Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of the Spatial Distribution of Welfare in Rural and Urban India on the basis of Demand System Estimations using Micro-level Data 1

Abstract In this paper we examine the incidence of poverty and inequality across different States and socio-economic groups in order to get a spatial picture of welfare distribution in India. Our welfare indicator is the money-metric measure of utility represented by the equivalent expenditure which incorporates substitution effects due to price changes. The indicator is derived from separate demand system estimations for rural and urban NSS 55 data. Different poverty and inequality measures are computed based on these equivalent expenditures in order to carry out our comparative analysis. We calculated these measures for the major States of India, for different religious groups, according to household type (the type of activity) and according to some social criteria like the level of education of the household head and the type of family structure, separately for both the urban and rural sectors. Results are analysed in detail bringing out interesting features and interpretations accompanied by plausible explanations. It is also shown that ignoring substitution effects and simply using deflated expenditures may not only alter the estimates of poverty and inequality but also the relative performances across regions and groups in certain cases.
Detection and Attribution of Observed Changes in Northern Hemisphere Spring Snow Cover

Significant declines in spring Northern Hemisphere (NH) snow cover extent (SCE) have been observed over the last five decades. As one step toward understanding the causes of this decline, an optimal fingerprinting technique is used to look for consistency in the temporal pattern of spring NH SCE between observations and simulations from 15 global climate models (GCMs) that form part of phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project.The authors examinedsimulationsfrom 15 GCMsthat includedboth natural and anthropogenic forcing and simulations from 7 GCMs that included only natural forcing. The decline in observed NH SCE could be largely explained by the combined natural and anthropogenic forcing but not by natural forcing alone. However, the 15 GCMs, taken as a whole, underpredicted the combined forcing response by a factor of 2. How much of this underprediction was due to underrepresentation of the sensitivity to external forcing of the GCMs or to their underrepresentation of internal variability has yet to be determined.
Real-time 3-D spatial-temporal dual-polarized measurement of wideband radio channel at mobile station

This paper describes a measurement system enabling the complete real-time characterization of the wideband radio channel. The system is based on a wideband radio channel sounder and a spherical antenna array, and it aims to describe the three-dimensional (3-D) spatial radio channel seen by the mobile terminal, including polarization. This information is highly valuable in designing antennas for mobile terminals. The spatial properties of the measurement system are analyzed through test measurements in an anechoic chamber. The system has a 40/spl deg/ spatial resolution and a 17 dB cross polarization discrimination. The values are well above those of a small mobile terminal antenna. The dynamic range in the spatial domain is 12 dB. The measurement is very fast, which makes real-time channel acquisition practical at normal mobile speeds.
Private queries in location based services: anonymizers are not necessary

Mobile devices equipped with positioning capabilities (e.g., GPS) can ask location-dependent queries to Location Based Services (LBS). To protect privacy, the user location must not be disclosed. Existing solutions utilize a trusted anonymizer between the users and the LBS. This approach has several drawbacks: (i) All users must trust the third party anonymizer, which is a single point of attack. (ii) A large number of cooperating, trustworthy users is needed. (iii) Privacy is guaranteed only for a single snapshot of user locations; users are not protected against correlation attacks (e.g., history of user movement). We propose a novel framework to support private location-dependent queries, based on the theoretical work on Private Information Retrieval (PIR). Our framework does not require a trusted third party, since privacy is achieved via cryptographic techniques. Compared to existing work, our approach achieves stronger privacy for snapshots of user locations; moreover, it is the first to provide provable privacy guarantees against correlation attacks. We use our framework to implement approximate and exact algorithms for nearest-neighbor search. We optimize query execution by employing data mining techniques, which identify redundant computations. Contrary to common belief, the experimental results suggest that PIR approaches incur reasonable overhead and are applicable in practice.
Maneuver Prediction for Road Vehicles Based on a Neuro-Fuzzy Architecture With a Low-Cost Navigation Unit

Collision avoidance is currently one of the main research areas in road intelligent transportation systems. Among the different possibilities available in the literature, the prediction of abrupt maneuvers has been shown to be useful in reducing the possibility of collisions. A supervised version of dynamic Fuzzy Adaptive System ART-based (dFasArt), which is a neuronal-architecture-based method that employs dynamic activation functions determined by fuzzy sets, is used for maneuver predicting and solving the problem of intervehicle collisions on roads. In this paper, it is shown how the dynamic character of dFasArt minimizes problems caused by noise in the sensors and provides stability on the predicted maneuvers. Several experiments with real data were carried out, and the SdFasArt results were compared with those achieved by an implementation of the Incremental Hierarchical Discriminant Regression (IHDR)-based method, showing the suitability of SdFasArt for maneuver prediction of road vehicles.
Risk Factors for Heatstroke among Japanese Forestry Workers

Risk Factors for Heatstroke among Japanese Forestry Workers: Takafumi Maeda, et al. Department of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, Fukushima Medical University School of Medicine—We examined the risk factors for heatstroke among forestry workers in Japan during the summer. We distributed a questionnaire to 124 forestry workers to determine heatstroke symptoms, degree of sweating and hydration, as well as perceived hotness and amount of sunlight at work sites. Forty of the workers (32.3%) reported experiencing heatstroke symptoms. Thirteen and 21 of them reported such symptoms during July and August, respectively. Eleven workers experienced heatstroke at around 14:00; 5 and 4 developed symptoms at around 11:00 and 10:00, respectively. Groups with and without heatstroke symptoms significantly differed in terms of perceived hotness (p<0.05), sunlight (p<0.05), degree of sweating (p<0.01) and frequency of hydration (p<0.05) while working. Heatstroke symptoms developed in 60.6% of workers aged up to 50 yr, but in only 22.0% of those over the age of 51 (p<0.01). Multiple regression analysis selected the following key variables associated with the development of heatstroke symptoms (R2=0.236 and p=0.006): frequency of urination, hotness, BMI and years of forestry work (standard coefficients: +0.229, +0.194, +0.280 and −0.162, respectively). The results of the present study showed that one third of forestry workers developed some symptoms of early heatstroke during summer forestry work. Furthermore, the results indicate that a short duration of forestry service was one of the risk factors contributing to the onset of heatstroke, in addition to heat stress, loss of body water and electrolytes, and obesity.
Ocular Manifestations in Infants Resulted from Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)

Objective Nowadays, many infertile couples can have child by assistant reproductive technology (ART). Always the undesirable effects of these methods on newborn are considered and are evaluated. The aim of this study is to describe the impact of ART on ocular and visual performances of infants born by these methods. Materials and methods In a cross-sectional descriptive study, 479 infants aged three-nine months presented to an optometry clinic of Child Health and Development Research Department (CHDRD), Tehran, Iran. Static retinoscopy, qualitative fixation evaluation, Hirschberg test, red reflex assessment and external eye examination were carried out. Other information such as birth weight and maturity of the infants was recorded. Results It was possible to assess only 320 out of 479 infants due to general condition of some participants. Comparison of mean refractive error in infants’ right and left eyes did not show any significant difference. Our findings confirmed that 20.3% had poor fixation, while 2.9% revealed manifest strabismus. The results also revealed the prevalences of myopia, hyperopia and emmetropia are 2.9%, 87%, and 10.1%, respectively. Red reflex abnormalities were significantly found in boys and in preterm infants (p < 0.05). Failure of fixation control was seen more frequently with increasing refractive error, which significantly developed in preterm infants (p < 0.001). Conclusion These results reflect the necessity of more comprehensive assessments and further follow-up of infants born by ART, especially for premature male ART infants. These results also suggest the probability of fixation condition and visual deficiencies in these infants. It is recommended to pay close attention to this preliminary report about the refractive and fixation condition of the infants born after ART.
The pathological role of advanced glycation end products-downregulated heat shock protein 60 in islet β-cell hypertrophy and dysfunction

Heat shock protein 60 (HSP60) is a mitochondrial chaperone. Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) have been shown to interfere with the β-cell function. We hypothesized that AGEs induced β-cell hypertrophy and dysfunction through a HSP60 dysregulation pathway during the stage of islet/β-cell hypertrophy of type-2-diabetes. We investigated the role of HSP60 in AGEs-induced β-cell hypertrophy and dysfunction using the models of diabetic mice and cultured β-cells. Hypertrophy, increased levels of p27Kip1, AGEs, and receptor for AGEs (RAGE), and decreased levels of HSP60, insulin, and ATP content were obviously observed in pancreatic islets of 12-week-old db/db diabetic mice. Low-concentration AGEs significantly induced the cell hypertrophy, increased the p27Kip1 expression, and decreased the HSP60 expression, insulin secretion, and ATP content in cultured β-cells, which could be reversed by RAGE neutralizing antibody. HSP60 overexpression significantly reversed AGEs-induced hypertrophy, dysfunction, and ATP reduction in β-cells. Oxidative stress was also involved in the AGEs-decreased HSP60 expression in β-cells. Pancreatic sections from diabetic patient showed islet hypertrophy, increased AGEs level, and decreased HSP60 level as compared with normal subject. These findings highlight a novel mechanism by which a HSP60-correlated signaling pathway contributes to the AGEs-RAGE axis-induced β-cell hypertrophy and dysfunction under diabetic hyperglycemia.
Neural Correlates of Detecting Pretense: Automatic Engagement of the Intentional Stance under Covert Conditions

Typically developing children begin to produce and understand pretend play between 18 and 24 months of age, and early pretense has been argued to be a candidate core capacity central to the deployment of representations of other peoples' mental statestheory of mind. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, 16 healthy adult volunteers were imaged while watching short (5 sec) clips of actors who either performed simple everyday actions or pretended to perform a similar set of actions, under covert conditions (e.g., participants were not directed to attend to actors' mental states). There was increased activity in the medial prefrontal areas (Brodmann's areas [BA] 9/6/32, 9, and 10), inferior frontal gyrus bilaterally (BA 44, 47), temporo-parietal regions (BA 21 and 22), and parahippocampal areas, including the amygdala, when subjects viewed pretend actions as compared with real actions. This result suggests that at least some areas previously implicated in making explicit mental state judgments are also strongly activated in response to actions that call for mental state interpretation (e.g., pretense) even when there is no explicit instruction for mind reading. This outcome is discussed in terms of accounts that propose theory of mind to be underwritten by automatic specialized mechanisms for the interpretation of the behavior of social agents.
Socioeconomic gradient in morbidity and mortality in people with diabetes: cohort study findings from the Whitehall study and the WHO multinational study of vascular disease in diabetes

Objectives: To assess whether the inverse socioeconomic mortality gradient observed in the general population persists in diabetic people. Design: The Whitehall cohort study and the London cohort of the WHO multinational study of vascular disease in diabetes. Setting: London. Subjects: 17 264 male civil servants (17 046 without diabetes, 218 with diabetes) aged 40–64 examined in 1967-9, and 300 people with diabetes aged 35–55 from London clinics examined in 1975-7. Both cohorts were followed up until January 1995. Main outcome measures: Mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and ischaemic heart disease. Results: In both cohorts people in the lower social groups were older, had higher blood pressure, and were more likely to smoke. In the Whitehall study, the prevalence of heart disease was higher in the lowest social group compared with the highest group, by 6% among non-diabetic people (P=0.0001) and by 14% among diabetic subjects (P=0.02). In the WHO study proteinuria was more common in the lowest social group compared with the highest (27% v 15%, P=0.01), as was retinopathy (54% v 48%, P=0.5). There was a clear socioeconomic gradient in all cause mortality in both cohorts, with death rates being about twice as high in the lowest compared with the highest social groups. In the Whitehall study this gradient was similar in both diabetic and non-diabetic subjects, and it persisted for mortality from cardiovascular disease and from ischaemic heart disease. About half of the increased risk of death in the lowest social group was accounted for by blood pressure and smoking. Conclusions: We confirm the existence of an inverse socioeconomic mortality gradient in diabetic people and suggest that this is largely due to conventional cardiovascular risk factors. Key messages People in lower social classes tend to have higher mortality than those in higher classes, but a Finnish study found no such socioeconomic gradient in mortality among diabetic people In response to this research we examined mortality in two large studies with 20 year follow up of 17 264 Whitehall civil servants (218 with diabetes) and 300 patients attending diabetes clinics in London Mortality was twice as high in diabetic people in the lowest socioeconomic groups as in those in the highest groups This difference was largely due to higher rates of smoking and high blood pressure in the lowest social groups, while blood glucose concentration had little impact on the relation These results emphasise the importance of improving conventional cardiovascular risk factors and reducing social inequality for reducing mortality in diabetic people
The Significance of an Enhanced Concept of the Organism for Medicine

Recent developments in evolutionary biology, comparative embryology, and systems biology suggest the necessity of a conceptual shift in the way we think about organisms. It is becoming increasingly evident that molecular and genetic processes are subject to extremely refined regulation and control by the cell and the organism, so that it becomes hard to define single molecular functions or certain genes as primary causes of specific processes. Rather, the molecular level is integrated into highly regulated networks within the respective systems. This has consequences for medical research in general, especially for the basic concept of personalized medicine or precision medicine. Here an integrative systems concept is proposed that describes the organism as a multilevel, highly flexible, adaptable, and, in this sense, autonomous basis for a human individual. The hypothesis is developed that these properties of the organism, gained from scientific observation, will gradually make it necessary to rethink the conceptual framework of physiology and pathophysiology in medicine.
Time-constrained failure diagnosis in distributed embedded systems: application to actuator diagnosis

Advanced automotive control applications such as steer-by-wire are typically implemented as distributed systems comprising many embedded processors, sensors, and actuators interacting via a communication bus. They have severe cost constraints, but demand a high level of safety and performance. Motivated by the need for timely diagnosis of faulty actuators in such systems, we present a method to achieve distributed failure diagnosis under deadline and resource constraints. Actuators are diagnosed in distributed fashion by processors to provide a global view of their fault status. The integration of software-based tests for actuator diagnosis within the overall control application is studied. These tests are implemented using analytical redundancy and execute concurrently with the control tasks. The test scheduling problem is then formulated and solved to guarantee actuator diagnosis within designer-specified deadlines while meeting control performance goals. As a secondary objective, the scheduling algorithm also reduces the number of processors required for diagnosis. We demonstrate the practicality of the proposed diagnosis approach by applying it to a steer-by-wire example to identify failed actuators in timely fashion.
High‐gamma power changes after cognitive intervention: preliminary results from twenty‐one senior adult subjects

Brain‐imaging techniques have begun to be popular in evaluating the effectiveness of cognitive intervention training. Although gamma activities are rarely used as an index of training effects, they have several characteristics that suggest their potential suitability for this purpose. This pilot study examined whether cognitive training in elderly people affected the high‐gamma activity associated with attentional processing and whether high‐gamma power changes were related to changes in behavioral performance.
Preoperative statin use and infection after cardiac surgery: a cohort study.

BACKGROUND It has been suggested that the routine use of statins preoperatively would reduce the risk of postoperative infection. We conducted this study to explore whether preoperative statin use was associated with infection after cardiac surgery (recipients of which have a higher-than-average risk of postoperative infection). METHODS We performed secondary analysis of data collected in a prospective cohort study of adults who underwent nontransplant cardiac surgery in a university hospital during the period January 1999 through December 2005. Outcomes were ascertained in a blinded and independent fashion. RESULTS Of the 7733 patients, 2657 (34%) were taking statins preoperatively; the proportion increased from 16% during 1999-2000 to 53% during 2003-2005 (P < .001, by test for trend). There was no association between preoperative statin use and postoperative infection: 214 statin users (8.1%) versus 425 statin nonusers (8.4%) developed an infection within 30 days after surgery. Factors associated with increased risk of infection after cardiac surgery included diabetes mellitus, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, increasing age, elevated baseline creatinine level, and longer duration of cardiopulmonary bypass but not statin use (adjusted odds ratio, 1.08; 95% confidence interval, 0.89-1.31). CONCLUSIONS Preoperative statin use was not associated with a reduction in the rate of postoperative infection among patients who underwent cardiac surgery. This lack of apparent benefit for high-risk patients argues against the routine use of statins as a preoperative strategy for lower-risk patients and supports calls for randomized trials to define whether preoperative statin use influences postoperative rates of infection.
Cosmic rays, antihelium, and an old navy spotlight

Cosmic-ray anti-deuterium and anti-helium have long been suggested as probes of dark matter, as their secondary astrophysical production was thought extremely scarce. But how does one actually predict the secondary flux? Anti-nuclei are dominantly produced in pp collisions, where laboratory cross section data is lacking. We make a new attempt at tackling this problem by appealing to a scaling law of nuclear coalescence with the physical volume of the hadronic emission region. The same volume is probed by Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) two-particle correlations. We demonstrate the consistency of the scaling law with systems ranging from central and off-axis AA collisions to pA collisions, spanning 3 orders of magnitude in coalescence yield. Extending the volume scaling to the pp system, HBT data allows us to make a new estimate of coalescence, that we test against preliminary ALICE pp data. For anti-helium the resulting cross section is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than earlier estimates. The astrophysical secondary flux of anti-helium could be within reach of a five-year exposure of AMS02.
Proteins Involved in Platelet Signaling Are Differentially Regulated in Acute Coronary Syndrome: A Proteomic Study

Background Platelets play a fundamental role in pathological events underlying acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Because platelets do not have a nucleus, proteomics constitutes an optimal approach to follow platelet molecular events associated with the onset of the acute episode. Methodology/Principal Findings We performed the first high-resolution two-dimensional gel electrophoresis-based proteome analysis of circulating platelets from patients with non-ST segment elevation ACS (NSTE-ACS). Proteins were identified by mass spectrometry and validations were by western blotting. Forty protein features (corresponding to 22 unique genes) were found to be differentially regulated between NSTE-ACS patients and matched controls with chronic ischemic cardiopathy. The number of differences decreased at day 5 (28) and 6 months after the acute event (5). Interestingly, a systems biology approach demonstrated that 16 of the 22 differentially regulated proteins identified are interconnected as part of a common network related to cell assembly and organization and cell morphology, processes very related to platelet activation. Indeed, 14 of those proteins are either signaling or cytoskeletal, and nine of them are known to participate in platelet activation by αIIbβ3 and/or GPVI receptors. Several of the proteins identified participate in platelet activation through post-translational modifications, as shown here for ILK, Src and Talin. Interestingly, the platelet-secreted glycoprotein SPARC was down-regulated in NSTE-ACS patients compared to stable controls, which is consistent with a secretion process from activated platelets. Conclusions/Significance The present study provides novel information on platelet proteome changes associated with platelet activation in NSTE-ACS, highlighting the presence of proteins involved in platelet signaling. This investigation paves the way for future studies in the search for novel platelet-related biomarkers and drug targets in ACS.
Leisure and Happiness in the U.S.: Evidence from Survey Data

We study the relationship between leisure and happiness, controlling for income and other determinants. Using survey data for the United States in 2007, our results show that certain aspects of leisure, such as leisure activity satisfaction, have a significant impact on individual well-being whereas the amount of leisure time may not play an important role in affecting happiness.