Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Higher Intake of Dairy Is Associated with Lower Cardiometabolic Risks and Metabolic Syndrome in Asian Indians

There is conflicting evidence about the association between dairy products and cardiometabolic risk (CMR). We aimed to assess the association of total dairy intake with CMR factors and to investigate the association of unfermented and fermented dairy intake with CMR in Asian Indians who are known to have greater susceptibility to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases compared to white Europeans. The study comprised 1033 Asian Indian adults with normal glucose tolerance chosen from the Chennai Urban Rural Epidemiological Study (CURES). Dietary intake was assessed using a validated open-ended semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Metabolic syndrome (MS) was diagnosed based on the new harmonising criteria using central obesity, dyslipidaemia [low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) and increased serum triglycerides (TG)], hypertension and glucose intolerance. Increased consumption of dairy (≥5 cups per day of total, ≥4 cups per day of unfermented or ≥2 cups per day of fermented dairy) was associated with a lower risk of high fasting plasma glucose (FPG) [hazards ratio (HR), 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.68, 0.48–0.96 for total dairy; 0.57, 0.34–0.94 for unfermented dairy; and 0.64, 0.46–0.90 for fermented dairy; p < 0.05 for all] compared to a low dairy intake (≤1.4 cups per day of total dairy; ≤1 cup per day of unfermented dairy; and ≤0.1 cup per day of fermented dairy). A total dairy intake of ≥5 cups per day was also protective against high blood pressure (BP) (HR: 0.65, 95% CI: 0.43–0.99, p < 0.05), low HDL (HR: 0.63, 95% CI: 0.43–0.92, p < 0.05) and MS (HR: 0.71, 95% CI: 0.51–0.98, p < 0.05) compared to an intake of ≤1.4 cups per day. A high unfermented dairy intake (≥4 cups per day) was also associated with a lower risk of high body mass index (BMI) (HR: 0.52, 95% CI: 0.31–0.88, p < 0.05) compared to a low intake (≤1 cup per day), while a reduced risk of MS was observed with a fermented dairy intake of ≥2 cups per day (HR: 0.71, 95% CI: 0.51–0.98, p < 0.05) compared to an intake of ≤0.1 cup per day. In summary, increased consumption of dairy was associated with a lower risk of MS and components of CMR.
A program for the solution of a class of geometric-analogy intelligence-test questions

13,072. Brandenberger, J. E. May 31. 1913, [Convention date]. Compound fabrics and sheet materials. -Films for photographic and like purposes consist of two previously prepared outer films of regenerated cellulose enclosing between them a perfectly uniform layer of plastic material, such as gelatine, resin, paraffin, rubber, or mixtures containing oil. In preparing the film, the cellulose films are unwound from rolls D, D over cylinders A, A placed close together and heated by steam &c. , the distance between the cylinders being adjustable. The plastic material is fed into the gap E between the films, and the composite film passes over a series of cylinders B, which may be heated when heat is necessary to set the plastic material. One of the two outer films may be glued to a strip of paper, fabric, metal, or other thin sheet material, and powder, fibres, blades, spangles, and other solid substances may be mixed with the plastic material.
Frequency decoding subject to dose conservation: firing rate response of periodically driven spiking models

In this work we consider a periodically forced generic integrate-and-fire model with a unique attracting equilibrium in the subthreshold dynamics and study the dependence of the firing rate on the frequency of the drive. The biological motivation underlying this work is the differential control exerted by the hypothalamic gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH), which is secreted in a pulsatile manner, on the secretion of the pituitary hormones FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) and LH (lutenizing hormone) according to GnRH pulse frequency. Our forcing satisfies the constraint of dose conservation, which can be interpreted as fixing the average GnRH concentration, while the frequency, amplitude and duty cycle are allowed to vary. The bifurcation structure in the parameter space formed by these last ones has been rigorously studied in \cite{GraKruCle13} where the firing rate was related with the rotation number of the existing periodic orbits. In this work we rigorously study how these bifurcation structures behave upon frequency variation. This allows us to show that the dependence of the firing rate on frequency of the drive follows a devil's staircase with non-monotonic steps and that there is an optimal response in the whole frequency domain. We also characterize certain bounded frequency windows in which the firing rate exhibits a bell-shaped envelope with a global maximum.
Report to the Congress: Medicare and the Health Care Delivery System

for inviting the Commission to be here this morning to discuss MedPAC’s annual report on Medicare and the healthcare delivery system. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission is a Congressional support agency that provides independent, nonpartisan policy and technical advice to the Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program. The Commission’s goal is to achieve a Medicare program that assures beneficiary access to high-quality care, pays health care providers and plans fairly by rewarding efficiency and quality, and spends tax dollars responsibly.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TURKISH TEACHERS' SELF-EFFICACY AND GRAMMAR SELF-EFFICACY PERCEPTIONS

Self-efficacy is people's belief in themselves for a goal they want to achieve. When both the relevant literature and the course contents of the education faculties in Turkey are examined, it is seen that grammar is an important area of competence in terms of teaching Turkish. This study focused on the relationship between Turkish teachers' self-efficacy and grammar self-efficacy perceptions. A mixed-methods research design was used in the research. The quantitative dimension consists of two scales, and the qualitative dimension is conducted with an interview. TSES and GSES questionnaires were applied to 404 participants who work as Turkish teachers in public schools in Turkey and agreed to participate in the research voluntarily. In order to examine the data obtained from the questionnaires in depth, a focus group interview was conducted with 6 participants who worked as Turkish teachers in public schools in Turkey and voluntarily agreed to participate in the research. According to the findings obtained from the research, a significant and positive relationship is observed between Turkish teachers' self-efficacy and grammar selfefficacy perceptions. It is shown that both self-efficacy and grammar self-efficacy perceptions of the participants did not differ significantly according to the gender variable.
The SimIIR 2.0 Framework: User Types, Markov Model-Based Interaction Simulation, and Advanced Query Generation

Simulated user retrieval system interactions enable studies with controlled user behavior. To this end, the SimIIR framework offers static, rule-based methods. We present an extended SimIIR 2.0 version with new components for dynamic user type-specific Markov model-based interactions and more realistic query generation. A flexible modularization ensures that the SimIIR 2.0 framework can serve as a platform to implement, combine, and run the growing number of proposed search behavior and query simulation ideas.
Investigating the influence of video-dubbing tasks on EFL learning

This study investigates the effects of completing video-dubbing tasks on English speaking proficiency, English public speaking anxiety (EPSA), and group cohesion (GC). Two classes of EFL college students were assigned to either the dubbing group or the comparison group. Both groups began by responding to the EPSA scale, the GC scale, and a standardized English speaking test. Next, the dubbing group completed two video-dubbing tasks, for each of which they worked in groups to select a video clip, remove the original soundtrack, rehearse the monologues and dialogues, create a new soundtrack, combine the video clip with the new soundtrack, submit the dubbed video clip, and perform the live dubbing in class. In contrast, during the weeks when the dubbing group performed live dubbing, the comparison group watched and discussed movies in English. Finally, both groups took the post-test comprising the two scales and a second set of the standardized English speaking test. The synthesis of quantitative and qualitative findings revealed that, firstly, video-dubbing tasks constituted an entertaining task that could enhance English speaking proficiency. Second, completing video-dubbing tasks reduced foreign language anxiety but not English public speaking anxiety. Third, group cohesion increased substantially as a result of accomplishing video-dubbing tasks.
Weighted shortest path in equilateral triangular meshes

Let T be a tessellation composed of equilateral triangular regions, in which each region has an associated positive weight. We present two approximation algorithms for solving the Weighted Region Prob-lem. Our algorithms are based on the method of discretizing the space by placing points on the cells of the tessellation and using Dijkstra’s algorithm for computing the weighted shortest path in the geometric graph obtained by such a discretization. For a given parameter ε ∈ [0 , 1], the weight of our paths are Å
B2B Advertising: Joint Dynamic Scoring of Account and Users

When a business sells to another business (B2B), the buying business is represented by a group of individuals, termed account, who collectively decide whether to buy. The seller advertises to each individual and interacts with them, mostly by digital means. The sales cycle is long, most often over a few months. There is heterogeneity among individuals belonging to an account in seeking information and hence the seller needs to score the interest of each individual over a long horizon to decide which individuals must be reached and when. Moreover, the buy decision rests with the account and must be scored to project the likelihood of purchase, a decision that is subject to change all the way up to the actual decision, emblematic of group decision making. We score decision of the account and its individuals in a dynamic manner. Dynamic scoring allows opportunity to influence different individual members at different time points over the long horizon. The dataset contains behavior logs of each individual’s communication activities with the seller; but, there are no data on consultations among individuals which result in the decision. Using neural network architecture, we propose several ways to aggregate information from individual members’ activities, to predict the group’s collective decision. Multiple evaluations find strong model performance.
Counterfactual Examples for Human Inverse Reinforcement Learning

Humans naturally communicate their decision-making through demonstrations, and infer others’ decision-making through reasoning that resembles inverse reinforcement learning (IRL). Though robots may also convey their decision-making to humans through demonstrations, standard IRL misrepresents human inference, often yielding ineffective demonstrations. Critically, the counterfactuals considered by standard IRL often do not match those considered by humans, and can misjudge a demonstration’s informative-ness to humans. This paper thus aims to more effectively convey robot policies to humans by maintaining a more accurate model of human knowledge throughout the demonstration process. We present a novel approach for evaluating a demonstration’s informativeness via counterfactuals likely to be considered by humans based on their current expectations of the robot’s policy. In addition, we investigate how scaffolding the number of features conveyed via demonstrations can improve informativeness. Finally, we show how to evaluate the expected difficulty for a human to predict an instance of a robot’s behavior based on their belief of the robot’s decision-making. We conclude by proposing an experiment that will evaluate the aforementioned methods.
Spectrally regularized surfaces

Priors play an essential role in Bayesian theory, and they are frequently center stage in scientific inference. In image processing, geometric priors became very popular in the past decades because of their physical explanation. They usually favor sparsity in the result in order to remove the noise. However, the sparsity might not only remove the noise, but also the details of the surface. In this thesis, we argue what priors should be imposed for certain types of surfaces and how they can be imposed efficiently in a variational framework. We show that spectral priors can preserve the details while removing noise efficiently. These priors lead to spectral regularizations that are more general than geometric ones, but more specific than entropy regularizations. In order to infer the distribution of a certain geometric property, such as curvature, over a surface from a finite number of discrete samples observed from that surface, we either need a regularizationfree method for surface reconstruction or directly infer the property from the samples. We first show a novel method that can reconstruct a closed surface from a finite point cloud without any regularization. Thanks to the regularization-freeness, we can directly extract prior information from the reconstructed surfaces. Directly learning from the samples, we investigate the gradient distribution of digital natural-scene images. We provide two parametric models for this distribution and analyze their properties, such as fitting accuracy, sparsity, entropy, and computational efficiency. In order to impose these priors in an application, we present a generic variational model with spectral regularization. We discuss several special cases of this model that recover to well-known models in the field. We analyze the role of regularization coefficient and how it is related to the convexity of the model. We illustrate several applications of this model with gradient distribution priors in image processing problems, including image enhancement, denoising, blind deconvolution, and scatter light removal. Considering second-order derivatives, we first show an efficient filter that can minimize total Gaussian curvature over a surface. Based on the same theory, we then extend this to filters for minimizing mean curvature and total variation. We finally extend these curvature filters to spectral regularization. We close by discussing the advantages and disadvantages of spectrally regularized surfaces and discussing possible future work.
Flocking of multi-robot systems with connectivity maintenance on directed graphs

Analysis and design techniques for cooperative flocking of nonholonomic multi-robot systems with connectivity maintenance on directed graphs are presented. First, a set of bounded and smoothly distributed control protocols are devised via carefully designing a class of bounded artificial potential fields (APF) which could guarantee the connectivity maintenance, collision avoidance and distance stabilization simultaneously during the system evolution. The connectivity of the underlying network can be preserved, and the desired stable flocking behavior can be achieved provided that the initial communication topology is strongly connected rather than undirected or balanced, which relaxes the constraints for group topology and extends the previous work to more generalized directed graphs. Furthermore, the proposed control algorithm is extended to solve the flocking problem with a virtual leader. In this case, it is shown that all robots can asymptotically move with the desired velocity and orientation even if there is only one informed robot in the team. Finally, nontrivial simulations and experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Chapter 1 PRODUCTION OFMULTIPLE 87 RB CONDENSATES AND ATOM LASERS BY RF COUPLING

One of the major goals in the study of Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) in dilute atomic gases has been the realization and development of atom lasers. An atom laser may be understood as a source of coherent matter waves. One can extract coherent matter waves from a magnetically trapped Bose condensate. Schemes to couple the atomic beam out of the magnetic trap have been demonstrated [1, 2, 3, 4]. In the experiments of [1, 2] the output coupling is performed by the application of a radio–frequency (rf) field that induces atomic transitions to untrapped Zeeman states. The atom laser described in [3] is based on the Josephson tunnelling of an optically trapped condensate and in [4] a two–photon Raman process is described that allows directional output coupling from a trapped condensate. Characterizing the output coupler is necessary to understand the atom laser itself. The literature dealing with theoretical descriptions of output couplers for Bose–Einstein condensates has focused both on the use of rf transitions [5, 6, 7, 8] and Raman processes [9]. Rf output coupling is based on single– or multi– step transitions between trapped and untrapped atomic states. As a consequence, a rich phenomenology arises that include the observation of ”multiple” condensates corresponding to atoms in different atomic states. These may display varied dynamical behaviour while in the trap. Also, both pulsed and continuous output–coupled coherent matter beams have been observed. The phenomenology is made even more varied by the possibility of out–coupling solely under gravity and also of magnetically pushed out beams. The apparatus operated by the Florence group [10] offers the
Groupes de Chow-Witt

Dans ce travail, nous etudions les groupies de Chow- Witt. Ces groupes ont ete introduits par J. Barge et F. Morel dans le but de comprendre dans quelle situation un A-module projectif P de rang egal a la dimension de A est isomorphe a un module projectif plus simple Q ⊕ A. Dans un premier temps, nous montrons que ces groupes satisfont a peu de choses pres les proprietes fonctorielles des groupes de Chow classiques. Nous definissons ensuite pour tout O X -module localement libre E de rang (constant) n sur un schema regulier X de dimension m ≥ n une classe d'Euler c n (E) qui est un raffinement de laclasse de Chern maximale classique c n (E). Cette classe d'Euler satisfait elle aussi de bonnes proprietes fonctorielles. Nous obtenons en particulier que si P est un projectif de rang n sur un anneau regulier A de dimension superieure ou egale a n tel que P ≃ Q ⊕ A alors c n (P) = 0. Nous calculons dans un second temps les groupes de Chow-Witt maximaux d'un anneau regulier de dimension 2 et d'une R-algebre A reguliere de dimension quelconque. Il decoule immediatement de ces calculs que si P est un A-module projectif de rang n egal a la dimension de l'anneau on a c n (P) = 0 si et seulement si P ≃ Q ⊕ A. Finalement nous examinons les liens entre les groupes de Chow-Witt et les groupes des classes d'Euler introduits par S. Bhatwadekar et R. Sridharan.
Decomposing Interaction and Mediating Effects of Race/Ethnicity and Circulating Cystatin C on Cognitive Status in the United States Health and Retirement Study

Background and objectives: Elevated circulating cystatin C is associated with cognitive impairment in non-Hispanic Whites, but its role in racial disparities in dementia is understudied. In a nationally representative sample of older non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic adults in the United States, we use mediation-interaction analysis to understand how racial disparities in the cystatin C physiological pathway may contribute to racial disparities in prevalent dementia. Methods: In a pooled cross-sectional sample of the Health and Retirement Study (n=9,921), we employed Poisson regression to estimate prevalence ratios and to test the relationship between elevated cystatin C (>1.24mg/L versus <1.24mg/L) and impaired cognition, adjusted for demographics, behavioral risk factors, and other biomarkers. Self-reported racialized social categories were a proxy measure for exposure to racism. We calculated additive interaction measures and conducted four-way mediation-interaction decomposition analysis to test the moderating effect of race/ethnicity and mediating effect of cystatin C on the racial disparity. Results: Overall, elevated cystatin C was associated with dementia (prevalence ratio [PR] = 1.4; 95%CI: 1.2, 1.8). Among non-Hispanic Black relative to non-Hispanic White participants, the relative excess risk due to interaction was 1.7 (95% CI: -0.2, 3.7), the attributable proportion was 0.2 (95%CI: 0.0, 0.5), and the synergy index was 1.4 (95% CI: 1.0, 2.0) in a fully-adjusted model. Elevated cystatin C was estimated to account for 2% (95% CI: -0%, 4%) for the racial disparity in prevalent dementia, and the interaction accounted for 9% (95% CI: -4%, 23%). Analyses for Hispanic relative to non-White participants suggested moderation by race/ethnicity, but not mediation. Discussion: Elevated cystatin C was associated with dementia prevalence. Our mediation-interaction decomposition analysis suggested that the effect of elevated cystatin C on the racial disparity might be moderated by race/ethnicity, which indicates that the racialization process affects not only the distribution of circulating cystatin C across minoritized racial groups, but also the strength of association between the biomarker and dementia prevalence. These results provide evidence that cystatin C is associated with adverse brain health and this effect is larger than expected for individuals racialized as minorities had they been racialized and treated as non-Hispanic White.
Are total omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids predictors of fatal stroke in the Adventist Health Study 2 prospective cohort?

Introduction The effects of omega-3 (n-3) and omega-6 (n-6) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) on cerebrovascular disease remain unsettled. However, most studies have focused on marine sourced n-3 PUFA rather than total n-3 PUFA, of which the majority in the American diet is plant derived. This study therefore intended to investigate these effects in a cohort for which the vegetarian diet was more prevalent than the general public. Methods Cox proportional hazards with fatal stroke as the outcome was performed on the approximately 96,000 subject Adventist Health Study 2 prospective cohort. Stratification by race and sex was performed on models with a priori covariables, comparing 90th to 10th percentile daily intakes of energy-adjusted total n-3 PUFA, total n-6 PUFA, and the n-6 / n-3 PUFA ratio as variables of interest. Results For the main analytical group (78,335 subjects), the hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) for total n-3 PUFA was 0.65 (0.51–0.83), and for total n-6 PUFA was 1.37 (1.02–1.82), while adjusting for both fatty acids in the model. The n-6 / n-3 PUFA ratio was harmful with a HR of 1.40 (1.16–1.69), whereas the inclusion of total n-3 PUFA slightly attenuated the HR to 1.33(1.02–1.74). Effects were similar for the non-black sex-combined and sex-specific analyses. Conclusion In most analytic groups, subjects with greater total n-3 PUFA intakes have lower risk of fatal stroke, and those with a higher n-6 / n-3 PUFA ratio had higher risk. However, the n-6 / n-3 PUFA ratio remains statistically significant even after adjusting for total n-3 PUFA or total n-6 PUFA, suggesting that the ratio is of epidemiologic interest for cerebrovascular disease research.