Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hard vs. Soft Law: Alternatives, Complements and Antagonists in International Governance

This article addresses the interaction of hard and soft law in a fragmented international law system. This issue is increasingly important in a world where functional international regimes proliferate to address globalization and national interdependence without any overarching legal hierarchy. The article makes three core claims in contradistinction to the existing literature. The first and primary claim is that international hard and soft law instruments can serve not only as alternatives or complements, but also as antagonists in many situations. The second, related claim is that this interaction has particular implications in a fragmented international law system, affecting the very nature of international hard and soft law regimes and their purported advantages. The interaction of hard and soft law regimes can lead to the hardening of soft law regimes, resulting in more strategic bargaining and reducing their purported advantages of consensus-building through information-sharing and persuasion; and it can lead to the softening of hard law regimes, resulting in reduced legal certainty and predictability, especially where there is distributive conflict between powerful states. The third and final claim is that the interaction of hard and soft law is not a binary either/or question, but one of specifying the conditions under which we can expect actors to employ hard and soft law as alternatives, complements or antagonists. The existing literature is not wrong in focusing on how hard and soft law may be employed as complements, but this literature tells only part of the story. The article provides an overarching theoretical framework for understanding the conditions under which states and other actors choose to employ hard and soft law in different ways, emphasizing the importance of distributive conflict among countries and their constituencies and the rise of regime complexes as conditions favorable to the use of hard and soft law as antagonists.
Iowa Statewide Stream Nitrate Load Calculated Using In Situ Sensor Network

Various techniques exist to estimate stream nitrate loads when measured concentration data are sparse. The inherent uncertainty associated with load estimation, however, makes tracking progress toward water quality goals more difficult. We used high‐frequency, in situ nitrate sensors strategically deployed across the agricultural state of Iowa to evaluate 2016 stream concentrations at 60 sites and loads at 35 sites. The generated data, collected at an average of 225 days per site, show daily average nitrate‐N yields ranging from 12 to 198 g/ha, with annual yields as high as 53 kg/ha from the intensely drained Des Moines Lobe. Thirteen of the sites that capture water from 82.5% of Iowa's area show statewide nitrate‐N loading in 2016 totaled 477 million kg, or 41% of the load delivered to the Mississippi–Atchafalaya River Basin (MARB). Considering the substantial private and public investment being made to reduce nitrate loading in many states within the MARB, networks of continuous, in situ measurement devices as described here can inform efforts to track year‐to‐year changes in nitrate load related to weather and conservation implementation. Nitrate and other data from the sensor network described in this study are made publicly available in real time through the Iowa Water Quality Information System.
Hypocenter location by pattern recognition

[1] A novel approach to hypocenter location is proposed on the basis the concept of pattern recognition. A new data misfit criterion for location is introduced which measures discrepancies between the observed arrival times of an event and those of “nearby” previous events. In the arrival pattern misfit measure, travel times predicted by an Earth model are effectively replaced by information from an ensemble of previous observations. Thin-plate spline interpolation and generalized cross validation are applied to interpolate and smooth the resulting misfit function which may then be used in standard location algorithms. Synthetic experiments show that in certain circumstances, it is possible to achieve locations with errors smaller than those in the underlying database. It is suggested that the arrival pattern approach exploits information on lateral heterogeneous Earth structure contained in the database to constrain locations. The arrival pattern approach is illustrated by relocating 395 ground truth events from the Nevada Test Site, 482 earthquakes from the Marianas subduction zone, and 457 earthquakes from the Atlantic mid-ocean ridge. It is shown that picking errors and unmodeled, small-scale lateral heterogeneity are the most significant sources of event mislocation and that errors in the original locations of the database events make a much smaller contribution.
Nutrients In situ Degradability of Almond Hulls and Cucumber Wastes from Greenhouse

Aims: Information about degradability of nutrients, effective degradability (ED) values and digestion kinetics of agricultural wastes is important for feed manufacturing industry and farmers performing feed mixing practices who currently rely on nutritive values published by research institutions. Almond hull (AH) and cucumber plant (CW) were evaluated for ruminal dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP), acid detergent fiber (ADF) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) degradation kinetics. Methodology: Duplicate bags containing 3 g ground raw material each were incubated in the rumen of two ruminally cannulated Assaf rams for 4, 8, 16, 24, 48 and 72 h. Rate and extent of ruminal degradation were estimated. Results: Significant effects of byproduct type were observed in rapidly soluble and potentially degradable fractions, and degradation rates of DM, CP, ADF and NDF. The rapidly soluble DM, CP, ADF and NDF fractions were 16.10, 15.2, 10.64 and 14.06% for CW, and 7.21, 6.64, 6.00 and 5.62% for AH. The potentially degradable DM, CP, ADF and NDF fractions, respectively, were 55.82, 62.30, 49.40 and 55.09% for CW, and 47.61, 44.26, 46.34 and 48.53% for AH. The DM, CP, Original Research Article Omar and Abdallah; ARRB, 13(2): 1-6, 2017; Article no.ARRB. 33785 2 ADF and NDF disappearance in CW were higher (P < 0.05) compared to those in AH. Similarly, the effective degradability (ED) of DM, CP, ADF and NDF in AH were higher compared to AH (P < 0.05). Conclusion: The new data presented in this study could be useful for the purposes of ration formulation and ruminants’ performance. Considering these findings, one can propose using both byproducts, together or separately as part of ruminant rations. It can be introduced in these rations as part of roughage (wheat and barley straw). CW can be incorporated in ruminant rations as part of better quality roughage (legume hay).
Investigation of gastrointestinal parasites of herbivores at Dhaka National Zoological Garden of Bangladesh

A total of 52 fecal samples were collected from 21 herbivores at Dhaka zoo during January to May, 2012 to investigate the prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites of herbivores. Overall prevalence of parasitic infection was 76.9%, of which 61.5% were positive for helminths and 55.8% were positive for protozoa. The identified parasites were Balantidium coli (55.8%), Paramphistomum sp. (36.5%), Fasciola sp. (19.2%), stomach worm (3.9%), Ascaris sp. (1.9%) and Strongyloides sp. (1.9%). Overall prevalence of mixed infection was 42.3%. Mixed infection was observed in the animals such as Butani cattle ( Balantidium coli and Paramphistomum sp.), Giraffe ( Balantidium coli and Paramphistomum sp.), Spotted deer ( Balantidium coli, Paramphistomum sp. and Fasciola sp.), Sambar deer ( Balantidium coli and Fasciola sp.), Horse ( Balantidium coli and Ascaris sp.), Greater kudu ( Balantidium coli and Paramphistomum sp.), Nil gai ( Balantidium coli and stomach worm), Black wilde beast ( Balantidium coli and Paramphistomum sp.), Impala ( Balantidium coli and Strongyloides sp.), Hippopotamus ( Balantidium coli and Paramphistomum sp.), Zebra ( Balantidium coli and Paramphistomum sp.), Wilde beast ( Balantidium coli and Paramphistomum sp.; Balantidium coli and Paramphistomum sp. and Fasciola sp.), One Horned Rhinoceros ( Balantidium coli and Paramphistomum sp.), Common Eland ( Balantidium coli and Paramphistomum sp.), Oryx ( Balantidium coli and stomach worm). Diameter of ova or cyst was also measured. Egg per gram/ Cyst per gram of feces (EPG/ CPG) were ranged from 300-1200. Gastrointestinal parasites are highly prevalent in herbivores of Dhaka zoo. Strategic control measure is necessary to protect the endangered species from parasitic infestation. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.3329/jbau.v12i1. 21245 J. Bangladesh Agril. Univ. 12(1): 79-85, June 2014
HeapTherapy: An Efficient End-to-End Solution against Heap Buffer Overflows

For decades buffer overflows have been one of the most prevalent and dangerous software vulnerabilities. Although many techniques have been proposed to address the problem, they mostly introduce a very high overhead while others assume the availability of a separate system to pinpoint attacks or provide detailed traces for defense generation, which is very slow in itself and requires considerable extra resources. We propose an efficient solution against heap buffer overflows that integrates exploit detection, defense generation, and overflow prevention in a single system, named Heap Therapy. During program execution it conducts on-the-fly lightweight trace collection and exploit detection, and initiates automated diagnosis upon detection to generate defenses in real-time. It can handle both over-write and over-read attacks, such as the recent Heartbleed attack. The system has no false positives, and keeps effective under polymorphic exploits. %as the generated defense captures semantic characteristics of exploits. It is compliant with mainstream hardware and operating systems, and does not rely on specific allocation algorithms. We evaluated Heap Therapy on a variety of services (database, web, and ftp) and benchmarks (SPEC CPU2006), it incurs a very low average overhead in terms of both speed (6.2%) and memory (7.7%).
COMMENTARY Extended-Spectrum- (cid:1) -Lactamase, AmpC, and Carbapenemase Issues (cid:1)

Optimal use of microbiology laboratories is essential to combat the spread of multiply antibiotic-resistant pathogens. This is vital for patient care, as advocated by Jarvis in stressing the importance of active detection and isolation to control methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and other resistant hospital-acquired pathogens (17). It is also vital for hospital accreditation in the United States, where the Joint Commission has set requirements for the control of acquisition and transmission of multidrug-resistant organisms (http: //www.jointcommission.org/NR/rdonlyres/31666E86-E7F4-423E -9BE8-F05BD1CB0AA8/0/HAP_NPSG.pdf-NPSG.07.03.01). These requirements cannot be met without excellence in diagnostic microbiology. The absence of new, effective anti-gram-negative antibiotics makes infection control the most important countermeasure against multidrug-resistant gram-negative pathogens. Infection control can prevent additional infections and the spread of resistant pathogens and thereby reduce the need to use antibiotics. Infection control is most effective when directed by rapid, accurate laboratory results. In short, excellence in diagnostic microbiology is critical to quality initiatives in hospitals. Some resistant pathogens may not be recognized because they are falsely susceptible in routine tests. This can lead to patients receiving ineffective antibiotics and contribute to the spread of the pathogens. Because the detection of such “hidden” resistance is so critical, this Commentary focuses on its detection in gram-negative pathogens. Because susceptibility tests may be unreliable, special tests are required to detect the resistance mechanisms involved. The mechanisms include extended-spectrum -lactamases (ESBLs), AmpC -lactamases, and carbapenemases of molecular classes A and B.
Segmental Excision versus Intralesional Curettage with Adjuvant Therapy for Giant Cell Tumour of Bone

Purpose. To review the functional outcome and local recurrence rate of 29 patients who underwent segmental excision or intralesional curettage with adjuvant therapy for giant cell tumour (GCT) of bone. Methods. Records of 17 men and 12 women (mean age, 30.17 years) who underwent segmental excision (n=18) or intralesional curettage followed by adjuvant therapy (n=11) for GCT of the femur (n=13), tibia (n=8), radius (n=6), or ulna (n=2) were reviewed. Nine of the patients had recurrent GCT of bone and had undergone segmental excision (n=6) or intralesional curettage (n=3) elsewhere. Functional outcome was evaluated using the Musculoskeletal Tumour Society (MSTS) scoring system. Results. The mean follow-up period was 6.4 (range, 3–13.5) years. 14 patients were followed up for 3 to 5 years, 12 for 5 to 10 years, and 3 for >10 years. Of 20 patients with primary GCT of bone, 12 underwent segmental excision and had no recurrence, and 8 underwent intralesional curettage, 2 of whom developed local recurrence. Of the remaining 9 patients with recurrent GCT of bone, there was one re-recurrence in each surgical option. Local recurrence was not associated with Campanacci grading or type of surgery. One of 18 patients with segmental excision and 3 of 11 patients with intralesional curettage had local recurrence (5.6% vs. 27.3%, p=0.139). The MSTS score was excellent in 7, good in 6, moderate in 2, fair in 2, and poor in one patient after segmental excision, whereas the score was excellent in 9 and good in 2 patients after intralesional curettage (p=0.206). The proportion of yielding an excellent outcome was higher after intralesional curettage (38.9% vs. 81.8%, p=0.0289). Nonetheless, the mean MSTS score of the 2 groups was comparable (74.17% vs. 86.36%, p=0.054). Conclusion. Local recurrence of GCT was not associated with the surgical option. Nonetheless, intralesional curettage resulted in better functional outcome.
Real-time global illumination using precomputed light field probes

We introduce a new data structure and algorithms that employ it to compute real-time global illumination from static environments. Light field probes encode a scene's full light field and internal visibility. They extend current radiance and irradiance probe structures with per-texel visibility information similar to a G-buffer and variance shadow map. We apply ideas from screen-space and voxel cone tracing techniques to this data structure to efficiently sample radiance on world space rays, with correct visibility information, directly within pixel and compute shaders. From these primitives, we then design two GPU algorithms to efficiently gather real-time, viewer-dependent global illumination onto both static and dynamic objects. These algorithms make different tradeoffs between performance and accuracy. Supplemental GLSL source code is included.
Articulatory analysis using a codebook for articulatory based low bit-rate speech coding

Fundamental to the success of the articulatory based speech coding is the mapping from acoustics to articulatory description. As the mapping is not unique and based on articulatory continuity criteria, the non-uniqueness of the articulatory trajectories is solved using a forward dynamic network. In this paper, we present new results on forward dynamic network used to estimate articulatory trajectories when using an improved articulatory codebook for acoustic-to-articulatory mapping. The improvement on the codebook design is based on a new model that provides more details on the vocal tract area function and on more appropriate articulatory parameter samplings according to the articulatory-acoustics relation.
Polycystic ovary syndrome - an update.

BACKGROUND Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common condition, present in 12-21% of women of reproductive age. Up to 70% of women with PCOS remain undiagnosed. OBJECTIVE This article summarises the 2011 national PCOS guideline, Evidence-based guideline for the assessment and management of polycystic ovary syndrome, for the general practice context, with particular reference to the needs of Indigenous Australian women. DISCUSSION Women with PCOS may present with a wide range of symptoms. The Rotterdam criteria are the most widely accepted for diagnosis and the national guideline references these criteria. Women with PCOS have a higher risk of metabolic syndrome and its cardiovascular sequelae. This is particularly important for Indigenous women who are already at increased baseline risk. Management of PCOS involves attention to current symptoms, fertility and psychosocial issues, as well as prevention of related future health problems including diabetes. Resources are available to help guide management and patients may benefit most from a team approach to care.
Density Conscious Subspace Clustering for High-Dimensional Data

Instead of finding clusters in the full feature space, subspace clustering is an emergent task which aims at detecting clusters embedded in subspaces. Most of previous works in the literature are density-based approaches, where a cluster is regarded as a high-density region in a subspace. However, the identification of dense regions in previous works lacks of considering a critical problem, called "the density divergence problemrdquo in this paper, which refers to the phenomenon that the region densities vary in different subspace cardinalities. Without considering this problem, previous works utilize a density threshold to discover the dense regions in all subspaces, which incurs the serious loss of clustering accuracy (either recall or precision of the resulting clusters) in different subspace cardinalities. To tackle the density divergence problem, in this paper, we devise a novel subspace clustering model to discover the clusters based on the relative region densities in the subspaces, where the clusters are regarded as regions whose densities are relatively high as compared to the region densities in a subspace. Based on this idea, different density thresholds are adaptively determined to discover the clusters in different subspace cardinalities. Due to the infeasibility of applying previous techniques in this novel clustering model, we also devise an innovative algorithm, referred to as DENCOS (density conscious subspace clustering), to adopt a divide-and-conquer scheme to efficiently discover clusters satisfying different density thresholds in different subspace cardinalities. As validated by our extensive experiments on various data sets, DENCOS can discover the clusters in all subspaces with high quality, and the efficiency of DENCOS outperformes previous works.
Antigenic differences in nuclear proteins of normal liver and hepatoma

A nuclear antigen was detected in the mouse liver nonhistone protein fraction by using antibodies to whole liver cells. The antigen was purified to homogeneity from perchloric acid extracts of liver tissue. It gave a single band corresponding to tool wt 21,000 in sodium dodecyl sulfate gel electrophoresis. Amino acid and carbohydrate analysis showed predominance of the acidic amino acids, lack of proline, and absence of carbohydrate. Immunofluorescence staining of liver sections confirmed the nuclear localization of the antigen. Its tissue distribution was studied by using radioimmunoassay. Of the various tissues extracted for analysis, the liver contained the highest amounts of the antigen, about 1 μg/mg of solubilized liver protein. Other tissues examined showed 2-4 percent of the amount of antigen present in the liver. Two transplantable hepatomas in C3H/HeJ and C57L/J mice, respectively, and three spontaneous C3H hepatomas showed greatly decreased levels of the antigen compared to normal liver. The amount of antigen in hepatomas varied from nondetectable to 2 percent of the amount of antigen found in the livers of the mice. The antigen was also found in the blood. The antigen was found in high concentrations (up to 13 mg/ml) in the urine of normal mice. This suggests identity with the previously known mouse urinary protein (MUP). In addition to the extremely high urinary output, the properties found to be shared by MUP and the nuclear antigen included similar serum concentrations (2-60 μg/ml), a sex difference with lower values in females, same molecular size as determined by gel filtration, and immunological identity. The nuclear localization of MUP and its disappearance from hepatomas suggest that it may have an important regulatory function.
Choosing reputable servents in a P2P network

Peer-to-peer information sharing environments are increasingly gaining acceptance on the Internet as they provide an infrastructure in which the desired information can be located and downloaded while preserving the anonymity of both requestors and providers. As recent experience with P2P environments such as Gnutella shows, anonymity opens the door to possible misuses and abuses by resource providers exploiting the network as a way to spread tampered with resources, including malicious programs, such as Trojan Horses and viruses.In this paper we propose an approach to P2P security where servents can keep track, and share with others, information about the reputation of their peers. Reputation sharing is based on a distributed polling algorithm by which resource requestors can assess the reliability of perspective providers before initiating the download. The approach nicely complements the existing P2P protocols and has a limited impact on current implementations. Furthermore, it keeps the current level of anonymity of requestors and providers, as well as that of the parties sharing their view on others' reputations.
Why don't patients do their exercises? Understanding non-compliance with physiotherapy in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee

STUDY OBJECTIVES To understand reasons for compliance and non-compliance with a home based exercise regimen by patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. DESIGN A qualitative study, nested within a randomised controlled trial, examining the effectiveness of physiotherapy in reducing pain and increasing mobility in knee osteoarthritis. In the intervention arm, participants undertook a series of simple exercises and repositioning of the kneecap using tape. In depth interviews were conducted with a subset of participants in the intervention arm using open ended questions, guided by a topic schedule, to encourage patients to describe their experiences and reflect on why they did or did not comply with the physiotherapy. Interviews were audiotaped, fully transcribed and analysed thematically according to the method of constant comparison. A model explaining factors influencing compliance was developed. SETTING Patients were interviewed at home. The study was nested within a pragmatic randomised controlled trial. PARTICIPANTS Twenty participants in the intervention arm of the randomised trial were interviewed three months after they had completed the physiotherapy programme. Eight were interviewed again one year later. MAIN RESULTS Initial compliance was high because of loyalty to the physiotherapist. Reasoning underpinning continued compliance was more complex, involving willingness and ability to accommodate exercises within everyday life, the perceived severity of symptoms, attitudes towards arthritis and comorbidity and previous experiences of osteoarthritis. A necessary precondition for continued compliance was the perception that the physiotherapy was effective in ameliorating unpleasant symptoms. CONCLUSIONS Non-compliance with physiotherapy, as with drug therapies, is common. From the patient's perspective, decisions about whether or not to comply are rational but often cannot be predicted by therapists or researchers. Ultimately, this study suggests that health professionals need to understand reasons for non-compliance if they are to provide supportive care and trialists should include qualitative research within trials whenever levels of compliance may have an impact on the effectiveness of the intervention.