Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Validity of the timed 25-foot walk as an ambulatory performance outcome measure for multiple sclerosis

The Multiple Sclerosis Outcome Assessments Consortium (MSOAC) includes representatives from advocacy organizations, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), European Medicines Agency (EMA), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), academic institutions, and industry partners along with persons living with multiple sclerosis (MS). One of the MSOAC goals is acceptance and qualification by regulators of performance outcomes that are highly reliable and valid, practical, cost-effective, and meaningful in MS. This article addresses the history, application, and psychometric properties of one such MSOAC metric of ambulation or walking namely, the timed 25-foot walk (T25FW). The T25FW has strong reliability over both brief and long periods of time in MS across a large range of disability levels. The outcome of walking speed from the T25FW has obvious real-world relevance and has correlated strongly with other measures of walking and lower extremity function. The T25FW is responsive for capturing intervention effects in pharmacological and rehabilitation trials and has an established value for capturing clinically meaningful change in ambulation. Directions for future research involve validating clinically meaningful improvements on the T25FW as well as determining whether 20% change is clinically meaningful across the disability spectrum. Researchers might further consider synchronizing accelerometers and motion sensors with the T25FW for capturing walking speed in everyday life and the patient’s real environment.
The Changing Face of Treatment: Mental Health Concerns and Integrated Care in an HIV Clinic

Abstract:Though advances in medical treatment have increased lifespans for those living with HIV, quality of life concerns often remain under-treated by health care providers. The integration of mental health services within the HIV medical setting can provide comprehensive care for patients, including brief screening, intervention, and appropriate follow-up. In this study, investigators examined mental health concerns identified during behavioral health screens at appointments in an Infectious Disease Clinic and compared them with previously published data from the same setting to assess changes in patient-reported problems. Results indicated shifts in identified problems, as well as demographic changes in the patient population from the previous study. Analyses suggested anger and goal-setting problems significantly contribute to reports of psychiatric symptoms, and suggested that adjustment to diagnosis, depression, and sleep concerns significantly contribute to the likelihood of engaging in a mental health consultation. Our findings highlight the importance of behavioral health screening to identify psychosocial concerns in integrated HIV care settings.
HAPRAP: a haplotype-based iterative method for statistical fine mapping using GWAS summary statistics

Motivation: Fine mapping is a widely used approach for identifying the causal variant(s) at disease-associated loci. Standard methods (e.g. multiple regression) require individual level genotypes. Recent fine mapping methods using summary-level data require the pairwise correlation coefficients () of the variants. However, haplotypes rather than pairwise , are the true biological representation of linkage disequilibrium (LD) among multiple loci. In this article, we present an empirical iterative method, HAPlotype Regional Association analysis Program (HAPRAP), that enables fine mapping using summary statistics and haplotype information from an individual-level reference panel. Results: Simulations with individual-level genotypes show that the results of HAPRAP and multiple regression are highly consistent. In simulation with summary-level data, we demonstrate that HAPRAP is less sensitive to poor LD estimates. In a parametric simulation using Genetic Investigation of ANthropometric Traits height data, HAPRAP performs well with a small training sample size (N < 2000) while other methods become suboptimal. Moreover, HAPRAP’s performance is not affected substantially by single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with low minor allele frequencies. We applied the method to existing quantitative trait and binary outcome meta-analyses (human height, QTc interval and gallbladder disease); all previous reported association signals were replicated and two additional variants were independently associated with human height. Due to the growing availability of summary level data, the value of HAPRAP is likely to increase markedly for future analyses (e.g. functional prediction and identification of instruments for Mendelian randomization). Availability and Implementation: The HAPRAP package and documentation are available at http://apps.biocompute. org.uk/haprap/ Contact: jie.zheng@bristol.ac. uk or tom.gaunt@bristol.ac. uk Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
General Tolerancing in Design Object Modeling.

A new methodology for form tolerancing in design object modeling is proposed. At first, what kind tolerances must be prepared and how to describe them in the authors' design object modeler CONMOTO is discussed. Next, the Positioning Performance Requirement (PPR) is defined and its computer description is discussed. Focusing the lines of geometrical error formation inside machine parts, several design rules for suitable tolerancing are derived from PPR using the Related Part_Atom Graph. At last, the computer implementation is shown that aid human designers to put the Surface Trend Indications which the authors have proposed for tolerancing.
Genetic Correlates of Spirituality/Religion and Depression: A Study in Offspring and Grandchildren at High and Low Familial Risk for Depression

The relationship between suffering and spiritual growth is foundational to the treatment literature on spiritually oriented psychotherapy. A common developmental path between suffering and increased spirituality may point to a unified psychological process, which has in turn a common underlying physiology with a genetic foundation. Possible genetic correlates of spirituality and depression have been identified in community samples. We investigate some of the previously identified candidates in a sample of families at both high and low risk for depression. Offspring and grandchildren of individuals at high and low risk for depression, participating in a multiwave 30-year longitudinal study, were assessed for 7 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) drawn from 4 single gene candidates associated with systems implicated in both depression and spirituality: Serotonin (5-HT1B and 5-HT2A), Dopamine (DRD2), Oxytocin (OT), and Monoamine Vesicular Transporter (VMAT1). Dopamine (DRD2) Serotonin (5-HT1B), their Transporter (VMAT1), and Oxytocin (OXTR) were positively associated with a high level of importance of spirituality or religion (S/R) in the group at low familial risk for depression. DRD2 minor allele was associated with both lifetime major depressive disorder (MDD) and spirituality in the low-risk group for depression. No SNPs were related to S/R in the group at high familial risk for depression. OXTR was associated with lifetime MDD in the full sample. Genes for dopamine, serotonin, their vesicular transporter, and oxytocin may be associated with S/R in people at low familial risk for depression. Genes for dopamine may be associated both with S/R and increased risk for depression in people at low-risk for depression, suggesting a common pathway or physiology to mild to moderate depression. MDD is associated with oxytocin across risk groups. In the high-risk group, phenotypic expression of S/R may be suppressed. The shared association of DRD2 by S/R and depression, generally found to be inversely related, calls for further research on their common physiological pathways, and the phenotypic expression of these pathways based upon use and environment. The findings may be interpreted to offer biological evidence in support of engaging suffering as an opportunity for spiritual growth in treatment, as is foundational to many existing spiritually oriented psychotherapies.
A Simple and Accurate Model to Predict Responses to Multi-electrode Stimulation in the Retina

Implantable electrode arrays are widely used in therapeutic stimulation of the nervous system (e.g. cochlear, retinal, and cortical implants). Currently, most neural prostheses use serial stimulation (i.e. one electrode at a time) despite this severely limiting the repertoire of stimuli that can be applied. Methods to reliably predict the outcome of multi-electrode stimulation have not been available. Here, we demonstrate that a linear-nonlinear model accurately predicts neural responses to arbitrary patterns of stimulation using in vitro recordings from single retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) stimulated with a subretinal multi-electrode array. In the model, the stimulus is projected onto a low-dimensional subspace and then undergoes a nonlinear transformation to produce an estimate of spiking probability. The low-dimensional subspace is estimated using principal components analysis, which gives the neuron’s electrical receptive field (ERF), i.e. the electrodes to which the neuron is most sensitive. Our model suggests that stimulation proportional to the ERF yields a higher efficacy given a fixed amount of power when compared to equal amplitude stimulation on up to three electrodes. We find that the model captures the responses of all the cells recorded in the study, suggesting that it will generalize to most cell types in the retina. The model is computationally efficient to evaluate and, therefore, appropriate for future real-time applications including stimulation strategies that make use of recorded neural activity to improve the stimulation strategy.
Identifying Metabolites of Meclonazepam by High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Using Human Liver Microsomes, Hepatocytes, a Mouse Model, and Authentic Urine Samples

Meclonazepam is a benzodiazepine patented in 1977 to treat parasitic worms, which recently appeared as a designer benzodiazepine and drug of abuse. The aim of this study was to identify metabolites suitable as biomarkers of drug intake in urine using high-resolution mass spectrometry, authentic urine samples, and different model systems including human liver microsomes, cryopreserved hepatocytes, and a mice model. The main metabolites of meclonazepam found in human urine were amino-meclonazepam and acetamido-meclonazepam; also, minor peaks for meclonazepam were observed in three of four urine samples. These observations are consistent with meclonazepam having a metabolism similar to that of other nitro containing benzodiazepines such as clonazepam, flunitrazepam, and nitrazepam. Both metabolites were produced by the hepatocytes and in the mice model, but the human liver microsomes were only capable of producing minor amounts of the amino metabolite. However, under nitrogen, the amount of amino-meclonazepam produced increased 140 times. This study comprehensively elucidated meclonazepam metabolism and also illustrates that careful selection of in vitro model systems for drug metabolism is needed, always taking into account the expected metabolism of the tested drug.
Understanding the Role of Adaptivity in Machine Teaching: The Case of Version Space Learners

In real-world applications of education, an effective teacher adaptively chooses the next example to teach based on the learner’s current state. However, most existing work in algorithmic machine teaching focuses on the batch setting, where adaptivity plays no role. In this paper, we study the case of teaching consistent, version space learners in an interactive setting. At any time step, the teacher provides an example, the learner performs an update, and the teacher observes the learner’s new state. We highlight that adaptivity does not speed up the teaching process when considering existing models of version space learners, such as the “worst-case” model (the learner picks the next hypothesis randomly from the version space) and the “preference-based” model (the learner picks hypothesis according to some global preference). Inspired by human teaching, we propose a new model where the learner picks hypotheses according to some local preference defined by the current hypothesis. We show that our model exhibits several desirable properties, e.g., adaptivity plays a key role, and the learner’s transitions over hypotheses are smooth/interpretable. We develop adaptive teaching algorithms, and demonstrate our results via simulation and user studies.
Brain–Computer Interfaces for Detection and Localization of Targets in Aerial Images

Objective. The N2pc event-related potential (ERP) appears on the opposite side of the scalp with respect to the visual hemisphere where an object of interest is located. We explored the feasibility of using it to extract information on the spatial location of targets in aerial images shown by means of a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) protocol using single-trial classification. Methods. Images were shown to 11 participants at a presentation rate of 5 Hz while recording electroencephalographic signals. With the resulting ERPs, we trained linear classifiers for single-trial detection of target presence and location. We analyzed the classifiers’ decisions and their raw output scores on independent test sets as well as the averages and voltage distributions of the ERPs. Results. The N2pc is elicited in RSVP presentation of complex images and can be recognized in single trials (the median area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.76 for left versus right classification). Moreover, the peak amplitude of this ERP correlates with the horizontal position of the target within an image. The N2pc varies significantly depending on handedness, and these differences can be used for discriminating participants in terms of their preferred hand. Conclusion and Significance. The N2pc is elicited during RSVP presentation of real complex images and contains analogue information that can be used to roughly infer the horizontal position of targets. Furthermore, differences in the N2pc due to handedness should be taken into account when creating collaborative brain–computer interfaces.
Lithium Fluoride Based Electron Contacts for High Efficiency n‐Type Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

Low‐resistance contact to lightly doped n‐type crystalline silicon (c‐Si) has long been recognized as technologically challenging due to the pervasive Fermi‐level pinning effect. This has hindered the development of certain devices such as n‐type c‐Si solar cells made with partial rear contacts (PRC) directly to the lowly doped c‐Si wafer. Here, a simple and robust process is demonstrated for achieving mΩ cm2 scale contact resistivities on lightly doped n‐type c‐Si via a lithium fluoride/aluminum contact. The realization of this low‐resistance contact enables the fabrication of a first‐of‐its‐kind high‐efficiency n‐type PRC solar cell. The electron contact of this cell is made to less than 1% of the rear surface area, reducing the impact of contact recombination and optical losses, permitting a power conversion efficiency of greater than 20% in the initial proof‐of‐concept stage. The implementation of the LiFx/Al contact mitigates the need for the costly high‐temperature phosphorus diffusion, typically implemented in such a cell design to nullify the issue of Fermi level pinning at the electron contact. The timing of this demonstration is significant, given the ongoing transition from p‐type to n‐type c‐Si solar cell architectures, together with the increased adoption of advanced PRC device structures within the c‐Si photovoltaic industry.
Modeling of Teager Energy Operated Perceptual Wavelet Packet Coefficients with an Erlang-2 PDF for Real Time Enhancement of Noisy Speech

In this paper, for real time enhancement of noisy speech, a method of threshold determination based on modeling of Teager energy (TE) operated perceptual wavelet packet (PWP) coefficients of the noisy speech and noise by an Erlang-2 PDF is presented. The proposed method is computationally much faster than the existing wavelet packet based thresholding methods. A custom thresholding function based on a combination of mu-law and semisoft thresholding functions is designed and exploited to apply the statistically derived threshold upon the PWP coefficients. The proposed custom thresholding function works as a mu-law or a semisoft thresholding function or their combination based on the probability of speech presence and absence in a subband of the PWP transformed noisy speech. By using the speech files available in NOIZEUS database, a number of simulations are performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method for speech signals in the presence of Gaussian white and street noises. The proposed method outperforms some of the state-of-the-art speech enhancement methods both at high and low levels of SNRs in terms of standard objective measures and subjective evaluations including formal listening tests.
“Being a good patient” during times of illness as defined by adolescent patients with cancer

Adolescents with cancer cite the opinions of others and expected impact on others as formative for their care preferences and decisions. The current study first explores how the concepts of being a good child and being a good patient may exist for adolescents with cancer and determines how adolescents describe and apply these concepts. The study then investigates parental actions and clinician behaviors perceived by adolescents with cancer as supportive in helping them to achieve their defined good child and good patient roles.
Don't repeat yourself: seamless execution and analysis of extensive network experiments

This paper presents MACI, the first bespoke framework for the management, the scalable execution, and the interactive analysis of a large number of network experiments. Driven by the desire to avoid repetitive implementation of just a few scripts for the execution and analysis of experiments, MACI emerged as a generic framework for network experiments that significantly increases efficiency and ensures reproducibility. MACI incorporates and integrates established simulators and analysis tools to foster rapid but systematic network experiments. MACI significantly improved the research and development process of various communication systems, such as i) an extensive DASH video streaming study, ii) the systematic development and improvement of Multipath TCP schedulers, and iii) research on a distributed topology graph pattern matching algorithm. MACI is publicly available to the research community to advance efficient and reproducible network experiments.
A review of “Asymmetric Numeral Systems”

In 2009, J. Duda proposed Asymmetric Numeral System for lossless compressive encodig, which is supposed to perform at speeds similar to Huﬀman coding with compression close to Arithmetic coding. This coding can combine compression and encryption into one step and is suited for systems with low computational power.
Facebook use and its relationship with self-esteem, personalities and addictive tendencies

4 Introduction 5 Social Networking and Privacy 6 Literature Review -Facebook 7 -Personality Characteristics and Facebook Usage 8 -Self-Esteem Characteristics and Facebook Usage 11 -Addictive Tendencies Characteristics and Facebook Usage 13 Aims 15 Hypothesise -Self Esteem 16 -Personality 16 -Addictive Tendencies 17 Methodology -Design 18 -Participants 18 -Materials 18 -Procedure 20 Results -Frequencies and Percentages 21 -Descriptive Statistics 23 -Inferential Statistics 25 -Correlations 25 -Self Esteem -Personalities -Addictive Tendencies Discussion 29 -Self-Esteem 29 -Personalities 30 -Addiction Tendencies 33 Limitations 36 Conclusion 37 References 38 Bibliography 44 Appendix 1 46
Antenna Selection in Full-Duplex Cooperative NOMA Systems

We investigate the problem of antenna selection (AS) in full-duplex (FD) cooperative non- orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems, where a multi-antenna FD relay assists transmission from a multi-antenna base station (BS) to a far user, while at the same, the BS transmits to a near user. Specifically, based on the end-to-end signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio at the near and far users, two AS schemes to select a single transmit antenna at both the BS and the relay, respectively, as well as a single receive antenna at relay are proposed. In order to study the ergodic sum rate and outage probability of these AS schemes, we have derived closed-form expressions assuming Rayleigh fading channels. The sum rate and outage probability of the AS schemes are also compared with the optimum selection scheme that maximizes the performance as well as with a random AS scheme. Our results show that the proposed AS schemes can deliver a near-optimal performance for near and far users, respectively.
Implementation Considerations, Not Topological Differences, Are the Main Determinants of Noise Suppression Properties in Feedback and Incoherent Feedforward Circuits

Biological systems use a variety of mechanisms to deal with the uncertain nature of their external and internal environments. Two of the most common motifs employed for this purpose are the incoherent feedforward (IFF) and feedback (FB) topologies. Many theoretical and experimental studies suggest that these circuits play very different roles in providing robustness to uncertainty in the cellular environment. Here, we use a control theoretic approach to analyze two common FB and IFF architectures that make use of an intermediary species to achieve regulation. We show the equivalence of both circuits topologies in suppressing static cell-to-cell variations. While both circuits can suppress variations due to input noise, they are ineffective in suppressing inherent chemical reaction stochasticity. Indeed, these circuits realize comparable improvements limited to a modest 25% variance reduction in best case scenarios. Such limitations are attributed to the use of intermediary species in regulation, and as such, they persist even for circuit architectures that combine both IFF and FB features. Intriguingly, while the FB circuits are better suited in dealing with dynamic input variability, the most significant difference between the two topologies lies not in the structural features of the circuits, but in their practical implementation considerations.