Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
WHANAUNGATANGA – A PROCESS IN THE TREATMENT OF MAORI WITH ALCOHOL- AND DRUG-USE RELATED PROBLEMS

Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand have advocated that culturally-based care requires goals and processes specifically defined within their ethnocultural context. Positive cultural identity and pride have been posited as integral to achieving wellbeing for Maori. A sample of Maori in treatment for alcohol- and drug-use associated problems was reported to believe that a sense of belonging to an iwix)(“tribe”) could contribute to the recovery process. Data relating to “tribal” affiliation, cultural self-identity and upbringing of that sample is presented. The key concepts of whanau(“family”) and whanaungatanga(“relationships”) in the treatment process for Maori are explored and the implications of their utility discussed. The findings highlight the complexity of providing treatment that is cognizant of ethnocultural factors
New Media Use by Patients Who Are Homeless: The Potential of mHealth to Build Connectivity

Background Patients experiencing homelessness represent a disproportionate share of emergency department (ED) visits due to poor access to primary care and high levels of unmet health care needs. This is in part due to the difficulty of communicating and following up with patients who are experiencing homelessness. Objective To determine the prevalence and types of “new media” use among ED patients who experience homelessness. Methods This was a cross-sectional observational study with sequential enrolling of patients from three emergency departments 24/7 for 6 weeks. In total, 5788 ED patients were enrolled, of whom 249 experienced homelessness. Analyses included descriptive statistics, and unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios. Results 70.7% (176/249) of patients experiencing homelessness own cell phones compared to 85.90% (4758/5539) of patients in stable housing (P=.001) with the former more likely to own Androids, 70% (53/76) versus 43.89% (1064/2424), and the latter more likely to have iPhones, 44.55% (1080/2424) versus 17% (13/76) (P=.001). There is no significant difference in new media use, modality, or frequency for both groups; however, there is a difference in contract plan with 50.02% (2380/4758) of stably housed patients having unlimited minutes versus 37.5% (66/176) of homeless patients. 19.78% (941/4758) of patients in stable housing have pay-as-you-go plans versus 33.0% (58/176) of homeless patients (P=.001). Patients experiencing homelessness are more likely to want health information on alcohol/substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence, pregnancy and smoking cessation. Conclusions This study is unique in its characterization of new media ownership and use among ED patients experiencing homelessness. New media is a powerful tool to connect patients experiencing homelessness to health care.
European Conference on Information Systems ( ECIS ) 5-15-2012 LEVERAGING SOCIAL CAPITAL AND ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY FOR KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION : A CASE STUDY OF A CROSS-ORGANIZATION IT PROJECT

Based on an in-depth case study, this article studies a collaborative IT project (one IT service vendor and three clients) involving intensive knowledge integration activity. It explains how social capital (e.g. relational, cognitive, structural), absorptive capacity (e.g. exploratory, exploitative, transformative) interact with each other with the support of organizational culture (e.g. collective, cooperative, compatible) to ensure the success of cross-organization knowledge integration information system project. Dividing the project process into three phases, we discuss in detail that in initiation phase, relational social capital initiates the exploratory absorptive capacity while exploratory absorptive capacity enhances the relational social capital in return; in implementation phase, cognitive social capital and exploitative absorptive capacity are utilized and synthesized to keep the smoothness of the implementation process; and in assimilation phase, transformative absorptive capacity leads to the reconfiguration of structural social capital while the reconfigured structural social capital in turn reinforces the transformative absorptive capacity. Within these three phases, we identified the different roles that culture plays as norm, facilitator and harmonizer.
MobShare: controlled and immediate sharing of mobile images

In this paper we describe the design and implementation of a mobile one picture sharing system <i>MobShare</i> that enables immediate, controlled, and organized sharing of mobile pictures, and the browsing, combining, and discussion of the shared pictures. The design combines research on otogray, personal image management, mobile one camera use, mobile picture publishing, and an interview study we conducted on mobile one camera users. The system is based on a client-server architecture and uses current mobile one and web technology. The implementation describes novel solutions in immediate sharing of mobile images to an organized web album, and in providing full control over with whom the images are shared. Also, we describe new ways of promoting discussion in sharing images and enabling the combination and comparison of personal and shared pictures. The system proves that the designed solutions can be implemented with current technology and provides novel approaches to general issues in sharing digital images.
Body Growth and Rapid Hematological Development Support Breath Hold of Baby Belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) during Subice Transit

Body size and oxygen stores in the blood and muscle set breath-hold limits in marine mammals, yet these characteristics are understudied in immature cetaceans. We examined body mass and hematology from birth through adulthood in beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas). At birth, body mass was 8% and 6% of the maximum mass recorded for adult females and males, respectively. Body mass then increased rapidly, approaching an asymptote around 12 yr for females and 18 yr for males. Interestingly, red blood cell counts, hemoglobin content, and hematocrit levels decreased after birth; this neonatal anemia was reversed as levels increased after 2 mo postpartum. Mature levels were obtained at approximately 8, 9, and 11 mo postpartum, respectively. Neonatal mean corpuscular hemoglobin also increased with ontogeny; mature levels were achieved by approximately 13 mo after birth. In contrast, mean corpuscular volume and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration demonstrated a significant but subtle increase throughout ontogeny. Our results indicate that postnatal maturation was required and that maturation occurred far earlier than the age at weaning (i.e., 2–3 yr postpartum). This is atypical of marine mammals, which generally achieve mature hemoglobin levels at weaning. Hematological maturation before maternal independence undoubtedly supports the prolonged breath holds of young belugas transiting under sea ice. This assessment enhances our knowledge of cetacean physiology and provides important inputs for determining age-specific dive capacity, yielding insights into age-specific flexibility to alter underwater behaviors, as will be required for future regime shifts and disturbances.
Tau and spectraplakins promote synapse formation and maintenance through Jun kinase and neuronal trafficking

The mechanisms regulating synapse numbers during development and ageing are essential for normal brain function and closely linked to brain disorders including dementias. Using Drosophila, we demonstrate roles of the microtubule-associated protein Tau in regulating synapse numbers, thus unravelling an important cellular requirement of normal Tau. In this context, we find that Tau displays a strong functional overlap with microtubule-binding spectraplakins, establishing new links between two different neurodegenerative factors. Tau and the spectraplakin Short Stop act upstream of a three-step regulatory cascade ensuring adequate delivery of synaptic proteins. This cascade involves microtubule stability as the initial trigger, JNK signalling as the central mediator, and kinesin-3 mediated axonal transport as the key effector. This cascade acts during development (synapse formation) and ageing (synapse maintenance) alike. Therefore, our findings suggest novel explanations for intellectual disability in Tau deficient individuals, as well as early synapse loss in dementias including Alzheimer’s disease. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.14694. 001
On Dynamic Precision Scaling

Based on the observation that application phases exhibit varying degrees of sensitivity to noise (i.e., accuracy loss) in computation during execution, this paper explores how Dynamic Precision Scaling (DPS) can maximize power efficiency by tailoring the precision of computation adaptively to temporal changes in algorithmic noise tolerance. DPS can decrease the arithmetic precision of noise-tolerant phases to result in power savings at the same operating speed (or faster execution within the same power budget), while keeping the overall loss in accuracy due to precision reduction bounded.
Determinants of the Internet Banking Intention in Malaysia

The objective of this study is to determine factors that influence individual intention towards online banking In Malaysia. Specifically, the study examines the influence of Self Efficacy (6 item), Trust( 6 item), Perceived Ease of Use(5 item) and Media reference(4 item) on the intention towards Online banking. Each variable is measured using 7-point interval scale. To achieve a mo re balance findings among the internet banking users in Malaysia, a total of 250 questionnaires to online bank customers at 4 major banks in Klang Valley, Selangor, and across the major cities in Penang, Ipoh & Johor. 210 usable questionnaires were returned with a response rate of 84%. The data was analysed using SPSS. It was found that Self Efficiency; Trust; Perceived Ease of Use are significantly related to the intention to adopt internet banking among the users in Malaysia. Perceived Ease of Use was the main determinant towards the intention for online banking as compared to Self-Efficacy and Trust. Theoretically, our study suggests that there is a direct relationship between perceived ease of use and intention to adopt online bank In short, this study has provided a good understanding & established the factors that influence on the adoption of internet banking usage in Malaysia. Th is finding is paramount useful among the banks & on line banking vendors as it will assist on their various strategy resources allocation decision on their internet banking solutions to retain or acquire new market share which will benefit both the banks & the users as well.
Animat vision: Active vision in artificial animals

We propose and demonstrate a new paradigm for active vision research that draws upon recent advances in the fields of artificial life and computer graphics. A software alternative to the prevailing hardware vision mindset, animat vision prescribes artificial animals, or animats, situated in physics-based virtual worlds as autonomous virtual robots possessing active perception systems. To be operative in its world, an animat must autonomously control its eyes and muscle-actuated body, applying computer vision algorithms to continuously analyze the retinal image streams acquired by its eyes in order to locomote purposefully through its world. We describe an initial animat vision implementation within lifelike artificial fishes inhabiting a physics-based, virtual marine world. Emulating the appearance, motion, and behavior of real fishes in their natural habitats, these animats are capable of spatially nonuniform retinal imaging, foveation, retinal image stabilization, color object recognition, and perceptually-guided navigation. These capabilities allow them to pursue moving targets such as fellow artificial fishes. Animat vision offers a fertile approach to the development, implementation, and evaluation of computational theories that profess sensorimotor competence for animal or robotic situated agents. <<ETX>>
Nonparametric sparsity and regularization

In this work we are interested in the problems of supervised learning and variable selection when the input-output dependence is described by a nonlinear function depending on a few variables. Our goal is to consider a sparse nonparametric model, hence avoiding linear or additive models. The key idea is to measure the importance of each variable in the model by making use of partial derivatives. Based on this intuition we propose a new notion of nonparametric sparsity and a corresponding least squares regularization scheme. Using concepts and results from the theory of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces and proximal methods, we show that the proposed learning algorithm corresponds to a minimization problem which can be provably solved by an iterative procedure. The consistency properties of the obtained estimator are studied both in terms of prediction and selection performance. An extensive empirical analysis shows that the proposed method performs favorably with respect to the state-of-the-art methods.
Rheological Studies of Asphalt with Ground Tire Rubber

ABSTRACT Laboratory studies about the interaction of asphalt cement with three different ground tire rubber (GTR) samples from different gradations were made using rheological and aging tests, and also chemical characterization tests. Rubber particle size, curing time, temperature and mixing rate were found to be important factors that affect the rubber depolymerization rate. It is possible to obtain homogeneous asphalt-rubber binders with non-detrimental viscosity at hot-mix temperatures, while still being elastic at rutting temperatures and less stiff at colder temperatures than base asphalt. The higher the rubber content in asphalt rubber, the better the cold stiffness properties and fatigue resistance, the lower the aging index. The proper combination of curing variables and asphalt composition is essential to assure good rheological properties. The high molecular size, the high asphaltenes content and high acidity in the asphalt cements resulted in blends more easily compatible and with good rheological properties.
FBK’s Neural Machine Translation Systems for IWSLT 2016

In this paper, we describe FBK’s neural machine translation (NMT) systems submitted at the International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) 2016. The systems are based on the state-of-the-art NMT architecture that is equipped with a bi-directional encoder and an attention mechanism in the decoder. They leverage linguistic information such as lemmas and part-of-speech tags of the source words in the form of additional factors along with the words. We compare performances of word and subword NMT systems along with different optimizers. Further, we explore different ensemble techniques to leverage multiple models within the same and across different networks. Several reranking methods are also explored. Our submissions cover all directions of the MSLT task, as well as en-{de, fr} and {de, fr}-en directions of TED. Compared to previously published best results on the TED 2014 test set, our models achieve comparable results on en-de and surpass them on en-fr (+2 BLEU) and fr-en (+7.7 BLEU) language pairs.
Identification of Goose-Origin Parvovirus as a Cause of Newly Emerging Beak Atrophy and Dwarfism Syndrome in Ducklings

ABSTRACT A recent epizootic outbreak, in China, of duck beak atrophy and dwarfism syndrome (BADS) was investigated using electron microscopic, genetic, and virological studies, which identified a parvovirus with a greater similarity to goose parvovirus (GPV) (97% protein homology) than to Muscovy duck parvovirus (MDPV) (90% protein homology). The new virus, provisionally designated GPV-QH15, was found to be antigenically more closely related to GPV than to MDPV in a virus neutralization assay. These findings were further supported by phylogenetic analysis showing that GPV-QH15 evolved from goose lineage parvoviruses, rather than from Muscovy duck- or other duck species-related parvoviruses. In all, two genetic lineages (GPV I and GPV II) were identified from the GPV samples analyzed, and GPV-QH15 was found to be closely clustered with two known goose-origin parvoviruses (GPVa2006 and GPV1995), together forming a distinctive GPV IIa sublineage. Finally, structural modeling revealed that GPV-QH15 and the closely related viruses GPVa2006 and GPV1995 possessed identical clusters of receptor-interacting amino acid residues in the VP2 protein, a major determinant of viral receptor binding and host specificity. Significantly, these three viruses differed from MDPVs and other GPVs at these positions. Taken together, these results suggest that GPV-QH15 represents a new variant of goose-origin parvovirus that currently circulates in ducklings and causes BADS, a syndrome reported previously in Europe. This new finding highlights the need for future surveillance of GPV-QH15 in poultry in order to gain a better understanding of both the evolution and the biology of this emerging parvovirus.
Study of surface wear and damage induced by dry sliding of tempered AISI 4140 steel against hardened AISI 1055 steel

In industry, the sliding mechanical systems are subject to friction and wear phenomena. These phenomena can be the origin of a reduction of the efficiency of the mechanical system even to be responsible for its incapacity. Generally, the materials of the parts which are moving relative (tribological couple) of these systems are low alloy steels and carbon steels, thanks to their good mechanical and tribological properties. The present work aimed to study, the surface wear and damage induced by dry sliding of hard carbon steel AISI 1055 (disc) against tempered low alloy steel AISI 4140 (pin) with different hardness and applied loads was investigated. The results revealed that the interaction between the applied load and pin hardness result in complex thermo-mechanical behaviour of the worn surfaces. When a lower hardness pin is used, the main wear mechanisms observed on the discs were abrasion, adhesion, and oxidation. When a higher hardness pin is used, the wear of the discs is governed by delamination, oxidation, and plastic deformation. In particular, third-body wear occurs at high applied load resulting in higher wear rate of high hardness pins compared to low hardness pins.
On the true and the modified Cramer-Rao bounds for the estimation of a scalar parameter in the presence of nuisance parameters

We consider the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) for the estimation of a scalar parameter in the presence of nuisance parameters. Whereas this true CRB is hard to evaluate in general, we present a simple analytical expression for its high SNR asymptote, i.e., the asymptotic CRB (ACRB). We show that this ACRB is related to the CRB for the joint estimation of the scalar parameter and the nuisance parameters. Previously, a modified CRB (MCRB) for the estimation of a scalar parameter in the presence of nuisance parameters has been derived. This MCRB is also simple to evaluate and is related to the CRB for the estimation of the scalar parameter assuming that the value of the nuisance parameters is a priori known. We show that the MCRB can be quite loose at high SNR, when the scalar parameter is coupled with the nuisance parameters. In the case of synchronization parameter estimation, we find that the ACRB equals the MCRB, whether or not (some of) the nuisance parameters are a priori known.
Adherence to Referral Criteria at Admission and Patient Management at a Specialized Burns Centre: The Case of the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa

Referral guidelines for burn care are meant to assist in decision-making as regards patient transfer and admissions to specialized units. Little is known, however, concerning how closely they are followed and whether they are linked to patient care. This is the object of the current study, focused on the paediatric burns centre of the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. All patients admitted to the centre during the winters of 2011–2015 (n = 1165) were included. The patient files were scrutinized to clarify whether the referral criteria in place were identified (seven in total) and to compile data on patient and injury characteristics. A case was defined as adherent to the criteria when at least one criterion was fulfilled and adherence was expressed as a percentage with 95% confidence intervals, for all years aggregated as well as by year and by patient or injury characteristics. The association between adherence to any individual criterion and hospital care (surgery or longer length of stay) was measured using logistic regressions. The overall adherence was 93.4% (100% among children under 2 years of age and 86% among the others) and it did not vary remarkably over time. The two criteria of “injury sustained at a specific anatomical site” (85.2%) and “young age” (51.9%) were those most often identified. Children aged 2 years or older were more likely to undergo surgery or to stay longer than those of young age (although a referral criterion) and so were those with higher injury severity (a referral criterion). In this specialized paediatric burns centre, children are admitted mainly according to the guidelines. However, given the high prevalence of paediatric burns in the region and the limited resources at the burns centre, adherence to the guidelines need to be further studied at all healthcare levels in the province.
A Cognitive Approach to Achieve Fair Uplink and Downlink Utilities in Wireless Networks

The paper investigates on fairness of utilities between uplink and downlink traffic flows in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) with an infrastructure mode. We propose a cognitive resource allocation scheme to tackle the fairness problem. The proposed scheme is cognitive by using neural networks to on-line learn the nonlinear function between the adopted Medium Access Control (MAC) parameters and the corresponding throughput. Thus, the learned knowledge can be exploited to adjust MAC parameters dynamically toward the utility fairness between uplink and downlink flows. Simulations results demonstrate that our adaptive scheme can effectively provide fair uplink and downlink utilities in a varying heterogeneous WLAN environment.
Heritability of Type-D Personality

Objective: To quantify the influence of genes and environment on individual differences in type-D status, and the type-D subcomponents negative affectivity and social inhibition. Type-D personality independently predicts poor prognosis in patients with cardiovascular disease. However, no previous study has determined the heritability of type-D personality. Methods: This study determined type-D personality by applying the “combination of scales” method to survey data collected by the Netherlands Twin Register in 3331 healthy, young adult twins. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), the relative contributions of additive genetic, nonadditive genetic, and nonshared environmental factors to the variance in type-D and its subcomponents were determined. Results: SEM indicated that type-D personality was substantially heritable (52%). The subcomponents negative affectivity and social inhibition were equally heritable, with broad heritability estimates of 46% and 50%. Although negative affectivity was determined by additive genetic effects and nonshared environment, individual differences in social inhibition were predominantly determined by nonadditive genetic effects and nonshared environment. Conclusions: This study provides strong evidence that genes are important in determining individual differences in type-D personality and the type-D subcomponents negative affectivity and social inhibition. A = additive genetic variance component; ABQ = Amsterdam Biographical Questionnaire; C = shared environmental variance component; D = nonadditive (dominance) genetic variance component; DZ = dizygotic; E = nonshared environmental variance component; MZ = monozygotic; NA = negative affectivity; SI = social inhibition; STAI = Spielberger Trait Anxiety Inventory; TWND = Twin type-D scale; YASR = Young Adult Self-Report.