Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Facial Expression Recognition in Daily Life by Embedded Photo Reflective Sensors on Smart Eyewear

This paper presents a novel smart eyewear that uses embedded photo reflective sensors and machine learning to recognize a wearer's facial expressions in daily life. We leverage the skin deformation when wearers change their facial expressions. With small photo reflective sensors, we measure the proximity between the skin surface on a face and the eyewear frame where 17 sensors are integrated. A Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm was applied for the sensor information. The sensors can cover various facial muscle movements and can be integrated into everyday glasses. The main contributions of our work are as follows. (1) The eyewear recognizes eight facial expressions (92.8% accuracy for one time use and 78.1% for use on 3 different days). (2) It is designed and implemented considering social acceptability. The device looks like normal eyewear, so users can wear it anytime, anywhere. (3) Initial field trials in daily life were undertaken. Our work is one of the first attempts to recognize and evaluate a variety of facial expressions in the form of an unobtrusive wearable device.
Evaluation of Bacteria Detected in Both Urine and Open Wounds in Nursing Facility Residents

Nursing home residents are at a greater risk of developing pressure injuries that develop into an open wound. Open wounds can be colonized with bacteria from multiple sources. Emerging evidence suggests the specific composition of the open wound microbial community can result in delayed wound healing and increased infection risk. Understanding the factors that influence microbial colonization of open wounds, can lead to the prevention of infections. The relationship between bacteria found in urine and that of open wounds, is currently unknown. Recent studies have shown that nursing home residents can harbor a urinary microbiota independent of symptoms and frequently experience urinary incontinence. To determine if the colonization of open wounds mirrors urinary colonization, we conducted a pilot study with nursing home residents, comparing bacteria present in open pressure injuries below the umbilicus and urine. To identify microbial species that were present in both urine and open wound at one timepoint, standard bacteriologic culture techniques followed by MALDI-TOF was used as well as16S rRNA-encoding gene amplicon sequencing. In this study we found that some bacteria detected in urine were also detected in open wounds in one individual at one timepoint, using both culture dependent and independent techniques. Bacterial species that were more often detected at both sites included Enterococcus faecalis, Proteus mirabilis, Escherichia coli, and Providencia stuartii. This pilot study provides evidence that urinary colonization can mirror open wound colonization. Further studies are needed to investigate if parallel colonization of these anatomical sites affect infection outcomes.
Principals’ Working Conditions, Job Stress, and Turnover Behaviors Under NCLB Accountability Pressure

Purpose: Many studies have investigated the impact of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and its sanctions on students and teachers. Little research, however, has systematically examined the relationship between NCLB and its sanctions and school principals. Given the importance of school leadership and the accountability systems implemented at different levels of government, there has been a need for research that examines how school leaders behave under the accountability pressure. Research Method: Using the Schools and Staffing Survey data, the Principal Follow-up Survey data, and detailed school-level adequate yearly progress (AYP) and assessment data systematically collected from 45 states, I investigate the association between NCLB sanctions and principals’ working conditions, job stress level, and turnover behaviors. I use a distance variable as a key matching variable in propensity score matching and estimate the association. Findings: I find strong evidence that NCLB sanctions are associated with a higher level of principals’ job stress and a higher turnover rate. These findings hold even after controlling for the influence of state accountability systems. I do not find evidence that these associations are moderated by principal or school characteristics. I also find little evidence that job stress is a mediator of the relationship between NCLB sanctions and principal turnover. Implications: Sanction-based accountability pressure appears to make the principalship more stressful and lead to turnover. Policy makers currently redesigning state and local accountability systems under the Every Student Succeeds Act may include support programs for school leaders to reduce their job stress level and retain them for a longer period of time.
Player 2.0: Toward a Practical Robot Programming Framework

Player/Stage has become a de facto standard in the open source robotics community. We describe recent work on restructuring the Player robot device server into a system that more closely aligns with the idea of a robot framework. The general requirements for a robot framework are also discussed. Player 2.0 is a major improvement in two basic areas, simplicity and flexibility. The driver API has been vastly simplified with many more parts of the communication being hidden from the user. The flexibility of the new system is realised in the library division that allows for different transport layers (or no transport at all), and in the new device address structure that allows for inter-server device subscriptions.
Linear transmit processing in MIMO communications systems

We examine and compare the different types of linear transmit processing for multiple input, multiple output systems, where we assume that the receive filter is independent of the transmit filter contrary to the joint optimization of transmit and receive filters. We can identify three filter types similar to receive processing: the transmit matched filter, the transmit zero-forcing filter, and the transmit Wiener filter. We show that the transmit filters are based on similar optimizations as the respective receive filters with an additional constraint for the transmit power. Moreover, the transmit Wiener filter has similar convergence properties as the receive Wiener filter, i.e., it converges to the matched filter and the zero-forcing filter for low and high signal-to-noise ratio, respectively. We give closed-form solutions for all transmit filters and present the fundamental result that their mean-square errors are equal to the errors of the respective receive filters, if the information symbols and the additive noise are uncorrelated. However, our simulations reveal that the bit-error ratio results of the transmit filters differ from the results for the respective receive filters.
Together we stand stronger

This is an action research case study investigating social participation roadblocks and opportunities through leisure-related factors for Eritrean refugee status holders in the city of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The intent of this paper is to report on challenges and opportunities for refugees as “citizens in transition” within a specific northern European urban neighbourhood. The research project has a key focus on urban leisure with a participatory, action-oriented epistemological and activist intent. This multidisciplinary mix was designed for consulting purposes. The paper describes the situation during the period 2015 to 2016, and future challenges triggered by the migration crisis in the last decade in the European context, with specific attention devoted to the impact on the Dutch context. From such continental and national scope, the paper will shift to the outcome of a specific consulting project pertaining to 98 Eritrean refugees, aged 19 to 24 years old, temporarily hosted by the city of Nijmegen. Here, empirical research based on design thinking principles have enabled the identification of potential solutions and strategies aimed at achieving a more effective process for the inclusion of those residence holders with refugee status into the social and cultural life of their neighbourhood, with the final ambition of future integration into the city. Being a case study grounded in constructivism, the paper will firstly provide an overview of facts, figures and findings to detail the research performed, and then conclude with reflexive considerations based on bibliographic references and methodological reflections.
The Interactions Between Power and Couple Satisfaction for Women

ABSTRACT Gender and power impact heterosexual relationships immensely. Imbalanced power dynamics within a relationship can lead to challenges. This study seeks to examine the reported power dynamics in a therapeutic seeing of women within a heterosexual relationship. The aim of this study is to see if (a) women have more perceived power after five therapy sessions of therapy and (b) this perceived power influences relationship satisfaction. Results include women reporting greater equality in their relationship power dynamic after therapy sessions. This increase in perceived power also correlated with a higher relationships satisfaction. Graphical Abstract
Measuring Implicit Science Learning with Networks of Player-Game Interactions

Visualizing player behavior in complex problem solving tasks such as games is important for both assessing learning and for the design of content. We collected data from 195 high school students playing an optics puzzle game, Quantum Spectre, and modeled their game play as an interaction network, examining errors hypothesized to be related to a lack of implicit understanding of the science concepts embedded in the game. We found that the networks were useful for visualization of student behavior, identifying areas of student misconceptions and locating regions of the network where students become stuck. Preliminary regression analyses show a negative relationship between the science misconceptions identified during gameplay and implicit science learning.
Experimental Analysis of the Line-Side Interphase Transformer Magnetizing Currents in Three-Phase Output Voltage Type Rectifiers

1 Abstract: Magnetizing currents of a line-side interphase transformer applied in a three-phase twelve-pulse voltage output type rectifiers are analyzed. Waveforms of the transformer voltages are derived. It is shown that fluxes of the core limbs contain a significant zero-sequence component, resulting in a stray flux and high magnetizing currents. Application of three single-phase cores is proposed. The results are experimentally verified.
Recasting mermin's multi-player game into the framework of pseudo-telepathy

Entanglement is perhaps the most non-classical manifestation of quantum mechanics. Among its many interesting applications to information processing, it can be harnessed to reduce the amount of communication required to process a variety of distributed computational tasks. Can it be used to eliminate communication altogether? Even though it cannot serve to signal information between remote parties, there are distributed tasks that can be performed without any need for communication, provided the parties share prior entanglement: this is the realm of pseudo-telepathy. One of the earliest uses of multi-party entanglement was presented by Mermin in 1990. Here we recast his idea in terms of pseudo-telepathy: we provide a new computer-scientist-friendly analysis of this game. We prove an upper bound on the best possible classical strategy for attempting to play this game, as well as a novel, matching lower bound. This leads us to considerations on how well imperfect quantum-mechanical apparatus must perform in order to exhibit a behaviour that would be classically impossible to explain. Our results include improved bounds that could help vanquish the infamous detection loophole.
Automatic Roof Plane Detection and Analysis in Airborne Lidar Point Clouds for Solar Potential Assessment

A relative height threshold is defined to separate potential roof points from the point cloud, followed by a segmentation of these points into homogeneous areas fulfilling the defined constraints of roof planes. The normal vector of each laser point is an excellent feature to decompose the point cloud into segments describing planar patches. An object-based error assessment is performed to determine the accuracy of the presented classification. It results in 94.4% completeness and 88.4% correctness. Once all roof planes are detected in the 3D point cloud, solar potential analysis is performed for each point. Shadowing effects of nearby objects are taken into account by calculating the horizon of each point within the point cloud. Effects of cloud cover are also considered by using data from a nearby meteorological station. As a result the annual sum of the direct and diffuse radiation for each roof plane is derived. The presented method uses the full 3D information for both feature extraction and solar potential analysis, which offers a number of new applications in fields where natural processes are influenced by the incoming solar radiation (e.g., evapotranspiration, distribution of permafrost). The presented method detected fully automatically a subset of 809 out of 1,071 roof planes where the arithmetic mean of the annual incoming solar radiation is more than 700 kWh/m2.
Gestational syphilis and stillbirth in the Americas: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of reported estimates of the association between gestational syphilis (GS) and stillbirth in the Americas region. METHODS Cochrane Library, Embase, LILACS, MEDLINE/PubMed, PLOS, and ScienceDirect were searched for original research studies quantifying the relationship between GS and stillbirth in the region. A final sample of eight studies was selected. A cumulative meta-analysis plus four subgroup meta-analyses of study data on the association between maternal syphilis during pregnancy and stillbirth were conducted. The four meta-analyses were based on 1) definition of cases and the control; 2) syphilis treatment (presence or absence, effective or ineffective); 3) definition of stillbirth as "showing no signs of life at birth"; and 4) definition of stillbirth based on low birth weight and gestational age. Random-effects metaanalyses were used to calculate pooled estimates of stillbirth with exposure to GS, and each subgroup analysis was tested for heterogeneity. RESULTS Women with GS had increased odds of stillbirth (pooled odds ratio (OR): 6.87; 95% confidence interval: 2.93, 16.08). There was considerable heterogeneity across the eight studies (percentage of variance (I²) = 95). The funnel plot was not statistically significant, pointing to a lack of publication bias. Increased odds of stillbirth among pregnant women with syphilis were also seen in all four subgroup meta-analyses. CONCLUSIONS GS is a major contributing factor for stillbirths in the Americas. Interventions targeting GS are highly cost-effective and, along with high-quality point-of-care testing, should be implemented across the region to help reach the goal of eliminating congenital syphilis.
DSAP: deep-sequencing small RNA analysis pipeline

DSAP is an automated multiple-task web service designed to provide a total solution to analyzing deep-sequencing small RNA datasets generated by next-generation sequencing technology. DSAP uses a tab-delimited file as an input format, which holds the unique sequence reads (tags) and their corresponding number of copies generated by the Solexa sequencing platform. The input data will go through four analysis steps in DSAP: (i) cleanup: removal of adaptors and poly-A/T/C/G/N nucleotides; (ii) clustering: grouping of cleaned sequence tags into unique sequence clusters; (iii) non-coding RNA (ncRNA) matching: sequence homology mapping against a transcribed sequence library from the ncRNA database Rfam (http://rfam.sanger.ac.uk/); and (iv) known miRNA matching: detection of known miRNAs in miRBase (http://www.mirbase.org/) based on sequence homology. The expression levels corresponding to matched ncRNAs and miRNAs are summarized in multi-color clickable bar charts linked to external databases. DSAP is also capable of displaying miRNA expression levels from different jobs using a log2-scaled color matrix. Furthermore, a cross-species comparative function is also provided to show the distribution of identified miRNAs in different species as deposited in miRBase. DSAP is available at http://dsap.cgu. edu.tw.
Depletion of Regulatory T Lymphocytes Reverses the Imbalance between Pro- and Anti-Tumor Immunities via Enhancing Antigen-Specific T Cell Immune Responses

Background The regulatory T cells (Tregs) can actively suppress the immune responses. However, literature about detailed changes of host effective and suppressive immunities before and after depletion of Tregs in ovarian carcinomas, is rare. Materials and Methods Ovarian cancer patients and the ascitogenic animal model were employed. Immunologic profiles with flow cytometric analyses, immunohistochemistric staining, RT-PCR, ELISA, and ELISPOT assays were performed. In vivo depletion of Treg cells with the mAb PC61was also performed in the animal model. Results The cytokines, including IL-4 (p = 0.017) and TNF-α (p = 0.046), significantly decreased while others such as TGF-β (p = 0.013), IL-6 (p = 0.016), and IL-10 (p = 0.018) were elevated in ascites of ovarian cancer patients, when the disease progressed to advanced stages. The ratio of CD8+ T cell/Treg cell in ascites was also lower in advanced diseases than in early diseases (advanced 7.37±0.64 vs. early 14.25±3.11, p = 0.037). The kinetic low-dose CD25 Ab depletion group had significantly lower intra-peritoneal tumor weight (0.20±0.03 g) than the sequential high-dose (0.69±0.06 g) and sequential low-dose (0.67±0.07 g) CD25 Ab deletion groups (p = 0.001) after 49 days of tumor challenge in the animal. The kinetic low-dose CD25 Ab depletion group generated the highest number of IFN-γ-secreting, mesothelin-specific T lymphocytes compared to the other groups (p<0.001). Conclusions The imbalance between effective and suppressive immunities becomes more severe as a tumor progresses. The depletion of Treg cells can correct the imbalance of immunologic profiles and generate potent anti-tumor effects. Targeting Treg cells can be a new strategy for the immunotherapy of ovarian carcinoma.
Motivation and competitive learning in a social robot

This paper describes the motivation and learning subsystems of Arisco which is a mechatronic head with interactive capacity which includes high expressivity through gesturing, voice recognition, text to speech generation, visual tracking, and Internet information retrieval. The general architecture is first described in the paper. Then, the learning capacity of Arisco is addressed. It learns and performs associations between different stimulus responses through several dynamic neural networks, guided by motivational drives. A number of experiments are discussed, covering stimulus competition, habituation, classical and operant conditioning.
The Thrombospondin Receptor CD 47 ( IAP ) Modulates and Associates with a 2 b 1 Integrin in Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

The carboxyl-terminal domain of thrombospondin-1 enhances the migration and proliferation of smooth muscle cells. Integrin-associated protein (IAP or CD47) is a receptor for the thrombospondin-1 carboxyl-terminal cell-binding domain and binds the agonist peptide 4N1K (kRFYVVMWKk) from this domain. 4N1K peptide stimulates chemotaxis of both human and rat aortic smooth muscle cells on gelatin-coated filters. The migration on gelatin is specifically blocked by monoclonal antibodies against IAP and a b1 integrin, rather than avb3 as found previously for 4N1K-stimulated chemotaxis of endothelial cells on gelatin. Both human and rat smooth muscle cells displayed a weak migratory response to soluble type I collagen; however, the presence of 4N1K peptide or intact thrombospondin-1 provoked a synergistic chemotactic response that was partially blocked by antibodies to a2 and b1 integrin subunits and to IAP. A combination of antia2 and IAP monoclonal antibodies completely blocked chemotaxis. RGD peptide and antiavb3 mAb were without effect. 4N1K and thrombospondin-1 did not augment the chemotactic response of smooth muscle cells to fibronectin, vitronectin, or collagenasedigested type I collagen. Complex formation between a2b1 and IAP was detected by the coimmunoprecipitation of both a2 and b1 integrin subunits with IAP. These data suggest that IAP can associate with a2b1 integrin and modulate its function.
Gonad development in Midas cichlids and the evolution of sex change in fishes

SUMMARY Some fishes mature and function as one sex and later transform to the other sex in response to social interactions. Previous evidence suggested that a change in developmental timing may be involved in the evolution of adult sex change in fishes. The most recent support for this idea came from reports that sex in the Midas cichlid, Amphilophus citrinellus, was determined by social conditions experienced at the juvenile stage. Differentiation as a male was reported to be dependent on large body size relative to group‐mates, and thought to be mediated through aggressive interactions. Here I demonstrate that socially controlled sex determination does not occur as was originally reported. Previously, I found that sex was not associated with body size in juveniles either in nature or in captivity. Similarly, I found no association between aggressive behavior and sex in juveniles. I later demonstrated that socially controlled sex determination does not typically occur in the Midas cichlid and closely related species and supported an alternative mechanism to explain large body size in adult males. Finally, in the current study I analyze gonad histology of fish from the same population used by the original authors and lay to rest the idea of socially controlled sex determination in this species. Recent observations of socially controlled sex determination in juveniles of species that typically change sex at the adult stage are examples of phenotypic plasticity, not genetic variation. Therefore, juvenile socially controlled sex determination does not support a theory that a change in developmental timing is involved in the evolution of adult sex change in fishes.