Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Marginal Abatement Cost Curves and the Optimal Timing of Mitigation Measures

Decision makers facing abatement targets need to decide which abatement measures to implement, and in which order. Measure-explicit marginal abatement cost curves depict the cost and abating potential of available mitigation options. Using a simple intertemporal optimization model, we demonstrate why this information is not su_cient to design emission reduction strategies. Because the measures required to achieve ambitious emission reductions cannot be implemented overnight, the optimal strategy to reach a short-term target depends on longer-term targets. For instance, the best strategy to achieve European's -20% by 2020 target may be to implement some expensive, high-potential, and long-to-implement options required to meet the -75% by 2050 target. Using just the cheapest abatement options to reach the 2020 target can create a carbonintensive lock-in and make the 2050 target too expensive to reach. Designing mitigation policies requires information on the speed at which various measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions can be implemented, in addition to the information on the costs and potential of such measures provided by marginal abatement cost curves.
Evidence for Reduced Drug Susceptibility without Emergence of Major Protease Mutations following Protease Inhibitor Monotherapy Failure in the SARA Trial

Background Major protease mutations are rarely observed following failure with protease inhibitors (PI), and other viral determinants of failure to PI are poorly understood. We therefore characterized Gag-Protease phenotypic susceptibility in subtype A and D viruses circulating in East Africa following viral rebound on PIs. Methods Samples from baseline and treatment failure in patients enrolled in the second line LPV/r trial SARA underwent phenotypic susceptibility testing. Data were expressed as fold-change in susceptibility relative to a LPV-susceptible reference strain. Results We cloned 48 Gag-Protease containing sequences from seven individuals and performed drug resistance phenotyping from pre-PI and treatment failure timepoints in seven patients. For the six patients where major protease inhibitor resistance mutations did not emerge, mean fold-change EC50 to LPV was 4.07 fold (95% CI, 2.08–6.07) at the pre-PI timepoint. Following viral failure the mean fold-change in EC50 to LPV was 4.25 fold (95% CI, 1.39–7.11, p = 0.91). All viruses remained susceptible to DRV. In our assay system, the major PI resistance mutation I84V, which emerged in one individual, conferred a 10.5-fold reduction in LPV susceptibility. One of the six patients exhibited a significant reduction in susceptibility between pre-PI and failure timepoints (from 4.7 fold to 9.6 fold) in the absence of known major mutations in protease, but associated with changes in Gag: V7I, G49D, R69Q, A120D, Q127K, N375S and I462S. Phylogenetic analysis provided evidence of the emergence of genetically distinct viruses at the time of treatment failure, indicating ongoing viral evolution in Gag-protease under PI pressure. Conclusions Here we observe in one patient the development of significantly reduced susceptibility conferred by changes in Gag which may have contributed to treatment failure on a protease inhibitor containing regimen. Further phenotype-genotype studies are required to elucidate genetic determinants of protease inhibitor failure in those who fail without traditional resistance mutations whilst PI use is being scaled up globally.
New Architectures for Radio-Frequency DC – DC Power Conversion

This document proposes two new architectures for switched-mode dc–dc power conversion. The proposed architectures enable dramatic increases in switching frequency to be realized while preserving features critical in practice, including regulation of the output across a wide load range and high light-load efficiency. This is achieved in part by how the energy conversion and regulation functions are partitioned. The structure and control approach of the new architectures are described, along with representative implementation methods. The design and experimental evaluation of prototype systems with cells operating at 100 MHz are also described. It is anticipated that the proposed approaches and ones like them will allow substantial improvements in the size of switching power converters and, in some cases, will permit their integrated fabrication.
Organisational resilience after the Canterbury earthquakes : a contextual approach.

Following a disaster, an organisation’s ability to recover is influenced by its internal capacities, but also by the people, organisations, and places to which it is connected. Current approaches to organisational resilience tend to focus predominantly on an organisation’s internal capacities and do not adequately consider the place-based contexts and networks in which it is embedded. This thesis explores how organisations’ connections may both hinder and enable organisational resilience. Organisations in the Canterbury region of New Zealand experienced significant and repeated disruptions as a result of two major earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks throughout 2010 and 2011. This thesis draws upon 32 case studies of organisations located in three severely damaged town centres in Canterbury to assess the influence that organisations’ place-based connections and relational networks had on their post-earthquake trajectories. The research has four objectives: 1) to examine the ways organisations connected to their local contexts both before and after the earthquakes, 2) to explore the characteristics of the formal and informal networks organisations used to aid their response and recovery, 3) to identify the ways organisations’ connections to their local contexts and support networks influenced their ability to recover following the earthquakes, and finally, 4) to develop approaches to assess resilience that consider these extra-organisational connections. The thesis contests the fiction that organisations recover and adapt independently from their contexts following disasters. Although organisations have a set of internal capacities that enable their post-disaster recovery, they are embedded within external structures that constrain and enable their adaptive options following a disaster. An approach which considers organisations’ contexts and networks as potential sources of organisational resilience has both conceptual and practical value. Refining our understanding of the influence of extra-organisational connections can improve our ability to explain variability in organisational outcomes following disasters and foster new ways to develop and manage organisational resilience.
Medical education in Vietnam

Background: Vietnam is one of the most populous countries in Southeast Asia, yet it displays an unsettling lack of doctors. Aims: Medical education is an important factor contributing to this issue, yet little is known about the system currently in place in Vietnam. Methods: Through an extensive literary search of medical schools’ and Ministry of Health's data, we have examined the current medical education system in Vietnam. Results: At present, there are 12 medical universities, and the general curriculum at each university follows a national framework but tends to vary from university to university. Medical training lasts either 4 or 6 years, with competitive graduates attending residency programs following graduation. While examinations are required to graduate, the lack of a national licensing exam makes it difficult to ensure that a nation-wide standard of quality exists, both at the medical universities themselves as well as amongst the doctors graduating from them. Conclusions: The development and institution of a national exam would introduce a standard of training throughout Vietnam's medical education system. Further, a substantial portion of a doctor's education is in subjects that are loosely related to medicine. When looking forward it will be important to evaluate whether or not these non-medical subjects detract from the quality of medical training.
Efficient and Provably Secure IP Multimedia Subsystem Authentication for UMTS

In a Universal Mobile telecommunications system IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), even when an IMS subscriber has passed the packet-switch domain authentication, the IMS subscriber's identity must be confirmed by the IMS authentication again before accessing IMS services. Both the packet-switch domain and the IMS authentications are necessary for the IMS subscriber. This is referred to as a two-pass authentication. However, the packet-switch domain authentication is carried out by the authentication and key agreement (AKA) of the 3rd generation partnership projects (3GPP), called 3GPP AKA; the IMS authentication is carried out by IMS AKA. Since IMS AKA is based on 3GPP AKA, almost all of the operations are the same. It is inefficient because almost all the involved steps in the two-pass authentication are duplicated. Hence, the one-pass authentication was proposed to increase the efficiency of the IMS authentication. Unfortunately, the one-pass authentication has some security problems and loses the mutual AKA capabilities. Therefore, in this paper, an evolutionary IMS AKA (E-IMS AKA) in the IMS authentication is proposed to replace the IMS AKA. E-IMS AKA not only adheres to the security requirements of IMS AKA, but also maintains the efficiency of the one-pass authentication method.
Silymarin Activates c-AMP Phosphodiesterase and Stimulates Insulin Secretion in a Glucose-Dependent Manner in HIT-T15 Cells

Silymarin (SIL) is a flavonoid extracted from milk thistle seed that has been reported to decrease hyperglycemia in people with type 2 diabetes (T2D). However, it is not known whether SIL has direct secretory effects on β-cells. Using the β-cell line HIT-T15, SIL was shown to decrease intracellular peroxide levels and to augment glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS). However, the latter was observed using a concentration range of 25–100 µM, which was too low to affect endogenous peroxide levels. The stimulatory effect of SIL dissipated at higher concentrations (100–200 µM), and mild apoptosis was observed. The smaller concentrations of SIL also decreased cAMP phosphodiesterase activity in a Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent manner. The stimulatory effects of SIL on GSIS were inhibited by three different inhibitors of exocytosis, indicating that SIL’s mechanism of stimulating GSIS operated via closing β-cell K-ATP channels, and perhaps more distal sites of action involving calcium influx and G-proteins. We concluded that augmentation of GSIS by SIL can be observed at concentrations that also inhibit cAMP phosphodiesterase without concomitant lowering of intracellular peroxides.
TiO 2 Nanotube Arrays Annealed in N 2 for Efficient Lithium-Ion Intercalation

Anatase titania nanotube arrays were fabricated by means of anodization and annealed at 300, 400, and 500 °C in N 2. Lithium-ion intercalation measurements revealed that annealing in nitrogen resulted in much enhanced lithium-ion insertion capacity and improved cyclic stability. TiO 2 nanotube arrays annealed at 300 °C exhibited the best lithium-ion intercalation property with an initial high discharge capacity up to 240 mA·h/g at a high current density of 320 mA/g. The excellent discharge capacity at a high charge/discharge rate could be attributed to the large surface area of the nanotube arrays and a short facile diffusion path for lithium-ion intercalation as well as improved electrical conductivity. As the annealing temperature increased, the discharge capacity decreased, but the cyclic stability improved; 400 °C annealed TiO 2 nanotube arrays possessed an initial discharge capacity of 163 mA·h/g and retained 145 mA·h/g at the 50th cycle. The relationship between the annealing conditions, microstruct.
Predicting the 2011 Dutch Senate Election Results with Twitter

To what extend can one use Twitter in opinion polls for political elections? Merely counting Twitter messages mentioning political party names is no guarantee for obtaining good election predictions. By improving the quality of the document collection and by performing sentiment analysis, predictions based on entity counts in tweets can be considerably improved, and become nearly as good as traditionally obtained opinion polls.
Cost of Illness for Patients with Arthritis Receiving Multidisciplinary Rehabilitation Care

Purpose. To describe healthcare consumption and costs prior to, during, and after multidisciplinary rehabilitation due to arthritis. Methods. 306 patients (age 18–75 years) with arthritis scheduled for multidisciplinary rehabilitation care in 9 rehabilitation centres and 4 rheumatology hospital departments were included and followed for 6 months. Costs were estimated in Euros (€) for the total sample and five clinical subgroups. Results. Healthcare costs ranged from €3,033 to €91,336 and were significantly higher at hospital departments compared to rehabilitation centres: €9,722 (SD 5,406) and €4,250 (SD 1,040). While total costs prior to and after rehabilitation were stable for those receiving rehabilitation at a hospital, there was a significant increase in costs for those being at a rehabilitation centre. Total mean costs were more than doubled when including social costs: from €32,410 (95% CI 20,074–37,017) to €51,491 (95% CI 49,055–61,657). Conclusions. Healthcare and social costs for arthritis rehabilitation were substantial both before and after a rehabilitation stay. It is important to explore methods to reduce the length of rehabilitation stay and production loss connected to rehabilitation of patients with rheumatic disease.
Structural and Functional Analysis of the Type III Secretion System from Pseudomonas fluorescens Q8r1-96

ABSTRACT Pseudomonas fluorescens Q8r1-96 represents a group of rhizosphere strains responsible for the suppressiveness of agricultural soils to take-all disease of wheat. It produces the antibiotic 2,4-diacetylphloroglucinol and aggressively colonizes the roots of cereal crops. In this study, we analyzed the genome of Q8r1-96 and identified a type III protein secretion system (T3SS) gene cluster that has overall organization similar to that of the T3SS gene cluster of the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. We also screened a collection of 30 closely related P. fluorescens strains and detected the T3SS genes in all but one of them. The Q8r1-96 genome contained ropAA and ropM type III effector genes, which are orthologs of the P. syringae effector genes hopAA1-1 and hopM1, as well as a novel type III effector gene designated ropB. These type III effector genes encoded proteins that were secreted in culture and injected into plant cells by both P. syringae and Q8r1-96 T3SSs. The Q8r1-96 T3SS was expressed in the rhizosphere, but mutants lacking a functional T3SS were not altered in their rhizosphere competence. The Q8r1-96 type III effectors RopAA, RopB, and RopM were capable of suppressing the hypersensitive response and production of reactive oxygen species, two plant immune responses.
Analysis of the Endwinding Cooling Effects in TEFC Induction Motors

This paper deals with the endwinding cooling problems of totally enclosed fan-cooled (TEFC) induction motors. In order to obtain information about the phenomena involved in the motor end space, three "ad hoc" prototypes have been built. The complete test-bench setup, together with the followed test procedures, is reported in detail. The measurement results have shown that all the motor-part overtemperatures (winding, endwindings, stator lamination, and external motor frame) decreasing, with the inner air speed increasing. The measured motor overtemperatures and losses allow the thermal-resistance identification of a simplified thermal model suitable to describe the thermal behaviors of the prototypes. By the endwinding-to-motor frame thermal resistance, the related heat-exchange coefficients have been evaluated as a function of the rotor speed. The proposed procedure allows separating the forced-convection contribution by the other thermal-exchange phenomena that occur in the end-space regions. The obtained heat-transfer coefficients are in agreement with the results reported in the past literature.
Physical activity and bronchial hyperresponsiveness: European Community Respiratory Health Survey II

Background: Identification of the risk factors for bronchial hyperresponsiveness (BHR) would increase the understanding of the causes of asthma. The relationship between physical activity and BHR in men and women aged 28.0–56.5 years randomly selected from 24 centres in 11 countries participating in the European Community Respiratory Health Survey II was investigated. Methods: 5158 subjects answered questionnaires about physical activity and performed BHR tests. Participants were asked about the frequency and duration of usual weekly exercise resulting in breathlessness or sweating. BHR was defined as a decrease in forced expiratory volume in 1 s of at least 20% of its post-saline value for a maximum methacholine dose of 2 mg. Results: Both frequency and duration of physical activity were inversely related to BHR. The prevalence of BHR in subjects exercising ⩽1, 2–3 and ⩾4 times a week was 14.5%, 11.6% and 10.9%, respectively (p<0.001). The corresponding odds ratios were 1.00, 0.78 (95% CI 0.62 to 0.99) and 0.69 (95% CI 0.50 to 0.94) after controlling for potential confounding factors. The frequency of BHR in subjects exercising <1 h, 1–3 h and ⩾4 h a week was 15.9%, 10.9% and 10.7%, respectively (p<0.001). The corresponding adjusted odds ratios were 1.00, 0.70 (95% CI 0.57 to 0.87) and 0.67 (95% CI 0.50 to 0.90). Physical activity was associated with BHR in all studied subgroups. Conclusions: These results suggest that BHR is strongly and independently associated with decreased physical activity. Further studies are needed to determine the mechanisms underlying this association.
The relationship between motivation, perceived stress and academic achievement in students

Many studies point out that students are often prone to stress, which can have several negative impacts on their health and the way they accomplish tasks. Furthermore, not only perceived stress is an important factor students are faced with during their academic career and which may influence their academic performance. Many studies indicated that the academic motivation is one of the most important factors in order to succeed at the university. The present study is aimed to examine the relationship between motivation, perceived stress and academic performance. Therefore, 146 undergraduate psychology students at the University of Twente took part and filled in an online questionnaire, containing the Academic Motivation Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale and additional questions concerning their academic performance and possible stressors. It was found that both gender and native language affected the level of perceived stress. In addition to that, the feeling of stress was significant correlated with the failing rate of courses. Not being motivated was found to be associated with higher levels of stress and a lower Grade Point Average.
Half‐lives of docosahexaenoic acid in rat brain phospholipids are prolonged by 15 weeks of nutritional deprivation of n‐3 polyunsaturated fatty acids

Male rat pups (21 days old) were placed on a diet deficient in n‐3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) or on an n‐3 PUFA adequate diet containing α‐linolenic acid (α‐LNA; 18 : 3n‐3). After 15 weeks on a diet, [4,5‐3H]docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; 22 : 6n‐3) was injected into the right lateral cerebral ventricle, and the rats were killed at fixed times over a period of 60 days. Compared with the adequate diet, 15 weeks of n‐3 PUFA deprivation reduced plasma DHA by 89% and brain DHA by 37%; these DHA concentrations did not change thereafter. In the n‐3 PUFA adequate rats, DHA loss half‐lives, calculated by plotting log10 (DHA radioactivity) against time after tracer injection, equaled 33 days in total brain phospholipid, 23 days in phosphatidylcholine, 32 days in phosphatidylethanolamine, 24 days in phosphatidylinositol and 58 days in phosphatidylserine; all had a decay slope significantly greater than 0 (p < 0.05). In the n‐3 PUFA deprived rats, these half‐lives were prolonged twofold or greater, and calculated rates of DHA loss from brain, Jout, were reduced. Mechanisms must exist in the adult rat brain to minimize DHA metabolic loss, and to do so even more effectively in the face of reduced n‐3 PUFA availability for only 15 weeks.
The Impact of Online Auction Duration

One view regarding auction duration suggests that longer auctions would result in more bidders and more bids, which in turn would result in higher prices. An opposing view is that shorter auctions might appeal to impatient bidders, or alternatively, that shorter duration might lead to more competitive dynamics. To examine these competing notions, we conduct pairwise comparisons of simultaneous auctions identical in all but duration. The auctions are conducted on two different platforms---eBay and a local auction site. We find that in eBay auctions, longer duration increases the number of bidders and bids, and consequently increases final prices by about 11%. On the local auction website, with far fewer auctions and a more steady set of participants, the effect is reversed, and shorter auctions generate higher prices by about 20%. Both sets of effects are robust and significant. We look at bidding activity on both sites to try to get at the root of that reversal. We find that in eBay auctions, the higher price in the longer-duration auction is accompanied by a higher number of participating bidders and a higher number of bids placed in the auction. In the local site, we find that the auction duration does not significantly affect the number of participating bidders or the number of bids placed in an auction. However, the magnitude of jump bids is negatively and significantly correlated with duration. These jump bids are in turn shown to impact final prices.
Increased Timing Variability in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

Theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that impaired time perception and the neural circuitry underlying internal timing mechanisms may contribute to severe psychiatric disorders, including psychotic and mood disorders. The degree to which alterations in temporal perceptions reflect deficits that exist across psychosis-related phenotypes and the extent to which mood symptoms contribute to these deficits is currently unknown. In addition, compared to schizophrenia, where timing deficits have been more extensively investigated, sub-second timing has been studied relatively infrequently in bipolar disorder. The present study compared sub-second duration estimates of schizophrenia (SZ), schizoaffective disorder (SA), non-psychotic bipolar disorder (BDNP), bipolar disorder with psychotic features (BDP), and healthy non-psychiatric controls (HC) on a well-established time perception task using sub-second durations. Participants included 66 SZ, 37 BDNP, 34 BDP, 31 SA, and 73 HC who participated in a temporal bisection task that required temporal judgements about auditory durations ranging from 300 to 600 milliseconds. Timing variability was significantly higher in SZ, BDP, and BDNP groups compared to healthy controls. The bisection point did not differ across groups. These findings suggest that both psychotic and mood symptoms may be associated with disruptions in internal timing mechanisms. Yet unexpected findings emerged. Specifically, the BDNP group had significantly increased variability compared to controls, but the SA group did not. In addition, these deficits appeared to exist independent of current symptom status. The absence of between group differences in bisection point suggests that increased variability in the SZ and bipolar disorder groups are due to alterations in perceptual timing in the sub-second range, possibly mediated by the cerebellum, rather than cognitive deficits.