Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stock Wars: Inventory Competition in a Two-Echelon Supply Chain with Multiple Retailers

This invention relates to a bath unit for use by, for example, invalids and includes a hollow buoyant platform mounted in the bath receptacle for constrained upright movement relative thereto with the platform being maintained in a substantially horizontal position when stationary or during upright movement. The upright movement of the platform relative to the bath receptacle when filled with water is achieved by controlling an inflow or outflow of bath water into or out of the platform. At the upper limit of upright movement, the top surface of the platform is substantially level with the top edges of the bath receptacle; however, since the platform is prevented from further upward movement by arresting means, the upward force of bath water, displaced by the platform, on the empty buoyant platform enables the platform to receive a body of an invalid thereon without causing the platform to move downward until the upward force of bath water has been removed by the inflowing of the bath water into the platform.
A Systematic Design to Suppress Wideband Ground Bounce Noise in High-Speed Circuits by Electromagnetic-Bandgap-Enhanced Split Powers

In this paper, the split power planes with electromagnetic bandgap structures enhancement is proposed for the wideband suppression of ground bounce noise in high-speed printed circuit boards. A systematic design procedure is presented, featuring a modified analytic design formula, a novel compact electromagnetic bandgap layout, and a discussion on the minimum number of cascaded rows. As it is capable of selectively suppressing the ground bounce noise at several desired frequencies, the approach is applied to deal with the coupled noise between two isolation islands and the ground bounce noise induced by signal line crossing the split power planes. Successful noise suppression over an ultrawide band from dc to 5 GHz and reduction of the peak ground bounce noise in the time domain by 75% by an electromagnetic bandgap strip 1.44 cm wide is demonstrated. Good agreement is seen from the comparison between simulation and experimental results
Locally Linear Embedding for Markerless Human Motion Capture Using Multiple Cameras

We investigate the possibility of applying non-linear manifold learning techniques to aid in markerless human motion capturing. We hypothesize that the set of segmented binary images (in a constrained environment) of a person in all possible poses lie on a low dimensional manifold in the image space. Since it is not feasible to densely sample the manifold by capturing real life images, we propose to learn the manifold by using synthetic images. An accurate 3D mesh of the actor can be used to generate the synthetic 3 dimensional virtual data. A set of poses (a collection of hierarchical joint angles defining the stance of a person at a point in time) ranging the space of possible human motion is used to animate the mesh and the synthetic images are then captured by virtual cameras. We hypothesize that these vectorized synthetic images lie on a low dimensional manifold shared by the pose vectors. We then align the synthetic image and pose pairs to form a common manifold by constraining them to be equivalent. Given a new set of real images of the actor, the system can then project the captured image onto the aligned common manifold and determine the closest synthetic poses to use to linearly generate the output pose. Our experiments exhibit promising results for our method.
Validating a Comprehensive Model of Environmental Concern Cross‐Nationally: A U.S.‐Canadian Comparison*

The dimensionality of "environmental concern" remains ambiguous despite decades of research on environmental attitudes and beliefs. We attempt to provide insight into this issue by using the belief systems perspective and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test a comprehensive conceptualization of environmental concern. Copyright (c) 2007 Southwestern Social Science Association.
Antagonistic interactions are sufficient to explain self-assemblage of bacterial communities in a homogeneous environment: a computational modeling approach

Most of the studies in Ecology have been devoted to analyzing the effects the environment has on individuals, populations, and communities, thus neglecting the effects of biotic interactions on the system dynamics. In the present work we study the structure of bacterial communities in the oligotrophic shallow water system of Churince, Cuatro Cienegas, Mexico. Since the physicochemical conditions of this water system are homogeneous and quite stable in time, it is an excellent candidate to study how biotic factors influence the structure of bacterial communities. In a previous study, the binary antagonistic interactions of 78 bacterial strains, isolated from Churince, were experimentally determined. We employ these data to develop a computer algorithm to simulate growth experiments in a cellular grid representing the pond. Remarkably, in our model, the dynamics of all the simulated bacterial populations is determined solely by antagonistic interactions. Our results indicate that all bacterial strains (even those that are antagonized by many other bacteria) survive in the long term, and that the underlying mechanism is the formation of bacterial community patches. Patches corresponding to less antagonistic and highly susceptible strains are consistently isolated from the highly-antagonistic bacterial colonies by patches of neutral strains. These results concur with the observed features of the bacterial community structure previously reported. Finally, we study how our findings depend on factors like initial population size, differential population growth rates, homogeneous population death rates, and enhanced bacterial diffusion.
Detection of viable Escherichia coli O157:H7 by ethidium monoazide real‐time PCR

Aims: The aim of this study was to develop and optimize a novel method that combines ethidium bromide monoazide (EMA) staining with real‐time PCR for the detection of viable Escherichia coli O157:H7 in ground beef. EMA can penetrate dead cells and bind to intracellular DNA, preventing its amplification via PCR.
On our mind: Salience, context, and figurative language

Rachel Giora, On our mind: Salience, context, and figurative language. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. ix, 259. Hb $55. The goal of this book is to explore the extent to which salient meanings – meanings that are decoded in our mental lexicon and foremost on our mind – affect our speech production and comprehension. “It aims to shed light, primarily empirically, on how, in addition to contextual information, salient meanings and senses of words and fixed expressions shape our linguistic behavior” (p. 9). According to Rachel Giora's graded salience hypothesis, salient meanings are more accessible than less salient ones. Of the multiple meanings of a given word or expression, the most salient one, which can be either literal or figurative, is always activated first regardless of context.
The stateless point to point routing protocol based on shortcut tree routing algorithm for IP-WSN

IP-based Wireless Sensor Network (IP-WSN) is one of the essential elements enabling Internet of Things (IoT). However, IP-WSN imposes great challenges due to low processing resources and strict energy constraints of sensors. Various routing protocols for IP-WSN have been proposed considering low-cost communication with resource-constraint and typical traffic patterns like multipoint-to-point, but most of routing protocols causes problems incurring inefficient route or/and consuming many processing resources. Especially, as far as point-to-point (P2P) traffic is concerned, those routing protocols incur triangular detour routes and require many processing resources at intermediate nodes where P2P traffic is an important traffic pattern. To address these challenges, we propose the Stateless P2P Routing protocol (SPR) based on shortcut tree routing algorithm which is our previous study. SPR can deliver a packet to the node having the smallest remaining hop count among neighbors without additional control overhead, instead of always delivering a packet to a parent or children along tree routes. SPR also provides a nearly stateless routing in that SPR determines a route through hierarchical address structure and one hop neighbor information without having to store global routing state. We implement SPR in our IP-WSN platform named SNAIL and conduct a simulation and a measurement to verify the performance of SPR. The simulation results show SPR provides improved hop count compared to HiLow and RPL. It also provides reduced memory usage and the number of control packets compared to RPL. Additionally, the measurement results show SPR provides decreased round trip time and increased packet delivery ratio compared to HiLow and RPL.
Annual high-dose oral vitamin D and falls and fractures in older women: a randomized controlled trial.

CONTEXT Improving vitamin D status may be an important modifiable risk factor to reduce falls and fractures; however, adherence to daily supplementation is typically poor. OBJECTIVE To determine whether a single annual dose of 500,000 IU of cholecalciferol administered orally to older women in autumn or winter would improve adherence and reduce the risk of falls and fracture. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 2256 community-dwelling women, aged 70 years or older, considered to be at high risk of fracture were recruited from June 2003 to June 2005 and were randomly assigned to receive cholecalciferol or placebo each autumn to winter for 3 to 5 years. The study concluded in 2008. INTERVENTION 500,000 IU of cholecalciferol or placebo. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Falls and fractures were ascertained using monthly calendars; details were confirmed by telephone interview. Fractures were radiologically confirmed. In a substudy, 137 randomly selected participants underwent serial blood sampling for 25-hydroxycholecalciferol and parathyroid hormone levels. RESULTS Women in the cholecalciferol (vitamin D) group had 171 fractures vs 135 in the placebo group; 837 women in the vitamin D group fell 2892 times (rate, 83.4 per 100 person-years) while 769 women in the placebo group fell 2512 times (rate, 72.7 per 100 person-years; incidence rate ratio [RR], 1.15; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02-1.30; P = .03). The incidence RR for fracture in the vitamin D group was 1.26 (95% CI, 1.00-1.59; P = .047) vs the placebo group (rates per 100 person-years, 4.9 vitamin D vs 3.9 placebo). A temporal pattern was observed in a post hoc analysis of falls. The incidence RR of falling in the vitamin D group vs the placebo group was 1.31 in the first 3 months after dosing and 1.13 during the following 9 months (test for homogeneity; P = .02). In the substudy, the median baseline serum 25-hydroxycholecalciferol was 49 nmol/L. Less than 3% of the substudy participants had 25-hydroxycholecalciferol levels lower than 25 nmol/L. In the vitamin D group, 25-hydroxycholecalciferol levels increased at 1 month after dosing to approximately 120 nmol/L, were approximately 90 nmol/L at 3 months, and remained higher than the placebo group 12 months after dosing. CONCLUSION Among older community-dwelling women, annual oral administration of high-dose cholecalciferol resulted in an increased risk of falls and fractures. TRIAL REGISTRATION anzctr.org. au Identifier: ACTRN12605000658617; isrctn.org Identifier: ISRCTN83409867.
From the New Wave to the New Hollywood: The Life Cycles of Important Movie Directors from Godard and Truffaut to Spielberg and Eastwood

Two great movie directors were both born in 1930. One of them, Jean-Luc Godard, revolutionized filmmaking during his 30s, and declined in creativity thereafter. In contrast, Clint Eastwood did not direct his first movie until he had passed the age of 40, and did not emerge as an important director until after 60. This dramatic difference in life cycles was not accidental, but was a characteristic example of a pattern that has been identified across the arts: Godard was a conceptual innovator who peaked early, whereas Eastwood was an experimental innovator who improved with experience. This paper examines the goals, methods, and creative life cycles of Godard, Eastwood, and eight other directors who were the most important filmmakers of the second half of the twentieth century. Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Spielberg, and Francois Truffaut join Godard in the category of conceptual young geniuses, while Woody Allen, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, and Martin Scorsese are classed with Eastwood as experimental old masters. In an era in which conceptual innovators have dominated a number of artistic activities, the strong representation of experimental innovators among the greatest film directors is an interesting phenomenon.
Polynomial Extension Operators. Part I

In this series of papers, we construct operators that extend certain given functions on the boundary of a tetrahedron into the interior of the tetrahedron, with continuity properties in appropriate Sobolev norms. These extensions are novel in that they have certain polynomial preservation properties important in the analysis of high order finite elements. This part of the series is devoted to introducing our new technique for constructing the extensions, and its application to the case of polynomial extensions from H(∂K) into H(K), for any tetrahedron K.
Oxygenator thrombosis: worst case after development of an abnormal pressure gradient - incidence and pathway

The development of an abnormally high pressure gradient (APG) before the membrane oxygenator (MO) is a complication that occurs during some extracorporeal circulation (ECC) procedures. The present study deals with the incidence of an APG and discusses a probable causative pathway by comparing surface-coated and uncoated oxygenation systems. Five thousand six hundred and seventeen adult ECCs were carried out (2581 without and 3036 with surface coatings). The incidence of an APG, therefore, amounted to 0.03% in the group with coated systems and 4.3% in the uncoated group. In addition, an in vitro study demonstrated significantly reduced adhesion and activation of platelets and leucocytes when the surfaces of the MOs were coated with heparin or polypeptides. The advantages of coating surfaces of ECC devices possibly depend on the selective adsorption of particular plasma proteins. These will presumably form a biocompatible membrane on the surface, and minimize pathological deposit of fibrin, platelets and other blood cells, and, therefore, implicate the prevention of an oxygenator failure.
Online Dynamic Reordering for Interactive Data Processing

We present a pipelining, dynamically user-controllable reorder operator, for use in data-intensive applications. Allowing the user to reorder the data delivery on the fly increases the interactivity in several contexts such as online aggregation and large-scale spreadsheets; it allows the user to control the processing of data by dynamically specifying preferences for different data items based on prior feedback, so that data of interest is prioritized for early processing. In this paper we describe an efficient, non-blocking mechanism for reordering, which can be used over arbitrary data streams from files, indexes, and continuous data feeds. We also investigate several policies for the reordering based on the performance goals of various typical applications. We present results from an implementation used in Online Aggregation in the Informix Dynamic Server with Universal Data Option, and in sorting and scrolling in a large-scale spreadsheet. Our experiments demonstrate that for a variety of data distributions and applications, reordering is responsive to dynamic preference changes, imposes minimal overheads in overall completion time, and provides dramatic improvements in the quality of the feedback over time. Surprisingly, preliminary experiments indicate that online reordering can also be useful in traditional batch query processing, because it can serve as a form of pipelined, approximate sorting.
Reasoning about systems with many processes

Methods are given for automatically verifying temporal properties of concurrent systems containing an arbitrary number of finite-state processes that communicate using CCS actions. TWo models of systems are considered. Systems in the first model consist of a unique control process and an arbitrary number of user processes with identical definitions. For this model, a decision procedure to check whether all the executions of a process satisfy a given specification is presented. This algorithm runs in time double exponential in the sizes of the control and the user process definitions. It is also proven that it is decidable whether all the fair executions of a process satisfy a given specification. The second model is a special case of the first. In this model, all the processes have identical definitions. For this model, an efficient decision procedure is presented that checks if every execution of a process satisfies a given temporal logic specification. This algorithm runs in time polynomial in the size of the process definition. It is shown how to verify certain global properties such as mutual exclusion and absence of deadlocks. Finally, it is shown how these decision procedures can be used to reason about certain systems with a communication network.
Dietary Behaviors of a Racially and Ethnically Diverse Sample of Overweight and Obese Californians

Objectives. To examine racial/ethnic differences in the dietary behaviors of overweight or obese adults using the 2007 California Health Interview Survey. Method. Data were obtained from the 2007 California Health Interview Survey, a population-based sample of noninstitutionalized adults in California. The sample included 26,721 adults aged 18 years and older whose body mass index status indicated that they were overweight or obese (body mass index ≥ 25), with 19,264 non-Hispanic White; 1,749 African American/Black; 1,616 Asian/Pacific Islander; and 4,092 Latino respondents. Respondents were compared with regard to consumption of five categories of food: fruits, vegetables, French fries, soft drinks, and fast-food. Multivariable regression analyses were conducted to examine racial/ethnic differences in dietary behaviors, with and without adjustment for age, gender, nativity, marital status, education, income, and food insecurity. Results. The findings suggested there were significant racial/ethnic differences in food preferences and that English proficiency, in part, explained some of these differences. Overweight/obese African American/Black respondents reported eating fruit (aBeta = −0.73, [95% confidence interval = −1.29, −0.17]) and vegetables (aBeta = −0.71 [−1.18, −0.24]) fewer times per day and fast-food (aBeta = 0.21, [0.04, 0.38]) more times per day compared with their non-Hispanic White counterparts. Irrespective of language proficiency, Asian/Pacific Islanders reported eating significantly less fruit compared with non-Hispanic Whites. Limited English proficient (LEP) Asian/Pacific Islanders were found to eat vegetables (aBeta = 1.41, [0.47, 2.63]) more times per day than non-Hispanic Whites, in contrast to English proficient Asian/Pacific Islanders who were found to eat vegetables (aBeta = −0.64, [−1.11, −0.18]) fewer times per day compared with non-Hispanic Whites. Both LEP and English proficient Latinos ate vegetables less often and drank soft drinks and ate fast-food more often than non-Hispanic Whites. Conclusions. Efforts to intervene with individuals who are overweight or obese must include culturally and linguistically tailored interventions that consider how individuals’ dietary behaviors are influenced by their racial/ethnic backgrounds.
Fast Möbius Inversion in Semimodular Lattices and ER-labelable Posets

We consider the problem of fast zeta and Mobius transforms in finite posets, particularly in lattices. It has previously been shown that for a certain family of lattices, zeta and Mobius transforms can be computed in $O(e)$ elementary arithmetic operations, where $e$ denotes the size of the covering relation. We show that this family is exactly that of geometric lattices. We also extend the algorithms so that they work in $e$ operations for all semimodular lattices, including chains and divisor lattices. Finally, for both transforms, we provide a more general algorithm that works in $e$ operations for all ER-labelable posets.
Suicide in Japan: Present State and Future Directions for Prevention

There were 23,104 suicides in Japan in 1996, making the suicide rate 18.4 per 100,000, which is not much higher than those of some European countries. This paper focuses on current trends of suicide in Japan. In addition, the problem of suicide among the elderly and some characteristic forms of suicide found in Japan, such as shinju (suicide pact) and inseki-jisatsu (suicide committed in order to take responsibility) are discussed. Future strategies are also proposed for suicide prevention in Japan.
Who Sustains Whose Development? Sustainable Development and the Reinvention of Nature

This paper explores the contradictions inherent in one of the more popular buzzwords of today: sustainable development. I argue that, despite claims of a paradigm shift, the sustainable development paradigm is based on an economic, not ecological, rationality. Discourses of sustainable development embody a view of nature specified by modern economic thought. One consequence of this discourse involves the transformation of ‘nature’ into ‘environment’, a transformation that has important implications for notions of how development should proceed. The ‘rational’ management of resources is integral to the Western economy and its imposition on developing countries is problematic. I discuss the implications of this ‘regime of truth’ for the Third World with particular reference to biotechnology, biodiversity and intellectual property rights. I argue that these aspects of sustainable development threaten to colonize spaces and sites in the Third World, spaces that now need to be made ‘efficient’ because of the capitalization of nature.
Riesgo suicida y desesperanza en pacientes psiquiátricos hospitalizados

La desesperanza (D) incrementa el riesgo suicida (RS). No se conoce esta informacion en una muestra representativa de pacientes psiquiatricos hospitalizados en Santa Marta (Colombia). El presente estudio busco describir la prevalencia y hallar la asociacion entre el RS y la D, de acuerdo con variables sociodemograficas y clinicas, en pacientes con trastornos psiquiatricos. Se realizo un estudio transversal, descriptivo correlacional. Se evaluaron 61 pacientes con la Escala de Riesgo Suicida de Plutchik, la Escala de Desesperanza de Beck y un cuestionario de datos sociodemograficos. Como principal resultados, se resalta que el 60,7% de la muestra presento RS y el 70,4% D. Se encontro una correlacion significativa entre el RS y la D, tambien entre el RS y los intentos previos de suicidio. No se hallaron correlaciones entre el RS, la D y variables sociodemograficas y clinicas. En conclusion, a mayor nivel de D, mayor RS en la poblacion psiquiatrica estudiada.