Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Obesity, diabetes, and length of time in the United States

AbstractObesity prevalence remains high in the United States (US), and is rising in most other countries. This is a repeated cross-sectional study using a nationally representative sample of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999 to 2012. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were separately performed for adults (n = 37,639) and children/adolescents (n = 28,282) to assess the associations between the length of time in the US, and the prevalences of obesity and diabetes. In foreign-born adults, the prevalences of both obesity and diabetes increased with the length of time in the US, and ≥20 years in the US was associated with significantly higher rates of obesity (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.32, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.22–4.40, P = 0.01) and diabetes (aOR 4.22, 95% CI 1.04–17.08, P = 0.04) compared with <1 year in the US. In children/adolescents, obesity prevalence was significantly higher in those born in the US than those who had been in the US for <1 year (aOR 3.15, 95% CI 1.51–6.56, P = 0.002). When analyzed by year, obesity prevalence was significantly higher in US-born than in foreign-born adults from 1999 to 2012. On the other hand, the gap in obesity prevalence between US-born and foreign-born children/adolescents decreased from 1999 to 2011 due to a rapid increase in obesity prevalence among the foreign-born population, until there was no significant difference in 2011 to 2012. This study revealed that the risks of obesity and diabetes have increased in foreign-born US residents with time living in the US. However, the obesity gap between US-born and foreign-born populations is closing.
A Conceptual Clustering Approach for User Pro ling in Personal Information Agents

Information agents have emerged in the last decade as an alternative to assist users to cope with the increasing volume of information available on the Web. In order to provide personalized assistance, these agents rely on having some knowledge about users contained into user pro les, i.e. models of users preferences and interests gathered by observation of user behavior. User pro les have to summarize categories corresponding not only to diverse user information interests but also to di erent levels of abstraction in order to allow agents to decide on the relevance of new pieces of information. In accomplishing this goal, the discovery of interest categories using document clustering o ers the advantage that an a priori knowledge of user interests is not needed, therefore the process of acquiring pro les is is completely unsupervised. However, most document clustering algorithms are not applicable to the problem of incrementally acquiring and modeling interests because of either the kind of solutions they provide, which do no resemble user interests, or the way they build such solutions, which is generally no incremental. In this paper we describe and evaluate a document clustering algorithm, named WebDCC (Web Document Conceptual Clustering), designed to support learning of user interests by personal information agents. WebDCC algorithm carries out incremental, unsupervised concept learning over Web documents with the goal of building and maintaining both accurate and comprehensible user pro les. Empirical evaluation of using this algorithm for user pro ling and its advantages respect of other clustering algorithms are presented.
Reliable detection of hidden information based on a non-linear local model

This paper investigates the reliable detection of information hidden in natural images. It is aimed to design a test with analytically predictable probabilities of error. To this end, the problem of hidden information detection is cast in the framework of hypothesis testing. The optimal test solving the decision problem of steganalysis requires image parameters which are not available in practice. To design a feasible test, a non-linear locally-adapted model of natural images is proposed. This model is linearized to allow an efficient and simple estimation of image parameters which leads to the design of an almost optimal test. Numerical results on a large number of natural images show the relevance of the theoretical findings.
Reviving the Invisible Hand: The Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty First Century

Reviving the Invisible Hand is an uncompromising call for a global return to a classical liberal economic order, free of interference from governments and international organizations. Arguing for a revival of the invisible hand of free international trade and global capital, eminent economist Deepak Lal vigorously defends the view that statist attempts to ameliorate the impact of markets threaten global economic progress and stability. And in an unusual move, he not only defends globalization economically, but also answers the cultural and moral objections of antiglobalizers. Taking a broad cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach, Lal argues that there are two groups opposed to globalization: cultural nationalists who oppose not capitalism but Westernization, and "new dirigistes" who oppose not Westernization but capitalism. In response, Lal contends that capitalism doesn't have to lead to Westernization, as the examples of Japan, China, and India show, and that "new dirigiste" complaints have more to do with the demoralization of their societies than with the capitalist instruments of prosperity. Lal bases his case on a historical account of the rise of capitalism and globalization in the first two liberal international economic orders: the nineteenth-century British, and the post-World War II American. Arguing that the "new dirigisme" is the thin edge of a wedge that could return the world to excessive economic intervention by states and international organizations, Lal does not shrink from controversial stands such as advocating the abolishment of these organizations and defending the existence of child labor in the Third World.
Regularity of the Generalized Quadratic Production Model: A Counterexample

Abstract Recently there has been a growing tendency to impose curvature, but not monotonicity, on specifications of technology. But regularity requires satisfaction of both curvature and monotonicity conditions. Without both satisfied, the second order conditions for optimizing behavior fail and duality theory fails. When neither curvature nor monotonicity are imposed, estimated flexible specifications of technology are much more likely to violate curvature than monotonicity. Hence it has been argued that there is no need to impose or check for monotonicity, when curvature has been imposed globally. But imposition of curvature may induce violations of monotonicity that otherwise would not have occurred. We explore the regularity properties of our earlier results with a multiproduct financial technology specified to be generalized quadratic. In our earlier work, we used the usual approach and accepted the usual view. We now find that imposition of curvature globally and monotonicity locally does not assure monotonicity within the region of the data. Our purpose is to alert researchers to the kinds of problems that we encountered and which we believe are largely being overlooked in the production modelling literature, as we had been overlooking them.
A distributed transaction processing protocol based on majority consensus

An n-failure-resilient protocol for distributed transaction processing regarding site crash, network partitioning, and local failures like abort of subtransactions is specified. The three-phased protocol contains concurrency control, a mechanism enforcing mutual consistency, and commitment based on majority consensus w.r. t. multiple copies of entities. To cope with transaction manager failures, backup processes for the manager are used. Data redundancy given by multiple copies in a partially redundant database is utilized to improve the resiliency of the protocol, i.e. to improve especially the successful commitment of update transactions processed by the protocol. The protocol is n-failure-resilient if the least redundant entity to be accessed by a transaction is mapped onto at least 2n+1 file copies in the distributed database.
Nonlinear Scalespace via Hierarchical Statistical Modeling.

Abstract : Nonlinear scalespace should be based on a hierarchical statistical model of the image intensity function. This model should contain an explicit representation of the multiscale structure of edges and corners. Using this model we can have a non-ad-hoc basis for computing the parameters we need to determine how much smoothing we should do at points that appear to be edge points. We also have a basis for computing the apparent error in our scalespace calculations. Hierarchical statistical modeling is a technique that can be applied to other problems in low-level vision, but in this introductory paper we just present the application of our scalespace theory to image smoothing.
The Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) Project

The primary goal of the SCALE-UP Project is to establish a highly collaborative, hands-on, computer-rich, interactive learning environment for large, introductory college courses. North Carolina State University and a group of more than two-dozen collaborating schools are folding together lecture and lab with multiple instructors in a way that provides an effective, economical alternative to traditional lecture-oriented instruction. The project involves the development of the pedagogy, classroom environment, and teaching materials that will support this type of learning. It includes the development, evaluation, and dissemination of new curricular materials in physics, chemistry, and biology. Here we will focus on the calculus-based introductory physics part of the effort. In comparisons to traditional instruction we have seen significantly increased conceptual understanding, improved attitudes, successful problem solving, and higher success rates, particularly for females and minorities. This chapter highlights the development of the SCALE-UP pedagogy, classroom environment, and teaching materials for calculus-based introductory physics at North Carolina State University. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: beichner@ncsu.edu Beichner et al. SCALE-UP
The Calculation of the Punctuality Rate between Bus Sites Based on AVL Data

Nowadays, people pay more and more attention on the service quality of public transportation, as well as the research on situations of public transportation arrival on time. This article analyses the feature of AVL data from the GPS system on the bus and raises the calculation model of bus stop-time. What's more, it gives the clear definition of Adjacent Sites Punctuality Rate (ASPR) and builds a more accurate calculation model with extreme value theory, which is used to evaluate the bus running between adjacent sites. Then it uses the AVL data of Shanghai's No.49 bus to test the model's practicality.
The 3′ Splice Site of Influenza A Segment 7 mRNA Can Exist in Two Conformations: A Pseudoknot and a Hairpin

The 3′ splice site of influenza A segment 7 is used to produce mRNA for the M2 ion-channel protein, which is critical to the formation of viable influenza virions. Native gel analysis, enzymatic/chemical structure probing, and oligonucleotide binding studies of a 63 nt fragment, containing the 3′ splice site, key residues of an SF2/ASF splicing factor binding site, and a polypyrimidine tract, provide evidence for an equilibrium between pseudoknot and hairpin structures. This equilibrium is sensitive to multivalent cations, and can be forced towards the pseudoknot by addition of 5 mM cobalt hexammine. In the two conformations, the splice site and other functional elements exist in very different structural environments. In particular, the splice site is sequestered in the middle of a double helix in the pseudoknot conformation, while in the hairpin it resides in a two-by-two nucleotide internal loop. The results suggest that segment 7 mRNA splicing can be controlled by a conformational switch that exposes or hides the splice site.
Maximizing Hypervisor Scalability Using Minimal Virtual Machines

The smallest instance offered by Amazon EC2 comes with 615MB memory and a 7.9GB disk image. While small by today's standards, embedded web servers with memory footprints well under 100kB, indicate that there is much to be saved. In this work we investigate how large VM-populations the open Stack hyper visor can be made to sustain, by tuning it for scalability and minimizing virtual machine images. Request-driven Qemu images of 512 byte are written in assembly, and more than 110 000 such instances are successfully booted on a 48 core host, before memory is exhausted. Other factors are shown to dramatically improve scalability, to the point where 10 000 virtual machines consume no more than 2.06% of the hyper visor CPU.
Vehicle Stop Detection Algorithm Based on Motion Analysis in Access Control System Application

In This paper, a vehicle stop detection algorithm based on motion analysis in access control system application is proposed. In this algorithm, motion of vehicle in consecutive frames is analyzed and used to determination of frame in which vehicle has been stopped. Motion analysis is carried out based on thresholded difference image calculated for each two sequential frames of a video stream and a verification mask which shows the variations of important edges in these two frames. Then, a decision value is extracted from the refined difference image that determines the vehicle stop frame. In this algorithm, an adaptive thresholding approach based on decision value of previous frames is proposed that compensates the various illumination conditions in day and night. The proposed vehicle stop detection algorithm was evaluated on several videos captured in day and night. The obtained results show efficiency of the proposed algorithm in real and operational conditions.
Environmental influences on dark matter haloes and consequences for the galaxies within them

We use large N-body simulations of dissipationless gravitational clustering in cold dark matter (CDM) cosmologies to study whether the properties of dark matter halos are affected by their environment. We look for correlations between the masses, formation redshifts, concentrations, shapes and spins of halos and the overdensity of their local environment. We also look for correlations of these quantities with the local tidal field. Our conclusion is extremely simple. Only the mass distribution varies as a function of environment. This variation is well described by a simple analytic formula based on the conditional Press-Schechter theory. We find no significant dependence of any other halo property on environment. Our results do not depend on our choice of cosmology. According to current hierarchical models, the structure and evolutionary history of a galaxy is fully determined by the structure and evolutionary history of the dark halo in which it is embedded. If these models are correct, clustering variations between galaxies of differing morphological types, luminosities, colours and surface brightnesses, must all arise because the halo mass function is skewed towards high mass objects in overdense regions of the Universe and towards low mass objects in underdense regions.
Multi-Objective Vehicle Routing Problems with Time Windows: a Vector Evaluated Artificial Bee Colony Approach

The vehicle routing problem with time windows, widely used in practice, is a nondeterministic polynomial time (NP)-hard problem. The proposed optimization algorithm is based on the artificial bee colony algorithm combined with the vector evaluated technique for solving the problem as a multi-objective problem. Unlike traditional two-steps algorithms, this algorithm provides a simultaneous solution set. The approach was tested on standard Solomon benchmark problems and the result shows that this algorithm was better than or equal to other heuristic algorithms.
A Study of Economic Efficiency of Utah Dairy Farmers: A System Approach

This study is primarily concerned with investigating the technical, allocative, and scale inefficiency of owner-operators of dairy farms in Utah. A stochastic production frontier has been applied to analyze these inefficiencies. The results indicate that there is positive association between years of education and productivity of labor and capital. Productivity is also found to be negatively related to off-farm income. Regarding the effects of farm size on efficiency, it is found that large farms are the most efficient of all sizes considered. Separate estimates of technical, allocative, and scale inefficiencies indicate that large and medium-sized farms are technically more efficient than small farms. Large farms, on average, are found to be performing much better than medium-sized and small farms so far as allocative and scale inefficiency are concerned. Copyright 1989 by MIT Press.
CCTV Control Room Collaboration and Communication: Does it Work?

Despite the increased usage of surveillance systems and the technological advances, there is currently no conceptual basis and little evidence to assess how well CCTV actually works for the purposes for which it is deployed. It is important to identify whether CCTV systems and applications meet stakeholder goals, and support human operators effectively, in attaining the goals for which the system is set up. This exploratory paper highlights the early findings found in CCTV control rooms. A series of ethnographic observations along with semi-structured interviews were carried out at six CCTV public surveillance control rooms – six managers, six supervisors and 25 operators were interviewed. Findings reveal that current control room systems are not designed to support operator and system communication and collaboration when performing their tasks. Poor linked technology and a lack of task coordination was evident between operators and external agencies such as police operators and local businesses. Several Human Computer Interaction (HCI) issues were uncovered from the fieldwork. Findings will be used to form a set of best-practice CCTV control room design recommendations.
Situated Boundary Spanning

Requirements Engineering (RE) faces considerable challenges that are often related to boundaries between various stakeholders involved in the software development process. These challenges may be addressed by boundary spanning practices. We examine how boundary spanning can be adapted to address RE challenges in Product Family Development (PFD), a context that involves complex RE. We study two different development approaches, namely, conventional and agile PFD, because these present considerably different challenges. Our findings from a multisite case study present boundary spanning as a solution to improve the quality of RE processes and highlight interesting differences in how boundary spanner roles and boundary objects are adapted in conventional and agile PFD.
Effects of tethering HP1 to euchromatic regions of the Drosophila genome

Heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) is a conserved non-histone chromosomal protein enriched in heterochromatin. On Drosophila polytene chromosomes, HP1 localizes to centric and telomeric regions, along the fourth chromosome, and to specific sites within euchromatin. HP1 associates with centric regions through an interaction with methylated lysine nine of histone H3, a modification generated by the histone methyltransferase SU(VAR)3-9. This association correlates with a closed chromatin configuration and silencing of euchromatic genes positioned near heterochromatin. To determine whether HP1 is sufficient to nucleate the formation of silent chromatin at non-centric locations, HP1 was tethered to sites within euchromatic regions of Drosophila chromosomes. At 25 out of 26 sites tested, tethered HP1 caused silencing of a nearby reporter gene. The site that did not support silencing was upstream of an active gene, suggesting that the local chromatin environment did not support the formation of silent chromatin. Silencing correlated with the formation of ectopic fibers between the site of tethered HP1 and other chromosomal sites, some containing HP1. The ability of HP1 to bring distant chromosomal sites into proximity with each other suggests a mechanism for chromatin packaging. Silencing was not dependent on SU(VAR)3-9 dosage, suggesting a bypass of the requirement for histone methylation.
Engineering and society : challenges of professional practice

1. Engineering and History. 2. Engineering in the Modern Era. 3. Sociological Insights. 4. Politics, Power and the State. 5. A Perspective on Economics. 6. Innovation. 7. Management in Engineering. 8. Development and Technology Transfer. 9. Energy and Sustainability. 10. Towards a Philosophy of Engineering. 11. Ethics and Professionalism.
New and Evolving Concepts in the Neurotoxicology of Lead

Lead (Pb) is a xenobiotic metal with no known essential function in cellular growth, proliferation, or signaling. Decades of research characterizing the toxicology of Pb have shown it to be a potent neurotoxicant, especially during nervous system development. New concepts in the neurotoxicology of Pb include advances in understanding the mechanisms and cellular specificity of Pb. Experimental studies have shown that stress can significantly alter the effects of Pb, effects that could potentially be mediated through alterations in the interactions of glucocorticoids with the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system of the brain. Elevated stress, with corresponding elevated glucocorticoid levels, has been postulated to contribute to the increased levels of many diseases and dysfunctions in low socioeconomic status populations. Cellular models of learning and memory have been utilized to investigate the potential mechanisms of Pb-induced cognitive deficits. Examination of long-term potentiation in the rodent hippocampus has revealed Pb-induced increases in threshold, decreases in magnitude, and shorter retention times of synaptic plasticity. Structural plasticity in the form of adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus is also impacted by Pb exposure. The action of Pb on glutamate release, NMDA receptor function, or structural plasticity may underlie perturbations in synaptic plasticity and contribute to learning impairments. In addition to providing insight into potential mechanisms of Pb-induced cognitive deficits, cellular models offer an opportunity to investigate direct effects of Pb on isolated biological substrates. A target of interest is the 78-kDa molecular chaperone glucose-regulated protein (GRP78). GRP78 chaperones the secretion of the cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6) by astrocytes. In vitro evidence shows that Pb strongly binds to GRP78, induces GRP78 aggregation, and blocks IL-6 secretion in astroglial cells. These findings provide evidence for a significant chaperone deficiency in Pb-exposed astrocytes in culture. In the long term, chaperone deficiency could underlie protein conformational diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Lead exposure in early life has been implicated in subsequent progression of amyloidogenesis in rodents during old age. This exposure resulted in an increase in proteins associated with AD pathology viz., beta-amyloid precursor protein (β-APP), and beta-amyloid (Aβ). These four new lines of research comprise compelling evidence that exposures to Pb have adverse effects on the nervous system, that environmental factors increase nervous system susceptibility to Pb, and that exposures in early life may cause neurodegeneration in later life. and approved for publication. Approval does not signify that the contents necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Agency, nor does …