Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Designing action-based exergames for children with cerebral palsy

Children with cerebral palsy (CP) want to play fast-paced action-oriented videogames similar to those played by their peers without motor disabilities. This is particularly true of exergames, whose physically-active gameplay matches the fast pace of action games. But disabilities resulting from CP can make it difficult to play action games. Guidelines for developing games for people with motor disabilities steer away from high-paced action, including recommendations to avoid the need for time-sensitive actions and to keep game pace slow. Through a year-long participatory design process with children with CP, we have discovered that it is in fact possible to develop action-oriented exergames for children with CP at level III on the Gross Motor Function Classification Scale. We followed up the design process with an eight-week home trial, in which we found the games to be playable and enjoyable. In this paper, we discuss the design of these games, and present a set of design recommendations for how to achieve both action-orientation and playability.
Identification of Streptococcus porcinus from human sources

Streptococcus porcinus is normally associated with infections in swine. Cultures of this streptococcal species are rarely reported from human infections. In the past 10 years, we have identified 13 cultures of S. porcinus from human sources from persons living in the United States and Canada. Seven of the strains were identified in the past 15 months. Nine of the strains were of a single serogroup, provisionally called C1. In addition, nine of the strains were isolated from the genitourinary tract of reproductive-age female patients, some with delivery problems. S. porcinus strains could be identified by hemolytic, serologic, and physiologic characteristics. All strains were susceptible to penicillin, erythromycin, and other antimicrobial agents. Fifty-four percent of the strains were resistant to tetracycline. These findings suggest that we may be seeing a change in the flora of the genitourinary tract of humans. Whether these isolates are significant pathogens is unknown at this time.
Malignant degeneration of presacral teratoma in the Currarino anomaly

The autosomal dominant Currarino anomaly (CA) comprises a presacral mass, partial sacral agenesis, and anorectal defects. Chronic constipation in childhood related to anorectal defects is the most common presenting symptom and hemisacrum the most frequent malformation. The presacral mass may be an anterior meningomyelocele, teratoma, hamartoma, dermoid cyst, neuroenteric cyst, or a combination of these. Sepsis and meningitis are frequent serious problems related to the anterior meningomyelocele, whilst malignant transformation of presacral teratoma is a rare, severe complication in CA. Here, we report on a three‐generation family segregating the CA, presenting with anorectal defects, severe constipation, and sacral involvement in affected relatives. Teratoma was the most frequent component of the presacral mass. In this kindred a 22‐year‐old man died of a neuroendocrine tumor, probably related to malignant change in a presacral teratoma. A novel mutation in HLXB9 consisting of a 24‐bp deletion and insertion of 2‐bp into exon 1, was identified in all patients and in also three asymptomatic members of this family. Anterior meningomyelocele is the most frequently reported component of the presacral masses in CA; however, presacral teratomas carry an inherent risk for malignancy that must be considered in the counseling, surgical treatment options, and follow‐up of CA patients. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Effect of Negative Pressure on Human Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells In Vitro

The aim of this study was to determine how low-intensity intermittent negative pressure affects the differentiation and proliferation of human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), as well of OPG and OPGL mRNA expression in MSCs. MSCs were isolated from adult marrow using the density gradient separation method, passaged for three generations, and divided into the vacuum group, which was administrated at pressure of −50 kPa, for 30 min at a frequency of 2/d, and a control group. The differentiation of MSCs was examined through inverted phase contrast microscopy, measurement of alkaline phosphatase activity, alizarin-red staining, and immunohistochemistry for type I collagen, hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1a), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). The MTT assay and flow cytometry were used to measure proliferation and apoptosis. Real-time PCR detected the expression of mRNA from OPG/OPGL. Compared to the control group, there was a decrease in the proliferation of cells in the vacuum group. The number of cells in S phase was reduced by 62.4%, while the rate of apoptosis, the activity of ALP, and calcium release all increased under vacuum conditions. Calcium nodes could be observed through alizarin-red staining, and the expression of collagen type I, VEGF, and HIF-1a were increased significantly. Expression of OPG mRNA was increased and the expression of OPGL mRNA decreased in the vacuum group relative to the control group. In conclusion, low-intensity intermittent negative pressure can inhibit the proliferation of human MSCs, induce differentiation to bone cells, promote the OPG mRNA expression, and reduce OPGL mRNA expression.
A Longitudinal Study of the Predictors of Perceived Procedural Justice in Australian University Staff

Purpose: This study examined the factors that predict employees' perceptions of procedural justice in university settings. The paper also reviews the ethical aspects of justice and psychological contracts within employment relationships. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study examined the predictors of perceived procedural justice in a two-wave longitudinal sample of 945 employees from 13 universities by applying the Job Demands-Resources theoretical model of stress. The proposed predictors were classified into two categories: Job demands of work pressure and work-home conflict; and job resources of job security, autonomy, trust in senior management, and trust in supervisor. The predictor model also examined job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment, demographic (age, gender, tenure, role) and individual characteristics (negative affectivity, job involvement) as well as Time 1 (T1) perceptions of procedural justice to ensure that tests were rigorous. Findings: A series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses found that job satisfaction at T1 was the strongest predictor of perceived procedural justice at Time 2. Employees' trust in senior management, and their length of tenure also positively predicted justice perceptions. There were also differences between academic and non-academic staff groups, as non-academic employees' level of job satisfaction, trust in senior management, and their length of organizational tenure predicted procedural justice perceptions, whereas for academics, only job satisfaction predicted perceived justice. For the “all staff” category, job satisfaction was a dominant and enduring predictor of justice, and employees' trust in senior management also predicted justice. Research limitations/implications: Results highlight the importance of workplace factors in enhancing fair procedures to encourage reciprocity from employees. As perceived procedural justice is also conceptually linked to the psychological contract between employees-employers, it is possible that employees' levels of job satisfaction and perceptions of trust in senior management, relative to other work attitudinal outcomes, may be more effective for improving the broader working environment, and promoting staff morale. Originality/value: This study adds to research on applied business ethics as it focuses on the ethical aspects of perceived procedural justice and highlights the importance of workplace factors in enhancing fair procedures in organizational policy to encourage reciprocity and promote healthy organizational environments.
Nonmotor Aspects of Action Concepts

Reading an action verb elicits the retrieval of its associated body movements as well as its typical goal—the outcome to which it is directed. Two fMRI experiments are reported in which retrieval of goal attributes was isolated from retrieval of motoric ones by contrasting actions that are either done intentionally (e.g., drink) and thus have associated goal information or by accident (e.g., hiccup). Orthogonally, the actions also varied in their motoricity (e.g., drink vs. imagine). Across both levels of motoricity, goal-directedness influenced the activity of a portion of left posterior inferior parietal lobe (pIPL). These effects were not explicable by the grammatical properties, imageability, or amount of body movement associated with these different types of verbs. In contrast, motoricity (across levels of goal-directedness) activated primarily the left middle temporal gyrus. Furthermore, pIPL was found to be distinct from the portion of left parietal lobe implicated in theory of mind, as localized in the same participants. This is consistent with the observation that pIPL contains many functionally distinct subregions and that some of these support conceptual knowledge. The present findings illustrate that, in particular, the pIPL is involved in representing attributes of intentional actions, likely their typical goals, but not their associated body movements. This result serves to describe an attribute-selective semantic subsystem for at least one type of nonmotor aspect of action knowledge.
Information overload and information poverty: challenges for healthcare services managers?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into managers' decision‐making practices when challenged by inappropriate information quality, and to test frameworks developed from research to see whether they apply to these managers.Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory, multiple case study used the critical incident technique in 19 semi‐structured interviews. Responses were analyzed using framework analysis, a matrix‐based content analysis technique, and then considered with respect to the research literature on information overload, information poverty and satisficing.Findings – The managers in this study tended to satisfice (terminate the search process and make a good enough decision, while recognizing that information gaps remain). Those challenged by too little information appear to fit descriptions of information poverty, while others described aspects of information overload.Research limitations/implications – A shortage of information behavior research on managers makes it diffic.
Sampled-Data Design for Robust Control of a Single Qubit

This technical note presents a sampled-data approach to the robust control of a single qubit (quantum bit). The required robustness is defined using a sliding mode domain and the control law is designed offline and then utilized online with a single qubit having bounded uncertainties. Two classes of uncertainties are considered involving the system Hamiltonian and the coupling strength of the system-environment interaction. Four cases are analyzed in detail including without decoherence, with amplitude damping decoherence, phase damping decoherence and depolarizing decoherence. Sampling periods are specifically designed for these cases to guarantee the required robustness. Two sufficient conditions are presented for the design of a unitary control for the cases without decoherence and with amplitude damping decoherence. The proposed approach has potential applications in quantum error-correction and in constructing robust quantum gates.
Concerted regulation of focal adhesion dynamics by galectin-3 and tyrosine-phosphorylated caveolin-1

Both tyrosine-phosphorylated caveolin-1 (pY14Cav1) and GlcNAc-transferase V (Mgat5) are linked with focal adhesions (FAs); however, their function in this context is unknown. Here, we show that galectin-3 binding to Mgat5-modified N-glycans functions together with pY14Cav1 to stabilize focal adhesion kinase (FAK) within FAs, and thereby promotes FA disassembly and turnover. Expression of the Mgat5/galectin lattice alone induces FAs and cell spreading. However, FAK stabilization in FAs also requires expression of pY14Cav1. In cells lacking the Mgat5/galectin lattice, pY14Cav1 is not sufficient to promote FAK stabilization, FA disassembly, and turnover. In human MDA-435 cancer cells, Cav1 expression, but not mutant Y14FCav1, stabilizes FAK exchange and stimulates de novo FA formation in protrusive cellular regions. Thus, transmembrane crosstalk between the galectin lattice and pY14Cav1 promotes FA turnover by stabilizing FAK within FAs defining previously unknown, interdependent roles for galectin-3 and pY14Cav1 in tumor cell migration.
Can Plant Viruses Cross the Kingdom Border and Be Pathogenic to Humans?

Phytoviruses are highly prevalent in plants worldwide, including vegetables and fruits. Humans, and more generally animals, are exposed daily to these viruses, among which several are extremely stable. It is currently accepted that a strict separation exists between plant and vertebrate viruses regarding their host range and pathogenicity, and plant viruses are believed to infect only plants. Accordingly, plant viruses are not considered to present potential pathogenicity to humans and other vertebrates. Notwithstanding these beliefs, there are many examples where phytoviruses circulate and propagate in insect vectors. Several issues are raised here that question if plant viruses might further cross the kingdom barrier to cause diseases in humans. Indeed, there is close relatedness between some plant and animal viruses, and almost identical gene repertoires. Moreover, plant viruses can be detected in non-human mammals and humans samples, and there are evidence of immune responses to plant viruses in invertebrates, non-human vertebrates and humans, and of the entry of plant viruses or their genomes into non-human mammal cells and bodies after experimental exposure. Overall, the question raised here is unresolved, and several data prompt the additional extensive study of the interactions between phytoviruses and non-human mammals and humans, and the potential of these viruses to cause diseases in humans.
Efficient admission control of piecewise linear traffic envelopes at EDF schedulers

We present algorithms for flow admission control at an earliest deadline first link scheduler when the flows are characterized by piecewise linear traffic envelopes. We show that the algorithms have very low computational complexity and, thus, practical applicability. The complexity can be further decreased by introducing the notion of discretized admission control. Through discretization, the range of positions for the end points of linear segments of the traffic envelopes is restricted to a finite set. Simulation experiments show that discretized admission control can lead to two orders of magnitude decrease in the amount of computation needed to make admission control decisions over that incurred when using exact (nondiscrete) admission control, with the additional benefit that this amount of computation no longer depends on the number of flows. We examine the relative performance degradation (in terms of the number of flows admitted) incurred by the discretization and find that it is small.
The Importance of Teaching Cultural Awareness in Design Education: Evidence from Interior Design

This article presents findings from a higher education interior design course at a U.S. university. For the course, titled the "Heritage Studio," a series of projects were developed aimed at developing self- awareness, empathy and cultural awareness in the students. Research and documentation of individual students' family histories provided the foundation for the projects. Throughout the process of completing projects for the course, students were encouraged to become self-aware of their personal heritage (cultural, linguistic, religious etc.) as a pathway toward developing empathy and appreciation for the personal history of their classmates. Upon completion of the course, student feedback was collected. Responses were qualitatively analyzed to assess students' learning of cultural awareness. The four themes that emerged as a result were: (1) realization of family impact on personal development, (2) realization of past affecting present (3) increased awareness of both diversity and commonalities among classmates and, (4) increased respect for one's own relatives and for the personal history of others. Details of these findings are described in this paper.
Injection‐Induced Moment Release Can Also Be Aseismic

The cumulative seismic moment is a robust measure of the earthquake response to fluid injection for injection volumes ranging from 3,100 to about 12 million m3. Over this range, the moment release is limited to twice the product of the shear modulus and the volume of injected fluid. This relation also applies at the much smaller injection volumes of the field experiment in France reported by Guglielmi et al. (2015, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab0476) and laboratory experiments to simulate hydraulic fracturing described by Goodfellow et al. (2015, https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL063093). In both of these studies, the relevant moment release for comparison with the fluid injection was aseismic and consistent with the scaling that applies to the much larger volumes associated with injection‐induced earthquakes with magnitudes extending up to 5.8. Neither the microearthquakes, at the site in France, nor the acoustic emission in the laboratory samples contributed significantly to the deformation due to fluid injection.
Sex Differences in Stress and Group Housing Effects on the Number of Newly Proliferated Cells and Neuroblasts in Middle-Aged Dentate Gyrus

Sex differences in stress and coping responses have been frequently documented in aged people, while whether such differences in aged people may appear at the middle age are unknown. This study was undertaken to study the impact of acute stress and social interaction on early neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus (DG) and hippocampus-related memory in two sexes of middle-aged mice. The number of newly proliferated cells, neuroblasts in DG, the object recognition and location memory in 9-month-old male and female C57BL/6N mice were assessed under baseline conditions as well as following an acute stressor regimen and group housing. Three conspecific companions, serving as “the housing group,” were used to model the social interaction throughout the stressor regimen. Males had lower numbers of newly proliferated cells and neuroblasts under baseline conditions as compared to females. The stressor regimen caused rapid decreases in the number of newly proliferated cells and neuroblasts in female DG but no obvious changes were observed in male DG. Group housing, regardless of companions' age, prevented the stress-induced decreases in the number of newly proliferated cells and neuroblasts in female DG. In contrast, the presence of young or age-matched companions potentiated the stress effect in males by decreasing the number of newly proliferated cells and neuroblasts. Finally, neither the stressor regimen nor group housing affected mouse performances in the object recognition and location memory in either sex. These findings, taken together, provide evidence to support a notion that middle-aged females appear to demonstrate more stress susceptibility on early neurogenesis in DG as compared to middle-aged males, although the hippocampus-related memory performances are comparable and not affected by stress in these males and females. Experiencing stress, middle-aged females are more prone to benefit from social interaction as compared to middle-aged males in this regard. We suggest, accordingly, that involving social interaction may afford a therapeutic advance in preventing stress-produced decreases in early neurogenesis in middle-aged females' DG.
Distributed Optimization for Shadow Removal in Spatial Augmented Reality

This paper proposes a novel shadow removal technique for cooperative projection system based-on spatio-temporal prediction. In our previous work, we proposed a distributed feedback algorithm, which is implementable in cooperative projection environments subject to data transfer constraints between components. A weakness of this scheme is that the compensation is conducted in each pixel independently. As a result, spatio-temporal information of the environmental change cannot be utilized even if it is available. In view of this, we specifically investigate the situation where some of projectors are occluded by a moving object whose oneframe-ahead behavior is predictable. In order to remove the resulting shadow, we propose a novel error propagating scheme that is still implementable in a distributed manner, and enables us to incorporate the prediction information of the obstacle. It is demonstrated experimentally that the proposed method significantly improves the shadow removal performance comparison to the previous work.
Stimulated emission depletion (STED) nanoscopy of a fluorescent protein-labeled organelle inside a living cell

We demonstrate far-field optical imaging with subdiffraction resolution of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in the interior of a living mammalian cell. The diffraction barrier is overcome by applying stimulated emission depletion (STED) on a yellow fluorescent protein tag. Imaging individual structural elements of the ER revealed a focal plane (x, y) resolution of <50 nm inside the living cell, corresponding to a 4-fold improvement over that of a confocal microscope and a 16-fold reduction in the focal-spot cross-sectional area. A similar gain in resolution is realized with both pulsed- and continuous-wave laser illumination. Images of highly convoluted parts of the ER reveal a similar resolution improvement in 3D optical sectioning by a factor of 3 along the optic axis (z). Time-lapse STED recordings document morphological changes of the ER over time. Thus, nanoscale 3D imaging of organelles in the interior of living cells greatly expands the scope of light microscopy in cell biology.