Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dealing with a Latent Danger: Parents Communicating with Their Children about Smoking

The purpose of this study was to understand parental approach to the topic of smoking with school-age preadolescent children. In-depth interviews were conducted with 38 parents and yielded a grounded theory that explains how parents communicated with their children about smoking. Parents perceived smoking to be a latent danger for their children. To deter smoking from occurring they verbally interacted with their children on the topic and took action by having a no-smoking rule. There were three interaction approaches, which differed by style and method of interaction. Most parents interacted by discussing smoking with their children. They intentionally took advantage of opportunities. Some interacted by telling their children about the health effects of smoking and their opposition to it. They responded on the spur-of-the-moment if their attention was drawn to the issue by external cues. A few interacted by acknowledging to their children the negative effects of smoking. They responded only when their children brought it up. The parents' intent for the no-smoking rule, which pertained mainly to their homes and vehicles, was to protect their children from second-hand smoke and limit exposure to smoking. The theory can be used by nurses to guide interventions with parents about youth smoking prevention.
Prioritized payload tuning mechanism for wireless body area network-based healthcare systems

This paper presents a priority-based MAC-frame payload tuning mechanism with reduced energy consumption for healthcare systems that use Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). A fundamental problem in WBANs is to prioritize the physiological sensors depending on several health and external criteria. The challenge is to design a dynamic decision making model that can optimize the energy consumption of each physiological sensor. To address this problem we employ the concept of Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) in order to calculate Criticality Index (CI), which signifies the severity or the priority of the physiological data sensed by each sensor. Considering the obtained CI value we proceed with designing a Markov Decision Process (MDP) based dynamic decision making model in order to tune MAC-frame payload by optimizing the energy consumption of each sensor node. We achieve around 25% decrease in the overall energy consumption using our proposed mechanism.
AODV Implementation Design and Performance Evaluation

To date, the majority of ad hoc routing protocol research has been done using simulation only. One of the most motivating reasons to use simulation is the difficulty of creating a real implementation. In a simulator, the code is contained within a single logical object, which is clearly defined and accessible. On the other hand, creating an implementation requires use of a system with many components. Consequently, the implementation developer must understand not only the routing protocol, but all the system parts and their complex interactions. Further, since ad hoc routing protocols are significantly different from traditional routing protocols, a new set of features must be introduced to support the routing protocol. In this paper we describe the event triggers required for proper operation, the design possibilities and the decisions for our Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol implementation, AODV-UCSB. We also summarize the design of other publicly available AODV implementations. Finally, we provide a comparison of different design approaches. This paper is meant to aid researchers in developing their own on-demand ad hoc routing protocols and assist users in determining the implementation design that best fits their needs.
Sir Thomas Boverton Redwood (1846–1919): a watershed in the British oil industry

Abstract Sir Thomas Boverton Redwood (1846–1919) stands as a giant in the history of petroleum science and technology. This paper pieces together scattered information about his life and work, and discusses his contributions, directly or indirectly, to petroleum exploration and production in various parts of the world, especially Burma (Myanmar), Persia, Mexico and the West Indies with which British colonial and commercial interests were related. Redwood established one of the first and most successful consulting firms for petroleum companies, and, in this way, trained generations of petroleum geologists and engineers. His masterpiece, Petroleum: A Treatise, which went through five editions from 1896 to 1926, summed up the knowledge of petroleum of its age, and still remains a valuable book for historical reference. Redwood's mediatory position between scientific, industrial and political circles in Britain enabled him to play a leading role in the development of petroleum technology, as well as Britain's oil operations around the world during the 1880s–1910s. He served as a technical advisor to many government committees and oil companies, and his total dedication to Britain's oil security during World War I and during the transformation of the Royal Navy's fleet from coal to oil fuel were the climax of his professional life.
A Theory for Optical flow-based Transport on Image Manifolds

An image articulation manifold (IAM) is the collection of images formed when an object is articulated in front of a camera. IAMs arise in a variety of image processing and computer vision applications, where they provide a natural lowdimensional embedding of the collection of high-dimensional images. To date IAMs have been studied as embedded submanifolds of Euclidean spaces. Unfortunately, their promise has not been realized in practice, because real world imagery typically contains sharp edges that render an IAM non-differentiable and hence non-isometric to the low-dimensional parameter space under the Euclidean metric. As a result, the standard tools from differential geometry, in particular using linear tangent spaces to transport along the IAM, have limited utility. In this paper, we explore a nonlinear transport operator for IAMs based on the optical flow between images and develop new analytical tools reminiscent of those from differential geometry using the idea of optical flow manifolds (OFMs). We define a new metric for IAMs that satisfies certain local isometry conditions, and we show how to use this metric to develop a new tools such as flow fields on IAMs, parallel flow fields, parallel transport, as well as a intuitive notion of curvature. The space of optical flow fields along a path of constant curvature has a natural multi-scale structure via a monoid structure on the space of all flow fields along a path. We also develop lower bounds on approximation errors while approximating non-parallel flow fields by parallel flow fields.
Resolution enhancement of thermal images in active dynamic thermography sequences

Recording time series of thermograms allows to reconstruct a thermal images of better spatial resolution and then to calculate basing on new high resolution (HR) sequence parametric images in Active Dynamic Technique. It is quite important because of low original spatial resolution of the detector in most of thermal cameras which are used today. Modification of equipment and reconstructive algorithms for HR procedure are discussed in the paper. Also clinical case of burn diagnosis using HR ADT technique is shown.
MULTIPLE ACCESS FOR MULTIPLE DESTINATIONS IN AD HOC NETWORKS

In this paper, we address the medium-access control (MAC) problem in systems with multiple destinations, a problem that is crucial to the development of ad hoc networks. We focus on collision-resolution algorithms, specifically on First-Come, First-Serve (FCFS) splitting algorithms. We illustrate the difficulties that arise because of the interference between two populations of nodes that share a common channel, the most serious consequence of which is the possibility of deadlock that occurs when a well-known improvement for the single-destination case is used. Experimental results verify that the straightforward use of the FCFS algorithm in two-destination environments (without using this improvement) leads to deadlock-free performance. We show how performance can be improved by applying a time-division mechanism to separate interfering groups of nodes.
Illusory shape representation in the monkey inferior temporal cortex

Perceived boundaries without physical differences between shape and background are called illusory contours (ICs). ICs and real contours (RCs) activate the early processing stages of the macaque visual pathway and the occipitotemporal areas of the human visual system in a similar way. However, it is not known how these contours are processed further in the highest visual areas. We tested how the responses of inferior temporal cortical (IT) neurons of macaque monkeys change in relationship to figures with RCs or ICs. The same set of figures [coloured pictures, ICs and silhouettes (SILs)] was presented to awake, fixating rhesus monkeys while the single‐cell activity was recorded in the anterior part of the IT. Most of the neurons responsive to RCs were also responsive to the same shapes presented as ICs. The average net firing rates, however, were significantly lower for the illusory stimuli than for the stimuli in the RC conditions, and the latency of the responses was significantly longer for the ICs than for the RCs. The shape selectivity was found to be different for coloured stimuli and ICs, and similar for SILs and ICs, suggesting the invariance of selectivity to shapes having the same contour but lacking internal surface information. These results suggest different modes of processing of RCs and ICs in the IT, which might explain the differences in their perception.
Phase Noise in LC Oscillators: A Phasor-Based Analysis of a General Result and of Loaded  $Q$

Recent work by Bank, and Mazzanti and Andreani has offered a general result concerning phase noise in nearly-sinusoidal inductance-capacitance (LC) oscillators; namely that the noise factor of such oscillators (under certain achievable conditions) is largely independent of the specific operation of individual transistors in the active circuitry. Both use the impulse sensitivity function (ISF). In this work, we show how the same result can be obtained by generalizing the phasor-based analysis. Indeed, as applied to nearly-sinusoidal LC oscillators, we show how the two approaches are equivalent. We analyze the negative-gm LC model and present a simple equation that quantifies output noise resulting from phase fluctuations. We also derive an expression for output noise resulting from amplitude fluctuations. Further, we extend the analysis to consider the voltage-biased LC oscillator and fully differential CMOS LC oscillator, for which the Bank's general result does not apply. Thus we quantify the concept of loaded Q.
Knowledge about dietary fibre: a fibre study framework

Abstract The objective of this work was to study the degree of knowledge about dietary fibre (DF), as influenced by factors such as gender, level of education, living environment or country. For this, a descriptive cross-sectional study was undertaken on a non-probabilistic sample of 6010 participants from 10 countries in different continents (Europe, Africa and America). The results showed that the participants revealed on average a positive but still low global level of knowledge, which alerts for the need to take some actions to further inform the population about DF and its role as a component of a healthy diet. The results also indicated differences between genders, levels of education, living environments and countries. The highest level of knowledge was revealed by the participants from female gender, with higher education and living in urban areas. Concerning the country, the best informed were the participants from Romania, followed by those from Portugal and Turkey while the least informed were from Egypt.
Monocrystalline silicon carbide nanoelectromechanical systems

SiC is an extremely promising material for nanoelectromechanical systems given its large Young's modulus and robust surface properties. We have patterned nanometer scale electromechanical resonators from single-crystal 3C-SiC layers grown epitaxially upon Si substrates. A surface nanomachining process is described that involves electron beam lithography followed by dry anisotropic and selective electron cyclotron resonance plasma etching steps. Measurements on a representative family of the resulting devices demonstrate that, for a given geometry, nanometer-scale SiC resonators are capable of yielding substantially higher frequencies than GaAs and Si resonators.
Multiple dynamic transitions in an anisotropic Heisenberg ferromagnet driven by polarized magnetic field.

A uniaxially (along the Z axis) anisotropic Heisenberg ferromagnet, in the presence of time-dependent (but uniform over space) magnetic field, is studied by Monte Carlo simulation. The time-dependent magnetic field was taken as elliptically polarized where the resultant field vector rotates in the X-Z plane. The system is cooled (in the presence of the elliptically polarized magnetic field) from high temperature. As the temperature decreases, it was found that in the low anisotropy limit the system undergoes three successive dynamical phase transitions. These three dynamic transitions were confirmed by studying the temperature variation of dynamic "specific heat. " The temperature variation of dynamic specific heat shows three peaks indicating three dynamic transition points.
AMP: Adaptive Multi-stream Prefetching in a Shared Cache

Prefetching is a widely used technique in modern data storage systems. We study the most widely used class of prefetching algorithms known as sequential prefetching. There are two problems that plague the state-of-the-art sequential prefetching algorithms: (i) cache pollution, which occurs when prefetched data replaces more useful prefetched or demand-paged data, and (ii) prefetch wastage, which happens when prefetched data is evicted from the cache before it can be used. A sequential prefetching algorithm can have a fixed or adaptive degree of prefetch and can be either synchronous (when it can prefetch only on a miss), or asynchronous (when it can also prefetch on a hit). To capture these distinctions we define four classes of prefetching algorithms: Fixed Synchronous (FS), Fixed Asynchronous (FA), Adaptive Synchronous (AS), and Adaptive Asynchronous (AA). We find that the relatively unexplored class of AA algorithms is in fact the most promising for sequential prefetching. We provide a first formal analysis of the criteria necessary for optimal throughput when using an AA algorithm in a cache shared by multiple steady sequential streams. We then provide a simple implementation called AMP, which adapts accordingly leading to near optimal performance for any kind of sequential workload and cache size. Our experimental set-up consisted of an IBM xSeries 345 dual processor server running Linux using five SCSI disks. We observe that AMP convincingly outperforms all the contending members of the FA, FS, and AS classes for any number of streams, and over all cache sizes. As anecdotal evidence, in an experiment with 100 concurrent sequential streams and varying cache sizes, AMP beats the FA, FS, and AS algorithms by 29-172%, 12-24%, and 21-210% respectively while outperforming OBL by a factor of 8. Even for complex workloads like SPC1-Read, AMP is consistently the best performing algorithm. For the SPC2 Video-on-Demand workload, AMP can sustain at least 25% more streams than the next best algorithm. Finally, for a workload consisting of short sequences, where optimality is more elusive, AMP is able to outperform all the other contenders in overall performance.
Label-Free Electrical Detection Using Carbon Nanotube-Based Biosensors

Label-free detections of biomolecules have attracted great attention in a lot of life science fields such as genomics, clinical diagnosis and practical pharmacy. In this article, we reviewed amperometric and potentiometric biosensors based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs). In amperometric detections, CNT-modified electrodes were used as working electrodes to significantly enhance electroactive surface area. In contrast, the potentiometric biosensors were based on aptamer-modified CNT field-effect transistors (CNTFETs). Since aptamers are artificial oligonucleotides and thus are smaller than the Debye length, proteins can be detected with high sensitivity. In this review, we discussed on the technology, characteristics and developments for commercialization in label-free CNT-based biosensors.
The Software Similarity Problem in Malware Analysis

In software engineering contexts software may be compared for similarity in order to detect duplicate code that indicates poor design, and to reconstruct evolution history. Malicious software, being nothing other than a particular type of software, can also be compared for simi- larity in order to detect commonalities and evolution history. This paper provides a brief introduction to the issue of measuring similarity between malicious programs, and how evolution is known to occur in the area. It then uses this review to try to draw lines that connect research in software engineering (e.g., on "clone detection" ) to problems in anti- malware research.
Demography, altruism, and the benefits of budding

It is now widely appreciated that competition between kin inhibits the evolution of altruism. In standard population genetics models, it is difficult for indiscriminate altruism towards social partners to be favoured at all. The reason is that while limited dispersal increases the kinship of social partners it also intensifies local competition. One solution that has received very little attention is if individuals disperse as groups (budding dispersal), as this relaxes local competition without reducing kinship. Budding behaviour is widespread through all levels of biological organization, from early protocellular life to cooperatively breeding vertebrates. We model the effects of individual dispersal, budding dispersal, soft selection and hard selection to examine the conditions under which altruism is favoured. More generally, we examine how these various demographic details feed into relatedness and scale of competition parameters that can be included into Hamilton's rule.
Discovering regulatory and signalling circuits in molecular interaction networks

MOTIVATION In model organisms such as yeast, large databases of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions have become an extremely important resource for the study of protein function, evolution, and gene regulatory dynamics. In this paper we demonstrate that by integrating these interactions with widely-available mRNA expression data, it is possible to generate concrete hypotheses for the underlying mechanisms governing the observed changes in gene expression. To perform this integration systematically and at large scale, we introduce an approach for screening a molecular interaction network to identify active subnetworks, i.e., connected regions of the network that show significant changes in expression over particular subsets of conditions. The method we present here combines a rigorous statistical measure for scoring subnetworks with a search algorithm for identifying subnetworks with high score. RESULTS We evaluated our procedure on a small network of 332 genes and 362 interactions and a large network of 4160 genes containing all 7462 protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions in the yeast public databases. In the case of the small network, we identified five significant subnetworks that covered 41 out of 77 (53%) of all significant changes in expression. Both network analyses returned several top-scoring subnetworks with good correspondence to known regulatory mechanisms in the literature. These results demonstrate how large-scale genomic approaches may be used to uncover signalling and regulatory pathways in a systematic, integrative fashion.
Non-convergent transpiration and stomatal conductance response of a dominant desert species in central Asia to climate drivers at leaf, branch and whole plant scales

Desert ecosystems exposed to extreme droughts are vulnerable to climate change. Multi-scale mechanism of hydrological adaptation of desert plants to drought are not fully understood, creating uncertainty in risk assessment of desert ecosystems to climate change by ecological modelling. In this study, we investigated multi-scale water use strategies of Haloxylon ammodendron, a dominant desert shrub across central Asia. We found that whole plant water use of H. ammodendron was significantly reduced during most of the daytime period (ca. 79%). At low light water use was controlled by photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) and at high vapour pressure deficit (VPD) it was further conserved by stomatal closure. It appears that water conservation in H. ammodendron at leaf-scale may behave differently with that at whole plant scale. High stomatal sensitivity to VPD at whole plant scale means more conservative water use strategy at plant scale than branchand leaf-scale. Response of transpiration and stomata to climate drivers were non-convergent among leaf, branch and whole plant scales for this desert shrub. Therefore, one must be cautious in up scaling leaf-scale data to infer canopy scale water conservation to avoid overestimation of plant response to climate drivers. Nonetheless, our results enrich the database of multi-scale water use response of desert plants to climate drivers, which is critical for ecological modelling aiming to predict arid land vulnerability to climate change.
Meropenem: a potent drug against superbug as unveiled through bioinformatics approaches

Global spread of multi-drug resistant bacteria like Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli have raised the alarm for researchers and doctors throughout the world. This new mechanism of resistance and the ability of ndm-1 gene to be transferred between the species may end the era of antibiotics treatment. Carbapenems are reliable drugs against many multi-resistant gram-negative pathogens. A 3-D homology model of NDM-1 was built and analysed for elucidation of functional site and binding interactions. This study revealed that meropenem has good interaction with the active sites of the receptor that could retard the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Surges of advanced medical support associated with influenza outbreaks

SUMMARY We utilized de-identified data to evaluate increases in four outcomes during influenza outbreak periods (IOPs) including: hospitalization, intensive care unit admission, mechanical ventilation or death for adults aged 18 years or older with medically attended acute respiratory illnesses (MAARI) admitted to any of Maryland's 50 acute-care hospitals over 12 years. Weekly numbers of positive influenza tests in the Maryland area were obtained from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention interactive website. The fewest consecutive weeks around the peak week containing at least 85% of the positive tests defined the IOP. Weekly counts of individual study outcomes were positively correlated with regional weekly counts of positive influenza tests during all the IOPs over 12 years. Also, rate ratios comparing daily occurrences of each study outcome between the IOP and non-IOP were significantly elevated. These results confirm conclusions of previous studies that influenza outbreaks are clearly associated with deaths and increased use of advanced medical resources by patients with MAARI. These data analyses suggest that increased efforts to develop more effective influenza vaccines and therapeutics should be a priority.