Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Complementarities in the Diffusion of Personal Computers and the Internet: Implications for the Global Digital Divide

This paper studies the cross-country diffusion of personal computers (PCs) and the Internet, and examines how the diffusive interactions across these technologies affect the evolution of the global digital divide. We adopt a generalized diffusion model that incorporates the impact of one technology's installed base on the diffusion of the other technology. We estimate the model on data from 26 developing and developed countries between 1991 and 2005. We find that the codiffusion effects between PCs and the Internet are complementary in nature and the impact of PCs on Internet diffusion is substantially stronger in developing countries as compared to developed ones. Furthermore, our results suggest that these codiffusive effects are a significant driver of the narrowing of the digital divide. We also examine the policy implications of our results, especially with respect to how complementarities in the diffusion of PC and Internet technologies might be harnessed to further accelerate the narrowing of the global digital divide.
Efficient Adaptively Weighted Analysis of Secondary Phenotypes in Case-Control Genome-Wide Association Studies

We propose and compare methods of analysis for detecting associations between genotypes of a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and a dichotomous secondary phenotype (X), when the data arise from a case-control study of a primary dichotomous phenotype (D), which is not rare. We considered both a dichotomous genotype (G) as in recessive or dominant models and an additive genetic model based on the number of minor alleles present. To estimate the log odds ratio β1 relating X to G in the general population, one needs to understand the conditional distribution [D ∣ X, G] in the general population. For the most general model, [D ∣ X, G], one needs external data on P(D = 1) to estimate β1. We show that for this ‘full model’, the maximum likelihood (FM) corresponds to a previously proposed weighted logistic regression (WL) approach if G is dichotomous. For the additive model, WL yields results numerically close, but not identical, to those of the maximum likelihood FM. Efficiency can be gained by assuming that [D ∣ X, G] is a logistic model with no interaction between X and G (the ‘reduced model’). However, the resulting maximum likelihood (RM) can be misleading in the presence of interactions. We therefore propose an adaptively weighted approach (AW) that captures the efficiency of RM but is robust to the occasional SNP that might interact with the secondary phenotype to affect the risk of the primary disease. We study the robustness of FM, WL, RM and AW to misspecification of P(D = 1). In principle, one should be able to estimate β1 without external information on P(D = 1) under the reduced model. However, our simulations show that the resulting inference is unreliable. Therefore, in practice one needs to introduce external information on P(D = 1), even in the absence of interactions between X and G.
Elevated serum alanine aminotransferase and gamma-glutamyltransferase and mortality in the United States population.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Elevated serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT) activities are markers of liver injury, but may also be associated with other diseases and death. In a prospective, national, population-based sample, we examined whether elevated ALT and GGT were associated with increased risk of all-cause and disease-specific mortality. METHODS Death certificate-based 12-year mortality was analyzed among 14,950 adult participants in the third US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-1994, who were negative for markers of viral hepatitis B and C. Abnormal ALT was defined as >30 U/L in men or >19 U/L in women, and abnormal GGT as >51 U/L in men or >33 U/L in women. RESULTS Cumulative mortality was 13.9% from all causes, including 4.2% from cardiovascular disease, 4.2% from neoplasms, 0.44% from diabetes, and 0.13% from liver disease. In multivariate-adjusted analyses, elevated ALT was not associated with all-cause mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 1.2; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.88-1.6). ALT elevation was associated with deaths from liver disease (HR, 8.2; 95% CI, 2.1-31.9), but not from cardiovascular disease (HR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.56-1.4), neoplasms (HR, 1.0; 95% CI, 0.65-1.5), or diabetes (HR, 2.4; 95% CI, 0.65-9.1). All-cause mortality increased with elevated GGT (HR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.2-1.8), as did mortality from liver disease (HR, 13.0; 95% CI, 2.4-71.5), neoplasms (HR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.01-2.2), and diabetes (HR, 3.3; 95% CI, 1.4-7.6), but not from cardiovascular disease (HR, 1.3; 95% CI, 0.80-2.0). CONCLUSIONS In the US population, elevated GGT was associated with mortality from all causes, liver disease, cancer, and diabetes, while ALT was associated only with liver disease mortality.
The WOZ Math Recognizer: A Mathematics Handwriting Recognition Wizard of Oz Tool

Mathematical handwriting recognition is an important method of mathematics input for computers. While strides in recognition have been made in recent years, recognition is still at a level where mistakes are common and often inexplicable from the user’s point-of-view. As a result, recognition mistakes can cause user distraction and frustration. In order to explore this area, we developed a Wizard of Oz mathematics handwriting recognition tool, the WOZ Math Recognizer. The WOZ Math Recognizer supports controlled symbol and position accuracy and batch and real-time recognition modes. We present the design of the WOZ Math Recognizer and discuss the types of errors we included in its design, how expressions are altered, controlling the WOZ Math Recognizer, and how users interact with it.
Intergenerational Risk Sharing in the Spirit of Arrow, Debreu, and Rawls, with Applications to Social Security Design

This paper examines the optimal allocation of risk in an overlapping‐generations economy. It compares the allocation of risk the economy reaches naturally to the allocation that would be reached if generations behind a Rawlsian “veil of ignorance” could share risk with one another through complete Arrow‐Debreu contingent‐claims markets. The paper then examines how the government might implement optimal intergenerational risk sharing with a social security system. One conclusion is that the system must either hold equity claims to capital or negatively index benefits to equity returns.
Detection of selective forwarding attack in wireless ad hoc networks using binary search

Selective forwarding attack is one of the most harmful attacks in wireless networks. This paper proposes an algorithm to defend against selective forwarding attacks based on binary search technique in clustered wireless ad hoc network. In the first phase, the cluster head raises an alarm when number of packets dropped along a path is more than a threshold value. In the second phase, control packets and hello packets are exchanged along a misbehaving routing path between the wireless node and a cluster head to detect compromised node. Experimental results demonstrate that the detection efficiency of the proposed algorithm is more than 90%. The algorithm can detect multiple compromised nodes if they exist. We have also experimented to estimate the threshold value of packet drops and computed the required rate of drops of compromised nodes so that they can be detected.
CME Practice parameter : Diagnosis of dementia ( an evidence-based review ) Report of the Quality Standards Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology

Article abstract—Objective: To update the 1994 practice parameter for the diagnosis of dementia in the elderly. Background: The AAN previously published a practice parameter on dementia in 1994. New research and clinical developments warrant an update of some aspects of diagnosis. Methods: Studies published in English from 1985 through 1999 were identified that addressed four questions: 1) Are the current criteria for the diagnosis of dementia reliable? 2) Are the current diagnostic criteria able to establish a diagnosis for the prevalent dementias in the elderly? 3) Do laboratory tests improve the accuracy of the clinical diagnosis of dementing illness? 4) What comorbidities should be evaluated in elderly patients undergoing an initial assessment for dementia? Recommendations: Based on evidence in the literature, the following recommendations are made. 1) The DSM-III-R definition of dementia is reliable and should be used (Guideline). 2) The National Institute of Neurologic, Communicative Disorders and Stroke–AD and Related Disorders Association (NINCDS-ADRDA) or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 3rd edition, revised (DSM-IIIR) diagnostic criteria for AD and clinical criteria for Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) have sufficient reliability and validity and should be used (Guideline). Diagnostic criteria for vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, and frontotemporal dementia may be of use in clinical practice (Option) but have imperfect reliability and validity. 3) Structural neuroimaging with either a noncontrast CT or MR scan in the initial evaluation of patients with dementia is appropriate. Because of insufficient data on validity, no other imaging procedure is recommended (Guideline). There are currently no genetic markers recommended for routine diagnostic purposes (Guideline). The CSF 14-3-3 protein is useful for confirming or rejecting the diagnosis of CJD (Guideline). 4) Screening for depression, B12 deficiency, and hypothyroidism should be performed (Guideline). Screening for syphilis in patients with dementia is not justified unless clinical suspicion for neurosyphilis is present (Guideline). Conclusions: Diagnostic criteria for dementia have improved since the 1994 practice parameter. Further research is needed to improve clinical definitions of dementia and its subtypes, as well as to determine the utility of various instruments of neuroimaging, biomarkers, and genetic testing in increasing diagnostic accuracy.
Name-It: association of face and name in video

This paper proposes a novel approach to extract meaningful content information from video by collaborative integration of image understanding and natural language processing. As an actual example, we developed a system that associates faces and names in videos, called Name-It, which is given news videos as a knowledge source, then automatically extracts face and name association as content information. The system can infer the name of a given unknown face image, or guess faces which are likely to have the name given to the system. This paper explains the method with several successful matching results which reveal effectiveness in integrating heterogeneous techniques as well as the importance of real content information extraction from video, especially face-name association.
Stability Indicating Method for SPf66 Antimalarial Peptide in Solution

Stability studies on the SPf66 antimalarial peptide with different pH and temperature conditions were carried out. The degradation mechanism was elucidated by the size‐exclusion chromatography (SEC) technique and the experimental data obtained at 37°C and different pH were fitted to a kinetic degradation model that could explain the loss of its immunogenic capacity. At 5, 25, 37, and 70°C and pH 2, changes were detected in the areas of the different species, although the values obtained could not be fitted to any known degradation kinetics.
Identifying instances of processing effort in translation through heat maps: an eye-tracking study using multiple input sources

Drawing on the seminal work of Just and Carpenter (1980), eye fixations have been used extensively to analyse instances of processing effort in studies of reading and writing processes. More recently, eye tracking has also been applied to experimental studies in translation process research (Jakobsen and Jensen 2008, Pavlović and Jensen 2009, Alves, Pagano and Silva 2009, Hvelplund 2011, Carl and Kay 2011, Carl and Dragsted 2012, among others). In most of these works, eye-tracking data have provided input for quantitative analyses of fixation count and duration in areas of interest in source and target texts. From a linguistic perspective, however, studies using eye-tracking data are considered rather complex since eye fixations tend to vary considerably among subjects. This paper attempts to tackle this issue by proposing a methodological approach that uses overlapped heat maps of different subjects to select and analyse translation problems. The results yield relevant findings for eye-tracking research in translation.
Silibinin protects against osteoarthritis through inhibiting the inflammatory response and cartilage matrix degradation in vitro and in vivo

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative joint disease characterized by cartilage degradation and inflammation. Silibinin, a polyphenolic flavonoid derived from fruits and seeds of Silybum marianum, has been reported to possess various potent beneficial biological effects, such as antioxidant, anti-cancer, hepatoprotective and anti-inflammatory activities. However, the anti-inflammatory effects of silibinin on OA have not been reported. This study aimed to assess the effects of silibinin on OA both in vitro and in vivo. In this study, we found that silibinin significantly inhibited the nterleukin-1β (IL-1β)-induced production of nitric oxide (NO), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and IL-6, expression of cyclooxygenase2 (COX-2), inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), matrix metalloproteinase-1 (MMP-1), MMP-3, MMP-13, a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs-4 (ADAMTS-4) and ADAMTS-5, degradation of aggrecan and collagen-II in human OA chondrocytes. Furthermore, silibinin dramatically suppressed IL-1β-stimulated phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase/ protein kinase B (PI3K/Akt) phosphorylation and nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kB) activation in human OA chondrocytes. In addition, treatment of silibinin not only prevented the destruction of cartilage and the thickening of subchondral bone but also relieved synovitis in mice OA models. Also, the immunohistochemistry results showed that silibinin significantly decreased the expression of MMP-13 and ADAMTS-5 and increased the expression of collagen-II and aggrecan in mice OA. Taken together, these results suggest that silibinin may be a potential agent in the treatment of OA.
Closing the loop: A simple distributed method for control over wireless networks

We present a distributed scheme used for control over a network of wireless nodes. As opposed to traditional networked control schemes where the nodes simply route information to and from a dedicated controller (perhaps performing some encoding along the way), our approach, Wireless Control Network (WCN), treats the network itself as the controller. In other words, the computation of the control law is done in a fully distributed way inside the network. We extend the basic WCN strategy, where at each time-step, each node updates its internal state to be a linear combination of the states of the nodes in its neighborhood. This causes the entire network to behave as a linear dynamical system, with sparsity constraints imposed by the network topology. We demonstrate that with observer style updates, the WCN's robustness to link failures is substantially improved. Fur-thermore, we show how to design a WCN that can maintain stability even in cases of node failures. We also address the problem of WCN synthesis with guaranteed optimal performance of the plant, with respect to standard cost functions. We extend the synthesis procedure to deal with continuous-time plants and demonstrate how the WCN can be used on a practical, industrial application, using a process-in-the-loop setup with real hardware.
Dyspepsia and irritable bowel syndrome after a Salmonella gastroenteritis outbreak: one-year follow-up cohort study.

BACKGROUND & AIMS It has been reported that some patients develop functional digestive disorders, particularly irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), after acute gastroenteritis (AGE). However, the presence of dyspepsia has not been specifically addressed. We prospectively evaluated development of dyspepsia and IBS during a 1-year follow-up in a cohort of adult patients affected by a Salmonella enteritidis AGE outbreak. METHODS Questionnaires were sent to 1878 potential participants at baseline and 3, 6, and 12 months; 677 had experienced a Salmonella enteritidis AGE on June 23, 2002, and 1201 had not (randomly selected controls, matched for village of residence, age, and sex). At 12 months, 271 patients and 335 controls returned the questionnaires. Data permitted the establishment of dyspepsia and IBS diagnosis by Rome II criteria. RESULTS Before the AGE outbreak, the prevalence of dyspepsia was similar in cases and controls (2.5% vs 3.8%); the prevalence of IBS was also similar (2.9% vs 2.3%). At 3, 6, and 12 months, the prevalence of both dyspepsia and IBS had increased significantly in exposed compared with unexposed subjects. Overlap between dyspepsia and IBS was frequent. At 1 year, the relative risk for development of dyspepsia was 5.2 (95% confidence interval, 2.7-9.8) and for IBS was 7.8 (95% confidence interval, 3.1-19.7). Prolonged abdominal pain and vomiting during AGE were positive predictors of dyspepsia. No predictive factors for IBS were found. CONCLUSIONS Salmonella gastroenteritis is a significant risk factor not only for IBS but also for dyspepsia; at 1 year of follow-up, 1 in 7 and 1 in 10 subjects developed dyspepsia or IBS, respectively.
Partial Restoration of Cardiovascular Function by Embryonic Neural Stem Cell Grafts after Complete Spinal Cord Transection

High-level spinal cord injury can lead to cardiovascular dysfunction, including disordered hemodynamics at rest and autonomic dysreflexia during noxious stimulation. To restore supraspinal control of sympathetic preganglionic neurons (SPNs), we grafted embryonic brainstem-derived neural stem cells (BS-NSCs) or spinal cord-derived neural stem cells (SC-NSCs) expressing green fluorescent protein into the T4 complete transection site of adult rats. Animals with injury alone served as controls. Implanting of BS-NSCs but not SC-NSCs resulted in recovery of basal cardiovascular parameters, whereas both cell grafts alleviated autonomic dysreflexia. Subsequent spinal cord retransection above the graft abolished the recovery of basal hemodynamics and reflexic response. BS-NSC graft-derived catecholaminergic and serotonergic neurons showed remarkable long-distance axon growth and topographical innervation of caudal SPNs. Anterograde tracing indicated growth of medullar axons into stem cell grafts and formation of synapses. Thus, grafted embryonic brainstem-derived neurons can act as functional relays to restore supraspinal regulation of denervated SPNs, thereby contributing to cardiovascular functional improvement.
Partitioning Problems in Parallel, Pipelined, and Distributed Computing

The problem of optimally assigning the modules of a parallel program over the processors of a multiple-computer system is addressed. A sum-bottleneck path algorithm is developed that permits the efficient solution of many variants of this problem under some constraints on the structure of the partitions. In particular, the following problems are solved optimally for a single-host, multiple-satellite system: partitioning multiple chain-structures parallel programs, multiple arbitrarily structured serial programs, and single-tree structured parallel programs. In addition, the problem of partitioning chain-structured parallel programs across chain-connected systems is solved under certain constraints. All solutions for parallel programs are equally applicable to pipelined programs. >
Apply n-best list re-ranking to acoustic model combinations of boosting training

The object function for Boosting training method in acoustic modeling aims to reduce utterance level error rate. This is different from the most commonly used performance metric in speech recognition, word error rate. This paper proposes that the combination of N-best list re-ranking and ROVER can partly address this problem. In particular, model combination is applied to re-ranked hypotheses rather than to the original top-1 hypotheses and carried on word level. Improvement of system performance is observed in our experiments. In addition, we describe and evaluate a new confidence feature that measures the correctness of frame level decoding result.
Light Scattering in Microcrystalline Silicon Thin Film Solar Cells

I n stit ut de M i c ro techn qu e , U v itN h alB g 2 CH-2000 Sw ze ndPhone +41 32 7183200, fax +41 32 7183201ABSTRACT: Different optical characterization methods were applied to a series of microcrystalline silicon thin films, either asgrown, textured, or subsequently polished, mirror-like. They reveal contributions of bulk and surface light scattering effects tothe phenomenon of optical absorption enhancement. The enhanced light absorption in textured layers is mainly due to a longeroptical path as a result of an efficient diffuse light scattering at the textured film surface. Root mean square surface roughnessof about 40nm is sufficient for completely diffusive scattering of silicon/metal back reflector.Keywords: Micro Crystalline Si - 1: Texturisation - 2: Spectroscopy - 31. INTRODUCTIONHydrogenated microcrystalline silicon (µc-Si:H)has been introduced as a new photovoltaic material andleads to thin-film single-junction cells with over 7%efficiency and over 25 mA/cm
Controlling for confounding variables in MS-omics protocol: why modularity matters

As the field of bioinformatics research continues to grow, more and more novel techniques are proposed to meet new challenges and improvements upon solutions to long-standing problems. These include data processing techniques and wet lab protocol techniques. Although the literature is consistently thorough in experimental detail and variable-controlling rigor for wet lab protocol techniques, bioinformatics techniques tend to be less described and less controlled. As the validation or rejection of hypotheses rests on the experiment's ability to isolate and measure a variable of interest, we urge the importance of reducing confounding variables in bioinformatics techniques during mass spectrometry experimentation.
Conceptualizing a responsibility based approach for elaborating and verifying RBAC policies conforming with CobiT framework requirements

The objective of this paper is to present the first results toward the definition of a two steps approach for aligning business level requirements issued from corporate framework such as CobiT down to technical policies such as the access rights modeled by RBAC. To achieve that, our approach is based on the concept of employees' responsibility. Using this concept is motivated by the importance and the omnipresence of the responsibility all along the company frameworks, from the CEO responsibilities such as in the financial sector as defined by Sarbanes-Oxley Act down to the responsibility at the operation layer such as the one of a trader who must follow stock quotes for private banking. The approach is illustrated based on an example, which highlights how access rights are assigned to employees having responsibilities defined at the CobiT framework layer.