Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Development and validation of an instrument for evaluating the ludicity of games in health education].

OBJECTIVE Developing and validating an instrument to evaluate the playfulness of games in health education contexts. METHODOLOGY A methodological, exploratory and descriptive research, developed in two stages: 1. Application of an open questionnaire to 50 graduate students, with content analysis of the answers and calculation of Kappa coefficient for defining items; 2. Procedures for construction of scales, with content validation by judges and analysis of the consensus estimate by Content Validity Index(CVI). RESULTS 53 items regarding the restless character of the games in the dimensions of playfulness, the formative components of learning and the profiles of the players. CONCLUSION Ludicity can be assessed by validated items related to the degree of involvement, immersion and reinvention of the subjects in the game along with the dynamics and playability of the game.
A Quantitative Model of Human Jejunal Smooth Muscle Cell Electrophysiology

Recently, a number of ion channel mutations have been identified in the smooth muscle cells of the human jejunum. Although these are potentially significant in understanding diseases that are currently of unknown etiology, no suitable computational cell model exists to evaluate the effects of such mutations. Here, therefore, a biophysically based single cell model of human jejunal smooth muscle electrophysiology is presented. The resulting cellular description is able to reproduce experimentally recorded slow wave activity and produces realistic responses to a number of perturbations, providing a solid platform on which the causes of intestinal myopathies can be investigated.
Quantification of the distribution of blood flow pressure with postures

At a different angle, this study analyzed the contour chart of blood flow pressure, extreme pressure and its position to quantify DBFP in thirteen different postures with gravity considered or not (G ≠ 0 or G = 0). The aim was to determine the suitable body positions, in which the postural model of a single vessel could be simplified to two-dimensional (2D) symmetrical one while only considering such factors as posture and gravity. Computational fluid dynamic simulations were performed. Numerical results demonstrated that the DBFP showed 2D axisymmetry at ±90° and three-dimensional (3D) asymmetry at any other posture with G ≠ 0, and 2D axisymmetrical one at any posture with G = 0. Therefore, modeling a vessel as a 2D model is feasible in space and at ±90° posture on earth. In addition, the maximum pressure occurred between the inlet and the middle of the vessel, and its position variation mainly happened in the range of 0° - 15°. For a single vessel, this study provides the first theoretical evidence for cardiovascular modeling in microgravity and may help guide the researchers in designing defense devices for astronauts or patients clinically.
Iteration complexity analysis of dual first-order methods for conic convex programming

In this paper we provide a detailed analysis of the iteration complexity of dual first-order methods for solving conic convex problems. When it is difficult to project on the primal feasible set described by conic and convex constraints, we use the Lagrangian relaxation to handle the conic constraints and then, we apply dual first-order algorithms for solving the corresponding dual problem. We give convergence analysis for dual first-order algorithms (dual gradient and fast gradient algorithms): we provide sublinear or linear estimates on the primal suboptimality and feasibility violation of the generated approximate primal solutions. Our analysis relies on the Lipschitz property of the gradient of the dual function or an error bound property of the dual. Furthermore, the iteration complexity analysis is based on two types of approximate primal solutions: the last primal iterate or an average primal sequence.
Objective biological measures for the assessment and management of auditory processing disorder

Auditory processing impairments negatively impact language learning, the ability to listen effectively in noisy environments, and the development of reading skills. Behavioral assessments of auditory processing provide valuable insight into auditory function but lack information about the biological health of the auditory pathway, and can be complicated by comorbid disorders, alertness, and motivation. The speech-evoked auditory brainstem response has recently been linked to communication skills such as speech-in-noise perception and reading ability and provides additional insight for the diagnosis and management of auditory processing disorders. This paper reviews how objective biological measures of auditory function can be used to reveal auditory system dysfunction in the absence of hearing loss.
An Hybrid Optimization Technique Coupling Evolutionary and Local Search Algorithms ∗

Evolutionary Algorithms are robust and powerful global optimization techniques for solving large scale problems that have many local optima. However, they require high CPU times, and they are very poor in terms of convergence performance. On the other hand, local search algorithms can converge in a few iterations but lack a global perspective. The combination of global and local search procedures should offer the advantages of both optimization methods while offsetting their disadvantages. This paper proposes a new hybrid optimization technique that merges a Genetic Algorithm with a local search strategy based on the Interior Point method. The efficiency of this hybrid approach is demonstrated by solving a constrained multi-objective mathematical test-case.
Neural Correlates of Subjective Awareness for Natural Scene Categorization of Color Photographs and Line-Drawings

It remains controversial whether visual awareness is correlated with early activation indicated by VAN (visual awareness negativity), as the recurrent process hypothesis theory proposes, or with later activation indicated by P3 or LP (late positive), as suggested by global workspace theories. To address this issue, a backward masking task was adopted, in which participants were first asked to categorize natural scenes of color photographs and line-drawings and then to rate the clarity of their visual experience on a Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS). The interstimulus interval between the scene and the mask was manipulated. The behavioral results showed that categorization accuracy increased with PAS ratings for both color photographs and line-drawings, with no difference in accuracy between the two types of images for each rating, indicating that the experience rating reflected visibility. Importantly, the event-related potential (ERP) results revealed that for correct trials, the early posterior N1 and anterior P2 components changed with the PAS ratings for color photographs, but did not vary with the PAS ratings for line-drawings, indicating that the N1 and P2 do not always correlate with subjective visual awareness. Moreover, for both types of images, the anterior N2 and posterior VAN changed with the PAS ratings in a linear way, while the LP changed with the PAS ratings in a non-linear way, suggesting that these components relate to different types of subjective awareness. The results reconcile the apparently contradictory predictions of different theories and help to resolve the current debate on neural correlates of visual awareness.
Learning clustered sub-spaces for sketch-based image retrieval

Most of the traditional sketch-based image retrieval systems compare sketches and images using morphological features. Since these features belong to two different modalities, they are compared either by reducing the image to a sparse sketch like form or by transforming the sketches to a denser image like representation. However, this cross-modal transformation leads to information loss or adds undesirable noise to the system. We propose a method, in which, instead of comparing the two modalities directly, a cross-modal correspondence is established between the images and sketches. Using an extended version of Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA), the samples are projected onto a lower dimensional subspace, where the images and sketches of the same class are maximally correlated. We test the efficiency of our method on images from Caltech, PASCAL and sketches from TU-BERLIN dataset. Our results show significant improvement in retrieval performance with the cross-modal correspondence.
Dynamic processor allocation with the Solaris operating system

The loop-level process control (LLPC) policy (Yue and Lilja, 1997) dynamically adjusts the number of threads an application is allowed to execute based on the application's available parallelism and the overall system load. This study demonstrates the feasibility of incorporating the LLPC strategy into an existing commercial operating system and parallelizing compiler and provides further evidence of the performance improvement that is possible using this dynamic allocation strategy. In this implementation, applications are automatically parallelized and enhanced with the appropriate LLPC hooks so that each application interacts with the modified version of the Solaris operating system. The parallelism of the applications is then dynamically adjusted automatically when they are executed in a multiprogrammed environment so that all applications obtain a fair share of the total processing resources.
Characterization of Organic Matter in Soil and Aquifer Solids

The focus of this work was the evaluation of analytical methods to determine and characterize fractions of subsurface organic matter. Major fractions of total organic carbon (TOC) include: particulate organic carbon (POC) in aquifer material, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and both volatile (VOC) and non-volatile (NVOC) organic carbon sub-fractions. POC makes up the bulk of TOC in contaminated and uncontaminated subsurface soils and aquifer materials. The volatile subfraction of POC can be determined quantitatively when minimally disturbed sub-cores are preserved immediately in the field. Methanol and acid addition (i.e. , HCl, NaHSO 4 ) to pH 2 are adequate preservatives for specific volatile organic compound determinations. An interlaboratory round-robin test to improve acidification and removal methods for carbonates in total carbon using sulfurous acid (H 2 SO 3 ) showed sensitivity to several factors. These factors include: operator care, acid strength and carbon content, and particularly, the incomplete removal of inorganic carbon at high total carbon to organic carbon ratios. Stable isotopic characteristics of NVOC from fuel contaminated and organic-enriched environments were found to be quite sensitive to the stable isotopic signatures of natural organic matter. The extractability of POC by a range of high to medium polarity solvents resulted in the observations that relatively little POC was extractable and water extracted comparable amounts to 1:1 mixtures of 0.01M KOH in methanol:toluene.
Intervenções breves para uso problemático de álcool: potencial de aplicação na prática do enfermeiro [Brief interventions on problematic alcohol consumption: potential for application in nursing practice]

O controle do uso problematico de alcool e uma das prioridades da saude publica mundial. O objetivo deste manuscrito foi apresentar a finalidade, os principais elementos e a aplicabilidade das intervencoes breves para o uso problematico de alcool, bem como refletir sobre seu potencial de aplicacao na pratica do enfermeiro. Para tanto, conduziu-se uma revisao narrativa de artigos cientificos selecionados na Biblioteca Virtual em Saude. Pela oportunidade de atuacao do enfermeiro em diversos cenarios, ele pode utilizar as intervencoes breves durante a consulta de enfermagem assistindo seus pacientes no processo de tomada de decisao e em seus esforcos para reduzir ou cessar o consumo de alcool. Assim o enfermeiro agira preventivamente, exercendo sua autonomia profissional de maneira critica e ativa, em direcao a uma pratica profissional cada vez mais responsavel e autonoma. ABSTRACT: Controlling problematical alcohol consumption is a public health priority worldwide. This manuscript presents the objectives, key elements and applicability of brief interventions on problematic alcohol consumption, as well as thinking about their potential applications to nursing practice. To this end, a narrative review was conducted of selected scientific articles in the Virtual Health Library. As nurses provide care in various different settings, they can use brief interventions during nursing to assist their patients in making decisions and in their efforts to reduce or cease alcohol consumption. In that way, nurses can act preventively, exercising their professional autonomy actively and critically, towards increasingly responsible and independent practice. RESUMEN: El control del consumo problematico de alcohol es una de las prioridades de la salud publica mundial. El objetivo de este trabajo fue presentar la finalidad, los principales elementos y la aplicabilidad de las intervenciones breves para el uso problematico de alcohol, bien como reflexionar sobre su potencial de aplicacion en la practica del enfermero. Para tanto, se condujo una revision narrativa de articulos cientificos seleccionados en la Biblioteca Virtual en Salud. Por la oportunidad de actuacion del enfermero en diversos escenarios, el puede utilizar las intervenciones breves durante la consulta de enfermeria asistiendo a sus pacientes en el proceso de tomar decisiones y en sus esfuerzos para reducir o cesar el consumo de alcohol. De esta forma el enfermero actuara preventivamente, ejerciendo su autonomia profesional de forma critica y activa, en direccion a una practica profesional cada vez mas responsable y autonoma.
Better Automatic Treebank Conversion Using A Feature-Based Approach

For the task of automatic treebank conversion, this paper presents a feature-based approach which encodes bracketing structures in a tree-bank into features to guide the conversion of this treebank to a different standard. Experiments on two Chinese treebanks show that our approach improves conversion accuracy by 1.31% over a strong baseline.
Cluster versus individual randomization in adolescent tobacco and alcohol studies: illustrations for design decisions.

BACKGROUND The decision to randomize by clusters of subjects such as a classroom or clinic versus individual randomization where some contamination may occur is examined within the framework of sample size issues. Estimates for background rates and intraclass correlations are also provided for adolescent tobacco and alcohol outcomes derived from a recent study using cluster randomization. METHODS A ratio of adjusted sample sizes is derived which is a function of the intraclass correlation and cluster size for cluster randomization and total amount of contamination for individual randomization. Using estimated incidence rates and intraclass correlations, we provide a comparison of sample sizes for two plausible study outcomes. RESULTS Small clusters such as a family or small classroom tend to have stronger within cluster dependence and cluster randomization would be clearly favoured over individual randomization. For moderately sized clusters, if contamination levels are likely to be high then cluster randomization would be a better choice. However in some situations where lower levels of contamination are expected, individual randomization may be preferred. With larger clusters, individual randomization should be considered when contamination rates are expected to be low. CONCLUSIONS Investigators must carefully consider the choice of cluster randomization versus individual randomization in the context of likely contamination. In this paper we provided a basis for making this decision as well as examples to illustrate these decisions, and parameter estimates that will be especially useful for investigators in adolescent tobacco and alcohol studies.
Performance Analysis for Multi-Way Relaying in Rician Fading Channels

In this paper, the multi-way relaying scenario is considered with M users who want to exchange their information with each other with the help of N relays (N ≫ M) among them. There are no direct transmission channels between any two users. Particularly, all users transmit their signals to all relays in the first time slot and M - 1 relays are selected later to broadcast their mixture signals during the following M - 1 time slots to all users. Compared to the transmission with the help of single relay, the multi-way relaying scenario reduces the transmit time significantly from 2M to M time slots. Random and semiorthogonal relays selections are applied. Rician fading channels are considered between the users and relays, and analytical expressions for the outage probability and ergodic sum rate for the proposed relaying protocol are developed by first characterizing the statistical property of the effective channel gain based on random relays selection. Also, the approximation of ergodic sum rate at high signal-to-noise ratio regime is derived. In addition, the diversity order of the system is investigated for both random and semiorthogonal relay selections. Meanwhile, it is shown that when the relays are randomly separated into L groups of M - 1 relays, the group with maximum average channel gain can achieve the diversity order L, which will increase when more relays considered in the scheme. Furthermore, when semiorthogonal selection (SS) algorithm is applied to select the relays with semiorthogonal channels, it is shown that the system will guarantee that all the users can decode the others information successfully. Moreover, the maximum of channel gain after semiorthogonal relays selection is investigated by using extreme value theory, and tight lower and upper bounds are derived. Simulation results demonstrate that the derived expressions are accurate.
A One class Classifier based Framework using SVDD : Application to an Imbalanced Geological Dataset

Evaluation of hydrocarbon reservoir requires classification of petrophysical properties from available dataset. However, characterization of reservoir attributes is difficult due to the nonlinear and heterogeneous nature of the subsurface physical properties. In this context, present study proposes a generalized one class classification framework based on Support Vector Data Description (SVDD) to classify a reservoir characteristic water saturation into two classes (Class high and Class low) from four logs namely gamma ray, neutron porosity, bulk density, and P sonic using an imbalanced dataset. A comparison is carried out among proposed framework and different supervised classification algorithms in terms of g metric means and execution time. Experimental results show that proposed framework has outperformed other classifiers in terms of these performance evaluators. It is envisaged that the classification analysis performed in this study will be useful in further reservoir modeling.
In response to 'Can sugars be produced from fatty acids? A test case for pathway analysis tools'

MOTIVATION In their article entitled 'Can sugars be produced from fatty acids? A test case for pathway analysis tools' de Figueiredo and co-authors assess the performance of three pathway prediction tools (METATOOL, PathFinding and Pathway Hunter Tool) using the synthesis of glucose-6-phosphate (G6P) from acetyl-CoA in humans as a test case. We think that this article is biased for three reasons: (i) the metabolic networks used as input for the respective tools were of very different sizes; (ii) the 'assessment' is restricted to two study cases; (iii) developers are inherently more skilled to use their own tools than those developed by other people. We extended the analyses led by de Figueiredo and clearly show that the apparent superior performance of their tool (METATOOL) is partly due to the differences in input network sizes. We also see a conceptual problem in the comparison of tools that serve different purposes. In our opinion, metabolic path finding and elementary mode analysis are answering different biological questions, and should be considered as complementary rather than competitive approaches. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Adaptive bounded time windows in an optimistically synchronized simulator

The authors address one problem of speeding parallel digital system simulation using time warp, namely, that logical processes with errant behavior can incur considerable rollback behavior (analogous to thrashing in paging virtual memories). Consequently, additional mechanisms must be added to an optimistically synchronized simulator to inhibit excessive rollback. They describe a method of adaptively sizing bounded time windows to balance lookahead processing. <<ETX>>
AnnL: The Tool for Planning for Viable Enterprises

This paper presents the Analysis of Networked Links (AnnL) tool that supports the principles and practices for the planning for viable enterprises, through such disciplines as Enterprise Engineering (including Enterprise Architecture, Governance, and Service Management). It shows how the software can be used throughout the lifecycle of Enterprise Engineering, providing synchronized reports not readily available in other tools.
The Author Perspective Model for Classifying Deontic Modality in Events

In this paper we present a generative model entitled the Author Perspective Model for the classification of deontic modality in event mentions. In the model modals, adverbials, and predicates associated with an event mention are generated by either a topic or author perspective where the author perspective is one of the three high level categories of deontic modality. We train the model with data gathered by a small set of seed phrases for each of the deontic modality categories. Our results show that we are able to classify the category of deontic modality with a micro-averaged F-Measure of 67.3%.
Fast vertical mining using diffsets

A number of vertical mining algorithms have been proposed recently for association mining, which have shown to be very effective and usually outperform horizontal approaches. The main advantage of the vertical format is support for fast frequency counting via intersection operations on transaction ids (tids) and automatic pruning of irrelevant data. The main problem with these approaches is when intermediate results of vertical tid lists become too large for memory, thus affecting the algorithm scalability.In this paper we present a novel vertical data representation called Diffset, that only keeps track of differences in the tids of a candidate pattern from its generating frequent patterns. We show that diffsets drastically cut down the size of memory required to store intermediate results. We show how diffsets, when incorporated into previous vertical mining methods, increase the performance significantly.
The Sustainability of Restorative Justice

There is a growing acknowledgment amongst professionals and academics that we need to develop new responses to crime. This book provides an insight into the first introduction of restorative justice to the criminal justice system in the Republic of Ireland. By analysing six case studies of restorative conferencing events, the authors aim to address the salient question of how restorative conferencing for young offenders can facilitate an exchange process whereby forms of reparation and social regulation may be achieved. The restorative justice process has much to offer, and the authors argue that this concept, particularly as it centres on the greater use of non custodial sentences, will not only bring about changes in the law but also have significant implications for social regulation.