Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stages of Change for Increasing Fruit and Vegetable Intake in a Japanese Population

OBJECTIVE: Thhis study aimed to investigate the reason why people choose to consume less vegetable and fruit through examining how the stage of change and psycho-social parameters relate to vegetable and fruit intake. METHODS: We carried out a cross-sectional study in 4 regions of Japan in which 2308 individuals (1012 men and 1296 women) aged 18 years or older who completed the questionnaires were included in the study. RESULTS: The results showed 56% of the participants were in the precontemplation stage (not thinking about consuming recommended amount of fruit and vegetable) and their average amounts of vegetable and fruit intake were far below the level of current recommendations, and subjects in the precontemplation stage showed lower scores of attitude and self efficacy. Men were more likely to be in precontemplation (67.7%) and less likely to be in action/maintenance stage (7.9%) than women (46.9%, 12.1%, respectively) (p < 0.001). We also observed the scores of attitude (p = 0.06) and self-efficacy (p < 0.01) rose as the stage went up from the precontemplation to action/maintenance for increasing vegetable and fruit intake. Moreover, a linear trend was found toward higher vegetable (p < 0.05) and fruit (p = 0.121) intake from precontemplation to action/maintenance stage. CONCLUSION: The present evidence suggests more attention should be focused on strategy for perceptions of personal need for recommended amount of vegetable and fruit intake for those who are in the precontemplation stage. Moreover, effective programs on enhancement of self-efficacy and attitude toward vegetable and fruit consumption are needed for increasing the vegetable and fruit intake.
Nanopore sequencing and assembly of a human genome with ultra-long reads

We report the sequencing and assembly of a reference genome for the human GM12878 Utah/Ceph cell line using the MinION (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) nanopore sequencer. 91.2 Gb of sequence data, representing ∼30× theoretical coverage, were produced. Reference-based alignment enabled detection of large structural variants and epigenetic modifications. De novo assembly of nanopore reads alone yielded a contiguous assembly (NG50 ∼3 Mb). We developed a protocol to generate ultra-long reads (N50 > 100 kb, read lengths up to 882 kb). Incorporating an additional 5× coverage of these ultra-long reads more than doubled the assembly contiguity (NG50 ∼6.4 Mb). The final assembled genome was 2,867 million bases in size, covering 85.8% of the reference. Assembly accuracy, after incorporating complementary short-read sequencing data, exceeded 99.8%. Ultra-long reads enabled assembly and phasing of the 4-Mb major histocompatibility complex (MHC) locus in its entirety, measurement of telomere repeat length, and closure of gaps in the reference human genome assembly GRCh38.
The Sonar Simulation Toolset

The Sonar Simulation Toolset, or SST, is a set of object-oriented software components and software development tools for building sonar simulators -“artificial oceans” that sound like a real ocean as “heard” by an existing or proposed sonar system. SST-based simulators produce a digital representation of the predicted signal at a selected point in the receiver’s processing path (typically at each element or beam-former) for a given sonar and environment. The signal includes random fluctuations with controlled statistical properties. The SST is intended to enable a user (programmer) to build a wide variety of applications simply and quickly, with minimal duplication. Thus, the toolset must be highly flexible, modular, portable, reliable, efficient, and tolerant of change. To help achieve these attributes, the principles of object-oriented programming are used as the basis for a library of classes and objects. A class defines a data structure and associated operations; an object is an instance of a class structure containing a particular set of data. SST classes are implemented in C, using mechanisms similar to the X Windows Toolkit. SST objects are C structures initialized at compile time; they may be placed in libraries like subroutines, and configured into application programs at link time. Currently, the package includes models (classes) for several types of beam pattems, pulses, sound propagation, reverberation, scatterers, etc. One of the sound propagation models uses eigenray files produced by the Naval Underwater Systems Center’s Generic Sonar Model, using any of Generic’s sound propagation models. A simple program called REVGEN-SST, which generates a reverberation time series and writes it in a file, is intended as a starting point for userdesigned applications. The current release runs on VAXNMS, VAWNIX, PyramiWNIX, and Cray/CTSS systems.
Mixing of Porpoise Ecotypes in South Western UK Waters Revealed by Genetic Profiling

Contact zones between marine ecotypes are of interest for understanding how key pelagic predators may react to climate change. We analysed the fine scale genetic structure and morphological variation in harbour porpoises around the UK, at the proposed northern limit of a contact zone between southern and northern ecotypes in the Bay of Biscay. Using a sample of 591 stranded animals spanning a decade and microsatellite profiling at 9 loci, clustering and spatial analyses revealed that animals stranded around UK are composed of mixed genetic ancestries from two genetic pools. Porpoises from SW England displayed a distinct genetic ancestry, had larger body-sizes and inhabit an environment differentiated from other UK costal areas. Genetic ancestry blends from one group to the other along a SW-NE axis along the UK coastline, and showed a significant association with body size, consistent with morphological differences between the two ecotypes and their mixing around the SW coast. We also found significant isolation-by-distance among juveniles, suggesting that stranded juveniles display reduced intergenerational dispersal, while adults show larger variance. The fine scale structure of this admixture zone raises the question of how it will respond to future climate change and provides a reference point for further study.
3D-clinorotation induces specific alterations in metabolite profiles of germinating Brassica napus L. seeds

During the whole history of their life on Earth, higher plants evolved under the constant gravity stimulus. Therefore, plants developed efficient mechanisms of gravity perception, underlying their ability to adjust the direction of growth to the gravity vector, i.e. the phenomenon of gravitropism. In this context, alterations in the magnitude and vector of the gravity field might compromise plant growth and development. This aspect was successfully addressed in gravity fields of low intensity (microgravity). On the other hand, microgravity can be simulated on the Earth by clinorotation, i.e. rotation of the experimental plant along one or several axes. This approach is routinely used for studies of gravity-related responses of crop plants, although the effect of simulated microgravity on the most sensitive ontogenetic stages — germination and seedling development — is still not sufficiently characterized. Recently, we addressed the effects of clinorotation on the proteome of germinating oilseed rape (Brassica napus) seeds. Here we extend this study to the seedling primary metabolome and address its changes in the presence of 3D-clinorotation. GC-MS analysis revealed essential alterations in patterns of sugars and sugar phosphates (specifically glucose-6-phosphate), methionine and glycerol. Thereby, abundances of individual metabolites showed high dispersion, indicating high lability and plasticity of the seedling metabolome.
Effect of Microcystis aeruginosa blooming on the production of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) in fish ponds

Reasons for low fish farm production at Eltel El-kabeer area, Ismailia Governorate were unknown. At the concerned area, fish survival rates have been dropped to reach less than 10% for several consecutive years. Some of the conducted studies, concerning the high mortality rates in the concerned area, claimed that that phenomenon was initially referred to cyanobacterium blooming (Microcystis aeruginosa) thought to be ingested by fish during feeding, or assimilated through gills during breathing. Twelve earthen ponds (each of 2000 m 2 area, 100-120 cm water depth, fertilized by 125 kg chicken manure / pond / week for a period of 16 weeks, and stocked with 5000 Nile tilapia fry with a weight ranged 5-7 gm) were used in the study and were divided equally into two studied groups. The first pond group was full of Microcystis aeruginosa bloom, while the second pond group was free of Microcystis aeruginosa bloom. Fish were stocked in the two previously mentioned studied pond groups, fed on feeding rate at 3 % of live body weight. Commercial floating fish diet with 25% protein content was used in fish feeding. Physicochemical parameters, plankton population, fish survival, fish production, and toxicity test for different fish size (5, 20, 50, 150 grams). In addition, Artemia also were studied. There was a significant difference between the two studied pond groups concerning all physical and chemical water characteristics investigated. Those investigated water characteristics were: dissolved oxygen, visibility, salinity, total suspended solid (TSS), alkalinity, total phosphorus and Ammonium (NH4). On the other hand, there was no significant difference between the two studied pond groups concerning each of temperature, pH, electric conductivity (EC), Hardness, nitrate (NO3) ammonium (NH3) and chlorophyll ―a‖. In general, all investigated values were within the suitable range for tilapia growth. The abundance of phytoplankton in number was highly significant in the first research pond group concerning each of Cyanophyta, Euglenophyta, and Microcystis aeruginosa in blooming, and was not significant in Baciloarophyta and Chlorophyta. In addition, Zooplankton was significant in numbers concerning Cladocera, Rotifers and Copepoda and was not significant in total zooplankton Effect of Microcystis aeruginosa blooming on the production of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) in fish ponds 72 number. Fish and Artemia exposed to pond with Microcystis blooming died within 24 hours. The research drew the attention towards conducting more future research studies in this concern as a way to control the toxic algae of Microcystis aeruginosa in fish ponds.
A conic section function network synapse and neuron implementation in VLSI hardware

An analogue VLSI design which computes radial basis function (RBF) and multilayer perceptron (MLP) propagation rules on a single chip is proposed to form a conic section function network (CSFN) synapse and neuron. This novel VLSI circuit has been designed to compute both the dot product (weighted sum) for MLP and the Euclidean distance for RBF. These two propagation rules are then aggregated to use for a CSFN synapse and neuron design. This network allows the use of bounded and unbounded decision regions, depending on the data distribution of a given application. The cdsSpice simulation results are also presented, which verifies the function of the designed synapse and neuron.
Assisted model selection, evaluation and comparison

The authors take a schema for identifying and structuring the important characteristics of decision models as they relate to problems, and expand it by developing a complete framework documentation to be used within the context of model management systems. They illustrate this framework by using it as a basis for a subsystem that assists the user in classifying his problem, identifying candidate models, and assessing and comparing their value within his context. <<ETX>>
Probabilistic resource estimation for pipeline architecture

This paper presents a new approach to resource estimation in high level synthesis. Given a set of operators and a data flow graph specification, we apply a probability based method to compute the probable numbers of operators, registers, bus and operator connections for each time step or algorithm latency. Combined with statistical metrics, we obtain a quick and accurate estimation module that includes real precedence constraints. The aim of this work is to provide ASICs designers with a guidance tool for a better use of high level synthesis. Algorithm properties like dated resource concurrence and operator link statistics are computed to guide algorithmic, transformations and hardware selection.
Salient Experiences are Represented by Unique Transcriptional Signatures in the Brain

Inducible transcription is essential for consolidation of salient experiences into long-term memory. However, the question of whether inducible transcription relays information representing the identity of the experience being encoded, has not been explored. To this end, we have analyzed transcription across multiple brain regions, induced by a variety of rewarding and aversive experiences. Our results define robust transcriptional signatures uniquely characterizing individual salient experiences. A subset of these induced transcriptional markers suffice for near-perfect decoding of the identity of recent experiences at the level of individual mice. Furthermore, experiences with shared attributes display commonalities in their transcriptional representation, exemplified in the representation of valence, habituation and reinforcement. Taken together, our results demonstrate the existence of a neural transcriptional code that represents the encoding of experiences in the mouse brain. This code is comprised of distinct transcriptional signatures that correlate to the affective attributes of the experiences that are being encoded.
Structured software usability evaluation: an experiment in evaluation design

This research compared the effectiveness of a detailed usability evaluation method and instrument to a traditional overview method. Usability is a distinctive term that includes, for example, ease of use, learnability, supportability of multi-level users, error prevention, feedback, and recovery. Evaluating a product against a set of usability criteria is a technique known in the usability field as a "heuristic evaluation," during which a usability professional can identify problems before they reach the end user. Heuristic evaluations performed early in a product lifecycle can promote fixes in preproduction phases, rather than more costly testing and implementation phases. In the study, 63 usability professionals performed heuristic evaluations in a 2 x 2 research design to determine the relative effectiveness in revealing usability problems of using traditional versus experimental contemporary heuristics, each paired with an unstructured all-at-once evaluation method, or an experimental structured method. In the latter method, the evaluators were required to use limited sets of heuristics during a given session, with breaks between sessions. The work is an extension of research by Masaaki Kurosu, who developed the Structured Heuristic Evaluation Method (sHEM) for use in Japan, and tested it in a single-factor design. In this present study the heuristic set and evaluation method variables were separated into a two-factor design; Kurosu's main effect of the contemporary/structured interaction was not replicated. Participants using traditional general heuristics found more usability problems than those using contemporary detailed heuristics. The study's strongest finding was that the structured approached rendered the participants more effective at identifying usability problems, even when individual participants found the approach "disconcerting" or "distracting. " Results are congruent with the psychological phenomenon of retroactive interference: by interrupting the evaluation at intervals, participants were able to "forget" previous sections, freeing up working memory to find more usability problems in subsequent sections. Implications of the practical applications of these results to the usability field are discussed.
Biotransformation of Cranberry Proanthocyanidins to Probiotic Metabolites by Lactobacillus rhamnosus Enhances Their Anticancer Activity in HepG2 Cells In Vitro

This study was designed to unravel the role of Lactobacillus rhamnosus in the bioconversion of cranberry proanthocyanidins and cytotoxicity of resulting metabolites to hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cells. Crude (CR) and flavonol+dihydrochalcone- (FL+DHC-), anthocyanin- (AN-), proanthocyanidin- (PR-), and phenolic acid+catechin- (PA+C-) rich fractions were subjected to fermentation with L. rhamnosus at 37°C for 12, 24, and 48 h under anaerobic conditions. The major metabolites produced by bioconversion of polyphenols were 4-hydroxyphenylacetic acid, 3-(4-hydroxyphenyl)propionic acid, hydrocinnamic acid, catechol, and pyrogallol. Furthermore, cytotoxicity of the biotransformed extracts was compared to their parent extracts using human hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cells. The results showed that PR-biotransformed extract completely inhibited HepG2 cell proliferation in a dose- and time-dependent manner with IC50 values of 47.8 and 20.1 μg/mL at 24 and 48 h, respectively. An insight into the molecular mechanisms involved revealed that the cytotoxic effects of PR at 24 h incubation were mitochondria-controlled and not by proapoptotic caspase-3/7 dependent. The present findings suggest that the application of a bioconversion process using probiotic bacteria can enhance the pharmacological activities of cranberry proanthocyanidins by generating additional biologically active metabolites.
Significance of trends in gait dynamics

Trends in time series generated by physiological control systems are ubiquitous. Determining whether trends arise from intrinsic system dynamics or originate outside of the system is a fundamental problem of fractal series analysis. In the latter case, it is necessary to filter out the trends before attempting to quantify correlations in the noise (residuals). For over two decades, detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) has been used to calculate scaling exponents of stride time (ST), stride length (SL), and stride speed (SS) of human gait. Herein, rather than relying on the very specific form of detrending characteristic of DFA, we adopt Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) to explicitly determine trends in spatio-temporal gait parameters during treadmill walking. Then, we use the madogram estimator to calculate the scaling exponent of the corresponding MARS residuals. The durations of ST and SL trends are determined to be independent of treadmill speed and have distributions with exponential tails. At all speeds considered, the trends of ST and SL are strongly correlated and are statistically independent of their corresponding residuals. The group-averaged values of scaling exponents of ST and ST MARS residuals are slightly smaller than 0.5, indicating weak anti-persistence. Thus, contrary to the interpretation prevalent in the literature, the statistical properties of ST and SL time series originate from the superposition of large scale trends and small scale fluctuations. We show that trends serve as the control manifolds about which ST and SL fluctuate. Moreover, the trend speed, defined as the ratio of instantaneous values of SL and ST trends, is tightly controlled about the treadmill speed. The strong coupling between the ST and SL trends ensures that the concomitant changes of their values correspond to movement along the constant speed goal equivalent manifold as postulated by Dingwell et al. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi. 1000856. Author summary During treadmill walking, the subject’s stride time (ST) and stride length (SL) must yield a stride speed which can fluctuate over a narrow range centered on the treadmill belt’s speed. The fact that both ST and SL are persistent is an intriguing property of human gait. For persistent fluctuations any deviation from the mean value is likely to be followed by a deviation in the same direction. To trace the origin of such persistence, we used a novel approach to determine trends in spatio-temporal gait parameters. We find that the trends of ST and SL of a subject are strongly correlated and are statistically independent of their corresponding residuals. Moreover, the trend speed, defined as the ratio of instantaneous values of SL and ST trends, is tightly controlled about the treadmill speed. The persistence of gait parameters stems from superposition of large scale trends and small scale fluctuations.
Assessment of Hunger in Growing Broiler Breeders in Relation to a Commercial Restricted Feeding Programme

From two weeks of age female broiler breeder chickens were fed either on a commercial daily ration (R), twice that amount (2R), or ad libitum (AL). Motivation to eat in R and 2R birds was compared every third week with that of AL birds subjected to 3-72h food deprivation. AL and 2R birds grew three and two times faster than R birds to 20 weeks, and AL birds ate two to four times as much per day as R birds, depending on age and on whether birds of the same age or weight were compared. When feeding motivation was measured in 16min tests with an operant procedure, numbers of responses by R and 2R birds were not related in a consistent way to the time since their daily meal ended Responses by AL birds were correlated consistently with the preceding period of food deprivation, but it was not possible to express hunger in R and 2R birds in terms of equivalent deprivation in AL birds, as intended, because feeding motivation in the two situations differed in magnitude. Instead, it was calculated that motivation to eat in R and 2R birds, from 8 to 20 weeks, was 3.6 and 1.9 times greater than that of maximally (72h) deprived AL birds. Another measure of feeding motivation with different birds, rate of eating in 10min tests, produced a similar index of hunger with 2R but not R birds. It is concluded that broiler breeders fed on the commercial ration eat only a quarter to a half as much as they would with free access to food, and that they are highly motivated to eat at all times. The modern broiler breeder industry is caught in a welfare dilemma, since on the one hand stock appear to be chronically hungry, while on the other hand less severe food restriction leads to reduced fertility and health problems.
Media, Conversations, and Shadows

This article proposes that microblogged messages that relate to a live event can be examined as indirect annotation on a media object that might not exist. From a collection of Twitter posts around two political events, we have begun to discover techniques for identifying how microblog posts relate to the matching media event. Further, we identify the relationship between the media event itself and the conversational shadow cast from the online community.
Effect of supplemental lactic acid bacteria on growth performance, glutathione turnover and aflatoxin B1 removal in lambs

This study investigated the effect of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) on growth performance, glutathione turnover, aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) residue and AFB1-DNA adduct in growing lambs. Diets were a 2 × 2 factorial design, including AFB1 at 0 or 100 µg/kg and LAB at 0 or 3 × 109 cfu/kg. Results showed that AFB1 decreased (P < 0.05) feed intake (FI), body weight gain (BWG), and activities of glutathione (GSH), glutathione s-transferases (GSTs) and glutathione reductase (GR) in liver and duodenal mucosa, whereas these parameters were increased (P < 0.05) by supplemental LAB. AFB1 increased and LAB decreased the feed conversion ratio (P < 0.05). Interactions (P < 0.05) were found on BWG, liver GSTs and mucosal GSH. LAB decreased (P ≤ 0.001) AFB1 residue in liver, kidney, plasma and faeces and AFB1-DNA adduct in kidney, plasma and faeces. It can be concluded that LAB can partially protect against AFB1 toxicity by facilitating glutathione turnover and reducing AFB1 toxicity in lambs.