Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient Decision Fusion for Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Based on OR-rule

In this paper, we consider an efficient decision fusion technique for cooperative spectrum sensing based on the logical OR-rule for dynamic spectrum sharing among primary and secondary users (PUs and SUs, respectively). If the OR-rule is employed, the fusion center (FC) only needs to be informed if any of the local decisions is a "1". In this case, it may be a waste of resources to communicate each local decision in an orthogonal channel, as is commonly assumed. To reduce resource consumption, we consider that SUs with local decisions "1" transmit simultaneously in the same channel using continuous wave (CW) signaling, and that the FC declares that the PU is present if it detects the summed CWs. However, since phase synchronization may not be practical, the summed CWs may suffer from destructive interference. Theoretical analysis and simulation results indicate that even with a very large channel gain to noise power ratio (CNR) between the SUs and FC, the system may not achieve error-free signaling. To address this problem, we propose power control (PC) to reduce the effects of destructive interference. This technique makes it possible to guarantee that the CWs will not fully cancel each other. We also propose a phase shifting (PS) technique designed to improve worst-case detection performance by achieving diversity gain. These proposed methods are very simple and, although suboptimal, they provide good detection probabilities. Numerical results indicate that these proposals make it possible to practically attain the upper bound of error-free signaling, even with moderate CNR values.
Public Debt, Ownership and Power The Political Economy of Distribution and Redistribution

This dissertation offers the first comprehensive historical examination of the political economy of US public debt ownership. Specifically, the study addresses the following questions: Who owns the US public debt? Is the distribution of federal government bonds concentrated in the hands of a specific group or is it widely held? And what if the identities of those who receive interest payments on government bonds are distinct from those who pay the taxes that finance the interest payments on the public debt? Does this mean that the public debt redistributes income from taxpayers to public creditors? Who ultimately bears the burden of financing the public debt? Despite centuries of debate, political economists have failed to come to any consensus on even the most basic facts concerning ownership of the US public debt and its potential redistributive effects. Some claim that the public debt is heavily concentrated and that interest payments on government bonds redistribute income regressively from poor to rich. Others insist that the public debt has become very widely held and instead redistributes income progressively. The lack of consensus, I argue, boils down to both the empirical and theoretical problems that plague existing studies. Empirically, only a handful of studies have attempted to map the ownership pattern of US federal government bonds, and even fewer have made efforts to measure the redistributive effects associated with a given ownership pattern. And to make matters worse, those few studies that do attempt to map the pattern of US public debt ownership make little effort to theorize in any systematic way the distributive and redistributive dimensions of the public debt. Anchored within a ‘capital as power’ theoretical framework, my purpose in this is to shed some much-needed light on the dynamics of distribution and redistribution that lie at the heart of the public debt. I show for the household and corporate sectors how over the past three decades, and especially in the context of the current crisis, the ownership of federal bonds and federal interest has become rapidly concentrated in the hands of dominant owners, the top 1% of households and the 2,500 largest corporations. Over the same period the federal income tax system has done little to progressively redistribute the federal interest income received by dominant owners. In this way, this dissertation argues that, since the early 1980s, the public debt has come to reinforce and augment the power of those at the very top of the hierarchy of social power. [This thesis was nominated for the York University Dissertation Prize. ]
Entry of Listeria monocytogenes into hepatocytes requires expression of InIB, a surface protein of the internalin multigene family

The intracellular bacterium Listeria monocytogenes can invade several types of normally non‐phagocytic cells. Entry into cultured epithelial cells requires the expression of inIA, the first gene of an operon, comprising two genes: inIA, which encodes internalin, an 800‐amino‐acid protein, and inIB, which encodes a 630‐amino‐acid protein. Several genes homologous to inIA are detected in the genome of L. monocytogenes; InIB is one of them. We have assessed the role of inIB In invasiveness of L. monocytogenes by constructing isogenic chromosomal deletion mutants in the inIAB locus. Our findings indicate that: i) inIB is required for entry of L. monocytogenes into hepatocytes, but not into intestinal epithelial cells; ii) inIB encodes a surface protein; iii) internalin plays a role for entry into some hepatocyte cell lines. These results provide the first insight into the cell tropism displayed by L. monocytogenes.
Government Intervention in the Muda Irrigation Scheme, Malaysia: 'actors', expectations and outcomes

At the dawn of the third millennium the problems associated with large-scale irrigation lie largely unresolved. The outcomes of government policies rarely correspond with expectations, leading to conflict and misunderstanding between federal governments, local agencies and farmers. This paper examines the mis-match of expectations between policy implementors and policy recipients in the implementation of one government policy (tertiary intervention) in the Muda irrigation scheme, Malaysia. The findings illustrate that this policy is not achieving the productivity increase or water saving expectations for which it was designed. Instead, tertiary intervention has increased the capacity of the farmers to unofficially control the distribution and supply of the water resource and to engage in off-farm productive and non-productive activities. This results in: a significant over-supply of water; the inefficient use of this supply; and a reduction in yields without a reduction in incomes. Importantly, tertiary intervention has enabled the farmers to diversify their livelihood strategies whilst retaining access to the rice-farming culture. The findings presented in this paper serve to illustrate the significance of 'actor' expectations on policy outcomes and agrarian change.
Visual cortex of the grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis): Architectonic subdivisions and connections from the visual thalamus

Thalamic projections to the visual cortex of the grey squirrel were studied by retrograde degeneration in the lateral geniculate and the pulvinar nuclei. The lateral geniculate was found to project to architectonic area 17 which also corresponds to visual area I as defined by its retinotopic organization. The projection is spatially organized in a precise way, and for every cortical point there is a corresponding column in the lateral geniculate which extends from border to border. For the binocular sector of area 17 the lateral geniculate column lies in the trilaminar part of the lateral geniculate, while for the uniocular sector the column lies in the bilaminar sector of the lateral geniculate. The pulvinar projects to several architectonic areas, areas 18 and 19 and to two or more temporal areas below area 19. This projection is roughly topographic but follows the sustaining pattern. When the squirrel is compared to the tree shrew and hedgehog what emerges is a conception of those changes in the visual system which arose as a result of adaptation to an arboreal habitat.
Demand elasticities for farmed salmon in world trade

The generalised demand specification of Barten and Eales et al. is used to estimate the world demand curves faced by major exporters of farmed salmon. Results suggest that the demand for farmed salmon has become less price elastic over time, fresh salmon from the UK faces the most competition in world markets and fresh salmon from Chile the least. Promotion programmes sponsored by the Norwegian Seafood Export Council appear to have increased the demand for fresh salmon at the expense of frozen salmon. Although the estimated promotion effects are small, the programme appears to have been remunerative from the Norwegian producer perspective. Oxford University Press and Foundation for the European Review of Agricultural Economics 2009; all rights reserved. For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.
Knowledge Sourcing, Knowledge Bases, and the Spatial Organisation of Car Design

This paper analyses the geographical implications of having different types of knowledge bases—synthetic and symbolic—involved in one single but complex innovation process: car design. To do so, we investigated three contrasting car design strategies (Audi, Renault, and SAIC-GM) with the aim of exploring empirical regularities and the reasons underlying the links between knowledge bases, knowledge sourcing mechanisms, and resulting spatial configurations. Evidence suggests that when the synthetic knowledge base is dominant, formal collaboration and mobility are prime knowledge sourcing mechanisms. Moreover, knowledge creation and exchange is likely to occur between actors permanently located within the same region or through the temporary colocation of globally spread innovation partners. On the other hand, when symbolic knowledge is dominant, mobility, monitoring, and buzz turn to be the most relevant sourcing mechanisms, and knowledge creation and exchange are likely to occur within a more strictly local dimension (eg, in cities), through temporary colocation configurations (eg, presence in fairs and via temporary staff exchange), and by global scanning of competitors and trends.
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Center for Applied Financial Economics (CAFE) Theory and Practice of GVAR Modeling

The Global Vector Autoregressive (GVAR) approach has proven to be a very useful approach to analyze interactions in the global macroeconomy and other data networks where both the cross-section and the time dimensions are large. This paper surveys the latest developments in the GVAR modeling, examining both the theoretical foundations of the approach and its numerous empirical applications. We provide a synthesis of existing literature and highlight areas for future research.
Enterprise Culture Management in China: Insiders' Perspective

In this paper, I review the history and current practices of enterprise culture management in China from an insider's perspective. Based on a systematic analysis of case study reports on enterprise culture published in the academic and practitioners' journals, I analysed how enterprise culture was understood and implemented in organizations of different ownership forms. I also discuss the Chinese characteristics and the influence of Western management techniques in the manifestation of Chinese enterprise culture. I argue that the configuration of Chinese organizational culture is heavily influenced by societal culture, in that there is a relatively heavier focus on relationship management than on performance management, at least based on the rhetoric of the enterprise managers.
Notch signalling coordinates tissue growth and wing fate specification in Drosophila

During the development of a given organ, tissue growth and fate specification are simultaneously controlled by the activity of a discrete number of signalling molecules. Here, we report that these two processes are extraordinarily coordinated in the Drosophila wing primordium, which extensively proliferates during larval development to give rise to the dorsal thoracic body wall and the adult wing. The developmental decision between wing and body wall is defined by the opposing activities of two secreted signalling molecules, Wingless and the EGF receptor ligand Vein. Notch signalling is involved in the determination of a variety of cell fates, including growth and cell survival. We present evidence that growth of the wing primordium mediated by the activity of Notch is required for wing fate specification. Our data indicate that tissue size modulates the activity range of the signalling molecules Wingless and Vein. These results highlight a crucial role of Notch in linking proliferation and fate specification in the developing wing primordium.
What's Not in the Syllabus: Faculty Transformation, Role Modeling and Role Conflict in Immersion Service-Learning Courses.

Immersion service-learning courses provide increased opportunities for faculty and students to experience the transformational effects of service-learning. This paper focuses on the experiences of faculty and the responses of students who took part in several immersion service-learning courses taught between 2005 and 2007 during the Winter term at Elon University in North Carolina. Four major themes were identified as being significant in these immersion service-learning courses: 1) sharing living space impacts the student-faculty relationship, 2) immersion faculty leaders are placed in multiple roles with multiple opportunities for role modeling, 3) immersion faculty experience their own transformative learning, which often further complicates their roles as leaders, and 4) immersion faculty leaders often experience role conflict in maintaining leadership roles and assessing student work in immersion courses. We conclude that while the role conflicts must be negotiated faculty modeling service behavior may have stronger lessons for students and their future civic engagement than other on-campus service learning courses. Immersion service-learning describes courses where students and faculty participate together in a service project for an extended period of time, working together, living together and learning together. This experience generally takes place in a location apart from the usual teaching site, such as another country, state, or community. Immersion in a community over a period of time provides a depth of experience that one might not otherwise have in more traditional servicelearning courses where the student works a number of hours at the site and then goes home or back to the classroom. Most of the service-learning experiences represented in the literature describe these more traditional courses. This research suggests positive effects on students’ personal and social development, moral development, cultural understanding, leadership,
On the stability of endogenous growth models: An evaluation of the agents' response to output fluctuations

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present three modified versions of the simple AK endogenous growth model. Design/methodology/approach - Such frameworks stress the role of consumers' sentiment, the impact of fiscal policy and the effect of non-optimal investment decisions made by firms. In all the cases, today's decisions take into consideration the economic performance of the previous period; in the first case, households react pro-cyclically to the output path; in the second case, a counter-cyclical fiscal policy is considered; and in the third case, firms adopt a pro-cyclical behavior concerning investment choices. Findings - The author studies the stability properties of the three models and concludes that, on each one of them, a saddle-path stable equilibrium exists. Originality/value - The paper accentuates the relevance of the reaction of the economic agents relatively to the business cycle. By assuming that the behavior of consumers, government and firms is a behavior of reaction to economic fluctuations, we find interesting and relevant results in what concerns the conventional intertemporal optimization growth model.
Domestication Genomics of the Open-Pollinated Scarlet Runner Bean (Phaseolus coccineus L.)

The runner bean is a legume species from Mesoamerica closely related to common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). It is a perennial species, but it is usually cultivated in small-scale agriculture as an annual crop for its dry seeds and edible immature pods. Unlike the common bean, P. coccineus has received little attention from a genetic standpoint. In this work we aim to (1) provide information about the domestication history and domestication events of P. coccineus; (2) examine the distribution and level of genetic diversity in wild and cultivated Mexican populations of this species; and, (3) identify candidate loci to natural and artificial selection. For this, we generated genotyping by sequencing data (42,548 SNPs) from 242 individuals of P. coccineus and the domesticated forms of the closely related species P. vulgaris (20) and P. dumosus (35). Eight genetic clusters were detected, of which half corresponds to wild populations and the rest to domesticated plants. The cultivated populations conform a monophyletic clade, suggesting that only one domestication event occurred in Mexico, and that it took place around populations of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. No difference between wild and domesticated levels of genetic diversity was detected and effective population sizes are relatively high, supporting a weak genetic bottleneck during domestication. Most populations presented an excess of heterozygotes, probably due to inbreeding depression. One population of P. coccineus subsp. striatus had the greatest excess and seems to be genetically isolated despite being geographically close to other wild populations. Contrasting with previous studies, we did not find evidence of recent gene flow between wild and cultivated populations. Based on outlier detection methods, we identified 24 domestication-related SNPs, 13 related to cultivar diversification and eight under natural selection. Few of these SNPs fell within annotated loci, but the annotated domestication-related SNPs are highly expressed in flowers and pods. Our results contribute to the understanding of the domestication history of P. coccineus, and highlight how the genetic signatures of domestication can be substantially different between closely related species.
Occupational Exposures During Routine Activities in Coal-Fueled Power Plants

Limited information is available on occupational exposures during routine, nonoutage work activities in coal-fueled power plants. This study evaluated occupational exposures to the principal contaminants in the facilities, including respirable dust (coal dust), arsenic, noise, asbestos, and heat stress. The data were collected over a 3-month period, during the summer of 2001, in 5 facilities that were chosen to be representative of the coal-fueled power plants of a large southeastern power-generating company. Each of the facilities was divided into 5 similar exposure groups based on previous exposure assessments and job tasks performed. From 4 of the 5 facilities, 392 air samples and 302 noise samples were collected with approximately 50 respirable coal dust, 32 arsenic, 15 asbestos, and 70 noise samples from each of the 4 plants. One of the previously surveyed facilities was also evaluated for heat stress, and 1 additional coal-fueled power plant was surveyed for a total of 20 personal heat stress samples. Personal monitors and area WBGT monitors were used. Of the nearly 400 air samples collected, only 1 exceeded the allowable occupational exposure value. For the noise samples, 55 (∼ 18%) were equal to or greater than the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 8-hour hearing conservation program level of 85 dBA, and 12 (∼ 4%) were equal to or greater than the OSHA 8-hour permissible exposure level of 90 dBA. Heat stress monitoring at the facilities indicates that 26% of the 1-hour TWAs were exceeded for one or all of the recommended heat stress limits. The data also concluded that some work sites were above the heat stress ceiling values recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Four of the 20 employees personally monitored exceeded the recommended limits for heart rate or body core temperature. This suggests there is a potential for heat strain if signs and symptoms are ignored. Recommendations are made to better control the heat stress exposure.
A Wide-Angle Scanning Planar Phased Array with Pattern Reconfigurable Magnetic Current Element

A wide-angle scanning planar phased array with magnetic current elements is proposed. A pattern reconfigurable technique is used to design the element that enhances scanning gain and decreases the sidelobe level throughout the entire scanning range. The array is comprised of eight elements in a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2 \times 4$ </tex-math></inline-formula> arrangement with uniform spacing. The proposed phased array operates at 5.8 GHz and can scan with 3 dB beamwidth the entire upper ground elevation plane from −90° to +90° enabled by a two-step pattern reconfigurability mechanism consisting of: 1) coarse-angle scanning and 2) fine-angle scanning. Significant outcomes also include the reduced sidelobe level (less than 7.8 dB) and the particularly small fluctuation (±0.75 dB) of the gain during scanning over a scanning range of 150° (from −75° to +75° in the elevation plane). With the absence of any structure above the ground level, the high efficiency, and the coverage of the entire upper half-space, this proposed antenna array is very attractive for a variety of phased array applications, particularly those that require a flush-mounted structure.
Tracing Behçet's disease origins along the Silk Road: an anthropological evolutionary genetics perspective.

OBJECTIVES Behçet's disease is a multifactorial vasculitis that shows its highest prevalence in geographical areas historically involved in the Silk Road, suggesting that it might have originated somewhere along these ancient trade routes. This study aims to provide a first clue towards genetic evidence for this hypothesis by testing it via an anthropological evolutionary genetics approach. METHODS Behçet's disease variation at ancestry informative mitochondrial DNA control region and haplogroup diagnostic sites was characterised in 185 disease subjects of Italian descent and set into the Eurasian mitochondrial landscape by comparison with nearly 9,000 sequences representative of diversity observable in Italy and along the main Silk Road routes. RESULTS Dissection of the actual genetic ancestry of disease individuals by means of population structure, spatial autocorrelation and haplogroup analyses revealed their closer relationships with some Middle Eastern and Central Asian groups settled along the Silk Road than with healthy Italians. CONCLUSIONS These findings support the hypothesis that the Behçet's disease genetic risk has migrated to western Eurasia in parallel with ancestry components typical of Silk Road-related groups. This provided new insights that are useful to improve the understanding of disease origins and diffusion, as well as to inform future association studies aimed at properly accounting for the actual genetic ancestry of the examined Behçet's disease samples in order to minimise the detection of spurious associations and to improve the identification of genetic variants with actual clinical relevance.