Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Successful Aging in Canada: Prevalence and Predictors from a Population-Based Sample of Older Adults

Background: Little research has been conducted to thoroughly explore the prevalence and predicators of successful aging (SA) from a national point of view. Objectives: The objectives of this study were (1) to estimate the prevalence of SA as defined by Rowe and Kahn using a large population-based dataset and (2) to determine the roles of sociodemographic, psychological, and lifestyle factors in SA among Canadian seniors. Methods: Data was from the Canadian Community Health Survey: Healthy Aging (CCHS-HA) (n = 25,864) conducted in 2008-2009. Rowe and Kahn's concept was used to measure SA. Descriptive analyses were used to estimate the prevalence of SA in those aged 45+ living in private dwellings in the ten provinces of Canada. Multivariate logistic regression was used to assess predicators of SA among those aged 65+ and having complete data on cognition. Results: The prevalence of SA was 50.1% among those aged 50+, then decreased to 46.2% for those aged 55+, 42.0% for those aged 60+, and 37.2% among those aged 65+. Assuming those 65+ living in institutions as unsuccessful agers, then the prevalence of SA was 35.3% among Canadian seniors aged 65+. There were no differences in prevalence rate of SA between males and females. We did not find higher income associated with SA. Being younger, married, regular drinkers, exercisers, perceived better health, satisfied with life, and taking calcium in the past month were associated with SA. The predicted probability of being a successful ager was 41% for those aged 65-74 years, 33% for 75-84 years, and 22% for those 85+ years, while controlling for other covariates. Presence of disease led to a major decline in SA, levels of functioning and engagement in contrast remained relatively constant. Conclusion: Over one third of the seniors in Canada met the criteria for SA, largely because the operationalization of the definition only considered severe chronic diseases that may not be well managed and thus likely to result in functional impairment. The modifiable risk factors identified provide direction for prevention efforts to increase SA at a population level.
Identification of grazed and mown grasslands using a time series of high-spatial-resolution remote sensing images

In many regions, a decrease of grasslands and change in their management can be observed with agriculture intensification. Hence, the evaluation of grassland status and management in farming systems is a key-issue for sustainable agriculture. However, inventory of grassland surfaces in agricultural areas is very incomplete and the spatiotemporal distribution of their management is still largely unknown. The objective of this study is to identify mown and grazed grasslands from a time series of high spatial resolution images acquired in 2006 on an experimental watershed located in Brittany, France. The coupling of two radiative transfer models (PROSPECT+SAIL) has been applied to the remote sensing images to derive biophysical variables, in order to identify grassland management. Then, based on training samples, the classification of the temporal profiles extracted from the images was performed using three different methods with increasing automation: a knowledge-based classification, a k-nearest neighborhood and a decision tree procedure.
Securing Humanitarian Information Exchange: A Mediator-Wrapper Architecture

Reliable and secure information exchange, which is crucial for successful response to crisis by humanitarian organizations, requires the responding groups to swiftly organize themselves in new and dynamic ways. Within these resulting impromptu structures, planning, negotiation, and coordination poses significant problems, due to the heterogeneity of the technologies in place. A plethora of technical solutions have been proposed to solve information exchange issues. However, they thought of security as an ad-hoc, especially authentication, authorization, and access control. This paper proposes a conceptual platform, the Secured Humanitarian Information Sharing Architecture (SHISA) , that enables heterogeneous humanitarian systems to exchange information while considering authentication, authorization, and access control. SHISA standardizes communication through the exchange of encrypted XML documents. It uses the Privilege Management Infrastructure (PMI) for authentication and authorization. The platform utilizes the mechanisms of indexing and impersonation to control data access so that humanitarian organizations' users access only the information they need.
An 8-bit 440-MS/s pipelined Analog-to-Digital Converter in 0.13-µm CMOS

In this paper, an 8-bit, 440-MS/s pipelined Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) is presented. The ADC utilizes double-sampling in order to relax the operational amplifier (opamp) settling time requirements. Redundant sign digit (RSD) correction compensates offset errors of the comparators. The ADC is designed with a 0.13-µm CMOS process. Simulated effective number of bits (ENOB) of the ADC is 7.09 with the most critical parasitics included and 162-MHz full-scale input, while the current drawn from 1.2V supply is 83mA.
The Extraction of Trading Rules From Stock Market Data Using Rough Sets

We propose the rough set approach to the extraction of trading rules for discriminating between bullish and bearish patterns in the stock market. Rough set theory is quite valuable for extracting trading rules because it can be used to discover dependences in data while reducing the effect of superfluous factors in noisy data. In addition, it does not generate a signal to trade when the pattern of the market is uncertain because the selection of reducts and the extraction of rules are controlled by the strength of each reduct and rule. The experimental results are encouraging and show the usefulness of the rough set approach for stock market analysis with respect to profitability.
Computing biodiversity change via a soundscape monitoring network

A monitoring network for biodiversity change is essential for wildlife conservation. In recent years, many soundscape monitoring projects have been carried out to investigate the diversity of vocalizing animals. However, the acoustic-based biodiversity assessment remains challenging due to the lack of sufficient recognition database and the inability to disentangle mixed sound sources. Since 2014, an Asian Soundscape monitoring project has been initiated in Taiwan. So far, there are 15 recording sites in Taiwan and three sites in Southeast Asia, with more than 20,000 hours of recordings archived in the Asian Soundscape. In this study, we employed the visualization of long-duration recordings, blind source separation, and clustering techniques, to investigate the spatio-temporal variations of forest biodiversity in the Triangle Mountain, Lienhuachih, and T aipingshan. On the basis of blind source separation, biological sounds, with prominent diurnal occurrence pattern, can be separated from the environmental sounds without any recognition database. Thus, clusters of biological sounds can be effectively identified and employed to measure the daily change in bioacoustic diversity. Our results show that the bioacoustic diversity was higher in the evergreen broad-leaved forest. However, the seasonal variation in bioacoustic diversity was most evident in the high elevation coniferous forest. This study demonstrates that a suitable integration of machine learning and ecoacoustics can facilitate the evaluation of biodiversity changes. In addition to biological activities, we can also measure the environmental variability from soundscape information. In the future, the Asian Soundscape will not only serve as an open database for soundscape recordings, but also will provide tools for analyzing the interactions between biodiversity, environment, and human activities.
Natural occurrence of ochratoxin A in wolfberry fruit wine marketed in China

Wolfberry fruit wine (WFW) is widely used as a global functional food to improve the immune system and prevent human disease. A total of 36 bottled WFWs were randomly collected in China between 2005 and 2010. Samples were analysed for the presence of ochratoxin A (OTA) using immunoaffinity column (IAC) clean-up and high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FLD). Positive results were confirmed by liquid chromatography–electrospray ionisation–tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS). The limit of detection (LOD), based on a signal-to-noise ratio of 3, was 0.05 ng mL–1. Recoveries ranged from 78.3% to 94.7% and relative standard deviations from 1.1% to 4.3% within the spiking range of 0.2–20 ng mL–1. OTA was detected in one sample, below the maximum allowable limit as established by the European community.
Nonrandom Distribution of Hepatitis C Virus Quasispecies in Plasma and Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cell Subsets

ABSTRACT The existence of an extrahepatic reservoir of hepatitis C virus (HCV) is suggested by differences in quasispecies composition between the liver, peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and serum. We studied HCV RNA compartmentalization in the plasma of nine patients, in CD19+, CD8+, and CD4+ positively selected cells, and also in the negatively selected cell fraction (NF). HCV RNA was detected in all plasma samples, in seven of nine CD19+, three of eight CD8+, and one of nine CD4+ cell samples, and in seven of eight NF cells. Cloning and sequencing of HVR1 in two patients showed a sequence grouping: quasispecies from a given compartment (all studied compartments for one patient and CD8+ and NF for the other) were statistically more genetically like each other than like quasispecies from any other compartment. The characteristics of amino acid and nucleotide substitutions suggested the same structural constraints on HVR1, even in very divergent strains from the cellular compartments, and homogeneous selection pressure on the different compartments. These findings demonstrate the compartmental distribution of HCV quasispecies within peripheral blood cell subsets and have important implications for the study of extrahepatic HCV replication and interaction with the immune system.
Enterovirus 71 and Coxsackievirus A16 3C Proteases: Binding to Rupintrivir and Their Substrates and Anti-Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease Virus Drug Design

ABSTRACT Enterovirus 71 (EV71) and coxsackievirus A16 (CVA16) are the major causative agents of hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD), which is prevalent in Asia. Thus far, there are no prophylactic or therapeutic measures against HFMD. The 3C proteases from EV71 and CVA16 play important roles in viral replication and are therefore ideal drug targets. By using biochemical, mutational, and structural approaches, we broadly characterized both proteases. A series of high-resolution structures of the free or substrate-bound enzymes were solved. These structures, together with our cleavage specificity assay, well explain the marked substrate preferences of both proteases for particular P4, P1, and P1′ residue types, as well as the relative malleability of the P2 amino acid. More importantly, the complex structures of EV71 and CVA16 3Cs with rupintrivir, a specific human rhinovirus (HRV) 3C protease inhibitor, were solved. These structures reveal a half-closed S2 subsite and a size-reduced S1′ subsite that limit the access of the P1′ group of rupintrivir to both enzymes, explaining the reported low inhibition activity of the compound toward EV71 and CVA16. In conclusion, the detailed characterization of both proteases in this study could direct us to a proposal for rational design of EV71/CVA16 3C inhibitors.
Vocational Rehabilitation in Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders: A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Although most individuals with schizophrenia are unemployed, plentiful evidence suggests that work rehabilitation is effective for this population. Yet, there have been only 11 published randomized controlled trials of work rehabilitation interventions for people with severe mental illness. We review these 11 studies, 9 of which were trials examining Individual Placement and Support (IPS) or supported employment (SE) interventions. Outcomes strongly favored the experimental groups in terms of the percentage of participants who worked at any point during the studies (weighted mean effect size = 0.66). In the 5 investigations comparing IPS/SE to conventional vocational rehabilitation services, 51% of the participants receiving IPS/SE worked competitively, versus 18% of those in the comparison groups (weighted mean effect size = 0.79). This effect size may be a useful benchmark for future trials. Further investigations should examine individual differences as predictors of response, to identify modifiable versus nonmodifiable factors that yield better outcomes.
Designing Incentives for Crowdsourced Tasks via Multi-armed Bandits

We have examined to apply the multi-armed bandit (MAB) techniques to the incentive design problem in crowdsourcing. So far, researchers studied the effects of various incentives including financial and social ones. The effect of these incentives, however, may differ in different tasks and/or at a different time, which makes difficult to find an appropriate incentive out of the whole design space of incentives is difficult. To overcome this difficulty, we take a data-driven approach instead of trying to find a universally effective incentive. More specifically, we apply MAB algorithms to the incentive design problem. MAB problems are a theoretical model of exploration-exploitation tradeoffs in reinforcement learning. We evaluated the effects of the nine incentives by using the task of word search puzzles published on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Based on the obtained data, we further evaluated the performance of typical MAB algorithms by simulation. The results show that applying the MAB algorithms are effective to obtain the appropriate incentive design.
Gender in Environmental Context: The Effect of Property Rights, Fines, and Empathy Nudging

Experimental economics research shows that gender can often explain some of the variation in individual behavior in experiments. This is especially true for contextualized games (corruption, environmental protection) in which participants’ behavior is guided by homegrown values and predispositions. We examine the gender differences in environmental behavior and the sharing of payoffs between a farmer and a water user under two alternative property rights assignments (farmer/polluter vs. water user/victim) and three methods of feedback (inducing empathy vs. imposing fine vs. no feedback). We found mixed evidence of gender differences concerning the choice of levels of pollution. Overall, albeit not always statistically significant, it seems that females are sharing with their group members more than males. Specifically, the results suggest that females are often more empathetic than males when they are in a position of a victim (water user). In a position of a polluter (farmer), in contrast, females and males are almost equally empathetic. Overall imposing monetary fines is counterproductive and decreases environmentally friendly behavior (however it does not significantly affect sharing), while empathy nudging increases sharing behavior (however it does not significantly affect environmentally friendly behavior). Empathy nudging is more effective for females than for males. Imposing fines, however, has no significant gender effect for either conservation or sharing behavior. Our findings provide another argument for increased gender equality based on environmentally sustainable economic development and thus propose a push by national governments as well as international organizations to increase the economic role of women.
Banking Biological Collections: Data Warehousing, Data Mining, and Data Dilemmas in Genomics and Global Health Policy

While DNA databases may offer the opportunity to (1) assess population-based prevalence of specific genes and variants, (2) simplify the search for molecular markers, (3) improve targeted drug discovery and development for disease management, (4) refine strategies for disease prevention, and (5) provide the data necessary for evidence-based decision-making, serious scientific and social questions remain. Whether samples are identified, coded, or anonymous, biological banking raises profound ethical and legal issues pertaining to access, informed consent, privacy and confidentiality of genomic information, civil liberties, patenting, and proprietary rights. This paper provides an overview of key policy issues and questions pertaining to biological banking, with a focus on developments in specimen collection, transnational distribution, and public health and academic-industry research alliances. It highlights the challenges posed by the commercialization of genomics, and proposes the need for harmonization of biological banking policies.
Genome Sequence of Pseudomonas putida Strain SJTE-1, a Bacterium Capable of Degrading Estrogens and Persistent Organic Pollutants

ABSTRACT Pseudomonas putida strain SJTE-1 can utilize 17β-estradiol and other environmental estrogens/toxicants, such as estrone, and naphthalene as sole carbon sources. We report the draft genome sequence of strain SJTE-1 (5,551,505 bp, with a GC content of 62.25%) and major findings from its annotation, which could provide insights into its biodegradation mechanisms.
Influence of convection on the water isotopic composition of the tropical tropopause layer and tropical stratosphere

[1] We present the first in situ measurements of HDO across the tropical tropopause, obtained by the integrated cavity output spectroscopy (ICOS) and Hoxotope water isotope instruments during the Costa Rica Aura Validation Experiment (CR-AVE) and Tropical Composition, Cloud and Climate Coupling (TC4) aircraft campaigns out of Costa Rica in winter and summer, respectively. We use these data to explore the role convection plays in delivering water to the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) and stratosphere. We find that isotopic ratios within the TTL are inconsistent with gradual ascent and dehydration by in-situ cirrus formation and suggest that convective ice lofting and evaporation play a strong role throughout the TTL. We use a convective influence model and a simple parameterized model of dehydration along back trajectories to demonstrate that the convective injection of isotopically heavy water can account for the predominant isotopic profile in the TTL. Air parcels with significantly enhanced water vapor and isotopic composition can be linked via trajectory analysis to specific convective events in the Western Tropical Pacific, Southern Pacific Ocean, and South America. Using a simple model of dehydration and hydration along trajectories we show that convection during the summertime TC4 campaign moistened the upper part of the TTL by as much as 2.0 ppmv water vapor. The results suggest that deep convection is significant for the moisture budget of the tropical near-tropopause region and must be included to fully model the dynamics and chemistry of the TTL and lower stratosphere.
A Model for a Multiresolution Time Series Database System

: In this paper we propose a model for multiresolution time series database management systems. This model stores compactly a time series and manages consistently its temporal dimension. This is achieved by extracting different resolutions and attributes summaries from the original time series. Our work is concerned in putting together two areas of study: time series analysis and database management systems. Time series analysis offers a great deal of methodologies and algorithms to process time series data. Database systems ﬁeld provides software expertise in managing data. Therefore, for many applications it is of primary relevance that database systems support time series.
Incorporation of Lean Red Meat into a National Cholesterol Education Program Step I Diet: A Long-Term, Randomized Clinical Trial in Free-Living Persons with Hypercholesterolemia

Objective: Clinicians often recommend that intake of all meat, particularly red meat, be reduced in conjunction with a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet to reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. This study was designed to determine the long-term effects of lean red meat (beef, veal and pork) compared to lean white meat (poultry and fish) consumption on lipoprotein concentrations in free-living hypercholesterolemic subjects consuming a National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) Step I diet. Methods: A randomized, crossover design was utilized. Hypercholesterolemic men and women (LDL cholesterol between 3.37 and 4.92 mmol/L) (triglycerides <3.96 mmol/L) (n = 145) were counseled to consume ≥80% of their 170 g/d meat intake as either lean red meat or lean white meat for two 36-week phases, separated by a four-week washout period of free meat selection. Subjects were instructed to follow an NCEP Step I diet throughout the study. Results: There were no significant differences in lipid concentrations between the lean red meat and lean white meat phases. LDL cholesterol was 4.02 ± 0.04 (SEM) and 4.01 ± 0.04 mmol/L in the white and red phases, respectively; this represented a decrease of ∼2% from baseline concentrations (p < 0.01). Total cholesterol also declined by 1% from baseline (p < 0.05), and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol rose over the study period by ∼2% to ∼3% from baseline to reach concentrations of 1.37 ± 0.03 mmol/L and 1.38 ± 0.03 mmol/L in the white and red phases, respectively (p < 0.001). Triglycerides were not altered by treatment. Conclusions: Consumption of lean red meat or lean white meat, as part of an NCEP Step I diet, is similarly effective for reducing LDL cholesterol and elevating HDL cholesterol concentrations in free-living persons with hypercholesterolemia.
Stirred suspension bioreactors as a novel method to enrich germ cells from pre‐pubertal pig testis

To study spermatogonial stem cells the heterogeneous testicular cell population first needs to be enriched for undifferentiated spermatogonia, which contain the stem cell population. When working with non‐rodent models, this step requires working with large numbers of cells. Available cell separation methods rely on differential properties of testicular cell types such as expression of specific cell surface proteins, size, density, or differential adhesion to substrates to separate germ cells from somatic cells. The objective of this study was to develop an approach that allowed germ cell enrichment while providing efficiency of handling large cell numbers. Here, we report the use of stirred suspension bioreactors (SSB) to exploit the adhesion properties of Sertoli cells to enrich cells obtained from pre‐pubertal porcine testes for undifferentiated spermatogonia. We also compared the bioreactor approach with an established differential plating method and the combination of both: SSB followed by differential plating. After 66 h of culture, germ cell enrichment in SSBs provided 7.3 ± 1.0‐fold (n = 9), differential plating 9.8 ± 2.4‐fold (n = 6) and combination of both methods resulted in 9.1 ± 0.3‐fold enrichment of germ cells from the initial germ cell population (n = 3). To document functionality of cells recovered from the bioreactor, we demonstrated that cells retained their functional ability to reassemble seminiferous tubules de novo after grafting to mouse hosts and to support spermatogenesis. These results demonstrate that the SSB allows enrichment of germ cells in a controlled and scalable environment providing an efficient method when handling large cell numbers while reducing variability owing to handling.