Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SleepMinder: An innovative contact-free device for the estimation of the apnoea-hypopnoea index

We describe an innovative sensor technology (SleepMinder™) for contact-less and convenient measurement of sleep and breathing in the home. The system is based on a novel non-contact biomotion sensor and proprietary automated analysis software. The biomotion sensor uses an ultra low-power radio-frequency transceiver to sense the movement and respiration of a subject. Proprietary software performs a variety of signal analysis tasks including respiration analysis, sleep quality measurement and sleep apnea assessment. This paper measures the performance of SleepMinder as a device for the monitoring of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and the provision of an estimate of the apnoea-hypopnoea index (AHI). The SleepMinder was tested against expert manually scored PSG data of patients gathered in an accredited sleep laboratory. The comparison of SleepMinder to this gold standard was performed across overnight recordings of 129 subjects with suspected SDB. The dataset had a wide demographic profile with the age ranging between 20 and 81 years. Body weight included subjects with normal weight through to the very obese (Body Mass Index: 21-44 kg/m2). SDB severity ranged from subjects free of SDB to those with severe SDB (AHI: 0.8-96 events/hours). SleepMinder's AHI estimation has a correlation of 91% and can detect clinically significant SDB (AHI>15) with a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 92%.
Throughput analysis of multiple-access-relay channel based on rateless coding

In this paper, we consider a new scheme based on jointly network and rateless coding for a multiple-access relay channel. In the scheme, whenever the relay can decode multiple messages of the users, it jointly encodes them using a larger rateless code. This scheme is compared with direct transmission and the conventional relaying scheme in which the relay helps each user independently at orthogonal channels. The comparison is made by evaluating the throughput of different schemes. The analytical and the simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the other ones at the cases considered.
Community Violence Exposure and Sexual Behaviors in a Nationally Representative Sample of Young Adults: The Effects of Race/Ethnicity and Gender

ABSTRACT This study examined whether exposure to community violence was related to sexual risk behaviors in a nationally representative sample of young adults and if there were gender or racial/ethnic differences in these relationships. The analytic sample for this study was drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and was composed of 7,726 unmarried, heterosexual African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic/Latino young adults aged 18 to 27 years old. Approximately 12% of participants reported some community violence exposures, with men and African Americans reporting the highest rates of such exposures. Regression analyses controlling for age, gender, parental education, and family structure indicated that exposures to community violence were associated with earlier sexual debut history, a higher number of sexual partners within the previous 12 months, and a higher number of total sexual partners. Additionally, violence exposures had stronger effects for males and weaker effects for African Americans. Primary and secondary sexual risk prevention initiatives would need to consider how patterns of sexual risk behaviors may be related to exposure to community violence and how such relationships may differ based on gender and race/ethnicity. Future research should also seek to illuminate pathways connecting these 2 major public health concerns.
Perinatal depression and psychosis: an update

Summary About 85% of women experience some type of postpartum mood disturbance. Generally, the symptoms are mild and short-lived, but a minority of women develop depressive illness or sudden psychosis. About half of episodes of apparently postnatal depression start during pregnancy and some seemingly postpartum psychoses start before delivery. Untreated antenatal depression can lead to poor obstetric outcomes, subsequent depression in the mother, and developmental disadvantage and depression later in life in the offspring. In this article we discuss the aetiology of perinatal depression and consider recommended pharmaceutical and psychosocial management of postpartum blues, perinatal depression and postpartum psychosis.
Pause Time Optimal Setting for AODV Protocol on RPGM Mobility Model in MANETs

For the last few years, a number of routing protocols have been proposed and implemented for wireless mobile Ad hoc network. The motivation behind this paper is to discover and study the pause time effects on Ad hoc on Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol and find out the node pause time optimal setting for this protocol where Reference Point Group Mobility (RPGM) model uses as a reference model. In order to come across the best performance of a particular routing protocol, there a need to examine a number of parameters with different performance and analyze the optimal setting of that protocol and its network configuration environment. This experiment, the speed is fixed with 20 ms in all scenarios while the pause time is varying from scenario to another to observe the optimal setting of the pause time on protocol’s performance in this configuration. The outcome of the experiment are analyzed with different parameters such as varying number of nodes, increasing connections, increasing pause time and discussed the effects of the pause time. The results have shown that the value of the pause time can be affecting the performance of the protocol. In the experiment, we found that the lower pause time give better performance of the protocol. However, this paper is a part of ongoing research on AODV protocol in link failure. Thus, it is important to figure out the factors which can be involved the performance of the protocol.
Distributed Coverage Games for Energy-Aware Mobile Sensor Networks

Inspired by current challenges in data-intensive and energy-limited sensor networks, we formulate a coverage optimization problem for mobile sensors as a (constrained) repeated multiplayer game. Each sensor tries to optimize its own coverage while minimizing the processing/energy cost. The sensors are subject to the informational restriction that the environmental distribution function is unknown a priori. We present two distributed learning algorithms where each sensor only remembers its own utility values and actions played during the last plays. These algorithms are proven to be convergent in probability to the set of (constrained) Nash equilibria and global optima of a certain coverage performance metric, respectively. Numerical examples are provided to verify the performance of our proposed algorithms.
Analysis of Factors Influencing Motivations for Becoming a Teacher

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to examine how attitudes toward the occupational values of teaching motivate prospective teachers.By examining the reasons or motives in various studies in the United States, England, and Japan, the three facets ("Job-Person Interaction", "Aspect of Job", and "Time") were set up. According to these facets, 26 items about the occupational values of teaching were designed. From them, 26 pairs of questions were drawn up; the first question centers on attitudes toward the occupational values of teaching, and the second on influences of the attitudes upon the desire to become a teacher.All favorable (or unfavorable) attitudes toward any values of teaching did not always motivate positively (or negatively) the prospective teachers. But favorable attitudes toward the economic, interpersonal, and ethical values of teaching motivated the persons positively to become teachers.It can be concluded that the motivation for becoming a teacher is the resultant of two vectors; the indi.
Analysis on the Performance of Server-less RFID Searching Protocol

Radio frequency identification (RFID) has spread into many fields. Its security and privacy has received more and more attention. Based on traditional authentication protocols, some other branches related to practical applications have been introduced including server-less authentication and searching protocols. The server-less searching protocol is extended from server-less authentication protocol and both of them are executedwithout the support from the backend servers. Through analyzing some proposed protocols, we found that the probabilistic tracking attack is one of the major threats on the serverless RFID security protocols. The probability of being tracked and the cost on computation are related with the probability of the undesired tag’s response. Based on the analysis, a practical conclusion is given which can be used in most of the server-less RFID systems.
Application of fuzzy neural network based on T-S model for mobile robot to avoid obstacles

The problem of avoiding obstacles for mobile robot is quite difficulty, because work circumstance of the mobile robot is usually unknown. It was against this background that a study was undertaken with the specific aim of mobile robots reaching the destination without collision. A fuzzy neural network method based on Takagi-Sugeno(T-S) model was proposed to be used in the study. It not only has the advantage of fuzzy logic and neural network, but also has good self-study ability. The data collected by 8 ultrasonic sensors were classified firstly. Then the navigation algorithm based on T-S model was carried out. The test results show that the mobile robot using this fuzzy neural network can recognize the obstacles in all environment types, decide its action, and then arrive at destination after 231 seconds averagely. It is faster than the mobile robot using BP neural network which takes 239 seconds averagely.
An access cell selection algorithm for next generation mobile environments

Next generation of mobile communications will be based on a heterogeneous infrastructure comprising different wireless access systems in a complementary manner. This paper proposes a network selection algorithm based on user activity, user preferences, service requirements, and networks conditions which provides users a prospect of being always best connected within an environment of heterogeneous mobile networks. This is achieved by a learning process which allows user to select an access network based in previous connections and a cost function that helps the user to select the best network that adapts to the needs.
Acetylation of Amikacin, a New Semisynthetic Antibiotic, by Pseudomonas aeruginosa Carrying an R Factor

A clinical isolate Pseudomonas aeruginosa GN315 resistant to amikacin (AK), a new semisynthetic antibiotic, inactivated AK by acetylation. The acetylating enzyme was purified approximately 146-fold from a crude extract of GN315 by affinity chromatography. Fractionated samples obtained by affinity chromatography showed almost the same inactivation curves toward 3′,4′-dideoxykanamycin B (DKB) and AK. Partially purified AK-acetylating enzyme inactivated DKB and kanamycin A but could not inactivate gentamicin C1. The optimal pH for their inactivation was 6.0 to 7.0, and the pH curves for the inactivation of both drugs were almost the same. These facts indicate that AK and DKB are inactivated by the same aminoglycoside-acetylating enzyme. Through elemental analysis, the inactivated AK was found to be a monoacetylated product of AK. A sample of inactivated AK was purified and compared with a synthetic 6′-N-acetyl AK by thin-layer chromatography, and the results indicated that AK was inactivated by acetylation of the 6′-NH2 group. The ultraviolet, infrared, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of the inactivated AK showed that AK was inactivated by the enzyme through acetylation of the amino group of 6′-amino-6′-deoxy-d-glucose moiety of AK. This enzyme, mediated by R factor, is capable of conferring resistance to AK, DKB, kanamycin, gentamicin, and sulfanilamide.
On Introspection, Metacognitive Control and Augmented Data Mining Live Cycles

We discuss metacognitive modelling as an enhancement to cognitive modelling and computing. Metacognitive control mechanisms should enable AI systems to self-reflect, reason about their actions, and to adapt to new situations. In this respect, we propose implementation details of a knowledge taxonomy and an augmented data mining life cycle which supports a live integration of obtained models.
De la confusion de langage à l'oubli : la déclaration des IVG dans les enquêtes quantitatives en population générale

The aims of this study on abortion underestimation are two fold. First, to compare the underreporting of induced abortion using different questions on this event from the same study, and the results from other recent French studies. Second, to estimate the classification errors due to misunderstanding of the terms used to describe induced abortion. The data came from the COCON study on contraceptive use and induced abortion in France. A representative sample of 2,863 women aged 18-44 was used for the analysis. Despite particular care over question wording, underestimation of induced abortion remained high (40%) in the COCON survey. Nevertheless, the study demonstrates the value of using a varied vocabulary to describe induced abortion, since this reduces classification errors and improves data quality. The study also raises questions about the significance of underreporting, which seems to be a constant regardless of the survey design and the form of questioning. One factor is the difficulty of talking about an event experienced as a failure, but other explanations are also possible, in particular the reluctance to disclose health-related events in general.
Arabidopsis E3 Ubiquitin Ligases PUB22 and PUB23 Negatively Regulate Drought Tolerance by Targeting ABA Receptor PYL9 for Degradation

Drought causes osmotic stress and rapidly triggers abscisic acid (ABA) accumulation in plants. The roles of various ABA receptors in drought tolerance and molecular mechanisms regulating ABA receptor stability needs to be elucidated. Here, we report that Arabidopsis plants overexpressing PYL9, one of the 14 pyrabactin resistance (PYR)/pyrabactin resistance-like (PYL)/regulatory component of ABA receptors (RCAR) family ABA receptors, gained drought tolerance trait. Osmotic stress induced accumulation of the PYL9 protein, which was regulated by the 26S proteasome. PYL9 interacted with two highly homologous plant U-box E3 ubiquitin ligases PUB22 and PUB23. In the cell-free degradation assay, the degradation of GST-PYL9 was accelerated in protein extract from plants overexpressing PUB22 but slowed down in protein extract from the pub22 pub23 double mutant. The in vivo decay of Myc-PYL9 was significantly reduced in the pub22 pub23 double mutant as compared with the wild-type. Additionally, PUB22 also interacted with other ABA receptors such as PYL5, PYL7 and PYL8. Considering the improved drought tolerance in the pub22 pub23 double mutant in previous studies, our results suggest that PUB22 and PUB23 negatively regulate drought tolerance in part by facilitating ABA receptors degradation.
Multilevel global placement with retiming

Multiple clock cycles are needed to cross the global interconnects for multi-gigahertz designs in nanometer technologies. For synchronous designs, this requires retiming and pipelining of global interconnects. In this paper, we present a practical solution for simultaneous retiming and multilevel global placement for performance optimization, based on the theory and algorithms for sequential timing analysis (Seq-TA). We extend the Seq-TA to handle gates/clusters with multiple outputs and integrate it into a multilevel optimization framework for simultaneous retiming and placement. We also develop two speed-up techniques which enable the Seq-TA to be efficiently integrated into a simulated annealing-based multilevel coarse placement for large-scale designs. Experimental results show that 1. retiming can improve the performance (delay) by 14% on average when it is applied after placement; 2. our approach for simultaneous retiming and placement can outperform the two-step approach (placement followed by retiming) by 10% on average in terms of delay minimization.
Causes of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness and the Impact on Athletic Performance: A Review

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) generally occurs between 24 and 72 hours after a bout of unaccustomed exercise that involves eccentric muscle action. In this review, a variety of aerobic and anaerobic activities are described emphasizing the eccentric component. It is suggested that the experience of severe DOMS can adversely impact various aspects of performance. During endurance events there may be a decrease in economy of movement, impairment of glycogen repletion and an alteration in biomechanical execution of a movement. Reductions in strength/power are also associated with severe DOMS. It is suggested that these changes might put an athlete at increased risk of injury. Although treatment is available to alleviate or prevent DOMS, the wisdom of routinely engaging in such a practice is questioned. Finally, it is noted that one bout of unaccustomed eccentrics results in some adaptation, which has a protective effect during subsequent bouts of eccentric exercise in that DOMS and other markers of muscle trauma are significantly reduced. Recommendations are made for dealing with DOMS at the initiation of an exercise program and during a regular season.
Sequence repeats in a polyoma virus DNA region important for gene expression

The sequenced prototype strains (A2 and A3) of polyoma virus lack sequence duplications characteristic of other papovaviruses. However, we found that five polyoma virus strains (P16, Toronto large plaque, MV, Ts 48, and NG59R) contain tandemly duplicated sequences in a region near the late RNA leader. Although the duplications vary in size (31 to 84 base pairs) and location (between nucleotide [nt] 5068 and nt 5185), the sequence between nt 5114 and nt 5137 is contained within all five duplicated segments. This region is known to be important in polyoma virus early gene expression, and it contains sequences capable of enhancing the expression of nonviral genes. Inspection of the sequences at and around the ends of the repeats indicated that the duplications do not arise by homologous recombination, and there was no indication that a sequence-specific mechanism results in their formation. However, the variation in the structure of the repeats among different polyoma virus strains suggests that these sequence duplications are a recent evolutionary occurrence. The potential biological significance of this variation is discussed.
Calcium Directly Regulates Phosphatidylinositol 4,5-Bisphosphate Headgroup Conformation and Recognition

The orchestrated recognition of phosphoinositides and concomitant intracellular release of Ca2+ is pivotal to almost every aspect of cellular processes, including membrane homeostasis, cell division and growth, vesicle trafficking, as well as secretion. Although Ca2+ is known to directly impact phosphoinositide clustering, little is known about the molecular basis for this or its significance in cellular signaling. Here, we study the direct interaction of Ca2+ with phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PI(4,5)P2), the main lipid marker of the plasma membrane. Electrokinetic potential measurements of PI(4,5)P2 containing liposomes reveal that Ca2+ as well as Mg2+ reduce the zeta potential of liposomes to nearly background levels of pure phosphatidylcholine membranes. Strikingly, lipid recognition by the default PI(4,5)P2 lipid sensor, phospholipase C delta 1 pleckstrin homology domain (PLC δ1-PH), is completely inhibited in the presence of Ca2+, while Mg2+ has no effect with 100 nm liposomes and modest effect with giant unilamellar vesicles. Consistent with biochemical data, vibrational sum frequency spectroscopy and atomistic molecular dynamics simulations reveal how Ca2+ binding to the PI(4,5)P2 headgroup and carbonyl regions leads to confined lipid headgroup tilting and conformational rearrangements. We rationalize these findings by the ability of calcium to block a highly specific interaction between PLC δ1-PH and PI(4,5)P2, encoded within the conformational properties of the lipid itself. Our studies demonstrate the possibility that switchable phosphoinositide conformational states can serve as lipid recognition and controlled cell signaling mechanisms.
Cultural distance and entry modes : implications for global expansion strategy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to take a strategic perspective on how MNEs in the retail sector decide to enter a new market. Drawing on transaction cost theory, the contingency approach and resource-based theory, the implications of the interplay between global strategy, cultural distance and entry mode strategies are examined by means of an analysis of Carrefour’s global expansion. Design/methodology/approach – To account for the shortcomings of prior research, a hypothesis in the relationship between entry modes and cultural distance is tested empirically using a sample of 44 foreign market entries by Carrefour over the 40 last years. The paper uses a quantitative approach, i.e., logistic regressions. To measure cultural distance, the authors rely on the GLOBE dimensions and the Kogut-Singh Index. Findings – The findings suggest a positive relationship between a resource commitment, entry mode strategy and cultural distance for Carrefour. However, these findings are contrary to the mainstream a.
Utilizing X3D for immersive environments

Conceptually, the semantics of X3D describe an abstract functional behaviour of time-based, interactive 3D, multimedia information and do not at all specify a specific software or hardware setup. However, X3D clients and applications today are mainly built for desktop systems running a web-browser.In this paper we explore how suitable X3D and W3C technologies can be utilized as an application and programming model for im-mersive virtual environments. We present a system implementation, necessary extensions to the X3D specification and discuss how standard nodes can be interpreted differently in an immersive setting.
Time, Emotion and the Embodiment of Timing

The past few decades have seen an explosion in studies exploring the effects of emotion on time judgments. The aim of this review is to describe the results of these studies and to look at how they try to explain the time distortions produced by emotion. We begin by examining the findings on time judgments in affective disorders, which allow us to make a clear distinction between the feelings of time distortion that originate from introspection onto subjective personal experience, and the effects of emotion on the basic mechanisms involved in time perception. We then report the results of behavioral studies that have tested the effects of emotions on time perceptions and the temporal processing of different emotional stimuli (e.g. facial expressions, affective pictures or sounds). Finally, we describe our own studies of the embodiment of timing. Overall, the different results on time and emotion suggest that temporal distortions are an indicator of how our brain and body adapt to the dynamic structure of our environment.