jimnoneill/paper-to-field-training huggingface dataset:
Cutaneous Feedback of Fingertip Deformation and Vibration for Palpation in Robotic Surgery

Despite its expected clinical benefits, current teleoperated surgical robots do not provide the surgeon with haptic feedback largely because grounded forces can destabilize the system's closed-loop controller. This paper presents an alternative approach that enables the surgeon to feel fingertip contact deformations and vibrations while guaranteeing the teleoperator's stability. We implemented our cutaneous feedback solution on an Intuitive Surgical da Vinci Standard robot by mounting a SynTouch BioTac tactile sensor to the distal end of a surgical instrument and a custom cutaneous display to the corresponding master controller. As the user probes the remote environment, the contact deformations, dc pressure, and ac pressure (vibrations) sensed by the BioTac are directly mapped to input commands for the cutaneous device's motors using a model-free algorithm based on look-up tables. The cutaneous display continually moves, tilts, and vibrates a flat plate at the operator's fingertip to optimally reproduce the tactile sensations experienced by the BioTac. We tested the proposed approach by having eighteen subjects use the augmented da Vinci robot to palpate a heart model with no haptic feedback, only deformation feedback, and deformation plus vibration feedback. Fingertip deformation feedback significantly improved palpation performance by reducing the task completion time, the pressure exerted on the heart model, and the subject's absolute error in detecting the orientation of the embedded plastic stick. Vibration feedback significantly improved palpation performance only for the seven subjects who dragged the BioTac across the model, rather than pressing straight into it.

Topic: Tactile and Sensory Interactions
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Comparative Study Using Functional and Stabilometric Evaluation of Balance in Elderly Submitted to Conventional Physiotherapy and Wii

Objective: To analyze and compare the benefits and advantages of using the Nintendo® WII console software and conventional physiotherapy for improving the balance in the elderly. Materials and methods: Sixteen elders, divided in 2 groups according to the received treatment (conventional physiotherapy or Wii-based rehabilitation), had their balance evaluated by 4 methods, by using the Berg balance scale, the functional reach, the up and go test, and stabilometry. Results: Berg balance scale scores improved for the Wii-based rehabilitation group. Larger body displacement towards the frontal region was observed in the functional reach test for the participants treated with Wii-based rehabilitation. Decreased time for completing the up and go test was observed for Wii-based rehabilitation. Stabilometric data revealed no significant differences between the two groups or between the different evaluations. Conclusions: We conclude that the Wii-based rehabilitation treatment was more effective in improving balance functional parameters than a more traditional physiotherapy protocol for older adults.

Topic: Balance, Gait, and Falls Prevention
Subfield: Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
&lt;title&gt;Building block concept for optical backplane interconnect systems&lt;/title&gt;

This paper represents the results of a trade study performed under the Optical Backplane Interconnect System contract sponsored by the Navy's Advanced Avionics Subsystems and Technology program. The purpose of this program is to perform development, test, evaluation, and documentation of optical backplane technology suitable for application in next- generation military air platforms.

Topic: Engineering and Test Systems
Subfield: Control and Systems Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Terahertz Radiation via Two-Color Photocurrent Mixing

A transient photocurrent model is developed to explain coherent terahertz emission from ultrafast ionizing air irradiated by femtosecond two-color laser fields. THz power scalability was also examined, resulting in generation of 150 kV/cm field amplitudes. Article not available.

Topic: Terahertz technology and applications
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
1.3 μm, 400 Mbit/s undersea optical repeater sea trial

A sea trial of a 1.3 μm, 400 Mbit/s undersea optical repeater1,2 connected with a 1.3 km-long undersea optical cable was conducted in Sagami Bay at about a 700 m depth in January 1981. Stable performance for the repeater was confirmed, as it withstood such external mechanical forces as heavy tension, water pressure, vibration, shock and extreme temperature change during laying and recovering.

Topic: Mobile Agent-Based Network Management
Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Spatio-temporally controlled transfection of nucleic acid payloads in cell-culture

There is a critical need in emerging areas of high-throughput screening of large molecule libraries during drug development, to transfect multiple molecules precisely into cells in a specific location within a culture. In this study, we report the novel use of a microelectrode array technology to achieve spatio-temporally controlled transfection of siRNA molecules into fibroblasts using the mechanism of electroporation. Optimal electroporation was achieved using cathodic voltage pulses of approximately 4 V and 10 ms duration, with transfection efficiency of approximately 57% and cell viability of 60%. Further development of this technology for gene and RNAi transfection is envisioned to be useful to make significant advances in the field neurogenomics and high-throughput screening.

Topic: Neuroscience and Neural Engineering
Subfield: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Disruption of Embryogenesis Biomarkers: A Critical Issue for Autism Therapeutics

ABSTRACT Recent advancements in the field of autism research have led to significant progress in identifying biomarkers associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This article provides a comprehensive update on the current landscape of biomarkers, encompassing genetic, neurobiological, and behavioral indicators. Genetic studies have identified numerous candidate genes and chromosomal abnormalities linked to ASD, highlighting the heritable nature of the disorder. Neuroimaging techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusion tensor imaging, have revealed distinct patterns of brain connectivity and structural anomalies that correlate with ASD symptoms. Additionally, electrophysiological measures, such as event‐related potentials and electroencephalography, offer insights into the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition and sensory processing in individuals with autism. Emerging research on metabolic and inflammatory biomarkers also shows promise in elucidating the biological pathways involved in ASD. Although these findings provide valuable avenues for early diagnosis and personalized treatment strategies, challenges remain in translating biomarker research into clinical practice. This review emphasizes the need for continued exploration of biomarkers to enhance our understanding of ASD and improve diagnostic accuracy and intervention efficacy for affected individuals.

Topic: Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Identification and control of aircraft dynamics using radial basis function networks

The emergence of neural networks as a promising tool for approximating complex system input-output mappings has generated a great deal of interest in the area of modeling, identification and control of nonlinear dynamical systems. One specific research area that would tremendously benefit from this approach is the area of identification and control of high performance aircraft, especially at high angles of attack. Under those flight conditions, the control task becomes extremely difficult due to added design complexity and hard nonlinearities characterizing the system. In this paper, the authors investigate one type of neural networks, namely radial basis function (RBF) networks, and apply them to the identification and control problems of an aircraft system. The RBF network is used as an on-line approximator of the aircraft pitch dynamics, combined with a nonlinear control law to improve the closed-loop system performance. The results are illustrated through simulations using a nonlinear model of the F-16 aircraft pitch dynamics.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Topic: Control Systems and Identification
Subfield: Control and Systems Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Smoking and alcohol consumption in early pregnancy

SummaryIn a survey of 319 women in early pregnancy 68.6 per cent did not smoke, including 7.5 per cent discontinuing during the pregnancy. Forty-five per cent did not drink alcohol, only 11.2 per cent having been 'habitual non-drinkers' before. Many women seem to be heeding advice on tobacco and alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

Topic: Prenatal Substance Exposure Effects
Subfield: Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Compressed Sensing SAR Imaging with Multilook Processing

Multilook processing is a widely used speckle reduction approach in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging. Conventionally, it is achieved by incoherently summing of some independent low-resolution images formulated from overlapping subbands of the SAR signal. However, in the context of compressive sensing (CS) SAR imaging, where the samples are collected at sub-Nyquist rate, the data spectrum is highly aliased that hinders the direct application of the existing multilook techniques. In this letter, we propose a new CS-SAR imaging method that can realize multilook processing simultaneously during image reconstruction. The main idea is to replace the SAR observation matrix by the inverse of multilook procedures, which is then combined with random sampling matrix to yield a multilook CS-SAR observation model. Then a joint sparse regularization model, considering pixel dependency of subimages, is derived to form multilook images. The suggested SAR imaging method can not only reconstruct sparse scene efficiently below Nyquist rate, but is also able to achieve a comparable reduction of speckles during reconstruction. Simulation results are finally provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Topic: Sparse and Compressive Sensing Techniques
Subfield: Computational Mechanics
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Lysozyme-Responsive Hydrogels of Chitosan-Streptomycin Conjugates for the On-Demand Release of Biofilm-Dispersing Enzymes for the Efficient Eradication of Oral Biofilms

Hydrogels with controlled degradation and sustained antibiofilm activity are promising biomaterials for the treatment of oral infections such as periodontitis or caries. In this article, an <i>in situ</i> forming chitosan-streptomycin hydrogel is developed that can target established bacterial biofilms in response to lysozyme, an enzyme that is overexpressed in saliva during oral infections. When the new hydrogel is applied to simulated oral biofilms, the overexpressed lysozyme degrades the hydrogel and releases chitosan-streptomycin oligosaccharides that can eradicate the biofilm. This work has shown that the coupling of chitosan and streptomycin can have a synergistic effect and that the new hydrogel based on chitosan-streptomycin conjugate can effectively combat biofilms of <i>E. coli</i>, <i>S. aureus</i>, and <i>P. aeruginosa</i> formed <i>in vitro</i> achieving a significant reduction in the biomass of the biofilm and a substantial reduction in the population of viable bacteria in established biofilms. Finally, the CS-Str hydrogel loaded with biofilm-disrupting enzymes, in particular, DNase I and/or DspB, showed a significantly increased ability to reduce the biofilm biomass of <i>P. aeruginosa</i> and <i>S. aureus</i> (by over 84% and up to 92%, respectively), resulting in a drastic reduction in cell viability, which fell below 4% for <i>P. aeruginosa</i> and below 5% for <i>S. aureus</i>.

Topic: Advanced Drug Delivery Systems
Subfield: Pharmaceutical Science
Field: Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics
Domain: Life Sciences
Image Categorization Using Local Probabilistic Descriptors

Image categorization involves the well known difficulties with different visual appearances of a single object, but introduces also the problem of within-category variation. This within-category variation makes highly distinctive local descriptors less appropriate for categorization. In this paper we propose a family of local image descriptors, called probabilistic patch descriptors (PPDs). PPDs encode the appearance of image fragments as well as their variability within a category. PPDs extend the usual local descriptors by modelling also the variance of the descriptors' elements, e.g. pixels or bins in a histogram. We apply PPDs to image categorization by using machine learning where the features are the matching scores between images and PPDs. We experiment with two variants of PPDs that are based on complementary local descriptors. An interesting observation is that combining the two PPD variants improves categorization accuracy. Experiments indicate benefits of modelling the within-category variation and show good robustness with respect to noise.

Topic: Advanced Image and Video Retrieval Techniques
Subfield: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Neuroprotective Effect of Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor-1 Antagonist in the Rat Model of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

<title>Abstract</title> <bold>Background:</bold> Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) antagonists are known for their neuroprotective effects. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the possible protective effects of PAI-1 antagonists in a rat mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) model.<bold>Method:</bold> Sprague Dawley male rats were grouped as sham (n=7), TBI (n=9), TBI + PAI-1 antagonist (5 and 10 mg/kg TM5441 and TM5484; n=6-7). Under anesthesia, TBI was induced by dropping a metal 300-gram weight from a height of 1 meter on the skull. Before and 24-hour after trauma neurological examination, tail suspension, Y-maze, novel object recognition tests were performed. Twenty-four hours after TBI, the rats were decapitated and activities of myeloperoxidase, nitric oxide release, luminol- and lucigenin-enhanced chemiluminescence were measured. Also, interleukin-1b, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor, interleukin-10, tumor growth factor-b, caspase-3, cleaved caspase-3, and PAI levels were measured with the ELISA method in the brain tissue. Brain injury was graded histopathologically following hematoxylin-eosin staining. Western blot and immunohistochemical investigation for low-density lipoprotein receptor, matrix metalloproteinase-3 and nuclear factor-kB were also performed. Data were analyzed using GraphPad Prism 8.0 (GraphPad Software, San Diego, CA, USA) and expressed as means ± SEM. Values of p &lt; 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant.<bold>Results: </bold>Higher levels of myeloperoxidase activity in the TBI group (p&lt;0.05) were found to be suppressed in 5 and 10 mg/kg TM5441 treatment groups (p&lt;0.05-p&lt;0.01). The tail suspension test score was increased in the TBI group (p&lt;0.001), and decreased in all treatment groups (p&lt;0.05-0.001). The histologic damage score was increased statistically significantly in the cortex, dentate gyrus, and CA3 regions in the TBI group (p&lt;0.01-0.001), decreased in the treatment groups in the cortex and dentate gyrus (p&lt;0.05-0.001). <bold>Conclusion: </bold>PAI antagonists, especially TM5441, has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties against mild TBI in the acute period. Behavioral test results were also improved after PAI antagonist treatment after mild TBI.

Topic: Traumatic Brain Injury and Neurovascular Disturbances
Subfield: Neurology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Object, subject and recipient of philosophical teaching: a theoretical reflection

In this paper, philosophical teaching is subjected to questions regarding the elements that characterize it, namely what is taught, who is taught and who is taught. Thus was born a theoretical reflection on three basic concepts, namely philosophy, the subject and the other. Through the suggestions of great thinkers, primarily the Heidegger of Being and Time, but also Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Deleuze and Levinas, possible definitions of the aforementioned concepts are proposed.
Philosophy is thus considered in a static sense, as a direct path to knowledge, and in a dynamic sense, as an ever-renewing practice. As for the “who”, once it is established that, by nature or ontic necessity, every man tends to know, the subject capable of teaching philosophy to others is defined. This can be either the simple scholar of philosophy or the real philosopher. The difference between the two is configured as follows: the first deals only with the knowledge of already traced paths, the second traces new ones. The recipient of philosophical teaching, on the other hand, is configured as an alterity to which the teaching subjectivity must relate. Here, too, we arrive at a double definition, namely the student as a simple acquaintance, whose active component is limited to the reception of the contents, and the student as a practitioner, who experiments with various methods and gets involved in the theory.
Finally, possible configurations are outlined on the basis of these three pairs of concepts, configurations which, in turn, become multiple in singular realities.

Topic: Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Understanding the Effectiveness of Conversation Pals Program

This study evaluated the Conversation Pals program initiated by the Rinker Center for International Programs which connected the level 3 Chinese students in the Intensive English Institute (IEI) and the American students enrolled in Chinese 201 to raise the awareness of target language and culture through a series of activities designed by their instructors. Through this study we wanted to learn how this program can be mutually beneficial to both groups of learners and help overcome some of the language and culture barriers to communication. Findings of Session 1 evaluation showed that the participants increased their level of confidence, as well as target language and culture awareness while developing a friendship with their conversation partner.

Topic: Family and Disability Support Research
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Na&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;‑Driven Nucleation of NaYF&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;:Yb,Er\nNanocrystals and Effect of Temperature on Their Structural\nTransformations and Luminescent Properties

Ultrasmall\npure hexagonal phase NaYF&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;:Yb,Er is successfully\nprepared via the solvothermal method. The upconversion (UC) luminescence\nof hexagonal phase NaYF&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;:Yb,Er nanocrystals is ten times\nstronger than that of cubic phase nanocrystals with the same size\nof 6 nm. XRD results reveal that heating above 673 K leads to conversion\nof the hexagonal phase to the high-temperature cubic phase, whereas\nthe cubic nanocrystals undergo phase transformation from normal cubic\nat room temperature to hexagonal at 673 K and further to high-temperature\ncubic above 773 K. The hexagonal nanocrystals exhibit emission enhancement\nafter heat treatment up to 573 K. Further heating above 773 K induces\na decreasing trend in emission due to the phase transition to the\nhigh-temperature cubic phase. The cubic phase exhibits decreasing\nluminescence with temperature due to strong cross relaxation and then\nincreasing luminescence above the temperature of 673 K due to the\nhexagonal phase transformation. The luminescent properties of both\nthe normal cubic phase and high-temperature cubic phase indicate that\ndifferent crystal fields exist in these two phases due to the rearrangement\nof ligands around Er&lt;sup&gt;3+&lt;/sup&gt; at high temperature.

Topic: Luminescence Properties of Advanced Materials
Subfield: Materials Chemistry
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Polarimetric target matrix decompositions and the 'Karhunen-Loeve expansion'

This contribution is concerned with polarimetric target matrix decomposition theorems for incoherent backscattering from distributed targets described by complex random 2/spl times/2 Sinclair matrices. The polarimetric covariance matrix concept is used to establish connections between the target decomposition theorems of Cloude and Barnes-Holm and the classical Karhunen-Loeve expansion of discrete random processes.

Topic: Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Applications and Techniques
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Avoidance of biological contaminants through sight, smell and touch in chimpanzees

Avoiding biological contaminants is a well-known manifestation of the adaptive system of disgust. In theory, animals evolved with such a system to prevent pathogen and parasite infection. Bodily products are human-universal disgust elicitors, but whether they also elicit avoidance behaviour in non-human primates has yet to be tested. Here, we report experimental evidence that potential exposure to biological contaminants (faeces, blood, semen), as perceived via multiple sensory modalities (visual, olfactory, tactile), might influence feeding decisions in chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes troglodytes )—our closest phylogenetic relatives. Although somewhat mixed, our results do show increased latencies to feed, tendencies to maintain greater distances from contaminants and/or outright refusals to consume food in test versus control conditions. Overall, these findings are consistent with the parasite avoidance theory of disgust, although the presence of biological contaminants did not preclude feeding entirely. The avoidance behaviours observed hint at the origins of disgust in humans, and further comparative research is now needed.

Topic: Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences