Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Early reproductive maturity among Pumé foragers: Implications of a pooled energy model to fast life histories

Life history theory places central importance on relationships between ontogeny, reproduction, and mortality. Fast human life histories have been theoretically and empirically associated with high mortality regimes. This relationship, however, poses an unanswered question about energy allocation. In epidemiologically stressful environments, a greater proportion of energy is allocated to immune function. If growth and maintenance are competing energetic expenditures, less energy should be available for growth, and the mechanism to sustain rapid maturation remains unclear. The human pattern of extended juvenile provisioning and resource sharing may provide an important source of variation in energy availability not predicted by tradeoff models that assume independence at weaning. We consider a group of South American foragers to evaluate the effects that pooled energy budgets may have on early reproduction. Despite growing up in an environment with distinct seasonal under‐nutrition, harsh epidemiological conditions, and no health care, Pumé girls mature quickly and initiate childbearing in their midteens. Pooled energy budgets compensate for the low productivity of girls not only through direct food transfers but importantly by reducing energy they would otherwise expend in foraging activities to meet metabolic requirements. We suggest that pooled energy budgets affect energy availability at both extrinsic and intrinsic levels. Because energy budgets are pooled, Pumé girls and young women are buffered from environmental downturns and can maximize energy allocated to growth completion and initiate reproduction earlier than a traditional bound‐energy model would predict. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Involvement of the 3’ Untranslated Region in Encapsidation of the Hepatitis C Virus

Although information regarding morphogenesis of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is accumulating, the mechanism(s) by which the HCV genome encapsidated remains unknown. In the present study, in cell cultures producing HCV, the molecular ratios of 3’ end- to 5’ end-regions of the viral RNA population in the culture medium were markedly higher than those in the cells, and the ratio was highest in the virion-rich fraction. The interaction of the 3’ untranslated region (UTR) with Core in vitro was stronger than that of the interaction of other stable RNA structure elements across the HCV genome. A foreign gene flanked by the 3’ UTR was encapsidated by supplying both viral NS3-NS5B proteins and Core-NS2 in trans. Mutations within the conserved stem-loops of the 3’ UTR were observed to dramatically diminish packaging efficiency, suggesting that the conserved apical motifs of the 3´ X region are important for HCV genome packaging. This study provides evidence of selective packaging of the HCV genome into viral particles and identified that the 3’ UTR acts as a cis-acting element for encapsidation.
Our approach most closely resembles a recent line of work involving the Gumbel distribution ( Hazan and Jaakkola 2012

Rademacher complexity is often used to characterize the learnability of a hypothesis class and is known to be related to the class size. We leverage this observation and introduce a new technique for estimating the size of an arbitrary weighted set, defined as the sum of weights of all elements in the set. Our technique provides upper and lower bounds on a novel generalization of Rademacher complexity to the weighted setting in terms of the weighted set size. This generalizes Massart’s Lemma, a known upper bound on the Rademacher complexity in terms of the unweighted set size. We show that the weighted Rademacher complexity can be estimated by solving a randomly perturbed optimization problem, allowing us to derive high-probability bounds on the size of any weighted set. We apply our method to the problems of calculating the partition function of an Ising model and computing propositional model counts (#SAT). Our experiments demonstrate that we can produce tighter bounds than competing methods in both the weighted and unweighted settings.
The Effects of Solids Retention Time in Full‐Scale Activated Sludge Basins on Trace Organic Contaminant Concentrations

Although pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) and endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) are largely unregulated, water resource recovery facilities are increasingly using advanced chemical/physical treatment technologies (e.g., advanced oxidation and reverse osmosis) to remove or destroy these trace organic contaminants (TOrCs). This can both reduce potential adverse human health effects in reuse applications and mitigate environmental effects on aquatic ecosystems. Unfortunately, advanced treatment technologies are typically energy intensive and costly to implement, operate, and maintain. The goal of this study was to determine whether optimization of solids retention time (SRT) provided sufficient benefits to warrant such operational strategies for TOrC mitigation. Specifically, SRTs of 5.5, 6, and 15 days were evaluated to determine the effects on several standard wastewater parameters (e.g., nitrite, nitrate, and ammonia concentrations) and the degradation of TOrCs. The experimental SRTs were operated simultaneously in parallel, full‐scale activated sludge basins. The results indicate that it can be beneficial to implement biological process optimization strategies using existing infrastructure while reducing reliance on advanced treatment technologies. This study also identified potential operational issues that might arise in activated sludge systems operating at extended SRTs.
Robotic manipulation of food products - a review

The food industry is a highly competitive manufacturing area, but with relatively little robotic involvement as compared to the automotive industry. This is due to the fact that food products are highly variable both in shape, sizes and structure which poses a major problem for the development of manipulators for its handling. This paper reviews the current state of development in robot manipulators for the food industry. Three main areas were covered. They are: the handling of non‐rigid food products – the processing of meat, poultry, fish and milking, the harvesting of food products – picking of fruits, asparagus and mushrooms, and the packaging of food products – secondary and tertiary.
Contribuições de modelagem de equações estruturais na análise de dados em modelos comportamentais de destino turístico

A fragilidade brasileira quanto a competitividade turistica e um fato observavel nos dados da Organizacao Mundial do Turismo. O Brasil caiu em 2011, da 45a para a 52a posicao, apesar de liderar no atributo recursos naturais e estar colocado na 23° em recursos culturais. Assim, grandes interesses e esforcos tem sido direcionados para o estudo da competitividade dos produtos e destinos turisticos. O destino turistico e caracterizado por um conjunto complexo e articulado de fatores tangiveis e intangiveis, apresentando alta complexidade, dados de elevada dimensionalidade, nao linearidade e comportamento dinâmico, tornando-se dificil a modelagem desses processos por meio de abordagens baseadas em tecnicas estatisticas classicas. Esta tese investigou modelos de equacoes estruturais e seus algoritmos, aplicados nesta area, analisando o ciclo completo de analise de dados, em um processo confirmatorio no desenvolvimento e avaliacao de um modelo holistico da satisfacao do turista; na validacao da estrutura do modelo de medida e do modelo estrutural, por meio de testes de invariância de multiplos grupos; na analise comparativa dos metodos de estimacao MLE, GLS e ULS para a modelagem da satisfacao e na realizacao de segmentacao de mercado no setor de destino turistico utilizando mapas auto-organizaveis de Kohonen e sua validacao com modelagem de equacoes estruturais. Aplicacoes foram feitas em analises de dados no setor de turismo, principal industria de servicos do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte, tendo sido, teoricamente desenvolvidos e testados empiricamente, modelos de equacoes estruturais em padroes comportamentais de destino turistico. Os resultados do estudo empirico se basearam em pesquisas com a tecnica de amostragem aleatoria sistematica, efetuadas em Natal-RN, entre Janeiro e Marco de 2013 e forneceram evidencias sustentaveis de que o modelo teorico proposto e satisfatorio, com elevada capacidade explicativa e preditiva, sendo a satisfacao o antecedente mais importante da lealdade no destino. Alem disso, a satisfacao e mediadora entre a geracao da motivacao da viagem e a lealdade do destino e que os turistas buscam primeiro a satisfacao com a qualidade dos servicos de turismo e, posteriormente, com os aspectos que influenciam a lealdade. Contribuicoes academicas e gerenciais sao mostradas e sugestoes de estudo sao dadas para trabalhos futuros.
Cooperative change detection using physical layer fusion

This work presents a new approach to spectrum sensing for cognitive radios with multiple sensors under a change detection framework. Physical layer fusion is used at the fusion center in order to implement a cumulative sum based change detection algorithm. Two channel models, AWGN and quasi static block-fading, are considered for the channel between the sensors and the fusion center. Analytical expressions are obtained for determining the false alarm rate and worst case detection delay performance. Simulation results are presented to highlight the performance of the scheme. It is shown that this scheme achieves a performance close to that of a centralized change detection scheme in the case of an AWGN channel.
Ethnic differences in social network help-seeking strategies among Latino and Euro-American dementia caregivers

This research explores the help-seeking behavior of Euro-American and Latino caregivers who provide homecare assistance to an older adult with dementia. A community sample of 89 caregiver-care recipient pairs (39 Latino and 50 Euro-American) was interviewed. Descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate analyses were conducted to examine ethnic differences in use of an informal social network for help with caregiving tasks. Caregiver experiences that may impact help-seeking behaviors such as perceived availability of support network, satisfaction with support received and caregiver distress were also considered. Latino caregivers reported less help-seeking than did the Euro-American caregivers. Overall, ethnicity accounted for 16% of the variation in help-seeking behaviors. Ethnicity accounted for a significant portion of the variation in most of the help-seeking characteristics examined even after adjusting for socioeconomic variables. In the multivariate model, the effects of ethnicity on help-seeking persisted, while the effects of other likely predictors did not. The size of social network may not be synonymous with the seeking of support by caregivers. Likewise, higher levels of distress among Latino caregivers did not result in increased help-seeking behaviors. There remains a need to identity what other factors may contribute to the cultural variability in caregivers’ use of informal support.
Vaginal and Uterine Bacterial Communities in Postpartum Lactating Cows

Reproductive inefficiency in cattle has major impacts on overall productivity of cattle operations, increasing cost of production, and impacting the sustainability of the cattle enterprise. Decreased reproductive success and associated disease states have been correlated with the presence of specific microbes and microbial community profiles, yet details of the relationship between microbial communities and host physiology are not well known. The present study profiles and compares the microbial communities in the bovine uterus and vagina using 16S rRNA sequencing of the V1–V3 hypervariable region at the time of artificial insemination. Significant differences (p < 0.05) between the vaginal and uterine communities were observed at the level of α-diversity metrics, including Chao1, Shannon’s Diversity Index, and observed OTU. Greater clustering of vaginal OTU was apparent in principal coordinate analysis compared to uterine OTU, despite greater diversity in the vaginal community in both weighted and unweighted UniFrac distance matrices (p < 0.05). There was a significantly greater relative abundance of unassigned taxa in the uterus (p = 0.008), otherwise there were few differences between the overall community profiles. Both vaginal and uterine communities were dominated by Firmicutes, although the relative abundance of rRNA sequences corresponding to species in this phylum was significantly (p = 0.007) lower in the uterine community. Additional differences were observed at the genus level, specifically in abundances within Clostridium (p = 0.009), Anaerofustis (p = 0.018), Atopobium (p = 0.035), Oscillospira (p = 0.035), 5-7N15 (p = 0.035), Mycoplasma (p = 0.035), Odoribacter (p = 0.042), and within the families Clostridiaceae (p = 0.006), Alcaligenaceae (p = 0.021), and Ruminococcaceae (p = 0.021). Overall, the comparison revealed differences and commonalities among bovine reproductive organs, which may be influenced by host physiology. The increased abundance of unassigned taxa found in the uterus may play a significant biological role in the reproductive status of the animal. The study represents an initial dataset for comparing bacterial communities prior to establishment of pregnancy.
Chlorogenic acid attenuates hypertension and improves endothelial function in spontaneously hypertensive rats

Background and objectives Epidemiologic studies indicate that ingestion of vegetables and fruit inhibits the development of cardiovascular disease. Chlorogenic acids are abundant phenolic compounds contained in vegetables and fruits, but the impact of dietary chlorogenic acids on vascular function in hypertension is not known. We therefore examined the effects of 5-caffeoylquinic acid (CQA), a representative chlorogenic acid, on blood pressure and vascular function in age-matched normotensive Wistar–Kyoto rats and spontaneously hypertensive rats. Methods and results A single ingestion of CQA (30–600 mg/kg) reduced blood pressure in spontaneously hypertensive rats, an effect that was blocked by administration of a nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, N(G)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester. When spontaneously hypertensive rats were fed diets containing 0.5% CQA for 8 weeks (approximately 300 mg/kg per day), the development of hypertension was inhibited compared with the control diet group. CQA ingestion increased urinary excretion of nitric oxide metabolites and decreased urinary excretion of hydrogen peroxide; decreased NADPH-dependent superoxide anion production in the aorta, suggesting that dietary CQA inhibited vascular NADPH oxidase activity; significantly improved acetylcholine-induced endothelium-dependent vasodilation in the aorta; and markedly reduced the degree of immunohistochemical staining for nitrotyrosine and media hypertrophy in aorta sections. In contrast, CQA had no effects in Wistar–Kyoto rats. Conclusions Dietary CQA reduces oxidative stress and improves nitric oxide bioavailability by inhibiting excessive production of reactive oxygen species in the vasculature, and leads to the attenuation of endothelial dysfunction, vascular hypertrophy, and hypertension in spontaneously hypertensive rats.
Zespół pieczenia jamy ustnej

Zespol pieczenia jamy ustnej (BMS) jest idiopatyczną jednostką chorobową manifestującą sie jako dlugotrwale uczucie piekącego, palącego lub klującego bolu w obrebie blon śluzowych jamy ustnej, najcześciej jezyka. Dolegliwościom bolowym czesto towarzyszą zaburzenia smaku, uczucie suchości jamy ustnej oraz nieprawidlowości psychiatryczne. Mimo ze jest to stosunkowo czeste schorzenie, szczegolnie w przypadku kobiet w wieku pomenopauzalnym, a jego obraz kliniczny opisuje sie w literaturze medycznej od niemal 150 lat, BMS nadal stanowi malo znany problem diagnostyczny i terapeutyczny. Trudności napotykane w praktyce klinicznej są w duzej mierze wynikiem slabo poznanej, wieloczynnikowej etiologii schorzenia, nieobecnością zadnych nieprawidlowości w zakresie morfologii blon śluzowych jamy ustnej oraz niedostatkiem randomizowanych badan weryfikujących skutecznośc postepowania leczniczego. Celem tego artykulu jest przyblizenie czytelnikom typowego obrazu klinicznego BMS, ukazanie znaczenia diagnostyki roznicowej zespolu oraz przedstawienie aktualnych danych dotyczących dostepnych sposobow terapii. Znajomośc powyzszych kwestii przez lekarzy roznych specjalności jest kluczowa dla poprawy jakości zycia pacjentow cierpiących na BMS.
Prediction of NMR J‐coupling in solids with the planewave pseudopotential approach

We review the calculation of NMR J‐coupling in solid materials using the planewave pseudopotential formalism of Density Functional Theory. The methodology is briefly summarised and an account of recent applications is given. We discuss various aspects of the calculations which should be taken into account when comparing results with solid‐state NMR experiments including anisotropy and orientation of the J tensors, the reduced coupling constant, and the relation between J and crystal structure. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Regulation by transcription attenuation in bacteria: how RNA provides instructions for transcription termination/antitermination decisions.

Regulation of gene expression by premature termination of transcription, or transcription attenuation, is a common regulatory strategy in bacteria. Various mechanisms of regulating transcription termination have been uncovered, each can be placed in either of two broad categories of termination events. Many mechanisms involve choosing between two alternative hairpin structures in an RNA transcript, with the decision dependent on interactions between ribosome and transcript, tRNA and transcript, or protein and transcript. In other examples, modification of the transcription elongation complex is the crucial event. This article will describe and compare several of these regulatory strategies, and will cite specific examples to illustrate the different mechanisms employed.
Criação de Modelo para Simulação de Movimentação de Ônibus a Partir de Dados Reais

The socio-spatial dynamics of a city undergoes constant changes over time. Consequently, the road network and the public transport system need continuous optimization to meet citizen demands. An alternative to reduce costs and impacts on evaluation of solutions is the use of simulators and models consistent with reality. Considering that, we processed vehicle tracking data and bus system planning information of São Paulo to improve the bus movement model used by InterSCSimulator, a highly scalable simulator for smart cities. In this paper, we present a mobility model based on real data from the São Paulo bus service to make the simulator more effective when recreating urban mobility scenarios.
Latent class profile analysis: an application to stage sequential processes in early onset drinking behaviours

Summary. In longitudinal research on early onset drinkers, much attention has been paid to the identification of subgroups of individuals who follow similar sequential patterns of drinking behaviours. However, research on the sequential development of drinking behaviour can be challenging in part because it may not be possible to observe the particular drinking behaviour stage at a given point in time directly. To address this difficulty, we can use a latent class analysis, which provides a set of principles for the systematic identification of homogeneous subgroups of individuals. In this work, we apply a latent class analysis in an investigation of stage sequential patterns of drinking behaviours among early onset drinkers, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. A latent class analysis approach is used to sort different patterns of drinking behaviours into a small number of classes at each measurement occasion; and the class sequencing of early onset drinkers over the entire set of time points is evaluated to identify two or more homogeneous early onset drinkers who exhibit a similar sequence of class memberships over time. This approach uncovers four common drinking behaviours in early onset drinkers over three measurements from early to late adolescence. The sequences of drinking behaviours can be grouped into three sequential patterns representing the most probable progression of early onset drinking behaviours.
Evidence of outer retinal changes in glaucoma patients as revealed by ultrahigh-resolution in vivo retinal imaging

Aims It is well established that glaucoma results in a thinning of the inner retina. To investigate whether the outer retina is also involved, ultrahigh-resolution retinal imaging techniques were utilised. Methods Eyes from 10 glaucoma patients (25–78 years old), were imaged using three research-grade instruments: (1) ultrahigh-resolution Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography (UHR-FD-OCT), (2) adaptive optics (AO) UHR-FD-OCT and (3) AO-flood illuminated fundus camera (AO-FC). UHR-FD-OCT and AO-UHR-FD-OCT B-scans were examined for any abnormalities in the retinal layers. On some patients, cone density measurements were made from the AO-FC en face images. Correlations between retinal structure and visual sensitivity were measured by Humphrey visual-field (VF) testing made at the corresponding retinal locations. Results All three in vivo imaging modalities revealed evidence of outer retinal changes along with the expected thinning of the inner retina in glaucomatous eyes with VF loss. AO-UHR-FD-OCT images identified the exact location of structural changes within the cone photoreceptor layer with the AO-FC en face images showing dark areas in the cone mosaic at the same retinal locations with reduced visual sensitivity. Conclusion Losses in cone density along with expected inner retinal changes were demonstrated in well-characterised glaucoma patients with VF loss.
91 F . What Is Process Standardization ?

Standards and standardization have played an important role in the evolution of information and communication technology. In parts of the literature on standardization and especially among practitioners we see a new theme emerge: business process standards. While there seems to be a consensus on the desirability of process standards, the concept has not yet been fully developed, and there is even less of a clear definition let alone a systematic understanding of the how and why of its value impact than with data and communication standards. In this paper, we suggest a process standardization construct and the associated value dimensions and report on a process standardization effort in a large multinational services firm that reveals how the theoretical considerations translate into concrete business value.
Algorithms for interpretable machine learning

It is extremely important in many application domains to have transparency in predictive modeling. Domain experts do not tend to prefer "black box" predictive model models. They would like to understand how predictions are made, and possibly, prefer models that emulate the way a human expert might make a decision, with a few important variables, and a clear convincing reason to make a particular prediction. I will discuss recent work on interpretable predictive modeling with decision lists and sparse integer linear models. I will describe several approaches, including an algorithm based on discrete optimization, and an algorithm based on Bayesian analysis. I will show examples of interpretable models for stroke prediction in medical patients and prediction of violent crime in young people raised in out-of-home care. Collaborators are Ben Letham, Berk Ustun, Stefano Traca, Siong Thye Goh, Tyler McCormick, and David Madigan.