Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Establishing a food list for a Total Diet Study: how does food consumption of specific subpopulations need to be considered?

A Total Diet Study (TDS) consists of selecting, collecting and analysing commonly consumed foods to obtain concentration data of different chemical compounds in foods as eaten. A TDS food list summarises the most consumed foods and represents the dietary habits of the general population of the country under study. The work reported here investigated whether TDS food lists that were initially designed for the whole population of the country under study also sufficiently cover the dietary pattern of specific subpopulations that are extra vulnerable for certain contaminants. The work was performed using data of three European countries: the Czech Republic, France and the UK. Each national food consumption database was combined with the corresponding national TDS food list (containing 336, 212 and 119 food items for the Czech Republic, France and the UK, respectively). The data were aggregated on the highest level of hierarchy of FoodEx-1, a pan-European food classification system, including 20 main FoodEx-1 groups. For the group ‘milk and dairy products’, the coverage of the consumption by the food list was investigated for more refined subgroups. For each food group or subgroup and country, the average percentage of coverage of the diet by the national TDS food list was calculated for different subpopulations, including children versus adults, women versus men, vegetarians versus non-vegetarians, and women of child-bearing age versus older women. The average diet of the different subpopulations was sufficiently covered by the food list of the Czech Republic and France. For the UK the average coverage was low due to a different food-coding approach and because food lists were not derived directly from national food consumption data. At the level of the 20 main food groups, differences between the subpopulations with respect to the average coverage of consumption by the TDS food list were minimal. The differences were more pronounced when looking in detail at the coverage of the dairy consumption. TDS food lists based on the mean consumption of the general population are also applicable to study the chemical exposure of different subpopulations, e.g. children, women of child-bearing age and vegetarians. This lowers the effort when performing a TDS.
Genomic regions regulating imprinting and insulin-like growth factor-II promoter 3 activity in transgenics: novel enhancer and silencer elements.

Transgenic lines (89) were made with constructs containing eight different combinations of candidate regulatory elements from the insulin-like growth factor-II (Igf2)-H19 region of mouse chromosome 7. In all constructs, promoter 3 of Igf2 was attached to a firefly luciferase reporter gene. Promoter 3 was the common element that imposed a decrease in reporter activity similar to that of endogenous Igf2 after birth. The specific activity of the reporter was measured on the day of birth in the liver and the brain, after each transgene had been transmitted by either the father or the mother. This procedure demonstrated that the quantity and organ distribution of expression from this promoter can be regulated by each element. The following new information was obtained. (a) The 5' differentially methylated region of Igf2 inhibits promoter 3 in the liver. (b) The conserved DNase I-hypersensitive Middle region between Igf2 and H19 is an enhancer of promoter 3 in the brain. (c) The H19 promoter inhibits Igf2 promoter 3 in the brain. The results confirmed that the H19 enhancer is a strong enhancer of promoter 3 in the liver. A new finding was that one genomic region regularly imposed imprinted gene expression. This was the H19 enhancer, and this region was sufficient to give higher expression on maternal transmission in the majority of transgenic lines. The full data are reported in Supplementary Publication SUP 50180 (8 pages), which has been deposited at the British Library Document Supply Centre, Boston Spa, Wetherby, West Yorkshire LS23 7BQ, U.K., from whom copies can be obtained on the terms indicated in Biochem. J. (1997) 21, 8-10.
Information leakage for correlated sources with compromised source symbols over wiretap channel II

Correlated sources are present in communication systems where protocols ensure that there is some predetermined information for sources. Here, we investigate two correlated sources across the wiretap channel II and their effect on the information leakage when some channel information and some source data symbols (the predetermined information) have been wiretapped. The adversary in this situation has access to more information than if a link is wiretapped only and can thus determine more about a particular source. We show that since the sources are correlated, if the information on one link and a portion of its data symbols are compromised then there is also information leakage for the other source. Further, we describe a method to reduce the information leakage for the scenario where the information from the source data symbols overlaps with the channel information.
An Ultra-Low Voltage Analog Front End for Strain Gauge Sensory System Application in 0.18 µm CMOS

SUMMARY This paper presents analysis and design of a new ultra-low voltage analog front end (AFE) dedicated to strain sensor applications. The AFE, designed in 0.18 μm CMOS process, features a chopper-stabilized instrumentation amplifier (IA), a balanced active MOSFET-C 2nd order low pass filter (LPF), a clock generator and a voltage booster which operate at supply voltage (Vdd) of 0.6 V. The designed IA achieves 30 dB of closedloop gain, 101 dB of common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR) at 50 Hz, 80 dB of power-supply rejection ratio (PSRR) at 50 Hz, thermal noise floor of 53.4 nV/ √ Hz, current consumption of 14 μA, and noise efficiency factor (NEF) of 9.7. The high CMRR and rail-to-rail output swing capability is attributed to a new low voltage realization of the active-bootstrapped technique using a pseudo-differential gain-boosting operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) and proposed current-driven bulk (CDB) biasing technique. An output capacitor-less low-dropout regulator (LDO), with a new fast start-up LPF technique, is used to regulate this 0.6 V supply from a 0.8–1.0 V energy harvesting power source. It achieves power supply rejection (PSR) of 42 dB at frequency of 1 MHz. A cascode compensated pseudo differential amplifier is used as the filter’s building block for low power design. The filter’s single-ended-to-balanced converter is implemented using a new low voltage amplifier with two-stage common-mode cancellation. The overall AFE was simulated to have 65.6 dB of signalto-noise ratio (SNR), total harmonic distortion (THD) of less than 0.9% for a 100 Hz sinusoidal maximum input signal, bandwidth of 2 kHz, and power consumption of 51.2 μW. Spectre RF simulations were performed to validate the design using BSIM3V3 transistor models provided by GLOBALFOUNDRIES 0.18 μm CMOS process.
Reliable $H_{\infty}$ Nonuniform Sampling Fuzzy Control for Nonlinear Systems With Time Delay

The problem of reliable H infin nonuniform sampling fuzzy control for nonlinear systems with time delay is investigated in this paper. Utilizing the input delay approach and the descriptor model transformation, an equivalent continuous-time generalized Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system is obtained. Sufficient conditions for the existence of state feedback controller are derived in terms of linear matrix inequities (LMIs), which guarantee the requirements of H infin performance criterion for the normal and possible actuator fault cases. In order to relax the conservatism of these obtained conditions, a feasible algorithm is provided to remove some slightly restricted conditions in LMIs. Finally, an illustrative example is given to show the validity of the proposed scheme.
Brain neuronal unit discharge in freely moving animals : methods and application in the study of sleep mechanisms

In the evolution of hypotheses concerning brain mechanisms of behavior, few techniques have had more influence than the study of neuronal discharge in awake behaving animals. The basic principles behind this approach are simple. Any set of neurons hypothesized to be involved in a particular function can be expected to exhibit altered discharge in temporal relationship to the occurrence of the function. In addition, the details of the temporal patterns of discharge correlated with the function could provide specific information about the kind of complex coding in the neural circuitry underlying the associated brain mechanisms. Wellknown examples include movement-related cells in the precentral cortex and stimulus "edge" detectors in the visual cortex. Outside of delineated sensory or motor pathways, many brain areas appear to have multiple functions, possibly reflecting the various specializations of closely adjacent or overlapping subsets of neurons or the convergence or integration of multiple functions by individual neurons. The functions of any particular neuron encountered either electrophysiologically or histologically may be unknown. In these cases, unit-recording techniques may allow us to identify such functions. For example, we may ask whether certain hypothalamic neurons show changes related to satiety, hunger, or food ingestion, or physiological stimuli related to feeding (e.g., blood glucose), rather than to any of several other hypothalamic functions.
Cardiorespiratory development in extremely preterm infants: vulnerability to infection and persistence of events beyond term‐equivalent age

Objective: Apnoea, bradycardia and hypoxemia occur frequently in extremely preterm infants, yet there is little longitudinal data describing cardiorespiratory development in these infants. This prospective study characterized early age‐dependent changes in cardiorespiratory function and determined how activity is affected by factors such as underlying disease, postnatal insults and therapeutic interventions.
Interpersonal verbs, gender, and implicit causality

In the present report we describe a series of studies investigating whether women and men are regarded as equivalently able to cause outcomes in social interaction. Two experiments plus a follow-up study varied sex of actors, sex of recipients, and verb type and examined who is perceived to be more causal in brief verbal descriptions of interpersonal events. Results show that the gender of participants in a social interaction significantly affects perceptions of who initiates and who elicits interpersonal behaviors. When females are described as acting or feeling in mixed-gender pairs, they are viewed as less causal than males. At the same time, when men and women are recipients of others' actions, women more than men are perceived as having elicited the acts directed toward them. Interpretation centers on the lower status accorded women and on the power of language to sustain such arrangements. The results are seen as having implications for research in implicit causality and affect control theory.
An Empirical Assessment of Student Computer Use Behaviors in the Classroom

Universities have widely deployed assorted information technologies, which positions students' laptop as a key pedagogical tool outside and inside the classroom. Viewed critically, the value imparted by laptops in the classroom is determined through the complex interplay of intended and unintended computer use behaviors and is, therefore, suspect. In response, universities may implement classroom control systems that impose either comparatively restricted or unrestricted access levels. We distinguish between two kinds of use behaviors-applicable behaviors and extraneous behaviors. We address two research questions. Are amounts of applicable and extraneous behaviors associated with different access levels? Are learning outcomes associated with amounts of applicable and extraneous behaviors? Using a cross-sectional, quasi-experimental design and data on 71 subjects, we conclude that a restricted access level is associated with significantly higher levels of applicable behavior vis-à-vis the unrestricted access level, and that time spent on extraneous behavior is negatively associated with learning performance.
Video retrieval using relevant topics extraction from movie subtitles

In this paper we propose a novel video retrieval approach based on relevant topics extraction from video subtitles using natural language processing strategies and movie temporal segmentation into scenes. The proposed method is able to identify various subjects existent in a subtitle document and deals with the polysemantic character of words. The approach has been tested on various movie genres, including documentaries, TV series, news, sports. The objective evaluation carried out on a video dataset selected from one week video archive of France Television proves the performance of our technique that returns a mean average precision score superior to 0.5.
Perception of basic emotions in music: Culture-specific or multicultural?

The perception of basic emotions such as happy/sad seems to be a human invariant and as such detached from musical experience. On the other hand, there is evidence for cultural specificity: recognition of emotional cues is enhanced if the stimuli and the participants stem from the same culture. A cross-cultural study investigated the following research questions: (1) How are six basic universal emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise) perceivable in music unknown to listeners with different cultural backgrounds? ; and (2) Which particular aspects of musical emotions show similarities and differences across cultural boundaries? In a cross-cultural study, 18 musical segments, representing six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise) were presented to subjects from Western Europe (Germany and Norway) and Asia (South Korea and Indonesia). Results give evidence for a pan-cultural emotional sentience in music. However, there were distinct cultural, emotion and item-specific differences in emotion recognition. The results are qualified by the outcome measurement procedure since emotional category labels are language-based and reinforce cultural diversity.
ػیپ یىیب ي یتخاىؼارف یَاگآ م ؤ ٍفل رب نآ یاَ فدَ ضاظا تفرؽیپ یاَ The Prediction of the Meta-cognitive Awareness and its Components on Achievement Goals

Objective: The present study aimed at Predicting the Metacognitive Awareness and its components on achievement goals amongst student in Mazandaran University. Method: The research had a descriptive correlation method. The research samples comprised 300 male students selected by using randomly multi-stage sampling. To assess related variables, Achievement Goals Questionnaire developed by Midgley et al (2000), and Mastery- Avoidance Goal Orientation Sub- scale designed by Andrew et al (2001), as well as Meta cognitive Awareness Inventory made by Schraw and Dennison (1994) were used. Results: The results from research showed that there was a significant positive relationship between achievement goals and meta-cognition. Correspondingly, the relationships of meta-cognitive components (The knowledge of cognition, regulation, declarative, procedural, conditional, planning, monitoring, information management, debugging and evaluation) with mastery-approach goal orientation and performance-approach goal orientation were found to be significantly positive. Besides, The results of the research uncovered that no significant positive link of mastery- avoidance goal orientation with knowledge of cognition, regulation, conditional, monitoring, information management, debugging and evaluation and also that no significant link of mastery-avoidance goal orientation with knowledge of cognition and declarative one were observed. While performance-avoidance goal orientation correlated significantly and positively with meta cognition, knowledge of cognition, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge, monitoring and evaluation, it showed significantly negative correlation with knowledge of regulation and information management. Additionally, no significant relationship was discovered among performance- avoidance goal orientation, declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and debugging. The results from multivariate regression analysis proposed that multiple relationships existed between achievement goals (mastery approach, mastery -avoidance, performance - approach and performance - avoidance) and meta cognition. Finally, based on the results provided by the present research, achievement goals variables accounted for approximately 17% of meta cognitive variance. Conclusion: There is a relationship between the achievement goals with meta-cognition and its components. Also research findings are accounted for the significacant variance in the achievement goals of meta-cognition.
3 D-DCT BASED MULTI-SCALE FULL-REFERENCE QUALITY METRIC FOR STEREOSCOPIC VIDEO

In this paper, a new 3D video quality metric based on multiscale images and masking effect is proposed. Proposed metric mainly contains three components: 3D-DCT transform, asymmetric multi-scale measurement, and difference of disparity estimation. 3D-DCT transform is processed by grouping similar blocks in both left and right channel. DCT coefficients are analyzed taking into account Human Visual System (HVS) properties, i.e. contrast sensitivity function (CSF) and masking effect. Left channel is processed into several downsampled versions and then measured by PSNR-HVS-M. In addition, depth error between original image and distorted image is also measured using disparity estimation. The proposed metric is validated over 3D video quality database with wider types of compression artifacts. The results show that the metric outperforms current metrics over different 3D video formats and compression methods.
Psychological FirstAid:An Evidence Informed Approach forAcute Disaster Behavioral Health Response

Counseling Association by Dr. Garry R. Walz and Dr. Jeanne C. Bleuer of Counseling Outfitters, LLC. Its purpose is to provide a means of capturing the ideas, information and experiences generated by the annual ACA Conference and selected ACA Division Conferences. Papers on a program or practice that has been validated through research or experience may also be submitted. This digital collection of peer-reviewed articles is authored by counselors, for counselors. VISTAS Online contains the full text of over 500 proprietary counseling articles published from 2004 to present.
in Self-Persuasion Motivated Reflection on Attitude-Inconsistent Information : An Exploration of the Role of Fear of Invalidity

The mere thought effect is defined in part by the tendency of self-reflective thought to heighten the generation of and reflection on attitude-consistent thoughts. By focusing on individuals’ fears of invalidity, we explored the possibility that the mere opportunity for thought sometimes motivates reflection on attitude-inconsistent thoughts. Across three experiments, dispositional and situational fear of invalidity was shown to heighten reflection on attitude-inconsistent thoughts. This heightened reflection, in turn, interacted with individuals’ thought confidence to determine whether attitude-inconsistent thoughts were assimilated or refuted and consequently whether individuals’ attitudes and behavioral intentions depolarized or polarized following a sufficient opportunity for thought, respectively. These findings emphasize the impact of motivational influences on thought reflection and generation, the importance of thought confidence in the assimilation and refutation of self-generated thought, and the dynamic means by which the mere thought bias can impact self-persuasion.
Theory-based assessment in environmental education: a tool for formative evaluation

This article reports on the development of a theory-informed assessment instrument for use in evaluating environmental education programs. The instrument involves coding learners’ brief reflective writing on five established educational and social psychological constructs that correspond to five important goals of environmental education: promoting learners’ perceived relevance of environmental content, sense of personal and collective responsibility for sustainability, knowledge of environmental content, readiness for environmental action, and identity exploration around environmental questions. The article describes the development of the instrument and its use for coding the reflective writing of 242 early adolescents who participated in a large-scale environmental education program.
Generation of HIV‐1‐Based Lentiviral Vector Particles

This unit presents protocols outlining the methodology and techniques involved in the construction and application of HIV‐1‐based lentiviral vector systems. Also described are procedures that can be used to concentrate and purify high‐titer recombinant lentiviral vector preparations, as well as protocols for transduction of adherent and suspension cells.
Virtualization-assisted Framework for Prevention of Software Vulnerability Based Security Attacks

Virtualization is a useful technology for addressing secur ity concerns since it allows for the creation of isolated software execut ion environments, e.g., for separation of the sensitive parts of a system from the complex, untrusted parts. In this paper, we describe a tool f or dynamically detecting and preventing software vulnerabilities t hat exploits the availability of virtualized (isolated) execution environ ments. A program that is not itself malicious, but could have vulnerabilitie s, is first safely executed within a virtualized Testing environment, wherein its execution is traced using dynamic binary instrumentation and checked against extensive security policies that express the behavioral patt erns associated with various vulnerability exploits. The program’s execut ion trace is represented using a hybrid model that consists of regular expressions along with data invariants in order to capture both control and dat a flow. The execution trace and security policies are then used to const ruct an abstract behavioral model of the program’s exercised executi on paths. The program and its behavioral model are then migrated to a Real execution environment, wherein the behavioral model is used for effici ent run-time monitoring (in place of the security policies), along with a continuous learning process, in order to prevent non-permissible program behavior. We implemented the proposed framework using the PIN dynamic binary instrumentation tool from Intel and the Xen virtual machine monitor, and evaluated the utility and performance of the proposed methodology using several benchmarks and attack data sets. Our evaluation demonstrates almost 100% coverage for the considered software vulnerabilities, including buffer overflows, race conditi ons, link attacks, memory vulnerabilities, and NULL-pointer referencing. Execution time overheads of 38.42X and 1.46X are imposed on program execution in the Testing and Real environments, respectively, indicating the potential of the proposed approach in preventing vulnerability exploits with acceptable overheads.