Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the role of stiffness design for fingertip trajectories of underactuated modular soft hands

In this work, we propose a method to compute the stiffness of flexible joints and its realization in order to let the fingers track a certain predefined trajectory. We refer to tendon-driven, underactuated and passively compliant hands composed of deformable joints and rigid links. Specific stiffness and pre-form shapes can be assigned to the finger joints can be given s such that a single-cable actuation can be used. We firstly define a procedure to determine suitable joints stiffness and then we propose a possible realization of soft joints using rapid prototyping techniques. The stiffness computation is obtained leveraging on the the mechanics of tendon-driven hands and on compliant systems, while for its implementation beam theory has been exploited. We validate the proposed framework both in simulation and with experiments using the robotic Soft-SixthFinger, a wearable robot for grasping compensation in patients with a paretic hand, as a case study. The proposed framework can be used to design the stiffness of the passive joints in several model of underactuated tendon-driven soft hands so to improve their grasping capabilities.
Punishment and partner switching cause cooperative behaviour in a cleaning mutualism

Abstract: What are the mechanisms that prevent partners from cheating in potentially cooperative interactions between unrelated individuals? The cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus and client reef fish both benefit from an interaction as long as the cleaner eats ectoparasites. However, the cleaner fish prefers some client mucus, which constitutes cheating. Field observations suggested that clients control such cheating by using punishment (chasing the cleaner) or by switching partners (fleeing from the cleaner). Here, we tested experimentally whether such client behaviours result in cooperative cleaner fish. Cleaners were allowed to feed from Plexiglas plates containing prawn items and fish flake items. A lever attached to the plates allowed us to mimic the behaviours of clients. As cleaners showed a strong preference for prawn over flakes, we taught them that eating their preferred food would cause the plate to either chase them or to flee, while feeding on flakes had no negative consequences. We found a significant shift in cleaner fish foraging behaviour towards flake feeding after six learning trials. As punishment and terminating an interaction resulted in the cleaners feeding against their preferences in our experiment, we propose that the same behaviours in clients improve the service quality of cleaners under natural conditions.
Preliminary determination of flame speeds from infrared images using image processing techniques in a 150 kWth coal fired combustion test rig

Flame speeds are important flame characteristics in combustion processes as it determines the stability of the flame. Accurate experimental measurements of flame speeds require optical systems and diagnostic instruments, such as those in schlieren photography. However, these systems are more suitable in laboratory environments. In industrial furnaces, simpler methods are required to determine the flame speeds for comparison. Infrared cameras are used to detect ‘hot spots’ in furnaces, and since the radiation intensity of the flame is indicated by the brightness of the pixels in the images, a sequence of images can be used to determine the difference in the pixels’ brightness, allowing determination of the flame’s movement and subsequently the flame speed. Thus, in this study, a tool to determine the flame speeds using an image processing technique is presented. Preliminary results of the flame speeds from a 150 kWth coal fired combustion test rig were obtained. The combustion test rig contains a moveable block that imparts a swirling flow with a swirl number of 2.0. Infrared images were recorded for liquid petroleum gas (LPG) flames and coal-flames. The approximated flame speeds show that the coal flames are highly fluctuating compared to liquid petroleum gas flames. This may be caused by the inertia of the coal particulates that have increased the turbulence of the gas flow. Keywords—coal flames, flame speeds, image processing, infrared imaging.
Chapter 3 Health Effects of E ‐ Cigarette Use Among U . S . Youth and Young Adults

Effects of Aerosol Inhalation by the E‐Cigarette User 100 Dose and Effects of Inhaling Aerosolized Nicotine 100 Aerosolized Nicotine and Cardiovascular Function 101 Aerosolized Nicotine and Dependence 102 Effects of Nicotine in Youth Users 104 Nicotine Exposure from Maternal Nicotine Consumption: Prenatal and Postnatal Health Outcomes 108 Summary 113 Effects of the Inhalation of Aerosol Constituents Other than Nicotine 114 Aerosolized Nicotine‐Related Compounds 114 Aerosolized Solvents 115 Aerosolized Flavorants 115 Aerosolized Adulterants 116 Summary 117 Effects of Toxicants Produced During Aerosolization 118 Summary 119 Effects Not Involving Inhalation of Aerosol by the E‐Cigarette User 119 Health Effects Attributable to Explosions and Fires Caused by E‐Cigarettes 119 Health Effects Caused by Ingestion of E‐Cigarette Liquids 119 Secondhand Exposure to the Constituents of E‐Cigarette Aerosol 120 Exposure to Nonusers 120 Movement of E‐Cigarette Aerosol 121 Exposure to E‐Cigarette Aerosol and Considerations of Dose 121 Health Effects of Secondhand Exposure to E‐Cigarette Aerosols 122
[Epidemiology of non-typhoid salmonellosis in a hospital in Pontevedra (1994-1997)].

BACKGROUND Since data on non-typhoidal salmonellosis in our health care area are scarce, we undertook an epidemiological study covering a four year period (1994-1997). METHODS Retrospective descriptive study carried out through review of the medical and clinical microbiologic records at Hospital Provincial de Pontevedra. Culture, isolation, identification, antibiotic susceptibility and serotypification were done according to usual Clinical Microbiology protocols. RESULTS Along the period under study 459 cases of non-typhoidal salmonellosis were diagnosed. The relative incidence was higher among pediatric than adult patients. Between 1994-1996 top incidence was detected in August, while in 1997 another maximum was found in April, closely related to climatic variations. The most frequent serogroup was D, with an increase in serogroup B since 1996. We found 16 different serotypes, being the more frequent in decreasing order Enteritidis (87.2%), Typhimurium (3.6%) and Hadar (2.3%). This distribution shows differences with regard to other national series covering a similar period of time. The more frequently detected antibiotic resistance was to ampicillin (39.0% strains), ampicillin-sulbactam (17.6%) and nalidixic acid (5.9%). Neither 3rd-generation cephalosporines nor fluoroquinolones resistance was detected. Serotype Typhimurium was the most resistant. We found association between certain resistance patterns and serotypes Hadar, Paratyphi B and Typhimurium. Most diagnosed cases corresponded to acute gastroenteritis (95.6%). Patients under 3 and over 69 suffered more frequently from extraintestinal salmonellosis. CONCLUSIONS The high incidence of alimentary toxinfection due to Salmonella spp. in our area should warrant strict epidemiological surveillance programmes to detect sources of infection, evaluate sanitary control measures and use of antibiotics.
Conserving social–ecological systems in Indonesia: human–nonhuman primate interconnections in Bali and Sulawesi

An important question asked by primatologists and conservationists alike is: what is the relevance of primates and primate conservation for ecosystem conservation? The goal of this article is to contribute to this dialogue by advocating the use of a research perspective that focuses on the dynamics of human–nonhuman primate sympatry and interaction (i.e., ethnoprimatology) in order to better understand complex social–ecological systems and to inform their conservation management. This perspective/approach is based largely on the recognition that human primates are important components of all ecological systems and that niche construction is a fundamental feature of their adaptive success. To demonstrate the relevance of the human–nonhuman primate interface for ecosystem conservation, we provide examples from our research from two islands in the Indonesian archipelago: Bali and Sulawesi. In Bali, humans and long‐tail macaques coexist in a system that creates favorable environments for the macaques. This anthropogenic landscape and the economic and ecological relationships between humans and monkeys on Bali provide insight into sustainable systems of human/nonhuman primate coexistence. In Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi, villagers and Tonkean macaques overlap in their use of both forest and cultivated resources. The finding that the Arenga pinnata palm is extremely important for both villagers and macaques points to a conservation management recommendation that may help protect the overall ecosystem; the cultivation and propagation of mutually important tree species at forest‐agricultural ecotone as a means to curb crop raiding and to alleviate farmer's perceived need to clear additional forest. Am. J. Primatol. 73:62–74, 2011. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Poly-Thymidine Oligonucleotides Mediate Activation of Murine Glial Cells Primarily Through TLR7, Not TLR8

The functional role of murine TLR8 in the inflammatory response of the central nervous system (CNS) remains unclear. Murine TLR8 does not appear to respond to human TLR7/8 agonists, due to a five amino acid deletion in the ectodomain. However, recent studies have suggested that murine TLR8 may be stimulated by alternate ligands, which include vaccinia virus DNA, phosphothioate oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) or the combination of phosphothioate poly-thymidine oligonucleotides (pT-ODNs) with TLR7/8 agonists. In the current study, we analyzed the ability of pT-ODNs to induce activation of murine glial cells in the presence or absence of TLR7/8 agonists. We found that TLR7/8 agonists induced the expression of glial cell activation markers and induced the production of multiple proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines in mixed glial cultures. In contrast, pT-ODNs alone induced only low level expression of two cytokines, CCL2 and CXCL10. The combination of pT-ODNs along with TLR7/8 agonists induced a synergistic response with substantially higher levels of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines compared to CL075. This enhancement was not due to cellular uptake of the agonist, indicating that the pT-ODN enhancement of cytokine responses was due to effects on an intracellular process. Interestingly, this response was also not due to synergistic stimulation of both TLR7 and TLR8, as the loss of TLR7 abolished the activation of glial cells and cytokine production. Thus, pT-ODNs act in synergy with TLR7/8 agonists to induce strong TLR7-dependent cytokine production in glial cells, suggesting that the combination of pT-ODNs with TLR7 agonists may be a useful mechanism to induce pronounced glial activation in the CNS.
Scaling Limit of Fluctuations in Stochastic Homogenization

We investigate the global fluctuations of solutions to elliptic equations with random coefficients in the discrete setting. In dimension $d\geq 3$ and for i.i. d. \ coefficients, we show that after a suitable scaling, these fluctuations converge to a Gaussian field that locally resembles a (generalized) Gaussian free field. The paper begins with a heuristic derivation of the result, which can be read independently and was obtained jointly with Scott Armstrong.
Live Collaborative Large-Scale Dense 3D Reconstruction Using Consumer-Grade Hardware

We present a real-time system for collaboratively reconstructing dense volumetric models of large 3D scenes (see Figure 1). Reconstructing such models is important for many tasks – e.g. content creation for films and games [10], augmented reality [19], cultural heritage preservation [21] and building information modelling [14] – but capturing large scenes can take significant time, and the risk of transient changes to the scene (e.g. people moving around) goes up as the capture time increases, corrupting the model and forcing the user to restart the capture. There are thus good reasons to want instead to split the capture into several shorter sequences, which can be captured either over multiple sessions or in parallel (by multiple users) and then joined to make the whole scene.
Principal Pattern Analysis: A Combined Approach for Dimensionality Reduction with Pattern Categorization

Over the past decades there has been several techniques found to overcome the data analysis problem in most of the science domains such as engineering, astronomy, biology, remote sensing, economics, consumer transactions etc., It is required to reduce the dimension of the data (having less features) in order to improve the efficiency and accuracy of data analysis. Traditional statistical methods partly calls off due to the increase in the number of observations, but mainly because of the increase in number of variables associated with each observation. As a consequence an ideal technique called Principal Pattern Analysis is developed which encapsulates feature extraction and categorize features. Initially it applies principal component analysis to extract eigen vectors similarly to prove pattern categorization theorem the corresponding patterns are segregated. Certain decisive factors as weight vectors are determined to categorize the patterns. Experimental results have been proved that error approximation rate is very less too it’s more versatile for high dimensional datasets.
Applying a uniform marked morphism to a word

We describe the relationship between different parameters of the initial word and its image obtained by application of a uniform marked morphism. The functions described include the subword complexity, frequency of factors, and the recurrence function. The relations obtained for the image of a word can be used also for the image of a factorial language. Using induction, we give a full description of the involved functions of the fixed point of the morphism considered.
Outdoor auditory scene analysis using a moving microphone array embedded in a quadrocopter

This paper addresses auditory scene analysis, especially, sound source localization using an aerial vehicle with a microphone array in an outdoor environment. Since such a vehicle is able to search sound sources quickly and widely, it is useful to detect outdoor sound sources, for instance, to find distressed people in a disaster situation. In such an environment, noise is quite loud and dynamically-changing, and conventional microphone array techniques studied in the field of indoor robot audition are of less use. We, thus, proposed MUltiple SIgnal Classification based on incremental Generalized EigenValue Decomposition (iGEVD-MUSIC). It can deal with high power noise by introducing a noise correlation matrix and GEVD even when the signal-to-noise ratio is less than 0 dB. In addition, the noise correlation matrix is incrementally estimated to adapt to dynamic changes in noise. We developed a prototype system for auditory scene analysis based on the proposed method using the Parrot AR.Drone with a microphone array and a Kinect device. Experimental results using the prototype system showed that dynamically-changing noise is properly suppressed with the proposed method and multiple human voice sources are able to be localized even when the AR.Drone is moving in an outdoor environment.
Phase 1 and Pharmacokinetic Study of Lexatumumab in Patients with Advanced Cancers

Purpose: To assess the safety and tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and early evidence of antitumor activity of escalating doses of lexatumumab (HGS-ETR2), a fully human agonistic monoclonal antibody which targets and activates the tumor necrosis factor–related apoptosis-inducing ligand receptor 2 (TRAIL-R2) in patients with advanced solid malignancies. Experimental Design: In this phase 1, open label study, patients with advanced solid malignancies were treated with escalating doses of lexatumumab administered i.v. over 30 to 120 min every 21 days. A cohort of four patients, which could be expanded to six patients, was studied at each dose level. The dose-limiting toxicity (DLT) dose was defined as the dose at which the incidence of DLT in the first two cycles was ≥33%. The maximum tolerated dose was defined as the highest dose at which <33% of subjects experienced DLT. The pharmacokinetics and immunogenicity of lexatumumab were also characterized. Tumor specimens from historical or current biopsies, when available, were stained for TRAIL-R2 using immunohistochemistry techniques. Results: Thirty-seven patients received 120 cycles of lexatumumab at doses ranging from 0.1 to 20 mg/kg every 21 days as of May 2006. The 20 mg/kg dose was identified as the DLT dose based on DLTs in three of seven patients treated with this dose; DLTs included asymptomatic elevations of serum amylase, transaminases, and bilirubin. The 10 mg/kg dose cohort was expanded to 12 patients and the 10 mg/kg dose was identified as the maximum tolerated dose. The mean (±SD) clearance and apparent terminal half-life values at the 10 mg/kg dose averaged 6.0 (2.9) mL/d/kg and 16.4 (10.9) days, respectively. Twelve patients had durable stable disease that lasted a median of 4.5 months, including three patients with sarcoma having prolonged stable disease (≥6.7 months). Immunohistochemistry for TRAIL-R2 showed specific staining in >10% of tumor cells for 16 of the 20 evaluable specimens submitted (80%). Conclusions: Lexatumumab was safe and well tolerated at doses up to and including 10 mg/kg every 21 days. Lexatumumab was associated with sustained stable disease in several patients. Pharmacokinetics were linear over the dose range studied, and consistent with a two-compartment model with first-order elimination from the central compartment. Additional evaluation of this novel apoptosis-inducing agent, particularly in combination with chemotherapy agents, is warranted and ongoing.
Deliberate self-harm patients in the emergency department: who will repeat and who will not? Validation and development of clinical decision rules

Objectives (1) Validate an existing clinical tool for assessing risk after deliberate self-harm (DSH), Manchester Self-Harm Rule, in a new setting and new population, (2) develop a clinical decision rule based on factors associated with repeated self-harm in a Swedish population and (3) compare these rules. Design A consecutive series of 1524 patients attending one of Scandinavia's largest emergency departments (ED) due to DSH during a 3-year period were included. Explanatory factors were collected from hospital charts and national databases. A nationwide register-based follow-up of new DSH episode or death by suicide within 6 months was used. We used logistic regression, area under the curve and classification trees to identify factors associated with repetition. To evaluate the ability of different decision rules to identify patients who will repeat DSH, we calculated the sensitivity and specificity. Main outcome measure Repeated DSH or suicide within 6 months. Results The cumulative incidence for patients repeating within 6 months was 20.3% (95% CI 18.0% to 22.0%). Application of Manchester Self-Harm Rule to our material yielded a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 21%. The clinical decision rule based on four factors associated with repetition in the Swedish population yielded a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 18%. Conclusions Application of either rules, with high sensitivity, may facilitate assessment in the ED and help focus right resources on patients at a higher risk. Irrespective of the choice of decision rule, it is difficult to separate those who will repeat from those who will not due to low specificity.
Priming with synthetic oligonucleotides attenuates pressure overload-induced inflammation and cardiac hypertrophy in mice.

AIMS Inflammation and Toll-like receptor (TLR) signalling have been linked to the development of cardiac hypertrophy following transverse aortic constriction (TAC). In the present study, we investigated whether pre-treatment with the synthetic TLR9 ligands 1668-thioate or 1612-thioate modulates the progression of TAC-induced cardiac inflammation and hypertrophy. METHODS AND RESULTS C57BL/6N-mice were pre-treated with 1668-thioate, 1612-thioate (0.25 nmol/g, i.p.), or phosphate-buffered saline 16 h prior to TAC or sham surgery. Heart-weight/body-weight ratio (HW/BW), cardiomyocyte cell size, cellular macrophage accumulation, myofibroblast differentiation, and collagen deposition were investigated for up to 28 days. Cardiac function was monitored using a pressure-volume catheter and M-mode echocardiography. Inflammatory gene expression in the heart was analysed via gene array, while the time course of mRNA expression of key inflammatory mediators was assessed via RT-qPCR. TAC increased the HW/BW ratio and cardiomyocyte cell size and induced macrophage accumulation, myofibroblast differentiation, and collagen deposition. These changes were accompanied by cardiac inflammation and a significant loss of left ventricular function. Pre-treatment with cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG)-containing 1668-thioate attenuated the inflammatory response, the progression of cardiac hypertrophy, and cardiac remodelling, which resulted in a prolonged preservation of left ventricular function. These changes were induced to a smaller extent by the use of the non-CG-containing oligodeoxynucleotide 1612-thioate. CONCLUSION Pre-treatment with 1668-thioate attenuated cardiac hypertrophy following pressure overload, possibly by modifying the hypertrophy-induced inflammatory response, thereby reducing cardiac growth and fibrosis as well as delaying loss of cardiac function.
Benchmarking and Characterization of event-based Neuromorphic Hardware

We present the modular framework SNABSuite (Spiking Neural Architecture Benchmark Suite) for “black-box” benchmarking of neuromorphic hardware systems and spiking neural network software simulators. The motivation for having a coherent collection of benchmarks is twofold: first, benchmarks evaluated on different platforms provide measures for direct comparison of performance indicators (e.g. resource efficiency, quality of the result, robustness .). By using the platforms as they are provided for possible end-users and evaluating selected performance indicators, benchmarks support the decision for or against a system based on use-case requirements. Second, benchmarks may reveal opportunities for effective improvements of a system and can contribute to future development. Systems like the Heidelberg BrainScaleS-project [2], IBM TrueNorth [3], the Manchester SpiNNaker chip [4] or the Intel Loihi platform [5] drive the evolution of neuromorphic hardware implementations, while comparable benchmarks and corresponding measures are still rare. The problem of “comparable” measures can be addressed in two ways: concerning application driven measures like classification accuracy it may be advantageous to implement these algorithms in a highly specialized manner to get the best result