Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Shift Work on the Postural and Psychomotor Performance of Night Workers

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of shift work on the psychomotor and postural performance of night workers. The study included 20 polysomnography technicians working schedule of 12-h night shift by 36-h off. On the first day of protocol, the body mass and height were measured, and an actigraph was placed on the wrist of each participant. On the second day of protocol, sleepiness by Karolinska Sleepiness Scale, postural control by force platform (30 seconds) and psychomotor performance by Psychomotor Vigilance Task (10 minutes) were measured before and after 12-h night work. Results showed that after 12-h night work, sleepiness increased by 59% (p<0.001), postural control variables increased by 9% (p = 0.048), and 14% (p = 0.006). Mean reaction time, and the number of lapses of attention increased by 13% (p = 0.006) and 425% (p = 0.015), respectively, but the mean reciprocal reaction time decreased by 7%. In addition, there were correlations between sleepiness and postural control variables with opened eyes (r = 0.616, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.361–0.815; r = 0.538; 95% CI = 0.280–0.748) and closed eyes (r = 0.557; 95% CI = 0.304–0.764, r = 0497; 95% CI = 0.325–0.715) and a pronounced effect of sleepiness on postural sway (R2 = 0.393; 95% CI = 0.001–0.03). Therefore, 12-h night work system and sleepiness showed a negative impact in postural and psychomotor vigilance performance of night workers. As unexpected, the force platform was feasibility to detect sleepiness in this population, underscoring the possibility of using this method in the workplace to prevent occupational injuries and accidents.
Validation of the Omron M7 (HEM-780-E) oscillometric blood pressure monitoring device according to the British Hypertension Society protocol

BackgroundThe Omron M7 (HEM-780-E) is an automated oscillometric upper arm blood pressure monitor for the professional and home use markets. The aim of this study was to validate the accuracy of this device according to the British Hypertension Society (BHS) and the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) SP10 validation criteria. MethodsParticipants were recruited until a total of 85 were obtained that filled the blood pressure ranges specified by the BHS protocol. Recruitment to the study was from the general medical and specialist clinics and from the staff at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London, UK. Nine sequential same-arm blood pressure readings were taken from each participant by two trained observers, alternating between a mercury reference sphygmomanometer and the Omron M7 (HEM-780-E). The differences between the reference and test device readings, for both systolic and diastolic pressures, were compared with BHS and AAMI criteria to determine the outcome of the study. ResultsThe Omron M7 (HEM-780-E) is graded ‘A’ for systolic and ‘A’ for diastolic blood pressures according to the BHS criteria. The mean (standard deviation) of the difference between the observer and the device measurements was 0.75±6.5) mmHg for systolic and 1.33±5 mmHg for diastolic pressures. The device, therefore, also satisfies the AAMI SP10 standard for the study population, which requires differences of <±5 (8) mmHg. ConclusionThe Omron M7 (HEM-780-E) achieved an ‘A/A’ performance classification under the BHS criteria and passed the AAMI requirements for the study population. It can be recommended for professional and home-use in this population.
Fever with thrombocytopenia associated with a novel bunyavirus in China.

BACKGROUND Heightened surveillance of acute febrile illness in China since 2009 has led to the identification of a severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) with an unknown cause. Infection with Anaplasma phagocytophilum has been suggested as a cause, but the pathogen has not been detected in most patients on laboratory testing. METHODS We obtained blood samples from patients with the case definition of SFTS in six provinces in China. The blood samples were used to isolate the causal pathogen by inoculation of cell culture and for detection of viral RNA on polymerase-chain-reaction assay. The pathogen was characterized on electron microscopy and nucleic acid sequencing. We used enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, indirect immunofluorescence assay, and neutralization testing to analyze the level of virus-specific antibody in patients' serum samples. RESULTS We isolated a novel virus, designated SFTS bunyavirus, from patients who presented with fever, thrombocytopenia, leukocytopenia, and multiorgan dysfunction. RNA sequence analysis revealed that the virus was a newly identified member of the genus phlebovirus in the Bunyaviridae family. Electron-microscopical examination revealed virions with the morphologic characteristics of a bunyavirus. The presence of the virus was confirmed in 171 patients with SFTS from six provinces by detection of viral RNA, specific antibodies to the virus in blood, or both. Serologic assays showed a virus-specific immune response in all 35 pairs of serum samples collected from patients during the acute and convalescent phases of the illness. CONCLUSIONS A novel phlebovirus was identified in patients with a life-threatening illness associated with fever and thrombocytopenia in China. (Funded by the China Mega-Project for Infectious Diseases and others.).
A Conserved Mitochondrial ATP-binding Cassette Transporter Exports Glutathione Polysulfide for Cytosolic Metal Cofactor Assembly*♦

Background: ABC transporters of mitochondria (ATM) are required for formation of cytosolic iron-sulfur clusters and molybdenum cofactor. Results: Arabidopsis ATM3 and yeast Atm1 transport radiolabeled glutathione disulfide (GSSG). Transport of glutathione trisulfide (GS-S-SG) was demonstrated by mass spectrometry. Conclusion: A mitochondrial transporter exports glutathione polysulfide. Significance: Identification of substrate(s) of ATMs defines their role in metal cofactor assembly and iron homeostasis. An ATP-binding cassette transporter located in the inner mitochondrial membrane is involved in iron-sulfur cluster and molybdenum cofactor assembly in the cytosol, but the transported substrate is unknown. ATM3 (ABCB25) from Arabidopsis thaliana and its functional orthologue Atm1 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae were expressed in Lactococcus lactis and studied in inside-out membrane vesicles and in purified form. Both proteins selectively transported glutathione disulfide (GSSG) but not reduced glutathione in agreement with a 3-fold stimulation of ATPase activity by GSSG. By contrast, Fe2+ alone or in combination with glutathione did not stimulate ATPase activity. Arabidopsis atm3 mutants were hypersensitive to an inhibitor of glutathione biosynthesis and accumulated GSSG in the mitochondria. The growth phenotype of atm3-1 was strongly enhanced by depletion of the mitochondrion-localized, GSH-dependent persulfide oxygenase ETHE1, suggesting that the physiological substrate of ATM3 contains persulfide in addition to glutathione. Consistent with this idea, a transportomics approach using mass spectrometry showed that glutathione trisulfide (GS-S-SG) was transported by Atm1. We propose that mitochondria export glutathione polysulfide, containing glutathione and persulfide, for iron-sulfur cluster assembly in the cytosol.
Characterization of a novel collagen‐like protein TrpA in the cyanobacterium Trichodesmium erythraeum IMS101

The collagen protein family is diverse and its membership is continually expanding as new collagen‐like molecules are identified. Identification of collagen in unicellular eukaryotes and prokaryotes has opened discussion on the function of these collagens and their role in the emergence of multicellularity. The previous identification of a collagen gene in Trichodesmium erythraeum raises the question of function of this structural protein in a prokaryote. In this study, we show that this gene is expressed during all phases of growth, indicating that it may be required for all phases of growth. Using immunofluorescence techniques, we demonstrate that the collagen‐like protein is localized in a specific manner between adjacent cells along the trichome of T. erythraeum. Trichomes treated with the enzyme collagenase exhibited fragmentation, supporting our immunofluorescence localization data that this collagen‐like protein is found between adjacent cells. Our data strongly suggest that the collagen‐like protein found in T. erythraeum functions to maintain the structural integrity of the trichome through the adhesion of adjacent cells.
Double Regression: Efficient spatially correlated path loss model for wireless network simulation

The accuracy of wireless network packet simulation critically depends on the quality of the wireless channel models. These models directly affect the fundamental network characteristics, such as link quality, transmission range, and capture effect, as well as their dynamic variation in time and space. Path loss is the stationary component of the channel model affected by the shadowing in the environment. Existing path loss models are inaccurate, require very high measurement or computational overhead, and/or often cannot be made to represent a given environment. The paper contributes a flexible path loss model that uses a novel approach for spatially coherent interpolation from available nearby channels to allow accurate and efficient modeling of path loss. We show that the proposed model, called Double Regression (DR), generates a correlated space, allowing both the sender and the receiver to move without abrupt change in path loss. Combining DR with a traditional temporal fading model, such as Rayleigh fading, provides an accurate and efficient channel model that we integrate with the NS-2 simulator. We use measurements to validate the accuracy of the model for a number of scenarios. We also show that there is substantial impact on simulation behavior (e.g., up to 600% difference in throughput for simple scenarios) when path loss is modeled accurately.
Improving Software Development Process through Data Mining Techniques Embedding Alitheia Core Tool Ms

Research in the fields of software quality, maintainability requires the analysis of large quantity of data, which originate from software projects. It is a challenging task in pre-processing the data and synthesizing the composite results. It is very often an error prone task. Data mining techniques are generally considered as the best for preprocessing data. But there may be case that data is not up to the mark for that, in this context an improvised core tool will be used to facilitate software engineering research on large and diverse data set . There may be the chance of not getting the proper result for boosting up the software industry, but upto certain extent it will be surely helpful in research field or to the researchers for further innovative development. Keywords— Data mining, Software engineering, Feature selection, Alithea core tool.
Adaptive Channel Hopping for Interference Robust Wireless Sensor Networks

In this work, an Adaptive Channel Hopping (ACH) mechanism for sensor networks is proposed to avoid interference from other sources and narrow-band jamming. Under unfavorable channel conditions, ACH lets sensors switch to a new operating channel. ACH reduces the channel scanning and selection latency by ordering available channels using link quality indicator measurements and weights. The proposed ACH scheme is evaluated through simulations and a hardware implementation, which suggest low latency and high channel selection quality even in very adverse conditions.
Phase Conductor on Multi-layered Attentions for Machine Comprehension

Attention models have been intensively studied to improve NLP tasks such as machine comprehension via both question-aware passage attention model and self-matching attention model. Our research proposes phase conductor (PhaseCond) for attention models in two meaningful ways. First, PhaseCond, an architecture of multi-layered attention models, consists of multiple phases each implementing a stack of attention layers producing passage representations and a stack of inner or outer fusion layers regulating the information flow. Second, we extend and improve the dot-product attention function for PhaseCond by simultaneously encoding multiple question and passage embedding layers from different perspectives. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed model PhaseCond on the SQuAD dataset, showing that our model significantly outperforms both state-of-the-art single-layered and multiple-layered attention models. We deepen our results with new findings via both detailed qualitative analysis and visualized examples showing the dynamic changes through multi-layered attention models.
Modeling On and Above a Stereoscopic Multitouch Display

We present a semi-immersive environment for conceptual design where virtual mockups are obtained from gestures we aim to get closer to the way people conceive, create and manipulate three-dimensional shapes. We developed on-and-above-the-surface interaction techniques based on asymmetric bimanual interaction for creating and editing 3D models in a stereoscopic environment. Our approach combines hand and nger tracking in the space on and above a multitouch surface. This combination brings forth an alternative design environment where users can seamlessly switch between interacting on the surface or in the space above it to leverage the bene t of both interaction spaces.
A penny for your thoughts ? The value of information in recommendation systems

Most recommendation systems are trained to predict behavioral data and then used to generate more such data by recommending items and receiving feedback on the quality of these recommendations. This data in then fed back into the training process. This creates a feedback loop: as long as the lowcost way to interact with the service is through the recommender, the recommender will only ever see behavioral data on the items it chooses. This process can lead to hidden biases, as it effectively limits how much information the recommender system will ever see. On the other hand, there is a cost to making exploratory recommendations, as they should, myopically, be worse than the best bets of a recommendation system. In this paper we explore the notion that recommender systems are a special kind of active learning agents, with the peculiarity that the cost of asking for the label of an instance depends on its true label, as the cost of showing a bad recommendation when exploring is higher than the cost of showing a good recommendation.
Topic Detection Based on Group Average Hierarchical Clustering

Via analyzing characters of vast disaster news on the Internet, a new topic detection algorithm based on Group Average Hierarchical Clustering (GAHC), which is suitable for the processing of big data on the network, is proposed in this paper. The core idea of GAHC is to divide big data into smaller groups, and then cluster groups hierarchically to generate final topics. During the process of clustering, vector space modal is used to represent news documents, and a similarity calculation model based on weights of time and place is proposed. The new algorithm can automatically organize similar disaster news materials, generate news topics, furthermore provide personalized service for users and form the topic detection system for disaster news. Experimental results demonstrate that the performance of the algorithm is good.
Parallel view-dependent refinement of progressive meshes

We present a scheme for view-dependent level-of-detail control that is implemented entirely on programmable graphics hardware. Our scheme selectively refines and coarsens an arbitrary triangle mesh at the granularity of individual vertices, to create meshes that are highly adapted to dynamic view parameters. Such fine-grain control has previously been demonstrated using sequential CPU algorithms. However, these algorithms involve pointer-based structures with intricate dependencies that cannot be handled efficiently within the restricted framework of GPU parallelism. We show that by introducing new data structures and dependency rules, one can realize fine-grain progressive mesh updates as a sequence of parallel streaming passes over the mesh elements. A major design challenge is that the GPU processes stream elements in isolation. The mesh update algorithm has time complexity proportional to the selectively refined mesh, and moreover can be amortized across several frames. The static data structure is remarkably compact, requiring only 57% more memory than an indexed triangle list. We demonstrate real-time exploration of complex models with normals and textures.
Accounting for Changes in College Attendance Profile: A Quantitative Life-Cycle Analysis

This paper analyzes changes in the distribution of college enrollment rates that occurred between 1980 and 2000. It aims not only to explain the 69% increase in the overall college enrollment, but also changes in the profile of college students in terms of their ability and financial status. College attendance increased by 27% less than average among individuals in the lowest quartile of the joint family income and ability distribution. However, it increased by 12% more than average for individuals in the highest quartile of the distribution. The increase in college enrollment was far from uniform and, to explain these changes, I construct a life-cycle heterogeneous agents model of labor supply and human capital formation. The model is calibrated to match schooling patterns and labor market outcomes for the 1979 and 1997 NLSY cohorts. I explicitly model and quantitatively estimate the effect of four potential driving forces to explain the observed changes: The increase in the college wage gap, the change in the allocation of grants and scholarships, the increase in educational costs, and the changes in the ability and family income distribution. Finally, I explore alternative educational policies and their effect on different population groups.
Lack of effect of central nervous system‐active doses of nabilone on capsaicin‐induced pain and hyperalgesia

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of nabilone on capsaicin‐induced pain and hyperalgesia, as well as on biomarkers of cannabinoid central nervous system (CNS) effects. A randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled, crossover study was conducted in 30 healthy male volunteers receiving single doses of nabilone (1, 2 or 3 mg). Pain intensity after intradermal capsaicin injections in the forearm was assessed by continuous visual analogue scale (0–100 mm). Capsaicin cream was applied to the calf to induce hyperalgesia. Primary hyperalgesia was assessed by measuring heat pain thresholds, whereas secondary hyperalgesia was assessed by measuring the area where light tactile stimulation was felt to be painful. Pain and hyperalgesia were measured at baseline and 2–3.5 h after dosing. The CNS effects were assessed at baseline and up to 24 h after dosing using visual analogue mood scales for feeling ‘stimulated’, ‘anxious’, ‘sedated’ and ‘down’. Plasma samples for pharmacokinetic analysis were obtained up to 24 h after drug administration. Nabilone did not significantly attenuate either ongoing pain or primary or secondary hyperalgesia, whereas dose‐dependent CNS effects were observed from 1.5 to 6 h after dosing, being maximal at 4–6 h. Plasma concentrations of nabilone and its metabolite carbinol were maximal 1–2 h after dosing. Adverse events (AE) were common on nabilone treatment. Four subjects withdrew due to pronounced CNS AE (anxiety, agitation, altered perception, impaired consciousness). Although nabilone had marked CNS effects, no analgesic or antihyperalgesic effects were observed.
A multi-variable control technique for ZVS phase-shift full-bridge DC/DC converter

In this paper a multivariable control system is proposed for an efficient ZVS full-bridge dc-dc converter used in a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV). This converter processes the power between the high voltage traction battery and low voltage (12V) battery. Generally, Phase-shift between the two legs of the full-bridge converter is the main control parameter to regulate the output power. However, the zero voltage switching cannot be guaranteed by merely controlling the phase-shift particularly for light load conditions. In order to extend the soft switching operation of the converter for light loads, asymmetrical passive auxiliary circuits are used to provide reactive current. However, the auxiliary circuits increase extra current burden on the power MOSFETs, leading to lower efficiency. In this paper, the duty cycle of bridge legs (as another control parameter) is also controlled to minimize the conduction losses of the converter. Basically, the multivariable controller has to adjust the control parameters in such a way that the circulating currents are kept at their minimum level for soft switching while the output power is regulated. The system operating principle, soft switching and mathematical model are discussed. Experimental results are also presented that validate the effectiveness of the control method for a 2KW prototype.
Evanescent field enhancement due to plasmonic resonances of a metamaterial slab

The characteristics of plasmonic resonance in a dielectric‐sandwiched metamaterial film at visible wavelengths of 650 and 568 nm have been investigated (for both p‐ and s‐polarized light). Our calculated results demonstrate that each mode of plasmonic resonance has maximum resonance strength at a particular film thickness of the metamaterial. We also demonstrated that the effect of evanescent field enhancement is due to plasmonic resonances of the sandwiched metamaterial system. And the stronger the plasmonic resonance strength the larger the evanescent field is enhanced at the interfaces of the metamaterial film. Also we see that the plasmonic resonances in a sandwiched metamaterial are influenced not only by the materials that constitute the interfaces but also by the thickness of surrounding dielectrics or distance between evanescent light source and metamaterial film. Finally, our results show that there might be an effective light propagation length that will let the coupling efficiency between evanescent light source and SPs resonance become a maximum. These properties of plasmonic resonances to structure parameters of metamaterial film and its surrounding dielectrics provide a useful way to control the optical responses of an optoelectronic device when the wavelength of light source is fixed. That is, by suitably choosing light polarizations, thickness of the metamaterial thin film or the surrounding dielectrics and the position of evanescent light source, it is possible to modulate the plasmonic resonance wavenumber or resonance strength of the system. Therefore, the optical responses of the system can be modulated. Our results will be helpful for the structure design to control the behaviours of coupled plasmonic resonances and consequently the optical properties of the dielectric‐sandwiched metamaterial film.