Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning to Forecast Pedestrian Intention from Pose Dynamics

For an autonomous car, the ability to foresee a humans action is very useful for mitigating the risk of a possible collision. To humans this pedestrian intention foresight comes naturally as they are able to recognize another person's actions just by perceiving subtle changes in posture. Approximating this intention inference ability by directly training a deep neural network is useful but especially challenging. First, sufficiently large datasets for intention recognition with frame-wise human pose and intention annotations are rare and expensive to compile. Second, training on smaller datasets can lead to overfitting and make it difficult to adapt to intra-class variations in action executions. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a real time framework that learns (i) intention recognition using weak-supervision and (ii) locomotion dynamics of intention from pose information using transfer learning. This new formulation is able to tackle the lack of frame-wise annotations and to learn intra-class variation in action executions. We empirically demonstrate that our proposed approach leads to earlier and more stable detection of intention than other state of the art approaches with real time operation and the ability to detect intention one second before the pedestrian reaches the kerb.
Metabolic Maturation of Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes by Inhibition of HIF1&agr; and LDHA

Rationale: Human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hPSC-CMs) are a readily available, robustly reproducible, and physiologically appropriate human cell source for cardiac disease modeling, drug discovery, and toxicity screenings in vitro. However, unlike adult myocardial cells in vivo, hPSC-CMs cultured in vitro maintain an immature metabolic phenotype, where majority of ATP is produced through aerobic glycolysis instead of oxidative phosphorylation in the mitochondria. Little is known about the underlying signaling pathways controlling hPSC-CMs’ metabolic and functional maturation. Objective: To define the molecular pathways controlling cardiomyocytes’ metabolic pathway selections and improve cardiomyocyte metabolic and functional maturation. Methods and Results: We cultured hPSC-CMs in different media compositions including glucose-containing media, glucose-containing media supplemented with fatty acids, and glucose-free media with fatty acids as the primary carbon source. We found that cardiomyocytes cultured in the presence of glucose used primarily aerobic glycolysis and aberrantly upregulated HIF1&agr; (hypoxia-inducible factor 1&agr;) and its downstream target lactate dehydrogenase A. Conversely, glucose deprivation promoted oxidative phosphorylation and repressed HIF1&agr;. Small molecule inhibition of HIF1&agr; or lactate dehydrogenase A resulted in a switch from aerobic glycolysis to oxidative phosphorylation. Likewise, siRNA inhibition of HIF1&agr; stimulated oxidative phosphorylation while inhibiting aerobic glycolysis. This metabolic shift was accompanied by an increase in mitochondrial content and cellular ATP levels. Furthermore, functional gene expressions, sarcomere length, and contractility were improved by HIF1&agr;/lactate dehydrogenase A inhibition. Conclusions: We show that under standard culture conditions, the HIF1&agr;-lactate dehydrogenase A axis is aberrantly upregulated in hPSC-CMs, preventing their metabolic maturation. Chemical or siRNA inhibition of this pathway results in an appropriate metabolic shift from aerobic glycolysis to oxidative phosphorylation. This in turn improves metabolic and functional maturation of hPSC-CMs. These findings provide key insight into molecular control of hPSC-CMs’ metabolism and may be used to generate more physiologically mature cardiomyocytes for drug screening, disease modeling, and therapeutic purposes.
Learning image-based localization

Image-based localization plays a vital role in many tasks of robotics and computer vision, such as global localization, recovery from tracking failure, and loop closure detection. Recent methods based on regression forests for camera relocalization directly predict 3D world locations for 2D image locations to guide camera pose optimization. During training, each tree greedily splits the samples to minimize the spatial variance. This thesis develops techniques to improve the performance camera pose estimation based on regression forests method and extends its application domains. First, random features and sparse features are combined so that the new method only requires an RGB image in the testing. After that, a label-free sample-balanced objective is developed to encourage equal numbers of samples in the left and right sub-trees, and a novel backtracking scheme is developed to remedy the incorrect 2D-3D correspondence in the leaf nodes caused by greedy splitting. Furthermore, the methods based on regression forests are extended to use local features in both training and test stages for outdoor applications, eliminating their dependence on depth images. Finally, a new camera relocalization method is developed using both points and lines. Experimental results on publicly available indoor and outdoor datasets demonstrate the efficacy of the developed approaches, showing superior or on-par accuracy with several state-of-the-art baselines. Moreover, an integrated software and hardware system is presented for mobile robot autonomous navigation in uneven and unstructured indoor environments. This modular and reusable software framework incorporates capabilities of perception and autonomous navigation. The system is evaluated are in both simulation and real-world experiments, demonstrating the efficacy and efficiency of the developed system.
Deviance detection is the dominant component of auditory contextual processing in the lateral superior temporal gyrus: A human ECoG study

Auditory contextual processing has been assumed to be based on a hierarchical structure consisting of the primary auditory cortex, superior temporal gyrus (STG), and frontal lobe. Recent invasive studies on mismatch negativity (MMN) have revealed functional segregation for auditory contextual processing such as neural adaptation in the primary auditory cortex and prediction in the frontal lobe. However, the role of the STG remains unclear. We obtained induced activity in the high gamma band as mismatch response (MMR), an electrocorticographic (ECoG) counterpart to scalp MMN, and the components of MMR by analyzing ECoG data from patients with refractory epilepsy in an auditory oddball task paradigm. We found that MMR localized mainly in the bilateral posterior STGs, and that deviance detection largely accounted for MMR. Furthermore, adaptation was identified in a limited number of electrodes on the superior temporal plane. Our findings reveal a mixed contribution of deviance detection and adaptation depending on location in the STG. Such spatial considerations could lead to further understanding of the pathophysiology of relevant psychiatric disorders.
Active Inference and Cognitive Consistency

I know little about social psychology and less about cognitive consistency theory; however, I greatly enjoyed reading the deconstruction of this paradigm by Kruglanski et al. (this issue). I learned a lot and was struck repeatedly by the consilience between their treatment and complementary formulations in theoretical neurobiology. The underlying tenets of their argument emerge—in my world—from a Bayesian or variational treatment of perception and self-organized behavior. This is variously known as the free energy principle, active inference, predictive processing, or self-evidencing (Clark, 2013, Friston, 2010; Friston, FitzGerald, Rigoli, Schwartenbeck, & Pezzulo, 2017; Hohwy, 2016). Particular flavors of this formulation have dominated cognitive neuroscience and aspects of philosophy for the past decade. For example, the Bayesian brain hypothesis (Kersten, Mamassian, & Yuille, 2004; Knill & Pouget, 2004) and predictive processing (Barrett & Simmons, 2015; Michael & De Bruin, 2015; Rao & Ballard 1999; Seth, 2013) are now predominant paradigms in cognitive neuroscience. Active inference generalizes this approach to provide an enactive or embodied treatment of action and perception. This resulting treatment bears some remarkable similarities to the ideas reviewed in Kruglanski et al. This commentary tries to establish the formal links between active inference and constructs in cognitive consistency theory in the hope that there may be some useful cross-fertilisation. In what follows, I briefly overview active inference with a special focus on the quantities needed to describe affective responses to new information and then unpack some key dialectics that speak to cognitive consistency, epistemic and motivational value, specific and nonspecific closure, and so on.
Six minute walk distance and reference values in healthy Italian children: A cross-sectional study

The 6-minute walking test (6MWT) is a simple assessment tool to evaluate exercise capacity. The result of the test is the distance that a subject can walk at a constant and normal pace within 6 minutes (6MWD) and reflects the aerobic/fitness performance related to walking function. Use of 6MWT has been relevant to assess exercise tolerance either in healthy children or in patients with, heart, lung and metabolic diseases. Our aim was to find 6MWT reference values in healthy Italian children. The 6MWT was performed in 5614 children aged 6–11 years recruited from primary Italian schools. Age related reference percentiles of the covered distance were gender-modeled. A linear and quadratic regression model was used to predict 6MWT performance. Males walked longer distances than females, respectively 598.8±83.9 m vs 592.1±77.6 m (p = 0.0016). According to the regression analysis, 6MWD was positively related to age, gender and height, while it was negatively related to body weight [(6MWD = -160.16 + 93.35× age (years) -4.05× age2 (years) +7.34× gender (m) +2.12× weight (kg) −2.50× height (cm)]. Reference values were established for the 6MWT in healthy children. The age related 6MWD percentiles provided a useful tool in the assessment of capacity in 6–11 year children, in fact they may be helpful to evaluate the effect of a given treatment or rehabilitation program and represent a feasible measure as to prevention within the primary school context. It was found a substantial difference from other countries for 6mwd values. In our study, factors such as age, weight and height were relevant for the prediction of 6MWD, similarly to other studies. Therefore, these variables should be taken into account in context of exercise performance.
Longitudinal Associations Among Negative Cognitions and Depressive and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in Women Recently Exposed to Stalking

Being stalked is a potentially traumatic experience associated with a threat to personal safety. Although major depression and posttraumatic stress (PTS) disorder are highly prevalent among stalking victims, little is known about factors associated with risk for the onset and maintenance of depressive and PTS symptoms in individuals with recent stalking exposure. The aim of this study was to determine the role of cognitive appraisals (negative views about the self, negative views about the world, self-blame) in the development of depressive and PTS symptoms in young adult women who had experienced stalking within 1 month of their baseline assessment. Participants (n = 82) completed self-report online surveys of posttraumatic cognitions and symptoms four times over the course of 3 months. Levels of posttraumatic cognitions among female stalking victims were comparable to those in other studies of trauma-exposed individuals. Multilevel models (MLMs) revealed that within-person changes in cognitions were differentially associated with concurrent changes in depressive and PTS symptoms over time, controlling for the influence of time, age, race, ethnicity, lifetime stalking victimization, childhood trauma exposure, and symptoms of the other disorder. Whereas more negative cognitions about the world were associated with higher levels of concurrent depressive and PTS symptoms, negative cognitions about the self were uniquely associated with higher concurrent depressive symptoms. Contrary to expectation, self-blame was not significantly associated with depressive or PTS symptoms. Results provided support for the potential utility of negative cognitions as risk markers for depressive and PTS symptoms in young adult female stalking victims. The present findings suggest that interventions targeting symptom-specific thinking patterns could help reduce risk for negative mental health outcomes associated with stalking victimization.
ALPACA: Application Performance Aware Server Power Capping

Server power capping limits the power consumption of a server to not exceed a specific power budget. This allows data center operators to reduce the peak power consumption at the cost of performance degradation of hosted applications. Previous work on server power capping rarely considers Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements of consolidated services when enforcing the power budget. In this paper, we introduce ALPACA, a framework to reduce QoS violations and overall application performance degradation for consolidated services. ALPACA reduces unnecessary high power consumption when there is no performance gain, and divides the power among the running services in a way that reduces the overall QoS degradation when the power is scarce. We evaluate ALPACA using four applications: MediaWiki, SysBench, Sock Shop, and CloudSuite's Web Search benchmark. Our experiments show that ALPACA reduces the operational costs of QoS penalties and electricity by up to 40% compared to a non optimized system.
The role of AP-1 in self-sufficient proliferation and migration of cancer cells and its potential impact on an autocrine/paracrine loop

The activating protein-1 (AP-1) family members are highly expressed in invasive cancers, but the consequences of this are not completely understood. The aim of this study was to explore the significance of elevated levels of AP-1 family members under conditions that restrict growth. We observed that invasive MDA-MB-231 cells express high levels of Fra-1, c-Jun and, Jun-D during serum starvation and throughout the cell cycle compared to non-tumorigenic and non-invasive cell lines. We then analyzed Fra-1 levels in additional breast and other cancer cell lines. We found a correlation between the high levels of Fra-1 during serum starvation and the ability of the cells to proliferate and migrate under these conditions. Utilizing a dominant negative construct of AP-1, we demonstrated that proliferation and migration of MDA-MB-231 in the absence of serum requires AP-1 activity. Finally, we observed that MDA-MB-231 cells secrete factors(s) that induce Fra-1 expression and migration in non-tumorigenic and non-metastatic cells and that both the expression of and response to these factors require AP-1 activity. These results suggest the presence of an autocrine/paracrine loop that maintains high Fra-1 levels in aggressive cancer cells, enhancing their proliferative and metastatic ability and affecting neighbors to alter the tumor environment.
Groups and Emotional Arousal Mediate Neural Synchrony and Perceived Ritual Efficacy

We present the first neurophysiological signatures showing distinctive effects of group social context and emotional arousal on cultural perceptions, such as the efficacy of religious rituals. Using a novel protocol, EEG data were simultaneously recorded from ethnic Chinese religious believers in group and individual settings as they rated the perceived efficacy of low, medium, and high arousal spirit-medium rituals presented as video clips. Neural oscillatory patterns were then analyzed for these perceptual judgements, categorized as low, medium, and high efficacy. The results revealed distinct neural signatures and behavioral patterns between the experimental conditions. Arousal levels predicted ratings of ritual efficacy. Increased efficacy was marked by suppressed alpha and beta power, regardless of group or individual setting. In groups, efficacy ratings converged. Individual setting showed increased within-participant phase synchronization in alpha and beta bands, while group setting enhanced between-participant theta phase synchronization. This reflected group participants' orientation toward a common perspective and social coordination. These findings suggest that co-presence in groups leads to a social-tuning effect supported by between-participant theta phase synchrony. Together these neural synchrony patterns reveal how collective rituals have both individual and communal dimensions. The emotionality of spirit-medium rituals drives individual perceptions of efficacy, while co-presence in groups signals the significance of an event and socially tunes enhanced agreement in perceptual ratings. In other words, mass gatherings may foster social cohesion without necessarily requiring group-size scaling limitations of direct face-to-face interaction. This could have implications for the scaling computability of synchrony in large groups as well as for humanistic studies in areas such as symbolic interactionism.
User Testing an Information Foraging Tool for Ambulatory Surgical Site Infection Surveillance

Abstract Background Surveillance for surgical site infections (SSIs) after ambulatory surgery in children requires a detailed manual chart review to assess criteria defined by the National Health and Safety Network (NHSN). Electronic health records (EHRs) impose an inefficient search process where infection preventionists must manually review every postsurgical encounter (< 30 days). Using text mining and business intelligence software, we developed an information foraging application, the SSI Workbench, to visually present which postsurgical encounters included SSI-related terms and synonyms, antibiotic, and culture orders. Objective This article compares the Workbench and EHR on four dimensions: (1) effectiveness, (2) efficiency, (3) workload, and (4) usability. Methods Comparative usability test of Workbench and EHR. Objective test metrics are time per case, encounters reviewed per case, time per encounter, and retrieval of information meeting NHSN definitions. Subjective measures are cognitive load using the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Task Load Index (NASA TLX), and a questionnaire on system usability and utility. Results Eight infection preventionists participated in the test. There was no difference in effectiveness as subjects retrieved information from all cases, using both systems, to meet the NHSN criteria. There was no difference in efficiency in time per case between the Workbench and EHR (8.58 vs. 7.39 minutes, p = 0.36). However, with the Workbench subjects opened fewer encounters per case (3.0 vs. 7.5, p = 0.002), spent more time per encounter (2.23 vs. 0.92 minutes, p = 0.002), rated the Workbench lower in cognitive load (NASA TLX, 24 vs. 33, p = 0.02), and significantly higher in measures of usability. Conclusion Compared with the EHR, the Workbench was more usable, short, and reduced cognitive load. In overall efficiency, the Workbench did not save time, but demonstrated a shift from between-encounter foraging to within-encounter foraging and was rated as significantly more efficient. Our results suggest that infection surveillance can be better supported by systems applying information foraging theory.
Measurement and modelling of primary sex ratios for species with temperature-dependent sex determination

ABSTRACT For many oviparous animals, incubation temperature influences sex through temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). Although climate change may skew sex ratios in species with TSD, few available methods predict sex under natural conditions, fewer still are based on mechanistic hypotheses of development, and field tests of existing methods are rare. We propose a new approach that calculates the probability of masculinization (PM) in natural nests. This approach subsumes the mechanistic hypotheses describing the outcome of TSD, by integrating embryonic development with the temperature-dependent reaction norm for sex determination. Further, we modify a commonly used method of sex ratio estimation, the constant temperature equivalent (CTE), to provide quantitative estimates of sex ratios. We test our new approaches using snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina). We experimentally manipulated nests in the field, and found that the PM method is better supported than the modified CTE, explaining 69% of the variation in sex ratios across 27 semi-natural nests. Next, we used the PM method to predict variation in sex ratios across 14 natural nests over 2 years, explaining 67% of the variation. We suggest that the PM approach is effective and broadly applicable to species with TSD, particularly for forecasting how sex ratios may respond to climate change. Interestingly, we also found that the modified CTE explained up to 64% of variation in sex ratios in a Type II TSD species, suggesting that our modifications will be useful for future research. Finally, our data suggest that the Algonquin Park population of snapping turtles possesses resilience to biased sex ratios under climate change. Summary: A new model for estimating sex ratios from temperature traces for species with temperature-dependent sex determination.
Can Women in Labor Give Informed Consent to Epidural Analgesia?

There are reasons to believe that decision-making capacity (mental competence) of women in labor may be compromised in relation to giving informed consent to epidural analgesia. Not only severe labor pain, but also stress, anxiety, and premedication of analgesics such as opioids, may influence women's decisional capacity. Decision-making capacity is a complex construct involving cognitive and emotional components which cannot be reduced to 'understanding' alone. A systematic literature search identified a total of 20 empirical studies focused on women's decision-making about epidural analgesia for labor pain. Our review of these studies suggests that empirical evidence to date is insufficient to determine whether women undergoing labor are capable of consenting to epidural analgesia. Given such uncertainties, sufficient information about pain management should be provided as part of prenatal education and the consent process must be carefully conducted to enhance women's autonomy. To fill in the significant gap in clinical knowledge about laboring women's decision-making capacity, well-designed prospective and retrospective studies may be required.