A Method for Multi-Robot Asynchronous Trajectory Execution in MoveIt2

This work presents an extension to the MoveIt2 planning library supporting asynchronous execution for multi-robot / multi-arm robotic setups. The proposed method introduces a unified way for the execution of both synchronous and asynchronous trajectories by implementing a simple scheduler and guarantees collision-free operation by continuous collision checking while the robots are moving.Comment: Accepted to the "IROS 2023 Workshop on Task and Motion Planning: from Theory to Practice" -- https://dyalab.mines.edu/2023/iros-workshop

Prevention at work and stress evaluation in France and in Italy / La prévention sur les lieux de travail et l’évaluation du stress en France et en Italie / Prevenzione nei luoghi di lavoro e valutazione dello stress in Francia e in Italia

A European directive, transposed into the legal systems of the member States, steers towards an idea of prevention that is primary, general, programmed and integrated in work design. The interpretation of norms and the guidelines of institutions devoted to health and safety in the workplace direct, however, towards the management of existing risks. This is particularly evident as far as stress and the so called psycho-social risks are concerned. Even the approaches of disciplines regarding work follow the same trend. A real and effective protection of well-being appears to be neglected, and this is confirmed by statistics about physical and psychological damages to workers. The contributions in this collection concern France and Italy, where, however, internationally recognized approaches, allowing primary prevention interventions on work, have been developed

BYOC: Personalized Few-Shot Classification with Co-Authored Class Descriptions

Text classification is a well-studied and versatile building block for many NLP applications. Yet, existing approaches require either large annotated corpora to train a model with or, when using large language models as a base, require carefully crafting the prompt as well as using a long context that can fit many examples. As a result, it is not possible for end-users to build classifiers for themselves. To address this issue, we propose a novel approach to few-shot text classification using an LLM. Rather than few-shot examples, the LLM is prompted with descriptions of the salient features of each class. These descriptions are coauthored by the user and the LLM interactively: while the user annotates each few-shot example, the LLM asks relevant questions that the user answers. Examples, questions, and answers are summarized to form the classification prompt. Our experiments show that our approach yields high accuracy classifiers, within 82% of the performance of models trained with significantly larger datasets while using only 1% of their training sets. Additionally, in a study with 30 participants, we show that end-users are able to build classifiers to suit their specific needs. The personalized classifiers show an average accuracy of 90%, which is 15% higher than the state-of-the-art approach.Comment: Accepted at EMNLP 2023 (Findings

Prediction of collapse time of polymer stabilized O/W emulsions

Polymers are widely used in the industry as an ingredient to increase the stability of formulations. Depending on their concentration, they can act as depletion agents or gel agent. The stability of these systems is driven by the polymers and the structure of the network of droplets and can lead to collapse of the emulsions. In this work, Multiple Light Scattering device is used to monitor the behaviour of w/o emulsions stabilized with polymers. The heart of the optical scanning analyser is a detection head, which moves up and down along a flat-bottomed cylindrical glass cell (see figure). The detection head is composed of a pulsed near infrared light source (wavelength = 880 nm) and two synchronous detectors. The transmission detector (at 180°) receives the light, which goes through the sample, while the backscattering detector (at 45°) receives the light scattered backward by the sample. The detection head scans the entire height of the sample, acquiring transmission and backscattering data every 40 µm. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Patient engagement and patient support programs in allergy immunotherapy: A call to action for improving long-term adherence

Allergy immunotherapy (AIT) is acknowledged to produce beneficial mid- and long-term clinical and immunologic effects and increased quality of life in patients with allergic respiratory diseases (such as allergic rhinoconjunctivitis and allergic asthma). However, poor adherence to AIT (due to intentional and/or non-intentional factors) is still a barrier to achieving these benefits. There is an urgent need for patient support programs (PSPs) that encompass communication, educational and motivational components. In the field of AIT, a PSP should be capable of (1) improving adherence, (2) boosting patient engagement, (3) explaining how AIT differs from pharmacological allergy treatments; (4) increasing health literacy about chronic, progressive, immunoglobulin-E-mediated immune diseases, (5) helping the patient to understand and manage local or systemic adverse events, and (6) providing and/or predicting local data on aeroallergen levels. We reviewed the literature in this field and have identified a number of practical issues to be addressed when implementing a PSP for AIT: the measurement of adherence, the choice of technologies, reminders, communication channels and content, the use of "push" messaging and social networks, interactivity, and the involvement of caregivers and patient leaders. A key issue is "hi-tech" (i.e. approaches based mainly on information technology) vs. "hi-touch" (based mainly on interaction with humans, i.e. family members, patient mentors and healthcare professionals). We conclude that multistakeholder PSPs (combining patient-, provider and society-based actions) must now be developed and tested with a view to increasing adherence, efficacy and safety in the field of AIT

Passive microrheology as a useful tool for milk gel analyses

Passive microrheology based on Diffusing Wave Spectroscopy (DWS) [1,2] is presented as a straightforward tool for the analysis of milk gel preparation. Diffusing Wave Spectroscopy consists of analysing the interferential images of light, which is backscattered by the sample. This so called speckles images, which are detected by a CCD camera, change in time due to the Brownian motion of the particles that scatter the light. The variation of the images as a function of time can be directly correlated to the viscoelastic properties of the sample. As it is an optical method, it is perfectly adapted to study the weak gels of milk products. Nowadays, milk gels such as yogurts or chees have attracted lots of interest due to its growing market. The milk properties, such as pH, calcium content and protein content are very important and change significantly the cheese properties. This work shows how passive microrheology can be used to follow up the milk gel formation with exact gel time determination. Gel time was determined by a new rescaling method, namely Time-Cure Superposition (TCS) [3,4]. This data processing determines the gel point according to the Winter-Chambon criterion [5]. Moreover, the viscoelastic properties of the preparation can be compared according to parameters, such as the protein enrichment, calcium ion addition or others. Results were compared to other instruments (texturometers, rheometer, Optigraph®, etc.). References: [1] D. A. Weitz et al., in Dynamic Light Scattering, W. Brown (Ed.) (Oxford Univ. Press, New York (1993), Chap. 16. [2] D. J. Pine et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 1988, 60, 1434. [3] T. H. Larsen, E. M. Furst, Phys. Rev. Letters, 2008, 100, 14600 [4] K. M. Schultz, E. M. Furst, Soft Matter, 2012, 8, 6198 [5] H. H. Winter, F. Chambon, J. Rheology 1986, 30, 364-38

Contradiction under International law on the Swiss ban of Minarets

The Swiss vote on the 29th of November, 2009 turned the popular initiative against constructing minarets into a law with a 60% majority of voters. The vote reflects xenophobia and the negative image of Islam or Islamophobia held by the proponents of the initiative. This fear has to be dealt with by psychologists and sociologists

High-precision Photometric Redshifts from Spitzer/IRAC: Extreme [3.6]-[4.5] Colors Identify Galaxies in the Redshift Range z~6.6-6.9

One of the most challenging aspects of studying galaxies in the z>~7 universe is the infrequent confirmation of their redshifts through spectroscopy, a phenomenon thought to occur from the increasing opacity of the intergalactic medium to Lya photons at z>6.5. The resulting redshift uncertainties inhibit the efficient search for [C II] in z~7 galaxies with sub-mm instruments such as ALMA, given their limited scan speed for faint lines. One means by which to improve the precision of the inferred redshifts is to exploit the potential impact of strong nebular emission lines on the colors of z~4-8 galaxies as observed by Spitzer/IRAC. At z~6.8, galaxies exhibit IRAC colors as blue as [3.6]-[4.5] ~-1, likely due to the contribution of [O III]+Hb to the 3.6 mum flux combined with the absence of line contamination in the 4.5 mum band. In this paper we explore the use of extremely blue [3.6]-[4.5] colors to identify galaxies in the narrow redshift window z~6.6-6.9. When combined with an I-dropout criterion, we demonstrate that we can plausibly select a relatively clean sample of z~6.8 galaxies. Through a systematic application of this selection technique to our catalogs from all five CANDELS fields, we identify 20 probable z~6.6-6.9 galaxies. We estimate that our criteria select the ~50% strongest line emitters at z~6.8 and from the IRAC colors we estimate a typical [O III]+Hb rest-frame equivalent width of 1085A for this sample. The small redshift uncertainties on our sample make it particularly well suited for follow-up studies with facilities such as ALMA.Comment: In submission to the Astrophysical Journal, updated in response to the referee report, 13 pages, 11 figures, 1 tabl

Destructive effect of fluctuations on the performance of a Brownian gyrator

The Brownian gyrator (BG) is a minimal model of a nano-engine performing a rotational motion, judging solely upon the fact that in non-equilibrium conditions its torque, angular momentum ${\cal L}$ and angular velocity $\cal W$ have non-zero mean values. For a time-discretized model, we calculate the previously unknown probability density functions (PDFs) of ${\cal L}$ and $\cal W$. We find that when the time-step $\delta t \to 0$, both PDFs converge to uniform distributions with diverging variances. For finite $\delta t$, the PDF of ${\cal L}$ has exponential tails and all moments, but its noise-to-signal ratio is generically much bigger than $1$. The PDF of ${\cal W}$ exhibits heavy power-law tails and its mean ${\cal W}$ is the only existing moment. The BG is therefore not an engine in common sense: it does not exhibit regular rotations on each run and its fluctuations are not only a minor nuisance. Our theoretical predictions are confirmed by numerical simulations and experimental data. We discuss some improvements of the model which may result in a more systematic behavior.Comment: 5 pages +SM 11 page

Développer le pouvoir d’apprendre : pour une critique de la transmission en éducation et en formation

Researchers of the TAO Research Programs and the Centre de Recherche sur le Travail et le Développement (Research Center on Work and Development) at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, illustrate critical reflections on education and training. These collected papers, stemming from different disciplinary frameworks and approaches, share the theoretical work and the epistemological orientation. With particular reference to the teachings of Weber, Vygotskij and Bakhtin, they focus on learning, conceived as social action, on the development of learning activity, and on the development of thought in professional dialogues. Along this line, the idea according to which education and training realize the “transmission” of knowledge, capacity, competence, values, practices, gestures, etc., is questioned and discussed