Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimating 2-D vector velocities using multidimensional spectrum analysis

Wilson (1991) presented an ultrasonic wideband estimator for axial blood flow velocity estimation through the use of the 2-D Fourier transform. It was shown how a single velocity component was concentrated along a line in the 2-D Fourier space, where the slope was given by the axial velocity. Later, it was shown that this approach could also be used for finding the lateral velocity component by also including a lateral sampling. A single velocity component would then be concentrated along a plane in the 3-D Fourier space, tilted according to the 2 velocity components. This paper presents 2 new velocity estimators for finding both the axial and lateral velocity components. The estimators essentially search for the plane in the 3- D Fourier space, where the integrated power spectrum is largest. The first uses the 3-D Fourier transform to find the power spectrum, while the second uses a minimum variance approach. Based on this plane, the axial and lateral velocity components are estimated. Several phantom measurements, for flow-to-depth angles of 60, 75, and 90 degrees, were performed. Multiple parallel lines were beamformed simultaneously, and 2 different receive apodization schemes were tried. The 2 estimators were then applied to the data. The axial velocity component was estimated with an average standard deviation below 2.8% of the peak velocity, while the average standard deviation of the lateral velocity estimates was between 2.0% and 16.4%. The 2 estimators were also tested on in vivo data from a transverse scan of the common carotid artery, showing the potential of the vector velocity estimation method under in vivo conditions.
La valorisation du pin d'Alep en zone méditerranéenne française

Cette etude a pu etre realisee grâce â la 2 eme Bourse interregionale de recherche sur la valorisation des produits de la foret mediterraneenne animee par Foret Mediterraneenne et financee par les Conseils regionaux de Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur et Languedoc Roussillon, l 'Assemblee regionale Corse et par plusieurs mecenes: Agfa-Gevaert la Fondation de France et Alsatel. Le texte qui suit constitue le compte rendu de ces travaux.
The Legal Treatment of Islamic Minorities in Europe

In all countries of the European Union, the Muslim communities, numbering about 15,000,000 people, represent a substantial religious minority, although it is a very varied group, both in terms of religious practice and national origin. The very weight of this minority forces the legal systems to come to terms with its presence. However, these changes are highly diversified and are evolving rapidly, not necessarily towards greater tolerance. This volume provides a brief sketch of these changes, describing the situation of some member countries of the European Union (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and UK) and of one of the enlargement candidate countries, Romania. The book also contains an initial attempt at comparison between European countries and the USA and an overall analysis of the problems posed by the Islamic presence in Europe and the strategies to manage them. This work allows readers to draw some general conclusions on convergences and divergences within the European Union and the factors that determine them.
Failure of regular external ventricular drain exchange to reduce cerebrospinal fluid infection: result of a randomised controlled trial

Background: It is controversial whether regular changes of external ventricular drains can reduce cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) infection. Objective: To carry out a randomised controlled clinical trial over a two year period to determine whether a regular change of ventricular catheter every five days could reduce CSF infection and improve outcome. Methods: 103 patients requiring external ventricular drains for more than five days and with no evidence of concurrent CSF infection were studied. The patients were randomised to regular change of ventricular catheter (every five days) and no change unless clinically indicated. Results: The CSF infection rates were 7.8% for the catheter change group and 3.8% for the no change group, respectively (rate ratio = 1.80, 95% confidence interval 0.33 to 9.81, p = 0.50). No significant difference was found in intensive care unit stay, ward stay, or clinical outcome between the two groups. Conclusions: Regular changes of ventricular catheter at five day intervals did not reduce the risk of CSF infection. A single external ventricular drain can be employed for as long as clinically indicated.
Circular economy to ensure production operational sustainability: A green-1 lean approach 2

: Satisfying the requirements associated with environmental concerns and resource 4 efficiency in the manufacturing process has become necessary to realize effective production 5 management. Specifically, manufacturers must identify novel working procedures or 6 methodologies to enhance the resource efficiency and environmental friendliness of 7 production processes. Green-lean production and a circular economy are promising schemes 8 to achieve this goal. However, compared to green-lean management, the implementation of a 9 circular economy in production operations remains relatively unclear. Several scholars have 10 recommended the combination of the circular economy and green-lean concepts to bridge this 11 gap, however, systematic methods remain to be developed. Considering this aspect, this study 12 proposes a method that integrates green-lean solutions with the circular economy concept. 13 The proposed method is applied in production operations through the principle of continuous 14 improvement to enhance the environmental and resource performance aspects. The method 15 includes three successive phases, which can not only help managers fully identify the 16 opportunities for improvement but also provide managers with directions for improvement by 17 introducing four strategy quadrants. The effectiveness and practicability of the proposed 18 method are proven considering an industrial case of the assembly workshop of an automobile 19 company. The proposed study can support enhance theoretical knowledge regarding the 20 green-lean and circular economy concepts and demonstrates the implementation of a circular 21 economy in the process of optimizing the production operation of manufacturing enterprises. 22
DDbar Correlations probing Thermalization in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions

We propose to measure azimuthal correlations of heavy-flavor hadrons to address the status of thermalization at the partonic stage of light quarks and gluons in high-energy nuclear collisions. In particular, we show that hadronic interactions at the late stage cannot significantly disturb the initial back-to-back azimuthal correlations of DDbar pairs. Thus, a decrease or the complete absence of these initial correlations does indicate frequent interactions of heavy-flavor quarks and also light partons in the partonic stage, which are essential for the early thermalization of light partons.
Kinetics of the Water Release of Hygroscopic Acrylamide Gel Embedded in Calcium Chloride by Thermogravimetric Analysis

Poly (acrylamide) gel was synthesized by radical polymerization of acrylamide and N, N'-methylene-bisacrylamide in the presence of benzoyl peroxide and carbon nanotubes. The dry product was saturated with calcium chloride and prepared for water absorption and desorption. The kinetics of water desorption of poly (acrylamide) gel embedded with hygroscopic calcium chloride (DHG), was studied from thermograms data of thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). DHG captures vapor from the environment and releases it as fresh water; it can be used as the condenser to build atmospheric water generators (AWGs) to alleviate the freshwater stress rusting from innovative activities such as industrial, agricultural, rural, and defense endeavors. The kinetics parameters of the synthesized DHG showed that it absorbed environmental vapor at room temperature and released water below its boiling point (40 to 90 °C), temperatures achievable under sunlight via the photothermal effect.
Expanding the Universal Medication Schedule: a patient-centred approach

Objective Improved drug labelling for chronic pill-form medications has been shown to promote patient comprehension, adherence and safety. We extended health literacy principles and included patients' perspectives to improve instructions for: (1) non-pill form, (2) short term, (3) ‘as needed,’ (4) tapered and (5) escalating dose medications. Setting Participants were recruited via convenience sampling from primary care clinics in Chicago, Illinois and San Francisco, California, USA. Participants 40 adult, English-speaking participants who reported taking at least one prescription drug in the past 12 months were enrolled in the study. Primary and secondary outcomes Participant opinions, preferences and comprehension of standard and improved medication instructions were assessed during four iterative waves of discussion groups. Brief interviews preceding the discussion groups measured individuals’ literacy skills, sociodemographic and health characteristics. Results On average, participants were 46 years old, took four medications and reported two chronic health conditions. Patients varied sociodemographically; 40% were men and 33% had limited literacy skills. Patients agreed on the need for simpler terminology and specificity in instructions. Discussions addressed optimal ways of presenting numeric information, indication and duration of use information to promote comprehension and safe medication use. Consensus was reached on how to improve most of the instructions. Conclusions Through this patient-centred approach, we developed a set of health literacy-informed instructions for more challenging medications. Findings can inform current drug labelling initiatives and promote safe and appropriate medication use.
JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL AND QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS December 1976 COMMENT: ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF STOCK EXCHANGE SPECIALISTS ON STOCK VOLATILITY

In a recent article in this Journal, Amir Barnea [1] proposes a criterion for assessing the market-making efficiency of New York Stock Exchange specialists. The appealing aspects of Barneas method are that it uses publicly available data (common stock prices) and operates on a variable of primary concern to investors, the variance of returns on common stock. The difficulty we see in applying his approach, however, is that Barnea's performance criterion can be sensitive to a number of factors in addition to any impact the specialist might have, and that effective specialist intervention might have either a positive or negative impact on the performance measure. Thus, his specialist ranking seems to be quite misleading, and his empirical findings appear to be amenable to a substantially different interpretation than that which he provides. Barnea, consistent with the conceptual approach of Demsetz [5], Tinic [9], and Tinic and West [10], [11] , [12], views the market-making function of the specialist as one of absorbing temporary imbalance between random buy and sell tenders. However, unlike Demsetz, Tinic, and West who focused on bid-ask spreads, Barnea is primarily concerned with the impact liquidity services have on the variance of returns. We agree with Barnea about the advisability of this change in emphasis. The problem which must be faced by any variance-oriented approach is separating random tender-induced variance from volatility that is caused by
INSTITUTIONAL FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS POLITICS: EVIDENCE FROM INDONESIA

Why do religious politics thrive in some societies but not others? This paper explores the institutional foundations of this process in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim democracy. We show that a major Islamic institution, the waqf, fostered the entrenchment of political Islam at a critical historical juncture. In the early 1960s, rural elites transferred large amounts of land into waqf —a type of inalienable charitable trust—to avoid expropriation by the government as part of a major land reform effort. Although the land reform was later undone, the waqf properties remained. We show that greater intensity of the planned reform led to more prevalent waqf land and Islamic institutions endowed as such, including religious schools, which are strongholds of the Islamist movement. We identify lasting effects of the reform on electoral support for Islamist parties, preferences for religious candidates, and the adoption of Islamic legal regulations (sharia). Overall, the land reform contributed to the resilience and eventual rise of political Islam by helping to spread religious institutions, thereby solidifying the alliance between local elites and Islamist groups. These findings shed new light on how religious institutions may shape politics in modern democracies. JEL Classifications: D72, D74, P16, P26, Z12
Opportunity cost.

In an effort to expedite the publication of articles, AJHP is posting manuscripts online as soon as possible after acceptance. Accepted manuscripts have been peer-reviewed and copyedited, but are posted online before technical formatting and author proofing. These manuscripts are not the final version of record and will be replaced with the final article (formatted per AJHP style and proofed by the authors) at a later time.
Stiffness control and transformation for robotic systems with coordinate and non-coordinate bases

In this paper, the application of the conservative congruence transformation (CCT) to the stiffness mapping between non-coordinate basis and coordinate basis systems is studied and presented. Through the stiffness transformation between the 2 degree-of-freedom cylindrical and joint spaces, we illustrate that the CCT can be applied either directly or indirectly to the stiffness transformation between any two systems with either coordinate basis or noncoordinate basis. It is found that the same stiffness control for a conservative system will render a symmetric stiffness matrix with respect to a coordinate basis, but an asymmetric matrix with respect to a non-coordinate basis. The direct and indirect CCT methods are presented, with the latter requiring an intermediate coordinate system with a generalized coordinate basis. The relationships of the effective K/sub g/ matrices between the direct and indirect CCT methods are found and validated.
Neutrophil Activation Promotes Fibrinogen Oxidation and Thrombus Formation in Behçet’s Disease

Background— Behçet disease (BD) is a systemic vasculitis with a broad range of organ involvement, characterized by a multisystemic, immune-inflammatory disorder involving vessels of all sizes and often complicated by thrombosis. Systemic redox imbalance and circulating neutrophil hyperactivation have been observed in BD patients and are thought to be responsible for impaired coagulation. We here focused on the pathogenetic mechanisms potentially linking immune cell activation and thrombosis, and specifically examined whether neutrophil activation can affect fibrinogen modifications and consequently elicit thrombosis. Methods and Results— Blood samples were collected from 98 consecutive BD patients attending our dedicated Center and from 70 age and sex-matched healthy controls; in all patients fibrinogen function and structure, fibrin susceptibility to plasmin-lysis, plasma redox status, leucocyte oxidative stress markers and possible ROS sources were examined. Thrombin-catalyzed fibrin formation and fibrin susceptibility to plasmin-induced lysis were significantly impaired in BD patients (p<0.001). These findings were associated to increased plasma oxidative stress markers (p<0.001) and to a marked carbonylation of fibrinogen (p<0.001) whose secondary structure appeared deeply modified. Neutrophils displayed an enhanced NADPH oxidase activity and increased ROS production (p<0.001), which significantly correlated with fibrinogen carbonylation level (r 2 =0.33 p<0.0001), residual (cid:533) -band intensity (r 2 =0.07 p<0.01) and fibrinogen clotting ability (r 2 =0.073 p<0.01) Conclusions— In BD patients, altered fibrinogen structure and impaired fibrinogen function are associated with neutrophil activation and enhanced ROS production whose primary source is represented by neutrophil NADPH oxidase.
Is the Public Ready for a Tobacco-Free Ireland? A National Survey of Public Knowledge and Attitudes to Tobacco Endgame in Ireland.

Tobacco-Free Ireland (TFI) policy sets a tobacco endgame goal to reduce smoking prevalence to less than 5% by 2025. However, public opinion on this goal, an important policy lever, is uncharted in Ireland. This study aimed to inform policy planning by measuring public knowledge and attitudes to tobacco endgame. A telephone-administered cross-sectional survey of 1,000 randomly-dialled members of the general public was conducted. Prevalence of awareness, perceived achievability, and support for the TFI goal and potential tobacco endgame measures was calculated and compared across tobacco/e-cigarette user status. Logistic regression identified factors independently associated with TFI goal support. Although TFI goal awareness was low (34.0%), support was high (74.6%), albeit most (60.2%) believed it achievable beyond 2025. Goal support was higher among non-tobacco/e-cigarette users (adjusted Odds Ratio (aOR) 2.68, 95%CI 1.83-3.90), women (aOR 1.55, 95%CI 1.13-2.14) and higher social class members (aOR 1.48, 95%CI 1.03-2.12). Product-focused measures were popular while views on user-focused measures were mixed: e.g. 86.1% supported nicotine content reduction while 40.3% supported user licensing. Phasing-out tobacco sales was highly-supported (82.8%); however, for most, this was contingent on support for currently addicted users. Despite low awareness, there is strong support for tobacco endgame in Ireland and views on achievability are more realistic than the current goal of 2025. Supporting currently addicted tobacco users and engaging groups with lower support will be important policy planning and communication considerations. The Irish public are ready for tobacco endgame. These findings should re-invigorate policy planning to translate endgame ambition into action.
Nonlinear response of laterally loaded rigid piles in sliding soil

This paper proposes a new, integrated two-layer model to capture nonlinear response of rotationally restrained laterally loaded rigid piles subjected to soil movement (sliding soil, or lateral spreading). First, typical pile response from model tests (using an inverse triangular loading profile) is presented, which includes profiles of ultimate on-pile force per unit length at typical sliding depths, and the evolution of pile deflection, rotation, and bending moment with soil movement. Second, a new model and closed-form expressions are developed for rotationally restrained passive piles in two-layer soil, subjected to various movement profiles. Third, the solutions are used to examine the impact of the rotational restraint on nonlinear response of bending moment, shear force, on-pile force per unit length, and pile deflection. Finally, they are compared with measured response of model piles in sliding soil, or subjected to lateral spreading, and that of an in situ test pile in moving soil. The study indi.
Impregnation of cellulose acetate films with carvacrol using supercritical carbon ioxide

Cellulose acetate films were impregnated with carvacrol using supercritical carbon dioxide. The supercritical impregnation process, conducted in a static regime at pressure of 21 MPa and temperature of 50 °C, was optimized by variation in the processing time (30 and 120 min) and decompression rate (from 0.3 MPa/min to 36 MPa/min). Characterization of the obtained cellulose acetate films was performed by Atomic Force Microscopy and Differential Scanning Calorimetry. Effects of glycerol and carvacrol on the properties of the films were discussed. Release kinetics from the cellulose acetate film with 31.4% of carvacrol was investigated in a physiological saline solution. In addition, the Higuchi and Korsmeyer-Peppas release models fitted the carvacrol release curve well. Obtained cellulose acetate films impregnated with carvacrol can be of interest for the application in medicine as wound dressings considering their biocompatibility and biodegradability as well as their potential antimicrobial activity or in the food industry as an active food packaging.
Cryopreserved Human Adipose-derived Stromal Vascular Fraction Maintains Fracture Healing Potential via Angiogenesis and Osteogenesis in an Immunode�cient Rat Model

Background: Novel therapeutic strategies for the healing of nonunion, which has serious effects on the quality of life of patients, are needed. We evaluated the therapeutic effect of local transplantation of human stromal vascular fraction (SVF) cells on fracture healing in a rat non-healing fracture model and compared the effects between freshly isolated (F) and cryopreserved (C)-SVFs. Methods: Nonhealing fracture model was induced in the femur of female immunode�cient rats (F344/N Jcl rnu/rnu) with cauterizing periosteum. Immediately after the creation of non-healing fracture, rats received local transplantation of F and C-SVFs suspended in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) or the same volume of PBS without cells using the same scaffold as a control group. During 8 weeks post-surgery, radiologic, histological, immunohistochemical, and biomechanical analyses were performed to evaluate fracture healing. The comparison of radiological results was performed with a chi-square test, and the multiple comparisons of immunohistochemical, histological and biomechanical results among groups were made using a one-way analysis of variance. A probability value of 0.05 was considered to denote statistical signi�cance. Results: At week 8, in 60% of animals receiving F-SVF cells and in 50% of animals receiving C-SVF cells, the fracture radiologically healed with bone union whereas nonunion was observed in the control group. The healing potential was also con�rmed by histological and biomechanical assessments. One of the mechanisms of healing involving intrinsic angiogenesis/osteogenesis was enhanced in F- and C-SVF groups compared with that in the control group. Human cells-derived vasculogenesis/osteogenesis, which was also con�rmed in an in vitro differentiation assay, was also enhanced in the F- and C-SVF groups compared with that in the control groups, and could be another mechanism for healing. Conclusions: SVF cells bone as fresh bone fracture to other mesenchymal
Pengaruh Profitabilitas, Likuiditas, Leverage, dan Aktivitas dalam Memprediksi Financial Distress

Penelitian ini mempunyai tujuan untuk memperoleh bukti empiris pengaruh dari profitabilitas, likuiditas, leverage, dan aktivitas dalam memprediksi kondisi financial distress dalam perusahaan sektor industrial, consumer non-cyclicals, dan basic materials yang terdaftar didalam Bursa Efek Indonesia pada tahun 2019-2021. Sampel yang digunakan berjumlah 75 sampel data yang dipilh menggunakan metode purposive sampling. Teknik analisis data menggunakan analisis regresi logistic dengan pengolahan data memakai SPSS versi 25.0. Hasil penelitian bisa disimpulkan bahwa profitabilitas yang diukur dengan return on asset berpengaruh negatif terhadap prediksi financial distress. Likuiditas yang diukur dengan current ratio tidak berpengaruh terhadap prediksi financial distress. Leverage diukur dengan debt to asset ratio tidak berpengaruh terhadap prediksi financial distress. Aktivitas dengan total asset turnover tidak berpengaruh terhadap prediksi financial distress.