Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The psychosocial consequences of severe deafness and the modifying effect on the socioeconomic position in a special education institution setting: A pilot study

Objective: To study the psychosocial consequences of severe deafness and the effects on the socioeconomic position of the affected individuals. Methods: A cohort study of a deaf student attending a special education secondary school for the deaf and some of their teachers were randomly selected for the study. Sociodemographic characteristics, self-reported deafness, employment situation, and financial conditions, psychosocial consequences such as social isolation, denial of privileges, educational attainment, the level of achievement, and satisfaction with life were assessed using a semi-structured questionnaire. Results: All the participants had severe to profound hearing loss, and all of them could communicate by sign language. Adverse psychosocial consequences were found in this study population. A significant percentage was not satisfied with their current placement. A significant percentage reported limitation in their achievements and more than a third of them admitted to having been denied privileges as a result of being deaf. Social isolation was a major source of worry for 70% of the respondents and close to 40% admitted to being angry mainly because of the attitude of the society towards them. Underemployment was found in 44%, of the sampled population. Conclusion: Hearing impaired individuals are faced with economic and psychosocial adverse consequences. Labor market and educational policies must take into consideration these challenges to integrate this segment of our population into the active, productive sector of the economy.
Endless cold: a seasonal reconstruction of temperature and precipitation in the Burgundian Low Countries during the 15th century based on documentary evidence

Abstract. This paper applies the methods of historical climatology to present a climate reconstruction for the area of the Burgundian Low Countries during the 15th century. The results are based on documentary evidence that has been handled very carefully, especially with regard to the distinction between contemporary and non-contemporary sources. Approximately 3000 written records derived from about 100 different sources were examined and converted into seasonal seven-degree indices for temperature and precipitation. For the Late Middle Ages only a few climate reconstructions exist. There are even fewer reconstructions which include spring and autumn temperature or any precipitation information at all. This paper therefore constitutes a useful contribution to the understanding of climate and weather conditions in the less well researched but highly interesting 15th century. The extremely cold winter temperatures during the 1430s and an extremely cold winter in 1407/1408 are striking. Moreover, no other year in this century was as hot and dry as 1473. At the beginning and the end of the 1480s and at the beginning of the 1490s summers were considerably wetter than average.
Lattices with non-Shannon inequalities

We study the existence or absence of non-Shannon inequalities for variables that are related by functional dependencies. Although the powerset on four variables is the smallest Boolean lattice with non-Shannon inequalities there exist lattices with many more variables without non-Shannon inequalities. We search for conditions that ensures that no non-Shannon inequalities exist. It is demonstrated that 3-dimensional distributive lattices cannot have non-Shannon inequalities and planar modular lattices cannot have non-Shannon inequalities. The existence of non-Shannon inequalities is related to the question of whether a lattice is isomorphic to a lattice of subgroups of a group.
A Relatively Small Turing Machine Whose Behavior Is Independent of Set Theory

Since the definition of the Busy Beaver function by Rado in 1962, an interesting open question has been the smallest value of n for which BB(n) is independent of ZFC set theory. Is this n approximately 10, or closer to 1,000,000, or is it even larger? In this paper, we show that it is at most 7,910 by presenting an explicit description of a 7,910-state Turing machine Z with 1 tape and a 2-symbol alphabet that cannot be proved to run forever in ZFC (even though it presumably does), assuming ZFC is consistent. The machine is based on the work of Harvey Friedman on independent statements involving order-invariant graphs. In doing so, we give the first known upper bound on the highest provable Busy Beaver number in ZFC. To create Z, we develop and use a higher-level language, Laconic, which is much more convenient than direct state manipulation. We also use Laconic to design two Turing machines, G and R, that halt if and only if there are counterexamples to Goldbach's Conjecture and the Riemann Hypothesis, respectively.
INTRAMUSCULAR MARTIN-GRUBER ANASTOMOSIS

Objective : This paper reports the incidence, origin, course and anatomical relationships of intramuscular Martin-Gruber anastomosis. Methods : Anatomical dissection of 100 limbs from 50 adults cadavers was performed. The intramuscular Martin-Gruber anastomosis was found in five forearms, three in the right and two in the left side, one was bilateral. All communication were located between the anterior interosseous nerve and the ulnar nerve. Conclusion : The purpose of intramuscular Martin-Gruber anastomosis, which we found in 5% of dissected limbs, is to supply the flexor digitorum profundus muscle and it is unlikely to have any influence on the innervation of the intrinsic muscles of the hand. Level of Evidence IV, Cases Series.
A non-scan DFT method at register-transfer level to achieve complete fault efficiency

This paper presents a non-scan design-for-testability (DFT) method for VLSIs designed at register transfer level (RTL) to achieve complete fault efficiency. In RTL design, a VLSI generally consists of a controller and a data path. The controller and the data path are connected with internal signals: control signals and status signals. The proposed method consists of the following two steps. First, we apply our DFT methods to the controller and the data path, respectively. Then, to support at-speed testing, we append a test plan generator which generates a sequence of test control vectors for the modified data path. Our experimental results show that the proposed method can reduce significantly both of test generation time and test application time compared with the full-scan design, though the hardware overhead of our method is slightly larger than that of the full-scan design.
Cost-Effective Robustness in Clock Networks Using Near-Tree Structures

Clock trees are commonly used to deliver clock signals to sequential elements in circuits. However, by construction, tree structures are inherently prone to failure caused by variations. The robustness of a clock tree can be improved by inserting redundancy in the form of cross links or multilevel fusion trees. Such near-tree structures can provide robustness at low cost. In this paper, we establish that the locations of the inserted redundancy are crucial in providing cost-effective robustness. We present two methods to systematically insert redundancy. The redundancy is realized by either inserting cross links or performing local merges. Moreover, we present a vertex reduction method that reduces the amount of redundancy that needs to be inserted in our near-tree structures. Empirical results show that our structures are more robust to variations and have lower power consumption compared to the state-of-the-art clock networks. Furthermore, our near-tree structures provide smooth trade-offs between cost and robustness, reducing clock skews by 11%-39% at an expense of 3%-68% higher power consumption.
Endothelial Cell Coculture Within Tissue-Engineered Cardiomyocyte Sheets Enhances Neovascularization and Improves Cardiac Function of Ischemic Hearts

Background— Regenerative therapies, including myocardial tissue engineering, have been pursued as a new possibility to repair the damaged myocardium, and previously the transplantation of layered cardiomyocyte sheets has been shown to be able to improve cardiac function after myocardial infarction. We examined the effects of promoting neovascularization by controlling the densities of cocultured endothelial cells (ECs) within engineered myocardial tissues created using our cell sheet-based tissue engineering approach. Methods and Results— Neonatal rat cardiomyocytes were cocultured with GFP-positive rat-derived ECs on temperature-responsive culture dishes. Cocultured ECs formed cell networks within the cardiomyocyte sheets, which were preserved during cell harvest from the dishes using simple temperature reduction. We also observed significantly increased in vitro production of vessel-forming cytokines by the EC-positive cardiac cell sheets. After layering of 3 cardiac cell sheets to create 3-dimensional myocardial tissues, these patch-like tissue grafts were transplanted onto infarcted rat hearts. Four weeks after transplantation, recovery of cardiac function could be significantly improved by increasing the EC densities within the engineered myocardial tissues. Additionally, when the EC-positive cardiac tissues were transplanted to myocardial infarction models, we observed significantly greater numbers of capillaries in the grafts as compared with the EC-negative cell sheets. Finally, blood vessels originating from the engineered EC-positive cardiac tissues bridged into the infarcted myocardium to connect with capillaries of the host heart. Conclusions— In vitro engineering of 3-dimensional cardiac tissues with preformed EC networks that can be easily connected to host vessels can contribute to the reconstruction of myocardial tissue grafts with a high potential for cardiac function repair. These results indicate that neovascularization can contribute to improved cardiac function after the transplantation of engineered cardiac tissues.
Mothers' emotional expressiveness and coping: Relations with preschoolers' social-emotional competence.

To investigate mothers' influence on their children's social-emotional development, mothers of 57 preschoolers gave information by interview and diary about their expression of emotions when in their children's presence. An examination of mothers'interview and diary responses revealed a coherent picture of these emotions. Moreover, results confirmed expectations that various aspects of mothers' emotions influenced their children's own expressiveness, understanding of emotions, prosocial responses to peer emotions, and overall social competence
Bilateral filtering for gray and color images

Bilateral filtering smooths images while preserving edges, by means of a nonlinear combination of nearby image values. The method is noniterative, local, and simple. It combines gray levels or colors based on both their geometric closeness and their photometric similarity, and prefers near values to distant values in both domain and range. In contrast with filters that operate on the three bands of a color image separately, a bilateral filter can enforce the perceptual metric underlying the CIE-Lab color space, and smooth colors and preserve edges in a way that is tuned to human perception. Also, in contrast with standard filtering, bilateral filtering produces no phantom colors along edges in color images, and reduces phantom colors where they appear in the original image.
Effects of intracutaneous injections of sterile water in patients with acute low back pain: a randomized, controlled, clinical trial

Intracutaneous sterile water injection (ISWI) is used for relief of low back pain during labor, acute attacks of urolithiasis, chronic neck and shoulder pain following whiplash injuries, and chronic myofascial pain syndrome. We conducted a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the effect of ISWI for relief of acute low back pain (aLBP). A total of 68 patients (41 females and 27 males) between 18 and 55 years old experiencing aLBP with moderate to severe pain (scores ≥5 on an 11-point visual analogue scale [VAS]) were recruited and randomly assigned to receive either ISWIs (n=34) or intracutaneous isotonic saline injections (placebo treatment; n=34). The primary outcome was improvement in pain intensity using the VAS at 10, 45, and 90 min and 1 day after treatment. The secondary outcome was functional improvement, which was assessed using the Patient-Specific Functional Scale (PSFS) 1 day after treatment. The mean VAS score was significantly lower in the ISWI group than in the control group at 10, 45, and 90 min, and 1 day after injection (P<0.05, t-test). The mean increment in PSFS score of the ISWI group was 2.9±2.2 1 day after treatment, while that in the control group was 0.9±2.2. Our study showed that ISWI was effective for relieving pain and improving function in aLBP patients at short-term follow-up. ISWI might be an alternative treatment for aLBP patients, especially in areas where medications are not available, as well as in specific patients (e.g., those who are pregnant or have asthma), who are unable to receive medications or other forms of analgesia because of side effects.
Low Power CMOS Dynamic Latch Comparator using 0.18?m Technology

The design and analysis of low power, high speed CMOS dynamic latch comparator is presented. The comparator combines the features of both, the resistive dividing network and differential current sensing comparator. The proposed design will improve the comparator performance by reducing the propagation delay, power dissipation. Simulation results are obtained in 0.18um with supply voltages of 1.8v respectively. The schematic of comparator is captured using Cadence Virtuoso schematic editor and simulated using the Cadence Spectre simulator.
Loss of Nuclear Activity of the FBXO7 Protein in Patients with Parkinsonian-Pyramidal Syndrome (PARK15)

Mutations in the F-box only protein 7 gene (FBXO7) cause PARK15, an autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disease presenting with severe levodopa-responsive parkinsonism and pyramidal disturbances. Understanding the PARK15 pathogenesis might thus provide clues on the mechanisms of maintenance of brain dopaminergic neurons, the same which are lost in Parkinson's disease. The protein(s) encoded by FBXO7 remain very poorly characterized. Here, we show that two protein isoforms are expressed from the FBXO7 gene in normal human cells. The isoform 1 is more abundant, particularly in primary skin fibroblasts. Both isoforms are undetectable in cell lines from the PARK15 patient of an Italian family; the isoform 1 is undetectable and the isoform 2 is severely decreased in the patients from a Dutch PARK15 family. In human cell lines and mouse primary neurons, the endogenous or over-expressed, wild type FBXO7 isoform 1 displays mostly a diffuse nuclear localization. An intact N-terminus is needed for the nuclear FBXO7 localization, as N-terminal modification by PARK15-linked missense mutation, or N-terminus tag leads to cytoplasmic mislocalization. Furthermore, the N-terminus of wild type FBXO7 (but not of mutant FBXO7) is able to confer nuclear localization to profilin (a cytoplasmic protein). Our data also suggest that overexpressed mutant FBXO7 proteins (T22M, R378G and R498X) have decreased stability compared to their wild type counterpart. In human brain, FBXO7 immunoreactivity was highest in the nuclei of neurons throughout the cerebral cortex, intermediate in the globus pallidum and the substantia nigra, and lowest in the hippocampus and cerebellum. In conclusion, the common cellular abnormality found in the PARK15 patients from the Dutch and Italian families is the depletion of the FBXO7 isoform 1, which normally localizes in the cell nucleus. The activity of FBXO7 in the nucleus appears therefore crucial for the maintenance of brain neurons and the pathogenesis of PARK15.
The angular momentum content of dwarf galaxies: new challenges for the theory of galaxy formation

We compute the specific angular momentum distributions for a sample of low-mass disc galaxies observed by Swaters. We compare these distributions to those of dark matter haloes obtained by Bullock et al. from high-resolution N-body simulations of structure formation in a LCDM universe. We find that although the disc mass fractions are significantly smaller than the universal baryon fraction, the total specific angular momenta of the discs are in good agreement with those of dark matter haloes. This suggests that discs form out of only a small fraction of the available baryons, but yet manage to draw most of the available angular momentum. In addition we find that the angular momentum distributions of discs are clearly distinct from those of the dark matter; discs lack predominantly both low and high specific angular momenta. Understanding these findings in terms of a coherent picture for disc formation is challenging. Cooling, feedback and stripping, which are the main mechanisms to explain the small disc mass fractions found, seem unable to simultaneously explain the angular momentum distributions of the discs. In fact, it seems that the baryons that make up the discs must have been born out of angular momentum distributions that are clearly distinct from those of LCDM haloes. However, the dark and baryonic mass components experience the same tidal forces, and it is therefore expected that they should have similar angular momentum distributions. Therefore, understanding the angular momentum content of disc galaxies remains an important challenge for our picture of galaxy formation.
Homology of Pseudodifferential Operators I. Manifolds with Boundary

The Hochschild and cyclic homology groups are computed for the algebra of ‘cusp’ pseudodifferential operators on any compact manifold with boundary. The index functional for this algebra is interpreted as a Hochschild 1-cocycle and evaluated in terms of extensions of the trace functionals on the two natural ideals, corresponding to the two filtrations by interior order and vanishing degree at the boundary, together with the exterior derivations of the algebra. This leads to an index formula which is a pseudodifferential extension of that of Atiyah, Patodi and Singer for Dirac operators; together with a symbolic term it involves the ‘eta’ invariant on the suspended algebra over the boundary previously introduced by the first author.
Denetim Odağı Ve Yenilikçi Birey Davranışları Arasındaki İlişkiler: Belirsizliğe Tolerans Ve Risk Almanın Aracılık Etkisi

Today, innovativeness has an important function for both the public sector and the private sector. At the focal point of innovativeness are individuals whose innovative behaviors are influenced by various factors. Locus of control is one of those factors too. In this context, while examining the relationships between locus of control and individual innovative behaviors; mediating effects of their tolerance for ambiguity and risk taking tendencies on innovativeness are also been investigated. In the present study, the relationships between the variables are examined via Structural Equation Modeling. According to the results, it is found that the locus of control affects the level of innovativeness by tolerance for ambiguity and risk taking whereas there is not a direct relationship between individual’s locus of control and their innovativeness level.
Lightweight authentication of freshness in outsourced key-value stores

Data outsourcing offers cost-effective computing power to manage massive data streams and reliable access to data. Data owners can forward their data to clouds, and the clouds provide data mirroring, backup, and online access services to end users. However, outsourcing data to untrusted clouds requires data authenticity and query integrity to remain in the control of the data owners and users. In this paper, we address the authenticated data-outsourcing problem specifically for multi-version key-value data that is subject to continuous updates under the constraints of data integrity, data authenticity, and "freshness" (i.e., ensuring that the value returned for a key is the latest version). We detail this problem and propose IncBM-Tree, a novel construct delivering freshness and authenticity. Compared to existing work, we provide a solution that offers (i) lightweight signing and verification on massive data update streams for data owners and users (e.g., allowing for small memory footprint and CPU usage for a low-budget IT department), (ii) immediate authentication of data freshness, (iii) support of authentication in the presence of both real-time and historical data accesses. Extensive benchmark evaluations demonstrate that IncBM-Tree achieves higher throughput (in an order of magnitude) for data stream authentication than existing work. For data owners and end users that have limited computing power, IncBM-Tree can be a practical solution to authenticate the freshness of outsourced data while reaping the benefits of broadly available cloud services.
CROSSLINGUISTIC PERCEPTION OF PITCH IN LANGUAGE AND MUSIC

This dissertation investigates the ways in which experience with lexical tone influences the perception of musical melody, and how musical training influences the perception of lexical tone. The central theoretical basis for the study is a model of perceptual learning, Reverse Hierarchy Theory (Ahissar et al., 2009), in which cognitive processes like language tune neural resources to provide the sensory information necessary for the perceptual task; these sensory resources are then available to other cognitive processes, like music, which rely on the same perceptual properties. This study proposes that the tone properties pitch height, pitch direction, and pitch slope correspond to the melodic properties key, contour, and interval , respectively, and this correspondance underlies crossover effects between lexical tone and melody perception. Specifically, the study asks three questions: 1. whether differences in melody perception between tone and non-tone language speakers, and among speakers of different tone languages, can be linked to specific properties of the languages’ tonal inventories; 2. whether melody perception is affected by second language experience with a tone language; and 3. whether musical ear-training leads to enhanced perception of lexical tone. To address (1), a standardized test of music perception (the Musical Ear Test; Wallentin et al. (2010)) was administered to tone (Mandarin and Yoruba)
Cogito, Ergo sum! cognitive processes of students dealing with data structures

A research that has just recently been finished, investigated thinking processes that occur in the minds of students dealing with data structures. The research findings are pointed out in this paper, and two of them are elaborated. One is the phenomenon of programming-context thinking. This type of thinking stems from comparatively low level of abstraction gained by students in a data structures course. Programming-context thinking is the cause of other phenomena found in the research, and one such phenomenon — perception of a data structure as static or dynamic — is also elaborated. Implications for data structures instruction are discussed. Apart from presenting the research results, this paper serves as an example of cognitive research — a kind of research that is still not broadly enough done in Computer Science Education. It is one purpose of this paper to manifest the need for more such research.
An average-value model of kinematic Stirling engine for the study of variable-speed operations of dish-stirling solar-thermal generating system

A simplified model of the Stirling engine is developed for the study of grid-connected variable-speed operations of dish-Stirling (DS) solar-thermal power plant. The model relates the average values of the engine state variables and also takes into account engine losses, the variations of heater temperature and total mass of the working gas in the engine cylinder. The improved model is compared with the existing models and the new model is shown to be more suitable for grid-related studies and control system design.