Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of 6-month community-based exercise interventions on gait and functional fitness of an older population: a quasi-experimental study

Background Gait ability in older adults has been associated with independent living, increased survival rates, fall prevention, and quality of life. There are inconsistent findings regarding the effects of exercise interventions in the maintenance of gait parameters. Objectives The aim of the study was to analyze the effects of a community-based periodized exercise intervention on the improvement of gait parameters and functional fitness in an older adult group compared with a non-periodized program. Methods A quasi-experimental study with follow-up was performed in a periodized exercise group (N=15) and in a non-periodized exercise group (N=13). The primary outcomes were plantar pressure gait parameters, and the secondary outcomes were physical activity, aerobic endurance, lower limb strength, agility, and balance. These variables were recorded at baseline and after 6 months of intervention. Results Both programs were tailored to older adults’ functional fitness level and proved to be effective in reducing the age-related decline regarding functional fitness and gait parameters. Gait parameters were sensitive to both the exercise interventions. Conclusion These exercise protocols can be used by exercise professionals in prescribing community exercise programs, as well as by health professionals in promoting active aging.
Collision Detection for Underwater ROV Manipulator Systems

Work-class ROVs equipped with robotic manipulators are extensively used for subsea intervention operations. Manipulators are teleoperated by human pilots relying on visual feedback from the worksite. Operating in a remote environment, with limited pilot perception and poor visibility, manipulator collisions which may cause significant damage are likely to happen. This paper presents a real-time collision detection algorithm for marine robotic manipulation. The proposed collision detection mechanism is developed, integrated into a commercial ROV manipulator control system, and successfully evaluated in simulations and experimental setup using a real industry standard underwater manipulator. The presented collision sensing solution has a potential to be a useful pilot assisting tool that can reduce the task load, operational time, and costs of subsea inspection, repair, and maintenance operations.
Military Supplement: Perfluorocarbon Emulsions, Platelet Counts and Inflammation.

Perfluorocarbon emulsions (PFC) are a class of lipid coated micelle slurries wherein the active center of the micelle is a completely halogen/fluorine substituted hydrocarbon capable of dissolving very large quantities of non-polar gases. Due to their unique enhanced solubility for oxygen (O2) and nitrogen (N2) PFCs have been utilized in research as enhanced gas transport media for situations wherein the microcirculation is dysfunctional. In the early 1990's a PFC emulsion was approved for human use during coronary artery angioplasty and one is presently in use in Russia as well as other countries. The pharmaceutical class has had reported in the past associated with variable amounts of time limited thrombocytopenia. Anxiety about cerebral embolism surfaced after a pivotal phase III trial leading to the cessation of all human research in the United States. At that time papers both published and submitted to the FDA opined (without proof) that the platelet count decrease might be caused by platelet white cell conjugates and/or platelet aggregates thereby signaling a general inflammatory response to PFCs and a potential thrombosis risk. Although thrombocytopenia has been reported in response to PFC emulsion formulations it is not ubiquitous and seems to be less associated with some formulations. As well, in some recent animal studies there is no evidence of platelet white cell adverse interactions. The mechanism for the reported thrombocytopenia is as yet not fully understood, and risk-benefit profiles will have to be carefully studied as contemporary human trials move forward.
Education for Managing Digital Transformation: A Feedback Systems Approach

“Digital transformation” is becoming the newest mantra of business leaders. It is clear that there are tremendous business opportunities resulting from this revolution, but there is also a price to be paid. Most management literature focuses on the benefits of digitalization, reflecting the desire to increase performance and efficiency in selected business activities. However, digital transformations may lead to the disruption of established ways of doing the work of the firm, stakeholder power may be fundamentally changed, and there is the potential for redefining the nature of the firm itself. Consequently, the decision to “go digital” requires managers to develop perspectives that have the requisite variety to cope with these challenges. Feedback systems thinking is a powerful means for managers to develop and communicate business models that include those aspects of digitalization that affects their firm’s theory of success. The Uber case illustrates the principles of applying feedback systems thinking to the radical changes that it has presented the public transportation sector. This paper analyzes Uber’s platform business by presenting an endogenous explanation of the drivers and eventual constraints to growth of the theory of success upon which the firm is based. This type of analysis has implications for all firms considering implementing a significant digital transformation process.
Lift calculations based on accepted wake models for animal flight are inconsistent and sensitive to vortex dynamics

There are three common methods for calculating the lift generated by a flying animal based on the measured airflow in the wake. However, these methods might not be accurate according to computational and robot-based studies of flapping wings. Here we test this hypothesis for the first time for a slowly flying Pacific parrotlet in still air using stereo particle image velocimetry recorded at 1000 Hz. The bird was trained to fly between two perches through a laser sheet wearing laser safety goggles. We found that the wingtip vortices generated during mid-downstroke advected down and broke up quickly, contradicting the frozen turbulence hypothesis typically assumed in animal flight experiments. The quasi-steady lift at mid-downstroke was estimated based on the velocity field by applying the widely used Kutta–Joukowski theorem, vortex ring model, and actuator disk model. The calculated lift was found to be sensitive to the applied model and its different parameters, including vortex span and distance between the bird and laser sheet—rendering these three accepted ways of calculating weight support inconsistent. The three models predict different aerodynamic force values mid-downstroke compared to independent direct measurements with an aerodynamic force platform that we had available for the same species flying over a similar distance. Whereas the lift predictions of the Kutta–Joukowski theorem and the vortex ring model stayed relatively constant despite vortex breakdown, their values were too low. In contrast, the actuator disk model predicted lift reasonably accurately before vortex breakdown, but predicted almost no lift during and after vortex breakdown. Some of these limitations might be better understood, and partially reconciled, if future animal flight studies report lift calculations based on all three quasi-steady lift models instead. This would also enable much needed meta studies of animal flight to derive bioinspired design principles for quasi-steady lift generation with flapping wings.
Understanding Mobile Commerce Continuance Intentions: An Empirical Analysis of Chinese Consumers

Advancements in wireless communications have increased the number of people using mobile devices and have accelerated the growth of mobile commerce (m-commerce). This research aims to examine Chinese consumers' m-commerce continuance usage intentions by extending the Expectations-Confirmation Model (ECM). Additional variables such as perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, trust and perceived cost were added to the traditional ECM. Data was collected from 410 consumers who had prior experience using m-commerce. Structural equation modelling was applied to examine the proposed research model. The results showed that satisfaction, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, perceived cost and trust have significant influence on consumers' m-commerce continuance intentions. This research confirms the need to extend the traditional ECM when studying technology such as m-commerce. The results of this study will be useful for telecommunications and m-commerce companies in formulating strategies to retain their consumers.
Association of Anthropometric Indices of Obesity with Hypertension in Chinese Elderly: An Analysis of Age and Gender Differences

This study aims to explore the association of anthropometric indices of obesity with hypertension in Chinese elderly and its possible gender and age differences. A total of 7070 adults age 60 or older were interviewed in a cross-sectional study conducted in 2017. Anthropometric indices for each participant were measured by using standard methods of trained doctoral/master students. We performed two binary logistic regression models to examine the association of the nine different anthropometric indices and hypertension by gender. Lastly, analyses were performed in two steps stratified for age. Comparing individuals with and without hypertension, there were statistically significant differences in anthropometric indices except height, a body shape index (ABSI), and hip index (HI) in males; and except height in females. There were gender differences in the relationship between anthropometric indices and the prevalence of hypertension in Chinese older adults. After stratification by age, the associations of all anthropometric indices became weaker, disappeared, or even went in the opposite direction. Furthermore, body mass index (BMI) in men (except individuals older than 80) and hip circumference (HC) in women showed a significant impact on the risk of hypertension. The association of anthropometric indices of obesity with hypertension in Chinese elderly differ by gender and age. These findings indicate a need to develop gender-specific strategies for the male and female elderly in the primary and secondary prevention of hypertension.
Media Use in School-Aged Children and Adolescents

This policy statement focuses on children and adolescents 5 through 18 years of age. Research suggests both benefits and risks of media use for the health of children and teenagers. Benefits include exposure to new ideas and knowledge acquisition, increased opportunities for social contact and support, and new opportunities to access health-promotion messages and information. Risks include negative health effects on weight and sleep; exposure to inaccurate, inappropriate, or unsafe content and contacts; and compromised privacy and confidentiality. Parents face challenges in monitoring their children’s and their own media use and in serving as positive role models. In this new era, evidence regarding healthy media use does not support a one-size-fits-all approach. Parents and pediatricians can work together to develop a Family Media Use Plan (www.healthychildren.org/MediaUsePlan) that considers their children’s developmental stages to individualize an appropriate balance for media time and consistent rules about media use, to mentor their children, to set boundaries for accessing content and displaying personal information, and to implement open family communication about media.
Reducing DRAM footprint with NVM in Facebook

Popular SSD-based key-value stores consume a large amount of DRAM in order to provide high-performance database operations. However, DRAM can be expensive for data center providers, especially given recent global supply shortages that have resulted in increasing DRAM costs. In this work, we design a key-value store, MyNVM, which leverages an NVM block device to reduce DRAM usage, and to reduce the total cost of ownership, while providing comparable latency and queries-per-second (QPS) as MyRocks on a server with a much larger amount of DRAM. Replacing DRAM with NVM introduces several challenges. In particular, NVM has limited read bandwidth, and it wears out quickly under a high write bandwidth. We design novel solutions to these challenges, including using small block sizes with a partitioned index, aligning blocks post-compression to reduce read bandwidth, utilizing dictionary compression, implementing an admission control policy for which objects get cached in NVM to control its durability, as well as replacing interrupts with a hybrid polling mechanism. We implemented MyNVM and measured its performance in Facebook's production environment. Our implementation reduces the size of the DRAM cache from 96 GB to 16 GB, and incurs a negligible impact on latency and queries-per-second compared to MyRocks. Finally, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on the usage of NVM devices in a commercial data center environment.
Esmolol acutely alters oxygen supply‐demand balance in exercising muscles of healthy humans

Beta‐adrenoreceptor antagonists (β blockers) reduce systemic O2 delivery and blood pressure (BP) during exercise, but the subsequent effects on O2 extraction within the active limb muscles are unknown. In this study, we examined the effects of the fast‐acting, β1 selective blocker esmolol on systemic hemodynamics and leg muscle O2 saturation (near infrared spectroscopy, NIRS) during submaximal leg ergometry. Our main hypothesis was that esmolol would augment exercise‐induced reductions in leg muscle O2 saturation. Eight healthy adults (6 men, 2 women; 23–67 year) performed light and moderate intensity bouts of recumbent leg cycling before (PRE), during (β1‐blocked), and 45 min following (POST) intravenous infusion of esmolol. Oxygen uptake, heart rate (HR), BP, and O2 saturation (SmO2) of the vastus lateralis (VL) and medial gastrocnemius (MG) muscles were measured continuously. Esmolol attenuated the increases in HR and systolic BP during light (−12 ± 9 bpm and −26 ± 12 mmHg vs. PRE) and moderate intensity (−20 ± 10 bpm and −40 ± 18 mmHg vs. PRE) cycling (all P < 0.01). Exercise‐induced reductions in SmO2 occurred to a greater extent during the β1‐blockade trial in both the VL (P = 0.001 vs. PRE) and MG muscles (P = 0.022 vs. PRE). HR, SBP and SmO2 were restored during POST (all P < 0.01 vs. β1‐blocked). In conclusion, esmolol rapidly and reversibly increases O2 extraction within exercising muscles of healthy humans.
Nurses' Perceptions of Spirituality and Spiritual Care at Five Tertiary Care Hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Objectives To identify the perceptions towards spirituality and spiritual care among nurses at tertiary care hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on nurses at five tertiary care hospitals in Riyadh. The data were collected using the Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale (SSCRS). Results We recruited 978 nurses, of which 896 (91.6%) were female. The mean SSCRS score was 3.8±0.5 (the spirituality and spiritual care statements fell within the 'agree' category). A statistically significant difference was found only between perceptions of spirituality and spiritual care among nurses and their nursing experience duration. Conclusions The findings of this study revealed that nurses were oriented to spirituality, and respected the importance of providing spiritual care to their patients. The nurses believed that spirituality exists in all religions and spiritual care means showing concern while treating the patients by focusing on respecting patients' religious beliefs.
Classification of the Systems Used in Surface Electromyographic Signal Detection according to the Degree of Isotropy

Surface electromyographic (EMG) signals are known to be strongly influenced by anatomical, physiological and detection system parameters. Among the detection system parameters, we are interested in the effect of muscle fiber inclination on the electrode arrangement. The purpose of this study was to determine the best and the worst orientation of the electrodes arranged in nine detection systems relative to the muscle fiber direction and also to classify the investigated systems according to their degree of isotropy. The study was based on simulated surface EMG (sEMG) signals generated in a cylindrical multilayer volume conductor. The orientation of electrodes with respect to the fiber direction was defined by the fiber inclination angle (FIA). For each detection system, the mean power (MP) of the simulated signals was computed at different FIAs and used as a basis for evaluating the effect of muscle fiber inclination. We showed that for the FIA range of 0–180 (cid:155) , approximately isotropic systems had three positions to record sEMG signals under good conditions (MP was maximum). However, longitudinal and transversal highly anisotropic systems had two and one positions, re-spectively, at which sEMG signals were detected under good conditions. We showed also that the degree of isotropy of the nine detection systems investigated was less affected by the increase in muscle and fat thicknesses. However, with an increase in inter-electrode distance (IED), the degree of isotropy of approximately isotropic systems decreased while the degree of isotropy of highly anisotropic systems increased.
A Relational Ethics Framework for Advancing Practice with Children with Complex Health Care Needs and Their Parents

ABSTRACT Children with complex health care needs are an emerging population that commonly requires long-term supportive services. A growing body of evidence has highlighted that these children and their families experience significant challenges. Many of these challenges involve ethical concerns that have been under-recognized. In this article, we (a) outline ethical concerns that arise in clinical practice with children with complex health care needs and their families (e.g.: exclusion of children’s voices in discussions and decisions that affect them; difficulties in defining their best interests; clashes across the array of social roles that parents manage; limited recognition of the ethical significance of parents’ and other family members’ interests) and (b) propose a relational ethics framework for addressing these concerns. Our framework draws on hermeneutical interpretation and moral experience as foundational orientations, recognizing children with complex health care needs as relationally embedded agents, who while dependent and entitled to protection, are simultaneously agential. Children’s and parents’ interests are relationally intertwined and interdependent. Families are recognized as significant social microcosms for the cultivation and transmission of intergenerational cultural heritage, narratives, and outlooks. We describe strategies for (a) conducting a relational ethics inquiry and (b) reconciliation of identified ethical concerns through a process of rapprochement. A relational ethics framework can promote clinical practices that are ethically attuned to the complexity of this population’s needs.
The TIGER Corpus Navigator

Linguistically annotated corpora are a central resource in NLP. The extraction of formal knowledge from these corpora, however, is a tedious process. We introduce the Tiger Corpus Navigator, a Semantic Web system which aids users to classify and retrieve sentences from linguistic corpora – here, the Tiger corpus – on the basis of abstract linguistic concepts. These linguistic concepts are specified extensionally, thus, independent from the underlying annotation: The user provides a small set of pre-classified sentences that represent instances (positive examples) or counterinstances (negative examples) of the corresponding concept, and the system automatically acquires a formal OWL/DL specification of the underlying concept using an Active Machine Learning approach.
Relocating cued goals induces population remapping in CA1 related to memory performance in a two‐platform water task in rats

The activity of CA1 neurons in the rodent hippocampus represents multiple aspects of learning episodes, including cue and place information. Previous reports on cue and place representation in CA1 have examined activity in single neurons and population recordings during free exploration of an environment or when actions are directed to either cue or place aspects of memory tasks. To better understand cue and place memory representation in CA1, and how these interact during goal‐directed navigation, we investigated population activity in CA1 during memory encoding and retrieval in a novel water task with two visibly distinct platforms, using mRNA for immediate early genes Arc and Homer1a as markers of neural activity. After training, relocating cues to new places induces an extensive, perhaps global, remapping of the memory code that is accompanied by altered navigation and rapid learning of new cue‐place information. In addition, we have found a significant relationship between the extent of reactivation and overall cue choice accuracy. These findings demonstrate an important relationship between population remapping in CA1 and memory‐guided behavior.
LibSEAL: revealing service integrity violations using trusted execution

Users of online services such as messaging, code hosting and collaborative document editing expect the services to uphold the integrity of their data. Despite providers' best efforts, data corruption still occurs, but at present service integrity violations are excluded from SLAs. For providers to include such violations as part of SLAs, the competing requirements of clients and providers must be satisfied. Clients need the ability to independently identify and prove service integrity violations to claim compensation. At the same time, providers must be able to refute spurious claims. We describe LibSEAL, a SEcure Audit Library for Internet services that creates a non-repudiable audit log of service operations and checks invariants to discover violations of service integrity. LibSEAL is a drop-in replacement for TLS libraries used by services, and thus observes and logs all service requests and responses. It runs inside a trusted execution environment, such as Intel SGX, to protect the integrity of the audit log. Logs are stored using an embedded relational database, permitting service invariant violations to be discovered using simple SQL queries. We evaluate LibSEAL with three popular online services (Git, ownCloud and Dropbox) and demonstrate that it is effective in discovering integrity violations, while reducing throughput by at most 14%.