Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The acceptability of milk and milk products in populations with a high prevalence of lactose intolerance.

1) Most humans, like other mammals, gradually lose the intestinal enzyme lactase after infancy and with it the ability to digest lactose, the principle sugar in milk. At some point in prehistory, a genetic mutation occurred and lactase activity persisted in a majority of the adult population of Northern and Central Europe. 2) Persistence of intestinal lactase, the uncommon trait worldwide, is inherited as a highly penetrant autosomal-dominant characteristic. Both types of progeny are almost equally common when one parent is a lactose maldigester and the other a lactose digester. 3) The incidence of lactose maldigestion is usually determined in adults by the administration in the fasting state of a 50-g dose of lactose in water, the equivalent of that in 1 L of milk. Measurement is made of either the subsequent rise in blood glucose or the appearance of additional hydrogen in the breath. It is also sometimes identified by measuring lactase activity directly in a biopsy sample from the jejunum. For children the test dose is reduced according to weight. Depending on the severity of the lactase deficiency and other factors, the test dose may result in abdominal distention, pain, and diarrhea. 4) The frequency of lactose maldigestion varies widely among populations but is high in nearly all but those of European origin. In North American adults lactose maldigestion is found in approximately 79% of Native Americans, 75% of blacks, 51% of Hispanics, and 21% of Caucasians. In Africa, Asia, and Latin America prevalence rates range from 15-100% depending on the population studied. 5) Whenever the lactose ingested exceeds the capacity of the intestinal lactase to split it into the simple sugars glucose and galactose, which are absorbed directly, it passes undigested to the large intestine. There it is fermented by the colonic flora, with short-chain fatty acids and hydrogen gas as major products. The gas produced can cause abdominal distention and pain and diarrhea may also result from the fermentation products. 6) Among individuals with incomplete lactose digestion, there is considerable variation in awareness of lactose intolerance and in the quantity of lactose that can be ingested without symptoms. A positive standard lactose test is not a reliable predictor of the ability of an individual to consume moderate amounts of milk and milk products without symptoms. In usual situations the quantity of lactose ingested at any one time is much less than in the lactose-tolerance test. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Personality and national culture: Predictors of compensation strategy preferences in the United States of America and India

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between individual personality and compensation package preferences and whether cross‐cultural differences exist in these preferences in the USA and India.Design/methodology/approach – A survey methodology was used and subjects included 175 MBA students of two universities, one in the USA and one in India. Measurement instruments included a Big Five personality measure and a compensation pay strategy typology.Findings – Results indicated a significantly different pattern of results between subjects in the two countries. In the India sample, introversion was a significant predictor of a security/commitment pay strategy and extroversion and neuroticism were significant predictors of performance‐driven pay strategies. In the US sample, none of the personality variables was predictive of pay strategy preferences.Practical implications – Multinational firms should reconsider “one‐size‐fits‐all” compensation plans and tailor strategies to fit t.
Evaluation of experimental autoimmune uveitis in mice treated with FTY720.

PURPOSE FTY720 (fingolimod) is an immunomodulatory drug capable of preventing T-cell migration to inflammatory sites by binding to and subsequently downregulating the expression of sphingosine-1 phosphate receptor 1 (S1P(1)) leading in turn to T-cell retention in lymphoid organs. Additional effects of FTY720 by increasing functional activity of regulatory T cells have recently been demonstrated, raising the conversion of conventional T cells into regulatory T cells and affecting the sequestration of regulatory T cells in normal mice. In this study, the action of FTY720 in the ocular autoimmune model in mice was investigated. METHODS Mice were immunized with 161-180 peptide and pertussis toxin and were treated with 1 mg/kg/d FTY720 by gavage (7-21 days postimmunization [dpi]) or left untreated. Spleen cells, harvested 21 dpi, were cultured and assayed for cytokine production. Draining lymph node, spleen, and eye cells 21 dpi were assayed for quantification of T-cell populations. Disease severity was evaluated by histologic examination of the enucleated eyes at 21 and 49 dpi. In addition, anti-IRBP antibodies were analyzed by ELISA. RESULTS FTY720 was effective in suppressing the experimental autoimmune uveitis score. Although there was a reduction in the number of eye-infiltrating cells, FTY did not prevent Treg accumulation at this site. FTY720 leads to a significant increase of CD4(+)IFN-gamma(+) and CD4(+)Foxp3(+) cell percentages in lymph nodes, suggesting that this site could be the source of Treg cells found in the eye. CONCLUSIONS The data showed that treatment in vivo with FTY720 was able to suppress EAU in mice. These results are indicative of the possible therapeutic use of FTY720 in ocular autoimmune processes.
BiDi screen: a thin, depth-sensing LCD for 3D interaction using light fields

An LCD screen is transformed into a BiDi (bidirectional) screen to support 2D multi-touch and walk-up 3D gesture interaction. An image sensor placed a small distance behind an LCD forms a mask-based light-field camera, allowing passive depth estimation. The BiDi screen also supports novel mixed-reality rendering with external light-emitting widgets that light a virtual scene.
THE EFFECT OF PAST EXPERIENCE UPON THE BINOCULAR RIVALRY

The phenomenon of binocular rivalry has frequently been investigated in an effect to show the importance of inner factors in perception. Engel (1956), among others, demonstrated that the semantic difference between two figures presented simultaneously to corresponding areas of the two eyes affected subject (S)'s verbal reports on what he saw. Other investigators emphasized the role of emotion, personality, or cultural difference in binocular rivalry (Bagby, 1957; Davis, 1959; Hastorf & Myro, 1959;Pettigrew, Allport & Barnett., 1958). In a more controlled experiment, Kakizaki (1950a, 1950b) clearly showed the effect of previous stimulation on binocular rivalry. Under the condition where prior to binocular presentation of two antagonistic figures, one of the S's eyes was stimulated by one of the two figures, was found such an effect that made the figure antagonistic to the preceding one dominant in succeeding rivalry, no matter which eye was previously stimulated. Similar effects have been reported in studies on the perception of reversible perspective and figureground patterns (Kakizaki, 1950b; Hochberg, 1950; Oyama, 1952; Carlson, 1953). It is seen from these studies that prior stimulation can inhibit a subsequent perception of a similar figure rather than facilitate its recognition. On the other hand, several investigators have found that with figure-ground or perspective patterns, prior stimulation of a figure is effective in facilitating perception of the same figure (Rubin, 1921; Rock & Kremen, 1957). Ninomiya (1958) has shown that the effect of previous stimulation on figure-ground reversals can change from inhibition to facilitation as the frequency of previous stimulation and the time-interval between the previous and subsequent stimulations increase and the duration of the previous stimulation decreases. The preceding stimulations given in the experiments mentioned above are supposed to have relatively short-term effects which could be some temporal changes in the perceptual system. The present investigation deals with the effect of past experience which will result in relatively long-term 1 This study was collducted at the Osaka City
Task mapping on NoC-based MPSoCs with faulty tiles: Evaluating the energy consumption and the application execution time

The use of spare tiles in a networks-on-chip based multi-processor chip can improve the yield, reducing the cost of the chip and maintaining the system functionality even if the chip is defective. However, the impact of this approach on application characteristics, such as energy consumption and execution time, is not documented. For instance, on one hand the application tasks might be mapped onto any tile of a defect-free chip. On the other hand, a chip with a defective tile needs special task mapping that avoid fault tiles. This paper presents a task mapping aware of faulty tiles, where an alternative task mapping can be generated and evaluated in terms of energy consumption and execution time. The results show that faults on tiles have, on average, a small effect on energy consumption but no significant effect on execution time. It demonstrates that spare tiles can improve yield with a small impact on the application requirements.
Event Pattern Matching over Streams with Missing Timestamps

Recognising patterns that correlate multiple events over time becomes increasingly important in applications from urban transportation to security to office automation. In many real-world scenarios, however, timestamps of events may be erroneously recorded and events may be dropped from a stream due to network failures or load shedding policies. In this work, we present SimpMatch, a novel algorithm for probabilistically recognizing event patterns using constraints over event orderings in a stream. Our approach avoids learning probability distributions for time-points or occurrence intervals. Instead, we employ the abstraction of segmented intervals and compute the probability of a sequence of such segments using the principle of order statistics. The algorithm is shown to be efficient, running in linear time to the number of missed timestamps, and accurate, yielding exact results if event generation is based on a Poisson process and providing a good approximation otherwise. Our empirical analysis highlights that even without prior knowledge about the missed timestamps and without assuming a discrete time domain, SimpMatch allows for efficient and effective reasoning over event streams, with a graceful reduction of accuracy as uncertainty increases.
Barycenters in the Wasserstein Space

In this paper, we introduce a notion of barycenter in the Wasserstein space which generalizes McCann's interpolation to the case of more than two measures. We provide existence, uniqueness, characterizations, and regularity of the barycenter and relate it to the multimarginal optimal transport problem considered by Gangbo and Świech in [Comm. Pure Appl. Math., 51 (1998), pp. 23–45]. We also consider some examples and, in particular, rigorously solve the Gaussian case. We finally discuss convexity of functionals in the Wasserstein space.
Issues and experiences designing and implementing two group drawing tools

Groupware designers are developing multi-user equivalents of popular paint and draw applications. Their job is not an easy one. First, human factors issues peculiar to group interaction appear that, if ignored, seriously limit the usability of the group tool. Second, implementation is fraught with considerable hurdles. The authors describe the issues and experiences they have met and handled in the design of two systems supporting remote real time group interaction: GroupSketch, a multi-user sketchpad; and GroupDraw, an object-based multi-user draw package. On the human factors side, they summarize empirically-derived design principles that are critical to building useful and usable collaborative drawing tools. On the implementation side, they describe experiences with replicated versus centralized architectures, schemes for participant registration, multiple cursors, network requirements, and the structure of the drawing primitives. <<ETX>>
Augmented Reality for Urban Skills Training

Warfighters develop and maintain their skills through training. Since fully-manned live training in the real world is often too expensive (by many measures), scientists have developed many types of training systems ranging from classroom sessions to those using virtual reality. Recently, researchers have used augmented reality (AR) to insert virtual entities into the real world, attempting to create a low cost, repeatable, and effective substitute for fully-manned live training. However, very little evaluation of the effectiveness of AR for training has been performed. We performed a pilot study to evaluate the use of wearable AR in teaching urban skills, specifically, room clearing in teams. Eight teams of two were briefed on room clearing techniques, given hands-on instruction, and then allowed to practice those techniques with or without the AR system. After this instructional period, subjects performed several room clearing scenarios against real people using infrared-based practice weapons that logged the number of hits on the subjects and the enemy and neutral forces. During these trials, a subject matter expert evaluated how well the subjects applied the room-clearing techniques. In this paper, we describe the pilot study in more detail, including the hardware and software testbed, and then provide an analysis of the results of the pilot study.
Adaptive sequential design for regression on Schauder Basis

We present a new sequential algorithm to build both optimal design and model selection in a multi-resolution family of functions. This algorithm relies on a localization property of discrete sequential D and A-optimal designs for Schauder Basis. We use these property with a simulated annealing strategy to obtain our stochastic algorithm. We illustrate its efficiency on several numerical experiments.
Posicionamento estratégico de mercado: Definição de uma proposta de valor para uma marca de produtos de limpeza

O objetivo deste artigo centrou em definir uma proposta de valor para direcionar o posicionamento estrategico adequado de uma nova marca de produtos de limpeza. Para alcancar o objetivo, foi utilizada uma pesquisa exploratoria de abordagem qualitativa com 12 intermediarios de mercado e quatro gestores da organizacao foco, por meio da qual se operacionalizou a aplicacao de um metodo para a definicao de proposta de valor. Quanto as implicacoes academicas, o presente trabalho ampliou teoricamente algumas das contribuicoes descritas nos estudos relacionados ao processo de posicionamento estrategico, como as pertinentes a necessidade de orientacao ao mercado e a inclusao das dimensoes de diferenciacao – produto, servicos ao cliente, recursos humanos e imagem – para analise. Palavras-chave: Posicionamento. Proposta de valor. Marca.
Specific window of prolactin inhibition in late gestation decreases mammary parenchymal tissue development in gilts.

Prolactin is required from d 70 to 110 of gestation for normal mammary development of gilts. The goal of the present study was to determine the effect of inhibiting prolactin with bromocriptine during specific time windows during the second half of gestation on mammary gland development in gilts. Crossbred primigravid gilts were assigned as controls (n = 12) or received 10 mg of bromocriptine orally three times daily from d 50 to 69 (BR50, n = 12), d 70 to 89 (BR70, n = 12), or d 90 to 109 (BR90, n = 12) of gestation. Jugular blood samples were collected on d 50, 70, 90, and 109 of gestation and assayed for prolactin and estradiol. Gilts were slaughtered on d 109 of gestation and fetuses were counted and weighed. One row of mammary glands was used for dissection of parenchymal and extraparenchymal tissues, and for biochemical analyses. Tissue from the other row was used for measures of prolactin receptor number and affinity. Concentrations of prolactin were decreased markedly (P < 0.001) at the end of each bromocriptine treatment period compared with controls, but there was no overall treatment effect (P > 0.1) on estradiol concentrations. Extraparenchymal tissue weight of the mammary glands was unaffected by treatments (P > 0.1), but weight of parenchymal tissue, total DNA, and total RNA were lower (P < 0.01) in BR90 than control gilts. The percentage of DM in parenchymal tissue was unaffected by treatments (P > 0.1), but percentage of fat was higher and percentage of protein lower (P < 0.01) in BR90 gilts compared with controls. Cell size, as estimated by the protein:DNA ratio, also was lower (P < 0.01) in the BR90 group. Number and affinity of prolactin receptors in parenchymal tissue were not significantly altered by treatments. In conclusion, there is a specific time period in the second half of gestation, from 90 to 109 d, during which prolactin is essential for normal mammary parenchymal tissue development.
Oxidative damage parameters in renal tissues of aged and young rats based on gender

Purpose Aging is characterized by a gradual functional decrease of all systems including the kidneys. Growing evidence links altered lipid protein redox-homeostasis with renal dysfunction. The effect of sexual dimorphism on the lipid protein redox-homeostasis mechanisms in the aging kidney is obscure. In the current study, we aimed to investigate redox homeostasis as it related to sexual dimorphism on protein oxidation and lipid peroxidation parameters, as protein carbonyl (PCO), total thiol (T-SH), advanced oxidation protein products (AOPP), malondialdehyde, glutathione (GSH), and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, as potential aging biomarkers, which may contribute to an analysis of the free radical theory of aging. Materials and methods The study was carried out with 16 naturally aged rats (24 months old; eight males and eight females) and their corresponding young rat groups as controls (6 months old; eight males and eight females). All of the aforementioned parameters (PCO, T-SH, AOPP, MDA, GSH, SOD) were measured manually instead of automated devices or ELISA kits. Results PCO, AOPP, and malondialdehyde levels in aged rats were significantly higher in the older rat group than in the younger rat group, whereas SOD activities were significantly lower in old rats. T-SH levels were not significantly different in male groups; however, T-SH levels were lower in the aged female group than in the young female control group. In addition, GSH levels were significantly different between the aged rat group and the corresponding young control group for both genders. Conclusion With respect to PCO and AOPP, impaired redox homeostasis is substantially more prominent in males than females. The decrease of G-SH levels in male groups could be attributed to stabilizing the redox status of protein thiol groups by the depletion of the GSH groups. Considering the results, the renal tissue proteins and lipids in different genders may have different susceptibilities to oxidative damage.
Time course of perception and decision making during mammographic interpretation.

OBJECTIVE This article describes the time course of lesion detection on digital mammograms using data about both eye position and decision time to compare performance between experienced mammographers and trainees. Research indicates that a longer decision time works against performance in the interpretation of chest radiographs because the likelihood of error is increased, particularly for trainees. Is this relation between decision time and performance also true for interpreting mammograms? Is there an optimal decision time-performance trade-off for detecting breast lesions? MATERIALS AND METHODS Six radiology trainees (experience, 302-976 cases) and three mammographers (experience, 3000-5000 cases per year) reviewed 40 test cases. Each test case was represented by two mammograms that showed different views of the same breast. Twenty breasts contained suspicious lesions, and 20 were lesion-free. An interactive computer display system with an eye-head tracker measured the timing of decisions, where visual attention was directed, and how much time was spent fixating on a region of interest for each decision. Eye position was monitored during an initial-decision phase, and decision times were measured throughout a final-decision phase during which suspicious lesions recognized initially were interpreted and localized. Performance was analyzed using localization receiver operating characteristic curves. RESULTS The time course of interpreting mammograms is similar to that for interpreting chest radiographs. Mammographers detected 71% of the true lesions within 25 sec, and trainees detected 46% within 40 sec. Both a fixation dwell time of 1000 msec and a high level of confidence in the decision were associated with the detection of true lesions for the mammographers but not for the trainees. CONCLUSION Mammographers detected most breast lesions by global recognition within 25 sec, but trainees took more time. Prolonging one's search beyond the global recognition phase yielded few new lesions and increased the risk of error.
Operating system enhancement through firmware

Microprogramming support for the enhancement of operating system design is described in detail, organization structure of realtime operating systems are examined, and criteria proposed for determining which functions are best for firmware implementation. Also, a closed queueing network model with state dependent routing probabilities is developed for studying the impact of microprogramming on a tactical computer system performance. Based on measurement obtained from two applications, the mathematical model is a good approximation in predicting system performance. Avenues for additional research is recommended.
Apraxia: Clinical Types, Theoretical Models, and Evaluation

Apraxia is traditionally defined as a disorder of skilled movement that cannot be attributed to elementary sensorimotor deficit, aphasia or severe mental deterioration (De Renzi, 1989). This negative definition has led to integrate within the same framework a multitude of relatively different clinical manifestations, which have little in common with the kind of deficits to which it was originally applied (e.g., gaze apraxia, gait apraxia, trunk apraxia). These forms probably concern automatic movements and, therefore, will not be treated here. It is now largely admitted that some clinical signs are particularly useful for the diagnosis. First, the disorder affects the two sides of the body, even though the brain lesions are generally unilateral and more particularly located in the left (dominant) hemisphere. Second, the errors made by apraxics vary depending on the conditions of testing. For instance, apraxics can succeed in many circumstances, but fail when the movement must be executed to the clinician’s request. In this frame, three categories of movement are regarded as relevant to the evaluation: Imitation of meaningless postures, pantomime production (i.e., demonstration of the use of a tool without the tool in hand) and actual tool use. Apraxia has been, and is still, subject to intense debate notably about its autonomy from elementary sensorimotor deficits and from higher-level cognitive processes. As a result, neurologists and neuropsychologists alike are commonly uncertain about the good way of assessing and interpreting it. In this chapter, we propose to address different issues relative to the notion of apraxia in light of recent developments made in the field.