Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Proposed Computer-Vision Based Upper-Limb Rehabilitation & Evaluation Suite

Hand function impairment is a common consequence of stroke, requiring continuous monitoring and kinematic evaluations to assess motor recovery progress. The Sollerman Hand Function Test (SHT) and the Box and Block Test (BBT) are some essential assessment tools for evaluating patients’ ability to perform everyday activities. However, the need for physical presence of a therapist and the use of specialized materials makes the process time-consuming and dependent on the availability of clinical resources. This paper focuses on the development of a computer vision based upper-limb rehabilitation suite that includes virtual alternatives to traditional sub-tests found in the SHT, along with a digital version of the Box and Block Test, that do not require extra hardware equipment. Following a concise overview of existing research methodologies, we thoroughly examine and showcase our implemented solution while also addressing pertinent challenges and constraints. Finally, usability issues of the applications and necessary adjustments, are also discussed.
A Methodology Aimed to Foster Collaboration Skills by using Educational Robotics

Numerous scholars and researchers frequently express that educational robotics holds great potential for skills development. However, the true groundbreaking impact of educational robotics can only be realized when it is paired with appropriate pedagogical methodologies and techniques. The objective of this research is to integrate pedagogical theories into a framework that facilitates the growth of collaboration skills through the utilization of educational robotics. After, almost three and a half years of work, one pilot and two case studies were implemented within formal school settings, this research yielded encouraging tangible results. This work summarizes the important findings of this research and attempts to discuss the future development of a stand-alone measurement tool for assessing students’ collaboration skills at any given time within a primary school educational context for students between 11 and 12 years old.
Automatic Quality Assessment of Wikipedia Articles—A Systematic Literature Review

Wikipedia is the world’s largest online encyclopedia, but maintaining article quality through collaboration is challenging. Wikipedia designed a quality scale, but with such a manual assessment process, many articles remain unassessed. We review existing methods for automatically measuring the quality of Wikipedia articles, identifying and comparing machine learning algorithms, article features, quality metrics, and used datasets, examining 149distinct studies, and exploring commonalities and gaps in them. The literature is extensive, and the approaches follow past technological trends. However, machine learning is still not widely used by Wikipedia, and we hope that our analysis helps future researchers change that reality.
Pseudo-haptic and Self-haptic Feedback During VR Text Entry

The use of virtual reality (VR) equipment is becoming increasingly common in people’s daily lives concerning a variety of applications and utilities. Text entry in the VR environment has always been a challenge and a main subject of research in HCI, especially when it comes to human-centered and user-friendly interfaces and implementations. To assist occasional text entry on small VR keyboards without specialised sensing equipment or external devices, we compare a single-finger method relying on pseudo-haptic feedback, and a novel bimanual approach that exploits the self-haptic feedback method. In a user study (n=24), we find that both methods have comparable performance but also distinct advantages and disadvantages, demonstrating good learnability and promising prospects for further refinement.
An Augmented Likelihood Approach for the Discrete Proportional Hazards Model Using Auxiliary and Validated Outcome Data – with Application to HCHS/SOL Study

In large epidemiologic studies, self-reported outcomes are often used to record disease status more frequently than by gold standard diagnostic tests alone. While selfreported disease outcomes are easier to obtain than diagnostic test results, they are often prone to error. There has recently been interest in using error-prone, auxiliary outcomes to improve the efficiency of inference for discrete time-to-event analyses. We have developed a new augmented likelihood approach that incorporates auxiliary data into the analysis of gold standard time-to-event outcome, which can be considered when self-reported outcomes are available in addition to a gold standard endpoint. We
Understanding the Concurrent Enrollment Instructor Credentialing Cliff from the Instructors’ Perspective: A Qualitative Study Utilizing Principal-Agent Theory

ABSTRACT A credentialing standard clarification brought forth by the Higher Learning Commission could result in the elimination of approximately half of the liberal arts concurrent enrollment instructors in Indiana, Minnesota, and other locations under HLC accreditation. Concurrent enrollment instructors who were affected by this evolution in credentialing and needed to complete additional coursework to retain their eligibility to instruct concurrent enrollment courses were interviewed for this research. Using the lens of principal-agent theory, the authors share the reasoning, factors, and commonalities behind the findings as to why concurrent enrollment instructors did or did not complete the required coursework before the upcoming credentialing deadline to maintain their eligibility as a concurrent enrollment instructor. Implications for the field and recommendations for policy changes further research are offered. PLAN LANGUAGE SUMMARY One of the foundational blocks of concurrent enrollment (CE) programming are the high school teachers who are simultaneously college instructors, also known as CE instructors, in the classroom. However, a clarification and update to CE liberal arts credentialing standards set to come into effect in 2025, which requires many liberal arts CEinstructors to take additional graduate level coursework in their subject area, has the potential to disrupt CE programming in high schools. The loss of CE instructors and a reduction of CE programming would negatively impact students and instructors, and, even more broadly, negatively impact communities and states. We found that instructors who were not close to retirement were more likely to complete the additional coursework and maintain their CE credentials if their school administration, or a school administration who would hire them as a future CE instructor, was willing to increase CE instructor salaries compared to their teacher base pay. Increases in pay were viewed by instructors as the main avenue a school administration could recognize the additional work that goes into becoming a CE instructor by a high school teacher. Those who did not complete the additional coursework most often cited a lack of encouragement by their school district and not seeing the possibility of a return on their investment of time and energy to complete additional graduate coursework. With these findings and school administrators, higher education policymakers, and state policymakers in mind, financial incentives and policies school districts and state agencies could implement and offer to CE instructors to increase the supply of CE instructors are then discussed.
Systematic functional analysis of the Com pilus in Streptococcus sanguinis: a minimalistic type 4 filament dedicated to DNA uptake in monoderm bacteria

ABSTRACT Type 4 filaments (T4F) are a superfamily of versatile nanomachines, ubiquitous in prokaryotes, which use conserved multi-protein machineries to assemble and operate filamentous polymers of type 4 pilins. In the best-studied T4F, these machineries are complex, which has posed challenges to understanding the mechanisms of filament assembly and their multiple functions. Here, we report the systematic functional analysis of the Com pilus, a widespread T4F mediating DNA uptake during natural transformation in monoderm bacteria. Using Streptococcus sanguinis, we show that Com pili are bona fide type 4 pili (T4P), representing a new pilus sub-type. We show that with only eight components necessary for pilus assembly and functioning—all “core” proteins universally conserved in this superfamily—the Com pilus epitomizes a minimalistic T4F. We further demonstrate that core T4F components are sufficient for filament assembly. Paradoxically, akin to the more elaborate T4F, the Com pilus contains four minor pilins forming a complex, probably tip-located. Our results have global implications for T4F and make the Com pilus a model for elucidating fundamental processes underpinning filament assembly. IMPORTANCE Type 4 filaments (T4F) are nanomachines ubiquitous in prokaryotes, centered on filamentous polymers of type 4 pilins. T4F are exceptionally versatile and widespread virulence factors in bacterial pathogens. The mechanisms of filament assembly and the many functions they facilitate remain poorly understood because of the complexity of T4F machineries. This hinders the development of anti-T4F drugs. The significance of our research lies in characterizing the simplest known T4F—the Com pilus that mediates DNA uptake in competent monoderm bacteria—and showing that four protein components universally conserved in T4F are sufficient for filament assembly. The Com pilus becomes a model for elucidating the mechanisms of T4F assembly. Type 4 filaments (T4F) are nanomachines ubiquitous in prokaryotes, centered on filamentous polymers of type 4 pilins. T4F are exceptionally versatile and widespread virulence factors in bacterial pathogens. The mechanisms of filament assembly and the many functions they facilitate remain poorly understood because of the complexity of T4F machineries. This hinders the development of anti-T4F drugs. The significance of our research lies in characterizing the simplest known T4F—the Com pilus that mediates DNA uptake in competent monoderm bacteria—and showing that four protein components universally conserved in T4F are sufficient for filament assembly. The Com pilus becomes a model for elucidating the mechanisms of T4F assembly.
Evolutionary fingerprints of EMT in pancreatic cancers

Mesenchymal plasticity has been extensively described in advanced and metastatic epithelial cancers; however, its functional role in malignant progression, metastatic dissemination and therapy response is controversial. More importantly, the role of epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) and cell plasticity in tumor heterogeneity, clonal selection and clonal evolution is poorly understood. Functionally, our work clarifies the contribution of EMT to malignant progression and metastasis in pancreatic cancer. We leveraged ad hoc somatic mosaic genome engineering, lineage tracing and ablation technologies and dynamic genetic reporters to trace and ablate tumor-specific lineages along the phenotypic spectrum of epithelial to mesenchymal plasticity. The experimental evidences clarify the essential contribution of mesenchymal lineages to pancreatic cancer evolution and metastatic dissemination. Spatial genomic analysis combined with single cell transcriptomic and epigenomic profiling of epithelial and mesenchymal lineages reveals that EMT promotes with the emergence of chromosomal instability (CIN). Specifically tumor lineages with mesenchymal features display highly conserved patterns of genomic evolution including complex structural genomic rearrangements and chromotriptic events. Genetic ablation of mesenchymal lineages robustly abolished these mutational processes and evolutionary patterns, as confirmed by cross species analysis of pancreatic and other human epithelial cancers. Mechanistically, we discovered that malignant cells with mesenchymal features display increased chromatin accessibility, particularly in the pericentromeric and centromeric regions, which in turn results in delayed mitosis and catastrophic cell division. Therefore, EMT favors the emergence of high-fitness tumor cells, strongly supporting the concept of a cell-state, lineage-restricted patterns of evolution, where cancer cell sub-clonal speciation is propagated to progenies only through restricted functional compartments. Restraining those evolutionary routes through genetic ablation of clones capable of mesenchymal plasticity and extinction of the derived lineages completely abrogates the malignant potential of one of the most aggressive form of human cancer.
The prophylactic value of TNF-α inhibitors against retinal cell apoptosis and optic nerve axon loss after corneal surgery or trauma

Background and Purpose Late secondary glaucoma is an often-severe complication after acute events like anterior segment surgery, trauma, infection, etc. TNF-α is a major mediator that is rapidly upregulated, diffusing also to the retina and causes apoptosis of the ganglion cells and degeneration of their optic nerve axons (mediating steps to glaucomatous damage). Anti-TNF-α antibodies are in animals very effective in protecting the retinal cells and the optic nerve—and might therefore be useful prophylactically against secondary glaucoma in future such patients.Here we evaluate 1) toxicity and 2) efficacy of two TNF-α inhibitors (adalimumab and infliximab), in rabbits by subconjunctival administration. Methods For drug toxicity, animals with normal, unburned corneas were injected with adalimumab (0.4, 4, or 40 mg), or infliximab (1, 10, or 100 mg). For drug efficacy, other animals were subjected to alkali burn before such injection, or steroids (for control). The rabbits were evaluated clinically with slit lamp and photography, electroretinography, optical coherence tomography, and intraocular pressure manometry. A sub-set of eyes were stained ex vivo after 3 days for retinal cell apoptosis (TUNEL). In other experiments the optic nerves were evaluated by paraphenylenediamine staining after 50 or 90 days. Loss of retinal cells and optic nerve degeneration were quantified. Results Subconjunctival administration of 0.4 mg or 4.0 mg adalimumab were well tolerated, whereas 40.0 mg was toxic to the retina. 1, 10, or 100 mg infliximab were also well tolerated.Analysis of the optic nerve axons after 50 days confirmed the safety of 4.0 mg adalimumab and of 100 mg infliximab. For efficacy, 4.0 mg adalimumab subconjunctivally in 0.08 mL provided practically full protection against retinal cell apoptosis 3 days following alkali burn, and infliximab 100 mg only slightly less. At 90 days following burn injury, control optic nerves showed about 50% axon loss as compared to 8% in the adalimumab treatment group. Conclusions Subconjunctival injection of 4.0 mg adalimumab in rabbits shows no eye toxicity and provides excellent neuroprotection, both short (3 days) and long-term (90 days). Ourtotal accumulated data from several of our studies, combined with the present paper, suggest that corneal injuries, including surgery, might benefit from routine administration of anti-TNF-α biologics to reduce inflammation and future secondary glaucoma.
Pangenome databases provide superior host removal and mycobacteria classification from clinical metagenomic data

Background Culture-free real-time sequencing of clinical metagenomic samples promises both rapid pathogen detection and antimicrobial resistance profiling. However, this approach introduces the risk of patient DNA leakage. To mitigate this risk, we need near-comprehensive removal of human DNA sequence at the point of sequencing, typically involving use of resource-constrained devices. Existing benchmarks have largely focused on use of standardised databases and largely ignored the computational requirements of depletion pipelines as well as the impact of human genome diversity. Results We benchmarked host removal pipelines on simulated Illumina and Nanopore metagenomic samples. We found that construction of a custom kraken database containing diverse human genomes results in the best balance of accuracy and computational resource usage. In addition, we benchmarked pipelines using kraken and minimap2 for taxonomic classification of Mycobacterium reads using standard and custom databases. With a database representative of the Mycobacterium genus, both tools obtained near-perfect precision and recall for classification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Computational efficiency of these custom databases was again superior to most standard approaches, allowing them to be executed on a laptop device. Conclusions Nanopore sequencing and a custom kraken human database with a diversity of genomes leads to superior host read removal from simulated metagenomic samples while being executable on a laptop. In addition, constructing a taxon-specific database provides excellent taxonomic read assignment while keeping runtime and memory low. We make all customised databases and pipelines freely available.
Verfeinerte Theorie der elektrothermischen Kälteerzeugung

Forty years ago E. Altenkirch had developed a theory concerning the use of the electrothermic Peltier effect for refrigerating purposes. This theory is too much simplified in comparison with the practical difficulties and the present authors give a more detailed calculation here. First they consider the influence of non cylindric forms of the thermoelements. Secondly the new calculations demonstrate the great influence even of small contact resistances on the maximal temperature diminuition and efficiency of electrothermic cooling plants. In conclusion the authors discuss the diminuition of the practical chances of the electrothermic cooling method from the standpoint of the new detailed theory.
Optimizing redundancy design for chip-multiprocessors for flexible utility functions

Yield of chip-multiprocessors (CMP) can be improved by adding spares to the design. The optimal spare configuration has previously been derived for certain evaluation metrics, such as yield per area, performance-averaged yield, and so on. However, all previous approaches are limited to the scenario where only those chips which have the full-configuration (i.e., have n working processors, where n is the number of processors in the CMP 's specifications) can be sold. In the meantime, yield problems have forced vendors of high-volume CMPs to sell chips with different numbers of working processors. The purpose of this paper is to extend our recent framework for the optimal redundancy design to systematically capture such flexibilities. We first define utility function for CMPs in terms of two functions: (i) the number-of-processors-binning (NPB) function, which captures the range of the number of (enabled) working processors over which a chip can be sold, and (ii) the value function, which captures how the value of a chip to the user depends upon the number of processors enabled in the chip. We use case studies to identify the relationships between utility functions and optimal spare configurations. Then we extend our branch and bound algorithm and incorporate a dynamic programming approach to develop the first framework for optimal and ε-optimal (i.e., within ε of optimal, typically at much lower area overhead) redundancy designs for different utility functions. We demonstrate that even in an era of high defect density which leads to extremely low yield, we are able to combine approaches in a way that provide figure of merit that is up to 83.8% of that of the ideal case, i.e., for a process with zero defect density.
Novel Methods for Multi-ancestry Polygenic Prediction and their Evaluations in 3.7 Million Individuals of Diverse Ancestry

Polygenic risk scores are becoming increasingly predictive of complex traits, but subpar performance in non-European populations raises concerns about their potential clinical applications. We develop a powerful and scalable method to calculate PRS using GWAS summary statistics from multi-ancestry training samples by integrating multiple techniques, including clumping and thresholding, empirical Bayes and super learning. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method and a variety of alternatives using large-scale simulated GWAS on ~19 million common variants and large 23andMe Inc. datasets, including up to 800K individuals from four non-European populations, across seven complex traits. Results show that the proposed method can substantially improve the performance of PRS in non-European populations relative to simple alternatives and has comparable or superior performance relative to a recent method that requires a higher order of computational time. Further, our simulation studies provide novel insights to sample size requirements and the effect of SNP density on multi-ancestry risk prediction.
A multiscale spatiotemporal model 1 including a switch from aerobic to 2 anaerobic metabolism reproduces 3 succession in the early infant gut 4 microbiota

The human intestinal microbiota starts to form immediately after birth, 12 and is important for the health of the host. During the ﬁrst days facultatively anaero- 13 bic bacterial species generally dominate, such as Enterobacteriaceae. These are suc- 14 ceeded by strictly anaerobic species, particularly Biﬁdobacterium species. An early 15 transition to Biﬁdobacterium species is associated with health beneﬁts: for example, 16 Biﬁdobacterium species repress growth of pathogenic competitors and modulate the 17 immune response. Succession to Biﬁdobacterium is thought to be due to consumption 18 of intracolonic oxygen present in newborns by facultative anaerobes, including Enter- 19 obacteriaceae. To study if oxygen depletion suﬃces for the transition to Biﬁdobac- 20 terium species, here we introduce a multiscale mathematical model that considers 21 metabolism, spatial bacterial population dynamics and cross-feeding. Using publicly 22 available metabolic network data from the AGORA collection, the Biﬁdobacterium species, explaining the observed variety of microbial composition and 42 demonstrating the use of the model for hypothesis generation. The framework al- 43 lows us to test a variety of controlling factors, including intestinal mixing and transit 44 time. Future versions will also include detailed modeling of oligosaccharide and mucin 45 metabolism. 46
Low-Frequency Oscillation Analysis of VSM-Based VSC-HVDC Systems Based on the Five-Dimensional Impedance Stability Criterion

—Virtual Synchronous Machines (VSMs)-based high voltage DC (HVDC) systems enhance the inertia of the power system. However, the dynamic interactions between the VSM-based rectifier station, the inverter station, and the grid could induce the system oscillation, which has been investigated in this paper. At first, the hybrid AC/DC impedance models of the VSMs considering the coupling between the AC and DC dynamics are established. Then, the relationships between the DC impedance, dq -frame impedance, and the hybrid AC/DC impedance are presented. It is found that the DC impedance of the VSM-based inverter station and the d-d channel impedance of the dq -frame impedance of the rectifier station behave as negative resistors in the low-frequency range. Moreover, a five-dimension impedance stability criterion based on the hybrid AC/DC impedance and generalized inverse Nyquist criterion is proposed to assess the system stability. The analysis results show that the low-frequency oscillation occurs when the grid SCR of the rectifier station is small. Finally, the simulation and experimental results verify the impedance models and the stability criterion.