Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HoloLens-based Mixed Reality Experiences for Subjects with Alzheimer's Disease

HoloLens technology enables mixed reality experiences that integrate holographic objects into the real world in which the mixed reality head-mounted device is used. Since HoloLens' launch in March 2016, some mixed-reality applications of this technology have been announced or showcased, addressing different fields, including education, data visualization, tourism, entertainment, and professional training e.g., in medicine, architecture, manufacturing, and engineering. Still, a limited number of reported research provide examples of user experience designs and evaluations for applications using HoloLens. We are interested in the use of HoloLens as therapeutic tool for people with the Alzheimer's Disease. The paper describes a set of therapeutic activities that have been designed in cooperation with neurologists and aim at stimulating short term memory and spatial memory in this target group. We also report a preliminary study of the usability of these activities among the elderly subjects.
CONSTRUCTIVE DATA MINING : MODELING AUSTRALIAN INFLATION

This paper improves upon de Brouwer and Ericsson’s (1998) model of Australian inflation in three directions: cointegration analysis, treatment of weak exogeneity, and model design. On the third issue, recent developments in computer-automated model selection help obtain a more parsimonious, empirically constant, data-coherent, encompassing error correction model for inflation in Australia. The level of consumer prices is a mark-up over domestic and import costs, with adjustments for dynamics and relative aggregate demand.
Low-leakage asymmetric-cell SRAM

Introduces a novel family of asymmetric dual-V/sub t/ SRAM cell designs that reduce leakage power in caches while maintaining low access latency. Our designs exploit the strong bias towards zero at the bit level exhibited by the memory value stream of ordinary programs. Compared to conventional symmetric high-performance cells, our cells offer significant leakage reduction in the zero state and in some cases also in the one state albeit to a lesser extent. A novel sense-amplifier, in coordination with dummy bitlines, allows for read times to be on par with conventional symmetric cells. With one cell design, leakage is reduced by 7/spl times/ (in the zero state) with no performance degradation. An alternative cell design reduces leakage by 40/spl times/ (in the zero state) with a performance degradation of 5%.
Performance of μMRI‐Based virtual bone biopsy for structural and mechanical analysis at the distal tibia at 7T field strength

To assess the performance of a 3D fast spin echo (FSE) pulse sequence utilizing out‐of‐slab cancellation through phase alternation and micro‐magnetic resonance imaging (μMRI)‐based virtual bone biopsy processing methods to probe the serial reproducibility and sensitivity of structural and mechanical parameters of the distal tibia at 7.0T.
Extreme reductions: contraction of disyllables into monosyllables in taiwan Mandarin

This study investigates a severe form of segmental reduction known as contraction. In Taiwan Mandarin, a disyllabic word or phrase is often contracted into a monosyllabic unit in conversational speech, just as “do not” is often contracted into “don’t” in English. A systematic experiment was conducted to explore the underlying mechanism of such contraction. Preliminary results show evidence that contraction is not a categorical shift but a gradient undershoot of the articulatory target as a result of time pressure. Moreover, contraction seems to occur only beyond a certain duration threshold. These findings may further our understanding of the relation between duration and segmental reduction. Index Terms: contraction, reduction, undershoot, duration, speech rate, Taiwan Mandarin
Retinitis Pigmentosa Reduces the Risk of Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy: A Nationwide Population-Based Cohort Study

Purpose To study the association between retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and the progression of diabetic retinopathy (DR). Methods Using the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000 of Taiwan, we identified individuals with an initial diagnosis for RP during the period of 1997–2008. A non-RP comparison group, 10-fold frequency matched by sex, age, index year and the year of diabetes diagnosed, were randomly selected from the same database. The occurrence of DR was observed for all subjects until the end of 2009. The Kaplan-Meier curves were used to illustrate the cumulative probability of developing DR for the RP group and comparison groups. The hazard ratio (HR) of DR for the RP group relative to the comparison group was estimated using Cox proportional hazards model after adjusting for potential confounders. Results The Kaplan-Meier curves were not statistically significant different between the RP group and the comparison group. However, the RP group had a higher cumulative probability of developing DR during the first six to seven years. The cumulative probability kept increasing and became higher in the comparison group but remained unchanged in the RP group. The HR for the RP patients comparing with the comparison group was 0.96 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.43–2.14). Stratified by severity, RP was associated with a non-statistically significant reduced risk of proliferative DR (PDR) (HR = 0.70, 95% CI = 0.16–3.14). The HR for non-proliferative DR (NPDR) was 1.08 (95% CI = 0.40–2.86). Conclusion In this study, RP was not statistically significant associated with the incidence of DR.
Care Coordination Services: A Description of an Alternative Service Model for At-Risk Families

ABSTRACT Objective: The objective of this article is to describe a care coordination model that includes promising practices which are supported by both practice-based and research-based evidence. This model was developed to address the gaps of other models, namely an emphasis on skill teaching with parents, the flexibility to adapt to the needs of youth with a wide variety of presenting problems, and model fidelity assessment tools to help scale up the program across multiple locations with fidelity. Method: We discuss preliminary administrative and outcome data from 898 youth served across eight locations. Results: Data suggest positive outcomes at departure from service, as well as 6 months and 12 months post case closure. Conclusion: Preliminary data indicate that youth with educational and behavioral health challenges can benefit from coordination of services that are both youth guided and family driven. As this program has been scaled up and has an established vehicle of dissemination, it is in a unique position to be tested via more highly controlled and rigorous efficacy trials.
Concurrency in heavily loaded neighborhood-constrained systems

Let G be a connected undirected graph in which each node corresponds to a process and two nodes are connected by an edge if the corresponding processes share a resource. We consider distributed computations in which processes are constantly demanding all of their resources in order to operate, and in which neighboring processes may not operate concurrently. We advocate that such a system is general enough for representing a large class of resource-sharing systems under heavy load. We employ a distributed scheduling mechanism based on acyclic orientations of G and investigate the amount of concurrency that it provides. We show that this concurrency is given by a number akin to G's chromatic and multichromatic numbers, and that, among scheduling schemes which require neighbors in G to alternate in their turns to operate, ours is the one that potentially provides the greatest concurrency. However, we also show that the decision problem corresponding to optimizing concurrency is NP-complete.
Memory mapped ECC: low-cost error protection for last level caches

This paper presents a novel technique, Memory Mapped ECC, which reduces the cost of providing error correction for SRAM caches. It is important to limit such overheads as processor resources become constrained and error propensity increases. The continuing decrease in SRAM cell size and the growing capacity of caches increases the likelihood of errors in SRAM arrays. To address this, redundant information can be used to correct a value after an error occurs. Information redundancy is typically provided through error-correcting codes (ECC), which append bits to every SRAM row and increase the array's area and energy consumption. We make three observations regarding error protection and utilize them in our architecture: (1) much of the data in a cache is replicated throughout the hierarchy and is inherently redundant; (2) error-detection is necessary for every cache access and is cheaper than error correction, which is very infrequent; (3) redundant information for correction need not be stored in high-cost SRAM. Our unique architecture only dedicates SRAM for error detection while the ECC bits are stored within the memory hierarchy as data. We associate a physical memory address with each cache line for ECC storage and rely on locality to minimize the impact. The cache is dynamically and transparently partitioned between data and ECC with the fraction of ECC growing with the number of dirty cache lines. We show that this has little impact on both performance (1.3% average and < 4%) and memory traffic (3%) across a range of memory-intensive applications.
Non-Negative Temporal Decomposition of Speech Parameters by Multiplicative Update Rules

I invented a non-negative temporal decomposition method for line spectral pairs and articulatory parameters based on the multiplicative update rules. These parameters are decomposed into a set of temporally overlapped unimodal event functions restricted to the range [0,1] and corresponding event vectors. When line spectral pairs are used, event vectors preserve their ordering property. With the proposed method, the RMS error of the measured and reconstructed articulatory parameters is 0.21 mm and the spectral distance of the measured and reconstructed line spectral pairs parameters is 2.0 dB. The RMS error and spectral distance in the proposed method are smaller than those in conventional methods. This technique will be useful for many applications of speech coding and speech modification.
International Workshop on Social Media World Sensors ( Sideways ) Workshop Programme 09 : 00 – 09 : 30 – Introduction by Workshop Chairs

Twitter and other social media data are utilized for a wide variety of applications such as marketing and stock market prediction. Each application and appropriate domain of social media text presents its own challenges and benefits. We discuss methods for detecting obesity, a risk factor for Type II Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM), from the language of food on Twitter on community data, the peculiarities of this data, and the development of individual-level data for this task.
Guidelines for the Prevention of Stroke in Women: A Statement for Healthcare Professionals From the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association

Purpose— The aim of this statement is to summarize data on stroke risk factors that are unique to and more common in women than men and to expand on the data provided in prior stroke guidelines and cardiovascular prevention guidelines for women. This guideline focuses on the risk factors unique to women, such as reproductive factors, and those that are more common in women, including migraine with aura, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and atrial fibrillation. Methods— Writing group members were nominated by the committee chair on the basis of their previous work in relevant topic areas and were approved by the American Heart Association (AHA) Stroke Council’s Scientific Statement Oversight Committee and the AHA’s Manuscript Oversight Committee. The panel reviewed relevant articles on adults using computerized searches of the medical literature through May 15, 2013. The evidence is organized within the context of the AHA framework and is classified according to the joint AHA/American College of Cardiology and supplementary AHA Stroke Council methods of classifying the level of certainty and the class and level of evidence. The document underwent extensive AHA internal peer review, Stroke Council Leadership review, and Scientific Statements Oversight Committee review before consideration and approval by the AHA Science Advisory and Coordinating Committee. Results— We provide current evidence, research gaps, and recommendations on risk of stroke related to preeclampsia, oral contraceptives, menopause, and hormone replacement, as well as those risk factors more common in women, such as obesity/metabolic syndrome, atrial fibrillation, and migraine with aura. Conclusions— To more accurately reflect the risk of stroke in women across the lifespan, as well as the clear gaps in current risk scores, we believe a female-specific stroke risk score is warranted.
The long march to interoperable digital rights management

This paper discusses interoperability of digital rights management (DRM) systems. We start by describing a basic reference model for DRM. The cause of interoperability is served by understanding and circumscribing what DRM is "in the whole. " Then we outline and contrast three different approaches to achieving interoperability. One approach relies on flexible network services to provide functionality where it is needed, perhaps by bridging different systems. We describe an experimental service orchestration system (NEMO) that enables such an approach.
Personalization Services for Adaptive Educational Hypermedia

This paper proposes an architecture for providing personalization services for adaptive educational hypermedia. We formalize adaptation functionality in a re-usable way appropriate for the use in the semantic web. We show how to design personalization services that provide re-usable adaptation methods employing semantic web description formats. keywords: adaptive hypermedia, personalization, adaptive web, semantic web, web service.
16S Ribosomal DNA Sequence Analysis of a Large Collection of Environmental and Clinical Unidentifiable Bacterial Isolates

ABSTRACT Some bacteria are difficult to identify with phenotypic identification schemes commonly used outside reference laboratories. 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA)-based identification of bacteria potentially offers a useful alternative when phenotypic characterization methods fail. However, as yet, the usefulness of 16S rDNA sequence analysis in the identification of conventionally unidentifiable isolates has not been evaluated with a large collection of isolates. In this study, we evaluated the utility of 16S rDNA sequencing as a means to identify a collection of 177 such isolates obtained from environmental, veterinary, and clinical sources. For 159 isolates (89.8%) there was at least one sequence in GenBank that yielded a similarity score of ≥97%, and for 139 isolates (78.5%) there was at least one sequence in GenBank that yielded a similarity score of ≥99%. These similarity score values were used to defined identification at the genus and species levels, respectively. For isolates identified to the species level, conventional identification failed to produce accurate results because of inappropriate biochemical profile determination in 76 isolates (58.7%), Gram staining in 16 isolates (11.6%), oxidase and catalase activity determination in 5 isolates (3.6%) and growth requirement determination in 2 isolates (1.5%). Eighteen isolates (10.2%) remained unidentifiable by 16S rDNA sequence analysis but were probably prototype isolates of new species. These isolates originated mainly from environmental sources (P = 0.07). The 16S rDNA approach failed to identify Enterobacter andPantoea isolates to the species level (P = 0.04; odds ratio = 0.32 [95% confidence interval, 0.10 to 1.14]). Elsewhere, the usefulness of 16S rDNA sequencing was compromised by the presence of 16S rDNA sequences with >1% undetermined positions in the databases. Unlike phenotypic identification, which can be modified by the variability of expression of characters, 16S rDNA sequencing provides unambiguous data even for rare isolates, which are reproducible in and between laboratories. The increase in accurate new 16S rDNA sequences and the development of alternative genes for molecular identification of certain taxa should further improve the usefulness of molecular identification of bacteria.
Posttraumatic stress disorder among mothers of pediatric cancer survivors: diagnosis, comorbidity, and utility of the PTSD checklist as a screening instrument.

OBJECTIVE To examine posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in mothers of survivors of childhood cancer. Comorbidity of anxiety and depressive disorders, prevalence of subclinical PTSD, and the utility of a self-report measure as a screening instrument for PTSD were also investigated. METHOD Mothers (n = 65) completed a questionnaire self-report PTSD checklist (PCL-C). Mothers were administered several modules of the SCID: nonpatient edition by telephone, including the PTSD, Generalized Anxiety, and Major Depressive Disorder modules. RESULTS We diagnosed 6.2% of the sample with current PTSD. An additional 20% had subclinical PTSD. One of four mothers with PTSD diagnoses had a comorbid diagnosis of an anxiety and depressive disorder. The PCL-C evidenced diagnostic utility as a screening instrument. However, a moderate number of false-positives would result if the recommended cut-off on the instrument was used. CONCLUSIONS The PCL-C had diagnostic utility in screening mothers of childhood cancer survivors. The presence of comorbid diagnoses such as anxiety and depression should be examined.
Host Plant Odors Represent Immiscible Information Entities - Blend Composition and Concentration Matter in Hawkmoths

Host plant choice is of vital importance for egg laying herbivorous insects that do not exhibit brood care. Several aspects, including palatability, nutritional quality and predation risk, have been found to modulate host preference. Olfactory cues are thought to enable host location. However, experimental data on odor features that allow choosing among alternative hosts while still in flight are not available. It has previously been shown that M. sexta females prefer Datura wrightii compared to Nicotiana attenuata. The bouquet of the latter is more intense and contains compounds typically emitted by plants after feeding-damage to attract the herbivore’s enemies. In this wind tunnel study, we offered female gravid hawkmoths (Manduca sexta) odors from these two ecologically relevant, attractive, non-flowering host species. M. sexta females preferred surrogate leaves scented with vegetative odors form both host species to unscented control leaves. Given a choice between species, females preferred the odor bouquet emitted by D. wrightii to that of N. attenuata. Harmonizing, i.e. adjusting, volatile intensity to similar levels did not abolish but significantly weakened this preference. Superimposing, i.e. mixing, the highly attractive headspaces of both species, however, abolished discrimination between scented and non-scented surrogate leaves. Beyond ascertaining the role of blend composition in host plant choice, our results raise the following hypotheses. (i) The odor of a host species is perceived as a discrete odor ‘Gestalt’, and its core properties are lost upon mixing two attractive scents (ii). Stimulus intensity is a secondary feature affecting olfactory-based host choice (iii). Constitutively smelling like a plant that is attracting herbivore enemies may be part of a plant’s strategy to avoid herbivory where alternative hosts are available to the herbivore.
Introduction and validation of a naturalistic observational hand skill assessment for use in Australian early childhood contexts

The ACHS consists of 20 hand skill items that are rated on 6-level Likert rating scale, in terms of the effectiveness level. The ACHS also includes 22 activity items in the domains of leisure and play, school-related work, and activities of daily living. A parent-report questionnaire is developed as part of the ACHS, to help gauge which activities present appropriate developmental challenges for the children and observable environments. Discussion and Conclusion
Cell treatment after acute myocardial infarction prevents early decline in circulating IGF-1

Abstract Objectives. To examine the influence of intracoronary autologous bone marrow cell transplantation after acute myocardial infarction on circulating growth factors and their relationship to left ventricular function. Methods. Circulating insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), stromal derived factor-1-alpha (SDF-1α), and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) were measured in patients randomized to cell treatment or control, in the ASTAMI study. Autologous cells were injected intracoronary on day 6; blood was sampled on days 5, 9, and at three months. Left ventricular ejection fraction was recorded by electrocardiogram-gated single photon emission computed tomography at six months. Results. Only change in IGF-1 from baseline to three months differed between groups (p=0.024). A weak but significant correlation was found between left ventricular ejection fraction and the averaged IGF-1 concentrations of all patients (r=0.24, p=0.02). Patients with IGF-1 above or below median (102 ng/ml) had a left ventricular ejection fraction of 52.3% (±11.4) versus 46.4% (±12.2) respectively (p=0.017). Conclusions. Intracoronary bone marrow cell treatment after myocardial infarction attenuates a reduction in circulating IGF-1. IGF-1 levels over time were weakly, but significantly correlated to left ventricular ejection fraction.
Age, job characteristics and coronary health.

BACKGROUND Workplace demographics are changing in many European countries with a higher proportion of older workers in employment. Research has shown that there is an association between job strain and cardiovascular disease, but this relationship is unclear for the older worker. AIMS To investigate the association between job strain and a coronary event comparing younger and older male workers. METHODS Cases with a first-time coronary event were recruited from four coronary/intensive care units (1999-2001). Matched controls were recruited from the case's general practitioner surgery. Physical measurements were taken and self-administered questionnaires completed with questions on job characteristics, job demands and control. Unconditional logistic regression was carried out adjusting for classical cardiovascular risk factors. RESULTS There were 227 cases and 277 matched controls. Age stratified analyses showed a clear difference between younger (<50 years) and older (≥50 years) workers with regard to the exposure of job strain (job demands and control) and the association between these factors and cardiovascular disease. Older workers who had a coronary event were four times as likely to have high job strain [OR = 4.09 (1.29-13.02)] and more likely to report low job control [OR = 0.83 (0.72-0.95)]. CONCLUSIONS Job control emerged as a potential protective factor for heart disease and this evidence was stronger in the older male worker. Nevertheless, they were significantly more likely to have job strain. These results suggest that older workers may be more susceptible to job strain.