Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experience Changes How Emotion in Music Is Judged: Evidence from Children Listening with Bilateral Cochlear Implants, Bimodal Devices, and Normal Hearing

Children using unilateral cochlear implants abnormally rely on tempo rather than mode cues to distinguish whether a musical piece is happy or sad. This led us to question how this judgment is affected by the type of experience in early auditory development. We hypothesized that judgments of the emotional content of music would vary by the type and duration of access to sound in early life due to deafness, altered perception of musical cues through new ways of using auditory prostheses bilaterally, and formal music training during childhood. Seventy-five participants completed the Montreal Emotion Identification Test. Thirty-three had normal hearing (aged 6.6 to 40.0 years) and 42 children had hearing loss and used bilateral auditory prostheses (31 bilaterally implanted and 11 unilaterally implanted with contralateral hearing aid use). Reaction time and accuracy were measured. Accurate judgment of emotion in music was achieved across ages and musical experience. Musical training accentuated the reliance on mode cues which developed with age in the normal hearing group. Degrading pitch cues through cochlear implant-mediated hearing induced greater reliance on tempo cues, but mode cues grew in salience when at least partial acoustic information was available through some residual hearing in the contralateral ear. Finally, when pitch cues were experimentally distorted to represent cochlear implant hearing, individuals with normal hearing (including those with musical training) switched to an abnormal dependence on tempo cues. The data indicate that, in a western culture, access to acoustic hearing in early life promotes a preference for mode rather than tempo cues which is enhanced by musical training. The challenge to these preferred strategies during cochlear implant hearing (simulated and real), regardless of musical training, suggests that access to pitch cues for children with hearing loss must be improved by preservation of residual hearing and improvements in cochlear implant technology.
Application of arm support training in sub-acute stroke rehabilitation: First results on effectiveness and user experiences

A multi-center randomized clinical trial was performed in 7 Dutch rehabilitation centers, in the context of an implementation project (ROBAR), to compare the effect of an arm support (AS) training device to equally intensive conventional reach training (CON) on recovery of arm-hand function in sub-acute stroke. The Fugl-Meyer assessment (FM) and user experiences of therapists and patients were examined in both groups. An improvement of 10 and 8 points on the FM was found for respectively the CON and AS group. Both therapists and patients reported positive experiences on several aspects of user acceptance. These findings indicate that a low-tech system for arm support results in similar gains in arm function as conventional reach training in equal intensity, and is suitable for application in clinical practice.
Nanoconfinement Controls Stiffness, Strength and Mechanical Toughness of Β-sheet Crystals in Silk

Silk features exceptional mechanical properties such as high tensile strength and great extensibility, making it one of the toughest materials known. The exceptional strength of silkworm and spider silks, exceeding that of steel, arises from β-sheet nanocrystals that universally consist of highly conserved poly-(Gly-Ala) and poly-Ala domains. This is counterintuitive because the key molecular interactions in β-sheet nanocrystals are hydrogen bonds, one of the weakest chemical bonds known. Here we report a series of large-scale molecular dynamics simulations, revealing that β-sheet nanocrystals confined to a few nanometres achieve higher stiffness, strength and mechanical toughness than larger nanocrystals. We illustrate that through nanoconfinement, a combination of uniform shear deformation that makes most efficient use of hydrogen bonds and the emergence of dissipative molecular stick–slip deformation leads to significantly enhanced mechanical properties. Our findings explain how size effects can be exploited to create bioinspired materials with superior mechanical properties in spite of relying on mechanically inferior, weak hydrogen bonds. S ilk is a biological protein fibre with exceptional tunable mechanical properties such as high tensile strength and great extensibility, making it one of the toughest and most versatile materials known 1–3. Since its development in China thousands of years ago, silk has been used throughout history not only as luxury fabrics but also in various technological applications including parachutes, medical sutures and, more recently, tissue regeneration 4. Variations in synthesis conditions such as temperature, reeling speed and pH lead to silk-based peptide fibrils or protein aggregates with rather different structural and mechanical properties 5–8. However, despite decades of research in silk production and mechanical properties, the mass production of silk and biomimetic materials remains a challenge, particularly because of silk's unique features that can be achieved only by the controlled self-assembly of the macromolecular constructs with molecular precision at the nanoscale. Recent investigations revealed that antiparallel β-sheet crystals at the nanoscale, consisting of highly conserved poly-(Gly-Ala) and poly-Ala repeats found in both commercial and spider silk 9 , have a key role in defining the mechanical properties of silk by providing stiff orderly crosslinking domains embedded in a semi-amorphous matrix that consists predominantly of less orderly β-structures, 3 1 helices and β-turns 10–12 (Fig. 1a). β-sheet nanocrystals, bonded by means of assemblies of hydrogen bonds 13,14 , have dimensions of a few nanometres and constitute roughly 10–15% of the silk volume, whereas with less orderly extended structures the β-sheet content can exceed …
A fuzzy color classification for logos retrieval

A fuzzy color classification for logos retrieval scheme is developed to retrieve logos efficiently. We transfer each logo to only 8 colors image using only 8 rules. Afterwards, we utilize the 8 colors images for comparing the logos. The major differences between our proposed method and existing ones are: 1. We consider the spatial information. (Our approach is permutation comparison). Most of the existing ones (color classification-based methods) are combination comparison. 2. We resized all images to 40 × 30 pixels. Therefore, our approach can handle diverse sizes, defocus and noise problems. 3. We adopt the concept of the relative relation of RGB. Consequently, our system can deal with dissimilar lighting conditions, partial occlusion, and various color saturation at the same time. 4. We don't want to know what the meanings of the logos are. We do want to know what the colors of the logos are.
Experimental Signal Deconvolution in Acoustic Emission Identification Setup

Identification of acoustic sources is a great deal and the most important problem emerging in biomedical applications and nondestructive testing. We present the basics of time reversal Acoustic Emission (AE) principle and point out the advantages of AE nondestructive testing for localization and classification of acoustic sources. This approach provides the tool for the defect localization by means of the reversal wave focusing in nonlinearity position in the material under consideration. Also, using TR operator to AE signal, we obtain convolutional signal in the closest neighborhood of acoustic source, which gives us the pure image of the real characteristics of AE source after deconvolution process applied to the signals detected. We describe the mathematical background for backside deconvolution through the Green functions. Further, we design the laboratory settings realizing experiments for AE signal deconvolution of the reversed signals measured by the laser beam device centering to the position of the defect. Finally, we apply the recently developed classification methods to these signals.
Confirmatory factor analysis of employee trust scale

A The Employee Trust Scale is developed for a study that examines employees’ trust towards their supervisors. This 49-item measure is a newly created scale by the researchers based on the findings of their previous study “Exploring the Concept of Trust in Malaysia Society”. Through the result of exploratory factor analysis, Chua et al. (2015) was able to extract three factors, labeled ‘trustworthiness, ‘position status’and ‘relationship’ which accounted for 62.49% of the total variance and the scale provided reliable assessment. Considering the existing assumptions of three dimensions of employee trust toward their supervisor as established by Chua et al. (2015), in this paper, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test the dimensionality of the Employee Trust Scale. This analysis was conducted with Structural Equation Modelling which was used to assess the fit of the model. In addition, reliability and validity of the model was measured. A total of 514 (274 males and 228 females) employees who were selected randomly from public and private organization sectors in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia were involved in this study. Their ages ranged from 21 to 59 years old with an average of 34.34 years old and their average tenure with their current organization was 8.46 years (with s.d. = 8.11 years). Finding of the present research can help in enhancing productivity within an organization by improving trust and relationship building between employees and employer.
Bmc Medicine Estimation of Proteinuria as a Predictor of Complications of Pre-eclampsia: a Systematic Review

Background: Proteinuria is one of the essential criteria for the clinical diagnosis of pre-eclampsia. Increasing levels of proteinuria is considered to be associated with adverse maternal and fetal outcomes. We aim to determine the accuracy with which the amount of proteinuria predicts maternal and fetal complications in women with pre-eclampsia by systematic quantitative review of test accuracy studies.
Who Killed the Travelin' Soldier: Elites, Masses, and Blacklisting of Critical Speakers

Several studies have shown the influence of ownership on media content in routine contexts but none has quantitatively tested it in the theoretically important context of a crisis. Recently the country musicians the Dixie Chicks were blacklisted from the radio for criticizing the president in wartime. I use this event to test the role of media ownership in a crisis. Through analyzing airplay from a national sample of radio stations, this paper finds that contrary to prominent allegations grounded in the political economy tradition of media sociology, this backlash did not come from owners of large chains. Rather, I find that opposition to the Dixie Chicks represents grassroots conservative sentiment, which may be exacerbated by the ideological connotations of country music or tempered by tolerance for dissent.
Large-margin Structured Learning for Link Ranking

We introduce a new approach to learning for the common problem of link prediction. Since link prediction is a structured prediction task that is naturally viewed as a ranking problem, we propose to learn to optimize a ranking metric directly in a large-margin structured prediction framework. This approach is appealing because it directly encodes the desired behavior into the learning objective. We show how to compute subgradients of the learning objective efficiently, and we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on real-world networks.
On sources covariance matrix singularities and high-resolution active wideband source localization

High resolution eigenstructure-based techniques for signal source localization are known to be ineffective when the source covariance matrix is not of full rank. We present here two techniques to circumvent this problem in the context of wideband active source localization. An extension is made to show how eigenstructure methods can be applied even when there is only one snapshot available to estimate the wideband spectral matrices.
THE EMBEDDED SYSTEMS SHOW LONDON , MAY 24-25 , 2000 Dynamic Deployment of Java Applications

Producing high quality software, on time, and keeping costs within reasonable bounds have been three major goals from the very beginning of software engineering as an engineering science. Hardly ever are deployed systems either error-free or fully functionally satisfactory. The result is that, once brought into operation, systems undergo a series of “patches”, “fixes”, modifications, and changes. At the same time, increasingly many functions dependent on software in business, industry, and at home depend on being immediately available. Having these services unavailable due to updating the software is annoying for users. And there are other types of systems – real-time systems – that cannot afford to be taken down, for instance, telecommunication systems, command-andcontrol systems, and any other systems requiring continuous operation. This paper presents the Java Distributed Run-time Update Management System (JDRUMS). JDRUMS is meant to deal with the above mentioned problems, specifically for Java. It provides functionality for the introduction of new versions of existing Java classes on the fly, while preserving the internal state of objects.
A Commensal Gone Bad: Complete Genome Sequence of the Prototypical Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli Strain H10407

ABSTRACT In most cases, Escherichia coli exists as a harmless commensal organism, but it may on occasion cause intestinal and/or extraintestinal disease. Enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) is the predominant cause of E. coli-mediated diarrhea in the developing world and is responsible for a significant portion of pediatric deaths. In this study, we determined the complete genomic sequence of E. coli H10407, a prototypical strain of enterotoxigenic E. coli, which reproducibly elicits diarrhea in human volunteer studies. We performed genomic and phylogenetic comparisons with other E. coli strains, revealing that the chromosome is closely related to that of the nonpathogenic commensal strain E. coli HS and to those of the laboratory strains E. coli K-12 and C. Furthermore, these analyses demonstrated that there were no chromosomally encoded factors unique to any sequenced ETEC strains. Comparison of the E. coli H10407 plasmids with those from several ETEC strains revealed that the plasmids had a mosaic structure but that several loci were conserved among ETEC strains. This study provides a genetic context for the vast amount of experimental and epidemiological data that have been published.
ANY2API - Automated APIfication - Generating APIs for Executables to Ease their Integration and Orchestration for Cloud Application Deployment Automation

APIs are a popular means to expose functionality provided by Cloud-based systems, which are utilized to integrate and orchestrate application as well as management functionality in a programmatic manner. In the domain of application management, they are used to fully automate management processes, for example, to deploy Cloud-based Web applications or back-ends for mobile apps. However, as not all required functionality is exposed through an API natively, such processes additionally involve a multitude of other heterogeneous technologies such as scripting languages and deployment automation tooling. Consequently, combining different technologies in an efficient manner is a complex integration challenge. In this paper, we present a generic approach for automatically generating API implementations for arbitrary executables such as scripts and compiled programs, which are not natively exposed as APIs. This APIfication tackles the aforementioned integration challenges by unifying the invocation of heterogeneous technologies while avoiding the costly and manual wrapping of existing executables because it does not scale. We further present the modular and extensible open-source framework ANY2API that implements our APIfication approach. Furthermore, we evaluate the approach and the framework by measuring the overhead of generating and using API implementations. In addition, we conduct a detailed case study to confirm the technical feasibility of the approach.
Phase Resetting in an Asymptotically Phaseless System: On the Phase Response of Limit Cycles Verging on a Heteroclinic Orbit

Rhythmic behaviors in neural systems often combine features of limit-cycle dynamics (stability and periodicity) with features of near heteroclinic or near homoclinic cycle dynamics (extended dwell times in localized regions of phase space). Proximity of a limit cycle to one or more saddle equilibria can have a profound effect on the timing of trajectory components and response to both fast and slow perturbations, providing a possible mechanism for adaptive control of rhythmic motions. Reyn [“Generation of limit cycles from separatrix polygons in the phase plane” in Geometrical Approaches to Differential Equations, Lecture Notes in Math. 810, Springer, New York, 1980, pp. 264–289] showed that for a planar dynamical system with a stable heteroclinic cycle (or separatrix polygon), small perturbations satisfying a net inflow condition will generically give rise to a stable limit cycle (see also [J. Guckenheimer and P. Holmes, Nonlinear Oscillations, Dynamical Systems, and Bifurcations of Vector Fields, 3rd ed.
A Geometric Interpretation of ?-SVM Classifiers

We show that the recently proposed variant of the Support Vector machine (SVM) algorithm, known as ν-SVM, can be interpreted as a maximal separation between subsets of the convex hulls of the data, which we call soft convex hulls. The soft convex hulls are controlled by choice of the parameter ν. If the intersection of the convex hulls is empty, the hyperplane is positioned halfway between them such that the distance between convex hulls, measured along the normal, is maximized; and if it is not, the hyperplane's normal is similarly determined by the soft convex hulls, but its position (perpendicular distance from the origin) is adjusted to minimize the error sum. The proposed geometric interpretation of ν-SVM also leads to necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a choice of ν for which the ν-SVM solution is nontrivial.
An F2 Pig Resource Population as a Model for Genetic Studies of Obesity and Obesity-Related Diseases in Humans: Design and Genetic Parameters

Obesity is a rising worldwide public health problem. Difficulties to precisely measure various obesity traits and the genetic heterogeneity in human have been major impediments to completely disentangle genetic factors causing obesity. The pig is a relevant model for studying human obesity and obesity-related (OOR) traits. Using founder breeds divergent with respect to obesity traits we have created an F2 pig resource population (454 pigs), which has been intensively phenotyped for 36 OOR traits. The main rationale for our study is to characterize the genetic architecture of OOR traits in the F2 pig design, by estimating heritabilities, genetic, and phenotypic correlations using mixed- and multi-trait BLUP animal models. Our analyses revealed high coefficients of variation (15–42%) and moderate to high heritabilities (0.22–0.81) in fatness traits, showing large phenotypic and genetic variation in the F2 population, respectively. This fulfills the purpose of creating a resource population divergent for OOR traits. Strong genetic correlations were found between weight and lean mass at dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry scanning (0.56–0.97). Weight and conformation also showed strong genetic correlations with slaughter traits (e.g., rg between abdominal circumference and leaf fat at slaughtering: 0.66). Genetic correlations between fat-related traits and the glucose level vary between 0.35 and 0.74 and show a strong correlation between adipose tissue and impaired glucose metabolism. Our power calculations showed a minimum of 80% power for QTL detection for all phenotypes. We revealed genetic correlations at population level, for the first time, for several difficult to measure and novel OOR traits and diseases. The results underpin the potential of the established F2 pig resource population for further genomic, systems genetics, and functional investigations to unravel the genetic background of OOR traits.
Optimal design of resilient virtual networks [Invited]

Due to the independent operation of cloud infrastructures and communication networks, global cloud services face limitations in the end-to-end quality of experience (QoE). Network virtualization enables end-to-end QoE by combining the control of network and cloud resources. In a network-virtualization architecture involving different business roles, there are two important questions: how to design an end-to-end resilient virtual network for cloud services given the service requests and the available resources of the physical layer, and at which layer to provision resilience. The existing literature on virtual network design usually lacks the separation of the business roles and the corresponding layers, and hence, cannot offer an answer to these questions. In this invited paper, we address both questions by proposing novel resilient virtual network design models for flexible and cost-efficient virtual networks having resilience either at the virtual or the physical layer, or using a combination of both, and by analyzing the performance of the proposed resilience alternatives both via analysis and extensive simulations.
Genetics of Type 2 Diabetes—Pitfalls and Possibilities

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a complex disease that is caused by a complex interplay between genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. While the major environmental factors, diet and activity level, are well known, identification of the genetic factors has been a challenge. However, recent years have seen an explosion of genetic variants in risk and protection of T2D due to the technical development that has allowed genome-wide association studies and next-generation sequencing. Today, more than 120 variants have been convincingly replicated for association with T2D and many more with diabetes-related traits. Still, these variants only explain a small proportion of the total heritability of T2D. In this review, we address the possibilities to elucidate the genetic landscape of T2D as well as discuss pitfalls with current strategies to identify the elusive unknown heritability including the possibility that our definition of diabetes and its subgroups is imprecise and thereby makes the identification of genetic causes difficult.