Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades and the emergence of social assistance in Latin America

This paper provides an overview of the political and economic context under which Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades was introduced to prelude the emergence of social assistance in Latin America. The paper identifies four distinctive features of the programme that were revolutionary in their own right. First, the Progresa-Oportunidades embraced a multidimensional approach to poverty, linking income transfers with simultaneous interventions in health, education and nutrition. Second, the programme focused on the poor. This is in clear contrast to generalised food subsidies and other targeted interventions that dominated the antipoverty agenda in the past. Third, the programme followed a complex system of identification and selection of beneficiaries to prevent discretionary political manipulation of public funds. Finally, an independent impact evaluation protocol proved to be critical for both improving the programme’s effectiveness and strengthening its legitimacy across different political factions and constituencies. The paper concludes that the success of Progresa-Oportunidades must be understood in a broader context, where a harsh economic and political environment, coupled with a rapid democratisation and increasing political competition, laid down the foundations for the introduction and then sustained expansion of the programme
Feedback-Based Iterative Learning Design and Synthesis With Output Constraints for Robotic Manipulators

Feedback-based iterative learning control (ILC) has been proposed to improve the unacceptable transient performance (either in state or in output) in the iteration-domain. This letter addresses a special performance requirement of output constraints, which are motivated from the safety requirements in robotic manipulators. A barrier-function like Lyapunov function is used to design a new state feedback (or a proportional-derivative controller) to ensure that output constraints are satisfied in the finite time-domain. This state feedback is then combined with the standard feed-forward ILC to track the desired trajectory. With the help of composite energy function, it is shown that, for robotic manipulators, the proposed control method can achieve perfect tracking performance without violating output constraints in any iteration. Simulation results, which are based on the model of recently developed rehabilitation robot EMU, are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.
Mapping the Neural Dynamics of Korean–English Bilinguals With Medium Proficiency During Auditory Word Processing

Bilingualism is a worldwide phenomenon and provides an opportunity to understand how the brain represents language processing. Although many studies have investigated the neural mechanism of bilingualism, it still remain unclear how brain systems are involved in the second language processing. Here, we examined the neural dynamics of bilinguals with medium proficiency during auditory word processing. Korean–English (K–E) bilinguals were recruited for the study (L1: Korean and L2: English). They performed a word comprehension task on phonological and semantic aspects by hearing words. We compared their task performance, task-induced regional activity, and functional connectivity (FC) between L1 and L2 processing. Brain activation analyses revealed that L2 evoked more widespread and stronger activation in brain regions involved in auditory word processing and the increased regional activity in L2 was prominent during phonological processing. Moreover, L2 evoked up-regulation during semantic processing was associated with L2 proficiency. FC analyses demonstrated that the intra-network connectivity showed stronger in the language network (LN), dorsal attention network (DAN), and default mode network (DMN) in L2 than L1. For the L2 phonological processing, the increased FC within the DAN was positively correlated with individuals’ L2 proficiency. Also, L2 semantic processing induced the enhanced internetwork connectivity between the LN and DMN. Our findings suggest that L2 processing in K–E bilinguals induces dynamic changes in the brain at a regional and network-level and FC analysis can disentangle the different networks involvement in L2 auditory word processing according to two key features: phonology and semantics.
Multimodal Pain Management Protocol Versus Patient Controlled Narcotic Analgesia for Postoperative Pain Control after Shoulder Arthroplasty.

Background Our institution's traditional pain management strategy after shoulder arthroplasty has involved the utilization of postoperative patient-controlled narcotic analgesia. More recently, we have implemented a protocol (TLC) that utilizes a multimodal approach. The purpose of this study was to determine whether this change has improved pain control and decreased narcotic utilization. Methods Patients undergoing primary total shoulder or reverse arthroplasty were retrospectively studied. All patients underwent interscalene brachial plexus blockade. "Traditional" patients were provided a patient-controlled analgesic pump postoperatively. TLC patients were given preoperative and postoperative multimodal, non-narcotic analgesic medications and breakthrough narcotics. Morphine equivalent units (MEU) consumed and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) scores for pain (0, 8, 16, and 24 hours) were considered. Results There were 108 patients in each group. Total postoperative narcotic consumption in the first 24 postoperative hours was 38.5 +/- 81.1 MEU in the "Traditional group" compared to 59.3 +/- 59.1 MEU in the TLC group (P<0.001). Of patients in the TLC group, 88% utilized breakthrough narcotics. VAS pain was significantly higher in the "Traditional group" at 16 hours (4.1 +/- 2.9 vs 3.2 +/- 2.7, P=0.020) and 24 hours (4.8 +/- 2.7 vs 3.7 +/- 2.6, P=0.004). Conclusion Those treated with the TLC protocol had greater narcotic utilization but better VAS pain scores at 24 hours after surgery. Both groups experienced rebound pain. While the TLC protocol led to an improved pain experience, further modification of the currently protocol may be necessary to reduce overall narcotic utilization.
De‐palmitoylation by N‐(tert‐Butyl) hydroxylamine inhibits AMPAR‐mediated synaptic transmission via affecting receptor distribution in postsynaptic densities

Palmitoylation of α‐amino‐3‐hydroxy‐5‐methyl‐4‐isoxazolepropionic acid receptors (AMPARs) subunits or their “scaffold” proteins produce opposite effects on AMPAR surface delivery. Considering AMPARs have long been identified as suitable drug targets for central nervous system (CNS) disorders, targeting palmitoylation signaling to regulate AMPAR function emerges as a novel therapeutic strategy. However, until now, much less is known about the effect of palmitoylation‐deficient state on AMPAR function. Herein, we set out to determine the effect of global de‐palmitoylation on AMPAR surface expression and its function, using a special chemical tool, N‐(tert‐Butyl) hydroxylamine (NtBuHA).
The Excellent Properties of a Dense Grid-Based HOG Feature on Face Recognition Compared to Gabor and LBP

To effectively represent facial features in complex environments, a face recognition method based on dense grid histograms of oriented gradients (HOG) is proposed. First, the face image is divided by numerous dense grids from which the HOG features are extracted. Then, all the grid HOG feature vectors are composed to realize the feature expression of the whole face, and the nearest neighbor classifier is used for recognition. In the FERET face database with complex changes in illumination, time, and environment, we test the gamma illumination correction, the spatial gradient direction, the size of the block, the standardization, and the face image resolution to find and analyze the optimal HOG parameters for face recognition. Finally, we compare our dense grid HOG with the two famous local facial feature extraction methods: the Gabor wavelet and the local binary pattern (LBP) on face recognition. The experimental results show that the dense grid HOG method is more suitable for the variations in time and environment. The feature extraction times of the dense grid HOG and LBP are similar. However, the dense grid HOG method uses fewer dimensions to obtain a better recognition rate than the LBP. Moreover, the dense grid HOG feature extraction time greatly outperforms the Gabor wavelet feature.
Band gap and work function tailoring of SnO2 for improved transparent conducting ability in photovoltaics

Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) are an essential component in modern optoelectronic devices, such as solar panels and touch screens. Their ability to combine transparency and conductivity, two properties that are normally mutually exclusive, have made them the subject of intense research over the last 50 years. SnO2, doped with F or Sb, is a widely used and relatively inexpensive transparent conducting material, however, its electronic structure leaves scope for improving its properties for use in many TCO applications, especially in solar cell devices. Here we show using density functional theory that incorporation of Pb into SnO2 reduces the band gap through lowering of the conduction band minimum, thereby increasing the electron affinity. The electron effective mass at the conduction band minimum decreases alongside the band gap, indicating improved charge carrier mobilities. Furthermore, the calculated optical absorption properties show the alloys retain their transparency in the visible spectrum. Our results suggest that alloying of PbO2 with SnO2 will enable improved electronic properties, including a highly tuneable workfunction, which will open up the material for other applications, such as hole injection layers in organic photovoltaics.
Rumor detection on Twitter using extracted patterns from conversational tree

These days, Twitter social network is one of the main platforms for getting news, among people over the world. This is because of the high volume of data generated by this social media, which makes Twitter up to date with news and information. Nevertheless, the existence of invalid information over the social network makes the users unhappy and also arises some problems in the real world, particularly in the crisis. To overcome these problems and other possible issues, automatic detection of rumor on Twitter must be taken into account. Despite such issues, in this paper, rumor detection in Twitter is studied. In this paper, the rumor is validated by considering the user's feedback, as the source data for rumor study. In our proposed method, pattern recognition and its analysis of the user conversational tree in Twitter is studied. These recognized patterns feed into as features for training a classifier for rumor detection. The model for training a classifier is an Extreme Learning Machine and its extension. The dataset for experiments of our method is the standard dataset of SemEval-2017 Task 8. Experiments of our proposed method with respect to competitor methods in rumor detection show that our method outperforms the state of the art methods.
Reinforcing the pulmonary artery autograft in the aortic position with a textile mesh: a histological evaluation.

OBJECTIVES The Ross procedure involves replacing a patient's diseased aortic valve with their own pulmonary valve. The most common failure mode is dilatation of the autograft. Various strategies to reinforce the autograft have been proposed. Personalized external aortic root support has been shown to be effective in stabilizing the aortic root in Marfan patients. In this study, the use of a similar external mesh to support a pulmonary artery autograft was evaluated. METHODS The pulmonary artery was translocated as an interposition autograft in the descending thoracic aortas of 10 sheep. The autograft was reinforced with a polyethylene terephthalate mesh (n = 7) or left unreinforced (n = 3). After 6 months, a computed tomography scan was taken, and the descending aorta was excised and histologically examined using the haematoxylin-eosin and Elastica van Gieson stains. RESULTS The autograft/aortic diameter ratio was 1.59 in the unreinforced group but much less in the reinforced group (1.11) (P < 0.05). A fibrotic sheet, variable in thickness and containing fibroblasts, neovessels and foreign body giant cells, was incorporated in the mesh. Histological examination of the reinforced autograft and the adjacent aorta revealed thinning of the vessel wall due to atrophy of the smooth muscle cells. Potential spaces between the vessel wall and the mesh were filled with oedema. CONCLUSIONS Reinforcing an interposition pulmonary autograft in the descending aorta with a macroporous mesh showed promising results in limiting autograft dilatation in this sheep model. Histological evaluation revealed atrophy of the smooth muscle cell and consequently thinning of the vessel wall within the mesh support.
Experimental Comparison of two Active Vibration Control Approaches: Velocity Feedback and Negative Capacitance Shunt Damping

This paper outlines a direct, experimental comparison between two established active vibration control techniques. Active vibration control methods, many of which rely upon piezoelectric patches as actuators and/or sensors, have been widely studied, showing many advantages over passive techniques. However, few direct comparisons between different active vibration control methods have been made to determine the performance benefit of one method over another. For the comparison here, the first control method, velocity feedback, is implemented using four accelerometers that act as sensors along with an analog control circuit which drives a piezoelectric actuator. The second method, negative capacitance shunt damping, consists of a basic analog circuit which utilizes a single piezoelectric patch as both a sensor and actuator. Both of these control methods are implemented individually using the same piezoelectric actuator attached to a clamped Plexiglas window. To assess the performance of each control method, the spatially averaged velocity of the window is compared to an uncontrolled response.
Statistical Characteristics of Sprite Halo Events Using Coincident Photometric and Imaging Data

Sprite halos are brief, diffuse flashes, which occur at the top of a sprite and precede the development of streamer structures at lower altitudes. We have investigated the characteristics of sprite halos in detail using coincident photometric and imaging data obtained during the Sprites'96 and '99 campaign in Colorado and Wyoming, USA. It is found that the average altitude of the centroid of the halo emission and the mean horizontal diameter of the halo events are ∼80 and ∼86 km, respectively, while the average speed of the descending motion of the sprite halos was ∼4.3 × 107 m/s. It was also found that the peak current intensity of the causative CG decreases with time delay from the onset of the sferics.
Dirac Electrons at the Source: Breaking the 60-mV/Decade Switching Limit

Power consumption of today’s integrated circuit is very difficult to reduce because the MOSFET is subjected to the thermal limit of 60 mV/decade for the subthreshold swing (SS). In this paper, we show that this SS limit of thermionic current can be conquered—thus power consumption drastically reduced by density of states (DOS) engineering at the source. Specifically, the linear DOS of Dirac electrons at the source concomitant with an efficient gate control brings the SS limit down to 37 mV/decade, and further down to very small values by suppressing the thermal tail contribution with a small bandgap in the injected DOS. Using the first principles analysis, we demonstrate that FETs with Dirac source to possess extremely promising device performance in both energy dynamic power and switching speed at the ultralow operating voltage regime of 0.3 V compared with ultrathin-body Si FETs.
Incidental detection of hepatitis B and C viruses and their coinfection in a hospital-based general population in tertiary care hospital of Uttar Pradesh

Introduction: Substantial proportion of liver diseases worldwide is caused by hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections which manifest not only as an acute illness but also lead to chronic sequelae. Together HBV and HCV cause chronic infection in more than 500 million persons and about one million deaths annually. Most of the people with chronic infection are not aware of the infection thus enabling it to go unnoticed, and undiagnosed and act as a potential source of infection for the community at large. Therefore, we aimed to find the prevalence of HBV and HCV in Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh among individuals attending the tertiary care hospital. Materials and Methods: From February 2015 to January 2016, 3750 patients attending the outdoor patient departments or admitted to the indoor patient departments of teaching hospital and advised to undergo HBV and HCV for screening before any invasive/surgical procedure were included in the study. Screening was done by rapid card test followed by the confirmation of all samples by enzyme immunoassay. Results: Seroprevalence of HBV and HCV was found to be 3.9% and 1.76% respectively with higher seroprevalence among males and in married participants in both infections. Blood transfusion is statistically a significant risk factor for HCV infection (P < 0.05). Coinfection with HBV/HCV was seen in 0.16% of the individuals visiting the hospital. Conclusion: Higher seroprevalence of HBV and HCV among the hospital-based population mandates screening of high-risk individuals. Awareness by health education of safe sexual practices and improved safety of blood and its products are among the most important preventive measures to control HBV and HCV infection.
Smoking Experimentation, Moderate-to-Vigorous Physical Activity, and Associated Psychosocial and Demographic Correlates among Mexican Origin Youth

Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) may deter adolescents from smoking initiation and psychosocial risk and protective factors associated with both physical activity and smoking experimentation may play a role. This paper examines such psychosocial factors across four groups of adolescents identified by crossing smoking experimentation (yes/no) with completion of regular MVPA (yes/no). In 2008–09, 1,098 Mexican origin youth (553 girls and 546 boys, mean age 14.3 years [SD=1.04]) provided data on smoking behavior, physical activity, alcohol use, acculturation, peer and parental smoking, BMI, body image, smoking outcome expectations, anxiety, subjective social status (SSS), body image, and sensation-seeking tendencies. We conducted Pearson’s χ2 tests to examine associations between a) MVPA and smoking and b) demographic variables and the four groups identified by crossing smoking experimentation with MVPA. Next, adjusting for age and gender, we completed analysis of covariance to examine differences in psychosocial factors across the four groups. In our sample, 22.4% had experimented with cigarettes, and 29.3% completed adequate MVPA. Both behaviors were more prevalent among boys. Although not statistically significantly higher, 32.9% of experimenters completed adequate MVPA compared to 28.3% among non-experimenters. Experimenters who complete adequate MVPA reported the highest levels of thrill and adventure seeking, while those who completed inadequate MVPA reported lower SSS and more body image concerns than non-experimenters (p<0.05 for all). Our findings highlight an opportunity to address MVPA as an alternative to smoking among Mexican origin youth with high thrill and adventure sensation-seeking tendencies, 82% of whom have experimented and 69% of whom completed MVPA.
Sexual Disgust Trumps Pathogen Disgust in Predicting Voter Behavior During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

Why is disgust sensitivity associated with socially conservative political views? Is it because socially conservative ideologies mitigate the risks of infectious disease, whether by promoting out-group avoidance or by reinforcing norms that sustain antipathogenic practices? Or might it be because socially conservative ideologies promote moral standards that advance a long-term, as opposed to a short-term, sexual strategy? Recent attempts to test these two explanations have yielded differing results and conflicting interpretations. Here, we contribute to the literature by examining the relationship between disgust sensitivity and political orientation, political party affiliation, and an often overlooked outcome—actual voter behavior. We focus on voter behavior and affiliation for the 2016 U.S. presidential election to determine whether pathogen or sexual disgust better predicts socially conservative ideology. Although many prominent aspects of Donald Trump’s campaign—particularly his anti-foreign message—align with the pathogen-avoidance model of conservatism, we found that pathogen-related disgust sensitivity exerted no influence on political ideology, political party affiliation, or voter behavior, after controlling for sexual disgust sensitivity. In contrast, sexual disgust sensitivity was associated with increased odds of voting for Donald Trump versus each other major presidential candidate, as well as with increased odds of affiliating with the Republican versus the Democratic or Libertarian parties. In fact, for every unit increase in sexual disgust sensitivity, the odds of a participant voting for Trump versus Clinton increased by approximately 30%. It seems, then, that sexual disgust trumps pathogen disgust in predicting socially conservative voting behavior.
An overview of DC-DC converter topologies and controls in DC microgrid

DC Microgrid has a promising future due to its better compatibility with distributed renewable energy resources, higher efficiency and higher system reliability. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review of DC-DC Converters topologies used in DC Microgrids. The advantages and limitations of classical and recent converter topologies are discussed. The Hierarchical Control Strategies-Primary and Secondary controls have been reviewed. Primary control relies only on local measurements used for proper load sharing among converters. Secondary control is a coordinated control with some form of communication for additional functionalities. A brief note on protection and the key challenges faced in DC Microgrid operation have also been discussed. This paper gives a brief idea about the recent developments and overall operation of DC Microgrid.
Success determinants to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) performance

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a current need for companies to be competitive in the global market. PLM became a necessity to work collaboratively with least time and cost for the best quality production. PLM offerings are not only limited to 3D designing and visualization but also extended to data management, digitization, and virtual manufacturing. PLM is a management approach which manages the related product information in each phase of the product's lifecycle. Various companies and systems suppliers consider PLM as software systems only while it is a broad business management concept. Due to this ambiguity, most companies fail to understand and implement it properly. PLM is actually a concept which is backed up by PLM systems as the enormous product-related data needs technological support to manage. Implementation of PLM systems is complementary to the institutionalization of the PLM concept. Hence, present study reviews success factors to PLM performance and empirically analyzes causal success factors. This work will be helpful to the managers in industries to utilize this unique approach to manage their products.