Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differences in Weight Status and Energy-Balance Related Behaviors among Schoolchildren across Europe: The ENERGY-Project

Background Current data on the prevalence of overweight and energy-balance behaviors among European children is necessary to inform overweight prevention interventions. Methodology/Principal Findings A school-based survey among 10–12 year old children was conducted in seven European countries using a standardized protocol. Weight, height, and waist circumference were measured; Engagement in physical activity, sedentary and dietary behaviors, and sleep duration were self-reported. Descriptive analyses were conducted, looking at differences according to country, gender, and parental education. 7234 children (52%girls; 11.6±0.7 years) participated. 25.8% and 5.4% of boys, and 21.8% and 4.1% of girls were overweight (including obese) and obese (according to International Obesity Task Force criteria), respectively. Higher prevalence of overweight/obesity was observed in Greece, Hungary, Slovenia and Spain than in Belgium, Netherlands and Norway. Large differences between countries were found in intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages, breakfast, active transport, TV and computer time. More favorable overweight status and behavior patterns were found in girls than boys and in children of higher educated parents than in children of lower educated parents. Conclusions/Significance High levels and striking differences in overweight status and potential risk behaviors were found among schoolchildren across Europe.
Optimal exploration as a symmetry breaking phenomenon

We study the problem of joint estimation and control for a small example for which we can numerically compute the exact solution. We demonstrate, that optimal exploration is achieved through symmetry breaking in the Bellman equation; that optimal actions can be discontinuous in the beliefs; and that the optimal value function is typically non-differentiable. This could pose a challenge for the conventional design of value function approximations for solving POMDPs.
Perceived managerial discretion and firm performance: The moderating role of market competition

Despite being widely discussed in the literature, the impact of managerial discretion on firm performance remains inconclusive. In this study it is proposed that market competitiveness plays an important role in determining the influence of perceived managerial discretion on firm performance. In a survey of 169 top managers of Chinese enterprises, it was found that in highly competitive markets, perceived managerial discretion was positively related to firm performance. In contrast, where there is little competition, perceived managerial discretion and firm performance were negatively correlated. These results suggest that companies operating in highly competitive markets should permit managers greater discretion to make strategic choices to react to the dynamics of the environment. Conversely, companies in less competitive markets should limit managerial discretion to prevent managers abusing this power for personal benefits.
Maternal Milk Reduces Severity of Necrotizing Enterocolitis and Increases Intestinal IL-10 in a Neonatal Rat Model

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a devastating intestinal disease of premature infants. Maternal milk has been suggested to be partially protective against NEC; however, the mechanisms of this protection are not defined. The aim of this study was to examine the effect(s) of artificial feeding of rat milk (RM)-versus cow milk-based rat milk substitute (RMS) on the development of NEC in a neonatal rat model and elucidate the role of inflammatory cytokines in NEC pathogenesis. Newborn rats were artificially fed with either collected RM or RMS. Experimental NEC was induced by exposure to asphyxia and cold stress and evaluated by histologic scoring of damage in ileum. Intestinal cytokine mRNA expression was determined by real-time PCR. Cytokine histologic localization was performed by confocal microscopy. Similar to human NEC, artificial feeding of RM reduces the incidence and severity of NEC injury in neonatal rats. Freezing and thawing of collected RM did not eliminate the protective effect of maternal milk. Ileal IL-10 expression was significantly increased in the RM group compared with RMS. Increased IL-10 peptide production was detected in the RM group with signal localized predominantly in the cytoplasm of villus epithelial cells. These results suggest that the protective effect of maternal milk is associated with increased production of anti-inflammatory IL-10 in the site of injury. Better understanding of the mechanisms underlying these protective effects could be beneficial either in the prevention of NEC or in the development of future therapeutic strategies to cure NEC.
MeDShare: Trust-Less Medical Data Sharing Among Cloud Service Providers via Blockchain

The dissemination of patients’ medical records results in diverse risks to patients’ privacy as malicious activities on these records cause severe damage to the reputation, finances, and so on of all parties related directly or indirectly to the data. Current methods to effectively manage and protect medical records have been proved to be insufficient. In this paper, we propose MeDShare, a system that addresses the issue of medical data sharing among medical big data custodians in a trust-less environment. The system is blockchain-based and provides data provenance, auditing, and control for shared medical data in cloud repositories among big data entities. MeDShare monitors entities that access data for malicious use from a data custodian system. In MeDShare, data transitions and sharing from one entity to the other, along with all actions performed on the MeDShare system, are recorded in a tamper-proof manner. The design employs smart contracts and an access control mechanism to effectively track the behavior of the data and revoke access to offending entities on detection of violation of permissions on data. The performance of MeDShare is comparable to current cutting edge solutions to data sharing among cloud service providers. By implementing MeDShare, cloud service providers and other data guardians will be able to achieve data provenance and auditing while sharing medical data with entities such as research and medical institutions with minimal risk to data privacy.
The Situational Humor Response Questionnaire (SHRQ) and Coping Humor Scale (CHS): A decade of research findings

The Situational Humor Response Questionnaire (SHRQ) and the Coping Humor Scale (CHS) are self-report measures of different aspects of the sense of humor that were developed in the context of an investigation of the stress-moderating effects of humor. The SHRQ assesses the degree to which subjects laugh and smile in a wide variety of situations, and the CHS measures the degree to which respondents make use of humor in coping with stress in their lives. Both scales have been translated into more than 10 languages, and a fairly large body of research findings has accumulated, providing evidence for the reliability and construct validity of these measures. This article reviews research on these scales with regard to (1) the stressmoderator hypothesis, (2) correlations with coping-related variables, and (3) the factor space occupied by the measures. The paper addresses the range of usefulness of both measures, as well as their limitations as measures of sense of humor.
Human lymphocyte reaction to freeze-dried allograft and xenograft ligamentous tissue

Decisions made before reconstruction of the ACL in clude patient selection, choice of operative procedure, and selection of proper reconstructive material. Re search in the use of allograft material for reconstructive grafts is of great interest for many reasons, including the advantage of not violating the patient's normal anatomy for donor tissue. A group of eight patients who received arthroscopically inserted freeze-dried bone-patellar tendon-bone allograft tissue for ACL re construction were selected for a prospective study. These patients were matched against a group of four autograft controls. Immunologically, the lymphocyte blast transformation test was used to evaluate the host reaction to implanted donor graft. Lymphocytes drawn from each patient were tested for their reaction against a panel of human allograft tendon and goat xenograft tendon homoge nates. A stimulation index of greater than 3 was con sidered a positive reaction. It was hypothesized that a consistent lack of antigenicity would be observed with allograft extracts and that an antigenic reaction would be observed with the xenograft extracts. Six patients (75%) showed an immunologic reaction to the goat xenograft, and four patients (50%) showed an immunologic reaction to at least one human allograft test cell after allograft insertion. One patient had such an intense clinical immunologic response that she re quired removal of the allograft. All four of the autograft controls had a nonimmunogenic response to testing, as had been expected. Although the numbers of this study are small, it is important to point out that an immunologic response to freeze-dried allograft tendon appears to be occurring, in contrast to previous re search in animals.
A Novel Digital Calibration Technique for Gain and Offset Mismatch in TIΣΔ ADCs

Time interleaved sigma-delta (TIΣΔ) architecture is a potential candidate for high bandwidth analog to digital converters (ADC) which remains a bottleneck for software and cognitive radio receivers. However, the performance of the TIΣΔ architecture is limited by the unavoidable gain and offset mismatches resulting from the manufacturing process. This paper presents a novel digital calibration method to compensate the gain and offset mismatch effect. The proposed method takes advantage of the reconstruction digital signal processing on each channel and requires only few logic components for implementation. The run time calibration is estimated to 10 and 15 clock cycles for offset cancellation and gain mismatch calibration respectively. Keywords—sigma-delta, calibration, gain and offset mismatches, analog-to-digital conversion, time-interleaving.
The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System

Open collaboration systems, such as Wikipedia, need to maintain a pool of volunteer contributors to remain relevant. Wikipedia was created through a tremendous number of contributions by millions of contributors. However, recent research has shown that the number of active contributors in Wikipedia has been declining steadily for years and suggests that a sharp decline in the retention of newcomers is the cause. This article presents data that show how several changes the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have ironically crippled the very growth they were designed to manage. Specifically, the restrictiveness of the encyclopedia’s primary quality control mechanism and the algorithmic tools used to reject contributions are implicated as key causes of decreased newcomer retention. Furthermore, the community’s formal mechanisms for norm articulation are shown to have calcified against changes—especially changes proposed by newer editors.
Learning Throughout Working Life: Interdependencies at work

Recently the meaning of lifelong learning has been transformed by economic imperatives from a focus on securing personal development to individuals' maintenance of their vocational practice throughout their working lives. These imperatives aim to reshape the responsibilities and goals for adults' learning throughout their working lives. This paper proposes an account of learning at work as a component of individual's development across their lifespan. It argues that learning throughout working life is an inevitable product of everyday thinking and acting, shaped by the work practices in which individuals participate. However, the quality of learning is contingent on the kinds of activities individuals engage in and the guidance they can access. These contributions are referred to as the activities and interdependencies afforded by the workplace. Continuities and discontinuities in development through working life can be understood in part by patterns of participation in these social practices. Yet there is tension between individuals' interest in participation and the affordance of the work practices in which they act. It is proposed that, although able to regulate their participation, ultimately individuals' ability to maintain their vocational practice is constrained by the way workplaces afford opportunities for engagement and interactions.
Treatment of Childhood Atopic Dermatitis and Economic Burden of Illness in Asia Pacific Countries

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common chronic inflammatory skin condition in children. In Asia, the prevalence of AD is increasing, which is largely attributed to environmental and socioeconomic factors including family income, parental education, lifestyle and metropolitan living. Current clinical guidelines recommend a stepped approach in the management of eczema in children, with treatment steps tailored to the severity of the eczema. To address the skin barrier dysfunction, skin hydration and the application of emollients is essential. There is evidence supporting the use of bleach baths as an antimicrobial therapy against Staphylococcus aureus. In patients in whom topical treatment fails, wet wrap therapy may be considered as a treatment option before considering systemic therapies. In the second part of this article, the economic burden of AD is addressed. AD not only negatively impacts the child's quality of life but also that of the whole family and is associated with a burden on health-care costs and society. AD in an infant will lead to frequent additional visits to the pediatrician, to additional and partially expensive treatment costs and, in rare cases, to hospitalization. It is thus of utmost importance to define efficient strategies to not only treat AD but also to decrease the risk of developing the disease.
Ethical Climates and Contextual Predictors of Whistle-Blowing

This article presents the results of a study that investigates ethical climate theory and eight contextual predictors of willingness to blow the whistle and frequency of whistle-blowing on seven forms of misconduct. Although three of the ethical climates investigated demonstrate relationships with whistle-blowing intentions and actions, the ethical climates generally fail to predict whistle-blowing consistently. Instead, supervisory status emerges as the most consistent predictor of intentions and behaviors. Contrary to popular belief, civilian status also demonstrates significant negative relationships with whistle-blowing. Police are less inclined than civilian employees to maintain a code of silence.
Virtual-Reality-Based Social Interaction Training for Children with High-Functioning Autism

ABSTRACT Employing the multiple-baseline across-subjects design, the authors examined the implementation and potential effect of a virtual-reality-based social interaction program on the interaction and communication performance of children with high functioning autism. The data were collected via behavior observation and analysis, questionnaires, and interviewing. The children participants demonstrated increased performance of responding, initiation, greeting, and positive conversation-ending during the intervention, and improved social competence measures after the intervention. The study also contributed salient themes on the adaptive design of a virtual-reality-based learning environment for learners with special needs. The study findings should extend the discussion on the design and usage of technology-supported informal learning environment for children with diverse characteristics and learning needs.
ρ m As an "Error-Free" Index of Rater Agreement

are all instances of the application of regression analysis to the evaluation of performance strategies in probability learning tasks. Similarly, Naylor and Wherry (1965), Wherry and Naylor (1966) and Madden (1963) have used the multiple regression model to capture the strategies or policies of judges in attitude research. There is an important distinction, of course, between these two kinds of research investigations. The major distinguishing feature lies in the presence or absence of a criterion of &dquo;correct&dquo; behavior.
Equivariant Cohomological Chern Characters

We construct for an equivariant cohomology theory for proper equivariant CW-complexes an equivariant Chern character, provided that certain conditions about the coefficients are satisfied. These conditions are fulfilled if the coefficients of the equivariant cohomology theory possess a Mackey structure. Such a structure is present in many interesting examples.
In vivo imaging of neuromodulatory synaptic transmission using PET: A review of relevant neurophysiology

Recent data from positron emission tomography (PET) imaging studies suggest the possibility of studying synaptic transmission in vivo in humans. The approach will require a synthesis of two established techniques: brain activation studies (conventionally performed by measuring regional cerebral blood flow or metabolism) and neurotransmitter receptor imaging (using radiolabelled ligands that bind to specific neuroreceptors). By comparing neuroreceptor binding in subjects at rest and while performing an activation task, it may be possible to determine whether a particular neurotransmitter is involved in performance of the task. The underlying principle is that endogenous neurotransmitter competes with the injected radioligand for the same receptors, thereby inhibiting ligand binding. This effect will be even more pronounced during activation, as the synaptic concentration of transmitter rises. Thus, activation of a specific neurotransmitter will be detected as a decrease in specific binding of the radioligand. In this paper we review neurophysiological and biochemical literature to estimate the endogenous neurotransmitter concentration changes that will be expected to occur during an activation task, using the dopamine system as an example. We calculate that the average synaptic dopamine concentration is ≈ 100 nM and that it approximately doubles during activation. This, along with consideration of the concentration of radioligand and affinities of the ligand and dopamine for dopamine receptors, suggests that physiological activation of a specific neurotransmitter system is likely to be detectable with PET. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Voltage Stability Assessment via Continuation Power Flow Method

1 Abstract — This paper presents a potential algorithm for continuation power flow method in voltage stability assessment. Modified continuation power flow method termed as MCBF was developed which solved the solution of bifurcation point at the Q-V curve. The solvability of power flow at the bifurcation point beyond the maximum loadability point of a system was achieved through the implementation of predictor-corrector technique. QV curve was automatically plotted once the bifurcation point has been reached. Voltage stability analysis was subsequently conducted utilizing the MCPF solutions. Comparative studies performed with respect to the conventional power flow technique revealed the strength of the proposed MCPF; which was validated on a standard IEEE reliability test (RTS) system.
Selecting the Best Tridiagonal System Solver Projected on Multi-Core CPU and GPU Platforms

Nowadays multicore processors and graphics cards are commodity hardware that can be found in personal computers. Both CPU and GPU are capable of performing high-end computations. In this paper we present and compare parallel implementations of two tridiagonal system solvers. We anal yze the cyclic reduction method, as an example of fine-grained pa rallelism, and Bondeli’s algorithm, as a coarse-grained exa mple of parallelism. Both algorithms are implemented for GPU architectures using CUDA and multi-core CPU with shared memory architectures using OpenMP. The results are compare d in terms of execution time, speedup, and GFLOPS. For a large system of equations, 2, the best results were obtained for Bondeli’s algorithm (speedup1.55x and 0.84 GFLOPS) for multi-core CPU platforms while the cyclic reduction (speed up 17.06x and5.09 GFLOPS) was the best for the case of GPU platforms.
The ‘Interanimation’ of Worlds: Creative Metaphors in Art and Design

Creative metaphors in language juxtapose two words which appear quite different on the surface, but share an underlying similarity given a particular context. In the metaphor ‘life is a river,’ the vehicle ‘river’ modifies the tenor ‘life’ and draws our attention to life's meandering and the constant flow of time. Scholars have emphasized a dynamic tension between tenor and vehicle and that the vehicle (‘river’) is always salient modifying the tenor (‘life’) and never vice versa. A central argument of this paper is that: (1) the vehicle is salient because it is always relatively more concrete than the tenor on the sensory-verbal-symbolic continuum, and (2) the vehicle always modifies the tenor implicitly and spontaneously so that they are experienced as a unity. These ideas have been extended to successful art and design metaphors. The surface difference in artworks and design objects is between denotative subject matter and connotative style or function and form respectively. The underlying similarity reflect the influence of concrete sensory style or form properties which resonate with subject matter or function respectively thereby creating a tacit experience of fit. This unified experience establishes a bridge between the viewer/user and the work that is the foundation for a personal attachment to it.
Variable Latency Speculative Parallel Prefix Adders for Unsigned and Signed Operands

A variable latency adder (VLA) reduces average addition time by using speculation: the exact arithmetic function is replaced by an approximated one, that is faster and gives correct results most of the times. When speculation fails, an error detection and correction circuit gives the correct result in the following clock cycle. Previous papers investigate VLAs based on Kogge-Stone, Han-Carlson or carry select topologies, speculating that carry propagation involves only a few consecutive bits. In several applications using 2's complement representation, however, operands have a Gaussian distribution and a nontrivial portion of carry chains can be as long as the adder size. In this paper we propose five novel VLA architectures, based on Brent-Kung, Ladner-Fisher, Sklansky, Hybrid Han-Carlson, and Carry increment parallel-prefix topologies. Moreover, we present a new efficient error detection and correction technique, that makes proposed VLAs suitable for applications using 2's complement representation. In order to investigate VLAs performances, proposed architectures have been synthesized using the UMC 65 nm library, for operand lengths ranging from 32 to 128 bits. Obtained results show that proposed VLAs outperform previous speculative architectures and standard (non-speculative) adders when high-speed is required.
Real time signature extraction from a supervised classifier system

Recently some algorithms have been proposed to clean post-training rule populations evolved by XCS, a state of the art Learning Classifier System (LCS). We present an algorithm to extract optimal rules, which we refer to as signatures, during the operation of UCS, a recent variant of XCS. In a benchmark binary valued dataset our method seconds the generalization and optimality hypotheses for UCS and provide mechanisms for retrieving all maximally general rules in real time. In real valued problems, where precise realization of decision boundaries is often not possible, our algorithm is able to retrieve near optimal representations with the help of a modified subsumption operator. The algorithm is able to reduce the processing time asymptotically and provides a mechanism for early stopping of the learning process.