Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural Inter face Technology for Rehabil itation : Exploiting and Promoting Neuroplastic ity

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement EEC-0540865, Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) of the US Army Medical Research and Material Command Agreement W81XWH-07-1-0716, a special grant from the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants from the NIBIB (1R01EB007749) and NINDS (1R21NS056136), and grant number 5 UL1 RR024153 from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the NIH and NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of NCRR or NIH. a Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Pittsburgh, 3471 Fifth Ave., Suite 202, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA b Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, 300 Technology Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA c Quality of Life Technology (QoLT) Engineering Research Center, 417 South Craig Street, Room 303, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA d Human Engineering Research Laboratories, VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, 7180 Highland Drive, Building 4, 151R-1, Pittsburgh, PA 15206, USA e Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA f Human Cortical Physiology Section and Stroke Neurorehabilitation Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), NIH, 10 Center Drive, MSC 1430, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA g Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University of Tuebingen, Gartenstr 29, Room 210, D-72074, Tuebingen, Germany h Department of Neurobiology, University of Pittsburgh, 200 Lothrop Street, E1440 BSTWR, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA * Corresponding author. Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, 3471 Fifth Ave., Suite 202, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. E-mail address: djw50@pitt.edu (D.J. Weber).
Environmental Characteristics of Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) Burrow Locations in an Altered Industrial Landscape

In the Colorado Desert of California, the western distributional limit of the desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) occurs in the Whitewater Hills of the southeastern San Bernardino Mountains. Much of the area has been developed for wind energy generation and tortoises often live in association with altered industrial landscapes. Natural habitat in the area was characterized by a sharp transition zone of plant associations including representatives of the Colorado and Mojave Deserts, coastal, and montane ecosystems. We examined the environmental factors associated with the locations of desert tortoise burrows at a site developed for wind energy generation. Measure- ments were taken at the opening of burrows, including elevation, slope, aspect, and distance to various natural and anthropogenic features of the landscape. We compared this data set with identical measurements for random points that lacked burrows in the same landscape. The analysis demonstrated that desert tortoises within the study area did not randomly select their burrow sites. Desert tortoise burrows were located closer to roads and concrete foundations associated with wind energy turbines and transformers than were random points. The results challenge the paradigm that desert tortoises are negatively affected by all forms of anthropogenic disturbance and suggest that with proper planning, some forms of development in the desert are compatible with conservation of sensitive species.
How non-consumption goals (elicited by competitive setting or social risk) and self-confidence influence the importance of trivial attributes in product evaluation

Purpose This research aims to provide new empirical evidence, showing that trivial attributes can exert a significant impact on product evaluation when they help to fulfill non-consumption goals (goal that goes beyond functional benefits). Design/methodology/approach The research presents two experimental studies that investigate the role of trivial product attributes in various non-consumption contexts. Findings Trivial attributes can have a significant impact on product evaluation when they help to fulfill non-consumption goals. First, in the non-competitive versus competitive choice settings, a trivial attribute becomes more important when it helps to make a choice (i.e. a non-consumption goal). Second, in the low versus high social risk settings, a trivial attribute becomes more important when it helps to reduce a social risk (i.e. a non-consumption goal). In addition, self-confidence is a moderator, which regulates consumers’ ability to rely on trivial attributes in making product choices. Research limitations/implications The social risk manipulations (high vs low) were operationalized by manipulating the impression motive related to social risk. The more important a goal is, the more risk consumers feel in decision making (Lazarus, 1991). Therefore, risk is a proxy of the goal strength or goal relevance. Future research is needed to examine goal strength’s sole influence on the perception of the trivial attribute. Practical implications From managerial perspective, trivial attributes can help companies to improve their sales. For example, a way to increase an attribute’s importance is to put the product in a competitive setting. Increasing a social risk further increases the influence of trivial attributes. When less confident consumers perceive the social risk is high, they prefer a brand with a trivial attribute. For consumers, the findings also suggest that consumers should not be tempted to consider trivial attributes in their purchase decisions. Reconsidering attributes and increasing self-confidence could help maintain focus on non-trivial attributes. Originality/value The study makes several contributions to theory and practice. This is the first study to systematically propose a framework of how trivial attributes’ role in product evaluation and choice change based on goals. The paper clarifies confusions about the definitions of trivial attributes and reconciles contradictory findings in literature. A trivial attribute can be instrumental in evaluation and choice when it helps to achieve a non-consumption goal. It is also the first study to introduce social risks into trivial attributes research in choices. The findings provide empirical evidence that social risks and self-confidence together drive consumers to prefer for trivial attribute.
Formation and Collisional Evolution of Kuiper Belt Objects

This chapter summarizes analytic theory and numerical calculations for the formation and collisional evolution of KBOs at 20--150 AU. We describe the main predictions of a baseline self-stirring model and show how dynamical perturbations from a stellar flyby or stirring by a giant planet modify the evolution. Although robust comparisons between observations and theory require better KBO statistics and more comprehensive calculations, the data are broadly consistent with KBO formation in a massive disk followed by substantial collisional grinding and dynamical ejection. However, there are important problems reconciling the results of coagulation and dynamical calculations. Contrasting our current understanding of the evolution of KBOs and asteroids suggests that additional observational constraints, such as the identification of more dynamical families of KBOs (like the 2003 EL61 family), would provide additional information on the relative roles of collisional grinding and dynamical ejection in the Kuiper Belt. The uncertainties also motivate calculations that combine collisional and dynamical evolution, a `unified' calculation that should give us a better picture of KBO formation and evolution.
Topic Interest and Goal Orientation: An Investigation on Middle School EFL Students in Vietnam

This paper reports a study investigating the relationship between students’ levels of topic interest and their goal orientations in EFL learning. Two scales adopted from the literature related to mastery and performance goal orientations and 42 popular topics used currently in different textbooks were given to 834 9 th Grade Vietnamese students for the sampling. As a result of the research, topic interest was identified as being more strongly correlated with mastery goals than with performance goals. Further analyses of the relationships between these two constructs provided insightful understandings for topical textbook design, goal enhancement incentives, and their interactions in ESL learning.
Analyzing Media Representations of Sportswomen—Expanding the Conceptual Boundaries Using a Postfeminist Sensibility

This article seeks to expand the conceptual boundaries of sport media research by investigating the utility of a postfeminist sensibility for analyzing depictions of women in sport. Rosalind Gill’s (2007) notion of a postfeminist sensibility is situated within UK-led feminist critiques of gendered neoliberalism in popular culture and offers a conceptual lens through which sports scholars might interrogate the complex and contradictory media landscape that often simultaneously marginalizes and empowers sportswomen. In highlighting postfeminism as a sensibility, this article makes visible the ways in which depictions of sportswomen as sexy and strong reorients responsibility for the sexualization of female athletes away from media institutions and toward the female athlete themselves. It also explains how a postfeminist sensibility differs from third wave feminism—a related framework popular among sports feminists seeking to respond to ambivalent and complex renderings of contemporary sporting femininity.
Online data collection with special populations over the World Wide Web.

The quick ascendance of the World Wide Web as the dominant vehicle for internet communication has recently made experimentation in a multimedia environment feasible on the Internet. Although web sites containing online psychology demonstrations and experiments for non-handicapped individuals have appeared in recent years (especially in the areas of cognitive and social psychology), there appear to have been few attempts to conduct online experimentation with special populations. We recently completed two online pilot studies of families with Down syndrome or Williams syndrome members: a) A survey that asks (via Likert rating scales, adjective checklists, multiple-choice style questions, and text-entry boxes) about family background, computer use, and temperament of the special needs family member; and b) An experiment (completed by an individual with special needs) that includes auditory and visual digit span tasks and a memory-for-orientation task in which responses are entered via mouse clicks. Recruiting began with e-mail announcements to representative Down syndrome and Williams syndrome discussion groups, listserves, and bulletin boards, and submission of the project's URL (http://www.cofc.edu/~marcellm/testaw.htm) and key indexing terms to selected search engines. This paper reviews technical aspects of developing the online programmes as well as the strengths and weaknesses of online vs. traditional laboratory-based research in relation to issues such as experimental control, delivery of instructions, experimenter bias, participant recruitment, sample heterogeneity, generalization, attrition, privacy, financial costs, data integrity, and ethics. We conclude by offering our thoughts on two ways of implementing online experimentation with special populations: a) Using a remote parent 'helper' as a proxy to work with the target individual; and b) Collaborating with professional colleagues in Web-based projects conducted in traditional laboratory settings.
Axisymmetric stationary solutions with arbitrary multipole moments

In this paper, the problem of ﬁnding an axisymmetric stationary spacetime from a speciﬁed set of multipole moments, is studied. The condition on the multipole moments, for existence of a solution, is formulated as a convergence condition on a power series formed from the multipole moments. The methods in this paper can also be used to give approximate solutions to any order as well as estimates on each term of the resulting power series.
This Isn’t the Free Will Worth Looking For

According to previous research, threatening people’s belief in free will may undermine moral judgments and behavior. Four studies tested this claim. Study 1 used a Velten technique to threaten people’s belief in free will and found no effects on moral behavior, judgments of blame, and punishment decisions. Study 2 used six different threats to free will and failed to find effects on judgments of blame and wrongness. Study 3 found no effects on moral judgment when manipulating general free will beliefs but found strong effects when manipulating the perceived choice capacity of the judged agent. Study 4 used pretested narratives that varied agents’ apparent free will and found that perceived choice capacity mediated the relationship between free will and blame. These results suggest that people’s general beliefs about whether free will exists have no impact on moral judgments but specific judgments about the agent’s choice capacity do.
Using Satellite and Airborne LiDAR to Model Woodpecker Habitat Occupancy at the Landscape Scale

Incorporating vertical vegetation structure into models of animal distributions can improve understanding of the patterns and processes governing habitat selection. LiDAR can provide such structural information, but these data are typically collected via aircraft and thus are limited in spatial extent. Our objective was to explore the utility of satellite-based LiDAR data from the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) relative to airborne-based LiDAR to model the north Idaho breeding distribution of a forest-dependent ecosystem engineer, the Red-naped sapsucker (Sphyrapicus nuchalis). GLAS data occurred within ca. 64 m diameter ellipses spaced a minimum of 172 m apart, and all occupancy analyses were confined to this grain scale. Using a hierarchical approach, we modeled Red-naped sapsucker occupancy as a function of LiDAR metrics derived from both platforms. Occupancy models based on satellite data were weak, possibly because the data within the GLAS ellipse did not fully represent habitat characteristics important for this species. The most important structural variables influencing Red-naped Sapsucker breeding site selection based on airborne LiDAR data included foliage height diversity, the distance between major strata in the canopy vertical profile, and the vegetation density near the ground. These characteristics are consistent with the diversity of foraging activities exhibited by this species. To our knowledge, this study represents the first to examine the utility of satellite-based LiDAR to model animal distributions. The large area of each GLAS ellipse and the non-contiguous nature of GLAS data may pose significant challenges for wildlife distribution modeling; nevertheless these data can provide useful information on ecosystem vertical structure, particularly in areas of gentle terrain. Additional work is thus warranted to utilize LiDAR datasets collected from both airborne and past and future satellite platforms (e.g. GLAS, and the planned IceSAT2 mission) with the goal of improving wildlife modeling for more locations across the globe.
What Is an Object File?

The notion of an object file figures prominently in recent work in philosophy and cognitive science. Object files play a role in theories of singular reference, object individuation, perceptual memory, and the development of cognitive capacities. However, the philosophical literature lacks a detailed, empirically informed theory of object files. In this article, we articulate and defend the multiple-slots view, which specifies both the format and architecture of object files. We argue that object files represent in a non-iconic, propositional format that incorporates discrete symbols for separate features. Moreover, we argue that features of separate categories (such as colour, shape, and orientation) are stored in separate memory slots within an object file. We supplement this view with a computational framework that characterizes how information about objects is stored and retrieved.
The Effect of Extended Injection of Subcutaneous Heparin on Pain Intensity and Bruising Incidence

Background Reducing patients’ pain is one of the main goals of providing clinical services, which requires nursing skill. As a simple technique, increasing the duration of subcutaneous heparin injection may affect the intensity of pain and bruising. Objective The aim of this study was to assess the effect of increasing the heparin injection time on pain intensity and bruising associated with subcutaneous injection. Methods The present quasi-experimental study consisted of 86 patients, admitted to our hospital, who were treated with subcutaneous heparin injection. A McGill pain intensity questionnaire was used to measure pain severity in a purposive sampling. All of the subjects received subcutaneous heparin twice for 10 seconds. They also were injected twice with heparin infusion, although it was for 30 seconds this time. The interval between the two injections was 24 h, and the intensity of the pain was measured after each injection. The Pearson correlation coefficient was measured, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the t-test were used to analyze the data. Results Eighty patients received heparin. The body mass indexes were reported as 52 (60%) and 34 (40%) for subjects within the age range of 18.5–24.9 and 25–29.9, respectively. Regarding the mean of pain intensity, there was a significant difference between the 10 and 30 s injections (p < 0.05). Additionally, there was a significant difference in bruising rates between the two methods 48 and 72 h after injection (p < 0.05). The ANOVA test showed a significant association between gender and bruising (p = 0.001). Conclusion According to the results, by elevating the duration of heparin injection, the severity of pain was reduced, and, therefore, the patients felt more comfortable. Trial Registration The trial was registered at the Thai Clinical Trials Registry (TCTR) with the TCTR identification of TCTR20160221001. Funding This research was supported by the research cluster grant (88186-25/01/89) from Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran. The authors received no financial support for the authorship and/or publication of this article.
A Fuzzy Logic Based Intelligent Negotiation Agent (FINA) in Ecommerce

With the evolution of electronic commerce (eCommerce) on the Web and the rise of interest in intelligence of software agents, automated negotiation is becoming an increasingly popular method for an eCommerce system to be efficient; however, negotiation, which takes place in transactions, is complicated, time-consuming and costly for participants to reach an agreement. This paper presents a model of an intelligent negotiation agent based on fuzzy logic methodology in order to alleviate the complexity of negotiation. The proposed negotiation agent model is particularly suitable to open environments, such as the Internet. The conventional methods, such as game theory, are incapable of handling an open environment where the information is sparse and full of uncertainty, while the fuzzy approaches are suitable to elegantly deal with this problem. The fuzzy logic based intelligent negotiation agent, presented in this paper, is able to interact autonomously and consequently save human labor in negotiations. The aim of modeling a negotiation agent is to reach mutual agreement efficiently and intelligently. The negotiation agent is able to negotiate with other such agents, over various sets of issues, on behalf of the real-world parties they represent, i.e. it can handle multi-issue negotiation. The reasoning model of the negotiation agent has been implemented partially by using c# based on Microsoft . NET. The reliability and the flexibility of the reasoning model are finally evaluated. The results show that performance of the proposed agent model is acceptable for negotiation parties to achieve mutual benefits
vsInk - Integrating Digital Ink with Program Code in Visual Studio

We present vsInk, a plug-in that affords digital ink annotation in the Visual Studio code editor. Annotations can be added in the same window as the editor and automatically reflow when the underlying code changes. The plug-in uses recognisers built using machine learning to improve the accuracy of the annotation's anchor. The user evaluation shows that the core functionality is sound.
Modeling of Aggregate Available Bandwidth in Many-toOne Data Transfer

This work investigates the modeling of aggregate available bandwidth in multi-sender network applications. Unlike the well-established client-server model, where there is only one server sending the requested data, the available bandwidth of multiple senders when combined together does exhibit consistent properties and thus can be modeled and estimated. Through extensive experiments conducted in the Internet this work proposed to model the aggregate available bandwidth using a normal distribution and then illustrates its application through a hybrid download-streaming algorithm for video delivery. This new multi-source bandwidth model is especially suitable for the emerging peer-to-peer applications, where having multiple sources available are the norm rather than the exception.
A Framework for Analyzing Technical Trade Barriers in Agricultural Markets

Technical trade barriers are increasingly important in the international trade of agricultural products. Designing technical trade measures that can satisfy the growing demand for food safety, product differentiation, environmental amenities, and product information at the lowest cost to the consumer and to the international trading system requires an understanding of the complex economics of regulatory import barriers. This report proposes a definition and classification scheme to frame discussion and evaluation of such measures. Open-economy models that complement the classification scheme are developed graphically to highlight the basic elements that affect the economic impacts of changes in technical trade barriers.
A Functional Gamma-Band Defined by Stimulus-Dependent Synchronization in Area 18 of Awake Behaving Cats

During the past decade, numerous studies have demonstrated stimulus-specific synchronization of neuronal activity in the γ-frequency range. However, it appears that the different analyses are based on widely different assumptions about which frequency range to investigate. Therefore, the term “γ-synchronization” refers to an inhomogeneous spectrum of definitions and corresponding frequency bands. Moreover, most studies have been performed in anesthetized animals or in awake animals by use of fixation paradigms. Thus, it is difficult to relate these results to alert animals behaving under natural conditions. Here, we investigate stimulus specific synchronization in primary visual cortex of awake cats in a tracking paradigm. We record local field potentials and multiunit activity simultaneously from multiple electrodes. (1) We demonstrate that visual stimulation induces neuronal synchronization in a broad frequency range reaching well above 100 Hz. (2) We derive a functional γ-band based on an objective criterion: We show that synchronization of neuronal activity is optimally orientation-tuned when a broad frequency band is considered. This band starts above 40 Hz, a frequency that is typically related to the term γ-synchronization, and extends to very high frequencies. Interestingly, the frequency of maximum synchronization is different from the frequency at which synchronization is most stimulus specific. (3) We demonstrate synchronization of neuronal activity in a distinct low-frequency band with different properties suggesting separate functional roles of low- and high-frequency synchronization.