Uniform Sampling Framework for Sampling Based Motion Planning and Its Applications to Robotics and Protein Ligand Binding

Sampling-based motion planning aims to find a valid path from a start to a goal by sampling in the planning space. Planning on surfaces is an important problem in many research problems, including traditional robotics and computational biology. It is also a difficult research question to plan on surfaces as the surface is only a small subspace of the entire planning space. For example, robots are currently widely used for product assembly. Contact between the robot manipulator and the product are required to assemble each piece precisely. The configurations in which the robot fingers are in contact with the object form a surface in the planning space. However, these configurations are only a small proportion of all possible robot configurations. Several sampling-based motion planners aim to bias sampling to specific surfaces, such as Cobst surfaces, as needed for tasks requiring contact, or along the medial axis, which maximizes clearance. While some of these methods work well in practice, none of them are able to provide any information regarding the distribution of the samples they generate. It would be interesting and useful to know, for example, that a particular surface has been sampled uniformly so that one could argue regarding the probability of finding a path on that surface. Unfortunately, despite great interest for nearly two decades, it has remained an open problem to develop a method for sampling on such surfaces that can provide any information regarding the distribution of the resulting samples. Our research focuses on solving this open problem and introduces a framework that is guaranteed to uniformly sample any surface in Cspace. Instead of explicitly constructing the target surfaces, which is generally intractable, our uniform sampling framework only requires detecting intersections between a line segment and the target surface, which can often be done efficiently. Intuitively, since we uniformly distribute the line segments, the intersections between the segments and the surfaces will also be uniformly distributed. We present two particular instances of the framework: Uniform Obstacle-based PRM (UOBPRM) that uniformly samples Cobst surfaces, and Uniform Medial-Axis PRM (UMAPRM) that uniformly samples the Cspace medial axis. We provide a theoretical analysis for this framework that establishes uniformity and probabilistic completeness and also the probability of sampling in narrow passages. We show applications of this uniform sampling framework in robotics (both UOBPRM and UMAPRM) and in biology (UOBPRM). We are able to solve some difficult motion planning problems more efficiently than other sampling methods, including PRM, OBPRM, Gaussian PRM, Bridge Test PRM, and MAPRM. Moreover, we show that UOBPRM and UMAPRM have similar computational overhead as other approaches. UOBPRM is used to study the ligand binding affinity ranking problem in computational biology. Our experimental results show that UOBPRM is a potential technique to rank ligand binding affinity which can be further applied as a cost-saving tool for pharmaceutical companies to narrow the search for drug candidates

Learning-related Soft Skills Among Online Business Students in Higher Education: Grade Level and Managerial Role Difference in Self-Regulation, Motivation, and Social Skill

The purpose of the study was to investigate how undergraduate and graduate business management students, as well as those who had a managerial role in their career and who did not, differ on levels of soft skills (SRL strategies, motivation, and social skills) after gender was controlled. Moreover, we intended to investigate how well soft skills factors influence business students’ successes in an online learning environment after students’ individual characteristics and learning characteristics were controlled. To serve this purpose, this study conducted MANCOVA and hierarchical multiple regression analyses on data collected from 162 students in fully online business courses. First, the results of the study indicated that graduate students had higher level of soft skills than undergraduate students, especially in self-regulation and motivation. Likewise, students with managerial experiences demonstrated a higher level of soft skills. Next, hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the final regression model with all soft skills factors included could predict approximately 34% of the variance in students learning outcomes to a statistically significant level. In addition, goal setting, self-efficacy, and social skills were found to be significant predictors. We suggest that instructors and instructional designers should realize that soft skills are important contributor to the learning outcomes. Therefore, mechanisms to enhance student soft skills should be embedded into the online course in order to improve student learning outcomes. This should be especially a priority for undergraduate online courses because undergraduate students do not demonstrate higher soft skills compared to graduate students

Distributing Money to Commemoration: Collective Memories, Sense of Place, and Participatory Budgeting

This article brings the aspect of collective memories (and thus identity) back “in” to facilitate our understanding of the intriguing relationship among memories, places, and deliberative projects. While we observe that the memories of a place assign meanings to it and thereby not only imbue a “sense of place” to local members but also influence the process of deliberation, we claim that the process of deliberation can serve as a place-(re)making opportunity in a bottom-up way. Taking an experimental participatory budgeting (PB) program in Taiwan as an example, we find that collective memories play a role to influence what projects are proposed, what projects win the voting, and how people react to winning projects. In the case of South-Peak, on one hand, the winning projects echo aspects of prevailing commemorative narratives; on the other, the voting results further confirm, connect, and align the local collective memories. That is, a self-reinforcing process occurs. Additionally, we discuss how prevailing memories may change due to significant events so the meanings assigned to a specific place may thus change accordingly. Nevertheless, this is not to say that PB can only be conducted in places of strong memories and thus where a sense of place exists; since the deliberation process itself acts as a place-(re)making chance, we can expect PB to encourage the emergence and/or refreshment of collectivity during its own process

Orbital hemangiopericytoma in an Asian population

Background/PurposeHemangiopericytoma is a very rare orbital tumor. The purpose of this study was to report the clinical and histopathological features of six cases of orbital hemangiopericytoma in an Asian population.MethodsClinical and histopathological features were reviewed in six patients who were histopathologically confirmed as having primary orbital hemangiopericytoma in National Taiwan University Hospital between May 2001 and December 2010.ResultsAmong the six cases who were diagnosed as having primary orbital hemangiopericytoma, all lesions were reported as vascular tumors and featured branching “staghorn appearance” vessels. All patients, including one male and five females, presented with progressive proptosis and some associated symptoms such as extraocular motility limitation with diplopia, displacement of the globe, afferent pupillary defect, congested vessels of conjunctiva, or decreased visual acuity. On computed tomography, the orbital tumors tended to manifest as circumscribed masses with homogeneous medium-to-high enhancement with contrast studies. All six patients received surgical treatments, and four of them had additional radiotherapy. Three patients had recurrence after surgeries, and one of them had multiple metastases to lung and liver. All patients were still alive after a follow-up period of 5–10 years.ConclusionOrbital hemangiopericytoma has malignant potential, which may lead to local recurrence and/or metastasis. Histopathological findings alone are insufficient to predict the behavior of this tumor. Therefore, both clinical and histopathological findings are important to evaluate the treatment outcomes. Total excision accompanied with radiotherapy is suggested and long-term follow-up is required

Luteolin Suppresses Inflammatory Mediator Expression by Blocking the Akt/NFκB Pathway in Acute Lung Injury Induced by Lipopolysaccharide in Mice

Acute lung injury (ALI), instilled by lipopolysaccharide (LPS), is a severe illness with excessive mortality and has no specific treatment strategy. Luteolin is an anti-inflammatory flavonoid and widely distributed in the plants. Pretreatment with luteolin inhibited LPS-induced histological changes of ALI and lung tissue edema. In addition, LPS-induced inflammatory responses, including increased vascular permeability, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and interleukin (IL)-6 production, and expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), were also reduced by luteolin in a concentration-dependent manner. Furthermore, luteolin suppressed activation of NFκB and its upstream molecular factor, Akt. These results suggest that the protection mechanism of luteolin is by inhibition of NFκB activation possibly via Akt

Homogeneous point mutation detection by quantum dot-mediated two-color fluorescence coincidence analysis

This report describes a new genotyping method capable of detecting low-abundant point mutations in a homogeneous, separation-free format. The method is based on integration of oligonucleotide ligation with a semiconductor quantum dot (QD)-mediated two-color fluorescence coincidence detection scheme. Surface-functionalized QDs are used to capture fluorophore-labeled ligation products, forming QD-oligonucleotide nanoassemblies. The presence of such nanoassemblies and thereby the genotype of the sample is determined by detecting the simultaneous emissions of QDs and fluorophores that occurs whenever a single nanoassembly flows through the femtoliter measurement volume of a confocal fluorescence detection system. The ability of this method to detect single events enables analysis of target signals with a multiple-parameter (intensities and count rates of the digitized target signals) approach to enhance assay sensitivity and specificity. We demonstrate that this new method is capable of detecting zeptomoles of targets and achieve an allele discrimination selectivity factor >10(5)

Different Renal Function Equations and Dosing of Direct Oral Anticoagulants in Atrial Fibrillation

BACKGROUND: Randomized trials of direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) adopted the Cockcroft-Gault (CG) formula to calculate estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) to determine the dosages of DOACs. OBJECTIVES: The authors aimed to investigate the agreements/disagreements of eGFRs calculated using different equations (CG, Modified Diet in Renal Disease [MDRD], and Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration [CKD-EPI] formulas), and their impacts on the dosages of DOACs and clinical outcomes. METHODS: Medical data from a multicenter health care provider in Taiwan including 39,239 patients with atrial fibrillation were used. Among these patients, there were 11,185 and 2,323 patients treated with DOACs and warfarin, respectively. RESULTS: At the cutoff values of eGFR of 50 mL/min, the agreements were 78% between MDRD and CG and 81% between CKD-EPI and CG. The disagreements among the different equations were largely due to overestimations, especially for patients aged >75 years and with a body weight of <50 kg (58.8% for MDRD and 50.9% for CKD-EPI). Among patients receiving DOACs whose dosages were defined as “on label” based on MDRD or CKD-EPI, only those whose dosages were “truly on label” based on CG were associated with a lower risk of major bleeding (adjusted HR: 0.34; 95% CI: 0.26-0.45) compared to warfarin. CONCLUSIONS: The adoptions of MDRD or CKD-EPI rather than CG would result in inappropriate dosing of DOACs (mainly overdosing), which would attenuate the advantages of DOACs compared to warfarin. The CG equation should be used as the gold standard to calculate eGFRs and guide the DOAC dosages

Investigating Knowledge Management Activities and Influential Factors of Contract Research Organizations (CRO)

The pharmaceutical industry is critical to a nation’s economic development and welfare. However, most pharmaceutical companies do not have the capabilities to complete clinical trials by themselves and need assistance from the contract/clinical research organization (CRO). Clinical trials are highly knowledge-intensive and include several fields, such as toxicology, statistics, production, biology, health care, pharmacology, trial protocol design, and legal regulation. In academic research, few studies have focused on studying this important area from the perspective of knowledge management. Consequently, this research aims to fill this research gap by investigating knowledge management activities and influencing factors of CRO. A holistic framework was designed for this research, with the former (knowledge management activities) including four major constructs: knowledge creation and absorption, knowledge accumulation and storage, knowledge flow and diffusion, and knowledge protection, and the latter (influencing factors) including strategy and leadership, organizational culture, people, and information technology. Four CROs in Taiwan were selected for in-depth case studies. The research results are expected to contribute to both academia and industry