Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A World Induced Technical Change Hybrid Model

The need for a better understanding of future energy scenarios, of their compatibility with the objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations, and of their links with climate policy, calls for the development of hybrid models. Hybrid because both the technological detail typical of Bottom Up (BU) models and the long run dynamics typical of Top Down (TD) models are crucially necessary. We present WITCH - World Induced Technical Change Hybrid model - a neoclassical optimal growth model (TD) with energy input detail (BU). The model endogenously accounts for technological progress, both through learning curves affecting prices of new vintages of capital and through R&D investments. In addition, the model captures the main economic interrelationships between world regions and is designed to analyze the optimal economic and environment policies in each world region as the outcome of a dynamic game. This paper provides a detailed description of the WITCH model, of its Baseline, and of the model calibration procedure.
Reducing metallic artefacts in post-operative spinal imaging: slice encoding for metal artefact correction with dual-source parallel radiofrequency excitation MRI at 3.0 T

Objective: To compare the effects of metal artefacts and acquisition time among slice encoding for metal artefact correction (SEMAC), SEMAC with dual-source parallel radiofrequency (SEMAC-DSPRF) transmission and fast spin echo (FSE) images using 3.0-T MRI. Methods: The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was calculated in a phantom study using a pedicle screw. A total of 16 patients who underwent spinal surgery using pedicle screws were included in the clinical study. T 1 weighted FSE, SEMAC and SEMAC-DSPRF images were obtained. Four imaging findings (visibility of the dural sac, neural foramens, bone – implant interface and overall artefacts) were evaluated by using five-point scales independently by two observers. The mean scan time was recorded. Results: The mean SNR was 71.2, 25.7 and 28.4 for FSE, SEMAC and SEMAC-DSPRF images, respectively. FSE images were ranked lower than SEMAC and SEMAC-DSPRF images, and ranking of SEMAC and SEMAC-DSPRF images did not differ statistically for all four imaging findings. The mean scan
When need is greatest, help may be closest: Significance of the spiritual dimension in therapy mediated by interviewees

Abstract In critical situations, the need for change is urgent. The focus in this article is on such situations, because then the inclusion of the spiritual dimension may be particularly significant. Examples from a central explorative study are included to mediate the importance of the spiritual dimension. This present elaboration is conducted with qualitative research methods, including phenomenography, which relates to descriptions, analysis, and understanding of experiences. It is conducted as close as possible the interviewees’ comprehensions and experiences. The driving force through the entire research process has been to contribute to give answers to the central question: What makes therapy work? The selected explanatory cases describe how spiritual experiences may contribute to hope and opening up new opportunities for mental problem solving and transformation in the process of regaining mental health. The wholeness of the person was activated, and this elicited coping and mental liberation. The interviewees had experienced thorough transformation and liberation from drug addiction and other serious disorders. The present article describes a concluding elaboration on an ongoing explorative study related to participants’ liberation in an efficient treatment organization. The intention is that the insight emerging from the study may be transferable to other research and treatment contexts.
“Look Before You Leap”: Lessons from Urban Water Sector Reforms in Ghana

The article is primarily a case study of the use of a management contract for the reform of urban water in Ghana and addresses two main questions: (1) is contractualism suitable for the reform of urban water sector activities in developing countries; (2) under what conditions can contracting actually promote efficiency in the water sector? The findings point to answers for both questions. First, contractualism is a defective tool for reforming the politically sensitive water sector. Second, in order for contractualism to actually promote efficiency, certain fundamental conditions − context, agency task specificity and creative adaptation − must be adequately addressed.
The leadership journey.

It isn't always easy to change leadership hats or to alter the way you assess a business problem. Under pressure, most executives fall back on the management style or approach that worked in the last crisis they faced. But old approaches rarely work in new and demanding situations. Just ask Leonard Schaeffer, chairman and CEO of WellPoint Health Networks, one of the country's largest and most successful managed-care companies. In this account, he describes how he consciously adopted three very different styles of leadership at critical points during his 30-year career, depending on the business challenges at hand. Schaeffer headed up the U.S. Health Care Finance Administration during the Carter years--and led the charge toward more efficient work practices at that agency. Then he transformed Blue Cross of California from a floundering bureaucracy losing close to $1 million each day into a strong public company, WellPoint. The dire circumstances at Blue Cross had dictated that Schaeffer initially be an autocratic leader, which he considers the managerial equivalent of being an emergency room surgeon--forced to do whatever it takes to save a patient's life. But as the company rebounded, the CEO shed that "any decision is better than no decision" style. He has become a participative, hands-off leader-setting strategies and goals from above but letting WellPoint's line managers and executives figure out how best to achieve those goals. Most recently, Schaeffer has turned into a reformer--a leader who works with one foot outside the company to spur changes in health care and society. There are pitfalls in switching leadership styles, Schaeffer admits, but this flexibility is necessary for realizing corporate- and personal-success.
Neisserial PorB is translocated to the mitochondria of HeLa cells infected with Neisseria meningitidis and protects cells from apoptosis

We have previously shown that purified meningococcal porin PorB associates with mitochondria and prevents apoptosis of B cells, Jurkat cells and HeLa cells (Massari et al., 2000, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 97: 9070–9075). This work examines if intact meningococci have a similar effect as purified porins. It was first determined that intact live meningococci do not induce apoptosis of HeLa cells and do not perturb mitochondrial physiology. This latter consideration is important as Neisserial porins affect the susceptibility of cells to apoptosis by preventing mitochondrial depolarization and cytochrome c release, events involved in the apoptosis cascade. Purified PorB or PorB from live bacteria were found to translocate into and interact with mitochondria. It was then determined whether treatment of HeLa cells with meningococci could prevent staurosporine‐mediated apoptosis due to an effect of PorB on the mitochondrial parameters. Incubation of HeLa cells with live meningococci prevented staurosporine‐induced apoptosis, as ascertained by measurements of mitochondrial potential, translocation of mitochondrial cytochrome c to the cytosol, caspases activation, and nuclear DNA degradation. These data are consistent with our previous findings that purified PorB associates with mitochondria and prevents apoptosis, and demonstrates that the mechanism by which whole meningococci protects cells from apoptosis is a result of direct interaction of neisserial porin with mitochondria.
Analysis of Intact Monoclonal Antibody IgG1 by Electron Transfer Dissociation Orbitrap FTMS*

The primary structural information of proteins employed as biotherapeutics is essential if one wishes to understand their structure–function relationship, as well as in the rational design of new therapeutics and for quality control. Given both the large size (around 150 kDa) and the structural complexity of intact immunoglobulin G (IgG), which includes a variable number of disulfide bridges, its extensive fragmentation and subsequent sequence determination by means of tandem mass spectrometry (MS) are challenging. Here, we applied electron transfer dissociation (ETD), implemented on a hybrid Orbitrap Fourier transform mass spectrometer (FTMS), to analyze a commercial recombinant IgG in a liquid chromatography (LC)-tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) top-down experiment. The lack of sensitivity typically observed during the top-down MS of large proteins was addressed by averaging time-domain transients recorded in different LC-MS/MS experiments before performing Fourier transform signal processing. The results demonstrate that an improved signal-to-noise ratio, along with the higher resolution and mass accuracy provided by Orbitrap FTMS (relative to previous applications of top-down ETD-based proteomics on IgG), is essential for comprehensive analysis. Specifically, ETD on Orbitrap FTMS produced about 33% sequence coverage of an intact IgG, signifying an almost 2-fold increase in IgG sequence coverage relative to prior ETD-based analysis of intact monoclonal antibodies of a similar subclass. These results suggest the potential application of the developed methodology to other classes of large proteins and biomolecules.
Theoretical investigation of transcranial alternating current stimulation using realistic head model

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACs) is an important new technique that allows to modulate non-invasively high-order cortical processes. The underlying mechanisms of activation of this brain stimulation technique are still poorly understood. Herein, we use a finite difference time domain (FDTD) technique to investigate the penetration and focality of tACs in comparison to a time invariant (DC) stimulation. We show that stimulation using 10Hz generates cerebral fields that are larger (×2.5) and more focused than DC stimulation and that faster oscillating stimuli of 100Hz and 1000Hz, generate smaller and less focused cerebral fields than 10Hz. The outcomes of this study may help tACs users to design better protocols and interpret experimental results.
Dynamic subcellular localization of a respiratory complex controls bacterial respiration

Respiration, an essential process for most organisms, has to optimally respond to changes in the metabolic demand or the environmental conditions. The branched character of their respiratory chains allows bacteria to do so by providing a great metabolic and regulatory flexibility. Here, we show that the native localization of the nitrate reductase, a major respiratory complex under anaerobiosis in Escherichia coli, is submitted to tight spatiotemporal regulation in response to metabolic conditions via a mechanism using the transmembrane proton gradient as a cue for polar localization. These dynamics are critical for controlling the activity of nitrate reductase, as the formation of polar assemblies potentiates the electron flux through the complex. Thus, dynamic subcellular localization emerges as a critical factor in the control of respiration in bacteria. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.05357. 001
A clinical study to assess the ability of a powered toothbrush to remove chlorhexidine/tea dental stain.

AIM A single-center, single-blind, two-way crossover study was performed to compare the effects of an electric powered toothbrush with a conventional manual toothbrush at removing chlorhexidine/tea tooth staining. METHODS This study used 24 subjects. During the week before the study, the subjects received a prophylaxis to remove all staining, plaque and calculus deposits. On the Monday of the following week, subjects returned to the clinic to receive a further prophylaxis. Under direct supervision, they then rinsed with a 0.2% chlorhexidine mouthrinse, immediately followed by a rinse with a warm black tea solution. This cycle was repeated hourly eight times throughout the day and on the following days until the Friday. Throughout this period, volunteers omitted all other forms of oral hygiene except rinsing with the chlorhexidine mouthwash. On the Friday, the level of stain was assessed both prior to and immediately after brushing with the allocated brush with toothpaste for 1 min. This was done in an adjoining room (out of sight of the clinical scorer). Subjects were then instructed to use the toothbrush at home according to their normal oral hygiene practices. On the following Friday, subjects returned to the clinic when the stain present was re-assessed. Each subject received a thorough prophylaxis to remove all plaque calculus and staining before starting the second period of the study and again on completion of the study. RESULTS The study showed relatively little difference between the ability of the two brushes to remove stain at a single test brushing. However, there was some evidence that the powered brush was more effective than the manual brush in minimising stain level during the home use period, overall and in particular for gingival crescent sites. CONCLUSIONS This study has suggested that the powered brush may become more effective at reducing dental stain, the longer the brush is used under normal home conditions.
Detecting In-line Mathematical Expressions in Scientific Documents

One of the issues in extracting natural language sentences from PDF documents is the identification of non-textual elements in a sentence. In this paper, we report our preliminary results on the identification of in-line mathematical expressions. We first construct a manually annotated corpus and apply conditional random field (CRF) for the math-zone identification using both layout features, such as font types, and linguistic features, such as context n-grams, obtained from PDF documents. Although our method is naive and uses a small amount of annotated training data, our method achieved an 88.95% F-measure compared with 22.81% for existing math OCR software.
Depth-Focused Waveform Based on SHEPWM Method for Ground-Airborne Frequency-Domain Electromagnetic Survey

The ground–airborne frequency-domain electromagnetic (GAFDEM) survey is a mixture of ground and airborne electromagnetic methods with a source on the ground and a magnetic field receiver in the air. The technique probes different depths of the earth by transmitting waveforms at different frequencies. Therefore, multiple closely spaced frequencies are needed when surveying a specific target depth in detail. However, in the existing GAFDEM systems using a square wave or a 2n pseudorandom wave, the ground source needs to transmit more sets of waveforms with different fundamental frequencies in more flights to improve the vertical resolution for the same observed line, which will seriously reduce the exploration efficiency. In this paper, we design a depth-focused waveform to solve this problem based on a new full-cycle asymmetrical selective harmonic elimination pulse width modulation (SHEPWM) method. In the SHEPWM method, we obtain a desired spectrum by directly controlling the switching angles of a binary sequence with an artificial neural network algorithm. In our study, we first provide the basic theory and method for waveform design. Then, we realize the depth-focused waveform and pseudorandom waveform via simulation. Next, we employ the depth-focused waveform into practice and compare it with the 2n pseudorandom wave in a GAFDEM field survey. The test shows that the survey result with a depth-focused waveform has a higher vertical resolution and efficiency.
Three Cases of Cochleosaccular Endolymphatic Hydrops without Vertigo Revealed by Furosemide-Loading Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potential Test

Objective To describe possible cases of cochleosaccular endolymphatic hydrops without vertigo. Study Design Retrospective case report. Setting University hospital. Patients Three patients with possible cochleosaccular hydrops without vertigo were studied. The basis of diagnosis was positive result of the furosemide-loading vestibular evoked myogenic potential test, no canal paresis in the caloric test, and recurrent cochlear symptoms or fluctuating low-tone hearing loss. Case Report In case 1, a 47-year-old woman had recurrent left aural fullness and tinnitus and a few weeks later complained of a floating sensation and could not stand up. The furosemide-loading vestibular evoked myogenic potential test showed a positive result in the left ear. In case 2, a 24-year-old woman complained of a backward falling sensation lasting several seconds; subsequently, a severe floating sensation persisted and she could not stand up for several days. Audiography showed fluctuating low-tone hearing loss in the left ear, and the furosemide-loading vestibular evoked myogenic potential test showed a positive result. In case 3, a 41-year-old woman had a floating sensation while walking and subsequently complained of tinnitus in the left ear. She could not stand up because of a severe floating sensation and, moreover, complained of a sudden falling sensation lasting for several seconds. The furosemide-loading vestibular evoked myogenic potential test indicated a positive result in the left ear. Conclusions The patients in cases 2 and 3 complained of a short-lasting sensation of falling down. Severe disequilibrium that prohibited standing up was noted in all cases. It was suggested that these symptoms were caused by saccular hydrops.
Drivers of commercialization: A case of indigenous chicken production in northern Uganda

This study was conducted to assess the drivers of commercialization and profitability among the smallholder farmers of indigenous chickens (IC) in northern Uganda. A market index was constructed to measure the proportion of IC marketed as a proxy for commercialization. A Tobit regression model was fitted using maximum likelihood estimation to determine the drivers of commercialization level of IC. Gross margin analysis was conducted to measure annual profits from IC production and a multiple linear regression was estimated using ordinary least squares to ascertain the determinants of profitability. Overall, the level of commercialization of IC was found to be as low as 31.2%. This level was affected by: IC flock size, number of cattle owned, group membership and access to poultry specific extension services. Commercial IC production was found to be profitable with average gross margins of UGX 118,704 (equivalent to US$34 per annum). Our results revealed that profitability in IC production and marketing was affected by bicycle access, number of extension visits, family ownership of chickens, sex, and age of household head. Our findings point to the need for implementation of strategies to increase flock size like disease management, provision of targeted extension services and increased group marketing of chickens.
SensIR: Detecting Hand Gestures with a Wearable Bracelet using Infrared Transmission and Reflection

Gestures have become an important tool for natural interaction with computers and thus several wearables have been developed to detect hand gestures. However, many existing solutions are unsuitable for practical use due to low accuracy, high cost or poor ergonomics. We present SensIR, a bracelet that uses near-infrared sensing to infer hand gestures. The bracelet is composed of pairs of infrared emitters and receivers that are used to measure both the transmission and reflection of light through/off the wrist. SensIR improves the accuracy of existing infrared gesture sensing systems through the key idea of taking measurements with all possible combinations of emitters and receivers. Our study shows that SensIR is capable of detecting 12 discrete gestures with 93.3% accuracy. SensIR has several advantages compared to other systems such as high accuracy, low cost, robustness against bad skin coupling and thin form-factor.
An Architecture for IP Address Allocation with CIDR

have no defined hierarchical relationship, administrators would not be able to assign IP addresses within the domains out of some common prefix for the purpose of data abstraction. The result would be flat inter-domain routing; all routing domains would need explicit knowledge of all other routing domains that they route to. This can work well in small and medium sized internets, up to a size somewhat larger than the current Internet. However, this does not scale to very large internets. For example, we expect growth in the future to an Internet which has tens or hundreds of thousands of routing domains in North America alone. This requires a greater degree of the reachability information abstraction beyond that which can be achieved at the `routing domain' level. In the Internet, however, it should be possible to exploit the existing hierarchical routing structure interconnections, as discussed in Section 5. Thus, there is the opportunity for a group of routing domains each to be assigned an address prefix from a shorter prefix assigned to another routing domain whose function is to interconnect the group of routing domains. Each member of the group of routing domains now `owns' its (somewhat longer) prefix, from which it assigns its addresses. The most straightforward case of this occurs when there is a set of routing domains which are all attached only to a single service provider domain (e.g. regional network), and which use that provider for all external (inter-domain) traffic. A small prefix may be assigned to the provider, which then assigns slightly longer prefixes (based on the provider's prefix) to each of the routing domains that it interconnects. This allows the provider, when informing other routing domains of the addresses that it can reach, to abbreviate the reachability information for a large number of routing domains as a single prefix. This approach therefore can allow a great deal of hierarchical abbreviation of routing information, and thereby can .
Profile of Weekly Training Load in Elite Male Professional Basketball Players

Manzi, V, D'Ottavio, S, Impellizzeri, FM, Chaouachi, A, Chamari, K, and Castagna, C. Profile of weekly training load in elite male professional basketball players. J Strength Cond Res 24(5): 1399-1406, 2010-The aim of this study was to examine the training load (TL) profile of professional elite level basketball players during the crucial parts of the competitive season (pre-play-off finals). Subjects were 8 full-time professional basketball players (age 28 ± 3.6 years, height 199 ±7.2 cm, body mass 102 ± 11.5 kg, and body fat 10.4 ± 1.5%) whose heart rate (HR) was recorded during each training session and their individual response to TL monitored using the session-rate of perceived exertion (RPE) method (200 training sessions). The association between the session-RPE method and training HR was used to assess the population validity of the session-RPE method. Significant relationships were observed between individual session-RPE and all individual HR-based TL (r values from 0.69 to 0.85; p < 0.001). Coaches spontaneously provided a tapering phase during the competitive weeks irrespective of the number of games played during it (i.e., 1 or 2 games). The individual weekly players' TL resulted in being not significantly different from each other (p > 0.05). Elite male professional basketball imposes great physiological and psychological stress on players through training sessions and official competitions (1-2 per week). Consequently, the importance of a practical and valid method to assess individual TL is warranted. In this research, we demonstrated that session-RPE may be considered as a viable method to asses TL without the use of more sophisticated tools (i.e., HR monitors). The session-RPE method enabled the detection of periodization patterns in weekly planning in elite professional basketball during the crucial part of the competitive season (1 vs. 2 weekly fixtures model).