Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of COVID-19 on Informal Caregivers and the Development and Validation of a Scale in English and Spanish to Measure the Impact of COVID-19 on Caregivers

To understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected caregivers, we assessed its perceived impact on caregiving through a new measure: the Caregiver COVID-19 Limitations Scale (CCLS-9), in Spanish and English. We also compared levels of caregiver self-efficacy and burden pre-COVID-19 and early in the pandemic. We administered surveys via internet to a convenience sample of caregivers in January 2020 (pre-pandemic, n = 221) and in April–June 2020 (English, n = 177 and Spanish samples, n = 144) to assess caregiver self-efficacy, depression, pain, and stress. We used the early pandemic surveys to explore the validity of the CCLS-9. The pre-COVID-19 survey and the April English surveys were compared to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic affected caregivers. The CCLS-9 had strong construct and divergent validity in both languages. Compared to pre-COVID-19, caregiver stress (p = .002) and pain (p = .009) were significantly greater early in COVID-19, providing evidence of its validity. COVID-19 added to caregiver stress and pain.
Passive Exercise Adaptation for Ankle Rehabilitation Based on Learning Control Framework

Ankle injuries are among the most common injuries in sport and daily life. However, for their recovery, it is important for patients to perform rehabilitation exercises. These exercises are usually done with a therapist’s guidance to help strengthen the patient’s ankle joint and restore its range of motion. However, in order to share the load with therapists so that they can offer assistance to more patients, and to provide an efficient and safe way for patients to perform ankle rehabilitation exercises, we propose a framework that integrates learning techniques with a 3-PRS parallel robot, acting together as an ankle rehabilitation device. In this paper, we propose to use passive rehabilitation exercises for dorsiflexion/plantar flexion and inversion/eversion ankle movements. The therapist is needed in the first stage to design the exercise with the patient by teaching the robot intuitively through learning from demonstration. We then propose a learning control scheme based on dynamic movement primitives and iterative learning control, which takes the designed exercise trajectory as a demonstration (an input) together with the recorded forces in order to reproduce the exercise with the patient for a number of repetitions defined by the therapist. During the execution, our approach monitors the sensed forces and adapts the trajectory by adding the necessary offsets to the original trajectory to reduce its range without modifying the original trajectory and subsequently reducing the measured forces. After a predefined number of repetitions, the algorithm restores the range gradually, until the patient is able to perform the originally designed exercise. We validate the proposed framework with both real experiments and simulation using a Simulink model of the rehabilitation parallel robot that has been developed in our lab.
The Human Hippocampus Contributes to Egocentric Coding of Distance to a Local Landmark

Spatial navigation can depend on path integration or environmental cues (e.g., landmarks), which are thought to be integrated in hippocampal and entorhinal circuits. This study investigates the anatomical basis of path integration and navigation based on a single local landmark using an individual differences approach, since people vary substantially in their ability to navigate with path integration cues and landmarks. In two experiments, we dissociated the use of path integration and a local landmark in the same navigation task, and investigated whether morphological variability in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex could explain behavioral variability in young healthy humans. In Experiment 1, participants navigated in a fully immersive virtual reality environment, with body-based cues available for path integration. The participants first walked through a series of posts before attempting to walk back to the remembered location of the first post. We found that gray matter volume of the hippocampus positively predicted behavioral accuracy of retrieving the target’s distance in relation to the local landmark. Hippocampus also positively predicted path integration performance in terms of walking-distance to the target location. Experiment 2 was conducted in a desktop virtual environment, with no body-based cues available. Optic flow served as path integration cues, and participants were tested on their memory of a learned target location along a linear track. Consistent with Experiment 1, the results showed that hippocampal volume positively predicted performance on the target’s distance in relation to the local landmark. In contrast to Experiment 1, there was no correlation between hippocampal volume and path integration performance. Together, our two experiments provide novel and converging evidence that the hippocampus plays an important role in encoding egocentric distance to a single local landmark during navigation, and they suggest a stronger hippocampal involvement when path integration is based on body-based compared to optic flow cues.
Thermo-Mechanical Properties Of An Epoxy Molding Compound In Pressure Cooker Environment

Semi-conductor devices are mostly encapsulated by epoxy molding compound (EMC) materials. During encapsulation stresses are generated due to the curing of the epoxy. Moreover, additional stresses will build up during cooling down from molding to ambient temperature caused by the differences in the coefficient of thermal expansion. These residual stresses add up to the stresses generated during mechanical loading and may lead to product failure. The viscoelastic properties of the encapsulation material (epoxy) depend highly on temperature, moisture and degree of cure. In case that moisture sensitivity was included in these researches the highest temperature had to be limited to 100 o C (In practice even to about 85 o C). This limitation is restrictive for the application of the obtained thermomechanical properties data in reliability studies. The present research focused on the thermo-mechanical properties of the EMCs in harsh environment, i.e. Temp>100 °C & RH≈100%. For the present harsh environment study a special moisture-temperature-pressure chamber i.e. Pressure Vessel (PV) with a highly accurate tensile tester is designed and developed. The functionality and performance of the setup is assessed measuring the viscoelastic creep compliance of the EMC in dry condition supported by a measurement in a Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer, DMA Q800 TA instrument Co. Applying the Time–Temperature Superposing principle, the viscoelastic master-curves and related shift factors are also extracted. Finally the viscoelastic behavior of the EMC for the harsh environment is determined and the effect of the moisture is considered.
MIDST: an enhanced development environment that improves the maintainability of a data science analysis

With the increasing ability to generate actionable insight from data, the field of data science has seen significant growth. As more teams develop data science solutions, the analytical code they develop will need to be enhanced in the future, by an existing or a new team member. Thus, the importance of being able to easily maintain and enhance the code required for an analysis will increase. However, to date, there has been minimal research on the maintainability of an analysis done by a data science team. To help address this gap, data science maintainability was explored by (1) creating a data science maintainability model, (2) creating a new tool, called MIDST (Modular Interactive Data Science Tool), that aims to improve data science maintainability, and then (3) conducting a mixed method experiment to evaluate MIDST. The new tool aims to improve the ability of a team member to update and rerun an existing data science analysis by providing a visual data flow view of the analysis within an integrated code and computational environment. Via an analysis of the quantitative and qualitative survey results, the experiment found that MIDST does help improve the maintainability of an analysis. Thus, this research demonstrates the importance of enhanced tools tohelp improve the maintainability of data science projects.
Theoretical Assessment of the First Cycle Transition, Structural Stability and Electrochemical Properties of Li2FeSiO4 as a Cathode Material for Li-ion Battery

Lithium iron orthosilicate (Li2FeSiO4) with Pmn21 space group was theoretically investigated as a cathode material of Li-ion batteries using density functional theory (DFT) calculations. PBE-GGA (+U), WC-GGA, L(S)DA (+U) and mBJ+LDA (GGA) methods under spin polarization ferromagnetic (FM) and anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) procedure were used to investigate the material properties including structural parameters, theoretical reaction voltage (TRV), magnetic state and electrical properties (based on density of states, DOS). Theoretical structural assessments implied electrochemical reversibility and structural stability of Li2FeSiO4. Based on DFT calculations, switching between magnetic states were proposed to account the experimental observations of the extra oxidation voltage in the first cycle.
Patterns and Antipatterns, Principles, and Pitfalls: Accountability and Transparency in Artificial Intelligence

Copyright © 2020, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved. ISSN 0738-4602 82 AI MAGAZINE Increasingly, decisions that significantly impact the lives of individuals (such as decisions about hiring, housing, insurance, loans, criminal justice, or medical treatment) are being made in a partnership between human decisionmakers and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. As builders of AI systems, we know how easy it is for errors to occur. We also know how difficult it can be to push the boundaries and adapt a system developed in one context into another. As developers of AI, we know how our systems learn from people and from the past, assimilating latent biases. Understanding all of this, who better than us to insist that the systems we build support investigation and iterative improvement, so that others are empowered to help counter the limitations of AI while benefiting from its strengths?  This article discusses a set of principles for accountability and transparency in AI as well as a set of antipatterns or harmful trends too often seen in deployed systems. It provides concrete suggestions for what can be done to shift the balance away from these antipatterns and toward more positive ones. Patterns and Antipatterns, Principles, and Pitfalls: Accountability and Transparency in Artificial Intelligence
The Effect of High and Medium Fidelity Simulator in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Training on Nursing Students’ Knowledge and Performances

The study was planned as a quasi-experimental study to compare the effect of training with high-fideli ty and medium-fidelity simulator cardiopulmonary resuscita tion manikins on nursing students’ knowledge and performances. The participating students included t wo groups that trained with a medium-fidelity cardiopulmonary resuscitation manikin. Experimental group 1 (n=44) performed scenario-based cardiopulmonary resuscitation with a highfidelity simulator. Experimental group 2 (n=46) performed the practice with a medium-fidelity cardiopulmonary resuscitation manikin. After one and 6 months, the performance of all the students was assessed. It wa s determined that the changes in the knowledge and performance scores in both groups were similar , though an intra-groups comparison demonstrated si gnificant increases in scores. After one and 6 months, the performance assessment scores in both groups were similar and were significantly higher than other performance sc ores (p<0.001) . The outcomes from this exploration highlight the efficiency of simulation-based educat ion as well as the permanence of cardiopulmonary resuscitation performances.
Randomness Efficient Feature Hashing for Sparse Binary Data

We present sketching algorithms for sparse binary datasets, which maintain binary version of the dataset after sketching, while simultaneously preserving multiple similarity measures such as Jaccard Similarity, Cosine Similarity, Inner Product, and Hamming Distance, on the same sketch. A major advantage of our algorithms is that they are randomness eﬃcient, and require signiﬁcantly less number of random bits for sketching – logarithmic in dimension, while other competitive algorithms require linear in dimension. Our proposed algorithms are eﬃcient, oﬀer a compact sketch of the dataset, and can be eﬃciently deployed in a distributive setting. We present a theoretical analysis of our approach and complement them with extensive experimentations on public datasets. For analysis purposes, our algorithms require a natural assumption on the dataset. We empirically verify the assumption and notice that it holds on several real-world datasets.
Neuropeptides as Novel Insecticidal Agents

To meet the requirements of population green revolution has started which results in the use of toxic chemicals and insects too gained resistance to overcome these toxic substances. Continuous use of those toxic substances in turn results in the degradation of environment. To overcome those difficulties, strategies were approached based on integrated pest management which includes the characteristics of insect specific, non toxic, compatible with other insect control agents, etc. Initially to meet these requirements various compounds such as bio control agents, newer insecticides, transgenic plants International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 8 Number 02 (2019) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
Genetic and biochemical properties of Cicer spp reveal distinction between wild and cultivated chickpea genotypes

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the third most important legumes after beans and peas in the world. Turkey is one of the main chickpea producing countries but the yield is not within the expected quantity considering cultivated area. Breeding chickpea varieties requires well-characterized wild Cicer spp progenitors including C. reticulatum, C. echinospermum, C. bijugum and C. pinnatifidum that exhibit sympatric distribution in the Southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey. This study contributes to the identification of similarities and differences among wild and cultivated Cicer spp. ecotypes using DNA marker systems and biochemical parameters. RAPD and ISSR markers revealed four groups and separated C pinnatifidum ecotypes as a single population. Wild Cicer spp and cultivated chickpea species exhibited significant variations for their oil, protein, starch, cellulose, fructose and sucrose content. Furthermore, the cultivated chickpea genotypes had higher content of fat, starch and sucrose than those of the wild progenitors whereas wild Cicer spp ecotypes possessed higher values for cellulose, fructose and glucose than cultivated chickpea genotypes.
Effect of fuel-sulfur on NO/sub x/ formation in a refractory burner

Combustion inside a refractory tube is stabilized by thermal conduction in the tube wall and by wall-to-wall radiation. In the turbulent regime, plug flow is approached closely and backmixing is negligible. As a result, the process is ideal for kinetic studies. In this investigation the effect of adding up to 5.47% wt. tertiary butyl mercaptan and up to 5.17% wt. pyridine to hexane has been investigated experimentally and theoretically. The mercaptan was found to reduce the thermal NO/sub x/ slightly and the fuel-NO/sub x/ significantly for the combustion of pre-evaporated droplets. The theoretical results are in qualitative agreement with the experimental measurements and provide considerable insight regarding the paths of reaction. 17 refs.
Survival, abundance, and movement of a synanthropic population of the brown recluse spider, Loxosceles reclusa (Araneae: Sicariidae)

Abstract We conducted a two-year mark-recapture study of a synanthropic population of the brown recluse spider Loxosceles reclusa Gertsch & Mulaik, 1940 in northwestern Illinois. We used joint live encounter and dead recovery models to estimate adult survival, recapture, and dead recovery probabilities. To estimate adult abundance, we used full-likelihood closed-population models. Monthly survival was constant between sexes (0.73, 95% CI = 0.66–0.78), but males were less likely to be recaptured and an additive effect of time revealed highest recapture probabilities in September. The probability of recovering a marked adult that died during the study was 0.13 (95% CI = 0.07–0.24). Average life expectancy for adults was 94 days, much lower than in prior laboratory studies. Causes of observed mortality were predation by conspecifics and cobweb spiders (Parasteatoda tepidariorum (C.L. Koch, 1841)) or undetermined. A likely source of mortality for this sit-and-wait predator is starvation. Model averaging of full likelihood closed-population models resulted in adult abundance estimates that were similar between males (28, 95% CI = 20–63) and females (28, 95% CI = 26–38). However, the total population of adults including those hidden in harborage (boxes, furniture, crevices etc.) was undoubtedly much higher. Based on count data, immature spiders were as abundant as adults early in the year, gradually increasing to a peak three times greater by mid-summer. Male spiders moved longer distances than females and were less likely to exhibit site fidelity. The average tenure of a female at a specific site was nearly 8 days.
eAPT: enhancing APT with a mirror site resolver

Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) is a package manager used in Debian Linux distributions. By default, APT is configured to use the official central repository, but it also allows users to modify and add alternative repositories easily. Since using geographically closer servers can boost the download speed, many users adopt mirror sites in their country instead of the default repository. However, it is often challenging for users to select an appropriate mirror site. First, users have to change the repository URL manually with insufficient information about mirror sites. Second, if the mirror site in use is not working, APT cannot find an alternative mirror site in an automated manner. To address these problems and improve the user experience of APT, we propose the enhanced Advanced Packaging Tool (eAPT) which is built on the top of APT with a mirror site resolver to find the optimal mirror site based on the user’s geographical location in terms of the package installation time and stability even when some mirror sites are not responsible. Our experimental results demonstrate that eAPT is about between 8 and 10 times faster than APT for installing large sized packages (e.g., openjdk-11-jdk or android-sdk) in India and Australia.
Network Attack Surface : Lifting the Attack Surface Concept to Network Level for Evaluating the Resilience against Zero-Day Attacks

The concept of attack surface has seen many applications in various domains, e.g., software security, cloud security, mobile device security, Moving Target Defense (MTD), etc. However, in contrast to the original attack surface metric, which is formally and quantitatively defned for a software, most of the applications at higher abstraction levels (e.g., the network level) are limited to an intuitive and qualitative notion, losing the power of the original concept. In this paper, we lift the attack surface concept to the network level as a security metric for evaluating the resilience of networks against potential zero day attacks. Specifcally, we tackle two main challenges as follows. First, we develop models for addressing the incompatibility between the original attack surface model and the need for average across different resources inside a network. Second, we design heuristic algorithms to signifcantly reduce the complexity of calculating the network attack surface. Finally, we confrm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms through simulation results.
Appendix K Climate Change Assessment 1 . 0 CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENT

Engineering Construction Bulletin (ECB) No. 2018-14 (USACE ECB 2018) provides guidance for incorporating climate change information in hydrologic analyses in accordance with the USACE overarching climate change adaption policy. It calls for a qualitative analysis. The goal of a qualitative analysis of potential climate threats and impacts to USACE hydrology-related projects and operations is to describe the observed present and possible future climate threats, vulnerabilities, and impacts of climate change specific to the study goals or engineering designs. This includes consideration of both past (observed) changes as well as potential future (projected) changes to relevant climatic and hydrologic variables.
Reducing tau ameliorates behavioural and transcriptional deficits in a novel model of Alzheimer’s disease

Summary One of the key knowledge gaps blocking development of effective therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the lack of understanding of how amyloid beta (Aβ) and tau cooperate in causing disease phenotypes. Within a mouse tau deficient background, we probed the molecular, cellular and behavioural disruption triggered by wild-type human tau’s influence on human Aβ-induced pathology. We find that Aβ and tau work cooperatively to cause a hyperactivity phenotype and to cause downregulation of gene transcription including many involved in synaptic function. In both our mouse model and in human post-mortem tissue, we observe accumulation of pathological tau in synapses, supporting the potential importance of synaptic tau. Importantly, tau depletion in the mice, initiated after behavioural deficits emerge, was found to correct behavioural deficits, reduce synaptic tau levels, and substantially reverse transcriptional perturbations, suggesting that lowering tau levels, particularly at the synapse, may be beneficial in AD. Highlights - Expression of human familial Alzheimer’s associated mutant amyloid precursor protein and presenillin 1 with wild-type human tau in the absence of endogenous tau in a novel MAPT-AD mouse model results in behavioural deficits and downregulation of genes involved in synaptic function. - Tau is present in pre and postsynaptic terminals in MAPT-AD mice and human AD brain. In mice, lowering synaptic tau levels was associated with improved cognition and recovered gene expression. - These data suggest that Aβ and tau act cooperatively in impairing synaptic function and that lowering tau at synapses could be a beneficial therapeutic approach in AD.
A Search For Z Pair in a Three Lepton Channel

We present a search for Z-boson pair production in a three lepton channel using the ATLAS detector at √ s = 14 TeV. The search was motivated by the inefficiencies in electron reconstruction in the four lepton channel. In ATLAS, the sliding window algorithm which covers the range |η | < 2.5 is designed for electron identification. We used different clustering algorithms with a higher η coverage to identify the missing electron. We used a likelihood method for partially identify electrons and established kinematic selection for events. Although the three lepton channel has a higher acceptance, it suffers from a higher background relative to the four lepton channel which consists mainly of Zbb, Zb, WZ, and tt. The analysis was performed using Monte Carlo samples generated by different event generators, and the ATLAS detector was simulated by the GEANT4 software. We estimate a gain of 36% of the acceptance of ZZ for 1 fb−1 with respect to the explicitly fully reconstructed four lepton final state ZZ → 4l. In terms of the significance, which is defined as S √ S+B , we find an increase from 3.6 to 4.09±0.04.