Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mothers’ Attachment to Infants: Relations with Infant Temperament, Stress, and Responsive Maternal Behavior

According to attachment theory, mothers’ internal effective responses to their infant would predict their responsive behavior. Moreover, following the transactional model, maternal stress and infant temperament could affect both maternal feelings and behaviors. In this study, 38 mothers completed attachment, stress, and infant temperament questionnaires, and were observed interacting with their infants, when the infants were six weeks and nine months old. Maternal feelings of attachment were unrelated to their responsive behaviors. More severely stressed mothers felt less attached at six weeks, but stress did not affect maternal behaviors. Fussy babies had less attached mothers: the effect of temperatment on responsive behaviour was more complex. Mothers of fussier babies were less responsive. Mothers also reported feeling more attached to boys. Discussion centered on the buffering of maternal responsive behavior, development of maternal attachment, and the need to examine maternal attachment and responsi.
An evolution strategy assisted by an ensemble of local Gaussian process models

Surrogate models used in evolutionary algorithms (EAs) aim to reduce computationally expensive objective function evaluations. However, low-quality surrogates may mislead EAs and as a result, surrogate-assisted EAs may fail to locate the global optimum. Among various machine learning models for surrogates, Gaussian Process (GP) models have shown to be effective as GP models are able to provide fitness estimation as well as a confidence level. One weakness of GP models is that the computational cost for training increases rapidly as the number of training samples increases. To reduce the computational cost for training, here we propose to adopt an ensemble of local Gaussian Process models. Different from independent local Gaussian Process models, local Gaussian Process models share the same model parameters. Then the performance of the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES) assisted by an ensemble of local Gaussian Process models with five different sampling strategies is compared. Experiments on eight benchmark functions demonstrate that ensembles of local Gaussian Process models can provide reliable fitness prediction and uncertainty estimation. Among the compared strategies, the clustering technique using the lower confidence bound sampling strategy exhibits the best global search performance.
Related haloarchaeal pleomorphic viruses contain different genome types

Archaeal viruses have been the subject of recent interest due to the diversity discovered in their virion architectures. Recently, a new group of haloarchaeal pleomorphic viruses has been discovered. It is distinctive in terms of the virion morphology and different genome types (ssDNA/dsDNA) harboured by rather closely related representatives. To date there are seven isolated viruses belonging to this group. Most of these share a cluster of five conserved genes, two of which encode major structural proteins. Putative proviruses and proviral remnants containing homologues of the conserved gene cluster were also identified suggesting a long-standing relationship of these viruses with their hosts. Comparative genomic analysis revealed three different ways of the genome organization, which possibly reflect different replication strategies employed by these viruses. The dsDNA genomes of two of these viruses were shown to contain single-strand interruptions. Further studies on one of the genomes suggested that the interruptions are located along the genome in a sequence-specific manner and exhibit polarity in distribution.
Effect of electrical stunning frequency and current waveform in poultry welfare and meat quality

&NA; This study aimed to evaluate the effects of different stunning frequencies and electrical current waveforms on chicken welfare and meat quality. Two‐hundred‐thirty‐two Cobb broilers, 48 d of age and 2.76 ± 0.47 live‐weight, were randomly assigned into 4 stunning treatments — 2 frequencies (300 Hz and 650 Hz) and 2 current waveforms (direct current [DC] and alternating current [AC]). Broilers were electrically stunned in a water bath in a commercial slaughterhouse (70 V, 100 mA). The electronarcosis and stunning efficiency were confirmed by assessment of visual parameters (absence of rhythmic breathing, ocular reflex, and coordinated wing flapping) and blood parameters (lactate, glucose, creatine kinase, sodium, and potassium), which were measured after bleeding. The incidence of traumas and injuries was assessed after plucking. Meat quality analysis was performed in Pectoralis major (PM), with determinations of pH, breast yield (PMY), water holding capacity (WHC), water absorption capacity (WAC), thawing loss (DL), cooking loss (CL), shear force (SF), and instrumental color (a*, b*, L*, C*, and h). The interaction between waveform and frequency was significant (P < 0.05) only for lactate, sodium, and lightness (L*). Lactate and sodium levels decreased at 300 Hz‐DC. Meat lightness increased at 300 Hz‐DC. The individual effect of frequency was significant for glucose, creatine kinase, potassium, WHC, PMY, b*, C*, and h. Regarding waveform, AC decreased plasma glucose and DC decreased creatine kinase and WAC. In general, stunning frequency exerts greater influence than waveform on the welfare and meat quality parameters of broilers. The use of frequency at 650 Hz proved to render animals efficiently unconscious and to promote greater meat quality.
Methods and uncertainties in bioclimatic envelope modelling under climate change

Potential impacts of projected climate change on biodiversity are often assessed using single-species bioclimatic ‘envelope’models. Such models are a special case of species distribution models in which the current geographical distribution of species is related to climatic variables so to enable projections of distributions under future climate change scenarios. This work reviews a number of critical methodological issues that may lead to uncertainty in predictions from bioclimatic modelling. Particular attention is paid to recent developments of bioclimatic modelling that address some of these issues as well as to the topics where more progress needs to be made. Developing and applying bioclimatic models in a informative way requires good understanding of a wide range of methodologies, including the choice of modelling technique, model validation, collinearity, autocorrelation, biased sampling of explanatory variables, scaling and impacts of non-climatic factors. A key challenge for future research is integrating factors such as land cover, direct CO2 effects, biotic interactions and dispersal mechanisms into species-climate models. We conclude that, although bioclimatic envelope models have a number of important advantages, they need to be applied only when users of models have a thorough understanding of their limitations and uncertainties.
Score-Level Fusion in Biometric Verification

This paper presents and details the investigations into the effectiveness of various score level fusion approaches in both multi-sample and multimodal biometric systems. Experimental investigations are conducted using face and speech modalities. The scores for face and voice biometrics are based on the use of different features extracted from the XM2VTS database. These scores are provided by idiap research institute. Experimental results demonstrated that a higher performance can be achieved by applying the fusion at multimodal level.
Availability of food stores and consumption of fruit, legumes and vegetables in a Brazilian urban area.

BACKGROUND The food environment can have an important influence on the availability of and access to food, which plays a significant role in the health of individuals. The goal of this study was to compare the consumption of fruits, legumes and vegetables (FLV) by adults and the availability of food stores in the context of socioeconomic and geographic space connected to basic health units in a Brazilian capital city. METHODS The study was developed from information obtained through the Risk Factors Surveillance for Non-Communicable Diseases Prevention by Telephone Survey (VIGITEL), using samples from Belo Horizonte from the years 2008 to 2010. A total of 5611 records were geocoded based on the postal code. A score was created based on the weekly and daily frequency of FLV intake of individuals. The coverage area of basic health units was used as a neighborhood unit. Georeferenced data on food stores in the city and neighborhood income were used. RESULTS As neighborhood income increased, there was an increase in the distribution of food establishments for all of the studied categories. The highest FLV intake scores were observed in areas with higher income levels. CONCLUSION The highest concentration of food stores, regardless of supply quality, was observed in geographic areas with higher purchasing power and in those where there was a greater concentration of other types of businesses and services, a different pattern from that found in other countries.
Emergence of ocular dominance columns in cat visual cortex by 2 weeks of age

Previous anatomic studies of the geniculocortical projection showed that ocular dominance columns emerge by 3 weeks of age in cat visual cortex, but recent optical imaging experiments have revealed a pattern of physiologic eye dominance by the end of the second week of life. We used two methods to search for an anatomic correlate of this early functional ocular dominance pattern. First, retrograde labeling of lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) inputs to areas of cortex preferentially activated by one eye showed that the geniculocortical projection was already partially segregated by eye at postnatal day 14 (P14). Second, transneuronal label of geniculocortical afferents in flattened sections of cortex after a tracer injection into one eye showed a periodic pattern at P14 but not at P7. In the classic model for the development of ocular dominance columns, initially overlapping geniculocortical afferents segregate by means of an activity‐dependent competitive process. Our data are consistent with this model but suggest that ocular dominance column formation begins between P7 and P14, approximately a week earlier than previously believed. The functional and anatomic data also reveal an early developmental bias toward contralateral eye afferents. This initial developmental bias is not consistent with a strictly Hebbian model for geniculocortical afferent segregation. The emergence of ocular dominance columns before the onset of the critical period for visual deprivation also suggests that the mechanisms for ocular dominance column formation may be partially distinct from those mediating plasticity later in life. J. Comp. Neurol. 430:235–249, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Piaget's Theory and Psychometric Intelligence

Much has been written recently about Piaget's concept of conservation, especially in relation to elementaryschool science and mathematics curriculums (1 -4). Psychologists and educators have become increasingly interested in this concept because Piaget holds it to be the indispensable element of concrete operational thought, in fact "a necessary condition for all rational activity" (5: 3). The concept of conservation begins and develops during the period of concrete operations, which in our culture coincides roughly with the elementary-school years. Of particular interest has been the potential use of this concept as an intellectual measure which is relatively free of cultural content and, more important, which possesses construct validity, that most desirable of test characteristics (6:
Disease Activity in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Is Associated with Increased Risk of Myocardial Infarction, Stroke and Cardiovascular Death – A Danish Nationwide Cohort Study

Purpose Chronic inflammatory diseases have been linked to increased risk of atherothrombotic events, but the risk associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is unclear. We therefore examined the risk of myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, and cardiovascular death in patients with IBD. Methods In a nationwide Danish population-based setting, a cohort of patients with incident IBD between 1996 and 2009 were identified in national registers. Hospitalizations with IBD as primary diagnosis, initiation of biological treatment and dispensed prescriptions of corticosteroids were all used as surrogate markers for disease activity, with flares classified as the first 120 days after diagnosis of IBD, and 120 days after a new corticosteroid prescription, biological treatment or IBD hospitalization, respectively. Continued corticosteroid prescriptions or IBD hospitalizations were defined as persistent activity, and periods free of such events were defined as remissions. Poisson regression was used to examine risk of MI, stroke, and cardiovascular death using a matched population-based comparison cohort as reference Results We identified 20,795 IBD patients with a mean age of 40.3 years that were matched according to age and sex with 199,978 controls. During the study period, there were 365 patients with MI, 454 with stroke, and 778 with cardiovascular death. Patients with IBD had an overall increased risk of MI (rate ratio [RR] 1.17 [95% confidence interval 1.05–1.31]), stroke (RR 1.15 [1.04–1.27], and cardiovascular death (RR 1.35 [1.25–1.45]). During flares and persistent IBD activity the RRs of MI increased to 1.49 (1.16–1.93) and 2.05 (1.58–2.65), the RRs of stroke to 1.53 (1.22–1.92) and 1.55 (1.18–2.04) and for cardiovascular death 2.32 (2.01–2.68) and 2.50 (2.14–2.92). In remission periods, the risk of MI, stroke and cardiovascular death was similar to controls. Conclusion Inflammatory bowel disease is associated with increased risk of MI, stroke, and cardiovascular death during periods with active disease.
Emotion Recognition with the Help of Privileged Information

In this article, we propose a novel approach to recognize emotions with the help of privileged information, which is only available during training, but not available during testing. Such additional information can be exploited during training to construct a better classifier. Specifically, we recognize audience's emotion from EEG signals with the help of the stimulus videos, and tag videos' emotions with the aid of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. First, frequency features are extracted from EEG signals and audio/visual features are extracted from video stimulus. Second, features are selected by statistical tests. Third, a new EEG feature space and a new video feature space are constructed simultaneously using canonical correlation analysis (CCA). Finally, two support vector machines (SVM) are trained on the new EEG and video feature spaces respectively. During emotion recognition from EEG, only EEG signals are available, and the SVM classifier obtained on EEG feature space is used; while for video emotion tagging, only video clips are available, and the SVM classifier constructed on video feature space is adopted. Experiments of EEG-based emotion recognition and emotion video tagging are conducted on three benchmark databases, demonstrating that video content, as the context, can improve the emotion recognition from EEG signals and EEG signals available during training can enhance emotion video tagging.
Statistical Modelling and Causality in the Social Sciences

Philosophers and statisticians have been debating on causality for a long time. However, these discussions have been led quite independently from each other. An objective of this paper is to pursue a fruitful dialogue between philosophy and statistics. As is well known, at the beginning of the 20th century, some philosophers and statisticians dismissed the concept of causality altogether. It will suffice to mention Bertrand Russell (1913) and Karl Pearson (1911). Almost a hundred years later, causality still represents a central topic both in philosophy and statistics.
Association discovery

Association discovery is one of the most studied tasks in the field of data mining. However, far more attention has been paid to how to discover associations than to what associations should be discovered. In this talk Geoff will provide a highly subjective tour of the field. He will highlight shortcomings of the dominant frequent pattern paradigm and illustrate benefits of the alternative top-k approach. He will argue for the value of statistical filtering of associations and discuss some null-hypotheses of widespread application. He will compare the merits of randomization, holdout and within-search approaches to statistical filtering. He will also argue that in many applications it is preferable to find interesting itemsets rather than interesting rules.
The concentrations of sugar nucleotides in bovine corneal epithelium and endothelium.

The cornea is an example of a composite tissue made up of three distinct and separable cellular layers, the epithelium, the stroma and the endothelium. The epithelium is of ectodermal origin and is separated from the stroma by Bowman's membrane, which is a modified layer of the stroma. The stroma and the endothelium are of mesodermal origin and separated from each other by Descemet's membrane, a basement membrane laid down by the endothelium. In the course of experiments designed to elucidate the pathway of biosynthesis of keratan sulphate in the corneal stroma (Handley & Phelps, 1972b), we became interested in the differences that might be found in the nucleotide and nucleotide sugar concentrations in each of the three component layers. The present communication reports the concentrations of sugar nucleotides present in the epithelium and endothelium layers of the cornea. The epithelium and the endothelium layers of the cornea were removed from the stroma by scraping with a stainless-steel scraper. The total water space of the epithelium and endothelium was determined by drying in an oven at 104°C for 24h and was found for both these tissues to be 74% of the wet wt. This value was taken as an estimate of the intracellular water and was used in the calculation of the cellular concentrations of the nucleotide sugars. Samples of the endothelium (approx. 1.Og) and of the epithelium (approx. 0.7g) were powdered in a stainless-steel percussion mortar and cooled to -180°C. The powder was extracted with perchloric acid as described by Handley & Phelps (1972a). The neutralized extract of either the corneal epithelium or the endothelium was applied to the top of a column (4cmxlcm) of Dowex 1 (formate form; 200400 mesh), prewashed with 8 bed volumes of 3Mammonium formate and with distilled water until all traces of NH4' ion had been removed. The eluent from the column was monitored with a LKB Uvicord II (LKB Produckter AB, Stockholm 12, Sweden), which measured the percentage transmission at 254nm. After application of the sample, the column was washed with distilled water until the percentage transmission returned to the value before the extract was added. The column was then eluted with an increasing formic acid-ammonium formate gradient at a rate of 20ml/h. Fractions of volume 1 ml were collected. The gradient was formed by using a sealed mixing vessel of 27ml internal volume containing 20ml of distilled water fed from a single reservoir.
Circulating adiponectin levels in various malignancies: an updated meta-analysis of 107 studies

Early detection of cancers is challenging for lack of specific biomarkers. Adiponectin is an adipokine predominantly derived from adipocytes and hypoadiponectinemia has been reported to associate with risk of many types of cancers. However, available evidence is controversial. Some studies show that increased adiponectin levels correlate with cancer risk. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis of the association between circulating adiponectin levels and cancer development. A systematic search of PubMed, EMBASE, Wiley Online Library and Cochrane Library was conducted for eligible studies involving circulating adiponectin and malignancies from inception to August 8, 2015. Standard mean differences (SMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated by use of a random-effect model. Funnel plot and Egger's linear regression test were conducted to examine the risk of publication bias. 107 studies were included with 19,319 cases and 25,675 controls. The pooled analysis indicated that circulating adiponectin levels were lower in patients with various cancers than in controls, with a pooled SMD of −0.334 μg/ml (95% CI, −0.465 to −0.203, P = 0.000). No evidence of publication bias was observed. Circulating high molecular weight adiponectin levels were also lower in cancer patients than in controls, with a pooled SMD of −0.502 μg/ml (95% CI, −0.957 to −0.047, P = 0.000). This meta-analysis provides further evidence that decreased adiponectin levels is associated with risk of various cancers. Hypoadiponectinemia may represent a useful biomarker for early detection of cancers.
Y CHAPTER ONE Process Evaluation for Public Health Interventions and Research An Overview

Improving and sustaining successful public health interventions relies increasingly on the ability to identify the key components of an intervention that are effective, to identify for whom the intervention is effective, and to identify under what conditions the intervention is effective. The published literature includes a plethora of reports about interventions that have successful outcomes. A limited number of studies, however, disentangle the factors that ensure successful outcomes, characterize the failure to achieve success, or attempt to document the steps involved in achieving successful implementation of an intervention. To truly advance science and our understanding of applied interventions, we must learn a great deal more about public health intervention successes and failures. Process evaluation efforts can assist in making these discoveries. In the last decade, the literature on process evaluation related to public health interventions has grown considerably. In the late 1990s and in early 2000, there has been an explosion in the number of published studies that include extensive process evaluation components. There are several plausible explanations for this noticeable increase in the use of process evaluation. Social and behavioral interventions have become increasingly complex, making it important for researchers to know the extent to which all intervention components are actually implemented. This complexity stems from the fact that projects are often implemented at multiple locations, so that process evaluation becomes essential for ensuring that planned interventions are carried out equally at all sites. Complexity Y
Alex: Bootstrapping a Spoken Dialogue System for a New Domain by Real Users

When deploying a spoken dialogue system in a new domain, one faces a situation where little to no data is available to train domain-specific statistical models. We describe our experience with bootstrapping a dialogue system for public transit and weather information in real-word deployment under public use. We proceeded incrementally, starting from a minimal system put on a toll-free telephone number to collect speech data. We were able to incorporate statistical modules trained on collected data – in-domain speech recognition language models and spoken language understanding – while simultaneously extending the domain, making use of automatically generated semantic annotation. Our approach shows that a successful system can be built with minimal effort and no in-domain data at hand.