Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Internal-External Efficacy Model: Towards the Integration of Computer Self-Efficacy and Task Technology Fit into a Comprehensive View

This research reviews the task-technology fit literature and draws parallels with the internal-external efficacy model recently developed by Eden (2001). In particular, it argues that the construct of task-technology fit, operationalized with perceptual measures as is commonly done, is equivalent to the concept of means efficacy included in the internal-external efficacy model. As a result, the latter provides a theoretical lens through which existing results in the task-technology fit literature can be interpreted, as well as a number of avenues for further research that have not been conceptualized before. A research model based on these arguments is outlined, as well as the potential contribution of carrying out such study.
Effects of oral zinc supplementation on serum leptin levels in Ache males of eastern Paraguay

Significant population variation has been demonstrated in serum leptin levels, independent of adiposity. Included within these populations, Ache males have significantly lower leptin levels compared to American subjects with comparable adiposity. The underlying causes of these differences are not understood but zinc has been shown to be an important regulator of leptin in humans and rodents. Zinc deficiency is associated with somatic wasting and significant declines in circulating leptin levels. Zinc deficiency is common in underdeveloped regions and may therefore contribute to low leptin levels among Ache men. To ascertain the potential role of zinc on Ache male leptin profiles, zinc supplementation was conducted to observe leptin responsiveness. Ache males were given daily oral zinc supplementation (50mg zinc gluconate) (n = 8) or placebo (n = 6) for 10 days. Serum leptin levels were measured on the first and last days of the treatment/placebo period. Despite supplementation exceeding triple the USDA recommended daily requirements, serum leptin levels did not change in the zinc‐supplemented group (P = 0.61) and were not significantly different from males receiving placebo (P = 0.72). It is concluded that zinc is not likely to be a contributing factor in male Ache leptin profiles and that other sources of variation such as chronic energetic stresses affecting leptin production and perhaps receptor number or sensitivity should be considered. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 15:681–687, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Random-Phase Beamforming for Initial Access in Millimeter-Wave Cellular Networks

The utilization of the millimeter-wave frequency band (mm-wave) in the fifth generation ({5G}) of mobile communication is a highly-debated current topic. Mm-wave MIMO systems will use arrays with large number of antennas at the transmitter and the receiver, implemented on a relatively small area. With the inherent high directivity of these arrays, algorithms to help the user equipment find the base station and establish a communication link should be carefully designed. Towards that, we examine two beamforming schemes, namely, random-phase beamforming (RPBF) and directional beamforming (DBF), and test their impact on the Cram\'er-Rao lower bounds (CRB) of jointly estimating the direction-of-arrival, direction-of-departure, time-of-arrival, and the complex channel gain, under the line-of-sight channel model. The results show that the application of RPBF is more appropriate in the considered scenario as it attains a lower CRB with fewer beams compared to DBF.
Illumination-robust face recognition system based on differential components

Illumination variation generally causes performance degradation of face recognition systems under real-life environments. Therefore, we propose an illumination-robust face recognition system using a fusion approach based on efficient facial feature called differential two-dimensional principal component analysis (D2D-PCA) for consumer applications. In the proposed method, face images are divided into two sub-images to minimize illumination effects, and D2D-PCA is separately applied to each sub-images. The individual matching scores obtained from two sub-images are then integrated using a weighted-summation operation, and the fused-score is utilized to classify the unknown user. Performance evaluation of the proposed system was performed using an extended Yale face database B which consists of 2,414 face images for 38 subjects representing 64 illumination conditions under the frontal pose. Experimental results show that the proposed fusion approach enhanced recognition accuracy by 22.02% compared to that of 2DPCA, and we confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed face recognition system under illumination-variant environments.
Effect of ascorbic acid intake on nonheme-iron absorption from a complete diet 1,2

Background: Ascorbic acid has a pronounced enhancing effect on the absorption of dietary nonheme iron when assessed by feeding single meals to fasting subjects. This contrasts with the negligible effect on iron balance of long-term supplementation with vitamin C. Objective: Our goal was to examine the effect of vitamin C on nonheme-iron absorption from a complete diet rather than from single meals. Design: Iron absorption from a complete diet was measured during 3 separate dietary periods in 12 subjects by having the subjects ingest a labeled wheat roll with every meal for 5 d. The diet was freely chosen for the first dietary period and was then altered to maximally decrease or increase the dietary intake of vitamin C during the second and third periods. Results: There was no significant difference in mean iron absorption among the 3 dietary periods despite a range of mean daily intakes of dietary vitamin C of 51‐247 mg/d. When absorption values were adjusted for differences in iron status and the 3 absorption periods were pooled, multiple regression analysis indicated that iron absorption correlated negatively with dietary phosphate (P = 0.0005) and positively with ascorbic acid (P = 0.0069) and animal tissue (P = 0.0285). Conclusions: The facilitating effect of vitamin C on iron absorption from a complete diet is far less pronounced than that from single meals. These findings may explain why several prior studies did not show a significant effect on iron status of prolonged supplementation with vitamin C. Am J Clin Nutr 2001;73:93‐8.
A multiple case study of neighborhood partnerships for positive youth development.

OBJECTIVE To identify factors associated with successful neighborhood mobilization to prevent teen pregnancy using a positive youth development approach. METHODS A multiple case study was conducted on 5 neighborhood partnerships using in-person interviews with key informants, observation of meetings, and review of existing documents. RESULTS Competent staff, strong sense of community, support of key organizations, shared leadership, effective group process, and a perceived need for the initiative influenced level of mobilization. CONCLUSION Organizing neighborhoods around teen pregnancy prevention, even using a youth development approach, is challenging but can be accomplished when the right constellation of factors is in place.
Extracting text keywords using WordNet

Summarizing, extracting keywords, sorting and filtering large quantities of texts were subject of various algorithms based on lexical databases because this was a difficult and time consuming task for a human operator. Our proposed algorithm is based on WordNet lexical database. It eliminates the connection words. For the remaining words (only nouns or verbs) we build a tree with several levels of more generic terms like hypernym or lexicographer file. Using custom weights for each tree level and statistical analysis, we extract a restricted number of words which are used to define the keywords of a document. These results can be used to sort and filter a document based on relevance.
Molecular Characterization of First HumanBartonella Strain Isolated in Italy

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to characterize a Bartonellastrain (BA-1) isolated from a blood culture of an Italian, human immunodeficiency virus-positive patient with bacillary angiomatosis. We analyzed the isolate using molecular biology methods such as whole-cell fatty acid analysis, PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, type-specific 16S rRNA PCRs, sequence analysis of the 16S rRNA, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, and arbitrarily primed PCR. The BA-1 isolate turned out to be a Bartonella quintana strain, similar but not identical to B. quintana Oklahoma, which was used as a control strain.
A novel computer aided breast mass detection scheme based on morphological enhancement and SLIC superpixel segmentation.

PURPOSE To develop a computer-aided detection (CAD) scheme for mass detection on digitized mammograms that achieves a high sensitivity while maintaining a low false positive (FP) rate using morphological enhancement and simple linear iterative clustering (SLIC) method. METHODS The authors developed a multiple stage method for breast mass detection. The proposed CAD scheme consists of five major components: (1) preprocessing based on morphological enhancement, which enhances mass-like patterns while removing unrelated background clutters, (2) segmentation of mass candidates based on the SLIC method, which groups mass and background tissue into different regions, (3) prescreening of suspicious regions using rule-based classification that eliminates regions unlikely to represent masses, (4) potential lesion contour refinement based on distance regularized level set evolution, and (5) FP reduction based on feature extraction and an ensemble of undersampled support vector machines. Two datasets were built to design and evaluate the system: a mass dataset containing 187 cases (386 mammograms) and a nonmass dataset containing 88 mammograms. All cases were acquired from the digital database for screening mammography (DDSM). Approximately two thirds of the available masses were used for training the system, and the remaining masses and nonmass dataset were used for testing. RESULTS Testing of the proposed CAD system on the mass dataset yielded a mass-based sensitivity of 98.55%, 97.10%, 92.75% at 0.84, 0.63, 0.55 FP mark/image, respectively. Tested on the nonmass dataset, the scheme showed a FP rate of 0.55, 0.34, 0.30 mark/image. CONCLUSIONS The results indicate that the system is promising in improving the performance of current CAD systems by reducing FP rate while achieving relatively high sensitivity.
Hybrid multi-agent systems: modeling, specification and verification

Specifying behaviors of multi-agent systems (MASs) is a dem anding task, especially when applied in safety-critical systems. In the latter systems, the specification of behaviors has to be carried out carefully in order to avoid side effects that might cause unwanted or even disastrous be haviors. Thus, formal methods based on mathematical models of the system un der design are helpful. They not only allow us to formally specify the sy stem at different levels of abstraction, but also to verify the consistency of the specified systems before implementing them. The formal specification aim s a precise and unambiguous description of the behavior of MASs, whereas th e verification aims at proving the satisfaction of specified requirements. A behavior of an agent can be described as discrete changes of its states with respect to external or internal actions. Whenever an ac tion occurs, the agent moves from one state to another one. Therefore, an effic ient way to model this type of discrete behaviors is to use a kind of state tr nsition diagrams such as finite automata. One remarkable advantage of su ch transition diagrams is that they lend themselves formal analysis techn iques usingmodel checking. The latter is an automatic verification technique which det ermines whether given properties are satisfied within a model underl ying a particular system. In realistic physical environments, however, it is necessa ry to consider continuous behaviors in addition to discrete behaviors of M ASs. Examples of those type of behaviors include the movement of a soccer agen t to kick off or to go to the ball, the process of putting out the fire by a fire b rigade agent in a rescue scenario, or any other behaviors that depend on an y timed physical law. The traditional state transition diagrams are not s ufficient to combine these types of behaviors. Hybrid automataoffer an elegant method to capture such types of behaviors. Hybrid automata extend regular sta te tr nsition diagrams with methods that deal with those continuous actions such that the state transition diagrams are used to model the discrete cha nges of behaviors, while differential equations are used to model the continuo us changes. The semantics of hybrid automata make them accessible to formal verification by means of model checking.
Robust and automatic cell detection and segmentation from microscopic images of non-setae phytoplankton species

Saliency-based marker-controlled watershed method was proposed to detect and segment phytoplankton cells from microscopic images of non-setae species. This method first improved IG saliency detection method by combining saturation feature with colour and luminance feature to detect cells from microscopic images uniformly and then produced effective internal and external markers by removing various specific noises in microscopic images for efficient performance of watershed segmentation automatically. The authors built the first benchmark dataset for cell detection and segmentation, including 240 microscopic images across multiple phytoplankton species with pixel-wise cell regions labelled by a taxonomist, to evaluate their method. They compared their cell detection method with seven popular saliency detection methods and their cell segmentation method with six commonly used segmentation methods. The quantitative comparison validates that their method performs better on cell detection in terms of robustness and uniformity and cell segmentation in terms of accuracy and completeness. The qualitative results show that their improved saliency detection method can detect and highlight all cells, and the following marker selection scheme can remove the corner noise caused by illumination, the small noise caused by specks, and debris, as well as deal with blurred edges.
A novel Arthrobacter beta-galactosidase with homology to eucaryotic beta-galactosidases

An Arthrobacter beta-galactosidase has homology with the lysosomal acid beta-galactosidases from humans and mice and with a Xanthomonas manihotis enzyme. Phylogenetic analysis of the deduced amino acid sequence showed an unusual pattern, with this procaryotic enzyme clustering within the animal clade. The gene encodes a subunit of 52 kDa, and the enzyme appears to be active as a dimer. The enzyme hydrolyzed substrates with either a beta-1,4 or a beta-1,3 linkage.
Improved quantum efficiency of GaInAsP/InP top air-clad lateral current injection lasers

An internal quantum efficiency (ηi) of GaInAsP/InP top air-clad lateral current injection (LCI) lasers was considerably improved by covering the top surface with 50-nm thick InP cap layer. As the result, threshold current of 6.7 mA and the differential quantum efficiency of 56% were attained for five-quantum-wells (QWs) LCI laser with the cavity length of 500 μm and the stripe width of 1.5 μm.
Acoustic noise and echo cancelling with microphone array

A novel method of performing acoustic echo cancelling using microphone arrays is presented. The method employs a digital self-calibrating microphone system. The calibration process is a simple indirect on-site calibration that adapts to the particulars of the acoustic environment and the electronic equipment in use. Primarily intended for handsfree telephones in automobiles, the method simultaneously suppresses the handsfree loudspeaker and car noise. The system also continuously takes into account disturbances such as fan noise. Examples from an extensive evaluation in a car are also included. Typical performance results demonstrate 20-dB echo cancellation and 10-dB noise reduction simultaneously.
Enhanced measurement sensitivity of hopeless ideation among older adults at risk of self-harm: Reliability and validity of Likert-type responses to the Beck Hopelessness Scale

Objective: Responses to the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) have been identified as a significant predictor of suicide-related ideation and self-harm, of note, to a greater degree than severity of depressive symptoms. The BHS is the most widely used instrument to assess this construct, yet concern has been expressed about the traditional true/false response format of this instrument. For this study, we obtained responses from older adults to a revised four-point Likert-type BHS response format. Method: A national sample of 117 older Canadians at risk of self-harm was recruited from multiple sources for this study over a one-year period. Most participants were women (65%) with an average age of 68.47 years (SD = 9.02, range 50–92). Results: Exploratory factor analysis suggests the existence of two factors labeled Powerlessness/Disappointment and Negative Future Expectancies. Concurrent validity of this two-factor model of BHS responses is provided vis-à-vis suicide-related ideation subsequent to statistical control for socio-demographic factors, physical health, and depressive symptomatology. Of note, the relative contribution to the measurement of BHS factors is proportionately equal and greater than all other independent variables. Conclusion: We contend that this revised BHS response format may be appropriate for use in clinical and research applications though replication with other samples and populations is warranted.
Static Analysis of App Dependencies in Android Bytecode-Technical

Android applications (apps) are highly interactive, but have— by design—no facilities to declare dependencies reflecting such interactions. Dependencies are hidden in code and uncovering them requires static analysis techniques. This technical note presents our static analysis infrastructure to extract dependency information from Android (Dalvik) bytecode. This infrastructure is used in a study of variability mechanisms in software ecosystems [5]. In the present paper, we provide details on the implementation, our dataset, and the statistics we calculated.
How to extend the use of the discrete orthogonal stockwell transform to image watermarking

In this paper, we explore the use of the discrete orthogonal Stockwell transform (DOST) in image watermarking by proposing a blind medical image watermarking (MIW) method based on multi-resolution representation that proceeds by embedding the watermark within the high frequency subbands of the 2D DOST representation of the cover image. Experimental results show that the proposed method improved the transparency of watermarking artifacts in comparison with other works and achieved a good compromise between fidelity and capacity.
Survival of Patients with Glioblastoma Multiforme is not Influenced by Altered Expression of P16, P53, EGFR, MDM2 or Bcl‐2 Genes

Deregulated expression of one or more growth control genes including p16, p53, EGF receptor (EGFR), MDM2 or Bcl‐2 may contribute to the treatment resistance phenotype of GBM and generally poor patient survival. Clinically, GBM have been divided into two major groups defined by (1) histologic progression from a low grade tumor (“progressive” or “secondary” GBM) contrasted with (2) those which show initial clinical presentation without a prior history (“de novo” or “primary” GBM). Using molecular genetic analysis for p53 gene mutations together with immunophenotyping for overexpression of EGFR, up to four GBM variants can be distinguished, including the p53+/EGFR progressive or the p53‐/EGFR+de novo variant. We examined the survival of 80 adult patients diagnosed with astrocytic GBM stratified by age category (>40, 41–60 or 61–80) to determine whether alterations in any one given growth control gene or whether different genetic variants of GBM (progressive versus de novo) were associated with different survival outcomes. Survival testing using Kaplan‐Meier plots for GBM patients with or without altered expression of p16, p53, EGFR, MDM2 or Bcl‐2 showed no significant differences by age group or by gene expression indicating a lack of prognostic value for GBM. Also the clinical outcome among patients with GBM showed no significant differences within each age category for any GBM variant including the progressive and de novo GBM variants indicating similar biologic behavior despite different genotypes. Using a pair‐wise comparison, one‐third of the GBM with normal p16 expression showed accumulation of MDM2 protein and this association approached statistical significance (0.01 < P < 0.05) using the Bonferroni procedure. These GBM may represent a variant in which the p19ARF/MDM2/p53 pathway may be deregulated rather than the p16/cyclin D‐CDK4/Rb pathway.
Optimum pH levels for eluting enteroviruses from sludge solids with beef extract

This study demonstrates that elution of enteroviruses from a mixture of primary- and activated-sludge solids with beef extract at pH 9.2 +/- 0.2 may be less efficient than elution with beef extract at pH 7.2 +/- 0.2 and that elution of enteroviruses from extended-aeration-sludge solids with beef extract is at best no more efficient at pH 9.2 +/- 0.2 than at pH 7.2 +/- 0.2. Thus, the common practice of adjusting the pH of beef extract used for eluting enteroviruses from the natural neutral level of the elutant to alkaline levels is unnecessary and probably undesirable.
Pharmacist-Led Group Medical Appointments for the Management of Type 2 Diabetes with Comorbid Depression in Older Adults

Background:: Depression is associated with poor glycemic control, increased number of microvascular and macrovascular complications, functional impairment, mortality, and 4.5 times higher total health care costs in patients with diabetes. Shared medical appointments (SMAs) may be an effective method to attain national guideline recommendations for glycemic control in diabetes for patients with depression through peer support, counseling, problem solving, and improved access to care. Objective: To test the efficacy as assessed by attainment of a hemoglobin A1c (A1C) <7% of pharmacistted group SMA visits, Veterans Affairs Multidisciplinary Education in Diabetes and Intervention for Cardiac Risk Reduction in Depression (VA-MEDIC-D), in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Methods: This was a randomized controlled trial of VA-MEDIC-D added to standard care versus standard care alone in depressed patients with diabetes with A1C >6.5%. VA-MEDIC-D consisted of 4 once-weekly, 2-hour sessions followed by 5 monthly 90-minute group sessions. Each SMA session consisted of multidisciplinary education and pharmacist-led behavioral and pharmacologic interventions for diabetes, lipids, smoking, and blood pressure. No pharmacologic interventions for depression were provided. The change in the proportion of participants who achieved an A1C <7% at 6 months was compared. Results: Compared to standard care (n = 44), a lower proportion of patients in VA-MEDIC-D (n = 44) had systolic blood pressure (SBP) <130 mm Hg at baseline, but were similar in other cardiovascular risk factors and psychiatric comorbidity. The change in the proportion of participants achieving an A1C <7% was greater in the VA-MEDIC-D arm than in the standard care arm (29.6% vs 11.9%), with odds ratio 3.6 (95% CI 1.1 to 12.3). VA-MEDIC-D participants also achieved significant reductions in SBP, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and non–high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol from baseline, whereas significant reductions were attained only in non–HDL cholesterol with standard care. There was no significant change in depressive symptoms for either arm. Conclusions: Pharmacist-led group SMA visits are efficacious in attainment of glycemic control in patients with diabetes and depression without change in depression symptoms.