Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Nutritional Effects of Olestra Olestra Dose Response on Fat-Soluble and Water-Soluble Nutrients in Humans 1 , 2 , 3

Ninety normal healthy adults were given 0, 8, 20 or 32 g/d olestra for 8 wk as part of a diet that provided 1 { 0.2 of the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of vitamins A, D, E and K, folate zinc, calcium and iron. In addition, a 20 mg/d supplement of vitamin D was supplied. The diet provided 15% of energy from protein, 35% from fat and 55% from carbohydrate. The purpose of the study was to determine the dose response of olestra on vitamins D, E and K, carotenoids, vitamin B12, folate and zinc. Circulating concentrations of retinol, carotenoids, tocopherols, 25-hydroxyand 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D metabolites, phylloquinone, des-g-carboxyprothrombin, prothrombin, folate and hematological parameters were measured biweekly, as were urine concentrations of zinc and g-carboxyglutamic acid (Gla). Clinical chemistry, urinalysis and vitamin B12 absorption were measured at wk 0 and 8. Olestra reduced serum concentrations of carotenoids, a-tocopherol, 25-hydroxyergocalciferol and phylloquinone in a dose-responsive manner. Olestra did not affect Gla excretion, plasma des-gcarboxyprothrombin or prothrombin concentrations, prothrombin time, vitamin B12 absorption, overall vitamin D status or the status of folate or zinc. Laboratory evaluations showed no health-related effects of olestra. Subjects in all groups reported common gastrointestinal symptoms such as loose stools, fecal urgency and flatulence, which were transient and generally mild to moderate in severity. These symptoms did not affect protocol compliance or the ability to measure the potential for olestra to affect nutrient availability. J. Nutr. 127: 1646S–1665S, 1997.
Aalborg Universitet Avoiding Catch-22 Validating the PainDETECT in a in a population of patients with chronic pain

Background: Neuropathic pain is defined as pain caused by a lesion or disease of the somatosensory nervous system and is a major therapeutic challenge. Several screening tools have been developed to help physicians detect patients with neuropathic pain. These have typically been validated in populations pre-stratified for neuropathic pain, leading to a so called “Catch-22 situation:” “a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule”. The validity of screening tools needs to be proven in patients with pain who were not pre-stratified on basis of the target outcome: neuropathic pain or nonneuropathic pain. This study aims to assess the validity of the Dutch PainDETECT (PainDETECT-Dlv) in a large population of patients with chronic pain. Methods: A cross-sectional multicentre design was used to assess PainDETECT-Dlv validity. Included where patients with low back pain radiating into the leg(s), patients with neck-shoulder-arm pain and patients with pain due to a suspected peripheral nerve damage. Patients’ pain was classified as having a neuropathic pain component (yes/no) by two experienced physicians (“gold standard”). Physician opinion based on the Grading System was a secondary comparison. Results: In total, 291 patients were included. Primary analysis was done on patients where both physicians agreed upon the pain classification (n = 228). Compared to the physician’s classification, PainDETECT-Dlv had a sensitivity of 80% and specificity of 55%, versus the Grading System it achieved 74 and 46%. Conclusion: Despite its internal consistency and test-retest reliability the PainDETECT-Dlv is not an effective screening tool for a neuropathic pain component in a population of patients with chronic pain because of its moderate sensitivity and low specificity. Moreover, the indiscriminate use of the PainDETECT-Dlv as a surrogate for clinical assessment should be avoided in daily clinical practice as well as in (clinical-) research. Catch-22 situations in the validation of screening tools can be prevented by not pre-stratifying the patients on basis of the target outcome before inclusion in a validation study for screening instruments. Trial registration: The protocol was registered prospectively in the Dutch National Trial Register: NTR 3030.
Subjective Sleep Quality Monitoring with the Hypnos Digital Sleep Diary: Evaluation of Usability and User Experience

Sleep diaries are records of individual’s sleep and wake times, extending over a period of several days up to several weeks. Sleep diaries are often used to support the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders though the emergence of self-tracking technologies also makes them interesting for intrinsically motivated individuals who wish to gain insight into their sleep patterns and related influences. This paper introduces Hypnos, a digital sleep diary, and a user study aimed to its usability and the resulting user experience. The study involved eighteen participants without a diagnosed sleep disorder for a period of ten days. Overall Hypnos was found useful and usable which supports its application in practice, but it is advisable to make the user experience more attractive, stimulating and innovative in order to also make the self-tracking more intrinsically motivating.
The Multidimensionality of the Rotter I-E Scale: An Application of Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

The purposes of the present investigation were to examine the dimensionality of the ! totter Internal-External (I-E) scale, to test the invariance of its factor structure before and . after an intervention designed to alter I-E, and to demonstrate the use of confirmatory factor analysis. An a priori model based on the content of the Rotter items hypothesized six factors, and a review of ---;(11 earlier factor analyses demonstrated that each of these factors had been previously identified. Results from time one and time two both indicated that this hypothesized rodel was able to adequately explain responses to the Rotter items, that the hypothesized factors were defined and distinguishable, that the factor structure was invariant over time, and that alternative models with fewer hypothesized factors or a simpler structure did not fit the data as well. In a more general discussion of the Rotte; scale it was concluded thati when judged by current standards, the RottOr I-E scale is a poor measurement instrument: its internal consistency reliability is minimal, the rationale for its forced-choice format is dubious, the assumption of its unidimensionality is clearly wrong, and the .distinguishable facets of the scale cannot be inferred with sufficient reliability to be practically useful. (Author) ****************k***************************************ti***P********** Reproductions supplied by EMS are the best that can be made from the orieinal document. j **,t********************************************************************
Products of n open subsets in the space of continuous functions on [0,1]

Let O1, . , On be open sets in C[0, 1], the space of real-valued continuous functions on [0, 1]. The product O1 · · ·On will in general not be open, and in order to understand when this can happen we study the following problem: given f1, . , fn ∈ C[0, 1], when is it true that f1 · · · fn lies in the interior of Bε(f1) · · ·Bε(fn) for all ε > 0 ? (Bε denotes the closed ball with radius ε and centre f .) The main result of this paper is a characterization in terms of the walk t 7→ γ(t) := (f1(t), . , fn(t)) in R. It has to behave in a certain admissible way when approaching {x ∈ R | x1 · · ·xn = 0}. We will also show that in the case of complex-valued continuous functions on [0, 1] products of open subsets
Theory of Learning with Few Examples and Object Localization

Visual object localization and categorization is still a big challenge for current research and gets even more difficult when confronted with few training examples. Therefore we will present a Bayesian concept to enhance state-of-the-art machine learning techniques even when dealing with just a single view of an object category. Furthermore an object localization approach is presented, which can serve as a baseline for researchers within the area of object localization. Recent work has shown impressive progress in the field of visual object recognition. Despite these results, nearly all those techniques depend on a large set of training examples. This shows the still existing gap between the capabilities of human and machine vision. The question arises which additional information source is used by the human vision system to solve this ill-posed task. An intuitive answer is the interclass paradigm, which emphasize the importance to transfer knowledge from similar object categories (support classes) previously learned. With this basic concept new machine learning techniques have been developed specialized on learning object models from small training sets [1].
Social Support and Adolescent Well-Being Wang , Ziyu 2019-02

The aim of this study was to examine whether the two components of parental social support, emotional and instrumental, are associated with various aspects of adolescent well-being in the current Chinese context. A sample of 1306 adolescents (47% girls, 11, 13 and 15 years old, 39% urban) was derived from the nationally representative 2012 survey “China Family Panel Studies”. Four indicators of adolescent well-being were examined: health status, academic attainment, self-perception and depression. Logistic regression and multiple linear regression models were applied to analyze associations between the two domains of parental social support and four indicators of adolescent well-being, respectively. Both the intermediate and high levels of emotional support were associated with better self-perception and lower levels of depression, while these associations were only reflected at the high level of instrumental support. In addition, only the high level of emotional support was associated with higher academic attainment. Overall these associations remained after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, including age, gender, living location, family income and family size. However, some of the confounders were more influential on adolescent well-being than others. For example, those adolescents who lived in rural areas were more likely to report suboptimal health status. These findings are discussed in the context of the rapid changes in Chinese society. This research adds to the empirical evidence on the association between parental social support and adolescent well-being in contemporary Mainland China.
Branching Deregulation and Merger Optimality

The U.S. banking industry has been characterized by intense merger activity in the absence of economies of scale and scope. We claim that the loosening of geographic constraints on U.S. banks is responsible for this consolidation process, irrespective of value-maximizing motives. We demonstrate this by putting forward a theoretical model of banking competition and studying banks’ strategic responses to geographic deregulation. We show that even in the absence of economies of scale and scope, bank mergers represent an optimal response. Also, we show that the consolidation process is characterized by merger waves and that some equilibrium mergers are not profitable per se -they yield losses- but become profitable as the waves of mergers unfold.
The quantification of external colour changes during sexual transition in the protogynous spotty wrasse Notolabrus celidotus

ii Acknowledgments . iii Table of Content . v List of figures . vii List of Tables. ix Chapter 1 . 1 General introduction . 1 1.1 Sex change and hermaphroditism . 1 1.1.1 Hermaphroditism . 1 1.1.2 Social Controlled sex change . 3 1.1.3 Behavioural changes . 4 1.1.4 Physiological changes . 5 1.1.5 External changes . 7 1.2 Sex determination and differentiation in fish . 7 1.3 Colour formation . 8 1.4 Digital photography and computer analysis for colour quantification . 10 1.5 Notolabrus celidotus (Spotty). 11 1.6 Thesis research . 14 1.6. 1 Aims and objectives . 14 1.6. 2 Thesis format . 15 Chapter 2 . 16 Developing a systematic colour measurement in the protogynous N. celidotus . 16 2.
Network Analytics for Streaming Traffic Analysis

Network traffic analytics has always been an important field for cybersecurity and network operations. The analysis could be done on the stream of data (network traffic) in an on-line mode for real-time network operations or on the captured traffic data in an off-line mode for forensic analysis. In this paper, we aim to shed light into using machine learning based network analytics on traffic flows both for network operations and forensic analysis purposes. In doing so, our goal is to design and develop systems that could assist the human expert in analyzing "unknown background" traffic.
Introduction: The Issue of Human Trafficking

Human trafficking has justifiably been called the slavery of our times. While the overwhelming majority of internationally trafficked persons – an estimated 80 per cent – are women and children, many thousands of men are trafficked each year too. The majority of internationally trafficked persons are forced into what is nowadays an antiquated term, ‘white slavery’ – that is, sex work. One reason why this term is no longer appropriate is that contemporary trafficking involves people of all colours, ethnicities and religions. But not all trafficked persons are engaged in sex work. While some – especially children – operate in the shadow economy as beggars or pickpockets, many others work in more or less legitimate areas of national economies, including agriculture, construction, fishing, domestic service, and manufacturing. Many other children are trafficked for adoption purposes, which sometimes results in them virtually becoming slaves to their new families. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), some 43 per cent of trafficked persons are trafficked for sexual exploitation, 32 per cent for non-sexual labour exploitation and circa 25 per cent for a mixture of sexual and nonsexual labour exploitation (ILO 2008: 3). One feature common to all trafficked persons is that, irrespective of the type of work in which they are engaged, they are being severely exploited, enjoy few if any human rights and, in one way or another, are being severely coerced. Most have also been deceived by traffickers. Before exploring this issue further, it is necessary to define two of the key terms used in this study. The first is ‘human trafficking’. The most frequently cited definition in the 2000s is that provided in Article 3 of one of the so-called Palermo Protocols of the United Nations (UN), that on human trafficking (the ‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children’ – in UN 2000a). 1 This is quoted in full in Chapter 2, and need not be repeated here. Unfortunately, while this UN definition is a thoughtful and comprehensive one, it is also somewhat cumbersome and even confusing. For instance, newcomers to the topic might find difficulty in understanding from it the differences between human trafficking and people smuggling; the
Phase Transition in Taxi Dynamics and Impact of Ridesharing

We develop a numerical model using both artificial and empirical inputs to analyze taxi dynamics in an urban setting. More specifically, we quantify how the supply and demand for taxi services, the underlying road network, and the public acceptance of taxi ridesharing (TRS) affect the optimal number of taxis for a particular city, as well as commuters' average waiting time and trip time. Results reveal certain universal features of the taxi dynamics with real-time taxi-booking---that there is a well-defined transition between the oversaturated phase when demand exceeds supply, and the undersaturated phase when supply exceeds demand. The boundary between the two phases gives the optimal number of taxis a city should accommodate, given the specific demand, road network and commuter habits. Adding or removing taxis may affect commuter experience very differently in the two phases revealed. In the oversaturated phase the average waiting time is affected exponentially, while in the undersaturated phase it is affected sub-linearly. We analyze various factors that can shift the phase boundary, and show that an increased level of acceptance for TRS universally shifts the phase boundary by reducing the number of taxis needed. We discuss some of the useful insights on the benefits and costs of TRS, especially how under certain situations TRS will not only have economic benefits for commuters, but can also save the overall travel time for the shared parties, by significantly reducing the time commuters spend on waiting for taxis. Our simulations also suggest that simple artificial taxi systems can capture most of the universal features of the taxi dynamics. The relevance of the assumptions and the overall methodology are also illustrated using the empirical road network and taxi demand in Singapore.
Basketball using RFID

In this project, we develop a prototype for a basketball tracking that uses RFID to detect player statistics. Recently, applications such as Apple’s HomeCourt have shown the attractiveness of sports tracking using commodity hardware running computer vision. This is our attempt using RFID. An RFID tag is placed on the basketball and on the backboard of the basketball hoop. The RSSI of the tags are recorded and fed into a neural network, which identifies patterns to distinguish between a made and a missed shot.
Bragg-edge elastic strain tomography for in situ systems from energy-resolved neutron transmission imaging

Technological developments in high resolution time-of-flight neutron detectors have raised the prospect of tomographic reconstruction of elastic strain fields from Bragg-edge strain images. This approach holds the potential to provide a unique window into the full triaxial stress field within solid samples. While general tomographic reconstruction from these images has been shown to be ill-posed, an injective link between measurements and boundary deformations exists for systems subject to in situ applied loads in the absence of residual stress. Recent work has provided an algorithm to achieve tomographic reconstruction for this class of mechanical system. This letter details an experimental proof-of-concept for this algorithm involving the full reconstruction of a biaxial strain field within a non-trivial steel sample. This work was carried out on the RADEN energy resolved neutron imaging instrument within the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex, with validation through Digital Image Correlation and constant wavelength neutron strain scans.
Widespread Striatal Delivery of GDNF from Encapsulated Cells Prevents the Anatomical and Functional Consequences of Excitotoxicity

Methods Human ARPE-19 cells engineered to secrete high levels of the glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) were encapsulated into hollow fiber membranes. The devices were implanted into the rat striatum 1 week prior to striatal quinolinic acid injections. Animals were evaluated using a battery of validated motor tests, and histology was performed to determine the extent of GDNF diffusion and associated prevention of neuronal cell loss and behavioral deficits. Results Encapsulated cell-based delivery of GDNF produced widespread distribution of GDNF throughout the entire implanted striatum. Stereological estimates of striatal neuron number and volume of lesion size revealed that GDNF delivery resulted in near complete neuroprotection. Conclusions Delivery of neurotrophic molecules such as GDNF using encapsulated cells has reached a technological point where clinical evaluation is justified. Because GDNF has been effective in animal models of Parkinson's disease, stroke, epilepsy, and Huntington's disease, among other debilitating neurodegenerative diseases, encapsulated cell-based delivery of GDNF might represent one innovative means of slowing the neural degeneration seen in a myriad of currently untreatable neurological diseases.
E-Banking as a Financial Supply Chain System: Can e-TAM improve Trust and the Rate of Adoption?

Electronic banking as a financial supply chain system has gone a long way to revolutionize banking services as contemporary customers of banking organizations have largely moved from brick and mortal banking to digital platform. However, trust remains an important underlying factor that makes users from developing countries to be wary of the way they adopt this novel technology banking system. The significant objective of this study therefore centres on how to improve trust using extended technology acceptance model (e-TAM) by incorporating perceived security and e-trust with perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use to predict adoption of e-banking. Previous studies have paid meagre attention to this area, especially in a developing context. The data of the study were collected from 266 customers while the responses obtained were analysed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling. The findings show that perceived usefulness and perceived ease use predicted e-trust and e-banking adoption. Perceived security also predicted e-banking adoption but failed to predict e-trust. E-trust mediates the relationship between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and e-banking adoption. However similar mediating effect was not found between perceived security and e-banking adoption. The implications of the study were presented.
Understanding the barriers and motivations to shared reading with young children: The role of enjoyment and feedback

Shared reading with young children has a positive impact on a range of areas including language development and literacy skills, yet some parents face challenges in engaging in this activity. While much is known about the benefits of shared reading, the barriers to it are poorly understood. The research presented here draws on in-depth interviews with 20 parents of pre-school children to understand home-reading practices in a socio-economically and culturally mixed sample, exploring the motivations and barriers that exist to engaging in shared reading. Results indicate that parents are motivated to engage in shared reading when there is clear evidence of their child’s enjoyment. However, parental perceptions of ‘negative’ child-feedback could be a barrier to shared reading. This has particular implications for the age at which parents perceive reading to be a valued and worthwhile activity for their child, suggesting that some parents may choose not to read with their babies because they are not receiving the feedback they require in order to sustain the activity. Moreover, this study also revealed that, for many parents, their enjoyment of shared reading activity was closely related to evidence of child enjoyment, thus creating a further barrier to reading when child enjoyment was perceived to be absent. This has strong implications for interventions that seek to encourage and support home-reading practices between parents and young children.