Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enzootic and Epizootic Rabies Associated with Vampire Bats, Peru

During the past decade, incidence of human infection with rabies virus (RABV) spread by the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) increased considerably in South America, especially in remote areas of the Amazon rainforest, where these bats commonly feed on humans. To better understand the epizootiology of rabies associated with vampire bats, we used complete sequences of the nucleoprotein gene to infer phylogenetic relationships among 157 RABV isolates collected from humans, domestic animals, and wildlife, including bats, in Peru during 2002–2007. This analysis revealed distinct geographic structuring that indicates that RABVs spread gradually and involve different vampire bat subpopulations with different transmission cycles. Three putative new RABV lineages were found in 3 non–vampire bat species that may represent new virus reservoirs. Detection of novel RABV variants and accurate identification of reservoir hosts are critically important for the prevention and control of potential virus transmission, especially to humans.
Extracting Implicit Social Relation for Social Recommendation Techniques in User Rating Prediction

Recommendation plays an increasingly important role in our daily lives. Recommender systems automatically suggest items to users that might be interesting for them. Recent studies illustrate that incorporating social trust in Matrix Factorization methods demonstrably improves accuracy of rating prediction. Such approaches mainly use the trust scores explicitly expressed by users. However, it is often challenging to have users provide explicit trust scores of each other. There exist quite a few works, which propose Trust Metrics to compute and predict trust scores between users based on their interactions. In this paper, first we present how social relation can be extracted from users' ratings to items by describing Hellinger distance between users in recommender systems. Then, we propose to incorporate the predicted trust scores into social matrix factorization models. By analyzing social relation extraction from three well-known real-world datasets, which both: trust and recommendation data available, we conclude that using the implicit social relation in social recommendation techniques has almost the same performance compared to the actual trust scores explicitly expressed by users. Hence, we build our method, called Hell-TrustSVD, on top of the state-of-the-art social recommendation technique to incorporate both the extracted implicit social relations and ratings given by users on the prediction of items for an active user. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to extend TrustSVD with extracted social trust information. The experimental results support the idea of employing implicit trust into matrix factorization whenever explicit trust is not available, can perform much better than the state-of-the-art approaches in user rating prediction.
Evaluation of Linear Regression Simultaneous Myoelectric Control Using Intramuscular EMG

Goal: The objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of linear regression models to decode patterns of muscle coactivation from intramuscular electromyogram (EMG) and provide simultaneous myoelectric control of a virtual 3-DOF wrist/hand system. Performance was compared to the simultaneous control of conventional myoelectric prosthesis methods using intramuscular EMG (parallel dual-site control)-an approach that requires users to independently modulate individual muscles in the residual limb, which can be challenging for amputees. Methods: Linear regression control was evaluated in eight able-bodied subjects during a virtual Fitts' law task and was compared to performance of eight subjects using parallel dual-site control. An offline analysis also evaluated how different types of training data affected prediction accuracy of linear regression control. Results: The two control systems demonstrated similar overall performance; however, the linear regression method demonstrated improved performance for targets requiring use of all three DOFs, whereas parallel dual-site control demonstrated improved performance for targets that required use of only one DOF. Subjects using linear regression control could more easily activate multiple DOFs simultaneously, but often experienced unintended movements when trying to isolate individual DOFs. Offline analyses also suggested that the method used to train linear regression systems may influence controllability. Conclusion and Significance: Linear regression myoelectric control using intramuscular EMG provided an alternative to parallel dual-site control for 3-DOF simultaneous control at the wrist and hand. The two methods demonstrated different strengths in controllability, highlighting the tradeoff between providing simultaneous control and the ability to isolate individual DOFs when desired.
The effect of age on neuromechanical responses to electrical stimulation of superficial peroneal nerve during walking

Supervisory Committee Dr. S. Hundza (School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education) Co-supervisor Dr. M. D. Klimstra (School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education) Co-supervisor Dr. E. P. Zehr (School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education) Departmental Member In the healthy young, stimulation of superficial peroneal nerve (SPn) cutaneous afferents at the ankle during walking has been shown to elicit functionally relevant neural and mechanical responses that contribute to obstacle avoidance during swing and have been referred to as stumble corrective responses. However, specific age-related differences in the stumble corrective response induced by electrically evoked cutaneous stimulation have yet to be determined. As a confounding contributor to age related changes in dynamic stability during locomotion, neural and mechanical changes in the stumble corrective response may result in a decreased ability to recover from a destabilizing incident and provide key markers of neuromuscular decline. Therefore the purpose of this study was to compare age-dependent differences in responses to electrically evoked stimulation of the superficial peroneal nerve at the ankle during walking in healthy young and elderly groups. Electromyograms (EMG) of the tibialis anterior (TA), soleus (Sol), medial gastrocnemius (MG), biceps femoris (BF) and vastus lateralis (VL) were recorded along with gait kinematics including joint displacement and angular velocity at the ankle and knee as well as toe clearance relative to the walking surface. Overall, the stumble corrective response was preserved in the elderly as evident by significant responses in kinematics and muscle activity that were similar in sign and phase to those seen in the healthy young. However, the magnitude of the kinematic responses and resulting toe clearance in older adults were significantly smaller than in the young. Further, during the swing phase of unstimulated walking cycles, there were reduced knee flexion, plantarflexion and toe clearance in the elderly with corresponding differences in muscle activity. Therefore, smaller kinematic responses to stimulation, in the elderly, superimposed on a different undisturbed gait profile, resulting in reduced toe clearance, reflects early degradation of the stumble corrective response. This early degradation is likely a prodromal sign of increased fall risk. This supports the potential use of cutaneous reflexes in quantifying degradation of neuromuscular control and its contribution to fall risk.
Success in College: From C 's in High School to A 's in College (review)

you stand is also influenced by where you have been, what you have said, and what you have written. Two of his most valuable discussions involve the leadership of administrators in enhancing diversity in all institutional initiatives (chapter 9), and the promotion of the concept of “The Integrated Scholar” (chapter 7). Integrated scholars possess a blend of teaching, research, and service; the advancement of this concept is particularly important at a time when these are becoming more independent at many colleges and universities (Schuster and Finkelstein, 2006). Section III, “Guidance to Various Academic Administrators and Support Professionals,” comprises six chapters concerning administrators’ roles and responsibilities in the important areas of professional development, strategic planning, budgeting, and fundraising. Administrators at all levels will find that these activities account for increasingly larger components of their own evaluations and for increasingly larger amounts of their time. Section IV, “Assessments and Evaluations,” contains two brief chapters on these core functions. At a time when stakeholders (from students and parents to accrediting agencies and government departments) expect greater accountability, issues of institutional and unit assessments and accreditation deserve more than one chapter. In addition, as a result of the ever larger involvement of ethical and legal issues associated with personnel evaluation, this process could also benefit from more attention. Smith points to the importance of the verification of credentials of external candidates. The recent example of a MIT dean of admissions who worked at the Institute for 28 years before it was discovered that she lied on her initial resume points to the importance of such verification and of the retroactive verification of credentials of present of employees. This will certainly help with accreditation agencies. The six chapters in section V, “Politics and Partnerships,” remind administrators of the importance of ethical concerns, conflicts of interests and commitments, regulatory compliance, arrangements with other organizations, and the importance of internationalbased programs. The concluding chapter is devoted to the mundane, but real, issue of inclement weather and the associated policies, procedures, and academic impacts. Smith advises that when confronted with potentially hazardous conditions, “I always recommend, erring on the safe side” (p.188). Finally, remember you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, “you can readily poll a group of friends and colleagues who have a special inclination to respond”(p.167). Throughout this review I have argued that individuals in various positions will benefit from this book. In addition, I suggest that Where You Stand Is Where You Sit would form the basis of an excellent staff development activity for groups of administrators. Through such an investment, an institution can enhance both the quality of its administrative staff and its overall effectiveness.
A new view of comparative economics

A comprehensive reevaluation of the nature of economic systems across the globe, A New View of Comparative Economic Systems is today's choice for today's world. This exciting text is not merely a re-treading of an obsolete Soviet-oriented text, but a fresh, new, and comprehensive reappraisal of the nature and study of economic systems. A New View of Comparative Economic Systems defines a new approach and will set the standard for years to come in Comparative Economic courses.
Effects of gait rehabilitation with a footpad-type locomotion interface in patients with chronic post-stroke hemiparesis: a pilot study

Objective: We developed a footpad-type locomotion interface called the GaitMaster. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the effects of gait rehabilitation using the GaitMaster in chronic stroke patients. Design: Randomized cross-over design. Setting: An outpatient department. Subjects: Twelve patients with chronic post-stroke hemiparesis. Intervention: In group A, patients underwent an ‘intervention phase’ followed by a ‘non-intervention phase’, whereas in group B, patients underwent the non-intervention phase first, followed by the intervention phase. In the four- or six-week intervention phase, participants underwent twelve 20-minute sessions of gait rehabilitation using the GaitMaster4. Main outcome measures: We measured gait speed and timed up-and-go test. Results: No differences between the two groups were observed in the baseline clinical data. For the combined groups A and B, the maximum gait and timed up-and-go test speeds improved significantly only in the intervention phase (P = 0.0001 and P = 0.003, respectively). The percentages of improvement from baseline at the end of GaitMaster training were 16.6% for the maximum gait speed and 8.3% for the timed up-and-go test. The effect size for GaitMaster4 training was 0.58 on the maximum gait speed and 0.43 on the timed up-and-go test. Conclusions: This pilot study showed that gait rehabilitation using the GaitMaster4 was a feasible training method for chronic stroke patients. Calculation of the sample size indicated that a sample size of 38 participants would be adequate to test a null hypothesis of nil benefit additional to routine rehabilitation for chronic stroke patients in a future randomized controlled trial.
The CUHTK-entropic 10xRT broadcast news transcription system

This paper describes the development of the CUHTK-Entropic 10xRT Broadcast News Transcription System. Previous HTK broadcast news transcription systems have focused on maximising accuracy with few constraints on compute power available. In order to develop a system running in under 10 times real time on a single CPU, detailed investigation and optimisation of the system architecture and mode of operation was required. This paper outlines those developments and discusses the way in which operation under 10xRT was ensured despite variability of the data to be recognised. On the 1998 test the system produced an average word error rate of 16.1% running in 9.5xRT.
Clutter Rejection methods in Doppler color flow imaging: Single-ensemble vs. multi-ensemble

Clutter filter which efficiently increases the estimation accuracy of blood flow velocity attracts much attentions in Doppler color flow imaging. In this paper, we briefly introduce several state-of-the-art clutter suppression methods based on our recently works and categorize them to the singleensemble method and multi-ensemble one. Then the computing complexity of all competing methods were analyzed in-depth to provide a valuable suggestion at the real clinical situations. Furthermore, two group of clinical experiments on volunteer's carotid artery and kidney data were used to evaluate performance between single-ensemble methods and multi-ensemble ones. The results verify that the single-ensemble method shows best clutter rejection when imaging single carotid vessel, while the multi-ensemble method achieves a higher performance for kidney imaging which includes multi-stage vessels.
Mithramycin A sensitizes cancer cells to TRAIL-mediated apoptosis by down-regulation of XIAP gene promoter through Sp1 sites

Mithramycin A is a DNA-binding antitumor agent, which has been clinically used in the therapies of several types of cancer and Paget's disease. In this study, we investigated the combined effect of mithramycin A and tumor necrosis factor-α–related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) on apoptosis of cancer cells. In Caki renal cancer cells, which are resistant to TRAIL, cotreatment with subtoxic doses of mithramycin A and TRAIL resulted in a marked increase in apoptosis. This combined treatment was also cytotoxic to Caki cells overexpressing Bcl-2 but not to normal mesengial cells. Moreover, apoptosis by the combined treatment with mithramycin A and TRAIL was dramatically induced in various cancer cell types, thus offering an attractive strategy for safely treating malignant tumors. Mithramycin A–stimulated TRAIL-induced apoptosis was blocked by pretreatment with the broad caspase inhibitor zVAD-fmk or Crm-A overexpression, showing its dependence on caspases. We found that mithramycin A selectively down-regulated XIAP protein levels in various cancer cells. Luciferase reporter assay and the chromatin immunoprecipitation assay using the XIAP promoter constructs show that mithramycin A down-regulates the transcription of XIAP gene through inhibition of Sp1 binding to its promoter. Although XIAP overexpression significantly attenuated apoptosis induced by mithramycin A plus TRAIL, suppression of XIAP expression by transfection with its small interfering RNA prominently enhanced TRAIL-induced apoptosis. We present here for the first time that mithramycin A–induced suppression of XIAP transcription plays a critical role in the recovery of TRAIL sensitivity in various cancer cells. [Mol Cancer Ther 2006;5(11):2737–46]
Sibling development : implications for mental health practitioners

I heartily recommend "Sibling Development. ""--CFLE Network Newsletter (National Council on Family Relations) Sibling relationships have a major influence on a person's development and behavior, yet, until now the topic has been seriously underrepresented in the professional literature. "Sibling Development: Implications for Mental Health Practitioners" addresses this gap by examining the range of developmental, clinical, and cultural issues related to sibling relationships. It highlights positive sibling relationships as a source of strength and resilience; at the other end of the spectrum, it addresses sibling abuse, a dangerous and underdiagnosed condition. It demonstrates the crucial support that siblings can provide each other in families experiencing mental illness, substance abuse, divorce, and other stressors. It also considers issues of cultural and ethnic diversity, gender, disability, and sexual orientation as they relate to siblings and their families. Each chapter provides case studies to illustrate how theory and empirical findings can be incorporated into culturally informed treatment, and offers implications for practice and future research. It is an essential resource for all practitioners, researchers, students, and educators who work with or study siblings. Key Features: Examines the role of siblings as cultural educators and socializing agents Offers empirically derived treatment approaches for siblings and families Discusses lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender siblings Includes case studies to demonstrate how to integrate theory and empirical findings into practice Looks at sibling dynamics in families with mental illness, substance abuse, and divorce, as well as siblings of individuals with disabilities Discusses sibling relationships in transracial adoptive families
Ion Move Brownian Dynamics (IMBD)--simulations of ion transport.

PURPOSE Comparison of the computed characteristics and physiological measurement of ion transport through transmembrane proteins could be a useful method to assess the quality of protein structures. Simulations of ion transport should be detailed but also timeefficient. METHODS The most accurate method could be Molecular Dynamics (MD), which is very time-consuming, hence is not used for this purpose. The model which includes ion-ion interactions and reduces the simulation time by excluding water, protein and lipid molecules is Brownian Dynamics (BD). In this paper a new computer program for BD simulation of the ion transport is presented. We evaluate two methods for calculating the pore accessibility (round and irregular shape) and two representations of ion sizes (van der Waals diameter and one voxel). RESULTS Ion Move Brownian Dynamics (IMBD) was tested with two nanopores: alpha-hemolysin and potassium channel KcsA. In both cases during the simulation an ion passed through the pore in less than 32 ns. Although two types of ions were in solution (potassium and chloride), only ions which agreed with the selectivity properties of the channels passed through the pores. CONCLUSIONS IMBD is a new tool for the ion transport modelling, which can be used in the simulations of wide and narrow pores.
Increasing effect of body weight perception on suicidal ideation among young Korean women: Findings from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001 and 2005

Objective: To examine the prevalence of actual and perceived overweight and to compare the mediating effect of perceived overweight on the relationship between actual overweight and suicidal ideation among young Korean women between 2001 and 2005. Methods: Data were gathered from the 2001 and 2005 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys involving a nationally representative sample of young women (568 in 2001 and 385 in 2005) aged 20–29 years. Results: Over the 5-year period, the prevalence of actual overweight (body mass index ≥23 kg/m2) and perceived overweight increased by 10.5% and 22.8%, respectively. The discrepancy between actual and perceived body weights was much wider in 2005 than in 2001. After controlling for covariates (age, marital status, educational attainment, employment status, smoking status, alcohol consumption, and regular exercise), overweight women were more likely to think about suicide than their normal-weight counterparts in both periods. However, in both periods, the association between overweight and suicidal ideation became nonsignificant when perceived weight was considered. In both periods, a self-perception of overweight was associated with an increased risk of suicidal ideation, but the association was much stronger in 2005 than in 2001. Conclusion: This study suggests a need for educational programs or effective treatments to help young women who perceive themselves as overweight to reduce the potential risk of suicidal ideation in later life.
Ensemble of multiple descriptors for automatic image annotation

Automatic image annotation (AIA) plays an important role and attracts much research attention in image understanding and retrieval. Annotation can be posed as classification problems where each annotation keyword is defined as a group of database images labeled with a semantic word. It is shown that, by establishing one-to-one corresponding between image region and semantic keyword is a feasible approach for automatic image annotation. In this paper, we proposed a novel algorithm, EMDAIA for automatic image annotation based on ensemble of descriptors. EMDAIA regards the annotation process as a multi-class image classification. The producers of EMDAIA are presented as follows. First, each image is segmented into a collection of image regions. For each region, a variety of low-level visual descriptors are extracted. All regions are then clustered into k categories with each cluster associated with an annotation keyword. Moreover, for an unlabeled instance, distance between this instance and each cluster center is measured and the nearest category's keyword is chosen to annotate it. Experiment results on LabelMe, a benchmark dataset, shows EMDAIA outperforms some recent state-of-the-art automatic image annotation algorithms.