Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimating joint movements from observed EMG signals with multiple electrodes under sensor failure situations toward safe assistive robot control

In this paper, we propose an estimation method of human joint movements from measured EMG signals for assistive robot control. We focus on how to estimate joint movements using multiple EMG electrodes even under sensor failure situations. In real world applications, EMG sensor electrodes might become disconnected or detached from skin surfaces. If we consider EMG-based robot control for assistive robots, such sensor failures lead to significant errors in the estimation of user joint movements. To cope with these sensor failures, we propose a state estimation model that takes uncertain observations into account. Sensor channel anomalies are found by checking the covariance of the EMG signals measured by multiple EMG electrodes. To validate the proposed control framework, we artificially disconnect an EMG electrode or detach one side of an EMG probe from the skin surface during elbow joint movement estimation. We show proper control of a one-DOF exoskeleton robot based on the estimated joint torque using our proposed method even when one EMG electrode has a sensor problem; a standard method with no tolerability against uncertain observations was unable to deal with these fault situations. Furthermore, the errors of the estimated joint torque with our proposed method were smaller than the standard method or a method with a conventional sensor fault detection algorithm.
The Importance of Genetic Counseling, DNA Diagnostics, and Cardiologic Family Screening in Left Ventricular Noncompaction Cardiomyopathy

Background—Left ventricular (LV) noncompaction (LVNC) is a distinct cardiomyopathy featuring a thickened bilayered LV wall consisting of a thick endocardial layer with prominent intertrabecular recesses with a thin, compact epicardial layer. Similar to hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathy, LVNC is genetically heterogeneous and was recently associated with mutations in sarcomere genes. To contribute to the genetic classification for LVNC, a systematic cardiological family study was performed in a cohort of 58 consecutively diagnosed and molecularly screened patients with isolated LVNC (49 adults and 9 children). Methods and Results—Combined molecular testing and cardiological family screening revealed that 67% of LVNC is genetic. Cardiological screening with electrocardiography and echocardiography of 194 relatives from 50 unrelated LVNC probands revealed familial cardiomyopathy in 32 families (64%), including LVNC, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and dilated cardiomyopathy. Sixty-three percent of the relatives newly diagnosed with cardiomyopathy were asymptomatic. Of 17 asymptomatic relatives with a mutation, 9 had noncompaction cardiomyopathy. In 8 carriers, nonpenetrance was observed. This may explain that 44% (14 of 32) of familial disease remained undetected by ascertainment of family history before cardiological family screening. The molecular screening of 17 genes identified mutations in 11 genes in 41% (23 of 56) tested probands, 35% (17 of 48) adults and 6 of 8 children. In 18 families, single mutations were transmitted in an autosomal dominant mode. Two adults and 2 children were compound or double heterozygous for 2 different mutations. One adult proband had 3 mutations. In 50% (16 of 32) of familial LVNC, the genetic defect remained inconclusive. Conclusion—LVNC is predominantly a genetic cardiomyopathy with variable presentation ranging from asymptomatic to severe. Accordingly, the diagnosis of LVNC requires genetic counseling, DNA diagnostics, and cardiological family screening.
The Language of Wisdom Understood Through an Analysis of Wise Quotes

Wise quotes carry advice about how to navigate life’s difficult decisions or feelings, allowing cultures to pass wisdom through generations. Qualities of wisdom have been identified by careful examination of wise individuals. Similarly, wise sayings and quotations can be analyzed and interpreted as emblematic of cultural beliefs about wisdom. The present research examines thematic and linguistic qualities of 157 wise quotes nominated as wise by 194 undergraduates. Thematic analysis of wise quotes centered on five dimensions of wisdom: Humor, Emotion, Review, Openness and Experience. Humor and Emotion were found to be the least represented while Review and Experience were the most represented. Linguistic analysis compared strong (n = 101) versus weak (n = 56) wise quotes and found that strong wise quotes were more linguistically complex and less likely to use the first-person pronouns. Analyzing the language of wisdom through quotes can provide additional insight into cultural representations of wisdom.
Steganalysis of Compressed Speech Based on Histogram Features

A steganalysis method for analysis-by-synthesis compressed speech based on the histogram features of the pulse position parameter is proposed in this paper. Speech compressed by G.729 coder is taken as an example to illuminate the algorithm. On the basis of analysis to the pulse position histogram characters of cover and stego speech, a new feature, histogram flatness is proposed. Furthermore, we use histogram flatness, the center of mass of histogram characteristic function, and histogram variance as classifying features, and employ SVM classifiers to classify speech into cover and stego data. Experiment results show the proposed algorithm has good performance for steganalysis of speech compressed by G.729 coders. This method can be also extended to compressed speech coded by other AbS-based coders.
Statistics and ethics in medical research: study design.

The term "design" encompasses all the structural aspects of a study, notably the definition of the study sample, size of sample, method of treatment allocation, type of statistical design (randomised, cross-over, sequential, etc), and choice of outcome measures. The importance of this stage cannot be overemphasised since no amount of clever analysis later will be able to compensate for major design flaws. In this article I will consider the relation between design and ethics in observational studies and clinical trials, but I will defer the problem of sample size until the next article.
Multi party computations: past and present

Cryptography is traditionally concerned with two users, Alice and Bob, who want to communicate privately and authentically over an insecure channel, and in modern times engage in protocols such as coin flipping over the telephone, contract signing, and interactive zero-knowledge proofs. Today, Alice and Bob are part of the internet, The cryptographic challenges involve n users who want to perform arbitrary interactive and probabilistic computations among themselves, all the while keeping their local data secret. Examples of such computations, where secrecy is an issue, include:
The Structure of Search Engine Law

Search engines are the new linchpins of the Internet, and a new body of law - search engine law - will increasingly determine the shape of the Internet. Making sensible search policy requires a clear understanding of how search works, what interests are at stake, and what legal questions intersect at search. This article offers the first comprehensive overview of search engine law, which it organizes into a systematic taxonomy. It then demonstrates the dense legal interrelationships created by search by discussing a series of important themes in search engine law, each of which cuts across many doctrinal areas.
Predictor-Corrector Preconditioners for Newton-Krylov Solvers in Fluid Problems

We propose an alternative implementation of preconditioning techniques for the solution of non-linear problems. Within the framework of Newton-Krylov methods, preconditioning techniques are needed to improve the performance of the solvers. We propose a different implementation approach to re-utilize existing semi-implicit methods to precondition fully implicit non-linear schemes. We propose a predictor-corrector approach where the fully non-linear scheme is the corrector and the pre-existing semi-implicit scheme is the predictor. The advantage of the proposed approach is that it allows to retrofit existing codes, with only minor modifications, in particular avoiding the need to reformulate existing methods in terms of variations, as required instead by other approaches now currently used. To test the performance of the approach we consider a non-linear diffusion problem and the standard driven cavity problem for incompressible flows.
Content-Based Image Retrieval

There has been a great amount of research work done in the Content-Based Image Retrieval field, the majority of which covers issues such as Feature Representation, User Relevance Feedback and Indexing Structures. There has not been much investigation of the sample size and its effects on the accuracy of a retrieval system. The following report presents a CBIR system that has been designed and developed for this purpose. The effects with varying scope and number of irrelevant semantic classes are illustrated, underlining the role of these factors in CBIR. An evaluation of appropriate performance measures is also covered to enable a consistent representation for CBIR systems. This is essential to enable a true comparison on similar grounds.
On properties of some matrix splittings

Properties of some splittings of amonotone matrix A are discussed. These properties are fundamental hypotheses in the proofs of comparison theorems. This fact is illustrated by several results given in the literature. This paper is closely related to (10). The following definitions of splittings are used. Definition 1.1. Let M, N ∈ n×n . Then the decomposition A = M − N is called (a) a regular splitting of A if M −1 ≥ 0a ndN ≥ 0, (b) a nonnegative splitting of A if M −1 ≥ 0, M −1 N ≥ 0a nd NM −1 ≥ 0, (c) a weak nonnegative splitting of A if M −1 ≥ 0 and either M −1 N ≥ 0 (the first type )o r NM −1 ≥ 0 (the second type), (d) a weak splitting of A if M is nonsingular, M −1 N ≥ 0a nd NM −1 ≥ 0, (e) a weaker splitting of A if M is nonsingular and either M −1 N ≥ 0 (the first type) or NM −1 ≥ 0 (the second type), (f) a convergent splitting of A if � (M −1 N )= � ( NM −1 ) < 1. The splittings defined in the successive items extend successively a class of split- tings of A = M − N for which the matrices N and M −1 may lose the properties of nonnegativity. Distinguishing both types of weak nonnegative and weaker split- tings leads to further extensions allowing us to analyze cases when M −1 N may have negative entries even if NM −1 is a nonnegative matrix. It is necessary to mention that the definition assumed in item (b) is equivalent to the definition of weak regular splitting of A introduced originally by Ortega and Rheinboldt (6). However, some authors, for instance Berman and Plemmons (1), using the same name "weak regular splitting", restrict this definition to its weaker version based on the conditions M −1 ≥ 0a ndM −1 N ≥ 0 without the condition NM −1 ≥ 0, which corresponds to a weak nonnegative splitting of the first type defined in item
Dynamic label placement for improved interactive exploration

This work presents a novel approach for dynamically rendering annotations attached to a 3D scene. We formulate the problem as a general optimization under constraints, accounting for certain desirable properties. To approximately solve the NP-hard optimization problem in real-time, we present a particular heuristic that greedily places labels while maintaining constraints. Typical greedy label placement algorithms do not pay particular attention to the order of placement and, as a result, suffer from the fundamental limitation that successive labels get progressively more difficult to place. We use algorithmic and mathematical tools that compensate for the drawback of typical greedy approaches. In addition, they are well suited for GPU implementation, because they are completely image based. As a result, we can place tens of labels in real-time, as demonstrated in this paper.
Subdivision shading

The idea of Phong Shading is applied to subdivision surfaces: normals are associated with vertices and the same construction is used for both locations and normals. This creates vertex positions and normals. The vertex normals are smoother than the normals of the subdivision surface and using vertex normals for shading attenuates the well known visual artifacts of many subdivision schemes. We demonstrate how to apply subdivision to normals and how blend and combine different normals for achieving a variety of effects.
Cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

This is the fourth in a series of articles covering the 2002 American Diabetes Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, 14–18 June 2002. Peter Savage (Ellicott City, MD) discussed secular trends in cardiovascular disease (CVD) among patients with diabetes. Two-thirds to three-quarters of patients with diabetes will eventually die of CVD. Diabetes is becoming more important as a cause of CVD in the population because of its increasing prevalence, due to the high incidence in minority populations and the increasing obesity of the population. The “key question,” Savage stated, is whether persons with diabetes are different from those without diabetes in not enjoying the same decline in CVD that has been seen in the overall population over the past 50 years, presumably reflecting a variety of advances in the treatment of risk factors. In a study of time trends in mortality in U.S. adults between surveys in 1971–1975 and in 1982–1984, diabetic men had a decline of 13% in age-adjusted CVD mortality, while that for nondiabetic men was 36%, and diabetic women had an increase of 23%, while women without diabetes had a decline in CVD mortality of 27% (1). Although microvascular disease is relatively specific for diabetes, macrovascular disease appears as an acceleration of the illness seen in persons without diabetes. High LDL is a risk factor in those with and without diabetes, but persons with diabetes tend to have low HDL, high triglyceride, and abnormal LDL particle size. They have the hypertension of the insulin resistance syndrome, which becomes exacerbated with renal disease (and diabetic patients with renal disease have extraordinarily high rates of CVD). Diabetes is associated with coagulation abnormalities and inflammation, as well as hyperglycemia, glycation, and secondary effects on CVD risk factors. Insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia are additional factors in persons with diabetes. Savage pointed …
Indexing of Fictional Video Content for Event Detection and Summarisation

This paper presents an approach to movie video indexing that utilises audiovisual analysis to detect important and meaningful temporal video segments, that we term events. We consider three event classes, corresponding to dialogues, action sequences, and montages, where the latter also includes musical sequences. These three event classes are intuitive for a viewer to understand and recognise whilst accounting for over 90% of the content of most movies. To detect events we leverage traditional filmmaking principles and map these to a set of computable low-level audiovisual features. Finite state machines (FSMs) are used to detect when temporal sequences of specific features occur. A set of heuristics, again inspired by filmmaking conventions, are then applied to the output of multiple FSMs to detect the required events. A movie search system, named MovieBrowser, built upon this approach is also described. The overall approach is evaluated against a ground truth of over twenty-three hours of movie content drawn from various genres and consistently obtains high precision and recall for all event classes. A user experiment designed to evaluate the usefulness of an event-based structure for both searching and browsing movie archives is also described and the results indicate the usefulness of the proposed approach.
Multi-Task Learning with Gaussian Matrix Generalized Inverse Gaussian Model

In this paper, we study the multi-task learning problem with a new perspective of considering the structure of the residue error matrix and the low-rank approximation to the task covariance matrix simultaneously. In particular, we first introduce the Matrix Generalized Inverse Gaussian (MGIG) prior and define a Gaussian Matrix Generalized Inverse Gaussian (GMGIG) model for low-rank approximation to the task covariance matrix. Through combining the GMGIG model with the residual error structure assumption, we propose the GMGIG regression model for multi-task learning. To make the computation tractable, we simultaneously use variational inference and sampling techniques. In particular, we propose two sampling strategies for computing the statistics of the MGIG distribution. Experiments show that this model is superior to the peer methods in regression and prediction.
Local Learned Dictionaries Optimized to Edge Orientation for Inverse Halftoning

A method is proposed for fully restoring local image structures of an unknown continuous-tone patch from an input halftoned patch with homogenously distributed dot patterns, based on a locally learned dictionary pair via feature clustering. First, many training sets consisting of paired halftone and continuous-tone patches are collected, and then histogram-of- oriented-gradient (HOG) feature vectors that describe the edge orientations are calculated from every continuous-tone patch, to group the training sets. Next, a dictionary learning algorithm is separately conducted on the categorized training sets, to obtain the halftone and continuous-tone dictionary pairs, optimized to edge-oriented patch representation. Finally, an adaptively smoothing filter is applied to the input halftone patch, to predict the HOG feature vector of an unknown continuous-tone patch, and to select one of the previously learned dictionary pairs, based on the Euclidean distance between the HOG mean feature vectors of the grouped training sets and the predicted HOG vector. In addition to using the local dictionary pairs, a patch fusion technique is used to reduce some artifacts, such as color noise and overemphasized edges on smooth regions. Experimental results show that the use of the paired dictionary selected by the local edge orientation and patch fusion technique not only reduced the artifacts in smooth regions, but also provided well expressed fine details and outlines, especially in the areas of textures, lines, and regular patterns.
PERILAKU KECURANGAN AKADEMIK MAHASISWA AKUNTANSI: DIMENSI FRAUD TRIANGLE

Abstract: Academic Fraud Behaviour of Accountinng Students: Fraud Triangle Dimension. This study examine the dimensions of Fraud Triangle to explain this effect on the student’s cheating. This study uses a model of research The Academic Dishonesty Scale modifi cation. Sample in this study were 217 accounting students in Brawijaya University Malang. Data was collected through survey methods. This study have obtained empirical evidence that student’s cheating behaviorwas determined by the dimensions of the Fraud Triangle consists of incentive, opportunity and rationalization. Abstrak : Perilaku Kecurangan Akademik Mahasiswa Akuntansi: Dimensi Fraud Triangle. Studi ini menguji dimensi Fraud Triangle untuk menjelaskan perilaku kecurangan akademik mahasiswa dengan menggunakan model The Academic Dishonesty Scale modifi cation. Sampel penelitian adalah 217 mahasiswa akuntansi Universitas Brawijaya Malang. Data dikumpulkan dengan metoda survei. Hasil penelitian memperoleh bukti empiris bahwa perilaku kecurangan mahasiswa ditentukan oleh dimensi Fraud Triangle yaitu tekanan, peluang dan rasionalisasi .
Estimating the Size of the Female Sex Worker Population in Kenya to Inform HIV Prevention Programming

Background The high burden of HIV infections among female sex workers (FSW) in sub-Saharan Africa has been long recognised, but effective preventive interventions have largely not been taken to scale. We undertook a national geographical mapping exercise in 2011/2012 to assess the locations and population size of FSW in Kenya, to facilitate targeted HIV prevention services for this population. Methods and Findings We used a geographical mapping approach, consisting of interviews with secondary key informants to identify “hot” spots frequented by FSW, their operational dynamics and the estimated numbers of FSW in those spots. This was followed by validation of the estimates through interviews with FSW at each spot identified. The mapping covered Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, and 50 other major urban centres. In total, 11,609 secondary key informant interviews were conducted to identify FSW spots. Further, a total of 6,360 FSW were interviewed for spot validation purposes. A total of 10,670 spots where FSW congregate were identified. The estimated FSW population in all the towns mapped was 103,298 (range 77,878 to 128, 717). Size estimates in the towns mapped were extended to smaller towns that were not mapped, using a statistical model. The national urban FSW population estimate was 138,420 (range 107, 552 to 169, 288), covering all towns of over 5,000 population. We estimated that approximately 5% of the urban female population of reproductive age in Kenya could be sex workers, which is consistent with previous estimates from other sub-Saharan African countries. Conclusions This study provides the first national level data on the size of the FSW population in Kenya. These data can be used to enhance HIV prevention programme planning and implementation for FSW, to form the basis for impact evaluations, and to improve programme coverage by directing efforts to locations with the greatest need.
Europeans and their online engagement in policy-making: have governments managed to foster citizens involvement thanks to the internet?

In the last years governments have implemented several initiatives in order to take advantage of the potential of the internet to actively engage citizens in the process of policy-making and, thus, to overcome the traditional barriers observed in the offline context, those being, that the most advantaged socioeconomic groups are the most likely to get involved. This paper addresses whether these online initiatives have been successful in reaching the aforementioned goals. Results show that digital skills and online networks are key elements to explain citizens use of the aforementioned governments tools for participative policymaking. Nonetheless, public initiatives seem to have been little successful till now in engaging citizens through the internet since the participation patterns online mirror the divides observed in the offline context. Interestingly enough, there is some evidence that points out that citizens might be using these online tools to express their disappointment with public policies and authorities.