Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Cerebral Windkessel as a Dynamic Pulsation Absorber

Nearly all cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow and cerebral arterial and venous blood flow is pulsatile [1-4]. Capillary blood flow is nearly smooth [5,6,7]. The pulsatility of the CSF closely resembles the pulsatility of the intracranial veins [8,9], both of which have some characteristics of an arterial pulse, including, under some circumstances, a dicrotic notch [10]. Many aspects of the pulsatility of intracranial blood and CSF are difficult to understand, particularly because the pulsatile flow occurs in a rigid cranium which places obvious constraints on pulsatile dynamics. How is it that capillary blood flow is smooth, whereas the blood flow in the intracranial arteries and veins—sometimes only millimeters away from the capillaries— is quite pulsatile [3]? Why does the pulsatility of the veins resemble the pulsatility of the CSF [9]? Why do the CSF and venous pressure pulse waveforms have some characteristics of an arterial pulse [10]? Why does the intracranial pressure (ICP) pulse normally precede the arterial blood pressure (ABP) pulse, but lag with intracranial hypertension [1,6,11-14] (fig 1)? I propose that a useful approach to understanding these counterintuitive aspects of intracranial pulsatility is to consider the dynamics of the cerebral windkessel as that of a designed system. Such a system manifests design principles that accomplish specified goals, which for the cerebral windkessel is the buffering of arterial pulsatility—an unwanted ‘vibration’—in cerebral blood flow, while at the same time maintaining optimal cerebral blood flow and minimizing energy dissipation. This approach to exploring intracranial pulsatility entails reverse engineering of the cerebral windkessel, in accordance with established engineering principles of vibration control. Abstract
Medical management of pneumonia in children aged under 5 years in Alexandria, Egypt: mothers' perspective.

Background Pneumonia is among the top causes of morbidity and mortality among the under-fives worldwide. Aims A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess health-seeking behaviour and first medical management of pneumonia among children aged under 5 years in Alexandria, Egypt from the mothers' perspectives. Methods Using a pre-designed questionnaire, we interviewed 507 mothers of pneumonic children aged under 5 years who had been admitted at 4 governmental children's hospitals. The study was conducted during August-November 2017. Results We found that 57.2% of children received home treatment before seeking medical advice. Around 26% of mothers waited ≥ 2 days before seeking medical advice; insufficient knowledge about the disease was their main contention (89%). Factors significantly associated with the delay were: rural residence (P = 0.006); low income (P = 0.002); home treatment given before seeking medical advice (P < 0.001) and previous episodes of pneumonia (P = 0.002). Diagnosis of pneumonia had not been made by more than half of the first consulted sources (52.7%). Conclusion There is an urgent need to improve mothers' knowledge and train physicians for appropriate management of pneumonia in children under 5 years.
Non-a ne GARCH option pricing models, variance dependent kernels, and di↵usion limits

This paper investigates the pricing and weak convergence of an asymmetric non-a ne, nonGaussian GARCH model when the risk-neutralization is based on a variance dependent exponential linear pricing kernel with stochastic risk aversion parameters. The risk-neutral dynamics are obtained for a general setting and its weak limit is derived. We show how several GARCH di↵usions, martingalized via well-known pricing kernels, are obtained as special cases and we derive necessary and su cient conditions for the presence of financial bubbles. An extensive empirical analysis using both historical returns and options data illustrates the advantage of coupling this pricing kernel with non-Gaussian innovations.
Long-Term Care Needs: Implication for Savings, Welfare and Public Policy

Contrary to the predictions of standard life cycle models, individuals dissave slowly during retirement. I investigate the role of long-term care (LTC) needs in the saving decisions of the elderly, those above age 70, and quantify its importance relative to bequests and medical expenses. For this purpose, I construct a model of savings for old people where LTC needs are stochastic, individuals are heterogeneous in their access to informal care, and there is an optimal choice of care hours bought in the market. Health is estimated using a new dynamic latent variable model that summarizes the rich information contained in health surveys into 4 parsimonious health groups. This allows me to account for heterogeneity in both LTC needs and survival probabilities. Results imply that motives associated with LTC needs are significantly more important than medical expenses or bequest motives as drivers of savings for higher-income elderly. On the other hand, the middle class saves little for LTC because their children provide substantial informal care and show strong bequest motives. Medical expenditures matter little because the health states in which they are high are also short-lived due to higher mortality. Equivalent variation calculations indicate that a 4.5% subsidy in the price of care is revenue neutral, since it reduces government transfers to the poor from means-tested programs. On the other hand, it is welfare improving for both the poor and the rich. ∗CEMFI. I am deeply indebted to my advisor Josep Pijoan-Mas for his encouragement and useful comments. I am also grateful to Dante Amengual and Nezih Guner for insightful comments and discussions. Errors and omissions are exclusively my own responsibility. e-mail:jesus.bueren@cemfi.edu. es
Efficacy of newer insecticides against sucking pests of Okra

An experiment was carried out to evaluate the efficacy of newer insecticides against sucking pests viz., aphids, jassids and whitefly on okra during 2013–2014 at the research farm, College of Agriculture, Parbhani. Mean population of aphids and jassids after three sprays revealed that imidacloprid 17.8 SL @ 20 g a.i./ha was effective and superior. The next best were thiamethoxam 25 WG 25 g a.i./ha 2.62 and 4.41 followed by acetamiprid 20 SP @ 20 g a.i./ha which were at par. The treatments profenofos 50 EC @ 500 g a.i./ha, fipronil 5 SC @ 50 g a.i./ha and buprofezin 25 SC @ 250 g a.i./ha were also found statistically at par. Spinosad 45 SC @ 75 g a.i./ha recorded 6.29 aphids/3 leaves as compared to 14.55 aphids/3 leaves in untreated control. Whiteflies were controlled significantly by acetamiprid 20 SP (rt) 20 g a.i./ha (1.96/3 leaves) followed by imidacloprid 17.8 SL @ 20 g a.i./ha (2.81/3 leaves).
Personal Hygiene and Worm Eggs at Pupils Nail in Kupang City, Indonesia

Worm disease does not cause death but can affect digestion, absorption and metabolism of food. Helminthiasis figure in Kupang City in particular were not recorded properly, but when viewed from its risk factor then it was endemic because of sanitary conditions, personal hygiene, behavior, and the provision of clean water is still low. This study aim to identify the presence of worm’s eggs in the pupils nail and the correlation with clean and healthy living behavior of pupils. This analytic observational study used cross sectional design. The samples were primary school students as many as 50 people that were taken by random sampling. Data collection was through interviews and laboratory tests on stool samples and analyzed by using chi-square. Results found as many as 13 pupils (26%) were infested by worm eggsof Ascaris lumbricoides at their nail. There were no relation between the presence of worm eggs at pupils nail with gender (p=0.303), age (p=0.747), grade (p=0.643) and playing habits (p=1.000), but there is an association between the presence of worm eggs at elementary pupils nails with the latrine use (p=0.049) and personal hygiene (p=0.039). So that PHC expected to cooperate with the department of education improve the promotion and provision of facilities to support a clean and healthy behaviors for elementary school students
A Case of Suspected Drug Interaction Between Topiramate and Co-administered Clarithromycin/Pranlukast

Case description: A 4-year-old boy presented with tuberous sclerosis and symptomatic partial epilepsy of the upper right extremity. Topiramate was prescribed for the treatment of epilepsy, and seizure behavior was well controlled. However, the patient experienced a significantly increased seizure frequency immediately after the administration of clarithromycin and pranlukast treatment during topiramate treatment. Topiramate is metabolized by CYP3A4, which is inhibited by clarithromycin and pranlukast. Thus, pharmacokinetic interactions may have occurred. This is the first report of a possible drug interaction between topiramate, clarithromycin, and pranlukast.
Changes of anterior segment parameters after horizontal rectus muscles recession versus resection

Background: To record the corneal, and anterior chamber depth changes after performing recession versus resection of horizontal recti muscles. Methods: Consecutive patients who underwent isolated lateral rectus muscle recession or resection February 2014 to January 2015 were prospectively studied. Refractive error (spherical equivalent); K1, K2, and mean k reading, anterior and posterior corneal elevation; and anterior chamber depth were measured (Pentacam) before, 1 month, and 3 months after surgery. Patients who could not maintain reliable fixation and those with a history of eye surgery were excluded. Pre- and postoperative measurements were compared by analysis of variance. Results: A total of 36 eyes of 23 patients (average age, 16 years) were included. Rectus muscle recession was performed in 24 eyes; and resection was performed in 12 eyes. Statistically significant changes in mean keratometry of recession group only. Central anterior elevation, and central anterior chamber depth were significant when both groups are compared at first month after surgery. Changes became regressive at the end of the third month. Although a significant change of central anterior elevation persisted. Conclusions: In recession group, the mean K was the only statistically significant variable by the first postoperative month. Comparing the both groups, the anterior corneal elevation, and central anterior chamber depth revealed a significant difference by the end of the first postoperative month. After 3 months, all parameters showed a statistical insignificant difference between the recession and resection groups except the anterior corneal elevation.
THE EMERGENCE OF VERNACULAR TELEVISION STATIONS IN THE ERA OF DECENTRALISATION OF GOVERNANCE IN KENYA: THE ROLE OF VERNACULAR TV STATIONS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF COUNTIES

Cite this article: Thuranira, I.S. (2020). The Emergence Of Vernacular Television Stations In The Era Of Decentralisation Of Governance In Kenya: The Role Of Vernacular Tv Stations In The Development Of Counties. International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science, 8(2), 14-26. 14 THE EMERGENCE OF VERNACULAR TELEVISION STATIONS IN THE ERA OF DECENTRALISATION OF GOVERNANCE IN KENYA: THE ROLE OF VERNACULAR TV STATIONS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF COUNTIES
Can aversion to inequity trump strategic dominance?∗

We test experimentally theories of social preferences in strategic situations. We focus on a conflict between strategic dominance and inequity aversion in 2 × 2 normal-form games, in which both players have a dominant strategy, both earn different payoffs in equilibrium, and most deviations hurt both players. Virtually everybody follows dominance when aligned with inequity aversion, but the selection of the dominant action decreases with the equilibrium-payoff difference between subjects. That inequity concerns may trump strategic dominance represents a strong evidence for other-regarding motives. However, the documented degree of prosocial concerns is considerably lower than in other contexts. This can be mostly attributed to players in the disadvantageous position in equi-
Gender Disparities In Mortality Among Medical Admissions Of A Tertiary Health Facility In Ilorin, Nigeria

We retrospectively assessed sex-related differences in duration of hospital stay and mortality among medical admissions at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), Nigeria between January 1996 and December, 2005. Seventeen thousand six hundred and fifty patients, consisting of 10,040 (56.9%) males and 7,610 (43.1%) females were admitted during the period under review. Of these, 4220 died which was made up of 2624 (62.2%) males and 1596 (37.8%) females with overall percentage mortality of 23.9%. Mortality rate was significantly higher (Chi=62.5, p=0.0001) in males (26.1%) than in females (20.97%). The percentages of deaths due to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/Tuberculosis (TB), neoplasms and haematological disorders were higher in females than in males (p=0.0001, 0.0001 and 0.0001 respectively). However, deaths from gastrointestinal system and liver, and endocrine system were higher in males (p=0.0001 and 0.02 respectively) than in females. We recommend gender specific community interventions for the control of HIV/AIDS, TB and liver diseases in the population studied.
The Domestic Transmission of International Shocks: Evidence from US and Mexican Mutual Funds

In this study, I demonstrate that international mutual funds can cause temporary stock price deviations from fundamentals in the countries they have positions in. I show that US mutual funds massively sold their Mexican equity when the recent crisis was developing, which then led to the average undervaluation of Mexican stocks that were held by US funds (i.e., the exposed stocks). I establish that Mexican domestic funds responded to this underpricing heterogeneously; Mexican funds that owned the exposed stocks joined the US funds in selling, while those that did not bought the undervalued Mexican stocks. I provide evidence that these Mexican fund trades likewise had an impact on Mexican equity prices. Exposed stocks that were not in the portfolios of selling Mexican funds were in fact not subject to underpricing, while those that were were the ones driving the average undervaluation of all exposed stocks. This implies that the purchases by some Mexican funds were successful in counterbalancing the price pressure from US funds, while the sales by the others exacerbated the mispricing.
A k -points-based distance for robust geometric inference.

Analyzing the sub-level sets of the distance to a compact submanifold of R d is a common method in topological data analysis, to understand its topology. Therefore, topological inference procedures usually rely on a distance estimate based on n sample points [43]. In the case where sample points are corrupted by noise, the distance-to-measure function (DTM, [16]) is a surrogate for the distance-to-compact-set function. In practice, approximating the homology of its sub-level sets requires to compute the homology of unions of n balls ([29, 13]), that might become intractable whenever n is large. To simultaneously face the two problems of a large number of points and noise, we introduce the k -power-distance-to-measure function ( k -PDTM). This new surrogate for the distance-to-compact is a k -points-based approximation of the DTM. These k points are minimizers of a robustiﬁed version of the classical k -means criterion [35]. The sublevel sets of the k -PDTM consist in unions of k balls, and this distance is also proved robust to noise. We assess the quality of this approximation for k possibly drastically smaller than n , and provide an algorithm to compute this k -PDTM from a sample. Numerical experiments illustrate the good behavior of this k -points approximation in a noisy topological inference framework.
LVI: Hijacking Transient Execution through Microarchitectural Load Value Injection

The recent Spectre attack first showed how to inject incorrect branch targets into a victim domain by poisoning microarchitectural branch prediction history. In this paper, we generalize injection-based methodologies to the memory hierarchy by directly injecting incorrect, attacker-controlled values into a victim’s transient execution. We propose Load Value Injection (LVI) as an innovative technique to reversely exploit Meltdown-type microarchitectural data leakage. LVI abuses that faulting or assisted loads, executed by a legitimate victim program, may transiently use dummy values or poisoned data from various microarchitectural buffers, before eventually being re-issued by the processor. We show how LVI gadgets allow to expose victim secrets and hijack transient control flow. We practically demonstrate LVI in several proof-of-concept attacks against Intel SGX enclaves, and we discuss implications for traditional user process and kernel isolation. State-of-the-art Meltdown and Spectre defenses, including widespread silicon-level and microcode mitigations, are orthogonal to our novel LVI techniques. LVI drastically widens the spectrum of incorrect transient paths. Fully mitigating our attacks requires serializing the processor pipeline with lfence instructions after possibly every memory load. Additionally and even worse, due to implicit loads, certain instructions have to be blacklisted, including the ubiquitous x86 ret instruction. Intel plans compiler and assembler-based full mitigations that will allow at least SGX enclave programs to remain secure on LVI-vulnerable systems. Depending on the application and optimization strategy, we observe extensive overheads of factor 2 to 19 for prototype implementations of the full mitigation.
China’s Import Competition and Innovation: the Role of Unions

This paper investigates the impact of China’s import competition on process and product innovation and shows how the presence of unions at the firm level affects this relationship. By using firm level data for period 2005-2010 on Italy and applying IV fixed effects estimation techniques, we show that the impact of import competition depends: i) on the kind of goods (intermediates vs finals goods) imported and ii) on the kind of innovation output analyzed (process vs product innovation). More specifically, China’s import competition in final goods foster innovation activities (both product and process), while imports of intermediate goods decrease the incentive to product innovation. Also, we provide evidence that in firms characterized by union presence, the likelihood of engaging in product innovation activities increases, while the opposite happens for process innovation. Last, when considering the interaction of unions with the imports variables, the effects of imports on innovation activities turn out to be generally reduced. In particular, unions discourage the increase in process innovation in response to China’s final good competition, while attenuating the negative impact entailed by imports of intermediate goods on product innovation. These findings highlight the relevance of taking into account the role of unions when analyzing the consequences of globalization since unions can significantly influence firms’ strategies. JEL Classification: C33, L25, F14, F60, O30, J50.
TELE-TRAFFIC ANALYSIS OF ALL-OPTICAL PACKET/ BURST SWITCHED NODES

The blocking behavior of an asynchronous all-optical OBS/OPS node with shared wavelength converters has been successfully analyzed using classical Tele-traffic models. It has been proved that the Engset traffic model with modification in off time of an on-off traffic source is more realistic for analysis of such a system. It has been shown that the degree of conversion affects the blocking behavior of an optical packet/burst switched node which is not ignorable especially when the switching node under consideration is of medium or small port count. To be exact, continuous time Markov chains have been used. The important quantitative measures which are the time, call and traffic blocking have been evaluated and compared. Additionally, we have compared two approaches: 1) using pure Engset traffic source which assumes a lost packet/burst to be immediately removed from the system, 2) using modified Engset traffic source where the more realistic behavior is assumed that the lost packet/burst is to be dumped at the node which takes finite time and during this time source cannot generate more packets/bursts. The work done here will contribute to the Tele-traffic analysis of all-optical burst/packet switched nodes.
Policy Uncertainty , Financial Constraints and Investments ∗

Exploiting textual information on exposure to political risks for a large panel of U.S. firms, I study the sensitivity of corporate investment rates to uncertainty. I find that the increase in economic policy uncertainty during the Great Recession can account for up to half of the observed reduction in investment and R&D rates. The result is primarily driven by firms that are ex-ante likely to be financially constrained. This suggests that financial frictions, and not just wait-and-see effects, are key for understanding the relation between investment and uncertainty.
Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Automating Fire Watch in Industrial Environments through Machine Learning-Enabled Visual Monitoring

Nuclear power plants (NPPs) are experiencing significant cost challenges to remain competitive with other energy-generation industries. Unlike other industries, the cost of operations and maintenance (O&M) activities at an NPP is mostly attributed to workforce cost. The NPP industry has therefore resorted to automating manually intensive tasks to reduce O&M costs, especially for monitoring activities. One monitoring function that is visually demanding and can occur frequently in order to meet the requirements of the fire protection program in an NPP is fire watch. A fire watch is a worker physically stationed at a given location (where normal fire protection measures are challenged) with the sole responsibility of observing a given area to ensure a fire is detected and mitigated promptly. This effort targets migrating fire watch from a manual model to an automated model. An automated visual monitoring approach using machine learning was pursued to closely resemble the actual manual visual monitoring performed by a fire watch. Multiple machine-learning methods were evaluated for automated visual recognition of fire; long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks, coupled to a color-based feature-extraction method to extract fire regions, resulted in the most accurate results. In addition to developing the method, a training data set for fire in industrial environments was developed. Because machine-learning methods are sensitive to the training data used, using only industrial fire videos were essential. Various sources of publicly available datasets containing scenes approximating industrial settings with and without fire were investigated and aggregated. They consist of YouTube-8M datasets that were downloaded and used to train and validate the neural network modelling approaches used in this analysis. Additional video datasets available from previously published literature sources and an online repository provided by Yahoo (YFCC100m and FiSmo) were also downloaded and aggregated to test the color feature extraction efforts and isolate fire regions in a frame. The developed method was trained and validated using 1,000 industrial-only fire videos extracted from YouTube-8M datasets. After the developed method was trained and validated using the YouTube-8M data, it was tested using a set of 62 videos, split evenly between fire and no-fire scenarios, from a Yahoo videos repository. The accuracy achieved by the developed method was 0% missed positives (i.e. fire occurred but not detected)