Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reliability of isokinetic measures

Isokinetic resistance is frequently used to strength profile healthy athletes and to evaluate the status of injured athletes involved in rehabilitation programs. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the reliability of peak torque, torque acceleration energy, endurance ratio, average power, and total work measures obtained with a Cybex isokinetic dynamometer. Fifteen college students underwent a test - retest procedure for right and left knee flexion and extension, shoulder flexion and extension, and shoulder internal and external rotation. Highest reliability coefficients were found for peak torque, torque acceleration energy, average power, and total work measures. Lower coefficients were observed for the endurance ratio measure. Higher reliability was generally observed for the knee extension/ flexion test procedure than for the shoulder tests.
Non-Linear Predictors based on the Functionally Expanded Neural Networks for Speech Feature Extraction

In this paper we focus on the design of the feature extractor stage of the speech recognition system which aims to compute optimal vectors for the next phoneme classification stage. We propose a new non-linear feature extraction method based on the linear-in-parameters functionally expanded neural network (FENN) model. The main idea is to design an improved and flexible feature extractor which can effectively account for some of the significant non-linear phenomena usually observed in the speech production process. The effectiveness of the proposed method is assessed on phoneme classification tasks. Specifically, we evaluate the performances on the telephone quality NTIMIT database, focusing the investigations on highly confusable phonemes such as front vowels: /ih/, /ey/, /eh/, /ae/. The results are compared with other widely used coding methods namely, the linear predictive coding (LPC) and the Mel frequency cepstral coding (MFCC). The experiments show a relative improvement in the rates through the use of our proposed non-linear feature extractor technique
Impacts of Pretransplant Infections on Clinical Outcomes of Patients with Acute-On-Chronic Liver Failure Who Received Living-Donor Liver Transplantation

Background Liver transplantation is the only therapeutic modality for patients with acute-on chronic liver failure (ACLF). These patients are at high risk for bacterial infections while awaiting transplantation. The aim of this study was to elucidate whether an adequately treated bacterial infection influences the outcomes after transplantation in this patient population. Methodology/Principal Findings 54 recipients (median age, 49.5 years [range, 22–60]) of adult-to-adult living donor liver transplant (LDLT) for ACLF were categorized as those with pretransplant infection (Group 1, n = 34) or without pretransplant infection (Group 2, n = 20) for retrospective analyses. With the exception of a higher male-female ratio (P = 0.046) and longer length of pretransplant hospital stay (P = 0.026) in Group 1, similar demographic, laboratory and clinical features were found in both groups. Patients in Group 1 (totally 42 pretransplant infection episodes) were adequately treated with effective antibiotic(s) before receiving LDLT. All included patients were followed up until one year after transplantation or death. Sixty-one posttransplant infection episodes were found in an overall of 44 ACLF patients (27 in Group 1 vs. 15 in Group 2; P = 0.352). Frequently encountered posttransplant infections were intraabdominal infection, pneumonia, bloodstream infection and urinary tract infection. Two patients died in each group (P = 0.622). No significant difference was found in the length of posttransplant ICU stay, and in one-year survival, graft rejection, and posttransplant infection rate between both groups. The longer overall hospital stay (mean day, 89.0 vs. 65.5, P = 0.024) found in Group 1 resulted from a longer pretransplant hospital stay receiving treatment for pretransplant infection(s) and/or awaiting transplantation. Conclusions These data suggested that an adequately treated pretransplant infection do not pose a significant risk for clinical outcomes including posttransplant fatality in recipients in adult-to-adult LDLT for ACLF.
NAWMS: nonintrusive autonomous water monitoring system

Water is nature's most precious resource and growing demand is pushing fresh water supplies to the brink of non-renewability. New technological and social initiatives that enhance conservation and reduce waste are needed. Providing consumers with fine-grained real-time information has yielded benefits in conservation of power and gasoline. Extending this philosophy to water conservation, we introduce a novel water monitoring system, NAWMS, that similarly empowers users. The goal of our work is to furnish users with an easy-to-install self-calibrating system that provides information on when, where, and how much water they are using. The system uses wireless vibration sensors attached to pipes and, thus, neither plumbing nor special expertise is necessary for its installation. By implementing a non-intrusive, autonomous, and adaptive system using commodity hardware, we believe it is cost-effective and widely deployable. NAWMS makes use of the existing household water flow meter, which is considered accurate, but lacks spatial granularity, and adds vibration sensors on individual water pipes to estimate the water flow to each individual outlet. Compensating for manufacturing, installation, and material variabilities requires calibration of these low cost sensors to achieve a reasonable level of accuracy. We have devised an adaptive auto-calibration procedure, which attempts to solve a two phase linear programming and mixed linear geometric programming problem. We show through experiments on a three pipe testbed that such a system is indeed feasible and adapts well to minimize error in the water usage estimate. We report an accuracy, over likely domestic flow-rate scenarios, with long-term stability and a mean absolute error of 7%.
Entrainment of vastus medialis complex activity differs between genders

Introduction: That the vastus medialis oblique (VMO) is a functional unit of the vastus medialis (VM) is disputed. Delayed VMO activation predicts patellofemoral pain, which has higher rates in women. Methods: Single MUs and surface electromyogram (EMG) were collected from the VMO and VM of 9 men and 9 women. Men were tested once; women were tested during 5 menstrual phases. Coherence was assessed for motor unit (MU) firings within and between the VM and VMO using multilevel logistic models to determine statistical significance. Results: Compared with women, men have 741% (MU pairs) and 256% (MU‐EMG pairs) greater odds of common drive (0–5 Hz) coherent oscillations. MU pairs from the VMO and the dual VM/VMO complex have 228% and 212% greater odds of coherent oscillations in the beta band (15–35 Hz) compared with VM pairs. Conclusions: The VM and VMO are neurologically different muscles; control of the VM complex is sexually dimorphic. Muscle Nerve 53: 633–640, 2016
Dictating the Risk: Experimental Evidence on Giving in Risky Environments

We study if and how social preferences extend to risky environments. We provide experimental evidence from different versions of dictator games with risky outcomes and establish that preferences that are exclusively based on ex post or on ex ante comparisons cannot generate the observed behavioral patterns. The more money decision-makers transfer in the standard dictator game, the more likely they are to equalize payoff chances under risk. Risk to the recipient does, however, generally decrease the transferred amount. Ultimately, a utility function with a combination of ex post and ex ante fairness concerns may best describe behavior. (JEL C72, D63, D64, D81)
A Test for the Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates (APACS): Normative Data and Psychometric Properties

The Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates (APACS) test is a new tool to evaluate pragmatic abilities in clinical populations with acquired communicative deficits, ranging from schizophrenia to neurodegenerative diseases. APACS focuses on two main domains, namely discourse and non-literal language, combining traditional tasks with refined linguistic materials in Italian, in a unified framework inspired by language pragmatics. The test includes six tasks (Interview, Description, Narratives, Figurative Language 1, Humor, Figurative Language 2) and three composite scores (Pragmatic Productions, Pragmatic Comprehension, APACS Total). Psychometric properties and normative data were computed on a sample of 119 healthy participants representative of the general population. The analysis revealed acceptable internal consistency and good test-retest reliability for almost every APACS task, suggesting that items are coherent and performance is consistent over time. Factor analysis supports the validity of the test, revealing two factors possibly related to different facets and substrates of the pragmatic competence. Finally, excellent match between APACS items and scores and the pragmatic constructs measured in the test was evidenced by experts' evaluation of content validity. The performance on APACS showed a general effect of demographic variables, with a negative effect of age and a positive effect of education. The norms were calculated by means of state-of-the-art regression methods. Overall, APACS is a valuable tool for the assessment of pragmatic deficits in verbal communication. The short duration and easiness of administration make the test especially suitable to use in clinical settings. In presenting APACS, we also aim at promoting the inclusion of pragmatics in the assessment practice, as a relevant dimension in defining the patient's cognitive profile, given its vital role for communication and social interaction in daily life. The combined use of APACS with other neuropsychological tests could also improve our understanding of the cognitive substrates of pragmatic abilities and their breakdown.
LEFT LATERALIZATION IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY: AN fMRI STUDY USING THE EXPERT ARCHIVAL PARADIGM

In brain-imaging and behavioral research, studies of autobiographical memory have higher ecological validity than controlled laboratory memory studies. However, they also have less controllability over the variables investigated. This article presents a novel technique—the expert archival paradigm—that increases controllability while maintaining ecological validity. Stimuli were created from games played by two international-level chess masters. The two players were asked to perform a memory task with stimuli generated from their own games and stimuli generated from other players’ games while they were scanned using fMRI. The study found a left lateralized pattern of brain activity that was very similar in both masters. The brain areas activated were the left temporo-parietal junction and left frontal areas. The expert archival paradigm has the advantage of not requiring an interview to assess the participants’ autobiographical memories, and affords the possibility of measuring their accuracy of remembering as well as their brain activity related to remote and recent memories. It can also be used in any field of expertise, including arts, sciences, and sports, in which archival data are available.
Awareness and Attitude Toward Genetic Counselling Services in South of Iran

Background: Genetic counseling is the process of guidance in which people understand and adjust to the psychological, clinical, and familial implications of genetic impacts on disease. As a preventive strategy, genetic counselling has an important role in increasing families’ knowledge and awareness about their condition. Objectives: The present study was conducted to assess knowledge and attitude of couples who referred for premarital laboratory testing in the south of Iran. Methods: Onehundredandtwenty-ﬁvecoupleswererecruitedrandomlyfromthepremaritalreferralstotheBandarAbbasHealth Center in Hormozgan province, south of Iran. The questionnaire has been considered by ﬁve experts in the ﬁeld. Context validity indexhasbeencalculatedas0.89. Allquestionnaireswereﬁlledbyeachpartner. Thecollecteddatawerestatisticallyanalyzedusing statistical package for social sciences (SPSS 16.0). Results: The total mean age was 26.7 years which among them 125 couples, 41.6% were consanguineous. There were signiﬁcant relations between education, monthly income, job, religious beliefs and history of a genetic disorders in the family members and some aspects of awareness and attitude toward genetic counselling (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Ourpresentstudyshowedtheimpactof socioeconomicstatusonattitudetowardgeneticcounsellinginmarriagede-cisionandco-operationforgeneticcounsellinginmultiplesecessions. Basedonourﬁndingwesuggestimprovementof awareness toward genetic counselling. An educational curriculum can be designed at the school and undergraduate level besides national media in all aspects especially premarital and fertility decisions.
The Deuterium Abundance Towards Q1937-1009

We present a new measurement of the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio (D/H) in the Lyman limit absorption system at $z = 3.572$ towards Q1937--1009. We use an improved method to measure D/H in QSO absorption systems, which includes extra parameters to treat the continuum uncertainties, a variety of new absorption models which allow for undetected velocity structure, and the improved measurement of the total hydrogen column density by Burles & Tytler (1997a). We find that all models, including contamination, give an upper limit D/H $< 3.9 \times 10^{-5}$ (95 % confidence). Both this and previous analyses find contamination to be unlikely in this absorption system, A $\chi^2$ analysis in models without contamination gives D/H $= 3.3 \pm 0.3 \times 10^{-5}$ (67% confidence), which is higher but consistent with the earlier results of Tytler et al. (1996), and a second measurement of D/H towards Q1009+2956 (Burles & Tytler 1997). With calculations of standard big bang nucleosynthesis (SBBN) and the assumption that this measurement of D/H is representative of the primordial value, we find a high baryon-to-photon ratio, $\eta = 5.3 \pm 0.4 \times 10^{-10}$. This is consistent with primordial abundance determinations of $^4$He in H II regions (Izotov et al. 1997) and $^7$Li in the atmospheres of warm metal-poor population II stars (Bonifacio & Molaro 1997). We find a high value for the present-day baryon density, $\Omega_b h^2 = 0.0193 \pm 0.0014$, which is consistent with other inventories of baryonic matter, from low to high redshift: clusters of galaxies, the Lyman alpha forest & the Cosmic Microwave Background.
Morphologic Patterns of Lip Prints in a Sample of Croatian Population.

PURPOSE Cheiloscopy deals with the study of elevations and depressions which form a characteristic pattern on the external surface of the lips. Lip grooves are considered to be unique and analogous to the fingerprint. The aim of the research was to determine the type of grooves on healthy lips of men and women using lip prints in a sample of Croatian population, to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between men and women in the types of grooves and to determine whether there are any differences between male and female lip prints. MATERIAL AND METHODS A randomly selected sample of Croatian population consisted of 40 male and 50 female subjects. The samples of lip grooves were classified according to Tsuchihashi classification. RESULTS The research has shown that most women in Croatia belong to Type 2 (40.0%), followed by Type 1 (34.0%), Type 3 (12.0%), Type 4 (8.0%), and Type 5 (6.0%) which is of less importance. Most Croatian men belong to Type 3 (35.0%) and Type 2 (25.0%). A small number of men belong to Type 4 (15.0%), Type 5 (12.5%) and Type1 (12.5%). CONCLUSION There was a statistically significant difference between men and women regarding the types of lip grooves.
Functional Dynamics of the Gut Microbiome in Elderly People during Probiotic Consumption

ABSTRACT A mechanistic understanding of the purported health benefits conferred by consumption of probiotic bacteria has been limited by our knowledge of the resident gut microbiota and its interaction with the host. Here, we detail the impact of a single-organism probiotic, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG ATCC 53103 (LGG), on the structure and functional dynamics (gene expression) of the gut microbiota in a study of 12 healthy individuals, 65 to 80 years old. The analysis revealed that while the overall community composition was stable as assessed by 16S rRNA profiling, the transcriptional response of the gut microbiota was modulated by probiotic treatment. Comparison of transcriptional profiles based on taxonomic composition yielded three distinct transcriptome groups that displayed considerable differences in functional dynamics. The transcriptional profile of LGG in vivo was remarkably concordant across study subjects despite the considerable interindividual nature of the gut microbiota. However, we identified genes involved in flagellar motility, chemotaxis, and adhesion from Bifidobacterium and the dominant butyrate producers Roseburia and Eubacterium whose expression was increased during probiotic consumption, suggesting that LGG may promote interactions between key constituents of the microbiota and the host epithelium. These results provide evidence for the discrete functional effects imparted by a specific single-organism probiotic and challenge the prevailing notion that probiotics substantially modify the resident microbiota within nondiseased individuals in an appreciable fashion. IMPORTANCE Probiotic bacteria have been used for over a century to promote digestive health. Many individuals report that probiotics alleviate a number of digestive issues, yet little evidence links how probiotic microbes influence human health. Here, we show how the resident microbes that inhabit the healthy human gut respond to a probiotic. The well-studied probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG ATCC 53103 (LGG) was administered in a clinical trial, and a suite of measurements of the resident microbes were taken to evaluate potential changes over the course of probiotic consumption. We found that LGG transiently enriches for functions to potentially promote anti-inflammatory pathways in the resident microbes. Probiotic bacteria have been used for over a century to promote digestive health. Many individuals report that probiotics alleviate a number of digestive issues, yet little evidence links how probiotic microbes influence human health. Here, we show how the resident microbes that inhabit the healthy human gut respond to a probiotic. The well-studied probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG ATCC 53103 (LGG) was administered in a clinical trial, and a suite of measurements of the resident microbes were taken to evaluate potential changes over the course of probiotic consumption. We found that LGG transiently enriches for functions to potentially promote anti-inflammatory pathways in the resident microbes.
The structure of cluster knowledge networks: uneven and selective, not pervasive and collective

This study focuses on the relationship between industrial clustering and innovation. It contributes to this literature by showing two empirical properties of the cluster learning process: first, that the structure of the knowledge network in a cluster is related with the heterogeneous distribution of firm knowledge bases and, second, that business interactions and knowledge flows are not highly co-occurring phenomena. In particular, this paper highlights how the heterogeneity of firms’ knowledge bases generates uneven distribution of knowledge and selective inter-firm learning. This study has been based on empirical evidence collected at firm level in three wine clusters in Italy and Chile. Methods of social network analysis have been applied to process the data.
2 Car talk , car listen

Among age-old speculations about the origins of human language is a suggestion that use of the oral channel evolved to leave the hands and the rest of the body free for other activities. Whether this is true or not, there are few human activities that proceed unaccompanied by talking or listening. With the scope of everyday activities expanding to include some that are life-threatening unless performed with sufficient care, questions about the demands of language use on attention to other things have assumed new priority. This new priority runs up against an old, unresolved, but theoretically central psycholinguistic debate over how language production and language comprehension are related to each other. The terms of this relationship involve shared or divided components of linguistic knowledge and shared or divided resources of perceptual, motor, and cognitive skill. Our question in this chapter is how production and comprehension differ in their demands on attention or working memory (Baddeley, 2003), as reflected in how much production and comprehension interfere with other tasks. At bottom, we are interested in whether talking is harder than listening. The automatic answer to this question seems to be " of course ". Talking involves retrieving linguistic information from memory and assembling utterances in working memory, using only information from the intended meaning; listening benefits from specific form cues and accompanying recognition processes. The retrieval challenges for speakers are imposing: The estimated vocabulary of an educated English speaker is over 45,000 words. Failures of retrieval are common enough to have inspired a famous observation of William James (1890) about tip-of-the-tongue states and a large research literature on the phenomenon, beginning with Brown and McNeill (1966). Assembling utterances entails structuring and ordering the words into one of the infinite number of possible phrases or sentences of English, drawing on the 12,000-or-more syllables of which English words are composed , and articulating the syllables at a rate of three or four per second, using more muscle fibres than any other mechanical performance of the human body (Fink, 1986). It is ability to speak a foreign language, not ability to understand one, that constitutes the commonplace standard of bilingual competence: Every word uttered, indeed every sound, is on display for
Two Potential Mechanisms Underlying the Link between Approximate Number Representations and Symbolic Math in Preschool Children

The approximate number system (ANS) is frequently considered to be a foundation for the acquisition of uniquely human symbolic numerical capabilities. However, the mechanism by which the ANS influences symbolic number representations and mathematical thought remains poorly understood. Here, we tested the relation between ANS acuity, cardinal number knowledge, approximate arithmetic, and symbolic math achievement in a one-year longitudinal investigation of preschoolers’ early math abilities. Our results suggest that cardinal number knowledge is an intermediary factor in the relation between ANS acuity and symbolic math achievement. Furthermore, approximate arithmetic performance contributes unique variance to math achievement that is not accounted for by ANS acuity. These findings suggest that there are multiple routes by which the ANS influences math achievement. Therefore, interventions targeting both the precision and manipulability of the ANS may prove to be more beneficial for improving mathematical reasoning compared to interventions targeting only one of these factors.