Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Responses of Physiological Stress during Table Tennis Competition in Elite Female Players

Stress is inevitable in competitive sports. Table tennis in the world known as a fastest ball game that requires attention and control stress. The main purpose of this study was investigation of physiological stress responses in elite table tennis players during competition. 16 female table tennis players (age average of 18.7 ± 3.8, height average of 161.6 ± 3.4 cm and weight average of 50.1 ± 4.2 kg) that participating in elective national team selected. During 8 competitive racing, salivary levels of Cortisol (C), testosterone (T) and Immunoglobulin A (sIgA) at rest, 60 and 30 minutes before and 60 and 30 minutes after racing were measured through saliva by enzymatic methods (ELISA). Data were analyzed using two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance. The findings presented that Cortisol level in loser player was significantly increased than winner player (p<0.05); while there was no significant difference in testosterone and sIgA levels (p>0.05). Also significant difference in salivary testosterone, Cortisol and sIgA periods of 60 and 30 minutes before and after competition observed in the group of winners and losers than rest(p<0.05). Table tennis competition puts high stress on young players, that probably these indicators affect the performance table as an indicator of stress has an important effect on
Music listening in families and peer groups: benefits for young people's social cohesion and emotional well-being across four cultures

Families are central to the social and emotional development of youth, and most families engage in musical activities together, such as listening to music or talking about their favorite songs. However, empirical evidence of the positive effects of musical family rituals on social cohesion and emotional well-being is scarce. Furthermore, the role of culture in the shaping of musical family rituals and their psychological benefits has been neglected entirely. This paper investigates musical rituals in families and in peer groups (as an important secondary socialization context) in two traditional/collectivistic and two secular/individualistic cultures, and across two developmental stages (adolescence vs. young adulthood). Based on cross-sectional data from 760 young people in Kenya, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Germany, our study revealed that across cultures music listening in families and in peer groups contributes to family and peer cohesion, respectively. Furthermore, the direct contribution of music in peer groups on well-being appears across cultural contexts, whereas musical family rituals affect emotional well-being in more traditional/collectivistic contexts. Developmental analyses show that musical family rituals are consistently and strongly related to family cohesion across developmental stages, whereas musical rituals in peer groups appear more dependent on the developmental stage (in interaction with culture). Contributing to developmental as well as cross-cultural psychology, this research elucidated musical rituals and their positive effects on the emotional and social development of young people across cultures. The implications for future research and family interventions are discussed.
The Effect of Audio-visual Materials in the EFL Classroom : Developing Intercultural Understanding and Listening Skills

The purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of audio-visual materials in FL (foreign language) learning in order to develop intercultural understanding as well as listening skills in the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom context by examining Japanese university students learning English in Japan. This research employed questionnaires to examine the perception and motivation of 85 first-year university students who attended listening classes at a university. The participants felt interested in the places which were shown in the audio-visual materials and recognized the differences in cultures and lifestyles between the foreign countries and Japan. In addition, the majority of the students found that it was effective to learn foreign languages with DVDs/videos and their motivation of learning the target language increased. It was also found that the variety of visual information related to facial expressions, gestures and settings of the conversations greatly facilitated their listening comprehension of the stories and increased their awareness of the culture in the EFL classroom. 外国語学習における視聴覚教材の使用は、リスニング能力の向上のみならず異文化知識 を養う上で非常に効果的であると考えられる。 本研究は、日本で英語を学習する大学 1 年 生 85 名にアンケート調査を実施し、約 4 ケ月にわたる週 1 回のリスニングの授業におい て、視聴覚教材が学習者の文化的意識や学習動機にどのような影響を与えるのかを調査し た。 結果として、大多数の学習者が映像で紹介された国や都市に関心を示し、日本と海外 における生活や文化の相違を認識したことが明らかになった。 また、学習動機が向上し、 視聴覚教材が外国語学習に効果的であると感じた学習者がほとんどであった。 さらに、映 像による視覚的情報(話者の表情、ジェスチャー、会話が行われている場所、など)が話 の内容を理解する上で、非常に重要な役割を果たしていることも判明した。 したがって、 視聴覚教材を効果的に授業に取り入れることで、EFL の学習環境においても文化的意識を 向上させることが可能であるといえる。 Institute for Language and Culture
A microdevice to locally electroporate embryos with high efficiency and reduced cell damage

The ability to follow and modify cell behaviour with accurate spatiotemporal resolution is a prerequisite to study morphogenesis in developing organisms. Electroporation, the delivery of exogenous molecules into targeted cell populations through electric permeation of the plasma membrane, has been used with this aim in different model systems. However, current localised electroporation strategies suffer from insufficient reproducibility and mediocre survival when applied to small and delicate organisms such as early post-implantation mouse embryos. We introduce here a microdevice to achieve localised electroporation with high efficiency and reduced cell damage. In silico simulations using a simple electrical model of mouse embryos indicated that a dielectric guide-based design would improve on existing alternatives. Such a device was microfabricated and its capacities tested by targeting the distal visceral endoderm (DVE), a migrating cell population essential for anterior-posterior axis establishment. Transfection was efficiently and reproducibly restricted to fewer than four visceral endoderm cells without compromising cell behaviour and embryo survival. Combining targeted mosaic expression of fluorescent markers with live imaging in transgenic embryos revealed that, like leading DVE cells, non-leading ones send long basal projections and intercalate during their migration. Finally, we show that the use of our microsystem can be extended to a variety of embryological contexts, from preimplantation stages to organ explants. Hence, we have experimentally validated an approach delivering a tailor-made tool for the study of morphogenesis in the mouse embryo. Furthermore, we have delineated a comprehensive strategy for the development of ad hoc electroporation devices.
BodyMAC: Energy efficient TDMA-based MAC protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) enable placement of tiny biomedical sensors on or inside the human body to monitor vital body signs. The IEEE 802.15. 6 task group is developing a standard to optimize WBAN performance by defining the physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) layer specifications. In this paper an energy efficient MAC protocol (BodyMAC) is proposed. It uses flexible bandwidth allocation to improve node energy efficiency by reducing the possibility of packet collisions and by reducing radio transmission times, idle listening and control packets overhead. BodyMAC is based on a Downlink and Uplink scheme in which the Contention Free Part in the Uplink subframe is completely collision free. Three types of bandwidth allocation mechanisms allow for flexible and efficient data and control communications. An efficient Sleep Mode is introduced to reduce the idle listening duration, especially for low duty cycle nodes in the network. Simulation results show superior performance of BodyMAC compared to that of the IEEE 802.15. 4 MAC.
Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics Automated Characterization of Blood Vessels as Arteries and Veins in Retinal Images

In recent years researchers have found that alternations in arterial or venular tree of the retinal vascul-ature are associated with several public health problems such as diabetic retinopathy which is also the leading cause of blindness in the world. A prerequisite for automated assessment of subtle changes in arteries and veins, is to accurately separate those vessels from each other. This is a difficult task due to high similarity between arteries and veins in addition to variation of color and non-uniform illumination inter and intra retinal images. In this paper a novel structural and automated method is presented for artery/vein classification of blood vessels in retinal images. The proposed method consists of three main steps. In the first step, several image enhancement techniques are employed to improve the images. Then a specific feature extraction process is applied to separate major arteries from veins. Indeed, vessels are divided to smaller segments and feature extraction and vessel classification are applied to each small vessel segment instead of each vessel point. Finally, a post processing step is added to improve the results obtained from the previous step using structural characteristics of the retinal vascular network. In the last stage, vessel features at intersection and bifurcation points are processed for detection of arterial and venular sub trees. Ultimately vessel labels are revised by publishing the dominant label through each identified connected tree of arteries or veins. Evaluation of the proposed approach against two different datasets of retinal images including DRIVE database demonstrates the good performance and robustness of the method. The proposed method may be used for determination of arteriolar to venular diameter ratio in retinal images. Also the proposed method potentially allows for further investigation of labels of thinner arteries and veins which might be found by tracing them back to the major vessels.
Proving Liveness Properties of Concurrent Programs

A liveness property asserts that program execution eventually reaches some desirable state. While termination has been studied extensively, many other liveness properties are important for concurrent programs. A formal proof method, based on temporal logic, for deriving liveness properties is presented. It allows a rigorous formulation of simple informal arguments. How to reason with temporal logic and how to use safety (invariance) properties in proving liveness is shown. The method is illustrated using, first, a simple programming language without synchronization primitives, then one with semaphores. However, it is applicable to any programming language.
Action Understanding in Infancy: Do Infant Interpreters Attribute Enduring Mental States or Track Relational Properties of Transient Bouts of Behavior?

We address recent interpretations of infant performance on spontaneous false belief tasks. According to most views, these experiments show that human infants attribute mental states from a very young age. Focusing on one of the most clearly worked out, minimalist versions of this idea, Butterfill and Apperly's (2013) "minimal theory of mind" framework, we defend an alternative characterization: the minimal theory of rational agency. On this view, rather than conceiving of social situations in terms of states of an enduring mental substance animating agents, infant interpreters parse observed bouts of behavior and their contexts into goals, rational means to those goals, and available information. In other words, the social ontology of infant interpreters consists in goal-directed, (mis- or un-) informed bouts of behavior, by non-enduring agents, rather than agents animated by states of enduring, unobservable minds. We discuss a number of experiments that support this interpretation of infant socio-cognitive competence.
Spatiotemporal dynamics of neuronal population response in the primary visual cortex

One of the fundamental questions in system neuroscience is how the brain encodes external stimuli in the early sensory cortex. It has been found in experiments that even some simple sensory stimuli can activate large populations of neurons. It is believed that information can be encoded in the spatiotemporal profile of these collective neuronal responses. Here, we use a large-scale computational model of the primary visual cortex (V1) to study the population responses in V1 as observed in experiments in which monkeys performed visual detection tasks. We show that our model can capture very well spatiotemporal activities measured by voltage-sensitive-dye-based optical imaging in V1 of the awake state. In our model, the properties of horizontal long-range connections with NMDA conductance play an important role in the correlated population responses and have strong implications for spatiotemporal coding of neuronal populations. Our computational modeling approach allows us to reveal intrinsic cortical dynamics, separating them from those statistical effects arising from averaging procedures in experiment. For example, in experiments, it was shown that there was a spatially antagonistic center-surround structure in optimal weights in signal detection theory, which was believed to underlie the efficiency of population coding. However, our study shows that this feature is an artifact of data processing.
DA (IM)POSSIBILIDADE DO DIÁLOGO: CONVERSAÇÕES PÚBLICAS E OS DIREITOS LGBTS

Este estudo tem como objetivo discutir o uso das estrategias do Projeto de Conversacoes Publicas (PCP) na promocao de dialogos relacionados aos direitos de pessoas lesbicas, gays, bissexuais e transgenero (LGBT). Quatro encontros de grupo foram audio-gravados e posteriormente transcritos literal e integralmente. A analise privilegiou a identificacao de quatro momentos marcantes nas conversas grupais discutidas a partir de sua articulacao com os fundamentos tecnicos do PCP, o construcionismo social e as discussoes contemporâneas acerca de etica e direitos humanos. Destaca-se que a estrutura da conversa do PCP tem o beneficio de criar uma condicao favoravel ao dialogo ao suspender a necessidade de producao de solucoes ou acordos imediatos. Dada a artificialidade desse contexto conversacional, tal estrategia deve ser entendida como um recurso de sensibilizacao, focado na expansao da compreensao do outro e sem substituir outras formas de atuacao social.
The theoretical significance of research on language attrition for understanding bilingualism

The most important and most controversial issue for bilingualism research is the question why children are better at language learning than adults: while all normally developing children reach fully native speaker proficiency, foreign language learners hardly ever do. Researchers disagree as to whether this age effect is due to language-specific neurobiological and maturational processes or to more general factors linked to cognitive development and the competition of two language systems in the bilingual mind. As both scenarios predict non-native like behavior of second language (L2) learners, it has to date been impossible to conclusively establish which of them actually obtains. I propose that new insights can be provided by including first language (L1) attriters in the comparison: migrants who are using their L2 dominantly, and whose L1 is consequently deteriorating. These speakers acquired their L1 without maturational constraints, but they experience the same impact of bilingualism and competition between languages as L2 learners do. They therefore provide a source of data that is non-native for reasons which are known. If attaining native speaker proficiency is maturationally constrained, processing strategies should remain native-like in an L1 which has become non-dominant. If the persistent problems of L2 learners are due to issues such as lack of exposure and competition between languages, attriters should become more similar to foreign-language learners than to natives.
Modern Food Sharing Networks and Community Integration in the Central Canadian Arctic

From June 1992 to July 1993, research on wildlife harvesting and subsistence was conducted among a sample of householders in the Inuit community of Holman. In an earlier paper, the authors examined the involvement of younger Inuit in subsistence hunting, noting that despite the sweeping political, social, and economic changes that have been experienced in Holman and across the Canadian North, hunting remained an important sociocultural and economic activity for some members of the sample group. This paper focuses specifically on the informal socioeconomic mechanisms employed by Holman Inuit for the distribution of wild resources and compare the present range of such activity to that observed by Stefansson, Jenness, Rasmussen, and Damas in their work on Copper Inuit food sharing. These data indicate 1) that the sharing form most frequently cited ethnographically, obligatory seal-sharing partnerships, is more irregular than formerly; and 2) that voluntary, nonpartnership-based sharing remains an important element in the contemporary economic system.
Digitizing Work: Driving and Measuring Changes in Information Worker Time Use and Performance Via a Longitudinal Quasi-Experiment

We study the causal effects of digitizing work on information workers’ time-use and performance at a large insurance firm. We make causal inferences and obtain unbiased estimates by exploiting a quasi-experiment: the phased introduction of Electronic Document Management (EDM) across multiple offices at different dates. We apply a difference-in-differences methodology to econometrically measure changes in a suite of performance metrics. We further triangulate on the effects of digitizing work via three complementary research techniques: extensive onsite interviews before, during and after implementation; detailed time use diaries and observation; and a series of surveys. In addition to large changes in time-use and performance, we find that digitization leads to a decline in the substitutable routine labor input and an increase in complementary nonroutine cognitive labor input. We uncover a new micro-level mechanism, “IT-enabled slack”, that explains how exactly IT can lead to payoff in terms of information worker performance.
Inferring Muscle-Tendon Unit Power from Ankle Joint Power during the Push-Off Phase of Human Walking: Insights from a Multiarticular EMG-Driven Model

Introduction Inverse dynamics joint kinetics are often used to infer contributions from underlying groups of muscle-tendon units (MTUs). However, such interpretations are confounded by multiarticular (multi-joint) musculature, which can cause inverse dynamics to over- or under-estimate net MTU power. Misestimation of MTU power could lead to incorrect scientific conclusions, or to empirical estimates that misguide musculoskeletal simulations, assistive device designs, or clinical interventions. The objective of this study was to investigate the degree to which ankle joint power overestimates net plantarflexor MTU power during the Push-off phase of walking, due to the behavior of the flexor digitorum and hallucis longus (FDHL)–multiarticular MTUs crossing the ankle and metatarsophalangeal (toe) joints. Methods We performed a gait analysis study on six healthy participants, recording ground reaction forces, kinematics, and electromyography (EMG). Empirical data were input into an EMG-driven musculoskeletal model to estimate ankle power. This model enabled us to parse contributions from mono- and multi-articular MTUs, and required only one scaling and one time delay factor for each subject and speed, which were solved for based on empirical data. Net plantarflexing MTU power was computed by the model and quantitatively compared to inverse dynamics ankle power. Results The EMG-driven model was able to reproduce inverse dynamics ankle power across a range of gait speeds (R2 ≥ 0.97), while also providing MTU-specific power estimates. We found that FDHL dynamics caused ankle power to slightly overestimate net plantarflexor MTU power, but only by ~2–7%. Conclusions During Push-off, FDHL MTU dynamics do not substantially confound the inference of net plantarflexor MTU power from inverse dynamics ankle power. However, other methodological limitations may cause inverse dynamics to overestimate net MTU power; for instance, due to rigid-body foot assumptions. Moving forward, the EMG-driven modeling approach presented could be applied to understand other tasks or larger multiarticular MTUs.
Job-length estimation and performance in backfilling schedulers

Backfilling is a simple and effective way of improving the utilization of space-sharing schedulers. Simple first-come-first-served approaches are ineffective because large jobs can fragment the available resources. Backfilling schedulers address this problem by allowing jobs to move ahead in the queue, provided that they will not delay subsequent jobs. Previous research has shown that inaccurate estimates of execution times can lead to better backfilling schedules. We characterize this effect on several workloads, and show that average slowdowns can be effectively reduced by systematically lengthening estimated execution times. Further, we show that the average job slowdown metric can be addressed directly by sorting jobs by increasing execution time. Finally, we modify our sorting scheduler to ensure that incoming jobs can be given hard guarantees. The resulting scheduler guarantees to avoid starvation, and performs significantly better than previous backfilling schedulers.
Age-Dependent Impairment of Cognitive and Synaptic Function in the htau Mouse Model of Tau Pathology

A hallmark feature of Alzheimer's disease pathology is the presence of neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), which are intracellular aggregates of conformationally abnormal and hyperphosphorylated tau. The presence of NFTs in the forebrain is associated with impairments of cognitive function, supporting a central role for tau in dementia. The significance of the accumulation of NFTs for neuronal and cognitive function is still obscure. It is possible that NFTs disrupt synaptic transmission and plasticity, leading to memory deficits and cognitive malfunction. To elucidate the relationship between the development of tau pathology and synaptic and cognitive functions, we performed behavioral tests and electrophysiological experiments in the htau mouse. Here we report age-dependent cognitive and physiological impairments in htau mice that preceded neurodegeneration. Twelve-month-old htau mice with moderate tau pathology, but not 4-month-old mice with early-stage tau pathology, presented cognitive deficits in an object recognition memory task in which the visual recognition memory of a novel object was disrupted. Moreover, only 12-month-old htau mice exhibit spatial memory deficits, as indicated by the impaired performance in the Morris water maze. In addition, we report that basal synaptic transmission and induction of long-term potentiation with high-frequency stimulation, but not theta burst stimulation, is perturbed in hippocampal CA1 region of old but not young htau mice. Our results suggest that tau pathology may underlie an age-dependent learning impairment through disruption of synaptic function.