Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Commute Times, Food Retail Gaps, and Body Mass Index in North Carolina Counties

Introduction The prevalence of obesity is higher in rural than in urban areas of the United States, for reasons that are not well understood. We examined correlations between percentage of rural residents, commute times, food retail gap per capita, and body mass index (BMI) among North Carolina residents. Methods We used 2000 census data to determine each county's percentage of rural residents and 1990 and 2000 census data to obtain mean county-level commute times. We obtained county-level food retail gap per capita, defined as the difference between county-level food demand and county-level food sales in 2008, from the North Carolina Department of Commerce, and BMI data from the 2007 North Carolina Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. To examine county-level associations between BMI and percentage of rural residents, commute times, and food retail gap per capita, we used Pearson correlation coefficients. To examine cross-sectional associations between individual-level BMI (n = 9,375) and county-level commute times and food retail gap per capita, we used multilevel regression models. Results The percentage of rural residents was positively correlated with commute times, food retail gaps, and county-level BMI. Individual-level BMI was positively associated with county-level commute times and food retail gaps. Conclusions Longer commute times and greater retail gaps may contribute to the rural obesity disparity. Future research should examine these relationships longitudinally and should test community-level obesity prevention strategies.
Pesticides and atopic and nonatopic asthma among farm women in the Agricultural Health Study.

RATIONALE Risk factors for asthma among farm women are understudied. OBJECTIVES We evaluated pesticide and other occupational exposures as risk factors for adult-onset asthma. METHODS Studying 25,814 farm women in the Agricultural Health Study, we used self-reported history of doctor-diagnosed asthma with or without eczema and/or hay fever to create two case groups: patients with atopic asthma and those with nonatopic asthma. We assessed disease-exposure associations with polytomous logistic regression. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS At enrollment (1993-1997), 702 women (2.7%) reported a doctor's diagnosis of asthma after age 19 years (282 atopic, 420 nonatopic). Growing up on a farm (61% of all farm women) was protective for atopic asthma (odds ratio [OR], 0.55; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.43-0.70) and, to a lesser extent, for nonatopic asthma (OR, 0.83; 95%CI, 0.68-1.02; P value for difference = 0.008). Pesticide use was almost exclusively associated with atopic asthma. Any use of pesticides on the farm was associated only with atopic asthma (OR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.14-1.87). This association with pesticides was strongest among women who had grown up on a farm. Women who grew up on farms and did not apply pesticides had the lowest overall risk of atopic asthma (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.27-0.62) compared with women who neither grew up on farms nor applied pesticides. A total of 7 of 16 insecticides, 2 of 11 herbicides, and 1 of 4 fungicides were significantly associated with atopic asthma; only permethrin use on crops was associated with nonatopic asthma. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that pesticides may contribute to atopic asthma, but not nonatopic asthma, among farm women.
Reproductive performance in high-producing dairy cows : Can we sustain it under current practice ?

Division of Reproduction, Dept of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science (FVMAS), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), PO Box 7054, 75007 Uppsala, Sweden Dept of Animal Environment and Health, FVMAS, SLU, PO Box 234, 532 23 Skara, Sweden Division of Ruminant Diseases and Epidemiology, Dept of Clinical Sciences, FVMAS, SLU, Uppsala, Sweden Dept of Animal Breeding and Genetics, FVMAS, SLU, PO Box 7023, 75007 Uppsala, Sweden VikingGenetics, Örnsro, PO Box 64, SE-532 21 Skara, Sweden Swedish Dairy Association, PO Box 210, SE-101 24 Stockholm, Sweden * Corresponding author: heriberto.rodriguez@kv.slu. se
Implementation of Header Compression in 3GPP LTE

Header compression is the process of reducing protocol header overhead in order to improve link efficiency while maintaining the end-to-end transparency. Robust Header Compression (ROHC) is a scheme for IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service). ROHC is defined for 2.5Gm (GPRS) and according to 3Gpp2 Next generation Network, in CDMA2000 1x EV-DO and 1x EV-DV (Release B and onwards) system. ROHC specifies compression of IP headers including IPv4, IPv6, RTP and ESP on a per hop basis. The Compressed Header size is reduced to around 1-3 bytes. This Header compression can be implemented in Mobile handsets and all of the wireless infrastructure equipment upstream BTS/NodeB. Header Compression basically includes Generation of IP context to send on wireless device and each IP context is given a Sequence Number which is encoded before sending the information. The audio–video streams is first encapsulated in RTP (Real time transport Protocol) Packet, which is then included under UDP Packet, and finally IP Packet Carries this whole UDP & RTP data. The compression takes place at the Radio Layer defined at PDCP Link layer. ROHC is very robust against Bit errors on the link and also against errors introduced due to long RTT. In addition, it results in very high compression ratios, which increase effective link bandwidth and decrease packet processing requirements in power sensitive downstream devices.
Dynamic ultrasonography to evaluate coracoacromial ligament displacement during motion in shoulders with supraspinatus tendon tears

We evaluated coracoacromial ligament (CAL) displacement during motion in shoulders with supraspinatus tendon tears by dynamic ultrasonography (US). Twenty subjects with unilateral, full‐thickness supraspinatus tendon tears (SST group) and 20 subjects with intact supraspinatus tendons (control group) underwent dynamic US. The CAL displacement in their bilateral shoulders was measured in the transverse US view during passive and active shoulder abduction and internal rotation (SAIR). In the SST group, the CAL displacement was significantly greater in the affected shoulders than in the intact ones (1.9 mm ± 0.8 mm vs. 1.5 mm ± 0.5 mm, p = 0.01) during passive SAIR, but was not significantly different between the shoulders (1.7 mm ± 0.7 mm vs. 1.7 mm ± 0.4 mm, p = 0.81) during active SAIR. In the control group, no difference in the CAL displacement between the shoulders was noted during passive and active SAIR. Thus, dynamic US revealed greater CAL displacement in shoulders with supraspinatus tendon tears than in intact ones during passive SAIR. Dynamic US may help to detect abnormal kinematics in shoulders with such injury. © 2012 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 30:1430–1434, 2012
Stable A/G MIMO Transmission Aided by Open-Loop Calibrated Channel Estimation and Adaptive Precoding

Due to the high flight speed of the aircraft and long range to access the ground station (GS), the channel state information (CSI) is not accurately obtained by direct feedback from the receiver to the transmitter. This makes it difficult to achieve stable transmission when the feedback codebook selection scheme is directly employed in the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) for the air-to-ground (A/G) communications. Therefore, in this paper, a stable transmission scheme for the A/G MIMO transmission is proposed to handle these issues. Two contributions are proposed: 1) an open-loop calibrated channel estimation scheme based on navigation filtering to offer a more accurate CSI estimation; and 2) an adaptive precoding scheme based on the correlation coefficient for stable transmission. The simulations confirm the validity and efficiency of the proposed schemes. For the 4 $\times$ 4 MIMO transmission, compared with the traditional scheme of a single antenna, the spectrum efficiency can be improved by 2 $\sim$ 4 times with a stable transmission.
Parameterization of an electrical battery model for dynamic system simulation in electric vehicles

This article describes the parameterization of a simple, dynamic single cell battery model for cell and system simulation. It is shown how to parameterize the model based on basic electrical tests and publicly available data such as data sheets. The performance of the parameterized model is validated with test results gained from two different cycles with the li-Tec HEA 40 High Energy Cell. Additionally, it is shown how the model can be extended to consider basic aging effects.
A Novel Method for Subjective Picture Quality Assessment and Further Studies of HDTV Formats

This paper proposes a novel method for the assessment of picture quality, called triple stimulus continuous evaluation scale (TSCES), to allow the direct comparison of different HDTV formats. The method uses an upper picture quality anchor and a lower picture quality anchor with defined impairments. The HDTV format under test is evaluated in a subjective comparison with the upper and lower anchors. The method utilizes three displays in a particular vertical arrangement. In an initial series of tests with the novel method, the HDTV formats 1080p/50,1080i/25, and 720p/50 were compared at various bit-rates and with seven different content types on three identical 1920 times 1080 pixel displays. It was found that the new method provided stable and consistent results. The method was tested with 1080p/50,1080i/25, and 720p/50 HDTV images that had been coded with H.264/AVC High profile. The result of the assessment was that the progressive HDTV formats found higher appreciation by the assessors than the interlaced HDTV format. A system chain proposal is given for future media production and delivery to take advantage of this outcome. Recommendations for future research conclude the paper.
Diversity and Distribution of Marine Synechococcus: Multiple Gene Phylogenies for Consensus Classification and Development of qPCR Assays for Sensitive Measurement of Clades in the Ocean

Marine Synechococcus is a globally significant genus of cyanobacteria that is comprised of multiple genetic lineages or clades. These clades are thought to represent ecologically distinct units, or ecotypes. Because multiple clades often co-occur together in the oceans, Synechococcus are ideal microbes to explore how closely related bacterial taxa within the same functional guild of organisms co-exist and partition marine habitats. Here we sequenced multiple gene loci from cultured strains to confirm the congruency of clade classifications between the 16S–23S rDNA internally transcribed spacer (ITS), 16S rDNA, narB, ntcA, and rpoC1 loci commonly used in Synechococcus diversity studies. We designed quantitative PCR (qPCR) assays that target the ITS for 10 Synechococcus clades, including four clades, XV, XVI, CRD1, and CRD2, not covered by previous assays employing other loci. Our new qPCR assays are very sensitive and specific, detecting down to tens of cells per ml. Application of these qPCR assays to field samples from the northwest Atlantic showed clear shifts in Synechococcus community composition across a coastal to open-ocean transect. Consistent with previous studies, clades I and IV dominated cold, coastal Synechococcus communities. Clades II and X were abundant at the two warmer, off-shore stations, and at all stations multiple Synechococcus clades co-occurred. qPCR assays developed here provide valuable tools to further explore the dynamics of microbial community structure and the mechanisms of co-existence.
Simple and Effective Carrier Sensing Adaptation for Multi Rate Ad-Hoc MESH Networks

Adaptive physical carrier sensing (PCS) based on tuning the PCS threshold has been shown to be an effective mechanism for improving aggregate network throughput. However, earlier work assumed a single link rate and a common PCS threshold for the entire network, as appropriate for a regular 2-D lattice grid of nodes with constant link (1-hop) distances. In an ad-hoc network topology, the 1-hop link distances vary significantly and a single PCS threshold is no longer suitable. Because IEEE 802.11 a/b/g networks provide multiple data rates over any link, joint tuning of the link rate and PCS threshold is thus desirable for achieving optimal aggregate throughput for ad-hoc networks. In this work, we first propose a simple yet effective principle for the above optimization. Next, we use the intuition offered by these formulations to suggest run-time adaptive solutions in OPNET simulations. We restrict ourselves to 1-dimensional random linear networks primarily to corroborate analysis with simulations and defer results with other topologies for future work
An Argument for Change in Tobacco Treatment Options Guided by the ASAM Criteria for Patient Placement

Tobacco use is a major threat to public health in the United States, and the number one cause of preventable death. Although most smokers try to quit unaided, robust data indicate that pairing behavioral support to US Food Drug Administration-approved cessation medications significantly increase cessation rates. Those who do receive assistance in quitting usually receive very low intensity treatment, regardless of the severity of their dependence or their medical and environmental circumstances. This is in stark contrast to how other substance use disorders are treated, where there are varying levels of care depending on addiction severity and biopsychosocial circumstances. The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) developed a formal algorithm for assessing substance use disorders and determining the optimal level of care. The ASAM Patient Placement Criteria are regularly used to determine the appropriate level of care for all substance use disorders except tobacco. This paper will review key aspects of the ASAM dimensions of care and placement levels, with emphasis on how they apply to tobacco use and present case examples of typical smokers who would benefit from a higher intensity of tobacco dependence treatment. We also present current barriers to reimbursing healthcare providers for these services. We conclude with a commentary and discussion regarding recommendations for improvements in tobacco dependence treatment care.
Tracking based sparse box proposal for time constraint detection in video stream

Search and Rescue or surveillance applications from en embedded moving camera yield challenging computer vision problems as both very high precision/recall and real-time performance are required. However, in these contexts, it is often sufficient to assess the detection of each object of interest only once in the area spanned by the camera, with the idea that what matters is to be aware of its existence, its time to detection being a secondary objective. Taking advantage of this point, we describe a sparse box proposal controlled by tracking and designed to generate a small number of boxes per frame covering each object at least once in the video. Our sparse box proposal adapts to the budget allowed for single box classification and is able to achieve relevant results even on challenging situations while comfortably dealing with real time requirements.
Expression of Interleukin (IL)-18 and Functional IL-18 Receptor on Human Vascular Endothelial Cells, Smooth Muscle Cells, and Macrophages

Although considerable evidence implicates the cytokine interferon (IFN)-γ in atherogenesis, the proximal inducers and the range of sources of its expression remain unknown. This study tested the hypothesis that interleukin (IL)-18 regulates IFN-γ expression during atherogenesis. Indeed, human atheroma in situ expressed IL-18 and elevated levels of its receptor subunits, IL-18Rα/β, compared with nondiseased arterial tissue. IL-18 occurred predominantly as the mature, 18-kD form and colocalized with mononuclear phagocytes (MØ), while endothelial cells (ECs), smooth muscle cells (SMCs), and MØ all expressed IL-18Rα/β. Correspondingly in vitro, only MØ expressed IL-18, while all three cell types displayed the IL-18Rα/β complex constitutively, exhibiting enhanced expression upon stimulation with LPS, IL-1β, or tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α. IL-18 signaling evoked effectors involved in atherogenesis, e.g., cytokines (IL-6), chemokines (IL-8), intracellular adhesion molecules (ICAM)-1, and matrix metalloproteinases (MMP-1/-9/-13), demonstrating functionality of the receptor on ECs, SMCs, and MØ. Finally, IL-18, particularly in combination with IL-12, induced the expression of IFN-γ in cultured MØ and, surprisingly, in SMCs (but not in ECs). The expression of functional IL-18 and IL-18 receptor on human atheroma-associated ECs, SMCs, and MØ, and its unexpected ability to induce IFN-γ expression in SMCs, suggests a novel paracrine proinflammatory pathway operating during atherogenesis.
Dystemo

Emotion recognition in text has become an important research objective. It involves building classifiers capable of detecting human emotions for a specific application, for example, analyzing reactions to product launches, monitoring emotions at sports events, or discerning opinions in political debates. Most successful approaches rely heavily on costly manual annotation. To alleviate this burden, we propose a distant supervision method—Dystemo—for automatically producing emotion classifiers from tweets labeled using existing or easy-to-produce emotion lexicons. The goal is to obtain emotion classifiers that work more accurately for specific applications than available emotion lexicons. The success of this method depends mainly on a novel classifier—Balanced Weighted Voting (BWV)—designed to overcome the imbalance in emotion distribution in the initial dataset, and on novel heuristics for detecting neutral tweets. We demonstrate how Dystemo works using Twitter data about sports events, a fine-grained 20-category emotion model, and three different initial emotion lexicons. Through a series of carefully designed experiments, we confirm that Dystemo is effective both in extending initial emotion lexicons of small coverage to find correctly more emotional tweets and in correcting emotion lexicons of low accuracy to perform more accurately.
Classifying Patterns of Localized Glaucomatous Visual Field Defects on Automated Perimetry

AimTo classify the classic patterns of glaucomatous visual field defects on automated perimetry and to study their proximity to fixation. Study DesignCross-sectional observational study. Materials and MethodsAbout 1120 full threshold 30-2 reliable visual fields of glaucoma patients were analyzed by 2 glaucomatologists. Classically described patterns of visual field defects were identified on the pattern deviation plot and definitions proposed. Interreader agreement between 3 independent (not involved in the classification) readers was determined. Proximity to fixation of the different patterns was assessed. ResultsInterreader agreement with 3 readers was found to be 93% or more between any 2 readers using the present system of classification. Central fixation was seen to be involved in 45% of the glaucomatous visual field defects studied overall. ConclusionsThe proposed definitions of topographical glaucomatous field defects based on the pattern deviation probability plot are simple to use in clinical practice with good interreader agreement.
CACTI-FinFET: An integrated delay and power modeling framework for FinFET-based caches under process variations

We present CACTI-FinFET, an integrated framework for simulation of power, delay, temperature, as well as process variations of FinFET-based caches. We have developed a FinFET design library and process variation models to characterize the delay and leakage spreads of such caches. We present results for various FinFET design styles and show that mixing different design styles may be a promising strategy for optimizing cache delay and leakage.
Mobile data traffic analysis: How do you prefer watching videos?

In this paper, we analyze an anonymized packet trace of mobile handset data traffic from a major European mobile Internet Service Provider (ISP). Our goal is to understand the effect of the differences between this traffic and the traffic in wired residential networks. This knowledge can be useful for adapting the network to specific mobile usage. We show that, compared to wired users, mobile users exchange data with fewer servers. We then evaluate the performance at flow level, and study the influence of the access type (2G or 3G). In particular, we quantify the improvement provided by a 3G access in terms of delays and throughput. To figure out the user experience, we focus on a popular usage: media streaming. We measure performance metrics for the two main content diffusion techniques: ISP-managed live TV and progressive download (PDL, e.g. YouTube or Deezer). We observe that live TV streams only suffer from moderate packet losses thanks to conservative encoding bitrates chosen according to the radio access type. As for progressive download, while audio streams generally cope well with mobile networks, only 3G users experience smooth video playback. Through the analysis of session durations, we determine the effect of the Radio Access Type on the user experience.We notably show that users react to impaired network conditions by aborting their streaming sessions. We also highlight usage differences between live TV and PDL.
Prognostic power of proadrenomedullin in community-acquired pneumonia is independent of aetiology

Biomarkers are useful in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Recently, midregional (MR) proadrenomedullin (proADM) has been shown to be of potential prognostic use. We sought to determine whether this prognostic role depends on the cause of CAP. We conducted a prospective cohort study of immunocompetent patients with CAP. Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) and CURB-65 score (confusion (abbreviated mental test score of ≤8), urea ≥7 mol·L−1, respiratory rate ≥30 breaths·min−1, blood pressure <90 mmHg systolic or <60 mmHg diastolic, and age ≥65 yrs), blood C-reactive protein, procalcitonin, MR-proADM, and microbiological studies were systematically performed. Patients were grouped as bacterial, viral/atypical and mixed CAP, and were followed up at 30, 90 and 180 days, and 1 yr. We recruited 228 CAP patients. Identification of at least one pathogen was achieved in 155 (68%) patients. MR-proADM levels closely correlated with increasing severity scores, and showed an important predictive power for complications and short- and long-term mortality (1 yr). Its addition to PSI and CURB-65 significantly improved their prognostic accuracy. A MR-proADM cut-off of 0.646 nmol·L−1 identified 92% of patients scored as PSI classes IV and V as high risk. MR-proADM outcome prediction power was not affected by different aetiologies. MR-proADM has high short- and long-term prognostic accuracy, and increases the accuracy of clinical scores. The prognostic value of MR-proADM is not modified by different possible CAP aetiologies.
Belief, Acceptance and Belief Reports

This essay is about a theory of belief and a theory of belief reports formulated within the framework of DR (Discourse Representation) theory. DR theory’s treatment of definite and indefinite noun phrases leads to a superior treatment of belief reports involving singular terms. But it also provides something of even greater potential benefit to a treatment of belief: a (highly idealized) theory of how recipients recover verbally encoded information and of what form such information must take. The use of this account of verbally encoded information causes a distinctive treatment of belief to emerge. I will focus here on an analysis within this framework of how beliefs arise from the acceptance of verbal information and how the process of belief formation interacts with the process of belief report interpretation.