Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inundation monitoring through high-resolution SAR/InSAR data and 2D hydraulic simulations

In the present paper, COSMO-SkyMed high-resolution data acquired on the southern Basilicata region (Italy) are used for flood hazard monitoring. We concentrate on the flood event of Nov. 2-4, 2010, for which multi-temporal SAR data were available over the Bradano River downstream area in the same acquisition geometry, which allows interferometric processing. SAR intensity data analysis of two acquisitions dated 3 and 4 Nov., performed through optimized thresholding algorithms, shows good results, highlighting the temporal evolution of the flood throughout the two days, as also confirmed by a comparison with the results of a 2D hydraulic simulation of the same event. Additional use of the one-day co-event coherence channel, and then of more intensity and coherence data layers in the multi-temporal dataset, through automated clustering procedures, helps discriminating in more detail some uncertain cases regarding inundated fields, and suggest procedures to shed light on the spatio-temporal backscattering patterns of flood-prone areas.
External Validation of a Referral Rule for Axial Spondyloarthritis in Primary Care Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain

Objectives To validate and optimize a referral rule to identify primary care patients with chronic low back pain (CLBP) suspected for axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA). Design Cross-sectional study with data from 19 Dutch primary care practices for development and 38 for validation. Participants Primary care patients aged 18-45 years with CLBP existing more than three months and onset of back pain started before the age of 45 years. Main Outcome The number of axSpA patients according to the ASAS criteria. Methods The referral rule (CaFaSpA referral rule) was developed using 364 CLBP patients from 19 primary care practices and contains four easy to use variables; inflammatory back pain, good response to nonsteriodal anti-inflammatory drugs, family history of spondyloarthritis and a back pain duration longer than five years. This referral rule is positive when at least two variables are present. Validation of the CaFaSpA rule was accomplished in 579 primary care CLBP patients from 38 practices from other areas. Performance of the referral rule was assessed by c-statistic and calibration plot. To fit the final referral rule the development and validation datasets were pooled leading to a total study population of 943 primary care participants. Results The referral rule was validated in 579 patients (41% male, mean age 36 (sd7.0). The percentage of identified axSpA patients was 16% (n=95). External validation resulted in satisfactory calibration and reasonable discriminative ability (c-statistics 0.70 [95% CI, 0.64-0.75]). In the pooled dataset sensitivity and specificity of the referral rule were 75% and 58%. Conclusions The CaFaSpA referral rule for axSpA consists of four easy to use predictors for primary care physicians and has a good predictive value in this validation study. The referral rule has the potential to be a screening tool for primary care by identifying CLBP patients suspected for axSpA.
Neuroprotection or Increased Brain Damage Mediated by Temperature in Stroke Is Time Dependent

The control of temperature during the acute phase of stroke may be a new therapeutic target that can be applied in all stroke patients, however therapeutic window or timecourse of the temperature effect is not well established. Our aim is to study the association between changes in body temperature in the first 72 hours and outcome in patients with ischemic (IS) and hemorrhagic (ICH) stroke. We prospectively studied 2931 consecutive patients (2468 with IS and 463 with ICH). Temperature was obtained at admission, and at 24, 48 and 72 hours after admission. Temperature was categorized as low (<36°C), normal (36–37°C) and high (>37°C). As the main variable, we studied functional outcome at 3 months determined by modified Rankin Scale. Temperature in stroke patients is higher than in controls, and increases gradually in the first 72 hours after stroke. A positive correlation between temperature and stroke severity determined by NIHSS was found at 24 and 48 hours, but not at admission or 72 hours. In a logistic regression model, high temperature was associated with poor outcome at 24 hours (OR 2.05, 95% CI 1.59–2.64, p<0.0001) and 48 hours (OR 1.93, 95% CI 1.08–2.34, p = 0.007), but not at admission or 72 hours. Temperature increases in patients with stroke in the first 72 hours, with the harmful effect of high temperature occurring in the first 48 hours. The neuroprotective effect of low temperature occurs within the first 24 hours from stroke onset.
Phrase Discovery for English and Cross-language Retrieval at TREC 6

In our TREC 6 experiments for the main tasks and tracks, Berkeley worked primarily on extending our probabilistic document retrieval methods to incorporate two words phrases found using the ranking provided by expected mutual information measure. While these methods did not result in performance improvements for English retrieval, they were central in obtaining reasonable performance in English queries against German documents in the crosslingual track
Reward Inference by Primate Prefrontal and Striatal Neurons

The brain contains multiple yet distinct systems involved in reward prediction. To understand the nature of these processes, we recorded single-unit activity from the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) and the striatum in monkeys performing a reward inference task using an asymmetric reward schedule. We found that neurons both in the LPFC and in the striatum predicted reward values for stimuli that had been previously well experienced with set reward quantities in the asymmetric reward task. Importantly, these LPFC neurons could predict the reward value of a stimulus using transitive inference even when the monkeys had not yet learned the stimulus–reward association directly; whereas these striatal neurons did not show such an ability. Nevertheless, because there were two set amounts of reward (large and small), the selected striatal neurons were able to exclusively infer the reward value (e.g., large) of one novel stimulus from a pair after directly experiencing the alternative stimulus with the other reward value (e.g., small). Our results suggest that although neurons that predict reward value for old stimuli in the LPFC could also do so for new stimuli via transitive inference, those in the striatum could only predict reward for new stimuli via exclusive inference. Moreover, the striatum showed more complex functions than was surmised previously for model-free learning.
Online list accessing algorithms and their applications: recent empirical evidence

This paper reports the results of an empirical test of the performances of a large set of online list accessing algorithms. The dgorithms’ access cost performances were tested with respect to request sequences generated from the Calgary Corpus. In addition to testing access costs within the traditional dynamic list accessing model we tested all algorithms’ relative performances as data compressors via the compression scheme of Bentley et al. Some of the results are quite surprising and stand in contrast to someco mpetitive analysis theoretical results. For example, the randomized algorithms that were tested, all attaining competitive ratio less than 2, performed consistently inferior to quite a few deterministic algorithms that obtained the best performance. In many instances the best performance was obtained by deterministic algorithms that are either not competitive or not optimal.
Entrepreneurship and Economic Development: Theory, Evidence and Policy

This paper provides an overview of the state of the art of the intersection of development and entrepreneurship. Given the neglect of entrepreneurship by development scholars it deals with (i) recent theoretical insights from the intersection of entrepreneurship and development studies; (ii) the empirical evidence on that relationship between entrepreneurship and development; and (iii) fresh insights for entrepreneurship policy for development that emerges from recent advanced in this area, including female entrepreneurship in developing countries.
Unemployment Insurance and Personal Bankruptcy

Personalbankruptcyallowshouseholdstostopordelaytherepaymentof debts. In so doing, bankruptcy provides a form of insurance to households. In particular, bankruptcy allows households some flexibility in timing repayments in a way that allows for sudden unforeseen contingencies. As an implicit form of insurance, bankruptcy may augment, substitute for, or even limit other forms of insurance. Conversely, the presence of other forms of insurance against life’s vicissitudes may enhance or limit the usefulness of bankruptcy. In this article, I investigate the interaction between one of the largest social insurance schemes, the U.S. unemployment insurance system (UI), and the personal bankruptcy system. An overwhelmingly large proportion of those filing for bankruptcy (over two-thirds) have recently experienced a job disruption (Sullivan et al. [2000] and Domowitz and Sartain [1999]). Further, Cochrane (1991) finds that prolongedspellsofunemploymentarepoorlyinsuredandthereforeresultinlarge drops in consumption levels. How does the level of unemployment insurance available to workers affect the benefits of bankruptcy protection? Conversely, how do the benefits of bankruptcy alter the benefits generated by UI? Lastly, how does the presence of bankruptcy alter the consequences of scaling back unemployment insurance? Myfindings are as follows: First, in the benchmark economy, introducing bankruptcy under even low UI replacement ratios lowers welfare. Second, reducing the UI replacement ratio increases bankruptcy rates. 1 Additionally,
VLBA Observations of a Sample of Nearby FR I Radio Galaxies

We observed 17 nearby low-luminosity FR I radio galaxies using the NRAO Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) at 1.67 GHz, as part of a multiwavelength study of a complete sample of 21 sources selected by radio flux density from the Uppsala General Catalogue of Galaxies. We detected radio emission from all 17 galaxies. At a FWHM resolution of ≈10 × 4 mas, five galaxies show only an unresolved radio core, 10 galaxies show core-jet structures, and two galaxies show twin-jet structures. Comparing these VLBA images with images previously obtained with the NRAO VLA, we find that all detected VLBA jets are well aligned on parsec scales with the VLA jets on kiloparsec scales and that the jet-to-counterjet surface brightness ratios, or the sidedness, decreases systematically with increasing distance along the jet. We attribute the sidedness to the Doppler boosting effect and its decline to the deceleration of the jets. We show that a distribution of Lorentz factor centered near Γ = 5 can reproduce our VLBA detection statistics for core, core-jet, and twin-jet sources. We also note that the luminosity per unit length, Lj, of the VLBA jets drops quickly with distance, r, along the jet, approximately as Lj ∝ r-2.0. We discuss three different mechanisms to explain this jet fading: (1) the decrease of Doppler boosting due to jet deceleration, (2) synchrotron losses, and (3) expansion losses in constant velocity but adiabatically spreading jets. Mechanisms (1) and (2) are inconsistent with the observations, while mechanism (3) is consistent with the observations provided the magnetic field lines in the jets are aligned perpendicular to the jet axis. This implies that the deceleration of the jets required by the unified scheme does not occur on the tens of parsec scales but must occur on larger scales.
Effect of photon beam energy, gold nanoparticle size and concentration on the dose enhancement in radiation therapy.

INTRODUCTION Gold nanoparticles have been used as radiation dose enhancing materials in recent investigations. In the current study, dose enhancement effect of gold nanoparticles on tumor cells was evaluated using Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. METHODS We used MCNPX code for MC modeling in the current study. A water phantom and a tumor region with a size of 1×1×1 cm3 loaded with gold nanoparticles were simulated. The macroscopic dose enhancement factor was calculated for gold nanoparticles with sizes of 30, 50, and 100 nm. Also, we simulated different photon beams including mono-energetic beams (50-120 keV), a Cobalt-60 beam, 6 & 18 MV photon beams of a conventional linear accelerator. RESULTS We found a dose enhancement factor (DEF) of from 1.4 to 3.7 for monoenergetic kilovoltage beams, while the DEFs for megavoltage beams were negligible and less than 3% for all GNP sizes and concentrations. The optimum energy for higher DEF was found to be the 90 keV monoenergetic beam. The effect of GNP size was not considerable, but the GNP concentration had a substantial impact on achieved DEF in GNP-based radiation therapy. CONCLUSION The results were in close agreement with some previous studies considering the effect of photon energy and GNP concentration on observed DEF. Application of GNP-based radiation therapy using kilovoltage beams is recommended.
DIRECT DEMONSTRATION OF THETA-POSITIVE ANTIGEN-BINDING CELLS, WITH ANTIGEN-INDUCED MOVEMENT OF THYMUS-DEPENDENT CELL RECEPTORS

Anti-θAKR antibody conjugated to fluorescein has been used in direct immunofluorescence tests to identify spleen θ+ (T) sheep erythrocyte rosette-forming cells in AKR mice. Specificity studies involving A and cogenic A/θAKR mice clearly demonstrated that the cell surface fluorescence and cytotoxicity produced by the antiserum is directed solely toward the θAKR alloantigen. Approximately ⅜ of rosette-forming and non-rosette-forming spleen cells were found to be θ+. The tendency for T cells to bind less antigen and the tendency for antigen-binding T cells to bear less θ than other spleen T cells, first suggested by other studies involving rosette-elimination by anti-θC3H plus complement, were confirmed by direct immunofluorescence. All AKR rosettes are specifically inhibitable by anti-immunoglobulin, including T rosettes. Antigen-induced redistribution of T cell receptors, analogous to that previously described for B cell receptors (16), occurs as readily in θ+RFC as in θ- RFC, without altering the symmetrical ring distribution of θAKR antigen.
An empirical investigation of ways in which some of the problems encountered by some dyslexics may be alleviated using computer techniques

This research describes the development of a highly configurable word processing environment to alleviate some of the difficulties encountered by dyslexics when producing and reading text. It also describes a pragmatic, empirical methodology, closely involving dyslexic users, which has proved highly effective.All dyslexic subjects tested were able to use the software to identify and store a configuration of background and foreground colour, text typeface and font, and spacing between characters, words and lines which they found easier to read than the default settings. Successful tests were also carried out to investigate the use of different appearances (font, colour etc.) to alleviate character recognition and reversal problems.
Forecasting Sales and Price for Existing Single-Family Homes: A VAR Model with Error Correction

In this paper we forecast demand for existing single-family housing in the United States. We first find that sales volume (sales) and median sales price (price) have unit roots. We then find that sales and price are cointegrated. We develop a vector autoregressive (VAR) model with error correction to further examine the causality between sales and price. We find that there exists a bidirectional causality relationship between sales and price. Price affects sales significantly and sales affects price weakly. With the VAR model we then forecast sales and price for existing single-family housing during the period 1991 to 1994 by using a recursive method. We find that our predictions for sales and price fit the actual data well.
FollowBias: Supporting Behavior Change toward Gender Equality by Networked Gatekeepers on Social Media

Networked gatekeepers on social media increasingly influence which people and groups receive media attention. Many unknowingly direct much greater attention to men than to women. Can technologies support these gatekeepers to follow their own values of equality? Theories of value consistency suggest that confronting people with inconsistencies between values and behavior can prompt behavior change. In this paper, we introduce FollowBias, a novel system that offers feedback on the percentage of women that users follow onTwitter. We conduct field deployments of FollowBias with 61 and 78 participants, exploring differences between their values and behavior, their explanations of those differences, and their changes in behavior. In the first, FollowBias users had a 45 percentage point greater chance of increasing the percentage of women followed over one week. In the second, we fail to find an effect. We also offer findings on political and ethical trade-offs in designing systems for behavior change toward equality.
Compressive sensing meets unreliable link: sparsest random scheduling for compressive data gathering in lossy WSNs

Compressive Sensing (CS) has been recognized as a promising technique to reduce and balance the transmission cost in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Existing efforts mainly focus on applying CS to reliable WSNs, namely, each wireless link is 100% reliable. However, our experimental results show that traditional compressive data gathering (CDG) could result in arbitrarily bad recovery performance, when the wireless links are lossy. In this paper, we study the impact of packet loss on compressive data gathering and ways to improve its robustness using sparsest random scheduling (SRS). The key idea of our scheme is to treat each sampling value as one CS measurement, which helps us to reduce the impact of packet loss on the recovery accuracy. Our scheme also outperforms the tradition CDG in reliable WSNs in that our scheme has significantly lowered transmission cost. To achieve this, we present a sparsest measurement matrix where each row has only one nonzero element. More importantly, we propose a representation basis to sparsify the gathering data, and prove that our measurement matrix satisfies the restricted isometric property (RIP) with high probability. Extensive experimental results show our scheme can recover the data accurately with packet loss ratio up to $15\%$, while traditional CDG can hardly recover the data under similar or even better conditions.
Metagenomic Reconstruction of Key Anaerobic Digestion Pathways in Municipal Sludge and Industrial Wastewater Biogas-Producing Systems

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a microbial process widely used to treat organic wastes. While the microbes involved in digestion of municipal sludge are increasingly well characterized, the taxonomic and functional compositions of AD digesters treating industrial wastewater have been understudied. This study examined metagenomes from a biogas-producing digester treating municipal sludge in Shek Wu Hui (SWH), Hong Kong and an industrial wastewater digester in Guangzhou (GZ), China, and compared their taxonomic composition and reconstructed biochemical pathways. Genes encoding carbohydrate metabolism and protein metabolism functions were overrepresented in GZ, while genes encoding functions related to fatty acids, lipids and isoprenoids were overrepresented in SWH, reflecting the plants’ feedstocks. Mapping of genera to functions in each community indicated that both digesters had a high level of functional redundancy, and a more even distribution of genera in GZ suggested that it was more functionally stable. While fermentation in both samples was dominated by Clostridia, SWH had an overrepresentation of Proteobacteria, including syntrophic acetogens, reflecting its more complex substrate. Considering the growing importance of biogas as an alternative fuel source, a detailed mechanistic understanding of AD is important and this report will be a basis for further study of industrial wastewater AD.
EVENT RECOGNITION FOR MEANINGFUL HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION IN A SMART ENVIRONMENT

The aim of this project is to monitor a room for the purposes of analysing the interactions and identities of a small set of individuals. We work with multiple uncalibrated sensors that observe a single environment and generate multimodal data streams. These streams are processed with the help of a generic client-server middleware called SmartFlow. Modules for visual motion detection, visual face tracking, visual face identification, visual opportunistic sensing, audio-based localization, and audio-based identification are implemented and integrated under SmartFlow to work in coordination across different platforms.
On Products of Random Matrices and certain Hecke Algebras associated with Groups of 2 × 2 Matrices

The determination of the density functions for products of random elements from specified classes of matrices is a basic problem in random matrix theory and is also of interest in theoretical physics. For connected simple Lie groups of 2 × 2 matrices and conjugacy and spherical classes a complete solution is given here. The problem/solution can be re-stated in terms of the structure of certain Hecke algebras attached to groups of 2 × 2 matrices.
Small World in Motion (SWIM): Modeling Communities in Ad-Hoc Mobile Networking

The complexity of social mobile networks, networks of devices carried by humans (e.g. sensors or PDAs) and communicating with short-range wireless technology, makes it hard protocol evaluation. A simple and efficient mobility model such as SWIM reflects correctly kernel properties of human movement and, at the same time, allows to evaluate accurately protocols in this context. In this paper we investigate the properties of SWIM, in particular how SWIM is able to generate social behavior among the nodes and how SWIM is able to model networks with a power-law exponential decay dichotomy of inter contact time and with complex sub-structures (communities) as the ones observed in the real data traces. We simulate three real scenarios and compare the synthetic data with real world data in terms of inter-contact, contact duration, number of contacts, and presence and structure of communities among nodes and find out a very good matching. By comparing the performance of BUBBLE, a community-based forwarding protocol for social mobile networks, on both real and synthetic data traces, we show that SWIM not only is able to extrapolate key properties of human mobility but also is very accurate in predicting performance of protocols based on social human sub-structures.
Overexpression of HAX-1 Protects Cardiac Myocytes From Apoptosis Through Caspase-9 Inhibition

Caspase-9 is a critical regulator of mitochondria-mediated apoptosis. We found that adult cardiac myocytes, but not nonmyocytes, have high caspase-9 expression, and exhibit relative resistance to caspase-9–induced cell death. Thus, we hypothesized that cardiac myocytes possess factors that resist apoptosis. Through a yeast two-hybrid screening of adult human heart cDNA library, we identified HS-1 associated protein-1 (HAX-1), a 35-kD BH-domain containing protein localized to the mitochondria as one of the molecules that interacts with caspase-9. Recombinant HAX-1 protein inhibited caspase-9 processing in a dose-dependent manner in a cell-free caspase activation assay. Overexpression of HAX-1 in adult cardiac myocytes conferred 30% protection from apoptosis as compared with the control. Suppression of HAX-1 expression using siRNA-HAX-1 resulted in significant cell death in adult cardiac myocytes, suggesting the importance of HAX-1 in cardiac myocyte resistance to apoptotic stimulation. On apoptotic stimulation, some caspase-9 translocated to the mitochondria and co-localized with HAX-1, confirming the spatial proximity of caspase-9 and HAX-1. In summary, HAX-1 is a newly identified anti-apoptotic factor and its mechanism of action is through caspase-9 inhibition.