Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Environmental and Lifestyle Factors Associated with Overweight and Obesity in Perth, Australia

Purpose. To examine associations between environmental and lifestyle factors and overweight or obesity. Design. A cross-sectional survey and an environmental scan of recreational facilities. Setting. Metropolitan Perth, Western Australia. Subjects. Healthy sedentary workers and homemakers aged 18 to 59 years (n = 1803) living in areas within the top and bottom quintiles of social disadvantage. Measures. Four lifestyle factors, one social environmental factor, and five physical environment factors (three objectively measured). Results. After adjustment for demographic factors and other variables in the model, overweight was associated with living on a highway (odds ratio [OR], 4.24; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.62–11.09) or streets with no sidewalks or sidewalks on one side only (OR, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.03–1.78) and perceiving no paths within walking distance (OR, 1.42; 95% CI, 1.08–1.86). Poor access to four or more recreational facilities (OR, 1.68; 95% CI, 1.11–2.55) and sidewalks (OR, 1.62; 95% CI, .98–2.68) and perceiving no shop within walking distance (OR, 1.84; 95% CI, 1.01–3.36) were associated with obesity. Conversely, access to a motor vehicle all the time was negatively associated with obesity (OR, .56; 95% CI, .32–.99). Watching 3 or more hours of television daily (ORs, 1.92 and 1.85, respectively) and rating oneself as less active than others (ORs, 1.66 and 4.05, respectively) were associated with both overweight and obesity. After adjustment for individual demographic factors and all other variables in the model, socioeconomic status of area of residence and leisure-time physical activity were not associated with overweight or obesity. Conclusion. Factors that influence overweight and obesity appear to differ, but aspects of the physical environment may be important. Objectively measured neighborhood environment factors warrant further investigation.
Effect of passive exposure to smoking on age at natural menopause.

The authors examine the impact of passive exposure to smoking on age at menopause using a study of 261 U.S. women aged 35 and over. "Data were analysed with the Kaplan-Meier procedure and conditional logistic regression by methods analogous to life table analysis of survival data in a clinical trial or cohort study.The Kaplan-Meier estimate of mean age at natural menopause was 49.7 years for smokers and 50.8 years for non-smokers. The mean ages in non-smokers whose spouses also did not smoke and non-smokers whose spouses smoked were 51.9 and 49.8 years respectively. " According to the authors "the findings thus suggest that there is an effect from passive smoking but do not justify the conclusion that effects of active and passive exposure are equivalent. " (EXCERPT)
A test suite for evaluation of English-to-Korean machine translation systems

This paper describes KORTERM’s test suite and their practicability. The test-sets have been being constructed on the basis of fine-grained classification of linguistic phenomena to evaluate the technical status of English-to-Korean MT systems systematically. They consist of about 5000 test-sets and are growing. Each test-set contains an English sentence, a model Korean translation, a linguistic phenomenon category, and a yes/no question about the linguistic phenomenon. Two commercial systems were evaluated with a yes/no test of prepared questions. Total accuracy rates of the two systems were different (50% vs. 66%). In addition, a comprehension test was carried out. We found that one system was more comprehensible than the other system. These results seem to show that our test suite is practicable.
High-Performance Reverse Time Migration on GPU

Partial Differential Equations (PDE) are the heart of most simulations in many scientific fields, from Fluid Mechanics to Astrophysics. One the most popular mathematical schemes to solve a PDE is Finite Difference (FD). In this work we map a PDE-FD algorithm called Reverse Time Migration to a GPU using CUDA. This seismic imaging (Geophysics) algorithm is widely used in the oil industry. GPUs are natural contenders in the aftermath of the clock race, in particular for High-performance Computing (HPC). Due to GPU characteristics, the parallelism paradigm shifts from the classical threads plus SIMD to Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD). The NVIDIA GTX 280 implementation outperforms homogeneous CPUs up to 9x (Intel Harpertown E5420) and up to 14x (IBM PPC 970). These preliminary results confirm that GPUs are a real option for HPC, from performance to programmability.
Dimensions of Cultural Mediation in Guiding Chinese Tour Groups: Implications for Interpretation

This paper examines the cultural brokering or mediating role of tour guides and the contribution of interpretation to that role. Using Chinese inbound tourism to Australia as a context, the paper draws on two separate mixed-methods studies to explore the views of tourism industry representatives, tour guides and visitors with respect to cultural mediation. In addition to defining and outlining the dimensions of cultural mediation, respondents elaborated on what these dimensions entail and how the cultural mediation performed by guides contributes to the visitor experience. The findings suggest that, to be a cultural mediator, a tour guide needs to perform a number of roles relating to three broad dimensions: the mediation of access, understanding, and encounters. The first and third, brokering physical access and facilitating opportunities for encounters and/or social interaction with locals, were both reported by visitors as important contributors to memorable experiences. However, it was the mediation of understanding, i.e., the guide's brokering of a cognitive/affective dimension to the experience, that visitors most frequently cited as contributing to experiences which were memorable. Finally, when asked to evaluate their tour guides' performance as cultural mediators, visitors reported that many guides fell short of adequately mediating their understanding of the host culture, which appears to be due to both the guides' lack of sufficient depth of knowledge about Australia and a lack of interpretation skills. The paper presents some of the implications of these findings for tour guiding and, in particular, for the more effective and widespread use of interpretation as a tool for mediating cultural understanding.
Genotyping Test with Clinical Factors: Better Management of Acute Postoperative Pain?

Individualization of acute postoperative pain treatment on an evidence-based decision process is a major health concern. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of genetic and non-genetic factors on the variability of response to morphine in acute postoperative pain. A group of nighty-five patients undergoing major surgery were included prospectively. At 24 h, a logistic regression model was carried out to determine the factors associated with morphine doses given by a Patient Controlled Analgesia device. The dose of morphine was associated with age (p = 0.011), patient weight (p = 0.025) and the duration of operation (p = 0.030). This dose decreased with patient’s age and duration of operation and increased with patient’s weight. OPRM1 and ABCB1 polymorphisms were significantly associated with administered dose of morphine (p = 0.038 and 0.012 respectively). Patients with at least one G allele for c.118A>G OPRM1 polymorphism (AG/GG) needed 4 times the dose of morphine of AA patients. Additionally, patients with ABCB1 CT and CC genotypes for c.3435C>T polymorphism were 5.6 to 7.1 times more prone to receive higher dose of morphine than TT patients. Our preliminary results support the evidence that OPRM1/ABCB1 genotypes along with age, weight and duration of operation have an impact on morphine consumption for acute postoperative pain treatment.
Predict Defibrillation Outcome Using Stepping Increment of Poincare Plot for Out-of-Hospital Ventricular Fibrillation Cardiac Arrest

Early cardiopulmonary resuscitation together with early defibrillation is a key point in the chain of survival for cardiac arrest. Optimizing the timing of defibrillation by predicting the possibility of successful electric shock can guide treatments between defibrillation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation and improve the rate of restoration of spontaneous circulation. Numerous methods have been proposed for predicting defibrillation success based on quantification of the ventricular fibrillation waveform during past decades. To date, however, no analytical technique has been widely accepted for clinical application. In the present study, we investigate whether median stepping increment that is calculated from the Euclidean distance of consecutive points in Poincare plot could be used to predict the likelihood of successful defibrillation. Electrocardiographic recordings of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients were obtained from the external defibrillators. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curve and compared with the results of other established features. The results indicated that median stepping increment has comparable performance to the established methods in predicting the likelihood of successful defibrillation.
Clinical and molecular features of the immunodysregulation, polyendocrinopathy, enteropathy, X linked (IPEX) syndrome

Immunodysregulation, polyendocrinopathy, enteropathy, X linked (IPEX, OMIM 304790) is a rare, recessive disorder resulting in aggressive autoimmunity and early death. Mutations in FOXP3 have been identified in 13 of 14 patients tested. Research in the mouse model, scurfy, suggests that autoimmunity may stem from a lack of working regulatory T cells. We review published reports regarding the genetics, clinical features, immunology, pathology, and treatment of IPEX. We also report three new patients who were treated with long term immunosuppression, followed by bone marrow transplantation in two. IPEX can be differentiated from other genetic immune disorders by its genetics, clinical presentation, characteristic pattern of pathology, and, except for high IgE, absence of substantial laboratory evidence of immunodeficiency. While chronic treatment with immunosuppressive drugs may provide temporary benefit for some patients, it does not cause complete remission. Remission has been observed with bone marrow transplantation despite incomplete engraftment, but the long term outcome is uncertain.
Positive experiences of doctoral-level supervisors-in-training conducting group-format supervision: a qualitative investigation

Experiential learning opportunities are powerful in shaping positive supervisor behaviours. We were interested in examining the positive experiences of supervisors-in-training during their first practice experience as supervisors. Our study was guided by two research questions: (a) what are the experiences that supervisors-in-training viewed as positive during the course of providing clinical supervision to master's-level counselling trainees? and (b) how did these positive experiences contribute to their professional development? We employed a variation of the consensual qualitative research method developed by Hill, Thompson, and Nutt-Williams (1997) and interviewed 10 supervisors-in-training regarding their positive experiences in supervising master's-level counselling trainees. The results included five major categories of positive experiences: (a) the positive value of feedback; (b) enhanced confidence in using a wider variety of supervision tasks and procedures; (c) the impact of the experience on other aspects of professional practice; (d) increased familiarity with the multiple roles of the supervisor; and (e) for some, increased comfort navigating co-supervision dynamics. Each of these categories included subcategories. We discuss our findings within the context of supervision training in graduate education.
Transfer of View-manifold Learning to Similarity Perception of Novel Objects

We develop a model of perceptual similarity judgment based on re-training a deep convolution neural network (DCNN) that learns to associate different views of each 3D object to capture the notion of object persistence and continuity in our visual experience. The re-training process effectively performs distance metric learning under the object persistency constraints, to modify the view-manifold of object representations. It reduces the effective distance between the representations of different views of the same object without compromising the distance between those of the views of different objects, resulting in the untangling of the view-manifolds between individual objects within the same category and across categories. This untangling enables the model to discriminate and recognize objects within the same category, independent of viewpoints. We found that this ability is not limited to the trained objects, but transfers to novel objects in both trained and untrained categories, as well as to a variety of completely novel artificial synthetic objects. This transfer in learning suggests the modification of distance metrics in view- manifolds is more general and abstract, likely at the levels of parts, and independent of the specific objects or categories experienced during training. Interestingly, the resulting transformation of feature representation in the deep networks is found to significantly better match human perceptual similarity judgment than AlexNet, suggesting that object persistence could be an important constraint in the development of perceptual similarity judgment in biological neural networks.
Unified vector space mapping for knowledge representation systems

One of the most significant problems which inhibits further developments in the areas of Knowledge Representation and Artificial Intelligence is a problem of semantic alignment or knowledge mapping. The progress in its solution will be greatly beneficial for further advances of information retrieval, ontology alignment, relevance calculation, text mining, natural language processing etc. In the paper the concept of multidimensional global knowledge map, elaborated through unsupervised extraction of dependencies from large documents corpus, is proposed. In addition, the problem of direct Human - Knowledge Representation System interface is addressed and a concept of adaptive decoder proposed for the purpose of interaction with previously described unified mapping model. In combination these two approaches are suggested as basis for a development of a new generation of knowledge representation systems.
BIOSYNTHESIS OF DOBUTAMINE MONOGLUCURONIDES AND GLUCURONIDATION OF DOBUTAMINE BY RECOMBINANT HUMAN UDP-GLUCURONOSYLTRANSFERASES

Selected aspects of dobutamine glucuronidation were studied in detail. There are potentially four sites at which dobutamine can be conjugated to glucuronic acid. Three of the four dobutamine monoglucuronides that can be formed were enzymatically synthesized using pig liver microsomes, isolated, and characterized by tandem mass spectrometry, and 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy. Analysis of dobutamine glucuronidation by liver microsomes from various sources revealed large variability in the ratios of the three regioisomers. Interestingly, catecholic dobutamine meta-O-glucuronide, by far the major product synthesized with human liver microsomes, was only a minor product for rat liver microsomes. Rabbit liver microsomes yielded diglucuronides, in addition to monoglucuronides. Activities of individual recombinant human UDP-glucuronosyltransferases (UGTs) were investigated, and the results suggested that dobutamine glucuronidation in the human liver is mainly carried out by UGTs 2B7 and 1A9. Among the extrahepatic UGTs, the formation of monoglucuronides, mainly catecholic meta-O-glucuronide, by UGTs 1A7 and 1A8 was similar to that by 1A9, whereas UGT1A10 also efficiently catalyzed the formation of catecholic dobutamine para-O-glucuronide.
Learning From Learning Theory

In spite of recent interest in its microfoundations, institutional theory’s account of what, why, and when ideas diffuse remains limited and oversocialized. As such, it is unclear how firms decide what to adopt and how these decisions evolve across a population as innovations spread and become taken for granted. We review recent work in institutional theory on this issue and draw from learning theory to inform institutional accounts of adoption decisions in ways that add to current explanations of organizational heterogeneity. In particular, we develop a model of adoption strategies that explains how firms identify which practices to adopt by drawing on knowledge that is either local or distant (search scope) to understand what works and what does not (mindfulness). We then theorize how the decision to adopt is further conditioned by the extent of diffusion (temporal variation) and the characteristics of the field, organization, and innovation (decision context). We discuss the implications of this model for our understanding of how things diffuse and identify additional ways in which the microfoundations of institutional theory can be advanced by studying how organizations learn.
Three‐dimensional reconstruction of maltoporin from electron microscopy and image processing.

Two dimensional crystals of maltoporin (or phage lambda receptor) were obtained by reconstitution of purified maltoporin trimers and Escherichia coli phospholipids by detergent dialysis. Two different trimer packing forms were observed. One was hexagonal (a = 7.8 nm) and one rectangular (a = 7.8 nm, b = 13.6 nm). In this paper we describe the three‐dimensional structure of maltoporin, deduced from the study of the rectangular form by electron microscopy and image processing. At a resolution of approximately 2.5 nm, maltoporin trimers form aqueous channel triplets which appear to merge into a single outlet at the periplasmic surface of the outer membrane. The pore defined by maltoporin has a similar structure to that outlined by the matrix protein. From the results of functional studies by conductance measurement, it is concluded that the three channels defined by maltoporin act, contrary to those formed by the porin (OmpF protein), as a single conducting unit. A tentative outline of the maltoporin promoter is given. Maltoporin appears to be constituted by three different domains: a major rod‐like domain spanning the membrane, a minor domain located near the periplasmic surface of the membrane and finally a central domain responsible for the splitting of the channel.
Increasing literacy levels by the use of linguistic prediction

A predictive text input system, PAL, was introduced into a school environment with a group of 17 children representing a wide range of special educational needs. The group included non-speakers and also children with severe spelling and language problems. In all but one of the cases, this system was found to be very successful in improving the quantity and quality of the written work which the pupils produced. This work shows that, not only can predictive systems be used as an acceleration technique for physically-disabled people, they can also be of great benefit both as a prosthesis and a training aid for children with a wide range of spelling and language dysfunction.
Mechanical stochastic tug-of-war models cannot explain bidirectional lipid-droplet transport

Intracellular transport via the microtubule motors kinesin and dynein plays an important role in maintaining cell structure and function. Often, multiple kinesin or dynein motors move the same cargo. Their collective function depends critically on the single motors’ detachment kinetics under load, which we experimentally measure here. This experimental constraint—combined with other experimentally determined parameters—is then incorporated into theoretical stochastic and mean-field models. Comparison of modeling results and in vitro data shows good agreement for the stochastic, but not mean-field, model. Many cargos in vivo move bidirectionally, frequently reversing course. Because both kinesin and dynein are present on the cargos, one popular hypothesis explaining the frequent reversals is that the opposite-polarity motors engage in unregulated stochastic tugs-of-war. Then, the cargos’ motion can be explained entirely by the outcome of these opposite-motor competitions. Here, we use fully calibrated stochastic and mean-field models to test the tug-of-war hypothesis. Neither model agrees well with our in vivo data, suggesting that, in addition to inevitable tugs-of-war between opposite motors, there is an additional level of regulation not included in the models.
The treatment of sporadic versus MEN1‐related pituitary adenomas

Abstract. Beckers A, Betea D, Valdes Socin H, Stevenaert A (Domaine Universitaire du Sart‐Tilman, Liege, Belgium). The treatment of sporadic versus MEN1‐related pituitary adenomas (Minisymposium). J Intern Med 2003; 253: 599–605.
Secure and HVS-adaptive exhibition Spread Transform Dither Modulation watermarking for Digital Cinema

In this paper, we propose a secure watermarking scheme based on spread transform dither modulation (STDM) method for digital cinema. The embedding is performed in the JPEG2000 decoding pipeline after the de-quantization and prior to the inverse discrete wavelet transform (IDWT). We exploit the wavelet properties related to the human visual system (HVS) in order to have a trade-off between fidelity and robustness, while preserving security. We design a pixel-wise masking vector that modulates the spreading vector in such a way that preserves its security. Our results show that the proposed method is robust against traditional image processing attacks. The proposed scheme can also survive the camecording attack, a pre-processing step is done in the detection for this end.
Are elder siblings helpers or competitors? Antagonistic fitness effects of sibling interactions in humans

Determining the fitness consequences of sibling interactions is pivotal for understanding the evolution of family living, but studies investigating them across lifetime are lacking. We used a large demographic dataset on preindustrial humans from Finland to study the effect of elder siblings on key life-history traits. The presence of elder siblings improved the chances of younger siblings surviving to sexual maturity, suggesting that despite a competition for parental resources, they may help rearing their younger siblings. After reaching sexual maturity however, same-sex elder siblings' presence was associated with reduced reproductive success in the focal individual, indicating the existence of competition among same-sex siblings. Overall, lifetime fitness was reduced by same-sex elder siblings' presence and increased by opposite-sex elder siblings' presence. Our study shows opposite effects of sibling interactions depending on the life-history stage, and highlights the need for using long-term fitness measures to understand the selection pressures acting on sibling interactions.