Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Family Intervention for Obese/Overweight Children Using Portion Control Strategy (FOCUS) for Weight Control

Nutritional counseling for children with obesity is an important component of management. This randomized controlled trial was conducted to compare change in body mass index (BMI) z score after 6 months. Children 8 to 16 years with a BMI greater than the 85th percentile were randomized to standard of care nutrition counseling versus intervention with standard nutrition counseling including portion control tool training for the family. Measures were completed at baseline, 3 months, and 6 months. Fifty-one children were randomized to control and 48 to intervention. Mean age was 11 years (SD = 2.2). Mean BMI z score was 2.7 (SD = 0.4). Forty-five percent were male (n = 45). Follow-up at 6 months was 73.7% (73/99). Although no differences were seen between the groups, there was a significant decrease in BMI z score between baseline and 6 months within each group.
Surgical Management of Unicentric Castleman's Disease in the Abdomen

Castleman's disease (CD) is a rare lymphoproliferative disorder that can involve single or multiple lymph nodes in the body. Especially, the localized form of CD is known to be well-controlled by using a surgical resection. On occasion, the surgeon may confront an abdominal and retroperitoneal mass of unknown origin. Thus, we present this case in which we treated a 16-year-old female patient for CD and investigated how to evaluate and manage the situation from the standpoint of CD. Also, we give a review of the pathology, clinical manifestation, diagnosis, and treatment of CD.
Human hopping on very soft elastic surfaces: implications for muscle pre-stretch and elastic energy storage in locomotion

SUMMARY During hopping in place and running, humans maintain similar center of mass dynamics by precisely adjusting leg mechanics to compensate for moderate changes in surface stiffness. We investigated the limits of this precise control by asking humans to hop in place on extremely soft elastic surfaces. We found that hoppers drastically altered leg mechanics and maintained similar center of mass dynamics despite a sevenfold change in surface stiffness (11–81 kN m-1). On the stiffest surfaces, the legs compressed in early stance and then extended in late stance in the pattern that is typical for normal bouncing gaits. On the softest surfaces, however, subjects reversed this pattern so that the legs extended up to 8 cm in early stance and then compressed by a similar distance in late stance. Consequently, the center of mass moved downward during stance by 5–7 cm less than the surface compressed and by a similar distance as on the stiffest surfaces. This unique leg action probably reduced extensor muscle pre-stretch because the joints first extended and then flexed during stance. This interpretation is supported by the observation that hoppers increased muscle activation by 50% on the softest surface despite similar joint moments and mechanical leg work as on the stiffest surface. Thus, the extreme adjustment to leg mechanics for very soft surfaces helps maintain normal center of mass dynamics but requires high muscle activation levels due to the loss of the normal extensor muscle stretch–shorten cycle.
Differences in Competitive Ability between Plants from Nonnative and Native Populations of a Tropical Invader Relates to Adaptive Responses in Abiotic and Biotic Environments

The evolution of competitive ability of invasive plant species is generally studied in the context of adaptive responses to novel biotic environments (enemy release) in introduced ranges. However, invasive plants may also respond to novel abiotic environments. Here we studied differences in competitive ability between Chromolaena odorata plants of populations from nonnative versus native ranges, considering biogeographical differences in both biotic and abiotic environments. An intraspecific competition experiment was conducted at two nutrient levels in a common garden. In both low and high nutrient treatments, C. odorata plants from nonnative ranges showed consistently lower root to shoot ratios than did plants from native ranges grown in both monoculture and competition. In the low nutrient treatment, C. odorata plants from nonnative ranges showed significantly lower competitive ability (competition-driven decreases in plant height and biomass were more), which was associated with their lower root to shoot ratios and higher total leaf phenolic content (defense trait). In the high nutrient treatment, C. odorata plants from nonnative ranges showed lower leaf toughness and cellulosic contents (defense traits) but similar competitive ability compared with plants from native ranges, which was also associated with their lower root to shoot ratios. Our results indicate that genetically based shifts in biomass allocation (responses to abiotic environments) also influence competitive abilities of invasive plants, and provide a first potential mechanism for the interaction between range and environment (environment-dependent difference between ranges).
Countering Insider Threats

This article summarizes the objectives and structure of a seminar with the same title, held from July 20th to July 25th, 2008, at Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany. The seminar brought together researchers and policy-makers from all involved communities, to clarify what it is that identifies an insider threat, and to develop a common vision of how an insider can be categorized as well as an integrated approach that allows a qualitative reasoning about the threat and the possibilities of attacks. This report gives an overview of the discussions and presentations during the week, as well as the outcome of these discussions.
El Plan de Convertibilidad y la economía argentina (1991-1999)

The accumulation process based on the financial valuation started to give signs of being unmistakably worn out in Argentina at the end of the 80´s. This accumulation regime had been established from the financial reform of 1977 and the trade opening of 1979. It was characterized by a fierce redistribution of income against wage earners during the military dictatorship, in which the Stated as a catalyst of resources to the most concentrated sectors of domestic and international stock. Between 1989 and 1990, we witnessed an acute hyperinflationary process on one hand, and on the other hand, a State under a deep economic crisis. Throungh a series of economic policies tha culminated in the Plan of Convertibily, the Menem administration tried to find a solution to this situation of bankruptcy, adapting their economic policies to the interest of foreign creditors and large local and international conglomerates.
High-Tunability and High-$Q$-Factor Integrated Ferroelectric Circuits up to Millimeter Waves

Based on advanced industrial fabrication processes and on specialized design strategies, a new class of ferroelectric metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors with high tunability and high quality factor ( Q-factor) is here presented. Modeled by means of lumped element equivalent circuits and experimentally validated up to 67 GHz, a maximum tunability of 81% (0-20-V bias), and a Q-factor improvement up to 30% (at 0 V) could be demonstrated at 1 GHz. These varactors have been exploited in the design of reconfigurable filters, with a center frequency at around 1 GHz that can be tuned up to 112%, and a figure of merit (FoM) per applied bias better than 31.5 dB-1 /kV. Owing to their promising features, these materials have been exploited to design small-size capacitors suitable for millimeter-wave frequencies. The results demonstrate tunabilities and FoMs superior to the state-of-the-art. Based on this, two 60-GHz tunable phase shifters are proposed. They represent the first example of such devices based on MIM (Ba,Sr)TiO3 (BST) capacitors. In terms of insertion loss, size, FoM, and FoM per bias they show a remarkable improvement with respect to the state-of-the-art of ferroelectric-based devices, thus proving that the BST represents a promising candidate to operate into the millimeter frequency band.
Convergence and International Factor Flows in Theory and History

Standard neoclassical growth models rarely admits international factor mobility: convergence may result from factor accumulation in a closed economy, or from technology transfer. Conventional models are thus poorly equipped to explain the contribution of international factor flows to convergence in history. A general model with many goods, and multiple mobile and fixed factors is developed. In response to recent historical research, a four-factor case is studied, with labor, capital, and resources as potentially mobile factors, and land fixed. The model is then explored in the context of recent historical analyses of the sources of long-run convergence and divergence.
Code generation for hardware accelerated AES

Data must be encrypted if it is to remain confidential when sent over computer networks. Encryption solves many problems involving invasion of privacy, identity theft, fraud, and data theft. However for encryption to be widely used, it must be fast. The problem is so important that new Intel processors provide hardware support for encryption. These instructions implement key stages of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), allowing encryption to be completed more quickly and using less power. The AES algorithm consists of several 'rounds' of encryption, each of which involves a relatively complicated computation. This new hardware support allows an entire round to be implemented with just a single instruction. An implementation of the AES algorithm using these instructions contains several code sections that can be fine tuned for optimal performance. However, these optimizations are usually done by hand, which can be a lengthy, labour intensive process. We present a system that can generate billions of variants of the AES encryption code to find the best solution for a particular microarchitecture. We apply both common loop optimizations and ones specific to AES. We evaluate the generated code on hardware with built-in AES support using both selective-brute force and guided searches. Our generator achieves significant speedups over a straightforward implementation of the code.
VLUS: Visual location-based URL screening tool for improved WWW security

Currently, numerous freeware URL screening tools are available online. While these tools exhibit various levels of sophistication in dealing with traditional web-based exploits, most of them are quite ineffective in detecting some more subtle forms of infection. In particular, most of these tools omit to detect and/or alert against drive-by-download injections that do not result in the download and/or execution of a malware, but instead (only) aim to tarnish the credibility of the compromised web-site or intrude on the privacy of its users. In this paper, we present our new Visual Location-Based URL Screening tool, named VLUS. We demonstrate that with this tool, various forms of drive-by-download injection (leading to redirection) can be easily spotted, irrespective of the nature of the injected content. The tool is also useful for the purposes of general web-page content analysis.
Extraction of Surface-Related Features in a Recurrent Model of V1-V2 Interactions

Background Humans can effortlessly segment surfaces and objects from two-dimensional (2D) images that are projections of the 3D world. The projection from 3D to 2D leads partially to occlusions of surfaces depending on their position in depth and on viewpoint. One way for the human visual system to infer monocular depth cues could be to extract and interpret occlusions. It has been suggested that the perception of contour junctions, in particular T-junctions, may be used as cue for occlusion of opaque surfaces. Furthermore, X-junctions could be used to signal occlusion of transparent surfaces. Methodology/Principal Findings In this contribution, we propose a neural model that suggests how surface-related cues for occlusion can be extracted from a 2D luminance image. The approach is based on feedforward and feedback mechanisms found in visual cortical areas V1 and V2. In a first step, contours are completed over time by generating groupings of like-oriented contrasts. Few iterations of feedforward and feedback processing lead to a stable representation of completed contours and at the same time to a suppression of image noise. In a second step, contour junctions are localized and read out from the distributed representation of boundary groupings. Moreover, surface-related junctions are made explicit such that they are evaluated to interact as to generate surface-segmentations in static images. In addition, we compare our extracted junction signals with a standard computer vision approach for junction detection to demonstrate that our approach outperforms simple feedforward computation-based approaches. Conclusions/Significance A model is proposed that uses feedforward and feedback mechanisms to combine contextually relevant features in order to generate consistent boundary groupings of surfaces. Perceptually important junction configurations are robustly extracted from neural representations to signal cues for occlusion and transparency. Unlike previous proposals which treat localized junction configurations as 2D image features, we link them to mechanisms of apparent surface segregation. As a consequence, we demonstrate how junctions can change their perceptual representation depending on the scene context and the spatial configuration of boundary fragments.
Analysis of ESL Course Offerings in Community Colleges.

This paper discusses the impact of increasing immigration on English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) course offerings, presents the results of the 1998 National Curriculum Study, and examines existing ESL curriculum course designs through an analysis of selected course catalogs. The 1998 National Curriculum Study revealed that ESL programs are a significant component to most community college curricula. Out of a sample of 164 community colleges, 90 institutions offered ESL courses, a 15% increase from a 1991 study. Institutional size plays a role in ESL course availability, with the majority of course offerings located in community colleges with an enrollment of more than 6,000. Community colleges serve two types of ESL students: one who studies English for immediate job marketability, and another who views English acquisition as a step toward eventual transfer to a four-year institution. The 1998 study showed that transferability of ESL courses is affected by students' objectives, as well as by curriculum policy. Other needs that ESL programs can meet include teaching American social and civic traditions, and easing the acculturation process. Contains 17 references. (AS) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** Running Head: ESL in Community Colleges Analysis of ESL Course Offerings in Community Colleges Elaine W. Kuo University of California, Los Angeles ED 263, Dr. Cohen March 17, 1999 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement E UCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) his document has been reproduced as eceived from the person or organization originating it. 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. ° Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. 1 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY E. Kuo TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)
WHICH MATTERS MORE IN MODE CHOICE: DENSITY OR INCOME? THE RELATIVE EFFECTS OF POPULATION DENSITY AND INCOME ON COMMUTE-TRIP MODAL SPLIT IN URBAN AREAS.

This analysis examines data at the census tract, city, and metropolitan area levels. In addition to the primary question of income versus density in affecting commuters' modal split, other factors influencing mode choice are considered, such as a destination's regional prominence or a worker's access to heavy-rail transit. Given a cross-sectional analysis, the findings are that work-trip mode choice is significantly determined by density (and/or the factors that are proxied by density -- such as higher land prices and parking fees, more frequent transit service, and more congested roadways), not income. In fact, the absolute value of the elasticity of percentage of workers not driving alone with respect to density (approximately +0.35) is more than twice that with respect to per-capita income (roughly -0.1). Furthermore, the variable of density was found to be highly (statistically) significant across all regressions (i.e., at the 1 percent level), whereas income was rarely even significant (10 percent level).
Deductions about the Number, Organization, and Evolution of Genes in the Tomato Genome Based on Analysis of a Large Expressed Sequence Tag Collection and Selective Genomic Sequencing Article, publication date, and citation information can be found at www.plantcell.org/cgi/doi/10.1105/tpc.010478.

Analysis of a collection of 120,892 single-pass ESTs, derived from 26 different tomato cDNA libraries and reduced to a set of 27,274 unique consensus sequences (unigenes), revealed that 70% of the unigenes have identifiable homologs in the Arabidopsis genome. Genes corresponding to metabolism have remained most conserved between these two genomes, whereas genes encoding transcription factors are among the fastest evolving. The majority of the 10 largest conserved multigene families share similar copy numbers in tomato and Arabidopsis, suggesting that the multiplicity of these families may have occurred before the divergence of these two species. An exception to this multigene conservation was observed for the E8-like protein family, which is associated with fruit ripening and has higher copy number in tomato than in Arabidopsis. Finally, six BAC clones from different parts of the tomato genome were isolated, genetically mapped, sequenced, and annotated. The combined analysis of the EST database and these six sequenced BACs leads to the prediction that the tomato genome encodes ∼35,000 genes, which are sequestered largely in euchromatic regions corresponding to less than one-quarter of the total DNA in the tomato nucleus.
The Impact of API Change- and Fault-Proneness on the User Ratings of Android Apps

The mobile apps market is one of the fastest growing areas in the information technology. In digging their market share, developers must pay attention to building robust and reliable apps. In fact, users easily get frustrated by repeated failures, crashes, and other bugs; hence, they abandon some apps in favor of their competition. In this paper we investigate how the fault- and change-proneness of APIs used by Android apps relates to their success estimated as the average rating provided by the users to those apps. First, in a study conducted on 5,848 (free) apps, we analyzed how the ratings that an app had received correlated with the fault- and change-proneness of the APIs such app relied upon. After that, we surveyed 45 professional Android developers to assess (i) to what extent developers experienced problems when using APIs, and (ii) how much they felt these problems could be the cause for unfavorable user ratings. The results of our studies indicate that apps having high user ratings use APIs that are less fault- and change-prone than the APIs used by low rated apps. Also, most of the interviewed Android developers observed, in their development experience, a direct relationship between problems experienced with the adopted APIs and the users' ratings that their apps received.
Criminality and Incumbency of Candidates to the National Legislature in India

Utilizing new data on criminal charges against candidates to India's Fourteenth and Fifteenth Lok Sabha elections, we study the conditions that resulted in approximately a quarter of those elected to each legislature facing or having previously faced criminal charges. We show that Indian political parties are more likely to select criminals to run as candidates in electoral districts with lower levels of literacy and when parties face greater electoral uncertainty. The first finding resonates with a large literature that documents that poorly informed voters are more vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous politicians. The latter finding runs contrary to standard democratic theory, which claims that more electoral competition improves democratic accountability. We provide a formal model to gain insight into this surprising result. Subsidiary results show that the well-known incumbency disadvantage characterizing India legislative elections stems from the extraordinary performance of criminal candidates.
Predicting the asymptotic dynamics of large biological networks by interconnections of Boolean modules

The dynamics of Boolean networks can be represented by asynchronous transition graphs, whose attractors describe the system's asymptotic behavior. This paper shows that the attractors of the feedback interconnection of two Boolean modules can be fully identified in terms of crossproducts of the attractors of each module. Based on this observation, a model reduction technique is proposed, aiming at analysing the asymptotic behavior of a high-dimensional network through the computation of the dynamics of two isolated smaller subnetworks. The method is applied to a large network which models cell-fate decision: all the attractors of the full network are exactly calculated by representing the network as an interconnection of two 3-input/3-output modules.
Economic Thought and the Making of European Monetary Union

Contents: Foreword by G. Quaden Foreword by A.W. Coats Introduction Part I: Early Debates on European Monetary Integration 1. State and Market Post-war Integration Theory 2. Optimum Currency Area Theory and European Monetary Integration 3. Monetary Integration Debates in the 1970s Part II: Economic Thought at the European Community Institutions 4. The Development of Economic Thought at the European Community Institutions 5. Macroeconomic Thought at the European Commission in the 1970s: The First Decade of the Annual Economic Reports 6. Macroeconomic Thought at the European Commission in the First Half of the 1980s Part III: The Making of European Monetary Union 7. EMU From a Historical Perspective Index
Radiative transfer in the clumpy environment of young stellar objects

We developed a Monte-Carlo code for the treatment of the radiative transfer in arbitrary clumpy dust configurations. Both the radiation of the (central) energy source(s) and the ther- mal emission of the dust are considered. Intensity and polariza- tion maps of the modelled objects can be computed. As the first application of our code we studied the radiative transfer in a spherical two-phase clumpy dust shell containing a single star. The structure of the circumstellar dust density distribution is characterized by the filling factor of high-density clumps, the density ratio between the low and the high density phases and the size of the smallest individual clumps. Firstly, we considered the properties of the clumpy struc- tures of that model using the percolation theory. Particularly, we checked different ways to describe the optical depth. Sec- ondly, we investigated the total stellar flux, the mean scattering number and the absorption of the stellar radiation depending on the filling factor, the density ratio, the optical depth, the dust grain size and the smallest clump size. Thirdly, we compared the polarizing influence of a clumpy and an homogeneous dust shell. Fourthly, we investigated the influence of a clumpy den- sity structure on the surface brightness distribution. First results show significant changes in the spectral energy distribution as well as in images of clumpy dust configurations in comparison to their homogeneous counterparts.