Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Respective and Combined Effects of Impairments in Sensorimotor Systems and Cognition on Gait Performance: A Population-Based Cross-Sectional Study

Background Respective and combined effects of impairments in sensorimotor systems and cognition on gait performance have not been fully studied. This study aims to describe the respective effects of impairments in muscle strength, distance vision, lower-limb proprioception and cognition on the Timed Up & Go (TUG) scores (i.e., performed TUG [pTUG], imagined TUG [iTUG] and the time difference between these two tests [delta TUG]) in older community-dwellers; and to examine their combined effects on TUG scores. Methods Based on a cross-sectional design, 1792 community-dwellers (70.2±4.8 years; 53.6% female) were recruited. Gait performance was assessed using pTUG, iTUG and delta TUG. Participants were divided into healthy individuals and 15 subgroups of individuals according to the presence of impairment in one or more subsystems involved in gait control (i.e., muscle strength and/or distance vision and/or lower-limb proprioception and/or cognition [episodic memory and executive performance]). Impairment in muscle strength, distance vision and lower-limb proprioception was defined as being in the lowest tertile of performance. Impairment in cognition was defined as abnormal episodic memory and executive tests. Results A total of 191 (10.7%) exhibited impairment in muscle strength, 188 (10.5%) in distance vision, 302 (16.9%) in lower-limb proprioception, and 42 (2.3%) in cognition. Linear regressions showed that cognitive impairment as well as dual combinations of impairments were associated with increased pTUG (P<0.02). Impairment in lower-limb proprioception was associated with decreased iTUG (P=0.015). All combinations of impairments, except those including muscle strength and the combinations of the 4 subsystems, were associated with increased delta TUG (P<0.04). Conclusion Cognitive integrity is central for efficient gait control and stability, whereas lower-limb proprioception seems to be central for gait imagery.
Coupling the chemical dynamics of carbonate and dissolved inorganic nitrogen systems in the eutrophic and turbid inner Changjiang (Yangtze River) Estuary

Abstract. To better understand biogeochemical processes controlling CO2 dynamics in those eutrophic large-river estuaries and coastal lagoons, we investigated surface water carbonate system, nutrients, and relevant hydrochemical parameters in the inner Changjiang (Yangtze River) Estuary, covering its channel-like South Branch and the lagoon-like North Branch, shortly after a spring-tide period in April 2010. In the North Branch, with a water residence time of more than 2 months, biogeochemical additions of ammonium (7.4 to 65.7 μmol kg−1) and alkalinity (196 to 695 μmol kg−1) were detected along with high salinity of 4.5 to 17.4. In the South Branch upper-reach, unusual salinity values of 0.20 to 0.67 were detected, indicating spillover waters from the North Branch. The spillover waters enhanced the springtime Changjiang export fluxes of nutrients, dissolved inorganic carbon, and alkalinity. And they affected the biogeochemistry in the South Branch, by lowering water-to-air CO2 flux and continuing the nitrification reaction. In the North Branch, pCO2 was measured from 930 to 1518 μatm at the salinity range between 8 and 16, which was substantially higher than the South Branch pCO2 of 700 to 1100 μatm. Based on field data analyses and simplified stoichiometric equations, we suggest that the North Branch CO2 productions were quantified by biogeochemical processes combining organic matter decomposition, nitrification, CaCO3 dissolution, and acid-base reactions in the estuarine mixing zone. Although our study is subject to limited temporal and spatial coverage of sampling, we have demonstrated a procedure to quantificationally constrain net CO2 productions in eutrophic estuaries and/or coastal lagoons, by coupling the chemical dynamics of carbonate and dissolved inorganic nitrogen systems.
PENGGUNAAN STRATEGI POE (PREDICT-OBSERVE-EXPLAIN) UNTUK MEMPERBAIKI MISKONSEPSI FISIKA

Penyebab universal atas rendahnya mutu pendidikan IPA yang secara umum diterima oleh pendidik adalah adanya miskonsepsi dan kondisi pembelajaran yang kurang memperhatikan prakonsepsi peserta didik. Strategi POE (predict-observe-explain) digunakan untuk memperbaiki miskonsepsi fisika pada peserta didik. Pada kelompok eksperimen diterapkan pembelajaran dengan strategi POE sedangkan pada kelompok kontrol diterapkan pembelajaran konvensional dengan ceramah dan diskusi. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan rata-rata miskonsepsi kelompok eksperimen lebih kecil dari rata-rata miskonsepsi kelompok kontrol. Hasil tersebut menunjukkan bahwa bahwa strategi POE (predict-observe-explain) dapat digunakan untuk memperbaiki miskonsepsi fisika. Kata kunci: Miskonsepsi fisika, Strategi, POE.
Polymorphisms and haplotypes of the estrogen receptor-beta gene (ESR2) and cardiovascular disease in men and women.

BACKGROUND Cohort studies suggest an association between variation in the estrogen receptor-alpha gene (ESR1) and cardiovascular disease (CVD), but data are lacking for the effect of variation in the estrogen receptor-beta gene (ESR2). METHODS Three polymorphisms of the ESR2 gene, and their associated haplotypes, were evaluated in 296 white women from the Women's Health Study and 566 white men from the Physicians' Health Study who developed CVD [myocardial infarction (MI) or ischemic stroke], each matched 1:1 to a member of the cohort study who remained free from CVD. Blood samples and cardiovascular risk information were collected at baseline. RESULTS Women, but not men, who developed CVD or MI, but not ischemic stroke, were more likely to have the rs1271572 polymorphism variant T allele (P = 0.05 and 0.02) and less likely to have the rs1256049 polymorphism variant A allele (P = 0.003 and 0.004). No associations were observed for rs4986938. In conditional logistic multivariate regression, the rs1271572 variant was associated with increased odds of CVD [odds ratio (OR) = 1.49, 95% CI: 1.10-2.01] and MI (OR = 1.46, 95% CI: 0.96-2.23), whereas the rs1256049 variant was associated with decreased odds of CVD (OR = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.17-0.79) and MI (OR = 0.25, 95% CI: 0.09-0.73) in women. A common haplotype that included the rs1271572 variant was associated with a 7-fold increased risk of MI in women. CONCLUSIONS Two tightly linked polymorphisms of ESR2 were associated with risk of CVD, particularly MI, in women but not men. Additional studies of ESR2 genetic variation and risk of CVD are warranted.
The hard x-ray polarimeter X-Calibur

X-ray polarimetry promises unique information about astrophysical objects such as binary black hole systems, neutron stars, microquasars, active galactic nuclei, and gamma-ray bursts. We designed and built X-Calibur, a hard x-ray polarimeter to be flown in the focal plane of the InFOCS grazing incidence mirror in the fall of 2014 from Fort Sumner (NM)1. During the one-day flight X-Calibur will measure spectrum and polarization of x-rays in the 20-80keV range from up to five selected sources. X-Calibur exploits the fact that polarized photons scatter preferentially in a direction orthogonal to the orientation of their electric field vector. By combining a low-Z scatterer with high-Z Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT) detectors to photo-absorb the scattered x-rays, X-Calibur achieves a high detection efficiency of almost unity and a large modulation factor close to the theoretical limit given by the physics of Compton scattering. We have calibrated and tested X-Calibur extensively in the laboratory at Washington University and at the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS). Measurements using the highly polarized synchrotron beam at CHESS confirm the polarization sensitivity of the instrument. In this paper we report on the design of X-Calibur and results of laboratory calibration measurements characterizing the performance of the instrument.
Mixed Upwinding Covolume Methods on Rectangular Grids for Convection-Diffusion Problems

We consider an upwinding covolume or control-volume method for a system of first order PDEs resulting from the mixed formulation of a convection-diffusion equation with a variable anisotropic diffusion tensor. The system can be used to model the steady state of the transport of a contaminant carried by a flow. We use the lowest order Raviart--Thomas space and show that the concentration and concentration flux both converge at one-half order provided that the exact flux is in $H^1(\Omega)^2$ and the exact concentration is in $H^1(\Omega)$. Some numerical experiments illustrating the error behavior of the scheme are provided.
Visual hand motion capture for guiding a dexterous hand

Visual hand gesture based interfaces have been widely used for navigation of virtual environments (VE) and control of a robot arm in robotic systems. In fact, hand movement has abundant powers of expression with complex finger joint motions. In this paper, full-degree-of-freedom (DOF) hand motion is captured in a vision-based mode. It makes human-robot-interaction more intuitive and control of dexterous hand feasible. However, hand motion capture is a high dimensional search problem with serious ambiguity. A learning integrated with optimization approach in 3-D model based framework is introduced for pose estimation and a motion-tracking scheme with GA-based particle filter (PF) is described as a solution of high-dimensional and multi-modal search problem. Test experiment results show strong capabilities of such a hand motion capture system, especially in deal with high dimensional search problem.
Feature Combination beyond Basic Arithmetics

Kernel-based feature combination techniques such as Multiple Kernel Learning use arithmetical operations to linearly combine different kernels. We have observed that the kernel distributions of different features are usually very different. We argue that the similarity distributions amongst the data points for a given dataset should not change with their representation features and propose the concept of relative kernel distribution invariance (RKDI). We have developed a very simple histogram matching based technique to achieve RKDI by transforming the kernels to a canonical distribution. We have performed extensive experiments on various computer vision and machine learning datasets and show that calibrating the kernels to an empirically chosen canonical space before they are combined can always achieve a performance gain over state-of-art methods. As histogram matching is a remarkably simple and robust technique, the new method is universally applicable to kernel-based feature combination.
The User Experience of Smart-Phone Information Hierarchy and Screen Transition Patterns

This study aims to clarify the relation between the information hierarchy and screen transition as a feedback element for user experience in terms of user sensitivity and presence in a user-centered design environment of smart-phone visual perception based on theoretical researches. The result shows that the information hierarchy includes transitions from top to bottom, return, and transitions in the same hierarchical structure. As for tasks depending on the information hierarchy and transition styles, most tasks are sequential movement for depth entry, movement from top to bottom, and return to the previous screen. In a mobile device environment, since containing and structuralizing certain information on a small screen is important, the sequential structure needs transition effects for instant movement within the same configuration. As for tasks depending on the information hierarchy and transition styles, most tasks are sequential movement for depth entry, movement from top to bottom, and return to the previous screen. In a mobile device environment, the flip transition effect based on slides that feature the high transition rates is frequently used. Besides, transition from top to bottom and 'Move' and 'Scale' that have the concept of 'Layer' are also often utilized. As such, screen transition mainly for inter-depth movement is the major usage, but it is affected by the types, specifications of the used devices, internet access means and speed, etc.
CMUNITED-97: RoboCup-97 Small-Robot World Champion Team

Robotic soccer is a challenging research domain that involves multiple agents that need to collaborate in an adversarial environment to achieve specific objectives. In this article, we describe CMUNITED, the team of small robotic agents that we developed to enter the RoboCup-97 competition. We designed and built the robotic agents, devised the appropriate vision algorithm, and developed and implemented algorithms for strategic collaboration between the robots in an uncertain and dynamic environment. The robots can organize themselves in formations, hold specific roles, and pursue their goals. In game situations, they have demonstrated their collaborative behaviors on multiple occasions. We present an overview of the vision-processing algorithm that successfully tracks multiple moving objects and predicts trajectories. The article then focuses on the agent behaviors, ranging from low-level individual behaviors to coordinated, strategic team behaviors. CMUNITED won the RoboCup-97 small-robot competition at the Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Nagoya, Japan.
Production-Driven Patch Generation

We present an original concept for patch generation: we propose to do it directly in production. Our idea is to generate patches on-the-fly based on automated analysis of the failure context. By doing this in production, the repair process has complete access to the system state at the point of failure. We propose to perform live regression testing of the generated patches directly on the production traffic, by feeding a sandboxed version of the application with a copy of the production traffic, the 'shadow traffic'. Our concept widens the applicability of program repair, because it removes the requirements of having a failing test case.
Detection of debugger aware malware

Computer security researchers are often placed in a difficult situation their tools need to be perfect, in terms of possible exploits, in order to not raise suspicions in analysed malware. It is in the interest of malicious code to shut down if an analyst’s presence is detected as the longer it runs, the more revenue can be generated. While malware only needs to find one weakness in the analysis tool, the tool needs to cover all possible angles of attack, which is often impractical. It is not possible to analyse every discoverd malware sample by hand, because of large numbers, and automation is required. Malicious code that employs antitampering techniques can often mimic as a non-threatening application to slip past the automatic analyser. Such samples require more fine-grained approach, which is also more costly. A system that can detect these samples can improve the overall performance of the malware analysis process. Differential analysis converts the weakness of an analyst’s tool into a strength and can yield better performance than analysing every sample in a fine-grained manner. This runs a malware sample in two machines and records it’s actions. One of the machines is clean while the other contains traces of an analysis tool, such as debugger. Malware is declared as evasive if a difference is spotted in it’s behavior. This workflow was implemented in an automatic dynamic malware analysis environment Cuckoo Sandbox.
Partially ordered patterns and compositions

A partially ordered (generalized) pattern (POP) is a generalized pattern some of whose letters are incomparable, an extension of generalized permutation patterns introduced by Babson and Steingr´omsson. POPs were introduced in the symmetric group by Kitaev [19, 21], and studied in the set of k-ary words by Kitaev and Mansour [22]. Moreover, Kitaev et al. [23] introduced segmented POPs in compositions. In this paper, we study avoidance of POPs in compositions and generalize results for avoidance of POPs in permutations and words. Specifically, we obtain results for the generating functions for the number of compositions that avoid shuffle patterns and multi-patterns. In addition, we give the generating function for the distribution of the maximum number of nonoverlapping occurrences of a segmented POP τ (that is allowed to have repeated letters) among the compositions of n with m parts in a given set, provided we know the generating function for the number of compositions of n with m parts in the given set that avoid τ. This result is a q-analogue of the main result in [22].
Four Generations of Robotic Mapping and Exploration in Extreme Environments

An overview of four generations of robotic mapping and exploration systems for operations in extreme environments is presented. Theoretical and empirical insights gained during research, experimentation, and field expeditions with map reconstruction, navigation and object recognition are illustrated in two distinct classes of environments: nuclear response and military operations. In particular, the issues associated with the deployment of monolithic vs. distributed agents are examined with respect to each environmental classification. Experimental and simulated results detailing mapping operations with robot populations ranging from 1 to 1000 agents are discussed with respect to mission objectives and the environment type.
Clinical application of the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) for gait training—a systematic review

Objective: The aim of this study was to review the literature on clinical applications of the Hybrid Assistive Limb system for gait training. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted using Web of Science, PubMed, CINAHL and clinicaltrials.gov and additional search was made using reference lists in identified reports. Abstracts were screened, relevant articles were reviewed and subject to quality assessment. Results: Out of 37 studies, 7 studies fulfilled inclusion criteria. Six studies were single group studies and 1 was an explorative randomized controlled trial. In total, these studies involved 140 participants of whom 118 completed the interventions and 107 used HAL for gait training. Five studies concerned gait training after stroke, 1 after spinal cord injury (SCI) and 1 study after stroke, SCI or other diseases affecting walking ability. Minor and transient side effects occurred but no serious adverse events were reported in the studies. Beneficial effects on gait function variables and independence in walking were observed. Conclusions: The accumulated findings demonstrate that the HAL system is feasible when used for gait training of patients with lower extremity paresis in a professional setting. Beneficial effects on gait function and independence in walking were observed but data do not allow conclusions. Further controlled studies are recommended.
Energy-efficiency for multiframe real-time tasks on a dynamic voltage scaling processor

Energy-aware design for electronic systems has been an important issue in hardware and software implementations. Dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) techniques have been adopted to effectively trade the performance for the energy consumption. However, most existing research for energy-efficient design in DVS systems with realtime constraints focuses on tasks with worst-case execution times. Once a task instance completes earlier than its worst-case estimation, the unused slacks can be used for slowing down to reduce the energy consumption. This paper explores how to efficiently and effectively minimize the energy consumption to schedule a set of periodic real-time tasks with the multiframe property, in which the execution times of task instances are characterized by a vector of elements that are repeated. This paper proposes two types of approaches: (1) the task-based approach and (2) the frame-based approach. The task-based approach allocates the same time length for the executions of task instances belonging to the same task. The frame-based approach can reduce the energy consumption further by assigning an execution speed to each task frame. For on-line use, the scheduling overhead for speed determination is constant in both types of the proposed approaches. Simulations show that our proposed approaches sacrifice some optimality in terms of energy savings, compared to the optimal solutions, but require less space and less overhead for scheduling in the on-line (run-time) fashion.
Fabrication of 3D packaging TSV using DRIE

3D stacking of die with TSV (through Silicon Via) connection as well as wafer level packaging of CMOS image sensors (CIS) are becoming very hot topics. While TSV of CIS is definitively a back-end technique, 3D stacking of die through TSV can be done with different strategies: from the via first approach, a front-end process, to the via last approach, a back-end process. Each of these different ways of elaborating the vias has its advantages and drawbacks in terms of electrical performances, refilling materials and cost. They have in common the need to etch the vias. In this paper, we will review the DRIE performances for the definition of the different via shapes, depths, and sizes. A very low temperature (< 150 degC) PECVD process has also been characterized and will be presented for the high demanding packaging of CIS.
A high-sugar diet produces obesity and insulin resistance in wild-type Drosophila

SUMMARY Insulin-resistant, ‘type 2’ diabetes (T2D) results from a complex interplay between genes and environment. In particular, both caloric excess and obesity are strongly associated with T2D across many genetic backgrounds. To gain insights into how dietary excess affects insulin resistance, we studied the simple model organism Drosophila melanogaster. Larvae reared on a high-sugar diet were hyperglycemic, insulin resistant and accumulated fat – hallmarks of T2D – compared with those reared on control diets. Excess dietary sugars, but not fats or proteins, elicited insulin-resistant phenotypes. Expression of genes involved in lipogenesis, gluconeogenesis and β-oxidation was upregulated in high-sugar-fed larvae, as were FOXO targets, consistent with known mechanisms of insulin resistance in humans. These data establish a novel Drosophila model of diet-induced insulin resistance that bears strong similarity to the pathophysiology of T2D in humans.
Hawkes-laguerre reduced rank model for point processes

In recent years there has been a surge in the demand for analysis tools for multivariate point process data driven by work in neural coding and high frequency finance. In both these areas data volumes have become huge but few dimension reduction methods have been developed. Here we introduce a reduced rank model for the multivariate point process and provide a maximum likelihood estimator which we compute by an NMF type algorithm. However, the dependence on the point process history in the model implies our algorithm does not fit the traditional framework. The method is illustrated with a simulation and some data from cortical recordings from cats.
Observer-based stabilization of uncertain linear systems with recycle: An LMI approach

This paper deals with the control of processes having recycle streams. These processes can be modeled as state delayed systems. In this work the problem of robust design of an observed-based controller for these systems is presented. The system is assumed to have norm-bounded uncertainties which are independent in every matrix involved in its state space realization. To ensure asymptotic stability of the closed loop system, a Lyapunov functional is used to obtain delay-independent design conditions. The controller design is accomplished by means of a convex optimization procedure formulated using linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the main characteristics of the proposed design method.