Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experimental studies on kinematics and kinetics of walking with an assistive knee brace

Assistive knee brace is a species of wearable lower extremity exoskeletons. Such assistive equipment can enhance people's strength and provide desired locomotion to have advantages over wheelchairs, which are commonly used for patients with mobility disorders. However, the integration between the assistive knee brace and the user is challenging as inaccurate alignments may adversely affect the biomechanics of the knee joint. The goal of this study is to evaluate the changes between normal walking and walking with an assistive knee brace in “off” mode. The assistive knee brace was developed by integrating a multifunctional actuator with a custom-made knee-ankle-foot orthosis in order to minimize excessive shifting and to improve alignment to the knee joint. Spatial and temporal gait parameters, joint kinematics and joint kinetics parameters were compared. In general, the observed results showed that most of the gait parameters were not affected when walking with the knee brace. The only significant differences were found in knee flexion and knee rotational motions. These results indicated that walking with the developed knee brace provided minimal hindrance to the user and assured that assistive torque can be applied to the knee joint.
15O Radioactivity Clearance is Faster after Intracarotid Bolus Injection of 15O-Labeled Oxyhemoglobin than after 15O-Water Injection

The authors tested the hypothesis that the oxygen content of brain tissue is negligible by injecting an intracarotid bolus of 15O-labeled tracer into rats. Under the hypothesis, the clearance rates of 15O radioactivity from the brain after injections of both 15O-labeled water (H215O) and 15O-labeled oxyhemoglobin (HbO15O) should be identical. However, the logarithmic slope of the 15O radioactivity curve after HbO15O injection (0.494 ± 0.071 min-1) was steeper than that after H215O injection (0.406 ± 0.038 min−1) (P<0.001, n = 13), where the time range used in the comparison was between 60 and 120 seconds after the injection. A possible interpretation of this result is that nonmetabolized O15O may dwell in the brain tissue for a finite period of time before it is eventually metabolized or returned to the blood stream unaltered. These findings contradict assumptions made by models currently used to measure cerebral oxygen metabolism.
Spatial transfer functions: a unified approach to specifying deformation in volume modeling and animation

In this paper, we introduce the concept of spatial transfer functions as a unified approach to volume modeling and animation. A spatial transfer function is a function that defines the geometrical transformation of a scalar field in space, and is a generalization and abstraction of a variety of deformation methods. It facilitates a field based representation, and can thus be embedded into a volumetric scene graph under the algebraic framework of constructive volume geometry. We show that when spatial transfer functions are treated as spatial objects, constructive operations and conventional transfer functions can be applied to such spatial objects. We demonstrate spatial transfer functions in action with the aid of a collection of examples in volume visualization, sweeping, deformation and animation. In association with these examples, we describe methods for modeling and realizing spatial transfer functions, including simple procedural functions, operational decomposition of complex functions, large scale domain decomposition and temporal spatial transfer functions. We also discuss the implementation of spatial transfer functions in the vlib API and our efforts in deploying the technique in volume animation.
A Stochastic Model to Account for System Uncertainties Applied to an Optimal Harvesting Problem

Abstract In the modeling of stochastic nonlinear systems it is often necessary to consider the existence of uncertainties about some parameters of the system or in the distribution implied by the stochastic shocks, and in this setting, the control policy can be obtained by the rules of robust control theory. To present a different way to handle control systems in this scenario, this paper introduces a theoretical framework for continuous-time stochastic nonlinear systems in which the Control Variations Increase the state Uncertainty (CVIU systems). This type of system can be applied in several areas of science and engineering, due to its ability in dealing with complex stochastic systems, for which the dynamics are not completely known. In particular, the paper applies this model to a problem of fishery management in an unknown environment, and establishes a harvesting rule for it based on the CVIU approach. Using dynamic programming and tools from nonsmooth analysis, the control solution indicates the existence of a region in the state space in which the optimal harvesting is of no variation, yielding periods of inaction. This behavior obtained from optimality is somehow expected from the cautionary nature of controlling underdetermined systems.
In Vivo Near-Infrared Fluorescence Imaging of Apoptosis Using Histone H1-Targeting Peptide Probe after Anti-Cancer Treatment with Cisplatin and Cetuximab for Early Decision on Tumor Response

Early decision on tumor response after anti-cancer treatment is still an unmet medical need. Here we investigated whether in vivo imaging of apoptosis using linear and cyclic (disulfide-bonded) form of ApoPep-1, a peptide that recognizes histone H1 exposed on apoptotic cells, at an early stage after treatment could predict tumor response to the treatment later. Treatment of stomach tumor cells with cistplatin or cetuximab alone induced apoptosis, while combination of cisplatin plus cetuximab more efficiently induced apoptosis, as detected by binding with linear and cyclic form of ApoPep-1. However, the differences between the single agent and combination treatment were more remarkable as detected with the cyclic form compared to the linear form. In tumor-bearing mice, apoptosis imaging was performed 1 week and 2 weeks after the initiation of treatment, while tumor volumes and weights were measured 3 weeks after the treatment. In vivo fluorescence imaging signals obtained by the uptake of ApoPep-1 to tumor was most remarkable in the group injected with cyclic form of ApoPep-1 at 1 week after combined treatment with cisplatin plus cetuximab. Correlation analysis revealed that imaging signals by cyclic ApoPep-1 at 1 week after treatment with cisplatin plus cetuximab in combination were most closely related with tumor volume changes (r2 = 0.934). These results demonstrate that in vivo apoptosis imaging using Apopep-1, especially cyclic ApoPep-1, is a sensitive and predictive tool for early decision on stomach tumor response after anti-cancer treatment.
Location-based search engine for multimedia phones

Location-based search engine is an alternative approach for information retrieval to traditional location-based services based on fixed databases. This is a relatively new concept that aims at utilizing the location of user but without restricting to any fixed location-based service. In this paper, we outline a prototype solution for multimedia mobile phones based on web search, ad-hoc georeferencing, prefix tree structure and gazetteer. Experimental results show that the proposed solution finds search results that have higher or equal mean relevance than that of the GoogleMaps and YellowPages.
Scheduling for End-to-End Deadline-Constrained Traffic With Reliability Requirements in Multihop Networks

We attack the challenging problem of designing a scheduling policy for end-to-end deadline-constrained traffic with reliability requirements in a multihop network. It is well known that the end-to-end delay performance for a multihop flow has a complex dependence on the high-order statistics of the arrival process and the algorithm itself. Thus, neither the earlier optimization-based approaches that aim to meet the long-term throughput demands nor the solutions that focus on a similar problem for single-hop flows directly apply. Moreover, a dynamic programming-based approach becomes intractable for such multi-timescale quality-of-service (QoS)-constrained traffic in a multihop environment. This motivates us in this paper to develop a useful architecture that enables us to exploit the degree of freedom in choosing appropriate service discipline. Based on the new architecture, we propose three different approaches, each leading to an original algorithm. We study the performance of these algorithms in different scenarios to show both optimality characteristics and to demonstrate the favorable service discipline characteristics they possess. We provide extensive numerical results to compare the performance of all of these solutions to throughput-optimal back-pressure-type schedulers and to longest waiting-time-based schedulers that have provably optimal asymptotic performance characteristics. Our results reveal that the dynamic choice of service discipline of our proposed solutions yields substantial performance improvements compared to both of these types of traditional solutions under nonasymptotic conditions.
Image Hiding by Non-uniform Generalized LSB and Dynamic Programming

A novel steganographic method based on non-uniform generalized LSB is proposed. Different from the traditional distortion measure MSE and PSNR, the structural-similarity based image quality assessment is used to measure the distortion caused by the data hiding. With the given maximum allowable distortion, dynamic programming is performed to find the optimum substitution depth vector to achieve the maximum capacity. Experiments show the proposed method can achieve higher embedding payload while keeping smaller distortion
Awan: Locality-Aware Resource Manager for Geo-Distributed Data-Intensive Applications

Today, many organizations need to operate on data that is distributed around the globe. This is inevitable due to the nature of data that is generated in different locations such as video feeds from distributed cameras, log files from distributed servers, and many others. Although centralized cloud platforms have been widely used for data-intensive applications, such systems are not suitable for processing geo-distributed data due to high data transfer overheads. An alternative approach is to use an Edge Cloud which reduces the network cost of transferring data by distributing its computations globally. While the Edge Cloud is attractive for geo-distributed data-intensive applications, extending existing cluster computing frameworks to a wide-area environment must account for locality. We propose Awan : a new locality-aware resource manager for geo-distributed data-intensive applications. Awan allows resource sharing between multiple computing frameworks while enabling high locality scheduling within each framework. Our experiments with the Nebula Edge Cloud on PlanetLab show that Awan achieves up to a 28% increase in locality scheduling which reduces the average job turnaround time by approximately 18% compared to existing cluster management mechanisms.
3D path planning in a threat environment

We address optimal path planning in three dimensional space for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the stationary risk environment. We separate the task into two stage, in the first one we determine the risk optimal 2D path for fixed time problem. Then we solve the series of BVPs (Boundary Value Problems) with different UAV speeds and determine the admissible 2D path, which satisfies the time and risk constraints. In the last step one takes into account the relief along the chosen path and determine the approximated 3D path, which minimizes 2D threat along the path and satisfies other constraints.
Distribution of N-acetylneuraminic acid and sialylglycan in eggs of the Silky fowl

1. The distribution of sialic acid in the eggs of original Silky fowl was investigated. The sialic acid contents of the yolk, albumen and the chalaza of a single egg were 205·2, 11·96 and 0·83 mg, respectively. 2. The sialic acid content of the yolk of Silky eggs was 11·5-fold higher than that of a conventional domestic fowl yolk. 3. Sialic acid isolated from Silky yolk was entirely N-acetylneuraminic acid (NeuAc). No N-glycolylneuraminic acid or O-acetyl containing sialic acid was observed. 4. The structure of the major sialylglycan in Silky egg yolk was determined to be a disialyl-biantennary chain in which the NeuAc residues were α2-6 linked to glucose. No α2-3 linkage was observed. 5. Thus, the Silky fowl's egg provides an excellent source of NeuAc and sialylglycan.
Two Representation Theorems for Non-monotonic Inference Relations

This article considers some semantical properties of the postulates Weak Determinacy (WD) and Rational Contraposition (RC). In particular, we provide two representation theorems for preferential inference relations satisfying WD and RC respectively. This solves two open problems presented by H.Bezzazi, D.Makinson and R.Pino Perez in [Journal of Logic and Computation, 7, 1997].
The Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model

The use of distributed physically based models in environmental analysis is becoming more common as greater demands are placed on hydrologic models, particularly for problems involving prediction of future hydrologic conditions resulting from changes in land use or climate. The Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) is a physically based model that provides a dynamic representation of the spatial distribution of evapotranspiration, snow cover, soil moisture, and runoff at the spatial scale of digital elevation model data. The model has evolved significantly over the last several years to enable it to address a wide range of applied and research activities. This chapter presents a description of the current state of the model including field test results and example applications.
A compact aspect-based security monitor for J2ME applications

The contemporary approach to enrich the functionality of various devices is to make them programmable, and enable the users to install new features in the form of mobile code. For example, so-called smartphones are equipped with a basic set of applications, but the manufacturers and operators provide a lot of applications that can be later downloaded and installed. The expanding use of mobile code has emerged security concerns, since mobile code may also contain undesirable features. For finding the possible security weaknesses, we present our code monitoring solution in the context of J2ME (Java2 Micro Edition). We first describe our modular policy language for expressing simple rule based security policies. The policies are translated into aspects, practically into AspectJ aspects, that together form a runtime security monitor. We use a weaver to weave the aspects into the mobile code to guarantee its safe runtime execution. If the runtime behavior of the code attempts to violate the applied security policy, the application is halted. Later, we consider embedding a runtime monitor into J2ME applications. Since simplicity and compact policy descriptions are very beneficial properties in the contexts in which resources (e.g. memory) are limited, we believe that our solution is specifically usable for embedded mobile solutions. Compared to the other existing policy monitoring solutions, we aim at simpler policy descriptions by following the truncation automata approach, and by dismissing the approach in which automata state-chains are described into monitoring program. In fact, we consider automata states unnecessary, since the current state can be regarded as one of the remembered attribute values, if necessary.
Decidability of Definability

For a fixed infinite structure $\Gamma$ with finite signature tau, we study the following computational problem: input are quantifier-free first-order tau-formulas phi_0,phi_1,. ,phi_n that define relations R_0,R_1,\dots,R_n over Gamma. The question is whether the relation R_0 is primitive positive definable from R_1,. ,R_n, i.e., definable by a first-order formula that uses only relation symbols for R_1, . , R_n, equality, conjunctions, and existential quantification (disjunction, negation, and universal quantification are forbidden). We show decidability of this problem for all structures Gamma that have a first-order definition in an ordered homogeneous structure Delta with a finite language whose age is a Ramsey class and determined by finitely many forbidden substructures. Examples for structures Gamma with this property are the order of the rationals, the random graph, the homogeneous universal poset, the random tournament, all homogeneous universal C-relations, and many more. We also obtain decidability of the problem when we replace primitive positive definability by existential positive, or existential definability. Our proof makes use of universal algebraic and model theoretic concepts, Ramsey theory, and a recent characterization of Ramsey classes in topological dynamics.
Evaluation of SO2 dry deposition over a cassava plantation in Rayong, Thailand.

SO2 emissions have become a significant problem in the East Asian region. Long term exposure to high SO2 concentration can affect human health and the environment. Approximately half of the SO2 is delivered to the earth by the dry deposition process; the other half is deposited by wet deposition. Thus, an assessment of SO2 dry deposition is necessary for understanding its qualitative and quantitative effects. In the research program described here, SO2 dry deposition was studied in terms of SO2 dry deposition flux and deposition velocity using the Bowen ratio technique. All necessary parameters were measured above a cassava plantation at a site in Rayong, Thailand during the period from June to September 2004. The Bowen ratio technique was most applicable during the 8:00 to 17:00 time period of each day. The results yield an average transfer coefficient of 10.6 cm/s, relevant to the height interval across which differences were measured. The average dry deposition flux was 0.17 mg/m²/hr and the average dry deposition velocity was 0.14 cm/s.
Patient and Clinician Communication of Self-reported Insomnia During Ambulatory Cancer Care Clinic Visits

Background: Insomnia, the most commonly reported sleep-wake disturbance in people with cancer, has an adverse effect on quality of life including emotional well-being, distress associated with other symptoms, daily functioning, relationships, and ability to work. Objective: The aim of this study was to describe the content of discussions between clinicians and 120 patients with self-reported insomnia and to examine the associations of sociodemographic, clinical, and environmental factors with insomnia. Methods: A secondary analysis was conducted with self-reported symptom data and sociodemographic, clinical, and environmental factors. Recordings of clinician and patient discussions during clinic visits were examined by conducting a content analysis. Results: Severe insomnia was more likely to be reported by women, minority, and lower-income individuals. Seven major topics were identified in the discussions. The clinicians did not always discuss insomnia; discussion rates differed by diagnosis and clinical service. Conclusions: Reporting of insomnia by the patient and clinician communication about insomnia may have differed by demographic and clinical characteristics. Clinicians attended to insomnia about half the time with management strategies likely to be effective. Explanations may be that insomnia had a low clinician priority for the clinic visit or lack of clear evidence to support insomnia interventions. Implications for Practice: A better understanding is needed about why insomnia is not addressed even when reported by patients; it is well known that structured assessments and early interventions can improve quality of life. Research is warranted to better understand potential disparities in cancer care.
Effectiveness of PSD95 Inhibitors in Permanent and Transient Focal Ischemia in the Rat

Background and Purpose— Postsynaptic density-95 inhibitors reduce ischemic brain damage without inhibiting excitatory neurotransmission, circumventing the negative consequences of glutamatergic inhibition. However, their efficacy in permanent ischemia and in providing permanent neuroprotection and neurobehavioral improvement in a practical therapeutic window is unproven. These were tested here under conditions that included fever, which is a common occurrence in clinical stroke. Methods— Six studies were performed in unfasted Sprague-Dawley rats. Two involved permanent pial vessel occlusion in male and female rats. Two involved permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion, which induced severe hyperthermia, and 2 involved transient middle cerebral artery occlusion. Animals were treated with a single intravenous injection of postsynaptic density-95 inhibitors (Tat-NR2B9c[SDV] or Tat-NR2B9c[TDV]) 1 hour or 3 hours after stroke. Infarct volumes and neurobehavior were assessed in a blinded manner at 24 hours (pial vessel occlusion and permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion) or at 62 days (transient middle cerebral artery occlusion). Results— Postsynaptic density-95 inhibitors dramatically reduced infarct size in male and female animals exposed to pial vessel occlusion (>50%), in hyperthermic animals with fever exceeding 39°C exposed to permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion (approximately 50%), and at 62 days poststroke in animals exposed to transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (approximately 80%). Effectiveness of postsynaptic density-95 inhibitors was achieved without the drugs affecting body temperature. In transient middle cerebral artery occlusion, a single dose of postsynaptic density-95 inhibitor given 3 hours after stroke onset permanently maintained reduced infarct size and improved neurobehavior. Conclusions— Postsynaptic density-95 inhibitors administrated 3 hours after stroke onset reduced infarct volumes and improved long-term neurobehavioral functions in a wide therapeutic window. This raises the possibility that they may have future clinical usefulness.
AMOEBA: Robust Location Privacy Scheme for VANET

Communication messages in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) can be used to locate and track vehicles. While tracking can be beneficial for vehicle navigation, it can also lead to threats on location privacy of vehicle user. In this paper, we address the problem of mitigating unauthorized tracking of vehicles based on their broadcast communications, to enhance the user location privacy in VANET. Compared to other mobile networks, VANET exhibits unique characteristics in terms of vehicular mobility constraints, application requirements such as a safety message broadcast period, and vehicular network connectivity. Based on the observed characteristics, we propose a scheme called AMOEBA, that provides location privacy by utilizing the group navigation of vehicles. By simulating vehicular mobility in freeways and streets, the performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated under VANET application constraints and two passive adversary models. We make use of vehicular groups for anonymous access to location based service applications in VANET, for user privacy protection. The robustness of the user privacy provided is considered under various attacks.