Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Affective touch and attachment style modulate pain: a laser-evoked potentials study

Affective touch and cutaneous pain are two sub-modalities of interoception with contrasting affective qualities (pleasantness/unpleasantness) and social meanings (care/harm), yet their direct relationship has not been investigated. In 50 women, taking into account individual attachment styles, we assessed the role of affective touch and particularly the contribution of the C tactile (CT) system in subjective and electrophysiological responses to noxious skin stimulation, namely N1 and N2-P2 laser-evoked potentials. When pleasant, slow (versus fast) velocity touch was administered to the (non-CT-containing) palm of the hand, higher attachment anxiety predicted increased subjective pain ratings, in the same direction as changes in N2 amplitude. By contrast, when pleasant touch was administered to CT-containing skin of the arm, higher attachment anxiety predicted attenuated N1 and N2 amplitudes. Higher attachment avoidance predicted opposite results. Thus, CT-based affective touch can modulate pain in early and late processing stages (N1 and N2 components), with the direction of effects depending on attachment style. Affective touch not involving the CT system seems to affect predominately the conscious perception of pain, possibly reflecting socio-cognitive factors further up the neurocognitive hierarchy. Affective touch may thus convey information about available social resources and gate pain responses depending on individual expectations of social support. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health’.
MERS coronaviruses from camels in Africa exhibit region-dependent genetic diversity

Significance Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a zoonotic disease of global health concern, and dromedary camels are the source of human infection. Although Africa has the largest number of dromedary camels, and MERS-coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is endemic in these camels, locally acquired zoonotic MERS is not reported from Africa. However, little is known of the genetic or phenotypic characterization of MERS-CoV from Africa. In this study we characterize MERS-CoV from Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Morocco, and Ethiopia. We demonstrate viral genetic and phenotypic differences in viruses from West Africa, which may be relevant to differences in zoonotic potential, highlighting the need for studies of MERS-CoV at the animal–human interface. Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) causes a zoonotic respiratory disease of global public health concern, and dromedary camels are the only proven source of zoonotic infection. Although MERS-CoV infection is ubiquitous in dromedaries across Africa as well as in the Arabian Peninsula, zoonotic disease appears confined to the Arabian Peninsula. MERS-CoVs from Africa have hitherto been poorly studied. We genetically and phenotypically characterized MERS-CoV from dromedaries sampled in Morocco, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. Viruses from Africa (clade C) are phylogenetically distinct from contemporary viruses from the Arabian Peninsula (clades A and B) but remain antigenically similar in microneutralization tests. Viruses from West (Nigeria, Burkina Faso) and North (Morocco) Africa form a subclade, C1, that shares clade-defining genetic signatures including deletions in the accessory gene ORF4b. Compared with human and camel MERS-CoV from Saudi Arabia, virus isolates from Burkina Faso (BF785) and Nigeria (Nig1657) had lower virus replication competence in Calu-3 cells and in ex vivo cultures of human bronchus and lung. BF785 replicated to lower titer in lungs of human DPP4-transduced mice. A reverse genetics-derived recombinant MERS-CoV (EMC) lacking ORF4b elicited higher type I and III IFN responses than the isogenic EMC virus in Calu-3 cells. However, ORF4b deletions may not be the major determinant of the reduced replication competence of BF785 and Nig1657. Genetic and phenotypic differences in West African viruses may be relevant to zoonotic potential. There is an urgent need for studies of MERS-CoV at the animal–human interface.
Dentists’ opinions on using digital technologies in dental practice

OBJECTIVES To investigate which opinions among dentists are associated with level of technology use, when characteristics of the dentist and dental practice, as well as motivating work aspects are taken into account. METHODS A total of 1000 general dental practitioners in the Netherlands received a questionnaire on digital technologies they use, opinions on using technologies and related motivating work aspects. Questions were derived from expert interviews, the Dentists' Experienced Job Resources Scale and literature on technology implementation. Technology use was measured as the number of technologies used, and divided into three technology user groups: low (using 0-4 technologies, mostly administrative and radiographic technologies), intermediate (using 5-7, more varied technologies) and high technology users (using 8-12, including more innovative diagnostic technologies). Opinions on technology use and motivating work aspects were analysed using principal components analysis (PCA) and exploratory factor analysis. Scores on all components and factors were calculated for each respondent by computing the mean of all valid responses on the underlying items. Differences in these scale scores on opinions among the technology user groups were assessed using one-way analysis of variance and Kruskal-Wallis tests. A multiple linear regression analysis assessed the association of scale scores about opinions on technology use with the sum of technologies used, taking into account motivating work aspects and characteristics of the dentist and dental practice. RESULTS The response rate was 31%. Dentists who were high technology users perceived technologies as yielding more improvements in quality of care, adding more value to the dental practice and being easier to use, than low technology users. High technology users thought technologies added more value to their work and they reported higher skills and resources. They also focused more on technologies and thought these are more ready to use than low technology users. High technology users derived more motivation from "Immediate results" and "Craftsmanship" than low technology users. Personal and practice characteristics, motivating work aspects, and the opinion scales "Focus" and "Added value to dentist" explained 50% of the variance in the number of technologies a dentist uses. CONCLUSION Opinions on digital technologies among dentists and motivating work aspects vary with level of technology use. Being more focused on technologies and perceiving a higher added value from using them are associated with using more digital dental technologies, when taking into account motivating work aspects and characteristics of the dentist and dental practice.
The Methods of Choice for Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) Characterization

In recent years, extracellular vesicles (EVs) have become a subject of intense study. These membrane-enclosed spherical structures are secreted by almost every cell type and are engaged in the transport of cellular content (cargo) from parental to target cells. The impact of EVs transfer has been observed in many vital cellular processes including cell-to-cell communication and immune response modulation; thus, a fast and precise characterization of EVs may be relevant for both scientific and diagnostic purposes. In this review, the most popular analytical techniques used in EVs studies are presented with the emphasis on exosomes and microvesicles characterization.
Electromagnetic Design of a Large-Scale Double-Stator Direct Driving HTS Wind Generator

High-temperature superconducting (HTS) direct driving wind generators have been extensively researched due to their inherent high torque density and small mass. In this paper, a double-stator HTS wind generator with rotating HTS field windings is proposed to further improve the torque density. The electromagnetic design of this generator is made and electromagnetic performances of different topologies with air-gap windings or iron teeth are compared and analyzed. In addition, two regular HTS wind generators and one double-stator permanent magnet wind generator with the same scale are put forward to make comparison with proposed double-stator HTS machines, and the feasibility and practical value of these five topologies are evaluated in terms of the weight, volume and cost of active materials. The results reveal double-stator HTS wind generator has great advantages in volume and mass reduction.
A study on a content-based image retrieval technique for Chinese paintings

Purpose The purpose of this study is to build a database of digital Chinese painting images and use the proposed technique to extract image and texture information, and search images similar to the query image based on colour histogram and texture features in the database. Thus, retrieving images by this image technique is expected to make the retrieval of Chinese painting images more precise and convenient for users. Design/methodology/approach In this study, a technique is proposed that considers spatial information of colours in addition to texture feature in image retrieval. This technique can be applied to retrieval of Chinese painting images. A database of 1,200 digital Chinese painting images in three categories was built, including landscape, flower and figure. The authors develop an image-retrieval technique that considers colour distribution, spatial information of colours and texture. Findings In this study, a database of 1,200 digital Chinese painting images in three categories was built, including landscape, flower and figure. An image-retrieval technique was developed that considers colour distribution, spatial information of colours and texture. Through adjustment of feature values, this technique is able to process both landscape and portrait images. This technique also addresses liubai (i.e. blank) and text problems in the images. The experimental results confirm high precision rate of the proposed retrieval technique. Originality/value In this paper, a novel Chinese painting image-retrieval technique is proposed. Existing image-retrieval techniques and the features of Chinese painting are used to retrieve Chinese painting images. The proposed technique can exclude less important image information in Chinese painting images for instance liubai and calligraphy while calculating the feature values in them. The experimental results confirm that the proposed technique delivers a retrieval precision rate as high as 92 per cent and does not require a considerable computing power for feature extraction. This technique can be applied to Web page image retrieval or to other mobile applications.
Corner Point-Based Coarse–Fine Method for Surface-Mount Component Positioning

Component pick-and-place technology has been widely used to improve production efficiency and reduce common defects. The vision-driven measurement system of a component pick-and-place machine requires an appropriate positioning algorithm with low computational complexity, high accuracy, and high generalizability. To satisfy these attributes is rather challenging. This paper focuses on the online component positioning problem based on corner points. Thus, we propose a robust, accurate, and efficient universal algorithm that incorporates preprocessing, coarse positioning, and fine positioning stages. Two types of model key points are introduced for interpreting the model component. To enhance positioning accuracy and robustness against illumination changes, the Harris corners and subpixel corner points are extracted from the images of real components. In the coarse positioning step, distance and shape feature matching methods are introduced to, respectively, compute the coarse and correct correspondences between type I model key points and Harris corner points. After the corresponding point pairs have been obtained, the coarse and fine positioning problems are formulated as least squares error problems. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by applying the method in several real component positioning experiments.
The Influence of Respondent Characteristics on the Validity of Self-Reported Survey Responses.

OBJECTIVE To examine concordance between member self-reports and the organization's administrative claims data for two key health factors: number of chronic conditions, and number of prescription drugs. DATA Medicare Advantage plan claims data and member survey data from 2011 to 2012. DESIGN Mailed surveys to 15,000 members, enrolled minimum 6 months, drawn from a random sample of primary care physician practices with at least 200 members. METHODS Descriptive statistics were generated for extent of concordance. Multivariable logistic regressions were used to analyze the association of selected respondent characteristics with likelihood of concordance. FINDINGS Concordance for number of chronic conditions was 58.4 percent, with 27.3 percent under-reporting, 14.2 percent over-reporting. Concordance for number of prescription drugs was 56.6 percent with 38.9 percent under-reporting, 4.5 percent over-reporting. Number of prescriptions and assistance in survey completion were associated with higher likelihood of concordance for chronic conditions. Assistance in survey completion and number of chronic conditions were associated with higher concordance, and age and number of prescriptions were associated with lower concordance, for prescription drugs. CONCLUSIONS Self-reported number of chronic conditions and prescription medications are not in high concordance with claims data. Health care researchers and policy makers using patient self-reported data should be aware of these potential biases.
Single/multi-band multi-functional passive components with reconfiguration capabilities

This paper presents a review of multi-functional RF passive components. Special emphasis is given on planar passive devices that co-integrate the filtering functionality with other RF-analog-processing actions in order to reduce the size and the loss of conventional transmitter and receiver chains based on series-cascaded RF mono-functional passive blocks. Examples of multi-operational RF circuits that are covered in this overview article include: i) frequency-static and reconfigurable Wilkinson-type power dividers with added single/multi-band filtering behavior, ii) frequency-adaptive single/multi-band filtering impedance transformers, and iii) frequency-tunable broad-band bandpass filters with controllable notches inserted in the transmission band. For these multi-functional circuits, experimental results of several proof-of-concept microstrip prototypes are shown.
A discriminative latent model for Chinese multiword expression extraction

In this paper, we propose a discriminative latent model to extract Chinese multiword expressions from corpus resources as part of a larger research effort to improve machine translation(MT) system such as Super Function based Machine Translation(SFBMT). For existing MT systems, especially Statistic based MT(SBMT), the issue of multiword expressions (MWEs) detection and accurate correspondence from source to target language remains an unsolved problem. Template or Super Function based machine translation system suffer less from the existance of MWEs, but MWEs are still main holdback of MT systems. Our initial experiments on the Chinese-Japanese MT systems reveal that, where MWEs exist, SFBMT system suffer in terms of both efficiency ,comprehensibility and adequacy of finding the translation functions. Statistic based Machine Translation suffers more than SFBMT. For SFBMT systems to become of further practical use, they need to be enhanced with MWEs processing capability. As part of our study towards this goal, we proposed a discriminative latent model, which was developed for sequence labeling task, for identifying and extracting Chinese MWEs. In our evaluation, the tool achieved precisions ranging from 71.46% to 95.87% for different types of MWEs. Such results demonstrate that it is feasible to automatically identify many Chinese MWEs using our tool, Super Function based MT will be further improvement after the Chinese MWEs have been detected.
Autonomous vehicles' performance on single lane road: A simulation under VISSIM environment

This paper tests an autonomous vehicles (AV) longitudinal driving model Under VISSIM environment. The AV will obey three main rules: “Assuring a Clear Distance Ahead”, “Keeping Away from Dilemma Zone”, and “No Speeding”. To evaluate the performance of the AV, a simulation environment based on VISSIM was constructed. According to the simulation experiments, the average capacity per lane for AV in a single-lane road segment is about 2233 vehicles/hour, which is 1.13% higher than that for Human-Driving Vehicle (HV). However, AV will have a much better performance under heavy traffic condition because of its less desired speed deviation. As for signalized entrance lane, it shows that AVs prefer a more conservative driving way, which lead to a quick reduce in number of vehicles passing stop line during the beginning of amber period, which means lower possibilities for traffic conflict during the signal switching time. However, the total flow rate for AV during the whole signal time is almost the same as HV because AV has a higher flow rate during the middle and end of green time to make up the loss in amber time.
A Review of High Gain and High Efficiency Reflectarrays for 5G Communications

The future adaptability of reflectarray antenna requires a thorough investigation of its main conventional features for expected improvements. Its existing design featuring at microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies can be considered as a basic platform for further studies. In this paper, a thorough review of reflectarrays on some selected areas is presented. Its design implementations involving gain and efficiency improvement are discussed in details. Various design approaches have been critically analyzed at the unit cell and full reflectarray levels for a plausible enhancement in the featured parameters with 5G compatibility.
Expression of IL-4 Receptor alpha on smooth muscle cells is not necessary for development of experimental allergic asthma

Background— Airflow in the lungs of patients with allergic asthma is impaired by excessive mucus production and airway smooth muscle contractions. Elevated levels of the cytokines IL-4 and IL-13 are associated with this pathology. In vitro studies have suggested that IL-4 receptor alpha (IL-4R α ) signalling on smooth muscle cells is critical for airway inflammation and airway hyperresponsiveness. Objective— In order to define the contribution of IL-4 and IL-13 to the onset of asthmatic pathology the role of their key receptor IL-4R α in smooth muscle cells was examined in vivo . Methods— By using transgenic SMC-MHC cre IL-4R α − /lox mice deficient for IL-4R α in smooth muscle cells, in vivo effects of impaired IL-4R α signalling in smooth muscle cells on the outcome of asthmatic disease were investigated for the first time. Allergic asthma was introduced in mice by repeated sensitisation with ovalbumin/aluminium hydroxide on days 0, 7 and 14 followed by intranasal allergen challenge on days 21–23. Mice were investigated for the presence of airway hyperresponsiveness, airway inflammation, allergen specific antibody production, Th2 type cytokine responses and lung pathology. airway smooth muscle cells during the early phase of allergic asthma is not, as suggested, necessary for the outcome of the disease. Clinical Implications— Therapies targeting the IL-4R α might have no direct effect on smooth muscle cells in an allergic asthma response. muscle cell specific IL-4R α disruption (SMP8 cre IL-4R α − /lox mice) found development of AHR in response to house dust mite allergens or recombinant IL-13 in the absence of smooth muscle IL-4R α (C. Perkins, F. Finkelman, personal communication). These results indicate that IL-4R α expression on smooth muscle cell is not required for the development of AHR in mice. This does not exclude the possibility that IL-4R α signalling on smooth muscle cells contributes to the onset of AHR in wild type animals, as the airway response observed in our
Daily Total Physical Activity and Incident Stroke: The Japan Public Health Center–Based Prospective Study

Background and Purpose— There is limited evidence on the association between total physical activity and stroke in Asian populations experiencing a greater burden of hemorrhagic stroke than Western populations. We aimed to understand their optimal level of physical activity for stroke prevention. Methods— A total of 74 913 Japanese people 50 to 79 years of age without histories of cardiovascular disease or cancer were followed from 2000 to 2012. Results— During the 698 946 person-years of follow-up, we documented a total of 2738 incident cases of stroke, including 1007 hemorrhagic strokes (747 intraparenchymal and 260 subarachnoid hemorrhages) and 1721 ischemic strokes (1206 nonembolic and 515 embolic infarctions). Individuals in the second or third metabolic equivalents of task–hours per day quartile had the lowest risks of total stroke (hazard ratio [HR], 0.83; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.75–0.93), intraparenchymal hemorrhage (HR, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.64–0.97), subarachnoid hemorrhage (HR, 0.78; CI, 0.55–1.11), and nonembolic infarction (HR, 0.78; CI, 0.67–0.92), whereas those in the fourth quartile had the lowest risk of embolic infarction (HR, 0.76; CI, 0.59–0.97). Cubic spline graphs revealed a steep decrease in stroke risk (30% risk reduction) from the lowest level to a plateau at 5 to 10 metabolic equivalents of task–hours per day (50th percentile). The associations of total physical activity level with hemorrhage stroke showed U or J shape, which were because of vigorous-intensity activities, whereas the association with ischemic stroke showed L shape. Conclusions— For Japanese people, moderate levels of total physical activity, particularly achieved by moderate-intensity activities, may be optimal for stroke prevention because excessive vigorous-intensity activities might not be beneficial or even disadvantageous for prevention of hemorrhagic stroke.
The Potential Role of Direct and Indirect Contacts on Infection Spread in Dairy Farm Networks

Animals’ exchanges are considered the most effective route of between-farm infectious disease transmission. However, despite being often overlooked, the infection spread due to contaminated equipment, vehicles, or personnel proved to be important for several livestock epidemics. This study investigated the role of indirect contacts in a potential infection spread in the dairy farm network of the Province of Parma (Northern Italy). We built between-farm contact networks using data on cattle exchange (direct contacts), and on-farm visits by veterinarians (indirect contacts). We compared the features of the contact structures by using measures on static and temporal networks. We assessed the disease spreading potential of the direct and indirect network structures in the farm system by using data on the infection state of farms by paratuberculosis. Direct and indirect networks showed non-trivial differences with respect to connectivity, contact distribution, and super-spreaders identification. Furthermore, our analyses on paratuberculosis data suggested that the contributions of direct and indirect contacts on diseases spread are apparent at different spatial scales. Our results highlighted the potential role of indirect contacts in between-farm disease spread and underlined the need for a deeper understanding of these contacts to develop better strategies for prevention of livestock epidemics.