Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Test-Retest Reliability of the SWAY Balance Mobile Application

Background: The SWAY Balance Mobile Application is an FDA-cleared balance testing system which uses the built-in tri-axial accelerometers of a mobile electronic device to objectively assess postural movement. The system was designed to provide a means of quantitative balance assessment in clinical and on-field environments. The purpose of this study was to determine the intrasession and intersession reliability, as well as the minimum difference to be considered real, of the SWAY Balance Mobile Application. Methods: 24 individuals (15 male, 9 female; aged 25.96 (95.78 years)) performed the SWAY Balance protocol twice per testing session over a period of three testing sessions. Each testing session was separated by a minimum of seven days. Interclass Correlation Coefficients were calculated as an indication of the test-retest reliability. The minimum difference to be considered real was calculated to determine the minimum score change necessary to indicate an actual change in balance performance. Results: Mean SWAY Balance scores ranged from 86.90 (914.37) to 89.90 (911.19). Repeated measures ANOVA revealed no significant mean differences between SWAY balance scores of the experimental trials (F(5,115) 0.673; p 0.65). Excellent reliability was found (ICC(3,1) 0.76; SEM 5.39) with a minimum difference to be considered real of approximately 15. Conclusions: Results indicate that SWAY provides excellent overall reliability. However, it may be appropriate to have subjects perform a familiarization trial at the beginning of each testing session. Additionally, SWAY may demonstrate a ceiling effect when assessing balance improvements in those who already demonstrate good balance.
ickel substrate covered with a Sn-based protection bilayer as a hotoanode substrate for dye-sensitized solar cells

Ni is a metallic substrate commonly used in microelectronic and opto-electronic devices due to its high stability, cost-efficiency and flexibility. Up to now, Ni has not yet been used as the substrate for the photoanode in dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) because the formation of p-type Ni oxide hinders the electron transfer from n-type TiO2 mesoporous film to Ni substrate. In this paper, a Sn-based protection bi-layer coating on the Ni foil successfully turns Ni into a good photoanode substrate in DSSC. A Sn layer is initially electroplated onto the Ni surface to prevent its oxidation. The Sn layer is then transformed into a bi-layer of SnO2 and Ni–Sn intermetallic compound after high-temperature TiO2 sintering. Unlike the p-type Ni oxide layer, the top n-type SnO2 layer enables the electron transfer from the TiO2 mesoporous film to the conductive Ni substrate because its energy level of conduction band well matches that of TiO2. in lectroplating In addition, the interfacial Ni–Sn intermetallic compound is a good electrical conductor which facilitates the electron transfer. By carefully controlling the plating current density and time, a 1.2m-thick Sn layer with a smooth surface morphology is formed and is recognized as the best protection layer over the Ni substrate. The energy conversion efficiency of the resultant DSSC achieves 4.422% with a short-circuit current density of 10 mA/cm2, an open-circuit voltage of 0.643 V, and fill factor of 0.689 under AM 1.5 back-side illumination.
Visualizing Phoneme Category Adaptation in Deep Neural Networks

Both human listeners and machines need to adapt their sound categories whenever a new speaker is encountered. This perceptual learning is driven by lexical information. The aim of this paper is two-fold: investigate whether a deep neural network-based (DNN) ASR system can adapt to only a few examples of ambiguous speech as humans have been found to do; investigate a DNN’s ability to serve as a model of human perceptual learning. Crucially, we do so by looking at intermediate levels of phoneme category adaptation rather than at the output level. We visualize the activations in the hidden layers of the DNN during perceptual learning. The results show that, similar to humans, DNN systems learn speaker-adapted phone category boundaries from a few labeled examples. The DNN adapts its category boundaries not only by adapting the weights of the output layer, but also by adapting the implicit feature maps computed by the hidden layers, suggesting the possibility that human perceptual learning might involve a similar nonlinear distortion of a perceptual space that is intermediate between the acoustic input and the phonological categories. Comparisons between DNNs and humans can thus provide valuable insights into the way humans process speech and improve ASR technology.
Identification of Flights for Cost-Efficient Climate Impact Reduction

The aircraft-induced climate impact has drawn attention in recent years. Aviation operations affect the environment mainly through the release of carbon-dioxide, nitrogen-oxides, and by the formation of contrails. Recent research has shown that altering trajectories can reduce aviation environmental cost by reducing Absolute Global Temperature Change Potential, a climate assessment metric that adapts a linear system for modeling the global temperature response to aviation emissions and contrails. However, these methods will increase fuel consumption that leads to higher fuel costs imposed on airlines. The goal of this work is to identify flights for which the environmental cost of climate impact reduction outweighs the increase in operational cost on an individual aircraft basis. Environmental cost is quantified using the monetary social cost of carbon. The increase in operational cost is considering cost of additional fuel usage only. For this paper, an algorithm has been developed that modifies the trajectories of flights to evaluate the effect of environmental cost and operational cost of flights in the United States National Airspace System. The algorithm identifies flights for which the environmental cost of climate impact can be reduced and modifies their trajectories to achieve maximum environmental net benefit, which is the difference between reduction in environmental cost and additional operational cost. The result shows on a selected day, 16% of the flights among eight major airlines, or 2,043 flights, can achieve environmental net benefit using weather forecast data, resulting in net benefit of around $500,000. The result also suggests that the long-haul flights would be better candidates for cost-efficient climate impact reduction than the short haul flights. The algorithm will help to identify the characteristics of flights that are capable of applying cost-efficient climate impact reduction strategy.
Can rapid pressure decrease induced by supercavitation efficiently eradicate Legionella pneumophila bacteria

The presence of Legionella pneumophila bacteria in engineered water systems can pose a significant health risk. Current prevention and outbreak treatments are cost and environmentally ineffective. Moreover they do not prevent rapid bacteria recolonization. Although cavitation was already suggested as a possible water treatment technique a systematic study has not yet been performed. In the present experimental campaign we set out to evaluate the efficiency of removal of L. pneumophila by three types of cavitation—the most commonly used acoustic cavitation, the aggressive developed hydrodynamic cavitation, and the supercavitation. We show that it is probably not the pressure peaks or the high local temperatures that cause the eradication of the bacteria, but the rapid pressure decrease which was initiated in supercavitating flow regime. Results of the study show promising ground for further optimization of a methodology for L. pneumophila removal by cavitation.
Regional scale speciation reveals multiple invasions of freshwater in Palaemoninae (Decapoda)

Ashelby, C.W. , Page, T.J., De Grave, S. , Hughes, J.M. & Johnson, M.L. (2012) Regional scale speciation reveals multiple invasions of freshwater in Palaemoninae (Decapoda). —Zoologica Scripta, 41, 293–306.
Cardiac troponin biosensors: where are we now?

: Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is one of the leading causes of death among the cardiovascular diseases. Of several biomarkers used for detection, increased levels of cardiac troponins have proved to be significant in diagnosing AMI. This has motivated researchers in the field to develop point-of-care biosensors for rapid detection of an episode of AMI. Over the years, various detection techniques have emerged for the estimation of cardiac troponins. This review focuses on summarizing various biosensing methods, including optical, electrochemical, and acoustic techniques, for the detection of cardiac troponins.
The Case for Systematically Derived Spatial Language Usage

This position paper argues that, while prior work in spatial language understanding for tasks such as robot navigation focuses on mapping natural language into deep conceptual or non-linguistic representations, it is possible to systematically derive regular patterns of spatial language usage from existing lexical-semantic resources. Furthermore, even with access to such resources, effective solutions to many application areas such as robot navigation and narrative generation also require additional knowledge at the syntax-semantics interface to cover the wide range of spatial expressions observed and available to natural language speakers. We ground our insights in, and present our extensions to, an existing lexico-semantic resource, covering 500 semantic classes of verbs, of which 219 fall within a spatial subset. We demonstrate that these extensions enable systematic derivation of regular patterns of spatial language without requiring manual annotation.
To Abduce or not to Abduce, that is the Question. On the Role of Abductive Inference within Discourse Construction

In all these examples, we tend to infer a resultative connection between the first and second sentences (this assumption will be discussed and experimentally corroborated in more detail below). In particular, in the first and second examples, the dying of Fred is a consequence, and thus a result of his forgetting of the parachute or the jumping off the plane, respectively2. In the third example, the fact that the napkin fell of the table is clearly a result of the sneezing. However, due to the lack of surface discourse clues (cf. Marcu and Echihabi (2002)) which allow to infer a resultative connection, we should ask ourselves: what exactly are the properties of these discourses
Improvement of the Speaker Verification Systemwith Feature Level and Score LevelNormalization Techniques

The performance of a text independent Speaker verification (SV) system has degraded when speaker model training is done in one environment while the testing is done in another, due to mismatching of phonetic contents of speech utterances, recording environment, session variability and sensor variability of training and testing criteria, which are major problems in speaker verification system. The robustness of SV system has been improved by applying different Voice Activity Detection (VAD) techniques like Cepstral Mean Normalization (CMN), Cepstral Variance Normalization (CVN) techniques in features level and score normalization techniques in score level. In this paper we report the experiment carried out on the recently collected speaker recognition database Arunachali Language Speech Database (ALS-DB). The collected database is evaluated with Gaussian mixture model and Universal Background Model (GMM-UBM) and Mel- Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) with its first and second order derivatives as well as Prosodic features as a front end feature vectors. The performance of the speaker verification system has been improved by applying CVN at the feature level as well as score normalization technique Test-normalization (T-Norm) in the score level. And also we observe that the performance of SV system vastly improved while applying CVN in feature level and T-Norm in score level at the same time. We observe that combining MFCC with Prosodic features improved the performance of the SV system with 7.08%, while T-Norm improved the SV system with 3.22% and CVN has improved with 3.90%.
Applications of Laser Welding in Dentistry: A State-of-the-Art Review

The dental industry without lasers is inconceivable right now. This captivating technology has outlasted other possible alternative technologies applied in dentistry in the past due to its precision, accuracy, minimal invasive effect as well as faster operating time. Other alternatives such as soldering, resistance (spot) welding, plasma (torch) welding, and single pulse tungsten inert gas welding have their pros and cons; nevertheless, laser welding remains the most suitable option so far for dental application. This paper attempts to give an insight into the laser principle and types of lasers used for dental purposes, types of dental alloys used by the dentist, and effect of laser parameters on prosthesis/implants. It is apparent from the literature review that laser assisted dental welding will continue to grow and will become an unparalleled technology for dental arena.
Iodine monoxide at a clean marine coastal site: observations of high frequency variations and inhomogeneous distributions

Abstract. The first in situ point observations of iodine monoxide (IO) at a clean marine site were made using a laser-induced fluorescence instrument deployed at Mace Head, Ireland in August 2007. IO mixing ratios of up to 49.8 pptv (equivalent to pmol mol −1 ; 1 s average) were observed at day-time low tide, well in excess of previous observed spatially-averaged maxima. A strong anti-correlation of IO mixing ratios with tide height was evident and the high time resolution of the observations showed IO peaked in the hour after low tide. The temporal delay in peak IO compared to low tide has not been observed previously but coincides with the time of peak aerosol number previously observed at Mace Head. A long path-differential optical absorption spectroscopy instrument (with a 2 × 6.8 km folded path across Roundstone Bay) was also based at the site for 3 days during the point measurement observation period. Both instruments show similar temporal trends but the point measurements of IO are a factor of ~6–10 times greater than the spatially averaged IO mixing ratios, providing direct empirical evidence of the presence of inhomogeneities in the IO mixing ratio near the intertidal region.
SecTap: Secure Back of Device Input System for Mobile Devices

Smart mobile devices have become an integral part of people's life and users often input sensitive information on these devices. However, various side channel attacks against mobile devices pose a plethora of serious threats against user security and privacy. To mitigate these attacks, we present a novel secure Back-of-Device (BoD) input system, SecTap, for mobile devices. To use SecTap, a user tilts her mobile device to move a cursor on the keyboard and tap the back of the device to secretly input data. We design a tap detection method by processing the stream of accelerometer readings to identify the user's taps in real time. The orientation sensor of the mobile device is used to control the direction and the speed of cursor movement. We also propose an obfuscation technique to randomly and effectively accelerate the cursor movement. This technique not only preserves the input performance but also keeps the adversary from inferring the tapped keys. Extensive empirical experiments were conducted on different smart phones to demonstrate the usability and security on both Android and iOS platforms.
Attachment Styles are Related to ERPs Elicited to Angry Faces in an Oddball Paradigm

Attachment theory suggests that anxious attachment is associated with hypervigilance to threatening social stimuli, and avoidant attachment with avoidance or suppression of processing such stimuli. Twenty-five students viewed angry, fearful and neutral female faces in four visual oddball tasks, and completed the Attachment Style Questionnaire, the Autonomy-Connectedness Scale, and Anxiety and Depression subscales of the Symptom Checklist-90. When the oddballs were angry faces in a background of neutral frequents, we found higher levels of autonomy and secure attachment to be related to larger N100 and smaller P300 amplitudes; higher levels of anxious attachment were, on the contrary, associated with smaller N100 and larger P300 amplitudes. Variation in attachment is related to approaching, or withdrawing from threatening stimuli, and ERP-techniques add to our understanding of how the attachment system actually works.
Microlensing Surveys for Exoplanets

Unlike most other planet-detection techniques, gravitational microlensing does not rely on detection of photons from either the host or the planet. Rather, planets are discovered by their gravitational perturbation of light from a more distant source. I review the fundamental concepts of microlensing planet searches and discuss their practical application. I show how the strengths and peculiarities of the method flow from the basic manner in which planets are discovered. In particular, microlensing is sensitive to very low-mass planets on wide orbits and free-floating planets, and can be used to search for planets orbiting host stars with a broad range of masses and Galactocentric distances. However, microlensing events are rare and cannot be predicted in advance, the majority of the host stars are extremely faint, and the planetary signals typically last less than a day. These strengths motivate microlensing searches as powerful, complementary probes of unexplored parameter space that have already provid.
A comparison of productive and non-productive green water-use efficiency of Podocarpus henkelii and Pinus patula in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands

A number of studies undertaken in South Africa to quantify the green water-use (total evaporation) of introduced commercial forestry species have shown conclusively that green water-use from commercial forest plantations is substantially higher than from the original grasslands or fynbos that were replaced by afforestation. Green water can be categorised into productive (transpiration) and non-productive (canopy and litter interception and soil evaporation) fluxes. There is a widespread perception within South Africa that indigenous tree species, in contrast to commercial forestry genera/species, are water-wise and should thus be planted more extensively in view of their more efficient use of water. However, information on the water-use of indigenous trees and forests is scarce and indirect, and the relative contributions of transpiration, canopy interception and litter interception to total evaporation have until now not been investigated in South Africa. To quantify these fluxes, both field measurements and modelling were undertaken. In this study, green water-use by indigenous Podocarpus henkelii and an exotic species, Pinus patula, were compared. The results from this study showed that the productive green water-use by P. henkelii and P. patula was 41.0% and 95.9% of gross precipitation, respectively, over the 18-month period of this study. The non-productive canopy and litter interception by P. henkelii accounted for 29.8% and 6.2%, respectively, while canopy and litter interception accounted for 22.1% and 10.7%, respectively, for P. patula. The productive green water-use efficiency (WUE) of P. henkelli and P. patula is 7.14 g mm−1 and 25.21 g mm−1, respectively, in comparison with the total green WUE of 3.8 g mm−1 and 18.8 g mm−1. From a water resources management and planning perspective it is important to consider the total green WUE, but also to have a good understanding of the relative contributions of each component of the green water fluxes so that water abstracted from the soil can be differentiated from the water that does not reach the soil due to losses of canopy and litter interception and does not get lumped as one evaporative loss.
Predicting Ground Delay Program at an Airport Based on Meteorological Conditions

In this paper, we present two supervised-learning models, logistic regression and decision tree, to predict occurrence of a ground delay program at an airport based on meteorological conditions and scheduled traffic demand. Predicting the occurrence of ground delay programs can help the Federal Aviation Administration traffic managers and airline dispatchers prepare mitigation strategies to reduce impact of adverse weather. The models are developed for two major U.S. airports: Newark Liberty and San Francisco International airports. The logistic regression model estimates the probability that a ground delay program will occur during a given hour. The decision tree model, on the other hand, classifies whether or not a ground delay program is likely during an hour based on the input variables. Results indicate both models perform significantly better than a purely random prediction of ground delay program occurrence at the two airports. The degree to which various input variables impact the probability of ground delay program vary between the two airports. While the enroute convective weather is a dominant factor causing ground delay programs at Newark Liberty Intl. airport, poor visibility and low cloud ceiling caused by marine stratus are major drivers of ground delay program occurrence at San Francisco Intl. airport.
Improved stability conditions for discrete‐time systems under dynamic network protocols

This paper deals with the stability of discrete‐time networked systems with multiple sensor nodes under dynamic scheduling protocols. Access to the communication medium is orchestrated by a weighted try‐once‐discard or by an independent and identically‐distributed stochastic protocol that determines which sensor node can access the network at each sampling instant and transmit its corresponding data. Through a time‐delay approach, a unified discrete‐time hybrid system with time‐varying delays in the dynamics and in the reset conditions is formulated under both scheduling protocols. Then, a new stability criterion for discrete‐time systems with time‐varying delays is proposed by the discrete counterpart of the second‐order Bessel‐Legendre integral inequality. The developed approach is applied to guarantee the stability of the resulting discrete‐time hybrid system model with respect to the full state under try‐once‐discard or independent and identically‐distributed scheduling protocol. The communication delays can be larger than the sampling intervals. Finally, the efficiency of the presented approach is illustrated by a cart‐pendulum system.
Taxonomic notes on Ecuadorian Adelpha, with the description of two new species and seven new subspecies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Limenitidinae).

Two new species and seven new subspecies of Adelpha Hubner, [1819], are described from Ecuador (Adelpha attica hemileuca n. ssp. , Adelpha hesterbergi n. sp. , Adelpha hyas hewitsoni n. ssp. , Adelpha iphicleola thessalita n. ssp. , Adelpha iphiclus estrecha n. ssp. , Adelpha lamasi n. sp. , Adelpha radiata aiellae n. ssp. , Adelpha radiata explicator n. ssp. , Adelpha salus emmeli n. ssp .). The taxonomy and synonymy of Adelpha serpa (Boisduval, 1836) and related species, and Adelpha iphiclus (Linnaeus, 1758) and Adelpha iphicleola (H. W. Bates, 1864), are discussed and a number of taxonomic changes made.