Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intention to use hearing aids: a survey based on the theory of planned behavior

Objective To determine the intention to use hearing aids (HAs) by applying the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Design The TPB is a widely used decision-making model based on three constructs hypothesized to influence the intention to perform a specific behavior; namely, “attitude toward the behavior”, “subjective norm”, and “behavioral control”. The survey was based on a TPB-specific questionnaire addressing factors relevant to HA provision. Study sample Data from 204 individuals reporting hearing problems were analyzed. Different subgroups were established according to the stage of their hearing help-seeking. Results The TPB models’ outcome depended on the subgroup. The intention of those participants who had recognized their hearing problems but had not yet consulted an ear, nose, and throat specialist was largely dominated by the “subjective norm” construct, whereas those who had already consulted an ear, nose, and throat specialist or had already tried out HAs were significantly influenced by all constructs. The intention of participants who already owned HAs was clearly less affected by the “subjective norm” construct but was largely dominated by their “attitude toward HAs”. Conclusion The intention to use HAs can be modeled on the basis of the constructs “attitude toward the behavior”, “subjective norm”, and “behavioral control”. Individual contribution of the constructs to the model depends on the patient’s stage of hearing help-seeking. The results speak well for counseling strategies that explicitly consider the individual trajectory of hearing help-seeking.
Methodology for estimating the modulus of elasticity of bitumen under different aging conditions by AFM

This paper presents a micro and nano mechanical analysis method to measure the elastic modulus and properties of bitumen. Tests were performed using the AFM in pulsed force mode to determine the adhesion and stiffness of bitumen. In AFM contact mode, a methodology was developed to determine the modulus of elasticity of the bitumen using the nanoindentation technique for small-volume specimens using a Berkovich tip. Two different sources of bitumen were studied with a performance grade of PG 64 S (22) and PG 64 H (25), in its neat, RTFO, and RTFO + PAV aged conditions. The mechanical properties of the bitumen were analysed from the responses of the measured materials. The AFM images and mechanical results reveal that the properties of the bitumen are considerably affected by aging, associated with oxidation and variations in its morphology. Modulus measured by AFM was also compared to traditional G* measurements from a rheometer, and their relationship analysed.
Overview and Guidance on Agile Development in Large Organizations

A continual debate surrounds the effectiveness of agile software development practices. Some organizations adopt agile practices to become more competitive, improve processes, and reduce costs. Other organizations are skeptical about whether agile development is beneficial. Large organizations face an additional challenge in integrating agile practices with existing standards and business processes. To examine the effects of agile development practices in large organizations, we review and integrate scientific literature and theory on agile software development. We further organize our theory and observations into a framework with guidelines for large organizations considering agile methodologies. Based on this framework, we present recommendations that suggest ways large organizations with established processes can successfully implement agile practices. Our analysis of the literature and theory provides new insight for researchers of agile software development and assists practitioners in determining how to adopt agile development in their organizations.
Computation of lower bounds for a multiple depot, multiple vehicle routing problem with motion constraints

In this paper, the problem of planning paths for a collection of vehicles passing through a set of targets is considered. Each vehicle starts at a specified location (called a depot) and it is required that each target be on the path of at least one vehicle. Every vehicle has a motion constraint and the path of each vehicle must satisfy that constraint. In this article, we developed a method to compute lower bounds to this path planning problem by relaxing some of the constraints and posing it as a standard multiple traveling salesmen problem. For those problem instances where the distance between every pair of targets is at least 4 units, another method is developed to compute a lower bound using the convexity property of the length of such paths. The proposed bounds are numerically corroborated.
A modular software interface for the control system of an arc welding robot

In this paper an interface designed for developing and studying a process of robotic arc welding, is described. The interface has been implemented in Labview™ environment. The process consists in the control of a SMD (Shaped Metal Deposition) system that is an innovative method for rapid manufacturing of metal objects. The system developed can also be used just to control arc process of deposition.
Wall/Object Punching: An Important but Under‐Recognized Form of Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury

The present research investigated wall/object punching as a form of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) among 1,143 veterans seeking treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Wall/object punching was remarkably common in this sample (43%), and its inclusion in the definition of NSSI increased estimated prevalence of recent NSSI by 14%. As expected, wall/object punching was strongly associated with other traditional forms of NSSI, post-NSSI relief, and suicide ideation. Male veterans and veterans with PTSD were significantly more likely to engage in wall/object punching than female veterans and veterans without PTSD. More research on this important but under-recognized form of NSSI is needed.
An investigation into the forces that drive ice-shelf rift propagation on the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica

Abstract For three field seasons (2002/03, 2004/05, 2005/06) we have deployed a network of GPS receivers and seismometers around the tip of a propagating rift on the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica. During these campaigns we detected seven bursts of episodic rift propagation. To determine whether these rift propagation events were triggered by short-term environmental forcings, we analyzed simultaneous ancillary data such as wind speeds, tidal amplitudes and sea-ice fraction (a proxy variable for ocean swell). We find that none of these environmental forcings, separately or together, correlated with rift propagation. This apparent insensitivity of ice-shelf rift propagation to short-term environmental forcings leads us to suggest that the rifting process is primarily driven by the internal glaciological stress. Our hypothesis is supported by order-of-magnitude calculations that the glaciological stress is the dominant term in the force balance. However, our calculations also indicate that as the ice shelf thins or the rift system matures and iceberg detachment becomes imminent, short-term stresses due to winds and ocean swell may become more important.
Interhemispheric synchronization of oscillatory neuronal responses in cat visual cortex

Neurons in area 17 of cat visual cortex display oscillatory responses that can synchronize across spatially separate columns in a stimulus-specific way. Response synchronization has now been shown to occur also between neurons in area 17 of the right and left cerebral hemispheres. This synchronization was abolished by section of the corpus callosum. Thus, the response synchronization is mediated by corticocortical connections. These data are compatible with the hypothesis that temporal synchrony of neuronal discharges serves to bind features within and between the visual hemifields.
A Model of Ant Route Navigation Driven by Scene Familiarity

In this paper we propose a model of visually guided route navigation in ants that captures the known properties of real behaviour whilst retaining mechanistic simplicity and thus biological plausibility. For an ant, the coupling of movement and viewing direction means that a familiar view specifies a familiar direction of movement. Since the views experienced along a habitual route will be more familiar, route navigation can be re-cast as a search for familiar views. This search can be performed with a simple scanning routine, a behaviour that ants have been observed to perform. We test this proposed route navigation strategy in simulation, by learning a series of routes through visually cluttered environments consisting of objects that are only distinguishable as silhouettes against the sky. In the first instance we determine view familiarity by exhaustive comparison with the set of views experienced during training. In further experiments we train an artificial neural network to perform familiarity discrimination using the training views. Our results indicate that, not only is the approach successful, but also that the routes that are learnt show many of the characteristics of the routes of desert ants. As such, we believe the model represents the only detailed and complete model of insect route guidance to date. What is more, the model provides a general demonstration that visually guided routes can be produced with parsimonious mechanisms that do not specify when or what to learn, nor separate routes into sequences of waypoints.
Protein Gene Product 9.5 (PGP 9.5) Is Not a Specific Marker of Neural and Nerve Sheath Tumors: An Immunohistochemical Study of 95 Mesenchymal Neoplasms

In non-neoplastic tissues, the expression of protein gene product 9.5 (PGP 9.5), a member of the ubiquitin hydrolase family of proteins, is confined to neural and neuroendocrine cells. Although it has been claimed that PGP 9.5 is a specific marker of neural and/or nerve sheath differentiation in human tumors, careful review of the literature suggests that relatively few nonneural or nerve sheath tumors have been studied. Prompted by our recent observation of a PGP 9.5–positive malignant fibrous histiocytoma, we undertook a study of PGP 9.5 expression in a large group of well-characterized mesenchymal neoplasms. Sections from 95 mesenchymal tumors were retrieved from our archives and immunostained for PGP 9.5 using standard avidin-biotin complex technique and heat-induced epitope retrieval. Scoring was as follows: negative, 1+ (<10–25% of cells), 2+ (25–50% of cells), and 3+ (>50% of cells). Normal nerves and fibrous tissue were internal positive and negative controls, respectively. Positive immunostaining was seen in 80/95 (84%) of cases. Positive results by tumor subtype were as follows: (1) nerve sheath tumors: malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (7/10), neurofibromas (10/10), and perineuriomas (3/3); (2) (Myo) fibroblastic tumors: malignant fibrous histiocytoma (18/20), low-grade fibromyxoid sarcomas (8/9), fibromatoses (7/7), and desmoplastic fibroblastomas (2/2); (3) vascular tumors: angiosarcomas (4/4), hemangioendotheliomas (3/5), and hemangiomas (3/4); and (4) other non-nerve sheath tumors: pleomorphic liposarcoma (4/4), dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (2/5), rhabdomyosarcomas (2/2), synovial sarcomas (8/8), melanomas (1/2). All positive cases were 2–3+ except 6 malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor, 1 neurofibroma, 3 malignant fibrous histiocytoma, 2 low-grade fibromyxoid sarcoma, and 1 dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans. Positive staining was seen in normal smooth muscle and germinal centers in addition to nerves. We conclude that in this, the largest study to date of PGP 9.5 expression in mesenchymal neoplasms, we have found strong (2–3+) expression in the vast majority of nonneural or nerve sheath neoplasms studied. Although PGP 9.5 is a sensitive neural/nerve sheath marker, it is essentially totally nonspecific for diagnostic purposes. It is possible that our findings reflect cross-reactivity of the 13C4 clone with epitopes present on other ubiquitin hydrolases. Alternatively, PGP 9.5 expression may be aberrantly up-regulated in a variety of mesenchymal neoplasms.
Are GRB 980425 and GRB 031203 real outliers or twins of GRB 060218

GRB 980425 and GRB031203 are apparently two outliers with respect to the correlation between the isotropic equivalent energy E iso emitted in the prompt radiation phase and the peak frequency E peak of the spectrum in a vF v representation (the so-called Amati relation). We discuss if these two bursts are really different from the others or if their location in the E iso -E peak plane is the result of other effects, such as viewing them off-axis, or through a scattering screen, or a misinterpretation of their spectral properties. The latter case seems particularly interesting after GRB 060218 that, unlike GRB 031203 and GRB 980425, had a prompt emission detected both in hard and soft X-rays which lasted ∼2800 s. This allowed us to determine its E peak and total emitted energy. Although it shares with GRB 031203 the total energetics, it is not an outlier with respect to the Amati correlation. We then investigate if a hard-to-soft spectral evolution in GRB 031203 and GRB 980425, consistent with all the observed properties, can give rise to a time-integrated spectrum with an E peak consistent with the Amati relation.
Analyzing the Solutions of DEA Through Information Visualization and Data Mining Techniques: SmartDEA Framework

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has proven to be a useful tool for assessing efficiency or productivity of organizations, which is of vital practical importance in managerial decision making. DEA provides a significant amount of information from which analysts and managers derive insights and guidelines to promote their existing performances. Regarding to this fact, effective and methodologic analysis and interpretation of DEA results are very critical. The main objective of this study is then to develop a general decision support system (DSS) framework to analyze the results of basic DEA models. The paper formally shows how the results of DEA models should be structured so that these solutions can be examined and interpreted by analysts through information visualization and data mining techniques effectively. An innovative and convenient DEA solver, SmartDEA, is designed and developed in accordance with the proposed analysis framework. The developed software provides DEA results which are consistent with the framework and are ready-to-analyze with data mining tools, thanks to their specially designed table-based structures. The developed framework is tested and applied in a real world project for benchmarking the vendors of a leading Turkish automotive company. The results show the effectiveness and the efficacy of the proposed framework.
Bose–Einstein condensation in large time-averaged optical ring potentials

Interferometric measurements with matter waves are established techniques for sensitive gravimetry, rotation sensing, and measurement of surface interactions, but compact interferometers will require techniques based on trapped geometries. In a step towards the realisation of matter wave interferometers in toroidal geometries, we produce a large, smooth ring trap for Bose–Einstein condensates using rapidly scanned time-averaged dipole potentials. The trap potential is smoothed by using the atom distribution as input to an optical intensity correction algorithm. Smooth rings with a diameter up to 300 μm are demonstrated. We experimentally observe and simulate the dispersion of condensed atoms in the resulting potential, with good agreement serving as an indication of trap smoothness. Under time of flight expansion we observe low energy excitations in the ring, which serves to constrain the lower frequency limit of the scanned potential technique. The resulting ring potential will have applications as a waveguide for atom interferometry and studies of superfluidity.
Local list-decoding and testing of random linear codes from high error

In this paper, we give surprisingly efficient algorithms for list-decoding and testing random linear codes. Our main result is that random sparse linear codes are locally list-decodable and locally testable in the high-error regime with only a constant number of queries. More precisely, we show that for all constants c> 0 and γ > 0, and for every linear code C ⊆ 0,1N which is: sparse: |C| ≤ Nc, and unbiased: each nonzero codeword in C has weight in (1/2 - N-γ, 1/2 + N-γ), C is locally testable and locally list-decodable from (1/2 - ε)-fraction worst-case errors using only poly(1/ε) queries to a received word. We also give subexponential time algorithms for list-decoding arbitrary unbiased (but not necessarily sparse) linear codes in the high-error regime. In particular, this yields the first subexponential time algorithm even for the problem of (unique) decoding random linear codes of inverse-polynomial rate from a fixed positive fraction of errors. Earlier, Kaufman and Sudan had shown that sparse, unbiased codes can be locally (unique) decoded and locally tested from a constant fraction of errors, where this constant fraction tends to 0 as the number of codewords grows. Our results significantly strengthen their results, while also having significantly simpler proofs. At the heart of our algorithms is a natural "self-correcting" operation defined on codes and received words. This self-correcting operation transforms a code C with a received word w into a simpler code C' and a related received word w', such that w is close to C if and only if w' is close to C'. Starting with a sparse, unbiased code C and an arbitrary received word w, a constant number of applications of the self-correcting operation reduces us to the case of local list-decoding and testing for the Hadamard code, for which the well known algorithms of Goldreich-Levin and Blum-Luby-Rubinfeld are available. This yields the constant-query local algorithms for the original code C. Our algorithm for decoding unbiased linear codes in subexponential time proceeds similarly. Applying the self-correcting operation to an unbiased code C and an arbitrary received word a super-constant number of times, we get reduced to the problem of learning noisy parities, for which non-trivial subexponential time algorithms were recently given by Blum-Kalai-Wasserman and Feldman-Gopalan-Khot-Ponnuswami. Our result generalizes a result of Lyubashevsky, which gave a subexponential time algorithm for decoding random linear codes of inverse-polynomial rate from random errors.
Microarray profiling of circular RNAs in human papillary thyroid carcinoma

Background Non-coding circular RNAs (circRNAs) have displayed dysregulated expression in several human cancers. Here, we profiled the circRNA expression of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) tumors to improve our understanding of PTC pathogenesis. Methods Microarray profiling was performed on 18 thyroid samples, consisting of six PTC tumors, six matching contralateral normal samples, and six benign thyroid lesions. After low-intensity filtering, hierarchical clustering revealed the circRNA expression patterns. Statistical analysis followed by qRT-PCR validation identified the differential circRNAs. MicroRNA (miRNA) target prediction software identified putative miRNA response elements (MREs), which were used to construct a network map of circRNA-miRNA interactions for the differential circRNAs. Bioinformatics platforms predicted cancer-related circRNA-miRNA associations and putative downstream target genes, respectively. Results A total of 88 circRNAs and 10 circRNAs were significantly upregulated and downregulated, respectively, in PTC tumors relative to normal thyroid tissue, while 129 circRNAs and 226 circRNAs were significantly upregulated and downregulated, respectively, in PTC tumors relative to benign thyroid lesions. A total of 12 upregulated and four downregulated circRNAs were overlapping between the foregoing comparisons. One downregulated circRNA (hsa_circRNA_100395) showed interactive potential with two cancer-related miRNAs (miR-141-3p and miR-200a-3p). From this analysis, we identified several promising cancer-related genes that may be targets of the dysregulated hsa_circRNA_100395/miR-141-3p/miR-200a-3p axis in PTC tumors. Conclusions circRNA dysregulation may play a role in PTC pathogenesis, and several key circRNAs show promise as candidate biomarkers for PTC. The hsa_circRNA_100395/miR-141-3p/ miR-200a-3p axis may be involved in the pathogenesis of PTC.
Vector modulator-based phase shifter with 810º control range for 43-Gbps optical transceivers

A vector-modulator-based phase shifter for 43-Gbps RZ-DQPSK optical transceivers was developed by using InP HBTs. The weighting of the vector paths is controlled by a novel pseudo-sine-cosine generator using folding circuit, which covers the phase-control range of 810º with only one control voltage. To reduce the process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) dependence, a PVT compensation circuit is newly proposed. The monolithic integrated phase shifter exhibits monotonic phase control and constant output amplitude of 360 ± 11 mV through the whole phase-control range for 21.5-GHz signal. Small phase variations lower than 40º were observed for ±5% power voltage and 25–80ºC temperature variations. To our knowledge, this is the first voltage-controlled phase shifter with an over 720º phase-control range above 20 GHz reported to date.
Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments

In this paper, I address the question as to why participants tend to respond realistically to situations and events portrayed within an immersive virtual reality system. The idea is put forward, based on the experience of a large number of experimental studies, that there are two orthogonal components that contribute to this realistic response. The first is ‘being there’, often called ‘presence’, the qualia of having a sensation of being in a real place. We call this place illusion (PI). Second, plausibility illusion (Psi) refers to the illusion that the scenario being depicted is actually occurring. In the case of both PI and Psi the participant knows for sure that they are not ‘there’ and that the events are not occurring. PI is constrained by the sensorimotor contingencies afforded by the virtual reality system. Psi is determined by the extent to which the system can produce events that directly relate to the participant, the overall credibility of the scenario being depicted in comparison with expectations. We argue that when both PI and Psi occur, participants will respond realistically to the virtual reality.
Hierarchical Switching Control of Longitudinal Acceleration With Large Uncertainties

In this study, a hierarchical switching control strategy based on robust control theory is proposed to control longitudinal acceleration with large uncertainties. A model set, which is made up of four multiplicative-uncertainty models, is built to cover all uncertainties that arise from unmodeled dynamics and parameter uncertainties. The corresponding controller set is designed by LMI approach, which confirms the robust performance. Considering the characteristics of robust control systems, a switching index function by estimating model uncertainties is designed to determine when and which controller should be switched into the closed loop. Both theoretical analysis and experiments have been carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. And the results show that it has good performance of robust stability and tracking.