Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A RETROSPECTIVE STUDY OF PATHOLOGICAL FINDINGS IN ENDANGERED FORMOSAN PANGOLINS (MANIS PENTADACTYLA PENTADACTYLA) FROM SOUTHEASTERN TAIWAN

Formosan pangolin, a sub-species of Chinese pangolin is a critically endangered insectivorous mammal found only in Taiwan. Pathological studies are helpful in the diagnosis and investigation of wildlife diseases. Pathological findings in pangolins have not been well documented. The present paper reports the pathological findings of 14 free-ranging Formosan pangolins. External injuries and superficial wounds (6/14) were common finding in gross examination and were mostly found in the legs. Respiratory system (78%, 11/14) lesions included interstitial pneumonia, atelectasis and emphysema. Hepatic changes (43%, 6/14) included necrosis, bile duct hyperplasia, lipidosis and extensive hepatocyte degeneration. Parasites were detected in 57% of pangolins (8/14) studied and included both endoparasites and ectoparasites. Urinary system (21%, 3/14) lesions were interstitial nephritis and nephrolithiasis. Brain lesions were found in three pangolins and included cerebral edema and hemorrhage and ventriculitis. Additional pathological lesions included thyroid gland hyperplasia and left ventricular hypertrophy. The presented pathological findings can aid in the understanding of diseases of pangolins and will contribute knowledge to future investigations on diseases of pangolins.
A computational account for the ontogeny of mirror neurons via Hebbian learning

It has been proposed that Hebbian learning could be responsible for the ontogeny of predictive mirror neurons (Keysers and Gazzola, 2014). Predictive mirror neurons ﬁre both when an individual performs a certain action and when the action they encode is most likely to follow a concurrently observed action. Here, we show that a variation of Oja’s rule (an implementation of Hebbian learning) is suﬃcient for the emergence of mirror neurons. An artiﬁcial neural network has been created that simulates the interactions between the premotor cortex (PM) and the superior temporal sulcus (STS). The PM cortex coordinates self-performed actions, whereas the STS is a region known to respond to the sight of body movements and the sound of actions. A quantitative method for analyzing (predictive) mirror neuron activity in the artiﬁcial neural network is presented. A parameter space analysis shows that a variation of Oja’s rule that uses a threshold produces mirror neuron behavior, given that the bounds for the weights of inhibitory synapses are lower than those of excitatory synapses. By extension, this work provides positive evidence for the association hypothesis, which states that mirror-like behavior of neurons in the motorcortex arises due to associations established between sensory-and motor stimuli.
The Design of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle for the 2018 Maritime RobotX Challenge

Creating an autonomous ASV for operations in marine environments presents a unique set of design challenges. This paper provides an overview of the design and development of the University of Michigan’s autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) for the 2018 AUVSI Maritime RobotX Challenge. The evolution of the design over the course of the project is outlined in the context of the design strategy and reasoning for design decisions made to address the unique challenges. Detailed descriptions are provided to outline both the physical layout of the vessel as well as the logic used to design the systems onboard to support autonomous functionality. This encompasses vessel design, sensor selection, software architecture, and the logic for completing the competition tasks. The testing of these systems is described as it pertains to design changes, validation and verification (V&V), and ongoing work.
Measuring Author Impression Using Cosine Similarity Algorithm

: In this research we are focused on measuring the impact of main author on dependent author/followers. When dependent author use the work of main author, the dependent author may carry some impression of main author in his writing. Text similarity is comparison between query text and text from main document. This comparison gives most similar documents to user. Text similarity is important in the classifying the text as well as document. Using cosine similarity algorithm we can measure similarity between two different documents and also we can find impression of main author on dependent author. Up till now this work is not available for Marathi and English language it’s the first attempt in this direction where significance of author. This will also be applied in detection of plagiarism.
Maximum-Sensitivity Matching of Connected-Array Antennas Subject to Lange Noise Constants

Maximum-sensitivity matching of mutually coupled antenna arrays is analyzed when equal low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) are applied to all antenna signals and the signals are linearly combined. The LNA is assumed to be variable in an arbitrary lossless input matching network and characterized in terms of Lange noise constants. Equations are derived for the optimum LNA minimum noise figure source admittance min Y and beamformer coefficients in the cases of both single and multiple incident fields. The equations are solved rapidly by iteration for a connected array being investigated in the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder. The results show that mutual coupling has a small impact on sensitivity when the array is optimally matched, increasing the LNA contribution to noise by 4-17% in the field of view of 80-100% sensitivity and the 0.71. 8GHz frequency range. An analogous formulation is presented for maximum-efficiency matching where the optimum LNA input admittance in Y for the connected array is found to be approximately the conjugate of the maximumsensitivity min Y . A constant of proportionality is derived between the signal and noise impacts of mutual coupling when the LNA in Y and min Y are a conjugate pair, showing in particular that the effect on signal is always less than that on noise. The results provide an initial goal for the design of LNAs for use with the array.
Training and accreditation in transanal total mesorectal excision in the United States

The current standard of care for the surgical treatment of rectal cancer is the total mesorectal excision (TME). While laparoscopic TME has improved short-term postoperative outcomes relative to open surgery, its adoption has remained low and conversion rates high due to the technical difficulties associated with operating in the pelvis, particularly for low rectal tumors in obese male patients. Transanal TME (taTME) utilizes a “bottom up” approach to the distal rectum and mesorectum that overcomes the limitations of an abdominal approach by improving exposure of the TME planes. The proposed benefits of taTME include a lower rate of incomplete TME specimen grade, lower rates of positive resection margins, and lower rates of conversion to open surgery, as well as a higher rate of sphincter preservation for tumors located ≤5 cm from the anal verge. Short-term outcomes of taTME have thus far affirmed the proposed benefits of the procedure. Preliminary long-term oncological results demonstrate that when performed in carefully selected patients by high-volume surgeons with expertise, taTME is safe with acceptable oncologic and functional outcomes. The training of colorectal surgeons in taTME in the United States is currently unregulated and no formal system of accreditation exists. A large number of surgeons who have attended taTME workshops have not performed the procedure, either due to lack of comfort or low case volume. As taTME is associated with a significant learning curve, the training curriculum and use of proctorship will be paramount to the development of a standardized training program in the United States.
A Novel Parameter for the Diagnosis of Iron Deficiency: The Transferrin/Albumin Ratio.

Iron deficiency (ID) is generally easily diagnosed by a serum ferritin concentration less than 12 μg/L. However, in patients with concomitant pathologies, sensitivity of ferritin for diagnosing ID is low, since inflammation or liver disease can lead to normal or increased ferritin values, even when iron deficiency. In this study, we propose a new marker for diagnosing ID in patients with chronic disease: the Transferrin/Albumin ratio (Tf/A ratio). Indeed, the synthesis and the elimination of albumin and transferrin are regulated by similar processes, excepted in ID. In the latter, the synthesis of transferrin is stimulated, whereas that of albumin is not. Therefore, the Tranferrin/Albumin ratio increases in case of ID, even when transferrin values are within the normal range. To determine the accuracy of this novel parameter, we studied 75 patients with chronic disease who were submitted to bone marrow aspirates and iron staining. Iron stores depletion was defined by less than 10% sideroblasts, without extra-cellular iron nor siderocytes. Blood samples were routinely undertaken at the time of the medullar sampling for determination of hematological and biochemical parameters. Iron status including ferritin, Tranferrin Saturation (TfSat), soluble Transferrin Receptor (sTfR), sTfR/log ferritin and Tf/A ratio, was determined. The diagnostic accuracy of the Tf/A ratio was compared to previously described parameters of iron status that we cited above. Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curves were built to determine the best cut-off values for the prediction of iron deficiency. According to the Perls’ reaction, 25 of the 75 patients (33%) had depleted iron stores and 50 had normal or increased iron stores. Sixteen iron-depleted patients (67%) had anemia. Mann and Whitney U test showed that parameters significantly associated with ID were: Tf, Tf/A ratio, ferritin, TfSat, sTfR, sTfR/log ferritin, mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular hemoglobin, red blood cell and reticulocyte counts. In a multivariate analysis, the only significant, independent predictor of iron depletion was the Tf/A ratio (r = 0.637, p
A Comparison of Statistical Packages in R Tool to Impute Missing Values

: Data mining has pushed the realm of information technology beyond predictable limits. Missing value is one of the major factor, which can render the obtain result beyond use attained from specific data set by applying data mining technique. There could be numerous reasons for missing values in a data set such as human error, hardware malfunction etc. It is imperative to tackle the labyrinth of missing values before applying any technique of data mining; otherwise, the information extracted from data set containing missing values will lead to the path of wrong decision making. Due to improper handling, the result obtained by the researcher will differ from ones where the missing values are present. Several methods have been, and continue to be, developed to draw inferences from data sets with missing values. In this work, we experimented and results are compared for three methods of imputation of missing values in numerical dataset. We compare MICE (PMM, CART and SAMPLE), HMISC, HOT.DECK, AMELIA, kNN and MISSFOREST, which are likely the most sophisticated imputation methods currently employed for imputing missing values.
Effects of adjustable impinging flow on the vascular endothelial cell layer in a modified T chamber

The study aims to design a vitro device to mimic the fluid enviroment at a arterial bifurcation to explore the endothelial physiology. Confluent human umbilical vein endothelial cells were exposed to an impinging flow in a T chamber system we designed. The flow rate was set at 250 or 500 ml/min. The pressure in the chamber was 100 mmHg. The morphology of endothelial cells (ECs) was examined after 3, 6 and 12 hours. At 250 ml/min, ECs remained confluent, with no signs of damage, no gaps, no rounding up of cells been detected in 6 hours, and cells decreased in the stagnation point, and partly moved and crowded in downstream after 12 hours. At 500 ml/min, no differences in the shape and distribution of ECs were detected in 6 hours. After 12 hours, cells were over confluent and crowded at the stagnation point, while gaps between cells were enlarged and the number of cells decreased in the region with a high wall shear stress (WSS, >40 dynes/cm2) and wall shear stress gradient (WSSG, >300 dynes/ cm3). ECs were over confluent and crowded in downstream, and highly elongated and aligned as the direction of the impinging flow. The modified device, characterized by the adjustable velocity of the flow and pressure values in the chamber, can mimic different hemodynamics at bifurcation apices.
Uncertainty-aware Instance Segmentation using Dropout Sampling

Vision is an integral part of many robotic systems, and especially so when a robot must interact with its environment. In such cases, decisions made based on erroneous visual detections can have disastrous consequences. Hence, being able to accurately measure the uncertainty associated with visual information is highly important for making informed decisions. However, this uncertainty is often not captured by classic computer vision systems or metrics. In this paper we address the task of instance segmentation in a robotics context, where we are concerned with uncertainty associated with not only the class of an object (semantic uncertainty) but also its location (spatial uncertainty). We apply dropout sampling to the state-of-the-art instance segmentation network Mask-RCNN to provide estimates of both semantic uncertainty and spatial uncertainty. We show that a metric which combines both uncertainty measures provides an estimate of uncertainty which improves over either one individually. Additionally, we apply our technique to the ACRV Probabilistic Object Detection dataset where it achieves a score of 14.65.
Blockchain-Based Solutions to Improve Financing for the Ultra-Poor: Technological Potential and Practical Challenges

Several blockchain-based financial technologies (fintechs) and cryptocurrencies have been launched to improve the access to and affordability of financial services for the poor. Blockchain has technical potential that can be captured to serve the needs of unbanked and underbanked population. A look at the startups that have launched fintechs and cryptocurrencies for the poor indicates that there is currently no clear evidence that most of them are achieving their stated goals of helping the targeted population. The startups’ actions related to designs and other aspects are taken by keeping big companies’ and i nvestors' needs and preferences in mind. The needs of poor consumers, on the other hand, often go ignored. Unfortunately, the benefits that are claimed that fintech products and cryptocurrencies can offer to the poor are far from guaranteed due to their lack of skills and unfavorable market and institutional environments. New users of such technologies lack skills and access to new opportunities that can be exploited with the technologies.
THE INFLUENCE OF INCORRECT SIRE-IDENTIFICATION ON THE ESTIMATES OF GENETIC PARAMETERS AND BREEDING VALUES La influencia de la identification incorrecta del toro

To ensure correct ranking of the bulls, different environmental effects have to be eliminated from the data. Selection of bulls is, however, of great importance and hardly no other subject therefore has been discussed so intensively as bull evaluation in the past decades' literature of cattle breeding. In these discussions it has often been overlooked that some individuals, which have been treated as members of a progeny group, could belong to other groups due to incorrect sire-identification.
E-Performance Management Systems and Organization Performance of Sacco’s in Kenya

: Human resource information system (HRIS) is a concept which utilizes the information technology for effective management of the human resource, its functions and applications . E-performance management system is an important component of HRIS whose effects on organization performance remains largely unknown.Several studies both local and international have underscored the importance of HRIS on performance of organizations. However, the effects of the individual components of the system such as E-Performance Management were largely subsumed, hence, the exact impact of E-Performance Management is not known. Further, the focus of the studies was not on Saccos. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of e-performance management systems on organization performance of Saccos in Kenya. The study was guided by the technology acceptance theory. The study employed a cross sectional survey design targeting a population of 54 respondents drawn from 18 Saccos in the country. Purposive sampling was used to select the 54 respondents who were mainly the employees in the human resource department. Questionnaires were used as data collection instruments and data was quantitative in nature. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and correlation and presented in tables. The validity and reliability of the instrument was determined by Cronbach. The results showed that E-performance management had a significant effect on the performance of Saccos. The study therefore recommended that firms should improve more on data management in areas of performance assessment to allow for timely and speedy delivery of services to the employees.
Prevalence and Comparison of Mental Disorders among Administrative Staff and Warders of the Central Prison of Sistan and Baluchestan

Purpose: To examine and compare the prevalence of different types of mental disorders among the administrative staff and warders of the central prison of Sistan and Baluchestan. Materials and Methods: The study population included all employees of Zahedan general office of prisons. The sample consisted of 100 employees, of whom fifty individuals worked in various administrative units of Zahedan general office of prisons and fifty were warders and selected randomly. Goldberg’s General Health Questionnaire was used for data collection. Data was analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance. Results: The results indicated no statistically significant difference in mental health components between the two groups of administrative staff and ward staff (P = .05). However, there was a statistically significant difference between women and men, considering the mental health components (P = .01), thus, women working in the prison were suspected of having somatic symptoms, while men working in the prison were suspected of having social dysfunction symptoms. However, the difference between the two groups of men and women was not significant with regard to anxiety symptoms and depression symptoms (P = .05). Conclusion: It seems certain that preserving mental health is as important as physical health. Therefore, given the prison staff’s occupational sensitivity, necessary interventions could be exerted through formulating such plans as methods for coping with stress. This can help promoting their general health, while carrying out necessary assessment of staff’s mental health is also important in order to manage and control potential problems.
Keynote Abstracts Bilingualism: what belongs to language, what belongs to general cognition, and why it matters

Recent research on bilingual language development has revealed some convergent developmental paths among different early and late bilingual groups, such as child bilinguals, advanced adult second language speakers, and native speakers affected by attrition due to long-term use of another language. All these bilingual groups show variability in linguistic intuitions and behavior that (a) appears to be restricted to the interfaces between syntax and pragmatics and (b) tends to asymmetrically concern one language, but not the other. I will illustrate these patterns of variability with experimental data from bilinguals speaking different language combinations, focusing in particular on the interpretation of anaphoric forms but also of other structures. I will argue that subtle interactions of linguistic constraints and specific executive functions is at the root of these phenomena, and that these interactions are sensitive to both the type of structure and the age of onset of bilingualism.
Brief Announcements / Back Matter

Motivated by the structure of social networks, this paper initiates a study of distributed algorithms in networks that exhibit a core-periphery structure. Such networks contain two distinct groups of nodes: a large and sparse, group identiﬁed as the periphery , which is loosely organized around a small, and densely connected group identiﬁed as the core . We identify four basic properties that are relevant to the interplay between core and periphery. For each of these properties, we propose a corresponding axiom that captures the behavior expected of a social network based on a core-periphery structure. We then address their usefulness for distributed computation, by considering a nontrivial algorithmic task of signiﬁcance in both the distributed systems world and the social networks world, namely, the distributed construction of a minimum-weight spanning tree.
DIGIT: A Novel Design for a Low-Cost Compact High-Resolution Tactile Sensor With Application to In-Hand Manipulation

Despite decades of research, general purpose in-hand manipulation remains one of the unsolved challenges of robotics. One of the contributing factors that limit current robotic manipulation systems is the difficulty of precisely sensing contact forces – sensing and reasoning about contact forces are crucial to accurately control interactions with the environment. As a step towards enabling better robotic manipulation, we introduce DIGIT, an inexpensive, compact, and high-resolution tactile sensor geared towards in-hand manipulation. DIGIT improves upon past vision-based tactile sensors by miniaturizing the form factor to be mountable on multi-fingered hands, and by providing several design improvements that result in an easier, more repeatable manufacturing process, and enhanced reliability. We demonstrate the capabilities of the DIGIT sensor by training deep neural network model-based controllers to manipulate glass marbles in-hand with a multi-finger robotic hand. To provide the robotic community access to reliable and low-cost tactile sensors, we open-source the DIGIT design at www.digit. ml.
Reflection of an ultrasonic wave on a bone-interface implant: a numerical study of the multiscale roughness

– Quantitative ultrasound can be used to characterize the evolution of the bone-implant interface (BII), which is a complex system due to the implant surface roughness and to partial contact between bone and the implant. The aim of this study is to derive the main determinants of the ultrasonic response of the BII during osseointegration phenomena. The influence of i) the surface roughness parameters and ii) the thickness W of a soft tissue layer on the reflection coefficient r of the BII was investigated using a two-dimensional finite element model. When W increases from 0 to 150 µm, r increases from values in the range [0.45; 0.55] to values in the range [0.75; 0.88] according to the roughness parameters. An optimization method was developed to determine the sinusoidal roughness profile leading to the most similar ultrasonic response for all values of W compared to the original profile. The results show that the difference between the ultrasonic responses of the optimal sinusoidal profile and of the original profile was lower to typical experimental errors. This approach provides a better understanding of the ultrasonic response of the BII, which may be used in future numerical simulation realized at the scale of an implant.