Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of sensory signals from the insect coxa-trochanteral joint in controlling motor activity of the femur-tibia joint.

Interjoint coordination in multi-jointed limbs is essential for the generation of functional locomotor patterns. Here we have focused on the role that sensory signals from the coxa-trochanteral (CT) joint play in patterning motoneuronal activity of the femur-tibia (FT) joint in the stick insect middle leg. This question is of interest because when the locomotor system is active, movement signals from the FT joint are known to contribute to patterning of activity of the central rhythm-generating networks governing the CT joint. We investigated the influence of femoral levation and depression on the activity of tibial motoneurons. When the locomotor system was active, levation of the femur often induced a decrease or inactivation of tibial extensor activity while flexor motoneurons were activated. Depression of the femur had no systematic influence on tibial motoneurons. Ablation experiments revealed that this interjoint influence was not mediated by signals from movement and/or position sensitive receptors at the CT joint, i.e., trochanteral hairplate, rhombal hairplate, or internal levator receptor organ. Instead the influence was initiated by sensory signals from a field of campaniform sensillae, situated on the proximal femur (fCS). Selective stimulation of these fCS produced barrages of inhibitory postsynaptic potentials (IPSPs) in tibial extensor motoneurons and activated tibial flexor motoneurons. During pharmacologically activated rhythmic activity of the otherwise isolated mesothoracic ganglion (pilocarpine, 5 x 10(-4) M), deafferented except for the CT joint, levation of the femur as well had an inhibitory influence on tibial extensor motoneurons. However, the influence of femoral levation on the rhythm generated was rather labile and only sometimes a reset of the rhythm was induced. In none of the preparations could entrainment of rhythmicity by femoral movement be achieved, suggesting that sensory signals from the CT joint only weakly affect central rhythm-generating networks of the FT joint. Finally, we analyzed the role of sensory signals from the fCS during walking by recording motoneuronal activity in the single middle leg preparation with fCS intact and after their removal. These experiments showed that fCS activity plays an important role in generating tibial motoneuron activity during the stance phase of walking.
Swimming Upstream: Faculty and Staff Members From Urban Middle Schools in Low-Income Communities Describe Their Experience Implementing Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiatives

Introduction Addressing childhood overweight has become a top priority in the United States. Modification of school policies and practices has been used in an attempt to address the overweight epidemic among children and adolescents. Culturally diverse urban schools in low-income communities attempting to improve nutrition and increase physical activity may face unique challenges in the school environment. A better understanding is needed about school environments and how they may affect the implementation, efficacy, and sustainability of initiatives designed to improve nutrition and physical activity. Methods We carried out a qualitative study in five urban middle schools in low-income communities that had recently implemented Planet Health, a nutrition and physical activity intervention, to assess which aspects of the schools' physical, social, and policy environments were facilitating or impeding the implementation of health promotion initiatives. Thirty-five faculty and staff members participated. We conducted one focus group per school, with an average of seven participants per group. We analyzed focus group transcripts using the thematic analysis technique to identify key concepts, categories, and themes. Results Teachers and staff members in our study identified many school-related environmental barriers to successful implementation of nutrition and physical activity initiatives in their schools. School personnel recommended that classroom-based nutrition interventions such as Planet Health be coordinated with school food services so that the healthy messages taught in the classroom are reinforced by the availability of healthy, culturally appropriate cafeteria food. They identified household food insufficiency and overly restrictive eligibility criteria of the federally subsidized meal program as critical barriers to healthy nutritional behaviors. They also identified weight-related teasing and bullying and unhealthy weight-control behaviors as challenges to promotion of healthy nutrition and physical activity. Conclusion To maximize intervention efforts, researchers and practitioners must consider the effects of school environments on nutrition and physical activity initiatives.
ANALYSIS AND SIMULATION OF TRAFFIC CONTROL FOR RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN DVB-BASED BROADBAND SATELLITE ACCESS NETWORKS

Integration of satellite access networks with the Internet is seen as a strategic goal to achieve in order to provide ubiquitous broadband access to Internet services in Next Generation Networks (NGNs). One of the main interworking aspects which has been mo st studied is an efficient management of satellite resources, i.e. bandwidth and buffer space, in order to satisfy most demanding application requirements as to delay control and bandwidth assurance. In this context, resource management in DVB-S/DVB-RCS satellite technologies, emerging technologies for broadband satellite access and transport of IP applications, is a research issue largely investigated as a means to provide efficient bi-directional communications across satellites. This is in particular one of the principal goals of the SATIP6 project, sponsored within the 5th EU Research Programme Framework, i.e. IST. In this paper we present a possible approach to efficiently exploit bandwidth, the most critical resource in a broadband satellite access network, while pursuing satisfaction of delay and bandwidth requirements for applications with guaranteed QoS through a traffic control architecture to be implemented in ground terminals . Performance of this approach is assessed in terms of efficient exploitation of the uplink bandwidth and differentiation and minimization of queuing delays for most demanding applications over a time-varying capacity. Opnet simulations is used as analysis tool.
Investigating the Targets of MIR-15a and MIR-16-1 in Patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL)

Background MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short, noncoding RNAs that regulate the expression of multiple target genes. Deregulation of miRNAs is common in human tumorigenesis. The miRNAs, MIR-15a/16-1, at chromosome band 13q14 are down-regulated in the majority of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL). Methodology/Principal Findings We have measured the expression of MIR-15a/16-1, and 92 computationally-predicted MIR-15a/16-1 target genes in CLL patients and in normal controls. We identified 35 genes that are deregulated in CLL patients, 5 of which appear to be specific targets of the MIR-15a/16-1 cluster. These targets included 2 genes (BAZ2A and RNF41) that were significantly up-regulated (p<0.05) and 3 genes (RASSF5, MKK3 and LRIG1) that were significantly down-regulated (p<0.05) in CLL patients with down-regulated MIR-15a/16-1 expression. Significance The genes identified here as being subject to MIR-15a/16-1 regulation could represent direct or indirect targets of these miRNAs. Many of these are good biological candidates for involvement in tumorigenesis and as such, may be important in the aetiology of CLL.
Compact $X$ -Band Filter Based on Substrate Integrated Coaxial Line Stubs Using Advanced Multilayer PCB Technology

In this paper, a compact filter based on substrate integrated coaxial line (SICL) stubs was designed using an advanced multilayer printed circuit board (PCB) substrate. This technology is convenient to implement high-density interconnect (HDI) devices, which are dedicated to mass market and require to be compact and low cost. In addition, in order to avoid parasitic effects, HDI devices need to be shielded. The laser-drilled microvias used in the low-loss advanced multilayer PCB are the assets that allow the fabrication of compacted and shielded microwave filters. Using this technology, a third-order <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${X}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-band filter based on SICL stubs was designed. The SICL topology is convenient to be used for shielded devices thanks to the outer-grounded metallization. The filter was implemented in an advanced PCB substrate composed of seven layers of Megtron 6+. The via-holes fabricated with plated through-holes or laser-drilled microvias allow implementing SICL stubs throughout the thickness of the substrate. Measurements of the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${X}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-band filter are in a good agreement with the simulation. In comparison with other compact filters, the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${X}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-band filter based on SICL stubs has a good footprint reduction while maintaining good electrical performances.
Performance analysis of multi-cell systems with multiuser detection and multiple antennas

In this paper, we consider a system with K single-antenna client users, n/sub B/ base stations (each base station has n/sub B/ antennas) as well as a centralized controller. All the base stations operate at the same frequency and have optimal multi-user detection per base-station. A client user could be associated with a single base station at any time. We consider a general problem of uplink macroscopic scheduling where the centralized controller dynamically determines an appropriate association mapping of the K users with respect to the n/sub B/ base stations over a macroscopic time scale. We propose a novel analytical framework for the above macroscopic scheduling problems. A simple rule is to associate a user with the strongest base station (camp-on-the-strongest-cell) and this has been widely employed in conventional cellular systems. However, based on the optimization framework, we found that this conventional approach is in fact not optimal when multi-user detection is employed at the base station. We show that the optimal macroscopic scheduling algorithm is of exponential complexity and we propose a simple greedy algorithm as a feasible solution. It is shown that the macroscopic scheduling gain relative to the conventional approach increases with increasing n/sub B/ (due to the extra degree of freedom introduced by multiple antennas) and decreasing path loss exponent (due to large area of overlapping).
Temporal Behavior of Social Network Users in Information Diffusion

The rapid development of online social networks (OSN) renders them a powerful tool for information diffusion. Understanding the temporal behavior of OSN users is critical in studying the diffusion process. While there is much work on building various diffusion models to characterize the information propagation process, the diversity of OSN users' behavior patterns is seldom addressed in these models. However, as revealed by previous measurement studies as well as our empirical observations, OSN users' temporal behaviors are quite different. In this paper, we investigate users' temporal behaviors based on collected traces from a popular OSN in China, covering the diffusion actions of around 2.8 million users for more than 3 years. In particular, distinct from existing studies which mine users' temporal behaviors, we focus on diffusion times and propagation latencies of social links. After clustering the OSN users into two groups with our proposed temporal features, we observe some interesting phenomena, like "Birds of a feather flock together," and specifically find that users from different groups behave heterogeneously. Motivated by this observation, we propose a continuous time diffusion model by incorporating users' heterogeneous temporal diffusion patterns. Comparison of simulation results between our model and a homogeneous model demonstrate the necessity of applying our proposed model for more realistic diffusion descriptions.
Browser JS Guard: Detects and defends against Malicious JavaScript injection based drive by download attacks

In the recent times, most of the systems connected to Internet are getting infected with the malware and some of these systems are becoming zombies for the attacker. When user knowingly or unknowingly visits a malware website, his system gets infected. Attackers do this by exploiting the vulnerabilities in the web browser and acquire control over the underlying operating system. Once attacker compromises the users web browser, he can instruct the browser to visit the attackers website by using number of redirections. During the process, users web browser downloads the malware without the intervention of the user. Once the malware is downloaded, it would be placed in the file system and responds as per the instructions of the attacker. These types of attacks are known as Drive by Download attacks. Now-a-days, Drive by Download is the major channel for delivering the Malware. In this paper, Browser JS Guard an extension to the browser is presented for detecting and defending against Drive by Download attacks via HTML tags and JavaScript.
SIBYL: a tool for managing group design rationale

We describe SIBYL, a system that supports group decision making by representing and managing the qualitative aspects of decision making processes: such as the alternatives, the goals to be satisfied, and the arguments evaluating the alternatives with respect to these goals. We use an example session with SIBYL to illustrate the language, called DRL, that SIBYL uses for representing these qualitative aspects, and the set of services that SIBYL provides using this language. We also compare SIBYL to other systems with similar objectives and discuss the additional benefits that SIBYL provides. In particular, we compare SIBYL to gIBIS, a well-known “tool for exploratory policy discussion”, and claim that SIBYL is mainly a knowledge-based system which uses a semi-formal representation, whereas gIBIS is mainly a hypertext system with semantic types. We conclude with a design heuristic, drawn from our experience with SIBYL, for systems whose goal includes eliciting knowledge from people.
Heart rate variability (HRV) during virtual reality immersion

The goal of the study was assessment of the hour-long training involving handling virtual environment (sVR) and watching a stereoscopic 3D movie on the mechanisms of autonomic heart rate (HR) regulation among the subjects who were not predisposed to motion sickness. In order to exclude predispositions to motion sickness, all the participants (n=19) underwent a Coriolis test. During an exposure to 3D and sVR the ECG signal was continuously recorded using the Holter method. For the twelve consecutive 5-min epochs of ECG signal, the analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) in time and frequency domains was conducted. After 30 min from the beginning of the training in handling the virtual workstation a significant increase in LF spectral power was noted. The values of the sympathovagal LF/HF index while sVR indicated a significant increase in sympathetic predominance in four time intervals, namely between the 5th and the 10th minute, between the 15th and the 20th minute, between the 35th and 40th minute and between the 55th and the 60th minute of exposure.
PICTO-TEXT GLOSSES TO ENHANCE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

One of students’ difficulties in comprehending a reading text is their limited vocabulary. Therefore, this article is aimed to provide practical recommendation for EFL teachers to use picto-text (pictorial and textual) glosses in reading materials to help students’ become familiar to the terms used in the text that will eventually improve their reading comprehension .
To Change the Things I Can: Making Instruction More Intensive

When students do not respond adequately to core instruction, teachers must provide instruction and intervention that is more intensive and, therefore, more effective. However, for many educators, it is often unclear what it means to intensify instruction and how intensive instruction differs from high-quality core instruction. This article describes eight empirically supported methods for intensifying instruction for struggling learners along with specific suggestions, examples, and a planning guide for intensive instruction.
Characterization of subsets of human spermatozoa at different stages of maturation: implications in the diagnosis and treatment of male infertility.

BACKGROUND Reactive oxygen species (ROS)-induced damage of membrane phospholipids and DNA in human spermatozoa has been implicated in the pathogenesis of male infertility. In this study, variations in ROS production, DNA structure (as measured by the sperm chromatin structure assay) and lipid composition, were studied in human spermatozoa at different stages of maturation. METHODS Sperm subsets were isolated by discontinuous density gradient centrifugation of semen samples obtained from healthy donors and from infertility patients. RESULTS DNA damage and ROS production were highest in immature spermatozoa with cytoplasmic retention and abnormal head morphology, and lowest in mature spermatozoa. Docosahexaenoic acid and sterol content were highest in immature germ cells and immature spermatozoa, and lowest in mature spermatozoa. The relative proportion of ROS-producing immature spermatozoa in the sample was directly correlated with DNA damage in mature spermatozoa, and inversely correlated with the recovery of motile spermatozoa. There was no correlation between DNA damage and sperm morphology in mature spermatozoa. CONCLUSIONS The high levels of ROS production and DNA damage observed in immature spermatozoa may be indicative of derangements in the regulation of spermiogenesis. DNA damage in mature spermatozoa may be the result of oxidative damage by ROS-producing immature spermatozoa during sperm migration from the seminiferous tubules to the epididymis.
Effects of Humic Acid and Suspended Solids on the Removal of Heavy Metals from Water by Adsorption onto Granular Activated Carbon

Heavy metals constitute some of the most dangerous pollutants of water, as they are toxic to humans, animals, and aquatic organisms. These metals are considered to be of major public health concern and, therefore, need to be removed. Adsorption is a common physico-chemical process used to remove heavy metals. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and suspended solids (SS) are associated pollutants in water systems that can interact with heavy metals during the treatment process. The interactions of DOC and SS during the removal of heavy metals by granular activated carbon were investigated in batch and fixed-bed column experiments. Batch adsorption studies indicated that Langmuir adsorption maxima for Pb, Cu, Zn, Cd, and Ni at pH 6.5 were 11.9, 11.8, 3.3, 2.0, and 1.8 mg/g, respectively. With the addition of humic acid (HA) (DOC representative), they were 7.5, 3.7, 3.2, 1.6, and 2.5 mg/g, respectively. In the column experiment, no breakthrough (complete removal) was obtained for Pb and Cu, but adding HA provided a breakthrough in removing these metals. For Zn, Cd and Ni, this breakthrough occurred even without HA being added. Adding kaolinite (representative of SS) had no effect on Pb and Cu, but it did on the other metals.
Directed-transfer-function based analysis for epileptic prediction

epilepsy is a neurological disease with the feature of repeated seizures. The probability to predict upcoming seizures is an issue that attracts both researchers and clinicians. Meanwhile, the directed transfer function (DTF) analysis as mechanism for feature extraction in the intracranial electroencephalographic (iEEG) recordings applied to epileptic prediction could reflect the dynamics changes of brain activity before and after seizure onsets. In the present paper, a cortical network calculated by the method of DTF was investigated with the iEEG recordings from a patient undergoing presurgical evaluation. Particularly, the closeness centrality metric was evaluated to identify critical network nodes in the cortical network during both interictal and preictal states of an epileptic seizure. Obtained values of the closeness centrality obviously increased at 20s and 40s preictal in onset 1 and onset 2, respectively. As a conclusion, a significant change of the closeness centrality during preictal states would be a useful indication to early predict an upcoming seizure in patients with epilepsy.
Training of Cellular Automata for Image Filtering

Cellular Automata is significantly applying to image processing operations. The description about the use of training of cellular automata for filtering the salt and pepper noise in binary images is given by this paper. The selection of best rule set has been performed on the basis of objective function peak signal to noise ratio values between original and filtered image. The proposed method is also compared with some standard methods.
A Self-learning Template Approach for Recognizing Named Entities from Web Text

Recognizing Chinese Named entities from the Web is challenging, due to the lack of labeled data and differences between Chinese and English. We propose a semisupervised approach which leverages seed entities and the large unlabeled data to learn templates. Some high-quality templates are generated iteratively to extract new named entities based on the model of quality metrics. Experimental results show that our approach significantly outperforms the baseline method and it is robust against the changes of the Web.
Using Bioinspired Meta-heuristics to Solve Reward-Based Energy-Aware Mandatory/Optional Real-Time Tasks Scheduling

In this paper we present meta-heuristics to solve the energy aware reward based scheduling of real-time tasks with mandatory and optional parts in homogeneous multi-core processors. The problem is NP-Hard. The meta-heuristics are the bioinspired methods Particle Swarm Optimization and Genetic Algorithm. Results are compared using synthetic systems of tasks, generated following the guidelines proposed in previous papers with an Integer Lineal Programming solution.
Automated tracking of biological cells in an “in-vitro” environment using active contours and distance measures

Automation of biological cell tracking processes from time-lapse microscopy is increasingly being preferred due to time efficiency and avoidance of human inconsistencies. This paper presents development of algorithms to track the stochastic motion of the cells in micro-fluidic devices to aid the study of angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is the process of the growth of new blood vessels from a tissue monolayer. This process is important in several fields such as cancer treatment, tissue engineering and wound healing. Challenges with our data include low signal to noise ratio, complex cellular topologies such as close contact of cells and associating data over images acquired at different time. Our methodology of tracking of cells and the monolayer involves two steps; segmentation of the cells from images and tracking of these segmented cells over a span of time. The contribution of our work is the application of level set segmentation and the Bhattacharya distance measures for associating cells over sequential time frames. Results demonstrated on experimental data show that cells and monolayer are segmented and tracked effectively.