Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
World Kidney Day 2011: Protect Your Kidneys, Save Your Heart

CVD is the most common of the chronic NCDs that impact global mortality. About 30% of all deaths worldwide and 10% of all healthy life lost to disease are accounted for by CVD alone [1] . Although there has been some decline in mortality from CVD in developed countries, no such decline has been reported in developing countries, ethic and socially disadvantaged minority populations or in people with accompanying CKD [2, 3] . The presence of CKD significantly increases the risk of a CV event in both diabetes and hypertension [4, 5] . However, less well appreciated is that CKD alone is a strong risk factor for CVD, independent of diabetes, hypertension or any other conventional CVD risk factor [6, 7] . This is especially true when an increase in proteinuria, a major target of any CKD screening program, is present [6–9] . Introduction to World Kidney Day 2011
Earth Mover’s Distance Minimization for Unsupervised Bilingual Lexicon Induction

Cross-lingual natural language processing hinges on the premise that there exists invariance across languages. At the word level, researchers have identified such invariance in the word embedding semantic spaces of different languages. However, in order to connect the separate spaces, cross-lingual supervision encoded in parallel data is typically required. In this paper, we attempt to establish the cross-lingual connection without relying on any cross-lingual supervision. By viewing word embedding spaces as distributions, we propose to minimize their earth mover’s distance, a measure of divergence between distributions. We demonstrate the success on the unsupervised bilingual lexicon induction task. In addition, we reveal an interesting finding that the earth mover’s distance shows potential as a measure of language difference.
Methotrexate, vinblastine, doxorubicin, and cisplatin for advanced transitional cell carcinoma of the urothelium. Efficacy and patterns of response and relapse

Of 133 patients with advanced urothelial tract cancer given methotrexate (MTX), vinblastine (VBL), Adriamycin (ADR) (doxorubicin; Adria Laboratories, Columbus, OH), and cisplatin (DDP) (M‐VAC regimen), significant tumor regression occurred in 72% ± 8% of 121 with transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) evaluable for response. Complete remission (CR) was achieved in 36% ± 9% of patients, of whom 11% required the addition of surgical resection of residual disease. Although 68% of CR patients have relapsed, CR median survival will exceed 38 months compared with 11 months for partial (36%) and minor (6%) responders, and 8 months for nonresponders: 2‐year and 3‐year survivals were 68% and 55%, respectively, versus 0% to 7% for the remaining patients. Sixteen percent of responders developed brain lesions, half of whom had no systemic relapse at the time of progression. Three patients with non‐TCC histologies did not respond. In 32 patients who had pathologic restaging, the clinical (T) understaging (T < pathologic [P] restaging) error was 35%. Although all metastatic sites showed evidence of tumor regression, CR was noted more frequently in lung, in intraabdominal lymph nodes and masses, and in bone (24% to 35%); the rate for hepatic lesions was 15%. There were 52% of 21 N3–4Mo patients who achieved CR versus 33% of 100 with No‐+M+ lesions. Toxicity was significant with 4 (3%) drug‐related deaths, 25% incidence of nadir sepsis, 58% ⩾ 3+ myelosuppression, and 49% with mucositis. Responsiveness of metastasis in various sites, patterns of relapse, and the usefulness of the new CR response criteria are reported, as is the current status of cisplatin and methotrexate combination regimens. Cancer 64:2448–2458, 1989.
Organizacja planowania strategicznego - rola naczelnego kierownictwa

Przegląd sposobow podejścia do planowania strategicznego w przedsiebiorstwach polskich prowadzi do wniosku, iz przyjmowane rozwiązania mogą zostac zobrazowane przez dwa wymiary organizacji: centralizacje i formalizacje. Ze wzgledu na dwa powyzsze kryteria mozna mowic o czterech modelowych podejściach do przygotowania i wdrazania strategii: model przedsiebiorczy, model planujący, model partycypacyjny, model negocjacyjny, ktore kolejno omowiono.
Performance versus values in sustainability transformation of food systems

Questions have been raised on what role the knowledge provided by sustainability science actually plays in the transition to sustainability and what role it may play in the future. In this paper we investigate different approaches to sustainability transformation of food systems by analyzing the rationale behind transformative acts-the ground that the direct agents of change act upon- and how the type of rationale is connected to the role of research and how the agents of change are involved. To do this we employ Max Weber’s distinction between instrumental rationality and value-rationality in social action. In particular, we compare two different approaches to the role of research in sustainability transformation: (1) Performance-based approaches that measure performance and set up sustainability indicator targets and benchmarks to motivate the agents in the food system to change; (2) Values-based approaches that aim at communicating and mediating sustainability values to enable coordinated and cooperative action to transform the food system. We identify their respective strengths and weaknesses based on a cross-case analysis of four cases, and propose that the two approaches, like Weber’s two types of rationality, are complementary-because they are based on complementary observer stances—and that an optimal in-between approach therefore cannot be found. However, there are options for reflexive learning by observing one perspective-and its possible blind spots-from the vantage point of the other, so we suggest that new strategies for sustainability transformation can be found based on reflexive rationality as a third and distinct type of rationality.
The Job Generation Process

This statistical report on the behavior of individual firms assesses how changes in employment and regional growth occur. A longitudinal file is developed for 5.6 million business establishments, using the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation data for December 31st of 1969, 1972, 1974, and 1976. Since rate of job replacement is the key factor in regional growth, the data is analyzed to measure components of change, job generation, and interregional control. Six collective components of change are identified -- birth, death, expansion, contraction, in-migration and out-migration. Among the data provided are components of employment change by state; status of firms vs employment gains; net employment change by region, industry, status and size; components of change by region, industry, size and age; and percentage change for establishments. A profile of the job-generating firm shows that it is not a large corporation, but a small, independent, and volatile business. Therein lies the problem for development policymakers, since these firms tend to be difficult to identify and work with. A 'rifle-shooting' as opposed to 'shotgun-shooting' method of researching small firms is thus suggested. Policymakers should not attempt to stem migration, as this is found to be an insignificant factor in economic development. Rather, policymakers should focus on job replacement rather than reducing the rate of job loss, which has proven difficult to change and is relatively stable across states. Pleasant physical environment and strong local government are important incentives for firm location, and should be further investigated in relation to job generation. In sum, an indirect approach to studying small business as the major generator of jobs is advised, in which the proposed next step is to analyze data on individual firms alongside of the the characteristics of the places where firms decide to locate. (CJC)
Open source software: emerging business models

Several small and large firms have devised business models and strategies to use open source software (OSS) gainfully. However, despite the increasing popularity and success of some OSS, there is very little academic literature that provides clarity and guidance on developing business models with OSS. This paper contributes to the existing knowledge by critically analysing the various open source business models and then building a set of business models that encompass the current trends in this field. The models presented are supported by descriptions of organisations that have used them successfully.
The quiet daily variation in the total magnetic field: Global curves

Most magnetic mapping exercises involve measuring the amplitude, or total‐field component, of Earth's magnetic field. Removing the time‐varying part of the field is a task of data reduction, and the most common time variation is the quiet daily variation, Sq. It is thus valuable to have for reference type curves of the quiet daily variation in the total field. To meet this need, global data obtained during the 1965 International Year of the Quiet Sun have been used to derive type curves describing the Sq variation of the total magnetic field, in addition to the traditional field components. As for the traditional components, the total‐field curves show significant seasonal and latitudinal variability in amplitude and phase. The effect of the equatorial electro‐jet is clearly evident. In both hemispheres of the globe there are bands of reduced amplitude in total‐field signal between the equator and the path of the Sq focus. These bands, here termed the total‐field “doldrums”, persist throughout the year.
Assessment of non-uniform aging of solid dielectric using system poles of a modified debye model for oil-paper insulation of transformers

Dielectric parameters of insulation used in High voltage equipments like power transformers are dependent on insulation size and geometry. As a result parameters evaluated from the model of one insulation system finds limited use in predicting the condition of other. Poles calculated from branch parameters of insulation model, on the other hand are independent of insulation geometry. However such technique requires accurate modeling of dielectric response function. Conventional Debye model does not consider the effect of temperature gradient that exists across the length of the insulation during its operation. In the present paper it is shown that for more accurate modeling and better understanding of dielectric response of oil-paper insulation, a new model which considers the effect of temperature gradient on insulation properties, is necessary. The present paper reports a methodology that is capable of identifying such a model using PDC measurement data. It is also shown that use of conventional Debye model overestimates the pole values and the error increases with usage of the insulation.
An Analysis of Inventory Turnover in the Belgian Manufacturing Industry, Wholesale and Retail and the Financial Impact on Inventory Reduction

Various inventory studies have been published in the last decades. Some studies emphasize the importance of low inventories, other examine the evolution of inventories over time and especially focus on the impact of the just-in-time (JIT) revolution. The aim of this paper is to investigate the level of inventories held by Belgian companies at one moment in time, namely May 2004. First we examine differences in inventory ratios between manufacturing industry sectors as well as between wholesale and retail. We find empirical evidence that the type of production process is the most important driver for work in process inventory. The finished goods inventory ratio also differs significantly among industry sectors, but here the reasons for the difference are harder to distinguish. Finally we find the inventory ratio to be significantly higher in retail than in wholesale. Furthermore, we examine the financial impact of inventories in the manufacturing industry. We find that companies with very high inventory ratios have more chance to be bad financial performers. Regression analyses partially support the hypothesis of a negative relationship between inventory ratio and financial performance but significant results could not be obtained for all sectors.
Emission Reductions from Woody Biomass Waste for Energy as an Alternative to Open Burning

ABSTRACT Woody biomass waste is generated throughout California from forest management, hazardous fuel reduction, and agricultural operations. Open pile burning in the vicinity of generation is frequently the only economic disposal option. A framework is developed to quantify air emissions reductions for projects that alternatively utilize bio-mass waste as fuel for energy production. A demonstration project was conducted involving the grinding and 97-km one-way transport of 6096 bone-dry metric tons (BDT) of mixed conifer forest slash in the Sierra Nevada foothills for use as fuel in a biomass power cogeneration facility. Compared with the traditional open pile burning method of disposal for the forest harvest slash, utilization of the slash for fuel reduced particulate matter (PM) emissions by 98% (6 kg PM/BDT biomass), nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 54% (1.6 kg NOx/BDT), nonmethane volatile organics (NMOCs) by 99% (4.7 kg NMOCs/BDT), carbon monoxide (CO) by 97% (58 kg CO/BDT), and carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) by 17% (0.38 t CO2e/BDT). Emission contributions from biomass processing and transport operations are negligible. CO2e benefits are dependent on the emission characteristics of the displaced marginal electricity supply. Monetization of emissions reductions will assist with fuel sourcing activities and the conduct of biomass energy projects. IMPLICATIONS Economic considerations frequently dictate the disposal of woody biomass wastes by open burning. The alternative use for energy provides significant reduction in criteria air pollutant and greenhouse emissions. Valuing these reductions will improve the economic viability and increase the use of biomass for energy as well as assist with forest and agricultural management objectives.
A Review of critical issues on tax design and tax administration in a global economy and developing countries

The mobilization of domestic tax resource has become a key issue for developing countries. In this report, we provide some facts and figures on the levels and structures of taxation around the world with special attention to Low Income Countries, (LICs). We use the new ICTD database covering 203 countries with 40 tax items over the period 1980-2010. We discuss some principles of tax design in a global economy that are relevant for LICs. We also review some critical issues on corruption and compliance to see how they relate to growth and tax evasion. We then provide a benchmark framework to assess the overall performance of the government tax collection. We use the tax effort index that measures the gap between the potential tax and the actual tax. The novelty of this tax effort index is twofold. First it takes into account spatial variables to capture the geographic dependence. Second it breaks down the tax effort analysis tax item by tax item to capture the possible tax shift. We conclude with a full ranking of tax effort for all countries and some suggestions of tax reform for a subset of countries that are targeted by the Belgian Development Cooperation.
Customer Satisfaction in the Mobile Telecommunications Industry In Nigeria

Customer satisfaction is a fundamental marketing construct in the last three decades. In the past, it was unpopular and unaccepted concept because companies thought it was more important to gain new customers than retain the existing ones. However, in this present decade, companies have gained better understanding of the importance of customer satisfaction (especially service producing companies) and adopted it as a high priority operational goal. This study aimed at investigation the overall customer satisfaction of the mobile telecoms industry in Nigeria, factors influencing satisfaction and the relationship between satisfaction and demographics. The results obtained in this research indicated that 57% of the respondents were satisfied and 5% highly satisfied. The combination of network quality, billing, validity period and customer support (mobile services attributes) showed strong relationship with satisfaction while age, gender, location and employment variables showed weak relationship.
Archipelago platform for skin-mounted wearable and stretchable electronics

In this investigation, the “archipelago” design is presented as a platform for skin-mounted wearable and stretchable electronics. The electronic components of the design were distributed between islands connected by stretchable serpentine structures. The analytical results show that at 20% overall elongation, the serpentines stretch 60% due to the rigidity of the islands. This 20% elongation is defined as the system stretchability. The 60% elongation on the serpentines is defined as the effective stretchability. At 60% effective stretch, the calculated equivalent plastic strain in a serpentine interconnect is 0.67%, which is well below the fracture limit of copper. Elongation experiments show that the archipelago structure has the system stretchability up to 76% for one-time-stretching, translating to 228% of the effective stretchability on the serpentines. Fatigue-tension experiments show that at 20% system stretch, the archipelago structure can withstand on average 71,950 cycles without electrical or mechanical degradation.
Response to CO2 enrichment of understory vegetation in the shade of forests

Responses of forest ecosystems to increased atmospheric CO2 concentration have been studied in few free‐air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments during last two decades. Most studies focused principally on the overstory trees with little attention given to understory vegetation. Despite its small contribution to total productivity of an ecosystem, understory vegetation plays an important role in predicting successional dynamics and future plant community composition. Thus, the response of understory vegetation in Pinus taeda plantation at the Duke Forest FACE site after 15–17 years of exposure to elevated CO2, 6–13 of which with nitrogen (N) amendment, was examined. Aboveground biomass and density of the understory decreased across all treatments with increasing overstory leaf area index (LAI). However, the CO2 and N treatments had no effect on aboveground biomass, tree density, community composition, and the fraction of shade‐tolerant species. The increases of overstory LAI (~28%) under elevated CO2 resulted in a reduction of light available to the understory (~18%) sufficient to nullify the expected growth‐enhancing effect of elevated CO2 on understory vegetation.
Role of hepatitis B virus genotypes and quantitative HBV DNA in metastasis and recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma

Identification of risk factors for recurrence and metastasis of HCC is important for the prognosis of HCC surveillance in chronic HBV infection. In this article, 125 HCC patients recruited were followed up prospectively for tumor metastasis and recurrence for a median of 104 (10–130) weeks. HBV DNA level was detected by LightCycler‐based real‐time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction‐restriction system. HBV genotypes were determined by using PCR restriction‐fragment length polymorphism. BCP and PC mutations were performed by PCR and direct sequencing of amplified products. Among 125 HCC patients, 19 patients were excluded because of the lack of follow‐up data and the remaining 106 patients were followed up of 2 years and entered into analysis. Sixty‐nine patients had tumor metastasis or recurrence during the follow‐up and the cumulative probability of HCC metastasis or recurrence was 65.1%. On multivariate analysis, genotype C and HBV DNA level were the risk factors for HCC recurrence or metastasis. The incidence of recurrence or metastasis increased with baseline HBV DNA level in a dose‐response relationship ranging from 22% for HBV DNA level of less than 3 log10 copies/ml to 80% for HBV DNA level of 5 log10 copies/ml or greater (P = 0.012). Fifty‐seven (74.0%) and 12 (41.4%) patients had metastasis or recurrence in patients with genotype C and B, respectively. The adjusted OR of recurrence or metastasis for genotype C compared with genotype B was 9.755 (P = 0.009). In conclusion, elevated HBV DNA level and genotype C are strong risk predictors of HCC metastasis or recurrence. J. Med. Virol. 80:591–597, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Blind Deconvolution for a Curved Motion Based on Cepstral Analysis

When a camera moves during its exposure time, the captured image is degraded by the motion. Despite the several decades of researches, image deconvolution to restore a blurred image still remains an issue, particularly in blind deconvolution cases in which the actual shape of the blur is unknown. The cepstral approaches have been used to estimate a linear motion. In this paper, we propose a Point Spread Function (PSF) estimation method from a single blurred image. We extend the classical cepstral approaches that have been used for Uniform Linear motion PSF estimation. Focusing on Uniform Non-Linear motion (UNLM) that goes one direction and potentially weakly curves, we solve the PSF estimation problem as a camera path estimation problem. To solve the ill-posed problem, we derive a constraint on the behavior of the cepstra of UNLM PSFs. In a first step, we estimate several PSF candidates from the cepstrum of a blurred image. Then, we select the best PSF candidate by evaluating the candidates based on the ringing artifacts on the restored images obtained using the candidates. The performance of the proposed method is verified using both synthetic images and real images.
Discriminative learning for minimum error classification [pattern recognition]

A formulation is proposed for minimum-error classification, in which the misclassification probability is to be minimized based on a given set of training samples. A fundamental technique for designing a classifier that approaches the objective of minimum classification error in a more direct manner than traditional methods is given. The method is contrasted with several traditional classifier designs in typical experiments to demonstrate the superiority of the new learning formulation. The method can applied to other classifier structures as well. Experimental results pertaining to a speech recognition task are provided to show the effectiveness of the technique. >
The Change in Banks' Product Mix, Diversification and Performance: An Application of Multivariate GARCH to Canadian Data

Data suggest a change in banks’ performance attributable to a greater involvement in non-traditional activities. Indeed, market-oriented banking increases banks’ accounting returns at the cost of a higher volatility in financial results. The motivation of this paper is to study how bank product mix impacts diversification and performance. Thanks to our data and methodology we are able to shed new light on the apparently contradictory results found in the literature regarding the benefits to diversify in market-based banking. Some keys conditional volatilities reveal these benefits may in fact vary both over the business cycles and through time. Using a new framework based on a multivariate GARCH procedure and a modified Hausman test, our main findings suggest that most components of non-interest income actually provide non-negligible diversification benefits with respect to traditional banks’ business lines. In normal times, diversification even works for the components most related to market-oriented banking, i.e., trading income and capital markets fees. Not so surprisingly however, during crisis episodes these diversification benefits seem to vanish for most of the components, except for insurance and securitization, which act as buffers. Consistent with the literature, we also find that, despite the evolution of the banking business model, fees related to banks’ traditional activities – deposit, credit card and loan fees – remain the most stable and profitable sources of income.