Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fluidic Fabric Muscle Sheets for Wearable and Soft Robotics

Conformable robotic systems are attractive for applications in which they may actuate structures with large surface areas, provide forces through wearable garments, or enable autonomous robotic systems. We present a new family of soft actuators that we refer to as Fluidic Fabric Muscle Sheets (FFMS). They are composite fabric structures that integrate fluidic transmissions based on arrays of elastic tubes. These sheet-like actuators can strain, squeeze, bend, and conform to hard or soft objects of arbitrary shapes or sizes, including the human body. We show how to design and fabricate FFMS actuators via facile apparel engineering methods, including computerized sewing techniques that determine the stress and strain distributions that can be generated. We present a simple mathematical model that proves effective for predicting their performance. FFMS can operate at frequencies of 5 Hz or more, achieve engineering strains exceeding 100%, and exert forces >115 times their weight. They can be safely used in intimate contact with the human body even when delivering stresses exceeding 106 Pascals. We demonstrate their versatility for actuating a variety of bodies or structures, and in configurations that perform multiaxis actuation, including bending and shape change. As we also show, FFMS can be used to exert forces on body tissues for wearable and biomedical applications. We demonstrate several potential use cases, including a miniature steerable robot, a glove for grasp assistance, garments for applying compression to the extremities, and devices for actuating small body regions or tissues via localized skin stretch.
Almost Tight Lower Bounds for Hard Cutting Problems in Embedded Graphs

We prove essentially tight lower bounds, conditionally to the Exponential Time Hypothesis, for two fundamental but seemingly very different cutting problems on surface-embedded graphs: the Shortest Cut Graph problem and the Multiway Cut problem. A cut graph of a graph G embedded on a surface S is a subgraph of G whose removal from S leaves a disk. We consider the problem of deciding whether an unweighted graph embedded on a surface of genus G has a cut graph of length at most a given value. We prove a time lower bound for this problem of n Ω( g log g ) conditionally to the ETH. In other words, the first n O(g) -time algorithm by Erickson and Har-Peled [SoCG 2002, Discr. Comput. Geom. 2004] is essentially optimal. We also prove that the problem is W[1]-hard when parameterized by the genus, answering a 17-year-old question of these authors. A multiway cut of an undirected graph G with t distinguished vertices, called terminals , is a set of edges whose removal disconnects all pairs of terminals. We consider the problem of deciding whether an unweighted graph G has a multiway cut of weight at most a given value. We prove a time lower bound for this problem of n Ω( gt + g 2 + t log ( g + t )) , conditionally to the ETH, for any choice of the genus g ≥ 0 of the graph and the number of terminals t ≥ 4. In other words, the algorithm by the second author [Algorithmica 2017] (for the more general multicut problem) is essentially optimal; this extends the lower bound by the third author [ICALP 2012] (for the planar case). Reductions to planar problems usually involve a gridlike structure. The main novel idea for our results is to understand what structures instead of grids are needed if we want to exploit optimally a certain value G of the genus.
Runway Detection using Pushbroom Hyperspectral Camera

Hyperspectral image analysis techniques use reflective solar radiation acquired by hyperspectral cameras to identify target present in the scene. A target can be any material surface of interest within an acquired image. The image acquisition mode of mostly available commercial hyperspectral camera is pushbroom. A pushbroom hyperspectral camera is a line scanning image sensor which collects ground image data parallel to the flight path at a specific point angle. The one dimension of acquired hyperspectral image represents the swath width while the other represents the spectral range. In this work, detection of selected materials present in the scene is performed. The spectral signature libraries of the target material and the background materials present in the scene are known. This prior spectral signatures knowledge is utilized in image bands selection to decrease processing and storage requirements while at the same time minimizing target and background visual blending. Moreover, post processing techniques making use of the expected context and size/orientation of the target are developed for a successful detection.
A 130 nm CMOS LNA for Satellite Application

This work presents the design of a narrowband Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) that is a part of a transponder project of a UHF satellite for the Brazilian Environmental Data Collecting System (SBCDA). The proposed LNA operates at 401.635 MHz moreover, it provides 28dB of power gain, 3.6dB of noise figure (NF), IIP3 of -28 dBm and 6.53 mW of power consumption and it was designed in a standard 130 nm CMOS process.
Z_2-genus of graphs and minimum rank of partial symmetric matrices

The \emph{genus} $\mathrm{g}(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum $g$ such that $G$ has an embedding on the orientable surface $M_g$ of genus $g$. A drawing of a graph on a surface is \emph{independently even} if every pair of nonadjacent edges in the drawing crosses an even number of times. The \emph{$\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus} of a graph $G$, denoted by $\mathrm{g}_0(G)$, is the minimum $g$ such that $G$ has an independently even drawing on $M_g$. By a result of Battle, Harary, Kodama and Youngs from 1962, the graph genus is additive over 2-connected blocks. In 2013, Schaefer and Stefankovic proved that the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus of a graph is additive over 2-connected blocks as well, and asked whether this result can be extended to so-called 2-amalgamations, as an analogue of results by Decker, Glover, Huneke, and Stahl for the genus. We give the following partial answer. If $G=G_1\cup G_2$, $G_1$ and $G_2$ intersect in two vertices $u$ and $v$, and $G-u-v$ has $k$ connected components (among which we count the edge $uv$ if present), then $|\mathrm{g}_0(G)-(\mathrm{g}_0(G_1)+\mathrm{g}_0(G_2))|\le k+1$. For complete bipartite graphs $K_{m,n}$, with $n\ge m\ge 3$, we prove that $\frac{\mathrm{g}_0(K_{m,n})}{\mathrm{g}(K_{m,n})}=1-O(\frac{1}{n})$. Similar results are proved also for the Euler $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus. We express the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus of a graph using the minimum rank of partial symmetric matrices over $\mathbb{Z}_2$; a problem that might be of independent interest.
Process Variability Challenges for Radiation Mitigation Techniques on 16nm

This paper investigates the impact of process variability on traditional radiation and noise mitigation techniques for deep nanometer bulk CMOS technologies. Schmitt Trigger, Strengthening, Pseudo-Strengthening, and Rad-Hard techniques are explored observing the sensitivity to process variability. Results show that these techniques operating under process variability can introduce substantial degradation on timing and power. This study presents the benefits, and the drawbacks brought from the applied methods.
Combinatorial Auctions with Interdependent Valuations: SOS to the Rescue

We study combinatorial auctions with interdependent valuations, where each agent i has a private signal si that captures her private information and the valuation function of every agent depends on the entire signal profile, [Formula: see text]. The literature in economics shows that the interdependent model gives rise to strong impossibility results and identifies assumptions under which optimal solutions can be attained. The computer science literature provides approximation results for simple single-parameter settings (mostly single-item auctions or matroid feasibility constraints). Both bodies of literature focus largely on valuations satisfying a technical condition termed single crossing (or variants thereof). We consider the class of submodular over signals (SOS) valuations (without imposing any single crossing-type assumption) and provide the first welfare approximation guarantees for multidimensional combinatorial auctions achieved by universally ex post incentive-compatible, individually rational mechanisms. Our main results are (i) four approximation for any single-parameter downward-closed setting with single-dimensional signals and SOS valuations; (ii) four approximation for any combinatorial auction with multidimensional signals and separable-SOS valuations; and (iii) (k + 3) and (2 log(k) + 4) approximation for any combinatorial auction with single-dimensional signals, with k-sized signal space, for SOS and strong-SOS valuations, respectively. All of our results extend to a parameterized version of SOS, d-approximate SOS, while losing a factor that depends on d. Funding: This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [Grant 317/17], the National Science Foundation [Grant CCF-1813135], the Air Force Office of Scientific Research [Grant FA9550-20-1-0212], and the H2020 European Research Council [Grant 866132].
Regularize, Expand and Compress: Multi-task based Lifelong Learning via NonExpansive AutoML

Lifelong learning, the problem of continual learning where tasks arrive in sequence, has been lately attracting more attention in the computer vision community. The aim of lifelong learning is to develop a system that can learn new tasks while maintaining the performance on the previously learned tasks. However, there are two obstacles for lifelong learning of deep neural networks: catastrophic forgetting and capacity limitation. To solve the above issues, inspired by the recent breakthroughs in automatically learning good neural network architectures, we develop a Multi-task based lifelong learning via nonexpansive AutoML framework termed Regularize, Expand and Compress (REC). REC is composed of three stages: 1) continually learns the sequential tasks without the learned tasks' data via a newly proposed multi-task weight consolidation (MWC) algorithm; 2) expands the network to help the lifelong learning with potentially improved model capability and performance by network-transformation based AutoML; 3) compresses the expanded model after learning every new task to maintain model efficiency and performance. The proposed MWC and REC algorithms achieve superior performance over other lifelong learning algorithms on four different datasets.
How Far are we from Data Mining Democratisation? A Systematic Review

Context: Data mining techniques have demonstrated to be a powerful technique for discovering insights hidden in data from a domain. However, these techniques demand very specialised skills. People willing to analyse data often lack these skills, so they must rely on data scientists, which hinders data mining democratisation. Different approaches have appeared in the last years to address this issue. Objective: Analyse the state of the art to know how far are we from an effective data mining democratisation, what has already been accomplished, and what should be done in the upcoming years. Method: We performed a state-of-the-art review following a systematic and objective procedure, which included works both from the academia and the industry. The reviewed works were grouped in four categories. Each category was then evaluated in detail using a well-defined evaluation criteria to identify its strengths and weaknesses. Results: Around 700 works were initially considered, from which 43 were finally selected for a more in-depth analysis. Only two out of the four identified categories provide effective solutions to data mining democratisation. From these two categories, one always requires a minimum intervention of a data scientist, whereas the other one does not provide support for all the stages of the data mining process, and might exhibit accuracy problems in some contexts. Conclusion: In all analysed approaches, a data scientist is still required to perform some steps of the analysis process. Moreover, automated approaches that do not require data scientists for some steps expose some problems in other quality attributes, such as accuracy. Therefore, although existent work shows some promising initial steps, we are still far from data mining democratisation.
Visual interpretation of the robustness of Non-Negative Associative Gradient Projection Points over function minimizers in mini-batch sampled loss functions

Mini-batch sub-sampling is likely here to stay, due to growing data demands, memory-limited computational resources such as graphical processing units (GPUs), and the dynamics of on-line learning. Sampling a new mini-batch at every loss evaluation brings a number of benefits, but also one significant drawback: The loss function becomes discontinuous. These discontinuities are generally not problematic when using fixed learning rates or learning rate schedules typical of subgradient methods. However, they hinder attempts to directly minimize the loss function by solving for critical points, since function minimizers find spurious minima induced by discontinuities, while critical points may not even exist. Therefore, finding function minimizers and critical points in stochastic optimization is ineffective. As a result, attention has been given to reducing the effect of these discontinuities by means such as gradient averaging or adaptive and dynamic sampling. This paper offers an alternative paradigm: Recasting the optimization problem to rather find Non-Negative Associated Gradient Projection Points (NN-GPPs). In this paper, we demonstrate the NN-GPP interpretation of gradient information is more robust than critical points or minimizers, being less susceptible to sub-sampling induced variance and eliminating spurious function minimizers. We conduct a visual investigation, where we compare function value and gradient information for a variety of popular activation functions as applied to a simple neural network training problem. Based on the improved description offered by NN-GPPs over minimizers to identify true optima, in particular when using smooth activation functions with high curvature characteristics, we postulate that locating NN-GPPs can contribute significantly to automating neural network training.
On Extracting Data from HTML Tables

The Web provides many data in user-friendly tabular formats that are encoded using HTML. Information extractors are intended to extract those data as datasets that can feed business applications. There exist many proposals to implement them, which has motivated several previous surveys. Unfortunately, they are outdated and we do not think that it suffices to update them because they do not provide a good conceptual framework, they do not provide a taxonomy of web tables, they do not analyse the exact tasks involved, and they do not provide a good comparison framework. This article presents a review of the literature that does not have any of the previous problems, which we hope will be useful to both researchers and practitioners.
Effects of the Parental Environment on the Temperature Requirements and Salinity Tolerance of Spergularia marina Seeds

Spergularia marina produced flowers and fruits from June through November under field conditions in an inland saline environment. Seeds collected from plants over several growing seasons had different levels of dormancy. The environmental conditions to which parent plants were exposed at the time of seed production in the field influenced S. marina seed germinability. Seeds collected monthly responded differently to varying levels of salinity, indicating that parental environments influenced both the salt tolerance and relative germinability of seeds when they were exposed to salt stress. Laboratory-grown plants from seeds collected during the monthly intervals produced dormant seeds independent of the level of their parental seed germinability.
Produção de carne em ovinos de cinco genótipos: 3. Perdas e morfologia

Fifty (ten per breed) Merino, Polwarth. Corriedale, Romney Marsh and Texel lambs were castradet at 30 days of age and raised up to weaning (ten weeks) on native pasture at the Centro de Pesquisa de Pecuaria dos Campos Sulbrasileiros (EMBRAPA), Southern (Bage, RS) region of Brazil. Following weaning, the animals were feedioted during one week and each lamb was daily fed with 200 grams of a diet containing 17% of crude protein and 75% of dry matter basin. The animals were then moved to pasture up to 225 days of age when they were slaughtered to quantify and compare in vivo and carcass tosses and morphology. Liveweight (with and without a fasting period) was influenced by genotype. However, Merino, Polwarth and Corriedale live weight were not different among themselves, but lower than Romney Marsh lambs, which by their turn, were lower than Texel animals live weight. Fasting losses was significantiy affected when compared in absolute numbers (kg), bui not percentually. Highest tosses were observed in Texel breed lambs followed by Romney Marsh, whereas Corriedale, Polwarth and Merino didnot differ among themselves. Live weight carcass yield were significantly influenced by genotype. Heavier lambs showed superior carcass yield. Texel animals showed superior in vivo and in the carcass morphology, along wilh better conformation, body condition and body and carcass capacity, as cpmpared to other breeds.
Cytogenetic investigations on the holocentric chromosomes of Tetraneurella akinire (Sasaki) (Homoptera, Pemphigidae)

SUMMARYThe karyotype of the root aphid Tetraneurella akinire was analysed by means of C, G, and NOR banding. The overall base pair distribution was investigated after CMA3 and DAPI fluorochrome staining. Both C and G treatments revealed a well defined banding pattern on the X and Al chromosomes. C-bands showed a marked polymorphism in both size and number, even within the same individual. NOR banding produced a precipitation of silver on one telomere of the X chromosome, which also showed bright fluorescence after CMA3 staining. Treatment with DAPI uniformly stained all chromosomes. Neither CMA3 nor DAPI showed bright fluorescence overlapping the C-positive bands. It can be concluded that T. akinire chromosomes present a cluster of GC-rich DNA sequences located on one telomere of the X chromosome, whereas the AT- sequences are regularly arranged along the chromosome axes and not grouped into well defined clusters.
Regulation of interferon-γ gene transcription

Abstract Interferon-γ, a type II interferon, is an important immunoregulatory molecule whose initial biological properties were first reported in 1965. Although the effects of IFNγ in vitro and in vivo and at the molecular level have been widely investigated, the transcriptional control of this single copy gene has not been as extensively studied. In this review I will attempt to summarize what is known about the role of DNA binding proteins and genomic DNA regulatory regions in the regulation of transcription of the IFNγ gene. Current data suggests that transcriptional regulation involves DNA methylation and the interaction of multiple different DNA binding proteins with both promoter and intronic enhancer and suppressor elements.
Immunocytochemical localization of two retinoid-binding proteins in vertebrate retina

The recent discovery and characterization of several proteins that purify with endogenous, bound retinoid have given rise to the suggestion that these proteins, which are abundant in retina, perform a role in transport and function of vitamin A. Immunocytochemical techniques were used to localize two retinoid-binding proteins in the retina of four species. Antisera to cellular retinal-binding protein (CRALBP) and an interphotoreceptor retinoid-binding protein (IRBP) were obtained from rabbits immunized with antigens purified from bovine retina. Antibodies from each antiserum reacted with a single component in retinal homogenates and supernatants which corresponded to the molecular weight and charge of the respective antigen (non-SDS and SDS PAGE, electrophoretic transfer to nitrocellulose, immunochemical staining). Immunocytochemistry controls were antibodies from nonimmune serum and antibodies absorbed with purified antigen. Antigens were localized on frozen-sectioned bovine, rat, monkey, and human retina using immunofluorescence and the peroxidase-antiperoxidase technique. Specific staining with anti-IRBP was found in the space that surrounds photoreceptor outer segments, with heaviest labeling in a line corresponding to the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) apical surface. Cone outer segments were positive. Staining with anti-CRALBP was found in two cell types in all species: the RPE and the Muller glial cell. Within the RPE, labeling filled the cytoplasm and was heaviest apically, with negative nuclei. Labeling of Muller cells produced Golgi- like silhouettes with intense staining of all cytoplasmic compartments. Staining of the external limiting membrane was heavy, with labeled microvilli projecting into the interphotoreceptor space. Localization of IRBP to this space bordered by three cell types (RPE, photoreceptor, and Muller) is consistent with its proposed role in transport of retinoids among cells. Localization of CRALBP in RPE corroborates previous biochemical studies; its presence in the Muller cell suggests that this glial cell may play a hitherto unsuspected role in vitamin A metabolism in retina.
Different Roles of α- and β-Branch Xanthophylls in Photosystem Assembly and Photoprotection*

Xanthophylls (oxygenated carotenoids) are essential components of the plant photosynthetic apparatus, where they act in photosystem assembly, light harvesting, and photoprotection. Nevertheless, the specific function of individual xanthophyll species awaits complete elucidation. In this work, we analyze the photosynthetic phenotypes of two newly isolated Arabidopsis mutants in carotenoid biosynthesis containing exclusively α-branch (chy1chy2lut5) or β-branch (chy1chy2lut2) xanthophylls. Both mutants show complete lack of qE, the rapidly reversible component of nonphotochemical quenching, and high levels of photoinhibition and lipid peroxidation under photooxidative stress. Both mutants are much more photosensitive than npq1lut2, which contains high levels of viola- and neoxanthin and a higher stoichiometry of light-harvesting proteins with respect to photosystem II core complexes, suggesting that the content in light-harvesting complexes plays an important role in photoprotection. In addition, chy1chy2lut5, which has lutein as the only xanthophyll, shows unprecedented photosensitivity even in low light conditions, reduced electron transport rate, enhanced photobleaching of isolated LHCII complexes, and a selective loss of CP26 with respect to chy1chy2lut2, highlighting a specific role of β-branch xanthophylls in photoprotection and in qE mechanism. The stronger photosystem II photoinhibition of both mutants correlates with the higher rate of singlet oxygen production from thylakoids and isolated light-harvesting complexes, whereas carotenoid composition of photosystem II core complex was not influential. In depth analysis of the mutant phenotypes suggests that α-branch (lutein) and β-branch (zeaxanthin, violaxanthin, and neoxanthin) xanthophylls have distinct and complementary roles in antenna protein assembly and in the mechanisms of photoprotection.