Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correction to: Effects of a robot‐aided somatosensory training on proprioception and motor function in stroke survivors

Background- Proprioceptive deficits after stroke are associated with poor upper limb function, slower motor recovery, and decreased self-care ability. Improving proprioception should enhance motor control in stroke survivors, but current evidence is inconclusive. Thus, this study examined whether a robot-aided somatosensory-based training requiring increasingly accurate active wrist movements improves proprioceptive acuity and motor performance in chronic stroke. Methods - Twelve adults with chronic stroke completed a 2-day training (age range: 42 – 74 years; median time-after-stroke: 12 months; median Fugl-Meyer UE: 65). Retention was assessed at Day 5. Grasping the handle of a wrist-robotic exoskeleton, participants trained to roll a virtual ball to a target through continuous wrist adduction/abduction movements. During training vision was occluded, but participants received real-time, vibro-tactile feedback on their forearm about ball position and speed. Primary outcome was the just-noticeable-difference (JND) wrist position sense threshold as a measure of proprioceptive acuity. Secondary outcomes were spatial error in an untrained wrist tracing task and somatosensory-evoked potentials (SEP) as a neural correlate of proprioceptive function. Ten neurologically-intact adults were recruited to serve as non-stroke controls for age, gender and hand dominance (age range: 44 to 79 years; 6 women, 4 men). Results – Participants significantly reduced JND thresholds at posttest and retention (F(2, 38) = 4.54, p = 0.017, ηp2 = 0.20) in both groups. A higher pretest JND threshold was associated with a higher threshold reduction at posttest and retention (r = -0.86, -0.90, p ≤ 0.001) among the stroke participants. Error in the untrained tracing task was reduced by 22% at posttest, yielding an effect size of w = 0.13. Stroke participants exhibited significantly reduced P27-N30 peak-to-peak SEP amplitude at pretest (U = 11, p = 0.03) compared to the non-stroke group. SEP measures did not change systematically with training.Conclusion - This study provides proof-of-concept that non-visual, proprioceptive training can induce fast, measurable improvements in proprioceptive function in chronic stroke survivors. There is encouraging but inconclusive evidence that such somatosensory learning transfers to untrained motor tasks.Trial Registration Clinicaltrials.gov; Registration ID: NCT02565407; Date of registration: 01/10/2015; URL: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02565407
A tricategory of double categories

This is a first of a series of two papers. Our motive is to tackle the question raised in Böhm’s “The Gray Monoidal Product of Double Categories” from Applied Categorical Structures: which would be an alternative notion to intercategories of Grandis and Paré, so that monoids in Böhm’s monoidal category Dbl of strict double categories and double pseudo functors be an example of it? Before addressing this question we observe that although bicategories embed into pseudo double categories, this embedding is not monoidal, with the usual notion of a monoidal pseudo double category. We then prove that monoidal bicategories embed into the mentioned monoids of Böhm. In order to fit Böhm’s monoid into an intercategorytype object, we start by upgrading the category Dbl to a 2-category and end up rather with a tricategory DblPs. We propose an alternative definition of intercategories as internal categories in this tricategory, enabling Dbl to be an example of this gadget. The formal definition of a category internal to the (type of a) tricategory (of) DblPs, as well as another important example of these in the literature, we leave for a subsequent paper.
Les pratiques durables : une forme de résistance ordinaire ?

We propose to study the individuals' sustainable practices linked or not to market. 22 consumers' interviews and a quantitative survey with 308 respondents highlight that a lot of different daily and insignificant practices participate to an ordinary resistance. More precisely, we distinguish three categories of sustainable practices: practices with a meaning of resistance to consumption, practices with a meaning of resistance through consumption and finally, sustainable practices without any resistance meaning.
Bio-efficacy of Profenophos 50% Ec against lepidopteran and sucking pests of rice

A field experiment was carried out to evaluate the bioefficacy of profenophos 50% EC against leaf folder, Cnaphalocroris medinalis, stem borer Scirphophaga incertulas and green leafhopper, Nephotettix spp. on paddy. In the present experiment the efficacy of three doses of profenophos viz., 800, 1000 and 1200 ml/ha, cartap hydrochloride 50% SP @1000 g/ha, fipronil 5% SC @1000g/ha, monocrotophos 36% SL 1250 ml/ha and chlorpyrifos 20% EC1250 ml/ha were studied. The results confirm that cartap hydrochloride was the best treatment in reducing leaf folder (0.56 leaf folder/hill) and stem borer (0.55 dead heart/hill) whereas profenophos @ 1200 ml/ha was found superior in reducing leafhopper population effectively (96.33 hoppers/hill).
Manual soil preparation and piles of branches can support ground beetles (Coleoptera, carabidae) better than four different mechanical soil treatments in a clear-cut area of a closed-canopy pine forest in northern Poland

ABSTRACT I studied ground beetles in clear-cuts that represent six treatments: (i) manual plowing, (ii) plowing with a FAO-FAR FV 4088 cutter, (iii) plowing with an active single-moldboard U-162, (iv) plowing with a double moldboard forest plow LPz, (v) active piling of logging slash and (vi) no plowing or slash piles. The four plowing techniques differed in the depth and extent of their impact. Manual scarification of soil had the least effect on the species diversity, abundance and ecological traits of carabids. The larger the area and the deeper the plowing, the greater was the transformation of carabid assemblages. Piles of branches proved to be beneficial for the preservation of forest species, large species, mesophilic species and those with low dispersal power in clear-cut areas. In general, deep plowing was conducive to an increase in the proportion of individuals representing early succession species, whereas shallow plowing and especially manual scarification favored late succession species. The results suggest that for effective support of carabid beetles in a clear-cut area, only shallow plowing should be used. Piles of branches can be retained in a clear-cut area to provide a shelter supporting for forest fauna.
Impacts of short-term germination delay on fitness of the annual weed Agrostemma githago (L.)

Abstract Time of seedling emergence is an important step in the life cycle of annual plants because it may determine subsequent performance and success. Timing of emergence is especially critical to plant performance in habitats like arable fields which are subject to frequent disturbances. Within-season variation in timing of germination in the range of only a few days is typical for many arable weeds. However, since it is unclear whether such small deviations in germination date translate into fitness differences in the course of the life cycle, the aim of this paper was to quantify the effects of short germination delays on plant performance. We conducted two generalized randomized block experiments in an unheated greenhouse to study the impact of delayed germination (1, 2, 3 and 7 d) with and without competition, respectively, on the fitness of the arable weed species Agrostemma githago (L.). We expected that delayed germination significantly reduces fitness in terms of several life-history traits, and that the decrease of fitness is higher in the presence of competition. Under realistic conditions with competition through barley, Agrostemma plants with delayed germination of 7 d produced 54% fewer shoots, 57% less biomass, 52% fewer flowers, 36% lighter seeds and were 23% shorter as compared to control plants without delayed germination. Without additional stress through competition with barley this pattern was less pronounced. Thus, in the situation of interspecific competition, early emerging seedlings have biologically significant fitness advantages over later emerging seedlings of the same species.
The Effects of Test Type, Pronunciation, and Proficiency Level on EFL Learners’ Speaking Exam Scores

The present study aims to reveal the effects of test type, pronunciation and proficiency levels of the students on speaking test scores. A total of 147 Turkish EFL students consisting of 38 beginner, 36 elementary, 37 pre-intermediate and 36 intermediate levels participated in the study. Presentation as planned, and paired speaking test as unplanned one were used as instruments to figure out the effects of two different test types on the test scores. Being prepared for their performances, the students did their presentations lasting between 5 and 8 minutes in front of two raters. The same participants, at the end of each level, were invited to the paired-speaking tests designed for the students to show their spontaneous performances. The performances in both tests were scored through a scale with five criteria, and the criteria along with overall scores were examined through Paired Samples t-test to reveal the effects of test type, and through bivariate regression to see the proportion of pronunciation aspect on overall scores. The results showed that in beginner level, although no differences were found in the overall scores, the test type induced differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and relevance aspect of their speaking performances. Similar results were found in elementary level besides the difference found in accuracy aspect, which resulted in a significant difference in overall scores. However, in pre-intermediate level, the only significant difference was found in pronunciation. On the other hand, in intermediate level all the aspects along with the overall scores were found to be affected by the test type except for fluency and pronunciation. The bivariate regression revealed that the effect of pronunciation sub-score on overall scores is significant in each level and test type.
Identification of Student Academic Performance using the KNN Algorithm

Students are an important asset in the world of education also an institution and therefore also need to pay attention to students' graduation rates on time. The ups and downs of the percentage of students' abilities in classroom learning is one important element for assessing university accreditation. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor and evaluate teaching and learning activities using the KNN Algorithm classification. By processing student complaints data and seeing the results of previous learning can obtain important things for higher education needs. In predicting graduation rates based on complaints, this study uses the K-Nearest Neighbor classification algorithm by grouping data k = 1, k = 2, k = 3 with the smallest value possible. In experiments using the KNN method the results were clearly visible and showed quite good accuracy. From the experiment it was concluded that if there were fewer complaints from one student it could minimize the level of student non-graduates at the university and ultimately produce good accreditation.
Chemotactic properties and protein of equine uterine fluid.

: Forty uterine fluid samples were obtained from 4 mares classified as resistant to uterine bacterial infection. The uterus of each mare was flushed with 50 ml of saline solution during estrus and diestrus of successive estrous cycles. Bacteria or fungi were isolated from 4 samples, and 7 additional samples were obtained from a mare with active intrauterine infection. Fluid volumes obtained during estrus (means = 40.3 +/- 11 ml) tended to be greater than those recovered during diestrus (means = 36.8 +/- 7.9 ml), but the difference was not significant. Concentrations and yields of protein in recovered fluid did not vary significantly with the day of the estrous cycle. Protein concentration was significantly increased in samples from the infected uterus (P = less than 0.001). The ability of uterine fluid samples to attract neutrophils was measured using chemotactic chambers. There was no significant difference between distances migrated by neutrophils toward fluids obtained during estrus or diestrus. Chemotaxis scores tended to be higher with samples from the infected uterus, and the difference was significant for samples from 2 mares. Chemotaxis was neither significantly correlated with protein concentration of uterine fluid, nor with serum estrogens or progesterone.
Linking E-Mails and Source Code Using BM25F

—Existing approaches to recover links between e-mails and software artifacts are based on text search or text retrieval and reformulate link recovery as a document retrieval problem. We reﬁne and improve such solutions by leveraging the parts of which an e-mail is composed of: header, current message, and previous messages. The relevance of these parts is weighted by a probabilistic approach based on text retrieval. We implemented our novel solution exploiting the BM25F model. The results of an empirical study conducted on a public benchmark indicate that the new approach in many cases outperforms the baseline approaches chosen. In addition, the proposed approach is easy to use and it is accurate enough to be worth the costs it may introduce in the corpus preprocessing and indexing.
Pre-clinical screening model organism to study Parkinson disease: Caenorhabditis elegans and its utility

The people suffering from mental disorder are frequently high at 21 century due to lifestyle. Alzheimer type or Parkinson’s disease is an old age disorders observed in many people in almost all countries and impose on challenge to research field for drug discovery for preventing and restoring the mental health of people. Many model such as Zebrafish, flies, anurans and nematodes (C. elegans) were used to study Parkinson disease but C. elegans are the best model for Parkinson’s disease because of its special character like short lifespan, transparent and micro in size help the researcher to discover drug very easy, fast and in an economically feasible manner.
Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in Locally Owned Hotel Chains in Singapore

This exploratory study looked at the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs of 10 locally owned and operated Singapore hotel chains. By using a Content Analysis methodology, the 10 hotel chains’ CSR efforts were analysed vis-a-vis to their annual reports and websites. This gave clear indication of whether the hotel chains were complying with the promises and standards that they had stated and promised. This report found that the CSR reported by the hotel chains were inclined toward Environmental efforts. This could probably be due to this Environmental practice being more tangible and visible. It was also noted that while the initiatives taken by the hotel chains were relatively numerous, many failed to report on whether these efforts amounted to an achievement. Moreover, CSR reporting on the hotel chains’ websites were almost non-existent. Given this, recommendations have been included to assist Singapore hotel companies manage their reporting of CSR activities.
A New S-allele in Apple, `Sg', and Its Similarity to the `Sf' Allele from `Fuji'

S-allele genotypes of nine apple ( Malus ×domestica Borkh.) cultivars were identified using S-allele-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-restriction fragment- length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis. A new S-allele, Sg, was proposed to be present in 'American Summer Pearmain', 'Indo', 'Kitanosachi', and 'Meku 10'. This allele is very similar to Sf at the nucleotide sequence (92%) and deduced amino acid sequence (94%) levels.
Oithona similis likes it cool: evidence from two long-term time series

We compare the long-term and seasonal patterns of abundance and phenology of the cyclopoid copepod Oithona similis at the L4 site (1988–2013) in the North Atlantic and at the LTER-MC site (1984–2013) in the Mediterranean Sea to investigate whether high temperature limits the occurrence of this species with latitudinal cline. The two sites are well suited to testing this hypothesis as they are characterized by similar chlorophyll a concentration (Chl a) but different temperature [sea surface temperature (SST)]. The abundance of O. similis at L4 was ∼10 times higher than at LTER-MC. Moreover, this species had several peaks of abundance during the year at L4 but a single peak in spring at LTER-MC. The main mode of temporal variability in abundance was seasonal at both sites. The abundance of O. similis was negatively correlated with SST only at LTER-MC, whereas it was positively correlated with Chl a at both sites. Oithona similis had a temperature optimum between 15 and 20°C reaching maximum abundance at ∼16.5°C at LTER-MC, but showed no Chl a optimum at either site. We conclude that the abundance of O. similis increases with prey availability up to 16.5°C and that temperature >20°C represents the main limiting factor for population persistence.
Journal: Toxicological Sciences In silico identification and pharmacological evaluation of novel endocrine disrupting chemicals that act via the ligand binding domain estrogen receptor α

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) pose a significant threat to human health, society and the environment. Many EDCs elicit their toxicological effects through nuclear hormone receptors, like the estrogen receptor α (ERα). In silico models can be used to prioritize chemicals for toxicological evaluation to reduce the amount of costly pharmacological testing and enable early alerts for newly designed compounds. However, many of the current computational models are overly dependent on the chemistry of known modulators and perform poorly for novel chemical scaffolds. Herein we describe the development of computational, three-dimensional multiconformational-pocket-field docking and chemical-field docking models for the identification of novel EDCs that act via the ligand-binding domain of ERα. These models were highly accurate in the retrospective task of distinguishing known high-affinity ERα modulators from inactive or decoy molecules, with minimal training. To illustrate the utility of the models in prospective in silico compound screening, we screened a database of over 6,000 environmental chemicals and evaluated the 24 top-ranked hits in a ERα transcriptional activation assay and a differential scanning fluorimetry-based ERα binding assay. Promisingly, six chemicals displayed ERα agonist activity (32nM to 3.98μM) and two chemicals had moderately stabilizing effects on ERα. Two newly identified active compounds were chemically related β-adrenergic receptor (βAR) agonists, dobutamine and ractopamine (a feed additive that promotes leanness in cattle and poultry), which are the first βAR agonists identified as activators of ERα-mediated gene transcription. This approach can be applied to other receptors implicated in endocrine disruption.
The complete chloroplast genome sequence of the medicinal plant, Angelica gigas (Apiaceae)

Abstract The complete chloroplast genome sequence of Angelica gigas, a traditional herbal plant used in treating diseases, was obtained by de novo assembly using illumina sequencing data (Illumina Inc., San Diego, CA). The circular molecule of the genome was constructed of four parts, with a size of 146,916 bp in total – a large single copy (LSC) region of 93,118 bp, a small single copy (SSC) region of 17,582 bp and two inverted repeat (IRa and IRb) regions of 18,108 bp each. There were a total of 113 annotated genes, including 80 protein-coding genes, 29 tRNA genes and four rRNA genes. The phylogenetic result acquired through maximum parsimony analysis showed that A. gigas is closely related with A. decursiva and Seseli montanum.
Is Putting a Face on a Robot Worthwhile?

—Putting an animated face on an interactive robot is great fun but does it actually make the interaction more effective or more useful? To answer these questions, human-robot interactions using text, audio, a realistic avatar, and a simplistic cartoon avatar were compared in a user study with 24 participants. Participants expressed a high level of satisfaction with the accuracy and speed of all the interfaces used. Although the response time was longer for both the cartoon and realistic avatar interfaces (due to their increased computational cost), this had no effect on participant satisfaction. Participants found the avatar interfaces more fun to use than the traditional text-and audio-based interfaces, but there was no signiﬁcant difference between the two avatar-based interfaces. Putting a face on a robot may make a robot more fun to interact with, and the face may not have to be that realistic.
Insecticide Resistance in Field Population of Cotton Leaf Hopper, Amrasca devastans (Dist.) in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India

The major biotic constraint in Bt cotton is the occurrence of sucking pests to attain absolute yield potential from Bt cotton hybrids. The cotton leaf hopper, Amrasca devastans (Distant) (Homoptera: Cicadellidae) is posing a serious limitation to seed cotton yield which occur throughout the crop growth period in Andhra Pradesh. The leafhoppers can cause 21.2 per cent loss in yield (Bhosle et al., 2009) and can reduce upto 309 kg/ha in quantity of seed yield (Murugesan and Kavitha, 2010). Farmers mostly depend upon insecticides belonging to different groups to keep the crop free from leafhoppers and other sucking pests.
THERMAL AND OPTICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF MATERIALS USING PHOTOACOUSTIC SPECTROSCOPY: AN INVERSE PROBLEM APPROACH

In the present work we investigate the estimation of thermal and optical properties of materials using the photoacoustic technique. The direct problem is solved analitically using RG theory and the inverse problem is solved using the method of Levenberg-Marquardt. Good estimates and confidence bounds are obtained for the thermal diffusivity, the optical absorption coefficient and the thermal conductivity, when these parameters are estimated separately. Poor results were obtained for multiparameter estimation even for synthetic experimental data with low levels of noise.
Genetic structure of Patagonian toothfish populations from otolith DNA

Abstract The Patagonian toothfish, Dissostichus eleginoides, is a valuable fishery species and has a discontinuous distribution across the Southern Ocean. Identification of the genetic stock structure of toothfish would allow evaluation of the suitability of the spatial scale at which fisheries management operates. Genetic subdivision seems likely given the species distribution. Population genetics studies of this species have been performed; however, they have been limited by sample size, spatial coverage and/or the type of markers investigated. As a potential solution, we developed methods for extracting toothfish DNA from otoliths that are available in large numbers from collections held at several research institutes. Genetic differentiation between the three oceanic sectors was investigated. Four mitochondrial and four nuclear markers with multiple single nucleotide polymorphisms were sequenced by high throughput sequencing for samples from six locations. Genetic differentiation was found between three sectors with nuclear markers. However, only the Pacific sector was differentiated from other sectors with mitochondrial markers. This study demonstrates the usefulness of otolith DNA as a means of increasing sample sizes for population genetics research of fish. Additionally, the combination of nuclear and mitochondrial markers may allow insight into how the observed differences in movements between male and female toothfish impact population structure.