Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An empirical test of a use-diffusion model for Taiwan mobile digital TV

A Use-Diffusion (UD) model is used to examine Mobile Digital Television (MDTV) in Taiwan to gain a better understanding of the usage habits of MDTV consumers and to explore the factors that contribute to differing levels of UD. Participants were 87 drivers who had installed the product where they could operate it while driving. Three independent variables had a positive impact on use motivation: intensity of communication, average daily driving time and expected passenger use motivation. Additionally, three independent variables had a positive correlation with usage rates: perceived technological sophistication, user innovativeness and frustration in technology. Of the four user categories, intense users and non-specialised users had a higher awareness of MDTV as an essential technology than did specialised and limited users.
An optimized discontinuous crawl gait for quadruped robot

As the walking speed of the discontinuous crawl gait of the quadruped robot is rather slow, an optimized method is proposed for improving the forward walking velocity. To ensure the walking stability, the adjustment process of the center of gravity (COG) of the robot is divided in two types, lateral movement and forward movement respectively. Based on the definition of the inner support polygon, the former searches the desired stable COG position with the minimal moving distance in the lateral direction and the latter searches the maximal moving distance in the front direction respectively. The optimized method of the COG can improve the forward movement velocity with a stable locomotion and the proposed method is simulated and validated based on the simulation model constructed in the robot simulator Webots.
A New Method of Voltage Sag and Swell Detection

The fundamental voltage, current, and phase angle are required for a wide variety of power system applications. An algorithm that is capable of calculating or estimating these quantities in real time, in the presence of distorted waveforms, finds application in diverse areas of power systems. Techniques to detect voltage sag include the root mean square (rms), Fourier transform, and peak voltage detection methods. The problem with these methods is that they use a windowing technique and can therefore be too slow when applied to detect voltage sags for mitigation since they use historical data. Recent work in the field of signal processing has led to an algorithm that can extract a single non-stationary sinusoidal signal out of a given multi-component input signal. The algorithm is capable of estimating the amplitude, phase and frequency. In this paper, the algorithm is compared to existing methods of sag detection
Beneficial effect of the antioxidant riboflavin on gene expression of extracellular matrix elements, antioxidants and oxidases in keratoconic stromal cells

Keratoconus manifests as a conical protrusion of the cornea and is characterised by stromal thinning. This causes debilitating visual impairment which may necessitate corneal transplantation. Therapeutic targets related to disease mechanisms are currently lacking, as the pathobiology remains unclear. Many pathological features may be manifestations of defects in wound healing and reactive oxygen species (ROS)‐associated functions. In a wide range of tissue and cell types, antioxidant exposure has beneficial effects on both of these pathways. This study investigated the effect of treatment with the antioxidant riboflavin on wound healing and ROS‐associated functions in keratoconus.
Predicting Movie Success with Machine Learning and Visual Analytics

Predicting a movie’s opening success is a difficult problem, since it does not always depend on its quality only. External factors such as competing movies, time of the year and even weather influence the success as these factors impact the BoxOffice sales for the moving opening. Nevertheless, predicting a movie’s opening success in terms of BoxOffice ticket sales is essential for a movie studio, in order to plan its cost and make the work profitable. I introduce a simple solution for predicting movie success in terms of financial success and viewer recipience. As a result, this approach achieved decent estimations, allowing theatre planning to a certain extent, even for small studios.
THE COLLETT-LESTER FEAR OF DEATH SCALE: A CORRECTION

A revision of the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale is presented, eliminating a deviant item that reduced the reliability of the scale. Using a sample of 191 undergraduates, four 7-item subscales were derived with adequate reliabilities and factorial congruence for 2 ofthe subscales (Fear of Death of Self and Fear of Dying of Self).
Aural paired-associate learning in children as a function of free-associative strength.

An aural method of presentation was used to investigate the influence of associative strength on the paired-associate learning of 6and 9-year-old children in first and fourth grade. In each grade level, 3 groups of children learned lists of 8 paired associates which varied in associative strength between stimuli and responses. Group I learned a list composed of stimuli and their primary normative responses, half of which were relatively strong and half relatively weak; Group II learned a list in which the same stimuli were paired with nonprimary responses of low normative frequency; Group III learned a list consisting of the same stimuli and responses having no associative relation to the stimuli with which they were paired. Significant differences were obtained in rate of learning as a function of degree of associative strength at both grade levels.
Current hospital disaster preparedness.

SINCE THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, SUBSTANtial resources have been devoted to improving disaster preparedness in the United States, with an emphasis on mitigating terrorist threats. Adequate preparedness can only be achieved with a comprehensive approach that connects local, state, and federal programs. At the local level, planning should include all critical disaster health care resources, including hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, alternate care facilities, public health departments, and emergency medical services systems. Although hospitals are only one component of a regional program for disaster management, they represent a critical link in the system. In 2002, the US Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) established the National Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Program (NBHPP) to improve the preparedness of hospitals. The program’s priorities included improving hospital surge capacity, decontamination capability, and isolation capacity, as well as supplementing pharmaceutical supplies, and supporting training and education. When President Bush reauthorized the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act (Pub L No. 109-417) in 2006, oversight of the NBHPP was moved from HRSA to the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response, and the NBHPP was renamed the Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP).
Serum Folate and Cancer Mortality Among U.S. Adults: Findings from the Third National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey Linked Mortality File

Background: The relation between folate status and cancer is controversial. Several epidemiologic studies have suggested that increased folate intake is associated with reduced risk of various cancers, others have found no such associations, and a few have suggested that high folate intake might increase the risk of certain cancers. Methods: Using data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) Mortality File, a prospective cohort study of a nationally representative sample of 14,611 U.S. adults, we conducted Cox proportional hazards regression modeling to investigate the association of baseline serum folate concentrations and all-cancer mortality determined from linked death certificate data. Results: Relative to the lowest quintile of serum folate (<3.0 ng/mL), the multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios across quintiles 2 to 5 were: 1.61 [95% confidence interval (95% CI), 1.11-2.32], 1.00 (95% CI, 0.65-1.49), 1.39 (95% CI, 0.96-2.03), and 0.85 (95% CI, 0.59-1.22). These findings did not differ substantially by age or sex, but the higher risk for those in the second quintile appeared limited to non-Hispanic whites. Conclusion: These findings suggest that there may be a nonlinear relationship between folate status and the risk of all-cancer mortality such that persons with low, but not grossly deficient, serum blood folate concentrations may be at increased risk. Further study is needed to determine whether these findings are due to chance, and if not, to clarify their biological basis. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(5):1439–47)
Isolation, Sequence Analysis, and Comparison of Two Plasmids (28 and 29 Kilobases) from the Biomining Bacterium Leptospirillum ferrooxidans ATCC 49879

ABSTRACT Two plasmids, of 28,878 bp and 28,012 bp, were isolated from Leptospirillum ferrooxidans ATCC 49879. Altogether, a total of 67 open reading frames (ORFs) were identified on both plasmids, of which 32 had predicted products with high homology to proteins of known function, while 11 ORFs had predicted products with homology to previously identified proteins of unknown function. Twenty-four ORFs had products with no homologues in the GenBank/NCBI database. An analysis of the ORFs and other features of the two plasmids, the first to be isolated from a bacterium of the genus Leptospirillum, is presented.
Validation of self-reported fall events in intervention studies

Objective: To determine if self-reported data recalling at least one fall over a sixmonth recall period could be used as a reliable measure of falls by comparing retrospective self-report with a ‘gold standard' method of reporting these events using a prospective calendar-reported method. Design: Prospective study. Setting: Community-dwelling older people living in New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland in Australia. Subjects: A stratified sample of 264 randomly selected participants from a concurrent randomized controlled trial (RCT) of preventive health assessment for people over the age of 70 years. Interventions: Intervention and control group participants in the RCT kept a calendar of fall events for a six-month validation substudy. At the end of six months, participants were asked to retrospectively report their falls over the six-month period. Main results: Results indicated that percentage agreement between retrospective self-report and the calendar report of falls was 84%, however, sensitivity was 56% (95% confidence interval (CI) 44.1−67.5). Ten participants (4%) gave false positive self-reports of falls, and 33 (13%) participants gave false negative self-reports of falls. Therefore, retrospective self-reported fall rates were likely to involve under-reporting of falls. Significant differences were found in the sensitivity of retrospectively selfreported falls reported by the intervention group participants (sensitivity=71%; 95% CI 56.6−85.5) compared with the control group (sensitivity=40.5%; 95% CI 24.7−56.4, P =0.008). Validity of self-reported injuries as a result of a fall was less accurate (71% agreement; sensitivity 24% (95% CI 16.0−33.6). Conclusions: As recall of falls was more accurate in the intervention group than in the control group, it could appear that the intervention had the effect of increasing falls compared to the control group. Using these results, a method was devised to weight self-reported retrospective data to compensate for the poorer recall demonstrated in the control group, so that a more accurate estimate of falls could be derived from the self-reported data.
TUIO Hackathon

TUIO is an open framework that defines a common protocol and API for tangible- and multitouch-surfaces. The protocol is based on Open Sound Control and allows the platform-independent encoding and transmission of an abstract description of interactive surfaces, including touch events and tangible object states. While the original TUIO specification has been implemented for various hardware and software environments, there are not as many feature complete reference implementations of the next TUIO generation, although its specification [2] has been finalized and partially implemented by community members. The TUIO Hackathon at the International Conference for Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces is addressing expert users and developers of hardware and software environments for surface-based tangible user interfaces that are interested in experimenting with this new framework, with the goal of initiating the development and integration of new TUIO implementations.
Effects of a psycho-educational intervention on direct care workers’ communicative behaviors with residents with dementia

Abstract This study assessed the effects of a person-centered care-based psycho-educational intervention on direct care workers’ communicative behaviors with people with dementia living in aged-care facilities. An experimental study with a pretest–posttest control-group design was conducted in four aged-care facilities. Two experimental facilities received an 8-week psycho-educational intervention aiming to develop workers’ knowledge about dementia, person-centered care competences, and tools for stress management. Control facilities received education only, with no support to deal with stress. In total, 332 morning care sessions, involving 56 direct care workers (female, mean age 44.72 ± 9.02 years), were video-recorded before and 2 weeks after the intervention. The frequency and duration of a list of verbal and nonverbal communicative behaviors were analyzed. Within the experimental group there was a positive change from pre- to posttest on the frequency of all workers’ communicative behaviors. Significant treatment effects in favor of the experimental group were obtained for the frequency of inform (p < .01, η2partial = 0.09) and laugh (p < .01, η2partial = 0.18). Differences between groups emerged mainly in nonverbal communicative behaviors. The findings suggest that a person-centered care-based psycho-educational intervention can positively affect direct care workers’ communicative behaviors with residents with dementia. Further research is required to determine the extent of the benefits of this approach.
Note on transmitted complexity for quantum dynamical systems

Transmitted complexity (mutual entropy) is one of the important measures for quantum information theory developed recently in several ways. We will review the fundamental concepts of the Kossakowski, Ohya and Watanabe entropy and define a transmitted complexity for quantum dynamical systems. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Second quantum revolution: foundational questions’.
An integrative statistical method to explore herbivory-specific responses in plants

Spatial-temporal coordination between multiple processes/pathways is a key determinant of whole-organism transcriptome and metabolome reconfigurations in plant’s response to biotic stresses. To explore tissue-based interdependencies in Nicotiana attenuata’s resistance to insect attack, we performed time course analyses of the plant’s transcriptome and metabolome in herbivory-elicited source leaves and unelicited sink leaves and roots. To dissect the multidimensionality of these responses, we have recently designed a novel approach of constructing interactive motifs by combining an extended self-organizing maps (SOM) based dimensionality reduction method with bootstrap-based non-parametric ANOVA models. In this previous study, we used this method to study nonlinearities in gene-metabolite associations involved in the acyclic diterpene glucoside pathway. Here, we extend the application of this method to the extraction of genes showing herbivory-elicitation specifically in systemic (distal from the treatment sites) tissues using motif analysis for different combinations of treatment applied to Nicotiana attenuata.
Inhibitors of the cell-surface proteinases of the periodontal pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis

Porphyromonas gingivalis is a major pathogen associated with chronic periodontitis. Major virulence factors of this organism are its cell-surface located cysteine proteinases known as gingipains that include the Arg-specific proteinases RgpA, RgpB and the Lys-specific proteinase Kgp. The gingipains have been demonstrated to be essential for the virulence of the organism in animal models of disease. Hence there is considerable interest in the development of specific inhibitors of these proteinases that would be safe for human use. Review of the reported peptide-derived and non-peptide inhibitors of the gingipains reveals a surprising diversity of affinity, specificity and structural features. The ability of the gingipain active site to accommodate various substrates makes structure-based drug design of high specificity inhibitors a challenge. Here, we summarize the structural diversity of known gingipain substrates and inhibitors, including those derived from bovine milk and the gingipain propeptides. Inhibition of the gingipains using these peptides has been shown to reduce bacterial growth, disrupt biofilm development and significantly reduce lesion development in an animal model of infection. Hence these inhibitors may have potential to develop as therapeutics for P. gingivalis-associated periodontitis.
Dynamic symbol pairing PAPR reduction technique for OFDM systems

Due to its high spectral efficiency and inherent robustness against multipath fading channels, OFDM has become a popular solution for various high-speed wireless data transmission systems. However, the OFDM signal has a large PAPR (peak to average power ratio), which results in the significant nonlinear distortion when it passes through a high power amplifier. A number of PAPR reduction techniques have been proposed in the literature, while most of the technique require high computational complexity which is undesirable. In this paper, we propose a unique PAPR reduction method based on intelligent time domain signal paring which can achieve significant PAPR reduction with low complexity.
Neutralizing Activity of Saliva against Cytomegalovirus

ABSTRACT Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease is the leading cause of permanent disability in neonates in the United States. Neutralizing antibodies in saliva may protect against maternal CMV infection by blocking viral entry into oral epithelial cells, but the antibody response to CMV in the saliva following natural infection is not well characterized. Saliva specimens from naturally infected individuals were tested for CMV-neutralizing activity using epithelial and fibroblast cells. Saliva from seronegative adults had no inherent anti-CMV activity. Neutralizing activity of saliva from naturally infected adults was not detectable using fibroblast cells, and saliva from young children, adolescents, and Towne vaccine recipients did not have activity using either cell type. However, when using epithelial cells, neutralizing activity was present in saliva from 50% of seropositive adults, correlated with serum-neutralizing activity, and was more prevalent in mothers of children in day care than in non-day care-associated adults. Three day care mothers with high salivary neutralizing activities (>1:20) had exceptionally high serum-neutralizing titers (3- to 8-fold higher than typical seropositives) and were immunoblot positive for serum antibodies to the epithelial entry mediator UL130. These results suggest that salivary neutralizing activities are attainable by induction of high serum IgG levels and could be utilized to evaluate candidate cytomegalovirus vaccines.
A 4-element dual wideband circular Yagi MIMO antenna system with loop excitation

A 4-element dual-band Circular Yagi based multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system with loop excitation is presented. It has a very wide-bandwidth of 1 GHz in both bands. The lower band covers from 1.45-2.55 GHz while the upper band covers from 3.707-4.71 GHz. This antenna is highly directional with front-to-back ratio (FBR) of 13.8 dB, gain of 6.6 dB and directivity of 7 dB. The proposed antenna shows good MIMO performance in terms of isolation and correlation. It has a minimum isolation of 23 dB across both bands. Due to its geometry configuration, the radiation patterns are orthogonal to each other and hence it has very low correlation coefficient values not exceeding than 0.1338. The size of the single antenna is 78 × 117.5 mm2 while overall size is 263 × 263 mm2.
When more of a good thing is better: reply to Hayes et al. (1996)

More of a good process component is better when clients are not already getting enough. Process components may be in short supply because of limited resources or ignorance, because they are evaluations themselves, or because they are difficult-to-attain subgoals on the way to valued outcomes. Levels of crucially important process components that are not in short supply (including most commonly used therapeutic interventions) are unlikely to be statistical predictors of outcome. Conversely, then, null correlations with outcome do not impugn a component's therapeutic importance. Many of A.M. Hayes, L.G. Castonguay, and M.R. Goldfried's (1996b) examples of positive correlations usefully illustrated clients' cognitive and emotional processes that were treatment subgoals or evaluative indexes. However, by focusing on the (relatively rare) positive correlations, they overlooked the more common null or inconsistent correlations of theoretically important process components with outcome, which are the central topic of the responsiveness critique.
PET Studies of Cerebral Levodopa Metabolism: A Review of Clinical Findings and Modeling Approaches

[18F]Fluoro-3,4-dihydroxyphenyl-L-alanine (FDOPA) was one of the first successful tracers for molecular imaging by positron emission tomography (PET), and has proven immensely valuable for studies of Parkinson’s disease. Following intravenous FDOPA injection, the decarboxylated metabolite [18F] fluorodopamine is formed and trapped within terminals of the nigrostriatal dopamine neurons; reduction in the simple ratio between striatum and cerebellum is indicative of nigrostriatal degeneration. However, the kinetic analysis of dynamic FDOPA-PET recordings is formidably complex due to the entry into brain of the plasma metabolite O-methyl-FDOPA and due to the eventual washout of decarboxylated metabolites. Linear graphical analysis relative to a reference tissue input function is popular and convenient for routine clinical studies in which serial arterial blood samples are unavailable. This simplified approach has facilitated longitudinal studies in large patient cohorts. Linear graphical analysis relative to the metabolite-corrected arterial FDOPA input yields a more physiological index of FDOPA utilization, the net blood-brain clearance. Using a constrained compartmental model, FDOPA-PET recordings can be used to calculate the relative activity of the enzyme DOPA decarboxylase in living brain. We have extended this approach so as to obtain an index of steady-state trapping of [ 18F]fluorodopamine in synaptic vesicles. Although simple methods of image analysis are sufficient for the purposes of routine clinical studies, the more complex approaches have revealed hidden aspects of brain dopamine in personality, healthy aging, and in the pathophysiologies of Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.