Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of policy and policy reforms on non-agricultural enterprises and employment in developing countries: a review of past experiences

This paper explores two sets of issues. The first concerns the magnitude of policy induced distortions in developing countries and the impact of these distortions on the economy, paying special attention to differential impacts between firms of different sizes and resulting effects on the level of employment. The second concerns the prior experience of donors and the LDC governments with the process of policy change.
Proteomic analysis of regenerated rabbit lenses reveal crystallin expression characteristic of adult rabbits

Purpose To explore lens crystallin characteristics and morphology of rabbit regenerated lenses in comparison with wild type natural lenses by means of proteomic analysis and histological assay. Methods The lens regeneration model of the New Zealand rabbit was established, and lens regeneration was observed by slit lamp examination and photography. A histological assay was evaluated under light microscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Protein samples of regenerated lenses were collected from experimental rabbit eyes 2, 4, and 16 weeks after surgery. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) was performed. Image analyses was done using the ImageMaster 2D Elite 3.01 software package. The protein spots were trypsinized and identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time-of-flight-mass spectrometry. Results Lens regeneration began in the periphery of the capsule bag about one to two weeks after the surgery and proceeded to regenerate toward the center. The regenerated lens appeared spherical in shape with a fairly translucent cortical structure and a nuclear opacity. Histological findings showed that the remnant lens epithelial cells differentiate at the lens capsule equator and new lens fibers form in a concentric pattern in a manner similar to that observed in natural lenses. However, TEM showed morphological changes in the epithelial cells of the regenerated lenses as compared with natural lenses. 2-D electrophoresis revealed that the patterns of protein spots from regenerated lenses (two weeks, four weeks, and 16 weeks) were analogous to those of 16-week-old natural lenses but were substantially different from those of two-week-old natural lenses, particularly when the two-week-old regenerated lenses were compared with the two-week-old natural lenses. Conclusions Proteomic analysis revealed that crystallin expression in regenerated rabbit lenses was analogous to that of natural lenses of adult rabbits but was different from that of very young rabbits (two weeks old), and TEM revealed the presence of morphological changes in the epithelial cells of regenerated lenses. These results suggest that the regrowth of lens materials in the lens capsule after endocapsular phacoemulsification might actually represent the regeneration of “mature” lens substances, which have led us to the conclusion that the regenerative process does not exactly mimic embryonic development.
Differential Control of Growth, Apoptotic Activity, and Gene Expression in Human Breast Cancer Cells by Extracts Derived from Medicinal Herbs Zingiber officinale

The present study aimed to examine the antiproliferative potentiality of an extract derived from the medicinal plant ginger (Zingiber officinale) on growth of breast cancer cells. Ginger treatment suppressed the proliferation and colony formation in breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231. Meanwhile, it did not significantly affect viability of nontumorigenic normal mammary epithelial cell line (MCF-10A). Treatment of MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 with ginger resulted in sequences of events marked by apoptosis, accompanied by loss of cell viability, chromatin condensation, DNA fragmentation, activation of caspase 3, and cleavage of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase. At the molecular level, the apoptotic cell death mediated by ginger could be attributed in part to upregulation of Bax and downregulation of Bcl-2 proteins. Ginger treatment downregulated expression of prosurvival genes, such as NF-κB, Bcl-X, Mcl-1, and Survivin, and cell cycle-regulating proteins, including cyclin D1 and cyclin-dependent kinase-4 (CDK-4). On the other hand, it increased expression of CDK inhibitor, p21. It also inhibited the expression of the two prominent molecular targets of cancer, c-Myc and the human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT). These findings suggested that the ginger may be a promising candidate for the treatment of breast carcinomas.
Using Optical Vortex To Control the Chirality of Twisted Metal Nanostructures

We discovered for the first time that light can twist metal to control the chirality of metal nanostructures (hereafter, chiral metal nanoneedles). The helicity of optical vortices is transferred to the constituent elements of the irradiated material (mostly melted material), resulting in the formation of chiral metal nanoneedles. The chirality of these nanoneedles could be controlled by just changing the sign of the helicity of the optical vortex. The tip curvature of these chiral nanoneedles was measured to be <40 nm, which is less than 1/25th of the laser wavelength (1064 nm). Such chiral metal nanoneedles will enable us to selectively distinguish the chirality and optical activity of molecules and chemical composites on a nanoscale and they will provide chiral selectivity for nanoscale imaging systems (e.g., atomic force microscopes), chemical reactions on plasmonic nanostructures, and planar metamaterials.
Relationships of job demand, job control, and social support on intention to leave and depressive symptoms in Japanese nurses

This study aims to elucidate the relationships among the factors of the demand-control-support model (DCS) on the intention to leave a hospital job and depressive symptoms. Participants included 1,063 nurses. Job demand, job control, and support from supervisors were found to be significantly related to both the intention to leave and depressive symptoms. Based on the odds ratios per 1 SD change in the DCS factors, low support from supervisors was found to be most related to the intention to leave, and low job control was found to be most related to depressive symptoms. In models that did not include “job demand” as an independent variable, 60-h working weeks were found to have a significantly higher odds ratio for depressive symptoms. Support from supervisors is more important in preventing intention to leave and depressive symptoms among nurses than is support from co-workers. Improving job control and avoiding long working hours may be important to prevent depressive symptoms.
When is system support effective?

It is widely acknowledged that exploratory search tasks require more search support than currently provided on most commercial Information Retrieval (IR) systems. As a result, richer modes of interaction, and more functional IR systems are being developed. But these next generation IR systems come at a cost: they can place a large cognitive load on the user during interaction, and hamper progress. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between search tasks and search interfaces, and try to understand when system support is most effective for search tasks. We present a user study comprising known-item and exploratory search tasks and different interfaces that provide varying levels of system support. A quantitative and qualitative data analysis was conducted on the users' performances, preferences, and search behaviours. Our findings suggest that a relationship exists between the level of system support and search tasks, and that system support is most effective when it is enabling search activities appropriate to the task
A VAR Analysis of the Effects of Monetary Policy in East Asia

In this paper, a VAR model is used to study the effects of monetary policy shocks in seven East Asian economies. For each economy, the same identification scheme is imposed and the dynamic responses to a monetary shock are examined in the light of the predictions of monetary theory. The results suggest that the VAR model produces sensible impulse response functions for most of the economies, especially for the sample that ends before the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Given the openness of these economies, the exchange rate plays a significant role in the formulation of monetary policy. In order to capture explicitly the importance of the exchange rate in these economies, plausible weights are also imposed on the exchange rate to identify the model.
Multi-Shot Human Re-Identification Using Adaptive Fisher Discriminant Analysis

While much research in human re-identification has focused on the single-shot case, in real-world applications we are likely to have an image sequence from both the person to be matched and each candidate in the gallery, extracted from automated video tracking. It is desirable to take advantage of the multiple visual aspects (states) of each subject observed during training and testing. However, since each subject may spend different amounts of time in each state, equally weighting all the images in a sequence is likely to produce suboptimal performance. To address this problem, we introduce an algorithm to hierarchically cluster image sequences and use the representative data samples to learn a feature subspace maximizing the Fisher criterion. The clustering and subspace learning processes are applied iteratively to obtain diversity-preserving discriminative features. A metric learning step is then applied to bridge the appearance difference between two cameras. The proposed method is evaluated on three multi-shot re-id datasets and the results outperform state-of-the-art methods.
Functional brain imaging of tinnitus‐like perception induced by aversive auditory stimuli

Tinnitus is an aversive auditory percept of unknown origin. We tested the speculation that tinnitus may share neuronal processing mechanisms with aversive auditory percepts of known origin. This study revealed the functional neuroanatomy of the perception of aversive auditory stimuli. The stimuli were presented to 12 healthy volunteers so as to mimic the psychoacoustical features of tinnitus and its affective response in tinnitus sufferers. The regional cerebral blood flow distribution was measured by PET during four auditory processing conditions and one control condition. The aversive auditory stimuli activated primary and secondary auditory areas bilaterally, dorsolateral prefrontal attention areas, and structures in the limbic system which subserve emotional processing. Based on these results and findings from other functional neuroimages of tinnitus, we hypothesize that the perception of tinnitus may involve the functional linkage of these brain areas: secondary auditory cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and limbic system.
Continuous Motion Plans for Robotic Systems with Changing Dynamic Behavior

The main objective of this paper is to address motion planning for systems in which the dynamic equations describing the evolution of the system change in different regions of the state space. We adopt the control theory point of view and focus on the planning of open loop trajectories that can be used as nominal inputs for control. Systems with changing dynamic behavior are characterized by: (a) equality and inequality constraints that partition the state space into regions (discrete states); and (b) trajectories that are governed by diierent dynamic equations as the system traverses diierent regions in the state space. The motion plan therefore consists of the sequence of regions (discrete states) as well as continuous trajectory (evolution of the continuous state) within each of the regions. Since the task may require that the system trajectories and the inputs are suuciently smooth, we formulate the motion planning problem as an optimal control problem and achieve the smoothness by specifying an appropriate cost function. We present a formal framework for describing systems with changing dynamic behavior borrowing from the literature on hybrid systems. We formulate the optimal control problem for such systems, develop a novel technique for simplifying this problem when the sequence of discrete states is known, and suggest a numerical method for dealing with inequality constraints. The approach is illustrated with two examples. We rst consider the coordination between mobile manipulators carrying an object while avoiding obstacles. We show that the obstacle avoidance translates to inequality constraints on the state and the input. In this task no changes in the dynamic equations occur since no physical interaction between the manipulators and the obstacles takes place. In our second example, we study multi-ngered manipulation. In this case, the state space is partitioned into regions corresponding to different grasp conngurations. We compute the motion plan for a task that requires a switch between two grasp conngurations and obtain the optimal trajectory for the system as well as the optimal time when the switch should occur.
Factors Influencing Intention to Use and Application of Web-Based Learning among Students of Shiraz Payame Noor University (Providing a Path Analysis Model)

Introduction: in educational settings, the intention of web-based learning and its acceptance among students are crucial. The present study tries to identify factors influencing intention of using web-based learning among students. Methods: this is a descriptive-correlative study conducted on 120 students (male and female) selected randomly. In order to study factors influencing the intention to use web-based learning, 5 questionnaires for intentions to use technology, perception of the ease and advantages of web-based learning, pleasure seeking and applicability of web-based learning systems were used. Data analysis was conducted by descriptive statistics, correlation coefficient tests, path analysis, and goodness of fit indices using SPSS 18, and LISREL 8.5 software. Findings: various factors influence intentions to use web-based learning, some of which are investigated here.
Empathizing with basic emotions: Common and discrete neural substrates

Abstract Empathizing is a quantitative trait involving understanding another's mental state (including their emotion) and responding to this with an appropriate emotion. A reliable, behaviorally validated self-report questionnaire measure of this is the Empathy Quotient (EQ), which is continuously distributed across the general population. The “discrete emotions” model posits that each “basic” emotion has a relatively independent evolutionary antecedent and social-communicative function and is subserved by a discrete neural system. In this study, we investigate if and how empathy influences the perception of basic emotions. Twenty-five volunteers (13 female, 12 male) selected across EQ space participated in a correlational design 3T fMRI study. The stimuli were presented in a box-car design, where 5 blocks (each containing 4 video clips of any one of happy, sad, angry, disgust or neutral expressions from different actors) and a low-level baseline were presented in pseudo-random order. Using an exploratory analysis, we found different brain regions correlated with EQ, depending on which emotion was being perceived. In particular, the ventral striatal response to happy faces correlated positively with EQ, while the ventral striatal response to sad faces was negatively correlated with EQ. The precuneus and lateral prefrontal cortical response to angry faces correlated positively with EQ. The response of the insula and the superior temporal gyrus cortex to disgust faces were negatively correlated with EQ. These results are discussed in the light of the postulated evolutionary function of each emotion. Using a hypothesis-driven conjunction analysis, we found that a region in the left dorsal inferior frontal gyrus/premotor cortex was positively correlated to the EQ across all four emotions. This region could therefore constitute a biomarker for trait empathy across emotions. We conclude that there are common regions underlying empathy across different emotions, and there are regions that show an emotion-specific correlation with empathy. This pattern of results is interpreted using a modification of Haxby et al.'s model of face perception.
Computational Complexity and Lexical-Functional Grammar

An important goal of modern linguistic theory is to characterize as narrowly as possible the class of natural languages. One classical approach to this characterization has been to investigate the generative capacity of grammatical systems specifiable within particular linguistic theories. Formal results along these lines have already been obtained for certain kinds of Transformational Generat ive Grammars: for example, Peters and Ritchie 1973a showed that the theory of Transformational Grammar presented in Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax 1965 is powerful enough to allow the specification of grammars for generating any recursively enumerable language, while Rounds 1973,1975 extended this work by demonstrating that moderate ly restricted Transformat ional Grammars (TGs) can generate languages whose recognition time is provably exponential. 1
Word Segmentation : Quick but not Dirty Timothy Gambell 1814

Acknowledgments Portions of this work were presented at the 34th Northeaster Linguistic Society meeting, the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, the 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, University of Delaware, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, University of Illinois. We thank these audiences for useful comments. In addition, we are grateful to Steve Anderson, Noam Chomsky, Morris Halle, Bill Idsardi, Julie Legate, Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, Jenny Saffran and Brian Scholl for discussions on the materials presented here.
Matching demand and supply in the Dutch agricultural knowledge infrastructure : the emergence and embedding of new intermediaries in an agricultural innovation system in transition

De overgang naar een markt voor agrarisch onderzoek en kennisintensieve dienstverlening brengt verschillende uitdagingen met zich mee voor actoren in de agrarische kennisinfrastructuur, aan zowel de vraagkant (eindgebruikers van innovaties zoals boeren, en de overheid) en de aanbodzijde (aanbieders van onderzoek en kennisintensieve dienstverlening). Nieuwe organisatorische arrangementen proberen vraag en aanbod in de agrarische kennisinfrastructuur bij elkaar te brengen. Dit proefschrift gaat over dergelijke nieuwe organisatorische arrangementen.
Genome-Wide Identification of Regulatory Elements and Reconstruction of Gene Regulatory Networks of the Green Alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under Carbon Deprivation

The unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a long-established model organism for studies on photosynthesis and carbon metabolism-related physiology. Under conditions of air-level carbon dioxide concentration [CO2], a carbon concentrating mechanism (CCM) is induced to facilitate cellular carbon uptake. CCM increases the availability of carbon dioxide at the site of cellular carbon fixation. To improve our understanding of the transcriptional control of the CCM, we employed FAIRE-seq (formaldehyde-assisted Isolation of Regulatory Elements, followed by deep sequencing) to determine nucleosome-depleted chromatin regions of algal cells subjected to carbon deprivation. Our FAIRE data recapitulated the positions of known regulatory elements in the promoter of the periplasmic carbonic anhydrase (Cah1) gene, which is upregulated during CCM induction, and revealed new candidate regulatory elements at a genome-wide scale. In addition, time series expression patterns of 130 transcription factor (TF) and transcription regulator (TR) genes were obtained for cells cultured under photoautotrophic condition and subjected to a shift from high to low [CO2]. Groups of co-expressed genes were identified and a putative directed gene-regulatory network underlying the CCM was reconstructed from the gene expression data using the recently developed IOTA (inner composition alignment) method. Among the candidate regulatory genes, two members of the MYB-related TF family, Lcr1 (Low-CO 2 response regulator 1) and Lcr2 (Low-CO 2 response regulator 2), may play an important role in down-regulating the expression of a particular set of TF and TR genes in response to low [CO2]. The results obtained provide new insights into the transcriptional control of the CCM and revealed more than 60 new candidate regulatory genes. Deep sequencing of nucleosome-depleted genomic regions indicated the presence of new, previously unknown regulatory elements in the C. reinhardtii genome. Our work can serve as a basis for future functional studies of transcriptional regulator genes and genomic regulatory elements in Chlamydomonas.
Update on the Laboratory Diagnosis of Invasive Fungal Infections

Recent advances in the management of patients with haematological malignancies and transplant recipients have paralleled an increase in the incidence of fungal diseases due to pathogenic genera such as Candida and Aspergillus and the emergence of less common genera including Fusarium and Zygomycetes. Despite availability of new antifungal agents these opportunistic infections have high mortality. Rapid and reliable species identification is essential for antifungal treatment, but detection of the increasing diversity of fungal pathogens by conventional phenotypic methods remains difficult and time-consuming, and the results may sometimes be inconclusive, especially for unusual species. New diagnostic techniques (e.g., 1,3-beta-d-glucan detection) could improve this scenario, although further studies are necessary to confirm their usefulness in clinical practice.
Direct Path Interference Cancellation in FM Radio-Based Passive Radar

In passive radar based on illuminators of opportunity, one of the key problems is the suppression of the direct path interference (DPI) from the illuminator. This paper analyzes the DPI and the effect of which on passive radar in practical application, and demonstrates the importance of the suppression of DPI prior to analog to digital converter (ADC). Based on which, a new, efficient, automatic cancellation solution via hardware is brought forward. Real experiments indicate over 30 dB of the DPI suppression can be obtained
November 2008-------------------- The effect of Sovereign Wealth Funds ’ investments on stock markets

We perform an event study using a sample of 50 SWF acquisitions of equity stakes in listed companies around the world, from May 2005 to April 2008. According to our results, the announcement of an acquisition by a SWF has a transitory positive impact on the share price of the target company, but there is no lasting effect. This stands in contrast to the results obtained in the academic literature for the investments of private equity funds, and to a lesser extent pension funds.