Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Growth and Tolerance of Preterm Infants Fed a New Extensively Hydrolyzed Liquid Human Milk Fortifier

Objectives: This study was a comparison of growth and tolerance in premature infants fed either standard powdered human milk fortifier (HMF) or a newly formulated concentrated liquid that contained extensively hydrolyzed protein. Methods: This was an unblinded randomized controlled multicenter noninferiority study on preterm infants receiving human milk (HM) supplemented with 2 randomly assigned HMFs, either concentrated liquid HMF containing extensively hydrolyzed protein (LE-HMF) or a powdered intact protein HMF (PI-HMF) as the control. The study population consisted of preterm infants ⩽33 weeks who were enterally fed HM. Infants were studied from the first day of HM fortification until day 29 or hospital discharge, whichever came first. Results: A total of 147 preterm infants were enrolled. Noninferiority was observed in weight gain reported in the intent-to-treat (ITT) analysis was 18.2 and 17.5 g · kg−1 · day−1 for the LE-HMF and PI-HMF groups, respectively. In an a priori defined subgroup of strict protocol followers (n = 75), the infants fed LE-HMF achieved greater weight over time than those fed PI-HMF (P = 0.036). The LE-HMF group achieved greater linear growth over time compared to the PI-HMF (P = 0.029). The protein intake from fortified HM was significantly higher in the LE-HMF group compared with the PI-HMF group (3.9 vs 3.3 g · kg−1 · day−1, P < 0.0001). Both fortifiers were well tolerated with no significant differences in overall morbidity. Conclusions: Both fortifiers showed excellent weight gain (grams per kilograms per day), tolerance, and low incidence of morbidity outcomes with the infants who were strict protocol followers fed LE-HMF having improved growth during the study. These data point to the safety and suitability of this new concentrated liquid HMF (LE-HMF) in preterm infants. Growth with this fortifier closely matches the recent recommendations for a weight gain of >18 g · kg−1 · day−1.
Serum Homocysteine, Vitamin B12, Folic Acid Levels and Methylenetetrahydrofolate Reductase (MTHFR) Gene Polymorphism in Vitiligo

The aim of this study was to determine serum vitamin B12, folic acid and homocysteine (Hcy) levels as well as MTHFR (C677, A1298C) gene polymorphisms in patients with vitiligo, and to compare the results with healthy controls. Forty patients with vitiligo and 40 age and sex matched healthy subjects were studied. Serum vitamin B12 and folate levels were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Plasma Hcy levels and MTHFR polymorphisms were determined by chemiluminescence and real time PCR methods, respectively. Mean serum vitamin B12 and Hcy levels were not significantly different while folic acid levels were significantly lower in the control group. There was no significant relationship between disease activity and vitamin B12, folic acid and homocystein levels. No significant difference in C677T gene polymorphism was detected. Heterozygote A1298C gene polymorphism in the patient group was statistically higher than the control group. There was no significant relationship between MTHFR gene polymorphisms and vitamin B12, folic acid and homocysteine levels. In conclusion, vitamin B12, folate and Hcy levels are not altered in vitiligo and MTHFR gene mutations (C677T and A1298C) do not seem to create susceptibility for vitiligo.
What to Do with the Bounty? Organizational Patterns for the Implementation of Resources Allocated by the Courage to Change (Oz Letmura) Reform

ABSTRACT The research investigated the way in which school administrations implement resources provided by Israel’s “Courage to Change” reform. The uniqueness of this reform stems from the fact that the allocated resources come in the form of “weekly instruction time” rather than finance, and the school management needs to decide how to apply this resource. The research investigated programs created in the first year of the reform, identifying nine organizational patterns employed by school management to utilize the said resource. Identification of these patterns could inform other schools, contributing to construction of knowledge concerning resource exploitation.
TEACHING AND LEARNING OF DIGITAL VISUAL EFFECTS THROUGH PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING

The visual effects (VFX) industry continues to evolve on an almost daily basis. While new technologies and techniques help to make VFX work easier, the growth of the industry makes teaching and learning digital visual effects (DVE) increasingly challenging. Despite the increasing number of VFX graduates, there is a constant shortage of qualified professionals in the industry. This paper discusses the concerns of DVE education today, and attempts to incorporate problem-based learning (PBL) into its education. The paper presents a case study and reports the effects of using two PBL structures, ‘the problem-based approach’ and ‘guided problem-based learning’ to teach DVE to a group of undergraduates in the film and animation department. The students’ perception of their outcomes and learning process for the two structures will be compared and discussed.
Crafting the Volunteer: Voluntary Associations and the Reformation of Sociality

Narratives of volunteerism and civil society that emerged in Greece in the beginning of the twenty-first century echoed the modernization and Europeanization visions of Greek society that were proliferating in that era. Public discourses as well as state and EU policies endorsed a model of sociality that included volunteerism and was associated with the production of the new European and Greek citizen. Forms of public sociality, such as voluntary associations, thus constituted laboratories that produced subjects. The reformation of sociality and the invention of volunteerism were embedded in various civilizing projects. At the same time, a certain “lack of volunteerism” was broadly attributed to a general understanding of Greek particularity. This article proposes an alternate perspective that considers new and older forms of public sociality in relation to their cultural formation, where the flourishing of solidarity initiatives in contemporary crisis-ridden Greece is not considered a paradox, but rather the expression of the reconfiguration of the social and its potent political content.
1/2 BPS geometries of M2 giant gravitons

We construct the general 1/2 BPS M2 giant graviton solutions asymptotic to the 11-dimensional maximally supersymmetric plane-wave background, based on the recent work of Lin, Lunin, and Maldacena. The solutions have null singularity and we argue that it is unavoidable to have null singularity in the proposed framework, although the solutions are still physically relevant. They involve an arbitrary function F(x) which is shown to have a correspondence to the 1/2 BPS states of the Berenstein-Maldacena-Nastase (BMN) matrix model. A detailed map between the 1/2 BPS states of both sides is worked out.
Ieee Transactions on Signal Processing Task-driven Adaptive Statistical Compressive Sensing of Gaussian Mixture Models Ieee Transactions on Signal Processing 2

A framework for adaptive and non-adaptive statistical compressive sensing is developed, where a statistical model replaces the standard sparsity model of classical compressive sensing. We propose within this framework optimal task-specific sensing protocols specifically and jointly designed for classification and reconstruction. A two-step adaptive sensing paradigm is developed, where online sensing is applied to detect the signal class in the first step, followed by a reconstruction step adapted to the detected class and the observed samples. The approach is based on information theory, here tailored for Gaussian mixture models (GMMs), where an information-theoretic objective relationship between the sensed signals and a representation of the specific task of interest is maximized. Experimental results using synthetic signals, Landsat satellite attributes, and natural images of different sizes and with different noise levels show the improvements achieved using the proposed framework when compared to more standard sensing protocols. The underlying formulation can be applied beyond GMMs, at the price of higher mathematical and computational complexity.
Analysis of on-surface and in-air movement in handwriting of subjects with Parkinson’s disease and atypical parkinsonism

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of in-air movement besides on-surface movement for handwriting analysis. The proposed method uses a classification of drawing healthy subjects and subjects with Parkinson’s disease, according to their on-surface and in-air handwriting parameters during their writing on a graphical tablet. Experimental results on real data sets demonstrate that the highest accuracy of subject’s classification was obtained by combining both on-surface and in-air kinematic parameters.
Epizootiological characteristics of viable bacteria and fungi in indoor air from porcine, chicken, or bovine husbandry confinement buildings

Microorganisms found in bioaerosols from animal confinement buildings not only foster the risk of spreading diseases among livestock buildings, but also pose health hazards to farm workers and nearby residents. This study identified the various microorganisms present in the air of swine, chicken, and cattle farms with different kinds of ventilation conditions in Korea. Microbial air samples were collected onto Petri dishes with bacterial or fungal growth media using a cascade impactor. Endotoxin levels in total dust were determined by the limulus amebocyte lysate kinetic QCL method. Prevalent Gram-positive bacteria were Staphylococcus (S.) lentus, S. chromogenes, Bacillus (B.) cereus, B. licheniformis, and Enterococcus faecalis, while the dominant fungi and Gram-negative bacteria were Candida albicans and Sphingomonas paucimobilis, respectively. Considering no significant relationship between the indoor dust endotoxin levels and the isolation of Gram-negative bacteria from the indoor air, monitoring the indoor airborne endotoxin level was found to be also critical for risk assessment on health for animals or workers. The present study confirms the importance of microbiological monitoring and control on animal husbandry indoor air to ensure animal and worker welfare.
Interaction of natural survival instincts and internalized social norms exploring the Titanic and Lusitania disasters

To understand human behavior, it is important to know under what conditions people deviate from selfish rationality. This study explores the interaction of natural survival instincts and internalized social norms using data on the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania. We show that time pressure appears to be crucial when explaining behavior under extreme conditions of life and death. Even though the two vessels and the composition of their passengers were quite similar, the behavior of the individuals on board was dramatically different. On the Lusitania, selfish behavior dominated (which corresponds to the classical homo economicus); on the Titanic, social norms and social status (class) dominated, which contradicts standard economics. This difference could be attributed to the fact that the Lusitania sank in 18 min, creating a situation in which the short-run flight impulse dominated behavior. On the slowly sinking Titanic (2 h, 40 min), there was time for socially determined behavioral patterns to reemerge. Maritime disasters are traditionally not analyzed in a comparative manner with advanced statistical (econometric) techniques using individual data of the passengers and crew. Knowing human behavior under extreme conditions provides insight into how widely human behavior can vary, depending on differing external conditions.
Investigating various application areas of three-dimensional virtual worlds for higher education

Abstract: Three‐dimensional virtual world (3DVW) have been adopted extensively in the education sector worldwide, and there has been remarkable growth in the application of these environments for distance learning. A wide variety of universities and educational organizations across the world have utilized this technology for their regular learning and teaching programs. The current study conducts a systematic review of the published studies relevant to the application of 3DVWs in higher education. A search of the literature was carried out in eight high‐ranking scientific digital libraries. Following scrutiny according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, 165 papers out of 1402 publications were selected for review from a variety of disciplines over a 10‐year time period. The systematic review process were summarised, a number of paper reviews were conducted and results in conjunction with applicability of 3DVWs in higher education were extracted. In this study, various application areas of 3DVWs in higher education were found and classified into 13 main categories. Additionally, implications for research and practice are presented to provide new directions for further research and practice in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Numerical analysis of the Minimal and Two-Liquid models of the Market Microstructure

We present results of numerical analysis of several simple models for the microstructure of a double auction market without intermediaries which were introduced in cond-mat/9808240. We perform computer simulations of the minimal model in order to verify liquidity scaling laws. A logarithmic correction to the scaling law for midmarket variance is observed, but not for bid-offer spread or its fluctuation, because they are fundamentally different quantities. Time to midmarket sale ($\tau_S$) is found to scale as 1/J while its fluctuation goes as $0.73/J$. A ``reduced'' time ($\tau_{reduced}$) is also studied, and found to scale in a non-trivial way. Asymmetric fluxes are introduced to the minimal model and analytical result derived earlier for the speed of the moving midmarket agrees with numerical results. Simulation of the two-liquid model which describes a market with both market order and limit order traders, reveals widening of the bid-offer spread when the flux of market order traders exceeds that of limit order traders. The variation of the spread with the fraction of market-order traders is investigated. The formula for asymmetric fluxes is applied to the two-liquid model and its predictions are found to agree with experiment. The critical point is approximately determined, and the ratio of the midmarkets for $f = 0.0$ and $f = 0.5$ (where $f$ is the fraction of market-order traders) is calculated.
Measurement of Whole-Brain and Gray Matter Atrophy in Multiple Sclerosis: Assessment with MR Imaging.

Purpose To compare available methods for whole-brain and gray matter (GM) atrophy estimation in multiple sclerosis (MS) in terms of repeatability (same magnetic resonance [MR] imaging unit) and reproducibility (different system/field strength) for their potential clinical applications. Materials and Methods The softwares ANTs-v1.9, CIVET-v2.1, FSL-SIENAX/SIENA-5.0. 1, Icometrix-MSmetrix-1.7, and SPM-v12 were compared. This retrospective study, performed between March 2015 and March 2017, collected data from (a) eight simulated MR images and longitudinal data (2 weeks) from 10 healthy control subjects to assess the cross-sectional and longitudinal accuracy of atrophy measures, (b) test-retest MR images in 29 patients with MS acquired within the same day at different imaging unit field strengths/manufacturers to evaluate precision, and (c) longitudinal data (1 year) in 24 patients with MS for the agreement between methods. Tissue segmentation, image registration, and white matter (WM) lesion filling were also evaluated. Multiple paired t tests were used for comparisons. Results High values of accuracy (0.87-0.97) for whole-brain and GM volumes were found, with the lowest values for MSmetrix. ANTs showed the lowest mean error (0.02%) for whole-brain atrophy in healthy control subjects, with a coefficient of variation of 0.5%. SPM showed the smallest mean error (0.07%) and coefficient of variation (0.08%) for GM atrophy. Globally, good repeatability (P > .05) but poor reproducibility (P < .05) were found for all methods. WM lesion filling technique mainly affected ANTs, MSmetrix, and SPM results (P < .05). Conclusion From this comparison, it would be possible to select a software for atrophy measurement, depending on the requirements of the application (research center, clinical trial) and its goal (accuracy and repeatability or reproducibility). An improved reproducibility is required for clinical application. © RSNA, 2018 Online supplemental material is available for this article.
Long version ( Supplementary Material )-Latent Confusion Analysis by Normalized Gamma Construction

We developed a flexible framework for model-ing the annotation and judgment processes of humans , which we called " normalized gamma construction of a confusion matrix. " This framework enabled us to model three properties: (1) the abilities of humans, (2) a confusion matrix with labeling, and (3) the difficulty with which items are correctly annotated. We also provided the concept of " latent confusion analysis (LCA), " whose main purpose was to analyze the principal confusions behind human annotations and judgments. It is assumed in LCA that confusion matrices are shared between persons, which we called " latent confusions " , in tribute to the " latent topics " of topic modeling. We aim at summarizing the workers' confusion matrices with the small number of latent principal confusion matrices because many personal confusion matrices is difficult to analyze. We used LCA to analyze latent confusions regarding the effects of radioactivity on fish and shellfish following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011. An important theme in collective intelligence is modeling the annotation and judgment processes of humans. We focus on modeling a confusion matrix with labeling. Extracting a confusion matrix is useful for not just obtaining better (closer to the ground truth) aggregation of labels but also obtaining diagnostic information on human annotation and judgments. Dawid and Skene (1979) proposed a probabilistic genera-tive model for subjective labeling. Their model can estimate individual confusion matrices even when the true label is not available. Each worker in this model has a confusion matrix in which if an item (e.g., an image) has true label u, worker j can assign another label l with probability π (j) u,l. Smyth et al. (1994) applied the Dawid and Skene (DS) model to the image labeling problem. Snow et al. Preliminary work. Under review by the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). Do not distribute. (2008) applied the DS model to the analysis of opinions in natural language processing. Liu and Wang (2012) applied the DS model to judge the quality of (query, URL) pairs. Whitehill et al. (2009) proposed the Generative model of Labels, Abilities, and Difficulties (GLAD), which simultaneously estimated the expertise of each worker and the difficulty of each task. It is beneficial to use GLAD, unlike the DS model, in that it models the difficulty with which items are correctly annotated. However, it suffers from a critical issue that when we …
The Relationships among General Well-being,Job Burnout and Mental Health of Special Education Teachers in Sichuan Province

The paper tries to explore the relationships among general well-being, job burnout and mental health of special education teachers, by using a questionnaire to survey 233 teachers from special education schools. The results show the following: the special education teachers all demonstrate a moderate level of general well-being, general well-being, job burnout; there is a significantly negative effect among general well-being, job burnout and mental health of special education teachers; the depression, interpersonal sensitivity, obsessivecompulsive and hostility in general well-being serve partially meduim has moderating effect between job burnout and mental health.
Optimizing an MPI weather forecasting model via processor virtualization

Weather forecasting models are computationally intensive applications. These models are typically executed in parallel machines and a major obstacle for their scalability is load imbalance. The causes of such imbalance are either static (e.g. topography) or dynamic (e.g. shortwave radiation, moving thunderstorms). Various techniques, often embedded in the application's source code, have been used to address both sources. However, these techniques are inflexible and hard to use in legacy codes. In this paper, we demonstrate the effectiveness of processor virtualization for dynamically balancing the load in BRAMS, a mesoscale weather forecasting model based on MPI paral-lelization. We use the Charm++ infrastructure, with its over-decomposition and object-migration capabilities, to move subdomains across processors during execution of the model. Processor virtualization enables better overlap between computation and communication and improved cache efficiency. Furthermore, by employing an appropriate load balancer, we achieve better processor utilization while requiring minimal changes to the model's code.
The Law of the Maximum of a Bessel Bridge

Let $M_d$ be the maximum of a standard Bessel bridge of dimension $d$. A series formula for $P(M_d \le a)$ due to Gikhman and Kiefer for $d = 1,2, \ldots$ is shown to be valid for all real $d >0$. Various other characterizations of the distribution of $M_d$ are given, including formulae for its Mellin transform, which is an entire function. The asymptotic distribution of $M_d$ is described both as $d$ tends to infinity and as $d$ tends to zero.
Integrating Chemical Footprinting Data into RNA Secondary Structure Prediction

Chemical and enzymatic footprinting experiments, such as shape (selective 2′-hydroxyl acylation analyzed by primer extension), yield important information about RNA secondary structure. Indeed, since the -hydroxyl is reactive at flexible (loop) regions, but unreactive at base-paired regions, shape yields quantitative data about which RNA nucleotides are base-paired. Recently, low error rates in secondary structure prediction have been reported for three RNAs of moderate size, by including base stacking pseudo-energy terms derived from shape data into the computation of minimum free energy secondary structure. Here, we describe a novel method, RNAsc (RNA soft constraints), which includes pseudo-energy terms for each nucleotide position, rather than only for base stacking positions. We prove that RNAsc is self-consistent, in the sense that the nucleotide-specific probabilities of being unpaired in the low energy Boltzmann ensemble always become more closely correlated with the input shape data after application of RNAsc. From this mathematical perspective, the secondary structure predicted by RNAsc should be ‘correct’, in as much as the shape data is ‘correct’. We benchmark RNAsc against the previously mentioned method for eight RNAs, for which both shape data and native structures are known, to find the same accuracy in 7 out of 8 cases, and an improvement of 25% in one case. Furthermore, we present what appears to be the first direct comparison of shape data and in-line probing data, by comparing yeast asp-tRNA shape data from the literature with data from in-line probing experiments we have recently performed. With respect to several criteria, we find that shape data appear to be more robust than in-line probing data, at least in the case of asp-tRNA.
Fluoroprolines as Tools for Protein Design and Engineering.

The preference of the peptidyl-fluoroproline amide bond for the cis or trans conformation in the model compounds N-acetyl-4-fluoroproline methyl esters fully correlates with the thermostability of the related mutants of the model protein barstar. Thus, the (4S)-L-FPro mutants show a higher and the(4R)-L-FPro mutants a lower thermal stability than barstar.