Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Traditional food consumption is associated with higher nutrient intakes in Inuit children attending childcare centres in Nunavik

Objectives. To describe traditional food (TF) consumption and to evaluate its impact on nutrient intakes of preschool Inuit children from Nunavik. Design. A cross-sectional study. Methods. Dietary intakes of children were assessed with a single 24-hour recall (n=217). TF consumption at home and at the childcare centres was compared. Differences in children's nutrient intakes when consuming or not consuming at least 1 TF item were examined using ANCOVA. Results. A total of 245 children attending childcare centres in 10 communities of Nunavik were recruited between 2006 and 2010. The children's mean age was 25.0±9.6 months (11–54 months). Thirty-six percent of children had consumed at least 1 TF item on the day of the recall. TF contributed to 2.6% of total energy intake. Caribou and Arctic char were the most reported TF species. Land animals and fish/shellfish were the main contributors to energy intake from TF (38 and 33%, respectively). In spite of a low TF intake, children who consumed TF had significantly (p<0.05) higher intakes of protein, omega-3 fatty acids, iron, phosphorus, zinc, copper, selenium, niacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, and vitamin B12, and lower intakes of energy and carbohydrate compared with non-consumers. There was no significant difference in any of the socio-economic variables between children who consumed TF and those who did not. Conclusion. Although TF was not eaten much, it contributed significantly to the nutrient intakes of children. Consumption of TF should be encouraged as it provides many nutritional, economic, and sociocultural benefits.
The Political Economy of the World Trading System: From GATT to WTO

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is likely to be a major international organization for the foreseeable future. This volume surveys the WTO and GATT from the viewpoint of public choice and political economy, detailing the mechanics of the multilateral trading system that emerged from the Uruguay round of GATT. The authors, who were involved in the negotiations of the Uruguay talks, explain why WTO rules are phrased the way they are, the successes and failures of WTO and GATT, and how business, industrial associations and political lobbies influence the multilateral trading system.
InGaAs-based high-performance p-i-n photodiodes

We have designed, fabricated, and characterized high-speed and high-efficiency InGaAs-based p-i-n photodetectors with a resonant cavity enhanced structure. The devices were fabricated by a microwave-compatible process. By using a postprocess recess etch, we tuned the resonance wavelength from 1605 to 1558 nm while keeping the peak efficiencies above 60%. The maximum quantum efficiency was 66% at 1572 nm which was in good agreement with our theoretical calculations. The photodiode had a linear response up to 6-mW optical power, where we obtained 5-mA photocurrent at 3-V reverse bias. The photodetector had a temporal response of 16 ps at 7-V bias. After system response deconvolution, the 3-dB bandwidth of the device was 31 GHz, which corresponds to a bandwidth-efficiency product of 20 GHz.
PicoRadios for wireless sensor networks: the next challenge in ultra-low power design

An untapped opportunity in the realm of wireless data lies in low data-rate (<10 kb/s) low-cost wireless transceivers, assembled into distributed networks of sensor and actuator nodes. This enables applications such as smart buildings and highways, environment monitoring, user interfaces, entertainment, factory automation, and robotics While the aggregate system processes large amounts of data, individual nodes participate in a small fraction only (typical data rates <1 kb/s). These ubiquitous networks require that the individual nodes are tiny, easily integratable into the environment, and have negligible cost. The challenges and opportunities in the design of integrated wireless sensor and actuator nodes, to be used in such self-configuring ad-hoc networks, are described. To be viable, the node must be smaller than a couple of mm/sup 3/, cost <$1, and consume <100 μW, allowing for energy scavenging from the environment.
The neuroscientific study of spiritual practices

The purpose of this paper will be to provide a perspective on the current state of the research evaluating the neurobiological correlates of spiritual practices and review the methodological issues that confront this research field. There are many types of spiritual practices that might be studied including prayer and meditation, as well as unusual practices such as mediumistic trance states, speaking in tongues, and also drug-induced experiences. Current studies have utilized neuroimaging techniques including functional magnetic resonance imaging, single photon emission computed tomography, and positron emission tomography. These studies have helped elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms associated with spiritual practices. Such studies confront unique challenges for scientific methodology including determining the most appropriate objective measures such as neuroimaging studies and physiological parameters, and correlating them with subjective measures that help capture states of spiritual significance. Overall, a neuroscientific study of spiritual practices and experiences has the potential to provide fascinating data to further our understanding of the relationship between the brain and such phenomena.
Word Sense Disambiguation for Biomedical Text Mining Using Definition-Based Semantic Relatedness and Similarity Measures

—Automatically identifying the intended sense of ambiguous words improves the performance of clinical and biomedical applications. This paper by proposing Optimized Gloss Vector relatedness and Adapted Gloss Vector similarity measures, two enhanced semantic measures based on Gloss Vector relatedness measure (GV), evaluates their effectiveness over the task of word sense disambiguation (WSD) in the biomedical domain. Generally, GV measure, after computation of the concepts' gloss vectors using their definitions and an external corpus, quantifies the degree of relatedness as the cosine of the angle between two input concepts' computed gloss vectors. We use Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI) and Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) Structure for GV optimization and similarity adaptation respectively. The experimental result on the WSD dataset shows the proposed definition-based measures outperform other semantic measures in terms of accuracy.
Categorical Modeling of a State Oriented Version of Linear Logic

Several systems that promise a logical view of state in programming have been proposed in the literature. We investigate the syntax and semantics of one of these systems called LLMS, developed by Uday Reddy. We show that the existent categorical deenition of a model of LLMS is too conservative and introduce a neat way of revising the deenition. We give a concrete construction in a Dialectica category which forms a sound categorical model for the system.
Semi-blind pilot-layer aided channel estimation with emphasis on interleave-division multiple access systems

A channel estimation scheme for interleave-division multiple access (IDMA) systems is presented. Training and data are superimposed, i.e., no bandwidth expansion compared to a system without any training is necessary. A semi-blind linear minimum mean squared error (MMSE) channel estimator is derived. Monte Carlo simulation results are presented showing that the derived channel estimator in combination with the proposed training scheme is able to track fast-fading frequency-selective channels. As opposed to conventional channel estimation techniques, the BER performance even improves with increasing Doppler spread. An error performance close to the case of perfect channel knowledge can be achieved with high power efficiency
The influence of soft factors on quality improvement and performance: Perceptions from managers

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to investigate the influence of soft factors on quality improvement and performance and also to examine the link between quality improvement and organizational performance.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses data from perceptions from managers in 255 electrical and electronics (EE customer focus; employee involvement; training and education; and reward and recognition. Organizational performance was significantly influenced by the following soft factors: management commitment; customer focus; and employee involvement. Finally, this paper empirically shows that firm performance will increase when the organizations implement more quality improvement practices.Practical .
Towards a Sustainable Development View of Local Content using ICTs in South Africa A Key Priority in the National Information Society Strategy

South Africa (SA) has a history of strong commitment to sustainable development. It is a signatory to the major international agreements such as Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development, and has entrenched the attendant themes and goals into its own policy frameworks. It is also home to an emerging information society (IS), and already there are a number of information and communication technology (ICT) policies in place to improve the penetration of ICTs in the country. As part of the drive to successfully build an IS in SA, the government is currently working on a national Information Society and Development Plan and Implementation Strategy. The intersections of sustainable development and the IS are clear, hence the prevalence of references to each other in many policies and laws. A strong area of convergence is local content—the locally-owned or adapted knowledge of a community—which is shown by the paper to be essential for integrated sustainable development, as well as being a key priority in the national IS strategy. By exploring the links between sustainable development and the IS, and describing projects that create and disseminate local content with the support of ICTs in this area of convergence, the paper proposes the need for a broader definition of local content in the IS strategy, one that is framed within sustainable development principles rather than the current context of arts, culture and heritage. This move towards a sustainable development view of local content supports a further recommendation made by the paper, which is that government should portray ICTs not as an end unto themselves, but rather as powerful new tools that can be used to support SA’s existing efforts towards sustainably meeting its development goals. A Developing Connection 5 ▼ The national and provincial governments have recognized the strategic importance of ICTs and the ICT sector in “enhancing the country’s competitiveness and meeting development challenges” ▲ A Developing Connection 6
State Education Data Systems That Increase Learning and Improve Accountability. Policy Issues. Number 16.

Since the advent of the accountability movement in education reform, state education agencies (SEAs) have encountered signif­ icant data-collection and data-management issues. Most states have tried to meet these challenges head on, but, more often than not, demands have outstripped capacity as data needs con­ tinue to evolve and grow more complex. Policymakers will want to protect and improve their state’s information infrastructure in order to realize the full benefits of standards-based reform.
Rivers influence the population genetic structure of bonobos (Pan paniscus)

Bonobos are large, highly mobile primates living in the relatively undisturbed, contiguous forest south of the Congo River. Accordingly, gene flow among populations is assumed to be extensive, but may be impeded by large, impassable rivers. We examined mitochondrial DNA control region sequence variation in individuals from five distinct localities separated by rivers in order to estimate relative levels of genetic diversity and assess the extent and pattern of population genetic structure in the bonobo. Diversity estimates for the bonobo exceed those for humans, but are less than those found for the chimpanzee. All regions sampled are significantly differentiated from one another, according to genetic distances estimated as pairwise FSTs, with the greatest differentiation existing between region East and each of the two Northern populations (N and NE) and the least differentiation between regions Central and South. The distribution of nucleotide diversity shows a clear signal of population structure, with some 30% of the variance occurring among geographical regions. However, a geographical patterning of the population structure is not obvious. Namely, mitochondrial haplotypes were shared among all regions excepting the most eastern locality and the phylogenetic analysis revealed a tree in which haplotypes were intermixed with little regard to geographical origin, with the notable exception of the close relationships among the haplotypes found in the east. Nonetheless, genetic distances correlated with geographical distances when the intervening distances were measured around rivers presenting effective current–day barriers, but not when straight‐line distances were used, suggesting that rivers are indeed a hindrance to gene flow in this species.
Financial Integration and International Diversification Benefits: Cross Country Evidence from a Malaysian Perspective

A vast deal of research presenting evidence on the benefits of international diversification has been published. The empirical studies came to rather diverse conclusions as the authors used different sampling data, analyzed different countries within a different time period. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the degree of financial integration and benefits of portfolio diversification between the Malaysian equity markets and developed and developing equity markets from Malaysian perspective. The research question is; Is Malaysian financial market integrated to developed and developing markets? It inspects the controversial issues of market segmentation and integration in an emerging market setting, namely Malaysia. In the analysis, the developed and developing equity returns are adjusted for exchange rate fluctuations using Ringgit Malaysia based exchange rates. By employing time series analysis, the paper also seeks to investigate which market actually leads the Malaysian stock market. The research is based on secondary data, existing theories and earlier studies regarding international integration of stock market movements. The methodology utilizes standard co integration analysis, vector error correction model and portfolio theory. We also rely on variance decomposition and impulse response functions to gauge the strength of the interactions among the variables. This study contains secondary data for the period of 1999 to 2008.The study comprises monthly closing Morgan Stanley Composite Index (MSCI) indices of twenty developed and developing countries. The findings from the analysis could be useful to fund managers in their essential decision for portfolio management. The findings may also be of interest to policy makers interested in stock market co movement, since internationalization of markets could represent significant capital inflow or outflow and thus influence savings and consumption decisions.
A Novel Method for Trajectory Analysis in Surveillance

In this paper, we propose a nonparametric grammar based framework for analyzing trajectories, aiming to discover the motion pattern of objects and assist human understanding. The framework works in three steps. 1) Raw trajectories are smoothed to eliminate noise, and then, points and segments are sampled as primitive units. 2) The primitive units are clustered based on DPM and HDP-HMM, in order to learn the pre-terminal symbols in the grammar. 3) Trajectories (sequences of primitive units) are modeled with ISCFG, and parse trees are achieved by using Viterbi algorithm for further research. Compare with previous works, our approach includes temporal, spatial and structural information in a single model. All the parameters can be learned from training set and can be adapted online. The parse tree of trajectories can be exploited for further applications, such as path prediction and anomaly detection.
Big Data: The V's of the Game Changer Paradigm

The Big Data is the most prominent paradigm now-a-days. The Big Data starts rule slowly from 2003, and expected to rule and dominate the IT industries at least up to 2030. Furthermore, the Big Data conquer the technological war and easily capture the entire market since 2009. The Big Data is blasting everywhere around the World in every domain. The Big Data, a massive amount of data, able to generate billions of revenue. The secret behind of these billions of revenue is ever growing volume. This paper presents the redefinition of volume of Big Data. The volume is redefined by engaging three other V's, namely, voluminosity, vacuum, and vitality. Furthermore, this paper augments two new V's to the Big Data paradigm, namely, vendee and vase. This paper explores all V's of Big Data. There are lots of controversy and confusion regarding V's of Big Data. This paper uncovers the confusions of the V family of the Big Data.
Abelian Bf Theories and Knot Invariants Abelian Bf Theories and Knot Invariants Abelian Bf Theories and Knot Invariants

In the context of the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism, a new observable for the Abelian BF theory is proposed whose vacuum expectation value is related to the Alexander-Conway polynomial. The three-dimensional case is analyzed explicitly, and it is proved to be anomaly free. Moreover, at the second order in perturbation theory, a new formula for the second coefficient of the Alexander-Conway polynomial is obtained. An account on the higher-dimensional generalizations is also given.
Side channel information analysis based on machine learning

Cryptographic devices, even after recent improvements, are still vulnerable to side channel attacks(SCA). The majority of the available literature of SCA belongs to the traditional methods such as simple and differential analysis methods and template attacks, whilst few studies based on machine learning are available. In this paper, we investigate the side channel analysis based on machine learning techniques in the form of principal component analysis (PCA) and support vector machine (SVM). For this purpose, we verify the efficiency of RBF and POLY kernel functions of SVM classifier under the influence of the number of principal components (PCs). Our experimental results, obtained by cross validation method, comprise the accuracy and computational complexity of this method and can show the validity and the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
A Visual and Statistical Benchmark for Graph Sampling Methods

Effectively visualizing large graphs is challenging. Capturing the statistical properties of these large graphs is also difficult. Sampling algorithms, developed to more feasibly observe and analyze large graphs, are indispensable for this task. Many sampling approaches for graph simplification have been proposed. These methods can be grouped into three categories: node sampling, edge sampling, and traversal-based sampling. It is still an open question, however, which single sampling technique produces the best representative sample. The goal of this paper is to evaluate commonly used sampling methods through a combined visual and statistical comparison. Initial results indicate that the effectiveness of a sampling method is dependent on the type of graph, the size of the graph, and the desired statistical property. The benchmark can be used as a guideline in choosing the proper method for a particular graph sampling task. The resulting benchmark can be incorporated into graph visualization and analysis tools.
The rugosity effect

This paper surveys the series of lectures given by the author at the Nečas Center for Mathematical Modelling in 2006 and 2007. The main purpouse is the study of the boundary behaviour of solutions of some partial differential equations in domains with rough boundaries. Several classical examples are recalled: the strange term ”coming from somewhere else” of Cioranescu-Murat, Babuška’s paradox, the Courant-Hilbert example and the rugosity effect in fluid dynamics. Some classical and recent results on the shape stability of partial differential equations with Dirichlet boundary conditions are presented. In particular we describe different ways to deal with the rugosity effect in fluid dynamics or contact mechanics. 1 Some classical examples 1.
Better simulation modelling to support farming systems innovation: Review and synthesis

Abstract Simulation modelling is a methodology that appears highly suitable for use in farming systems innovation. However, if the aim is to improve farming systems by supporting farmer behaviour change, model‐based approaches seem to have delivered surprisingly little observable benefit to date. This paper identifies the problems underlying this apparent lack of impact, and proposes better approaches to improve on‐farm benefits from farming systems modelling. A key principle that has been neglected in farm simulation modelling is intimate involvement of clients (defined as “the individuals or groups whose approval is needed for change to be implemented") throughout the innovation process. We argue that client participation is essential in the problem definition, model design and testing and policy design and evaluation phases of model‐based research projects. The role of a simulation model within the innovation process, then, is to be a jointly‐created “virtual world” wherein experiments may be conducted to facilitate learning about the relevant system. We argue that whole farm simulation models that use decision rules to specify alternative farm management strategies are the best available form of virtual world models of farming systems. Besides appropriate client input, high quality models require excellent software development practices and strenuous attention to building user confidence. The latter should include analysing the model to assess its stability and sensitivity properties, before using it to simulate experiments that compare several management alternatives under a range of environmental and local conditions. This approach allows estimation of the variations in farm system performance that are likely to result from interactions between initial farm state, farm management policy and future weather and markets. On the other hand, using simulation models to discover “optimal” farm systems would usually be inappropriate due to the complexity arising from multiple‐stakeholder views, multiple‐criteria, and the dynamic nature of farming systems problems. An improved systems modelling methodology is proposed that should be better able to provide benefits into farming practice.
Different Adipose Depots: Their Role in the Development of Metabolic Syndrome and Mitochondrial Response to Hypolipidemic Agents

Adipose tissue metabolism is closely linked to insulin resistance, and differential fat distributions are associated with disorders like hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Adipose tissues vary in their impact on metabolic risk due to diverse gene expression profiles, leading to differences in lipolysis and in the production and release of adipokines and cytokines, thereby affecting the function of other tissues. In this paper, the roles of the various adipose tissues in obesity are summarized, with particular focus on mitochondrial function. In addition, we discuss how a functionally mitochondrial-targeted compound, the modified fatty acid tetradecylthioacetic acid (TTA), can influence mitochondrial function and decrease the size of specific fat depots.