Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Healthy Lifestyles Reduce the Incidence of Chronic Diseases and Dementia: Evidence from the Caerphilly Cohort Study

Background Healthy lifestyles based on non-smoking, an acceptable BMI, a high fruit and vegetable intake, regular physical activity, and low/moderate alcohol intake, are associated with reductions in the incidence of certain chronic diseases, but to date there is limited evidence on cognitive function and dementia. Methods In 1979 healthy behaviours were recorded on 2,235 men aged 45–59 years in Caerphilly, UK. During the following 30 years incident diabetes, vascular disease, cancer and death were recorded, and in 2004 cognitive state was determined. Findings Men who followed four or five of the behaviours had an odds ratio (OR) and confidence intervals (CI) for diabetes, corrected for age and social class, of 0.50 (95% CI: 0.19, 1.31; P for trend with increasing numbers of healthy behaviours <0.0005). For vascular disease the OR was 0.50 (95% CI: 0.30, 0.84; P for trend <0.0005), and there was a delay in vascular disease events of up to 12 years. Cancer incidence was not significantly related to lifestyle although there was a reduction associated with non-smoking (OR: 0.65; 95% CI: 0.54, 0.79). All-cause mortality was reduced in men following four or five behaviours (OR 0.40; 95% CI: 0.24, 0.67; P for trend <0.005). After further adjustment for NART, the OR for men following four or five healthy behaviours was 0.36 (95% CI: 0.12, 1.09; P for trend <0.001) for cognitive impairment, and 0.36 (95% CI: 0.07, 1.99; P for trend <0.02) for dementia. The adoption of a healthy lifestyle by men was low and appears not to have changed during the subsequent 30 years, with under 1% of men following all five of the behaviours and 5% reporting four or more in 1979 and in 2009. Interpretation A healthy lifestyle is associated with increased disease-free survival and reduced cognitive impairment but the uptake remains low.
Clustering with Normalized Information Potential Constrained Maximum Entropy Boltzmann Distribution

From a probabilistic perspective, the question of clustering is 'what is the probability that two data samples belong to the same cluster? '' Accepting the natural preclustering of samples into corresponding modes of the data probability distribution and answering the question posed above for these modes can reduce the problem complexity. Under the maximum entropy principle, a Boltzmann distribution model can be employed to evaluate the required mode-connectivity probabilities. An algorithm is developed using kernel density estimation in this framework. Its performance is demonstrated on benchmark datasets.
Lung Cancer Recognition using Radon Transform and Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System

In this paper, we represent computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system for recognition of lung cancer by analyzing CT images of chest. CAD system helps to improve the diagnostic performance of radiologists in their image interpretations. The proposed system relies on three stages mainly; firstly, the CT image is enhanced. Secondly, the lung and tumor are segmented from the input CT image by separating them from other organs in the CT scan. This is done using region growing Algorithm for segmenting the lung parenchyma and a set of morphological operations to detect the tumor. Thirdly, the geometrical information and transformed based features such as Radon transform based features obtained from the extracted tumor are used to classify the lung tumor into benign and malignant employing adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) classifier. Correct Classification rate of 98% is obtained by using geometric features.
Noisy feedback improves the BSC reliability function

For the information transmission a binary symmetric channel is used. There is also another noisy binary symmetric channel (feedback channel), and the transmitter observes without delay all the outputs of the forward channel via that feedback channel. The overall transmission time is fixed. The transmission of a exponential number of messages (i.e. the transmission rate is positive) is considered. The achievable decoding error exponent for such a combination of channels is investigated. It is shown that if the crossover probability of the feedback channel is less than a certain positive value, then the achievable error exponent is better than the best known lower bound for the error exponent of the no-feedback channel.
Hybrid Polymer-Network Hydrogels with Tunable Mechanical Response

Hybrid polymer-network gels built by both physical and covalent polymer crosslinking combine the advantages of both these crosslinking types: they exhibit high mechanical strength along with excellent fracture toughness and extensibility. If these materials are extensively deformed, their physical crosslinks can break such that strain energy is dissipated and irreversible fracturing is restricted to high strain only. This mechanism of energy dissipation is determined by the kinetics and thermodynamics of the physical crosslinking contribution. In this paper, we present a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) based material toolkit to control these contributions in a rational and custom fashion. We form well-defined covalent polymer-network gels with regularly distributed additional supramolecular mechanical fuse links, whose strength of connectivity can be tuned without affecting the primary polymer-network composition. This is possible because the supramolecular fuse links are based on terpyridine–metal complexation, such that the mere choice of the fuse-linking metal ion adjusts their kinetics and thermodynamics of complexation–decomplexation, which directly affects the mechanical properties of the hybrid gels. We use oscillatory shear rheology to demonstrate this rational control and enhancement of the mechanical properties of the hybrid gels. In addition, static light scattering reveals their highly regular and well-defined polymer-network structures. As a result of both, the present approach provides an easy and reliable concept for preparing hybrid polymer-network gels with rationally designed properties.
Pacing strategy and the occurrence of fatigue in 4000-m cycling time trials.

PURPOSE The present study was designed to examine the role of central and peripheral fatigue on 4000-m cycling time trial performance by comparing changes in power output and integrated electromyography (iEMG) in differently paced maximal efforts. METHODS Eight well-trained men performed three randomly ordered time trials with different pacing strategies, in which the first 2000 m were manipulated to evoke an increasing, even, and decreasing power output profile (SUB, EVEN, and SUPRA, respectively). Subjects were instructed to finish the last 2000 m of all trials in the shortest time possible. iEMG of the rectus femoris (RF), vastus lateralis (VL), and biceps femoris (BF) muscle, mechanical power output, and gas exchange variables were measured. Anaerobic and aerobic contributions to mechanical power output were calculated from gas exchange data. RESULTS The increase in mechanical power output during the SUB time trials was always associated with an increase in iEMG in all muscles. A decrease in mechanical power output near the end of the time trials was also marked by an increase in iEMG for all muscles, except for the RF. Comparing the last 2000-m interval with the first, aerobic power output increased for all strategies. Anaerobic power output increased in SUB and decreased in EVEN and SUPRA. CONCLUSION The relationship between iEMG and mechanical power output pattern was consistent with peripheral fatigue rather than central downregulation of mechanical power output. Specifically, anaerobic energy resources seem to be important in regulating pacing strategy.
Financial Management: Turning Theory into Practice

Financial management: Turning theory into practice is an accessible and principles-based financial management textbook for undergraduate and Honours Accounting students. The book takes cognizance of changes in the economic environment and their implications for the role of financial management and the teaching of the subject. Financial management follows the SAICA syllabus for financial management but also takes the skills required by the CIMA syllabus into account. It acknowledges the intent behind the SAICA Competency Framework to develop problem-solving, critical thinking and ethical business leaders, but at the same time provides academic and financial literacy support to students. This guided approach serves to produce both technically competent students as well as students who will be capable financial leaders in the workplace. Financial management supports students in the following ways: - Opening case studies engage student interest and illustrate why the principles that will be dealt with in the chapter are important for the successful financial management of South African companies. - Critical thinking boxes encourage students to think deeply about the consequences of various actions in the business environment, such as implementing financial performance measures, thereby developing their reasoning skills. - Worked examples guide students through problems in a step-by-step manner and give them confidence to tackle questions on their own. -Self-assessment questions test understanding of the key concepts. - 'Finance in action' boxes provide real-life examples of the theory covered in the chapter. The book is aimed at undergraduate and Honours Financial Management students enrolled in BCom Accounting courses at universities, primarily those following a CA route.
Human action recognition with contextual constraints using a RGB-D sensor

Recognition of human actions using a vision based approach is a challenging task. To improve the action recognition performance, we proposed a hierarchical probabilistic model based framework which not only models the dynamics of the actions but also considers contextual constraints in terms of object/action correlation and action sequential constraints. By considering the action/object correlation, it is possible to recognize actions which are either too subtle to perceive or too hard to recognize using motion features only. On the other hand, with the action sequential constraints, the recognition accuracy can be further improved. In the proposed approach, first, the dynamics of an action is modeled using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). Then, a Bayesian network is adopted to model the object constraints for the low-level action recognition. Finally, a high-level HMM is created to model the sequential constraints which refines the decision from the Bayesian model. Our approach was evaluated through experiments using a single RGB-D camera, which provides data of both the human gesture and manipulated objects. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can recognize human actions effectively.
Volume-encoded UV-maps

UV-maps are required in order to apply a 2D texture over a 3D model. Conventional UV-maps are defined by an assignment of uv positions to mesh vertices. We present an alternative representation, volume-encoded UV-maps, in which each point on the surface is mapped to a uv position which is solely a function of its 3D position. This function is tailored for a target surface: its restriction to the surface is a parametrization exhibiting high quality, e.g. in terms of angle and area preservation; and, near the surface, it is almost constant for small orthogonal displacements. The representation is applicable to a wide range of shapes and UV-maps, and unlocks several key advantages: it removes the need to duplicate vertices in the mesh to encode cuts in the map; it makes the UV-map representation independent from the meshing of the surface; the same texture, and even the same UV-map, can be shared by multiple geometrically similar models (e.g. all levels of a LoD pyramid); UV-maps can be applied to representations other than polygonal meshes, like point clouds or set of registered range-maps. Our schema is cheap on GPU computational and memory resources, requiring only a single, cache-coherent indirection to a small volumetric texture per fragment. We also provide an algorithm to construct a volume-encoded UV-map given a target surface.
Nonlinearity of davenport—Schinzel sequences and of generalized path compression schemes

Davenport—Schinzel sequences are sequences that do not contain forbidden subsequences of alternating symbols. They arise in the computation of the envelope of a set of functions. We show that the maximal length of a Davenport—Schinzel sequence composed ofn symbols is Θ (nα(n)), where α(n) is the functional inverse of Ackermann’s function, and is thus very slowly increasing to infinity. This is achieved by establishing an equivalence between such sequences and generalized path compression schemes on rooted trees, and then by analyzing these schemes.
The RDF Book Mashup: From Web APIs to a Web of Data

The RDF Book Mashup demonstrates how Web 2.0 data sources like Amazon, Google and Yahoo can be integrated into the Semantic Web. Following the principles of linked data, the RDF Book Mashup makes information about books, their authors, reviews, and online bookstores available on the Semantic Web. This information can be used by RDF browsers and crawlers, and other publishers of Semantic Web data can set links to it.
Constructing corporate commitment amongst remote employees: A disposition and predisposition approach

Purpose – This paper aims to propose a framework for examining and understanding corporate commitment amongst teleworking employees that deconstructs and expands upon approaches to date. It seeks to propose a perspective from which apparent tensions highlighted in existing studies can be understood and explored, and to suggest new relationships and combinations of conditions that impact on the communication practices and assumptions of both managers and employees.Design/methodology/approach – The approach to data collection and analysis is qualitative and interpretive, with primary data obtained by means of semi‐structured interviews subsequently analysed using both open and focussed coding. This method was selected because the dimensions and implications of communication practices in this particular context were largely unknown.Findings – This study illustrates the significance of distinguishing between the needs that underpin employees' choosing to continue the relationship and their readiness to act in.
The Influence of Product Design Evaluations on Investors' Willingness to Invest in Companies: Theory and Experiment with Finnish Individual Investors

ock market evaluate companies’ product design as part of their investment considerations. The purpose of this article is especially to address that question. After hypotheses were developed about the influence of product design evaluations on investors’ investment interest, an experimental study was conducted among Finnish individual investors. The results of the study demonstrate that product design creates strategic distinction for a company not only among customers in the product market but also among investors in the stock market. Indeed, investors’ favorable evaluations of a company’s product design are shown to significantly increase their willingness to invest in the company’s stock. The results provide new and interesting insights into the broader socioeconomic impacts of product design in the investment context, as well as valuable implications for the practice of design management.
A WebGL-based 3D virtual home roaming by seamlessly connecting videos to panoramas

In virtual 3d websites, the traditional 3D real-time rendering virtual roaming is difficult to achieve a realistic rendering effect. While ordinary panoramic roaming has the problem of visual disconnection on switching scene. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a WebGL-based virtual roaming method which can seamlessly connect video to panoramic view. Firstly, we convert the video initial position's texture coordinates to angle values, and compute turning degree according to the actual click position in the scene, and then, camera view roams to video's initial position. Secondly, the display content switches to the video player smoothly. During the video is playing, the camera view rotates to the video's end position. Finally, the content switches back to the panoramas after the video is over, and we make sure that the end video frame matches with the current perspective view. Experiments show that this method has fluency and a strong sense of reality. It's better to meet the requirements of virtual home roaming.
Buy-at-bulk network design: approximating the single-sink edge installation problem

We initiate the algorithmic study of an important but NP-hard problem that arises commonly in network design. The input consists of (1) An undirected graph with one sink node and multiple source nodes, a specified length for each edge, and a specified demand, dem{sub v}, for each source node v. (2) A small set of cable types, where each cable type is specified by its capacity and its cost per unit length. The cost per unit capacity per unit length of a high-capacity cable may be significantly less than that of a low-capacity cable, reflecting an economy of scale, i.e., the payoff for buying at bulk may be very high.
An Application of Process Mining by Sequence Alignment Methods to the SAP Invoice Process Example

Process mining started to be a very useful tool how to check processes in companies. The only thing that has to be done is to have at least some log about the activities performed by the software system. There are many methods that can be used then to analyze this data obtained from the log. Every usage of yet not used or rarely used method opens up new perspectives in process mining and reveals the unknown potential of its application to the practice. In this paper we have applied sequence alignment methods to the real process example and examined what results and benets could be obtained from such usage. The main purpose of this paper is to adjust methods for sequence alignment to be able to determine similarity between the business processes.
A Phasor-Data-Based State Estimator Incorporating Phase Bias Correction

With amplitude and phase information, time-synchronized measured phasor data of bus voltages and line currents can be used to calculate, without iterations, the voltage phasor on neighboring buses. In some phasor measurement units (PMUs), it has been observed that the voltage and current phasors exhibit phase biases, which can corrupt the conventional state estimator solution if it is augmented with such biased phasor data. This paper presents a new approach for synchronized phasor measurement-based state estimation, which can perform phasor angle bias correction given measurement redundancy. In this approach, polar coordinates are used as the state variables, because the magnitude and phase are largely independent measurements. The state estimation is formulated as an iterative least-squares problem, and its application to portions of the AEP high-voltage transmission system is illustrated.
Combinatorial and Algorithmic Volume Rigidity

We study the generic rigidity properties of systems of volume constraints. We formally define, in an algebraic geometrical setting, the volume rigidity problem and extract its underlying sparse hypergraph structure. Then we develop a combinatorial theory of cocircuit matroids which leads to a very general linear representation result for sparse hypergraphs. Applying this to the volume rigidity problem yields a combinatorial characterization of generic volume rigidity. Let P be a set of n points in the plane. Laman’s [11] landmark theorem characterizes exactly which sets of distances between points in P determine all ( n 2 ) distances up to a discrete set of possibilities, generically. Whiteley [32] asked the corresponding question for sets of triangle areas. We start by defining area rigidity in the plane and study its natural generalization to volume rigidity in arbitrary dimensions, proving a Laman-like theorem for hypergraphs with specific hereditary counts. This adds to a very small body of combinatorial rigidity results in dimensions higher than 3. The combinatorial characterization of volume rigidity is algorithmically tractable by our generalizations of pebble games from sparse graphs [12] to sparse hypergraphs [25].
Prevalence and Trend of Major Transfusion-Transmissible Infections among Blood Donors in Western China, 2005 through 2010

Background The prevalence of transfusion-transmissible infections (TTIs) in blood donations is important for evaluating blood safety and potential risks to the population. This study investigated the prevalence of TTIs among blood donors in Western China and suggested measures for policy-makers. Methods The screening results of 66,311 donations between 2005 and 2010 from a central blood center in Western China were analyzed. The prevalence of hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and syphilis infections were expressed in percentages for the entire study group as well as groups by demographic characteristics and donation frequency, with differences analyzed using Fisher's exact or Chi-square test. Logistic regression was performed to identify the influencing factors of the detected results. Results 1,769 (2.67%, 95% CI 2.55–2.79%) of the donated blood had serological evidence of infection with at least one pathogen and 44 (0.07%, 95% CI 0.05–0.09%) showed evidence of multiple infections. The seroprevalence of HBV, HCV, HIV, and syphilis infections was 0.87% (95% CI 0.80–0.94%), 0.86% (95% CI 0.79–0.93%), 0.31% (95% CI 0.26–0.35%), and 0.70% (95% CI 0.64–0.76%) respectively. Trend analysis for the prevalence of TTIs showed a significant increase from 2.44% to 3.71% (χ2 = 100.72, p = 0.00) over this 6-year period. The positive rates for TTIs varied along demographic lines. The top three risk factors in test-positive donors were identified as age, education level and donation frequency. The older age group and lower educated group were linked to a higher prevalence of TTIs. A decreasing prevalence was associated with an increasing frequency of blood donations (χ2 = 562.78, p = 0.00). Conclusions Hepatitis B and C were found most, and often in conjunction with syphilis. These were the primary threats to blood safety. The high positivity rate and the increasing prevalence of TTIs among blood donors in Western China call for further actions.
The Importance of Export Assistance Program Awareness

Abstract Data from a survey of high value agricultural exporters is analyzed to determine the relationship between firm characteristics and export sales patterns—whether a firm's export sales are decreasing, constant, or increasing. The importance of USDA export assistance programs and publications in affecting firms' export patterns is examined. A classification tree is developed that highlights the significant structural relationships between the variables and export sales patterns. The tree provides information for policymakers and the USDA to better target assistance programs for exports.