Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Peak flow based asthma self-management: a randomised controlled study in general practice. British Thoracic Society Research Committee.

BACKGROUND--Peak flow based asthma self-management plans have been strongly advocated in consensus statements, but convincing evidence for the effectiveness of this approach has been largely lacking. METHODS--A randomised controlled trial was conducted in 25 general practices comparing an asthma self-management programme based on home peak flow monitoring and surgery review by a general practitioner or practice nurse with a programme of planned visits for surgery review only over a six month period. RESULTS--Seventy two subjects (33 in the self-management group and 39 in the planned visit group) completed the study protocol, but diary card data for at least three months were available on a total of 84 (39 in the self-management group and 45 in the planned visit group). Teaching self-management took longer than the planned visit review. In the self-management group home peak flow monitoring was felt to be useful by doctors and patients in 28 (85%) and 27 (82%) cases, respectively. There were no between group differences during the study period in terms of lung function, symptoms, quality of life, and prescribing costs. Only within the self-management group were improvements noted in disturbance of daily activities and quality of life. Possible explanations for these negative results include small numbers of subjects, the mild nature of their asthma, and inappropriate self-management strategies for such patients. CONCLUSIONS-- Rigid adherence to long term daily peak flow measurement in the management of mild asthma in general practice does not appear to produce large changes in outcomes. Self-management and the use of prescribed peak flow meters need to be tailored to individual circumstances.
Terrestrial Laser Scanning of Agricultural Crops

Laser scanning is a new technology that provides accurate and dense 3D measurements from the object. Development of laser scanners and techniques has led to several successful applications in the field of land surveying, forestry, industrial design and city planning. However, airborne laser scanners have not broken through in the field of agriculture and precision planning due to high expenses and insufficient accuracy, where as terrestrial laser scanners on the tripod are considered to be impractical for operational use. However, in the future we may have low-cost laser scanners mounted e.g. on UAVs enabling the cost-efficient use of laser scanning for precision agriculture as they are presently used in forestry. The goal of this study was to investigate how laser scanners and laser point data can be exploited in agriculture and precision farming. Growth height and ear recognition of cultivated plants were investigated using laser scanner data. The test area of this study is located in the Kotkaniemi Experimental Station of Kemira GrowHow Ltd in Southern Finland. Cereal cultivars were sown in plots of 1.25 m x 10 m on 6 May 2006. Plots were fertilized at various rates corresponding to 0, 40, 80, 120 and 160 kg of N/ha. Three small grain cereals (barley, oat and wheat) with five different rates of fertilizer were scanned six times using Faro terrestrial laser scanner during the growing season of 2006. Faro laser scanner was mounted on a movable rack specially made for this study. The rack was about 3 meter high and Faro scanner scanned the ground beneath it. Test plots were signalled using white plastic disks and their location was measured using tachymeter. Besides, digital photographs, soil moisture values and growth height using tape measure were collected from each test plot and meteorological station observations were recorded. Growth heights were determined from each test plot using laser scanner data. A single test plot was divided into smaller grid cells and growth heights were determined from each cell. Precision harvesting was made on the 16th August 2006 with a combined harvester and total fresh weight of grains was weighed. Moisture content of grains was determined and fresh grain weight was converted into grain yield value (kg/ha) using grain moisture content and plot area. Growth height measures were compared to threshing results and there was strong correlation between measured growth heights and grain yield from each studied cultivars. Besides, ears of spring wheat cultivar Picolo were determined. An algorithm was developed to automatically recognize ears and estimate their size from laser scanner data. This result also correlates with the grain yield but the problem was to find suitable parameters for the algorithm and algorithm provide rather relative than absolute results of grain yield. * Corresponding author.
Sparse phase retrieval: Convex algorithms and limitations

We consider the problem of recovering signals from their power spectral densities. This is a classical problem referred to in literature as the phase retrieval problem, and is of paramount importance in many fields of applied sciences. In general, additional prior information about the signal is required to guarantee unique recovery as the mapping from signals to power spectral densities is not one-to-one. In this work, we assume that the underlying signals are sparse. Recently, semidefinite programming (SDP) based approaches were explored by various researchers. Simulations of these algorithms strongly suggest that signals upto O(n1/2- ϵ) sparsity can be recovered by this technique. In this work, we develop a tractable algorithm based on reweighted ℓ1-minimization that recovers a sparse signal from its power spectral density for significantly higher sparsities, which is unprecedented. We also discuss the limitations of the existing SDP algorithms and provide a combinatorial algorithm which requires significantly fewer ”phaseless” measurements to guarantee recovery.
New Tools for Intermodal Analysis and Association Testing in Neuroimaging

NEW TOOLS FOR INTERMODAL ANALYSIS AND ASSOCIATION TESTING IN NEUROIMAGING Simon N. Vandekar Russell T. Shinohara In the field of neuroimage analysis two key goals are to understand the association of a highdimensional imaging variable with a phenotype, and to understand relationships between several high-dimensional imaging variables. Several recent studies have shown that the standard “massunivariate” methods to test an association of an image with a phenotype have inflated type 1 error rates due to invalid assumptions. Here, we propose two new methods to perform association testing in neuroimaging and illustrate the method in two stages of the lifespan. The first is a parametric bootstrap testing procedure that estimates the joint distribution of test statistical parametric map in order to control the voxel-wise family-wise error rate (FWER). We illustrate the method by identifying sex differences in nonlinear developmental trajectories of cerebral blood flow through adolescence using the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort. The second testing procedure is a generalization of Rao’s score test based on projecting the score statistic onto a linear subspace of a high-dimensional parameter space. The approach provides a way to localize signal in the high-dimensional space by projecting the scores to the subspace where the score test was performed. This allows for inference in the high-dimensional space to be performed on the same degrees of freedom as the score test, effectively reducing the number of comparisons. We illustrate the method by analyzing a subset of the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative dataset. Finally, we propose a new tool to study relationships between neuroimaging modalities that we to describe how the spatial association between cortical thickness and sulcal depth changes in adolescent development. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT . iii ABSTRACT . iv LIST OF TABLES . vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . xi CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER 2 : INTERPRETABLE HIGH-DIMENSIONAL INFERENCE VIA SCORE PROJECTION WITH AN APPLICATION IN NEUROIMAGING . 3 2.
Hippocampal Amnesia

This article reviews 147 cases of amnesia following damage including the hippocampus or fornix as reported in 179 publications. The aetiology, mnestic abilities and reference(s) are tabulated for each case. Consistent findings across cases include the association of bilateral hippocampal damage with a deficit in anterograde episodic memory combined with spared procedural and working memory. The limited nature of retrograde amnesia following lesions to the fornix is also noted. Less consistent and thus more controversial findings, include effects of lesion size or laterality, deficits in semantic memory or familiarity-based recognition and the extent of retrograde amnesia. The evidence concerning these issues is reviewed across cases.
Primary Prevention of Neural Tube Defects

Studies had proven that supplementation of women of childbearing age with folic acid can prevent up to 70% of all cases of NTDs (Laurence et al 1981, MRC Vitamin Study Research Group 1991). These researches led to international recommendations that all women of childbearing age consume 400 micrograms of folic acid daily for the prevention of neural tube defects at least 1 month before and throughout the first trimester of pregnancy (CDC 1992, Institutes of Medicine 1998, WHO 2002). Three potential approaches were advocated to increase level of folic acid consumption among the general population: fortification of food supply, improvement of dietary habits and use of dietary supplements (CDC, 1992). In some countries such as Canada and the USA, these recommendations led to the fortification of all enriched grain products with folic acid. This action decreased the occurrence of spina bifida by 31% and anencephaly by 16% (CDC 2004) and thus was considered as a partial success. As for the change in eating habits, meeting dietary recommendations for grain intake is an important step to achieving the recommended daily intake for folic acid. Studies have shown that non pregnant women of childbearing age reported an average daily consumption of 128 mcg of folic acid, representing only 32 percent of the daily recommended amount (Yang et al. 2007). These facts imply that most women still need to daily consume a dietary supplement containing folic acid at the recommended dose (400 μg) in order to prevent pregnancies with NTDs. Despite all this, several studies have shown a low consumption of folic acid supplements worldwide: numbers vary from prevalence as low as 7.5% in Lebanon (Nasr Hage et al 2011) to the highest percentage of 40 % in Canada and the USA (Morin et al. 2002; Petrini et al, 2008). These percentages remain far from the “Healthy people 2010” goal aiming that a minimum of 80% of women of childbearing age consume at least 400 mcg of folic acid daily in the periconception period. Levels of awareness and knowledge have been studied extensively in women of childbearing age in order to explain the low prevalence of folic acid intake with variable results in different countries. Although these levels of awareness and knowledge were thought to explain low levels of folic acid consumption, a systematic review of the literature showed that variable interventions on folic acid increased women’s awareness from 60% to 72% and knowledge
The two-point correlation function of rich clusters of galaxies: results from an extended APM cluster redshift survey

We present new estimates of the spatial two-point correlation function of rich clusters of galaxies selected from the APM Galaxy Survey. We have measured redshifts for a sample of $364$ clusters out to a depth of $\sim 450\hmpc$. The clusters have a mean space density of $\bar{n} = 3.4\times 10^{-5}\hmpccc$. The two-point correlation function, $\xi_{cc}$, for this sample is equal to unity at a pair-separation of $r_0 = 14.3\pm1.75\hmpc$ (2$\sigma$ errors), consistent with our earlier results from a smaller sample. The new observations provide an accurate determination of the shape of $\xi_{cc}$ to pair-separations of about $50\hmpc$. Our results show that $\xi_{cc}$ has a higher amplitude than expected according to the standard $\Omega=1$ cold dark matter (CDM) model on spatial scales $2\simlt s \simlt 50\hmpc$, but are in good agreement with scale-invariant fluctuations in either a low density CDM model or a critical density universe made up of a mixture of hot and cold dark matter. Our results provide strong constraints on so called `co-operative' models of galaxy formation in which the galaxy formation process introduces large-scale structure in the galaxy distribution.
Distribution of Pseudomonas Species in a Dairy Plant Affected by Occasional Blue Discoloration

During 2010 many cases of discoloration in mozzarella, popularly termed as blue mozzarella, have been reported to the attention of public opinion. Causes of the alteration were bacteria belonging to the genus Pseudomonas. The strong media impact of such cases has created confusion, not only among consumers, but also among experts. In order to help improving the knowledge on microbial ecology of this microorganism a study has been set up with the collaboration of a medium-sized dairy plant producing fresh mozzarella cheese, with occasional blue discoloration, conducting surveys and sampling in the pre-operational, operational and post-operational process phase, milk before and after pasteurization, water (n=12), environmental surfaces (n=22) and the air (n=27). A shelf life test was conducted on finished products stored at different temperatures (4-8°C). Among the isolates obtained from the microbiological analysis of the samples, 60 were subjected to biomolecular tests in order to confirm the belonging to Pseudomonas genus and to get an identification at species level by the amplification and sequencing of the gyrB gene. The results of microbiological tests demonstrated the presence of microorganisms belonging to the genus Pseudomonas along the entire production lane; molecular tests showed 7 different species among the 40 isolates identified. One particular species (Pseudomonas koreensis) was isolated from blue discolored mozzarella cheese and was indicated as the most relevant for the production plant, both for the distribution along the processing chain and for the consequences on the finished product.
The effect of task technology fit toward individual performance on the Generation X (1956–1980) using information technology

The generation is defined as a group of individuals who were born in the same birth ranges, which at that time had formed the uniqueness of the experience, history or the same era. The rapidly evolving technological developments lead to Generation X (1956–1980) having different perspectives, thoughts, ideas in using information technology to complete its work. This study aims to the relationship between the task-technology fit (TTF) affecting utilization and individual performance impact on Generation X in the usage of information technology. The method that is used is PLS-SEM with 101 respondents from Generation X in Mulawarman University. The results showed the empirical model is able to explain 64.7% of the variance of individual performance impact on Generation X in using of information technology at the Mulawarman University. The research proves task-technology fit are factors that affect the generation x in the use information technology services, task-technology fit and utilization is a factor that has a significant positive relationship effects on individual performance improvement the generation x in using of information technology services at the Mulawarman University. The results of this study revealed that the better the suitability of the information technology to the user's tasks (task-technology fit) in Generation x at the Mulawarman University, influence in increasing the utilization and improving the performance of individuals impact on generation x in using information technology.
Patterns of gender parity in the humanities and STEM programs: the trajectory under the expanded higher education system

ABSTRACT This study considers patterns of participation according to gender in post-mass higher education from the perspective of higher education expansion in Taiwan. Becker’s D coefficient (D) is used to detect the patterns of gender parity in a ‘critical mass’ field in higher education. The study compared participation in STEM and the humanities in terms of gender parity. ARIMA was used to build the best-fit model to project the future trends of D in both programs. The findings suggest that more females are entering higher education and that there are little gender differences in those entering STEM programs. The gender gaps shown by D in the humanities and in STEM are narrowing rapidly in both the elite and mass stage, but the gap in the universal stage shows little change. The findings provide patterns of gender parity in different programs to interpret the effect of higher education expansion.
Semi-Automatic Normalization of Multitemporal Remote Images Based on Vegetative Pseudo-Invariant Features

A procedure to achieve the semi-automatic relative image normalization of multitemporal remote images of an agricultural scene called ARIN was developed using the following procedures: 1) defining the same parcel of selected vegetative pseudo-invariant features (VPIFs) in each multitemporal image; 2) extracting data concerning the VPIF spectral bands from each image; 3) calculating the correction factors (CFs) for each image band to fit each image band to the average value of the image series; and 4) obtaining the normalized images by linear transformation of each original image band through the corresponding CF. ARIN software was developed to semi-automatically perform the ARIN procedure. We have validated ARIN using seven GeoEye-1 satellite images taken over the same location in Southern Spain from early April to October 2010 at an interval of approximately 3 to 4 weeks. The following three VPIFs were chosen: citrus orchards (CIT), olive orchards (OLI) and poplar groves (POP). In the ARIN-normalized images, the range, standard deviation (s. d.) and root mean square error (RMSE) of the spectral bands and vegetation indices were considerably reduced compared to the original images, regardless of the VPIF or the combination of VPIFs selected for normalization, which demonstrates the method’s efficacy. The correlation coefficients between the CFs among VPIFs for any spectral band (and all bands overall) were calculated to be at least 0.85 and were significant at P = 0.95, indicating that the normalization procedure was comparably performed regardless of the VPIF chosen. ARIN method was designed only for agricultural and forestry landscapes where VPIFs can be identified.
Choline status and neurodevelopmental outcomes at 5 years of age in the Seychelles Child Development Nutrition Study

Choline is an essential nutrient that is found in many food sources and plays a critical role in the development of the central nervous system. Animal studies have shown that choline status pre- and postnatally can have long-lasting effects on attention and memory; however, effects in human subjects have not been well studied. The aim of the present study was to examine the association between plasma concentrations of free choline and its related metabolites in children and their neurodevelopment in the Seychelles Child Development Nutrition Study, an ongoing longitudinal study assessing the development of children born to mothers with high fish consumption during pregnancy. Plasma concentrations of free choline, betaine, dimethylglycine (DMG), methionine and homocysteine and specific measures of neurodevelopment were measured in 210 children aged 5 years. The children's plasma free choline concentration (9·17 (sd 2·09) μmol/l) was moderately, but significantly, correlated with betaine (r 0·24; P= 0·0006), DMG (r 0·15; P= 0·03), methionine (r 0·24; P= 0·0005) and homocysteine (r 0·19; P= 0·006) concentrations. Adjusted multiple linear regression revealed that betaine concentrations were positively associated with Preschool Language Scale – total language scores (β = 0·066; P= 0·04), but no other associations were evident. We found no indication that free choline concentration or its metabolites, within the normal physiological range, are associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes in children at 5 years of age. As there is considerable animal evidence suggesting that choline status during development is associated with cognitive outcome, the issue deserves further study in other cohorts.
International Diversification and Labor Income Risk

Members of an occupational pension plan face the same industry shocks, since membership is based on employment industry. An occupational pension fund might therefore design portfolio composition so as to hedge members' labour income shocks at the industry level. This paper quantifies differences in equilibrium equity portfolios across investors belonging to different industry-country pairs. We compare these industry-based portfolios to the one that would be optimal for an investor endowed with the average home-country labor income. Our analysis uncovers remarkable heterogeneity across industries in the three investing countries considered - US, Canada and Italy. These results point to a role of occupational pension funds in hedging labour income risk through international equity diversification.
Escape responses in juvenile Atlantic cod Gadus morhua L.: the effects of turbidity and predator speed

SUMMARY We examined the effect of turbidity (0.5–14 beam attenuation m–1) and predator attack speed (150 and 296 cm s–1) on escape responses of juvenile cod Gadus morhua in the laboratory. We triggered escape responses using a predator model and measured escape timing, direction and locomotor performance. We also measured responsiveness and estimated the likelihood of fish escaping the `predator attack' (putative escape success, PES). Turbidity affected both PES and the type of escape response used by the fish, but these effects depended on predator speed. PES for the fast predator attack declined from 73% in clear water to 21% in highly turbid water, due to decreased responsiveness and poorly timed escapes. Intermediate turbidity enhanced PES and responsiveness to the slow predator attack. Locomotor performance was reduced by turbidity, whereas predator speed had the opposite effect. Our results suggest that both predator attack speed and turbidity have important roles in determining the vulnerability of fish attacked by piscivorous predators.
Quaternionic Representation of the Riesz Pyramid for Video Magnification

Recently, we presented a new image pyramid, called the Riesz pyramid, that uses the Riesz transform to manipulate the phase in non-oriented sub-bands of an image sequence to produce real-time motion-magnified videos. In this report we give a quaternionic formulation of the Riesz pyramid, and show how several seemingly heuristic choices in how to use the Riesz transform for phase-based video magnification fall out of this formulation in a natural and principled way. We intend this report to accompany the original paper on the Riesz pyramid for video magnification.