Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relation Between Adolescent Cardiovascular Risk Factors and Carotid Intima‐Media Echogenicity in Healthy Young Adults: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Young Adults (ARYA) Study

Background Echogenicity is an ultrasound measure that reflects arterial wall composition. In adult populations, lower carotid intima‐media echogenicity relates to an unfavorable cardiovascular risk burden yet appears to reflect a different aspect of arterial wall remodeling than carotid intima‐media thickness (CIMT). Since studies on carotid intima‐media echogenicity earlier in life are lacking, we investigated associations between adolescent cardiovascular risk factors and young adulthood carotid intima‐media echogenicity and compared this to CIMT. Methods and Results In 736 participants of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Young Adults study, information on adolescent anthropometrics, puberty stage, and systolic blood pressure (SBP) was available. In young adulthood, demographics, anthropometrics, and fasting plasma samples were collected. Common CIMT and echogenicity, quantified as gray‐scale median (GSM), were evaluated using B‐mode ultrasonography. Lower and higher GSM values, respectively, represented lower and higher echogenicity. Associations of adolescent body mass index and SBP with young adulthood GSM and CIMT were evaluated using linear regression analysis. Mean age was 13.5 years in adolescence and 28.4 years in young adulthood (difference: 14.9 years). After full adjustment, adolescent body mass index related to GSM (β=−1.62/SD; 95% CI: −2.79, −0.46; P=0.006), independent of CIMT. Adolescent SBP did not relate to GSM. Moreover, adolescent body mass index (β=8.06 μm/SD [95% CI: 4.12, 11.99], P<0.001) and SBP (β=4.69 μm/SD [95% CI: 0.84, 8.54], P=0.02) related to CIMT. Conclusions Adolescent body mass index related to GSM and CIMT in young adulthood; SBP only related to CIMT. Hence, carotid intima‐media echogenicity appears to be involved in arterial wall remodeling, yet may mimic a different facet of this process than CIMT.
Towards the optimization of power and bandwidth consumption in mobile-cloud hybrid applications

Mobile devices can now support a wide range of applications, many of which demand high computational power. Backed by the virtually unbounded resources of cloud computing, today's mobile-cloud (MC) computing can meet the demands of even the most computationally and resource intensive applications. However, many existing MC hybrid applications are inefficient in terms of achieving objectives like minimizing battery power consumption and network bandwidth usage, which form a tradeoff. To counter this problem we propose a technique that: 1) measures, at run time, how well the MC application meets these two objectives; and 2) allows arbitrary configurations to be applied to the MC application in order to optimize the efficiency tradeoff. Our experimental evaluation considers two MC hybrid applications. We modularized them first, based on computationally-intensive tasks, and then executed them using a simple MC framework while measuring the power and bandwidth consumption at run-time. Analysis of results shows that efficient configurations of the apps can be obtained in terms of minimizing the two objectives. However, there remain challenges such as scalability and automation of the process, which we discuss.
Sources of Civic Engagement in Latin America: Empirical Evidence from Rural Ecuadorian Communities

Abstract The concept of civic engagement has greatly influenced the policy-making process in the field of development cooperation. However, in contrast to a vast quantity of empirical studies for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)–world, there is only little knowledge with respect to developing countries. Using Ecuadorian rural communities as an example, this paper analyses socioeconomic, political and cultural sources of civic engagement with multivariate regression analyses, which demonstrate that volunteering strongly depends on the cultural tradition. Additionally, the empirical results show that a pure application of the theoretical assumptions and operationalisations from the OECD–world is misleading, when analysing social processes in developing countries.
Cognitive approach for representing the haptic physical human-humanoid interaction. (Approche cognitive pour la représentation de l'interaction proximale haptique entre un homme et un humanoïde)

Les robots sont tout pres d'arriver chez nous. Mais avant cela, ils doivent acquerir la capacite d'interagir physiquement avec les humains, de maniere sure et efﬁcace. De telles capacites sont indispensables pour qu'il puissent vivre parmi nous, et nous assister dans diverses tâches quotidiennes, comme porter une meuble. Dans cette these, nous avons pour but de doter le robot humanoide bipede HRP-2 de la capacite a effectuer des actions haptiques en commun avec l'homme. Dans un premier temps, nous etudions comment des dyades humains collaborent pour transporter un objet encombrant. De cette etude, nous extrayons un modele global de primitives de mouvement que nous utilisons pour implementer un comportement proactif sur le robot HRP-2, aﬁn qu'il puisse effectuer la meme tâche avec un humain. Puis nous evaluons les performances de ce schema de controle proactif au cours de tests utilisateurs. Finalement, nous exposons diverses pistes d'evolution de notre travail: la stabilisation d'un humanoide a travers l'interaction physique, la generalisation du modele de primitives de mouvements a d'autres tâches collaboratives et l'inclusion de la vision dans des tâches collaboratives haptiques.
Identifying behavior models for process plants

The increasing complexity of today's production systems and the variety of model-based approaches to their monitoring, diagnosis and testing emphasize the importance of the modeling step. Modeling is mostly done manually, in a costly and time-consuming way. In this paper, an alternative that comes from the learning theory is given: an automated procedure for identifying behavior models from recorded observations. Assuming the system's structure is known, the algorithm presented here is capable of learning behavior models for its components. The algorithm accounts for probabilistic, timing, discrete and continuous aspects of the given system, using the modeling formalism of hybrid automata. The practical usability of identified models is demonstrated using an anomaly detection application for a real production system.
Labor Market Outcomes and Reforms in China

Over the past few decades of economic reform, China's labor markets have been transformed to an increasingly market-driven system. China has two segregated economies: the rural and urban. Understanding the shifting nature of this divide is probably the key to understanding the most important labor market reform issues of the last decades and the decades ahead. From 1949, the Chinese economy allowed virtually no labor mobility between the rural and urban sectors. Rural-urban segregation was enforced by a household registration system called "hukou. " Individuals born in rural areas receive "agriculture hukou" while those born in cities are designated as "nonagricultural hukou. " In the countryside, employment and income were linked to the commune-based production system. Collectively owned communes provided very basic coverage for health, education, and pensions. In cities, state-assigned life-time employment, centrally determined wages, and a cradle-to-grave social welfare system were implemented. In the late 1970s, China's economic reforms began, but the timing and pattern of the changes were quite different across rural and urban labor markets. This paper focuses on employment and wages in the urban labor markets, the interaction between the urban and rural labor markets through migration, and future labor market challenges. Despite the remarkable changes that have occurred, inherited institutional impediments still play an important role in the allocation of labor; the hukou system remains in place, and 72 percent of China's population is still identified as rural hukou holders. China must continue to ease its restrictions on ruralâ€“urban migration, and must adopt policies to close the widening rural-urban gap in education, or it risks suffering both a shortage of workers in the growing urban areas and a deepening urban-rural economic divide.
Time and the Recreational Demand Model

In this paper, a theoretically consistent approach to including time costs in recreational demand models is developed. The demand model is conditional on the recreationist's labor market situation. For individuals at corner solutions in the labor market, utility maximization is subject to two constraints, leading to a demand function with travel costs and travel time as independent variables. With interior solutions in the labor market, time is valued at the wage rate and combined with travel costs to produce one "full cost" variable. In an illustration, welfare measures based on the new model are estimated for a sample of sportfishermen.
Victimisation and Agency: The Social Construction of Union Women's Leadership

This article interrogates the notion that women union leaders lead differently. Despite significant variation in the union movements in Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and the USA, similar discourses on womens union leadership emerge in all five countries. Based on a materialist social construction approach which supports a recognition of difference without reference to essentialist ideas about women's nature, this article seeks to identify what may be common across these countries to explain this phenomenon. The article argues that the fact that women face discrimination in unions, on the one hand, and organise as a constituency and have access to women-only education, on the other, supports the development of transformational leadership among women unionists, even across diverse contexts and cultures. Unpacking union womens leadership practices in this way reveals a dialectic of victimisation and agency.
The Effects of Broadband Internet Expansion on Labor Market Outcomes

The author analyzes the effects of the expansion of broadband Internet access from 1999 to 2007 on labor market outcomes throughout the United States. Recent federal policy programs have allocated $18 billion toward subsidizing the spread of this technology, especially to rural areas. Understanding the interplay between technology, firms, and the labor market is important for evaluating whether additional scarce government resources should be allocated to improve this type of infrastructure. Using models that include county and time fixed effects, the author finds that gaining access to broadband services in a county is associated with approximately a 1.8 percentage point increase in the employment rate, with larger effects in rural and isolated areas. Most of the employment gains result from existing firms increasing the scale of their labor demand and from growth in the labor force. These results are consistent with a theoretical model in which broadband technology is complementary to skilled workers, with larger effects among college-educated workers and in industries and occupations that employ more college-educated workers.
Term Structure Multiplicity and Clientele in Markets with Transactions Costs and Taxes

The authors investigate term structure with realistic transactions costs and taxes. Its properties are derived from a certain no- arbitrage condition via duality theory in convex programming. Transac tions costs imply an infinite multiplicity of term structures. A simp le example with realistic transactions costs shows that this multipli city can induce a valuation range of over 277 basis points. Transacti ons costs also allow equilibrium without short-sale restrictions. The authors find the minimum transactions costs that prevent arbitrage. Each investor is shown to have a new type of clientele effect, called a weak long or a weak short clientele effect, for each bond. Copyright 1988 by American Finance Association.
3D gesture-based interaction for immersive experience in mobile VR

In this paper we introduce a novel solution for real-time 3D hand gesture analysis using the embedded 2D camera of a mobile device. The presented framework is based on forming a large database of hand gestures including the ground truth information of hand poses and details of finger joints in 3D. For a query frame captured by the mobile device's camera in real time, the gesture analysis system finds the best match from the database. Once the best match is found, the corresponding ground truth information will be used for interaction in the designed interface. The presented framework performs an extremely efficient gesture analysis (more than 30 fps) in flexible lighting condition and complex background with dynamic movement of the mobile device. The introduced work is implemented in Android and tested in Gear VR headset.
Choosing, moving and resigning at Westminster, UK

From book description: This volume discusses the formation of government cabinets within twenty European democracies, providing the institutional background to the selection and de-selection of ministers. Exploring the historical and constitutional context to cabinet formation, this volume proceeds to provide vital data on the strategic issues that affect the selection of ministers. Covering states from all over Europe, the authors examine trends from the post-war period up to the present day, with specific focus on recent decades for the newer democracies in political transition. The volume includes: * pioneering new research into the hiring and firing of government ministers * vital information on appointments, dismissals and resignations within government cabinets * succinct constitutional data relating to ministerial selections across a number of European states The book is the first output of the Selection and De-selection of Political Elites international network of scholars (SEDEPE) and will provide a major source of information for all scholars interested in the formation, maintenance and termination of cabinets and the nature of ministerial government. The Selection of Ministers in Europe. Hiring and Firing will also be of broader interest to students of European Government and Political Institutions.
A Probabilistic Hierarchical Model for Multi-View and Multi-Feature Classification

Some recent works in classification show that the data obtained from various views with different sensors for an object contributes to achieving a remarkable performance. Actually, in many real-world applications, each view often contains multiple features, which means that this type of data has a hierarchical structure, while most of existing works do not take these features with multi-layer structure into consideration simultaneously. In this paper, a probabilistic hierarchical model is proposed to address this issue and applied for classification. In our model, a latent variable is first learned to fuse the multiple features obtained from a same view, sensor or modality. Particularly, mapping matrices corresponding to a certain view are estimated to project the latent variable from a shared space to the multiple observations. Since this method is designed for the supervised purpose, we assume that the latent variables associated with different views are influenced by their ground-truth label. In order to effectively solve the proposed method, the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is applied to estimate the parameters and latent variables. Experimental results on the extensive synthetic and two real-world datasets substantiate the effectiveness and superiority of our approach as compared with state-of-the-art.
Object Tracking and Image Analysis for Observing and Reviewing Miniatures Games

With the advent of streaming platforms, the companies that develop miniatures games and those who play them have made numerous attempts to stream their events. While these streams are interesting, lack of access to critical information prevents any announcers from being able to give in-depth game analysis to the viewer. The application described here attempts to give announcers access to this critical information, allowing for a much improved experience for the viewer.
Mucosal involvement in bullous and cicatricial pemphigoid. A clinical and immunopathological study

Thirty‐six patients with bullous pemphigoid (BP) and 15 with cicatricial pemphigoid (CP) were studied for evidence of mucosal involvement both clinically and by direct immunofluorescence. Twenty‐one patients with BP and all those with CP had lesions of the mucous membranes. Eighteen patients with BP and 14 patients with CP had involvement of the oral mucosa. Lesions of the eyes, nose, pharynx, vulva and urethra also occurred in both groups. The lesions tended to be more widespread in CP patients. Twenty‐one patients with BP and 14 with CP were examined by an ophthalmologist. Fine scarring of the tarsal conjunctiva was found in both groups, but also in elderly controls. However, symblepharon occurred in one patient with BP as well as in three patients with CP, but was not seen in a group of 20 controls. Direct immunofluorescence (IF) studies showed linear deposition of IgG or C3 or both in the basement membrane zone of the skin, oral mucosa and conjunctival mucosa in both groups. The frequency of positive immunofluorescence was higher in the conjunctiva than in the lip mucosa or skin in both BP and CP patients. The significance of these findings and the relationship between BP and CP is discussed.
Impact of surrounding information on Wi-Fi sensing efficiency

One of essential parts of mobile applications using Wi-Fi is an energy-efficient Wi-Fi sensing. Lately, there have been many studies on Wi-Fi sensing algorithms using surrounding informations (e.g., bluetooth ID [1], cell ID [2] and speed [3], etc). Based on the correlation between such informations and Wi-Fi encounters, the algorithms can determine the wake-up time from sleep mode to detect a Wi-Fi AP efficiently. In this paper, we measure and compare the impact of each surrounding information on the Wi-Fi sensing efficiency by analyzing the uncertainty of information-conditioned remaining time of a mobile until its next Wi-Fi encounter. Using three metrics (i.e., information gain, conditional expectation and variance) on a real mobility trace, we measure to what extend each surrounding information can reduce the uncertainty of the remaining time, which turns out to be the improvement of Wi-Fi sensing efficiency. Comparing such gains from all surrounding informations, we show that the cell ID information is more energy-efficient than bluetooth ID, speed and even all possible combinations of them in Wi-Fi sensing.
Greek banks' internationalisation: a suggested modelling approach

Purpose – This research aims to examine the importance of Greek banks' internationalisation. Further, it seeks to identify the entry modes and organisational forms adopting Greek banks when crossing borders as well as to suggest a modelling approach.Design/methodology/approach – Empirical data were collected by using secondary and primary data sources. Primary data sources included semi‐structured interviews with the key stakeholders in the industry.Findings – This research identified that Greek banks, adopt foreign direct investment entry mode and organisational forms such as branches and representative offices (internal growth), as well as subsidiaries and affiliates (external growth). It also was found that the participating in this research Greek banks, combine the two types of growth in their foreign markets entry. This study identified that the balance of combination is dependent upon a number of reasons and factors.Research limitations/implications – The study contains several shortcomings. The emp.
Translating Pro-Drop Languages with Reconstruction Models

Pronouns are frequently omitted in pro-drop languages, such as Chinese, generally leading to significant challenges with respect to the production of complete translations. To date, very little attention has been paid to the dropped pronoun (DP) problem within neural machine translation (NMT). In this work, we propose a novel reconstruction-based approach to alleviating DP translation problems for NMT models. Firstly, DPs within all source sentences are automatically annotated with parallel information extracted from the bilingual training corpus. Next, the annotated source sentence is reconstructed from hidden representations in the NMT model. With auxiliary training objectives, in the terms of reconstruction scores, the parameters associated with the NMT model are guided to produce enhanced hidden representations that are encouraged as much as possible to embed annotated DP information. Experimental results on both Chinese-English and Japanese-English dialogue translation tasks show that the proposed approach significantly and consistently improves translation performance over a strong NMT baseline, which is directly built on the training data annotated with DPs.
Mode-Based Estimation of 3 dB Bandwidth for Near-Field Communication Systems

A new method for estimating the 3 dB bandwidth of near-field communication (NFC) systems using identical electrically small antennas is proposed. The method is based on equivalent circuit representation using the addition theorem, an approach used in the analysis of coupled antennas, and the correction factor derived from antenna impedance characteristics. In addition, variation in the 3 dB bandwidth with respect to the relative position and orientation of the NFC system is investigated using the proposed method.
Water diffusion closely reveals neural activity status in rat brain loci affected by anesthesia

Diffusion functional MRI (DfMRI) reveals neuronal activation even when neurovascular coupling is abolished, contrary to blood oxygenation level—dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI). Here, we show that the water apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) derived from DfMRI increased in specific rat brain regions under anesthetic conditions, reflecting the decreased neuronal activity observed with local field potentials (LFPs), especially in regions involved in wakefulness. In contrast, BOLD signals showed nonspecific changes, reflecting systemic effects of the anesthesia on overall brain hemodynamics status. Electrical stimulation of the central medial thalamus nucleus (CM) exhibiting this anesthesia-induced ADC increase led the animals to transiently wake up. Infusion in the CM of furosemide, a specific neuronal swelling blocker, led the ADC to increase further locally, although LFP activity remained unchanged, and increased the current threshold awakening the animals under CM electrical stimulation. Oppositely, induction of cell swelling in the CM through infusion of a hypotonic solution (−80 milliosmole [mOsm] artificial cerebrospinal fluid [aCSF]) led to a local ADC decrease and a lower current threshold to wake up the animals. Strikingly, the local ADC changes produced by blocking or enhancing cell swelling in the CM were also mirrored remotely in areas functionally connected to the CM, such as the cingulate and somatosensory cortex. Together, those results strongly suggest that neuronal swelling is a significant mechanism underlying DfMRI.
Replication of the R6K plasmid during the Escherichia coli cell cycle

The cell-cycle replication pattern of the R6K plasmid has been investigated by using the membrane-elution technique to produce cells labelled at different times during the division cycle and scintillation counting for quantitative analysis of radioactive plasmid DNA. The high-copy plasmid R6K replicates exponentially in a cell-cycle-independent manner. A mini-R6K plasmid deleted for the ori alpha origin of replication also replicates, exponentially in a cell-cycle-independent manner.