Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Revitalising Evidence-based Policy for the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030: Lessons from Existing International Science Partnerships

The convergence of agreements on disaster risk reduction (DRR), development finance, sustainable development and climate change in 2015 presents a unique opportunity for coherence across these inter-related policy areas. At the same time, demand is growing for a more prominent and effective role for science and technology in providing evidence for policy, with the international community recognising that successful disaster risk reduction (DRR) depends on it. Reflecting this ambition, science is included as a core aspect of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, although the ways in which this will be implemented in practice is still unclear. This paper aims to inform the implementation of international science coordination for DRR by examining a number of existing international science partnerships used across other relevant areas of policy to understand best practice, options for coordination and lessons identified. In the field of DRR, the science-policy interface needs to be strengthened in line with the best practice described in this review. An enhanced UNISDR Scientific and Technical Advisory Group will be given the mandate for to enhance the evidence base for DRR and mobilise science and technical work in coordination with a broad range of stakeholders. The structure and function of an enhanced STAG must be as open, as inclusive and as participatory as possible in order to build trust in new and existing institutions at local, national, regional and global levels. The challenge for the international community is to facilitate evidence-based policy making by formally recognising the links between DRR, development finance, sustainable development and climate change in the upcoming post-2015 agreements.
Human Immunodeficiency Viruses: Propagation, Quantification, and Storage

Described in this unit are basic protocols frequently used in the research of human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs). Provided are methods for propagating and quantifying HIV, as well as recommendations for long‐term storage. Background information about these methods is also provided and includes their advantages, disadvantages, and troubleshooting.
A new signalling pathway for parallel fibre presynaptic type 4 metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR4) in the rat cerebellar cortex

• Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter of the mammalian brain. It can activate ionotropic receptors underlying fast glutamatergic transmission as well as G protein‐coupled metabotropic receptors (mGluR1–8), which are pre‐ and postsynaptic modulators of this fast excitatory neurotransmission. • In the rodent cerebellum, activation of presynaptic mGluR4 depresses excitatory synaptic transmission at parallel fibre–Purkinje cell synapses. We show that this depression involves the inhibition of presynaptic calcium influx via a newly defined signalling pathway, which notably involves the activation of phospholipase C and ultimately protein kinase C. • The study of the molecular basis of mGluR signalling pathways is an important research topic because these receptors may be implicated in certain neurodegenerative disorders, like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease. As such, these receptors are becoming crucial targets for a number of therapeutic agents.
ERROR ESTIMATES FOR FINITE DIFFERENCE-QUADRATURE SCHEMES FOR A CLASS OF NONLOCAL BELLMAN EQUATIONS WITH VARIABLE DIFFUSION COEFFICIENTS

We derive error estimates for certain approximate solutions of Bellman equations associated to a class of controlled jump-diffusion (Levy) processes. These Bellman equations are fully nonlinear degenerate integroPDEs interpreted in the sense of viscosity solutions. The approximate solutions are generated by an implicit finite difference-quadrature scheme.
HEMATOLOGICAL AND MOLECULAR ANALYSIS OF β-THALASSEMIA AND Hb LEPORE IN CAMPANIA, ITALY

This epidemiological study was based on a hematological and a molecular analysis of 310 heterozygous β thalassemic and 75 carriers of Hb Lepore out of 3,000 microcythemic subjects from the Campania region of Italy. The molecular analysis of β chains and the δβ hybrid gene has shown different β chain defects, but only the Hb Lepore-Boston-Washington type in association with haplotypes I and V. The prevalence and distribution of these molecular defects in Campania show that they are linked to historical events and to the geographical characteristics of this region.
Hypothesis testing using pairwise distances and associated kernels

We provide a unifying framework linking two classes of statistics used in two-sample and independence testing: on the one hand, the energy distances and distance covariances from the statistics literature; on the other, distances between embeddings of distributions to reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS), as established in machine learning. The equivalence holds when energy distances are computed with semimetrics of negative type, in which case a kernel may be defined such that the RKHS distance between distributions corresponds exactly to the energy distance. We determine the class of probability distributions for which kernels induced by semimetrics are characteristic (that is, for which embeddings of the distributions to an RKHS are injective). Finally, we investigate the performance of this family of kernels in two-sample and independence tests: we show in particular that the energy distance most commonly employed in statistics is just one member of a parametric family of kernels, and that other choices from this family can yield more powerful tests.
Vitamin D and Its Analogues Decrease Amyloid-β (Aβ) Formation and Increase Aβ-Degradation

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by extracellular plaques in the brain, mainly consisting of amyloid-β (Aβ), as derived from sequential cleavage of the amyloid precursor protein. Epidemiological studies suggest a tight link between hypovitaminosis of the secosteroid vitamin D and AD. Besides decreased vitamin D level in AD patients, an effect of vitamin D on Aβ-homeostasis is discussed. However, the exact underlying mechanisms remain to be elucidated and nothing is known about the potential effect of vitamin D analogues. Here we systematically investigate the effect of vitamin D and therapeutically used analogues (maxacalcitol, calcipotriol, alfacalcidol, paricalcitol, doxercalciferol) on AD-relevant mechanisms. D2 and D3 analogues decreased Aβ-production and increased Aβ-degradation in neuroblastoma cells or vitamin D deficient mouse brains. Effects were mediated by affecting the Aβ-producing enzymes BACE1 and γ-secretase. A reduced secretase activity was accompanied by a decreased BACE1 protein level and nicastrin expression, an essential component of the γ-secretase. Vitamin D and analogues decreased β-secretase activity, not only in mouse brains with mild vitamin D hypovitaminosis, but also in non-deficient mouse brains. Our results further strengthen the link between AD and vitamin D, suggesting that supplementation of vitamin D or vitamin D analogues might have beneficial effects in AD prevention.
Parallel Connection of Two Three-Phase Three-Switch Buck-Type Unity-Power-Factor Rectifier Systems With DC-Link Current Balancing

Connecting three-phase rectifier systems in parallel shows many advantages as compared to a single rectifier system with higher output power, such as higher reliability, smaller current and voltage ripple components, lower filtering effort, or higher system bandwidth. However, current unbalance or circulating currents can occur for modular design. In this paper, the parallel connection of two three-phase three-switch buck-type unity-power-factor pulsewidth-modulation rectifier systems is experimentally investigated for a 10-kW digital-signal-processor-controlled prototype. A space vector modulation scheme is employed showing all the advantages of an interleaved operation. Three control schemes for active dc-link current balancing are described employing an additional free-wheeling state that allows to influence the rate of change of the dc-link currents and can therefore be used for dc-link current balancing. The control schemes differ concerning control action and additional switching losses. Simulation and experimental results confirm the theoretical considerations: The dc-link current-balancing capability of the different control methods is compared, and the influence of the additional free-wheeling state on switching losses and operation behavior is investigated. The most advantageous control method, which employs a hysteresis controller and shows limited switching losses, is selected. The analysis of the mains behavior shows an improvement as compared to a single rectifier operation.
A Context-aware Model to Support Ubiquitous Group Decision Making

Due to the costs to create conditions that allow participants to meet in the same place at the same time (time, travel, etc.) the ubiquitous Group Decision Support Systems appeared allowing decisionmakers to contribute with their ideas to the decision process anywhere and anytime. In this paper is proposed a model which enables decision-makers to contribute with their ideas to the decision process anywhere and anytime. It is a context-aware model which allows obtaining values of certain typical variables of the affective context (emotions and mood) and to transform those values in advises. So it enables the group reaches more easily the decision, strengthening the satisfaction of each member with the decision made. Also here are presented the architecture and mechanisms which could be used in the development of a prototype based on the presented model.
SWSL: SoftWare Synthesis for network Lookup

Data structure lookups are among the most expensive operations on routers' critical path in terms of latency and power. Therefore, efficient lookup engines are crucial. Several approaches have been proposed, based on either custom ASICs, general-purpose processors, or specialized engines. ASICs enable high performance but have long design cycle and scarce flexibility, while general-purpose processors present the opposite trade-off. Specialized programmable engines achieve some of the benefits of both approaches, but are still hard to program and limited either in terms of flexibility or performance. In this paper we investigate a different design point. Our solution, SWSL (SoftWare Synthesis for network Lookup) generates hardware logic directly from lookup applications written in C++. Therefore, it retains a simple programming model yet leads to significant performance and power gains. Moreover, compiled application can be deployed on either FPGA or ASIC, enabling a further trade-off between flexibility and performance. While most high-level synthesis compilers focus on loop acceleration, SWSL generates entire lookup chains performing aggressive pipelining to achieve high throughput. Initial results are promising: compared with a previously proposed solution, SWSL gives 2-4 × lower latency and 3-4× reduced chip area with reasonable power consumption.
Variational Program Inference

We introduce a framework for representing a variety of interesting problems as inference over the execution of probabilistic model programs. We represent a "solution" to such a problem as a guide program which runs alongside the model program and influences the model program's random choices, leading the model program to sample from a different distribution than from its priors. Ideally the guide program influences the model program to sample from the posteriors given the evidence. We show how the KL- divergence between the true posterior distribution and the distribution induced by the guided model program can be efficiently estimated (up to an additive constant) by sampling multiple executions of the guided model program. In addition, we show how to use the guide program as a proposal distribution in importance sampling to statistically prove lower bounds on the probability of the evidence and on the probability of a hypothesis and the evidence. We can use the quotient of these two bounds as an estimate of the conditional probability of the hypothesis given the evidence. We thus turn the inference problem into a heuristic search for better guide programs.
A Review on Detection of Plastic Mulching Films in Cotton using Hybrid Approaches

For removing the plastic mulching films from the cotton, the use of machine vision using the image processing methods is useful. This image processing is basically a specially designed software programs that can run the image in different ways. This paper presents various techniques for detection of plastic mulching films. A Hybrid approach is being used under which different parameters of the image is contributed to identify the error particle in machine vision system.
Links between mental health care professionals and general practices in England and Wales: the impact of GP fundholding.

BACKGROUND Fundholding general practitioners are able to determine the type of contracts they place with providers of mental health care, and are able to employ some categories of mental health care professionals directly. The impact of this on the care of the mental health of patients in non-fundholding practices is not yet fully known. AIM A survey was undertaken of 100 fundholding general practices and 100 similarly sized non-fundholding practices in order to investigate the changes in mental health provision made by general practitioners. METHODS A sample of 100 fundholding general practices in England and Wales was randomly chosen from the list supplied by the Association of Fundholders and matched to a similarly randomly chosen sample of non-fundholding practices. Postal questionnaires were sent to the senior partner and to the practice manager in each practice. RESULTS The number of mental health care professionals who are either employed by or attached to general practices, or who visit the general practice on a regular basis appears to have increased substantially since 1991. This increase was particularly marked in fundholding practices. The results suggest that general practitioners with specific links to particular mental health care providers were more satisfied with the service provided by the mental health care team, and more likely to increase referrals to that service in the last 2 years, than general practitioners without such links. There was little evidence to suggest that increasing the number of mental health care professionals in primary care had brought about a major reduction in referrals to psychiatrists. CONCLUSION General practitioners, particularly fundholders, are increasing their links with mental health professionals, and community psychiatric nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors are spending more time either based in general practice or visiting regularly. While the shift of resources to primary care, particularly to fundholders, may increase the treatment options available to patients with less severe illnesses, this may have the effect of reducing the services available for the long-term and severely mentally ill.
Systematic evaluation of workload clustering for extremely energy-efficient architectures

Chip power consumption has reached its limits, leading to the flattening of single-core performance. We propose the 10x10 processor, a federated heterogeneous multi-core architecture, where each core is an ensemble of u-engines (micro-engines, similar to accelerators) specialized for different workload groups to achieve dramatically higher energy efficiency. The u-engines collectively target the entire general-purpose workload space. The problem we study in this article is selecting the set of workloads that each u-engine should be customized for. For this problem we study the computation structure of a wide variety of workloads and cluster together workloads with similar computation structures, the idea being that each u-engine will be customized for the compute structures exhibited by a particular cluster. The constraint on this problem is the silicon budget of a processor. Lower silicon budgets accommodate fewer uengines and require individual u-engines to target larger segments of the workload space which leads to lower energy efficiency benefits from customization, because there is more variation among the compute structures making up each cluster. Therefore, we also study how workload coverage and benefit can be maximized for a given silicon budget. We study a broad general-purpose workload that includes 34 codes from 6 benchmark suites, identifying the most frequent functions, and clustering them based on two sets of instruction usage features (high-resolution and low-resolution) into 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 clusters respectively. We develop abstract metrics (coverage and weighted customization benefit) to evaluate the clusters. We show significant potential payoffs with four benefit models: 2-3x (square root model), 4-10x (linear model), 12-24x (quadratic model), and 22-26x (cubic model).
Controlling in between the Lorenz and the Chen Systems

This letter investigates a new chaotic system and its role as a joint function between two complex chaotic systems, the Lorenz and the Chen systems, using a simple variable constant controller. With the gradual tuning of the controller, the controlled system evolves from the canonical Lorenz attractor to the Chen attractor through the new transition chaotic attractor. This evolving procedure reveals the forming mechanisms of all similar and closely related chaotic systems, and demonstrates that a simple control technique can be very useful in generating and analyzing some complex chaotic dynamical phenomena.
On Optimal End-to-End QoS Budget Partitioning in Network Dimensioning

: We investigate the problem of optimal end-to-end QoS budget partitioning to quantify the advantage for network dimensioning of having a non-uniform allocation of end-to-end QoS requirement over the links in a path. We extend a previous revenue maximization model to M/G/1 queuing models and propose a fast partitioning heuristic based on the M/M/1 case. We then show on small networks with M/G/1 queues that the heuristic gives a near-optimal partitioning and conﬁrm previous numerical results obtained for the M/M/1 model that optimal partitioning can bring large cost reductions as compared with equal partitioning.
A novel ion selective PVC membrane electrode for determination of propranolol in pharmaceutical formulation

A novel ion selective PVC membrane electrode for determination of propranolol is developed. Silicotungstic acid is used as the counter ion and diisononyl phthalate (DNP) used as the plastizer. The electrode exhibits excellent potential respon se properties, showing a Nernstian response in the concentration of 3.0 〈 10-6~ 2.6 〈 10-2 M with the slope of 54.7 mV per decade, shorter conditioning time (~ 3 h), fast response time (40 s), a lower limit of detection (1.0 〈 10-7 M). The electrode is success- fully used for the analysis of propranolol in pharmaceutical formulation with the recoveries of 99.2 ~ 102.6 %, by using a direct potentiometric method and which does not require tedious sample preparation.
Differential Proteomics of Helicobacter pylori Associated with Autoimmune Atrophic Gastritis

Atrophic autoimmune gastritis (AAG) is a condition of chronic inflammation and atrophy of stomach mucosa, for which development can be partially triggered by the bacterial pathogen Helicobacter pylori (HP). HP can cause a variety of gastric diseases, such as duodenal ulcer (DU) or gastric cancer (GC). In this study, a comparative proteomic approach was used by two-dimensional fluorescence difference gel electrophoresis (DIGE) to identify differentially expressed proteins of HP strains isolated from patients with AAG, to identify markers of HP strain associated with AAG. Proteome profiles of HP isolated from GC or DU were used as a reference to compare proteomic levels. Proteomics analyses revealed 27 differentially expressed spots in AAG-associated HP in comparison with GC, whereas only 9 differential spots were found in AAG-associated HP profiles compared with DU. Proteins were identified after matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI)-TOF and peptide mass fingerprinting. Some AAG-HP differential proteins were common between DU- and GC-HP (peroxiredoxin, heat shock protein 70 (HSP70), adenosine 5′-triphosphate (ATP) synthase subunit a, flagellin A). Our results presented here may suggest that comparative proteomes of HP isolated from AAG and DU share more common protein expression than GC and provide subsets of putative AAG-specific upregulated or downregulated proteins that could be proposed as putative markers of AAG-associated HP Other comparative studies by two-dimensional maps integrated with functional genomics of candidate proteins will undoubtedly contribute to better decipher the biology of AAG-associated HP strains.
Developing a generic, individualised adherence programme for chronic medication users

Objective The scope of this article is to describe the background for and content of an adherence counselling programme with a specific focus on an individualised, multi-dimensional adherence model for patients with a potential adherence problem (a so-called ‘individualised systems model’). Methods An intervention programme based on WHO’s systems model for adherence was developed for implementation in primary health care and tested in a development project in Danish pharmacies in 2004-2005 in three pharmacies and 4 GP practices by 27 patients. Data were collected from the participants by registration forms, questionnaires, and focus groups. Since the programme was to support patients in the self-management process regarding choice and implementation of medication treatment, various strategies were used and different theoretical assumptions and choices made prior to setting up the study. These strategies include distinguishing between different types of non-adherence, a model for stages of change, self-efficacy, narratives, motivating interviewing strategies and coaching techniques. These strategic and theoretical choices are described in the article. Results The strategies and theoretical reflections formed the platform for the creation of a counselling programme, which was tested in two forms, a basic and an extended version - provided by either a pharmaconomist or a pharmacist. The result section also describes a toolbox of instruments to enable pharmacy staff and GPs to tailor a counselling programme for patients individually called ‘Safe and effective use of medicines’. Besides, the results include a description of how the WHO-model is transformed into an individualised counselling model.
A Novel Method for Simulating Soft Tissue Deformation

This paper describes a novel method for simulating soft tissue deformation with image-based rendering. It is based on the association of depth map with colour texture and the incorporation of microsurface details to generate photo-realistic images representing soft tissue deformations. In a pre-processing step, the depth map describing the surface is separated into two distributions corresponding to macroand micro-surface details. During user interactive simulation, deformation resulting from tissue-instrument interaction is rapidly calculated by modifying a coarse mass-spring model fitted to the macro-surface model. Micro-surface details are subsequently augmented to the modified model with 3D image warping. The proposed technique drastically reduces the polygonal count required to model the scene, whilst preserving deformed small surface details and offering a high level of photorealism.