Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Body Mass Index and Skinfold Thickness Measurements as Body Composition Screening Tools in Caucasian and African American Youth

There is growing concern regarding childhood obesity and its impact on children’s health, and many states and school districts have mandated that health assessments be conducted as part of physical education. Tools such as the FITNESSGRAM® (Welk & Meredith, 2008) can help teachers inform students and parents if students are above a healthy weight range. The FITNESSGRAM body composition assessment helps teachers categorize students as being in the Healthy Fitness Zone® or the Needs Improvement Zone based on skinfold thickness measurements or body mass index (BMI; kg/m2) data based on height and weight. The BMI or skinfold thickness cut-points at which a child is considered to be above a healthy weight were developed from data collected between 1983 and 1985 on Caucasian and African American children 5–18 years of age who participated in the Bogalusa Heart Study (Williams et al., 1992). These cut-points reflect a level of body fatness associated with greater health risk for cardiovascular disease (Higgins, Gower, Hunter, & Goran, 2001; Williams et al., 1992). The FITNESSGRAM values for BMI reflect a body fatness of approximately 25% for boys and 32% for girls, irrespective of race or ethnic group. These standards were established after estimating body fatness in children and comparing it with the risk for elevated blood pressure, total cholesterol, and serum lipoprotein ratio. Percent body fat calculated from the sum of triceps and calf skinfolds is the recommended measure of body composition on the FITNESSGRAM, but BMI is recognized as a suitable alternative. In their systematic review of the criterion-related validity of field-based fitness tests in youth, Castro-Pinero et al. (2009) reported that both these measures correlate well with criterion measures such as dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), but they concluded that skinfold thickness in general more accurately predicts childhood obesity than BMI. Although there is evidence that skinfolds may be a more accurate screening tool, BMI is commonly used because it is more feasible to collect students’ height and weight in school settings with large class sizes. The FITNESSGRAM mean ageand gender-specific BMI cutoff points for children above the healthy weight zone are similar to the 85th percentiles suggested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the points at which an increase in BMI begins to reflect greater body fatness (Freedman et al., 2005). There are, however, differences between the two values, because one indicates an excess level of body fatness associated with health risk and the other reflects the 85th percentile of the sex-specific BMI-for-age CDC growth charts (Kuczmarski et al., 2002). When BMI is used as a screening tool to identify overweight children, there is a lack of clarity concerning what Body Mass Index and Skinfold Thickness Measurements as Body Composition Screening Tools in Caucasian and African American Youth
Sampled-data consensus for multi-agent systems with quantised communication

This paper studies the sampled-data consensus problem of first-order and second-order multi-agent systems (MASs) with logarithmic quantised information transmission. Both undirected and directed communication topologies are considered. Under the undirected connected communication topology, we adopt for each agent the standard consensus protocols based on the logarithmic quantised relative states between neighbouring agents. Under the directed communication topology, so as to preserve the weighted average of agents’ states, we utilise the encoding/decoding strategy to transmit quantised information and estimate neighbouring agents’ states, and then, distributed control laws based on the state estimates are employed for each agent. Under both kinds of communication topologies, we prove that, for any given sampling period, by designing appropriate control gains, first-order MASs can reach consensus for any given quantiser accuracy, while second-order MASs can reach consensus if the quantiser accuracy is small enough. In all cases, the consensus states are presented explicitly. Finally, four numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of our results.
Length dependence of RNA-RNA annealing.

The association of complementary nucleic acids can be described by a second order rate constant k. For extended molecules, including complex nucleic acids, values of k were shown to be proportional to the square root of the chain length L of the shorter nucleic acid strand at temperatures between tm and tm-30 degrees C. For homopolymers this is true over a wider temperature range. Below temperatures of tm-30 degrees C, annealing rate constants may sharply decrease due to the formation of intramolecular structures. It seems to be reasonable to assume that the formation of intramolecular structures of nucleic acids reduces the density of nucleation sites for annealing and, thereby, lowers the rates of association. Here, we examined the relationship between RNA chain length and the kinetics of RNA-RNA annealing at physiological ionic strength and temperature. We used a complete sequence space derived from chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (cat) sequences to average over all structures for each given length. For groups of progressively longer antisense RNA species and a 800 nucleotides long complementary RNA, the observed annealing rate constants kobs were measured in vitro. The structure-averaged values for kobs of RNA-RNA annealing were not related to the square root of the chain length. Instead, they were found to be proportional to 10(alphaL) (alpha=0.0017). Here, a theoretical model is suggested in which the observed length dependence is mainly influenced by ionic interactions between complementary RNA strands. The observed length dependence has substantial implications for the biological behavior of long-chain complementary RNA including the design of antisense RNA. The efficacy of antisense RNA in living cells is known to be related to annealing kinetics in vitro. Thus, on a statistical basis and independent of individual structures, long-chain rather than short-chain antisense RNA should lead to stronger inhibition.
“She Deserved It”

Effects of ambivalent sexism, sexism norms, victim behavior, and type of violence on male students’ reactions to male violence against women in intimate relationships were examined. Participants judged a scenario depicting an act of sexual or non-sexual violence against a female partner who had either shown overtly sexual or non-sexual behavior toward another man. Generally, high (vs. low) hostile sexism, high (vs. low) hostile sexism norm feedback, and victim’s overtly sexual (vs. non-sexual) behavior led to stronger victim blame and perceived approval of the aggressor’s behavior. The victim of non-sexual violence was blamed more than the rape victim, particularly if she had behaved in an overtly sexual manner.
Analysis and design of phase shift full bridge converter with series-connected two transformers

A new phase shift full bridge (PSFB) converter with series-connected two transformers is proposed. The proposed converter shows wide zero voltage switching (ZVS) ranges and no output inductor is needed since each transformer individually acts as an inductor or a transformer during different times of the switching cycle. The operational principle, large signal modeling, and design equations are presented. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed converter can achieve a significant improvement in the efficiency for a 100W (5 V, 20 A) telecommunication on-board power supply.
Coalition-assisted energy efficiency optimization via uplink macro-femto cooperation

In this paper, we develop a macro-femto cooperation strategy for uplink transmissions of multi-channel two-tier networks, which aims at alleviating the co-channel interference and optimizing the energy efficiency of macro-users (MUEs) and femto-users (FUEs) simultaneously. Specifically, the features of our work include three folds. First, our proposed strategy allows the MUE to select a femto-access point (FAP) to perform hybrid access, which efficiently eliminates the cross-tier interference. Second, by adopting the coalitional game in partition form, the users with strong mutual interference form a coalition to share the channel in a time-division multiplexing manner such that the intra-coalition interference can be avoided. The corresponding time-division policy is obtained by employing the Nash bargaining solution. Third, the inter-coalition resource competition problem is solved within a non-cooperative energy efficiency game framework and the transmit power for each user is derived through Nash equilibrium. Theoretical analysis shows that our proposed strategy can efficiently improve the energy efficiency of FUEs. Also provided are simulation results which demonstrate the performance superiority of our developed strategy over the non-cooperative scheme in terms of user's energy efficiency and data transmission rate.
Factor Substitution and Inappropriate Use of Antipsychotics in Nursing Homes

Antipsychotics are indicated to treat schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, but nursing homes have been criticized previously for using them as chemical restraints to treat behavior problems, especially for residents with dementia. We find that nearly one-in-four nursing home residents with dementia that lack severe behavioral symptoms are prescribed an antipsychotic medication. Using an instrumental variables approach, we investigate whether an increase in nursing home wages leads to greater substitution towards antipsychotic medications. Our results suggest a $100 increase in weekly nursing home wages increases the inappropriate use of antipsychotics among dementia patients by 2% to 6.5%. This finding suggests policymakers should consider nursing home market factors when overseeing and regulating issues of nursing home quality. JEL Codes: I12, L1, J4
Synmon Architecture for Source-based SYN-flooding Defense on Network Processor

Distributed denial-of-service attacks remains to inflict damage to Internet services, after almost five years since its large-scale explosion. The demand for robust and high-speed firewall has led to the advent of hardware-based DDoS defense systems. Network processor is becoming the cornerstone of many new firewall designs due to its programmability and high performance packet processing ability. In this paper, we propose an innovative and practical syn-flooding defense system built on network processor. An embedded architecture, called synmon is proposed. We characterize our solution as a source-based autonomous system which resides in upstream border routers. It detects a wide-range of attacks and blocks a large portion of attack traffic before flooding into the core network. Change-point detection algorithm is employed to detect the occurrence of syn-flooding attack. It performs per-flow attack detection based on SYN and ACK packets exchanged in TCP friendly flow. A fuzzy-based adaptive rate-limiting mechanism is proposed to restrict the intensity of outgoing SYN packets. Under the per-flow mitigation scheme, while the attacker is penalized with limited outgoing connection, the legitimate clients in the same subnet are free from collateral damage. A hardware prototype of synmon embedded router is developed. We demonstrate that the synmon architecture seamlessly integrates with common routing tasks while providing cost-effective service for SYN-flooding defense system on the network processor platform
Which B2B e-business model: the case of Australian agribusiness organisations

The growing importance of B2B e-commerce has seen the need for the development of a model to assist in the choice of e-business models. This paper explores the internal and external factors influencing the choice of e-business models using depth interviews and case studies conducted with Australian agribusiness organisations. Sixteen factors, were identified with only 11 regarded as important to the selection of e-business models.
Requirement analysis by the KJ editor

The KJ method, a technique for obtaining a panoramic view of entire index card arrangements on a computer display, is described. The KJ editor simulates the activity of arranging index cards on a desk. Such activity is essential for carrying out the so-called KJ method, which is used in Japanese business. The editor is used for requirements analysis. It is found that the editor can be used for recording the analytical thinking process and that the resultant chart becomes a very good medium communication between the design and the sponsor/user. <<ETX>>
Improving mining efficiency: A new scheme for extracting association rules

In the age of information technology, the amount of accumulated data is tremendous. Extracting the association rule from this data is one of the important tasks in data mining.Most of the existing association rules in algorithms typically assume that the data set can fit in the memory.In this paper, we propose a practical and effective scheme to mine association rules from frequent patterns, called Prefixfoldtree scheme (PFT scheme). The original dataset is divided into folds, and then from each fold the frequent patterns are mined by using the tree projection approach.These frequent patterns are combined into one set and finally interestingness constraints are used to extract the association rules.The experiments will be conducted to illustrate the efficiency of our scheme.
Circularly Polarized Reconfigurable Crossed-Vagi Patch Antenna

A reconfigurable crossed-Vagi patch antenna (CYPA) that yields a circularly polarized pattern is proposed, and optimized by a novel Jumping-Genes Genetic Algorithm. This antenna is formed by two identical orthogonal reconfigurable linear Vagi patch arrays, around a single driven patch element. The main lobe of the reconfigurable crossed-Yagi patch antenna covers the elevation angles from 0° to 47° with a peak gain of 8.68 dBi. Full azimuthal coverage can be achieved by switching among the four antenna modes. The design justification has been duly demonstrated based on fabricated prototypes. The effect of a MEMS switch on the reconfigurable Vagi antennas is investigated. The reactance introduced by the switch can be offset by modifying the dimensions of a loaded slot. Due to the distinctive features of this antenna, satellite communications and global positioning systems would be the most suitable targets for application.
PARSEME – PARSing and Multiword Expressions within a European multilingual network

The aim of this paper is to present PARSEME, a COST Action devoted to the issue of Multiword Expressions in parsing and in linguistic resources (corpora, lexicons). This is a “meta-paper” intended to be the main citation point for any future work referring to PARSEME: it does not describe in detail any single result of the Action, but rather summarises its multifarious activities and provides links to such results (both completed and in progress).
Activation of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase abolishes insulin-mediated myocardial protection against ischemia-reperfusion injury.

Myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury contributes significantly to morbidity and mortality in patients with diabetes. Insulin decreases myocardial infarct size in animals and the rate of apoptosis in cultured cells. Ischemia-reperfusion activates p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), which regulates cellular apoptosis. To examine whether p38 MAPK affects insulin's cardioprotection against ischemia-reperfusion injury, we studied overnight-fasted adult male rats by use of an in vivo rat model of myocardial ischemia-reperfusion. A euglycemic clamp (3 mU.min(-1). kg(-1)) was begun either 10 min before ischemia (InsulinBI), 5 min before reperfusion (InsulinBR), or 30 min after the onset of reperfusion (InsulinAR), and continued until the end of the study. Compared with saline control, insulin decreased the infarct size in both InsulinBI (P < 0.001) and InsulinBR (P < 0.02) rats but not in InsulinAR rats. The ischemic area showed markedly increased phosphorylation of p38 MAPK compared with the nonischemic area in saline animals. Acute activation of p38 MAPK with anisomycin (2 mg/kg iv 10 min before ischemia) had no effect on infarct size in saline rats. However, it completely abolished insulin's protective effect in InsulinBI and InsulinBR rats. Activation of p38 MAPK by anisomycin was associated with marked and persistent elevation in IRS-1 serine phosphorylation. Treatment of animals with SB-239063, a potent and specific inhibitor of p38 MAPK, 10 min before reperfusion enabled insulin-mediated myocardial protection in InsulinAR rats. We conclude that insulin protects myocardium against ischemia-reperfusion injury when given prior to ischemia or reperfusion, and activation of p38 MAPK abolishes insulin's cardioprotective effect.
The Sources of On-Line Price Dispersion Across Product Types: An Integrative View of On-Line Search Costs and Price Premiums

This article analyzes the price dispersion for products observed on the Internet and reaffirms the existence of substantial price dispersion across e-tailers. Comparison of advertised vs. unadvertised products reveals that predictions of search theory on advertising effect are generally not confirmed in the Internet market. Comparison of multi-channel vs. pure-play e-tailers reveals that multi-channel retailers with established brands in physical stores command price premiums in most on-line markets but not in very competitive markets like books, CDs, and flight tickets. A model is developed that uses cross-site and in-site search as search cost variables, and range of product options, product description, and product demonstration as Web site service feature variables. It is used to test when search cost variables are more salient than service feature variables, and vice versa. The results show that whether a variable accounts for variance in prices differs from product to product. Some service features enable e-retailers to charge higher prices without losing competitiveness; others do not offer price advantage because they represent lower cost structures that allow e-tailers to charge lower prices to become more competitive.
The Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES): Validity as a Screening Instrument for PTSD

The Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES) is a brief child-friendly measure designed to screen children at risk for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It has good face and construct validity, a stable factor structure, correlates well with other indices of distress, and has been used to screen very large samples of at-risk-children following a wide range of traumatic events. However, few studies have examined the scale's validity against a structured diagnostic interview based on the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD. In the present study, the CRIES and the PTSD section of the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule-Child and Parent Version (ADIS-CP) were administered to a sample of children and adolescents (n=63) recruited from hospital accident and emergency rooms and the validity of the CRIES as a screening tool evaluated. Cutoff scores were chosen from this sample with a low base-rate of PTSD (11.1%) to maximize sensitivity and minimize the likelihood that children with a diagnosis of PTSD would fail to be identified. Cutoff scores were then cross-validated in a sample of 52 clinically referred children who had a high base-rate of PTSD (67.3%). A cutoff score of 30 on the CRIES-13 and a cutoff score of 17 on the CRIES-8 maximized sensitivity and specificity, minimized the rate of false negatives, and correctly classified 75–83% of the children in the two samples. The CRIES-8 (which lacks any arousal items) worked as efficiently as the CRIES-13 (which includes arousal items) in correctly classifying children with and without PTSD. Results are discussed in light of the current literature and of the need for further development of effective screens for children at-risk of developing PTSD.
Modeling tool for calculating dietary iron bioavailability in iron-sufficient adults

Background: Values for dietary iron bioavailability are required for setting dietary reference values. These are estimated from predictive algorithms, nonheme iron absorption from meals, and models of iron intake, serum ferritin concentration, and iron requirements. Objective: We developed a new interactive tool to predict dietary iron bioavailability. Design: Iron intake and serum ferritin, a quantitative marker of body iron stores, from 2 nationally representative studies of adults in the United Kingdom and Ireland and a trial in elderly people in Norfolk, United Kingdom, were used to develop a model to predict dietary iron absorption at different serum ferritin concentrations. Individuals who had raised inflammatory markers or were taking iron-containing supplements were excluded. Results: Mean iron intakes were 13.6, 10.3, and 10.9 mg/d and mean serum ferritin concentrations were 140.7, 49.4, and 96.7 mg/L in men, premenopausal women, and postmenopausal women, respectively. The model predicted that at serum ferritin concentrations of 15, 30, and 60 mg/L, mean dietary iron absorption would be 22.3%, 16.3%, and 11.6%, respectively, in men; 27.2%, 17.2%, and 10.6%, respectively, in premenopausal women; and 18.4%, 12.7%, and 10.5%, respectively, in postmenopausal women. Conclusions: An interactive program for calculating dietary iron absorption at any concentration of serum ferritin is presented. Differences in iron status are partly explained by age but also by diet, with meat being a key determinant. The effect of the diet is more marked at lower serum ferritin concentrations. The model can be applied to any adult population in whom representative, good-quality data on iron intake and iron status have been collected. Values for dietary iron bioavailability can be derived for any target concentration of serum ferritin, thereby giving risk managers and public health professionals a flexible and transparent basis on which to base their dietary recommendations. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01754012.
Effects of electron donor and acceptor conditions on reductive dehalogenation of tetrachloromethane by Shewanella putrefaciens 200

Shewanella putrefaciens 200 is a nonfermentative bacterium that is capable of dehalogenating tetrachloromethane to chloroform and other, unidentified products under anaerobic conditions. Since S. putrefaciens 200 can respire anaerobically by using a variety of terminal electron acceptors, including NO3-, NO2-, and Fe(III), it provides a unique opportunity to study the competitive effects of different electron acceptors on dehalogenation in a single organism. The results of batch studies showed that dehalogenation of CT by S. putrefaciens 200 was inhibited by O2, 10 mM NO3-, and 3 mM NO2-, but not by 15 mM Fe(III), 15 mM fumarate, or 15 mM trimethylamine oxide. Using measured O2, Fe(III), NO2-, and NO3- reduction rates, we developed a speculative model of electron transport to explain inhibition patterns on the basis of (i) the kinetics of electron transfer at branch points in the electron transport chain, and (ii) possible direct inhibition by nitrogen oxides. In additional experiments in which we used 20 mM lactate, 20 mM glucose, 20 mM glycerol, 20 mM pyruvate, or 20 mM formate as the electron donor, dehalogenation rates were independent of the electron donor used. The results of other experiments suggested that sufficient quantities of endogenous substrates were present to support transformation of tetrachloromethane even in the absence of an exogenous electron donor. Our results should be significant for evaluating (i) the bioremediation potential at sites contaminated with both halogenated organic compounds and nitrogen oxides, and (ii) the bioremediation potential of iron-reducing bacteria at contaminated locations containing significant amounts of iron-bearing minerals.