LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic dexterity of a planar 2-DOF parallel manipulator in a hybrid machine tool

Robotica / Volume 26 / Issue 01 / January 2008, pp 93 98 DOI: 10.1017/S0263574707003621, Published online: 12 July 2007 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0263574707003621 How to cite this article: Jun Wu, Jinsong Wang, Tiemin Li, Liping Wang and Liwen Guan (2008). Dynamic dexterity of a planar 2-DOF parallel manipulator in a hybrid machine tool. Robotica, 26, pp 93-98 doi:10.1017/S0263574707003621 Request Permissions : Click here
Learning Analytics and Serious Games: Trends and Considerations

This paper reviews the current status of Learning Analytics with special focus on their application in Serious Games. After presenting the advantages of incorporating Learning Analytics into game-based learning applications, different aspects regarding the integration process including modeling, tracing, aggregation, visualisation, analysis and employment of gameplay data are discussed. Associated challenges in this field as well as examples of best practices are also examined.
Teacher-Student Relationships and Engagement : Conceptualizing , Measuring , and Improving the Capacity of Classroom Interactions *

Classrooms are complex social systems, and student-teacher relationships and interactions are also complex, multicomponent systems. We posit that the nature and quality of relationship interactions between teachers and students are fundamental to understanding student engagement, can be assessed through standardized observation methods, and can be changed by providing teachers knowledge about developmental processes relevant for classroom interactions and personalized feedback/support about their interactive behaviors and cues. When these supports are provided to teachers’ interactions, student engagement increases. In this chapter, we focus on the theoretical and empirical links between interactions and engagement and present an approach to intervention designed to increase the quality of such interactions and, in turn, increase student engagement and, ultimately, learning and development. Recognizing general principles of development in complex systems, a theory of the classroom as a setting for development, and a theory of change specifi c to this social setting are the ultimate goals of this work. Engagement, in this context, is both an outcome in its own R. C. Pianta , Ph.D. (*) Curry School of Education , University of Virginia , PO Box 400260 , Charlottesville , VA 22904-4260 , USA e-mail: rcp4p@virginia.edu B. K. Hamre , Ph.D. Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning , University of Virginia , Charlottesville , VA , USA e-mail: bkh3d@virginia.edu J. P. Allen , Ph.D. Department of Psychology , University of Virginia , Charlottesville , VA , USA e-mail: allen@virginia.edu Teacher-Student Relationships and Engagement: Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Improving the Capacity of Classroom Interactions* Robert C. Pianta , Bridget K. Hamre , and Joseph P. Allen *Preparation of this chapter was supported in part by the Wm. T. Grant Foundation, the Foundation for Child Development, and the Institute of Education Sciences. 366 R.C. Pianta et al.
Hardness and Hierarchy Theorems for Probabilistic Quasi-Polynomial Time

We prove tight hierarchy theorems for bounded error probabilistic quasi-polynomial time classes, under se”era1 hardness assumptions. We show that if either (1) the Permanent does not have a subexponential time BP algorithm, or (2) some function in EXPTIME does not have subexponential size circuits, then for every lSa<D,
Calcium Signalling: More Messengers, More Channels, More Complexity

Recent studies have expanded the number of channel types and messengers that lead to Ca(2+) signals within cells. Furthermore, we are beginning to understand the complex interplay between different sources of Ca(2+).
Biofeedback for Gait Retraining Based on Real-Time Estimation of Tibiofemoral Joint Contact Forces

Biofeedback assisted rehabilitation and intervention technologies have the potential to modify clinically relevant biomechanics. Gait retraining has been used to reduce the knee adduction moment, a surrogate of medial tibiofemoral joint loading often used in knee osteoarthritis research. In this paper, we present an electromyogram-driven neuromusculoskeletal model of the lower-limb to estimate, in real-time, the tibiofemoral joint loads. The model included 34 musculotendon units spanning the hip, knee, and ankle joints. Full-body inverse kinematics, inverse dynamics, and musculotendon kinematics were solved in real-time from motion capture and force plate data to estimate the knee medial tibiofemoral contact force (MTFF). We analyzed five healthy subjects while they were walking on an instrumented treadmill with visual biofeedback of their MTFF. Each subject was asked to modify their gait in order to vary the magnitude of their MTFF. All subjects were able to increase their MTFF, whereas only three subjects could decrease it, and only after receiving verbal suggestions about possible gait modification strategies. Results indicate the important role of knee muscle activation patterns in modulating the MTFF. While this paper focused on the knee, the technology can be extended to examine the musculoskeletal tissue loads at different sites of the human body.
Kinematics and Application of a Hybrid Industrial Robot – Delta-RST 1

Serial robots and parallel robots have their own pros and cons. While hybrid robots consisting of both of them are possible and expected to retain their merits and minimize the disadvantages. The Delta-RST presented here is such a hybrid robot built up by integrating a 3-DoFs traditional Delta parallel structure and a 3-DoFs RST robotic wrist. In this paper, we focus on its kinematics analysis and its applications in industry. Firstly, the robotic system of the Delta-RST will be described briefly. Then the complete and systemic kinematics of this kind of robot will be presented in detail, followed by simulations and applications to demonstrate the correctness of the analysis, as well as the effectiveness of the developed robotic system. The closed-form kinematic analysis results are universal for similar hybrid robots constructing with the Delta parallel mechanism and serial chains. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.
Multiple sclerosis prevalence among Sardinians: further evidence against the latitude gradient theory

A descriptive epidemiological survey was extended to the whole province of Sassari, northern Sardinia between latitudes 40°30' N and 41° N. Results showed a crude total prevalence rate of 144.4 per 100 000 on prevalence day (31 December 1997), and an onset-adjusted prevalence rate of 149.7 per 100 000. The total average annual incidence rate was 4.9 per 100 000 for the whole time interval studied (1968–1997), having increased from 2.0 in 1968–1972 to 6.8 in the last quinquennium considered. A substantial improvement in MS case ascertainment due to the introduction of new diagnostic procedures might account for such rates in Sardinia as well as in other Italian regions. However, when comparing our data with those obtained in the province of Ferrara, in the same time frames (1968–1997), a nine-fold versus a five-fold increase of MS prevalence was detected in Ferrara and Sassari, respectively. MS incidence temporal trend also notably increased in Sassari, but remained substantially stable in Ferrara. The progressive shortening of the time interval between clinical onset and diagnosis, and the proportion of benign-mild MS cases, were similar diagnostic accuracy. In our opinion, the repeatedly assessed increase of MS frequency in our province, at least partially does represent an actual rise of MS risk among Sardinians, thus disproving the latitude gradient-based theory (i. e. prevalence rates correlate with geographical latitudes) and supporting the hypothesis of a “Sardinian focus” of MS in a genetically susceptible population.
High herbivore density associated with vegetation diversity in interglacial ecosystems.

The impact of large herbivores on ecosystems before modern human activities is an open question in ecology and conservation. For Europe, the controversial wood-pasture hypothesis posits that grazing by wild large herbivores supported a dynamic mosaic of vegetation structures at the landscape scale under temperate conditions before agriculture. The contrasting position suggests that European temperate vegetation was primarily closed forest with relatively small open areas, at most impacted locally by large herbivores. Given the role of modern humans in the world-wide decimations of megafauna during the late Quaternary, to resolve this debate it is necessary to understand herbivore-vegetation interactions before these losses. Here, a synthetic analysis of beetle fossils from Great Britain shows that beetles associated with herbivore dung were better represented during the Last Interglacial (132,000-110,000 y B.P., before modern human arrival) than in the early Holocene (10,000-5,000 y B.P.). Furthermore, beetle assemblages indicate closed and partially closed forest in the early Holocene but a greater mixture of semiopen vegetation and forest in the Last Interglacial. Hence, abundant and diverse large herbivores appear to have been associated with high structural diversity of vegetation before the megafauna extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene. After these losses and in the presence of modern humans, large herbivores generally were less abundant, and closed woodland was more prevalent in the early Holocene. Our findings point to the importance of the formerly rich fauna of large herbivores in sustaining structurally diverse vegetation in the temperate forest biome and provide support for recent moves toward rewilding-based conservation management.
Automatic sleep stage classification using ear-EEG

Sleep assessment is of great importance in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders. In clinical practice this is typically performed based on polysomnography recordings and manual sleep staging by experts. This procedure has the disadvantages that the measurements are cumbersome, may have a negative influence on the sleep, and the clinical assessment is labor intensive. Addressing the latter, there has recently been encouraging progress in the field of automatic sleep staging [1]. Furthermore, a minimally obtrusive method for recording EEG from electrodes in the ear (ear-EEG) has recently been proposed [2]. The objective of this study was to investigate the feasibility of automatic sleep stage classification based on ear-EEG. This paper presents a preliminary study based on recordings from a total of 18 subjects. Sleep scoring was performed by a clinical expert based on frontal, central and occipital region EEG, as well as EOG and EMG. 5 subjects were excluded from the study because of alpha wave contamination. In one subject the standard polysomnography was supplemented by ear-EEG. A single EEG channel sleep stage classifier was implemented using the same features and the same classifier as proposed in [1]. The performance of the single channel sleep classifier based on the scalp recordings showed an 85.7 % agreement with the manual expert scoring through 10-fold inter-subject cross validation, while the performance of the ear-EEG recordings was based on a 10-fold intra-subject cross validation and showed an 82 % agreement with the manual scoring. These results suggest that automatic sleep stage classification based on ear-EEG recordings may provide similar performance as compared to single channel scalp EEG sleep stage classification. Thereby ear-EEG may be a feasible technology for future minimal intrusive sleep stage classification.
Development and Evaluation in the Chinese Tourism Industry

— The web-based technologies have become a strategic necessity for tourism organizations. Through switching to online services, tourism organizations are achieving better positions in the digital-based competitive market. The Chinese tourism industry is investing in the development of a ‘Golden Tourism Project’ which includes tourism E-commerce website development and evaluation as one of main parts. This study investigates tourism E-commerce website development in China from three perspectives: the tourism website functionality, the tourism website user and the tourism website provider. Based on a web search and a questionnaire survey, this paper analyses the distribution and classifications of tourism websites, explores the functionality of these websites, and assesses user satisfaction for current tourism websites. The results show that the majority of tourism website providers are regional tourism destination organizations that mainly provide comprehensive local tourism information and services. The results also show the level of regional economic development has a significant impact on the construction of these local tourism websites. It is found that obtaining information is still the main aim of web users, however, the difficulties are slow Internet access. Finally, through a web master interview, this paper discusses the main barriers in developing high quality websites for tourism organizations in China.
Topical Application of Oleuropein Induces Anagen Hair Growth in Telogen Mouse Skin

METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
Oleuropein promoted cultured human follicle dermal papilla cell proliferation and induced LEF1 and Cyc-D1 mRNA expression and β-catenin protein expression in dermal papilla cells. Nuclear accumulation of β-catenin in dermal papilla cells was observed after oleuropein treatment. Topical application of oleuropein (0.4 mg/mouse/day) to C57BL/6N mice accelerated the hair-growth induction and increased the size of hair follicles in telogenic mouse skin. The oleuropein-treated mouse skin showed substantial upregulation of Wnt10b, FZDR1, LRP5, LEF1, Cyc-D1, IGF-1, KGF, HGF, and VEGF mRNA expression and β-catenin protein expression.


CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE
These results demonstrate that topical oleuroepin administration induced anagenic hair growth in telogenic C57BL/6N mouse skin. The hair-growth promoting effect of oleuropein in mice appeared to be associated with the stimulation of the Wnt10b/β-catenin signaling pathway and the upregulation of IGF-1, KGF, HGF, and VEGF gene expression in mouse skin tissue.
Ontology-driven indexing of public datasets for translational bioinformatics

The volume of publicly available genomic scale data is increasing. Genomic datasets in public repositories are annotated with free-text fields describing the pathological state of the studied sample. These annotations are not mapped to concepts in any ontology, making it difficult to integrate these datasets across repositories. We have previously developed methods to map text-annotations of tissue microarrays to concepts in the NCI thesaurus and SNOMED-CT. In this work we generalize our methods to map text annotations of gene expression datasets to concepts in the UMLS. We demonstrate the utility of our methods by processing annotations of datasets in the Gene Expression Omnibus. We demonstrate that we enable ontology-based querying and integration of tissue and gene expression microarray data. We enable identification of datasets on specific diseases across both repositories. Our approach provides the basis for ontology-driven data integration for translational research on gene and protein expression data. Based on this work we have built a prototype system for ontology based annotation and indexing of biomedical data. The system processes the text metadata of diverse resource elements such as gene expression data sets, descriptions of radiology images, clinical-trial reports, and PubMed article abstracts to annotate and index them with concepts from appropriate ontologies. The key functionality of this system is to enable users to locate biomedical data resources related to particular ontology concepts.
Development of augmented reality rehabilitation games integrated with biofeedback for upper limb

Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability in all over the world. This disability greatly impacts the stroke patients’ daily life activities. Thus, rehabilitation exercises are essential for post stroke patients to restore their lost functions gradually for daily life activities. Traditional rehabilitation exercises do not motivate the post stroke patients as they are normally humdrum and required expensive equipments. Therefore, this paper presents the development of low –cost motivating webcam colour based visual tracking augmented reality (AR) system with biofeedback for upper-limb post stroke rehabilitation therapy. Augmented Reality is a novel form of human-computer interface which overlay the computer-generated information on the real world environment rather than replaces it. In the developed AR system, two games; Ping Pong Rehab (PPR) and Balloon Collection Rehab (BCR) are created based on game design principle. PPR game trains shoulder and arm muscles during rehabilitation therapy whilst BCR game trains shoulder, arm and forearm muscles. Both games have been built and integrated with Biograph Infiniti software to monitor the muscles’ performance. The integrated system will obtain the biofeedback EMG signals from patients that will be utilised for future developments. It allows the patients to monitor their arms and muscles movements in real time on the display screen via low-cost webcam. The system aims for home based rehabilitation system and friendly used by patients themselves. The developed integrated system has tested with able subject and it worked perfectly during the test.
Power corrections from small distances

Abstract We review recent speculations on power like corrections in QCD which go beyond the standard Operator Product Expansion. Both the theoretical picture underlying these corrections and phenomenological manifestations are discussed in some detail.
‘African culture will be revolutionary or will not be’: William Klein's Film of the First Pan‐African Festival of Algiers (1969)

Abstract The First Pan‐African Cultural Festival took place in Algiers in July 1969 and gave rise to a collective film directed by William Klein. This film, The Pan‐African Festival of Algiers (1969), takes the form of an essay which gives coherence to a huge range of visual materials: posters, photographs, drawings, archive footage of African anti‐colonial struggles as well as sequences taken from the 1969 festival, such as interviews, rehearsals, concerts and speeches. The making of The Pan‐African Festival of Algiers coincided with the emergence of films from the Third World at a global level, often circulating alongside the films of the new waves that emerged from the end of the 1950s and the early 1960s onwards. Another trend found its second wind at this time: militant cinema with revolutionary aims of social intervention entered a golden age around the second half of the 1960s and into the 1970s. For most of the personalities who appeared in The Pan‐African Festival of Algiers it was necessary to g...
Social cognition impairments in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to attribute independent mental states to self and others to explain and predict behavior. Impairment of ToM is well established in developmental pathologies. In neurological populations, investigation of ToM is still rare but data suggest that ToM impairment could contribute to behavioral and social disturbances. In addition to neurological signs, multiple sclerosis (MS) presents with disorders of cognition and behavior directly related to brain damage. The aim of this study was to assess ToM abilities and recognition of facial emotional expression in adults with MS. We compared 64 patients with relapsing MS and 30 matched healthy controls on three levels of ToM tasks, a facial emotion recognition task, and a neuropsychological assessment. MS patients performed significantly worse than controls in emotion recognition and all ToM tasks (p < .02). These deficits were not correlated with demographic variables or neuropsychological test performance. These findings underscore the importance of assessing ToM and facial recognition in MS, as dysfunction in these areas may impact upon social interaction and, thus, impair quality of life for both patients with MS and their families.
Neural associative memories and sparse coding

The theoretical, practical and technical development of neural associative memories during the last 40 years is described. The importance of sparse coding of associative memory patterns is pointed out. The use of associative memory networks for large scale brain modeling is also mentioned.
A survey on wireless security protocols (WEP, WPA and WPA2/802.11i)

Wireless technology has been gaining rapid popularity for some years. Adaptation of a standard depends on the ease of use and level of security it provides. In this case, contrast between wireless usage and security standards show that the security is not keeping up with the growth paste of end user's usage. Current wireless technologies in use allow hackers to monitor and even change the integrity of transmitted data. Lack of rigid security standards has caused companies to invest millions on securing their wireless networks. There are three major types of security standards in wireless. In our previous papers which registered in ICFCC 2009 Malaysia and ICCDA 2009 Singapore [1] [2], we explained the structure of WEP and WPA as first and second wireless security protocols and discussed all their versions, problems and improvements. Now, we try to explain WPA2 versions, problems and enhancements that have done solve the WPA major weakness. Finally we make a comparison among WEP and WPA and WPA2 as all wireless security protocols in Wi-Fi technology. In the next phase we hope that we will publish a complete comparison among wireless security techniques by add the WiMax security technique and make a whole comparison among all security protocols in this area.
Alemtuzumab in the treatment of IVIG-dependent chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy

Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) is an idiopathic immune mediated neuropathy causing demyelination and conduction block thought to occur as the result of an aberrant autoimmune response resulting in peripheral nerve inflammation mediated by T cells and humoral factors. Diagnosis commonly prompts initial treatment with steroids or intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) on which 5–35% subsequently become dependent to maintain function. Despite a number of small scale trials, the role for alternative long-term immunosuppression remains unclear. Alemtuzumab is a humanised monoclonal antibody targeting the CD52 antigen present on the surface of lymphocytes and monocytes. A single intravenous infusion results in rapid and profound lymphopoenia lasting >12 months. We report its use and clinical outcome in a small series of patients with severe IVIG-dependent CIDP. Seven patients (4 Males; 3 Females) who had failed to respond to conventional immunosuppression were treated in 5 centres receiving 9 courses of alemtuzumab (dose range 60–150 mg). Following treatment, mean monthly IVIG use fell 26% from 202 to 149 g and IVIG administration frequency from 22 to 136 days. Two patients had prolonged remission, two patients had a partial response and no clear benefit was observed in the remaining three patients (2 Males, 1 Females). Responding patients had a younger age at onset (19.5 years) and shorter disease duration than non-responders. Three patients developed autoimmune disease following treatment. Alemtuzumab may offer an alternative treatment for a subset of early onset IVIG dependent CIDP patients failing conventional immunosuppressive agents, but concerns about toxicity may limit its use.