Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Numerical Simulation of Two Kinds of Sample Fiber Gratings Dispersion Compensator

In the paper, we investigate the reflect spectrum and time delay of two kinds sampling fiber gratings which is used in the OTDM/DWDM transmission systems. We analyze the relations between the sample rate and the channel numbers of the binary sampling gtatings for the first time, the counting method of multi-channel numbers about the binary sampling gtatings is proposed by means of the numerical simulation, which multi- channel numbers is decided by the sample rate. Then, we analyzes the chirp coefficient c1 and the c2 value limit when the binary sample grating length is to maintain unchanged, the c1 and the c2 are not too big or too small. In the latter part of the paper, we investigate the reflect spectrum and time delay of the sinc sample gtatings, which simulation results confirms the correctness of the sinc sample gratings theory by the experimental in literature. Moreover, we analyzed the relation between the modulation of two kinds of sampling gratings and the dispersion compensation result.
Segmenting travel on the sourcing of information.

In the study presented here, travellers from Switzerland are segmented on the basis of their information collection. Information plays a special role in tourism. Core elements of a succesful strategy consist of providing convenience and a trustful relation. While elements of convenience are such as easy accessablity and availabilty of customer-tailored information, a trustful relationship is based on people (friends and relatives)and therefore manpower (travel agencies employees, or employees in tourist information agencies)
Economic Crime: Does Personality Matter?

Since the publication of Edwin Sutherland's classical study, White Collar Crime, personality has been treated as completely irrelevant as a cause or as a correlating variable in studies of economic crime. This article questions that thesis. In an ongoing Swedish project studying economic crime in the areas of construction, engineering, and the music industry, 128 informants were interviewed regarding the personal character of the economic criminal compared to that of the law-abiding businessperson. Data were collected from five different regions in Sweden using the Big Five model, the personality model most often used within the field of personality research today. This article compares the results from the interviews with the few international studies that exist regarding economic crimes in these areas and common results are emphasized. It also presents nuanced analyses of the significance of personality in economic crime.
Phase II study of pemetrexed for second-line treatment of transitional cell cancer of the urothelium.

PURPOSE To assess the antitumor activity and toxicity of pemetrexed as second-line chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced or metastatic transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the urothelium. PATIENTS AND METHODS Eligible patients had a performance status of 0 or 1, adequate organ function, previous treatment with one prior chemotherapy regimen for locally advanced or metastatic TCC of the urothelium or relapsed within 1 year of adjuvant or neoadjuvant treatment. Patients received pemetrexed 500 mg/m2 intravenously on day 1 every 21 days, with vitamin B12, folic acid, and dexamethasone prophylaxis. RESULTS Forty-seven patients were enrolled and included in the intent-to-treat efficacy analysis. Responses: 3 (6.4%) complete responses and 10 (21.3%) partial responses produced an overall response rate of 27.7%. Ten patients (21.3%) had stable disease and 22 patients (46.8%) progressed. The median time to progressive disease was 2.9 months (95% CI, 1.7 months to 4.6 months) and median overall survival was 9.6 months (95% CI, 5.1 months to 14.6 months). Median duration of response was 5.0 months (95% CI, 3.9 months to 13.8 months). Of the 47 patients assessable for safety, grade 3 or 4 hematologic events were thrombocytopenia (8.5%; 0.0%), neutropenia (4.3%; 4.3%) and anemia (2.1%; 2.1%), respectively. Nonlaboratory toxicities included grade 4 stomatitis/pharyngitis, sepsis syndrome (one patient each), and grade 3 fatigue (three patients) and diarrhea (two patients). CONCLUSION Single-agent pemetrexed is safe and active as second-line treatment of patients with advanced TCC of the urothelium. Additional evaluation in the first- or second-line setting in TCC of the urothelium is warranted.
Legal Form, Performance and Risk in the Microfinance Industry

I examine whether a microfinance institution’s (MFI) legal form influences its financial performance and risk using a sample of 349 MFIs from a global dataset over the period of 2004-2012. Three main results emerge. First, after controlling for MFI, country and timespecific effects, an MFI’s commercialisation level has a negative impact on the institution’s financial performance and operating efficiency. Secondly, using a proxy for insolvency risk (LN(Z-score)), the study identifies that a legal form’s commercial orientation has a positive affect on an MFI’s insolvency risk. Finally, in relation to loan quality, I find no significant difference between various legal forms’ loan loss rates as they become more commercially orientated. These findings should prove useful for policy makers and investors involved in the microfinance industry in which there is no established ‘best set-up’.
Financing Health Care in Sub-Saharan Africa Through User Fees and Insurance

This book was written as part of a broad search for ways to improve the effectiveness of World Bank support for health in Africa. In this volume ideas are presented to stimulate a more informed discussion offer new perspectives and challenge some widely held assumptions about cost recovery. A rethinking of user fee policies is emphasized because this may lead to appropriate ways to improve quality and equity in the delivery of health care. There is in fact growing evidence that well-designed user fees and self-financing insurance schemes offer new opportunities to develop better health care systems in Africa south of the Sahara. The introduction to this book provides an overview on mechanisms for 1) mobilizing resources 2) setting prices and anticipating effects 3) implementation and future performance and 4) partnerships in cost-sharing. The book is then divided into 2 sections. Section 1 covers user fees and discusses 1) their goals (mobilizing resources promoting efficiency fostering equity reinforcing decentralization and sustainability and stimulating private sector development) 2) the ability and willingness of users to pay fees 3) the tradeoff between price and quality 4) exemption policies and 5) their administration and collection. The following recommendations are then made about user fees: 1) an explicit policy on user fees should be formulated; 2) the targeting of subsidies should be reconsidered; 3) the efficient management of facilities should be emphasized; 4) facilities should be permitted to retain a portion of the fees collected; 5) communities should have a voice on the boards of local health facilities; 6) better procurement practices (especially for drugs) should be stressed; 7) the development of private sector providers should be promoted; and 8) an information base should be constructed for future policy analysis. The second part of the book considers issues of self-financing health insurance such as risk sharing insurance basics formal health insurance in Africa prepayment plans for rural populations evaluating the potential for formal risk sharing in Africa and the potential for expanding coverage. The recommendations which arise from this discussion are 1) to focus initially on cities 2) to tap the formal sector 3) to implement user fees as a prerequisite 4) to stress catastrophic care 5) to pay attention to the "uninsurables" 6) to explore alternatives such as prepayment schemes 7) to maintain consumer choice and 8) to build an information base for policy analysis.
Increased neuronal cell survival after L‐deprenyl treatment in experimental thiamine deficiency

Experimental thiamine deficiency results in a reproducible pattern of selective neuronal cell death. Events such as blood‐brain barrier breakdown, N‐methyl‐D‐aspartic acid (NMDA) receptor‐mediated excitotoxicity, and increased reactive oxygen species have been implicated in thiamine deficiency‐induced neural loss. L‐deprenyl protects dopaminergic, noradrenergic, and acetylcholinergic neurons from neurotoxic, mechanical, and excitotoxic damage. In the present study, the effects of l‐deprenyl on neuronal cell survival were examined in rats made thiamine deficient by daily administration of the central thiamine antagonist pyrithiamine (0.5 mg/kg s.c.). Rats assigned to thiamine deficient or control groups received daily injections of l‐deprenyl (0.25, 0.5, or 1.0 mg/kg/day i.p.) or vehicle until they reached a state of severe thiamine deficiency (loss of righting reflex). At this stage, thiamine status was restored by daily injections of thiamine (10 mg/kg s.c.) for 3 days, after which the animals were killed, and their brains were processed for neuronal cell counts (cresyl violet staining), astrocytic proliferation [glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) immunohistochemistry], and monoamine oxidase B (MAO‐B) activity. All rats receiving l‐deprenyl (all doses) had significantly decreased neuronal cell loss in thalamic nuclei, in the inferior colliculus, and in the inferior olive and had a concomitant decrease in reactive astrocytic proliferation compared with the thiamine‐deficient, vehicle‐treated rats. The neuroprotective effects of l‐deprenyl in thiamine deficiency induced brain damage most likely result from its properties other than its effects as an MAO‐B inhibitor. J. Neurosci. Res. 52:240–246, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Factorial invariance of pregnancy-specific anxiety dimensions across nulliparous and parous pregnant women

The 10-item version of the Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire–Revised was developed based on a sample of nulliparous women. Whether this measure is also a valuable tool for future research on pregnancy-specific anxiety is unclear. Our study tested for invariance of this measure across nulliparous women and parous women by using a dataset of 6004 women pregnant up to 35 weeks. Results showed that whereas the factor structure of the 10-item version of the Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire–Revised was noninvariant, removing item 8 from the measure created a measure with invariant factor loadings that can be used for all pregnant women.
The Prevalence of Childhood Trauma Among Those Seeking Buprenorphine Treatment

ABSTRACT In this study, the authors examined the prevalence of five types of childhood trauma among a sample of adult patients who were addicted to opioids and seeking treatment with buprenorphine. Using a survey methodology, the authors examined a consecutive sample of 113 participants and found that 20.4% reported having experienced sexual abuse, 39.8% reported having experienced physical abuse, 60.2% reported having experienced emotional abuse, 23.0% reported having experienced physical neglect, and 65.5% reported having witnessed violence. Only 19.5% of the sample denied having experienced any of the five forms of childhood trauma. Most respondents (60.2%) reported having experienced one, two, or three different forms of childhood trauma. A minority reported having experienced four (13.3%) or all five (7.1%) forms of childhood trauma. These data indicate that among individuals with opioid dependence who are seeking treatment with buprenorphine, the prevalence rates of various types of childhood trauma are quite high.
Business Tourism

This chapter opens with a review of some general definitions of the concept of business tourism in order to set the basis of what the authors will be talking about in this book. This will also allow them to provide their own definition of the concept and be specific to the reader as to what they are referring to. They continue with more definitions of key concepts in the field. Then a section on the importance of business tourism will follow in which they analyze some examples of the promotion of countries as potential destinations for events. Next, some specific figures of the growth of business tourism in different countries will be given, and the advantages that business tourism has for them will be explained. This will lead to the final sections of the chapter on the importance of communication in different languages for the successful development of business tourism and some useful language-related resources to facilitate business tourism communication.
EU Productivity and Competitiveness: An Industry Perspective Can Europe Resume the Catching-up Process?

Acknowledgments: The authors thank Colin Webb (OECD) for his advice on the use of the OECD STAN database, which has been an important input for the databases used for this study. We also received data series and advice on their use from employees at various national statistical offices, in particular Statistics Denmark, the Federal Statistical Office in Germany, Statistics Finland, the Central Statistics Office in Ireland, Statistics Netherlands, the Office for National Statistics, UK, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, US, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, US. The data series underlying the growth accounting estimates draws partly from earlier work supported by the UK HM-Treasury ‘Evidence Based Policy Fund’ (with contributions from the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for Education and Skills), the European Commission’s Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs, and by the European Commission’s Fifth Research Framework Programme project ‘Employment Prospects in the Knowledge Economy’. We also received useful advice from Lourens Broersma (Netherlands), Harald Edquist (Sweden), Martin Falk (Austria), Lawrence Nayman and Johanna Melka (France), and Nicholas Oulton and Sylaja Srinivasan (UK). Finally we would like to thank Tassos Belessiotis and Jesus Maria Irigoyen from the European Commission’s Enterprise Directorate-General for comments throughout the research and for careful reading of the final draft. The editors of this study and the authors of the individual chapters are solely responsible for the results provided in this study.
Case studies of lead firm governance systems in the context of commercialization of smallholder agriculture in Uganda

[INTRODUCTION] The study is set in the context of: (a) overall weak farmer-buyer relations in most parts of Uganda’s agro-sector which affect the development prospects of small holder farmers (SHFs), and (b) a growing interest by the private and public sector, including the Government of Uganda (GOU) and development agencies in the contribution of value chain (VC) analysis and support interventions to economic development in the country. This study analyzes the governance of domestic value chains (DVCs) in the agricultural sector in Uganda. It focuses at exploring how agricultural produce buyers set up, coordinate and monitor - that is govern - the DVCs with their supplying farmers. Particularly how buyers govern the latter’s activities and performance and thus the division of labour in the DVC. Governance in this context constitutes for instance: (i) setting the requirements for farmers in terms of product quantity, quality and delivery, or production processes, (ii) monitoring compliance, and (iii) assisting farmers to meet the set requirements. This study focuses on such governance systems of various buyers which operate a DVC with SHFs. The buyers are called lead firms (LFs) of the DVC. The research was concerned with: the rationale and functioning of the business relation between the LF and SHFs, related benefits and costs as well as lessons-learnt, farmers’ upgrading as well as opportunities and challenges which will have to be addressed by the VC actors or call for assistance from for instance GOU and respective support institutions.
Frequency Domain receivers for IEEE 802.15.4a short range communication systems

In this paper we study the performance of an innovative Frequency Domain (FD) receiver for IEEE 802.15. 4a short-range communications. The proposed system takes benefit of the guard intervals which are introduced in the standard between the symbols, so avoiding the need of the cyclic prefix introduction at the transmitter. The proposed receiver strategy is based on the Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) criterion and is compared with the classical rake, considering a scenario where a coordinator communicates with several devices in a short range environment. The channel model, which is characterized by severe multipath propagation, has been derived according to the IEEE 802.15. 4a recommendations.
SHIVA STAR Inductive Pulse Compression System

Abstract : THE SHIVA STAR capacitor bank, a 120 KV parallel bank storing 9.5 MJ with a short circuit current of almost 90 MA, at the AFWL is the world's highest energy, fast capacitor bank. The approximately 3 microsecond short circuit current risetime is shortened by an inductive store/opening switch power conditioning system in which a total inductance of about 10 nH is charged with 35 MA currents. Electrically exploded conductor (fuse) opening switches are employed to interrupt the current in a few hundred nanoseconds to deliver a fast rising current to the load. The system is in operation at the AFWL and is used for a variety of plasma physics experiments. Performance of the bank and pulse compression system are discussed.
Self-assembly properties of recombinant engineered amelogenin proteins analyzed by dynamic light scattering and atomic force microscopy.

Dynamic light scattering (DLS) analysis together with atomic force microscopy (AFM) imaging was applied to investigate the supramolecular self-assembly properties of a series of recombinant amelogenins. The overall objective was to ascertain the contribution of certain structural motifs in amelogenin to protein-protein interactions during the self-assembly process. Mouse amelogenins lacking either amino- or carboxy-terminal domains believed to be involved in self-assembly and amelogenins having single or double amino acid mutations identical to those found in cases of amelogenesis imperfecta were analyzed. The polyhistidine-containingfull-length recombinant amelogenin protein [rp(H)M180] generated nanospheres with monodisperse size distribution (hydrodynamic radius of 20.7 +/- 2.9 nm estimated from DLS and 16.1 +/- 3.4 nm estimated from AFM images), comparable to nanospheres formed by full-length amelogenin rM179 without the polyhistidine domain, indicating that this histidine modification did not interfere with the self-assembly process. Deletion of the N-terminal self-assembly domain from amelogenin and their substitution by a FLAG epitope ("A"-domain deletion) resulted in the formation of assemblies with a heterogeneous size distribution with the hydrodynamic radii of particles ranging from 3 to 38 nm. A time-dependent dynamic light scattering analysis of amelogenin molecules lacking amino acids 157 through 173 and containing a hemagglutinin epitope ("B"-domain deletion) resulted in the formation of particles (21.5 +/- 6.8 nm) that fused to form larger particles of 49.3 +/- 4.3 nm within an hour. Single and double point mutations in the N-terminal region resulted in the formation of larger and more heterogeneous nanospheres. The above data suggest that while the N-terminal A-domain is involved in the molecular interactions for the formation of nanospheres, the carboxy-terminal B-domain contributes to the stability and homogeneity of the nanospheres, preventing their fusion to larger assemblies. These in vitro findings support the notion that the proteolytic cleavage of amelogenin at amino- and carboxy-terminii occurring during enamel formation influences amelogenin to amelogenin interactions during self-assembly and hence alters the structural organization of the developing enamel extracellular matrix, thus affecting enamel biomineralization.
Iron Balance in Regular Blood Donors

Background: Numerous reports have shown that iron stores decrease in blood donors after donation. As we need healthy donors, it is essential to test hemoglobin and ferritin levels for preventing reduced of iron stores in donors. Methods: This study was conducted on 235 healthy men. The donors were divided into three groups: group I) control group with no donation; group II) case group 1 with two donations within 1 year; group III) case group 2 with three donations within 1 year. Results: The mean level of hemoglobin was 15.9 and 14.7 g/dl in the control group and in the case group, respectively (p < 0.0000). The mean level of serum ferritin in group I, II and III, was 108, 56 and 26 mg/l, respectively (p < 0.0000). When studying various stages of iron deficiency in donors, it could be shown that 58% of group III donors but only 1% of control group donors had a negative iron balance. Moreover, iron deficiency anemia was observed in 20% of group III donors. Conclusion: Just measuring the hemoglobin level is not sufficient for selecting donors. In addition, testing of the ferritin level and iron supplementation are recommended in regular donors with more than one donation per year.
The impact of nocturnal hypertension and nondipping status on left ventricular mass: a cohort study

ObjectiveAmbulatory blood pressure monitoring provides a unique tool in the evaluation of night-time blood pressure (BP), having a critical role in the detection of a blunted nocturnal fall and of elevated night-time BP. Both nondipping status and nocturnal hypertension are associated with increased cardiovascular risk and target organ damage. The aim of our study was to investigate the impact of both nondipping status and nocturnal hypertension on left ventricular mass (LVM), assessed by means of echocardiography in a consecutive cohort of untreated participants. MethodsA total of 937 individuals were assessed by means of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring and echocardiography. Participants were divided into dippers and nondippers with or without systolic nocturnal hypertension (SNH). SNH was defined as night-time systolic blood pressure of 120 mmHg or more, and nondipping status was defined as an average reduction in systolic blood pressure at night less than 10% compared with the daytime BP. ResultsDippers and nondippers with SNH presented significantly higher values of left ventricular mass index compared with dippers and nondippers without SNH, respectively. Multiple regression analysis revealed that age (&bgr;=0.182, P<0.001), male gender (&bgr;=0.168, P<0.001), body mass index (&bgr;=0.080, P=0.011), and nocturnal SBP (&bgr;=0.174, P=0.037) were significant and independent determinants of LVM. Nondipping status was not found as an independent factor associated with LVM (P=0.136). ConclusionNocturnal hypertension rather than nondipping status seems to be an independent factor associated with left ventricular mass index. The concomitant presence of both nondipping status and nocturnal hypertension is associated with higher LVM, indicating an enhanced cardiovascular risk.