Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fatigue Mechanisms Determining Exercise Performance Convective oxygen transport and fatigue

Amann M, Calbet JA. Convective oxygen transport and fatigue. J Appl Physiol 104: 861–870, 2008. First published October 25, 2007; doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01008. 2007. — During exercise, fatigue is defined as a reversible reduction in forceor powergenerating capacity and can be elicited by “central” and/or “peripheral” mechanisms. During skeletal muscle contractions, both aspects of fatigue may develop independent of alterations in convective O2 delivery; however, reductions in O2 supply exacerbate and increases attenuate the rate of accumulation. In this regard, peripheral fatigue development is mediated via the O2-dependent rate of accumulation of metabolic by-products (e.g., inorganic phosphate) and their interference with excitation-contraction coupling within the myocyte. In contrast, the development of O2-dependent central fatigue is elicited 1) by interference with the development of central command and/or 2) via inhibitory feedback on central motor drive secondary to the peripheral effects of low convective O2 transport. Changes in convective O2 delivery in the healthy human can result from modifications in arterial O2 content, blood flow, or a combination of both, and they can be induced via heavy exercise even at sea level; these changes are exacerbated during acute and chronic exposure to altitude. This review focuses on the effects of changes in convective O2 delivery on the development of central and peripheral fatigue.
The Use of Foreign Psychodiagnostic Inventories in Differing Methodological Contexts

The assessment of individual characteristics is based on different methods (e.g., observation, interview, individual experiment). Normative psychodiagnostic measures remain leading instruments in quick diagnostics. Both the ability and personality characteristics assessments operationalized in inventories necessarily take culture specifi city and corresponding bias into account. Although this issue has been frequently addressed by psychologists, a related one has not been. The “blind spot” appears to be the possibility of theoretical reinterpretation of the inventories’ basis when these inventories are used in theoretical frameworks and scientifi c traditions that differ from the original ones. The use of psychodiagnostic inventories is important in the context of revealing personality factors that may infl uence the regulation of cognitive activity. The interpretation of the paths (or mechanisms) of the measured personality characteristics’ infl uence on cognitive activity depends on the specifi city of both the understanding of this activity and personality inventories.
Measuring Job Satisfaction of Volunteers in Public Parks and Recreation

Approximately 50% of American adults volunteer their time in non-profit organizations with an estimated 150 billion dollars worth of services being provided annually (Independent Sector, 1990). Public parks and recreation agencies are some of the many public organizations that rely on volunteers. With such a heavy reliance upon volunteer workers in public recreation, measuring volunteers’ satisfaction becomes a serious concern. Previous studies have typically studied volunteer satisfaction by modifying scales designed for use with paid employees (Hershey, 1998; Pearce, 1983; Ronen, 1977). However, this research has generally proceeded without evaluation of the modified scales. The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of inferences that can be made about public parks and recreation volunteers’ job satisfaction from scores on a modified employee job satisfaction scale. Scale items addressed six satisfaction dimensions: nature of the work, contingent rewards, supervision, operating procedures, coworkers and communication. Participants included volunteers in the City of Phoenix, Arizona’s Parks, Recreation and Library Department (n=583). Results suggest that an overall satisfaction score on the volunteer satisfaction scale can provide a useful measure of satisfaction among parks and recreation volunteers. Results also suggest that volunteer satisfaction is a function of both job setting and psychological functions met by volunteering. For example, coaches in youth sports programs typically volunteer so that their children may participate in the program; results confirm that coaches experience high levels of volunteer job satisfaction when people they know (e.g., their children) are receiving benefits of participation. Because job satisfaction is a key factor in the retention of volunteers, as well as in the ultimate success and stability of recreation programs, park and recreation managers should consider the usefulness of evaluating the satisfaction of their volunteers. Obtaining measures of volunteer satisfaction can give managers a sense of whether or not the needs of the volunteers are being met. Examination of specific items or dimensions on the volunteer satisfaction scale can help managers pinpoint areas of concern. Finally, matching job setting and individuals’ reasons for volunteering can help increase satisfaction among parks and recreation volunteers. Taking the time to understand why people are volunteering can help when placing them in specific volunteer positions.
Metabolic syndrome and major depression

Major depression is associated with a 4-fold increased risk for premature death, largely accounted by cardiovascular disease (CVD). The relationship between depression and CVD is thought to be mediated by the so-called metabolic syndrome (MeS). Epidemiological studies have consistently demonstrated a co-occurrence of depression with MeS components, ie, visceral obesity, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, and hypertension. Although the exact mechanisms linking MeS to depression are unclear, different hypotheses have been put forward. On the one hand, MeS could be the hallmark of the unhealthy lifestyle habits of depressed patients. On the other, MeS and depression might share common alterations of the stress system, including the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, the autonomic nervous system, the immune system, and platelet and endothelial function. Both the conditions induce a low grade chronic inflammatory state that, in turn, leads to increased oxidative and nitrosative (O&NS) damage of neurons, pancreatic cells, and endothelium. Recently, neurobiological research revealed that peripheral hormones, such as leptin and ghrelin, which are classically involved in homeostatic energy balance, may play a role in mood regulation. Metabolic risk should be routinely assessed in depressed patients and taken into account in therapeutic decisions. Alternative targets should be considered for innovative antidepressant agents, including cytokines and their receptors, intracellular inflammatory mediators, glucocorticoids receptors, O&NS pathways, and peripheral mediators.
Timing Synchronization in Ultra-Wideband Systems with Delay Line Combination Receivers

This paper proposes a novel non-data aided timing synchronization algorithm designated as "timing with delay line combination" (TDLC), to improve the synchronization speed of differential impulse radio ultra-wideband systems. Continuously integrating the combinative output signal provided by the proposed "frame-differential delay line" (FDL), it is found that the integration output exhibits a sharp rising or falling transition at the moment that the first signal per symbol arrives. By accurately detecting the time of the rising or falling edge, the symbol boundary can be simply derived. The proposed scheme achieves timing synchronization within a single symbol duration
Building from Children'S Strengths

This essay discusses what the childhood perspective offers—and what we would lose were we deprived of it. In that context it discusses current threats to childhood and the effects of these threats on education; the strength and potential of our humanness, with special emphasis on children's own strengths as a basis for their education and the power of collective thought, cooperative action, and, above all, human warmth and affection for developing that strength and potential. The conclusion describes an education based on children's strengths as makers of meaning and knowledge, and ways teachers can learn to recognize and respond to these strengths.
Minimizing Breaks in Sport Scheduling with Local Search

Sport scheduling has received significant attention in the recent years and has contributed many challenging applications for optimization technologies. This paper reconsiders the problem of minimizing the number of breaks in round-robin tournaments, an application which has been recently tackled by sophisticated constraint and mathematical programming approaches. It proposes a simulated annealing algorithm that finds optimal solutions very quickly for the largest instances available. On the larger instances (e.g., 28 teams), the algorithm is several orders of magnitude faster than earlier approaches. In addition, the experimental results indicate that near-optimal solutions can be obtained within 10 seconds for large instances. Of particular interest is the simplicity of the implementation, its automatic tuning of the parameters, and the fact that simulated annealing is an effective technique for another sport-scheduling application.
A More Discerning and Adaptable Multilingual Transliteration Mechanism for Indian Languages

Transliteration is the process of transcribing words from a source script to a target script. These words can be content words or proper nouns. They may be of local or foreign origin. In this paper we present a more discerning method which applies different techniques based on the word origin. The techniques used also take into account the properties of the scripts. Our approach does not require training data on the target side, while it uses more sophisticated techniques on the source side. Fuzzy string matching is used to compensate for lack of training on the target side. We have evaluated on two Indian languages and have achieved substantially better results (increase of up to 0.44 in MRR) than the baseline and comparable to the state of the art. Our experiments clearly show that word origin is an important factor in achieving higher accuracy in transliteration.
Multiproduct Pricing in Major League Baseball: A Principal Components Analysis

The empirical analysis of multiproduct pricing suffers from a lack of clear theoretical guidance and appropriate data, limitations which often render traditional regression-based analyses impractical. This paper analyzes ticket, parking, and concession pricing in Major League Baseball for the period 1991-2003 using a new methodology based on principal components, which allows inferences to be formed about the factors underlying price variation without strong theoretical guidance or abundant information about costs and demand. While general demand shifts are the most important factor, they explain only half of overall price variation. Also important are price interactions that derive from demand interrelationships between goods and the desire to maximize the capture of consumer surplus in the presence of heterogeneous demand.
NMDA Receptor Plasticity in the Hypothalamic Paraventricular Nucleus Contributes to the Elevated Blood Pressure Produced by Angiotensin II

Hypertension induced by angiotensin II (Ang II) is associated with glutamate-dependent dysregulation of the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN). Many forms of glutamate-dependent plasticity are mediated by NMDA receptor GluN1 subunit expression and the distribution of functional receptor to the plasma membrane of dendrites. Here, we use a combined ultrastructural and functional analysis to examine the relationship between PVN NMDA receptors and the blood pressure increase induced by chronic infusion of a low dose of Ang II. We report that the increase in blood pressure produced by a 2 week administration of a subpressor dose of Ang II results in an elevation in plasma membrane GluN1 in dendrites of PVN neurons in adult male mice. The functional implications of these observations are further demonstrated by the finding that GluN1 deletion in PVN neurons attenuated the Ang II-induced increases in blood pressure. These results indicate that NMDA receptor plasticity in PVN neurons significantly contributes to the elevated blood pressure mediated by Ang II.
Impact analysis-Towards a framework for comparison

The term impact analysis is used with many meanings. A three-part framework for characterizing and comparing diverse impact analysis approaches is defined. The parts correspond to how an approach is used to accomplish impact analysis, how an approach does impact analysis internally, and the effectiveness of the impact analysis approach. To illustrate the framework's application, five impact analysis approaches are illustrated according to it. <<ETX>>
Tissue Classification as a Potential Approach for Attenuation Correction in Whole-Body PET/MRI: Evaluation with PET/CT Data

Attenuation correction (AC) of whole-body PET data in combined PET/MRI tomographs is expected to be a technical challenge. In this study, a potential solution based on a segmented attenuation map is proposed and evaluated in clinical PET/CT cases. Methods: Segmentation of the attenuation map into 4 classes (background, lungs, fat, and soft tissue) was hypothesized to be sufficient for AC purposes. The segmentation was applied to CT-based attenuation maps from 18F-FDG PET/CT oncologic examinations of 35 patients with 52 18F-FDG–avid lesions in the lungs (n = 15), bones (n = 21), and neck (n = 16). The standardized uptake values (SUVs) of the lesions were determined from PET images reconstructed with nonsegmented and segmented attenuation maps, and an experienced observer interpreted both PET images with no knowledge of the attenuation map status. The feasibility of the method was also evaluated with 2 patients who underwent both PET/CT and MRI. Results: The use of a segmented attenuation map resulted in average SUV changes of 8% ± 3% (mean ± SD) for bone lesions, 4% ± 2% for neck lesions, and 2% ± 3% for lung lesions. The largest SUV change was 13.1%, for a lesion in the pelvic bone. There were no differences in the clinical interpretations made by the experienced observer with both types of attenuation maps. Conclusion: A segmented attenuation map with 4 classes derived from CT data had only a small effect on the SUVs of 18F-FDG–avid lesions and did not change the interpretation for any patient. This approach appears to be practical and valid for MRI-based AC.
An analysis of the mortality of workers in a nuclear facility.

Data from the Hanford plant, where many workers have been employed in jobs involving some exposure to radiation, are analyzed. Mortality from all causes, all cancers, and specific cancer types is related to personnel and exposure data for the population at risk. Results are compared with those of other investigators who have analyzed these data. The mortality of Hanford workers is first compared with that of the United States population and then related to radiation exposure without reference to an outside population. The first analysis shows a substantial ''health worker effect'' and no significantly high standardized mortality ratios for specific disease categories. A test for association of mortality with levels of radiation exposure reveals no correlation for all causes and all cancer. A statistically significant test for trend is obtained for multiple myeloma and cancer of the pancreas but no evidence of a positive correlation is found for 13 other cancer sites including those more typically associated with radiation exposure such as myeloid leukemia and lung cancer. The possibility of other occupational exposures and the lack of reliability with respect to diagnosis of cancer of the pancreas must be considered in terpreting these results. The identified correlations result from amore » small number of deaths with exposures greater than 15 rem. The lack of correlation for all cancrs and for leukemia is by no means inconsistent with current estimates of such effects given the amount of radiation exposure that has been received. « less
Identification of Accretion as Grain Growth Mechanism in Astrophysically Relevant Water–Ice Dusty Plasma Experiment

The grain growth process in the Caltech water–ice dusty plasma experiment has been studied using a high-speed camera and a long-distance microscope lens. It is observed that (i) the ice grain number density decreases fourfold as the average grain major axis increases from 20 to 80 μm, (ii) the major axis length has a log-normal distribution rather than a power-law dependence, and (iii) no collisions between ice grains are apparent. The grains have a large negative charge resulting in strong mutual repulsion and this, combined with the fractal character of the ice grains, prevents them from agglomerating. In order for the grain kinetic energy to be sufficiently small to prevent collisions between ice grains, the volumetric packing factor (i.e., ratio of the actual volume to the volume of a circumscribing ellipsoid) of the ice grains must be less than ∼0.1 depending on the exact relative velocity of the grains in question. Thus, it is concluded that direct accretion of water molecules is very likely to dominate the observed ice grain growth.
Maternal-Fetal Disposition of Glyburide in Pregnant Mice Is Dependent on Gestational Age

Gestational diabetes mellitus is a major complication of human pregnancy. The oral clearance (CL) of glyburide, an oral antidiabetic drug, increases 2-fold in pregnant women during late gestation versus nonpregnant controls. In this study, we examined gestational age–dependent changes in maternal-fetal pharmacokinetics (PK) of glyburide and metabolites in a pregnant mouse model. Nonpregnant and pregnant FVB mice were given glyburide by retro-orbital injection. Maternal plasma was collected over 240 minutes on gestation days (gd) 0, 7.5, 10, 15, and 19; fetuses were collected on gd 15 and 19. Glyburide and metabolites were quantified using high-performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, and PK analyses were performed using a pooled data bootstrap approach. Maternal CL of glyburide increased approximately 2-fold on gd 10, 15, and 19 compared with nonpregnant controls. Intrinsic CL of glyburide in maternal liver microsomes also increased as gestation progressed. Maternal metabolite/glyburide area under the curve ratios were generally unchanged or slightly decreased throughout gestation. Total fetal exposure to glyburide was <5% of maternal plasma exposure, and was doubled on gd 19 versus gd 15. Fetal metabolite concentrations were below the limit of assay detection. This is the first evidence of gestational age–dependent changes in glyburide PK. Increased maternal glyburide clearance during gestation is attributable to increased hepatic metabolism. Metabolite elimination may also increase during pregnancy. In the mouse model, fetal exposure to glyburide is gestational age–dependent and low compared with maternal plasma exposure. These results indicate that maternal glyburide therapeutic strategies may require adjustments in a gestational age–dependent manner if these same changes occur in humans.
Die-stacked DRAM caches for servers: hit ratio, latency, or bandwidth? have it all with footprint cache

Recent research advocates using large die-stacked DRAM caches to break the memory bandwidth wall. Existing DRAM cache designs fall into one of two categories --- block-based and page-based. The former organize data in conventional blocks (e.g., 64B), ensuring low off-chip bandwidth utilization, but co-locate tags and data in the stacked DRAM, incurring high lookup latency. Furthermore, such designs suffer from low hit ratios due to poor temporal locality. In contrast, page-based caches, which manage data at larger granularity (e.g., 4KB pages), allow for reduced tag array overhead and fast lookup, and leverage high spatial locality at the cost of moving large amounts of data on and off the chip. This paper introduces Footprint Cache, an efficient die-stacked DRAM cache design for server processors. Footprint Cache allocates data at the granularity of pages, but identifies and fetches only those blocks within a page that will be touched during the page's residency in the cache --- i.e., the page's footprint. In doing so, Footprint Cache eliminates the excessive off-chip traffic associated with page-based designs, while preserving their high hit ratio, small tag array overhead, and low lookup latency. Cycle-accurate simulation results of a 16-core server with up to 512MB Footprint Cache indicate a 57% performance improvement over a baseline chip without a die-stacked cache. Compared to a state-of-the-art block-based design, our design improves performance by 13% while reducing dynamic energy of stacked DRAM by 24%.
A Framework for Enhancing Performance and Handling Run-Time Uncertainty in Self-Adaptive Systems

Self-adaptivity allows software systems to autonomously adjust their behavior during run-time to reduce the cost complexities caused by manual maintenance. In this paper, a framework for building an external adaptation engine for self-adaptive software systems is proposed. In order to improve the quality of self-adaptive software systems, this research addresses two challenges in self-adaptive software systems. The first challenge is to provide better performance of the adaptation engine by managing the complexity of the adaptation space efficiently and the second challenge is handling run-time uncertainty that hinders the adaptation process. This research utilizes Case-based Reasoning as an adaptation engine along with utility functions for realizing the managed system's requirements.
An improved preprocessor for the automatic transcription of broadcast news audio stream

This paper deals with the preprocessing of the broadcast news (BN) audio stream for the automatic transcription purposes. The preprocessing consists of the automatic segmentation followed by the broad-class segment identiﬁcation. The former is capable of detecting speaker and/or acoustic changes in the BN audio stream with the precision being 82.75%. The latter acts as a ﬁlter that removes non-speech parts. The performance of the proposed system was evaluated on the multi-lingual pan-European COST278 BN database containing data in 6 languages. The preprocessing and segmentation module operates in a near-real-time way, with the total delay of 12 seconds. Its practical functionality was evaluated on the Czech part of the BN database. The automatically segmented signal was directly sent to the large vocabulary speech recognition system operating with a 200K-word Czech lexicon. The difference in performance between automatically and manually segmented BN streams was only minimal - 1.12%.
A multiple points-wise sliding DFT method based on sliding window model and DIT modification

The real-time processing of instantaneous bell target signal puts forward a higher demand in real-time processing ability and algorithm complexity. According to the high computational load of the point-wise sliding DFT method used in multiple points-wise sliding algorithm, a novel multiple points-wise sliding DFT algorithm is proposed in this paper based on sliding window model with a wide application in data streams processing. The calculation structure of the algorithm is modified by using DIT algorithm. The simulation results show that the algorithm could calculate the instantaneous bell target signal amplitude in real-time with less operations and has an ability of abnormal points tolerance in data sampling.