Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of a Collaborative Wheelchair System in Cerebral Palsy and Traumatic Brain Injury Users

Objective. This article describes the evaluation of the Collaborative Wheelchair Assistant (CWA), a robotic wheelchair that lets the user control the speed and provides guiding assistance along virtual paths programmed in software. Methods. Three people with cerebral palsy and 2 with traumatic brain injury, who had been ruled out as candidates for independent mobility, were recruited. These subjects were first trained to use the CWA with and without path guidance before completing a navigation task. Results. All subjects were able, after a few training sessions, to drive the wheelchair with path guidance safely and efficiently in an environment with obstacles and narrow passageways. The CWA enabled the subjects to drastically reduce their effort and intervention level without compromising performance. Conclusions. The results suggest that the CWA can provide driving assistance adapted to various disabilities. It could be used as a safe mobility device for some subjects who could eventually control a normal powered wheelchair after training and provide a way to increase the mobility of subjects with larger motor control or cognitive deficiencies.
Analysis of a MAP/PH/1 queue with discretionary priority

In this paper, we study a MAP/PH/1 queue with two classes of customers and discretionary priority. There are two stages of service for the low-priority customer. The server adopts the preemptive priority discipline at the first stage and adopts the nonpreemptive priority discipline at the second stage. Such a queueing system can be modelled into a quasi-birth-and-death (QBD) process. But there is no general solution for this QBD process since the generator matrix has a block structure with an infinite number of blocks and each block has infinite dimensions. We present an approach to derive the bound for the high-priority queue length. It guarantees that the probabilities of ignored states are within a given error bound, so that the system can be modelled into a QBD process where the block elements of the generator matrix have finite dimensions. Sojourn time distributions of both high and low priority customers are obtained.
Embedded security: New trends in personal recognition systems

Nowadays biometrics and embedded systems technologies bring the required means to face those security challenges in the current technological age. The electronic age points to the embedded security as one efficient solution for those applications where confidential treatment of the information is needed. Moreover, the genuine biometric characteristics of each individual become the most reliable features to be used as personal identifiers in front of the world, replacing those low-security tokens such as ID cards, PINs and passwords. Following this direction, the HW-SW co-design of a fingerprint-based personal recognition system embedded on a dynamically reconfigurable platform is suggested in this work. The selected system architecture provides the power to design these high performance applications at low cost.
Protection systems and protection implementations

The paper discusses the nature of systems for protection of information in the central memory of a computer, describing the potentialities and limitations of a variety of approaches. It is based upon work done in the course of a current project on protection systems at the Computer Laboratory, Cambridge, and outlines a system which is being developed to the point of hardware implementation in the Laboratory.
Computational intelligence and mechatronics solutions for robotic tactile object recognition

The paper discusses signal processing and mechatronics solutions for tactile object recognition using robotic hands. The two important aspects analyzed are the recognition of objects from tactile displacement profiles obtained by force sensing transducers and the recognition of textures using a rubbing motion executed by a robotic finger equipped with a dynamic tactile fingertip. Neural network solutions are used as an intelligent approach to recognize symbols, such as embossed numbers and letters, as well as for the recognition of different texture profiles. The conception issues, the challenges as well as the experimental results obtained are discussed from both a biological and a technological perspective.
Pesticides and human health

Pesticides, including herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, fumigants and rodenticides, provide important benefits in public health, food production and aesthetics (http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/pestbenefits.html). Unlike most other important chemicals, pesticides are designed to impact living systems (http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-123/). Consequently there has long been a concern about environmental and human consequences of widespread pesticide use. Carson1 effectively voiced this concern and documented some problems in her 1962 book, Silent Spring. Global pesticide use increased dramatically between the 1960s and 1990s, and more slowly thereafter, but large increases continue to occur in many developing countries.2 The estimated worldwide use in 2007 was 5211 million pounds of active ingredients, with herbicides accounting for the major use in agriculture, and about 40% of the use overall.3 To place this figure in context, it is close to one pound for each of the 6.6 billion people then inhabiting the globe, albeit with unequal distribution. Human occupational exposure is expected during pesticide production and application, but the general population can also be exposed through drift, contamination of water and food supplies, and biological concentration through the food chain.4 In addition, pesticide use for vector control and elimination of nuisance pests is an important exposure source for a considerable portion of the world population, and is an especially important source of exposure indoors.5 These varied pathways have resulted in such ubiquitous exposure that persistent pesticides or their metabolites can be found at low levels in biological tissues of much of the world's population. This includes many who may be …
Universal Perceptron and DNA-Like Learning Algorithm for Binary Neural Networks: Non-LSBF Implementation

Implementing linearly nonseparable Boolean functions (non-LSBF) has been an important and yet challenging task due to the extremely high complexity of this kind of functions and the exponentially increasing percentage of the number of non-LSBF in the entire set of Boolean functions as the number of input variables increases. In this paper, an algorithm named DNA-like learning and decomposing algorithm (DNA-like LDA) is proposed, which is capable of effectively implementing non-LSBF. The novel algorithm first trains the DNA-like offset sequence and decomposes non-LSBF into logic XOR operations of a sequence of LSBF, and then determines the weight-threshold values of the multilayer perceptron (MLP) that perform both the decompositions of LSBF and the function mapping the hidden neurons to the output neuron. The algorithm is validated by two typical examples about the problem of approximating the circular region and the well-known n -bit parity Boolean function (PBF).
Oxidized lipids in the diet accelerate the development of fatty streaks in cholesterol-fed rabbits.

Studies have indicated that oxidized lipoproteins may play a role in atherosclerosis. We have recently demonstrated that the levels of oxidized lipoproteins in the circulation can be directly correlated to the quantity of oxidized lipids in the diet. The present study tested the hypothesis that dietary oxidized lipids accelerate the development of atherosclerosis. For 12 to 14 weeks, 36 male New Zealand White rabbits were fed a low-cholesterol (0.25%) diet containing either 5% unoxidized corn oil (control diet) or 5% oxidized corn oil (oxidized-lipid diet). Serum cholesterol levels increased to a similar extent in both groups, with the majority of the cholesterol in the beta-migrating very low density lipoprotein (beta-VLDL) fraction. Beta-VLDL from control animals contained 3.86+/- 0.57 versus 9.07 +/- 2.14 nmol conjugated dienes per micromol cholesterol (P<.05) in rabbits fed the oxidized-lipid diet. No difference in oxidized lipid levels was detected in LDL. Most important, feeding a diet rich in oxidized-lipid resulted in a 100% increase in fatty streak lesions in the aorta. Additionally, rabbits that were fed the oxidized-lipid++ diet had a >100% increase in total cholesterol in the pulmonary artery that was primarily due to an increase in cholesteryl ester. Oxidized lipids are frequently present in the typical US diet, and our results suggest that consumption of these foods may be an important risk factor for atherosclerosis.
The form of etch rate minima in wet chemical anisotropic etching of silicon

Etching of monocrystalline silicon in alkaline based solutions leads to a deep minimum in the etch rate crystallographically oriented along (111). The details of the form of the minimum (angular dependence of the etch rate) are investigated and discussed in a framework of steps originating from spontaneous nucleation and from misorientation of the crystal face exposed to the etchant. As a result, the etch rate minimum is characterized by a narrow flat portion that reflects the density of nuclei, and the temperature dependence of the width has an activation energy equal to 1/3 of the nucleation barrier.
On the vulnerability of automatic speaker recognition to spoofing attacks with artificial signals

Automatic speaker verification (ASV) systems are increasingly being used for biometric authentication even if their vulnerability to imposture or spoofing is now widely acknowledged. Recent work has proposed different spoofing approaches which can be used to test vulnerabilities. This paper introduces a new approach based on artificial, tone-like signals which provoke higher ASV scores than genuine client tests. Experimental results show degradations in the equal error rate from 8.5% to 77.3% and from 4.8% to 64.3% for standard Gaussian mixture model and factor analysis based ASV systems respectively. These findings demonstrate the importance of efforts to develop dedicated countermeasures, some of them trivial, to protect ASV systems from spoofing.
Energy Efficient Segmentation-Link Strategies for Transparent IP over WDM Core Networks

Recent developments in Optical IP networks have heightened the need for reduction on power consumption via so called green photonics and concepts known as green networking. Adhering to these principles we proposed a novel energy savings approach which can be applied to optical IP networks and is based on so called "hibernation mode with segmentation link" technique. The hibernation mode technique is designed to help to reduce power consumption by sleep the network links and can help to optimise network overall energy usage by taking advantage of the hibernation algorithms we have developed. The proper implementation over the network infrastructure will save energy, operating cost to network operators, and while at the same time will also deliver reduced carbon footprint. In this paper, we show design model for developing energy efficient Segment-Link approach. In this scheme, the improvised energy saving techniques focus on selective sleeping of optical core fibre links, following which the Routing Wavelength Assignment algorithm based on GMPLS control plane are investigated. Simulation models and results for the proposed scheme are evaluated in both the fibre link only and segmentation-link schemes scenarios. The results shows that a significant amount of energy can be saved if appropriate "segmentation-link" mechanisms using optical bypass and traffic grooming is invoked.
WLC40-5: Efficient Approximations for Call Admission Control Performance Evaluations in Multi-Service Networks

Several dynamic call admission control (CAC) schemes for cellular networks have been proposed in the literature to reserve resources adaptively to provide the desired quality of service (QoS) to not only high priority calls but also to low priority ones. Efficient adaptive reservations depend on reliable and up-to-date system status feedback provided to the CAC mechanism. However exact analysis of these schemes using multidimensional Markov chain models are intractable in real time due to the need to solve large sets of flow equations. Hence performance metrics such as call blocking probabilities of various QoS classes are generally evaluated using one dimensional Markov chain models assuming that channel occupancy times for all QoS classes have equal mean values and all arriving calls have equal capacity requirements. In this paper we re-evaluate the analytical methods to compute call blocking probabilities of various QoS classes for several widely known CAC schemes by relaxing these assumptions, and propose a novel approximation method for performance evaluation with low computational complexity. Numerical results show that proposed method provides results that match well with the exact solutions.
Increased production of suilysin contributes to invasive infection of the Streptococcus suis strain 05ZYH33

Streptococcus suis serotype 2 (SS2) is widely recognized in the veterinary world as the cause of rapidly progressive and fatal sepsis in infant pigs, manifested with meningitis, polyarthritis and pneumonia. It has evolved into a highly infectious strain, and caused two large-scale outbreaks of human epidemic in China, characterized bytypical toxic-shock syndrome and invasive infection. However, the molecular basis of virulence of this emerging zoonotic pathogen is still largely unknown. The present study shows that the sequence type (ST)7 epidemic strain S. suis 05ZYH33 causes higher mortality, higher necrosis of polymorphonuclear neutrophils and a significantly higher damage to human umbilical vein endothelial cells compared to the non-epidemic strain S. suis 1940. These differences appear to associate with the enhanced secretion of suilysin (sly) by S. suis 05ZYH33 compared to the non-epidemic strain 1940. Inclusion of additional strains confirmed that the epidemic ST7 strains produce more sly protein (mean, 1.49 g/ml; range, 0.76–1.91 g/ml) than non-epidemic strains (mean, 0.33 g/ml; range, 0.07–0.94 g/ml), and this difference is significant (P<0.001). The nonpolar mutant strain S. suis Δsly, constructed from the epidemic ST7 strain S. suis 05ZYH33 confirmed the role of sly on the enhanced virulence of S. suis ST7 strains. These findings suggest that increased sly production in S. suis 05ZYH33 facilitates penetration to the epithelium and its survival in the bloodstream, thereby contributing to the invasive infection.
Adult Suicide Attempts In Relationship to Life Experiences and Familial Tendencies

The purpose of this project was to describe the variables age, gender, child or adult abuse, educational level, family history of suicide, depression, economic level as factors related to adult attempted suicides. The Lazarus framework was used to examine factors contributing to adult attempted suicide. A suicide prevention community education project was developed with Lazarus’s theory of cognition and unconscious processes in mind. Lazarus’s theory focuses on the relationship between development of coping skills learned during childhood and how a person will respond using those skills as an adult. This project explored links between child and adult abuse, education or economic levels, age, gender or family history that may influence adult attempted suicide. Information was then presented in the form of patient resource materials that were placed in health care areas populations of individuals and families with high risk for attempted suicide. Acknowledgments The detailed work that is involved with developing an idea for a master’s project consists of hours of reading and preparing. The assistance and encouragement of loved ones as well as learned colleagues and instructors has earned my sincerest appreciation. I would like to thank my husband, Rhea, for spending multiple years encouraging me to pursue my dreams as I worked up the scholastic ladder towards success. I would also like to thank my wonderful daughters, Melissa and Karen for their love, emotional support and for everything that they mean to me.
Preschool Children's Level of Proficiency in Motor Skills and the Level of Their Physical Fitness as Adolescents

Introduction According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in the year 2000, 64% of adults in the United States were overweight, depicting an epidemic of individuals at risk for health-related issues associated with obesity (6). As stated in Healthy People 2010, young citizens are potentially vulnerable for becoming sedentary with progressive age and a goal of the United States is to improve the health, fitness, and quality of lives through participation in daily physical activity (7). Sedentary behavior is correlated with an increased incidence of cardio respiratory and endocrinologic disorders, including hyperlipedemia and Type II diabetes mellitus in children and adults (5). Immunologic dysfunction has likewise been associated with inactivity, and the reduction in the levels of circulating lymphocytes, particularly CD4 and CD8 cells, essential for the control of the development of malignancy, has been noted in sedentary patients (4). Eosinophilic proliferation, which is critical in the suppression of allergic reactions, has also been correlated with exercise (3). Further, hypokinetic activity is associated with the progression of cognitive and executive function decline in individuals with neurologic disorders such as Alzheimer's and multi-infarct brain syndrome (2). Minimal human research has been conducted regarding cognition and exercise in normative pediatric cohorts. However, animal research correlates increased neurogenesis and the proliferation of neuronal cells, components associated with increased memory and learning capabilities, with physical activity levels (8). The embedding of motor patterns in the primary motor cortex occurs in infancy and the repetition of rudimentary movements provides the foundation for the development of progressively more complex motor activities (1). Physiological attributes are associated with primary motor cortex development which naturally occurs throughout the human growth and development cycles (2). The literature is bereft of research which explores the relationship between early childhood physical activities and maintained physical fitness levels. The purpose of this longitudinal research study was twofold: a) to determine if a relationship existed between the level of motor skill proficiency among children at pre-school and the level of physical fitness in adolescence and, b) to determine if the embedding of learned motor patterns associated with physical activity correlated with physical fitness longitudinally. Methods In 1988, the Test of Gross Motor Development (TGMD), which assesses locomotor and object control skills, was administered to 140 healthy preschool children, aged 4 to 6 years, who were purposively recruited from two day care centers in a large metropolitan city. In 1999, the AAHPERD fitness test, which has correlational validity with the TGMD (p Results Results indicate that the level of proficiency in motor skills in early childhood is predictive and correlates with the level of physical fitness in adolescence (p
Planetary exploration in the time of astrobiology: Protecting against biological contamination

These are intriguing times in the exploration of other solar-system bodies. Continuing discoveries about life on Earth and the return of data suggesting the presence of liquid water environments on or under the surfaces of other planets and moons have combined to suggest the significant possibility that extraterrestrial life may exist in this solar system. Similarly, not since the Viking missions of the mid-1970s has there been as great an appreciation for the potential for Earth life to contaminate other worlds. Current plans for the exploration of the solar system include constraints intended to prevent biological contamination from being spread by solar-system exploration missions.
Playing with norms: tractability of normative systems for homogeneous game structures

In this paper we study the connection between anonymous (normal form) games and normative systems for homogeneous concurrent game structures. We present a variant of the popular strategic logic ATL that allows for reasoning about norm compliance and the strategic ability of coalitions of agents. We broaden the notion of a normative system compared to earlier work and introduce two categories: individual and collective norms. Then we establish a technical link between these two notions, and between the notion of an individual norm and an anonymous game, as studied in recent work on algorithmic game theory. These connections enable us to show that model checking on homogeneous concurrent game structures with norms is tractable in the number of agents.
The Vesicular Monoamine Transporter, in Contrast to the Dopamine Transporter, Is Not Altered by Chronic Cocaine Self-Administration in the Rat

Although much evidence suggests that the brain dopamine transporter (DAT) is susceptible to dopaminergic regulation, only limited information is available for the vesicular monoamine transporter (VMAT2). In the present investigation, we used a chronic, unlimited-access, cocaine self-administration paradigm to determine whether brain levels of VMAT2, as estimated using [3H]dihydrotetrabenazine (DTBZ) binding, are altered by chronic exposure to a dopamine uptake blocker. Previously, we showed that striatal and nucleus accumbens DAT levels, as estimated by [3H]WIN 35,428 and [3H]GBR 12,935 binding, are altered markedly using this animal model (Wilson et al., 1994). However, in sequential sections from the same animals, [3H]DTBZ binding was normal throughout the entire rostrocaudal extent of the basal ganglia (including striatum and nucleus accumbens), cerebral cortex, and diencephalon, as well as in midbrain and brainstem monoamine cell body regions, both on the last day of cocaine access and after 3 weeks of drug withdrawal. These data provide additional evidence that VMAT2, unlike DAT, is resistant to dopaminergic regulation.