Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Young People’s Experiences of Viewing the Fitspiration Social Media Trend: Qualitative Study

Background Social media use has become ubiquitous in the lives of many people, especially young adults. A popular recent trend emerging on social media is that of posting and following ‘Fitspirational’ content - material that purports to motivate and showcase healthy lifestyle habits, particularly relating to exercise and diet. There is very limited existing literature on how engaging with this type of content influences people’s psychological and physical heath. Initial studies have focused on concerns over potential negative effects on psychological wellbeing including body image, self-esteem and eating disorders. Objective We aimed to address a gap in the literature for exploratory research on this topic from the perspective of users. We used a qualitative approach to explore how people experience viewing Fitspiration on social media including why and how they engage with this material and how they perceive that it affects their thoughts, emotions, behaviour and health. Methods We recruited 20 young adults (14 females, 6 males, aged 18-25) who self-declared themselves to be Fitspiration followers to participate in either focus groups or individual interviews. We asked detailed, open-ended questions about their motivations for following Fitspiration, experiences of viewing this content and its perceived impact. We used inductive thematic analysis to derive themes that represented common and salient features of the data set. Results Four main themes were developed: 1) A tool with the potential to support healthy living, 2) Unrealistic, untrustworthy content, 3) Negative effects on emotional wellbeing, and 4) Vulnerability and protective factors. Following Fitspirational posts on social media can provide young people with knowledge and motivation that may support healthy lifestyle behaviours. However, a range of harms also appeared to arise from Fitspiration viewing ranging from minor annoyances and frustrations to more meaningful negative effects on psychological & physical health. These negative effects seemed to persist despite individuals acknowledging that the material can be unrealistic, and believing that they are personally equipped to minimise harms to themselves. Conclusions This study suggests that Fitspiration on social media can be attractive and compelling for young people but appears to bring about negative as well as positive effects. Future research should aim to confirm the scale and intensity of positive and negative effects and investigate ways of harnessing desirable outcomes and minimising undesirable outcomes.
Disruptive Hearing Technologies and Mild Sensorineural Hearing Loss II: Current Research on Affordable Hearing Technologies and Direct-to-Consumer Models

Abstract Recently, President Trump signed into law the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Reauthorization Act of 2017, which included the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act designed to provide greater public accessibility to and affordability of amplification for individuals with self-identified mild and moderate hearing loss through the provision of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids (HAs) with a direct-to-consumer (DTC) delivery model. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and American Academy of Audiology Position Statements on OTC HAs state that these devices should only be used for adults with mild hearing losses. DTC amplification and service delivery has been available to consumers in a variety of forms for a significant period of time. However, FDA-regulated OTC HAs will not be available as described in the new law until the FDA publishes the required guidance related to the technology, safety, and labeling of such devices. With the clear similarities in mind between present and future amplification options, a literature search was conducted to review studies assessing outcomes for low-cost and DTC HAs and service-delivery models to inform what we may expect as OTC HAs enter the market. Nine studies were identified which assessed: (1) electroacoustic capabilities of low-cost and DTC HAs, (2) use of these devices in field trials, or (3) efficacy of DTC models. None of the studies reported outcomes specifically for participants with mild hearing loss. The studies had poor external validity because none included all factors that would exist in realistic uses of OTC HAs within a DTC model. Additional research will be needed as OTC HAs become available and different delivery models are proposed.
Key Enabling Technologies for Secure and Scalable Future Fog-IoT Architecture: A Survey

Fog or Edge computing has recently attracted broad attention from both industry and academia. It is deemed as a paradigm shift from the current centralized cloud computing model and could potentially bring a "Fog-IoT" architecture that would significantly benefit the future ubiquitous Internet of Things (IoT) systems and applications. However, it takes a series of key enabling technologies including emerging technologies to realize such a vision. In this article, we will survey these key enabling technologies with specific focuses on security and scalability, which are two very important and much-needed characteristics for future large-scale deployment. We aim to draw an overall big picture of the future for the research and development in these areas.
Evaluation of sentence embeddings in downstream and linguistic probing tasks

Despite the fast developmental pace of new sentence embedding methods, it is still challenging to find comprehensive evaluations of these different techniques. In the past years, we saw significant improvements in the field of sentence embeddings and especially towards the development of universal sentence encoders that could provide inductive transfer to a wide variety of downstream tasks. In this work, we perform a comprehensive evaluation of recent methods using a wide variety of downstream and linguistic feature probing tasks. We show that a simple approach using bag-of-words with a recently introduced language model for deep context-dependent word embeddings proved to yield better results in many tasks when compared to sentence encoders trained on entailment datasets. We also show, however, that we are still far away from a universal encoder that can perform consistently across several downstream tasks.
RenderNet: A deep convolutional network for differentiable rendering from 3D shapes

Traditional computer graphics rendering pipeline is designed for procedurally generating 2D quality images from 3D shapes with high performance. The non-differentiability due to discrete operations such as visibility computation makes it hard to explicitly correlate rendering parameters and the resulting image, posing a significant challenge for inverse rendering tasks. Recent work on differentiable rendering achieves differentiability either by designing surrogate gradients for non-differentiable operations or via an approximate but differentiable renderer. These methods, however, are still limited when it comes to handling occlusion, and restricted to particular rendering effects. We present RenderNet, a differentiable rendering convolutional network with a novel projection unit that can render 2D images from 3D shapes. Spatial occlusion and shading calculation are automatically encoded in the network. Our experiments show that RenderNet can successfully learn to implement different shaders, and can be used in inverse rendering tasks to estimate shape, pose, lighting and texture from a single image.
Sexual Rehabilitation After Prostate Cancer Through Assistive Aids: A Comparison of Gay/Bisexual and Heterosexual Men

The use of assistive aids in sexual rehabilitation after prostate cancer (PCa) was examined in 124 gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (GBM) and 225 heterosexual men. GBM were significantly more likely to use assistive aids (79% versus 56%), to try multiple assistive aids (M = 1.65 versus M = 0.83) including medication, penile injection, penile implant, vacuum pump, and nonmedical sex aids, and to seek information about sexual rehabilitation on the Internet, through counseling, or in a support group. There were no differences between the groups in satisfaction with the use of assistive aids. However, use of aids was a significant negative predictor of sexual functioning for GBM and a significant positive predictor for heterosexual men. Interview accounts described satisfaction with assistive aids in terms of maintaining erectile functioning and relationships. The majority of men in the study also described hindrances, both physical and social, resulting in discontinuation of assistive aids, including perceived artificiality, loss of sexual spontaneity, side effects, failure to achieve erectile response, cost, and lack of access to information and support. It is concluded that the specific needs and concerns of GBM and heterosexual men regarding sexual rehabilitation after PCa need to be addressed by clinicians.
What drives the rise of antidepressant consumption? Evidence from Switzerland

Antidepressant (AD) consumption has been steadily increasing in the last decade in most countries. The explanations suggested by researchers for this increment are still under scrutiny. This study attempts to identify the determinants of AD consumption by exploiting small area variations from Switzerland between 2003 and 2014. We observe that two specific drugs - Citalopram and Escitalopram - within the Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRI) category are mainly responsible for the increasing trend in AD consumption. Socio-economic, demographic, cultural, and geographical characteristics of the area are included in multiple regression models with random and fixed effects of AD consumption per capita. While most of these factors contribute to explain cross-area variations in AD use, they provide little explanation for the temporal trend in overall AD consumption. Conversely, we find that the time trend in AD consumption is explained at least partially by the density of prescribing physicians. More precisely, generic AD turn out to be positively associated with adverse local economic conditions, while branded AD are negatively associated with adverse economic conditions and positively related to the presence of neurologists and psychiatrists in the area. This may suggest that generic AD drugs are more likely prescribed in accordance to need, whereas branded AD are more likely to respond to preferences and financial incentives affecting suppliers.
How E-Commerce Improves the Brick and Mortar Shopping Experience: Explaining the Post-2002 Slowdown

May 2018 Brick and mortar retailers provided $376 billion of “free” consumer shopping experiences in 2015. For example, vehicle dealerships provide “free” test drives and department stores provide “free” fashion advice. In addition, brick and mortar services like banks also provide valuable “free” experiences as well. The recent shift to e-commerce raises fears that these “free” experiences may be disappearing. To capture the output of “free” experiences, I model their provision as a barter transaction of sales attention for experiences, and track this modeled transaction consistently with the industry outputs and inputs already tracked in GDP. Despite the rise of e-commerce, I find that brick and mortar shopping experiences grew faster than overall GDP after 2002. It may be true that Americans are spending less time at brick and mortar retailers – but retailers more than compensate by increasing the quantity of “free” experiences provided per hour. Consistent with the increased shopping output reported by retailers, shoppers self-reported lower stress levels during brick and mortar shopping. I argue that these changes are driven by competition from e-commerce, so the improvement in brick and mortar shopping experiences can be viewed as an indirect productivity effect from the Internet. Focusing on the wholesale and retail sector, the post-2002 productivity slowdown shrinks from 0.98 percentage points per year to only 0.13 percentage points per year. Across the entire private business sector, the post-2002 productivity slowdown shrinks from 0.44 percentage points per year to 0.26 percentage points per year. Rachel Soloveichik is a research economist at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis; e-mail: rachel.soloveichik@bea.gov. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis or the U.S. Department of Commerce.
‘The king in the car park’: new light on the death and burial of Richard III in the Grey Friars church, Leicester, in 1485

Archaeologists today do not as a rule seek to excavate the remains of famous people and historical events, but the results of the project reported in this article provide an important exception. Excavations on the site of the Grey Friars friary in Leicester, demolished at the Reformation and subsequently built over, revealed the remains of the friary church with a grave in a high status position beneath the choir. The authors set out the argument that this grave can be associated with historical records indicating that Richard III was buried in this friary after his death at the Battle of Bosworth. Details of the treatment of the corpse and the injuries that it had sustained support their case that this should be identified as the burial of the last Plantagenet king. This paper presents the archaeological and the basic skeletal evidence: the results of the genetic analysis and full osteoarchaeological analysis will be published elsewhere.
Auto-Meta: Automated Gradient Based Meta Learner Search

Fully automating machine learning pipelines is one of the key challenges of current artificial intelligence research, since practical machine learning often requires costly and time-consuming human-powered processes such as model design, algorithm development, and hyperparameter tuning. In this paper, we verify that automated architecture search synergizes with the effect of gradient-based meta learning. We adopt the progressive neural architecture search \cite{liu:pnas_google:DBLP:journals/corr/abs-1712-00559} to find optimal architectures for meta-learners. The gradient based meta-learner whose architecture was automatically found achieved state-of-the-art results on the 5-shot 5-way Mini-ImageNet classification problem with $74.65\%$ accuracy, which is $11.54\%$ improvement over the result obtained by the first gradient-based meta-learner called MAML \cite{finn:maml:DBLP:conf/icml/FinnAL17}. To our best knowledge, this work is the first successful neural architecture search implementation in the context of meta learning.
A Pilot Study Exploring the Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Analogue Measures of Pilot Competencies.

INTRODUCTION Sleep loss can result in cognitive, motor, and neurobehavioral impairments. In an aviation context, this can cause a serious threat to flight safety. Therefore, the study aimed to investigate the effects of 24-h sleep deprivation on mood, fatigue, and airline pilot competencies. METHODS Seven subjects attended two 24-h testing periods, one with an 8-h sleep opportunity, and the other with no sleep opportunity (i.e., sleep deprivation). Subjects were required to complete a battery of mood, fatigue, and analogue measures of pilot competency tasks every 8 h (0 h, 8 h, 16 h, 24 h) throughout each testing period. RESULTS While total mood disturbance was found to significantly increase (83.42, SD = 25.7), both objective (352.71, SD = 42.00) and subjective (34.85, SD = 8.82) fatigue were found to significantly decrease following 24-h sleep deprivation. Cognitive flexibility (757.45, SD = 58.48) and hand-eye coordination (dominant hand only) (60.28, SD = 3.86) were also negatively impacted following 24-h sleep deprivation. However, working memory and situation awareness were not significantly negatively impacted by the bout of sleep deprivation. DISCUSSION Some pilot-specific task-related factors such as subjective fatigue, cognitive flexibility, and working memory were found to be particularly susceptible to sleep loss, with significant declines in performance observed following 16-h continuous wakefulness, suggesting reductions in optimal functioning following this period of wakefulness. Further investigation using more regular testing time points, employing additional pilot competencies, and using more aviation-specific tasks is warranted.O'Hagan AD, Issartel J, McGinley E, Warrington G. A pilot study exploring the effects of sleep deprivation on analogue measures of pilot competencies. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2018; 89(7):609-615.
Evaluation of Targeted Image-Guided Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning System by Use of American Association of Physicists in Medicine Task Group-119 Test Cases

Background: This study aimed to evaluate the overall accuracy of the beam commissioning criteria of targeted image-guided radiation therapy (TiGRT) treatment planning system (TPS) based on the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Task Group Report 119 (TG-119). Methods: The work was performed using 6 MV energy LINAC with a variable dose rate of 200 MU/min which equipped with the high-quality external TiGRT dynamic multileaf collimator model H. The AAPM TG-119 intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) commissioning tests are composed of two preliminary tests and four clinical test cases. The clinical tests consisted of mock prostate, mock head and neck, C-shaped target, and multitarget. EDR2 film was used for evaluating the IMRT plans and point dose measured by a Pinpoint chamber positioned in slab phantom. The film analysis was done with the Sun Nuclear Corporation patient software. The dose prescription for each fraction was 200 cGy in mock prostate, mock head and neck, C-shaped target, and multitarget. Dose distributions were analyzed using gamma criteria of 3% and 2% dose difference (DD) and 3 and 2 mm distance to agreement. Results: In all test cases, the gamma criteria for 2%/2 and 3%/3 were found to be 94% and 98%, respectively. Results showed that the average gamma criteria result was in the range of 99.1% to 93% (3%/3, 2%/2) overall test cases. Conclusions: Findings were favorable and in some tests were comparable with the other studies. The dose point values were within the mean values of the range reported by TG-119. Overall, the TiGRT TPS is needed to apply IMRT technique in radiation therapy centers.
The influence of sex and neonatal stress on medullary microglia in rat pups

What is the central question of the study? Does neonatal stress, in the form of neonatal maternal separation, influence the maturation of microglial density, morphology and neuronal signalling in medullary regions regulating cardiorespiratory function in rat pups? What is the main finding and its importance? Using Iba‐1 immunohistochemistry, we show that neonatal maternal separation augments microglial density and the proportion of cells with an amoeboid morphology in the medulla. Although the current understanding of the effect of early life stress on medullary development is relatively limited, these data show that within this area, microglia are affected by neonatal stress. Microglia could therefore be important effectors in cardiorespiratory disorders resulting from maternal separation.
Evaluation of Electroencephalogram Signals of the Professional Pianists during Iconic Memory and Working Memory Tests Using Spectral Coherence

Background: Today, the neuroscience has growth in many aspects, and the effects of different factors on memory obtained many achievements. Several scientific and experimental studies evaluated effects of music on style and behavior of people; in this study, we evaluated memory between two groups of people, the professional pianists and normal people, through processing their electroencephalogram (EEG) signals using the coherence measure. Methods: In this study, EEG signals from 17 subjects during two memory tasks were recorded. After that, these signals were preprocessed, and spectral coherence connectivity measure between pair of electrodes was computed and then compared in the five frequency bands using independent t-test. Results: This statistical analysis for working memory task showed significant differences in the temporal, central, and parietal lobes, especially in P7, P3, Pz, T8, C3, and C4 electrodes. As we know, these differences are related to learned skills and activities, words and sounds perception, and memory. Furthermore, for iconic memory task, significant differences were observed in the right hemisphere of these two groups. Conclusions: From this task, we can say professional pianists are different from normal people in the perception of images and creativity. Results of this study show the effects of music on human brain and memory.
Loving Oneself: The Associations Among Sexually Explicit Media, Body Image, and Perceived Realism

Online sexually explicit material (SEM) is a popular media source, but little is known about its association with body image. This study explored whether perceived realism of SEM mediated the direct association of SEM use on body image while accounting for gender differences. Young adults (N = 393; ages 19 to 30; 53.4% women) recruited through a crowdsourcing Web site completed an anonymous online survey that assessed SEM use, perceptions of the realism of SEM, and body image. Body satisfaction, genital self-image, comfort being nude, penis-/breast-size satisfaction, and self-esteem were used to create the variable of body image. SEM use had a positive indirect association with body image through perceived realism for both men and women. Follow-up analyses revealed this association was due to body satisfaction and self-esteem in men and comfort being nude and self-esteem in women. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for clinical applications and understanding young adults’ body image.
Orchestrating a biomarker panel with lncRNAs and mRNAs for predicting survival in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

The low survival of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) makes the treatment of this disease one of the most challenging task in modern medicine. Here, by mining a large‐scale cancer genome atlas data set of pancreatic cancer tissues, we identified 21 long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) that significantly associated with overall survival in patients with PDAC (P < .01). Further analysis revealed that 8 lncRNAs turned out to be independently correlated with patients’ overall survival, and the risk score could be calculated based on their expression. To obtain a better predicting power, we integrated lncRNA data with a total of 410 differently expressed messenger RNAs (mRNAs) screened from PDAC and normal tissues in gene expression omnibus (GEO) database. The integration resulted in a much better panel including 8 lncRNAs (RP3.470B24.5, CTA.941F9.9, RP11.557H15.3, LINC00960, AP000479.1, LINC00635, LINC00636, and AC073133.1) and 8 mRNAs (DHRS9, ONECUT1, OR8D4, MT1M, TCN1, MMP9, DPYSL3, and TTN) to predict prognosis. A functional evaluation showed that these lncRNAs might play roles in pancreatic secretion, cell adhesion, and proteolysis. Using normal and pancreatic cancer cell lines, we confirmed that a majority of identified lncRNAs and mRNAs showed altered expressions in pancreatic cancer cells. Especially, LINC01589, LINC00960, TCN1, and MT1M showed a profoundly increased expression in pancreatic cancer cells, which suggests their potentially important role in pancreatic cancer. The results of our work indicate that lncRNAs have vital roles in PADC and provide new insights to integrate multiple kinds of markers in clinical practices.