Qualitative design and implementation of human-robot spatial interactions

Despite the large number of navigation algorithms available for mobile robots, in many social contexts they often exhibit inopportune motion behaviours in proximity of people, often with very "unnatural" movements due to the execution of segmented trajectories or the sudden activation of safety mechanisms (e.g., for obstacle avoidance). We argue that the reason of the problem is not only the difficulty of modelling human behaviours and generating opportune robot control policies, but also the way human-robot spatial interactions are represented and implemented. In this paper we propose a new methodology based on a qualitative representation of spatial interactions, which is both flexible and compact, adopting the well-defined and coherent formalization of Qualitative Trajectory Calculus (QTC). We show the potential of a QTC-based approach to abstract and design complex robot behaviours, where the desired robot's behaviour is represented together with its actual performance in one coherent approach, focusing on spatial interactions rather than pure navigation problems

Replicated host-race formation in bogus yucca moths: genetic and ecological divergence of Prodoxus quinquepunctellus on yucca hosts

Goal: Assess host-race formation in certain moths by examining their genetic and ecological differentiation. Organisms: Stalk-feeding moths, Prodoxus quinquepunctellus, collected from sympatric populations of Yucca elata and Y rostrata in west Texas, USA. Results: Moths on the two yuccas differed significantly in mtDNA haplotype frequencies, emergence time, wing dot number, body size, and ovipositor size and shape. Conclusion: Host-race formation has probably occurred in this yucca moth although genetic divergence was low

Risk-aware motion planning for automated vehicle among human-driven cars

We consider the maneuver planning problem for automated vehicles when they share the road with human-driven cars and interact with each other using a finite set of maneuvers. Each maneuver is calculated considering input constraints, actuator disturbances and sensor noise, so that we can use a maneuver automaton to perform higher-level planning that is robust against lower-level effects. In order to model the behavior of human-driven cars in response to the intent of the automated vehicle, we use control improvisation to build a probabilistic model. To accommodate for potential mismatches between the learned human model and human driving behaviors, we use a conditional value-at-risk objective function to obtain the optimal policy for the automated vehicle. We demonstrate through simulations that our motion planning framework consisting of an interactive human driving model and risk-aware motion planning strategy makes it possible to adapt to different traffic conditions and confidence levels

Photon Structure and Quantum Fluctuation

Photon structure derives from quantum fluctuation in quantum field theory to fermion and anti-fermion, and has been an experimentally established feature of electrodynamics since the discovery of the positron. In hadronic physics, the observation of factorisable photon structure is similarly a fundamental test of the quantum field theory Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). An overview of measurements of hadronic photon structure in e+e- and ep interactions is presented, and comparison made with theoretical expectation, drawing on the essential features of photon fluctuation into quark and anti-quark in QCD.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figures, to appear in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences

Leading particle effect, inelasticity and the connection between average multiplicities in {\bf e+e−e^+e^-} and {\bf pppp} processes

The Regge-Mueller formalism is used to describe the inclusive spectrum of the proton in $p p$ collisions. From such a description the energy dependences of both average inelasticity and leading proton multiplicity are calculated. These quantities are then used to establish the connection between the average charged particle multiplicities measured in {\bf $e^+e^-$} and {\bf $pp/{\bar p}p$} processes. The description obtained for the leading proton cross section implies that Feynman scaling is strongly violated only at the extreme values of $x_F$, that is at the central region ($x_F \approx 0$) and at the diffraction region ($x_F \approx 1$), while it is approximately observed in the intermediate region of the spectrum.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, to be published in Physical Review

Selection on structural allelic variation biases plasticity estimates

Wang and Althoff (2019) explored the capacity of Drosophila melanogaster to exhibit adaptive plasticity in a novel environment. In a full-sib, half-sib design, they scored the activity of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and plastic responses, measured as changes in ADH activity across ethanol concentrations in the range of 0-10% (natural variation) and 16% (the novel environment). ADH activity increased with alcohol concentration, and there was a positive association between larval viability and ADH activity in the novel environment. They also reported that families exhibiting greater plasticity had higher larval survival in the novel environment, concluding that ADH plasticity is adaptive. However, the four authors now concur that, since the study estimated plasticity from phenotypic differences across environments using full-sib families, it is not possible to disentangle the contributions of allele frequency changes at the Adh locus from regulatory control at loci known to influence ADH activity. Selective changes in allele frequencies may thus conflate estimates of plasticity; any type of "plasticity" (adaptive, neutral, or maladaptive) could be inferred depending on allele frequencies. The problem of scoring sib-groups after selection should be considered in any plasticity study that cannot use replicated genotypes. Researchers should monitor changes in allele frequencies as one mechanism to deal with this issue.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Inhibitor binding mode and allosteric regulation of Na+-glucose symporters.

Sodium-dependent glucose transporters (SGLTs) exploit sodium gradients to transport sugars across the plasma membrane. Due to their role in renal sugar reabsorption, SGLTs are targets for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Current therapeutics are phlorizin derivatives that contain a sugar moiety bound to an aromatic aglycon tail. Here, we develop structural models of human SGLT1/2 in complex with inhibitors by combining computational and functional studies. Inhibitors bind with the sugar moiety in the sugar pocket and the aglycon tail in the extracellular vestibule. The binding poses corroborate mutagenesis studies and suggest a partial closure of the outer gate upon binding. The models also reveal a putative Na+ binding site in hSGLT1 whose disruption reduces the transport stoichiometry to the value observed in hSGLT2 and increases inhibition by aglycon tails. Our work demonstrates that subtype selectivity arises from Na+-regulated outer gate closure and a variable region in extracellular loop EL5