Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mobile Technology Use by People Experiencing Multiple Sclerosis Fatigue: Survey Methodology

Background Fatigue is one of the most commonly reported symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS). It has a profound impact on all spheres of life, for people with MS and their relatives. It is one of the key precipitants of early retirement. Individual, group, and Internet cognitive behavioral therapy–based approaches to supporting people with MS to manage their fatigue have been shown to be effective. Objective The aim of this project was to (1) survey the types of mobile devices and level of Internet access people with MS use or would consider using for a health intervention and (2) characterize the levels of fatigue severity and their impact experienced by the people in our sample to provide an estimate of fatigue severity of people with MS in New Zealand. The ultimate goal of this work was to support the future development of a mobile intervention for the management of fatigue for people with MS. Methods Survey methodology using an online questionnaire was used to assess people with MS. A total of 51 people with MS participated. The average age was 48.5 years, and the large majority of the sample (77%) was female. Results Participants reported significant levels of fatigue as measured with the summary score of the Neurological Fatigue Index (mean 31.4 [SD 5.3]). Most (84%) respondents scored on average more than 3 on the fatigue severity questions, reflecting significant fatigue. Mobile phone usage was high with 86% of respondents reporting having a mobile phone; apps were used by 75% of respondents. Most participants (92%) accessed the Internet from home. Conclusions New Zealand respondents with MS experienced high levels of both fatigue severity and fatigue impact. The majority of participants have a mobile device and access to the Internet. These findings, along with limited access to face-to-face cognitive behavioral therapy–based interventions, create an opportunity to develop a mobile technology platform for delivering a cognitive behavioral therapy–based intervention to decrease the severity and impact of fatigue in people with MS.
FPGA hardware synthesis from MATLAB

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have been recently used as an effective platform for implementing many image/signal processing applications. MATLAB is one of the most popular languages to model image/signal processing applications. We present the MATCH compiler that takes MATLAB as input and produces a hardware in RTL VHDL, which can be mapped to an FPGA using commercial CAD tools. This dramatically reduces the time to implement an application on an FPGA. We present results on some image and signal processing algorithms for which hardware was synthesized using our compiler for the Xilinx XC4028 FPGA with an external memory. We also present comparisons with manually designed hardware for the applications. Our results indicate that FPGA hardware can be generated automatically reducing the design time from days to minutes, with the tradeoff that the automatically generated hardware is 5 times slower than the manually designed hardware.
The Surgical Treatment of Brachial Plexus Injuries in Adults

Learning Objectives: After studying this article, the participant should be able to: 1. Evaluate clinically a patient with brachial plexus paralysis and define the appropriate electrophysiologic and radiographic studies. 2. Differentiate between preganglionic (root) avulsion and postganglionic lesions and identify appropriate motor donors and nerve grafts. 3. Describe various nerve reconstructive strategies and make appropriate selection of secondary procedures for shoulder stability, elbow flexion, and hand reanimation. 4. Anticipate the possible functional outcome.
Genomic characterization and probiotic potential of lactic acid bacteria isolated from feces of guinea pig (Cavia porcellus)

Background: Presently, there exists a growing interest in mitigating the utilization of antibiotics in response to the challenges emanating from their usage in livestock. A viable alternative strategy encompasses the introduction of live microorganisms recognized as probiotics, exerting advantageous impacts on the immune system and nutritional aspects of the host animals. Native lactic acid bacteria, inherently possessing specific properties and adaptive capabilities tailored to each animal, are deemed optimal contenders for probiotic advancement. Aim: In the current investigation, microorganisms exhibiting probiotic potential were isolated, characterized, and identified from the fecal samples of guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) belonging to the Peruvian breed. Methods: The lactic acid bacteria isolated on Man, Rogosa, and Sharpe agar underwent Gram staining, catalase testing, proteolytic, amylolytic, and cellulolytic activity assays, low pH tolerance assessment, hemolytic evaluation, antagonism against Salmonella sp. , determination of autoaggregation and coaggregation capacity, and genotypic characterization through sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Results: A total of 33 lactic acid bacteria were isolated from the feces of 30 guinea pigs, also 10 isolates were selected based on Gram staining and catalase testing. All strains exhibited proteolytic activity, while only one demonstrated amylolytic capability, and none displayed cellulase activity. These bacteria showed higher tolerance to pH 5.0 and, to a lesser extent, to pH 4.0. Furthermore, they exhibited antagonistic activity against Salmonella sp. Only two bacteria demonstrated hemolytic activity, and were subsequently excluded from further evaluations. Subsequent assessments revealed autoaggregation capacities ranging from 4.55% to 23.19%, with a lesser degree of coaggregation with Salmonella sp. ranging from 3.53% to 8.94% for the remaining eight bacterial isolates. Based on these comprehensive tests, five bacteria with notable probiotic potential were identified by molecular assays as Leuconostoc citreum, Enterococcus gallinarum, Exiguobacterium sp. , and Lactococcus lactis. Conclusion: The identified bacteria stand out as promising probiotic candidates, deserving further assessment in Peruvian breed guinea pigs. This exploration aims to enhance production outcomes while mitigating the adverse effects induced by pathogenic microorganisms.
The Circulatory Effects of Intravenous Phentolamine in Man

Circulatory observations have been made on six normal subjects and six hypertensive patients before and after the acute intravenous injection of 5 mg. of phentolamine.The drug caused a prompt reduction in systemic vascular resistance which resulted in a rapid fall in systemic blood pressure in spite of an increase in heart rate and cardiac output.Evidence is presented that the predominant vascular activity of the drug is to cause a direct relaxation of vascular smooth muscle, an effect far more potent than its antagonism of circulating catecholamines or its very much weaker sympathetic-blocking action. This direct depressor effect on vascular smooth muscle unaccompanied by any but slight sympathetic blocking activities endows the drug with theoretically ideal antihypertensive properties.Phentolamine caused a transient but significant reduction in oxygen uptake in the majority of individuals. It is suggested that this may be due to a direct inhibition of cellular oxidative mechanisms.An appraisal of the circulatory activities of the drug with particular regard to its use as a diagnostic test for pheochromocytoma leads to serious doubts, not only with regard to the precision with which the results of such tests can be interpreted, but also to the validity of the use of the drug as a reliable screening test for excessive circulating catecholamines.
On the Construction of Data Aggregation Tree with Minimum Energy Cost in Wireless Sensor Networks: NP-Completeness and Approximation Algorithms

In many applications, it is a basic operation for the sink to periodically collect reports from all sensors. Since the data gathering process usually proceeds for many rounds, it is important to collect these data efficiently, that is, to reduce the energy cost of data transmission. Under such applications, a tree is usually adopted as the routing structure to save the computation costs for maintaining the routing tables of sensors. In this paper, we work on the problem of constructing a data aggregation tree that minimizes the total energy cost of data transmission in a wireless sensor network. In addition, we also address such a problem in the wireless sensor network where relay nodes exist and consider the cases where the link quality is not perfect. We show that these problems are NP-complete and propose <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(1)$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="tsai-ieq1-2512862.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>-approximation algorithms for each of them. Simulations show that the proposed algorithms have good performance in terms of energy cost.
Nonlinear Filtering Revisited: A Spectral Approach

The objective of this paper is to develop an approach to nonlinear filtering based on the Cameron--Martin version of Wiener chaos expansion. This approach gives rise to a new numerical scheme for nonlinear filtering. The main feature of this algorithm is that it allows one to separate the computations involving the observations from those dealing only with the system parameters and to shift the latter off-line.
Power Management of Voltage/Frequency Island-Based Systems Using Hardware-Based Methods

Shrinking technology nodes combined with the need for higher clock speeds have made it increasingly difficult to distribute a single global clock across a chip while meeting the power requirements of the design. Globally asynchronous locally synchronous (GALS) design style can help achieve low power consumption and modularity of a design while greatly reducing the number of global interconnects. Such multiple clock domain architectures can benefit from having frequency/voltage values assigned to each domain based on workload requirements. The work presented in this paper proposes a new hardware-based approach to dynamically change the frequencies and potentially voltages of a voltage-frequency island (VFI) system driven by a dynamic workload. This technique tries to change the frequency of a synchronous island such that it will have efficient power utilization while satisfying performance constraints. In recent years, there have been major developments, both in industry and academia, in the field of multiprocessor systems. Such multiprocessor systems are very good candidates for VFI design style implementation, where one or more processors can be part of a single VFI. To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed method, we have implemented a multiprocessor system for a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platform that uses independently generated clocks for each processor. The results from the FPGA platform confirm the claim that the power consumption of a system can potentially be reduced while maintaining the performance of many applications. Our work concentrates primarily on embedded systems, but the idea can be explored for general-purpose computing as well.
The Role of Human-Automation Consensus in Multiple Unmanned Vehicle Scheduling

Objective: This study examined the impact of increasing automation replanning rates on operator performance and workload when supervising a decentralized network of heterogeneous unmanned vehicles. Background: Futuristic unmanned vehicles systems will invert the operator-to-vehicle ratio so that one operator can control multiple dissimilar vehicles connected through a decentralized network. Significant human-automation collaboration will be needed because of automation brittleness, but such collaboration could cause high workload. Method: Three increasing levels of replanning were tested on an existing multiple unmanned vehicle simulation environment that leverages decentralized algorithms for vehicle routing and task allocation in conjunction with human supervision. Results: Rapid replanning can cause high operator workload, ultimately resulting in poorer overall system performance. Poor performance was associated with a lack of operator consensus for when to accept the automation’s suggested prompts for new plan consideration as well as negative attitudes toward unmanned aerial vehicles in general. Participants with video game experience tended to collaborate more with the automation, which resulted in better performance. Conclusion: In decentralized unmanned vehicle networks, operators who ignore the automation’s requests for new plan consideration and impose rapid replans both increase their own workload and reduce the ability of the vehicle network to operate at its maximum capacity. Application: These findings have implications for personnel selection and training for futuristic systems involving human collaboration with decentralized algorithms embedded in networks of autonomous systems.
Key Point Detection by Max Pooling for Tracking

Inspired by the recent image feature learning work, we propose a novel key point detection approach for object tracking. Our approach can select mid-level interest key points by max pooling over the local descriptor responses from a set of filters. Linear filters are first learned from targets in first frames. Then max pooling is performed over data driven spatial supporting field to detect discriminant key points, and thus the detected key points bear higher level semantic meanings, which we apply in tracking by structured key point matching. We show that our tracking system is robust to occlusions and cluttered background. Testing on several challenging tracking sequences, we demonstrate that our proposed tracking system can achieve competitive or better performances than the state-of-the-art trackers.
Sodium flux ratio through the amiloride-sensitive entry pathway in frog skin

The sodium flux ratio of the amiloride-sensitive Na+ channel in the apical membrane of in vitro Rana catesbeiana skin has been evaluated at different sodium concentrations and membrane potentials in sulfate Ringer solution. Amiloride-sensitive unidirectional influxes and effluxes were determined as the difference between bidirectional 22Na and 24Na fluxes simultaneously measured in the absence and presence of 10(-4) M amiloride in the external bathing solution. Amiloride- sensitive Na+ effluxes were induced by incorporation of cation- selective ionophores (amphotericin B or nystatin) into the normally Na+- impermeable basolateral membrane. Apical membrane potentials (Va) were measured with intracellular microelectrodes. We conclude that since the flux ratio exponent, n', is very close to 1, sodium movement through this channel can be explained by a free-diffusion model in which ions move independently. This result, however, does not necessarily preclude the possibility that this transport channel may contain one or more ion binding sites.
Satellite Retrievals of Total Column Water Vapour and Surface Emissivity During Arctic Winter

xx Acknowledgements . xxi Chapter
Road Surface Condition and Monitoring System Utilizing Motorcycle (ROCOM)—System Development, Validation and Field Test

: Motorcycles are the riskiest mode of travel in Malaysia, however motorcycles are also very sensitive to the road surface condition. Thus, by taking advantage of this, a system of software applications that analyses motorcycle motion and mapped out risky road sections was developed, i.e. ROCOM. The system consists of three major components, i.e. ROCOM Data Logger app, which utilizes a smart phone to collect acceleration data, ROCOM Risk Mapping app, which is a web-based application, and ROCOM Visual Tracking, which is a stand along software. ROCOM is able to detect adverse acceleration (> 2g) or vibration on the road surface similar to the High Accuracy GPS Data Logging for Vehicle Testing (VBOX). Risk mapping validation along a section of the motorcycle lane along Federal Route 2 shows that not only ROCOM have the similar risk-mapping pattern, but its route tracking capability on the map is far superior that the VBOX. The pilot and field test results showed that ROCOM works best when mounting the smartphone on the motorcycle handle bar or basket, and it can detect various road anomalies with successful detection rate of 62%, with high detection rate when passing through uneven road surfaces.
Purification and On-Column Refolding of Polyhistidine-tagged Staphylococcus aureus a-hemolysin Inclusion Bodies on the Profinia TM Protein Purification System

Introduction Bacteria are widely used as hosts for production of recombinant proteins that do not require post-translational modification, such as glycosylation, for bioactivity. With its well-defined genetics, highly efficient host-vector expression systems, and well-established protein purification methods, E. coli is usually the first choice for expression of recombinant proteins. However, high expression levels of proteins from strong promoters on high-copy-number plasmids can often result in the formation of insoluble protein aggregates known as inclusion bodies.
Deriving role engineering artifacts from business processes and scenario models

Scenario-driven role engineering is a systematic approach to engineer and maintain RBAC models. Such as every engineering process, this approach heavily depends on human factors and many of the corresponding engineering tasks must be conducted manually. However, based on the experiences we gained from our projects and case studies, we identified several tasks in role engineering that are monotonous, time-consuming, and can get tedious if conducted manually. These tasks include the derivation of candidate RBAC artifacts from business processes and scenario models. In this paper, we present an approach to automatically derive role engineering artifacts from process and scenario models. While our general approach is independent from a specific document format, we especially discuss the derivation of role engineering artifacts from UML activity models, UML interaction models, and BPMN collaboration models. In particular, we use the XMI (XML Metadata Interchange) representation of these models as a tool- and vendor-independent format to identify and automatically derive different role engineering artifacts.
Subacute effects of transgenic Cry1Ab Bacillus thuringiensis corn litter on the isopods Trachelipus rathkii and Armadillidium nasatum

Laboratory studies were conducted to investigate the subacute effects of transgenic Cry1Ab corn leaf material containing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) protein on the terrestrial isopods Trachelipus rathkii and Armadillidium nasatum. Survival and growth were measured for eight weeks in isopods fed leaf material of two Bt11 corn varieties, two Monsanto 810 (Mon810) corn varieties, and the isolines of each. Total lipid and protein content of the organisms was measured to examine effects on energetic reserves. Armadillidium nasatum individuals in all treatments responded similarly. For T. rathkii, no statistically significant effect of Bt was observed, but statistical differences were observed in growth between hybrids. Protein and sugar content of the food were found to be correlated with the differences in growth for T. rathkii. Total protein content was higher in T. rathkii and A. nasatum fed material with higher protein and sugar content. A trend toward less growth in T. rathkii on Bt corn varieties versus their isolines triggered a concentration‐response assay with purified Cry1Ab protein. No adverse effects of purified Bt protein were observed. These results indicate that little hazard to T. rathkii and A. nasatum from Bt corn leaf material from these hybrids exists. However, nutritional differences in corn hybrids contributed to differences in isopod growth.
Towards energy-aware software-based fault tolerance in real-time systems

Many real-time systems employed in defense, space, and consumer applications have power constraints and high reliability requirements. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between fault tolerance techniques and energy consumption. In particular, we establish the energy efficiency of Application Level Fault Tolerance (ALFT) over other software-based fault tolerance methods. We then develop sensible energy-aware heuristics for ALFT schemes. The heuristics yield up to 40% energy savings.
Expression of collagen and aggrecan genes in normal and osteoarthritic murine knee joints.

OBJECTIVE The STR/ort mouse strain develops osteoarthritis (OA) of the medial tibial cartilage whilst CBA mice do not develop this disease. We investigated whether changes occur in the expression of genes encoding major extracellular matrix proteins in the connective tissue of the murine knee joint in OA. DESIGN Expression of the genes encoding collagens II (Col2alpha1), X (Col10alpha1), alpha2(XI) (Col11alpha2) and aggrecan (Agc) was detected in skeletally mature and immature male mice of the CBA and STR/ort strains by in situ hybridization. RESULTS Col2alpha1 was expressed by chondrocytes of the tibial and patella-femoral cartilage and by the meniscal cartilage in all young mice (4-9 weeks) but only in the patella-femoral cartilage in older mice of both strains (36-45 weeks). In contrast Col2alpha1 was expressed by growth plate chondrocytes of both species at all ages. Similarly, Col2alpha1 transcripts were detected in cruciate ligament cells in both strains at all ages. Col10alpha1 transcripts were detected in cruciate ligament cells in both strains at all ages. Col10alpha1 expression was evident in the hypertrophic chondrocytes in the growth plate of young CBA and STR mice, but was not active in these cells in mature animals. However, Col10alpha1 was transcribed in articular chondrocytes of the tibia, meniscal and patella-femoral cartilages of all ages, in normal and osteoarthritic mice. Transcripts were also present in ligament of some mature animals. Col11alpha2 followed a similar pattern of expression in CBA cartilages to Col2alpha1, being active in adult growth plate but generally inactive in adult articular cartilages. Young CBA and STR/ort mice expressed Col11alpha2 in articular cartilage and very strongly throughout the growth plate. Agc expression was detected in all articular cartilages at all ages in both strains. Interestingly, transcripts for all four genes were absent in tibial articular chondrocytes located close to osteoarthritic lesions in STR/ort mice, indicating that these cells are unable to synthesize matrix proteins. Adult STR/ort mice also showed evidence of tissue remodeling around the periphery of the knee joint. Cells in remodeling areas actively transcribed Col2alpha1, Col10alpha1, Col11alpha2 and Agc. CONCLUSION It is unlikely that OA develops in STR/ort mice because of failure to express major proteins in joint tissue. However, once lesions develop in articular cartilage neighbouring chondrocytes fail to express genes encoding several matrix proteins.
Modules of constant Jordan type

Abstract We introduce the class of modules of constant Jordan type for a finite group scheme G over a field k of characteristic p > 0. This class is closed under taking direct sums, tensor products, duals, Heller shifts and direct summands, and includes endotrivial modules. It contains all modules in an Auslander-Reiten component which has at least one module in the class. Highly non-trivial examples are constructed using cohomological techniques. We offer conjectures suggesting that there are strong conditions on a partition to be the Jordan type associated to a module of constant Jordan type.