Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SWIRL: A sequential windowed inverse reinforcement learning algorithm for robot tasks with delayed rewards

We present sequential windowed inverse reinforcement learning (SWIRL), a policy search algorithm that is a hybrid of exploration and demonstration paradigms for robot learning. We apply unsupervised learning to a small number of initial expert demonstrations to structure future autonomous exploration. SWIRL approximates a long time horizon task as a sequence of local reward functions and subtask transition conditions. Over this approximation, SWIRL applies Q-learning to compute a policy that maximizes rewards. Experiments suggest that SWIRL requires significantly fewer rollouts than pure reinforcement learning and fewer expert demonstrations than behavioral cloning to learn a policy. We evaluate SWIRL in two simulated control tasks, parallel parking and a two-link pendulum. On the parallel parking task, SWIRL achieves the maximum reward on the task with 85% fewer rollouts than Q-learning, and one-eight of demonstrations needed by behavioral cloning. We also consider physical experiments on surgical tensioning and cutting deformable sheets using a da Vinci surgical robot. On the deformable tensioning task, SWIRL achieves a 36% relative improvement in reward compared with a baseline of behavioral cloning with segmentation.
Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Modulates Calcium Homeostasis in Human Coronary Microvascular Endothelial Cells after Ischemia and Reperfusion

Diabetic patients are at extreme risk for cardiovascular disease. Endothelial dysfunction plays a key role in the development of cardiovascular complications in diabetes. The effects of diabetes on the endothelium are multi-factorial, and include impaired intracellular calcium [Ca2+]i handling, particularly during reperfusion after ischemia. Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) forms the basis of a group of agents currently used for glycemic control in type 2 diabetic patients. GLP-1 also improves endothelial function and is cardioprotective after ischemia and reperfusion. The mechanisms behind these effects are unknown. We determined the effects of GLP1 on cytosolic calcium [Ca2+]i in human coronary microvascular endothelial cells (HCMVECs), under physiologic conditions and also after simulated ischemia and reperfusion. In HCMVECs, [Ca2+]i was measured with and without treatment with GLP1 (10 nM) and with and without simulated ischemia and reperfusion. We found that GLP-1 significantly modulates calcium handling in HCMVECs. The rise of ATPinduced [Ca2+]i was attenuated after treatment with GLP-1, both under physiologic conditions and after ischemia and reperfusion. These data reveal a role for GLP-1 in the modulation of [Ca2+]i in HCMVECs, which may be one mechanism by which it improves endothelial function. Given the increased risk of coronary microvascular dysfunction in type 2 diabetes, these findings suggest another potential benefit to the use of GLP-1 based therapies in diabetic patients.
RAPID RISK ASSESSMENT Acute encephalitis associated with infection with Borna disease virus 1 , Germany 26 March 2018

BoDV-1 in humans occurs rarely; however considering the severity of this disease, Member States may consider adding BoDV-1 to the list of pathogens included in the differential diagnosis of causes of human encephalitis. The fact that the virus could be transmitted through solid organ transplantation raises concerns about the possibility of transmission through other types of substances of human origin (SoHO). This should be further investigated.
Automated Traffic Enforcement: Responding to the Critics

: In many countries, traffic volumes and the number of drivers are rising faster than the availability of police officers whose routine duties include traffic law enforcement. Automated traffic enforcement, which produces photographic evidence of vehicles detected speeding or running red lights, can be used to supplement traditional enforcement. In the United States and Canada, a number of individuals and organizations have been very vocal in their opposition to automated traffic enforcement. They argue that automated enforcement programs are unnecessary for improving road safety, that they unfairly target relatively good drivers, and that they are motivated by revenue generation rather than safety. These arguments, however, often ignore the numerous peer-reviewed studies that have found real-world benefits in communities that use automated enforcement—cameras deter would-be violators, reduce crashes, and save lives. Solid, published research by a number of experts demonstrates that red light cameras save lives, and speed cameras substantially reduce speeding and speed-related crashes. Surveys of drivers and other road users indicate widespread support for automated enforcement. With regard to fairness, the objective of photo enforcement is to deter violations, not to surreptitiously catch violators. The more public the enforcement is, the better. If anything, automated enforcement programs improve fairness by reducing the potential for prejudicial enforcement. Finally, photo enforcement is intended to improve traffic safety by modifying the driver behaviors that lead to crashes, and it is reasonable to expect that people who break the law should pay for enforcing it. Ticket revenue should decline overtime as the cameras succeed in deterring would-be speeders and red light runners. This paper provides research-based responses to the critics’ arguments as well as best practice guidelines for effective automated enforcement programs.
Flow Dynamics and Wall Shear Stresses in a Bifurcated Femoral Artery

The present paper presents peak wall shear stresses and velocities in a bifurcated femoral artery. This artery is modeled along with blockage downstream of bifurcation, blockage at bifurcation, blockage downstream of stented femoral artery. The femoral artery is subjected to peripheral artery disease. A two-dimensional computational fluid dynamic analysis is conducted in all the models, assuming steady blood flow and seventy percent plaque. However, the blood viscosity and blood pressure vary in the femoral artery models as they are subjected to other medical conditions. Femoral artery bifurcates into profunda femoris and the bifurcation angles are assumed to vary at 30, 45 and 60 degrees. The blocked bifurcated artery is replaced with a wall stent and in many cases, a blockage develops downstream of the bifurcated stented artery as a consequence of stent implantation. The wall shear stresses and velocities results from the bifurcated and blocked femoral arterial models are compared to a normal artery characteristic. Further, a comparative study has been conducted along the blocked bifurcated artery with and without the stent.
Serum CancerAntigen-125 Levels in Endometriosis

Aim: Elevated serum cancer antigen (CA) 125 levels in females with endometriosis Design: Descriptive study Setting: Tertiary care teaching hospitals and infertility clinics Lahore Pakistan Patients: Fifty women of age 20-40 years diagnosed with endometriosis were included Main Outcome Measures: Serum CA 125 levels were measured in endometriosis patients. Material and methods: 50Married females of age 20-40 years, diagnosed with endometriosis were selected as cases.Females with conditions like leiomyomas and carcinomas were excluded. The results were expressed as means ±SD (U/ml). Results: Significantly higher mean serum CA 125 levels were seen in women with endometriosis (56.13±13.7) U/ml. The inter stage comparison of CA 125 show non-significant difference with advancement of the stage. Conclusion: Serum CA 125 levels are higher in endometriosis patients. It may be used as effective screening tool, diagnostic marker for patients with endometriosis or for monitoring therapy.
The Pitfalls of Visual Representations

A large body of research has addressed the benefits of visualization, whereas the analysis of the pitfalls has not received systematic attention. We aim to provide an overview of the common pitfalls and potential disadvantages of visual representations based on a multidisciplinary literature review. Subsequently, we develop a theoretically grounded classification of common cognitive, emotional, and social risks of visualization and populate it with a comprehensive list of visualization pitfalls. The aim of this research is not to diminish the potential of visualization, but rather to improve visual literacy by structuring our understanding of the possible limitations of graphic representations.
ARMOR : Towards Restricted Approximation with A Worst-Case Guarantee

Approximate applications can tolerate failures in memory and provide a better performance and energy efficiency. However, DRAM failures are randomly distributed in the approximate memory, and therefore, can introduce a large variation in the output quality of approximate applications. Prior works utilize the statistical analysis to guarantee that the error in the output is limited to a narrow range with a high confidence. In this work, we demonstrate that the errors in the output can be significantly higher than the statistical guarantee in many cases, and therefore, statistical guarantee cannot reason about the worst-case error. The goal of this work is to provide a guarantee on the worst-case error. We propose the notion of restricted approximation where the memory failure can only introduce a certain maximum error in the input, such that it is possible to estimate the worst-case error in the output by analyzing the program. We provide ARMOR, a software-hardware solution that provides a worst-case guarantee of the error in the output. With approximation, ARMOR reduces the energy by 12% and improves the performance by 18%. By restricting the error, ARMOR achieves 31 to 4 × 104 times reduction in error over the case where memory failures are randomly distributed.
Optimal Management of Individual Pension Plans

We consider optimal investment for an individual pension savings plan in receipt of gradual contributions against which one cannot borrow, using expected power utility as the optimality criterion. It is well known that in the presence of credit constraints the Samuelson paradigm of investment in constant proportions out of total wealth (including current savings and future contributions) no longer applies. Instead, the optimal investment gives rise to so-called stochastic lifestyling, whereby for low levels of accumulated capital it is optimal to invest fully in stocks and then gradually switch to safer assets as the level of savings increases. In stochastic lifestyling not only does the leverage between risky and safe assets change but also the actual mix of the risky assets varies over time. While the existing literature relies on complex numerical computations to quantify optimal lifestyling the present paper provides a simple formula that captures the main essence of the lifestyling effect.
Towards Effort Estimation for Web Service Compositions using Classification Matrix

Within the service-oriented computing domain, Web service composition is an effective realization to satisfy the rapidly changing requirements of business. Although the research into Web service composition has unfolded broadly, little work has been published towards composition effort estimation. Since examining all of the related work in this area becomes a mission next to impossible, the classification of composition approaches can be used to facilitate multiple research tasks. However, the current attempts to classify Web service composition are not suitable for the research into effort estimation. For example, the contexts and technologies of composition approaches are confused in the existing classifications. This paper firstly proposes an effort-oriented classification matrix for Web service composition, which distinguishes between the context and technology dimension. The context dimension is aimed at analyzing the environmental influence on the effort of Web service composition, while the technology dimension focuses on the technical influence on the effort. Therefore, different context types and technology categories can be treated as different effort factors. Based on the classification matrix, this paper also builds an effort- estimation-checklist table by applying a set of qualitative effort estimation hypotheses to those effort factors. The table can then be used to facilitate comparing the qualitatively estimated effort between different composition approaches.
Collaborative Model-Driven Software Engineering: A Classification Framework and a Research Map

Context: Collaborative Model-Driven Software Engineering (MDSE) consists of methods and techniques where multiple stakeholders manage, collaborate, and are aware of each others’ work on shared models. Objective: Collaborative MDSE is attracting research efforts from different areas, resulting in a variegated scientific body of knowledge. This study aims at identifying, classifying, and understanding existing collaborative MDSE approaches. Method: We designed and conducted a systematic mapping study. Starting from over 3,000 potentially relevant studies, we applied a rigorous selection procedure resulting in 106 selected papers, further clustered into 48 primary studies along a time span of 19 years. We rigorously defined and applied a classification framework and extracted key information from each selected study for subsequent analysis. Results: Our analysis revealed the following main fidings: (i) there is a growing scientific interest on collaborative MDSE in the last years; (ii) multi-view modeling, validation support, reuse, and branching are more rarely covered with respect to other aspects about collaborative MDSE; (iii) different primary studies focus differently on individual dimensions of collaborative MDSE (i.e., model management, collaboration, and communication); (iv) most approaches are language-specific, with a prominence of UML-based approaches; (v) few approaches support the interplay between synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. Conclusion: This study gives a solid foundation for classifying existing and future approaches for collaborative MDSE. Researchers and practitioners can use our results for identifying existing research/technical gaps to attack, better scoping their own contributions, or understanding existing ones.
RGB-NIR active gated imaging

This paper presents multispectral active gated imaging in relation to the transportation and security fields. Active gated imaging is based on a fast gated camera and pulsed illuminator, synchronized in the time domain to provide range based images. We have developed a multispectral pattern deposited on a gated CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) with a pulsed Near Infrared VCSEL module. This paper will cover the component-level description of the multispectral gated CIS including the camera and illuminator units. Furthermore, the design considerations and characterization results of the spectral filters are presented together with a newly developed image processing method.
IMPACT ON BROILER PRODUCTIVITY AND INTESTINAL TRACT MICROFLORA

A trial was carried out with broiler chicks 1 to 42 days old of cross Ross-308 with an aim of establishing the impact produced by the combination of the dry form of prebiotics obtained from Jerusalem artichoke and the probiotic bacteria Lactobacillus reuteri L. and Pediococcus pentosaceus L. on productivity of broilers and quality of their meat as well as on feed conversion, bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae and lactic bacteria counts in the ileum part of intestinal tract. As the result of the trial it was established that supplementation of the broiler basic feed with 0.5 % dry powder prebiotics obtained from JA (Helianthus tuberosus L.) in combination with probiotics 1 x 10 8 cfu·g -1 Lactobacillus reuteri L. and 1 x 10 8 cfu·g -1 Pediococcus pentosaceus L. , both the productivity of broiler chicks and the meat quality increased in comparison with the control group. The live weight of the broiler chicks increased by 2.1 %, the feed consumption for obtaining 1 kg of live weight decreased by 3.2 %, the level of the favourable lactic bacteria in ileum part of the intestinal tract was increased by 0.85 log cfu·g -1 , the cholesterol level in the meat of broiler chicks was reduced by 22.7 mg·(100 g) -1 , moreover, the meat had higher nutritional value: higher level of essential amino acid tryptophan and lower level of connective tissue protein – oxiproline.
Teaching CAT Tools to Translation Students: an Examination of Their Expectations and Attitudes

This paper presents a study among 103 female translation students enrolled in a Computer Applications in Translation course at the College of Languages & Translation, King Saud University, Riyadh. The study involved completing a questionnaire both at the beginning and at the end of the semester and semi-structured interviews. Classroom observations were also used to collect data aiming at enhancing validity of the study. The study aimed to assess the students’ degree of knowledge regarding Computer-Aided Translation (CAT) tools and their expectations and attitudes towards using these tools. The results of the study showed a relationship between the increase in the knowledge of CAT tools by the end of the course, and the change in students’ attitudes towards the discipline. Students attitudes became much less biased and, in general, fairly positive. The study suggests that the more the student translators became familiar with CAT tools, realizing their reasonable potentials and current limitations, the less anxious they were. These findings promote the integration of technology in general, and (CAT) tools in particular, into translation classrooms in order to enhance the skills of our students’ translators and maximize their opportunities in today’s job market.
Molecular Microbial Ecology of Marmara Sea Sediments

Uncommon chemical composition of Marmara Sea sediments (MSS) makes them a perfect candidate for investigation of ecologically important microbial processes. Studies on microbial ecology of this important ecosystem have recently been started; major outcomes of these efforts were reviewed in this chapter. Monitoring MSS from 10 different locations for two years revealed that microbial cells were abundant and active in the sediments. MSS were dominated by Euryarchaeota and Proteobacteria, as well as unclassified phylogenetic clusters. Dissimilatory nitrate reduction, dissimilatory sulfate reduction, methanogenesis and anaerobic hydrocarbon degradation (AnHD) were the most active processes in the first 15 cm below the sea floor. Scarcity of the electron acceptors and limiting nutrients (N and P) was the main factor affecting microbial abundance and activity in MSS. These indications led to further lab-scale efforts to increase AnHD activity of the sediments by N-P amendment. It was possible to increase AnHD potential of MSS for ~9× which may result in less human intervened and more economical field-scale bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbons.
Fighting the Global Problem of Antimicrobial Resistance

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing problem across the world, becoming a major threat to global public health. According to the Centre for Disease Control and prevention (CDC), in the USA alone over 2 million patients are infected with drug resistant bacterial infections and 23,000 of these patients die annually of these infections 1. This not only impacts health care systems but also has a negative impact on the economy as treatments become more expensive due to extended and more complex treatment regimes. It is estimated that the cost of this to the U. S government is in the region of $20 billion dollars per-annum, and this cost is only predicated to increase as drug resistance becomes more prevalent [1]. The antibiotic era began in 1945 with Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, even then he warned of the potential development of resistance to antibiotics [2]. Now his warning has become a reality with the discovery of numerous multi-drug-resistant (MDR) bacterial strains. There is growing concern that the surge in MDR bacterial strains may result in a ‘post antibiotic era’, where many of our current antibiotics will lose efficacy rendering bacterial infections untreatable [3]. The reality of this is already coming into effect; it has been reported that last resort treatments for MDR gonorrhoea are failing due to drug resistance [4].
Configurable Tightly-Coupled FPGA-style fabric for Fine-Grained Acceleration

Due to the slowdown of Dennard scaling and the dark silicon era, computer architects introduce hardware accelerators to maintain expected performance improvements without violating power budgets. These accelerators improve energy efficiency over a processor’s general-purpose pipeline and increase performance by trading off software flexibility for performance. Initial hardware accelerators often targeted large tasks, such as video encoding [1], graphics, etc. Then, looselycoupled sea of accelerators [2] became a model to accelerate several different domains. On the other hand, today, we see tightly-coupled accelerator proposals for heap management, hash maps, string functions, and fine-grained tasks [3] [4]. SIMD is in the same class of fine-grained acceleration, where a small group of operations are replaced by a single instruction.
The Effect of Aluminum Waste on the Material Properties of Concrete

The research investigated the density, Poisson ratio, young’s modulus of Elasticity and modulus of Rigidity of aluminum waste concrete. Aluminum waste which was obtained from Aluminum Extrusion Industry (ALEX) Inyishi in Ikeduru local Government Area of State, Nigeria, was investigated. Concrete cubes with different ingredient components were cast and cured in water at room temperature for 28 days. Some selected mixes were used for the Poisson ratio test and control test respectively. A total of 66 concrete cubes were cast for the determination of density, Poisson ratio, young’s modulus of elasticity and modulus of rigidity. The results of the density, poisson ratio, young’s modulus of Elasticity and modulus of Rigidity ranges from 2.35-2.55kg/m 3 , 0.38-153, 2.89 x 10 -5 – 3.41 x 10 -5, and o.56 x 10 -5 -1.24x 10 -5 respectively. The result of the control test of the density, Poisson ratio, young’s modulus of Elasticity and modulus of Rigidity ranges from 2.41-2.56kg/m 3 0.53-2.01, 3.04 x 10 -5 – 3.41 x 10 -5 and 0.56 x 10 -5 -1.38 x 10 -5 respectively. Aluminum waste produces no significant effect on the density, Poisson ratio, young’s modulus of Elasticity and modulus of Rigidity of the concrete.