Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Yang-Yang anomalies and coexistence diameters: simulation of asymmetric fluids.

A general method for estimating the Yang-Yang ratio, R(mu) , of a model fluid via Monte Carlo simulations is presented on the basis of data for a hard-core square-well (HCSW) fluid and the restricted primitive model (RPM) electrolyte. The isothermal minima of Q(L)(triple bond)2L/L scaling are evaluated at T(c) in an LxLxL box where m=rho-L is the density fluctuation. The "complete" finite-size scaling theory for the Q(+/-)(min) (T(c);L) incorporates pressure mixing in the scaling fields, thereby allowing for a Yang-Yang anomaly. It yields a dominant term in the asymmetry, Q(+)(min)-Q(-)(min) , varying as L(-beta/nu) with an amplitude proportional to the crucial pressure-mixing coefficient, j(2) . The reliably known critical order-parameter distribution for (d=3) Ising systems then enables one to estimate j(2) , thereby yielding R(mu) , from the Q minima together with information on the nonuniversal amplitudes for the order parameter and the susceptibility. The detailed analysis needed to estimate j(2) for an HCSW fluid and the RPM is presented. Furthermore, the Q-minima below T(c) can also provide the coexistence-curve diameters, rho(diam) (T) (triple bond)1/2 (rho(+) + rho(-)) , very close to T(c) for both models: here rho +/-(T) are the densities of the coexisting liquid and gas phases. The recently developed recursive scaling algorithm for Deltarho(infinity) (T) (triple bond)rho(+)-rho(-) is adapted to investigate the corresponding universal scaling functions. The two extremal forms of these scaling functions are computed with the aid of the exactly soluble decorated lattice-gas model. The critical densities for the RPM and HCSW fluid found via this route are consistent with previous estimates obtained from the data above T(c) ; the magnitudes of the |T- T(c)|(2beta) and |T- T(c)|(1-alpha) corrections to rho(diam)(T) are estimated.
Of nets and assets - Effects and impacts of employment-intensive programmes - A review of the ILO experience

This paper is the first of a series of Socio-Economic Technical Papers (SETPs) which POLDEV intends to disseminate for making information on the social-economic implications of employment-intensive growth strategies and investment programmes easily accessible to interested organisations, institutions and individuals. It is hoped that these papers will contribute to the enhancement of employment and investment policy programme design and evaluation practices
Local rifampicin in treatment of rhinoscleroma

Summary Many antibiotics, chemotherapeutic agents and other chemicals have been tried in the treatment of scleroma without much success (Toppozada et al, 1967). The most popular of these drugs are streptomycin and aureomycin (Botros et al, 1954; Zwiefach, 1955; El-Mofty, 1962), terramycin and chloromycetin (Hoover and King, 1953) and ampicillin, septrin and vibramycin (Ssali, 1975). El-Mofty and Attia (1957) attributed considerable value to the use of 20 per cent aureomycin ointment locally in treating the disease. Nigonol in the form of a local injection was tried by Toppozada et al. (1967) and they claimed good results. Shaer et al. (1981) reported that local application of 2 per cent acriflavine solution over an eight-week period was an effective and safe remedy for rhinoscleroma. Rifampicin has been used systemically with success as a new antibiotic for the treatment of scleroma (Riad, 1982). The aim of the present study was to evaluate the response of rhinoscleroma to local medication with rifampicin.selected for this study. The cases were diagnosed by clinical, histopathological (Fig. 1) and bacteriological data. Twelve cases were in the atrophic stage while eighteen were in the granulomatous stage of the disease. Rifampicin was applied locally into the nose in two forms: 1. Nasal instillations: used mainly in the atrophic cases. One ampoule of rifampicin (Rifocin-Lepetit®) 125 mg. diluted in 20 ml. saline solution was used and 2 ml. of the solution was applied twice daily. 2. Nasal infiltration: used mainly in the granulomatous cases. One ampoule of rifampicin (Rifocin-Lepetit®) 125 mg. was infiltrated into the granulomas every other day. Treatment was continued for eight weeks. Punch bio-spies were taken from the nasal lesions after four and eight weeks during the course of therapy and six months after the cessation of treatment. Biopsies were fixed, dehydrated, embedded in paraffin, sectioned and stained with H and E. Part of each specimen was submitted to bacteriological studies for the isolation of K. rhi-noscleromatis (Levine, 1951).
Assessing Library Performance: New Measures, Methods, and Models

Size has been a traditional measure of a library for many years. How many books were held, how many people were served, and how much money was spent were all ways to determine if a library was successful. That has changed recently. University administrations and public officials are looking more closely at how well libraries serve their users and how well libraries manage their resources. This paper will describe some current projects that seek to highlight new methods for assessing library performance and show how these new measures will help libraries demonstrate their efficiency and effectiveness.
Patenting activities and firm performance : Does firm size matter?

Whereas prior research has provided valuable insights into the willingness of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms to engage in patenting, a comparison of the performance implications of patenting activities across small and large firms is still lacking. This gap is important because SMEs and large firms, having different resources and capabilities, might benefit from patenting activities in different ways. In particular, SMEs can be expected to benefit less from patenting activities in terms of protection against imitators than large firms. On the other hand, the propensity and ability of SMEs to license out their patents and generate additional revenue streams might be relatively higher than that of their large counterparts. This paper studies the impact of patenting on licensing, innovation, and financial performance for both SMEs and large firms, using multiple-group path analyses on a sample of 358 manufacturing firms. Contrary to expectations, this study demonstrates that not only large firms, but also SMEs benefit from patenting in terms of commercializing product innovations. Moreover, for both SMEs and large firms, such increased innovation performance in turn contributes to higher profit margins. Patenting activities also increase the ability of SMEs and large firms to license out knowledge to external parties, and this positive effect is significantly stronger for large firms. However, neither in SMEs nor in large firms, these outward licensing activities generate short-term financial benefits. Finally, the study demonstrates that patenting activities do not trigger significant cost disadvantages for either SMEs or large firms. Jointly, these findings provide unique insights in the value-generating and cost-increasing effects of patenting, suggesting that not only large firms, but also SMEs should consider patenting as a viable strategy to fully reap commercial benefits from their innovation activities. At the same time, they temper open innovation scholars� expectations regarding the financial benefits of licensing out knowledge. Overall, these findings point to opportunities for optimizing the intellectual property management of both SMEs and large firms.
FDTD Acceleration for Cylindrical Resonator Design Based on the Hybrid of Single and Double Precision Floating-Point Computation

Acceleration of FDTD (finite-difference time-domain) is very important for the fields such as computational electromagnetic simulation. We consider the FDTD simulation model of cylindrical resonator design that requires double precision floating-point and cannot be done using single precision. Conventional FDTD acceleration methods have a common problem of memory-bandwidth limitation due to the large amount of parallel data access. To overcome this problem, we propose a hybrid of single and double precision floating-point computation method that reduces the data-transfer amount. We analyze the characteristics of the FDTD simulation to find out when we can use single precision instead of double precision. According to the experimental results, we achieved over 15 times of speed-up compared to the CPU single-core implementation and over 1.52 times of speed-up compared to the conventional GPU-based implementation.
PCR in laboratory diagnosis of human Borrelia burgdorferi infections

The laboratory diagnosis of Lyme borreliosis, the most prevalent vector-borne disease in the United States and endemic in parts of Europe and Asia, is currently based on serology with known limitations. Direct demonstration of Borrelia burgdorferi by culture may require weeks, while enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for antigen detection often lack sensitivity. The development of the PCR has offered a new dimension in the diagnosis. Capable of amplifying minute amounts of DNA into billions of copies in just a few hours, PCR facilitates the sensitive and specific detection of DNA or RNA of pathogenic organisms. This review is restricted to applications of PCR methods in the diagnosis of human B. burgdorferi infections. In the first section, methodological aspects, e.g., sample preparation, target selection, primers and PCR methods, and detection and control of inhibition and contamination, are highlighted. In the second part, emphasis is placed on diagnostic aspects, where PCR results in patients with dermatological, neurological, joint, and ocular manifestations of the disease are discussed. Here, special attention is given to monitoring treatment efficacy by PCR tests. Last, specific guidelines on how to interpret PCR results, together with the advantages and limitations of these new techniques, are presented.
Design ASNoC for low-power SoCs

This paper proposes a design methodology for application-specific network-on-chip (ASNoC). The methodology can generate optimized hierarchical ASNoC and a corresponding distributed shared memory for different applications. It uses statistical communication traces for cycle-accurate performance analysis for quick evaluation, and is based on floorplan to estimate power and area. The methodology can be easily integrated into current hardware/software codesign flow. Using this methodology, we generated an ASNoC for a H.264 HDTV decoder SoC. We compared the ASNoC with MIT's RAW network in performance, power, and area in detail. The comparison results show that the ASNoC provide substantial improvements in power, performance, and cost compared to regular-topology NoC. In the H.264 HDTV decoder SoC, the ASNoC uses 39% less power, 59% less silicon area, 74% less metal area, 63% less switch capacity, and 69% less link capacity to achieve 2times performance compared to the RAW network.
A Comparative Study of 3-D Face Recognition Under Expression Variations

Research in face recognition has continuously been challenged by extrinsic (head pose, lighting conditions) and intrinsic (facial expression, aging) sources of variability. While many survey papers on face recognition exist, in this paper, we focus on a comparative study of 3-D face recognition under expression variations. As a first contribution, 3-D face databases with expressions are listed, and the most important ones are briefly presented and their complexity is quantified using the iterative closest point (ICP) baseline recognition algorithm. This allows to rank the databases according to their inherent difficulty for face-recognition tasks. This analysis reveals that the FRGC v2 database can be considered as the most challenging because of its size, the presence of expressions and outliers, and the time lapse between the recordings. Therefore, we recommend to use this database as a reference database to evaluate (expression-invariant) 3-D face-recognition algorithms. We also determine and quantify the most important factors that influence the performance. It appears that performance decreases 1) with the degree of nonfrontal pose, 2) for certain expression types, 3) with the magnitude of the expressions, 4) with an increasing number of expressions, and 5) for a higher number of gallery subjects. Future 3-D face-recognition algorithms should be evaluated on the basis of all these factors. As the second contribution, a survey of published 3-D face-recognition methods that deal with expression variations is given. These methods are subdivided into three classes depending on the way the expressions are handled. Region-based methods use expression-stable regions only, while other methods model the expressions either using an isometric or a statistical model. Isometric models assume the deformation because of expression variation to be (locally) isometric, meaning that the deformation preserves lengths along the surface. Statistical models learn how the facial soft tissue deforms during expressions based on a training database with expression labels. Algorithmic performances are evaluated by the comparison of recognition rates for identification and verification. No statistical significant differences in class performance are found between any pair of classes.
Reduced waiting times for the GP: two examples of “advanced access” in Australia

“Advanced access” is a set of change principles for improved scheduling in office‐based health care, widely applied in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Examination of advanced access in two Australian general practices indicates it is feasible in this country and may offer improvements in patient access to care, practice income and workplace conditions. Rigorous evaluations of advanced access are lacking, but in the Australian National Primary Care Collaborative, 300 practices will implement advanced access, providing an opportunity for a rigorous evaluation of these principles.
Effects of Art on Surgical Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to assess the effect of art including ambient features such as music, interior design including visual art, and architectural features on health outcomes in surgical patients. BACKGROUND Healing environments can have a positive influence on many patients, but data focusing on art in surgical patients remain scarce. METHODS We conducted a systematic search following the PRISMA guidelines from January 2000 to October 2014 on art in surgical patients. For music interventions, we pooled controlled studies measuring health outcomes (eg, pain, anxiety, blood pressure, and heart rate) in a meta-analysis. For other art forms (ambient and architectural features and interior design), we did a narrative review, also including nonsurgical patients, and looked for examples covering 3 countries. RESULTS Our search identified 1101 hits with 48 studies focusing on art in surgical patients: 47 studies on musical intervention and 1 on sunlight. The meta-analysis of these studies disclosed significant effects for music on pain after surgery, anxiety, systolic blood pressure, and heart rate, when compared with control groups without music. Effects of music were larger with self-selected music, and lower in surgical interventions performed under general anesthesia. Interior design features such as nature images and more spacious rooms, and architectural features providing more sunlight had positive effects on anxiety and postoperative pain. CONCLUSIONS Self-selected music for surgical patients is an effective and low-cost intervention to enhance well being and possibly faster recovery. Although potentially very important, the impact of environmental features and spacious architecture with wide access to sunlight remains poorly explored in surgery. Further experimental research is needed to better assess the magnitude of the impact and cost effectiveness.
Role of fetal echocardiography in the evaluation of structure and function of fetal heart in diabetic pregnancies

Objective: To detect the structural and functional changes of fetal hearts in diabetic pregnancies by using Doppler echocardiography. Methods: This prospective study included 119 pregnant women divided into three groups. Group 1 included 47 pregnant patients with pre-existing diabetes mellitus (DM), group 2 included 40 patients with gestational diabetes and group 3 included 32 non-diabetic pregnant women. M-mode echocardiography was used to measure the thickness of the fetal ventricular walls and interventricular septum. The mitral and tricuspid early (E) and late (A) diastolic velocities and the ventricular shortening fraction were measured. Results: HbA1c % was significantly lower in gestational diabetes group compared with the pre-existing diabetes group. The interventricular septum was significantly thicker in the pre-existing diabetes group compared with other groups. Tricuspid and mitral E/A ratios were significantly lower in the pre-existing diabetes group compared with gestational diabetes and control groups. Moreover, there were no significant differences in the tricuspid and mitral E/A ratios between gestational diabetes group and the control group. The right and left ventricular shortening fractions were similar in the three groups. Conclusion: Fetuses of women with well-controlled gestational diabetes lack the diastolic dysfunction that is present in fetuses of women with pre-existing diabetes
Bounded divergence measures based on Bhattacharyya coefficient

We introduce a new entropy based measure, the bounded Bhattacharyya distance (BBD), for quantifying the dissimilarity between probability distributions. BBD is based on the Bhattacharyya coefficient (fidelity) , and is symmetric, positive semi-definite, and bounded. Unlike the Kullback-Leibler divergence, BBD does not require probability density functions to be absolutely continuous with respect to each other. We show that BBD belongs to the class of Csiszar f-divergence and derive certain relationships between BBD and well known measures such as Bhattacharyya, Hellinger and Jensen-Shannon divergence. Bounds on the Bayesian error probability are established with BBD measure. We show that the curvature of BBD in the parameter space of families of distributions is proportional to the Fisher information. For distributions with vector valued parameters, the curvature matrix can be used to obtain the Rao geodesic distance between them. We also discuss a potential application of probability distance measures in model selection.
Overexpression of Membrane Proteins Using Pichia pastoris

Among the small number of expression systems validated for the mass production of eukaryotic membrane proteins (EMPs), the methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris stands as one of the most efficient hosts. This system has been used to produce crystallization‐grade proteins for a variety of EMPs, from which high‐resolution 3D structures have been determined. This unit describes a set of guidelines and instructions to overexpress membrane proteins using the P. pastoris system. Using a G protein–coupled receptor (GPCR) as a model EMP, these protocols illustrate the necessary steps, starting with the design of the DNA sequence to be expressed, through the preparation and analysis of samples containing the corresponding membrane protein of interest. In addition, recommendations are given on a series of experimental parameters that can be optimized to substantially improve the amount and/or the functionality of the expressed EMPs.
A Survey of Quality of Service in Multi-tier Web Applications

Modern web services have been broadly deployed on the Internet. Most of these services use multi-tier architecture for flexible scaling and software reusability. However, managing the performance of multi-tier web services under dynamic and unpredictable workload, and different resource demands in each tier is a critical problem for a service provider. When offering quality of service assurance with least resource usage costs, web service providers should adopt self-adaptive resource provisioning in each tier. Recently, a number of rule-and model-based approaches have been designed for dynamic resource management in virtualized data centers. This survey investigates the challenges of resource provisioning and provides a competing assessment on the existing approaches. After the evaluation of their benefits and drawbacks, the new research direction to improve the efficiency of resource management and recommendations are introduced.
Information Disclosure in Common Value Repeated Auctions

What is the optimal disclosure policy of a seller in a repeated auction? When identical and common value items are auctioned sequentially, information about the outcome of the elapsed auctions, like the winners bid, changes how the bidders value next item and could impact their bidding strategy. We analyse this issue in a twice repeated common value auction, both in theory and in the lab. We show that when the winning bid is disclosed at the end of the first auction, any symmetric equilibrium of the game necessarily involves some bunching at the top: the strategy profiles in the first auction are flat for bidders that receive the highest signals about the value of the object. However, the impact of that information disclosure on the sellers profit cannot be assessed analytically. Therefore, we turn to the lab. We observe that the sellers profit decreases with disclosure of the winning bid compared to the case where no information is disclosed at the end of the first auction. The main reason is that bidders decrease drastically their bids in the first auction when they know that the winning bid will be revealed: an anticipation effect. Moreover and as predicted by theory, bunching occurs for high value signals.
Relationship among Activities of Daily Living, Apathy, and Subjective Well-Being in Elderly People Living Alone in a Rural Town

Background: There are limited psychological data on the quality of life and activities of daily living among elderly Japanese who live alone. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the frequency of apathy and its correlation with activities of daily living and with subjective well-being in elderly people living alone in a depopulated rural area. Methods: We evaluated 96 individuals aged 70 years or older (mean age 77.8 years) who lived alone at home in a rural town. To evaluate activities of daily living, apathy, and subjective well-being, the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology Competence Index, the Apathy Scale, and the Philadelphia Geriatric Center Morale Scale (subjective well-being scale) were used. Results: Of the 96 subjects, 94 (97.9%) showed apathy. The total score of the index of activities of daily living was primarily related to age and the apathy score and less to the PGC Morale Scale score. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that apathy in subjects who live alone appears to exert a marked effect on their ability to perform routine activities of daily living.