Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analyses of the anthropometric data from the North/South Ireland Food Consumption Survey

Abstract Objective To obtain measured anthropometric data for weight, height and other parameters not previously measured in the Irish population such as waist and hip circumferences and body composition. Design A cross-sectional survey. Weight, height, waist circumference, hip circumference and body composition were measured according to standard procedures. Setting Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, 1997–1999. Subjects Random representative sample of 1379 adults aged 18–64 years. Results: With the exception of body fat, all anthropometric values were significantly higher for men than women (P < 0.001). All measurements were significantly higher in the 36–50-year-old age group compared with 18–35 year olds. Height was the exception, which decreased significantly with age (P < 0.05). Weight, height and body mass index (BMI) have increased in Ireland since last measured in 1988 and in 1990. Over the last decade, obesity has increased in men 2.5 fold from 8% to 20% and in women by 1.25 fold from 13% to 16%. Significantly more women have a normal BMI than men (50.4% vs. 33.3%; P < 0.05). Cut-off points for a high waist circumference and high waist-to-hip ratio identified 47% and 33% of the population, respectively, to be at an increased risk for cardiovascular disease. Social class did not have any significant effect on mean BMI. Location of residence influenced BMI but not in any consistent manner. Ex-smokers had a significantly higher BMI than nonsmokers and smokers (P < 0.05). Conclusions A revision of current recommendations for combating obesity is warranted to improve the health of the Irish population. Further research is needed to identify the factors that have contributed to the dramatic increase in the prevalence of obesity in men over the last decade and have resulted in a higher prevalence of obesity in men than in women.
Coordinated control for frequency regulation in microgrids using RES, battery storage and demand response

This paper presents a coordinated control scheme for frequency regulation in an islanded microgrid having high penetration of renewables (Photovoltaic Power System, Wind Turbine Generator) along with a diesel generator, a battery energy storage system (BESS), and controllable loads. Although demand response through thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) has good ability to regulate frequency in such microgrids, customers do not always cherish their manipulation. This paper considers the constraints in the manipulation of TCLs. The proposed coordinated control scheme regulates the system frequency in accordance with IEEE Standards 1547 using TCLs, Photovoltaic (PV) Power System, BESS, and diesel generator. IEEE 13 bus balanced industrial distribution network is modified and used for the simulation study in MATLAB/Simulink using Power Analysis Toolbox environment.
Effect of the TiO 2 nanoparticles on the selected physical properties of mineral trioxide aggregate

Background: Some of the efforts to improve the properties of Mineral Trioxide Aggregate (MTA) include incorporation of some nanoparticles such as Titanium dioxide (TiO2). The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of TiO2 nanoparticles on the setting time, working time, push-out bond strength and compressive strength of MTA. Material and Methods: The physical properties to be evaluated were determined using the ISO 6786:2001 and 9917 specifications. Fifteen samples of each material (MTA or MTA with 1% weight ratio of TiO2 Nanoparticles) were prepared for any evaluated physical property. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and T-test. Statistical significance was set at P<0.05. Results: There was the significant effect of the material type (presence and absence of TiO2 nanoparticles) on the push-out bond strength, compressive strength, working time and setting time, with significantly higher values achieved in the group with TiO2 nanoparticles than the group without these particles (P=0.01 for the setting time and compressive strength, P=0.03 for the working time and P=0.001 for the bond strength). Conclusions: Based on the findings of this in vitro study, incorporation of the TiO2 nanoparticles with weight ratio of 1% increased the setting time, working time, compressive strength and push out bond strength of MTA.
Sequential Hypothesis Testing With Bayes Factors: Efficiently Testing Mean Differences

Unplanned optional stopping rules have been criticized for inflating Type I error rates under the null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) paradigm. Despite these criticisms, this research practice is not uncommon, probably because it appeals to researcher’s intuition to collect more data to push an indecisive result into a decisive region. In this contribution, we investigate the properties of a procedure for Bayesian hypothesis testing that allows optional stopping with unlimited multiple testing, even after each participant. In this procedure, which we call Sequential Bayes Factors (SBFs), Bayes factors are computed until an a priori defined level of evidence is reached. This allows flexible sampling plans and is not dependent upon correct effect size guesses in an a priori power analysis. We investigated the long-term rate of misleading evidence, the average expected sample sizes, and the biasedness of effect size estimates when an SBF design is applied to a test of mean differences between 2 groups. Compared with optimal NHST, the SBF design typically needs 50% to 70% smaller samples to reach a conclusion about the presence of an effect, while having the same or lower long-term rate of wrong inference.
mStress : Supporting Continuous Collection of Objective and Subjective Measures of Psychosocial Stress on Mobile Devices

Excessive, chronic, and repeated exposure to psychological stress can lead to significant health problems. However, new methods for better coping with stress that could significantly improve health and quality of life, cannot be developed and evaluated without scientifically valid datasets describing the experience of stress in everyday life. In prior research, scientifically valid datasets have been difficult to capture from natural environments. Sensors, which continuously capture objective information about physiology and behavior, are prone to noise and failure. In addition, aspects of everyday life (e.g., conversation, exercise, etc.) interfere with the physiological response to stress, making it difficult to tease out the effect of stress from changes in physiology. To overcome the challenges of assessing both exposures and responses to stressful events, new wireless sensing systems are needed to capture scientifically valid datasets describing the experience of stress in natural environments. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of mStress, a smartphone (Android G1) based system that continuously collects and processes multi-modal measurements from six body-worn wireless sensors to infer in real-time whether the subject wearing the sensors is stressed. mStress generates prompts for timely collection of self-reports, triggered by real-time changes in stress level inferred by the system, to collect the subjective experience of stress when it is fresh in the participant’s mind. To improve the quality of data, mStress incorporates several features including paying micro-incentives for timely completion of self-reports, realtime detection of and response to confounding factors that affect physiological signals, and real-time detection of sensor detachments so the participant can rectify themselves. All of this functionality occurs entirely on the mobile phone without any help from the back-end cloud. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. ACM Wireless Health 2010 San Diego, California USA Copyright 20XX ACM X-XXXXX-XX-X/XX/XX . $10.00. mStress was used by 23 human volunteers in a scientific study, in which each participant wore the sensors and provided self-reports during their wake hours for one full day in their natural environment. The phone lasted over 14 hours. Over 200 million samples of sensor measurements were collected, 19,000 stress predictions were made, and 803 prompts for self-report were answered, 98% of which were completed within 7 minutes of the prompt.
Improved dsrA-Based Terminal Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis of Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria

ABSTRACT To better describe the community structure of sulfate-reducing bacteria in environmental systems, we compared several dissimilatory sulfite reductase (dsr) primer sets for terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism application. A new reverse primer that increased allelic diversity estimates up to 5-fold was applied to hydrocarbon seep samples to examine the relationship between guild activity and diversity.
Prenatal glucocorticoid exposure alters hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal function and blood pressure in mature male guinea pigs

Pregnant guinea pigs were treated with dexamethasone (1 mg kg−1) or vehicle on days 40–41, 50–51 and 60–61 of gestation, after which animals delivered normally. Adult male offspring were catheterized at 145 days of age and subjected to tests of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis function in basal and activated states. Animals exposed to dexamethasone in utero (mat‐dex) exhibited increased hippocampus‐to‐brain weight ratio, increased adrenal‐to‐body weight ratio and increased mean arterial pressure. There were no effects on gestation length, birth weight and postnatal growth. There were no overall differences in diurnal plasma adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and cortisol profiles, though there were subtle differences during the subjective afternoon between control and mat‐dex offspring. A significant decrease in initial ACTH suppression was observed following dexamethasone injection in mat‐dex offspring compared to control offspring. Molecular analysis revealed significantly increased MR mRNA expression in the limbic system and particularly in the dentate gyrus in mat‐dex offspring. In the anterior pituitary, both pro‐opiomelanocortin (POMC) and glucocorticoid receptor (GR) mRNA levels were significantly elevated in mat‐dex offspring. In conclusion, (1) repeated prenatal treatment with synthetic glucocorticoid (sGC) permanently programmes organ growth, blood pressure and HPA regulation in mature male offspring and these changes involve modification of corticosteroid receptor expression in the brain and pituitary; (2) the effects of prenatal sGC exposure on HPA function appear to change as a function of age, indicating the importance of investigating HPA and cardiovascular outcome at multiple time points throughout life.
Perceived Parental Attachment, Personality Characteristics, and Cognition in Male Incest

The aim of this study was to investigate the multiple pathways of perceived child-rearing practices, cognitive-executive functions, and personality characteristics in incest and other sexual offenders. The participants consisted of 217 male sexual offenders who were in custody in southern Taiwan. Participants were divided into two groups of 25 incest and 192 nonincest sexual offenders. The incest offenders tended to be less extraverted and worse in abstract reasoning ability, and to have more perseverative thinking, and perceived less parental care than other sexual offenders. Moreover, the structural equation model showed that the effect of parental care on the type of sexual offense is mediated by cognitive-executive functions and personality traits. This finding suggests that the personality traits, cognitive function, and parental attachment of incest offenders differ from other sexual offenders. This result can be a helpful reference in sexual-offender intervention programs for relapse prevention.
A deep convolutional neural network for continuous zoom with dual cameras

This paper proposes a convolutional neural network for synthesizing continuous zoom from a pair of images captured by two nearby cameras with two fixed focal lengths. The network is composed of two sub-nets. The first one estimates the disparity map between input images so that they can be aligned. The second sub-net takes the aligned image pair for boosting the image resolution for simulating continuous zoom. We have built a prototype camera system and trained a network for the task. Experiments show that the proposed method can fuse the two captured images effectively and enhance the image resolution.
THINKING LIKE A FISH: A KEY INGREDIENT FOR DEVELOPMENT OF EFFECTIVE FISH PASSAGE FACILITIES AT RIVER OBSTRUCTIONS

Worldwide, obstructions on watercourses have interfered with migratory pathways of fish species, reducing life‐cycle success and often eliminating diadromous fish species altogether from river basins. Over the last century, efforts to mitigate these effects were initially directed at developing fishways for upstream, high‐value migrant adult salmon. In more recent years, efforts have turned to developing fishways for other species. Results of past research suggest that the development of effective fishways requires biological knowledge of fish behaviour when encountering variable flows, velocity and turbulence, combined with hydraulic and civil engineering knowledge and expertise to develop facilities that provide appropriate hydraulic conditions that fish will exploit. Further, it often requires substantial financial resources for biological and hydraulic testing as well as engineering design, particularly where prior knowledge of the behaviour of target fish species does not exist. Where biological or engineering knowledge (or both) is absent, development of effective passage facilities must take on a trial and error approach that will almost certainly require years to attain success. Evaluations of existing adult and juvenile fish passage facilities, where they have been carried out, suggest that migrant fish reject areas with hydraulic conditions they determine unsuitable. Even well designed fish ladders or nature‐like bypass channels for upstream migrants, even those with good attraction flows, will fail if incorrectly sited. Although progress has been made, developing successful installations for downstream migrants remains much more difficult, probably because downstream fish move with the flow and have less time to assess cues at entrances to any bypasses that they encounter. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Biomass and Nutrients of Planted and Naturally Occurring Pinus koraiensis in Korea

Biomass and nutrients (mainly nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P)) of Pinus koraiensis Sieb. et Zucc. were reviewed for plantations and naturally occurring stands in Korea. Slopes of allometric equations to estimate biomass were very similar for different locations while intercepts were different both for plantations and naturally occurring stands. Aboveground biomass ranged from 5.5 Mg ha -1 for the 7-year-old plantation to 339.9 Mg ha -1 for the 74-year-old plantation, and stem contained approximately more than 50% of aboveground biomass. In naturally occurring stands, seedling aboveground biomass ranged from 2.2 to 6.6. Mg ha -1 depending on locations, and the contribution of foliage to aboveground biomass was similar to or even sometimes higher than that of stem. Nitrogen and P contents in overstory aboveground vegetation significantly increased with plantation age. Foliage of P. koraiensis in naturally occurring stands contained 56-62% of N and 43-57% of P in total above- plus belowground nutrient contents. Total ecosystem N and P contents of P. koraiensis plantations ranged from 4180 kg ha -1 to 8990 kg ha -1 depending on age, and soils were the largest N and P pools. Nitrogen uptake and retention rapidly increased during the early growing stage due to biomass increase. As the precipitation passes through the canopy its chemistry changed significantly; throughfall and stemflow during the growing season were enriched in all cations and anions.
A Probable Etiology and Pathomechanism of Arousal and Anxiety on Cellular Level. Is it the Key for Recovering from Exaggerated Anxiety

How can stress of life evoke anxiety through the rather simple second messenger system? What is the main difference between acute stress response of humans and wild animals? What are the role of catecholamines and the alterations of carbon dioxide levels in anxiety disorder? How is it possible, that the same kind of stress causes very different symptoms and disorders in different people? How does the Path of Least Resistance work, and what is its importance? Do diseases of any etiology have a common pathogenetic root as a manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? What is the difference between functional and organic brain disorders at the cellular level? What is the pathomechanism of arousal and anxiety on cellular level? How does personality and behaviour affect one`s exposure to diseases? These are not easy questions, and we don’t expect to find perfectly accurate answers to all of them. Especially not as we consider, that several decades were not enough to resolve the debate whether hypocapnia would cause anxiety, anxiety would evoke hypocapnia, or they would be mutually correlated making both statements true (Meuret et al., 2005). Although there is a huge amount of controversial data available that cause uncertainty, the authors try to answer these questions. The BASIC idea of Sick Cell Syndrome is connected to Elkinton (1956). A modified universal disease model of Sick Cell Syndrome was constructed by author Sikter (published in 2007, Hungarian). The model is based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is theoretical and practical as well. Adapting it properly may be a key for treating anxiety disorder up to “restitutio ad integrum”. Since Kerr et al`s 1937 publication (as cited in Lum, 1981) there has been a long lasting dispute those who believe anxiety is caused by the lack of carbon dioxide, and those who insist that anxiety induces hypocapnia. Lum wrote the following in an editorial: “Although Kerr et al. (1937) had pointed out that the clinical manifestations of anxiety state were produced by hyperventilation, it was Rice (1950) who turned this concept upside down by stating that the anxiety was produced by the symptoms and, furthermore, that patients could be cured by eliminating faulty breathing habits. Lewis (1964) identified the role of anxiety as a trigger, rather than the prime cause. Given habitual hyperventilation, a variety of triggers, psychic or somatic, can initiate the vicious cycle of increased breathing,
Cost of informal care for community-dwelling mild–moderate dementia patients in a developed Southeast Asian country

ABSTRACT Background: Cost of informal care constitutes an important component of total dementia care cost. It also reflects resource utilization by patients and caregivers. We aim to quantify the informal cost of care for mild to moderate dementia patients. Methods: We recruited 165 patient–caregiver dyads with mild to moderate dementia. Informal care burden was assessed using the Resource Utilization in Dementia (RUD)-Lite instrument. A generalized linear model was fitted for association between cost of informal care and cognitive impairment, taking into account patient demographics, disease factors, and use of paid domestic help. Marginal estimates were obtained from the model for the purpose of illustration and discussion. Results: Total hours of informal care by primary caregiver doubled in moderate dementia patients, with 57.9% having paid domestic help to assist in care. Functional factors and use of paid domestic help were significantly associated with informal care costs. Costs were consistently higher for patients without paid domestic help for mild- and moderate dementia. Conclusion: This study demonstrates the informal care costs of caring for mild–moderate dementia patients in Singapore, with the unique cost savings provided by live-in paid domestic help, and potentially may aid policy-makers in allocation of resources and support to caregivers.
RLC Clock Tree Construction Based on DME Algorithms Associated with Grey Relational Cluster

In this paper, we associate grey relational clustering with DME approach, called GDME, for solving the problem of clock tree construction. The experimental results show that our GDME improves up to 3.58% on total average in terms of total wire length than that of other DME algorithms. Additionally, our results of zero-skew RLC-based clock trees compared with Hspice are lower to 0.017% and 0.2% on absolutely average in terms of skew and delay, respectively. The results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm can get a RCor RLC-based clock tree with zero skew and minimal delay for all the testing cases and benchmarks. IndexTerms— Clock tree, Zero skew, Grey relational cluster, DME (Deferred-Merge Embedding).
Shape of the story: story visualization techniques

There is now a growing awareness of the possibilities for application of natural language in the computing domain by incorporating knowledge of human-to-human interaction. We present an approach that aims to bridge the gap between scripting/storyboarding by a nontechnical creative writer and rendering characters and scenes by a graphics specialist. Natural language processing (NLP) and 3D graphic presentation is used to manipulate 3D scenes in real time. The proposed technique offers a flexible and easy way to generate an interactive 3DVE as compared with traditional 3D packages.
Harassment Due to Gender Nonconformity Mediates the Association Between Sexual Minority Identity and Depressive Symptoms

The visibility of a stigmatized identity is central in determining how individuals experience that identity. Sexual minority status (e.g., identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual) has traditionally been identified as a concealable stigma, compared with race/ethnicity or physical disability status. This conceptualization fails to recognize, however, the strong link between sexual minority status and a visible stigma: gender nonconformity. Gender nonconformity, or the perception that an individual fails to conform to gendered norms of behavior and appearance, is strongly stigmatized, and is popularly associated with sexual minority status. The hypothesis that harassment due to gender nonconformity mediates the association between sexual minority status and depressive symptoms was tested. Heterosexual and sexual minority–identified college and university students (N = 251) completed questionnaires regarding their sexual minority identity, experiences of harassment due to gender nonconformity, harassment due to sexual minority status, and depressive symptoms. A mediational model was supported, in which the association between sexual minority identity and depressive symptoms occurred via harassment due to gender nonconformity. Findings highlight harassment due to gender nonconformity as a possible mechanism for exploring variability in depressive symptoms among sexual minorities.