This paper presents a set of artificial potential field functions that improves upon, in general, the motion planning and posture control, with theoretically guaranteed point and posture stabilities, convergence and collision avoidance properties of the general3-trailer system in a priori known environment. We basically design and inject two new concepts; ghost walls and the distance optimizati...

CSE blew the lid on smog and smogmakers in 1996 in its book Slow murder: The deadly story of vehicular pollution in India. The study found that the problem of vehicular pollution in India was the result of a combination of outdated engine technology, poor fuel quality, defective transportation planning and bad maintenance of vehicles on road. CSE exposed that the government was indulging in the...

Introduction: A basic principle of cognitive neuroscience is that the brain directs movement, but it is unclear how this is done. Currently, we know very little about the neural computations mediating simple actions like reaching across a table, much less about more complex ones like playing tennis or violin. I want to understand the brain mechanisms that underlie this movement preparation. My ...

background: health system research (hsr) is system planning, coordination, monitoring and management of research resources and activities to achieve health and justice. as the main members of the health system, general practitioners (gps) play an important role in access to health care goals. the aim of the present study was to assess knowledge, attitude, and performance of gps in rafsanjan, ir...

For a very long time, family planning methods have paid little attention to the needs of men, but instead focused primarily on women. A bulk of contraceptives on the market today is women oriented. Probably, many providers assume that women have the greatest stake and interest as far as family planning is concerned. Worst still, there is a misconception that men are indifferent or even stand in...

The Nigerian educational system has undoubtedly encountered a number of significant impediments in the last few decades and it continue to struggle with the implementation and assurance of educational and teaching quality because of lack of effective planning. A shortage of accurate statistical data, financial, qualified planners, poor national economic performance, unsuitable governing structu...

Adaptive management planning projects use multiparty, multidisciplinary workshops and simulation modeling to facilitate dialogue, negotiation, and planning. However, they have been criticized as a poor medium for conflict resolution. Alternative processes from the conflict resolution tradition, e.g., principled negotiation and sequenced negotiation, address uncertainty and biophysical constrain...

Access to quality reproductive health and family planning services remain poor in Nigeria. We present results on family planning awareness and use from a survey of 3,080 women (age 15-49 years) in Jigawa, Katsina, Yobe, and Zamfara States. About 43.0% had heard of any method of contraception whereas 36.6% had heard of any modern method. Overall, 7.0% of all currently married women reported ever...

Viet Nam has high modern contraceptive prevalence (68%), with most services received through the public sector. As the country transitions to middle-income status, Viet Nam's donors have ceased donations of contraceptive supplies, causing a large projected shortfall in the family planning budget. In response, the Ministry of Health has decided to prioritize free or subsidized contraceptives for...

We present a model of interpersonal attitude used for generating expressive postures for computer animated characters. Our model consists of two principle dimensions, affiliation and status. It takes into account the relationships between the attitudes of two characters and allows for a large degree of variation between characters, both in how they react to other characters’ behaviour and in th...