Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DETERMINANTS OF VARIATION IN ADULT BODY HEIGHT

Final body height is achieved as the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factors. The aim of this article is to review past studies on body height that have followed different scientific traditions. In modern Western societies, about 20% of variation in body height is due to environmental variation. In poorer environments, this proportion is probably larger, with lower heritability of body height as well as larger socioeconomic body height differences. The role of childhood environment is seen in the increase in body height during the 20th century simultaneously with the increase in the standard of living. The most important non-genetic factors affecting growth and adult body height are nutrition and diseases. Short stature is associated with poorer education and lower social position in adulthood. This is mainly due to family background, but other environmental factors in childhood also contribute to this association. Body height is a good indicator of childhood living conditions, not only in developing countries but also in modern Western societies. Future studies combining different scientific traditions in auxology are needed to create a more holistic view of body height.
Multiagent Framework for Smart Grids Recovery

Failure propagation in smart grids (SGs) complicates and prolongs the recovery time as the faults to be resolved increase. This paper presents the design and implementation of a framework for SGs modeling, simulation, and recovery. The proposed approach is based on a multiagent system composed of static and mobile agents to ensure local and remote resolutions. The efficiency and completeness of the power system recovery protocol are proved as all the existing solutions are analyzed. The use of fault classification and a performing communication process as well as the deployment of local distributed databases updated at run-time ensure the effectiveness of the proposed fault recovery strategy. An experimental study confirms and validates the expected results.
Merging Plans with Quantitative Temporal Constraints, Temporally Extended Actions, and Conditional Branches

We develop an algorithm for merging plans that are represented in a richly expressive language. Specifically, we are concerned with plans that have (i) quantitative temporal constraints, (ii) actions that are not instantaneous, but rather have temporal extent, and (iii) conditional branches. Given a set S of such plans, our algorithm finds a set of constraints that jointly ensure that the plans in S are mutually consistent, if such a set of constraints exists. The algorithm has three phases. In the first, it employs a new data structure, a conditional simple temporal network (CSTN), to identify conflicts between the plans. Next, it uses an approach developed by Yang (1997) to suggest a potential resolution of the identified conflicts. Finally, the CSTN is again used to check whether the proposed resolution observes all the temporal constraints. We have implemented our approach, and we present preliminary experimental evidence about domain factors that influence its performance.
Hybrid center-symmetric local pattern for dynamic background subtraction

Effective foreground detection in dynamic scenes is a challenging task in computer vision applications. In this paper, we propose a novel background modeling method to tackle this problem. First, we propose a second-order center-symmetric local derivative pattern (CS-LDP) which extracts more detail information compared with the first-order center-symmetric local binary pattern (CS-LBP). Then by concatenating the CS-LBP and CS-LDP histograms, a new hybrid histogram feature is presented. The length of this histogram is much shorter than the local binary pattern (LBP) histogram. Based on this hybrid feature, a novel background modeling method is proposed where the pixel process is modeled with a group of adaptive hybrid histograms. The major advantage of our method is its low complexity. Experiments on three challenging sequences demonstrate that the proposed method is effective and fast, producing comparable results to state-of-art algorithm while reducing the computation time greatly.
Out of the Chrysalis of Silence, Into a World of Possibilities: Family Experiences of Having a Child Who Uses a Speech Generating Device

Cheryl Lee Crisp OUT OF THE CHRYSALIS OF SILENCE, INTO A WORLD OF POSSIBLITIES: FAMILY EXPERIENCES OF HAVING A CHILD WHO USES A SPEECH GENERATING DEVICE There are children in this world who are silenced by disability. The struggles of these children as they attempt to find a voice are difficult and often considered insurmountable. With advances in computer technology, devices are available to assist the child to have a voice. This voice is not found easily or acquired without difficulty. Even after finding and acquiring the necessary device, the child requires education and support to learn to use the device effectively. Challenges may be specific to the child’s disability, the support systems involved with the child, or even the technology itself. It is the adults in the child’s life, and the child’s family in particular, who provide needed support and assistance in helping him/her find an effective way of expressing his/her ideas. Families are an essential component in assisting their children to learn to use the device. My pilot study examined parents’ likes and dislikes of their child’s communication device. The preliminary data from that study illuminated several factors that increased the struggles of these children and their families as they work together to learn the device. These factors include financial, emotional, and developmental costs; as well as the lack of appropriately trained professionals; and excessive time lapses from evaluation to receipt of the device. The purpose of this study was to give a voice to the experiences of families around a child’s use of one type of augmentative and alternative (AAC), a speech generating device (SGD), by analyzing family’s experiences of the child’s use of a SGD
Viral Agents Associated with Poult Enteritis in Croatian Commercial Turkey Flocks

From 2003 to 2006, samples of intestinal content and spleens from 10 day old to 6 weeks old fattening turkeys showing clinical signs of enteritis were analyzed by specific PCR and RT-PCRs for detection of hemorrhagic enteritis virus, avian reovirus, turkey astrovirus-2, and turkey coronavirus. Total of 23 flocks from 6 farms were included in investigation. Specific sequence for hemorrhagic enteritis virus hexon gene was present in 6 samples from turkeys younger and in one from turkeys at 6 weeks of age. A product of turkey astrovirus-2 capsid gene was detected in 17/23 intestinal content samples. A 626-bp band of sigma A encoding gene segment from avian reovirus was present in three samples, all from the same farm. Sequence analysis of 450 bp fragment of avian reovirus sigma A encoding gene sequence showed that our strain had identity of 91.3% with the strains 138, 2408, 1733, 919, T6, and Os161. No turkey coronavirus specific PCR band was found in any sample. Four flocks were positive simultaneously on hemorrhagic enteritis virus and turkey astrovirus-2, and three flocks on turkey astrovirus-2 and avian reovirus. Severity of poult enteritis described in our study is caused by immunosuppressive turkey astrovirus-2 in combination with hemorrhagic enteritis virus or avian reovirus.
Ecopedagogy: educating for a new eco-social intercultural perspective

Nesse artigo pretende-se apresentar um estudo exploratorio da Ecopedagogia comoum projeto educacional internacional, que nasceu das necessidades do Novo Mileniopara transformar a globalizada “Sociedade de Risco Mundial”, produzida pelossistemas capitalistas neoliberais de dominacao global em direcao a uma civilizacaoalternativa, ecologica e social. A Ecopedagogia visa a criacao de uma civilizacaoecologicamente sustentavel, na perspectiva de reconstrucao fundamental, democraticae planetaria dos sistemas de educacao. Esta pesquisa, focalizada na perspectivaepistemologica pos-colonialista de Paulo Freire, argumenta que a propria vidae seu(s) futuro(s) dependem agora da humanizacao e transformacao da educacao.Freire coloca os problemas da libertacao cultural e educacional e explora as possibilidadesemancipatorias proporcionadas pelo interculturalismo. Adotou-se abordagem interdisciplinar e comparativa para o estudo da Ecopedagogia como uma nova fasedo desenvolvimento de teorias e movimentos ambientais e sociais, no sentido decontribuir para o seu avanco como um projeto educacional planetario para uma“Nova Civilizacao Ecossocial”. Alem disso, buscou-se desenvolver um conhecimentosignificativo e aplicavel para transformar a educacao na direcao da sustentabilidadeecologica, responsabilidade social e interculturalidade.
Recent Advances in Bioprinting and Applications for Biosensing

Future biosensing applications will require high performance, including real-time monitoring of physiological events, incorporation of biosensors into feedback-based devices, detection of toxins, and advanced diagnostics. Such functionality will necessitate biosensors with increased sensitivity, specificity, and throughput, as well as the ability to simultaneously detect multiple analytes. While these demands have yet to be fully realized, recent advances in biofabrication may allow sensors to achieve the high spatial sensitivity required, and bring us closer to achieving devices with these capabilities. To this end, we review recent advances in biofabrication techniques that may enable cutting-edge biosensors. In particular, we focus on bioprinting techniques (e.g., microcontact printing, inkjet printing, and laser direct-write) that may prove pivotal to biosensor fabrication and scaling. Recent biosensors have employed these fabrication techniques with success, and further development may enable higher performance, including multiplexing multiple analytes or cell types within a single biosensor. We also review recent advances in 3D bioprinting, and explore their potential to create biosensors with live cells encapsulated in 3D microenvironments. Such advances in biofabrication will expand biosensor utility and availability, with impact realized in many interdisciplinary fields, as well as in the clinic.
Ambiguous idiom processing in Parkinson's disease patients

Patients affected by Parkinson's disease (PD) can provide crucial information about the involvement of the motor system and prefrontal cortex in processing idioms including action verbs, since dopamine modulates the activity of these structures, and, consequently, different levels of this neurotransmitter can induce different cognitive impairments. In order to investigate the ability to process ambiguous idioms containing an action verb in patients, we asked 15 PD patients, in both OFF- and ON-phases, and 15 healthy matched participants to judge the plausibility of literal and idiomatic sentences, each presented at a self-paced rate. Patients in OFF-phase were faster in reading idiomatic than literal sentences, supporting the view that the motor system is not involved in online idiom processing. However, patients during OFF-phase were impaired in judging the plausibility of idiomatic ambiguous sentences, possibly due to the reduction of dopamine in prefrontal regions. The involvement of the motor system was evident in the ON-phase for literal sentences, suggesting that motor activation is strictly dependent on the context.
At the source: treating heart failure by altering muscle motor function.

### Cardiac Myosin Activation: A Potential Therapeutic Approach for Systolic Heart Failure Malik et al Science . 2011;331:1439–1443. A new study in Science provides proof of the principle for directly modulating the cardiac muscle's motor, myosin, as a therapeutic target in heart failure. The human and economic tolls from heart failure (HF) are significant in both developed and undeveloped countries.1–3 Although HF can take many forms,4,5 it is most commonly associated with decreased cardiac contractility and is, therefore, referred to as systolic HF (sHF). 6 Current therapeutic strategies rely on blocking neurohormonal activation by inhibiting associated pathways or by receptor blockade using either β-adrenergic or aldosterone blockers.7,8 Alternatively, some therapies are directed at increasing cardiac contractility in an effort to restore sufficient blood flow, usually by activating second messenger signaling pathways that increase cardiomyocyte calcium levels and augment sarcomere contraction.9 Both strategies suffer from a lack of specificity in that they target proteins upstream of the actual contractile events that underlie force production. Affecting important signaling pathways or receptor-ligand interactions can impact cellular function and perturb homeostasis in ways unrelated to the contractile apparatus, leading to undesirable side effects, such as hypotension, tachycardia, and even arrhythmias that can lead to sudden death.10 Recognizing the significant limitations of current therapeutic modalities, Malik and co-workers have directed their efforts at directly modulating cardiac contractility by tuning motor function at the source, the myosin heavy chain. The cardiac myosin heavy chains are encoded by two genes, MYH6 , which encodes α myosin heavy chain, and MYH7 , which encodes β myosin heavy chain, the latter being the predominant isoform in human ventricle. Although having greater than 90% amino acid homology, the two proteins differ significantly at the biochemical level. In comparison with α myosin, β myosin is relatively more efficient in force production as a function of energy consumption, with …
Toward AI research methodology: three case studies in evaluation

The roles of evaluation in empirical artificial intelligence (AI) research are described, in an idealized cyclic model and in the context of three case studies. The case studies illustrate the pitfalls in evaluation and the contributions of evaluation at all stages of the research cycle. Evaluation methods are contrasted with those of the behavioral sciences, and it is concluded that AI must define and refine its own methods. To this end, several experiment schemas and many specific evaluation criteria are described. Recommendations are offered in the hope of encouraging the development and practice of evaluation methods in AI. The first case study illustrates problems with evaluating knowledge-based systems, specifically a portfolio management expert system called FOLIO. The second study focuses on the relationship between evaluation and the evolution of the GRANT system, specifically, how the evaluations changed as GRANT's knowledge base was sealed up. Third, the cyclic nature of a given research model is examined. >
On Energy Efficiency Maximization in Downlink MIMO Systems Exploiting Multiuser Diversity

Energy efficiency (EE) maximization in MIMO systems has received much attention in next generation wireless communications. Within recent years, a lot of great works have been proposed to improve EE dramatically by power allocation and/or antenna selection. However, the systems significantly exploiting multiuser diversity were not considered in these works. With rapid popularization of wireless communication devices, the increasing density of user equipments (UEs) brings more multiuser diversity gain to be exploited. In this letter, we study the joint EE maximization over power allocation, UE and antenna selection. It will be shown that the maximum EE can be achieved by switching on all the antennas and selecting as many UEs as possible in a time slot with significant multiuser diversity. Simulation results demonstrate that with over tens of UEs, the proposed strategy can achieve less than 2% loss of EE compared to exhaustive antenna set selection.
The Impact of the Near-Tip Logic on the Accuracy and Convergence Rate of Hydraulic Fracture Simulators Compared to Reference Solutions

We benchmark a series of simulators against available reference solutions for propagating plane-strain and radial hydraulic fractures. In particular, we focus on the accuracy and convergence of the numerical solutions in the important practical case of viscosity dominated propagation. The simulators are based on different propagation criteria: linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM), cohesive zone models/tensile strength criteria, and algorithms accounting for the multi-scale nature of hydraulic fracture propagation in the near-tip region. All the simulators tested here are able to capture the analytical solutions of the different configurations tested, but at vastly different computational costs. Algorithms based on the classical LEFM propagation condition require a fine mesh in order to capture viscosity dominated hydraulic fracture evolution. Cohesive zone models, which model the fracture process zone, require even finer meshes to obtain the same accuracy. By contrast, when the algorithms use the appropriate multi-scale hydraulic fracture asymptote in the near-tip region, the exact solution can be matched accurately with a very coarse mesh. The different analytical reference solutions used in this paper provide a crucial series of benchmark tests that any successful hydraulic fracturing simulator should pass.
Ab initio construction of protein tertiary structures using a hierarchical approach.

We present a hierarchical method to predict protein tertiary structure models from sequence. We start with complete enumeration of conformations using a simple tetrahedral lattice model. We then build conformations with increasing detail, and at each step select a subset of conformations using empirical energy functions with increasing complexity. After enumeration on lattice, we select a subset of low energy conformations using a statistical residue-residue contact energy function, and generate all-atom models using predicted secondary structure. A combined knowledge-based atomic level energy function is then used to select subsets of the all-atom models. The final predictions are generated using a consensus distance geometry procedure. We test the feasibility of the procedure on a set of 12 small proteins covering a wide range of protein topologies. A rigorous double-blind test of our method was made under the auspices of the CASP3 experiment, where we did ab initio structure predictions for 12 proteins using this approach. The performance of our methodology at CASP3 is reasonably good and completely consistent with our initial tests.
The PACRAT system: an extensible WWW-based system for correlated sequence retrieval, storage and analysis

With PACRAT (Patterns, Analyses, Correlations. Remote Archive Testbed) we present an online database solution to the problem of accessing high-confidence sequences with specific relationships to classes of genes, such as upstream intergenic regions attached to tRNA genes. In addition the software contains a data warehousing and analysis-facilitating suite to streamline the process of analyzing the collected data. An unexpected additional benefit of the system is that it also provides easy access to sequences of lower confidence, and may be of assistance in such things as resolving ORF-call conflicts in genomic annotation projects.
Implementation Of Turbo Coded OFDM For PAPR Reduction using Modified Selective Mapping Technique

Multi-carrier modulation is an attractive technique for fourth generation wireless communication.Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is an efficient method of data transmission for high speed communication systems. However, the main drawback of OFDM system is that, it exhibits high Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signals. Many techniques have been proposed to mitigate the PAPR problem. Except for the signal distortion techniques such as clipping, peak windowing and companding and so on. The redundancy based PAPR reduction techniques include selective mapping, partial transmit sequence, tone reservation, tone injection and coding,etc information The undesired effects occurring to the distortion techniques can be alleviated with the penalty of the reduced transmission rates due to introduction of redundancy. In a turbo coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (TCOFDM) system, low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) can be achieved by selective-mapping (SLM). OFDM consist of large number of independent subcarriers, as a result of which the amplitude of such a signal can have high peak values. The . Selected Mapping (SLM) and turbo coding is one of the promising PAPR reduction techniques for OFDM.In a turbo coded orthogonal frequency- division multiplexing (TCOFDM) system, low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) can be achieved by selective-mapping (SLM). In this thesis, the issue of PAPR in OFDM is discussed. Two new methods are proposed to reduce the PAPR . first method is carried out by selecting mapping, the input sequence properly using a Hamming code and second method by turbo code using convolution encoder. These two methods provide less PAPR and also reduce BER.
Distinguishing the communicative functions of gestures An experiment with annotated gesture data

This paper deals with the results of a machine learning experiment conducted on annotated gesture data from two case studies (Danish and Estonian). The data concern mainly facial displays, that are annotated with attributes relating to shape and dynamics, as well as communicative function. The results of the experiments show that the granularity of the attributes used seems appropriate for the task of distinguishing the desired communicative functions. This is a promising result in view of a future automation of the annotation task.
Guided hyperplane evolutionary algorithm

A new evolutionary technique for multicriteria optimization called Guiding Hyper-plane Evolutionary Algorithm (GHEA) is proposed. The originality of the approach consists in the fact that the fitness assignment is realized by using a guiding hyperplane and a new non Pareto optimality concept. Numerical experiments illustrate the performance of GHEA compared with the popular NSGA-II and SPEA2.