Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Binge Eating Behavior and Weight Loss Maintenance over a 2-Year Period

Objective. To investigate the relationship between binge eating behavior and weight loss maintenance over a two-year period in adults. Design. Secondary data analysis using the Keep It Off study, a randomized trial evaluating an intervention to promote weight loss maintenance. Participants. 419 men and women (ages: 20 to 70 y; BMI: 20–44 kg/m2) who had intentionally lost ≥10% of their weight during the previous year. Measurements. Body weight was measured and binge eating behavior over the past 6 months was reported at baseline, 12 months and 24 months. Height was measured at baseline. Results. Prevalence of binge eating at baseline was 19.4% (n = 76). Prevalence of binge eating at any time point was 30.1% (n = 126). Although rate of weight regain did not differ significantly between those who did or did not report binge eating at baseline, binge eating behavior across the study period (additive value of presence or absence at each time point) was significantly associated with different rates of weight regain. Conclusion. Tailoring weight loss maintenance interventions to address binge eating behavior is warranted given the prevalence and the different rates of weight regain experienced by those reporting this behavior.
Department of Economics and Finance Working Paper Series @bullet Determinants of House Prices: a Quantile Regression Approach †

OLS regression has typically been used in housing research to determine the relationship of a particular housing characteristic with selling price. Results differ across studies, not only in terms of size of OLS coefficients and statistical significance, but sometimes in direction of effect. This study suggests that some of the observed variation in the estimated prices of housing characteristics may reflect the fact that characteristics are not priced the same across a given distribution of house prices. To examine this issue, this study uses quantile regression, with and without accounting for spatial autocorrecation, to identify the coefficients of a large set of diverse variables across different quantiles. The results show that purchasers of higher-priced homes value certain housing characteristics such as square footage and the number of bathrooms differently from buyers of lower-priced homes. Other variables such as age are also shown to vary across the distribution of house prices.
Content of Trans Fatty Acids in Human Cheek Epithelium: Comparison with Serum and Adipose Tissue

Studies pertaining to trans fatty acids (TFA), which have been implicated in development of chronic diseases, are more relevant in developing countries where nutrition transition is changing traditional habits and practices. Measuring TFA is an arduous task because of the need for fat biopsies. This study identifies a tissue, which can be easily accessed for analytical measurement of trans fatty acid. In this cross-sectional study, fatty acid in adipose tissue, cheek epithelium, and blood samples were assessed by gas chromatography. Spearman correlation coefficient was computed to study the correlation of fatty acid distribution among the three tissues. The correlation coefficient of total trans fatty acid between cheek epithelium and serum was 0.30 (P < 0.02) and between cheek epithelium and adipose tissue was 0.33 (P < 0.019). This study is the first to report trans fatty acid profile in cheek epithelium giving scope for utilizing the cheek epithelium as a tissue for objective assessment of trans fatty acid intake.
Relative prosodic boundary strength and prior bias in disambiguation

Previous research found that the relative rather than absolute size of prosodic boundaries is crucial in disambiguating attachment ambiguities [1, 2]. Furthermore, relative categorical differences matter whereas merely quantitative ones do not [1]. This paper presents further evidence that relative boundary strength is indeed crucial, but, contrary to earlier ﬁndings, gradient quantitative differences affect parsing decisions in gradient ways. Furthermore, varying the plausibility of a given reading in a given context shifts the perceptual boundaries between different phrasings such that quantitatively stronger prosodic cues are necessary to counter-act a prior bias against it.
High Doses of Caffeine during the Peripubertal Period in the Rat Impair the Growth and Function of the Testis

Prenatal caffeine exposure adversely affects the development of the reproductive organs of male rat offspring. Thus, it is conceivable that peripubertal caffeine exposure would also influence physiologic gonadal changes and function during this critical period for sexual maturation. This study investigated the impact of high doses of caffeine on the testes of prepubertal male rats. A total of 45 immature male rats were divided randomly into three groups: a control group and 2 groups fed 120 and 180 mg/kg/day of caffeine, respectively, via the stomach for 4 weeks. Caffeine caused a significant decrease in body weight gain, accompanied by proportional decreases in lean body mass and body fat. The caffeine-fed animals had smaller and lighter testes than those of the control that were accompanied by negative influences on the histologic parameters of the testes. In addition, stimulated-testosterone ex vivo production was reduced in Leydig cells retrieved from the caffeine-fed animals. Our results demonstrate that peripubertal caffeine consumption can interfere with the maturation and function of the testis, possibly by interrupting endogenous testosterone secretion and reducing the sensitivity of Leydig cells to gonadotrophic stimulation. In addition, we confirmed that pubertal administration of caffeine reduced testis growth and altered testis histomorphology.
Commentary: HIV infection and family processes: toward the next generation of research.

psychosocial adjustment (or psychoeducational performance) and have attempted to identify mechanisms that may explain these associations (e.g., predominant coping strategies, caregiver attitudes and practices, caregiver emotional distress). In an attempt to encourage further research on these mechanisms, this commentary will focus on factors identified by the four investigations that may hold promise for future intervention research. The findings of Coscia et al. are particularly noteworthy in that they identify both a mediating and a moderating mechanism in the relationship between HIV infection and cognitive functioning in children. As highlighted by the authors, the literature has identified a variety of central nervous system (CNS) outcomes associated with pediatric HIV infection. These outcomes include both changes in the structural integrity of the infected CNS (Campbell, 1997), as well as changes in neurochemical processes within the CNS of infected individuals (Kraiselburd, 1995). Yet, despite these biological differences, reports in the literature on the cognitive functioning of children with HIV/AIDS are varied (e.g., Bisiacchi, Suppiej, & Laverda, 2000; Fishkin et al., 2000; Loveland et al., 2000). Perhaps contributing to the explanation of the varied findings, Coscia et al. have identified home environment as a mediator between HIV infection and neurocognitive outcomes. These results suggest a need for prevention efforts (i.e., prior to significant disease progression), as well as specialized intervention for families once the child’s illness has progressed. A number of issues resulting from this finding will require further investigation, including whether, how, and when Journal of Pediatric Psychology, Vol. 26, No. 6, 2001, pp. 363–366
Mass ideology-based voting model

As one of the powerful tools in political science, ideal point estimation is always used to study the pattern behind the senators' voting behavior. In order to give a comprehensive estimation of senators' political positions, some researchers estimated the ideal points on different topics. However, for those senators who are not that polarized, their ideal points are so sensitive to the voting records that even a small change will make a big difference, which may mislead the readers. In this paper, we propose a mass ideology-based voting model taking the senators' latent ideology into consideration. Firstly, we model the senators' general ideal points by using the following links on Twitter due to the reason that we have homophily in social networks. Secondly, we use the roll call data of different bills, which can be decomposed as a combination of different topics, to estimate the senator's adjustment on different topics. Finally, we combine the general ideal points and the adjustments together to analyze the senator's political positions. Additionally, two-stage learning algorithms are also shown in the following section. Compared with the Issued-Adjusted model, our model has an edge on classifying the senators on different topics. This model can also be used to predict the voting behavior. Then, we show a case study of a moderate senator and try to explain her voting behavior for some bills according to our research.
Mediterranean Fin Whales (Balaenoptera physalus) Threatened by Dolphin MorbilliVirus

During 2011–2013, dolphin morbillivirus was molecularly identified in 4 stranded fin whales from the Mediterranean Sea. Nucleoprotein, phosphoprotein, and hemagglutinin gene sequences of the identified strain were highly homologous with those of a morbillivirus that caused a 2006–2007 epidemic in the Mediterranean. Dolphin morbillivirus represents a serious threat for fin whales.
Habitus conflicts and experiences of symbolic violence as obstacles for non-traditional students

Despite an expansion of educational opportunities throughout the EU, access to university is still distributed based on social inequality. This tendency can be observed in all EU countries, with Germany, Austria and Slovakia showing particularly low levels of upward mobility. Many working-class students or other non-traditional students never even contemplate entering the field of higher education; others achieve university entry, but fail to overcome the obstacles faced in this field. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theoretical-methodological approach and based on 12 narrative, problem-centred interviews, this study presents a general habitus-oriented analysis of non-traditional university drop outs. We then focus on one case study to describe how the habitus of a non-traditional student is preformed through his family and school background and conflicts with the university field and its institutional habitus requirements. We show that students with a strong sense of their social position and ‘place’ (Bourdieu, 1990; Goffman, 1951) are particularly at risk of feeling like ‘cultural outsiders’ in the higher education field, a situation that leads to increased fears of failure. We conclude with a reflection on the relevance of Bourdieu’s relational thinking for understanding and addressing the underlying mechanisms of social inequality and a discussion of measures necessary to improve graduation rates for non-traditional students in Europe.
Large-scale environmental controls on microbial biofilms in high-alpine streams

Abstract. Glaciers are highly responsive to global warming and important agents of landscape heterogeneity. While it is well established that glacial ablation and snowmelt regulate stream discharge, linkage among streams and streamwater geochemistry, the controls of these factors on stream microbial biofilms remain insufficiently understood. We investigated glacial (metakryal, hypokryal), groundwater-fed (krenal) and snow-fed (rhithral) streams - all of them representative for alpine stream networks - and present evidence that these hydrologic and hydrogeochemical factors differentially affect sediment microbial biofilms. Average microbial biomass and bacterial carbon production were low in the glacial streams, whereas bacterial cell size, biomass, and carbon production were higher in the tributaries, most notably in the krenal stream. Whole-cell in situ fluorescence hybridization revealed reduced detection rates of the Eubacteria and higher abundance of α-Proteobacteria in the glacial stream, a pattern that most probably reflects the trophic status of this ecosystem. Our data suggest low flow during the onset of snowmelt and autumn as a short period (hot moment) of favorable environmental conditions with pulsed inputs of allochthonous nitrate and dissolved organic carbon, and with disproportionately high microbial growth. Tributaries are relatively more constant and favorable environments than kryal streams, and serve as possible sources of microbes and organic matter to the main glacial channel during periods (e.g., snowmelt) of elevated hydrologic linkage among streams. Ice and snow dynamics - and their impact on the amount and composition of dissolved organic matter - have a crucial impact on stream biofilms, and we thus need to consider microbes and critical hydrological episodes in future models of alpine stream communities.
A novel family of plasmid-transferred anti-sense ncRNAs

The genome of Xanthomonas campestris pv. vesicatoria encodes a constitutively expressed small RNA, which we designate PtaRNA1, “Plasmid transferred anti-sense RNA”. It exhibits all hallmarks of a novel RNA antitoxin that proliferates by frequent horizontal transfer. It shows an erratic phylogenetic distribution with occurrences on chromosomes in a few individual strains distributed across both beta- and gamma-proteobacteria. Moreover, a homologous gene located on plasmid pMATVIM-7 of Pseudomonas aeruginosa is found. All ptaRNA1 homologs are located anti-sense to a putative toxin, which in turn is never encountered without the small RNA. The secondary structure of PtaRNA1, furthermore, is very similar to that of the FinP anti-sense RNA found on F-like plasmids in Escherichia coli.
Effective privacy amplification for secure classical communications

We study the practical effectiveness of privacy amplification for classical key distribution schemes. We find that in contrast to quantum key distribution schemes, the high fidelity of the raw key generated in classical systems allow the users to always sift a secure shorter key if they have an upper bound on the eavesdropper probability to correctly guess the exchanged key bits. The number of privacy amplification iterations needed to achieve information leak of 10−8 in existing classical communicators is 2 or 3 resulting in a corresponding slowdown 4 to 8. We analyze the inherent tradeoff between the number of iterations and the security of the raw key. This property which is unique to classical key distribution systems render them highly useful for practical, especially for noisy channels where sufficiently low quantum bit error ratios are difficult to achieve.
Measuring R-parity-violating couplings in dilepton production at the LHC

We revisit the issue of probing R-violating couplings of supersymmetric theories at hadronic colliders, particularly at the LHC. Concentrating on dimuon production, an evaluation of the optimal sensitivity to the R-violating coupling is performed through a maximum likelihood analysis. The measurement uncertainties are evaluated through a study of fully generated events processed through a fast simulation of the ATLAS detector. It is found that a host of R-violating couplings can be measured to a statistical accuracy of better than 10%, over a significant part of the m ˜ f - λ parameter space still allowed by low energy measurements. Since the bounds thus obtained do not simply scale as the squark mass, one can do significantly better at the LHC than at the Tevatron. The same analysis can also be extended to assess the reach of the LHC to effects due to any non-SM structure of the four- fermion amplitude, caused by exchanges of new particles with different spins such as leptoquarks and gravitons that are suggested by various theoretical ideas.
Analysis of IEEE 802.11 DCF for ad hoc networks under nonsaturation conditions

In this paper, we present a queue state driven analysis of IEEE 802.11 DCF for an ad hoc network under nonsaturation conditions. In our analysis, we focus on the average end-to-end delay, throughput, and the loss probability for a network consisting of single hop as well as multiple hops along a path from a given source to a destination. We study the effect of collision probability, probability of packet transmissions, the transmission range/carrier sense range, and the number of buffers in the queue. To validate the analysis, we carried out simulations and observed that the simulation results are in accordance with the analytical results.
FlipBack: Automatic Targeted Protection against Silent Data Corruption

The decreasing size of transistors has been critical to the increase in capacity of supercomputers. The smaller the transistors are, less energy is required to flip a bit, and thus silent data corruptions (SDCs) become more common. In this paper, we present FlipBack, an automatic software-based approach that protects applications from SDCs. FlipBack provides targeted protection for different types of data and calculations based on their characteristics. It leverages compile-time analysis and program markup to identify data critical for control flow and enables selective replication of computation by the runtime system. We evaluate FlipBack with various HPC mini-applications that capture the behavior of real scientific applications and show that FlipBack is able to protect applications from most silent data corruptions with only 6–20% performance degradation.
Iterative Eigenvalue Decomposition and Multipath-Grouping Tx/Rx Joint Beamformings for Millimeter-Wave Communications

We investigate Tx/Rx joint beamforming in millimeter-wave communications (MMWC). As the multipath components (MPCs) have different steering angles and independent fadings, beamforming aims at achieving array gain and diversity gain in this scenario. A sub-optimal beamforming scheme is proposed to find the antenna weight vectors (AWVs) at Tx/Rx via iterative eigenvalue decomposition (EVD), provided that full channel state information (CSI) is available at both the transmitter and receiver. To make this scheme practically feasible in MMWC, a corresponding training approach is suggested to avoid the channel estimation and iterative EVD computation. As in fast fading scenario, the training approach may be time-consuming due to frequent training; another beamforming scheme, which exploits the quasi-static steering angles in MMWC, is proposed to reduce the overhead and increase the system reliability by multipath grouping (MPG). The scheme first groups the MPCs and then concurrently beamforms toward multiple steering angles of the grouped MPCs, so that both array gain and diversity gain are achieved. Performance comparisons show that, compared with the corresponding state-of-the-art schemes, the iterative EVD scheme with the training approach achieves the same performance with a reduced overhead and complexity, whereas the MPG scheme achieves better performance with approximately equivalent complexity.
Activation of Invariant NKT Cells in Early Phase of Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis Results in Differentiation of Ly6Chi Inflammatory Monocyte to M2 Macrophages and Improved Outcome

Neuropathology in multiple sclerosis is closely linked to presence of macrophages in the CNS. Both M1 (inflammatory) and M2 (alternatively activated, noninflammatory) macrophages are found in the inflamed CNS and thought to differentiate from infiltrating monocytes. It is unclear whether the balance of M1 and M2 macrophages can be altered and whether this affects disease outcome. We show in this article that Ly6Chi inflammatory monocytes are the early and dominant infiltrating cells in the CNS during experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a model for the acute phase of multiple sclerosis. Activation of invariant NKT (iNKT) cells reduced the frequency of Ly6Chi monocytes and increased the proportion of M2 macrophages in the CNS with associated improvement in neurologic impairment. In contrast, iNKT-deficient mice showed higher numbers of Ly6Chi monocytes, reduced M2, and much more severe disease. Adoptive transfer of M2-enriched cells to iNKT-deficient mice markedly improved neurologic impairment. In vitro and in vivo experiments showed that iNKT cells promote differentiation of monocytes to M2 macrophages in an IL-4 and CD1d-dependent process. These findings indicate that infiltrating Ly6Chi inflammatory monocytes are early players in acute neuroinflammation and that their frequency and differentiation can be influenced by activation of iNKT cells with resultant improvement in disease outcome.
Collective optimization over average quantities

This paper addresses the design of algorithms for the collective optimization of a cost function defined over average quantities in the presence of limited communication. We argue that several meaningful collective optimization problems can be formulated in this way. As an application of the proposed approach, we propose a novel algorithm that achieves synchronization or balancing in phase models of coupled oscillators under mild connectedness assumptions on the (possibly time-varying and unidirectional) communication graphs
Arc Magmatic Tempos : Gathering the Evidence INTRODUCTION

A fascinating aspect of Earth’s evolution is that deep, hot rocks rise upward, by convection, to near-surface environments. This process helps cool the planet and is the main driver behind plate tectonics, as well as being the underlying cause of a wide range of associated magmatic processes. These magmatic processes have, in turn, played a key role in the overall differentiation of the planet, including the growth of oceanic and continental crust and the formation of an atmosphere. Along with the production of oceanic crust at mid-ocean ridges, one of the main results of such magmatism is the formation of long arcuate belts of volcanoes that overlie huge subsurface magmatic systems formed above subduction zones. These are called oceanic arcs3, when built into and on oceanic fl oor, or continental arcs, when built into the edge of continents. These magmatic arcs are associated with linear zones of highly deformed crust called orogenic belts, which are particularly impressive in continental-margin settings. The broad characteristics of these volcanic chains, their underlying magmatic footprints, and the associated orogenic belts are discussed by Ducea et al. (2015 this issue). One puzzling aspect of the evolution of magmatic arcs is that, despite continued ocean-plate subduction beneath them, the production of melts, the growth of the magmatic systems, and the associated volcanic eruptions are all highly episodic. Armstrong (1988) was among the first to document the episodic behavior of continental arcs (initially for the Coast Mountains region in British Columbia and Alaska and subsequently throughout the western US Cordillera) using an extensive regional geochronologic database. Now, through a combination of a rapidly growing number of U–Pb zircon crystallization ages from both volcanic and plutonic rocks, plus the expansion of U–Pb detrital zircon dating (FIGS. 1 AND 2), there is considerable evidence that magmatism in arcs is episodic in space and time at scales ranging from entire arcs to single volcanoes (Ducea 2001; Gehrels et al. 2009; Paterson et al. 2011; Memeti et al. 2014). Long segments of continental arcs can simultaneously fl are-up with magmatic activity within a ~30 My window (FIG. 2), and be followed by lulls in which volumetrically little magma is added to the arc. Magmatic episodicity at typically shorter durations is also well established at the scale of single magmatic plutonic or volcanic systems (e.g. Jicha et al. 2006; Matzel et al. 2006; de Silva and Gosnold 2007; Lipman 2007; Memeti et al. 2014).