Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A strategy to combine active trajectory control with the exploitation of the natural dynamics to reduce energy consumption for bipedal robots

The biped Lucy, powered by pleated pneumatic artificial muscles, has been built and controlled and is able to walk up to a speed of 0.15 m/s. The pressures inside the muscles are controlled by a joint trajectory tracking controller to track the desired joint trajectories calculated by a trajectory generator. However, the actuators are set to a fixed stiffness value. In this paper a compliance controller is proposed which can be added in the control architecture to reduce the energy consumption by exploiting the natural dynamics. The goal of this research is to preserve the versatility of actively controlled humanoids, while reducing their energy consumption. A mathematical formulation has been developed to find an optimal stiffness setting depending on the desired trajectory and physical properties of the system and the proposed strategy has been validated on a pendulum structure powered by artificial muscles. This strategy has not been implemented on the real robot because the walking speed of the robot is currently too slow to benefit already from compliance control.
The Second National Risk and Culture Study: Making Sense of - and Making Progress In - The American Culture War of Fact

Cultural Cognition refers to the disposition to conform one's beliefs about societal risks to one's preferences for how society should be organized. Based on surveys and experiments involving some 5,000 Americans, the Second National Risk and Culture Study presents empirical evidence of the effect of this dynamic in generating conflict about global warming, school shootings, domestic terrorism, nanotechnology, and the mandatory vaccination of school-age girls against HPV, among other issues. The Study also presents evidence of risk-communication strategies that counteract cultural cognition. Because nuclear power affirms rather than threatens the identity of persons who hold individualist values, for example, proposing it as a solution to global warming makes persons who hold such values more willing to consider evidence that climate change is a serious risk. Because people tend to impute credibility to people who share their values, persons who hold hierarchical and egalitarian values are less likely to polarize when they observe people who hold their values advocating unexpected positions on the vaccination of young girls against HPV. Such techniques can help society to create a deliberative climate in which citizens converge on policies that are both instrumentally sound and expressively congenial to persons of diverse values.
Teens and social media

Content creation by teenagers continues to grow, with 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation, up from 57% of online teens in 2004. The use of social media is gaining a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media. Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys, however, do dominate one area - posting of video content online. Online teen boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online somewhere where someone else could see it.
Lip AUs Detection by Boost-SVM and Gabor

Facial expression plays an important role in non-verbal social communication, emotion expression and affective recognition. To make the reorganization of facial expression more effectively, researchers try to recognize facial expression by the recognition of facial action units. In this paper, in order to identify lip AUs, we adopt Gabor wavelet transformation as the feature extraction method and Adaboost-SVM (combination of Adaboost and SVM) as the pattern classifier. Compared with the traditional non-cascaded Adboost algorithms in which the number of weak classifiers actually is fixed beforehand, a process of number optimization is added to ensure the minimum number of the weak classifies combination with the highest recognition rate. To test the effect of the given solution, 150 images from frontal faces for training and 100 images for prediction are collected. Compared with traditional SVM, the proposed system with Adaboost-SVM can not only improve the recognition accuracy from 79.0% to 83.0%, but also speed up AU classification process obviously.
The Impact of Gender on Interest in Science Topics and the Choice of Scientific and Technical Vocations

Many countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) note a shortage of highly qualified scientific‐technical personnel, whereas demand for such employees is growing. Therefore, how to motivate (female) high performers in science or mathematics to pursue scientific careers is of special interest. The sample for this study is taken from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006. It comprises 7,819 high performers either in sciences or mathematics from representative countries of four different education systems which generally performed well or around the OECD average in PISA 2006: Switzerland, Finland, Australia, and Korea. The results give evidence that gender specificity and gender inequity in science education are a cross‐national problem. Interests in specific science disciplines only partly support vocational choices in scientific‐technical fields. Instead, gender and gender stereotypes play a significant role. Enhancing the utility of a scientific vocational choice is expected to soften the gender impact.
DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER IN CHILDHOOD: FIVE TURKISH CASES

In this paper, the diagnostic processes, previous diagnoses, clinical symptomatology, life events, traumatic experiences, family histories, and treatment of five children (three girls and two boys between five and eleven years of age) with DID are presented. Clinical findings were headaches, aggressive behavior and outbursts, trance-like experiences, amnesias, inconsistent school performance, lying, sleep disturbances, and depressive symptoms. One of the patients had been treated previously under different diagnoses. The number of alter personalities ranged from two to eleven. One of the patients, a tenyear-old girl, had two distinct personality systems. All of the cases presented at least four Schneiderian first-rank symptoms except an eleven-year-old boy who had only one. All of the cases had amnesia between at least two alters during interviews initially, except for a five-year-old case who did not. A ten-year-old girl was treated successfully and her alter personalities integrated. The others discontinued the therapy.
Murine Model for Fusarium oxysporum Invasive Fusariosis Reveals Organ-Specific Structures for Dissemination and Long-Term Persistence

The soil-borne plant pathogen Fusarium oxysporum causes life-threatening invasive fusariosis in immunocompromised individuals. The mechanism of infection in mammalian hosts is largely unknown. In the present study we show that the symptoms of disseminated fusariosis caused by F. oxysporum in immunosuppressed mice are remarkably similar to those reported in humans. Distinct fungal structures were observed inside the host, depending on the infected organ. Invasive hyphae developed in the heart and kidney, causing massive colonization of the organs. By contrast, chlamydospore-like survival structures were found in lung, spleen and liver. Systemically infected mice also developed skin and eye infections, as well as thrombosis and necrosis in the tail. We further show that F. oxysporum can disseminate and persist in the organs of immunocompetent animals, and that these latent infections can lead to lethal systemic fusariosis if the host is later subjected to immunosuppressive treatment.
Cholesterol Modulates the Membrane- Disordering Effects of Beta-Amyloid Peptides in the Hippocampus: Specific Changes in Alzheimer’s Disease

Cholesterol represents an important determinant of the physical state of biological membranes. In Alzheimer’s disease (AD) brains, specific changes in the distribution of cholesterol and its membrane-ordering effects take place. In the present study, membrane fluidity was investigated at the level of the hydrocarbon core and of the heads of the phospholipid bilayers using two different fluorescent probes. Hippocampal membranes of AD brains showed a reduced fluidity in the hydrocarbon core region only. Fluidity was correlated with the cholesterol content in AD and control membranes. Aggregated β-amyloid peptides (Aβ) disrupted brain membrane structure in AD patients and controls in the same fashion. However, this effect was correlated with the cholesterol content in AD membranes only. It is suggested that in AD the brain becomes specifically sensitive for the modulation by membrane-bound cholesterol of the membrane-disturbing and ultimately neurotoxic properties of Aβ.
A dual-gain-mode high efficiency power amplifier for W-CDMA data communications

A dual-gain-mode power amplifier (PA) with a step attenuator (ATT) for W-CDMA data communications is described. The step ATT placed at the interstage of the two-stage amplifier gives a two gain step — a 0-dB thru state (high-gain mode) and a 14-dB attenuation state (low-gain mode). In addition, the ATT featuring a capacitor for phase discontinuity compensation can suppress a phase difference between the two states and also keeps good input return loss of the PA. The PA fabricated in a BiFET process integrates the two stage amplifier, its bias circuit, a reference voltage generator, and a bi-layer directional coupler on a 3 mm × 3 mm laminate. Measurements under a condition of a 824 MHz W-CDMA (R99) modulated signal and a 3.4 V supply voltage shows that the PA can achieve a power added efficiency (PAE) of 50% at output power (Pout) of 27.8 dBm in the high-gain mode. In the high- and low-gain modes, measured phase difference is as small as 7° and measured input return loss is well maintained at less than −10 dB. Due to good directivity, the integrated coupler with a coupling factor of −19.6 dB can keep a small detection error of less than 0.5 dB even under a load mismatching condition of 2.5∶1 VSWR.
A Novel Technique for the Assessment of Preoperative Cardiovascular Risk: Reactive Hyperemic Response to Short-Term Exercise

Background. Perioperative vascular function has been widely studied using noninvasive techniques that measure reactive hyperemia as a surrogate marker of vascular function. However, studies are limited to a static setting with patients tested at rest. We hypothesized that exercise would increase reactive hyperemia as measured by digital thermal monitoring (DTM) in association to patients' cardiometabolic risk. Methods. Thirty patients (58 ± 9 years) scheduled for noncardiac surgery were studied prospectively. Preoperatively, temperature rebound (TR) following upper arm cuff occlusion was measured before and 10 minutes after exercise. Data are presented as means ± SD. Statistical analysis utilized ANOVA and Fisher's exact test, with P values <0.05 regarded as significant. Results. Following exercise, TR-derived parameters increased significantly (absolute: 0.53 ± 0.95 versus 0.04 ± 0.42°C, P=0.04, and % change: 1.78 ± 3.29 versus 0.14 ± 1.27 %, P=0.03). All patients with preoperative cardiac risk factors had a change in TR (after/before exercise, ΔTR) with values falling in the lower two tertiles of the study population (ΔTR <1.1%). Conclusion. Exercise increased the reactive hyperemic response to ischemia. This dynamic response was blunted in patients with cardiac risk factors. The usability of this short-term effect for the preoperative assessment of endothelial function warrants further study.
Feature Selection Using a Semantic Hierarchy for Event Recognition and Type Classification

Event recognition and event type classification are among the important areas in text mining. A state-of-the-art approach utilizing deep-level lexical semantics and syntactic dependencies suffers from a limitation of requiring too large feature space. In this paper, we propose a novel feature selection method using a semantic hierarchy of features based on WordNet relations and syntactic dependencies. Compared to the well-known feature selection methods, our proposed method reduces the feature space significantly while keeping the same level of effectiveness. For noun events, it improves effectiveness as well as efficiency. Moreover, we expect the proposed feature selection can be applied to the other types of text classification using hierarchically organized semantic resources such as WordNet.
Methods for Categorizing and Recommending API Usage Patterns Based on Degree Centralities and Pattern Distances

API usage patterns have been considered as significant materials in reusing software library APIs for saving development time and improving software quality. Although efforts have been made on discovering and searching API usage patterns, the following two issues are still largely unexplored: how to provide a well-organized view of the discovered API usage patterns? and how to recommend follow-up API usage patterns once a usage pattern is adopted? This paper proposes two methods for categorizing and recommending API usage patterns: first, categories of the usage patterns are automatically identified based on a proposed degree centrality-based clustering algorithm; and second, follow-up usage patterns of an adopted pattern are recommended based on a proposed metric of measuring distances between patterns. In the experimental evaluations, the patterns categorization can achieve 85.4% precision rate with 83% recall rate. The patterns recommendation had approximately half a chance of correctly predicting the follow-up patterns that were actually used by the programmers.
Allergen/irritant interaction ‐ its role in sensitization and allergic disease

Recently, several studies have shown thai allergic diseases such as asthma, rhinitis, and eczema have become more common over the last 50 years. Burr et al. (1) have conducted two surveys 15 years apart in 12-year-old schoolchildren in south Wales (UK), and demonstrated that the number of children suffering from asthma, eczema, and hay fever increased significantly from 6% to 12%, 5% to 16%, and 9% to 15%, respectively, during this period. Similarly, three separate surveys conducted by Russell and colleagues (2, 3), in schoolchildren in Aberdeen (UK) over a 30-year period (196494), indicated that the prevalence of respiratory symptoms and atopy was increased, as demonstrated by increased diagnosis of asthma (from 4.1% in 1964 to 10.2% in 1989 to 19.5% in 1994), hay fever (from 3.2% in 1964 to 11.9% in 1989 to 12.9% in 1994), and eczema (from 5.3% in 1964 to 12% in 1989 to 17.7% in 1994). The most recent data indicate that this increase has been sustained since 1994. Analysis of the prevalence of allergic airway disease in 1996 has demonstrated that while the prevalence of asthma has risen to 21% among 12-13-year-old schoolchildren, the prevalence of allergic rhinitis has increased even further to 30% (4). Association betH'een environmental factors and allergic airway disease
Postgraduate training at the ends of the earth - a way to retain physicians?

INTRODUCTION The recruitment and retention of health workers, crucial to health service delivery, is a major challenge in many rural and remote areas. Finnmark, the most remote and northern county in Norway, has faced recurrent shortages during the last 5 decades, especially of primary care physicians. METHODS This article describes a postgraduate training model for family physicians and public health/community medicine physicians, based on group tutorial and in-service training in rural areas. The effect of the training programs on physician retention in Finnmark is evaluated by a longitudinal cohort study. RESULTS In total, 65-67% of the physicians from the programs are still working in the county 5 years after completion of the group tutorial. Rural practice provides good learning conditions when accompanied by appropriate tutelage, and in-service training allows the trainees and their families to 'grow roots' in the remote area while in training. The group tutorial develops peer support and professional networks to alleviate professional isolation. CONCLUSION On the basis of these findings, traditional centralistic training models are challenged. Postgraduate (vocational) training (residency) for primary care physicians can be successfully carried out in-service in remote areas, in a manner that enhances retention without compromising the quality of the training.
Learning Regulatory Networks from Sparsely Sampled Time Series Expression Data

We present a probabilistic modeling approach to learning gene transcriptional regulation networks from time series gene expression data that is appropriate for the sparsely and irregularly sampled time series datasets currently available. We use a clustering algorithm based on statistical splines to estimate continuous probabilistic models for clusters of genes with similar time expression proﬁles and for individual genes. Using the learned models, we present a novel mutual information score for causal edges between pairs of clusters and between pairs of genes corresponding to a given time lag δ . This score computes dependency between expression values as continuous quantities rather than discretizing them. We present empirical results on times series data for the yeast cell cycle, using randomization trials to determine statistically signiﬁcant candidate network edges and the Chow-Liu graph learning algorithm to learn the network structure, to obtain a dynamic model of cell cycle regulation. Biological validation of the inferred network suggests that our method can learn a meaningful, higher-level view of regulatory networks from sparse time series data.
Stability Analysis of Discrete T-S Fuzzy Systems with Piecewise Fuzzy Lyapunov Approach

For the conservatism problem of stability analysis of fuzzy systems with the common Lyapunov approach and the fuzzy Lyapunov approach, this paper proposes a new sufficient condition to check the stability of open-loop discrete T-S fuzzy systems based on the definition of the discrete piecewise fuzzy Lyapunov function. This condition only needs satisfying the condition of fuzzy Lyapunov approach in each maximal overlapped-rule group. Therefore, the proposed condition not only is less conservative and difficult than former two approaches, but also includes them as special cases. A simulation example shows the approach is effective and advantageous
Trends and patterns of prostate cancer: what do they suggest?

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed non-skin cancer in most western countries particularly in the US. Despite the substantial morbidity and mortality the etiology of prostate cancer is still unknown. As such the patterns and trends of prostate cancer in various countries are presented in this article to provide further insights for future epidemiologic studies. According to international comparisons the rates of prostate cancer have risen in every population-based registry around the world despite the very large population variation in incidence. It is noted that factors affecting reported incidence include changes over time in diagnosis and population differences in access to medical care quality of cancer diagnosis and population differences in access to medical care quality of cancer diagnosis completeness and accuracy of cancer reporting and screening. Moreover changes in prevalence of risk factors in the population will also impact the reported and the real incidence. Finally differences in risk among racial and ethnic groups are discussed.
COMPUTATION OF MEMORY REQUIREMENTS FOR MULTI-DIMENSIONAL SIGNAL PROCESSING APPLICATIONS BY HONGWEI ZHU

Many integrated circuit systems, particularly in the multimedia and telecom domains , are inherently data dominant. For this class of systems, a large part of the power consumption is due to the data storage and data transfer. Moreover, the area cost is often largely dominated by memory. Hence, the optimization of the memory architecture is crucial in the design methodology for this type of applications. In deriving an optimized memory architecture, memory size computation is an important step in the exploration of the possible algorithmic specifications of multimedia applications. This thesis presents a novel non-scalar approach for computing exactly the memory size in real-time multi-dimensional signal processing algorithms, like tele-com and multimedia applications. This methodology uses both algebraic techniques specific to the data-flow analysis used in modern compilers, and also recent advances in the theory of rational polyhedra. In contrast with all the previous works which are only estimation methods, this approach performs exact memory computations even for applications with numerous and complex array references.
Surgical Treatment of Migraine Headaches

This prospective study was conducted to investigate the role of removal of corrugator supercilii muscles, transection of the zygomaticotemporal branch of the trigeminal nerve, and temple soft-tissue repositioning in the treatment of migraine headaches. Using the criteria set forth by the International Headache Society, the research team’s neurologist evaluated patients with moderate to severe migraine headaches, to confirm the diagnosis. Subsequently, the patients completed a comprehensive migraine headaches questionnaire and the team’s plastic surgeon injected 25 units of botulinum toxin type A (Botox) into each corrugator supercilii muscle. The patients were asked to maintain an accurate diary of their migraine headaches and to complete a monthly questionnaire documenting pertinent information related to their headaches. Patients in whom the injection of Botox resulted in complete elimination of the migraine headaches then underwent resection of the corrugator supercilii muscles. Those who experienced only significant improvement underwent transection of the zygomaticotemporal branch of the trigeminal nerve with repositioning of the temple soft tissues, in addition to removal of the corrugator supercilii muscles. Once again, patients kept a detailed postoperative record of their headaches. Of the 29 patients included in the study, 24 were women and five were men, with an average age of 44.9 years (range, 24 to 63 years). Twenty-four of 29 patients (82.8 percent, p < 0.001) reported a positive response to the injection of Botox, 16 (55.2 percent, p < 0.001) observed complete elimination, eight (27.6 percent, p < 0.04) experienced significant improvement (at least 50 percent reduction in intensity or severity), and five (17.2 percent, not significant) did not notice a change in their migraine headaches. Twenty-two of the 24 patients who had a favorable response to the injection of Botox underwent surgery, and 21 (95.5 percent, p < 0.001) observed a postoperative improvement. Ten patients (45.5 percent, p < 0.01) reported elimination of migraine headaches and 11 patients (50.0 percent, p < 0.004) noted a considerable improvement. For the entire surgical group, the average intensity of the migraine headaches reduced from 8.9 to 4.1 on an analogue scale of 1 to 10, and the frequency of migraine headaches changed from an average of 5.2 per month to an average of 0.8 per month. For the group who only experienced an improvement, the intensity fell from 9.0 to 7.5 and the frequency was reduced from 5.6 to 1.0 per month. Only one patient (4.5 percent, not significant) did not notice any change. The follow-up ranged from 222 to 494 days, the average being 347 days. In conclusion, this study confirms the value of surgical treatment of migraine headaches, inasmuch as 21 of 22 patients benefited significantly from the surgery. It is also evident that injection of Botox is an extremely reliable predictor of surgical outcome.