Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Path Tracking Controller of Quadruped Robot for Obstacle Avoidance Using Potential Functions Method

This paper proposes a tracking controller for obstacle avoidance of a quadruped robot using potential functions method. The followings are done for this task. At first, a ceiling-mounted camera system is installed for image processing. The goal point and obstacles are separated and recognized by a color recognition method. Second, a path planning algorithm using potential functions method is proposed to generate the path to avoid obstacles and to plan a path for the quadruped robot to reach from start point to goal point. Third, a quadruped robot is chosen as the mobile platform for this study and the kinematic model for the robot is presented. Fourth, a tracking controller is designed for the quadruped robot to track the trajectory based on the backstepping method using Lyapunov function. Finally, the simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed trajectory planning algorithm and the tracking controller. [Keywords — Path tracking ; back stepping ; obstacles avoidance ; potential functions ; quadruped robot ] .
Review of recent progress of III-nitride nanowire lasers

Abstract. One-dimensional compound semiconductor nanolasers, especially nanowire (NW)-based nanolasers utilizing III-nitride (AlGaInN) materials system, are an emerging and promising area of research. Significant achievements have been made in developing III-nitride NW lasers with emission wavelengths from the deep ultraviolet (UV) to the near-infrared spectral range. The types of lasers under investigation include Fabry-Pérot, photonic crystal, plasmonic, ring resonator, microstadium, random, polariton, and two-dimensional distributed feedback lasers. The lasing thresholds vary by several orders of magnitude, which are a direct consequence of differing NW dimensions, quality of the NWs, characteristics of NW cavities, and coupling with the substrate. For electrically injected, such as ultralow-threshold and continuous-wave III-nitride NW lasers that can operate at room temperature, the following obstacles remain: carrier loss mechanisms including defect-related nonradiative surface recombination, electron overflow, and poor hole transport; low radiative recombination efficiency and high surface recombination; poor thermal management; and highly resistive ohmic contacts on the p-layer. These obstacles must be overcome to fully realize the potential of these lasers.
Equilibrium and Kinetics of Adsorption of Ni ( II ) and Pb ( II ) Ions on Cow Bone

The adsorption capacity of cow bone ash for Ni (II) and Pb (II) ions in aqueous solution was studied as functions of initial metal ion concentration and time in a batch system. Results showed that adsorption increased with Ni (II) and Pb (II) concentration. Adsorption isotherms such as Langmuir, Freundlich, Dubinin-Radushkevich, Harkins-Jura and Henry’s isotherms were applied to the adsorption data. Isotherm parameters showed that the data for Ni (II) sorption was better correlated than Pb(II) data. Ni (II) sorption correlated at 0.986, 0.945, 0.903, 0.884 and 0.768 for Langmuir, Freundlich, Harkins-Jura Dubinin-Radushkevich and Temkin isotherms respectively. The maximum adsorption capacity was found to be 0.079mg/g and 0.236 mg/g for Pb(II) and Ni(II) respectively. The kinetic behaviour of Ni (II) and Pb (II) ions towards the adsorbent was studied with two rate models: pseudo first-order and pseudo secondorder equation. The pseudofirst order rate model fitted the Pb (II) sorption (R = 0.941) while the pseudo second order rate model correlated the Ni (II) data ( R= 0.999). Maximum percent removal efficiency was 99.5% at 50 minutes for Pb (II) while that of Ni (II) was 32.83% at 60 minutes.
RISE WINTER 2015 – UNDERSTANDING AND TESTING SELF SENSING MCKIBBEN ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES

Due to their compliant properties, McKibben artificial muscles are well suited for applications in wearable devices and soft robotics since they do not require conventional joints to be affixed to. To make these actuators useful in closedloop controlled system, a number of challenges must be overcome with respect to measuring the contraction of the muscles. Researchers at the Robotics and Motion Laboratory (RAMlab) at the University of Michigan have developed a way to measure soft actuator motion, by making the braid of the McKibben artificial muscles out of conductive wire. Turning the muscles into an electric circuit allows the measurement of contraction of the actuator through measurements of inductance of the wire braid itself. In my RISE project, I conducted a systematic investigation of these self-sensing McKibben muscles by experimentally characterizing changes of inductance as the muscle contracts. Additionally, I developed a test fixture that enables antagonized testing of pairs of actuators. The fixture will allow variable inertial loads and different lengths of the McKibben artificial muscles to be tested and provides a platform to test control algorithms.
Ethical Trading and Socioeconomic Transformation: Critical Reflections on the South African Wine Industry

Newly emerging ethical trade practices in the South African wine industry are examined as a way of engaging with debates about the ability of alternative trade approaches to facilitate meaningful opportunities for socioeconomic development in the global South. The South African wine industry has undergone rapid restructuring since the end of apartheid in order to meet the demands of international markets. However, transforming racially skewed ownership and skill patterns is proving a particular challenge. In this paper we outline some of the initiatives that have been introduced to stimulate socioeconomic change within the industry. By utilising analytical tools such as commodity chains, networks, and cultural approaches we demonstrate that a complex array of forces is driving change on the ground. Such forces include national imperatives derived from the legacy of apartheid and the concerns of consumers in the global North. We conclude by considering the types of local and global constraints that need to be challenged if these initiatives are to be successful in facilitating meaningful socioeconomic transformation within the wine industry.
Stability of a Viscous Liquid Contained between Two Rotating Cylinders

In recent years much information has been accumulated about the flow of fluids past solid boundaries. All experiments so far carried out seem to indicate that in all cases steady motion is possible if the motion be sufficiently slow, but that if the velocity of the fluid exceeds a certain limit, depending on the viscosity of the fluid and the configuration of the boundaries, the steady motion breaks down and eddying flow sets in. A great many attempts have been made to discover some mathematical representation of fluid instability, but so far they have been unsuccessful in every case. The case, for instance, in which the fluid is contained between two infinite parallel planes which move with a uniform relative velocity has been discussed by Kelvin, Rayleigh, Sommerfeld, Orr, Mises, Hope, and others. Each of them cam e to the conclusion that the fundamental small disturbances of this system are stable. Though it is necessarily impossible to carry out experiments with infinite planes, it is generally believed that the motion in this case would be turbulent, provided the relative velocity of the two planes were sufficiently great.
Geodesic distances in the intrinsic dimensionality estimation using packing numbers

Dimensionality reduction is a very important tool in data mining. An intrinsic dimensionality of a data set is a key parameter in many dimensionality reduction algorithms. When the intrinsic dimensionality of a data set is known, it is possible to reduce the dimensionality of the data without losing much information. To this end, it is reasonable to find out the intrinsic dimensionality of the data. In this paper, one of the global estimators of intrinsic dimensionality, the packing numbers estimator (PNE), is explored experimentally. We propose the modification of the PNE method that uses geodesic distances in order to improve the estimates of the intrinsic dimensionality by the PNE method.
Closing Brackets with Recurrent Neural Networks

Many natural and formal languages contain words or symbols that require a matching counterpart for making an expression well-formed. The combination of opening and closing brackets is a typical example of such a construction. Due to their commonness, the ability to follow such rules is important for language modeling. Currently, recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are extensively used for this task. We investigate whether they are capable of learning the rules of opening and closing brackets by applying them to synthetic Dyck languages that consist of different types of brackets. We provide an analysis of the statistical properties of these languages as a baseline and show strengths and limits of Elman-RNNs, GRUs and LSTMs in experiments on random samples of these languages. In terms of perplexity and prediction accuracy, the RNNs get close to the theoretical baseline in most cases.
MORPHOLOGICAL VARIATION AND RELATIONSHIPS OF AZERBAIJAN CULTIVATED AND WILD GRAPE POPULATIONS

The aim of this study was the assessment of the genetic diversity of 60 accessions, comprising 30 local table grape varieties ( Vitis vinifera ssp. sativa ) and 30 wild types ( Vitis vinifera ssp. sylvestris) originating from regions near the Caspian Sea of Azerbaijan Republic by the multivariate statistics analysis of morphological traits. All plant materials are belonged to grape collections of the Azerbaijan Genetic Resources Institute of ANAS and Azerbaijan Scientific Research Institute of Viticulture and Wine-making. The experiment was arranged in a randomized completely block design (RCBD) with three two-vine replications. For each accession, 23 morphological traits (length of annual bud, length and width leave, length of stalk leave, length of central vessel, number of bunches per bush, length and width bunch, length of stalk bunch, number of berry per bunch, length and width berry, weight of bunch, number of seeds, length and width seed, 100 weight of berries, 100 weight of seeds, number of fertile buds, number of green buds (this trait has not measured in wild grape) yield of bud, yield of per bush and time of vegetation) were measured according to the international descriptors for grape. Data were analyzed using MSTATC and SPSS software packages. The phenotypic coefficients of variation and variance analysis were highly significant, indicating high genetic diversity among investigated grape accessions. The results of path analysis showed that the traits, such as the number of bunches per vine, the bunch length in cultivated grape population and the leave width, the bud yield in wild grape population have the greatest effect on yield. By principle component analysis the cultivars Haji Abbas, Gavangir, Sarigile gejyetishan, Ala shani and the wild grape samples №32, 34, 38, 43 and 44 were selected as high productive accessions. The cluster analysis leading according the Ward method on the basis Euclidean distance classified cultivars into three groups and wild grape accessions into 4 groups, while the genotypes with high yield were placed in a separated group on the both of the dendrograms. Cluster analysis of all genotypes is allowed to classify them into three main groups. Although on the basis of similarity index, cultivated and wild individuals clustered in separate groups (except Nardaran Darbandisi), the results of analysis of the dendrogram showed that the observed genetic diversity among these populations is not geographically structured. However, this information is very useful for further management of Azerbaijan grape germplasm.
Evaluating changes of biomass in global vegetation models: the role of turnover fluctuations and ENSO events

This paper evaluates the ability of eight global vegetation models to reproduce recent trends and inter-annual variability of biomass in natural terrestrial ecosystems. For the purpose of this evaluation, the simulated trajectories of biomass are expressed in terms of the relative rate of change in biomass (RRB), defined as the deviation of the actual rate of biomass turnover from its equilibrium counterpart. Cumulative changes in RRB explain long-term changes in biomass pools. RRB simulated by the global vegetation models is compared with its observational equivalent, derived from vegetation optical depth reconstructions of above-ground biomass (AGB) over the period 1993–2010. According to the RRB analysis, the rate of global biomass growth described by the ensemble of simulations substantially exceeds the observation. The observed fluctuations of global RRB are significantly correlated with El Niño Southern Oscillation events (ENSO), but only some of the simulations reproduce this correlation. However, the ENSO sensitivity of RRB in the tropics is not significant in the observation, while it is in some of the simulations. This mismatch points to an important limitation of the observed AGB reconstruction to capture biomass variations in tropical forests. Important discrepancies in RRB were also identified at the regional scale, in the tropical forests of Amazonia and Central Africa, as well as in the boreal forests of north-western America, western and central Siberia. In each of these regions, the RRBs derived from the simulations were analyzed in connection with underlying differences in net primary productivity and biomass turnover rate ̶as a basis for exploring in how far differences in simulated changes in biomass are attributed to the response of the carbon uptake to CO2 increments, as well as to the model representation of factors affecting the rates of mortality and turnover of foliage and roots. Overall, our findings stress the usefulness of using RRB to evaluate complex vegetation models and highlight the importance of conducting further evaluations of both the actual rate of biomass turnover and its equilibrium counterpart, with special focus on their background values and sources of variation. In turn, this task would require the availability of more accurate multi-year observational data of biomass and net primary productivity for natural ecosystems, as well as detailed and updated information on land-cover classification.
Imitating the Most Successful Neighbor in Social Networks

Abstract We study a model of observational learning in a set of agents who are connected through a social network. The agents face identical decision problems under uncertainty and update their choices myopically, imitating the choice of their most successful neighbor. We show that in finite networks, regardless of the network structure, the population converges to a monomorphic steady state, i.e., one at which every agent chooses the same action, and it cannot be predicted which this action will be. In arbitrarily large networks with bounded neighborhoods, an action is diffused to the whole population either if it is the only one initially chosen by a non-negligible share of the population, or if the payoffs satisfy a sufficient condition. Without the assumption of bounded neighborhoods, (i) an action can survive even if only one agent chooses it initially, and (ii) there may exist steady states that are not monomorphic.
EFFICIENT LIDAR POINT CLOUD DATA MANAGING AND PROCESSING IN A HADOOP-BASED DISTRIBUTED FRAMEWORK

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is one of the most promising technologies in surveying and mapping,city management, forestry, object recognition, computer vision engineer and others. However, it is challenging to efficiently storage, query and analyze the high-resolution 3D LiDAR data due to its volume and complexity. In order to improve the productivity of Lidar data processing, this study proposes a Hadoop-based framework to efficiently manage and process LiDAR data in a distributed and parallel manner, which takes advantage of Hadoop’s storage and computing ability. At the same time, the Point Cloud Library (PCL), an open-source project for 2D/3D image and point cloud processing, is integrated with HDFS and MapReduce to conduct the Lidar data analysis algorithms provided by PCL in a parallel fashion. The experiment results show that the proposed framework can efficiently manage and process big LiDAR data.
Timing an attacking forehand drive in table tennis.

Comparison of initial and terminal temporal accuracy of 5 male top table tennis players performing attacking forehand drives led to the conclusion that because of a higher temporal accuracy at the moment of ball/bat contact than at initiation the players did not fully rely on a consistent movement production strategy. Functional trial-to-trial variation was evidenced by negative correlations between the perceptually specified time-to-contact at the moment of initiation and the mean acceleration during the drive; within-trial adaptation was also evident for two of the Ss. It is argued that task constraints provide the organizing principles for perception and action at the same time, thereby establishing a mutual dependency between the two. Allowing for changes in these parameters over time, a unified explanation is suggested that does not take recourse to large amounts of (tacit) knowledge on the part of the S.
Word frequency effects in naturalistic reading

ABSTRACT Word frequency is a central psycholinguistic variable that accounts for substantial variance in language processing. A number of neuroimaging studies have examined frequency at a single word level, typically demonstrating a strong negative, and sometimes positive correlation between frequency and hemodynamic response. Here, 40 subjects read passages of text in an MRI scanner while their eye movements were recorded. We used fixation-related analysis to identify neural activity tied to the frequency of each fixated word. We found that negative correlations with frequency were reduced, while strong positive correlations were found in the temporal and parietal areas associated with semantics. We propose that the processing cost of low frequency words is reduced due to contextual cues. Meanings of high frequency words are more readily accessed and integrated with context resulting in enhanced processing in the semantic system. The results demonstrate similarities and differences between single word and naturalistic text processing.
Activity of the Seyfert galaxy neighbours

We present a follow-up study of a series of papers concerning the role of close interactions as a possible triggering mechanism of AGN activity. We have already studied the close (≤100 h −1 kpc) and the large-scale (≤1 h −1 Mpc) environment of a local sample of Sy1, Sy2, and bright IRAS galaxies (BIRG) and of their respective control samples. The results led us to the conclusion that a close encounter appears capable of activating a sequence where an absorption line galaxy (ALG) galaxy first becomes a starburst, then a Sy2, and finally a Sy1. Here we investigate the activity of neighbouring galaxies of different types of AGN, since both galaxies of an interacting pair should be affected. To this end we present the optical spectroscopy and X-ray imaging of 30 neighbouring galaxies around two local (z 0.034) samples of 10 Sy1 and 13 Sy2 galaxies. Although this is a pilot study of a small sample, various interesting trends have been discovered that imply physical mechanisms that may lead to different Seyfert types. Based on the optical spectroscopy, we find that more than 70% of all neighbouring galaxies exhibit star forming and/or nuclear activity (namely recent star formation and/or AGN), while an additional X-ray analysis showed that this percentage might be significantly higher. Furthermore, we find a statistically significant correlation, at a 99.9% level, between the value of the neighbour’s [OIII]/Hβ ratio and the activity type of the central active galaxy, i.e. the neighbours of Sy2 galaxies are systematically more ionized than the neighbours of Sy1s. This result, in combination with trends found using the Equivalent Width of the Hα emission line and the stellar population synthesis code STARLIGHT, indicate differences in the stellar mass, metallicity, and star formation history between the samples. Our results point towards a link between close galaxy interactions and activity and also provide more clues regarding the possible evolutionary sequence inferred by our previous studies.
Antitumor Activity of Balanitoside Extracted from Balanites aegyptiaca Fruit

Article history: Received on: 11/02/2013 Revised on: 14/03/2013 Accepted on: 26/06/2013 Available online: 06/08/2013 The current study aimed at investigating the antitumor efficacy of balanitoside extracted from Balanites aegyptiaca fruit against Ehrlich ascites carcinoma (EAC) bearing Swiss albino mice. The extracted balanitoside was proved by chemical analysis and LD50 of balanitoside was determined. Then, mice were injected intraperitoneally with balanitoside (10mg /kg b.wt) before and after EAC inoculation, to achieve preventive and therapeutic effects daily, for 9 days. The effects of balanitoside on the count of EAC cells and life span prolongation were studied; malondialdehyde (MDA), nitric oxide (NO) levels as well as catalase (CAT) and caspase 3 activities were estimated. Cytological studies on EAC cells and histopathological examination of liver tissue were carried out. Treatment with balanitoside decreased EAC cell count for preventive and therapeutic groups. MDA and NO levels were decreased in liver and serum in preventive and therapeutic groups compared to positive control group. While CAT activity was increased in liver and plasma of preventive and therapeutic groups in comparison with positive control group. Caspase 3 activity in EAC cells, was increased in preventive and therapeutic groups in comparison with positive control group. Survivin expression in liver was decreased in preventive and therapeutic groups in comparison with positive control group. The present work indicates that balanitoside isolated from fruit extract of Balanites aegyptiaca may possess significant antitumor and antioxidant activity in vivo.
APPROXIMATING FIXED POINTS OF WEAK '-CONTRACTIONS USING THE PICARD ITERATION

A secondary self-destruct fuze that functions in the event the primary fuze mode fails to function, and that meets the design requirements for a low cost, highly producible no-spin/low velocity operating environment. The fuze includes an improved slide assembly comprised of an aerodynamic safety release (ASR), a safety pin, a secondary firing pin fitted with a spring, a secondary detonator which is placed in alignment with the secondary firing pin, a slide, an omni directional weight release that operates at various impact angles, and a weight release support. In use, the fuze is fitted to a munition or grenade. As the grenade is dispensed from its carrier, the oscillation of a grenade stabilizer causes an arming screw to back out from the fuze slide, allowing the slide assembly to move to an in-line position relative to the center of the fuze. Concurrently, the aerodynamic safety release is lifted in the upward direction under the force of the airstream, releasing the safety pin. This releases the weight release support, which slides out of the fuze. Upon impact with ground, the omni directional weight release drops in a corresponding cavity in the slide, freeing the secondary firing pin, which then impacts the secondary detonator initiating it, which, in turn, initiates a main detonator. If for any reason the primary mode fails to function the grenade, the grenade is rendered safe to handle by the secondary mode that sterilizes a main detonator of the fuze.