Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Annotated-skeleton Biased Motion Planning for Faster Relevant Region Discovery

Motion planning algorithms often leverage topological information about the environment to improve planner performance. However, these methods often focus only on the environment's connectivity while ignoring other properties such as obstacle clearance, terrain conditions, and resource accessibility. We present a method that augments a skeleton representing the workspace topology with such information to guide a sampling-based motion planner to rapidly discover regions most relevant to the problem at hand. Our approach decouples guidance and planning, making it possible for basic planning algorithms to find desired paths earlier in the planning process. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in both robotics problems and applications in drug design. Our method is able to produce desirable paths quickly with no change to the underlying planner.
Arc‐disjoint in‐ and out‐branchings in digraphs of independence number at most 2

We prove that every digraph of independence number at most 2 and arc‐connectivity at least 2 has an out‐branching B + and an in‐branching B − which are arc‐disjoint (we call such branchings a good pair). This is best possible in terms of the arc‐connectivity as there are infinitely many strong digraphs with independence number 2 and arbitrarily high minimum in‐ and out‐degrees that have no good pair. The result settles a conjecture by Thomassen for digraphs of independence number 2. We prove that every digraph on at most 6 vertices and arc‐connectivity at least 2 has a good pair and give an example of a 2‐arc‐strong digraph D on 10 vertices with independence number 4 that has no good pair. We also show that there are infinitely many digraphs with independence number 7 and arc‐connectivity 2 that have no good pair. Finally we pose a number of open problems.
Nonlocal scalar conservation laws with discontinuous flux

We prove the well-posedness of entropy weak solutions for a class of space-discontinuous scalar conservation laws with nonlocal flux. We approximate the problem adding a viscosity term and we provide $ {{\bf{L}}^\infty} $ and BV estimates for the approximate solutions. We use the doubling of variable technique to prove the stability with respect to the initial data from the entropy condition.
Factory Automation: Resource Allocation of an Elevated LiDAR System with URLLC Requirements

Ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC) play a vital role in factory automation. To share the situational awareness data collected from the infrastructure as raw or processed data, the system should guarantee the URLLC capability since this is a safety-critical application. In this work, the resource allocation problem for an infrastructure-based communication architecture (Elevated LiDAR system/ELiD) has been considered which can support the autonomous driving in a factory floor. The decoder error probability and the number of channel uses parameterize the reliability and the latency in the considered optimization problems. A maximum decoder error probability minimization problem and a total energy minimization problem have been considered in this work to analytically evaluate the performance of the ELiD system under different vehicle densities.
Breaking Resonant Chains: Destabilization of Resonant Planets Due to Long-term Mass Evolution

Recent exoplanet observations reported a large number of multiple-planet systems, in which some of the planets are in a chain of resonances. The fraction of resonant systems to non-resonant systems provides clues about their formation history. We investigated the orbital stability of planets in resonant chains by considering the long-term evolution of planetary mass and stellar mass and using orbital calculations. We found that while resonant chains were stable, they can be destabilized by a change of ∼10% in planetary mass. Such a mass evolution can occur by atmospheric escape due to photoevaporation. We also found that resonant chains can be broken by a stellar mass loss of ≲1%, which would be explained by stellar winds or coronal mass ejections. The long-term mass change of planets and stars plays an important role in the orbital evolutions of planetary systems, including super-Earths.
Unveiling defect-mediated carrier dynamics in monolayer semiconductors by spatiotemporal microwave imaging

Significance Defects in two-dimensional (2D) transition-metal dichalcogenides play a crucial role in controlling the spatiotemporal dynamics of photogenerated charge carriers, which remain poorly understood to date. In this paper, the defect-mediated carrier diffusion and recombination in WS2 monolayers are quantitatively investigated by laser-illuminated microwave impedance microscopy. Surprisingly, the photoresponse is in general stronger in the more disordered regions and samples. Such counterintuitive observations are reconciled by spatiotemporally resolved experiments, which indicate that the electron lifetime is prolonged due to the slow release of holes from the trap states. The results reveal the intrinsic time and length scales of photocarriers in van der Waals materials, providing the guidance for implementing nanooptoelectronic devices based on 2D semiconductors. The optoelectronic properties of atomically thin transition-metal dichalcogenides are strongly correlated with the presence of defects in the materials, which are not necessarily detrimental for certain applications. For instance, defects can lead to an enhanced photoconduction, a complicated process involving charge generation and recombination in the time domain and carrier transport in the spatial domain. Here, we report the simultaneous spatial and temporal photoconductivity imaging in two types of WS2 monolayers by laser-illuminated microwave impedance microscopy. The diffusion length and carrier lifetime were directly extracted from the spatial profile and temporal relaxation of microwave signals, respectively. Time-resolved experiments indicate that the critical process for photoexcited carriers is the escape of holes from trap states, which prolongs the apparent lifetime of mobile electrons in the conduction band. As a result, counterintuitively, the long-lived photoconductivity signal is higher in chemical-vapor deposited (CVD) samples than exfoliated monolayers due to the presence of traps that inhibits recombination. Our work reveals the intrinsic time and length scales of electrical response to photoexcitation in van der Waals materials, which is essential for their applications in optoelectronic devices.
Two coniveau filtrations

A cohomology class of a smooth complex variety of dimension $n$ has coniveau $\geq c$ if it vanishes in the complement of a closed subvariety of codimension $\geq c$, and has strong coniveau $\geq c$ if it comes by proper pushforward from the cohomology of a smooth variety of dimension $\leq n-c$. We show that these two notions differ in general, both for integral classes on smooth projective varieties and for rational classes on smooth open varieties.
Deciphering the 3D Orion Nebula-I: Expanding Shells in the Huygens Region

Based on imaging and spectroscopic data, we develop a 3D model for the Huygens Region of the Orion Nebula. Ori C, the hottest star in the Trapezium, is surrounded by a wind-blown Central Bubble that opens SW into the Extended Orion Nebula. Outside of this feature lies a layer of ionized gas at about 0.4 pc from Ori C. Both of these features are moving rapidly away from Ori C with an expansion age for the Central Bubble of only 15,000 yr.
Array relocation approach for radial scanning algorithms on multi-GPU systems: total viewshed problem as a case study

In geographic information systems, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are commonly processed using radial scanning based algorithms. These algorithms are particularly popular when calculating parameters whose magnitudes decrease with the distance squared such as those related to radio signals, sound waves, and human eyesight. However, radial scanning algorithms imply a large number of accesses to 2D arrays, which despite being regular, results in poor data locality. This paper proposes a new methodology, termed sDEM, which substantially improves the locality of memory accesses and largely increases the inherent parallelism involved in the computation of radial scanning algorithms. In particular, sDEM applies a data restructuring technique prior to accessing the memory and performing the computation. In order to demonstrate the high efficiency of sDEM, we use the problem of total viewshed computation as a case study. Sequential, parallel, single-GPU and multi-GPU implementations are analyzed and compared with the state-of-the-art total viewshed computation algorithm. Experiments show that sDEM achieves an acceleration rate of up to 827.3 times for the best multi-GPU execution approach with respect to the best multi-core implementation.
Unbiased variable importance for random forests

Abstract The default variable-importance measure in random forests, Gini importance, has been shown to suffer from the bias of the underlying Gini-gain splitting criterion. While the alternative permutation importance is generally accepted as a reliable measure of variable importance, it is also computationally demanding and suffers from other shortcomings. We propose a simple solution to the misleading/untrustworthy Gini importance which can be viewed as an over-fitting problem: we compute the loss reduction on the out-of-bag instead of the in-bag training samples.
Restoration of fragmentary Babylonian texts using recurrent neural networks

Significance The documentary sources for the political, economic, and social history of ancient Mesopotamia constitute hundreds of thousands of clay tablets inscribed in the cuneiform script. Most tablets are damaged, leaving gaps in the texts written on them, and the missing portions must be restored by experts. This paper uses available digitized texts for training advanced machine-learning algorithms to restore daily economic and administrative documents from the Persian empire (sixth to fourth centuries BCE). As the amount of digitized texts grows, the model can be trained to restore damaged texts belonging to other genres, such as scientific or literary texts. Therefore, this is a first step for a large-scale reconstruction of a lost ancient heritage. The main sources of information regarding ancient Mesopotamian history and culture are clay cuneiform tablets. Many of these tablets are damaged, leading to missing information. Currently, the missing text is manually reconstructed by experts. We investigate the possibility of assisting scholars, by modeling the language using recurrent neural networks and automatically completing the breaks in ancient Akkadian texts from Achaemenid period Babylonia.
Ballistic transport in disordered Dirac and Weyl semimetals

We study the dynamics of Dirac and Weyl electrons in disordered point-node semimetals. The ballistic feature of the transport is demonstrated by simulating the wave-packet dynamics on lattice models. We show that the ballistic transport survives under a considerable strength of disorder up to the semimetal-metal transition point, which indicates the robustness of point-node semimetals against disorder. We also visualize the robustness of the nodal points and linear dispersion under broken translational symmetry. The speed of the wave packets slows down with increasing disorder strength, and vanishes toward the critical strength of disorder, hence becoming the order parameter. The obtained critical behavior of the speed of the wave packets is consistent with that predicted by the scaling conjecture.
Voxel Map for Visual SLAM

In modern visual SLAM systems, it is a standard practice to retrieve potential candidate map points from overlapping keyframes for further feature matching or direct tracking. In this work, we argue that keyframes are not the optimal choice for this task, due to several inherent limitations, such as weak geometric reasoning and poor scalability. We propose a voxel-map representation to efficiently retrieve map points for visual SLAM. In particular, we organize the map points in a regular voxel grid. Visible points from a camera pose are queried by sampling the camera frustum in a raycasting manner, which can be done in constant time using an efficient voxel hashing method. Compared with keyframes, the retrieved points using our method are geometrically guaranteed to fall in the camera field-of-view, and occluded points can be identified and removed to a certain extend. This method also naturally scales up to large scenes and complicated multi-camera configurations. Experimental results show that our voxel map representation is as efficient as a keyframe map with 5 keyframes and provides significantly higher localization accuracy (average 46% improvement in RMSE) on the EuRoC dataset. The proposed voxel-map representation is a general approach to a fundamental functionality in visual SLAM and widely applicable.
Threats to Federated Learning: A Survey

With the emergence of data silos and popular privacy awareness, the traditional centralized approach of training artificial intelligence (AI) models is facing strong challenges. Federated learning (FL) has recently emerged as a promising solution under this new reality. Existing FL protocol design has been shown to exhibit vulnerabilities which can be exploited by adversaries both within and without the system to compromise data privacy. It is thus of paramount importance to make FL system designers to be aware of the implications of future FL algorithm design on privacy-preservation. Currently, there is no survey on this topic. In this paper, we bridge this important gap in FL literature. By providing a concise introduction to the concept of FL, and a unique taxonomy covering threat models and two major attacks on FL: 1) poisoning attacks and 2) inference attacks, this paper provides an accessible review of this important topic. We highlight the intuitions, key techniques as well as fundamental assumptions adopted by various attacks, and discuss promising future research directions towards more robust privacy preservation in FL.
Controlling pain in cats

Pain should be assessed in cats as a part of triage and a validated pain scoring system should be used. A good understanding of pain physiology and pharmacology of analgesic agents is essential for choosing the most appropriate analgesic drug combination and reducing the risk of side effects. With diligent acute pain management, the risk of chronic pain development is reduced. This article summarises the physiology of adaptive and maladaptive pain, and provides an overview of currently available techniques and therapeutics used to assess and treat acute perioperative and chronic pain in cats.
Differences in Treatment-Seeking and Treatment-Adherence Factors for Tuberculosis in Armenian Versus Non-Armenian Populations of Los Angeles County

Differences in Treatment-Seeking and Treatment-Adherence Factors for Tuberculosis in Armenian Versus Non-Armenian Populations of Los Angeles County by Tanya M. Ferguson MS, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 2006 BS, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 1996 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Health, Health Sciences Epidemiology
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL FACULDADE DE MEDICINA PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM PNEUMOLOGIA ESTUDO DA RESPOSTA INFLAMATÓRIA EM LACTENTES COM SIBILÂNCIA: ANÁLISE DE IL-10 E CELULARIDADE NO ASPIRADO NASOFARÍNGEO

Wheezing in infancy during viral respiratory infections is common. However, the pathogenesis and the relationship with the development of asthma later in life are not well understood. The aim of this study was to evaluate the cellular pattern and IL-10 responses in nasopharyngeal secretions in these patients. Seventy one children were recruited and classified in 3 groups: first episode of wheezing (n=36), recurrent wheezing (n=18) and upper respiratory tract infections (n=17). Neutrophils were the predominant cells in cytologic analysis. Except in one recurrent wheezing infant, which accounted for 1% of the total cells, no eosinophils were detected in any sample. The IL-10 concentrations in nasopharyngeal samples from infants with the first episode of wheezing were significantly greater than those in samples obtained from patients with upper respiratory tract infections (p=0,017). There was no correlation between IL-10 levels and severity of the wheezing episodes. We conclude that neutrophils are the predominant cells in the airways of wheezy infants with viral respiratory infections and we suggest that IL-10 may play an important role in the pathogenesis of obstructive airway disease of infancy.
TOPLUM KÖKENLİ MENENJİT GELİŞEN HASTALARDA BEYİN OMİRİLİK SIVISINDAN İZOLE EDİLEN STREPTOCOCCUS PNEUMONIAE SUŞLARINDA PENİSİLİN DUYARLILIĞININ VE AMPİRİK ANTİBİYOTİK SEÇİMİNİN DEĞERLENDİRİLMESİ

Streptococcus pneumoniae is the predominant microorganism causing community acquired bacterial meningitis in adults. The resistance of S.pneumoniae to penicillin has increased steadily and causes difficulty in the treatment of pneumococcal meningitis. The aim of this study is to evaluate the penicillin susceptibility of S.pneumoniae strains isolated from cerebrospinal fluid of adults with meningitis, and to determine the appropriate antibiotics for empirical therapy. Five of 15 strains (% 33) showed high level penicillin resistance. Two strains (13 %) with penicilin resistance were found resistant to cefotaxime, sefepime, meropenem, tetracycline, and one of them to trimethoprim-sulfametoxazole. None of the strains were resistant to chloramphenicol, linezolid and vancomycin. According to these results it seems that addition of vancomycin to empirical treatment of meningitis may be appropriate approach.
Inconsistencies in the

Code comments are important artifacts in software. Javadoc comments are widely used for API specifications in Java. API developers write Javadoc comments, and API users often read these comments to understand the API they use, e.g., an API user can read a Javadoc comment for a method instead of reading the method body of the method. An inconsistency between the Javadoc comment and body for a method indicates either a fault in the body or, effectively, a fault in the comment that can mislead the method callers to introduce faults in their code. This thesis presents a novel approach, called @tComment, for testing Javadoc comments, specifically for testing method properties about null values and related exceptions. Our approach consists of two components. The first component takes as input source files for a Java project and automatically analyzes the English text in Javadoc comments to infer a set of likely properties for a method in the files. The second component generates random tests for these methods, checks the inferred properties, and reports inconsistencies. We evaluated @tComment on seven open-source projects and found 28 inconsistencies between Javadoc comments and method bodies. We reported all inconsistencies, and 12 have already been confirmed and fixed by the developers.
The Polymorphism of Regulatory Region of NOS3 Gene (rs2070744, Genotype CC) Protect Patients from Chronic Migraine

Aims: There is evidence that endothelial nitric oxide synthase has a role in migraine pathophysiology. In our research, the role of SNP rs2070744 (c.-813C>T) in promoter region of NOS3 gene in the episodic and chronic forms of migraine is considered. Place Study: University Headache Clinic June 2012 November 2014 and Department of Genetics, Faculty of Biology of Lomonosov Moscow State University between October 2013 and March 2016. Methodology: The study included 138 patients with migraine (44 with chronic and 96 with episodic migraine). The control group included 348 unexamined subjects. Genotypes were determined using real-time PCR with allelic discrimination test. Statistical processing was performed using Fisher test and Pearson's chi-squared test. Results: Our study evaluated the link of CC genotype of rs2070744 with migraine (Fisher’s p=0.026) and episodic migraine (Fisher’s p=0.022). Conclusion: Genotype CC of SNP rs2070744 in the regulatory region of NOS3 gene is more specific for episodic migraine and may prevents the chronification of migraine.
Conductas frente al viraje de la prueba de Tuberculina en estudiantes de medicina de una universidad de Lima, Perú

The aim of this study was to determine the behaviors in response to tuberculin skin test (PPD) conversion and the reasons for starting or not starting treatment for latent tuberculosis infection (TILT) among medical students at a university in Lima, Peru. A total of 548 participants completed a questionnaire; of them, 6.7% tested positive on university admission and 11.1% were recent converters. A total of 55.7% did not start TILT and had no explanation. Of the recent converters, most students who did start TILT were >22 years old (p = 0.01) and correctly answered general knowledge questions (p = 0.04). It is important to note that the PPD conversion rate was higher than that reported in the literature and that most students did not follow the treatment prophylaxis because of a lack of information.
Cardiovascular Risk Assessment Using WHO/ISH Risk Prediction Charts In a Rural Area of North India

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is emerging as a public health problem among low and middle income countries. Recent trends show that these risk factors are spreading fast from urban to rural populations. Objectives: The present study was conducted to assess the cardiovascular risk among adults aged ≥40 years, utilizing the WHO/ISH risk charts in a rural population of North India. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out at rural health training centre (RHTC) of North India. The information was collected by using a pretested questionnaire from adults aged ≥ 40 years, who had come to attend a health check up camp at the centre. Anthropometric measurements and laboratory investigations were completed for 133 participants. The data was analysed by using statistical software SPSS. Results: Risk of CVD was assessed to be ≥ 10% in 44.4% of subjects in 10 years duration. CVD risk (≥10%) was found to be higher in females (59.3%) as compared to males (40.7%). However this difference was found to be statistically non-significant (p=0.325). Greater than 10% CVD risk was significantly associated with illiteracy (p=0.043), raised pulse rate (p=0.031), systolic hypertension (p=0.00) and diabetes (p=0.00). Conclusion: The study points towards significant burden of CVD risk in rural North India, thus necessitating further evaluation/ research by using these charts, which is a low cost and easy screening tool in other settings, warranting an urgent need of actions to address this problem. Key Words: Cardiovascular Diseases, Rural population, WHO/ISH risk prediction chart