Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Private Interhousehold Transfers in Vietnam in the Early and Late 1990s

The author uses date from the 1992-93 and 1997-98 Vietnam Living Standards Survey (VLSS) to describe patterns of money transfers between households. Rapid economic growth during the 1990s did little to diminish the importance of private transfers in Vietnam. Private transfers are large and widespread in both surveys, and are much larger than public transfers. Private transfers appear to function like means-tested public transfers, flowing from better-off to worse-off households and providing old age support in retirement. Panel evidence suggests some hysteresis in private transfer patterns, but many households also changed from recipients to givers and vice versa between surveys. Changes in private transfers appear responsive to changes in household pre-transfer income, demographic changes, and life-course events. Transfer inflows rise upon retirement and widowhood, for example, and are positively associated with increases in health expenditures. It also appears that private transfer inflows increased for households affected by Typhoon Linda, which devastated Vietnam's southernmost provinces in late 1997.
Analysis of RSVP-TE Graceful Restart

GMPLS is viewed as an attractive intelligent control plane for different network technologies and graceful restart is a key technique to ensure this control plane is resilient and able to recover adequately from faults. This paper analyses the graceful restart mechanism proposed for a key GMPLS protocol, RSVP-TE. A novel analytical model, which may be readily adapted to study other protocols, is developed. This model allows the efficacy of graceful restart to be evaluated in a number of scenarios. It is found that, unsurprisingly, increasing control message loss and increasing the number of data plane connections both increased the time to complete recovery. It was also discovered that a threshold exists beyond which a relatively small change in the control message loss probability causes a disproportionately large increase in the time to complete recovery. The interesting findings in this work suggest that the performance of graceful restart is worthy of further investigation, with emphasis being placed on exploring procedures to optimise the performance of graceful restart.
Experimental Investigation on Prestress during the Manufactural Process of Integrated Multilayer Wrapped Vessel

Integrated multilayer wrapped vessel is a new type of multilayer high pressure vessel construction diffusely used in various process industrial productions. The prestress of the integrated multilayer wrapped vessel of inside diameter 500mm during its manufactural process was investigated. The experimental results showed that, the circumferential prestress distributions in the inner cylinder and the laminate during its manufactural process were approximately exponential function, thus in order to make the circumferential prestress contribution in the inner cylinder even as possible, the laminates should be staggered uniformly as the same circumferential angle during the manufactural process of the actual vessel, which is of an important significance to insure its manufactural quality and safe application.
Interpretation of Genomic Variants Using a Unified Biological Network Approach

The decreasing cost of sequencing is leading to a growing repertoire of personal genomes. However, we are lagging behind in understanding the functional consequences of the millions of variants obtained from sequencing. Global system-wide effects of variants in coding genes are particularly poorly understood. It is known that while variants in some genes can lead to diseases, complete disruption of other genes, called ‘loss-of-function tolerant’, is possible with no obvious effect. Here, we build a systems-based classifier to quantitatively estimate the global perturbation caused by deleterious mutations in each gene. We first survey the degree to which gene centrality in various individual networks and a unified ‘Multinet’ correlates with the tolerance to loss-of-function mutations and evolutionary conservation. We find that functionally significant and highly conserved genes tend to be more central in physical protein-protein and regulatory networks. However, this is not the case for metabolic pathways, where the highly central genes have more duplicated copies and are more tolerant to loss-of-function mutations. Integration of three-dimensional protein structures reveals that the correlation with centrality in the protein-protein interaction network is also seen in terms of the number of interaction interfaces used. Finally, combining all the network and evolutionary properties allows us to build a classifier distinguishing functionally essential and loss-of-function tolerant genes with higher accuracy (AUC = 0.91) than any individual property. Application of the classifier to the whole genome shows its strong potential for interpretation of variants involved in Mendelian diseases and in complex disorders probed by genome-wide association studies.
Feedback Control of the chemotherapy of HIV

Using a model which describes the interaction of the immune system with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), we introduce a feedback control strategy of chemotherapy in an early treatment setting, where the control represents the percentage of effect chemotherapy has on the viral production. We seek to regulate the viral count by manipulating the percentage of effect chemotherapy has on the viral production. We show via numerical simulations that the proposed feedback control strategy can handle strong uncertainties in the HIV dynamics induced by imperfect modeling and sampled/delayed cell measurements.
Effect of the Estrogen Antagonist, Tamoxifen, on Development of Glomerulosclerosis in the Cohen Diabetic Rat

Long-term administration of the estrogen antagonist,tamoxifen, to female, Cohen diabetic rats caused a significant decrease in the incidence of glomerulosclerosis, 12.5% as compared with 58.3% in control, untreated, diabetic female rats. This change in incidence was correlated with a corresponding decrease in plasma estradiol and cholesterol levels, but not with changes in oral glucose tolerance or insulin response. A similar correlation between decreased incidence of glomerulosclerosis and a decrease in plasma estradiol was previously noted in ovariectomized animals.
Blockade or deletion of transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) is not protective in a murine model of sepsis

Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response triggered by microbial infection that can cause cardiovascular collapse, insufficient tissue perfusion and multi-organ failure. The cation channel transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) is expressed in vascular endothelium and causes vasodilatation, but excessive TRPV4 activation leads to profound hypotension and circulatory collapse - key features of sepsis pathogenesis. We hypothesised that loss of TRPV4 signaling would protect against cardiovascular dysfunction in a mouse model of sepsis (endotoxaemia). Multi-parameter monitoring of conscious systemic haemodynamics (by radiotelemetry probe), mesenteric microvascular blood flow (laser speckle contrast imaging) and blood biochemistry (iSTAT blood gas analysis) was carried out in wild type (WT) and TRPV4 knockout (KO) mice. Endotoxaemia was induced by a single intravenous injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS; 12.5 mg/kg) and systemic haemodynamics monitored for 24 h. Blood flow recording was then conducted under terminal anaesthesia after which blood was obtained for haematological/biochemical analysis. No significant differences were observed in baseline haemodynamics or mesenteric blood flow. Naïve TRPV4 KO mice were significantly acidotic relative to WT counterparts. Following induction of sepsis, all mice became significantly hypotensive, though there was no significant difference in the degree of hypotension between TRPV4 WT and KO mice. TRPV4 KO mice exhibited a higher sepsis severity score. While septic WT mice became significantly hypernatraemic relative to the naïve state, this was not observed in septic KO mice. Mesenteric blood flow was inhibited by topical application of the TRPV4 agonist GSK1016790A in naïve WT mice, but enhanced 24 h following LPS injection. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, loss of TRPV4 signaling (either through gene deletion or pharmacological antagonism) did not attenuate sepsis-induced cardiovascular dysfunction: in fact, pathology appeared to be modestly exaggerated in mice lacking TRPV4. Local targeting of TRPV4 signalling may be more beneficial than global inhibition in sepsis treatment.
Designing a Process Guidance System to Support User's Business Process Compliance

Organizations define business processes specifying how employees should conduct their daily work. They require their employees to conform to defined process standards in order to avoid expensive mistakes and ensure the intended process outcomes. From a research perspective, process compliance has been primarily addressed by processcentric information systems supporting the execution of business processes. However, employees still have difficulties in being process compliant. What is missing is the direct support for users in the proper execution of business processes within the actual work environment. We follow a design science approach to address this gap and suggest a process guidance system supporting users’ business process compliance. Grounded by findings from existing guidance research, we derive meta-requirements and design principles of such systems and evaluate our artifact by two expert workshops discussing the proposed solution.
Education and diabetes in a racially and ethnically diverse population.

OBJECTIVES We used data from the National Health Interview Survey (1997-2002) to examine the association between education and the prevalence of diabetes in US adults and whether this relation differs by race/ethnicity. METHODS The analyses were limited to non-Hispanic Blacks, non-Hispanic Whites, and Hispanics. SUDAAN was used to account for the complex sampling design. RESULTS Educational attainment was inversely associated with the prevalence of diabetes. Individuals with less than a high-school diploma were 1.6 (95% confidence interval [CI]=1.4, 1.8) times more likely to have diabetes than those with at least a bachelor's degree. Whites and Hispanics exhibited a significant relation between diabetes and having less than a high-school education (odds ratio [OR]=1.7; 95% CI=1.5, 2.0; and OR=1.6; 95% CI=1.1, 2.3, respectively). In addition, the odds of having diabetes was stronger for women (OR=1.9; 95% CI=1.6, 2.4) than for men (OR=1.4; 95% CI=1.1, 1.6) CONCLUSIONS Educational attainment was inversely associated with diabetes prevalence among Whites, Hispanics, and women but not among Blacks. Education may have a different effect on diabetes health among different racial/ethnic groups.
Kinematics of hovering hummingbird flight along simulated and natural elevational gradients

SUMMARY Hovering flight is one of the most energetically demanding forms of animal locomotion. Despite the cost, hummingbirds regularly hover at high elevations, where flight is doubly challenging because of reduced air density and oxygen availability. We performed three laboratory experiments to examine how air density and oxygen partial pressure influence wingbeat kinematics. In the first study, we experimentally lowered air density but maintained constant oxygen partial pressure. Under these hypodense but normoxic conditions, hummingbirds increased stroke amplitude substantially and increased wingbeat frequency slightly. In the second experiment, we maintained constant air density but decreased oxygen partial pressure. Under these normodense but hypoxic conditions, hummingbirds did not alter stroke amplitude but instead reduced wingbeat frequency until they could no longer generate enough vertical force to offset body weight. In a final combined experiment, we decreased air density but increased oxygen availability, and found that the wingbeat kinematics were unaffected by supplemental oxygen. We also studied hovering and maximally loaded flight performance for 43 hummingbird species distributed along a natural elevational gradient in Peru. During free hovering flight, hummingbirds showed increased stroke amplitude interspecifically at higher elevations, mirroring the intra-individual responses in our first laboratory experiment. During loaded flight, hummingbirds increased both wingbeat frequency and wing stroke amplitude by 19% relative to free-flight values at any given elevation. We conclude that modulation of wing stroke amplitude is a major compensatory mechanism for flight in hypodense or hypobaric environments. By contrast, increases in wingbeat frequency impose substantial metabolic demands, are only elicited transiently and anaerobically, and cannot be used to generate additional sustained lift at high elevations.
Experiences in Conducting an Online Field Study of an Open-source, Extensible Software Platform

We identify several challenges in conducting a large-scale, online field study with 90 users of an open-source, integrated development environment. By reflecting on the benefits and challenges of specific methodological decisions and contextual constraints of this study, we hope to provide insight for other researchers designing similar types of studies, as well as to encourage discussion about how best to balance these trade-offs. In particular, we highlight the online nature of this study, and the impact of working with an open-source, extensible software application.
Limit Crystalloid Resuscitation after Traumatic Brain Injury

Patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) are often resuscitated with crystalloids in the emergency department (ED) to maintain cerebral perfusion. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether crystalloid resuscitation volume impacts mortality in TBI patients. This was a retrospective study of trauma patients with head abbreviated injury scale score ≥2, who received crystalloids during ED resuscitation between 2004 and 2013. Clinical characteristics and volume of crystalloids received in the ED were collected. Patients who received <2 L of crystalloids were categorized as low volume (LOW), whereas those who received ≥2 L were considered high volume (HIGH). Mortality and outcomes were compared. Multivariable regression analysis was used to determine the odds of mortality while controlling for confounders. Over 10 years, 875 patients met inclusion criteria. Overall mortality was 12.5 per cent. Seven hundred and forty-two (85%) were in the LOW cohort and 133 (15%) in the HIGH cohort. Gender and age were similar between the groups. The HIGH cohort had lower admission systolic blood pressure (128 vs 138 mm Hg, P = 0.001), lower Glasgow coma scale score (10 vs 12, P < 0.001), higher head abbreviated injury scale (3.8 vs 3.3, P < 0.001), and higher injury severity score (25 vs 18, P < 0.001). The LOW group had a lower unadjusted mortality (10 vs 26%, P < 0.001). Multivariable analysis adjusting for confounders demonstrated that those resuscitated with ≥2 L of crystalloids had increased odds of mortality (adjusted odds ratio 2.25, P = 0.005). Higher volume crystalloid resuscitation after TBI is associated with increased mortality, thus limited resuscitation for TBI patients may be indicated.
Nucleic acid binding and chaperone properties of HIV-1 Gag and nucleocapsid proteins

The Gag polyprotein of HIV-1 is essential for retroviral replication and packaging. The nucleocapsid (NC) protein is the primary region for the interaction of Gag with nucleic acids. In this study, we examine the interactions of Gag and its NC cleavage products (NCp15, NCp9 and NCp7) with nucleic acids using solution and single molecule experiments. The NC cleavage products bound DNA with comparable affinity and strongly destabilized the DNA duplex. In contrast, the binding constant of Gag to DNA was found to be ∼10-fold higher than that of the NC proteins, and its destabilizing effect on dsDNA was negligible. These findings are consistent with the primary function of Gag as a nucleic acid binding and packaging protein and the primary function of the NC proteins as nucleic acid chaperones. Also, our results suggest that NCp7's capability for fast sequence-nonspecific nucleic acid duplex destabilization, as well as its ability to facilitate nucleic acid strand annealing by inducing electrostatic attraction between strands, likely optimize the fully processed NC protein to facilitate complex nucleic acid secondary structure rearrangements. In contrast, Gag's stronger DNA binding and aggregation capabilities likely make it an effective chaperone for processes that do not require significant duplex destabilization.
Assistive technologies in reducing caregiver burden among informal caregivers of older adults: a systematic review

Abstract Aim: The world population is rapidly ageing. As population age, the incidence of functional limitations increases, demanding higher levels of care from caregivers. Assistive technologies improve individuals’ functioning, independence, well-being and quality of life. By increasing independence of older adults, assistive technologies decrease workloads required from informal caregivers. This review investigates, evaluates, and synthesises existing findings to examine whether and how assistive technologies reduce caregiver burden. Methods: Databases searched included MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, and Cochrane Library. Three groups of keywords were combined: those relating to assistive technology, caregiver burden, and older adults. Results: Two theories emerged from the analysis of study results. Caregivers reported that assistive technologies decrease caregiver burden. However, caregivers had concerns that assistive technologies could add to caregiver burden, highlighting the limitations of assistive technology. Conclusions: As suggested by a majority of the studies in this review, assistive technologies contribute to reducing caregiver burden among caregivers of older adults. Assistive technologies assisted caregivers by reducing time, levels of assistance and energy put towards caregiving, anxiety and fear, task difficulty, safety risk particularly for activities requiring physical assistance and increasing the independence of the users. Further research is required to better understand limitations of assistive technologies. Implications for Rehabilitation Support for informal caregivers of older adults need more attention and recognition. Assistive technologies can reduce caregiver burden among informal caregivers of older adults. Further research is required to better understand the effectiveness of assistive technologies in reducing caregiver burden as well as limitations and barriers associated with using assistive technologies.
3D non-linear analysis of the acetabular construct following impaction grafting

The study investigates the short-term behaviour of the acetabular construct following revision hip arthroplasty, carried out using the Slooff–Ling impaction grafting technique; using 3D finite element analyses. An elasto-plastic material model is used to describe the constitutive behaviour of morsellised cortico-cancellous bone (MCB) graft, since it has been shown that MCB undergoes significant plastic deformation under normal physiological loads. Based on previous experimental studies carried out by the authors and others, MCB is modelled using non-linear elasticity and Drucker Prager Cap (DPC) plasticity. Loading associated with walking, sitting down, and standing up is applied to the acetabular cup through a femoral head using smooth sliding surfaces. The analyses yield distinctive patterns of migration and rotation due to different activities. These are found to be similar to those observed in the clinical setting.
Evaluating similarity measures for emergent semantics of social tagging

Social bookmarking systems are becoming increasingly important data sources for bootstrapping and maintaining Semantic Web applications. Their emergent information structures have become known as folksonomies. A key question for harvesting semantics from these systems is how to extend and adapt traditional notions of similarity to folksonomies, and which measures are best suited for applications such as community detection, navigation support, semantic search, user profiling and ontology learning. Here we build an evaluation framework to compare various general folksonomy-based similarity measures, which are derived from several established information-theoretic, statistical, and practical measures. Our framework deals generally and symmetrically with users, tags, and resources. For evaluation purposes we focus on similarity between tags and between resources and consider different methods to aggregate annotations across users. After comparing the ability of several tag similarity measures to predict user-created tag relations, we provide an external grounding by user-validated semantic proxies based on WordNet and the Open Directory Project. We also investigate the issue of scalability. We find that mutual information with distributional micro-aggregation across users yields the highest accuracy, but is not scalable; per-user projection with collaborative aggregation provides the best scalable approach via incremental computations. The results are consistent across resource and tag similarity.
Computational Analysis of Vortex Dynamics in One-Component Bose-Einstein Condensates

We consider the GrossPitaeviskii Equation (GPE) to describe the dynamics of vortices in one-component BECs. In order to solve GPE, we use the 2nd order central finite difference scheme for the spatial derivation and the 4th order Runge-Kutta method to integrate in time. For a vortex wave function, we solve the well known vortex profile ODE numerically. With different external potentials, we observe different dynamics of vortices in BECs such as the vortex drift on a plane potential with an angle, the vortex-vortex interaction on a plane field with the same vorticity and the opposite vorticity, and the vortex precession on a magnetic trap potential. Our computational analysis observes all different vortex dynamics, and it confirms and supports the theoretical analysis that has been done previously.
Efficient Pricing of Derivatives on Assets with Discrete Dividends

It is argued that due to inconsistencies in existing methods to approximate the prices of equity options on assets which pay out fixed cash dividends at future dates, a new approach to this problem may be useful. Logically consistent methods which are guaranteed to exclude arbitrage exist, but they are not very popular in practice due to their computational complexity. An algorithm is defined which is easy to understand, computationally efficient, and which guarantees to generate prices which exclude arbitrage possibilitites. It is shown that for the method to work a mild uniform convergence condition must be satisfied and this condition is indeed satisfied for standard European and American options. Numerical results testify to the accuracy and flexibility of the method.
Calonectria spp. causing leaf spot, crown and root rot of ornamental plants in Tunisia

Calonectria spp. are important pathogens of ornamental plants in nurseries, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. They are commonly associated with a wide range of disease symptoms of roots, leaves and shoots. During a recent survey in Tunisia, a number of Calonectria spp. were isolated from tissues of ornamental plants showing symptoms of leaf spot, crown and root rot. The aim of this study was to identify these Calonectria spp. using morphological and DNA sequence comparisons. Two previously undescribed Calonectria spp. , C. pseudomexicana sp. nov. and C. tunisiana sp. nov., were recognised. Calonectria mexicana and C. polizzii are newly reported for the African continent. Pathogenicity tests with all four Calonectria spp. showed that they are able to cause disease on seedlings of Callistemon spp. , Dodonaea viscosa, Metrosideros spp. and Myrtus communis.