Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact on the family of a child's feeding and swallowing problems: Associations with parental stress, and children's daily functional activities

Introduction: Eating and drinking are essential components of everyday life. Adequate nutrition and hydration need to be maintained for growth and development. Many social gatherings/events revolve around eating and drinking. When something goes wrong with any part of eating or drinking it is called dysphagia. Children right through to adults and the elderly can have problems with eating and drinking. Problems eating or drinking in children could impact the family and create more stress for parents.Methods: Data from three scales including the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form, The Functional Status II(R) and the Pediatric Feeding and Swallowing Family Impact Scale-Revised were provided and analyzed. Data were analyzed using a Pearson product-moment correlation. Demographic information was provided as well. Student's t-tests were done on groups of participants to assess if there was a difference in means. Spearman rank correlations were done to determine relationships between ranked groups, such as income bracket, and each of the scales. Pearson product-moment correlations were done on continuous groups and the three scales to determine relationships.Results: A significant correlation of was found between the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form and the Pediatric Feeding and Swallowing Impact Scale-Revised. An inverse significant correlation was found between the Pediatric Feeding and Swallowing Family Impact Scale-Revised and the Functional Status II(R). Results revealed a significant inverse relationship between the Parenting Stress Index Short Form and the Functional Status II(R). A difference in reported scores was found on the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form of children with feeding tubes and children without feeding tubes. Scores from parents of children with feeding tubes on the Pediatric Feeding and Swallowing Disorders Family Impact Scale-Revised differed versus those without a feeding tube.
Competition promotes the evolution of host generalists in obligate parasites

Ecological theory traditionally predicts that interspecific competition selects for an increase in ecological specialization. Specialization, in turn, is often thought to be an evolutionary ‘dead end,’ with specialist lineages unlikely to evolve into generalist lineages. In host–parasite systems, this specialization can take the form of host specificity, with more specialized parasites using fewer hosts. We tested the hypothesis that specialists are evolutionarily more derived, and whether competition favours specialization, using the ectoparasitic feather lice of doves. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that complete host specificity is actually the ancestral condition, with generalists repeatedly evolving from specialist ancestors. These multiple origins of generalists are correlated with the presence of potentially competing species of the same genus. A competition experiment with captive doves and lice confirmed that congeneric species of lice do, in fact, have the potential to compete in ecological time. Taken together, these results suggest that interspecific competition can favour the evolution of host generalists, not specialists, over macroevolutionary time.
Local information transfer in soft robotic arm

Recently, the information theoretic approach has been increasingly used in the robotics community as powerful quantitative measures for characterizing the dynamic coupling between the controller, the body, and the environment in embodied robots. This approach is effective and useful even if this interaction regime becomes complex and nonlinear as is often the case in soft robots. In this study, we propose a method for characterizing and visualizing the information transfer spa-tiotemporally through the robot's body. This method is based on the framework called “local information transfer” proposed by Lizier et al. We extend it with the permutation-information theoretic approach, which makes it feasible for continuous time series data usually obtained in robotic platforms. To test the power of the proposed method, we performed experiments using a soft robotic arm simulator and a silicone-based soft robotic arm platform inspired by the octopus and showed that the external damage spreading is successfully and clearly visualized by the method. We also analyzed the robustness of the method to noise. Finally, we discuss future applications and possible extensions.
A New Method for Remote Protein Classification

Protein classification is an important research topic in Bioinformatics. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) based methods, e.g. the SVM-PSV algorithm, are among the most successful ones. Based on our current work, this paper presents an alternative algorithm, the LS_StaticEField algorithm, for protein classification. The LS_StaticEField algorithm is more efficient to compute than SVM based ones and provides satisfying accuracy performance when compared with the SVM-PSV method in the experiments of homology detection based on the SCOP database. KeywordsBioinformatics, LS_StaticEField, SVM, SCOP
A Saliency Detection Model Using Low-Level Features Based on Wavelet Transform

Researchers have been taking advantage of visual attention in various image processing applications such as image retargeting, video coding, etc. Recently, many saliency detection algorithms have been proposed by extracting features in spatial or transform domains. In this paper, a novel saliency detection model is introduced by utilizing low-level features obtained from the wavelet transform domain. Firstly, wavelet transform is employed to create the multi-scale feature maps which can represent different features from edge to texture. Then, we propose a computational model for the saliency map from these features. The proposed model aims to modulate local contrast at a location with its global saliency computed based on the likelihood of the features, and the proposed model considers local center-surround differences and global contrast in the final saliency map. Experimental evaluation depicts the promising results from the proposed model by outperforming the relevant state of the art saliency detection models.
Red Blood Cell Folate Insufficiency among nonpregnant Women of Childbearing age in Guatemala 2009 to 2010: Prevalence and predicted Neural Tube Defects risk.

BACKGROUND The World Health Organization recently released recommendations stating that red blood cell (RBC) folate concentrations should be above 400 ng/L (906 nmol/L) for optimal prevention of folate-sensitive neural tube defects (NTDs). The objective of this study was to determine the distribution of folate insufficiency (FI) (<906 nmol/L) and potential risk of NTDs based on RBC folate concentrations among nonpregnant women of child-bearing age in Guatemala. METHODS A national and regional multistage cluster probability survey was completed during 2009 to 2010 among Guatemalan women of child-bearing age 15 to 49 years of age. Demographic and health information and blood samples for RBC folate analyses were collected from 1473 women. Prevalence rate ratios of FI and predicted NTD prevalence were estimated based on RBC folate concentrations comparing subpopulations of interest. RESULTS National FI prevalence was 47.2% [95% confidence interval, 43.3-51.1] and showed wide variation by region (18-81%). In all regions, FI prevalence was higher among indigenous (27-89%) than among nonindigenous populations (16-44%). National NTD risk based on RBC folate concentrations was estimated to be 14 per 10,000 live births (95% uncertainty interval, 11.1-18.6) and showed wide regional variation (from 11 NTDS in the Metropolitan region to 26 NTDs per 10,000 live births in the Norte region). CONCLUSION FI remains a common problem in populations with limited access to fortified products, specifically rural, low income, and indigenous populations. However, among subpopulations that are most likely to have fortified food, the prevalence of FI is similar to countries with well-established fortification programs. Birth Defects Research (Part A) 106:587-595, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Rab27b Regulates Mast Cell Granule Dynamics and Secretion

The Rab GTPase family regulates membrane domain organization and vesicular transport pathways. Recent studies indicate that one member of the family, Rab27a, regulates transport of lysosome‐related organelles in specialized cells, such as melanosomes and lytic granules. Very little is known about the related isoform, Rab27b. Here we used genetically modified mice to study the involvement of the Rab27 proteins in mast cells, which play key roles in allergic responses. Both Rab27a and Rab27b isoforms are expressed in bone marrow‐derived mast cells (BMMC) and localize to secretory granules. Nevertheless, secretory defects as measured by β‐hexosaminidase release in vitroand passive cutaneous anaphylaxis in vivowere found only in Rab27b and double Rab27 knockout (KO) mice. Immunofluorescence studies suggest that a subset of Rab27b and double Rab27‐deficient BMMCs exhibit mild clustering of granules. Quantitative analysis of live‐cell time‐lapse imaging revealed that BMMCs derived from double Rab27 KO mice showed almost 10‐fold increase in granules exhibiting fast movement (>1.5 μm/s), which could be disrupted by nocodazole. These results suggest that Rab27 proteins, particularly Rab27b, play a crucial role in mast cell degranulation and that their action regulates the transition from microtubule to actin‐based motility.
Battery management system with dual-balancing mechanism for LiFePO4 battery module

This paper presents a battery management system of LiFePO4 battery module with dual-balancing mechanism. First, the employed battery management can accurately capture some important parameters of the LiFePO4 battery module, including voltage, current, temperature, and providing protection functions for the battery module. Next, these obtained parameters of the battery are transmitted to the microcontroller through the inter-integrated circuit (I2C-bus). And then the microcontroller can control the pack balancing circuit according to the received battery information. The proposed dual-balancing mechanism can avoid battery unbalance so as to increase the utility rate of the battery. Finally, some experimental results are used to verify the feasibility of the complete system.
A Generic Framework for Developing Strategic Information System Plans: Insights from Past Three Decades

Strategic Information System Planning (SISP) has been a major concern for business and information systems (IS) managers since the 1980s. Past research has proposed several methodologies, processes and models which facilitate development of SISP in organisations. This paper employs a systematic literature review approach and studies 84 papers (which remained after search in nine scientific databases and reviewing more than 2700 papers) in the field to compare the processes proposed in different methodologies. We then synthesized steps in these processes and in several rounds of integration and division, formed a general seven phase framework which covers all activities in the literature. The main elements of the proposed framework are: Initiation, Business Analysis, IT/IS Analysis, Strategy Formulation, Portfolio Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation. The paper concludes with recommendations for both practitioners and researchers.
PEX1 Mutations in Complementation Group 1 of Zellweger Spectrum Patients Correlate with Severity of Disease

The peroxisome biogenesis disorders (PBD) are a group of autosomal-recessive diseases with complex developmental and metabolic phenotypes, including the Zellweger spectrum and rhizomelic chondrodysplasia punctata. The diseases are caused by defects in peroxisomal matrix protein import and are characterized by the loss of multiple peroxisomal metabolic functions. In humans, 12 complementation groups have been identified, with complementation group 1 accounting for more than two thirds of all PBD patients. Mutations in the PEX1 gene encoding a member of the AAA protein family of ATPases are responsible for the defects in this group, and a variety of PEX1 mutant alleles have been described. We characterized the PEX1 gene mutations and associated haplotypes in a group of thoroughly documented Zellweger spectrum patients in complementation group 1 who represent the broad range of phenotypic variation. We compared the type of mutation with the age of survival, clinical manifestations, and biochemical alterations and found a close relationship between genotype and age of survival. Missense mutations cause a milder form of disease, whereas insertions, deletions, and nonsense mutations are associated with severe clinical phenotypes. Thus, knowing the PEX1 gene mutation is helpful in predicting the course of disease in individual cases.
Necessary conditions for vector‐valued operator inequalities in harmonic analysis

Via a random construction we establish necessary conditions for Lp (lq) inequalities for certain families of operators arising in harmonic analysis. In particular, we consider dilates of a convolution kernel with compactly supported Fourier transform, vector maximal functions acting on classes of entire functions of exponential type, and a characterization of Sobolev spaces by square functions and pointwise moduli of smoothness. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification 42B25, 42B15, 42B35.
Adhesion of vesicles.

A simple model for the adhesion of vesicles to interfaces and membranes is introduced and theoretically studied. It is shown that adhering (or bound) vesicles can exhibit a large variety of different shapes. The notion of a contact angle governed by tension is found to be applicable only for a restricted subset of these shapes. Furthermore, the vesicle undergoes a nontrivial adhesion transition from a free to a bound state. This transition is governed by the balance between the overall bending and adhesion energies, and occurs even in the absence of shape fluctuations.
FPGAs for data processing: Current state

Abstract To escape a number of physical limitations (e.g., bandwidth and thermal issues), hardware technology is strongly trending toward heterogeneous system designs, where a large share of the application work can be off-loaded to accelerators, such as graphics or network processors. In the database domain, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) were recently discovered as a powerful class of co-processors. Data-intensive tasks can benefit from their very high bandwidth paired with a very low latency. However, a number of challenges still have to be solved before FPGA-accelerated systems can go mainstream. Applications must leverage the massive parallelism provided by FPGAs; algorithms must be re-designed with awareness for communication; and new abstractions are needed to make system development effective. In this article, we report on some of the results we obtained working toward solutions to these challenges. They have been carried out in the context of the Avalanche project, a pioneer in the use of FPGAs for database applications.
Soft error vulnerability assessment of the real-time safety-related ARM Cortex-R5 CPU

This paper presents the results collected in a series of fault injection experiments conducted on a modern commercial embedded ARM Cortex-R5 processor, which is extensively used in real-time safety-related embedded applications. The paper aims to be a comprehensible study on how faults propagate through this CPU as they turn into errors at the core boundaries. The main goal of this study is to identify the most vulnerable parts in the micro-architecture of the ARM Cortex-R5 CPU. The long-term objective is to propose and decide how to protect these vulnerable parts without impacting the characteristic features of ARM processors: energy-efficiency and high-performance.
Improving 3D geometry transformations on a simultaneous multithreaded SIMD processor

In this paper we evaluate the performance of an SMT processor used as the geometry processor for a 3D polygonal rendering engine. To evaluate this approach, we consider PMesa (a parallel version of Mesa) which parallelizes the geometry stage of the 3D pipeline. We show that SMT is suitable for 3D geometry and we characterize the execution of the geometry stage in term of memory hierarchy, which is the main bottleneck. The results show that latency is not fully recovered by SMT; the use of L2 data prefetching does not succeed in increasing the performance. We show that this problem comes from a pollution of the instruction window by the threads experiencing L2 cache misses, thus reducing the window available for the other threads. We thus propose dcPRED, a hardware mechanism to predict L2 misses and control this pollution. Coupled with L2 data prefetching, dcPRED achieves gains up to 21% over the baseline SMT.
Primary systemic amyloidosis as a real diagnostic challenge – case study

Primary amyloidosis (AL) is a rare variety of plasma cell dyscrasia, the diagnosis of which is often difficult to establish. Pathogenesis of amyloidosis involves extracellular deposition of insoluble protein fibrils in tissues, leading to insufficiency of affected organs. According to various sources, mean survival rate of patients with primary amyloidosis ranges from 12 to 24 months, making primary amyloidosis a disease with a very poor prognosis. Survival rate is significantly lowered in case of cardiac manifestation of amyloidosis (about 6 months survival in untreated patients). In recent years a considerable progress in AL treatment has been observed. Nowadays we are able not only to delay progression of amyloidosis, but also to improve the function of the affected organs. Unfortunately as first signs and symptoms of AL are usually nonspecific, the diagnosis of AL is often delayed, resulting in late introduction of optimal therapy. There are many diagnostic tests which can be used in diagnostic process of amyloidosis, i.e. electrophoresis, serum and urine immunofixation or affected organs and bone marrow biopsy. On establishing the diagnosis in a patient with suspected amyloidosis it should be remembered that particular diagnostic methods vary considerably in sensitivity. The aim of this paper is to present a case report of a 27-year-old patient with primary amyloidosis focusing on diagnostic aspect of this condition. On the basis of this case, the authors would like to emphasize the value of precise diagnostic process, with immunological techniques playing undoubtedly a crucial role.
Backbone solving algorithm based on heuristic thinking

In 1997, the definition of the backbone was proposed for the first time -- It was a set of variables that with invariant assignments in the solution of SAT problems. The scale of the backbone was closely related to the scale of the search in the SAT(Boolean Satisfiability Problem) problem, while it had important applications in fault diagnosis, stochastic 3-SAT problem and verification of the quality implication term, so that it was very important to solve the backbone at high speed. In 2010, J. Marques-Silva proposed one test per time algorithm, which greatly improved the computing efficiency of backbone. Based on the one test per time, this paper drew on the heuristic thinking, which designed the scoring mechanism and filtering strategy, also it had adjust the set to be tested. Based on this idea, this paper proposed the heuristic backbone algorithm, which could improve the speed of backbone solution. The test sample had used the benchmark standard test sample and the 2017 SAT competition test sample. The experimental results showed that compared with the one test per time algorithm, the solving time of the heuristic backbone algorithm had been significantly improved.
Noninvasive measurement of ascending aortic blood velocity in mice.

Mice are useful models in numerous research protocols, but monitoring cardiovascular parameters in small animals is difficult. Therefore we evaluated the use of 20-MHz pulsed Doppler ultrasound to measure ascending aortic blood velocity in intact anesthetized mice. Using a 0.5-mm-diameter 20-MHz transducer applied to the right sternal border, we recorded audio Doppler signals from the ascending aorta of 31 mice [24.4 +/- 1.5 (SD) g body wt]. The signals were played back at speed into a fast Fourier transform analyzer from which we measured heart rate (453 +/- 96 beats/min), ejection time (38 +/- 3%), peak velocity (90 +/- 11 cm/s), mean velocity (23 +/- 4 cm/s), rise time (7.3 +/- 2 ms), stroke distance (29 +/- 7 mm), and acceleration (163 +/- 63 m/s2) from the spectral envelopes. We determined aortic diameter (1.2 +/- 0.2 mm) and Doppler angle (0-20 degrees) in six mice by molding the aortic root and major systemic vessels with casting resin infused at 100 mmHg pressure. For an aortic diameter of 1.2 mm, cardiac output was estimated to be 14.8 ml/min and stroke volume to be 33 microliters. To verify the origin of the signals and to test responsiveness to known stimuli, we measured velocity signals from the aorta and other nearby vessels and varied heart rate and aortic velocity by warming or by infusion of isoproterenol in three open-chest animals. For the noninvasive applications, acoustic coupling was adequate through the moistened fur, and aortic velocity signals were obtained in all animals. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Containment control for multiple euler-lagrange systems with parametric uncertainties in directed networks

In this paper, we study the distributed containment control problem for networked Lagrangian systems with multiple stationary or dynamic leaders in the presence of parametric uncertainties under a directed graph that characterizes the interaction among the leaders and the followers. When the leaders are stationary, a distributed adaptive control algorithm is proposed. We present a necessary and sufficient condition on the directed graph such that all followers converge to the stationary convex hull spanned by the stationary leaders asymptotically. As a byproduct, we show a necessary and sufficient condition on leaderless consensus for networked Lagrangian systems under a directed graph. When the leaders are dynamic, two cases are considered: i) The leaders have constant vectors of generalized coordinate derivatives; ii) The leaders have varying vectors of generalized coordinate derivatives. In the first case, we propose a distributed continuous estimator and a distributed adaptive control algorithm. In the second case, we propose a distributed adaptive control algorithm combined with distributed sliding-mode estimators. In both cases, a necessary and sufficient condition on the directed graph is presented such that all followers converge to the dynamic convex hull spanned by the dynamic leaders asymptotically.