Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diet in childhood and adult cardiovascular and all cause mortality: the Boyd Orr cohort

Objective: To examine the association between childhood diet and cardiovascular mortality. Design: Historical cohort study. Setting: 16 centres in England and Scotland. Participants: 4028 people (from 1234 families) who took part in Boyd Orr’s survey of family diet and health in Britain between 1937 and 1939 followed up through the National Health Service central register. Exposures studied: Childhood intake of fruit, vegetables, fish, oily fish, total fat, saturated fat, carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E estimated from household dietary intake. Main outcome measures: Deaths from all causes and deaths attributed to coronary heart disease and stroke. Results: Higher childhood intake of vegetables was associated with lower risk of stroke. After controlling for age, sex, energy intake, and a range of socioeconomic and other confounders the rate ratio between the highest and lowest quartiles of intake was 0.40 (95% confidence interval 0.19 to 0.83, p for trend 0.01). Higher intake of fish was associated with higher risk of stroke. The fully adjusted rate ratio between the highest and lowest quartile of fish intake was 2.01 (95% confidence interval 1.09 to 3.69, p for trend 0.01). Intake of any of the foods and constituents considered was not associated with coronary mortality. Conclusions: Aspects of childhood diet, but not antioxidant intake, may affect adult cardiovascular risk.
Containment of conjunctive object meta-queries

We consider the problem of query containment over an object data model derived from F-logic. F-logic has generated considerable interest commercially, in the academia, and within various standardization efforts as a means for building ontologies and for reasoning on the Semantic Web. Solution to the containment problem for F-logic queries can help with query optimization as well as the classification problem in information integration systems. An important property of F-logic queries, which sets them apart from database queries, is that they can mix the data-level and the meta-level in simple and useful ways. This means that such queries may refer not only to data but also schema information. To the best of our knowledge, the containment problem for such queries has not been considered in the literature. We show that, even for queries over meta-information together with data, this problem is decidable for non-recursive conjunctive queries. We also provide relevant complexity results.
Insecure bodies/selves: introduction to theme section

This short piece introduces a three-paper theme section on the theme of ‘Insecure bodies/selves’, growing out of a conference session held in 2012. Using the brief example of a brain-injured soldier's ‘shattered world’, creating a thoroughly ‘unsecured’ self/body, attention is given to how contemporary human geography has gradually opened itself to engaging with the multiple spaces of insecure bodies/selves. The three papers are then formally outlined and situated within these new currents of geographical and trans-disciplinary scholarship.
A Concrete View of Rule 110 Computation

Rule 110 is a cellular automaton that performs repeated simultaneous updates of an infinite row of binary values. The values are updated in the following way: 0s are changed to 1s at all positions where the value to the right is a 1, while 1s are changed to 0s at all positions where the values to the left and right are both 1. Though trivial to define, the behavior exhibited by Rule 110 is surprisingly intricate, and in (Cook, 2004) we showed that it is capable of emulating the activity of a Turing machine by encoding the Turing machine and its tape into a repeating left pattern, a central pattern, and a repeating right pattern, which Rule 110 then acts on. In this paper we provide an explicit compiler for converting a Turing machine into a Rule 110 initial state, and we present a general approach for proving that such constructions will work as intended. The simulation was originally assumed to require exponential time, but surprising results of Neary and Woods (2006) have shown that in fact, only polynomial time is required. We use the methods of Neary and Woods to exhibit a direct simulation of a Turing machine by a tag system in polynomial time.
Genetic Analysis of Sequences in the 3′ Nontranslated Region of Hepatitis C Virus That Are Important for RNA Replication

ABSTRACT The genome of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a plus-strand RNA molecule that carries a single long open reading frame. It is flanked at either end by highly conserved nontranslated regions (NTRs) that mediate crucial steps in the viral life cycle. The 3′ NTR of HCV has a tripartite structure composed of an about 40-nucleotide variable region, a poly(U/UC) tract that has a heterogeneous length, and a highly conserved 98-nucleotide 3′-terminal sequence designated the X tail or 3′X. Conflicting data as to the role the sequences in the 3′ NTR play in RNA replication have been reported. By using the HCV replicon system, which is based on the self-replication of subgenomic HCV RNAs in human hepatoma cell line Huh-7, we mapped in this study the sequences in the 3′ NTR required for RNA replication. We found that a mutant with a complete deletion of the variable region is viable but that replication is reduced significantly. Only replicons in which the poly(U/UC) tract was replaced by a homouridine stretch of at least 26 nucleotides were able to replicate, whereas RNAs with homopolymeric guanine, adenine, or cytosine sequences were inactive. Deletions of individual or all stem-loop structures in 3′X were not tolerated, demonstrating that this region is most crucial for efficient RNA replication. Finally, we found that none of these deletions or substitutions within the 3′ NTR affected RNA stability or translation, demonstrating that the primary effect of the mutations was on RNA replication. These data represent the first detailed mapping of sequences in the 3′ NTR assumed to act as a promoter for initiation of minus-strand RNA synthesis.
Enhancing function word translation with syntax-based statistical post-editing

The generation of precise and comprehensible translations is still a challenge in the patent and scientiﬁc domain. In particular, function words are often poorly translated in standard machine translation systems, particularly across language pairs with greatly diﬀering syntax. In this paper we exploit the target-side structure in tree-to-tree machine translation to post-edit function words automatically using a tree-based function word language model. We show that a signiﬁcant improvement in human evaluation can be achieved with our proposed method.
Design and Management Features of Everyday Technology That Challenge Older Adults

Introduction: The management of everyday technologies could present too difficult a challenge for older adults with cognitive impairments, leading to their exclusion from participation. The present study aims to identify and describe features that make everyday technologies more or less difficult for older adults, whether with or without cognitive difficulties. Methods: A pre-existent, empirically generated hierarchy of more to less difficult everyday technologies was analysed. A mixed methods design was used to investigate predefined assumptions. Findings: Correlation analysis indicated that the more difficult everyday technologies required a higher frequency of skill actions; a positive correlation between the difficulty of an everyday technology and the need to perform actions in a logical sequence when using it was identified. The analysis indicated that feedback provided to users by less difficult everyday technologies consisted of different modes of stimuli (visual, auditory and tactile), while that from more difficult everyday technologies provided a high frequency of complex visual feedback. The less difficult everyday technologies were designed in a manner that was more intuitive; the design guided the user and fewer errors could be made. Conclusion: This study presents several features in the design of everyday technologies, and the skills required in using them, that could make their management more difficult for older adults.
GTPase Activity and Neuronal Toxicity of Parkinson's Disease–Associated LRRK2 Is Regulated by ArfGAP1

Mutations in the leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene are the most common cause of autosomal dominant familial Parkinson's disease (PD) and also contribute to idiopathic PD. LRRK2 encodes a large multi-domain protein with GTPase and kinase activity. Initial data indicates that an intact functional GTPase domain is critically required for LRRK2 kinase activity. PD–associated mutations in LRRK2, including the most common G2019S variant, have variable effects on enzymatic activity but commonly alter neuronal process morphology. The mechanisms underlying the intrinsic and extrinsic regulation of LRRK2 GTPase and kinase activity, and the pathogenic effects of familial mutations, are incompletely understood. Here, we identify a novel functional interaction between LRRK2 and ADP-ribosylation factor GTPase-activating protein 1 (ArfGAP1). LRRK2 and ArfGAP1 interact in vitro in mammalian cells and in vivo in brain, and co-localize in the cytoplasm and at Golgi membranes. PD–associated and functional mutations that alter the GTPase activity of LRRK2 modulate the interaction with ArfGAP1. The GTP hydrolysis activity of LRRK2 is markedly enhanced by ArfGAP1 supporting a role for ArfGAP1 as a GTPase-activating protein for LRRK2. Unexpectedly, ArfGAP1 promotes the kinase activity of LRRK2 suggesting a potential role for GTP hydrolysis in kinase activation. Furthermore, LRRK2 robustly and directly phosphorylates ArfGAP1 in vitro. Silencing of ArfGAP1 expression in primary cortical neurons rescues the neurite shortening phenotype induced by G2019S LRRK2 overexpression, whereas the co-expression of ArfGAP1 and LRRK2 synergistically promotes neurite shortening in a manner dependent upon LRRK2 GTPase activity. Neurite shortening induced by ArfGAP1 overexpression is also attenuated by silencing of LRRK2. Our data reveal a novel role for ArfGAP1 in regulating the GTPase activity and neuronal toxicity of LRRK2; reciprocally, LRRK2 phosphorylates ArfGAP1 and is required for ArfGAP1 neuronal toxicity. ArfGAP1 may represent a promising target for interfering with LRRK2-dependent neurodegeneration in familial and sporadic PD.
Background subtraction for patterns of activities in cities

In this paper we learn patterns of activity in open urban spaces and detect activity outliers that represent events of interest. We do so utilising background suppression to flag people as foreground blobs in videos from city surveillance cameras. Since the application domain is challenging, with far-field cameras viewing scenes that vary from completely empty to very crowded, and each person in the crowds being a handful of pixels, we first establish the performance of different background subtraction algorithms using manually annotated scenes. We then apply the best-performing SubSENSE algorithm in off-line videos collected over many days, to learn the activity patterns and detect the events of interest as outliers.
Teachers’ misconceptions and questionable practices when using Putonghua 1 as the medium-of-instruction: a case study of Hong Kong

Immediately after the handover of Hong Kong to China, the teaching of Chinese in Putonghua was promulgated by the Hong Kong SAR government as a long-term goal. However, no clear definition and guidance regarding Putonghua instruction has been provided to teachers to facilitate the smooth implementation of this change. A review of the literature indicates that teachers’ beliefs have great value in assisting them to make sense of changes and govern their thoughts and behaviours. However, little is known about how teachers’ beliefs help teachers to understand the transition to a new medium-of-instruction (MOI). Thus, the aim of this case study is to examine how teachers’ beliefs help teachers to conceptualize the Putonghua medium-of-instruction (PMI) and how these beliefs affect their curricular decisions as well as the implementation of PMI. Data were collected from 10 secondary Chinese Language teachers in one school using semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. The findings revealed that since teachers held misconceptions about PMI in the initial phase, the implementation of PMI led to a shift of focus away from Chinese content knowledge. In the second phase, PMI was perceived merely as a code-switching device, and, as a result, only a surface change occurred that appeared unlikely to facilitate effective teaching and deep learning. This paper concludes with the observation that code switching alone is insufficient to achieve a successful transition of MOI if the deeper issue of teachers’ beliefs is neglected.
UV mutagenesis in radiation-sensitive strains of yeast.

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae appears to possess a single mutagenic or "error prony" pathway for the repair of UV damage; rev1, rev2, rev3 (Lemontt 1971a), rad6, rad8, rad9 and rad18 (Lawrence et al. 1974; present results). Strains carrying rad6 are the most sensitive to the lethal effects of UV light in this group and double mutants carrying rad6 and either rev1, rev3, rad9 or rad18 are no more sensitive than this single mutant strain, rev3 rad6 doubl- mutant diploids failed to show any UV-induced reversion of the normally highly reversion of the normally highly revertible ochre allele cycl-9, even though a total of more than 2.5 X 10(9) viable cells was examined, suggesting that strains of this kind are entirely UV-immutable; spontaneous revertants could be recovered, however. -The rad6 and rev3 gene products would appear to be necessary for all kinds of mutagenic events at all sites within the genome, but the products of the other genes that act in the "error-prone" pathway have a more restricted role and are involved in the production of only some kinds of mutations. It is suggested that such selectivity arises from the interaction of some repair enzymes with specific nucleotide sequences.
Wrap&zip: Linear decoding of planar triangle graphs

The Edgebreaker compression technique, introduced in [11], encodes any unlabeled triangulated planar graph of t triangles using a string of 2t bits. The string contains a sequence of t letters from the set {C, L, E, R, S} and 50% of these letters are C. Exploiting constraints on the sequence, we show that the string may in practice be further compressed to 1.6t bits using model independent codes and even more using model specific entropy codes. These results improve over the 2.3t bits needed by Keeler and Westbrook [6] and over the various 3D triangle mesh compression techniques published recently, which all exhibit larger constants or non-linear worst case storage costs. As in [11], we compress the mesh using a spiraling triangle-spanning tree and generate the same sequence of letters. Edgebreaker's decompression uses a look-ahead procedure to identify the third vertex of split triangles (S letter) by counting letter occurrences in the remaining part of the sequences. We introduce here a new decompression technique, which eliminates this look-ahead and thus exhibits a linear asymptotic time complexity. Wrap&zip converts the string into the corresponding trianglespanning tree and assigns orientations to each one of its free edges. During that “wrapping” process, whenever two consecutive edges point to the same vertex, it glues them together, possibly continuing the “zip” along the next pair of edges that just became adjacent. By labeling the vertices according to the order in which they first appear in the trianglespanning tree, this compression approach may be used to encode the connectivity (incidence of labeled graphs) of threedimensional triangle meshes that are homeomorphic to a sphere. Being able to decompress connectivity prior to vertex locations is essential for the most advanced geometry compression schemes, which use connectivity to predict the location of a vertex from the location of its previously decoded neighbors.
Multiple Constrained MPC Design for Automotive Dry Clutch Engagement

In this paper, a multiple model predictive controller (MPC) is proposed for the management of passenger car start up through dry clutch in automated manual transmission. Based on a high-order dynamic model of powertrain system, the feedback controllers are designed by using the crankshaft angular speed and the clutch disk angular speed as measured variables. Moreover, the MPC is developed to comply with constrains both on the input and on the output. The aim of the controller is to ensure a comfortable lockup and to avoid the stall of the engine as well as to reduce the engagement time. Numerical results show the good performance of the MPC with constrains in overcoming critical operating conditions. Comparisons with similar state-of-the-art works are also shown.
Taiwanese early childhood educators’ professional development

This study was designed based on a qualitative paradigm to explore the professional development of Taiwanese early childhood educators. The method of phenomenology was employed. The main research question addressed was ‘How do early childhood educators construe their professional development experience? ’ Seven Taiwanese early childhood educators participated in this study. In‐depth interviews were conducted to collect data. Through the description of participants’ experiences, it can be said that, for Taiwanese early childhood educators, professional development means those processes that facilitate personal and professional growth in their own self‐concept and self‐esteem, in working with young children and parents, and in their teaching practices.
Robust control design of impedance control for industrial robots

A widespread application of impedance control in industrial robotic systems is still a challenging problem. One of limitations is the absence of a widely-accepted framework for the synthesis of the impedance control parameters that ensure stability of both contact transition and interaction processes and guarantee desired contact performance. The existing design procedures based on robot passivity appear to be exceedingly conservative in applications in which the interaction between an industrial robot and a stiff environment should be controlled. The proposed new interaction stability paradigm ensures contact stability during all phases of interaction. Moreover, the new design framework realizes low-impedance performance allowing considerable reduction of high apparent industrial robot inertia and stiffness. The novel stability criteria are established based on robust control theory and take into account estimates of environmental stiffness, tolerating thereby large uncertainties and variations in industrial environments. These criteria are proved by extensively testing in industrial and space robots and have been recently extended to control synthesis of human robot interaction systems (haptic admittance displays and rehabilitation robots).
Data hiding in image and video .I. Fundamental issues and solutions

In this Part I of a two-part paper, we address a number of fundamental issues of data hiding in image and video and propose general solutions to them. We begin with a review of two major types of embedding, based on which we propose a new multilevel embedding framework to allow the amount of extractable data to be adaptive according to the actual noise condition. We then study the issues of hiding multiple bits through a comparison of various modulation and multiplexing techniques. Finally, the nonstationary nature of visual signals leads to highly uneven distribution of embedding capacity and causes difficulty in data hiding. We propose an adaptive solution switching between using constant embedding rate with shuffling and using variable embedding rate with embedded control bits. We verify the effectiveness of our proposed solutions through analysis and simulation. And Part II will apply these solutions to specific design problems for embedding data in grayscale and color images and video.
Dietary quality of the US child and adolescent population: trends from 1999 to 2012 and associations with the use of federal nutrition assistance programs.

BACKGROUND The state of the economy, changes in federal food assistance programs, and policies related to nutrition and the food supply in the United States may influence dietary quality in children and adolescents. OBJECTIVE We investigated dietary quality trends from 1999 to 2012 in the US child and adolescent population and their associations with socioeconomic status and participation in federal food assistance programs. DESIGN In this study, a nationally representative sample of 38,487 children and adolescents, aged 2-18 y, in the NHANES from 1999 to 2012 were included. Dietary information was collected with the use of a 24-h dietary recall. Dietary quality was measured with the use of the Healthy Eating Index 2010 (HEI-2010). RESULTS The mean HEI-2010 increased significantly from 42.5 (95% CI: 41.2, 43.8) to 50.9 (95% CI: 50.0, 51.8) from 1999 to 2012 (P-linear trend < 0.001). The reduction in empty calorie intake contributed to greater than one-third of this improvement in the total HEI-2010. We also observed significant increases in 9 other HEI-2010 component scores. However, the HEI-2010 component score for sodium decreased significantly, which reflected an increase in sodium consumption. We calculated the covariate-adjusted mean HEI-2010 score in subgroups that were defined by sociodemographic status and participation in nutrition assistance program at each NHANES cycle. Non-Hispanic black children and adolescents had a consistently lower HEI-2010 than that of other groups across all NHANES cycles. We observed a trend toward a lower HEI-2010 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants than in nonparticipants after the 2003-2004 cycle. We also observed a lower HEI-2010 in participants in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program (SBP) than in nonparticipants. In general, participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children appeared to have a higher HEI-2010 than that of nonparticipants. CONCLUSIONS Although HEI-2010 scores in children and adolescents improved steadily, the overall dietary quality remained poor. Participants in the SNAP and participants in the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, or both have lower dietary quality than do nonparticipants. Future policy interventions are needed to continue improvement in dietary quality and to address disparities.
Shouldn't Organization Theory Emerge from Adolescence?

Having lost its connection to world affairs, today organization theory lacks an external mission. Yet organizations lie at the heart of major conflicts that are shaping the course of the 21st century, and in principle, organization theory could contribute significantly to human welfare. Organization theory had roots in the emotions of everyday life, disgust about the deficiencies of bureaucracy and optimism that better organizations could benefit humanity. From the 1860s to the 1960s, two themes characterized writings about organizations. The earliest organizational writings by sociologists and economists focused on the effects of governmental bureaucracies on societies. Most expressed concern about bureaucracies’ propensity to ignore their environments. The early organizational writings by consultants and former managers reflected hope that organizations could become more productive. They concentrated on improving structural features to raise productivity, efficiency, or morale.