Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Images as Metadata: A New Perspective for Describing Research Data

Abstract Indispensable in many contexts, images are fundamental in the tasks of representation and transmission of information. In the scientific context, images can be tools for researchers seeking to see their data properly managed. Research data management guides in this direction as it determines necessary phases in the life cycle of projects. The description phase is fundamental as it is an essential means for data context, safeguarding, and reuse. The description often occurs through metadata models composed of descriptors capable of attributing context. However, there is one common aspect: the values associated with these descriptors are always textual or numeric. Through studies and work developed over the last few years, we propose a new approach to description, where images can have a preponderant role in the description of data, assuming the role of metadata. We present several pieces of evidence, point out their challenges and determine the opportunities this new perspective can have in the research. Images have specific characteristics that can be leveraged in improving data description. Historical evidence establish that images have always been used and produced in research, yet their representational ability has never been harnessed to describe data and give more context to the scientific process.
The macrophage polarization by miRNAs and its potential role in the treatment of tumor and inflammation (Review)

The characteristics of monocyte/macrophage lineage are diversity and plasticity, mainly manifested by M1 and M2 subtypes in the body tissues, and playing different roles in the immunity. In the polarization process of macrophages, the classic molecular mechanism is related to sequential transcription factors. Whether in tumor or inflammatory local microenvironment, the pathological factors of the local microenvironment often affect the polarization of M1 and M2 macrophages, and participate in the occurrence and development of these pathological processes. In recent years, a growing number of research results demonstrated that non-coding RNA (ncRNA) also participates in the polarization process of macrophages, in addition to traditional cytokines and transcriptional regulation signal pathway molecules. Among numerous ncRNAs, microRNAs (miRNAs) have attracted more attention from scholars both domestically and internationally, and significant progress has been made in basic and clinical research. Therefore, for improved understanding of the molecular mechanism of miRNAs in macrophage polarization and analysis of the potential value of this regulatory pathway in tumor and inflammatory intervention therapy, a comprehensive review of the progress of relevant literature research was conducted and some viewpoints and perspectives were proposed.
A History of Genocide in Africa

Based on a series of detailed case studies, this book presents the history of genocide in Africa within the specific context of African history, examining conflicts in countries such as Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Rwanda, and Sudan. Why has Africa been the subject of so many accusations related to genocide? Indeed, the number of such allegations related to Africa has increased dramatically over the past 15 years. Popular racist mythology might suggest that Africans belong to "tribes" that are inherently antagonistic towards each other and therefore engage in "tribal warfare" which cannot be rationally explained. This concept is wrong, as Timothy J. Stapleton explains in A History of Genocide in Africa: the many conflicts that have plagued post-colonial Africa have had very logical explanations, and very few of these instances of African warring can be said to have resulted in genocide. Authored by an expert historian of Africa, this book examines the history of six African countries–Namibia, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Nigeria–in which the language of genocide has been mobilized to describe episodes of tragic mass violence. It seeks to place genocide within the context of African history, acknowledging the few instances where the international legal term genocide has been applied appropriately to episodes of mass violence in African history and identifying the many other cases where it has not and instead the term has been used in a cynical manipulation to gain some political advantage. Readers will come to understand how, to a large extent, genocide accusations related to post-colonial Africa have often served to prolong wars and cause greater loss of life. The book also clarifies how in areas of Africa where genocides have actually occurred, there appears to have been a common history of the imposition of racial ideologies and hierarchies during the colonial era–which when combined with other factors such as the local geography, demography, religion, and/or economics, resulted in tragic and appalling outcomes.
Nanomaterials and molecular transporters to overcome the bacterial 1 envelope barrier : towards advanced delivery of antibiotics 2 3

23 With the dramatic consequences of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, nanomaterials and 24 molecular transporters have started to be investigated as alternative antibacterials or anti25 infective carrier systems to improve the internalization of bactericidal drugs. However, the 26 capability of nanomaterials/molecular transporters to overcome the bacterial cell envelope is 27 poorly understood. It is critical to consider the sophisticated architecture of bacterial envelopes 28 and reflect how nanomaterials/molecular transporters can interact with these envelopes, being 29 the major aim of this review. The first part of this manuscript overviews the permeability of 30 bacterial envelopes and how it limits the internalization of common antibiotic and novel 31 oligonucleotide drugs. Subsequently we critically discuss the mechanisms that allow 32 nanomaterials/molecular transporters to overcome the bacterial envelopes, focusing on the most 33 promising ones to this end – siderophores, cyclodextrins, metal nanoparticles, 34 antimicrobial/cell-penetrating peptides and fusogenic liposomes. This review may stimulate 35 drug delivery and microbiology scientists in designing effective nanomaterials/molecular 36 transporters against bacterial infections. 37 38
On the E ffi ciency of Partial Information in Elections ∗

We study the relation between the electorate’s information about candidates’ policy platforms during an election, and the subsequent provision of inefficient local public goods by the elected government. More information does not always lead to better outcomes. We show that the equilibrium outcome is efficient if voters are partially uninformed; whereas, if the electorate is very well informed, electoral competition leads candidates to provide inefficient local public goods in all equilibria.
Does Financial-Industrial Group Membership Affect Fixed Investment : Evidence from Russia 1

The current research estimates the accelerator type model of fixed investment using a Russian industrial enterprise dataset . This dataset contains individual firms’ accounting data for 1996 and 1997. The sample of firms was divided into three subsamples based on the ownership structure data. Registered Financial-Industrial Groups, unregistered Financial-Industrial Groups and non-group subsets were analyzed in order to compare sensitivities of investment to changes in internal liquidity in these three sets of firms. Controlling for size and investment opportunities it was found that in 1996-1997 the firms in unregistered groups invest a larger proportion of their retained earnings relative to the rest of the economy. We interpret this result as a proof of the hypothesis of better contract enforcement in unofficial groups compared to the rest of economy in the situation of lack of external financing of investment.
Making and breaking an island arc: A new perspective from the Oligocene Kyushu‐Palau arc, Philippine Sea

The Kyushu‐Palau Ridge (KPR) is a 2600 km long remnant island arc that is separated from the active Izu‐Bonin‐Mariana (IBM) arc by a series of spreading and rift basins. We present 40Ar/39Ar ages and geochemical data for the entire length of the Kyushu‐Palau arc as well as for the conjugate arc which is stranded within the IBM fore arc. New 40Ar/39Ar ages indicate that the KPR was active between 25 and 48 Ma, but the majority of the exposed volcanism occurred in the final phase, between 25 and 28 Ma. Rifting of the Kyushu‐Palau arc to form the Shikoku and Parece Vela basins occurred simultaneously along the length of the arc (circa 25 Ma), and at a similar distance from the trench. Unlike the IBM, the KPR has only limited systematic along‐arc geochemical trends. Two geochemical components within the KPR indicate an origin in the suprasubduction mantle. First, EM‐1‐like lavas are identified in a restricted section of the arc, suggesting a localized heterogeneity. Second, EM‐2‐like arc volcanoes formed on juvenile West Philippine Basin crust, potentially reflecting ingress of mantle from the then active EM‐2 province which lies in the west. Another geochemical heterogeneity is found at the KPR–Daito Ridge intersection where the arc developed on preexisting Cretaceous Daito Ridge crust. The geochemical characteristics at this intersection likely result from the involvement of sub–Daito Ridge lithospheric mantle. Subduction flux beneath the KPR generally matches post–45 Ma Eocene/Oligocene lavas in the IBM fore arc, involving fluids and melts derived from altered igneous crust.
CPTI15, the 2015 version of the Parametric Catalogue of Italian Earthquakes

The Italian Parametric Earthquake Catalogue (CPTI, Catalogo Parametrico dei Terremoti Italiani) represents the most extensive and reliable source of parameters for earthquakes in Italy and surrounding areas. CPTI15 is the fourth release of the CPTI series, the first dating back to 1999, and provides the most advanced and updated sets of macroseismic and instrumental data and parameters, for Italian earthquakes with maximum intensity I ≥ 5 or magnitude Mw ≥ 4.0 in the period 1000-2014. The catalogue lists 4584 events, 70% of which are based on the macroseismic datapoints provided by the Italian Macroseismic Database DBMI15. If available, both macroseismic and instrumental parameters are provided, together with a set of “preferred ones”, which consist of a selection between the macroseismic and the instrumental epicentres, and the weighted average of the macroseismic and instrumental magnitudes.
Price and Volume Effects Associated with Changes in the Danish Blue-chip Index

The Danish blue-chip index { the KFX Index { provides an interesting case for studying the e(cid:11)ects of changes in a stock market index. This is because of the unique selection criterion used for the composition of the KFX Index. The criterion is publicly known and based on a combination of liquidity and market value of the stock. Consistent with the selection criterion, the stock price e(cid:11)ects are generally small at the announcement of a change and at the later date when the change comes into e(cid:11)ect. However, the deleted stocks experience an abnormal return averaging (cid:0) 17% in the half year period before the change. The additions experience an average abnormal return of 5%, but in this case the stock price e(cid:11)ect is found only in the last month before the announcement. Furthermore, this study shows that abnormal trading activity and price-pressure occur around the e(cid:11)ective date which is consistent with investors rebalancing port-folios. In the long-run deleted stocks experience a decrease in trading volume while stocks that are added maintain their high level of trading volume. The (cid:12)ndings here suggest that the e(cid:11)ects are best explained by the so-called imperfect substitutes hypothesis or the information costs/liquidity hypothesis. This means that stocks in the KFX Index are exposed to a higher demand or more attention and lower cost of trading than stocks outside the index.
The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity

Preface ix Acknowledgments xxi Introduction: The Make-Believe Space 1 Part I. Spatial Transformation 1. The Materiality of Sovereignty 37 2. Repopulating a Territory 51 3. The Affects of Spatial Confinement 62 Part II. Administration 4. Administration and Affect 81 5. The Affective Life of Documents 97 Part III. Objects and Dwellings 6. Abjected Spaces, Debris of War 129 7. Affective Spaces, Melancholic Objects 161 8. Home, Law and the Uncanny 176 9. Collectibles of War and the Tangibility of Affect 202 Epilogue 215 Notes 223 Works Cited 247 Index 261
Student Loans: Overview and Issues

This report provides a detailed overview of the student loan market, presents new statistics that highlight student loan debt burdens and delinquency rates, and discusses current concerns among many Americans about student loans, including their fiscal impact. The report is intended to enhance awareness of the state of student loan debt and delinquency and highlight issues facing borrowers, creditors, the federal government, and society at large. ; Student loan debt has been increasing at a rapid pace in the last decade, climbing from about $364 billion in the first quarter of 2005 to $904 billion in the first quarter of 2012. Increasing levels of debt have been driven largely by growth in the number of borrowers, rather than growth in the average debt levels of individual borrowers. But average debt has increased moderately, and individual debt has become an increasing burden to some borrowers in light of the recent performance of the national economy. Along with this increase in student loan debt has been an increase in default rates. High debt levels, coupled with high default rates, present a number of challenges for individual student loan borrowers, but do not necessarily pose a substantial burden on society at large. An important factor in the recent climb in individual student loan burdens is the rising cost of higher education. ; While much of the concern about student loans is focused on borrower impacts, some have expressed concern about the potential for increased costs on the federal government. Data suggest that while the student loan program does impose some cost to the federal government under certain accounting methods, the costs are a small share of the federal budget. Various reform options that have been proposed, such as debt forgiveness, could change that dynamic, however. ; While the report does not offer specific suggestions on how to address the problems it highlighted, it does suggest some areas of concern to think about as policymakers consider student loans, and what some term to be the associated ? crisis? around them. The clear message is that student loans present problems for some borrowers that are well worth addressing. At the same time, the analysis suggests that student loans do not yet impose a significant burden on society from their fiscal impact.
A systematic review of financial debt in adolescents and young adults: Prevalence, correlates and associations with crime

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Multiple pattern matching for network security applications: Acceleration through vectorization (pre-print version)

As both new network attacks emerge and network traﬃc increases in vol-ume, the need to perform network traﬃc inspection at high rates is ever increasing. The core of many security applications that inspect network traf-ﬁc (such as Network Intrusion Detection) is pattern matching. At the same time, pattern matching is a major performance bottleneck for those applications: indeed, it is shown to contribute to more than 70% of the total running time of Intrusion Detection Systems. Although numerous eﬃcient approaches to this problem have been proposed on custom hardware, it is challenging for pattern matching algorithms to gain beneﬁt from the advances in commodity hardware. This becomes even more relevant with the adoption of Network Function Virtualization, that moves network services, such as Network Intrusion Detection, to the cloud where scaling on commodity hardware is key for performance. In this paper, we tackle the problem of pattern matching and show how to leverage the architecture features found in commodity platforms. We present eﬃcient algorithmic designs that achieve good cache locality and make use of modern vectorization techniques to utilize data parallelism within each core. We ﬁrst identify properties of pattern matching that make it ﬁt for vector-(cid:73) Preliminary results of this work were presented the 46th International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP) 2017 [1]. ization and show how to use them in the algorithmic design. Second, we build on an earlier, cache-aware algorithmic design and show how we apply cache-locality combined with SIMD gather instructions to pattern matching. Third, we complement our algorithms with an analytical model that predicts their performance and use it to easily evaluate alternative designs. We evaluate our algorithmic design with open data sets of real-world network traﬃc: Our results on two diﬀerent platforms, Haswell and Xeon-Phi, show a speedup of 1.8x and 3.6x, respectively, over Direct Filter Classiﬁcation (DFC), a recently proposed algorithm by Choi et al. for pattern matching exploiting cache locality, and a speedup of more than 2.3x over Aho-Corasick, a widely used algorithm in today’s Intrusion Detection Systems. Finally, we utilize highly parallel hardware platforms and evaluate the scalability of our algorithms, achieving processing throughput of up to 45Gbps.
Sputum Vitamin D Binding Protein (VDBP) GC1S/ 1S Genotype Predicts Airway Obstruction: A Prospective Study in Smokers with COPD

as well as the GC rs4588 and rs7041 genotypes, were assessed in a 4-year Finnish follow-up cohort (n = 233) of non-smokers, and smokers with and without COPD. The associations between the VDBP levels and the longitudinal decline of lung function were further analysed. Results: High frequencies of the haplotypes in rs7041/rs4588 were homozygous GC1S/1S (42.5%). Higher sputum VDBP levels in stage I and stage II COPD were observed only in carriers with GC1S/1S genotype when compared with non-smokers (p = 0.034 and p = 0.002, respectively). Genotype multivariate regression analysis indicated that the baseline sputum VDBP and FEV1/FVC ratio at baseline independently predicted FEV1% at follow-up. Discussion and Conclusion: The baseline sputum VDBP expression was elevated in smokers with COPD among individuals with the GC1S/1S genotype, and predicted follow-up airway obstruction. Our results suggest that the GC polymorphism should be considered when exploring the potential of VDBP as a biomarker for COPD. expression in rs7041 was elevated in smokers with COPD and predicted with follow-up airway obstruction in individuals with the GC1S/1S genotype. This suggests that GC polymorphism should be considered when the potential of VDBP as a biomarker for COPD is further evaluated.
JUMLAH DANA ZAKAT DAN FAKTOR-FAKTOR MAKROEKONOMI YANG MEMPENGARUHINYA

The aim of this study was to know the impact of macroeconomic indicators changes toward the total amount of collected zakah in BAZNAS during the period 2012-2016. This study uses qualitative approach by using liniear regression analysis technique. Futhermore dependent variable used in this study is the amount of zakah, while the independent variable are inflation, gold price, money supply and industrial production index. The determination of sampling uses non probability sampling with saturated sample method, on the other hand, the whole population was used as the sample of this study. Moreover, the data used in this study is secondary data.
Simulation of field pea growth and yield in diverse environments

Field pea (Pisum sativum L.) is frequently grown as a rotation crop with cereals in Australia. Modelling capacity to simulate field pea growth and production would be a useful tool for assessing crop management options in response to the fungal disease, blackspot. Field studies in South Australia (SA), Western Australia (WA) and Gansu, China were used to develop and test a field pea module for inclusion in APSIM. A new crop species was created using the “legume” template. Data on phenology, leaf area, biomass and components and grain yield were collected in field experiments in 2002 and 2003 in SA, and used to derive phenology parameters to test the model for biomass accumulation and yield. Data from WA and a wheat-field pea rotation experiment in Gansu, China were used to independently test the APSIM field pea module performance. Flowering dates, ranging from 80 to 105 days after sowing, were accurately predicted. The developed field pea module was also able to accurately simulate biomass accumulation, leaf area index and grain yield across the different seasons and experimental sites. Biomass accumulation was simulated with a RMSD of 555, 719 and 208 kg/ha, respectively in experiments in SA, WA and China. Observed grain yield ranged from 1000 to 3000 kg/ha and were also well simulated with a RMSD of 253 kg/ha. The above results suggest that the developed APSIM-field pea module can be used for assessing agronomic management options and quantifying potential yields for different environmental and soil conditions.
SOIL MICROBIAL COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE: RESULTS FROM A TEMPERATE KENTUCKY PASTURE

OF THESIS SOIL MICROBIAL COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE: RESULTS FROM A TEMPERATE KENTUCKY PASTURE Climate change is likely to alter plant species composition and interactions between plants and soil microbes that together dictate the quantity and quality of forage produced in pastures, the base of animal production in central Kentucky. This study assessed the seasonal dynamics of soil microbes and their response to increased temperature (+3C) and growing season precipitation (+30% of the mean annual). Total soil microbial biomass, community composition, enzyme activities, potential carbon mineralization, and catabolic responses to selected substrates were measured seasonally in the different climate treatments. In this system, seasonal variability was a dominant driving factor for all the soil microbial characteristics that I investigated. Summer maxima and winter minima were identified in the active microbial biomass, while soil microbial community structure differed between each season. Extracellular enzyme activities were generally highest in either the spring or summer, while seasonal patterns for each substrate were unique across catabolic response profiles. Climate treatments produced few significant main or interactive effects on the soil microbial biomass and function. This resiliency, coupled with evidence of functional redundancy, suggests that central Kentucky pasture ecosystems may be well-equipped to handle future environmental stress associated with climate change and to maintain critical ecosystem services.