Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Haptic Interfaces for Individuals with Visual Impairments

Vision enables a person to simultaneously perceive all parts of an object in its totality, relationships to other objects for scene navigation, identification and planning. These types of perceptual processes are especially important for comprehending scenes in gaming environments and virtual representations. While individuals with visual impairments may have reduced abilities to visualize objects using conventional sight, an increasing body of evidence indicates that compensatory neural mechanisms exist whereby tactile stimulation and additional senses can activate visual pathways to generate accurate representations. The current thrust to develop and deploy virtual and augmented reality systems capable of transporting users to different worlds has been associated with a push to include additional senses for even greater immersion. Clearly, the inclusion of these additional modalities will provide a method for individuals with visual impairments to enjoy and interact with the virtual worlds and content in general. Importantly, adoption and development of these methods will have a dramatic impact on inclusion in gaming and learning environments, and especially in relation to science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) education. While the development, standardization and implementation of these systems is still in the very early stages, gaming devices and open source tools are continuing to emerge that will accelerate the adoption and integration of the novel modes of computer interaction and provide new ways for individuals (with visual impairments) to experience digital content. Here we present the rationale and benefits for using this type of multimodal interaction for individuals with visual impairments as well as the current state of the art in haptic interfaces for gaming, education and the relationships to enhanced end user immersion and learning outcomes. As these technologies and devices are adopted and evolve, they are poised to have a dramatic impact on entertainment, education and quality of life of individuals with visual impairments.
Triple Reassortant H3N2 Influenza A Viruses, Canada, 2005

Since January 2005, H3N2 influenza viruses have been isolated from pigs and turkeys throughout Canada and from a swine farmer and pigs on the same farm in Ontario. These are human/classical swine/avian reassortants similar to viruses that emerged in US pigs in 1998 but with a distinct human-lineage neuraminidase gene.
Bayesian Drum Transcription Based on Nonnegative Matrix Factor Decomposition with a Deep Score Prior

This paper describes a statistical method of automatic drum transcription that estimates a musical score of bass and snare drums and hi-hats from a drum signal separated from a popular music signal. One of the most effective approaches for this problem is to apply nonnegative matrix factor deconvolution (NMFD) for estimating the temporal activations of drums and then perform thresholding for estimating a drum score. Such a pure audio-based approach, however, cannot avoid musically unnatural scores. To solve this, we propose a unified Bayesian model that integrates an NMFD-based acoustic model evaluating the likelihood of a drum score for a drum spectrogram, with a deep language model serving as a prior (constraint) of the score. The language model can be trained with existing drum scores in the framework of autoencoding variational Bayes and has more expressive power than the conventional statistical models. We derive an inference algorithm using Gibbs sampling, which is a marriage of the solid formalism of Bayesian learning with the expressive power of deep learning. It is shown that the proposed method not only slightly improved the F-measure score but also increased musical naturalness of the transcribed drum scores than NMFD.
The Role of 3 Tesla Diffusion-Weighted Imaging in the Differential Diagnosis of Benign versus Malignant Cervical Lymph Nodes in Patients with Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Objective. The aim of this study was to validate the role of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) at 3 Tesla in the differential diagnosis between benign and malignant laterocervical lymph nodes in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Materials and Methods. Before undergoing surgery, 80 patients, with biopsy proven HNSCC, underwent a magnetic resonance exam. Sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Spe) of conventional criteria and DWI in detecting laterocervical lymph node metastases were calculated. Histological results from neck dissection were used as standard of reference. Results. In the 239 histologically proven metastatic lymphadenopathies, the mean apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value was 0.903 × 10−3 mm2/sec. In the 412 pathologically confirmed benign lymph nodes, an average ADC value of 1.650 × 10−3 mm2/sec was found. For differentiating between benign versus metastatic lymph nodes, DWI showed Se of 97% and Spe of 93%, whereas morphological criteria displayed Se of 61% and Spe of 98%. DWI showed an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.964, while morphological criteria displayed an AUC of 0.715. Conclusions. In a DWI negative neck for malignant lymph nodes, the planned dissection could be converted to a wait-and-scan policy, whereas DWI positive neck would support the decision to perform a neck dissection.
Bacterial Nitric-oxide Synthases Operate without a Dedicated Redox Partner*

Bacterial nitric-oxide (NO) synthases (bNOSs) are smaller than their mammalian counterparts. They lack an essential reductase domain that supplies electrons during NO biosynthesis. This and other structural peculiarities have raised doubts about whether bNOSs were capable of producing NO in vivo. Here we demonstrate that bNOS enzymes from Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus anthracis do indeed produce NO in living cells and accomplish this task by hijacking available cellular redox partners that are not normally committed to NO production. These “promiscuous” bacterial reductases also support NO synthesis by the oxygenase domain of mammalian NOS expressed in Escherichia coli. Our results suggest that bNOS is an early precursor of eukaryotic NOS and that it acquired its dedicated reductase domain later in evolution. This work also suggests that alternatively spliced forms of mammalian NOSs lacking their reductase domains could still be functional in vivo. On a practical side, bNOS-containing probiotic bacteria offer a unique advantage over conventional chemical NO donors in generating continuous, readily controllable physiological levels of NO, suggesting a possibility of utilizing such live NO donors for research and clinical needs.
Early Kidney Damage Markers after Deferasirox Treatment in Patients with Thalassemia Major: A Case-Control Study

Background The life of patients with β-thalassemia major depends on blood transfusion. Regular blood transfusion leads to hemosiderosis in their main organs. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of deferasirox and deferoxamine on renal damage in patients with β-thalassemia major. Method The present case-control study was conducted on 60 individuals who were referred to the 17th Shahrivar Tertiary Referral Hospital in Guilan province, Iran. In this study, patients with β-thalassemia major who used deferasirox (n = 21) and patients who used deferoxamine (n = 19) were evaluated. The control group (n = 20) was selected from healthy individuals. Serum creatinine (CREA), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and Cystatin C were measured from blood samples. Furthermore, urinary (U.) neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), albumin (Alb), interleukin- (IL-) 18, and Kidney Injury Molecule-1 (KIM-1) were measured by the ELISA method and normalized for U. creatinine (CREA). Results U. NGAL, U. IL-18, and BUN biomarkers in the deferasirox group were significantly higher than those in the control group (p < 0.001). U. NGAL/CREA and U. KIM-1/CREA ratios increased in both the deferoxamine and deferasirox groups compared to the control group (p < 0.05). U. Alb was significantly higher in patients treated with deferoxamine than in healthy participants (p < 0.05). Conclusion The findings of this study indicate that after taking deferasirox, there was renal damage and an increase in inflammatory factors. Also, minor renal impairment was observed after deferoxamine administration, but it was not confirmed at the molecular level (U. NGAL and KIM-1). Therefore, it seems that patients who are taking these two drugs should be monitored carefully.
Single-Objective Path Planning for Autonomous Robots Using Reconfigurable Analog VLSI

This paper presents path planning using reconfigurable analog very large scale integrated (AVLSI) circuits. Existing research has shown that custom AVLSI circuits known as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) can theoretically be used for path planning. There are two main drawbacks to using custom ASICs: 1) circuit designs are fixed to some extent (not changeable) and 2) long design cycle/fabrication time (order of months). Reconfigurable analog circuits called field-programmable analog arrays (FPAAs) have been used to implement a variety of AVLSI circuits in a short time (order of minutes). This paper presents an algorithm for mapping a robot’s environment onto an FPAA, and then presents hardware results using an FPAA to implement the path-planning algorithm. Experimental results and analysis are presented for 24 environment scenarios. Digital search methods like breadth-first search have solutions which scale on the order of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol {O( {4^{d}} )}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> whereas this paper will show our analog solution is on the order of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol {O( d )}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${d}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the depth of the solution.
Detailed insights from microarray and crystallographic studies into carbohydrate recognition by microneme protein 1 (MIC1) of Toxoplasma gondii

The intracellular protozoan Toxoplasma gondii is among the most widespread parasites. The broad host cell range of the parasite can be explained by carbohydrate microarray screening analyses that have demonstrated the ability of the T. gondii adhesive protein, TgMIC1, to bind to a wide spectrum of sialyl oligosaccharide ligands. Here, we investigate by further microarray analyses in a dose‐response format the differential binding of TgMIC1 to 2‐3‐ and 2‐6‐linked sialyl carbohydrates. Interestingly, two novel synthetic fluorinated analogs of 3′SiaLacNAc1–4 and 3′SiaLacNAc1–3 were identified as highly potent ligands. To understand the structural basis of the carbohydrate binding specificity of TgMIC1, we have determined the crystal structures of TgMIC1 micronemal adhesive repeat (MAR)‐region (TgMIC1‐MARR) in complex with five sialyl‐N‐acetyllactosamine analogs. These crystal structures have revealed a specific, water‐mediated hydrogen bond network that accounts for the preferential binding of TgMIC1‐MARR to arrayed 2‐3‐linked sialyl oligosaccharides and the high potency of the fluorinated analogs. Furthermore, we provide strong evidence for the first observation of a CF···HO hydrogen bond within a lectin‐carbohydrate complex. Finally, detailed comparison with other oligosaccharide‐protein complexes in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) reveals a new family of sialic‐acid binding sites from lectins in parasites, bacteria, and viruses.
Relapse prevention in bipolar I disorder: 18-month comparison of olanzapine plus mood stabiliser v. mood stabiliser alone

Background Few controlled studies have examined the use of atypical antipsychotic drugs for prevention of relapse in patients with bipolar I disorder. Aims To evaluate whether olanzapine plus either lithium or valproate reduces the rate of relapse, compared with lithium or valproate alone. Method Patients achieving syndromic remission after 6 weeks'treatment with olanzapine plus either lithium (0.6–1.2 mmol/l) or valproate (50–125 μg/ml) received lithium or valproate plus either olanzapine 5–20 mg/day (combination therapy) or placebo (monotherapy), and were followed in a double-masked trial for 18 months. Results The treatment difference in time to relapse into either mania or depression was not significant for syndromic relapse (median time to relapse: combination therapy 94 days, monotherapy40.5 days; P=0.742), but was significant for symptomatic relapse (combination therapy 163 days, monotherapy42 days; P=0.023). Conclusions Patients taking olanzapine added to lithium or valproate experienced sustained symptomatic remission, but not syndromic remission, for longer than those receiving lithium or valproate monotherapy.
Functional Requirements for Reward-Modulated Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity

Recent experiments have shown that spike-timing-dependent plasticity is influenced by neuromodulation. We derive theoretical conditions for successful learning of reward-related behavior for a large class of learning rules where Hebbian synaptic plasticity is conditioned on a global modulatory factor signaling reward. We show that all learning rules in this class can be separated into a term that captures the covariance of neuronal firing and reward and a second term that presents the influence of unsupervised learning. The unsupervised term, which is, in general, detrimental for reward-based learning, can be suppressed if the neuromodulatory signal encodes the difference between the reward and the expected reward—but only if the expected reward is calculated for each task and stimulus separately. If several tasks are to be learned simultaneously, the nervous system needs an internal critic that is able to predict the expected reward for arbitrary stimuli. We show that, with a critic, reward-modulated spike-timing-dependent plasticity is capable of learning motor trajectories with a temporal resolution of tens of milliseconds. The relation to temporal difference learning, the relevance of block-based learning paradigms, and the limitations of learning with a critic are discussed.
Understanding emotion in context: how the Boston marathon bombings altered the impact of anger on threat perception

Three studies examine the impact of an anger manipulation on threat perception among Northeastern University students after the Boston Marathon bombings. Data collection for one experiment began within 24 hours of the bombings. Results suggest that the impact of anger on threat perception differed during the week of the bombings compared to 1 and 5 months later. During the week of the bombings only, participants experiencing anger were less sensitive to the distinction between threats and nonthreats, and more biased toward perceiving all stimuli as threatening relative to control participants. We discuss potential mechanisms for these effects and the need for more rapid response research in the wake of incidents of mass violence.
GPU-accelerated particle swarm optimization for selective harmonic elimination in multilevel converters with unequal DC levels

The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) has been widely used to solve the selective harmonic elimination (SHE) problem, however, the executing efficiency is not very good if it is implement on the traditional Central Processing Units (CPUs). In this paper, the PSO is parallel implemented on the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) under the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). Then, the GPU-accelerated PSO is used to solve the SHE equations with five to seven unequal dc sources and the executing efficiency gets hundreds of times faster than its CPU based counterpart. The experiments validate the correctness of the solved switching angles.
Deep Learning Based on Orthogonal Approximate Message Passing for CP-Free OFDM

Channel estimation and signal detection are very challenging for an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system without cyclic prefix (CP). In this article, deep learning based on orthogonal approximate message passing (DL-OAMP) is used to address these problems. The DL-OAMP receiver includes a channel estimation neural network (CE-Net) and a signal detection neural network based on OAM-P, called OAMP-Net. The CE-Net is initialized by the least square channel estimation algorithm and refined by minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) neural network. The OAMP-Net is established by unfolding the iterative OAMP algorithm and adding some trainable parameters to improve the detection performance. The DL-OAMP receiver is with low complexity and can estimate time-varying channels with only a single training. Simulation results demonstrate that the bit-error rate (BER) of the proposed scheme is lower than those of competitive algorithms for high-order modulation.
Dynamic monitoring of taxi demand profiles, utilizing location-specific information in large metropolitan areas

Urban mobility, especially in Metropolitan Areas has drawn the attention of scientists for many decades. As increasing volumes of urban data are captured and become available, new opportunities arise for data-driven analysis that can lead to improvements in the lives of citizens through evidence-based decision support systems and policies. Sensing and wireless networking technologies are increasingly deployed in transportation systems due to the fact that they provide updated and reliable information. In this study, Taxi demand profiles are monitored from data that offer the real-time occupancy status and Global Positioning System (GPS) location for three taxi fleets, during the New Year's day. This dataset provides rich spatiotemporal information about customers demand and their mobility patterns. However, analyzing these data presents many challenges. The data are complex, containing geographical and temporal components in addition to multiple variables associated with each trip. Despite all these, real-time information gives us the opportunity to export variety of `heatmaps', providing evidence relating to the mobility of the day. Furthermore, the conclusions of this study should help improve coordination of taxi services quality and increasing taxi fleet utilization.
Spatiotemporal Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling Tropical Ocean Surface Winds

Spatiotemporal processes are ubiquitous in the environmental and physical sciences. This is certainly true of atmospheric and oceanic processes, which typically exhibit many different scales of spatial and temporal variability. The complexity of these processes and the large number of observation/prediction locations preclude the use of traditional covariance-based spatiotemporal statistical methods. Alternatively, we focus on conditionally specified (i.e., hierarchical) spatiotemporal models. These methods offer several advantages over traditional approaches. Primarily, physical and dynamical constraints can be easily incorporated into the conditional formulation, so that the series of relatively simple yet physically realistic conditional models leads to a much more complicated spatiotemporal covariance structure than can be specified directly. Furthermore, by making use of the sparse structure inherent in the hierarchical approach, as well as multiresolution (wavelet) bases, the models can be computed with very large datasets. This modeling approach was necessitated by a scientifically meaningful problem in the geosciences. Satellite-derived wind estimates have high spatial resolution but limited global coverage. In contrast, wind fields provided by the major weather centers provide complete coverage but have low spatial resolution. The goal is to combine these data in a manner that incorporates the space-time dynamics inherent in the surface wind field. This is an essential task to enable meteorological research, because no complete high-resolution surface wind datasets exist over the world oceans. High-resolution datasets of this type are crucial for improving our understanding of global air–sea interactions affecting climate and tropical disturbances, and for driving large-scale ocean circulation models.
Gigabit Switches Considered Harmful

Objective: Authentic originals and the Ethernet have collected incredible enthusiasm from the two futurists and scholars over the most recent quite a long while. In this work, we demonstrate the development of Boolean rationale, which encapsulates the instinctive standards of calculations. We investigate new stable systems (Suet), refuting that the acclaimed community-oriented calculation for the examination of enormous multiplayer online pretending diversions keeps running in Ω(n! ) time. Methods/Statistical Analysis: We expect that every part of Suet permits the investigation of connected records, autonomous of every other segment. Even though cyberneticists, for the most part, accept the correct inverse, Suet depends on this property for right conduct. Findings: While we know about the same examinations on superblocks, a couple of undertakings have been labeled and watched essentially. Likewise, blunder bars have been omitted, since a large portion of our information focuses on 95 standard deviations from watched implies. This is evidential to the accomplishment of our work. Application: Further, we have an unrivaled perceiving how thwarts can be associated with the examination of the Internet. We described that e-business and entries are usually incongruent. Keywords: Boolean Logic, Ethernet, Super Locks
Age and sex affect human muscle fibre adaptations to heavy‐resistance strength training

This study assessed age and sex effects on muscle fibre adaptations to heavy‐resistance strength training (ST). Twenty‐two young men and women (20–30 years old) and 18 older men and women (65–75 years old) completed 9 weeks of heavy‐resistance knee extension exercises with the dominant leg 3 days week−1; the non‐dominant leg served as a within‐subject, untrained control. Bilateral vastus lateralis muscle biopsies were obtained before and after ST for analysis of type I, IIa and IIx muscle fibre cross‐sectional area (CSA) and fibre type distribution. One‐repetition maximum (1‐RM) strength was also assessed before and after ST. ST resulted in increased CSA of type I, IIa and IIx muscle fibres in the trained leg of young men, type I and IIa fibres in young women, type IIa fibres in older men, and type IIx fibres in older women (all P < 0.05). Analysis of fibre type distribution revealed a significant increase in the percentage of type I fibres (P < 0.05) along with a decrease in type IIx fibres (P= 0.054) after ST only in young women. There were no significant changes in muscle fibre CSA or fibre type distribution in the untrained leg for any group. All groups displayed significant increases in 1‐RM (27–39%; all P < 0.01). In summary, ST led to significant increases in 1‐RM and type II fibre CSA in all groups; however, age and sex influence specific muscle fibre subtype responses to ST.
Gene transfer into primary cultures of fetal neural stem cells by a recombinant adenovirus carrying the gene for green fluorescent protein

ObjectiveTo evaluate the transduction efficiency of a recombinant adenovirus carrying the gene for green fluorescent protein (Ad-GFP) into the primary cultures of fetal neural stem cells (NSCs) by the expression of GFP.MethodsThe Ad-GFP was constructed by homologous recombination in bacteria with the AdEasy system; NSCs were isolated from rat fetal hippocampus and cultured as neurosphere suspensions. After infection with the recombinant Ad-GFP, NSCs were examined with a fluorescent microscopy and a flow cytometry for their expression of GFP.ResultsAfter the viral infection, flow cytometry analysis revealed that the percentage of GFP-positive cells was as high as 97.05%. The infected NSCs sustained the GFP expression for above 4 weeks. After differentiated into astrocytes or neurons, they continued to express GFP efficiently.ConclusionWe have successfully constructed a viral vector Ad-GFP that can efficiently infect the primary NSCs. The reporter gene was showed fully and sustained expression in the infected cells as well as their differentiated progenies.