Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interpretation of treatment changes in 6-minute walk distance in patients with COPD

There is uncertainty about the interpretation of changes in the 6-min walk distance (6MWD) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients and whether the minimal important difference (MID) for this useful outcome measure exists. Data were used from nine trials enrolling a wide spectrum of COPD patients with 6MWD at baseline and follow-up and used to determine threshold values for important changes in 6MWD using three distribution-based methods. Anchor-based methods to determine a MID were also evaluated. Data were included of 460 COPD patients with a mean±sd forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) of 39.2±14.1% predicted and 6MWD of 361±112 m at baseline. Threshold values for important effects in 6MWD were between 29 and 42 m, respectively, using the empirical rule effect size and the standardised response mean. The threshold value was 35 m (95% confidence interval 30–42 m) based on the standard error of measurement. Correlations of 6MWD with patient-reported anchors were too low to provide meaningful MID estimates. 6-min walk distance should change by ∼35 m for patients with moderate to severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in order to represent an important effect. This corresponds to a 10% change of baseline 6-min walk distance. The low correlations of 6-min walk distance with patient-reported anchors question whether a minimal important difference exists for the 6-min walk distance.
Point Cloud Segmentation and 3 D Path Planning for Tracked Vehicles in Cluttered and Dynamic Environments

The paper presents a framework for tracked vehicle 3D path planning in rough areas, with dynamic obstacles. The framework provides methods for real-time point cloud interpretation, segmentation and traversabilty analysis tacking also into account changes such as dynamic obstacles and provides a terrain structure interpretation. Moreover the paper presents R2A an extended version of randomized A? coping with difficult terrains and complex paths for non-holonomic robots.
On the controllability of isotropic and anisotropic networks

This paper studies the controllability degree of complex networks as a function of the network weights and the location and number of control nodes. We quantify the controllability degree of a network with the worst-case control energy to drive the network to an arbitrary configuration. We show that isotropic networks are difficult to control, as the control energy grows exponentially with the network cardinality when the number of control nodes remains constant. Conversely, we prove that sufficiently anisotropic networks are easy to control, as the control energy is bounded independently of the network cardinality and number of control nodes.
Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence

The capacity to stabilize the content of attention over time varies among individuals, and its impairment is a hallmark of several mental illnesses. Impairments in sustained attention in patients with attention disorders have been associated with increased trial-to-trial variability in reaction time and event-related potential deficits during attention tasks. At present, it is unclear whether the ability to sustain attention and its underlying brain circuitry are transformable through training. Here, we show, with dichotic listening task performance and electroencephalography, that training attention, as cultivated by meditation, can improve the ability to sustain attention. Three months of intensive meditation training reduced variability in attentional processing of target tones, as indicated by both enhanced theta-band phase consistency of oscillatory neural responses over anterior brain areas and reduced reaction time variability. Furthermore, those individuals who showed the greatest increase in neural response consistency showed the largest decrease in behavioral response variability. Notably, we also observed reduced variability in neural processing, in particular in low-frequency bands, regardless of whether the deviant tone was attended or unattended. Focused attention meditation may thus affect both distracter and target processing, perhaps by enhancing entrainment of neuronal oscillations to sensory input rhythms, a mechanism important for controlling the content of attention. These novel findings highlight the mechanisms underlying focused attention meditation and support the notion that mental training can significantly affect attention and brain function.
Political elites and journalistic practices in India: A case of institutionalized heteronomy

The national elections in India in 2014 that swept the controversial leader Narendra Modi to power have generated a great deal of scholarship on their transformative impact with regard to the Indian polity. This article argues that, in fact, the elections demonstrate a continuity in the media’s relationship with dominant members of the political elite. Favourable, partisan reporting of dominant figures or families has a long history in India since the journalistic field reorients its subservience towards the new power structure. This research examines the similarities and differences in how authoritative and populist leaders like the Gandhis and Modi manipulate media power. While scholars have noted a close correspondence between politics and media in India, there is a research deficit in the analysis of the architecture of the media’s subservience to selected members of national significance, in the world’s largest democracy. This research draws into dialogue two influential theories – Field and New Institutionalism theory – to assert that the natural state of the Indian journalistic field is heteronomy in its relationship with hegemonic members of the political elite. This is occasionally pierced by limits imposed by populist politics in an electoral democracy. The relationship between the news media and individuals of the political elite, thus, can be conceptualized as that of contingent heteronomy.
What predicts workplace self-paced e-learning outcomes?: an exploratory study of motivation, self-regulated learning characteristics, and organisational contextual factors

Organisations today are investing significant amounts of time, money, and resources on workplace self-paced e-learning, yet employees seem to be having problems even getting these e-learning courses completed, bringing into question the true value of workplace self-paced e-learning. In an attempt to improve understanding of factors contributing to success in workplace self-paced e-learning, this study investigated how employee learners’ motivation, self-regulated learning, and organisational contextual factors affected outcomes in workplace self-paced e-learning. A quantitative study was conducted to investigate the research questions. Participants of the study were 119 employees enrolled in workplace self-paced e-learning courses provided by Hong Kong organisations. Data were collected using online questionnaires and analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling technique. Findings revealed significant relationships between learners’ motivation, self-regulated learning, organisational contextual factors, and training outcomes in workplace self-paced e-learning. Motivation to learn, time management, metacognitive self-regulation, perceived choice, workload, and organisational support were found to positively correlate with training outcomes as expressed in terms of course completion rate, learner satisfaction, and perceived learning performance in workplace self-paced e-learning. Findings also revealed learners’ autonomy in learning participation, level of workload (negative), and supervisor support (negative) moderate the relationship between learners’ time management strategy use and completion rate of workplace self-paced e-learning courses. Unfortunately, the results failed to support the expected relationship between supervisor support and training outcomes. The significance of the findings is discussed, along with implications for researchers and practitioners, limitations of the current study, and opportunities for future research.
Relaxation of trabecular meshwork and ciliary muscle by release of nitric oxide.

PURPOSE Recent evidence suggests that nitric oxide (NO) is a major messenger molecule regulating smooth muscle contractility. A role for NO in aqueous humor dynamics, and thus regulation of intraocular pressure, has been postulated. Recently, we described contractile properties of isolated bovine trabecular meshwork and ciliary muscle strips. To assess whether vasodilators contribute to the regulation of trabecular meshwork and ciliary muscle contractility, we measured the effect of various substances known to induce vasodilation by increasing intracellular cGMP production. METHODS Measurements of isometric tension were performed on isolated bovine ciliary muscle and trabecular meshwork strips using a custom-built electromagnetic force-length transducer. The effects of a membrane-permeable cGMP and an inhibitor of nitric oxide formation (L-nitroarginine = L-NAG) were investigated. Organic nitrate (isosorbide dinitrate = ISDN, isosorbide-5-mononitrate = 5-ISMN) and non-nitrate (sodium nitroprusside = SNP, S-nitroso-N-acetyl penicillamine = SNAP) vasodilators were tested. RESULTS Isolated strips were precontracted by carbachol 10(-6) mol/l for 30 minutes (100% carbachol maximal contraction). 8-bromo-cGMP 10(-4) mol/l evoked a relaxation to 86.7% +/- 1.4% (n = 8) in ciliary muscle and 58.6% +/- 5.4% (n = 7) in trabecular meshwork. Inhibition of NO-synthase by L-NAG increased the carbachol-induced contraction. The organic nitrovasodilators ISDN and 5-ISMN produced significant relaxations. The non-nitrates SNP and SNAP were the most potent relaxants. SNP 10(-4) mol/l relaxed the isolated ciliary muscle to 55.5% +/- 3.5% and the trabecular meshwork to 38.6% +/- 3.6%. ISDN and SNP were also tested on isolated strips without carbachol-induced precontraction. Both vasodilators had significant relaxing activity under these conditions. CONCLUSION The data indicate that an increase of intracellular cGMP by application of cGMP and organic nitrate or non-nitrate vasodilators induces relaxation of the bovine trabecular meshwork and ciliary muscle. Thus, nitric oxide is a cotransmitter of smooth muscle relaxation in the chamber angle and may be involved in the regulation of aqueous humor dynamics.
Becoming an Entrepreneur after Retirement: Entrepreneurial Intention of Technically and Vocationally Trained Military Personnel in Sri Lanka

This study was conducted to study the entrepreneurial intention of military personnel who are getting ready for their retirement and identify the key determents of entrepreneurial intention. They were undergoing a Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) organized by the military authorities for supporting their second career. Data were collected from 70 solders via questionnaire and Step wise regression analysis was used to evaluate the effects of variables. Self-efficacy, perceived environmental support and vocational education and training are significant predictors of entrepreneurial intention. This study presents detailed and solid results on entrepreneurial intentions which are positioned in the career literature. Keywords: Entrepreneurial intention, Military personnel, Subjective Norm, Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET)
Near-Optimal Regret Bounds for Thompson Sampling

Thompson Sampling (TS) is one of the oldest heuristics for multiarmed bandit problems. It is a randomized algorithm based on Bayesian ideas and has recently generated significant interest after several studies demonstrated that it has favorable empirical performance compared to the state-of-the-art methods. In this article, a novel and almost tight martingale-based regret analysis for Thompson Sampling is presented. Our technique simultaneously yields both problem-dependent and problem-independent bounds: (1) the first near-optimal problem-independent bound of O(√ NT ln T) on the expected regret and (2) the optimal problem-dependent bound of (1 + ϵ)Σi ln T / d(μi,μ1) + O(N/ϵ2) on the expected regret (this bound was first proven by Kaufmann et al. (2012b)). Our technique is conceptually simple and easily extends to distributions other than the Beta distribution used in the original TS algorithm. For the version of TS that uses Gaussian priors, we prove a problem-independent bound of O(√ NT ln N) on the expected regret and show the optimality of this bound by providing a matching lower bound. This is the first lower bound on the performance of a natural version of Thompson Sampling that is away from the general lower bound of Ω (√ NT) for the multiarmed bandit problem.
Development of Project-Based Learning Guide on Pollution and Environmental Conservation Material at SMA 1 Jekulo Kudus

One of the efforts to be an Adiwiyata school is done by improvement of knowledge, activities, attitudes, and skills of students regarding environment. The activities, attitudes, and skills, and the cognitive learning outcome of students were still low. Project learning is considered as one of the approaches to create learning environment that can support students to build knowledge, attitudes, and skills. The study aimed to describe the characteristics of learning guide and to test the validity, practicality, and effectiveness of learning guide on pollution and environmental conservation material. The study implemented research and development (R&D) design. The learning media was validated by the validator. The practicality was determined by student and teacher response. The effectiveness was observed from the activities, attitudes, and skills, and the cognitive learning outcome. The activities, attitudes, and skills were analyzed using percentage descriptive. The cognitive learning outcome was tested using independent t-test. The result of the study showed that the learning guide on pollution and environmental conservation material was valid, practical, and effective. The learning guide was declared valid with good category. The learning guide was declared stated practical by getting positive response from the students, and the teachers gave very good response. The learning guide was declaredeffective with activities, attitudes, and skills in very good category. The classical completeness of experiment class reached the Minimum Mastery Criteria 83,3% and control class 45,2%. There was significant difference between the post-test average score of experiment class and control class.
Necessary and sufficient conditions for stability of LMS

Guo and Ljung (1995) established some general results on exponential stability of random linear equations, which can be applied directly to the performance analysis of a wide class of adaptive algorithms, including the basic LMS ones, without requiring stationarity, independency, and boundedness assumptions of the system signals. The current paper attempts to give a complete characterization of the exponential stability of the LMS algorithms by providing a necessary and sufficient condition for such a stability in the case of possibly unbounded, nonstationary, and non-/spl phi/-mixing signals. The results of this paper can be applied to a very large class of signals, including those generated from, e.g., a Gaussian process via a time-varying linear filter. As an application, several novel and extended results on convergence and the tracking performance of LMS are derived under various assumptions. Neither stationarity nor Markov-chain assumptions are necessarily required in the paper.
Four routes of cognitive evolution.

Four routes of cognitive evolution are distinguished: phylogenetic construction, in which natural selection produces qualitative change to the way a cognitive mechanism operates (language); phylogenetic inflection, in which natural selection biases the input to a cognitive mechanism (imprinting and spatial memory); ontogenetic construction, in which developmental selection alters the way a cognitive mechanism operates (face recognition and theory of mind); and ontogenetic inflection, in which developmental selection changes the input to a cognitive mechanism (imitation). This framework integrates findings from evolutionary psychology (i.e., all research on the evolution of mentality and behavior). In contrast with human nativist evolutionary psychology, it recognizes the adaptive significance of developmental processes, conserves the distinction between cognitive and noncognitive mechanisms, and encompasses research on human and nonhuman animals.
Recent and emerging innovations in Salmonella detection: a food and environmental perspective

Salmonella is a diverse genus of Gram‐negative bacilli and a major foodborne pathogen responsible for more than a million illnesses annually in the United States alone. Rapid, reliable detection and identification of this pathogen in food and environmental sources is key to safeguarding the food supply. Traditional microbiological culture techniques have been the ‘gold standard’ for State and Federal regulators. Unfortunately, the time to result is too long to effectively monitor foodstuffs, especially those with very short shelf lives. Advances in traditional microbiology and molecular biology over the past 25 years have greatly improved the speed at which this pathogen is detected. Nonetheless, food and environmental samples possess a distinctive set of challenges for these newer, more rapid methodologies. Furthermore, more detailed identification and subtyping strategies still rely heavily on the availability of a pure isolate. However, major shifts in DNA sequencing technologies are meeting this challenge by advancing the detection, identification and subtyping of Salmonella towards a culture‐independent diagnostic framework. This review will focus on current approaches and state‐of‐the‐art next‐generation advances in the detection, identification and subtyping of Salmonella from food and environmental sources.
Hybrid CPU/GPU KD-Tree Construction for Versatile Ray Tracing

In this paper, we propose an hybrid CPU-GPU ray-tracing implementation based on an optimal Kd-Tree as acceleration structure. The construction and traversal of this KD-tree takes benefits from both the CPU and the GPU to achieve high-performance ray-tracing on mainstream hardware. Our approach, flexible enough to use only one computing units (CPU or GPU), is able to efficiently distribute workload between CPUs and GPUs for fast construction and traversal of the KD-tree.
Mobile pensioners: retirement migrants’ perspectives of EU citizenship and free movement

The European institutions picture EU citizens as important actors in the process of transforming EU citizenship into a “tangible reality”. By knowing and practising EU citizenship rights, EU citizens are supposed to give meaning and depth to the otherwise hollow concept of EU citizenship. What EU citizenship means for mobile citizens themselves and how EU citizens practice and evaluate their rights (“lived citizenship”) is generally not a central theme in reports and studies on EU citizenship. In this article the value of EU citizenship will be discussed by applying a qualitative research approach and by focusing on retired EU citizens’ perspectives and practice of, in particular, free movement. This article applies a comparative approach and includes EU citizens who move or return from the Netherlands to Spain or Turkey after retirement. Four groups of EU citizens move between these countries: Dutch nationals who move to Spain, Spanish nationals who return to Spain, Dutch nationals who move to Turkey and Turkish dual-nationals who return to Turkey after retirement. This article shows that migratory background, country of origin, country of retirement and the way in which EU citizenship is acquired determine retirement migrants’ perspectives and practice of EU citizenship.
Promoting oligodendrocyte progenitor cell maturation and remyelination as a novel therapeutical approach for multiple system atrophy

Alpha-synuclein (aSyn) aggregation within mature oligodendrocytes is the characteristic neuropathological feature of multiple system atrophy (MSA). In fact, dysfunction of oligodendrocytes is considered as a primary event in MSA pathogenesis leading to myelin loss and, ultimately, reduced axonal integrity and neuronal cell loss. Oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) are widely distributed in the adult central nervous system and represent a potential endogenous source for replacement of such dysfunctional oligodendrocytes. The extent to which OPCs are affected in MSA or even contribute to MSA pathogenesis remains undefined. Thus, we analyzed OPCs post-mortem in MSA brains and in a pre-clinical MSA mouse model expressing aSyn under the myelin basic protein (MBP) promoter. Importantly, we detected elevated numbers of striatal OPCs in MSA and its model 1 . Observing aSyn-positive OPCs in MSA patients, we additionally established two independent in vitro models in order to explore the effect of intracellular aSyn on OPC maturation. Both stable aSyn expressing OPC-like central glia-4 (CG4) cells 1 and transiently aSyn expressing primary OPCs derived from neonatal rats 2 robustly showed a severely reduced maturation. Similarly, primary OPCs exhibit a delayed maturation upon uptake of recombinant aSyn 2 . Taken together, our findings indicate that OPC dysfunction is a pathological feature of MSA. In addition, promoting OPC differentiation may represent a novel and promising interventional strategy for therapeutic approaches in MSA.
Low-Rank Prior in Single Patches for Nonpointwise Impulse Noise Removal

This paper introduces a low-rank prior in small oriented noise-free image patches. Considering an oriented patch as a matrix, a low-rank matrix approximation is enough to preserve the texture details in the optimally oriented patch. Based on this prior, we propose a single-patch method within a generalized joint low-rank and sparse matrix recovery framework to simultaneously detect and remove nonpointwise random-valued impulse noise (e.g., very small blobs). A weighting matrix is incorporated in the framework to encode an initial estimate of the spatial noise distribution. An accelerated proximal gradient method is adapted to estimate the optimal noise-free image patches. Experiments show the effectiveness of our framework in detecting and removing nonpointwise random-valued impulse noise.
Plant elicitation with salicylic acid increases bioactive compounds content and antioxidant activity in the infusion of Achillea millefolium L.

This study evaluated the total polyphenols content and the antioxidant activity of the infusion prepared with leaves from Achillea millefolium L. plants treated with salicylic acid (SA). Field cultivated plants received SA foliar applications (T1: control; T2: 1.0 mmol L applications at 20, 60 and 100 days after planting DAP and T3: 1.0 mmol L applications at 100 DAP during three days). The infusions from SA treated plants showed higher levels of total polyphenols and flavonoids compared to the control one. T2 and T3 infusions showed increases in the antioxidant activity by 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), nitric oxide (NO) and ferric-reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) tests. However, only T2 treated plants had higher antioxidant activity by inhibition of lipid peroxidation (TBARS). It was concluded that elicitation of A. millefolium plants with SA can be considered an adequate strategy to increase the production of bioactive compounds and the antioxidant capacity of infusions.