Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The cost of violating design affordances and conventions.

Figure 2. Examples of button-to-action mappings on different interfaces. Figure 3. This figure represents a four way interaction, F(1, 26) = 4.81, p = . 04, between interaction type, button configuration, working memory load and mapping congruency. The error bars show the mean standard error. Figure 1. A visual representation of previous button-to-action empirical findings (Still & Dark, 2008). The squares reflect buttons and the arrows directional response. There is a debate about whether designers need to distinguish between perceptual affordances and learned conventions (McGrenere & Ho, 2000; Norman, 1999). Because there is little behavioral evidence for either side of the debate (see Still & Dark, 2008), we investigated the impact of working memory load and mapping congruency on affordances and conventions. Our findings suggest that both sides of the debate are correct. There was a behavioral difference between acting on affordances and acting on conventions, but learned conventions influenced responses towards expected actions. Further, conditions requiring violation of an expected response, whether based on an affordance or a convention, were associated with poorer performance. We believe that after the initial learning period, conventions play a critical role in the perception of a design’s available actions, just as do perceptual affordances.
Molecular determinants for the recruitment of the ubiquitin‐ligase MuRF‐1 onto M‐line titin

Titin forms an intrasarcomeric filament system in vertebrate striated muscle, which has elastic and signaling properties and is thereby central to mechanotransduction. Near its C‐terminus and directly preceding a kinase domain, titin contains a conserved pattern of Ig and FnIII modules (IgA168‐IgA169‐FnIIIA170, hereby A168‐A170) that recruits the E3 ubiquitin‐ligase MuRF‐1 to the filament. This interaction is thought to regulate myofibril turnover and the trophic state of muscle. We have elucidated the crystal structure of A168‐A170, characterized MuRF‐1 variants by circular dichroism (CD) and SEC‐MALS, and studied the interaction of both components by isothermal calorimetry, SPOTS blots, and pull‐down assays. This has led to the identification of the molecular determinants of the binding. A168‐A170 shows an extended, rigid architecture, which is characterized by a shallow surface groove that spans its full length and a distinct loop protrusion in its middle point. In MuRF‐1, a C‐terminal helical domain is sufficient to bind A168‐A170 with high affinity. This helical region predictably docks into the surface groove of A168‐A170. Furthermore, pull‐down assays demonstrate that the loop protrusion in A168‐A170 is a key mediator of MuRF‐1 recognition. Our findings indicate that this region of titin could serve as a target to attempt therapeutic inhibition of MuRF‐1‐mediated muscle turnover, where binding of small molecules to its distinctive structural features could block MuRF‐1 access. —Mrosek, M. , Labeit, D. , Witt, S. , Heerklotz, H. , von Castelmur, E. , Labeit, S. , Mayans, O. Molecular determinants for the recruitment of the ubiquitin‐ligase MuRF‐1 onto M‐line titin FASEB J. 21, 1383–1392 (2007)
Temperature dependence of dark current in a CCD

We present data for dark current of a back-illuminated CCD over the temperature range of 222 to 291 K. Using an Arrhenius law, we found that the analysis of the data leads to the relation between the prefactor and the apparent activation energy as described by the Meyer-Neldel rule. However, a more detailed analysis shows that the activation energy for the dark current changes in the temperature range investigated. This transition can be explained by the larger relative importance at high temperatures of the diffusion dark current and at low temperatures by the depletion dark current. The diffusion dark current, characterized by the band gap of silicon, is uniform for all pixels. At low temperatures, the depletion dark current, characterized by half the band gap, prevails, but it varies for different pixels. Dark current spikes are pronounced at low temperatures and can be explained by large concentrations of deep level impurities in those particular pixels. We show that fitting the data with the impurity concentration as the only variable can explain the dark current characteristics of all the pixels on the chip.
Broadband Light Bending with Plasmonic Nanoantennas

A plasmonic antenna array is used to control the propagation of a light beam across an interface. The precise manipulation of a propagating wave using phase control is a fundamental building block of optical systems. The wavefront of a light beam propagating across an interface can be modified arbitrarily by introducing abrupt phase changes. We experimentally demonstrated unparalleled wavefront control in a broadband optical wavelength range from 1.0 to 1.9 micrometers. This is accomplished by using an extremely thin plasmonic layer (~λ/50) consisting of an optical nanoantenna array that provides subwavelength phase manipulation on light propagating across the interface. Anomalous light-bending phenomena, including negative angles of refraction and reflection, are observed in the operational wavelength range.
The Nature (and Nurture?) of Plasticity in Early Human Development

The effect of early experience is a long-standing concern in developmental psychology. Gaining further insight into the nature of human plasticity is central to efforts to prevent problems in development from arising and promote positive functioning. Evolutionary reasoning suggests that children should vary in their susceptibility to environmental influences, including parenting. Evidence indicates that rather than some children, such as those with negatively emotional temperaments or certain genotypes, being simply more vulnerable to the adverse effects of negative experiences, as commonly assumed, they may actually be more susceptible to both positive and negative experiences. In addition to raising questions about the nature of plasticity in human development, this article highlights unknowns regarding the role of nature and nurture in shaping individual differences in plasticity, including whether recent research linking maternal stress during pregnancy with child behavior problems illuminates a process whereby fetal programming shapes the child's susceptibility to postnatal environmental influences. Throughout this article, we raise concern about the potentially distorting influence that psychology's disproportionate focus on the adverse effect of negative experiences on developmental problems has on our understanding of human plasticity, and we propose that researchers should pay more attention to the positive side of the plasticity equation.
Is trade multilateralism being threatened by regionalism?

As economic powers from the developing world, particularly China, have emerged in the past few decades, their weight has altered the balance in the global trading system. This has presented challenges in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), where the Doha Round of multilateral negotiations has dragged on for more than a dozen years. Frustrated by this stalemate, many countries have sought alternatives. Among these are ‘mega-regional’ trade agreements such as the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and EU, and a 16-member Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In this volume, leading commentators – including two former heads of the WTO – examine the possible consequences of this shifting trade landscape. Is globalisation in reverse, and have countries been retreating from liberalisation since the world financial crisis of 2008– 09? Are the ‘mega-regional’ deals an existential threat to the WTO regime, or can they be used as building blocks towards wider multilateral agreement on a broad range of issues, from industrial standards to intellectual property rights. And what does it all mean for the balance of geopolitical power between the developed and developing world?
The Elusive Boreal Forest Thaumarchaeota

In recent years, Archaea have, with increasing frequency, been found to colonize both agricultural and forest soils in temperate and boreal regions. The as yet uncultured group I.1c of the Thaumarchaeota has been of special interest. These Archaea are widely distributed in mature vegetated acidic soils, but little has been revealed of their physiological and biological characteristics. The I.1c Thaumarchaeota have been recognized as a microbial group influenced by plant roots and mycorrhizal fungi, but appear to have distinct features from their more common soil dwelling counterparts, such as the Nitrosotalea or Nitrososphaera. They appear to be highly dependent on soil pH, thriving in undisturbed vegetated soils with a pH of 5 or below. Research indicate that these Archaea require organic carbon and nitrogen sources for growth and that they may live both aerobically and anaerobically. Nevertheless, pure cultures of these microorganisms have not yet been obtained. This review will focus on what is known to date about the uncultured group I.1c Thaumarchaeota formerly known as the “Finnish Forest Soil” (FFS) Archaea.
Fiscal Institutions in Resource-Rich Economies: Lessons from Chile and Norway

Resource-rich economies in general, and Arab oil exporters in particular, are at a critical juncture, facing the challenge of revamping their fiscal policy institutions and conduct to strengthen macroeconomic and financial stability, raise growth, and improve intra/inter-generational equity. This paper starts by reviewing the international evidence on fiscal policies and outcomes in resource-rich economies at large and Arab oil-exporting countries in particular, which suggests that strong fiscal (and political) institutions can turn the resource curse into a blessing. Then the paper provides comparative reviews of Chile's and Norway's decade-long experience in setting up new fiscal institutions and rules to manage their resource rents, aiming at and, in fact, attaining more macroeconomic and financial stability, higher growth, and improved equity. Specific reform lessons to strengthen fiscal institutions and policies are drawn for resource-rich economies and Arab oil exporters.
A Low-Complexity Noise Suppressor with Nonuniform Subbands and a Frequency-Domain Highpass Filter

This paper proposes a low-complexity noise suppressor with nonuniform subbands and a frequency-domain highpass filter. A highpass filter to suppress undesirable low frequency components in the input signal is replaced with a simple DC offset canceler in the time-domain combined with a frequency-domain weighting function. Frequency bins after Fourier transform are nonuniformly grouped to reduce the computations for calculating the spectral gain. A new decomposition pattern is developed for higher quality of the enhanced speech. The number of operations on typical DSP chips is 3.2 MIPS that is approximately 50% off the conventional load. Subjective evaluation results demonstrates that the low-complexity noise suppressor achieves comparable quality of the enhanced speech to that of the conventional noise suppressor
Optimal Structure of Pipelined Recurrent Neural Network in Modeling of MPEG Video

This paper investigates optimal structure of Piplined Recurrent Neural Network (PRNN) for adaptive traffic prediction of MPEG video signal via dynamic ATM networks. The traffic signal of each picture type (I, P, and B) of MPEG video is characterized by a nonlinear autoregressive moving average (NARMA) process. Since those modules of PRNN can be performed simultaneously in a pipelined parallelism fashion, this would lead to a significant improvement in the total computational efficiency of PRNN. In order to further improve the convergence performance of the adaptive algorithm for PRNN, a learning-rate annealing schedule is proposed to accelerate the adaptive learning process. The measure that is used for optimum structure of PRNN i.e. number of neurons in each module, number of modules is the one-step forward prediction gain. Results are shown to be promising and practically feasible in obtaining the best structure for a adaptive predictor of Noise. Keywords — MPEG, Video modeling, NARMA, PRNN, RTRL algorithm, One-step forward prediction gain
A Lightweight Anonymous On-demand Routing Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, all communications between any two sensor nodes occur in a shared and open wireless medium, which makes it easy for an adversary to eavesdrop on every message transmitted. While message encryption can protect the content exchanged between the nodes, routing information may reveal the identities of the communicating nodes and their relationships. For this purpose, the existing schemes used an onion packet, random walk, or storage migration to provide anonymity. These schemes incur high computation cost and communications cost. In this paper, we present a lightweight anonymous routing scheme to provide anonymous communications. In contrast to the existing schemes, we first use a Bloom filter to hide the identities of the sensor nodes, and thereafter, generate per-hop pseudo-link identifiers to accomplish routing and data packets forwarding tasks. This scheme not only conceals the node and the link identities in the data packets, but also helps to achieve traffic anonymity due to content analysis. In this paper, we describe not only the mechanisms to efficiently establish source routes and forward data packets anonymously, but also provide its proof of correctness.
Fault-Tolerant Network Interfaces for Networks-on-Chip

As the complexity of designs increases and technology scales down into the deep-submicron domain, the probability of malfunctions and failures in the networks-on-chip (NoCs) components increases. In this work, we focus on the study and evaluation of techniques for increasing reliability and resilience of network interfaces (NIs) within NoC-based multiprocessor system-on-chip architectures. NIs act as interfaces between intellectual property cores and the communication infrastructure; the faulty behavior of one of them could affect, therefore, the overall system. In this work, we propose a functional fault model for the NI components by evaluating their susceptibility to faults. We present a two-level fault-tolerant solution that can be employed for mitigating the effects of both permanent and temporary faults in the NI. Experimental simulations show that with a limited overhead, we can obtain an NI reliability comparable to the one obtainable by implementing the system by using standard triple modular redundancy techniques, while saving up to 48 percent in area, as well as obtaining a significant energy reduction.
Statistical Lifetime Analysis in Memristive Crossbar

Emerging devices for future memory technologies have attracted great attention recently. Memristors are one of the most favorable such devices, due to their high scalability and compatibility with CMOS fabrication process. Alongside their benefits they also face reliability concerns. In this sense our work analyzes some sources of uncertainties in the operation of the memristive memory and next proposes an approach to determine the expected lifetime of a memristive crossbar.
Effects of valproic acid and magnesium sulphate on rocuronium requirement in patients undergoing craniotomy for cerebrovascular surgery.

BACKGROUND Many anti-epileptics cause resistance to non-depolarizing neuromuscular blocking agents, but this has not been reported for valproic acid (VPA). We hypothesized that VPA would increase the rocuronium requirement and that magnesium sulphate (MgSO(4)) may reduce this increase. METHODS Fifty-five patients undergoing cerebrovascular surgeries were studied. Subjects were allocated into three groups at a 1:1:1 ratio: Groups VM, VC, and C. Groups VM and VC were given VPA premedication; Group C was not. A rocuronium injection (0.6 mg kg(-1) i.v. ) was administered to Group VM, followed by MgSO(4) as a 50 mg kg(-1) i.v. bolus and 15 mg kg(-1) h(-1) infusion. The same volume of 0.9% saline was administered to the other groups. Supplementary rocuronium (0.15 mg kg(-1)) was given whenever the train-of-four count reached 2. Rocuronium requirements (primary outcome), mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR), nausea, vomiting, shivering, and use of anti-emetics and nicardipine were compared. RESULTS Group VC showed the highest rocuronium requirement [mg kg(-1) h(-1): 0.47 (0.08) vs 0.33 (0.12) (Group C), 0.31 (0.07) (Group VM); P<0.001]. MAP, intraoperative HR, nausea, vomiting, shivering, and use of anti-emetics and nicardipine were not significantly different among the groups. Postoperative HR was lower in Group VM than in Group VC. CONCLUSIONS VPA increased the rocuronium requirement, and MgSO(4) infusion attenuated this increase.
Developable Triangulations of a Strip

This paper presents a modeling algorithm that helps automatically generate a “most” developable triangulated surface interpolating a given closed 3D boundary curve. The boundary curve is given in the form of a narrow strip which is often encountered in CAD applications like shoe and clothing wrinkle design. The triangulation geometrically simulates the folding process of a sheet as it would occur when rolled from one end of the strip to the other. The objective of maintaining the surface developability is realized by finding the “best rate” of the rolling along the boundary curve. To achieve this optimization, we convert the problem into a single-source shortest path problem on a special directed weighted graph, and utilize the famous Dijkstra’s algorithm to find a minimumweight path. Examples are provided to demonstrate useful applications of the presented methodology in CAD.
American Journal of Epidemiology Original Contribution Cytomegalovirus Infection and the Risk of Mortality and Frailty in Older Women: a Prospective Observational Cohort Study

Cytomegalovirus (CMV), a prevalent pathogen, causes severe disease in immunocompromised humans. However , present understanding is limited regarding the long-term clinical effect of persistent CMV infection in immu-nocompetent adults. The authors conducted a prospective observational cohort study (1992–2002) of 635 community-dwelling women in Baltimore, Maryland, aged 70–79 years in the Women's Health and Aging Studies to examine the effect of CMV infection on the risk of frailty, a common geriatric syndrome, and mortality in older women. The effect of baseline serum CMV antibody (immunoglobulin G) concentration on the risk of 3-year incident frailty, defined by using a 5-component measure, and 5-year mortality was examined with Cox proportional hazards models. Compared with those who were CMV seronegative, women in the highest quartile of CMV antibody concentration had a greater incidence of frailty (hazard ratio ¼ 3.46, 95% confidence interval: 1.45, 8.27) and mortality (hazard ratio ¼ 3.81, 95% confidence interval: 1.64, 8.83). After adjustment for potential confounders, CMV antibody concentration in the highest quartile independently increased the risk of 5-year mortality (hazard ratio ¼ 2.79, 95% confidence interval: 1.22, 6.40). Better understanding of the long-term clinical consequences of CMV infection in immunocompetent humans is needed to guide public health efforts for this widely prevalent infection. Human cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a prevalent herpes-virus best known for causing congenital infection and severe opportunistic disease in immunocompromised persons (1). Primary CMV infection in most immunocom-petent adults is asymptomatic or nonspecifically symptomatic , leaving no clinically observable trace of the infection except seroconversion (1). Acquisition of specific humoral and cellular immunity does not eradicate the virus but is followed by persistent infection in undif-ferentiated monocytes (2) and endothelial cells (3). Worldwide CMV seroprevalence can range from 52% to 99% among women of reproductive age (4). In the United States, 54% of adults 30–39 years of age and 91% of adults 80 years of age or older are CMV seropositive and thus harbor the virus (5). Epidemiologic associations have been reported between CMV and cardiovascular disease (6–8), functional impairment (9), cognitive decline (10), prolonged hospitalization (11), and frailty (12), a common geriatric syndrome (13) that independently predicts adverse outcomes (14). However, the long-term effect of CMV infection in immunocompetent adults remains unclear, in part because of the cross-sectional nature of these studies (7, 9, 12) and conflicting results (6, 15). Despite the previous report of an association between CMV infection and mortality in immunocompetent older adults, …
Molecular typing of Mycobacterium bovis isolates: A review

Mycobacterium bovis is the main causative agent of animal tuberculosis (TB) and it may cause TB in humans. Molecular typing of M. bovis isolates provides precise epidemiological data on issues of inter- or intra-herd transmission and wildlife reservoirs. Techniques used for typing M. bovis have evolved over the last 2 decades, and PCR-based methods such as spoligotyping and mycobacterial interspersed repetitive unit-variable number tandem repeat (MIRU-VNTR) have been extensively used. These techniques can provide epidemiological information about isolates of M. Bovis that may help control bovine TB by indicating possible links between diseased animals, detecting and sampling outbreaks, and even demonstrating cases of laboratory cross-contamination between samples. This review will focus on techniques used for the molecular typing of M. bovis and discuss their general aspects and applications.
Non-contact assessment of muscle contraction: Laser Doppler Myography

Electromyography (EMG) is the gold-standard technique used for the evaluation of muscle activity and contraction. The EMG signal supports analysis of a number of important parameters including amplitude and duration, engagement of motor units, and functional characteristics associated with factors such a force production and fatigue. Recently, a novel measurement method (Laser Doppler Myography, LDM) for the non-contact assessment of muscle activity has been proposed to measure the vibro-mechanical behavior of the muscles that conventionally is referred to as the mechanomyogram (MMG). The fact that contracting skeletal muscles produce vibrations and sounds has been known for more than three centuries. The aim of this study is to report on the LDM technique and to evaluate its capacity to measure without contact some characteristics properties of skeletal muscle contractions. This is accomplished with the very high vibration sensitivity inherent in the Laser Doppler Vibrometry method (in comparison to commonly used devices such as microphones, piezo electric pressure sensors, and accelerometers). Data measured by LDM are compared with signals measured using standard surface EMG (sEMG) which requires the use of skin electrodes. sEMG and LDM signals are simultaneously acquired and processed. The LDM and sEMG signals are compared with respect to the critical features of muscle activation timing, signal amplitude and force production. LDM appears to be a reliable and promising technique that allows measurement without the need for contact with the patient skin. LDM has additional potential advantages in terms of sensor properties, insofar as there are no significant issues relating to bandwidth or sensor resonance, and no mass loading is applied to the skin.