Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Discriminative Kalman Filter for Bayesian Filtering with Nonlinear and Nongaussian Observation Models

The Kalman filter provides a simple and efficient algorithm to compute the posterior distribution for state-space models where both the latent state and measurement models are linear and gaussian. Extensions to the Kalman filter, including the extended and unscented Kalman filters, incorporate linearizations for models where the observation model p(observation|state) is nonlinear. We argue that in many cases, a model for p(state|observation) proves both easier to learn and more accurate for latent state estimation. Approximating p(state|observation) as gaussian leads to a new filtering algorithm, the discriminative Kalman filter (DKF), which can perform well even when p(observation|state) is highly nonlinear and/or nongaussian. The approximation, motivated by the Bernstein–von Mises theorem, improves as the dimensionality of the observations increases. The DKF has computational complexity similar to the Kalman filter, allowing it in some cases to perform much faster than particle filters with similar precision, while better accounting for nonlinear and nongaussian observation models than Kalman-based extensions. When the observation model must be learned from training data prior to filtering, off-the-shelf nonlinear and nonparametric regression techniques can provide a gaussian model for p(observation|state) that cleanly integrates with the DKF. As part of the BrainGate2 clinical trial, we successfully implemented gaussian process regression with the DKF framework in a brain-computer interface to provide real-time, closed-loop cursor control to a person with a complete spinal cord injury. In this letter, we explore the theory underlying the DKF, exhibit some illustrative examples, and outline potential extensions.
Morphological ontogeny of Damaeolus ornatissimus (Acari: Oribatida: Damaeolidae), with comments on Damaeolus Paoli

Abstract The morphological ontogeny of Damaeolus ornatissimus Csiszár, 1962 from Romania is described and illustrated. The nymphs of this species are quadrideficient and eupheredermous, i.e. they carry the exuvial scalps of previous instars on the gastronotum. The bothridial seta of juveniles is fusiform, with long apical flagellum, and all prodorsal and gastronotal setae are smooth, and some of them are covered with thick layer of granular cerotegument. The larva has polygonal pattern on the gastronotum, two pairs of setae on paraproctal valves and 12 pairs of gastronotal setae, the nymphs have 12 pairs of latter setae. In all instars, seta d on all genua and tibiae is present.
Equivalence Projective Simulation as a Framework for Modeling Formation of Stimulus Equivalence Classes

Stimulus equivalence (SE) and projective simulation (PS) study complex behavior, the former in human subjects and the latter in artificial agents. We apply the PS learning framework for modeling the formation of equivalence classes. For this purpose, we first modify the PS model to accommodate imitating the emergence of equivalence relations. Later, we formulate the SE formation through the matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure. The proposed version of PS model, called the equivalence projective simulation (EPS) model, is able to act within a varying action set and derive new relations without receiving feedback from the environment. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that the field of equivalence theory in behavior analysis has been linked to an artificial agent in a machine learning context. This model has many advantages over existing neural network models. Briefly, our EPS model is not a black box model, but rather a model with the capability of easy interpretation and flexibility for further modifications. To validate the model, some experimental results performed by prominent behavior analysts are simulated. The results confirm that the EPS model is able to reliably simulate and replicate the same behavior as real experiments in various settings, including formation of equivalence relations in typical participants, nonformation of equivalence relations in language-disabled children, and nodal effect in a linear series with nodal distance five. Moreover, through a hypothetical experiment, we discuss the possibility of applying EPS in further equivalence theory research.
Is a planar Ventilation Perfusion (V/Q) scan a good test for elderly patients?

Poster: "ECR 2015 / C-1672 / Is a planar Ventilation Perfusion (V/Q) scan a good test for elderly patients? " by: "V. Jackson, N. F. Lynch, O. Rauf, A. H. Choudhri; Stockport/UK"
Spatial Epidemiology of the Stony-Coral-Tissue-Loss Disease in Florida

The stony-coral-tissue-loss disease (SCTLD) has recently caused widespread loss of coral along the Florida reef tract. Yet little is known about where, when, and why this coral disease outbreak occurred. In the absence of a definitive pathogen, it is essential to characterize the ecology of the disease and document the spatio-temporal dynamics of the outbreak. Here, we investigate the epizootiology of the SCTLD at multiple spatial and temporal scales along the Florida reef tract from May 2014 to December 2017. We used spatial interpolation to characterize the disease hotspots, Ripley’s K analysis to examine contagion, a spatio-temporal model to assess rates of spread, and a Bayesian model to examine ecological and environmental covariates that may have influenced the occurrence and severity of the outbreak. Our results show that the disease affected reefs at the scale of hundreds of kilometers, with significant clusters of up to 140 km. The epizootic clearly followed a contagion model, suggesting that the disease was highly contagious. The rate of spread of the epizootic was linear and moved slightly faster to the north (∼100 m d–1) than to the south (∼92 m d–1). The difference in rate of spread between the north and south direction may indicate currents facilitated transmission. The analyzed dataset showed that the epizootic affected at least 19 coral species and that deep and diverse sites were at greater risk of the disease than shallow and low diversity sites.
What Makes Employees’ Work So Stressful? Effects of Vertical Leadership and Horizontal Management on Employees’ Stress

Work stress is a significant problem all over the world. In the present study, from the perspective of the combination of vertical and horizontal management, we investigated the relationships of managerial ethical leadership, mutual monitoring, and mutual support among employees’ work stress levels. A total of 307 white collar employees in Japan were asked to complete an online questionnaire on three separate occasions. The results showed that both ethical leadership and mutual support were negatively related to stress. In addition, mutual support mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and work stress. Further, mutual monitoring moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and work stress: when mutual monitoring was high, stress did not decline with more ethical leadership. These results may suggest that ethical leadership can reduce work stress both directly and through mutual support, indirectly. Additionally, the direct effect may be constrained under high monitoring situations. Practical implications and needed future research are also discussed.
Self-Regulation of SMR Power Led to an Enhancement of Functional Connectivity of Somatomotor Cortices in Fibromyalgia Patients

Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that altered activity in somatosensory and motor cortices play a key role in pain chronification. Neurofeedback training of sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) is a tool which allow individuals to self-modulate their brain activity and to produce significant changes over somatomotor brain areas. Several studies have further shown that neurofeedback training may reduce pain and other pain-related symptoms in chronic pain patients. The goal of the present study was to analyze changes in SMR power and brain functional connectivity of the somatosensory and motor cortices elicited by neurofeedback task designed to both synchronize and desynchronize the SMR power over motor and somatosensory areas in fibromyalgia patients. Seventeen patients were randomly assigned to the SMR training (n = 9) or to a sham protocol (n = 8). All participants were trained during 6 sessions, and fMRI and EEG power elicited by synchronization and desynchronization trials were analyzed. In the SMR training group, four patients achieved the objective of SMR modulation in more than 70% of the trials from the second training session (good responders), while five patients performed the task at the chance level (bad responders). Good responders to the neurofeedback training significantly reduced pain and increased both SMR power modulation and functional connectivity of motor and somatosensory related areas during the last neurofeedback training session, whereas no changes in brain activity or pain were observed in bad responders or participants in the sham group. In addition, we observed that good responders were characterized by reduced impact of fibromyalgia and pain symptoms, as well as by increased levels of health-related quality of life during the pre-training sessions. In summary, the present study revealed that neurofeedback training of SMR elicited significant brain changes in somatomotor areas leading to a significant reduction of pain in fibromyalgia patients. In this sense, our research provide evidence that neurofeedback training is a promising tool for a better understanding of brain mechanisms involved in pain chronification.
AI in Healthcare: Time-Series Forecasting Using Statistical, Neural, and Ensemble Architectures

Both statistical and neural methods have been proposed in the literature to predict healthcare expenditures. However, less attention has been given to comparing predictions from both these methods as well as ensemble approaches in the healthcare domain. The primary objective of this paper was to evaluate different statistical, neural, and ensemble techniques in their ability to predict patients' weekly average expenditures on certain pain medications. Two statistical models, persistence (baseline) and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), a multilayer perceptron (MLP) model, a long short-term memory (LSTM) model, and an ensemble model combining predictions of the ARIMA, MLP, and LSTM models were calibrated to predict the expenditures on two different pain medications. In the MLP and LSTM models, we compared the influence of shuffling of training data and dropout of certain nodes in MLPs and nodes and recurrent connections in LSTMs in layers during training. Results revealed that the ensemble model outperformed the persistence, ARIMA, MLP, and LSTM models across both pain medications. In general, not shuffling the training data and adding the dropout helped the MLP models and shuffling the training data and not adding the dropout helped the LSTM models across both medications. We highlight the implications of using statistical, neural, and ensemble methods for time-series forecasting of outcomes in the healthcare domain.
Determinants of the hCG Concentration in the Early Luteal Phase After Final Maturation of Follicles With Bolus Trigger of Recombinant hCG

Introduction: It has recently been shown that late follicular phase progesterone levels correlate well with those in the early luteal phase, and that progesterone levels before and 12 h after human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) administration predict levels during the early luteal phase. This study investigated determinants of serum hCG levels after a bolus dose of hCG for triggering ovulation in women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF). Materials and Methods: This retrospective analysis was performed on data from a prospective study of women aged 18–42 years with normal ovarian reserve receiving gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist co-treatment during ovarian stimulation with follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) who were followed until 6 days after oocyte pick-up (OPU) in a single IVF cycle. The main outcome measures were early luteal phase serum hCG levels, and predictors of those levels. Results: There was wide inter-individual variability in early phase hCG concentrations over the period from 12 h after hCG injection up to 6 days after OPU. Patients with serum hCG values in the bottom 10% had a significantly higher body mass index (BMI; p = 0.038) and a significantly longer duration of stimulation (p = 0.014) than those with higher serum hCG values. Serum progesterone levels up to the first 36 h after hCG injection were significantly higher in the low vs. higher serum hCG group, but were similar at all other time points. There was a significant correlation between serum hCG level after hCG administration and BMI (lower BMI = higher serum hCG). In a cluster analysis, patients with the lowest serum hCG and progesterone levels at 12 h after hCG injection had significantly higher BMI, and significantly lower anti-Müllerian hormone level, duration of stimulation, and number of follicles of ≥11 and ≥14 mm compared with the other three clusters. Conclusion: Predictors of low serum hCG after a trigger bolus were difficult to determine, but BMI seems to be important. More detailed information on the luteal phase hormonal profile and data on predictors of hormone levels during this critical period can facilitate the development of strategies to allow individualization of the luteal phase support regimen, potentially improving IVF outcomes.
Suppression of NLRP3 Inflammasome by Erythropoietin via the EPOR/JAK2/STAT3 Pathway Contributes to Attenuation of Acute Lung Injury in Mice

Acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are common and devastating clinical disorders with high mortality and no specific therapy. An excessive inflammatory response results in the progression of ALI/ARDS, and the NLRP3 inflammasome is a key participant in inflammation. Erythropoietin (EPO), which is clinically used for anemia, reportedly exerts pleiotropic effects in ALI. However, whether EPO could protect against lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced ALI by regulating the NLRP3 inflammasome and its underlying mechanisms remain poorly elucidated. This study aimed to explore whether the therapeutic effects of EPO rely on the suppression of the NLRP3 inflammasome and the specific mechanisms in an LPS-induced ALI mouse model. ALI was induced in C57BL/6 mice by intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of LPS (15 mg/kg). EPO was administered intraperitoneally at 5 U/g after LPS challenge. The mice were sacrificed 8 h later. Our findings indicated that application of EPO markedly diminished LPS-induced lung injury by restoring histopathological changes, lessened lung wet/dry (W/D) ratio, protein concentrations in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) levels. Meanwhile, EPO evidently decreased interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and interleukin-18 (IL-18) secretion, the expression of NLRP3 inflammasome components including pro-IL-1β, NLRP3, and cleaved caspase-1 as well as phosphorylation of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) p65, which may be associated with activation of EPO receptor (EPOR), phosphorylation of Janus-tyrosine kinase 2 (JAK2) and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3). However, all the beneficial effects of EPO on ALI and modulation NLRP3 inflammasome were remarkably abrogated by the inhibition of EPOR/JAK2/STAT3 pathway and knockout (KO) of NLRP3 gene. Taken together, this study indicates that EPO can effectively attenuate LPS-induced lung injury in mice by suppressing the NLRP3 inflammasome, which is dependent upon activation of EPOR/JAK2/STAT3 signaling and inhibition of the NF-κB pathway.
CNS-Derived Blood Exosomes as a Promising Source of Biomarkers: Opportunities and Challenges

Eukaryotic cells release different types of extracellular vesicles (EVs) including exosomes, ectosomes, and microvesicles. Exosomes are nanovesicles, 30–200 nm in diameter, that carry cell- and cell-state-specific cargo of proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids, including mRNA and miRNA. Recent studies have shown that central nervous system (CNS)-derived exosomes may carry amyloidogenic proteins and facilitate their cell-to-cell transfer, thus playing a critical role in the progression of neurodegenerative diseases, such as tauopathies and synucleinopathies. CNS-derived exosomes also have been shown to cross the blood-brain-barrier into the bloodstream and therefore have drawn substantial attention as a source of biomarkers for various neurodegenerative diseases as they can be isolated via a minimally invasive blood draw and report on the biochemical status of the CNS. However, although isolating specific brain-cell-derived exosomes from the blood is theoretically simple and the approach has great promise, practical details are of crucial importance and may compromise the reproducibility and utility of this approach, especially when different laboratories use different protocols. In this review we discuss the role of exosomes in neurodegenerative diseases, the usefulness of CNS-derived blood exosomes as a source of biomarkers for these diseases, and practical challenges associated with the methodology of CNS-derived blood exosomes and subsequent biomarker analysis.
Neurophysiological Correlates of User Experience in Smart Home Systems (SHSs): First Evidence From Electroencephalography and Autonomic Measures

Home automation brings together technology, engineering, and user experience (UX). Within this framework, even neuroscience could be a valuable discipline to explore UX. For the first time, in the present work, some distinguishing effects of domotics on users’ cognitive and emotional behavior are highlighted by using the neuroscientific approach. In order to define possible effects of a smart home system (SHS) on UX, a neuroscientific multimethodology was adopted with the purpose of recording and confronting the neural activity (electroencephalography, EEG) and autonomic system responses of 19 individuals during a resting state (RS) baseline and the exploration of five different tech-interaction areas in a domotic environment. EEG findings showed a generalized neural activation reflected by alpha band activity while participants were exploring the tech areas confronted with the RS. The delta band was mainly present in temporo-central compared to frontal and parieto-occipital areas and was interpreted as a higher emotional activation related to the whole UX. This effect was found for the sixth tech-interaction area (i.e., bedroom) compared to the RS, and it is supposed to represent an enhanced emotional response and integration processing toward a higher multisensory interactive area. Regarding autonomic activity, an increase in heart rate (HR) was found for the bedroom area compared to the RS, thus showing a specific effect on physiological indices in this engaging tech area. The present research constitutes the first attempt to understand the user responsiveness to SHS, in terms of cognitive and emotional engagement, by adopting a neuroscientific perspective. Some high-value benefits derived from this approach will be described in light of the neurophysiological results.
ANTIOXIDANT-VITAMIN C: LUNG FUNCTION; LUNG CANCER

ABSTRACT Non-enzymatic vitamin C (ascorbic acid) plays an important role in the medicinal field and acts as antioxidants use in fruits and vegetable such as lemon, orange, grapes, carrots, tomatoes, grapefruit, beans, broccoli, and mangos. It helps to prevent and stop of various diseases such as lung cancer, asthma, and wheezing and finding an antibronchospastic effect. Other factors such as diet have also been implicated in the development of lung cancer. Despite the extensive research conducted in this area, the relationship between diet and lung cancer is still not clear. Diets high in fat and low in vegetables and fruits may increase the risk of lung cancer and other fact eating of tobacco and smoking of cigarette. Lung tissue damage due to high levels of free radicals in cigarette smoke causes direct (tissue oxidation) and indirect (release of oxidizing agents and enzymes). Vitamin C is necessary for phagocytosis. It plays a significant role in daily life, dietary system like eating food, vegetable and smoking of cigarette. It helps to prevent or stop the damage the lung tissue/or cause lung cancer. The present review studied that application of vitamin C act as antioxidant in lung cancer like diseases such as lung-cancer and role in lung function. Keywords: Review, Non-enzymatic antioxidant (vitamin C), Lung function, Lung diseases.
GIobalFusion

The paper enhances deep-neural-network-based inference in sensing applications by introducing a lightweight attention mechanism called the global attention module for multi-sensor information fusion. This mechanism is capable of utilizing information collected from higher layers of the neural network to selectively amplify the influence of informative features and suppress unrelated noise at the fusion layer. We successfully integrate this mechanism into a new end-to-end learning framework, called GIobalFusion, where two global attention modules are deployed for spatial fusion and sensing modality fusion, respectively. Through an extensive evaluation on four public human activity recognition (HAR) datasets, we successfully demonstrate the effectiveness of GlobalFusion at improving information fusion quality. The new approach outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms on all four datasets with a clear margin. We also show that the learned attention weights agree well with human intuition. We then validate the efficiency of GlobalFusion by testing its inference time and energy consumption on commodity IoT devices. Only a negligible overhead is induced by the global attention modules.
Optoelectronic Properties of Fluorine and Cobalt Co-Doped Tin Oxide Thin Films Deposited by Chemical Spray Pyrolysis

Transparent conducting Cobalt-fluorine co-doped tin oxide (SnO2: (Co, F)) thin filmswere deposited onto preheated glass substrates using the chemical spray pyrolysis method. The ([Co2+]/[Sn4+]) atomic concentration ratio (y)in the spray solution was varied between 0 and 5 at. %. The structural, electrical, optical and photoluminescence properties of these films were studied. It is found that the thin films are polycrystalline with a tetragonal crystal structure corresponding to SnO2 phase having a preferred orientation along the (200) plane. Transmission and reflection spectra reveal the presence of interference fringes indicating thickness uniformity and surface homogeneity of the deposited thin films. The electrical resistivity (ρ), volume carrier concentration density (Nv), surface carrier concentration density (Ns) and Hall mobility (μ) of the synthesized thin films were determined from the Hall Effect measurements in the Van der Paw-configuration and the following results were obtained: n-type conductivity in all deposited films, a low resistivity of 1.16×10-2 Ω. cm, and a high Hall mobility of 15.13×102 cm2.V-1.s-1with Co concentration equals to 3 at. %. These results show that the electrical properties of these thin films where greatly improved making them suitable as ohmic contact in photovoltaic application devices.