Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lifting techniques for the humanoid robots: insights from human movements

As a possible future task for humanoid robots, lifting movement of human-like object is experimentally studied. Our aim is to understand what is the knack, which is a important information to improve the skill level. Using a motion capture device, lifting of a human-like dummy (about 30 [kg] weigh) is measured for both experienced and inexperienced subjects. We found that three distinctive feature of experienced subjects: start with the legs open, no arm lift, and no lying back. Also, one of the participant used leverage for initiating the motion. These features are translated to the knacks and we suggest full extension of the arms, no arm lift, open strategy and use of leverage as the candidates of the knacks. For humanoid robotics, we believe these knacks are transferable to humanoid robots and expected to useful for designing behavior. Some of the candidates are about preparation of lift and reduces complexity of parameter tuning or searching space and the last one helps energetic efficiency.
An Adaptive Subsystem Based Algorithm for Channel Equalization in a SIMO System

The principle of multiple input/output inversion theorem (MINT) has been employed for multi-channel equalization. In this work, we propose to partition a single-input multiple-output system into two subsystems. The equivalence between the deconvoluted signals of the two subsystems is termed as auto-relation and we subsequently exploit this relation as an additional constraint to the existing adaptive MINT algorithm. In addition, we provide analysis of the auto-relation constraint and show that this constraint confines the solution of equalization filters within a multi-dimensional space. We also explain through the use of convergence analysis why our proposed algorithm can achieve a higher rate of convergence compared to the existing MINT-based algorithms. Simulation results, using both synthetic and recorded channel impulse responses, show that our proposed auto-relation aided MINT algorithm can achieve a fast convergence compared to the existing MINT-based algorithms.
Bayesian Brain: Probabilistic Approaches to Neural Coding (Doya, K., Eds., et al.; 2007) [Book Review]

As stated in the preface, "This book is based on lectures given at the First Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course, held in November 2004 at Bankoku Shinryokan, Okinawa, Japan. The intention of the course was to bring together both experimental and theoretical neuroscientists employing the principles of Bayesian estimation to understand the brain mechanisms of perception, decision, and control. " There are 13 chapters written by 23 contributors. While there are some noted omissions and errors, this book belongs in the library of every neuroscientist who wishes to be at the forefront of theoretical and/or experimental analysis.
MECP2 duplication: Possible cause of severe phenotype in females

MECP2 duplication syndrome, originally described in 2005, is an X‐linked neurodevelopmental disorder comprising infantile hypotonia, severe to profound intellectual disability, autism or autistic‐like features, spasticity, along with a variety of additional features that are not always clinically apparent. The syndrome is due to a duplication (or triplication) of the gene methyl CpG binding protein 2 (MECP2). To date, the disorder has been described almost exclusively in males. Female carriers of the duplication are thought to have no or mild phenotypic features. Recently, a phenotype for females began emerging. We describe a family with ∼290 kb duplication of Xq28 region that includes the MECP2 gene where the proposita and affected family members are female. Twin sisters, presumed identical, presented early with developmental delay, and seizures. Evaluation of the proposita at 25 years of age included microarray comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) which revealed the MECP2 gene duplication. The same duplication was found in the proposita's sister, who is more severely affected, and the proband's mother who has mild intellectual disability and depression. X‐chromosome inactivation studies showed significant skewing in the mother, but was uninformative in the twin sisters. We propose that the MECP2 duplication caused for the phenotype of the proband and her sister. These findings support evidence for varied severity in some females with MECP2 duplications. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Memory Correlates of Alzheimer's Disease Cerebrospinal Fluid Markers: A Longitudinal Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND Performance on episodic, semantic, and working memory tests is impaired in Alzheimer's disease (AD)-type dementia, but it is unclear which type of memory test is most strongly associated with early AD biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and most useful for monitoring disease progression. OBJECTIVE To examine the association between amyloid-β 1-42 (Aβ42) and tau in CSF with performance on different memory domains at baseline, and how these CSF markers are related with memory decline. METHODS We included 263 individuals with normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment, AD-type dementia, and non-AD dementia from the European EDAR study. Assessment included CSF Aβ42 and t-tau analyses with INNO-BIA AlzBio3 Luminex assay, the CERAD wordlist learning and delayed recall, animal fluency test, and the CANTAB Paired Associates Learning (PAL) and Spatial Working Memory tasks. Follow-up assessments were performed within 3 years after baseline. RESULTS At baseline, decreased CSF Aβ42 correlated most strongly with the PAL total errors adjusted and the wordlist delayed recall and increased CSF t-tau with the wordlist delayed recall. Over time, decreased CSF Aβ42 was associated with decline on the wordlist learning, whereas increased CSF t-tau were associated with decline in scores on the wordlist learning, wordlist delayed recall, and animal fluency. Associations were independent of baseline diagnosis. CONCLUSION Tests assessing episodic verbal and visuospatial memory are most useful for detection of AD pathology. Tests for episodic verbal memory and semantic memory are most useful for tracking memory decline.
TOWARD A THEORY OF POLICY IMPLEMENTATION: AN ORGANIZATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

John Wiley & Sons, 1958), pp. 26-27. 14. Harold Guetzkow, "Interagency Committee Usage," Public Administration Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, Summer 1950, p. 190. 15. Gulick and Urwick, op. cit. 16. The program is described in some detail in Allen Barton, et al., Decentralizing City Government (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath/Lexington Books, 1977). 17. John Lindsay, "Program for the Decentralized Administration of Municipal Services in New York City Communities," Office of the Mayor, December 1971. 18. Community schools and elementary schools are not truly separate field services, but their relationship is more complex than different levels of the same field service. The elementary school principal reports to the community school superintendent, who is responsible to both the Board of Education and the local Community School Board. This relationship does not affect our findings because only one response category was used for public schools. 19. The number of factors extracted from a factor analysis is normally determined by the minimum eigenvalue specification. Following accepted conventions, only factors with an eigenvalue of 1.0 or greater were extracted. 20. Tom Burns and G. M. Stalker, The Management of Innovation (London: Tavistock Publications, 1966), pp. 5-6. 21. For an application of this approach to administrative duplication, see: Martin Landau, "Redundancy, Rationality, and the Problem of Duplication and Overlap," Public Administration Review, Vol. 29, No. 4, July/August 1969, pp. 346-358. 22. The seminal article suggesting that the multiplicity of political units may be necessary to satisfy a multiplicity of different interests is: Vincent Ostrom, Charles Tiebout and Robert Warren, "The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry," American Political Science Review, Vol. 60, No. 4, December 1961, pp. 831-842.
The Influence of Firms on Government

Abstract While interest group explanations have considerably advanced our understanding of governmental outcomes, much remains to be understood about the specific country-level, industry-level and firm-level characteristics that underlie the influence firms have on the establishment of governmental rules, laws and regulations. In this study, we draw upon a unique database of roughly 6000 international firms to investigate the abilities of firms to affect governmental policies. We find that country-level institutional characteristics, such as the legal origin and political diversity of the firm’s home country, significantly affect the ability to influence government. We also find that industry-level characteristics, such as the number of industry competitors, and firm-level characteristics, such as size and age, are determinants of firm influence on governments.
Endothelial activation biomarkers increase after HIV-1 acquisition: plasma vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 predicts disease progression

Objective:We aimed to determine whether endothelial activation biomarkers increase after HIV-1 acquisition, and whether biomarker levels measured in chronic infection would predict disease progression and death in HIV-1 seroconverters. Design:HIV-1-seronegative Kenyan women were monitored monthly for seroconversion, and followed prospectively after HIV-1 acquisition. Methods:Plasma levels of angiopoietin-1 and angiopoietin-2 (ANG-1, ANG-2) and soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1), intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), and E-selectin were tested in stored samples from pre-infection, acute infection, and two chronic infection time points. We used nonparametric tests to compare biomarkers before and after HIV-1 acquisition, and Cox proportional-hazards regression to analyze associations with disease progression (CD4 <200 cells/&mgr;l, stage IV disease, or antiretroviral therapy initiation) or death. Results:Soluble ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 were elevated relative to baseline in all postinfection periods assessed (P < 0.0001). Soluble E-selectin and the ANG-2:ANG-1 ratio increased in acute infection (P = 0.0001), and ANG-1 decreased in chronic infection (P = 0.0004). Among 228 participants followed over 1028 person-years, 115 experienced disease progression or death. Plasma VCAM-1 levels measured during chronic infection were independently associated with time to HIV progression or death (adjusted hazard ratio 5.36, 95% confidence interval 1.99–14.44 per log10 increase), after adjustment for set point plasma viral load, age at infection, and soluble ICAM-1 levels. Conclusion:HIV-1 acquisition was associated with endothelial activation, with sustained elevations of soluble ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 postinfection. Soluble VCAM-1 may be an informative biomarker for predicting the risk of HIV-1 disease progression, morbidity, and mortality.
MEDX3DOM: MEDX3D for X3DOM

We present an implementation of MEDX3DOM a MEDX3D standard implemented into the X3DOM framework. We present the report of a work in progress of the implementation identifying the critical sections to be migrated into the new architecture, and possible extensions of the standard on the Web environment. Results for the early implementation are shown, where the visualization of medical datasets with advanced direct volume rendering algorithms are obtained under the X3DOM architecture with interactive frame rates and good image quality. An example of the HTML5/X3DOM document is presented with future.
Robust Automatic Registration of Multimodal Satellite Images Using CCRE With Partial Volume Interpolation

One of the most important steps in data fusion is image registration. Automatic image-to-image registration for images captured by different sensors traditionally requires the use of information-theoretic similarity measures such as mutual information. Recently, a new similarity measure known as cross-cumulative residual entropy (CCRE) has been proposed for multimodal image registration in medical imaging applications. In this paper, we investigate the use of CCRE for multisensor registration of remote sensing imagery. In particular, we investigate the extreme case of registering synthetic aperture radar images to optical images. We also propose a novel extension to the Parzen-window optimization approach proposed by Thévenaz which involves applying partial volume interpolation in the calculation of the gradients of the similarity measure. Our experimental results show that our proposed approach which uses CCRE as the similarity measure and partial volume interpolation in the optimization procedure provides superior performance to other approaches investigated.
Personalized Adaptive Control of Training Load in Cardio-Exergames--A Feasibility Study.

OBJECTIVE This article presents a feasibility study of using an algorithm for an individual and adaptive control of training load in an ergometer-controlled exergame for aerobic training. An additional goal was to investigate the effects of the adaptive game on the players' motivation. MATERIALS AND METHODS A two-phase approach (calibration and exercise phase) was applied in a sample of 16 physically active adults. In the cardio-exergame "LetterBird," the flight of a pigeon was controlled by the pedaling rate of a bike ergometer as input device. During the calibration phase the individual heart rate (HR) responses of the players were measured. In the exercise phase, these data were used to adjust the resistance of the ergometer using the proposed algorithm. The purpose of this algorithm was to induce an individually defined target HR and to keep it in a steady state. In order to establish a reference for further studies, the game experience was measured using the kids-Game Experience Questionnaire. RESULTS In 15 of 16 participants the actual HR reached the intended individual HR range within 10 minutes after onset of exercise. However, the induced HR initially exceeded the target HR in 13 participants, which made load adjustments necessary. The analysis of the kids-Game Experience Questionnaire confirmed the motivational effect of the exergame "LetterBird. " CONCLUSIONS The results confirm that the proposed algorithm for personalized HR control in the game "LetterBird" is feasible. Furthermore, the cardio-exergame "LetterBird" seems to have a substantial short-term motivating effect.
Stock market prediction using evolutionary support vector machines: an application to the ASE20 index

The main motivation for this paper is to introduce a novel hybrid method for the prediction of the directional movement of financial assets with an application to the ASE20 Greek stock index. Specifically, we use an alternative computational methodology named evolutionary support vector machine (ESVM) stock predictor for modeling and trading the ASE20 Greek stock index extending the universe of the examined inputs to include autoregressive inputs and moving averages of the ASE20 index and other four financial indices. The proposed hybrid method consists of a combination of genetic algorithms with support vector machines modified to uncover effective short-term trading models and overcome the limitations of existing methods. For comparison purposes, the trading performance of the ESVM stock predictor is benchmarked with four traditional strategies (a naïve strategy, a buy and hold strategy, a moving average convergence/divergence and an autoregressive moving average model), and a multilayer perceptron neural network model. As it turns out, the proposed methodology produces a higher trading performance, even during the financial crisis period, in terms of annualized return and information ratio, while providing information about the relationship between the ASE20 index and DAX30, NIKKEI225, FTSE100 and S&P500 indices.
Correlation of neurocognitive processing subtypes with language performance in young children with cochlear implants

Abstract Objectives Test data were used to explore the neurocognitive processing of a group of children with cochlear implants (CIs) whose language development is below expectations. Methods This cross-sectional study examines the relationship between neurocognitive processing, as assessed by the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition, and verbal language standard scores, assessed using either the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language or the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals in 22 school-age children with CIs. Processing scores of CI recipients with language scores below expectations were compared to those of children meeting or exceeding language expectations. Multiple linear regression estimated the associations of simultaneous and sequential processing with language scores. Results Though simultaneous processing scores between the two groups were similar, the mean sequential processing score (91.2) in the below expectations group (n = 13) was significantly lower (P = 0.002) than that of children (n = 9) meeting expectations (110.8). After adjusting for age at implantation, a 10-point higher sequential processing score was associated with a 7.4 higher language score (P = 0.027). Discussion Simultaneous processing capacity was at least within the average range of cognitive performance, and was not associated with language performance in children with CIs. Conversely, reduced sequential processing capacity was significantly associated with lower language scores. Conclusion Neurocognitive skills, specifically cognitive sequencing, serial ordering, and auditory-verbal memory may be targets for therapeutic intervention. Intensive cognitive and educational habilitation and in milieu intervention may improve language learning in children with CIs.
Risk Analysis of Scheduled Commercial Banks of India

Overall risk of a bank depends on many factors. In this paper, we investigate how group characteristics and bank-wise individual factors (credit policy, extent of hedging) influence the risk of a bank and how they vary with time. Initially we used coefficient of variation and K-means cluster analysis to explore the nature of the data. Further, we attempted a mixed modeling strategy to model the net interest margin values, treated as a surrogate of the exposed risk of a bank. The estimates of mixed model suggested that although there was an observed group-wise disparity in the level of risk, risk is more sensitive towards the individual characteristics of the bank. It was also observed in the study that the temporal effect on group-wise characteristics and individual bank characteristics is minimal in determining their influence on the exposed risk of a bank. The study indirectly demonstrates why Indian banks are almost unperturbed even in the backdrop of collapse of big banks in US and Europe.
The Prognostic and Predictive Role of Histology in Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer: A Literature Review

Introduction: The importance of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) histologic subtype has increased during the last few decades because of an unprecedented shift in epidemiology and an increasing number of target-specific chemotherapeutic agents. This review examined histology as a potential prognostic and/or predictive factor of clinical outcomes in advanced NSCLC. Methods: Literature searches of articles from 1982 to 2007 were conducted. We identified publications detailing phase II or III studies, retrospective analyses, and meta-analyses that reported a statistically significant prognostic or predictive role for histology. Results: Of 408 publications identified, 11 reported a prognostic association between histology and clinical outcomes, and 7 suggested that histologic subtype was predictive of outcomes in patients with advanced NSCLC treated with specific cytotoxic chemotherapy regimens. Fourteen publications reported histology was prognostic and/or predictive in patients treated with epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors. Inadequate data collection, test methodology, or study design—including insufficient sample size, misclassified samples, and grouping of histologic subtypes for analysis—may have obscured the interpretation of the role of histology in many of the studies. Conclusions: Although differences in study design and analyses make definitive conclusions difficult, evidence suggests that histology may be prognostic or predictive of clinical efficacy outcomes. To determine which patients would benefit from specific treatments and to further understand the role of histology, future studies should focus on establishing a definitive histologic diagnosis, and should include an analysis of histologic subtypes and efficacy outcomes.
Gastric Surgery for Morbid Obesity: The Adelaide Study

The efficacy of three gastric restriction operations were compared in a prospective randomized study of 310 morbidly obese subjects. The median patient age was 34 years (range, 18 to 62 years). They were predominantly female (13:1) and had a median pre-operative weight that was 198% of their ideal weight (range, 160% to 318%). There was an equitable dispersion of perceived risk factors between the groups under study and there were no deaths during the perioperative period. Compliance with follow-up at 3 years was 91%. When success was defined as a loss of more than 50% of excess weight or a current pregnancy, the success rates at 3 years were 17% for gastrogastrostomy, 48% for vertical gastroplasty, and 67% for Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (p less than 0.001). Although the gastric bypass operation took longer to perform, there were similar outcome patterns for the three groups during the postoperative period. We conclude that the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is the preferred procedure for the surgical treatment of morbid obesity.
Gadolinium reduces short‐term stretch‐induced muscle damage in isolated mdx mouse muscle fibres

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a lethal muscle disease caused by absence of the protein dystrophin which is part of a glycoprotein complex located on the intracellular surface of the surface membrane. The precise function of dystrophin and the reason why its absence causes severe muscle damage are unclear. Stretch‐induced muscle damage is well recognised in normal muscle and is more severe in muscles from animals lacking dystrophin (mdx mice). It has been proposed that stretch‐induced damage underlies the progression of damage in muscular dystrophy. In the present study we confirm that single fibres from mdx muscle are more susceptible to stretch‐induced damage and show that there is an associated rise in intracellular sodium concentration ([Na+]i) which is greater than in wild‐type mice. We show that this rise in [Na+]i can be prevented by Gd3+, which is an established blocker of stretch‐activated channels. mdx fibres have a higher than normal resting [Na+]i and this is also reduced by Gd3+. If Gd3+ is applied over the period in which [Na+]i rises following stretched contraction, it prevents one component of the reduced force. The other component of reduced force is caused by inhomogeneity of sarcomeres and can be minimised by stretching the muscle to its new optimum length. These experiments show that part of the short‐term damage caused by stretch in mdx fibres can be prevented by blocking stretch‐activated channels.