Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Virtual-Reality-Based Research in Hearing Science: A Platforming Approach

The lack of ecological validity in clinical assessment, as well as the challenge of investigating multimodal sensory processing, remain key challenges in hearing science. Virtual Reality (VR) can support hearing research in these domains by combining experimental control with situational realism. However, the development of VR-based experiments is traditionally highly resource demanding, which places a significant entry barrier for basic and clinical researchers looking to embrace VR as the research tool of choice. The Oticon Medical Virtual Reality (OMVR) experiment platform fast-tracks the creation or adaptation of hearing research experiment templates to be used to explore areas such as binaural spatial hearing, multimodal sensory integration, cognitive hearing behavioral strategies, auditory-visual training, etc. In this paper, the OMVR’s functionalities, architecture, and key elements of implementation are presented, important performance indicators are characterized, and a use-case perceptual evaluation is presented.
Collisions during planetary systems formation

The Moon is believed to have formed from the debris generated by a giant impact. In the canonical impact scenario it is found that the Moon forms predominantly from impactor material. In contrast, the isotopic composition of the two objects match almost perfectly (Young et al., 2016, Science 351, 493-496). Various alternative scenarios were proposed to reconcile the impact model and observational constraints. In this work, we further explore the icy impactor scenario (Reufer et al., 2012, Icarus 221, 296-299). The influence of the thickness of the water ice layer on top of the impactor as well as the pre-impact spin of the proto-Earth are studied. The highest fraction of debris disc originating from the proto-Earth is found when the spin is anti-aligned to the impactor’s trajectory (retrograde rotation). However, discs which are least as massive as the Moon are only found for prograde preimpact rotation. We investigate one specific case that has both a sufficiently massive disc and a high similarity in material origin (of Earth mantle and Moon) for the influence of numerical resolution. The results in terms of disc mass and material origin are consistent within 15 %, while the iron content is more sensitive to a change of resolution. The effects of the initial temperature profile and the material rheology were also investigated for two specific cases. We find only relatively small differences in disc properties.
Adaptation of AI Explanations to Users’ Roles

Surrogate explanations approximate a complex model by training a simpler model over an interpretable space. Among these simpler models, we identify three kinds of surrogate methods: (a) feature-attribution, (b) example-based, and (c) rule-based explanations. Each surrogate approximates the complex model differently, and we hypothesise that this can impact how users interpret the explanation. Despite the numerous calls for introducing explanations for all, no prior work has compared the impact of these surrogates on specific user roles (e.g., domain expert, developer). In this article, we outline a study design to assess the impact of these three surrogate techniques across different user roles.
Representation of political data in Wikidata

Looking at the massive amount of data which is available on the Web, we humans are in need of open knowledge bases that are consistent, complete, and useful. Wikidata, the data management platform for Wikipedia stores all kinds of data. As such, when we are looking for a specific dataset or if we want to answer a question, we could start by looking at Wikidata. In this paper, we are going to analyze all forms of political data on Wikidata, finding out which current representations exist and develop a method which can be used to integrate the most important missing data about political data on Wikidata
Viscoelastic free vibration behavior of nano-scaled beams via finite element nonlocal integral elasticity approach

In this paper, the free-vibration behavior of viscoelastic nano-scaled beams is studied via the finite element (FE) method by implementing the principle of total potential energy and nonlocal integral theory. The formulations are derived based on the Kelvin–Voigt viscoelastic model and Euler–Bernoulli beam theory considering the nonlocal integral theory. The eigenvalue problem of the free vibration is extracted by employing the variational relations. To the best of the authors knowledge it is the first time that the viscoelastic characteristics are implemented in the nonlocal integral FE method to study mechanical behavior of nano-scaled beams. Various boundary conditions can be properly modeled by the current method. Numerical results are compared with literature in order to validate the proposed approach. Then, the effects of nonlocal parameter, viscoelastic parameter, geometrical parameters and different boundary conditions on the complex natural frequencies of the nano-scaled Euler– Bernoulli beams are studied.
Investigating the Role of the Cholesterol Recognition/interaction Amino-acid Consensus Sequence in Follicle Stimulating Hormone Receptor Function and Structure

Human infertility is a complex disorder that can often be attributed to a dysfunction of the endocrine system. Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) is one of many hormones that participate in a complex process in both women and men to regulate normal reproduction. The dysfunction of this hormone and its receptor are some of the many causes of infertility. FSH is secreted by the anterior pituitary and, in women, initiates a cascade of biological events that enable ovulation. FSH carries out its function by binding and activating specific receptors. The FSH receptor (FSHR) is a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) that is located in the cell membrane of target cells in the ovaries and testes. GPCRs often interact with a variety of molecules beyond their ligands including, in some cases, cholesterol in the plasma membrane. The Cholesterol Recognition/Interaction Amino Acid Consensus Sequence (CRAC) is one such binding domain and is represented by the sequence LV-XXXX-Y-XXXXX-K/R. The human FSHR contains a sequence consistent with the CRAC motif in the first intracellular loop L-TTLQ-Y-KLTVP-R. We hypothesized that mutating this domain will negatively affect the signaling of the receptor upon ligand activation. To test this hypothesis tyrosine 375 was mutated to phenylalanine (Y375F) which should render the CRAC inactive. After establishing a cell line stably expressing the mutant receptor, activation of the p44/42 (ERK1/2) pathway was measured. Preliminary data suggest that signaling of the hFSHR-Y375F mutant is decreased relative to the wild-type receptor. As we learn more about this receptor, we continue to gain knowledge about conditions such as infertility. This information can facilitate the development of innovative treatments which can help many families who struggle to conceive.
INVESTIGATING THE GENETIC BASIS OF BONE PLIABILITY IN VARIOUS CICHLID SPECIES

Phenotypic plasticity, an important source of biodiversity, is the ability for an organism with a single genotype to produce myriad phenotypes in response to different environmental stimuli. The genetic mechanisms involved in phenotypic plasticity and their ability to cause evolutionary change remains poorly understood. Here, we experiment with the cichlid feeding apparatus with a focus on the lower jaw, a widely used model to understand rapid evolutionary divergence and phenotypic plasticity. We first demonstrate that changes in the cis-regulatory landscape of DNA can explain differential gene expression of some genes. This finding expands our understanding of the types of molecular mechanisms involved in phenotypic plasticity. We provide further evidence, via qPCR validation, for dynamic expression of a subset of these bone-marker genes over time, thus highlighting the fact that timing is important in plasticity studies. Finally, we show that morphological changes to the feeding apparatus in response to alternate feeding environments arise after the transcriptional response, and are localized to specific structures involved in foraging; the exact same structures that were used for our genetic studies. Evolutionarily, fish facial anatomy is homologous to human facial anatomy. Load-induced developmental plasticity is known to occur in humans and is the reason why dental interventions, such braces, are effective therapies. It is also the reason why impact exercise is an effective treatment for various degenerative bone diseases. These data further the understanding of phenotypic plasticity in fishes and thereby provide a more general understanding of bone health and diseases.
Title: Relative contributions of water level components to extreme water levels along the United States Southeast Atlantic Coast from a regional-scale water level hindcast

: 45 A 38-year hindcast water level product is developed for the United States Southeast Atlantic coastline from the entrance of Chesapeake Bay to the southeast tip of Florida. The water level modelling framework utilized in this study combines a global-scale hydrodynamic model (Global Tide and Surge Model, GTSM-ERA5), a novel ensemble-based tide model, a parameterized wave setup model, and statistical corrections applied to improve modelled water level components. Corrected water level data are found to be skillful, with an RMSE of 13 cm, when compared to observed water level 50 measurement at tide gauge locations. The largest errors in the hindcast are location-based and typically found in the tidal component of the model. Extreme water levels across the region are driven by compound events, in this case referring to combined surge, tide, and wave forcing. However, the relative importance of water level components varies spatially, such that tides are found to be more important in the center of the study region, non-tidal residual water levels to the north, and wave setup in the north and south. Hurricanes drive the most extreme water level events within the study area, but non- 55 hurricane events define the low to mid-level recurrence interval water level events. This study presents a robust analysis of the complex oceanographic factors that drive coastal flood events. This dataset will support a variety of critical coastal research goals including research related to coastal hazards, landscape change, and community risk assessments.
A Comparative Performance Study of Grid-based and Particle-based Fluid Simulation Algorithms

: Simulation of fluids is quite a challenging task because unlike solid objects liquid shows a drastic amount of change per frame hence rendering liquids becomes quite a computationally expensive task. Over the years many new and improved fluid simulation algorithms have been introduced but most of them are fairly complex and put a heavy computational load on the CPU and GPU. In this paper we are going to examine the two most popular fluid simulation algorithms, the lagragian based particle approach and the euler based grid approach. These algorithms are particularly popular because of their simplicity and low computational loads; we will be testing these algorithms by providing real-time interactive workloads to compare their performance.
Endophytic Bacteria Producing Antimicrobial Compounds of Musa balbisiana Colla

This study aims to obtain endophytic bacteria on Banana Hump (Musa Balbisiana Colla), know its ability to produce antimicrobial compounds and determine the identity of endophytic bacteria producing antimicrobial compounds. This research is quantitative descriptive research. Isolation of endophytic bacteria based on streak plate method and activity analysis antimicrobials using the Kirby Bauer method. Identification of endophytic bacteria based on morphological characteristics and molecular. The results showed that there was one type of endophytic bacteria that had the potential to have antibacterial activity hinder Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus with the diameter of the inhibition zone on the test bacteria Eschercia colii.e. 8,10 and on Staphylococcus aureus 7.76mm. Bacterial isolates identified as Enterobacter ronggenkampii are closely related to Enterobacter ronggenkampii strain colony 354 chromosomes with a similarity index of 99.22%.
Bio-inspired geomagnetic navigation method for autonomous underwater vehicle#br#

: This paper presents a bio-inspired geomagnetic navigation method for autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) without using any a priori geomagnetic information. Firstly, the multi-objective search problem is raised. Secondly, the geomagnetic navigation model is established by constructing a cost function. Then, by taking into consideration the biological magneto-taxis movement behavior for the geomagnetic environment stimulus, the multi-objective evolutionary search algorithm is derived to describe the search process. Finally, compared to the state-of-the-art, the proposed method presents better robustness. The simulation results demonstrate the reliability and feasibility of the proposed method.
Reducing Respondent Burden for NCSES Surveys

NCSES survey data are used for a wide variety of research purposes. In order to make these surveys more efficient, we consider additional data sources including other NCSES surveys as well as external administrative data to identify questions that may be shortened or removed by using information from these other sources. We found that citizenship and physical difficulty could be removed for a subset of respondents, and that existing efforts to introduce dependent interviewing showed promise in reducing respondent burden. We also provide a guide on performing similar analyses with linked external data, outlining the steps of evaluating the quality of linkage and consistency of linked items.
Lightweight usable cryptography: a usability evaluation of the Ascon 1.2 family

We present a usability study of the Ascon 1.2 family of cryptographic algorithms. As far as we know, this is the first published experimental evaluation aimed at a cryptographic design (i.e. not a specific API) with the purpose of informing which aspects to standardise. While the results show the general difficulty of choosing and applying cryptographic algorithms, there are some more specific insights. These include the possibility of confusing multiple variants, the relevance of small interfaces, and the desire for higher-level wrapper functions (e.g. for protocols). Overall, many questions are still open, including how usability could be integrated into the design and evaluation of cryptographic algorithms. Our main takeaway is that lightweight usable cryptography is an open research area that deserves greater focus. For the review of NISTIR 7977, the standardisation process of Ascon as a FIPS, and when exploring potential future SPs, the key criterion of usability should be based on realistic user testing and on triangulation from other methods.
Actor-Critic Architectures in Parameterized Action Space

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is a method that combines Reinforcement Learning and Deep Learning. This method is assigned as a goal-oriented algorithm which learn how to reach a complex objective performing actions and receiving evaluated feedbacks from the environment. DRL is applied to solve problems in a large range of applications in domains such video-games, ﬁnance, robotics and many more. These domains are regularly composed by complex environments that contains a large set of features and a continuous action space such the RoboCup Soccer Simulator 2D (RCSS2D), an autonomous agent based simulation to mimic soccer games. For this kind of environments with continuous action space is frequently used a sub-ﬁeld of the DRL: the Actor-Critic algorithms. Actor-Critic technique is one of the most powerful method used in DRL, characterized as an extension of the Policy Gradient method that combine two models which may deliberately share parameters: actor model and critic model. The Actor model perform the policy update and the Critic model updates the value function parameters that deﬁnes the state-value. This combination provides a wide ﬂexibility to deal with the action space to better ﬁt a problem and one of the ways to treat the action space is by parameterizing it. The objective of this work is to evaluate extended Actor-Critic architectures in a parameterized continuous action space using the RCSS2D environment.
IJNU Tamsulosin as an Expulsive Therapy for Lower Ureteric Calculus after Extra Corporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy: A Randomized Controlled Study

Background and Aims: Tamsulosin has been used in several current medical expulsion therapy experiments but the results of studies are variable. Therefore, we conducted a study to evaluate the role of tamsulosin on stone clearance in patients with lower ureteric stone with extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (SWL). Methods: A prospective randomized open label study was performed in 119 patients with single lower ureteric calculus undergoing shock wave lithotripsy. The study group received 0.4 mg tamsulosin daily and control group received hydration and analgesic on demand for a maximum of 30 days. Follow up visits were performed at 1, 2, 3 & 4 weeks after ESWL. Efficacy of tamsulosin was evaluated in term of success rate, time for expulsion of fragment & analgesic requirement. Results: The clearance rate was 93% in tamsulosin group and 90% in control group, when stone size was in the range of 4-7 mm and difference was statistically not significant (p=0.6). When stone size was in the range of 8-12 mm, the clearance was 80% in tamsulosin group and 52% in control group and difference in statisti - cally significant (p=0.021). The mean time to expulsion of the fragments was 12.9 days (±7.5) in tamsulosin group and 14.2days (±7.9) in control group and difference was statistically insignificant (p=0.561). The mean dose of analgesic used in tamsulosin group was 65.83 mg (±48.26) and 116.10 mg (±55) in control group. The difference was statistically significant (p=0.000). Conclusions: Treatment with tamsulosin appears to be beneficial in lower ureteric stone clearance after ESWL, particularly in larger stone with less need of analgesic.
Hard to Survey and Negligible? Institutional Populations in Europe and the Risk of Bias in Surveys Due to Their Exclusion

As of 2011, 1.3% of the European population were living in communal establishments such as retirement and nursing homes, university halls of residence, prisons, or refugee accommodation centers. Their small relative size, and their label as hard to survey are two reasons why many social surveys exclude institutional populations and cover only residents of private households. Using the latest European census data (2011), the present paper provides a quantitative de-scription of these understudied groups with respect to their age, sex, marital status, citizenship, educational attainment, and labor force status. By identifying the cases in which restricting the target population to residents of private households might result in coverage bias, the paper aims to provide a basis for future decisions about the eligibility or ineligibility of institutional populations. Two components of bias are considered: the size of the respective institutional populations and di ff erences in various demographic and socioeconomic variables. The results underline the heterogeneity of institutional populations. Due to the unequal distribution of institutional populations across age groups, I conclude that, to reduce the risk of bias, social surveys should consider extending their target populations to old-age persons living in retirement and nursing homes.
The LSM Design Space and its Read Optimizations

Log-structured merge (LSM) trees have emerged as one of the most commonly used storage-based data structures in modern data systems as they offer high throughput for writes and good utilization of storage space. However, LSM-trees were not originally designed to facilitate efficient reads. Thus, state-of-the-art LSM engines employ numerous optimization techniques to make reads efficient. The goal of this tutorial is to present the fundamental principles of the LSM paradigm along with the various optimization techniques and hybrid designs adopted by LSM engines to accelerate reads.Toward this, we first discuss the basic LSM operations and their access patterns. We then discuss techniques and designs that optimize point and range lookups in LSM-trees: (i) index and (ii) filter data structures, (iii) caching, and (iv) read-friendly data layouts. Next, we present the performance tradeoff between writes and reads, outlining the rich design space of the LSM paradigm and how one can navigate it to improve query performance. We conclude by discussing practical problems and open research challenges. This will be a 1.5-hour tutorial.
Effective governing equations for dual porosity Darcy–Brinkman systems subjected to inhomogeneous body forces and their application to the lymph node

We derive the homogenized governing equations for a double porosity system where the fluid flow within the individual compartments is governed by the coupling between the Darcy and the Darcy–Brinkman equations at the microscale, and are subjected to inhomogeneous body forces. The homogenized macroscale results are obtained by means of the asymptotic homogenization technique and read as a double Darcy differential model with mass exchange between phases. The role of the microstructure is encoded in the effective hydraulic conductivities which are obtained by solving periodic cell problems whose properties are illustrated and compared. We conclude by solving the new model by means of a semi-analytical approach under the assumption of azimuthal axisymmetry to model the movement of fluid within a lymph node.
The Rapid Enumeration of a Mixed Culture of S. cerevisiae & L. plantarum in Beer Using Image-based Cytometry

Mixed cultures are prevalent in the food industry. From sour beer to sourdough bread, mix culture popularity is growing. A number of microbiological mixtures are used in these unique fermenting processes to create distinctive flavor profiles of consumers’ favorite foods. Although mixed cultures seem ubiquitous, they are often not well enumerated. The aim of this thesis was to create a novel rapid image-based cytometry method to enumerate mixed cultures in beer. Imaged-based cytometry can be used to rapidly enumerate mixed microbial cultures, as opposed to traditional plate counting methods that can take days to grow and count. A novel method was developed using the Nexcelom Cellometer X2 (X2) using fluorescent dyes and size exclusion automated counting on a mixed culture containing the microorganisms, lactic acid bacteria and yeast (L. plantarum and S. cerevisiae). Traditional spread plating using MRS and ADPA selective plates were used to validate this new methodology. The enumeration results were not found to be significantly different (P>0.05) when analyzed by ANOVA comparing X2 to traditional plating for log(CFU/mL). The difference between the log(CFU/mL) of the X2 and
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO KNOT THEORY AND THE JONES POLYNOMIAL

This paper introduces knot theory, a branch of topology. We be-gin with the definition of knots in mathematics, knot equivalence, and common types of knots. Then, we discuss the Jones Polynomial as an invariant of knots, with an example of calculating the Jones Polynomial provided. Two results about reduced alternating links are then given, with their applications dis-cussed, as these results can be proven with the knot polynomials. Eventually, we briefly mention the applications of the Jones Polynomials in other fields, including those outside of mathematics.