Hand and Arm Gesture-based Human-Robot Interaction: A Review

The study of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) aims to create close and friendly communication between humans and robots. In the human-center HRI, an essential aspect of implementing a successful and effective HRI is building a natural and intuitive interaction, including verbal and nonverbal. As a prevalent nonverbally communication approach, hand and arm gesture communication happen ubiquitously in our daily life. A considerable amount of work on gesture-based HRI is scattered in various research domains. However, a systematic understanding of the works on gesture-based HRI is still lacking. This paper intends to provide a comprehensive review of gesture-based HRI and focus on the advanced finding in this area. Following the stimulus-organism-response framework, this review consists of: (i) Generation of human gesture(stimulus). (ii) Robot recognition of human gesture(organism). (iii) Robot reaction to human gesture(response). Besides, this review summarizes the research status of each element in the framework and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of related works. Toward the last part, this paper discusses the current research challenges on gesture-based HRI and provides possible future directions.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure

Self‐Sacrificial Template‐Directed Synthesis of Metal–Organic Framework‐Derived Porous Carbon for Energy‐Storage Devices

Metal–organic framework (MOF)‐derived carbon materials exhibit large surface areas, but dominant micropore characteristics and uncontrollable dimensions. Herein, we propose a self‐sacrificial template‐directed synthesis method to engineer the porous structure and dimensions of MOF‐derived carbon materials. A porous zinc oxide (ZnO) nanosheet solid is selected as the self‐sacrificial template and two‐dimensional (2D) nanostructure‐directing agent to prepare 2D ZIF‐8‐derived carbon nanosheets (ZCNs). The as‐prepared ZCN materials exhibit a large surface area with hierarchical porosity. These intriguing features render ZCN materials advanced electrode materials for electrochemical energy‐storage devices, demonstrating large ion‐accessible surface area and high ion‐/electron‐transport rates. This self‐sacrificial template‐directed synthesis method offers new avenues for rational engineering of the porous structure and dimensions of MOF‐derived porous carbon materials, thus exploiting their full potential for electrochemical energy‐storage devices.On the surface: A self‐sacrificial template‐directed synthesis method is proposed to engineer the porosity and dimensions of MOF‐derived carbon materials. By using a porous nanosheet solid as the self‐sacrificial template and two‐dimensional (2D) nanostructure‐directing agent, 2D ZIF‐8‐derived carbon nanosheets are prepared, which exhibit a large ion‐accessible surface area and rapid ion transport as the electrode materials for electrochemical energy‐storage devices.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137193/1/celc201500536-sup-0001-misc_information.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137193/2/celc201500536.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137193/3/celc201500536_am.pd

MUSCLE ACTIVATION AND THREE-DIMENSIONAL KINEMATICS OF UPPER EXTREMITY IN SNATCH WEIGHT LIFTING

INTRODUCTION: Previously, there was little weightlifting research focused on biomechanics of the elbow and the shoulder joints (Bartonietz, 1996). Therefore, the purposes of this study were to evaluate the kinematics of upper extremity on sagittal plane during 1st pull, transition from the 1st to the 2nd pull, 2nd pull, turnover under the barbell, catch phase, and rising from the squat position phases of snatch weight lifting and to examine upper-limb muscles activity during snatch weight lifting. The EMG signals were analyzed using the normalized linear envelopes

Curcumin Suppresses Intestinal Fibrosis by Inhibition of PPAR γ

Intestinal fibrotic stricture is a major complication of Crohn’s disease (CD) and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is considered as an important contributor to the formation of intestinal fibrosis by increasing extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. Curcumin, a compound derived from rhizomes of Curcuma, has been demonstrated with a potent antifibrotic effect. However, its effect on intestinal fibrosis and the potential mechanism is not completely understood. Here we found that curcumin pretreatment significantly represses TGF-β1-induced Smad pathway and decreases its downstream α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) gene expression in intestinal epithelial cells (IEC-6); in contrast, curcumin increases expression of E-cadherin and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) in IEC-6. Moreover, curcumin promotes nuclear translocation of PPARγ and the inhibitory effect of curcumin on EMT could be reversed by PPARγ antagonist GW9662. Consistently, in the rat model of intestinal fibrosis induced by 2,4,5-trinitrobenzene sulphonic acid (TNBS), oral curcumin attenuates intestinal fibrosis by increasing the expression of PPARγ and E-cadherin and decreasing the expression of α-SMA, FN, and CTGF in colon tissue. Collectively, these results indicated that curcumin is able to prevent EMT progress in intestinal fibrosis by PPARγ-mediated repression of TGF-β1/Smad pathway

The Variability and Evaluation Method of Recycled Concrete Aggregate Properties

With the same sources and regeneration techniques, given RA’s properties may display large variations. The same single property index of different sets maybe has a large difference of the whole property. How shall we accurately evaluate the whole property of RA? 8 groups of RAs from pavement and building were used to research the method of evaluating the holistic characteristics of RA. After testing and investigating, the parameters of aggregates were analyzed. The data of physical and mechanical properties show a distinct dispersion and instability; thus, it has been difficult to express the whole characteristics in any single property parameter. The Euclidean distance can express the similarity of samples. The closer the distance, the more similar the property. The standard variance of the whole property Euclidean distances for two types of RA is Sk=7.341 and Sk=2.208, respectively, which shows that the property of building RA has great fluctuation, while pavement RA is more stable. There are certain correlations among the apparent density, water absorption, and crushed value of RAs, and the Mahalanobis distance method can directly evaluate the whole property by using its parameters: mean, variance, and covariance, and it can provide a grade evaluation model for RAs

Triptolide modulates adriamycin sensitivity via regulating Mir-21 and Bcl-2 expression in K562/A02 cell line

Drug resistance is a major obstacle for successful treatment of leukemia. Increasing evidence suggests that microRNA-21 (miR-21) is over-expressed in K562/A02 cell line, promoting drug resistance. The aim of our present study is to investigate the reversal effects of triptolide on drug resistance in adriamycin-resistant cells. Cell viability was measured by MTT assays and adriamycin induced apoptosis was evaluated by flow cytometry. Levels of miR-21 quantified by real-time PCR. Bcl-2 protein level were measured by western blot. TPL enhanced sensitivity of K562/A02 cells to adriamycin and promoted adriamycin–induced apoptosis. Levels of miR-21 and Bcl-2 was significantly decreased after triptolide treatment. Transfection with anti-miR-21, a significant up-regulation of sensitivity to adriamycin and a significant down-regulation of Bcl-2 protein level was noted in K562/A02 cells. Our study suggests that triptolide significantly sensitizes K562/A02 cell to adriamycin by inducing apoptosis and these effects of triptolide may be due to its down-regulation of miR-21.Colegio de Farmacéuticos de la Provincia de Buenos Aire

A Survey on Large Language Models for Recommendation

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as powerful tools in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and have recently gained significant attention in the domain of Recommendation Systems (RS). These models, trained on massive amounts of data using self-supervised learning, have demonstrated remarkable success in learning universal representations and have the potential to enhance various aspects of recommendation systems by some effective transfer techniques such as fine-tuning and prompt tuning, and so on. The crucial aspect of harnessing the power of language models in enhancing recommendation quality is the utilization of their high-quality representations of textual features and their extensive coverage of external knowledge to establish correlations between items and users. To provide a comprehensive understanding of the existing LLM-based recommendation systems, this survey presents a taxonomy that categorizes these models into two major paradigms, respectively Discriminative LLM for Recommendation (DLLM4Rec) and Generative LLM for Recommendation (GLLM4Rec), with the latter being systematically sorted out for the first time. Furthermore, we systematically review and analyze existing LLM-based recommendation systems within each paradigm, providing insights into their methodologies, techniques, and performance. Additionally, we identify key challenges and several valuable findings to provide researchers and practitioners with inspiration. We have also created a GitHub repository to index relevant papers on LLMs for recommendation, https://github.com/WLiK/LLM4Rec.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Quality of and Recommendations for Relevant Clinical Practice Guidelines for COVID-19 Management: A Systematic Review and Critical Appraisal

Background: The morbidity and mortality of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are still increasing. This study aimed to assess the quality of relevant COVID-19 clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) and to compare the similarities and differences between recommendations.Methods: A comprehensive search was conducted using electronic databases (PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science) and representative guidelines repositories from December 1, 2019, to August 11, 2020 (updated to April 5, 2021), to obtain eligible CPGs. The Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE II) tool was used to evaluate the quality of CPGs. Four authors extracted relevant information and completed data extraction forms. All data were analyzed using R version 3.6.0 software.Results: In total, 39 CPGs were identified and the quality was not encouragingly high. The median score (interquartile range, IQR) of every domain from AGREE II for evidence-based CPGs (EB-CPGs) versus (vs.) consensus-based CPG (CB-CPGs) was 81.94% (75.00–84.72) vs. 58.33% (52.78–68.06) in scope and purpose, 59.72% (38.89–75.00) vs. 36.11% (33.33–36.11) in stakeholder involvement, 64.58% (32.29–71.88) vs. 22.92% (16.67–26.56) in rigor of development, 75.00% (52.78–86.81) vs. 52.78% (50.00–63.89) in clarity of presentation, 40.63% (22.40–62.50) vs. 20.83% (13.54–25.00) in applicability, and 58.33% (50.00–100.00) vs. 50.00% (50.00–77.08) in editorial independence, respectively. The methodological quality of EB-CPGs were significantly superior to the CB-CPGs in the majority of domains (P < 0.05). There was no agreement on diagnosis criteria of COVID-19. But a few guidelines show Remdesivir may be beneficial for the patients, hydroxychloroquine +/– azithromycin may not, and there were more consistent suggestions regarding discharge management. For instance, after discharge, isolation management and health status monitoring may be continued.Conclusions: In general, the methodological quality of EB-CPGs is greater than CB-CPGs. However, it is still required to be further improved. Besides, the consistency of COVID-19 recommendations on topics such as diagnosis criteria is different. Of them, hydroxychloroquine +/– azithromycin may be not beneficial to treat patients with COVID-19, but remdesivir may be a favorable risk-benefit in severe COVID-19 infection; isolation management and health status monitoring after discharge may be still necessary. Chemoprophylaxis, including SARS-CoV 2 vaccines and antiviral drugs of COVID-19, still require more trials to confirm this

ScQ cloud quantum computation for generating Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states of up to 10 qubits

We introduce an online for public quantum computation platform, named as ScQ, based on a 1D array of 10-qubit superconducting processor. Single qubit rotation gates can be performed on each qubit. Controlled-NOT (CNOT) gates between nearest-neighbor sites on the 1D array of 10 qubits are available. We show online preparation and verification of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states of up to 10 qubits by this platform, for all possible blocks of qubits in the chain. Both graphic interface and the quantum assembly language methods are presented to achieve the above tasks, which rely on a parameter scanning feature implemented on ScQ. Performance of this quantum computation platform, such as fidelities of the logic gates and details of the superconducting device, are presented