Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dairy products and colorectal cancer risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies.

BACKGROUND Previous studies of the association between intake of dairy products and colorectal cancer risk have indicated an inverse association with milk, however, the evidence for cheese or other dairy products is inconsistent. METHODS We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to clarify the shape of the dose-response relationship between dairy products and colorectal cancer risk. We searched the PubMed database for prospective studies published up to May 2010. Summary relative risks (RRs) were estimated using a random effects model. RESULTS Nineteen cohort studies were included. The summary RR was 0.83 (95% CI [confidence interval]: 0.78-0.88, I2=25%) per 400 g/day of total dairy products, 0.91 (95% CI: 0.85-0.94, I2=0%) per 200 g/day of milk intake and 0.96 (95% CI: 0.83-1.12, I2=28%) per 50 g/day of cheese. Inverse associations were observed in both men and women but were restricted to colon cancer. There was evidence of a nonlinear association between milk and total dairy products and colorectal cancer risk, P<0.001, and the inverse associations appeared to be the strongest at the higher range of intake. CONCLUSION This meta-analysis shows that milk and total dairy products, but not cheese or other dairy products, are associated with a reduction in colorectal cancer risk.
A Tool Chain for a Lightweight, Robust and Uncertainty-based Context Classification System (CCS)

In this paper we present a tool chain developed to support a Context Classification System (CCS). The CCS is especially designed to run even on lightweight commodity phones with a high detection rate and low calculation effort. The main design aspect considered while building the tool chain was the support for most common users and not only developers. Moreover, the CCS we are using proves to be a robust context recognition method, which supports the gain of both context classes and a fuzzy uncertainty value describing the confidence of their classification.
Tracking Articulated Hand Underlying Graphical Model with Depth Cue

Visual tracking of articulated objects in real 3D space is challenging with applications in advanced human–computer interfaces and gesture semantic understanding. In this paper, graphical model, constructing articulated human hand, and NBP algorithm embedded with CAMSHIFT, inferencing hand configuration in 3D space, are applied for visual hand tracking. We also introduce image depth cue captured by two calibrated cameras together with color and edge as observation model. Depth cue allows our method to track human hand incomparatively accurate distance from cameras, especially in cluttered scenes with objects of similar color or edge. All those image cues are converted necessarily to probability distribution applied for the graphical model frame. The proposed method promotes the tracking efficiency and robustness proved by experiments and theory analysis.
Effect of Various Compounds Blocking the Colony Pigmentation on the Aflatoxin B1 Production by Aspergillus flavus

Aflatoxins and melanins are the products of a polyketide biosynthesis. In this study, the search of potential inhibitors of the aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) biosynthesis was performed among compounds blocking the pigmentation in fungi. Four compounds—three natural (thymol, 3-hydroxybenzaldehyde, compactin) and one synthetic (fluconazole)—were examined for their ability to block the pigmentation and AFB1 production in Aspergillus flavus. All compounds inhibited the mycelium pigmentation of a fungus growing on solid medium. At the same time, thymol, fluconazole, and 3-hydroxybenzaldehyde stimulated AFB1 accumulation in culture broth of A. flavus under submerged fermentation, whereas the addition of 2.5 μg/mL of compactin resulted in a 50× reduction in AFB1 production. Moreover, compactin also suppressed the sporulation of A. flavus on solid medium. In vivo treatment of corn and wheat grain with compactin (50 μg/g of grain) reduced the level of AFB1 accumulation 14 and 15 times, respectively. Further prospects of the compactin study as potential AFB1 inhibitor are discussed.
Development of dialogue systems for a mobility aid for blind people: initial design and usability testing

This paper presents a new travel aid to increase the independent mobility of blind and elderly travellers. This aid builds on the technologies of geographical information systems (GIS) and the Global Positioning System (GPS). The MoBIC Travel Aid (MoTA) consists of two interrelated components: the MoBIC Pre-journey System (MoPS) to assist users in planning journeys and the MoBIC Outdoor System (MoODS) to execute these plans by providing users with orientation and navigation assistance during journeys. The MoBIC travel aid is complementary to primary mobility aids such as the long cane or guide dog. Results of a study of user requirements, the user interface designs, and the first field trial, currently being conducted in Berlin, are presented.
Preface the Community

Companies are cooperating in many different ways, from supply chains with tight inventory controls to dynamic partnerships and virtual enterprises. This leads to an emerging class of enterprise wide applications in which monitoring of relevant situations and the timely response play an ever increasing role. Parallel to this trend, we are seeing the massive deployment of sensors. The resulting cyber-physical systems can monitor from low-level sensor signals to high-level abstract events, and react to them. Taking the event processing paradigm a step further, novel applications combine sensor data with other sources to infer threats and opportunities. In (Hinze, Sachs, Buchmann, 2009) we surveyed 20 event-based applications and analyzed their requirements and main features. In this book additional applications are addressed. The combined applications cover a broad spectrum: • Financial applications, risk management and fraud detection (see chapters 2 and 9) • Supply chain management, logistics and real time enterprises (see chapter 9) • Environmental monitoring and warning systems (see chapters 2 and 7) • Marine security and rescue systems (see chapters 8 and 19) • Integrated health care systems and emergency response (see chapters 5 and 7) • Smart environments ranging from smart cars and homes to smart cities (chapters 4, 6 and 17) • Traffic control ranging from cars to air traffic control (see chapters 16 and 12) • Information dissemination, alerter mechanisms and information dashboards (see chapter 18) • Network management and service collaboration (see chapters 10, 11, 13 and 15) The list of reactive systems, often called sense-and-respond systems, is continuously growing. The reasons for this explosive growth is a combination of increasing demand for timely response to relevant events (even in the face of a torrential flood of information), the ensuing need for scalability, and the requirements to react fast to new threats and opportunities. At the same time, (complex) event processing is maturing as a discipline and gaining widespread attention. How vibrant the event processing community is can best be seen by its multiple activities: various web sites and blogs serve as portals to relevant information and timely and informed commentary 1 start ups are gaining traction and are opening up new business domains 2 , open source projects are making event processing accessible to a broader academic clientele 3 , early workshops, such as DEBS (Distributed
The Effects of Flattening the Effective Marginal Rate Structure in Australia: Policy Simulations Using the Melbourne Institute Tax and Transfer Simulator

This paper uses the Melbourne Institute Tax and Transfer Simulator (MITTS) to examine the effects of a reduction in the means-tested benefit taper, or withdrawal, rates in Australia to 30 per cent. That is, all taper rates of 50 per cent and 70 per cent in the 1998 system are reduced to 30 per cent, while leaving all basic benefit levels unchanged. This change is therefore expected to ‘flatten’ the tax structure by reducing the high marginal tax rates applying to those with relatively low incomes and increasing the marginal tax rates of medium incomes. Simulations in which all individuals are assumed to have an unchanged labour supply (using MITTS-A) are compared with behavioural simulations in which the majority of individuals are free to adjust the number of hours worked (using MITTS-B). The results reflect only the supply side of the labour market. The database used is the 1997 Income Distribution Survey (IDS), so that weekly incomes are based on the financial year 1997-98.
Role of the PI3K/AKT and mTOR signaling pathways in acute myeloid leukemia

The PI3K/AKT and mTOR signaling pathways are activated in acute myeloid leukemia, including in the more immature leukemic populations. Constitutive PI3K activation is detectable in 50% of acute myeloid leukemia samples whereas mTORC1 is activated in all cases of this disease. In leukemic cells, the PI3K activity relates to the expression of the p110δ isoform of class IA PI3K. Constitutive PI3K activation is the result of autocrine IGF-1/IGF-1R signaling in 70% of acute myeloid leukemia samples but specific inhibition of this pathway does not induce apoptosis. Specific inhibition of PI3K/AKT or mTORC1 alone in vitro has anti-leukemic effects which are essentially exerted via the suppression of proliferation. However, as mTORC1 activation is independent of PI3K/AKT in acute myeloid leukemia, dual PI3K and mTOR inhibitors may induce apoptosis in blast cells. Moreover, mTORC1 inhibition using sirolimus overactivates PI3K/AKT via the upregulation of IRS2 expression and by favoring IGF-1/IGF-1R autocrine signaling. Recent data also indicate that mTORC1 does not control protein translation in acute myeloid leukemia. These results open the way for the design of direct inhibitors of protein synthesis as novel acute myeloid leukemia therapies and also for the development of second generation mTOR inhibitors (the TORKinhibs).
Oxidative Stress and Heart Failure in Altered Thyroid States

Increased or reduced action of thyroid hormone on certain molecular pathways in the heart and vasculature causes relevant cardiovascular derangements. It is well established that hyperthyroidism induces a hyperdynamic cardiovascular state, which is associated with a faster heart rate, enhanced left ventricular systolic and diastolic function whereas hypothyroidism is characterized by the opposite changes. Hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism represent opposite clinical conditions, albeit not mirror images. Recent experimental and clinical studies have suggested the involvement of ROS tissue damage under altered thyroid status. Altered-thyroid state-linked changes in heart modify their susceptibility to oxidants and the extent of the oxidative damage they suffer following oxidative challenge. Chronic increase in the cellular levels of ROS can lead to a catastrophic cycle of DNA damage, mitochondrial dysfunction, further ROS generation and cellular injury. Thus, these cellular events might play an important role in the development and progression of myocardial remodeling and heart failure in altered thyroid states (hypo- and hyper-thyroidism). The present review aims at elucidating the various signaling pathways mediated via ROS and their modulation under altered thyroid state and the possibility of antioxidant therapy.
Optimum CSPR evaluation of heterodyne envelope receivers in OFDM-PONs

A heterodyne envelope (HE) receiver (RX) is investigated in the context of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) passive optical networks (PONs). Impacts of limited roll-off factor of shaping filter and required guard-band (GB) are studied through numerical simulations, showing that the Carrier to Signal Power Ratio (CSPR) value plays a significant role in the systems performance. For a QPSK system with 10 Gbps bitrate and for a bit error ratio (BER) quality threshold of 10-3 we show an improvement of 10.8 dB in sensitivity and 25% in spectral efficiency by using an optimum CSPR value as compared to unity CSPR.
An efficient Switching Median Filter for Salt & Pepper Impulse Noise Reduction

An improved and efficient adaptive median filter is proposed for salt & pepper impulse noise removal from digital images. The more perfect and computationally efficient filtering scheme takes care to restore only the impulse corrupted pixels by a perfect mid-ranking image statistic from an appropriate local neighborhood while keeping the signal content of the uncorrupted pixels as such. The corrupted signals are identified by an adaptive technique and the signal loss due to misinterpretation of uncorrupted signals as corrupted is almost avoided to sustain the image details intact. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm which detects impulses and restores the corrupted signals in a single efficient stretch is far more superior than many of the other median filters in terms of retaining the fidelity of the images corrupted by salt & pepper impulse noise even to the tune of ninety five percent. The objectiveness of the proposed filter in terms of peak signal to noise ratio and mean absolute error at all noise levels shows the significance of this filter.
Effect of Geolocators on Migration and Subsequent Breeding Performance of a Long-Distance Passerine Migrant

Geolocators are small light-weight data loggers used to track individual migratory routes, and their use has increased exponentially in birds. However, the effects of geolocators on individual performance are still poorly known. We studied geolocator effects on a long-distance migrating passerine bird, the northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe L.). We asked the general question of whether geolocators affect migratory behaviour and subsequent reproductive performance of small passerines by comparing arrival time, breeding time, breeding success and survival of geolocator versus control birds of known identity and breeding history. During two years geolocator birds (n=37) displayed a lower apparent survival (30%) as compared to controls (45%, n=164). Furthermore, returning geolocator birds (n=12) arrived on average 3.5 days later, started laying eggs 6.3 days later, and had lower nest success (25%) than control birds (78%). Our results suggest that geolocators affect migratory performance with carry-over effects to the timing of breeding and reproductive success in the subsequent breeding season. We discuss the implications of such geolocator effects for the study of migratory strategies of small passerines in general and suggest how to identify and investigate such effects in the future.
A DDS‐based middleware for quality‐of‐service and high‐performance networked robotics

Social robots must adapt to dynamic environments, human interaction partners and challenging new stringent tasks. Their inner software is usually distributed and should be designed and deployed carefully because slight changes in the robot's requirements can have an important impact not only on the existing source code but also on the resulting performance at run‐time. This paper proposes an implementation of this inner software using a new lightweight middleware for networked robotics called Nerve. The principal novelty this middleware has with respect to other state‐of‐the‐art approaches is that it guarantees both scalability and QoS, which are key requirements for real‐time robotics software. The benefits of Nerve have been proved through its use in two key components of the cognitive system of a social robot: (i) the visual attention mechanism, used to extract relevant data from perceived images; and (ii) a robot learning by imitation control architecture that allows the social robot to be taught by people using natural demonstrations (i.e. using the same communication channels that would be used to teach people). Nerve makes use of existing patterns for networked applications together with the recent Data Distribution Service specification, which is a publish/subscribe standard for real‐time and distributed systems that provides a wide set of QoS policies. In this paper, these different QoS policies have been applied carefully to achieve the best performance of the target robot. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Effects of Knowledge Versus Production Boundaries on Firm Survival through Systemic Technological Change

Firms that develop complex products are at greater risk from systemic technological change, which alters the way product components work together, and can also affect the nature of demand for a product. We ask what combinations of knowledge and production boundaries best position firms that make complex products to survive systemic change. Some work suggests that vertical integration might improve survival but other research posits that maintaining broad knowledge boundaries could be sufficient, as it enables efficiency through outsourcing yet retains effectiveness in integrating component technologies. We propose that the answer depends on whether we focus on technological or market boundaries, and that while in general broad boundaries favor adaptation to systemic change, integrating downstream from manufacturing can hinder adaptation. In addition, we argue that integration into the manufacture of components may be more critical than is suggested in prior work. Our longitudinal study of systemic change in the hard disk drive industry provides preliminary support for these predictions.
Image quality estimation for different spatial resolutions

State of the art visual quality assessment methods are effective when the input image and the reference image have the same resolution. However, estimating the quality of an image that has spatial resolution different than that of the reference image is still a challenging problem. In this work, we design a quality estimator (QE) to estimate the quality of a distorted image with a lower resolution compared to the reference image. We also present a subjective test environment to explore the success of the proposed algorithm in comparison with other QEs. The subjective tests demonstrate that the proposed method works better than other approaches.
Semi-Global Depth Up-sampling for 3 D Video Acquisition

In this paper, we propose a new method to upsample a depth map for 3D video acquisition. The proposed method is based on Markov random fields. The low-resolution depth values are used for data term and the high-resolution color data are exploited for smoothness term. Especially, we apply semi-global energy minimization to reduce computational time. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms conventional methods. Keywords—semi-global depth up-sampling, 3D video, depthimage-based rendering.
Proper isometric actions of Thompson's groups on Hilbert space

In 1965, Thompson defined the groups F, T , and V [8]. Thompson’s group V is the group of right-continuous bijections v of [0, 1] that map dyadic rational numbers to dyadic rational numbers, that are differentiable except at finitely many dyadic rational numbers, and such that, on each interval on which v is differentiable, v is affine with derivative a power of 2. The group F is the subgroup of V consisting of homeomorphisms. The group T is the subgroup of V consisting of those elements which induce homeomorphisms of the circle, where the circle is regarded as [0, 1] with 0 and 1 identified. It is a long-standing open question to determine whether F is amenable. The main theorem of this paper establishes that the groups F, T , and V all have the weaker property of a-T-menability. A theorem of Higson and Kasparov [4] states that every a-T-menable group satisfies the Baum-Connes conjecture with arbitrary coefficients, so Thompson’s groups F, T , and V satisfy the Baum-Connes conjecture as well. An isometric action of a discrete group G on a metric space X is proper if, for any x ∈ X and any bounded subset U of X, there are only finitely many elements of g that translate x inside U. A function f : V1 → V2 between two vector spaces is affine if it is the composition of a linear map followed by a translation.
Optical delineation of human malignant melanoma using second harmonic imaging of collagen

Skin cancer incidence has increased exponentially over the last three decades. In 2008 skin cancer caused 2280 deaths in the UK, with 2067 due to malignant melanoma. Early diagnosis can prevent mortality, however, conventional treatment requires multiple procedures and increasing treatment times. Second harmonic generation (SHG) imaging could offer diagnosis and demarcation of melanoma borders non-invasively at presentation thereby short-cutting the excision biopsy stage. To test the efficacy and accuracy of SHG imaging of collagen in skin and to delineate the borders of skin cancers, unstained human melanoma biopsy sections were imaged using SHG microscopy. Comparisons with sister sections, stained with H&E or Melan-A were made for correlation of invasion borders. Fresh ex vivo normal human and rat skin was imaged through its whole thickness using SHG to demonstrate this technique is transferable to in vivo tissues. SHG imaging demonstrated detailed collagen distribution in normal skin, with total absence of SHG signal (fibrillar collagen) within the melanoma-invaded tissue. The presence or absence of signal changes dramatically at the borders of the melanoma, accurately demarcating the edges that strongly correlated with H&E and Melan-A defined borders (p<0.002). SHG imaging of ex vivo human and rat skin demonstrated collagen architecture could be imaged through the full thickness of the skin. We propose that SHG imaging could be used for diagnosis and accurate demarcation of melanoma borders on presentation and therefore potentially reduce mortality rates.
Displacement analysis of the 4SPS-2CCS mechanism based on hyper-chaotic network

The forward displacement analysis of parallel mechanism is attributed to find the solutions of complicated nonlinear equations and it is a very difficult process. Taking chaotic sequences as the initial values of Newton iterative method we can find all the solutions of equations quickly. Making use of existing chaos system and discovering new chaos system to generate chaotic sequences with good properties is the key to the Newton iterative method based on Chaos sequences. Based on the topology structure of chaotic neural network connected with four chaotic neurons, hyper-chaos phenomenon exists in the chaotic neural network system. For the first time, based on utilizing hyper-chaotic neural network to obtain initial points a new method of finding all real number solutions of the nonlinear questions is proposed. Using quaternion, the author establishes the mathematical model of forward displacement for the generalized 4SPS-2CCS parallel robot mechanism and a numerical example is given. Compared to the Homotopy continuation method the result shows the calculation is brief and high calculation efficiency as the calculation is done in real number range. The proposed method has universality which can be used in forward displacement of other parallel mechanism.