One way of handling Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is based on the concept, that the robot acts like an animal companion to human. According to this paradigm the Robot should not be molded to mimic the human being, and form human-to-human like communication, but to follow the existing biological examples and form inter-species interaction. The 20.000 year old human-dog relationship is a good exa...

Plants undergo two major post-embryonic developmental transitions--the juvenile-to-adult vegetative transition (vegetative phase change) and the adult-to-reproductive transition (flowering). In woody plants, these transitions can be separated by years, but in herbaceous species they are often very close together, making it difficult to differentiate the effects of vegetative phase change and fl...

BACKGROUND It is increasingly important to evaluate patients' recovery after ambulatory surgery. The authors developed the Functional Recovery Index (FRI) to assess postdischarge functional recovery for ambulatory surgical patients. METHODS The scale development involved four phases: item generation, item selection, reliability, and validity testing. A draft questionnaire was tested and revis...

This paper attempts to provide a critical approach to the issue of regional integration, one of the most important subjects over the last two decades and currently one of the leading debates that are taking place in the South. Although the importance of regional integration –given its correlation to the process of pacific change in international relations–, it seems that there is no satisfactor...

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An evolutionary response to selection requires genetic variation; however, even if it exists, then the genetic details of the variation can constrain adaptation. In the simplest case, unlinked loci and uncorrelated phenotypes respond directly to multivariate selection and permit unrestricted paths to adaptive peaks. By contrast, 'antagonistic' pleiotropic loci may constrain adaptation by affect...

This paper describes the intelligent Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) control system using Fuzzy Rule Interpolation (FRI) method. The AGV used in this paper is a virtual vehicle simulated using computer. The purpose of the control system is to control the simulated AGV by moving along the given path towards a goal. Some obstacles can be placed on or near the path to increase the difficulties of t...

FRIGIDA (FRI) is a major gene involved in the regulation of flowering time in Arabidopsis thaliana. Nucleotide variation at this gene was investigated by sequencing 25 field ecotypes collected from western Europe. Genetic diversity at FRI was characterized by a high number of haplotypes and an excess of low-frequency polymorphisms. A large excess of intraspecific nonsynonymous variation associa...

Heterosis is an important phenomenon in agriculture. However, heterosis often greatly varies among hybrids and among traits. To investigate heterosis across a large number of traits and numerous genotypes, we evaluated 12 life history traits on parents and hybrids derived from five Arabidopsis thaliana ecotypes (Col, Ler-0, Cvi, Ws, and C24) by using a complete diallel analysis containing 20 hy...