Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
User Defined Hand Gesture Recognition for Android Smart Phones Using Accelerometer

User experience has come up as an equally important aspect as performance in consumer electronics especially in mobile phones. A lot of research is being made in order to simplify human machine interaction so that the overall activity completion time is minimized subsequently. Today’s smart phones come with various technologies such as fingerprint recognition, proximity sensing, motion sensing etc in order to provide their customers a better experience which is closely related to the physical world. Most of the smart phones today are loaded with inertial sensors like gyroscopes, magnetometers or accelerometers that can sense the motion of the device in 3D. This technology has been successfully used in games providing real world simulation of the events and actions to the user. In this paper we propose a user friendly hand gesture recognition for android smart phones based on the readings of built-in 3-axial accelerometer. In this process we have designed an android application that allows users to set some easy gestures to open frequently used apps such as Phone, Contacts, Camera, Gallery etc. For Example, When the user performs a predefined gesture such as placing a phone onto his ears triggers the call for the user selected contact.
Functional polymorphisms and methotrexate treatment outcome in recent-onset rheumatoid arthritis.

AIMS Clinical response to methotrexate (MTX) treatment differs among rheumatoid arthritis patients. Genetic variation can partly account for this phenomenon. In this study, functional polymorphisms in genes related to the mechanism of action of MTX or immunopathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis were studied for association with treatment outcome in a Dutch cohort of patients with early rheumatoid arthritis. Furthermore, tests for replication of previous research on these genetic variants were performed according to reported end points. MATERIALS & METHODS Seven polymorphisms in seven genes were analyzed in 205 genotyped patients with active rheumatoid arthritis. All patients received standardized MTX treatment (< or =25 mg per week orally) combined with folic acid. MTX treatment outcome was evaluated by disease activity score criteria and adverse drug events. The following genetic variants were analyzed and correlated: ABCB1 3435C>T, ITPA IVS2 +21A>C, HLA-G (-14 bp >+14 bp), TGFB1 +869T>C and TLR4 +896A>G. In case of significant differences, regression analyses were applied. Since carriers of the minor alleles of the SNPs DHFR 829C>T and IMPDH2 +787C>T were not observed, no statistical analyses could be performed. RESULTS No significant associations or replications of these genetic variants with MTX efficacy were demonstrated. Regarding toxicity, patients carrying the ABCB1 3435T-allele and TLR4 +896G-allele were 2.5-times more likely to develop adverse drug events at 6 months (odds ratio: 2.6; 95% CI: 1.1-6.2, and odds ratio: 2.5; 95% CI: 1.1-6.1, respectively). Additionally, this chance increased almost fourfold in patients with the two unfavorable genotypes (odds ratio: 3.9; 95% CI: 1.5-10.3). However, none of these associations remained significant after correction for multiple testing (p < 0.004). CONCLUSION Our data indicate that MTX toxicity was potentially associated with ABCB1 3435C>T and TLR4 +896A>G. However, after correction, none of these associations remained significant. Furthermore, no significant associations or replications of these functional variants with efficacy were found.
Fertility policy and implementation in China, 1986-88.

At present China maintains its ambitious goal of not exceeding a population of around 1.2 billion by the year 2000. Given the huge number of women entering the peak childbearing ages during the next decade the attainment of this target requires renewed efforts in family planning. After a period of relaxation in the family planning program since 1986 the national and provincial governments have been tightening up on family planning in order to achieve Chinas goal. Despite changes in leadership and degree of heavy-handedness in enforcement of the one-child policy between the early 1980s and 1988 throughout this period the basic elements of Chinas family planning program have not changed. These elements include: a stated official policy on voluntarism mandatory family planning and contraceptive methods national limits on the number of children per couple and the use of one-child pledges and family planning contracts in policy implementation. (authors) (summaries in ENG FRE SPA)
Disability profiles and objective quantitative assessment in Parkinson's disease

ABSTRACT— A new technique for quick objective and quantitative determination of important aspects of the motor handicap in movement disorders is presented. A compound, but natural, test movement was used to find out if the degree of dysfunction in postural, locomotor and manual motor functions differed among the patients and if medication influenced these functions differently. After 12 h without medication, 16 patients with Parkinson's disease showed a movement time between 1.5 and 13.6 times that of an age‐matched normal subject and a greater performance variability on repeated examination. In some patients the increase of test movement time was caused mainly by the locomotion component while in others the time for the postural or manual part of the movement was more markedly augmented. Thus, a specific motor disability profile was found for each patient and expressed in quantitative terms. The effects of 1‐dopa treatment were quantified in each patient.
Cross Channel Consumer Behavior and its Benefits: Scale Validation to Assess Purchasing Process Performance

Purpose – This paper developed and validated a scale of cross-channel behavior and its benefits capable of ascertaining the performance of the consumer buying process. Design/methodology/approach – The sample of 451 consumers filled out questionnaires for statistical validation purposes. Three first order reflective CCB constructs and four CCB benefits were tested with second and third order formative models Findings – The validation indicated that all constructs have convergent and discriminant validity. CCB is formed by simultaneous information searches, product/price comparisons, and interactions with the retailers/manufacturers, and the benefits are symbolic/ utilitarian and positive/negative. The coefficient between CCB and its benefits is considerable, with the avoidance of purchasing process problems being an expected result. Originality/value – The article highlights the conceptual construction of the cross channels consumer behavior construct as generating improvements in buying process performance. Marketing researchers can test the frequency of this new behavior in consumer relations.
Fuzzy network model-based fuzzy state controller design

The performance of model-based controller design relies heavily on the quality and suitability of the utilized process model. This contribution proposes a fuzzy network based nonlinear controller design methodology. Fuzzy networks are a model approach combining high approximation quality with high interpretability. The input/output (I/O) models commonly used for identification are transformed to fuzzy state-space models. Transferring and adjusting methods from linear state-space theory a control concept consisting of a fuzzy state controller and an adaptive set-point filter for nonlinear dynamic processes is deduced. The capability of the method is demonstrated for a hydraulic drive.
Ethanol consumption and the susceptibility of mice to Listeria monocytogenes infection.

BACKGROUND It is well known that excessive alcohol consumption correlates with increased infectious disease. However, the molecular microbiological and immunological bases for ethanol-induced alterations in host defense are largely unknown. METHODS To study the effect of alcohol consumption on the pathogenesis of intracellular bacteria, we examined the relative susceptibility of alcohol-fed mice to a virulent strain of Listeria monocytogenes. RESULTS Based on lethal dose 50% determinations, survival curve analysis, and bacterial burden, alcohol consumption did not increase the susceptibility of C57BL/6, BALB/c, or A/J mice to systemic infection by strain EGD. Mice fed an ethanol-containing liquid diet showed slightly reduced susceptibility to Listeria. Alcohol consumption modestly decreased bacterial numbers in the spleen but not the liver. We also found that mice fed a typical solid diet were more sensitive to EGD infection than were animals fed a control liquid-containing diet. CONCLUSIONS This study indicates that alcohol consumption may not always increase infectious disease progression.
Inhibition kinetics of catabolic dehydrogenases by elevated moieties of ATP and ADP – implication for a new regulation mechanism in Lactococcus lactis

ATP and ADP inhibit, in varying degrees, several dehydrogenases of the central carbon metabolism of Lactococcus lactis ATCC 19435 in vitro, i.e. glyceraldehyde‐3‐phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH). Here we demonstrate mixed inhibition for GAPDH and competitive inhibition for LDH and ADH by adenine nucleotides in single inhibition studies. The nonlinear negative co‐operativity was best modelled with Hill‐type kinetics, showing greater flexibility than the usual parabolic inhibition equation. Because these natural inhibitors are present simultaneously in the cytoplasm, multiple inhibition kinetics was determined for each dehydrogenase. For ADH and LDH, the inhibitor combinations ATP plus NAD and ADP plus NAD are indifferent to each other. Model discrimination suggested that the weak allosteric inhibition of GAPDH had no relevance when multiple inhibitors are present. Interestingly, with ADH and GAPDH the combination of ATP and ADP exhibits lower dissociation constants than with either inhibitor alone. Moreover, the concerted inhibition of ADH and GAPDH, but not of LDH, shows synergy between the two nucleotides. Similar kinetics, but without synergies, were found for horse liver and yeast ADHs, indicating that dehydrogenases can be modulated by these nucleotides in a nonlinear manner in many organisms. The action of an elevated pool of ATP and ADP may effectively inactivate lactococcal ADH, but not GAPDH and LDH, providing leverage for the observed metabolic shift to homolactic acid formation in lactococcal resting cells on maltose. Therefore, we interpret these results as a regulation mechanism contributing to readjusting the flux of ATP production in L. lactis.
Organisational Structure and Information Technology (IT): Exploring the Implications of IT for Future Military Structures

Abstract : This report provides a conceptual framework for describing organisational structures based on the work of Mintzberg (1979) and Groth (1999), and considers the implications of information technology (IT) for current and future military organisational structures. The various components that influence organisational structure are considered: coordinating mechanisms, design parameters and contingency factors. When combined together these components form various structural configurations. The role of IT in modifying and extending the range of coordinating mechanisms and structural configurations is also described. These configurations and associated components provide a framework within which military organisations can be categorised. This framework is used to describe a current joint operational level headquarters (HQ), and to explore the implications of emerging IT for future HQ.
A role for the inferior colliculus in multisensory speech integration

Multisensory integration can occur at relatively low levels within the central nervous system. Recent evidence suggests that multisensory audio-visual integration for speech may have a subcortical component, as acoustic processing in the human brainstem is influenced by lipreading during speech perception. Here, stimuli depicting the McGurk illusion (a demonstration of auditory–visual integration using speech stimuli) were presented to a 12-year-old child (FX) with a circumscribed unilateral lesion of the right inferior colliculus. When McGurk-type stimuli were presented in the contralesional hemifield, illusory perception reflecting bimodal integration was significantly reduced compared with the ipsilesional hemifield and a group of age-matched controls. These data suggest a functional role for the inferior colliculus in the audio-visual integration of speech stimuli.
Nonlinear channel equalization using new neural network model

A generalized diagonal recurrent neural network (GDRNN) and its learning algorithm for dynamic systems are proposed. The hidden nodes of the GDRNN have recurrent weights to capture the dynamic characteristics of the given nonlinear systems. The GDRNN with the proposed learning algorithm gives faster learning speed and better convergence properties than the conventional diagonal recurrent neural network (DRNN). In computer simulations, the performance of the GDRNN is compared with that of the conventional neural network.
Detection of central white matter injury underlying vestibulopathy after mild traumatic brain injury.

PURPOSE To determine if central axonal injury underlies vestibulopathy and ocular convergence insufficiency after mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) by using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) analysis of diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI). MATERIALS AND METHODS The institutional review board approved this study, and the requirement to obtain informed consent was waived. Diffusion-tensor images were retrospectively reviewed in 30 patients with mild TBI and vestibular symptoms and 25 patients with mild TBI and ocular convergence insufficiency. Control subjects consisted of 39 patients with mild TBI without vestibular abnormalities and 17 patients with mild TBI and normal ocular convergence. Fractional anisotropy (FA) maps were generated as a measure of white matter integrity and were analyzed with TBSS regression analysis by using a general linear model. DTI abnormalities were correlated with symptom severity, neurocognitive test scores, and time to recovery with the Pearson correlation coefficient. RESULTS Compared with control subjects, patients with mild TBI and vestibular symptoms had decreased neurocognitive test scores (P < .05) and FA values in the cerebellum and fusiform gyri (P < .05). Patients with ocular convergence insufficiency had diminished neurocognitive test scores (P < .05) and FA values in the right anterior thalamic radiation and right geniculate nucleus optic tracts (P < .0001). Cerebellar injury showed an inverse correlation with recovery time (R = -0.410, P = .02). Anterior thalamic radiation injury showed correlation with decreased processing speed (R = 0.402, P < .05). CONCLUSION DTI findings in patients with mild TBI and vestibulopathy support the hypothesis that posttraumatic vestibulopathy has a central axonal injury component. Peripheral vestibular structures were not assessed, and a superimposed peripheral contribution may exist. DTI evaluation of central vestibular structures may provide a diagnostic imaging tool in these patients and a quantitative biomarker to aid in prognosis.
Environmental filters reduce the effects of sampling bias and improve predictions of ecological niche models

Ecological niche models represent key tools in biogeography but the effects of biased sampling hinder their use. Here, we address the utility of two forms of filtering the calibration data set (geographic and environmental) to reduce the effects of sampling bias. To do so we created a virtual species, projected its niche to the Iberian Peninsula and took samples from its binary geographic distribution using several biases. We then built models for various sample sizes after applying each of the filtering approaches. While geographic filtering did not improve discriminatory ability (and sometimes worsened it), environmental filtering consistently led to better models. Models made with few but climatically filtered points performed better than those made with many unfiltered (biased) points. Future research should address additional factors such as the complexity of the species’ niche, strength of filtering, and ability to predict suitability (rather than focus purely on discrimination).
Analysis Using Different Graph-Based Representations

This paper presents an overview of different graph-based representations proposed to solve text classification tasks. The core of this manuscript is to highlight the importance of enriched/non-enriched co-occurrence graphs as an alternative to traditional features representation models like vector representation, where most of the time these models can not map all the richness of text documents that comes from the web (social media, blogs, personal web pages, news, etc). For each text classification task the type of graph created as well as the benefits of using it are presented and discussed. In specific, the type of features/patterns extracted, the implemented classification/similarity methods and the results obtained in datasets are explained. The theoretical and practical implications of using co-occurrence graphs are also discussed, pointing out the contributions and challenges of modeling text document as graphs.
Earnings quality, investment decisions, and financial constraint

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between accruals quality, financial constraint, and investment decisions and if earnings quality affects investment-cash flow sensitivities. Design/methodology/approach – An analysis was conducted of a sample with 10,318 observations of 958 non-financial companies from seven different countries, covering 1992 to 2009. Then, the investment determinants were estimated using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). Findings – Poor accruals quality was positively associated with investment rates for firms with overinvestment and negatively related to investment rates for firms with underinvestment. Additionally, the results indicate that accruals quality affects investment-cash flow sensitivities for firms in a situation of financial constraint; that is, poor accounting information quality can exacerbate the dependence of investment on free cash flow. Originality/value – The results show that poor accruals quality could exacerbate the problems caused by the conflict of interest between decision-makers and shareholders or other stakeholders.
Do ecological communities disperse across biogeographic barriers as a unit?

Biogeographic barriers have long been implicated as drivers of biological diversification, but how these barriers influence co‐occurring taxa can vary depending on factors intrinsic to the organism and in their relationships with other species. Due to the interdependence among taxa, ecological communities present a compelling opportunity to explore how interactions among species may lead to a shared response to historical events. Here we collect single nucleotide polymorphism data from five commensal arthropods associated with the Sarracenia alata carnivorous pitcher plant, and test for codiversification across the Mississippi River, a major biogeographic barrier in the southeastern United States. Population genetic structure in three of the ecologically dependent arthropods mirrors that of the host pitcher plant, with divergence time estimates suggesting two of the species (the pitcher plant moth Exyra semicrocea and a flesh fly Sarcophaga sarraceniae) dispersed synchronously across this barrier along with the pitcher plant. Patterns in population size and genetic diversity suggest the plant and ecologically dependent arthropods dispersed from east to west across the Mississippi River. In contrast, species less dependent on the plant ecologically show discordant phylogeographic patterns. This study demonstrates that ecological relationships may be an important predictor of codiversification, and supports recent suggestions that organismal trait data should be prominently featured in comparative phylogeographic investigations.
Voice familiarity detection using EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a direct communication pathway between brain and external devices bypassing the natural pathway of nerves and muscles. BCI enables an individual to send commands to a peripheral device using his brain activity. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is the most commonly used brain signal acquisition method as it is simple, economical and portable. Feasibility of detecting familiar vs non-familiar voice signals using EEG signals has been investigated in this paper. The results show that combination of features such as mobility and complexity of the signal gives an average accuracy of 72.2% in classifying between familiar and unfamiliar voices among 8 subjects.
Prospective memory : A narrative review on theoretical models , methodological approaches , and main findings

The planning of a future intention, maintaining it during a variable period of time, and recovering it in the expected moment and/or context has been explored under the umbrella term of Prospective Memory (PM). For instance, remember to deliver a message to a certain person or to take some medication at the appropriate time are activities decidedly dependent on a good PM function. In this context, the present work aims to provide a brief overview of the uprising research dedicated to PM, including an analysis of the definition, of the current theoretical approaches, and of the main procedures used in this field. Additionally, this review also covers some of the results obtained concerning the study of PM across development, the advanced neural correlates, and the strategies proposed to boost PM functioning. As final considerations, we pinpoint the main shortcomings and the potentialities ascribed to the PM research domain.
Cnidae sizes in the two morphotypes of the giant Caribbean anemone Condylactis gigantea (Actiniaria: Actiniidae)

Fil: Gonzalez Munoz, Ricardo Enrique. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnologico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; Argentina
A W-band tripler with a novel band pass filter on thin-film substrate

The novel multilayer thin-film substrate using BCB as a dielectric was suggested in the paper. 3-metals and 2-BCB layers were used in this technology for the evaluation of passive devices. The band pass filter for W-band application with unique circuit and structure was designed and implemented. The implemented filter has an insertion loss below 1.5 dB, and return loss over 20 dB in the passband of 90~100 GHz. The attenuation is over 40 dB and 20 dB at the first and second harmonic frequencies, respectively and this response is adequate for the tripler application. The W-band tripler with a novel band pass filter in output part was evaluated on the thin-film substrate using commercial 0.15 um GaAs pHEMT from WIN foundry, and occupies the area of 2.5 x 1.5 mm. The measured response shows the conversion gain of -20dB and the spurious suppressions are 20 dBc and 10 dBc for the first and second harmonics, respectively due to the operation of the band pass filter.