Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of individual and household level factors on stunting: A comparative study in three Indian states

Background: Status of growth especially in early childhood is not only the most important determinant of health of a child but also a reflection of the well-being of the entire society. The extent of malnutrition in India is very high, but the exact magnitude varies considerably depending on which indicator is used. Child health in this paper is measured through chronic malnutrition (termed as stunting). Three states were selected, namely Bihar, West Bengal and Kerala. These three states represent the three stages of development. Bihar is one of the least and Kerala is one of the most developed states in India. Aim: The present paper aims to investigate the degree of chronic malnutrition in the context of socio-economic, demographic and other characteristics of the children and their households in the three selected states in India. Subjects and methods: The data for this study were taken from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2) conducted by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, in 1998–1999. The NFHS-2 sample covers ever-married women in the age group 15–49 years from 26 states in India. Besides collecting information on health, the survey collects data on socio-economic and demographic characteristics at individual and household level. Results: The percentage of stunting of children in Bihar, West Bengal and Kerala was found to be 54, 39 and 23%, respectively. Regression analysis showed that the major factors that significantly influenced the status of health in the children in all three states were women's education and the household condition index. Months of breastfeeding and birth interval also had some association with health status. The effect of the above-mentioned variables was most prominent in Bihar and least in Kerala in terms of statistical significance. Conclusion: There is a close positive link between the nutritional status of pre-school children and the stages of development of the states. Mothers’ education and household condition are important influences on children's health status irrespective of the stage of development.
Beyond the spreadsheet: reflections on tool support for literature studies

Background: Even though a number of tools are reported to be used by researchers undertaking systematic reviews, important shortages are still reported revealing how such solutions are unable to satisfy current needs. Method: Two research groups independently provided a design for a tool supporting systematic reviews. The resulting tools were assessed against the feature lists provided by prior research. Results: After presenting an overview of the tools and the core design decisions taken, we provide a feature analysis and a discussion regarding selected challenges deemed crucial to provide a proper tool support. Conclusions: Although the designed solutions do not yet support the entire systematic review process, their architecture has been designed to be flexible and extendable. After highlighting the difficulties of developing appropriate tools, we call for action: developing tools to support systematic reviews is a community project.
PlayerRating: A reputation system for multiplayer online games

In multiplayer online games, players interact with each other using aliases which unfortunately enable antisocial behavior. Vague rules and limited policing mean that only the very worst offenders are ever disciplined. This paper presents PlayerRating, a distributed reputation system specifically designed for online games. It leverages the prior experiences of a player's peers to determine the reputability of all other peers, allowing well-behaved players to safely congregate and avoid interaction with antisocial peers. The system has been implemented as an interface add-on for the game World of Warcraft and is evaluated theoretically and experimentally.
Identifying the Major Sources of Variance in Transaction Latencies: Towards More Predictable Databases

Decades of research have sought to improve transaction processing performance and scalability in database management systems (DBMSs). However, significantly less attention has been dedicated to the predictability of performance: how often individual transactions exhibit execution latency far from the mean? Performance predictability is vital when transaction processing lies on the critical path of a complex enterprise software or an interactive web service, as well as in emerging database-as-a-service markets where customers contract for guaranteed levels of performance. In this paper, we take several steps towards achieving more predictable database systems. First, we propose a profiling framework called VProfiler that, given the source code of a DBMS, is able to identify the dominant sources of variance in transaction latency. VProfiler automatically instruments the DBMS source code to deconstruct the overall variance of transaction latencies into variances and covariances of the execution time of individual functions, which in turn provide insight into the root causes of variance. Second, we use VProfiler to analyze MySQL and Postgres - two of the most popular and complex open-source database systems. Our case studies reveal that the primary causes of variance in MySQL and Postgres are lock scheduling and centralized logging, respectively. Finally, based on VProfiler's findings, we further focus on remedying the performance variance of MySQL by (1) proposing a new lock scheduling algorithm, called Variance-Aware Transaction Scheduling (VATS), (2) enhancing the buffer pool replacement policy, and (3) identifying tuning parameters that can reduce variance significantly. Our experimental results show that our schemes reduce overall transaction latency variance by 37% on average (and up to 64%) without compromising throughput or mean latency.
Ruang Budaya “Barikan” Di Desa Sumber Polaman Lawang Jawa Timur

Lawang city has many interesting sights, one of which is the source Polaman Baths, located in Sumber Polaman. In the Village of Polaman there are some cultural activities that make up the cultural space. Local communities do village ritual ceremonies to honor ancestors founders of the village as well as a petition to God for the prosperity of rural communities Polaman. The cultural activities are known as cultural ritual barikan. Time and Barikan ritual space in the traditional settlement pattern forming Polaman rural communities. The research method in this study is descriptive-qualitative method with an etnographic approach. This study aims to identify patterns formed by the settlement of the cultural activities that make up the cultural space. By knowing the settlement pattern is formed it will be determined the shape of preservation suitable for spaces used settlements and cultural preservation barikan itself. Keywords: cultural space, barikan traditional ceremonies, village Source Polaman
Role of Transcription Factors in Motoneuron Differentiation of Adult Human Olfactory Neuroepithelial‐Derived Progenitors

Neurosphereforming cell (NSFC) lines have been established from cultures of human adult olfactory neuroepithelium. Few of these cells ever express mature neuronal or glial markers in minimal essential medium supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum or defined medium. However, these neural progenitors have the potential to differentiate along glial or neuronal lineages. To evaluate the potential of NSFCs to form motoneurons, transcription factors Olig2, Ngn2, and HB9 were introduced into NSFCs to determine if their expression is sufficient for motoneuron specification and differentiation, as has been shown in the early development of the avian and murine central nervous systems in vivo. NSFCs transfected with Olig2, Ngn2, and HB9 alone exhibited no phenotypic lineage restriction. In contrast, simultaneous transfection of Ngn2 and HB9 cDNA increased the expression of Isl1/2, a motoneuron marker, when the cells were maintained in medium supplemented with retinoic acid, forskolin, and sonic hedgehog. Furthermore, a population of Olig2‐expressing NSFCs also expressed Ngn2. Cotransfection of NSFCs with Olig2 and HB9, but not Olig2 and Ngn2, increased Isl1/2 expression. Coculture of NSFCs trans‐fected with Ngn2‐HB92 or Olig2 and HB9 with purified chicken skeletal muscle demonstrated frequent contacts that resembled neuromuscular junctions. These studies demonstrate that transcription factors governing the early development of chick and mouse motoneuron formation are able to drive human adult olfactory neuroepithelial progenitors to differentiate into motoneurons in vitro. Our long‐term goal is to develop cell populations for future studies of the therapeutic utility of these olfactory‐derived NSFCs for autologous cell replacement strategies for central nervous system trauma and neurodegenerative diseases.
Alpha-Latrotoxin Rescues SNAP-25 from BoNT/A-Mediated Proteolysis in Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Neurons

The botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) exhibit zinc-dependent proteolytic activity against members of the core synaptic membrane fusion complex, preventing neurotransmitter release and resulting in neuromuscular paralysis. No pharmacologic therapies have been identified that clinically relieve botulinum poisoning. The black widow spider venom α-latrotoxin (LTX) has the potential to attenuate the severity or duration of BoNT-induced paralysis in neurons via the induction of synaptic degeneration and remodeling. The potential for LTX to antagonize botulinum poisoning was evaluated in embryonic stem cell-derived neurons (ESNs), using a novel screening assay designed around the kinetics of BoNT/A activation. Exposure of ESNs to 400 pM LTX for 6.5 or 13 min resulted in the nearly complete restoration of uncleaved SNAP-25 within 48 h, whereas treatment with 60 mM K+ had no effect. Time-lapse imaging demonstrated that LTX treatment caused a profound increase in Ca2+ influx and evidence of excitotoxicity, though ESNs remained viable 48 h after LTX treatment. This is the first instance of a cell-based treatment that has shown the ability to eliminate BoNT activity. These data suggest that LTX treatment may provide the basis for a new class of therapeutic approach to BoNT intoxication and may contribute to an improved understanding of long-term mechanisms of BoNT intoxication and recovery. They further demonstrate that ESNs are a novel, responsive and biologically relevant model for LTX research and BoNT therapeutic drug discovery.
Query Parsing Task for GeoCLEF2007 Report

Geo-query parsing task is a sub-task in GeoCLEF2007 and it is run by Microsoft Research Asia. We have provided a query set of 800,000 real queries (in English) from MSN search. The proposed task requires that, based on the provided query set, the participants first identify the local queries and then analyze the different components for the local queries. We have provided a sample labeled query set of 100 queries for training. There are six valid submissions from six teams. We selected 500 queries to form our evaluation set. Under a rather strict evaluation criterion and metric, the Miracle team achieves the highest F1-score, 0.488, and the highest Recall too, 0.566, while the Ask team achieves the highest Precision, 0.625.
Time Optimal Spectrum Sensing

Spectrum sensing is a fundamental operation in cognitive radio environment. It gives information about spectrum availability by scanning the bands. Usually a fixed amount of time is given to scan individual bands. Most of the times, historical information about the traffic in the spectrum bands is not used. But this information gives the idea, how busy a specific band is. Therefore, instead of scanning a band for a fixed amount of time, more time can be given to less occupied bands and less time to heavily occupied ones. In this paper we have formulated the time assignment problem as integer linear programming and source coding problems. The time assignment problem is solved using the associated stochastic optimization problem.
Visualization for communication: the importance of aesthetic sizzle

When creating a visualization for communication, the inclusion of aesthetically appealing elements can greatly increase a design's appeal, intuitiveness and memorability. Used without care, this "sizzle" can reduce the effectiveness of the visualization by obscuring the intended message. Maintaining a focus on key design principles and an understanding of the target audience can result in an effective visualization for communication. This paper describes these principles and shows their use in creating effective designs.
Dramatic mitotic response in planarians after feeding, and a hypothesis for the control mechanism.

Using a new technique to stain and count planarian mitotic cells, a very rapid increase in neoblast mitotic activity has been found following feeding. The increase becomes visible 1 hour after feeding, reaches a maximum in 3–8 hours, and lasts for almost a week. These results suggest that a substantial proportion of neoblasts in the intact worm must be in the G2 phase ready to enter mitosis. The fact that the mitotic figures occur throughout the parenchyma also suggests that the stimulus may be of a neurohumoral kind.
Data Driven Authentication: On the Effectiveness of User Behaviour Modelling with Mobile Device Sensors

We propose a lightweight, and temporally and spatially aware user behaviour modelling technique for sensor-based authentication. Operating in the background, our data driven technique compares current behaviour with a user profile. If the behaviour deviates sufficiently from the established norm, actions such as explicit authentication can be triggered. To support a quick and lightweight deployment, our solution automatically switches from training mode to deployment mode when the user's behaviour is sufficiently learned. Furthermore, it allows the device to automatically determine a suitable detection threshold. We use our model to investigate practical aspects of sensor-based authentication by applying it to three publicly available data sets, computing expected times for training duration and behaviour drift. We also test our model with scenarios involving an attacker with varying knowledge and capabilities.
Finite State Machine Parsing for Internet Protocols: Faster Than You Think

A parser's job is to take unstructured, opaque data and convert it to a structured, semantically meaningful format. As such, parsers often operate at the border between untrusted data sources (e.g., the Internet) and the soft, chewy center of computer systems, where performance and security are paramount. A firewall, for instance, is precisely a trust-creating parser for Internet protocols, permitting valid packets to pass through and dropping or actively rejecting malformed packets. Despite the prevalence of finite state machines (FSMs) in both protocol specifications and protocol implementations, they have gained little traction in parser code for such protocols. Typical reasons for avoiding the FSM computation model claim poor performance, poor scalability, poor expressibility, and difficult or time-consuming programming. In this research report, we present our motivations for and designs of finite state machines to parse a variety of existing Internet protocols, both binary and ASCII. Our hand-written parsers explicitly optimize around L1 cache hit latency, branch misprediction penalty, and program-wide memory overhead to achieve aggressive performance and scalability targets. Our work demonstrates that such parsers are, contrary to popular belief, sufficiently expressive for meaningful protocols, sufficiently performant for high-throughput applications, and sufficiently simple to construct and maintain. We hope that, in light of other research demonstrating the security benefits of such parsers over more complex, Turing-complete codes, our work serves as evidence that certain ``practical'' reasons for avoiding FSM-based parsers are invalid.
Global emissions of hydrogen chloride and chloromethane from coal combustion, incineration and industrial activities: Reactive Chlorine Emissions Inventory

Much if not all of the chlorine present in fossil fuels is released into the atmosphere as hydrogen chloride (HCl) and chloromethane (CH3Cl, methyl chloride). The chlorine content of oil-based fuels is so low that these sources can be neglected, but coal combustion provides significant releases. On the basis of national statistics for the quantity and quality of coal burned during 1990 in power and heat generation, industrial conversion and residential and commercial heating, coupled with information on the chlorine contents of coals, a global inventory of national HCl emissions from this source has been constructed. This was combined with an estimate of the national emissions of HCl from waste combustion (both large-scale incineration and trash burning) which was based on an estimate of the global quantity released from this source expressed per head of population. Account was taken of reduced emissions where flue gases were processed, for example to remove sulphur dioxide. The HCl emitted in 1990, comprising 4.6 ± 4.3 Tg Cl from fossil fuel and 2 ± 1.9 Tg Cl from waste burning, was spatially distributed using available information on point sources such as power generation utilities and population density by default. Also associated with these combustion sources are chloromethane emissions, calculated to be 0.075 ± 0.07 Tg as Cl (equivalent) from fossil fuels and 0.032 ± 0.023 Tg Cl (equivalent) from waste combustion. These were distributed spatially exactly as the HCl emissions, and a further 0.007 Tg Cl in chloromethane from industrial process activity was distributed by point sources.
Homotopy quantum field theories and tortile structures

We study a variation of Turaev's homotopy quantum field theories using 2-categories of surfaces. We define the homotopy surface 2-category of a space $X$ and define an $\cS_X$-structure to be a monoidal 2-functor from this to the 2-category of idempotent-complete additive $k$-linear categories. We initiate the study of the algebraic structure arising from these functors. In particular we show that, under certain conditions, an $\cS_X$-structure gives rise to a lax tortile $\pi$-category when the background space is an Eilenberg-Maclane space $X=K(\pi,1)$, and to a tortile category with lax $\pi_2X$-action when the background space is simply-connected.
Quality‐of‐life differences between prophylactic and on‐demand factor replacement therapy in European haemophilia patients

The European Study on the Clinical Outcomes and Resource Utilization associated with Haemophilia Care was designed to compare various health outcomes associated with on‐demand and prophylactic factor substitution methods in European haemophilia patients. While the primary objective of this research is to conduct an economic analysis, an important component of this study is to evaluate quality‐of‐life differences that may exist between patients who utilize these two styles of therapy. Quality‐of‐life research has emerged as a primary measure of health outcomes because it allows the augmentation of traditional clinical indicators of health with data gathered from the patient's perspective. A total of 1033 haemophilia patients from 16 European haemophilia treatment centres were enrolled in this study. The SF‐36, a multidimensional quality‐of‐life instrument, was administered to all participants. This instrument measures eight health‐related quality‐of‐life dimensions: physical functioning, physical role limitations, bodily pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, emotional role limitations, and mental health. All haemophilia subjects enrolled in the study scored significantly lower than the population normative means in the three physical dimensions and in the general health dimension. HIV‐negative haemophiliac subjects differed significantly by factor substitution type in a multivariate analysis examining all eight health dimensions. Univariate analyses testing each dimension separately indicated that patients treated prophylactically reported significantly less bodily pain, better general health, and scored significantly higher in the physical functioning, mental health, and social functioning dimensions. While these results suggest that health‐related quality‐of‐life may be better for haemophilia patients treated prophylactically, future prospective studies that gather periodic quality‐of‐life data over time should be conducted.
From Resilience to Vulnerability: Mechanistic Insights into the Effects of Stress on Transitions in Critical Period Plasticity

While early experiences are proposed to be important for the emergence of anxiety and other mental health problems, there is little empirical research examining the impact of such experiences on the development of emotional learning. Of the research that has been performed in this area, however, a complex picture has emerged in which the maturation of emotion circuits is influenced by the early experiences of the animal. For example, under typical laboratory rearing conditions infant rats rapidly forget learned fear associations (infantile amnesia) and express a form of extinction learning which is relapse-resistant (i.e., extinction in infant rats may be due to fear erasure). In contrast, adult rats exhibit very long-lasting memories of past learned fear associations, and express a form of extinction learning that is relapse-prone (i.e., the fear returns in a number of situations). However, when rats are reared under stressful conditions then they exhibit adult-like fear retention and extinction behaviors at an earlier stage of development (i.e., good retention of learned fear and relapse-prone extinction learning). In other words, under typical rearing conditions infant rats appear to be protected from exhibiting anxiety whereas after adverse rearing fear learning appears to make those infants more vulnerable to the later development of anxiety. While the effects of different experiences on infant rats’ fear retention and extinction are becoming better documented, the mechanisms which mediate the early transition seen following stress remain unclear. Here we suggest that rearing stress may lead to an early maturation of the molecular and cellular signals shown to be involved in the closure of critical period plasticity in sensory modalities (e.g., maturation of GABAergic neurons, development of perineuronal nets), and speculate that these signals could be manipulated in adulthood to reopen infant forms of emotional learning (i.e., those that favor resilience).