Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes in EEG Power Spectral Density and Cortical Connectivity in Healthy and Tetraplegic Patients during a Motor Imagery Task

Knowledge of brain connectivity is an important aspect of modern neuroscience, to understand how the brain realizes its functions. In this work, neural mass models including four groups of excitatory and inhibitory neurons are used to estimate the connectivity among three cortical regions of interests (ROIs) during a foot-movement task. Real data were obtained via high-resolution scalp EEGs on two populations: healthy volunteers and tetraplegic patients. A 3-shell Boundary Element Model of the head was used to estimate the cortical current density and to derive cortical EEGs in the three ROIs. The model assumes that each ROI can generate an intrinsic rhythm in the beta range, and receives rhythms in the alpha and gamma ranges from other two regions. Connectivity strengths among the ROIs were estimated by means of an original genetic algorithm that tries to minimize several cost functions of the difference between real and model power spectral densities. Results show that the stronger connections are those from the cingulate cortex to the primary and supplementary motor areas, thus emphasizing the pivotal role played by the CMA_L during the task. Tetraplegic patients exhibit higher connectivity strength on average, with significant statistical differences in some connections. The results are commented and virtues and limitations of the proposed method discussed.
The social structure of free and open source software development

Metaphors, such as the Cathedral and Bazaar, used to describe the organization of FLOSS projects typically place them in sharp contrast to proprietary development by emphasizing FLOSS’s distinctive social and communications structures. But what do we really know about the communication patterns of FLOSS projects? How generalizable are the projects that have been studied? Is there consistency across FLOSS projects? Questioning the assumption of distinctiveness is important because practitioner–advocates from within the FLOSS community rely on features of social structure to describe and account for some of the advantages of FLOSS production. To address this question, we examined 120 project teams from SourceForge, representing a wide range of FLOSS project types, for their communications centralization as revealed in the interactions in the bug tracking system. We found that FLOSS development teams vary widely in their communications centralization, from projects completely centered on one developer to projects that are highly decentralized and exhibit a distributed pattern of conversation between developers and active users. We suggest, therefore, that it is wrong to assume that FLOSS projects are distinguished by a particular social structure merely because they are FLOSS. Our findings suggest that FLOSS projects might have to work hard to achieve the expected development advantages which have been assumed to flow from "going open. " In addition, the variation in communications structure across projects means that communications centralization is useful for comparisons between FLOSS teams. We found that larger FLOSS teams tend to have more decentralized communication patterns, a finding that suggests interesting avenues for further research examining, for example, the relationship between communications structure and code modularity.
Model-Checking Algorithms for Continuous-Time Markov Chains

Continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) have been widely used to determine system performance and dependability characteristics. Their analysis most often concerns the computation of steady-state and transient-state probabilities. This paper introduces a branching temporal logic for expressing real-time probabilistic properties on CTMCs and presents approximate model checking algorithms for this logic. The logic, an extension of the continuous stochastic logic CSL of Aziz et al. (1995, 2000), contains a time-bounded until operator to express probabilistic timing properties over paths as well as an operator to express steady-state probabilities. We show that the model checking problem for this logic reduces to a system of linear equations (for unbounded until and the steady-state operator) and a Volterra integral equation system (for time-bounded until). We then show that the problem of model-checking time-bounded until properties can be reduced to the problem of computing transient state probabilities for CTMCs. This allows the verification of probabilistic timing properties by efficient techniques for transient analysis for CTMCs such as uniformization. Finally, we show that a variant of lumping equivalence (bisimulation), a well-known notion for aggregating CTMCs, preserves the validity of all formulas in the logic.
Effect of Visual Acuity and Stereopsis on Ocular Deviation

Purpose: The aim of the present study is to correlate Visual acuity and Stereopsis in the presence of ocular deviation. Methods: A pilot, cross sectional, observational study was performed at tertiary eye care centers. Subjects with Ocular deviation between 10 to 40 prism diopters, Corrected distance Visual Acuity should be greater than 6/18 and Age should be between 10 to 40 years of age were included in the study. Visual acuity was assessed with Log Mar chart and recorded in log units and Stereopsis was assessed with Titmus fly test. Results: 30 subjects were included in the study. Out of that, 16 subjects were in the age group of 11-20 years, 12 subjects were in the age group of 21-30 years and 2 subjects were in the age group of 31-40 years. 60% subjects were Female and 40% subjects were Male. Mean scores of visual parameters were taken. Visual acuity was deteriorated to 0.193 log units. Stereopsis was deteriorated to 80 sec of arc in the presence of ocular deviation Conclusions: Visual acuity and Stereopsis decreases significantly with increase in ocular deviation.
Investigating consumer motivations for sustainable hotel practices and the effect on satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty

Sustainable hotel practices focus on minimizing the negative impact of hospitality operations on the environment and the global climate. Hotels are resource demanding utilizing more water and electricity and generating more solid waste per person than in a residential setting. Public concern over environmental degradation is growing in step with consumer demand for sustainable business practices. This study employed the theory of planned behavior to understand better the underlying motivations of hotel guests to engage in the sustainable efforts of hotel practitioners. Structural equation modeling was used to empirically investigate what drives guest motivations toward participation in sustainable hotel practices and what the effect is on guest satisfaction and loyalty formation. Loyalty points or discount vouchers are used to encourage guests to participate in sustainable practices. Consumer concern for the environment, subjective norms, hedonic beliefs, and self-image congruence were evaluated. The effects of engaging in sustainable practices on guest satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty were evaluated as well as the moderating effect of involving guests in sustainable practices. The study revealed customers’ intrinsic motivations were more significant in motivating them to engage in sustainable activities than external rewards. The discussion includes reflections on managerial and theoretical implications.
The instability of precessing flow

Abstract An explanation is put forward for the instability observed within a precessing, rotating spheroidal container. The constant vorticity solution for the flow suggested by Poincare is found to be inertially unstable through the parametric coupling of two inertial waves by the underlying constant strain field. Such resonant couplings are due either to the elliptical or shearing strains present which elliptically distort the circular streamlines and shear their centres respectively. For the precessing Earth's outer core, the shearing of the streamlines and the ensuing shearing instability are the dominant features. The instability of some exact, linear solutions for finite precessional rates is established and used to corroborate the asymptotic analysis. A complementary unbounded analysis of a precessing, rotating fluid is also presented and used to deduce a likely upperbound on the growth rate of a small disturbance. Connection is made with past experimental studies.
Ion collisions in very strong electric fields

A classical trajectory Monte Carlo (CTMC) simulation has been made of charge exchange and ionization processes between a hydrogen atom and fully stripped ions embedded in very strong static electric fields (of order of ), which are thought to exist in cosmic and laser-produced plasmas. Calculations show that the presence of the field affects absolute values of the cross sections, enhancing ionization and reducing charge exchange. Moreover, the overall effect depends upon the relative orientation between the field and the nuclear motion. Other features of a null-field situation, such as scaling laws, are revisited.
Novel compact circularly polarized square microstrip antenna

A novel compact circular-polarization (CP) operation of the square microstrip antenna with four slits and a pair of truncated corners is proposed and investigated. Experimental results show that the proposed compact CP design can have an antenna-size reduction of about 36% as compared to the conventional corner-truncated square microstrip antenna at a given operating frequency. Also, the required size of the truncated corners for CP operation is much greater than that for the conventional CP design using a simple square microstrip patch, providing a relaxed manufacturing tolerance for the proposed compact CP design. Details of the experimental results are presented and discussed.
WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS FOR SPECTRAL CAMERA CALIBRATION BY SUNAYANA SAHA

This work presents a unique spectral camera calibration technique using wireless " smart " micro electro-mechanical (MEMS) sensors. The word " smart " denotes capabilities of MEMS other than sensing, for instance, computing and communication. We foresee the use of widely distributed and deeply embedded " smart " MEMS sensors as potential calibration gauges for spectral cameras, such as, thermal infrared (IR) or visible spectrum cameras. Thus, the primary motivation of our presented work is to investigate the problem of spectral camera calibration in an indoor environment using the " smart " MEMS sensors. The main application of our work is in hazard-aware environments, or in any smart and intelligent spaces. There are also many other applications of advanced computer vision and robotics that try to automate manufacturing processes and can benefit from the use of " smart " MEMS and the results of our work. We have investigated an optimal design of a spectral calibration system with thermal IR and hyperspectral cameras and the " smart " MEMS sensors known as the MICA sensors. The MICA sensor hardware is manufactured by Crossbow Inc. and programmed using TinyOS, an open source operating system, developed by the University of California at Berkeley. Our experimental results demonstrate a calibration of the thermal IR camera manufactured by Indigo System Corporation with MICA temperature sensors and our preliminary calibration of MICA luminance sensors using a hyperspectral camera manufactured by Opto-Knowledge Systems Inc. 4 In this thesis, we provide an overview of the features and challenges of the MEMS sensors in general, as recognized by current research efforts. We then propose a robust calibration system design by maintaining two main objectives – minimizing the wireless loss of data transmitted by the sensors and maximizing the information content of the collected data. The first objective is fulfilled by experimentally determining an optimal sensor network that gives the least data losses. Maximization of information content is achieved by synchronizing, registering and calibrating acquired 2D spectral camera images with precise point measurements obtained wirelessly from the MICA sensors. We believe that the reported outcomes of our experimental results will help other researchers designing optimal spectral camera calibration systems in future.
The Role of Credit in International Business Cycles

The recent financial crisis raises important issues about the role of credit in international business cycles and the transmission of financial shocks across country borders. This paper investigates the international spillover of US credit shocks and the importance of credit in explaining business cycle fluctuations using a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model with credit, estimated over the period 1979Q2 to 2006Q4 for 26 major advanced and emerging economies. Results from the country-specific models reveal the importance of bank credit in explaining output growth, changes in inflation and long term interest rates in countries with developed banking sector. The generalized impulse response function (GIRF) for a one standard error negative shock to US real credit provides strong evidence of the spillover of US credit shock to the UK, the Euro area, Japan and other industrialized economies.
Role of Transcription Factors in Peripheral Nerve Regeneration

Following axotomy, the activation of multiple intracellular signaling cascades causes the expression of a cocktail of regeneration-associated transcription factors which interact with each other to determine the fate of the injured neurons. The nerve injury response is channeled through manifold and parallel pathways, integrating diverse inputs, and controlling a complex transcriptional output. Transcription factors form a vital link in the chain of regeneration, converting injury-induced stress signals into downstream protein expression via gene regulation. They can regulate the intrinsic ability of axons to grow, by controlling expression of whole cassettes of gene targets. In this review, we have investigated the functional roles of a number of different transcription factors – c-Jun, activating transcription factor 3, cAMP response element binding protein, signal transducer, and activator of transcription-3, CCAAT/enhancer binding proteins β and δ, Oct-6, Sox11, p53, nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cell, and ELK3 – in peripheral nerve regeneration. Studies involving use of conditional mutants, microarrays, promoter region mapping, and different injury paradigms, have enabled us to understand their distinct as well as overlapping roles in achieving anatomical and functional regeneration after peripheral nerve injury.
Gender Norms and Other Factors Explaining the Gender Gap in Students’ Entrepreneurial Inclination in Spain and Iceland

Young women still have a lower entrepreneurial inclination (EI) than young men in both a Latin society (Spain) and in a Nordic society (Iceland). Our data come from a survey conducted among university students who attended the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Iceland. After constructing a set of variables and indicators that served as explanatory variables, and after conducting a statistical and regression analysis, this study provides evidence about the determinants of this gender gap in EI. The EI of male students was more sensitive to having higher self-confidence than in the case of female students. In turn, the EI of female students was more sensitive to both positive (enrichment) and negative (conflict) perspectives about the work–family interface than in the case of males. Additionally, the EI of students was positively related with entrepreneurial family antecedents, and with the level of parental income; and it was negatively related with their tolerance for risk. Some cross-cultural differences were also found between the Spanish and
Statistical inference of P(X < Y ) for the Burr Type XII distribution based on records

In this paper, the maximum likelihood and Bayesian approaches have been used to obtain the estimates of the stress-strength reliability $R=P(X<Y)$ based on upper record values for the two-parameter Burr Type XII distribution. A necessary and su fficient condition is studied for the existence and uniqueness of the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters. When the first shape parameter of $X$ and $Y$ is common and unknown, the maximum likelihood (ML) estimate and asymptotic con fidence interval of $R$ are obtained. In this case, the Bayes estimate of $R$ has been developed by using Lindley's approximation and the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method due to lack of explicit forms under the squared error (SE) and linear-exponential (LINEX) loss functions for informative prior. The MCMC method has been also used to construct the highest posterior density (HPD) credible interval. When the fi rst shape parameter of X and Y is common and known, the ML, uniformly minimum variance unbiased (UMVU) and Bayes estimates, Bayesian and HPD credible as well as exact and approximate intervals of $R$ are obtained. The comparison of the derived estimates is carried out by using Monte Carlo simulations. Two real life data sets are analysed for the illustration purposes.
Non-morphological Determination of Nominal Particle Ordering in Korean

In this paper, we argue that syntactic principles are better-suited to accounting for the complexities of morpheme ordering of nominal inflectional particles in Korean. We address the arguments made in Sells (1995, 1997) and Cho and Sells (1995) that syntactic principles are incapable of providing a principled account of morpheme order in Korean inflectional morphology and show that syntactic approaches are superior conceptually and empirically to the lexicalist analyses proposed in the papers.
Methods of Phylogenetic Analysis: New Improvements on Old Methods.

Introduction: Phylogenetic analysis presents a unique problem in biology, because evolutionary history can never be known with certainty. The purpose of any phylogenetic analysis is to estimate the evolutionary relationships between a set of homologous taxa, which can be anything from morphological characteristics to molecular sequences (reviewed in Mount, 2001). The result is a tree composed of " nodes " and " branches " , where the terminal nodes (or " leaves ") correspond to the taxa being studied (henceforth assumed to be DNA sequences), the internal nodes represent ancestral sequences, and the branches represent the topological relationship between the nodes (reviewed in Saitou, 1996). While many different methods have been developed for inferring phylogeny, they can all be thought of as members of two broad classifications: (1) those methods that use an algorithm to directly build a tree through a series of defined steps; and (2) those methods that define a criterion to be maximized (or minimized), and then use an algorithm to evaluate potential trees based on this criterion (Swofford et al., 1996). The first class of programs works largely by converting the similarity between pairs of sequences into evolutionary distance, and then using a defined set of steps to build a tree. These methods are computationally very fast, but suffer from two major downfalls: (1) evolutionary information is lost when overall similarity between sequences is observed, rather than individual mutation events (Hendy and Penny, 1982); and (2) it is difficult to reliably assess the confidence of a tree produced by any given algorithm (Swofford et al., 1996). For these reasons, purely algorithmic methods will not be discussed further. In contrast, the second group of methods proceeds in two steps. First, an optimality criterion is defined, which is simply a score used to assess the value of a particular tree. Second, an algorithm is used to compute the value of this function for various trees, while searching for the best tree (the one that maximizes the criterion) (Swofford et al., 1996). While these methods are appealing because they have the promise of finding the optimal tree according to the applied criterion, they can be computationally slow for even moderate numbers of taxa, to a point where the amount of time required for an exhaustive search is prohibitive. However, this limitation has led to the development of countless computational methods that attempt to reliably get as close to the …
Osteochondritis Dissecans of the Humeral Capitellum

Background: There is a paucity of information regarding the effect of lesion location on surgical outcomes in the treatment of osteochondritis dissecans (OCD) of the humeral capitellum. Purpose: To survey the literature for conclusions that can be drawn regarding the effect of lesion location on treatment of capitellar OCD lesion. The hypothesis was that lesion severity and the need for more aggressive surgical interventions are increased for lesions that are located laterally on the capitellum. Study Design: Systematic review; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: All studies from the past 20 years were determined using a literature search of PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane databases. Included studies were clinical studies that specifically commented on the location of the OCD defect on the capitellum. Excluded studies were case reports, review articles, and those that did not include information regarding the location of the OCD lesion on the capitellum. Results: Six studies met the inclusion criteria. Autograft reconstruction was found to yield reliable outcomes regardless of lesion location, as 87% (26/30) of lateral lesions had excellent or good outcomes using the Timmerman and Andrews score, while 91% (21/23) of central lesions had excellent or good outcomes. There was a trend toward improved outcomes with more aggressive surgical management of lateral lesions, specifically those involving the lateral cartilage margin. The failure rate for nonreconstructive operative management for lateral lesions was noted to be significant, as failure rates for peg fixation of lateral lesions was seen to be as high as 44% (4/9) in one of the studies. Conclusion: Studies regarding capitellar OCD lesion location, as it relates to symptom severity and surgical outcome, are limited. The literature suggests that lesions located on the lateral capitellum—particularly those involving the lateral cartilage margin—require more aggressive surgical management than those located medially. A refinement of the Takahara classification is proposed, which includes lesion location as a factor influencing surgical decision making.
ASTE 12CO (J = 3–2) Survey of Elliptical Galaxies

We report $^{12}$CO($J=$3--2) observations of 15 nearby elliptical galaxies carried out with the ASTE telescope. Thirteen were selected without regard to the presence of other tracers of cold interstellar matter. CO emission was detected from three of the galaxies, two of which are undetected by IRAS at 100 microns, suggesting that cold ISM may be present in more ellipticals than previously thought. The molecular gas masses range from $2.2 \times 10^6$ to $4.3 \times 10^8$ $M_\odot$. The ratio of the CO(3--2) and (1--0) lines, $R_{31}$, has a lower value for elliptical galaxies than for spiral galaxies except for NGC 855, for which the value is close to the mean for spirals. The molecular gas in NGC 855 has a mean density in the range 300 -- 1000 cm$^{-3}$ adopting a temperature range of 15 -- 100 K.