Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
1848 in 1998: The Politics of Commemoration in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia

The year 1998 marked the 150th anniversary of the cascading wave of revolution that swept across Europe in the spring of 1848. Like all great upheavals (indeed like all great events, personalities, or works of art), the revolutions of 1848 do not contain their own meaning. Powerful cultural objects—whether events, persons, or cultural creations—are always ambiguous: indeed that ambiguity, according to Griswold (1987a) is a key part of what constitutes their power. Such objects always offer rich and varied, though not unlimited, interpretive possibilities. It is now widely agreed that the meanings of such cultural objects are not fixed, given, or uniquely ascertainable, but instead are created and recreated in different times, places, and settings through a series of “interactions” or “negotiations” between the objects and their socially situated, culturally equipped, and often politically engaged interpreters (Hall 1980; Griswold 1987a, 1987b; Liebes and Katz 1996).
Theoretical and Empirical Results for Recovery From Multiple Measurements

The joint-sparse recovery problem aims to recover, from sets of compressed measurements, unknown sparse matrices with nonzero entries restricted to a subset of rows. This is an extension of the single-measurement-vector (SMV) problem widely studied in compressed sensing. We study the recovery properties of two algorithms for problems with noiseless data and exact-sparse representation. First, we show that recovery using sum-of-norm minimization cannot exceed the uniform-recovery rate of sequential SMV using l 1 minimization, and that there are problems that can be solved with one approach, but not the other. Second, we study the performance of the ReMBo algorithm (M. Mishali and Y. Eldar, ¿Reduce and boost: Recovering arbitrary sets of jointly sparse vectors,¿ IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 56, no. 10, 4692-4702, Oct. 2008) in combination with l 1 minimization, and show how recovery improves as more measurements are taken. From this analysis, it follows that having more measurements than the number of linearly independent nonzero rows does not improve the potential theoretical recovery rate.
Rethinking the micro-foundations of macroeconomics: insights from behavioural economics

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, macroeconomics is at a crossroads: on the one hand, the analytically rigorous, assumption-based approaches based on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models lack intuitive plausibility and predictive power; on the other hand, alternative models lack an underlying analytical core. Behavioural economics offers a potential solution if it can unify intuition and analytical rigour. The aim of this paper is to assess the extent to which macroeconomics can embed behavioural and psychological insights from behavioural microeconomic analysis in order to build a rigorous and intuitively plausible understanding of how economic systems, including the macroeconomy and the financial system, work.
Reducing Insecticide Use in Broad-Acre Grains Production: An Australian Study

Prophylactic use of broad-spectrum insecticides is a common feature of broad-acre grains production systems around the world. Efforts to reduce pesticide use in these systems have the potential to deliver environmental benefits to large areas of agricultural land. However, research and extension initiatives aimed at decoupling pest management decisions from the simple act of applying a cheap insecticide have languished. This places farmers in a vulnerable position of high reliance on a few products that may lose their efficacy due to pests developing resistance, or be lost from use due to regulatory changes. The first step towards developing Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies involves an increased efficiency of pesticide inputs. Especially challenging is an understanding of when and where an insecticide application can be withheld without risking yield loss. Here, we quantify the effect of different pest management strategies on the abundance of pest and beneficial arthropods, crop damage and yield, across five sites that span the diversity of contexts in which grains crops are grown in southern Australia. Our results show that while greater insecticide use did reduce the abundance of many pests, this was not coupled with higher yields. Feeding damage by arthropod pests was seen in plots with lower insecticide use but this did not translate into yield losses. For canola, we found that plots that used insecticide seed treatments were most likely to deliver a yield benefit; however other insecticides appear to be unnecessary and economically costly. When considering wheat, none of the insecticide inputs provided an economically justifiable yield gain. These results indicate that there are opportunities for Australian grain growers to reduce insecticide inputs without risking yield loss in some seasons. We see this as the critical first step towards developing IPM practices that will be widely adopted across intensive production systems.
Social, Clinical and Microbiological Differential Characteristics of Tuberculosis among Immigrants in Spain

Background To identify the differential tuberculosis (TB) characteristics within the immigrant population with respect to natives in Spain. Methodology/Principal Findings A prospective cohort study design was implemented to examine the TB cases diagnosed and starting standard antituberculous treatment in Spain, between January 1st 2006 and March 31st 2007. A logistic regression analysis was performed to determine differential characteristics. 1,490 patients were included in the study population, 1,048 natives and 442 (29.7%) immigrants. According to the multivariate analysis, the following variables were significantly associated with immigrant TB cases: younger age (OR = 3.79; CI:2.16–6.62), living in group situation (OR = 7.61; CI:3.38–12.12), lower frequency of disabled (OR:0.08; CI:0.02–0.26) and retired (OR:0.21; CI:0.09–0.48) employment status, lower frequency of pulmonary disease presentation (OR = 0.47; CI:0.24–0.92), primary or emergency care admission (OR = 1.80; CI:1.05–3.06 and OR = 2.16; CI:1.36–3.45), drug resistance (OR = 1.86; CI:1.01–3.46), treatment default (OR:2.12; CI:1.18–3.81), lower frequency of alcohol and cigarette consumption (OR = 2.10; CI:1.42–3.11 and OR = 2.85; CI:2.10–3.87 respectively), more directly observed treatment (OR = 1.68; CI:1.04–2.69), and poor understanding of TB disease and its treatment (OR = 3.11; CI:1.86–5.20). The low percentage of primary MDR-TB in the native population (0.1% vs. 2.2% of immigrants) should be noted. Conclusions/Significance The differences show the need to introduce specific strategies in the management of TB within the immigrant population, including the improvement of social and work conditions.
Quantifying the Impacts of Environmental Factors on Vegetation Dynamics over Climatic and Management Gradients of Central Asia

Currently there is a lack of quantitative information regarding the driving factors of vegetation dynamics in post-Soviet Central Asia. Insufficient knowledge also exists concerning vegetation variability across sub-humid to arid climatic gradients as well as vegetation response to different land uses, from natural rangelands to intensively irrigated croplands. In this study, we analyzed the environmental drivers of vegetation dynamics in five Central Asian countries by coupling key vegetation parameter “overall greenness” derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI time series data, with its possible factors across various management and climatic gradients. We developed nine generalized least-squares random effect (GLS-RE) models to analyze the relative impact of environmental factors on vegetation dynamics. The obtained results quantitatively indicated the extensive control of climatic factors on managed and unmanaged vegetation cover across Central Asia. The most diverse vegetation dynamics response to climatic variables was observed for “intensively managed irrigated croplands”. Almost no differences in response to these variables were detected for managed non-irrigated vegetation and unmanaged (natural) vegetation across all countries. Natural vegetation and rainfed non-irrigated crop dynamics were principally associated with temperature and precipitation parameters. Variables related to temperature had the greatest relative effect on irrigated croplands and on vegetation cover within the mountainous zone. Further research should focus on incorporating the socio-economic factors discussed here in a similar analysis.
CROSS‐INFECTION OF WOUNDS IN A SURGICAL WARD DURING A TRIAL OF THE USE OF OILED BLANKETS

Plan of the Trial. The surgical ward selected has been used in previous" investigations. It contains 24 . beds, 12 in the male part of the ward and 12 in the female part. These portions are separated by glass doors and a passage, from which open off the kitchen, linen store, dressing room and other small rooms. In addition there is a number of beds on a veranda, which were not included in the trial, but to which and from which patients in the main ward were transferred from time to time. The surgeon, resident medical officer and nursing staff are common to both parts of the ward. The only difference between the two parts of the ward was that the beds in the male ward were furnished with oiled blankets exclusively, while the female ward beds carried the ordinary hospital blankets and served as controls. The trial commenced on August 2 and lasted until November 30,1946, a period of seventeen weeks.
Fe b 20 04 Time Asymmetry and Chaos in General Relativity .

In this work the late-time evolution of Bianchi type V III models is discussed. These cosmological models exhibit a chaotic behaviour towards the initial singularity and our investigations show that towards the future, far from the initial singularity, these models have a non-chaotic evolution, even in the case of vacuum and without inflation. These space-time solutions turn out to exhibit a particular time asymmetry. On the other hand, investigations of the late-time behaviour of type V III models by another author have the result that chaos continues for ever in the far future and that these solutions have a time symmetric behaviour: this result was obtained using the approximation methods of Belinski, Khalatnikov and Lifshitz (BKL) and we try to find out a possible reason explaining why the different approaches lead to distinct outcomes. It will be shown that, at a heuristic level, the BKL method gives a valid approximation of the late-time evolution of type V III models, agreeing with the result of our investigations.
Exposure: A Passive DNS Analysis Service to Detect and Report Malicious Domains

A wide range of malicious activities rely on the domain name service (DNS) to manage their large, distributed networks of infected machines. As a consequence, the monitoring and analysis of DNS queries has recently been proposed as one of the most promising techniques to detect and blacklist domains involved in malicious activities (e.g., phishing, spam, botnets command-and-control, etc.). EXPOSURE is a system we designed to detect such domains in real time, by applying 15 unique features grouped in four categories. We conducted a controlled experiment with a large, real-world dataset consisting of billions of DNS requests. The extremely positive results obtained in the tests convinced us to implement our techniques and deploy it as a free, online service. In this article, we present the Exposure system and describe the results and lessons learned from 17 months of its operation. Over this amount of time, the service detected over 100K malicious domains. The statistics about the time of usage, number of queries, and target IP addresses of each domain are also published on a daily basis on the service Web page.
Antibody-Array Interaction Mapping, a New Method to Detect Protein Complexes Applied to the Discovery and Study of Serum Amyloid P Interactions with Kininogen in Human Plasma*

Protein-protein interactions are fundamentally important in biological processes, but the existing analytical tools have limited ability to sensitively and precisely measure the dynamic composition of protein complexes in biological samples. We report here the development of antibody-array interaction mapping (AAIM) to address that need. We used AAIM to probe interactions among a set of 48 proteins in serum and found several known interactions as well potentially novel interactions, including multiprotein clusters of interactions. A novel interaction initially identified between the innate immune system protein C-reactive protein and the inflammatory protein kininogen (KNG) was confirmed in subsequent experiments to involve serum amyloid P instead of its highly related family member, C-reactive protein. AAIM was used in a variety of formats to further study this interaction. In vitro studies confirmed the ability of the purified proteins to interact and revealed a zinc dependence of the interaction. Studies using plasma samples collected longitudinally following a controlled myocardial infarction revealed no consistent changes in the serum amyloid P-KNG interaction levels but consistent changes in KNG activation and interactions with plasma prekallikrein. These results demonstrate a versatile platform for measuring the dynamic composition of protein complexes in biological samples that should have value for studies of normal and disease-related signaling networks, multiprotein clusters, or enzymatic cascades.
Impact of renal function on morbidity and mortality after percutaneous aortocoronary saphenous vein graft intervention.

BACKGROUND Percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with chronic renal insufficiency (CRI) and native coronary artery disease is often problematic, marred by increased morbidity and mortality rates and a high incidence of restenosis and revascularization. However, little is known about the effect of CRI in patients who have undergone prior coronary artery bypass graft surgery and then undergo saphenous vein graft (SVG) intervention. METHODS We analyzed the inhospital and 1-year outcomes of 1265 consecutive patients with normal renal function and varying degrees of renal insufficiency who underwent percutaneous SVG intervention and divided them into 4 groups on the basis of the calculated creatinine clearance (CrCl): group 1, CrCl > or =70 mL per minute (n = 626); group 2, CrCl 50 to 69 mL per minute (n = 357); group 3, CrCl 30 to 49 mL per minute (n = 228); and group 4, CrCl <30 mL per minute (n = 54). Patients undergoing dialysis replacement therapy were excluded from the study. RESULTS Patients with lower CrCl more often were older, female, had diabetes mellitus, and had worse left ventricular function. Angiographic baseline characteristics were comparable among the 4 groups. Overall immediate procedural success was similar for all groups. Patients with a low CrCl had significantly higher inhospital overall and cardiac mortality rates (P <.001), including a significantly higher incidence of myocardial infarction, vascular complications, pulmonary edema, and renal function deterioration. At 1-year follow-up, the overall mortality rates remained significantly higher in patients with decreased CrCl, with an incremental rise in overall mortality rate associated with lower renal function (P <.001). CONCLUSIONS This study suggests that renal function is a primary determinate of short- and long-term survival in patients undergoing percutaneous SVG intervention and that there is a clear relationship between CrCl and cardiovascular outcome.
Extending RMI to support dynamic reconfiguration of distributed systems

By using dynamic reconfiguration, the flexibility, adaptability, and extensibility of distributed systems are enhanced. Treating interactions among components during dynamic reconfiguration is still one of the most crucial problems in this research area. This challenge should be met by middleware design and development. However, current standard middleware offers little support for dynamic reconfiguration of distributed systems. In this paper, we describe an extended Java RMI that supports efficiently dynamic reconfiguration of distributed systems. This extended Java RMI can automatically monitor and manipulate invocations between components during dynamic reconfiguration. Moreover, the extended Java RMI can automatically switch invocations from remote to local and vice versa.
Neospora caninum in Wild Waterfowl: Occurrence of Parasite DNA and Low Antibody Titers

Abstract Thirty-five adult waterfowl (14 males and 21 females) representing various orders and species were sampled during the hunting season from 2015 to 2016. Antibodies to Neospora caninum were detected by IFAT on blood samples, while heart and brain were subjected to molecular analysis for the detection of Neospora caninum DNA. Twelve birds (34.3%) (6 Anas crecca, 3 Anas platyrhynchos, 2 Anas penelope, 1 Anas acuta) showed antibodies versus N. caninum, while 10 animals out of 35 (4 A. crecca, 2 A. platyrhynchos, 2 A. penelope, 1 A. acuta, and 1 Vanellus vanellus) scored positive for at least 1 DNA sample, with an overall prevalence of 28.6%. The present report shows for the first time the occurrence of antibodies and N. caninum DNA in waterfowl. The avian species investigated in the present report, which feed directly from the soil and/or water, would be able to ingest oocysts excreted by final canid hosts and could contribute to parasite transmission in the sylvatic cycle. To achieve a definitive result about the role of these avian species in the epidemiology of this protozoan, the presence of viable parasites should be demonstrated by bioassay and/or culture, as well as histological evidence of N. caninum cysts in avian tissues.
Using mixed-methods research to study the quality of life of coeliac women

Aims and objectives. To research the quality of life of Spanish womenwith coeliac disease. Background. Women with coeliac disease express lower quality of life than men with coeliac disease. Design. Explanatory sequential approach usingmixedmethods andwith a gender perspective. Methods. The research was carried out between May and July 2015. In its quantitative stage, it aimed to determine the health-related quality of life in a representative sample (n = 1097) of Spanish adult women with coeliac disease using a specific questionnaire named Coeliac Disease-Quality of Life. In its qualitative phase, it aimed to describe the life experiences of a woman with coeliac disease in a qualitative manner by means of interviews (n = 19) with a semistructured script. Quantitative data were analysed using SPSS version 20 and presented in descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were analysed using the directed content analysis. Results. The quantitative process gave us the values on the four aspects studied: dysphoria, disease limitations, health problems and inadequate treatment. These aspects allowed us to create a qualitative process, based on which we generated an interview, from which four larger categories emerged. These categories were feelings at diagnosis, limitations in day-to-day life, social perceptions of the disease and personal meanings of coeliac disease. Thus, both phases of our project are totally connected. There was a high level of congruence between quantitative scores and narratives. Conclusion. This study shows us the strong points of mixed-methods strategy in health sciences. The mixed-methods strategy gave us a wider view of the experience of women living with coeliac disease. In our case, a strength and not a limitation is having performed the quality of life study in women with coeliac disease using a mixed methodology, approaching the experience of being a woman with coeliac disease in Spain in two different but complementary ways. The quantitative and qualitative data allowed us to interpret the experiences of our participants.
Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity: A Consequence of More Fundamental Learning Rules

Spike timing dependent plasticity (STDP) is a phenomenon in which the precise timing of spikes affects the sign and magnitude of changes in synaptic strength. STDP is often interpreted as the comprehensive learning rule for a synapse – the “first law” of synaptic plasticity. This interpretation is made explicit in theoretical models in which the total plasticity produced by complex spike patterns results from a superposition of the effects of all spike pairs. Although such models are appealing for their simplicity, they can fail dramatically. For example, the measured single-spike learning rule between hippocampal CA3 and CA1 pyramidal neurons does not predict the existence of long-term potentiation one of the best-known forms of synaptic plasticity. Layers of complexity have been added to the basic STDP model to repair predictive failures, but they have been outstripped by experimental data. We propose an alternate first law: neural activity triggers changes in key biochemical intermediates, which act as a more direct trigger of plasticity mechanisms. One particularly successful model uses intracellular calcium as the intermediate and can account for many observed properties of bidirectional plasticity. In this formulation, STDP is not itself the basis for explaining other forms of plasticity, but is instead a consequence of changes in the biochemical intermediate, calcium. Eventually a mechanism-based framework for learning rules should include other messengers, discrete change at individual synapses, spread of plasticity among neighboring synapses, and priming of hidden processes that change a synapse's susceptibility to future change. Mechanism-based models provide a rich framework for the computational representation of synaptic plasticity.
Evaluation of a Novel PCR-Based Assay for Detection and Identification of Chlamydia trachomatis Serovars in Cervical Specimens

ABSTRACT The aims of this study were to compare a novel PCR-based Chlamydia trachomatis detection and genotyping (Ct-DT) assay with the FDA-approved, commercially available C. trachomatis detection Hybrid Capture 2 (HC2) assay and to investigate the C. trachomatis serovar distribution among young women in a rural Costa Rican study population. A total of 5,828 sexually active women participating in a community-based trial in Costa Rica were tested for C. trachomatis by HC2. A sample of 1,229 specimens consisting of 100% HC2 C. trachomatis-positive specimens (n = 827) and a random sample of 8% HC2 C. trachomatis-negative specimens (n = 402) were tested with the Ct-DT assay. Agreement between the two assays was determined by the unweighted kappa statistic. Discrepant specimens were tested with a second commercially available test (COBAS TaqMan). The Ct-DT-positive specimens were further analyzed with the Ct-DT genotyping step to investigate the distribution of 14 different C. trachomatis serovars (A, B/Ba, C, D/Da, E, F, G/Ga, H, I/Ia, J, K, L1, L2/L2a, and L3). After accounting for the sampling fraction selected for Ct-DT testing, crude agreement with the HC2 assay was 98% and the kappa was 0.92 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.89 to 0.97). The 33 discordant samples that were further analyzed with the COBAS TaqMan test showed better agreement with the Ct-DT assay (31/33, P < 0.001). Among the 806 Ct-DT-positive samples, serovar E was the most common serovar (31%), followed by serovars F and D (both 21%) and serovar I (15%). In conclusion, the novel Ct-DT assay permits reliable detection and identification of C. trachomatis serovars.