Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mapping Implied Body Actions in the Human Motor System

The human visual system is highly tuned to perceive actual motion as well as to extrapolate dynamic information from static pictures of objects or creatures captured in the middle of motion. Processing of implied motion activates higher-order visual areas that are also involved in processing biological motion. Imagery and observation of actual movements performed by others engenders selective activation of motor and premotor areas that are part of a mirror-neuron system matching action observation and execution. By using single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation, we found that the mere observation of static snapshots of hands suggesting a pincer grip action induced an increase in corticospinal excitability as compared with observation of resting, relaxed hands, or hands suggesting a completed action. This facilitatory effect was specific for the muscle that would be activated during actual execution of the observed action. We found no changes in responsiveness of the tested muscles during observation of nonbiological entities with (e.g., waterfalls) or without (e.g., icefalls) implied motion. Thus, extrapolation of motion information concerning human actions induced a selective activation of the motor system. This indicates that overlapping motor regions are engaged in the visual analysis of physical and implied body actions. The absence of motor evoked potential modulation during observation of end posture stimuli may indicate that the observation–execution matching system is preferentially activated by implied, ongoing but not yet completed actions.
Saffron Reduced Toxic Effects of its Constituent, Safranal, in Acute and Subacute Toxicities in Rats

Background: Saffron and its constituents are widely used around the world as a spice and medicinal plant. Different constituents in medicinal herbs are thought to have the potential to induce useful and/or adverse effects. So, efforts have been made to find the best and most valuable tools to reduce their adverse effects. Objectives: According to Iranian traditional medicine (ITM), it is believed that administration of whole herbs exhibits more activity and fewer side effects than isolated constituents. Since toxicological studies have indicated that safranal is more toxic than other active components in saffron stigma, thus this study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of co-administration of saffron extract and safranal in acute and sub-acute toxicities in rats. Materials and Methods: In acute toxicity, rats received safranal (1.2 mL/kg, IP) plus saffron aqueous extract (25-100 mg/kg, IP). One and four days after the treatment, percentage of mortality was assessed. In subacute toxicity, rats were randomly divided into six groups. Group 1) safranal (0.2 mL/kg, IP), Groups 2, 3 and 4) safranal plus saffron aqueous extract (5, 10 and 20 mg/kg, IP) Groups 5 and 6) Paraffin and normal saline, as solvents of safranal and saffron aqueous extract, respectively. Treatments were continued for 21 days. For sub-acute toxicity, the percentages of lethality as well as some biochemical parameters were evaluated. Results: Our results showed that four days co-treatment of safranal and saffron significantly reduced mortality, so that the effect was more obvious in lower doses. Sub-acute toxicity studies showed that saffron could increase survival in rats so that no mortality was observed at dose of 10 mg/kg. Our data also indicated that the levels of triglyceride, BUN and ALT significantly increased after sub-acute interaperitoneal (IP) administration of safranal (0.2 mL/kg/day) and co-treatment of saffron aqueous extract (5 and 10 mg/kg) plus safranal significantly improved all toxic effects of safranal on biochemical parameters. Conclusions: The co-administration of saffron aqueous extract and safranal reduced toxic effects of safranal in acute and sub-acute toxicities.
Usability of force-based controllers in physical human-robot interaction

Learning from demonstration is an invaluable skill for a robot acting in a human populated natural environment, allowing the teaching of new skills without tedious and complex manual programming. Physical human-robot interaction, where the human is in a physical contact with the robot, is a promising approach for teaching especially manipulation skills. This paper studies the human side of physical human-robot interaction, in the context of a human physically guiding a robot through the desired set of motions. The paper addresses the question, which kind of response of the robot is preferable for the human user. In addition, different approaches for the guidance are described and relevant technical challenges are discussed. The main finding of the user study is that there is a need for a trade-off between the conflicting goals of naturalness of motion and positioning accuracy.
Elementary School Teachers' Perceptions toward ICT: The Case of Using Magic Board for Teaching Mathematics

This study aims at investigating elementary school teachers’ perceptions toward to the use of ICT. Magic Board, an interactive web-based environment which provides a set of virtual manipulatives for elementary mathematics, is used as the case of ICT. After participating in Magic Board workshops, 250 elementary school teachers in Taiwan responded to a researcher developed questionnaire to get teachers’ perceptions toward the use of Magic Board. The study revealed that teachers rated high scores on perceived teaching assistance, perceived learning assistance, and perceived competence of technology integration. The correlation among the three subscales indicates that teachers had a higher score on one scale correlated with higher scores on the other two scales. Findings show no gender difference on perceptions toward Magic Board. However, teachers who have data projectors in their classrooms rated higher scores on perceived teaching assistance and perceived competence of technology integration than those without data projectors in their classrooms. Lastly, this study discusses implications for these results and recommendations for future research.
Software Service Defined Network: Centralized Network Information Service

Software-defined networking (SDN) is fast evolving as a new paradigm for next generation data networking. In SDN, controller is a central piece of its networks, which provides a logically centralized control of the network. Different from the previous studies on Northbound APIs and Southbound APIs of SDN, in this paper, we propose a service oriented network architecture for east-west network expansions in SDN. In particular, we present the software service defined network (SSDN), a network infrastructure to support east-west network expansion and network services federation across multiple domains. SSDN is based on a highly extensible service computing framework, which differs from the traditional BGP/PCE based inter-domain approaches. We describe the network software-service layer (NSSL) in SSDN, its use cases, its controller and service backup mechanisms, and the new business opportunities under the context of SSDN. It is shown that the proposed approach enhances the development efficiency, enables controller agility, improves scalability, achieves separate life-cycle management, enables inter- and intra-domain communication between different controllers, and enhances the network resiliency.
POLICE CAUTIONING OF JUVENILES IN LONDON

Unresolved Questions about Police Cautions The last 15 years have seen a marked change in the official processing of juvenile offenders, as more and more have been officially cautioned. This development has not been produced by any change in the law, but by changes in police policies for dealing with juvenile offenders. The im plementation in 1971 of most of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 had a relatively small and transitory effect on the trends in cautions and findings of guilt of juveniles (see Farrington, 1980, pp. 275-276). It is true that this Act gave statutory recognition to police cautioning (in the non implemented s. 5), and that the introduction of police cautioning schemes was influenced by the two White Papers which preceded it (Home Office, i965, 1968). Nevertheless, the change in official processing has been produced by the police (albeit under Home Office instructions) rather than by the law. Two key questions pertinent to this change in police policy are as follows: (1) After a police force introduces a cautioning (or juvenile bureau) scheme, to what extent do recorded cautions replace court appearances, and to what extent do they replace unrecorded warnings? In other words, does the police caution divert juveniles who would previously have been taken to court, or does it widen the net and drag juveniles into the official processing system who would previously have escaped it? (or does it do both ? ) (2) What are the relative effects of recorded cautions, findings of guilt and unrecorded warnings (e.g. on recidivism) ?
Consumer responsiveness to mobile marketing

Digital marketing media, e.g. internet and mobile phones, are considered powerful new opportunities to reach consumers but are dependent upon consumer responsiveness to the new media. Consumer responsiveness is a function of the perceived relevance of the marketing message and the acceptance of the medium of the message. Two empirical studies conducted in Finland showed that compared to traditional Direct Mail (DM) and commercial e-mail, the responsiveness to mobile marketing was considerably lower. The findings indicate that companies need to consider consumers' responsiveness in order to understand the marketing communication effectiveness in different traditional and new communication media.
The DEEP2 galaxy redshift survey: the evolution of the blue fraction in groups and the field

We explore the behaviour of the blue galaxy fraction over the redshift range 0.75 z 1.3 in the DEEP2 Survey, both for field galaxies and for galaxies in groups. The primary aim is to determine the role that groups play in driving the evolution of galaxy colour at high z . I n pursuing this aim, it is essential to define a galaxy sample that does not suffer from redshiftdependent selection effects in colour‐magnitude space. We develop four such samples for this study: at all redshifts considered, each one is complete in colour‐magnitude space, and the selection also accounts for evolution in the galaxy luminosity function. These samples will also be useful for future evolutionary studies in DEEP2. The colour segregation observed between local group and field samples is already in place at z ∼ 1: DEEP2 groups have a significantly lower blue fraction than the field. At fixed z, there is also a correlation between blue fraction and galaxy magnitude, such that brighter galaxies are more likely to be red, both in groups and in the field. In addition, there is a negative correlation between blue fraction and group richness. In terms of evolution, the blue fraction in groups and the field remains roughly constant from z = 0.75 to 1, but beyond this redshift the blue fraction in groups rises rapidly with z, and the group and field blue fractions become indistinguishable at z ∼ 1.3. Careful tests indicate that this effect does not arise from known systematic or selection effects. To further ensure the robustness of this result, we build on previous mock DEEP2 catalogues to develop mock catalogues that reproduce the colour‐overdensity relation observed in DEEP2 and use these to test our methods. The convergence between the group and field blue fractions at z ∼ 1.3 implies that DEEP2 galaxy groups only became efficient at quenching star formation at z ∼ 2; this result is broadly consistent with other recent observations and with current models of galaxy evolution and hierarchical structure growth.
Price changes in Finland: some evidence from micro CPI data

In this paper we analyse the Finnish consumer price changes from February 1997 to December 2004 on the basis of a set of microdata which covers over half of the items included in the Finnish CPI. Our findings can be summarised with four stylised facts. Firstly, only a small fraction of prices change monthly. In the period under review, an average 80% of prices remained unchanged in consecutive months. Secondly, price changes can be large in both directions. Thirdly, positive inflation is due to the higher number of price increases compared to decreases, and the magnitude of price changes is more or less in balance. Finally, the decomposition of monthly inflation to the weighted fraction of products with price changes and the weighted average of those price changes seems to give support for the time-dependent modelling of Finnish consumer prices, although signs of state-dependent pricing can also be found in the data. JEL Classification: E31, D40, L11
The state estimation of UAV based on UKF

In order to achieve the UAV's precise positioning of the radiation target, firstly is to do the state estimation itself. The BDS/INS Integrated Navigation system is a high-precision real-time navigation scheme which has been widely used, it is not only able to pinpoint the UAV, but also can provide the UAV's navigation information such as speed, acceleration and attitude angle etc. so it can meet the scout equipment's work demands on UAV. This article make the Unscented Karman Filter (UKF) algorithm apply to BDS/INS Integrated Navigation system, built the UAV state estimation system and compared with experimental EKF scheme. The experimental result shows that the BDS/INS Integrated Navigation System using UKF for UAV can conduct a comprehensive and highly accurate state estimation.
Intergenerational Justice Perceptions and the Role of Welfare Regimes

This study analyzes intergenerational justice perceptions among 2,075 undergraduate students in 1996-1998 across eight democracies spanning four welfare regime types. It examined how different regimes structure perceptions of (a) justness in principle of young-to-old public resource transfers and (b) actual contributions to and rewards from society of various age groups. Support in principle of young-to-old transfers is higher in social democratic and conservative than in liberal and radical welfare regimes and correlates positively with a welfare-statist ideological frame and negatively with a market-based frame. Regarding actual contributions to society, the following ordering of age groups was obtained: adults > youth > elderly. Regarding actual rewards, the ranking was adults > elderly ≥ youth. But in the conservative regime, the youngest age group ranked lowest in perceived rewards and highest in perceived contributions. It was concluded that there is a distinct perception of intergenerational injustice among these populations of highly educated young citizens.
Inhibited upper ocean restratification in nonequilibrium swell conditions

Diurnal restratification of the ocean surface boundary layer (OSBL) represents a competition between mixing of the OSBL and solar heating. Langmuir turbulence (LT) is a mixing process in the OSBL, driven by wind and surface waves, that transfers momentum, heat, and mass. Observations in nonequilibrium swell conditions reveal that the OSBL does not restratify despite low winds and strong solar radiation. Motivated by observations, we use large‐eddy simulations of the wave‐averaged Navier‐Stokes equations to show that LT is capable of inhibiting diurnal restratification of the OSBL. Incoming heat is redistributed vertically by LT, forming a warmer OSBL with a nearly uniform temperature. The inhibition of restratification is not reproduced by two common Reynolds‐averaged Navier‐Stokes equation models, highlighting the importance of properly representing sea‐state dependent LT dynamics in OSBL models.
Theoretical Maximum Prediction Accuracy for Analogy-Based Software Cost Estimation

Software cost estimation is an important area of research in software engineering. Various cost estimation model evaluation criteria (such as MMRE, MdMRE etc.) have been developed for comparing prediction accuracy among cost estimation models. All of these metrics capture the residual difference between the predicted value and the actual value in the dataset, but ignore the importance of the dataset quality. What is more, they implicitly assume the prediction model to be able to predict with up to 100% accuracy at its maximum for a given dataset. Given that these prediction models only provide an estimate based on observed historical data, absolute accuracy cannot be possibly achieved. It is therefore important to realize the theoretical maximum prediction accuracy (TMPA) for the given model with a given dataset. In this paper, we first discuss the practical importance of this notion, and propose a novel method for the determination of TMPA in the application of analogy-based software cost estimation. Specifically, we determine the TMPA of analogy using a unique dynamic K-NN approach to simulate and optimize the prediction system. The results of an empirical experiment show that our method is practical and important for researchers seeking to develop improved prediction models, because it offers an alternative for practical comparison between different prediction models.
Persistence Bias and the Wage-Schooling Model

This paper provides an expression for the bias of the OLS estimator of the schooling coefficient in a simple static wage-schooling model where earnings persistence is not accounted for. It is argued that the OLS estimator of the schooling coefficient is biased upward, and the bias is increasing with potential labor-market experience and the degree of earnings persistence. In addition, NLSY data are used to show that the magnitude of the persistence bias is non-negligible, and the bias cannot be cured by increasing the control set. Further, it is shown that disregarding earnings persistence is still problematic for the estimation of the schooling coefficient even if individual unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity are taken into account. Overall, the findings support the dynamic approach to the estimation of wage-schooling models recently suggested by Andini (2012; 2013).
Sodium intake is associated with increased disease activity in multiple sclerosis

Background Recently, salt has been shown to modulate the differentiation of human and mouse Th17 cells and mice that were fed a high-sodium diet were described to develop more aggressive courses of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. However, the role of sodium intake in multiple sclerosis (MS) has not been addressed. We aimed to investigate the relationship between salt consumption and clinical and radiological disease activity in MS. Methods We conducted an observational study in which sodium intake was estimated from sodium excretion in urine samples from a cohort of 70 relapsing-remitting patients with MS who were followed for 2 years. The effect of sodium intake in MS disease activity was estimated using regression analysis. We then replicated our findings in a separate group of 52 patients with MS. Results We found a positive correlation between exacerbation rates and sodium intake in a multivariate model adjusted for age, gender, disease duration, smoking status, vitamin D levels, body mass index and treatment. We found an exacerbation rate that was 2.75-fold (95% CI 1.3 to 5.8) or 3.95-fold (95% CI 1.4 to 11.2) higher in patients with medium or high sodium intakes compared with the low-intake group. Additionally, individuals with high-sodium intake had a 3.4-fold greater chance of developing a new lesion on the MRI and on average had eight more T2 lesions on MRI. A similar relationship was found in the independent replication group. Conclusions Our results suggest that a higher sodium intake is associated with increased clinical and radiological disease activity in patients with MS.
Features in the Lipid Status of Two Generations of Fingerlings (0+) of Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar L.) Inhabiting the Arenga River (Kola Peninsula)

The present research focused on determining the lipid status of salmon fingerlings (0+) in early development after dispersal form groups of spawning nests in biotopes of different hydrological conditions. The revealed qualitative and quantitative differences in the levels of phospholipids and fatty acids among two generations of Atlantic salmon fingerlings (0+) living in different biotopes of the Arenga River (a tributary of the Varzuga River) may be associated with the peculiarities of their genetically determined processes of the biosynthesis and modification of individual lipid classes and trophoecological factors (food spectrum, quality and availability of food objects, and hydrological regime). The research was organized to observe the dynamics of these developmental changes from ages 0+ to 2+.
From Friendly Society to Compulsory Medical Aid Association

The compulsory medical benefit scheme for white public servants in South Africa grew out of a friendly society founded in 1905. This development diverged from the experience of other members of the British Commonwealth, where universal health insurance schemes developed following the British example. The Civil Servants’ Medical Benefit Association (CSMBA) addressed the needs of white public servants, leaving the non-white communities without any form of government-sponsored medical support, apart from health care provided at government hospitals. The CSMBA was a well-managed medical benefit association, but when it was appointed the compulsory medical benefit association for white public servants, government intervention affected the financial viability of the organization, despite the payment of a state subsidy.