Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of fatigue on multifinger co‐ordination in force production tasks in humans

1 This study investigated the effects of fatigue, induced by production of maximal isometric force for 60 s with four fingers, upon indices of multifinger co‐ordination. 2 Measurements of individual finger forces were performed during single‐ and multifinger maximal force production (maximal voluntary contraction, MVC) for two sites of force application, the middle of the distal or the middle of the proximal phalanxes. Two fatiguing exercises were used, involving force production at the distal phalanxes and at the proximal phalanxes. Fourteen subjects were tested. 3 The total force in four‐finger tasks dropped by about 43 % when it was produced at the site involved in the fatiguing exercise. During force production at the other site, MVC dropped by 23 %. During single‐finger MVC tests, force drop with fatigue was similar across all four fingers (about −25 % of their corresponding MVCs). 4 Force production by one finger was accompanied by involuntary force production by other fingers (enslaving). Enslaving remained unchanged by fatigue when measured during force generation at the site involved in the fatiguing exercise, but increased during force production at the other site. 5 The total MVC of four fingers acting in parallel was smaller than the sum of the MVCs of these fingers in single‐finger tasks (force deficit). The force deficit increased with fatigue. Force‐sharing patterns during four‐finger tasks showed only minor changes under fatigue. 6 These results indicate that the effects of fatigue were not limited to changes in the force‐generating capabilities of the muscles. In particular, fatigue could lead to a reorganisation at a neural level that defines commands to individual fingers.
Data Analytics Service Composition and Deployment on Edge Devices

Data analytics on edge devices has gained rapid growth in research, industry, and different aspects of our daily life. This topic still faces many challenges such as limited computation resource on edge devices. In this paper, we further identify two main challenges: the composition and deployment of data analytics services on edge devices. We present the Zoo system to address these two challenge: on one hand, it provides simple and concise domain-specific language to enable easy and and type-safe composition of different data analytics services; on the other, it utilises multiple deployment backends, including Docker container, JavaScript, and MirageOS, to accommodate the heterogeneous edge deployment environment. We show the expressiveness of Zoo with a use case, and thoroughly compare the performance of different deployment backends in evaluation.
Techniques de surcharge en utilisateurs d'un canal à accès multiple. (Overloading Techniques on a Multiple Access Channel)

Cette these est consacree au concept de surcharge du canal de transmission, qui intervient lorsqu’un systeme admet un nombre d’utilisateurs superieur a ce que permet l’utilisation de signaux orthogonaux. Nous avons mis en evidence l’existence de deux grandes familles de constructions a l’emission autorisant un gain en efficacite spectrale par l’augmentation du nombre d’utilisateurs. La premiere famille de techniques mise a jour englobe les schemas utilisant des combinaisons de CDMA orthogonal et eventuellement de TDMA, et une construction proposee dans la litterature par Ross et Taylor. Nous avons examine et compare les performances fournies par differentes methodes de detection multi-utilisateurs fondees sur l’annulation iterative d’interferences pouvant etre appliquees a ces schemas en l’absence de codage, sur canal gaussien ou eventuellement sur canal de Rayleigh non selectif. Nous nous sommes ensuite interesses a des schemas relevant de la deuxieme famille de construction : d’une part un schema propose a la suite d’une interpretation des schemas precedents en tant que codage multi-niveaux d’une constellation etendue, et d’autre part l’IDMA (Interleave-Division Multiple Access), dont les performances ont ete etudiees sur canal gaussien en l’absence de codage, et comparees aux autres techniques de surcharge vues precedemment. Enfin, nous avons presente dans un formalisme matriciel general des techniques iteratives adaptees a des schemas incluant du codage canal, et pouvant etre mises en œuvre sur canal gaussien ou sur canal de Rayleigh multitrajets. Plusieurs recepteurs adaptes a chaque type de schemas (CDMA ou IDMA) ont ainsi ete proposes.
Effects of long-term intake of a yogurt fermented with Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus 2038 and Streptococcus thermophilus 1131 on mice

The gut is an extremely complicated ecosystem where micro-organisms, nutrients and host cells interact vigorously. Although the function of the intestine and its barrier system weakens with age, some probiotics can potentially prevent age-related intestinal dysfunction. Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus 2038 and Streptococcus thermophilus 1131, which are the constituents of LB81 yogurt, are representative probiotics. However, it is unclear whether their long-term intake has a beneficial influence on systemic function. Here, we examined the gut microbiome, fecal metabolites and gene expression profiles of various organs in mice. Although age-related alterations were apparent in them, long-term LB81 yogurt intake led to an increased Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes ratio and elevated abundance of the bacterial family S24-7 (Bacteroidetes), which is known to be associated with butyrate and propanoate production. According to our fecal metabolite analysis to detect enrichment, long-term LB81 yogurt intake altered the intestinal metabolic pathways associated with propanoate and butanoate in the mice. Gene ontology analysis also revealed that long-term LB81 yogurt intake influenced many physiological functions related to the defense response. The profiles of various genes associated with antimicrobial peptides-, tight junctions-, adherens junctions- and mucus-associated intestinal barrier functions were also drastically altered in the LB81 yogurt-fed mice. Thus, long-term intake of LB81 yogurt has the potential to maintain systemic homeostasis, such as the gut barrier function, by controlling the intestinal microbiome and its metabolites.
Blind Key Based Attack Resistant Audio Steganography Using Cocktail Party Effect

Steganography is a popular technique of digital data security. Among all digital steganography methods, audio steganography is very delicate as human auditory system is highly sensitive to noise; hence small modification in audio can make significant audible impact. In this paper, a key based blind audio steganography method has been proposed which is built on discrete wavelet transform (DWT) as well as discrete cosine transform (DCT) and adheres to Kerckhoff’s principle. Here image has been used as secret message which is preprocessed using Arnold’s Transform. To make the system more robust and undetectable, a well-known problem of audio analysis has been explored here, known as Cocktail Party Problem, for wrapping stego audio. The robustness of the proposed method has been tested against Steganalysis attacks like noise addition, random cropping, resampling, requantization, pitch shifting, and mp3 compression. The quality of resultant stego audio and retrieved secret image has been measured by various metrics, namely, “peak signal-to-noise ratio”; “correlation coefficient”; “perceptual evaluation of audio quality”; “bit error rate”; and “structural similarity index. ” The embedding capacity has also been evaluated and, as seen from the comparison result, the proposed method has outperformed other existing DCT-DWT based technique.
Continuous Indoor Localization and Navigation Based on Low-cost INS / Wi-Fi Integration

The widely diffused Wi-Fi infrastructure can be used for the indoor positioning and a lot of Wi-Fi localization techniques have been studied recently. However, for continuous indoor navigation of a mobile object, most of the existing methods do not give a satisfactory performance. The inertial measurement unit (IMU), providing the motion information of the object with a high update rate, is widely used in dead-reckoning navigation applications. By using the complementary nature of Inertial Navigation System (INS) and Wi-Fi positioning principles, an integrated system of INS and Wi-Fi is expected to form a low-cost, robust and continuous indoor navigation solution. In this paper, two loosely-coupled INS/Wi-Fi schemes and one tightly-coupled integration approach are presented.
Association of serum antibodies to heat-shock protein 65 with carotid atherosclerosis : clinical significance determined in a follow-up study.

BACKGROUND Previous work has proved that increased titers of antibodies against heat-shock protein (hsp) 65 are associated with atherosclerotic lesions independently of other established risk factors. The present follow-up study was designed to further scrutinize the association of hsp antibodies and atherosclerosis and evaluate the possible predictive value of these antibodies for the development and/or progression of lesions in the same population. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 750 subjects 45 to 74 years old were recruited, and the rate of participation was 93.6%; 58 subjects died between 1990 and 1995. All participants were subjected to determination of serum antibodies against hsp65 and sonography to assess carotid atherosclerotic lesions and evaluate other risk factors, ie, age, sex, body mass index, blood cholesterol, apolipoprotein B, apolipoprotein A, triglycerides, lipoprotein(a), fibrinogen, leukocyte number, antithrombin III, ESR, ferritin, hypertension, smoking, and diabetes mellitus. Our data show that hsp65 antibody titers in the population emerged as highly consistent over a 5-year observation period (r=0.78, P<0.0001). Titers were significantly elevated in subjects with progressive carotid atherosclerosis and correlated with intima/media thickness. Multiple linear regression analysis documented these associations to be independent of age, sex, and other risk factors. Subanalyses revealed a preferential association of hsp65 antibody titers with advanced lesions (odds ratio, 1.42; 95% CI, 1.02 to 1.98; P=0.039). Other risk factors neither confounded nor modified this association. Finally, hsp65 antibody titers significantly predicted the 5-year mortality (hazard ratio, 1.52; 95% CI, 1.14 to 2.03; P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS These findings indicate a sustained existence of anti-hsp65 antibodies in subjects with severe atherosclerosis, which is predictive for mortality.
Voting, Inequality and Redistribution

This paper surveys models of voting on redistribution. Under reasonable assumptions, the baseline model produces an equilibrium with the extent of redistributive taxation chosen by the median income earner. If the median is poorer than average, redistribution is from rich to poor, and increasing inequality increases redistribution. However, under different assumptions about the economic environment, redistribution may not be simply rich to poor, and inequality need not increase redistribution. Several lines of argument are presented, in particular, political participation, public provision of private goods, public pensions, and tax avoidance or evasion.
FPGA Implementation of SRRC Filter for WCDMA Systems

: This paper presents the FPGA implementation of Square root raised cosine filter for pulse shaping used in WCDMA systems. Square root raised cosine filter is a FIR filter. Square root raised cosine filters are used in both transmitter and receiver for matching filter purpose. Mainly square root raised cosine filter is used for pulse shaping so that it reduces the required system bandwidth and also reduces inter symbol interference. SRRC filter also designed to maintain the power level in db’s . SRRC filter is designed by five levels of adders with a roll off factor 0.2 . Shifting and add method is used for designing of SRRC filter.
Graphene nanoplatelet composite ‘paper’ as an electrostatic actuator

Graphene nanoplatelets (GnP) can be made into a thin ‘paper’ through vacuum filtration of GnP suspension. Electrodes were fabricated from the compressed GnP paper and then by coating the surface with epoxy. The electrostatic actuator was constructed from two parallel-aligned composite papers fixed at the anode and a cathode connected to ground. The two composite papers would then separate when a voltage was applied. The GnP paper was also modified to increase surface area by introducing porosity or adding ∼10 wt% C750 (GnP with diameter less than 1 μm); or changing the relative permittivity by adding barium titanate particles; or combining these two effects by adding CNCs. Overall the output work could be significantly improved to over 400%.
Analysis of synonymous codon usage in FAD 7 genes from different plant species

In this study, the codon bias of the FAD7 genes among 10 different plant species was analyzed to identify general patterns of codon usage in the FAD7 genes. Our results showed that U-ended or A-ended codons were preferentially used in FAD7 for dicots, whereas G-ended or C-ended codons were preferentially used in FAD7 for monocots. An ENC-plot showed that some other factors may influence the codon usage of FAD7, except mutation bias in plant species. A correlation analysis between the codon adaptation index and GC or GC3s contents demonstrated that the codon usage bias of the FAD7 gene in plant species could be influenced by the gene expression level. The cluster analysis of relative synonymous codon usage values and phylogenetic trees of protein sequences for FAD7 genes confirm that the codon preference of FAD7 is influenced by genetic relationships. Moreover, Arabidopsis thaliana and Nicotiana tabacum were predicted to be the most appropriate expression hosts for the FAD7 genes from dicots, and Zea mays may be suitable for the expression of the FAD7 genes from monocots. Our results provide useful insights into the evolutionary relationships of plant species.
CPJD Corpus: Crowdsourced Parallel Speech Corpus of Japanese Dialects

Public parallel corpora of dialects can accelerate related studies such as spoken language processing. Various corpora have been collected using a well-equipped recording environment, such as voice recording in an anechoic room. However, due to geographical and expense issues, it is impossible to use such a perfect recording environment for collecting all existing dialects. To address this problem, we used web-based recording and crowdsourcing platforms to construct a crowdsourced parallel speech corpus of Japanese dialects (CPJD corpus) including parallel text and speech data of 21 Japanese dialects. We recruited native dialect speakers on the crowdsourcing platform, and the hired speakers recorded their dialect speech using their personal computer or smartphone in their homes. This paper shows the results of the data collection and analyzes the audio data in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio and mispronunciations.
CT and MR image information fusion scheme using a cascaded framework in ripplet and NSST domain

The fusion of multimodal medical information is considered as an assisted approach for the medical professionals. Computed tomography and magnetic resonance (CT–MR) medical image fusion are able to help the radiologist in precise diagnosis of disease and deciding the required treatment in accord with the patient's condition. Therefore, a cascaded framework is proposed in this study that presents a fusion approach for multimodal medical information in ripplet transform (RT) and non-subsampled shearlet (NSST) domain. The RT and NSST having different features are utilised in a cascade manner that provides several directional decomposition coefficients and increases shift invariance information in the fused images. At the first stage decomposition, a biologically inspired neural model, motivated by novel sum-modified Laplacian and spatial frequency is utilised to fuse the low- and high-frequency coefficients, respectively, and the max fusion rule based on regional energy is utilised at stage 2. This model is used to preserve the redundant information also. The fusion performance is also validated by extensive simulations performed on different CT–MR image datasets of different diseases. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method provides better fused images in terms of visual quality along with the quantitative indices compared with several existing fusion approaches.
A microsatellite polymorphism in the heme oxygenase-1 gene promoter is associated with increased bilirubin and HDL levels but not with coronary artery disease

Summary Heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1) is involved in the generation of the endogenous anti-oxidant bilirubin which exerts beneficial effects against arteriosclerosis. A (GT) repeat polymorphism in the HO-1 promoter region modulates HO-1 expression in response to oxidative stress. Recently, this polymorphism has been reported to protect from coronary artery disease in Orientals. We intended to confirm this observation in Caucasians. We studied 649 individuals with myocardial infarction (n=258), stable coronary artery disease (n=180) and controls without coronary artery disease (n=211). Carriers of short alleles (<25 repeats) had higher bilirubin levels (median 0.66 mg/dL, IQR 0.49 to 0.91) compared to non-carriers (median 0.61mg/dL, IQR 0.45 to 0.82; p=0.03) and a more favourable lipid profile (HDL median 47mg/dL, IQR 40 to 50 vs. median 45, IQR 37 to 55, p=0.01; triglycerides median 118mg/dL, IQR 87 to 174 vs. median 132, IQR 97 to 191, p=0.03). However, no significant differences of the genotype distribution were observed between the three groups in this Caucasian study population (p=0.94). Although potentially beneficial effects of the short HO-1 allele on lipid profile and serum bilirubin were observed, in contrast to Orientals, the HO-1 genotype was not associated with coronary artery disease in Caucasians.
Motion Improvement of Four-Wheeled Omnidirectional Mobile Robots for Indoor Terrain

The four-wheeled omnidirectional platform is great to use for an indoor mobile robot. It can increasingly move and change heading directions. However, the robot is easy to slip when it is moving. One or more wheels are sometimes not touching the ground. This paper approaches to solving these problems by computational simulation in locomotion. The mathematical models simulate the robot movement. The robot struggles to go to the target with randomly simulated slips and untouched ground circumstances. The robot can estimate the positions using the Kalman filter and readjust itself to the planned path. Consequently, this paper demonstrates the motion improvement and compares the results of decreasing errors.
An Evaluation Framework for Multimodal Interaction

In this paper we present a framework for evaluating interactions between a human user and an embodied virtual agent that communicates using natural language, gesture, and by executing actions in a shared context created through a visual simulation interface. These interactions take place in real time and demonstrate collaboration between a human and a computer on object interaction and manipulation. Our framework leverages the semantics of language and gesture to assess the level of mutual understanding during the interaction and the ease with which the two agents communicate. We present initial results from trials involving construction tasks in a blocks world scenario and discuss extensions of the evaluation framework to more naturalistic and robust interactions.
FTO is a transcriptional repressor to auto-regulate its own gene and potentially associated with homeostasis of body weight

Fat mass and obesity-associated (FTO) protein is a ferrous ion (Fe2+)/2-oxoglutarate (2-OG)-dependent demethylase preferentially catalyzing m6A sites in RNA. The FTO gene is highly expressed in the hypothalamus with fluctuation in response to various nutritional conditions, which is believed to be involved in the control of whole body metabolism. However, the underlying mechanism in response to different nutritional cues remains poorly understood. Here we show that ketogenic diet-derived ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) transiently increases FTO expression in both mouse hypothalamus and cultured cells. Interestingly, the FTO protein represses Fto promoter activity, which can be offset by BHB. We then demonstrate that FTO binds to its own gene promoter, and Fe2+, but not 2-OG, impedes this binding and increases FTO expression. The BHB-induced occupancy of the promoter by FTO influences the assembly of the basal transcriptional machinery. Importantly, a loss-of-function FTO mutant (I367F), which induces a lean phenotype in FTOI367F mice, exhibits augmented binding and elevated potency to repress the promoter. Furthermore, FTO fails to bind to its own promoter that promotes FTO expression in the hypothalamus of high-fat diet-induced obese and 48-h fasting mice, suggesting a disruption of the stable expression of this gene. Taken together, this study uncovers a new function of FTO as a Fe2+-sensitive transcriptional repressor dictating its own gene switch to form an auto-regulatory loop that may link with the hypothalamic control of body weight.
Defining and quantifying users’ mental imagery-based BCI skills: a first step

Objective. While promising for many applications, electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) are still scarcely used outside laboratories, due to a poor reliability. It is thus necessary to study and fix this reliability issue. Doing so requires the use of appropriate reliability metrics to quantify both the classification algorithm and the BCI user’s performances. So far, classification accuracy (CA) is the typical metric used for both aspects. However, we argue in this paper that CA is a poor metric to study BCI users’ skills. Here, we propose a definition and new metrics to quantify such BCI skills for mental imagery (MI) BCIs, independently of any classification algorithm. Approach. We first show in this paper that CA is notably unspecific, discrete, training data and classifier dependent, and as such may not always reflect successful self-modulation of EEG patterns by the user. We then propose a definition of MI-BCI skills that reflects how well the user can self-modulate EEG patterns, and thus how well he could control an MI-BCI. Finally, we propose new performance metrics, classDis, restDist and classStab that specifically measure how distinct and stable the EEG patterns produced by the user are, independently of any classifier. Main results. By re-analyzing EEG data sets with such new metrics, we indeed confirmed that CA may hide some increase in MI-BCI skills or hide the user inability to self-modulate a given EEG pattern. On the other hand, our new metrics could reveal such skill improvements as well as identify when a mental task performed by a user was no different than rest EEG. Significance. Our results showed that when studying MI-BCI users’ skills, CA should be used with care, and complemented with metrics such as the new ones proposed. Our results also stressed the need to redefine BCI user training by considering the different BCI subskills and their measures. To promote the complementary use of our new metrics, we provide the Matlab code to compute them for free and open-source.