Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Xenomelia: a new right parietal lobe syndrome

Background Damage to the right parietal lobe has long been associated with various disorders of body image. The authors have recently suggested that an unusual behavioural condition in which otherwise rational individuals desire the amputation of a healthy limb might also arise from right parietal dysfunction. Methods Four subjects who desired the amputation of healthy legs (two right, one left and one, at first, bilateral and then left only) were recruited and underwent magnetoencephalography (MEG) scans during tactile stimulation of sites above and below the desired amputation line. Regions of interest (ROIs) in each hemisphere (superior parietal lobule (SPL), inferior parietal lobule, S1, M1, insula, premotor cortex and precuneus) were defined using FreeSurfer software. Results Analysis of average MEG activity across the 40–140 ms post-stimulation timeframe was carried out using an unpaired t test. This revealed significantly reduced activation only in the right SPL ROI for the subjects' affected legs when compared with both subjects' unaffected legs and that of controls. Conclusions The right SPL is a cortical area that appears ideally placed to unify disparate sensory inputs to create a coherent sense of having a body. The authors propose that inadequate activation of the right SPL leads to the unnatural situation in which the sufferers can feel the limb in question being touched without it actually incorporating into their body image, with a resulting desire for amputation. The authors introduce the term ‘xenomelia’ as a more appropriate name than apotemnophilia or body integrity identity disorder, for what appears to be an unrecognised right parietal lobe syndrome.
Design pattern builder: a concept for refinable reusable design pattern libraries

Reuse is one of the core principles in professional software engineering. Design patterns provide a reusable solution for common design problems. But their implementations are generally not reusable as they are often well tailored to a specific context. We introduce a concept, that facilitates the reuse of their implementations by defining an abstract design pattern definition that can be instantiated with specialized design decisions. This approach is a meta-level Builder constructing design patterns as first-class citizens. It simplifies the application of design patterns by providing a pattern library and still being able to adjust it to the concrete context.
The Effect of Veterans Benefits on Veterans' Education and Earnings

The majority of armed forces veterans make use of the subsidized training and educational benefits provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The effect of veterans benefits on educational attainment am civilian earnings is estimated here using the Census Bureau's 1987 Survey of Veterans. Two identification strategies are employed to control for unobserved characteristics that are correlated with educational attainment and benefit usage. First, a fixed effects strategy is implemented by exploiting information on educational attainment at the time of entry to service. Second, instrumental variables estimates are computed, where the excluded instruments are interactions between period of service am educational attainment at entry to service. The effect of veterans benefits on earnings is estimated by decomposing the return to education into a return to the grade completed at entry to service and a return to the post-entry grade increment. Veterans benefits are estimated to increase schooling by roughly 1.4 years and the grade increment is worth roughly 4.3 percent, so that veterans benefits raise annual earnings by approximately 6 percent. This premium appears to accrue primarily to the 77 percent of benefit users who attended college or graduate school.
Towards Multitarget Testing in Molecular Microbiology

Advantages of PCR assays over more conventional culture-based diagnostics include significantly higher sensitivities and shorter turnaround times. They are particularly useful when patient treatment has already been initiated or for specimens that may contain microorganisms that are slow-growing, difficult to culture, or for which culture methods do not exist. However, due to genome variability, single target testing might lead to false-negative results. This paper focuses on examples from our own experiences and the literature to provide insight into the limitations of single target testing in molecular biology. Lessons learned from these experiences include the careful design of diagnostic assays, preferably multitargeted, the importance of investigating the incidence and epidemiology of infection in detail, the frequent participation in appropriate quality assurance schemes, and the importance of continuous attentiveness by investigators when confronted with inconsistent results. In conclusion, multitargeted testing in microbiological molecular assays should be a rule.
Dynamic Game Difficulty Scaling Using Adaptive Behavior-Based AI

Games are played by a wide variety of audiences. Different individuals will play with different gaming styles and employ different strategic approaches. This often involves interacting with nonplayer characters that are controlled by the game AI. From a developer's standpoint, it is important to design a game AI that is able to satisfy the variety of players that will interact with the game. Thus, an adaptive game AI that can scale the difficulty of the game according to the proficiency of the player has greater potential to customize a personalized and entertaining game experience compared to a static game AI. In particular, dynamic game difficulty scaling refers to the use of an adaptive game AI that performs game adaptations in real time during the game session. This paper presents two adaptive algorithms that use ideas from reinforcement learning and evolutionary computation to improve player satisfaction by scaling the difficulty of the game AI while the game is being played. The effects of varying the learning and mutation rates are examined and a general rule of thumb for the parameters is proposed. The proposed algorithms are demonstrated to be capable of matching its opponents in terms of mean scores and winning percentages. Both algorithms are able to generalize well to a variety of opponents.
A comparison study on F0 distribution of tone 2 and tone 3 in Mandarin disyllables by native speakers and Japanese learners

In the process of Mandarin learning, Japanese students always have problems when distinguishing Tone 2 and Tone 3, especially in connected speech. So, in this paper, we investigate the production of these two tones in disyllable words on the basis of tone-dependent F0 distribution, trying to show the characteristics of native speakers and the systematic error pattern of Japanese. Getting the error pattern of a specific learner group is of great importance in improving teaching method of Mandarin disyllables, and developing computer assisted mandarin pronunciation technology.
Increasing Incidence of Plasmodium knowlesi Malaria following Control of P. falciparum and P. vivax Malaria in Sabah, Malaysia

Background The simian parasite Plasmodium knowlesi is a common cause of human malaria in Malaysian Borneo and threatens the prospect of malaria elimination. However, little is known about the emergence of P. knowlesi, particularly in Sabah. We reviewed Sabah Department of Health records to investigate the trend of each malaria species over time. Methods Reporting of microscopy-diagnosed malaria cases in Sabah is mandatory. We reviewed all available Department of Health malaria notification records from 1992–2011. Notifications of P. malariae and P. knowlesi were considered as a single group due to microscopic near-identity. Results From 1992–2011 total malaria notifications decreased dramatically, with P. falciparum peaking at 33,153 in 1994 and decreasing 55-fold to 605 in 2011, and P. vivax peaking at 15,857 in 1995 and decreasing 25-fold to 628 in 2011. Notifications of P. malariae/P. knowlesi also demonstrated a peak in the mid-1990s (614 in 1994) before decreasing to ≈100/year in the late 1990s/early 2000s. However, P. malariae/P. knowlesi notifications increased >10-fold between 2004 (n = 59) and 2011 (n = 703). In 1992 P. falciparum, P. vivax and P. malariae/P. knowlesi monoinfections accounted for 70%, 24% and 1% respectively of malaria notifications, compared to 30%, 31% and 35% in 2011. The increase in P. malariae/P. knowlesi notifications occurred state-wide, appearing to have begun in the southwest and progressed north-easterly. Conclusions A significant recent increase has occurred in P. knowlesi notifications following reduced transmission of the human Plasmodium species, and this trend threatens malaria elimination. Determination of transmission dynamics and risk factors for knowlesi malaria is required to guide measures to control this rising incidence.
Foundations of Materials Experience: An Approach for HCI

A growing number of HCI scholars have started to take materiality as an entry point for acquiring a deeper understanding of the possibilities and constraints of design. Steadily moving beyond a distinction between the physical and the digital, a few have also started to look at materials as part of the unfolding of social and cultural practices. Yet, to date, relatively little is known about how these practices develop within the situated experience of materials, and how this situational whole can be supported by design. By contributing to both growing materiality scholarship and emerging practice-oriented approaches in HCI, this paper articulates a framework of materials experience that discusses how materials shape ways of doing and ultimately, practice, and how this is rooted in the experience of those materials.
Concurrent Design Optimization of Mechanical Structure and Control for High Speed Robots

A concurrent design method of mechanical structure and control is developed for two-link high speed robots. An integrated design approach to achieve high speed positioning is explored, in which comprehensive design parameters describing arm link geometry, actuator locations and feedback gains are optimized with respect to the settling time of the system. First, a two-lik, non-rigid arm is analyzed and a simple dynamic model representing rapid positioning processes is obtained. Optimal feedback gains minimizing the settling time are obtained as functions of structural parameters involved in the dynamic model. The structural parameters are then optimized using a nonlinear programming technique in order to obtain an overall optimal performance. Based on the optimal design, a prototype high speed robot is built and tested. The resultant arm design shows an outstanding performance, which is otherwise unattainable if the structure and control are designed separately.
Effects of trawling on seafloor habitat and associated invertebrate taxa in the Gulf of Alaska

Short-term effects of bottom trawling on a 'hard-bottom' (pebble, cobble, and boulder) seafloor were studied on the outer continental shelf in the eastern Gulf of Alaska. Eight sites were trawled in August 1996; then, from a research submersible we videotaped each trawl path and a nearby reference transect to obtain quantitative data. Boulders were displaced, and large epifaunal invertebrates were removed or damaged by a single trawl pass. These structural components of habitat were the dominant features on the seafloor. There was a significant decrease in density, and an increase in damage, to sponges and anthozoans in trawled versus reference transects. Changes in density, or damage to most motile invertebrates were not detected. Delayed mortality, of apparently undamaged invertebrates, may have resulted in greater impact than we detected. Alternatively, over time, some invertebrates may have recovered from any damage previously suffered. A subsequent survey at these sites will address these questions.
Using Tele-robotic Skull Drill for Neurosurgical Applications

This paper first gives a brief literature review about relevant technology, including the state-of-the-art surgical robotics, the state-of-the-art image-guided neurosurgery and applications, and Internet-based robotics. The architecture of the proposed telerobotic skull drill system is presented in the paper, including the client/server control architecture for the telerobotic skull drill system, the mechanical interface between robotic arm and the skull drill, and trajectory planning for the telerobotic skull drill system. Controller designed for this telerobotic system is also given in the paper, including position, orientation, and force feedback controllers in three different phases. Wave variable-based approach is employed to satisfy the stability of the telerobotic system. Finally, the experiment is concluded in the paper
F plus KS: A new feature selection strategy for steganalysis

Performance of universal steganalysis highly depends on the features extracted from the images. Recently there have been some high-dimensional feature sets introduced in order to model a large number of dependencies between neighboring pixels and JPEG coefficients. Although using these high-dimensional models can increase detection rate, due to their dimensionality, they can induce some problems in the classification process. Furthermore, extraction of such excessively large models is time-consuming. Using a feature selection strategy can lead to selection of the most prominent features and as a result, it can decrease feature extraction time. Another advantage of feature selection can be detection of the features that should be preserved in the steganography process in order to avoid detection of steganography. In this paper, a new feature selection algorithm is suggested which utilizes two statistical measures (i.e., KS from Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and F from F-to-remove). For selecting features, the proposed method does not benefit from a classifier; therefore, it should be considered as a filter method. In the proposed method, according to F statistic which is available in F-to-remove method, a reordering is applied on the features. Afterward, the features are mutually compared using KS-test and if the distributions of the two features are equal, one of them is discarded. The comparison of the proposed method with a recently introduced filter-type method for this aim shows performance improvements in terms of the effectiveness of selected features.
Physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling of cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine in male rats

A physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model for simulating the kinetics of cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX) in male rats was developed. The model consisted of five compartments interconnected by systemic circulation. The tissue uptake of RDX was described as a perfusion‐limited process whereas hepatic clearance and gastrointestinal absorption were described as first‐order processes. The physiological parameters for the rat were obtained from the literature whereas the tissue : blood partition coefficients were estimated on the basis of the tissue and blood composition as well as the lipophilicity characteristics of RDX (logP = 0.87). The tissue : blood partition coefficients (brain, 1.4; muscle, 1; fat, 7.55; liver, 1.2) obtained with this algorithmic approach were used without any adjustment, since a focused in vitro study indicated that the relative concentration of RDX in whole blood and plasma is about 1 : 1. An initial estimate of metabolic clearance of RDX (2.2 h−1 kg−1) was obtained by fitting PBPK model simulations to the data on plasma kinetics in rats administered 5.5 mg kg−1 i.v. The rat PBPK model without any further change in parameter values adequately simulated the blood kinetic data for RDX at much lower doses (0.77 and 1.04 mg −1 i.v.), collected in this study. The same model, with the incorporation of a first order oral absorption rate constant (Ka 0.75 h−1), reproduced the blood kinetics of RDX in rats receiving a single gavage dose of 1.53 or 2.02 mg kg−1. Additionally, the model simulated the plasma and blood kinetics of orally administered RDX at a higher dose (100 mg kg−1) or lower doses (0.2 or 1.24 mg kg−1) in male rats. Overall, the rat PBPK model for RDX with its parameters adequately simulates the blood and plasma kinetic data, obtained following i.v. doses ranging from 0.77 to 5.5 mg kg−1 as well as oral doses ranging from 0.2 to 100 mg kg−1. Published in 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
TCP/IP Attacks, Defenses and Security Tools

The TCP/IP protocol suite is the foundation of Internet and is ubiquitous in almost all networks worldwide. It was written as a robust protocol, which is able to communicate despite node failures. The design parameters of TCP did not weigh security as important and placed an implicit trust on nodes. The result was a protocol which was reliable and robust, but contained myriad inherent security flaws, open to be exploited by a malicious entity as was amply demonstrated by Morris worm (1) in the early days of what is Internet today. This problem was aggravated by various faulty implementations of the TCP/IP protocol. Many vulnerabilities and corresponding attacks have been identified targeting TCP/IP protocol suite including spoofing attacks, denial of service attacks, authentication attacks and routing attacks etc. Design flaws of TCP/IP can be mitigated by applying layers of security mechanism in a network. But this application itself is open to exploitation. Various tools have been designed to analyze and identify the presence of such vulnerabilities and avenues of exploitation in TCP/IP suite. We describe the spectrum of attacks against TCP/IP suite and discuss various defense mechanisms and tools like firewalls, intrusion detection systems, protocol analyzers, sniffers and vulnerability scanners etc. We conclude with an analysis of these tools. Keyword: Network security, TCP/IP security, security tools, hacking, computer security.
Horizontal and vertical social preferences in tournaments

Most studies find no collusion in tournaments. This result suggests that social preferences are irrelevant in this context. We investigate the impact of social preferences in a tournament using data from a laboratory experiment with two treatments. In a conentional tournament, an agent receives either the full prize or no prize at all. The other tournament provides the same incentives but the actual payment of an agent equals her expected payment. In both treatments the principal chooses between a fair and an unfair contract. Standard economic theory predicts the same effort provision in all situations. Our results show instead that envy between agents and the fairness of the principal determine the effectiveness of tournaments. Moreover, we observe that collusion between the agents and reciprocity towards the principal are mutually exclusive.
Semantic Clustering of Adjectives and Verbs Based on Syntactic Patterns

In this paper we show that some of the syntactic patterns in an NLP lexicon can be used to identify semantically ”similar” adjectives and verbs. We define semantic similarity on the basis of parameters used in the literature to classify adjectives and verbs semantically. The semantic clusters obtained from the syntactic encodings in the lexicon are evaluated by comparing them with semantic groups in existing tax­ onomies. The relation between adjectival syntactic patterns and their meaning is particularly interesting, because it has not been explored in the literature as much as it is the case for the relation between verbal complements and tu-guments. The identification of semantic groups on the basis of the syntactic encodings in the con­ sidered NLP lexicon can also be extended to other word classes and, maybe, to other languages for which the same type of lexicon exists.
An approach to anchoring and placing high performance custom digital designs

Custom layouts of digital blocks are often used in mixed-signal designs in order to meet the critical performance requirements. Unlike traditional standard-cell based digital placement, custom-cell based digital placement may need additional manual help and intervention to achieve higher performance. The need for manual intervention is primarily due to the inability of modern analytical placers in delivering satisfactory performance on placing designs without pre-placed blocks. While most design flow works in a flat or top-down fashion, custom digital design generally works in a bottom-up fashion that there is no prior knowledge on I/O pin plan since it is changeable by the owners of modules. Without any or very few fixed I/O locations, modern analytical placers tend to produce unsatisfactory results. In this work, we propose a method, mimicking the process of making beds, to guide state-of-the-art analytical placers to deliver better placement results. With the crafted pseudo anchors and nets, total HPWL on Capo10.5 [1], mPL6 [2], NTUplace3 [3] and VDAPlace [4] have improved by 2.92%, 8.69%, 25.26% and 10.72% respectively on a set of industry custom digital designs and improved by 2.19%, 4.34%, 36.09%, and 14.27% respectively on Peko-Suite1 benchmarks.
The Diamond Paradox: A Dynamic Resolution

We consider the role of repeat business in resolving the paradox of Diamond (1971). In each period, consumers engage in sequential price search at a positive search cost. Consumers enforce pricing discipline via a simple loyalty-boycott search rule that directs future-period seraches away from firms that raise prices in the current period. In consumers' best equlibria, the equilibrium price decreases continuously with the level of search costs, and the competitive outcome obtains as search costs approach zero. We show further that Rotemberg and Saloner's (1986) finding of countercyclical markups does not arise in the presence of positive search costs.
Suppliers and Product Development in the Early American Automobile Industry

Joint product development, in which suppliers and automakers hare the responsibility for component design, has given Japanese auto companies an important competitive advantage in both quality and new model lead times [Clark, 1989]. In contrast, U.S. automakers until recently left little room for suppliers' participation in the design process; vendors typically manufactured components to assembler-provided drawings. Although joint engineering is usually regarded as distinctively Japanese [Nishiguchi, 1994], American automotive suppliers often participated in component design before 1920. There were three overlapping stages in product design in the early American auto industry. While pioneering auto builders like Henry Ford and Alexander Winton designed their cars in detail, suppliers' engineering contributions were crucial in making a car sufficienfiy reliable and cheap to be attractive to consumers. Vendors like George Holley and Cleveland Cap Screw solved critical design problems in carburetion and valve production, enabling their customers, Henry Ford and Alexander Winton, to overcome what historian of technology Thomas Parke Hughes has termed "reverse salients" in an advancing technological front [Hughes, 1983]. After these engineering issues had been resolved, and as consumer demand for automobiles took off, over a hundred car makers entered the market between roughly 1903 and 1918. Nearly all assembled their automobiles from outsourced motors, transmissions, and chassis. The presence of a technically sophisticated supplier base enabled these builders to produce automobiles without large fixed capital investment or much technical expertise [Seltzer, 1928, pp. 19-21]. Vendors were therefore responsible for most of the engineering that went into assembled cars; components were usually off-theshelf parts that the assembler merely installed. The third stage of product development arrangements began with the rise to dominance of vertically integrated, high-volume producers between 1910 and 1920. By 1920, Ford and GM produced three-quarters of the automobiles sold in the United States. From then until the restructuring forced