Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Longitudinal Analysis of Stroke Patients' Brain Rhythms during an Intervention with a Brain-Computer Interface

Stroke is a leading cause of motor disability worldwide. Upper limb rehabilitation is particularly challenging since approximately 35% of patients recover significant hand function after 6 months of the stroke's onset. Therefore, new therapies, especially those based on brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and robotic assistive devices, are currently under research. Electroencephalography (EEG) acquired brain rhythms in alpha and beta bands, during motor tasks, such as motor imagery/intention (MI), could provide insight of motor-related neural plasticity occurring during a BCI intervention. Hence, a longitudinal analysis of subacute stroke patients' brain rhythms during a BCI coupled to robotic device intervention was performed in this study. Data of 9 stroke patients were acquired across 12 sessions of the BCI intervention. Alpha and beta event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD/ERS) trends across sessions and their association with time since stroke onset and clinical upper extremity recovery were analyzed, using correlation and linear stepwise regression, respectively. More EEG channels presented significant ERD/ERS trends across sessions related with time since stroke onset, in beta, compared to alpha. Linear models implied a moderate relationship between alpha rhythms in frontal, temporal, and parietal areas with upper limb motor recovery and suggested a strong association between beta activity in frontal, central, and parietal regions with upper limb motor recovery. Higher association of beta with both time since stroke onset and upper limb motor recovery could be explained by beta relation with closed-loop communication between the sensorimotor cortex and the paralyzed upper limb, and alpha being probably more associated with motor learning mechanisms. The association between upper limb motor recovery and beta activations reinforces the hypothesis that broader regions of the cortex activate during movement tasks as a compensatory mechanism in stroke patients with severe motor impairment. Therefore, EEG across BCI interventions could provide valuable information for prognosis and BCI cortical activity targets.
Language Models, Smoothing, and IDF Weighting

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between smoothing in language models and idf weights. Language models regard the relative within-document-frequency and the relative collection frequency; idf weights are very similar to the latter, but yield higher weights for rare terms. Regarding the correlation between the language model parameters and relevance for two test collections, we find that the idf type of weighting seems to be more appropriate. Based on the observed correlation, we devise empirical smoothing as a new type of term weighting for language models, and retrieval experiments confirm the general applicability of our method. Finally, we show that the most appropriate form of describing the relationship between the language model parameters and relevance seems to be a product form, which confirms a language model proposed before.
Fault tolerant wind farm control — A benchmark model

In the recent years the wind turbine industry has focused on optimizing the cost of energy. One of the important factors in this is to increase reliability of the wind turbines. Advanced fault detection, isolation and accommodation are important tools in this process. Clearly most faults are dealt with best at a wind turbine control level. However, some faults are better dealt with at the wind farm control level. In this paper a benchmark model for fault detection and isolation, and fault tolerant control of wind turbines implemented at the wind farm control level is presented. The benchmark model includes a small wind farm of nine wind turbines, based on a simple model of a wind turbine as well as the wind and interactions between wind turbines in the wind farm. The model includes wind and power references scenarios as well as three relevant fault scenarios. This benchmark model is used in an international competition dealing with Wind Farm fault detection and isolation and fault tolerant control.
Preventive Command and Control Regulation: A Case Analysis

The aim of the current study is to evaluate new preventive command-and-control environmental regulation’s competitive effects on automobile manufacturers and their suppliers. The methodology that we have used is a case analysis, and its main aim is to study an unfamiliar situation. Therefore, we have chosen cases from each of the groups: two suppliers and one manufacturer. The new regulation obliges automobile companies to deeply modify their process technologies and their relationships with their suppliers (toughening requirements and strengthening long-term relationships) and to require their workers to train in environmental matters. Complying with regulation by suppliers will be possible if product and process designs are modified. However, only organisational actions, which include workers’ training in environmental and quality matters and activities to recover value in factories, are capable to achieve it. In any case, these factories have already been affected by trade-offs between environmental and other more classic manufacturing objectives, especially quality.
One Step Beyond. Migration als kulturelle Praxis

Migration is a conditio humana, firmly rooted in the cultural matrix of human society. The current discourse has been shaped by problematic concepts and research approaches. Migration has been and often is seen as an irregular occurrence and exception. But even pre-modern societies were characterized by high mobility. Numerous studies at pre-modern and modern migrations show that individual migration is usually part of a comprehensive and superordinate historical process and can only be understood within this frame of reference. Migratory movements mostly have pioneers, run along tightly defined routes, occur in networks, immigrants of same origin settle in spatial proximity, migrations are demographically selective and accompanied by return migrants. In combination with new methods from life sciences, for archaeological migration research, this opens up new perspectives.
Integrating phylogenetic and taxonomic evidence illuminates complex biogeographic patterns along Huxley’s modification of Wallace’s Line

Aim Nearly 150 years ago, T. H. Huxley modified Wallace’s Line, including the island of Palawan as a component of the Asian biogeographic realm and separating it from the oceanic Philippines. Although Huxley recognized some characteristics of a transition between the regions, Palawan has since been regarded primarily as a peripheral component of the Sunda Shelf. However, several recent phylogenetic studies of Southeast Asian lineages document populations on Palawan to be closely related to taxa from the oceanic Philippines, apparently contradicting the biogeographic association of Palawan with the Sunda Shelf. In the light of recent evidence, we evaluate taxonomic and phylogenetic data in an attempt to identify the origin(s) of Palawan’s terrestrial vertebrate fauna.
Professional Integrity Among Pre-Service Teachers During Teaching Practice: Experience from School Leaders in Misungwi District, Tanzania

This study investigated lived experiences among school leaders about pre-service teachers’ professional integrity during the teaching practice in Misungwi District. Narrative interview was used to collect the data. Fifteen (15) school leaders were purposively selected from 5 secondary schools that accommodated pre-service teachers to do the teaching practice in 2018. The narrative qualitative data analysis was employed in data analysis. The results indicated that school leaders experienced a number of professional misconducts which include the prevalence of sexual violence, disobedience to the dressing code, absenteeism and professional incompetence. The prevalence of these misconducts among pre-service teachers were attributed to a number of factors which include lack of awareness, inappropriate conduct among school-based teachers who are expected to be role models, ineffective working environment, lack of commitment and lack of volunteerism spirit. The study outlines possible strategies to enhance pre-service teachers’ professional integrity, such as upgrading the school curriculum to reflect sexual education, instilling the culture of collegiality and volunteerism. Furthermore, the study recommends for a shared national dialogue on effective strategies to enhance teachers’ professional integrity.
Conditions for Professional Development

This article seeks to contribute to the debate about the professional development of teachers, following the publication of the McCrone Report and subsequent settlement. It starts by identifying some key features, both negative and positive, of the current context of Scottish educational policy: here it is argued that the year 2000 can be regarded as an important watershed in the evolution of Scottish education. The middle section focuses on the recent history and current state of teacher education, taking account of political and professional views on both Initial Teacher Education and Continuing Professional Development. In the final part, an attempt is made to define the principles which should inform future policy on teacher development and to set out the conditions which have to be met if teachers are to be offered genuine professional enhancement. As part of this, the challenges to the major stakeholders in teacher education are considered.
Protecting and developing local economies

Why should anyone want to swim against what appears to be the tide of history by attempting to rebuild local economic systems which, over the past century, have been almost entirely swept away? Don't small countries and the regions within larger ones really have no option but to participate in the global economy in a whole-hearted way? This chapter will explore the answers to these questions. Certainly, rebuilding a local economy is not an easy option, but I hope to show that it is one that is definitely worth making the effort to achieve. Few of us would worry about the regions in which we live being entirely absorbed into the global economy if that system was equitable, sustainable, and worked reliably and well. But it is none of these, which is why we need both to develop local alternatives to it and also to attempt its reform. Let's look at each of these three areas in turn to see the extent to which the global economy fails. First, is it equitable?
Some extremal functions in fourier analysis. II

We obtain extremal majorants and minorants of exponential type for a class of even functions on ℝ which includes log |x| and |x| α , where -1 < α < 1. We also give periodic versions of these results in which the majorants and minorants are trigonometric polynomials of bounded degree. As applications we obtain optimal estimates for certain Hermitian forms, which include discrete analogues of the one dimensional Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequalities. A further application provides an Erdos- Turan-type inequality that estimates the sup norm of algebraic polynomials on the unit disc in terms of power sums in the roots of the polynomials.
Soft Subspace Clustering for Cancer Microarray Data Analysis: A Survey

A need has long been identified for a more effective methodology to understand, prevent, and cure cancer. Microarray technology provides a basis of achieving this goal, with cluster analysis of gene expression data leading to the discrimination of patients, identification of possible tumor subtypes, and individualized treatment. Recently, soft subspace clustering was introduced as an accurate alternative to conventional techniques. This practice has proven effective for high dimensional data, especially for microarray gene expressions. In this review, the basis of weighted dimensional space and different approaches to soft subspace clustering are described. Since most of the models are parameterized, the application of consensus clustering has been identified as a new research direction that is capable of turning the difficulty with parameter selection to an advantage of increasing diversity within an ensemble.
The Cost of Combating Global Warming: Facing the Tradeoffs

veloping world, they assert, will have to be at the expense of the rich nations. Their diagnosis is wrong, but their conclusion is right. Any costs of mitigating climate change during the coming decades will surely be borne by the high-income coun tries. But the benefits, despite what spokespeople for the developing world say, will overwhelmingly accrue to future generations in the developing world. Any action combating global warming will be, intended or not, a foreign aid program. The Chinese, Indonesians, or Bangladeshis are not going to divert resources from their own development to reduce the greenhouse effect, which is caused by the presence of carbon-based gases in the earth's atmosphere. This is a prediction, but it is also sound advice. Their best defense against climate change and vulnerability to weather in general is their own development, reducing their reliance on agriculture and other such out door livelihoods. Furthermore, they have immediate environmental problems? air and water pollution, poor sanitation, disease? that demand earlier attention. There are three reasons the beneficiaries
Expression of pcp4a in subpopulations of CNS neurons in zebrafish

The molecular organization of the zebrafish brain and its relation to neuroanatomical divisions are still largely unknown. In this study we have analyzed the expression of a small transcript encoding for the IQ containing polypeptide Pcp4a in developing and juvenile zebrafish. The transcript is exclusively expressed in neural structures with a pattern that is highly specific for restricted domains and cell populations throughout development, and it allows us to follow the development of these structures at different times. The expression of pcp4a characterizes the dorsocaudal telencephalon, dorsal habenula, pretectal nuclei, preglomerular complex, mammillary bodies, and deep layers of the optic tectum and is a hallmark of a subpopulation of reticulospinal neurons. In the telencephalon, comparison of the expression of pcp4a with other pallial markers showed a rostrocaudal gradient in the expression of these genes, which suggests that the dorsal telencephalon of zebrafish may be organized in distinct areas with different molecular natures. Pcp4 has been involved in modulating calcium signals and in binding to calmodulin, but its precise role in neuronal functions is not known. The analysis of pcp4a expression and localization in the zebrafish brain suggests that pcp4a may be a useful marker for sensory and some motor neuronal circuitries and for telencephalic areas processing sensory inputs. J. Comp. Neurol. 495:769–787, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Postsynaptic Glutamate Receptor Subunit DGluR-IIA Mediates Long-Term Plasticity in Drosophila

The developing neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) ofDrosophila larvae can undergo long-term strengthening of signal transmission, a process that has been shown recently to involve local subsynaptic protein synthesis and that is associated with an elevated synaptic accumulation of the postsynaptic glutamate receptor subunit DGluR-IIA. To analyze the role of altered postsynaptic glutamate receptor expression during this form of genetically induced junctional plasticity, we manipulated the expression levels of two so far-described postsynaptic receptor subunit genes,dglur-IIA and dglur-IIB, in wild-type animals and plasticity mutants. Here we show that elevated synaptic expression of DGluR-IIA, which was achieved by direct transgenic overexpression, by genetically increased subsynaptic protein synthesis, or by a reduced dglur-IIB gene copy number, results in an increased recruitment of active zones, a corresponding enhancement in the strength of junctional signal transmission, and a correlated addition of boutons to the NMJ. Ultrastructural evidence demonstrates that active zones appear throughout NMJs at a typical density regardless of genotype, suggesting that the space requirements of active zones are responsible for the homogeneous synapse distribution and that this regulation results in the observed growth of additional boutons at strengthened NMJs. These phenotypes were suppressed by reduced or eliminated DGluR-IIA expression, which resulted from either a reduced dglur-IIA gene copy number or transgenic overexpression of DGluR-IIB. Our results demonstrate that persistent alterations of neuronal activity and subsynaptic translation result in an elevated synaptic accumulation of DGluR-IIA, which mediates the observed functional strengthening and morphological growth apparently through the recruitment of additional active zones.
Environmental sound classification for scene recognition using local discriminant bases and HMM

Analysis and classification of auditory scenes or contexts play important roles in content-based indexing and retrieval of multimedia databases and context-aware applications. In this paper, we propose an environmental sound and auditory scene recognition scheme that focuses on efficient feature representation and classfication of the unstructured composition of a scene (for example, restaurant, street, beach, etc.). We propose to use the local discriminant bases (LDB) technique to identify the discriminatory time-frequency subspace for environmental sounds and then use it for corresponding feature extraction. Based on LDB, we present two recognition models, with or without explicit sound event modeling, for auditory scenes, in which the hidden Markov model (HMM) is used to depict the characteristics and correlations among various events that constitute the scene. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for auditory scene classification.
Nomogram using transrectal ultrasound-derived information predicting the detection of high grade prostate cancer on initial biopsy

Purpose: To develop a nomogram using transrectal ultrasound (TRUS)-derived information for predicting high grade (HG) prostate cancer (PCa) on initial biopsy. Methods: Data were collected on 1,048 men with serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels 4.0 to 9.9 ng/mL who underwent an initial prostate biopsy. Two logistic regression-based nomograms were constructed to predict the detection of PCa. Nomogram-1 incorporated age, digital rectal examination, PSA and percent free PSA data, whereas nomogram-2 incorporated those factors plus TRUS-derived information (i.e., prostate volume and the presence of hypoechoic lesions). The prediction of any PCa and HGPCa (Gleason score≥7) were determined. Twenty percent of the data were randomly reserved for study validation, and the predictive accuracies of the two nomograms were directly compared. Results: Of the 1,048 men who underwent biopsy, 216 (20.6%) were found to have any PCa, and 97 (9.3%) were found to have HGPCa. All six risk factors were found to be independent predictors for both any PCa and HGPCa. The area under curve (AUC) for nomogram-2 was 0.76 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.72 to 0.81) for predicting any PCa, and 0.83 (95% CI, 0.79 to 0.88) for predicting HGPCa. These AUCs were greater than those for nomogram-1 (0.72 [95% CI, 0.68 to 0.76 for any PCa; P<0.001], 0.78 [95% CI, 0.72 to 0.83 for HGPCa; P<0.001]). Removing the TRUS-derived information from nomogram-2 resulted in an incremental AUC decrease of 0.052 for any PCa and 0.063 for HGPCa. Conclusions: The nomogram using TRUS-derived information had a high predictive accuracy for HGPCa on initial prostate biopsy.
24-Hour Glucose Profiles on Diets Varying in Protein Content and Glycemic Index

Evidence is increasing that the postprandial state is an important factor contributing to the risk of chronic diseases. Not only mean glycemia, but also glycemic variability has been implicated in this effect. In this exploratory study, we measured 24-h glucose profiles in 25 overweight participants in a long-term diet intervention study (DIOGENES study on Diet, Obesity and Genes), which had been randomized to four different diet groups consuming diets varying in protein content and glycemic index. In addition, we compared 24-h glucose profiles in a more controlled fashion, where nine other subjects followed in random order the same four diets differing in carbohydrate content by 10 energy% and glycemic index by 20 units during three days. Meals were provided in the lab and had to be eaten at fixed times during the day. No differences in mean glucose concentration or glucose variability (SD) were found between diet groups in the DIOGENES study. In the more controlled lab study, mean 24-h glucose concentrations were also not different. Glucose variability (SD and CONGA1), however, was lower on the diet combining a lower carbohydrate content and GI compared to the diet combining a higher carbohydrate content and GI. These data suggest that diets with moderate differences in carbohydrate content and GI do not affect mean 24-h or daytime glucose concentrations, but may result in differences in the variability of the glucose level in healthy normal weight and overweight individuals.
Process Tailoring and the the Software Capability Maturity Model

Abstract : The Software Capability Maturity Modeism (SW-CMM)Srn is serving as the foundation for a major portion of the process improvement being undertaken in the software industry. It is composed of two volumes: the Capability Maturity Model for Software, and the Key Practices of the Capability Maturity Model. The key practices of the SW-OMM are expressed in terms that reflect normal practices of organizations that work on large, government contracts. There is, however, a significant population of software-producing and -acquiring organizations, operating in different environments, for which the key practices require significant interpretation and/or tailoring prior to application. This report presents a tailoring framework that identifies process artifacts, tailoring processes, and their relationships to project artifacts, and explores the nature of various kinds of tailoring used in the definition and development of software process descriptions. Techniques appropriate to each type of tailoring are then discussed. The general approach utilizes and builds upon the Software Process Framework, whose purpose is to provide guidance for designing, analyzing, and reviewing software processes for consistency with the 5W-C MM.
MDM4 Overexpressed in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Patients with Complex Karyotype and Wild-Type TP53

Acute myeloid leukemia patients with complex karyotype (CK-AML) account for approximately 10–15% of adult AML cases, and are often associated with a poor prognosis. Except for about 70% of CK-AML patients with biallelic inactivation of TP53, the leukemogenic mechanism in the nearly 30% of CK-AML patients with wild-type TP53 has remained elusive. In this study, 15 cases with complex karyotype and wild-type TP53 were screened out of 140 de novo AML patients and the expression levels of MDM4, a main negative regulator of p53-signaling pathway, were detected. We ruled out mutations in genes associated with a poor prognosis of CK-AML, including RUNX1 or FLT3-ITD. The mRNA expression levels of the full-length of MDM4 (MDM4FL) and short isoform MDM4 (MDM4S) were elevated in CK-AML relative to normal karyotype AML (NK-AML) patients. We also explored the impact of MDM4 overexpression on the cell cycle, cell proliferation and the spindle checkpoint of HepG2 cells, which is a human cancer cell line with normal MDM4 and TP53 expression. The mitotic index and the expression of p21, BubR1 and Securin were all reduced following Nocodazole treatment. Moreover, karyotype analysis showed that MDM4 overexpression might lead to aneuploidy or polyploidy. These results suggest that MDM4 overexpression is related to CK-AML with wild-type TP53 and might play a pathogenic role by inhibiting p53-signal pathway.