Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spasticity assessment system for elbow flexors/extensors: Healthy pilot study

This paper describes initial testing of a spasticity assessment system for passive elbow flexion/extension motions using a robotic manipulator. Quantitative force data was collected from healthy individuals. As repetition and speed were increased, significant differences in measured force were found in a study with a high speeds (n=48), but were not found in a study with a lower speeds (n=52). This result assists clinicians who now possess a baseline of healthy data to which quantitative patient data can be compared. Future developments include contrasting healthy baseline values to clinical trial data from individuals with stroke or acquired brain injury.
An Assessment of the Relationships of Awareness, Attitude, Satisfaction and Organization Support Associated with E‐learning and Organization and Individual Performance

The main objective of the study is to test a model of e‐learning effectiveness. The data were collected from 125 subjects enrolled in the Institute of Banking Studies (IBS) at the State of Kuwait. The study results indicate that attitudes toward e‐learning systems explained a significant portion of variance in satisfaction with the systems. The results indicate also, that both attitudes toward and satisfaction with the e‐learning systems explain a significant portion of the variance in organization and individual performance. The current results indicate the special potency of the attitude toward the e‐learning systems flexibility and relevance in predicting both satisfaction with the systems and performance. The study indicated the need to test causal models and included a discussion of the implications and directions of future research.
Flavonoid-Rich Extract of Paulownia fortunei Flowers Attenuates Diet-Induced Hyperlipidemia, Hepatic Steatosis and Insulin Resistance in Obesity Mice by AMPK Pathway

The flavonoid-rich extract from Paulownia fortunei flowers (EPF) has been reported to prevent obesity and other lipid metabolism disease. However, the mechanism of its protective effects is not yet clear. The objective of this study was to investigate molecular factors involved in the hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects of EPF in obese mice fed a high-fat diet (HFD). Male h ICR (Institute of Cancer Research) mice were fed a HFD containing or not containing the EPF (50 or 100 mg/kg) for eight weeks. EPF reduced body weight gain, lipid accumulation in livers and levels of lipid, glucose and insulin in plasma as well as reduced insulin resistance as compared with the HFD group. EPF significantly decreased serum aminotransferase activity of the HFD group. We observed that EPF administration significantly increased the level of AMP-activated kinase (AMPK) phosphorylation and prevented fat deposits in livers and HepG2 cells, but these effects were blocked by compound C (an AMPK inhibitor). The protective effects of EPF were probably associated with the decrease in HMGCR, SREBP-1c and FAS expressions and the increase in CPT1 and phosphor-IRS-1 expressions. Our results suggest that EPF might be a potential natural candidate for the treatment and/or prevention of overweight and hepatic and metabolic-related alterations induced by HFD.
Large Scale Detection of Irregularities in Accounting Data

In recent years, there have been several large accounting frauds where a company's financial results have been intentionally misrepresented by billions of dollars. In response, regulatory bodies have mandated that auditors perform analytics on detailed financial data with the intent of discovering such misstatements. For a large auditing firm, this may mean analyzing millions of records from thousands of clients. This paper proposes techniques for automatic analysis of company general ledgers on such a large scale, identifying irregularities - which may indicate fraud or just honest errors - for additional review by auditors. These techniques have been implemented in a prototype system, called Sherlock, which combines aspects of both outlier detection and classification. In developing Sherlock, we faced three major challenges: developing an efficient process for obtaining data from many heterogeneous sources, training classifiers with only positive and unlabeled examples, and presenting information to auditors in an easily interpretable manner. In this paper, we describe how we addressed these challenges over the past two years and report on experiments evaluating Sherlock.
Efficient Computation of Moments in Sum-Product Networks

Bayesian online learning algorithms for Sum-Product Networks (SPNs) need to compute moments of model parameters under the one-step update posterior distribution. The best existing method for computing such moments scales quadratically in the size of the SPN, although it scales linearly for trees. We propose a linear-time algorithm that works even when the SPN is a directed acyclic graph (DAG). We achieve this goal by reducing the moment computation problem into a joint inference problem in SPNs and by taking advantage of a special structure of the one-step update posterior distribution: it is a multilinear polynomial with exponentially many monomials, and we can evaluate moments by differentiating. The latter is known as the \emph{differential trick}. We apply the proposed algorithm to develop a linear time assumed density filter (ADF) for SPN parameter learning. As an additional contribution, we conduct extensive experiments comparing seven different online learning algorithms for SPNs on 20 benchmark datasets. The new linear-time ADF method consistently achieves low runtime due to the efficient linear-time algorithm for moment computation; however, we discover that two other methods (CCCP and SMA) typically perform better statistically, while a third (BMM) is comparable to ADF. Interestingly, CCCP can be viewed as implicitly using the same differentiation trick that we make explicit here. The fact that two of the top four fastest methods use this trick suggests that the same trick might find other uses for SPN learning in the future.
Inhibition of Converting Enzyme in Brain Tissue and Cerebrospinal Fluid of Rats Following Chronic Oral Treatment with the Converting Enzyme Inhibitors Ramipril and Hoe 288

A direct central nervous system (CNS)-related component of the cardiovascular actions of converting enzyme (CE) inhibitors will be governed by the ability of these drugs to gain access to the brain. We investigated the inhibitory effect of the two CE inhibitors ramipril and Hoe 288 on CE activity in different brain regions and in the cerebrospinal fluid of rats. One-week oral gavage treatment with ramipril (10 mg/kg/day) and Hoe 288 (10 mg/kg/day) resulted in a marked inhibition of CE activity in the brain cortex (90 and 91% respectively), the hypothalamus (78 and 82% respectively), and in the brainstem (67 and 66% respectively). The complete blockade of plasma CE activity was paralleled by a 84% inhibition of CE activity in cerebrospinal fluid, Both CE inhibitors failed significantly to inhibit CE activity in the striatum. Our results demonstrate that the CE inhibitors Hoe 288 and ramipril were able to pass the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to inhibit central CE activity. The penetration of CE inhibitors into the CNS appears to depend on the lipophilicity of the drugs and on the mode of drug application. The possibility that an inhibition of CE activity in circumventricular organs outside the BBB such as the subfornical organ and the organum vasculosum of the lamina terminalis may be sufficient to explain the central effects of orally applied CE inhibitors is discussed.
Incorporating Domain and Sentiment Supervision in Representation Learning for Domain Adaptation

Domain adaptation aims at learning robust classifiers across domains using labeled data from a source domain. Representation learning methods, which project the original features to a new feature space, have been proved to be quite effective for this task. However, these unsupervised methods neglect the domain information of the input and are not specialized for the classification task. In this work, we address two key factors to guide the representation learning process for domain adaptation of sentiment classification -- one is domain supervision, enforcing the learned representation to better predict the domain of an input, and the other is sentiment supervision which utilizes the source domain sentiment labels to learn sentiment-favorable representations. Experimental results show that these two factors significantly improve the proposed models as expected.
EUROPEAN BRIEFING: Polycentricity in European spatial planning: from an analytical tool to a normative agenda

The notion of polycentricity is gaining widespread currency in both academic and professional debates. It has opened its way in the spatial policy documents of the European Union and member states alike, and has become one of the key components of the integrated spatial development strategy promoted by the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). Whilst polycentricity is increasingly shaping the spatial policy discourses both in the Commission and in member states, the precise meaning of the term has remained elusive. The first two sections of this article aim to unpack the concept of polycentricity, trace its origin and its development and clarify the confusion over its multiple interpretations at various spatial scales. The third section of the article explains how the concept of polycentricity which has traditionally been used as an analytical tool to explain an existing or emerging reality is now increasingly being used to determine that reality. This is based on the analyses of the use of polycentricity within the European spatial planning framework and in particular the ESDP. Here, the article raises a number of questions regarding the promotion of the polycentric urban regions as one of the ESDP's key policy options for a balanced territorial development across Europe.
The World Cup, the Red Devils, and related arguments in Korea

As usual, the World Cup drove many into frenzy. All over the world, people cheered excitedly as they watched the matches being played at one end of Eurasia. The World Cup did not let down its myth of being a ‘world festival’. In fact, it seems that in the Korean case it exerted a greater influence than at any other time. However, in reality, what caught the attention of Koreans was not the World Cup myth: new cultures of watching and cheering the games became a larger issue. A total of over 24 million people crowded the streets to enjoy the World Cup. The ‘Red Devils’ attire and shouts of ‘Dae-han Min-gook (Korea)! ’ swept the country. The so-called ‘Red Devils phenomenon’ became the symbol of the 2002 World Cup. This surprising phenomenon was soon surrounded by many kinds of arguments. Prior to the World Cup, there had been various talks about the World Cup itself.1 Certainly there had been ‘arguments’ about the World Cup. For example in the 2002 Summer issue of Dangdae Bipyung (Criticism Today), on one side one finds strong criticism of the World Cup, saying that ‘the World Cup energy is the nation state energy that satisfies the public’s desires’ (Hwang 2002: 166) while on the other side, there were arguments such as those that suggest ‘football as taste’, saying that ‘the politics of taste is at the center of the criticism of ideology’ (Dongyeon Yi 2002a: 199). These arguments were but an ‘overture’ to what would follow. Until then, it had seemed as if mere recollections would remain after the event. But shortly after the games began everything changed. An unprecedented experience gave birth to a heated argument surrounding the World Cup and, in more general terms, football extended into a full-scale argument about the ‘Red Devils phenomenon’. Discussions were inevitably accompanied by respective analyses, evaluations, and predictions about Korean society. In this respect, like its precursor ten years ago — the New Generation dispute2 — the ‘Red Devils phenomenon’ dispute was a new version of the Korean Society Character Dispute that greeted us in the summer of 2002.3 This new form of dispute was different from the previous dispute primarily in the fact that it generally occurred without specific opponents. Given that it is only the beginning of a new dispute, theses and adversaries will likely become clearer in the future. With this presupposition in mind, this article attempts to summarize the dispute in the following manner. The first question to ponder is whether to view the phenomenon as a ‘festival’, or as ‘madness’. Accordingly, various arguments will be assessed under a framework of ‘festival theories’, and ‘madness theories’. 4 Next, I propose to view each perspective of the ‘Red Devils phenomenon’, not simply as an explanation of the event, but as a process that has practical implications in the ‘progress’ of the society. In conclusion, I will sum up the entire dispute with this question in mind.
The importance of context in understanding biased policing: state patrol traffic citations in Washington State

Several studies have provided evidence that racial profiling on the part of law enforcement agencies in the USA is a widespread problem. In contrast to most extant analyses of biased policing, our multivariate analyses of approximately 1.6 million traffic stops by the Washington State Patrol disaggregate the data from the state level to smaller jurisdictions and examine differences in rates of citation for several minority groups. The analyses reveal that, when racial/ethnic differences in the commission of traffic violations are taken into account, the initial effects of race/ethnicity on the probability of receiving a citation are greatly attenuated.
Identifying Patients at Risk for Obstructive Sleep Apnea in a Primary Care Practice

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine (1) whether our review of systems (ROS) form facilitates identification of sleep complaints; (2) how frequently department physicians investigate these sleep complaints; (3) the prevalence of our family practice patients at increased risk for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA); and (4) how well ROS responses function as diagnostic tests to identify OSA risk. Methods: We used a prospectively collected sample of consecutive adult patients undergoing preventive examinations at 2 family medicine clinics. Patients completed ROS forms and the Berlin Questionnaire to determine OSA risk level. Physicians at only one site used ROS forms during care. Results: Two hundred forty-nine of 382 eligible patients (65%) completed forms and underwent examinations. Thirty-seven percent responded positively to sleep-related ROS questions. Physicians documented 24% of those complaints. ROS form use affected documentation (31% with use vs 5% without; P = .03). Thirty-three percent of all patients had increased OSA risk. Fifty-seven percent of high-risk patients responded affirmatively to an ROS question as opposed to 27% for those at lower risk (P < .001). ROS responses were 57% sensitive and 73% specific for increased OSA risk. Conclusions: Sleep symptoms were common and were recognized significantly more often when our physicians used a ROS form. However, few complaints were investigated. Our current ROS sleep questions are not sufficiently sensitive to identify increased OSA risk. Physicians should prioritize evaluation of sleep dysfunction because of the association with OSA.
Modeling Healthcare System-of-Systems: A Mathematical Programming Approach

Traditional system analysis and design approaches seem insufficient to model healthcare systems, given their complexity, the presence of uncertainty, and scale. To overcome these difficulties, a system-of-systems approach is adopted. In this paper, we present a methodological framework for modeling healthcare systems and devising strategies that improve the health level of a population. The problem is formulated as a nonlinear programming model in which the objective is to optimize the population's health level, appropriately defined, by taking into account several constraints. The resulting policies could improve the sustainability of healthcare systems, and, consequently, the well-being of people and the overall sustainability of corresponding countries.
THE EFFECT OF IMMUNE RESPONSES IN VIRAL INFECTIONS: A MATHEMATICAL MODEL VIEW

To study the effect of immune response in viral infections, a new mathematical model is proposed and analyzed. It describes the interactions between susceptible host cells, infected host cells, free virus, lytic and nonlytic immune response. Using the LaSalle’s invariance principle, we establish conditions for the global stability of equilibria. Uniform persistence is obtained when there is a unique endemic equilibrium. Mathematical analysis and numerical simulations indicate that the basic reproduction number of the virus and immune response reproductive number are sharp threshold parameters to determine outcomes of infection. Lytic and nonlytic antiviral activities play a significant role in the amount of susceptible host cells and immune cells in the endemic steady state. We also present potential applications of the model in clinical practice by introducing antiviral effects of antiviral drugs.
The Dialectics of Dementia: With Particular Reference to Alzheimer's Disease

ABSTRACT A new theory of the dementing process in old age is presented in outline. Its main focus is on the dialectical interplay between neurological and social-psychological factors, with special emphasis on aspects of the latter which deprive a neurologically impaired individual of his or her personhood. The account of dementia so derived is more comprehensive and less deterministic than those which are based on the simpler versions of a ‘medical model’. Also, it opens up the way for a more personal and optimistic view of caregiving.
The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: The role of hashtags

Twitter is a linguistic marketplace (Bourdieu, 1977) in which the processes of self-branding and micro-celebrity (Marwick, 2010) depend on visibility as a means of increasing social and economic gain. Hashtags are a potent resource within this system for promoting the visibility of a Twitter update (and, by implication, the update’s author). This study analyses the frequency, types and grammatical context of hashtags which occurred in a dataset of approximately 92,000 tweets, taken from 100 publically available Twitter accounts, comparing the discourse styles of corporations, celebrity practitioners and ‘ordinary’ Twitter members. The results suggest that practices of self-branding and micro-celebrity operate on a continuum which reflects and reinforces the social and economic hierarchies which exist in offline contexts. Despite claims that hashtags are ‘conversational’, this study suggests that participatory culture in Twitter is not evenly distributed, and that the discourse of celebrity practitioners and corporations exhibits the synthetic personalization (Fairclough, 1989) typical of mainstream media forms of broadcast talk.
Explaining Men's Entry into Female- Concentrated Occupations: Issues of Masculinity and Social Class

This article seeks to add to an understanding of why some men enter female-concentrated occupations (and why the majority do not). Drawing on the results of in-depth interviews with 27 men in a range of occupations, I illustrate and interpret the complex and often contradictory ways in which men approach the notion of working in female-concentrated occupations and examine the impact that this has on their occupational outcomes. The data suggest that different attitudes to female-concentrated work cannot in themselves explain men's presence there. Consequently I explore, with particular reference to social class, the context in which attitudes around gender, work and occupational destinations, are framed. I conclude that men's entry to female-concentrated occupations may best be approached, not as an issue of ‘masculinity’ but as one of social mobility operating within a gendered labour market.
Does Children’s Academic Achievement Improve when Single Mothers Marry?

Promoting marriage, especially among low-income single mothers with children, is increasingly viewed as a promising public policy strategy for improving developmental outcomes for disadvantaged children. Previous research suggests, however, that children’s academic achievement either does not improve or declines when single mothers marry. In this article, the authors argue that previous research may understate the benefits of mothers’ marriages to children from single-parent families because (1) the short-term and long-term developmental consequences of marriage are not adequately distinguished and (2) child and family contexts in which marriage is likely to confer developmental advantages are not differentiated from those that do not. Using multiple waves of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), the authors find that single mothers’ marriages are associated with modest but statistically significant improvements in their children’s academic achievement trajectories. However, only children from more advantaged single-parent families benefit from their mothers’ marriage.
Algorithmic Design of the Globe Wide-Area Location Service

We describe the algorithmic design of a worldwide location service for distributed objects. A distributed object can reside at multiple locations at the same time, and offers a set of addresses to allow client processes to contact it. Objects may be highly mobile like, for example, software agents or Web applets. The proposed location service supports regular updates of an object's set of contact addresses, as well as efficient look-up operations. Our design is based on a worldwide distributed search tree in which addresses are stored at different levels, depending on the migration pattern of the object. By exploiting an object's relative stability with respect to a region, combined with the use of pointer caches, look-up operations can be made highly efficient.
A Practical Calibration Method for Multiple Cameras

In this paper, we propose a practical factorization- and-position based method for multiple cameras calibration. The method yields a simple calibration means for an arbitrary number of linear projective cameras while maintaining the handiness and flexibility of the original method. A freely moving planar pattern as a calibration object at a few different orientations is only required. All the cameras do not have to see this pattern at all orientations, and only reasonable overlap between camera subgroups is necessary. We divide these cameras into groups according to their positions and orientations first, and then calibrate each camera in the world coordinate system of its own group via a factorization-based method. Common view fields of planar pattern are used to estimate the Euclidean transformation between these world coordinate systems and represent all cameras in a same world coordinate system. Both the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of cameras can be obtained in a uniform world coordinate system of accuracy to within a pixel.