Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Postural Responses to a Suddenly Released Pulling Force in Older Adults with Chronic Low Back Pain: An Experimental Study

Chronic low back pain (CLBP), one of the most common musculoskeletal conditions in older adults, might affect balance and functional independence. The purpose of this study was to investigate the postural responses to a suddenly released pulling force in older adults with and without CLBP. Thirty community-dwelling older adults with CLBP and 26 voluntary controls without CLBP were enrolled. Participants were required to stand on a force platform while, with one hand, they pulled a string that was fastened at the other end to a 2-kg or to a 4-kg force in the opposite direction at a random order. The number of times the participants lost their balance and motions of center of pressure (COP) when the string was suddenly released were recorded. The results demonstrated that although the loss of balance rates for each pulling force condition did not differ between groups, older adults with CLBP had poorer postural responses: delayed reaction, larger displacement, higher velocity, longer path length, and greater COP sway area compared to the older controls. Furthermore, both groups showed larger postural responses in the 4-kg pulling force condition. Although aging is generally believed to be associated with declining balance and postural control, these findings highlight the effect of CLBP on reactive balance when responding to an externally generated force in an older population. This study also suggests that, for older adults with CLBP, in addition to treating them for pain and disability, reactive balance evaluation and training, such as reaction and movement strategy training should be included in their interventions. Clinicians and older patients with CLBP need to be made aware of the significance of impaired reactive balance and the increased risk of falls when encountering unexpected perturbations.
Prosody-Based Sentence Boundary Detection of Spontaneous Speech

Sentence boundary detection (SBD), also known as sentence breaking decides where a sentence begins and ends. This paper describes sentence boundary detection using acoustic and prosodic features for spontaneous Malay language spoken audio. We introduced the addition of volume change rate to 7 prosodic features and rate-of-speech for our preliminary experiment of detecting sentence boundary. Experiments are conducted on a forty-two minutes question-answer (Q/A) session of spontaneous speech comprising 12 adult male speakers and 4 female speakers. The speech datasets are first classified as speech/non-speech segments and only the non-speech segments are further tested as candidates of sentence boundaries. Our proposed rule-based method of boundary detection managed a promising 74.88% accuracy rate. For future work, we are considering to utilize learning algorithm to improve the accuracy rate and reduce false alert.
Multi-Beacons Energy-efficient Geographical Routing for Low Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks

a standard based geographical routing provides low data rate connectivity at a very small power consumption and low complexity to inexpensive devices. The existing geographical relies on finding the least power consuming path by creating and maintaining routing tables. Beacon packets are used for computing power and energy consumption between two nodes. This power and energy consumption information is used for creating and updating the routing tables at various nodes. For every change in the data transmission conditions, multiple beacon packets are exchanged between various nodes for updating the routing tables. The network time and power consumption during this interval is undesired and hence must be minimized. In this paper, multiple beacons based energy efficient geographical (MbIEG) routing scheme for IEEE 802.15. 4a standard is presented. The proposed scheme uses three types of beacon packets of different bit length. The network initialization is done using the beacon packet of standard bit length, while the intermediate network update is done using beacon packets of smaller size. The reduction in beacon packet size reduces the transmission time and power consumption. Using selective update procedure, the number of computations required is reduced for finding the optimal energy efficient route to destination. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve same performance as the existing topology in terms of route length and delivery ratio. Due to reduction in intermediate power consumption and number of computations the overall energy consumption of the network is reduced. Reduction in complexity, computations and energy consumption make the proposed scheme useful for achieving low-power consumption, low cost solutions for IEEE 802.15. 4a networks.
Epibatidine and pain.

In 1992 the chemical epibatidine (fig. 1), isolated from the skin of the Equadorian poison-arrow frog Epipedobates tricolor, was shown to be 200 times more potent than morphine in blocking heat nociception in the mouse. The study was carried out using the hotplate test, which measures the time taken for a mouse to show a behavioural response (jumping or paw licking) when stood on a heated plate maintained at 55 C. Epibatidine had been described 10 years earlier by Daly and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA, but had been isolated in such small amounts that it could not be characterized. However, so potent was the antinociceptive effect of the compound – less than 5 g kg 1 i.p. causes an antinociception response in the mouse – that the effect was used as a bioassay during the further isolation and purification of epibatidine. The antinociceptive effect of epibatidine was not blocked by the opioid antagonist naloxone, suggesting a therapeutic action different from that of morphine and a potentially novel therapeutic mechanism of providing pain relief. This was an exciting finding because it opened up the possibility of a new therapy, without the adverse effects of opiates, for the treatment of severe pain. However, epibatidine was extremely toxic, causing hypertension, respiratory paralysis and seizures, with death occurring at doses not much higher than those required for antinociception. 65 Extensive modification of the compound would be necessary to provide a useful therapeutic agent. Such was the interest in epibatidine that by 1993 synthetic material was available in larger amounts. 36 Synthesis of the optical isomers of epibatidine quickly followed, potentially offering an important advantage in describing the pharmacology of the compound. Epibatidine is the exo-isomer of the two possible geometric isomers (fig. 1) and can exist as two enantiomers ( )or R-epibatidine and ( )or S-epibatidine. The natural compound is the ( ) isomer, although there is little difference in pharmacological activity between the ( ) and ( ) isomers. 20 72 The endo-isomer (fig. 1) is inactive. 58 These advances in synthesis of epibatidine’s isomers made it possible to discover more about this exceptionally potent compound. A news article in Science in 1993 stated that the “race is on to turn the potential (of epibatidine) into reality”. In this review, I shall consider the progress
Youth motivations to watch sports in Indian context: exploring cross-nationality and cross-gender differences

Abstract The current study revolves around research in sport consumption motivations exploring Nationality and Gender difference across fan motivations to watch sports in a way similar to Kwon and Trail (2001) in Indian context, a subject neglected until now. Data was collected from 260 respondents from India’s largest Private University. Findings reveal Group Affiliation as the most important motivation followed by Eustress (entertainment), Aesthetics, and Self-Esteem. Betting on sports was found as the least preferred motivation. Findings revealed Nationality having a significant impact on Group Affiliation and Aesthetics while Gender has a significant impact on Group Affiliation, Eustress as well as on level of identification with sport. These findings have implications for sports marketers of different sporting events involved in marketing of sports related activities to enhance their marketing practices. The results of the current study are of interest for physical education departments of large private Universities which can use them to promote their sports events at a large scale. The last section of the study discusses the results in detail followed by directions for future research.
A Classification Approach of Granules Based on Variable Precision Rough Sets

The key to granular computing (GrC) is to make use of granules in problem solving. Classification is one of important problems in machine learning and data mining. With view of granular computing, this paper presents a classification approach to granules based on the variable precision rough set (VPRS) model. An algorithm is proposed and a tree structure of granules is given.
Mechano-electrical feedback during Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy?

Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT) has emerged as an important therapy to improve pump function in heart failure patients with left bundle branch block (LBBB). Using a multi-scale modeling approach, we investigated the effect of mechano-electrical feedback (MEF) during LBBB and CRT on cardiac function and dispersion of repolarization. Our model describes cellular electrophysiology and calcium handling as well as cardiac mechanics and hemodynamics. Ventricular electromechanics is represented by a single cardiac fiber, while physiological pressure-volume loops are obtained by simulating the systemic circulation. LBBB was simulated by activating the fiber at one end and CRT by simultaneous activation at both ends. Systolic function improved with onset of CRT, but diastolic function only improved after MEF. We conclude that MEF during LBBB may lead to an increase in dispersion of repolarization during onset of CRT, which may lead to impaired diastolic function and to ventricular arrhythmia.
Study on the computational cost of EEG dynamic modeling methods

The recording of brain activity at the scalp level, also known as electroencephalography (EEG), is a brain imaging technique commonly used in the clinical environment. Adequate modeling of the recorded signals could help to improve the diagnosis of several illnesses such as sleep disorders and epilepsy. This paper presents a computational cost analysis for dynamic modeling methods and considers their suitability to real-time biomedical applications. The analyzed state-of-the-art methods are Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBN) and Sequential Independent Component Analysis Mixture Modeling (SICAMM). The results show that the ICA-based methods have a lower computational cost than the BN-based methods. The applicability of these methods to patient monitoring using EEG signals is discussed, considering the improvement of the time response by means of parallelization techniques.
Promoting developmental transcription

Animal growth and development depend on the precise control of gene expression at the level of transcription. A central role in the regulation of developmental transcription is attributed to transcription factors that bind DNA enhancer elements, which are often located far from gene transcription start sites. Here, we review recent studies that have uncovered significant regulatory functions in developmental transcription for the TFIID basal transcription factors and for the DNA core promoter elements that are located close to transcription start sites.
Towards a framework for human judgements of quantitative information: the numerical judgement process, NJP model

ABSTRACT This contribution presents a review and a theoretical process framework for human intuitive numerical judgments based on numerical information, The NJP model. The model is descriptive and includes one or several of the following stages, each consisting of information processing and solution strategies (1) problem readings (2) recognitions, (3) associations, (4) similarity assessments, (5) problem interpretations, (6) computations, (7) marker nominations, (8) start value selections and (9) adjustments. three main types of strategies are used separately, in sequence or simultaneously with others in and across stages: (i) Associative strategies, e.g., an answer is retrieved immediately, (ii) Computational strategies, different algorithms are applied to the information and (iii) Analogue strategies, visual analogue representations, e.g., anchoring and adjustment. The paper concludes that a generic model of intuitive judgments will inspire further studies of the psychological processes activated when a judge makes an intuitive numerical judgment.
Forensic analysis of Wickr application on android devices

As there are many applications that are supported by smartphones, so there is an increasing interest in finding artifacts (digital evidence) created by such applications. Wickr is a free application that allows users to send self-destructing files and messages. It came out as an iOS-only app but now it is launched in “public-beta” for android devices. As claimed by the Wickr app founders, it leaves no traces behind even for forensic investigators. This research focuses on authenticating the claims above. Experiments consisting of various test cases on rooted and non-rooted android devices were performed to investigate whether the traces are left behind or not.
A model to predict anti-regressive effort in Open Source Software

Accumulated changes on a software system are not uniformly distributed: some elements are changed more often than others. For optimal impact, the limited time and effort for complexity control, called anti-regressive work, should be applied to the elements of the system which are frequently changed and are complex. Based on this, we propose a maintenance guidance model (MGM) which is tested against real-world data. MGM takes into account several dimensions of complexity: size, structural complexity and coupling. Results show that maintainers of the eight open source systems studied tend, in general, to prioritize their anti-regressive work in line with the predictions given by our MGM, even though, divergences also exist. MGM offers a history-based alternative to existing approaches to the identification of elements for anti-regressive work, most of which use static code characteristics only.
Pediatric Integrative Medicine in Residency Program: Relationship between Lifestyle Behaviors and Burnout and Wellbeing Measures in First-Year Residents

It is widely recognized that burnout is prevalent in medical culture and begins early in training. Studies show pediatricians and pediatric trainees experience burnout rates comparable to other specialties. Newly developed Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) core competencies in professionalism and personal development recognize the unacceptably high resident burnout rates and present an important opportunity for programs to improve residents experience throughout training. These competencies encourage healthy lifestyle practices and cultivation of self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, mindfulness, and compassion—a paradigm shift from traditional medical training underpinned by a culture of unrealistic endurance and self-sacrifice. To date, few successful and sustainable programs in resident burnout prevention and wellness promotion have been described. The University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine Pediatric Integrative Medicine in Residency (PIMR) curriculum, developed in 2011, was designed in part to help pediatric programs meet new resident wellbeing requirements. The purpose of this paper is to detail levels of lifestyle behaviors, burnout, and wellbeing for the PIMR program’s first-year residents (N = 203), and to examine the impact of lifestyle behaviors on burnout and wellbeing. The potential of the PIMR to provide interventions addressing gaps in lifestyle behaviors with recognized association to burnout is discussed.
Identifying Causal Genes at the Multiple Sclerosis Associated Region 6q23 Using Capture Hi-C

Background The chromosomal region 6q23 has been found to be associated with multiple sclerosis (MS) predisposition through genome wide association studies (GWAS). There are four independent single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with MS in this region, which spans around 2.5 Mb. Most GWAS variants associated with complex traits, including these four MS associated SNPs, are non-coding and their function is currently unknown. However, GWAS variants have been found to be enriched in enhancers and there is evidence that they may be involved in transcriptional regulation of their distant target genes through long range chromatin looping. Aim The aim of this work is to identify causal disease genes in the 6q23 locus by studying long range chromatin interactions, using the recently developed Capture Hi-C method in human T and B-cell lines. Interactions involving four independent associations unique to MS, tagged by rs11154801, rs17066096, rs7769192 and rs67297943 were analysed using Capture Hi-C Analysis of Genomic Organisation (CHiCAGO). Results We found that the pattern of chromatin looping interactions in the MS 6q23 associated region is complex. Interactions cluster in two regions, the first involving the rs11154801 region and a second containing the rs17066096, rs7769192 and rs67297943 SNPs. Firstly, SNPs located within the AHI1 gene, tagged by rs11154801, are correlated with expression of AHI1 and interact with its promoter. These SNPs also interact with other potential candidate genes such as SGK1 and BCLAF1. Secondly, the rs17066096, rs7769192 and rs67297943 SNPs interact with each other and with immune-related genes such as IL20RA, IL22RA2, IFNGR1 and TNFAIP3. Finally, the above-mentioned regions interact with each other and therefore, may co-regulate these target genes. Conclusion These results suggest that the four 6q23 variants, independently associated with MS, are involved in the regulation of several genes, including immune genes. These findings could help understand mechanisms of disease and suggest potential novel therapeutic targets.
Combination Therapy of Inhaled Indacaterol/Glycopyrronium for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in the Very Elderly: Is It Safe? An Electrocardiographic Evaluation

Cardiovascular (CV) comorbidities in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are associated with increased morbidity and mortality, especially in old and very old subjects. The question if long-acting beta-agonist and long-acting muscarinic antagonist could be associated with the increased prevalence of CV-related adverse effects has puzzled, particularly in the past, specialists involved in the management of respiratory diseases. The safety of these compounds has scarcely been tested in patients aged ≥ 65 years with CV comorbidities, since randomized controlled trials rarely include this subpopulation. However, the fixed combination indacaterol/glycopyrronium has shown a favorable CV safety profile in both healthy volunteers and COPD patients. Thus, we aimed to assess the CV safety pro- file of the fixed combination indacaterol/glycopyrronium 110/50 μg in a series of COPD patients aged ≥ 80 years with several comorbidities. Our results indicate that this combination is safe in the comorbid elderly, since no significant electrocardiographic abnormalities were recorded after the administration of the inhaled therapy. Only rare and nonclinically significant changes in heart rate and corrected QT interval duration were evident, mainly in females and in patients with concomitant impaired kidney function.
LEARNING THE VISUAL WORD CODE

Visual words are peculiar cognitive entities living under several and apparently conflicting requirements. Although behavioural studies have taught us just how flexible visual word representations are in the brain, the trivial fact that we can distinguish between anagrams demands that these representations somehow carry letter order. In this chapter we present a connectionist network developed so as to test a simple hypothesis on the character of the orthographic code: that its flexibility is a by-product of location invariance. We then illustrate a more explanatory aspect of the modelling approach to gain some insights into the kind of code used by this location invariant network -how it actually keeps track of letter order. Implications for the field of visual word recognition and future research are discussed.
Integrable Hierarchies and Wakimoto Modules

In our earlier papers we proposed a new approach to integrable hierarchies of soliton equations and their quantum deformations. We have applied this approach to the Toda field theories and the generalized KdV and modified KdV (mKdV) hierarchies. In this paper we apply our approach to the Ablowitz-Kaup-Newell-Segur (AKNS) hierarchy and its generalizations. In particular, we show that the free field (Wakimoto) realization of an affine algebra naturally appears in the context of the generalized AKNS hierarchies. This is analogous to the appearance of the free field (quantum Miura) realization of a W-algebra in the context of the generalized KdV equations. As an application, we give here a new proof of the existence of the Wakimoto realization.
An Intelligent Interface for relational databases

In the present computing world, most new-generation database applications demand intelligent interface to enhance efficient interactions between database and the users. The most accessible interfaces for databases must be intelligent and able to understand natural language expressions. In this paper mapping of natural language queries to SQL is discussed. We propose a general architecture for an intelligent database interface and also a real implementation of such a system which can be connected to any database. One of the main characteristics of this interface is domain-independence, which means that this interface can be used with any database. Another characteristic of this system is ease of configuration. The intelligent interface employs semantic matching technique to convert natural language query to SQL using dictionary and set of production rules. The dictionary consists of semantics sets for tables and columns. The shaped query is executed and the results are presented to the user. This interface was first tested using Supplier-Parts database and secondly with Northwind database of SQL server 7.0. KeywordsDatabases; Structured Query Language (SQL); intelligent interface; Intelligent Database System (IDBS), Flexible Querying; Intelligent Layer; Domain Independent Interface.
The Application of Imaging Flow Cytometry to High-Throughput Biodosimetry

Biodosimetry methods, including the dicentric chromosome assay, the cytokinesis.block micronucleus assay and the γH2AX marker of DNA damage are used to determine the dose of ionizing radiation. These techniques are particularly useful when physical dosimetry is absent or questioned. While these assays can be very sensitive and specific, the standard methods need to be adapted to increase sample throughput in the case of a large.scale radiological/nuclear event. Recent modifications to the microscope.based assays have resulted in some increased throughput, and a number of biodosimetry networks have been, and continue to be, established and strengthened. As the imaging flow cytometer. (IFC) is a technology that can automatically image and analyze processed blood samples for markers of radiation damage, the microscope.based biodosimetry techniques can be modified for the IFC for high.throughput biological dosimetry. Furthermore, the analysis templates can be easily shared between networked biodosimetry laboratories for increased capacity and improved standardization. This review describes recent advances in IFC methodology and their application to biodosimetry.