Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An enhanced obstacle avoidance method for the visually impaired using deformable grid

Various obstacle avoidance (OA) methods with the monocular vision have been studied to assist visually impaired people. Recently, a method that effectively locates obstacles at a risk of collision using the shape variation of a grid, called deformable grid (DG), was introduced [11]. To further improve the detection performance of the previous work, a vertex deformation function representing the displacement of each vertex in the DG is firstly defined employing the perspective projection geometry. Then, the collision risk is accurately estimated based on the shape variation of the DG that is measured using the vertex deformation function. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms other conventional methods as well as the previous work in terms of both the accuracy and processing time, and clearly detects obstacles that present a risk of collision in a variety of scenarios. This method is suitable for application to electronic travel aid (ETA) systems using consumer devices, such as smart-phones, tablets, and wearable devices.
NMDA and strychnine diversely modulate spinal dorsal horn noxious responsiveness in normal rats: potential significance to sensory disorders in neuropathic pain

Changes in neuronal excitability due to increase in excitatory transmitters and/or removal of local inhibition underlie central neuron sensitization and altered responsiveness related to painful sensory disorders. To distinguish the contribution of each of the two mechanisms, they have been mimicked separately in intact rats, by iontophoretically applying excitatory (NMDA) and disinhibitory (the glycine antagonist strychnine) substances during dorsal horn neuron recording. Wide dynamic range (WDR) neurons were extracellularly recorded at the L5-L6 lumbar level in anesthetized and paralyzed rats and an analysis was made, before and during the substance application, of the characteristics of the response to noxious stimuli applied to areas supplied by the ipsilateral sciatic nerve and the contralateral sciatic and saphenous nerves ("inappropriate" areas). The results show that the neuronal response properties were modified differently during the NMDA-induced hyperexcitability and strychnine-induced release of inhibition. Both manipulations brought about the unmasking of responses to previously ineffective, noxious stimuli applied to the contralateral sciatic and saphenous nerve areas, and the enhancement of the responses to noxious stimulation of the ipsilateral sciatic nerve area. However, it was only during the increased excitation induced by NMDA that the neurons exhibited hyperresponsiveness, with long-lasting afterdischarge, to noxious stimulation of the ipsi- and contralateral areas. Such response features resemble those described in sensitized neurons in neuropathic rats and associated with behavioral signs of hyperalgesia. This suggests, by inference, a crucial contribution of the NMDA-induced increased excitability to the expression of neuronal sensitization related to this painful sensory disorder.
A Multicentered Prospective Analysis of Diagnosis, Risk Factors, and Outcomes Associated With Pediatric Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia*

Objective: To assess risk factors and outcomes associated with pediatric ventilator-associated pneumonia. Design: Multicentered prospective observational cohort. Setting: Children’s hospitals in the United States. Patients: Mechanically ventilated patients less than 18 years old. Measurements and Main Results: Prospective evaluation of the prevalence, risk factors, and outcomes of pediatric ventilator-associated pneumonia along with evaluation of diagnostic criterion for pediatric ventilator-associated pneumonia. The prevalence of pediatric ventilator-associated pneumonia was 5.2% (n = 2,082), for a rate of 7.1/1,000 ventilator days. Patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia had a longer unadjusted ICU length of stay (p < 0.0001) and increased length of mechanical ventilation by more than 11 days (p < 0.0001). After adjustment for patient factors, ICU length of stay (p = 0.03) and mechanical ventilation days (p = 0.001) remained significant. Patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia were almost three times more likely to die (p = 0.007). Independent risk factors for ventilator-associated pneumonia were reintubation and part-time ventilation. Conclusions: Pediatric ventilator-associated pneumonia is common in mechanically ventilated pediatric patients. These patients have longer length of stay, longer duration of mechanical ventilation, and increased risk for mortality.
PENGARUH SPESIFIKASI PENUGASAN TERHADAP REKOMENDASI MENGHENTIKAN PROYEK YANG BERKINERJA BURUK DALAM MENCEGAH ESKALASI KOMITMEN MANAJERIAL: SEBUAH PERAN REPRESENTASI MENTAL

Based on psychological theories about the creation and use of mental representations, and synthesize theory with the theory of decision making to develop the cognitive explanation of escalation behavior among consultants, this study investigates the effect of the assignment specifications on recommendations discontinuing of a poorly performing project in preventing managerial escalation of commitment the role of mental representation. Subjects consist of 102 undergraduate accounting students at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. This research was conducted using two experimental. First experimental research design used 3 x 1 (special purpose, special purpose alternative, general purpose; scores of knowledge) to examine the purpose of the assignment of mental representation. Experiment I manipulated into three assigned conditions: a special purpose, special alternative purpose and general purpose. In experiment II study using 2 x 2 factorial design (justification requirement, no justification requirement; general purpose, special purpose) to examine the effects of justification on the recommendation of the continuity of projects such as those used by Kadous and Sedor (2004). This study predicts that the purpose of processing information (assigned purpose) will influence the mental representations they build, process and store information, which ultimately affect their recommendation for the discontinuing recommendation of a poorly performing projects. The results showed that the specifications of the assignment against the recommendation to discontinuing recommendation of a poorly performing projects with the role of mental representation, can not prevent the escalation of commitment, unless given specific objectives in the assignment.
Influence of initial neck node biopsy on the incidence of recurrence in the neck and survival in patients who subsequently undergo curative resectional surgery

During a period of 23 years, 57 patients who had an initial neck node biopsy elsewhere, with the diagnosis of metastatic squamous cell carcinoma established, underwent curative resection by our department after the site of head and neck primary was found. Ten patients free of disease died of other causes, leaving 47 patients who were eligible for at least 3 years of follow‐up. Nineteen patients are aliye after 3 or more years. The incidence of recurrence in the neck was 57% (27/47). The 3‐year survival in this group of Stage III was 40% (19/47) and 5‐year survival was 34% (16/47). Compared with historical data, it appears from the present study that a previous biopsy of a neck node did not adversely affect the incidence either of neck recurrence or survival when appropriate surgery is performed.
Using Quality of Life to Evaluate Outcomes and Measure Effectiveness

Evaluating the outcomes achieved by service providers who assist people with intellectual disabilities is extremely important in terms of ascertaining whether service providers achieve their goals. Furthermore, knowledge of the outcomes achieved by service providers better equips those charged with managing them to make strategic decisions to fulfill their accountability obligations for the best use of limited resources. The authors provide support for the emerging view that quality of life is an outcome measure that can be utilized to assess service providers' performance. To do this they modified a performance measurement framework to illustrate how quality of life can be incorporated in a comprehensive analysis of the outcomes achieved by various stakeholders of the service provider. They then used three examples drawn from the literature (relating to employment services, the U.S. state of Nebraska, and family quality of life), to highlight how this framework could be applied. Ideas are also presented on other areas where a comprehensive stakeholder analysis, incorporating quality of life measures, could form part of a service provider's performance evaluation. The authors review some issues that should be considered in relation to the implementation of a comprehensive performance measurement system that incorporates quality of life as one of the outcome measures.
Women in Power

A growing literature examines the organizational factors that promote women’s access to positions of organizational power. Fewer studies, however, explore the implications of women in leadership positions for the opportunities and experiences of subordinates. Do women leaders serve to undo the gendered organization? In other words, is women’s greater representation in leadership positions associated with less gender segregation at lower organizational levels? We explore this question by drawing on Cohen and Huffman’s (2007) conceptual framework of women leaders as either “change agents” or “cogs in the machine” and analyze a unique multilevel data set of workplaces nested within Fortune 1000 firms. Our findings generally support the “agents of change” perspective. Women’s representation among corporate boards of directors, corporate executives, and workplace managers is associated with less workplace gender segregation. Hence, it appears that women’s access to organizational power helps to undo the gendered organization.
Linear-loss interval estimation of location and scale parameters.

Estimation, in both theory and practice, tends to be divided into two almost distinct branches. On the one hand, point estimation, by providing a working value for the unknown true parameter value, is undoubtedly useful in further investigations of the given situation although its reliability may be difficult to assess in real terms through the medium of the estimated standard error. On the other hand, confidence interval estimation, by presenting a whole set of more or less plausible values of the parameter, is often less easy to apply but has a more direct assessment of reliability through the confidence coefficient. The dilemma in estimation arises essentially from this need for a balance between usefulness and reliability-usefulness through the practical advantages of narrowing down the set of plausible values and the increasing reliability which attends the enlarging of the set. This dilemma is one of the sources of awkward questions from users about estimation. What confidence coefficient should be used? Why not use the whole parameter space as confidence interval and so ensure 100 % confidence? Why use a point estimate when it is almost certainly not the true parameter value? While answers to such naive questions can be expressed in terms of the distribution of the estimator or the class of confidence intervals associated with various confidence coefficients, they are not the only solution to the dilemma, and, in our view, are not readily appreciated by users. Any serious attempt to take account of the consequences of unreliability in not capturing the true parameter value and of lack of usefulness in excessive width should, we feel, involve the specification of some reasonable loss function and the subsequent examination of the problem in terms of decision theory. Such an attempt is usually beset by the well-known difficulties of the non-existence of a uniformly best solution in a frequentist approach and of the assessment of the prior distribution in a Bayesian approach. There is, however, one unexploited specification of the decision-theory approach to estimation which has some degree of realism and for which a satisfactory frequentist solution can be readily obtained. This paper considers the consequences of adopting a piecewise-linear loss function for a situation where interval estimates are required for location or scale parameters. Under certain circumstances intervals which are uniformly best invariant, with respect to the group of ' positive' linear transformations, can be found for this frequentist decision problem. Such interval estimates, while of interest in their own right as solutions of the particular decision problem,
Fixation-related potentials : Foveal versus parafoveal target identification

The P300 event-related potential (ERP) can be used to infer whether an observer is looking at a target or not. Common practice in P300 BCIs and experiments is that observers are asked to fixate their eyes while stimuli are presented. First studies have shown that it is also possible to distinguish between target and non-target fixations on the basis of single ERPs in the case that eye movements are made, and ERPs are synchronized to fixations (fixation-related potentials or FRPs) rather than to stimulus onset. However, in these studies small object sizes ensured that participants could only identify whether the object was a target or non-target after fixating on it. We here compare (non-)target FRPs when objects are identified before versus after fixation. We also examine ERPs from static eyes conditions. FRP shapes are in accordance with the notion that the late component of the P300 is associated with identifying a target, and eye movements do not substantially affect the P300. Even when the time of object identification is unknown, it is possible to distinguish between target and non-target FRPs on a single FRP basis. These results are important for fundamental science and for developing applications to covertly monitor observers’ interests.
Optimal fusion of diverse feature sets for speaker identification: an alternative method

For speaker identification, a robust and effective feature extraction method is necessary. But in the current circumstance, there exists no perfect feature that could optimally characterize physiological difference among speakers regardless of personal variation. A soft competition scheme for optimal fusion of diverse feature sets is applied to speaker identification in order to achieve the improved performance. Based on a linear combination scheme, diverse feature vectors are used together while the winning feature vector through soft competition plays more important role in the representation. The simulations on KING corpus show that this alternative method could yield good performance for speaker identification.
Testing for linear errors in nonlinear computer programs

This paper provides an approach to test nonlinear functions in computer programs, whether this function is used for control flow, such as a predicate inequality or equality constraint, or is given as an input-output relationship. This approach will obtain test data to detect linear errors in the given nonlinear function. An error-space criterion previously given by Zeil will be utilized, and a necessary and sufficient condition for the test data will be specified to guarantee the satisfaction of this criterion. This leads to a simple and efficient method to select test data which satisfies that condition; only (n+2) tests are required, where n is the number of input variables. An analysis will be given to show that this simple approach can be very effective in detecting nonlinear errors as well.
Tn3 labeling of a cryptic plasmid found in the plant pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas tabaci and mobilization of RSF1010 by donation

pBPW1, a conjugative cryptic plasmid isolated from the plant pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas tabaci BR2, was labeled with Tn3. pBPW1::Tn3 and RSF1010 mobilization into Pseudomonas mellea recipients were separate events, not involving recombination of the two plasmids during conjugation.
Second-order statistics of complex signals

The second-order statistical properties of complex signals are usually characterized by the covariance function. However, this is not sufficient for a complete second-order description, and it is necessary to introduce another moment called the relation function. Its properties, and especially the conditions that it must satisfy, are analyzed both for stationary and nonstationary signals. This leads to a new perspective concerning the concept of complex white noise as well as the modeling of any signal as the output of a linear system driven by a white noise. Finally, this is applied to complex autoregressive signals, and it is shown that the classical prediction problem must be reformulated when the relation function is taken into consideration.
Longitudinal relationships between workplace bullying, basic psychological needs, and employee functioning: a simultaneous investigation of psychological need satisfaction and frustration

The aim of this cross-lagged study was to provide new insight into the interplay between workplace bullying, basic psychological needs (for autonomy, competence, and relatedness), and employee functioning. Based on new developments in self-determination theory (SDT) research, we simultaneously examined the temporal relationships between workplace bullying, need satisfaction and frustration, as well as two indicators of psychological functioning: life satisfaction and psychosomatic complaints. Data were collected at two time points over a 12-month period from a sample of 508 Canadian nurses. Results suggest that bullying not only negatively predicted satisfaction for the needs of autonomy and competence, it actively frustrated all three needs. Frustration of the needs for competence and relatedness as well as satisfaction of the need for relatedness also predicted the psychological functioning of employees exposed to bullying behaviour over time. Taken together, the results suggest that evaluating need frustration provides in-depth insight into the detrimental effects of bullying on employees’ psychological inner resources and may explain the impoverishment of employees’ psychological functioning when confronted with bullying behaviour. The implications for the bullying and SDT literature are discussed.
Realizing reconfigurable mesh algorithms on softcore arrays

The reconfigurable mesh is a very popular model for massively parallel computation for which a large body of algorithms with exceptionally low runtime complexities exists. However, these low complexities can not be exploited due to the unrealistic assumption that communication time is either constant or logarithmic in the number of cores. Nevertheless, studying the reconfigurable mesh model and associated algorithms might lead to new approaches for the design and programming of many cores with light-weight, circuit-switched interconnects. In this paper, we present the mapping of reconfigurable mesh algorithms to softcore arrays. We first discuss our architecture and the corresponding tool flow, and then turn to the most critical issues, minimizing communication delay and establishing synchronization in the single-operand, circuit-switched network. We show experimental results from an FPGA prototype and evaluate our architecture by a sparse matrix multiplication case study.
Improving mobile robot bilateral teleoperation by introducing variable force feedback gain

This paper presents new feedback force rendering scheme for the bilateral teleoperation of mobile robot. Previous research indicated that the feedback force based on obstacle range information prevented accurate motion control of the mobile robot since human operator's commands were distorted by the feedback force. To solve this problem, a new force rendering approach with variable feedback gain is proposed. In proposed scheme, force feedback gain is adaptively tuned based on measured distances to the obstacle and time derivatives of the distances. Stability of the proposed bilateral teleoperation architecture was analyzed and the performance is proved by simulations. Results of simulation and experimental study proved that the quality of the mobile robot bilateral teleoperation with variable force feedback gain is significantly better than the conventional approach with constant feedback gain.
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD)—diagnosis and moral policing; an ethical dilemma for paediatricians

We certainly live in interesting times; advertisements in the media and even in emergency departments enjoin those who have suffered injury to claim legal compensation from those who have wronged them, often on a ‘no win no fee’ basis. Although UK paediatrics has, thus far, been largely immune to this cultural shift, it has been argued that children should be able to sue parents for illnesses that might have been prevented by vaccination,1 for wrongful birth2 or for illness caused by passive smoking.3 No such cases have succeeded in the UK, perhaps reflecting the importance the legal system attaches to the integrity of the family as a social unit. Contrast the US, where, by 2005 more than 20 states had enacted laws criminalising women for behaviours in pregnancy considered harmful to the fetus, for example, drinking excessive alcohol.4 In the UK, considerable license is afforded to pregnant women over behaviours that may affect the welfare of their unborn children; but could this be about to change? A recent case, heard by the upper tribunal of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA),5 has drawn attention to duties that might be owed to a fetus, and how competing moral claims between the mother and her fetus might be balanced. This has implications for paediatricians who may be involved in the diagnosis and management of conditions resulting from adverse maternal behaviours in pregnancy. The case was brought by a local authority on behalf of a 6-year-old affected by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), (rather than the more severe fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)). 6 It was accepted by all parties that the child's condition had resulted from continuing maternal alcohol consumption in pregnancy, despite warnings of the consequences for the fetus/future child (which the mother had understood) and provision …
Alloxan‐Induced Diabetes Reduces β‐Adrenergic Receptor Number Without Affecting Adenylate Cyclase in Rat Ventricular Membranes

Summary We have investigated alterations in β-adrenergic receptors and adenylate cyclase activity in myocardial membranes from normal and alloxan-treated diabetic rats. Saturation curves of [3H]dihydroalprenolol binding yielded a Bmax of 96.3 ± 3.9 fmol/mg protein in normal membranes and 47.6 ± 3.9 fmol/mg protein in diabetic membranes. Decreased receptor number in membranes from diabetic animals was not accompanied by alteration in receptor affinity for either antagonists or agonists to the β-receptor. We were unable to detect any alteration in adenylate cyclase activity in similar ventricular membranes. Adenylate cyclase activity in the basal state or in the presence of sodium fluoride, guanyl-5'-yl imidodiphosphate, or isoproterenol, with or without GTP, was not altered by the alloxan-induced diabetic state. Stimulation of adenylate cyclase activity by forskolin, the novel diterpene activator, also was not altered by diabetes. The results suggest that while diabetes reduced β-receptor number, this is not reflected in any other component of the adenylate cyclase complex.