Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Equilibrium Equivalence under Expected Plurality and Probability of Winning Maximization ∗ INCOMPLETE : ONE SECTION MISSING

This paper studies competition between two office-motivated candidates when voters vote probabilistically and candidates maximize expected plurality or they maximize probability of winning. Every symmetric equilibrium under probability of winning is an equilibrium under expected plurality, but the converse hinges on some subtle issues. In a standard model of probabilistic voting, equilibria under probability of winning — if any — must be symmetric and must occur at the utilitarian welfare maximizing policy position. If the utility functions of voters are negative definite at that point, then it is indeed a local equilibrium under probability of winning. If negative definiteness is weakened to strict concavity (a seemingly innocuous move), this implication breaks down, and pure strategy equilibria under probability of winning need not exist. This possibility is examined in detail.
Effect on Adsorption of Cd ( II ) Ions by Modified Coir Pith as Agricultural Waste

This work focused on the adsorption of Cd(II) ions from aqueous solution using modified coir pith. The extended adsorption conditions were studied as a function of calcination temperature, contact time, adsorbent size, initial pH of solution and initial Cd(II) concentration. The results showed that the modified coir pith with size smaller than 125 μm gave the maximum adsorption of Cd(II) at 600°C and pH 5. The adsorption capacity increased sharply and led to equilibrium after 15 minutes. The results also coincided with the model of the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. The modified coir pith gave a higher Cd(II) uptake of 19.80 mg Cd(II)/g adsorbent.
Association of p53 binding and immortalization of primary C57BL/6 mouse embryo fibroblasts by using simian virus 40 T-antigen mutants bearing internal overlapping deletion mutations

To more precisely map the immortalization and p53 binding domains of T antigen, a large series of overlapping deletion mutations were created between codons 251 to 651 by utilizing a combination of Bal 31 deletion and oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis. Immortalization assay results indicated that amino acids (aa) 252 to 350, 400, and 451 to 532 could be removed without seriously compromising immortalization, although the appearance of immortal colonies was delayed in some cases. Western immunoblotting experiments indicated that the p53 binding capacities of T antigen produced by mutants missing aa 252 to 300, 301 to 350, 400, or 451 to 532 were only slightly reduced relative to that of wild-type T antigen. Within the limits of this deletion analysis, the immortalization and p53 binding domains appear to be colinear and, in fact, may represent two aspects of the same domain. This deletion analysis eliminates the entire zinc finger domain (aa 302 to 320), a small portion of the leucine-rich region (aa 345 to 350), and a large portion of the ATP binding domain (aa 451 to 528) as participants in p53 binding or in the immortalization process. The results also show that removal of T antigen amino acids within the region 451 to 532 appears to alter the capacity of newly synthesized but not older T antigen and p53 molecules to form complexes.
Measuring the changing cost of cybercrime

In 2012 we presented the rst systematic study of the costs of cybercrime. In this paper, we report what has changed in the seven years since. The period has seen major platform evolution, with the mobile phone replacing the PC and laptop as the consumer terminal of choice, with Android replacing Windows, and with many services moving to the cloud. The use of social networks has become extremely widespread. The executive summary is that about half of all property crime, by volume and by value, is now online. We hypothesised in 2012 that this might be so; it is now established by multiple victimisation studies. Many cybercrime patterns appear to be fairly stable, but there are some interesting changes. Payment fraud, for example, has more than doubled in value but has fallen slightly as a proportion of payment value; the payment system has simply become bigger, and slightly more ecient. Several new cybercrimes are signicant enough to mention, including business email compromise and crimes involving cryptocurrencies. The move to the cloud means that system misconguration may now be responsible for as many breaches as phishing. Some companies have suered large losses as a side-eect of denial-of-service worms released by state actors, such as NotPetya; we have to take a view on whether they count as cybercrime. The infrastructure supporting cybercrime, such as botnets, continues to evolve, and specic crimes such as premium-rate phone scams have evolved some interesting variants. The overall picture is the same as in 2012: traditional oences that are now technically `computer crimes' such as tax and welfare fraud cost the typical citizen in the low hundreds of Euros/ dollars a year; payment frauds and similar oences, where the modus operandi has been completely changed by computers, cost in the tens; while the new computer crimes cost in the tens of cents. Defending against the platforms used to support the latter two types of crime cost citizens in the tens of dollars. Our conclusions remain broadly the same as in 2012: it would be economically rational to spend less in anticipation of cybercrime (on antivirus, rewalls, etc.) and more on response. We are particularly bad at prosecuting criminals who operate infrastructure that other wrongdoers exploit. Given the growing realisation among policymakers that crime hasn't been falling over the past decade, merely moving online, we might reasonably hope for better funded and coordinated law-enforcement action.
SOIL SPATIAL HETEROGENEITY IN MEDITERRANEAN ECOSYSTEMS

Cristina Cruz, Carolina Muñoz, Maria Angeles Botella and Maria Amélia Martins Loução (2002). Nitrogen availability in Mediterranean ecosystems. Revista Biol. (Lisboa) In the present study mineral nitrogen availability (nitrate and C.CRUZ, C. MUÑOZ, M.A. BOTELLA, M.A. MARTINS-LOUÇÃO 2 ammonium) and organic matter concentrations were determined for open space soils or for soils under the influence of several Mediterranean plant species (sclerophylous and summer semi-deciduous species). The results obtained so far clearly show that: nitrate, ammonium and organic matter concentrations were quite variable within the research plot (macrogrid) even in the close proximity of individual plants. Variability in the sample values was great enough that some of the highest and lowest measured nutrient concentrations occurred within the extent of individual plant root systems. The spatial extent of variability was comparable to that found in similar ecosystems. According to the results obtained, it appears that soil landscape might be considered a mosaic of profiles reflecting the occurrence of chemical characteristics of the ground cover vegetation.
Analysis of Total Quality Management Practices , Competitiveness and Their Relationship to the Task Environment

The purpose of this paper is to relate the total quality management practices, competitiveness and their relationship to the task environment. Data for this study were obtained from existing literatures on total quality management and competitiveness as well. The methodology heavily relied on existing previous literatures on the subject being dealt with. The findings of the study revealed that leaders do have a critical role to play in the total quality management success as they are responsible for defining targets, investing in people, creating a learning context, and developing cooperative relationship with customers; practices that are related to the achievement of continuous improvement and in turn, continuous improvement affects quality outcomes.
Quality and yield of Indian mustard genotypes as influenced by different fertility levels

An essential requirement for biotechnological interventions for improving oil quality in mustard species is to examine oil content and types of fatty acids in germplasm. A field experiment was, therefore, conducted at Research Farm of CCS, Haryana Agricutural University, Hisar, India during Rabi(winter) season of 2008-09. The treatment consisted of four genotypes (RL-1359, TAC-437, Kranti and NRCDR-601) of Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) in the main plots and four fertility levels i.e. 75, 100, 125 and 150% of the recommended dose of fertilizer (N+P) in the sub-plots were tested in split plot design with three replications. Mustard genotype TAC-437 produced the maximum seed yield and it was superior to all other entries, which did not differ significantly among themselves. Seed yield increased only up to recommended dose of fertilizer and the increase was non-significant thereafter. Genotype TAC-437, which had the maximum seed yield, was found to be inferior in oil content than other genotypes. Genotypes NRCDR-601 had maximum oil content and it was at par with RL-1359 and Kranti but superior to TAC-437. Application of fertilizer to mustard crop had adverse effect on oil content. The decrease in oil content with the increase in fertilizer was maximum in RL-1359. Different genotypes had no marked changes in fatty acid composition. However, erucic acid was found to be minimum in genotype TAC-437 (~45%) and maximum in NRDCR-601 (~55%), whereas, oleic acid was minimum in NRDCR-601 and maximum in TAC-437. The study of erucic acid levels is important to identifying genes responsible for erucic acid synthesis so as to develop low erucic acid lines . The modification of these genes responsible for fatty acid synthesis may help in tailoring the low erucic genotypes crop
Vulnerability and Effective Freedom : A Merleau-Pontian View Tadashi KAWASAKI

Introduction: two concepts of vulnerability in bioethics The concept of vulnerability has been a controversial topic in bioethics, especially in ethics of medical research involving human subjects for about two decades. In 2001, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) of United States submitted to the President a paper titled Ethical and Policy Issues in Research Involving Human Participants, in which the Commission pointed out several problems of the federal regulations for protection of human subjects (45 CFR 46) by Department of Health and Human Services. The regulations were in line with the Belmont Report (1979), well known for the three ethical principles (respect for persons, beneficence and justice). The Belmont Report showed a great interest in protection of the vulnerable subjects, learning from the postwar history of US in which the unethical medical studies exploited and harmed the vulnerable such as children and the mentally disabled. It called our attention to “one special instance of injustice” which results from “the involvement of vulnerable subjects. ” However, it offered no definition of vulnerability, which was one of the difficulties that the NBAC report identified (p. 87). The federal regulations and the Belmont Report instead took a so-called “group-based approach” (ibid.) which categorized certain populations (e.g. children, prisoners and mentally disabled persons) as vulnerable groups, without any regard to different contexts and characteristics of each study and subject. This approach has been criticized for leading to discrimination and stereotype. After the NBAC report, research ethics scholars have made a lot of effort to provide an appropriate framework to protect vulnerable subjects (Agrawal 2003; Hurst 2008; Coleman 2009; Lange et al. 2013). In other words, they have tried to answer three questions: What is vulnerability? Who is vulnerable? How can we protect the vulnerable from harm and wrong? On the other hand, European scholars have argued that vulnerability should be considered as an ontological condition of human being (e.g. Rendtorff 2002). For them, it expresses the finitude and fragility of life, but it has been misunderstood in modern society due to “vulnerability reducing agenda” which aims to eliminate suffering, disability and mortality to create perfect human beings. Rightly understood, the respect for vulnerability can be the essential foundation of ethics, requiring us all to care each other. In this sense, the Barcelona Declaration, submitted to the European Commission in
I/Q imbalance estimation in OFDM systems

The paper proposes a new algorithm for I/Q imbalance estimation of multi-band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) Ultra-wideband (UWB) systems in the presence of Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) and Sample Frequency Offset (SFO). The proposed algorithm has a low complexity and is robust to both Frequency Dependent I/Q Mismatch (F-D I/Q-M) and Frequency Independent I/Q Mismatch (F-I I/Q-M). Through numerical simulation, the algorithem achieves a 9% lower PER compared to non-compensation condition in 10dB SNR condition and is shown to outperform conventional appoaches .
Birth spacing and infant mortality: evidence for eighteenth and nineteenth century German villages

Summary Data from an historical population in which fertility control was minimal and modern health services were mostly unavailable are used to show that there appears to have been a strong association between previous birth interval length and infant mortality, especially when the previous child survived. Although only imperfect proxies for breast-feeding practices and other potentially confounding factors are available for this population, the results suggest that the association between previous interval length and infant mortality in this population is not solely, or primarily, a function of differences in breast-feeding behaviour or socioeconomic status. Other factors, e.g. maternal depletion or sibling competition, are more likely to explain the observed association.
Multi Pixel Photon Counters (MPPC) as an Alternative to APD in PET Applications

The performance of multi pixel photon counters (MPPC) of 3 mm × 3 mm size, with 14400 and 3600 pixels, were studied by means of the signal from a laser light pulser and using the 3 mm × 3 mm × 20 mm LSO pixel scintillator. Special attention was paid to measure number of fired pixels, generated by the light of pulser and that of the LSO crystal, using a direct method of a comparison of the light peak position in the pulse height spectrum with that of the single photoelectron. The tests of the LSO crystal showed 1550 ± 80 fired pixels per MeV in the MPPC with 14400 pixels assuring a good linearity of the response up to about 1 MeV energy of gamma rays absorbed in the LSO crystal. Energy resolution of 14.8% for 662 keV gamma rays from 137Cs source and a time resolution of about 850 ps for 511 keV annihilation quanta were limited by a rather low number of the fired pixels compared to the number of photoelectrons in photomultipliers.
Factors Buffering Against the Effects of Job Demands

Given the increasing role that paid work is likely to play in older adulthood in the coming decades, the goal of this study was to understand the circumstances under which work is related to mental health for older adults and whether these circumstances differ by age. Using a multiworksite sample of 1,812 U.S. workers age 18 to 81, we use the life-span theory of control to hypothesize that older and younger workers may benefit differentially from job and personal control in the context of high job demands. Results suggest that for younger workers with high personal control, job control buffers the impact of job demands on mental health. For older workers, personal control alone buffers the impact of job demands on mental health. This study adds to previous research by addressing how the factors thought to buffer against the effects of job demands differ cross-sectionally by age.
A comparison of clinical and diagnostic interview schedule diagnoses. Physician reexamination of lay-interviewed cases in the general population.

We examined the level of agreement between diagnoses derived from data gathered by lay interviewers using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) in a general population survey (the Epidemiologic Catchment Area project) and both DIS and clinical diagnoses made by psychiatrists. Overall percent agreement between the lay DIS and the psychiatrists clinical impression ranged from 79% to 96%. The chance-corrected concordance was . 60 or better for eight of the 11 diagnoses. Specificities were all 90% or better. Sensitivities were lower, but lay results showed a bias for only two diagnoses: major depression was significantly underdiagnosed and obsessive illness was overdiagnosed. We compared the present results with those of previous studies from clinical settings. We explored possible reasons for disagreement and discussed the implications of the findings for psychiatric epidemiologic research.
CP violation in the three-body B ± phase-space

In this contribution, we briefly review the literature regarding Charge-Parity Violation (CPV) in twoand three-body decays, with emphasis in the contribution of soft final state interactions. We describe a model based on the CPT constraint including final state interactions, which can be applied to study CPV in the high two-body invariant mass region. The CPV in this sector of the phase space could be associated with the final state interaction coupling a pair of light pseudoscalars to double-charm B decay channels. Furthermore, we discuss the applicability of this idea to analyse CPV data from B decays in three light pseudoscalars for two-body invariant mass around 4 GeV, considering final state interactions and the CPT constraint.
Influence of Ascorbic Acid Supplementation on the Haematological and Clinical Biochemistry Parameters of Male Rabbits Exposed to Aflatoxin B1

This study was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of L‐ascorbic acid (AA) in alleviating the toxicity of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in male New‐Zealand white rabbits. Five rabbits (6 months of age and mean body weight 3.12 kg) per group were assigned to 1 of 6 treatment groups: 0 mg AA and 0 mg AFB1/kg BW (control); 20 mg AA/kg BW; 15 μg AFB1/kg BW; 15 μg AFB1 plus 20 mg AA/kg BW; 30 μg AFB1/kg BW; 30 μg AFB1 plus 20 mg AA/kg BW. Rabbits were orally administered their respective doses every other day for 9 weeks, followed by a 9‐week recovery period where all drugs were withdrawn. Evaluations were made for hemato‐biochemical parameters and enzymatic activities. Results showed that AFB1 significantly (p < 0.05) decreased hemoglobin (Hb), total erythrocytic count (TEC) and packed cell volume (PCV), in a dose‐dependent manner, and these effects were continued during the recovery period. Ascorbic acid caused an increase in these parameters, and alleviated the negative effect of AFB1 during the treatment period. Additionally, serum concentrations of total protein, albumin and glucose were significantly (P < 0.05) declined by treatment with the high dose of aflatoxin and these effects were continued during the recovery period. Ascorbic acid caused non‐significant increases in these parameters and alleviated the harmful effect of AFB1. On the other hand, aflatoxin treatment caused significant increases (P < 0.05) in the activities of serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and alkaline phosphatase (AlP) during the treatment period in a dose dependent manner, and this effect was continued during the recovery period, especially with the high dose. Also, treatment with the high dose of aflatoxin caused significant increases (P < 0.05) in cholesterol and total bilirubin. Ascorbic acid caused significant decreases in these parameters and alleviated the harmful effects of AFB1. Whereas, Total leukocyte count (TLC), urea and creatinine were not significantly affected by aflatoxin‐treatment. Generally, it is interesting feature that the treatment with AA alone had no negative effects on most of the previous parameters. Also, the presence of AA could diminished the adverse effects of AFB1 on most of hematological and biochemical values, and enzymatic activities in rabbits.
Explaining the Size Distribution of Plants: An Approach Based on Civic Capital

We show that the distribution of plant size within narrowly defined industries is affected by the variation in the stock of civic capital that occurs at the provincial level. Data on plant size come from the 2001 Italian Census of Manufacturing and Services. Civic capital turns out to have a positive effect on both the average and the standard deviation of the plant size distribution. This effect is stronger in labor-intensive industries. The potential endogeneity of current civic capital is addressed by instrumenting it with historical variables. Our interpretation for these results is that civic capital is associated with reduced opportunistic behavior, which improves intra-firm cooperation and hampers the incidence of principal-agent problems, thus allowing plants to operate on a larger scale
Super Interaction Neural Network

Recent studies have demonstrated that the convolutional networks heavily rely on the quality and quantity of generated features. However, in lightweight networks, there are limited available feature information because these networks tend to be shallower and thinner due to the efficiency consideration. For farther improving the performance and accuracy of lightweight networks, we develop Super Interaction Neural Networks (SINet) model from a novel point of view: enhancing the information interaction in neural networks. In order to achieve information interaction along the width of the deep network, we propose Exchange Shortcut Connection, which can integrate the information from different convolution groups without any extra computation cost. And then, in order to achieve information interaction along the depth of the network, we proposed Dense Funnel Layer and Attention based Hierarchical Joint Decision, which are able to make full use of middle layer features. Our experiments show that the superior performance of SINet over other state-of-the-art lightweight models in ImageNet dataset. Furthermore, we also exhibit the effectiveness and universality of our proposed components by ablation studies.
A six‐fold gradient in the incidence of type 1 diabetes at the eastern border of Finland

Objective. Type 1 diabetes results from gene‐environment interactions in subjects with genetic susceptibility to the disease. We assessed the contribution of environmental and genetic factors to type 1 diabetes by comparing the incidence in two neighboring populations living in conspicuously different socioeconomic circumstances. Research design and methods. We compared the incidence over a 10‐year period (1990–99) in children younger than 15 years of age living in the Karelian Republic of Russia and in Finland. The frequency of susceptible and protective human leukocyte antigen (HLA)‐DQ alleles was analyzed in 400 non‐diabetic schoolchildren from Russian Karelia and 1000 Finnish subjects. Results. The average annual age‐adjusted incidence of type 1 diabetes was lower in Russian Karelia than in Finland: 7.4 per 100 000 (95% confidence interval 3.5 – 11.3) versus 41.4 per 100 000 (37.3 – 45.5), while there were no differences in the frequency of the HLA DQ genotypes predisposing to type 1 diabetes in the background populations. The incidence rate did not differ significantly between different ethnic groups in Russian Karelia (Finns/Karelians, Russians, others). Conclusions. There is a close to six‐fold gradient in the incidence of type 1 diabetes between Russian Karelia and Finland, although the predisposing HLA DQ genotypes are equally frequent in the two populations. This suggests that environmental factors contribute to this steep difference in the incidence rate between these adjacent regions.