Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing individual dietary intake from common-plate meals: a new tool for an enduring practice

Abstract Objective The purposes of the present study were to estimate individual intake from common-plate meals among Bedouin Arabs using a modified 24 h recall questionnaire, and to evaluate reported energy intake (EI) by comparison with estimated energy requirement (EER). Design Weighed records were used to develop a method of quantifying intake from common plates. Reported EI and nutrient intakes were obtained from administration of the modified 24 h recall. The relative standard error (RSE) was used to evaluate the reliability of reported nutrient intakes. The FAO/WHO/United Nations University and Oxford equations and reported physical activity levels were used to compute ratios of reported EI to BMR and EER. Setting Population centres of traditionally semi-nomadic Bedouin Arabs undergoing sedentarization/urbanization in southern Israel. Subjects A convenience sample of 451 adults (aged 19–82 years). Results Mean (se) energy intake was 9648 (276) kJ/d (2306 (66) kcal/d) for men and 8230 (172) kJ/d (1967 (41) kcal/d) for women, of which carbohydrates accounted for 63–64 %. The nutrient intakes evaluated had RSE ratios of less than 25 %. EI:EER ratios ranged from 0·86 to 0·89, and from 0·87 to 0·93 among non-dieters who ate the usual amount on the recall day. Conclusions The modified 24 h recall produced plausible estimates of energy and nutrient intakes, comparable to those obtained with the 24 h recall in other populations. The modified questionnaire makes an important contribution to facilitating large-scale nutritional surveillance in the Bedouin population, and may serve as a model for modifying dietary instruments to quantify individual intake in other populations that practise common-plate eating.
Auranofin in the treatment of steroid dependent asthma: a double blind study.

BACKGROUND: Long term administration of oral corticosteroids in patients with asthma may be associated with serious side effects. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, including gold salts, have been shown to reduce the need for systemic corticosteroid treatment in uncontrolled studies. The effect of oral gold (auranofin) on asthma symptoms, lung function, and the need for oral prednisone treatment was investigated. METHODS: A 26 week randomised, double blind, placebo controlled, parallel group trial of auranofin was performed in 32 patients with moderately severe chronic asthma who required an oral corticosteroid dose of at least 5 mg prednisone a day (or equivalent) or 2.5 mg/day prednisone plus more than 800 micrograms/day inhaled corticosteroids. Auranofin was given orally in a dose of 3 mg twice daily. Asthma symptoms, lung function, and adverse effects were assessed at regular intervals. After 12 weeks of treatment prednisone dosage was tapered down by 2.5 mg every two weeks if the patient was clinically stable. Asthma exacerbations were treated with short courses of high doses of oral steroids. RESULTS: Twenty eight of the 32 patients, 13 in the placebo group and 15 in the auranofin group, completed the study. The total corticosteroid reduction achieved after 26 weeks of treatment was significantly greater (4 mg) in the auranofin group than in the placebo group (0.3 mg). The number of exacerbations requiring an increase of steroids was greater in the placebo group (2.1) than in the active group (0.9). A significant increase in FEV1 of 6.4% predicted occurred in the auranofin group during the study and there was a reduction of asthma symptoms such as wheezing and cough. There was no difference between the groups in peak flow measurements or in the number of asthma attacks. The incidence of side effects of auranofin was low, but exacerbations of constitutional eczema were noticeable. CONCLUSION: Auranofin provides an effective adjunct to treatment for steroid dependent asthma, leading to a reduction of oral steroid dose.
1 REACTIVE OXYGEN SPECIES AND MITOCHONDRIAL SENSITIVITY TO OXIDATIVE STRESS DETERMINE INDUCTION OF CANCER CELL DEATH BY p 21 *

From the Department of Biochemistry, Medical Research Council (MRC) Toxicology Unit and Department of Cancer Studies and Molecular Medicine, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 9HN, UK. Karolinska Institutet, Department of molecular medicine and surgery, Urology laboratory, M1:02, 171 76 Stockholm, Sweden. Department of Infection, Immunity and Biochemistry, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF14 4XN, UK; Translational Cancer Therapeutics Program Department of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences, South Carolina College of Pharmacy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 Corresponding author. email: sm460@le.ac. uk. Phone: +44(0) 116 228 7098. Fax: +44(0) 116 229 7098
Business Value of Information Systems Interoperability ? A Balanced Scorecard Approach

It is widely believed that the establishment of interoperability of firm’s IS with the ones of other cooperating firms (e.g. customers, suppliers, business partners) can generate significant business value. However, this has been only to a very limited extent empirically investigated. This paper contributes to filling this research gap by presenting an empirical study of the effect of IS interoperability on the four business performance dimensions/ perspectives proposed by the Balanced Scorecard approach (financial, internal business processes, customers, learning and innovation). In particular, we examine the effects of adopting three different fundamental types of IS interoperability standards differing in the level of detail and applicability: XML, industry-specific standards and proprietary standards. Our study is based on a large dataset from 14065 European firms (from 25 countries and 10 sectors) collected through the e-Business Watch Survey of the European Commission. It is concluded that all these three examined types of IS interoperability standards increase considerably the positive impact of firm’s IS on the above four business performance perspectives/dimensions; however, their effects differ significantly. The adoption of industryspecific interoperability standards has the highest positive impact, while proprietary and XML standards have similar lower impacts. These conclusions provide valuable empirical evidence of the multidimensional business value generated by IS interoperability and its strong dependence on the type of IS interoperability standards adopted.
A cognitive engineering study on the development of an object oriented process modeling formalism

The task of business engineering (BE) would be effective if provided with tools that support the analysis and understanding of a business system. The study aims at: 1) empirically investigating the cognitive processes of analyzing multiple models of the object oriented methodology; 2) identifying the problem solving strategy for understanding a business system; and 3) proposing a modeling formalism that fits the problem solving strategy. The results of this study show that existing object oriented methodologies need to be revised for providing integrated and multi dimensional views of the core business process. We suggest low level use case diagrams and time, cost and quality dimensional message trace diagrams to provide a comprehensive modeling formalism of object oriented business engineering.
Pilot Response in Combined Control Tasks

Pilot response in a multi-task simulation, which consisted of a primary control task combined with one or two secondary or side control tasks, was investigated. A general description of the response characteristics of each of these tasks was obtained and this information was used to determine the work-load requirements of the tasks. Two different control tasks were used as the primary control task, either a fixed-base simulation of a lunar letdown or a simplified multi-loop tracking task which was similar to the end portion of the lunar letdown. The simplified tracking task was used in lieu of the more complicated lunar letdown because it could be represented and reproduced analytically. The secondary or side tasks consisted of a system failures task and a motor response task. The system failures task was incorporated from those systems present in a vehicle known as the Mercury Procedures Trainer. The motor response task was similar to that presented by the late Dr. Fitts of the University of Michigan. The task consisted of using a pencil-like device to make impacts on two separated, restricted columns. An evaluation of the pilot's capability in controlling the multi-task simulation and a determination of the inter-task correlation was made. It was shown that either of the two side tasks produced similar effects on the primary task. Quality measurements were made of all three tasks in all possible combinations. The degradation of each, when in the combined task tests, was then correlated to the other task(s) of the same test. A simple relationship was found by which one could predict the time required of a human operator to perform the particular task(s) in question. This relationship could be used to determine the workloading qualities of the tasks when performed either alone or combined. An analytical representation for the degraded pilot response in the multi-loop tracking task was also obtained.
Floer cohomology in the mirror of the projective plane and a binodal cubic curve

We construct a family of Lagrangian submanifolds in the Landau-Ginzburg mirror to the projective plane equipped with a binodal cubic curve as anticanonical divisor. These objects correspond under mirror symmetry to the powers of the twisting sheaf 0(1), and hence their Floer cohomology groups form an algebra isomorphic to the homogeneous coordinate ring. An interesting feature is the presence of a singular torus fibration on the mirror, of which the Lagrangians are sections. This gives rise to a distinguished basis of the Floer cohomology and the homogeneous coordinate ring parameterized by fractional integral points in the singular affine structure on the base of the torus fibration. The algebra structure on the Floer cohomology is computed using the symplectic techniques of Lefschetz fibrations and the TQFT counting sections of such fibrations. We also show that our results agree with the tropical analog proposed by Abouzaid-Gross-Siebert. Extensions to a restricted class of singular affine manifolds and to mirrors of the complements of components of the anticanonical divisor are discussed.
Evidence That the Variable Regions of the Central Domain of VlsE Are Antigenic during Infection with Lyme Disease Spirochetes

ABSTRACT It has been postulated that the vls system of the Lyme disease spirochetes contributes to immune evasion through antigenic variation. While it is clear that vlsE undergoes sequence change within its variable regions at a high frequency during the early stages of infection, a definitive role in immune evasion has not been demonstrated. In this report we assessed the murine and human humoral immune response to recombinant (r)-VlsE variants that originally arose during infection in mice. Immunoblot analyses of r-VlsE variants were conducted by using serum samples collected from mice infected with Borrelia burgdorferi clones that carried different vlsE variants. All of the r-VlsE variants were recognized by infection sera regardless of the identity of the infecting clone or isolate. In addition, all variants were immunoreactive with a panel of human Lyme disease patient serum samples. It is evident from these analyses that the infection-induced VlsE variants share common epitopes that reside within conserved segments of these proteins. However, preabsorption experiments revealed that the variable regions of the central domain of VlsE, which undergo rapid mutation during infection, also influence the antigenic properties of the protein. A subset of the antibodies elicited against vlsE variants that differ in the sequences of their variable regions were found to be variant specific. Hence, in spite of a robust antibody response to conserved segments of VlsE, infection-induced sequence changes within the variable regions alter the antigenicity of VlsE. These results provide the first direct evidence of antigenic variation in the VlsE protein.
BiobankConnect: software to rapidly connect data elements for pooled analysis across biobanks using ontological and lexical indexing

Objective Pooling data across biobanks is necessary to increase statistical power, reveal more subtle associations, and synergize the value of data sources. However, searching for desired data elements among the thousands of available elements and harmonizing differences in terminology, data collection, and structure, is arduous and time consuming. Materials and methods To speed up biobank data pooling we developed BiobankConnect, a system to semi-automatically match desired data elements to available elements by: (1) annotating the desired elements with ontology terms using BioPortal; (2) automatically expanding the query for these elements with synonyms and subclass information using OntoCAT; (3) automatically searching available elements for these expanded terms using Lucene lexical matching; and (4) shortlisting relevant matches sorted by matching score. Results We evaluated BiobankConnect using human curated matches from EU-BioSHaRE, searching for 32 desired data elements in 7461 available elements from six biobanks. We found 0.75 precision at rank 1 and 0.74 recall at rank 10 compared to a manually curated set of relevant matches. In addition, best matches chosen by BioSHaRE experts ranked first in 63.0% and in the top 10 in 98.4% of cases, indicating that our system has the potential to significantly reduce manual matching work. Conclusions BiobankConnect provides an easy user interface to significantly speed up the biobank harmonization process. It may also prove useful for other forms of biomedical data integration. All the software can be downloaded as a MOLGENIS open source app from http://www.github. com/molgenis, with a demo available at http://www.biobankconnect. org.
Spatial Sampling of Printed Patterns

The bitmap obtained by scanning a printed pattern depends on the exact location of the scanning grid relative to the pattern. We consider ideal sampling with a regular lattice of delta functions. The displacement of the lattice relative to the pattern is random and obeys a uniform probability density function defined over a unit cell of the lattice. Random-phase sampling affects the edge-pixels of sampled patterns. The resulting number of distinct bitmaps and their relative frequencies can be predicted from a mapping of the original pattern boundary to the unit cell (called a module-grid diagram). The theory is supported by both simulated and experimental results. The module-grid diagram may be useful in helping to understand the effects of edge-pixel variation on optical character recognition.
A deep learning approach for unsupervised domain adaptation in multitemporal remote sensing images

In this paper, we propose a novel deep convex network method for domain adaptation in multitemporal remote sensing imagery. We fuse the capabilities of the extreme learning machine (ELM) classifier and local feature descriptor techniques to boost the classification accuracy. We use the Affine Scale Invariant Feature Transform (ASIFT) to extract the key points from the image pair, i.e. source and target domain images. The neural network consist of two layers, one layer uses the keypoints extracted by ASIFT to map the training points of the source image to the target image, while layer 2 is used for the purpose of classification. Experimental results obtained on multitemporal VHR images acquired by the IKONOS2 confirm the promising capability of the proposed method.
Vehicle recognition using common appearance captured by 3D LIDAR and monocular camera

In driving environments, other vehicles are one of the most frequently appearing close range objects from the ego-vehicle. Thus, the development of high accuracy vehicle recognition algorithms is essential for safe and efficient automated driving. However, detecting vehicles with consistently high accuracy is difficult because there are various vehicle types with different appearances, such as sedans, buses, trucks, and SUVs. This intra-class variation must be addressed or, irregular recognition performance can occur, depending on vehicle type. Conventional machine learning-based algorithms are inadequate to address this problem because they are mostly trained on samples of entire appearance. Considering the wide variability in vehicle appearance, collecting samples of every vehicle type may not be ideal. In this study, we propose a vehicle recognition algorithm using common appearance characteristics of every vehicle type. Rectangular shapes are captured by a 3D LIDAR while tires and bumpers are captured by a monocular camera. Angular features extracted from these common appearances are then fused by the Dempster-Shafer theory framework for vehicle recognition. By performing real-world experiments, we demonstrated that common appearances captured by the proposed algorithm provide sufficiently generalized features to recognize diverse vehicle types in urban driving environments.
Disparity search range estimation based on dense stereo matching

This paper presents a scheme for estimating disparity search range based on hierarchical stereo matching. It is important to specify a proper range of search space, since it prevents the solution from being trapped in local minima, and saves a lot of time for estimating disparity maps. Conventionally, it has been estimated by finding a sparse set of the correspondences via feature matching techniques. Instead, we address this problem by considering how the dense correspondences, the ultimate goal of estimating search range, can be estimated without search range. First, we estimate the dense correspondences by adapting a simple local stereo matching technique with an arbitrary search range. The hierarchical scheme is leveraged for reducing computational costs and memory usages. Then, reliable checking techniques are performed for eliminating unreliable correspondences. Finally, the range of search space is estimated by observing the distribution of the reliable correspondences. For the quantitative evaluation, a new error metric, biased root mean squared error (B-RMSE), is proposed, which differentiates the estimated search range whether it is narrower or wider than true disparity range. The experimental results show that the proposed method gives more accurate search range compared to the conventional method.
Maximum Entropy Modeling and Semantic Concept Detection

In this paper we propose a Maximum Entropy based approach for automatic annotation of multimedia content. In our approach, we explicitly model the spatial-location of the low-level features by means of specially designed predicates. In addition, the interaction between the low-level features is modeled using joint observation predicates. We evaluate the performance of semantic concept classifiers built using this approach on the TRECVID2003 corpus. Experiments indicate that our model performance is on par with the best results reported to-date on this dataset; Despite using only unimodal features and a single approach towards model-building. This compares favorably with the state-of-the-art systems which use multimodal features and classifier fusion to achieve similar results on this corpus.
Large Scale Behavioral Analytics via Topical Interaction

We propose the split-diffuse (SD) algorithm that takes the output of an existing dimension reduction algorithm, and distributes the data points uniformly across the visualization space. The result, called the topic grids, is a set of grids on various topics which are generated from the free-form text content of any domain of interest. The topic grids efficiently utilizes the visualization space to provide visual summaries for massive data. Topical analysis, comparison and interaction can be performed on the topic grids in a more perceivable way.
A theoretical exploration of PSOC in an ecological context: The town-gown example

The construct of psychological sense of community (PSOC) is an important multidimensional factor in understanding community well being yet despite this fact, most of the research on PSOC does not adequately account for this reality. Using the example of a residential neighborhood that adjoins a university campus, this article seeks to expand the current conceptualization of PSOC to more fully capture its ecological and cultural complexities. By applying Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) social ecological framework along with a number of related social science concepts to a discussion of PSOC in a campus-adjacent neighborhood, the paper explores theoretical perspectives and related community constructs that may help expand the conceptualization and measurement of PSOC in diverse communities. While town-gown relations provide the focus of this article, this work has implications for the general exploration of the roots and conceptualization of PSOC at multiple systemic levels and in diverse settings.
Statistical Literacy: Developing a Youth and Adult Education Statistical Project.

This article focuses on the notion of literacy - general and statistical - in the analysis of data from a fieldwork research project carried out as part of a master's degree that investigated the teaching and learning of statistics in adult education mathematics classes. We describe the statistical context of the project that involved the development of a questionnaire, the organization of the resulting information into tables, and the preparation of posters summarizing the results. The project was carried out with 7th-grade students, ages from 16 to 43, in a public state elementary school as part of the Youth and Adult Education program (Educacao de Jovens e Adultos - EJA), located on the outskirts of Campinas, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The aim of this article is to extend the analysis of fieldwork data collected as part of a master's degree research carried out by Conti (2009). The main objective of the master's research was to understand the teaching and learning of statistics in youth and adult education classes. Here we are focusing on the analysis of literacy events, both general and specifically statistical, that took place during the course of a statistical project - the development of a questionnaire, the organization and analysis of the resulting data, and the presentation of these results in a community context. The participants in the project were seventh-grade students, aged between 16 and 43, enrolled in the Youth and Adult Education program (Educacao de Jovens e Adultos - EJA) offered by a public state elementary school in Campinas, southeastern Brazil. We now need to give some information on the background of this program, and of 'second chance' adult education in Brazil. The Brazilian National Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (LDBEN, n. 9.394/96, Ministry of Education, 1996) prescribes Youth and Adult Education (EJA) as a teaching method aimed at those who do not have access to or did not continue their studies in primary and secondary school during the ages of 7 to 17 years. It also recommends that EJA be offered as a free educational program, with appropriate opportunities, and considering the characteristics, interests, and conditions of life and work of citizens. Quality basic education for youth and adults is not assured simply by running such programs. According to the Course Proposal for Youth and Adult Education (Ministry of Education, 2002), working with mathematics in EJA should focus on doing, thinking and learning mathematics respecting the socio-cultural identity of the students, taking account of their