Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cognition and dual-task performance in older adults with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease

Background Patients with neurodegenerative diseases usually experience significant functional deficits. Older adults with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may suffer from both motor and cognitive impairments, making them especially vulnerable to poor dual-task performance. Objective To analyze the dual-task cost of walking in subjects with PD and AD exposed to motor and cognitive distracters. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted involving 126 older adults comprising three groups: PD (n=43), AD (n=38), and control (n=45). The subjects were evaluated using the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test administered with motor and cognitive distracters. Mixed-design analysis of variance (ANOVA) with cognition as a covariant factor was used to test the possible main effects of dual-task on motion. A 5% threshold for significance was set, with a 95% confidence interval (CI). The partial eta square (n2p) analysis was included to estimate the magnitude of effect. Results Examining the effects for dual-task, ANOVA revealed the main effect for group×task interactions (F=13.09; P=0.001; n2p =0.178), for task (F=8.186; P=0.001; n2p =0.063) but not for group (F=2.954; P=0.056; n2p =0.047). Cognition applied as a covariant factor indicated interference on dual-tasks (F=30.43; P=0.001; n2p =0.201). Conclusion The findings of this study suggest that dual-task interference is a particularly noticeable problem in PD and AD, affecting subjects’ ability to appropriately adapt to environmental challenges.
Multireference adaptive noise canceling applied to the EEG

The technique of multireference adaptive noise canceling (MRANC) is applied to enhance transient nonstationarities in the electroencephalogram (EEG), with the adaptation implemented by means of a multilayer perceptron artificial neural network (ANN). The method was applied to recorded EEG segments and the performance on documented nonstationarities recorded. The results show that the neural network (nonlinear) gives an improvement in performance (i.e., signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the nonstationarities) compared to a linear implementation of MRANC. In both cases an improvement in the SNR was obtained. The advantage of the spatial filtering aspect of MRANC is highlighted when the performance of MRANC is compared to that of the inverse auto-regressive filtering of the EEG, a purely temporal filter.
Template mining for the extraction of citation from digital documents

Information Extraction (IE) is a term that involves the activity of automatically extracting pre-specified sorts of information from short, natural language texts. It may be seen as the activity of populating a structured information source (or database) from an unstructured, or free text, information source. This structured database then can be used for a number of purposes: for creating a citation database, for report generation, for decision making in business, for using data-mining or artificial intelligent and neural network techniques, and so on. Template mining is a particular technique used in IE. When text matches a template, the system extracts data according to instructions associated with that template. This study hypothesizes that the template mining technique can be used to extract citation information from printed and digital full-text articles so that universal or semi-universal citation databases can be automatically established before too long in the future.
One hundred years of eruptions of house mice in Australia: a natural biological curio

The house mouse has adapted well to the cereal crops of south-eastern Australia where populations show aperiodic outbreaks over large areas. A 20-year population study has provided a wealth of information on breeding ecology, demographic changes, spatial behaviour and epidemiology. The breeding season can be as short as 4.5 months and as long as 10 months with litter size changing seasonally from high values in spring to low values in autumn. There are marked changes in litter size between years. Rates of increase of populations also vary between years. The rate of change of populations during the breeding season is independent of density effects, but if the population density is high at the commencement of breeding then the litter size is depressed throughout that breeding season. There are density-dependent effects on survival during the non-breeding season. Rates of increase of populations over spring and summer are highly correlated with accumulated rainfall from the previous winter-spring (April-October). Studies of helminths and viruses indicate that Australian mice carry only a subset of the helminths found in Europe. There have been no published studies on murine viruses in Europe. Perhaps a reduced diversity of diseases partially accounts for the ability of mice to increase rapidly to extreme population densities in cereal-growing areas of south-eastern Australia.
A Local-Search Algorithm for Steiner Forest

In the Steiner Forest problem, we are given a graph and a collection of source-sink pairs, and the goal is to find a subgraph of minimum total length such that all pairs are connected. The problem is APX-Hard and can be 2-approximated by, e.g., the elegant primal-dual algorithm of Agrawal, Klein, and Ravi from 1995. We give a local-search-based constant-factor approximation for the problem. Local search brings in new techniques to an area that has for long not seen any improvements and might be a step towards a combinatorial algorithm for the more general survivable network design problem. Moreover, local search was an essential tool to tackle the dynamic MST/Steiner Tree problem, whereas dynamic Steiner Forest is still wide open. It is easy to see that any constant factor local search algorithm requires steps that add/drop many edges together. We propose natural local moves which, at each step, either (a) add a shortest path in the current graph and then drop a bunch of inessential edges, or (b) add a set of edges to the current solution. This second type of moves is motivated by the potential function we use to measure progress, combining the cost of the solution with a penalty for each connected component. Our carefully-chosen local moves and potential function work in tandem to eliminate bad local minima that arise when using more traditional local moves.
Synchronous motor observability study and a new robust MRAS speed observer with an improved zero-speed position estimation design for surface PMSM

This paper deals with the Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) observability problems and proposes a simple and effective solution to improve the rotor speed and position estimation for Surface PMSM (SPMSM). In fact, the problem of loss of observability at low frequency range is always recognized in experimental settings. Nevertheless, there are no sufficient theoretical observability analyses for the PMSM. In the literature, only the sufficient observability condition has been presented. Therefore, the current work is aimed specially to the necessary observability condition analysis. In order to improve the rotor speed and position estimation in the case of SPMSM, a special attention is given to Model Reference Adaptive System (MRAS). MRAS based techniques are one of the best methods to estimate the rotor speed and position due to its performances and straight forward stability approach. In this paper, we propose a new robust MRAS scheme based on sliding mode techniques to estimate the rotor speed of a SPMSM. Furthermore, an Estimator/Observer swapping system is designed to overcome position observability problems at zero speed which is an unobservable state point. The stability of the proposed MRAS observer is also presented and discussed. Various tests are carried out in simulation using MATLAB/SIMULINK to illustrate the obtained theoretical results.
Evaluating Cross-Lingual Equating

Adapting educational tests from 1 language to others requires equating across the different language versions to be able to compare examinees from different language groups. Such equating is usually based on translated items considered to have similar content and psychometric characteristics in both source and target languages. However, because it is not possible to ascertain that these items are really similar in different languages, it is difficult to control and validate the equating outcome. The purpose of this study was to develop a method for evaluating cross-lingual equating and apply it to the Psychometric Entrance Test (PET) used for admission to Israeli universities. This test is written in Hebrew (the source-language, SL) and translated into 5 languages. A cross-lingual equating in a double-linking plan was performed in each of 12 forms translated to 1 target language (TL1), and each of 9 forms translated to another target language (TL2). The average difference between the equating results in the 2 links, indicating the overall instability incorporated in the equating process, was more than 10 times the standard error of equating in the TL1-SL process and about half this size in the TL2-SL process. The significance of the results and the differences found between the 2 TLs are discussed, as well as the potential displayed by the method for use as a general evaluative tool for cross-lingual equating.
THE EPICS-BASED ACCELERATOR CONTROL SYSTEM OF THE S-DALINAC

The control system of the Superconducting Darmstadt Electron Linear Accelerator (S-DALINAC) is currently undergoing a migration to an EPICS-based system. Important subsystems are operated successfully by EPICS software since several years. This contribution describes latest developments as well as the current status of the migration.
Recurrent Models for Auditory Attention in Multi-Microphone Distant Speech Recognition

Integration of multiple microphone data is one of the key ways to achieve robust speech recognition in noisy environments or when the speaker is located at some distance from the input device. Signal processing techniques such as beamforming are widely used to extract a speech signal of interest from background noise. These techniques, however, are highly dependent on prior spatial information about the microphones and the environment in which the system is being used. In this work, we present a neural attention network that directly combines multi-channel audio to generate phonetic states without requiring any prior knowledge of the microphone layout or any explicit signal preprocessing for speech enhancement. We embed an attention mechanism within a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) based acoustic model to automatically tune its attention to a more reliable input source. Unlike traditional multi-channel preprocessing, our system can be optimized towards the desired output in one step. Although attention-based models have recently achieved impressive results on sequence-to-sequence learning, no attention mechanisms have previously been applied to learn potentially asynchronous and non-stationary multiple inputs. We evaluate our neural attention model on the CHiME-3 challenge task, and show that the model achieves comparable performance to beamforming using a purely data-driven method.
Accelerating Weeder: A DNA Motif Search Tool Using the Micron Automata Processor and FPGA

Motif searching, i.e., identifying meaningful patterns from biological data, has been studied extensively due to its importance in the biomedical sciences. In this work, we seek to improve the performance of Weeder, a widely-used tool for automatic de novo motif searching. Weeder consists of several functions, among which we find that the function oligo scan, which handles the pattern matching, is the bottleneck, especially when dealing with large datasets. Motivated by this observation, we adopt the Micron Automata Processor (AP) to accelerate the pattern-matching stage of Weeder. The AP is a massively-parallel, nonvon-Neumann semiconductor architecture that is purpose-built for symbolic pattern matching. Relying on the fact that AP is capable of performing matching for thousands of patterns in parallel, we develop an APaccelerated Weeder implementation in this work. In particular, we describe how to map Weeder’s pattern matching to the AP chip and use the high-end FPGA on the AP board to postprocess the output from AP. Our experiment shows that the AP-accelerated Weeder achieves 751x speedup on pattern matching, compared to a single-threaded CPU implementation. key words: automata processor, Weeder, motif search, FPGA
Video route

The always increasing number of videos on the internet yield data for novel quite useful multimedial service applications, but finding videos best satisfying the users need is becoming challenging. At the same time, new video collection platforms allow to upload videos enriched with positional metadata when recorded with a GPS-enabled device such as a smartphone. These platforms can thus go beyond the prevalent keyword search and instead take advantage from the positional metadata of videos, e.g., to find videos recorded in a certain area. This information, however allows for much more interesting queries. In this paper we present Video Route which allows a user to specify a target route (query) and obtain an approximation of the target route that is piecewise composed of subtrajectories derived from a set of given trajectories. Our approach is aimed at high approximation accuracy while keeping the number of composed subtrajectories low.
Lab-on-Glass System for DNA Analysis using Thin and Thick Film Technologies

In this paper, we present a compact lab-on-chip system suited for label-free DNA analysis. The system can be fabricated on a conventional microscope glass slide using thin-film and thick-film technologies. It integrates a heating chamber, an electrowetting-based droplet handling system and a hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) photosensor array for DNA detection. At this stage of research we have designed and tested the individual functional units. The heating chamber incorporates a thin metal film heater optimized for uniform temperature distribution on a 1cm 2 area. A forward-biased a-Si:H p-i-n junction is used for temperature monitoring, achieving a linear temperature dependence with -3.3 mV/K sensitivity. The droplet-handling unit, relying on the electrowetting method, is designed to move the sample from the heating chamber to the sensor array. The unit includes a set of metal pads beneath a layer of PDMS that provides both the electric insulation of the electrodes and the hydrophobic surface needed by the electrowetting technique. The UV sensor array allows measuring the DNA absorbance variation at 254nm related to the hybridization between probe-molecules contained in the sample and reference target molecules immobilized on the sensor surface. A preliminary test to detect the hybridization between a 25-mer single-stranded oligonucleotides and denaturated pBR 322 4162-mer single-stranded oligonucleotides has been carried out successfully.
Evaluation of water permeability of forward osmosis membranes using osmotically driven membrane test

Desalination is a key technology to overcome water shortage problem in a near future. High energy consumption is an Achilles’ heel in desalination technology. Osmotically driven membrane processes like forward osmosis(FO) was introduced to address this energy issue. Characterizing membrane properties such as water permeability(A), salt permeability(B), and the resistance to salt diffusion within the support layer(KICP) are very important to predict the performance of scaled-up FO processes. Currently, most of researches reported that the water permeability of FO membrane was measured by reverse osmosis(RO) type test. Permeating direction of RO and FO are different and RO test needs hydraulic pressure so that several problems can be occurred(i.e. membrane deformation, compaction and effect of concentration polarization). This study focuses on measuring water permeability of FO membrane by FO type test results in various experimental conditions. A statistical approach was developed to evaluate the three FO membrane properties(A, B, and KICP) and it predicted test result by the internal and external concentration polarization model.
Complete Dissolution of Ball-Milled Masson Pine Using an Aqueous Sodium Hydroxide Solvent

An inorganic sodium hydroxide aqueous solution was developed for the dissolution of ball-milled softwood. Extractive-free Masson pine powder was prepared from the wood meal by planetary ball milling for various lengths of time. The effects of ball milling on the dissolution and regeneration of Masson pine powder were investigated. After 4 h of ball milling, the wood powder was completely dissolved in 6 wt% NaOH aqueous solution under vigorous magnetic stirring for 10 to 20 min at room temperature. The alkaline nitrobenzene oxidation products yield of 4 h ball-milled wood was very close to that of coarse wood meal without ball milling. Regeneration of the lignin fraction was easier than cellulose during the acid neutralization process, and the dialysis regeneration yield of total biomass was 91.1%. Therefore, the complete dissolution of the Masson pine in sodium hydroxide solution is of great potential for enhancing lignin isolation with a very little structural change.
The Manual Habituation and Discrimination of Shapes in Preterm Human Infants from 33 to 34+6 Post-Conceptional Age

Background Grasping at birth is well-known as a reflex in response to a stimulation of the palm of the hand. Recent studies revealed that this grasping was not only a pure reflex because human newborns are able to detect and to remember differences in shape features. The manual perception of shapes has not been investigated in preterm human infants. The aim of the present study was to investigate manual perception by preterm infants. Methodology/Principal Findings We used a habituation/reaction to novelty procedure in twenty-four human preterm infants from 33 to 34+6 post-conceptional age. After habituation to an object (prism or cylinder) in one hand (left or right) in a habituation phase, babies were given either the same object or the other (novel) object in the same hand in a test phase. We observed that after successive presentations of the same object, a decrease of the holding time is observed for each preterm infant. Moreover, a significant increase of the holding time is obtained with the presentation of the novel object. Finally, the comparison between the current performance of preterm infants and those of full-term newborns showed that preterm babies only had a faster tactile habituation to a shape. Conclusion/Significance For the first time, the results reveal that preterm infants from 33 to 34+6 GW can detect the specific features that differentiate prism and cylinder shapes by touch, and remember them. The results suggest that there is no qualitative, but only quantitative, difference between the perceptual abilities of preterm babies and those of full-term babies in perceiving shape manually.
Automatic detection and mapping of double potentials in intracardiac electrograms

Abstract Catheter ablation has become a very efficient strategy to terminate sustained cardiac arrhythmias like atrial flutter (AFlut). Identification of the optimal ablation spot, however, often proves difficult when scar from previous ablations is present. Although the application of electro-anatomical mapping systems allows to record thousands of intracardiac electrograms (EGMs) from each atrium, state-of-the-art techniques provide limited options for automatic signal processing. Goal of the presented research was the development of an algorithm to detect EGMs that present double potentials (DPs), as these often indicate functional or anatomical lines of block for cardiac excitation. Using an annotated database, we developed several features based on the morphological descriptors of DPs. These were used to train a binary decision tree which was able to detect DPs with a correct rate of over 90%.
Compared effects of three oligosaccharides on metabolism of intestinal microflora in rats inoculated with a human faecal flora

Using germ-free rats inoculated with a human faecal flora (gnotobiotic rats), the effects of three oligosaccharides (β-fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), β-galacto-oligosaccharides (TOS) and α-gluco-oligosaccharides (GOS)) on intestinal bacterial metabolism were compared. The animals were fed on either a control diet or diets containing 4Og/kg of GOS, FOS or TOS. FOS and TOS were the preferred growth substrates for Bifidobacteria which increased in number by 2 log values in faeces of rats when compared with rats fed on GOS or control diets. Ingestion of TOS specifically induced hydrolysis of the substrate, and did not modify the activity of any other enzymes measured in the caecum. GOS led to a non-specific enzymic induction of β-galactosidase (EC 3.2.1.23), β-glucosidase (EC 3.2.1.21) and α-glucosidase (EC 3.2.1.20) activities whereas β-glucuronidase (EC 3.2.1.31) was lowered. Compared with the control group, FOS and TOS diets led to a significant increase in H2 and CH4 excretion; the GOS diet increased only CH4. Analysis of caecal contents revealed a decrease in pH for all diets compared with controls. Total short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) concentration increased significantly in all groups, but the SCFA profile differed between treatment groups. It was concluded that the three oligosaccharides studied had different effects which may be linked to their chemical structure. Some of these effects may be beneficial to human health
Clustering Using a Hybrid Query Similarity Measure

Query clustering is a task that groups similar queries automatically without using predetermined class descriptions. Such clusters can be used to discover the common interests of online information seekers to exploit their collective search experience for the benefit of others. Since similarity is fundamental to the definition of a cluster, measures of similarity between two queries is essential to the query clustering procedure. This paper introduces a hybrid query similarity measure that uses both query terms and the results returned to queries. Experiments show that the hybrid approach can generate query clusters of better overall quality than existing similarity measures. Key-Words: Information retrieval, query mining, query clustering, similarity measures.
Global Estimates of CO Sources with High Resolution by Adjoint Inversion of Multiple Satellite Datasets (MOPITT, AIRS, SCIAMACHY, TES)

Abstract. We combine CO column measurements from the MOPITT, AIRS, SCIAMACHY, and TES satellite instruments in a full-year (May 2004–April 2005) global inversion of CO sources at 4°×5° spatial resolution and monthly temporal resolution. The inversion uses the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model (CTM) and its adjoint applied to MOPITT, AIRS, and SCIAMACHY. Observations from TES, surface sites (NOAA/GMD), and aircraft (MOZAIC) are used for evaluation of the a posteriori solution. Using GEOS-Chem as a common intercomparison platform shows global consistency between the different satellite datasets and with the in situ data. Differences can be largely explained by different averaging kernels and a priori information. The global CO emission from combustion as constrained in the inversion is 1350 Tg a−1. This is much higher than current bottom-up emission inventories. A large fraction of the correction results from a seasonal underestimate of CO sources at northern mid-latitudes in winter and suggests a larger-than-expected CO source from vehicle cold starts and residential heating. Implementing this seasonal variation of emissions solves the long-standing problem of models underestimating CO in the northern extratropics in winter-spring. A posteriori emissions also indicate a general underestimation of biomass burning in the GFED2 inventory. However, the tropical biomass burning constraints are not quantitatively consistent across the different datasets.