Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Musical Rhythms Affect Heart Rate Variability: Algorithm and Models

There were a lot of psychological music experiments and models but there were few psychological rhythm experiments and models. There were a lot of physiological music experiments but there were few physiological music models. There were few physiological rhythm experiments but there was no physiological rhythm model. We proposed a physiological rhythm model to fill this gap. Twenty-two participants, 4 drum loops as stimuli, and electrocardiogram (ECG) were employed in this work. We designed an algorithm to map tempo, complexity, and energy into two heart rate variability (HRV) measures, the standard deviation of normal-to-normal heartbeats (SDNN) and the ratio of low- and high-frequency powers (LF/HF); these two measures form the physiological valence/arousal plane. There were four major findings. Initially, simple and loud rhythms enhanced arousal. Secondly, the removal of fast and loud rhythms decreased arousal. Thirdly, fast rhythms increased valence. Finally, the removal of fast and quiet rhythms increased valence. Our work extended the psychological model to the physiological model and deepened the musical model into the rhythmic model. Moreover, this model could be the rules of automatic music generating systems.
Vehicular Networks for a Greener Environment: A Survey

Researchers are looking for solutions that save the environment and money. Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) offer promising technology for safety communications. Thus, researchers try to integrate certain applications into existing research. The current survey critically examines the use of vehicular communication networks to provide green solutions. We discuss the current implementations of technology and provide a comparison from the communication perspective. This paper is meant to motivate researchers to investigate a new direction in which a network of vehicles is used to enhance total fuel and power consumption, gas emissions, and-as a result-budgets. Moreover, open issues and research directions that have only been slightly addressed, if at all, are discussed.
Accurate alignment between correlated light, cryo-light, and electron cryo-microscopy data using sample support features

Combining fluorescence microscopy with electron cryo-tomography allows, in principle, spatial localization of tagged macromolecular assemblies and structural features within the cellular environment. To allow precise localization and scale integration between the two disparate imaging modalities, accurate alignment procedures are needed. Here, we describe a marker-free method for aligning images from light or cryo-light fluorescence microscopy and from electron cryo-microscopy that takes advantage of sample support features, namely the holes in the carbon film. We find that the accuracy of this method, as judged by prediction errors of the hole center coordinates, is better than 100 nm.
Treatment of Striae Distensae Using Needling Therapy: A Pilot Study

BACKGROUND Striae distensae are dermal scars characterized by flattening and atrophy of the epidermis. Although many treatment modalities have been attempted with variable results, there is no criterion standard treatment modality for striae distensae. OBJECTIVES To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of a disk microneedle therapy system (DTS) in the treatment of striae distensae. MATERIALS AND METHODS Sixteen Korean volunteers with striae distensae alba or rubra were enrolled. Patients received three treatments using a DTS at 4‐week intervals. Clinical response to treatment was assessed by comparing pre‐ and post‐treatment clinical photographs, skin biopsies, and patient satisfaction scores. Clinical improvement was assessed using the quartile grading scale. RESULTS Marked to excellent improvement was noted in seven (43.8%) patients, with minimal to moderate improvement in the remaining nine. Patient satisfaction scores showed that six (37.5%) patients were highly satisfied, eight (50.0%) were somewhat satisfied, and two (12.5%) were unsatisfied. There were no significant side effects except mild pain, erythema, and spotty bleeding. CONCLUSION Disk microneedle therapy system (DTS) can be effectively and safely used in the treatment of striae distensae.
Dynamic Point Convolution-Based Point Cloud Completion Network

Point cloud completion, a method that infers the complete point cloud by extracting features from a partial point cloud, is a crucial issue in 3D visual research. Currently, deep learning techniques have been widely applied in this field. However, most typical deep learning point cloud completion networks focus on the completion of the overall shape of the point cloud rather than the repair of local details. In light of this, this study proposes a novel dynamic point convolution-based point cloud completion network. This network uses a dual-branch encoder to extract spatial features and structural features from the point cloud and merge these two features. Subsequently, a multi-layer perceptron is used to generate a coarse completion of the partial point cloud, and finally, a dense completion point cloud is generated by grid folding. The experimental results show that the proposed point cloud completion network outperforms PCN and other point cloud completion networks. In terms of CDL1, CD-L2, and EMD metrics, the proposed network reduces 6.67%, 18.53%, and 4.53% on average, respectively, and in terms of F-Score metric, the proposed network outperforms the PCN by 2.41 percentage points on average.
Specificity and sensitivity of the Beck Hopelessness Scale for suicidal ideation among adolescents entering early intervention service

Abstract Previous studies have shown an association between hopelessness and suicidal behaviour in clinical populations. The aim of the study was to investigate sensitivity, specificity, and predictive validity of the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) for suicidal ideation in adolescents who show early risk signs on the psychiatric disorder continuum. Three-hundred and two help-seeking adolescents (mean age = 15.5 years) who were entering an early intervention team at Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland, completed questionnaires of BHS and suicidal ideation, derived from Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II). Results suggest that a BHS cut-off score ≥8 (sensitivity = 0.70, specificity = 0.76) or cut-off score ≥9 (sensitivity = 0.63, specificity = 0.80) may be useful to detect suicidal ideation with BHS in help-seeking adolescents population. Results remain mainly the same in a separate analysis with adolescents at risk for psychosis. The results support previous cut-off points for BHS in identification of suicidal ideation. The results suggest also that lower cut-off scores may be useful in sense of sensitivity, especially in clinical settings.
Investigating the cortical oscillatory correlates of smooth pursuit eye movements: a magnetoencephalographic study

Models of motion perception propose that eye movement estimates are integrated into middle temporal cortex (MT+) as a mechanism that disambiguates world motion from retinal motion induced by ego movement. Little is known about the relationship between eye movement signals in this area and cortical oscillations, a phenomenon linked to perceptual and motor processing. Magnetoencephalography was used to examine the significance of oscillations in this area during pursuit. Results from Experiment 1 suggest low-frequency suppression in MT+ reflects eye position during sinusoidal tracking. A control study (Experiment 2) examining activity in response to retinal slip suggests this was not due to pursuit error when the stimulus changed direction. Experiment 3 examined oscillations during pursuit at various head-centred eye eccentricities. No difference was found in the magnitude of activity as a function of eye position during pursuit, suggesting modulations in these rhythms was related to another aspect of the eye movement. Experiment 4 found no specific effects of eye velocity on alpha or beta, but there was a consistent effect of eye speed on beta activity. Additionally, there was no such effect found between alpha and eye speed, suggesting some functional distinction in the role of these rhythms in pursuit behaviour. In Chapter 4, two experiments examined cortical changes during pursuit (Experiment 5) and retinal motion adaptation (Experiment 6), and the subsequent motion aftereffect. Beta suppression in MT+ during oculomotor adaptation was a significant predictor of the motion aftereffect duration, perhaps indicating that beta changes index the efficacy with which the visual motion system is able to recalibrate itself in the presence of a stationary stimulus following adaptation. Taken together, these results suggest a role for beta suppression in MT+ during pursuit, which seems to reflect the processing of extraretinal signals for oculomotor control and the estimation of head-centred motion.
A highly efficient and scalable prediction approach based on random forest that is capable of handling enormous data sets

Cardiovascular illnesses include elevated blood pressure, stroke, heart failure, and heart disease. They are the leading causes of premature mortality all over the globe, especially in economically disadvantaged and countries with middle incomes. The diagnosis of these conditions at an earlier stage might lead to a drop in the number of untimely deaths. Health care is an incredibly important and promising application of data mining. The medical field has benefited substantially from data mining. Heart Disease is a challenging but manageable chronic disease that people around the world are diligently striving to manage. There are a total of 70,000 samples in the dataset, and its qualities may be broken down into 12 categories. Data was then examined in a jupyter notebook (anaconda-3) environment. Random forest, a machine learning approach, is used to do both classification and analysis of the data sets. Percentages representing accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity are used to illustrate the dataset's findings. Employing the random forest technique, we were able to enhance our accuracy at foreseeing cardiac issues by 86.9%. Furthermore, the sensitivity was 80.6%, while the specificity was 82.7 percent. After conducting an analysis of random forest's operational features, we found that it has a medical accuracy of 85 % when it comes to forecasting the outcome of cardiovascular illness. It has been shown that the random forest is the most efficient algorithm for identifying cardiac diseases consequently, which is included in the suggested technique.
Cigarettes with different nicotine levels affect sensory perception and levels of biomarkers of exposure in adult smokers.

INTRODUCTION Few clinical studies involving cigarettes have provided a comprehensive picture of smoke exposure, test article characterization, and insights into sensory properties combined. The purpose of these pilot studies was to determine whether cigarettes with different levels of nicotine but similar tar levels would affect sensory experience or smoking behavior so as to significantly alter levels of selected biomarkers of exposure (BOE). METHODS In 2 confined, double-blind studies, 120 adult smokers switched from Marlboro Gold cigarettes at baseline to either 1 of 2 lower nicotine cigarettes or 1 of 2 higher nicotine cigarettes and then to the other cigarette after 5 days. Urinary excretion of exposure biomarkers (nicotine equivalents [NE], total and free 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanol [NNAL], 1-hydroxypyrene, and 3-hydroxypropyl mercapturic acid) as well as carboxyhemoglobin and plasma cotinine were measured at baseline, Day 5, and Day 10. Daily cigarette consumption was monitored and sensory characteristics were rated for each cigarette. RESULTS With higher nicotine yield, urine NE, urine total NNAL, and plasma cotinine increased while nonnicotine BOE decreased without changes in cigarette consumption. In contrast, with lower nicotine yield, urine NE, urine total NNAL, and plasma cotinine dropped while nonnicotine BOE and cigarettes per day increased. Higher nicotine cigarettes were rated harsher and stronger than at baseline while lower nicotine cigarettes were less strong. All 4 test cigarettes were highly disliked. CONCLUSIONS These studies demonstrate that abrupt increases or decreases in nicotine and the resulting sensory changes impact BOE through changes in intensity or frequency of smoking.
Uncorrelated Multilinear Principal Component Analysis for Unsupervised Multilinear Subspace Learning

This paper proposes an uncorrelated multilinear principal component analysis (UMPCA) algorithm for unsupervised subspace learning of tensorial data. It should be viewed as a multilinear extension of the classical principal component analysis (PCA) framework. Through successive variance maximization, UMPCA seeks a tensor-to-vector projection (TVP) that captures most of the variation in the original tensorial input while producing uncorrelated features. The solution consists of sequential iterative steps based on the alternating projection method. In addition to deriving the UMPCA framework, this work offers a way to systematically determine the maximum number of uncorrelated multilinear features that can be extracted by the method. UMPCA is compared against the baseline PCA solution and its five state-of-the-art multilinear extensions, namely two-dimensional PCA (2DPCA), concurrent subspaces analysis (CSA), tensor rank-one decomposition (TROD), generalized PCA (GPCA), and multilinear PCA (MPCA), on the tasks of unsupervised face and gait recognition. Experimental results included in this paper suggest that UMPCA is particularly effective in determining the low-dimensional projection space needed in such recognition tasks.
Conservatoire students' experiences and perceptions of instrument-specific master classes

Historically, in the professional training of musicians, the master-apprentice model has played a central role in instilling the methods and values of the discipline, contributing to the rigorous formation of talent. Expert professional musicians advocate that certain thinking skills can be modelled through the master-apprentice model, yet its critics argue that independent learning, interaction and creativity are stifled. We studied responses to a questionnaire detailing students' experiences as performers and listeners in master classes and discovered that principal instrument and level of study usually determined the extent of performing experiences. However, approaches in arranging master classes differed between instrument departments. There were positive perceptions of instrumental master classes, but students' disclosure of negative experiences showed that females were more likely than males to find master classes to be intimidating and unfriendly. In discussing these outcomes, we consider the institution's role in helping students to negotiate social gradients of expertise and socialisation to a professional self-concept.
Need factors for utilisation of institutional delivery services in Nepal: an analysis from Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, 2011

Objective This study aims to assess the role of need factors with respect to the utilisation of institutional delivery services in Nepal. Design An analytic study was conducted using a subset of 4079 ever married women from the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, which utilised two-stage cluster sampling. Logistic regression with complex sample analysis was performed to evaluate the effects of antenatal care visits and birth preparedness activities on facility delivery. Outcome measures Facility delivery. Results Overall facility delivery rate was low at 36.9% (95% CI 33.5% to 40.2%, SE 1.69). Only half (50.1%) of the women made four or more antenatal care visits while 62.9% (95% CI 59.9% to 65.8%, SE 1.51) did not indicate any of the four birth preparation activities. After adjusting for external, predisposing and enabling factors, women who made more than four antenatal care visits were five times more likely to deliver at a health facility when compared to those who paid no visit (adjusted OR 4.94, 95% CI 3.14 to 7.76). Similarly, the likelihood for facility delivery increased by 3.4-fold among women who prepared for at least two of the four activities compared to their counterparts who made no preparation (adjusted OR 3.41, 95% CI 2.01 to 5.58). Conclusions The perceived need, as expressed by the frequency of antenatal care visits and birth preparedness activities, plays an important role in institutional delivery service utilisation for Nepali women. These findings have implications for behavioural interventions to change their intention to deliver at a health facility.
Arousal, valence, and the uncanny valley: psychophysiological and self-report findings

The main prediction of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis (UVH) is that observation of humanlike characters that are difficult to distinguish from the human counterpart will evoke a state of negative affect. Well-established electrophysiological [late positive potential (LPP) and facial electromyography (EMG)] and self-report [Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM)] indices of valence and arousal, i.e., the primary orthogonal dimensions of affective experience, were used to test this prediction by examining affective experience in response to categorically ambiguous compared with unambiguous avatar and human faces (N = 30). LPP and EMG provided direct psychophysiological indices of affective state during passive observation and the SAM provided self-reported indices of affective state during explicit cognitive evaluation of static facial stimuli. The faces were drawn from well-controlled morph continua representing the UVH’ dimension of human likeness (DHL). The results provide no support for the notion that category ambiguity along the DHL is specifically associated with enhanced experience of negative affect. On the contrary, the LPP and SAM-based measures of arousal and valence indicated a general increase in negative affective state (i.e., enhanced arousal and negative valence) with greater morph distance from the human end of the DHL. A second sample (N = 30) produced the same finding, using an ad hoc self-rating scale of feelings of familiarity, i.e., an oft-used measure of affective experience along the UVH’ familiarity dimension. In conclusion, this multi-method approach using well-validated psychophysiological and self-rating indices of arousal and valence rejects – for passive observation and for explicit affective evaluation of static faces – the main prediction of the UVH.
Leptin, puberty and reproductive function: lessons from animal studies and observations in humans.

Wieland Kiess, Werner F Blum and Michel L Aubert Children’s Hospital, Department of General Paediatrics and Neonatology, University of Giessen, Feulgenstr. 12, D-35385 Giessen, Germany, Lilly Germany, Saalburgstr. 153, D-61350 Bad Homburg, Germany, and Division of Biology of Growth and Reproduction, Department of Paediatrics, School of Medicine, University of Geneva, CH-1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland
Piece of Cake: Children's Birthday Celebrations and Alternatives to Consumer Culture

Abstract Based on qualitative interviews with 20 mothers and 12 fathers from diverse class and racial backgrounds, this article develops a grounded theory of parents' complex experiences with their children's birthday celebrations. Like a piece of cake, these experiences are multi-layered, multi-textured, and cooked up by parents and children as they choose from the array of products available in consumer culture. Parents savor these celebrations as times to do something their children enjoy, to be with family, and to foster children's relationships with each other. At the same time, however, many parents also struggle with the effects of consumer culture. They both embrace and critique it, enjoying and seeking to resist the emphasis on consuming things and experiences. They use their imaginations to create a variety of celebrations, many of which have alternative qualities, where children engage in shared activities, develop their relationships with their friends and families, and de-emphasize high levels of consumption.
Urinary Neutrophil Gelatinase-Associated Lipocalin: A Useful Biomarker for Tacrolimus-Induced Acute Kidney Injury in Liver Transplant Patients

Tacrolimus is widely used as an immunosuppressant in liver transplantation, and tacrolimus-induced acute kidney injury (AKI) is a serious complication of liver transplantation. For early detection of AKI, various urinary biomarkers such as monocyte chemotactic protein-1, liver-type fatty acid-binding protein, interleukin-18, osteopontin, cystatin C, clusterin and neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) have been identified. Here, we attempt to identify urinary biomarkers for the early detection of tacrolimus-induced AKI in liver transplant patients. Urine samples were collected from 31 patients after living-donor liver transplantation (LDLT). Twenty recipients developed tacrolimus-induced AKI. After the initiation of tacrolimus therapy, urine samples were collected on postoperative days 7, 14, and 21. In patients who experienced AKI during postoperative day 21, additional spot urine samples were collected on postoperative days 28, 35, 42, 49, and 58. The 8 healthy volunteers, whose renal and liver functions were normal, were asked to collect their blood and spot urine samples. The urinary levels of NGAL, monocyte chemotactic protein-1 and liver-type fatty acid-binding protein were significantly higher in patients with AKI than in those without, while those of interleukin-18, osteopontin, cystatin C and clusterin did not differ between the 2 groups. The area under the receiver operating characteristics curve of urinary NGAL was 0.876 (95% confidence interval, 0.800–0.951; P<0.0001), which was better than those of the other six urinary biomarkers. In addition, the urinary levels of NGAL at postoperative day 1 (p = 0.0446) and day 7 (p = 0.0006) can be a good predictive marker for tacrolimus-induced AKI within next 6 days, respectively. In conclusion, urinary NGAL is a sensitive biomarker for tacrolimus-induced AKI, and may help predict renal event caused by tacrolimus therapy in liver transplant patients.
Perceptions of the utility of personality assessment for personnel selection in the South African context: An exploratory study

This study explored South African industrial psychologists’ perceptions of the utility of personality assessment for personnel selection. Eleven industrial psychologists (2 male, 9 female) from the Johannesburg area, South Africa were the participants. They participated in semi-structured interviews exploring their understanding of the place of personality assessment in personnel selection within organisational settings in South Africa and the common practices employed. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Four dominant themes emerged from the data: person-environment fit; specific uses of personality tests; commonly used tests and validity and ethical concerns. Based on the findings, personality assessment use in South African industry settings appears multi-layered and consistently evolving.
Serum gentamicin assay: A comparison and assessment of different methods

We have compared, in a clinical laboratory, three methods for estimating the concentration of gentamicin in serum. The adenylase method is most accurate, but requires considerable skilled technical time and expensive apparatus. The urease method requires an accurate pH meter but is otherwise inexpensive, but in our hands, although it produces results most rapidly, it also requires considerable technician time and is least accurate. The agar diffusion method requires no expensive apparatus, least technician time, and produces results of acceptable accuracy. It does, however, take longer than the other two methods to produce results.