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In past years, there has been significant progress in the field of indoor robot localization. To precisely recover the position, the robots usually relies on multiple on-board sensors. Nevertheless, this affects the overall system cost and increases computation. In this research work, we considered a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) device as the only sensor for detecting surroundings and propose an efficient indoor localization algorithm. To attenuate the computation effort and preserve localization robustness, a weighted parallel iterative closed point (WP-ICP) with interpolation is presented. As compared to the traditional ICP, the point cloud is first processed to extract corners and line features before applying point registration. Later, points labeled as corners are only matched with the corner candidates. Similarly, points labeled as lines are only matched with the lines candidates. Moreover, their ICP confidence levels are also fused in the algorithm, which make the pose estimation less sensitive to environment uncertainties. The proposed WP-ICP architecture reduces the probability of mismatch and thereby reduces the ICP iterations. Finally, based on given well-constructed indoor layouts, experiment comparisons are carried out under both clean and perturbed environments. It is shown that the proposed method is effective in significantly reducing computation effort and is simultaneously able to preserve localization precision.

Using Active Share and tracking error, the author sorted all-equity mutual funds into various categories of active management. The most active stock pickers outperformed their benchmark indices even after fees, whereas closet indexers underperformed. These patterns held during the 2008–09 financial crisis and within market-cap styles. Closet indexing has increased in both volatile and bear markets since 2007. Cross-sectional dispersion in stock returns positively predicts performance by stock pickers.

As people pay more attention to environmental issues, incorporating leather elements in solid wood furniture has become a new trend. This change reflects consumers’ concern for sustainable materials and their quest for personalized home design. Due to the similarity between styling of leather custom closets in the market, its surface texture and color are the key factors influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions. This study explored the visual-tactile perception of different leather materials by Chinese leather custom furniture consumers and establish an evaluation model. Based on Kansei engineering and market trend research, 12 representative leather samples and 7 perceptual phrases were selected through expert evaluation and KJ methods. Questionnaires were used to collect consumers’ visual-tactile perception evaluations of leather samples. Analysis using SPSS software showed that surface roughness, softness, and comfort of the material were the key factors affecting the tactile perception, while the visual perception was closely related to the color characteristics and aesthetic of the material. Cluster analysis categorized these materials as suitable for 4 different styles of home environments. This paper provides a theoretical basis for selecting materials for leather customized furniture and guides future design.

The stage adaptation of Giovanni’s Room by Eline Arbo, the artistic director of the International Theater of Amsterdam, elides some of the nuances of how the novel presents the paradoxes of first-person narration from a protagonist deeply in denial about his homosexuality: how David wants Giovanni, wants men generally, but can’t bear to indulge in or account for these proclivities. Yet the production is nevertheless able, by virtue of its physicality as a medium, to show and enact some of the subtleties of the story by, for example, lighting and music and other dramaturgical stagecraft. Since this is an adaptation by another reader of James Baldwin’s novel who clearly also loves it, it was with curiosity and interest that I attended the production on January 23, 2025. The occasion of my visit was to join a public panel to discuss “ Giovanni’s Room : Spaces, Places and Identities,” organized by Jaap Kooijman, Professor in Media Studies and the director of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), and Nawal Mustafa, Professor of Black Studies and Critical Race Studies, both of the University of Amsterdam. The panel was additionally sponsored by NICA, Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis, and took place before the evening’s performance.

Discover how flushing toilets evolved from ancient sanitation practices to advanced designs that dramatically improved public health and hygiene.

Coming out, or the disclosure of a minority identity, features prominently across disciplines, including several subfields of sociological research. In the context of sexuality, theoretical arguments offer competing predictions. Some studies propose that coming out is increasingly an unremarkable life transition as the stigma associated with non-heterosexualities attenuates, while others posit entrenched discrimination. Rather than testing these theories or providing incremental evidence in support of one position, we use 52 in-depth interviews with recently-out individuals to explain how identity disclosures in the present moment can validate plural possibilities. Our findings show that ambivalence is the core narrative which animates the contemporary coming out process. Respondents identify three interpretive frameworks that structure their experience of sexuality as at once incidental and central: generational differences, identity misrecognitions, and interfacing with institutions. We also detail a fourth theme, intersectionality, which shows the analytic limits of ambivalence in the coming out process. These patterns suggest more broadly that sexuality, like ethnicity, may provide symbolic resources—“distinguishing but not defining”—in the service of crafting a modern sexual self.

This article considers how international criminal justice administered by the International Criminal Court (ICC) affects the possibility of negotiated, peaceful transitions of power in autocracies. We argue that a strong international criminal tribunal can deter dictators' decisions to peacefully relinquish their power. It does so when the dictator in question has faced a relatively violent opposition, one that was ready to strike a deal with the dictator promising him amnesty in exchange for stepping down. Facing an opposition that \"has skeletons in its closet,\" the dictator will peacefully exit his office only under a weak ICC regime. We use a cross-national time-series data set spanning 1998 to 2007 to test our theory and find that under a weak ICC regime, the more skeletons the opposition has in its own closet, the more likely is the dictator to peacefully step down from office. Interestingly, this relationship holds, to a large extent, across various levels of dictator's culpability. If the ICC is strong, the number of skeletons the opposition has in its closet has, for the most part, no effect on the dictator's likelihood of stepping down.

Water-efficient products, a key component of water-saving technology, are widely installed and utilized in all sectors of society. Due to China’s extensive and varied use of this product, advancements in effectiveness and quality will significantly enhance people’s standard of living. In recent years, manufacturers, corporate purchasers, and individual customers have given more attention to the quality of these items due to the spike in local market and export demands for water-efficient products in China. It has been a pressing problem to find a practical solution for increasing product quality in a reasonable and scientific manner. In order to build a DECIA quality improvement model for water-efficient product quality that is quantifiable and technically practical, this paper investigates how to improve the quality of smart water closets based on six-sigma management. Thus, the development of a water-efficient industry can be green and sustainable.

The emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlighted the importance of disinfection processes in health safety. Textiles and footwear have been identified as vectors for spreading infections. Therefore, their disinfection can be crucial to controlling pathogens’ dissemination. The present work aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a commercial disinfectant aerosolized by an ultrasonic nebulizer closet as an effective method for disinfecting textiles and footwear. The disinfection was evaluated in three steps: suspension tests; nebulization in a 0.08 m3 closet; nebulization in the upscaled 0.58 m3 closet. The disinfection process of textiles and footwear was followed by the use of bacteriophages, bacterial spores, and bacterial cells. The disinfection in the 0.58 m3 closet was efficient for textiles (4 log reduction) when bacteriophage Lambda, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Bacillus subtilis were used. The footwear disinfection was achieved (4 log reduction) in the 0.08 m3 closet for Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. Disinfection in an ultrasonic nebulization closet has advantages such as being quick, not wetting, being efficient on porous surfaces, and is performed at room temperature. Ultrasonic nebulization disinfection in a closet proves to be useful in clothing and footwear stores to prevent pathogen transmission by the items’ widespread handling.

Mapping in the GPS-denied environment is an important and challenging task in the field of robotics. In the large environment, mapping can be significantly accelerated by multiple robots exploring different parts of the environment. Accordingly, a key problem is how to integrate these local maps built by different robots into a single global map. In this paper, we propose an approach for simultaneous merging of multiple grid maps by the robust motion averaging. The main idea of this approach is to recover all global motions for map merging from a set of relative motions. Therefore, it firstly adopts the pair-wise map merging method to estimate relative motions for grid map pairs. To obtain as many reliable relative motions as possible, a graph-based sampling scheme is utilized to efficiently remove unreliable relative motions obtained from the pair-wise map merging. Subsequently, the accurate global motions can be recovered from the set of reliable relative motions by the motion averaging. Experimental results carried on real robot data sets demonstrate that the proposed approach can achieve simultaneous merging of multiple grid maps with good performances.