Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Overview and Significance of Hurricanes on the Louisiana Coast, U.S.A.

Hurricanes have played a critical role in the transgressive evolution of Louisiana's barrier islands and may account for up to 90% of shoreline retreat measured within the historic (102 years) time frame. Since 1901, some 55 tropical storms or hurricanes have made landfall along the Louisiana coast showing the highest incidence in September. Fewest landfalls have been recorded along the eastern region of Louisiana with the incidence being double that along the southcentral and southwest regions of the State. Approximately half the total number of tropical cyclone landfalls occurred in a thirty year period between 1931 and 1960, bounded by two of the 'quietist' decades of the past one hundred years; 1921-1930 with two direct landfalls, and 1961-1970 with two landfalls. Review of intensities of storms making landfall along the U.S. mainland through 1992 shows that 11 of the 50 strongest storms have impacted Louisiana. Given that the foredune elevation along the Louisiana coast seldom exceeds 2m above sea level, the significance of overwash processes and inlet breaching becomes readily apparent. Episodic landward translation of the beach of near 100 m is typical during stronger hurricanes. Post-storm recovery of the barrier islands has been thwarted by a reduction of sediment supplied to the littoral zone over time, subsidence, rapid relative sea-level rise and anthropogenic activity. Consequently, Louisiana's barrier islands are predisposed towards chronic erosion and land loss. Although hurricanes have proven destructive along the open coast, they have resulted in considerable deposition on portions of Louisiana's marshes. Examples include over 70 cm of mixed organic and inorganic debris accumulating after Hurricane Audrey (1957) and up to 16 cm of vertical accretion after Hurricane Andrew (1992). However, ongoing work suggests that substrate compression during storm passage may significantly reduce, or nullify, the effect of storm deposition on the marshes' long-term net elevation gain. Areas of floating marsh undergo considerable damage during severe hurricanes. Predictions of future wave and storm surge accompanying severe hurricanes (category 5) indicate that significant waves heights between 1 and 2 m can be anticipated as far inland as New Orleans. A gradual landward shift of larger waves is predicted with time due to the disappearance of barrier islands and coastal retreat. Wave heights up to 4 m are predicted in Lake Ponchartrain, located immediately north of New Orleans, for a category 5 hurricane making landfall along the Isles Dernieres. On considering that modeled surge levels increase from around 4 m to 7 m along the lake's northern shore, a hurricane of this magnitude will likely cause severe destruction and evacuation problems for the City of New Orleans and surrounding metropolitan areas.
Substantiated Reports of Child Maltreatment from the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect 2008: Examining Child and Household Characteristics and Child Functional Impairment

Objective: Identifying child and household characteristics that are associated with specific child maltreatment types and child functional impairment are important for informing prevention and intervention efforts. Our objectives were to examine the distribution of several child and household characteristics among substantiated child maltreatment types in Canada; to determine if a specific child maltreatment type relative to all other types was associated with increased odds of child functional impairment; and to determine which child and household characteristics were associated with child functional impairment. Method: Data were from the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (collection 2008) from 112 child welfare sites across Canada (n = 6163 children). Results: Physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional maltreatment were highly prevalent among children aged 10 to 15 years. For single types of child maltreatment, the highest prevalence of single-parent homes (50.6%), social assistance (43.0%), running out of money regularly (30.7%), and unsafe housing (30.9%) were reported for substantiated cases of neglect. Being male, older age, living in a single-parent home, household running out of money, moving 2 or more times in the past year, and household overcrowding were associated with increased odds of child functional impairment. Conclusions: More work is warranted to determine if providing particular resources for single-parent families, financial counselling, and facilitating adequate and stable housing for families with child maltreatment histories or at risk for child maltreatment could be effective for improving child functional outcomes.
Ability of PROMIS Pediatric Measures to Detect Change in Children With Cerebral Palsy Undergoing Musculoskeletal Surgery

Background: The Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) was developed to provide patient-reported outcome measures that are designed as being universally relevant across health conditions, low burden, and precise. A major problem for research and clinical practice in cerebral palsy (CP) is the void of outcomes instruments that are capable of evaluating the wide range of abilities and broad age spectrum inherent in this clinical population. Given the tremendous potential of PROMIS, the research questions for this study were “How do PROMIS pediatric computer adaptive tests and short forms detect change in children with CP following elective musculoskeletal surgery? ” and “How do PROMIS instruments compare to the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory Cerebral Palsy Module Version 3.0 (PedsQL CP), Pediatric Outcomes Data Collection Instrument (PODCI), the Timed Up and Go (TUG), and the Gross Motor Functional Measure (GMFM). ” Methods: PROMIS Pediatric computer adaptive tests and short forms and the PedsQL, PODCI, TUG, and GMFM were administered before and after surgery. Effect size (ES) and standardized response mean (SRM) were calculated. Floor and ceiling effects were evaluated and, exposure rates for the PROMIS item banks were examined. Results: ES and SRM for all PROMIS Pediatric Measures were nonsignificant. PedsQL CP detected significant, positive change in mobility at 6 (ES=0.26; SRM=0.31) and 12 (ES=0.36; SRM=0.36) months; pain at 12 months (ES=0.29; SRM=0.34); and fatigue at 6 (ES=0.24; SRM=0.22) and 12 (ES=0.36; SRM=0.41) months. Significant negative changes were detected by the PODCI (ES=−0.20; SRM=−0.26), GMFM (ES=−0.13; SRM=−0.24), and TUG (ES=−0.29; SRM=−0.25). Ceiling effects were high. Exposure to an appropriate range of the PROMIS Mobility item bank was limited. Conclusions: PROMIS measures were less able to detect change than other measures. PROMIS measures may be improved by tailoring start/stop rules or by adding items to include content appropriate for children with mobility impairments. Level of Evidence: Level III—diagnostic study.
Supplementary Document

1 Supplementary Methods 2 1.1 Computation of the P -values for the miRNA-mediated regulation of target genes and miRNAtargeting-specific promoter methylation . 2 1.2 Comparison of the P -values for the distinct brain regions . 3 1.3 Estimation of the number of miRNAs with target genes that were significantly up/downregulated or the number of target gene promoters that were significantly hypo/hyper methylated between any two brain regions . 4 1.4 Rank correlation coefficients between P -values attributed to miRNA-mediated regulation of target genes and P -values attributed to miRNA-targeting-specific promoter methylation . 4 1.5 Multiple regression model between miRNA-mediated regulation of target genes, miRNAtargeting-specific promoter methylation, and differential miRNA expression, with the additional consideration of age and gender . 5 1.6 Selection of miRNAs that significantly regulated target genes based on multiple regression models . 6 1.7 KEGG pathway enrichment analysis of the selected miRNAs . 6
Psychological investigation of the structure of paranoia in a non-clinical population

Background Previous studies of paranoia have assessed only limited numbers of paranoid thoughts, and have not considered the experience from a multidimensional perspective or examined the relationship between different suspicious thoughts. Aims To assess a wide range of paranoid thoughts multidimensionally and examine their distribution, to identify the associated coping strategies and to examine social–cognitive processes and paranoia. Method Six questionnaire assessments were completed by 1202 individuals using the internet. Results Paranoid thoughts occurred regularly in approximately a third of the group. Increasing endorsement of paranoid thoughts was characterised by the recruitment of rarer and odder ideas. Higher levels of paranoia were associated with emotional and avoidant coping, less use of rational and detached coping, negative attitudes to emotional expression, submissive behaviours and lower social rank. Conclusions Suspiciousness is common and there may be a hierarchical arrangement of such thoughts that builds on common emotional concerns.
Exploring Digital Libraries through Visual Interfaces

Libraries are long standing institutions, providing an important service of making information widely available. So it is with Digital Libraries (DL), but this evolution into a computerized format does not come without its own unique challenges. The variety and quantity of information available in the digital space is truly astounding. However, as this growth continues, traditional methods for searching are becoming less effective to support the needs of users to find information quickly and easily. The conventional library book search system provides several attributes associated with books as a response to the users’ inquiry. This includes title, author, publication year, ISBN, page total, and similar information. While considering the increasing volume of data, the current text-based approach to result presentation is not an ideal solution for the modern digital environment. Particularly in the case of comparing a lengthy list of search results, this approach is ill-suited, as it is inefficient and non-intuitive (Good et al., 2005). Assistance, such as ranked results, can aid in such problems but the user will still be relied on to investigate the top results individually (Veerasamy & Heikes, 1997; Dushay, 2004). Additionally, the current popular approach of presenting a summary of content may not accurately reflect what is of value to the user. The advancements and trends that allow for the rapid growth of DL also permit more elaborate interfaces with which to access them (Bertini et al., 2005). Information Visualization is one such avenue, which has proven to be an effective approach in acquiring information from a large compilation of data. By making use of users' perceptual cognition for navigating extensive digital workspaces, their ability to understand, and speed with which they review the information space is improved (Card et al., 1999). Previous studies have proven the significance of visualization in the users’ information forage (Veerasamy & Heikes, 1997; Hawkins, 1999; Kim et al., 2002). One common approach to assist users’ search activities uses visualization techniques combined with information filtering. The users’ interaction defines the attributes of interest that easily filter out unrelated data. The following visualization procedure transforms the remaining data into graphical illustrations. FilmFinder and HomeFinder are interactive visual interfaces which assist the user to narrow down the search scope and easily compare
Underestimating one’s influence in help-seeking.

Excerpt] Robert Cialdini's book, Influence (Cialdini, 1984), has counseled countless readers on the art and science of persuasion. Some have read the book looking for tips on how to become more persuasive, while others have flipped the pages searching for clues on how to protect themselves from persuasive attempts. Whatever they are hoping to find, readers come away with a similar emotional response. Almost without exception, their common reaction is a feeling of surprise. Scan the reviews of Influence available online and you will be told in clear detail about a strong sense of shock, awe, and amazement, all centered around how gullible people seem, how transparent effective persuasion tools are, and how willing we all may be to say "yes" to a clever phrasing of a direct request. The effects described in Influence are indeed surprising, but, at the same time, they are also empowering to the casual reader. They verify that tools of persuasion are not possessed exclusively by individuals with unique skills and rare talents; instead, they are simple and subtle approaches to presenting a decision so that others will feel compelled to comply. These tools can be understood, customized, and implemented by anyone—not just used car dealers, door-to-door salesmen, and brand advertisers. In short, what is particularly surprising about Cialdini's book is not his compelling description of how people can be easily influenced, but how easy it may be for each of us to become influential ourselves. If we appreciate the pressure that others face when deciding whether to agree with our requests for help, we may be in a much better position to get help. This insight has inspired our own research on the topic of help-seeking and compliance. Specifically, we have examined the extent to which people are aware of the most basic weapon of influence—making a direct request for help. Given that we regularly ask people for help or are subject to help requests ourselves, we should be fairly accurate in estimating the likelihood that others will say "yes" to a direct request. However, our research tells a different story—one that suggests people are woefully inaccurate when it comes to predicting others' helpfulness. Rather than give people the benefit of the doubt, most of us wrongly assume that others will say "no" in response to our requests (e.g., to buy a box of cookies or to write a letter of recommendation). In the sections that follow, we describe this systematic bias, highlight its potential utility, and address some of its adverse consequences.
Extending Taylor Approximation to Hybrid Systems with Integrals

In [10, 11] we proposed a technique to approximate Hybrid Automata (HA) with Polynomial HA. The idea was to replace functions appearing in formulae with their Taylor Polynomials. Here we extend this technique to HA with formulae admitting integral functions. We prove that we get over-approximations of the original HA. We study the conditions ensuring that: 1. the “distance” between the formulae of the original HA and its approximation get close to 0 when increasing the degree of the Taylor polynomial (syntactical approximation), 2. the “distance” between the configurations reached in n steps by the two HA get close to 0 when increasing the degree of the Taylor polynomial (semantic approximation).
Estimating Centrality Statistics for Complete and Sampled Networks: Some Approaches and Complications

The study of large, "big data" networks is becoming increasingly common and relevant to our understanding of human systems. Many of the studied networks are drawn from social media and other Web-based sources. As such, in-depth analysis of these dynamic structures e.g. In the context of cyber security, remains especially challenging. Due to the time and resources incurred in computing network measures for large networks, it is practical to approximate these whenever possible. We present some approximation techniques exploiting any tractable relationship between the measures and network characteristics such as size and density. We find there exist distinct functional relationships between network statistics of complex "slow" measures and "fast" measures, such as the linkage between betweenness centrality and network density. We also track how these relationships scale with network size. Specifically, we explore the efficacy of both linear modeling (i.e., Correlations and least squares regression) and non-linear modeling in estimating the network measures of interest. We find that sparse, but not severely sparse, networks which admit sufficient entropy incur the most variance in the network statistics and, hence, more error in the estimation. We review our approaches with three prominent network topologies: random (aka Erdos-Renyi), Watts-Strogatz small-world, and scale-free networks. Finally, we assess how well the estimation approaches perform for sub-sampled networks.
Comparative studies on the Effect of Antioxidant properties of the Plants Helianthus annus and Solanum nigrum Exposed to the Heavy Metal Chromium

Large areas of soils have been contaminated by heavy metals, which are deleterious to the existence, reproduction and development of living organisms including plants, animals and microorganisms. The contamination of nature compartments by heavy metals has become a serious environmental problem. Due to the high cost of conventional clean-up technologies, there is an increasing interest in the remediation of contaminated sites using biological environmental friendly technique. One such method is Phytoremediation A technique in which soil contamination due to industrial activities is minimized. It is a method, which isolates and detoxifies the heavy metal pollutants. Phytoremediation of soil contaminated by heavy metals has been widely accepted as a cost-effective and environmental-friendly clean-up technology. During the exposure of plants to contaminated soils the antioxidant defence system helps the plant to protect itself from the damage. Antioxidants are substances used by the body to protect itself from damage caused by oxidation due to toxic environment. Helianthus annus (Sunflower) and Solanum nigrum (Black night shade) are common plants grown in all parts of the world. In the present work the plants Helianthus annus and Solanum nigrum were exposed to the heavy metal Chromium contaminated soils and the biochemical factors, vitamins and minerals factor and antioxidant factors were investigated. From the results it is evident that the heavy metal chromium affects significantly the biochemical factors, vitamins and minerals factor and antioxidant factors in both the plants. While comparing the antioxidant property between the two plants, Solanum nigrum is found to be having higher antioxidant property than Helianthus annus.
[Evaluation of the exposure levels to radioactivity in the hot-spring environment of the Island of Ischia during a year].

It is known that the decay products of the U-238 are findable in nature in certain materials (such as tufa, limestone, etc.), therefore some populations are naturally exposed to radiations originated by building materials, houses and isotopes present in drinking-waters. It is evident that, for example, the residents of Campania or Lazio will be involved, on such conditions and during their whole life, in the action of natural radiations of decay products of Uranium and consequently of Radon, which is originated and, as gas, also findable in the air of those indoor areas, at a concentration inversely proportional to the relevant ventilation factors. Furthermore, it is known that this isotope is always found in thermal waters too and sometimes at levels which make them classify as radioactive and with therapeutic properties still subjects of studies and researches. Actually, presence of Radon in warm waters is particularly evident in some basins (the Baths of Badgastein in Austria) and is also findable in some italian thermal towns such as Merano Laurisia, Abano, Baths of Lucca or the island of Ischia itself. All underground waters and especially the warm ones, including, those of Ischia basins, hold radioactive isotopes, since their composition is related to the nature of the underground, which they come from, and is strongly influenced by the kind of rocks present in that area, by the granulometry of the geological strata or by existent fractures, by flow speed and finally by solubilization capacity. On such conditions it is evident that all waters, during their scouring, will be enriched by Radon 222 (a gaseous, therefore more soluble, element); just because of its physical state, it will be more present in external environment in case of warm waters such as those ones now examined. Consequently the environmental state from a radioecological point of view of the utilized waters has to be considered, as well as any other thermal resort, fundamentally due to Radon (Rn) and to the relevant decay products. As a matter of fact, whereas from the family of Uranium come Radon (Rn 222), Lead (Pb 210) and Polonium (Po 210), these last two, respectively with halving-times of 22.3 years and 138.4 days, from the family of Thorium (Th 232) originates Radon (Rn 220 in past times defined "Toron" according to its "forebear") and Lead (Pb 212 with a halving-time of 10.6 hours). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Power-efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

University of Catania .  General Remarks on Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks . - Data Delivery Model ● Direct or Multi-Hop Routing ● Performance Metrics for WSN Routing Protocols ● Role of Topology Management Protocols .  Overview of Energy-Saving Routing Protocols for WSNs . - Optimization-Based Routing Protocols ● Data-Centric Routing Protocols ● Cluster-Based Routing Protocols ● Location-Based Routing Protocols ● QoS-Enabled Routing Protocols .  Data-Centric Power-Efficient Routing Protocols . - Sensor Protocols for Information via Negotiation ● Directed Diffusion Protocol ● Rumor Routing Protocol ● Constrained Anisotropic Diffusion Routing Protocol ● Cougar Protocol ● Two-Tier Data Dissemination Protocol .  Optimization-Based Power-Aware Routing Protocols - Minimum-Cost Forwarding Protocol ● Sequential Assigned Routing Protocol ● Energy-Aware Routing Protocol ● Maximum Lifetime Routing Protocol .  Cluster-Based Energy-Efficient Routing Protocols . - Low Energy-Adaptive Cluster Hierarchy Protocol ● LEACH Extensions and LEACH-Inspired Protocols ● Energy-Aware Routing Protocol in Cluster-Based Sensor Networks .  Location-Based Energy-Aware Routing Protocols . - Minimum Energy Communication Network (MECN) Protocol ● Geographic and Energy-Aware Routing (GEAR) Protocol .  Energy-Aware QoS-Enabled Routing Protocols. - Energy-Aware QoS Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks ● Real-Time Power-Aware Routing (RPAR) Protocol .  Topology Control Protocols for Energy-Efficient Routing . - Geographic-Adaptive Fidelity (GAF) Protocol ● Span Protocol ● Sparse Topology and Energy Management (STEM) Protocol .  Summary and Open Issues . - References . -
Burnout Comparison Among Residents in Different Medical Specialties

Objective: To investigate resident burnout in relation to work and home-related factors. Method: Maslach Burnout Inventory was mailed to residents in eight different medical specialties, with a response rate of 35%. Results: Overall, 50% of residents met burnout criteria, ranging from 75% (obstetrics/gynecology) to 27% (family medicine). The first year of residency, being single, personal stress, and dissatisfaction with faculty were independently associated with burnout. Conclusions: Efforts to reduce resident burnout nationally would benefit from expanding beyond the work-hours regulation.