Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PII: S0042-6989(97)00240-X

We compared the mechanisms responsible for orientation discrimination of stimuli defined by luminance and red/green isoluminant contrast. A four-alternative forced-choice (4-AFC) paradigm was used to determine thresholds for discriminating I cpd sinewave gratings differing in orientation, contrast, or both. When measuring orientation thresholds as a function of stimulus contrast, we found a decrease in thresholds with increasing stimulus contrast. For three temporal frequencies (0, 1, and 8 Hz) the functions relating orientation thresholds to stimulus contrast had similar shapes for luminance and isoluminant gratings, indicating similar processing mechanisms. Thresholds for stationary or slowly moving gratings were consistently lower for isoluminant than for luminance gratings, when contrast was expressed on an absolute RMS-cone-contrast scale. When contrast was defined as multiples of detection thresholds, discrimination was slightly better for luminance gratings. Thresholds for fast moving gratings were similar, irrespective of the definition of contrast. In contrast to previous work, we found a marked "oblique-effect" for both luminance and isoluminant gratings, when measuring discrimination thresholds as a function of standard orientation. Finally, we measured discrimination thresholds for gratings that varied in contrast and orientation simultaneously. The shapes of the resulting two-dimensional threshold contours were similar for luminance and isoluminant gratings, indicating again that these stimuli undergo similar neuronal processing. Performance of the observers could be described by probability summation of the orientation and contrast cues, resulting in an elliptical shape of the two-dimensional threshold contours. In conclusion, our results show similar performance for luminance and isoluminant gratings in several orientation discrimination tasks. The similarity in shape of the different threshold functions presents strong evidence that similar mechanisms underlie orientation discrimination of luminance and isoluminant stimuli. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
eFeCTIVIDAD DeL USo De ALCoHoL GLICeRINADo PARA LA DeSCoNTAMINACIÓN De MANoS eN UNA PoBLACIÓN SIN ACCeSo AL AGUA PoTABLe PoSTeRReMoTo eN PISCo, PeRÚ

We assessed the effectiveness of the use of glycerinated alcohol for disinfecting the hands of persons fixing foods in communal kitchens in refugee and neighborhood camps with no access to potable water during the first days alter the earthquake that hit Pisco, Peru in August 2007. A previous assessment was performed in 20 adult women with no prior handwashing. Bacterial load in their hands, including mesophilic microorganisms, Enterobacteriaceae, and Staphylococcus aureus was measured before and after the use of glycerinated alcohol. A significant reduction in bacterial load (p<0.001) was found according to the Wilcoxon test. We conclude that the use of glycerinated alcohol is effective for hand disinfection in people manipulating food in an area with no access to potable water alter a natural disaster, in this case, the earthquake that hit Pisco in August 2007.
Report of the 20th Nationwide follow‐up survey of primary liver cancer in Japan

In the 20th Nationwide Follow‐up Survey of Primary Liver Cancer in Japan, data from 21 075 new patients and 40 769 previously followed patients were compiled from 544 institutions over a 2‐year period from 1 January 2008 to 31 December 2009. Compared with the previous 19th survey, the population of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) was older at the time of clinical diagnosis, included more female patients, included more patients with non‐B non‐C HCC, had smaller tumor diameters and more frequently received radiofrequency ablation as local ablation therapy. Cumulative survival rates were calculated for HCC, intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, and combined hepatocellular cholangiocarcinoma (combined HCC and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma) by treatment type and by background characteristics for patients newly registered between 1998 and 2009 whose final outcome was survival or death. Cumulative survival rates for HCC were calculated by dividing patients by combinations of background factors (number of tumors, tumor diameter, and Child–Pugh grade) and by treatment types (hepatectomy, local ablation therapy, and transcatheter arterial chemoembolization). Cumulative survival rates and median overall survival in patients treated by resection, transcatheter arterial chemoembolization, and local ablation therapy were calculated. The same values were also calculated by the registration date by dividing patients newly registered between 1978 and 2009 into four time period groups . The results of the analysis show that the prognosis of HCC is improving dramatically. It is expected that the data obtained from this nationwide follow‐up survey will contribute to advancing clinical research, including the design of clinical trials, as well as the treatment strategy of primary liver cancer in the clinical practice setting.
Clinical utility of microarray B‐cell epitope mapping in food allergies: A systematic review

Peptide microarray technology has been proposed as a useful tool for diagnosing food allergy. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in the clinical methods and analytical procedures used to assess its diagnostic and prognostic performance. We performed a systematic review of studies that have used B‐cell epitopes by peptide microarray in food allergies to identify the clinical utility of this immunologic technique.
Smartphone-based Use of the Photoplethysmography Technique to Detect Atrial Fibrillation in Primary Care: A Diagnostic Accuracy Study of the FibriCheck Appl

Objectives This study tested the diagnostic accuracy of the FibriCheck AF algorithm for the detection of atrial fibrillation (AF) based on smartphone photoplethysmography (PPG) and single-lead electrocardiography (ECG) signals. Methods A convenience sample of patients, aged 65 and older, with and without a known history of AF, was recruited from 17 primary care facilities. Patients with an active pacemaker rhythm were excluded. A PPG signal was obtained with the backside camera of an iPhone 5S. Simultaneously, a single-lead ECG was registered using a dermal patch with a wireless connection to the same smartphone. PPG and single-lead ECG signals were analysed using the FibriCheck AF algorithm. At the same time, a 12-lead ECG was obtained and interpreted off-line by independent cardiologists to determine the presence of AF. Results A total of 102/223 subjects (46%) were in AF. PPG signal quality was sufficient for analysis in 93%, and single-lead ECG quality was sufficient in 94% of the participants. After removing insufficient quality measurements, the sensitivity and specificity were 96% (95% CI 89-99%) and 97% (95% CI 91-99%) for the PPG signal versus 95% (95% CI 88-98%) and 97% (95% CI 91-99%) for the single-lead ECG, respectively. False-positive results were mainly due to premature ectopic beats. In 196 subjects where the signal quality of both techniques was adequate, PPG and single-lead ECG yielded a similar diagnosis in 192 subjects (98%). Conclusions The FibriCheck AF algorithm can accurately detect AF based on smartphone PPG and single-lead ECG signals in a primary care convenience sample.
Vertical atomic manipulation with dynamic AFM without tip change via multi-step mechanism Supplementary Information

J. Bamidele, S. H. Lee, Y. Kinoshita, R. Turanský, Y. Naitoh, Y. J. Li, Y. Sugawara, I. Štich, and L. Kantorovich ∗ Physics Department, King’s College London, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom Department of Applied Physics, Osaka University, 2-1 Yamada-oka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan Center for Comp. Mat. Science, Inst. of Physics, Slovak Acad. of Sciences, 84511 Bratislava, Slovakia (Dated: June 20, 2014)
Interrelationship of Experiential Marketing on Perceived Purchase Intension in Quick Service Restaurant Chains

The concept of experiential marketing remains somewhat intangible and no real efforts have been made in uncovering the components of successful experiential marketing event. The aim the paper is to measure the influence of experiential marketing on customer purchase intension. Experiential marketing enables customers to differentiate one product or service with another since they experience themselves directly in the process of selecting and consuming the product or service using five approaches, such as sense, feel, think, act and relate.
Automatic Parallelization of Graph Queries with MapReduce

The MapReduce programming model has gained attraction for large scaled data processing in recent years. One typical application is graph query parallelization. Although a lot of work has been done to parallel graph queries by MapReduce, the data model used for graphs does not reflect the original graph shape, thus making it difficult to manipulate graphs in a structured way. In this paper, we show a new approach to parallelization of graph queries in UnQL, a graph query language whose data model is an edge labelled graph. The most prominent feature of this language is that all UnQL queries can be specified by structural recursion which can be evaluated in a bulk manner. After carefully examining the properties of structural recursion, we propose a natural way for parallelizing structural recursion by MapReduce automatically in two steps: 1) bulk computing and 2) unreachable part removal and global ε-edge elimination. The experiments show the feasibility of our approach for parallelization of graph queries.
Pass-the-Hash in Windows 10

Attackers have used the Pass-the-Hash (PtH) attack for over two decades. Its effectiveness has led to several changes to the design of Windows. Those changes influenced the feasibility of the attack and the effectiveness of the tools used to execute it. At the same time, novel PtH attack strategies appeared. All this has led to confusion about what is still feasible and what configurations of Windows are vulnerable. This paper examines various methods of hash extraction and execution of the PtH attack. It identifies the prerequisites for the attack and suggests hardening options. Testing in Windows 10 v1903 supports the findings. Ultimately, this paper shows the level of risk posed by PtH to environments using the latest version of Windows 10. Pass-the-Hash in Windows 10 2 Lukasz Cyra, lukasz.cyra@gmail.com
cARe: an augmented reality support system for geriatric inpatients with mild cognitive impairment

Cognitive impairment such as memory loss, an impaired executive function and decreasing motivation can gradually undermine instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). With an older growing population, previous works have explored assistive technologies (ATs) to automate repetitive components of therapy and thereby increase patients' autonomy and reduce dependence on carers. While most ATs were built around screens and projection-based augmented reality (AR), the potential of head-mounted displays (HMDs) for therapeutic assistance is still under-explored. As a contribution to this effort we present cARe, an HMD-based AR framework that uses in-situ instructions and a guidance mechanism to assist patients with manual tasks. In a case study with six geriatric patients, we investigated the prototype's feasibility during a cooking task in comparison to a regular paper-based recipe. Qualitative and quantitative results indicate that cARe has potential to offer assistance to older individuals with declining cognitive function in their day-to-day tasks and increase their independence in an enjoyable way.
Physiological Response of two Wheat Cultivars Grown under Newly Reclaimed Sandy Soil to α-Tocopherol Foliar Application

Field experiment was carried out at the experimental station of Agricultural Production and Research Station, National Research Centre, El Nubaria Province, El Behaira Governorate, Egypt during two successive winter seasons (2010/2011) and (2011/2012) to evaluate the effect of foliar application of α-tocopherol at different concentrations (400, 800, 1000 and 1200 mg/l) on the growth and grain yield quantity and quality of two wheat cultivars (Sids12 and Sids 13). The main results could be summarized as follows: Dry weight of spikes/plant of Sids 12 cultivar was significantly increased by 9.50% and 26.92% than those of Sids 13 cultivar at 100 DAS and 120 DAS respectively. Grain yield/plant and /fed of Sids 12 cultivar was significantly higher than those of Sids 13 cultivar by 7.82% and 4.06%, respectively. The total carbohydrates content in grains of Sids 12 cultivar was higher than those of Sids 13 cultivar by 0.67%. Protein content in leaves and grains of Sids 12 cultivar showed significant increases by 0.90% and 0.88% respectively than those of Sids 13 cultivar. Sids 12 cultivar showed more adaptation to the conditions of newly reclaimed land than Sids 13 cultivar that appeared in higher values of growth parameters, grain yield and its components as well as percentages of carbohydrates and proteins. -tocopherol treatments at different concentrations caused significant increases in all growth parameters under investigation of both cultivars (Sids 12 and Sids 13) at two growth stages (100 DAS and 120 DAS) relative to control. 1000 mg/l -tocopherol was the optimum treatment. Yield and yield components were significantly increased by -tocopherol treatments at all levels. The increases in grain yield/fed of Sids 13 cultivar due to 1000 mg/l and 1200 mg/l tocopherol were 22.95% and 19.26% respectively, while, the increases in grain yield/fed in Sids 12 were 18.36% and 17.58% respectively relative to corresponding controls. Sids 13 cultivar was responded more effectively to tocopherol treatments than Sids 12 that appeared in the increases percentages in grain yield /fed relative to control plants. -tocopherol treatment at 1000 mg/l caused significant increases in total carbohydrates in leaves by 8.57 % and 8.43% and in grains by 6.03 % and 6.55% in Sids 12 and Sids 13 respectively relative to corresponding controls. The highest significant increases in protein content of grains in the two wheat cultivars, Sids 12 and Sids 13 resulted from -tocopherol treatment at 1000 mg/l were 8.82% and 7.69% followed by -tocopherol treatment at 1200mg/l that were 7.15% and 7.19% respectively relative to corresponding controls. The optimum treatment was 1000 mg/l -tocopherol followed by 1200 mg/l -tocopherol in aiding two wheat cultivars to partially overcome undesirable conditions of new land and reflected on yield quantity and quality.
Age, growth and mortality of brown stripe snapper Lutjanus vitta (Quoy and Gaimard 1824) from West Sulu Sea, Philippines.

The age, growth and mortality parameters of brown stripe snapper Lutjanus vitta (Quoy and Gaimard 1824) from west Sulu Sea were investigated. Brown stripe snappers were sampled from small-scale bottom set longline landings from October 2012 until December 2013. The oldest recorded male was 11.71 years and female was 10.71 years, and measured 33.5 and 26.5 cm, respectively. Examination of sectioned otolith margins (n= 490) indicated annuli deposition in December and January which was closely related to the lowest water temperature in Sulu Sea. The von Bertalanffy growth parameters (male L ∞ = 32.5 cm, K= 0.34 year -1 , t 0 = -1.68 year; female L ∞ = 27.1 cm, K = 0.53 year -1 , t 0 = -1.30 year) differed significantly between sexes (ARSS F= 6.33, d.f. =22, p< 0.05). The estimated total mortality rates were, 0.53 year -1 (male) and 0.50 year -1 (female). Linear relations between otolith weight and
A forwarding cache vlan protocol (FCVP) in wireless networks

The Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) technology is one of the hottest areas of networking systems. A VLAN is a logical connection rather than physical that allows network devices to be combined as “virtual LANs”. The VLAN technology functions by logically segmenting the network into different broadcast domains so that packets can only delivered between ports with the same VLAN identity (group member). By using this characteristic of VLAN there is a very flexible mechanism to group the physical ports together. Wireless networks also need the flexibility to collect more than two devices equipped with wireless communication and networking capability. In recent years, wireless network has been attracting a lot of attention due to wireless devices have enjoyed a tremendous rise in popularity. In order to communicate among some groups of wireless devices without the convention concept of clusters we propose a novel model to form the multiple-domain or the multiple-group as “virtual LANs” according to the logical connection in ad hoc networks. In this paper we also propose a novel forwarding cache VLAN protocol (FCVP) for ad hoc networks to simulate the behavior of VLAN in ad hoc network. For our purpose, each node in ad hoc networks records the nodes of the same VLAN identity in a cache table to keep the information of the VLAN identification for forwarding the packets. We simulate the proposed protocol in ad hoc network environment between 50 and 80 nodes with different size of VLANs groups. The result shows that the throughput of our protocol delivering packets to all nodes in the same VLAN group is more than 84% of the case. Furthermore, we compared to the flooding, the efficiency of communication improves up to 68% on our FCVP.
Upper Bound on the Expected Generalization Error of the Convolutional Neural Network

Deep learning (DL) algorithms have recently shown great performance in many applications, including computer vision, natural language processing, robotics, etc. Using information theory, we derive an upper bound on the expected generalization error of the convolutional neural network (CNN) in terms of the entropy of the input and the number of layers. When there is no one-to-one mapping between hidden layers, the upper bound shows that as the number of hidden layers increases in the CNN, the expected generalization error decreases exponentially to zero. Keywords—Deep learning (DL), convolutional neural network (CNN), generalization error, upper bound.
When Lexicon-Grammar Meets Open Information Extraction: a Computational Experiment for Italian Sentences

In this work we show an experiment on building an Open Information Extraction system (OIE) for Italian language. We propose a system wholly reliant on linguistic structures and on a small set of verbal behavior patterns defined putting together theoretical linguistic knowledge and corpus-based statistical information1. Starting from elementary one-verb sentences, the system identifies elementary tuples and then, all their permutations, preserving the overall well-formedness (grammaticality) and trying to preserve semantic coherence (acceptability). Although the work focuses only on the Italian language, it can be proficiently extended also to other languages, since it is essentially based only on linguistic resources and on a representative corpus for the language under consideration2.
Weather Based Forecasting of Crop Yields , Pests and Diseases-IASRI Models

In view of the fact that weather affects crops, several weather based models have been attempted for forecasting crop yield for various crops at selected distticts/agro climatic zones/states. The models utilised weekly/fortnightly weather data and, in some cases, agricultural inputs at distri~t level. The techniques induded development of suitable weather indices which were used as regrt"ssors in the models, discriminant function analysis and water balance technique. Using these approaches, reliable forecast of crop yield can be provided before harvest 21/2months (rice and wheat), 1Y2month (sorghum), I month (m? he) and in middle of September in sugarcane. Pests and diseases, major factors limiting the production, are also influenced by weather conditions. Therefore, weather based models were developed for forewarning of important pests/diseases in rice, mustard, pigeon pea, sugarcane, groundnut, mango, potato and cotton at various locations using the techniques like regression analysis (taking suitable functions of weather variables/indices as regressors), complex polynomials through GMDH technique and Artificial Neural Network technique. The forewarnings through these models will be very useful in taking timely control measures. These approaches have been successfully used by other workers and organisations for forecasting crop yield and the forewamings issued enabled the farmers to optimise plant protection measures. In this paper various approaches are discussed with illustrations.
Crop yield gap and stability in organic and conventional farming systems

the three farming systems was similar, but when excluding years of Phytophthora outbreaks in potato, temporal stability was higher in the organic farming system. There are two non-mutually exclusive mechanistic explanations for these results. First, the enhanced spatial stability in the organic farming system could result from changes in resource-based (i.e. bottom-up) processes, which coincides with the observed higher nutrient provisioning throughout the season in soils with more organic matter. Second, enhanced resource inputs may also a ﬀ ect stability via increased predator-based (i.e. top-down) control. According to this explanation, predators stabilize population dynamics of soil organisms, which is supported by the observed higher soil food web biomass in the organic farming system.We conclude that closure of the yield gap between organic and conventional farming can be a matter of time and that organic farming may result in greater spatial stability of soil biotic and abiotic properties and soil processes. This is likely due to the time required to fundamentally alter soil properties.
How agroecological farmers develop their own practices: a grid to describe the objects and mechanisms of learning

The agroecological transition -defined here as a transition toward practices based on the management of ecological processesrequires innovations involving a wide range of stakeholders, from farmers to scientists or intermediaries. An extensive literature has shown that agroecological farmers’ practices cannot be exclusively based on the application and adaptation of general recipes to the specific context of their farms: for intermediaries, supporting farmers thus calls for opening innovation spaces in which they can develop their own practices and generate innovative agroecological knowledge rooted in their peculiar agroecosystem. As a consequence, we argue that it is important to better understand how this knowledge is developed. However, the ways in which farmers learn remain poorly investigated at the individual level. The major role of experience in learning leads us to build on Kolb’s pragmatist theory and to consider the individual learning process as a continuous interplay between a farmer’s experience and his or her capacity for action. The purpose of this paper is to propose an analytical grid to describe the mechanisms connecting the farmer’s experience and his pragmatic judgements. To do so, we focused on the case of conservation agriculture. We conducted five semi-structured interviews with experienced farmers and qualitatively analyzed them. The resulting grid exposes an array of learning mechanisms as well as the objects they may be linked with. This analytical grid may, in the future, be applied to a wider sample of farmers, as a means to better grasp the possible diversity of their learning processes. A deeper understanding of these processes would then help intermediaries to identify which types of support are the most adequate for farmers engaged in the agroecological transition.