Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Financing Firms in India

The authors examine the legal and business environments, financing channels, and governance mechanisms of various types of firms in India and compare them to those from other countries. Despite its English commonlaw origin, strong legal protection provided by the law, and a democratic government, corruption within India's legal system and government significantly weakens investor protection in practice. External financing of firms has been dominated by nonmarket sources of financing, while the characteristics of listed firms are similar to those from countries with weak investor protection. The evidence, including results based on a survey of small and medium-scale private firms, shows that alternative financing channels provide the most important source of funds. The authors also find that informal governance mechanisms, such as those based on reputation, trust, and relationships are more important than formal mechanisms (such as courts) in resolving disputes, overcoming corruption, and supporting growth.
The side effect of egalitarian norms: Reactive group distinctiveness, biological essentialism, and sexual prejudice

In the context of sexual prejudice, in which group distinctiveness motivation is particularly strong for men, three studies tested the hypothesis that egalitarian norms can intensify reactive distinctiveness motives, and then paradoxically increase intergroup differentiation and prejudice. Depending on the studies, the egalitarian norm was experimentally manipulated or induced and kept constant. Group distinctiveness was manipulated through scientific support for the theory that a person’s sexual orientation is determined by biological factors in terms of the extant biological differences (high distinctiveness) versus biological similarities (low distinctiveness) between heterosexual and gay people. Egalitarian norms increased men’s (but not women’s) intergroup differentiation (Study 1) and prejudice (Study 2) when group distinctiveness was low (as compared to high). This pattern was specific to men with high gender self-esteem, and appeared when the biological theory was framed in terms of intergroup differences rather than the uncontrollability of sexual orientation (Study 3).
Estimating Groundwater Recharge in the Semiarid Al-Khazir Gomal Basin, North Iraq

The mean annual recharge of Al-Khazir Gomal Basin was estimated as a basis for decision makers regarding the renewability and sustainability of groundwater. For this purpose, two approaches were used: hydrograph analysis and water table fluctuation (WTF). The long-term mean daily stream-flow records of Al-Khazir River (1969–1981) were used to estimate groundwater discharge by base-flow hydrograph separation and displacement recession curve methods. Four base-flow separation methods were used; one is the graphical separation method, and three are automated separation methods included in the web-based Hydrograph Analysis Tool. The annual recharge estimated by WTF was 111.6 mm/y, and the average annual recharge estimated by the four base-flow separation methods was 125.8 mm/y. Estimating recharge by the water table fluctuation method does not incorporate spatial variability contained in the whole watershed, because the specific yield did not represent the entire basin. However, the hydrograph analysis method can give a comprehensive estimation of the net integrated recharge for the entire watershed, which includes different recharge mechanisms. The displacement recession curve method deviates a lot (>30 mm/y) from the other methods, which indicates that this method may not be suitable to apply in such large watersheds.
A Prospective Metagenomic and Metabolomic Analysis of the Impact of Exercise and/or Whey Protein Supplementation on the Gut Microbiome of Sedentary Adults

The gut microbiota of humans is a critical component of functional development and subsequent health. It is important to understand the lifestyle and dietary factors that affect the gut microbiome and what impact these factors may have. Animal studies suggest that exercise can directly affect the gut microbiota, and elite athletes demonstrate unique beneficial and diverse gut microbiome characteristics. These characteristics are associated with levels of protein consumption and levels of physical activity. The results of this study show that increasing the fitness levels of physically inactive humans leads to modest but detectable changes in gut microbiota characteristics. For the first time, we show that regular whey protein intake leads to significant alterations to the composition of the gut virome. ABSTRACT Many components of modern living exert influence on the resident intestinal microbiota of humans with resultant impact on host health. For example, exercise-associated changes in the diversity, composition, and functional profiles of microbial populations in the gut have been described in cross-sectional studies of habitual athletes. However, this relationship is also affected by changes in diet, such as changes in dietary and supplementary protein consumption, that coincide with exercise. To determine whether increasing physical activity and/or increased protein intake modulates gut microbial composition and function, we prospectively challenged healthy but sedentary adults with a short-term exercise regime, with and without concurrent daily whey protein consumption. Metagenomics- and metabolomics-based assessments demonstrated modest changes in gut microbial composition and function following increases in physical activity. Significant changes in the diversity of the gut virome were evident in participants receiving daily whey protein supplementation. Results indicate that improved body composition with exercise is not dependent on major changes in the diversity of microbial populations in the gut. The diverse microbial characteristics previously observed in long-term habitual athletes may be a later response to exercise and fitness improvement. IMPORTANCE The gut microbiota of humans is a critical component of functional development and subsequent health. It is important to understand the lifestyle and dietary factors that affect the gut microbiome and what impact these factors may have. Animal studies suggest that exercise can directly affect the gut microbiota, and elite athletes demonstrate unique beneficial and diverse gut microbiome characteristics. These characteristics are associated with levels of protein consumption and levels of physical activity. The results of this study show that increasing the fitness levels of physically inactive humans leads to modest but detectable changes in gut microbiota characteristics. For the first time, we show that regular whey protein intake leads to significant alterations to the composition of the gut virome.
Parking control of a center-articulated mobile robot in presence of measurement noise

Articulated steering vehicles (with active joint) are preferable for navigation in narrow environments due to their high maneuverability. In order to achieve closed-loop control of a center-articulated mobile robot, feedback from the goal's position and orientation is needed. In practice, the measurement would be noisy. In this paper, we first investigate a kinematic model for center-articulated mobile robots, and propose a method to control a parking maneuver. Then, using a beacon-based positioning system, we show the effectiveness of this method in the presence of measurement noise.
Net primary productivity and rain‐use efficiency as affected by warming, altered precipitation, and clipping in a mixed‐grass prairie

Grassland productivity in response to climate change and land use is a global concern. In order to explore the effects of climate change and land use on net primary productivity (NPP), NPP partitioning [fBNPP, defined as the fraction of belowground NPP (BNPP) to NPP], and rain‐use efficiency (RUE) of NPP, we conducted a field experiment with warming (+3 °C), altered precipitation (double and half), and annual clipping in a mixed‐grass prairie in Oklahoma, USA since July, 2009. Across the years, warming significantly increased BNPP, fBNPP, and RUEBNPP by an average of 11.6%, 2.8%, and 6.6%, respectively. This indicates that BNPP was more sensitive to warming than aboveground NPP (ANPP) since warming did not change ANPP and RUEANPP much. Double precipitation stimulated ANPP, BNPP, and NPP but suppressed RUEANPP, RUEBNPP, and RUENPP while half precipitation decreased ANPP, BNPP, and NPP but increased RUEANPP, RUEBNPP, and RUENPP. Clipping interacted with altered precipitation in impacting RUEANPP, RUEBNPP, and RUENPP, suggesting land use could confound the effects of precipitation changes on ecosystem processes. Soil moisture was found to be a main factor in regulating variation in ANPP, BNPP, and NPP while soil temperature was the dominant factor influencing fBNPP. These findings suggest that BNPP is critical point to future research. Additionally, results from single‐factor manipulative experiments should be treated with caution due to the non‐additive interactive effects of warming with altered precipitation and land use (clipping).
The degraded broadcast channel with action-dependent states

In this paper we study the degraded broadcast channel with action dependent states and causal side information at the encoder. Two main models are studied: the case where the actions depend only on the messages, and the case where the actions can depend also on past values of the state. The latter model is referred to as actions with feedback. When the actions depend only on the messages, the full capacity region is derived. We then show that if the channel is physically degraded, then dependence of the actions on past values of the state does not increase its capacity region. We further demonstrate by an example that if the channel is stochastically degraded, action feedback can increase its capacity region. This situation resembles previous results on feedback in regular (state-independent) broadcast channels.
A Hierarchical Multi-label Propagation Algorithm for Overlapping Community Discovery in Social Networks

Multi-label propagation algorithms (MLPAs) have nearly linear time complexity, but the accuracy and stability still need to be improved when applied to overlapping community discovery. Inspired from the idea that boundary nodes are more probable to appear in the overlapping regions of different communities, a Hierarchical Multi-label Propagation Algorithm (HMPA) based on node hierarchy and label propagation gain for overlapping community discovery in social networks is proposed in this paper. HMPA consists of three stages. Firstly, HMPA utilizes LPAm to unfold initial non-overlapping communities. Secondly, a PageRank-like method is proposed to mark the hierarchy of each node according to the initial partition of the first stage. Finally, multi-label propagation algorithm considering label propagation gain between nodes, which is calculated based on node hierarchy, is introduced to refine overlapping region. Experimental results on both the synthetic and real world networks show that the proposed algorithm can effectively solve the problems of traditional multi-label propagation algorithms in terms of accuracy and stability.
Interferon release does not add discriminatory value to smear-negative HIV–tuberculosis algorithms

Clinical algorithms for evaluating HIV-infected individuals for tuberculosis (TB) prior to isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT) perform poorly, and interferon-&ggr; release assays (IGRAs) have moderate accuracy for active TB. It is unclear whether, when used as adjunct tests, IGRAs add any clinical discriminatory value for active TB diagnosis in the pre-IPT assessment. 779 sputum smear-negative HIV-infected persons, established on or about to commence combined antiretroviral therapy (ART), were screened for TB prior to IPT. Stepwise multivariable logistic regression was used to develop clinical prediction models. The discriminatory ability was assessed by receiver operator characteristic area under the curve (AUC). QuantiFERON®-TB Gold in-tube (QFT-GIT) was evaluated. The prevalence of smear-negative TB by culture was 6.4% (95% CI 4.9–8.4%). Used alone, QFT-GIT and the tuberculin skin test (TST) had comparable performance; the post-test probability of disease based on single negative tests was 3–4%. In a multivariable model, the QFT-GIT test did not improve the ability of a clinical algorithm, which included not taking ART, weight <60 kg, no prior history of TB, any one positive TB symptom/sign (cough ≥2 weeks) and CD4+ count <250 cells per mm3, to discriminate smear-negative culture-positive and -negative TB (72% to 74%; AUC comparison p=0.33). The TST marginally improved the discriminatory ability of the clinical model (to 77%, AUC comparison p=0.04). QFT-GIT does not improve the discriminatory ability of current TB screening clinical algorithms used to evaluate HIV-infected individuals for TB ahead of preventive therapy. Evaluation of new TB diagnostics for clinical relevance should follow a multivariable process that goes beyond test accuracy.
The Relative Biological Effectiveness for Carbon and Oxygen Ion Beams Using the Raster-Scanning Technique in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cell Lines

Background Aim of this study was to evaluate the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of carbon (12C) and oxygen ion (16O)-irradiation applied in the raster-scanning technique at the Heidelberg Ion beam Therapy center (HIT) based on clonogenic survival in hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines compared to photon irradiation. Methods Four human HCC lines Hep3B, PLC, HepG2 and HUH7 were irradiated with photons, 12C and 16O using a customized experimental setting at HIT for in-vitro trials. Cells were irradiated with increasing physical photon single doses of 0, 2, 4 and 6 Gy and heavy ionsingle doses of 0, 0.125, 0.5, 1, 2, 3 Gy (12C and 16O). SOBP-penetration depth and extension was 35 mm +/−4 mm and 36 mm +/−5 mm for carbon ions and oxygen ions respectively. Mean energy level and mean linear energy transfer (LET) were 130 MeV/u and 112 keV/um for 12C, and 154 MeV/u and 146 keV/um for 16O. Clonogenic survival was computated and realtive biological effectiveness (RBE) values were defined. Results For all cell lines and both particle modalities α- and β-values were determined. As expected, α-values were significantly higher for 12C and 16O than for photons, reflecting a steeper decline of the initial slope of the survival curves for high-LET beams. RBE-values were in the range of 2.1–3.3 and 1.9–3.1 for 12C and 16O, respectively. Conclusion Both irradiation with 12C and 16O using the rasterscanning technique leads to an enhanced RBE in HCC cell lines. No relevant differences between achieved RBE-values for 12C and 16O were found. Results of this work will further influence biological-adapted treatment planning for HCC patients that will undergo particle therapy with 12C or 16O.
The influence of viral RNA secondary structure on interactions with innate host cell defences

RNA viruses infecting vertebrates differ fundamentally in their ability to establish persistent infections with markedly different patterns of transmission, disease mechanisms and evolutionary relationships with their hosts. Although interactions with host innate and adaptive responses are complex and persistence mechanisms likely multi-factorial, we previously observed associations between bioinformatically predicted RNA secondary formation in genomes of positive-stranded RNA viruses with their in vivo fitness and persistence. To analyse this interactions functionally, we transfected fibroblasts with non-replicating, non-translated RNA transcripts from RNA viral genomes with differing degrees of genome-scale ordered RNA structure (GORS). Single-stranded RNA transcripts induced interferon-β mediated though RIG-I and PKR activation, the latter associated with rapid induction of antiviral stress granules. A striking inverse correlation was observed between induction of both cellular responses with transcript RNA structure formation that was independent of both nucleotide composition and sequence length. The consistent inability of cells to recognize RNA transcripts possessing GORS extended to downstream differences from unstructured transcripts in expression of TNF-α, other interferon-stimulated genes and induction of apoptosis. This functional association provides novel insights into interactions between virus and host early after infection and provides evidence for a novel mechanism for evading intrinsic and innate immune responses.
An Experimental Exploration of Marsaglia's xorshift Generators, Scrambled

Marsaglia proposed xorshift generators are a class of very fast, good-quality pseudorandom number generators. Subsequent analysis by Panneton and L'Ecuyer has lowered the expectations raised by Marsaglia's article, showing several weaknesses of such generators. Nonetheless, many of the weaknesses of xorshift generators fade away if their result is scrambled by a nonlinear operation (as originally suggested by Marsaglia). In this article we explore the space of possible generators obtained by multiplying the result of a xorshift generator by a suitable constant. We sample generators at 100 points of their state space and obtain detailed statistics that lead us to choices of parameters that improve on the current ones. We then explore for the first time the space of high-dimensional xorshift generators, following another suggestion in Marsaglia's article, finding choices of parameters providing periods of length 21024 − 1 and 24096 − 1. The resulting generators are of extremely high quality, faster than current similar alternatives, and generate long-period sequences passing strong statistical tests using only eight logical operations, one addition, and one multiplication by a constant.
Fixed-Parameter Tractability and Completeness I: Basic Results

For many fixed-parameter problems that are trivially soluable in polynomial-time, such as ($k$-)DOMINATING SET, essentially no better algorithm is presently known than the one which tries all possible solutions. Other problems, such as ($k$-)FEEDBACK VERTEX SET, exhibit fixed-parameter tractability: for each fixed $k$ the problem is soluable in time bounded by a polynomial of degree $c$, where $c$ is a constant independent of $k$. We establish the main results of a completeness program which addresses the apparent fixed-parameter intractability of many parameterized problems. In particular, we define a hierarchy of classes of parameterized problems $FPT \subseteq W[1] \subseteq W[2] \subseteq \cdots \subseteq W[SAT] \subseteq W[P]$ and identify natural complete problems for $W[t]$ for $t \geq 2$. (In other papers we have shown many problems complete for $W[1]$.) DOMINATING SET is shown to be complete for $W[2]$, and thus is not fixed-parameter tractable unless INDEPENDENT SET, CLIQUE, IRREDUNDANT SET and many other natural problems in $W[2]$ are also fixed-parameter tractable. We also give a compendium of currently known hardness results as an appendix.
The Perirhinal Cortex and Recognition Memory Interference

There has recently been an increase in interest in the effects of visual interference on memory processing, with the aim of elucidating the role of the perirhinal cortex (PRC) in recognition memory. One view argues that the PRC processes highly complex conjunctions of object features, and recent evidence from rodents suggests that these representations may be vital for buffering against the effects of pre-retrieval interference on object recognition memory. To investigate whether PRC-dependent object representations play a similar role in humans, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan neurologically healthy participants while they performed a novel interference-match-to-sample task. This paradigm was specifically designed to concurrently assess the impact of object versus spatial interference, on recognition memory for objects or scenes, while keeping constant the amount of object and scene information presented across all trials. Activity at retrieval was examined, within an anatomically defined PRC region of interest, according to the demand for object or scene memory, following a period of object compared with spatial interference. Critically, we found greater PRC activity for object memory following object interference, compared with object memory following scene interference, and no difference between object and scene interference for scene recognition. These data demonstrate a role for the human PRC during object recognition memory, following a period of object, but not scene interference, and emphasize the importance of representational content to mnemonic processing.
Electrophysiological Evidence for a Postperceptual Locus of Suppression during the Attentional Blink Time-based Attention and the Attentional Blink

When an observer detects a target in a rapid stream of visual stimuli, there is a brief period of time during which the detection of subsequent targets is impaired. In this study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from normal adult observers to determine whether this "attentional blink" reflects a suppression of perceptual processes or an impairment in postperceptual processes. No suppression was observed during the attentional blink interval for ERP components corresponding to sensory processing (the P1 and N1 components) or semantic analysis (the N400 component). However, complete suppression was observed for an ERP component that has been hypothesized to reflect the updating of working memory (the P3 component). Results indicate that the attentional blink reflects an impairment in a postpercep-tual stage of processing. Over the past several decades, the vast majority of studies of visual attention have examined the operation of attention across space. In the visual search task, for example, a target item must be detected within an array of distractor items that are presented at different locations from the target. In recent years, however, there has been growing interest in the operation of attention over time rather than over space. Time-based attention has typically been studied with the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task, which can be thought of as a time-based analog of the visual search task. Specifically, whereas visual search tasks typically require the observer to detect a target in an array of items presented simultaneously at different locations, RSVP tasks typically require the observer to detect a target in a sequence of items presented sequentially at a single location. Because visual search and RSVP are so analogous, it seems reasonable to suppose that the same mechanisms of attention would operate in both tasks. However, space plays a uniquely important role in the organization of the primate visual system, and several investigators have proposed that space also plays a unique role in visual attention (Hillyard & special attentional mechanisms may be used for space-based attention that are not available for time-based attention. In this study we addressed this issue by comparing the nature of attentional selection in a time-based attention task with previous findings from space-based attention tasks. Much of the recent interest in time-based attention derives from a phenomenon that was independently discovered by Broadbent and Broadbent (1987) and by Sperling and colleagues (Reeves & Sperling, 1986; Weichselgartner & Sperling, 1987) and that was …