Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural tube closure requires Dishevelled-dependent convergent extension of the midline

In Xenopus, Dishevelled (Xdsh) signaling is required for both neural tube closure and neural convergent extension, but the connection between these two morphogenetic processes remains unclear. Indeed normal neurulation requires several different cell polarity decisions, any of which may require Xdsh signaling. In this paper we address two issues: (1) which aspects of normal neurulation require Xdsh function; and (2) what role convergent extension plays in the closure of the neural tube. We show that Xdsh signaling is not required for neural fold elevation, medial movement or fusion. Disruption of Xdsh signaling therefore provides a specific tool for uncoupling convergent extension from other processes of neurulation. Using disruption of Xdsh signaling, we demonstrate that convergent extension is crucial to tube closure. Targeted injection revealed that Xdsh function was required specifically in the midline for normal neural tube closure. We suggest that the inherent movement of the neural folds can accomplish only a finite amount of medial progress and that convergent extension of the midline is necessary to reduce the distance between the nascent neural folds, allowing them to meet and fuse. Similar results with Xenopus strabismus implicate the planar cell polarity (PCP) signaling cascade in neural convergent extension and tube closure. Together, these data demonstrate that PCP-mediated convergent extension movements are crucial to proper vertebrate neurulation.
Problematic computer game use among adolescents, younger and older adults.

AIMS Playing digital games has been associated with forms of addictive behavior. Past research on the subject has often been criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds, due mainly to measurement or sampling issues. The present study aims to overcome these two limitations, and presents data from a representative study in Germany using an already established instrument for measuring problematic game use. DESIGN Large-scale, representative study using a computer-assisted telephone survey. SETTING Germany. PARTICIPANTS A total of 580 adolescents between 14 and 18 years of age, 1866 younger adults between 19-39 years and 1936 older adults aged 40 years and older (overall n = 4382). MEASUREMENTS Problematic game use was measured with the Gaming Addiction Short Scale (GAS), which covers seven criteria including salience, withdrawal and conflicts. Additionally, differential aspects of personality, as well as gaming behaviour, were measured. FINDINGS Only seven respondents [0.2%, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.1, 0.3] met all criteria of the GAS Scale. In contrast, 3.7% (95% CI: 3.1, 4.3) of the respondents can be considered problematic users, meeting at least half these conditions. The percentage of problematic gamers among adolescents is above average (7.6%, 95% CI: 5.6, 10.1). High GAS scores are associated with aggression, low sociability and self-efficacy and lower satisfaction with life. Additionally, these scores correspond with intensive use and preferences for certain gaming genres across all age groups. CONCLUSIONS Following Gaming Addiction Short Scale criteria, gaming addiction is currently not a widespread phenomenon among adolescents and adults in Germany. Gaming Addiction Short Scale scores are associated with intensive use, as well as certain problematic aspects of individuals' personalities and social lives.
Social Media and Politics: Examining Indonesians’ Political Knowledge on Facebook

The Internet and social media have played a significant role in contemporarypolitical sphere of Indonesia. In particular, they have been widely usedfor political activism and discussion; but whether the discussions areconstructive is another issue. Constructive political discussion requiresseveral preconditions; one of the most important requirements is rationalreasoning. Citizens must be equipped with some degree of politicalknowledge and competency to provide reasonable arguments andjustifications in discussions. The primary objective of this paper is to examinethe level of political knowledge of Indonesian Facebookers regardingcorruption which is currently a serious issue in Indonesia. An online surveywas conducted among the most active users of an anti-corruption Facebookgroup of Indonesians. The results of the study generally suggested that theparticipants were well informed about the current affairs of their societyand showed a high level of political knowledge in terms of the CorruptionEradication Commission and also the incumbent politicians; however, theresults indicated a low level of knowledge regarding laws and regulationssurrounding corruption as well as the issues related to the former politicians.
Rural Childhood in New Zealand: A Unique Site of Children's Agency and Social Participation

This article reports on a qualitative research study that explored the perspectives and lived experiences of children in a range of New Zealand rural environments. Thirty-six children, aged between 6 and 11 years, were interviewed about living in the country and also contributed artwork and photographs. They came from four specific rural locations, ranging from ‘rural with high urban influence’ to ‘highly rural/remote’. Children expressed positive views about aspects of rural living, such as opportunities for being outdoors and participating in social relationships, confirming a positive discourse of the rural idyll. Their accounts highlighted children's agency under complex and sometimes challenging conditions. Children also, however, experienced some aspects of rural life as dull, dangerous or difficult. The complex and nuanced constructions of rural childhood uncovered in this study point to the critical importance of consulting with children in order to understand their experiences and best meet the needs of rural children and families.
Classical and quantum part of the environment for quantum Langevin equations

Among quantum Langevin equations describing the unitary time evolution of a quantum system in contact with a quantum bath, we completely characterize those equations which are actually driven by classical noises. The characterization is purely algebraic, in terms of the coefficients of the equation. In a second part, we consider general quantum Langevin equations and we prove that they can always be split into a maximal part driven by classical noises and a purely quantum one.
The Machinery Behind Political Pamphleteering

Mr. Bigelow 8erved tU Director of the Corre› 8pO’1Ulence and DUtribution DivUion for the Republica", National Ccnnmittee during the 1936 campaign. He i8 a Buffalo, N. Y. , adverti8› ing 8pecitdUt and merchandi8ing cCYUueUor. W’HEN JO~NY Q. VOTER, at, a political rally or on a street cOrner, is handed one or a dozen cheaply printed political ,pamphlets seeking his vote for the e1ection or re-election of a presi› dential candidate, he has no idea of the complex organization behind that simple act. But putting into his hands what the party strategists consider the right pamphlet at the right moment is’ the culmination of a gigantic eftort. In the fir,st place, Mr. Voter has little conception of the magnitude of the operations which, taken to› gether, make up a presidential cam› paign. In 1986, for example, the Re’publican headquarters staff at Chi› cago distributed approximately 880 million pieces of campaign material produced outside their own organi› zation, beside the millions of press releases, postcards, letters, mimeo› graphed sheets, bulletins and so : forth which make up part of the grist of every campaign. Of this huge distribution, about 52 million pieces were accounted for by the yellow felt sunflower buttons
From perception over anticipation to manipulation

From autonomous driving cars to surgical robots, robotic system has enjoyed significant growth over the past decade. With the rapid development in robotics alongside the evolution in the related fields, such as computer vision and machine learning, integrating perception, anticipation and manipulation is key to the success of future robotic system. In this thesis, we explore different ways of such integration to extend the capabilities of a robotic system to take on more challenging real world tasks. On anticipation and perception, we address the recognition of ongoing activity from videos. In particular we focus on long-duration and complex activities and hence propose a new challenging dataset to facilitate the work. We introduce hierarchical labels over the activity classes and investigate the temporal accuracy-specificity trade-offs. We propose a new method based on recurrent neural networks that learns to predict over this hierarchy and realize accuracy specificity trade-offs. Our method outperforms several baselines on this new challenge. On manipulation with perception, we propose an efficient framework for programming a robot to use human tools. We first present a novel and compact model for using tools described by a tip model. Then we explore a strategy of utilizing a dual-gripper approach for manipulating tools – motivated by the absence of dexterous hands on widely available general purpose robots. Afterwards, we embed the tool use learning into a hierarchical architecture and evaluate it on a Baxter research robot. Finally, combining perception, anticipation and manipulation, we focus on a block stacking task. First we explore how to guide robot to place a single block into the scene without collapsing the existing structure. We introduce a mechanism to predict physical stability directly from visual input and evaluate it first on a synthetic data and then on real-world block stacking. Further, we introduce the target stacking task where the agent stacks blocks to reproduce a tower shown in an image. To do so, we create a synthetic block stacking environment with physics simulation in which the agent can learn block stacking end-to-end through trial and error, bypassing to explicitly model the corresponding physics knowledge. We propose a goal-parametrized GDQN model to plan with respect to the specific goal. We validate the model on both a navigation task in a classic gridworld environment and the block stacking task.
Algorithms for Real-Time Estimation of Individual Wheel Tire-Road Friction Coefficients

It is well recognized in the automotive research community that knowledge of the real-time tire-road friction coefficient can be extremely valuable for active safety applications, including traction control, yaw stability control and rollover prevention. Previous research results in literature have focused on the estimation of average tire-road friction coefficient for the entire vehicle. This paper explores the development of algorithms for reliable estimation of independent friction coefficients at each individual wheel of the vehicle. Three different observers are developed for the estimation of slip ratios and longitudinal tire forces, based on the types of sensors available. After estimation of slip ratio and tire force, the friction coefficient is identified using a recursive least-squares parameter identification formulation. The observers include one that utilizes engine torque, brake torque, and GPS measurements, one that utilizes torque measurements and an accelerometer and one that utilizes GPS measurements and an accelerometer. The developed algorithms are first evaluated in simulation and then evaluated experimentally on a Volvo XC90 sport utility vehicle. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of estimating friction coefficients at the individual wheels reliably and quickly. The sensitivities of the observers to changes in vehicle parameters are evaluated and comparisons of robustness of the observers are provided.
Risk of colorectal cancer in relatives: a case control study.

BACKGROUND In around 10 to 15% of all colorectal cancer (CRC) cases, a positive family history of colorectal cancer is observed . Although increased risk of colorectal cancer in individuals with a family history of the disease has been observed consistently in the past studies, limited information is available on colorectal cancer associated with family history in Iran. AIMS The purpose of this study is to define the risk of colorectal cancer associated with a family history of cancer. SETTING AND DESIGN The present study was designed as an unmatched case control study. The cases were 393 patients with histologically confirmed colorectal carcinomas and there were 393 controls, randomly selected from among the healthy participants in a health survey. METHODS The family history was extracted from a standard history form completed by the patient or from the record created by a health care provider. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS Mantel-Heanszel Odds Ratio was computed for removing the confounding effect of age and sex. RESULTS A positive family history of cancer was reported by 36.4 and 24.4% among the cases and controls, respectively. Colorectal cancer risk increased two-fold in subjects who reported having first degree relatives with cancer. The adjusted odds ratio was 4.76, indicating that having a positive family history of colorectal cancer among relatives increased one's risk of colorectal cancer about 4.5-fold. CONCLUSION According to our findings, a family history of cancer increased the risk of CRC. Due to this fact that there is no current colorectal cancer screening program in Iran, it is recommended that first degree relatives of patients with colorectal cancer should be considered as a priority group for screening programs.
Assessing the Economic Impacts of Tomato Integrated Pest Management in Mali and Senegal

This study assesses the research benefits of IPM technologies and management practices aimed at reducing the virus problem in tomatoes in West Africa. Surveys are conducted with producers, extension agents, scientists, and other experts to obtain information and economic surplus analysis is used to project benefits over time. The determinants of adoption are assessed using a probit model. Results show that adoption of the host-free period reduced the amount of insecticide sprays by 71% and the production cost by $200/ha in Mali. The cost-benefit analysis indicated that the use of virus-tolerant seeds generated profits ranging from $1,188 to $2,116/ha in Mali and from $1,789 to $4,806/ha in Senegal. The likely factors influencing adoption of the technologies in both countries are the frequency of extension visits, farmer’s field school training, gender, education, seed cost, tomato area, and experience in tomato losses. The benefits in the closed economy market vary from $3.4 million to $14.8 million for the host-free period, $0.5 million to $3 million for the virus-tolerant seeds, and $4.8 million to $21.6 million for the overall IPM program. In the same order, the benefits under the open economy market range from $3.5 million to $15.4 million, $0.5 million to $3million, and $5 million to $24 million. The distribution pattern indicates that producers gain one-third and consumers two-thirds of the benefits. Our results support policies aiming to increase the adoption rate or the expected change in yield.
Light-Trapping and Interface Morphologies of Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells on Multiscale Surface Textured Substrates

The short circuit current and quantum efficiency of silicon thin-film solar cells can be increased by using multiscale surface textures consisting of micro- and nanoscale textures. Adding microtextures to the already existing nanosurface textures leads to an increase of the short circuit current from 15.5 mA/cm2 to almost 17 mA/cm2 for thin amorphous silicon solar cells. To gain insights into the light-trapping properties, finite difference time domain simulations were carried out using realistic interface morphologies. The simulations reveal that the gain of the short circuit current is caused by an increased effective thickness of the solar cell and the scattering properties of the microtextured back reflector. The thickness of the solar cells is increased by the growth of the silicon p-i-n diode on the microtextured surface. The influence of the nanoscale and multiscale surface textures on the quantum efficiency and short circuit current will be discussed.
Automatic Machine Translation Evaluation: A Qualitative Approach

The present study addresses the problem of Automatic Evaluation of Machine Translation (MT) from a linguistic perspective. Most of the studies performed in this area focus on quantitative analyses based on correlation coefficients; however, little has been done as regards a more qualitative approach, going beyond correlations and analysing data in detail. This thesis aims at shedding some light on the suitability, influence and combination of linguistic information to evaluate MT output, not restricting our research to the correlation with human judgements but basing it on a qualitative analysis. More precisely, this research intends to emphasize the effectiveness of linguistic analysis in order to identify and test those linguistic features that help in evaluating traditional concepts of adequacy and fluency. In order to perform this research we have focused on MT output in English, with an application to Spanish so as to test the portability of our approach. The starting point of this work was a linguistic analysis of both MT output and reference segments with the aim of highlighting not only those linguistic errors that an automatic MT evaluation metric must identify, but also those positive linguistic features that must be taken into account, identified and treated as correct linguistic phenomena. Once the linguistic analysis was conducted and in order to confirm our hypotheses and check whether those linguistic phenomena and traits identified in the analysis were helpful to evaluate MT output, we designed and implemented a linguistically-motivated MT metric, VERTa, to evaluate English output. Several experiments were conducted with this first version of VERTa in order to test the suitability of the linguistic features selected and how they should be combined so as to evaluate fluency and adequacy separately. Besides using information provided by correlations as a guide we also performed a detailed analysis of the metric’s output every time linguistic features were added and/or combined. After performing these experiments and checking the suitability of the linguistic information used and how it had to be used and combined, VERTa’s parameters were adjusted and an updated and optimised version of the metric was ready to be used. With this updated version and for the sake of comparison, a meta-evaluation of the metric for adequacy, fluency and MT quality was conducted, as well as a comparison to some of the best-known and widely-used MT metrics, showing that it outperformed them all when adequacy and fluency were assessed. Finally, we ported our MT metric to Spanish with the aim of studying its portability by checking which linguistic features in our metric would have to be slightly modified, which changes would have to be performed and finally if the metric would be easy to adapt to a new language. Furthermore, this version of VERTa for Spanish was compared to other well-known metrics used to evaluate Spanish, showing that it also outperformed them.
Evaluating the Psychometric Properties of the Evidence-Based Practice Attitude and Utilization Survey.

OBJECTIVE Most health professions recognize the value of evidence-based practice (EBP), yet the uptake of EBP across most health disciplines has been suboptimal. To improve EBP uptake, it is important to first understand the many dimensions that affect EBP use. The Evidence-Based practice Attitude and utilization SurvEy (EBASE) was designed to measure the attitudes, skills, and use of EBP among practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM); however, the dimensionality of the instrument is not well understood. The aim of the current research was to examine the psychometric properties of the attitudes, skills, and use subscales of EBASE. DESIGN This was a secondary analysis of data obtained from the administration of EBASE. Data were examined using principal components analyses and confirmatory methods. Internal consistency reliabilities of resultant subscales were also computed. PARTICIPANTS 1314 U.S. chiropractors and 554 Canadian chiropractors. RESULTS A unidimensional structure best fit the attitudes and use subscales. Skills subscale items were best represented by subscales with a multidimensional structure. Specifically, the skills construct was best modeled with three dimensions (identification of the research question, locating research, and application of EBP). All subscales had acceptable internal consistency reliability estimates. CONCLUSIONS The findings support the modification of the scoring guidelines for the original EBASE. These changes are likely to result in a more accurate measure of EBP attitudes, skills, and use among chiropractors, and possibly CAM providers more generally.
Intuitive interface through active 3D gaze tracking

Our interaction with machines is always severely constrained by unnatural interfaces such as mouse, keyboard and joystick. Such interfaces make it difficult for us to convey our ideas in order for computers to understand and perform our intended tasks. In this research, our aim is to build systems that use natural human actions as interfaces. In particular we exploit gaze to track a person's focus of attention. We present an active gaze tracking system that enables a user to instruct a robot arm to pick up and hand over an object placed arbitrarily in 3D space. Our system determines the precise 3D position of the object of unknown size, shape and color by following the person's steady gaze.
Use of stable isotopes to assess the bioavailability of trace elements: a review

The bioavailability (utilization) of trace elements is very variable, depending on the characteristics of the element itself, composition of the diet, gastrointestinal conditions and other physiological factors. To derive dietary recommendations and make use of emerging information on diet-gene interactions relating to nutritional requirements for trace elements, methods for assessing bioavailability are required. The trace elements of particular interest include iron, zinc, selenium and copper because of problems of deficiency, purported links with chronic diseases, and the growing market in fortified foods and supplements. The absorption and subsequent metabolism of trace elements can be monitored using stable isotope tracers, but there are difficulties associated with this approach. Although radioisotopes offer many advantages over stable isotopes, their use is restricted due to safety and ethical issues. The difficulties and limitations of methodologies associated with labelling of trace elements in foods with stable isotopes, design of human studies to generate results that predict bioavailability, and detection and quantification of stable isotopes in biological samples are discussed.