Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Tele-Therapies Based on Serious Games for Health for People with Time-Management and Organisational Problems: Preliminary Results

Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most prevalent disorders within the child population today. Inattention problems can lead to greater difficulties in completing assignments, as well as problems with time management and prioritisation of tasks. This article presents an intelligent tele-therapy tool based on Serious Games for Health, aimed at the improvement of time management skills and the prioritisation of tasks. This tele-system is based on the use of decision trees within Django, a high-level Python Web framework. The technologies and techniques used were selected so as to boost user involvement and to enable the system to be easily customised. This article shows the preliminary results of the pilot-phase in an experiment performed to evaluate the use of adaptive tele-therapies within a group of typically developing children and adolescents aged between 12 and 19 years old without ADHD. To do so, we relied on the collection of parameters and the conduct of surveys for assessing time management skills, as well as measuring system usability and availability. The results of a time management survey highlighted that the users involved in the trial did not use any specific or effective time management techniques, scoring 1.98 and 2.30 out of 5 points in this area for ages under 15 and over 16 years old, respectively. The final calculations based on the usability questionnaire resulted in an average score of 78.75 out of 100. The creation of a customisable tool capable of working with different skills, in conjunction with the replication of the current study, may help to understand these users’ needs, as well as boosting time management skills among teenagers with and without ADHD.
Silicon Effect-Aware Full-Chip Extraction and Mitigation of TSV-to-TSV Coupling

This paper presents a silicon effect-aware multiTSV model. Through-silicon-via (TSV) depletion region, silicon substrate discharging path and electrical field distribution around TSV neighbor are modeled and studied in full-chip design. Verification with field solver and full-chip TSV-to-TSV coupling analysis in both the worst case and the average case show this model is accurate and efficient. It is found that 3-D nets receive more noise than their 2-D counterparts due to TSV-to-TSV coupling. To alleviate this coupling noise on TSV nets, two new optimization methods are investigated. One way is to utilize guard rings around the victim TSV so as to form a stronger discharging path, an alternative approach is to adopt differential signal transmission to improve noise immunity. These techniques have been implemented on 3-D IC designs with TSVs placed regularly or irregularly. Full-chip analysis results show that our approaches are effective in noise reduction with small area overhead.
Understanding and Predicting Interestingness of Videos

The amount of videos available on the Web is growing explosively. While some videos are very interesting and receive high rating from viewers, many of them are less interesting or even boring. This paper conducts a pilot study on the understanding of human perception of video interestingness, and demonstrates a simple computational method to identify more interesting videos. To this end we first construct two datasets of Flickr and YouTube videos respectively. Human judgements of interestingness are collected and used as the ground-truth for training computational models. We evaluate several off-the-shelf visual and audio features that are potentially useful for predicting interestingness on both datasets. Results indicate that audio and visual features are equally important and the combination of both modalities shows very promising results.
Perceived Speed of Colored Stimuli there are two cortical processing streams which process

In this and two companion papers we examine the cortical basis for the relationship between perceived Stanford, California 94305 speed, color, and contrast. Here, behavioral experiments designed to measure how perceived speed depends on color and contrast are described. The second Summary paper reports functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measurements of color responsivity in a motion-The influence of contrast and color on perceived motion was measured using a speed-matching task. Ob-selective portion of the human brain, region MTϩ (Wan-dell et al., 1999 [this issue of Neuron]). The third paper servers adjusted the speed of an L cone contrast pattern to match that of a variety of colored test patterns. describes measurements of neural activity in area MT of the awake monkey brain (Seidemann et al., 1999 [this The dependence of speed on test contrast was the same for all test colors measured, differing only by a issue of Neuron]). For the stimuli used in these studies, we find no significant discrepancy between the behav-sensitivity factor. This result suggests that the reduced apparent speed of low contrast targets and certain ioral and neural measurements. Hence, the color information within the conventional motion pathway may be colored targets is caused by a common cortical mechanism. The cone contrast levels that equate perceived sufficient to explain behavioral judgments of relative speed. speed differ substantially from those that equate visibility. This result suggests that the neural mechanisms governing speed perception and visibility differ. Per-Results ceived speed differences caused by variations in color can be explained by color responses that are charac-Each panel in Figure 1a shows how perceived speed teristic of motion-selective cortex. increases with stimulus contrast, and different panels describe measurements for different observers. The curves within each panel show the relationship between Introduction contrast and speed for the three types of cone-isolating stimuli. In the experiment, subjects adjusted the physi-In an ideal visual system, perceived speed does not depend on contrast or color. A stimulus moving at 5Њ/s cal velocity of a standard stimulus, an L cone–isolating stimulus at 2.5% contrast, to match the perceived speed should appear to move at the same speed whether it has high or low contrast, or whether it appears red or of a colored test that always moved at 8. 2Њ/s. Consider the curve measuring matches between an L cone test blue. The visual pathways do not achieve this goal. Low contrast achromatic luminance stimuli appear to …
Glutamine Stimulates Biosynthesis and Secretion of Insulin-like Growth Factor 2 (IGF2), an Autocrine Regulator of Beta Cell Mass and Function*

Background: An IGF2/IGF1R autocrine loop regulates beta cell glucose competence, proliferation, and apoptosis, and GLP-1 increases IGF1R expression. Results: Glutamine enhances IGF2 biosynthesis, secretion, and IGF2-dependent Akt phosphorylation. Conclusion: Glutamine controls the activity of the IGF2/IGF1R autocrine loop through IGF2 up-regulation. Significance: The IGF2/IGF1R autocrine loop integrates changes in feeding and metabolic state to adapt beta cell mass and function. IGF2 is an autocrine ligand for the beta cell IGF1R receptor and GLP-1 increases the activity of this autocrine loop by enhancing IGF1R expression, a mechanism that mediates the trophic effects of GLP-1 on beta cell mass and function. Here, we investigated the regulation of IGF2 biosynthesis and secretion. We showed that glutamine rapidly and strongly induced IGF2 mRNA translation using reporter constructs transduced in MIN6 cells and primary islet cells. This was followed by rapid secretion of IGF2 via the regulated pathway, as revealed by the presence of mature IGF2 in insulin granule fractions and by inhibition of secretion by nimodipine and diazoxide. When maximally stimulated by glutamine, the amount of secreted IGF2 rapidly exceeded its initial intracellular pool and tolbutamide, and high K+ increased IGF2 secretion only marginally. This indicates that the intracellular pool of IGF2 is small and that sustained secretion requires de novo synthesis. The stimulatory effect of glutamine necessitates its metabolism but not mTOR activation. Finally, exposure of insulinomas or beta cells to glutamine induced Akt phosphorylation, an effect that was dependent on IGF2 secretion, and reduced cytokine-induced apoptosis. Thus, glutamine controls the activity of the beta cell IGF2/IGF1R autocrine loop by increasing the biosynthesis and secretion of IGF2. This autocrine loop can thus integrate changes in feeding and metabolic state to adapt beta cell mass and function.
HealthAdvisor: Recommendation System for Wearable Technologies enabling Proactive Health Monitoring

Proactive monitoring of one's health could avoid serious diseases as well as better maintain the individual's well-being. In today's IoT world, there has been numerous wearable technological devices to monitor/measure different health attributes. However, with that increasing number of attributes and wearables, it becomes unclear to the individual which ones they should be using. The aim of this paper is to provide a recommendation engine for personalized recommended wearables for any given individual. The way the engine works is through first identifying the diseases that this person is at risk of, given his/her attributes and medical history. We built a machine learning classification model for this task. Second, these diseases are mapped to the attributes that need to be measured in order to monitor such diseases. Third, we map these measurements to the appropriate wearable technologies. This is done via a textual analytics model that we developed that uses available information of different wearables to map the aforementioned measurements to these wearables. The output can be used to recommend the wearables to individuals as well as provide a feedback to wearable developers for common measurements that do not have corresponding wearables today.
Long-fragment DNA as a potential marker for stool-based detection of colorectal cancer

Neoplastic cells that are exfoliated from the colorectal epithelium exhibit dysfunctional apoptotic mechanisms, and thus it is possible to identify high-molecular-weight DNA fragments (long DNA) in feces. In the present study, the sensitivity and specificity of fecal-based long DNA assays were evaluated for the detection of colorectal cancer (CRC). Feces were collected from 54 healthy volunteers and 130 patients with CRC prior to surgical treatment. The presence of long DNA of the adenomatosis polyposis coli, Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homolog (KRAS), B-raf proto-oncogene, serine/threonine kinase and p53 genes was assessed by polymerase chain reaction followed by electrophoresis. The identification of long DNA in feces was found to exhibit a sensitivity of 56.2% and specificity of 96.3% for CRC detection. In addition, long DNA was identified in the feces of 58/90 (64.4%) patients with distal CRC and 15/40 (37.5%) patients with proximal CRC. This study indicates the potential of the fecal long DNA assay as a non-invasive and easily performed method for the detection of individuals with CRC.
Does Classroom Gender Composition Affect School Dropout?

Measuring the gender peer effects on student achievement has recently attracted a lot of attention in the literature. Yet, the results are inconclusive. A substantial amount of research shows that having relatively more girls in a division increases the academic achievement of all students. Nevertheless, the identification of pure gender effects remains a challenge due to the fact that girls outperform boys in overall academic performance. Our study overcomes this identification problem in a setting where girls are not academically better. Using 2009-2010 school year data on 8th graders in Turkey, this paper disentangles pure "academic" peer effects and "gender" peer effects. Our estimations reveal that the higher the share of females in a division, the lower the likelihood that a student drops out. One standard deviation increase in the share of females in the division decreases the likelihood of dropout by 0.3 percentage points. This result holds even though females are 9.32 percentage points more likely to drop out. These findings are robust to the inclusion of various control variables e.g. parental and academic background of the student, school and regional characteristics. We also find that the gender peer effects are prevalent in both females and males.
Research and development of free-space laser communications and quantum key distribution technologies at NICT

Since 2006, ground-to-satellite laser communication experiments have been successfully performed using intensity modulation/direct detection (IMDD) between the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) optical ground station located in Tokyo and a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite. With the advent of coherent binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) receivers in orbit by a German satellite, it is now absolutely imperative to establish interoperability between the different optical communications systems. At NICT, an optical receiver that can demodulate both IMDD and coherent optical signals for free-space laser communications has been developed that can recover the carrier phase after homodyne detection by means of digital signal processing (DSP). A transportable optical ground station has also been developed for site-diversity purposes in order to increase accessibility between terrestrial and space systems. A new NICT mid-term research plan has started since April 2011 and this paper presents research and development in free-space laser communications technologies at NICT.
The Fine-Scale Structure of the Global Tropopause Derived from COSMIC GPS Radio Occultation Measurements

[1] The spatiotemporal structure of the lapse‐rate tropopause is examined by using state‐of‐the‐art Global Positioning System radio occultation measurements from the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC) Formosa Satellite Mission 3 mission. The high temporal and spatial resolutions of the data reveal the detailed structure of tropopause properties such as pressure (pt), temperature (Tt), and sharpness (Nt ) and their relationships to upper tropospheric and lower stratospheric processes. The overall results are generally in good agreement with previous studies. The climatology of all three tropopause properties shows largely homogeneous structure in the zonal direction: noticeable asymmetries are found only in the tropics and the Northern Hemisphere extratropics during boreal winter owing to localized tropospheric processes. This contrasts with the seasonal cycles of tropopause properties which are significantly influenced by stratospheric processes such as the Brewer‐Dobson circulation, the polar vortex, and the radiative processes near the tropopause. On intraseasonal time scales, pt and Tt exhibit significant variability over the Asian summer monsoon and the subtropics where double tropopauses frequently occur. In contrast, Nt shows maximum variability in the tropics where pt and Tt have minimum variability, possibly a consequence of vertically propagating waves. The tropopause properties derived from COSMIC observations are further applied to evaluate tropopause data directly available from the NCEP‐NCAR Reanalysis (NNR). Although the NNR tropopause data have been widely usedinclimatestudies,theyarefoundtohavesignificantandsystematicbiases,especiallyin the subtropics. This suggests that the NNR tropopause data should be treated with great caution in any quantitative studies.
Gain of function mutants reveal sites important for the interaction of the atypical inhibitors benztropine and bupropion with monoamine transporters

Two atypical inhibitors of the dopamine transporter, benztropine, used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, and bupropion, used as an antidepressant, show very different psychostimulant effects when compared with another inhibitor, cocaine. Taking advantage of the differential sensitivity of the dopamine and the norepinephrine transporters (DAT and NET) to benztropine and bupropion, we have used site‐directed mutagenesis to produce gain‐of‐function mutants in NET which demonstrate that Ala279 in the trans‐membrane domain 5 (TM5) and Ser359 in the TM7 of DAT are responsible for the higher sensitivity of DAT to both bupropion and benztropine. Substitution of these two DAT residues into the NET background does not alter the potency of NET‐selective inhibitors, such as desipramine. The results from experiments examining the ability of DAT‐selective inhibitors to displace [3H]nisoxetine binding in NET gain‐of‐function mutants suggest that Ser359 contributes to the initial binding of the inhibitor, and that Ala279 may influence subsequent steps involved in the blockade of translocation. Thus, these studies begin to identify residues that are important for the unique molecular interactions of benztropine and bupropion with the DAT, and that ultimately may contribute to the distinct behavioral actions of these drugs.
Feasibility Study of the Time-variant Functional Connectivity Pattern during an Epileptic Seizure

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by seizures, i.e. abnormal synchronous activity of neurons in the brain. Intracranial ElectroEncephaloGraphy (iEEG) is the recording of brain activity at a high temporal resolution through electrodes placed within different brain regions. Intracranial electrodes are used to access structures deep within the brain and to reveal brain activity which is not displayed in scalp EEG recordings. In order to identify pattern of propagation across brain areas, a connectivity measure named the Adapted Directed Transfer Function (ADTF) has been developed. This measure reveals connections between different regions by exploiting statistical dependencies within multichannel recordings. The ADTF can be derived from the coefficients of a time-variant multivariate autoregressive (TVAR) model fitted to the data. We applied the ADTF to 26 iEEG signals recorded during a subclinical seizure to identify the propagation of electrical activity specific to epilepsy. We showed the feasibility of detecting the propagation pattern during the epileptic seizure. The leading region seen in the pattern was consistent with post-operative results. We proved that connectivity patterns derived from iEEG recordings can provide useful information about seizure propagation and may improve the accuracy of the pre-surgical evaluation in patients affected by refractory epilepsy.
Social Networking Sites and Educational Adaptation in Higher Education: A Case Study of Chinese International Students in New Zealand

This study aims to find out the relationship between the use of SNSs and educational adaptation process of Chinese international students (from China) in New Zealand. Based on interview data, this paper addressed how Chinese international students use SNSs (RenRen, Facebook, etc.) to expand and manage their online social networks to help their adaptation to new educational environment. As a case study of Chinese international students in New Zealand and from the narrative of students, we examined the relationship among educational difficulties, life satisfaction, and the use of SNSs. This study would help in further understanding how and why SNSs can be adopted in higher education to support effective overseas learning experiences.
Making quantum gravity calculable

We describe recent attempts at discretizing canonical quantum gravity in four dimensions in terms of a connection formulation. This includes a general introduction, a comparison between the real and complex connection approach, and a discussion of some open problems. (Contribution to the proceedings of the workshop “Recent mathematical developments in classical and quantum gravity”, Sintra, Portugal, July 1995.)
NON‐BLOCKING SUPERVISORY CONTROL FOR INITIALISED RECTANGULAR AUTOMATA

We consider the problem of supervisory control for a class of rectangular automata and more specifically for compact rectangular automata with uniform rectangular activity, i.e. initialised. The supervisory controller is state feedback and disables discrete‐event transitions in order to solve the non‐blocking forbidden state problem. The non‐blocking problem is defined under both strong and weak conditions. For the latter maximally permissive solutions that are computable on a finite quotient space characterised by language equivalence are derived.
The theoretic center of computer science

In this article we examine computer science in general, and theory and distributed computing in particular. We present a map of the computer science conferences, speculating about the center of computer science. In addition we present some trends and developments. Finally we revisit centrality, wondering about the central actors in computer science. This article is a printed version of a frivolous PODC 2007 business meeting talk, held by the second author. In an attempt to address a broader audience we have extended the content by data about theory conferences and computer science in general. Still, the character of the information remains the same, meaning our investigations should not be taken too seriously.
Targeted High-Throughput Sequencing Identifies Pathogenic Mutations in KCNQ4 in Two Large Chinese Families with Autosomal Dominant Hearing Loss

Autosomal dominant non-syndromic hearing loss (ADNSHL) is highly heterogeneous, among them, KCNQ4 is one of the most frequent disease-causing genes. More than twenty KCNQ4 mutations have been reported, but none of them were detected in Chinese mainland families. In this study, we identified a novel KCNQ4 mutation in a five generation Chinese family with 84 members and a known KCNQ4 mutation in a six generation Chinese family with 66 members. Mutation screening of 30 genes for ADNSHL was performed in the probands from thirty large Chinese families with ADNSHL by targeted region capture and high-throughput sequencing. The candidate variants and the co-segregation of the phenotype were verified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and Sanger sequencing in all ascertained family members. Then we identified a novel KCNQ4 mutation p.W275R in exon 5 and a known KCNQ4 mutation p.G285S in exon 6 in two large Chinese ADNSHL families segregating with post-lingual high frequency-involved and progressive sensorineural hearing loss. This is the first report of KCNQ4 mutation in Chinese mainland families. KCNQ4, a member of voltage-gated potassium channel family, is likely to be a common gene in Chinese patients with ADNSHL. The results also support that the combination of targeted enrichment and high-throughput sequencing is a valuable molecular diagnostic tool for autosomal dominant hereditary deafness.
The Industrial Organization of Rebellion: The Logic of Forced Labor and Child Soldiering

We investigate one of the world’s most pernicious forms of exploitation: child soldiering. Most theories can be captured by a principal-agent model that incorporates punishments, indoctrination, and age-varying productivity. For rebel leaders, we show it is almost always optimal to coerce rather than reward children, and that leaders will tend to forcibly recruit children when punishment and supervision are cheap, when children’s outside options are poor, and when rebel leaders are resource-constrained. To see which mechanisms dominate in practice, we interview and survey former members of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, who provide a cruel natural experiment that reveals how children and adults respond to coercive incentives. The evidence suggests that children are more easily indoctrinated and disoriented than adults, but are less effective guerrillas; hence the optimal targets of coercion are young adolescents. We confirm predications of the model on a new “cross-rebel” dataset and suggest policy solutions.