Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transcranial magnetic stimulation and preparation of visually-guided reaching movements

To better define the neural networks related to preparation of reaching, we applied transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to the lateral parietal and frontal cortex. TMS did not evoke effects closely related to preparation of reaching, suggesting that neural networks already identified by our group are not larger than previously thought. We also replicated previous TMS/EEG data by applying TMS to the parietal cortex: new analyses were performed to better support reliability of already reported findings (Zanon et al., 2010; Brain Topography 22, 307–317). We showed the existence of neural circuits ranging from posterior to frontal regions of the brain after the stimulation of parietal cortex, supporting the idea of strong connections among these areas and suggesting their possible temporal dynamic. Connection with ventral stream was confirmed. The present work helps to define those areas which are involved in preparation of natural reaching in humans. They correspond to parieto-occipital, parietal and premotor medial regions of the left hemisphere, i.e., the contralateral one with respect to the moving hand, as suggested by previous studies. Behavioral data support the existence of a discrete stream involved in reaching. Besides the serial flow of activation from posterior to anterior direction, a parallel elaboration of information among parietal and premotor areas seems also to exist. Present cortico-cortical interactions (TMS/EEG experiment) show propagation of activity to frontal, temporal, parietal and more posterior regions, exhibiting distributed communication among various areas in the brain. The neural system highlighted by TMS/EEG experiments is wider with respect to the one disclosed by the TMS behavioral approach. Further studies are needed to unravel this paucity of overlap. Moreover, the understanding of these mechanisms is crucial for the comprehension of response inhibition and changes in prepared actions, which are common behaviors in everyday life.
The Influence of Tractor-Seat Height above the Ground on Lateral Vibrations

Farmers experience whole-body vibrations when they drive tractors. Among the various factors that influence the vibrations to which the driver is exposed are terrain roughness, tractor speed, tire type and pressure, rear axle width, and tractor seat height above the ground. In this paper the influence of tractor seat height above the ground on the lateral vibrations to which the tractor driver is exposed is studied by means of a geometrical and an experimental analysis. Both analyses show that: (i) lateral vibrations experienced by a tractor driver increase linearly with tractor-seat height above the ground; (ii) lateral vibrations to which the tractor driver is exposed can equal or exceed vertical vibrations; (iii) in medium-size tractors, a feasible 30 cm reduction in the height of the tractor seat, which represents only 15% of its current height, will reduce the lateral vibrations by around 20%; and (iv) vertical vibrations are scarcely influenced by tractor-seat height above the ground. The results suggest that manufacturers could increase the comfort of tractors by lowering tractor-seat height above the ground, which will reduce lateral vibrations.
Fast Mode Decision for Depth Video Coding Using H.264/MVC

Multi-view video plus depth (MVD) is presented as one of 3D video formats. With color and depth videos, virtual views can be synthesized using depth image based rendering. Due to high complexity of 3D video coding, reduction of the time complexity of depth video coding is essential to success of MVD. Thus, this paper proposes a fast mode decision scheme for depth video coding, aiming at speeding up both mode decision and synthesized-view distortion estimation simultaneously. The proposed scheme includes two stages. First at all, features of color and depth videos are referred to reduce the candidates for mode decision with high prediction accuracy and negligible degradation of rate-distortion (RD) performance. For a depth macroblock (MB) having the co-located MB with high complexity of vertical texture in the reconstructed color video, the second stage further selects the optimal mode using the synthesized-view distortion directed RD cost to reduce the synthesized-view distortion. For fast estimation of synthesized-view distortions, a mathematical approximation of a previous synthesized-view distortion function that mimics view rendering is proposed. Experimental results conducted by JMVC 6.0. 3, the reference software of H.264/MVC, show that the proposed scheme achieves significant time reduction with negligible RD performance degradation.
Factors that promote or inhibit the implementation of e-health systems: an explanatory systematic review.

OBJECTIVE To systematically review the literature on the implementation of e-health to identify: (i) barriers and facilitators to e-health implementation, and (ii) outstanding gaps in research on the subject. METHODS MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PSYCINFO and the Cochrane Library were searched for reviews published between 1 January 1995 and 17 March 2009. Studies had to be systematic reviews, narrative reviews, qualitative metasyntheses or meta-ethnographies of e-health implementation. Abstracts and papers were double screened and data were extracted on country of origin; e-health domain; publication date; aims and methods; databases searched; inclusion and exclusion criteria and number of papers included. Data were analysed qualitatively using normalization process theory as an explanatory coding framework. FINDINGS Inclusion criteria were met by 37 papers; 20 had been published between 1995 and 2007 and 17 between 2008 and 2009. Methodological quality was poor: 19 papers did not specify the inclusion and exclusion criteria and 13 did not indicate the precise number of articles screened. The use of normalization process theory as a conceptual framework revealed that relatively little attention was paid to: (i) work directed at making sense of e-health systems, specifying their purposes and benefits, establishing their value to users and planning their implementation; (ii) factors promoting or inhibiting engagement and participation; (iii) effects on roles and responsibilities; (iv) risk management, and (v) ways in which implementation processes might be reconfigured by user-produced knowledge. CONCLUSION The published literature focused on organizational issues, neglecting the wider social framework that must be considered when introducing new technologies.
Non-coding RNA regulation in pathogenic bacteria located inside eukaryotic cells

Intracellular bacterial pathogens have evolved distinct lifestyles inside eukaryotic cells. Some pathogens coexist with the infected cell in an obligate intracellular state, whereas others transit between the extracellular and intracellular environment. Adaptation to these intracellular lifestyles is regulated in both space and time. Non-coding small RNAs (sRNAs) are post-transcriptional regulatory molecules that fine-tune important processes in bacterial physiology including cell envelope architecture, intermediate metabolism, bacterial communication, biofilm formation, and virulence. Recent studies have shown production of defined sRNA species by intracellular bacteria located inside eukaryotic cells. The molecules targeted by these sRNAs and their expression dynamics along the intracellular infection cycle remain, however, poorly characterized. Technical difficulties linked to the isolation of “intact” intracellular bacteria from infected host cells might explain why sRNA regulation in these specialized pathogens is still a largely unexplored field. Transition from the extracellular to the intracellular lifestyle provides an ideal scenario in which regulatory sRNAs are intended to participate; so much work must be done in this direction. This review focuses on sRNAs expressed by intracellular bacterial pathogens during the infection of eukaryotic cells, strategies used with these pathogens to identify sRNAs required for virulence, and the experimental technical challenges associated to this type of studies. We also discuss varied techniques for their potential application to study RNA regulation in intracellular bacterial infections.
The Social Shaping of Fixed and Mobile Networks : A Historical Comparison

2 The Ancient Greeks dreamt of a device that would enable people to talk over long distances without the need for an interlocutor. They called such a device a 'telephone'. The idea of direct communication over electric wire was then introduced with the arrival of Morse's Telegraph in 1838. However, even when Bell finally invented the Electric Speaking Telephone in 1876, it still took some time to find a common use for the device. Even though its invention had been anticipated for a long time, it arrived without a clear and agreed purpose and was received simply as a curiosity. This monologue presents the history of society's adoption of the fixed-line telephone, and the corresponding adoption of the mobile telephone. It highlights the differences and similarities of these histories, and poses some interesting questions for today's mobile industry. This document presents a comparison between the social role of the landline telephone from the 1880s till World War II and the mobile telephone nowadays. Two papers analyse the social map of telephone uses in both the early days of the landline telephones and the mobile phone today. First, we show the similarities and differences concerning the launch and uses of both devices. In both cases the issue of the telephone as a broadcasting service arises. Another topic is who were the early adopters and which were the appropriate uses according to the industry. The considerations of the industry about the right users and uses affect the development of the market. Also presented is the impact of the telephone on the household and work management. In addition to its functionality the telephone and its use presents a " fun " side-it is an " electronic toy ". The comparison also exposes the social skills created by the use of the telephone, the health and social fears associated with the use of the devices, and how telephones are related to the sustaining of community links and social networks. The interest of the comparison is to give an insight into what happens when new services and new devices enter a marketplace. The evolution of fixed line telephones, the practices of the users, and the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of the industry can provide valuable information concerning the evolution of mobile telephones and the launch of new services. Since the 1880s, the telephone has been a carrier of point-to-point messages between individuals and a medium …
Judgement of countability and plural marking in English by native and non-native English speakers

ABSTRACT Learning whether English nouns are countable or not is a source of great difficulty for many ESL/EFL learners. In the present study, a grammaticality judgement task comprised of a range of nouns representative of the different facets of the countability system in English was distributed to 82 native speakers of English (NSs) and 98 non-native speakers (NNSs). Participant responses provided both quantitative and qualitative data for analysis. The findings indicate that there are significant differences between the judgements made by the NSs and NNSs both quantitatively and qualitatively. It is also evident from the data that the judgements made by the NNSs reveal poor awareness of countability and plural marking in English, an over-reliance on noun countability preferences (i.e. rigidly memorising whether a particular noun is countable or uncountable), and a certain illogicality in their explanations. The article culminates with a brief discussion of some pedagogical implications in relation to countability and plural marking.
Enhancing the Adhesive Strength of a Plywood Adhesive Developed from Hydrolyzed Specified Risk Materials

The current production of wood composites relies mostly on formaldehyde-based adhesives such as urea formaldehyde (UF) and phenol formaldehyde (PF) resins. As these resins are produced from non-renewable resources, and there are some ongoing issues with possible health hazard due to formaldehyde emission from such products, the purpose of this research was to develop a formaldehyde-free plywood adhesive utilizing waste protein as a renewable feedstock. The feedstock for this work was specified risk material (SRM), which is currently being disposed of either by incineration or by landfilling. In this report, we describe a technology for utilization of SRM for the development of an environmentally friendly plywood adhesive. SRM was thermally hydrolyzed using a Canadian government-approved protocol, and the peptides were recovered from the hydrolyzate. The recovered peptides were chemically crosslinked with polyamidoamine-epichlorohydrin (PAE) resin to develop an adhesive system for bonding of plywood specimens. The effects of crosslinking time, peptides/crosslinking agent ratio, and temperature of hot pressing of plywood specimens on the strength of formulated adhesives were investigated. Formulations containing as much as 78% (wt/wt) peptides met the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) specifications of minimum dry and soaked shear strength requirement for UF resin type adhesives. Under the optimum conditions tested, the peptides–PAE resin-based formulations resulted in plywood specimens having comparable dry as well as soaked shear strength to that of commercial PF resin.
The Intracellular Loop between Domains I and II of the B-Type Calcium Channel Confers Aspects of G-Protein Sensitivity to the E-Type Calcium Channel

Neuronal voltage-dependent calcium channels undergo inhibitory modulation by G-protein activation, generally involving both kinetic slowing and steady-state inhibition. We have shown previously that the β-subunit of neuronal calcium channels plays an important role in this process, because when it is absent, greater receptor-mediated inhibition is observed (Campbell et al., 1995b). We therefore hypothesized that the calcium channel β-subunits normally may occlude G-protein-mediated inhibition. Calcium channel β-subunits bind to the cytoplasmic loop between transmembrane domains I and II of the α1-subunits (Pragnell et al., 1994). We have examined the hypothesis that this loop is involved in G-protein-mediated inhibition by making chimeras containing the I–II loop of α1B or α1A inserted into α1E (α1EBE and α1EAE, respectively). This strategy was adopted because α1B (the molecular counterpart of N-type channels) and, to a lesser extent, α1A (P/Q-type) are G-protein-modulated, whereas this has not been observed to any great extent for α1E. Although α1B, coexpressed with α2-δ and β1b transiently expressed in COS-7 cells, showed both kinetic slowing and steady-state inhibition when recorded with GTPγS in the patch pipette, both of which were reversed with a depolarizing prepulse, the chimera α1EBE (and, to a smaller extent, α1EAE) showed only kinetic slowing in the presence of GTPγS, and this also was reversed by a depolarizing prepulse. These results indicate that the I–II loop may be the molecular substrate of kinetic slowing but that the steady-state inhibition shown by α1B may involve a separate site on this calcium channel.
Measuring Fundamental Parameters of Substellar Objects. I. Surface Gravities

We present an analysis of high-resolution optical spectra for a sample of very young, mid- to late-M, low-mass stellar and substellar objects: 11 in the Upper Scorpius association, and two (GG Tau Ba and Bb) in the Taurus star-forming region. Effective temperatures and surface gravities are derived from a multiple-feature spectral analysis using TiO, Na I, and K I, through comparison with the latest synthetic spectra. We show that these spectral diagnostics complement each other, removing degeneracies with temperature and gravity in the behavior of each. In combination, they allow us to determine temperature to within 50 K and gravity to within 0.25 dex, in very cool young objects. Our high-resolution spectral analysis does not require extinction estimates. Moreover, it yields temperatures and gravities independent of theoretical evolutionary models (although our estimates do depend on the synthetic spectral modeling). We find that our gravities for most of the sample agree remarkably well with the isochrone predictions for the likely cluster ages. However, discrepancies appear in our coolest targets: these appear to have significantly lower gravity (by up to 0.75 dex) than our hotter objects, even though our entire sample covers a relatively narrow range in effective temperature (~300 K). This drop in gravity is also implied by intercomparisons of the data alone, without recourse to synthetic spectra. We consider, and argue against, dust opacity, cool stellar spots, or metallicity differences leading to the observed spectral effects; a real decline in gravity is strongly indicated. Such gravity variations are contrary to the predictions of the evolutionary tracks, causing improbably low ages to be inferred from the tracks for our coolest targets. Through a simple consideration of contraction timescales, we quantify the age errors introduced into the tracks through the particular choice of initial conditions and demonstrate that they can be significant for low-mass objects that are only a few megayears old. However, we also find that these errors appear insufficient to explain the magnitude of the age offsets in our lowest gravity targets. We venture that this apparent age offset may arise from evolutionary model uncertainties related to accretion, deuterium burning and/or convection effects. Finally, when combined with photometry and distance information, our technique for deriving surface gravities and effective temperatures provides a way of obtaining masses and radii for substellar objects independent of evolutionary models; radius and mass determinations are presented in Paper II.
Dynamical separation of spherical bodies in supersonic flow

Abstract An experimental and computational investigation of the unsteady separation behaviour of two spheres in Mach-4 flow is carried out. The spherical bodies, initially contiguous, are released with negligible relative velocity and thereafter fly freely according to the aerodynamic forces experienced. In experiments performed in a supersonic Ludwieg tube, nylon spheres are initially suspended in the test section by weak threads which are detached by the arrival of the flow. The subsequent sphere motions and unsteady flow structures are recorded using high-speed (13 kHz) focused shadowgraphy. The qualitative separation behaviour and the final lateral velocity of the smaller sphere are found to vary strongly with both the radius ratio and the initial alignment angle of the two spheres. More disparate radii and initial configurations in which the smaller sphere centre lies downstream of the larger sphere centre each increases the tendency for the smaller sphere to be entrained within the flow region bounded by the bow shock of the larger body, rather than expelled from this region. At a critical angle for a given radius ratio (or a critical radius ratio for a given angle), transition from entrainment to expulsion occurs; at this critical value, the final lateral velocity is close to maximum due to the same ‘surfing’ effect noted by Laurence & Deiterding (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 676, 2011, pp. 396–431) at hypersonic Mach numbers. A visualization-based tracking algorithm is used to provide quantitative comparisons between the experiments and high-resolution inviscid numerical simulations, with generally favourable agreement.
MOOCs, disruptive innovation and the future of higher education: A conceptual analysis

Abstract The potential influence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on higher education institutions is much discussed and debated, with some arguing that MOOCs are a disruptive innovation that will radically change existing models of higher education. However, analyses of whether and how MOOCs might disrupt higher education models are relatively scarce. This paper analyses whether MOOCs should be considered a disruptive innovation according to the concept’s defining criteria. It compares characteristics of disruptive innovation with current developments in MOOCs, suggesting three perspectives – performance, benefits, and market – that can be used as a lens and analytic framework to explore and evaluate current practice. The findings indicate that MOOCs do not match all the characteristics of disruptive innovation as they are commonly identified in the literature. However, MOOCs may be a sustaining innovation that establishes new markets for learners who are not served by universities.
WISH-RIBS: Broadcast Scheduling and Opportunistic Failure Recovery in Wireless Networks

Broadcasting is an elementary problem in wireless networks in general, and energy-efficient solutions are important to resource-limited wireless sensor networks. This paper presents two contributions: (1) an (off-line) algorithm to produce an efficient wireless broadcast schedule, and (2) an (on-line) opportunistic recovery strategy from link failures that might occur during the execution of the broadcast protocol. In simulations we find that the proposed scheduling algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art solutions and that the link failure recovery strategy offers improved broadcast resilience across all studied scheduling strategies.
An Efficient On-Chip Test Generation Scheme Based on Programmable and Multiple Twisted-Ring Counters

Twisted-ring-counters (TRCs) have been used as built-in test pattern generators for high-performance circuits due to their small area overhead, low performance impact and simple control circuitry. However, previous work based on a single, fixed-order TRC often requires long test time to achieve high fault coverage and large storage space to store required control data and TRC seeds. In this paper, a novel programmable multiple-TRC-based on-chip test generation scheme is proposed to minimize both the required test time and test data volume. The scan path of a circuit under test is divided into multiple equal-length scan segments, each converted to a small-size TRC controlled by a programmable control logic unit. An efficient algorithm to determine the required seeds and the control vectors is developed. Experimental results on ISCAS'89, ITC'99 and IWLS'05 benchmark circuits show that, on average, the proposed scheme using only a single programmable TRC design can achieve 35.58%-98.73% reductions on the number of test application cycles with smaller storage data volume compared with previous work. When using more programmable TRC designs, 83.60%-99.59% reductions can be achieved with only slight increase on test data volume.