Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reliability of aerobic and anaerobic field tests in in measuring athletes’ performances: A statistical approach on a cohort of 100 subjects

To determine the statistical relationships among different consolidated performance tests (Yo-Yo, jump, sprint and agility), and the Powersprint™ device, an isotonic equipment, usually used to increase the muscular strength of athletes, used here as performance test. One hundred individuals were involved in the tests (16 females and 84 males). Ninety-five subjects were practicing different field sports, whereas 3 female and 2 male subjects were inactive. Gender, height and body mass were recorded. Participants completed the following tests: Squat Jump, Counter Movement Jump, 10 m sprint, 15 m sprint, Change of Direction, Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test level 1 and PowerSprint 3.0™. Results of this experiment highlighted that PowerSprint 3.0™ is positively and significantly correlated with Squat Jump, Counter Movement Jump, 10 m sprint, 15 m sprint, Change of Direction, Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test level 1. Additionally, the principal component analysis, as expected, was able to neatly differentiates between male, female and inactive subjects. The selected tests appeared particularly effective in giving information about athlete performances in soccer. Performances measured with the PowerSprint 3.0™ positively and significantly correlated with jumps, COD, sprint and YYIR1 tests. This is an indication of the possible use of this light, inexpensive and portable instrument for measuring athlete performances and checking the effectiveness of training programs.
Some organization principles in early speech development

In early speech development, progressive gains in phonetic ability represent progress in multiple domains (e.g., sensory, perceptual, cognitive, linguistic, and neuromotor) all of which are ultimately conveyed through the speech motor system. Accordingly, the comprehensive understanding of speech development requires knowledge about age-related changes in speech motor performance and about the factors affecting those changes during the various phases of speech development. In this chapter, we consider why motor-based descriptions are essential for addressing long-standing practical and theoretical issues regarding early speech development. We also present a conceptual framework for studying early speech motor development, which guides our current line of research inquiry. The conceptual framework proposes that developmental stages in speech motor behavior are guided by production constraints and catalysts to speech motor performance: Production constraints are factors that limit speech production abilities in young children and catalysts are factors that engender change toward mature speech. Finally, we consider findings from our studies on early speech motor development that are motivated by the framework.
Prognostic Value of the Metastatic Lymph Node Ratio in Patients With Resectable Carcinoma of Ampulla of Vater

Abstract Patients with carcinoma of the ampulla of Vater (CAV) have better outcomes among periampullary malignancies. However, little is known about the metastatic lymph node ratio (LNR) as a prognostic factor for resectable CAV. We retrospectively reviewed our CAV patients undergoing curative surgery and analyzed their prognostic factors. A total of 212 CAV patients who received radical surgery at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Linkou, between 2000 and 2010 were admitted in this study. The lymph node ratio was defined as the number of metastatic lymph nodes (LNs) divided by the total number of LNs removed. The patients’ demographic data, comorbidities, operation type, and tumor features were analyzed retrospectively for survival prediction of patients. The median age of the patients was 62 years, and 57% of the patients were men. The surgical procedure was standard pancreaticoduodenectomy and pylorus-preserving pancreaticoduodenectomy in 53% and 47% of the patients, respectively. The median follow-up duration was 32.6 months, and 50% of the patients had died by the end of the study. The median overall survival time (OS) and disease-free survival time (DFS) were 65.8 and 33.7 months, respectively. In multivariate analysis, patients with a metastatic LNR >0.056 had a significantly poor prognosis in both OS and DFS. A metastatic LNR >0.056 predicted a poor DFS and OS in CAV patients after radical surgery. Greater awareness on the impact of metastatic LNR may help clinicians provide appropriate adjuvant treatment for high-risk CAV patients.
A fuel cell based domestic uninterruptible power supply

The design process for a fuel-cell-based inverter system for domestic use is discussed. The peculiar characteristics of the fuel cell stack energy source require the use of a battery for buffering. The fuel cell characteristics and the battery requirements for this application are discussed. A large number of different possible solutions are examined. The proposed solution uses an active filter and a battery to compensate for the slow dynamics of the fuel cell.
Optical Flow Estimator Using VHDL for Implementation in FPGA

Usually image sequence processing is accomplished on high-speed general-purpose processors, but until now, the time involved to process image sequences in flows of 25 or 30 frames per second has been very large [1][2]. However, the use of new digital integrated circuit technologies and new smart algorithms make possible to develop circuits to process image sequences in real time as previous stages in image analysis.
Color demosaicking by local directional interpolation and nonlocal adaptive thresholding

Single sensor digital color cameras capture only one of the three primary colors at each pixel and a process called color demosaicking (CDM) is used to reconstruct the full color images. Most CDM algorithms assume the existence of high local spectral redundancy in estimating the missing color samples. However, for images with sharp color transitions and high color saturation, such an assumption may be invalid and visually unpleasant CDM errors will occur. In this paper, we exploit the image nonlocal redundancy to improve the local color reproduction result. First, multiple local direc- tional estimates of a missing color sample are computed and fused according to local gradients. Then, nonlocal pixels similar to the esti- mated pixel are searched to enhance the local estimate. An adaptive thresholding method rather than the commonly used nonlocal means filtering is proposed to improve the local estimate. This allows the final reconstruction to be performed at the structural level as op- posed to the pixel level. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed local directional interpolation and nonlocal adaptive thresh- olding method outperforms many state-of-the-art CDM methods in reconstructing the edges and reducing color interpolation artifacts, leading to higher visual quality of reproduced color images. © 2011
Please Scroll down for Article Multivariate Behavioral Research Sensitivity of Fit Indices to Misspecification in Growth Curve Models

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Microsensor wireless networks and implanted biomedical devices have emerged as exciting new application domains. These applications are highly energy constrained and require flexible, integrated, energy-efficient ADC modules that can ideally operate at the same supply voltage as digital circuits. In many applications, the performance requirements are quite modest (100s kS/s). This paper presents a highly digital ADC architecture compatible with advanced CMOS processes, capable of operating down to a supply voltage of 200mV (i.e., subthreshold regime) and up to 900mV. However, leakage and device variation must be addressed, particularly at low supply voltages.
Structuring Sub-Populations in Parallel Genetic Algorithms for MPP

Massive parallel implementation of Genetic Algorithms is strongly related to the structure of sub-populations. Two classes of problems arise: how to maintain individual diversity and how to choose a communication topology among the sub-populations. We present a survey of different communication topologies and compare their performance using an optimized algorithm for massive parallel computers. The test set consists of well-known hard functions, the test environment is Cray T3D with 128 processors. The simulation results show that the speed and accuracy of Parallel Genetic Algorithms are strongly related to the topology and asynchronous nature of the interconnection policy. 2. Department of Computer Science, University of Bologna, Via di Mura Anteo Zamboni 7, I-40127 Bologna, Italy.
The Effects of Market Liberalization on the Relative Earnings of Chinese Women 1

In this paper, we explore the effects of differences in labor market institutions and the degree of market liberalization on the size and composition of gender wages gaps in China’s urban labor markets. We use enterprise-ownership type, enterprise age, and workers’ methods of finding employment as proxies for the extent of market liberalization. We find both the size of the wage gaps and the proportion of the gap left unexplained by differences in observed characteristics largest in the most liberalized joint-venture sector, and smallest in the least liberalized state sector. We next investigate the effects of differences in the wage structure on the gender wage gaps. We find that differences in the wage structure, in general, and the degree of wage dispersion, in particular, are extremely important in accounting for the larger wage gaps in the joint-venture and collective sectors relative to the state-owned sector. Journal of Economic Literature Classification: J16, J31, J71, O15, O53, P23
Bone Mineral Density as a Marker of Cumulative Estrogen Exposure in Psychotic Disorder: A 3 Year Follow-Up Study

Altered estrogen-induced neuroprotection has been implicated in the etiology of psychotic disorders. Using bone mineral density as a marker of lifetime estrogen exposure, a longitudinal family study was conducted to discriminate between etiological mechanisms and secondary effects of disease and treatment. Dual X-ray absorptiometry scans were acquired twice, with an interval of 3 years, in 30 patients with psychotic disorder (male (M)/female (F): 24/6, mean age of 32 years at second measurement), 44 non-psychotic siblings of patients with a psychotic disorder (M/F: 26/18, mean age 32) and 27 controls (M/F: 7/20, mean age 35). Total bone mineral density, Z-scores and T-scores were measured in the lumbar spine and proximal femur. Associations between group and bone mineral density changes were investigated with multilevel random regression analyses. The effect of prolactin-raising antipsychotic medication was evaluated. (Increased risk of) psychotic disorder was not associated with disproportionate bone mineral density loss over a three year period. Instead, femoral bone mineral density measures appeared to decrease less in the patient versus control comparison (total BMD: B = 0.026, 95% CI 0.002 to 0.050, p = 0.037; Z-score: B = 0.224, 95% CI 0.035 to 0.412, p = 0.020; and T-score: B = 0.193, 95% CI 0.003 to 0.382, p = 0.046). Current or past use of a prolactin-raising antipsychotic medication was not associated with bone mineral density changes. In this small longitudinal study, there was no evidence of ongoing estrogen deficiency in psychotic disorder as there was no excessive loss of bone mineral density over a 3-year period in patients using antipsychotic medication.
The spatial distribution of X-ray selected AGN in the Chandra deep fields: a theoretical perspective

We study the spatial distribution of X-ray selected active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the framework of hierarchical coevolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies and dark matter haloes. To this end, we have applied the theoretical model developed by Croton et al., De Lucia & Blaizot and Marulli et al. to the output of the Millennium Run and obtained hundreds of realizations of past light cones from which we have extracted realistic mock AGN catalogues that mimic the Chandra deep fields. We find that the model AGN number counts are in fair agreement with observations both in the soft and in the hard X-ray bands, except at fluxes ≲10−15 erg cm−2 s−1, where the model systematically overestimates the observations. However, a large fraction of these faint objects are typically excluded from the spectroscopic AGN samples of the Chandra fields. We find that the spatial two-point correlation function predicted by the model is well described by a power-law relation out to 20 h−1 Mpc, in close agreement with observations. Our model matches the correlation length r0 of AGN in the Chandra Deep Field-North but underestimates it in the Chandra Deep Field-South. When fixing the slope to γ= 1.4, as in Gilli et al., the statistical significance of the mismatch is 2σ–2. 5σ, suggesting that the predicted cosmic variance, which dominates the error budget, may not account for the different correlation length of the AGN in the two fields. However, the overall mismatch between the model and the observed correlation function decreases when both r0 and γ are allowed to vary, suggesting that more realistic AGN models and a full account of all observational errors may significantly reduce the tension between AGN clustering in the two fields. While our results are robust to changes in the model prescriptions for the AGN light curves, the luminosity dependence of the clustering is sensitive to the different light-curve models adopted. However, irrespective of the model considered, the luminosity dependence of the AGN clustering in our mock fields seems to be weaker than in the real Chandra fields. The significance of this mismatch needs to be confirmed using larger data sets.
Thermodynamics of Regular Cosmological Black Holes with the de Sitter Interior

We address the question of thermodynamics of regular cosmological spherically symmetric black holes with the de Sitter center. Space-time is asymptotically de Sitter as r → 0 and as r → ∞. A source term in the Einstein equations connects smoothly two de Sitter vacua with different values of cosmological constant: 8πGTμν = Λδμν as r → 0, 8πGTμν = λδμν as r → ∞ with λ < Λ. It represents an anisotropic vacuum dark fluid defined by symmetry of its stress-energy tensor which is invariant under the radial boosts. In the range of the mass parameter Mcr1 ≤ M ≤ Mcr2 it describes a regular cosmological black hole. Space-time in this case has three horizons: a cosmological horizon rc, a black hole horizon rb < rc, and an internal horizon ra < rb, which is the cosmological horizon for an observer in the internal R-region asymptotically de Sitter as r → 0. We present the basicfeatures of space-time geometry and the detailed analysis of thermodynamics of horizons using the Padmanabhan approach relevant for a multi-horizon space-time with a non-zero pressure. We find that in a certain range of parameters M and q =√Λ/λ there exist a global temperature for an observer in the R-region between the black hole horizon rb and cosmological horizon rc. We show that a second-order phase transition occurs in the course of evaporation, where a specific heat is broken and a temperature achieves its maximal value. Thermodynamical preference for a final point of evaporation is thermodynamically stable double-horizon (ra = rb) remnant with the positive specific heat and zero temperature.
Microrheology and structure of a yield-stress polymer gel.

The small-scale rheology of Carbopol ETD 2050, a polymer gel with a yield stress, is studied as a function of polymer concentration by measuring the diffusion of submicron-sized spherical fluorescent particles suspended in gel. Dynamic light scattering is used to determine the mean-squared displacement (of the particles as a function of lag time t. Fluorescence microscopy is used to track the particle trajectories directly, from which and the van Hove correlation function are determined. From our results we calculate the microrheological viscous and elastic moduli of the material. The two techniques cover complementary ranges of tau and and give results that agree well. The microrheological moduli are substantially smaller than the bulk values as determined by conventional shear rheometry. The bulk viscoelastic behavior is dominated by the elastic modulus, while at low enough concentrations and high enough frequencies the microrheological response is predominantly viscous. These results will be discussed in the context of the gel structure.
Improving the projection method for TOA source localization in the presence of sensor position errors

This paper develops a closed-form solution that improves the projection matrix method for time of arrival (TOA) source localization in the presence of sensor position inaccuracy. The projection approach is attractive because it does not require the use of an extra variable as in the traditional closed-form solution. Compared with the previous projection method, the proposed algorithm offers a closed-form solution and at the same time attains the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) performance for Gaussian noise over the small noise region. The performance of the proposed method is validated by simulations.
First low frequency all-sky search for continuous gravitational signals

In this paper we present the results of the first low frequency all-sky search of continuous gravitational wave signals conducted on Virgo VSR2 and VSR4 data. The search covered the full sky, a frequency range between 20 and 128 Hz with a range of spin-down between − 1 . 0 × 10 − 10 and þ 1 . 5 × 10 − 11 Hz = s, and was based on a hierarchical approach. The starting point was a set of short fast Fourier transforms, of length 8192 s, built from the calibrated strain data. Aggressive data cleaning, in both the time and frequency domains, has been done in order to remove, as much as possible, the effect of disturbances of instrumental origin. On each data set a number of candidates has been selected, using the FrequencyHough transform in an incoherent step. Only coincident candidates among VSR2 and VSR4 have been examined in order to strongly reduce the false alarm probability, and the most significant candidates have been selected. The criteria we have used for candidate selection and for the coincidence step greatly reduce the harmful effect of large instrumental artifacts. Selected candidates have been subject to a follow-up by constructing a new set of longer fast Fourier transforms followed by a further incoherent analysis, still based on the FrequencyHough transform. No evidence for continuous gravitational wave signals was found, and therefore we have set a population-based joint VSR2-VSR4 90% confidence level upper limit on the dimensionless gravitational wave strain in the frequency range between 20 and 128 Hz. This is the first all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves conducted, on data of ground-based interferometric detectors, at frequencies below 50 Hz. We set upper limits in the range between about 10 − 24 and 2 × 10 − 23 at most frequencies. Our upper limits on signal strain show an improvement of up to a factor of ∼ 2 with respect to the results of previous all-sky searches at frequencies below 80 Hz.
Rational Speculators, Contrarians, and Excess Volatility

The vector autoregressive approach for testing present value models is applied to a heterogeneous-agent asset pricing model using historical observations of the S&P 500 index. Besides fundamentalists, who value assets according to expected dividends, the model features rational and contrarian speculators. Agents choose their strategy based on evolutionary considerations. Supplementing the standard present value model with speculative agents dramatically improves the model's ability to replicate observed market dynamics. In particular, the existence of contrarians can explain some of the most volatile episodes including the 1990s bubble, suggesting this was not a rational bubble. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi. org/10.1287/mnsc.2014. 1937 . This paper was accepted by Itay Goldstein, finance.
N-octanoyl dopamine treatment exerts renoprotective properties in acute kidney injury but not in renal allograft recipients.

BACKGROUND N-octanoyl dopamine (NOD) treatment improves renal function when applied to brain dead donors and in the setting of warm ischaemia-induced acute kidney injury (AKI). Because it also activates transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 (TRPV1) channels, we first assessed if NOD conveys its renoprotective properties in warm ischaemia-induced AKI via TRPV1 and secondly, if renal transplant recipients also benefit from NOD treatment. METHODS We induced warm renal ischaemia in Lewis, wild-type (WT) and TRPV1(-/-) Sprague-Dawley (sd) rats by clamping the left renal artery for 45 min. Transplantations were performed in allogeneic and syngeneic donor-recipient combinations (Fisher to Lewis and Lewis to Lewis) with a cold ischaemia time of 20 h. Treatment was instituted directly after restoration of organ perfusion. Renal function, histology and perfusion were assessed by serum creatinine, microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using arterial spin labelling (ASL). RESULTS NOD treatment significantly improved renal function in Lewis rats after warm ischaemia-induced AKI. It was, however, not effective after prolonged cold ischaemia. The renoprotective properties of NOD were only observed in Lewis or WT, but not in TRPV1(-/-) sd rats. Renal inflammation was significantly abrogated by NOD. MRI-ASL showed a significantly lower cortical perfusion in ischaemic when compared with non-ischaemic kidneys. No overall differences were observed in renal perfusion between NOD- and NaCl-treated rats. CONCLUSIONS NOD treatment reduces renal injury in warm ischaemia, but is not effective in renal transplant in our experimental animal models. The salutary effect of NOD appears to be TPRV1-dependent, not involving large changes in renal perfusion.