Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multivariate Analysis Approach to the Serum Peptide Profile of Morbidly Obese Patients

Background: Obesity is currently epidemic in many countries worldwide and is strongly related to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Mass spectrometry, in particular matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight (MALDI-TOF) is currently used for detecting different pattern of expressed protein. This study investigated the differences in low molecular weight (LMW) peptide profiles between obese and normal-weight subjects in combination with multivariate statistical analysis. Materials: Serum samples of 60 obese patients and 10 healthy subjects were treated by cut-off membrane (30000 Da) to remove the most abundant proteins. The filtrates containing the LMW protein/peptides were analyzed by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Dataset was elaborated to align and normalize the spectra. We performed cluster analysis and principal component analysis to detect some ionic species that could characterize and classify the subject groups. Results: We observed a down-expression of ionic species at m/z 655.94 and an over-expression of species at m/z 1518.78, 1536.77, 1537.78 and 1537.81 in obese patients. Furthermore we found some ionic species that can distinguish obese patients with diabetes from those with normal glucose level. Conclusion: Serum peptide profile of LMW associate with multivariate statistical approach was revealed as a promising tool to discriminate and characterize obese patients and it was able to stratify them in relation to comorbidity that usually are associated with this disease. Further research involving a larger sample will be required to validate these findings.
Feinfühliges Elternverhalten und kindliche Emotionsregulation

Zusammenfassung. Feinfuhliges Elternverhalten in der fruhen Kindheit (0 – 3 Jahre) bildet die Basis fur die Entwicklung grundlegender sozial-emotionaler Kompetenzen im Kindesalter. Ein gering ausgepragtes feinfuhliges Elternverhalten wird mit Verhaltens- und emotionalen Storungen sowie Emotionsregulationsproblemen bei Kindern assoziiert. Der vorliegende Review untersucht, wie feinfuhliges Elternverhalten die Emotionsregulation und die sozial-emotionale Entwicklung von Kindern beeinflusst. Zwischen 2007 und 2016 konnten 12 Studien identifiziert werden, in denen diese Zusammenhange betrachtet werden. Feinfuhliges Elternverhalten konnte als Pradiktor fur eine positive sozial-emotionale Entwicklung im weiteren Verlauf bestatigt werden, wahrend sich wenig feinfuhliges Verhalten negativ auf die Entwicklung von Kindern auswirkte. Die Ergebnisse sprechen fur einen verstarkten Fokus auf der Forderung elterlicher Kompetenzen in den ersten Lebensjahren.
Bacterial Communities in Aerosols and Manure Samples from Two Different Dairies in Central and Sonoma Valleys of California

Aerosols have been suspected to transport food pathogens and contaminate fruits and vegetables grown in close proximity to concentrated animal feeding operations, but studies are lacking that substantiate such transport. To monitor the potential transport of bacteria originated from fresh or dry manure through aerosols on a dairy, we identified by 16S rRNA sequencing, bacteria in aerosols collected within 2 to 3 meters from dairy cows at two dairies. Gram-positive Firmicutes were predominant in aerosols from a dairy in Sonoma, California, and surrounded by vineyards, in contrast to sequences of Gram-negative Proteobacteria predominant in aerosols from a dairy in Modesto, California, also surrounded by other dairies. Although Firmicutes represented approximately 50% of the 10 most abundant sequences, aerosols from the Sonoma dairy also contained sequences of Bacteriodetes and Actinobacteria, identified previously with animal feces. While none of the top 10 sequences from fresh or dry manure from Modesto dairy were detected in aerosols, two of the sequences from the phylum Bacteriodetes and one from class Clostridia from fresh manure were detected in aerosols from Sonoma. Interestingly, none of the sequences from dry manure were in the top 10 sequences in aerosols from both dairies. The 10 most abundant sequences in aerosols from the Modesto dairy were all from Proteobacteria and nearly half of them were from genus Massilia, which have been isolated previously from immune-compromised people and aerosols. We conclude that the predominant bacteria in aerosols are diverse among locations and that they do not reflect the predominant species of bacteria present in cow feces and/or in close proximity to cows. These results suggest that the aerosol sequences did not originate from manure. Large volumes of aerosols would be required to determine if bacterial sequences from aerosols could be used to track bacteria in manure to crops grown in proximity.
The stereoscopic cinema: From film to Digital projection

A noteworthy improvement in the projection of stereoscopic moving images is taking place; the image is clear and easy to view. Moreover, the setup of projection is simplified, and requires no tweaking for continued performance at a high-quality level. The new system of projection relies on the Texas Instruments Digital Micromirror Device (DMD), and the basis for this paper is the Christie Digital Mirage 5000 projector and StereoGraphics selection devices, CrystalEyes and the ZScreen.
Design of a Lateral-Line Sensor for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Abstract In an ongoing research project an autonomous underwater vehicle is to be built that will detect, localize, and avoid objects by means of a fully passive sensory system. Using hot-wire anemometry it measures local water velocities at the vehicle's hull and thus mimics the lateral-line system of fish and many amphibians. Fish often use the lateral-line system as their only means for navigation, especially under poor visual conditions. Simulations and theoretical calculations of the flow around an underwater vehicle show that velocity measurements with hot-wire anemometers enable an underwater vehicle to detect surfaces, so that no clear sight or active scanning is necessary for collision avoidance. A first series of experiments validates theoretical calculations and shows that a vehicle can detect parallel movement to a wall.
Functional Conservation of DNA Methylation in the Pea Aphid and the Honeybee

DNA methylation is a fundamental epigenetic mark known to have wide-ranging effects on gene regulation in a variety of animal taxa. Comparative genomic analyses can help elucidate the function of DNA methylation by identifying conserved features of methylated genes and other genomic regions. In this study, we used computational approaches to distinguish genes marked by heavy methylation from those marked by little or no methylation in the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. We investigated if these two classes had distinct evolutionary histories and functional roles by conducting comparative analysis with the honeybee, Apis (Ap.) mellifera. We found that highly methylated orthologs in A. pisum and Ap. mellifera exhibited greater conservation of methylation status, suggesting that highly methylated genes in ancestral species may remain highly methylated over time. We also found that methylated genes tended to show different rates of evolution than unmethylated genes. In addition, genes targeted by methylation were enriched for particular biological processes that differed from those in relatively unmethylated genes. Finally, methylated genes were preferentially ubiquitously expressed among alternate phenotypes in both species, whereas genes lacking signatures of methylation were preferentially associated with condition-specific gene expression. Overall, our analyses support a conserved role for DNA methylation in insects with comparable methylation systems.
f(R) Theories Of Gravity

Modified gravity theories have received increased attention lately due to combined motivation coming from high-energy physics, cosmology, and astrophysics. Among numerous alternatives to Einstein's theory of gravity, theories that include higher-order curvature invariants, and specifically the particular class of $f(R)$ theories, have a long history. In the last five years there has been a new stimulus for their study, leading to a number of interesting results. Here $f(R)$ theories of gravity are reviewed in an attempt to comprehensively present their most important aspects and cover the largest possible portion of the relevant literature. All known formalisms are presented\char22{}metric, Palatini, and metric affine\char22{}and the following topics are discussed: motivation; actions, field equations, and theoretical aspects; equivalence with other theories; cosmological aspects and constraints; viability criteria; and astrophysical applications.
Leveraging the Web Platform for the Web of Things : Position Paper for W 3 C Workshop on the Web of Things

Web Architecture provides a general-purpose way of establishing an interlinked network of resources, which are interacted with through the exchange of representations of their state. We argue that the “Web of Things” fits well into this general framework, and thus should be built firmly on the foundation provided by Web Architecture. We also argue that in order to allow an evolutionary path towards a “Web of Things”, it is important to take small and incremental steps towards the final goal, instead of trying to establish a grand “Web of Things Architecture” in one monolithic step. One interesting first step could be to focus on Activity Streams as one way how streams of resource updates can be represented in a uniform, extensible, and machine-readable way.
Changes in spousal decision-making among displaced workers.

This study explores changes in spousal decision-making patterns between one and nine months after a plant closing. Two dimensions of decision-making were examined via path analysis in relation to employment status of spouse, reemployment status and gender of displaced worker, and household economic hardship. Overall, there was no dramatic change among the displaced workers. This may imply that decision-making is established over the course of marriage and is resistant to change. Alternatively, eight months may simply be too short a time span to detect any remarkable changa Nevertheless, economic hardship appeared to affect spousal decision-making differently at the two points of time after unemployment.
Exercise and physical activity in older adults with knee pain: a mixed methods study

Objectives. To describe and explore current exercise and physical activity behaviour in older adults with knee pain in the UK. Methods. A survey was mailed to 2234 adults ≥50 years of age registered with one general practice within the UK to determine the presence and severity of knee pain and levels of physical activity. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 questionnaire responders with knee pain. Results. The questionnaire response rate was 59% (n = 1276) and 611 respondents reported knee pain. Only ∼40% of individuals with knee pain were sufficiently active to meet physical activity recommendations. Interviews revealed individual differences in the type and setting of physical activity completed and some self-monitored their symptoms in response to physical activity in order to guide future behaviour. Conclusion. Innovative interventions that can be adapted to suit individual needs and preferences are required to help older adults with knee pain become more physically active.
Consensus-Based Decentralized Auctions for Robust Task Allocation

This paper addresses task allocation to coordinate a fleet of autonomous vehicles by presenting two decentralized algorithms: the consensus-based auction algorithm (CBAA) and its generalization to the multi-assignment problem, i.e., the consensus-based bundle algorithm (CBBA). These algorithms utilize a market-based decision strategy as the mechanism for decentralized task selection and use a consensus routine based on local communication as the conflict resolution mechanism to achieve agreement on the winning bid values. Under reasonable assumptions on the scoring scheme, both of the proposed algorithms are proven to guarantee convergence to a conflict-free assignment, and it is shown that the converged solutions exhibit provable worst-case performance. It is also demonstrated that CBAA and CBBA produce conflict-free feasible solutions that are robust to both inconsistencies in the situational awareness across the fleet and variations in the communication network topology. Numerical experiments confirm superior convergence properties and performance when compared with existing auction-based task-allocation algorithms.
Traffic-Related Air Pollution and Dementia Incidence in Northern Sweden: A Longitudinal Study

Background Exposure to ambient air pollution is suspected to cause cognitive effects, but a prospective cohort is needed to study exposure to air pollution at the home address and the incidence of dementia. Objectives We aimed to assess the association between long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution and dementia incidence in a major city in northern Sweden. Methods Data on dementia incidence over a 15-year period were obtained from the longitudinal Betula study. Traffic air pollution exposure was assessed using a land-use regression model with a spatial resolution of 50 m × 50 m. Annual mean nitrogen oxide levels at the residential address of the participants at baseline (the start of follow-up) were used as markers for long-term exposure to air pollution. Results Out of 1,806 participants at baseline, 191 were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease during follow-up, and 111 were diagnosed with vascular dementia. Participants in the group with the highest exposure were more likely than those in the group with the lowest exposure to be diagnosed with dementia (Alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia), with a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.43 (95% CI: 0.998, 2.05 for the highest vs. the lowest quartile). The estimates were similar for Alzheimer’s disease (HR 1.38) and vascular dementia (HR 1.47). The HR for dementia associated with the third quartile versus the lowest quartile was 1.48 (95% CI: 1.03, 2.11). A subanalysis that excluded a younger sample that had been retested after only 5 years of follow-up suggested stronger associations with exposure than were present in the full cohort (HR = 1.71; 95% CI: 1.08, 2.73 for the highest vs. the lowest quartile). Conclusions If the associations we observed are causal, then air pollution from traffic might be an important risk factor for vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Citation Oudin A, Forsberg B, Nordin Adolfsson A, Lind N, Modig L, Nordin M, Nordin S, Adolfsson R, Nilsson LG. 2016. Traffic-related air pollution and dementia incidence in northern Sweden: a longitudinal study. Environ Health Perspect 124:306–312; http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/ehp.1408322
A game theoretic approach to minimize the completion time of network coded cooperative data exchange

In this paper, we introduce a game theoretic framework for studying the problem of minimizing the completion time of instantly decodable network coding (IDNC) for cooperative data exchange (CDE) in decentralized wireless network. In this configuration, clients cooperate with each other to recover the erased packets without a central controller. Game theory is employed herein as a tool for improving the distributed solution by overcoming the need for a central controller or additional signaling in the system. We model the session by self-interested players in a non-cooperative potential game. The utility function is designed such that increasing individual payoff results in a collective behavior achieving both a desirable system performance in a shared network environment and the Pareto optimal solution. We further show that our distributed solution achieves the centralized solution. Through extensive simulations, our approach is compared to the best performance that could be found in the conventional point-to-multipoint (PMP) recovery process. Numerical results show that our formulation largely outperforms the conventional PMP scheme in most practical situations and achieves a lower delay.
Volume estimation using food specific shape templates in mobile image-based dietary assessment

As obesity concerns mount, dietary assessment methods for prevention and intervention are being developed. These methods include recording, cataloging and analyzing daily dietary records to monitor energy and nutrient intakes. Given the ubiquity of mobile devices with built-in cameras, one possible means of improving dietary assessment is through photographing foods and inputting these images into a system that can determine the nutrient content of foods in the images. One of the critical issues in such the image-based dietary assessment tool is the accurate and consistent estimation of food portion sizes. The objective of our study is to automatically estimate food volumes through the use of food specific shape templates. In our system, users capture food images using a mobile phone camera. Based on information (i.e., food name and code) determined through food segmentation and classification of the food images, our system choose a particular food template shape corresponding to each segmented food. Finally, our system reconstructs the three-dimensional properties of the food shape from a single image by extracting feature points in order to size the food shape template. By employing this template-based approach, our system automatically estimates food portion size, providing a consistent method for estimation food volume.
Etanercept plus methylprednisolone as initial therapy for acute graft-versus-host disease.

Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is a principal cause of morbidity following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). Standard therapy for GVHD, high-dose steroids, results in complete responses (CRs) in 35% of patients. Because tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFalpha) is an important effector of experimental GVHD, we treated patients with new-onset GVHD with steroids plus the TNFalpha inhibitor etanercept on a previously reported pilot trial (n = 20) and a phase 2 trial (n = 41). We compared their outcomes with those of contemporaneous patients with GVHD (n = 99) whose initial therapy was steroids alone. Groups were similar with respect to age, conditioning, donor, degree of HLA match, and severity of GVHD at onset. Patients treated with etanercept were more likely to achieve CR than were patients treated with steroids alone (69% vs 33%; P < .001). This difference was observed in HCT recipients of both related donors (79% vs 39%; P = .001) and unrelated donors (53% vs 26%; P < .001). Plasma TNFR1 levels, a biomarker for GVHD activity, were elevated at GVHD onset and decreased significantly only in patients with CR. We conclude that etanercept plus steroids as initial therapy for acute GVHD results in a substantial majority of CRs. This trial was referenced at www.clinicaltrials. gov as NCT00141713.
A novel cooperative communication protocol for QoS provisioning in wireless sensor networks

Cooperative communications have been demonstrated to be effective in combating the multiple fading effects in wireless networks, and improving the network performance in terms of adaptivity, reliability, data throughput and network life time. In this paper, we investigate the use of cooperative communications for quality of service (QoS) provisioning in resource-constrained wireless sensor networks, and propose MRL-CC, a Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning based multi-hop mesh Cooperative Communication mechanism for wireless sensor networks. In order to disseminate data reliably in MRL-CC, a multi-hop mesh cooperative structure is first constructed. Then a cooperative mechanism with cooperative partner assignments, and coding and transmission schemes is implemented using a multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm. We compare the network performance of MRL-CC with MMCC [1], a Multi-hop Mesh structure based Cooperative Communication scheme, and investigate the impacts of network traffic load, interference and sensor node's mobility on the network performance. Simulation results show that MRL-CC performs well in terms of a number of QoS metrics, and fits well in large-scale networks and highly dynamic environments.
Analysis of packet loss processes in high-speed networks

The exact distribution of the number of lost packets in a block of given size is obtained and compared with the distribution under the assumption of independent and identical packet loss probability (the i.i.d. distribution). Numerical examples show that the exact distribution may be worse for applications such as forward error correction. <<ETX>>
CENTRE FOR NEWFOUNDLAND S'IUDIES TOTAL OF 10 PAGES ONLY MAY BE XEROXED

Stroke is among one of the leading neurological disorders in clinics. The purpose of this study was to investigate the functional deficits of the experimental "stroke" animal. In order to get a better understanding of the real mechanisms behind these deficits, a systematic observation of the behavioural and pathological changes associated with cerebral ischemia was carried out in three experiments in Mongolian gerbils. In Experiment 1, an animal model using delayed, repetitive) cerebral ischemia was used to determine the behavioural and neuropathological changes following multi-episodes of cerebral ischemia. In Experiment 2, animals were pre-exposed to the test environment before ischemia and an attempt w. :ts made to determine whether the post-ischemic hyperactivity resulted from a simple change in motor function or a deficit in spatial mapping ability. In Experiment 3, the neuropathological and locomotor activity changes resulting from different carotid artery occlusion duratior1s 1(5, 10 and 15 minutes) ware investigated. An attempt was made to determine whether the graded ischemia resulting from the different ischemic durations resulted in graded increases in locomotor activity. From these three experiments it is concluded that the basis for the increased locomotor activity following an episode of cerebral ischemia is an alteration of spatial learning ability.
Evaluation of E-Portfolio Systems

Introduction E-portfolios are a new type of software and it is still relatively vague to determine, which functions are obligatory – that is which functions constitute characteristic features – and which functions are just optional (“nice to have“). This chapter describes the concept and the results of a research project which was conducted to evaluate e-portfolio systems, and aims at providing decision guidance for implementing e-portfolios – first and foremost from the pedagogical perspective. It consists of two main parts: the first part introduces the method of evaluation and a criteria checklist for e-portfolio systems, which can be used by institutions to carry out evaluations on their own, depending on their individual focal points. The second part summarizes the results of an evaluation carried out in the year 2009 and gives recommendations, primarily aimed at institutions of higher education .
SOCIAL ENTERPRISE AS A MECHANISM OF YOUTH EMPOWERMENT

Empowerment is one of the most important social value creation activities performed by social enterprises (SEs). Despite the burgeoning research on SEs, there is limited research on the meaning and aspects of empowerment from the SE perspective, or the so-called SE-as-Empowerment research. In light of this research gap, we employed the Gioia’s methodology and data triangulation to analyze a renowned Hong Kong’s SE that focuses on youth empowerment. This study contributes to the SE-as-Empowerment literature by revealing five types of empowerment — building social awareness, meaningful participation, social connections, building entrepreneurial skills, and power sharing between youths and adults — which can be broadly categorized into social-capacity empowerment and entrepreneurial-capacity empowerment. This study makes novel contributions to the SE-as-Empowerment literature by proposing new concepts including multi-directional (internally and externally oriented) aspect of empowerment, the pluralistic noti.