In this paper, chaos is applied to the control of moving robots in order to generate random-like trajectories needed in tasks such as exploration, scanning natural terrains or mapping of unknown environments. Synchronization between the robots of a team is achieved by exploiting the paradigm of mirror neurons, i.e. a neural structure playing a key role in the process of imitation and behaviour ...

BACKGROUND Collagen is the most abundant protein in animals. Each polypeptide chain of collagen is composed of repeats of the sequence: Gly-X-Y, where X and Y are often L-proline (Pro) and 4(R)-hydroxy-L-proline (Hyp) residues, respectively. These chains are wound into tight triple helices of great stability. The hydroxyl group of Hyp residues contributes much to this conformational stability. ...

Social play and tolerance are positively correlated and playful signals are more freely expressed in egalitarian than in despotic species. Macaque species are organized along a continuum from intolerant to tolerant social systems and, for this reason, they are good models to test some hypotheses about the possible linkage between communication and tolerance. We compared facial playful communica...

Physical inactivity is one of the major causes of type 2 diabetes, and exercise training contributes substantially to both the prevention and treatment of this disease. Physical exercise affects many biochemical characteristics of skeletal muscle and thereby influences energy metabolism of the whole body. Although the mechanism by which the biochemical properties of skeletal muscle adapt to phy...

In many optimization problems, the structure of solutions reflects complex relationships between the different input parameters. For example, experience may tell us that certain parameters are closely related and should not be explored independently. Similarly, experience may establish that a subset of parameters must take on particular values. Any search of the cost landscape should take advan...

BACKGROUND Although MIMIC-II, a public intensive care database, has been recognized as an invaluable resource for many medical researchers worldwide, becoming a proficient MIMIC-II researcher requires knowledge of SQL programming and an understanding of the MIMIC-II database schema. These are challenging requirements especially for health researchers and clinicians who may have limited computer...

SOFT (‘Second-Order Functions and Theorems’) is a tool to mimic second-order functions and theorems in the first-order logic of ACL2. Second-order functions are mimicked by first-order functions that reference explicitly designated uninterpreted functions that mimic function variables. First-order theorems over these second-order functions mimic second-order theorems universally quantified over...

A very general class of EDAs is defined, on which universal results on the rate of diversity loss can be derived. This EDA class, denoted SML-EDA, requires two restrictions: 1) in each generation, the new probability model is build using only data sampled from the current probability model; and 2) maximum likelihood is used to set model parameters. This class is very general; it includes simple...

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a major health issue, affecting large numbers of patients worldwide. It is associated with an increase in complications and poor prognostics if diagnosis is delayed. Medical guidelines are routinely employed to classify different AKI stages, but guidance on the early detection of AKI risk is limited. In this paper, we present a Bayesian Networks (BN) proof of concep...

A thorough description of the evolving MIMIC Hardware Description Language (MHDL) is presented from the perspective of an analog modeler or designer. Analog simulation issues pertinent to MHDL description are discussed. This includes both transient and steady-state simulation.perspectives. Several modeling examples demonstrate the concepts and simulation issues related to these examples, as wel...