Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prototype of an auto-calibrating, context-aware, hybrid brain-computer interface

We present the prototype of a context-aware framework that allows users to control smart home devices and to access internet services via a Hybrid BCI system of an auto-calibrating sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) based BCI and another assistive device (Integra Mouse mouth joystick). While there is extensive literature that describes the merit of Hybrid BCIs, auto-calibrating and co-adaptive ERD BCI training paradigms, specialized BCI user interfaces, context-awareness and smart home control, there is up to now, no system that includes all these concepts in one integrated easy-to-use framework that can truly benefit individuals with severe functional disabilities by increasing independence and social inclusion. Here we integrate all these technologies in a prototype framework that does not require expert knowledge or excess time for calibration. In a first pilot-study, 3 healthy volunteers successfully operated the system using input signals from an ERD BCI and an Integra Mouse and reached average positive predictive values (PPV) of 72 and 98% respectively. Based on what we learned here we are planning to improve the system for a test with a larger number of healthy volunteers so we can soon bring the system to benefit individuals with severe functional disability.
Comparative Study of Sr+2 and Zn+2 Incorporation in the Biomimetic Coating of a Prosthetic Alloy

The next great wave of innovation and development for implantable medical devices focuses on surface engineering. This would enhance their performance, restore lost functions and ultimately reduce pain. Biomimetic coating is a promising approach, used in that concern. In the present work, an attempt was made to develop the function of the biomimetic coating rather than the classical biocompatibility. Corrected simulated body fluid, leading the conventional fluid concentration by one half, 1.5 � c-SBF, was prepared with adequate supplement of Sr +2 , or Zn +2 according to the permissible therapeutic doses, 0.5 mM. The selection of Sr +2 and Zn +2 as additives was owing to their anti-osteoporotic and antimicrobial/bacterial activity respectively. The bioinert discs of titanium aluminum vanadium alloy, Ti-6Al-4V, were pretreated according to our previously developed protocol (Alaa Adawy et al. 2009, Biomimetic Coating of Precalcified Ti-6Al-4V Alloy, J. Open Medical Devices, 1(2009)19). Subsequently, they were soaked in the prepared SBFs. Stepwise surface characterization was assessed using Diffuse Reflectance Infra-red Fourier Transform Spectroscopy, DRIFTS. In parallel, the remnants of the soaking solutions were analyzed chemically by atomic absorption and biochemical kits, and physically by AC electrical conductivity measurements at room temperature. Scanning electron microscopy, SEM, was used to assess surface final morphology post the whole treatment duration. Incorporation of Sr +2 and Zn +2 resulted in the growth of calcium deficient apatite of high carbonate content. The former increased the activity of biomimetic deposition while the latter induced more uniformity in the resultant coating.
Health Effects of Chronic Arsenic Exposure

Arsenic is a unique element with distinct physical characteristics and toxicity whose importance in public health is well recognized. The toxicity of arsenic varies across its different forms. While the carcinogenicity of arsenic has been confirmed, the mechanisms behind the diseases occurring after acute or chronic exposure to arsenic are not well understood. Inorganic arsenic has been confirmed as a human carcinogen that can induce skin, lung, and bladder cancer. There are also reports of its significant association to liver, prostate, and bladder cancer. Recent studies have also suggested a relationship with diabetes, neurological effects, cardiac disorders, and reproductive organs, but further studies are required to confirm these associations. The majority of research to date has examined cancer incidence after a high exposure to high concentrations of arsenic. However, numerous studies have reported various health effects caused by chronic exposure to low concentrations of arsenic. An assessment of the health effects to arsenic exposure has never been performed in the South Korean population; thus, objective estimates of exposure levels are needed. Data should be collected on the biological exposure level for the total arsenic concentration, and individual arsenic concentration by species. In South Korea, we believe that biological exposure assessment should be the first step, followed by regular health effect assessments.
Shaping as a method for accelerating reinforcement learning

Learning complex control behavior by building some initial control knowledge into the learning controller through shaping is addressed. The principle underlying shaping is that learning to solve complex problems can be facilitated by first learning to solve related simpler problems. The authors present experimental results illustrating the utility of shaping in training controllers by means of reinforcement learning methods. Shaping a reinforcement learning controller's behavior over time by gradually increasing the complexity of the control task as the controller learns makes it possible to scale reinforcement learning methods to more complex tasks. This is illustrated by an example. <<ETX>>
School Nurse Work Environment: Ingredients for Safe and Effective Practice

When preparing for the class I teach on the school nurse’s work environment, one of the many topics in Nursing 5870: School Nurse Role Development, I refer back to the 1997 article by McKibben and DiPaolo in The Journal of School Nursing as a starting point. In addition, a handout given to the class is a ‘‘wish list’’ for health offices generated over the years from entries on the school nurse listserv, SCHLRN-L. But before looking at the wish list, we begin by creating a model school health room on a white board. Students in the class are all registered nurses. Typically, half of them are already working in schools, and the rest are preparing themselves for a career change. These two diverse groups bring different perspectives to what is essential. Practicing school nurses will make comments such as:
Livestock-Associated Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA) Clonal Complex (CC) 398 Isolated from UK Animals belong to European Lineages

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of livestock-associated methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA) clonal complex (CC) 398 recovered from S. aureus isolated animals in the UK. To determine possible origins of 12 LA-MRSA CC398 isolates collected after screening more than a thousand S. aureus animal isolates from the UK between 2013 and 2015, whole genome sequences (WGS) of CC398 European, including UK, and non-European isolates from diverse animal hosts were compared. Phylogenetic reconstruction applied to WGS data to assess genetic relatedness of all 89 isolates, clustered the 12 UK CC398 LA-MRSA within the European sub-lineages, although on different nodes; implicating multiple independent incursions into the UK, as opposed to a single introduction followed by clonal expansion. Three UK isolates from healthy pigs and one from turkey clustered within the cassette chromosome recombinases ccr C S. aureus protein A (spa)-type t011 European sub-lineage and three UK isolates from horses within the ccrA2B2 t011 European sub-lineage. The remaining UK isolates, mostly from pigs, clustered within the t034 European lineage. Presence of virulence, antimicrobial (AMR), heavy metal (HMR), and disinfectant (DR) resistance genes were determined using an in-house pipeline. Most, including UK isolates, harbored resistance genes to ≥3 antimicrobial classes in addition to β-lactams. HMR genes were detected in most European ccrC positive isolates, with >80% harboring czrC, encoding zinc and cadmium resistance; in contrast ~60% ccrC isolates within non-European lineages and 6% ccrA2B2 isolates showed this characteristic. The UK turkey MRSA isolate did not harbor φAVβ avian prophage genes (SAAV_2008 and SAAV_2009) present in US MSSA isolates from turkey and pigs. Absence of some of the major human-associated MRSA toxigenic and virulence genes in the UK LA-MRSA animal isolates was not unexpected. Therefore, we can conclude that the 12 UK LA-MRSA isolates collected in the past 2 years most likely represent separate incursions into the UK from other European countries. The presence of zinc and cadmium resistance in all nine food animal isolates (pig and poultry), which was absent from the 3 horse isolates may suggest heavy metal use/exposure has a possible role in selection of some MRSA.
Robust Motion Recovery: The Two-Plane Method

This paper presents a method to recover the full-motion (3 rotations and 3 translations) of the head from an input video using a cylindrical head model. Given an initial reference template of the head image and the corresponding head pose, the head model is created and full head motion is recovered automatically. The robustness of the approach is achieved by a combination of three techniques. First, we use the iteratively re-weighted least squares (IRLS) technique in conjunction with the image gradient to accommodate non-rigid motion and occlusion. Second, while tracking, the templates are dynamically updated to diminish the effects of self-occlusion and gradual lighting changes and to maintain accurate tracking even when the face moves out of view of the camera. Third, to minimize error accumulation inherent in the use of dynamic templates, we re-register images to a reference template whenever head pose is close to that in the template. The performance of the method, which runs in real time, was evaluated in three separate experiments using image sequences (both synthetic and real) for which ground truth head motion was known. The real sequences included pitch and yaw as large as 40° and 75°, respectively. The average recovery accuracy of the 3D rotations was about 3°. In a further test, the method was used as part of a facial expression analysis system intended for use with spontaneous facial behavior in which moderate head motion is common. Image data consisted of 1-minute of video from each of 10 subjects while engaged in a 2-person interview. The method successfully stabilized face and eye images allowing for 98% accuracy in automatic blink recognition.
International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity Correspondence of Perceived vs. Objective Proximity to Parks and Their Relationship to Park-based Physical Activity

Background: Parks are key environmental resources for encouraging population-level physical activity (PA). In measuring availability of parks, studies have employed both self-reported and objective indicators of proximity, with little correspondence observed between these two types of measures. However, little research has examined how the degree of correspondence between self-reported and objectively-measured distance to parks is influenced by individual, neighborhood, and park-related variables, or which type of measure is more strongly related to physical activity outcomes.
Programming for a Capability System via Safety Games

New operating systems with security-specific system calls, such as the Capsicum capability system, allow programmers to write applications that satisfy strong security properties with significantly less effort than full verification. However, the amount of effort required is still high enough that even the Capsicum developers have reported difficulties in writing correct programs for their system. In this work, we present an algorithm that automatically rewrites a program for Capsicum so that it satisfies a given security policy by finding a winning strategy to an automata-theoretic safety game. We have implemented our algorithm as a tool, and we present experimental results that demonstrate that our algorithm can be applied to rewrite practical programs to satisfy practical security properties. Capsicum, combined with our algorithm, thus represents a sweet spot in the trade-off between the strength of policies that an operating system can enforce, and the ease of programming for such a system. We focus on an algorithm for rewriting programs for Capsicum. However, our algorithm can be naturally generalized to rewrite programs for systems different from Capsicum, such as decentralized information flow control and tagged-memory systems.
Handedness Trends across Age Groups in a Japanese Sample of 2316

Hand-preference data of 2316 Japanese were analyzed by age groups, sex, and familial sinistrality. Right-hand preference increased across age groups at least up to 30 years for men, while women showed relatively stable and stronger preference for right-hand use. Unlike some Western studies, no linear trends across age groups were found for both sexes. Declining cultural censorship against left-handedness would not be responsible for the trends, since there was no evidence indicating such a decline in Japan. Hypotheses of reduced longevity and life-long adaptation to the right-handed world are not satisfactory either, since both hypotheses assume a linear trend spanning the entire life span. Thus, it seems that a single-factor hypothesis which explains all the results by resorting to a single cause does not account for the complex results found in this and other studies.
Interkinetic Nuclear Migration and the Selection of Neurogenic Cell Divisions during Vertebrate Retinogenesis

During retinal development, neuroepithelial progenitor cells divide in either a symmetric proliferative mode, in which both daughter cells remain mitotic, or in a neurogenic mode, in which at least one daughter cell exits the cell cycle and differentiates as a neuron. Although the cellular mechanisms of neurogenesis remain unknown, heterogeneity in cell behaviors has been postulated to influence this cell fate. In this study, we analyze interkinetic nuclear migration, the apical–basal movement of nuclei in phase with the cell cycle, and the relationship of this cell behavior to neurogenesis. Using time-lapse imaging in zebrafish, we show that various parameters of interkinetic nuclear migration are significantly heterogeneous among retinal neuroepithelial cells. We provide direct evidence that neurogenic progenitors have greater basal nuclei migrations during the last cell cycle preceding a terminal mitosis. In addition, we show that atypical protein kinase C (aPKC)-mediated cell polarity is essential for the relationship between nuclear position and neurogenesis. Loss of aPKC also resulted in increased proliferative cell divisions and reduced retinal neurogenesis. Our data support a novel model for neurogenesis, in which interkinetic nuclear migration differentially positions nuclei in neuroepithelial cells and therefore influences selection of progenitors for cell cycle exit based on apical–basal polarized signals.
A New Robust and Secure Approach to SVD-3 Level DWT Video Watermarking

Digital watermarking is used to protect digital content such as images, audio and videos that have been tampered maliciously and with higher accuracy. Digital video watermarking is a new and merging area of research to exploit different ways in order to prohibit illegal replication and exploitation of digital contents. In this paper, to maintain the quality of video and to ensure the ownership we propose a new SVD-3 Level DWT watermarking embedding technique. Singular value decomposition (SVD) is an important transform technique in robust digital watermarking. We apply the 3 level DWT and SVD on selected frames and embed the watermark into randomly selected frames with the help of secret key to authenticate the video by considering the video quality, robustness and video imperceptibility.
Persistence Increases with Diversity and Connectance in Trophic Metacommunities

Background We are interested in understanding if metacommunity dynamics contribute to the persistence of complex spatial food webs subject to colonization-extinction dynamics. We study persistence as a measure of stability of communities within discrete patches, and ask how do species diversity, connectance, and topology influence it in spatially structured food webs. Methodology/Principal Findings We answer this question first by identifying two general mechanisms linking topology of simple food web modules and persistence at the regional scale. We then assess the robustness of these mechanisms to more complex food webs with simulations based on randomly created and empirical webs found in the literature. We find that linkage proximity to primary producers and food web diversity generate a positive relationship between complexity and persistence in spatial food webs. The comparison between empirical and randomly created food webs reveal that the most important element for food web persistence under spatial colonization-extinction dynamics is the degree distribution: the number of prey species per consumer is more important than their identity. Conclusions/Significance With a simple set of rules governing patch colonization and extinction, we have predicted that diversity and connectance promote persistence at the regional scale. The strength of our approach is that it reconciles the effect of complexity on stability at the local and the regional scale. Even if complex food webs are locally prone to extinction, we have shown their complexity could also promote their persistence through regional dynamics. The framework we presented here offers a novel and simple approach to understand the complexity of spatial food webs.
Inferencing processes after right hemisphere brain damage: effects of contextual bias.

PURPOSE Comprehension deficits associated with right hemisphere brain damage (RHD) have been attributed to an inability to use context, but there is little direct evidence to support the claim. This study evaluated the effect of varying contextual bias on predictive inferencing by adults with RHD. METHOD Fourteen adults with no brain damage (NBD) and 14 with RHD read stories constructed with either high predictability or low predictability of a specific outcome. Reading time for a sentence that disconfirmed the target outcome was measured and compared with a control story context. RESULTS Adults with RHD evidenced activation of predictive inferences only for highly predictive conditions, whereas NBD adults generated inferences in both high- and low-predictability stories. Adults with RHD were more likely than those with NBD to require additional time to integrate inferences in high-predictability conditions. The latter finding was related to working memory for the RHD group. Results are interpreted in light of previous findings obtained using the same stimuli. CONCLUSIONS RHD does not abolish the ability to use context. Evidence of predictive inferencing is influenced by task and strength of inference activation. Treatment considerations and cautions regarding interpreting results from one methodology are discussed.
Nontoxic doses of suramin enhance activity of paclitaxel against lung metastases.

We recently reported that acidic (aFGF) and basic (bFGF) fibroblast growth factors confer a broad spectrum chemoresistance in solid tumors, and that suramin, an inhibitor of multiple growth factors including aFGF and bFGF, enhanced the in vitro antitumor activity of several anticancer drugs including paclitaxel (Song, S., et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 97: 8658-8663, 2000). The present study investigated in vitro and in vivo interaction between paclitaxel and suramin, using human PC3-LN cells which, upon i.v. injection into immunodeficient mice, yielded lung metastases in 100% of animals. In in vitro studies, conditioned medium (CM) obtained from histocultures of rat lung metastases induced a 3-fold resistance. The addition of suramin had no effect in the absence of CM but reversed the CM-induced resistance; calculations based on the IC(50) values indicate a complete reversal in the presence of <20 microM suramin. Analysis by the combination index method indicates a synergistic interaction between paclitaxel and suramin. In in vivo studies, animals with well-established lung metastases (at least five nodules of 1 mm in diameter) were treated i.v. with paclitaxel (15 mg/kg) and suramin (10 mg/kg) administered twice weekly for 3 weeks. Single-drug therapy with paclitaxel or suramin did not reduce body weight. Suramin alone had no antitumor activity. Paclitaxel alone reduced the tumor size by approximately 75%, reduced the density of nonapoptotic cells by approximately 70% in residual tumors, and enhanced the fraction of apoptotic cells by approximately 3-fold. The addition of suramin to paclitaxel therapy enhanced the antitumor effect, resulting in an additional 5-fold reduction of tumor size, an additional 9-fold reduction of the density of nonapoptotic cells, and an additional 30% increase in the apoptotic cell fraction. These data indicate significant enhancement of the efficacy of paclitaxel by suramin and support the use of nontoxic doses of suramin with paclitaxel in the treatment of lung cancer.
Associations of polymorphisms of rs693 and rs1042031 in apolipoprotein B gene with risk of breast cancer in Chinese.

BACKGROUND Lipid synthesis is an integrated result of genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors, and also can promote growth and survival of cancer cells. Apolipoprotein B plays a central role in lipid metabolism as the major protein component of very-low-density lipoprotein and low-density lipoprotein. METHODS We investigated the associations of polymorphisms of rs693 (-7673C>T) and rs1042031 (-12669 G>A) in the APOB gene with risk of breast cancer in 675 blood-unrelated Chinese patients with breast cancer and 712 healthy controls. RESULTS Polymorphisms of -12669 G>A and -7673C>T in the APOB gene were significantly associated with an increased risk of breast cancer (P = 0.000), especially for postmenopausal women (P = 0.000, 0.023). The positive associations still remained after further analysis of the two polymorphisms' distribution according to body mass index. However, no statistical associations were found between -12669 G>A and -7673C>T polymorphisms and other clinical characteristics, including tumor size, lymph node metastasis, histological grade, estrogen and progesterone receptor status and Her-2 status. CONCLUSIONS rs693 and rs1042031 polymorphisms in the APOB gene increased the risk of breast cancer in Chinese, and this role of the two polymorphisms in connection with breast cancer was not dependent on body mass index.
Auditory and visual cortex of primates: a comparison of two sensory systems

A comparative view of the brain, comparing related functions across species and sensory systems, offers a number of advantages. In particular, it allows separation of the formal purpose of a model structure from its implementation in specific brains. Models of auditory cortical processing can be conceived by analogy to the visual cortex, incorporating neural mechanisms that are found in both the visual and auditory systems. Examples of such canonical features at the columnar level are direction selectivity, size/bandwidth selectivity, and receptive fields with segregated vs. overlapping ON and OFF subregions. On a larger scale, parallel processing pathways have been envisioned that represent the two main facets of sensory perception: (i) identification of objects; and (ii) processing of space. Expanding this model in terms of sensorimotor integration and control offers an overarching view of cortical function independently of sensory modality.