Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Functional Neuroanatomy of Second Language Sentence Comprehension: An fMRI Study of Late Learners of American Sign Language

The neurobiology of sentence comprehension is well-studied but the properties and characteristics of sentence processing networks remain unclear and highly debated. Sign languages (i.e., visual-manual languages), like spoken languages, have complex grammatical structures and thus can provide valuable insights into the specificity and function of brain regions supporting sentence comprehension. The present study aims to characterize how these well-studied spoken language networks can adapt in adults to be responsive to sign language sentences, which contain combinatorial semantic and syntactic visual-spatial linguistic information. Twenty native English-speaking undergraduates who had completed introductory American Sign Language (ASL) courses viewed videos of the following conditions during fMRI acquisition: signed sentences, signed word lists, English sentences and English word lists. Overall our results indicate that native language (L1) sentence processing resources are responsive to ASL sentence structures in late L2 learners, but that certain L1 sentence processing regions respond differently to L2 ASL sentences, likely due to the nature of their contribution to language comprehension. For example, L1 sentence regions in Broca's area were significantly more responsive to L2 than L1 sentences, supporting the hypothesis that Broca's area contributes to sentence comprehension as a cognitive resource when increased processing is required. Anterior temporal L1 sentence regions were sensitive to L2 ASL sentence structure, but demonstrated no significant differences in activation to L1 than L2, suggesting its contribution to sentence processing is modality-independent. Posterior superior temporal L1 sentence regions also responded to ASL sentence structure but were more activated by English than ASL sentences. An exploratory analysis of the neural correlates of L2 ASL proficiency indicates that ASL proficiency is positively correlated with increased activations in response to ASL sentences in L1 sentence processing regions. Overall these results suggest that well-established fronto-temporal spoken language networks involved in sentence processing exhibit functional plasticity with late L2 ASL exposure, and thus are adaptable to syntactic structures widely different than those in an individual's native language. Our findings also provide valuable insights into the unique contributions of the inferior frontal and superior temporal regions that are frequently implicated in sentence comprehension but whose exact roles remain highly debated.
A Crossed DD Geometry and Its Double-Coil Excitation Method for Electric Vehicle Dynamic Wireless Charging Systems

Dynamic wireless charging technology can supply power for electric vehicle (EV) while it is in-motion. However, the system output stability is heavily influenced by the mutual inductance variation of the magnetic coupler, which is a major drawback of the EV dynamic wireless power transfer (EV-DWPT). This paper focuses on the primary coil design and its activating method. First, the LCC compensation network was adopted in both primary side and pick-up side of the system to achieve the constant primary current characteristic. Subsequently, a double-coil excitation method with the crossed-DD coil structure was proposed, which specifically concentrates on the feature of the dynamic mutual inductance. Simulation studies were carried out to prove the effectiveness of the proposed system. An EV-DWPT system prototype was performed to further verify the theoretical and simulation results.
The difficulty of studying race-ethnic stroke rehabilitation disparities in a community

ABSTRACT Objective: Minority populations have worse stroke outcomes compared with non-Hispanic whites (NHWs). One possible explanation for this disparity is differential allocation of stroke rehabilitation. We utilized a population-based stroke study to determine the feasibility of studying Mexican American-NHW differences in stroke rehabilitation in a population-based design including identification of community partners, development of standardized data collection instruments, and collection of pilot data. Methods: As part of the Brain Attack Surveillance in Corpus Christi project, we followed 48 patients for the first 90 days after stroke, and attempted to work with community partners to garner information on rehabilitation modalities used. With input from local occupational and physical therapists and speech language pathologists, we created data collection forms to capture rehabilitation activities and time spent on these activities and conducted a 3-month data collection pilot. Results: Of the 79 rehabilitation venues in the community, 63 (80%) agreed to participate. During the pilot, 545 data forms from 20 stroke patients were collected corresponding to ~18% of stroke patients. Forms were used by 13 partners during the pilot including 3 of 4 inpatient rehabilitation facilities, 4 of 13 skilled nursing facilities, 4 of 26 home health agencies, and 2 of 36 outpatient rehabilitation providers. Conclusions: Initial agreement from rehabilitation providers to participate in research was excellent, but completion of study related data collection forms was sub-optimal suggesting this approach is not feasible for a future population-based stroke rehabilitation study. Further methods to study post-stroke rehabilitation disparities in communities are needed.
Aircraft Longitudinal Control based on the Lanchester's Phugoid Dynamics Model

This paper presents a longitudinal aircraft controller inspired by the polar equation of the hodograph, one of the invariants of the Lanchester’s phugoid dynamics. The control design procedure follows the considerations made by Lancaster to develop the Phugoid dynamics, this is, the angle of attack is quasi-static. Then, it is possible to design a longitudinal aircraft dynamics controller that requires knowing the elevator control derivative coefficient, and the aircraft physical characteristics. The control design procedure assumes a known structure for the aircraft aerodynamic characteristics. Closed-loop stability properties rely on considering that the angle of attack is small and boundedness of the lift coefficient. Numerical simulations using the X-Plane flight simulator validate the proposed controller.
Feature Level-Sets: Generalizing Iso-Surfaces to Multi-Variate Data

Iso-surfaces or level-sets provide an effective and frequently used means for feature visualization. However, they are restricted to simple features for uni-variate data. The approach does not scale when moving to multi-variate data or when considering more complex feature definitions. In this paper, we introduce the concept of traits and feature level-sets, which can be understood as a generalization of level-sets as it includes iso-surfaces, and fiber surfaces as special cases. The concept is applicable to a large class of traits defined as subsets in attribute space, which can be arbitrary combinations of points, lines, surfaces and volumes. It is implemented into a system that provides an interface to define traits in an interactive way and multiple rendering options. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach using multi-variate data sets of different nature, including vector and tensor data, from different application domains.
Relations of religion with depression and loneliness in older sexual and gender minority adults

ABSTRACT Objectives: High levels of religious involvement have been associated with positive mental health outcomes in older adults. This study investigated whether the effects of religion on healthy aging could generalize to older LGBTQ adults. Methods: This study examined religious affiliation in childhood versus at present, as well as the relationships of outness to religious community and religious engagement with depression and loneliness in 102 lesbian, gay, and bisexual cisgender, transgender, and questioning adults (LGBTQ) over the age of 55. As part of a larger study, participants completed several questions and measures including: one outness to religious community item, 4 religious engagement questions, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, and the 8-item UCLA Loneliness Scale. Results: Many older LGBTQ adults reported changes in religious affiliation from childhood to adulthood. Greater levels of outness to religious communities and lower religious engagement were related to lower levels of depression and loneliness. Conclusions: Findings suggest that outness to religious communities may be beneficial to the mental health of older LGBTQ adults. Higher levels of distress may lead to higher levels of religious engagement. Clinical Implications: Religion, especially those that are supportive of sexual minorities, may help to improve the well-being of older LGBTQ adults.
Fluorescent contrast agents for tumor surgery

Cancer is a leading cause of cases of mortality worldwide. The most effective method to cure solid tumors is surgery. Every year, >50% of cancer patients receive surgery to remove solid tumors. Surgery may increase the cure rate of most solid tumors by 4–11 fold. Surgery has many challenges, including identifying small lesions, locating metastases and confirming complete tumor removal. Fluorescence guidance describes a new approach to improve surgical accuracy. Near-infrared fluorescence imaging allows for real-time early diagnosis and intraoperative imaging of lesion tissue. The results of previous preclinical studies in the field of near-infrared fluorescence imaging are promising. This review provides examples introducing the three kinds of fluorescent dyes: The passive fluorescent dye indocyanine green, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical use in the USA, the fluorescent prodrug 5-aminolevulinic acid, a porphyrin precursor in the heme synthesis, and biomarker-targeted fluorescent dyes, which allow conjugation to different target sites.
Fabrication of an anthropomorphic heterogeneous mouse phantom for multimodality medical imaging

This work presents a comprehensive methodology for constructing a tissue equivalent mouse phantom using image modeling and 3D printing technology. The phantom can be used in multimodality imaging and irradiation experiments, quality control, and management. Computed tomography (CT) images of a mouse were acquired and imported into 3D modeling software. A skeleton and skin shell models were segmented in the modeling software and manufactured using 3D printing technology. The bone model was constructed with VERO-WHITE printing material with additional ingredients, including a photosensitive resin, polyurethane epoxy resin, and acrylate. Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene resin material was used to construct the skin shell. The skin shell was attached to the skeleton and filled with a specially formulated gel to act as a soft tissue substitute. The gel consisted of agarose, micro-pearl powder, sodium chloride, and magnevist solution (gadopentetate dimeglumine). A micro-container filled with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) radioactive tracer was placed in the abdomen for micro and human positron emission tomography (PET)/CT imaging. The mouse phantom had tissue equivalency in dose attenuation with x-rays and relaxation times with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The CT Hounsfield Unit (HU) range for the gel soft tissue material was 31–36 HU. The 3D printed bone mimetic material had equivalent tissue/bone contrast compared with in vivo mouse measurements with a mean value of 130 ± 10 HU. At different magnetic field strengths, the T1 relaxation time of the soft tissue was 382.75–506.48 ms, and T2 was 51.11–70.76 ms. 18F-FDG tracer could be clearly observed in PET imaging. The 3D printed mouse phantom was successfully constructed with tissue-equivalent materials. Our model can be used for CT, MRI, and PET as a standard device for small-animal imaging and quality control.
A Loop Antenna with Coupling Strip and Tuner for All-Metal-Shell Handset Application

A dual-band frame antenna with coupling strip and tuner is proposed in this work for all-metal-shell mobile telephone application with all the metal devices being considered The metal-shell handsets are getting more and more popular nowadays due to the robustness and its fascinating appearance. The metal-shell associated with surrounding electronic components would occupy the metal clearance, which will absorb the energy radiated by the antenna. This work provides an optional solution to design the antenna with all the metal components like front-and-back facing cameras, telephone receiver and steel sheet taken into consideration, where the metal shell of the handset and a coupling strip are utilized as part of the antenna. The metal shell of the handset has a symmetric C-shaped gap with a width of 2mm and no other breakpoints to decrease the robustness of the structure. The proposed antenna is able to generate radiation covering the bandwidth of 824–960 MHz (GSM) and 1710–2690 MHz (DCS/PCS/UMTS/L TE) for mobile communication. With the application of the tuner, the antenna can get a broadband characteristic and the coupling strip may add the capacitance of the structure, making the antenna resonate at the lower band as 0. 25λ resonant mode and as 0. 5λ resonant mode at the higher band. The principle of the tuner has also been discussed in the paper, helping locate the proper situation to induce the switchable inductor. A prototype has been fabricated to verify the radiation performance in a practical handset test environment.
Characterization and reduction of exercise-based motion influence on heart rate variability using accelerator signals and channel decoding in the time–frequency domain

Objective: Heart rate variability (HRV) is defined as the variation of the heart’s beat to beat time intervals. Although HRV has been studied for decades, its response to stress tests and off-rest measurements is still under investigation. In this paper, we studied the influence of motion on HRV throughout different exercise tests, including a maximal running of healthy recreational runners, cycling, and walking tests of healthy subjects. Approach: In our proposed method, we utilized the motion trajectory (which is known to exist partially in HRV) measured by a three-channel accelerator (ACC). We then estimated their shares in HRV using a wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) and an error-correcting problem formulation. In this method, we characterized the motion components of three orthogonal directions induced into the HRV signal, and then we suppressed the estimated motion artefact to construct a motion-attenuated spectrogram. Main results and Significance: Our analysis showed that HRV in the exercise context is susceptible to motion artefacts. Furthermore, the interpretation of autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity and HRV indices throughout exercise has a high margin of error depending on the intensity level, type of exercise, and motion trajectory. Our experiment on 84 healthy subjects throughout mid-intensity cycling and walking tests showed 39% and 32% influence on average, respectively. In addition, our proposed method revealed through a maximal running test with 11 runners that motion can describe on average 20%–40% of the HRV high-frequency (HF) energy at different workloads of running.
Theorizing the Benefits and Costs of Adaptive Cultures for Development

Child socialization and development are, in part, products of adapting cultural systems. These systems evolve from the combined influence of collective history and current environmental affordances. They permeate family systems, shaping child development via numerous mechanisms, including structures and roles; values, beliefs, and goals; and parenting—to name a few. Recent growth in the study of child development among racial, ethnic, and cultural minority groups, which has been supported by important cultural-developmental theoretical advances, sheds essential light on the ways in which adapting cultural systems permeate child socialization and development in all families. Across this scholarship, there are numerous examples of the effectiveness of adapting cultural systems for promoting developmental competencies. There are also examples, however, in which adapting cultural systems either fail to promote developmental competencies or undermine the development of competencies. To address these theoretical and empirical tensions, we advance a set of propositions. Together, the propositions situate the developmental consequences of adapting cultural systems within multiple scientific traditions, including psychological, ecological, family systems, developmental, and biological perspectives. These propositions can support scientific inquiries aimed at identifying both the benefits and costs of adaptive cultures for development among diverse groups.
Schema Slicing Methods to Reduce Development Costs of WSDL-Based Web Services

Web Services provide a standards-based open platform for integrating distributed service components. The development of large distributed XML Web Services is greatly simplified with XML data binding tools that automate XML parsing and serialization by binding XML to native data structures. This paper presents a schema slicing method to remove unused schema components from schemas, thereby significantly reducing the XML data binding code size of WSDL-based Web Services. Our results show that schema slicing applied to large Web Services, such as ONVIF, results in the removal of 70% of the schema components on average. Our method also obtains significant schema size reductions for several popular WSDL-based Web Services, such as eBay Web Services (10% reduction), PayPal Web Services (18% reduction), Microsoft Exchange Web Services (4% reduction), Amazon S3 Web Services (22% reduction) and ESRI ArcGIS Web Services (42% to 59% reduction). We implemented schema slicing in the popular gSOAP toolkit.
EasyPrivacy: Context-Aware Resource Usage Control System for Android Platform

With the rapid development of the Android platform, numerous applications (apps) are developed to provide new or enhanced services using resources on mobile devices. On one hand, these apps can bring convenience for users in context which has little privacy risk. On the other hand, misuse of these resources by apps may result in privacy leakage in context which has strict requirements for privacy. Therefore, fine-grained resource usage constraint mechanisms that take the context information into account are in demand. In this paper, we present an enhanced context-aware resource usage control system (EasyPrivacy) in Android to provide adaptive resource usage control automatically when the specific context is detected according to the pre-configured policies. In addition, to facilitate users that have little domain knowledge in Android to configure policies reasonably, we have developed an application named TipsTool, which can guide users to configure policies step by step. The Experimental results show that users can easily protect their privacy on smartphones through this system.
Research on Speech Under Stress Based on Glottal Source Using a Physical Speech Production Model

Speech recognition accuracy is severely reduced by the variability caused by stress. Considering the fact that speech under stress is caused by the physiological changes of the vocal folds in the physiological system whose vibration behavior is reflected by glottal flow, this paper presents a method of study on speech under stress based on a physical speech production model and characteristics of glottal flow. The physical model is used to model glottal aerodynamics in the vocal system to represent speech production. The relationship between physical parameters and glottal flow parameters is explored based on the physical model, and the glottal source and physical model are linked. Through studying on the glottal and physical parameters for the neutral and for the speech under stress, features for speech under stress characterizing the vocal folds, vortex–flow interaction, and shape of glottal flow are compared with those of neutral speech. The relations between the proposed parameters and stress-speech production mechanism are discussed. Experiments show that physical parameters representing the stiffness and viscosity of vocal folds, subglottal pressure, and laryngeal ventricle strongly influence the glottal flow. The relations for physical parameters, glottal parameters, and stress production are revealed, and theoretical and experimental bases are provided for stress detection and classification in speech recognition system.
Design and Analysis of a Large-Range Flexure-based Parallel Mechanism Based on Matrix Method

This paper proposes a novel 3-Degree of Freedom (DOF) planar Flexure-based Parallel Mechanism (FPM) with a large motion range about $\pm \mathbf{2}. \mathbf{5}\mathbf{mm}\times\pm \mathbf{2}. \mathbf{5}\mathbf{mm}\times\pm \mathbf{2}. \mathbf{5}^{\circ}$. Three different joints based on compliant four-bar mechanism are selected to construct Prismatic-Prismatic-Revolute (PPR) configuration. With the characteristic of deterministic motion, the Compound Basic Parallelogram Mechanism (CBPM) and Double Blade Rotary Pivot (DBRP) are served as the passive prismatic and revolute joints respectively to eliminate the coupling between joints. The compliance matrix of the compliant four-bar mechanism are derived with matrix method. The output and input compliance matrices of the proposed FPM are thereby achieved based on modularization approach. Finite-Element Analysis (FEA) and preliminary experiments are implemented. And the results validate the correctness of the developed model and feasibility of the design.
Collaborative Detector Fusion of Data-Driven PHD Filter for Online Multiple Human Tracking

The use of multiple data sources (measurements) has been recently demonstrated to improve the accuracy and reliability of a tracking system as it is capable of providing redundancy in different aspects, and also eliminating interferences of individual sources. This paper focuses on addressing the multiple human tracking problem from a multi-detector approach. This approach integrates two detectors with different characteristics (full-body and body-parts) to perform robust collaborative fusion based on data-driven Gaussian Mixture Probability Hypothesis Density (GM-PHD) filters. To leverage the maximum strengths from multiple detectors, we propose a robust fusion center at the track level, which manages to perform Generalized Intersection Covariance (GCI) fusions for survival and birth tracks independently, and also eliminates false tracks caused by a cluttered environment. Moreover, an identity reassignment mechanism is also developed to address the identity mismatching problem in the target birth process, so as to enhance the fusion performance and track consistency. Experimental results on two challenging benchmark video sequences confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach.