Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Training in Complementary Feeding Counselling of Healthcare Workers and Its Influence on Maternal Behaviours and Child Growth: A Cluster-randomized Controlled Trial in Lahore, Pakistan

Malnutrition is common among children aged 6–24 months in developing countries. It increases the risk of mortality. Interventions to improve infant-feeding hold the promise of reducing malnutrition among these children. A study in Brazil has shown the success of training in communication and counselling skills among health workers in improving the nutritional status of young children. Questions were raised whether the method used in the study in Brazil would also be effective when applied in other countries. The aim of the present study was to reduce growth faltering in young children through proper nutrition-promotion techniques. The objective of the study was to determine the efficacy of training health workers in nutrition counselling in enhancing their communication skills and performance, improving feeding practices, and reducing growth faltering in children aged 6–24 months. A cluster-randomized controlled trial was carried out. The method used in this study was a replica of the method in a similar study in Pelotas, Brazil. Forty health centres were paired, and one centre of each pair was randomly allocated to the intervention group, and the other to the control group. The Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) module—‘Counsel the mother'—was used for training health workers in the health centres in the intervention group. Data from 36 paired health centres and 375 mothers and their children aged 6–24 months recruited from these health centres following consultation with health workers were included in analysis. Independent observers, masked to the intervention status, examined the performance of health workers within the first month after training. Mother-child pairs were visited at home within two weeks, 45 days, and 180 days after recruitment. Information was recorded on the feeding practices, recall of the recommendations of health workers, and sociodemographic variables at these home-visits. Weight and length of the child were measured at each contact. The communication skills and consultation performance of health workers were significantly better in the intervention group than in the control group. The mothers' recall of the recommendation of health workers and reported infant-feeding practices were also significantly better in the intervention group than in the control group, even 180 days after the recruitment consultation. Growth faltering was less in the intervention group, with the largest effect observed among children in the age-group of 12 + months. These results indicate that training in IMCI feeding counselling can enhance the communication skills and performance of health workers. Improved feeding practices of counselled mothers can, in turn, reduce growth faltering in their children.
Die audiovisuelle Sprachverarbeitung bei Patienten mit Cochlea-Implantat

Zusammenfassung: Mit Hilfe der elektrischen Reizung des Hornervs durch implantierte Elektroden in die Horschnecke (Cochlea-Implantat: CI) kann bei Ertaubten die Fahigkeit zur Wahrnehmung akustischer Sprachlaute wieder hergestellt werden. Aufgrund der herabgesetzten akustische Qualitat der Signale ziehen diese zusatzliche visuelle Informationen heran. Akustische Sprachreize (zweisilbige Substantive) wurden zeitgleich zu einem Video-Segment mit dem Gesicht des Sprechers dargeboten, das entweder dem akustischen Wort kongruente (z. B. Audio: Hotel, Video: Hotel) oder inkongruente Information (z. B. Audio: Hotel, Video: Insel) aussprach. Die Analyse der Verhaltensdaten ergab, dass CI-Patienten deutlich von der zusatzlichen Darbietung des Sprechergesichtes profitieren, um Sprachlaute zu verstehen. Auch Normalhorende nutzen visuelle Informationen, vor allem, wenn die akustischen Signale verrauscht und schwer verstandlich sind. Die audiovisuelle Sprachverarbeitung lost bei CI-Nutzern und Normalhorenden unterschie.
Synthesis of Hierarchical Finite-State Controllers for POMDPs

We develop a hierarchical approach to planning for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) in which a policy is represented as a hierarchical finite-state controller. To provide a foundation for this approach, we discuss some extensions of the POMDP framework that allow us to formalize the process of abstraction by which a hierarchical controller is constructed. We describe a planning algorithm that uses a programmer-defined task hierarchy to constrain the search space of finite-state controllers, and prove that this algorithm converges to a hierarchical finite-state controller that is e-optimal in a limited but well-defined sense, related to the concept of recursive optimality.
Editorial: Exploring the Nature of Research Questions in Mixed Methods Research

• demonstrate the need for mixed methods to answer research questions that include clearly interconnected qualitative and quantitative components, • present distinctly identifiable qualitative and quantitative data (or one transformed to the other) that are analyzed and presented separately, • make identifiable inferences or conclusions on the basis of the results of appropriate qualitative and quantitative data analyses, and • clearly integrate the results of the two or more (qualitative and quantitative) strands of the study into coherent conclusions or inferences that are more comprehensive and meaningful than those of the qualitative or quantitative strands alone.
[Evaluation of ceftazidime treatment in septicemia expert systems].

The septicaemia expert-system (SES) consists of 18 departments of infectious diseases and microbiology in different French university hospitals. In this context, and compared with the totality of cases analyzed, ceftazidime was used by preference in worrying infections, i.e. often older patients, higher frequency of hospital-acquired infections and of multibacterial infections, greater number of pathogens regarded as difficult to eradicate. The results of ceftazidime treatment in these patients were not different from those obtained in the totality of cases.
STREAMING HIERARCHICAL VIDEO SEGMENTATION BASED ON AN OBSERVATION SCALE

In this paper, we present a simple approach to streaming video segmentation based on an observation scale. Here, we transform the streaming video segmentation into a graph partitioning problem in which each part corresponds to one region of the video; furthermore, we apply a simple method for merging the segmentations of two consecutive blocks to achieve the temporal coherence. The spatialtemporal coherence is given, only, by color information instead of more complex features. We provide an extensive comparative analysis among our method and methods in the literature showing efficiency, ease of use, and temporal coherence of ours. According to the experiments, our method produces good results when applied to video segmentation besides presenting a low space and time cost, compared to other methods.
Effects of focus of attention on physiological, behavioural, and reported state anxiety in repressors, low-anxious, high-anxious, and defensive high-anxious individuals

Abstract Discrepancies between physiological activity, behavioural anxiety, and self-reported anxiety were examined when focus of attention was manipulated in a public speech task for four groups of individuals: repressors, low-anxious, high-anxious, and the defensive high-anxious. They were exposed to self-focus (when their behaviour was socially evaluated) and other-focus (when their behaviour was not socially evaluated) conditions. Repressors had consistently the lowest level of self-reported anxiety, but had consistently greater physiological activity in all conditions and greater behavioural anxiety in the self-focus condition. The high-anxious showed the opposite pattern, i.e. their self-reported anxiety was greater than their physiological and behavioural anxiety, and this finding was significant in the self-focus condition. No significant pattern of discrepancy was found for the low-anxious or defensive high-anxious groups. The findings are discussed and interpreted within the framework of recent cognitive models of anxiety.
Detecting auditory-visual speech synchrony: how precise?

Previous research suggests that people are rather poor at perceiving auditory-visual (AV) speech asynchrony, especially when the visual signal occurs first. However, estimates of AV synchrony detection depend on many factors and previous measures may have underestimated its precision. Here we used a synchrony-driven search task to examine how accurately an observer could detect AV speech synchrony. In this task on each trial a participant viewed four videos (positioned at the cardinal points of a circle) that showed the lower face of a talker while hearing a spoken /ba/ syllable. One video had the original AV timing, in the others the visual speech was shifted 100 ms, 200 ms or 300 ms earlier. Participants were required to conduct a speeded visual search for the synchronized face/voice token (the position of which was randomized). The results showed that the synchrony detection window was narrow with 82% of responses selecting either the original unaltered video (29%) or the video where the visual signal led by 100 ms (53%). These results suggest that an observer is able to judge AV speech synchrony with some precision.
MOOCs Meet Measurement Theory: A Topic-Modelling Approach

This paper adapts topic models to the psychometric testing of MOOC students based on their online forum postings. Measurement theory from education and psychology provides statistical models for quantifying a person's attainment of intangible attributes such as attitudes, abilities or intelligence. Such models infer latent skill levels by relating them to individuals' observed responses on a series of items such as quiz questions. The set of items can be used to measure a latent skill if individuals' responses on them conform to a Guttman scale. Such well-scaled items differentiate between individuals and inferred levels span the entire range from most basic to the advanced. In practice, education researchers manually devise items (quiz questions) while optimising well-scaled conformance. Due to the costly nature and expert requirements of this process, psychometric testing has found limited use in everyday teaching. We aim to develop usable measurement models for highly-instrumented MOOC delivery platforms, by using participation in automatically-extracted online forum topics as items. The challenge is to formalise the Guttman scale educational constraint and incorporate it into topic models. To favour topics that automatically conform to a Guttman scale, we introduce a novel regularisation into non-negative matrix factorisation-based topic modelling. We demonstrate the suitability of our approach with both quantitative experiments on three Coursera MOOCs, and with a qualitative survey of topic interpretability on two MOOCs by domain expert interviews.
Network Function Virtualization enabled multicast routing on SDN

Many multicast services such as live multimedia distribution and real-time event monitoring require constructing a multicast mechanism that involves network functions (e.g. firewall, video transcoding). Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a concept that proposes using virtualization to implement network functions on infrastructure building block (such as high volume servers, virtual machines), where software provides the functionality of existing purpose-built network equipment. We present an approach for building the multicast mechanism whereby multicast flows are processed by NFV before reaching their end users. We propose a routing algorithm and a method for building an appropriate multicast topology.
Healthcare choice: Bourdieu’s capital, habitus and field

The promotion of choice is a common theme in both policy discourses and commercial marketing claims about healthcare. However, within the multiple potential pathways of the healthcare ‘maze’, how do healthcare ‘consumers’ or patients understand and experience choice? What is meant by ‘choice’ in the policy context, and, importantly from a sociological perspective, how are such choices socially produced and structured? In this theoretical article, the authors consider the interplay of Bourdieu’s three key, interlinked concepts – capital, habitus and field – in the structuring of healthcare choice. These are offered as an alternative to rational choice theory, where ‘choice’ is regarded uncritically as a fundamental ‘good’ and able to provide a solution to the problems of the healthcare system. The authors argue that sociological analyses of healthcare choice must take greater account of the ‘field’ in which choices are made in order to better explain the structuring of choice.
Health promotion evaluation

Health-promotion evaluation remains a topic of intense discussion amongst practitioners, researchers and policy makers. Much has been written in this area in recent years, and several efforts made to synthesize existing knowledge of ‘what works’ in health promotion and why. In May 2000, a small number of evaluators, practitioners and policy makers gathered under the auspices of the British Heart Foundation to present and debate papers on four evaluation themes identi ed by the WHO health promotion evaluation group (World Health Organization, 1998): participation, capacity building, multiple methods and appropriateness. Four of these papers are presented in this, and a subsequent issue, of the journal. This issue features two articles. The  rst paper, by David White, synthesizes recent systematic reviews of health-promotion evaluation studies. He makes several interesting comments on the strengths and weaknesses of different quality standards for evidence used in these reviews. Most pertinent is his assessment of the amount of evidence that is discarded owing to the quality standards set by the reviewers. While taking some exception to the WHO health promotion evaluation group’s virtual dismissal of randomized control trials (an exception also taken in the paper by Ken Judge & Linda Bauld), he points to several methodological problems in interpreting their findings. The paper concludes persuasively that judgement of health-promotion effectiveness requires inclusion of a broader range of ‘evidences’ than most reviews have so far allowed, and that the criteria for assessing the soundness of such evidence inevitably rest on expert (and other stakeholder? ) judgements. Given the target of White’s paper (systematic reviews), his comments apply primarily to that form of health-promotion practice that focuses on particular behaviours or diseases. While this form of practice continues to predominate, and remains important, there has also been a generation’s worth of practice attempting to grapple with underlying health determinants embedded in complex forms of social organisation. Critical Public Health,Vol. 11, No. 1, 2001
Social Justice and Leisure

Robert Garcia is Founding Director and Counsel at the City Project, a nonprofit legal and policy advocacy organization based in Los Angeles, California. Please send correspondence to Robert Garcia, The City Project, 1055 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1660, Los Angeles, CA 90017, rgarcia@cityprojectca.org The topic of this Butler Lecture is how to translate research through advocacy to seek equal access to parks and recreation and better health for all. The challenge in Los Angeles is this: Children of color living in poverty with limited access to a car have the worst access to parks and physical activity, to schools with five acres or more of playing fields, and to physical education in public schools. These children suffer disproportionately from obesity and diabetes and are the most at risk for gangs, crime, drugs, and violence (Garcia & Strongin, 2011; Garcia & Fenwick, 2009). Research has documented similar patterns in other regions in the state and nation (Maroko, Maantay, Sohler, Grady, & Arno, 2009; Snyder & Sickmund, 2006; Alleyne & LaPoint, 2004). Six strategies are relevant to address this challenge:
New entropy based combination rules in HMM/ANN multi-stream ASR

Classifier performance is often enhanced through combining multiple streams of information. In the context of multi-stream HMM/ANN systems in ASR, a confidence measure widely used in classifier combination is the entropy of the posteriors distribution output from each ANN, which generally increases as classification becomes less reliable. The rule most commonly used is to select the ANN with the minimum entropy. However, this is not necessarily the best way to use entropy in classifier combination. In this article, we test three new entropy based combination rules in a full-combination multi-stream HMM/ANN system for noise robust speech recognition. Best results were obtained by combining all the classifiers having entropy below average using a weighting proportional to their inverse entropy.
Oral estrogen therapy may mitigate the effects of aerobic training on cardiorespiratory fitness in postmenopausal women: a double-blind, randomized clinical pilot study

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to evaluate the isolated and associated effects of oral estrogen therapy and aerobic training on cardiorespiratory fitness in postmenopausal women. MethodsForty-two hysterectomized healthy postmenopausal women were randomly divided (in a double-blind manner) into four groups: placebo-control (n = 9), estrogen therapy–control (n = 12), placebo–aerobic training (PLA-AT; n = 11), and estrogen therapy–aerobic training (ET-AT; n = 10). The estrogen therapy groups received estradiol valerate (1 mg/day) and the aerobic training groups trained on a cycle ergometer three times per week at moderate intensity. Before and 6 months after the interventions, all women underwent a maximal cardiopulmonary exercise test on a cycle ergometer. ResultsRegardless of hormone therapy, aerobic training increased oxygen uptake at anaerobic threshold (P = 0.001), oxygen uptake at respiratory compensation point (P = 0.043), and oxygen uptake at peak exercise (P = 0.020). The increases at respiratory compensation point and peak exercise were significantly greater in the groups receiving placebo than in the groups receiving estrogen (oxygen uptake at respiratory compensation point: PLA-AT +5.3 [2.8] vs ET-AT +3.0 [2.5] mL kg−1 min−1, P = 0.04; oxygen uptake at peak exercise: PLA-AT +5.8 [3.4] vs ET-AT +2.8 [1.4] mL kg−1 min−1, P = 0.02). ConclusionsOral estrogen therapy may mitigate the cardiorespiratory fitness increase induced by aerobic training in hysterectomized healthy postmenopausal women.
Cultural Diversity, Institutions, and Urban Economic Performance

Interactions between culturally diverse individuals can spur economic benefits by stimulating new ideas that raise urban residents' productivity. But diversity can also diminish economic well-being by making communication difficult, and by stimulating conflict. This paper investigates whether urban institutions—in particular residents' sense of generalized trust—determine when diversity is an economic asset and when it is a liability. To do so, data on trust, birthplace diversity, wages, and demographics in US metropolitan areas are combined. The evidence suggests that workers are much better able to harness the productivity-enhancing spillovers that arise from cultural diversity when they live in cities endowed with strong informal institutions.
Justice by Other Means: Venue Sorting in Parole Revocation

We consider the factors that shape venue sorting, the process by which a legal case can be handled through different organizational arrangements with distinct procedures, institutional cultures, and sanctioning constraints. The empirical area for our investigation of venue sorting is California's parole revocation system, in which parolees accused of new crimes can be returned to prison by either criminal courts or the parole board. We find that seriousness of the alleged offense partially predicts the venue through which parolees are sanctioned. However, venue sorting is further explained by decision makers' perceptions of parolee threat, as well as concerns about organizational efficiency and legitimacy. We conclude by discussing how these findings may relate to the general phenomenon of venue sorting across a range of legal situations.
Innovativeness, exploratory behavior, market mavenship, and opinion leadership: An empirical examination in the Asian context

The market maven construct, developed by Feick and Price (1987), has been used in empirical studies in the USA, South Africa, Germany, Poland, and Hungary. This study extends previous research by being the first to use the general mavenship concept in an Asian country (Israel). Furthermore, the study examines market mavenship and opinion leadership as outcome concepts arising from exploratory behavior or innovativeness tendencies. Additionally, the impact of a three-dimensional exploratory behavior concept is compared to the impact of a unidimensional innovativeness concept on opinion leadership and market mavenship. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to test the two nomological models based on a sample of 142 adult Israeli consumers. Although both exploratory behavior and innovativeness affect market mavenship and opinion leadership, the impact of the former is stronger. Additionally, the impact of the “new brand trial” facet of exploratory behavior on market maven was comparable to that of innovativeness, whereas its impact on opinion leadership was weaker than the impact of innovativeness. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Field, experimental, and analytical data on large-scale HPC systems and evaluation of the implications for exascale system design

Reliability is an issue for today's large scale computing systems designers, producers, and users. As we approach exascale, the resilience challenge will become critical due to increase in system-scale. It is then fundamental to understand the nature of errors, evaluate their probability of occurrence, and improve the design to reduce their impact on the overall system. In the paper we will present experimental, field, and analytical data to characterize and quantify errors on accelerators, providing a thorough understanding of errors impact on today and future large-scale systems.
Coloured signed distance fields for full 3D object reconstruction

We propose a novel 3D object reconstruction framework that is able to fully capture the accurate coloured geometry of an object using an RGB-D sensor. Building on visual odometry for trajectory estimation, we perform pose graph optimisation on collected keyframes and reconstruct the scan variationally via coloured signed distance fields. To capture the full geometry we conduct multiple scans while changing the object’s pose. After collecting all coloured fields we perform an automated dense registration over all collected scans to create one coherent model. We show on eight reconstructed real-life objects that the proposed pipeline outperforms the state-of-the-art in visual quality as well as geometrical fidelity.
Factors Affecting Resistance and Intention to Use the Smart TV

Abstract This study examines the factors affecting the adoption of smart TV based on the innovation resistance and technology acceptance models. Based on a national survey, perceived usefulness was found influential in predicting resistance and intention to use smart TV consistent with previous literature. Perceived ease of use also showed significant impact on reducing resistance. It should be noted, however, that the effect of perceived ease of use on intention to use a smart TV was not supported. Contrary to the expectation, perceived ease of use had a negative impact on perceived usefulness. Additionally, mediating role of resistance was identified as significant.