Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Profiles of Food Security for US Farmworker Households and Factors Related to Dynamic of Change.

OBJECTIVES We recruited 248 farmworker families with preschool-aged children in North Carolina and examined food security indicators over 24 months to identify food security patterns and examine the dynamic of change over time. METHODS Participants in the Niños Sanos study, conducted 2011 to 2014, completed quarterly food security assessments. Based on responses to items in the US Household Food Security Survey Module, we identified different states of food security by using hidden Markov model analysis, and examined factors associated with different states. We delineated factors associated with changes in state by using mixed-effect ordinal logistic regression. RESULTS About half of the households (51%) consistently stayed in the most food-secure state. The least food-secure state was transient, with only 29% probability of this state for 2 consecutive quarters. Seasonal (vs migrant) work status, having immigration documents (vs not documented), and season predicted higher levels of food security. CONCLUSIONS Heterogeneity in food security among farmworker households calls for tailoring intervention strategies. The transiency and unpredictability of low food security suggest that access to safety-net programs could reduce low food security risk in this population.
On the Material Characterisation of Wind Turbine Blade Coatings: The Effect of Interphase Coating–Laminate Adhesion on Rain Erosion Performance

Rain erosion damage, caused by repeated droplet impact on wind turbine blades, is a major cause for concern, even more so at offshore locations with larger blades and higher tip speeds. Due to the negative economic influence of blade erosion, all wind turbine Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are actively seeking solutions. In most cases, since the surface coating plays a decisive role in the blade manufacture and overall performance, it has been identified as an area where a solution may be obtained. In this research, two main coating technologies have been considered: In-mould coatings (Gel coating) applied during moulding on the entire blade surface and the post-mould coatings specifically developed for Leading Edge Protection (LEP). The coating adhesion and erosion is affected by the shock waves created by the collapsing water droplets on impact. The stress waves are reflected and transmitted to the laminate substrate, so microstructural discontinuities in coating layers and interfaces play a key role on its degradation and may accelerate erosion by delamination. Analytical and numerical models are commonly used to relate lifetime prediction and to identify suitable coating and composite substrate combinations based on their potential stress reduction on the interface. Nevertheless, in order to use them, it is necessary to measure the contact adhesion resistance of the multi-layered system interfaces. The rain erosion performance is assessed using an accelerated testing technique, whereby the test material is repeatedly impacted at high speed with water droplets in a Whirling Arm Rain Erosion Rig (WARER). The materials, specifically the coating–laminate interphase region and acoustic properties, are further characterised by several laboratory tests, including Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), pull-off testing, peeling–adhesion testing and nanoindentation testing. This body of work includes a number of case studies. The first case study compares two of the main coating technologies used in industry (i.e., gel coating and LEP); the second case investigates the effects of the in-mould gel coating curing; and the third considers the inclusion of a primer layer on a LEP configuration system. Following these case studies, the LEP is found to be a far superior coating due to its appropriate mechanical and acoustic properties and the interface between the coating and the substrate is highlighted as a key aspect, as poor adhesion can lead to delamination and, ultimately, premature failure of the coating.
Associations between indoor CO2 concentrations and sick building syndrome symptoms in U.S. office buildings: an analysis of the 1994-1996 BASE study data.

Higher indoor concentrations of air pollutants due, in part, to lower ventilation rates are a potential cause of sick building syndrome (SBS) symptoms in office workers. The indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration is an approximate surrogate for indoor concentrations of other occupant-generated pollutants and for ventilation rate per occupant. Using multivariate logistic regression (MLR) analyses, we evaluated the relationship between indoor CO2 concentrations and SBS symptoms in occupants from a probability sample of 41 U.S. office buildings. Two CO2 metrics were constructed: average workday indoor minus average outdoor CO2 (dCO2, range 6-418 ppm), and maximum indoor 1-h moving average CO2 minus outdoor CO2 concentrations (dCO2MAX). MLR analyses quantified dCO2/SBS symptom associations, adjusting for personal and environmental factors. A dose-response relationship (p < 0.05) with odds ratios per 100 ppm dCO2 ranging from 1.2 to 1.5 for sore throat, nose/sinus, tight chest, and wheezing was observed. The dCO2MAX/SBS regression results were similar.
Are Issue-Cycles Culturally Constructed? A Comparison of French and American Coverage of Global Climate Change

We present a cross-cultural comparison of newspaper coverage of global warming in France and in the United States (1987-1997) as a case study to analyze the impact of culturally bound journalistic practices on media attention cycles. Based on the results of a content analysis, we show that France's coverage was more event-based, focused more on international relations, and presented a more restricted range of viewpoints on global warming than American coverage did. American coverage emphasized conflicts between scientists and politicians. Downs's "quot;media-attention cycle,"quot; which is apparent for the American coverage, does not manifest as visibly in French coverage. Our findings suggest that research on media coverage of global environmental issues needs to move beyond studies at the national level; cross-cultural comparisons are essential to understand how different news regimes might affect public opinion.
LRP in Alzheimer's disease: friend or foe?

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder and the leading cause of senile dementia. The brains of AD patients show two major pathological hallmarks: amyloid or senile plaques (SPs) and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs). While NFTs are bundles of protein filaments found in the cytoplasm of neurons, SPs are extracellular aggregates of insoluble protein fibrils. The major component of SPs is a small, hydrophobic peptide termed amyloid β peptide (Aβ), which is derived from a ubiquitous type I transmembrane protein of unknown function named amyloid precursor protein (APP) (1).
Identification of stage I non-small cell lung cancer patients at high risk for local recurrence following sublobar resection.

OBJECTIVE An increasing proportion of patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is undergoing sublobar resection (L-). However, there is little information about the risks and correlates of local recurrence (LR) after such surgery, especially compared with patients undergoing lobectomy (L+). METHODS Ninety-three and 318 consecutive patients with stage I NSCLC underwent L- and L+, respectively, from 2000 to 2006. Median follow-up was 34 months. RESULTS In the L- group, the LR rates at 2, 3, and 5 years were 13%, 24%, and 40%, respectively. The risk of LR was significantly associated with tumor grade, tumor size, and T stage. The crude risk of LR was 33.8% (21 of 62) for patients whose tumors were grade ≥ 2. In the L+ group, the LR rates at 2, 3, and 5 years were 14%, 19%, and 24%, respectively. The risk of LR significantly increased with increasing tumor size, length of hospital stay, and the presence of diabetes. The L- group experienced a significant increase in failure in the bronchial stump/staple line compared with the L+ group (10% vs 3%; P = .04) and nonsignificant trends toward increased ipsilateral hilar and subcarinal failure rates. CONCLUSIONS Patients with stage I NSCLC who undergo L- have an increased risk of LR compared with patients undergoing L+, particularly when they have tumors grade ≥ 2 or tumor size > 2 cm. If L- is considered, additional local therapy should be considered to reduce this risk of LR, especially with tumors grade ≥ 2 or size > 2 cm.
Longitudinal Mediation Modeling of Unhealthy Behaviors as Mediators between Workplace Demands/Support and Depressive Symptoms

Lifestyle has been regarded as a key pathway through which adverse psychosocial working characteristics can give rise to long-term health problems. The purpose of this study was to estimate the indirect/mediated effect of health behaviors in the longitudinal work characteristics-depression relationship. The analyses were based on the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health, including 3706 working participants with repeat survey measures on four occasions (2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014). Psychosocial work characteristics including demands and social support were analyzed in relation to depressive symptoms. Autoregressive longitudinal mediation models using structural equation modeling were used to estimate the intermediate effects of unhealthy behaviors including current smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, unhealthy diet and physical inactivity. Both workplace demands and social support were related to later depressive symptoms. In bivariate models we found no significant paths from workplace demands to health behaviors, but two out of three significant time-specific paths from workplace support to excessive drinking and from excessive drinking to depressive symptoms. Social support was also associated with subsequent unhealthy diet, and one path from unhealthy diet to depressive symptoms was found. However, despite indications of certain longitudinal relationships between psychosocial working conditions and health behaviors as well as between health behaviors and depressive symptoms, no significant intermediate effects were found (p>0.05). We conclude that changes in unhealthy behaviors over a period of two years are unlikely to act as strong intermediaries in the longitudinal relationship between job demands and depressive symptoms and between social support and depressive symptoms.
Building a Successful Adult Life: Findings From Youth-Directed Research

Abstract Although transition outcomes for youth with disabilities have shown some improvement and transition support practices have been identified, many young people continue to face transition barriers that preclude their full participation in key adult life activities. While research efforts have largely been professionally driven, there is emerging literature suggesting that the use of participatory, empowerment methodologies may bolster the identification of appropriate research methods and useful solutions to problems, as well as promoting the application of findings to accomplishing practice and policy improvements. The purpose of this study was to use a youth-directed, participatory action methodology to investigate youths' perceptions of the value of transition promotion experiences identified as effective by professionals, and to examine the level at which youth with disabilities participate in those experiences. A survey was developed and administered to 202 young people with disabilities by leaders from the National Youth Leadership Network. Findings indicated that youth generally endorse the importance of validated transition promotion practices; however, they reported having limited opportunity to participate in them. Implications related to the use of participatory action methodologies and needed practice and policy improvements are discussed.
Low Examinee Effort in Low-Stakes Assessment: Problems and Potential Solutions

Student test-taking motivation in low-stakes assessment testing is examined in terms of both its relationship to test performance and the implications of low student effort for test validity. A theoretical model of test-taking motivation is presented, with a synthesis of previous research indicating that low student motivation is associated with a substantial decrease in test performance. A number of assessment practices and data analytic procedures for managing the problems posed by low student motivation are discussed.
Identification of Surgery Indicators by Mining Hospital Data: A Preliminary Study

The management of patient referrals is an interesting issue when it comes to predicting future patient demand to increase hospital productivity. In general, a patient is referred from the general practitioner to hospital care. A patient referral contains information that indicates the need for hospital care and this information is differently structured for different medical needs. In practice, these needs can be viewed as the forthcoming patient demand at the hospital, analogous to a volume of orders. Today, the structure of the referrals is very much up to the general practitioner who is referring the patient. This implies that the data provided to the hospital can vary extensively between cases. We suggest that, by enforcing a certain structure on the referral data, it may be possible to make early predictions about the patient demand. Such predictions could then be used as a basis for managing resources more efficiently to increase hospital productivity. This paper investigates the possibility of using data mining techniques to automatically generate prediction models by extracting conclusive information from patient records combined with surgical suite statistics, ,e.g., surgery preparations and anesthesia type, that are of significance for estimating patient demand in a surgery department, e.g., probability of surgery, surgery duration and recovery. We hypothesize that the generated models may provide new knowledge about, and a basis for, how to structure a patient referral. In addition, these models may also be used for the actual prediction of patient demand.
Therapeutic drug monitoring of psychoactive drugs during pregnancy in the genomic era: challenges and opportunities

Various symptoms of mental illness occur commonly during pregnancy. It is estimated that serious mental disorders, including major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, panic and other anxiety disorders, occur with a frequency of 10 to 25% in community samples of US women in their child-bearing years. As a result, approximately a third of all women take at least one psychoactive drug during pregnancy. Fetal drug exposure has been documented for all psychoactive drugs studied to date. However, the rate and extent of placental transfer within and between psychoactive drug classes remains ill defined. The contribution of various genetic factors such as the role of polymorphic drug metabolizing enzymes and drug transporters in controlling the variability of fetal drug exposure is also unclear. Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) has traditionally played an important role in psychiatric pharmacotherapy during pregnancy to ensure an adequate drug dose to achieve desired benefits while avoiding excessive fetal accumulation for drugs. In the genomic era, individualized treatment with specific drugs tailored to the mother's and fetus's genotype should eventually become the standard of care. Several methodological problems need to be overcome for this prediction to become reality. One approach to this goal taken by the Specialized Center of Research on Sex and Gender Factors Affecting Women's Health at the Emory University Women's Mental Health Program is described. This research is grounded on TDM of pregnant women receiving antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-epileptic drugs and mood stabilizers. The use of pharmacokinetic and pharmacogenetic models to predict maternal plasma drug concentrations, fetal drug exposure, and maternal and neonatal outcomes, is expected to improve our understanding of dose-response relationships of psychoactive drugs in pregnancy.
Direct and Indirect Longitudinal Effects of Parental Involvement on Student Achievement: Second-Order Latent Growth Modeling Across Ethnic Groups.

The present study on the influence of parental involvement on students' academic achievement overcame limitations in current research by including simultaneous considerations of multidimensional, longitudinal, mediational, and ethnic factors. Results indicated (a) significant ethnic differences in the direct effects of parental involvement on academic achievement; (b) consistent indirect effects, mediated by student educational aspiration, across all 4 ethnic groups for initial status and subsequent academic growth; (c) consistent indirect effects, mediated by student locus of control, across all 4 ethnic groups for initial achievement status only; and (d) greater parental involvement. in terms of communication and educational aspiration for children to enhance students' educational aspiration and students' locus of control.
Novel bandwidth allocation and packet scheduling strategy for WiMAX

IEEE 802.16 and its variants provide Quality of Service (QoS) by dividing the data traffic into five service classes governed by QoS parameters. Efficient bandwidth allocation algorithm and packet scheduling algorithms ensure that the desired QoS requirements are met. In this paper, a novel bandwidth allocation algorithm and a packet scheduling algorithm are proposed that regulate bandwidth intensive connections by applying three-strike technique. The proposed algorithms ensure that the bandwidth is distributed effectively among the conforming connections thereby improving the overall QoS of the network. Simulation results of the proposed algorithm, when compared with standard algorithms like Earliest Deadline First (EDF), reveal that the proposed algorithm significantly increases the throughput and decreases the data drop for the conforming connection as compared to the EDF algorithm. Throughput improvements and data drop reduction are seen for intra-class inter-MS connections as well as inter-class intra-MS connections.
Use of persuasive technology to change end-users' IT security aware behaviour: A pilot study

Persuasive technology has been applied in marketing, health, environmental conservation, safety and other domains and is found to be quite effective in changing people’s attitude and behaviours. This research extends the application domains of persuasive technology to information security awareness and uses a theory-driven approach to evaluate the effectiveness of a web-based program developed based on the principles of persuasive technology to improve the information security awareness of end users. The findings confirm the existence of a very strong effect of the webbased program in raising users’ attitude towards information security aware behavior. This finding is useful to the IT researchers and practitioners in developing appropriate and effective education strategies for improving the information security attitudes for endusers. Keywords—Information security, persuasive technology, IT security-aware behaviour, theory of planned behaviour survey.
The influence of thymic and bursal lymphoid systems in avian tuberculosis.

Intact and immunologically deficient chickens inoculated with M avium were examined for structural changes in the spleen, the tuberculin reactions and antibody formation. Intravenous inoculation caused miliary tuberculosis of spleen and liver but not brain; intracerebral inoculation caused massive lymphocytic tuberculosis meningitis with later spread to spleen and liver. Neonatal bursectomy and thymectomy did not significantly alter the disease in terms of survival and lesion structure. Cortisone induced earlier development of lesions.In spleen, bacilli were first seen 5 days after inoculation in macrophages in the lymphoid sheath-particularly in capsules of germinal centers. Subsequent lesions were tubercles in the lymphoid sheath, hyperplasia of penicillar arteriolar sheaths, lymphoid atrophy and amyloid deposition. Tubercles were composed of infected macrophages located centrally and surrounded by lighter noninfected macrophages. Cell membranes were extensively interwined where these cells were in contact. Mycobacteria were present within dense, membrane-bound residual bodies.Antibody was first detected 8 days after inoculation in intact birds and persisted throughout the disease. Tuberculin reactions were mixtures of a perivascular monocytic response (delayed hypersensitivity) which developed early and was absent terminally, and a vasculonecrotic response which developed later and persisted to death of the bird. Both reactions occurred in the absence of detectable antibody in bursectomized birds.
A CDMA and AMPS handset power amplifier based on load modulation technique

A new MMlC PA for Cellular & AMPS handsets based on the asymmetric power combining scheme of Doherty amplifier has been developed to boost the efficiency at a low power level. The amplifier has two modes of operation, low and high power modes. At a low power mode, only the main amplifier generates output power and at a high power mode, both the main and auxiliary amplifiers are operational, combining the power efficiently by the load modulation. For the CDMA environment, the amplifier at the low power mode exhibits PAE of 35% and ACLR less than 3ldBc at I8.6dBm and the high power mode exhibits PAE of 37.7% and ACLR of 3ldBc at 28.4dBm. For the AMPS mode operation, the amplifier delivers 2ldBm with PAE of 41.7% and 30.3dBm with 43% in low mode and high mode, respectively.
Service dependency graph: an efficient model for hardware/software interfaces modeling and generation for SoC design

Complex systems-on-chip are designed by interconnecting pre-designed hardware (HW) and software (SW) components. During the design cycle, a global model of the SoC may be composed of HW and SW models at different abstraction levels. Designing HW/SW interfaces to interconnect SoC components is a source of design bottlenecks. This paper describes a service-based model enabling systematic design and co-simulation of HW/SW interfaces for SoC design. This model, called Service dependency graph (SDG) allows modeling of complex and application-specific interfaces. We present also a model generator that can automatically build HW/SW interfaces based on service and resource requirements described by the SDG. This approach has been applied successfully on the design of an MPEG-4 encoder. Additionally the SDG seems to be an excellent intermediate representation for the design automation of HW/SW interfaces.
ELECTRICAL EXCITABILITY AND CYTO-ARCHITECTURE OF THE PREMOTOR CORTEX IN MONKEYS

Recent experimental and clinical studies 1 on the "premotor area," i. e. , the region of the cerebral cortex just anterior to the classic "motor area," indicate that this region is intimately concerned with motor activity and that it probably gives rise to important motor projection systems. As statements in the literature concerning the electrical excitability of this area lack precision and, indeed, are often conflicting, it has seemed desirable to carry out a carefully controlled analysis of the response of this region to faradic stimulation, before and after the removal of the motor area, and to correlate the results with detailed microscopic examination of the cortex. The present paper embraces the results of such a study. The terms "motor" and "premotor" areas have been used throughout as synonymous, respectively, with "area 4" and "area 6" of Brodmann. CONSIDERATIONS OF STRUCTURE Area 4 of Brodmann (the motor cortex, area gigantopyramidalis of