Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
What are the symbols of Alzheimer? A permutation entropy based symbolic analysis for the detection of early changes of the electroencephalographic complexity due to mild Alzheimer

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia, greatly affecting cognitive functioning and independent living of elderly population. The lack of an available drug therapy that could prevent disease progression shifted the research interest towards the early detection of the neurodegeneration symptoms that affect the mature brain and impair the interaction between brain regions, thus partially causing functional disconnection. The notion of electroencephalographic complexity is a valid and reliable method of quantifying the degree of isolation of brain regions due to AD pathology. Recently permutation entropy, which is a methodology of transforming the signal data into symbolic sequences and then computing the frequency distribution of symbolic patterns, gained great attention and was applied in seizure detection and computation of consciousness. The current study aims to investigate whether this complexity marker would be suitable to be applied in dementia research towards the quantification of the degree of cognitive deterioration due to disconnection of brain regions. The promising results indicate that permutation entropy on posterior regions (parieto-occipital areas) abnormally increases during mild dementia and is negatively correlated with the level of cognitive dysfunction, as estimated by the Mini Mental State Examination. Therefore, it may be a fast, accurate and simple tool for screening elderly population prone in Alzheimer.
Assessment of a visual to spatial-audio sensory substitution system

Sensory substitution is a technique whereby sensory information in one modality such as vision can be assimilated by an individual in another modality such as hearing. This paper makes use of a depth sensor to provide a spatial-auditory sensory substitution system, which converts an array of range data to spatial auditory information in real-time. In experiments, participants were trained with the system then blindfolded, seated behind a table while equipped with the sensory substitution system while keeping the sensor in front of their eyes. In the experiments, participants had to localise a target on the table by reporting its direction and in its distance. Results showed that the using the proposed system participants achieved a high accuracy rate (90%) in detecting the direction of the object, and showed a performance of 56% for determining the object's distance.
A running experiment of humanoid biped

Aiming for a humanoid robot of the next generation, we have been developing a biped which can jump and run. This paper introduces a method of running pattern generation and running experiment of biped robot HRP-2LR. Based on the physical parameters of HRP-2LR, running patterns are pre-calculated so that it follows the desired profiles of the total linear and angular momentum. For this purpose we used resolved momentum control. The vertical momentum is calculated considering the compliant elements in order to realize accurate flight duration. The horizontal momentum is calculated to satisfy the ZMP patterns given in advance. Using our pattern, HRP-2LR could successfully run with average speed of 0.16[m/s] with repeat flight phase 0.06 [s] and support phase 0.3 [s].
Cluster RCT of case management on patients' quality of life and caregiver strain in ALS

Objectives: To study the effect of case management on quality of life, caregiver strain, and perceived quality of care (QOC) in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and their caregivers. Methods: We conducted a multicenter cluster randomized controlled trial with the multidisciplinary ALS care team as the unit of randomization. During 12 months, patients with ALS and their caregivers received case management plus usual care or usual care alone. Outcome measures were the 40-item ALS Assessment Questionnaire (ALSAQ-40), Emotional Functioning domain (EF); the Caregiver Strain Index (CSI); and the QOC score. These measures were assessed at baseline and at 4, 8, and 12 months. Results: Case management resulted in no changes in ALSAQ-40 EF, CSI, or QOC from baseline to 12 months. ALSAQ-40 EF scores in both groups were similar at baseline and did not change over time (p = 0.331). CSI scores in both groups increased significantly (p < 0.0001). Patients with ALS from both groups rated their perceived QOC at baseline with a median score of 8, which did not change significantly during follow-up. Conclusion: Within the context of multidisciplinary ALS care teams, case management appears to confer no benefit for patients with ALS or their caregivers. Classification of evidence: This study provides Class III evidence that case management in addition to multidisciplinary ALS care does not significantly improve health-related quality of life of patients with ALS.
Knowledge Creation in Virtual Communities of Patients: The Role of Quality Assurance

Virtual communities of patients provide health-related information and mutual support for their members. This paper presents a member centric knowledge creation process within virtual communities of patients. Our objective is to capture the importance of quality assurance of medical information available within virtual communities of patients. Furthermore, the role of the members as the main player in the quality assurance process is discussed and a knowledge creation process that involves the community and the operator is presented. This knowledge creation process fits the needs of these communities in terms of interaction, medical content and quality assurance aspects done by the members and the operator. The paper presents a full design cycle including an empirical study on the needs of virtual communities of patients, the design of a new e-service that fits these needs and the implementation of the knowledge creation process.
WIDER Working Paper No . 2013 / 107 Land , environment and climate Contributing to the global public good

This paper discusses global public goods related to the world’s land resources, their current provision and likely future provision, their potential impacts on the world’s poorest households, as well as prospects for using foreign assistance to enhance these outcomes. Specifically, the paper discusses: carbon sequestration, the provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services, water management, and investments in research, policies, and institutions to facilitate adaptation to climate change. Within this context, access to geospatial analysis tools and information on climate, land use and tenure, poverty and environmental indicators will become increasingly valuable to both public and private decision makers.
A content-based image authentication system with lossless data hiding

In this paper, we present a novel content-based image authentication framework which embeds the authentication information into the host image using a lossless data hiding approach. In this framework the features of a target image are first extracted and signed using the digital signature algorithm (DSA). The authentication information is generated from the signature and the features are then inserted into the target image using a lossless data hiding algorithm. In this way, the unperturbed version of the original image can be obtained after the embedded data are extracted. An important advantage of our approach is that it can tolerate JPEG compression to a certain extent while rejecting common tampering to the image. The experimental results show that our framework works well with JPEG quality factors greater than or equal to 80 which are acceptable for most authentication applications.
Predictors of Perceived Health Status in Elderly Men and Women

Baseline data on the perceived health status of participants (N = 5,201) in the Cardiovascular Health Study of the Elderly (CHS) are reported. The authors examined the predictive utility of health-related factors representing eight different domains, assessed gender differences in the prediction of perceived health, and tested a hypothesis regarding the role of known clinical conditions versus subclinical disease in predicting perceived health. Multivariate analyses showed that the majority of the explained variance in self-assessed health is accounted for by variables that fall into four general categories. Although gender differences were small, the analysis showed that the relative importance of several predictor variables did vary by gender.
The Empirical Study on Human Flesh Search Based on neutralization Theory

Human Flesh Search((HFS) is a search phenomenon emerging on the Internetin recent years, which integrates machine search and manual search, and is usually used to find or identify immoral events or characters. But problematically in the process of HFS, the personal information of search objects is posted on the Internet, which seriously violates the privacy protection of the search objects and affectes the real lives of others. In this paper, we apply the neutralization technology theory and deterrence theory, both prominent in criminology, with the construction of privacy awareness, to study the behavior of participants of the HFS. Using smartPLS2.0 software to analyze 574 questionnaires, we got our research conclusion. We find that the technologies of denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of victim, appeal to higher loyalties, avoidance of greater harm and privacy awareness significantly influence the intention to participate in the HFS, but the metaphor of the ledger technology, the certainty of sanction and the severity of the sanction have no significant effect on HFS participation intention. Based on the results of this study, we conduct a detailed analysis and give some appropriate instructions. At last, the research conclusion may have some potentially fruitful reference for related legislation and be helpful to guide the Internet behavior of netizens.
Incipient Resistance of Helicoverpa punctigera to the Cry2Ab Bt Toxin in Bollgard II® Cotton

Combinations of dissimilar insecticidal proteins ("pyramids") within transgenic plants are predicted to delay the evolution of pest resistance for significantly longer than crops expressing a single transgene. Field-evolved resistance to Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) transgenic crops has been reported for first generation, single-toxin varieties and the Cry1 class of proteins. Our five year data set shows a significant exponential increase in the frequency of alleles conferring Cry2Ab resistance in Australian field populations of Helicoverpa punctigera since the adoption of a second generation, two-toxin Bt cotton expressing this insecticidal protein. Furthermore, the frequency of cry2Ab resistance alleles in populations from cropping areas is 8-fold higher than that found for populations from non-cropping regions. This report of field evolved resistance to a protein in a dual-toxin Bt-crop has precisely fulfilled the intended function of monitoring for resistance; namely, to provide an early warning of increases in frequencies that may lead to potential failures of the transgenic technology. Furthermore, it demonstrates that pyramids are not 'bullet proof' and that rapid evolution to Bt toxins in the Cry2 class is possible.
Multi-level indexing in a distributed self-organized storage system

In many systems providing storage and retrieval operations on data, indices are used to make these operations more efficient. Distributed storage systems provide means to distribute the burden of storing and retrieving data onto multiple different computers. Routing indices can answer the central question in these systems: Where should one look for a specified data item? To be able to query for different columns in a relation or different entries in tuples, indexing for multiple dimensions is necessary. Our group applies a swarm-based approach to distributed storage leading to a new class of distributed systems, which are fully self-organized in their behavior and lack any shared global data structures. In this paper, we research whether multiple levels of routing indices can be maintained and used in such a distributed and self-organized storage service. To achieve this, we look into different types of indices and evaluate them in an experiment.
A Phase 1 Human Immunodeficiency Virus Vaccine Trial for Cross-Profiling the Kinetics of Serum and Mucosal Antibody Responses to CN54gp140 Modulated by Two Homologous Prime-Boost Vaccine Regimens

A key aspect to finding an efficacious human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine is the optimization of vaccine schedules that can mediate the efficient maturation of protective immune responses. In the present study, we investigated the effect of alternate booster regimens on the immune responses to a candidate HIV-1 clade C CN54gp140 envelope protein, which was coadministered with the TLR4-agonist glucopyranosyl lipid A-aqueous formulation. Twelve study participants received a common three-dose intramuscular priming series followed by a final booster at either 6 or 12 months. The two homologous prime-boost regimens were well tolerated and induced CN54gp140-specific responses that were observed in both the systemic and mucosal compartments. Levels of vaccine-induced IgG-subclass antibodies correlated significantly with FcγR engagement, and both vaccine regimens were associated with strikingly similar patterns in antibody titer and FcγR-binding profiles. In both groups, identical changes in the antigen (Ag)-specific IgG-subclass fingerprint, leading to a decrease in IgG1 and an increase in IgG4 levels, were modulated by booster injections. Here, the dissection of immune profiles further supports the notion that prime-boost strategies are essential for the induction of diverse Ag-specific HIV-1 responses. The results reported here clearly demonstrate that identical responses were effectively and safely induced by both vaccine regimens, indicating that an accelerated 6-month regimen could be employed for the rapid induction of immune responses against CN54gp140 with no apparent impact on the overall quality of the induced immune response. (This study has been registered at http://ClinicalTrials.gov under registration no. NCT01966900.)
Validity and repeatability of a depth camera-based surface imaging system for thigh volume measurement

ABSTRACT Complex anthropometrics such as area and volume, can identify changes in body size and shape that are not detectable with traditional anthropometrics of lengths, breadths, skinfolds and girths. However, taking these complex with manual techniques (tape measurement and water displacement) is often unsuitable. Three-dimensional (3D) surface imaging systems are quick and accurate alternatives to manual techniques but their use is restricted by cost, complexity and limited access. We have developed a novel low-cost, accessible and portable 3D surface imaging system based on consumer depth cameras. The aim of this study was to determine the validity and repeatability of the system in the measurement of thigh volume. The thigh volumes of 36 participants were measured with the depth camera system and a high precision commercially available 3D surface imaging system (3dMD). The depth camera system used within this study is highly repeatable (technical error of measurement (TEM) of <1.0% intra-calibration and ~2.0% inter-calibration) but systematically overestimates (~6%) thigh volume when compared to the 3dMD system. This suggests poor agreement yet a close relationship, which once corrected can yield a usable thigh volume measurement.
Early Experience of Remote & Hot Service Deployment with Trustworthiness in CROWN Grid 1

CROWN Grid aims to empower in-depth integration of resources and cooperation of researchers nationwide and worldwide. In such a distributed environment, to facilitate adoption of services, remote and hot service deployment is highly desirable. Furthermore, when the deployer and the target container are from different domains, great security challenges arise when a service is deployed to the remote container. In this paper, we present ROST, an original scheme of Remote & hOt Service deployment with Trustworthiness. By dynamically updating runtime environment configurations, ROST avoids restarting the runtime system during deployment. Moreover, we adopt trust negotiation in ROST to assure the security of service deployment. We conduct experiments in a real grid environment, and evaluate ROST comprehensively.
An assessment of the internal consistency of measures of constructs of the Dortmund Developmental screening for 5-6 years old children

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the reliability of DESK 3-6 for children 5-6 years old of age through the use of methods such are internal consistency reliability, test-retest and Cronbachâ€™s alpha, as well as check its suitability on a different sample. Participants were 484 preschool children (243 boys and 241 girls) with ages ranging from 60 to 78 months. The Dortmund Developmental Screening for Preschools (TrA¶ster, Flender, & Reineke, 2004) was used. Results revealed that the original version of DESK 3-6 for children 5-6 years old of age shows problems in internal consistency, adequate Cronbach alpha and test-retest coefficients. It is concluded that the present instrument appears to carry enough data to justify its use on other samples as well.
Semantic question answering of umrah pilgrims to enable self-guided education

Umrah as a pilgrimage to Mecca is obligatory in Islam madhab. Pilgrims can gain their knowledge about the requirements of Umrah using books, expert and existent question answering systems but still they suffer from the lack of complexity and natural language patterns. This paper proposes the semantic based question answering system to able pilgrims to compose any question about Umrah in natural language format. The proposed system used ontology to represent the knowledge about ritual of Umrah and Pilgrims. The question complexity for question in natural language is observed since it needs to be map with the contents in the ontology. An Umrah Knowledge module in this system covers all the rules and fact in the ontology format and the Educational modules is responsible for question answering interaction.
Business and technical requirements of Software-as-a-Service: Implications in portuguese enterprise business context

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a viable option for some companies bearing their business processes. There is a considerable adoption rate, with companies already using more than two services for over two years. However, while some companies have plans to put more business processes supported by these services in the near future, others do not know if they will. They have several concerns regarding the software providers service level. These concerns are mainly technical and functional issues, service availability and payment models. There are major changes compared to the traditional software that have implications on how the software is developed and made available to the users. The existing research addresses specific aspects and few studies give a broader view of the implications of SaaS for anyone who develops and provides software, and also for those who consumes it as an end user. What are the real needs of the Portuguese market? What fears and what is being done to mitigate them? Where should we focus our attention related to the SaaS offering in order to create more value? Thus, to analyze these questions four exploratory case studiesare used to assess the possible implications of SaaS on software developers or software providers based in Portugal and also on end-users. This article appears in the context of a realistic and deep research that includes the involvement of managers, leaders and decision makers of Portuguese companies, to realize what actually constitutes a problem in SaaS and what effectively companies would like to have available in this offer. The results of this study reveal that SaaS effectively constitutes a very interesting and solid solution for the development of Portuguese companies, however there is a lack for greater efforts particularly in terms of customization for each customer (tenant) and integration with the back-end on-premise applications.
Combination of Linkage and Association Studies for Brain Arteriovenous Malformation

Background and Purpose— Genetic factors for brain arteriovenous malformation are unexplored because of the low incidence of familial cases, albeit local and familial clustering. We used a combination of a linkage study and an association study to explore the genetic background. Methods— A genome-wide linkage analysis was performed in 12 patients from 6 unrelated families using the GENEHUNTER program. A genome-wide association analysis of 26 cases and 30 controls was performed using a GeneChip 10K mapping array. Significance levels for linkage and single single-nucleotide polymorphism association analyses were set at P<0.05 and P<0.0001, respectively. Genotyping was also performed using 58 960 single-nucleotide polymorphisms for 2 sets of discordant twins. Results— The linkage analysis revealed 7 candidate regions, with the highest logarithm of odds score of 1.88 (P=0.002) at chromosome 6q25. A significant association was observed for 4 single-nucleotide polymorphisms and 2 haplotypes, but none of them overlapped with candidate linkage regions. Genotyping of the twins showed no genetic heterogeneity. Conclusions— The present study failed to identify genetic factors for arteriovenous malformation although the low statistical power may have resulted in such evidence being missed.
Joint differential invariants of binary and ternary forms

We use moving frames to construct and classify the joint invariants and joint differential invariants of binary and ternary forms. In particular, we prove that the differential invariant algebra of ternary forms is generated by a single third order differential invariant. To connect our results with earlier analysis of Kogan, we develop a general method for relating differential invariants associated with different choices of cross-section.
Evaluation of child and adolescents with attempted suicide

Purpose:Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people. The aim of this study was to investigate psychiatric diagnoses, clinical and demographic characteristics of children and adolescents who attempted suicide. Materials and methods:Medical records of patients who attempted suicide under the age of 18 were examined by a child and adolescent psychiatrist, between January 2009 and December 2011 were evaluated retrospectively. Results: Out of 61 patients who attempted suicide, 45 (73.8%) were female and 48 (78.7%) of them were between the ages of 15-17. Drug overdose was the most common way of attempting suicide (83.6%). Psychopathology was diagnosed in 65.6% of these patients. The most frequent psychiatric disorders were major depressive disorder, conduct disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Conflicts with family and in boyfriend/ girlfriend relationships were the most common precipitant factors for attempting suicide. Conclusion: The identification of risk factors related to suicide attempts maybe helpful in predicting suicidal behaviour. Current research suggests that being female, having mental disorders (particularly depression) and close relationship problems were important factors associated with adolescent suicide attempts. Close monitoring and treatment of adolescents at risk of attempting suicide are crucial in preventive mental health. Pam Med J 2014;7(3):176-183