Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Closed-Loop Task Difficulty Adaptation during Virtual Reality Reach-to-Grasp Training Assisted with an Exoskeleton for Stroke Rehabilitation

Stroke patients with severe motor deficits of the upper extremity may practice rehabilitation exercises with the assistance of a multi-joint exoskeleton. Although this technology enables intensive task-oriented training, it may also lead to slacking when the assistance is too supportive. Preserving the engagement of the patients while providing “assistance-as-needed” during the exercises, therefore remains an ongoing challenge. We applied a commercially available seven degree-of-freedom arm exoskeleton to provide passive gravity compensation during task-oriented training in a virtual environment. During this 4-week pilot study, five severely affected chronic stroke patients performed reach-to-grasp exercises resembling activities of daily living. The subjects received virtual reality feedback from their three-dimensional movements. The level of difficulty for the exercise was adjusted by a performance-dependent real-time adaptation algorithm. The goal of this algorithm was the automated improvement of the range of motion. In the course of 20 training and feedback sessions, this unsupervised adaptive training concept led to a progressive increase of the virtual training space (p < 0.001) in accordance with the subjects' abilities. This learning curve was paralleled by a concurrent improvement of real world kinematic parameters, i.e., range of motion (p = 0.008), accuracy of movement (p = 0.01), and movement velocity (p < 0.001). Notably, these kinematic gains were paralleled by motor improvements such as increased elbow movement (p = 0.001), grip force (p < 0.001), and upper extremity Fugl-Meyer-Assessment score from 14.3 ± 5 to 16.9 ± 6.1 (p = 0.026). Combining gravity-compensating assistance with adaptive closed-loop feedback in virtual reality provides customized rehabilitation environments for severely affected stroke patients. This approach may facilitate motor learning by progressively challenging the subject in accordance with the individual capacity for functional restoration. It might be necessary to apply concurrent restorative interventions to translate these improvements into relevant functional gains of severely motor impaired patients in activities of daily living.
The Short-Term Effects of Real-Time Virtual Reality Feedback on Motor Learning in Dance

Does virtual reality (VR) represent a useful platform for teaching real-world motor skills? In domains such as sport and dance, this question has not yet been fully explored. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of two variations of real-time VR feedback on the learning of a complex dance movement. Novice participants (n 30) attempted to learn the action by both observing a video of an expert's movement demonstration and physically practicing under one of three conditions. These conditions were: full feedback (FULL-FB), which presented learners with real-time VR feedback on the difference between 12 of their joint center locations and the expert's movement during learning; reduced feedback (REDUCED-FB), which provided feedback on only four distal joint center locations (end-effectors); and no feedback (NO-FB), which presented no real-time VR feedback during learning. Participants' kinematic data were gathered before, immediately after, and 24 hr after a motor learning session. Movement error was calculated as the difference in the range of movement at specific joints between each learner's movement and the expert's demonstrated movement. Principal component analysis was also used to examine dimensional change across time. The results showed that the REDUCED-FB condition provided an advantage in motor learning over the other conditions: it achieved a significantly greater reduction in error across five separate error measures. These findings indicate that VR can be used to provide a useful platform for teaching real-world motor skills, and that this may be achieved by its ability to direct the learner's attention to the key anatomical features of a to-be-learned action.
Understanding the persistence of inequality in higher education: evidence from Australia

During the latter half of the twentieth century, Australia, like many countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, experienced rapid expansion in participation in higher education which was supported by government through increases in the number of publicly funded university places. However, in spite of this expansion, a disproportionately large share of the undergraduate student population is still drawn from higher socio-economic backgrounds. This paper seeks to understand the persistence of inequality in higher education by examining changes in patterns of participation in Australian universities since the 1970s. Using logistic regressions to analyse data collected by three Australian surveys conducted between 1987 and 2005, the authors examine the influence of having a university-educated parent on an individual’s chances of obtaining a higher education degree. They find that although the expansion of higher education has had some impact in terms of reducing inequality, having a university-educated parent continues to exert a direct effect on an individual’s propensity to graduate from university. The paper draws on the theories of maximally maintained inequality and relative risk aversion to interpret institutional and student behaviour. The policy challenges of addressing structural inequality in higher education are also discussed.
Projection of Meaning in Fronto-Temporal Dementia

The phenomenon of confabulation has achieved little linguistic attention although it concerns aberrant utterances. Most studies have been carried out from a neuropsychiatric point of view. The aim of this study was to examine confabulate constructions with focus on the impact of time course and context on projections of meaning. Confabulate speech produced by individuals with fronto-temporal dementia (FTD) was investigated. A questionnaire was used to elicit confabulations in two individuals with severe FTD. Correct answers were uttered promptly, but were often followed by confabulate speech in a further development of the answer. Faulty answers often consisted of uncharacteristic general information that gradually developed into confabulations. A discrimination between two kinds of confabulate speech was made. In Primary dysdeictic confabulation, a lack of deictic centre was the dominating linguistic feature with major consequences on the maintenance of activated speech situations. Secondary confabulation consisted of problems with semantic selection causing faulty answers. The two categories of confabulation had in common that the semantic elements consisting mainly of projections from mental resource domains that are semantic and episodic memories. Both kinds of confabulations are likely to be caused by attentional problems. The attentional disturbance was obvious in regulation of semantic selection, which was demonstrated as projections of linguistic elements from identity preserving resource domains. The confabulate speech was mainly connected to mental representations of the individuals' identity and consisted of preserved episodic and semantic memories. Confabulate speech appears to serve the purpose of keeping up a strong image of the self.
The Value of Volunteering for a Nonprofit Membership Association: The Case of ARNOVA

Although research indicates that volunteer labor is of significant value to many nonprofit organizations, this value is generally not included in the organization's financial accounting statements. This study discusses the value added to nonprofit membership organizations of the volunteering done by its members. It uses an exploratory case study of the Association for Research on Nonprofits Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) to demonstrate how volunteer labor is valued and presented within a social accounting framework by utilizing the Expanded Value Added Statement. This is followed by discussion of some of the benefits and limitations of such a method and policy implications.
‘Good lesbian, bad lesbian…’: regulating heterosexuality in fostering and adoption assessments

The paper examines the assessment of lesbians who apply to foster or adopt, using data generated from 30 interviews with local authority social workers. Using feminist and queer theories, the author suggests that lesbian applicants pose a challenge to the discourse of 'compulsory gender and heterosexuality' which structures fostering and adoption work. It is argued that this discourse relies upon a series of assumptions about the automatic fitness of heterosexual applicants, especially concerning the idea of gender and sexuality role models needed for children's development. Further, this 'heteronormative' discourse relies upon the continuing need to make 'other' the categories 'lesbian' or 'gay'. The article considers how 'the lesbian' is constructed as a 'threat', as 'militant', or as 'automatically safe' in assessments, and makes the point that social work is productive of versions of the lesbian subject. The author argues that only certain versions are likely to be approved to foster or adopt, particularly that which is termed 'the good lesbian'.
A Secure and Trusted Channel Protocol for the User Centric Smart Card Ownership Model

The User Centric Smart Card Ownership Model (UCOM) provides an open and dynamic smart card environment enabling cardholders to request installation/deletion of an application to which they are entitled. As in this model, smart cards are not under the control of a centralised authority; hence, it is difficult for an application provider to ascertain their trustworthiness. At present, proposed secure channel protocols for the smart card environment do not provide adequate assurance required by the UCOM. In this paper, we explore the reasons behind their failure to meet the UCOM requirements and then propose a secure and trusted channel protocol that meets them. In addition, the proposed protocol is also suitable to GlobalPlatform's consumer-centric smart cards. A comparison of the proposed protocol with existing smart card and selected Internet protocols is provided. Then we analyse the protocol with the CasperFDR tool. Finally, we detail the implementation and the performance measurement.
Reversing Education Majors' Arithmetic Misconceptions With Short-Term Instruction Using Manipulatives

The authors examined the impact of manipulativebased instruction on 2 independent cohorts of preservice elementary teachers. In Study 1, 50 participants engaged in problem solving with operations on whole numbers and fractions using concrete and representational manipulatives over 5 classes. Pre- to posttest performance on a mathematics survey and division-of-fractions task showed significant improvement in arithmetic knowledge, accompanied by a significant decrease in arithmetic misconceptions. Study 2 replicated Study 1 findings with an independent sample of 39 volunteers. These results indicate that manipulatives can effectively and efficiently reverse long-standing arithmetic misconceptions and increase arithmetic knowledge before education majors enter classrooms as full-time teachers.
Framing Service Learning in Social Work: An Interdisciplinary Elective Course Embedded within a University–Community Partnership

While academic service learning has grown in popularity across disciplines and universities, the pedagogical strategies for service learning courses vary greatly, especially for courses focused on development in underserved communities. Ideally, service learning pedagogy should place equal importance on student and community benefits, build reciprocal relationships with community partners, and engage students in deep reflection about social cultural and economic issues. In designing a new service learning elective course to engage students in a rural town revitalization project, we intentionally framed the course to meet the aforementioned goals. We used a three-component service learning pedagogy model that: (1) embedded the course in an existing university–community partnership; (2) mobilized interdisciplinary teams of students for community-identified projects; and (3) promoted reflection on complex economic and social justice issues by integrating students' processing through blog, faculty–student–community discussions, and community feedback. Benefits to students and community based on two qualitative studies are discussed, as are implications for social work education and research.
‘Masters and Novices’: Socialization and Social Learning through the NATO Parliamentary Assembly

This article explores the process of identity constructions in Central and Eastern Europe through democracy promotion in NATO-PA. Utilizing social group theory and social identity theory, the article is concerned with the processes of socialization and social learning taking place at the agent level, which seem to explain how in-groups and outgroups are formed, and whyagents want to belong to the in-group. It is assumed that the complex process of new identity constructions as part of the effort of joining the dominant in-group cannot be explained purely by reference to the usual theory of the agent based on rationality, but that it has more to do with less tangible factors such as positive self-esteem and a desire to belong to a positively valued in-group.
A Reliability-oriented Transmission Service in Wireless Sensor Networks

Reliable transmission service is in dire need for many applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Most existing routing protocols however, seriously suffer from low end-to-end success rates in real deployments. Through extensive experiments on a test-bed of Mica2 nodes, we identify three key problems that hinder the reliable packet delivery. In order to address these problems and therefore to provide a reliability-oriented transmission service, we propose a novel in-middle recovery mechanism that fills the gap between the traditional per-hop recovery and end-to-end recovery mechanisms. To realize such an idea, we design and implement proliferation routing that leverages randomized dispersity and reproduction. The distinctive feature of proliferation routing is its great flexibility. Not only can it be applied with any medium access control (MAC) protocol and routing metric, but also a desired service quality can be effectively derived by controlling the system parameters. Such a feature is revealed by theoretical analysis and confirmed by implementation and simulation experiments. In a specific experiment setup, proliferation routing can increase the end-to-end transmission success rate up to 70% compared with the well-known hop-based routing and flooding.
The principal components estimation of large factor models when factors are weak

This paper studies the principal components estimator of factor models when the dimensionality of the data, n, and the number of observations, T, go to infinity proportionally. We focus on an empirically relevant situation when the cumulative effects of the normalized factors on the cross-sectional units do not overwhelmingly dominate the cumulative idiosyncratic influences. We show that, in such a situation, the principal components estimators of the factors and factor loadings are inconsistent but asymptotically normal. We give explicit formulae for the amount of the inconsistency and for the asymptotic variance of the estimators. To illustrate potential implications of our results for econometric practice we estimate the amount of the forecast bias which would result from using the inconsistent principal components estimator of a factor in a simple diffusion index forecast model. As a Monte Carlo analysis shows, our asymptotic formulae work very well even in samples as small as n = 40 and
Baseline CD4+ T Cell Counts Correlates with HIV-1 Synonymous Rate in HLA-B*5701 Subjects with Different Risk of Disease Progression

HLA-B*5701 is the host factor most strongly associated with slow HIV-1 disease progression, although risk of progression may vary among patients carrying this allele. The interplay between HIV-1 evolutionary rate variation and risk of progression to AIDS in HLA-B*5701 subjects was studied using longitudinal viral sequences from high-risk progressors (HRPs) and low-risk progressors (LRPs). Posterior distributions of HIV-1 genealogies assuming a Bayesian relaxed molecular clock were used to estimate the absolute rates of nonsynonymous and synonymous substitutions for different set of branches. Rates of viral evolution, as well as in vitro viral replication capacity assessed using a novel phenotypic assay, were correlated with various clinical parameters. HIV-1 synonymous substitution rates were significantly lower in LRPs than HRPs, especially for sets of internal branches. The viral population infecting LRPs was also characterized by a slower increase in synonymous divergence over time. This pattern did not correlate to differences in viral fitness, as measured by in vitro replication capacity, nor could be explained by differences among subjects in T cell activation or selection pressure. Interestingly, a significant inverse correlation was found between baseline CD4+ T cell counts and mean HIV-1 synonymous rate (which is proportional to the viral replication rate) along branches representing viral lineages successfully propagating through time up to the last sampled time point. The observed lower replication rate in HLA-B*5701 subjects with higher baseline CD4+ T cell counts provides a potential model to explain differences in risk of disease progression among individuals carrying this allele.
Schema Theory and Cognitive Psychology: Implications for Social Studies

Schema theory and research from cognitive psychology have been applied fruitfully in science education over the last decade. Their implications for improving social studies education are drawn, in particular identifying key ideas, using graphic concept maps in instruction, and assessing students' prior knowledge and its connections. A conceptualization of differences between children of different ages according to the characteristics of their cognitive structures and processes is suggested. Anticipated difficulties with the approach as a whole are also outlined.
The Stormy Relations between Rafael Correa and Social Movements in Ecuador

Despite persistent calls for examining the diversity of Latin America’s “pink tide,” many scholars continue to divide the governments into a simplistic “good” or moderate left and a “bad” or radical/nationalist left. Ecuador’s Rafael Correa is inevitably included with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales as part of a triad of radical left-leaning governments in South America. While Correa, along with Chávez and Morales, has faced threats to his power from the traditional conservative oligarchy, the greatest challenges to his government have come from the social-movement left. These dissidents have criticized his administration for failing to foster transformation of the structures that exploit and oppress marginalized communities. A constant difficulty for social-movement activists has been challenging Correa from the left without strengthening a common enemy on the right. A pesar de insistentes llamados a examinar la diversidad de la llamada “marea Rosa” latinoamericana, muchos académicos continúan dividiendo burdamente a estos gobiernos en una izquierda moderada o “buena” y una izquierda nacionalista, radical y “mala. ” Rafael Correa de Ecuador se ve incluido, inevitablemente, en el grupo de Hugo Chávez de Venezuela y Evo Morales de Bolivia, una triada de radicales de izquierda en América del Sur. Aunque Correa, junto a Chávez y Morales, ha tenido que enfrentar a la oligarquía conservadora tradicional, los mayores desafíos a su gobierno han provenido del movimiento social izquierdista. Estos disidentes han criticado a su administración por no fomentar la transformación de las estructuras que explotan y oprimen a las comunidades marginadas. Una constante dificultad para los miembros dellos movimientos sociales ha sido desafiar a Correa desde la izquierda sin así fortalecer al enemigo común que es la derecha.
Pitch and Communicative Intent in Mother's Speech: Adjustments for Age and Sex in the First Year

This study investigated pitch and communicative intent in mothers' infant-directed speech spoken to their infants at birth, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months. Audio recordings of mothers (6 with female, and 6 with male infants) talking to another adult and to their infant at 5 ages were low-pass filtered and rated by 60 adults on 5 scales (Positive or Negative Affect, Express Affection, Encourage Attention, Comfort or Soothe, and Direct Behavior). Mean fundamental frequency (F0) and pitch range of utterances were also measured. Utterances associated with positive affect tend to peak at 6 and 12 months, whereas more directive utterances peaked at 9 months. Mean F0 followed the age trend for affective utterances, and pitch range followed the trend for directive utterances. The results suggest mother speech patterns reflect, complement, and perhaps facilitate infant development.
A Study of the Effect of Illumination Conditions and Color Spaces on Skin Segmentation

This work aims at investigating the influence of luminance information and environment illumination on skin classification. We explore Bayesian approaches to perform automatic classification of human skin pixels on digital images, using color features as input. Two probabilistic skin color models were built on different color spaces (RGB, normalized RG, HSI, HS, YCbCr and CbCr) and tested in a task of automatic pixel classification into skin and non-skin. Analyses of classification performance were done by presenting an illumination controlled image database containing images acquired in four different illumination conditions (shadow, sun, incandescent and fluorescent lights) to these classifiers. Our experiments show that building probabilistic skin color models using the CbCr color space generally improves performance of the classifiers and that best performance is achieved in shadow illumination.
Subspace-based identification of compliance dynamics of parallel kinematic manipulator

A high-bandwith robot-workpiece interaction requires a stiff robot without resonances in the frequency range of operation. In this article, the compliance dynamics of the Gantry-Tau parallel kinematic robot were identified using subspace-based identification and physical modeling. Measurements were performed both with a camera vision system developed and with a laser tracker. Although promising simulation results for another Gantry-Tau prototype exist, both vision and laser tracker experiments identified multiple resonances around 14 Hz, which can reduce force control performance.
How's the Merger Arbitrage Strategy in China?

This paper examines the profitability of merger arbitrage strategies in China. Additionally, it examines the presence of insider trading in the target company, prior to the announcement of the M&A offer, in the Chinese stock market. Using a sample of 22 tender offer bids (from January 2002 to December 2006) and applying standard event study methodology, we find that the average cumulative abnormal return (CAR) from a portfolio, which purchases long the target firm is significant at positive 17.7%, for voluntary tender offers (from day -30 to the announcement day 0). However, the average CAR form day 0 to the resolution day is significant at negative -4.14%. For mandatory tender offer, both the pre- and post-announcement average CAR are not statistically significant. Lhese results suggest that there is no opportunity for investors to profit from a post-announcement long only strategy. In addition, the significant pre-announcement price appreciation followed by post-announcement negative return suggests insider trading. Finally, the pattern of CAR for mandatory tender offers is different from that for voluntary offers, where the mandatory tender offer events have no impact on the share price of target firm.