Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Animal Spirits, Lumpy Investment, and Endogenous Business Cycles

In this paper, we present an evolutionary model of industry dynamics yielding en- dogenous business cycles with 'Keynesian' features. The model describes an economy composed of firms and consumers/workers. Firms belong to two industries. The first one performs RD consumption is less volatile than GDP; investment, consumption and change in stocks are procyclical and coincident variables; employment is procyclical; unemployment rate is countercyclical; firm size distributions are skewed but depart from log-normality; firm growth distributions are tent-shaped.
The Role of African Traditional Healers in the Management of Mental Challenges in Africa

This paper is aimed at describing the practices of African Traditional Healers, highlighting their contributions to those seeking relief to their mental health challenges and offering recommendations on how to improve on their services. This is because, reports from the World Health Organization (2003) show that the prevalence of the mental illness is epidemically high and that by the year 2020, depression is estimated to be the leading health problem in the world. The African faces considerable mental health challenges that are linked to civil wars, unemployment and AIDS epidemic. Unfortunately there are only a few trained mental health professionals in the continent to handle these conditions. Therefore, African Traditional Healers are widely sought after by masses of non-elite and elite Africans to meet their psycho-social needs, yet little is written in the literature about the practices of these healers and how they contribute to the maintenance of mental health throughout the continent.
A New Pseudo-Random Number Generator Based on Two Chaotic Maps

A new pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) is proposed. The principle of the method consists in mixing chaotic maps produced from an input initial vector. The algorithm uses permutations whose positions are computed and indexed by a chaotic function based on linear congruences. The performance of this scheme is evaluated through statistical analysis. Such a cryptosystem lets appear significant cryptographic qualities for a good security level.
Radio Specific Emitter Identification based on nonlinear characteristics of signal

Radio Specific Emitter Identification (SEI) is the technique which identifies the individual radio emitter based on the received signals' specific properties called signals' Radio Frequency Fingerprint (RFF). SEI is very significant for improving the security of wireless networks. A novel SEI method which treats the emitter as a nonlinear dynamical system is proposed in this paper. The method works based on the signal's nonlinear characteristics which result from the unintentional and unavoidable physical-layer imperfections. The reconstructed phase space (RPS) is used as the tool for analyzing the nonlinearity. The entire characteristics of RPS and state changes characteristics of points in RPS are extracted to form RFF. To evaluate the availability of the RFF, the signals from four wireless network cards are collected by a signal acquisition system. The proposed RFF's discrimination capabilities are visually analyzed using the boxplot. The results of visual analysis and classification demonstrate that this method is effective.
Biodegradation of 2-methylquinoline by Klebsiella pneumoniae TJ-A isolated from acclimated activated sludge

Bacterial strain Klebsiella pneumoniae TJ-A, which was capable of utilizing 2-methylquinoline as the sole carbon and energy source, was isolated from acclimated activated sludge under aerobic conditions. Effects of temperature and initial pH on the biodegradation of 2-methylquinoline by Klebsiella pneumoniae TJ-A were investigated. The optimal temperature and initial pH were 30°C and 7.5, respectively. The degradation process was well described by the Haldane model. Then 1, 2, 3, 4-tetrahydro-2-methylquinoline, 4-ethyl-benzenamine and N-butyl-benzenamine were metabolites detected during the degradation of 2-methylquinoline. 2-Methylquinoline was initially hydroxylated at C-4 to form 2-methyl-4-hydroxy-quinoline, and then to form 2-methyl-4-quinolinol as a result of tautomerism. Hydrogenation of heterocyclic ring between the position 2 and 3 produced 2, 3-dihydro-2-methyl-4-quinolinol. The carbon-carbon bond between the position 2 and 3 in the heterocyclic ring cleaved and then formed 2-ethyl-N-ethyl-benzenamine. Tautomerism might result in the formation of N-butyl-benzenamine. The 4-ethyl-benzenamine was produced as a result of losing one ethyl group from N-butyl-benzenamine. The bacterial strain Klebsiella pneumoniae TJ-A was the priority species in the aerobic activated sludge responsible for the degradation of 2-methylquinoline.
Widespread expression in adult rat forebrain of mRNA encoding high‐affinity neurotensin receptor

The peptides neurotensin (NT) and neuromedin N exert effects on neurons by means of a high‐affinity NT receptor (NTRH) belonging to the superfamily of G‐protein–coupled receptors. In the present study, we used in situ hybridization histochemistry with sensitive riboprobe methodology to investigate the distribution of NTRH mRNA in the forebrain of adult rats. Labeled cells were abundant in the hypothalamus, epithalamus, ventral thalamus, septum, amygdala, and pallidum, including many regions where NTRH mRNA had not been detected previously. In the hypothalamus, novel sites of NTRH mRNA expression included the arcuate, periventricular, paraventricular, supraoptic, medial preoptic, anterior, ventromedial, and posterior nuclei, as well as the lateral hypothalamic area. In the thalamus, novel sites of expression included the anterodorsal nucleus, lateral habenula, and zona incerta, where labeling was much more extensive than previously reported. Novel telencephalic sites of expression included most bed nuclei of the stria terminalis, most divisions of the amygdala, the main olfactory bulb, the endopiriform nucleus, the claustrum, many parts of retrohippocampal allocortex, and limited parts of most isocortical areas. Novel sites of expression were also observed in the midbrain and pons. Taking into account expected differences in the subcellular locations of receptor mRNA and protein, the regional distribution of NTRH mRNA agrees well with that of NTRH determined previously. Our results identify many novel sites of NTRH mRNA expression in adult brain and provide a basis for investigating involvement of NT and related peptides in regulating the activity of these diverse cells, whose phenotypes remain largely undetermined. J. Comp. Neurol. 402:475–500, 1998. Published 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Comparison of ELISAs for the differentiation of infection from vaccination by detection of antibodies to the non-structural protein 3 ABC of Foot-and-Mouth disease virus

A study was performed in order to validate ELISAs for the differentiation of FMDV-infected cattle from those that had merely been vaccinated. Sets of sera from naive and from vaccinated animals as well as from cattle that had been vaccinated and subsequently infected were tested for antibodies to nonstructural proteins (NSPs) of FMDV in a commercial test, the Chekit FMD-3ABC bo-ov (Bommeli/Intervet) and a competitive ELISA developed at the Danish Veterinary Institute. Probang samples from infected animals were examined by plaque test and by RT-nPCR in order to determine whether the animals had become virus carriers.
Aligning Geospatial Ontologies Logically

Information sharing and updates have become increasingly important in the rapidly changing world. However, owing to the distributed and decentralized nature of information collection and storage, it is not easy to use information from different sources synergistically. Ontology plays as an important role in establishing formal descriptions of a domain of discourse. In geographic information science, the rapid developments of crowd-sourced geospatial databases challenge and also bring opportunities to the current geospatial information development framework. In this paper, a new semi-automatic method is proposed to align disparate geospatial ontologies, based on description logic and domain experts’ knowledge.
Distributed Uplink Power Control for Multi-Cell Cognitive Radio Networks

We present a distributed power control algorithm to address the uplink interference management problem in cognitive radio networks where the underlaying secondary users (SUs) share the same licensed spectrum with the primary users (PUs) in multi-cell environments. Since the PUs have a higher priority of channel access compared to the SUs, minimal number of SUs should be gradually removed, subject to the constraint that all primary users are supported with their target signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs), which is assumed feasible. In our proposed algorithm, each primary user rigidly tracks its target-SINR by employing the conventional target-SINR tracking power control algorithm (TPC). Each transmitting SU employs the TPC as long as the total received power at the primary receiver is below a given threshold; otherwise, it decreases its transmit power in proportion to the ratio between the given threshold and the total received power at the primary receiver, which is referred to as the total received-power-temperature. We show that our proposed distributed power-update function has at least one fixed-point. We also show that our proposed algorithm not only improves the number of supported SUs but also guarantees that all primary users are supported with their (feasible) target-SINRs. Finally, we also propose an enhanced power control algorithm that achieves zero-outage for PUs and a better outage ratio for SUs. To this end, we provide a robust power control method that considers the uncertainties in channel gains.
Image Processing in Collaborative Open Narrative Systems

Open narrative approach enables the creators of multimedia content to create multi-stranded, navigable narrative environments. The viewer is able to navigate such space depending on author’s predetermined constraints, or even browse the open narrative structure arbitrarily based on their interests. This philosophy is used with great advantage in the collaborative open narrative system NARRA. The platform creates a possibility for documentary makers, journalists, activists or other artists to link their own audiovisual material to clips of other authors and finally create a navigable space of individual multimedia pieces. To help authors focus on building the narratives themselves, a set of automated tools have been proposed. Most obvious ones, as speech-to-text, are already incorporated in the system. However other, more complicated authoring tools, primarily focused on creating metadata for the media objects, are yet to be developed. Most complex of them involve an object description in media (with unrestricted motion, action or other features) and detection of near-duplicates of video content, which is the focus of our current interest. In our approach, we are trying to use motion-based features and register them across the whole clip. Using Grid Cut algorithm to segment the image, we then try to select only parts of the motion picture, that are of our interest for further processing. For the selection of suitable description methods, we are developing a meta-learning approach. This will supposedly enable automatic annotation based not only on clip similarity per se, but rather on detected objects present in the shot.
Clinical usefulness of assessing VEGF and soluble receptors sVEGFR-1 and sVEGFR-2 in women with breast cancer.

INTRODUCTION The biological activity of VEGF depends on the presence of its specific receptors on the endothelial surface: VEGFR-1, VEGFR-2, and on their soluble forms sVEGFR-1 and sVEGFR-2. The binding of the membrane-bound receptors with VEGF affects the permeability, proliferation and migration of vascular endothelial cells. This creates the necessary conditions for the vascularisation of solid tumours and for the spread of remote metastases. The sVEGFR-1 and sVEGFR-2 receptors are believed to be natural inhibitors of VEGF. OBJECTIVE To determine the clinical usefulness of VEGF and the sVEGFR-1 and sVEGFR-2 receptors level assay in women with primary breast cancer. The assessment also took into account: patient's age, stage of the disease, histological grade, status of the axillary lymph nodes and size of the primary tumour. MATERIAL AND METHODS The concentrations of VEGF, sVEGFR-1 and sVEGFR-2 were ascertained in 103 women with primary breast cancer. The concentrations of VEGF in the plasma, and those of the soluble receptors sVEGFR-1 and sVEGFR-2 in the serum, were assessed by ELISA, R&D Systems. RESULTS The study found significantly raised concentrations of VEGF, sVEGFR-1 and sVEGFR-2 in the serum of women with breast cancer, relative to the values obtained from the control group. It was found that with increasing clinical stages of the disease, the levels of VEGF and concentrations of sVEGFR-1 and sVEGFR-2 also increased. Similar findings were noted when assessing the degree of the histological grade of the tumours. Significantly higher values of VEGF protein and the assessed receptors were obtained from women with metastases to the axillary lymph nodes. A positive relationship, though without statistical significance, was noted between the concentration of sVEGFR-2 and the size of the tumour. CONCLUSIONS The high concentrations of the VEGF cytokine and the sVEGFR-1 and sVEGFR-2 receptors in women with breast cancer are responsible for giving rise to the processes of tumour angiogenesis. The concentrations of the VEGF protein and the soluble forms of the receptors sVEGFR-1 and sVEGFR-2 in the serum of breast cancer patients showed positive correlations with the clinical stage of the disease. These results point to the usefulness of VEGF assessment and its soluble receptors in the clinical evaluation of patients with breast cancer.
Clustering of filarial infection in an age-graded study: genetic, household and environmental influences

A statistical method that analyses correlation structures in families to delineate the contribution of genetic, household and environmental factors on clustering of infection, has been applied to data collected in an area endemic for brugian filariasis in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Infection was assessed both by microfilaraemia and by anti-filarial IgG4. The results confirmed earlier findings that genetic factors play an important role in clustering of infection. When clustering of infection was analysed in children (<10 years of age) and adults (>20 years of age) separately, it was found that the genetic factors influence clustering of infection in children more profoundly than environmental or household effects. In contrast, genetic factors could not fully explain the clustering of infection seen in adults, which seemed to be mainly determined by household and environmental effects. The data have implications for genotyping studies in brugian filariasis; they indicate that it may be important to concentrate on the younger age groups where individual environmental effects have not yet overruled the genetic influences on gain/loss of infection.
Selection for costly sexual traits results in a vacant mating niche and male dimorphism

The expected strong directional selection for traits that increase a male's mating ability conflicts with the frequent observation that within species, males may show extreme variation in sexual traits. These male reproductive polymorphisms are usually attributed to direct male–male competition. It is currently unclear, however, how directional selection for sexually selected traits may convert into disruptive selection, and if female preference for elaborate traits may be an alternative mechanism driving the evolution of male polymorphism. Here, we explore this mechanism using the polyandric dwarf spider Oedothorax gibbosus as a model. We first show that males characterized by conspicuous cephalic structures serving as a nuptial feeding device (“gibbosus males”) significantly outperform other males in siring offspring of previously fertilized females. However, significant costs in terms of development time of gibbosus males open a mating niche for an alternative male type lacking expensive secondary sexual traits. These “tuberosus males” obtain virtually all fertilizations early in the breeding season. Individual‐based simulations demonstrate a hitherto unknown general principle, by which males selected for high investment to attract females suffer constrained mating opportunities. This creates a vacant mating niche of unmated females for noninvesting males and, consequently, disruptive selection on male secondary sexual traits.
Telemedicine adoption by different groups of physicians

This study addresses the factors that could affect the intention of physicians to adopt telemedicine technology. Based on the theoretical foundations of technology adoption models, a revised model is proposed and tested via a questionnaire with two groups of physicians that were, at the time of the survey, just about to use telemedicine technology. Group A is composed of physicians from a large urban healthcare provider institution involved in clinical, teaching, and research activities, and will soon use a telemedicine intranet solution. Group B is composed of physicians from rural areas who will eventually be linked to a telemedicine network. Results analyzed with PLS indicate that in both cases, physicians' perception of usefulness of telemedicine is positively related to their intention to adopt this technology. This is the only common result between the two groups. Other significant yet different results indicate that the reactions of two types of potential adopters of telemedicine are influenced by their background and environment. This revised model helps in distinguishing the shades in the intention of adopting telemedicine between two distinct groups of physicians.
Cloaking Malware with the Trusted Platform Module

The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is commonly thought of as hardware that can increase platform security. However, it can also be used for malicious purposes. The TPM, along with other hardware, can implement a cloaked computation, whose memory state cannot be observed by any other software, including the operating system and hypervisor. We show that malware can use cloaked computations to hide essential secrets (like the target of an attack) from a malware analyst. We describe and implement a protocol that establishes an encryption key under control of the TPM that can only be used by a specific infection program. An infected host then proves the legitimacy of this key to a remote malware distribution platform, and receives and executes an encrypted payload in a way that prevents software visibility of the decrypted payload. We detail how malware can benefit from cloaked computations and discuss defenses against our protocol. Hardening legitimate uses of the TPM against attack improves the resilience of our malware, creating a Catch-22 for secure computing technology.
Genetic diversity in human-derived Pneumocystis carinii isolates from four geographical locations shown by analysis of mitochondrial rRNA gene sequences

The opportunistic fungal pathogen Pneumocystis carinii is a frequent cause of pneumonia in immunocompromised hosts. In this study, we have compared the DNA sequences of a portion of the mitochondrial large-subunit rRNA gene of P. carinii (an informative locus showing up to 27% differences among isolates of P. carinii from human-, rat-, mouse-, ferret-, rabbit-, and horse-infected lungs) obtained from human-derived isolates from widely disparate geographical areas, including Britain, the United States, Brazil, and Zimbabwe. A single-base polymorphism which varied among samples was identified. Apart from this nucleotide, the DNA sequences of all samples were identical. The sequences of the British samples were shown to be stable over a period of 4 years. These data suggest that there is relatively low genetic diversity among isolates of human-derived P. carinii from different global regions.
Clinicoeconomics and Outcomes Research Dovepress Estimating the Health Care Burden of Prescription Opioid Abuse in Five European Countries

Background: Opioid abuse, including abuse of prescription opioids (" RxOs ") and illicit substances like heroin, is a serious public health issue in Europe. Currently, there is limited data on the magnitude of RxO abuse in Europe, despite increasing public and scientific interest in the issue. The purpose of this study was to use the best-available data to derive comparable estimates of the health care burden of RxO abuse in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom (EU5). Methods: Published data on the prevalence of problem opioid use and the share of opioid abuse patients reporting misuse of non-heroin opioids were used to estimate the prevalence of RxO abuse in the EU5 countries. The costs of RxO abuse were calculated by applying published estimates of the incremental health care costs of opioid abuse to country-specific estimates of the costs of chronic pain conditions. These estimates were input into an economic model that quantified the health care burden of RxO abuse in each of the EU5 countries. Sensitivity analyses examined key assumptions. Results: Based on best-available current data, prevalence estimates of RxO abuse ranged from 0.7 to 13.7 per 10,000 individuals across the EU5 countries. Estimates of the incremental health care costs of RxO abuse ranged from €900 to €2,551 per patient per year. The annual health care cost burden of RxO abuse ranged from €6,264 to €279,927 per 100,000 individuals across the EU5 countries. Conclusion: This study suggests that RxO abuse imposes a cost burden on health systems in the five largest European countries. The extent of RxO abuse in Europe should be monitored given the potential for change over time. Continued efforts should be made to collect reliable data on the prevalence and costs of RxO abuse in Europe to facilitate an accurate characterization of the extent of this potentially growing problem.
Representational affordances and creativity in association-based systems

This paper describes ongoing research into associationbased computational creative systems. The necessary components for developing association-based creative systems are outlined, and the challenges in measuring the creativity of such a system are discussed. An approach to operationalising creativity metrics for association-based systems based on representational affordances is described. This approach is then demonstrated through an analysis of results produced by a system for constructing associations between visual designs.
The transformation of slip dislocations during twinning of copper-aluminum alloy crystals.

Face-centred cubic metals deform by slip until the flow stress and dislocation density are very high, under certain conditions deformation may then proceed by twinning. The geometrical relation between the parent and twinned lattices has been studied in detail (1, 2). In the present work, the dislocation substructures in the parent and twinned portions of the samples were examined in thin foils cut from deformed Cu-8 at. % Al alloy crystals. The data confirm the theoretical predictions, and offer an explanation of some formerly puzzling observations. Consideration of the dislocation transformations indicates that twinning should result in an increase in strength of the material ; this question is also examined.