Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronic pain rehabilitation with a serious game using multimodal input

Rehabilitation for chronic pain follows a multidisciplinary approach, which despite the effort, often lacks the long term success and patients often fail to translate the skills learned in therapy to every day life. Serious games are hypothesized to support patients to self manage their complaints and keep training their physical functions by themselves, especially, when the game is controlled by the patient's own body performance. In this paper we present the implementation of a system providing multimodal input, including our own full body motion capture system, a low cost motion capture system (Microsoft Kinect) and biosignal acquisition devices to a game engine. In addition, a workflow has been established, that enables the use of the acquired multimodal data for serious games in a medical environment. Finally, a serious game has been implemented, targeting rehabilitation of patients with chronic pain of the lower back and neck. The focus of this work is on the multimodal input and how it is used in a game to support rehabilitation of chronic pain patients. A brief comparison of a marker-based full body MoCap system and Microsoft's Kinect is included. Preliminary results of tests currently underway are provided.
A Syntax-based Rule-base for Textual Entailment and a Semantic Truth Value Annotator

Textual entailment (TE) is the semantic inference task which takes two text fragments, and determines whether one entails the other. It captures the semantic inferences needed by many text understanding applications. Practical TE applications usually adopt relatively low-level lexical or lexicalsyntactic representations of text, which correspond closely to language structure. In many cases, such approaches miss out on some of the valuable and more abstract information, at the generic-syntactic and semantic levels. This thesis first presents a novel comprehensive generic syntax-based rule-base for the TE task, which offers a wide variety of over 60 generic entailment rules that can substitute between copious equivalent or entailing constructions in categories such as: active vs. passive, coordination, apposition, determiners, possessives, and case correction. Also, they can extract simplified IS-A and HAS-A implications from over a dozen generic patterns, and successfully decouples relative clauses. Based on inputs from previous salient works on the topic, as well as novel contributions, the rule-base is represented according to the Stanford Dependencies standard, is based on a well defined formalism, and is made publicly available for use with TE systems, including full documentation, and tools for rule design and software compilation. The rules are honed for high resilience to syntactic structure diversity, especially in RTE texts, which are used in the field’s most common benchmark. Qualitative and quantitative depth evaluations are reported, including a manual dataset analysis, that demonstrate the high potential for knowledge resources of this type in TE, the wide coverage this rule-base has over the required set of syntax-based transformations in this setting, its high accuracy, and how it significantly improves the performance of a concrete entailment engine. Additionally, I show that much work is needed for such systems to make better use of syntax-based resources. I then introduce TruthTeller, a novel algorithm and system that takes the syntactic parse tree of a given sentence, and identifies the semantic truth value of each predicate and clause. In contrast with previous work, it is the first such system meant to serve the natural language inference research community as a an open source tool, enriching conventional syntax tree representation. Some possible uses for these annotations are: inferring parts of a sentence from the whole, improving similarity (and contradiction) measures between texts, and improving the accuracy of entailment rule matching. As a side product, TruthTeller also annotates negation, and a classification of predicate implication types (factive, implicative, etc.). The download package also includes a lexicon of predicates and their implication types, the largest of its kind and the first to be made publicly available. Both the lexicon and TruthTeller’s annotations are shown to have good accuracy, recall and precision.
Probabilistic counting

We present here a class of probabilistic algorithms with which one can estimate the number of distinct elements in a collection of data (typically a large file stored on disk) in a single pass, using only 0(1) auxiliary storage and 0(1) operations per element. We precisely quantify the accuracy-storage trade-offs: for instance a typical accuracy of about 5% can be achieved using only 256 binary words, even for very large files. The algorithms are totally insensitive to the replicative structure of the elements in the file. They are particularly adapted to data base systems in the context of query optimization and can be implemented in a decentralized manner (thus making them also useful for distributed data base applications).
SemEval-2015 Task 2: Semantic Textual Similarity, English, Spanish and Pilot on Interpretability

In semantic textual similarity (STS), systems rate the degree of semantic equivalence between two text snippets. This year, the participants were challenged with new datasets in English and Spanish. The annotations for both subtasks leveraged crowdsourcing. The English subtask attracted 29 teams with 74 system runs, and the Spanish subtask engaged 7 teams participating with 16 system runs. In addition, this year we ran a pilot task on interpretable STS, where the systems needed to add an explanatory layer, that is, they had to align the chunks in the sentence pair, explicitly annotating the kind of relation and the score of the chunk pair. The train and test data were manually annotated by an expert, and included headline and image sentence pairs from previous years. 7 teams participated with 29 runs.
Analyzing multi-dimensional networks within MediaWikis

The MediaWiki platform supports popular socio-technical systems such as Wikipedia as well as thousands of other wikis. This software encodes and records a variety of relationships about the content, history, and editors of its articles such as hyperlinks between articles, discussions among editors, and editing histories. These relationships can be analyzed using standard techniques from social network analysis, however, extracting relational data from Wikipedia has traditionally required specialized knowledge of its API, information retrieval, network analysis, and data visualization that has inhibited scholarly analysis. We present a software library called the NodeXL MediaWiki Importer that extracts a variety of relationships from the MediaWiki API and integrates with the popular NodeXL network analysis and visualization software. This library allows users to query and extract a variety of multidimensional relationships from any MediaWiki installation with a publicly-accessible API. We present a case study examining the similarities and differences between different relationships for the Wikipedia articles about "Pope Francis" and "Social media. " We conclude by discussing the implications this library has for both theoretical and methodological research as well as community management and outline future work to expand the capabilities of the library.
Diagnosis of hydatidiform mole and persistent trophoblastic disease: diagnostic accuracy of total human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), free hCG {alpha}- and {beta}-subunits, and their ratios.

OBJECTIVE Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is widely used in the management of hydatidiform mole and persistent trophoblastic disease (PTD). Predicting PTD after molar pregnancy might be beneficial since prophylactic chemotherapy reduces the incidence of PTD. DESIGN A retrospective study based on blood specimens collected in the Dutch Registry for Hydatidiform Moles. A group of 165 patients with complete moles (of which 43 had PTD) and 39 patients with partial moles (of which 7 had PTD) were compared with 27 pregnant women with uneventful pregnancy. METHODS Serum samples from patients with hydatidiform mole with or without PTD were assayed using specific (radio) immunoassays for free alpha-subunit (hCGalpha), free beta-subunit (hCGbeta) and 'total' hCG (hCG + hCGbeta). In addition, we calculated the ratios hCGalpha/hCG + hCGbeta, hCGbeta/hCG + hCGbeta, and hCGalpha/hCGbeta. Specificity and sensitivity were calculated and paired in receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, resulting in areas under the curves (AUCs). RESULTS hCGbeta, hCGbeta/hCG + hCGbeta and hCGalpha/hCGbeta show AUCs ranging between 0.922 and 0.999 and, therefore, are excellent diagnostic tests to distinguish complete and partial moles from normal pregnancy. To distinguish partial from complete moles the analytes hCGbeta, hCG + hCGbeta and the ratio hCGalpha/hCGbeta have AUCs between 0.7 and 0.8. Although hCGalpha, hCGbeta and hCG + hCGbeta concentrations are significantly elevated in patients who will develop PTD compared with patients with spontaneous regression after evacuation of their moles, in predicting PTD, these analytes and parameters have AUCs <0.7. CONCLUSIONS Distinction between hydatidiform mole and normal pregnancy is best shown by a single blood specimen with hCGbeta, but hCGbeta/hCG + hCGbeta and hCGalpha/hCGbeta are also excellent diagnostic parameters. To predict PTD, hCGalpha, hCGbeta, hCG + hCGbeta and hCGalpha/hCGbeta are moderately accurate tests, although they are not accurate enough to justify prophylactic chemotherapy treatment for prevention of PTD.
Estimation of Human Movements from Body Acceleration Monitoring Using One Nearest Neighbor Method - Ubiquitous Health Care

We are developing an ubiquitous system for constant monitoring of human health that uses a 3D accelerometer and an electrocardiogram communicating wirelessly to a personal computer. The should provide an automatic alert whenever a person’s condition indicates a risk of heart attack or other danger. We collected acceleration data and bodily movement records from our staffs and from volunteer in order to determine from the movement data what sorts of movements, such as walking or riding a bicycle, a person is engaging in. Our system is able to infer the type of human movements from the acceleration data and use this in combination with ECG data to decide whether to issue an alert. Recently, we used a threshold method for the estimating what types of movements were being detected. Then we recently improved on our movement estimates by using normalization and the one nearest neighbor method.
A HMM-based speech synthesis system using a new glottal source and vocal-tract separation method

This paper introduces a HMM-based speech synthesis system which uses a new method for the Separation of Vocal-tract and Liljencrants-Fant model plus Noise (SVLN). The glottal source is separated into two components: a deterministic glottal waveform Liljencrants-Fant model and a modulated Gaussian noise. This glottal source is first estimated and then used in the vocal-tract estimation procedure. Then, the parameters of the source and the vocal-tract are included into HMM contextual models of phonems. SVLN is promising for voice transformation in synthesis of expressive speech since it allows an independent control of vocal-tract and glottal-source properties. The synthesis results are finally discussed and subjectively evaluated.
Age-and Gender-Dependent Analysis of Voice Source Characteristics

The effects of age, gender, and vocal tract configurations on the glottal excitation signal are still only partially understood. In this paper we examine some of these effects, and show that the voice source parameters, such as fundamental frequency (F<sub>o</sub>), open quotient (related to H*<sub>1</sub> - H*<sub>2</sub>), and spectral tilt (related to H*<sub>1</sub> - A*<sub>3</sub>) are not only affected by age and gender but are also intercorrelated (the asterisk superscript denotes correction for the influence of various formants). Recordings of 92 male and female speakers from three age groups (8, 15, 20-39) are analyzed. The main observations are: for low-pitched talkers H*<sub>1</sub> - H* <sub>2</sub> (hence, the open quotient) is proportional to F<sub>o</sub>, while for high-pitched talkers H*<sub>1</sub> $H*<sub>2 </sub> is proportional to F<sub>1</sub> (high to low vowels) for F<sub>1 </sub> < 700 Hz. The parameter H*<sub>1</sub> - A*<sub>3</sub> showed a strong dependence on F<sub>2</sub> and F<sub>3</sub> for all talkers and age groups: increasing F<sub>2</sub> or F<sub>3</sub> yielded an increase in H*<sub>1</sub> - A*<sub>3</sub>. Spectral tilt was seen to be vowel dependent and for male talkers, spectral tilt changed dramatically with age. A better understanding of the dependencies of voice source parameters on age and gender will help improve voice source parameter estimation and analysis for a variety of speech processing and medical applications
PRESCRIÇÃO DE EXERCÍCIOS FÍSICOS PARA IDOSOS

O presente estudo tem como objetivo investigar a prescricao de exercicios para idosos, constante na literatura em lingua portuguesa, sob forma de livros, periodicos, anais e publicacoes eletronica. Para tanto, procurou-se coletar dados quanto aos seguintes aspectos: a) Impacto do envelhecimento no organismo humano; b) Avaliacao dos componentes da aptidao funcional; e, c) Composicao de um programa de exercicio fisico. O processo de envelhecimento evidencia mudancas nos niveis antropometrico, neuromuscular, cardiovascular, pulmonar, neural, alem da diminuicao da agilidade, coordenacao, equilibrio, flexibilidade, mobilidade articular e aumento na rigidez de cartilagem, tendoes e ligamentos. Essas mudancas associadas ao baixo nivel de atividade fisica nos idosos levam ao declinio da capacidade funcional. A avaliacao do nivel de dependencia funcional torna-se importante ao idoso, pois proporcionara uma prescricao de exercicios fisicos mais direcionada as suas reais necessidades, aumentando a efetividade do programa e reduzindo os riscos. Os principios gerais para a prescricao de exercicios fisicos para idosos fundamentam-se na modalidade(s) apropriada, intensidade, duracao, frequencia e progressao da atividade fisica, com o objetivo de melhorar a qualidade de vida, minimizar as alteracoes fisiologicas, melhorar a capacidade motora e proporcionar beneficios sociais, psicologicos e fisicos. Portanto, na prescricao de exercicios fisicos para idosos e necessario o treinamento da capacidade cardiorespiratoria, da forca, do equilibrio, do tempo de reacao e movimento e da agilidade.
Prognostic nomogram for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma after partial hepatectomy.

PURPOSE This study aimed to establish an effective prognostic nomogram for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) after partial hepatectomy. PATIENTS AND METHODS The nomogram was based on a retrospectively study on 367 patients who underwent partial hepatectomy for ICC at the Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital from 2002 to 2007. The predictive accuracy and discriminative ability of the nomogram were determined by concordance index (C-index) and calibration curve and compared with five currently used staging systems on ICC. The results were validated using bootstrap resampling and a prospective study on 82 patients operated on from 2007 to 2008 at the same institution. RESULTS On multivariate analysis of the primary cohort, independent factors for survival were serum carcinoembryonic antigen, CA 19-9, tumor diameter and number, vascular invasion, lymph node metastasis, direct invasion, and local extrahepatic metastasis, which were all selected into the nomogram. The calibration curve for probability of survival showed good agreement between prediction by nomogram and actual observation. The C-index of the nomogram for predicting survival was 0.74 (95% CI, 0.71 to 0.77), which was statistically higher than the C-index values of the following systems: American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) seventh edition (0.65), AJCC sixth edition (0.65), Nathan (0.64), Liver Cancer Study Group of Japan (0.64), and Okabayashi (0.67; P < .001 for all). It was also higher (0.74) in predicting survival for the mass-forming type of ICC (P < .001). In the validation cohort, the nomogram discrimination was superior to the five other staging systems (C-index: 0.75 v 0.60 to 0.63; P < .001 for all). CONCLUSION The proposed nomogram resulted in more-accurate prognostic prediction for patients with ICC after partial hepatectomy.
Segmentation and alignment of parallel text for statistical machine translation

We address the problem of extracting bilingual chunk pairs from parallel text to create training sets for statistical machine translation. We formulate the problem in terms of a stochastic generative process over text translation pairs, and derive two different alignment procedures based on the underlying alignment model. The first procedure is a now-standard dynamic programming alignment model which we use to generate an initial coarse alignment of the parallel text. The second procedure is a divisive clustering parallel text alignment procedure which we use to refine the first-pass alignments. This latter procedure is novel in that it permits the segmentation of the parallel text into sub-sentence units which are allowed to be reordered to improve the chunk alignment. The quality of chunk pairs are measured by the performance of machine translation systems trained from them. We show practical benefits of divisive clustering as well as how system performance can be improved by exploiting portions of the parallel text that otherwise would have to be discarded. We also show that chunk alignment as a first step in word alignment can significantly reduce word alignment error rate.
Comprehension of indirect requests by adults with severe traumatic brain injury: Contributions of gestural and verbal information

Purpose: The researchers sought to determine the extent to which individuals with and without traumatic brain injury (TBI) integrate gestural and verbal information when interpreting indirect requests. Method: Eighteen adults with cognitive-communication impairments secondary to severe TBI and 18 neurologically-intact adults viewed video vignettes depicting actors conversing in everyday contexts and concluding with indirect requests. Indirect requests were presented in three conditions: verbal information only (VO), gestural information only (GO) and combined verbal and gestural information (VG). Following each vignette, participants answered prediction and interpretation probes. Results: Statistical analysis revealed comparable performance patterns across participant groups, with significantly better performance in the VG condition than either the VO or GO conditions; however, neurologically-intact participants performed significantly better than participants with TBI in all conditions. Further analysis involved categorization of incorrect responses to determine the basis for participant errors. Conclusion: Overall, results suggest that individuals with brain injury benefit from a combination of gestural and verbal information when interpreting indirect requests; however, interpretations by individuals with brain injury are less accurate than interpretations made by neurologically-intact individuals. Incorrect responses tend to be abstract rather than literal and inaccurate with regard to a speaker's intended meaning.
Spatial Data Modeling on GIS for Classification of Measles-prone Region Using Multiple Attribute Decision Making

Indonesia is a country that has a tropical climate, so that many typical tropical climate diseases emerge. This disease is caused by viruses and parasites that breed during the dry season or the rainy season. One typical tropical disease is measles. This paper discusses the geographical information system (GIS) technology by analyzing spatial data modeling to determine the classification of measles-prone areas based on immunization status coverage using the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) and Weight Product Model (WPM) method. Some parameters are used consist of immunization status data for multiple attribute decision making (MADM), diseases preventable by immunization (PD3I), epidemic and nutritional status of infants. The SAW and WPM method in modeling spatial data analysis processes data according to the parameters to determine the scale in comparing all alternative data on the scope of classification of immunization status areas, namely: good, average, fair and poor. The test results with the Cohen's Kappa Method Consistency Test (MCT) is obtained an average coefficient of 0.41 for consistent measurements for the chosen method. It can be concluded that the two measurements using the SAW and WPM methods have a moderate for the strength of agreement category, for using in spatial data modeling on the GIS for classification of measles prone regions using MADM. Keywords: GIS, Spatial data modeling, MADM, SAW, WPM, Cohen's Kappa, Tropical diseases, Measles.
An automated design flow for 3D microarchitecture evaluation

Although the emerging 3D integration technology can significantly reduce interconnect delay, chip area, and power dissipation in nanometer technologies, its impact on overall system performance is still poorly understood due to the lack of tools and systematic flows to evaluate 3D microarchitectural designs. The contribution of this paper is the development of MEVA-3D, an automated physical design and architecture performance estimation flow for 3D architectural evaluation which includes 3D floorplanning, routing, interconnect pipelining and automated thermal via insertion, and associated die size, performance, and thermal modeling capabilities. We apply this flow to a simple, out-of-order superscalar microprocessor to evaluate the performance and thermal behavior in 2D and 3D designs, and demonstrate the value of MEVA-3D in providing quantitative evaluation results to guide 3D architecture designs. In particular, we show that it is feasible to manage thermal challenges with a combination of thermal vias and double-sided heat sinks, and report modest system performance gains in 3D designs for these simple test examples
On Natural Modulational Bandwidth of Deep-Water Surface Waves

We suggest that there exists a natural bandwidth of wave trains, including trains of wind-generated waves with a continuous spectrum, determined by their steepness. Based on laboratory experiments with monochromatic waves, we show that, if no side-band perturbations are imposed, the ratio between the wave steepness and bandwidth is restricted to certain limits. These limits are consistent with field observations of narrow-banded wind-wave spectra if a characteristic width of the spectral peak and average steepness are used. The role of the wind in such modulation is also discussed.
Control of an optimal finger exoskeleton based on continuous joint angle estimation from EMG signals

Patients suffering from loss of hand functions caused by stroke and other spinal cord injuries have driven a surge in the development of wearable assistive devices in recent years. In this paper, we present a system made up of a low-profile, optimally designed finger exoskeleton continuously controlled by a user's surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals. The mechanical design is based on an optimal four-bar linkage that can model the finger's irregular trajectory due to the finger's varying lengths and changing instantaneous center. The desired joint angle positions are given by the predictive output of an artificial neural network with an EMG-to-Muscle Activation model that parameterizes electromechanical delay (EMD). After confirming good prediction accuracy of multiple finger joint angles we evaluated an index finger exoskeleton by obtaining a subject's EMG signals from the left forearm and using the signal to actuate a finger on the right hand with the exoskeleton. Our results show that our sEMG-based control strategy worked well in controlling the exoskeleton, obtaining the intended positions of the device, and that the subject felt the appropriate motion support from the device.