Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Continuous 2D control via state-machine triggered by endogenous sensory discrimination and a fast brain switch

Objective. Brain computer interfacing (BCI) is a promising method to control assistive systems for patients with severe disabilities. Recently, we have presented a novel BCI approach that combines an electrotactile menu and a brain switch, which allows the user to trigger many commands robustly and efficiently. However, the commands are timed to periodic tactile cues and this may challenge online control. In the present study, therefore, we implemented and evaluated a novel approach for online closed-loop control using the proposed BCI. Approach. Eleven healthy subjects used the novel method to move a cursor in a 2D space. To assure robust control with properly timed commands, the BCI was integrated within a state machine allowing the subject to start the cursor movement in the selected direction and asynchronously stop the cursor. The brain switch was controlled using motor execution (ME) or imagery (MI) and the menu implemented four (straight movements) or eight commands (straight and diagonal movements). Main results. The results showed a high completion rate of a target hitting task (~97% and ~92% for ME and MI, respectively), with a small number of collisions, when four-channel control was used. There was no significant difference in outcome measures between MI and ME, and performance was similar for four and eight commands. Significance. These results demonstrate that the novel state-based scheme driven by a robust BCI can be successfully utilized for online control. Therefore, it can be an attractive solution for providing the user an online-control interface with many commands, which is difficult to achieve using classic BCI solutions.
Imaging necrosis during treatment is associated with worse survival in EORTC 26101 study

Objective Imaging necrosis on MRI scans was assessed and compared to outcome measures of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer 26101 phase III trial that compared single-agent lomustine with lomustine plus bevacizumab in patients with progressive glioblastoma. Methods MRI in this post hoc analysis was available for 359 patients (lomustine = 127, lomustine + bevacizumab = 232). First, imaging necrosis at baseline being formally measurable (>10 × 10 mm, given 2 slices) was assessed. At weeks 6 and 12 of treatment, it was analyzed whether this necrosis remained stable or increased >25% calculated by 2 perpendicular diameters or whether necrosis developed de novo. Univariate and multivariate associations of baseline necrosis with overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were tested by log-rank test. Hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence interval were calculated by Cox model. Results Imaging necrosis at baseline was detected in 191 patients (53.2%) and was associated with worse OS and PFS in univariate, but not in multivariate analysis. Baseline necrosis was predictive for OS in the lomustine-only group (HR 1.46, p = 0.018). At weeks 6 and 12 of treatment, increase of baseline necrosis and de novo necrosis were strongly associated with worse OS and PFS in univariate and multivariate analysis (PFS both p < 0.001, OS univariate p < 0.001, multivariate p = 0.0046). Conclusion Increase of and new development of imaging necrosis during treatment is a negative prognostic factor for patients with progressive glioblastoma. These data call for consideration of integrating the assessment of imaging necrosis as a separate item into the MRI response assessment criteria.
Changes in phosphorus fractions associated with soil chemical properties under long-term organic and inorganic fertilization in paddy soils of southern China

The identification of phosphorus (P) fractions is essential for understanding the transformation and availability of P in paddy soils. To investigate the soil P fractions associated with soil properties under long-term fertilization, we selected three fertilization treatments, including no fertilization (CK), chemical fertilizers (NPK) and chemical fertilizers combined with manure (NPKM), from three long-term experiments located in Nanchang (NC), Jinxian (JX) and Ningxiang (NX). The results showed that chemical fertilizers combined with manure (NPKM) significantly (P ≤ 0.05) increased the soil total phosphorus, Olsen P and soil organic matter (SOM) by 2, 3 and 1 times, respectively, compared with the NPK treatment, and by 4, 17 and 2 times, respectively, compared with the CK treatment. NPKM significantly increased the grain yield compared with CK and NPK at all sites. The apparent P balance with NPK was higher in NC and NX but lower in JX compared with NPKM. Hedley fractionation revealed the predominance of most of the organic and inorganic phosphorus (Po and Pi) fractions with long-term fertilization, especially with the NPKM treatment, at all sites. The nonlabile P pool decreased by 14% and 18% whereas the moderately labile P pool proportions increased by 3 and 6 times with the NPK and NPKM treatments, respectively, compared to the CK treatment. The labile P pool showed a significant positive relationship with the SOM, total P and Olsen P contents. The moderately labile P was positively correlated with the total P and Olsen P. A significant positive correlation was observed between soil pH and the nonlabile P pool. Redundancy analysis revealed that the moderately labile P fraction (HCl dil. Pi fraction) was remarkably increased by the NPKM treatment and significantly correlated with the soil pH and total P concentration. The labile P fraction (NaHCO3-Pi) showed a strong relationship with the Olsen P and total P. However, the residual P fraction was negatively correlated with the HCl. dil. Pi fraction. We concluded that NPKM application improved P availability by many folds compared to NPK, which could lead to environmental pollution; therefore, the rate of combined application of manure and chemical fertilizer should be reduced compared to chemical fertilizer inputs to minimize the wastage of resources and environmental P losses.
Nociceptive pulmonary‐cardiac reflexes are altered in the spontaneously hypertensive rat

We investigated the cardiovascular and respiratory responses of the normotensive Wistar‐Kyoto (WKY) rat and the spontaneously hypertensive (SH) rat to inhalation and intravenous injection of the noxious stimuli allyl isothiocyanate (AITC). AITC inhalation evoked atropine‐sensitive bradycardia in conscious WKY rats, and evoked atropine‐sensitive bradycardia and atenolol‐sensitive tachycardia with premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) in conscious SH rats. Intravenous injection of AITC evoked bradycardia but no tachycardia/PVCs in conscious SHs, while inhalation and injection of AITC caused similar bradypnoea in conscious SH and WKY rats. Anaesthesia (inhaled isoflurane) inhibited the cardiac reflexes evoked by inhaled AITC but not injected AITC. Data indicate the presence of a de novo nociceptive pulmonary‐cardiac reflex triggering sympathoexcitation in SH rats, and this reflex is dependent on vagal afferents but is not due to steady state blood pressure or due to remodelling of vagal efferent function.
The equitable contributions of environment, management and restoration status on grassland diversity and composition

Powers, RaeAnn C. , "The equitable contributions of environment, management and restoration status on grassland diversity and composition" (2014). Plant composition is controlled by a combination of environmental, biotic, historical and management factors. Although there has been much focus on restoring grassland diversity, it is unclear which factors and/or interactions of factors are constraining diversity in grasslands and the relative influences of different factors. We measured soil fertility, soil texture, grazing intensity, fire frequency and plant cover in 694 plots, located within 33 remnant and restored fields in managed grasslands in the central Great Plains. Using univariate (general linear model) and multivariate (PERMANOVA) analyses, we identified significant factors and their relative contributions to plant richness, evenness, floristic quality index (FQI) and composition. We found that species richness declines with nitrogen across all fields; however, remnant fields have higher species richness for any level of soil nitrogen. Remnant fields also have significantly more soil nitrogen than restored fields. Increased grazing intensity correlates with increased richness. Conversely, evenness and FQI are only affected by burn frequency. We found species composition is equitably controlled by environment, management and restoration status, explaining over one-third of the total variation. Soil nitrogen has the largest effect on composition but it is not exponentially greater than soil texture, grazing intensity, fire frequency and restoration status. We performed an indicator species analysis to identify species associated with each environmental and management factor. Indicator species analysis reveals that the differences in environment and management maintain high beta diversity; the extremes of every factor maintain plant communities with similar floristic quality indices (FQI) and proportions of native/exotic species. Our results reinforce the premise that a complexity of drivers control ecosystems; no single management factor or environmental factor controls plant composition. Maintaining a diversity of management intensities and regimes helps sustain plant diversity across a variable landscape. ©2014 ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the large group of people who made this possible for me. Jean Knops, for bearing with my unending questions and for your support through this process. In addition to being the general awesome numbers guy on this project, my co-advisor, Chad Brassil, swooped in at the critical hour and nurtured my growth as a writer and scientist. Travis Hinkelman provided much needed statistical support and R-coding. provided assistance in the field and lab. Thanks for all the laughter, guys! The Nature Conservancy and the Crane Trust allowed …
RESP: A Computer Aided OWL REasoner Selection Process

Existing approaches for selecting the most appropriate reasoner for different semantic applications mainly relies on discussions between application developers and reasoner experts. However this approach will become inadequate with the increasing adoption of Semantic Web technologies in applications from different domains and the rapid development of OWL reasoning technologies. This work proposes RESP, a computer aided reasoner selection process designed to perform reasoner selection for different applications and so reduce the effort and communication overhead required to select the most appropriate reasoner. Preliminary evaluation results show that RESP successfully helps application developers to select the most appropriate reasoner, or at least narrow down the number of candidate reasoners to consider. Contributions of this work are two folds: (1) the design of a (relatively simple but useful) computer aided OWL reasoner selection process, and (2) the identification and discussion of a set of example application characteristics that can affect the OWL reasoner selection.
A Systematic Study of the Final Masses of Gas Giant Planets

We construct an analytic model for the gas accretion rate onto planets embedded in protoplanetary disks as a function of planetary mass, viscosity, scale height, and unperturbed surface density, and systematically study the long-term accretion and final masses of gas giant planets. We first derive an analytical formula for the surface density profile near the planetary orbit from considerations of the balance of force and dynamical stability. Using it in the empirical formula of normalized gas accretion rate that is derived based on hydrodynamic simulations, we then simulate the mass evolution of gas giant planets in viscously evolving disks. We finally determine the final mass as a function of semimajor axis of the planet. We find that the disk can be divided into three regions characterized by different processes by which the final mass is determined. In the inner region, the planet grows quickly and forms a deep gap to suppress the growth by itself before disk dissipation. The final mass shows the same trend as the mass determined by the viscous condition for gap opening, but is about 10 times larger than that. In the intermediate region, the disk's viscous diffusion limits gas accretion onto planets before deep gap formation. The final mass can be up to the disk mass, when the disk's viscous evolution occurs faster than disk evaporation. In the outer region, planets capture only tiny amounts of gas within the disk lifetime to form Neptune-like planets. We also derive analytic formulae for the final masses in the different regions and the locations of the boundaries, which are helpful to gain a systematic understanding of the masses of gas giant planets.
Usability in agile development: A systematic mapping study

Background: Interest in the integration of the agile software development process (ASDP) and user-centred design (UCD) has grown over the last decade. However, there are not many papers that study this issue holistically and uncover the current state of this integration. Aim: This study sets out to answer the following research question: What is the current state of integration between agile processes and usability? Method: We conduct a systematic mapping study (SMS). A SMS is a form of systematic literature review that aims to identify and classify the research papers published about a specified issue. Results: We retrieved a total of 161 primary studies, which we categorized according to four criteria: process, practice, team and technology integration. The largest group refers to process integration with a total of 76 primary studies. Judging by the increase in the number of publications over the last decade, the integration of human-computer interaction (HCI) activities and techniques into the ASDP is an issue of notable interest. Conclusions: There are very few papers that study the literature holistically and report the current state of usability in the ASDP. Additionally, there are no formalized proposals for adopting usability techniques in ASDP.
A genetic approach for adaptive multiagent control in heterarchical manufacturing systems

In this paper, we apply genetic algorithms to adapt the decision strategies of autonomous controllers in a part-driven heterarchical manufacturing system. The control agents use pre-assigned decision rules only for a limited amount of time, and obey a rule replacement policy propagating the most successful rules to the subsequent populations of concurrently operating agents. The twofold objective of this approach is to automatically optimize the performance of the control system during the steady-state unperturbed conditions of the manufacturing floor, and to improve the reactions of the agents to unforeseen disturbances (e.g., failures, shortages of materials) by adapting their decision strategies. Results on a detailed discrete event model of a multiagent heterarchical manufacturing system confirm the effectiveness of the approach.
Effects of Chronic Mild Stress in Female Bax Inhibitor-1-Gene Knockout Mice

Objective The anti-apoptotic protein Bax inhibitor-1 (BI-1) is a regulator of apoptosis linked to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, and BI-1-/- mice exhibit increased sensitivity to tissue damage. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of BI-1 in the pathogenesis of chronic mild stress (CMS)-induced depression-like behaviors in BI-1-/- mice. Methods We delivered CMS for 2 or 6 weeks in BI-1-knockout and wild-type mice. Control groups of BI-1-knockout and wild-type mice were left undisturbed. The measured parameters were sucrose consumption at weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, spontaneous locomotion, and a forced swimming test (FST) at weeks 2 and 6. Results Significant decreases in sucrose consumption and increases in immobility time in the FST were observed in both stress groups compared with the non-stress groups. Interestingly, at week 2, but not at week 6, BI-1-/--stress mice showed less sucrose intake and greater immobility time than did BI-1+/+-stress mice. Conclusion These results suggest that BI-1 may play role in protecting against the depressogenic effects of CMS in the short term, but not in the long term. Further study is required to deepen understanding of the role of BI-1 in protecting against depression.
Energy efficient relay node placement in a eta-mu fading channel

In this paper we examine the effect of relay (R) placement on the energy efficiency of a wireless sensor network (WSN) operating over a n-μ fading channel. We consider n-μ statistics for modeling the small scale fading affected wireless channel between the sensor nodes. The n-μ model is quite general in nature and it encompasses other popular fading models such as Rayleigh, Nakagami etc. In order to address the demand for high data rate WSN applications, spectrally efficient M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) is adopted. Transmission between a pair of sensor nodes is benefitted from a third node, placed in a collinear manner (i.e. on the same straight line, joining source and destination) between source (S) and destination (D), and acting as a relay (R). The relay operates in a selective decode and forward (DF) mode. It has been seen that it is more beneficial to place the R closer to S than D. We have also investigated the effective relay placement region and how different design parameters such as constellation size (M), path loss exponent (n) and fading parameters (n and μ) affect the placement region.
Gfi1‐GCE inducible Cre line for hair cell‐specific gene manipulation in mouse inner ear

Tissue‐specific inducible Cre recombinase mouse lines allow precise genetic manipulations in spatiotemporal manners and are pivotal for functional studies of genes during development and in adults. Growth factor independence 1 (GFI1) is an essential transcription factor expressed in the hair cells of mouse inner ear and Gfi1 locus serves as an excellent anchor site to drive the expression of inducible Cre recombinase in mouse inner hair cells. In this study, we have generated Gfi1‐P2A‐GFP‐CreERT2 (Gfi1‐GCE) knock‐in mouse line by in‐frame fusion of a self‐cleaving GCE to the C‐terminus of GFI1. We have shown that as predicted, the expression of GCE and GFI1 was detected specifically in the cytosol and nuclei of hair cells, respectively, of uninduced Gfi1‐GCE mice, suggesting the successful cleavage and simultaneous expression of GFI1 and GCE. In addition, the in‐frame fusion of the self‐cleaving GCE does not interrupt the function of Gfi1 in the inner ear. Administration of tamoxifen leads to nuclear translocation of GCE and results in an efficient activation of tdTomato reporter gene expression specifically in most hair cells throughout development and in adults. Thus, this inducible Gfi1‐GCE mouse line is a highly efficient Cre deleter and is suitable for gene manipulation in developing and adult inner ear hair cells.
Face super-resolution based on singular value decomposition

In this paper, a novel face image super-resolution approach based on singular value decomposition (SVD) is proposed. We prove that the singular values of an image at one resolution have approximately linear relationships with their counterparts at other resolutions. This makes the estimation of the singular values of the corresponding HR face images more reliable. From the signal-processing point of view, this can effectively preserve and reconstruct the dominant information in the HR face image. Interpolating the two other matrices obtained from the SVD of a LR face image does not change either the primary facial structure or the pattern of the face image. Furthermore, the mapping scheme for interpolating the matrices can be viewed as a “coarse-to-fine” estimation of HR face images, which uses the mapping matrices learned from the corresponding reference image pairs. Experimental results show that the proposed super-resolution scheme is effective and efficient.
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Do Bank Loans and Local Amenities Explain Chinese Urban House Prices?

Based on Chinese city-level data from 1999 to 2012 and controlling for geological, environmental, and social diversity, this study suggests that credit plays a significant role in driving up house prices after the Great Recession, whereas property prices only influence bank lending before 2008. Local amenities such as higher education, green infrastructure, healthcare, and climate also positively affect house prices. Moreover, the impacts of bank loans on housing prices tend to be related to the level of amenities, suggesting an integrated approach (i.e. combining macroeconomic and urban economic variables) of housing market for the future research. University Brown Bag seminar, and especially anonymous referees for their comments. In addition, we are grateful to City University of Hong Kong for its financial support. The work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [Project No. CityU 144709]. The hospitality of the ISER, Osaka University is also gratefully acknowledged. The views in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the China Merchants Group, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System.
Hybrid Feature Selection and Weighting Method Based on Binary Particle Swarm Optimization

This work proposes an optimization technique based on binary particle swarm optimization that performs feature selection and feature weighting simultaneously. In the optimization process, each member of the population is described as a vector having three parts: i) one weight per feature (feature weighting), ii) one binary value per feature indicating the presence or the absence of the feature (feature selection), and, iii) the number of neighbors of the kNN classifier. After optimization, this vector is used as a mask to generate a new subset of features that is evaluated using the kNN classifier. The experimental study was performed on public datasets and showed that the proposed technique obtains better accuracy and reduction rates than state-of-the-art techniques.