Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of fatness, intelligence, education and sociodemographic factors on response rate in a health survey.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: The aim was to investigate the characteristics of non-responders to an invitation to attend a health examination. DESIGN: Taking advantage of an ongoing study of obesity, this was a survey of a cohort of severely obese men, with a randomly selected control group. PARTICIPANTS: The participants were draftees to the compulsory Danish military draft board examination between 1943 and 1977. Among 362,200 draftees, 1940 were identified as severely obese (body mass index greater than or equal to 31 kg/m2). A comparison group of 1801 subjects was randomly drawn from the remaining population. During the period 1981-3 those still alive and living in the same region (1651 obese, 1504 control) were invited to a health examination. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: The examination was attended by 964 obese (58%) and 1134 controls (75%). In both groups an increasing response rate was associated with decreasing body mass index, and increasing intelligence test score, educational level, current social class, age (up to 50 years) and proximity of residence. Logistic regression analysis showed that all these variables had independent effects on response rate. Frequency and duration of hospital admissions during the period 1977-82 did not differ among responders and non-responders in either group. CONCLUSION: Response rates in health surveys are strongly influenced by degree of fatness, intelligence, educational level, social class, age, and proximity of residence.
Formal specification and verification of JXTA's Endpoint Routing Protocol

JXTA protocols describe a framework for peer-to-peer networking, independent of underlying transport protocols, for peer collaboration and message exchange. The JXTA project is an open source initiative and its protocols are informally specified as exchanges of XML-based messages between entities. This paper presents the formal specification and automated verification of the one JXTA's core protocol: the Endpoint Routing Protocol. This protocol runs at the core of the JXTA architecture is responsible for routing messages between peers. The PROMELA based formal specification serves as input to the SPIN model checker to prove the protocol's incompleteness through the presence of deadlocks and live-locks.
A 20/10/5/2.5Gb/s Power-scaling Burst-Mode CDR Circuit Using GVCO/Div2/DFF Tri-mode Cells

PON is one of the promising solutions for the last-mile communication systems. In PONs, the fast-locked CDR circuit must lock within tens of bit times once the data packets arrive. The so-called burst-mode CDR (BMCDR) circuits with gated VCOs (GVCOs) have been presented. To meet the requirements of different PON standards, a multi-band BMCDR circuit is very desirable. The conventional multi-band technique is realized by a GVCO with dividers. Since the GVCO has to operate at the highest speed, it dissipates a fixed power, even though only a low data rate is required. Furthermore, the dividers introduce extra time delays to reduce the sampling margin that may become an issue for high data rates. In this work, a 20/10/5/2.5Gb/s power-scaling BMCDR circuit is implemented in 90nm CMOS technology. It is aimed to scale the power of a BMCDR circuit for different data rates. To realize a power-scaling multi-band BMCDR circuit, a tri-mode cell can be configured as a GVCO, a divide-by-2 divider, or 2 DFFs. Moreover, improvements are made to address the problem associated with the extra time delays that reduce the sampling margin.
A Guild of 45 CRISPR-Associated (Cas) Protein Families and Multiple CRISPR/Cas Subtypes Exist in Prokaryotic Genomes

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) are a family of DNA direct repeats found in many prokaryotic genomes. Repeats of 21–37 bp typically show weak dyad symmetry and are separated by regularly sized, nonrepetitive spacer sequences. Four CRISPR-associated (Cas) protein families, designated Cas1 to Cas4, are strictly associated with CRISPR elements and always occur near a repeat cluster. Some spacers originate from mobile genetic elements and are thought to confer “immunity” against the elements that harbor these sequences. In the present study, we have systematically investigated uncharacterized proteins encoded in the vicinity of these CRISPRs and found many additional protein families that are strictly associated with CRISPR loci across multiple prokaryotic species. Multiple sequence alignments and hidden Markov models have been built for 45 Cas protein families. These models identify family members with high sensitivity and selectivity and classify key regulators of development, DevR and DevS, in Myxococcus xanthus as Cas proteins. These identifications show that CRISPR/cas gene regions can be quite large, with up to 20 different, tandem-arranged cas genes next to a repeat cluster or filling the region between two repeat clusters. Distinctive subsets of the collection of Cas proteins recur in phylogenetically distant species and correlate with characteristic repeat periodicity. The analyses presented here support initial proposals of mobility of these units, along with the likelihood that loci of different subtypes interact with one another as well as with host cell defensive, replicative, and regulatory systems. It is evident from this analysis that CRISPR/cas loci are larger, more complex, and more heterogeneous than previously appreciated.
Language maintenance shift of a three generation Italian family in three migration countries : an international comparative study

This thesis is a comparative investigation into the use of Italian of an extended Italian family in language contact situation in three countries: the United States, Australia and France. This study is undertaken and described in the context of the different policies on migrant integration and minority languages in the three migration countries. The investigation uses the ‘Case Study’ methodology in the format of an embedded multiple case-study project. The third generation was made the focus of the study to investigate Fishman’s “intergroup social dependency” theory. According to this theory, when the immigrant experience is viewed from a perspective of three or more generation time depth, the immigrant group generally loses its language due to its dependency on the host society for its survival. Fishman contends that only an effective and strict ‘compartmentalisation of language functions’ between the minority language and the host language can help the minority group maintain its language. The findings indicate that for people of Italian background living as a minority group in language contact situation compartmentalisation is not a viable alternative. Nor do they consider the ‘maintenance’ of their community language important. When in the migration country bilingualism is valued, it is the standard variety of the heritage language that is chosen for maintenance and further learning. The study presents recommendations towards the achievability of bilingualism beyond the limitations of compartmentalisation.
A cross four-order cumulants based harmonic retrieval TLS-ESPRIT method in the estimation of harmonic parameters

A cross four-order cumulant expression is derived from complex-valued and real-valued random harmonic signal in the context of hybrid colored noise. Based on this expression, a TLS-ESPRIT retrieval method is proposed and used to jointly estimate harmonic frequency,mutual power and phase difference. Theoretical analysis and digital simulation studies have shown that the proposed method can restrain the Gaussian colored noise and/or the unrelated non-Gaussian colored noise between the channels with high frequency resolution and stability in the estimation of harmonic parameters.
Generalized Point Based Value Iteration for Interactive POMDPs

We develop a point based method for solving finitely nested interactive POMDPs approximately. Analogously to point based value iteration (PBVI) in POMDPs, we maintain a set of belief points and form value functions composed of those value vectors that are optimal at these points. However, as we focus on muItiagent settings, the beliefs are nested and computation of the value vectors relies on predicted actions of others. Consequently, we develop a novel interactive gen eralization of PBVI applicable to muItiagent settings.
Meta-constraints on violations for over constrained problems

Constraint programming techniques are widely used to solve real-world problems. It often happens that such problems are over-constrained and do not have any solution. In such a case, the goal is to find a good compromise. A simple theoretical framework is the Max-CSP, where the goal is to minimize the number of constraint violations. However, in real-life problems, complex rules are generally imposed with respect to violations. Solutions which do not satisfy these rules have no practical interest. Therefore, many frameworks derived from the Max-CSP have been introduced. In this paper, we classify the most usual types of rules, and we show that some of them are not expressible in existing frameworks. We introduce a new paradigm in which all these rules can be encoded, through meta-constraints. Moreover, we show that most of existing frameworks can be included in our model.
Multiobjective Interaction Programming for Two-Persons

Interaction programming is a complex decision making model for multi-persons, which can be widely applied in fields with conflict or non-conflict, such as control problem of product plan, mutli-agents and network conflict in the engineering and computer fields. This paper extends a class of cooperative interaction programming of two-persons (or two agents). We define $s$-optimal joint solution to interaction programming of two-persons and get its some properties. It is proved that the $s$-optimal joint solution of interaction programming can be obtained by solving a corresponding mathematical programming problem. Finally, we build a pricing model of interaction programming for two-class supply chain. Numerical results show that the pricing model of interaction programming is better than the pricing model of Stackelberg game and the pricing model of joint pricing.
Generalized Compute-and-Forward Schemes for Multi-Hop Two-Way Relay Channels

Wireless network coding for multi-hop two-way relay channels (MH-TRC) has been proven to achieve a significantly improved network throughput than non- network coding (Non-NC) schemes. Our previous work showed that the multi-hop compute-and-forward (MH- CPF) scheme for the MH-TRC with fixed two transmission time intervals was unable to outperform Non-NC in the MH-TRC with an arbitrary number of nodes. In view of this fact, we propose an I-time- interval (I-TI) MH-CPF scheme (I represents the number of transmission time intervals) for the MH- TRC with arbitrary numbers of nodes and messages. By converting the transmission pattern to a corresponding characteristic matrix, the outage probability of the I-TI MH-CPF scheme is derived. We investigate the relationships between the numbers of nodes, messages and TIs with the outage probability. It is proven that L-1-TI MH-CPF can outperform 2-TI MH-CPF when the number of messages is large, while the MH-CPF scheme with a larger number of TIs has better outage performance than 2-TI MH-CPF in the MH-TRC with a small number of nodes.
Corporate E-Learning: an Empirical Evaluation

This paper explores user views of the current e-learning practices in an organisational setting. Eighty employees of Korean Air, who were enrolled in an e-learning course, participated in the study on a voluntary basis. Data on employees' perceptions of importance and satisfaction with their course portal were gathered by administering a survey questionnaire. The study revealed that employees considered all portal features as quite important and satisfying, although some more than others. They also agreed that there was scope for further improvement through adding extra functionality. These findings have important implications for improving the effectiveness of corporate e-learning.
Mathematik

A stationary Poisson cylinder process in the d -dimensional Euclidean space is composed by a stationary Poisson process of k -ﬂats (1 ≤ k ≤ d − 1) which are dilated by i.i. d. random compact cylinder bases taken from the corresponding ( d − k )-dimensional orthogonal complement. If the second moment of the ( d − k )-volume of the typical cylinder base exists, we prove asymptotic normality of the d -volume of the union set of Poisson cylinders that covers an expanding star-shaped domain ̺ W as ̺ grows unboundedly. Due to the long-range dependences within the union set of cylinders, the variance of its d -volume in ̺ W increases asymptotically proportional to the ( d + k )th power of ̺ . To obtain the exact asymptotic behaviour of this variance we need a distinction between discrete and continuous directional distributions of the typical k -ﬂat.
Long-term Outcomes of Drug-eluting Stents in Symptomatic Intracranial Stenosis

Purpose The use of drug-eluting stent (DES) to treat intracranial stenosis has shown short-term success. However, there are no reports regarding the long-term results of DES. We present the long-term clinical outcome after DES stenting for symptomatic severe intracranial stenosis. Materials and Methods Our study included a consecutive series of 11 patients who underwent intracranial stenting using DES between March and July, 2006, during the time when bare metal stents were not available at our medical institution. The mean patient age was 59 years. Lesion location was the middle cerebral artery in five patients, the intradural vertebral artery in three, the basilar artery in one, the vertebrobasilar junction in one, and the cavernous internal cerebral artery in one patient. We evaluated the technical success, defined as reduction of residual stenosis ≤30% in the target lesion) as well as the clinical and imaging outcomes as long as 75 months following the procedure. In addition to a cerebral angiogram (n = 2), follow-up study was obtained by CT angiography (n = 6) or intracranial Doppler imaging (n = 2) during a mean time of 55 months after the procedure (range, 24 to 73 months). Three patients refused imaging follow-up and accepted only clinical follow-up. The mean clinical follow-up period was 67 months (range, 47-75 months). Results Stenting in all patients was technically successful and without periprocedural complications. There was thrombus formation during the procedure in one patient who experienced no further complications. There were no new neurological events during the mean follow-up period of 5.6 years. No patients were found to have restenosis ≥50% at during the mean follow-up period of 55 months. One patient died of a sudden heart attack 59 months following the procedure which was regarded as unrelated to the cerebral lesion. Conclusion Our study demonstrates that DES shows long-term stability and safety, and results in good clinical outcomes with a low rate of restenosis.
A Provably Secure and Efficient Verifiable Shuffle based on a Variant of the Paillier Cryptosystem

We propose a variant of the Paillier cryptosystem that improves efficiency in encryption, re-encryption and decryption while preserving the homomorphic prop- erty. We then use this variant to construct a new verifiable shuffle system and prove its security. We show that the new shuffle scheme has the least number of rounds and exponentiations compared to all known shuffle schemes. Finally, we show how to construct a publicly verifiable mix-net using the shuffle system.
Non-Invasive in vivo Imaging in Small Animal Research

Non-invasive real time in vivo molecular imaging in small animal models has become the essential bridge between in vitro data and their translation into clinical applications. The tremendous development and technological progress, such as tumour modelling, monitoring of tumour growth and detection of metastasis, has facilitated translational drug development. This has added to our knowledge on carcinogenesis. The modalities that are commonly used include Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computed Tomography (CT), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), bioluminescence imaging, fluorescence imaging and multi-modality imaging systems. The ability to obtain multiple images longitudinally provides reliable information whilst reducing animal numbers. As yet there is no one modality that is ideal for all experimental studies. This review outlines the instrumentation available together with corresponding applications reported in the literature with particular emphasis on cancer research. Advantages and limitations to current imaging technology are discussed and the issues concerning small animal care during imaging are highlighted.
How do the changes in musculoskeletal properties and oestrogen levels during the adolescent growth spurt affect landing technique in girls

The adolescent growth spurt is associated with rapid growth and hormonal changes, thought to contribute to the increased ACL injury risk in girls. However, relatively little is known about these musculoskeletal and oestrogen changes during the growth spurt in girls. Purpose: To investigate the longitudinal changes in oestrogen, as well as anterior knee laxity, and lower limb strength and flexibility throughout the adolescent growth spurt in girls. Methods: Thirty-three healthy girls, aged 10-13 years, in Tanner Stage II and 4-6 months from their PHV, were initially recruited. Participants were tested up to four times during the 12 months of their growth spurt, according to the timing of their maturity offset (Test 1: maturity offset = -6 to -4 months, Test 2: maturity offset = 0 months, Test 3: maturity offset = +4 months, Test 4: maturity offset = +8 months). During each testing session anterior knee laxity, lower limb flexibility and isokinetic muscle strength, as well as saliva measures of estradiol concentration were measured. Results: A significant (p = 0.002) effect of time on anterior knee laxity was found from the time of PHV, although no changes in estradiol concentration were displayed over time (p = 0.811). Participants displayed a significant increase (p < 0.05) in isokinetic quadriceps muscle strength over time, with no apparent increase in isokinetic hamstring muscle strength. Conclusions: We speculate that increased quadriceps strength,
LISE: a server using ligand-interacting and site-enriched protein triangles for prediction of ligand-binding sites

LISE is a web server for a novel method for predicting small molecule binding sites on proteins. It differs from a number of servers currently available for such predictions in two aspects. First, rather than relying on knowledge of similar protein structures, identification of surface cavities or estimation of binding energy, LISE computes a score by counting geometric motifs extracted from sub-structures of interaction networks connecting protein and ligand atoms. These network motifs take into account spatial and physicochemical properties of ligand-interacting protein surface atoms. Second, LISE has now been more thoroughly tested, as, in addition to the evaluation we previously reported using two commonly used small benchmark test sets and targets of two community-based experiments on ligand-binding site predictions, we now report an evaluation using a large non-redundant data set containing >2000 protein–ligand complexes. This unprecedented test, the largest ever reported to our knowledge, demonstrates LISE’s overall accuracy and robustness. Furthermore, we have identified some hard to predict protein classes and provided an estimate of the performance that can be expected from a state-of-the-art binding site prediction server, such as LISE, on a proteome scale. The server is freely available at http://lise.ibms. sinica.edu. tw.
Virulence Characteristics and Genetic Affinities of Multiple Drug Resistant Uropathogenic Escherichia coli from a Semi Urban Locality in India

Extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (ExPEC) are of significant health concern. The emergence of drug resistant E. coli with high virulence potential is alarming. Lack of sufficient data on transmission dynamics, virulence spectrum and antimicrobial resistance of certain pathogens such as the uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) from countries with high infection burden, such as India, hinders the infection control and management efforts. In this study, we extensively genotyped and phenotyped a collection of 150 UPEC obtained from patients belonging to a semi-urban, industrialized setting near Pune, India. The isolates representing different clinical categories were analyzed in comparison with 50 commensal E. coli isolates from India as well as 50 ExPEC strains from Germany. Virulent strains were identified based on hemolysis, haemagglutination, cell surface hydrophobicity, serum bactericidal activity as well as with the help of O serotyping. We generated antimicrobial resistance profiles for all the clinical isolates and carried out phylogenetic analysis based on repetitive extragenic palindromic (rep)-PCR. E. coli from urinary tract infection cases expressed higher percentages of type I (45%) and P fimbriae (40%) when compared to fecal isolates (25% and 8% respectively). Hemolytic group comprised of 60% of UPEC and only 2% of E. coli from feces. Additionally, we found that serum resistance and cell surface hydrophobicity were not significantly (p = 0.16/p = 0.51) associated with UPEC from clinical cases. Moreover, clinical isolates exhibited highest resistance against amoxicillin (67.3%) and least against nitrofurantoin (57.3%). We also observed that 31.3% of UPEC were extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producers belonging to serotype O25, of which four were also positive for O25b subgroup that is linked to B2-O25b-ST131-CTX-M-15 virulent/multiresistant type. Furthermore, isolates from India and Germany (as well as global sources) were found to be genetically distinct with no evidence to espouse expansion of E. coli from India to the west or vice-versa.
Latent geometry of bipartite networks

Despite the abundance of bipartite networked systems, their organizing principles are less studied compared to unipartite networks. Bipartite networks are often analyzed after projecting them onto one of the two sets of nodes. As a result of the projection, nodes of the same set are linked together if they have at least one neighbor in common in the bipartite network. Even though these projections allow one to study bipartite networks using tools developed for unipartite networks, one-mode projections lead to significant loss of information and artificial inflation of the projected network with fully connected subgraphs. Here we pursue a different approach for analyzing bipartite systems that is based on the observation that such systems have a latent metric structure: network nodes are points in a latent metric space, while connections are more likely to form between nodes separated by shorter distances. This approach has been developed for unipartite networks, and relatively little is known about its applicability to bipartite systems. Here, we fully analyze a simple latent-geometric model of bipartite networks and show that this model explains the peculiar structural properties of many real bipartite systems, including the distributions of common neighbors and bipartite clustering. We also analyze the geometric information loss in one-mode projections in this model and propose an efficient method to infer the latent pairwise distances between nodes. Uncovering the latent geometry underlying real bipartite networks can find applications in diverse domains, ranging from constructing efficient recommender systems to understanding cell metabolism.