Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
2 The effects of FDI on recipient countries in Central and Eastern Europe +

Literature on economic growth and FDI implies that FDI can facilitate growth of recipient economy via capital formation channel directly and via positive spillovers and inclusion into international productive and innovative networks indirectly. In this paper, the role of FDI in explaining growth is examined in two quantitative steps. In the first step, a bi-variate Granger causality test is used to examine whether FDI Granger causes growth, merchandise exports and imports. In the second step, growth equation with FDI as one of the explanatory variables is estimated based on panel data set for 11 transition economies in the period 1994-2002. The final results of the analysis imply that FDI is not statistically significant in explaining variation in the growth rates of the observed economies. The finding can be explained by the fact that FDI have not contributed to the capital formation strongly because they have dominantly flown into the observed economies as “brownfield” investments, moreover, they have been directed into service sector.
Adherence to dietary regimens. 2: Components of effective interventions.

Diet has an important impact not only on health but also on daily functioning, cognitive performance, and, perhaps, psychological well-being. Much is known about the specific dietary changes necessary to improve these factors, yet it becomes ever more clear that information about proper diet is rarely sufficient to change dietary behavior. Interventions aimed at changing diet must consider the typical dietary practices of the population in question and, as a corollary, must deal with the cultural obstacles to eating the "proper" foods. Psychological factors are paramount in setting the stage for dietary change. These include the individual's perception of being at risk, perceived benefits of a change in diet, confidence that the necessary change can be made, and the symbolic and real role food plays in a person's life. Nutrition education has traditionally focused on what changes should be made, and behavioral psychology has emphasized how to make the changes. These two fields must come together, and there must be recognition that nutrition education can provide necessary information, and behavioral change strategies can provide the necessary skills. There is now a considerable amount of information on strategies for nutrition education and on principles and techniques for behavioral change. Many intervention programs to alter dietary behavior have been undertaken. These have varied from programs aimed at an entire country, such as the National Cholesterol Education Program in the United States, to programs aimed at individuals. Although these vary considerably in size, strategy, and effects, collectively they yield valuable information on effective methods for changing behavior and for maintaining behavioral change. Programs that integrate behavioral procedures such as self-monitoring, stimulus control, coping skills, and relapse prevention appear to hold the most promise. Policy is an area that has received little attention as a means of changing dietary behavior. Government officials have made major efforts to enhance food safety, improve nutrition labeling on foods, and educate the public about a balanced diet. Much more may be possible, however. Financial incentives might be offered to increase production of healthy foods, thereby lowering cost and increasing availability. Legislation could govern food advertising and food availability (eg, vending machines) to which the entire population or selected groups (eg, children) are exposed. Existing studies on dietary adherence span different interventions, populations, disease targets, methods of evaluation, and other factors, so it is not surprising that results across studies are mixed. Enough of the studies have shown positive findings, however, to lead to the conclusion that meaningful dietary modification is possible, at least in some individuals making some dietary changes. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Cultural Diversity , Knowledge Diversity and Innovation

The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of cultural diversity on innovation. In doing so, the paper investigates the interaction effects between cultural diversity, knowledge diversity and knowledge regime in an organizational context, where actors interact and exchange knowledge through networks. The underlying premise of the paper is that, the impact of cultural diversity on innovation depends on both the technological opportunities prevalent in the industry, and also the diversity in the competencies among actors. An agent based simulation study is carried out. In the model, networks form and evolve through the interactions between agents, through which they learn. The model investigates both the structural characteristics of networks that evolve, and the knowledge growth in the population, corresponding to varying degrees of cultural diversity and knowledge diversity. The results reveal that the extent to which cultural diversity yields more learning depends on the characteristics of the knowledge regime, as well as the extent of knowledge diversity within the population. In particular, in intermediate degrees of technological opportunities, cultural diversity has a negative impact on innovation.
An overview of the determinants of CCR5 and CXCR4 co-receptor function.

IP: 54.70. 40.11 On: Tue, 11 Dec 2018 10:33:31 Journal of General Virology (2001), 82, 1807–1814. Printed in Great Britain .
OTPS: A decision support service for optimal airfare Ticket Purchase

Due to the fast development and wide application of Web technology, online purchases have become the main method to buy airfare tickets. Because information about pricing factors is unavailable, it is difficult for customers to buy airfare tickets at the lowest cost or even at a relatively lower cost. Although several approaches have been proposed to suggest the optimal timing for purchasing airfare tickets, these methods are based on predictions of tomorrow's price information. Clearly, local optimal decisions which rely solely on tomorrow's price prediction can be misleading or incorrect, resulting in missed opportunities to buy tickets at a lower cost in the future. In this paper, a novel Optimal airfare Ticket Purchase decision-support Service (OTPS) is proposed, which makes continuous recommendations on the best purchase time before the departure date. OTPS is based on the strategy of the Dynamic ratio of numbers of Potential days with Lower Price (DPLP), which takes the fluctuation tendency of airfare prices for a period into consideration. Specifically, parameter values of the model are set in a route-specific manner and updated periodically to enhance the generalization ability and reliability of OTPS. Extensive experiments are conducted on the real-world ticket price dataset of multiple routes. The experimental results prove that OTPS shows superiority over other state-of-the-art solutions.
Analisis Kinerja Reksa Dana Pendapatan Tetap, Reksa Dana Saham, dan Reksa Dana Campuran (Studi Di Bursa Efek Indonesia – BEI)

This study aims to determine the differentiation of the performance of fixed income mutual funds, equity mutual funds, and mix mutual funds of aspects of real returns. Studies conducted in the Indonesia Stock Exchange – IDX for longitudinal data in 2013 at the condition of macroeconomic weakened by indications the high inflation rate, followed by the increase in the BI rate, the weakening of the rupiah on the US Dollar, and the issue of debt Cailing and tapering off planned by the FED, Data were analyzed descriptively and hypothesis was tested by Kruskal Wallis k-samples. The analysis showed that the performance of equity mutual funds posted positive results and relatively higher than mix mutual fund, while fixed income mutual funds recorded a negative result but thin adrift of the two other mutual funds. However, statistically at 95% confidence interval, performance fixed income mutual funds, equity mutual funds, and mix mutual funds of aspects of the real return is not significantly different, where the average performance of the three mutual funds are under Composite Stock Price Index.Keywords: performance; mutual funds; real return.
Confidence Score of ARTIST-5 Ionogram Autoscaling

1 Background: ARTIST Autoscaling and its Quality Control . 2 0/1 Autoscaling Confidence Level (ACL) and ADEP Merit Check . 2 Two-digit C-Level . 2 QUALSCAN . 3 ARTIST-5 Confidence Score Evaluation . 4 Concepts for Selecting Quality Criteria . 4 Quality control of interim autoscaling steps . 4 Use of NHPC per-point-error to detect unreasonable trace shapes . 4 Automatic detection of disturbed ionospheric conditions . 4 Separate analysis of Oand X-polarization data . 4 No detection of outliers . 4 Evaluation of ARTIST-5 Confidence Score . 5 Access to Confidence Metrics . 5 Acknowledgement . 7 References . 7
pot addressing for microarray images structured in exagonal grids

In this work, an efficient method for spot addressing in images, which are generated by the scanning of hexagonal structured microarrays, is proposed. Initially, the blocks of the image are separated using the projections of the image. Next, all the blocks of the image are processed separately for the detection of each spot. The spot addressing procedure begins with the detection of the high intensity objects, which are probably the spots of the image. Next, the Growing Concentric Hexagon algorithm, which uses the properties of the hexagonal grid, is introduced for the detection of the non-hybridized spots. Finally, the Voronoi diagram is applied to the centers of the detected spots for the gridding of the image. The method is evaluated using spots generated from the scanning of the Beadchip of Illumina,
Analysis & Visualization of EHR Patient Portal Clickstream Data

The purpose of this paper is the analysis of EHR clickstream data for patient portal to determine patient usage behavior by analyzing patterns found in the data. Clickstream data retains vital information trail of patient’s usage. Utilizing directed and undirected data mining techniques for data exploration and then visualizing specific patterns provide valuable information about how a patient utilizes these services. The information can help service providers to understand the demographics and behavioral aspects of the patients to develop, enhance and improve their systems to make the best use for these portals.
Effects of alkaline hydrogen peroxide treatment of wheat straw on site and extent of digestion in sheep.

Two experiments (4 X 4 Latin squares) were conducted, using four multiple-cannulated wethers (mean body weight, 65 kg), to determine effects of treating wheat straw (WS) with alkaline solutions (pH 11.5) of hydrogen peroxide (AHP; .26 g hydrogen peroxide/g WS) on site and extent of nutrient digestion in sheep. Diets contained either 33 to 37% (low WS) or 70 to 72% (high WS) AHP-treated (T) or non-treated (C) WS. Treatment of WS with AHP resulted in increased acid detergent fiber and cellulose concentrations and decreased acid detergent lignin (ADL) concentrations compared with non-treated WS. In Exp. 1, intakes were held constant at approximately 1,044 g dry matter (DM)/d. When fed AHP-treated WS diets, wethers digested more (P less than .05) DM, neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and cellulose in the stomach (54.8, 47.4, 51.6 and 20.0%; 65.6, 68.8, 51.5 and 37.2%; 66.6, 74.2, 45.2 and 40.7% of intake, respectively, for low WS-T, high WS-T, low WS-C and high WS-C diets) and in the total tract (83.0, 74.8, 68.4 and 50.0%; 81.8, 81.0, 53.9 and 42.1%; 85.2, 86.9, 50.2 and 47.6%, respectively, for the low WS-T, high WS-T, low WS-C and high WS-C diets), and had lower (P less than .05) ruminal pH than when fed the non-treated WS diets. In Exp. 2, the same wethers were fed diets similar to those fed in Exp. 1, but at ad libitum intake. Wethers consumed less (P less than .05) feed when fed the high WS-C diet than when fed the other three diets (2,234, 2,526, 2,271 and 1,297 g/d for the low WS-T, high WS-T, low WS-C and high WS-C diets, respectively). Digestibilities of DM, NDF and cellulose were higher (P less than .05) when sheep were fed the treated WS diets than when fed the non-treated WS diets (82.7, 70.7, 68.4 and 58.0%; 78.6, 72.9, 49.4 and 51.6%; 78.0, 84.0, 53.8 and 37.5%, respectively, for the low WS-T, high WS-T, low WS-C and high WS-C diets). Fluid and particulate dilution rates in the rumen were higher (P less than .08) when wethers consumed AHP-treated WS diets compared with non-treated WS diets (8.21, 8.56, 6.96 and 6.81%/h; 6.06, 6.73, 4.05 and 3.15%/h, respectively, for the low WS-T, high WS-T, low WS-C and high WS-C diets). The AHP treatment was successful in overcoming the major barriers to microbial degradation of WS in the gastrointestinal tract of wethers.
Immunomodulating action of low intensity millimeter waves on primed neutrophils

Comparative investigation of the susceptibility of intact and primed neutrophils of the NMRI strain mice to low intensity millimeter wave (mm wave) irradiation (41.95 GHz) was performed. The specific absorption rate was 0.45 W/kg. Isolated neutrophils were primed by a chemotactic peptide N‐formyl‐methionyl‐leucyl‐phenylalanine (fMLP) at a subthreshold concentration of 10 nM for 20 min, and then the cells were activated by 1 μM fMLP. Production of the reactive oxygen species (ROS) was estimated by the luminol dependent chemiluminescence technique. It was found that the preliminary mm wave irradiation of the resting cells at 20 °C did not act on the ROS production induced by the chemotactic peptide. The exposure of the primed cells results in a subsequent increase in the fMLP response. Therefore, the primed neutrophils are susceptible to the mm waves. Specific inhibitors of the protein kinases abolished the mm wave effect on the primed cells. The data indicate that protein kinases actively participate in transduction of the mm wave signal to effector molecules involved in neutrophil respiratory burst. Bioelectromagnetics 23:599–606, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Welfare Measures with Risk: Do Distributions Matter?

Mortality risks from exposure to many common environmental contaminants are often difficult to know with certainty, leading some people to form different perceptions of those risks. Recent work by Hurley and Shogren (2005) and Hill, Perry and Willis (2005) suggest that subjects often base their assessment of uncertain risks on the mode, rather than the mean, of the distribution pertaining to the risk. In this paper we test this modal response hypothesis (MRH) in the context of willingness to pay to reduce an uncertain environmental risk. We meld the random-utility framework typically used in transportation studies and non-market valuation with the MRH to form a modal random-utility model (MRUM). We show that the MRUM includes information about the general shape, including skewness, of the risk distribution that are ignored in models that simply use the mean and variance of risk as determinants of WTP to reduce risk or uncertainty. Thus, the MRUM is potentially a superior statistical model to the mean-variance model, especially when risk distributions are asymmetric. JEL Codes: Q510, Q530, D810
Transmission Dynamics and Molecular Characterization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Isolates with Low Copy Numbers of IS6110

ABSTRACT Population-based analysis of Mycobacterium tuberculosistransmission in Houston, Tex. , over 5 years identified 377 patients infected with an isolate containing one to four copies of IS6110. The isolates were analyzed by spoligotyping and assigned to one of three major genetic groups based on nucleotide polymorphisms in codons katG 463 and gyrA 95. Prospectively obtained patient interviews were reviewed to assess epidemiologic links between apparently clustered patients. A total of 13 groups of isolates with the same IS6110 profile were identified, representing 326 of the 377 patients (86.5%; range 2 to 113 patients). In contrast, 28 groups of isolates containing 334 patients (88.6%) had the same spoligotype (range, 2 to 143 patients). Combination of IS6110 profile and spoligotype data identified 31 clusters with 300 patients (79.6%; range, 2 to 82 patients). All 377 isolates belonged to major genetic group 1 (77 patients) or genetic group 2 (300 patients); no major genetic group 3 isolates were identified. Among the 228 patients interviewed, 33 patients (14.5%) were directly linked to another patient in the same cluster. Possible epidemiologic links were also found among 11 patients. Moreover, many clusters consisted of individuals with the same ethnicity. In conclusion, we confirmed that IS6110profiling and spoligotyping together provide enhanced molecular discrimination of M. tuberculosis isolates with low copy numbers of IS6110. Identification of epidemiologic links among some of the patients verified that the combination of these two methods reliably indexes tuberculosis transmission.
A fuzzy based load frequency control for distribution network connected with mini hydro power plant

Mini hydro power plants MHPP are gaining attraction as a cost effective source for rural electrification in developing countries due to its environmental friendly operation. These MHPP plants suffer from the speed control problem due to continuous load variation. PID controllers fail to provide optimum speed control due to its limitation of parameter tuning. Alternatively, Fuzzy logic control is commonly used for implementing intelligent control for the nonlinear system. This paper presents a new fuzzy logic based governor for frequency/speed regulation of MHPP for implementation in distribution network. For verification, the response of load frequency control using fuzzy based governor and PID based governor is compared. The simulation results show that fuzzy based governor ensures robust control by improving the frequency response as well as dynamic response in comparison to PID based governor. Furthermore, fuzzy based governor enables the generator to continuously supply power even at 25% load variation whereas generator with PID based governor fails to supply power even at 20% load variation.
Data Rate Fairness Cooperative Beamforming Techniques for Cognitive Radio Systems in the Presence of Asynchronous Interferences

In this paper, we develop a data rate fairness optimal cooperative beamforming technique for a cognitive radio system with multiple secondary receivers (SRs) and multiple primary receivers (PRs) in the presence of asynchronous interferences. In particular, the data rate fairness beamforming design is formulated as an optimization problem to maximize the minimum data rate of the SRs subject to transmission power constraints at the secondary cooperative transmitters (SCTs) and asynchronous interference power constraints at the PRs. The optimal beamforming design is a quadratically constrained quadratic program max-min optimization problem, which is non-convex and non-linear. Therefore, we reformulate the optimal beamforming design as a quasi-convex problem using the semidefinite program (SDP) relaxation, which can be solved using the SDP solvers and bisection method. The complexity of the optimal beamforming scheme stands against its practical implementation. So, we study important properties of the optimization problem. By exploiting these properties, we also propose low complexity suboptimal beamforming techniques. Furthermore, we extend the beamforming techniques to incorporate the uncertainties in channel and propagation delay estimation between SCTs and PRs.
Factors Affecting the Performance of Sales Personnel of Insurance Companies in Ghana

In this study, the primary objective was to investigate the factors that affect the performance ofsales personnel of insurance companies, with specific focus on factors such as motivation and resourcefulness of the sales person. Using descriptive survey methodology, data was collected from sales personnel of ten insurance companies in Ghana. Findings suggest that motivation is a key factor influencing the performance of insurance sales personnel.
Reducing Trust When Trust Is Essential

Trust is unavoidable in many complex systems. As users demand more functionality and convenient access, there is often a point at which a systems designer has no choice but to ask clients to place some level of trust in one participant in the system, be it a key management server or even just the integrity of some external hardware. This is in contrast to many cryptographic functionalities that will either perform as expected, or at least remain secure, without a client having to trust anything but their own integrity. The main focus of this thesis is to conduct a thorough analysis of two settings in which trust is essential and find new dimensions in which to reduce the amount of trust the participants are asked to put in the system for it to function as expected. First, we analyze remote storage where a third party is trusted to store and do access control on a client's data. Second, we study what additional assumptions are necessary in order to circumvent impossibility of fully secure MPC without an honest majority.
Effectiveness of Head-Mounted Vibrotactile Stimulation in Subjects With Bilateral Vestibular Loss: A Phase 1 Clinical Trial

Objective: Evaluate the effectiveness of a head-mounted vibrotactile prosthesis for balance improvement in subjects with severe bilateral vestibular loss (BVL). Study Design: Crossover study. Setting: Academic tertiary care vestibular function test center. Patients: Five subjects with severe BVL as defined by video-oculography, rotational chair, and computerized dynamic posturography criteria. Intervention: Vibrotactile head tilt feedback Main Outcome Measures: Change in Sensory Organization Test (SOT) Conditions 5 and 6 performance (fall-no fall, time to fall, strategy analysis) and dynamic subjective visual vertical (DSVV) response. Results: 1) Significant improvement in binary fall-no fall ratio on SOT 5 and SOT 6 combined (&khgr;2 = 9.603, df = 1, p = 0.001); 2) Significant increase in time to fall measurements on SOT 5 (p < 0.001) and SOT 6 (p < 0.01; 1-tailed t test); 3) Nonsignificant improvement in strategy scores on SOT 5 (p = 0.156) and SOT 6 (p = 0.259; 1-tailed t test); and 4) No significant effect during eccentric DSVV testing (analysis of variance). Conclusion: Head-mounted vibrotactile stimulation produced significant improvement in postural stability in subjects with BVL undergoing SOT 5 and 6 testing with no effect on subjective visual vertical during DSVV testing.
Design of a low voltage DC grid interfacing PV and energy storage systems

A design of a Photovoltaic (PV) power system architecture with energy storage system for low voltage DC grid applications is presented in this paper. The system components include the following: PV panels with non-isolated dc-dc interleaved boost converters, batteries with non-isolated bidirectional buck converters. The PV converter is controlled using perturb & observe for maximum power point tracking. The batteries' converter is controlled to regulate the DC bus voltage. These parts are linked together with the utility grid through a 600V DC bus. An energy management system is used to control the power flow between the system components. As an example for the low voltage DC grid system integration; a total number of 1,008 panels can be installed on the rooftop of a selected building, with a total power of 320kWp. Different scenarios are considered for the connections of both PV and batteries. A scaled-down experimental prototype, for the PV system with an energy storage system, is used to validate the presented concept.