Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Teaching machines for perceptual-motor skills

Teaching machines have been developed for training and testing those skiDs involved in perceptual-motor tasks such as driving, piloting and tracking. These machines monitor the operator's performance and vary the parameters of his task accordingly. so as to maintain its difficulty at an optimal level as his learning progresses. It has been demonstrated that this is a viable technique for training and testing such skills, and the behaviour of this type of teaching machine is shown together with some results in its application. Research on automated teaching has concentrated on cognitive and perceptual skills leaving perceptual-motor skills largely neglected. Motor skills are not verbalized and hence the introspective analysis which is essential to the teaching of cognitiVe skills is not available, and training is largely by exampJe or through partial tasks. However, the lack of verbalization affects the approach of the designer rather than the problems he faces, and it is shown that teaching machines for motor skills are essentially similar to those for cognitive skills. It is suggested that these machines will be of use in testing spatial and motor abilities, industrial training and rehabilitation and the evaluation of motor disability, together with driver and pilot training.
Deformation of the normal monkey optic nerve head connective tissue after acute IOP elevation within 3-D histomorphometric reconstructions.

PURPOSE To characterize optic nerve head (ONH) connective tissue deformation after acute (15 or 30 minutes) intraocular pressure (IOP) elevation in six adult normal monkeys using three-dimensional (3-D) histomorphometry. METHODS Trephined ONH and peripapillary sclera from both eyes of six monkeys, each perfusion fixed with one eye at IOP 10 mm Hg (IOP-10) and the other at IOP 30 or 45 mm Hg (IOP-30 or IOP-45, by anterior chamber manometer), were serially sectioned, 3-D reconstructed, 3-D delineated, and quantified according to standard parameters. For each monkey, intereye differences (high-IOP eye minus IOP-10) for each parameter were calculated and compared by ANOVA and EPIDmax both overall and regionally. EPIDmax deformations for each parameter were defined to be those statistically significant differences that exceeded the maximum physiologic intereye difference within six bilaterally normal monkeys in a previous report. RESULTS Regional EPIDmax laminar thinning, posterior bowing of the peripapillary sclera, and thinning and expansion of the scleral canal were present in most high-IOP eyes and were colocalized in those demonstrating the most deformation. Laminar deformation was minimal, not only posteriorly but in some cases anteriorly in the high-IOP eyes. No increase in deformation was seen in the IOP-45 versus the IOP-30 eyes. CONCLUSIONS ONH connective tissue alterations after acute IOP elevation involve regional thinning, stretching, and deformation of the lamina cribrosa and peripapillary sclera that are minimal to modest in magnitude. The time-dependent character of these alterations and their compressive, expansile, and shear effects on the axons, the astrocytes, and the laminar and posterior ciliary circulations remain to be determined.
Plio‐Pleistocene diversification and genetic population structure of an endangered lizard (the Blue Mountains water skink, Eulamprus leuraensis) in south‐eastern Australia

Aim Although climatic fluctuations occurred world‐wide during the Pleistocene, the severity of glacial and drought events – and hence their influence on animal and plant biogeography – differed among regions. Many Holarctic species were forced to warmer‐climate refugia during glacial periods, leaving the genetic signature of recent expansion and gene flow among modern‐day populations. Montane south‐eastern Australia experienced less extreme glaciation, but the effects of drier and colder climatic conditions over this period on biotic distributions, and hence on the present‐day genetic structure of animal and plant populations, are poorly known.
Proposal Analyzing Accountability in ( E-) Exams

Many companies and universities increasingly use electronic exam (e-exam for short) systems: for example Cisco’s CCNA certifications or language tests such as IELTS or TOEFL are organized using computer systems, and also at ETH Zurich electronic exams are held regularly [8]. This naturally raises the question of the security of such systems. From the point of view of the organizing institution, cheating is a major concern, but candidates (i.e., students) are typically more concerned with fairness and transparency of the process. In particular the latter concerns are often ignored by current systems. Typically the system is assumed to be trusted, and the candidates can only partly verify whether everything went well. Yet, as recent scandals have shown [2, 5], (e-)exam systems cannot always be trusted entirely. In security protocol design the notions of Verifiability [1, 7, 3], Accountability [7] and Auditability [6] have been known for some time. A verifiable protocol protocol allows the participants to verify, after the protocol’s execution, whether the outcome of the protocol is correct. When verifiability fails, accountability additionally allows to identify which party is responsible for this failure. Finally a protocol is auditable if it logs sufficient evidence to convince an outside judge of the absence of errors. Some preliminary work on verifiability in e-exams exist [4], however accountability and auditability have not yet been studied in this context.
Living organizational communication :Consuming dialogism and polyphony as practical wisdom in the production of consciousness

The realties we know as organizations come to exist through conversations. For years such conversations are shaped by the mainstream Cartesian worldview and Newtonian mechanics. As cracks on the said worldview and fissures on the above mechanics become bigger and wider, the need to look at other ways of seeing and producing a more ‘living conversations’ are inevitable. We suggest Bakhtin’s polyphony as the new way in the production of such ‘consciousness’ (living conversations) for learning creation in the context of organizational communication realm. Polyphony is basically about the construction of voices of characters with equal rights, and it is done with responsibility overseeing by the Third. In this work we argued that polyphony should be celebrated as the wellspring of learning creation following ‘theory of action’ in the context of the production of consciousness, for addressing the issue of future organizational fitness.
Acute burns of the hands - physiotherapy perspective.

BACKGROUND Acute burns of the hands are complex and may impact on various aspects of a person's life. Physiotherapy rehabilitation and restoration of hand function is critical for the patient's independence and re-integration into society. PURPOSE This study aimed to explore the perceptions and experiences of physiotherapists in the management of patients with their hand burn injuries. METHOD Five focus groups consisting of physiotherapists and physiotherapy assistants working with burn injured patients from each of the five selected public hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal were recruited. An explorative qualitative approach was adopted. RESULTS Physiotherapists emphasised that the acute management of the hand was trivialised due to a primary focus on the survival of the burn sufferer. Therapists identified several factors that determined the patients' level of participation and motivation in therapy one of which was the procedural pain experienced. The role of the therapists' within the rehabilitation framework was found to be critical to their recovery however there appeared to be a breakdown in the collaboration and communication among health care professionals to the detriment of effective intervention. CONCLUSION A multidisciplinary team approach is the foundation in the management of acute burn injuries and during the trajectory of the trauma care continuum.
Intergroup Lysis and Transduction by Streptococcal Bacteriophages

Bacteriophages from streptococci of groups A, E, and G lysed streptococci distributed among serogroups A, C, G, H, and L; propagated in some, but not all, of these; and transduced streptomycin resistance within group A or (by A phages only) from group A to group G streptococci.
Composition and Decomposition of Internal Models in Motor Learning under Altered Kinematic and Dynamic Environments

The learning process of reaching movements was examined under novel environments whose kinematic and dynamic properties were altered. We used a kinematic transformation (visuomotor rotation), a dynamic transformation (viscous curl field), and a combination of these transformations. When the subjects learned the combined transformation, reaching errors were smaller if the subject first learned the separate kinematic and dynamic transformations. Reaching errors under the kinematic (but not the dynamic) transformation were smaller if subjects first learned the combined transformation. These results suggest that the brain learns multiple internal models to compensate for each transformation and has some ability to combine and decompose these internal models as called for by the occasion.
Dietary Carotenoids and Risk of Lung Cancer in a Pooled Analysis of Seven Cohort Studies

Intervention trials with supplemental β-carotene have observed either no effect or a harmful effect on lung cancer risk. Because food composition databases for specific carotenoids have only become available recently, epidemiological evidence relating usual dietary levels of these carotenoids with lung cancer risk is limited. We analyzed the association between lung cancer risk and intakes of specific carotenoids using the primary data from seven cohort studies in North America and Europe. Carotenoid intakes were estimated from dietary questionnaires administered at baseline in each study. We calculated study-specific multivariate relative risks (RRs) and combined these using a random-effects model. The multivariate models included smoking history and other potential risk factors. During follow-up of up to 7–16 years across studies, 3,155 incident lung cancer cases were diagnosed among 399,765 participants. β-Carotene intake was not associated with lung cancer risk (pooled multivariate RR = 0.98; 95% confidence interval, 0.87–1.11; highest versus lowest quintile). The RRs for α-carotene, lutein/zeaxanthin, and lycopene were also close to unity. β-Cryptoxanthin intake was inversely associated with lung cancer risk (RR = 0.76; 95% confidence interval, 0.67–0.86; highest versus lowest quintile). These results did not change after adjustment for intakes of vitamin C (with or without supplements), folate (with or without supplements), and other carotenoids and multivitamin use. The associations generally were similar among never, past, or current smokers and by histological type. Although smoking is the strongest risk factor for lung cancer, greater intake of foods high in β-cryptoxanthin, such as citrus fruit, may modestly lower the risk.
Syllable-based automatic arabic speech recognition in noisy enviroment

In this paper, syllables are proposed to be used as acoustic units to improve the performance of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems of Arabic spoken proverbs in noisy environments. To test our proposed approach, a speaker-independent HMM-based speech recognition system was designed using hidden Markov model toolkit (HTK). A series of experiments on noisy speech has been carried out using an Arabic database that consists of fifty-nine Egyptian speakers. The obtained results show that the recognition rate using syllables outperformed the rate obtained using monophones and triphones by 20.88% and 15.82%, respectively. The use of syllables did not only improve the performance of the ASR process in noisy environments, but also it limited the complexity of the computation (and consequently the running time) of the recognition process. Also, we show in this paper that the integration of a pre-processing enhancement technique in the front-end of the syllable-based ASR engine leads to an improvement of the recognition rate by 20.88% and 15.82%, compared to the rates obtained using monophones and triphone-based ASR, respectively.
Dynamic Positioning With Model Predictive Control

Marine vessels with dynamic positioning (DP) capability are typically equipped with sufficient number of thrusters to make them overactuated and with satellite navigation and other sensors to determine their position, heading, and velocity. An automatic control system is tasked with coordinating the thrusters to move the vessel in any desired direction and to counteract the environmental forces. The design of this control system is usually separated into several levels. First, a DP control algorithm calculates the total force and moment of force that the thruster system should produce. Then, a thrust allocation (TA) algorithm coordinates the thrusters so that the resultant force they produce matches the request from the DP control algorithm. Unless significant heuristic modifications are made, the DP control algorithm has limited information about the thruster effects such as saturations and limited rate of rotation of variable-direction thrusters, as well as systemic effects such as singular thruster configurations. The control output produced with this control architecture is therefore not always optimal, and may result in a position loss that would not have occurred with a more sophisticated control algorithm. Recent advances in computer hardware and algorithms make it possible to consider a model-predictive control (MPC) algorithm that combines positioning control and TA into a single algorithm, which should theoretically yield a near-optimal controller output. This paper explores the advantages and disadvantages of using MPC compared with the traditional algorithms.
Combining metric features in large collections

Current information systems are required to process complex digital objects, which are typically characterized by multiple descriptors. Since the values of many descriptors belong to non-sortable domains, they are effectively comparable only by a sort of similarity. Moreover, the scalability is very important in the current digital-explosion age. Therefore, we propose a distributed extension of the well-known threshold algorithm for peer-to-peer paradigm. The technique allows to answer similarity queries that combine multiple similarity measures and due to its peer-to- peer nature it is highly scalable. We also explore possibilities of approximate evaluation strategies, where some relevant results can be lost in favor of increasing the efficiency by order of magnitude. To reveal the strengths and weaknesses of our approach we have experimented with a 1.6 million image database from Flicker comparing the content of the images by five similarity measures from the MPEG-7 standard. To the best of our knowledge, the experience with such a huge real-life dataset is quite unique.
Discovering genetic polymorphism associated with gene expression levels across the whole genome

Genetic differences have been shown to contribute to gene expression variability. A complete evaluation of the associations between a whole genome scan with 550k Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) and 54k detectable expression levels (probesets) was performed on 176 human peripheral blood samples. The results are presented along with visualizations that reveal cis and trans gene expression regulatory effects. The algorithmic approach followed utilized a distributed computational system. The analysis was performed using a linear regression adjusting for all relevant covariates. Permutation testing on a random subset of the top results provided an indication of the significance levels adjusted for multiple testing and the non independence of SNPs due to linkage disequilibrium. The database of the produced results can be used as a resource to assess the functional impact of genetic polymorphisms to gene expression regulation. This resource is applicable across all disease areas.
Presynaptic Calcium Influx Controls Neurotransmitter Release in Part by Regulating the Effective Size of the Readily Releasable Pool

The steep calcium dependence of synaptic strength that has been observed at many synapses is thought to reflect a calcium dependence of the probability of vesicular exocytosis (p), with the cooperativity of three to six corresponding to the multiple calcium ion binding sites on the calcium sensor responsible for exocytosis. Here we test the hypothesis that the calcium dependence of the effective size of the readily releasable pool (RRP) also contributes to the calcium dependence of release at the calyx of Held synapse in mice. Using two established methods of quantifying neurotransmitter release evoked by action potentials (effective RRP), we find that when calcium influx is changed by altering the external calcium concentration, the calcium cooperativity of p is insufficient to account for the full calcium dependence of EPSC size; the calcium dependence of the RRP size also contributes. Reducing calcium influx by blocking R-type voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs) with Ni2+, or by blocking P/Q-type VGCCs with ω-agatoxin IVA also changes EPSC amplitude by reducing both p and the effective RRP size. This suggests that the effective RRP size is dependent on calcium influx through VGCCs. Furthermore, activation of GABAB receptors, which reduces presynaptic calcium through VGCCs without other significant effects on release, also reduces the effective RRP size in addition to reducing p. These findings indicate that calcium influx regulates the RRP size along with p, which contributes to the calcium dependence of synaptic strength, and it influences the manner in which presynaptic modulation of presynaptic calcium channels affects neurotransmitter release.
Technological Progress in Radiation Therapy for Brain Tumors

To achieve a good therapeutic ratio the radiation dose to the tumor should be as high as possible with the lowest possible dose to the surrounding normal tissue. This is especially the case for brain tumors. Technological advancements in diagnostic imaging, dose calculations, and radiation delivery systems, combined with a better understanding of the pathophysiology of brain tumors have led to improvements in the therapeutic results. The widely used technology of delivering 3-D conformal therapy with photon beams (gamma rays) produced by Linear Accelerators has progressed into the use of Intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Particle beams have been used for several decades for radiotherapy because of their favorable depth dose characteristics. The introduction of clinically dedicated proton beam therapy facilities has improved the access for cancer patients to this treatment. Proton therapy is of particular interest for pediatric malignancies. These technical improvements are further enhanced by the evolution in tumor physiology imaging which allows for improved delineation of the tumor. This in turn opens the potential to adjust the radiation dose to maximize the radiobiological effects. The advances in both imaging and radiation therapy delivery will be discussed.
Integrating P2PSIP into collaborative P2P applications: A case study with the P2P videoconferencing system BRAVIS

Collaborative applications, such as videoconferencing systems, allow communication partners to interact and communicate anytime and anywhere over the Internet. Today, such applications require central servers for various functions. Even decentralized Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems still require servers for the invitation and localization of users. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is usually used for videoconferencing systems as a signaling protocol with its registration and proxy servers. This paper introduces a use case where these central SIP servers are replaced in a collaborative application with the help of the decentralized P2PSIP protocol. In the paper, we evaluate different available P2PSIP candidates and describe the integration of a chosen candidate into the P2P videoconferencing system BRAVIS. We present new insights on the practical appliance of P2PSIP for real life collaborative P2P applications along with general remarks for the integration and improvement of P2PSIP.
Donor-derived stem-cells and epithelial mesenchymal transition in squamous cell carcinoma in transplant recipients

Background Skin squamous-cell-carcinoma (SCC), is the main complication in long-term kidney-transplant recipients, and it can include donor-derived cells. Preclinical models demonstrated the involvement of epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) in the progression of skin SCC, and the role of Snail, an EMT transcription factor, in cancer stem-cell survival and expansion. Here, we studied stem-cells and EMT expression in SCCs and concomitant actinic keratoses (AK) in kidney-transplant recipients. Methods In SCC and AK in 3 female recipients of male kidney-transplants, donor-derived Y chromosome in epidermal stem cells was assessed using combined XY-FISH/CD133 immunostaining, and digital-droplet-PCR on laser-microdissected CD133 expressing epidermal cells. For EMT study, double immunostainings of CD133 with vimentin or snail and slug, electron microscopy and immunostainings of keratinocytes junctions were performed. Digital droplet PCR was used to check CDH1 (E-cadherin) expression level in laser-microdissected cells co-expressing CD133 and vimentin or snail and slug. The numbers of Y-chromosome were assessed using digital droplet PCR in laser-microdissected cells co-expressing CD133 and vimentin, or snail and slug, and in CD133 positive cells not expressing any EMT maker. Results We identified donor-derived stem-cells in basal layers and invasive areas in all skin SCCs and in concomitant AKs, but not in surrounding normal skin. The donor-derived stem-cells expressed the EMT markers, vimentin, snail and slug in SCCs but not in AKs. The expression of the EMT transcription factor, SNAI1, was higher in stem-cells when they expressed vimentin. They were located in invasive areas of SCCs. In these areas, the expressions of claudin-1 and desmoglein 1 were reduced or absent, and within the basal layer there were features of basal membrane disappearance. Donor-derived stem cells were in larger numbers in stem cells co-expressing vimentin or snail and slug than in stem cells not expressing any EMT marker. Conclusion We identified here donor-derived stem cells within skin SCC in kidney-transplant recipients. They were located in invasive areas of SCC and had EMT characteristics.
Identification of a competing risks model with unknown transformations of latent failure times

This paper is concerned with identification of a competing risks model with unknown transformations of latent failure times. The model includes, as special cases, competing risks versions of proportional hazards, mixed proportional hazards and accelerated failure time models. It is shown that covariate effects on latent failure times, cause-specific link functions and the joint survivor function of the disturbance terms can be identified without relying on modelling the dependence between latent failure times parametrically nor using an exclusion restriction among covariates. As a result, the paper provides an identification result about the joint survivor function of the latent failure times conditional on covariates.