Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Labour Force Participation and Employment of Humanitarian Migrants: Evidence from the Building a New Life in Australia Longitudinal Data

This study uses the longitudinal data from the Building a New Life in Australia survey to examine the relationships between human capital and labour market participation and employment status among recently arrived/approved humanitarian migrants. We find that the likelihood of participating in the labour force is higher for those who had pre-immigration paid job experience, completed study/job training and have better job searching knowledge/skills in Australia and possess higher proficiency in spoken English. We find that the chance of getting a paid job is negatively related to having better pre-immigration education, but it is positively related to having unpaid work experience and job searching skills in Australia, and better health. We also explore the ethical implications of the findings.
WP / 17 / 058 External Flows and Inclusive Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

The study assesses how external flows influence inclusive human development in a panel of 48 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2000-2012. The empirical evidence is based on Tobit regressions and Generalised Method of Moments. The findings from both estimation techniques reveal that remittances and FDI increase inclusive development whereas foreign aid has the opposite effect. The results suggest some positive and negative impacts of interest for further analysis. First, remittances are negatively associated with: (i) Middle income countries compared to Low income countries where the effect is not significant; (ii) French Civil law countries compared to English Common law countries where the effect is positive and (iii) Resource-rich countries compared to their Resource-poor counterparts where the effect is positive. Second, foreign aid is more negatively linked to Low income, French Civil law, Islam-dominated, Un-landlocked, Resource-rich and Politically-unstable countries. Third, FDI is positively associated with: (i) Low income, French Civil law and Landlocked countries compared to respectively Middle income, English Common law and Un-landlocked countries where the effect is insignificant and (ii) Politically-stable countries compared to their Politically-unstable counterparts where the effect is negative. JEL Classification: F21; F24; F35; I30; O55
Towards Designing PLC Networks for Ubiquitous Connectivity in Enterprises

Powerline communication (PLC) provides inexpensive, secure and high speed network connectivity, by leveraging the existing power distribution networks inside the buildings. While PLC technology has the potential to improve connectivity and is considered a key enabler for sensing, control, and automation applications in enterprises, it has been mainly deployed for improving connectivity in homes. Deploying PLCs in enterprises is more challenging since the power distribution network is more complex as compared to homes. Moreover, existing PLC technologies such as HomePlug AV have not been designed for and evaluated in enterprise deployments. In this paper, we first present a comprehensive measurement study of PLC performance in enterprise settings, by analyzing PLC channel characteristics across space, time, and spectral dimensions, using commodity HomePlug AV PLC devices. Our results uncover the impact of distribution lines, circuit breakers, AC phases and electrical interference on PLC performance. Based on our findings, we show that careful planning of PLC network topology, routing and spectrum sharing can significantly boost performance of enterprise PLC networks. Our experimental results show that multi-hop routing can increase throughput performance by 5x in scenarios where direct PLC links perform poorly. Moreover, our trace driven simulations for multiple deployments, show that our proposed fine-grained spectrum sharing design can boost the aggregated and per-link PLC throughput by more than 20% and 100% respectively, in enterprise PLC networks.
Investigation of Exomic Variants Associated with Overall Survival in Ovarian Cancer

Background—While numerous susceptibility loci for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) have been identified, few associations have been reported with overall survival. In the absence of common prognostic genetic markers, we hypothesize that rare coding variants may be associated with overall EOC survival and assessed their contribution in two exome-based genotyping projects of the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC). Methods—The primary patient set (Set 1) included 14 independent EOC studies (4293 patients) and 227,892 variants, and a secondary patient set (Set 2) included six additional EOC studies (1744 patients) and 114,620 variants. Because power to detect rare variants individually is reduced, gene-level tests were conducted. Sets were analyzed separately at individual variants and by gene, and then combined with meta-analyses (73,203 variants and 13,163 genes overlapped). Results—No individual variant reached genome-wide statistical significance. A SNP previously implicated to be associated with EOC risk and, to a lesser extent, survival, rs8170, showed the strongest evidence of association with survival and similar effect size estimates across sets (Pmeta=1.1E-6, HRSet1=1.17, HRSet2=1.14). Rare variants in ATG2B, an autophagy gene important for apoptosis, were significantly associated with survival after multiple testing correction (Pmeta=1.1E-6; Pcorrected=0.01). Conclusions—Common variant rs8170 and rare variants in ATG2B may be associated with EOC overall survival, although further study is needed. Impact—This study represents the first exome-wide association study of EOC survival to include rare variant analyses, and suggests that complementary single variant and gene-level analyses in large studies are needed to identify rare variants that warrant follow-up study.
In Situ Prebiotics for Weaning Piglets: In Vitro Production and Fermentation of Potato Galacto-Rhamnogalacturonan

ABSTRACT Postweaning diarrhea (PWD) in pigs is a leading cause of economic loss in pork production worldwide. The current practice of using antibiotics and zinc to treat PWD is unsustainable due to the potential of antibiotic resistance and ecological disturbance, and novel methods are required. In this study, an in vitro model was used to test the possibility of producing prebiotic fiber in situ in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract of the piglet and the prebiotic activity of the resulting fiber in the terminal ileum. Soluble fiber was successfully produced from potato pulp, an industrial waste product, with the minimal enzyme dose in a simulated upper GI tract model extracting 26.9% of the initial dry matter. The fiber was rich in galactose and galacturonic acid and was fermented at 2.5, 5, or 10 g/liter in a glucose-free medium inoculated with the gut contents of piglet terminal ileum. Fermentations of 5 g/liter inulin or 5 g/liter of a purified potato fiber were used as controls. The fibers showed high fermentability, evident by a dose-dependent drop in pH and an increase in the organic acid content, with lactate in particular being increased. Deep sequencing showed a significant increase in the numbers of Lactobacillus and Veillonella organisms and an insignificant increase in the numbers of Clostridium organisms as well as a decrease in the numbers of Streptococcus organisms. Multivariate analysis showed clustering of the treatment groups, with the group treated with purified potato fiber being clearly separated from the other groups, as the microbiota composition was 60% Lactobacillus and almost free of Clostridium. For animal studies, a dosage corresponding to the 5-g/liter treatment is suggested.
Fibreoptic vs videolaryngoscopic (C‐MAC® D‐BLADE) nasal awake intubation under local anaesthesia

Numerous indirect laryngoscopes have been introduced into clinical practice and their use for tracheal intubation under local anaesthesia has been described. However, a study comparing indirect laryngoscopic vs fibreoptic intubation under local anaesthesia and sedation appears lacking. Therefore, we evaluated both techniques in 100 patients with an anticipated difficult nasal intubation time for intubation the primary outcome. We also assessed success rate, glottic view, Ramsey score, and patients' and anaesthetists' satisfaction. The median (IQR [range]) time for intubation was significantly shorter with the videolaryngoscope with 38 (24–65 [11–420]) s vs 94 (48–323 [19–1020]) s (p < 0.0001). There was no difference in the success rate of intubation (96% for both techniques; p > 0.9999) and satisfaction of the anaesthetists and patients. We conclude that in anticipated difficult nasal intubation a videolaryngoscope represents an acceptable alternative to fibreoptic intubation.
A Privacy Service for Context-aware Mobile Computing

Privacy issues related to the access of context information are becoming increasingly important as we move toward ubiquitous and mobile computing environments. In this article, we describe the design and implementation of a privacy service, called Context Privacy Service (CoPS), to control how, when and to whom disclose a user’s context information. Based on the results of an end-user survey and experience reported by other research groups, we identified the main service requirements and designed CoPS aiming flexibility, generality, simplicity and fine-grained privacy control. CoPS is an optional service of our context-provisioning middleware MoCA and allows users of context- and location-aware applications to define and manage their privacy policies regarding disclosure of their context information. The main features supported by CoPS are group-based access control, pessimistic and optimistic approaches for access control, hierarchical privacy rules, mixed-initiative interaction, and rule specificity analysis.
Transitive factorisations into transpositions and holomorphic mappings on the sphere

We determine the number of ordered factorisations of an arbitrary permutation on n symbols into transpositions such that the factorisations have minimal length and such that the factors generate the full symmetric group on n symbols. Such factorisations of the identity permutation have been considered by Crescimanno and Taylor in connection with a class of topologically distinct holomorphic maps on the sphere. As with Macdonald's construction for symmetric functions that multiply as the classes of the class algebra, essential use is made of Lagrange inversion.
Undiagnosed sleep apnea in patients with essential hypertension.

The prevalence of sleep apnea was studied in 46 middle- and older-aged men with "essential hypertension. " Thirty-four age- and weight-similar normotensive men were also studied. Fourteen hypertensive men and three controls had sleep apnea syndrome, as defined as greater than ten apneas per hour of sleep. Hypertensive men with apnea tended to be more overweight and slightly older than the hypertensive men without apnea, but differences were not statistically significant. Individual men with apnea could not be distinguished by their answers on a questionnaire that elicited symptoms related to apnea. Seven hypertensive men with apnea were treated with protriptyline and one with uvulopalatopharyngoplasty, and apnea index (apneas per hour) decreased by 77% from pretreatment levels while mean blood pressure decreased from 149/95 mm Hg to 139/90 mm Hg. Undiagnosed sleep apnea syndrome may be associated with systemic hypertension in many middle- and older-aged men. In some, sleep apnea syndrome could be the cause of hypertension, and in others it may contribute to hypertension of another cause.
Evaluation of the Risk of Transmission of Bacterial Biofilms and Clostridium difficile During Gastrointestinal Endoscopy

Recent attention has focused on the potential for the transmission of bacterial biofilms, Clostridium difficile, and other types of pathogenic spore-forming bacteria during gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy. This study investigates whether GI endoscopy is a risk factor for the transmission of bacterial biofilms and the endospores or vegetative cells of pathogenic spore-forming bacteria including C. difficile. The medical literature was reviewed to evaluate the risk of the transmission of these infectious agents during GI endoscopy. No cases of a GI endoscope transmitting the endospores or vegetative cells of C. difficile or another type of pathogenic spore-forming bacterium were identified during this review. Also, no studies were identified during this review that document a case of infection causally linked to a bacterial biofilm that formed on the internal surfaces of and was transmitted by a GI endoscope that was reprocessed in accordance with currently accepted and well-established reprocessing standards. Gastrointestinal endoscopy is not reported to be a risk factor for the transmission of bacterial biofilms, C. difficile, or the endospores (and vegetative cells) of any other type of pathogenic spore-forming bacterium (or any type of infectious agent). Strict adherence to currently accepted and well-established reprocessing standards is necessary to prevent transmission of biofilms, C. difficile, and other infectious agents during GI endoscopy.
1 Chinese Monetary Policy and the Dollar Peg *

This paper investigates to what extent Chinese monetary policy is constrained by the dollar peg. To this end, we use a cointegration framework to examine whether Chinese interest rates are driven by the Fed’s policy. In a second step, we estimate a monetary model for China, in which we include also other monetary policy tools besides the central bank interest rate, namely reserve requirement ratios and open market operations. Our results suggest China has been relatively successful in isolating its monetary policy from the US policy and that the interest rate tool has not been effectively made use of. We therefore conclude that by employing capital controls and relying on other instruments than the interest rate China has been able to exert relatively autonomous monetary policy.
A Spatio-Temporal Understanding of Growth Regulation during the Salt Stress Response in Arabidopsis[W]

This work uses time-lapse imaging and tissue-specific gene expression analysis to identify the key signaling pathways important for regulating dynamic changes in growth during the response of Arabidopsis roots to salt stress. Plant environmental responses involve dynamic changes in growth and signaling, yet little is understood as to how progress through these events is regulated. Here, we explored the phenotypic and transcriptional events involved in the acclimation of the Arabidopsis thaliana seedling root to a rapid change in salinity. Using live-imaging analysis, we show that growth is dynamically regulated with a period of quiescence followed by recovery then homeostasis. Through the use of a new high-resolution spatio-temporal transcriptional map, we identify the key hormone signaling pathways that regulate specific transcriptional programs, predict their spatial domain of action, and link the activity of these pathways to the regulation of specific phases of growth. We use tissue-specific approaches to suppress the abscisic acid (ABA) signaling pathway and demonstrate that ABA likely acts in select tissue layers to regulate spatially localized transcriptional programs and promote growth recovery. Finally, we show that salt also regulates many tissue-specific and time point–specific transcriptional responses that are expected to modify water transport, Casparian strip formation, and protein translation. Together, our data reveal a sophisticated assortment of regulatory programs acting together to coordinate spatially patterned biological changes involved in the immediate and long-term response to a stressful shift in environment.
The Opioid Crisis: Naloxone Access Laws and Moral Hazard

Naloxone Access Laws (NALs) are one of several policies intended to ght the rampant opioid epidemic by allowing the public to carry naloxone (Narcan), an overdose reversal drug. All states have currently adopted NALs with New Mexico being the rst one in 2001. This study extends the literature by examining the potential for moral hazard from the ready availability of naloxone to opioid abusers and the general public. E ects on opioid overdose deaths, opioid rehabilitation admissions, and the legal supply of opioids are analyzed via a xed e ects regression method and propensity score matching techniques. The study nds the law to have a mixed e ect on opioid overdose deaths. Various speci cations show NALs to either have no impact on opioid overdose fatalities or causing up to 2 more per 100,000 population. The supply of legal opioid drugs signi cantly went up from 3,200 to 4,000 more grams per 100,000 population due to NALs during the time period analyzed. However, the e ects of NALs on opioid rehabilitation admission is unclear. Depending on the outcome of interest, the evidence of moral hazard stemming from NALs is either inconclusive or weak.
Fast Convergence of Regularized Learning in Games

We show that natural classes of regularized learning algorithms with a form of recency bias achieve faster convergence rates to approximate efficiency and to coarse correlated equilibria in multiplayer normal form games. When each player in a game uses an algorithm from our class, their individual regret decays at $O(T^{-3/4})$, while the sum of utilities converges to an approximate optimum at $O(T^{-1})$--an improvement upon the worst case $O(T^{-1/2})$ rates. We show a black-box reduction for any algorithm in the class to achieve $\tilde{O}(T^{-1/2})$ rates against an adversary, while maintaining the faster rates against algorithms in the class. Our results extend those of [Rakhlin and Shridharan 2013] and [Daskalakis et al. 2014], who only analyzed two-player zero-sum games for specific algorithms.
Is there a connection between inflammation, telomerase activity and the transcriptional status of telomerase reverse transcriptase in renal failure?

Abstract Telomerase is involved in the elongation of telomeres. It remains active in very few types of cell in mature organisms. One such cell type is the lymphocytes. In this study, we investigated the activity and expression of telomerase in lymphocytes from renal failure patients and compared it to that for normal controls. Inflammation status was determined at the same time. The enzyme activity was measured using PCR-ELISA with peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from three groups: 53 healthy individuals, 50 patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and 50 dialysis patients. In the same cell populations, the expression of the reverse transcriptase of the human telomerase gene (hTERT) was measured via real-time PCR. The inflammationstatus of these individuals was determined by calculating the interleukin 6 (IL-6), IL-10, C-reactive protein (CRP) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-a) serum concentrations via ELISA. The lowest levels of telomerase activity were detected in CKD, and this group had the highest IL-6 and CRP values and the lowest hTERT expression. The dialysis group showed significant differences in comparison to the normal subjects and to the CKD patients. Further studies are warranted in order to explore the way inflammation influences telomerase activity and hTERT expression.
Effect of caffeic acid phenethyl ester on bone formation in the expanded inter-premaxillary suture

Background Narrow maxilla is a common problem in orthodontics and dentofacial orthopedics. To solve this problem, a procedure called rapid maxillary expansion (RME) has been used. However, relapse tendency is a major problem of RME. Although relapse tendency is not clearly understood, various treatment procedures and new applications have been investigated. The present study aimed to investigate the possible effectiveness of caffeic acid phenethyl ester (CAPE) on new bone formation in rat midpalatal suture after RME. Materials and methods Twenty male Sprague Dawley rats were used in this study. The animals were randomly divided into two groups as control and CAPE group. In the CAPE group, CAPE was administered systemically via intraperitoneal injection. RME procedure was performed on all animals. For this purpose, the springs were placed on the maxillary incisors of rats and activated for 5 days. After then, the springs were removed and replaced with short lengths of rectangular retaining wire for consolidation period of 15 days. At the end of the study, histomorphometric analysis was carried out to assess new bone formation. Results New bone formation was significantly greater in the CAPE group than the control group (P<0.05). CAPE enhances new bone formation in midpalatal suture after RME. Conclusion These results show that CAPE may decrease the time needed for retention.
Towards Bandwidth Efficient Adaptive Streaming of Omnidirectional Video over HTTP: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation

Real-time entertainment services such as streaming audiovisual content deployed over the open, unmanaged Internet account now for more than 70% during peak periods. More and more such bandwidth hungry applications and services are proposed like immersive media services such as virtual reality and, specifically omnidirectional/360-degree videos. The adaptive streaming of omnidirectional video over HTTP imposes an important challenge on today's video delivery infrastructures which calls for dedicated, thoroughly designed techniques for content generation, delivery, and consumption. ; AB@This paper describes the usage of tiles --- as specified within modern video codecs such HEVC/H.265 and VP9 --- enabling bandwidth efficient adaptive streaming of omnidirectional video over HTTP and we define various streaming strategies. Therefore, the parameters and characteristics of a dataset for omnidirectional video are proposed and exemplary instantiated to evaluate various aspects of such an ecosystem, namely bitrate overhead, bandwidth requirements, and quality aspects in terms of viewport PSNR. The results indicate bitrate savings from 40% (in a realistic scenario with recorded head movements from real users) up to 65% (in an ideal scenario with a centered/fixed viewport) and serve as a baseline and guidelines for advanced techniques including the outline of a research roadmap for the near future.
Communication through Resonance in Spiking Neuronal Networks

The cortex processes stimuli through a distributed network of specialized brain areas. This processing requires mechanisms that can route neuronal activity across weakly connected cortical regions. Routing models proposed thus far are either limited to propagation of spiking activity across strongly connected networks or require distinct mechanisms that create local oscillations and establish their coherence between distant cortical areas. Here, we propose a novel mechanism which explains how synchronous spiking activity propagates across weakly connected brain areas supported by oscillations. In our model, oscillatory activity unleashes network resonance that amplifies feeble synchronous signals and promotes their propagation along weak connections (“communication through resonance”). The emergence of coherent oscillations is a natural consequence of synchronous activity propagation and therefore the assumption of different mechanisms that create oscillations and provide coherence is not necessary. Moreover, the phase-locking of oscillations is a side effect of communication rather than its requirement. Finally, we show how the state of ongoing activity could affect the communication through resonance and propose that modulations of the ongoing activity state could influence information processing in distributed cortical networks.