Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Backlash Agent: A trading strategy based on Directional Change

Directional Change (DC) is a technique to summarize price movements in a financial market. According to the DC concept, data is sampled only when the magnitude of price change is significant according to the investor. Unlike with time series, DC samples data at irregular time intervals. In this paper, we propose a contrarian trading strategy that is based on the DC concept. We examine the profitability of our trading strategy using three currency pairs: EUR/CHF, GBP/CHF and EUR/USD. The results show that our proposed trading strategy is profitable with Alpha over than 10 in some cases. However, counting the bid and ask prices can decrease considerably the profits under particular settings.
Glycoform Modification of Secreted Recombinant Glycoproteins through Kifunensine Addition during Transient Vacuum Agroinfiltration

Kifunensine, a potent and selective inhibitor of class I α-mannosidases, prevents α-mannosidases I from trimming mannose residues on glycoproteins, thus resulting in oligomannose-type glycans. We report for the first time that through one-time vacuum infiltration of kifunensine in plant tissue, N-linked glycosylation of a recombinant protein transiently produced in whole-plants shifted completely from complex-type to oligomannose-type. Fc-fused capillary morphogenesis protein 2 (CMG2-Fc) containing one N-glycosylation site on the Fc domain, produced in Nicotiana benthamiana whole plants, served as a model protein. The CMG2-Fc fusion protein was produced transiently through vacuum agroinfiltration, with and without kifunensine at a concentration of 5.4 µM in the agroinfiltration suspension. The CMG2-Fc N-glycan profile was determined using LC-MS/MS with a targeted dynamic multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) method. The CMG2-Fc expression level in the infiltrated plant tissue and the percentage of oligomannose-type N-glycans for kifunensine treated plants was 874 mg/kg leaf fresh weight (FW) and 98.2%, respectively, compared to 717 mg/kg leaf FW and 2.3% for untreated plants. Oligomannose glycans are amenable to in vitro enzymatic modification to produce more human-like N-glycan structures that are preferred for the production of HIV-1 viral vaccine and certain monoclonal antibodies. This method allows glycan modifications using a bioprocessing approach without compromising protein yield or modification of the primary sequence, and could be expanded to other small molecule inhibitors of glycan-processing enzymes. For recombinant protein targeted for secretion, kifunensine treatment allows collection of glycoform-modified target protein from apoplast wash fluid (AWF) with minimal plant-specific complex N-glycan at higher starting purity and concentration than in whole-leaf extract, thus simplifying the downstream processing.
Analyzing the robustness of general video game playing agents

This paper presents a study on the robustness and variability of performance of general video game-playing agents. Agents analyzed includes those that won the different legs of the 2014 and 2015 General Video Game AI Competitions, and two sample agents distributed with its framework. Initially, these agents are run in four games and ranked according to the rules of the competition. Then, different modifications to the reward signal of the games are proposed and noise is introduced in either the actions executed by the controller, their forward model, or both. Results show that it is possible to produce a significant change in the rankings by introducing the modifications proposed here. This is an important result because it enables the set of human-authored games to be automatically expanded by adding parameter-varied versions that add information and insight into the relative strengths of the agents under test. Results also show that some controllers perform well under almost all conditions, a testament to the robustness of the GVGAI benchmark.
Women's health and health care in Vietnam

Women made up more than half of the Vietnam’s population (nearly 47 million or 50.7% of the total population in 2016). The number of female employees in Vietnam in 2016 was 26.4 million accounting for 48.4% of the country’s workforce (Vietnam General Statistics Office, 2017). Women’s health and health care in Vietnam have been significantly improved over time. Maternal mortality in Vietnam has decreased from 233 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 69 per 100,000 live births in 2009, and then again to approximately 50 per 100,000 live births in 2015 (InterAgency Group, 2015). Life expectancy at birth of Vietnamese women reached 76.1 years in 2016, higher than that of men (70.8 years) (Vietnam General Statistics Office, 2017). The improvement in health indicators for women has been impressive, but there still exist inequities in women’s health and health care in Vietnam (United Nations Development Programme). To tackle the inequity problems, a deep understanding of the current situation of women’s health and health care in Vietnam is needed by policy makers, social and health practitioners as well as by the public. The findings from this set of authors provide further insights into today’s women and health care issues in Vietnam. Chuong et al., based on the analyses of data from the Vietnam Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2000, 2006, 2011, and 2014, found that the coverage of antenatal and skilled birth attendance both increased over time in Vietnam. However, improvements in antenatal care and skilled birth attendance in Vietnam have been uneven across different segments of the population, and the degrees of inequity are likely to increase (Chuong et al., 2018). Inequity in health service utilization was also discovered from a study by Hanh et al., which showed that about 28.2% of the migrants having sex had not used any contraceptive method. Contraceptive use was significantly associated with age, education, private companies, and income (Hanh, Tuan, Anh, Ha, & Anh, 2018). Many women in Vietnam are still suffering from communicable diseases, especially reproductive tract problems and HIV/AIDS. Le et al. revealed that about
Rab11 and its effector Rip11 participate in regulation of insulin granule exocytosis

Rab GTPases and their effectors play important roles in membrane trafficking between cellular compartments in eukaryotic cells. In the present study, we examined the roles of Rab11B and its effectors in insulin secretion in pancreatic β‐cells. In the mouse insulin‐secreting cell line MIN6, Rab11 was co‐localized with insulin‐containing granules, and over‐expression of the GTP‐ or the GDP‐bound form of Rab11B significantly inhibited regulated secretion, indicating involvement of Rab11B in regulated insulin secretion. To determine the downstream signal of Rab11‐mediated insulin secretion, we examined the effects of various Rab11‐interacting proteins on insulin secretion, and found that Rip11 is involved in cAMP‐potentiated insulin secretion but not in glucose‐induced insulin secretion. Analyses by immunocytochemistry and subcellular fractionation revealed Rip11 to be co‐localized with insulin granules. The inhibitory effect of the Rip11 mutant was not altered in MIN6 cells lacking Epac2, which mediates protein kinase A (PKA)‐independent potentiation of insulin secretion, compared with wild‐type MIN6 cells. In addition, Rip11 was found to be phosphorylated by PKA in MIN6 cells. The present study shows that both Rab11 and its effector Rip11 participate in insulin granule exocytosis and that Rip11, as a substrate of PKA, regulates the potentiation of exocytosis by cAMP in pancreatic β‐cells.
Thermoanalytical studies of carbamazepine: hydration/dehydration, thermal decomposition, and solid phase transitions

Carbamazepine (CBZ), a widely used anticonvulsant drug, can crystallize and exhibits four polymorphic forms and one dihydrate. Anhydrous CBZ can spontaneously absorb water and convert to the hydrate form whose different crystallinity leads to lower biological activity. The present study was concerned to the possibility of recovering the hydrated form by heating. The thermal behavior of spontaneously hydrated carbamazepine was investigated by TG/DTG-DTA and DSC in dynamic atmospheres of air and nitrogen, which revealed that the spontaneous hydration of this pharmaceutical resulted in a Form III hydrate with 1.5 water molecules. After dehydration, this anhydrous Form III converted to Form I, which melted and decomposed in a single event, releasing isocyanic acid, as shown by evolved gas analysis using TG-FTIR. Differential scanning calorimetry analyses revealed that Form III melted and crystallized as Form I, and that subsequent cooling cycles only generated Form I by crystallization. Solid state decomposition kinetic studies showed that there was no change in the substance after the elimination of water by heating to 120 °C. Activation energies of 98 ± 2 and 93 ± 2 kJ mol-1 were found for the hydrated and dried samples, respectively, and similar profiles of activation energy as a function of conversion factor were observed for these samples.
Is Lymph Node Size a Reliable Factor for Estimating Lymph Node Metastasis in Early Gastric Cancer?

Purpose Pre-operative lymph node (LN) size is a valuable parameter for determining treatment strategy for gastric cancer. However, a correlation between LN size and metastasis has not been established. Materials and Methods Thirty-six LN-positive (LNP) and matched 36 LN-negative (LNN) patients were included, and pathology slides of the LNs of these patients were reviewed. All the LNs were measured along the long-axis (LA) and short-axis (SA), manually. Results Average retrieved LNs were 37.3±19.8 and 40.5±11.6 in the LNN and LNP groups, respectively. In total 2,800 LNs, including 136 metastatic LNs (MLNs) and 2,664 non-metastatic LNs (nMLNs), were evaluated. Mean length was significantly more in MLNs along both, the LA and SA (MLN_LA vs. nMLN_LA: 4.97±3.84 vs. 3.37±2.40 mm, MLN_SA vs. nMLN_SA: 3.86±3.19 vs. 2.43±1.59 mm; P<0.001). However, 92.6% (126/136) and 95.6% (130/136) of MLNs were <10 mm along the LA and SA, respectively. In addition, only 22.2% of the LNP group exhibited an MLN as the largest LN. Conclusions Pre-operative multi-detector computed tomography has limited ability in estimating the presence of metastasis in LNs because most MLNs are less than 10 mm, and only a small proportion of the LNP group exhibits an MLN as the largest MLN.
Phase registration in a gallery improving gait authentication

In this paper, we propose a method of inertial sensor-based gait authentication by inter-period phase registration of an owner's gallery. In spite of the importance for gait authentication of constructing a gallery of phase-registered gait patterns, previous implementations just relied on simple methods of period detection based on heuristic knowledge such as local peaks/valleys or local auto-correlation of the gait signals. Consequently, we propose to improve a gait gallery by incorporating a phase registration technique which globally optimizes inter-period phase consistency in an energy minimization framework. However, the previous phase registration technique suffers from a phase distortion problem due to ambiguities in the combination of a periodic signal function and a phase evolution function. We present a linear phase evolution prior to constructing an undistorted gait signal for better matching performance. Experiments using real gait signals from 32 subjects show that the proposed methods outperform the latest methods in the field.
TREE SPECIES CLASSIFICATION OF INDIVIDUAL TREES IN SWEDEN BY COMBINING HIGH RESOLUTION LASER DATA WITH HIGH RESOLUTION NEAR-INFRARED DIGITAL IMAGES

The aim of this research is to make identification of tree species of individual trees more efficient through combining high resolution laser data with high resolution near-infrared images. Identification of the classes Scots pine (Pinus silvestris L.), Norway spruce (Picea abies L.), and deciduous trees was chosen because these groups are the most important for forest applications in Sweden. Tree species classification is the last step in a method that has the following steps: (1) delineation of individual tree crowns using laser data, (2) estimation of tree height and crown area using laser data, and finally (3) species identification of the delineated tree crowns by adding data from near-infrared digital images. The tests were performed in southern Sweden at the Remningstorp test site (lat. 58°30’N, long. 13°40’E). The laser measurements had a density of seven laser measurements per square meter and the nearinfrared images had a pixel size of 10 cm. On ground, tree position and stem diameter were measured and tree species recorded for trees within a Scots pine dominated, a Norway spruce dominated, and a birch dominated forest stand. Near-infrared images were used for classification. The camera position and orientation of each image was used to map laser generated tree segments to the corresponding pixels in the aerial image. The results indicate that near-infrared images add useful information for tree species classification.
Nutritional Status Assessment of Internally Displaced Children in “Dream City”- Iraq

Malnutrition is one of the major public health challenges in developing countries especially those experiencing security instability. Not much is known of the nutritional status of displaced children in Iraq. The objective of this study was to assess the nutritional status of internally displaced children in Dream city-Salaheddin-Iraq to provide a validated baseline information for further humanitarian responses to help those children. The “Dream city” in Salaheddin governorate was chosen for it represents a large collection of displaced families. A total of 788 children (less than 5 years) was surveyed. Height, weight and mid-upper arm circumference were measured. Under-nutrition was found in 19.2% of them according to body mass index, and 19.5% when using mid-upper arm circumference index. The prevalence of wasting was 14.6% and severe wasting 6.9%. There was a significant association between under-nutrition and number of the children in the family, age of the child, and father’s and mother’s education. A noticeable percentage of children were hardly consuming meat, eggs or fruits (only once or none per week). About one child in every five displaced children is undernourished. The percentiles of different anthropometric measurements for height, weight, body mass index, and mid upper arm circumference for those children were below the standard measurements reported by WHO and NCHS growth charts for the corresponding age.
Price Discovery Using a Double Auction

We investigate equilibrium in the buyer's bid double auction (BBDA) in a model with correlated signals and either private or interdependent values. Using a combination of theorems and numerical experiments, we demonstrate that simple equilibria exist even in small markets. Moreover, we bound traders' strategic behavior as a function of market size and derive rates of convergence to zero of (i) inefficiency in the allocation caused by strategic behavior and (ii) the error in the market price as an estimate of the rational expectations price. These rates together with numerical experiments suggest that strategic behavior is inconsequential even in small markets in its effect on allocational efficiency and information aggregation. The BBDA thus simultaneously accomplishes both the informational and allocational goals that markets ideally fulfill; it does this perfectly in large markets and approximately in small markets, with the error attributable mainly to the smallness itself and not the strategic behavior of traders.
Incorporation of The Nihility Medium to Improve The Cylindrical Invisibility Cloak

─ Two dimensional cylindrical wave expansion method is used to analyze the cylindrical invisible nihility cloak. Ideal model of the cloak is set up to solve the problem and it is observed that a perfect equivalence with the ideal situation of the cloak can be achieved by using nihility medium at perturbed void region of the geometry. Also it is observed that the use of nihility medium at δ, the convergence rate is independent of the type of incident field. Both the transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) cases have been discussed. Index Terms – Convergence, nihility, transverse electric, transverse magnetic, and wave expansion.
The properties of hydrogen physisorption in carbon nanotube arrays

The hydrogen physisorption in carbon nanotube arrays is simulated by grand canonical Monte Carlo method at room temperature and 100 Atm. We find that H_2 molecules can be adsorbed inside and outside SWCNTs (Single-walled Carbon Nanotubes), and the number density of H_2 outside SWCNTs is higher than that inside SWCNTs, and a square array is finer than a triangular array for hydrogen physisorption in carbon nanotube arrays. Further, we interpret them theoretically.
Studies on the Effect of the Capping Materials on the Spherical Gold Nanoparticles Catalytic Activity

Size-controlled gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were prepared in the presence of different capping materials (sodium citrate, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), and chitosan). The results obtained suggest that the AuNPs were synthesized with different particle size, which is controlled by changing the molar ratio between sodium citrate, (CTAB), and chitosan to Au (III). The catalytic activities of the AuNPs with different capping materials were studied for 4-nitrophenol reduction by NaBH4 as a model reaction. AuNPs with different capping materials is comparable from the value of the apparent rate constant of 4-nitrophenol reduction (0.6 × 10–3, 1.9 × 10–3, and 2.4 × 10–3 s–1) for sodium citrate, CTAB and chitosan. From the results, it is concluded that, AuNPs catalyzed the electron transfer process between and nitro compounds with all the capping materials used AuNPs capped by chitosan were more active for the reduction than the other two.
Biological filtration for BOM and particle removal : a critical review

ore stringent water quality regulations and the increasingly widespread use of ozonation have focused new attention on biological filtration of drinking water. Benefits of biofiltration include decrease of the potential for bacterial regrowth, reduction of chlorinated disinfection byproducts (DBPs) formed during secondary disinfection, reduction of chlorine demand, and decrease of the corrosion potential.1 Additionally, biofiltration has the potential to control taste and odor–causing compounds and other micropollutants of health and aesthetic concern.2–5 Several authors have examined and reviewed biological treatment of drinking water.1,6–9 The use of biologically active rapid filters for the production of biologically stable water has been recognized in Western Biological filtration, an important process step for the production of microbially safe and aesthetically pleasing drinking water, has attracted increased attention within the water industry. In many cases, the most economical way to implement biological rapid filtration is to achieve biodegradable organic matter (BOM) removal and particle removal within the same filter unit, i.e., single-stage biological filtration. This requires optimization of the filtration process, keeping in mind both treatment goals: BOM and particle removal. This article presents a critical review of the key parameters and engineering variables influencing the biological performance, as well as the conventional performance, of biologically active filters. Several areas requiring further research have been identified.
Stratification substantially reduces behavioral variability in the hypoxic–ischemic stroke model

Stroke is the most common cause of long‐term disability, and there are no known drug therapies to improve recovery after stroke. To understand how successful recovery occurs, dissect candidate molecular pathways, and test new therapies, there is a need for multiple distinct mouse stroke models, in which the parameters of recovery after stroke are well defined. Hypoxic–ischemic stroke is a well‐established stroke model, but behavioral recovery in this model is not well described. We therefore examined a panel of behavioral tests to see whether they could be used to quantify functional recovery after hypoxic–ischemic stroke. We found that in C57BL/6J mice this stroke model produces high mortality (approximately one‐third) and variable stroke sizes, but is fast and easy to perform on a large number of mice. Horizontal ladder test performance on day 1 after stroke was highly and reproducibly correlated with stroke size (P < 0.0001, R 2 = 0.7652), and allowed for functional stratification of mice into a group with >18% foot faults and 2.1‐fold larger strokes. This group exhibited significant functional deficits for as long as 3 weeks on the horizontal ladder test and through the last day of testing on automated gait analysis (33 days), rotarod (30 days), and elevated body swing test (EBST) (36 days). No deficits were observed in an automated activity chamber. We conclude that stratification by horizontal ladder test performance on day 1 identifies a subset of mice in which functional recovery from hypoxic–ischemic stroke can be studied.
How Old Are Sunflowers? A Molecular Clock Analysis of Key Divergences in the Origin and Diversification of Helianthus (Asteraceae)

Premise of research. For many questions in evolutionary ecology, it is quite valuable to have an estimate of the span of geologic time over which a group of species has arisen and diversified. This study uses a molecular clock approach to generate a first estimate of key divergences in the evolutionary history of the genus Helianthus, which to date has lacked such an estimate. Methodology. Divergence time analysis was performed with well-resolved phylogenies of Asteraceae and Helianthus in a stepping-stone manner using the RelTime maximum likelihood method with a variety of available macrofossil, fossil pollen, and molecular clock calibrations derived from the literature. Pivotal results. Mean estimates from nine individual calibration scenarios time the divergence of Helianthus from the sister genus Phoebanthus at between 2.47 and 5.41 Ma. Composite calibration incorporating all literature estimates time this divergence at 3.63 Ma, with a 95% confidence interval spanning 0–8.26 Ma. Subsequent diversification within Helianthus is therefore confined to the last few million years. Conclusions. These findings place the origin and diversification of Helianthus into the temporal context of the Pliocene expansion of open habitats across North America and the subsequent vegetation fluctuations of the Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles.