Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Grass Roots War on Poverty

Sub-Saharan Africa's failure to slay the dragon of poverty is due to a logical flaw in its policies: the remedies to reduce poverty don't address the causes. Poverty is caused by unemployment, owing to a scarcity of jobs that pay above bare subsistence, but grass-roots poverty alleviation measures are exclusively designed to make job-seekers more capable although no jobs are available. The 'appropriate' technologies of the grass roots movement that dominates anti-poverty policies are oriented towards consumption, ignoring production jobs. Poverty persists from low productivity in agriculture or outright landlessness. Irrigation and rural electrification are required to facilitate economic diversification into non-agricultural work. Yet irrigation and electrification require central political coordination and application of modern science and technology. Centralized decision- making is low on the agenda of the anti-poverty movement, with deep roots at the local level. To create employment requires capital investments to expand entrepreneurial opportunities and increase productive jobs. The most successful countries to grapple with poverty have 'scaled up,' not down; Big, not Small, is Beautiful. The statistical evidence for a large number of developing countries strongly supports the hypothesis of a trickle down effect, not a bottom up effect as the best way to beat poverty.
Results from a Second Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer Observation of the Coma Cluster

The Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer satellite observed the Coma Cluster for ~177 ks during 2000 November and December, a second observation motivated by the intriguing results from the first ~87 ks observation in 1996. Analysis of the new data set confirms that thermal emission from isothermal gas does not provide a good fit to the spectral distribution of the emission from the inner 1° radial region. While the observed spectrum may be fitted by emission from gas with a substantial temperature gradient, it is more likely that the emission also includes a secondary nonthermal component. If so, nonthermal emission comprises ~8% of the total 4-20 keV flux. Interpreting this emission as due to Compton scattering of relativistic electrons (which produce the known extended radio emission) by the cosmic microwave background radiation, we determine that the mean, volume-averaged magnetic field in the central region of Coma is B ~ 0.1-0.3 μG.
Adaptive Locomotor Plasticity in Chronic Spinal Cats after Ankle Extensors Neurectomy

After lateral gastrocnemius–soleus (LGS) nerve section in intact cats, a rapid locomotor compensation involving synergistic muscles occurs and is accompanied by spinal reflex changes. Only some of these changes are maintained after acute spinalization, indicating the involvement of descending pathways in functional recovery. Here, we address whether the development of these adaptive changes is dependent on descending pathways. The left LGS nerve was cut in three chronic spinal cats. Combined kinematics and electromyographic (EMG) recordings were obtained before and for 8 d after the neurectomy. An increased yield at the ankle was present early after neurectomy and, as in nonspinal cats, was gradually reduced within 8 d. Compensation involved transient changes in step cycle structure and a longer term increase in postcontact medial gastrocnemius (MG) EMG activity. Precontact MG EMG only increased in one of three cats. In a terminal experiment, the influence of group I afferents from MG and LGS on stance duration was measured in two cats. LGS effectiveness at increasing stance duration was largely decreased in both cats. MG effectiveness was only slightly changed: increased in one cat and decreased in another. In cat 3, the plantaris nerve was cut after LGS recovery. The recovery time courses from both neurectomies were similar (p > 0.8), suggesting that this spinal compensation is likely a generalizable adaptive strategy. From a functional perspective, the spinal cord therefore must be considered capable of adaptive locomotor plasticity after motor nerve lesions. This finding is of prime importance to the understanding of functional plasticity after spinal injury.
Globalization and the Knowledge-Driven Economy

The study implements the Schumpeterian notion of creative reaction to articulate and test the hypothesis that the shift to the knowledge economy in advanced economies is the result of the creative reaction of firms, caught in out-of-equilibrium conditions by the fast globalization of product and factor markets since the last decade of the 20th century. Advanced countries specialized in the generation and exploitation of knowledge because of its relative abundance stemming from their sophisticated knowledge governance mechanisms and the large stock of knowledge. In turn, this had strong positive effects on total factor productivity. The empirical analysis confirms that in advanced economies the specialization in knowledge-based activities substituted for the previous specialization in mass manufacturing activities supporting the increase of total factor productivity. The new specialization in knowledge-intensive activities has been stronger in cases where patent activities have been more intense and the exposure to international trade and the revenue per capita have been larger.
Does home ownership really cause unemployment? Evidence from German regional data

Using German regional data for 1998, 2002 and 2006, this study reexamines the Oswald hypothesis, the conjecture that high levels of home ownership are linked to inferior outcomes in regional labor markets. Applying a set of controls for regional unemployment rates, three dierent econometric models are specified and estimated: a cross-sectional model, a pooled data model, and a model taking into account unobserved time-invariant eects on regional unemployment rates. It is found that the link between home ownership and unemployment levels is inverse in cross-section but positive in panel estimations. The economic significance of the relationship is small in both cases, however. Factors like average labor productivity, participation, export orientation and human capital endowment seem to dominate the impact of home ownership on unemployment in German regions.
Do resource consent announcements provide valuable information

Purpose – Investor access to timely, financial resource consent information is problematic, consequently the purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic importance of New Zealand resource consent announcements to the stock exchange.Design/methodology/approach – The authors apply event study methodology and cross‐sectional rank regression using a sample of resource consent announcements from 1993 to 2007.Findings – Evidence of excess return volatility is found both on and before resource consent announcement dates. The results show that stock market reactions to resource consent announcements are positive for news of successes and negative for news of setbacks. Uncertainty associated with resource consent announcements appears to contribute to a delayed negative market response. In contrast, price reactions to announcements of resource consent success are immediate and significantly positive only when the news is concurrently disseminated via the media.Research limitations/implications – The findi.
A Measure of Syntactic Flexibility for Automatically Identifying Multiword Expressions in Corpora

Natural languages contain many multi-word sequences that do not display the variety of syntactic processes we would expect given their phrase type, and consequently must be included in the lexicon as multiword units. This paper describes a method for identifying such items in corpora, focussing on English verb-noun combinations. In an evaluation using a set of dictionary-published MWEs we show that our method achieves greater accuracy than existing MWE extraction methods based on lexical association.
Efficient pitch detection algorithms for pitched musical instrument sounds: A comparative performance evaluation

Pitch detection of an audio signal is an interesting research topic in the field of speech signal processing. Pitch is one of the most important perceptual features, as it conveys much information about the audio signal. It is closely related to the physical feature of fundamental frequency f0. For musical instrument sounds, the f0 and the measured pitch can be considered equivalent. In this paper four pitch detection algorithms have been proposed for pitched musical instrument sounds. The goal of this paper is to investigate how these algorithms should be adapted to pitched musical instrument sounds analysis and to provide a comparative performance evaluation of the most representative state-of-the-art approaches. This study is carried out on a large database of pitched musical instrument sounds, comprising four types of pitched musical instruments violin, trumpet, guitar and flute. The algorithmic performance is assessed according to the ability to estimate pitch contour accurately.
Identification of protein N-termini in Cyanophora paradoxa cyanelles: transit peptide composition and sequence determinants for precursor maturation

Glaucophyta, rhodophyta, and chloroplastida represent the three main evolutionary lineages that diverged from a common ancestor after primary endosymbiosis. Comparative analyses between members of these three lineages are a rich source of information on ancestral plastid features. We analyzed the composition and the cleavage site of cyanelle transit peptides from the glaucophyte Cyanophora paradoxa by terminal amine labeling of substrates (TAILS), and compared their characteristics to those of representatives of the chloroplastida. Our data show that transit peptide architecture is similar between members of these two lineages. This entails a comparable modular structure, an overrepresentation of serine or alanine and similarities in the amino acid composition around the processing peptidase cleavage site. The most distinctive difference is the overrepresentation of phenylalanine in the N-terminal 1–10 amino acids of cyanelle transit peptides. A quantitative proteome analysis with periplasm-free cyanelles identified 42 out of 262 proteins without the N-terminal phenylalanine, suggesting that the requirement for phenylalanine in the N-terminal region is not absolute. Proteins in this set are on average of low abundance, suggesting that either alternative import pathways are operating specifically for low abundance proteins or that the gene model annotation is incorrect for proteins with fewer EST sequences. We discuss these two possibilities and provide examples for both interpretations.
Nitric Oxide Stimulates Macrophage Inflammatory Protein-2 Expression in Sepsis1

NO is a crucial mediator of the inflammatory response, but its in vivo role as a determinant of lung inflammation remains unclear. We addressed the in vivo role of NO in regulating the activation of NF-κB and expression of inflammatory proteins using an in vivo mouse model of sepsis induced by i.p. injection of Escherichia coli. We observed time-dependent degradation of IκB and activation of NF-κB accompanied by increases in inducible NOS, macrophage inflammatory protein-2 (MIP-2), and ICAM-1 expression after E. coli challenge, which paralleled the ability of lung tissue to produce high-output NO. To determine the role of NO in this process, mice were pretreated with the NO synthase (NOS) inhibitor NG-methyl-l-arginine. Despite having relatively modest effects on NF-κB activation and ICAM-1 or inducible NOS expression, the NOS inhibitor almost completely inhibited expression of MIP-2 in response to E. coli challenge. These responses were associated with the inhibition of migration of neutrophils in lung tissue and increased permeability induced by E. coli. In mice pretreated with NG-methyl-l-arginine, coadministration of E. coli with the NO donor (Z)-1-[N-(2-aminoethyl)-N-(2-ammonioethyl)amino]diazen-1-ium-1,2-diolate substantially restored MIP-2 expression but decreased ICAM-1 expression. The results suggest that NO generated after administration of E. coli serves as an important proinflammatory signal to up-regulate MIP-2 expression in vivo. Thus, NO production in high quantities may be important in the mechanism of amplification of the lung inflammatory response associated with sepsis.
Growth Inhibition of Re-Challenge B16 Melanoma Transplant by Conjugates of Melanogenesis Substrate and Magnetite Nanoparticles as the Basis for Developing Melanoma-Targeted Chemo-Thermo-Immunotherapy

Melanogenesis substrate, N-propionyl-cysteaminylphenol (NPrCAP), is selectively incorporated into melanoma cells and inhibits their growth by producing cytotoxic free radicals. Magnetite nanoparticles also disintegrate cancer cells and generate heat shock protein (HSP) upon exposure to an alternating magnetic field (AMF). This study tested if a chemo-thermo-immunotherapy (CTI therapy) strategy can be developed for better management of melanoma by conjugating NPrCAP on the surface of magnetite nanoparticles (NPrCAP/M). We examined the feasibility of this approach in B16 mouse melanoma and evaluated the impact of exposure temperature, frequency, and interval on the inhibition of re-challenged melanoma growth. The therapeutic protocol against the primary transplanted tumor with or without AMF exposure once a day every other day for a total of three treatments not only inhibited the growth of the primary transplant but also prevented the growth of the secondary, re-challenge transplant. The heat-generated therapeutic effect was more significant at a temperature of 43°C than either 41°C or 46°C. NPrCAP/M with AMF exposure, instead of control magnetite alone or without AMF exposure, resulted in the most significant growth inhibition of the re-challenge tumor and increased the life span of the mice. HSP70 production was greatest at 43°C compared to that with 41°C or 46°C. CD8+T cells were infiltrated at the site of the re-challenge melanoma transplant.
A scheme for disaster recovery in wireless networks with dynamic ad-hoc routing

This paper proposes a hybrid network scheme combining ad-hoc networks into cellular networks. The scheme is aimed to help the networks to recover to service as much as possible after a disaster strike, by maintaining the connection between Base Stations (BSs) and nodes via multi-hopping, where if a node cannot connect to a BS directly, it switches its working mode from cellular mode to ad-hoc mode. A location-based routing protocol has been proposed for building a route from the node to the BS. Simulation results shows that even if only a small part of the nodes can directly connect to a BS, most of the nodes can find a route to a BS via multi-hopping. And it is found that it outperforms a previously proposed solution which is via beaconing in terms of resistance to mobility.
DATA TRANSMISSION WITH GBITS SPEED USING CMOS BASED INTEGRATED CIRCUITS FOR OPTO-ELECTRONIC INTERFACES AND APPLICATIONS

The performance of the data transmission using the principle of the optical communication can be enhanced further simply by increasing both the wavelength count and bit rate per channel, so as to improve the utilization of the optical fiber bandwidth. This approach in turn requires the most suitable device structures and the technologies for both opto-electronic transducers and the associated driving electronics circuitry. The number of transistor stages required between the power and ground rails is only two so that the minimum supply voltage required is one threshold voltage plus one pinch-off voltage. The pre-amplifier is a balanced two-stage configuration such that the effect of bias-dependent mismatches is minimized. A new inductive series-peaking technique has been introduced so as to enhance the bandwidth by utilizing the resonance characteristics of LC networks. In addition to this arrangement, a new negative differential current feedback technique has been put forward for the discussion so as to boost the bandwidth of the system and to reduce the value of peaking inductors. This pre-amplifier circuit has been implemented in TSMC 0.18 µm, 1.8 V, 6-metal mixed mode CMOS technology and is analyzed using Spectre from Cadence Design Systems with BSIM3v3 device models. For an optical front-end with a 0.3 pF photodiode capacitance, simulation results demonstrate that the pre-amplifier has bandwidth of 3.5 GHz and provides a trans-impedance gain of 66 dB. The total chip area is approximately 1 mm 2 and the DC power consumption is about 85 mW
Interference of Quorum Sensing by Delftia sp. VM4 Depends on the Activity of a Novel N-Acylhomoserine Lactone-Acylase

Background Turf soil bacterial isolate Delftia sp. VM4 can degrade exogenous N-acyl homoserine lactone (AHL), hence it effectively attenuates the virulence of bacterial soft rot pathogen Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. carotovorum strain BR1 (Pcc BR1) as a consequence of quorum sensing inhibition. Methodology/Principal Findings Isolated Delftia sp. VM4 can grow in minimal medium supplemented with AHL as a sole source of carbon and energy. It also possesses the ability to degrade various AHL molecules in a short time interval. Delftia sp. VM4 suppresses AHL accumulation and the production of virulence determinant enzymes by Pcc BR1 without interference of the growth during co-culture cultivation. The quorum quenching activity was lost after the treatment with trypsin and proteinase K. The protein with quorum quenching activity was purified by three step process. Matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) and Mass spectrometry (MS/MS) analysis revealed that the AHL degrading enzyme (82 kDa) demonstrates homology with the NCBI database hypothetical protein (Daci_4366) of D. acidovorans SPH-1. The purified AHL acylase of Delftia sp. VM4 demonstrated optimum activity at 20–40°C and pH 6.2 as well as AHL acylase type mode of action. It possesses similarity with an α/β-hydrolase fold protein, which makes it unique among the known AHL acylases with domains of the N-terminal nucleophile (Ntn)-hydrolase superfamily. In addition, the kinetic and thermodynamic parameters for hydrolysis of the different AHL substrates by purified AHL-acylase were estimated. Here we present the studies that investigate the mode of action and kinetics of AHL-degradation by purified AHL acylase from Delftia sp. VM4. Significance We characterized an AHL-inactivating enzyme from Delftia sp. VM4, identified as AHL acylase showing distinctive similarity with α/β-hydrolase fold protein, described its biochemical and thermodynamic properties for the first time and revealed its potential application as an anti-virulence agent against bacterial soft rot pathogen Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. carotovorum based on quorum quenching mechanism.
Quantization Design and Channel Estimation for Massive MIMO Systems with One-Bit ADCs

We consider the problem of channel estimation for uplink multiuser massive MIMO systems, where, in order to significantly reduce the hardware cost and power consumption, one-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are used at the base station (BS) to quantize the received signal. Channel estimation for one-bit massive MIMO systems is challenging due to the severe distortion caused by the coarse quantization. It was shown in previous studies that an extremely long training sequence is required to attain an acceptable performance. In this paper, we study the problem of optimal one-bit quantization design for channel estimation in one-bit massive MIMO systems. Our analysis reveals that, if the quantization thresholds are optimally devised, using one-bit ADCs can achieve an estimation error close to (with an increase by a factor of $\pi/2$) that of an ideal estimator which has access to the unquantized data. The optimal quantization thresholds, however, are dependent on the unknown channel parameters. To cope with this difficulty, we propose an adaptive quantization (AQ) approach in which the thresholds are adaptively adjusted in a way such that the thresholds converge to the optimal thresholds, and a random quantization (RQ) scheme which randomly generate a set of nonidentical thresholds based on some statistical prior knowledge of the channel. Simulation results show that, our proposed AQ and RQ schemes, owing to their wisely devised thresholds, present a significant performance improvement over the conventional fixed quantization scheme that uses a fixed (typically zero) threshold, and meanwhile achieve a substantial training overhead reduction for channel estimation. In particular, even with a moderate number of pilot symbols (about 5 times the number of users), the AQ scheme can provide an achievable rate close to that of the perfect channel state information (CSI) case.
Modeling style and variation in human motion

Style and variation are two vital components of human motion: style differentiates between examples of the same behavior (slow walk vs. Fast walk) while variation differentiates between examples of the same style (vigorous vs. lackadaisical arm swing). In this talk, we will introduce a method to simultaneously model style and variation of motion data captured from different subjects performing the same behavior. Following this direction, we further investigate the subject-specific style in human motion and build a new model to generate subject-specific normal walking style.
Real time estimation of modal parameters of non-stationary systems using adaptive wavelet filtering and recursive least square algorithm

Summary The paper presents a method of modal parameter estimation based on RLS (Recursive Least Square) algorithm, and wavelet filtering. The wavelet filtering gives possibility to decoupling frequency components of signal response of structure. This operation can also reduce the order of the signal model estimated by RLS algorithm. An additional advantage of this method is the possibility of adapting the wavelet filter parameters to the changing parameters of the system. Reduced model order significantly reduces the time of estimation of modal parameters, which enables the real – time implementation of the method. Due to recursively updated covariance matrix of model parameters, the confidence intervals of modal parameters can be also estimated. All routines have been implemented and tested in MATLAB®. The method have been tested on simulated data delivered by an AIRBUS team and on the test bed with a variable stiffness.
A Survey of Methods for Constructing Rooted Phylogenetic Networks

Rooted phylogenetic networks are primarily used to represent conflicting evolutionary information and describe the reticulate evolutionary events in phylogeny. So far a lot of methods have been presented for constructing rooted phylogenetic networks, of which the methods based on the decomposition property of networks and by means of the incompatible graph (such as the CASS, the LNETWORK and the BIMLR) are more efficient than other available methods. The paper will discuss and compare these methods by both the practical and artificial datasets, in the aspect of the running time of the methods and the effective of constructed phylogenetic networks. The results show that the LNETWORK can construct much simper networks than the others.