Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
QT Interval Instability and Variability in Dogs with Hyperadrenocorticism

Hyperadrenocorticism is one of the most common endocrine diseases in dogs. In humans, it is clearly associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular events, but studies in dogs are scarce. To investigate the arrhythmogenic risk of dogs with hyperadrenocorticism, indices of variability and instability of the QT interval were studied in 38 dogs with hyperadrenocorticism and in 12 healthy dogs: variance (QTv), total instability (TI), short-term (STI) and long-term (LTI), and mean (QTm). Except for QTm, all parameters studied were higher in the hyperadrenocorticism group than in the control group. In addition, STI and QTv showed moderate positive correlation with left ventricle wall thickness. To a better understanding on the effect of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis on ventricular repolarization, the hyperadrenocorticism group was subdivided according to the percentage of variation in plasma cortisol concentration (<30.1%; 30.1-60%; >60%) 8 hours after low-dose administration of dexamethasone. There was statistical difference in QTv, TI and LTI indices between the control group and the <30.1% and >60% groups, and in STI index between the control group and the >60% group. There was no statistical difference between sex groups in any of the electrocardiographic parameters studied. This result may indicate that the etiology of hyperadrenocorticism, and its consequent influence on hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis could interfere on the heterogeneity of ventricular repolarization parameters in different ways, especially in the short-term stability; however further studies are necessary to understand the role of cortisol on electrical instability in dogs.
Multi-User Opportunistic Spectrum Access Using Reinforcement Learning

This paper studies the channel exploration problem for the distributed opportunistic spectrum access (D-OSA) system, where multiple secondary users (SUs) sequentially sense multiple licensed channels and utilize one of idle channel. However, channel sensing order can affect the system performance seriously. When using a better sensing order, the SU can find faster a free channel with high quality and the less collisions among SUs can happen. In this paper, we propose a mechanism using reinforcement learning to find dynamically out a sensing order for improving the system performance. In the proposed mechanism, the interactions among SUs are considered. Simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism and the significant improvement of the system performance.
An Update on Semen Physiology, Technologies, and Selection Techniques for the Advancement of In Vitro Equine Embryo Production: Section I

Simple Summary Male fertility is often estimated by simple sperm assessment, and therefore, it is crucial to establish species-specific baselines for normal sperm parameters. In this paper, sperm physiology, function, and common abnormalities in stallions will be reviewed. Abstract As the use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and in vitro embryo production (IVP) expand in the equine industry, it has become necessary to further our understanding of semen physiology as it applies to overall fertility. This segment of our two-section review will focus on normal sperm parameters, beginning with development and extending through the basic morphology of mature spermatozoa, as well as common issues with male factor infertility in IVP. Ultimately, the relevance of sperm parameters to overall male factor fertility in equine IVP will be assessed.
Applying Fuzzy Logic for Optimal Placement of XBOX Kinect Sensors for Industrial Applications

Automated acquisition of sensing data is an active research area in manufacturing domain. A great deal of research work has been focused on automated data acquisitionapplied to various subjects related to manufacturing operations such as safety, performance improvement, monitoring and layout planning. Laser scanners including Time of Flight cameras play a significant role in real time or near real time decision makings in manufacturing automation. To establish an automated sensing system in a work place, enough test data should be available regarding the performance characteristics. This paper investigates the performance of Microsoft XBOX Kinect on spatial modeling in large jobsites, and employs fuzzy logic to find optimal placement of Kinect sensors that gives the best resolution.
Nitrogen Application Increases Soil Organic Carbon And Crop Productivity By Altering Soil Autotrophic Bacterial Community On the Semiarid Loess Plateau

Background and aims Soil autotrophic microorganisms play crucial roles in carbon fixation and crop productivity. However, the information is remains limited to whether and how soil autotrophic microbe mediate SOC pool dynamics and crop productivity.Methods Here, we investigated the effects of the structure and co-occurrence network of soil autotrophic bacterial community on SOC storage and maize yield. A long-term field experiment was conducted with four chemical nitrogen (N) application rates on the semi-arid Loess Plateau, including N application at 0 kg ha–1 (N0), 100 kg ha−1 (N1), 200 kg ha−1 (N2), and 300 kg ha−1 (N3), respectively. Results Our results showed that the N application significantly impacted the structure and co-occurrence network of soil cbbL-carrying bacterial community via changing soil pH, nitrate nitrogen (NO3-N), and soil water content (SWC). The diversity of soil autotrophic bacterial community decreased with the increasing rate of N application. We detected a high abundance of the autotrophic bacterial dominant genera Xanthobacter, Bradyrhizobium, Aminobacter, and Nitrosospira. The co-occurrence network of autotrophic bacteria contained four distinct modules that consisted of closely interconnected microorganisms. Structural equation modeling further indicated that the diversity, composition, and network of autotrophic bacterial community had significant relationships with SOC storage and maize yield.Conclusion Taken together, our results highlight that the soil autotrophic bacterial community may drive carbon fixation SOC accumulation and contribute positively to crop productivity.
Multi-modal emotion recognition using recurrence plots and transfer learning on physiological signals

In this paper we propose to use Recurrence Plots (RP) to generate 2D representations of physiological activity which should be less subject dependent and better suited for non-stationary signals such as EDA. The performance of spectrograms and RPs are compared on two publicly available datasets: AMIGOS and DEAP. Transfer learning is employed by using a pre-trained ResNet-50 model to recognize emotional states (high vs low arousal and high vs low valence) from the two types of representations. Results show that RPs reach a similar performance to spectrograms on periodic signals such as ECG and plethysmography (F1 of 0.76 for valence and 0.74 for arousal on the AMIGOS dataset) while they outperform spectrograms on EDA (F1 of 0.74 for valence and 0.75 for arousal). By combining the two sources of information we were able to reach a F1 of 0.76 for valence and 0.75 for arousal.
Building environmental assessment methods: clarifying intentions

The intentions for, and the thinking behind, the Green Building Challenge (GBC) assessment framework and its development are made explicit. This paper disentangles three separate roles for environmental assessment of buildings (stimulating owners to improve a building's performance, informing decision makers during the design stages and delivering objective measurements of a building's impact on natural systems). The author provides a number of significant lessons from the development exercise and discusses further implications and directions for developing environmental assessment methods for buildings. A distinction is made between ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ agendas and their implications for the future development of building environmental assessment methods. This is essential in order to clarify the many roles and applications demanded of these tools. The considerable practical overlap between the ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ agendas suggests that they can be reconciled within a single tool. ‘Green’ perfo.
Unpacking Non-Dualistic Design: The Soma Design Case

We report on a somaesthetic design workshop and the subsequent analytical work aiming to demystify what is entailed in a non-dualistic design stance on embodied interaction and why a first-person engagement is crucial to its unfoldings. However, as we will uncover through a detailed account of our process, these first-person engagements are deeply entangled with second- and third-person perspectives, sometimes even overlapping. The analysis furthermore reveals some strategies for bridging the body-mind divide by attending to our inner universe and dissolving or traversing dichotomies between inside and outside; individual and social; body and technology. By detailing the creative process, we show how soma design becomes a process of designing with and through kinesthetic experience, in turn letting us confront several dualisms that run like fault lines through HCI’s engagement with embodied interaction.
Effect of Earth Ground and Environment on Body-Centric Communications in the MHz Band

Body area network (BAN) research, which uses the human body as a transmission channel, has recently attracted considerable attention globally. Zimmerman first advocated the idea in 1995. Illustrations of the electric field streamlines around the human body and wearable devices with electrodes were drawn. In the pictures, the electrodes of the wearable devices constitute a closed circuit with the human body and the earth ground. However, analysis of the circuit has not been conducted. In this study, we model the human body shunted to earth ground in a radio anechoic chamber to analyze the electric field strength around it and clarify the effect of earth ground during BAN run time. The results suggest that earth ground has little influence on the human body and wearable devices. Only when the human body is directly grounded, the electric field near the feet area will decrease. The input impedance of the transmitter is approximately the same, and the received open-circuit voltage and current of the receiver are also the same. In addition, we elucidate that stable communications can be established by developing a closed circuit using earth ground as return path. When the external electronic devices and human body are shunted to earth ground, the received open-circuit voltage and current increase.
Improved and compact 0.7 GHz tune-all bandpass filter

A compact tune-all bandpass filter is presented. This electronically tuned filter is based on series-coupled slow-wave resonators. It allows wide simultaneous and continuous tunings of centre frequency (+/-15% around 0.7 GHz) and bandwidth (from 50 to 100 MHz) with insertion loss IL 11 dB. This two-pole bandpass filter exhibits also a very small surface of only 7.3 10^-3 lambda0^2 and a -20 dB stop-band that extends up to 10 GHz.
Development of Control Structure for Hybrid Wind Generators with Active Power Capability

A hierarchical control structure is proposed for hybrid energy systems (HES) which consist of wind energy system (WES) and energy storage system (ESS). The proposed multilevel control structure consists of four blocks: reference generation and mode select, power balancing, control algorithms, and switching control blocks. A high performance power management strategy is used for the system. Also, the proposed system is analyzed as an active power filter (APF) with ability to control the voltage, to compensate the harmonics, and to deliver active power. The HES is designed with parallel DC coupled structure. Simulation results are shown for verification of the theoretical analysis.
Towards Climate Neutrality in Poland by 2050: Assessment of Policy Implications in the Farm Sector

Climate neutrality achievement in the European Union assumes the necessity of efforts and transformations in most economic sectors of its member-states. The farm sector in Poland, being the second largest contributor to the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and in the top fifth of farm sectors in the EU-27 countries, needs to undergo structural and technological transformations to contribute to the climate action goals. The article assesses the potential impacts of Poland’s climate neutrality achievement path on the domestic farm sector in terms of its structure, output, income, and prices of agricultural products. The approach is based on complex economic modelling combining computable general equilibrium (CGE) and optimisation modelling, with the farm sector model consisting of farm, structural, and market modules. While the modelling results cover three GHG emission-reduction scenarios up to 2050, to understand the transformation impact within varying policy approaches, the study for each scenario of farm sector development also outlines three policy options: carbon pricing, forced emission limit, and carbon subsidies. Results in all scenarios and policy options indicate a strong foreseeable impact on agricultural output and prices (mainly livestock production), shifts in the production structure toward crops, as well as changes in farm income along the analysed timeframe.
100 Jahre Forschung in der Betontechnologie ‐ Von der Empirie zur Werkstoffwissenschaft

Einführend werden der Stand der Betontechnologie um die Jahrhunderwende sowie die ersten experimentellen Untersuchungen geschildert. Dann wird auf die frühen Arbeiten eingegangen, welche die Grundlagen für einen gezielten Mischungsentwurf von Beton bildeten. Die Entwicklung der zur Betonherstellung erforderlichen Ausgangsstoffe wird kurz dargestellt. Dann werden einige der wesentlichsten wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten in der Betontechnologie, die während der zweiten Hälfte dieses Jahrhunderts entstanden sind, erläutert. Dazu gehören Untersuchungen über die Mikrostruktur von Zementstein und Beton, über das Bruchverhalten bei Druck‐ oder Zugbeanspruchung sowie über die mechanischen Eigenschaften von Beton und die dazugehörigen Stoffgesetze. Schließlich werden Untersuchungen zu Problemen der Dauerhaftigkeit von Beton sowie des Transports von Flüssigkeiten und Gasen in Beton geschildert. Der abschließende Abschnitt enthält einen kurzen Ausblick auf zukünftige Forschungsaufgaben.
Estimating continuous affect with label uncertainty

Continuous affect estimation is a problem where there is an inherent uncertainty and subjectivity in the labels that accompany data samples – typically, datasets use the average of multiple annotations or self-reporting to obtain ground truth labels. In this work, we propose a method for uncertainty-aware continuous affect estimation, that models explicitly the uncertainty of the ground truth label as a uni-variate Gaussian with mean equal to the ground truth label, and unknown variance. For each sample, the proposed neural network estimates not only the value of the target label (valence and arousal in our case), but also the variance. The network is trained with a loss that is defined as the KL-divergence between the estimation (valence/arousal) and the Gaussian around the ground truth. We show that, in two affect recognition problems with real data, the estimated variances are correlated with measures of uncertainty/error in the labels that are extracted either by considering multiple annotations of the data, or by manually cleaning the dataset.
Sexueller Selbstwert von Trans*Personen: Fragebogenentwicklung und klinische Testung

Zusammenfassung Ziel der Studie In der vorliegenden Studie sollte ein neues Messinstrument zur Erfassung sexuellen Selbstwerts in deutscher Sprache konstruiert und hinsichtlich seiner faktoriellen Struktur, Validität und Reliabilität untersucht werden. Anschließend sollte der sexuelle Selbstwert bei Trans*Personen untersucht werden. Methodik In einem ersten Schritt erfolgte die Konstruktion und Validierung an einer Bevölkerungsstichprobe (N=426; Studie 1, online), es wurden konfirmatorische Faktorenanalyse sowie statische Itemanalyse durchgeführt. In einem zweiten Schritt erfolgte die Ambulanzbefragung von Trans*Personen (N=85; Studie 2) zum sexuellen Selbstwert, Körpererleben sowie psychischen und psychosomatischen Beschwerden, zudem erfolgte ein Vergleich zur Bevölkerungsstichprobe. Ergebnisse Es konnten ein akzeptabler Modellfit und eine gute interne Konsistenz für die finale eindimensionale 8-Item-Lösung der sexuellen Selbstwertskala (SSWS) erreicht werden. Sexueller Selbstwert war in der Normalbevölkerung moderat positiv mit globalem Selbstwert assoziiert. Trans*Personen hatten einen signifikant geringeren sexuellen Selbstwert im Vergleich zur Normalbevölkerung. Bei Trans*Personen zeigten sich die erwarteten Zusammenhänge mit Körpererleben, es fand sich jedoch kein Zusammenhang mit psychischen und psychosomatischen Beschwerden. Schlussfolgerung Die SSWS ist ein erstes deutschsprachiges und geschlechtsneutrales Instrument zur Erfassung sexuellen Selbstwerts und verfügt über gute psychometrische Eigenschaften. Sie erscheint vielversprechend für die Verlaufs- und Erfolgskontrolle der Transitionsbehandlung von Trans*Personen sowie für den Einsatz in der Paar- und Sexualtherapie.
Microfluidic coaxial transmission line and phase shifter

This article presents a microfluidic coaxial transmission line assembly that is realized by weaving together stretchable metallic fibers composed of a liquid‐metal core inside an elastomeric shell. These fibers are woven around a core fiber to create a coaxial assembly. The resulting structure exhibits exceptional stretchability compared to conventional coaxial transmission lines. The mechanical properties of the supporting elastomer and the fluidic properties of the conductors ensure that the characteristic impedance of the transmission line is maintained while stretched. As a result, the system is well suited for applications requiring durable transmission lines and tunable phase shifters (or time‐delay lines). A prototype fluidic coaxial structure is characterized that consists of eutectic gallium indium (EGaIn) encased in an elastomeric poly‐styrene‐(ethylene‐co‐butylene)‐styrene (SEBS). © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:1459–1462, 2014
Manufacture and Performance Test of New Type MR Damper

A new type of small proportion double rod structure magnetorheological(MR) damper was manufactured in this article, and the damper performance test was taken on electro-hydraulic servo system. The results indicate that the damper is not only able to provide a large damping force, but also its adjustable coefficient is high. And the hysteresis curve is still good in a high-frequency vibration, so it has a good stability.
Hybrid sensors using laser targeting

Proposed, to the best of our knowledge, is the first extreme environment wireless all-in-one hybrid temperature plus pressure sensor using a remoted thick single crystal Silicon Carbide chip within a pressurized capsule. Analysis and experiments are reported for the pressure aspect of the sensor for pressures up to 40 atms.
Parental involvement and educational success among vulnerable students in vocational education and training

ABSTRACT Background Parental involvement is positively associated with students’ educational success. However, research shows that levels of involvement and participation vary considerably, depending on parents’ social and economic resources. Understanding more about the kinds of involvement that matter to students themselves is important, as it may help to determine how best to support those from less advantageous backgrounds. Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate which forms of parental involvement students in upper secondary education (age 16–18) who were defined as vulnerable highlight as important for their achievement at school. Method The study was based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews with 25 students in the second year of upper secondary vocational education and training (VET) in Norway. Based on their grades, the students were identified as being at risk of not completing upper secondary education. The majority of the students had an immigrant background and came from families with low socioeconomic resources. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using a reflexive thematic analysis approach. Findings The students acknowledged different forms of parental involvement as a major explanation for their success in school. Five themes were identified by the analysis: social psychological support, supervision of schoolwork, practical support, high expectations and aspirations, and obligation and gratitude towards parents. The students’ narratives reveal different kinds of parental involvement practices that are not restricted to parents who hold higher levels of education or who are familiar with the educational system. In addition, their narratives also reflected their need for encouragement and motivation, their need for practical support in everyday school life, and their appreciation of clearly expressed expectations regarding education. Conclusions The findings from this study contribute to the field by describing the specific forms of parental involvement that matter in the eyes of students identified as vulnerable. Furthermore, the findings emphasise the importance of identifying the particular needs of each student and supporting all parents as empowered participants in their children’s education.
COMMENTS ON "DRIVER BEHAVIOR IN AN EMERGENCY SITUATION IN THE AUTOMATED HIGHWAY SYSTEM"

This article presents a critique to a study which examined driver behavior in an emergency situation in the Automated Highway System (AHS). The author focuses on two issues addressing the driver's monitoring role in emergency situations and the use of a simulator to investigate issues pertaining to driver response. (See PATH Database Record no. 17103 for original study.)
Integrating Prospect Theory and Stackelberg Games to Model Strategic Dyad Behavior of Information Providers and Travelers: Theory and Numerical Simulations

Existing policy models of optimal guidance strategies are typically concerned with single-objective optimization based on reliable forecasts in terms of the consistency between predicted and observed aggregate activity-travel patterns. The interaction and interdependencies between policy objective and individuals have not received much attention. This paper considers how one specific activity schedule choice—namely, the start time of an activity chosen by individual travelers under guidance information—aggregates to form an equilibrium distribution, which in turn influences guidance generation and determines the best possible achievement of the policy objective. These choices are formalized as the outcomes of a Stackelberg game in which a traveler's behavior model is integrated with prospect theory. The properties of the model are examined by using numerical computer simulations. The results of the simulations support the face validity of the formulated model.