Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimization of High Voltage IGCTs towards 1 V On-State Losses

The modern trends towards operating at lower switching frequencies in many power electronics applications adopting multi-level topologies, along with special demands for high current carrying capabilities and/or high efficiency, is forcing the development of applicationspecific devices. The Integrated Gate-Commutated Thyristor (IGCT) is an ideal device, which will lend itself well to these adaptations due to its inherent low conduction loss thyristor properties on the one hand, and the hard switched functionality on the other. Today however, IGCTs with voltage ratings exceeding 4500V are optimized normally for state-ofthe-art two or three level inverters, which are usually operating at relatively higher frequencies. Therefore, in this paper, we demonstrate by simulation and experiment the feasibility of designing through “anode engineering” a wider range of HV-IGCTs with very low on-state losses approaching the 1V value, which many applications strive for today.
The Effectiveness of Jet-Grout Slabs and Cross-walls in Restricting Wall Movements in Deep Excavations

This paper presents observations made at some well-instrumented deep excavations during the construction of the Taipei Rapid Transit Systems. Jet-grout slabs and in-situ cross-walls were used inside these excavations to reduce the lateral displacements of the retaining walls. Based upon these case histories, the effectiveness of these two types of support systems in restricting lateral displacements of retaining walls for deep excavations in soft clay is assessed.
Syntenin, a syndecan adaptor and an Arf6 phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate effector, is essential for epiboly and gastrulation cell movements in zebrafish

Epiboly, the spreading and the thinning of the blastoderm to cover the yolk cell and close the blastopore in fish embryos, is central to the process of gastrulation. Despite its fundamental importance, little is known about the molecular mechanisms that control this coordinated cell movement. By a combination of knockdown studies and rescue experiments in zebrafish (Danio rerio), we show that epiboly relies on the molecular networking of syntenin with syndecan heparan sulphate proteoglycans, which act as co-receptors for adhesion molecules and growth factors. Furthermore, we show that the interaction of syntenin with phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2) and with the small GTPase ADP-ribosylation factor 6 (Arf6), which regulate the endocytic recycling of syndecan, is necessary for epiboly progression. Analysis of the earliest cellular defects suggests a role for syntenin in the autonomous vegetal expansion of the yolk syncytial layer and the rearrangement of the actin cytoskeleton in extra-embryonic tissues, but not in embryonic cell fate determination. This study identifies the importance of the syntenin–syndecan–PIP2–Arf6 complex for the progression of fish epiboly and establishes its key role in directional cell movements during early development.
Depression in classic versus akinetic‐rigid Parkinson's disease

We examined the prevalence of major depression and dysthymia in 78 patients with the classic variant of Parkinson's disease (PD) (that is, tremor plus rigidity and/or bradykinesia), and in 34 patients with the akinetic‐rigid variant. Although the prevalence of dysthymia was similar in both groups (classic PD, 31%; and akinetic‐rigid PD, 32%), patients with akinetic‐rigid PD had a significantly higher prevalence of major depression (38% versus 15%, respectively; p < 0.01). A stepwise regression analysis demonstrated that bradykinesia was the extrapyramidal sign with the highest correlation with Hamilton depression scale scores. Our findings demonstrate a significant association between major depression and the akinetic‐rigid type of PD.
Management Turnover, Regulatory Oversight, and Performance: Evidence from Community Banks

This paper exploits a unique panel of U.S. community banks to re-examine the role of regulatory oversight in disciplining bank management and to consider the effect of such regulatory-linked disciplinary actions on subsequent bank performance. The results indicate that both weak bank performance and poor regulatory evaluations are associated with increased executive turnover. Furthermore, the relationship between poor regulatory evaluations and turnover persists after controlling for performance. Finally, executive turnover linked to poor regulatory evaluations is found to be positively related to future performance. Overall, the findings are consistent with the explanation that regulatory oversight can lead to improved bank governance.
Blood Transfusion Strategies in Elective Vascular Surgery

Autotransfusion techniques used in vascular surgery: intraoperative cell salvage (ICS) and acute normovolemic haemodilution (ANH), are evaluated in this article, especially their effectiveness in the reduction of allogeneic blood transfusions and cost. In comparison with ICS, ANH does not need any special equipment, is more accessible and cheaper, but the other method, ICS, is more adopted by vascular surgeons and anaesthetists. Even if ICS is preferred to ANH, only one study among the randomized studies confirmed the convincing benefit of using the cell salvage technique, and only 2 non-randomized studies had similar results, moreover, meta-analyses of these studies have not resolved the dispute over the efficiency of ICS. Only three meta-analyses assessing ICS in a subpopulation of patients who underwent abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery showed a decrease in the use of allogeneic blood and improvement of clinical outcomes. ANH in vascular surgery was evaluated in 6 randomized studies and 1 retrospective study. There was no study, except one, which would evaluate ANH as the only autotransfusion method in vascular surgery. ANH was assessed in combination with ICS and 3 randomized studies confirmed that this combination could be effective in the achievement of the reduction in exposure to allogeneic blood. Because ANH can have an impact on microcirculatory and macrocirculatory levels, two studies evaluated it from this point of view, but without any significant results. For the future, both ANH and ICS can have a potential to save allogeneic blood and money but positive results depend on blood loss and the type of elective infrarenal aortic surgery. ANH should be evaluated separately and in greater detail. Although the general risks of blood transfusion have been reduced during recent years, the risk of the transmission of infectious diseases, bacterial, fungal as well as viral, transfusion reactions, immunosuppression and postoperative infectious complications still remains. To avoid allogeneic transfusion, autotransfusion techniques are preferred. They include the intraoperative cell salvage technique (ICS), acute normovolemic haemodilution (ANH) and preoperative blood donation. Each of the autotransfusion techniques can be used for vascular surgery but some of them have more often been adopted by vascular surgeons. The most popular technique in vascular surgery seems to be intraoperative cell salvage whereas acute normovolemic haemodilution is not used as frequently. Techniques (ICS, ANH), their advantages and disadvantages as well as their effectiveness in the reduction of cost and allogeneic blood transfusions in elective vascular surgery are evaluated in this article.
VARIETAL SCREENING OF CHICKPEA AND THE EFFICACY OF DIFFERENT INSECTICIDES AGAINST CHICKPEA POD BORER HELICOVERPA ARMIGERA ( HB )

Two experiments were conducted at the Research Farms of Agriculture Research Institute Ratta Kulachi Dera Ismail Khan to test six varieties of gram (KK-1, CM-88, CM-72, C-3, C-40 and Piadar) for their tolerance against gram pod borer and to assess comparative efficacy of five insecticides (Thiodan 40EC, Lorsban 40EC, Ripcord 10EC, Nurell-D (Chlorpyrifos + Cypermethrin 50 + 500 g/L EC) and Methomy 45 WP) against gram pod borer Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner) during the year 2003-04. Gram variety CM72 was found significantly more tolerant to the attack of gram pod borer followed by KK-1. Maximum pod borer infestation was found in variety CM-88. All the tested insecticides significantly reduced the infestation of gram pod borer as compared to control plots. However, Methomyl was found most effective against the tested pest under field conditions.
Does Internal Migration Lead to Faster Regional Convergence in Turkey? an Empirical Investigation

In this study, using econometric methods, we examine whether internal migration in the last 30 years in Turkey has had any effect on the speed of convergence across Turkish provinces. According to standard neoclassical theory, migration across regions is conducive to faster convergence in income per capita: migration occurs from regions with low per capita income towards regions with higher per capita income, thus per capita income in in-migration regions would fall while that in out-migration regions would tend to rise, holding all else constant. In this study, we first test for absolute convergence across 67 Turkish provinces for 1975-2000 using non-linear least squares method. We find that there occurs no absolute convergence, meaning that provinces with initial-low-income per capita had no tendency to grow at a faster rate than provinces with initial-higher-income per capita. This result may be due to the fact that there are significant structural differences among provinces. To test this likelihood, regional dummies and sectoral shares in gross provincial product variables (agriculture, industry and services) are added to the convergence regressions. As expected, when we control for regional and sectoral differences across provinces, convergence across provinces occurs. Lastly, in order to assess the contribution of migration to convergence, we include net migration rates as explanatory variables to convergence regressions. We use the Instrumental Variables method in order to control for endogeneity between growth in per capita income and migration. According to our preliminary results, contrary to the predictions of the standard neoclassical theory, for 1975-2000, internal migration is not conducive to faster per capita income convergence across provinces in Turkey. One probable reason is that the marginal returns to capital in most net out-migration provinces and regions are relatively lower than those in the net in-migration provinces and regions in Turkey. Accordingly, the incentives to invest in capital in net-out migration regions may well be less than those in the net in-migration regions. Faced with lower investment in gross capital formation, and thus lower economic growth, net out-migration provinces and regions may not benefit from out-migration in terms of convergence in per capita income.
LDBio-Toxo II Immunoglobulin G Western Blot Confirmatory Test for Anti-Toxoplasma Antibody Detection

ABSTRACT Tests commonly used for routine determination of anti-Toxoplasma gondii immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies show a high level of consistency. However, considerable variations between commercial screening tests are still observed in detecting antibodies present at low concentrations, leading to a number of discrepant and/or equivocal results. It is therefore important to use a reference test to confirm borderline results. In this study, we evaluated the use of a new qualitative test based on Western blot analysis—the LDBio-Toxo II IgG test—as a confirmatory test for at-risk patients. The study was performed retrospectively, using 569 serum samples with “low-positive” (2 to 32 international units) anti-Toxoplasma IgG levels from 375 patients. These samples were either sera collected during the routine screening of pregnant women, from patients with unrelated infections, or from immunocompromised patients or sequential sera taken from pregnant women with acquired Toxoplasma infection or from their newborns during follow-up. The LDBio-Toxo II IgG test was compared to several commercial tests commonly used for anti-Toxoplasma IgG screening. The Sabin-Feldman dye test was used as a reference test. In this study, the results of the LDBio-Toxo II IgG test appeared to be consistent with those of the dye test; the LDBio-Toxo II IgG test had a specificity of 100% and a sensitivity of 99.2%. Our findings suggest that the LDBio-Toxo II IgG test is a useful serological tool in cases in which the presence or absence of Toxoplasma antibodies needs to be reliably determined, for example, for the follow-up of pregnant women and their newborns or for subjects with immune deficiencies following human immunodeficiency virus infection, hematological malignancies, or transplantation.
An Economic Analysis of the Malaysian Palm Oil Market

The objectives of the study are to describe a national model of the Malaysian palm oil market and to identify the important factors affecting the Malaysian palm oil industry. The model is estimated by taking into account total oil palm area, oil palm yield, domestic consumption, exports and imports over the period of study between 1970 and 1999. The results show the importance of the Malaysian economic activity, the exchange rate and world population in affecting the palm oil industry. Other factors are palm oil stock level, price of palm oil, technological advancement in production technique and the price of soyabean oil
Environmental factors, spatial variation, and specific requirements of Chironomidae in Mediterranean reference streams

Abstract Chironomidae spatial distribution was investigated at 63 near-pristine sites in 22 catchments of the Iberian Mediterranean coast. We used partial redundancy analysis to study Chironomidae community responses to a number of environmental factors acting at several spatial scales. The percentage of variation explained by local factors (23.3%) was higher than that explained by geographical (8.5%) or regional factors (8%). Catchment area, longitude, pH, % siliceous rocks in the catchment, and altitude were the best predictors of Chironomidae assemblages. We used a k-means cluster analysis to classified sites into 3 major groups based on Chironomidae assemblages. These groups were explained mainly by longitudinal zonation and geographical position, and were defined as 1) siliceous headwater streams, 2) mid-altitude streams with small catchment areas, and 3) medium-sized calcareous streams. Distinct species assemblages with associated indicator taxa were established for each stream category using IndVal analysis. Species responses to previously identified key environmental variables were determined, and optima and tolerances were established by weighted average regression. Distinct ecological requirements were observed among genera and among species of the same genus. Some genera were restricted to headwater systems (e.g., Diamesa), whereas others (e.g., Eukiefferiella) had wider ecological preferences but with distinct distributions among congenerics. In the present period of climate change, optima and tolerances of species might be a useful tool to predict responses of different species to changes in significant environmental variables, such as temperature and hydrology.
Safety and efficacy of addition of bevacizumab to oxaliplatin-based preoperative chemotherapy in colorectal cancer with liver metastasis- a single institution experience.

PURPOSE To evaluate the safety and efficacy of the addition of bevacizumab to oxaliplatin-based preoperative chemotherapy in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients. METHODS Between August 2008 and December 2011, 51 patients with histologically documented CRC and liver metastases were treated with first-line oxaliplatin-based therapy plus bevacizumab: FOLFOX 4 (oxaliplatin, folinic acid and 5-FU) plus bevacizumab or OXFL mod.Mayo (folinic acid, oxaliplatin and 5-FU) plus bevacizumab. RESULTS The mean patient age was 59.69+ 9.38 years (range 38-78) and 34 (66.67%) were male. Complete response (CR) was achieved in 7 (13.73%) patients, partial response (PR) in 29 (56. 86%) and stable disease (SD) in 6 (11.76%); progressive disease (PD) was registered in 9 (17.65%) patients. Disease control rate was 82.36% (42 patients). Liver resections were performed in 37 (72.55%) patients vs those without resection (p<0.01). The same regimen without bevacizumab was administered postoperatively to 18 (42. 86%) patients. The mean progression free survival (PFS) was 9.90±7.07 months (range 3-26) and was significantly longer in patients with postoperative therapy (p<0.001). Treatment-related toxicity appeared in 28 (54. 90%) patients vs those who did not (p<0.001) Independent of grade, nausea (19.61%), leucopenia (17.65%) and peripheral neuropathy (17.65%) were the most frequent toxicities. Chemotherapy was postponed in 9 (17.65%) patients due to grade 3-4 toxicities. The most frequent grade 3 or 4 toxicities were leucopenia (5.88%) and hypertension (3.92%). CONCLUSION Bevacizumab plus oxaliplatin-based treatment is safe and efficient as preoperative treatment of mCRC with primarily unresectable liver metastases. Liver resection could offer a possibility for long-term survival in these patients.
Recombinant, tumour-derived idiotype vaccination for indolent B cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas: a focus on FavId™

FavId™ (Favrille, Inc., San Diego, CA, USA) is a personalised therapeutic vaccine product for B cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, custom-manufactured from individual patient’s tumour cells. This investigational agent consists of recombinant tumour-specific immunoglobulin (idiotype [Id]) chemically conjugated to the highly immunogenic carrier protein keyhole limpet haemocyanin (Id–KLH). The vaccine product is administered by subcutaneous co-injection with the cytokine adjuvant granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) with the goal of stimulating tumour-specific T cell and humoral immunity. Therapeutic Id vaccines have shown promising results in early phase clinical trials in follicular lymphoma, and several Phase III trials are ongoing. FavId’s advantages over other Id vaccine formulations include its rapid and efficient manufacturing technology utilising recombinant baculovirus, with a production time of only 8 – 12 weeks. In Phase II studies, FavId Id–KLH plus GM-CSF vaccines have been found to be safe, immunogenic and clinically active in follicular lymphoma. At present, FavId is being tested in a randomised, placebo-controlled Phase III trial in follicular lymphoma, aimed at improving the time to disease progression when administered following cytoreduction with rituximab. If found to be efficacious in this pivotal trial, FavId would represent a tumour-selective immunotherapy for lymphoma with little toxicity and a novel mechanism of action.
Mining Sentiment Classification from Political Web Logs

Over the last few years the number of web logs and amount of opinionated data on the World Wide Web has grown dramatically. Web logs allow people to share their opinions on a wide range of “hot” topics with virtual communities. As readers start turning to web logs as a source of information, automatic techniques that identify the sentiment of web log posts will help bloggers categorize and filter this exploding information source. However, on the surface, sentiment classification of web log posts, in particular political web log posts, appears to be a more difficult problem than classification of traditional text because of the interplay among the images, hyperlinks, the style of writing and language used within web logs. In this paper we investigate existing technology and their utility for sentiment classification on web log posts. We show that a Naïve Bayes classifier can on average correctly predict a posting’s political category 78.06% of the time with a standard deviation of 2.39. It significantly outperforms Support Vector Machines at the 99.9% confidence level with a confidence interval of [1.425, 3.488]. On average, SVMs correctly predicted the category of web log posts 75.47% of the time with a standard deviation of 2.64. Previous research was able to achieve an 81.0% accuracy using Naïve Bayes and 82.9% using SVMs using our chosen feature set representation on a nonspecific topic corpus [14]. Using our dataset of political web logs over a two-year period, we also show that it is important to maintain a uniform distribution in such datasets to avoid biases in classification.
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL DECISION: THEORIES, DETERMINANTS AND CONSTRAINTS

The pervasiveness of the entrepreneurial phenomenon attracts the attention on the determinants of the decision of becoming entrepreneur. As the entrepreneurial decision can be additionally conceived as firm entry, as a real business investment in the creation of a new business and as a career choice in favour of self-employment, the literature about entrepreneurship is integrated with industrial organization, financial economics and labour economics approaches to identify contextual and personal determinants. Finally, an analysis of the constraints that limit the entrepreneurial decision is carried out.
Saving and Investment in an Open Economy with Non-Traded Goods

We examine a model of a small open economy in which there is free international mobility of financial capital, investment in capital goods and a non-traded good. Such an environment is rich enough to explain several phenomena that are inexplicable in more barren models. We suggest an explanation of why saving and investment may be correlated even with no restrictions on trade in assets. We explain why a high saving country may nonetheless borrow from abroad to finance investment. We also provide an optimizing model of stages in the balance of payments.
Neural correlates of resolving uncertainty in driver's decision making

Neural correlates of driving and of decision making have been investigated separately, but little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms of decision making in driving. Previous research discusses two types of decision making: reward‐weighted decision making and cost‐weighted decision making. There are many reward‐weighted decision making neuroimaging studies but there are few cost‐weighted studies. Considering that driving involves serious risk, it is assumed that decision making in driving is cost weighted. Therefore, neural substrates of cost‐weighted decision making can be assessed by investigation of driver's decision making. In this study, neural correlates of resolving uncertainty in driver's decision making were investigated. Turning right in left‐hand traffic at a signalized intersection was simulated by computer graphic animation based videos. When the driver's view was occluded by a big truck, the uncertainty of the oncoming traffic was resolved by an in‐car video assist system that presented the driver's occluded view. Resolving the uncertainty reduced activity in a distributed area including the amygdala and anterior cingulate. These results implicate the amygdala and anterior cingulate as serving a role in cost‐weighted decision making. Hum Brain Mapp 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.