Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Realistic 3D Human Saccades Generated by a 6-DOF Biomimetic Robotic Eye Under Optimal Control

2 We recently developed a biomimetic robotic eye with 6 independent tendons, each controlled by 3 their own rotatory motor, and with insertions on the eye ball that faithfully mimic the biomechanics 4 of the human eye. We constructed an accurate physical model of this system, and learned to 5 control its nonlinear dynamics by optimising a cost that penalised saccade inaccuracy, movement 6 duration, and total energy expenditure of the motors. To speed up the calculations, the simulator 7 was approximated by a recurrent neural network (NARX). We showed that the system can produce 8 realistic eye movements that closely resemble human saccades in all directions: their nonlinear 9 main-sequence dynamics (amplitude-peak eye velocity and duration relationships), cross-coupling 10 of the horizontal and vertical movement components leading to approximately straight saccade 11 trajectories, and the 3D kinematics that restrict 3D eye orientations to a plane (Listing’s law). 12 Interestingly, the motors organised themselves in appropriate agonist-antagonist muscle pairs, 13 and the motor signals for the eye resembled the well-known pulse-step characteristics that 14 have been reported for monkey motoneuron activity. We here fully analyse the eye-movement 15 properties produced by the model across the entire oculomotor range and the underlying control 16 signals. We argue that our model may shed new light on the neural control signals and their
Responses of fishes and lampreys to the re‐creation of meanders in a small English chalk stream

River rehabilitation initiatives have become commonplace in European water courses as a result of European Union Water Framework Directive requirements. However, the short‐term responses of fishes to such work have thus far been varied, with some river rehabilitation efforts resulting in demonstrable improvements in diversity and size structure, whereas others have resulted in little or no change. Electrofishing and channel character surveys were conducted annually between 2009 and 2014 on a reach of the River Glaven (North Norfolk, UK) before and after rehabilitation work (embankment removal in 2009 and re‐meandering in 2010) as well as on a control reach immediately upstream. To assess the effects of rehabilitation work, before‐after‐control‐impact analysis tested for changes in channel character (geomorphology, substratum composition, and mesohabitat structure) and in fish species richness, relative abundance, population density, and size structure (calculated after fish data entry into the UK Environment Agency's National Fisheries Population Database). Following re‐meandering work (i.e., treatment), habitat heterogeneity and depth variation increased in the treatment reach, but fish responses were not significant except for biomass and density increases of brown trout Salmo trutta and abundance decreases of European eel Anguilla anguilla, in the treatment but not the control reach. These results are consistent with comparable river rehabilitation initiatives elsewhere, and they suggest that larger‐scale rehabilitations are probably needed to produce greater increases in fish density and diversity. It is recommended that future rehabilitation initiatives address catchment‐scale factors that can enhance ecosystem recovery, for example, removal of barriers to colonization, and increases in connectivity and water quality issues linked to eutrophication, elevated fine sediment inputs, and various pollutants.
Future Generation Computer Systems

and cloud providers (IBM Quantum and Amazon Braket). This paper proposes the concept of quantum function-as-a-service, system design, operation workflows, implementation of QFaaS, and lessons learned on the benefits and limitations of quantum serverless computing. We also present practical use cases with various quantum applications on today’s quantum computers and simulators to demonstrate our framework capability to facilitate the ongoing quantum software transition.
Differential LRRK2 Signalling and Gene Expression in WT-LRRK2 and G2019S-LRRK2 Mouse Microglia Treated with Zymosan and MLi2

Mutations in the leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene cause autosomal dominant Parkinson’s disease (PD), with the most common causative mutation being the LRRK2 p.G2019S within the kinase domain. LRRK2 protein is highly expressed in the human brain and also in the periphery, and high expression of dominant PD genes in immune cells suggests involvement of microglia and macrophages in inflammation related to PD. LRRK2 is known to respond to extracellular signalling including TLR4, resulting in alterations in gene expression, with the response to TLR2 signalling through zymosan being less known. Here, we investigated the effects of zymosan, a TLR2 agonist and the potent and specific LRRK2 kinase inhibitor MLi-2 on gene expression in microglia from LRRK2-WT and LRRK2 p.G2019S knock-in mice by RNA-sequencing analysis. We observed both overlapping and distinct zymosan and MLi-2 mediated gene expression profiles in microglia. At least two candidate genome-wide association (GWAS) hits for PD, CathepsinB (Ctsb) and Glycoprotein-nmb (Gpnmb), were notably downregulated by zymosan treatment. Genes involved in inflammatory response and nervous system development were up and downregulated, respectively, with zymosan treatment, while MLi-2 treatment particularly exhibited upregulated genes for ion transmembrane transport regulation. Furthermore, we observed that the top twenty most significantly differentially expressed genes in LRRK2 p.G2019S microglia show enriched biological processes in iron transport and response to oxidative stress. Overall, these results suggest that microglial LRRK2 may contribute to PD pathogenesis through altered inflammatory pathways. Our findings should encourage future investigations of these putative avenues in the context of PD pathogenesis.
Edinburgh Research Explorer Contributions of inner and outer coordination sphere bonding in determining the strength of substituted phenolic pyrazoles as copper extractants

Alkyl-substituted phenolic pyrazoles such as 4-methyl-2-[5-( n -octyl)-1 H -pyrazol-3-yl]phenol (L2H) are shown to function as Cu-extractants, having similar strength and selectivity over Fe( III ) to 5-nonylsalicyl-aldoxime which is a component of the commercially used ACORGA® solvent extraction reagents. Substitution in the phenol ring of the new extractants has a major e ﬀ ect on their strength, e.g. 2-nitro-4- methyl-6-[5-(2,4,4-trimethylpentyl)-1 H -pyrazol-3-yl]phenol (L4H) which has a nitro group ortho to the phenolic hydroxyl group unit and has an extraction distribution coe ﬃ cient for Cu nearly three orders of magnitude higher than its unsubstituted analogue 4-methyl-6-[5-(2,4,4-trimethylpentyl)-1 H -pyrazol-3- yl]phenol (L8H). X-ray structure determinations and density functional theory (DFT) calculations con ﬁ rm that inter-ligand hydrogen bonding between the pyrazole NH group and the phenolate oxygen atom stabilise the Cu-complexes, giving pseudomacrocyclic structures. Electron-accepting groups ortho to the phenol oxygen atoms buttress the inter-ligand H-bonding, enhancing extractant strength but the e ﬀ ectiveness of this is very dependent on steric factors. The correlation between the calculated energies of formation of copper complexes in the gas phase and the observed strength of comparably substituted reagents in solvent extraction experiments is remarkable. Analysis of the energies of formation suggests that big di ﬀ erences in strength of extractants arise principally from a combination of the e ﬀ ects of the substituents on the ease of deprotonation of the proligands and, for the ortho -substituted ligands, their propensity to buttress inter-ligand hydrogen bonding.
Thermodynamic and Elastic Properties of Magnesite at Mantle Conditions: First‐Principles Calculations

Magnesite (MgCO3) is a likely main host of carbonates in the mantle and plays an important role in the transport and storage of carbon in the Earth's mantle. Its physical properties at high pressure and high temperature (PT) are crucial for understanding the deep carbon cycle. Here we investigated thermodynamic and elastic properties of magnesite under the mantle PT conditions using first‐principles calculations with local density approximation (LDA). Magnesite has the seismic velocities close to those of forsterite. The effect of the magnesite on seismic velocity of the carbonated peridotite and eclogite is subtle in the upper mantle. However, magnesite has much smaller seismic velocities and far larger elastic anisotropy than major minerals in the transition zone and lower mantle. The enrichment of magnesite in the transition zone and lower mantle will likely produce seismically detectable low‐velocity zone and velocity anisotropy.
Designing Behavioral Nudges for Increased Participation in Recycling as a Social Movement

This thesis project is exploring and investigates the applications of different methods of reward and nudging strategies and their potential effect on motivating and directing people’s behavior to be more engaged in recycling as a social movement within the society of Saudi Arabia. By creating sustainable behaviors, we contribute to the solutions and help minimize the potential damage of plastic pollution. The designs created throughout this thesis as prototypes of different concepts test the effectiveness of the different strategies on the behaviors of the population in Saudi Arabia. The main findings demonstrated that for people to steer their behavior toward recycling, they need to be financially rewarded. Testing other nudging strategies showed that these strategies might not be as powerful as the traditional system of reward and punishment. Therefore, this project needs to be further investigated and iterated in cooperation with other stakeholders and designers from different fields.
What Causes Persistent Neural Activity?

The persistent neural activity at a global scale, either stationary or oscillatory, can be explained by the use of the excitatory inhibitory neural network models. This state of the network is, as can be inferred, crucial for the information processing and the memorizing ability of the brain. Though the goal for persistence to exists is visible; but from where the network achieves its ability to show rich variety of the persistent dynamical states is not clear. The following study investigates the possible reasons for the persistence in neuronal networks and shows that the action of the inhibitory components, among other favorable factors in the network, plays a key role in stabilizing neural activity, once it starts. The results strongly support previous research conducted with simpler or more specialized neural network models, as well as neurophysiological experiments.
Let the Beat Follow You - Creating Interactive Drum Sounds From Body Rhythm

It is often the case that human body movements include rhythmic patterns. A video camera system that captures these patterns and responds to them with rhythmic sounds or music, as these happen, could create a unique interactive experience. Creating such an experience requires a real-time translation of related visual cues into in-rhythm sounds and warrants novel real-time methods. In this work, we propose a novel learning-based system, called ‘Interac-tiveBeat’, which generates an evolving interactive sound-track for a camera input that captures person’s movements. InteractiveBeat infers body skeleton keypoints and translates them into drum rhythms using a series of sequence models. It then implements a conditional drum generation network for generating polyphonic drum sounds based on the rhythms. To guarantee real-time function, these models are integrated into a time-evolving pipeline with rules for updates. InteractiveBeat is trained and evaluated on a well-annotated large-scale dance database (AIST), and in addition, we collected a dataset of in-the-wild videos with people performing movements of various activities that correspond to background music. Furthermore, we develop a ‘live’ demo prototype of the system. Our evaluation re-sults show that the system can generate interactive rhythmic drums more accurately than existing methods and achieves a non-cumulative latency of 34ms (approx. 30 fps). This allows InteractiveBeat to be synchronized with the video stream and react to real-time movements.
Dynamic Inference of Likely Symbolic Tensor Shapes in Python Machine Learning Programs

In machine learning programs, it is often tedious to annotate the dimensions of shapes of various tensors that get created during execution. We present a dynamic likely tensor shape inference analysis, called ShapeIt, that annotates the dimensions of shapes of tensor expressions with symbolic dimension values and establishes the symbolic relationships among those dimensions. Such annotations can be used to understand the machine learning code written in popular frameworks, such as PyTorch and JAX, and to find bugs related to tensor shape mismatch. We have implemented ShapeIt on top of a novel dynamic analysis framework for Python, called Pynsy, which works by instrumenting Python bytecode on the fly. Our evaluation of ShapeIt on several tensor programs illustrates that ShapeIt could effectively infer symbolic shapes and their relationships for various neural network programs with low runtime overhead.
Effect of diet and physical activity based interventions in pregnancy on gestational weight gain and pregnancy outcomes meta-analysis of individual participant data from randomised trials

Objective To synthesise the evidence on the overall and differential effects of interventions based on diet and physical activity during pregnancy, primarily on gestational weight gain and maternal and offspring composite outcomes, according to women’s body mass index, age, parity, ethnicity, and pre-existing medical condition; and secondarily on individual complications. Design
GRAPH PARTITIONING AND MULTI-WAY CHEEGER INEQUALITIES

A classical result in graph theory states that a graph is disconnected iff its Laplacian matrix has eigenvalue 0, with multiplicity 2. One may be interested in whether a robust analogue of this statement exists: is a graph close to being disconnected iff the second smallest eigenvalue of its Laplacian is close to 0? This is the subject of the discrete Cheeger inequality, which we prove in this paper [1, 2]. We also prove a higher-order Cheeger inequality due to [3], which provides a robust analogue of the fact that a graph possesses k disjoint connected components iff its Laplacian has eigenvalue 0 with multiplicity k .
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Beta-decay implications for the W-boson mass anomaly

We point out the necessity to consider β -decay observables in resolutions of the W -boson anomaly in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory that go beyond pure oblique corrections. We demonstrate that present global analyses that explain the W -boson mass anomaly predict a large, percent-level, violation of first-row Cabibbo Kobayashi Maskawa unitarity. We investigate what solutions to the W -boson mass anomaly survive after including β -decay constraints.
Varikoselektomi Yaşının Semen Parametreleri ve Fertilite Üzerine Etkisi The Influence of Varicocelectomy Age on Semen Parameters and Fertility Rates

Objective: Varicocele is the most frequently observed correctable cause of infertility in men. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the influence of age at the time of varicocelectomy on semen parameters and fertility. Methods: Infertile men who underwent microsurgical varicocelectomy between January 2012 and December 2019 were retrospectively evaluated. Patients were divided into 4 age groups as follows: group 1 including patients aged ≤25 years old, group 2 including patients aged ≥26 and ≤30 years old, group 3 including patients aged ≥31 and ≤35 years old, and group 4 including patients aged ≥36 years old. Results: A total of 138 infertile men were divided into 4 groups. There were 18 men in group 1, 58 men in group 2, 44 men in group 3, and 18 men in group 4. There were significant improvements in the mean sperm concentration, progressive motility, and total motile sperm count values in all groups after surgery. Significant improvement in sperm morphology was detected only in groups 1 and 2 (p=0.007 and p=0.005, respectively). There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of preoperative and postoperative sperm parameters. Total fertility rate and the number of patients having children with natural conception or assisted reproductive techniques were lower in group 4 but these differences were not statistically significant (p=0.083 and p=0.454, respectively). Conclusion: Varicocelectomy can be recommended for all infertile men regardless of age. There was no difference in postoperative semen parameters and fertility rates between the age groups.
Making the Pick: Understanding Professional Editor Comment Curation in Online News

Online comments within news articles are a key way people share opinions. Discovering insightful comments can, however, be challenging for readers. A solution to this problem is using comment curation , whereby professional editors select the highest quality comments manually — referred to as “editor-picks”. This paper studies the growing use of professional editor-curation for user-generated comments. We focus on the New York Times as a case study, using a dataset covering 80k articles. We study the characteristics of editor-pick comments, highlighting how editor criteria vary across news sections ( e.g. sports, entertainment). We find that editor-pick comments tend to be longer, more relevant to the article, positive in sentiment, and contain low toxicity. Our analysis further reveals that editors within different news sections exhibit differing criteria when they perform comment selection. Thus, we finally propose a set of models that can automatically identify good candidate editor-picks. Our ultimate goal is to reduce editor and journalistic workload, increasing productivity and the quality of curated comments.
POVERTY AMIDST PLENTY OF RESOURCES: DOES INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK REINFORCE THE RESOURCE CURSE SYNDROME IN NIGERIA?

: Despite the large inflow of government revenue through crude oil sales, poverty still soars, and Nigeria inability to sincerely distribute these economic benefits to trickledown to the generality of the populace has been cited as the basis for its recent awful distinction of being world poverty capital. This study examines the impact of oil revenue on poverty situation in Nigeria and specifically investigates how institutional dynamics affects the impact of oil revenue on poverty in Nigeria in an attempt to provide current empirical evidence for the country resource-curse syndrome. Under the framework of VECM and over the period of 1995-2021, findings showed that in the short-run, oil revenue negatively impact on poverty in the current period; however, in the long-run, the contribution of oil revenue to poverty becomes positive. The result further showed that weak institutions and high level of corruption strengthens the resource-curse syndrome in Nigeria. On grounds of these findings, the study recommends, among others; that policymakers of the government should put in place quality institutions that will promote good governance and ensure that the proceeds from oil are properly utilized by building critical infrastructures like roads, refineries, etc necessary to meaningfully create decent jobs which will in turn, end poverty and inequality in the long-run.
Quality of

INTRODUCTION Continuity models are rare in Sweden. The aim was to compare the intrapartum care experiences between women who had or not a known midwife attending their birth. METHODS A cohort study was conducted in a rural area with long distance to a labor ward in Sweden. From August 2017 to June 2019, a continuity model with a known midwife was offered between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. daily. Questions about intrapartum care were assessed in two aspects; the perceived reality and the subjective importance. RESULTS A total of 226 women recruited in early pregnancy were followed up two months after giving birth. Women who had a known midwife providing labor care reported higher overall satisfaction and were more likely to value the subjective importance and the perceived reality significantly higher than women who received intrapartum care without a known midwife assisting. When analyzing the medical aspects of intrapartum care, the most important factors for not being satisfied were deficiencies in the partner’s involvement and insufficient pain relief. For the emotional aspects, deficiencies in participation in decision making was the most important aspect. CONCLUSIONS Having a known midwife assisting at birth reduced discrepancies between women’s subjective importance and perceived reality of intrapartum care, especially regarding support and the involvement of the partner. A known midwife generated higher overall satisfaction with the medical and emotional aspects of intrapartum care. To improve satisfaction and the quality of intrapartum care, continuity midwifery models of care should be implemented.
Effect of Plastic Ingredients synthesis Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

The research reviews focused on investigation of methods used for organic production. The condensation reaction of phenol with acetone in the presence of sulfonic catalyst (P-toluene sulfonic acid) PTSA studied with the influence of significant factors. Using NMR as a tool is one of the paper advantages and introducing alternative catalyst that brings the stability compared to ion-exchange resin such as Amberlyst or DOWEX, and the solubility that enhance the rate of reaction to give better selectivity and productivity. As a result, catalytic reaction has the potential of producing bisphenol A (BPA) at lower production costs. Also the study cover other aspects relevant to the process such as engineering processes include: solubility, diffusivity, chemistry of the reagents and the reaction mechanism.
Doppler Lidar–Based Wind-Proﬁle Measurement System for Offshore Wind-Energy and Other Marine Boundary Layer Applications

Accuratemeasurementofwindspeedproﬁlesaloftinthemarineboundarylayerisadifﬁcultchallenge. The development of offshore wind energy requires accurate information on wind speeds above the surface at least at the levels occupied by turbine blades. Few measured data are available at these heights, and the temporal and spatial behavior of near-surface winds is often unrepresentative of that at the required heights. As a consequence, numerical model data, another potential source of information, are essentially unveriﬁed at these levels of the atmosphere. In this paper, a motion-compensated, high-resolution Doppler lidar–based wind measurement system that is capable of providing needed information on offshore winds at several heights is described. The system has been evaluated and veriﬁed in several ways. A sampling of data from the 2004 New EnglandAir Quality Study shows the kind of analysesand information available.Examples include time–height cross sections, time series, proﬁles, and distributions of quantities such as winds and shear. These analyses show that there is strong spatial and temporal variability associated with the wind ﬁeld in the marine boundary layer. Winds near the coast show diurnal variations, and frequent occurrences of low-level jets are evident, especially during nocturnal periods. Persistent patterns of spatial variability in the ﬂow ﬁeld that are due to coastal irregularities should be of particular concern for wind-energy planning, because they affect the representativeness of ﬁxed-location measurements and imply that some areas would be favored for wind-energy production whereas others would not.