Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of a Videoconference-Adapted Version of the Community Diabetes Prevention Program, and Comparison of Weight Loss With In-Person Program Delivery

Abstract Introduction Effective, standardized, and easily accessible weight management programs are urgently needed for military beneficiaries. Videoconference interventions have the potential for widespread scaling, and can provide both real time interaction and flexibility in delivery times regardless of location, but there is little information on their effectiveness and acceptability. Materials and Methods This study as part of a larger weight loss trial describes the videoconference adaption of Group Lifestyle Balance (GLB) program, a community group-based Diabetes Prevention Program intervention, and provides a comparison of weight loss and meeting attendance between in-person and videoconference delivery modes over 12 weeks in adult family members of military service members. Forty-three participants were enrolled from two military installations and received either the videoconference-adapted or an in-person GLB program in a non-randomized trial design. Differences in program attendance and percent weight lost at 12 weeks were compared by independent samples t-tests and nonparametric methods. Group differences in the percentage of weight lost over the 12-week period were analyzed using a linear mixed model. Results All GLB intervention components were successfully delivered by videoconference with minor adaptations for the different delivery mechanism. Participant retention was 70% and 96% in the in-person and videoconference groups, respectively (p = 0.04). Completing participants in both groups lost a significant percent body weight over the 12 week intervention (p < 0.001) and there was no difference in percent body weight after 12 weeks of intervention (6.2 ± 3.2% and 5.3 ± 3.4% for in-person and videoconference at 12 weeks, respectively; p = 0.60). Conclusion This study describes the first videoconference adaption of the GLB program for use in military families. Attrition was lower in the videoconference group, and there were a similar levels of weight loss in both groups regardless of delivery modality. Videoconference weight loss interventions are effective and feasible for scaling to support healthy weight management in military as well as civilian populations.
Mammalian nonsarcomeric myosin regulatory light chains are encoded by two differentially regulated and linked genes [published erratum appears in J Cell Biol 1990 Nov;111(5 Pt 1):2207]

The myosin 20,000-D regulatory light chain (RLC) has a central role in smooth muscle contraction. Previous work has suggested either the presence of two RLC isoforms, one specific for nonmuscle and one specific for smooth muscle, or the absence of a true smooth muscle- specific isoform, in which instance smooth muscle cells would use nonmuscle isoforms. To address this issue directly, we have isolated rat RLC cDNAs and corresponding genomic sequences of two smooth muscle RLC based on homology to the amino acid sequence of the chicken gizzard RLC. These cDNAs are highly homologous in their amino acid coding regions and contain unique 3'-untranslated regions. RNA analyses of rat tissue using these unique 3'-untranslated regions revealed that their expression is differentially regulated. However, one cDNA (RLC-B), predominantly a nonmuscle isoform, based on abundant expression in nonmuscle tissues including brain, spleen, and lung, is easily detected in smooth muscle tissues. The other cDNA (RLC-A; see Taubman, M., J. W. Grant, and B. Nadal-Ginard. 1987. J. Cell Biol. 104:1505-1513) was detected in a variety of nonmuscle, smooth muscle, and sarcomeric tissues. RNA analyses comparing expression of both RLC genes with the actin gene family and smooth muscle specific alpha-tropomyosin demonstrated that neither RLC gene was strictly smooth muscle specific. RNA analyses of cell lines demonstrated that both of the RLC genes are expressed in a variety of cell types. The complete genomic structure of RLC-A and close linkage to RLC-B is described.
Extending IP to Low-Power, Wireless Personal Area Networks

Extending IP to low-power, wireless personal area networks (LoWPANs) was once considered impractical because these networks are highly constrained and must operate unattended for multiyear lifetimes on modest batteries. Many vendors embraced proprietary protocols, assuming that IP was too resource-intensive to be scaled down to operate on the microcontrollers and low-power wireless links used in LoWPAN settings. However, 6LoWPAN radically alters the calculation by introducing an adaptation layer that enables efficient IPv6 communication over IEEE 802.15. 4 LoWPAN links.
Long-Run Consumption Risk and the Real Yield Curve

This paper estimates a consumption-based, no-arbitrage model of the term structure of real interest rates. The model nests the standard long-run risk model which assumes constant market prices of risk. We find that the long-run consumption risk dominates the short-run and volatility risks and drives most of the movements of bond risk premiums. The risk premium for consumption volatility is negative, suggesting that long-term real bonds provide an effective hedge against the volatility risk in consumption growth. In contrast to the standard long-run risk model, however, we find strong evidence that the market price of long-run consumption risk is time-varying and that stochastic volatilities alone are not sufficient to account for the variations in bond risk premiums. JEL Classification: G12, E43
Medical Image Retrieval with Relevance Feedback via Pairwise Constraint Propagation

Relevance feedback is an effective tool to bridge the gap between superficial image contents and medically-relevant sense in content-based medical image retrieval. In this paper, we propose an interactive medical image search framework based on pairwise constraint propagation. The basic idea is to obtain pairwise constraints from user feedback and propagate them to the entire image set to reconstruct the similarity matrix, and then rank medical images on this new manifold. In contrast to most of the algorithms that only concern manifold structure, the proposed method integrates pairwise constraint information in a feedback procedure and resolves the small sample size and the asymmetrical training typically in relevance feedback. We also introduce a long-term feedback strategy for our retrieval tasks. Experiments on two medical image datasets indicate the proposed approach can significantly improve the performance of medical image retrieval. The experiments also indicate that the proposed approach outperforms previous relevance feedback models.
Puerperal and parental experiences alter rat preferences for pup odors via changes in the oxytocin system

In the rat, induction of maternal behavior depends on the parity of the female. For example, nulliparous (NP) females need longer exposure to pups than multiparous (MP) or lactating (L) females to exhibit similar maternal behavior. In this study, we investigated the role of brain oxytocin in the approaching behavior of these female rats. Olfactory preferences for pup odors were examined for 8 consecutive days. Each preference test was followed by direct overnight exposure to pups. On the 8th day, MP and L, but not NP females showed robust pup-odor preferences. After the behavioral test, half of the females were exposed to pups for 2 h, whereas the other half were not. The females were then sacrificed to analyze brain oxytocin (OXT) and vasopressin (AVP) activities by cFos immunohistochemistry and to quantify their receptor mRNA expression using real-time PCR. In the paraventricular nucleus (PVN), the percentage of cFos-positive OXT neurons was significantly larger in MP and L females than in NP females after pup exposure. No significant differences were found in cFos expression in OXT neurons of the supraoptic nucleus (SON) or in AVP neurons of either the PVN or SON. Expression of OXT receptor mRNA in the medial preoptic area and amygdala of the control groups was also higher in MP females than in NP females. Finally, we demonstrated that infusion of OXT into the lateral ventricle of NP females promoted preferences for pup odors. These results indicate that puerperal and parental experiences enhance the responsiveness of OXT neurons in the PVN to pup stimuli and establish olfactory preferences for these odors in a parity-dependent manner.
Automatic Video Intro and Outro Detection on Internet Television

Content Delivery Networks aim to deliver multimedia content to end-users with high reliability and speed. However, the transmission costs are very high due to large volume of video data. To cost-effectively deliver bandwidth-intensive video data, content providers have become interested in detection of redundant content that most probably are not of user's interest and then providing options for stopping their delivery. In this work, we target intro and outro (IO) segments of a video which are traditionally duplicated in all episodes of a TV show and most viewers fast-forward to skip them and only watch the main story. Using computationally-efficient features such as silence gaps, blank screen transitions and histogram of shot boundaries, we develop a framework that identifies intro and outro parts of a show. We test the proposed intro/outro detection methods on a large number of videos. Performance analysis shows that our algorithm successfully delineates intro and outro transitions, respectively, by a detection rate of 82% and 76% and an average error of less than 2.06 seconds.
HIV‐1 gp120 Proteins and gp160 Peptides Are Toxic to Brain Endothelial Cells and Neurons: Possible Pathway for HIV Entry into the Brain and HIV‐Associated Dementia

Breakdown of the blood-brain barrier is commonly seen in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-associated dementia, despite the lack of productive HIV-infection of the brain endothelium. Through this damaged blood-brain barrier, HIV and HIV-infected monocytes/macrophages infiltrate the brain and further infect microglia and brain macrophages. Neuronal cell death and dysfunction are the underlying cause of HIV-associated dementia, but no productive HIV-infection of neurons has been documented. It is likely that secreted viral products play a major role in blood-brain barrier damage and neuronal cell death. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of HIV-1 gp160 peptides and gp120 proteins on brain microvascular endothelial cells and neurons from both human and rats. Four of the 7 gp160 peptides tested evoked significant neurotoxicity. Two different full-length recombinant HIV gp120 proteins (HIV-1CM235 gp120 and HIV-1MN gp120) also induced neuronal and brain endothelial cell death, and concentrations as little as 1 ng/ml evoked pronounced morphological changes in these cells and marked cytotoxicity. This study suggests that HIV proteins and peptides that are shed in vivo may be directly involved in blood-brain barrier damage and neuronal cell death in HIV-associated dementia.
An on-demand routing protocol for multi-hop multi-radio multi-channel cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio networks are composed of spectrum-agile devices capable of changing their configurations and transmission parameters on the fly based on their spectral environment. This capability opens up the possibility of designing flexible and dynamic spectrum access strategies with the purpose of opportunistically reusing portions of the spectrum temporarily vacated by licensed primary users. However, this flexibility in the spectrum access brings a new complexity in the design of communication protocols at different layers. In this paper, we consider the problem of routing in multi-hop cognitive radio networks. We propose a multi-radio multi-channel on-demand solution that is able to effectively manage the transmission activities of cognitive and primary users. The routing metric should be carefully developed in order to provide a tradeoff between the channel diversity of the routing path and the end-to-end delay. Through simulations, we highlight the performance of our proposed solution and compare it to multi-radio multichannel on-demand distance vector protocol.
Interleaved boost converter system for unity power factor operation

In this paper, a very unique boost converter system with a combination of interleaving and zero-ripple techniques for power factor correction (PFC) is proposed. The converter allows clean power in the universal ac line (90 Vac to 265 Vac) and compliance with any standards or regulations. The converter is designed in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) operation to reduce the system complexity and to eliminate diode reverse recovery loss. This can remove EMI filter without sacrificing the input current harmonics. Consequently, high density PFC converter with low cost can be achieved. Simulation results are given to validate the predicted behavior.
Quantifying Spatiotemporal Stability by means of Entropy: Approach and Motivations

Several studies demonstrate that there are critical differences between real wireless networks and simulation models. This finding has permitted to extract spatial and temporal properties for links and to provide efficient methods as biased link sampling to guarantee efficient routing structure. Other works have focused on computing metrics to improve routing, specially the reuse of the measure of entropy. From there, rises the idea of formulating a new measure of entropy that gives an overview of the spatiotemporal stability of a link. This measure will rely on spatial and temporal properties of links and fed with the efficiency of biased link sampling
Nondisplaceable compartment Plasma compartment k 4 k 2 Receptor compartment

Neurochemistry of human cognition remains uninvestigated because neuroimaging techniques have limited ability to detect neurochemical changes associated with cognitive processing. In recent years investigators have used molecular imaging to develop methods for detection, mapping and measurement of neurotransmitters released acutely during cognitive processing in the live human brain. Most of these methods exploit the competition between endogenous neurotransmitter and a radiolabeled receptor ligand. Because of the competition, the ligand concentration decreasesin the brain areas where neurotransmitter is released endogenously during a task performance. The decreased concentration is detected by measuring the activity of intravenously injected radioligand using a PET camera. The PET data acquired dynamically isapplied to a receptor kinetic model, which estimates kinetic parameter values at multiple time point. Based on these values dopamine released during performance of a task is detected, mapped and measured. By using different ligands, dopamine released inside or outside the striatum can be detected using this technique. The neurotransmitter imaging technique at present can detect acute changes only in dopamine neurotransmission. Since it significantly limits the scope, there is a need to develop methods and ligands for detection of acute changes in the levels of other neurochemicals.
PrIMe: a software engineering methodology for developing provenance-aware applications

Provenance is a concept often used in the Art world to refer to the documented history of an artifact, providing information about the artifact's lineage and authenticity. Provenance-aware applications similarly allow their users to have confidence about the data they produce, and can enable users to make judgements relating to notions of trust, accountability, validation, replication and compliance of their data. PrIMe is a software engineering methodology for adapting applications to enable them to interact with a provenance middleware layer, thereby making them provenance-aware. Such applications allow users to answer questions about provenance use cases, which are descriptions of scenarios in which a user interacts with a system by performing particular functions on that system. In order to illustrate how PrIMe can make applications provenance-aware, an Organ Transplant Management example application is used.
An Agent Based Anti-Money Laundering System Architecture for Financial Supervision

Anti-money laundering is a hot issue nowadays. How to establish an automatically technology to extract SARs (suspicious activity report) is the core problem for financial institutions. This paper aims to establish system architecture based on agent technology financial supervision in financial institution taking into consideration of not only transaction information database in financial institutions, but also customer profiles information and external information. The capability of self-learning and self-adaptive makes it difficult for those customers to avoid supervision through simple learning from regulations.
Patients with polymyositis or dermatomyositis have reduced grip force and health-related quality of life in comparison with reference values: an observational study.

OBJECTIVES The aims of this study were to investigate hand function in PM and DM patients and compare this with reference values in healthy individuals and also to investigate if hand function correlated with activity performance and health-related quality of life. METHODS An observational cross-sectional study was performed in 18 women and 13 men with PM or DM with established disease. Grip force and hand mobility were assessed by Grippit and Escola Paulista de Medicina-Range of Motion scale. Activity performance was measured with myositis activities profile and health-related quality of life by short form-36 (SF-36). RESULTS Women and men with PM and DM with mean disease duration of 6.8 (5.5) years had a significantly lower grip force than gender- and age-matched healthy individuals (women 71% and men 60%). They also had significantly lower mean values in all dimensions of the health-related quality of life instrument SF-36 compared with the Swedish population. In patients with PM and DM, the grip force correlated significantly with the ability to perform domestic activities. In women with PM and DM, the grip force correlated significantly with the health-related quality of life dimensions vitality and mental health. There were no significant differences between patients with PM and DM regarding grip force, hand mobility, activity performance or health-related quality of life. CONCLUSIONS Patients with PM or DM have reduced grip force that could influence activity performance and health-related quality of life.
Human coding RNA editing is generally nonadaptive

Significance Recent genomic studies have revealed more than 1,000 coding sites in the human genome that are subject to A-to-I editing at the RNA level, but it is unclear whether these RNA editing events, many of which are nonsynonymous, are generally advantageous. Analyzing the frequencies and levels of RNA editing at groups of coding sites with different functional importance, we provide unequivocal evidence that human coding RNA editing is generally nonadaptive. We propose that the vast majority of the observed coding RNA editing results from tolerable promiscuous targeting by RNA editing enzymes. Our finding has important implications for understanding the physiological consequences of normal and abnormal coding RNA editing. Impairment of RNA editing at a handful of coding sites causes severe disorders, prompting the view that coding RNA editing is highly advantageous. Recent genomic studies have expanded the list of human coding RNA editing sites by more than 100 times, raising the question of how common advantageous RNA editing is. Analyzing 1,783 human coding A-to-G editing sites, we show that both the frequency and level of RNA editing decrease as the importance of a site or gene increases; that during evolution, edited As are more likely than unedited As to be replaced with Gs but not with Ts or Cs; and that among nonsynonymously edited As, those that are evolutionarily least conserved exhibit the highest editing levels. These and other observations reveal the overall nonadaptive nature of coding RNA editing, despite the presence of a few sites in which editing is clearly beneficial. We propose that most observed coding RNA editing results from tolerable promiscuous targeting by RNA editing enzymes, the original physiological functions of which remain elusive.
Forecast Bias in Two Dimensions

Economists have tried to uncover stylized facts about people’s expectations, testing whether such expectations are rational. Tests in the early 1980s suggested that expectations were biased, and some economists took irrational expectations as a stylized fact. But, over time, the results of tests that led to such a conclusion were reversed. In this paper, we examine how tests for bias in expectations, measured using the Survey of Professional Forecasters, have changed over time. In addition, key macroeconomic variables that are the subject of forecasts are revised over time, causing problems in determining how to measure the accuracy of forecasts. The results of bias tests are found to depend on the subsample in question, as well as what concept is used to measure the actual value of a macroeconomic variable. Thus, our analysis takes place in two dimensions: across subsamples and with alternative measures of realized values of variables.
European Conference on Information Systems ( ECIS ) 2000 Constructing New Media

Media are explored to envision, to design, and to implement platforms for knowledge management within communities. They actively shape, support and develop the community being resident on a medium. We study Intranets as media for knowledge management and provide an agent-oriented model for Intranets. We argue that organization and logical space of a community have to be reconstructed on the medium and that new knowledge and organizational structures can evolve by using the medium. We distinguish as counterparts the organizational structure and the knowledge being represented on the platform and the organizational structure and the knowledge of the community resident on the medium. We propose a media dialog and a media spiral between those counterparts as processes of shaping a community by a medium and of developing and implementing new knowledge and new organizational structures within a community on a medium.
Communication across the HCI / SE divide : ISO 13407 and the Rational Unified Process ®

Human-computer interaction practitioners and software engineers must work together to develop useful and usable systems. Although both groups learn techniques for product development activities like requirements generation, high-level and detailed design, and testing, the traditional outputs of these techniques may not make effective contact with the results of the other group or the needs of the project as a whole. We examine the products of different activities in software development to explore whether information flow from one group to the other has natural points of contact or if gaps exist. We use ISO 13407 as an example of a human-centred development process and the Rational Unified Process® as an example of a software engineering process.
Change Propagation in Process Models Using Behavioural Profiles

Business process change is at the very core of business process management, which aims at enabling flexible adaptation to changing business needs. However, the wide variety of drivers for business process modeling initiatives, reaching from business evolution to process enactment, results in multiple models that overlap in content due to serving different purposes. That, in turn, imposes serious challenges for the propagation of changes between these process models. Given a change in one model, this paper introduces an approach to determine a change region in another model by exploiting the behavioral profile of corresponding activities. It, therefore, supports the process of change propagation and eases the synchronization of process models significantly. As a major contribution, our approach can handle changes in pairs of models, even if they are not defined in terms of a hierarchical refinement.