Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robot-Assisted Training of Arm and Hand Movement Shows Functional Improvements for Incomplete Cervical Spinal Cord Injury

Objective The aim of the study was to demonstrate the feasibility, tolerability, and effectiveness of robotic-assisted arm training in incomplete chronic tetraplegia. Design Pretest/posttest/follow-up was conducted. Ten individuals with chronic cervical spinal cord injury were enrolled. Participants performed single degree-of-freedom exercise of upper limbs at an intensity of 3-hr per session for 3 times a week for 4 wks with MAHI Exo-II. Arm and hand function tests (Jebsen-Taylor Hand Function Test, Action Research Arm Test), strength of upper limb (upper limb motor score, grip, and pinch strength), and independence in daily living activities (Spinal Cord Independence Measure II) were performed at baseline, end of training, and 6 mos later. Results After 12 sessions of training, improvements in arm and hand functions were observed. Jebsen-Taylor Hand Function Test (0.14[0.04]–0.21[0.07] items/sec, P = 0.04), Action Research Arm Test (30.7[3.8]–34.3[4], P = 0.02), American Spinal Injury Association upper limb motor score (31.5[2.3]–34[2.3], P = 0.04) grip (9.7[3.8]–12[4.3] lb, P = 0.02), and pinch strength (4.5[1.1]–5.7[1.2] lb, P = 0.01) resulted in significant increases. Some gains were maintained at 6 mos. No change in Spinal Cord Independence Measure II scores and no adverse events were observed. Conclusions Results from this pilot study suggest that repetitive training of arm movements with MAHI Exo-II exoskeleton is safe and has potential to be an adjunct treatment modality in rehabilitation of persons with spinal cord injury with mild to moderate impaired arm functions.
The bodily self and its disorders: neurological, psychological and social aspects.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW The experience of ourselves as an embodied agent with a first-person perspective is referred to as 'bodily self'. We present a selective overview of relevant clinical and experimental studies. RECENT FINDINGS Sharing multisensory body space with others can be observed in patients with structurally altered bodies (amputations, congenital absence of limbs), with altered functionality after hemiplegia, such as denial of limb ownership (somatoparaphrenia) and with alterations in bodily self-consciousness on the level of the entire body (e.g. in autoscopic phenomena). In healthy participants, the mechanisms underpinning body ownership and observer perspective are empirically investigated by multisensory stimulation paradigms to alter the bodily self. The resulting illusions have promoted the understanding of complex disturbances of the bodily self, such as out-of-body experiences. We discuss the role of interoception in differentiating between self and others and review current advances in the study of body integrity identity disorder, a condition shaped as much by neurological as by social-psychological factors. SUMMARY We advocate a social neuroscience approach to the bodily self that takes into account the interactions between body, mind and society and might help close the divide between neurology and psychiatry.
The Relationship of Motor Coordination, Visual Perception, and Executive Function to the Development of 4–6-Year-Old Chinese Preschoolers' Visual Motor Integration Skills

Visual motor integration (VMI) is a vital ability in childhood development, which is associated with the performance of many functional skills. By using the Beery Developmental Test Package and Executive Function Tasks, the present study explored the VMI development and its factors (visual perception, motor coordination, and executive function) among 151 Chinese preschoolers from 4 to 6 years. Results indicated that the VMI skills of children increased quickly at 4 years and peaked at 5 years and decreased at around 5 to 6 years. Motor coordination and cognitive flexibility were related to the VMI development of children from 4 to 6 years. Visual perception was associated with the VMI development at early 4 years and inhibitory control was also associated with it among 4-year-old and the beginning of 5-year-old children. Working memory had no impact on the VMI. In conclusion, the development of VMI skills among children in preschool was not stable but changed dynamically in this study. Meanwhile the factors of the VMI worked in different age range for preschoolers. These findings may give some guidance to researchers or health professionals on improving children's VMI skills in their early childhood.
A Node-Based Method for SLAM Navigation in Self-Similar Underwater Environments: A Case Study

This work deals with the development of a node-based monocular visual methodology for autonomous vehicle navigation which has the goal of exploring unknown regions of the sea bottom with a posterior safe revisiting of them. The work accentuates characteristics of the seabed like self-similarity and backscattering. In a stepwise fashion, a visual guidance system constructs a shape similar to a narrow corridor by optimally creating a heading function on the basis of keypoints threads, which ensures future revisits. The corridor is composed of nodes and paths in between. Each path is composed of a visual-odometry-based trail which is generated in feature-poor environments, in combination with a feature-based trail which emerges in feature-rich regions. A probabilistic analysis of the uncertainties and their impact in the success rate on loop closings is carried out. We work out two case studies, the first employing an ad-hoc benchmark and the second a series of experiments in the real world. From here qualitative conclusions can be drawn out that enable us to anticipate potential applications of the approach in the field of autonomous navigation underwater.
Response of Submerged Macrophyte Communities to External and Internal Restoration Measures in North Temperate Shallow Lakes

Submerged macrophytes play a key role in north temperate shallow lakes by stabilizing clear-water conditions. Eutrophication has resulted in macrophyte loss and shifts to turbid conditions in many lakes. Considerable efforts have been devoted to shallow lake restoration in many countries, but long-term success depends on a stable recovery of submerged macrophytes. However, recovery patterns vary widely and remain to be fully understood. We hypothesize that reduced external nutrient loading leads to an intermediate recovery state with clear spring and turbid summer conditions similar to the pattern described for eutrophication. In contrast, lake internal restoration measures can result in transient clear-water conditions both in spring and summer and reversals to turbid conditions. Furthermore, we hypothesize that these contrasting restoration measures result in different macrophyte species composition, with added implications for seasonal dynamics due to differences in plant traits. To test these hypotheses, we analyzed data on water quality and submerged macrophytes from 49 north temperate shallow lakes that were in a turbid state and subjected to restoration measures. To study the dynamics of macrophytes during nutrient load reduction, we adapted the ecosystem model PCLake. Our survey and model simulations revealed the existence of an intermediate recovery state upon reduced external nutrient loading, characterized by spring clear-water phases and turbid summers, whereas internal lake restoration measures often resulted in clear-water conditions in spring and summer with returns to turbid conditions after some years. External and internal lake restoration measures resulted in different macrophyte communities. The intermediate recovery state following reduced nutrient loading is characterized by a few macrophyte species (mainly pondweeds) that can resist wave action allowing survival in shallow areas, germinate early in spring, have energy-rich vegetative propagules facilitating rapid initial growth and that can complete their life cycle by early summer. Later in the growing season these plants are, according to our simulations, outcompeted by periphyton, leading to late-summer phytoplankton blooms. Internal lake restoration measures often coincide with a rapid but transient colonization by hornworts, waterweeds or charophytes. Stable clear-water conditions and a diverse macrophyte flora only occurred decades after external nutrient load reduction or when measures were combined.
Perspective Preserving Solution for Quasi-Orthoscopic Video See-Through HMDs

In non-orthoscopic video see-through (VST) head-mounted displays (HMDs), depth perception through stereopsis is adversely affected by sources of spatial perception errors. Solutions for parallax-free and orthoscopic VST HMDs were considered to ensure proper space perception but at expenses of an increased bulkiness and weight. In this work, we present a hybrid video-optical see-through HMD the geometry of which explicitly violates the rigorous conditions of orthostereoscopy. For properly recovering natural stereo fusion of the scene within the personal space in a region around a predefined distance from the observer, we partially resolve the eye-camera parallax by warping the camera images through a perspective preserving homography that accounts for the geometry of the VST HMD and refers to such distance. For validating our solution; we conducted objective and subjective tests. The goal of the tests was to assess the efficacy of our solution in recovering natural depth perception in the space around said reference distance. The results obtained showed that the quasi-orthoscopic setting of the HMD; together with the perspective preserving image warping; allow the recovering of a correct perception of the relative depths. The perceived distortion of space around the reference plane proved to be not as severe as predicted by the mathematical models.
Outcome, Recurrence and Mortality after Non-Valvular Atrial Fibrillation Stroke: Long-Term Follow-Up Study.

Objective Non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) is a major risk factor for ischemic stroke (IS) and a powerful predictor of mortality. This study investigates early and long-term outcome among patients with IS secondary to NVAF and identify the main factors associated with poor outcome, recurrence, and death. Methods We analyzed the data from our consecutive NVAF acute IS database, over a period of 23 years. The endpoints were bad outcome (Modified Rankin Score ≥3), recurrence, and mortality at discharge, after 6 months, 12 months, and final follow-up. Multivariate Cox and Kaplan-Meier analysis were used to estimate the probability of death. Results 129 consecutive acute IS patients were included (77 [59.7%] females, mean age 70.2 ± 10.1 years). Discharge, 6 and 12 months bad outcome was 62%, 63%, and 61%, respectively. After a median follow-up of 17 months (IQR 6-54.5), 35.6% patients had bad outcome, 21.7% had recurrence and 36.4% died. The recurrence and death annual rates were 19.1% and 6.32%. The absence of oral anticoagulation (OAC) and NIHSS score > 12 were the strongest predictors of mortality. Conclusions IS secondary to NVAF has a high rate of stroke recurrence and mortality in our population, with the absence of OAC and major stroke as the main risk factors.
FERMI-LAT OBSERVATIONS OF THE LIGO EVENT GW150914

The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has an instantaneous field of view (FoV) covering ∼ 1 / 5 of the sky and it completes a survey of the entire sky in high-energy gamma-rays every 3 hr. It enables searches for transient phenomena over timescales from milliseconds to years. Among these phenomena could be electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave (GW) sources. In this paper, we present a detailed study of the LAT observations relevant to Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) event GW150914, which is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and has been interpreted as being due to the coalescence of two stellar-mass black holes. The localization region for GW150914 was outside the LAT FoV at the time of the GW signal. However, as part of routine survey observations, the LAT observed the entire LIGO localization region within ∼70 minutes of the trigger and thus enabled a comprehensive search for a γ-ray counterpart to GW150914. The study of the LAT data presented here did not find any potential counterparts to GW150914, but it did provide limits on the presence of a transient counterpart above 100 MeV on timescales of hours to days over the entire GW150914 localization region.
CVD diamond for electronic devices and sensors

Series Preface. Preface. List of Contributors. Basic Properties, Defects and Impurities, Surface properties and Synthesis. 1 Basic Properties of Diamond: Phonon Spectra, Thermal Properties, Band Structure ( Gordon Davies ). 2 Transport Properties of Electrons and Holes in Diamond ( Jan Isberg ). 3 Point Defects, Impurities and Doping ( Alison Mainwood ). 4 Surface Conductivity of Diamond ( Lothar Ley ). 5 Recent Progress in the Understanding of CVD Growth of Diamond ( J.E. Butler, A. Cheesman and M. N. R. Ashfold ). 6 Heteroepitaxial Growth ( M. Schreck ). Radiation Sensors. 7 Detectors for UV and Far UV Radiation ( Alan T. Collins ). 8 Diamond Radiation Sensors for Radiotherapy ( Mara Bruzzi ). 9 Radiation Sensors for High Energy Physics Experiments ( H. Kagan and W. Trischuk ). 10 CVD-Diamond Detectors for Experiments with Hadrons, Nuclei, and Atoms ( E. Berdermann and M. Ciobanu ). 11 Neutron Detectors ( G. Verona-Rinati ). Active Electronic Devices. 12 High-Power Switching Devices ( Jan Isberg ). 13 H-Terminated Diamond Field-Effect Transistors ( Makoto Kasu ). 14 Doped Diamond Electron Devices ( E. Kohn and A. Denisenko ). 15 Optoelectronic Devices Using Homoepitaxial Diamond p - n and p - i - n Junctions ( Toshiharu Makino and Hiromitsu Kato ). Electrochemical and Biological Sensors. 16 Biofunctionalization of Diamond Surfaces: Fundamentals and Applications ( J. A. Garrido ). 17 Diamond Electrochemical Sensors ( John S. Foord ). Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems. 18 CVD Diamond MEMS ( J. Kusterer and E. Kohn ). Superconductivity in CVD Diamond. 19 Superconductivity in Diamond ( Yoshihiko Takano ). Index.
Automated cross-browser compatibility testing

With the advent of Web 2.0 applications and new browsers, the cross-browser compatibility issue is becoming increasingly important. Although the problem is widely recognized among web developers, no systematic approach to tackle it exists today. None of the current tools, which provide screenshots or emulation environments, specifies any notion of cross-browser compatibility, much less check it automatically. In this paper, we pose the problem of cross-browser compatibility testing of modern web applications as a 'functional consistency' check of web application behavior across different web browsers and present an automated solution for it. Our approach consists of (1) automatically analyzing the given web application under different browser environments and capturing the behavior as a finite-state machine; (2) formally comparing the generated models for equivalence on a pairwise-basis and exposing any observed discrepancies. We validate our approach on several open-source and industrial case studies to demonstrate its effectiveness and real-world relevance.
Asiaticoside Attenuates Cell Growth Inhibition and Apoptosis Induced by Aβ1-42 via Inhibiting the TLR4/NF-κB Signaling Pathway in Human Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a very common progressive neurodegenerative disorder with the highest incidence in the world. Dysfunction of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) may be responsible for the pathogenesis and pathology of AD for abnormally transporting amyloid-β (Aβ, the main component of the senile plaques) from the sera into the central nervous system. Aβ peptides induce apoptosis in human brain microvascular endothelial cells (hBMECs), the main component of BBB. Apoptosis in neuronal cells plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of AD. Asiaticoside, a natural glycoside extracted from Centella asiatica (L.) Urban, has an anti-apoptotic effect on hBMECs but the molecule mechanism remains unclear. Therefore, we investigate the protective effect of asiaticoside on Aβ1-42-induced cytotoxicity and apoptosis as well as associated mechanism in hBMECs with commonly used in vitro methods for clinical development of asiaticoside as a novel anti-AD agent. In the present study, we investigated the effects of asiaticoside on cytotoxicity by Cell Counting Kit-8 assay, mitochondrial membrane potential by JC-1 fluorescence analysis, anti-apoptosis by Hoechst 33258 staining and Annexin V-FITC (fluorescein isothiocyanate) and propidium iodide (PI) analyses, the expressions of TNF-α and IL-6 by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and TLR4, MyD88, TRAF6, p-NF-κB p65, and total NF-κB p65 by Western blotting, and nuclear translocation of NF-κB p65 by immunofluorescence analysis in hBMECs. The results showed that pretreatment of asiaticoside (25, 50, and 100 μM) for 12 h significantly attenuated cell growth inhibition and apoptosis, and restored declined mitochondrial membrane potential induced by Aβ1-42 (50 μM) in hBMECs. Asiaticoside also significantly downregulated the elevated expressions of TNF-α, IL-6, TLR4, MyD88, TRAF6, and p-NF-κB p65, as well as inhibited NF-κB p65 translocation from cytoplasm to nucleus induced by Aβ1-42 in hBMECs in a concentration-dependent manner. The possible underlying molecular mechanism of asiaticoside may be through inhibiting the TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathway. Therefore, asiaticoside may be developed as a novel agent for the prevention and/or treatment of AD clinically.
Diquafosol Delivery from Silicone Hydrogel Contact Lenses: Improved Effect on Tear Secretion.

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability to uptake and to deliver diquafosol from commercial contact lenses (CLs) and its effect on tear secretion. METHODS For both in vitro and in vivo experiments, two commercial silicone hydrogel (Si-Hy) CLs (comfilcon A and balafilcon A) were used. The CLs were soaked overnight for 12 h in diquafosol solution and control CLs were soaked in saline solution (NaCl 0.9%). The CLs were introduced into a new well container with 1 mL of saline solution, and aliquots of 100 μL were extracted at different times during a period of 6 h to measure the diquafosol release. For in vivo experiments, nine male New Zealand white rabbits were used. CLs soaked in diquafosol were inserted in the eye and compared with control CLs and diquafosol topical instillation. Schirmer's tests were performed to evaluate tear secretion and diquafosol release at different times during the 6-h period. RESULTS For in vitro experiments, the largest amount of diquafosol was released during the first 24 h for both CL materials under study, without statistical differences between them (P < 0.05). The topical application showed the maximum release at 1 min after instillation, meanwhile the release from both CL materials was at 30 min of insertion. The effect on tear secretion was higher with CL delivery compared with topical instillation (P < 0.05), being 300 min for both CLs and 90 min for topical application. CONCLUSION The use of CLs increases the residence time of diquafosol on the ocular surface with a concomitant enhancement in tear secretion during longer periods.
Routing questions for collaborative answering in Community Question Answering

Community Question Answering (CQA) service enables its users to exchange knowledge in the form of questions and answers. By allowing the users to contribute knowledge, CQA not only satisfies the question askers but also provides valuable references to other users with similar queries. Due to a large volume of questions, not all questions get fully answered. As a result, it can be useful to route a question to a potential answerer. In this paper, we present a question routing scheme which takes into account the answering, commenting and voting propensities of the users. Unlike prior work which focuses on routing a question to the most desirable expert, we focus on routing it to a group of users - who would be willing to collaborate and provide useful answers to that question. Through empirical evidence, we show that more answers and comments are desirable for improving the lasting value of a question-answer thread. As a result, our focus is on routing a question to a team of compatible users.We propose a recommendation model that takes into account the compatibility, topical expertise and availability of the users. Our experiments over a large real-world dataset shows the effectiveness of our approach over several baseline models.
The problematic coexistence of "internet gaming disorder" and esports

Whether or not gaming causes addiction continues to be debated in the scholarly literature. The American Psychiatric Association has proposed "Internet gaming disorder," a non-substance addictive disorder, in order to encourage further research on the subject. We suggest that competitive gaming, better known as esports, might provide a unique platform on which to discuss the validity of the proposed disorder.
Fog over virtualized IoT: new opportunity for context-aware networked applications and a case study

In this paper, we discuss the most significant application opportunities and outline the challenges in real-time and energy-efficient management of the distributed resources available in mobile devices and at the Internet-to-Data Center. We also present an energy-efficient adaptive scheduler for Vehicular Fog Computing (VFC) that operates at the edge of a vehicular network, connected to the served Vehicular Clients (VCs) through an Infrastructure-to-Vehicular (I2V) over multiple Foglets (Fls). The scheduler optimizes the energy by leveraging the heterogeneity of Fls, where the Fl provider shapes the system workload by maximizing the task admission rate over data transfer and computation. The presented scheduling algorithm demonstrates that the resulting adaptive scheduler allows scalable and distributed implementation.
Experimental Determination of the Mechanical Behaviour of Compacted Exfoliated Vermiculite

A series of compacted exfoliated vermiculite samples were prepared, and their mechanical behaviour was experimentally studied. The vermiculite was first exfoliated and after compacted in order to obtain a material with good thermal and mechanical properties. The as‐prepared samples have been tested under compressive loading. Some parameters effect was studied, as the porosity and the type of the compacted exfoliated vermiculite. The samples of this porous media display two steps for the stress–strain behaviour under uniaxial compressive loading, that is initial nonlinear deformation, strain‐hardening ‘pseudo‐platform’ stage.
Isointense infant brain segmentation with a hyper-dense connected convolutional neural network

Neonatal brain segmentation in magnetic resonance (MR) is a challenging problem due to poor image quality and low contrast between white and gray matter regions. Most existing approaches for this problem are based on multi-atlas label fusion strategies, which are time-consuming and sensitive to registration errors. As alternative to these methods, we propose a hyper-densely connected 3D convolutional neural network that employs MR-T1 and T2 images as input, which are processed independently in two separated paths. An important difference with previous densely connected networks is the use of direct connections between layers from the same and different paths. Adopting such dense connectivity helps the learning process by including deep supervision and improving gradient flow. We evaluated our approach on data from the MICCAI Grand Challenge on 6-month infant Brain MRI Segmentation (iSEG), obtaining very competitive results. Among 21 teams, our approach ranked first or second in most metrics, translating into a state-of-the-art performance.