Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Simulation Study on Selective Stimulation of C-Fiber Nerves for Chronic Pain Relief

It has been reported that stimulating nociceptive unmyelinated C nerves (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) near the sarcolemma could induce the secretion of endogenous opioids that relieve chronic pain. However, a substantial concern remains: concomitant stimulation might cause acute pain to nociceptive myelinated <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{A}\delta $ </tex-math></inline-formula> nerves (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A\delta$ </tex-math></inline-formula>), which generally have a lower activation threshold than the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. However, few studies have reported on <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C$ </tex-math></inline-formula> selectivity over <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A\delta $ </tex-math></inline-formula> (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-selectivity). In this study, the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A\delta $ </tex-math></inline-formula> nerves were modeled using the Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) and McIntyre-Richardson-Grill (MRG) models, respectively. Two potential stimulation schemes, including bipolar square waves and burst modulated alternating current, together with a new stimulation scheme named inhibit-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A\delta $ </tex-math></inline-formula> (i-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A\delta$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) that inhibits the excitability of the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A\delta $ </tex-math></inline-formula>, were systematically investigated. Their stimuli were given to the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A\delta $ </tex-math></inline-formula> nerves through point electrodes located near the nerve fibers. Simulation results revealed that i-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A\delta $ </tex-math></inline-formula> presented the highest <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-selectivity, which provides a basis for non-invasive effective chronic-pain relief.
How Machine Learning Works

M achines are increasingly doing “intelligent” things: Facebook recognizes faces in photos, Siri understands voices, and Google translates websites. The fundamental insight behind these breakthroughs is as much statistical as computational. Machine intelligence became possible once researchers stopped approaching intelligence tasks procedurally and began tackling them empirically. Face recognition algorithms, for example, do not consist of hard-wired rules to scan for certain pixel combinations, based on human understanding of what constitutes a face. Instead, these algorithms use a large dataset of photos labeled as having a face or not to estimate a function f (x) that predicts the presence y of a face from pixels x. This similarity to econometrics raises questions: Are these algorithms merely applying standard techniques to novel and large datasets? If there are fundamentally new empirical tools, how do they fit with what we know? As empirical economists, how can we use them? 1 We present a way of thinking about machine learning that gives it its own place in the econometric toolbox. Central to our understanding is that machine learning
Performance Evaluation of Thermally Stressed Solid Dielectrics for Transformers

An experimental study to determine the furan contents of mineral transformer oils impregnated thermally upgraded Kraft and Nomex-910 has been conducted in the present study. Oil samples with thermally upgraded Kraft and Nomex-910 were thermally stressed at different temperatures ranging from 120°C to 180°C. Further, high performance chromatography and Raman spectroscopy tests were performed on each of the aged samples. It has been determined from test results of both techniques that the furan contents produced in thermally upgraded Kraft oil samples is higher than that of Nomex-910 impregnated test samples. Degree of polymerization which determines the degradation of the dielectric for thermally upgraded Kraft oil sample at 120°C is 905 and at 180°C is 309. Whereas, degree of polymerization for Nomex-910 impregnated oil sample varies from 927 at 120°C to 362 at 180°C. It is concluded from the experimentation study that the degradation rate of Nomex-910 insulating paper is lesser than that of thermally upgraded Kraft. Nomex-910 samples have better thermal performance and higher life than that of the thermally upgraded Kraft samples. It is expected that the present experimental investigation shall be highly beneficial not only to the transformer utilities but also to the customers.
Understanding figurative and literal language: The graded salience hypothesis

In this study I lest the prevalent Claims among contemporary psycholinguists that understanding metaphor does not involve a special process, and that it is essentially identical to understanding literal language. Particularly, I examine the claims that figurative language does not involve processing the surface literal meaning (e.g., Gibbs 1984), and that its comprehension is not processing-intensive, because it does not involve a trigger (e.g., Keysar 1989). A critique, review and reinterpretation ofa number of contemporary researches on literal and figurative language reveal that figurative and literal language use are governed by a general principle of salience: Salient meanings (e.g., conventional frequent, familiär, enhanced by prior context) are processed first. Thus, for example, when the most salient meaning is intended (äs in, e.g., the figurative meaning of conventional Idioms), it is accessed directly, without having toprocess the less salient (literal) meaning first (Gibbs 1980). However, when a less rather than a more salient meaning is intended (e.g., the metaphoric meaning ofnovel metaphors, the literal meaning of conventional Idioms, or a novel Interpretation ofa highly conventional literal expression) comprehension seems to involve a sequential process, upon which the more salient meaning is processed initially, before the intended meaning is derived (Blasko and Connine 1993; Gerrig 1989; Gibbs 1980; Gregory and Mergler 1990). Parallel processing is induced when more than one meaning is salient. For instance, conventional metaphors whose metaphoric and literal meanings are equally salient, are processed initially both literally and metaphorically (Blasko and Connine 1993). The directl sequential process debate, then, can be reconciled: Different linguistic expressions ( salient-less salient) may tap different (direct/parallel/sequential) processes.
COSMOS: An Orchestration Framework for Smart Computation Offloading in Edge Clouds

The evolution of Internet of Things (IoT) has sparked significant research interest in edge computing. Within this scope and given the ever-increasing number of IoT and mobile devices, computation offloading is emerging as a cutting-edge and significant research area with enormous potential and practical applications.In this respect, we present the architecture design and experimental evaluation of an orchestration framework for smart computation offloading from IoT or mobile devices to edge cloud servers. The proposed orchestration platform, namely COSMOS, includes control-plane components for workload prediction, load balancing, and admission control. COSMOS is particularly tailored to the needs of an object identification service that receives images from a multitude of Points of Interest (PoIs), performs object identification using a trained model (based on Tensorflow), calculates the prediction accuracy, and finally returns to the end-users the identification outcome and accuracy along with useful information about the identified object. COSMOS has been deployed and evaluated in a large-scale experimental facility that employs OpenStack and OpenSourceMANO (OSM) for Network Function Virtualization (NFV) orchestration. Our experimental results indicate the feasibility of computation offloading for this object identification service and further uncover useful insights in terms of performance and scalability.
A Vision for Health Informatics: Introducing the SKED Framework.An Extensible Architecture for Scientific Knowledge Extraction from Data

The goals of the Triple Aim of health care and the goals of P4 medicine outline objectives that require a significant health informatics component. However, the goals do not provide specifications about how all of the new individual patient data will be combined in meaningful ways and with data from other sources, like epidemiological data, to promote the health of individuals and society. We seem to have more data than ever before but few resources and means to use it efficiently. We need a general, extensible solution that integrates and homogenizes data of disparate origin, incompatible formats, and multiple spatial and temporal scales. To address this problem, we introduce the Scientific Knowledge Extraction from Data (SKED) architecture, as a technology-agnostic framework to minimize the overhead of data integration, permit reuse of analytical pipelines, and guarantee reproducible quantitative results. The SKED architecture consists of a Resource Allocation Service to locate resources, and the definition of data primitives to simplify and harmonize data. SKED allows automated knowledge discovery and provides a platform for the realization of the major goals of modern health care.
Towards Dual-Issue Single-Path Code

The Patmos instruction-set architecture is designed for real-time systems. As such, it has features that increase the predictability of code running on it. One important feature is its dual-issue pipeline: instructions may be organized in bundles of two that are issued and executed in parallel. This increases the throughput of the processor in a predictable manner, but only if the compiler makes use of it.Single-path code is a code-generation technique that produces predictable executions by always following the same trace of instructions. The Patmos compiler can already produce single-path code, but it does not use the second issue slot available in the processor. This is less than ideal because the single-path transformation results in code that has a high degree of instruction-level parallelism.In this paper, we present a single-path code generator that can produce bundled instructions. It includes generic support for bundling algorithms, such that implementing them is simple and does not require changing other parts of the compiler.We also present one such bundling algorithm plugged into the single-path code generator. With it, we show that we can produce dual-issue instructions to improve performance.
Research and implementation of master-slave control for interventional robot system

Minimally invasive endovascular surgery is an important means of treatment of cardiovascular diseases. The operation of traditional surgical intervention operation system was very difficult. And it is a departure from the hand-held conduit progressive doctors operating mode. The doctors are asked too much for the intubation. In order to solve this problem, based on the new catheter mechanical means a linear stepper / push mechanism guide-wire with scaling control method between master and slave, a mobile surgical robot master-slave control system was designed, and the performance of this device was tested. Experiments showed that the axial movement between the master and slave system error is less than 1%, and the rotational movement accuracy is better than 1 degree in performance and functionality to meet the requirements of vascular interventional procedures.
A high efficiency, 40dBm, 728-768 MHz MMIC Doherty power amplifier using low-voltage GaAs HBT technology for LTE and active antenna system applications

In this paper we report on the design and measurements of 1.75× 2.45mm2 monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) Doherty power amplifier (DPA) fabricated using low-voltage, low-cost GaAs hetero-junction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology. In measurements, from 31dBm to 40dBm saturated output power higher than 43% drain efficiency is obtained across 728 to 768 MHz band. Moreover, single stage Doherty amplifier exhibits 14dB small signal gain over the band of operation. To the best of our knowledge, with low voltage GaAs HBT, the highest efficiency and saturated output power are reported in this work.
Inhibition of Tissue Transglutaminase 2 Attenuates Contractility of Pregnant Human Myometrium1

Premature delivery remains a serious risk factor in pregnancy, with currently licensed tocolytics unable to offer significant improvement in neonatal outcome. Further understanding of the regulators of uterine contractility is required to enable the development of novel and more effective tocolytic therapies. The transglutaminase family is a class of calcium-dependent, transamidating enzymes, of which tissue transglutaminase 2 is a multifunctional enzyme with roles in cell survival, migration, adhesion, and contractility. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of this enzyme in regulating the contractility of pregnant human myometrium. Tissue strips from biopsy samples obtained at elective cesarean section were either allowed to contract spontaneously or induced to contract with oxytocin, phenylephrine, or bradykinin. Activity integrals, used to measure contractile activity, were taken following cumulative additions of the reversible, polyamine transglutaminase inhibitors cystamine and mono-dansylcadaverine and the irreversible, site-specific transglutaminase inhibitors N-benzyloxycarbonyl-l-phenylalanyl-6-dimethylsulfonium-5-oxo-L-norleucine and 1,3-dimethyl-2[(oxopropyl)thio]imidazolium. The ability of cystamine and mono-dansylcadaverine to affect oxytocin-mediated calcium mobilization within primary cultured myometrial cells was also measured utilizing a calcium indicator. All inhibitors attenuated myometrial contractions in a concentration-dependent manner independent of the method of contraction stimulus. Similarly cultured myometrial cells preincubated with cystamine and mono-dansylcadaverine displayed an altered calcium response to oxytocin stimulation. Our findings demonstrate a potential role for tissue transglutaminase 2 in regulating uterine contractility in pregnant human myometrium that may be associated with the calcium signaling cascade required for contraction.
Improving visual spatial working memory in younger and older adults: effects of cross-modal cues

ABSTRACT Spatially informative auditory and vibrotactile (cross-modal) cues can facilitate attention but little is known about how similar cues influence visual spatial working memory (WM) across the adult lifespan. We investigated the effects of cues (spatially informative or alerting pre-cues vs. no cues), cue modality (auditory vs. vibrotactile vs. visual), memory array size (four vs. six items), and maintenance delay (900 vs. 1800 ms) on visual spatial location WM recognition accuracy in younger adults (YA) and older adults (OA). We observed a significant interaction between spatially informative pre-cue type, array size, and delay. OA and YA benefitted equally from spatially informative pre-cues, suggesting that attentional orienting prior to WM encoding, regardless of cue modality, is preserved with age. Contrary to predictions, alerting pre-cues generally impaired performance in both age groups, suggesting that maintaining a vigilant state of arousal by facilitating the alerting attention system does not help visual spatial location WM.
Macrophage Migration Inhibition Studies with Cells from Mice Vaccinated with Cell Walls of Mycobacterium bovis BCG: Relationship Between Inhibitory Activity of Lung Cells and Resistance to Airborne Challenge with Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv

In an effort to evaluate the role of delayed hypersensitivity in acquired resistance of mice to airborne infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv, the ability of lung and peritoneal cells from mice vaccinated in various ways with mycobacterial fractions or with M. bovis BCG to inhibit, in the presence of purified protein derivative, in vitro migration of normal peritoneal cells was determined. The degree of inhibition induced by lung cells was correlated with immunity, but that induced by peritoneal cells could not be associated with enhanced resistance. Live BCG given intravenously to mice stimulated greater resistance to infection and inhibitory activity of lung cells than did live BCG given subcutaneously. Vaccines with a protective index greater than 1 also induced a significant increase in lung weight. Although a correlation between ability of lung cells to inhibit cell migration and acquired resistance of the host to airborne infection with H37Rv was demonstrated, the data do not exclude the possibility that the two phenomena are independent responses to the immunologically complex mycobacterial antigens.
Distributed Coordination of Electric Vehicles providing V2G Regulation Services

The aim of this paper is to propose a distributed electric vehicle (EV) coordination mechanism, which enables the management of the charging/discharging operation of an EV fleet, offering V2G regulation services to support system operation based on a day-ahead scheduling profile generated by an EV aggregator. Initially, a decentralized iterative algorithm is introduced to manage EV charging/discharging schedule aiming to meet the daily mobility energy requirement of an EV fleet with respect to the day-ahead schedule of the EV aggregator. Then, a droop-based control and a novel distributed regulation dispatch algorithm are developed aiming to meet the regulation dispatch signals send to the EV aggregator by the system.
Approximate analytical solutions to thermo-poroelastic equations by means of the iterated homotopy analysis method

A new approach of the homotopy analysis method (HAM), named iterated homotopy analysis method (I-HAM) is used to find approximate analytical solutions to thermo-poroelastic equations. The homotopy analysis method contains the auxiliary parameter ℏ, which provides us with a simple way to adjust and control the convergence region of the series solution. This method is reliable and manageable. The I-HAM solutions are compared with numerical solutions. To the best of our knowledge, this kind of analytic solutions has been never reported. Also, in each example, the comparison between I-HAM and traditional HAM is done, which shows the efficiency of I-HAM.
Exploring minimal pronunciation modeling for low resource languages

This work was supported by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) via Department of Defense U.S. Army Research Laboratory contract number W911NF-12- C-0013. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation thereon. Disclaimer: The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either express or implied, of IARPA, DoD/ARL, or the U.S. Government.
The Journal of Systems and Software

Integrating human–computer interaction (HCI) activities in software engineering (SE) processes is an often-expressed desire. Two metrics to demonstrate the impact of integrating HCI activities in SE processes are proposed. Usability Goals Achievement Metric (UGAM) is a product metric that measures the extent to which the design of a product achieves its user-experience goals. Index of Integration (IoI) is a process metric that measures the extent of integration of the HCI activities in the SE process. Both the metrics have an organizational perspective and can be applied to a wide range of products and projects. An attempt has been made to keep the metrics easy to use in the industrial context. While the two metrics were proposed mainly to establish a correlation between the two and thereby demonstrate the effectiveness of integration of HCI in SE processes, several other applications seem likely. The two metrics were evaluated in three independent studies: a classroom-based evaluation with two groups of students, a qualitative feedback from three industry projects, and a quantitative evaluation using 61 industry projects. The metrics were found to be useful, easy to use, and helpful in making the process more systematic. Our studies showed that the two metrics correlate well with each other and that IoI is a good predictor of UGAM. Regression analysis showed that IoI has a somewhat greater effect on UGAM in projects that use the agile process model than the waterfall process and in the projects that are executed as a contracted software development service than in the projects in product companies. UGAM also correlated well with the traditional usability evaluations
Bone metastatic LNCaP‐derivative C4‐2B prostate cancer cell line mineralizes in vitro

Prostate cancer frequently metastasizes to bone. However, unlike many other tumors that produce osteolytic lesions, prostate cancer produces osteoblastic lesions through unknown mechanisms. In the current study, we explored the ability and mechanism of an osteotropic prostate cancer cell line (C4‐2B) to induce mineralization.
Test–retest reliability of the 10‐metre fast walk test and 6‐minute walk test in ambulatory school‐aged children with cerebral palsy

Short‐term test‐retest reliability of the 10‐metre fast walk test (10mFWT) and 6‐minute walk test (6MWT) was evaluated in 31 ambulatory children with cerebral palsy (CP), with subgroup analyses in Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) Levels I (n=9), II (n=8), and III (n=14). Sixteen females and 15 males participated, mean age 9 years 5 months (SD 3y 7mo, range 4y 3mo‐18y 2mo). Twenty had spastic diplegia, while the others had another form of CP. Retest interval varied from 1 to 4 weeks (mean 10.6d [SD 6.4]). Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) estimated reliability. The 10mFWT ICC was 0.81 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.65–0.90) across participants, and >0.59 in GMFCS subgroups (95% CI lower bound >0.01). The 6MWT ICC was 0.98, and >0.90 in GMFCS subgroups (95% CI lower bound >0.64). Bland‐Altman plots indicated bias towards higher 6MWT retest distances in GMFCS Level I. Minimum detectable change (95% CI) was 61.9, 64.0, and 47.4m for the 6MWT within GMFCS Levels I, II, and III respectively. The conclusion is that while the 10mFWT showed inadequate test‐retest reliability given its wide 95% CI, the 6MWT demonstrated good to excellent reliability. Investigation of the need for a practice walk when administering the 6MWT with children in GMFCS Level I is recommended to establish their fastest pace.
Who Reads Corporate Tweets? Network Analysis of Follower Communities

Social networking sites became very popular since the introduction of Six Degrees in 1997 and companies started to utilize them to build online communities. This research aims to further understand online communities by analyzing the network structure and composition of Twitter follower networks. An explorative analysis is conducted on the Twitter follower network of Europe’s twenty-five largest product software vendors, which includes 95,895 unique followers. A proprietary tool was built for data collection and social network analysis was used to analyze the data. Structural analysis shows that the networks have small-world characteristics and have high reciprocity in terms of following relationships. Analyzing the composition of the networks shows that a) they have a small internal audience and large external audience, b) Twitter is used for monitoring competitors by some, and c) the companies have very distinct and unique follower communities. Especially the uniqueness of the communities demonstrates the value of such communities to companies.