Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characteristics of cognitive function in patients with cerebellar infarction and its association with lesion location

Objective: This study aimed to explore the characteristics of cognitive function in patients with cerebellar infarction and its association with lesion location. Methods: Forty-five patients with isolated cerebellar infarction were collected in the Department of Neurology, Beijing Tiantan Hospital. Thirty healthy controls were recruited matched by age and education. Global cognitive function was evaluated by using Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination version III (ACE-III). An extensive neuropsychological assessment battery was also tested to evaluate the characteristics of each cognitive domain. 3D slicer software was used to draw the lesion, and evaluate the lesions’ volume, side, and location. Group analysis was used to compare the differences in cognitive performance between patients and healthy controls, and patients with left and right cerebellar hemisphere infarction. Spearman analysis was used to explore the correlation between cognitive function and lesion volume. We also subdivided each patient’s lesions according to the cerebellar atlas to identify the specific cerebellar location related to cognitive decline. Results: Patients with cerebellar infarction had a lower ACE-III score compared with the healthy group (87.9 ± 6.2 vs. 93.7 ± 2.9, p < 0.001), and 22 (48.9%) patients were diagnosed with cognitive impairment. The z-transformed score of attention and executive function in the patients’ group was −0.9 ± 1.4 and −0.8 ± 1.0 respectively, with 19 (43.2%) and 23 (56.4%) patients impaired. Compared with healthy controls, the relative risk ratio with 95% confidence interval (CI) for impairment in attention and executive function were 3.24 (1.22–8.57) and 3.39 (1.45–7.89). However, only 10 (22.1%) patients showed impairment in more than two cognitive domains. Compared with the left lesion group, patients with right cerebellar infarction showed significantly impaired executive function (−1.1 ± 0.3 vs. −0.5 ± 0.2, p = 0.01). And the cerebellar posterior lobe regions, especially lobules VI, VIII, and IX, were explored to have lower cognitive performance. Furthermore, lesion volume was identified to be associated with the ACE-III score (r = −0.37, p = 0.04). Conclusion: We identified that cerebellar involvement in cognition, especially in attention processing and executive function. Cerebellar right-sided lateralization of cognition and functional topography were also revealed in the current study.
Film and Sheeting Materials

Plastic film and sheet products represent a significant use for polymeric resins of all types. Film and sheet products serve a wide range of consumer, commercial, and industrial markets, including packaging, communication materials (magnetic tape, reprographic and photographic products, and stationery), thermal and electrical insulation, optical products (glazing, filters, and light control), agricultural mulching, and construction, as well as for component manufacture in appliances, transportation equipment, and electrical equipment. The principal film and sheet resins are the polyolefins (polyethylene and polypropylene), polystyrene, the vinyl resins, polyesters, and the cellulosics. Specialty markets, in smaller volume, exist for film and sheet products made from higher cost or high performance polymers. Film properties may vary from strong, stiff materials to soft, pliable, even rubbery films. Sheet may be hard and rigid or soft foams. Properties such as tensile, impact, and tear strength can be obtained over a wide range, dependent on the polymer used, the presence of additives or modifiers, and the process used in their manufacture. Similarly, variations in slip, handleability, sealability, optical properties, electrical properties, and color or transparency can be altered to meet end use requirements. Films and sheet are commonly manufactured by such melt-extrusion processes as flat die extrusion, blown tube extrusion, and calendering, or by solution casting. Other processes include reactive casting of sheet or the regeneration of cellulose. Auxiliary processes used in film or sheet manufacture include coextrusion of multilayers, coating, laminating, and orientation (monoaxial or biaxial). Keywords: Film; Sheeting; Polymers; Vinyl films; Cellophane; Cellulosics; Speciality films; Water soluble films; Vinyl polymers; Urethanes; ABS polymers; Polyesters
Real-Time Piecewise Regression

Ubiquitous sensing technologies make big data a trendy topic and a favored approach in transportation studies and applications, but the increasing volumes of data sets present remarkable challenges to data collection, storage, transfer, visualization, and processing. Fundamental aspects of big data in transportation are discussed, including how many data to collect and how to collect data effectively and economically. The focus is GPS trajectory data, which are used widely in this domain. An incremental piecewise regression algorithm is used to evaluate and compress GPS locations as they are produced. Row-wise QR decomposition and singular value decomposition are shown to be valid numerical algorithms for incremental regression. Sliding window–based piecewise regression can subsample the GPS streaming data instantaneously to preserve only the points of interest. Algorithm performance is evaluated completely as accuracy and compression power. A procedure is presented for users to choose the best parameter value for their GPS devices. Results of experiments with real-world trajectory data indicate that when the proper parameter value is selected, the proposed method achieves significant compression power (more than 10 times), maintains acceptable accuracy (less than 5 m), and always outperforms the fixed-rate sampling approach.
Economic and Environmental Factors Determining the Amount of Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the MENA Countries

The gradual warming of the earth and its negative environmental and economic impacts contributed to pay attention to sustainable development considerably. Since climate change is a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2, countries are seeking to prevent the rapid growth of emissions to reduce global climate change. Accordingly, and considering the importance of the subject, the present study examines the effects of variables such as per capita income, population, energy consumption structure, energy intensity, degree of trade openness, industry share of GDP on carbon dioxide emissions in MENA countries, during 1993-2015 based on the regression model of population stochastic effects, Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STRIPAT) and Spatial Durbin Panel Data Model (SDPDM). The results of this study indicate that the logarithm of GDP, population, energy structure and energy intensity have a positive and significant effect on carbon dioxide emissions, and the degree of trade openness has a negative and significant effect on carbon emissions. In addition, the positive and significant effect of the intermittent spatial variable indicates that carbon emissions are highly relevant among different regions. In general, the results of model estimation show that attention is more important to spatial correlation, heterogeneity and external effects in policymaking.
Building a tabletop human-computer-object interaction system with Kinect

The goal of this semester thesis was to create a real-time tabletop human-computer-object interaction system that would detect predefined objects in the scene, identify which object has been picked up by the user, locate the position of the hand with the object and recognize when that object was dropped again. The hardware for the project consisted of a Microsoft Kinect, a tripod and a laptop running Ubuntu to perform the calculations. The Kinect camera delivered standard RGB images as well as 3D coordinates of the scene points and the tripod ensured a more or less stable setup. The code for the interaction system, which was written completely in C++, utilized the OpenNI, OpenCV, Eigen3 and OpenGL libraries and was compiled with CMake. The final algorithm comprised three main parts. First, the scene was segmented into plane and clutter (hands and the objects) using the 3D point cloud obtained from the Kinect and a RANSAC approach to find the dominant plane. Then, a Haarclassifier was trained on the collected images of hands to detect hands in the segmented scene. Further, object recognition based on 2D histograms obtained from multiple views of the same object and their similarity to the currently visible clutter patches was introduced. Finally, all these parts were combined into a single interaction system that could be executed in real-time.
Nutritional Status, Dietary Diversity and Household Food Security of Population in Arid Western Rajasthan

The study uses cross-sectional data of a sample of 350 individuals from two villages of Jodhpur district of western Rajasthan. This paper examines the sociodemographic characteristics, extent of food security, diet composition and diversity as well as nutritional status at the household level. To this end, subjective and objective measures like Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) and Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS), 24-hr dietary recall and BMI were employed. Average HFIAS score of the villages were 0.83 and 0.90 representing 70-74% of population as food secure. Mild food insecurity was observed in the area specifically of qualitative nature rather than quantitative. Dietary diversity scores for the villages were 7.23 and 6.96. Per capita intake of calorie and protein were found 2001.04 kcal and 59.96 g, respectively. Dietary deficiency of fresh fruits and vegetables reflected in lower availability of betacarotene and vitamin-C through the diet. Findings suggested that around 30% of the selected population was having low BMI and women were more prone to under nutrition
Squeezing Marsquakes Out of Groundwater

Pore pressure in aquifers confined below a cryosphere will increase as Mars cools and the cryosphere thickens. Increased pore pressure decreases the effective stress and hence promotes seismicity. We calculate the rate of pore pressure change from cooling of Mars's interior and the modulation of pore pressure from solar and Phobos tides and barometric loading. Using the time‐varying pressure and tidal stresses, we compute Coulomb stress changes and the expected seismicity rate from a rate‐and‐state friction model. Seismicity rate will vary by several tens of percent to 2 orders of magnitude if the mean pore pressure is within 0.2 and 0.01 MPa of lithostatic, respectively. Seismic events promoted by high pore pressure may be tremor‐like. Documenting (or not) tidally modulated shallow seismicity would provide evidence for (or against) water‐filled confined aquifers, that pore pressure is high, and that the state of stress is close to failure—with implications for processes that can deliver water to the Martian surface.
HIV/AIDS pandemic and agricultural production in Cameroon

Whether HIV/AIDS affects agricultural production in Cameroon is purely an empirical issue due to controversy in results over the years. This study has as objectives to assess factors that affect the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and to explore the influence of HIV/AIDS on agricultural production in Cameroon. The 2007 Household Consumption Survey is use as our source of data together with other variables imported into the survey data from the ministries in charge of public health and agriculture. Estimates are obtained using instrumental variables two-stage least squares regression method. The result shows that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS pandemic in Cameroon is strongly influence by level of education, age, occupation and environmental characteristics, while the main result reveals that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS correlates negatively with agricultural production. These results have implications for agricultural policy instruments that could offer interventions to HIV/AIDS affected persons to mitigate the negative effect on agricultural production.
Does Engagement Build Empathy for Shared Water Resources? Results from the Use of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index during a Mobile Water Allocation Experimental Decision Laboratory

Currently, there are no tools that measure improvements in levels of empathy among diverse water stakeholders participating in transboundary decision-making. In this study, we used an existing empathy scale from clinical psychology during an Experimental Decision Laboratory (EDL) where participants allocated water across a transboundary basin during minor and major drought conditions. We measured changes in empathy using a pre-test/post-test design and triangulated quantitative results with open-ended survey questions. Results were counter-intuitive. For most participants, levels of the four components of empathy decreased after participating in the EDL; however, significant demographically-driven differences emerged. Qualitative results confounded the problem through the capture of participant perceptions of increased overall empathy and perspective taking specifically. Implications for methodological tool development, as well as practice for water managers and researchers are discussed. Water empathy is a particularly sensitive construct that requires specialized intervention and measurement.
Radiocarbon Dating of Mortar from the Aqueduct in Skopje

ABSTRACT The Aqueduct is one of the city landmarks of Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia. It was part of a water-supply system, with a total original length of about 10 km, while its surface remains are about 385 m long. The age of the Aqueduct is not known—several hypotheses place it to periods between the 6th and 16th centuries. Six mortar samples from different positions of the eastern façade were taken for radiocarbon (14C) dating. In order to extract only the carbon associated to the time of building, three strategies for sample preparation were used: (1) mechanical separation of lime lumps formed during mortar hardening (2) selection on the basis of particle size and the ability to suspend in water induced by ultrasonic shock, and (3) collection of two gas CO2 fractions produced from the same bulk in reaction with acid. Characterization of fractions was performed by isotopic carbon composition and FTIR-ATR analyses. The most plausible results were obtained from lime lump fractions that were dated in the timeframe of 15th to 17th century.
Unveiling the internal migration dynamics in Ecuador between 2001 and 2010

ABSTRACT This paper unveils the dynamics of internal migration in Ecuador using data from the last two census. The use of chord diagrams allows one to identify the changing patterns of migration between provinces. In the last period, internal migration decreased notably, and traditional destination provinces lost importance in favour of a more balanced redistribution of people within the country.
Clayey landslide seismology : use of endogenous seismic catalog for understanding the deformation pattern

This research project aims at increasing knowledge on the mechanisms controlling the deformation of clayey landslides through the combination of passive seismic and geodetic monitoring. Recent studies have demonstrated that seismic monitoring is able to give interesting information on landslide mechanics and in some case to provide precursory patterns useful for failure forecasting. The recent installation of seismometers on landslides revealed a variety of seismic signals of law magnitude (ML $<$ 1) suspected to be generated by slope deformation (falling, toppling, sliding, flowing), weathering of the slope material or fluid circulation. This endogenous seismicity needs to be categorized. We thus proposed a standard classification of the endogenous seismic sources; the objective of this standard is to be able to compare the seismic activity of several landslides and identify the mechanisms generating these seismic signals as well as their correlation with external forcing. Several signal properties (i.e. duration, spectral content and spectrogram shape) are taken into account to describe the different class of signals and allow generic comparison. We observe that similar signals recorded at different sites present the same properties and discussed the possible seismic sources considering the type of deformation observed on the studied slopes. [. ]
Simulation of Granular Media with the Material Point Method

We propose an extension to the Material Point Method for the simulation of granular media. We model the dynamics with an elastoplastic, continuum assumption. The behavior of the granular media is captured by the Drucker-Prager yield criterion that naturally represents the frictional relationship between shear and normal stresses. We develop a stress projection algorithm that is well suited for both explicit and implicit time integration, and uses a non-associative flow rule to ensure volume preservation. Our approach is able to recreate the dynamics of granular media undergoing large deformations, topological changes, and collisions.
Optimization of Post Combustion CO2 Capture from a Combined-Cycle Gas Turbine Power Plant via Taguchi Design of Experiment

The potential of carbon capture and storage to provide a low carbon fossil-fueled power generation sector that complements the continuously growing renewable sector is becoming ever more apparent. An optimization of a post combustion capture unit employing the solvent monoethanolamine (MEA) was carried out using a Taguchi design of experiment to mitigate the parasitic energy demands of the system. An equilibrium-based approach was employed in Aspen Plus to simulate 90% capture of the CO2 emitted from a 600 MW natural gas combined-cycle gas turbine power plant. The effects of varying the inlet flue gas temperature, absorber column operating pressure, amount of exhaust gas recycle, and amine concentration were evaluated using signal to noise ratios and analysis of variance. The optimum levels that minimized the specific energy requirements were a: flue gas temperature = 50 °C; absorber pressure = 1 bar; exhaust gas recirculation = 20% and; amine concentration = 35 wt%, with a relative importance of: amine concentration > absorber column pressure > exhaust gas recirculation > flue gas temperature. This configuration gave a total capture unit energy requirement of 5.05 GJ/tonneCO2, with an energy requirement in the reboiler of 3.94 GJ/tonneCO2. All the studied factors except the flue gas temperature, demonstrated a statistically significant association to the response.
Autonomous mobile communication relays

Maintaining a solid radio communication link between a mobile robot entering a building and an external base station is a well-recognized problem. Modern digital radios, while affording high bandwidth and Internet-protocol-based automatic routing capabilities, tend to operate on line-of-sight links. The communication link degrades quickly as a robot penetrates deeper into the interior of a building. This project investigates the use of mobile autonomous communication relay nodes to extend the effective range of a mobile robot exploring a complex interior environment. Each relay node is a small mobile slave robot equipped with sonar, ladar, and 802.11b radio repeater. For demonstration purposes, four Pioneer 2-DX robots are used as autonomous mobile relays, with SSC-San Diego's ROBART III acting as the lead robot. The relay robots follow the lead robot into a building and are automatically deployed at various locations to maintain a networked communication link back to the remote operator. With their on-board external sensors, they also act as rearguards to secure areas already explored by the lead robot. As the lead robot advances and RF shortcuts are detected, relay nodes that become unnecessary will be reclaimed and reused, all transparent to the operator. This project takes advantage of recent research results from several DARPA-funded tasks at various institutions in the areas of robotic simulation, ad hoc wireless networking, route planning, and navigation. This paper describes the progress of the first six months of the project.
A TYPOLOGY MODEL OF POPULATION GROWTH CHARACTERISTICS AND LAND LIMITATIONS IN REGENCY AND CITY, WEST SUMATRA PROVINCE - INDONESIA

The objectives to be achieved through this study are to 1) Analyze the limitations of land for the cultivation of regencies and cities in West Sumatra Province; 2) Model regional typologies based on indicators growth of population with limited district and city land in West Sumatra Province; and 3) Attract the implications of the typology of the region on population policies in West Sumatra. This study uses descriptive analytical methods and the nature of this research is explained which aims to test various indicators in the study. From the results of the study, it was explained that the high rate of growth population was caused by the high fertility rate in West Sumatra as a result of the pressure on the land or the reduced land index. The existence of pressure on the land and a low land index (insufficient) will have an impact on the ratio of the number of poor people in the regency/city in West Sumatra as happened in Solok city, Bukittinggi city, Padang Panjang city and Payakumbuh city. The implication of population policy for the city of Sawahlunto and Pariaman is how to maintain low population growth, while other cities how to reduce the rate of population growth.
MANAGEMENT OF VIRTUAL MACHINE AS AN ENERGY CONSERVATION IN PRIVATE CLOUD COMPUTING SYSTEM

Cloud computing is a service model that is packaged in a base computing resources that can be accessed through the Internet on demand and placed in the data center. Data center architecture in cloud computing environments are heterogeneous and distributed, composed of a cluster of network servers with different capacity computing resources in different physical servers. The problems on the demand and availability of cloud services can be solved by fluctuating data center cloud through abstraction with virtualization technology. Virtual machine (VM) is a representation of the availability of computing resources that can be dynamically allocated and reallocated on demand. In this study the consolidation of VM as energy conservation in Private Cloud Computing Systems with the target of process optimization selection policy and migration of the VM on the procedure consolidation. VM environment cloud data center to consider hosting a type of service a particular application at the instance VM requires a different level of computing resources. The results of the use of computing resources on a VM that is not balanced in physical servers can be reduced by using a live VM migration to achieve workload balancing. A practical approach used in developing OpenStack-based cloud computing environment by integrating Cloud VM and VM Placement selection procedure using OpenStack Neat VM consolidation. Following the value of CPU Time used as a fill to get the average value in MHz CPU utilization within a specific time period. The average value of a VM’s CPU utilization in getting from the current CPU_time reduced by CPU_time from the previous data retrieval multiplied by the maximum frequency of the CPU. The calculation result is divided by the making time CPU_time when it is reduced to the previous taking time CPU_time multiplied by milliseconds.