Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The hand shape recognition of Human Computer Interaction with Artificial Neural Network

The hand gestures used in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) are generally posed by complicated and large amplitude actions of arm /hand. Thus usable HCI instructions are few and HCI efficiency is low. This paper presents new hand shapes and the corresponding recognition system for the HCI with robot or Coordinate Measuring Machine. Using a touchpad to precept the touching of fingers, hand shapes posed to express HCI instructions are defined by the combinations of 2 binary status, i.e. status of touching /detaching on touchpad and status of stretching /retracting over touchpad, of Index, Middle, Ring and Little fingers. Method of extracting the features in hand shape image is presented. Based on Neural Network, a decision binary tree is used in the real-time recognition of the hand shapes. A correctness ratio of about 95% is obtained when implemented by DSP processor in the recognition of 12 hand shapes.
Experimental evidence that extra-pair mating drives asymmetrical introgression of a sexual trait

Theory suggests that traits under positive selection may introgress asymmetrically across a hybrid zone, potentially driven by sexual selection. Two subspecies of the red-backed fairy-wren (Malurus melanocephalus) differ primarily in a sexual signal used in mate choice—red versus orange male back plumage colour—but phylogeographic analyses suggest asymmetrical introgression of red plumage into the genetic background of the orange subspecies. We hypothesized that this asymmetrical introgression may be facilitated by sexual selection if red males have a mating advantage over orange males. We tested this hypothesis with correlational data and a plumage manipulation experiment where we reddened the back plumage of a subset of orange males to mimic males of the red subspecies. There was no correlational evidence of a mating advantage to naturally redder males in this population. Experimentally reddened males sired a similar amount of within-pair young and lost paternity at the same rate as orange males, but they sired significantly more extra-pair young, leading to substantially higher total reproductive success. Thus, we conclude that sexual selection via extra-pair mating is a likely mechanism responsible for the asymmetrical introgression of plumage colour in this system, and is potentially driven by a sensory bias for the red plumage signal.
Indoor position determination using location fingerprinting and vehicle sensor data

In this paper we present a system for position determination of vehicles in indoor areas such as parking garages or underground parking lots. By combining location fingerprinting using Bluetooth signal strengths and relative positioning using vehicle sensor data (speed and yaw rate) in a collective filter arrangement, an ubiquitous and stable vehicle positioning is provided. Hereby, both a Kalman filter and a particle filter were investigated and compared. By further incorporating signals from Global Navigation Satellite Systems in outdoor areas, a seamless outdoor-indoor positioning could be achieved. With the presented techniques, an accuracy of <; 2 m is feasible at a low financial effort.
The Fall and Rise of NimBees

In 2012, the startup Gloin began to develop a new social mobile application, called BeeFun, allowing users to communicate with each other based on their contextual information, i.e., their history, location, preferences, etc. For two years the company invested a great amount of resources to develop the idea, to specify the business plan and to implement the product. In the last phase, seeking funding to launch the product, Gloin was finalist of the 2013 LaunchPad Denmark Business Plan Cup. The finalists won the access to an acceleration program to get funding and launch their products in Denmark. In this process, some flaws in the idea and in the business plan that endangered the project success were detected. In this paper, we detail the process of developing BeeFun, the major failings, the lessons learnt and how Gloin pivoted to develop a new product called nimBees. A product that is currently getting the attention of medium and large enterprises. In addition, some of the barriers that the promoters of the idea, as researchers, had to overcome are also detailed.
CBSC-based pipelined analog-to-digital converters: Power dissipation bound analysis

The comparator-based switched-capacitor (CBSC) technique has been used in low power analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). The objective of this paper is to derive the theoretical minimum power dissipation bound for CBSC-based pipelined ADCs with digital error correction of 1.5 bit/stage. To achieve this, the constituent building blocks whose performance is limited by noise, are examined. The optimum values of the design parameters influencing the power dissipation bound are also investigated including the optimal output ramp rates needed to achieve a given linearity constraint, comparator bias current and delay time. The derived equations are verified through behavioral simulation in MATLAB.
The circulating immunoglobulins involved in protective immunity to the intestinal stage of Nippostrongylus brasiliensis in the rat.

Antisera taken from rats after one, two or three larval infections with Nippostrongylus brasiliensis or after one infection of adult worms were separated by chromatography and the fractions were tested for passive protective activity. Irrespective of the number or type of infections given, protection against the parasite was most frequently obtained with fractions of antisera containing predominantly 7Sγ1-globulin. γM- and γA-globulins sometimes appeared to contribute to protective activity, but γM-globulin was not the major source of protective antibodies in antisera taken after a primary infection either of adult worms or of larvae. 7Sγ2-protective antibodies were found only in a pool of antiserum taken after three infections. Rats were passively protected with antiserum or fractions of antiserum, which were free of reagins and of other identifiable anaphylactic antibodies. It appears that rats can be passively immunized with antisera which do not have anaphylactic activity.
Linking Leadership to Student Learning: Introduction

Leadership matters. At least the evidence of “local” leaders’ effects on student learning—particularly those in formal leadership roles such as principals—is quite compelling. And it matters for no other reason that a great many people want it to matter. When people view leadership as part of the solution, they allow it to influence them. “Followership” is, after all, a voluntary state of mind, and “leadership” is an attribution on the part of those in that state of mind who, however temporarily, allow themselves to be influenced. What prompts people to assume the cloak of followership? In some circles, after all, being anything other than a leader seems almost unpatriotic. In other circles, just using the word follower in one’s writing about leadership produces quite predictable objections from those with egalitarian sentiments at the pristine extreme. And yet leadership and followership fundamentally depend on one another for any meaning at all. The four articles in this special issue all have leadership in their titles, and we view them as studies of leadership. But we could, almost as easily, view them as studies of followership. Perhaps we should have, as they have at least as much to say about the states of followers as the practices of leaders. For example, the article by Wahlstrom and Louis speaks to the nature of teachers’ trust in leaders, and their sense of collective efficacy; this study helps us understand how these teachers’ internal states are influenced by leadership and, in turn, how such internal states influence the instructional practices of teachers. As another example, Leithwood and Jantzi’s article examines the causes and consequences of school principals’ sense of collective efficacy. In this study, school-level “leaders” are conceptualized at least partly as followers in relation to influence exercised by those in district leadership roles.
Modelling science trustworthiness under publish or perish pressure

Scientific publication is immensely important to the scientific endeavour. There is, however, concern that rewarding scientists chiefly on publication creates a perverse incentive, allowing careless and fraudulent conduct to thrive, compounded by the predisposition of top-tier journals towards novel, positive findings rather than investigations confirming null hypothesis. This potentially compounds a reproducibility crisis in several fields, and risks undermining science and public trust in scientific findings. To date, there has been comparatively little modelling on factors that influence science trustworthiness, despite the importance of quantifying the problem. We present a simple phenomenological model with cohorts of diligent, careless and unethical scientists, with funding allocated by published outputs. This analysis suggests that trustworthiness of published science in a given field is influenced by false positive rate, and pressures for positive results. We find decreasing available funding has negative consequences for resulting trustworthiness, and examine strategies to combat propagation of irreproducible science.
Buddy Reading in a Singaporean Primary School

■ Buddy Reading, a peer tutoring programme, is popularly adopted in Singapore schools to increase the reading proficiency of lower primary children who are not reading at age appropriate levels. However, this programme is rarely subjected to systematic evaluation. In view of this, the present study undertakes an evaluation of the programme as it is implemented in a Singaporean primary school. The evaluation brings to the fore some of the shortcomings inherent in the programme and proposes how the training could be enhanced. The final part of the paper evaluates the effects of the newly proposed training programme and concludes with implications for training and research in the area.
Students' Intentions and Social Support as Predictors of Self-Reported Academic Behaviors: A Comparison of First- and Continuing-Generation College Students

The purpose of this analysis was to examine academic intentions, parental support, and peer support as predictors of self-reported academic behaviors among a sample of 329 first- and continuing-generation college freshmen. Regression analyses revealed that different variables predicted academic behaviors for the three groups examined (students whose parents had no college experience, some college experience, or a college degree). Specifically, all three independent variables—intention, parental support, and peer support—were predictive of self-reported academic behavior for students whose parents had at least a bachelor's degree. However, peer support was the only variable predictive of academic behavior for the students whose parents had some college experience and intention was the only significant predictor for first-generation college students.
Do marker‐based paternity assignments favour heterozygous and unrelated males?

Genetic marker‐based parentage analyses are widely applied to studies of natural populations in the fields of evolutionary biology, conservation biology and ecology. When the same markers used in a parentage analysis are used together with the inferred parentage in a downstream analysis, such as the analysis of mate choice in terms of heterozygosity or relatedness, a bias may be incurred because a subset of the genotypes are favoured in parentage assignments or non‐exclusions. A previous simulation study shows that exclusion‐based paternity analyses are biased in favour of heterozygous males, and males less related to the mothers than expected under random mating. In this study, I investigated the biases of genetic paternity analyses achieved by both exclusion‐ and likelihood‐based methods, using both analytical and simulation approaches. It is concluded that while both exclusion‐ and likelihood‐based methods can lead to biased paternity assignments or non‐exclusions in favour of a subset of genotypes, the bias is not consistently towards heterozygous males or males apparently less related to mothers. Both the direction and extent of the bias depend heavily on the allele frequency distribution and the number of markers, the methods used for paternity assignments, and the estimators of relatedness. There exist important differences in the patterns of the biases between exclusion‐ and likelihood‐based paternity analysis methods. It is concluded that the markers, except when they are highly informative to yield accurate paternity assignments or exclusions, should be split into two subsets which are used separately in the paternity and downstream analyses.
Peripheral neuropathy in systemic vasculitides

Purpose of reviewPeripheral nervous system (PNS) involvement is of great diagnostic value in systemic vasculitides, because it occurs frequently and often early during the course of these diseases, despite the supposed blood-nerve barrier that should prevent or at least minimize PNS damage. However, it carries no poor prognostic value in vasculitides. Recent advances have been made in understanding the pathogenetic mechanisms of PNS involvement. Recent findingsVasculitic neuropathy may result from primary or secondary systemic vasculitides, or may be restricted to the PNS, in a form that is now also considered to be a systemic vasculitis. The blood-nerve barrier is not as efficient as the blood-brain barrier. Inflammatory cell infiltration into the vasa nervorum and epineurial arteries leads to ischemic axonal nerve injury and is facilitated by additional breaches in the blood-nerve barrier, induced by proinflammatory cytokines, oxidative stress-derived molecules, and matrix metalloproteinases. Although animal models of myeloperoxidase or, now, proteinase 3-antineutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody-inducing vasculitis have been developed, they do not support a role for antineutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibodies in PNS involvement. Treatment should be chosen based on the other organ involvement and the patient’s general condition. When PNS involvement is isolated, corticosteroids alone should be used as first-line treatment. SummaryApart from the so-called nonsystemic nerve vasculitis, PNS involvement is rarely the sole clinical sign of systemic necrotizing vasculitis, and its association with other typical manifestations is often suggestive of the diagnosis of vasculitis. Herein are summarized recent advances that have clarified but not yet fully elucidated the pathogenesis of peripheral neuropathy in systemic vasculitides, together with the latest clinical findings and therapeutic strategies.
Comparison of Level of NKG2D Ligands between Normal and Tumor Tissue Using Multiplex RT-PCR

The abilities of NKG2D ligands to specifically mark stressed or transformed cells and activate NK cells suggest the possibility that the expression levels of NKG2D ligands in cancers may be helpful to predict the efficacy of NK cell-based cancer immunotherapy. Therefore, a multiplex RT-PCR was developed and used for rapid and simultaneous analysis of the expression level of NKG2D ligands in cancer cells and tissues. With total RNAs isolated from various cancer cell lines, the multiplex RT-PCR revealed various expression patterns of NKG2D ligands. With total tissue RNAs, the gastrointestinal tumors showed consistently increased NKG2D ligands, compared with adjacent normal tissues. However, NKG2D ligands were not always consistently increased in tumor tissues and expression patterns of NKG2D ligands were heterogeneous between patients, especially in breast and lung cancers. In addition, expression patterns of NKG2D ligands were very similar between various paired primary and their multidrug-resistant/metastatic cells, except MCF-7 sublines. These results demonstrated that the multiplex RT-PCR might be a useful diagnostics to detect the expression levels of NKG2D ligands in tissues as well as cells, and suggested that the gastrointestinal tumors might be good candidates for NK cell-based cancer immunotherapy, since it showed significantly higher levels of NKG2D ligands than adjacent normal tissues.
Prevalence of serum neutralizing antibody to serotype 9 rotavirus WI61 in children from South America and central Europe

Neutralizing serum antibody to serotype 9 rotavirus WI61 was detected in 41% of 870 Ecuadorian children and 26% of 140 German children. In both areas an age-related prevalence increase was observed. We identified 11 serum samples from Ecuadorian children which neutralized exclusively serotype 9 rotavirus. Thirteen of 71 (18%) German children hospitalized with serologically defined primary rotavirus gastroenteritis showed a seroconversion to serotype 9 rotavirus; however, in 10 of these 13 patients, the infecting serotype could be identified as serotype 1, 3, or 4. Furthermore, all 13 patients showed fourfold increases in titer to at least one further serotype.
An authentication broker service for secure and confidential EPC

Radio Frequency Identification technology (RFID) has a wide range of potential applications and many successful stories. However, there are certain issues regarding Electronic Product Code (EPC) network architecture and tag-reader security models, such as security, privacy and scalability of the EPC network whilst authenticating RF tags. The EPC network architecture specification has no authentication process to authenticate an RF tag prior to knowing its EPC, but a tag is authenticated at EPC information Service (EPCIS) instead. This may result in the leakage of tag's EPC before its authentication. There is a need of an authentication process in the EPC network so that tag's EPC may only be known once it is successfully authenticated. In this paper we have proposed an authentication broker service for EPC network. A distributed design of the authentication broker service is also discussed.
Improvement of CHO Cell Culture Medium Formulation: Simultaneous Substitution of Glucose and Glutamine

The formulation of the culture medium for a Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell line has been investigated in terms of the simultaneous replacement of glucose and glutamine, the most commonly employed carbon and nitrogen sources, pursuing the objective of achieving a more efficient use of these compounds, simultaneously avoiding the accumulation of lactate and ammonium in the medium. The key factor in this process is the selection of compounds that are slowly metabolized. Among the different compounds studied, galactose and glutamate provide the best results, allowing support of cell growth with an optimal balance between nutrient uptake and cell requirements and the generation of minimal quantities of lactate and ammonium. The attained results also highlight the capacity of the cells to redistribute their metabolism as a response to the changes in medium composition.
Who truly benefits from extracorporeal membrane oxygenation: a call to develop predictive models.

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) has matured considerably from its initial development by John H. Gibbon, MD, in Philadelphia, PA, in 1937.1 Since then, the evolution of perfusion technology (e.g., centrifugal flow pumps and polymethylpentene membrane oxygenators) and cardiac critical care medicine2 have allowed circuits to be miniaturized and have enabled their role in higher acuity of critically ill patients to expand without a decriment in outcomes. Mendiratta and colleagues3 from the University of Arkansas have performed an excellent retrospective review of the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO) Registry.4 In their review of 99 elderly (>65 years of age) patients who underwent ECMO as part of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (E-CPR), they were able to elucidate two key findings: 1) preexisting renal insufficiency is a harbinger of a poor outcome and 2) while E-CPR outcomes in the elderly are not stellar, they appear to be better than conventional CPR. These results bring the question of which patient can most optimally benefit from this advanced resuscitative technology to the forefront. In the current study, Mendiratta et al.3 were able to demonstrate a 22.2% survival to discharge in the elderly population. Given the inherent comorbidities of this population, the practitioners who enroll data in the ELSO Registry are to be commended. Conventional survival to discharge with E-CPR has been reported to be 27%. 5 In evaluating our own data in the E-CPR population at The Ohio State University, we have been able to achieve 57% successful decannulation in the E-CPR setting, with a 29% survival to discharge (unpublished data). From these data, one could crudely predict a 25–30% survival to discharge for E-CPR. This demonstrates room for improvement while patients are supported with ECMO or the need for development of predictive models which would enable more optimum patient selection. We would argue the latter. Other areas of critical care medicine have benefitted from predictive models (e.g., Sepsis-related Organ Failure Assessment). 6 Researchers in the ECMO/E-CPR arena have identified risk factors which can foretell a poor outcome, such as age, preexisting renal insufficiency, disease process, and the need for anticoagulation.3,5,7–9 Although these risk factors may aid in our prognostication to some degree, the initiation of ECMO or its continuation does not currently have a beneficial predictive model (such as that potentially provided by a back propagating artificial neural network). 10 With an ever-expanding eye on process improvement, quality, and resource utilization that has evolved with the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, it is imperative that those practitioners with expertise and belief in the benefits of ECMO develop expanded predictive models of efficacy and survival. As these models evolve, we should call for the expansion of the ELSO Registry to include the data elements to enable their validation nationally and internationally and further improve the outcomes being obtained by ECMO practitioners.
Implications of laboratory tests of condom integrity.

BACKGROUND There is sufficient evidence from Food and Drug Administration laboratory experiments and clinical studies to draw conclusions about the relative importance of holes and breakage to condoms. The laboratory test methods determined penetration of viruses or virus-size microspheres through holes in condoms under conditions that simulated or exaggerated those expected in actual use, and determined the frequency with which condoms might pass virus or microspheres and the amounts of passage in each case. GOALS To summarize and comment on the significance of test results on latex, polyurethane, and natural membrane condoms as barriers to virus passage. STUDY DESIGN Published and unpublished data addressing three distinct concerns were analyzed: (1) passage of virus or microspheres through small holes or pores inherent in the material of "intact" condoms which are undetectable by the standard water leak quality assurance test, (2) passage of virus or microspheres through larger holes in "leaker" condoms detectable by the water leak test but marketed because of the finite acceptable quality level (AQL) of the test, and (3) passage of virus through condoms that break during use. RESULTS Extrapolating to the passage of semen expected during actual use allowed an analysis of the relative importance of breakage and water-leak-detectable or water-leak-undetectable holes. CONCLUSIONS The relative importance of breaks and holes is related to the volume of semen that contains an "infectious dose" of a sexually transmitted disease (STD). When 0.1 mL to 1.0 mL exposures to semen are necessary for disease transmission, the risk during latex condom use primarily results not from holes, but from breakage of condoms. For smaller volumes of semen exposure (0.00001 mL and less), the presence of holes can be as important as breaks. The same qualitative argument pertains to a comparison of "leaker" condoms to the large majority of "intact" condoms.