Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do as I do? Prospects for parental participation 1.5 years after immersion treatment for adolescent obesity

This study compared successful with unsuccessful participants and their mothers 1.5 years following completion of an immersion programme for the treatment of adolescent obesity. Teenagers (M age = 14.5; 69.5% female) participated in a 4‐ to 8‐week therapeutic camp; those who continued losing weight 1.5 years post‐camp were identified as ‘Losers’; those who regained weight were considered ‘Gainers’. Twenty‐six Loser campers, 23 Gainer campers and all mothers were interviewed about their current weights and lifestyle habits. Losers' and Gainers' mothers both reported losing weight significantly. Relative to Gainer mothers, however, Loser mothers reported 26% fewer high‐fat foods in the house and greater likelihood of self‐monitoring. Loser campers, relative to Gainer campers, reported self‐monitoring more consistently; using trainers more frequently; and consuming fewer calories and less fat. Gainer campers also reported a tendency to use family therapy more than Loser families. The Loser campers reported following the dictates of the programme more than the Gainer campers, as expected. One striking and unique finding, however, was that Gainer mothers seemed to follow the programme for themselves as much as Loser mothers. Apparently for some participants in immersion treatment (like the Loser campers in this study), parents who participate fully may promote sustained success; for other adolescent weight controllers (like the present Gainer campers), having ‘Do as I do’ mothers clearly does not guarantee sustained changes in lifestyle for the teenagers. A hypothesis based on these results is that additional cognitive‐behaviour therapy subsequent to immersion may be useful for this latter group.
Trend analysis of extreme runoff events in major river basins of Peninsular Malaysia

This study performed trend analysis of extreme runoff events (high flow and seven-day low flow) of four major river basins located in Peninsular Malaysia in Southeast Asia. Trend analysis using Spearman’s rank test and standard normal homogeneity test using 25 years (1982–2006) of runoff data found no statistically significant trend in extreme events of Kelantan and Pahang basins. Muda was found to have a decreasing trend in high flow which was changed to an increasing trend after a significant ‘change point’ in year 1992, while there was a continuous increasing trend in the low flow. Similarly, Perak was found to have decreasing trend in high flow but increasing trend in low flow. Hydrological trends detected in this study vary widely among watersheds despite the fact that they are located in the similar climatic zones. We argue that the changes in flow regime are evident even at a smaller spatial scale, and the presence of trends has significant implications on how water resources be managed.
Separable Almost Ideal Demand System, A

The necessary and sufficient conditions for direct weak separability are used to derive restrictions on the parameters of the Almost Ideal (AI) demand system, yielding a systematic way of restricting the parameter space that may be useful for estimating large demand systems. The proposed method is illustrated with an application to Canadian demand, with emphasis on root consumption. A 15-good, complete AI demand system subject to nonlinear separability restrictions was estimated by using an efficient minimum distance procedure. The results provide support for a parsimonious separable structure, and show that estimated food demands are inelastic with respect to both own price and income, and that substitution possibilities between foods are limited.
Low power, low area, high speed architectural design for motion estimation in MPEG-4

The key to high performance of MPEG-4 video compression lies in an efficient reduction of spatial and temporal redundancy. The main idea of inter prediction techniques is quick checking of the entire search area with efficient matching criterion viz. sum of absolute difference to eliminate the impossible or least matched candidates, followed by finer selection among the potentially best matched candidates. The macroblock with least SAD value will decide the motion vector. Due to object-based nature of MPEG-4, new SAD design with efficient computational ability, less area and less power in 0. 18μm CMOS technology and operating frequency of 1.508GHz is proposed in the following paper.
Return Dependence and the Limits of Product Diversification in Financial Firms

Copula-GARCH models indicate dependence between bank returns and those to insurance underwriting, securities brokerage, and mortgage finance increased during the recent crisis. In contrast, dependence between banks and the broader market was little changed. The crisis-related jump in return dependence within the financial services sector was greatest for banks that had previously appeared the most independent. Larger banks were also especially prone to increased dependence. These findings raise doubts about the ability of financial conglomerates to diversify effectively and highlight the need for policy progress in methods for resolving such institutions should they become illiquid or insolvent.
Early Maturation of Frequency-Following Responses to Voice Pitch in Infants with Normal Hearing

Neural plasticity of pitch processing mechanisms at the human brainstem, as reflected by the scalp-recorded frequency-following response (FFR) to voice pitch, has been reported for normal-hearing adults. Characteristics and maturation of such a response during the first year of life have remained unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of FFR to voice pitch in normal-hearing infants and to make a direct comparison with adults using the same stimulus and recording parameters. 9 infants and 9 adults were recruited. A Chinese monosyllable that mimics the English vowel /i/ with a rising pitch was used to elicit the FFR to voice pitch. The results demonstrated that infant FFRs showed slightly larger Pitch Strength but comparable Frequency Error, Slope Error, and Tracking Accuracy to those obtained from adults. Early maturation of FFRs was also observed in the infants starting from 1 to 3 mo. of age.
Politicising Council Decision-making: The Effect of European Parliament Empowerment

Research on the intra-institutional consequences of differences in the EU's inter-institutional rule configurations is rare. This study investigates the effect of the empowerment of the European Parliament (EP) on the active involvement of ministers in Council decision-making. The empowerment of the EP is likely to increase the incentives for bureaucrats in the Council's preparatory bodies to refer decisions on legislative dossiers to ministers. The empirical analysis examines this claim with data on about 6,000 legislative decision-making processes that were concluded between 1980 and the end of 2007. The analysis demonstrates a strong and robust association between the type of legislative procedure and different decision-making levels in the Council: a more powerful EP makes Council decision-making more politicised.
Local and Community Driven Development : Moving to Scale in Theory and Practice

Services are failing poor urban and rural people in the developing world, and poverty remains concentrated in rural areas and urban slums. This state of affairs prevails despite prolonged efforts by many governments to improve rural and urban services and development programs. This book focuses on how communities and local governments can be empowered to contribute to their own development and, in the process, improve infrastructure, governance, services, and economic and social development, that is, ultimately, the broad range of activities for sustainable poverty reduction. Countries and their development partners have been trying to involve communities and local governments in their own development since the end of Second World War, when the first colonies gained independence in South Asia. Pioneers in both India and Bangladesh (then a part of Pakistan) developed a clear vision of how it will be done: local development should be planned and managed by local citizens, their communities, and their local governments within a clearly defined decentralized framework that devolves real power and resources to local governments and communities. Capacity support will be provided by technical institutions and sectors and nongovernmental institutions.
Goods Prices and Exchange Rates: What Have We Learned?

Import prices typically change by a smaller proportion than the exchange rate between the exporting and importing country. Recent research indicates that common-currency relative prices for similar goods exported to different markets are highly correlated with exchange rates between those markets. This evidence suggests that incomplete pass-through is a consequence of third-degree price discrimination. While distance matters for market segmentation, borders have independent effects. The source of the border effect has not been clearly identified. Furthermore, there is little evidence yet to suggest substantial market power is implied by the observed price discrimination.
Is Variety the Spice of Life? Implications for Calorie Intake

The income elasticity of calories generally is substantially smaller than the income elasticity of food expenditure. One reason may be an increasing concern for food variety as incomes increase. Food variety can be linked with two characteristics of food indifference curves: (1) curvature and (2) location of the curves relative to the axes. Estimates suggest increasing taste for variety as food budgets increase. Therefore, such taste for variety apparently underlies in part the low income elasticities for calorie demand, which in turn cast doubt on the World Bank assertion that the nutrient intakes of poor populations will improve rapidly with income. Copyright 1989 by MIT Press.
Harnessing a Network of Experts for Competitive Advantage: Technology Scouting in the ICT Industry

In order to identify discontinuous technological change and develop appropriate action, companies are increasingly building technology foresight (TF) practices. This paper explores how, using networks of experts, TF capabilities can be built. On the basis of three case studies and 43 interviews, it is shown that building foresight systems through networks of scouts yields several benefits, including the support for sourcing external technologies. Using insights from the three major telecommunication incumbents in Europe, the paper describes and discusses (1) what can be achieved by technology scouting, (2) how a process can be set up, (3) what is important in the design of a scouting network, and (4) the characteristics that should be aimed for when choosing technology scouts. The paper contributes to the methodological base of corporate foresight, to the technology management literature, and to the understanding of how companies can increase their open-innovation capabilities by extending the intertwinement with their environment.
Environmental variation, hybridization, and phenotypic diversification in Cuatro Ciénegas pupfishes

Hybridization can generate novel phenotypes, and in combination with divergent selection along environmental gradients, can play a driving role in phenotypic diversification. This study examined the influence of introgressive hybridization and environmental variation on the phenotypic diversity of two pupfish species (Cyprinodon atrorus and Cyprinodon bifasciatus) endemic to the Cuatro Ciénegas basin, Mexico. These species occupy opposite environmental extremes and are comprised of multiple, intraspecifically isolated populations. However, interspecific hybridization occurs to various degrees within connecting, intermediate environments. Using geometric morphometric analysis, extensive variation of body shape was observed between and within species, and phenotypic variation was strongly correlated with environmental conditions. Furthermore, some introgressed populations exhibited unique phenotypes not found in either of the parents, and overall morphospace occupation was significantly higher in introgressed populations when compared to the parentals. Overall, we find environmental variation and transgressive segregation both appear to have been important in shaping phenotypic variation in this system.
Climates of risk: A field analysis of global climate change in US media discourse, 1997-2004

How are industry and environmentalist discourses of climate risk related to dominant scientific and political discourses? This study operationalizes Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital in order to map dimensions of risk description and prescription onto a journalistic field of industry, environmentalist, scientific, and political media. Results show that conventional definitions of risk mirror an opposition between scientific and political discourses. Prescriptions for action on risk are partly autonomous from definitions however. Environmentalist and scientific media feature more proactive discourse, and industry and political media feature more reactive discourse. Implications for future research on climate risk and relational studies of media discourse are discussed.
Adaptive output feedback control of uncertain nonlinear systems using single-hidden-layer neural networks

We consider adaptive output feedback control of uncertain nonlinear systems, in which both the dynamics and the dimension of the regulated system may be unknown. However, the relative degree of the regulated output is assumed to be known. Given a smooth reference trajectory, the problem is to design a controller that forces the system measurement to track it with bounded errors. The classical approach requires a state observer. Finding a good observer for an uncertain nonlinear system is not an obvious task. We argue that it is sufficient to build an observer for the output tracking error. Ultimate boundedness of the error signals is shown through Lyapunov's direct method. The theoretical results are illustrated in the design of a controller for a fourth-order nonlinear system of relative degree two and a high-bandwidth attitude command system for a model R-50 helicopter.
Radiation pressure driven vibrational modes in ultra-high-Q silica microspheres

This work demonstrates silica microspheres that possess ultra-high-Q optical whispering gallery modes, and simultaneously exhibit mechanical modes in the radio frequency range that can be excited by radiation pressure force. In contrast to previous studies that deal with vibrational modes of nanospheres using Raman or Brillouin scattering from ensembles, this work reports the parametric oscillation instability in single microspheres in a large diameter range (35-110 mum).
How HR measures support risk management: The Deutsche bank example

Are there concrete examples of how the “soft” HR factors can be made tangible and, what's more, meaningful to the business? In this article we give an answer to this frequently asked question. We show how Deutsche Bank's HR function consistently developed the range of employee surveying instruments to become pivotal to the Group's success. This is part of a wider effort in recent years to achieve a change of direction for the HR function, making it a strategic partner to the business. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Fall detection system for older adults

Fall is a major health issue among older adults. Fall may cause serious injury to the older adults such as heap fractures and head traumas. A method for detecting falls among older adults is presented which uses the Microsoft Kinect sensor. The system consists of two parts. The first one is to detect fall using Kinect sensor and second part is to generate control signal to send message. To detect fall condition, motion related features are calculated. For this sensor's color and depth output is used. Ground event segmentation is done to detect moving objects from the video stream followed by feature extraction and event classification. After fall detection, help message will send to the registered number so that immediate medical assistance will get. The system works on real time data.
Host defence against C. albicans infections in IgH transgenic mice with VH derived from a natural anti‐keratin antibody

Fungal infections have been increasing and life‐threatening in recent years, but host immune responses, especially the humoral immunity, to fungi have not been fully understood. In the present study, we report that natural antibodies from unimmunized mice bind to Candida albicans. We established a monoclonal natural antibody, 3B4, which recognized a surface antigen located at germ tubes of C. albicans. The 3B4 antibody protected mice from C. albicans‐induced death in passive immunization, by mechanisms involving suppressing germ tube formation and modulating phagocytosis. Interestingly, 3B4 also bound to a self‐antigen keratin. To further study the generation and anti‐C. albicans activities of natural antibodies in vivo, we constructed a μ chain transgenic mouse (TgVH3B4) using the VH gene from 3B4. TgVH3B4 had elevated serum anti‐keratin/C. albicans IgM, and were resistant to C. albicans infections. Analyses of B cell development showed that in TgVH3B4, B cells secreting the anti‐keratin/C. albicans antibodies were enriched in the B1 B cell compartment. Our findings reveal an important role of keratin‐reactive natural antibodies in anti‐C. albicans immune responses, and suggest that keratin may function in selecting B cells into the B1 B cell compartment, where natural antibodies are made to fight fungal infections.
On the Difference between Tax and Spending Policies in Models with Finite Horizons

This paper uses the Blanchard (1985) finite horizon model to study how taxes and government spending can be managed to stabilize aggregate demand. It is shown that tax policy cannot stabilize demand in less time than it stabilizes the public debt, but that, if government spending is the instrument of policy, demand can be stabilized independently of the dynamics of the debt. These results imply that if the objective is to stabilize the debt while maintaining demand as close as possible to a pre-determined target path, and taxes are the instrument, taxes would have to be changed temporarily as much as feasible. On the other hand, if the instrument is government spending, it can be changed gradually to achieve the objectives. The dynamic effects of taxes are a straightforward implication of the intertemporal budget constraint, when it is assumed that agents cannot be surprised by government policies. More traditional dynamics can be obtained if it is assumed that the government succeeds in announcing a policy and implementing a different one. If however the announcement is no credible, discretion is inferior to a predetermined tax rule.
The Contested Politics of Corporate Governance

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has successfully become institutionalized as the preeminent global framework for voluntary corporate environmental and social reporting. Its success can be attributed to the “institutional entrepreneurs” who analyzed the reporting field and deployed discursive, material, and organizational strategies to change it. GRI has, however, fallen short of the aspirations of its founders to use disclosure to empower nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The authors argue that its trajectory reflects the power relations between members of the field, their strategic choices and compromises, their ability to mobilize alliances and resources, and constraints imposed by the broader institutions of financial and capital markets. The authors draw three notable implications from this study. First, institutional theory needs to pay more attention to economic structures, strategies, and resources. Second, institutional entrepreneurship by relatively weak societal groups such as NGOs is inherently constrained by the structural power of wider institutions and by the compromises required to initiate change. Third, the strategies of NGOs represent a form of power capable of shifting, if not transforming, the field of corporate governance.
How can Australia sustain middle school education

Middle school is a crucial area of education where adolescents experiencing physiological and psychological changes, and require expert guidance. As more research evidence is provided about adolescent learning, teachers are considered pivotal to adolescents’ educational development. Reform measures need to be targeted at the inservice and preservice teacher levels. This quantitative study employs a 40-item, five part Likert scale survey to understand preservice teachers’ (n = 142) perceptions of their confidence to teach in a middle school at the conclusion of their tertiary education. The survey instrument was developed from the literature, with connections to the Queensland College of Teachers' professional standards. Results indicated that they perceived themselves as capable of creating a positive classroom environment with seven items greater than 80%, except with behaviour management ( 84%). Items associated with implementing a middle school curriculum had varied responses (e.g., implementing literacy and numeracy were 74%, while implementing learning with real world connections was 91%). This information may assist coursework designers. For example, if a significant percentages of preservice teachers indicate that they believe they were not well prepared for assessment and reporting at the middle school level, then course designers can target these areas more effectively.
Training in dementia care: a cluster-randomized controlled trial of a training program for nursing home staff in Germany

ABSTRACT Background: This study examines the effectiveness of a nursing home staff training program designed to improve the interaction between residents with dementia and their caregivers. Methods: A three-arm cluster-randomized and controlled population of 96 caregivers and 210 residents was used. Caregivers of the intervention group (IG) received a three-month training program in dementia care. Data were gathered at baseline, immediately after the training and at a six-month follow-up-assessment. Short- and long-term effects of the training program were assessed in comparison with another intervention referred to as the relaxation group (RG) and a wait-list control group (CG). Results: Results indicated significant positive effects of the training program on caregivers' knowledge immediately after the training and on the use of physical restraints at the six-month follow-up. Caregivers' overall competence increased significantly both in the IG and in the RG. No intervention effects were found on caregivers' level of burnout, their health complaints or on the use of sedative drugs. Relaxation training was more successful in the reduction of caregivers' health complaints. Conclusions: Results of the study indicate both the effectiveness and the limitations of a general training program in dementia care. The complexity of the nursing home setting potentially needs more complex interventions. Ongoing and continued support of the caregivers, as well as changes in organization and environment, are more likely to be helpful in the long-term improvement in the quality of care. Future research should focus on studies of specific interventions, such as the interesting effects of relaxation training on the caregivers' state of health.