Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mental Fatigue Assessment in Different Thermal Environments – Protocol

Environmental and personal characteristics influence the behavior of individuals through the limitation of effort levels by a more or less rapid induction of fatigue. In particular, mental fatigue is recognized as a major cause of errors leading to accidents. As a consequence, thermal environment study has gained increasing importance in recent years. In order to contribute to enlarge the knowledge in this field, this work aims to present an essay protocol to evaluate the influence of the thermal environment on mental fatigue, based on electroencephalographic (EEG) analysis. With this purpose an exploratory study was held with 36 volunteers to validate the protocol. Volunteers simulated an administrative task for one hour. Fatigue assessment was carried out by analyzing Alpha and Beta waves amplitude over time. Assays were performed in a climatic chamber with controlled temperature and humidity: 22°C (40 and 80% RH) and 32°C (40 and 80% RH). Results suggest that both temperature and humidity influence the amplitude of the EEG signal (Alpha and Beta waves) in both hemispheres. The greatest amplitudes were found whenever environmental temperature and/or relative humidity values were higher. At the end of the article the advantages and limitations of mental fatigue assessment are discussed.
The Impact of Clay Minerals on Soil Hydrological Processes

In literature clay and clay-loamy soils are sometimes called heavy soils. The origin of this term lies in agriculture – they are difficult to cultivate and thus increasingly energy demanding. One of the basic characteristics of heavy soils is their capacity to change their volume, which is induced by swelling and shrinking processes. These processes occur in three dimensions. In horizontal plane they are represented by formation of cracks and in vertical plane by vertical movement of soil surface. With the formation of cracks, soil environment becomes a two-domain structure, cracks being one domain and soil matrix being the other one. Shrinkage cracks are distributed through the unsaturated zone of a soil profile. In general, unsaturated zone is a three-phase system pertaining to litosphere and limited by land surface upwards and water table downwards. Simultaneously, it is a subsystem of a wider system formed by atmosphere plant cover soil – groundwater. All these sub-systems are interconnected by interaction (hydrological) processes and together they constitute soil water regime. Hydrological processes as a part of soil water regime are called water regime elements. Water regime elements can cause temporal and spacial changes in soil water storage, which are denoted soil moisture regime.
An anatomy of the credibility of online newspapers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discover the primary components of credibility of three types of online newspapers and how the credibility of news differs by type.Design/methodology/approach – The paper participants were recruited at a large north‐eastern US university. All items of credibility scales were measured using seven‐point Likert‐type scales. For each of the three credibility scales, the mean was computed and the scales were analysed for similarities and differences. The scales were factor analysed to determine their underlying dimensions.Findings – Three factors (expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness) were common to the three types, but the different factor structure of each type was identified. The result of multiple comparisons shows that the differences between all three types of online newspapers were significant. Also the summated scores of the mainstream type were the highest on most items. However, the summated score of the index type of online newspaper was the highes.
What is the best operation for advanced prolapse ?

❙ The Golden Rule of surgery Page 84 T he more numerous the choices of surgical techniques for pelvic organ prolapse, the less agreement there is on which operation is best. Further complicating the picture is the industry’s push to consider augmentation with synthetic or biologic materials on an almost routine basis. Few scientific comparisons of the various approaches have been performed, however. To help shed some light on surgical decision-making, we convened an expert panel to review published data and explore our experience with selected procedures. ❚ What to consider before choosing a procedure • A woman’s desires regarding sexual activity are a critical piece of information, just as are her general health and history of pelvic surgery. • It also helps to know which symptoms of her prolapse and related pelvic floor disorders she finds most bothersome.
Ripcord: a modular platform for data center networking

In this demo, we present Ripcord, a modular platform for rapidly prototyping scale-out data center networks. Ripcord enables researchers to build and evaluate new network features and topologies, using only commercially available hardware and open-source software. The Ripcord demo will show three examples of custom network functions, operating together, on top of a 160-node cluster. The first is a routing engine that isolates classes of traffic. The second is a dynamic network manager than adjusts links and switch power states to reduce energy. The third is a statistics aggregator that supports network health monitoring and automatic alerts. The demo will be interactive, with a visualization of live parameters for each link and switch, such as bandwidth, drops, and power status, as well a control panel to modify the traffic load. We feel that an interactive demo is the best way to introduce the research community to Ripcord and get their feedback.
Life-iNet: A Structured Network-Based Knowledge Exploration and Analytics System for Life Sciences

Search engines running on scientiﬁc literature have been widely used by life scientists to ﬁnd publications related to their research. However, existing search engines in the life-science domain, such as PubMed, have limitations when applied to exploring and analyzing factual knowledge (e.g., disease-gene associations) in massive text corpora. These limitations are mainly due to the problems that factual information exists as an unstructured form in text, and also keyword and MeSH term-based queries cannot
Petrogenesis of high-grade metamorphic soles from the Central Dinaric Ophiolite belt and their significance for the Neotethyan evolution in the Dinarides

High-grade metamorphic soles in NE Bosnia and Herzegovina make part of the Krivaja-Konjuh ophiolite complex (KKOC), which is one of the most important constituents of the Jurassic ophiolite melange of the Central Dinarides. Several rock types were distinguished within the investigated metamorphic suite - sapphirine and corundum amphibolites, garnet-clinopyroxene±orthopyroxene amphibolites, clinopyroxene±garnet amphibolites, amphibolites per se and clinopyroxene+plagoclase±garnet gneisses.Peak temperature and pressure conditions calculated from different mineral pairs were estimated to range between 850 and 1100°C at 1.1 to 1.3 GPa. A prograde multi-stage metamorphic history of analyzed rocks was followed by the post-peak relaxation witnessed in decomposing porphyroblasts of garnet and ubiquitous formation of amphibole and orthopyroxene rims around clinopyroxene. The whole-rock chemical composition of magmatic protoliths largely defines it as cumulates from supra-subduction zones and scarcely as MORB-like tholeiitic mafic extrusives. Their origin is linked to near-ridge crust generation of a back-arc basin. Following the Middle Jurassic contraction of Neotethyan a portion of these rocks was likely entrained in an incipient subduction/thrusting system characteristic for the formation of metamorphic soles. According to geological evidences, and most notably, the age of radiolarians taken from KKOC basalts, the formation of metamorphic sole rocks must have followed a rapid transition in the Dinaridic Neotethys geotectonic setting before its final obduction onto the Adria margins in the next 15 Ma before the end of Jurassic.
Hippocampally-Dependent Consolidation in a Hierarchical Model of Neocortex

In memory consolidation, declarative memories which initially require the hippocampus for their recall, ultimately become independent of it. Consolidation has been the focus of numerous experimental and qualitative modeling studies, but only little quantitative exploration. We present a consolidation model in which hierarchical connections in the cortex, that initially instantiate purely semantic information acquired through probabilistic unsupervised learning, come to instantiate episodic information as well. The hippocampus is responsible for helping complete partial input patterns before consolidation is complete, while also training the cortex to perform appropriate completion by itself.
Sequential Optimization of Adaptive Arrays in Coherent Laser Communications

In optical wireless communications, a channel-matched adaptive coherent receiver may be implemented using an array of receive apertures. After atmospheric channel fading estimation, several replicas of a message received through the atmosphere are combined. As an alternative to training-based channel estimation, we analyze the performance of sequential techniques for direct optimization of multi-aperture array receivers in free-space coherent laser communications.
Sodium Benzoate–Rich Beverage Consumption is Associated With Increased Reporting of ADHD Symptoms in College Students

Objective: Sodium benzoate, a common additive in popular beverages, has recently been linked to ADHD. This research examined the relationship between sodium benzoate–rich beverage ingestion and symptoms related to ADHD in college students. Method: College students (N = 475) completed an anonymous survey in class in fall 2010. The survey assessed recent intake of a noninclusive list of sodium benzoate–rich beverages and ADHD-related symptoms using a validated screener. Results: Sodium benzoate–rich beverage intake was significantly associated with ADHD-related symptoms (p = .001), and significance was retained after controlling for covariates. Students scoring ≥4 on the screener (scores that may be consistent with ADHD; n = 67) reported higher intakes (34.9 ± 4.4 servings/month) than the remainder of the sample (16.7 ± 1.1 servings/month). Conclusion: These data suggest that a high intake of sodium benzoate–rich beverages may contribute to ADHD-related symptoms in college students and warrants further investigation.
Differentiating Psychopathy from General Antisociality Using the P3 as a Psychophysiological Correlate of Attentional Allocation

Recent studies have shown that while psychopathy and non-psychopathic antisociality overlap, they differ in the extent to which cognitive impairments are present. Specifically, psychopathy has been related to abnormal allocation of attention, a function that is traditionally believed to be indexed by event-related potentials (ERPs) of the P3-family. Previous research examining psychophysiological correlates of attention in psychopathic individuals has mainly focused on the parietally distributed P3b component to rare targets. In contrast, very little is known about the frontocentral P3a to infrequent novel events in psychopathy. Thus, findings on the P3 components in psychopathy are inconclusive, while results in non-psychopathic antisocial populations are clearer and point toward an inverse relationship between antisociality and P3 amplitudes. The present study adds to extant literature on the P3a and P3b in psychopathy by investigating component amplitudes in psychopathic offenders (N = 20), matched non-psychopathic offenders (N = 23) and healthy controls (N = 16). Also, it was assessed how well each offender group was able to differentially process rare novel and target events. The offender groups showed general amplitude reductions compared to healthy controls, but did not differ mutually on overall P3a/P3b amplitudes. However, the psychopathic group still exhibited normal neurophysiological differentiation when allocating attention to rare novel and target events, unlike the non-psychopathic sample. The results highlight differences between psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders regarding the integrity of the neurocognitive processes driving attentional allocation, as well as the usefulness of alternative psychophysiological measures in differentiating psychopathy from general antisociality.
Toward Sensor-Based Random Number Generation for Mobile and IoT Devices

The importance of random number generators (RNGs) to various computing applications is well understood. To ensure a quality level of output, high-entropy sources should be utilized as input. However, the algorithms used have not yet fully evolved to utilize newer technology. Even the Android pseudo RNG (APRNG) merely builds atop the Linux RNG to produce random numbers. This paper presents an exploratory study into methods of generating random numbers on sensor-equipped mobile and Internet of Things devices. We first perform a data collection study across 37 Android devices to determine two things-how much random data is consumed by modern devices, and which sensors are capable of producing sufficiently random data. We use the results of our analysis to create an experimental framework called SensoRNG, which serves as a prototype to test the efficacy of a sensor-based RNG. SensoRNG employs collection of data from on-board sensors and combines them via a lightweight mixing algorithm to produce random numbers. We evaluate SensoRNG with the National Institute of Standards and Technology statistical testing suite and demonstrate that a sensor-based RNG can provide high quality random numbers with only little additional overhead.
On the Bit Error Probability of Optimal Multiuser Detectors in Cooperative Cellular Networks

In this paper, we present new theoretical analysis on the uncoded bit error probability (BEP) of optimal multiuser detectors in cooperative cellular networks. We consider the uplink of a cooperative network where an arbitrary number of receivers jointly detect the signals transmitted from multiple transmitters. For such a network, we derive accurate upper and lower bounds on the BEP with independent Rayleigh fading and arbitrary path loss. We observe that our lower bound accurately approximates the BEP at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), whereas the upper bound is accurate at high SNRs. We further evaluate our bounds asymptotically to explicitly characterize the cooperative diversity order and array gains in the high-SNR regime.
AN EXPERIMENTAL COMPARISON OF BIASED AND UNBIASED RANDOM-KEY GENETIC ALGORITHMS

Random key genetic algorithms are heuristic methods for solving combinatorial optimization problems. They represent solutions as vectors of randomly generated real numbers, the so-called random keys. A deterministic algorithm, called a decoder, takes as input a vector of random keys and associates with it a feasible solution of the combinatorial optimization problem for which an objective value or fitness can be computed. We compare three types of random-key genetic algorithms: the unbiased algorithm of Bean (1994); the biased algorithm of Goncalves and Resende (2010); and a greedy version of Bean's algorithm on 12 instances from four types of covering problems: general-cost set covering, Steiner triple covering, general-cost set k -covering, and unit-cost covering by pairs. Experiments are run to construct runtime distributions for 36 heuristic/instance pairs. For all pairs of heuristics, we compute probabilities that one heuristic is faster than the other on all 12 instances. The experiments show that, in 11 of the 12 instances, the greedy version of Bean's algorithm is faster than Bean's original method and that the biased variant is faster than both variants of Bean's algorithm.
Bacterial endotoxin isolated from a water spray air humidification system as a putative agent of occupation-related lung disease

Outbreaks of hypersensitivity pneumonitis or humidifier fever were attributed to the inhalation of organic material aerosolized by a chilled-water spray humidification system. The purpose of this study was to isolate and characterize the serologically detectable antigen(s) present in extracts obtained from the humidification system. By using bicarbonate or phenol-water extractions or both, the antigen was isolated and characterized, using colorimetry, gas-liquid chromatography, reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography, and X-ray fluorescence. Carbohydrates, hexosamines, phosphorus, and even-numbered saturated and unsaturated fatty acids were constituents of the serologically detectable antigen. When tested in in vivo and in vitro assays, the antigen had demonstrable endotoxin activity. All subjects with biopsy-proven lung disease and a majority of subjects suspected of having lung disease had antibodies directed toward the purified endotoxin. The data strongly suggest that an aerosolized bacterial endotoxin is a putative agent inducing lung disease.
Differential perception of tonal contours through the syllable

This paper proposes a model of differential tonal perception in which the perception of tonal movement in spoken language is influenced by syllable structure. In the proposed model, tonal movement at the syllable onset is perceptually coded differently from movement in the syllable nucleus or in the coda. An F0 contour through the syllable onset or at the beginning of the nucleus is coded as a level tone, while a contour through the nucleus or at the beginning of the coda is coded as a contour tone.
Ring‐Mold Craters on Ceres: Evidence for Shallow Subsurface Water Ice Sources

One of the main tasks of the Dawn mission is to characterize the potentially ice‐rich crust of the dwarf planet Ceres. Ongoing studies reveal morphological features related to ice‐rich material such as pits or particular landslides. Here we report the identification of ring‐mold craters within the huge impact crater Occator. The Cerean ring‐mold craters exhibit strong morphological similarities to the ring‐mold craters on Mars, where ice‐rich material is thought to be involved in such crater development. We discuss the occurrence of water ice reservoirs in the subsurface and assume that ice‐rich material likely plays an important role in the development of ring‐mold craters on Ceres. The occurrence of ring‐mold craters on the surface of Ceres is not only a sign of water ice reservoirs in the subsurface but can also be used for the study of habitable zones on planetary bodies.
Oracle Complexity of Second-Order Methods for Finite-Sum Problems

Finite-sum optimization problems are ubiquitous in machine learning, and are commonly solved using first-order methods which rely on gradient computations. Recently, there has been growing interest in \emph{second-order} methods, which rely on both gradients and Hessians. In principle, second-order methods can require much fewer iterations than first-order methods, and hold the promise for more efficient algorithms. Although computing and manipulating Hessians is prohibitive for high-dimensional problems in general, the Hessians of individual functions in finite-sum problems can often be efficiently computed, e.g. because they possess a low-rank structure. Can second-order information indeed be used to solve such problems more efficiently? In this paper, we provide evidence that the answer -- perhaps surprisingly -- is negative, at least in terms of worst-case guarantees. However, we also discuss what additional assumptions and algorithmic approaches might potentially circumvent this negative result.
A meta-analysis of four genome-wide association studies of survival to age 90 years or older: the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology Consortium.

BACKGROUND Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) may yield insights into longevity. METHODS We performed a meta-analysis of GWAS in Caucasians from four prospective cohort studies: the Age, Gene/Environment Susceptibility-Reykjavik Study, the Cardiovascular Health Study, the Framingham Heart Study, and the Rotterdam Study participating in the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium. Longevity was defined as survival to age 90 years or older (n = 1,836); the comparison group comprised cohort members who died between the ages of 55 and 80 years (n = 1,955). In a second discovery stage, additional genotyping was conducted in the Leiden Longevity Study cohort and the Danish 1905 cohort. RESULTS There were 273 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) associations with p < . 0001, but none reached the prespecified significance level of 5 x 10(-8). Of the most significant SNPs, 24 were independent signals, and 16 of these SNPs were successfully genotyped in the second discovery stage, with one association for rs9664222, reaching 6.77 x 10(-7) for the combined meta-analysis of CHARGE and the stage 2 cohorts. The SNP lies in a region near MINPP1 (chromosome 10), a well-conserved gene involved in regulation of cellular proliferation. The minor allele was associated with lower odds of survival past age 90 (odds ratio = 0.82). Associations of interest in a homologue of the longevity assurance gene (LASS3) and PAPPA2 were not strengthened in the second stage. CONCLUSION Survival studies of larger size or more extreme or specific phenotypes may support or refine these initial findings.
Coupling of interfacial soil properties and bio‐hydrological processes: The flow cell concept

By applying the newly developed flow cell (FC) concept, this study investigated the impact of small‐scale spatial variations (millimetre to centimetre) in organic matter (OM) composition (diffusive reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy), biological activity (zymography), and wettability (contact angle [CA]) on transport processes (tracer experiments, radiography). Experiments were conducted in five undisturbed soil slices (millimetre apart), consisting of a sandy matrix with an embedded loamy band.
Obstacle classification and detection for vision based navigation for autonomous driving

With the rising trend in research and development of autonomous vehicles, it is important to keep in mind the cost effectiveness of the system. The cost of high-end sensor technologies being astronomically expensive, the research opportunities are restricted to a select few of high-tech companies and research laboratories such as Google, Tesla, Ford, and the likes of it. Hence our main focus is to develop an autonomous system suitable for academic and research purposes as well. This can be achieved by using available sensors such as the monocular cameras. The existing computer vision techniques along with the deep learning tools like Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) can together be used for developing a robust vision based autonomous driving system. The proposed method uses the SegNet encoder-decoder architecture for pixel-wise semantic segmentation of the video frame followed by an obstacle detection algorithm. The entire algorithm was implemented and tested on a mobile embedded platform of NVIDIA's Jetson TK1.