Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Political Advertising and Voting Intention: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Ads Viewership

Mexico’s campaign law assigns TV and radio ads to parties according to their vote share in the previous election, and mandates the time of the day at which ads are aired to be determined randomly. We exploit this arguably exogenous variation in viewers’ exposure to political ads by different parties and longitudinal electoral survey data to estimate the effect of ads on voting intentions during Mexico’s 2012 presidential campaign. We find that political ads on both radio and TV have a positive, significant and sizeable effect on voting intentions. This effect is short-lived (about two weeks), and is stronger in the early weeks of the campaign. Ads tend to have no significant impact on voters’ knowledge of candidates’ political message, and to be more effective at convincing individuals that are more educated, and those who voted for the party in the past. Taken together these findings suggests that ads do not influence voters by conveying new information but that other mechanisms of persuasion, cantered around ads’ non-informative content, may be at work.
3D morphological measurement of whole slide histological vasculature reconstructions

Properties of the microvasculature that contribute to tissue perfusion can be assessed using immunohistochemistry on 2D histology sections. However, the vasculature is inherently 3D and the ability to measure and visualize the vessel wall components in 3D will aid in detecting focal pathologies. Our objectives were (1) to develop a method for 3D measurement and visualization of microvasculature in 3D, (2) to compare the normal and regenerated post-ischemia mouse hind limb microvasculature, and (3) to compare the 2D and 3D vessel morphology measures. Vessels were stained for smooth muscle using 3,3'-Diaminobenzidine (DAB) immunostain for both normal (n = 6 mice) and regenerated vasculature (n = 5 mice). 2D vessel segmentations were reconstructed into 3D using landmark based registration. No substantial bias was found in the 2D measurements relative to 3D, but larger differences were observed for individual vessels oriented non-orthogonally to the plane of sectioning. A larger value of area, perimeter, and vessel wall thickness was found in the normal vasculature as compared to the regenerated vasculature, for both the 2D and 3D measurements (p < 0.01). Aggregated 2D measurements are sufficient for identifying morphological differences between groups of mice; however, one must interpret individual 2D measurements with caution if the vessel centerline direction is unknown. Visualization of 3D measurements permits the detection of localized vessel morphology aberrations that are not revealed by 2D measurements. With vascular measure visualization methodologies in 3D, we are now capable of locating focal pathologies on a whole slide level.
Leadership role of Consultant Nurses working with Older People: a co-operative inquiry.

AIMS The aim of the co-operative enquiry undertaken was to explore how the leadership component of the Consultant Nurse for Older People role was reflected in day-to-day working. BACKGROUND Leadership is one of the four key elements of the Consultant Nurse role and is the key mechanism for achieving and embedding transformation in practice. However, within the role of the Consultant Nurse this area has not been explored in detail. METHODS A 6-month co-operative inquiry approach was used to develop insights into leadership strategies of Consultant Nurses for Older People and involved the five authors of the paper, four Consultant Nurses in Older People nursing and the lead author who was also an experienced Consultant Nurse and practice-based researcher from a different nursing specialism. RESULTS Through the analysis of the stories shared by the co-authors/participants, two key themes emerged relating to complexity and pathway. These themes provided a major focus for the Consultant Nurses in their leadership role. The outcome of the study is a framework that describes the triggers and enabling factors that precede the use of leadership strategies at the clinical and organizational level and associated outcomes. CONCLUSIONS In defining how leadership is reflected by Consultant Nurses for Older People, a complex picture emerges that is multifaceted and multidimensional. Consultant Nurses need support to make visible the valuable contribution they make to enabling healthcare teams, organizations and work places. Consultant Nurses for Older People are key in ensuring the quality agenda within their organizations as they are well placed to provide leadership at both a strategic and clinical level, while providing influence to operational development. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT Within the context of the literature this area is under investigated. Understanding how leadership is reflected in the role of Consultant Nurses is complex as Consultant Nurses work across traditional interfaces and between different levels within organizations. Consultant Nurses have been 'challenged' to identify the 'difference' they are making; to do this it is important to understand how leadership (as one element) is reflected in a highly complex, multidimensional role and the links between leadership and enabling, quality person-centred ways of working with Older People within rapidly changing, pressurized healthcare settings.
Benign childhood seizure susceptibility syndrome: three case reports

In this study, we describe three patients who each had two different forms of idiopathic focal epilepsiy. Two of these patients had electroclinical features compatible with Panayiotopoulos syndrome and benign childhood epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes (BCECTS), one of whom developed a particular electroclinical picture of atypical benign focal epilepsy and the other an atypical evolution characterized by verbal auditory agnosia and aphasia. The third patient had clinical and electroencephalographic features of BCECTS and of idiopathic childhood occipital epilepsy (Gastaut type) which evolved into electroclinical features of continuous spikes and waves during slow sleep (CSWS). All three patients presented with two focal idiopathic epilepsies with a particular evolution associated with CSWS, supporting the concept of benign childhood seizure susceptibility syndrome as described by Panayiotopoulos (1993).
Transition Layer and Surface Roughness Effects on the Response of Metal-Based Fiber-Optic Corrosion Sensors

This paper presents experimental results, approximate analytical formulations, and numerical simulation results to analyze the reflectance from a metalized fiber tip under corrosion, which is part of a corrosion sensor. Moreover, the dynamics of corrosion on a thin metallic film is modeled computationally by considering a proposed roughness fitting function to consider the evolution of film thickness and shape during the corrosion process. For this modeling, COMSOL Multiphysics is used to simulate the optical signal reflected from the transducer element of the sensor. The simulation results for the optical signal reflected from a rough metallic film are compared with experimental and analytical results. The results reveal that the corrosion process generates an inhomogeneous metallic structure that allows the occurrence of surface plasmon resonance, and the proposed simple surface roughness model can be used to describe the dynamic process of corrosion of an aluminum film that is deposited on the end-facet of an optical fiber.
Age-related changes in the protein and mRNA levels of CYP 2 E 1 and CYP 3 A isoforms as well as in their hepatic activities in Wistar rats . What role for oxidative stress ?

Drug biotransformation and its therapeutic effect may be modified during ageing. Among different causative factors of ageing, the impairment of normal cellular functions by free radicals has been evoked as playing a critical role. The effect of age on the expression and activity of CYP2E1 and CYP3A was investigated in male Wistar rats of 3, 8, 11 and 18 months old. The total cytochrome P450 as well as the expression and the activity (midazolam oxidation) of CYP3A isoforms did not change until 18 months of age. Chlorzoxazone hydroxylation (CYP2E1 activity) increased from 3 to 8 months, remained constant between 8 and 11 months and then progressively decreased until 18 months. Interestingly, CYP2E1 microsomal protein followed the same enzyme activity profile from 3 to 8 months, but remained constant thereafter. The level of CYP2E1 mRNA did not change over the whole period. While the amount of proteins did not change after 8 months, their functionality may be affected by oxidative stress (increase in thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, 10.1007/s00204-003-0526-z file:///C:/biblio/farm/Full-texts-FARM/Wauthier-2004-1.htm 2 of 16 10/04/2004 12:16 decrease in reduced glutathione level). However, no changes in carbonyl protein content were observed. The decrease in CYP2E1 activity in rats after 11 months is most probably due to post-translational modifications of CYP2E1 proteins. Indeed, it may be correlated with an accumulation of oxidative damage. Since no change was observed in CYP3A activity or in their protein and mRNA content, it seems that such isoforms should be less affected by oxidative stress.
Graph-Based Joint User-Centric Overlapped Clustering and Resource Allocation in Ultradense Networks

With the increase of access point (AP) density and the exponential growth of mobile devices supported by ultradense networks (UDNs), user-centric overlapped clustering relying on AP cooperation is becoming a promising design principle for guaranteeing the quality of service (QoS) required by each user equipment. This ambitious goal can be achieved by the joint design of user-centric overlapped clustering and resource allocation. In this context, both the traffic-load balancing and the limited availability of orthogonal resource blocks (RBs) have to be carefully considered in UDNs. To tackle these challenges, we formulate a joint user-centric overlapped clustering and resource allocation problem with the goal of maximizing the system's spectral efficiency. To efficiently solve this problem, it is decoupled into two subproblems, which can be solved independently with the aid of our graph–theoretical framework. We first develop a novel distributed three-stage user-centric clustering solution, which is aware of the APs’ traffic-loads. Then, based on the overlapped clusters constructed, we propose a novel two-stage graph-based user-centric resource allocation scheme for mitigating the resultant inter-cluster interference, despite the limited availability of orthogonal RBs. Our numerical results confirm the benefits of the proposed framework and show that it outperforms the benchmark solutions in terms of both its per area aggregated user rate and user rate.
Quality-Adjusted Agricultural Land Abundance Curse in Economic Development: Evidence from Postreform Chinese Panel Data

ABSTRACT China’s family responsibility system, introduced in 1979, resulted in equal distribution in land, allowing identification of how land abundance affects development. We measure land abundance as quality-adjusted farmland per capita. We find robust evidence that higher quality-adjusted farmland per capita has a significant negative effect on growth, even after controlling for land quality and population density. Therefore, quality-adjusted agricultural land abundance confers a type of “resource curse,” which elucidates an important causal determinant of the contemporary substantial differences in the standard of living across Chinese provinces.
Metabolic alterations in urine extracellular vesicles are associated to prostate cancer pathogenesis and progression

ABSTRACT Urine contains extracellular vesicles (EVs) that concentrate molecules and protect them from degradation. Thus, isolation and characterisation of urinary EVs could increase the efficiency of biomarker discovery. We have previously identified proteins and RNAs with differential abundance in urinary EVs from prostate cancer (PCa) patients compared to benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH). Here, we focused on the analysis of the metabolites contained in urinary EVs collected from patients with PCa and BPH. Targeted metabolomics analysis of EVs was performed by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry. The correlation between metabolites and clinical parameters was studied, and metabolites with differential abundance in PCa urinary EVs were detected and mapped into cellular pathways. We detected 248 metabolites belonging to different chemical families including amino acids and various lipid species. Among these metabolites, 76 exhibited significant differential abundance between PCa and BPH. Interestingly, urine EVs recapitulated many of the metabolic alterations reported in PCa, including phosphathidylcholines, acyl carnitines, citrate and kynurenine. Importantly, we found elevated levels of the steroid hormone, 3beta-hydroxyandros-5-en-17-one-3-sulphate (dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate) in PCa urinary EVs, in line with the potential elevation of androgen synthesis in this type of cancer. This work supports urinary EVs as a non-invasive source to infer metabolic changes in PCa.
Competence Estimation: Classifying Expertise of Web Discussion Participants

Web discussion bulletin boards have been attracting much attention in recent years. They enable people to hold discussions online, whereas these have traditionally been conducted face-to-face at town meetings, etc. However, in a large-scale bulletin board, not all of the participants have a deep understanding of a topic when engaging in discussion. In particular, it is important to automatically classify a person who is making useful posts if a bulletin board is intended to make agreements. This paper proposes an automated method to identify the expertise of participants by defining expertise as a requisite argumentative competence. In this paper, we propose novel features for competence estimation models: lexical features (IDF, discourse marker, and topic similarity) and a directed influence graph feature. Furthermore, in the evaluation experiments, we evaluate the precision-recall curve against the baseline. As for datasets for evaluation, the expertise of the participants in the data of discussion conducted in the actual Web discussion bulletin board is annotated in seven grades. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methodology is effective in many cases.
Standalone and Non-Standalone Beam Management for 3GPP NR at mmWaves

The next generation of cellular networks will exploit mmWave frequencies to dramatically increase the network capacity. Communication at such high frequencies, however, requires directionality to compensate the increased propagation loss. Users and base stations need to align their beams during both initial access and data transmissions to ensure that the maximum gain is reached. The accuracy of beam selection, and the delay in updating the beam pair or performing initial access, impact the end-to-end performance and the quality of service. In this article we review the beam management procedures included in the 3GPP NR specifications and propose possible enhancements, based on both standalone and non-standalone architectures, to improve network control operations. We also provide a performance comparison among different schemes, along with design insights on the most important parameters related to beam management frameworks.
Data Uploading in Hybrid V2V/V2I Vehicular Networks: Modeling and Cooperative Strategy

Supporting data dissemination in vehicular networks is difficult due to high mobility of vehicle traffic, limited communication resources, and dynamic communication requirements. In this paper, we investigate data dissemination in hybrid vehicular networks, where messages generated at vehicles should be uploaded to the roadside unit (RSU) assisted by vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, using vehicles traveling in both directions as relays. The objective is to optimize the resource utilization and reduce the data delivery delay. We first analyze the data uploading capacity and delivery delay in hybrid vehicular networks with the store-carry-and-forward mechanism. Applying the analytical results and given the traffic and data information, a distributed multisource scheduling algorithm is proposed. Extensive simulations are conducted to verify the correctness of the analysis. It shows that the proposed algorithm significantly improves the data dissemination efficiency compared with the existing solutions.
Self-Dimensioning and Planning of Small Cell Capacity in Multitenant 5G Networks

An important concept in the fifth generation of mobile networks is multitenancy, which allows diverse operators sharing the same wireless infrastructure. To support this feature in conjunction with the challenging performance requirements of future networks, more automated and faster planning of the required radio capacity is needed. Likewise, installing small cells is an effective resource to provide greater performance and capacity to both indoor and outdoor places. This paper proposes a new framework for automated cell planning in multitenant small cell networks. In particular, taking advantage of the available network data, a set of detailed planning specifications over time and space domains are generated in order to meet the contracted capacity by each tenant. Then, the network infrastructure and configuration are updated according to an algorithm that considers different actions such as adding/removing channels and adding or relocating small cells. The simulation results show the effectiveness of various methods to derive the planning specifications depending on the correlation between the tenant's and network's traffic demands.
Map-Based Channel Model for Evaluation of 5G Wireless Communication Systems

This paper presents a channel model for the fifth generation air interface evaluations. The described model covers frequency bands from typical cellular frequencies up to millimeter waves and a variety of different environments, with emphasis on the urban outdoor. The model enables assessment of single radio links with, e.g., the massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) and very large antenna arrays, device-to-device links with both link ends moving, up to system level evaluations with a multitude of different types of transceivers. In addition to the overview, some selected model features are described in more detail. Also, a few exemplary model outputs are depicted and discussed. A comparison to corresponding geometry-based stochastic model is performed in urban outdoor environment with the second moment distributions of propagation parameters and with the multiuser (MU) MIMO sum rate capacity. The simulations indicate substantial differences in MU-MIMO performances between the models.
Prediction of Fluid Characteristics in Pediatric Otitis Media with Effusion from the Tympanometry

Objective: To correlate the characteristics of type B tympanogram with the type of middle ear fluid in children suffering from persistent OME. Methodology: A prospective study was conducted on children with persistent OME for more than 3 months who failed to respond to medical treatment with type B tympanogram in one or both ears and were candidate for myringotomy. The middle ear fluid was aspirated and the viscosity of the fluid was evaluated objectively by measuring the diameter of the diffusion circle on a filter paper in mm. Results: Thirty eight children (70 ears) were enrolled in this study. The shape of type B tympanogram was either flat (67.14%) or peaked (32.86 %). Three fluid types were noticed in OME namely serous, mucoid and glue. The shape was highly correlated with the type of secretions. Compliance and gradient of type B tympanogram were negatively correlated with the viscosity of the secretions. Conclusion: Tympanometry is a beneficial clinical tool in prediction, diagnosis and management of OME. Characteristics of type B tympanogram were correlated with the viscosity of middle ear fluid. Detailed analysis of type B tympanogram can assist the clinicians in determining the indication of comprehensive treatment.
Internet-Distributed Vehicle-in-the-Loop Simulation for HEVs

By introducing the concept of “data coupling” into the existing hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), several distributed subsystems are now able to be coupled together to constitute an Internet-Distributed Vehicle-in-the-Loop (ID-VIL) simulation platform. These subsystems include: the cloud server (Cloud) which acts as the central control node, the Electric Vehicle (EV) which serves as the Vehicle-in-the-Loop (VIL), and the HIL simulation platforms for engine (EIL) and battery (BIL). The proposed ID-VIL configuration makes it possible that the EV which does not contain any hybrid powertrain can simulate the output of an HEV's power system, meanwhile the subsystems of HEV (such as engine and battery) that are actually deployed on HIL platforms can work just the same as on board. The feasibility and reliability of ID-VIL system are verified by a 10 s acceleration test, a 7 km urban road tests, and the transparency analysis of the test result.
Utilization of alternate chirality enantiomers in microbial communities

Our previous study of chirality led to interesting findings for some anaerobic extremophiles: the ability to metabolize substrates with alternate chirality enantiomers of amino acids and sugars. We have subsequently found that not just separate microbial species or strains but entire microbial communities have this ability. The functional division within a microbial community on proteo- and sugarlytic links was also reflected in a microbial diet with L-sugars and D-amino acids. Several questions are addressed in this paper. Why and when was this feature developed in a microbial world? Was it a secondary de novo adaptation in a bacterial world? Or is this a piece of genetic information that has been left in modern genomes as an atavism? Is it limited exclusively to prokaryotes, or does this ability also occur in eukaryotes? In this article, we have used a broader approach to study this phenomenon using anaerobic extremophilic strains from our laboratory collection. A series of experiments were performed on physiologically different groups of extremophilic anaerobes (pure and enrichment cultures). The following characteristics were studied: 1) the ability to grow on alternate chirality enantiomers - L-sugars and D- amino acids; 2) Growthinhibitory effect of alternate chirality enantiomers; 3) Stickland reaction with alternate chirality amino acids. The results of this research are presented in this paper.
Debt Covenant Violations, Firm Financial Distress, and Auditor Actions

We conduct a comprehensive study on the associations between debt covenant violations (“violations”) and auditor actions for financially distressed and non-distressed firms. Our study is motivated by a lack of research on the consequences of violations resulting from auditors’ actions. We find that firms with violations have significantly higher audit fees, a greater likelihood of receiving a going concern opinion, and a greater likelihood of experiencing an auditor resignation. Importantly, the positive associations hold for all types of firms, including financially non-distressed firms. In fact, we find that, after controlling for other financial information, the relation between violations and an increased likelihood of a going concern opinion is stronger for non-distressed versus distressed firms. Our evidence is consistent with belief-revision research in auditing that finds auditors react more strongly to information that is inconsistent with their prior beliefs. This study provides further evidence on the indirect yet significant consequences of covenant violations on firms resulting from auditor actions.