Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Machine Learning Literacy for Measurement Professionals: A Practical Tutorial

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of assessment, creating new challenges for measurement professionals, including big data management, test security, and analyzing new validity evidence. In response to these challenges, Machine Learning (ML) emerges as an increasingly important skill in the toolbox of measurement professionals in this new era. However, most ML tutorials are technical and conceptual-focused. Therefore, this tutorial aims to provide a practical introduction to ML in the context of educational measurement. We also supplement our tutorial with several examples of supervised and unsupervised ML techniques applied to marking a short-answer question. Python codes are available on GitHub. In the end, common misconceptions about ML are discussed. © 2023 by the National Council on Measurement in Education.
Developmental Effects of Screen Time on Gender Diverse Student’s Experiences of Bullying Victimization

ABSTRACT We used a large state-wide sample of adolescent students in 8th, 10th, and 12th grades (N = 58,689) to examine the predictive value of screen time on bullying victimization, as well as its interaction with age by gender, including transgender and gender nonconforming identities. Participants were majority boys/men (52.3%), heterosexual (88.1%), and White (73.7%). Findings generally supported previous literature related to cisgender differences, but highlighted differences for transgender and gender nonconforming youth. While screen time and technology use, as well as development and maturation, appear to be important predictors of bullying victimization for cisgender students identifying as boys/men and girls/women, they did not predict bullying victimization for transgender or gender nonconforming youth. Results suggest we cannot assume previous bullying research on binary cisgender students will generalize to transgender and gender nonconforming youth. Practical implications for advancing bullying and victimization research with gender diverse students are outlined.
Soft Actor–Critic-Driven Adaptive Focusing under Obstacles

Electromagnetic (EM) waves that bypass obstacles to achieve focus at arbitrary positions are of immense significance to communication and radar technologies. Small-sized and low-cost metasurfaces enable the accomplishment of this function. However, the magnitude-phase characteristics are challenging to analyze when there are obstacles between the metasurface and the EM wave. In this study, we creatively combined the deep reinforcement learning algorithm soft actor–critic (SAC) with a reconfigurable metasurface to construct an SAC-driven metasurface architecture that realizes focusing at any position under obstacles using real-time simulation data. The agent learns the optimal policy to achieve focus while interacting with a complex environment, and the framework proves to be effective even in complex scenes with multiple objects. Driven by real-time reinforcement learning, the knowledge learned from one environment can be flexibly transferred to another environment to maximize information utilization and save considerable iteration time. In the context of future 6G communications development, the proposed method may significantly reduce the path loss of users in an occluded state, thereby solving the open challenge of poor signal penetration. Our study may also inspire the implementation of other intelligent devices.
Design and development of Tokyo Tech pico-satellite Cute-1.7

Cute-1.7 is a pico-satellite mainly developed by students at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech). This will be the second satellite built at Tokyo Tech after the first one, CUTE-I, which was launched in June 2003. The configuration of Cute-1.7 is a 10 cm × 10 cm × 20 cm box with a mass of 2 kg. The engineering objective of Cute-1.7 is to validate commercially available products such as Personal Digital Assistances (PDAs) in the space environment, and to demonstrate a "satellite core concept" which is dividing a satellite into a bus component and a mission component to adopt various missions. The scientific objective is to demonstrate the performance of avalanche photo diodes (APDs) as future X-ray detectors used in the space environment. Results of this mission will provide the first feedback for a space application of APD such as Japan's future X-ray astronomy mission NeXT.
University of Groningen An activated set point of T-cell and monocyte inflammatory networks in recent-onset schizophrenia patients involves both pro- and anti-inflammatory forces Drexhage,

We recently described a pro-inflammatory gene expression signature in the monocytes of 60% of patients with recent-onset schizophrenia (SCZ). Here we investigated whether the T-cell system is also in a proinflammatory state. A detailed fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) analysis, e.g. of CD3+CD25+ T cells, IFN-c+, IL-4+, IL-17A+ (CD4+) lymphocytes and CD4+CD25highFoxP3+ regulatory T cells, was performed on peripheral blood of 26 patients with recent-onset SCZ (in 19 of whom the inflammatory gene expression signature of the monocyte had been determined) and in age-/gender-matched healthy controls. Various relevant T-cell cytokines, e.g. sCD25, IFN-c, IL-17A and IL-4, were measured in serum by a multiplex assay. We detected : (a) not only higher percentages of pro-inflammatory-prone monocytes, activated CD3+CD25+ T cells and pro-inflammatory Th17 cells in patients, but also higher percentages of anti-inflammatory CD4+CD25highFoxP3+ regulatory T cells and IL-4+ lymphocytes ; (b) that this activated T-cell set point was reflected in significantly raised serum levels of sCD25; (c) that the up-regulation of IL-4+-containing lymphocytes was predominantly found in patients characterized by a monocyte proinflammatory set point ; and (d) that regulatory T-cell and Th17-cell numbers were higher in patients irrespective of the pro-inflammatory state of the monocytes. Our data do not support the concept that the T-cell system is in a simple pro-inflammatory state in recent-onset SCZ, but do show that the monocyte and T-cell networks are activated and involve both proand anti-inflammatory forces. This suggests control within an activated inflammatory system. Received 10 September 2010 ; Reviewed 10 November 2010 ; Revised 22 November 2010 ; Accepted 17 December 2010 ; First published online 24 January 2011
Pneumatic Artificial Muscle Antagonistic Joint Trajectory Tracking Using Adaptive Explicit Model Predictive Control

In this paper, we present an explicit solution to adaptive model predictive control for a pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) antagonistic joint trajectory tracking. Compared with the traditional model predictive control, the explicit model predictive control may pre-calculate the form of optimization solution offline, which saves the computation cost and reduce the time performance of the system. Meanwhile, we utilize an adaptive method to estimate the disturbance arbitrarily, instead of maximizing the disturbance directly. Finally, the simulation results and running time of the explicit adaptive model predictive control (EAMPC) method and the min-max model predictive control method are compared, which shows the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
Snakes in Powers of Complete Graphs

A snake in a graph G is a simple circuit $\mathcal{S}$ in G such that every edge of G that joins two vertices $\mathcal{S}$ of is an edge of $\mathcal{S}$. Denote by $S( G )$ the length of a longest snake in G. Some lower bounds for $S( {K_n^d } )$ are obtained, where $K_n^d $ denotes the product of d copies of the complete graph $K_n $ on n vertices.
Dynamics of suspended particles in eccentrically rotating flows

The motion of a light particle in an eccentrically rotating cylinder provides a method for verifying stationary history lift force effects at low but non-zero particle Reynolds numbers. We examine the flow in detail using a Lagrangian equation of motion for constant, non-zero-vorticity flows, and we predict a measurable and stationary contribution of history lift effects that can be verified experimentally with current experimental techniques. Because the history lift contribution is relevant only under certain conditions (which are determined in this work), the present flow configuration also allows one to isolate history drag effects under normal gravitation conditions without resorting to the tethered-particle arrangement used in previous works. We formulate and solve the trajectory problem for light particles that attain stable orbital motion, and we propose an experimental concept that makes possible the study of individual contributions of Lagrangian forces to the motion of small particles in viscous flows.
Trapped Field Properties of Large Disk MgB$_{2}$ Bulks Fabricated by an In-situ Infiltration and Reaction Method Using an Amorphous B Preform Containing Dilute Mg

An <bold><italic>in-situ</italic></bold> infiltration and reaction (IR) method is one of the most promising methods for the mass production of dense MgB<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> with a filling factor of over 90%. This is because it does not require an apparatus that applies physical pressure during synthesis, in contrast to the hot isostatic pressing, hot pressing, and spark plasma sintering methods. To promote the infiltration of Mg melt into the B preform, a low-reactivity crystalline B has usually been used to create MgB<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> bulks with centimetric dimensions. In this paper, we attempted to fabricate large MgB<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> bulks by the IR method using highly reactive amorphous B, which should result in a high critical current, as reported in the literature. To promote the intrusion of Mg melt, we mixed a small amount of Mg into the amorphous B preform, which is expected to give a similar effect to the so-called premix method. We successfully produced IR-processed MgB<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> disk bulks, of 20 mm diameter and 5 mm thickness, at a reaction temperature of 700 °C with a holding time of 9 or 24 h. A trapped field <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$B_\mathrm{T}$</tex-math></inline-formula> of 1.85 T at 20 K was obtained at the surface centers of the MgB<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> bulks, which is comparable with the <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$B_\mathrm{T}$</tex-math></inline-formula> values of dense MgB<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> bulks prepared by the hot isostatic pressing, hot pressing, and spark plasma sintering methods. Therefore, we can conclude that the Mg premixing method is an effective way of preparing dense MgB<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> bulks with a high <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$B_\mathrm{T}$</tex-math></inline-formula> by the IR process using amorphous B.
Cytotoxic and Antioxidant Activity of Hypericum perforatum L. Extracts against Human Melanoma Cells from Different Stages of Cancer Progression, Cultured under Normoxia and Hypoxia

Oxidative stress and the hypoxic microenvironment play a key role in the progression of human melanoma, one of the most aggressive skin cancers. The aim of our study was to evaluate the effect of Hypericum perforatum extracts of different origins (both commercially available (HpEx2) and laboratory-prepared from wild grown (HpEx12) and in vitro cultured (HpEx13) plants) and hyperforin salt on WM115 primary and WM266-4 lymph node metastatic human melanoma cells cultured under normoxic and hypoxic conditions. The polyphenol content, radical scavenging activity, and hyperforin concentration were determined in the extracts, while cell viability, apoptosis, ROS production, and expression of NRF2 and HO-1, important oxidative stress-related factors, were analyzed after 24 h of cell stimulation with HpExs and hyperforin salt. We found that cytotoxic, pro-apoptotic and antioxidant effects depend on the extract composition, the stage of melanoma progression, and the oxygen level. Hyperforin salt showed lower activity than H. perforatum extracts. Our study for the first time showed that the anticancer activity of H. perforatum extracts differs in normoxia and hypoxia. Importantly, the composition of extracts of various origins, including in vitro cultured, resulting in their unique properties, may be important in the selection of plants for therapeutic application.
The Effectiveness of Workplace Musculoskeletal Injury Risk Factor Screening Tools for Reducing Injury: A Systematic Review

Introduction: Musculoskeletal injury (MSI) contributes to global health burdens. Effective MSI prevention is necessary. MSI risk factor screening tools can be used by employers to identify and mitigate occupational hazards. Rigorous synthesis of the effectiveness of these tools has not taken place. We synthesized literature on effectiveness of MSI risk factor screening tools for reducing injury through informing prevention interventions. Materials and Methods: A literature search of Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library (Trials), CINAHL, Scopus and PsycINFO databases was performed. Included studies required an analytic design, used an MSI risk factor screening tool to inform an intervention in a working-age population and reported an outcome of MSI development, injury or compensation/work absence. Data extraction and study quality rating (Downs and Black criteria) were completed. Studies were sub-categorized as having used a single MSI screening tool (single-tool) to inform an injury prevention intervention or involving multiple simultaneous screening tools (multiple-tool). Study outcomes were synthesized when possible. Results: Eighteen articles representing fourteen studies met our inclusion criteria. No high-quality studies were identified (maximum Downs and Black score of 19). Studies did not employ previously validated tools but instead, typically, those purpose-built for a single use. The results were inconsistent both when using tools alone and in combination with other tools. Outcome measure heterogeneity precluded meaningful meta-analysis. Conclusions: There is limited evidence regarding use of MSI risk factor screening tools for preventing injury. Rigorous studies that utilize previously validated tools are needed.
Potassium Dehydroandrograpolide Succinate Targets NRP1 Mediated VEGFR2/VE-Cadherin Signaling Pathway to Promote Endothelial Barrier Repair

Impairment of vascular endothelial integrity is associated with various vascular diseases. Our previous studies demonstrated that andrographolide is critical to maintaining gastric vascular homeostasis, as well as to regulating pathological vascular remodeling. Potassium dehydroandrograpolide succinate (PDA), a derivative of andrographolide, has been clinically used for the therapeutic treatment of inflammatory diseases. This study aimed to determine whether PDA promotes endothelial barrier repair in pathological vascular remodeling. Partial ligation of the carotid artery in ApoE−/− mice was used to evaluate whether PDA can regulate pathological vascular remodeling. A flow cytometry assay, BRDU incorporation assay, Boyden chamber cell migration assay, spheroid sprouting assay and Matrigel-based tube formation assay were performed to determine whether PDA can regulate the proliferation and motility of HUVEC. A molecular docking simulation and CO-immunoprecipitation assay were performed to observe protein interactions. We observed that PDA induced pathological vascular remodeling characterized by enhanced neointima formation. PDA treatment significantly enhanced the proliferation and migration of vascular endothelial cells. Investigating the potential mechanisms and signaling pathways, we observed that PDA induced endothelial NRP1 expression and activated the VEGF signaling pathway. Knockdown of NRP1 using siRNA transfection attenuated PDA-induced VEGFR2 expression. The interaction between NRP1 and VEGFR2 caused VE-Cad-dependent endothelial barrier impairment, which was characterized by enhanced vascular inflammation. Our study demonstrated that PDA plays a critical role in promoting endothelial barrier repair in pathological vascular remodeling.
CAT: Constrained Adversarial Training for Anatomically-Plausible Semi-Supervised Segmentation

Deep learning models for semi-supervised medical image segmentation have achieved unprecedented performance for a wide range of tasks. Despite their high accuracy, these models may however yield predictions that are considered anatomically impossible by clinicians. Moreover, incorporating complex anatomical constraints into standard deep learning frameworks remains challenging due to their non-differentiable nature. To address these limitations, we propose a Constrained Adversarial Training (CAT) method that learns how to produce anatomically plausible segmentations. Unlike approaches focusing solely on accuracy measures like Dice, our method considers complex anatomical constraints like connectivity, convexity, and symmetry which cannot be easily modeled in a loss function. The problem of non-differentiable constraints is solved using a Reinforce algorithm which enables to obtain a gradient for violated constraints. To generate constraint-violating examples on the fly, and thereby obtain useful gradients, our method adopts an adversarial training strategy which modifies training images to maximize the constraint loss, and then updates the network to be robust to these adversarial examples. The proposed method offers a generic and efficient way to add complex segmentation constraints on top of any segmentation network. Experiments on synthetic data and four clinically-relevant datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in terms of segmentation accuracy and anatomical plausibility.
Comprehensive Kinase Activity Profiling Revealed the Kinase Activity Patterns Associated with the Effects of EGFR Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor Therapy in Advanced Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Patients with Sensitizing EGFR Mutations

EGFR mutations are strong predictive markers for EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) therapy in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Although NSCLC patients with sensitizing EGFR mutations have better prognoses, some patients exhibit worse prognoses. We hypothesized that various activities of kinases could be potential predictive biomarkers for EGFR-TKI treatment among NSCLC patients with sensitizing EGFR mutations. In 18 patients with stage IV NSCLC, EGFR mutations were detected and comprehensive kinase activity profiling was performed using the peptide array PamStation12 for 100 tyrosine kinases. Prognoses were observed prospectively after the administration of EGFR-TKIs. Finally, the kinase profiles were analyzed in combination with the prognoses of the patients. Comprehensive kinase activity analysis identified specific kinase features, consisting of 102 peptides and 35 kinases, in NSCLC patients with sensitizing EGFR mutations. Network analysis revealed seven highly phosphorylated kinases: CTNNB1, CRK, EGFR, ERBB2, PIK3R1, PLCG1, and PTPN11. Pathway analysis and Reactome analysis revealed that the PI3K-AKT and RAF/ MAPK pathways were significantly enriched in the poor prognosis group, being consistent with the outcome of the network analysis. Patients with poor prognoses exhibited high activation of EGFR, PIK3R1, and ERBB2. Comprehensive kinase activity profiles may provide predictive biomarker candidates for screening patients with advanced NSCLC harboring sensitizing EGFR mutations.
Microstructures and critical current densities of YBCO films containing structure-controlled BaZrO3 nanorods

BaZrO3 nanorods are known to be effective pinning centers as c-axis-correlated pinning centers. Furthermore, BaZrO3 nanorods in REBa2Cu3Oy (RE: rare-earth element) films are formed by self-assembled stacking of BaZrO3 using a target mixture of a superconductor and BaZrO3 for pulsed-laser deposition, which is a very easy fabrication technique. The density of BaZrO3 nanorods in YBa2Cu3Oy (YBCO) films can be controlled by varying the BaZrO3 content in a target. The BaZrO3 addition has two functions for superconductivity; one is the improvement of pinning forces due to the addition of pinning centers and the other is Tc degradation. The optimum BaZrO3 addition for Jc improvement in magnetic fields is found to be around 3 wt% because of a trade-off between the two functions described above. Furthermore, the length of BaZrO3 nanorods is found to be controlled using two types of target: pure YBCO and a mixture of YBCO and BaZrO3. Varying the BaZrO3 nanorod length has an effect on the pinning mechanism. In particular, magnetic field angle dependences of Jc are varied from c-axis-correlated pinning to nearly random pinning by changing the nanorod length. The magnetic field at the crossover of the pinning mechanism seems to be adjusted by the BaZrO3 nanorod length.
Noninvasive Image Reconstruction of Flowing Thrombus With Electrical Capacitance Tomography

A method for noninvasive real-time measurement of blood cardiopulmonary bypass is proposed by electrical capacitance tomography (ECT). An eight-electrode sensor ECT data acquisition system is designed, including sensor design and data acquisition module design. The system has a real-time imaging speed of 40 frames per second (FPS) and an average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 64.59 dB per channel, which has been experimentally verified. First, the system is able to detect 6.25%–42.25% of the target area ratio (AR) when the sensor inner diameter is 20 mm, the outer diameter is 25 mm, and the image correlation coefficient (ICC) is not less than 0.7, which obtained by static experiments. Second, the corresponding voltage sum curve is different when different sizes of targets flow through the electrode coverage area. Dynamic experiments have verified that the sum of voltage curve for each frame image is available to further determine the size of the thrombus generated during the circulation process. Finally, dynamic experiments were performed using fresh porcine blood clots to mimic thrombus, which verified the feasibility of using ECT for in vitro thrombus detection.
AImotion Challenge Results: a Framework for AirSim Autonomous Vehicles and Motion Replication

The use of simulation environments is becoming more significant in the development of autonomous cars, as it allows for the simulation of high-risk situations while also being less expensive. In this paper, we presented a framework that allows the creation of an autonomous vehicle in the AirSim simulation environment and then transporting the simulated movements to the TurtleBot. To maintain the car in the correct direction, computer vision techniques such as object detection and lane detection were assumed. The vehicle's speed and steering are both determined by Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers. A virtual personal assistant was developed employing natural language processing to allow the user to interact with the environment, providing movement instructions related to the vehicle's direction. Additionally, the conversion of the simulator movements for a robot was implemented to test the proposed system in a practical experiment. A comparison between the real position of the robot and the position of the vehicle in the simulated environment was considered in this study to evaluate the performance of the algorithms.
Calculation of IR signatures from airborne vehicles

To be able to predict the IR signature of an aircraft, the heat radiated, in the form of IR radiation, has to be calculated. A program package, SIGGE, has been developed at FOI for this purpose. In this paper, the code will be presented together with some results from verification, validation and one application.