Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role for pragmatic randomized controlled trials (pRCTs) in comparative effectiveness research

There is a growing appreciation that our current approach to clinical research leaves important gaps in evidence from the perspective of patients, clinicians, and payers wishing to make evidence-based clinical and health policy decisions. This has been a major driver in the rapid increase in interest in comparative effectiveness research (CER), which aims to compare the benefits, risks, and sometimes costs of alternative health-care interventions in ‘the real world’. While a broad range of experimental and nonexperimental methods will be used in conducting CER studies, many important questions are likely to require experimental approaches – that is, randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Concerns about the generalizability, feasibility, and cost of RCTs have been frequently articulated in CER method discussions. Pragmatic RCTs (or ‘pRCTs’) are intended to maintain the internal validity of RCTs while being designed and implemented in ways that would better address the demand for evidence about real-world risks and benefits for informing clinical and health policy decisions. While the level of interest and activity in conducting pRCTs is increasing, many challenges remain for their routine use. This article discusses those challenges and offers some potential ways forward.
Towards Complete Scene Reconstruction from Single-View Depth and Human Motion

Complete scene reconstruction from single view RGBD is a challenging task, requiring estimation of scene regions occluded from the captured depth surface. We propose that scene-centric analysis of human motion within an indoor scene can reveal fully occluded objects and provide functional cues to enhance scene understanding tasks. Captured skeletal joint positions of humans, utilised as naturally exploring active sensors, are projected into a human-scene motion representation. Inherent body occupancy is leveraged to carve a volumetric scene occupancy map initialised from captured depth, revealing a more complete voxel representation of the scene. To obtain a structured box model representation of the scene, we introduce unique terms to an object detection optimisation that overcome depth occlusions whilst deriving from the same depth data. The method is evaluated on challenging indoor scenes with multiple occluding objects such as tables and chairs. Evaluation shows that human-centric scene analysis can be applied to effectively enhance state-of-the-art scene understanding approaches, resulting in a more complete representation than single view depth alone.
Pseudodifferential analysis on continuous family groupoids

We study properties and representations of the convo- lution algebra and the algebra of pseudodieren tial operators asso- ciated to a continuous family groupoid. We show that the study of representations of the algebras of pseudodieren tial operators of or- der zero completely reduces to the study of the representations of the ideal of regularizing operators. This recovers the usual boundedness theorems for pseudodieren tial operators of order zero. We prove a structure theorem for the norm completions of these algebras asso- ciated to groupoids with invariant ltrations. As a consequence, we obtain criteria for an operator to be compact or Fredholm. We end with a discussion of the signicance of these results to the index the- ory of operators on certain singular spaces. For example, we give a new approach to the question of the existence of spectral sections for operators on coverings of manifolds with boundary. We expect that our results will also play a role in the analysis on more general singular spaces.
Urine Methyl Hippuric Acid Levels in Acute Pesticide Poisoning: Estimation of Ingested Xylene Volume and Association with Clinical Outcome Parameters

To determine the relationship between the oral ingestion volume of xylene and methyl hippuric acid (MHA) in urine, we measured MHA in 11 patients whose ingested xylene volume was identified. The best-fit equation between urine MHA and ingested amount of xylene was as follows: y (ingested amount of xylene, mL/kg) = −0.052x2 + 0.756x (x = MHA in urine in g/g creatinine). From this equation, we estimated the ingested xylene volume in 194 patients who had ingested pesticide of which the formulation was not available. Our results demonstrated that oxadiazole, dinitroaniline, chloroacetamide, organophosphate, and pyrethroid were xylene-containing pesticide classes, while the paraquat, glyphosate, glufosinate, synthetic auxin, fungicide, neonicotinoid, and carbamate classes were xylene-free pesticides. Sub-group univariate analysis showed a significant association between MHA levels in urine and ventilator necessity in the pyrethroid group. However, this association was not observed in the organophosphate group. Our results suggest that MHA in urine is a surrogate marker for xylene ingestion, and high urine MHA levels may be a risk factor for poor clinical outcome with some pesticide poisoning.
A Context-Based State Estimation Technique for Hybrid Systems

This paper proposes an approach to robust state estimation for mobile robots with intermittent dynamics. The approach consists of identifying the robot’s mode of operation by classifying the output of onboard sensors into mode-specific contexts. The underlying technique seeks to efficiently use available sensor information to enable accurate, high-bandwidth mode identification. Context classification is combined with multiple-model filtering in order to significantly improve the accuracy of state estimates for hybrid systems. This approach is validated in simulation and shown experimentally to produce accurate estimates on a jogging robot using low-cost sensors.
A dataset for Hand-Held Object Recognition

Visual object recognition is just one of the many applications of camera-equipped smartphones. The ability to recognise objects through photos taken with wearable and handheld cameras is already possible through some of the larger internet search providers; yet, there is little rigorous analysis of the quality of search results, particularly where there is great disparity in image quality. This has motivated us to develop the Small Hand-held Object Recognition Test (SHORT). This includes a dataset that is suitable for recognising hand-held objects from either snapshots or videos acquired using hand-held or wearable cameras. SHORT provides a collection of images and ground truth that help evaluate the different factors that affect recognition performance. At its present state, the dataset is comprised of a set of high quality training images and a large set of nearly 135,000 smartphone-captured test images of 30 grocery products. In this paper, we will discuss some open challenges in the visual object recognition of objects that are being held by users. We evaluate the performance of a number of popular object recognition algorithms, with differing levels of complexity, when tested against SHORT.
A logical verification methodology for service-oriented computing

We introduce a logical verification methodology for checking behavioral properties of service-oriented computing systems. Service properties are described by means of SocL, a branching-time temporal logic that we have specifically designed for expressing in an effective way distinctive aspects of services, such as, acceptance of a request, provision of a response, correlation among service requests and responses, etc. Our approach allows service properties to be expressed in such a way that they can be independent of service domains and specifications. We show an instantiation of our general methodology that uses the formal language COWS to conveniently specify services and the expressly developed software tool CMC to assist the user in the task of verifying SocL formulas over service specifications. We demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our methodology by means of the specification and analysis of a case study in the automotive domain.
Unplanned but not unwanted? Teen pregnancy and parenthood among young people with refugee backgrounds

African-born young women with refugee backgrounds in Victoria, Australia, are experiencing elevated rates of teen pregnancy and early parenthood relative to other young women. Drawing primarily on qualitative data from a longitudinal study of settlement and well-being of refugee youth, this article examines the ways young women with refugee backgrounds negotiate teen pregnancy and early motherhood while also managing the challenges of early settlement. While young women indicate that their pregnancies were not planned, they are not necessarily unwanted. Nonetheless, early motherhood involves substantial challenges and complexities, particularly in relation to education, housing and social support. Policy and programmatic responses need to focus both on increasing understanding and capacity for reproductive choice among young women with refugee backgrounds, and providing support for teen parents in order to facilitate successful settlement.
Applying Theory of Planned Behavior in Predicting of Patient Safety Behaviors of Nurses

Background: Patient safety has become a major concern throughout the world. It is the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of health care, ensuring safer care is an enormous challenge, psychosocial variables influences behaviors of human. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is a well-validated behavioral decision-making model that has been used to predict social and health behaviors. This study is aimed to investigate predictors of nurse’s patient safety intentions and behavior, using a TPB framework. Methods: Stratified sampling technique was used to choose 124 nurses who worked at the selected hospitals of Isfahan in 2011. Study tool was a questionnaire, designed by researchers team including 3 nurses a physician and a psychologist based on guideline of TPB model. Questionnaire Validity was confirmed by experts and its reliability was assessed by Cronbach’s alpha as 0.87. Binary logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate how well each TPB variables predicted the variance in patient safety behavior. Analyzing was done by SPSS18. Results: Finding revealed that “normative beliefs” had the greatest influence on nurses intention to implement patient safety behaviors. Analyzing data by hospital types and workplace wards showed that both in public and private hospitals normative beliefs has affected safety behaviors of nurses more than other variables. Also in surgical wards, nurses behaviors have been affected by “control beliefs” and in medical wards by normative beliefs. Conclusion: Normative beliefs, and subjective norms were the most influential factor of safety behavior of nurses in this study. Considering the role of cultural context in these issues, it seemseducation of managers and top individuals about patient safety and its importance is a priority also control believes were another important predicting factor of behavior in surgical wards and intensive care units. Regarding the complexity of work in these spaces, applying medical guidelines and effective supervision must be seriously followed.
Does Distance Matter in the Age of the Internet?

This study is part of the broad debate about the role of distance and technology for interpersonal contact. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that systematically and explicitly compares the role of distance in social networks pre- and post-Internet. An analysis is made of the effect of distance on the frequency of e-mail, phone, face-to-face and overall contact in personal networks, and the findings are compared with their pre-Internet counterpart whose data were collected in 1978 in the same East York, Toronto locality. Multilevel models with a spline specification are used to examine the non-linear effects of distance on the frequency of contact. These effects are compared for both very close and somewhat close ties, and for different role relationships: immediate kin, extended kin, friends and neighbours. The results show that e-mail contact is generally insensitive to distance, but tends to increase for transoceanic relationships greater than 3000 miles apart. Face-to-face contact remains strongly related to short distances (within five miles), while distance has little impact on how often people phone each other at the regional level (within 100 miles). The study concludes that e-mail has only somewhat altered the way people maintain their relationships. The frequency of face-to-face contact among socially close friends and relatives has hardly changed between the 1970s and the 2000s, although the frequency of phone contact has slightly increased. Moreover, the sensitivity of these relationships to distance has remained similar, despite the communication opportunities of the Internet and low-cost telephony.
Independent Age Cues for Infancy and Older Age in One Face: Evidence for Rivalry in Age Perception

Participants estimated the ages of infants, teens, and adults in their 20s and 60s, using averaged facial images, as well as digitally transformed images of two different age groups. Since a blended face has intermediate features of the component faces, age of the combined faces was hypothesized to be perceived as the mean age of the component faces. However, the perceived age was underestimated when the transformed face included an infant, but overestimated when the face included a person in their 60s. From this one may infer the faces of infants and adults in their 60s have strong age cues. The estimated ages for blended images of infants and adults in their 60s showed a clear bipolar distribution, with one peak at 5–9 years and the other at 50–54 years. Analysis of individual variation showed that the different response to infants–60s faces was related to variations in sensitivity to 60s faces, not to a general perceptual tendency or confused responses to ambiguous appearing faces. Thus, cues for infancy and older age are qualitatively independent and can co-exist in one face, yielding a rivalry in age perception.
Implicit Egotism on the Baseball Diamond: Why Peter Piper Prefers to Pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates

Abstract Research on “implicit egotism” indicates that people tend to react positively to anything that reminds them of themselves, including their own names and the letters in their names. Names can have effects (presumably unconscious ones) even on people's choices of mates and careers. Nelson and Simmons (2007) presented evidence suggesting that people are attracted to name-resembling outcomes even when those outcomes undermine their conscious goals. For example, they found that major league baseball players with first or last names starting with the letter K strike out (i.e., record a “K”) at a rate greater than that of other players. The present archival study tested the hypothesis that Nelson and Simmons's finding was due in part to pitchers (who are generally poor batters) being over-represented among players with names starting with K. Parallel analyses were run for the letter P (the first letter in the word pitcher). Results provide some support for the idea that implicit egotism has implications not only for players' performances, but also for the positions they prefer to play on the field.
Building blood vessels—stem cell models in vascular biology

Spheroids of differentiating embryonic stem cells, denoted embryoid bodies, constitute a high-quality model for vascular development, particularly well suited for loss-of-function analysis of genes required for early embryogenesis. This review examines vasculogenesis and angiogenesis in murine embryoid bodies and discusses the promise of stem cell–based models for the study of human vascular development.
Rapid prototyping toolchain for humanoid robotics applications

This paper introduces a rapid development toolchain for the design and dynamic simulation of robotic and/or mechatronic applications. The toolchain provides a fast and seamless workflow from developing a mechanical system in Computer Aided Design (CAD) software to automatically generating full dynamic simulations with real time 3D visualization. Subsequent design changes in CAD are reflected to the dynamic simulation blocks by simply updating the kinematic and dynamic parameters with minimal user input. The toolchain is demonstrated on the development of a 14 degree of freedom bipedal robot, validating its usefulness for designing complex robotic systems.
A Business Intelligence Solution for Frequent Pattern Mining on Social Networks

Frequent pattern mining is an important data mining task. Since its introduction, it has drawn attention from many researchers. Consequently, many frequent pattern mining algorithms have been proposed, which include level-wise Apriori-based algorithms, tree-based algorithms, and hyperlinked array structure based algorithms. While these algorithms are popular and benefit from a few advantages, they also suffer from some disadvantages. In this paper, we propose and evaluate an alternative frequent pattern mining algorithm called B-mine. Evaluation results show that our proposed algorithm is both space- and time-efficient. Furthermore, to show the practicality of B-mine in real-life applications, we apply B-mine to discover frequent following patterns in social networks.
Models with products of Dirichlet processes

Nonparametric Bayesian models are often preferred over parametric models due to their superior flexibility in interpreting data. A strong motivation for the use of these models is the desire of avoiding the assumptions that are necessary for parametric models. A prominent place in Bayesian nonparametrics is played by the Dirichlet process, which is defined by a base measure and a concentration parameter. In this paper, we propose the construction of models based on products of Dirichlet processes and corresponding mixture models. We show how these processes can be used for classification of data with shared features. The proposed processes are different from the recently introduced hierarchical Dirichlet processes. We show the use of the proposed model on classification of multivariate time series and demonstrate its performance with computer simulations.
Adults and Adolescents: The Same or Different? Exploring Police Trust in an Inner‐city, Adolescent Population

Although much is known about the impact socially disorganized, inner-city communities have on the development of various behaviors in adolescents (Garbarino, Dubrow, Kostelny, & Pardo, 1992; Menard & Huizinga, 2001) there remains a considerable knowledge gap when examining this population in terms of its views about and trust in the police. Research into levels of trust in the police has focused on adult populations revealing that trust of the police is a multi-dimensional construct in which minority groups who reside within inner city, urban communities report being highly distrustful of the police (Sherman, 1997; Stoutland, 2001). Enhancing police trust in the citizens of these communities is important because citizen–police relations are a key aspect in crime reduction. However, by concentrating only on adults we are ignoring a potentially significant contributor: children in these communities. If one is to effectively increase trust in police in high crime communities, should they only concentrate on the adults? Should one assume that children residing in high crime communities have low levels of trust in the police just because adults do? Or, do children have a high level of trust for the police, even when residing in high crime communities because they have not been exposed to or affected by the social injustices and ills that the adults in the community have? In order to answer these questions, one must first figure out how to measure the level of trust held by adolescents in the police. The purpose of this research note is to explore the conceptualization and operationalization of police trust in a sample of adolescents who reside in low income, high crime communities in Richmond, Virginia (N = 69).
Multi-affine registration using local polynomial expansion

In this paper, we present a non-linear (multi-affine) registration algorithm based on a local polynomial expansion model. We generalize previous work using a quadratic polynomial expansion model. Local affine models are estimated using this generalized model analytically and iteratively, and combined to a deformable registration algorithm. Experiments show that the affine parameter calculations derived from this quadratic model are more accurate than using a linear model. Experiments further indicate that the multi-affine deformable registration method can handle complex non-linear deformation fields necessary for deformable registration, and a faster convergent rate is verified from our comparison experiment.
100 × 120-Gb/s PDM 64-QAM transmission over 160 km using linewidth-tolerant pilotless digital coherent detection

We demonstrate 11.2-Tb/s transmission of 12.5-GHz spaced 120-Gb/s PDM 64-QAM signals over 160 km by using a digital coherent receiver with pilotless demodulation algorithms. The spectral efficiency of 9.0 b/s/Hz is the highest reported for 100-Gb/s/ch-class transmission.
Parental Attachment, Coping Efficacy and Antisocial Behavior among Adolescents from Divorced Family in Selangor, Malaysia

The main purpose of this study was to determine the relationships between parental attachment, coping efficacy and antisocial behavior among adolescents from divorced families. Respondents were 170 secondary school students aged 13 to 17, selected using purposive sampling technique. Self-administered questionnaire was used in data collection. Adolescents’ attachment with parent was assessed with Parent Attachment subscale from Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA). Coping Self-Efficacy Scale (CSES) and Subtypes of Antisocial Behavior Questionnaire (STAB) were used to measure adolescents’ coping efficacy and antisocial behavior respectively. Correlation analysis showed that mother attachment (r = -.219, p < .01) and coping efficacy (r = -.365, p < .001) had significant negative correlation with antisocial behavior. Coping efficacy fully mediated the relationship between mother attachment and antisocial behavior (Z = -3.197, p < .001). Intervention or prevention programs should target both mothers and children from divorced families.
The Relation of Job Knowledge, Job Performance, and Supervisory Ratings as a Function of Ratee Race

Racial bias in performance ratings may be inferred when ratings hold differ- ent meanings for different racial subgroups. Operationally, this would be indi- cated by differences (by ratee race) in the correlation between performance ratings and objective indices of performance. In this study, the effects of rate race on the relations between supervisory ratings and more objective criteria of job knowledge and work performance were examined by aggregating corre- lations across 25 studies. The results indicated that supervisory ratings were more highly related to work-performance measures-and to a lesser extent to job-knowledge measures-for Black than for White ratees. Tivo theories were proposed that could account for such differences.