Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT AND RURAL DEPOPULATION IN ROMANIA: ANALYSIS OF CORRELATIONS USING A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH

The growth of Romanian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has acted on the increase of food consumption, on the implementation of agri-food sector and on the level of farmer's income, even if one of the main negative bottleneck of this growth has been the emigration from the countryside, whose workforce has been partially re-employed in urban territories. The purpose of this research was to assess by a quantitative approach main nexus between the growth of Gross Domestic Product and the increase of agricultural GDP; besides, another aim has been focused on assessing the role of financial subsides allocated by the CAP in contrasting the emigration from the Romanian countryside. The Moran’s index has been pivotal in estimating the spatial autocorrelation in all Romanian counties between the variable Gross Domestic Product, the level of agrarian GDP and rural emigration. Findings have pointed out a dichotomy between Romanian regions and a positive role of financial subsidies allocated by the CAP in alleviating depopulation in rural territories.
Audit of patients with type 2 diabetes following a critical cardiac event.

BACKGROUND Evidence indicates that type 2 diabetes leads to complications such as a cardiac event, which often requires admission to a coronary care unit (CCU). Although there is a considerable body of knowledge about the management and characteristics of people with type 2 diabetes and myocardial infraction, there are few reports of the disease and demographic characteristics of the entire group of patients with diabetes admitted to a CCU. PURPOSE To gain greater understanding of the characteristics of patients with diabetes hospitalized for a critical cardiac event in order to assist in the development of an appropriate self-management programme for CCU patients with diabetes. METHODS Data were collected retrospectively from computerized records and charts of all patients with diabetes admitted to the CCU from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2003. FINDINGS The proportion of type 2 diabetic patients admitted to CCU with a critical cardiac event over the 4-year study period was consistent at 14.7%, 233 in 1589 patients. More than 22% of CCU patients with diabetes were readmitted to hospital within 28 days compared with only 6% of CCU patients without diabetes. Predictors for readmission and length of stay were also examined. CONCLUSIONS A considerable proportion of a CCU population had type 2 diabetes and these patients had significantly higher readmission rates. The implications of this study for the development of a self-management programme for patients with diabetes who experienced a critical cardiac event are discussed. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE Innovative programmes are required to reduce the rate of readmission for patients with both diabetes and a critical cardiac event. These should: 1 ensure transition programmes, such as self-management, commence within the CCU environment and continue following discharge, and 2 integrate diabetes and cardiac self-management programmes to condense the large amount of information provided to patients for managing two serious conditions.
Information theory based sensor surveillance

Hydrophones phase and gain dispersions have a deep impact on conventional beampatterns of line arrays, by affecting the sidelobe level. Indeed, high sidelobe levels threaten the detection of weak sources in the presence of strong jammers. Sensors failures are even more critical. Sensors surveillance algorithms are therefore essential to the array performances. They often consist in selecting valid sensors whose power spectral densities are close to a certain estimated mean within a certain fixed or estimated standard deviation. These statistics estimations first take the assumption of no sensors failures, and require parameters settings. After having recalled the impact of sensors dispersions and sensors failures on conventional beampatterns, parameter free sensors surveillance algorithms are proposed. They are based on information criteria, such as Stochastic Complexity Minimization or Akaike Information Criteria. These sensors selection methods are compared to the more traditional methods described above on synthetic data and sea trial signals.
Multimessenger Constraints on Magnetic Fields in Merging Black Hole–Neutron Star Binaries

The LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Collaboration recently detected gravitational waves (GWs) from the merger of black hole–neutron star (BHNS) binary systems GW200105 and GW200115. No coincident electromagnetic (EM) counterparts were detected. While the mass ratio and BH spin in both systems were not sufficient to tidally disrupt the NS outside the BH event horizon, other, magnetospheric mechanisms for EM emission exist in this regime and depend sensitively on the NS magnetic field strength. Combining GW measurements with EM flux upper limits, we place upper limits on the NS surface magnetic field strength above which magnetospheric emission models would have generated an observable EM counterpart. We consider fireball models powered by the black hole battery mechanism, where energy is output in gamma rays over ≲1 s. Consistency with no detection by Fermi-GBM or INTEGRAL SPI-ACS constrains the NS surface magnetic field to ≲1015 G. Hence, joint GW detection and EM upper limits rule out the theoretical possibility that the NSs in GW200105 and GW200115, and the putative NS in GW190814, retain dipolar magnetic fields ≳1015 G until merger. They also rule out formation scenarios where strongly magnetized magnetars quickly merge with BHs. We alternatively rule out operation of the BH-battery-powered fireball mechanism in these systems. This is the first multimessenger constraint on NS magnetic fields in BHNS systems and a novel approach to probe fields at this point in NS evolution. This demonstrates the constraining power that multimessenger analyses of BHNS mergers have on BHNS formation scenarios, NS magnetic field evolution, and the physics of BHNS magnetospheric interactions.
Set-relevance Determines the Impact of Distractors on Episodic Memory Retrieval

We investigated the interplay between stimulus-driven attention and memory retrieval with a novel interference paradigm that engaged both systems concurrently on each trial. Participants encoded a 45-min movie on Day 1 and, on Day 2, performed a temporal order judgment task during fMRI. Each retrieval trial comprised three images presented sequentially, and the task required participants to judge the temporal order of the first and the last images (“memory probes”) while ignoring the second image, which was task irrelevant (“attention distractor”). We manipulated the content relatedness and the temporal proximity between the distractor and the memory probes, as well as the temporal distance between two probes. Behaviorally, short temporal distances between the probes led to reduced retrieval performance. Distractors that at encoding were temporally close to the first probe image reduced these costs, specifically when the distractor was content unrelated to the memory probes. The imaging results associated the distractor probe temporal proximity with activation of the right ventral attention network. By contrast, the precuneus was activated for high-content relatedness between distractors and probes and in trials including a short distance between the two memory probes. The engagement of the right ventral attention network by specific types of distractors suggests a link between stimulus-driven attention control and episodic memory retrieval, whereas the activation pattern of the precuneus implicates this region in memory search within knowledge/content-based hierarchies.
The effects of the real exchange rate on the trade balance: Is there a J-curve for Vietnam? A VAR approach.

This study employs a reduced-form VAR model to estimate trade balance’s responses to a positive shock to the real VND/USD exchange rate. For this purpose, we apply identification restrictions based on the conclusion by Krugman, Obstfeld and Melitz (2012), and on the theory of the AA-DD model to estimate the impulse response functions of the trade balance. We use a monthly data set of four endogenous variables and two exogenous variables from January 1995 to December 2012. Since the data of two endogenous variables is unavailable in monthly basis, we interpolate those series using Chow and Lin’s (1971) annualized approach from their annual series. Overall, we find that there exists a J-curve for Vietnam, and its effect lasts for 11 months. Particularly, the worsening effect on the trade balance becomes most severe in the third and the fourth months.
Virtualization of radio access network by Virtual Machine and Docker: Practice and performance analysis

Software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) are the embraced technologies for the backhauling of future 5G networks. Virtual Machine (VM) and Docker container based deployments have received much attention. This paper presents the virtualization of a prototyped software defined radio access network (RAN) architecture by using VMs and Docker containers. In addition, it provides an analytical model for the generalized software defined RAN architecture with the practice of VM based and Docker container based implementations. Using measurements obtained from the two testbeds and the introduced queuing model, we compare their performances and analyze the two different architectures. Results verify the superiority of the Docker technology. Some observations from the behavior of the testbeds are concluded for a better understanding of the VM and Docker container based technologies for the future development of 5G SDN controller.
Modern organic and broiler chickens sold for human consumption provide more energy from fat than protein

Abstract Objective In 1976, the Royal College of Physicians and the British Cardiac Society recommended eating less fatty red meat and more poultry instead because it was lean. However, the situation has changed since that time, with a striking increase in fat content of the standard broiler chicken. The aim of the present study was to report a snapshot of data on fat in chickens now sold to the public. Design Samples were obtained randomly between 2004 and 2008 from UK supermarkets, farm shops and a football club. The amount of chicken fat was estimated by emulsification and chloroform/methanol extraction. Setting Food sold in supermarkets and farms in England. Subjects Chicken samples. Results The fat energy exceeded that of protein. There has been a loss of n-3 fatty acids. The n-6:n-3 ratio was found to be as high as 9:1, as opposed to the recommendation of about 2:1. Moreover, the TAG level in the meat and whole bird mostly exceeded the proportion of phospholipids, which should be the higher for muscle function. The n-3 fatty acid docosapentaenoic acid (DPA, 22 : 5n-3) was in excess of DHA (22 : 6n-3). Previous analyses had, as usual for birds, more DHA than DPA. Conclusions Traditional poultry and eggs were one of the few land-based sources of long-chain n-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, which is synthesized from its parent precursor in the green food chain. In view of the obesity epidemic, chickens that provide several times the fat energy compared with protein seem illogical. This type of chicken husbandry needs to be reviewed with regard to its implications for animal welfare and human nutrition.
Molecular cloning, expression, and characterization of the human mitogen-activated protein kinase p44erk1

p44erk1 is a member of a family of tyrosyl-phosphorylated and mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases that participate in cell cycle control. A full-length erk1 cDNA was isolated from a human hepatoma cell line (Hep G2) library. The erk1 cDNA clone shared approximately 96% predicted amino acid identity with partial sequences of rodent erk1 cognates, and the erk1 gene was assigned to human chromosome 16 by hybrid panel analysis. Human erk1 expressed in Escherichia coli as a glutathione S-transferase fusion (GST-Erk1) protein was substantially phosphorylated on tyrosine in vivo. It underwent further autophosphorylation in vitro (up to 0.01 mol of P per mol) at the regulatory Tyr-204 site and at additional tyrosine and serine residues. Threonine autophosphorylation, presumably at the regulatory Thr-202 site, was also detected weakly when the recombinant kinase was incubated in the presence of manganese, but not in the presence of magnesium. Before and after cleavage of the GST-Erk1 protein with thrombin, it exhibited a relatively high level of myelin basic protein phosphotransferase activity, which could be reduced eightfold by treatment of the kinase with the protein-tyrosine phosphatase CD45, but not by treatment with the protein-serine/threonine phosphatase 2A. The protein-tyrosine kinase p56lck catalyzed phosphorylation of GST-Erk1 at two autophosphorylations sites, including Tyr-204, and at a novel site. A further fivefold stimulation of the myelin basic protein phosphotransferase activity of the GST-Erk1 was achieved in the presence of a partially purified MAP kinase kinase from sheep platelets. Under these circumstances, there was primarily an enhancement of the tyrosine phosphorylation of GST-Erk1. This MAP kinase kinase also similarly phosphorylated a catalytically compromised version of GST-Erk1 in which Lys-71 was converted to Ala by site-directed mutagenesis.
Proposal of a new punctured turbo coding scheme for TH-UWB communications

This paper deals with a novel cross-layer approach, involving both physical and data link layers, suitable for TH-UWB systems, named punctured hopping (PH). PH scheme permits to limit the throughput reduction of the basic full rate turbo coding scheme, while maintaining the same code free distance. The proposed coding scheme performs a puncturing of the parity bits, but, differently from the rate compatible punctured turbo codes (RCPTC) scheme, the less significant bits within a coded frame are not completely discarded as only half of their impulses are punctured, thus preserving the error correcting capabilities jointly with achieving a better spectral efficiency. The performance of the proposed PH coding scheme has been derived in an indoor multipath fading channel and compared with the uncoded, the basic full rate and the RCPTC systems. The results show a significant performance gain in comparison with the RCPTC and, hence, a significant reduction of the performance loss in comparison with the basic full rate turbo coding scheme, while maintaining the same throughput of the RCPTC
Impedance cardiography revisited

Previously reported comparisons between cardiac output (CO) results in patients with cardiac conditions measured by thoracic impedance cardiography (TIC) versus thermodilution (TD) reveal upper and lower limits of agreement with two standard deviations (2SD) of approximately ±2.2 l min−1, a 44% disparity between the two technologies. We show here that if the electrodes are placed on one wrist and on a contralateral ankle instead of on the chest, a configuration designated as regional impedance cardiography (RIC), the 2SD limit of agreement between RIC and TD is ±1.0 l min−1, approximately 20% disparity between the two methods. To compare the performances of the TIC and RIC algorithms, the raw data of peripheral impedance changes yielded by RIC in 43 cardiac patients were used here for software processing and calculating the CO with the TIC algorithm. The 2SD between the TIC and TD was ±1.7 l min−1, and after annexing the correcting factors of the RIC formula to the TIC formula, the disparity between TIC and TD further declined to ±1.25 l min−1. Conclusions: (1) in cardiac conditions, the RIC technology is twice as accurate as TIC; (2) the advantage of RIC is the use of peripheral rather than thoracic impedance signals, supported by correcting factors.
The Role of European Parliament Committees in the EU Policy-Making Process

Die Autorin hat bei zahlreichen Gelegenheiten für das Renner-Institut bzw. in seinem Auftrag über das Europäische Parlament (EP) referiert. Sie hat uns freundlicherweise einen aktuellen Beitrag (datiert mit Frühjahr 2001) zu diesem thematischen Schwerpunkt zur Verfügung gestellt. Damit soll auch in der Textsammlung des eEuropa-Buchs des Renner-Instituts der Stellenwert des Europäischen Parlaments bei der Diskussion des Themas „Governance“ bzw. „Demokratie-Entwicklung in der Europäischen Union“ unterstrichen werden.
Synthesis of Lyapunov Functions using Formal Verification

Recent employments of SMT solvers within the Lyapunov function synthesis provided effective tools for automated construction of Lyapunov functions alongside with sound computer-assisted certificates. The main benefit of the suggested approach is the formal correctness and elimination of the numerical uncertainty. In the present work, we extend the SMT-based synthesis approach for wider classes of continuous and discrete-time systems. Additionally, we address constructions of Lyapunov functions for state-dependent switching systems. We illustrate our approach by means of various examples from the control systems literature.
Social protection systems and domestic violence in poor urban contexts: the case of San Juan de Lurigancho

In Peru approximately four out of ten women has suffered from any kind of violence from their partners. In spite of the development of a social protection system in the country, according to the DHS, only 25% of women sought help. This problem of lack of access to the social protection system might be related to different factors. One can consider individual reasons, community level reasons but also institutional problems related to the supply of the public system in the country. Using an ecological approach that combines different levels of analysis, the purpose of this paper is then to understand why the social protection system related to violence is not working well in local neighborhoods. Specifically we will analyze why women do not denounce the acts of violence against them. The case study will be based in San Juan de Lurigancho a neighborhood in metropolitan Lima, where according to our own research the rate of violence toward women is even bigger than national average. Our methodology is qualitative and has included ethnographic work, in depth interviews and visits to public institutions.
TPI-287, a New Taxane Family Member, Reduces the Brain Metastatic Colonization of Breast Cancer Cells

Brain metastases of breast and other cancers remain resistant to chemotherapeutic regimens that are effective systemically, in part due to the blood–brain barrier. We report that TPI-287, a new microtubule-stabilizing agent, displays in vitro cytotoxic activity similar to taxanes and epothilones. Unlike the taxanes, TPI-287 is permeable through the blood–brain barrier. Brain-to-plasma ratios of TPI-287 after a single injection typically exceeded one and were as high as 63.8 in the rat and 14.1 in the mouse. A brain-tropic derivative of the MDA-MB-231 triple-negative breast cancer cell line, 231-BR, was used to test whether TPI-287 may be efficacious at preventing or treating brain metastases. TPI-287 had growth inhibitory effects comparable with paclitaxel when 231-BR tumor cells were injected into the mammary fat pad. Brain metastatic colonization was determined by intracardiac injection of 231-BR cells, with treatment beginning on day 3 to 4 postinjection, culminating in a histologic count of brain metastases in brains necropsied days 25 to 28 postinjection. In this assay, paclitaxel, ixabepilone, and nab paclitaxel did not have significant inhibitory activity. TPI-287 was ineffective in the same assay using a 6 mg/kg every week schedule; however an 18 mg/kg dose delivered on days 3, 7, and 11 significantly reduced the outgrowth of brain metastases (55% reduction, P = 0.028) and reduced proliferation in brain metastases (16% reduction, P = 0.008). When TPI-287 treatment was delayed until days 18, 22, and 26 postinjection, efficacy was reduced (17% reduction, not significant). These data suggest that TPI-287 may have efficacy when administered early in the course of the disease. Mol Cancer Ther; 11(9); 1959–67. ©2012 AACR.
Context modulates attention to social scenes in toddlers with autism.

BACKGROUND In typical development, the unfolding of social and communicative skills hinges upon the ability to allocate and sustain attention toward people, a skill present moments after birth. Deficits in social attention have been well documented in autism, though the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. METHODS In order to parse the factors that are responsible for limited social attention in toddlers with autism, we manipulated the context in which a person appeared in their visual field with regard to the presence of salient social (child-directed speech and eye contact) and nonsocial (distractor toys) cues for attention. Participants included 13- to 25-month-old toddlers with autism (autism; n = 54), developmental delay (DD; n = 22), and typical development (TD; n = 48). Their visual responses were recorded with an eye-tracker. RESULTS In conditions devoid of eye contact and speech, the distribution of attention between key features of the social scene in toddlers with autism was comparable to that in DD and TD controls. However, when explicit dyadic cues were introduced, toddlers with autism showed decreased attention to the entire scene and, when they looked at the scene, they spent less time looking at the speaker's face and monitoring her lip movements than the control groups. In toddlers with autism, decreased time spent exploring the entire scene was associated with increased symptom severity and lower nonverbal functioning; atypical language profiles were associated with decreased monitoring of the speaker's face and her mouth. CONCLUSIONS While in certain contexts toddlers with autism attend to people and objects in a typical manner, they show decreased attentional response to dyadic cues for attention. Given that mechanisms supporting responsivity to dyadic cues are present shortly after birth and are highly consequential for development of social cognition and communication, these findings have important implications for the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of limited social monitoring and identifying pivotal targets for treatment.
Review series: Rehabilitation in non COPD: Mechanisms of exercise limitation and pulmonary rehabilitation for patients with pulmonary fibrosis/restrictive lung disease

The standard of care in the treatment of chronic lung disease includes pulmonary rehabilitation (PR). While evidence of the effectiveness of PR in chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD) is robust, that for pulmonary fibrosis and other non-fibrotic restrictive lung diseases is less extensive. However, PR has been shown to improve functional exercise capacity and health-related quality of life in non-COPD patients, primarily those with interstitial lung diseases. This review examines mechanisms of exercise limitation in non-COPD patients and discusses how they might affect both the application of and outcome measures of PR. We also review the assessment of exercise performance, dyspnea, and quality of life as well as special protocols, safety considerations, and special techniques in PR as applied to patients with pulmonary fibrosis or restrictive lung disease. At present, there are no evidence-based guidelines for PR in non-COPD patients whereas PR is firmly recommended in COPD management. More research is needed to strengthen the evidence for the use of PR in non-COPD patients. Meanwhile, the available data, summarized in this review, support the inclusion of PR in the management of all patients with chronic lung disease including pulmonary fibrosis and restrictive lung disease.