Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Noninvasive Brain-Actuated Wheelchair Based on a P300 Neurophysiological Protocol and Automated Navigation

This paper describes a new noninvasive brain-actuated wheelchair that relies on a P300 neurophysiological protocol and automated navigation. When in operation, the user faces a screen displaying a real-time virtual reconstruction of the scenario and concentrates on the location of the space to reach. A visual stimulation process elicits the neurological phenomenon, and the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal processing detects the target location. This location is transferred to the autonomous navigation system that drives the wheelchair to the desired location while avoiding collisions with obstacles in the environment detected by the laser scanner. This concept gives the user the flexibility to use the device in unknown and evolving scenarios. The prototype was validated with five healthy participants in three consecutive steps: screening (an analysis of three different groups of visual interface designs), virtual-environment driving, and driving sessions with the wheelchair. On the basis of the results, this paper reports the following evaluation studies: 1) a technical evaluation of the device and all functionalities; 2) a users' behavior study; and 3) a variability study. The overall result was that all the participants were able to successfully operate the device with relative ease, thus showing a great adaptation as well as a high robustness and low variability of the system.
Air Pollution and Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Nested Case–Control Study among Members of a Northern California Health Plan

Background: Ecologic analyses, case–case comparisons, and animal experiments suggest positive associations between air pollution and tuberculosis. Objectives: We evaluated this hypothesis in a large sample, which yielded results that are applicable to the general population. Methods: We conducted a case–control study nested within a cohort of Kaiser Permanente of Northern California members. All active pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) cases newly diagnosed between 1996 and 2010 (n = 2,309) were matched to two controls (n = 4,604) by age, sex, and race/ethnicity on the index date corresponding with the case diagnosis date. Average individual-level concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3), and particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ≤ 2.5 μm (PM2.5) and 10 μm (PM10) for 2 years before diagnosis/entry into the study were estimated using measurements from the California Air Resources Board monitor closest to the participant’s residence. Results: In single-pollutant adjusted conditional logistic regression models, the pulmonary TB odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) for the highest quintile (vs. lowest) were 1.50 (95% CI: 1.15, 1.95) for CO and 1.42 (95% CI: 1.10, 1.84) for NO2. Corresponding estimates were higher among never [1.68 (95% CI: 1.26, 2.24)] than ever [1.19 (95% CI: 0.74, 1.92)] smokers for CO. In contrast, for NO2, estimates were higher among ever [1.81 (95% CI: 1.13, 2.91)] than never [1.29 (95% CI: 0.97, 1.71)] smokers. O3 was inversely associated for smokers [0.66 (95% CI: 0.43, 1.02)] and never smokers [0.65 (95% CI: 0.52, 0.81)]. No other consistent patterns were observed. Conclusions: In this first, to our knowledge, U.S. nested case–control study on air pollution and pulmonary TB, we observed positive associations with ambient CO and NO2, which require confirmation. Citation: Smith GS, Van Den Eeden SK, Garcia C, Shan J, Baxter R, Herring AH, Richardson DB, Van Rie A, Emch M, Gammon MD. 2016. Air pollution and pulmonary tuberculosis: a nested case-control study among members of a Northern California health plan. Environ Health Perspect 124:761–768; http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/ehp.1408166
Prevention and treatment of renal disease in insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.

A S DISCUSSED in previous chapters, the development of diabetic nephropathy is a longterm, complicated process, probably involving not only metabolism and hormones, but also hemodynamics. The final stage, with extinct renal function and uremia, is different from other end-stage renal failure (ESRF) situations, because the patients usually show evidence of severe cardiac and vascular disease, including retinopathy with possible blindness. This chapter deals only with the development of renal failure, but along with changes in renal function characteristic changes also occur concomitantly in the eyes and in the vasculature as a whole. These disease processes are likely to be multifactorial, developing over many years. ’ Usually diabetic nephropathy takes about three decades to develop. Three main stages may be defined, each lasting more or less a decade, after the acute changes at the initial diagnosis of diabetes (Stage I), which involve abnormalities in the kidney. Stage II (in the first decade) usually lasts 10 years, and is characterized by renal hyperfunction and hypertrophy without any clinical or laboratory signs of disease, but structural changes are developing. Long-term follow-up studies have, however, shown that patients with severe early renal involvement (hyperfiltration) are those most prone to development of late nephropathy. In the following decade (Stage III) a characteristic abnormality develops, microalbuminuria, defined as an elevated urinary albumin excretion rate below the proteinuric range. This, too, is a slow process, and the increase in albuminuria from normal to the proteinuric level may also last about 10 years, although with considerable variations in rate of progression. The third decade (Stage IV) is classical, clinically apparent diabetic nephropathy, known since the 193Os, with proteinuria and eventually
SlickDeque: High Throughput and Low Latency Incremental Sliding-Window Aggregation

Online analytics, in most advanced scientific and business applications, rely heavily on the efficient execution of large numbers of Aggregate Continuous Queries (ACQs). Incremental slidingwindow computation is used in the state-of-the-art ACQ processing algorithms (FlatFIT, TwoStacks, and DABA) to avoid the reevaluation of the aggregate value of the window from scratch on every update. FlatFIT and TwoStacks aim to increase throughput, and DABA to minimize latency, while all process invertible and non-invertible aggregates uniformly. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm, SlickDeque, that distinguishes the execution between invertible and non-invertible aggregates and offers better throughput and latency for both types. In addition, our method requires less memory and efficiently supports multi-ACQ processing. We theoretically show the time and space complexity advantages of SlickDeque and experimentally validate them using a real workload. Specifically, our approach maintains 283% lower latency spikes on average while achieving up to 19% throughput improvement in a single query environment and up to 345% improvement in amulti-query environment over the state-of-the-art approaches along with requiring up to 5 times less memory.
Soft Sweeps Are the Dominant Mode of Adaptation in the Human Genome

The degree to which adaptation in recent human evolution shapes genetic variation remains controversial. This is in part due to the limited evidence in humans for classic “hard selective sweeps,” wherein a novel beneficial mutation rapidly sweeps through a population to fixation. However, positive selection may often proceed via “soft sweeps” acting on mutations already present within a population. Here we examine recent positive selection across six human populations using a powerful machine learning approach that is sensitive to both hard and soft sweeps. We found evidence that soft sweeps are widespread and account for the vast majority of recent human adaptation. Surprisingly, our results also suggest that linked positive selection affects patterns of variation across much of the genome, and may increase the frequencies of deleterious mutations. Our results also reveal insights into the role of sexual selection, cancer risk, and central nervous system development in recent human evolution.
Multi-modal panoramic 3D outdoor datasets for place categorization

We present two multi-modal panoramic 3D outdoor (MPO) datasets for semantic place categorization with six categories: forest, coast, residential area, urban area and indoor/outdoor parking lot. The first dataset consists of 650 static panoramic scans of dense (9,000,000 points) 3D color and reflectance point clouds obtained using a FARO laser scanner with synchronized color images. The second dataset consists of 34,200 real-time panoramic scans of sparse (70,000 points) 3D reflectance point clouds obtained using a Velodyne laser scanner while driving a car. The datasets were obtained in the city of Fukuoka, Japan and are publicly available in [1], [2]. In addition, we compare several approaches for semantic place categorization with best results of 96.42% (dense) and 89.67% (sparse).
Is Drift a Serious Alternative to Natural Selection as an Explanation of Complex Adaptive Traits?

‘There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. ’ —Donald Rumsfeld, 2003, President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, on the subject of the U.S. government’s failure to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
Effect of Mitomycin-C Inactivation on Expression Pattern of Pluripotency Related Transcriptional Factors in Buffalo Fetal Fibroblasts and Wharton's Jelly

Present study examined the effect of mitomycin-C (MMC) treatment on expression profile of pluripotency genes (Oct-4, Sox-2 and Nanog) in buffalo fetal fibroblasts (BFFs) and Wharton's jelly (BWJ) stem cells, generally used as a feeder cell support to grow the pluripotent stem cells. In a time dependent study, a variable response in relative mRNA expression of pluripotency genes was observed, expression of Oct-4 in BFF declined immediately post MMC inactivation but a significant elevation (P 0.05) in BWJ. Results of this study suggests that MMC inactivation of the cells used as feeder support modulates the expression profile of pluripotency genes and this alteration in gene expression pattern is variable in different cell types.
Numerical Simulation on Interlayer Interference of Thin and Interbed Reservoirs

In the reservoirs with inhomogeneous layers,when it was produced by commingled production or commingled water injection,they would show serious contradiction between the layers,which would affect their production speed and the ultimate oil recovery.Thus,in allusion to the problem of interference between the layers,the numerical simulation was conducted.The seven major factors affecting the interference between layers were considered,including average permeability,permeability differential,average viscosity,layer number,single layer thickness,well spacing and pressure differential,72(4×18) group contrast experiments were designed by orthogonal analysis to study the interference in reservoirs with positive negative rhythm in reservoirs with and without restraining barriers.Results show that with the increase of permeability differential,the interlayer interference increases,the integrated reservoir recovery declines significantly.The effects of various factors and the rules of variation on the interference between the layers are discussed and the biggest effect factor is the permeability differential.Research result provides a theoretical basis for the reservoir adjustment and arrangement of oilfield development.
Abnormal Gait Behavior Detection for Elderly Based on Enhanced Wigner-Ville Analysis and Cloud Incremental SVM Learning

A cloud based health care system is proposed in this paper for the elderly by providing abnormal gait behavior detection, classification, online diagnosis, and remote aid service. Intelligent mobile terminals with triaxial acceleration sensor embedded are used to capture the movement and ambulation information of elderly. The collected signals are first enhanced by a Kalman filter. And the magnitude of signal vector features is then extracted and decomposed into a linear combination of enhanced Gabor atoms. The Wigner-Ville analysis method is introduced and the problem is studied by joint time-frequency analysis. In order to solve the large-scale abnormal behavior data lacking problem in training process, a cloud based incremental SVM (CI-SVM) learning method is proposed. The original abnormal behavior data are first used to get the initial SVM classifier. And the larger abnormal behavior data of elderly collected by mobile devices are then gathered in cloud platform to conduct incremental training and get the new SVM classifier. By the CI-SVM learning method, the knowledge of SVM classifier could be accumulated due to the dynamic incremental learning. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is feasible and can be applied to aged care, emergency aid, and related fields.
An IAEA multi-technique X-ray spectrometry endstation at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste: benchmarking results and interdisciplinary applications.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) jointly with the Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste (EST) operates a multipurpose X-ray spectrometry endstation at the X-ray Fluorescence beamline (10.1L). The facility has been available to external users since the beginning of 2015 through the peer-review process of EST. Using this collaboration framework, the IAEA supports and promotes synchrotron-radiation-based research and training activities for various research groups from the IAEA Member States, especially those who have limited previous experience and resources to access a synchrotron radiation facility. This paper aims to provide a broad overview about various analytical capabilities, intrinsic features and performance figures of the IAEA X-ray spectrometry endstation through the measured results. The IAEA-EST endstation works with monochromatic X-rays in the energy range 3.7-14 keV for the Elettra storage ring operating at 2.0 or 2.4 GeV electron energy. It offers a combination of different advanced analytical probes, e.g. X-ray reflectivity, X-ray absorption fine-structure measurements, grazing-incidence X-ray fluorescence measurements, using different excitation and detection geometries, and thereby supports a comprehensive characterization for different kinds of nanostructured and bulk materials.
CerFix

We present CerFix, a data cleaning system that finds certain fixes for tuples at the point of data entry, i.e., fixes that are guaranteed correct. It is based on master data, editing rules and certain regions. Given some attributes of an input tuple that are validated (assured correct), editing rules tell us what other attributes to fix and how to correct them with master data. A certain region is a set of attributes that, if validated, warrant a certain fix for the entire tuple. We demonstrate the following facilities provided by CerFix: (1) a region finder to identify certain regions; (2) a data monitor to find certain fixes for input tuples, by guiding users to validate a minimal number of attributes; and (3) an auditing module to show what attributes are fixed and where the correct values come from.
Rapid Development of NLP Modules with Memory-based Learning

The need for software modules performing natural language processing (NLP) tasks is growing. These modules should perform efficiently and accurately, while at the same time rapid development is often mandatory. Recent work has indicated that machine learning techniques in general, and memory-based learning (MBL) in particular, offer the tools to meet both ends. We present examples of modules trained with MBL on three NLP tasks: (i) text-to-speech conversion, (ii) part-of-speech tagging, and (iii) phrase chunking. We demonstrate that the three modules display high generalization accuracy, and argue why MBL is applicable similarly well to a large class of other NLP tasks.
The Effect of Vestibulo-Ocular Reflex Deficits and Covert Saccades on Dynamic Vision in Opioid-Induced Vestibular Dysfunction

Patients with bilateral vestibular dysfunction cannot fully compensate passive head rotations with eye movements, and experience disturbing oscillopsia. To compensate for the deficient vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR), they have to rely on re-fixation saccades. Some can trigger “covert” saccades while the head still moves; others only initiate saccades afterwards. Due to their shorter latency, it has been hypothesized that covert saccades are particularly beneficial to improve dynamic visual acuity, reducing oscillopsia. Here, we investigate the combined effect of covert saccades and the VOR on clear vision, using the Head Impulse Testing Device – Functional Test (HITD-FT), which quantifies reading ability during passive high-acceleration head movements. To reversibly decrease VOR function, fourteen healthy men (median age 26 years, range 21–31) were continuously administrated the opioid remifentanil intravenously (0.15 µg/kg/min). VOR gain was assessed with the video head-impulse test, functional performance (i.e. reading) with the HITD-FT. Before opioid application, VOR and dynamic reading were intact (head-impulse gain: 0.87±0.08, mean±SD; HITD-FT rate of correct answers: 90±9%). Remifentanil induced impairment in dynamic reading (HITD-FT 26±15%) in 12/14 subjects, with transient bilateral vestibular dysfunction (head-impulse gain 0.63±0.19). HITD-FT score correlated with head-impulse gain (R = 0.63, p = 0.03) and with gain difference (before/with remifentanil, R = −0.64, p = 0.02). One subject had a non-pathological head-impulse gain (0.82±0.03) and a high HITD-FT score (92%). One subject triggered covert saccades in 60% of the head movements and could read during passive head movements (HITD-FT 93%) despite a pathological head-impulse gain (0.59±0.03) whereas none of the 12 subjects without covert saccades reached such high performance. In summary, early catch-up saccades may improve dynamic visual function. HITD-FT is an appropriate method to assess the combined gaze stabilization effect of both VOR and covert saccades (overall dynamic vision), e.g., to document performance and progress during vestibular rehabilitation.
Transplantation Experiments on Placental Ageing

KROHN1 has recently re-emphasized the role that transplantation studies can play in the elucidation of the process of ageing in organs and tissues. He has shown that skin and ovary have intrinsic life cycles, to a large extent independent of central mechanisms. These techniques have not been successfully used in the study of rapidly ageing transient tissues like the placenta. Earlier transplantation studies of placenta have always used allogeneic tissues, since the importance of genetic differences in such experiments was not appreciated2. The present experiments, to be described in detail elsewhere, were designed to demonstrate the evolution of syngeneic transplants of mouse trophoblast with age.
Coordination of independent learners in cooperative

In the framework of fully cooperative multi-agent systems, independent agents learning by reinforcement must overcome several difficulties as the coordination or the impact of exploration. The study of these issues allows first to synthesize the characteristics of existing reinforcement learning decentralized methods for independent learners in cooperative Markov games. Then, given the difficulties encountered by these approaches, we focus on two main skills: optimistic agents, which manage the coordination in deterministic environments, and the detection of the stochasticity of a game. Indeed, the key difficulty in stochastic environment is to distinguish between various causes of noise. The SOoN algorithm is so introduced, standing for “Swing between Optimistic or Neutral”, in which independent learners can adapt automatically to the environment stochasticity. Empirical results on various cooperative Markov games notably show that SOoN overcomes the main factors of non-coordination and is robust face to the exploration of other agents.
Optimization of a perfusion bioreactor for tissue engineering

Tissue engineering aims to repair and regenerate damaged tissues by developing biological substitutes mimicking the natural extracellular matrix. It is evident that scaffolds, being a tridimensional matrix, are of extreme importance providing the necessary support for the new tissue. This new tissue is cultivated in vivo or in vitro in a bioreactor in which is placed the scaffold with cells. In order to control the cell culture process inside of a bioreactor it is essential to know the fluid flow inside and around the scaffold in order to know witch parameters must be controlled in order to obtain optimum conditions to cell culture. The wall shear stress must be adequate to the tissue to be cultivated, i.e., bone, muscle, cartilage and it is known that a proper stimulus is necessary to improve the cell proliferation inside the scaffold. This work considers a novel perfusion bioreactor and it is intended to optimize the fluid flow within the chamber and the scaffold by assessing the turbulence kinetic energy, the velocity and the wall shear stress.
CAx-technologies for hybrid fast tool/slow slide servo diamond turning of freeform surface

Most of commercial CAM software solutions (SolidCAM, Unigraphics and etc.) are commonly employed for generating tool paths on machining of freeform surfaces. However, these CAM software solutions are presently unable to support fast tool/slow slide servo diamond turning of freeform surface due to difference in coordinating systems. In contrast to traditional machining processes, fast tool/slow slide servo diamond turning is controlled by both linear and angular positions of the workpiece and is known as polar or cylindrical coordinate system. Hence, a special CAM post-processor is required to generate the spiral tool trajectory in fast tool/slow slide servo diamond turning. However, these special CAM software solutions are very expensive. Manufacturers have been searching for solutions to sustain their competitive advantage in mass producing products at the shortest time to market and at a most economical cost. Hence, these drive the needs for an alternative and economical option of generating accurate tool trajectory for fast tool/slow slide servo diamond turning of freeform surfaces. This article proposes an attractive solution with an integration of Visual Basic application programming interface into SolidWorks to generate spiral tool trajectory for diamond turning of freeform surface. In this proposed methodology, the spiral tool trajectory can be extracted directly from computer-aided design models of freeform surface without utilizing any expensive CAM software. In addition, the critical cutting parameters and tool geometrical angles were also optimized with the developed methodologies for the accurate machining of freeform surfaces in the hybrid fast tool/slow slide servo process.