Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SMMR-Explore: SubMap-based Multi-Robot Exploration System with Multi-robot Multi-target Potential Field Exploration Method

Collaborative exploration in an unknown environment without external positioning under limited communication is an essential task for multi-robot applications. For inter-robot positioning, various Distributed Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (DSLAM) systems share the Place Recognition (PR) descriptors and sensor data to estimate the relative pose between robots and merge robots’ maps. As maps are constantly shared among robots in exploration, we design a map-based DSLAM framework, which only shares the submaps, eliminating the transfer of PR descriptors and sensor data. Our framework saves 30% of total communication traffic. For exploration, each robot is assigned to get much unknown information about environments with paying little travel cost. As the number of sampled points increases, the goal would change back and forth among sampled frontiers, leading to the downgrade in exploration efficiency and the overlap of trajectories. We propose an exploration strategy based on Multi-robot Multi-target Potential Field (MMPF), which can eliminate goal’s back-and-forth changes, boosting the exploration efficiency by 1.03 ×∼1.62 × with 3 % ∼ 40 % travel cost saved. Our SubMap-based Multi-robot Exploration method (SMMR-Explore) is evaluated on both Gazebo simulator and real robots. The simulator and the exploration framework are published as an open-source ROS project at https://github.com/efc-robot/SMMR-Explore.
Development of the General Self-regulation Scale for a Healthy Lifestyle (GSRSHL) among Japanese University Students

Background: A healthy lifestyle of students is an important contributor to both quality of life and longevity. The objective of this study was to develop a new measurement scale, the General Self-regulation Scale for a Healthy Lifestyle (GSRSHL), for university students. Methods: A total of 434 university students (281 male, 153 female) participated in this study. To confirm the validity of the new scale, we examined the relationship among the GSRSHL, the Japanese version of the Brief Self-control Scale, perceived stress, and life satisfaction.Results: The exploratory factor analysis of 15 items yielded two correlated factors: “planning achievement” and “emotional control. ” The new scale showed good internal consistency. Confirmatory factor analysis with covariate analysis demonstrated that “planning achievement” and “emotional control” were positively associated with self-regulation and life satisfaction. “Emotional control” related negatively to perceived stress. “Planning achievement” increased the odds of adequate sleep, balanced diet, and physical exercise. “Emotional control” increased the odds of consuming breakfast, having adequate sleep, following a balanced diet, and having less stress.Conclusions: Our study provided evidence of the validity and the applicability of the GSRSHL in Japanese students.
Reconstructing Six Sigma barriers in manufacturing and service organizations: The effects of organizational parameters

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically validate how the effectiveness of the most influential barriers to Six Sigma implementation may vary in relation to dimensions of organizational factors in a developing country.Design/methodology/approach – An empirical survey, using 500 self‐administered questionnaires, was conducted. Data about 47 Six Sigma barriers and specific organizational parameters from 132 usable questionnaires, with a response rate of 26.4 per cent, were collected and analyzed by means of statistical data analysis package.Findings – The results highlight the key role of soft impediments, i.e. knowledge and support, and hard impediments, i.e. professionals and finance, as the most influential barriers to Six Sigma implementation. The analysis clearly shows that only specific barriers are significantly influencing Six Sigma implementation in relation to dimensions of organizational factors.Practical implications – Decision makers and quality managers should not waste their reso.
Locally-iterative Distributed (Δ + 1)-coloring and Applications

We consider graph coloring and related problems in the distributed message-passing model. Locally-iterative algorithms are especially important in this setting. These are algorithms in which each vertex decides about its next color only as a function of the current colors in its 1-hop-neighborhood. In STOC’93 Szegedy and Vishwanathan showed that any locally-iterative Δ + 1-coloring algorithm requires Ω (Δ log Δ + log * n) rounds, unless there exists “a very special type of coloring that can be very efficiently reduced” [44]. No such special coloring has been found since then. This led researchers to believe that Szegedy-Vishwanathan barrier is an inherent limitation for locally-iterative algorithms and to explore other approaches to the coloring problem [2, 3, 19, 32]. The latter gave rise to faster algorithms, but their heavy machinery that is of non-locally-iterative nature made them far less suitable to various settings. In this article, we obtain the aforementioned special type of coloring. Specifically, we devise a locally-iterative Δ + 1-coloring algorithm with running time O(Δ + log * n), i.e., below Szegedy-Vishwanathan barrier. This demonstrates that this barrier is not an inherent limitation for locally-iterative algorithms. As a result, we also achieve significant improvements for dynamic, self-stabilizing, and bandwidth-restricted settings. This includes the following results: We obtain self-stabilizing distributed algorithms for Δ + 1-vertex-coloring, (2Δ - 1)-edge-coloring, maximal independent set, and maximal matching with O(Δ + log * n) time. This significantly improves previously known results that have O(n) or larger running times [23]. We devise a (2Δ - 1)-edge-coloring algorithm in the CONGEST model with O(Δ + log * n) time and O(Δ)-edge-coloring in the Bit-Round model with O(Δ + log n) time. The factors of log * n and log n are unavoidable in the CONGEST and Bit-Round models, respectively. Previously known algorithms had superlinear dependency on Δ for (2Δ - 1)-edge-coloring in these models. We obtain an arbdefective coloring algorithm with running time O(√ Δ + log * n). Such a coloring is not necessarily proper, but has certain helpful properties. We employ it to compute a proper (1 + ε)Δ-coloring within O(√ Δ + log * n) time and Δ + 1-coloring within O(√ Δ log Δ log * Δ + log * n) time. This improves the recent state-of-the-art bounds of Barenboim from PODC’15 [2] and Fraigniaud et al. from FOCS’16 [19] by polylogarithmic factors. Our algorithms are applicable to the SET-LOCAL model [25] (also known as the weak LOCAL model). In this model a relatively strong lower bound of Ω (Δ 1/3) is known for Δ + 1-coloring. However, most of the coloring algorithms do not work in this model. (In Reference [25] only Linial’s O(Δ 2)-time algorithm and Kuhn-Wattenhofer O(Δ log Δ)-time algorithms are shown to work in it. ) We obtain the first linear-in-Δ Δ + 1-coloring algorithms that work also in this model.
Causative Agents of American Tegumentary Leishmaniasis Are Able to Infect 3T3-L1 Adipocytes In Vitro

Although macrophages have long been considered key players in the course of Leishmania infections, other non-professional phagocytes have lately been shown to maintain low levels of the parasite in safe intracellular niches. Recently, it was demonstrated that the adipose tissue is capable of harboring Old World L. (L.) infantum in mice. However, there is no evidence of experimental adipocyte infection with New World Leishmania species so far. In addition, it was not known whether adipocytes would be permissive for formation of the unique, large and communal parasitophorous vacuoles that are typical of L. (L.) amazonensis in macrophages. Here we evaluated the ability of L. (L.) amazonensis and L. (V.) braziliensis promastigotes and amastigotes to infect 3T3-L1 fibroblast-derived adipocytes (3T3-Ad) using light and transmission electron microscopy. Our results indicate that amastigotes and promastigotes of both species were capable of infecting and surviving inside pre- and fully differentiated 3T3-Ad for up to 144 h. Importantly, L. (L.) amazonensis amastigotes resided in large communal parasitophorous vacuoles in pre-adipocytes, which appeared to be compressed between large lipid droplets in mature adipocytes. In parallel, individual L. (V.) braziliensis amastigotes were detected in single vacuoles 144 h post-infection. We conclude that 3T3-Ad may constitute an environment that supports low loads of viable parasites perhaps contributing to parasite maintenance, since amastigotes of both species recovered from these cells differentiated into replicative promastigotes. Our findings shed light on the potential of a new host cell model that can be relevant to the persistence of New World Leishmania species.
Back to BaSICS: Early Treatments Matter in Critical Illness

characteristics of 138 hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia in Wuhan, China. JAMA 2020;323: 1061–1069. 4. Diao B, Wang C, Tan Y, Chen X, Liu Y, Ning L, et al. Reduction and functional exhaustion of T cells in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Front Immunol 2020;11:827. 5. Lee J, Park SS, Kim TY, Lee DG, Kim DW. Lymphopenia as a biological predictor of outcomes in COVID-19 patients: a nationwide cohort study. Cancers (Basel) 2021;13:471. 6. Niu J, Sareli C, Mayer D, Visbal A, Sareli A. Lymphopenia as a predictor for adverse clinical outcomes in hospitalized patients with COVID-19: a single center retrospective study of 4485 cases. J Clin Med 2022;11:700. 7. Adamo S, Chevrier S, Cervia C, Zurbuchen Y, Raeber ME, Yang L, et al. Profound dysregulation of T cell homeostasis and function in patients with severe COVID-19. Allergy 2021;76:2866–2881. 8. Popescu I, Snyder ME, Iasella CJ, Hannan SJ, Koshy R, Burke R, et al. CD4 T-cell dysfunction in severe COVID-19 disease is tumor necrosis factor-a/tumor necrosis factor receptor 1–dependent. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2022;205:1403–1418. 9. Mehta AK, Gracias DT, Croft M. TNF activity and T cells. Cytokine 2018; 101:14–18. 10. Mak TW, Yeh WC. Signaling for survival and apoptosis in the immune system. Arthritis Res 2002;4:S243–S252. 11. Winkler ES, Bailey AL, Kafai NM, Nair S, McCune BT, Yu J, et al. SARS-CoV-2 infection in the lungs of human ACE2 transgenic mice causes severe inflammation, immune cell infiltration, and compromised respiratory function [preprint]. bioRxiv; 2020 [accessed 2022 Mar 24]. Available from: https://www.biorxiv. org/ content/10.1101/2020.07. 09.196188v1. 12. Gawish R, Starkl P, Pimenov L, Hladik A, Lakovits K, Oberndorfer F, et al. ACE2 is the critical in vivo receptor for SARS-CoV-2 in a novel COVID-19 mouse model with TNFand IFNg-driven immunopathology. eLife 2022;11:e74623. 13. Robinson PC, Richards D, Tanner HL, Feldmann M. Accumulating evidence suggests anti-TNF therapy needs to be given trial priority in COVID-19 treatment. Lancet Rheumatol 2020;2: e653–e655. 14. Kokkotis G, Kitsou K, Xynogalas I, Spoulou V, Magiorkinis G, Trontzas I, et al. Systematic review with meta-analysis: COVID-19 outcomes in patients receiving anti-TNF treatments. Aliment Pharmacol Ther 2022; 55:154–167.
Taxonomic assessment of Sorbus subgenus Aria in the Malé Karpaty Mountains

In this paper we present a taxonomic assessment of Sorbus subgen. Aria in the Malé Karpaty Mts (western Slovakia and north-eastern Austria). Detailed field observations, morphological comparison, herbarium revisions, multivariate morphometric analyses, flow cytometry and molecular (nuclear microsatellite markers) analyses were used to assess the taxonomic diversity within this group. Diploids, triploids and tetraploids were detected. Diploids are represented by a single taxon, S. aria, which shows considerable morphological and genetic variability. Sorbus aria ranges from rare to locally abundant throughout the area studied. Triploids are confined to the central and southern parts of the region and include several single, presumably apomictic individuals and rare apomictic lineages, which are not treated as separate species here due to the very limited number of individuals recorded. Tetraploids show similar distribution patterns to those of triploids: S. danubialis and S. collina occur in the southern part of the mountains, while S. petraea, a new species described here, inhabits the central part of the mountain range. The entire population of S. petraea includes approximately one hundred individuals. It occurs mainly in the surroundings of Vysoká Mt. by the village of Kuchyňa, where it forms several small populations and approximately 30 individuals grow on Čierna skala hill by the village of Plavecký Mikuláš. In addition to these recent occurrences, there are two herbarium specimens from the 1960s documenting the species on Vápená Mt. The low genetic and morphological variability and flow cytometric seed screening indicate an apomictic mode of reproduction in this species and justify its recognition at the species level. Sorbus collina is reported here in Slovakia for the first time. We have not confirmed the occurrence of S. austriaca, S. buekkensis, S. carpatica, S. graeca, S. pannonica, S. thaiszii and S. zolyomii in the Malé Karpaty Mts and consider the previously published records to be erroneous. Lectotypes are designated for S. thaiszii and S. zolyomii. A determination key, detailed distribution maps and photographs of representative herbarium specimens of all taxa of S. subgen. Aria occurring in the Malé Karpaty Mts are provided. A line drawing and a photograph of the newly described species are also presented.
Jump-Drop Adjusted Prediction of Cumulative Infected Cases Using the Modified SIS Model

Accurate prediction of cumulative COVID-19 infected cases is essential for effectively managing the limited healthcare resources, specifically in India. Historically, epidemiological models have helped control such epidemics. Those models need accurate past data to predict for future. However, for various reasons, we observe sudden drops and jumps in the number of daily reported COVID-19 infected cases on some days, not aligned with the overall trend. If we incorporate those observations in the training data, the model's prediction accuracy may worsen, as they do not capture the correct trend in the training data. But it is not straightforward for the existing epidemiological models to decide a specific day as a sudden drop or jump. We propose an algorithm that automatically determines any drop or jump days in this work. Then, based on the overall trend in the data, we adjust the number of daily infected cases on those days and decide on the training data based on the adjusted observations. We have applied the proposed algorithm in a recently proposed modified Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible (SIS) to show that adjusted training data gives better prediction accuracy when jump and drop exist in the training data.
Melanization of Candida auris Is Associated with Alteration of Extracellular pH

Candida auris is a recently emerged global fungal pathogen, which causes life-threatening infections, often in healthcare settings. C. auris infections are worrisome because the fungus is often resistant to multiple antifungal drug classes. Furthermore, C. auris forms durable and difficult to remove biofilms. Due to the relatively recent, resilient, and resistant nature of C. auris, we investigated whether it produces the common fungal virulence factor melanin. Melanin is a black-brown pigment typically produced following enzymatic oxidation of aromatic precursors, which promotes fungal virulence through oxidative stress resistance, mammalian immune response evasion, and antifungal peptide and pharmaceutical inactivation. We found that certain strains of C. auris oxidized L-DOPA and catecholamines into melanin. Melanization occurred extracellularly in a process mediated by alkalinization of the extracellular environment, resulting in granule-like structures that adhere to the fungus’ external surface. C. auris had relatively high cell surface hydrophobicity, but there was no correlation between hydrophobicity and melanization. Melanin protected the fungus from oxidative damage, but we did not observe a protective role during infection of macrophages or Galleria mellonella larvae. In summary, C. auris alkalinizes the extracellular medium, which promotes the non-enzymatic oxidation of L-DOPA to melanin that attaches to its surface, thus illustrating a novel mechanism for fungal melanization.
Aqueous Humor Analysis in Overlapping Clinical Diagnosis of Cytomegalovirus and Rubella Virus Anterior Uveitis

Background and Objectives: A cross-sectional single-center study was conducted to investigate the etiology in hypertensive anterior uveitis whose clinical features are not fully distinctive from cytomegalovirus or from rubella virus and to demonstrate the possible coexistence of both these viruses in causing anterior uveitis. Materials and Methods: The clinical charts of a cohort of patients with hypertensive viral anterior uveitis of uncertain origin consecutively seen in a single center from 2019 to 2022 were retrospectively reviewed; data on the clinical features, aqueous polymerase chain reaction, and antibody response to cytomegalovirus and rubella virus were collected. Results: Forty-three eyes of as many subjects with viral anterior uveitis of uncertain origin were included. Thirty-two patients had an aqueous polymerase chain reaction or antibody index positive to cytomegalovirus only, while 11 cases had an aqueous antibody response to both cytomegalovirus and rubella virus. This latter overlapping group had a statistically significant higher rate of hypochromia and anterior vitritis (p-value: 0.02 and < 0.001, respectively). Conclusions: The simultaneous presence of intraocular antibodies against cytomegalovirus and rubella virus could redefine the differential diagnosis of hypertensive viral anterior uveitis, demonstrating a possible “converged” immune pathway consisting in a variety of stimuli.
Percolation on High-dimensional Product Graphs

We consider percolation on high-dimensional product graphs, where the base graphs are regular and of bounded order. In the subcritical regime, we show that typically the largest component is of order logarithmic in the number of vertices. In the supercritical regime, our main result recovers the sharp asymptotic of the order of the largest component, and shows that all the other components are typically of order logarithmic in the number of vertices. In particular, we show that this phase transition is quantitatively similar to the one of the binomial random graph. This generalises the results of Ajtai, Koml\'os, and Szemer\'edi and of Bollob\'as, Kohayakawa, and \L{}uczak who showed that the $d$-dimensional hypercube, which is the $d$-fold Cartesian product of an edge, undergoes a phase transition quantitatively similar to the one of the binomial random graph.
The Infinite-Dimensional Topology of Function Spaces

Introduction. Chapter 1. Basic topology. Chapter 2. Basic combinatorial topology. Chapter 3. Basic dimension theory. Chapter 4. Basic ANR theory. Chapter 5. Basic infinite-dimensional topology. Chapter 6. Function spaces. Appendix A. Preliminaries. Appendix B. Answers to selected exercises. Appendix C. Notes and comments. Bibliography. Special Symbols. Author Index. Subject Index.
Thoth: Bridging the Gap Between Persistently Secure Memories and Memory Interfaces of Emerging NVMs

Emerging non-volatile memories (NVMs) are expected to be part of future computing systems, including cloud systems and edge devices. In addition to the high density (and hence large capacities) NVMs can provide, they feature ultra-low idle power which makes them very promising for edge computing and data centers. Additionally, NVMs’ ability to retain data upon system crash (e.g., power outage or software bug) makes them a great candidate for high-availability and persistent applications. However, NVMs’ data retention capability brings in security challenges and further complicates today’s secure memory implementations; to ensure correct and secure system recovery, the data and security metadata must be persisted atomically (i.e., up-to-date in memory upon a crash). Despite the many efforts for rethinking secure memory implementations to enable crash-consistency, we observe that the state-of-the-art solutions are based on a major assumption that may not be suitable for future memory interfaces. Specifically, the majority of today’s solutions assume that either the encryption counter and/or message-authentication code (MAC) can be co-located with data by directly or indirectly leveraging the otherwise Error-Correcting Codes (ECC) bits. However, we observe that emerging interfaces and standards delegate the ECC calculation and management to happen inside the memory module, which makes it possible to remove extra bits for ECC in memory interfaces. Thus, all today’s solutions may need to separately persist the encrypted data, its MAC, and its encryption counter upon each memory write. To mitigate this issue, we propose a novel solution, Thoth, which leverages a novel off-chip persistent partial updates combine buffer that can ensure crash consistency at the cost of a fraction of the write amplification by the state-of-the-art solutions when adapted to future interfaces. Based on our evaluation, Thoth improves the performance by an average of 1.22x (up to 1.44x) while reducing write traffic by an average of 32% (up to 40%) compared to the baseline Anubis when adapted to future interfaces.
Spatial and Modal Optimal Transport for Fast Cross-Modal MRI Reconstruction

Multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) plays a crucial role in comprehensive disease diagnosis in clinical medicine. However, acquiring certain modalities, such as T2-weighted images (T2WIs), is time-consuming and prone to be with motion artifacts. It negatively impacts subsequent multi-modal image analysis. To address this issue, we propose an end-to-end deep learning framework that utilizes T1-weighted images (T1WIs) as auxiliary modalities to expedite T2WIs' acquisitions. While image pre-processing is capable of mitigating misalignment, improper parameter selection leads to adverse pre-processing effects, requiring iterative experimentation and adjustment. To overcome this shortage, we employ Optimal Transport (OT) to synthesize T2WIs by aligning T1WIs and performing cross-modal synthesis, effectively mitigating spatial misalignment effects. Furthermore, we adopt an alternating iteration framework between the reconstruction task and the cross-modal synthesis task to optimize the final results. Then, we prove that the reconstructed T2WIs and the synthetic T2WIs become closer on the T2 image manifold with iterations increasing, and further illustrate that the improved reconstruction result enhances the synthesis process, whereas the enhanced synthesis result improves the reconstruction process. Finally, experimental results from FastMRI and internal datasets confirm the effectiveness of our method, demonstrating significant improvements in image reconstruction quality even at low sampling rates.