Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of lowering the legal blood alcohol concentration limit to 0.03 on male, female and teenage drivers involved alcohol-related crashes in Japan

In June of 2002, a revision to part of the Road Traffic Act drastically increased the penalties for drinking and driving offences in Japan. Most notably, the legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit for driving was lowered from 0.05 mg/ml to 0.03 mg/ml. The rationale for the new lower BAC limit was predicated on the assumption that drinking drivers will comply with the new, lower limit by reducing the amount of alcohol they consume prior to driving, thereby lowering their risk of crash involvement. This, in turn, would lead to fewer alcohol-related crashes. A key limitation of previous lower BAC evaluation research in determining the effectiveness of lower legal BAC limit policies is the assumption of population homogeneity in responding to the laws. The present analysis is unique in this perspective and focuses on the evaluation of the impact of BAC limit reduction on different segments of the population. The chief objective of this research is to quantify the extent to which lowering the legal limit of BAC has reduced male, female and teenager involvement in motor vehicle crashes in Japan since 2002. Most notably, the introduction of reduced BAC limit legislation resulted in a statistically significant decrease in the number of alcohol-impaired drivers on the road in Japan, indicating responsiveness to the legal change among adults and teenagers. In addition, this preliminary assessment appears to indicate that the implementation of 0.03 BAC laws and other associated activities are associated with statistically significant reductions in alcohol-involved motor vehicle crashes. In comparison, the rates of total crashes showed no statistically significant decline nor increase in the period following the introduction of the BAC law, indicating that the lower BAC limit only had an effect on alcohol-related crashes in Japan. The evidence suggests that the lower BAC legal limit and perceived risk of detection are the two most important factors resulting in a sustained change in drinking and driving behaviour in Japan. It is recommended that future research and resources in other countries be focused on these factors as determinants to reduced alcohol-related crashes.
Towards high-speed automated micromanipulation

In this work, we present a high-speed pick-and-place method for cell-assembly applications. Besides range of motion and accuracy, rapidness of a manipulation system is an important parameter, which is so far underrated in related studies. To achieve high-speed micromanipulation, obtaining 3D positions of both the target microobject and the end effector rapidly is necessary. In addition, controlling the vibration of the end effector, which is greater at high speed, is another arduous task. We propose a new fast detection algorithm for both the target microobject and the end effector for achieving high-speed control of the system. Moreover, to realize the stable control for very fast movements, the vibration of the system is compensated. High-speed control of the microhand system is demonstrated with preliminary experiments consisting of pick-and-place actions of 40 to 60 μm microspheres; we aimed at performing a manipulation task in 1 second. Comparison with similar studies shows the merit of the proposed automated high-speed micromanipulation system.
No Differences in Outcomes in People with Low Back Pain Who Met the Clinical Prediction Rule for Lumbar Spine Manipulation When a Pragmatic Non-thrust Manipulation Was Used as the Comparator.

PURPOSE To investigate differences in pain and disability between patients treated with thrust manipulation (TM) and those treated with non-thrust manipulation (NTM) in a group of patients with mechanical low back pain (LBP) who had a within-session response to an initial assessment and met the clinical prediction rule (CPR). METHODS Data from 71 patients who met the CPR were extracted from a database of patients in a larger randomized controlled trial comparing TM and NTM. Treatment of the first two visits involved either TM or NTM (depending on allocation) and a standardized home exercise programme. Data analysis included descriptive statistics and a two-way ANOVA examining within- and between-groups effects for pain and disability, as well as total visits, total days in care, and rate of recovery. RESULTS No between-group differences in pain or disability were found for NTM versus TM groups (p=0.55), but within-subjects effects were noted for both groups (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS This secondary analysis suggests that patients who satisfy the CPR benefit as much from NTM as from TM.
Antioxidant Capacity and HPLC-DAD-MS Profiling of Chilean Peumo (Cryptocarya alba) Fruits and Comparison with German Peumo (Crataegus monogyna) from Southern Chile

Liquid chromatography (LC) coupled with UV detection and electrospray ionization (ESI) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) was used for the generation of chemical fingerprints and the identification of phenolic compounds in peumo fruits and aerial parts from southern Chile. Thirty three compounds (19 of these detected in C. alba and 23 in C. monogyna) were identified, mainly flavonoid glycosides, phenolic acids, anthocyanins and flavonoid aglycons. Total phenolic content and total flavonoid content was measured for both species, and were higher in the extracts from C. monogyna fruits and aerial parts than extracts from C. alba. The fruits of Cryptocarya alba (Chilean peumo) presented high antioxidant capacity (9.12 ± 0.01 μg/mL in the DPPH assay), but was three times lower to that of Crataegus monogyna (German peumo) (3.61 ± 0.01 μg/mL in the DPPH assay).
Methylation by Set9 modulates FoxO3 stability and transcriptional activity

The FoxO family of transcription factors plays an important role in longevity and tumor suppression by regulating the expression of a wide range of target genes. FoxO3 has recently been found to be associated with extreme longevity in humans and to regulate the homeostasis of adult stem cell pools in mammals, which may contribute to longevity. The activity of FoxO3 is controlled by a variety of post-translational modifications that have been proposed to form a ‘code’ affecting FoxO3 subcellular localization, DNA binding ability, protein-protein interactions and protein stability. Lysine methylation is a crucial post-translational modification on histones that regulates chromatin accessibility and is a key part of the ‘histone code’. However, whether lysine methylation plays a role in modulating FoxO3 activity has never been examined. Here we show that the methyltransferase Set9 directly methylates FoxO3 in vitro and in cells. Using a combination of tandem mass spectrometry and methyl-specific antibodies, we find that Set9 methylates FoxO3 at a single residue, lysine 271, a site previously known to be deacetylated by Sirt1. Methylation of FoxO3 by Set9 decreases FoxO3 protein stability, while moderately increasing FoxO3 transcriptional activity. The modulation of FoxO3 stability and activity by methylation may be critical for fine-tuning cellular responses to stress stimuli, which may in turn affect FoxO3's ability to promote tumor suppression and longevity.
The effects of temperature on detection of prey DNA in two species of carabid beetle

Abstract PCR-based techniques to investigate predator-prey trophic interactions are starting to be used more widely, but factors affecting DNA decay in predator guts are still poorly understood. Here, we investigated the effects of time since feeding, temperature and amplicon size on the detectability of prey DNA in the gut content of two closely related predator species. Cereal aphids, Sitobion avenae, were fed to the carabid beetles Pterostichus melanarius and Nebria brevicollis. Beetles were allowed to digest their meal at 12°C, 16°C and 20°C, and batches of beetles were subsequently frozen at time periods from 0–72 h after feeding. Aphid DNA was detected within beetles' gut contents using primers amplifying fragments of 85, 231, 317 and 383 bp. Prey DNA detection rates were significantly higher in N. brevicollis than in P. melanarius, indicating fundamental dissimilarities in prey digestion capacities. High temperatures (20°C) and large amplicons (383 bp) significantly decreased detection rates. The shortest amplicon gave the highest prey DNA detection success, whereas no differences were observed between the 231 bp and the 317 bp fragment. Our results indicate that factors such as ambient temperature, predator taxon and amplicon size should all be considered when interpreting data derived from PCR-based prey detection. Correction for such factors should make calculation of predation rates in the field more accurate and could help us to estimate when predation events occur in the field.
Leveraging transitive relations for crowdsourced joins

The development of crowdsourced query processing systems has recently attracted a significant attention in the database community. A variety of crowdsourced queries have been investigated. In this paper, we focus on the crowdsourced join query which aims to utilize humans to find all pairs of matching objects from two collections. As a human-only solution is expensive, we adopt a hybrid human-machine approach which first uses machines to generate a candidate set of matching pairs, and then asks humans to label the pairs in the candidate set as either matching or non-matching. Given the candidate pairs, existing approaches will publish all pairs for verification to a crowdsourcing platform. However, they neglect the fact that the pairs satisfy transitive relations. As an example, if o1 matches with o2, and o2 matches with o3, then we can deduce that o1 matches with o3 without needing to crowdsource (o1, o3). To this end, we study how to leverage transitive relations for crowdsourced joins. We propose a hybrid transitive-relations and crowdsourcing labeling framework which aims to crowdsource the minimum number of pairs to label all the candidate pairs. We prove the optimal labeling order and devise a parallel labeling algorithm to efficiently crowdsource the pairs following the order. We evaluate our approaches in both simulated environment and a real crowdsourcing platform. Experimental results show that our approaches with transitive relations can save much more money and time than existing methods, with a little loss in the result quality.
Effect of feeding a high-fat diet independently of caloric intake on reproductive function in diet-induced obese female rats

Introduction Globally, the prevalence of overweight and obesity is increasing, predisposing females to health hazards including compromised reproductive capacity. Our objective was to investigate the effect of ad libitum, isocalorically and hypocalorically restricted high-fat diet (HFD) feeding on reproductive function in diet-induced obese female rats. Material and methods Twenty female albino Sprague Dawley rats were used; 5 rats were kept on a standard pellet animal diet to serve as a control group (A) and 15 rats were fed a HFD for 9 weeks to induce obesity. The HFD fed animals were equally divided into three groups: an ad libitum HFD group (B), an isocalorically restricted HFD group (C), and a hypocalorically restricted HFD group (D). Estrous cyclicity, hormonal levels, ovarian histopathology and caspase-3 immunoreactivity were evaluated. Results The HFD-fed rats in groups B, C and D had significant irregularity in estrous cyclicity Vs group A (p = 0.001, 0.003 and 0.034 respectively). Groups C and D had significant reduction in serum progesterone level (p = 0.006 and 0.018 Vs A). Isocaloric restriction of HFD feeding significantly increased serum LH. Groups B and C had a significant increase in caspase-3 expression in the ovary (p < 0.001). Conclusions Ad libitum HFD interfered with the normal estrous cycle and enhanced apoptosis of luteal cells in obese female rats. The HFD restriction interfered with the normal estrous cycle and caused functional insufficiency of the corpus luteum in obese female rats. These results suggest that HFD feeding determinately affects female reproductive function independently of caloric intake.
Ultrashort Antimicrobial Peptides with Antiendotoxin Properties

ABSTRACT Release of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) (endotoxin) from bacteria into the bloodstream may cause serious unwanted stimulation of the host immune system. Some but not all antimicrobial peptides can neutralize LPS-stimulated proinflammatory responses. Salt resistance and serum stability of short antimicrobial peptides can be boosted by adding β-naphthylalanine to their termini. Herein, significant antiendotoxin effects were observed in vitro and in vivo with the β-naphthylalanine end-tagged variants of the short antimicrobial peptides S1 and KWWK.
Stereo obstacle detection in challenging environments: The VIAC experience

Obstacle detection by means of stereo-vision is a fundamental task in computer vision, which has spurred a lot of research over the years, especially in the field of vehicular robotics. The information provided by this class of algorithms is used both in driving assistance systems and in autonomous vehicles, so the quality of the results and the processing times become critical, as detection failures or delays can have serious consequences. The obstacle detection system presented in this paper has been extensively tested during VIAC, the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge [1], [2], which has offered a unique chance to face a number of different scenarios along the roads of two continents, in a variety of conditions; data collected during the expedition has also become a reference benchmark for further algorithm improvements.
Heuristic Evaluation of Digital Game Based Learning: A Case Study

In the past decade, computer games have been gradually seen as one of effective teaching methods and environments, and they have been widely applied in various fields. The purpose of this case study was to investigate the usability of the computer Game, Crazy Machines 2, as a digital game-based learning material through heuristic evaluation to ascertain whether the game conform to interface design principles. Research results indicate that the highest-point indicator is the game interface which provides immediate feedback to solve related missions or problems. The second-highest is game rules which appropriately provide missions or constructive feedback icons to students, enabling them to know what is happening. The lower-point indicator is the social interaction feature, experts consider that if students have different media and the best communication tools, they will achieve the best learning effect. This study recommends future research towards adding the indicators of playfulness and joyfulness into the heuristic evaluation tools.
MIRACLE's 2005 Approach to Cross-lingual Information Retrieval

This paper presents the 2005 Miracle’s team approach to Bilingual and Multilingual Information Retrieval. In the multilingual track, we have concentrated our work on the merging process of the results of monolingual runs to get the multilingual overall result, relying on available translations. In the bilingual and multilingual tracks, we have used available translation resources, and in some cases we have using a combining approach.
Improved Bounds for Computing Kemeny Rankings

Voting (or rank aggregation) is a general method for aggregating the preferences of multiple agents. One voting rule of particular interest is the Kemeny rule, which minimizes the number of cases where the final ranking disagrees with a vote on the order of two alternatives. Unfortunately, Kemeny rankings are NP-hard to compute. Recent work on computing Kemeny rankings has focused on producing good bounds to use in search-based methods. In this paper, we extend on this work by providing various improved bounding techniques. Some of these are based on cycles in the pairwise majority graph, others are based on linear programs. We completely characterize the relative strength of all of these bounds and provide some experimental results.
Detecting cloud provisioning errors using an annotated process model

In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of annotating a process model with assertions to detect errors in cloud provisioning in near real time. Our proposed workflow is: a) construct a process model of the desired provisioning activities using log data, b) use the process model to determine appropriate annotation triggers and annotate the process model with assertions, c) use the process model to monitor the deployment logs as they are generated, d) trigger the assertion checking based on process activities and log entries, and e) check the assertions to determine errors. For a production deployment tool, Asgard, we have implemented the steps involving constructing a process model, using the model to determine appropriate annotation triggers, triggering the annotation checking based on Asgard log files, and detecting errors. Our prototype has detected errors that cross deployment tool boundaries and go undetected by Asgard; it further has detected other errors substantially more quickly than Asgard would have.
Nonparametric Single-Trial EEG Feature Extraction and Classification of Driver's Cognitive Responses

We proposed an electroencephalographic (EEG) signal analysis approach to investigate the driver's cognitive response to traffic-light experiments in a virtual-reality-(VR-) based simulated driving environment. EEG signals are digitally sampled and then transformed by three different feature extraction methods including nonparametric weighted feature extraction (NWFE), principal component analysis (PCA), and linear discriminant analysis (LDA), which were also used to reduce the feature dimension and project the measured EEG signals to a feature space spanned by their eigenvectors. After that, the mapped data could be classified with fewer features and their classification results were compared by utilizing two different classifiers including nearest neighbor classification (KNNC) and naive bayes classifier (NBC). Experimental data were collected from 6 subjects and the results show that NWFE+NBC gives the best classification accuracy ranging from , which is over higher than LDA+KNN1. It also demonstrates the feasibility of detecting and analyzing single-trial EEG signals that represent operators' cognitive states and responses to task events.
Computational microscopic imaging for malaria parasite detection: a systematic review

Malaria, being an epidemic disease, demands its rapid and accurate diagnosis for proper intervention. Microscopic image‐based characterization of erythrocytes plays an integral role in screening of malaria parasites. In practice, microscopic evaluation of blood smear image is the gold standard for malaria diagnosis; where the pathologist visually examines the stained slide under the light microscope. This visual inspection is subjective, error‐prone and time consuming. In order to address such issues, computational microscopic imaging methods have been given importance in recent times in the field of digital pathology. Recently, such quantitative microscopic techniques have rapidly evolved for abnormal erythrocyte detection, segmentation and semi/fully automated classification by minimizing such diagnostic errors for computerized malaria detection. The aim of this paper is to present a review on enhancement, segmentation, microscopic feature extraction and computer‐aided classification for malaria parasite detection.
Multiscale Correlations between Joint and Tissue-Specific Biomechanics and Anatomy in Postmortem Ovine Stifles

The stability of the knee joint is an important indicator of its overall health and function. Joint stability depends on multiple structural and functional properties that include the anatomy of the underlying bones, the geometry and stiffness of the joint capsule and the soft tissues within like tendon, ligaments, cartilage and meniscus. The multiscale biomechanical relationships between the form and function of the whole joint and individual tissues can provide useful insights on the physiological condition of the knee and require further exploration. To better understand these relationships, in this study we compare multiple structural and mechanical parameters in healthy ovine stifles (n = 6). Specifically, we have evaluated joint laxity, joint morphology, individual tissue T2* relaxation and mechanical properties of the anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments (ACL, PCL), medial and lateral collateral ligaments (MCL, LCL), the patellar tendon, menisci, and cartilage from the femoral condyles. Using mechanical testing at two length scales along with anatomical and quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, we investigate the correlation between individual tissue and whole joint mechanical properties. We also performed statistical tests to measure the strength of correlation coefficients between the measured metrics at multiple levels among whole joint mechanics, joint size, and individual tissue properties. We observe positive correlations between the joint laxity forces and the epicondyle-to-epicondyle distance measured as an anatomical marker. We also find that the viscoelastic properties of the tendons and ligaments correlate positively with joint laxity forces. No such correlations were observed between the cartilage and meniscus properties and the joint laxity forces. Further, we found a weak inverse correlation between the tissue viscoelastic properties and T2* for MCL; strong and moderately positive correlations for cartilage samples from both femoral condyles and the menisci, LCL and PCL respectively. These results provide useful insights into the differential role of individual tissue properties that can be used to predict the whole joint responses that are key indicators of knee health and performance.
Leakage-Abuse Attacks Against Searchable Encryption

Schemes for secure outsourcing of client data with search capability are being increasingly marketed and deployed. In the literature, schemes for accomplishing this efficiently are called Searchable Encryption (SE). They achieve high efficiency with provable security by means of a quantifiable leakage profile. However, the degree to which SE leakage can be exploited by an adversary is not well understood. To address this, we present a characterization of the leakage profiles of in-the-wild searchable encryption products and SE schemes in the literature, and present attack models based on an adversarial server's prior knowledge. Then we empirically investigate the security of searchable encryption by providing query recovery and plaintext recovery attacks that exploit these leakage profiles. We term these leakage-abuse attacks and demonstrate their effectiveness for varying leakage profiles and levels of server knowledge, for realistic scenarios. Amongst our contributions are realistic active attacks which have not been previously explored.