Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Traumatic Brain Injury Training For Compensated Caregivers: Experiences In North Carolina

Purpose: Individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) often experience cognitive deficits that result in difficulties with language and social skills. While direct Speech and Language Therapy can help with these difficulties, there is increasing support for implementing other intervention methods (e.g. environment modification and communication partner training). Training communication partners of individuals with TBI has proven to be an extremely effective means of intervention for this population, however there has been limited research that has specifically examined paid caregivers and the training they receive as communication partners. This study aimed to evaluate the current state of communication training among professional caregivers in North Carolina. Method: A total of 13 caregiver participants completed an online anonymous survey that gathered information regarding their demographics, completed training programs, understanding of communication difficulties associated with TBI as well as useful strategies for communication, common conversational contexts, confidence in communicating, and desire for additional training. Their responses were qualitatively analyzed. Conclusions: It was found that the majority of the caregivers were female and had some form of higher education. Most had been employed with individuals with TBI for 5 years or less and only currently served one or two individuals with TBI. They worked in a variety of settings and their job titles could be described as either “Administrative Staff” or “Direct Support Staff”. Although participants reported completion of training programs about TBI, programs that had a focus towards communication were limited. The participants as a group were knowledgeable about communication difficulties of individuals with TBI and useful communication strategies and all of the respondents recognized that individuals with TBI suffer socially due to their injury. Overall, there was a high level of perceived self-confidence in their ability to communicate effectively with individuals with TBI, although participants were also still open to receiving additional communication training. The two most commonly preferred forms of training included an in-person seminar or an online training format. This paper discusses the implications for future training of these professionals in both direct support and administrative positions.
Statistical features analysis of transient current signal for broken bars fault detection in LS-PMSMs

Electrical motors constitute critical elements in certain industrial facilities and domestic fields as a prime mover. In spite of its good trait, failures in electrical motor cannot be impeded because it is mainly working in the industrial field. LS-PMSM is a high efficiency motor introduced recently in industrial field. LS-PMSM is a hybrid motor, which its rotor is combination of squirrel-cage rotor and high energy permanent magnets to have high starting torque and high efficiency together. Similar to other types of electrical motors, various faults that lead to malfunction of the motor occur in LS-PMSM during its operation. In this context, investigates diagnostic techniques for LS-PMSM with special reference to rotor faults. Since LS-PMSM has squirrel cage rotor, among different faults may happen in it, broken bar is the most important one. This paper deal with the finite element method to investigation of broken rotor bar faults on LS-PMSM with statistical feature analysis in the time domain using transient current signal.
Variational formulation and integration of electric circuits

Variational integrators [1] are geometric integrators that are symplectic, momentum-preserving and have an excellent long-time energy behavior. This means that energy (for conservative systems) or the energy rate (for systems with external forces) is on average preserved in the discrete solution even for large step sizes, i.e., there is no numerical energy dissipation or generation. Variational integrators have been mainly developed and used for a wide variety of mechanical systems. However, considering real-life systems, these are in general not of purely mechanical character. In fact, more and more systems become multidisciplinary in the sense, that not only mechanical parts, but also electric and software subsystems are involved, resulting into mechatronic systems. Since the integration of these systems with a unified simulation tool is desirable, the aim is to extend the applicability of variational integrators to mechatronical systems. As a first step towards a unified simulation, in this talk, a variational framework for nonlinear electric circuits consisting of inductors, capacitors, resistors, and voltage sources is presented [2, 3]. The Lagrangian formulation is based a degenerate Lagrangian and takes the basic circuit laws into account. The resulting differential-algebraic system can be reduced by performing the variational principle on a reduced space. It is shown under which conditions the corresponding reduced Lagrangian is regular and thus the equations of motion transform to an ordinary differential equation system. Based on a discrete variational formulation, a variational integrator for the structure-preserving simulation of nonlinear electric circuits is derived and demonstrated by numerical examples. It can be shown that for the developed integrators the energy rate as well as the current frequencies are better preserved in comparison to standard circuit simulations with e.g. Runge-Kutta or BDF methods. The approach is extended to hybrid systems that allows for the inclusion of transistors. Transistors naturally introduce a hybrid behavior to the circuit, that means an interaction between continuous dynamics and discrete events. As a first step, we consider a simple diode model that makes it possible to study a basic state-controlled switching feature for the electric circuit. For the variational formulation and simulation of such a hybrid electric systems, we adapt strategies for the construction of nonsmooth variational collision integrators [4] . In the future, we want to analyze further properties of the resulting equations of motion based on the circuit topology and relate the results to classical ones from the well established Modified Nodal Analysis. Furthermore, we will investigate in which way the variational techniques approve for the simulation of more complex circuits including further circuits elements as well as for the simulation and optimization of large mechatronic systems.
Modeling of Boom and Burst of Shadow - A Game Theory Approach

This paper formulates a game theory model to discuss equilibrium among four main participants who need to choose between acting sunshine and shadow activities in financial market. Their activities will determine the market's transparency level and indirectly decide utility of each player. We observe that the perfect situation, when all players act sunshine activities, is Nash equilibrium. But when financial institutions, regulators and intermediaries choose to coalesce together and deviate from the rules, a Pareto improvement will take place in the allied group, and the equilibrium will move. But when market transparency decreases to too low a level and goes below the bottom line, investors will leave the market and the bubble will burst.
Auditory cortical images of cochlear-implant stimuli: dependence on electrode configuration.

This study examines patterns of auditory cortical activity elicited by single-pulse cochlear implant stimuli that vary in electrode configuration, cochlear place of stimulation, and stimulus level. Recordings were made from the primary auditory cortex (area A1) of ketamine-anesthetized guinea pigs. The spatiotemporal pattern of neural spike activity was measured simultaneously across 16 cortical locations spanning approximately 2-3 octaves of the tonotopic axis. Such a pattern, averaged over 40 presentations of any particular stimulus, was defined as the "cortical image" of that stimulus. Acutely deafened guinea pigs were implanted with a 6-electrode animal version of the 22-electrode Nucleus banded electrode array (Cochlear). Cochlear electrode configurations consisted of monopolar (MP), bipolar (BP + N) with N inactive electrodes between the active and return electrodes (0 < or = N < or = 4), tripolar (TP) with one active electrode and two flanking return electrodes, and common ground (CG) with one active electrode and as many as five return electrodes. Cortical images typically showed a focus of maximum spike probability and minimum latency. Spike probabilities tended to decrease, and latencies tended to increase, with increasing cortical distance from that focus. Cortical images of TP stimuli were the most spatially compact, followed by BP + N images, and then MP images, which were the broadest. Images of CG stimuli were rather variable across animals and stimulus channels. The locations of cortical images shifted systematically from caudal to rostral as the cochlear place of stimulation changed from basal to apical. At the most sensitive cortical site for each condition, the dynamic ranges over which spike rates increased with increased current level were restricted to about 1-2 dB, regardless of configuration. Dynamic ranges tended to increase with increasing cortical distance from the most sensitive site. Electrode configurations that produced compact cortical images (e.g., TP and BP + 0) showed the greatest range of thresholds within each cortical image and the largest dynamic range at cortical sites removed from the most sensitive site.
Edge‐preserving color image interpolation using spatial and spectral correlations

Abstract We propose in this paper a new and effective method to interpolate digital color images by exploiting inherent image spatial and spectral correlations. The proposed method consists of two main steps: interpolating the green image plane based on local spatial correlation within the plane, and interpolating red and blue image planes based on spectral correlation between different color planes. When compared with conventional and contemporary methods of color image interpolation, our proposed method can better preserve image attributes that have great influence on visual quality of interpolated color images, in particular edge sharpness and color consistency.
Topography, relief, and TRMM‐derived rainfall variations along the Himalaya

Along the southern Himalayan topographic front, the Indian summer monsoon modulates erosive processes and rates. To investigate the influence of topography and relief on rainfall generation and resultant erosion, we processed satellite rainfall amounts for the last 8 years (1998–2005) from the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM). Based upon a spatial resolution of ∼5 × 5 km for the Himalaya, we identify (1) the spatial distribution of rainfall and (2) the large‐scale relationships between topography, relief, and rainfall locations. Our results show two distinct rainfall maxima along strike in the Himalaya. The first, outer rainfall peak occurs along the southern margin of the Lesser Himalaya within a narrow band of mean elevation (0.9 ± 0.4 km) and mean relief (1.2 ± 0.2 km). The second, discontinuous, inner band typically occurs along the southern flank of the Greater Himalaya (elevation and relief: both 2.1 ± 0.3 km).
Effective Diagrammatic Communication: Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Issues

The study of systems of communication may be divided into three parts: syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Accounts of the embedding of text-based languages in the computational processes of reasoners and communicators are relatively well developed, with accounts available for a spectrum of languages ranging from the highly formalised and constrained, such as formal logics, to the highly informal and unconstrained natural languages used in everyday conversations. Analogies between diagrams and such textual representations of information are quite revealing about similarities and differences and can provide a useful starting point for exploring the issues in a theory of diagrammatic communication. This paper sketches out a theory of diagrammatic communication, based upon recent studies of the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic component issues which such a theory must accommodate. In the context of this theory an exploration is made of the issues involved in answering the question: what makes for an effective diagrammatic representation? To achieve this we review a framework in which we may explore properties of representations, and properties of the relation between representations and that which they represent. By relating this framework to our sketched theory of diagrammatic communication, we explore the concept of effectiveness in diagrams. This process of exploration enables us to relate previous studies of the effectiveness of diagrams into a broader, unified framework, which clarifies both the various issues relating to effectiveness and the relations between them.
An Investigation of Factors that Contribute to Low Representation of Women in Administrative Posts in Primary Schools*

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate factors that contribute to low representation of women in administrative posts in schools. The researchers used the descriptive survey design. The instruments used to collect data were interviews and questionnaires. The sample selected for the study was made up of seven schools which constituted thirty five percent of the 20 primary schools in Lower Gweru District. Ten school heads, seven deputy school heads and twenty teachers in charge from the selected primary schools were included in the sample. The results indicated that there are stereotyping beliefs that affect women when they are making critical decisions such as opting to take up administrative posts. The government should therefore adopt gender sensitive policies that enhance equitable and equal participation of women and men in the educational sector.
A Focus and Context Interface for Interactive Volume Rendering

Hardware-accelerated volume rendering techniques are limited by the available fragment processing capacity and on board texture memory of current GPUs. In this paper we investigate the utility of a focus and context interface for hardware-accelerated volume rendering by introducing an interactive lens that can provide finer detail within the region of interest through magnification and high-quality rendering, or can show different aspects of the data via a separate transfer function or rendering mode. In addition, the focus and context decomposition can be used as a user-controlled mechanism for multiresolution rendering in time-critical applications. We show through several examples that such an interface is a useful addition to existing volume rendering implementations and provides a way for improved interaction with volumetric datasets.
Cross-Rate Variation in the Intelligibility of Dual-Rate Gated Speech in Older Listeners

Intelligibility of sentences gated with a single primary rate (0.5-8 Hz, 25-75% duty cycle) or gated with an additional concurrent rate of 24 Hz and a 50% duty cycle was examined in older normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. With a stronger effect of age than hearing loss, intelligibility tended to increase with primary rate and duty cycle, but varied for dual-rate gating. Reduction in the total amount of speech due to concurrent 24 Hz gating had little effect on the intelligibility for the lowest and highest primary rates, but was detrimental for rates between 2 to 4 Hz, mimicking the pattern previously obtained from young normal-hearing listeners. The dual-rate intelligibility decrement with a 2 Hz primary rate significantly correlated with speech intelligibility in multi-talker babble, suggesting overlap of perceptual processes. Overall, findings reflect interaction of central and peripheral processing of speech occurring on different time scales.
Effect of Local Anesthetic on Neuronal Cytoplasmic Calcium and Plasma Membrane Lysis (Necrosis) in a Cell Culture Model

Background To investigate the mechanism by which rare cases of spinal local anesthetic (LA) neurotoxicity occur, we have tested the hypotheses that LAs elevate cytoplasmic calcium (Ca2+cyt), that this is associated with a neurotoxic effect, and that lidocaine and bupivacaine differ in their neurotoxicity. Methods Neurons of the ND7 cell culture line, derived from dorsal root ganglion, were loaded with fura-2 and analyzed by digitized video fluorescence microscopy during 60 min LA exposure, allowing determination of Ca2+cyt and time of necrotic cell death (plasma membrane lysis) at the single neuron level. Results Lidocaine 0.1% and bupivacaine 0.025% caused minimal changes in Ca2+cyt. Lidocaine 0.5–5% and bupivacaine 0.125–0.625% caused an early, small (less than threefold), concentration-dependent increase in Ca2+cyt that was transient and returned to near baseline within 10 min. Lidocaine 2.5% and 5% then caused a sustained, greater than ten-fold increase in Ca2+cyt and death in some neurons during the 60 min exposure period. Pretreatment with thapsigargin eliminated the initial transient increase in Ca2+cyt, consistent with endoplasmic reticulum (ER) as its source, and increased neuronal death with 5% lidocaine, suggesting that lidocaine neurotoxicity can be increased by failure of ER to take up elevated Ca2+cyt. The later sustained increase in Ca2+cyt seen with 2.5 and 5% lidocaine was prevented in Ca2+-free medium, and restored when Ca2+ was added back to the buffer in the presence of lidocaine, suggesting that higher concentrations of lidocaine increase influx of Ca2+ through the plasma membrane. Conclusions In this model, lidocaine greater than 2.5% elevates Ca2+cyt to toxic levels. Bupivacaine and lower concentrations of lidocaine transiently alter Ca2+cyt homeostasis for several minutes, but without an immediate neurotoxic effect within 60 min.
A simple OMNeT++ queuing experiment using different random number generators

We apply a simple queuing-experiment using parallel streams of random numbers to exhibit shortcomings of the OMNeT++ random number generator. As an improvement we implement more modern generators. OMNeT++ [20] is an object-oriented discrete event simulation system based on C++. It is primarily designed to simulate computer networks, multi-processors and other distributed systems. The basic development of OMNeT++ began at the Technical University of Budapest (BME) in 1992. Currently, OMNeT++ is being used by dozens of universities and companies as a research tool, for validating hardware and protocol designs, and for performance evaluations. OMNeT++ is a non-commercial, open-source project. It is easy to integrate new components or alter current implementations of components within its object-oriented architecture. OMNeT++ has been extended to support parallel stochastic discrete event simulation. Several synchronization mechanisms can be used. One suitable synchronization mechanism is the statistical synchronization, for which OMNeT++ provides explicit support. Further details on this issue can be found in the OMNeT++ on-line manual [20]. In the present paper we apply a simple queuing-experiment using parallel streams of random numbers to exhibit important shortcomings of the OMNeT++ random number generator (RNG). As an improvement we implement more modern RNGs, one of them supports well tested parallel streams. The following two sections contain a description and the properties of these RNGs. The simulation experiments and the corresponding results are described in Sections 4 and 5.
Sizing ultracapacitors for hybrid electric vehicles

An efficient energy storage medium is essential in all hybrid electric vehicles. The advances in double layer electrolytic capacitor technology have opened new areas to complement batteries as a storage medium. In this paper we will review some of the present applications of ultracapacitors as well as to provide guidelines for sizing ultracapacitors for minimal mass in hybrid electric vehicles. Equations for both constant current as well as constant power discharge are discussed. An iterative method for determining the minimum number of ultracapacitor cells is introduced. The effects of ultracapacitor sizing on the rating of interface power electronics are examined.
Maintaining Causal Order in Large Scale Distributed Systems Using a Logical Hierarchy

The paper presents a simple and eecient protocol that supports exchange of messages among a set of nodes while preserving the causal ordering of message exchange. It is designed for a large scale replicated system where a message is sent to every replica in the network. The desirable characteristics of the protocol are that it imposes little space overhead appended to each message. This is achieved by using a propagation algorithm that is based on nodes organized in a logical hierarchy, where each node sends and receives messages from a few nodes only. Therefore, a node needs to keep track of messages received from those nodes and stamp messages with this information only in order to verify the causal ordering. This low cost of timestamp size results in reduced communication overhead and increased performance and scalability of the system. The protocol is fully asynchronous and the burden of propagation is evenly distributed among the nodes, which improves system performance. It can be implemented on an unreliable network and survives processor failures and partitions.
Manifold ranking with sink points for update summarization

Update summarization aims to create a summary over a topic-related multi-document dataset based on the assumption that the user has already read a set of earlier documents of the same topic. Beyond the problems (i.e., topic relevance, salience, and diversity in extracted information) tackled by topic-focused multi-document summarization, the update summarization must address the novelty problem as well. In this paper, we propose a novel extractive approach based on manifold ranking with sink points for update summarization. Specifically, our approach leverages a manifold ranking process over the sentence manifold to find topic relevant and salient sentences. More important, by introducing the sink points into sentence manifold, the ranking process can further capture the novelty and diversity based on the intrinsic sentence manifold. Therefore, we are able to address the four challenging problems above for update summarization in a unified way. Experiments on benchmarks of TAC are performed and the evaluation results show that our approach can achieve comparative performance to the existing best performing systems in TAC tasks.
Extraction of second order cyclostationary vibration components : The time – frequency approach

Analysis of the vibration signals generated by the machinery has proven its usefulness in industrial condition monitoring. In the recent years, the use of vibrodiagnostics has expanded to many branches of industry and has found application in the number of types of the machinery. This fact raise the demand for application of vibrodiagnostic tools to more complex objects, frequently operating under nonstationary conditions and in harsh environment.