Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Peak exercise responses in heart failure: back to basics.

Evaluating central haemodynamics became a prominent cardiological feature in the 1950s following Sarnoff and Berglund's introduction of Starling's Law into practice via a family of ventricular function curves,1 but it went out of favour after 1981 when Benge2 and Franciosa3 claimed discrepancy between haemodynamics and exercise capacity in heart failure (HF) patients. Dismissing its value became fashionable in subsequent decades with further emphasis of its dissociation with changes in symptoms. In 1991, Mancini and colleagues4 greatly contributed to the widespread use of cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPX) by showing its prognostic value in patients with severe HF referred for transplantation. Since this landmark study, a large number of studies have confirmed the unsurpassed prognostic value of peak exercise capacity, generally reported as peak oxygen consumption (peak VO2/kg), in HF patients. The simple explanation for this is that, according to the Fick principle, peak exercise VO2 is determined by peak exercise cardiac output and arteriovenous oxygen difference. When Chomsky et al. 5 tried to reintroduce the usefulness of haemodynamic evaluation in selecting transplant candidates in 1996, they were rather overwhelmed by counter arguments.6,7 The emergence of such discrepancies is clearly puzzling, especially in view of the fact that central haemodynamics offer by far the best means of looking into cardiac performance and dysfunction. There are a number of reasons why haemodynamic evaluations went out of favour. Chief amongst these are the choice of unrepresentative haemodynamic variables and the misplaced belief that measurements at rest can be representative of actual cardiac function irrespective of reserve capacity. Such a misconception probably stemmed from the misleadingly title of the 1981 paper by Franciosa,3 which also failed to highlight that in their own study, exercise haemodynamics actually correlated very well with exercise capacity. A more … *Corresponding author. Tel: +33 1 4995 6608, Fax: +33 1 4995 8439, Hopital Lariboisiere, Assistance Publique, 2 rue Ambroise Pare, 75010 Paris, France. Email: alain.cohen-solal{at}lrb.aphp. fr.
Corporate Tax Behavior and Political Uncertainty: Evidence from National Elections around the World

We empirically investigate the effects of political uncertainty on corporate tax behavior. To identify the effects of political uncertainty, we construct a data set that tracks whether firms’ tax avoidance varies systematically around the occurrence of national elections. Our dataset includes firms exposed to 103 national elections in 30 countries. We find that corporate tax avoidance varies systematically across the election cycle, peaking in election years and declining the next year. The effect on tax avoidance is greatest for elections with greater electoral uncertainty, and for elections in countries with relatively lower quality of law, relatively weaker tax enforcement, and relatively lower book-tax conformity. The evidence suggests that firms use both conforming and nonconforming tax avoidance strategies, although the results for conforming tax avoidance are marginal.
Complexity of ferroresonance phenomena: sensitivity studies from a single-phase system to three-phase reality

This paper contains a comprehensive literature review on ‘real case’ ferroresonance phenomena having occurred at different voltage levels of power systems. Sensitivity studies on a single phase system are conducted to understand the coupled effect of circuit breaker? s grading capacitor and circuit ground capacitor on the sustainability of ferroresonance. This coupling effect has been verified by test results obtained on a three phase 132/33 kV distribution system. ATPDraw simulation was performed to determine the correct values of grading and ground capacitances which then produce comparable simulation results to the field test recordings in terms of 3-phase voltages and currents measured from the two de-energisation tests. The complexity of ferroresonance issue is dominated by the nonlinearity of core, however circuit parameters, especially the “mix and match” of series capacitor and ground capacitor values also plays an importance role.
Using blockchain to build trusted LoRaWAN sharing server

With the rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) market and requirement, low power wide area (LPWA) technologies have become popular. In various LPWA technologies, Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) and long range (LoRa) are two main leading competitive technologies. Compared with NB-IoT networks, which are mainly built and managed by mobile network operators, LoRa wide area networks (LoRaWAN) are mainly operated by private companies or organizations, which suggests two issues: trust of the private network operators and lack of network coverage. This study aims to propose a conceptual architecture design of a blockchain built-in solution for LoRaWAN network servers to solve these two issues for LoRaWAN IoT solution. ,The study proposed modeling, model analysis and architecture design. ,The proposed solution uses the blockchain technology to build an open, trusted, decentralized and tamper-proof system, which provides the indisputable mechanism to verify that the data of a transaction has existed at a specific time in the network. ,To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that integrates blockchain technology and LoRaWAN IoT technology.
A business user model-driven engineering method for developing information systems

This thesis is all about raising the level of abstraction at which information systems are built, using business end-users knowledge and MDE to achieve the result. The work intro- duces, first, Micro-Modelling Language (μML), a lightweight modelling language that is used to express basic structural and behavioural aspects of information systems using effectivily business-users knowledge of their desired system. Throughout the work, graphical notation and semantics for the language concepts are identified, providing a simpler and semantically cleaned modelling language than standard UML and other UML-based languages. The work also proposes BUILD (Business-User Information-Led Development), an End- User MDE approach to support the construction of information systems using high-level specifications and accelerate the development process using layered model transformation and code generation. Throughout the thesis, a number of development phases and model transformation steps are identified to allow the low-level technical detail be introduced and developed automatically by rules, with less end-users engagement. Domain-Specific code generators, for generating executable Java Swing Applications code and MySQL script, are used to demonstrate the validity of the research.
A Service Oriented Architecture for Biomedical Question Answering System

Medical practitioners consider online medical resources as one of the important sources to answer their biomedical questions. Finding the answer to a certain question among large amount of medical documents - available on the Web - is very time consuming. In this paper we present a biomedical question answering system that is based on service oriented architecture and Web services. Service oriented architecture facilitates this system development by providing modular design, loosely coupled application integration, asset reuse, system agility, and interoperability.
Pollution Permit Consignment Auctions: Theory and Experiments

Unlike extant auction-based climate change markets, California’s AB32 market utilizes a consignment auction design in which utilities are allocated a share of emissions permits that they must sell into the uniform-price auction. Auction revenue is returned to the consignee, which creates an incentive to increase the auction clearing price through strategic bidding. In a simple theoretical model, we show that consignees will accomplish this by overstating their quantity demanded in the auction, since this increases the probability that demand exceeds supply and the auction clears at a positive price. This results in inefficient allocations and inflated auction prices. We test this consignment mechanism through a series of lab experiments and confirm these predictions. We also find that overall firm profits are lower in a consignment auction, and that firms are more likely to incur penalties from program non-compliance due to allocative inefficiencies.
A New Perspective on Anti-Windup Design based on Experimental Results

Abstract Whereas stable linear systems with inputs have a unique steady-state solution, which is independent on the initial conditions and only depends on the input signals, nonlinear systems in general do not possess this property. Due to the lack of this property it is often hard to evaluate the exact behavior of the system, and thus to evaluate the ‘exact’ performance. In this article we present the results of three experiments performed on a simple nonlinear system, i.e. an anti-windup system consisting of a PI controlled integrator plant with input saturation and linear anti-windup controller. These results, which are validated by simulation and substantiated by theoretical results, clearly show the problems that prevent such an exact performance evaluation of the system. Based on these experimental results we come up with another definition of performance-based anti-windup design, based on the notion of convergent systems.
Localization and Characterization of the Hippuricase Activity of Group B Streptococci

Studies are presented on the isolation, localization, and characterization of hippuricase activity of group B streptococci. Washed, intact cells, live or heat killed at 56 C, exhibited hydrolysis of hippuric acid, but cell-free filtrates of the organism did not. Excellent hippuricase activity was recoverable from supernatant fluids of mechanically disrupted cells, and evidence suggests that it exists largely intracellularly. Characteristics of the hippuricase preparation are consistent with the view that the biologically active principle is an enzyme. A quantitative microtiter technique has been developed which is useful in titrating enzymatic activity and antibody neutralization. Sera from rabbits immunized with filtered preparations neutralized hippuricase activity.
Collaboration environment for JointCloud computing

JointCloud computing is a new generation of cloud computing mode based on the cooperation among multicloud service entities. Through the deep integration of multicloud resources, it facilitates developers to customize cloud services by the method of “software definition", and to create cloud value. Achieving successful cloud service transactions is the most important challenge that JointCloud faces. This paper originally puts forward a supporting environment of cross-stakeholders peer-to-peer transactions, including resources and services, named JointCloud Cooperation Environment (JCCE). The core of JCCE architecture involves distributed cloud transaction, distributed cloud community, distributed cloud monitoring, and the blockchain-based distributed ledger system. In such primary services, the related information exchange techniques, especially value exchange techniques, are conducive to breaking the information asymmetry among the participants in JointCloud, creating win-win opportunities for each party, and forming strong support for the JointCloud computing business innovation. From the perspective of cloud service consumers, cloud service providers, and cloud service brokers, JCCEs consumption service mode, supply service mode, and consultation service mode are put forward to guide the transaction participants to apply the value-exchange service of JCCE efficiently and conveniently. Finally, with regard to the support service of value exchange, the operation mechanism of JCCE is expounded in different scenarios including cloud resource transaction, data transaction, and custom software service transaction.
Making Reinforcement Learning Work on Real Robots

Programming robots is hard. It often takes a great deal of time to fine-tune the many parameters in a typical control algorithm. For some robot tasks, we may not even know a good solution without extensive experimentation. Even when we, as humans, have good intuitions about how to perform a given task, it is often difficult to translate these into the sensor and actuator spaces of the robot. Having the robot learn how to perform a given task is one way of addressing these problems. Specifying what the robot should be doing, and allowing it to fill in the details of how using learning is an appealing idea. In general, describing a task at a higher, more behavioral level is easier for humans than having to specifying the exact mapping from sensors to actuators that defines a control policy. In particular, reinforcement learning is a very promising paradigm for learning on real robots. However, simply applying existing reinforcement learning techniques will almost certainly lead to failure. Issues such as large, continuous state and action spaces, extremely limited amounts of training data, lack of initial knowledge about the task and environment, and the necessity of keeping the robot physically safe during learning must be explicitly addressed if learning is to succeed. In this dissertation, we identify some of the problems that must be overcome when attempting to implement a reinforcement learning system on a real mobile robot. We discuss some solutions to these problems and present two components that, together, allow us to use reinforcement learning techniques effectively on a real robot. HEDGER is a safe value-function approximation algorithm designed to be used with continuous state and action spaces, and with sparse reward functions. JAQL is our general framework for reinforcement learning on real robots, and deals with the problems of initial knowledge and robot safety. We validate the effectiveness of both components using a variety of simulated and real robot task domains.
SmartBar: Refining a Capacitive-Enabled Spacebar for Gamers

Keyboards targeting PC gamers offer a differentiated experience through improved performance and additional features. One of the similarities between standard keyboards and gaming keyboards is a spacebar that offers a large, accessible surface area. SmartBar is a spacebar with an embedded capacitive sensor that allows for additional input on the surface of the key. This allows dedicated macro buttons typically included on gaming keyboards to be integrated into the spacebar keycap as separate, logical buttons. A user study was conducted that compared five different keycap designs for SmartBar to assess user preference and performance related to activating macros. Results show that a rounded keycap with a -8 degree slope was the most preferred and provided the best recognition rate. The results make a case that the physical design of the spacebar keycap can notably impact user preference and performance related to spacebar designs with embedded capacitive sensors.
Mortality from Circulatory System Diseases among French Uranium Miners: A Nested Case-Control Study

A significant association has been observed between radon exposure and cerebrovascular disease (CeVD) mortality among French uranium miners, but risk factors for circulatory system diseases (CSD) have not been previously considered. We conducted new analyses in the recently updated (through 2007) French cohort of uranium miners (n = 5,086), which included 442 deaths from CSD, 167 of them from ischemic heart disease (IHD) and 105 from CeVD. A nested case-control study was then set up to collect and investigate the influence of these risk factors on the relationships between mortality from CSD and occupational external gamma ray and internal ionizing radiation exposure (radon and long-lived radionuclides) in this updated cohort. The nested case-control study included miners first employed after 1955, still employed in 1976 and followed up through 2007. Individual information about CSD risk factors was collected from medical files for the 76 deaths from CSD (including 26 from IHD and 16 from CeVD) and 237 miners who had not died of CSD by the end of follow-up. The exposure-risk relationships were assessed with a Cox proportional hazard model weighted by the inverse sampling probability. A significant increase in all CSD and CeVD mortality risks associated with radon exposure was observed in the total cohort [hazard ratios: HRCSD/100 working level months (WLM) = 1.11, 95% confidence interval (1.01; 1.22) and HRCeVD/100 WLM = 1.25 (1.09; 1.43), respectively]. A nonsignificant exposure-risk relationship was observed for every type of cumulative ionizing radiation exposure and every end point [e.g., HRCSD/100WLM = 1.43 (0.71; 2.87)]. The adjustment for each CSD risk factor did not substantially change the exposure-risk relationships. When the model was adjusted for overweight, hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia and smoking status, the HR/100WLM for CSD, for example, was equal to 1.21 (0.54; 2.75); and when it was adjusted for risk factors selected with the Akaike information criterion, it was equal to 1.44 (0.66; 3.14). To our knowledge, this is the first study to use a uranium miner cohort to consider the major standard CSD risk factors in assessing the relationships between ionizing radiation exposure and the risk of death from these diseases. These results suggest that the significant relationship between CeVD risk and radon exposure observed in the total French cohort is probably not affected by the CSD risk factors. Extending the collection of information about CSD risk factors to a larger subsample would be useful to confirm this result.
PHARMACOECONOMIC EVALUATION FOR DENGUE VACCINE PRICING FOR MALAYSIA: TOWARDS AFFORDABILITY, COST EFFECTIVENESS AND SUSTAINABILITY

Objective: Malaysian health ministry is currently evaluating the licensing of dengue vaccine Dengvaxia using a set of criteria including safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness. The purpose of this research is to formulate a model framework to assist transparent decision-making. Methods: To quantify the cost-effective price of vaccine, pharmacoeconomic evaluation models are commonly used. We review in this paper dengue economic burdens and pharmacoeconomic models, with particular reference to cost-effectiveness. Results: A major weakness in current pharmacoeconomic models is the omission of cost of vaccine production, which is two orders of magnitude lower than the market price. This paper proposes an inclusive model that yields a highly cost-effective threshold price of dengue vaccine at USD 5 per dose for Malaysia. Conclusion : At USD 5 per dose, Dengue vaccine will be fair, Affordable and sustainable.
The Children of the Missed Pill

We assess the impact of exogenous variation in oral contraceptives prices-a year-long decline followed by a sharp increase due to a documented collusion case-on fertility decisions and newborns' outcomes. Our empirical strategy follows an interrupted time-series design, which is implemented using multiple sources of administrative information. As prices skyrocketed (45% within a few weeks), the Pill's consumption plunged, and weekly conceptions increased (3.2% after a few months). We show large effects on the number of children born to unmarried mothers, to mothers in their early twenties, and to primiparae women. The incidence of low birth weight and fetal/infant deaths increased (declined) as the cost of birth control pills rose (fell). In addition, we document a disproportional increase in the weekly miscarriage and stillbirth rates. As children reached school age, we find lower school enrollment rates and higher participation in special education programs. Our evidence suggests these "extra" conceptions were more likely to face adverse conditions during critical periods of development.
Energy-efficient renovation of residential districts. Cases from the Russian market

The energy-efficiency of Soviet-era residential districts in cold urban Russian regions is poor. It could be improved by renovating buildings to be more energyefficient and by reducing the losses in the related energy infrastructure. This dissertation deals with the energy-efficient renovation of such Russian districts. The idea of holistic district renovations is introduced, including both renovations of the buildings and modernization of the related energy and water infrastructures. Based on case studies, solutions are presented and analyzed for renovating upscale Russian residential districts into more energy-efficient ones. Holistic renovation concepts were developed both for individual apartment buildings and for typical residential districts. For the II-18 Soviet-standard type building, the energy saving potential was up to 68% for heating energy and up to 26% for electricity. In the district considered, using different district modernization scenarios, up to 72% of the heating demand and up to 34% of the electricity demand could be saved. CO2-equivalent, SO2-equivalent, and TOPP-equivalent (tropospheric ozone precursor potential) emissions, as well as particulates of the different district energy production scenarios, were also analyzed. In view of CO2-equivalent and TOPPequivalent emissions in the case district, changing a CHP plant from natural gas to biogas would be favorable. Considering also SO2-equivalent emissions and particulates, only the most advanced energy production scenarios could be recommended. The costs of different renovation packages for the type apartment building varied between €125/m and €200/m, depending on the extent of the selected renovation package. Repairing the external walls formed around 35–40% of the total costs in all renovation packages. If the whole district was renovated (both the buildings and the related energy and water infrastructures), the costs per inhabitant varied between €3,360 and €5,200. The costs per inhabitant of additional alternatives, including renewable energy production solutions, were over €6,090. In addition, business models for such district renovations were analyzed. Developing a completely new business model for the Russian district renovations may be needed, since none of the identified models as such is suitable. Since some ESCO (Energy Service Company) activities have been realized in Russia, adapting modified Western ESCOs with well-defined financial guarantees could work in Russia. ISBN, ISSN ISBN 978-951-38-8186-3 (Soft back ed.) ISBN 978-951-38-8187-0 (URL: http://www.vtt.fi/publications/index.jsp) ISSN-L 2242-119X ISSN 2242-119X (Print) ISSN 2242-1203 (Online)