Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative effects of intramyocardial autotransplantation of different bone marrow cells upon outcomes of experimental myocardial infarction in rabbits

Over the last decade, different cell therapy options have been tested to improve treatment of myocardial infarction (MI), including cardiomyoplastics. Autologous bone marrow is a widely used source of therapeutic cell preparations, i.e., freshly isolated mononuclear cell fraction (MF), or cultured multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MMSC). The aim of our pilot study was to compare shortand long-term consequences of intramyocardial MF and MMSC transplantation upon clinical course and outcome of experimental MI. Materials and methods: The experiments were performed with male Chinchilla rabbits of 2.8+0.2 kg weight. MI was modelled by ligation of anterior descendent left coronary artery. Mononuclear cell fraction was obtained from the bone marrow aspirate. MMSC cell culture was grown by MF cell passages in МЕМ medium with 10% fetal calf serum. Intramyocardial injections of MF or MMSC suspensions were performed into 6 points of the infarcted area. The surviving animals were divided in four groups, each consisting of 13 rabbits: group 1 (controls), group 2 (placebo-treated), group 3 (MMSC injections), and group 4 (MF injections). Electrocardiography (ECG) and echo-cardiography were carried out in all animals before surgery, during 1 mo and 1 year after surgery. Myocardial perfusion rates were assessed with SPECT technique. IM dimensions (perfusion areas) were determined by means of staining heart sections with 2,3,5-TTC. Routine histology of myocardial sections was also performed. Vascularization rates of different myocardial areas were assessed in similar way.
Rényi entanglement entropies in quantum dimer models: from criticality to topological order

Thanks to Pfaffian techniques, we study the Rényi entanglement entropies and the entanglement spectrum of large subsystems for two-dimensional Rokhsar–Kivelson wavefunctions constructed from a dimer model on the triangular lattice. By including a fugacity t on some suitable bonds, one interpolates between the triangular lattice (t = 1) and the square lattice (t = 0). The wavefunction is known to be a massive topological liquid for t > 0 whereas it is a gapless critical state at t = 0. We mainly consider two geometries for the subsystem: that of a semi-infinite cylinder and the disc-like set-up proposed by Kitaev and Preskill (2006 Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 110404). In the cylinder case, the entropies contain an extensive term—proportional to the length of the boundary—and a universal subleading constant sn(t). Fitting these cylinder data (up to a perimeter of L = 32 sites) provides sn with a very high numerical accuracy (10 − 9 at t = 1 and 10 − 6 at t = 0.5). In the topological liquid phase we find sn(t > 0) = − ln2, independent of the fugacity t and the Rényi parameter n. At t = 0 we recover a previously known result, for n < 1 and sn(t = 0) = − ln(2)/(n − 1) for n > 1. In the disc-like geometry—designed to get rid of the boundary contributions—we find an entropy snKP(t0) = − ln2 in the whole massive phase whatever n > 0, in agreement with the result of Flammia et al (2009 Phys. Rev. Lett. 103 261601). Some results for the gapless limit are discussed.
Think Twice before Going for Incentives: Social Norms and the Principal’s Decision on Compensation Contracts

type="main"> Principals make decisions on various issues, ranging from contract design to control system implementation. Few studies examine the principal's active role in these decisions. We experimentally investigate this role by studying how a principal's choice of an incentive contract that may discourage misrepresentation, compared to a fixed-salary contract, affects the honesty of his or her agents’ cost reporting. Results show that, besides an incentive effect and a principal trust effect, the active choice for incentives produces a negative “information leakage” effect. When principals use incentives, their choices not only incentivize truthful reporting and signal distrust, but they also leak important information about the social norm, namely, that other agents are likely to report dishonestly. Agents conform to this social norm by misrepresenting cost information more. Our results have important practical implications. Managers must recognize that their decisions can leak information to their agents, which may produce unanticipated consequences for the social norms of the organization.
Title Multi-contour initial pose estimation for 3 D registration

Reliable manipulation of everyday household objects is essential to the success of service robots. In order to accurately manipulate these objects, robots need to know objects’ full 6-DOF pose, which is challenging due to sensor noise, clutters and occlusions. In this paper, we present a new approach for effectively guessing the object pose given an observation of just a small patch of the object, by leveraging the fact that many household objects can only keep stable on a planar surface under a small set of poses. In particular, for each stable pose of an object, we slice the object with horizontal planes and extract multiple cross-section contours. The pose estimation is then reduced to find a stable pose whose contour matches best with that of the sensor data, and this can be solved efficiently by convolution. Experiments on the manipulation tasks in the DARPA Robotics Challenge validate our approach. In addition, we also investigate our method’s performance on object recognition tasks raising in the challenge.
Variation of the first cut-off frequency of the Earth-ionosphere waveguide observed by DEMETER

[1] More than four years of VLF electric field data recorded by DEMETER have been analyzed, in order to monitor the first cut-off frequency (QTM1) of the Earth-ionosphere waveguide, at around 1.6–1.8 kHz. Since losses in a waveguide are maximized right at the cut-off frequency, DEMETER (∼700 km orbit) can detect the minimum of energy of the leaking fields coming from the waveguide. This measurement permits to draw a global map of its value (f1), which is directly related to the effective height of the ionosphere (h) by the relation f1 = c/2h (c is the speed of light). It enables the remote sensing of the D region, which is one of the less known layers of the ionosphere, because it is too low for satellites to orbit inside it and too high for balloons to reach it. The effective height depends mainly on the electron density (Ne) and neutral density (Nn) profiles, which determine the plasma frequency and the electron mobility. The effective height shifts downward 5–10 km in southern warm season in the South Pacific Ocean. Another effect is observed in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans; the effective height decreases its value twice a year, in the area of roughly ±15° from the geomagnetic equator. The main causes for the changes on the effective reflection height are the solar radiation and the thunderstorm activity. However, the observed shifts are more prominent over the oceans, and a possible explanation for this difference could be attributed to i) less polluted conditions above the oceans (aerosols change the atmospheric conductivity and then the global atmospheric electric circuit), ii) the effect of the current associated to the thunderclouds on the bottom of the ionosphere because thunderstorms are much more numerous above land, or iii) ionization by elves because their occurrence is larger above oceans.
Social Protection and Jobs Responses to COVID-19: A Real-Time Review of Country Measures

This paper benefited enormously from contributions by Miglena Abels, Aysenur Acar, Nazanin Akhgar, Amel Allahoum, Colin Andrews, Jehan Arulpragasam, Claudia Rodriguez Alas, Haleem Hassan Kashkol Al-Kazali, Edward Archibald, Angela Elzir Assy, Ashiq Aziz, Reena Badiani-Magnusson, Paul Bance, Mehdi Barouni, Roland Berenger Berehoudougou, Martina Bergthaller, Anush Bezhanyan, Mira Bierbaum, Christian Bodewig, Benedicte Leroy De La Briere, Stefanie Brodmann, Yoonyoung Cho, Emmanuelle Collet, Facundo Cuevas, Matthew Cummins, Pamela Dale, Louise Moreira Daniel, MarieChristina Dankmeyer, Gustavo Demarco, Melin Ed, Malin Linnea Sofia Ed, Randa El-Rashidi, Maliha Fanning, Luis Frota, Carlos Galian, Jordi Jose Gallego-Ayala, Maria Concepcion Steta Gandara, Elena Glinskaya, Rebekka Grun, Sabina Guliyeva, Melis Guven, Courtney Hallink, Mahdi Halmi, Alessandra Heinemann, Johannes Hoenigl, Maddalena Honorati, Armenuhi Hovakimyan, Su Su Htay, Roberto Iacono, Adina-Maria Iorganda, Buthaina al-Iryani, Aylin Isik-Dikmelik, Marijana Jasarevic, Mustafa Kadhim Mohammed, Alex Kamurase, Sandor Karacsony, Dmitri Karasyov, Selma Kasic, Ayaba Gilberte Kedote, Qaiser Khan, Johannes Koettl, Julian Alexander Koschorke, Adea Kryeziu, Francesca Lamanna, Aleksandar Lazovski, Kook Hee Lee, Louisa Lippi, Mattias Lundberg, Mattia Makovic, Jonathan Marskell, Alessandra Marini, Erica Mattellone, Shea McClanahan, Karla Mcevoy, Emma Mistiaen, Khalid Moheyddeen, Matteo Morgandi, Harry Edmund Moroz, Martien Van Nieuwkoop, Nga Nguyet Nguyen, Noel Muller, Anthony Njage, Marija Novkovic, Philip O’Keefe, Yulia Olenik, Vitorino Mello Oliveira, Mirey Ovadiya, Efsan Ozen, Truman Packard, Karuna Pal, Robert Palacios, Montserrat Pallares-Miralles, Ekaterina Pankratova, Ana Pantelic, Jasmina Papa, Clemente Avila Parra, Kenia Parsons, Luca Pellerano, Remy Pigois, Ariel Pino, Juul Pinxten, Nadine Poupart, Ana Prodanovic, Pamela Pozarny, Ma. Lourdes M. Rivera, Nina Rosas Raffo, Pedro Rosas, Solene Rougeaux, F. Zehra Rizvi, Pedro Rosas, Friederike Uta Rother, Manuel Salazar, Marijana Šalinović, Indhira Santos, Achim Schmillen, Anita Schwarz, Sirma Seker, Karin Seyfert, Ivan Shulga, Nuno Cunha Meira Simoes, Charles Chilufya SJ, Andrius Skarnulis, Rene Antonio Leon Solano, Tayana Charisse Oliveira de Souza, Tayllor Spadafora, Federico Spano, Maya Stern-Plaza, Anna Sukhova, Kalilou Sylla, Claudia Zambra Taibo, Emil Tesliuc, Samman Thapa, Fiona Stewart, Gulsana Turusbekova, Emre Uckardesler, Silas Udahemuka, Rashiel Velvarde, Fabio Veras, Andrea Vermehren, Dewen Wang, Asha M. Williams, Penny Williams, Briana Wilson, Natalia Winder-Rossi, Gelila Woodeneh, Naila Zeitoun, Lansong Zhang, Yukun Zhu, Mustapha Ziroili, and Maria Zlatareva. Special thanks to Michal Rutkowski, Christina Behrendt, and David Stewart for their precious guidance and support. P ub lic D is cl os ur e A ut ho riz ed
Big or Small Cities? On City Size and Economic Growth

Policy-makers and academics frequently emphasize a positive link between city size and economic growth. The empirical literature on the relationship, however, is scarce and uses rough indicators for the size for a country's cities, while ignoring factors that are increasingly considered to shape the relationship. In this paper, we employ a panel of 113 countries between 1980 and 2010 to explore whether (1) there are certain city sizes that are growth enhancing and (2) how additional factors highlighted in the literature impact the city size/growth relationship. The results suggest a non-linear relationship which is dependent on the country's size. In contrast to the prevailing view that large cities are growth-inducing, for the majority of countries relatively small cities of up to 3 million inhabitants are more conducive to economic growth. A large share of the urban population in cities with more than 10 million inhabitants is only growth promoting in countries with an urban population of 28.5 million and more. In addition, the relationship is highly context dependent: a high share of industries that benefit from agglomeration economies, a well-developed urban infrastructure, and an adequate level of governance effectiveness allow countries to take advantage of agglomeration benefits from larger cities.
Dietary calcium and pregnancy-induced hypertension: is there a relation? 1–3

The evidence that calcium plays a role in the etiology, prevention, and treatment of pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) is reviewed. The precise factors involved in the pathogenesis of PIH are unclear, but several alterations in calcium metabolism have been identified. Epidemiologic data suggest an inverse correlation between dietary calcium intake and incidence of PIH. Although evidence suggests a possible beneficial effect of supplemental calcium, contradictions persist in clinical trials of pregnant women. Presently, there is insufficient evidence to support routine calcium supplementation of all pregnant women. However, high-risk groups, such as pregnant teens, populations with inadequate calcium intake, and women at risk of developing PIH, may benefit from consuming additional dietary calcium. Clin Nutr 2000;71(suppl):1371S–4S.
CYP 3 A 5 and ABCB 1 polymorphisms in donor and recipient : impact on Tacrolimus dose requirements and clinical outcome after renal transplantation

Background. The effect of potentially relevant genetic polymorphisms, CYP3A5 6986A>G and ABCB1 3435C>T, on Tacrolimus pharmacokinetics and graft clinical outcome was investigated in donor and recipient DNA samples from 209 kidney transplant patients. Methodology/principal findings. The mean follow-up was 21.8 6 9 months. The Tacrolimus dose, trough blood concentrations (C0) and C0/dose ratio were only statistically correlated with the recipient CYP3A5 genotype. CYP3A5 and ABCB1 genotypes appeared to have no influence on the incidence of Biopsy Proven Acute Rejection and Delayed Graft Function. Renal function was not affected by CYP3A5 and ABCB1 genotypes. Histological evaluation of biopsies revealed also no significant association between Tacrolimus toxicity features and donor or recipient CYP3A5 and ABCB1 polymorphisms. Tacrolimus sparing appeared to be independent of CYP3A5 and ABCB1 genotypes. Conclusions/significance. Recipient CYP3A5 6986A>G polymorphism explains part of the interindividual variability of the pharmacokinetics of Tacrolimus. The clinical outcome at 2-year follow-up does not appear to be related to the donor or recipient CYP3A5 6986A>G and/or ABCB1 3435C>T polymorphisms.
Perceived and Imagined Tempos of Familiar Songs

Two studies investigated the similarity of metronome settings to perceived and imagined familiar songs by subjects unselected for musical ability. In Study 1, mean tempo settings in the two tasks were about 100 beats per minute. Songs with slower perceived tempos tended to be faster in the imagery task and vice versa. In Study 2, subjects set fastest and slowest acceptable tempos for the same set of songs in the imagery mode. These settings were positively correlated with the preferred tempo for the song. Most subjects thought that there were limits on how fast or slow a song could be imagined. These results suggest that tempo is explicitly represented in auditory imagery.
Theta-Band Phase Locking of Orbitofrontal Neurons during Reward Expectancy

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The Impact of Capital on Lending in Economic Downturns and Investor Protection – The Case of Large EU Banks

This paper attempts to find out whether better quality of investor protection matters for the effect of capital ratio on loan growth of large EU banks in 1996-2011. We focus on several measures of the quality of investor protection with a proven track record in the banking literature, i.e.: anti-self-dealing index, ex-antecontrol and ex-post-control of anti-self-dealing indices, and creditor protection rights index. Our results show that better investor protection increases the procyclical impact of capital on lending in the sample of banks reporting unconsolidated data. This is consistent with the view that better shareholders rights protection induces bank borrowers to take more loans and to engage in more risk-taking, in particular during economic booms, which results in greater sensitivity of bank lending to capital ratios in economic downturns. The opposite effect is found in the sample of banks reporting consolidated data. This effect is consistent with the view that better minority shareholders protection may reduce risk-taking incentives of large banks and result in better risk management of credit portfolio (and other investments of such banks).
The Bright Side of Labor Protection in Emerging Markets: The Case of Firm Transparency

Using a unique regulatory change (the enactment of Labor Contract Law) in China, we find that the strengthening of labor protection leads to a significant increase in the stock price informativeness as well as overall transparency in labor-intensive firms. Further analyses indicate that this relation is driven by a better alignment of incentives between the company board and managers, and therefore managers have less short-term concerns and are willing to disclose more firm-specific information: after the enactment of the Labor Contract Law, labor-intensive firms decrease their managers’ pay-performance sensitivity accompanied with less earnings management, more innovation activities and improved operating efficiency. In addition, the labor protection benefits both stakeholders of labors and shareholders: the labor-intensive firms provide better pay arrangements for labors, receive better operating performances and higher market values. Our findings provide new insights on the bright side of labor protection and throw light on how stringent laws can shape the information environment of emerging markets.
Categorization and Aging as measured by an adapted version of Wechsler’s similarities test

L’objectif de cette recherche est d’etudier l’evolution avec le vieillissement du processus taxonomique implique dans une version adaptee du test des Similitudes de Wechsler, qui distingue la categorisation des mots concrets versus abstraits. Deux groupes ont ete constitues : 20 adultes jeunes (M =20ans, SD=1.36) et 20 adultes âges (M =70ans, SD=4.66). Les resultats montrent un declin de la categorisation taxonomique avec l’âge, notamment pour les mots abstraits. L’effet de concretude est donc observe mais seulement chez les âges du fait d’un effet « plafond » des performances chez les jeunes adultes. De plus, il s’avere que la moyenne des reponses taxonomiques des âges est a peu pres equivalente a celle d’enfants de 9 ans d’une etude anterieure. La courbe curvilineaire du developpement de la categorisation taxonomique observee par de nombreux auteurs est donc retrouvee. Neanmoins, une analyse plus precise des items et des reponses montre que les âges ont davantage de difficultes avec des mots faciles qu’avec des mots difficiles. Ce resultat suggere que le processus de categorisation serait preserve mais que des variables affectives viendraient moduler l’activation du processus taxonomique.
A Corpus Phonetic Study of Contemporary Persian Vowels in Casual Speech

Contemporary Iranian Persian is described as having a six vowel system; however, there is currently very little work that characterizes the exact nature of these vowels. Previous works posit substantially different vowel spaces, and conflicting accounts of the extent to which historical length distinctions are still relevant in Persian -these distinctions then affect phonological theorizing, especially with regards to vocalic assimilation (sometimes referred to as "vowel harmony"). This study uses a corpus of over 60 hours of casual telephone speech among 104 speakers to describe the vowels of Persian. It is demonstrated that historical length distinctions no longer obtain, that previous descriptions of the vowel space of Persian are no longer necessarily accurate, and that the low back vowel may no longer be a steady state vowel for all speakers nor as low or as rounded as previously described. This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: https://repository.upenn. edu/pwpl/ vol25/iss1/15 A Corpus Phonetic Study of Contemporary Persian Vowels in Casual Speech
Two steps alkaline transesterification of waste cooking oil and quality assessment of produced biodiesel.

Biodiesel is an environmentally friendly renewable diesel fuel alternative. In Egypt, millions liters of waste cooking oil (WCO) are discarded annually into sewage systems, pollute water streams and adds to the cost of treating effluents. In an attempt to reduce the cost of biodiesel and pollution caused by WCO, this study aimed to investigate the feasibility of biodiesel production from WCO by applying two steps alkaline transesterification process using methanol, KOH as a catalyst and hot distilled water for purification. The produced biodiesel was physico-chemically characterized. From the results it was clear that the produced biodiesel was within the recommended standards of biodiesel fuel (r > 0.95) and met the criteria required to be a diesel substitute compared with the Egyptian petro-diesel fuel standards (r = 0.999).
Intracoronary Imaging of the Working Group of Coronary Circulation and of the Subgroup on Intravascular Ultrasound of the Working Group of Echocardiography of the European Society of Cardiology

Miniaturized flexible ultrasound catheters provide detailed information on the vessel wall. They are an additional diagnostic evaluation technique, partly in the realm of coronary interventions in patients with coronary artery disease. Fluoroscopy and angiographic road-mapping are indispensable elements of the intracoronary ultrasound examination and of the therapeutic procedure. Thus intracoronary ultrasound should not be considered an alternative to angiography but rather a complementary diagnostic technique. The clinical advantages deriving from the use of intracoronary ultrasound have not yet been established in randomized trials. However, there is increasing evidence from large prospective studies that ultrasound guidance improves the results of catheter-based intracoronary interventions in terms of immediate lumen enlargement, reduced procedure-related complications and long-term restenosis. Although intracoronary ultrasound has become a routinely applied diagnostic technique in interventional cardiology, no attempts have been made to standardize the examination procedure, the definitions and the format of reporting qualitative and quantitative data. The aim of this article is to propose guidelines for the acquisition, classification and analysis of intracoronary ultrasound images and to recommend indications for clinical application of intracoronary ultrasound based on recent experience.
Inference for the Neighborhood Inequality Index

The neighborhood inequality (NI) index measures aspects of spatial inequality in the distribution of incomes within the city. The NI index is defi ned as a population average of the normalized income gap between each individual's income (observed at a given location in the city) and the incomes of the neighbors, living within a certain distance range from that individual. This paper provides minimum bounds for the NI index standard error and shows that unbiased estimators can be identified ed under fairly common hypothesis in spatial statistics. These estimators are shown to depend exclusively on the variogram, a measure of spatial dependence in the data. Rich income data are then used to infer about trends of neighborhood inequality in Chicago, IL over the last 35 years. Results from a Monte Carlo study support the relevance of the standard error approximations.