Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Port-Hamiltonian Systems in Adaptive and Learning Control: A Survey

Port-Hamiltonian (PH) theory is a novel, but well established modeling framework for nonlinear physical systems. Due to the emphasis on the physical structure and modular framework, PH modeling has become a prime focus in system theory. This has led to a considerable research interest in the control of PH systems, resulting in numerous nonlinear control techniques. General nonlinear control methodologies are classified in a spectrum from model-based to model-free, where adaptation and learning typically lie close to the end of the range. Various articles and monographs have provided a detailed overview of model-based control techniques on PH models, but no survey is specifically dedicated to the learning and adaptive control methods that can benefit from the PH structure. To this end, we provide a comprehensive review of the current learning and adaptive control methodologies that have been adapted specifically to PH systems. After establishing the required theoretical background, we elaborate on various general machine learning, iterative learning, and adaptive control techniques and their application to PH systems. For each method we highlight the changes from the general setting due to PH model, followed by a detailed presentation of the respective control algorithm. In general, the advantages of using PH models in learning and adaptive controllers are: i) Prior knowledge in the form of PH model speeds up the learning. ii) In some instances new stability or convergence guarantees are obtained by having a PH model. iii) The resulting control laws can be interpreted in the context of physical systems. We conclude the paper with notes on open research issues.
The Effects on Skin Blood Flow of Immersing the Ischemic Legs of Patients with Peripheral Arterial Disease into Artificially Carbonated Water

It is known that carbon dioxide causes vasodilatation. Therefore, immersing the extremities into carbonated water would be expected to increase skin blood flow, given that carbon dioxide can permeate through the skin surface. We immersed the ischemic legs of patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) into water artificially carbonated by a new device. Sixteen Fontaine grade II PAD patients were randomly divided into two groups: eight patients whose legs were immersed into artificially carbonated water (CO2 group), and eight patients whose legs were immersed into tap water as a control (CTL group). The water temperature was set at 35°C, and the immersion (10 min) was repeated daily for 3 weeks in both groups. During immersion, the average percent skin blood flow increase was larger in the CO2 group than in the CTL group (426 vs. 173%, p < 0.001), and increased gradually with each immersion in the CO2 group (272% at the first immersion, 343% after 2 weeks, and 359% after 3 weeks, p < 0.01). Leg symptoms at rest, such as a sensation of cold and/or numbness, were significantly alleviated in the CO2 group compared to the CTL group (2.5 points, CO2 group vs. 8.7 points, CTL group after 3-weeks based on a 10-point relative scale, p < 0.01). Immersion into artificially carbonated water appears to be a convenient treatment option for treating limb ischemia.
May the best analyst win.

A small Australian start-up company called Kaggle is exploiting the concept of "crowdsourcing" in a novel way. Kaggle9s core idea is to facilitate the analysis of data by allowing outsiders to model it. To do that, the company organizes competitions in which anyone with a passion for data analysis can battle it out. The contests offered so far have ranged widely, from ranking international chess players to evaluating whether a person will respond to HIV treatments to forecasting if a researcher9s grant application will be approved. Despite often modest prizes, the competitions have so far attracted more than 3000 statisticians, computer scientists, econometrists, mathematicians, and physicists from approximately 200 universities in 100 countries, Kaggle founder Anthony Goldbloom boasts. And the wisdom of the crowds can sometimes outsmart those offering up their data. In the HIV contest, entrants significantly improved on the efforts of the research team that posed the challenge. Citing this and other successes as examples, Goldbloom argues that Kaggle can help bring fresh ideas to data analysis.
Controller Design for Robust Output Regulation of Regular Linear Systems

We present three dynamic error feedback controllers for robust output regulation of regular linear systems. These controllers are i) a minimal order robust controller for exponentially stable systems, ii) an observer-based robust controller, and iii) a new internal model based robust controller structure. In addition, we present two controllers that are by construction robust with respect to predefined classes of perturbations. The results are illustrated with an example where we study robust output tracking of a sinusoidal reference signal for a 2-D heat equation with boundary control and observation.
Evaluation of gender differences in caregiver burden in home care: Nagoya Longitudinal Study of the Frail Elderly (NLS‐FE)

Background: Japan is presently experiencing a growth in the number of male caregivers and this situation has given rise to some concerns over gender differences. Previous studies have suggested that there are gender differences in caregiver burden in home care, however, it is still unclear whether or not gender differences exist. We therefore conducted this study to attain a better understanding of the Japanese male caregiver burden in home care, using data from the Nagoya Longitudinal Study of Frail Elderly (NLS‐FE).
Brothers in arms against cancer.

The tumor-suppressor protein p53 has been dubbed "the guardian of the genome. " Few nonspecialists know that the celebrated p53 is closely related to two other proteins, p63 and p73. Yet these unheralded siblings are grabbing the attention of cancer biologists. New research suggests that p63 and p73 are fierce cancer killers that deserve equal billing with p53. Because efforts to exploit p53 in cancer therapies haven9t yet paid off, some researchers are now looking to p73 and p63 as alternative tumor treatments. Researchers have shrunk or prevented tumors in animals by targeting p73, and the first clinical trials—attempting to use p73 to combat a hard-to-treat type of breast cancer—have already started.
Semantic Filtering

Edge-preserving image operations aim at smoothing an image without blurring the edges. Many excellent edge-preserving filtering techniques have been proposed recently to reduce the computational complexity or/and separate different scale structures. They normally adopt a user-selected scale measurement to control the detail/texture smoothing. However, natural photos contain objects of different sizes which cannot be described by a single scale measurement. On the other hand, edge/contour detection/ analysis is closely related to edge-preserving filtering and has achieved significant progress recently. Nevertheless, most of the state-of-the-art filtering techniques ignore the success in this area. Inspired by the fact that learning-based edge detectors/classifiers significantly outperform traditional manually-designed detectors, this paper proposes a learning-based edge-preserving filtering technique. It synergistically combines the efficiency of the recursive filter and the effectiveness of the recent edge detector for scale-aware edge-preserving filtering. Unlike previous filtering methods, the propose filter can efficiently extract subjectively-meaningful structures from natural scenes containing multiple-scale objects.
Adaptive System Optimization Using Random Directions Stochastic Approximation

We present new algorithms for <italic>simulation optimization</italic> using random directions stochastic approximation (RDSA). These include first-order (gradient) as well as second-order (Newton) schemes. We incorporate both continuous-valued as well as discrete-valued perturbations into both types of algorithms. The former are chosen to be independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) symmetric uniformly distributed random variables (r.v.), while the latter are i.i. d. asymmetric Bernoulli r.v. s. Our Newton algorithm, with a novel Hessian estimation scheme, requires <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N$</tex-math></inline-formula>-dimensional perturbations and three loss measurements per iteration, whereas the simultaneous perturbation Newton search algorithm of <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">[1]</xref> requires <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2N$</tex-math> </inline-formula>-dimensional perturbations and four loss measurements per iteration. We prove the asymptotic unbiasedness of both gradient and Hessian estimates and asymptotic (strong) convergence for both first-order and second-order schemes. We also provide asymptotic normality results, which in particular establish that the asymmetric Bernoulli variant of Newton RDSA method is better than 2SPSA of <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">[1]</xref>. Numerical experiments are used to validate the theoretical results.
Demography. China's population growing slowly, changing fast.

China9s population has long been something of a magic number for the rest of the world. Marketers rhapsodize about selling to 1.3 billion consumers, while agronomists worry about whether those 1.3 billion mouths will have enough to eat. Preliminary figures from the 2010 census released last week show that the country is still growing. But the census also reveals trends that could reshape the world9s view of China—and perhaps even trigger changes in the government9s controversial one-child policy.
Neuroscience. Feedback from frontal cortex may be a signature of consciousness.

In this week's issue of Science (p. [858][1]), researchers say they have identified a neural signature of consciousness that is present in healthy people and brain-damaged patients who retain some awareness, but not in people who are truly in a vegetative state. Other researchers say the method is innovative but not ready for clinical use. In the meantime, however, the study may provide insights into the mystery of how consciousness is embodied in the human brain. [1]: http://www.sciencemag. org/content/332/6031/858.short
Cerebral oxygenation and sympathetic responses to smoking in young and middle-aged smokers

This study examined the effects of acute tobacco smoking on cerebral oxygenation and autonomic function in 28 male, habitual smokers of shorter young smokers (YSM) or longer middle-aged smokers (MSM) smoking history. Following baseline testing, participants undertook a smoking protocol involving the consumption of two cigarettes within 15 min. Measures of cerebral oxygenation and autonomic function were collected before, during, and 0 min, 30 min, 1 h, and 4 h post-smoking. Tissue saturation index (TSI) for MSM was greater than YSM during cigarette consumption (p < 0.05). Moreover, MSM observed significant within-group changes for TSI during and post-cigarette consumption (p < 0.05). Further, MSM observed an increase in low frequency (LF) band from 30 min to 1 h post-consumption, followed by a decline, whereas elevations above MSM were observed in YSM at 4 h (p < 0.05). Both MSM and YSM showed a decrease in high-frequency (HF) band post-cigarette, while increased LF/HF ratio post-consumption was observed in YSM. A decline in the standard deviation of RR intervals, post-cigarette consumption was evident in MSM (p < 0.05). Moreover, the root mean square of RR interval in both groups similarly decreased following cigarette consumption (p < 0.05). Acute smoking affects heart rate variability, suggestive of vagal withdrawal, and maybe indicate an effect of smoking history. Additionally, prolonged smoking history alters cerebral microcirculatory responses to acute tobacco exposure in MSM.
The pharmacist's contribution to clinicians' ward rounds: analysis by the stages in the drug use process

Hospital pharmacists are increasingly becoming an integral part of the clinical team, with many pharmacists now attending clinicians' ward rounds. This exploratory study observed five pharmacists attending ward rounds in hospitals in South East England, each on two or three occasions. The pharmacists volunteered to take part in the study and consent was obtained from the clinicians in charge. Each round was observed, tape recorded and transcribed. The verbal contributions of each member of the team to the discussions of drugs were analysed and categorised using the stages of the drug use process.
Distributed Nash Equilibrium Seeking by a Consensus Based Approach

In this paper, Nash equilibrium seeking among a network of players is considered. Different from many existing works on Nash equilibrium seeking in noncooperative games, the players considered in this paper cannot directly observe the actions of the players who are not their neighbors. Instead, the players are supposed to be capable of communicating with each other via an undirected and connected communication graph. By a synthesis of a leader-following consensus protocol and the gradient play, a distributed Nash equilibrium seeking strategy is proposed for the noncooperative games. Analytical analysis on the convergence of the players’ actions to the Nash equilibrium is conducted via Lyapunov stability analysis. For games with nonquadratic payoffs, where multiple isolated Nash equilibria may coexist in the game, a local convergence result is derived under certain conditions. Then, a stronger condition is provided to derive a nonlocal convergence result for the nonquadratic games. For quadratic games, it is shown that the proposed seeking strategy enables the players’ actions to converge to the Nash equilibrium globally under the given conditions. Numerical examples are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed seeking strategy.
Separable Approximation for Solving the Sensor Subset Selection Problem

An algorithm is proposed to solve the sensor subset selection problem. In this problem, a prespecified number of sensors are selected to estimate the value of a parameter such that a metric of estimation accuracy is maximized. The metric is defined as the determinant of the Bayesian Fisher information matrix (B-FIM). It is shown that the metric can be expanded as a homogenous polynomial of decision variables. In the algorithm, a separable approximation of the polynomial is derived based on a graph-theoretic clustering method. To this end, a graph is constructed where the vertices represent the sensors, and the weights on the edges represent the coefficients of the terms in the polynomial. A process known as natural selection in population genetics is utilized to find the dominant sets of the graph. Each dominant set is considered as one cluster. When the separable approximation is obtained, the sensor selection problem is solved by dynamic programming. Numerical results are provided in the context of localization via direction-of-arrival (DOA) measurements to evaluate the performance of the algorithm.
Spectral Nulling on Transmit via Nonlinear FM Radar Waveforms

Modern radars operate in electromagnetic environments crowded with other RF users. Adaptive spectral nulling on transmit can reduce interference from and to these other RF users. An analytical theory is developed for spectral nulling by a minimal adjustment, or offset, to the phase of the radar pulse that maintains constant pulse amplitude. Numerical examples show that a small time-varying phase offset designed by the proposed method can produce deep spectral nulls at one or more chosen frequencies in the radar's spectral sidelobes with little other effect on the pulse spectrum or ambiguity function.
Effect of epigallocatechin-3-gallate on acrylamide-induced oxidative stress and apoptosis in PC12 cells

Acrylamide (ACR) is a chemical intermediate utilized in industry. ACR is also formed during heating of foods containing carbohydrates and amino acids. Therefore, humans are widely exposed to ACR, and ACR neurotoxicity in humans is a significant public health issue attracting wide attention. In this study, we investigated the potential neuroprotective effects of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), the most abundant polyphenolic compound in green tea, in PC12 cells treated with ACR. ACR-treated PC12 cells pretreated with various concentrations of EGCG (2.5, 5 and 10 μM) for 24 h had increased viability and acetylcholinesterase activity and reduced apoptosis and necrosis compared to cells exposed to ACR alone. EGCG reduced the expression of bax mRNA, decreased cytochrome c release, reduced intracellular calcium levels, inactivated caspase 3 and increased mitochondrial membrane potential, suggesting that EGCG prevents ACR-induced apoptosis through a mitochondrial-mediated pathway. In addition, EGCG inhibited the formation of reactive oxygen species and lipid peroxidation while enhancing superoxide dismutase activity and glutathione levels, thereby reducing oxidative stress. Our results indicate that pretreatment of PC12 cells with EGCG attenuates ACR-induced apoptosis by reducing oxidative stress. Therefore, drinking green tea may reduce nerve injury induced by ACR.
Science education. Climate change sparks battles in classroom.

An informal survey this spring of 800 members of the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA) found that climate change was second only to evolution in triggering protests from parents and school administrators. Online message boards for science teachers tell similar tales. Unlike biology teachers defending the teaching of evolution, however, earth science teachers don9t have the protection of the First Amendment9s language about religion. But the teachers feel their arguments are equally compelling: Science courses should reflect the best scientific knowledge of the day, and offering opposing views amounts to teaching poor science. Most science teachers don9t relish having to engage this latest threat to their profession and resent devoting precious classroom time to a discussion of an alleged "controversy. " And they believe that politics has no place in a science classroom. Even so, some are being dragged against their will into a conflict they fear could turn ugly.
The Effect of Radiofrequency Energy on Ambient Fluid Temperature in an Enclosed Compartment: An in Vitro Model of the Subacromial Space

Background Radiofrequency (RF) devices are widely used in arthroscopic shoulder surgery for tissue ablation and other effects. They have heating effect during tissue application. It is known that chondrocyte death occurs with temperatures above 45 °C. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of various factors on the heating effect of RF probes in a controlled in vitro model. Methods A perspex model was used, in which volume, flow, outflow position, duration of RF probe use and inflow temperature could be closely controlled. Results Temperature rises in the bathing fluid sufficient to cause cell death were seen. The temperature rise was most noticeable when there was no fluid flow through the compartment, at smaller fluid volumes, if the fluid inflow temperature is elevated, and if the outflow is distant from the RF device. Of note, 30 seconds of use in a volume of 20 mL with no flow led to temperatures above 50 °C. Discussion Most of the factors affecting temperature rises using RF devices are directly under the surgeon's control. Further work is needed in this area to define the potential clinical effects of the use of these devices.
What could we have done for her now?

In the 1960s my mother had three episodes of postnatal depression. I have always known this must have had a significant effect on herself and my father, but recently I have recognised that the depression undoubtedly also had an effect on my siblings and me, and perhaps it could also affect my children in the future. Maybe it all started with one of my grandparents a long time ago, but no one ever spoke about it. What previously I had considered a small family incident of mental illness I now see as something more significant, stretching over generations and passing on vulnerabilities. I wonder whether it made me the person and practitioner I am today? I have looked again at two photos of my mother and me, the first taken on the day I was born. There I am, a small bundle in an old fashioned blanket, and she is holding me as if I am the most precious thing and smiling sideways at the camera. In the second photo a few months later she looks …
Extended Object Tracking using a Radar Resolution Model

The work presented here concerns the problem of vehicle tracking when multiple radar reflection centers could be resolved on each vehicle. For this extended target tracking problem we propose a radar sensor model, capable of describing such measurements, incorporating sensor resolution. Furthermore, we introduce approximations to handle the inherently complex data association problem. The evaluation in terms of describing measured data and resulting tracking performance shows that the model effectively exploits the information in multiple vehicle detections.
Increased incidence of invasive breast cancer after the introduction of service screening with mammography in Sweden

Screening with mammography has been shown to substantially reduce mortality from breast cancer. The incidence of invasive cancer will increase as screening starts, and it is desirable that it gradually returns to the same level as before screening. Age‐specific incidence of invasive breast cancer in 11 Swedish counties, including 463,000 women aged 40–74 years, was analysed before and after the start of service screening with mammography. Incidence, as observed on average during 12.8 years from screening start, was compared to expected incidence based on the incidence during a 15‐year period preceding screening start. The height of the incidence peak during the first screening round was increasing with increasing age, compatible with the accumulation in the population of slowly growing tumours by age. All analysed age groups showed an increased ratio between observed stabilised incidence 7–14 years after screening start and expected incidence. When relative risks were adjusted for lead time, the estimates were 1.54 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.33–1.79) and 1.21 (95% CI 1.04–1.41) for the age groups 50–59 and 60–69 years, respectively. In the age groups 40–49 and 70–74, no change was observed. The findings were further confirmed by the observation of a disappearance in the screened population of the notch in the increasing trend of age‐specific breast cancer incidence for the ages after menopause. This notch could indicate hormone‐related retardation in tumour growth around menopause. It appears that many of these clinically insignificant, retarded tumours are detected with screening mammography. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Dechirp-on-Receive Linearly Frequency Modulated Radar as a Matched-Filter Detector

It is widely assumed that dechirp-on-receive linearly frequency modulated radar is a form of matched filtering, although this is rarely demonstrated. In this correspondence it is shown that this type of radar receiver, specifically linearly frequency modulated CW (LFMCW) radar and stretch processing radar, closely approaches matched filtering, and so can be assumed to have the same well-understood properties and advantages as that class of detectors.
High Efficiency Satellite Multiple Access Scheme for Machine-to-Machine Communications

The work presented here describes the key design drivers and performance of a high efficiency satellite mobile messaging system well adapted to the machine-to-machine communication services targeting, in particular, the vehicular market. It is shown that the proposed return link multiple access solution is providing a random access channel (RACH) aggregated spectral efficiency around 2 bit/s/Hz in the presence of power unbalance with reliable packet delivery over typical land mobile satellite (LMS) channels.