APT (Block Device Layer with Automatic Parallelism Tuning) that maximizes the throughput of IP-SAN protocols in long-fat networks. BDL-APT parallelizes data transfer using multiple IP-SAN sessions at a block device layer, and adjusts the number of active IP-SAN sessions automatically according to network status. A block device layer is a layer that receives read/write requests from an application or a file system, and relays those requests to a storage device. BDL-APT automatically optimizes the number of IP-SAN sessions based on the measured network status using our parallelism tuning mechanism based on a numerical computation algorithm, Golden Section Search method. We perform preliminarily investigation on the effectiveness of BDL-APT unrealistic network environments using our BDL-APT implementation. Consequently, we demonstrate that our BDL-APT operates effectively in long-fat networks.
Assessing The Relationship Between Liberalization, Ownership And Performance: The Case Of Turkish Banks

This paper employs a DEA-type Malmquist index approach to evaluate the impact of financial liberalization on the productivity changes of public, private and foreign banks in Turkey during the period between 1981 and 1990. The results indicate that all forms of banks have benefited from financial liberalization. However, foreign banks were found to be the most productive, followed by private banks and public banks respectively. The major source of productivity gains is scale changes for public and private banks and technical progress for foreign banks. It also seems that productivity growth indices of all banks converge towards the end of liberalization period.
Incidence of Type 1 Diabetes in Philadelphia Is Higher in Black Than White Children From 1995 to 1999

OBJECTIVE—To determine the epidemiology of type 1 diabetes in children in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1995 through 1999 and compare these data with previous cohorts. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—This is a report of a retrospective population-based registry maintained since 1985. Hospital records meeting the following criteria were reviewed: newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes, age 0–14 years, residing in Philadelphia at the time of diagnosis, and diagnosed from 1 January 1995 to 31 December 1999. The secondary source of validation was the School District of Philadelphia. Incidence rates by race and age were compared with 1985–1989 and 1990–1994 cohorts. RESULTS—A total of 234 case subjects were identified, and the registry was determined to be 96% complete. The overall age-adjusted incidence rate in Philadelphia was 14.8 per 100,000/year. Incidence rates in Hispanic children (15.5 per 100,000/year) and white children (12.8 per 100,000/year) have been relatively stable over 15 years. The incidence in black children (15.2 per 100,000/year), however, has increased dramatically, rising 64% in children 5–9 years of age (14.9 per 100,000/year) and 37% in the 10- to 14-year age-group (26.9 per 100,000/year). CONCLUSIONS—The overall incidence of type 1 diabetes in Philadelphia is increasing and is similar to other U.S. registries. These are the first data reporting a higher incidence in black children in a registry of children 0–14 years of age. The etiology of the marked increase in incidence in the black population is unknown and underscores the need to establish type 1 diabetes as a reportable disease, so that environmental risk factors may be thoroughly investigated.
New methods for simulating the Student T-distribution - Direct use of the inverse cumulative distribution function

We explore the Student T-Distribution and present some new techniques for simulation. In particular, an explicit and accurate approximation for the inverse, $F_n^{-1}$ of the CDF, $F_n$, is presented, as well as some simple exact and iterative techniques for defining this function. The methods presented are particularly well adapted to be used with copula and quasi-Monte-Carlo techniques.
Improving Test Suites via Generated Specifications

This thesis presents a specification-based technique for generating, augmenting, and minimizing test suites. The technique is automatic but assumes the existence of a test case generator. The technique dynamically induces specifications from test suite executions. Test suites can be generated by adding cases until the induced specification stops changing. The resulting test suites have better fault detection than suites of the same size with 100% branch coverage. Augmenting an existing test suite, such as a code-covering suite, also increases its fault detection. Minimizing test suites while holding the generated specification constant compares favorably to previously-known techniques. These positive results can be explained by two insights, which the thesis also justifies experimentally. First, given an a priori specification (an oracle), the specification coverage of a test suite compares the suite’s induced specification with the oracle. Experiments show that specification coverage is correlated with fault detection, even when test suite size and code coverage are held constant. Second, when tests are added at random to a suite, specification coverage increases rapidly, then levels o at a high value. Even without knowing the ideal specification that would be induced by all possible tests, it is possible to produce a specification very near that one. The thesis’s test suite generation and augmentation technique increases the specification coverage of the test suite, but without knowing the oracle specification and without examining the code. In addition to improving fault detection, the technique generates a specification close to the oracle, which has many benefits in itself.
Data Integration and Opportunities in Biological XML Data Management

There is a proliferation of research and industrial organizations that produce sources of huge amounts of biological data issuing from experimentation with biological systems. In order to make these heterogeneous data sources easy to use, several efforts at data integration are currently being undertaken based mainly on XML. Starting from a discussion of the main biological data types and system interactions that need to be represented, the authors discuss the main approaches proposed for their modelling through XML. Then, they show the current efforts in biological data integration and how an increasing amount of Semantic information is required in terms of vocabulary control and ontologies. Finally, future research directions in biological data integration are discussed. Marco Mesiti DICO, Università di Milano, Italy