Why and how FOSS scripting languages are important at school and at home

Скриптові мови ВПЗ на кшалт оболонки Unix, Perl й Python — дуже продуктивні, гнучкі і потужні інструменти програмування для усіх. Вони набагато легше вивчаються та розгортаються на будь-якій операційній системі, аніж програми на компільованих мовах, таких як Сі або Сі++, і все ж вони можуть автоматизувати чи значно прискорити багато втомливої комп'ютерної діяльності у будь-якій області повсякденних обчислень.FOSS scripting languages like Unix shells, Perl and Python are extremely productive, flexible and powerful programming tools for everybody. They are much easier to learn and deploy on any operating system than programs in compiled languages like C or C++, and yet they can automate or greatly speed up many tedious computer activities in any area of daily computing

The Open Data, Open Society report

Цей звіт є першим результатом науково-дослідного проекту про відкритість державних даних в місцевих адміністраціях ЄС. Повний звіт був завершений у жовтні 2010 року, випущений під ліцензією Creative Commons CC-BY та може бути вільно завантажений з веб-сайту проекту DIME 2 або Школи Св’ятої Анни. Доповідь також повністю перевидана на http://stop.zona-m.net 3, розділена на окремі сторінки з можливістю коментування анонімними читачами для того, щоб отримати якомога більше зворотного зв'язку та обговорення кожної окремої частини (але спочатку зпогодженням умов читачами!). Це повідомлення містить тільки вступ до цього.This report is the first output of a research project about openness of public data in EU local administrations. The full report was finished in October 2010, is released under a Creative Commons cc-by license and can be freely downloaded from the web site of the DIME project 2 or from Sant’Anna school. The report is also integrally republished on http://stop.zona-m.net 3, split in separate pages with comments open to anonymous readers, in order to facilitate as much as possible feedback and discussion on each single part (but please do check the notes to readers first!). This report only contains the introduction about this

New Trends in Tinnitus Management

Tinnitus is a perception of sound in absence of sound stimulation. Tinnitus in many cases cannot be eliminated by conventional medical treatment with drugs or surgery. Some people who begin to notice tinnitus, whether spontaneous or induced by noise, trauma or other insult, will experience spontaneous resolution, but many patients will have persistent tinnitus. For some of them, tinnitus sensation will be joined by tinnitus suffering, with many adverse effects like anxiety, depression and sleep disorders. For these tinnitus sufferers the psychological and acoustic approach proposed by the Tinnitus Retraining Therapy and Acoustic Desensitization Protocol may be helpful. Periodically new treatments are suggested like low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation and sequential phase shift sound cancellation treatment based on the frequency and loudness matching of the tinnitus. The aim of this work is to review modern considerations for the treatment of tinnitus

Machine-learning-based Prediction of Gait Events from EMG in Cerebral Palsy Children

Machine-learning techniques are suitably employed for gait-event prediction from only surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals in control subjects during walking. Nevertheless, a reference approach is not available in cerebral-palsy hemiplegic children, likely due to the large variability of foot-floor contacts. This study is designed to investigate a machine-learning-based approach, specifically developed to binary classify gait events and to predict heel-strike (HS) and toe-off (TO) timing from sEMG signals in hemiplegic-child walking. To this objective, sEMG signals are acquired from five hemiplegic-leg muscles in nearly 2500 strides from 20 hemiplegic children, acknowledged as Winters' group 1 and 2. sEMG signals, segmented in overlapping windows of 600 samples (pace = 5 samples), are used to train a multi-layer perceptron model. Intra-subject and inter-subject experimental settings are tested. The best-performing intra-subject approach is able to provide in the hemiplegic population a mean classification accuracy () of 0.97±0.01 and a suitable prediction of HS and TO events, in terms of average mean absolute error (MAE, 14.8±3.2 ms for HS and 17.6±4.2 ms for TO) and F1-score (0.95±0.03 for HS and 0.92±0.07 for TO). These results outperform previous sEMG-based attempts in cerebral-palsy populations and are comparable with outcomes achieved by reference approaches in control populations. In conclusion, the findings of the study prove the feasibility of neural networks in predicting the two main gait events using surface EMG signals, also in condition of high variability of the signal to predict as in hemiplegic cerebral palsy

Variability of Muscular Recruitment in Hemiplegic Walking Assessed by EMG Analysis

Adaptive variability during walking is typical of child motor development. It has been reported that neurological disorders could affect this physiological phenomenon. The present work is designed to assess the adaptive variability of muscular recruitment during hemiplegic walking and to detect possible changes compared to control populations. In the attempt of limiting the complexity of computational procedure, the easy-to-measure coecient of variation (CV) index is adopted to assess surface electromyography (sEMG) variability. The target population includes 34 Winters’ type I and II hemiplegic children (H-group). Two further healthy populations, 34 age-matched children (C-group) and 34 young adults (A-group), are involved as controls. Results show a significant decrease (p < 0.05) of mean CV for gastrocnemius lateralis (GL) in H-group compared to both C-group (15% reduction) and A-group (35% reduction). Reductions of mean CV are detected also for tibialis anterior (TA) in H-group compared to C-group (7% reduction, p > 0.05) and A-group (15% reduction, p < 0.05). Lower CVs indicate a decreased intra-subject variability of ankle-muscle activity compared to controls. Novel contribution of the study is twofold: (1) To propose a CV-based approach for an easy-to-compute assessment of sEMG variability in hemiplegic children, useful in different experimental environments and different clinical purposes; (2) to provide a quantitative assessment of the reduction of intra-subject variability of ankle-muscle activity in mild-hemiplegic children compared to controls (children and adults), suggesting that hemiplegic children present a limited capability of adapting their muscle recruitment to the different stimuli met during walking task. This finding could be very useful in deepening the knowledge of this neurological disorder

A place-based approach to migrant integration

This Science for Policy report focuses on urban and territorial strategies promoted by the EU Cohesion Policy during the 2014-2020 programming period, namely Sustainable Urban Development (SUD), Integrated Territorial Investment (ITI) and Community-led Local Development (CLLD), and explores whether and how they may contribute to the integration and inclusion of international migrants in the local context. The study illustrates the findings of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) Exploratory Research Activity (ERA) International migrants in Functional Urban Areas. How strategies of sustainable urban development can foster the integration of migrants?, which integrates two analytical approaches, with in-depth case studies based on local data and performed by local academics complementing the analysis carried out at EU-level

EMG-Based Characterization of Walking Asymmetry in Children with Mild Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy

5 May 2019; Accepted: 24 June 2019; Published: 27 June 2019 Abstract: Hemiplegia is a neurological disorder that is often detected in children with cerebral palsy. Although many studies have investigated muscular activity in hemiplegic legs, few EMG-based findings focused on una ected limb. This study aimed to quantify the asymmetric behavior of lower-limb-muscle recruitment during walking in mild-hemiplegic children from surface-EMG and foot-floor contact features. sEMG signals from tibialis anterior (TA) and gastrocnemius lateralis and foot-floor contact data during walking were analyzed in 16 hemiplegic children classified as W1 according to Winter’ scale, and in 100 control children. Statistical gait analysis, a methodology achieving a statistical characterization of gait by averaging surface-EMG-based features, was performed. Results, achieved in hundreds of strides for each child, indicated that in the hemiplegic side with respect to the non-hemiplegic side, W1 children showed a statistically significant: decreased number of strides with normal foot-floor contact; decreased stance-phase length and initial-contact sub-phase; curtailed, less frequent TA activity in terminal swing and a lack of TA activity at heel-strike. The acknowledged impairment of anti-phase eccentric control of dorsiflexors was confirmed in the hemiplegic side, but not in the contralateral side. However, a modified foot-floor contact pattern is evinced also in the contralateral side, probably to make up for balance requirements