Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficacy of Upper Limb Therapies for Unilateral Cerebral Palsy: A Meta-analysis

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Children with unilateral cerebral palsy present with impaired upper limb (UL) function affecting independence, participation, and quality of life and require effective rehabilitation. This study aims to systematically review the efficacy of nonsurgical upper limb therapies for children with unilateral cerebral palsy. METHODS: Medline, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and PubMed were searched to December 2012. Randomized controlled or comparison trials were included. RESULTS: Forty-two studies evaluating 113 UL therapy approaches (N = 1454 subjects) met the inclusion criteria. Moderate to strong effects favoring intramuscular injections of botulinum toxin A and occupational therapy (OT) to improve UL and individualized outcomes compared with OT alone were identified. Constraint-induced movement therapy achieved modest to strong treatment effects on improving movement quality and efficiency of the impaired UL compared with usual care. There were weak treatment effects for most outcomes when constraint therapy was compared with an equal dose (amount) of bimanual OT; both yielded similar improved outcomes. Newer interventions such as action observation training and mirror therapy should be viewed as experimental. CONCLUSIONS: There is modest evidence that intensive activity-based, goal-directed interventions (eg, constraint-induced movement therapy, bimanual training) are more effective than standard care in improving UL and individualized outcomes. There is little evidence to support block therapy alone as the dose of intervention is unlikely to be sufficient to lead to sustained changes in UL outcomes. There is strong evidence that goal-directed OT home programs are effective and could supplement hands-on direct therapy to achieve increased dose of intervention.
Research on the integration strategy of group recommendation based on user's interactive behaviors

The traditional recommender system is recommends for individuals, but many activities are generated by groups in real life. It is a hot spot that how to recommend for groups. And for recommending better and improving the accuracy of recommender system, it is important that collects and integrates the group members' preferences. The best recommendation focus on reducing the dissatisfaction of the group members to the recommended items as much as possible. On the basis of the traditional recommender system, this paper constructed a preference integration model for group recommender systems. This model obtained the each members' prediction rating on the items and group's predictions on the items based on the individual and group collaborative filtering algorithm. Additionally, this paper put forward a method that obtain the weights of members through the interactive behaviors, then obtain the final prediction of items through the preference fusion method. Finally, this paper put forward the improved GMAE evaluation model, and the fusion model was verified and evaluated by experiments, it demonstrated that the proposed model perform better than pure collaborative filtering method on accuracy and diversity.
Assembling silver nanowires using optoelectronic tweezers

Light patterned dielectrophoresis or optoelectronic tweezers (OET) has been proved to be an effective micromanipulation technology for cell separation, cell sorting and control of cell interactions. Apart from being useful for cell biology experiments, the capability of moving small objects accurately also makes OET an attractive technology for other micromanipulation applications. In particular, OET has the potential to be used for efficiently and accurately assembling small optoelectronic/electronic components into circuits. This approach could produce a step change in the size of the smallest components that are routinely assembled; down from the current smallest standard component size of 400×200 μm (0402 metric) to components a few microns across and even nanostructured components. In this work, we have demonstrated the use of OET to manipulate conductive silver nanowires into different patterns. The silver nanowires (typical diameter: 60 nm; typical length: 10 μm) were suspended in a 15 mS/m solution of KCL in water and manipulated by positive dielectrophoresis force generated by OET. A proof-of-concept demonstration was also made to prove the feasibility of using OET to manipulate silver nanowires to form a 150-μm-long conductive path between two isolated electrodes. It can be seen that the resistance between two electrodes was effectively brought down to around 700 Ω after the silver nanowires were assembled and the solution evaporated. Future work in this area will focus on increasing the conductivity of these tracks, encapsulating the assembled silver nanowires to prevent silver oxidation and provide mechanical protection, which can be achieved via 3D printing and inkjet printing technology.
Neosexism: Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est Pareil

A scale designed to tap into a new type of gender prejudice, called neosexist beliefs, is proposed. Two studies investigating antecedents and consequences of neosexism were conducted. In the first study, a predictive model was tested with a sample of 130 male students. It was found, according to hypotheses, that considerations of collective interest (CI) and old-fashioned sexism had an impact on neosexism. However, only the latter and CI triggered opposition to affirmative action (AA). The second study evaluated the effects of CI and neosexism among a sample of 149 male workers employed in a firm where an exhaustive AA program was implemented. For example, it was found that support for the program in place and evaluations of women's qualifications were influenced both by neosexism and by CI. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Hypertension in Pregnancy and Offspring Cardiovascular Risk in Young Adulthood: Prospective and Sibling Studies in the HUNT Study (Nord-Trøndelag Health Study) in Norway.

Women with hypertensive disorders in pregnancy are at increased lifetime risk for cardiovascular disease. We examined the offspring's cardiovascular risk profile in young adulthood and their siblings' cardiovascular risk profile. From the HUNT study (Nord-Trøndelag Health Study) in Norway, 15 778 participants (mean age: 29 years), including 210 sibling groups, were linked to information from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. Blood pressure, anthropometry, serum lipids, and C-reactive protein were assessed. Seven hundred and six participants were born after exposure to maternal hypertension in pregnancy: 336 mothers had gestational hypertension, 343 had term preeclampsia, and 27 had preterm preeclampsia. Offspring whose mothers had hypertension in pregnancy had 2.7 (95% confidence interval, 1.8-3.5) mm Hg higher systolic blood pressure, 1.5 (0.9-2.1) mm Hg higher diastolic blood pressure, 0.66 (0.31-1.01) kg/m2 higher body mass index, and 1.49 (0.65-2.33) cm wider waist circumference, compared with offspring of normotensive pregnancies. Similar differences were observed for gestational hypertension and term preeclampsia. Term preeclampsia was also associated with higher concentrations of non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (0.14 mmol/L, 0.03-0.25) and triglycerides (0.13 mmol/L, 0.06-0.21). Siblings born after a normotensive pregnancy had nearly identical risk factor levels as siblings born after maternal hypertension. Offspring born after maternal hypertension in pregnancy have a more adverse cardiovascular risk profile in young adulthood than offspring of normotensive pregnancies. Their siblings, born after a normotensive pregnancy, have a similar risk profile, suggesting that shared genes or lifestyle may account for the association, rather than an intrauterine effect. All children of mothers who have experienced hypertension in pregnancy may be at increased lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease.
Anuran larval developmental plasticity and survival in response to variable salinity of ecologically relevant timing and magnitude.

Salinity in affected freshwater ecosystems fluctuates with seasonal rainfall, tidal flux, rates of evaporation, chemical runoff and the influence of secondary salinization. Environmental stressors such as salinity can have lasting effects on anuran development, yet little is known about the effects of fluctuating salinity on tadpole ontogeny or the effects of differing magnitudes of salinity exposure, as would occur in natural wetland systems. We examined how salinity fluctuations affected survival, growth and development of Litoria ewingii by exposing tadpoles to a range of salinity concentrations (5.6-10.85 ppt) at three different stages of development (hind limb-bud formation; toe differentiation and forearm development). We also investigated the plasticity of tadpole growth rates in response to non-lethal, transient salinity influxes, specifically examining the capacity for compensatory growth and its relationship to the timing, magnitude or frequency of salinity exposure. Our results show that later-stage tadpoles are more tolerant to elevated salinity than those exposed at a younger age, and that exposure to high salinity later in life suppresses the potential for compensatory growth. Tadpoles exposed to transient low salinity lost less mass during metamorphosis than animals in constant salinity treatments, indicating a possible alternate to compensatory growth. Exposure to near-lethal salinities early in development did not alter tadpole responses to subsequent salinity stress. Our results provide some of the first evidence that both the timing and magnitude of transient environmental stressors can have an effect on anuran development and developmental trade-offs in a stressful environment.
Scanning the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator gene using high-resolution DNA melting analysis.

BACKGROUND Complete gene analysis of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator gene (CFTR) by scanning and/or sequencing is seldom performed because of the cost, time, and labor involved. High-resolution DNA melting analysis is a rapid, closed-tube alternative for gene scanning and genotyping. METHODS The 27 exons of CFTR were amplified in 37 PCR products under identical conditions. Common variants in 96 blood donors were identified in each exon by high-resolution melting on a LightScanner(R). We then performed a subsequent blinded study on 30 samples enriched for disease-causing variants, including all 23 variants recommended by the American College of Medical Genetics and 8 additional, well-characterized variants. RESULTS We identified 22 different sequence variants in 96 blood donors, including 4 novel variants and the disease-causing p.F508del. In the blinded study, all 40 disease-causing heterozygotes (29 unique) were detected, including 1 new probable disease-causing variant (c.3500-2A>T). The number of false-positive amplicons was decreased 96% by considering the 6 most common heterozygotes. The melting patterns of most heterozygotes were unique (37 of 40 pairs within the same amplicon), the exceptions being p.F508del vs p.I507del, p.G551D vs p.R553X, and p.W1282X vs c.4002A>G. The homozygotes p.G542X, c.2789 + 5G>A, and c.3849 + 10kbC>T were directly identified, but homozygous p.F508del was not. Specific genotyping of these exceptions, as well as genotyping of the 5T allele of intron 8, was achieved by unlabeled-probe and small-amplicon melting assays. CONCLUSIONS High-resolution DNA melting methods provide a rapid and accurate alternative for complete CFTR analysis. False positives can be decreased by considering the melting profiles of common variants.
Randomized Prediction Games for Adversarial Machine Learning

In spam and malware detection, attackers exploit randomization to obfuscate malicious data and increase their chances of evading detection at test time, e.g., malware code is typically obfuscated using random strings or byte sequences to hide known exploits. Interestingly, randomization has also been proposed to improve security of learning algorithms against evasion attacks, as it results in hiding information about the classifier to the attacker. Recent work has proposed game-theoretical formulations to learn secure classifiers, by simulating different evasion attacks and modifying the classification function accordingly. However, both the classification function and the simulated data manipulations have been modeled in a deterministic manner, without accounting for any form of randomization. In this paper, we overcome this limitation by proposing a randomized prediction game, namely, a noncooperative game-theoretic formulation in which the classifier and the attacker make randomized strategy selections according to some probability distribution defined over the respective strategy set. We show that our approach allows one to improve the tradeoff between attack detection and false alarms with respect to the state-of-the-art secure classifiers, even against attacks that are different from those hypothesized during design, on application examples including handwritten digit recognition, spam, and malware detection.
Secret Key Agreement Over Multipath Channels Exploiting a Variable-Directional Antenna

We develop an approach of key distribution protocol(KDP) proposed recently by T.Aono et al., where the security of KDP is only partly estimated in terms of eavesdropper's key bit errors. Instead we calculate the Shannon's information leaking to a wire tapper and also we apply the privacy amplification procedure from the side of the legal users. A more general mathematical model based on the use of Variable-Directional Antenna (VDA) under the condition of multipath wave propagation is proposed. The new method can effectively be used even in noiseless interception channels providing thus a widened area with respect to practical applications. Statistical characteristics of the VDA are investigated by simulation, allowing to specify the model parameters. We prove that the proposed KDP provides both security and reliability of the shared keys even for very short distances between legal users and eavesdroppers. Antenna diversity is proposed as a mean to enhance the KDP security. In order to provide a better performance evaluation of the KDP, it is investigated the use of error correcting codes.
Produktivität und Idiomatizität von Präposition-Substantiv-Sequenzen

Abstract The present paper discusses two fundamental properties of so-called determinerless PPs, their idiomaticity and productivity. Combining evidence from German newspaper corpora with methods from statistical natural language processing, we can show that determinerless PPs are no more idiomatic that ordinary phrasal combinations in general. From an empirical point of view determinerless PPs can be classified as productive. Consequently determinerless PPs should not be treated as idiomatic exceptions, which can be covered by finite lists.
Supervision and Regulation of Home Automation Systems with Smartphones

Home automation and building services systems are integrated in many homes and buildings to meet the needs of comfort, security and efficiency of the customers. On the other hand, mobile devices such as handheld devices and smart phones are providing location-independent access to the Internet and local networks. This paper describes the requirements to combine these two mediums to supervise home automation systems with smart phones. It presents the design and implementation of an iPhone application that allows the retrofitting of mobile devices into an existing KNX home automation system without the need of specific hardware or skilled technicians. An approach to use configuration files, which arise during the installation of KNX home automation systems, for the initial setup of the mobile application is discussed.
Priming of Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhi-Specific CD8+ T Cells by Suicide Dendritic Cell Cross-Presentation in Humans

Background The emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. Typhi), the etiologic agent of typhoid fever, has aggravated an already important public health problem and added new urgency to the development of more effective typhoid vaccines. To this end it is critical to better understand the induction of immunity to S. Typhi. CD8+ T cells are likely to play an important role in host defense against S. Typhi by several effector mechanisms, including killing of infected cells and IFN-γ secretion. However, how S. Typhi regulates the development of specific CD8+ responses in humans remains unclear. Recent studies in mice have shown that dendritic cells (DC) can either directly (upon uptake and processing of Salmonella) or indirectly (by bystander mechanisms) elicit Salmonella-specific CD8+ T cells. Methodology/Principal Findings We report here that upon infection with live S. Typhi, human DC produced high levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-α, but low levels of IL-12 p70 and IFN-γ. In contrast, DC co-cultured with S. Typhi-infected cells, through suicide cross-presentation, uptake S. Typhi-infected human cells and release high levels of IFN-γ and IL-12p70, leading to the subsequent presentation of bacterial antigens and triggering the induction of memory T cells, mostly CD3+CD8+CD45RA−CD62L− effector/memory T cells. Conclusions/Significance This study is the first to demonstrate the effect of S. Typhi on human DC maturation and on their ability to prime CD8+ cells and highlights the significance of these phenomena in eliciting adaptive immunity to S. Typhi.
NQueens on CUDA: Optimization Issues

Todays commercial off-the-shelf computer systems are multicore computing systems as a combination of CPU, graphic processor (GPU) and custom devices. In comparison with CPU cores, graphic cards are capable to execute hundreds up to thousands compute units in parallel. To benefit from these GPU computing resources, applications have to be parallelized and adapted to the target architecture. In this paper we show our experience in applying the NQueens puzzle solution on GPUs using Nvidia's CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) technology. Using the example of memory usage and memory access, we demonstrate that optimizations of CUDA programs may have contrary results on different CUDA architectures. Evaluation results will point out, that it is not sufficient to use new programming languages or compilers to achieve best results with emerging graphic card computing.
Minimum mean squared error time series classification using an echo state network prediction model

The echo state network (ESN) has been recently proposed as an alternative recurrent neural network model. An ESN consists of a reservoir of conventional processing elements, which are recurrently interconnected with untrained random weights, and a readout layer, which is trained using linear regression methods. The key advantage of the ESN is the ability to model systems without the need to train the recurrent weights. In this paper, we use an ESN to model the production of speech signals in a classification experiment using isolated utterances of the English digits "zero" through "nine. " One prediction model for each digit was trained using frame-based speech features (cepstral coefficients) from all train utterances, and the readout layer consisted of several linear regressors which were trained to target different portions of the time series using a dynamic programming algorithm (Viterbi). Each novel test utterance was classified with the label from the digit model with the minimum mean squared prediction error. Using a corpus of 4130 isolated digits from 8 male and 8 female speakers, the highest classification accuracy attained with an ESN was 100.0% (99.1%) on the train (test) set, compared to 100% (94.7%) for a hidden Markov model (HMM). HMM performance increased to 100.0% (99.8%) when context features (first- and second-order temporal derivatives) were appended to the cepstral coefficients. The ESN offers an attractive alternative to the HMM because of the ESN's simple train procedure, low computational requirements, and inherent ability to model the dynamics of the signal under study
Relating layered queueing networks and process algebra models

This paper presents a process-algebraic interpretation of the Layered Queueing Network model. The semantics of layered multi-class servers, resource contention, multiplicity of threads and processors are mapped into a model described in the stochastic process algebra PEPA. The accuracy of the translation is validated through a case study of a distributed computer system and the numerical results are used to discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different forms of analysis available in both approaches, i.e., simulation, mean-value analysis, and differential approximation.
Celiac Plexus Block and Neurolysis in the Management of Chronic Upper Abdominal Pain

Abstract Chronic upper abdominal pain occurs as a complication of various malignant and benign diseases including pancreatic cancer and chronic pancreatitis, and when present may contribute to lower quality of life and higher mortality. Though various pain management strategies are available as part of a multimodal approach, they are often incompletely effective and accompanied by side effects. Pain originating in upper abdominal viscera is transmitted through the celiac plexus, which is an autonomic plexus located in the retroperitoneum at the root of the celiac trunk. Direct intervention at the level of the plexus, referred to as celiac plexus block or neurolysis depending on the injectate, is a minimally invasive therapeutic strategy which has been demonstrated to decrease pain, improve function, and reduce opiate dependence. Various percutaneous techniques have been reported, but, with appropriate preprocedural planning, use of image guidance (usually computed tomography), and postprocedural care, the frequency and severity of complications is low and the success rate high regardless of approach. The main benefit of the intervention may be in reduced opiate dependence and opiate-associated side effects, which in turn improves quality of life. Celiac plexus block and neurolysis are safe and effective treatments for chronic upper abdominal pain and should be considered early in patients experiencing such symptoms.