Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RetroDepth: 3D silhouette sensing for high-precision input on and above physical surfaces

We present RetroDepth, a new vision-based system for accurately sensing the 3D silhouettes of hands, styluses, and other objects, as they interact on and above physical surfaces. Our setup is simple, cheap, and easily reproducible, comprising of two infrared cameras, diffuse infrared LEDs, and any off-the-shelf retro-reflective material. The retro-reflector aids image segmentation, creating a strong contrast between the surface and any object in proximity. A new highly efficient stereo matching algorithm precisely estimates the 3D contours of interacting objects and the retro-reflective surfaces. A novel pipeline enables 3D finger, hand and object tracking, as well as gesture recognition, purely using these 3D contours. We demonstrate high-precision sensing, allowing robust disambiguation between a finger or stylus touching, pressing or interacting above the surface. This allows many interactive scenarios that seamlessly mix together freehand 3D interactions with touch, pressure and stylus input. As shown, these rich modalities of input are enabled on and above any retro-reflective surface, including custom "physical widgets" fabricated by users. We compare our system with Kinect and Leap Motion, and conclude with limitations and future work.
Effect of noninvasive mechanical ventilation in elderly patients with hypercapnic acute-on-chronic respiratory failure and a do-not-intubate order

Noninvasive mechanical ventilation (NIMV) is effective in the treatment of patients with acute respiratory failure (ARF). It proved to reduce the need of endotracheal intubation (ETI), the incidence of ETI-associated pneumonia, and mortality compared to nonventilated patients. A particular aspect concerns the outcome of NIMV in patients referring to an emergency room (ER) for ARF, and with a do-not-intubate (DNI) status due to advanced age or critical conditions. The aim of our study is to assess the outcome of NIMV in a group of elderly patients with acute hypercapnic ARF who had a DNI status. An overall number of 62 subjects (30 males, 32 females, mean age 81 ± 4.8 years, range 79–91 years) referred to our semi-intensive respiratory department were enrolled in the study. The underlying diseases were severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in 50/62 subjects, restrictive thoracic disorders in 7/62 subjects, and multiorgan failure in 5/62 subjects. Fifty-four/62 patients were successfully treated with NIMV while 2/62 did not respond to NIMV and were therefore submitted to ETI (one survived). Among NIMV-treated patients, death occurred in 6 patients after a mean of 9.9 days; the overall rate of NIMV failure was 12.9%. Negative prognostic factors for NIMV response proved to be: an older age, a low Glasgow Coma Score, a high APACHE score at admission, a high PaCO2 after 12 hours and a low pH both after 1 and 12 hours of NIMV. We conclude that elderly patients with acute hypercapnic ARF with a DNI status can be successfully treated by NIMV.
EFFECT OF MUSIC ON ANAEROBIC EXERCISE PERFORMANCE

For years, mostly the effects of music on cardiorespiratory exercise performance have been studied, but a few studies have examined the effect of music on anaerobic exercise. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of listening to music and its rhythm on anaerobic exercise: on power output, heart rate and the concentration of blood lactate. 28 male subjects were required to visit the laboratory on 6 occasions, each separated by 48 hours. Firstly, each subject performed the Running-based Anaerobic Sprint Test (RAST) under 3 conditions on separate days: while listening to “slow rhythm music”, “fast rhythm music” or “no music”. 48 hours after the subjects completed RAST under 3 conditions, Wingate Anaerobic Power (WAN) tests were performed under 3 music conditions. The order of the 3 conditions (slow music, fast music and no music) was selected randomly to prevent an order effect. Results showed no significant differences between 3 conditions in anaerobic power assessments, heart rate or blood lactate (p > 0.05). On the basis of these results it can be said that music cannot improve anaerobic performance. The type of music had no impact on power outputs during RAST and WAN exercise. As a conclusion, listening to music and its rhythm cannot enhance anaerobic performance and cannot change the physiological response to supramaximal exercise.
Modulation of Immunity and Inflammation by the Mineralocorticoid Receptor and Aldosterone

The mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) is a ligand dependent transcription factor. MR has been traditionally associated with the control of water and electrolyte homeostasis in order to keep blood pressure through aldosterone activation. However, there is growing evidence indicating that MR expression is not restricted to vascular and renal tissues, as it can be also expressed by cells of the immune system, where it responds to stimulation or antagonism, controlling immune cell function. On the other hand, aldosterone also has been associated with proinflammatory immune effects, such as the release of proinflammatory cytokines, generating oxidative stress and inducing fibrosis. The inflammatory participation of MR and aldosterone in the cardiovascular disease suggests an association with alterations in the immune system. Hypertensive patients show higher levels of proinflammatory mediators that can be modulated by MR antagonism. Although these proinflammatory properties have been observed in other autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases, the cellular and molecular mechanisms that mediate these effects remain unknown. Here we review and discuss the scientific work aimed at determining the immunological role of MR and aldosterone in humans, as well as animal models.
Temperature-salinity distribution in the northeastern Atlantic from ship and Argo vertical casts

Abstract. The present study defines new interpolation functions for hydrological data. These functions are applied to generate climatological maps of temperature–salinity distribution with a 25 m depth interval and a 30 km space interval (MEDTRANS data set). The data undergo rigorous initial data quality control, having passed several filtering procedures. The gridding is done on neutral density surfaces, which allows better representation of thermohaline fronts for the same gridding radius. The multi-pass Barnes optimum interpolation procedure with spatially variable size of the gridding window is used. The shape of the window accounts for the dominant along-isobath direction of water mass transport over steeply sloping topography. A local ratio of topographic to planetary β-effects is used to define the shape of the window as a function of the relative importance of the topographic influence. The N/f ratio is applied to account for the baroclinic compensation decay of the topographic influence on water mass transport with the distance from the bottom. The gridded fields are available at the website of the Centre of Oceanography of the University of Lisbon ( http://co.fc.ul.pt/en/data ). The MEDTRANS climatology gives more details of the distribution of water characteristics in the subtropical northeastern Atlantic than other alternative climatologies and is able to reproduce a number of dynamic features described in the literature: the acceleration in the meanders of the Azores current; the cyclonic gyre in the Gulf of Cadiz; and the splitting and separation of the Mediterranean Water (MW) outflow in two veins near the Gorringe and Galicia banks. Seasonal climatologies, computed for the warm (May–October) and cold (November–April) seasons, reveal stronger zonal extension of the upper ocean patterns during the warm season, as compared to the cold one.
Feeling existentially touched – A phenomenological notion of the well-being of elderly living in special housing accommodation from the perspective of care professionals

This article presents a phenomenological analysis of interview material, in which 12 care professionals in elderly care reflect on the elderly's well-being within the frame of special housing accommodation. The perspective of the care professionals is of special interest. The findings show that the well-being is characterized as the elderly's feelings of being existentially touched. The well-being is an existential experience of being acknowledged as a human being and is an approach that classifies the elderly's needs as those of having, loving, and being. The meaning of the phenomenon is elucidated by the constituents: (1) to feel the freedom of choice, (2) to feel pleasure, and (3) to feel closeness to someone or something. The findings contribute new understanding of well-being in the elderly care by its existential dimension of the well-being as “just being” and of doing things in order to experience meaningfulness. Accordingly, the well-being of the elderly as it is seen from the perspective of the care professionals involves both carers’ subjectivity and intersubjectivity between the care professional and the elderly. An implication for promoting elderly's well-being is to develop awareness of these existential dimensions.
Production Theory: Accounting for Firm Heterogeneity and Technical Change

The paper presents a new framework to assess firm level heterogeneity and to study the rate and direction of technical change. Building on the analysis of revealed short-run production functions by Hildenbrand (1981), we propose the (normalized) volume of the zonotope composed by vectors-firms in a narrowly defined industry as an indicator of inter-firm heterogeneity. Moreover, the angles that the main diagonal of the zonotope form with the axes provide a measure of the rates and directions of technical change over time. The proposed framework can easily account for n-inputs and m-outputs and, crucially, the measures of heterogeneity and technical change do not require many of the standard assumptions from production theory.
Socio-Cultural Differences in Social Exclusion

The main object of this research is to describe social exclusion in a comparative world perspective. Social exclusion is a main concern worldwide. Non-desirable social groups as neighbours are used as a proxy measure to answer three questions: who are the most excluded social groups, who are the excluders, and what are the main explanatory variables of social exclusion. Social exclusion, as a multidimensional phenomenon, is defined in relation to concepts such as stigma, discrimination, and prejudice. Social, economic, political and ideological-religious attitudes are used to construct the profile of the excluder. Social exclusion has been measured through three indexes of social exclusion, personal, group and total exclusion, since a main component analysis demonstrated that the degree of social exclusion varied depending on whether the excluded group was more or less based on personal decisions on one’s behaviour taken by the individual. Based on theory and previous research, four main variables have been tested to explain social exclusion: social position, exposure to information, post-materialist values and perception of security. But other explanatory variables were also added to the analysis. EVS and WVS databases (from 1981 to 2014) have been used, though most of the analysis has been based on the last WVS-6 th wave on 59 countries with a total of more than 85,000 interviews.
Hybrid Technique Plus Fast Frequency Sweep for the Efficient and Accurate Analysis of Substrate Integrated Waveguide Devices

In this paper, we adapt a novel mode-matching and method-of-moments hybrid technique to efficiently analyze substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) based devices. The hybrid technique is formulated in terms of a single equivalent current. This fact is used to include the emergent modal weights, i.e., the scattering parameters, as unknowns of the method-of-moments system of equations. In this case, it is relatively easy to develop fast frequency sweep schemes that can be used to highly accelerate the solution of an arbitrary device and, as a result, a very efficient technique is obtained. This technique can be applied to the analysis and design of SIW devices, and it is highly competitive when compared to other method-of-moments and mode-matching hybrid formulations or when compared to reference commercial software.
Overtourism, malestar social y turismofobia. Un debate controvertido

espanolEl articulo comparte algunas reflexiones sustraidas de los debates que recientemente han irrumpido en la propaganda politica, las agendas de los medios de comunicacion, las reivindicaciones de los movimientos sociales y las asociaciones vecinales. En primer lugar, se hace una reflexion partiendo de la hipotesis que el llamado overtourism tambien sinonimo de masificacion, saturacion o presion turistica, no es un fenomeno ni tan novedoso ni tan reciente. En segundo lugar, se observan algunos elementos que han despertado el malestar social y que han desencadenado el efecto amplificador de estos debates en diversos entornos turisticos. Por ultimo, se analizan algunas estrategias que se denominan como 5D (desestacionalizacion, descongestion, descentralizacion, diversificacion, deluxe tourism) que son promocionadas como estrategias para enfrentar la problematica analizada. Estas reflexiones nacen en el marco de una investigacion en la ciudad de Barcelona, que se alimenta prevalentemente de la etnografia y el analisis cuantitativo. EnglishThe paper shares some reflections of the debates emerging from the political propaganda, social movements and neighborhood associations complains. The paper takes into account the impact that overtourism, social unrest and tourismphobia have had on the media agenda. It is a reflection based on the hypothesis that these are neither a new nor recent phenomena. Beyond that, the research will focus on some elements that have awakened social unrest and have triggered the amplifying effect of these debates. Finally, the paper analyzes some strategies referred to as the 5D (deseasonalization, decongestion, decentralization, diversification, deluxe tourism), which are being promoted as propositions to analyzed the problem. These reflections emerge from ethnographic and quantitative research conducted in the city of Barcelona.
Extension-Based Semantics of Abstract Dialectical Frameworks

One of the most prominent tools for abstract argumentation is the Dung's framework, AF for short. It is accompanied by a variety of semantics including grounded, complete, preferred and stable. Although powerful, AFs have their shortcomings, which led to development of numerous enrichments. Among the most general ones are the abstract dialectical frameworks, also known as the ADFs. They make use of the so-called acceptance conditions to represent arbitrary relations. This level of abstraction brings not only new challenges, but also requires addressing existing problems in the field. One of the most controversial issues, recognized not only in argumentation, concerns the support cycles. In this paper we introduce a new method to ensure acyclicity of the chosen arguments and present a family of extension-based semantics built on it. We also continue our research on the semantics that permit cycles and fill in the gaps from the previous works. Moreover, we provide ADF versions of the properties known from the Dung setting. Finally, we also introduce a classification of the developed sub-semantics and relate them to the existing labeling-based approaches.
Rolling stones: The motion of a sphere down an inclined plane coated with a thin liquid film

A spherical bead deposited on a smooth tilted dry plane wall rolls down the slope under the uniform acceleration of gravity. We describe an analogous experiment conducted using a plane wall that is coated with a thin layer (of order 50–100 μm) of a viscous liquid. The steady motion of the sphere under gravity involves a combination of rotation and sliding. We examine the dependence of the experimentally observed steady translational and rotational speeds on the physical parameters in the system. In particular, the interplay between viscous forces and interfacial forces leads to nontrivial exponents for the scaling of the speeds with the characteristics of the sphere and the viscous liquid. The overhang situation, in which the sphere rolls down the underside of an inclined lubricated plane, is also examined. In this case, the steady motion is still observed for a certain range of angles and bead sizes; that is, the sphere does not always detach from the surface. The adhesive force arises dynamically from t.
Doing Politics: Discursivity, performativity and mediation in political discourse

This edited volume explores the discursive, performative and mediated dimensions of contemporary political discourse. The strengths of the volume are manifold: it contains cutting edge interdisciplinary research on political discourses by international authors (UK, USA, Italy, Germany, Austria, Denmark) in political science, discourse linguistic and social interaction research. The contributions represent a wide range of methodological approaches to political discourse, analyzing a broad variety of genres, some of which have been less analyzed to-date, for example Wikipedia articles in combination with their discussion pages or the interaction between politicians and voters in the constituency office of a British Member of Parliament. The contributions also focus on political discourses of high and relevant topicality, such as EU membership of Britain, populism, migration and xenophobia, terrorism and narratives in international relations.
Microbial Proteogenomics, Gaining Ground with the Avalanche of Genome Sequences

A consensus for defining the fundamental unit of biological diversity, the species, has not yet been reached for prokaryotes. Although high-throughput molecular tools are now available to assess the microbial diversity, estimating the total number of species of bacteria and archaea on Earth is still a challenge due to the huge amount of low- abundant species present in environmental samples. Ever since the first whole cellular genome sequenced, the one from Haemophilus influenzae in 1995, more than seven thousand complete genomes have been reported. The avalanche of genome sequences is resulting in an exceptional documentation of representatives of numerous taxa. While annotation of these genomes has gained in accuracy with new gene prediction tools, proteogenomics has proved to help in discovering new genes, identifying the true translational initiation codon of coding domain sequences and characterizing maturation events at the protein level such as signal peptide processing. Beside this structural annotation, proteogenomics can also give rise to significant insights into the function of proteins. Basically, proteogenomics consists in obtaining massive protein sequence data by means of large shotgun proteomic strategies and the use of high-throughput tandem mass spectrometry. Such experimental data is then used for improving genome annotation. Unexpected results such as the reversal of gene sequences in different bacteria or the use of non-canonical start codons for translation in Deinococcus species are only some of the numerous corrections documented so far. Today, the proteogenomic analysis of a given set of representatives that fully covered the tree of life would result in a better ground for accurate annotation of novel strains. This would improve comparative genomics studies and could be of help for assessing in what way closely-related species are differing.
Does Foreign Portfolio Investment Help In Bad Times? Firm-Level Evidence from the Asian Financial Crisis

Capital raised through foreign portfolio flows is seen as volatile and undesirable for countries with poorly regulated financial systems. An implication is that firms that finance themselves in part with such investment have worse outcomes during systemic liquidity crises. I investigate if this is true for East Asian firms that raised portfolio capital through foreign public issuances prior to the Asian financial crisis. Unlike previous studies, I control for selection bias using propensity score-weighted difference-in-difference estimation. I find that firms that had previously raised capital abroad had better crisis and post-crisis period outcomes than otherwise comparable local firms. Specifically, foreign equity-raising firms and foreign debt-raising firms with robust capital structures outperform comparable local firms. I present evidence that foreign equityraising firms were less financially constrained than similar local firms, while foreign debt-raising firms appear more financially constrained during and after the crisis. To highlight the liquidity constraints channel I show that crisis and post-crisis period borrowing ability, and consequently firm outcomes, were impaired by pre-crisis level and composition of firm debt. My analysis underscores that foreign issuances had positive value during the crisis and that firms whose growth plans were based on a mix of foreign equity and debt had better crisis-period outcomes than firms that relied primarily on debt. ∗I am extremely grateful to Barry Eichengreen, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Ulrike Malmendier and Jim Wilcox for their valuable advice and support throughout this project. I also acknowledge comments by participants at the International and Macroeconomics seminar, Finance Lunch and Development Lunch. E-mail: rachitag@econ.berkeley. edu. Address for correspondence: Department of Economics, University of California at Berkeley, 530 Evans Hall, Berkeley CA 94720. The most recent version of the paper can be found at http: //works.bepress. com/rachita_gullapalli. “Unlike FDI, portfolio investment is fully mobile at low cost. Because of their volatility, portfolio investments can cause drastic disruptions in private capital flows during crises which may then spill into the real sector since such investments are a significant source of productive resources, especially for developing countries” United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.1
N-Glycosylation of Acid-Sensing Ion Channel 1a Regulates Its Trafficking and Acidosis-Induced Spine Remodeling

Acid-sensing ion channel-1a (ASIC1a) is a potential therapeutic target for multiple neurological diseases. We studied here ASIC1a glycosylation and trafficking, two poorly understood processes pivotal in determining the functional outcome of an ion channel. We found that most ASIC1a in the mouse brain was fully glycosylated. Inhibiting glycosylation with tunicamycin reduced ASIC1a surface trafficking, dendritic targeting, and acid-activated current density. N-glycosylation of the two glycosylation sites, Asn393 and Asn366, has differential effects on ASIC1a biogenesis. Maturation of Asn393 increased ASIC1a surface and dendritic trafficking, pH sensitivity, and current density. In contrast, glycosylation of Asn366 was dispensable for ASIC1a function and may be a rate-limiting step in ASIC1a biogenesis. In addition, we revealed that acidosis reduced the density and length of dendritic spines in a time- and ASIC1a-dependent manner. ASIC1a N366Q, which showed increased glycosylation and dendritic targeting, potentiated acidosis-induced spine loss. Conversely, ASIC1a N393Q, which had diminished dendritic targeting and inhibited ASIC1a current dominant-negatively, had the opposite effect. These data tie N-glycosylation of ASIC1a with its trafficking. More importantly, by revealing a site-specific effect of acidosis on dendritic spines, our findings suggest that these processes have an important role in regulating synaptic plasticity and determining long-term consequences in diseases that generate acidosis.