Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Symposium : Food Assistance and the Well-Being of Low-Income Families Child Food Insecurity Increases Risks Posed by Household Food

The US Food Security Scale (USFSS) measures household and child food insecurity (CFI) separately. Our goal was to determine whether CFI increases risks posed by household food insecurity (HFI) to child health and whether the Food Stamp Program (FSP)modifies these effects. From 1998 to 2004, 17,158 caregivers of children ages 36 mo were interviewed in six urban medical centers. Interviews included demographics, the USFSS, child health status, and hospitalization history. Ten percent reported HFI, 12% HFI and CFI (H&CFI). Compared with food-secure children, thosewithHFI had significantly greater adjusted odds of fair/poor health and being hospitalized since birth, and those with H&CFI had even greater adverse effects. Participation in the FSP modified the effects of FI on child health status and hospitalizations, reducing, but not eliminating, them. Children in FSP-participating households that were HFI had lower adjusted oddsof fair/poor health [1.37 (95%CI, 1.06–1.77)] than children in similar non-FSPhouseholds [1.61 (95% CI, 1.31–1.98)]. Children in FSP-participating households that were H&CFI also had lower adjusted odds of fair/ poor health [1.72 (95%CI, 1.34–2.21)] than in similar non-FSP households [2.14 (95%CI, 1.81–2.54)]. HFI is positively associated with fair/poor health and hospitalizations in young children. With H&CFI, odds of fair/poor health and hospitalizations are even greater. Participation in FSP reduces, but does not eliminate, effects of FI on fair/poor health. J. Nutr. 136: 1073–1076, 2006.
A 1 × 400 Backside-Illuminated SPAD Sensor With 49.7 ps Resolution, 30 pJ/Sample TDCs Fabricated in 3D CMOS Technology for Near-Infrared Optical Tomography

A 1 × 400 array of backside-illuminated SPADs fabricated in 130 nm 3D IC CMOS technology is presented. Sensing is performed in the top tier substrate and time-to-digital conversion in the bottom tier. Clusters of eight pixels are connected to a winner-take-all circuit with collision detection capabilities to realise an efficient sharing of the time-to-digital converter (TDC). The sensor's 100 TDCs are based on a dual-frequency architecture enabling 30 pJ per conversion at a rate of 13.3 ms/s per TDC. The resolution (1 LSB) of the TDCs is 49.7 ps with a standard deviation of 0.8 ps across the entire array; the mean DNL is ±0.44 LSB and the mean INL is ±0.47. The chip was designed for use in near-infrared optical tomography (NIROT) systems for brain imaging and diagnostics. Measurements performed on a silicon phantom proved its suitability for NIROT applications.
The morphology and toughness of thermoplastic-modified epoxy polymer with carbon nanotubes or silica nanoparticles

The research carried out in this thesis was to investigate the effects of incorporating nanomodlfiers into amine cured epoxy resin, with a second phase of thermoplastic. The morphology and properties of the epoxy with various percentages of thermoplastic with reactive endgroups were assessed. As the percentage of thermoplastic was increased the morphology changed from spherical particulate, to co-continuous and finally phase inverted. The Young's modulus and 0.2% proof stress of the material were unaffected by the addition of the thermoplastic. The ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and fracture properties increased with increasing thermoplastic content. Several methods of dispersion for the nanotubes were tested using different types of multiwalled carbon nanotubes. Sonicating non-functionalised Thomas Swan nanotubes into the epoxy gave the best dispersion. The dispersions were assessed using a greyscale analysis, and a quadrat analysis of transmission electron micrograph collages. Both methods gave comparable results. The addition of nanotubes to the blend was found to have no effect on the tensile or fracture properties of the polymer. The addition of nanosilica to the blends was found to give an increase in Young's modulus but had no effect on the UTS, 0.2% proof stress or fracture properties. Plane strain compression tests were used to investigate why this epoxy was not toughened by the addition of nanosilica. These revealed that an epoxy which will toughen with the addition of nanosilica shows strain softening and significant shear band formation while the epoxy used throughout this thesis does not. Finally the thermoplastic was used with different endgroups. Changing the endgroup from one reactive group to another had no effect on morphology, but resulted in a slight decrease in fracture properties. The unreactive endgroup had a significant effect on the morphology and resulted in general in an increase in fracture properties and a decrease in UTS.
EBG Based Microstrip Patch Antenna for Brain Tumor Detection via Scattering Parameters in Microwave Imaging System

A microwave brain imaging system model is envisaged to detect and visualize tumor inside the human brain. A compact and efficient microstrip patch antenna is used in the imaging technique to transmit equivalent signal and receive backscattering signal from the stratified human head model. Electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure is incorporated on the antenna ground plane to enhance the performance. Rectangular and circular EBG structures are proposed to investigate the antenna performance. Incorporation of circular EBG on the antenna ground plane provides an improvement of 22.77% in return loss, 5.84% in impedance bandwidth, and 16.53% in antenna gain with respect to the patch antenna with rectangular EBG. The simulation results obtained from CST are compared to those obtained from HFSS to validate the design. Specific absorption rate (SAR) of the modeled head tissue for the proposed antenna is determined. Different SAR values are compared with the established standard SAR limit to provide a safety regulation of the imaging system. A monostatic radar-based confocal microwave imaging algorithm is applied to generate the image of tumor inside a six-layer human head phantom model. S-parameter signals obtained from circular EBG loaded patch antenna in different scanning modes are utilized in the imaging algorithm to effectively produce a high-resolution image which reliably indicates the presence of tumor inside human brain.
Empathizing-systemizing cognitive styles: Effects of sex and academic degree

This study tests if the drives to empathize (E) and systemize (S), measured by the Systemizing Quotient-Revised (SQ-R) and Empathy Quotient (EQ), show effects of sex and academic degree. The responses of 419 students from the Humanities and the Physical Sciences were analyzed in terms of the E-S theory predictions. Results confirm that there is an interaction between sex, degree and the drive to empathize relative to systemize. Female students in the Humanities on average had a stronger drive to empathize than to systemize in comparison to males in the Humanities. Male students in the Sciences on average had a stronger drive to systemize than to empathize in comparison to females in the Sciences. Finally, students in the sciences on average had a stronger drive to systemize more than to empathize, irrespective of their sex. The reverse is true for students in the Humanities. These results strongly replicate earlier findings.
Fast Exact Nearest Patch Matching for Patch-Based Image Editing and Processing

This paper presents an efficient exact nearest patch matching algorithm which can accurately find the most similar patch-pairs between source and target image. Traditional match matching algorithms treat each pixel/patch as an independent sample and build a hierarchical data structure, such as kd-tree, to accelerate nearest patch finding. However, most of these approaches can only find approximate nearest patch and do not explore the sequential overlap between patches. Hence, they are neither accurate in quality nor optimal in speed. By eliminating redundant similarity computation of sequential overlap between patches, our method finds the exact nearest patch in brute-force style but reduces its running time complexity to be linear on the patch size. Furthermore, relying on recent multicore graphics hardware, our method can be further accelerated by at least an order of magnitude (≥ 10 ×). This greatly improves performance and ensures that our method can be efficiently applied in an interactive editing framework for moderate-sized image even video. To our knowledge, this approach is the fastest exact nearest patch matching method for high-dimensional patch and also its extra memory requirement is minimal. Comparisons with the popular nearest patch matching methods in the experimental results demonstrate the merits of our algorithm.
Current Status of the Insecticide

The mosquito Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae) is the primary vector of dengue in Mexi‐ co and lately virus Chikungunya, although Aedes albopictus is widely distributed; its role in both diseases’ transmission has not been confirmed. The control of mosquitoes in Mex‐ ico includes source reduction consisting in the elimination of containers that are favorable sites for oviposition and development of the aquatic stage. The use of insecticides is to control larvae and adulticides as outdoor ultra-low volume applications and indoor re‐ sidual spray and more recently impregnated materials. The health department regulates the use of insecticides, and such regulations are revised and adapted over time. Since 1999, the vector control regulations gave preference to the use of pyrethroids, a perme‐ thrin-based formulation to control adult forms. This insecticide was used as the only adulticide in Mexico for more than 10 years. The consequences of this actions have evolved in a widespread and strong resistance to other insecticides, mainly pyrethroids. We include in this revision evidence of resistance reported in Ae. aegypti in Mexico.
Analysis and Comparison of Greek Parliamentary Electoral Systems of the Period 1974-1999

An important topic, in electoral studies, is the choice of the electoral system, which will be applied in parliamentary elections, because parliamentary seats distributed to political parties differ when a different system is applied. In this paper we focus on the five latest electoral systems applied in Greek Parliamentary Elections. Each one of them is described and analysed, in detail. Different measures of disproportionality are used in order to evaluate and compare these systems. We provide implementation details and illustrations using the data set of the latest parliamentary elections of 1996 and various data sets generated by introducing noise to the initial data set
Orbiting Low Frequency Array for radio astronomy

Recently new and interesting science drivers have emerged for very low frequency radio astronomy from 0.3 MHz to 30 MHz. However Earth bound radio observations at these wavelengths are severely hampered by ionospheric distortions, man made interference, solar flares and even complete reflection below 10 MHz. OLFAR is Orbiting Low Frequency ARray, a project whose aim is to develop a detailed system concept for space based very low frequency large aperture radio interferometric array observing at these very long wavelengths. The OLFAR cluster could either orbit the moon, whilst sampling during the Earth-radio eclipse phase, or orbit the Earth-moon L2 point, sampling almost continuously or Earth-trailing and leading orbit. The aim of this paper is to present the technical requirements for OLFAR and first order estimates of data rates for space based radio astronomy based on the proposed scalable distributed correlator model. The OLFAR cluster will comprise of autonomous flight units, each of which is individually capable of inter satellite communication and down-link. The down-link data rate is heavily dependent on distance of the cluster from Earth and thus the deployment location of OLFAR, which are discussed.
Linking River Management To Species Conservation Using DynamicLandscape-Scale Models

Efforts to conserve stream and river biota could benefit from tools that allow managers to evaluate landscape-scale changes in species distributions in response to water management decisions. We present a framework and methods for integrating hydrology, geographic context and metapopulation processes to simulate effects of changes in streamflow on fish occupancy dynamics across a landscape of interconnected stream segments. We illustrate this approach using a 482 km catchment in the southeastern US supporting 50 or more stream fish species. A spatially distributed, deterministic and physically based hydrologic model is used to simulate daily streamflow for sub-basins composing the catchment. We use geographic data to characterize stream segments with respect to channel size, confinement, position and connectedness within the stream network. Simulated streamflow dynamics are then applied to model fish metapopulation dynamics in stream segments, using hypothesized effects of streamflow magnitude and variability on population processes, conditioned by channel characteristics. The resulting time series simulate spatially explicit, annual changes in species occurrences or assemblage metrics (e.g. species richness) across the catchment as outcomes of management scenarios. Sensitivity analyses using alternative, plausible links between streamflow components and metapopulation processes, or allowing for alternative modes of fish dispersal, demonstrate large effects of ecological uncertainty on model outcomes and highlight needed research and monitoring. Nonetheless, with uncertainties explicitly acknowledged, dynamic, landscape-scale simulations may prove useful for quantitatively comparing river management alternatives with respect to species conservation. Published 2012. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. key words: aquatic biodiversity; freshwater fishes; hydrologic models; fluvial geomorphology; metapopulation dynamics Received 9 March 2012; Accepted 23 March 2012
Approaching waterfilling capacity of parallel channels by higher order modulation and probabilistic amplitude shaping

Parallel, additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels with an average sum power constraint are considered. It is shown how the waterfilling Shannon capacity can be approached by higher order modulation and probabilistic amplitude shaping (PAS). This is achieved by a new distribution matching approach called product distribution matching (PDM). The asymptotic performance of PDM is analyzed by achievable rates. A heuristic for optimizing the input distribution is proposed, which enables signaling at a target spectral efficiency with a fixed-rate forward error correction (FEC) code, while the optimal power allocation is ensured by mercury-waterfilling and a simple bit-loading strategy. Finite blocklength simulation results with 5G low-density parity-check codes show power savings of around 1 dB compared to a conventional scheme with uniform input distributions.
Renal Association Clinical Practice Guidelines on Acute Kidney Injury

Acute kidney injury (AKI) has now replaced the term acute renal failure and an universal definition and staging system has been proposed to allow earlier detection and management of AKI. The new terminology enables healthcare professionals to consider the disease as a spectrum of injury. This spectrum extends from less severe forms of injury to more advanced injury when acute kidney failure may require renal replacement therapy (RRT). Clinically AKI is characterised by a rapid reduction in kidney function resulting in a failure to maintain fluid, electrolyte and acid-base homoeostasis. There have previously been many different definitions of AKI used in the literature which has made it difficult to determine the epidemiology and outcomes of AKI. Over recent years there has been increasing recognition that relatively small rises in serum creatinine in a variety of clinical settings are associated with worse outcomes [1]. To address the lack of an universal definition for AKI a collaborative network of international experts representing nephrology and intensive care societies established the Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative (ADQI) and devised the RIFLE definition and staging system for AKI [2]. Shortly after this many of the original members of the ADQI group collaborated to form the Acute Kidney Injury Network (AKIN) [3, 4]. The AKIN group modified the RIFLE staging system to reflect the clinical significance of relatively small rises in serum creatinine. Most recently the international guideline group, Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) has brought together international experts from many different specialties to produce a definition and staging system that harmonises the previous definitions and staging systems proposed by both ADQI and AKIN [5]. It is anticipated that this definition and staging system
Findings of the VarDial Evaluation Campaign 2017

We present the results of the VarDial Evaluation Campaign on Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Similar Languages, Varieties and Dialects, which we organized as part of the fourth edition of the VarDial workshop at EACL’2017. This year, we included four shared tasks: Discriminating between Similar Languages (DSL), Arabic Dialect Identification (ADI), German Dialect Identification (GDI), and Cross-lingual Dependency Parsing (CLP). A total of 19 teams submitted runs across the four tasks, and 15 of them wrote system description papers.
Long intergenic non-coding RNA induced by X-ray irradiation regulates DNA damage response signaling in the human bronchial epithelial BEAS-2B cell line

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been regarded as the primary genetic regulators of several important biological processes. However, the biological functions of lncRNAs in radiation-induced lung damage remain largely unknown. The present study aimed to investigate the potential effects of lncRNAs on radiation-induced lung injury (RILI). Female C57BL/6 mice were exposed to 12 Gy single doses of total body irradiation (TBI). LncRNA microarray screening was conducted at 24 h post-irradiation (IR) to investigate the differentially-expressed lncRNAs during RILI. Following the subsequent bioinformatics analysis and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) validation, one of the verified differentially-expressed long intergenic radiation-responsive ncRNAs (LIRRs), LIRR1, was selected for further functional study. The normal human bronchial epithelial BEAS-2B cell line was used as the cell model. The recombinant eukaryotic expression vector for the lncRNA was designed, constructed and transfected using lipofectamine. RT-PCR, clonogenic and flow cytometry assays, immunofluorescence detection and western blot analysis were performed to reveal the role of the lncRNA in the radiosensitivity regulation of the RILI target cells. In lung tissues 24 h after 12 Gy TBI, six of the identified differentially-expressed LIRRs near the coding genes were validated using quantitative (q)PCR. The upregulation of two LIRRs was observed and confirmed using qPCR. LIRR1 was chosen for further functional study. Following the stable transfection of LIRR1, identified through G418 screening, increased radiosensitivity, evident cell cycle G1 phase arrest and increased γ-H2AX foci formation were observed in the bronchial epithelial BEAS-2B cell line subsequent to IR. LIRR1 overexpression also led to decreased expression of the KU70, KU80 and RAD50 DNA repair proteins, marked activation of p53, decreased mouse double minute 2 homolog (MDM2) expression, and substantially induced p21 and suppressed cyclin-dependent kinase 2 in BEAS-2B following IR. Subsequent to the use of Pifithrin-α, a specific inhibitor of p53 activation, increased MDM2 expression was observed in the LIRR1-overexpressing cells, suggesting that LIRR1 could mediate the DNA damage response (DDR) signaling in a p53-dependent manner. The present study provides a novel mechanism for RILI, using the concept of lncRNAs.
Plasma PCSK9 Levels Are Elevated with Acute Myocardial Infarction in Two Independent Retrospective Angiographic Studies

Objective Proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) is a circulating protein that promotes degradation of the low density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor. Mutations that block PCSK9 secretion reduce LDL-cholesterol and the incidence of myocardial infarction (MI). However, it remains unclear whether elevated plasma PCSK9 associates with coronary atherosclerosis (CAD) or more directly with rupture of the plaque causing MI. Methods and Results Plasma PCSK9 was measured by ELISA in 645 angiographically defined controls (<30% coronary stenosis) and 3,273 cases of CAD (>50% stenosis in a major coronary artery) from the Ottawa Heart Genomics Study. Because lipid lowering medications elevated plasma PCSK9, confounding association with disease, only individuals not taking a lipid lowering medication were considered (279 controls and 492 with CAD). Replication was sought in 357 controls and 465 with CAD from the Emory Cardiology Biobank study. PCSK9 levels were not associated with CAD in Ottawa, but were elevated with CAD in Emory. Plasma PCSK9 levels were elevated in 45 cases with acute MI (363.5±140.0 ng/ml) compared to 398 CAD cases without MI (302.0±91.3 ng/ml, p = 0.004) in Ottawa. This finding was replicated in the Emory study in 74 cases of acute MI (445.0±171.7 ng/ml) compared to 273 CAD cases without MI (369.9±139.1 ng/ml, p = 3.7×10−4). Since PCSK9 levels were similar in CAD patients with or without a prior (non-acute) MI, our finding suggests that plasma PCSK9 is elevated either immediately prior to or at the time of MI. Conclusion Plasma PCSK9 levels are increased with acute MI.
Neurocognitive and Behavioral Predictors of Social Problems in ADHD: A Bayesian Framework

Objective: Social problems are a key area of functional impairment for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and converging evidence points to executive dysfunction as a potential mechanism underlying ADHD-related social dysfunction. The evidence is mixed, however, with regard to which neurocognitive abilities account for these relations. Method: A well-characterized group of 117 children ages 8–13 (M = 10.45, SD = 1.53; 43 girls; 69.5% Caucasian/Non-Hispanic) with ADHD (n = 77) and without ADHD (n = 40) were administered multiple, counterbalanced tests of neurocognitive functioning and assessed for social skills via multi-informant reports. Results: Bayesian linear regressions revealed strong support for working memory and cross-informant interfering behaviors (inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity) as predictors of parent- and teacher-reported social problems. Working memory was also implicated in social skills acquisition deficits, performance deficits, and strengths based on parent and/or teacher report; inattention and/or hyperactivity showed strong correspondence with cross-informant social problems in all models. There was no evidence for, and in most models strong evidence against, effects of inhibitory control and processing speed. The ADHD group was impaired relative to the non-ADHD group on social skills (d = 0.82–0.88), visuospatial working memory (d = 0.89), and phonological working memory (d = 0.58). In contrast, the Bayesian ANOVAs indicated that the ADHD and non-ADHD groups were equivalent on processing speed, IQ, age, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES). There was no support for or against group differences in inhibition. Conclusions: These findings confirm that ADHD is associated with impaired social performance, and implicate working memory and core ADHD symptoms in the acquisition and performance of socially skilled behavior.