Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social capital and access to credit in post-conflict Lira, northern Uganda

Abstract This study builds on research about the importance of informal saving associations and social relations to understand the strategies employed by households in post-conflict situations to access financial capital. The study examines the impact of social capital on accessing loans among formerly displaced households in Lira district. The contributions of sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors for access to loans were investigated. Data were collected from March–July 2011 through interviews with 221 household heads and through field research observations. Consistent with our hypotheses, social capital was strongly associated with loan access. Multiple regression analyses revealed the influence of age, gender, and educational level of household heads, as well as the impact of land and livestock ownership, on accessing loans. Results of this study can inform the design of development programs that effectively address challenges associated with access to financial capital and promote sustainable livelihoods in post-conflict settings.
Modeling Time to First Malaria Using Spatially Correlated Conditional Autoregressive Frailty Model

Introduction: The burden of malaria is a major public health concern in Ethiopia. Its dynamics is being changed by construction of dams which serve either for hydroelectric or irrigation purpose in the region. This study aimed at examining the impact of hydroelectric dam on malaria transmission in southwestern Ethiopia using Spatially Correlated Conditional Autoregressive Frailty (CAR) model. Method: A two-year weekly basis longitudinal study was conducted among children less than 10 years of age in sixteen villages, in southwest Ethiopia. CAR frailty model that accommodates the clustering effect were fitted to the malaria data set. The parameters in the model were estimated under a Bayesian framework using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach. Results: Among 2040 children, 548 (26.9%) of them experienced malaria symptom in their blood samples during the study period. The minimum observed time for the first malaria infection was 4 days and the maximum was 698 days. The result reveals that the hazard of getting malaria infection is decreased by 5% for 1km distance away from the dam (HR=0.95, 95% CI: 0.88-0.99). Children aged > 3 years are more likely experienced malaria infection as compared to < 3 years of age. The result also showed that there is a marked clustering (Sigma=0.61 with 95% CI: 0.38 - 0.95) of villages in the study area. Hence the estimation of parameters with the assumption of neighborhood (Spatially Correlated CAR frailty model) was found to be parsimonious. Conclusions: Malaria control intervention program should consider the spatial variation of malaria transmission in order to get sustainable and efficient malaria control in the study area.
Consumer credit dependency: an experimental approach to measuring poverty and the impacts of welfare policy

of CONSUMER CREDIT DEPENDENCY: AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO MEASURING POVERTY AND THE IMPACTS OF WELFARE POLICY by Stephanie N. Monjaraz Consumer debt has risen at an average annual rate of 4.1 percent over the last 20 years and while that is not in itself shocking, when compared to the average annual growth of the family household income which has only grown by an annual average rate of 0.6 percent over the same time period the width of the gap between consumer debt and income growth is. Given this large outweigh, this study argues that the official poverty threshold should be revised and account for this modern debt conundrum. This study uses longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and estimates the effect specific welfare policies have on alternative poverty measures. We contribute to the literature by statistically evaluating a new experimental poverty measure, debt poor, which accounts for the negative impact interest payments, on non-mortgage debt, have on a household’s disposable income. The 17 welfare policies analyzed in this study directly impact poverty and are grouped into three categories: eligibility requirements, financial incentives to work, and time limits. State-level, household-level and women specific entity and time fixed effects were specified for over 7,000 households residing in 48
From Chip to Converter: A Complete Cost Model for Power Electronics Converters

The unified knowledge on power converter design and manufacturing technology establishes a powerful tool, where the cost and topology realization can be analyzed simultaneously. This paper collects the design practice and cost estimation of various components in a power electronics converter and unites that to a choice of the assembling and manufacturing processes and resulting cost of the complete converter. The outcome of this work specifies the power converter at predefined power level and cooling condition and demonstrates the cost drivers of the complete unit depending on production volumes. As a case study, the cost of an inverter for a full electric or hybrid vehicle application is estimated and the results are compared with figures available in the literature, yielding the conclusion that the validity of such figures is highly dependent on production volumes and power levels. The essence of this paper is a set of general, reliable, and fast design models and production charts, in accordance with realistic cost estimates for the sake of system optimization and development of cost effective electric drives from small series to large volumes.
Spécification du protocole MAC pour les réseaux IEEE 802.11e à différentiation de services sous contrainte de mobilité. (Specification of MAC protocol for quality of service in IEEE 802.11-based networks under mobility constraints)

Cette these a pour objectif de proposer de nouvelles approches d'ordonnancement, de cooperation et de gestion de la mobilite dans les reseaux sans fil de type IEEE 802.11. Le maintien de la qualite de service (QoS), au niveau MAC, represente la caracteristique fondamentale de ces approches. L'analyse des mecanismes existants nous a conduits a retenir le protocole EDCF, supportant la QoS, comme une base de travail pour l'ensemble de nos propositions. Dans le but de pallier certaines faiblesses du standard 802.11, une nouvelle architecture a base de multi-ordonnanceurs HCF-T, est proposee. Les performances obtenues sont exprimees en termes de gestion du trafic, de maintien du debit, d'elimination de collisions et de reduction de la charge du reseau. Ensuite, un schema cooperatif est presente et analyse. Il comporte une etude de deux protocoles de relayage AAF et DAF ainsi qu'une evaluation d'un ensemble de techniques de combinaison au niveau du recepteur. Concernant la problematique de la mobilite, nous avons retenu et analyse un scenario prenant en consideration les differentes situations rencontrees dans un modele reel. Un algorithme de resolution multi-couvertures est propose afin de traiter l'acces dans les zones de recouvrement. Cette etude a mene a distinguer trois regimes de mobilite : faible, moyen et fort. Les performances sont evaluees en fonction des metriques MAC et pour chaque mode de mobilite, un schema de synthese est etabli
0.04 Hz relative optical-frequency stability in a 1.5 mu m distributed-Bragg-reflector (DBR) laser

The optical frequency of a 1.5- mu m distributed-Bragg-reflector (DBR) laser is stabilized against that of a master laser by heterodyne-type frequency locking with a phase-locked loop (PLL). Despite the laser's wide linewidth of 16 MHz, stable PLL operation with an optical hold-in range of 26 GHz is realized, and residual frequency fluctuations are reduced to 0.04 Hz at an averaging time of 500 s. The combination of DBR laser and PLL is, therefore, suitable for frequency-controlled light sources. The offset error from the settled frequency caused by the bandlimited beat spectrum is discussed. <<ETX>>
Trypsin inhibitors in guinea pig plasma: isolation and characterization of contrapsin and two isoforms of alpha-1-antiproteinase and acute phase response of four major trypsin inhibitors.

Contrapsin and two isoforms, F (fast) and S (slow), of alpha-1-antiproteinase (also called alpha-1-proteinase inhibitor) were isolated in an apparently homogeneous state from plasma of inflamed guinea pigs. Contrapsin inactivated trypsin, but did not significantly affect chymotrypsin, pancreatic elastase, or pancreatic kallikrein. On the other hand, both isoforms of alpha-1-antiproteinase inhibited trypsin, chymotrypsin, and elastase, but not plasma or pancreatic kallikrein. The S isoform of alpha-1-antiproteinase was present in barely detectable amounts in healthy animals, but increased markedly when the acute-phase reaction was induced by subcutaneous injection of turpentine. On the other hand, the plasma levels of the F isoform, contrapsin, and alpha-macroglobulin showed moderate (1.5 to 2.3-fold) elevation during the acute-phase reaction. In contrast to the previous findings that rats and rabbits contain two different alpha-macroglobulins, one of which is an acute-phase reactant while the other is not, inflamed guinea pigs contained only one species of alpha-macroglobulin. Murinoglobulin, the most prominent acute-phase negative protein in both mice and rats, showed no significant change in guinea pigs. These results indicate that guinea pig plasma contains four major trypsin inhibitors, i.e., contrapsin, alpha-1-antiproteinase, alpha-macroglobulin, and murinoglobulin, the properties of which are very similar to those of the respective mouse homologues, but that the acute-phase response of these inhibitors differs greatly from that of the homologous proteins in rats or mice.
Convexity Adjustments and Forward Libor Model: Case of Constant Maturity Swaps

We investigate the theoretical and empirical difference between the standard convexity adjustment and Forward Libor Model in a particular case of two-period Constant Maturity Swaps. Using daily data from 1991 to 1997, we simulate the difference (spread) between the two-period CMS swap rates calculated by convexity adjustment and Forward Libor Model. The spread reaches 8.49 basis points in some cases, and correlation coefficients between spread and one-year, two-year cap volatilities are 0.8750 and 0.7939, respectively. Moreover, convexity adjustment yields CMS swap rates higher than Forward Libor Model does. Since the pricing using Forward Libor Model would be exact, we conclude that the convexity adjustment overestimates CMS swap rates. In this paper, we simulate two-period CMS swap, and it is reasonable to believe that the spread will be much bigger for longer period CMS swap or other convex instrument.
TRPC4 Knockdown Suppresses Epidermal Growth Factor-induced Store-operated Channel Activation and Growth in Human Corneal Epithelial Cells*

Epidermal growth factor (EGF) in corneal epithelial cells stimulates proliferation by inducing capacitative calcium entry (CCE). However, neither the identity nor the mechanism of activation of the plasma membrane influx pathway that mediates CCE is known. Accordingly, we determined, in human corneal epithelial cells, whether or not (i) CCE is dependent upon stimulation of storeoperated channel (SOC) activity, (ii) the canonical transient receptor potential (TRP) protein isoform TRPC4 is a component of such channels, and (iii) suppression of TRPC4 protein expression decreases EGF-induced stimulation of SOC activity and proliferation. The whole cell patch-clamp technique was used to monitor TRPC4-mediated stimulation of SOC activity following intracellular calcium store depletion and induction of CCE. TRPC4 small interfering RNA transfection suppressed TRPC4 protein expression. Reverse transcription-PCR and Western blot analysis were used to assess knockdown efficiency of mRNA and protein expression. [3H]Thymidine incorporation was used to evaluate EGF-in-duced mitogenesis. Ca2+ transients were measured by single-cell fluorescence imaging. TRPC4 knockdown decreased mRNA and protein expression by 89 and 87%, respectively. In these cells, EGF-induced SOC activation elicited by intracellular calcium store depletion was obviated; 2) EGF-induced CCE fell by 76%; 3) EGF-induced stimulation of SOC activity was eliminated; and 4) EGF-induced increases in proliferation fell by 54%. Thus, TRPC4 is a component of SOC in human corneal epithelial cells whose activation by EGF is requisite for an optimum mitogenic response to this growth factor.
Combining photometric and depth data for lightweight and robust visual odometry

This paper presents a visual odometry system for mobile robots that works on RGB-D data from a Kinect/Xtion class sensor, and reports experimental results of evaluating this system on publicly available data. The aim of the presented research was to build a lightweight RGB-D visual odometry system, which can run in real-time on-board of such robots as walking machines that have limited computing resources. The proposed approach is based on tracking FAST keypoints over a sequence of RGB frames to establish correspondences between the photometric features in selected keyframes of the RGB-D data stream, and then on using the readily available depth data to map these features into 3D coordinates. The approach is tested on publicly available data, demonstrating satisfying performance with very low requirements as to the computing resources.
Abnormal fatty acid metabolism in childhood spinal muscular atrophy

Our previous experience with abnormal fatty acid metabolism in several children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) prompted evaluation of fatty acid metabolism in a larger cohort. Thirty‐three infants with severe infantile SMA were shown to have a significantly increased ratio of dodecanoic to tetradecanoic acid in plasma compared with normal infants and 6 infants affected with equally debilitating, non‐SMA denervating disorders. Seventeen children with milder forms of SMA had normal fatty acid profiles. In addition, all 5 infants with severe SMA evaluated in a fasting state developed a distinctive and marked dicarboxylic aciduria, including saturated, unsaturated, and 3‐hydroxy forms, comparable in severity with the dicarboxylic aciduria of children with primary defects of mitochondrial fatty acid β‐oxidation. Nine children with chronic SMA and 23 control patients did not develop an abnormal dicarboxylic aciduria during fasting. No known disorder of fatty acid metabolism explains all of the abnormalities we find in SMA. Our data suggest, however, that the abnormalities are not a consequence of SMA‐related immobility, systemic illness, muscle denervation, or muscle atrophy. These abnormalities in fatty acid metabolism may be caused by changes in cellular physiology related to the molecular defects of the SMA‐pathogenic survival motor neuron gene or neighboring genes. Ann Neurol 1999;45:337–343
Online Signature Verification Based on Stable Features Extracted Dynamically

Effective information extraction and optimal feature subspace selection have great effects on the performance of online signature verification. One of the difficulties about online signature verification is to extract and select effective features, which are stable in genuine but discriminative to distinguish forgeries. Different from other works, stability of spectral information inherent in signatures is analyzed in this paper, and stable spectral information is selected dynamically dependent on individuals to reconstruct the stable spectral features. In order to extract more effective spectral information, features are decomposed by wavelet packet with the optimal mother wavelet. To enhance the security level of online signature verification, discriminative capabilities of stable spectral features are analyzed by factorial experiment design. The optimal feature subspace is selected according to contribution rate. Furthermore, we proposed a simple and effective modified dynamic time warping (DTW) with signature curves constraint to solve the problem of heavy computation of DTW. Several experiments are carried out on open access database of MCYT_DB1 and SVC2004 task2 which consist of 6600 signatures from 140 individuals in total. Experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed method.
The evolution of natriuretic peptide augmentation in management of heart failure and the role of sacubitril/valsartan

Heart failure (HF) is one of the leading causes of morbidity, mortality, and health care expenditures in the US and worldwide. For three decades, the pillars of treatment of HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) were medications that targeted the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS). Prior attempts to augment the natriuretic peptide system (NPS) for the management of HF failed either due to lack of significant clinical benefit or due to the unacceptable side effect profile. This review article will discuss the NPS, the failure of early drugs which targeted the NPS as therapies for HF, and the sequence of events which led to the development of sacubitril plus valsartan (Entresto; LCZ696; Novartis). LCZ696 has been shown to be superior to the standard of care available for treatment of HFrEF in several substantial hard endpoints including heart failure hospitalizations, cardiovascular mortality, and all-cause mortality.
Predation Response of Vibrio fischeri Biofilms to Bacterivorus Protists

ABSTRACT Vibrio fischeri proliferates in a sessile, stable community known as a biofilm, which is one alternative survival strategy of its life cycle. Although this survival strategy provides adequate protection from abiotic factors, marine biofilms are still susceptible to grazing by bacteria-consuming protozoa. Subsequently, grazing pressure can be controlled by certain defense mechanisms that confer higher biofilm antipredator fitness. In the present work, we hypothesized that V. fischeri exhibits an antipredator fitness behavior while forming biofilms. Different predators representing commonly found species in aquatic populations were examined, including the flagellates Rhynchomonas nasuta and Neobodo designis (early biofilm feeders) and the ciliate Tetrahymena pyriformis (late biofilm grazer). V. fischeri biofilms included isolates from both seawater and squid hosts (Euprymna and Sepiola species). Our results demonstrate inhibition of predation by biofilms, specifically, isolates from seawater. Additionally, antiprotozoan behavior was observed to be higher in late biofilms, particularly toward the ciliate T. pyriformis; however, inhibitory effects were found to be widespread among all isolates tested. These results provide an alternative explanation for the adaptive advantage and persistence of V. fischeri biofilms and provide an important contribution to the understanding of defensive mechanisms that exist in the out-of-host environment.
Ensuring social acceptance of the energy transition. The German government’s ‘consensus management’ strategy

ABSTRACT This study deals with the German Federal Government’s approach of ensuring public support for its ‘Energiewende’, the swift and complete transition to an energy system based on renewable sources. First, the government’s ‘consensus management’ strategy is described as consisting of four elements: the setup of stakeholder deliberation fora; the funding of organisations dedicated to the public promotion of the energy transition; public campaigns that appeal to people’s commitment and the support of research on energy technologies. The study then traces the need for a strong social mandate of the energy transition back to the scope of the regulatory challenge and the recently growing conflicts around implementation, to institutional constraints of a consensus democracy and to the narrative of ‘Energiewende’ as the ‘grand national task’.
Ankle antagonist coactivation in the double-support phase of walking: Stroke vs. healthy subjects

Abstract Introduction: Lesions in ipsilateral systems related to postural control in the ipsilesional side may justify the lower performance of stroke subjects during walking. Purpose. To analyze bilateral ankle antagonist coactivation during double support in stroke subjects. Methods: Sixteen (8 females; 8 males) subjects with a first isquemic stroke and 22 controls (12 females; 10 males) participated in this study. The double-support phase was assessed through ground reaction forces and the electromyography of ankle muscles was assessed in both limbs. Results: The ipsilesional limb presented statistically significant differences from the control when assuming specific roles during double support. The tibialis anterior and soleus pair was the one in which this atypical behavior was more pronounced. Conclusion: The ipsilesional limb presents a dysfunctional behavior when a higher postural control activity was demanded.
Epidemiology of Multiple Sclerosis in US Veterans

In previous papers of this series, we explored the epidemiology of MS, examining the effects of race, sex, geography, latitude and climate, migration, age at onset, population ancestry, and individual ethnicity on the risk of MS, using an unusually large cohort of MS cases and pre-illness matched controls comprising US veterans of World War II (WWII) and the Korean Conflict (KC). In this paper, we examine primarily the effect of other factors on the risk of MS in this cohort and their relation to those previously studied. We found here that latitude tier of residence at entry into active duty (EAD), years of education, and socioeconomic class (coded from occupation) were similarly associated with MS risk among white men, black men, and white women. Higher levels of each factor showed increased MS risk. Multivariate analyses indicated that for white male WWII subjects an urban address, 9 or more years of education, uncorrected visual acuity less than 20/20 at EAD, a more northern latitude, and a higher proportion of the subject's EAD state population reporting Swedish ancestry each significantly increased the risk of MS. White male KC subjects showed roughly the same patterns, except that uncorrected visual acuity less than 20/20 was associated with lower MS risk (ancestry/ethnicity was not studied). For black male WWII and KC subjects combined, a similar analysis (omitting ancestry/ethnicity) showed that only latitude at EAD and 9 or more years of education were independently associated with a significantly higher MS risk, and for WWII plus KC white women (also without ancestry/ethnicity), only latitude was a significant risk factor in these multivariate analyses. The smaller number of subjects, especially in these last two groups, limited the power to detect statistically significant risks in these last analyses. Similarities to white men of WWII in univariate analyses for all other groups suggest that findings for the former would otherwise apply to the latter. Although the interpretations of these associations may be obscure, in addition to geography, age, sex, and race, per se, higher socioeconomic status is significantly associated with higher MS risk in black and white men and in white women in the United States. NEUROLOGY 1997;48: 204-213