Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prediction of standing height among Israeli older adults: Results from a national survey

Background: An accurate measurement of full height while standing is sometimes not possible among older adults, in particular among the frail elderly. For such cases, the use of knee height (KH) and ulna bone length (UL) has been suggested for standing height estimation. Studies have shown that predictive equations of height were ethnic-specific. Aim: This study attempted to develop representative equations to predict standing height based on KH, UL and waist circumference (WC) for older adult Israeli women and men. Subjects and methods: A random sample of 1500 older adults (aged 74.48 ± 6.09 years old). Participants were interviewed in their homes and measurements of Standing height, KH, UL and WC were taken. A quadratic regression analysis, for each sex separately, was performed to predict standing height based on age, KH, UL and WC. Results: The adjusted r 2 standing height prediction equations were 0.51 and 0.67 for women and men, respectively. Conclusions: The prediction of the standing height of frail elderly Israelis, by KH, UL, WC and age, may be an alternative method when actual standing height is difficult or not possible to measure.
Peer-to-peer based multimedia distribution service

Recently, there are many research interests in providing efficient and scalable multimedia distribution service. However, stringent quality-of-service (QoS) requirements for media distribution, as well as dynamically changing and heterogeneous network capacity in today's best effort Internet, bring many challenges. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework for multimedia distribution service based on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. A topology-aware overlay is proposed in which hosts self-organize into groups. End hosts within the same group have similar network conditions and can easily collaborate with each other to achieve QoS awareness. In order to improve media delivery quality and provide high service availability, we further propose two distributed heuristic replication strategies, intergroup replication and intragroup replication, based on this topology-aware overlay. Specifically, intergroup replication is aimed to improve the efficiency of media content delivery between the group where a request is issued and the group where the content is stored. Also, intragroup replication is targeted at improving the availability of the content. Extensive simulation results show that the latency in our proposed architecture is 20% less than that of the FreeNet and 50% less than that of the randomly replication system. Simulation results also show that the video quality in our system is much better than that in the other two systems. Our P2P-based approach is also distributed, scalable, cost effective, and aware of the performance.
Passive undulatory gaits enhance walking in a myriapod millirobot

The design and modeling of a segmented myriapod millirobot with a compliant body is presented. A dynamic model is used to demonstrate how body undulations can result from only varying the phase difference in the stance change between adjacent segments - even with passive intersegmental connections - and how these gaits affect locomotion. Different gaits are demonstrated experimentally in a 20-leg, 2.2 gram millirobot, and the resulting motion is compared to that predicted by the simulation. Both simulation and experiments show that undulatory gaits can increase the average speed of straight-line locomotion as compared to non-undulatory gaits for the same stepping frequency. The model and the millirobot can be used concurrently with biological studies to understand aspects of myriapod locomotion. This robot is also a useful tool to gain insight into how flexibility can be introduced into robots at this scale to enhance locomotion.
Saturated particle filter

In many practical applications the state variables are defined on a compact set of the state space. For estimating such variables constrained particle filters have been successfully applied to nonlinear systems. For the saturated system the measurement information can be used during the sampling procedure to obtain particles that approximate the true state of the system. This can be achieved by using a detection function, which detects the saturation as it occurs. In this paper we pro- pose the Saturated Particle Filter algorithm which incorporates the measurements into the importance sampling procedure through the detection function. The new filter is applied to the Lindley-type stochastic process, where the stochastic process depends on an exogenous parameter. This parameter changes during the simulation. Furthermore, the system is corrupted with high measurement noise. The simulations show that our new filter achieves better performance than the standard Constrained SIR filter, while it preserves low computational complexity.
Controllability of nonlocal second-order impulsive neutral stochastic functional integro-differential equations with delay and Poisson jumps

The current paper is concerned with the controllability of nonlocal second-order impulsive neutral stochastic functional integro-differential equations with infinite delay and Poisson jumps in Hilbert spaces. Using the theory of a strongly continuous cosine family of bounded linear operators, stochastic analysis theory and with the help of the Banach fixed point theorem, we derive a new set of sufficient conditions for the controllability of nonlocal second-order impulsive neutral stochastic functional integro-differential equations with infinite delay and Poisson jumps. Finally, an application to the stochastic nonlinear wave equation with infinite delay and Poisson jumps is given.
Inferring ancestry in mouse genomes using a hidden Markov model

The use of recombinant inbred strains in mice is a powerful tool for understanding the genetics of complex diseases, such as alcohol tolerance. In 1981, McClearn and Kakihana introduced the Inbred Long Sleep (ILS) and Inbred Short Sleep (ISS) mouse strains that had been selectively bred from eight ancestor strains for their response to alcohol. The study provides a rare framework for computational analysis as the lineages of the two strains are well documented and six of the eight ancestor mouse strains have been sequenced. We have recently sequenced the complete genomes of the ILS and ISS strains to identify all single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), where individual nucleotides in the ILS and ISS genomes differ from the reference mouse genome (mm10). Here, we leverage this data as well as fine-scale mouse recombination rates to infer the ancestral origin of each segment of the ILS and ISS genomes using a hidden Markov model (HMM). Our model is a fully connected set of seven states corresponding to each of the six sequenced ancestors and single state to capture the two unsequenced ancestors (the "unknown" state). Transitions between distinct states correspond to cross-over events during the breeding. Our transitions are further informed by incorporating fine-scale mouse recombination rates from Brunschwig et al. as priors to the likelihood of transitioning from one state to a different state (a recombination event) between any two observations. As recombination rates are per-base and region-specific, this has the added benefit of naturally incorporating the distance between SNPs into our transition probabilities as well. Each state emits an indicator variable, specifying whether the detected SNP is consistent with the specified ancestor. We note that inconsistencies can arise from sequencing errors and de novo mutations. We use an Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm to determine the best parameters for our model. Furthermore we identify regions within the ILS and ISS genomes that are identical by descent (IBD). Sometimes large segments of the ancestor genomes are absolutely identical and indistinguishable. We sought to identify these regions within the HMM output, where a particular ancestor is chosen (by Viterbi) based on little to no informative positions. In these cases, there is no way to truly distinguish the ancestor of origin so we reclassify the segment as IBD. Our model outputs the inferred ancestor or IBD label for every segment of the ILS and ISS genomes. These regions were then verified by manual inspection using the Integrative Genome Viewer. Furthermore, we examined the consistency of called insertions, deletions, and structural variants between the ILS and ISS strain and the inferred ancestor within the region.
Parameters for assessment of the inferior acetabulum morphology in 300 adult hips

Abstract The inferior acetabulum (IA) has been studied as a stabilizer of the hip in flexed positions with potential implications in femoroacetabular impingement and hip instability. However, there is a paucity of studies considering the normal morphology and parameters for assessment of the IA. The purpose of this study was to define parameters to assess the IA morphology and their normal range. Specifically, the objectives were to assess: (i) the width of the anterior horn (AH) and posterior horn (PH) of the acetabulum; (ii) the inclination of the articular surface of the AH angle (AHA) and PH angle (PHA) in the axial plane; (iii) the anterior opening angle of the IA and differences between genders. One hundred and fifty adult skeletons were utilized in this study. Measurements were taken directly from acetabula in 300 innominate bones utilizing digital calipers. In sequence, the innominate bones were assembled to sacrum and 150 pelvises were digitally photographed in standardized positions. Angular parameters of the acetabulum were then measured utilizing the Adobe Photoshop software. The mean width of the AH was 14.80 ± 2.35 mm (range 9.44–20.88). The mean width of the PH was 19.72 ± 2.61 mm (range 13.16–25.86). The AHA was on average 43.58 ± 7.10° (range 24.70–64) and the PHA was on average 36.07 ± 7.54° (16.10–53.20). The mean anterior opening angle of the IA was 25.33 ± 5.40° (10.90–43.10). The IA morphology can be evaluated in all anatomical planes through quantitative parameters. The assessment of the osseous morphology of the IA is the first step to elucidate abnormalities of the IA as potential source of hip pain.
Update on anode materials for Na-ion batteries

Na-ion batteries have emerged in recent years, due to their advantages of natural abundance, low cost and environmental friendliness. In this article, we review the up-to-date research progress on anode materials for Na-ion batteries from five respects: carbon-based materials, alloy-based materials, metal oxides and sulfides based on conversion reaction, titanium-based compounds with insertion mechanism, and organic composites. In particular, we not only summarize the Na-storage mechanism of these anodes, but also discuss the failure mechanism. The problems and challenges associated with these anodes are pointed out. Furthermore, on the basis of extensive reports and our experimental studies, feasible strategies are suggested for designing high performance anode materials. After further in-depth exploration and investigation, we believe that Na-ion batteries are promising alternative to lithium-ion batteries for low cost and large-scale energy storage systems in the near future.
Changes During Storage of Electrically Conductive Blends Polyaniline–Poly(Ethylene‐co‐vinyl Acetate)

Abstract The electrical conductivity behavior of polyaniline–poly(ethylene‐co‐vinyl acetate) (PANI–EVA) blends was variable and dynamic during their storage. It was shown that the apparent concentration of the intrinsically conductive polymer at which a conductivity jump of the blends occurs (Φ c ) is not a constant value over time. The electrical conductivity of the films of low PANI content (below 2.5 wt.%) increased by several (ca. 5) orders of magnitude. It was found that the PANI phase undergoes a flocculation process subsequently resulting in the formation of conductive pathways and a continuous network. Besides, the shape of percolation curves was found to change during storage of the films. Decreased conductivity deviations were registered for blends of low PANI content (<2.5 wt.%), indicating that an improvement (or decreasing number of defects) of the conductive pathways took place within the bulk of the insulating EVA matrix. These results and observed phenomena are discussed by means of the interfacial model for electrically conductive polymer blends. They supported the dispersion/flocculation phase transition within similar composite materials. The phase separation and conductivity jump are attributed to the interfacial interactions between the polymeric constituents. It was shown that the microstructure of the blends consists of highly ordered PANI paths embedded in the insulating EVA matrix. Long fibrils of PANI and interconnected fractal‐like networks were observed. It was found that the sizes of the PANI domains also varied during storage of the films. Due to the spontaneous flocculation of the primary PANI particles, conductive pathways are formed at extremely low percolation threshold (Φ c , loading level ca. 5 × 10−3 wt. fraction). Thus, an important property of the conductive constituent, namely its solid‐state rearrangement, was proved. This PANI self‐organization is also interpreted according to the interfacial model of polymer composites. On the other hand, the competition between self‐organization of the complex of PANI with dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid and crystallization of EVA matrix has resulted in structural changes and formation of continuous conductive networks within the blends, responsible for their significantly increased conductivity.
Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience Integrative Neuroscience

These two problems were solved at once deriving the high-dimensional semantic space from a lexical co-occurrence matrix (Deerwester et al., 1990; Lund and Burgess, 1996). The main assumption for this derivation is that semantic proximity can be inferred by analyzing the statistical regularities in a text corpus. For instance, if the word " giraffe " is mentioned in a text, it is likely that the words, " neck " , " zebra " and " zoo " (which are semantically related) will also be mentioned. The conditional probabilities of co-occurrence (i.e. the probability of fi nding " dog " given that " cat " was mentioned) are thus likely to determine a good measure of semantic proximity. Lund and Burgess demonstrated this relation determining that: (1) Near neighbors in the co-ocurrence space correspond to related meanings (2) Clusters in this space corresponded to semantic categories and (3) Similarity in co-occurrence space determined the effect on RT in a semantic priming experiment. This result was in line with prior evidence which had shown a correlation between frequency of co-occurrence and free-word association probabilities (Spence and Owens, 1990), since the asso-ciative structure of words plays a central role in recall and colleagues showed that free word-association metrics (Nelson et al., 1999; Steyvers et al., 2004) performed better than corpus based metrics to predict human performance in various experiments of semantic memory. Assuming that the semantic space has been fully characterized, how should a model of retrieval and free-association be determined from this space? The underlying hypothesis of most current
Structural framework for combining speaker recognition methods

The paper describes a structural framework for the design of a speaker recognition system based on multiple models. This combination is not only at the recognition level, but also at a joint training of the models. This unified training of the models uses a common structure : a decomposition tree of the set of data of normalization speakers. For the experiments, the Gaussian Mixture Model and the Auto-Regressive Vectorial Model are the two models we have selected to test the structural framework of the speaker verification scoring combination. This approach has been tested on a subset of the 30”-NIST’97 Speaker Recognition Evaluation corpus. The list of the files of this subset (i.e., normalization, training and test) can be found at http://www-apa.lip6. fr/PAROLE/ICSLP2000/.
Dual-active-bridge series resonant converter: A new control strategy using phase-shifting combined frequency modulation

This paper proposes a new control strategy for a single phase isolated-dual-active-bridge series resonant converter (IDBRC). The proposed strategy combines both frequency modulation and phase shifting between the two active bridges. The shifted phase is kept at a suitable value to maximize the average power factor of the system and to handle the direction of the power flow. Meanwhile, frequency modulation is used to manipulate the magnitude of the power to be transferred. By using the proposed control method, both the active bridges can achieve zero voltage transition feature. System efficiency is also improved, especially at light load condition. As can be seen from the small-scale experiment, an increment of 7.8% and 3% of efficiency in forward and backward power transmission modes can be achieved. This promising results make IDBRC as well as the proposed control method possible to be applied in the DC transmission system.
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease presenting with alien limb sign

Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease is a fatal spongiform encephalopathy, which typically presents with a rapidly progressing dementia and additional neurological findings that can be quite variable and diverse. Here we report the unusual case of a patient who presented with left alien limb sign without overt cognitive impairment and was ultimately diagnosed with pathologically confirmed Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. © 2006 Movement Disorder Society
Joint transmit and receive beamforming for multi-relay MIMO-OFDMA cellular networks

A novel transmission protocol is conceived for a multi-user, multi-relay, multiple-input-multiple-output orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access (MIMO-OFDMA) cellular network based on joint transmit and receive beamforming. More specifically, the network's MIMO channels are mathematically decomposed into several effective multiple-input-single-output (MISO) channels, which are spatially multiplexed for transmission. For the sake of improving the attainable capacity, these MISO channels are grouped using a pair of novel grouping algorithms, which are then evaluated in terms of their performance versus complexity trade-off1.
NHTSA DRIVER DISTRACTION RESEARCH: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

Driver distraction has been identified as a high-priority topic by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, reflecting concerns about the compatibility of certain in-vehicle technologies with the driving task, whether drivers are making potentially dangerous decisions about when to interact with in-vehicle technologies while driving, and that these trends may accelerate as new technologies continue to become available. Since 1991, NHTSA has conducted research to understand the factors that contribute to driver distraction and to develop methods to assess the extent to which in-vehicle technologies may contribute to crashes. This paper summarizes significant findings from past NHTSA research in the area of driver distraction and workload, provides an overview of current ongoing research, and describes upcoming research that will be conducted, including research using the National Advanced Driving Simulator and work to be conducted at NHTSA's Vehicle Research and Test Center. Preliminary results of the ongoing research are also presented. For the covering abstract see ITRD E111577.
Analysis of Kinetic Energy Effect in Molecular Deformation of Aluminum 6063 Alloy

The matrix repatterning process during the cause of molecular deformation is studied. Aluminum 6063 alloy, which was melted at 650 o C and subjected to two solidification kinetics, (vibratory and static), in a steel die mould. The evaluation of molecular parameters, the velocity, pressure, and temperature of the alloy were obtained during the experimental process to assess parametric properties and influence on the molecules as deformation occurred. It was revealed that velocity of impact dominates the experimental temperatures and pressures recorded. Moreover, vibrated solidification process possessed more impact absorbing energy than static cooling process. Conclusively, the evaluations of the most probable speed show that temperature for static cooling was reached faster than that of vibrated solidifications. Thus, kinetic energy had great effect in delocalization and deformation process of molecules of the material. According to (7), who examined the effects of tensile deformation rates on tensile properties of polypropylene, affirmed that deformation parameters had great influence in the deformation of the material but in their analysis tensile rate of deformations was evaluated leaving out the internal effect of mechanism that brought about the process and ultimate tensile properties of the material. The elastomeric network deformation analysis of
Randomly coloring constant degree graphs

We study a simple Markov chain, known as the Glauber dynamics, for generating a random k ‐coloring of an n ‐vertex graph with maximum degree Δ. We prove that, for every ε > 0, the dynamics converges to a random coloring within O(nlog n) steps assuming k ≥ k0(ε) and either: (i) k/Δ > α* + ε where α*≈︁ 1.763 and the girth g ≥ 5, or (ii) k/Δ >β * + ε where β*≈︁ 1.489 and the girth g ≥ 7. Our work improves upon, and builds on, previous results which have similar restrictions on k/Δ and the minimum girth but also required Δ = Ω (log n). The best known result for general graphs is O(nlog n) mixing time when k/Δ > 2 and O(n2) mixing time when k/Δ > 11/6. Related results of Goldberg et al apply when k/Δ > α* for all Δ ≥ 3 on triangle‐free “neighborhood‐amenable” graphs. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg. , 2013
Score Following of Orchestral Music Using Acoustic Pressure Peak-Tracking and Linear Stretch Matching

In this research, we present a new real-time score following system for orchestral music. A score of orchestral music includes portions where we can follow the score by adopting the existing method using the short-time spectral analysis and Dynamic Programming (DP) matching. Also, it includes portions where the fundamental tones and overtones of many instruments are complicatedly overlapped; hence, the existing method can not be used. But we can observe distinct acoustic pressure peaks in the latter portions. So we propose a new score following system using these pressure peaks, which should be used in combining with a system using the existing method. In this research, first, we originate a new method with which we can presume pressure peaks from an orchestral score. And then, in order to follow the score, we match these presumed peaks with the corresponding peaks extracted from the performance sound. When we use DP in the process of the matching, it is often occurred that the time values of notes are deviated from the correct values by the nonlinear characteristic of DP. Finally, we propose a new linear stretch matching method to avoid these deviations of time values. We implement a system using this new method and compare its results with those obtain by using DP.
Miniature genome in the marine chordate Oikopleura dioica.

Oikopleura dioica is a small pelagic chordate belonging to the class of larvaceans ([Fig. 1][1]A). Chordates include vertebrates, cephalochordates, and urochordates, and urochordates are divided into ascidians, thaliaceans, and larvaceans. Larvaceans may be derived from the most basal branch of