Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy to the Study of Brain Function in Humans and Animal Models

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a noninvasive optical imaging technique that indirectly assesses neuronal activity by measuring changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin in tissues using near-infrared light. fNIRS has been used not only to investigate cortical activity in healthy human subjects and animals but also to reveal abnormalities in brain function in patients suffering from neurological and psychiatric disorders and in animals that exhibit disease conditions. Because of its safety, quietness, resistance to motion artifacts, and portability, fNIRS has become a tool to complement conventional imaging techniques in measuring hemodynamic responses while a subject performs diverse cognitive and behavioral tasks in test settings that are more ecologically relevant and involve social interaction. In this review, we introduce the basic principles of fNIRS and discuss the application of this technique in human and animal studies.
Altruism or Just Showing Off ?

As the cheetah sees a gazelle standing silently in the wilderness, it slowly moves towards it. The cheetah suddenly springs up and initiates an active chase after the gazelle. The gazelle starts to run and then stots (running slowly initially and then jumping high). Is the gazelle trying to alert the other gazelles to the cheetah's presence, an act we call altruism, or trying to communicate to the cheetah to stop the fruitless chase, an anti-predator act? In other similar situations, some individuals of a species exhibit such an apparently altruistic behavior that has questioned many experts, may the motives be altruistic or selfish? In game theory, if individuals are in a state of self-interest, they would not be exhibiting such altruistic behavior if the reason is anything other than to increase the individual's utility. A " self-interested " individual is one who is just trying to maximize their own utility, not necessarily trying to harm others. The altruistic phenomenon that had become puzzling to many has been the topic of great interest for many researchers. Previously, there were three traditional models developed to explain this altruistic phenomenon and they occurred in the following order: group selection (GS), kin selection (KS) and reciprocal altruism (RA). Each of these models will be introduced and we will see how the " handicap principal " suggested by Amotz Zahavi has formed the basis of an alternative model to explain the altruistic behavior phenomenon; however, the strengths and limitations of all of these models will be presented. The group selection claims the idea that an individual helps in a group if the benefit of the group exceeds the individual investment. Zahavi (1995) mentioned that group selection is not illogical but it has been shown to be vulnerable to social parasitism. By social parasites, he meant the individuals who do not invest in the group's welfare gain just as much as those who do invest in the group. This model is no longer adopted by most scientists. The model that was
People Detection and Localization in Real Time during Navigation of Autonomous Robots

Currently the navigation involves the interaction of the robot with its environment, this means that the robot has to find the position of obstacles (natural brands and artificial) with respect to its plane. Its environment is time-variant and computer vision can help it to localization and people detection in real time. This article focuses on the detection and localization of people with respect to plane of the robot during the navigation of autonomous robot, for people detection is used Morphological HOG Face Detection algorithm in real-time, where our goal is to localization people in the plane of the robot, obtaining position information relative to the X-Axis (left, right, obstacle) and with the Y-Axis (near, medium, far) with respect robot, to identify the environment in that it's located in the robot is applied the vanishing point detection. Experiments show that people detection and localization is better in the medium region (201 to 600 cm) obtaining 93.13% of accuracy, this allows the robot has enough time to evade the obstacle during navigation, the navigation getting 97.03% of accuracy for the vanishing point detection.
Are Students Willing to Use Your Online Open Resources?

Student users’ acceptance is crucial to the success of open resources for university education. Drawing on the theory of reasoned behavior, technology acceptance model and flow theory, this research examines the factors affecting university students’ acceptance of open resources for university education. We have collected 200 valid questionnaires and conducted data analysis with structural equation modeling. The results show that information quality and perceived usefulness are the two main factors affecting users’ acceptance. Perceived ease of use significantly affects perceived usefulness and the perceived enjoyment. We have not found the obvious effect of the perceived enjoyment on user acceptance. Thus, open resource providers need to provide quality and useful information in order to improve students’ learning efficiency and learning effects.
Genomix: a method for combining gene-finders' predictions, which uses evolutionary conservation of sequence and intron-exon structure

MOTIVATION Correct gene predictions are crucial for most analyses of genomes. However, in the absence of transcript data, gene prediction is still challenging. One way to improve gene-finding accuracy in such genomes is to combine the exons predicted by several gene-finders, so that gene-finders that make uncorrelated errors can correct each other. RESULTS We present a method for combining gene-finders called Genomix. Genomix selects the predicted exons that are best conserved within and/or between species in terms of sequence and intron-exon structure, and combines them into a gene structure. Genomix was used to combine predictions from four gene-finders for Caenorhabditis elegans, by selecting the predicted exons that are best conserved with C.briggsae and C.remanei. On a set of approximately 1500 confirmed C.elegans genes, Genomix increased the exon-level specificity by 10.1% and sensitivity by 2.7% compared to the best input gene-finder. AVAILABILITY Scripts and Supplementary Material can be found at http://www.sanger. ac.uk/Software/analysis/genomix
Belt tactile interface for communication with mobile robot allowing intelligent obstacle detection

This paper focuses on the construction of a novel belt tactile interface and telepresence system intended for mobile robot control. The robotic system consists of a mobile robot and a wearable master robot. The elaborated algorithms allow the robot to precisely recognize the shape, boundaries, movement direction, speed, and distance to the obstacle by means of the laser range finders. The designed tactile belt interface receives the detected information and maps it through the vibrotactile patterns. We designed the patterns in such a way that they convey the obstacle parameters in a very intuitive, robust, and unobtrusive manner. The robot movement direction and speed are governed by the tilt of the user's torso. The sensors embedded into the belt interface measure the user orientation and gestures precisely. Such an interface lets to deeply engage the user into the teleoperation process and to deliver them the tactile perception of the remote environment at the same time. The key point is that the user gets the opportunity to use own arms, hands, fingers for operation of the robotic manipulators and another devices installed on the mobile robot platform. The experimental results of user study revealed the effectiveness of the designed vibration patterns for obstacle parameter presentation. The accuracy in 100% for detection of the moving object by participants was achieved. We believe that the developed robotic system has significant potential in facilitating the navigation of mobile robot while providing a high degree of immersion into remote space.
Epidemiological insights on the association between female genital mutilation and Hepatitis C Infection in Egypt: An Examination using Demographic and Health Survey data of Egypt, 2008.

Purpose: Egypt has the highest prevalence of chronic Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections and also a high prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM). The high prevalence chronic hepatitis C has been attributed to HCV transmission by contaminated injections for the control of schistosomiasis. HCV infection has not been well studied in the context of female genital mutilation (FGM). We sought to identify associations between FGM and HCV using the Egypt Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS), 2008. Methods: FGM was chosen as the main independent variable of interest. Other independent variables such as age, education, marital status, residence, beliefs associated with FGM, history of blood transfusion, surgery, sharing needles, and history of schistosomiasis were included in the analysis. Throughout the analysis, HCV infection was used as the main dependent variable. Results: Univariate analysis of FGM and HCV showed a statistically significant association with a Prevalence Odds Ratio of 4.82 (2.91 -7.96), after adjusting for age and schistosomiasis injection, the association between FGM and HCV remained statistically significant with an odds of 2.98 (1.76 – 5.05)Among the category for FGM performer and association with HCV infection, the OR was 4.28 (2.31 – 7.91) when the FGM was performed by a ghagaria, 3.68 (2.76 4.90) when the FGM was performed by daya, and 3.30 (1.81 -5.88) when the FGM was performed by a barber. Among other independent variables, a lack of education, rural residence, and having religious precepts for FGM had statistically increased odds of association with HCV infection. Conclusion: There is a statistically significant association between FGM and HCV infection. There are increased odds of HCV when the FGM is performed by providers other than doctors. Participants from a rural residence and who those who did not have any education were at increased odds of HCV. Subjects who believed in religious precepts for FGM and also who answered that FGM can continue had increased odds of association with HCV infections. Epidemiological insights on the association between female genital mutilation and Hepatitis C Infection in Egypt: An Examination using Demographic and Health Survey data of Egypt, 2008. Submitted to Georgia State University as a partial fulfillment for the Degree of Masters in Public Health Shameem Fathima Jabbar, MBBS. Thesis chair: Ike Solomon Okosun, MS, MPH, PhD, FRSPH, FTOS
Hypoxia Induces an Immunodominant Target of Tuberculosis Specific T Cells Absent from Common BCG Vaccines

M. tuberculosis (MTB) species-specific antigenic determinants of the human T cell response are important for immunodiagnosis and vaccination. As hypoxia is a stimulus in chronic tuberculosis infection, we analyzed transcriptional profiles of MTB subject to 168 hours of hypoxia to test the hypothesis that upregulation by hypoxia might result in gene products being recognized as antigens. We identified upregulation of two region of difference (RD) 11 (Rv2658C and Rv2659c), and one RD2 (Rv1986) absent from commonly used BCG strains. In MTB infected persons, the IL-2 ELISpot response to Rv1986 peptides was several times greater than the corresponding IFN-γ response to the reference immunodominant ESAT-6 or CFP-10 antigens. The IL-2 response was confined to two epitopic regions containing residues 61–80 and 161–180. The biggest population of IL-2 secreting T cells was single cytokine positive central memory T cells. The IL-2 response to live MTB bacilli lacking Rv1986 was significantly lower than the response to wild type or mutant complemented with Rv1986. In addition, the IL-2 response to Rv1986 was significantly lower in HIV-TB co-infected persons than in HIV uninfected persons, and significantly increased during antiretroviral therapy. These findings demonstrate that Rv1986 is an immunodominant target of memory T cells and is therefore of relevance when considering the partial efficacy of currently used BCG vaccines and provide evidence for a clinical trial comparing BCG strains.
Trajectory smoothing using jerk bounded shortcuts for service manipulator robots

This paper aims to smooth jerky trajectories for high-DOF manipulators with Soft Motion [1] shortcuts which are bounded in velocity, acceleration and jerk. The algorithm presented here iteratively picks two points on the trajectory and attempts to replace the intermediate trajectory with a shorter and collision-free segment. The objective of this algorithm is to shorten the execution time of an input trajectory as much as possible while retaining the feasibility. Simulation and real-world experimental results on reaching tasks in human environments show that this technique can generate smooth and collision-free motions for a KUKA Light-Weight Robot.
The rate of visuomotor adaptation correlates with cerebellar white‐matter microstructure

Convergent experimental evidence points to the cerebellum as a key neural structure mediating adaptation to visual and proprioceptive perturbations. In a previous study, we have shown that activity in the anterior cerebellum varies with the rate of learning, with fast learners exhibiting more activity in this region than slow learners. Here, we investigated whether this variability in behavior may partly reflect inter‐individual differences in the structural properties of cerebellar white‐matter output tracts. For this purpose, we used diffusion‐weighted magnetic resonance imaging to estimate fractional anisotropy (FA), and correlated the FA with the rate of adaptation to an optical rotation in 11 subjects. We found that FA in a region consistent with the superior cerebellar peduncle (SCP), containing fibers connecting the cerebellar cortex with motor and premotor cortex, was positively correlated with the rate of adaptation but not with the general level of performance or the initial deviation. The same pattern was observed in a region of the lateral posterior cerebellum. In contrast, FA in the angular gyrus of the posterior parietal cortex correlated positively both with the rate of adaptation and the overall level of performance. Our results show that the rate of learning a visuomotor task is associated with FA of cerebellar pathways. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A MIMO Transceiver Scheme Using TR-STBC for Single-Carrier UWB Communications with Frequency Domain Equalization

In this study, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques are applied to single-carrier (SC) frequency domain equalization (FDE) Ultra-wide band (UWB) systems with blockwise processing to obtain both frequency diversities and spatial diversities, for very high data transmission, over strongly frequency-selective UWB channels. Time reversal space-time block coding (TR-STBC) is utilized to achieve transmit diversity in the proposed scheme. The receiver employs Minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) FDE scheme and zero-forcing (ZF) FDE scheme with equal gain combining (EGC) diversity, respectively, to overcome the fading effect of UWB channels. Furthermore, this study presents a theoretical performance analysis result on conditional bit error rate (BER) in terms of various antennas numbers and different equalization schemes. Simulations are also provided for demonstrating that the proposed MIMO transceiver scheme for SC-FDE UWB preponderates over the SISO scheme and the oversampling diversity case.
Dispositional, Demographic, and Social Predictors of Trajectories of Intimate Partner Aggression in Early Adulthood

Objective: From a developmental systems perspective, the origins of maladjusted behavior are multifaceted, interdependent, and may differ at different points in development. Personality traits influence developmental outcomes, as do socialization environments, but the influence of personality depends on the socialization environment, and the influence of the socialization environment varies according to personality. The present study takes a developmental systems approach to investigate pathways through which dispositional traits in childhood might act in concert with peer and parental socialization contexts to predict trajectories of intimate partner aggression (IPA) during emerging adulthood. Method: The study included 466 participants (49% male, 81% European American, 15% African American) from a longitudinal study of social development. Measures of demographics, temperament, personality, parent–child relations, romantic relationships, peer relationships, and IPA were administered between 5 and 23 years of age. The study used latent growth curve analysis to predict variations in trajectories of IPA during early adulthood. Results: Numerous variables predicted risk for the perpetration of IPA, but different factors were associated at the end of adolescence (e.g., psychopathic traits) than with changes across early adulthood (e.g., friend antisociality). Males and individuals with a history of resistance to control temperament showed enhanced susceptibility to social risk factors, such as exposure to antisocial peers and poor parent-adolescent relations. Conclusions: Consistent with a developmental systems perspective, multiple factors, including personality traits in early childhood and aspects of the social environment in adolescence, predict trajectories of IPA during early adulthood through additive, mediated, and moderated pathways. Knowledge of these risk factors and for whom they are most influential could help inform efforts to prevent the emergence and persistence of IPA.
Cysteine Substitution Mutants Give Structural Insight and Identify ATP Binding and Activation Sites at P2X Receptors

P2X receptors for extracellular ATP are a distinct family of ligand-gated cation channels involved in physiological processes ranging from synaptic transmission to muscle contraction. Common ATP binding motifs are absent from P2X receptors, and the extent of the agonist binding site is unclear. We used cysteine-scanning mutagenesis, radiolabeled 2-azido ATP binding, and methanethiosulfonate (MTS) compounds to identify amino acid residues involved in ATP binding and gating of the human P2X1 receptor. The pattern of MTSEA [(2-aminoethyl)methanethiosulfonate hydrobromide] biotinylation was also used to determine the accessibility of substituted cysteine residues and whether this changed on addition of ATP. Analysis of cysteine-substituted mutants of the last 44 amino acid residues (S286–I329) in the extracellular loop before the second transmembrane segment showed that N290, F291, R292, and K309 mutants had reduced ATP potency and 2-azido ATP binding. MTS reagents produced additional shifts in ATP potency at these residues, suggesting that they are directly involved in ATP binding; the effects were dependent on the charge of the MTS reagent at K309C; one explanation for this is that K309 interacts directly with the negatively charged phosphate of ATP. The remainder of the cysteine substitutions had little or no effect on ATP potency. However, at the mutants D316C, G321C, A323C, and I328C, MTS reagents did not change ATP potency but modified agonist-evoked responses, suggesting that this region may contribute to the gating of the channel.
ON-SITE SELF-CALIBRATION USING PLANAR FEATURES FOR TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNERS

Terrestrial laser scanners provide a three-dimensional sampled representation (i.e. point cloud) of the surfaces of objects. They have great potential to improve the measurement and representation of remote and widespread objects for applications such as engineering metrology, cultural heritage recording and forestry, among others. Prior to performing measurement tasks such as these, proper error modelling and estimation is essential in order to remove the inherent systematic effects such as range finder offset, collimation axis error, etc. A rigorous, point-based self-calibration method has been demonstrated to be effective, but it is very labour-intensive since it requires manual measurement of a large number of signalised targets. In this paper, we propose a planar-feature-based “on-site” self-calibration method that can reduce the manual labour needed in the point-based method. After outlining the principles and mathematical models of the proposed method, the subject of model identification is addressed. Tests with simulated datasets reveal that the residual patterns from the plane-based method are markedly different from those of the point-based method. The ramification of this outcome is that systematic error identification, an important process for new instrumentation such as terrestrial laser scanners, is not straightforward. In addition, the tests of the proposed method with real terrestrial laser scanner datasets are presented and analysed.
Translating the Correct`wear' Verb from a Linguistic Cluster: Evidence from Verb Semantics in Cantonese and Vietnamese

This work addresses how`wear' is represented in Cantonese and Vietnamese. In particular, I have designed and conducted experiments which address speciic questions such as: what are thèwear' verbs in Cantonese and Vietnamese, how native speakers select amongst these verbs, how individual preferences could be incorporated into verb selection in machine translation, and whether clustering techniques provide any insight in translating`wear'.
Mathematical modeling of postcoinfection with influenza A virus and Streptococcus pneumoniae, with implications for pneumonia and COPD-risk assessment

Background The interaction between influenza and pneumococcus is important for understanding how coinfection may exacerbate pneumonia. Secondary pneumococcal pneumonia associated with influenza infection is more likely to increase respiratory morbidity and mortality. This study aimed to assess exacerbated inflammatory effects posed by secondary pneumococcal pneumonia, given prior influenza infection. Materials and methods A well-derived mathematical within-host dynamic model of coinfection with influenza A virus and Streptococcus pneumoniae (SP) integrated with dose–response relationships composed of previously published mouse experimental data and clinical studies was implemented to study potentially exacerbated inflammatory responses in pneumonia based on a probabilistic approach. Results We found that TNFα is likely to be the most sensitive biomarker reflecting inflammatory response during coinfection among three explored cytokines. We showed that the worst inflammatory effects would occur at day 7 SP coinfection, with risk probability of 50% (likely) to develop severe inflammatory responses. Our model also showed that the day of secondary SP infection had much more impact on the severity of inflammatory responses in pneumonia compared to the effects caused by initial virus titers and bacteria loads. Conclusion People and health care workers should be wary of secondary SP infection on day 7 post-influenza infection for prompt and proper control-measure implementation. Our quantitative risk-assessment framework can provide new insights into improvements in respiratory health especially, predominantly due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).