Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elections, Foreign Direct Investment, and Economic Growth in Ghana’s Fourth Republic: 1993 to 2016

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has been seen as an important factor influencing economic growth directly and indirectly in both developed and developing countries. This study assesses the impact of FDI on growth in Ghana since the return to constitutional rule in 1993. The study uses time series data from 1993 to 2016. Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lagged model (ARDL), the study finds a positive impact of FDI on growth both in the short-run and long-run. However, there is a lag period of two. The study equally finds that Gross Saving has a positive impact on growth. On the other hand inflation has a negative effect on growth both in the short and long run. The study also discovered that FDI granger causes growth but GDP does not granger cause FDI. Post-election years with incidence of political uncertainty slow down FDI inflow into Ghana. The study recommends the adoption of stringent fiscal and monetary policies to keep inflation low. It also recommends maintaining and improving the liberal market environment to attract investors, policies to encourage saving, and improving on political transitions to avoid uncertainties for investors.
Does Corporate Culture Affect Bank Risk‐Taking? Evidence from Loan‐Level Data

We examine the effect of bank culture on financial stability through the lens of bank lending decisions. Using the Competing Value Framework developed in organizational behavior research, we measure bank culture along four distinct dimensions: compete, create, control, and collaborate. We find that compete-dominant banks are associated with riskier lending practices – higher approval rate, lower borrower quality, and fewer covenant requirements. These banks exhibit higher loan growth, but incur larger loan losses. As a result, they make greater contributions to systemic risk. We find the opposite results among control-dominant banks, whose culture emphasizes control and safety. Our findings cannot be explained by the bank business models, CEO compensation incentives and CEO characteristics. To establish causality, we use the exogenous shock to the US banking system during the Russian crisis of Fall 1998.
ELECTROCOAGULATION FOR THE TREATMENT OF WASTEWATER FOR REUSE IN IRRIGATION AND PLANTATION

Growing water scarcity in Pakistan is compelling people to use the treated wastewater at least for landscape irrigation and plantation to augment available water resources. In the present study, a laboratory scale electrocoagulation (EC) process was utilized to treat the raw wastewater in order to bring the quality up to the international wastewater reuse standards. Effect of various operating parameters such as operating time, current density and inter-electrode spacing was evaluated to achieve the maximum possible treatment efficiency. It was found that the application of 24.7 mA/cm 2 current density with an inter-electrode spacing of 5 cm may provide 91.8%, 77.2% and 68.5% removal in turbidity, COD and TSS within 30 minutes of EC treatment. The quality of treated wastewater was compared with various international standards/guidelines for wastewater reuse. It was found that the studied parameters such as BOD, COD, TDS, TSS, turbidity, NO3-N, NH3-N, chloride, Na + , Ca 2+ , Mg 2+ , sulfate, total phosphorus, electrical conductivity Oil and Grease (O & G) and total coliform (TC) were within allowable limits. Electrical conductivity, TDS and Sodium Adsorption Ratio (SAR) are mainly used for the determination of wastewater suitability for safe irrigation. Their values do not exceed the international wastewater reuse standards. The study shows that the raw wastewater generated at the study site after EC treatment is safe for landscape irrigation and plantation.
HCI as an instrument for strengthening culture and language of a Colombian native community

This paper is about the relationship between culture and human-computer interaction. Cultures are live, open and in continuous change. Computer and information technology, as external factors for non-Western-industrialized societies, may trigger transformations, that sometimes, could be considered as negative or unwanted. For example, the usage of Western word-processors modiﬁed the Japanese writing sys-tem when Japanese people faced a number of unfamiliar concepts introduced in those computer tools [8]. At the same time, minority societies around the world are in danger of extinction. The Nasa people, our target population, struggle to revitalize their mother tongue and cultural traditions. This text presents an experience about developing or adapting computer tools to help the revitalization eﬀorts. The use of the computer could lead to positive eﬀects, or at least, to eﬀects aligned with the policies of the society.
COMPARISON BETWEEN TRADITIONAL METHODS AND REAL TIME PCR FOR DETECTION OF E .COLI IN BOVINE MEAT PRODUCTS

Received at: 27/5/2013 Accepted: 8/7/2013 This study was performed to compare the prevalence of E . coli in minced meat and sausage using traditional methods and real time PCR. A total of 100 samples of minced meat and sausage (50 of each) were collected from different supermarket in Giza and Assiute governorates. The results using traditional methods recorded as 25% and 15% as positive E . coli from minced meat and sausage respectively, while the incidence of E. coli O157 recorded as 4% and 2% from minced meat and sausage respectively. The incidence of E. coliO 157 by using real time PCR recorded as 8% and 6% from minced meat and sausage respectively. The melting curve appeared at (82 ° C) for E. coli O 157 by using SYBR green Real time PCR.
Modelling the creep of deep foundations in soft Gothenburg clays

Abstract The design of deep foundations in areas with significant background creep deformation is a challenge. In Sweden, mainly empirical methods have been used in the design of deep foundations. Generally, the predictions have been highly inaccurate, in particular with regards to the long-term deformations. Therefore, a stepwise approach is proposed, which stems from the concept of performance based design. It is shown that with the proposed approach, it is for the first time possible to perform representative back analyses of the long-term response of deep foundations in an environment with ongoing settlements. This is achieved with simplified 2D finite-element analyses using a commercially available creep model. Design assumptions and simplifications are defined based on careful back analysis of relevant case studies in the area that can be found in literature. Finally, the approach is validated by comparison with long-term monitoring of a 22-storey building on a floating piled raft.
STATIONARY EDEN MODEL ON CAYLEY GRAPHS BY TONĆI ANTUNOVIĆ

We consider two stationary versions of the Eden model, on the upper half planar lattice, resulting in an infinite forest covering the half plane. Under weak assumptions on the weight distribution and by relying on ergodic theorems, we prove that almost surely all trees are finite. Using the mass transport principle, we generalize the result to Eden model in graphs of the form G × Z+, where G is a Cayley graph. This generalizes certain known results on the two-type Richardson model, in particular of Deijfen and Häggström in 2007 [Ann. Appl. Probab. 17 (2007) 1639–1656].
Regional cerebral blood ow decline can predict atrophy in Alzheimer’s disease spectrum

Fardin Nabizadeh Neuroscience Research Group (NRG), Universal Scienti c Education and Research Network (USERN), Tehran, Iran Mohammad Reza Rostami Neuroscience Research Group (NRG), Universal Scienti c Education and Research Network (USERN), Tehran, Iran Mohammad Balabandian (  balabandianm@gmail.com ) Neuroscience Research Group (NRG), Universal Scienti c Education and Research Network (USERN), Tehran, Iran
Survey of Various Clustering Techniques for Big Data in Data Mining

Abstarct — Data mining is the method which is useful for extracting useful information and data is extorted, but the classical data mining approaches cannot be directly used for big data due to their absolute complexity. The data that is been formed by numerous scientific applications and incorporated environment has grown rapidly not only in size but also in variety in recent era. The data collected is of very large amount and there is difficulty in collecting and assessing big data. Clustering algorithms have developed as a powerful meta-learning tool which can precisely analyze the volume of data produced by modern applications. The main goal of clustering is to categorize data into clusters such that objects are grouped in the same cluster when they are “similar” according to similarities, traits and behavior. The most commonly used algorithm in clustering are partitioning, hierarchical, grid based, density based, and model based algorithms. Partitioning algorithms can also be called as the centroid based clustering. Hierarchical algorithms can also be called as the connectivity based clustering. Density based clustering is based on the concept of data reachability and data connectivity. Grid based clustering is based on the size of the grid instead of the data. Model based clustering is based upon the probability distribution. In this survey paper, a review of clustering and its different techniques in data mining is done considering the criteria’s for big data.
Climate Model Errors over the South Indian Ocean Thermocline Dome and Their Effect on the Basin Mode of Interannual Variability*

An open-ocean thermocline dome south of the equator is a striking feature of the Indian Ocean (IO) as a result of equatorial westerly winds. Over the thermocline dome, the El Niño–forced Rossby waves help sustain the IO basin (IOB) mode and offer climate predictability for the IO and surrounding countries. This study shows that a common equatorial easterly wind bias, by forcing a westward-propagating downwelling Rossby wave in the southern IO, induces too deep a thermocline dome over the southwestern IO (SWIO) in state-of-the-art climate models. Such a deep SWIO thermocline weakens the influence of subsurface variability on sea surface temperature (SST), reducing the IOB amplitude and possibly limiting the models’ skill of regional climate prediction. To the extent that the equatorial easterly wind bias originates from errors of the South Asian summer monsoon, improving the monsoon simulation can lead to substantial improvements in simulating and predicting interannual variability in the IO.
Heller, Valentin and Bruggemann, Mark and Spinneken, Johannes and Rogers, Benedict (2016) Composite modelling of subaerial landslide-tsunamis in different water body geometries and novel insight into slide and wave

This article addresses subaerial landslide-tsunamis with a composite (experimental-numerical) modelling approach. A shortcoming of generic empirical equations used for hazard assessment is that they are commonly based on the two idealised water body geometries of a wave channel (2D) or a wave basin (3D). A recent systematic comparison of 2D and 3D physical block model tests revealed wave amplitude differences of up to a factor of 17. The present article investigates two of these recently presented 2D-3D test pairs in detail, involving a solitary-like wave (scenario 1) and Stokes-like waves (scenario 2). Results discussed include slide and water particle kinematics and novel pressure measurements on the slide front. Instantaneous slide-water interaction power graphs are derived and potential and
DEV118786 1..11

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are the benchmark molecular markers for modern genomics. Until recently, relatively few SNPs were known in the zebrafish genome. The use of nextgeneration sequencing for the positional cloning of zebrafish mutations has increased the number of known SNP positions dramatically. Still, the identified SNP variants remain under-utilized, owing to scant annotation of strain specificity and allele frequency. To address these limitations, we surveyed SNP variation in three common laboratory zebrafish strains using whole-genome sequencing. This survey identified an average of 5.04 million SNPs per strain compared with the Zv9 reference genome sequence. By comparing the three strains, 2.7 million variants were found to be strain specific, whereas the remaining variants were shared among all (2.3 million) or some of the strains. We also demonstrate the broad usefulness of our identified variants by validatingmost in independent populations of the same laboratory strains. We have made all of the identified SNPs accessible through ‘SNPfisher’, a searchable online database (snpfisher.nichd.nih.gov). The SNPfisher website includes the SNPfisher Variant Reporter tool, which provides the genomic position, alternate allele read frequency, strain specificity, restriction enzyme recognition site changes and flanking primers for all SNPs and Indels in a user-defined gene or region of the zebrafish genome. The SNPfisher site also contains links to display our SNP data in the UCSC genome browser. The SNPfisher tools will facilitate the use of SNP variation in zebrafish research as well as vertebrate genome
DMD056804 867..871

Due to the importance of in vitro cytochrome P450 (P450) induction assay to assess the possible drug-drug interaction events, the recent US Food and Drug Administration draft guidance and European Medicines Agency guideline recommend to assess P450 induction using fresh or cryopreserved hepatocytes at mRNA level and/or enzyme activity level. Although cryopreserved hepatocytes are commercially available for P450 induction assays, feasibility and practicability of these hepatocytes have not been fully investigated. In this study, a total of 23 lots of human cryopreserved hepatocytes were treated with three typical inducers (omeprazole, phenobarbital, and rifampicin), and induction of CYP1A2, CYP2B6, and CYP3A4 enzyme activity was measured. In 8 of these 23 hepatocyte lots, induction of CYP1A2, CYP2B6, CYP2C8, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, and CYP3A4 mRNAwas also analyzed. The results revealed that CYP1A2, CYP2B6, and CYP3A4were induced (>2.0-fold) by omeprazole, phenobarbital, and rifampicin, respectively, in all the hepatocyte lots tested at enzyme activity level (23 lots) and mRNA level (8 lots). In contrast, of the 8 hepatocyte lots treated with rifampicin, CYP2C8 and CYP2C9 mRNA were not induced in 5 and 2 hepatocyte lots, respectively, and CYP2C19 mRNA was not induced in any of the 8 hepatocyte lots tested. These results suggest that induction of CYP1A2, CYP2B6, and CYP3A4 can be readily assessed, but evaluation for CYP2C mRNA induction might not be feasible, using commercially available human cryopreserved hepatocytes.
Denoising Autoencoder with Dropout based Network Anomaly Detection

—A Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) plays an important role in ensuring information security. It helps system administrators identify and detect malicious activities in their companies. Many techniques have been devised by researchers to achieve reliable detection of anomalies. It is thus a challenging task to determine a network anomaly more accurately. To solve this problem, we propose a Denoising-Autoencoder (DAE) with a Dropout based network anomaly detection method because it forces the extraction of intrinsic features so as to increase the detection accuracy. A popular NSL-KDD dataset is used for the training and evaluation of our approach. The performance of our approach takes into consideration different metrics such accuracy, precision, recall, f-measure values and the detection rate. Experimental results show that our approach performs better than other detection methods, especially when we use a single hidden layer with 8 neurons.
Automated Routing in Pedestrian Dynamics

In this thesis, the eﬀect of an alternate ﬂoorﬁeld is analyzed, by using it in a newly composed testmodel for pedestrian dynamics. In simulations of pedestrian movement, the routing of agents 1 is an integral part. Routing can be seen as the composition of two aspects: the global pathﬁnding through a geometry and the avoidance of static or dynamic obstacles (like walls or other agents) in a local situation. Development of pedestrian simulation shows various models with different answers to the question of navigation. Many of which make use of manually added elements 2 to solve the global pathﬁnding, which enable the user to simulate crowd movement in that speciﬁc geometry. Other models use an algorithm with no restriction to the type of geometry, that will yield a navigation direction. The Gradient Navigation Model (GNM) described by Dietrich [7] is one of the later. It uses the solution of the Eikonal equation (see chapter 2.2), which describes a 2-D wave propagation. The wave starts in the target region and propagates throughout the geometry. Agents are directed in the opposite direction of the gradient of a ﬂoorﬁeld , the afore-mentioned solution to the Eikonal equation. The Routing using the plain ﬂoorﬁeld will yield non-smooth pathways. This could pose a problem for models, relying on a well-posed problem: In [7], Dietrich shows the exis-tance and uniqueness of a solution to his problem-formulation by using the theorem of Picard-Lindel¨of. To apply this theorem, Lipschitz-continuous ﬁrst derivatives of the inputfunctions must exist. This contradicts with non-smooth pathways in a plain ﬂoorﬁeld. He solves that problem by introducing a molliﬁer, which basically takes a locally integrable function and returns a smooth approximation. Thus he creates a well posed problem. In this thesis, an enhanced ﬂoorﬁeld is described, which addresses the aforementioned issue (non-smoothness) as a welcome side-eﬀect. A research group at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid [14] is working on safe nav-1
Metabolic £ uxanalysis ofa glycerol-overproducingSaccharomyces cerevisiae strain based onGC-MS , LC-MSandNMR-derived 13 C-labelling data

This study focuses on unravelling the carbon and redox metabolism of a previously developed glycerol-overproducing Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain with deletions in the structural genes encoding triosephosphate isomerase (TPI1), the external mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenases (NDE1 and NDE2) and the respiratory chain-linked glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GUT2). Two methods were used for analysis of metabolic fluxes: metabolite balancing and C-labelling-based metabolic flux analysis. The isotopic enrichment of intracellular primary metabolites was measured both directly (liquid chromatography-MS) and indirectly through proteinogenic amino acids (nuclear magnetic resonance and gas chromatography-MS). Because flux sensitivity around several important metabolic nodes proved to be dependent on the applied technique, the combination of the three C quantification techniques generated the most accurate overall flux pattern. When combined, the measured conversion rates and C-labelling data provided evidence that a combination of assimilatory metabolism and pentose phosphate pathway activity diverted some of the carbon away from glycerol formation. Metabolite balancing indicated that this results in excess cytosolic NADH, suggesting the presence of a cytosolic NADH sink in addition to those that were deleted. The exchange flux of four-carbon dicarboxylic acids across the mitochondrial membrane, as measured by the C-labelling data, supports a possible role of a malate/aspartate or malate/oxaloacetate redox shuttle in the transfer of these redox equivalents from the cytosol to the mitochondrial matrix.
A F AUST -B UILT M OBILE V OCODER I NSTRUMENT

The growth of increasingly powerful mobiles devices and their ubiquity opens up more and more possibilities in the creation of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIMEs). However, since smartphones were not conceived for musical purposes, they are affected by some limitations. This work aims to develop a mobile version of a vocoder using the Faust programming language, in order to test the limits and opportunities offered by smartphones in creating a portable version of such an old musical effect. Both a custom app and purpose-designed phone case prototype were developed. The vocoder app presents a clear reconstruction of the words, via the quite pleasant and well-known timbre. However, some difﬁculties were encountered in the development process. In particular, some mobile devices are not powerful enough to handle a high level of polyphony.
Mimicking Infectious Meningitis As The Initial Manifestation

Jun Xiao Huazhong University of Science and Technology Shuo-Qi Zhang Huazhong University of Science and Technology Xin Chen Huazhong University of Science and Technology Yue Tang Huazhong University of Science and Technology Man Chen Huazhong University of Science and Technology Ke Shang Huazhong University of Science and Technology Gang Deng Huazhong University of Science and Technology Chuan Qin Huazhong University of Science and Technology Dai-Shi Tian (  tiands@tjh.tjmu.edu.cn ) Huazhong University of Science and Technology
CMAR_A_259125 7671..7680

1Department of General Surgery Research, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of General Surgery, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, People’s Republic of China; 3Institute of Medical Sciences, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Pathology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, People’s Republic of China Background: Cancer cell migration, tumor angiogenesis, and activated hepatic stellate cells (a-HSCs) promote the development of colorectal liver metastases (CLM). Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome protein family verprolin-homologous protein 2 (WAVE2) has been associated with CLM, although the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Methods: In the current study, we evaluated the relationship between WAVE2 and CLM in 103 CLM patients who underwent liver resection. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining was performed to determine the association between WAVE2 protein expression and hepatic micro-metastasis in human CLM tissues. WAVE2 knockout was performed in hepatic stellate cells (HSC) to explore the function and signaling pathways of WAVE2 in colorectal cancer progression. Results: Significantly higher levels of WAVE2 were detected in portal-associated relative to sinusoid-associated micro-metastasis. A strong correlation was identified between WAVE2 levels and microvessel density (MVD) in hepatic metastasis. Similarly, expression of WAVE2 was closely associated with activation of HSCs. Mechanistically, WAVE2 regulated the progression of human CLM acts by regulating the growth factor β (TGF-β) and Hippo pathways via effector yes-associated protein (YAP1). Conclusion: Overall, our results demonstrated that WAVE2 participates in CLM tumor microenvironment, and can be a potential latent therapeutic target for CLM.
Running head: PARENTS AND PARTNERS’ EXPERIENCES OF TRANSITION Athletes’ retirement from elite sport: A qualitative study of parents and partners’

eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can’t change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/