Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Environment modeling with physiological motion disturbance for surgical teleoperation

In this paper we propose a modeling method for the interaction impedance of a remote soft tissue that contains quasi-periodic physiological motion disturbance. Through this study, it is shown that the interaction with such environment is not passive and its influence should be considered in the teleoperator design. The interaction impedance depends not only on the soft tissue impedance but also on the relationship between the robotic tool motion and the soft tissue motion disturbance. An illustrative case study is presented to demonstrate how to analyze the environment interaction impedance in real application.
A measure of interpretation bias in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

OF THE THESIS A Measure of Interpretation Bias in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by Joseph William Boffa III Master of Arts in Psychology San Diego State University, 2014 Researchers have developed methods of measuring interpretation of ambiguous situations in anxious individuals. However, to our knowledge, no measure exists that would allow the examination of benign (i.e., non-threatening) and threat interpretations in individuals with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The present study outlines the development and validation of such a measure. Using a word-sentence association paradigm (e.g., WSAP,) 202 individuals provided ratings of how well they felt benign and threat words relate to thirteen ambiguous scenarios. Results revealed that individuals with high PTSD symptoms (n = 64) rated threat words as significantly more related to ambiguous sentences than did worry/dysphoric (n = 68) or non-worry/non-dysphoric (n = 70) individuals. We also calculated an interpretation bias by subtracting the relatedness rating for threat words from the relatedness rating for benign words. Thus larger scores revealed a benign bias, or a tendency to endorse that benign words are more related to ambiguous scenarios than threat words. Due to the increased endorsement of threat words in the PTSD group, they displayed a significantly smaller benign bias benign bias than did the other two groups. Our results provide additional evidence for an interpretation bias in individuals experiencing PTSD symptoms, as well as suggest possible implications for the distinction of benign and threat components in cognitive models of PTSD. Furthermore, the current study serves as preliminary evidence of the usefulness of the Word-Sentence Association Paradigm for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (WSAPTSD) as a brief symptom measure for PTSD.
Role of (p)ppGpp in Viability and Biofilm Formation of Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae S8

Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae is a Gram-negative bacterium and the cause of porcine pleuropneumonia. When the bacterium encounters nutritional starvation, the relA-dependent (p)ppGpp-mediated stringent response is activated. The modified nucleotides guanosine 5’-diphosphate 3’-diphosphate (ppGpp) and guanosine 5’-triphosphate 3’-diphosphate (pppGpp) are known to be signaling molecules in other prokaryotes. Here, to investigate the role of (p)ppGpp in A. pleuropneumoniae, we created a mutant A. pleuropneumoniae strain, S8ΔrelA, which lacks the (p)ppGpp-synthesizing enzyme RelA, and investigated its phenotype in vitro. S8ΔrelA did not survive after stationary phase (starvation condition) and grew exclusively as non-extended cells. Compared to the wild-type (WT) strain, the S8ΔrelA mutant had an increased ability to form a biofilm. Transcriptional profiles of early stationary phase cultures revealed that a total of 405 bacterial genes were differentially expressed (including 380 up-regulated and 25 down-regulated genes) in S8ΔrelA as compared with the WT strain. Most of the up-regulated genes are involved in ribosomal structure and biogenesis, amino acid transport and metabolism, translation cell wall/membrane/envelope biogenesis. The data indicate that (p)ppGpp coordinates the growth, viability, morphology, biofilm formation and metabolic ability of A. pleuropneumoniae in starvation conditions. Furthermore, S8ΔrelA could not use certain sugars nor produce urease which has been associated with the virulence of A. pleuropneumoniae, suggesting that (p)ppGpp may directly or indirectly affect the pathogenesis of A. pleuropneumoniae during the infection process. In summary, (p)ppGpp signaling represents an essential component of the regulatory network governing stress adaptation and virulence in A. pleuropneumoniae.
INDEFINITE KERNEL NETWORK WITH DEPENDENT SAMPLING

We study the asymptotical properties of indefinite kernel network with coefficient regularization and dependent sampling. The framework under investigation is different from classical kernel learning. Positive definiteness is not required by the kernel function and the samples are allowed to be weakly dependent with the dependence measured by a strong mixing condition. By a new kernel decomposition technique introduced in [27], two reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces and their associated kernel integral operators are used to characterize the properties and learnability of the hypothesis function class. Capacity independent error bounds and learning rates are deduced.
Simultaneous Approximation to Pairs of Algebraic Numbers

The author uses an elementary lemma on primes dividing binomial coefficients and estimates for primes in arithmetic progressions to sharpen a theorem of J. Rickert on simultaneous approximation to pairs of algebraic numbers. In particular, it is proven that max {∣∣∣∣√2− p1 q ∣∣∣∣ , ∣∣∣∣√3− p2 q ∣∣∣∣} > 10−10q−1.8161 for p1, p2 and q integral. Applications of these estimates are briefly discussed.
Inflammaging increases susceptibility to cigarette smoke-induced COPD

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is related to an abnormal chronic inflammatory response of the lung to mainly cigarette smoke (CS) and the disease risk is increased in aged individuals. The source of this chronic inflammation is due to the repeated and progressive activation of immune cells. We hypothesize that in a chronic CS-induced mouse model, the predisposition to COPD pathogenesis in aged mice is characterized by an elevated immune response compared to young animals. We measured several characteristics of COPD in young and old mice (2 and 12 months of age) exposed to CS for 3 months. CS-exposed aged mice exhibited increased lung compliance (0.061 ± 0.008 vs. 0.055 ± 0.006 ml/cm H2O, p < 0.01), emphysema development (35.36 ± 0.71 vs. 25.31 ± 0.005 μm; p < 0.01) and airway remodeling (2.15 ± 0.37 vs. 1.09 ± 0.64 μm3/μm2; p < 0.01) compared to control animals, which was not seen in CS-exposed young mice. Quantification of lung tissue inflammation revealed a significantly greater volume of inducible bronchus-associated lymphoid tissue structures in aged mice after CS exposure (5.94 ± 2.89 vs. 2.37 ± 1.69 μm3/μm2; p < 0.01). Our results indicate that age-induced lung inflammation is further elevated after CS exposure in old mice, potentially via an age-induced change in immune cell susceptibility to CS thereby accelerating the pathophysiological hallmarks of COPD.
SmarterDeals: a context-aware deal recommendation system based on the smartercontext engine

Daily-deal applications are popular implementations of on-line advertising strategies that offer products and services to users based on their personal profiles. The current implementations are effective but can frustrate users with irrelevant deals due to stale profiles. To exploit these applications fully, deals must become smarter and context-aware. This paper presents SmarterDeals, our deal recommendation system that exploits users' changing personal context information to deliver highly relevant offers. SmarterDeals relies on recommendation algorithms based on collaborative filtering, and SmarterContext, our adaptive context management framework. SmarterContext provides SmarterDeals with up-to-date information about users' locations and product preferences gathered from their past and present web interactions. For many deal categories the accuracy of SmarterDeals is between 3% and 8% better than the approaches we used as baselines. For some categories, and in terms of multiplicative relative performance, SmarterDeals outperforms related approaches by as much as 173.4%, and 37.5% on average.
Cross-Linguistic Syntactic Priming Effect on EFL Learners' Immediate Syntactic Structure Formation

After a message to be conveyed emerges, how a syntactic outline of the intended sentence is constructed is an intriguing issue. Previous research shows that people are more likely to use a particular syntactic structure if that structure has recently been employed. However, seldom have studies explored cross-linguistic syntactic priming effect on sentence production between Chinese and English. We investigated whether cross-linguistically syntactic priming might occur between the two languages. By manipulating dative sentence structure in English and Chinese, syntactic priming tasks were conducted on Chinese L1 (first language) EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners to test specifically whether the effect of processing a particular dative syntactic structure formation in Chinese L1 would affect subsequent formation of dative structure in English L2 (second language) and vice versa. A spoken sentence translation task was employed. Participants read aloud a prime sentence in either English or Chinese and then immediately translated the sentence into the other language. Sentence production of the participants were recorded and analyzed in terms of the realization of argument structures of the predicates. Cross-linguistic syntactic priming was found to apply bi-directionally from Chinese to English and from English to Chinese, with PO (prepositional-object) dative structure more dominant than DO (double-object) dative structure both in Chinese and in English.
Supine sleep and positional sleep apnea after acute ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage

OBJECTIVE: Obstructive sleep apnea is frequent during the acute phase of stroke, and it is associated with poorer outcomes. A well-established relationship between supine sleep and obstructive sleep apnea severity exists in non-stroke patients. This study investigated the frequency of supine sleep and positional obstructive sleep apnea in patients with ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke. METHODS: Patients who suffered their first acute stroke, either ischemic or hemorrhagic, were subjected to a full polysomnography, including the continuous monitoring of sleep positions, during the first night after symptom onset. Obstructive sleep apnea severity was measured using the apnea-hypopnea index, and the NIHSS measured stroke severity. RESULTS: We prospectively studied 66 stroke patients. The mean age was 57.6±11.5 years, and the mean body mass index was 26.5±4.9. Obstructive sleep apnea (apnea-hypopnea index ≥5) was present in 78.8% of patients, and the mean apnea-hypopnea index was 29.7±26.6. The majority of subjects (66.7%) spent the entire sleep time in a supine position, and positional obstructive sleep apnea was clearly present in the other 23.1% of cases. A positive correlation was observed between the NIHSS and sleep time in the supine position (rs = 0.5; p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Prolonged supine positioning during sleep was highly frequent after stroke, and it was related to stroke severity. Positional sleep apnea was observed in one quarter of stroke patients, which was likely underestimated during the acute phase of stroke. The adequate positioning of patients during sleep during the acute phase of stroke may decrease obstructive respiratory events, regardless of the stroke subtype.
Using a phonocardiography in a pulse wave velocity measurement

A data acquisition is realised using purely non-invasive measuring mode, i.e. phonocardiography, in this project. A blood pulse wave velocity (PWV) in human arterial tree is determined by analysing phonocardiographic (PCG) records. Two signals are needed at minimum for an estimation of the pulse wave velocity. All of these signals have to be measured simultaneously from different points on a human body using electronic phonendoscopes. Pressure and sound manifestations of the pulse wave spreading are recorded in a cardiovascular system by this measuring device. Recorded signals are transferred to the computer in a real time mode, where they are saved for a next data processing (filtering, standardisation, and analysis). The pulse wave velocity is estimated using a cross-correlation analysis of recorded phonocardiographic signals.
To tag or not to tag -: harvesting adjacent metadata in large-scale tagging systems

We present HAMLET, a suite of principles, scoring models and algorithms to automatically propagate metadata along edges in a document neighborhood. As a showcase scenario we consider tag prediction in community-based Web 2.0 tagging applications. Experiments using real-world data demonstrate the viability of our approach in large-scale environments where tags are scarce. To the best of our knowledge, HAMLET is the first system to promote an efficient and precise reuse of shared metadata in highly dynamic, large-scale Web 2.0 tagging systems.
Power variations of multi-port routers in an application-specific NoC design : A case study

In this research, we analyze the power variations present in a router having varied number of ports, in a Networks- on-Chip. The work is divided into two sections, projecting the merits and shortcomings of a multi-port router from the aspect of power consumption. First, we evaluate the power variations present during the transfers between various port pairs in a multi-port router. The power gains achieved through careful port selection during the mapping phase of the NoC design are shown. Secondly, through exhaustive experimentation, we discuss the IR-drop related issues that arise when using large multi-port routers.
Robust design for bilateral teleoperation system with Markov jumping parameters

This paper presents a robust design for the general bilateral teleoperation system with Markov jumping parameters. Although passivity-based approach and robust design-based approach can stabilize the bilateral teleoperation system, sufficient conditions are too conservative. In this paper, requirements for a general bilateral teleoperation system are given first. Next, time delays on the Internet are modeled by a Markov process with nine states, three for the forward communication branch and three for the backward communication branch. Based on the requirements of the master and the slave controllers, the standard robust design are carried out. Then, with the model of Internet time delays, the bilateral teleoperation system is reconstructed by a Markov jumping system. Based on the mode-dependent stability conditions for the stochastic time delay system, the closed-loop controller is designed to obtain the less conservative stable system and to therefore improve the performance of tracking and transparency. Simulation has been carried out and the results verify the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed approach.
Joint Coordinated Precoding and Discrete Rate Selection in Multicell MIMO Networks

Many practical wireless communications systems select their transmit rate from a finite set of modulation and coding schemes, which correspond to a set of discrete rates. In this paper, we therefore formulate a joint coordinated precoding and discrete rate selection problem for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multicell networks. Compared to the common assumption of using the continuous Shannon rates as the user utilities, explicitly accounting for the discrete rates more accurately models practical wireless communication systems. The optimization problem that we formulate is combinatorial and non-convex, however, and is thus hard to solve. We therefore rewrite the problem using a discontinuous rate function, which we then bound using its concave envelope in some domain. Based on block coordinate descent, we provide a convergent resource allocation algorithm which can be implemented in a semi-distributed fashion. Numerical performance evaluation shows performance gains when the discrete rates are optimized using our model, as compared to the traditional methods which use the continuous Shannon rates as the user utilities.
A mutation in glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase alters endocytosis in CHO cells

The CHO cell mutant FD 1.3. 25 exhibits both increased accumulation and altered distribution of endocytosed fluid phase tracers. Neither the rate of tracer internalization nor the kinetics of recycling from early endosomes was affected, but exocytosis from late endocytic compartments appeared to be decreased in the mutant. Endocytosed tracer moved more rapidly to the cell poles in FD1.3. 25 than in wild type cells. An abundant 36-kD polypeptide was found associated with taxol-polymerized microtubules in preparations from wild type and mutant; in the former but not the latter this polypeptide could be dissociated by incubation of the microtubules in ATP or high salt. The 36-kD polypeptide co- electrophoresed in two dimensions with the monomer of the glycolytic enzyme glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH). Analysis of cDNA clones showed that the mutant is heterozygous for this enzyme, with approximately 25% of the GAPDH RNA containing a single nucleotide change resulting in substitution of Ser for Pro234, a residue that is conserved throughout evolution. Stable transfectants of wild type cells expressing the mutant monomer at approximately 15% of the total enzyme exhibited the various changes in endocytosis observed in FD1.3. 25.
The MMASCS multi-modal annotated synchronous corpus of audio, video, facial motion and tongue motion data of normal, fast and slow speech

In this paper, we describe and analyze a corpus of speech data that we have recorded in multiple modalities simultaneously: facial motion via optical motion capturing, tongue motion via electro-magnetic articulography, as well as conventional video and high-quality audio. The corpus consists of 320 phonetically diverse sentences uttered by a male Austrian German speaker at normal, fast and slow speaking rate. We analyze the influence of speaking rate on phone durations and on tongue motion. Furthermore, we investigate the correlation between tongue and facial motion. The data corpus is available free of charge for research use, including phonetic annotations and a playback software which visualizes the 3D data, from the website http://cordelia.ftw. at/mmascs
APUNTES SOBRE SOCIOLOGÍA DE LA EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR EN CONTEXTO INTERNACIONAL, REGIONAL Y LOCAL* Notes on higher education sociology in international , regional and local context

El presente articulo analiza el estadio de desarrollo en que se encuentra la sociologia de la educacion superior en los paises del norte, con enfasis en los Estados Unidos y Europa, y su grado de implantacion en America Latina de habla hispana y en Chile, en particular. Revisa los procesos de institucionalizacion academica, profesionalizacion de la investigacion y produccion disciplinaria en los paises centrales y su posterior evolucion por difusion geografica, inclusion de nuevos temas, enfasis interdisciplinarios, diferenciacion y especializacion de enfoques y por efecto de un creciente foco comparativo en el estudio de los sistemas nacionales. Muestra enseguida la debilidad de esos mismos procesos de institucionalizacion profesionalizacion y produccion en America Latina, en contraste con la contribucion realizada por esta region en terminos de algunas perspectivas y topicos de estudio caracteristicos, tales como los enunciados en torno a un 'modelo latinoamericano' de universidad, su vinculo con la politica y la sociedad civil, el rol de los movimientos estudiantiles, el impacto de los regimenes autoritarios sobre la educacion superior y el cultivo de un enfoque critico (o critico y alienado a la vez) frente a los procesos de globalizacion, mercadizacion y progresivo privatismo que envuelven a la educacion superior de la region. Finalmente, a la manera de un breve estudio de caso, se analiza la incipiente y aun precaria institucionalizacion de un campo de investigacion disciplinaria de la educacion superior en Chile y los tipos de investigadores que a el concurren. Se cuantifica y caracteriza la produccion de los distintos grupos de investigadores mostrando su incipiente desarrollo, su vinculo con los debates de politica publica del sector y su inclinacion localista y falta de ambicion teorica.
Automated Annotation for Medical Discharge Summaries : A Preliminary Study

Presumably, with sufficient training data, it would be possible to build a classifier for each of the twenty predetermined complication labels. However since our training set consists of only a hundred and forty patients in total, and 14 of the 20 labels were associated with 10 or fewer patients, this approach was clearly infeasible. Similarly for the second task, there were only twenty patients labeled with additional complications. Instead of relying solely on manually annotated training data, we leverage it in order to devolop a pattern matcher that automatically generates more “labeled” data. This output is then used to train a classifier that recognizes whether or not a particular sentence contains some mention of a complication. The classifier is feature engineered to capture the general characteristics (linguistic and otherwise) of any complication mention, that is, it captures instances from a much broader set than the twenty complications the pattern matcher was developed for. 2 Background
Analysis of Risk in Construction Automation Investment

The decision to invest in construction automation rests upon the financial and intangible benefits. Although a selection of associated costs may be obtained from suppliers or estimated using managerial judgement there is an inherent level of uncertainty surrounding the annual cash flows. Analysis of investment risk may play an important role in the introduction of automated construction technology to UK construction engineering. Stochastic risk simulation may be applied to analyse the uncertainty surrounding the investment decision faced by UK contractors and plant hire firms. Using Monte Carlo sampling techniques, risk profiles have been generated for a tele-operated system from a financial model replacing discrete estimations with a range of subjective probability density functions. It is concluded that there appears to be downside financial risk associated with the decision to invest in the chosen example system and that additional objective data is essential for accurate financial risk analysis. In opposition with the down-side risk associated with the chosen system, the nontangible rewards appear to favour investment in automated construction technology.
Analysis for Shared and Distributed Memory Machines

Advances in programming languages and parallelizing compilers are making parallel computers easier to use by providing a high-level portable programming model that protects software investment. However, experience has shown that simply finding parallelism is not always sufficient for obtaining good performance from today’s multiprocessors, largely because the cost of interprocessor communication is much greater than computation or local memory accesses. To overcome this problem, I believe compilers need to perform communication analysis to locate and optimize interprocessor communication. I show how communication analysis has been used to improve performance for both shared and distributed memory machines, and describe a new project to apply these techniques to compilers for software distributed-shared-memory (DSM) systems.