Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A UTOMATICALLY I NFERRING D ATA Q UALITY FOR S PATIOTEMPORAL F ORECASTING

The importance of learning from spatiotemporal data has been growing with increasing amounts of data sources distributed over space. While numerous studies have been done for analyzing spatiotemporal signals, existing models have assumed that heterogeneous data sources in the spatial domain are equally reliable over time. In this paper, we propose a novel method that estimates time-varying data quality levels based on local variations of spatiotemporal signals without explicit labels that designate data quality. Furthermore, we integrate our estimate of data quality level with graph convolutional networks to exploit their efficient structure, because spatially distributed data sources form natural graphs. Finally, we evaluate the proposed method by simulating a forecasting task with real-world climate data.
Manufacturing process and electrode properties of palladium-electroded ionic polymer–metal composite

This paper primarily focuses on the manufacturing process of palladium-electroded ionic polymer–metal composite (IPMC). First, according to the special properties of Pd, many experiments were done to determine several specific procedures, including the addition of a reducing agent and the time consumed. Subsequently, the effects of the core manufacturing steps on the electrode morphology were revealed by scanning electron microscopy studies of 22 IPMC samples treated with different combinations of manufacturing steps. Finally, the effects of electrode characteristics on the electromechanical properties, including the sheet resistivity, the elastic modulus and the electro-active performance, of IPMCs were evaluated experimentally and analyzed according to the electrode morphology.
Using ipsilateral motor signals in the unaffected cerebral hemisphere as a signal platform for brain–computer interfaces in hemiplegic stroke survivors

Brain–computer interface (BCI) systems have emerged as a method to restore function and enhance communication in motor impaired patients. To date, this has been applied primarily to patients who have a compromised motor outflow due to spinal cord dysfunction, but an intact and functioning cerebral cortex. The cortical physiology associated with movement of the contralateral limb has typically been the signal substrate that has been used as a control signal. While this is an ideal control platform in patients with an intact motor cortex, these signals are lost after a hemispheric stroke. Thus, a different control signal is needed that could provide control capability for a patient with a hemiparetic limb. Previous studies have shown that there is a distinct cortical physiology associated with ipsilateral, or same-sided, limb movements. Thus far, it was unknown whether stroke survivors could intentionally and effectively modulate this ipsilateral motor activity from their unaffected hemisphere. Therefore, this study seeks to evaluate whether stroke survivors could effectively utilize ipsilateral motor activity from their unaffected hemisphere to achieve this BCI control. To investigate this possibility, electroencephalographic (EEG) signals were recorded from four chronic hemispheric stroke patients as they performed (or attempted to perform) real and imagined hand tasks using either their affected or unaffected hand. Following performance of the screening task, the ability of patients to utilize a BCI system was investigated during on-line control of a one-dimensional control task. Significant ipsilateral motor signals (associated with movement intentions of the affected hand) in the unaffected hemisphere, which were found to be distinct from rest and contralateral signals, were identified and subsequently used for a simple online BCI control task. We demonstrate here for the first time that EEG signals from the unaffected hemisphere, associated with overt and imagined movements of the affected hand, can enable stroke survivors to control a one-dimensional computer cursor rapidly and accurately. This ipsilateral motor activity enabled users to achieve final target accuracies between 68% and 91% within 15 min. These findings suggest that ipsilateral motor activity from the unaffected hemisphere in stroke survivors could provide a physiological substrate for BCI operation that can be further developed as a long-term assistive device or potentially provide a novel tool for rehabilitation.
Broadband asymmetric high isolation directional coupler using quadrature mode suppression

In this paper, the design of a novel asymmetric directional coupler is proposed. This coupler is designed to obtain uniformly tight coupling and high isolation. The coupler uses a divider-combiner configuration employing quadrature mode suppression to obtain high isolation. The design makes use of five section branch line couplers and two-section power combiners to obtain broad bandwidth for coupling, return loss and isolation. The proposed five-branch coupler is a new configuration which offers unequal power split to overcome the problem of large branch impedances associated with multiple branch couplers. The proposed asymmetric coupler has coupling better than 6 dB over the frequency range from 1.08 to 2.96 GHz, and isolation better than 25dB from 1.03 to 3.27GHz. Its directivity is above 20 dB from 1.05 to 3.17 GHz. For load sensing, this coupler offers a dynamic range better than 20 dB, from 1.26 to 2.52 GHz. This coupler is fabricated in single layer microstrip technique and on low cost FR4 substrate. High directivity over a broad bandwidth and low cost makes it suitable for several small signal transmit/receive applications.
Schwann‐like cells differentiated from human dental pulp stem cells combined with a pulsed electromagnetic field can improve peripheral nerve regeneration

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of Schwann‐like cells combined with pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) on peripheral nerve regeneration. Schwann‐like cells were derived from human dental pulp stem cells (hDPSCs) and verified with CD104, S100, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), laminin, and P75NTR immunocytochemistry. Gene expression of P75NTR and S100 were analyzed. Male Sprague‐Dawley rats (200‐250g, 6‐week‐old) were divided into seven groups (n = 10 each): control, sham, PEMF, hDPSCs, hDPSCs + PEMF, Schwann‐like cells, Schwann‐like cells + PEMF. Cells were transplanted (1 × 106/10µl/rat) at crush‐injury site or combined with PEMF (50 Hz, 1 h/day, 1 mT). Nerve regeneration was evaluated with functional test, histomorphometry and retrograde labelled neurons. Schwann‐like cells expressed CD104, S100, GFAP, laminin, and p75 neurotrophin receptor (P75NTR). P75NTR and S100 mRNA expression was highest in Schwann‐like cells + PEMF group, which also showed increased Difference and Gap scores. Axons and retrograde labeled neurons increased in all treatment groups. Schwann‐like cells, hDPSCs with or without PEMF, and PEMF only improved peripheral nerve regeneration. Schwann‐like cells + PEMF showed highest regeneration ability; PEMF has additive effect on hDPSCs, Schwann‐like cell in vitro and nerve regeneration ability after transplantation in vivo. Bioelectromagnetics. 37:163–174, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial of a Nutrition Intervention Program in a Multiethnic Adult Population in the Corporate Setting Reduces Depression and Anxiety and Improves Quality of Life: The GEICO Study

Purpose. To determine whether a plant-based nutrition program in a multicenter, corporate setting improves depression, anxiety, and productivity. Design. A quasi-experimental study examined the impact of diet on emotional well-being and productivity. Setting. The study was conducted in 10 corporate sites of a major U.S. insurance company. Subjects. There were 292 participants (79.8% women, 20.2% men), with body mass index ≥25 kg/m2 and/or previous diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Intervention. Either weekly instruction in following a vegan diet or no instruction was given for 18 weeks. Measures. Depression and anxiety were measured using the Short Form-36 questionnaire. Work productivity was measured using the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire. Analysis. Baseline characteristics were examined by t-test for continuous variables and χ2 test for categorical variables. Analysis of covariance models were adjusted for baseline covariates. Paired t-tests were used to determine within-group changes and t-tests for between-group differences. Results. In an intention-to-treat analysis, improvements in impairment because of health (p < .001), overall work impairment because of health (p = .02), non-work-related activity impairment because of health (p < .001), depression (p = .02), anxiety (p = .04), fatigue (p < .001), emotional well-being (p = .01), daily functioning because of physical health (p = .01), and general health (p = 0.02) in the intervention group were significantly greater than in the control group. Results were similar for study completers. Conclusion. A dietary intervention improves depression, anxiety, and productivity in a multicenter, corporate setting.
Effects of Depression and Antidepressant Use on Goal Setting and Barrier Identification Among Patients With Type 2 Diabetes

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of depression and antidepressant use on goal setting and barrier identification in patients with type 2 diabetes. Methods In a large diabetes education network, 778 patients with type 2 diabetes were enrolled in the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) Outcomes System as part of their routine diabetes education between 2005 and 2008. Self-reported depression, 7 self-identified behavior change goals, and 13 barriers to diabetes self-care were collected from the Diabetes Self-Management Assessment Report Tool (D-SMART®); antidepressant use was documented from the Diabetes Educator Tool (D-ET®). Multiple linear regression was used to evaluate the effects of depression or antidepressant use on the number of goals or the number of barriers while controlling for relevant covariates. Results Among 778 patients (507 nondepressed, 181 depressed with antidepressant use, 90 depressed without antidepressant use), median age was 58, 60.9% were female, and 85.9% were Caucasian. Patients with and without depression had a similar number of self-identified behavior change goals, whereas patients with depression had 1 additional barrier to diabetes self-care compared with those without depression. In the depressed subgroup, antidepressant use had no association with the number of goals that the subjects set or the number of barriers they identified. Conclusions Among patients with type 2 diabetes, depression was associated with a slightly greater number of barriers, which may support the importance of depression screening and depression treatment in patients with diabetes.
Sonic hedgehog signalling mediates astrocyte crosstalk with neurons to confer neuroprotection

Sonic hedgehog (SHH) is a glycoprotein associated with development that is also expressed in the adult CNS and released after brain injury. Since the SHH receptors patched homolog‐1 and Smoothened are highly expressed on astrocytes, we hypothesized that SHH regulates astrocyte function. Primary mouse cortical astrocytes derived from embryonic Swiss mouse cortices, were treated with two chemically distinct agonists of the SHH pathway, which caused astrocytes to elongate and proliferate. These changes are accompanied by decreases in the major astrocyte glutamate transporter‐1 and the astrocyte intermediate filament protein glial fibrillary acidic protein. Multisite electrophysiological recordings revealed that the SHH agonist, smoothened agonist suppressed neuronal firing in astrocyte‐neuron co‐cultures and this was abolished by the astrocyte metabolic inhibitor ethylfluoroacetate, revealing that SHH stimulation of metabolically active astrocytes influences neuronal firing. Using three‐dimensional co‐culture, MAP2 western blotting and immunohistochemistry, we show that SHH‐stimulated astrocytes protect neurons from kainate‐induced cell death. Altogether the results show that SHH regulation of astrocyte function represents an endogenous neuroprotective mechanism.
An investigation of tourism information on destination management organization websites as the pull factor: A case study of health and wellness tourism information

The current study investigates tourism information provided on the tourism destination management organization websites parallel with senior tourists' preferences, constraints, and travel behaviors to find the associations between them. As the exploratory study, the phenomenon within Thailand setting was solely explored. Senior travelers were mainly the samples of the research. Health and wellness tourism information provided on Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) websites were captured and analyzed based on the suggested tourism motivations. Netnography content analysis was employed to extract the data collected from senior travelers who participated in online travel communities. Three stages were conducted in the methodology, including examining the data captured from reviews available on the online travel community, TripAdvisor.com; exploring health and wellness information available on TAT websites; and analyzing and comparing the findings. The findings from TripAdvisor.com exposed that escapism motivation was the main motive that pushes senior travelers to visit Thailand. However, even though Thailand has been ranked among the world's top wellness destinations, health and wellness tourism was rarely mentioned in Thailand Travel Forum. The key constraints concerned weather issues, physical impairments, and accessibilities. By investigating TAT websites, more information about health and medical products and services were found, while information regarding wellness tourism product was absent. Since TAT and the government intended to attract more wellness senior tourists, both parties should deliver additional relevant and useful information essential for their trip planning and improve the functionality of the existing websites to enhance user experiences on the websites and communication competencies.
On peak to average power ratio of universal filtered OFDM signals

Universal Filtered OFDM (UF-OFDM) exhibits better spectral properties compared to the classic OFDM modulation technique. One of the drawbacks of multicarrier modulation (MCM) is its high Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR), challenging power amplifier design. In this paper, the PAPR of UF-OFDM signals is analyzed mathematically and then verified by numerical simulations. It is shown, analytically as well as by simulation, that the PAPR of UF-OFDM signals is higher than that of OFDM signals due to the FIR-filtering. Moreover, a simple approximated PAPR relation between both signals is found and accurately matches with simulation. To reduce the PAPR, a simple clipping algorithm along with DFT precoding is investigated in UF-OFDM systems with low complexity transceiver implementation, and compared with classic CP-OFDM/SC-FDMA systems under various system settings of both synchronous and asynchronous multiuser transmission. The link level simulation with typical LTE parameters shows that UF-OFDM performs slightly worse than OFDM with perfect time and frequency synchronization, while significant SNR gain of more than 2 dB can be achieved with relaxed synchronization.
The usefulness of a single arm cuff oscillometric method (Arteriograph) to assess changes in central aortic blood pressure and arterial stiffness by antihypertensive treatment: results from the Doxazosin-Ramipril Study

Abstract Purpose: Inhibition of the renin-angiotensin system may have effects on vascular structure and function beyond the effects on blood pressure (BP) reduction. We studied the ability of a single arm cuff oscillometric method (Arteriograph, TensioMed, Hungary) to assess effects of antihypertensive treatment on BP and arterial stiffness. Furthermore, this technique was compared to pulse wave analysis and applanation tonometry (SphygmoCor, AtCor Medical, Australia). Materials and methods: Brachial and aortic BP, augmentation index (AIx), and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) was simultaneously assessed by both techniques in 71 untreated hypertensive patients. Thereafter, 58 completed double-blind randomized treatment for 12 weeks with ramipril or doxazosin. Results: Treatment (assessed by the Arteriograph) reduced aortic more than brachial systolic BP (−13.2 vs. −11.2 mm Hg; p = .002) and improved all indices of arterial stiffness. This greater reduction in aortic to brachial systolic BP was more marked by ramipril than by doxazosin (−20.9 and −17.1 vs. −4.3 and −4.2 mm Hg; p = .006), with a similar trend for AIx (−6.2 vs. −2.2%; p = .058). Both devices showed correlations for aortic and brachial systolic and diastolic BP and AIx (r = 0.75–0.86, all p < .001), while agreement for PWV was weaker (r = 0.28; p = .043). The Arteriograph generally recorded higher values for aortic BP and AIx than the SphygmoCor. Conclusions: Antihypertensive treatment reduced aortic systolic BP more than brachial BP and improved arterial stiffness. Blocking the renin-angiotensin system may have additional effects beyond BP reduction. We demonstrate the feasibility of the Arteriograph to monitor changes in BP and arterial stiffness by treatment.
Which links should I use? A variogram-based selection of relationship measures for prediction of node attributes in temporal multigraphs

When faced with the task of forming predictions for nodes in a social network, it can be quite difficult to decide which of the available connections among nodes should be used for the best results. This problem is further exacerbated when temporal information is available, prompting the question of whether this information should be aggregated or not, and if not, which portions of it should be used. With this challenge in mind, we propose a novel utilization of variograms for selecting potentially useful relationship types, whose merits are then evaluated using a Gaussian Conditional Random Field model for node attribute prediction of temporal social networks with a multigraph structure. Our flexible model allows for measuring many kinds of relationships between nodes in the network that evolve over time, as well as using those relationships to augment the outputs of various unstructured predictors to further improve performance. The experimental results exhibit the effectiveness of using particular relationships to boost performance of unstructured predictors, show that using other relationships could actually impede performance, and also indicate that while variograms alone are not necessarily sufficient to identify a useful relationship, they greatly help in removing obviously useless measures, and can be combined with intuition to identify the optimal relationships.
Structural Requirements for VAP-B Oligomerization and Their Implication in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-associated VAP-B(P56S) Neurotoxicity*

The integral endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-membrane protein VAP-B interacts with various lipid-transfer/binding proteins containing an FFAT motif through its N-terminal MSP domain. A genetic mutation within its MSP domain, P56S, was identified in familial forms of motor neuron diseases. This mutation induces the formation of insoluble VAP-B(P56S) protein aggregates by an unknown mechanism. In this study, we defined the structural requirements for VAP-B oligomerization and demonstrated their contribution for VAP-B(P56S) aggregation and neurotoxicity. We show that the oligomerization of VAP-B is mainly mediated by its coiled-coil domain and that the GXXXG dimerization motif within the transmembrane domain mediates transmembrane domains self-association but is insufficient to drive VAP-B oligomerization. We further show that the oligomerization of the wild-type VAP-B is independent of its MSP domain. However, we found that the P56S mutation induces conformational changes within the MSP domain and facilitates its propensity to aggregate by exposing hydrophobic patches to the solvent. These conformational changes have no direct effect on FFAT binding. Rather, they enhance VAP-B(P56S) oligomerization driven by the combined contributions of the coiled-coil and the transmembrane domains, thereby preventing accessibility to FFAT-binding site, facilitating the production of VAP-B(P56S)-insoluble aggregates and consequently its neurotoxicity. These results shed light on the mechanism by which VAP-B(P56S) aggregates are formed and induce familial motor neuron diseases.
MECCAS: Collaborative Storage Algorithm Based on Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers on Mobile Edge Cloud

The commonly existing employed centralized algorithms fail to be adaptive to the new storage pattern on mobile edge cloud. To address this issue, we propose an alternating-direction-method-of-multipliers-based collaborative storage algorithm called MECCAS (Mobile Edge Cloud Collaborative Storage). The proposed MECCAS is able to minimize the delay of task execution and total costs for the overall operation, and meanwhile maximize the utilization of local information of nodes and system reliability. Nodes on mobile edge cloud storage are capable of adaptively allocating resources for storage to increase power usage effectiveness and reduce the risk of nodes withdrawal. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our MECCAS algorithm compared with other three baselines, i.e., ADM, RDM and ERASURE. The optimization utility of our algorithm is higher than other three algorithms by 41.72%, 44.52% and 22.94% on average, respectively
Impaired Center-Surround Suppression in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is often associated with declined visual processing abilities. Here we tested whether the functions of center-surround suppression- a hallmark property in the visual system- are altered by AD. To this end, we recruited three groups of participants (AD, elderly, and young) in a motion direction discrimination task, in which we measured the temporal duration threshold of a drifting Gabor with varying stimulus sizes. We first replicated the phenomena of center-surround suppression that the required duration for discriminating a high contrast grating decreases with increasing stimulus size. We then showed that the magnitudes of suppression varied among the three groups. There was progressive reduction of suppression in the elderly and AD groups compared with the young group. Interestingly, we found that the levels of suppression can predict the severity of dementia in the AD group. Our results suggest that AD is associated with impaired center-surround functions in the visual motion processing pathway.
Image processing in encrypted domain for distributed storage in cloud

The advancements in the area of Signal processing in encrypted domain aka s.p.e.d are extremely useful for cloud computing and other distributed storage applications. Even though cloud computing provides solution for storage and processing of bulk data, it raises severe security concerns, especially when the data contain sensitive personal information. This necessitates the need for devising methods for processing the data in encrypted domain. Image processing techniques in encrypted domain either suffer from complex data processing operations or restricted distribution requirements. This paper attempts to resolve security issues in distribution of computationally efficient Shamir's secret sharing scheme. Also, two important image processing operations viz., image interpolation and 2D DCT are implemented in encrypted domain over cloud. Analysis show that quality of the processing operations is at par with that of the corresponding operations in plain domain