The widely used model predictive control of discrete-time control barrier functions (MPC-CBF) has difficulties in obstacle avoidance for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in complex terrain. To address this problem, we propose adaptive dynamic control barrier functions (AD-CBF). AD-CBF is able to adaptively select an extended class of functions of CBF to optimize the feasibility and flexibility of obstacle avoidance behaviors based on the relative positions of the UGV and the obstacle, which in turn improves the obstacle avoidance speed and safety of the MPC algorithm when integrated with MPC. The algorithmic constraints of the CBF employ hierarchical density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (HDBSCAN) for parameterization of dynamic obstacle information and unscaled Kalman filter (UKF) for trajectory prediction. Through simulations and practical experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the AD-CBF-MPC algorithm in planning optimal obstacle avoidance paths in dynamic environments, overcoming the limitations of the point-by-point feasibility of MPC-CBF.

A new vacuum line to extract CO2 from carbonate and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in water was established at Guangxi Normal University. The vacuum line consisted of two main components: a CO2 bubble circulation region and a CO2 purification collection region, both of which were made of quartz glass and metal pipelines. To validate its reliability, a series of carbonate samples were prepared using this system. The total recovery rate of CO2 extraction and graphitization exceeded 80%. Furthermore, the carbon content in calcium carbonate exhibited a linear relationship with the CO2 pressure within the system, demonstrating its stability and reliability. The system was also employed to prepare and analyze various samples, including calcium carbonate blanks, foraminiferal, shell, groundwater, and subsurface oil-water samples. The accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) results indicated that the average beam current for 12C- in the samples exceeded 40 μA. Additionally, the contamination introduced during the liquid sample preparation process was approximately (1.77 ± 0.57) × 10−14. Overall, the graphitized preparation system for carbonate and DIC in water exhibited high efficiency and recovery, meeting the requirements for samples dating back to approximately 30,000 years.

Evidence-based conservation can be hindered by limited field data, but historical archives have the potential to provide unique insights into conservation-relevant parameters, such as identification of suitable habitat for threatened species. The Manumea or Tooth-billed Pigeon Didunculus strigirostris has declined on Samoa and only a tiny remnant population still persists, and a key first step for conservation is to locate surviving birds. Numerous Manumea records are available from the nineteenth century onwards, and we used historical and modern records to generate a series of species distribution models to predict the distribution of suitable habitat across Samoa to guide new field searches. Manumea distribution is closely associated with forest cover or its proxies. Preferred Manumea food plants are suggested to be low-elevation trees, but elevation provides relatively low percentage contribution in most models, thus not excluding the possibility that Manumea might occur at high elevations. There is also little evidence for elevational change in records over the past century. Models based on visual versus acoustic records exhibit differences in predicted habitat suitability, suggesting that some purported acoustic records might not actually represent Manumea calls. Field searches should target areas representing high habitat suitability across all models, notably the forested central axis of Upolu.

The paper presents a Wittgensteinian account of the concept woman, in terms of family resemblance. This approach is deemed superior to the Carnapian account, championed by Sally Haslanger, in that it allows for more inclusivity and to locate the source of sexism not so much in the very concept of woman but in the beliefs sexist people have about women. The compatibility of this account with semantic externalism is explored, as well as its relationship with stereotypes and paradigmatic examples of women. It is further shown how present-day attempts to extend the application of the concept of woman beyond human females may be made sense in terms of a change of hinges—that is, of the rules of evidential significance, which a community of speakers brings to bear on the determination of whether a person is a woman. Finally, it is argued that, despite Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical quietism, such an account is politically significant. This in turn shows that in fact Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical pronouncements far from being inimical to political and societal change may in fact be conducive to it.

Studies with multiple radiocarbon dates often contain useful information on the relative locations of the dated levels. Such information can be used to obtain robust, integrated site chronologies, with at times more precise ages than those of the individual dates, where outliers can be identified and downweighted, and where the ages of any undated levels can also be estimated. Examples include trees with radiocarbon dates separated by exactly known amounts of yearly tree-rings, or sedimentary sites where ages further down the stratigraphy can be assumed to be older than ages further up. Here we present coffee, an R package for Bayesian models that apply chronological ordering for fossils and environmental events. Coffee runs natively within the popular and versatile R environment, with no need for importing or exporting data or code from other programs, and works with plain-text input files that are relatively easy to read and write. It thus provides a new, transparent and adaptable educational and research platform designed to make chronology building more accessible.

Eve Caroline Southward (1930–2023) was a multi-talented scientist, motivated by her curiosity and love of nature. Since she was never paid as a scientist, Eve was an amateur, in the best sense of the word. She was highly proficient at transmission electron microscopy and made lasting contributions to polychaete taxonomy, morphology and ecology. Eve was internationally respected, especially for her studies on the Siboglinidae, mouthless and gutless tubeworms (formerly called Pogonophora) that are found worldwide in the deep-sea. She described how the siboglinids obtained nutrition from symbiotic, sulphur-oxidising bacteria and described similar symbiotic relationships in several bivalve species. Eve wrote over 140 scientific publications and described 56 new benthic species, 47 being mouthless and gutless ‘pogonophores’. Eve assisted her husband Alan Southward in starting broad-scale intertidal surveys around the British Isles and Northwest Europe. These surveys formed the foundation for the time-series, later continued by others, that allowed assessments of the influence of climatic fluctuations, using intertidal rocky shore biota as indicators. Eve contributed, with Alan, to what became a 50-year study describing the long-term effects on intertidal communities of the oil pollution and excessive dispersant use resulting from the Torrey Canyon oil spill in 1967. Eve also co-wrote the Linnaean Society Synopsis on Echinoderms of the British Isles and helped complete unpublished work by Alan Southward and others on barnacle taxonomy.

Alongside the well-known jurisprudential ideas associated with legal realism, some scholars have highlighted the realists’ political-economic ideas. Best known among them has been Morton Horwitz, who has argued that the realists launched an “attack on the legitimacy of the market.” Other scholars challenged this view and argued that there was no significant connection between legal realism and political economic ideas. I offer a corrective to both views. I first consider the work of five legal realists (Karl Llewellyn, Adolf Berle, William O. Douglas, Jerome Frank, and Thurman Arnold) and show that all held views that were well within the political-economic mainstream of their era, which did not challenge the legitimacy of market capitalism but wanted to see markets better regulated. I also show that for many of these realists, there were important connections between their jurisprudential and political-economic ideas. I then turn to some neglected writings of Felix Cohen to show that he too saw a direct link between his legal and economic ideas. However, unlike the other legal realists discussed here, he was a radical critic of market capitalism. I use his political-economic writings for a reconsideration of his better-known jurisprudential works.

The crystal structure of perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA) was solved via parallel tempering using synchrotron powder diffraction data obtained from the Brockhouse X-ray Diffraction and Scattering (BXDS) Wiggler Lower Energy (WLE) beamline at the Canadian Light Source. PFNA crystallizes in monoclinic space group P21/c (#14) with lattice parameters a = 26.172(1) Å, b = 5.6345(2) Å, c = 10.9501(4) Å, and β = 98.752(2)°. The crystal structure is composed of dimers, with pairs of PFNA molecules connected by hydrogen bonds via the carboxylic acid functional groups. The Rietveld-refined structure was compared to a density functional theory-optimized structure, and the root-mean-square Cartesian difference was larger than normally observed for correct powder structures. The powder data likely exhibited evidence of disorder which was not successfully modeled.

As a kind of lower-limb motor assistance device, the intelligent walking aid robot plays an essential role in helping people with lower-limb diseases to carry out rehabilitation walking training. In order to enhance the safety performance of the lower-limb walking aid robot, this study proposes a deep vision-based abnormal lower-limb gait prediction model construction method for the problem of abnormal gait prediction of patients’ lower limbs. The point cloud depth vision technique is used to acquire lower-limb motion data, and a multi-posture angular prediction model is trained using long and short-term memory networks to build a model of the user’s lower-limb posture characteristics during normal walking as well as a real-time lower-limb motion prediction model. The experimental results indicate that the proposed lower-limb abnormal behavior prediction model is able to achieve a 97.4% prediction rate of abnormal lower-limb movements within 150 ms. Additionally, the model demonstrates strong generalization ability in practical applications. This paper proposes further ideas to enhance the safety performance of lower-limb rehabilitation robot use for patients with lower-limb disabilities.