Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Classification criteria for local navigation digital assistance techniques for the visually impaired

This paper presents the criteria for classification of the existing techniques for the development of navigation aid for the visually impaired people. Digital assistance for the visually impaired people to navigate easily even during the presence of static and moving obstacles has been a food for research over the years. The motivation for the current work is the development of a smart hearing aid for people with hearing loss. The filtering of essential information to enable a better sensing of the surrounding environment for people with diminished vision is the main aim of developing a navigation system for people with such impairment. The current study gives an overview of the techniques used for obstacle detection, detection of path for navigation and system for alerting the users about existing obstacles in their path. It also presents the selected algorithms used for detecting the obstacles in the path and alarming the user about its presence which offers as a criteria for the comparison of the techniques for the development of a navigation system for the blind.
Murine and Human Hematopoietic Colony Formation: A Possible Regulatory Role for Intracellular Histamine

Increasing number of data suggests that locally produced histamine is involved in regulation of hematopoiesis. In this study the granulocyte/macrophage (CFU-GM) colony formation by normal murine or human bone marrow cells, leukaemic colony formation (CFU-L) by a murine leukemia cell line (WEHI 3B), and colony formation by bone marrow cells from patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) have been examined. We detected mRNA and protein expression of histidine decarboxylase (HDC), the only enzyme responsible for histamine synthesis both in normal bone marrow progenitor cells and in leukaemic progenitors. The significance of in situ generated histamine was shown on colony formation by inhibitory action of αFMH (blocking HDC activity, i.e. de novo histamine formation) and by N,N-diethyl-2-{4-(phenylmethyl)phenoxy|-ethanamine-HCl (DPPE) disturbing the interference of histamine with intracellular binding sites. These data provide further confirmation of the role of histamine in development and colony formation of bone marrow derived cells.
Response Times and Decision‐Making

Response times have been very informative for the understanding of mental processes, 1 for many years. The most useful analyses of response times have been those based on 2 cognitive theories of decision-making, known as evidence accumulation models. We review 3 the history of decision-making models, and the empirical phenomena which have guided 4 their development. We focus particularly on the common elements of the models, as they 5 represent theoretical agreement about the most fundamental elements of decision-making 6 theory. We also review the practical usage of evidence accumulation models as data-analysis 7 tools, with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of this popular approach. While 8 popular, model-based analysis of response time data can be challenging, and so we review 9 developments which make those analyses easier, and also discuss common approaches to 10 the most common problems in plotting, parameter estimation, and model selection. 11
Discourse Deficits Following Right Hemisphere Damage in Deaf Signers

Previous findings have demonstrated that hemispheric organization in deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL) parallels that of the hearing population, with the left hemisphere showing dominance for grammatical linguistic functions and the right hemisphere showing specialization for non-linguistic spatial functions. The present study addresses two further questions: first, do extra-grammatical discourse functions in deaf signers show the same right-hemisphere dominance observed for discourse functions in hearing subjects; and second, do discourse functions in ASL that employ spatial relations depend upon more general intact spatial cognitive abilities? We report findings from two right-hemisphere damaged deaf signers, both of whom show disruption of discourse functions in absence of any disruption of grammatical functions. The exact nature of the disruption differs for the two subjects, however. Subject AR shows difficulty in maintaining topical coherence, while SJ shows difficulty in employing spatial discourse devices. Further, the two subjects are equally impaired on non-linguistic spatial tasks, indicating that spared spatial discourse functions can occur even when more general spatial cognition is disrupted. We conclude that, as in the hearing population, discourse functions involve the right hemisphere; that distinct discourse functions can be dissociated from one another in ASL; and that brain organization for linguistic spatial devices is driven by its functional role in language processing, rather than by its surface, spatial characteristics.
Instruction-set extension under process variation and aging effects

We propose a novel custom instruction (CI) selection technique for process variation and transistor aging aware instruction-set architecture synthesis. For aggressive clocking, we select CIs based on statistical static timing analysis (SSTA), which achieves efficient speedup during target lifetime while mitigating degradation of timing yield (i.e., probability of satisfying the timing). Furthermore, we consider process variation and aging on not only CIs but also basic instructions (BIs). Even if basic functional units (BFUs), e.g., ALU, get slower due to aging, only a few BIs with critical propagation delay may violate the timing, whereas the other BIs running on the same BFU can still satisfy the timing. We then introduce “customized BFUs”, which execute only such aging-critical BIs. The customized BFUs, used as spare BFUs of the aging-critical BIs, can extend lifetime of the system. Combining the two approaches enables speedup as well as lifetime extension with no or negligibly small area/power overhead. Experiments demonstrate that our work outperforms conventional worst-case work (by an average speedup of about 49%) and existing SSTA-based work (16x or more lifetime extension with comparable speedup).
Current-fed quadratic full-bridge buck converter for PV systems interfacing: Dynamic characterization

Interfacing a single photovoltaic (PV) module into either a single-phase or a three-phase inverter requires an interfacing converter with wide conversion range and sufficient dynamic headroom. In terms of avoiding issues with common-mode currents between the PV module and the inverter, a converter with galvanic isolation is preferred. This is especially important with the emerging thin-film modules that have larger cell-to-frame parasitic capacitances compared to traditional modules. This paper discusses the dynamic characteristics of the current-fed quadratic full-bridge buck converter (CFQFB) in photovoltaic application. The foundation for the proposed topology is based on the concept of true current-fed converters that differ fundamentally from the conventional voltagefed converters. In addition, the paper will discuss the effects emerging from a non-ideal source, paying particular attention to the properties of the PV module. The analytical claims are verified with extensive measurement results from a corresponding 190-W prototype.
Spatial Mapping and Profiling of Metabolite Distributions during Germination1[OPEN]

A combination of metabolomics and mass spectrometry imaging provides new insights in metabolic processes during the germination of maize seeds. Germination is a highly complex process by which seeds begin to develop and establish themselves as viable organisms. In this study, we utilize a combination of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography-fluorescence, and mass spectrometry imaging approaches to profile and visualize the metabolic distributions of germinating seeds from two different inbreds of maize (Zea mays) seeds, B73 and Mo17. Gas chromatography and liquid chromatography analyses demonstrate that the two inbreds are highly differentiated in their metabolite profiles throughout the course of germination, especially with regard to amino acids, sugar alcohols, and small organic acids. Crude dissection of the seed followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis of polar metabolites also revealed that many compounds were highly sequestered among the various seed tissue types. To further localize compounds, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging was utilized to visualize compounds in fine detail in their native environments over the course of germination. Most notably, the fatty acyl chain-dependent differential localization of phospholipids and triacylglycerols was observed within the embryo and radicle, showing correlation with the heterogeneous distribution of fatty acids. Other interesting observations include unusual localization of ceramides on the endosperm/scutellum boundary and subcellular localization of ferulate in the aleurone.
Automatic identification of document sections for designing a French clinical corpus (Identification automatique de zones dans des documents pour la constitution d’un corpus médical en français) [in French]

Résumé. De nombreuses informations cliniques sont contenues dans le texte des dossiers électroniques de patients et ne sont pas directement accessibles à des fins de traitement automatique. Pour pallier cela, nous préparons un large corpus annoté de documents cliniques. Une première étape de ce travail consiste à séparer le contenu médical des documents et les informations administratives contenues dans les en-têtes et pieds de page. Nous présentons un système d’identification automatique de zones dans les documents cliniques qui offre une F-mesure de 0,97, équivalente à l’accord inter-annoteur de 0,98. Notre étude montre que le contenu médical ne représente que 60% du contenu total de notre corpus, ce qui justifie la nécessité d’une segmentation en zones. Le travail d’annotation en cours porte sur les sections médicales identifiées. Abstract. Much clinical information is contained in the free text of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and is not available for automatic processing. To advance Natural Language Processing of the French clinical narrative, we are building a richly annotated large-scale corpus of French clinical documents. To access the most medically relevant content of EHRs we develop an automatic system to separate the core medical content from other document sections, such as headers and footers. The performance of automatic content extraction achieves 96.6% F-measure, on par with human inter-annotator agreement of 98%. We find that medically relevant content covers only 60% of clinical documents in our corpus. Future annotation work will focus on these sections.
The East–West Health Divide in Europe: Growing and Shifting Eastwards

Over a four-decade long period, a health gap has opened up between European countries, in particular along the East/West dimension. One could speak of a European health divide. The divide is growing larger and, at the same time, shifting eastwards, leaving countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova at an increasing health disadvantage. Health inequalities, or differences between social classes, within European countries also seem to have been growing for the last couple of decades. Those countries that were previously led by communist regimes today show larger health inequalities than do countries in Western Europe. The countries that were once part of the Soviet Union demonstrate the most alarming health trends, with large segments of the population actually experiencing falling life expectancies. Reducing global and European health inequalities so that the health chances of a newborn child are not dependent on which country and social class he or she is born in, is a truly formidable task, which implies an entirely new way of seeing human development.
Hiding memory latency using fixed priority scheduling

Modern embedded platforms contain a variety of physical resources, such as caches, interconnects, main memory, etc., which the processor must access during the execution of a task. We argue that processor task execution and accesses to physical resources should be co-scheduled in real-time systems to predictably hide resource access latency. In particular, in this work we focus on co-scheduling task execution and accesses to main memory to hide DRAM access latency. Since modern systems implement DMA controllers that can be operated independently of processor execution, this allows us to hide memory transfer latency by scheduling DMA transfer in parallel with processor execution. The main contribution of this paper is a dynamic scheduling algorithm for a set of sporadic real-time tasks that efficiently co-schedules processor and DMA execution to hide memory transfer latency. The proposed algorithm can be applied to either uniprocessor or partitioned multiprocessor systems. We demonstrate that we improve processor utilization significantly compared to existing scratchpad and cache management systems.
Automatic extraction of subcategorization frames for Italian

Subcategorization is a kind of knowledge which can be considered as crucial in several NLP tasks, such as Information Extraction or parsing, but the collection of very large resources including subcategorization representation is difficult and time-consuming. Various experiences show that the automatic extraction can be a practical and reliable solution for acquiring such a kind of knowledge. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationships between subcategorization frame extraction and the nature of data from which the frames have to be extracted, e.g. how much the task can be influenced by the richness/poorness of the annotation. Therefore, we present some experiments that apply statistical subcategorization extraction methods, known in literature, on an Italian treebank that exploits a rich set of dependency relations that can be annotated at different degrees of specificity. Benefiting from the availability of relation sets that implement different granularity in the representation of relations, we evaluate our results with reference to previous works in a cross-linguistic perspective.
The Dark Side of Lysosome‐Related Organelles: Specialization of the Endocytic Pathway for Melanosome Biogenesis

Melanosomes are lysosome‐related organelles within which melanin pigments are synthesized and stored in melanocytes and retinal pigment epithelial cells. Early ultrastructural studies of pigment cells revealed that melanosomes consist of a complex series of organelles; more recently, these structures have been correlated with cargo constituents. By studying the fate of melanosomal and endosomal cargo in melanocytic cells, the effects of disease‐related mutations on melanosomal morphology, and the genes affected by these mutations, we are beginning to gain novel insights into the biogenesis of these complex organelles and their relationship to the endocytic pathway. These insights demonstrate how specialized cells integrate unique and ubiquitous molecular mechanisms in subverting the endosomal system to generate cell‐type specific structures and their associated functions. Further dissection of the melanosomal system will likely shed light not only on the biogenesis of lysosome‐related organelles but also on general aspects of vesicular transport in the endosomal system.
A Nonparametric Valley-Seeking Technique for Cluster Analysis

The problem of clustering multivariate observations is viewed as the replacement of a set of vectors with a set of labels and representative vectors. A general criterion for clustering is derived as a measure of representation error. Some special cases are derived by simplifying the general criterion. A general algorithm for finding the optimum classification with respect to a given criterion is derived. For a particular case, the algorithm reduces to a repeated application of a straightforward decision rule which behaves as a valley-seeking technique. Asymptotic properties of the procedure are developed. Numerical examples are presented for the finite sample case.
The associations of mobile touch screen device use with musculoskeletal symptoms and exposures: A systematic review

Background The use of mobile touch screen devices (MTSDs) has increased rapidly over the last decade, and there are concerns that their use may have negative musculoskeletal consequences; yet evidence on the association of MTSD use with musculoskeletal symptoms and exposures is currently dispersed. The aim of this study was to systematically review available literature on musculoskeletal symptoms and exposures associated with MTSD use. The synthesised information may facilitate wise use of MTSDs and may identify areas in need of further research. Methods EMBASE, Medline, Scopus, PsycINFO and Proquest electronic databases were searched for articles published up to June 2016, using keywords describing MTSD, musculoskeletal symptoms (e.g. pain, discomfort) and musculoskeletal exposures (e.g. posture, muscle activity). Two reviewers independently screened the articles, extracted relevant data and assessed methodological quality of included studies. Due to heterogeneity in the studies, a meta-analysis was not possible and a structured narrative synthesis of the findings was undertaken. Results A total of 9,908 articles were screened for eligibility with 45 articles finally included for review. Included articles were of cross-sectional, case-control or experimental laboratory study designs. No longitudinal studies were identified. Findings were presented and discussed in terms of the amount, features, tasks and positions of MTSD use and its association with musculoskeletal symptoms and musculoskeletal exposures. Conclusions There is limited evidence that MTSD use, and various aspects of its use (i.e. amount of usage, features, tasks and positions) are associated with musculoskeletal symptoms and exposures. This is due to mainly low quality experimental and case-control laboratory studies, with few cross-sectional and no longitudinal studies. Further research is warranted in order to develop guidelines for wise use of MTSDs.
Controls on at‐a‐station hydraulic geometry in steep headwater streams, Colorado, USA

Detailed hydraulic measurements were made in nine step‐pool, five cascade and one plane‐bed reach in Fraser Experimental Forest, Colorado to better understand at‐a‐station hydraulic geometry (AHG) relations in these channel types. Average values for AHG exponents, m (0·49), f (0·39), and b (0·16), were well within the range found by other researchers working in steep gradient channels. A principal component analysis (PCA) was used to compare the combined variations in all three exponents against five potential control variables: wood, D84, grain‐size distribution (σ), coefficient of variation of pool volume, average roughness‐area (projected wetted area) and bed gradient. The gradient and average roughness‐area were found to be significantly related to the PCA axis scores, indicating that both driving and resisting forces influence the rates of change of velocity, depth and width with discharge. Further analysis of the exponents showed that reaches with m > b + f are most likely dominated by grain resistance and reaches below this value (m < b + f) are dominated by form resistance. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Oxalobacter formigenes Colonization and Oxalate Dynamics in a Mouse Model

ABSTRACT Animal and human studies have provided compelling evidence that colonization of the intestine with Oxalobacter formigenes reduces urinary oxalate excretion and lowers the risk of forming calcium oxalate kidney stones. The mechanism providing protection appears to be related to the unique ability of O. formigenes to rely on oxalate as a major source of carbon and energy for growth. However, much is not known about the factors that influence colonization and host-bacterium interactions. We have colonized mice with O. formigenes OxCC13 and systematically investigated the impacts of diets with different levels of calcium and oxalate on O. formigenes intestinal densities and urinary and intestinal oxalate levels. Measurement of intestinal oxalate levels in mice colonized or not colonized with O. formigenes demonstrated the highly efficient degradation of soluble oxalate by O. formigenes relative to other microbiota. The ratio of calcium to oxalate in diets was important in determining colonization densities and conditions where urinary oxalate and fecal oxalate excretion were modified, and the results were consistent with those from studies we have performed with colonized and noncolonized humans. The use of low-oxalate purified diets showed that 80% of animals retained O. formigenes colonization after a 1-week dietary oxalate deprivation. Animals not colonized with O. formigenes excreted two times more oxalate in feces than they had ingested. This nondietary source of oxalate may play an important role in the survival of O. formigenes during periods of dietary oxalate deprivation. These studies suggest that the mouse will be a useful model to further characterize interactions between O. formigenes and the host and factors that impact colonization.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF BLENDED LEARNING , PRIOR KNOWLEDGE TO THE UNDERSTANDING CONCEPT IN ECONOMICS

This research aims to determine the effectiveness of blended learning strategies for individuals and groups to improve the understanding of concepts in mathematics courses, based on prior knowledge possessed by students. Targets to be achieved from this research is to test the significance of the results of learning about: a) the ability of understanding the concept of linear functions in blended learning individual vs. group, b) differences in the ability of understanding the concept of linear function between students with high prior knowledge and low prior knowledge, and c) whether there is an interaction of the application of blended learning individual vs. group and prior knowledge of the capabilities of understanding the concept of a linear function. Teaching methods used in this research are a web-based teaching and face-to-face teaching, conducted individual and group. Data collection was conducted in two phases: the preparation and implementation stages of the research. Research has independent variables in the form of blended learning is done in individual and group, the dependent variable of the ability of understanding the concept of a linear function of the material, and a moderator variable of high and low prior knowledge.