Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comprehensive study of oxidative stress in patients with somatic symptom disorder

Abstract Objective To investigate oxidative stress parameters [total oxidant status (TOS), total antioxidant status (TAS), oxidative stress index (OSI), paraoxonase (PON), arylesterase (ARE) and thiol-disulphide homeostasis] in patients who were diagnosed as having somatic symptom disorder in accordance with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5. Methods The study included 41 medication-free patients with somatic symptom disorder and 47 age, sex, and sociodemographic-matched healthy individuals. The patients were administered the Patient Health Questionnaire-15, Somatic Symptom Amplification Scale, Beck Depression Inventory, and Beck Anxiety Inventory. TOS, TAS, OSI, PON, ARE thiol, disulphide levels, and routine biochemical parameters were compared between the two groups. Results TOS, OSI, disulphide levels, disulphide/native thiol, and disulphide/total thiol ratios were found significantly higher in the patient group compared with the control group (p < 0.001). There was no significant difference in PON, ARE, and TAS parameters between the two groups (p > 0.05). Conclusion This study showed that the level of oxidants increased and oxidative balance was impaired in somatic symptom disorder. Oxidative stress may play a role in the aetiopathogenesis of this disorder. This is the first study to report an association between oxidative stress and somatic symptom disorder.
On High Availability Distributed Control Plane for Software-Defined Networks

The architecture and organization of the high availability distributed control plane for SDN/OpenFlow networks are considered. High availability is achieved by redundancy of controller instances, active switch-controller communications, computing resources and tools for a controller instance failure and overloading detection and recovery. The proactive backup controller allocation algorithm which allows to minimize the time to repair in the case of a single controller instance failure is discussed. The algorithm for controllers' load-balancing allows dynamically reconfigure the control plane with a minimum number of switch control transfer operations to avoid controller instance overloading. The initial experimental results of the proposed algorithms for the HA distributed SDN control plane are described.
Urban Land-Use Classification From Photographs

Land-use (LU) classification of urban areas is conventionally achieved via field survey or remote sensing technologies, which is labor-intensive and time-consuming. With the wide development of social networks such as microblog and ubiquitous network access, images are captured by residents and tourists. In this letter, we propose a method for an automatic urban LU classification using geotagged images from public venues. Our method identifies the LU type depicted in those images that are extrapolated to the local regions bounded by street blocks. Experiments were conducted with geotagged photographs and Open Street Map of an urban area in London, U.K. It was demonstrated that the proposed method achieved overall 76.5% accuracy across five LU types. More importantly, our method demonstrated a greater performance in dealing with a mixture of LU types.
Multimodal Sensorimotor Integration for Expert-in-the-Loop Telerobotic Surgical Training

This paper presents a novel multimodal training platform integrated with hand-over-hand (HOH) haptic guidance for dual-console surgical robotic systems such as the da Vinci Si system. The expert-in-the-loop (EIL) framework incorporates a fuzzy interface system in order to provide a trainee with adaptive authority over the procedure as well as hand-over-hand haptic guidance adjusted in real time based on the proficiency level of the trainee. The EIL expertise-oriented framework enables performance of a surgical procedure by an expert surgeon on a patient, while simultaneously providing a trainee at any stage of the motor-skills development with multimodal training without jeopardizing patient safety. Closed-loop stability of the system is investigated using the circle criterion and it is shown that the proposed architecture is unconditionally stable. Experimental evaluations are presented in support of the proposed platform through the implementation of a dual-console surgical setup consisting of the classic da Vinci surgical system (Intuitive Surgical, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, USA) and the dV-Trainer master console (Mimic Technology, Inc., Seattle, WA, USA). To the best of our knowledge, the implemented setup is the first research platform for dual-console studies involving the classic da Vinci surgical system.
Effects of the Simultaneous Presentation of Corresponding Auditory and Visual Stimuli on Size Variance Perception

To overcome limitations in perceptual bandwidth, humans condense various features of the environment into summary statistics. Variance constitutes indices that represent diversity within categories and also the reliability of the information regarding that diversity. Studies have shown that humans can efficiently perceive variance for visual stimuli; however, to enhance perception of environments, information about the external world can be obtained from multisensory modalities and integrated. Consequently, this study investigates, through two experiments, whether the precision of variance perception improves when visual information (size) and corresponding auditory information (pitch) are integrated. In Experiment 1, we measured the correspondence between visual size and auditory pitch for each participant by using adjustment measurements. The results showed a linear relationship between size and pitch—that is, the higher the pitch, the smaller the corresponding circle. In Experiment 2, sequences of visual stimuli were presented both with and without linked auditory tones, and the precision of perceived variance in size was measured. We consequently found that synchronized presentation of audio and visual stimuli that have the same variance improves the precision of perceived variance in size when compared with visual-only presentation. This suggests that audiovisual information may be automatically integrated in variance perception.
Description of a new species of the genus Protracheoniscus Verhoeff, 1917 and redescription of Protracheoniscuskryszanovskii Borutzky, 1957 from the southeast of European Russia (Isopoda, Oniscidea, Agnaridae)

Abstract A new species of woodlice, Protracheoniscuspokarzhevskii Gongalsky & Turbanov, sp. n. is described from Kalmykia, NE Pre-Caspian region, Russia. Protracheoniscuskryszanovskii Borutzky, 1957 from the same area is also redescribed. Diagnostic features of these species as well as affinities within the genus are provided and discussed.
Multi-Objective Evolutionary Instance Selection for Regression Tasks

The purpose of instance selection is to reduce the data size while preserving as much useful information stored in the data as possible and detecting and removing the erroneous and redundant information. In this work, we analyze instance selection in regression tasks and apply the NSGA-II multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to direct the search for the optimal subset of the training dataset and the k-NN algorithm for evaluating the solutions during the selection process. A key advantage of the method is obtaining a pool of solutions situated on the Pareto front, where each of them is the best for certain RMSE-compression balance. We discuss different parameters of the process and their influence on the results and put special efforts to reducing the computational complexity of our approach. The experimental evaluation proves that the proposed method achieves good performance in terms of minimization of prediction error and minimization of dataset size.
Regeneration of the acorn worm pygochord with the implication for its convergent evolution with the notochord

The origin of the notochord is a central issue in chordate evolution. This study examined the development of the acorn worm pygochord, a putative homologue of the notochord. Because the pygochord differentiates only after metamorphosis, the developmental was followed process by inducing regeneration after artificial amputation in Ptychodera flava. It was found that although the regeneration of the posterior part of the body did not proceed via formation of an obvious regeneration bud, pygochord regeneration was observed within a few weeks, possibly via trans‐differentiation of endoderm cells. The expression of the fibrillary collagen gene (Fcol) and elav in the pygochord during regeneration was detected. This indicates that pygochord cells are not part of gut epithelial cells, but that they differentiated as a distinct cell type. Our gene expression analyses do not provide supporting evidence for the homology between the pygochord and notochord, but rather favored the convergent evolution between them.
Modulated Predictive Current Control Technique for a Three-Phase Four-Wire Active Power Filter based on H-bridge Two-Level Converter

Finite-control-set model-based predictive current control (FCS-MPCC) technique is distinguished by a variable switching frequency which causes high harmonic distortion a low sampling frequency. This latter could be considered an undesired behavior for active power filter for grid-connected applications. To overcome this issue, this paper proposes a modulated FCS-MPCC applied to a three-phase four-wire active power filter based on H-bridge converter. Simulation results are developed to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed modulated FCS-MPCC comparing with classic FCS-MPCC, thus concluding the advantages and limitations of each technique at transient and steady states.
Carnosic Acid Modulates Increased Hepatic Lipogenesis and Adipocytes Differentiation in Ovariectomized Mice Fed Normal or High-Fat Diets

As postmenopausal women experience a rapid increase in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk with an increase in abdominal fat, dietary interventions to reduce CVD risk have been emphasized. This study was aimed at investigating the effect of a high-fat diet (HFD) in combination with an ovariectomy on liver and adipose tissue fat metabolism. The efficacy of carnosic acid (CA) supplementation in the suppression of HFD- and ovariectomy-induced obesity was also evaluated. Ovariectomized (OVX) or sham-operated mice at eight weeks of age were fed with a normal diet (ND), HFD, ND and 0.02% CA, or HFD and 0.02% CA for 12 weeks. All of the animals were sacrificed at the age of 20 weeks. The blood and tissue markers of the lipogenesis and adipocyte differentiation were measured. As expected, ovariectomy decreased the uterus weight and serum 17β-estradiol concentration. The HFD and ovariectomy significantly contributed to increases in the body weight and total fat mass, which were effectively inhibited by CA supplementation. The circulating concentrations of insulin, leptin, and TG (triglyceride) were significantly higher in the HFD group, and the concentrations were two to five times higher in the OVX and HFD group compared with those of the ND group. The CA supplementation significantly lowered the insulin, leptin, and TG concentrations in the OVX and HFD mice. The hepatic protein expressions of pAMPK and pACC were up-regulated by CA supplementation in OVX mice fed either ND or HFD. The expressions of hepatic SREBP1c and FAS mRNA were the highest in the OVX and HFD group, which were suppressed by CA supplementation. The adipose tissue PPARγ, aP2, and lipoprotein lipase (LPL) mRNA expressions were up-regulated by a HFD or ovariectomy, while they were significantly reduced in the mice fed a CA supplemented diet. The TNF-α and IL-6 mRNA levels in the adipose tissue were decreased by providing CA in the OVX groups. These results suggest that HFD and ovariectomy independently contribute to body fat accumulation, and CA effectively alleviated the ovariectomy-induced increases in lipogenesis and adipocyte differentiation. Further human trials are required in order to evaluate the efficacy of rosemary-derive CA as natural anti-adipogenic compounds, especially in postmenopausal women.
Amoeba: An Autonomous Backup and Recovery SSD for Ransomware Attack Defense

Ransomware is one of growing concerns in enterprise and government organizations, because it may cause financial damages or loss of important data. Although there are techniques to detect and prevent ransomware, an evolved ransomware may evade them because they are based on monitoring known behaviors. Ransomware can be mitigated if backup copies of data are retained in a safe place. However, existing backup solutions may be under ransomware's control and an intelligent ransomware may destroy backup copies too. They also incur overhead to storage space, performance and network traffic (in case of remote backup). In this paper, we propose an SSD system that supports automated backup, called Amoeba. In particular, Amoeba is armed with a hardware accelerator that can detect the infection of pages by ransomware attacks at high speed and a fine-grained backup control mechanism to minimize space overhead for original data backup. For evaluation, we extended the Microsoft SSD simulator to implement Amoeba and evaluated it using the realistic block-level traces, which are collected while running the actual ransomware. According to our experiments, Amoeba has negligible overhead and outperforms in performance and space efficiency over the state-of-the-art SSD, FlashGuard, which supports data backup within the device.
Can Touchscreen Devices be Used to Facilitate Young Children's Learning? A Meta-Analysis of Touchscreen Learning Effect

Because of the continuous stream of touchscreen apps that are claimed to be educational and the increasing use of touchscreen devices in early childhood, considerable attention is being paid to the effect of touchscreens on young children's learning. However, the existing empirical findings in young child samples are not consistent. In this meta-analysis we tested the overall effect of touchscreen devices on young children's (0- to 5-year-olds) learning performance, as well as moderators of this effect, based on 36 empirical articles (79 effect sizes) involving 4,206 participants. The overall analysis showed a significant touchscreen learning effect (d = 0.46), indicating that young children indeed benefited from touchscreen learning. Interestingly, age, learning material domain, comparison group, and experimental environment significantly moderated the effect of touchscreen devices on young children's learning outcome. These findings shed light on the role of touchscreen-related physical experience in early childhood education.
Segmentation of vessel tree from cine-angiography images for intraoperative clinical evaluation

The assessment of vascular complexity in the lower limbs provides relevant information about peripheral artery diseases, with a relevant impact on both therapeutic decisions and on prognostic estimation. Such evaluation is currently carried out by human operators via visual inspection of cine-angiograms, resulting in conflicting results and scorings that are largely operator-dependent, mostly because of the technical difficulties in the quantification of vascular network and its flow capability. We propose a new method to automatically segment the vessel tree from cine-angiography video for intraoperative clinical evaluation, in order to improve the clinical interpretation of the complexity of vascular collaterals in Peripheral Arterial Occlusive Disease (PAOD) patients.
Study on Electrodynamic Suspension System with High-Temperature Superconducting Magnets for a High-Speed Maglev Train

For the electrodynamic suspension (EDS) system in the high-speed magnetic levitation (Maglev) train, high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coils made of ReBCO-coated conductors can be used as levitation magnets. In this paper, a three-dimensional (3-D) model of the HTS EDS system is built for the design of the suspension system of a full-scale high-speed Maglev train. Subsequently, the levitation and drag forces are analyzed using finite-element method (FEM), and the force performances of different operating currents, reaction board thicknesses, and air gap lengths are investigated. And the distribution of the eddy current on the reaction board induced by the moving HTS magnets is obtained. Moreover, according to the eddy current distribution and force analysis results, a mirror image method is proposed to simplify the calculation and accelerate the estimation of the saturated levitation force of an HTS EDS system. The calculation results of the model are verified by the FEM model with an error less than 8%. Finally, the model is expanded to a full-scale HTS EDS system, which validates the feasibility of applying to the high-speed Maglev train.
A Multichannel Wireless sEMG Sensor Endowing a $0.13 \ \mu \mathrm{m}$ CMOS Mixed-Signal SoC

This paper presents a wireless multichannel surface electromyography (sEMG) sensor which features a custom 0.13- $\mu \mathrm{m}$ CMOS mixed-signal system-on-chip (SoC) analog frontend circuit. The proposed sensor includes 10 sEMG recording channels with tunable bandwidth (BW) and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) resolution. The SoC includes 10x bioamplifiers, $10\mathrm{x}3^{rd}$ order $\Delta \Sigma$ MASH 1-1-1 ADC, and 10x on-chip decimation filters (DF). This SoC provides the sEMG samples data through a serial peripheral interface (SPI) bus to a microcontroller unit (MCU) that then transfers the data to a wireless transceiver. We report sEMG waveforms acquired using a custom multichannel electrode module, and a comparison with a commercial grade system. Results show that the proposed integrated wireless SoC-based system compares well with the commercial grade sEMG recording system. The sensor has an input-referred noise of $2.5 \ \mu \mathbf{V}_{rms}$ (BW of 10–500 Hz), an input-dynamic range of 6 $\mathbf{mV}_{pp}$, a programmable sampling rate of 2 ksps, for sEMG, while consuming only $7.1 \ \mu \mathrm{W}/\mathrm{Ch}$ for the SoC (w/ ADC & DF) and 21.8 mW of power for the sensor (Transceiver, MCU, etc.). The system lies on a $1.5 \ \mathrm{x}\ 2.0\ \mathrm{cm}^{2}$ printed circuit board and weights $< 1\mathrm{g}$.
Rhabdomyoblastic differentiation in rosai dorfman disease of the orbit in a 12-year-old male

Extranodal Rosai–Dorfman disease involving the orbit has been reported severally with extensive discourse on management strategies. However, rhabdomyoblastic differentiation coexisting with the disease is yet unreported. We present the clinical and histopathological features of a 12-year-old boy presenting with both. A 12-year-old boy was referred to our Ophthalmic Plastic Surgical Service with a 5-year history of bilateral, progressively enlarging eyelid, orbital masses causing proptosis, and severe cosmetic blemish. He had suffered vision loss to the right eye following trauma 2 years prior to the onset of the disease. Computed tomography of the orbits revealed preseptal and intraorbital components of well-defined multi-lobulated masses in both orbits. No significant nodal involvement was noted. He underwent excision biopsy of the tumor in both eyes performed 1 month apart. A histopathologic diagnosis of the Rosai–Dorfman disease with focal areas of rhabdomyoblastic differentiation was made. He was treated postoperatively with a course of oral steroids with close observation for the rhabdomyoblastic differentiation. Rosai–Dorfman disease is an uncommon disease and has been reported to coexist with other pathologies. We highlight focal myoblastic differentiation within the excised tissues which may not necessarily warrant a diagnosis of rhabdomyosarcoma. Long-term follow-up of this patient is required to establish the safety of observation.
Interference from GPU System Service Requests

Heterogeneous systems combine general-purpose CPUs with domain-specific accelerators like GPUs. Recent heterogeneous system designs have enabled GPUs to request OS services, but the domain-specific nature of accelerators means that they must rely on the CPUs to handle these requests. Such system service requests can unintentionally harm the performance of unrelated CPU applications. Tests on a real heterogeneous processor demonstrate that GPU system service requests can degrade contemporaneous CPU application performance by up to 44% and can reduce energy efficiency by limiting CPU sleep time. The reliance on busy CPU cores to perform the system services can also slow down GPU work by up to 18%. This new form of interference is found only in accelerator-rich heterogeneous designs and may be exacerbated in future systems with more accelerators. We explore mitigation strategies from other fields that, in the face of such interference, can increase CPU and GPU performance by over 20% and $2 \times$, respectively, and CPU sleep time by $4.8 \times$. However, these strategies do not always help and offer no performance guarantees. We therefore describe a technique to guarantee quality of service to CPU workloads by dynamically adding backpressure to GPU requests.
Estimation of Emotions by Wearable Biometric Sensors Under Daily Activities

To examine the possibility of emotion estimation under daily activities with wearable sensors of objective biomarkers, we developed a discriminant model of the kind of emotion using pulse rate variability, skin temperature, body motion, and conversation. During 10 weeks of the experimental period, 5 healthy subjects recorded strongly conscious emotions (happy, relaxed, sad, and angry) at every 30 min during working hours. Significant association with the type of emotion was detected for heart rate, the variance of the frequency component of pulse rate variability, body movement, skin temperature, and conversation. Stepwise canonical discriminant analysis using these variables revealed that the kind of emotion can be expanded in two dimensions reflecting the levels of arousal and valence, respectively.
Hyperspectral Image-Based Variety Classification of Waxy Maize Seeds by the t-SNE Model and Procrustes Analysis

Variety classification is an important step in seed quality testing. This study introduces t-distributed stochastic neighbourhood embedding (t-SNE), a manifold learning algorithm, into the field of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) and proposes a method for classifying seed varieties. Images of 800 maize kernels of eight varieties (100 kernels per variety, 50 kernels for each side of the seed) were imaged in the visible- near infrared (386.7–1016.7 nm) wavelength range. The images were pre-processed by Procrustes analysis (PA) to improve the classification accuracy, and then these data were reduced to low-dimensional space using t-SNE. Finally, Fisher’s discriminant analysis (FDA) was used for classification of the low-dimensional data. To compare the effect of t-SNE, principal component analysis (PCA), kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) and locally linear embedding (LLE) were used as comparative methods in this study, and the results demonstrated that the t-SNE model with PA pre-processing has obtained better classification results. The highest classification accuracy of the t-SNE model was up to 97.5%, which was much more satisfactory than the results of the other models (up to 75% for PCA, 85% for KPCA, 76.25% for LLE). The overall results indicated that the t-SNE model with PA pre-processing can be used for variety classification of waxy maize seeds and be considered as a new method for hyperspectral image analysis.