Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel Approach to Monitor Rehabilitation Outcomes in Stroke Survivors Using Wearable Technology

Quantitative assessment of motor abilities in stroke survivors can provide valuable feedback to guide clinical interventions. Numerous clinical scales were developed in the past to assess levels of impairment and functional limitation in individuals after stroke. The Functional Ability Scale is one of these clinical scales. It is a 75-point scale used to evaluate the functional ability of subjects by grading movement quality during performance of 15 motor tasks. Performance of these motor tasks requires subjects to reach for objects (e.g., a pencil on a table) and manipulate them (e.g., lift the pencil). In this paper, we show that accelerometer data recorded during performance of a subset of the motor tasks pertaining to the Functional Ability Scale can be relied upon to derive accurate estimates of the scores provided by a clinician using this scale. Accelerometer-based estimates of clinical scores were obtained by segmenting the recordings into movement components (reaching, manipulation, release/return), extracting data features, selecting features that maximized the separation among classes associated with different clinical scores, feeding these features to Random Forests to estimate scores for individual motor tasks, and using a linear equation to estimate the total Functional Ability Scale score based on the sum of the clinical scores for individual motor tasks derived from the accelerometer data. Results showed that it is possible to achieve estimates of the total Functional Ability Scale score marked by a bias of only 0.04 points of the scale and a standard deviation of only 2.43 points when using as few as three sensors to collect data during performance of only six motor tasks.
The Relationship of Locus of Control and Social Learning on Academic Achievement in a Supplemental Instruction Program

A large number of high school students entering college are arriving academically unprepared. Abilene Christian University’s newly founded Bridge Scholars Program seeks to help and support academically at-risk students based upon low ACT/SAT scores and low high school GPA averages. This research utilizes the Supplemental Instruction program, (based upon Bandura’s social learning theory), as its academic intervention. The research questions are 1) How does Supplemental Instruction contribute to an at-risk student’s college readiness (knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviors and strategies)? And, 2) Does a student’s internal or external locus of control predict academic performance? A pretest and posttest using Rotter’s (1966) Internal-External Locus of Control Scale measured students’ overall academic confidence. Class test scores, class final grades, and semester GPA were used to measure Supplemental Instruction program effectiveness. Although Locus of Control proved insignificant, test scores, final class grade, and overall semester GPA indicate that the Bridge Scholars program and Supplemental Instruction are highly effective interventions in better preparing at-risk students for the rigors of college level academia. The Relationship of Locus of Control and Social Learning on Academic Achievement in a Supplemental Instruction Program A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School Abilene Christian University In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science in Social Work By Tina Fleet May 2017
Prevention/intervention programs for students with or at-risk of emotional disturbances : a thesis ...

The purpose of this qualitative action research study was to examine prevention/intervention programs that: a) are widely used research based effective prevention/intervention programs; b) can be used within a school setting and/or day treatment program; c) can be aligned with the services provided by other agencies as the best suited program at this unique site that services 12 1-12 grade emotionally disturbed youth. The procedures used was 18 pre-presentation interview questions answered by eight participants followed by a 30-minute powerpoint presentation on five prevention/intervention programs for students with or at-risk of an emotional disturbance. Data collection concluded with 18 post-presentation interview questions answered by six volunteer participants. An effective research-based program, “Why Try? ” was selected, as it offered strategies for building self-esteem, fostering self-determination and selfmotivation. In addition, “Why Try? ” can be used in the classroom/day treatment setting and be aligned with the services provided by other agencies. The process being used to align services as a result of this action research case project has been a weekly meeting between the educational staff and day treatment staff. The impact of this action research project has 1) improved the relationships between staff and students; 2) stimulated and improved relationships between day treatment and educational staff; 3) and helped show all agencies involved with the care and education of the residents at Unity Care Group Home Inc. and students at Paradise School that we can work together efficiently to serve our children to our best abilities.
A Digital offset-compensation scheme for an LA and CDR in 65-nm CMOS

A digital offset-compensation scheme for a limiting amplifier (LA) and CDR is presented. The proposed scheme detects the LA offset by sampling the CDR recovered clock with the LA output. The scheme eliminates offset-induced data jitter and compensates offset even for levels that saturate the LA output and cause the CDR not to lock. The compensation circuitry consumes 7.2 mW and occupies 160×110 µm2, a third the area of the LA.
The Serotonergic System: Its Role in Pathogenesis and Early Developmental Treatment of Autism

Autism is a severe childhood disorder already presenting in the first 3 years of life and, therefore, strongly correlated with neurodevelopmental alterations in prenatal, as well as postnatal period. Neurotransmitters hold a pivotal role in development by providing the stimulation needed for synapses and neuronal networks to be formed during the critical period of neuroplasticity. Aberrations of the serotonergic system modify key processes in the developing brain and are strongly implicated in the pathophysiology of developmental disorders. Evidence for the role of serotonin in autism emerges from neuropathological, imaging and genetic studies. Due to its developmental arrest, autism requires early intervention that would, among others, target the disrupted serotonergic system and utilize brain plasticity to elicit clinically important brain changes in children.
Resolution of Conflicts Among Ontology Mappings: a Fuzzy Approach

Interoperability is a strong requirement in open distributed systems and in the Semantic Web. The need for ontology integration is not always completely met by the available ontology matching techniques because, in most cases, the semantics of the compared ontologies is not considered, thus leading to inconsistent mappings. Probabilistic approaches has been proposed to validate mappings and solve the inconsistencies, based on a mapping confidence measure. As probabilistic approaches suffer from the lack of well-founded likelihood measures of mapping correctness, we propose a validation approach based on fuzzy interpretation of mappings, which better models the notion of degree of similarity between ontology elements. Moreover, we describe a con flict resolution method which computes the minimal sets of con flicting mappings and can be the ground of different validation strategies.
Des Styles pour une Personnalisation de l'Interaction Homme-Robot

Les robots compagnons sont des robots personnels qui ont pour objectif d’accompagner l’utilisateur dans ses activites de la vie quotidienne. Nous nous interessons pour notre part aux enfants, accompagnes par un robot dans differentes situations : travail scolaire, reconfort, jeu, protection,. L’acceptabilite de ces robots compagnons dans le quotidien est questionnee dans de nombreux travaux ; elle est liee a son apparence physique, son utilite, sa facilite d’utilisation mais aussi a d’autres criteres qu’il reste a etudier. Un des defis dans la conception de tels robots est de les doter de reelles competences sociales de perception, de raisonnement et d’action lors de leurs interactions avec l’utilisateur. La recherche dans le domaine de l’interaction humain- robot se tourne ainsi de plus en plus vers les travaux en Informatique Affective (Affective Computing) pour concevoir des robots personnels plus sociaux, l’emotion etant une dimension centrale dans les interactions. D’autres dimensions comme la confiance, la legitimite ou encore la credibilite du compagnon sont importantes pour leur acceptabilite. Des travaux ont propose l’idee d’un compagnon ”polyvalent” capable d’endosser de multiples roles et de s’adapter en fonction des besoins de l’utilisateur et en fonction du contexte de la situation. La Theorie du Compagnon presentee souleve la question des differences entre individus influencant la qualite de l’interaction et la construction d’une relation entre le compagnon et l’utilisateur. Ce travail sur la personnalisation des robots a pour but de creer de la valeur, en particulier pour des parents souhaitant un robot compagnon pour leur enfant, en accord avec leurs propres attentes.
From Word Form Surfaces to Communication

The starting point of this paper is the external surface of a word form, for example the agent-external acoustic perturbations constituting a language sign in speech or the dots on paper in the case of written language. The external surfaces are modality-dependent tokens which the hearer recognizes by means of (i) pattern-matching and (ii) a mapping into modality-independent types, and which the speaker produces by an inverse mapping from modality-independent types into tokens synthesized in a modality of choice. The types are provided by a lexicon stored in the agent's memory. They include not only the necessary as opposed to accidental (kata sumbebekos), as used in the philosophical tradition of Aristotle. properties of the surface shape, but also the associated morphosyntactic properties and the meaning. The question addressed by this paper is how to design the lexical analysis of word form types as a data structure (abstract data type), suitable for the purpose of Database Semantics (DBS), i.e., for a computational model of natural language communication. Database Semantics describes the procedural aspects of the SLIM theory of language[1, p. 1]. As an acronym, SLIM stands for the principles of Surface compositional, time Linear, Internal Matching. As a word, SLIM stands for low (linear) mathematical complexity. After discussing the conditions of automatic word form recognition and production in a talking robot, we turn to the question of what format the analyzed word forms should have. The requirements are an easy coding of lexical details, a simple detection and representation of semantic relations, suitability for storage and retrieval in a database, support of a computationally straightforward matching procedure for relating the levels of language and context, and compatibility with a suitable algorithm.
Distributed Evaluation of Top-k Temporal Joins

We study a particular kind of join, coined Ranked Temporal Join (RTJ), featuring predicates that compare time intervals and a scoring function associated with each predicate to quantify how well it is satisfied. RTJ queries are prevalent in a variety of applications such as network traffic monitoring, task scheduling, and tweet analysis. RTJ queries are often best interpreted as top-k queries where only the best matches are returned. We show how to exploit the nature of temporal predicates and the properties of their associated scoring semantics to design TKIJ, an efficient query evaluation approach on a distributed Map-Reduce architecture. TKIJ relies on an offline statistics computation that, given a time partitioning into granules, computes the distribution of intervals' endpoints in each granule, and an online computation that generates query-dependent score bounds. Those statistics are used for workload assignment to reducers. This aims at reducing data replication, to limit I/O cost. Additionally, high-scoring results are distributed evenly to enable each reducer to prune unnecessary results. Our extensive experiments on synthetic and real datasets show that TKIJ outperforms state-of-the-art competitors and provides very good performance for n-ary RTJ queries on temporal data.
Automatic Calibration of Numerical Models using Fast Optimisation by Fitness Approximation

Genetic algorithms (GAs) and multi-objective genetic algorithms (MOGAs) have proven to be successful in calibrating numerical models. The limitation of using GAs and MOGAs is their expensive computational requirement. The calibration process usually needs to run the numerical model and evaluate the objective function thousands of times before converging to an acceptable solution and generating a sufficiently accurate Pareto set. However, in real world applications, there is simply not enough time and resources to perform such a huge number of model runs. In this study, a computational framework, known as GA-kNN, is presented for solving computationally expensive calibration problems. The concept of GA-kNN will be demonstrated via one novel approximate model using k-Nearest Neighbour classifier. This study also investigates Pareto ranks estimation using kNN classifier as a way to speed up multi-objective genetic algorithm search, namely NSGA-II-kNN. The approximation model is performed in predicting the form of Pareto ranks instead of running the simulation models and ranking current population. This approach can substantially reduce the number of model evaluations on computational expensive problems without compromising the good search capabilities of NSGA-II. The simulation results suggest that the proposed optimisation frameworks are able to achieve good solutions as well as provide considerable savings of the numerical model calls compared to traditional GA and NSGA-II optimisation frameworks.
Serial Next-Generation Sequencing of Circulating Cell-Free DNA Evaluating Tumor Clone Response To Molecularly Targeted Drug Administration

Purpose: We evaluated whether next-generation sequencing (NGS) of circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) could be used for patient selection and as a tumor clone response biomarker in patients with advanced cancers participating in early-phase clinical trials of targeted drugs. Experimental Design: Plasma samples from patients with known tumor mutations who completed at least two courses of investigational targeted therapy were collected monthly, until disease progression. NGS was performed sequentially on the Ion Torrent PGM platform. Results: cfDNA was extracted from 39 patients with various tumor types. Treatments administered targeted mainly the PI3K–AKT–mTOR pathway (n = 28) or MEK (n = 7). Overall, 159 plasma samples were sequenced with a mean sequencing coverage achieved of 1,685X across experiments. At trial initiation (C1D1), 23 of 39 (59%) patients had at least one mutation identified in cfDNA (mean 2, range 1–5). Out of the 44 mutations identified at C1D1, TP53, PIK3CA and KRAS were the top 3 mutated genes identified, with 18 (41%), 9 (20%), 8 (18%) different mutations, respectively. Out of these 23 patients, 13 received a targeted drug matching their tumor profile. For the 23 patients with cfDNA mutation at C1D1, the monitoring of mutation allele frequency (AF) in consecutive plasma samples during treatment with targeted drugs demonstrated potential treatment associated clonal responses. Longitudinal monitoring of cfDNA samples with multiple mutations indicated the presence of separate clones behaving discordantly. Molecular changes at cfDNA mutation level were associated with time to disease progression by RECIST criteria. Conclusions: Targeted NGS of cfDNA has potential clinical utility to monitor the delivery of targeted therapies. Clin Cancer Res; 21(20); 4586–96. ©2015 AACR.
Prototype Abstraction in Category Learning

Do people learn categories by abstracting prototypes, forming simple rules, remembering specific exemplars, or by some combination of these? Although some consensus seems to be emerging for a combination of rule formation and exemplar memorization, recent work has revived interest in prototype abstraction (e.g., Smith et al., 1997; Smith & Minda, 1998). We reexamined this recent evidence with an eye toward an alternative simple strategy subjects could use within those particular studies. A very simple strategy, available in some categorization tasks in which corrective feedback is supplied, is to classify the current stimulus in the same category as the previous stimulus if the two are sufficiently similar to one another. This simple strategy makes no recourse to stored category representations of any kind. And this strategy will be useful only under certain circumstances. Reexamining the work by Smith and colleagues, we found that those category structures that produced evidence for prototype abstraction could be “learned,” at least to some degree, using this simple strategy. Moreover, simulated data sets created using this simple strategy were better fitted by a prototype model than an exemplar model. We argue that evidence for prototype abstraction from the studies by Smith and colleagues may be weaker than they originally claimed.
The Dangers of Separating Social Justice from Multicultural Education: Applications in Higher Education

This article presents the case of the author’s experience as a student in a multicultural education course. The exploration of this case expands on Cho’s (2017) theoretical linking of social justice and multicultural education by highlighting the practical dangers of disengaging social justice from multicultural education. As an alternative to critiquing the field of multicultural education, this paper focuses on the execution of social justice in a multicultural education course. Both a social justice and a multicultural education lens are applied to analyze the author’s experience in the course. Additionally, practical considerations are provided for those teaching multicultural education courses in higher education.
Strain-Transcending Inhibitory Antibodies against Homologous and Heterologous Strains of Duffy Binding Protein region II

Duffy binding protein region II (DBPII) is a promising vaccine candidate against vivax malaria. However, polymorphisms of DBPII are the major obstacle to designing a successful vaccine. Here, we examined whether anti-DBPII antibodies from individual P. vivax exposures provide strain-transcending immunity and whether their presence is associated with DBPII haplotypes found in patients with acute P. vivax. The ability of antibodies to inhibit DBL-TH-erythrocyte binding was tested by COS7 erythrocyte binding inhibition assay. Seven samples of high responders (HR) were identified from screening anti-DBPII levels. HR no.3 and HR no.6 highly inhibited all DBL-TH binding to erythrocytes, by >80%. Antibodies from these two patients’ plasma had the potential to be broadly inhibitory against DBL-TH1, -TH2, -TH6, -TH7, -TH8 and -TH9 haplotypes when plasma was serially diluted from 1:500 to 1:2000. To further examine the association of DBPII haplotypes and the ability of antibodies to broadly inhibit DBL-TH variants, the individual samples underwent sequencing analysis and the inhibitory function of the anti-DBPII antibodies was tested. The patterns of DBPII polymorphisms in acute patients were classified into two groups, DBPII Sal I (55%) and DBL-TH variants (45%). Plasma from Sal I and DBPII-TH patients who had the highest inhibition against Sal I or DBL-TH4 and -TH5 was serially diluted from 1:500 to 1:2000 and their inhibitory capacity was tested against a panel of DBL-TH haplotypes. Results provided evidence of both strain-transcending inhibition as well as strain-specific inhibition by antibodies that blocked erythrocyte binding against some DBL-TH variants and against homologous alleles. This study demonstrated broad inhibition by anti-DBPII antibodies against DBL-TH haplotypes in natural P. vivax exposed individuals. The identification of conserved epitopes among DBL-TH may have implications for vaccine development of a DBPII-based vaccine against diverse P. vivax infections.
Various Extraction Methods for Obtaining Stilbenes from Grape Cane of Vitis vinifera L.

Grape cane, leaves and grape marc are waste products from viticulture, which can be used to obtain secondary stilbene derivatives with high antioxidant value. The presented work compares several extraction methods: maceration at laboratory temperature, extraction at elevated temperature, fluidized-bed extraction, Soxhlet extraction, microwave-assisted extraction, and accelerated solvent extraction. To obtain trans-resveratrol, trans-ε-viniferin and r2-viniferin from grape cane of the V. vinifera variety Cabernet Moravia, various conditions were studied: different solvents, using powdered versus cut cane material, different extraction times, and one-step or multiple extractions. The largest concentrations found were 6030 ± 680 µg/g dry weight (d.w.) for trans-resveratrol, 2260 ± 90 µg/g d.w. for trans-ε-viniferin, and 510 ± 40 µg/g d.w. for r2-viniferin. The highest amounts of stilbenes (8500 ± 1100 µg/g d.w.) were obtained using accelerated solvent extraction in methanol.
Targeted therapy for soft tissue sarcomas in adolescents and young adults

Soft tissue sarcomas (STSs) are a heterogeneous group of tumors originating from the mesenchyme. Even though they affect individuals in all age groups, the prevalence of subtypes of STSs changes significantly from childhood through adolescence into adulthood. The mainstay of therapy is surgery, with or without the addition of chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. These treatment modalities are associated, in many cases, with significant morbidity and, given the heterogeneity of tumor histologies encompassed by the term “STS”, have not uniformly improved outcomes. Moreover, some subgroups of STSs appear to be more, and others less, responsive to conventional chemotherapy agents. Over the last two decades, our understanding of the biology of STSs is slowly increasing, allowing for the development of more targeted therapies. We review the new treatment modalities that have been tested on patients with STSs, with a special focus on adolescents and young adults, a group of patients that is often underrepresented in clinical trials and has not received the dedicated attention it deserves, given the significant differences in biology and treatment response in comparison to children and adults.
Bandwidth Enhancement of Three-Stage Doherty Power Amplifier Using Symmetric Devices

This paper proposes a design scheme for extending the bandwidth of a three-stage Doherty power amplifier (DPA) based on symmetric devices for broadband applications. The proposed bandwidth enhancement scheme provides an optimized solution for the load combiner parameters while operating the auxiliary power amplifier (PA) at lower current values as compared to the main PA at saturation. The proposed scheme promises 30.3% fractional bandwidth in terms of efficiency enhancement up to 9.54-dB back-off. The proposed design methodology is validated with the design of a broadband three-stage DPA using three 10-W packaged GaN HEMT devices. Measurement results show more than 51.6% drain efficiency at 6-dB output power back-off (OPBO) over the entire frequency range from 700 to 950 MHz. At 9.54-dB OPBO, the drain efficiency is better than 50.2% over this 250-MHz band. The peak drain efficiency at saturation is better than 60.04% over the entire band of operation. Measurement with 5-MHz WCDMA modulated signal shows the average drain efficiency of about 57.6% at 33.97-dBm average output power at the center frequency of operation. The corresponding adjacent channel power ratio is better than -45.6 dBc after applying digital predistortion. The circuit is realized with microstrip technology, which can be easily fabricated using conventional printed circuit processes.