Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does whole-body vibration training in the horizontal direction have effects on motor function and balance of chronic stroke survivors? A preliminary study

[Purpose] The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of whole-body vibration (WBV) in the horizontal direction on the motor function and balance of chronic stroke survivors. [Subjects and Methods] This study was a randomized controlled trial. Twenty-one individuals with chronic stroke from an inpatient rehabilitation center participated in the study. The participants were allocated to either the WBV training group or the control group. The WBV training group (n = 12) received whole-body vibration delivered in the horizontal direction (15 min/day, 3 times/week, 6 wks) followed by conventional rehabilitation (30 min/day, 5 times/week, 6 wks); the control group (n = 9) received conventional rehabilitation only (30 min/day, 5 times/week, 6 wks). Motor function was measured by using the Fugl-Meyer assessment, and balance was measured by using the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) and the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test before and after the interventions. [Results] After the interventions, all variables improved significantly compared with the baseline values in the WBV training group. In the control group, no significant improvements in any variables were noted. In addition, the BBS score in the WBV training group increased significantly compared with that in the control group. [Conclusion] WBV training with whole-body vibration delivered in the horizontal direction may be a potential intervention for improvement of motor function and balance in patients who previously experienced a stroke.
Inverse optimal design of input-to-state stabilizing nonlinear controllers

We show that input-to-state stabilizability is both necessary and sufficient for the solvability of a Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs equation associated with a meaningful differential game problem similar to, but more general than, the "nonlinear H/sub /spl infin//" problem. The significance of the result stems from the fact that constructive solutions to the input-to-state stabilization problem are available. Rather than completion of squares, the main tools in our analysis are Legendre-Fenchel transformations and the general form of Young's inequality.
An Intelligent Information System for Maritime Navigation Information

This paper describes aspects of an information system being constructed for intelligent information retrieval in maritime navigation applications. The system is based largely on digital nautical charts, and the construction of a taxonomy of chart features and concepts related to the maritime navigation domain is described. This taxonomy is used in formulating queries and sub-queries for disparate sources of information that supply information about navigation hazards, aids to navigation, and other relevant local information.
Intrinsic Diurnal Variations in Cardiac Metabolism and Contractile Function

Diurnal variation of cardiac function in vivo has been attributed primarily to changes in factors such as sympathetic activity. No study has investigated previously the intrinsic properties of the heart throughout the day. We therefore investigated diurnal variations in metabolic flux and contractile function of the isolated working rat heart and how this related to circadian expression of metabolic genes. Contractile performance, carbohydrate oxidation, and oxygen consumption were greatest in the middle of the night, with little variation in fatty acid oxidation. The expression of all metabolic genes investigated (including regulators of carbohydrate utilization, fatty acid oxidation, and mitochondrial function) showed diurnal variation, with a general peak in the night. In contrast, pressure overload–induced cardiac hypertrophy completely abolished this diurnal variation of metabolic gene expression. Thus, over the course of the day, the normal heart anticipates, responds, and adapts to physiological alterations within its environment, a trait that is lost by the hypertrophied heart. We speculate that loss of plasticity of the hypertrophied heart may play a role in the subsequent development of contractile dysfunction.
Different Strokes and Different Folks: Economical Dynamic Surface Sensing and Affect-Related Touch Recognition

Social touch is an essential non-verbal channel whose great interactive potential can be realized by the ability to recognize gestures performed on inviting surfaces. To assess impact on recognition performance of sensor motion, substrate and coverings, we collected gesture data from a low-cost multitouch fabric pressure-location sensor while varying these factors. For six gestures most relevant in a haptic social robot context plus a no-touch control, we conducted two studies, with the sensor (1) stationary, varying substrate and cover (n=10); and (2) attached to a robot under a fur covering, flexing or stationary (n=16). For a stationary sensor, a random forest model achieved 90.0% recognition accuracy (chance 14.2%) when trained on all data, but as high as 94.6% (mean 89.1%) when trained on the same individual. A curved, flexing surface achieved 79.4% overall but averaged 85.7% when trained and tested on the same individual. These results suggest that under realistic conditions, recognition with this type of flexible sensor is sufficient for many applications of interactive social touch. We further found evidence that users exhibit an idiosyncratic `touch signature', with potential to identify the toucher. Both findings enable varied contexts of affective or functional touch communication, from physically interactive robots to any touch-sensitive object.
Design a high availability platform for the carrier grade applications

Many carrier grade applications require a high availability platform, such as telecommunication systems, nuclear power plants, rockets. A high availability platform can provide reliability, security, upgradeability, scalability and other capabilities to the applications. This paper introduces the key issues when designing a high availability platform, fault prediction, hardware redundancy and fault management, which can be used as the guideline in the design of similar platforms.
Convergence Rates of Markov Chains Acknowledgements. I Thank Eric Belsley for Comments and Corrections, and Thank

This is an expository paper which presents various ideas related to non-asymptotic rates of convergence for Markov chains. Such rates are of great importance for stochastic algorithms which are widely used in statistics and in computer science. They also have applications to analysis of card shuuing and other areas. In this paper, we attempt to describe various mathematical techniques which have been used to bound such rates of convergence. In particular, we describe eigenvalue analysis , random walks on groups, coupling, and minorization conditions. Connections are made to modern areas of research wherever possible. Elements of linear algebra, probability theory, group theory, and measure theory are used, but eeorts are made to keep the presentation elementary and accessible. Persi Diaconis for introducing me to this subject and teaching me so much.
Detecting Pedestrians with Stereo Vision: Safe Operation of Autonomous Ground Vehicles in Dynamic Environments

This paper describes an integrated system for real-time detection and tracking of pedestrians from a moving vehicle. We use stereo vision as the primary sensor, and show that this sensor has a number of practical advantages over monocular vision. These include the ability to quickly identify regions-of-interest in an image, classify these regions based on shape, and track detected pedestrians in three-dimensional world coordinates. This system can also utilize monocular appearance-based algorithms, using regions-of-interest with known scale to increase speed and reliability. Finally, stereo allows us to construct fast algorithms for detecting independent motion in a scene.
AVATALK Virtual Humans for Training with Computer Generated Forces

Research Triangle Institute's (RTI) AVATALKTM technology enables natural interaction with computer generated virtual humans, linking theory of human behavior with virtual reality, knowledge representation, and natural language processing. AVATALK virtual humans act realistically without human intervention--action takes such form as choice of utterances, conversational expectancy, and branching logic within the application. Underlying virtual human action is a dialog processor, a behavior engine, and a virtual environment adapter. AVATALK-enabled applications provide an opportunity for practice with numerous case-based scenarios in a reproducible, objective learning environment prior to the challenge of actual engagement. Training and sustainment benefits include enhanced adaptability, availability, and assessment, and reduced loss of effectiveness for learners at distributed locations. RTI has already developed AVATALK-enabled products for training to conduct data collection interviews, for tank maintenance training, and for Emergency Medical Technician training. AVATALK intelligent agents are a logical extension for training in the communication that occurs among forces.
Is there any relationship between Student's learning styles and self-Efficacy?

Introduction: Learning shows that how difficult a person worked on something, how much time she/ he spent on it, and how difficult she/ he insisted on troubles to solve them. Individuals who have low self-efficacy levels would lose so many learning opportunities specially opportunities which need much more trying and are a kind of challenge. Then the researchers aimed to notice that is there any relationship between Students learning style and self-efficacy? Material and Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. The sample volume was 363 students. They were chosen randomly from Zahedan University of Medical Sciences’ students. A three section questionnaire was used for data collection. Section one determined the demographic information. Section two was the Vark's learning style standard questionnaire. The third section was the self-efficacy questionnaire designed by Pintrich and colleagues. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, qui square test, Pearson correlation, t test and ANOVA by SPSS v.19. Significance level was considered less than 0.05(P<0.05). Results: Mean of age students was 21.28±2.64 in this study. 197 respondents were females while others were male. A significant relationship was found between student's gender and their efficacy. Females showed a higher level of efficacy. Despite this there wasn’t any significant relationship between student's gender and their learning styles. The ANOVA test showed a significant relationship between student's learning styles and efficacy. Conclusion: Learning styles could help us predicting one's efficacy. While self-efficacy is an important factor in someone's success. So this study suggests to the professors to use optimum learning methods by considering student's learning styles.
Transitions to three-dimensional flows in a cylinder driven by oscillations of the sidewall

The transition from two-dimensional to three-dimensional flows in a finite circular cylinder driven by an axially oscillating sidewall is explored in detail. The complete symmetry group of this flow, including a spatio-temporal symmetry related to the oscillating sidewall, is Z2 × O(2). Previous studies in flows with the same symmetries, such as symmetric bluff-body wakes and periodically forced rectangular cavities, were unable to obtain the theoretically predicted bifurcation to modulated travelling waves. In the simpler cylindrical geometry, where the azimuthal direction is physically periodic, we have found these predicted modulated travelling waves as stable fully saturated nonlinear solutions for the first time. A careful analysis of the base states and their linear stability identifies different parameter regimes where three-dimensional states are either synchronous with the forcing or quasi-periodic, corresponding to different symmetry-breaking processes. These results are in good agreement with theoretical predictions and previous results in similar flows. These different regimes are separated by three codimension-two bifurcation points that are yet to be fully analysed theoretically. Finally, the saturated nonlinear states and their properties in different parameter regimes are analysed.
Demoiréing of Camera-Captured Screen Images Using Deep Convolutional Neural Network

Taking photos of optoelectronic displays is a direct and spontaneous way of transferring data and keeping records, which is widely practiced. However, due to the analog signal interference between the pixel grids of the display screen and camera sensor array, objectionable moir\'e (alias) patterns appear in captured screen images. As the moir\'e patterns are structured and highly variant, they are difficult to be completely removed without affecting the underneath latent image. In this paper, we propose an approach of deep convolutional neural network for demoir\'eing screen photos. The proposed DCNN consists of a coarse-scale network and a fine-scale network. In the coarse-scale network, the input image is first downsampled and then processed by stacked residual blocks to remove the moir\'e artifacts. After that, the fine-scale network upsamples the demoir\'ed low-resolution image back to the original resolution. Extensive experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed technique can efficiently remove the moir\'e patterns for camera acquired screen images; the new technique outperforms the existing ones.
On Package Organization for Willingness Satisfaction in Social Networks

Studies show that both the personal preference and social tightness between friends play important roles in the decision process of activity participation for a person. Considering the preference of a person and the social tightness among friends, in this work, we formulate a new research problem, called Package Organization for Willingness satisfaction (POWA), to effectively select items into a package that can be adopted by the most users. Efficiently obtaining the optimal package and the corresponding group of users under the setting of POWA is very challenging, as we prove that POWA is NP-hard. Aiming to strike a balance between the quality of solutions and the time needed for computation, we propose algorithm Intermediate Package Organization with Social and Preference Pruning (IPOSPP) to obtain good solutions efficiently. We conduct an extensive performance evaluation on four real datasets to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm.
GOing Bayesian: model-based gene set analysis of genome-scale data

The interpretation of data-driven experiments in genomics often involves a search for biological categories that are enriched for the responder genes identified by the experiments. However, knowledge bases such as the Gene Ontology (GO) contain hundreds or thousands of categories with very high overlap between categories. Thus, enrichment analysis performed on one category at a time frequently returns large numbers of correlated categories, leaving the choice of the most relevant ones to the user's; interpretation. Here we present model-based gene set analysis (MGSA) that analyzes all categories at once by embedding them in a Bayesian network, in which gene response is modeled as a function of the activation of biological categories. Probabilistic inference is used to identify the active categories. The Bayesian modeling approach naturally takes category overlap into account and avoids the need for multiple testing corrections met in single-category enrichment analysis. On simulated data, MGSA identifies active categories with up to 95% precision at a recall of 20% for moderate settings of noise, leading to a 10-fold precision improvement over single-category statistical enrichment analysis. Application to a gene expression data set in yeast demonstrates that the method provides high-level, summarized views of core biological processes and correctly eliminates confounding associations.
Sensor fusion using Dempster-Shafer theory [for context-aware HCI]

Context-sensing for context-aware HCI challenges the traditional sensor fusion methods with dynamic sensor configuration and measurement requirements commensurate with human perception. The Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence has uncertainty management and inference mechanisms analogous to our human reasoning process. Our Sensor Fusion for Context-aware Computing Project aims to build a generalizable sensor fusion architecture in a systematic way. This naturally leads us to choose the Dempster-Shafer approach as our first sensor fusion implementation algorithm This paper discusses the relationship between Dempster-Shafer theory and the classical Bayesian method, describes our sensor fusion research work using Dempster-Shafer theory in comparison with the weighted sum of probability method The experimental approach is to track a user's focus of attention from multiple cues. Our experiments show promising, thought-provoking results encouraging further research.
Cybernetic Ontology and Transjunctional Operations

Dieser Aufsatz stellt einige Gedanken zu einer Ontologie der Kybernetik vor. Es gibt eine sehr einfache Übersetzung des Begriffs "Ontologie". Es ist die Theorie von ′′Was es gibt′′ (Quine). Aber wenn dies der Fall ist, erwartet man zu Recht, dass die Disziplin eine Reihe von Aussagen über "alles" darstellt. Dies ist nur eine weitere Möglichkeit zu sagen, dass die Ontologie uns so allgemeine und grundlegende Konzepte liefert, dass alle Aspekte des Seins oder der Realität abgedeckt werden. Somit finden alle wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen ihre Leitsätze und Handlungsmaximen in der Ontologie begründet und durch sie legitimiert. Die Ontologie entscheidet, ob unsere logischen Systeme leere Spiele mit Symbolen oder formale Beschreibungen dessen sind, was "wirklich" ist. Die folgende Untersuchung kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass unsere gegenwärtige (klassische) Ontologie nicht "alles" abdeckt. Sie schließt bestimmte Phänomene des Seins von der wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung aus und erklärt sie für irrational oder metaphysisch. Die ontologische Situation der Kybernetik ist jedoch dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass gerade der Aspekt des Seins, den die ontologische Tradition von der wissenschaftlichen Behandlung ausschließt, der thematische Kern und Mittelpunkt dieser neuen Disziplin ist. Da es unmöglich ist, die Existenz neuer Methoden und positiver Ergebnisse der kybernetischen Forschung zu leugnen, bleibt uns nichts anderes übrig, als ein neues System der Ontologie zusammen mit einer entsprechenden Theorie der Logik zu entwickeln. Die logischen Methoden, die in der Kybernetik faute de mieux [vgo: in Ermangelung eines Besseren] verwendet werden, gehören zur alten ontologischen Tradition und sind nicht mächtig genug, um die neuen Aspekte der Realität zu analysieren, die aus einer Theorie der Automaten hervorgehen. Der erste Teil dieses Aufsatzes beschäftigt sich mit der klassischen Ontologie. Der zweite Teil ist einigen Perspektiven einer transklassischen Ontologie gewidmet. In den Abschnitten drei und vier wird versucht, eine neue Theorie der Logik zu entwickeln, die den Anforderungen der Kybernetik besser gerecht wird als die beiden oder viele der derzeit verwendeten Systeme. In den ersten beiden Abschnitten dominiert der philosophische Standpunkt. In den letzten beiden werden technische Probleme der Logik hervorgehoben. Citation Information / How to cite Published originally in: Self-Organizing Systems, M. C. Yovits, G. T. Jacobi G. D. Goldstein (eds.), Washington D. C. (Spartan Books) 1962, 313-392 Reprinted in: "Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer operationsfähigen Dialektik", Vol.1, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg, 1976, p. 249-328. suggested citation / Zitiervorschlag: Gotthard Günther, Cybernetic Ontology and Transjunctional Operations, in: www.vordenker. de – Deutsche Übersetzung (Sommer Edition 2018, J. Paul, Hg.) – URL: http://www.vordenker. de/ggphilosophy/gg_cyb_ontology_en-ger.pdf ISSN 1619-9324
Lossless image compression scheme with binary layers scanning

In this work a novel lossless coding approach for color images is considered. It is based on local-adaptive combination of inter- and intra-component prediction. New context modeling method based on decomposition to binary layers is used for prediction errors. Compression performance of proposed algorithm is proved by experimental results obtained for popular public benchmarks.
Automatic synthesis of specifications for first order curry programs

This paper presents a technique to automatically infer algebraic property-oriented specifications from first-order Curry programs. Curry is a lazy functional logic language and the interaction between laziness and logical variables raises some additional difficulties with respect to other proposals for functional languages. Our technique statically infers from the source code of a Curry program a specification which consists of a set of equations relating (nested) operation calls that have the same behavior. We propose a (glass-box) semantic-based inference method which relies on a fully-abstract (condensed) semantics for achieving, to some extent, the correctness of the inferred specification, differently from other (black-box) approaches based on testing techniques.
Secure Geographic Routing Protocols: Issues and Approaches

In the years, routing protocols in wireless sensor networks (WSN) have been substantially investigated by researches Most state-ofthe-art surveys have focused on reviewing of wireless sensor network . In this paper we review the existing secure geographic routing protocols for wireless sensor network (WSN) and also provide a qualitative comparison of them.
Workforce reduction and firm performance: evidence from French firm data (1994–2000)

Using a large annual database of French firms (1994-2000), this article examines the determinants of workforce reductions in publicly listed and non-listed companies and their consequences on firm performance. First, workforce reduction appears to be a defensive response to adverse economic shocks. However, publicly listed firms anticipate better than do unlisted companies the decision to cut jobs. Second, a difference-in-differences model indicates that there has been a very small but significant improvement in the major performance indicators for the non-listed companies. For listed companies, the corresponding estimates are not significant.
METAPHORS AND LAY THEORIES OF PSI EXPERIENCES

Optically active carboxylic acids I where R1 is an organic radical which is linked to the asymmetric C' atom via a carbon atom and R2 is one of the radicals R1 (but not the same radical), halogen or an organic radical which is bonded to the asymmetric C' atom via an oxygen atom, are prepared by reacting a ketene II II with an alcohol in a homogeneous liquid phase in the presence of a tertiary amine III and then converting the resulting ester into the acid, using an optically active alcohol IV.