Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
When Sharing Economy Meets IoT

Air pollution is a serious global issue impacting public health and social economy. In particular, exposure to small particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less in diameter (PM2.5) can cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and cancer. Fine-grained urban air quality monitoring is crucial yet difficult to achieve. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of an ambient environment aware system, namely UbiAir, which can support fine-grained urban air quality monitoring through mobile crowdsensing on a bike-sharing system. We have built specific IoT box configured with multiple pollutant sensors and attached on shared bikes to sample micro-scale air quality data in the monitoring space that is split by a scalable grid structure. Both hardware and software data calibration methods are exploited in UbiAir to make the sampled data reliable. Then, we use Bayesian compressive sensing (BCS) as an inference model that leverages the calibrated samples to recover data points without direct measurements and reconstruct an accurate air quality map covering the entire monitoring space. In addition, red envelope based incentive schemes and differential rewarding strategies have been designed in UbiAir, and an adaptive BCS algorithm is proposed to deploy the red envelopes at the most informative positions to facilitate data sampling and inference. We have tested our system on campus with over 100k data measurements collected by 36 students through 18 days. Our real-world experiments show that UbiAir is a light-weight, low-cost, accurate and scalable system for fine-grained air quality monitoring, as compared with other solutions.
Fine-Grained Air Pollution Inference with Mobile Sensing Systems

Air pollution is a global health threat. Except static official air quality stations, mobile sensing systems are deployed for urban air pollution monitoring to achieve larger sensing coverage and greater sampling granularity. However, the data sparsity and irregularity also bring great challenges for pollution map recovery. To address these problems, we propose a deep autoencoder framework based inference algorithm. Under the framework, a partially observed pollution map formed by the irregular samples are input into the model, then an encoder and a decoder work together to recover the entire pollution map. Inside the decoder, we adopt a convolutional long short-term memory (ConvLSTM) model by revealing its physical interpretation with an atmospheric dispersion model, and further present a weather-related ConvLSTM to enable quasi real-time applications. To evaluate our algorithm, a half-year data collection was deployed with a real-world system on a coastal area including the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city in north China. With the resolution of 500 m x 500 m x 1 h, our offline method is proved to have high robustness against low sampling coverage and accidental sensor errors, obtaining 14.9% performance improvement over existing methods. Our quasi real-time model better captures the spatiotemporal dependencies in the pollution map with unevenly distributed samples than other real-time approaches, obtaining 4.2% error reduction.
Collaborative comic-based digital storytelling with primary school children

This work explores how comic-based digital storytelling can support primary school children in reflecting on situations involving conflict in the classroom. In particular, we focus on investigating three specific aspects: (1) the potential of digital story composition conducted collaboratively or individually, (2) the children's perception on the use of digital storytelling for reflecting on conflicts that might arise in class and, (3) the teachers' experience of introducing a digital tool for collaborative storytelling and comics composition in an educational context. In this paper, we explored these aspects by developing a case study. A class of 12 children and 2 teachers explore the use of a digital tool, named Communics, aimed at creating digital narratives individually and collaboratively. The results show that digital narratives created from collaborative storytelling are longer, more structured, and richer with meaning compared to stories from individual work. Moreover, it emerged that children prefer to work collaboratively, even if it meant compromising, going slower and waiting for their turn. Finally, teachers appreciated the collaborative use of Communics, and in particular, the turn-based feature as children can practice the narrative re-elaboration with a peer while waiting for their turn.
What do atoms feel?: understanding forces and energy in chemical bonding through the ELI-Chem environment

We developed and explored four degrees of bodily engagement - video, mouse, joystick and haptic - to support chemistry students in grasping the attraction-repulsion forces and energy changes involved in chemical bonding. These topics are difficult to grasp as there are no analogues from everyday life for opposing forces happening simultaneously. Our theoretical framework is based on embodied learning theory by relating conceptual learning to bodily experiences. The study uses quantitative methods with 48 high-school students in a pretest-intervention-posttest design. Findings showed an increase in accuracy and a decrease in response time in all conditions. Only the haptic condition showed a significantly larger increase in accuracy, however, not a corresponding decrease in response-time compared to other conditions. This study highlights the states in which embodied learning uniquely contributes to understanding: absence of prior embodied experience, learning about a nonvisual concept related to forces, and a high congruence with the concept learned.
"Whom would you like to talk with?": exploring conversational agents for children's linguistic assessment

The dramatic increment of communication impairments among children increases the demand for intensive, highly accessible and low-cost interventions as well as new assessment and therapeutic tools. Our research aims at exploring the use of Conversational Agents (CAs) to support linguistic assessment and training among children with language impairment. One of the open research issues in this arena concerns the identification of the most appropriate form of "embodiment" of the CA for children to interact with. To this end, we evaluated the linguistic performance of 14 neuro-typical children and 3 children with language impairment comparing different CAs - physical object and virtual character - with "traditional" human interaction. Based on our analysis, we identify insights for the design of CA: the physicality does influence the performance of linguistic tasks for children with linguistic impairment. In addition, children seem to show a preference for the physical CA and perceived it as smarter than the virtual one.
Exploring accessible programming with educators and visually impaired children

Previous attempts to make block-based programming accessible to visually impaired children have mostly focused on audio-based challenges, leaving aside spatial constructs, commonly used in learning settings. We sought to understand the qualities and flaws of current programming environments in terms of accessibility in educational settings. We report on a focus group with IT and special needs educators, where they discussed a variety of programming environments for children, identifying their merits, barriers and opportunities. We then conducted a workshop with 7 visually impaired children where they experimented with a bespoke tangible robot-programming environment. Video recordings of such activity were analyzed with educators to discuss children's experiences and emergent behaviours. We contribute with a set of qualities that programming environments should have to be inclusive to children with different visual abilities, insights for the design of situated classroom activities, and evidence that inclusive tangible robot-based programming is worth pursuing.
Not on any map: co-designing a meaningful bespoke technology with a child with profound learning difficulties

We present a case study of co-designing digital technology that offers positive and meaningful experiences with and for a child with profound learning difficulties and his family. We combine Method Stories and Participatory Evaluation to capture the process of engaging with Archie, a seven year old boy affected by brain damage, in performing independently an activity he enjoys and in the learning of communication skills. Our co-design process led to the creation of "Not On Any Map", an interactive physical device comprised of a custom made box, smart buttons and an Android application. Participatory evaluation with Archie showed that he was highly engaged with the technology, giving him more agency with an overall positive impact on his life and that of his direct family. We thus contribute an outline of an approach to co-designing bespoke technology, and present accounts of interaction in which a non-verbal child with profound learning difficulties can convey meaning through actions and joint attention. These findings open up new spaces for rethinking the function of Augmentative and Alternative Communication system and shape new directions for co-design in this context.
Effects of Different LVEF Assessed by Echocardiography and CMR on the Diagnosis and Therapeutic Decisions of Cardiovascular Diseases

Aims The impact of different left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) assessed by echocardiography (EC) and cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) on clinical diagnosis and management that could be critical in clinical practice remains unclear. This study investigated this impact for patients who underwent both exams in a real-world clinical practice. Methods 500 patients who underwent CMR and two-dimensional EC were retrospectively included in present study. EC-measured LVEF and CMR-measured LVEF were compared. A 50% cut-off of LVEF was chosen to assess the effect of the difference between these two modalities on disease diagnosis, and a 35% cut-off was chosen for disease management, respectively. For those patients who received device therapy or coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), the study compared the LVEF between EC and CMR with the current guideline for therapy recommendation. Results EC-LVEF and CMR-LVEF were positively correlated, but EC-LVEF was significantly larger than CMR-LVEF (P < 0.001). Three patient groups were examined: (I) CMR-LVEF ≥ 50%, (II) 35% < CMR-LVEF < 50%, and (III) CMR-LVEF ≤ 35%. Overall, 139 of 500 patients showed inconsistent measures. There were more inconsistent measures between the two modalities in group III than group I (41.6% for group III vs. 4.1% for group I). In patients who received device therapy or CABG, 97.6% of the CMR-measured LVEF were consistent with the guideline, but only 61.0% consistent EC-measured LVEF. Conclusion For patients with lower LVEF and planning to receive device therapy or cardiac surgery, it should be cautious to applying the recommended cut-off values to CMR-measured LVEF because its inconsistency with EC-measured LVEF.
Flow Cytometric Pattern of TCRVδ Subtype Expression Rapidly Identifies γδT Cell Lymphoma

Background: γδT cell lymphoma (γδ TCL) is a class of hematopoietic malignancy that expresses the γδ T cell receptor (TCR) with a low incidence. Determining the clonal proliferation of γδT cells is important for the diagnosis of such malignancies. Few studies have used flow cytometry to detect VδTCR and its subtypes (Vδ1 and Vδ2) at the protein level, although it is a practical method for determining the neoplastic γδT cells. Methods: A TCRVδ-based 10-color protocol was designed for the detection of malignant proliferation of γδT subtype cells by multiparameter flow cytometry, and the diagnostic results were compared with the gene rearrangement results. Results: All 19 cases of γδ TCL were positive for cluster of differentiation 3 (CD3) and TCR γδ and presented with abnormal distribution patterns of Vδ1 and Vδ2, of which 16 of the 19 cases showed a restricted Vδ1 staining pattern and the remaining three cases lacked the expression of either Vδ1 or Vδ2. Among the 10 normal controls and 11 patients with reactively higher CD4 and CD8 double-negative ratio, the percentage of Vδ2 positive events (range: 16.4–99.0%) was significantly higher than that of Vδ1 (range: 0–50.5%; p < 0.0001), and all cases had a normal Vδ distribution pattern. To detect clonality, there was no difference in the detection rate between the TCRVδ analysis and the gene scanning techniques (p = 1.000) with a high degree of coincidence (Kappa = 0.850, p < 0.001). The heteroduplex analysis was less sensitive than the other methods but was more specific (100%) than the gene scanning techniques, and the TCRVδ subtype analysis had the highest sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value. Compared with molecular methods, immunophenotyping is able to distinguish the T cell lineage. Conclusion: The γδT panel, based on the TCRVδ antibody by flow cytometry, could be advantageous for the rapid identification of suspected γδTCL.
SEMA3A and IGSF10 Are Novel Contributors to Combined Pituitary Hormone Deficiency (CPHD)

Background: The mutation frequencies of pituitary transcription factors genes in patients with combined pituitary hormone deficiencies (CPHD) vary substantially between populations. However, apart from PROP1 the mutation rate of other genes is low and for almost half of the patients with CPHD the routine sequencing of known genes is unsuccessful in the identification of genetic causes. Methods: A cohort of 66 sporadic and nine familial CPHD cases (80 patients in total) were subjected to initial testing of the genes PROP1, POU1F1, LHX3, LHX4, and HESX1 using a targeted gene panel and MLPA. In patients who tested negative, a whole exome sequencing approach was employed. Results: In nine of the familial cases and 32 of the sporadic patients mutations in the PROP1 gene were found (the common pathogenic variants included c.301_302delAG and c.150delA). Mutations were also found in genes so far not related directly to CPHD. A unique homozygous and clinically relevant variant was identified in the SEMA3A gene, which may contribute to neural development and his phenotypic spectrum including short stature and isolated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (IHH). Another pathogenic variant p.A1672T was found in the IGSF10 gene reported to be responsible for delayed puberty and neuronal migration during embryogenesis. Several suspected novel but predicted benign variants were also identified for the CHD7, WDR11 and FGF17 genes. Conclusion: Although PROP1 defects account for a majority of CPHD patients, identification of rare, less frequent variants constitutes a big challenge. Multiple genetic factors responsible for CPHD are still awaiting discovery and therefore the usage of efficient genomic tools (i.e., whole exome sequencing) will further broaden our knowledge regarding pituitary development and function.
Genetic Structure of the Norwegian Parastagonospora nodorum Population

The necrotrophic fungal pathogen Parastagonospora nodorum causes Septoria nodorum blotch (SNB), which is one of the dominating leaf blotch diseases of wheat in Norway. A total of 165 P. nodorum isolates were collected from three wheat growing regions in Norway from 2015 to 2017. These isolates, as well as nine isolates from other countries, were analyzed for genetic variation using 20 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Genetic analysis of the isolate collection indicated that the P. nodorum pathogen population infecting Norwegian spring and winter wheat underwent regular sexual reproduction and exhibited a high level of genetic diversity, with no genetic subdivisions between sampled locations, years or host cultivars. A high frequency of the presence of necrotrophic effector (NE) gene SnToxA was found in Norwegian P. nodorum isolates compared to other parts of Europe, and we hypothesize that the SnToxA gene is the major virulence factor among the three known P. nodorum NE genes (SnToxA, SnTox1, and SnTox3) in the Norwegian pathogen population. While the importance of SNB has declined in much of Europe, Norway has remained as a P. nodorum hotspot, likely due at least in part to local adaptation of the pathogen population to ToxA sensitive Norwegian spring wheat cultivars.
Do Animals Engage Greater Social Attention in Autism? An Eye Tracking Analysis

Background Visual atypicalities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are a well documented phenomenon, beginning as early as 2–6 months of age and manifesting in a significantly decreased attention to the eyes, direct gaze and socially salient information. Early emerging neurobiological deficits in perceiving social stimuli as rewarding or its active avoidance due to the anxiety it entails have been widely purported as potential reasons for this atypicality. Parallel research evidence also points to the significant benefits of animal presence for reducing social anxiety and enhancing social interaction in children with autism. While atypicality in social attention in ASD has been widely substantiated, whether this atypicality persists equally across species types or is confined to humans has not been a key focus of research insofar. Methods We attempted a comprehensive examination of the differences in visual attention to static images of human and animal faces (40 images; 20 human faces and 20 animal faces) among children with ASD using an eye tracking paradigm. 44 children (ASD n = 21; TD n = 23) participated in the study (10,362 valid observations) across five regions of interest (left eye, right eye, eye region, face and screen). Results Results obtained revealed significantly greater social attention across human and animal stimuli in typical controls when compared to children with ASD. However in children with ASD, a significantly greater attention allocation was seen to animal faces and eye region and lesser attention to the animal mouth when compared to human faces, indicative of a clear attentional preference to socially salient regions of animal stimuli. The positive attentional bias toward animals was also seen in terms of a significantly greater visual attention to direct gaze in animal images. Conclusion Our results suggest the possibility that atypicalities in social attention in ASD may not be uniform across species. It adds to the current neural and biomarker evidence base of the potentially greater social reward processing and lesser social anxiety underlying animal stimuli as compared to human stimuli in children with ASD.
The Cardiorespiratory Network in Healthy First-Degree Relatives of Schizophrenic Patients

Impaired heart rate- and respiratory regulatory processes as a sign of an autonomic dysfunction seems to be obviously present in patients suffering from schizophrenia. Since the linear and non-linear couplings within the cardiorespiratory system with respiration as an important homeostatic control mechanism are only partially investigated so far for those subjects, we aimed to characterize instantaneous cardiorespiratory couplings by quantifying the casual interaction between heart rate (HR) and respiration (RESP). Therefore, we investigated causal linear and non-linear cardiorespiratory couplings of 23 patients suffering from schizophrenia (SZO), 20 healthy first-degree relatives (REL) and 23 healthy subjects, who were age-gender matched (CON). From all participants’ heart rate (HR) and respirations (respiratory frequency, RESP) were investigated for 30 min under resting conditions. The results revealed highly significant increased HR, reduced HR variability, increased respiration rates and impaired cardiorespiratory couplings in SZO in comparison to CON. SZO were revealed bidirectional couplings, with respiration as the driver (RESP → HR), and with weaker linear and non-linear coupling strengths when RESP influencing HR (RESP → HR) and with stronger linear and non-linear coupling strengths when HR influencing RESP (HR → RESP). For REL we found only significant increased HR and only slightly reduced cardiorespiratory couplings compared to CON. These findings clearly pointing to an underlying disease-inherent genetic component of the cardiac system for SZO and REL, and those respiratory alterations are only clearly present in SZO seem to be connected to their mental emotional states.
RIPK3: A New Player in Renal Fibrosis

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is the end result of a plethora of renal insults, including repeated episodes of acute or toxic kidney injury, glomerular, or diabetic kidney disease. It affects a large number of the population worldwide, resulting in significant personal morbidity and mortality and economic cost to the community. Hence it is appropriate to focus on treatment strategies that interrupt the development of kidney fibrosis, the end result of all forms of CKD, in addition to upstream factors that may be specific to certain diseases. However, the current clinical approach to prevent or manage renal fibrosis remains unsatisfactory. The rising importance of receptor-interacting serine/threonine-protein kinase (RIPK) 3 in the inflammatory response and TGF-β1 signaling is increasingly recognized. We discuss here the biological functions of RIPK3 and its role in the development of renal fibrosis.
Sexual Abuse in Adolescents Is Associated With Atypically Increased Responsiveness Within Regions Implicated in Self-Referential and Emotional Processing to Approaching Animate Threats

Childhood sexual abuse is associated with significant subsequent pathology and neurodevelopmental disruption. In particular, childhood sexual abuse has been associated with heightened threat sensitivity. However, little work has directly investigated this issue. In this study, we examine the association of childhood sexual abuse to neural and behavioral responses to looming, threatening face stimuli. The study involved 23 adolescents with significant past sexual abuse and 24 comparison individuals matched on IQ, age, and sex. Participants were scanned during a looming threat task that involved negative and neutral, human faces and animals that appeared to either loom toward or recede from the participant. We found that adolescents who had been previously subjected to sexual abuse, relative to comparison adolescents, showed increased neural responses to threatening looming stimuli in regions including rostral and superior frontal gyrus as well as posterior cingulate gyrus. In addition, they were significantly more slowed by looming stimuli, particularly if these were human faces, than adolescents who had not been exposed. These data demonstrate that prior sexual abuse was associated with heightened neural responsiveness to looming threats in a series of regions beyond the amygdala. These data are interpreted within models of rostromedial frontal and posterior cingulate cortices that stress their role in self-referential emotional processing and emotional maintenance.