Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parameters and Measures in Assessment of Motor Learning in Neurorehabilitation; A Systematic Review of the Literature

Upper limb function, essential for daily life, is often impaired in individuals after stroke and cerebral palsy (CP). For an improved upper limb function, learning should occur, and therefore training with motor learning principles is included in many rehabilitation interventions. Despite accurate measurement being an important aspect for examination and optimization of treatment outcomes, there are no standard algorithms for outcome measures selection. Moreover, the ability of the chosen measures to identify learning is not well established. We aimed to review and categorize the parameters and measures utilized for identification of motor learning in stroke and CP populations. PubMed, Pedro, and Web of Science databases were systematically searched between January 2000 and March 2016 for studies assessing a form of motor learning following upper extremity training using motor control measures. Thirty-two studies in persons after stroke and 10 studies in CP of any methodological quality were included. Identified outcome measures were sorted into two categories, “parameters,” defined as identifying a form of learning, and “measures,” as tools measuring the parameter. Review's results were organized as a narrative synthesis focusing on the outcome measures. The included studies were heterogeneous in their study designs, parameters and measures. Parameters included adaptation (n = 6), anticipatory control (n = 2), after-effects (n = 3), de-adaptation (n = 4), performance (n = 24), acquisition (n = 8), retention (n = 8), and transfer (n = 14). Despite motor learning theory's emphasis on long-lasting changes and generalization, the majority of studies did not assess the retention and transfer parameters. Underlying measures included kinematic analyses in terms of speed, geometry or both (n = 39), dynamic metrics, measures of accuracy, consistency, and coordination. There is no exclusivity of measures to a specific parameter. Many factors affect task performance and the ability to measure it—necessitating the use of several metrics to examine different features of movement and learning. Motor learning measures' applicability to clinical setting can benefit from a treatment-focused approach, currently lacking. The complexity of motor learning results in various metrics, utilized to assess its occurrence, making it difficult to synthesize findings across studies. Further research is desirable for development of an outcome measures selection algorithm, while considering the quality of such measurements.
On quantized consensus by means of gossip algorithm - Part II: Convergence time

This paper deals with the distributed averaging problem over a connected network of agents, subject to a quantization constraint. It is assumed that at each time update, only a pair of agents can update their own numbers in terms of the quantized data being exchanged. The agents are also required to communicate with one another in a stochastic fashion. In the first part of the paper, it was shown that the quantized consensus is reached by means of a stochastic gossip algorithm proposed in a recent paper, for any arbitrary quantization. The current part of the paper considers the expected value of the time at which the quantized consensus is reached. This quantity (corresponding to the worst case) is lower and upper bounded in terms of the topology of the graph, for uniform quantization. In particular, it is shown that the upper bound is related to the principal minors of the weighted Laplacian matrix. A convex optimization is also proposed to determine the set of probabilities (used to pick a pair of agents) which leads to the fast convergence of the gossip algorithm.
Micromanipulation in assisted reproductive technology: intracytoplasmic sperm injection, assisted hatching, and preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

Indications for Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection Despite agreement in some areas, no universal standards for selection have emerged, and a lack of standardized criteria has complicated attempts to quantify intracytoplasmic sperm injection’s (ICSI’s) therapeutic value. There is a general consensus, however, that it should be performed in subsequent attempts after failed fertilization using standard insemination of oocytes whose nuclear maturity has been properly established. In regard to sperm numbers, when the original count is less than 5 3 10/mL, the likelihood of fertilization with insemination procedures is significantly reduced, regardless of etiology. A couple is considered unsuitable for standard in vitro fertilization (IVF) using insemination if the sperm concentration in the initial ejaculate is less than 500,000 progressively motile spermatozoa per milliliter with ,4% normal forms (using Kruger strict criteria). One potential cause may be spontaneous hardening of Correspondence: Lucinda Veeck Gosden, DSc, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, 505 East 70th Street, HT-340, NewYork, NY 10021. E-mail lveeck@med. cornell.edu
An Intelligent Technique for Extracting Subjects from User Profile Using ODP Ontology-Driven Reasoning

Nowadays, the amount of available information, especially on the Web, is increasing. In this field, the role of user modeling and personalized information access is obviously vital. The traditional techniques like BOW (Bags of words) limit recommendations to the words which have been stored in the profile. In other words, the news items, which semantically relate to the users interests, can't be recognized and recommended to the users. Besides, BOW technique suffers from the curse of dimensionality, thus computational burden reduction is an essential task to efficiently handle a large number of terms in practical applications. This study focuses on the problem of choosing a representation of documents that can be suitable to induce concept-based user profiles as well as to support a content-based retrieval process. In this study, a new approach has been proposed to construct a ranked semantic user profile through extracting the related subjects. The new items can be recommended through collecting information from the user's selections, based on existing domain ontology ODP. The efficiency of the proposed technique has been shown by embedding it into an intelligent aggregator, RSS (RSS is acronym of " Really Simple Syndication) feed reader, which has been trained and evaluated by different and heterogeneous users. The results in experimental session show that the incoming news item which semantically relates to the profile gets highly recommended to the user despite its excluding of common words in the profile.
Microbial characterization in microbial fuel cells for bioelectricity production

The development of new methods combining sustainable energy production and wastewater treatment are urgently required to solve environmental problems resulting from our fossil fuel dependence. Microbial fuel cells (MFC) represent a new technology for the production of renewable energy by direct conversion of organic matter into electricity by bacteria. For MFC optimization, a complete characterization of the microbial communities that thrive in the anode compartment is required. The aim of this work is to characterize the microbial populations of two distinct MFC. The methodology used combined PCR obtaining the 16S rRNA genes, followed by cloning and restriction profiles analyses after hydrolysis with the restriction enzyme Hae III and sequencing. Databases searches for sequences homologous to the nucleotide sequences of 16S rRNA encoding genes cloned were subsequently performed. A total of 960 clones belonging to the Bacteria and Archaea domains, corresponding to a total of 142 distinct restriction profiles, and 58 different species were obtained. The estimative of the species relative abundances showed a large number of bacteria belonging to Burkolderiales, Pseudomonadales, Rhodocyclales e Xanthomonadales, all of them orders of Proteobacteria. Archaea exhibiting a high relative abundance belonged to the Methanomicrobiales, order of the Euryarchaeota.
Dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction coupled with magnetic nanoparticles for extraction of zearalenone in wheat samples

A new, sensitive and fast dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) coupled with micro-solid phase extraction (μ-SPE) was developed for determination of zearalenone (ZEN) in wheat samples. The DLLME was performed using acetonitrile/water (80:20 v/v) as the disperser solvent and 1-octanol as the extracting solvent. The acetonitrile/water (80:20 v/v) solvent was also used to extract ZEN from solid wheat matrix, and was directly applied as the disperser solvent for DLLME process. Additionally, hydrophobic oleic-acid-modified magnetic nanoparticles were used in μ-SPE approach to retrieve the analyte from the DLLME step. So, the method uses high surface area and strong magnetism properties of these nanoparticles to avoid time-consuming column-passing processes in traditional SPE. Main parameters affecting the extraction efficiency and signal enhancement were investigated and optimized. Under the optimum conditions, the calibration curve showed a good linearity in the range of 0.1-500 μg kg−1 (R2=0.9996) with low detection limit of 83 ng g−1. The intra-day and inter-day precisions (as RSD %) in the range of 2.6-4.3 % and high recoveries ranging from 91.6 to 99.1 % were obtained. The pre-concentration factor was 3. The method is simple, inexpensive, accurate and remarkably free from interference effects.
3D Volume Data Segmentation from Superquadric Tensor Analysis

The segmentation of 3D target objects into coherent subregions is one of the most important issues in computer graphics as it is applied in many applications, such as medical model visualization and analysis, 3D model retrieval and recognition, skeleton extraction, and collision detection. The goal of 3D segmentation is to separate the volume or mesh data into several subregions which have similar characteristics. In this paper, we present an efficient and accurate 3D model segmentation methodology by merging and splitting the subregions in a 3D model. Our innovative 3D model segmentation system consists of two steps: i) the ellipsoidal decomposition of unorganized 3D object using properties of three dimensional second-order diffusion tensor fields, and ii) The iteratively merging and splitting of subregions of the 3D model by measuring the similarity between neighboring regions. Experimental results are conducted to evaluate the performance of our methodology using 3D models from well-known databases and 3D target objects that are reconstructed from image sequences.
Preventing the detrimental effect of posttraumatic stress in young children: The role of theory of mind in the aftermath of a natural disaster

We conducted a field study to test whether parents' negative reactions to a natural disaster affected children's reactions, together with the factors buffering this negative influence. Specifically, we examined whether parents' posttraumatic stress symptoms following an earthquake were associated with children's posttraumatic symptoms and their use of negative coping strategies. Theory of mind (ToM) was tested as the factor allowing children to reduce the detrimental effects of posttraumatic stress symptoms on negative coping. Hypotheses were tested in a sample of elementary school children and their parents in the aftermath of the earthquakes that struck Northern Italy in 2012. Results revealed that mothers' (but not fathers') posttraumatic stress symptoms were positively associated with children's posttraumatic stress symptoms, which acted as mediator on the use of negative coping strategies by children, but only among children with low ToM abilities. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of findings.
ATTRACTIVENESS OF CARBON DISULFIDE TO WILD NORWAY RATS

When faced with a choice among feeding sites, Norway rats prefer locations that conspecifics are exploiting (Galef and Clark 1971, Galef and Heiber 1976). When faced with a choice among several novel foods, naive (observer) rats choose novel foods eaten by conspecifics (demonstrators) with whom they have previously interacted (Galef and Wigmore 1983, Posadas-Andrews and Roper 1983, Strupp and Levitsky 1984). Laboratory experiments have shown that these effects are mediated by volatile cues present in the breath of demonstrators (Galef and Stein 1985). Such cues could be the smell of food that a demonstrator has ingested before interacting with an observer. Alternatively, the social transmission of diet preferences might require a combination of the smell of ingested diet and some endogenous (demon-strator-derived) odor. In a series of experiments designed to test between these two possibilities, Galef and Stein (1985) and Galef etal. (1985) showed that both the smell of ingested diet and demonstrator-produced odors (i.e., semiochemicals) were important. In gas chromatography/mass spectroscopic experiments that were designed to identify candidate semiochemicals (Galef et al. 1988), we found that carbon disulfide (CS
Using self-organizing maps to control physical robots with omnidirectional drives

In many application areas, robots most suitably employ classical PID controllers and the like. In the field of autonomous mobile robots, however, further adaptation features are required in order to adapt to dynamically changing environmental conditions. In recent contests, the particular research area of soccer-playing robots, called RoboCup, has observed the emergence of omnidirectional driven robots. Such drives consist of three independently controllable motors with which a robot can simultaneously perform both translational movements and rotations, which yield a significant advantage in soccer games. This paper describes how a Kohonen-feature-map-based neural network is able to learn the required capabilities and how to adapt to changing environmental conditions
Down Syndrome Candidate Region 1 Isoform 1 Mediates Angiogenesis through the Calcineurin-NFAT Pathway

Down syndrome candidate region 1 (DSCR1) is one of more than 50 genes located in a region of chromosome 21 that has been implicated in Down syndrome. DSCR1 can be expressed as four isoforms, one of which, isoform 4 (DSCR1-4), has recently been found to be strongly induced by vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A165) and to provide a negative feedback loop that inhibits VEGF-A165-induced endothelial cell proliferation in vitro and angiogenesis in vivo. We report here that another DSCR1 isoform, DSCR1-1L, is also up-regulated by VEGF-A165 in cultured endothelial cells and is strongly expressed in several types of pathologic angiogenesis in vivo. In contrast to DSCR1-4, the overexpression of DSCR1-1L induced the proliferation and activation of the transcription factor NFAT in cultured endothelial cells and promoted angiogenesis in Matrigel assays in vivo, even in the absence of VEGF-A. Similarly, small interfering RNAs specific for DSCR1-1L and DSCR1-4 had opposing inhibitory and stimulatory effects, respectively, on these same functions. DSCR1-4 is thought to inhibit angiogenesis by inactivating calcineurin, thereby preventing activation and nuclear translocation of NFAT, a key transcription factor. In contrast, DSCR1-1L, regulated by a different promoter than DSCR1-4, activates NFAT and its proangiogenic activity is inhibited by cyclosporin, an inhibitor of calcineurin. In sum, DSCR1-1L, unlike DSCR1-4, potently activates angiogenesis and could be an attractive target for antiangiogenesis therapy. (Mol Cancer Res 2006;4(11):811–20)
Memory for Justice-Related Information: The Joint Impact of Justice Sensitivity and the Framing of the Learning Situation

We investigated two factors that determine accurate memory for justice-related information: Justice Sensitivity as a personality factor is argued to shape the elaboration and accessibility of representations in the domain of justice of an individual learner, whereas the framing of the learning situation determines whether justice concepts are activated during learning. Consequently, both factors determine the degree of elaboration of encoding of new justicerelated information and, thus, the accuracy of memory at a later point in time. In an incidental learning study, seventy-six students received information on the selection of Elite Universities in Germany with the instruction to either rate the perceived novelty of the information or its perceived justice. A week later, they completed a recognition test. Recognition was tested for just, unjust, and justice-unrelated information. Results indicated that both variables — Justice Sensitivity and the framing of the learning situation — are functionally equivalent and shape accuracy of memory for justice-related information in a synergistic interaction.
Efficient management of transcoding and multicasting multimedia streams

Management of multimedia applications is a very challenging task. This is especially true in the emerging new Internet where users use devices such as smart phones and PDAs, a considerable amount of them are connected via wireless connections, and peer to peer applications are becoming more and more popular. In this new environment, the multimedia format that should be sent to different users varies considerably and sending a media stream to a set of users often involves transcoding of formats. This paper addresses the problem of managing multicast streaming in this new environment by defining a framework in which transcoding can be done in internal network nodes, and not necessarily at the sender's or at the receivers' ends. In this framework the sender retrieves all the information regarding the transcoding abilities of the various nodes and the characteristics of the links. Then, it needs to decide how to broadcast the multimedia stream, in what formats, and where to perform the needed transcoding. We show that this algorithmic problem is NP-hard (and also hard to approximate). However, for the very practical case where the number of relevant formats is small, we present an efficient approximation scheme. We study, using simulations, the actual performance of our algorithm and compare it to transcoding at the sender's or at the receivers' ends. Our results indicate that performing transcoding in intermediate nodes is indeed efficient, and that our algorithm can find a much better streaming scheme than any known algorithm.
The Simpler the Better

We built three different AI models to predict the category (frozen, liquid or none) based on polarimetric radar variables. One model was a long-shot model for the purpose of winning the competition (it didn’t). The second was a complex black box model to represent the average learnability of the dataset. The third was a simple, human-readable model that would perform similarly to the above two models but possess the additional advantage of being easy to implement and comprehend.
LIG English-French spoken language translation system for IWSLT 2011

This paper describes the system developed by the LIG laboratory for the 2011 IWSLT evaluation. We participated to the English-French MT and SLT tasks. The development of a reference translation system (MT task), as well as an ASR output translation system (SLT task) are presented. We focus this year on the SLT task and on the use of multiple 1-best ASR outputs to improve overall translation quality. The main experiment presented here compares the performance of a SLT system where multiple ASR 1-best are combined before translation (source combination), with a SLT system where multiple ASR 1-best are translated, the system combination being conducted afterwards on the target side (target combination). The experimental results show that the second approach (target combination) overpasses the first one, when the performance is measured with BLEU.
Research Area Markets and Politics Research Unit Market Processes and Governance Schwerpunkt Märkte Und Politik Abteilung Marktprozesse Und Steuerung Political Fragmentation and Projected Tax Revenues: Evidence from Flemish Municipalities * Hogeschool Gent ** Wzb *** Hogeschool Gent Political Fragme

The level of revenues pocketed by a government during the fiscal year often deviates from that projected by this government in its budget. Despite a flourishing literature on, for example, the technical or procedural determinants of such forecast errors, little is yet known about how political stratagems may affect forecast errors. In the present paper, we analyse whether differences in the level of government fragmentation are useful in explaining local government tax revenue forecast errors – controlling for various other factors. Using data on 242 Flemish municipalities for the period 1992-2002, we find that two-party governments are more optimistic than single-party governments. In contrast to our initial expectations, governments with at least three parties are significantly more careful (or less optimistic) in their revenue projections than single-or two-party governments. Belgium) and a research seminar at WZB (Berlin, Germany) for helpful comments. We also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Flemish Government (Steunpunt Bestuurlijke Organisatie Vlaanderen (SBOV)). Parteien in einer Regierung die Überschätzung der Einnahmen geringer wird.
Qualité du sommeil et de la vigilance suite à un ajustement circadien partiel lors d’une simulation de travail de nuit

Night work is associated with many short and long term health problems. Misalignment between the circadian phase and the sleep-wake schedule causes a state of internal desynchrony considered as the main cause of these health problems. Circadian adjustment to night work is proposed as a countermeasure. Usually, complete circadian adjustment is not recommended because night workers experience circadian misalignment when returning on a day-active schedule, causing repeated circadian phase shifts and internal desynchrony. Therefore, partial circadian realignment was proposed as a compromise to stabilize circadian rhythms in night workers. However, the extent of partial circadian adjustment necessary to improve sleep and vigilance quality is still unclear. Here, partial adjustments obtained by phase delay or advance were quantified not only by the phase shift of dim light salivary melatonin onset, but also by the overlap of the melatonin production episode with the sleep-wake cycle during simulated night work. The effects of small but statistically significant partial circadian adjustments on sleep and vigilance quality were assessed in a laboratory simulation of night work to determine their clinical significance. Effects on daytime sleep and night-time vigilance quality were modest. They suggest that even small phase delays may decrease the accumulation of sleep debt, whereas the advance strategy improves subjective night work alertness and mood. Absolute phase shifts, by advance or delay, were associated with improved subjective night work alertness and mood. Field studies are needed, to determine whether these strategies can be adapted to real-life situations and provide effective support to night workers.
Motor coordination disorders in children

The amount of research focusing on children with motor coordination disorders has risen steadily in recent years. In this volume, the authors examine the literature to assess the nature of the disorder, developmental progressions, associated features and long-term prognosis. The book will benefit professionals such as teachers, psychologists and pediatricians who work with children labelled 'clumsy'. The topics covered will help such professionals with both recognition of such disorders and with intervention.