Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Citrus Pulp as a Dietary Source of Antioxidants for Lactating Holstein Cows Fed Highly Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Diets

The effects of feeding pelleted citrus pulp (PCP) as a natural antioxidant source on the performance and milk quality of dairy cows fed highly polyunsaturated fatty acid (FA) diets were evaluated. Four lactating Holstein cows were assigned to a 4×4 Latin-square. Treatments, on a dry matter (DM) basis, were i) control diet; ii) 3% soybean oil; iii) 3% soybean oil and 9% PCP and; iv) 3% soybean oil and 18% PCP. When cows fed on citrus pulp, the DM intake tended to decrease. The total tract apparent digestibility of DM and ether extract decreased when cows fed on the control diet compared to other diets. Cows fed PCP had higher polyphenols and flavonoids content and higher total ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) in milk compared to those fed no pelleted citrus pulp. Cows fed 18% PCP showed higher monounsaturated FA and lower saturated FA in milk fat compared with cows fed the other diets. The lowest n-6 FA proportion was in milk fat from cows fed control. The present study suggests that pelleted citrus pulp added to 9% to 18% DM increases total polyphenols and flavonoids concentration, and the FRAP in milk.
Interprofessional simulation training’s impact on process and outcome team efficacy beliefs over time

Introduction Recent findings suggest that process and outcome-based efficacy beliefs are factorially distinct with differential effects for team performance. This study extends this work by examining process and outcome efficacy (TPE, TOE) of interprofessional (IP) care teams over time. Methods A within-team, repeated measures design with survey methodology was implemented in a sample of prelicensure IP care teams performing over three consecutive clinical simulation scenarios. TPE and TOE were assessed before and after each performance episode. Results Initial baseline results replicated the discriminant validity for TPE and TOE separate factors. Further findings from multilevel modelling indicated significant time effects for TPE convergence, but not TOE convergence. However, a cross-level interaction effect of ‘TOE(Start-Mean)×Time’ strengthened TOE convergence over time. A final follow-up analysis of team agreement’s substantive impact was conducted using independent faculty-observer ratings of teams’ final simulation. Conclusion Independent sample t-tests of high/low-agreement teams indicated support for agreement’s substantive impact, such that high-agreement teams were rated as significantly better performers than low-agreement teams during the final simulation training. We discuss the substantive merit of methodological within-team agreement as an indicator of team functionality within IP and greater healthcare-simulation trainings at-large.
Valuable In-Service Training: Evaluation by Principals.

This study investigated what motivated principals to seek professional development and criteria they used when reflecting on their professional development experiences. It explored how they conceptualized the implementation process of their inservice experiences and noted why they chose specific professional development programs and how they used acquired knowledge. Graduate students interviewed elementary principals who had participated every year for at least 3 years in a professional development program. Before the interview, principals completed questionnaires on demographics, work situation, three professional development programs in which they participated, reasons why they participated, program usefulness, quality of training, and how training supported their professional learning. The interviews collected more detailed information on the same topics. Data analysis indicated that principals wanted to know more about some innovations before acting on them. Principals valued inservice programs that provided information confirming their personal theories. Most principals valued chances for informal networking during inservice activities. Principals wanted a balanced blend of information, demonstrations, practice, reflection, and discussion about implementation problems. The most effective inservice training method involved the principals and all of the teachers participating in an inservice program. (Contains 17 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Center for Educational Policy and Innovation University of Leuven Vesaliusstraat 2 B-3000 Leuven Valuable in-service training: evaluation by principals Paper presented at the annual AERA-meeting, New Orleans, April 21-28, 2000 Roland Vandenberghe Geert Kelchtermans, Frederik Maes e-mail: roland.vandenbergheOped. kuleuven.ac. be
Automatic modeling of duration in a Spanish text-to-speech system using neural networks

Accurate prediction of segmental duration from text in a textto-speech system is difficult for several reasons. One specially relevant is the great quantity of contextual factors that affect timing and how to model them. There are many parameters that affect duration, but not all of them are always relevant. We present a complete environment in which to decide which parameters are more relevant in different situations and the best way to code them. The system is based in a neural network absolutely configurable, and the main effort is made in the parameters to be used, including the contextual effects using windows of variable length.
Modulation of Hypercholesterolemia-Induced Oxidative/Nitrative Stress in the Heart

Hypercholesterolemia is a frequent metabolic disorder associated with increased risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. In addition to its well-known proatherogenic effect, hypercholesterolemia may exert direct effects on the myocardium resulting in contractile dysfunction, aggravated ischemia/reperfusion injury, and diminished stress adaptation. Both preclinical and clinical studies suggested that elevated oxidative and/or nitrative stress plays a key role in cardiac complications induced by hypercholesterolemia. Therefore, modulation of hypercholesterolemia-induced myocardial oxidative/nitrative stress is a feasible approach to prevent or treat deleterious cardiac consequences. In this review, we discuss the effects of various pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, some novel potential pharmacological approaches, and physical exercise on hypercholesterolemia-induced oxidative/nitrative stress and subsequent cardiac dysfunction as well as impaired ischemic stress adaptation of the heart in hypercholesterolemia.
The Impact of Employees’ Recognition, Rewards and Job Stress on Job Performance: Mediating Role of Perceived Organization Support

Aim - the purpose of this study is to examine the role of employee rewards, recognition, and job-related stress towards employee performance considering the mediating role of perceived organizational support in the call-centers located in Lahore, Pakistan. Design - The data has been gathered through the survey method of the questionnaire. A simple random sampling technique is used for this study. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structure equation modeling (SEM) techniques have been used for statistical analysis. Findings - Results showed that employee rewards and recognition have a significant and positive effect on employee performance whereas job stress has a significant and negative effect on employee performance. Findings also revealed that perceived organizational support significantly and fully mediates the relationship between employee rewards, recognition, and job stress and employee performance. So this study puts light on crucial factors that lead to better employee performance. Implications - Employee rewards and recognition play an important role in overall employee performance. If the companies will not take it seriously, then it might lead to negative consequences. On the other hand, job stress also plays a vital role in employee performance.
Optimal strategies for identifying patients with myocardial infarction in general practice.

BACKGROUND In order to provide evidence-based secondary prevention of coronary heart disease (CHD) in general practice, eligible patients need to be identified. The optimal strategy is one in which all appropriate patients are identified with the least effort. OBJECTIVE The purpose of the study was to determine the optimal strategy to identify subjects with a myocardial infarction (MI) from general practice records using different search criteria. METHODS The study was a cross-sectional survey of 10 general practices in Tayside, Scotland. A random sample of all subjects aged over 35 (n = 5061) and registered with the general practices was obtained. The main outcome measures were sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and yield (the number of records that need to be examined to detect a "true case"). RESULTS Of the sample of 5061, 207 (4.1%) were defined to have had a "gold standard" MI. A Read code for ischaemic heart disease (IHD) had the highest sensitivity (95%) but with a poor PPV (52%). All searches had high specificities. The addition of a record of hospitalization for MI to the Read code for MI gave 100% sensitivity and high yield (1 in 1.11). In situations where the Read coding is of poor quality, the alternative search strategy of a hospital record of MI or receiving aspirin or nitrates was optimum. CONCLUSIONS Patients who had experienced an MI can be easily identified from a combination of a Read code for MI and a record of hospitalization for an MI giving 100% sensitivity and specificity with a yield of 1 in 1.11.
Fault-tolerant control for safety of discrete event systems

This paper considers fault-tolerant control that ensures the safety of a discrete event system. We consider multiple faulty modes. Each faulty mode is modeled by an automaton. These automata, together with the automaton modeling the normal mode, describe a discrete event system with faults. Each faulty mode has some illegal states that must be avoided by control so that the fault can be tolerated. We assume that fault-tolerant control will take action (disablements) only when the occurrence of a fault is certain. We consider both full event observation and partial event observation. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of fault-tolerant control. We also provide formula and algorithm to calculate control actions if the necessary and sufficient conditions are satisfied. Both offline control synthesis (for full event observation) and online control synthesis (for partial event observation) are investigated.
Manifold Optimization for Gaussian Mixture Models

We take a new look at parameter estimation for Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). In particular, we propose using \emph{Riemannian manifold optimization} as a powerful counterpart to Expectation Maximization (EM). An out-of-the-box invocation of manifold optimization, however, fails spectacularly: it converges to the same solution but vastly slower. Driven by intuition from manifold convexity, we then propose a reparamerization that has remarkable empirical consequences. It makes manifold optimization not only match EM---a highly encouraging result in itself given the poor record nonlinear programming methods have had against EM so far---but also outperform EM in many practical settings, while displaying much less variability in running times. We further highlight the strengths of manifold optimization by developing a somewhat tuned manifold LBFGS method that proves even more competitive and reliable than existing manifold optimization tools. We hope that our results encourage a wider consideration of manifold optimization for parameter estimation problems.
Bootstrap Tests for Unit Roots in the Presence of Long-Memory Errors Test Bootstrap per Radici Unitarie in Presenza di Errori a Memoria Lunga

Riassunto: Nei lavori applicati il numero di volte che una serie temporale deve essere differenziata per raggiungere la stazionarietà viene usualmente determinato mediante metodi intuitivi e non formali. Tuttavia, per molte serie storiche osservate, prendere la differenza prima o seconda può risultare eccessivo. Un approccio alternativo è quello di utilizzare la classe dei più generali modelli frazionari ARFIMA(p,d,q), ma, in questo contesto, gli usuali test per radici unitarie hanno bassa potenza contro alternative frazionarie. In questo lavoro vedremo come utilizzare alcuni test asintotici di integrazione frazionaria per testare l’ipotesi nulla di radici unitarie contro alternative frazionarie, inoltre, poiché tali test risultano distorti in piccoli campioni, utilizzeremo una particolare metodologia bootstrap per migliorarne il comportamento.
( In ) Efficiency in Intrahousehold Allocations *

Previous research using plot-level agricultural data from Burkina Faso found that the allocation of resources within African households was Pareto inefficient, contradicting most collective models of intrahousehold bargaining. I provide an explanation for these households' Pareto inefficient behavior and I test its robustness using an alternative dataset also collected in Burkina Faso. Households experiencing exogenous negative rainfall shocks are less likely in that year to exhibit Pareto inefficient intrahousehold allocations. These negative rainfall shocks are correlated with increases in labor resources allocated to the wife's plots, further confirming that in bad years, households try to avoid losses from Pareto inefficiency.
On Preferred States of Agents - how Global Structure is reflected in Local Structure

We investigate the correlation between the information theoretic measure of empowerment and the graph theoretic measure of closeness centrality, to better understand the structural conditions that must exist in a world for learning and adaptation. We examine both measures in both a simple gridworld scenario, represented as a graph, and on a scale-free graph. We show a strong correlation between the two measures, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of both. We go on to show how the local measurement of empowerment can in many cases predict a measure for the global measurement of closeness centrality.
Using the Simon Effect in Simultaneity/Asynchrony Discrimination Tasks: Interest, Methods, and Limits

In this chapter, we describe some methods to explore the automatic, unconscious processing of asynchronous events that are judged as being simultaneous. We first describe our conceptual framework, which was guided by clinical inquiries on patients with schizophrenia. We then describe how we applied the Simon effect, as a novel method of analyses. The code provided with the manuscript (see book’s GitHub repository) will allow the reader to generate his/her own data. The aim of the chapter is to provide all the necessary information for the reader to train and calculate effects like the Simon effect by including some example data files (see Annex). It must be noted at the onset that these calculations are not meant to replace more standardized measures like the evaluation of the threshold. They are only meant to complement them. Also, it is not the aim of this manuscript to provide a set method. We rather advocate that some flexibility in our methods can sometimes provide additional and useful information on the processes we explore. In the final section of this chapter, we provide an example of how and to which aim other methods can be used when utilizing identical tasks. The flow of our mental activity in time is unidirectional, from the past to the future. This directionality is an intrinsic property of all cognitive functions, which appears to be a given fact, and which we seldom reflect upon or include as a parameter of our experimental approaches. Its importance is evident in clinical populations for whom the continuous flow of thought is altered. For example, clinical experience suggests that patients with schizophrenia suffer from a disruption of the feeling of time continuity. This disruption has been described by many psychiatrists based on patients’ reports (i.e., they are based on what the patients say within interviews with the psychiatrist; Andreasen, 1999; Fuchs, 2007; Minkowski, 1933; Vogeley & Kupke, 2007; Chapman, 1966). The drawback of these reports is that they are selected and interpreted subjectively by the psychiatrist. The impairments, thus, require objective experimentation and measurement. It is with the goal of objectively characterizing such a
Perverse coherent sheaves (after Deligne)

This note is mostly an exposition of an unpublished result of Deligne, which introduces an analogue of perverse $t$-structure on the derived category of coherent sheaves on a Noetherian scheme with a dualizing complex. Construction extends to the category of coherent sheaves equivariant under an action of an algebraic group; though proof of the general statement in this case does not require new ideas, it provides examples (such as sheaves on the nilpotent cone of a semi-simple group equivariant under the adjoint action) where construction of coherent "intersection cohomology" sheaves works.
Docking window framework: supporting multitasking by docking windows

When performing tasks using computers, multiple documents are used with multiple applications. During working with computers, multiple tasks, perhaps involving multiple documents, are switched. This paper presents the Docking Window Framework: an extended multi-window system supporting such multitasking situations. It enables construction of workspaces comprising multiple windows with simple switching of workspaces. Although previous systems emphasized the support of task-switching after workspace construction, the proposed system characteristically supports construction of workspaces through a docking user interface. It also supports operation of multiple windows simultaneously, provides a tile layout of windows to reduce the overhead of window operations, and supports saving and restoration of workspaces. We conducted two experiments to evaluate the system. In window arrangement tasks, participants performed tasks faster using the proposed system than when using a popular window system (Windows XP). Moreover, in task-switching tasks, participants using our system performed multiple tasks in parallel more efficiently.
Implicit FSM decomposition applied to low-power design

Clock-gating techniques are very effective in the reduction of the switching activity in sequential logic circuits. In this paper, we describe a clock-gating technique based on finite-state machine (FSM) decomposition. The approach is based on the computation of two sub-FSMs that together have the same functionality as the original FSM. For all the transitions within one sub-FSM, the clock for the other sub-FSM is disabled. To minimize the average switching activity, we search for a small cluster of states with high stationary state probability and use it to create the small sub-FSM. Explicit manipulation of the state transition graph requires time and space exponential on the number of registers in the circuit, thereby restricting the applicability of explicit methods to relatively small circuits. The approach we propose is based on a method that implicitly performs the FSM decomposition. Using this technique, the FSM decomposition is performed by direct manipulation of the circuit. We provide a set of experiments that show that power consumption can be substantially reduced, in some cases by more than 70%.
LRP5 deficiency down-regulates Wnt signalling and promotes aortic lipid infiltration in hypercholesterolaemic mice

Low‐density lipoprotein receptor‐related protein 5 (LRP5) is a member of the LDLR family that orchestrates cholesterol homoeostasis. The role of LRP5 and the canonical Wnt pathway in the vascular wall of dyslipidaemic animals remains unknown. In this study, we analysed the role of LRP5 and the Wnt signalling pathway in mice fed a hypercholesterolaemic diet (HC) to trigger dyslipidaemia. We show that Lrp5−/− mice had larger aortic lipid infiltrations than wild‐type mice, indicating a protective role for LRP5 in the vascular wall. Three members of the LDLR family, Lrp1, Vldlr and Lrp6, showed up‐regulated gene expression levels in aortas of Lrp5−/− mice fed a hypercholesterolaemic diet. HC feeding in Lrp5−/− mice induced higher macrophage infiltration in the aortas and accumulation of inflammatory cytokines in blood. Wnt/β‐CATENIN signalling proteins were down‐regulated in HC Lrp5−/− mice indicating that LRP5 regulates the activation of Wnt signalling in the vascular wall. In conclusion, our findings show that LRP5 and the canonical Wnt pathway down‐regulation regulate the dyslipidaemic profile by promoting lipid and macrophage retention in the vessel wall and increasing leucocyte‐driven systemic inflammation.
Nonlinear Simulation of Multivariate Sea State Time Series

In this paper, three nonlinear methods are described for artificially generating operational sea state histories. In the first method, referred to as Translated Gaussian Process the observed time series is transformed to a process which is supposed to be Gaussian. This Gaussian process is simulated and back transformed. The second method, called Local Grid Bootstrap, consists in a resampling algorithm for Markov chains within which the transition probabilities are estimated locally. The last models is a Markov Switching Autoregressive model which allows in particular to model different weather types.Copyright © 2005 by ASME
Different Responses to Clarithromycin in Patients with Cryptogenic Organizing Pneumonia

Cryptogenic organizing pneumonia (COP) is an idiopathic interstitial pneumonia characterized by a subacute course and favorable prognosis with corticosteroids. However, some patients show resistance to steroids. Macrolides have been used with success in those patients showing resistance to steroids. A few reports showed treatment failure with macrolides in patients with COP who were resistant to steroids. In this report, we described two cases of COP who showed different responses to clarithromycin. One recovered completely, but the other gradually showed lung fibrosis with clarithromycin.
The sensing board enhanced by interactive sound system for collaborative work

In this paper, we describe a new sensing board system enhanced with audio devices. Our previous board system provides users with common display images using tangible pieces, thus, users collaboratively work with visual and tangible information. On the other hand, the proposed system is characterized by the functionality of the direct responses of both sounds and images from the contents. Using the system, we develop three application systems with the following objectives: (1) Users enjoy interaction of sounds and images; (2) Users have high level of engagement; and (3) Users enjoy personal sounds and images. We have carried out experiments to evaluate the benefits and have found that these systems enhance user engagement, participation, and continuous operation.