Interactively Robot Action Planning with Uncertainty Analysis and Active Questioning by Large Language Model

The application of the Large Language Model (LLM) to robot action planning has been actively studied. The instructions given to the LLM by natural language may include ambiguity and lack of information depending on the task context. It is possible to adjust the output of LLM by making the instruction input more detailed; however, the design cost is high. In this paper, we propose the interactive robot action planning method that allows the LLM to analyze and gather missing information by asking questions to humans. The method can minimize the design cost of generating precise robot instructions. We demonstrated the effectiveness of our method through concrete examples in cooking tasks. However, our experiments also revealed challenges in robot action planning with LLM, such as asking unimportant questions and assuming crucial information without asking. Shedding light on these issues provides valuable insights for future research on utilizing LLM for robotics.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, accepted at SII 202

Development of non-equiatomic Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr-Mo high-entropy alloys for metallic biomaterials

Nobel non-equiatomic Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr-Mo high-entropy alloys (HEAs) for metallic biomaterials (bio-HEAs) were designed and developed. The pseudo-binary phase diagrams focusing on solidification were constructed by thermodynamic calculations. The shifting the alloy composition of the equiatomic TiNbTaZrMo bio-HEA can realize the drastic improvement of the deformability. Notably, the non-equiatomic Ti, Zr-rich composition stimulated the molecular interaction between biological cells and bio-HEA, indicating the possibility of the proposed non-equiatomic Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr-Mo HEAs as an advanced biomaterial for bone tissue engineering applications. This is the first achievement for the alloy design including the control of alloy composition for the development of new bio-HEAs.Hori T., Nagase T., Todai M., et al. Development of non-equiatomic Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr-Mo high-entropy alloys for metallic biomaterials. Scripta Materialia, 172, , 83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scriptamat.2019.07.011

The human Mis12 complex is required for kinetochore assembly and proper chromosome segregation

During cell division, kinetochores form the primary chromosomal attachment sites for spindle microtubules. We previously identified a network of 10 interacting kinetochore proteins conserved between Caenorhabditis elegans and humans. In this study, we investigate three proteins in the human network (hDsn1Q9H410, hNnf1PMF1, and hNsl1DC31). Using coexpression in bacteria and fractionation of mitotic extracts, we demonstrate that these proteins form a stable complex with the conserved kinetochore component hMis12. Human or chicken cells depleted of Mis12 complex subunits are delayed in mitosis with misaligned chromosomes and defects in chromosome biorientation. Aligned chromosomes exhibited reduced centromere stretch and diminished kinetochore microtubule bundles. Consistent with this, localization of the outer plate constituent Ndc80HEC1 was severely reduced. The checkpoint protein BubR1, the fibrous corona component centromere protein (CENP) E, and the inner kinetochore proteins CENP-A and CENP-H also failed to accumulate to wild-type levels in depleted cells. These results indicate that a four-subunit Mis12 complex plays an essential role in chromosome segregation in vertebrates and contributes to mitotic kinetochore assembly

Stereophonic noise reduction using a combined sliding subspace projection and adaptive signal enhancement

A novel stereophonic noise reduction method is proposed. This method is based upon a combination of a subspace approach realized in a sliding window operation and two-channel adaptive signal enhancing. The signal obtained from the signal subspace is used as the input signal to the adaptive signal enhancer for each channel, instead of noise, as in the ordinary adaptive noise canceling scheme. Simulation results based upon real stereophonic speech contaminated by noise components show that the proposed method gives improved enhancement quality in terms of both segmental gain and cepstral distance performance indices in comparison with conventional nonlinear spectral subtraction approaches

Dependence of alkyl-substituent length for bulk heterojunction solar cells utilizing 1,4,8,11,15,18,22,25-octaalkylphthalocyanine

Tetsuro Hori, Yasuo Miyake, Tetsuya Masuda, Takeshi Hayashi, Kaoru Fukumura, Hiroyuki Yoshida, Akihiko Fujii, Masanori Ozaki, and Yo Shimizu "Dependence of alkyl-substituent length for bulk heterojunction solar cells utilizing 1,4,8,11,15,18,22,25-octaalkylphthalocyanine," Journal of Photonics for Energy 2(1), 021004 (2 March 2012). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JPE.2.02100

CIN after endovascular aortic repair

Objective : This study aimed to determine the perioperative predictors of contrast medium-induced nephropathy (CIN) after endovascular aortic repair (EVAR). Materials and Methods : The data of 203 consecutive patients who underwent elective EVAR for thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysm between January 2014 and September 2014 were retrospectively analyzed. CIN was defined according to the diagnostic criteria of the European Society of Urogenital Radiology. Results : Fourteen patients (6.9%) developed CIN after EVAR. Contrast medium volume (CV), preoperative serum creatinine, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), and the CV/eGFR ratio were significantly related with CIN development after EVAR. The CV/eGFR ratio was significantly higher in patients with CIN than those without CIN. Receiver operator characteristic curve analysis showed that the area under the curve of the CV/eGFR ratio was 0.782, indicating that it was the most important predictor. The appropriate CV/eGFR ratio cutoff was >1.62. Sensitivity and specificity were 85.7% and 65.6%, respectively. Conclusions : The CV/eGFR ratio was a useful predictor of contrast medium-induced nephropathy after EVAR. It is possible that the score can be used in patients when managing the EVAR techniques and contrast medium volume