Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rolli'n Back in Monte Carlo

This paper proposes a simple roll-back scheme for calculating the conditional trade values for future time horizons under a Monte Carlo setup. It is independent of the nature of the trade and does not require any basis functions; as it is currently required using standard regression methods. The underlying idea is the fact that, according to Central Limit Theorem, only the first two moments of the distribution are relevant in calculating the unconditional mean. The fundamental approximation resulting from this insight is to model the cash flows as a normal distribution defined on a set of Markovian supports. Conditional values of the trade is then formulated based on the conditional expectations of these correlated supports. To give a more practical description of the approach, two simple examples of an interest rate note, and an American put option, are presented in a step-by-step manner. Its application to counterparty risk is shown by comparing the counterparty risk exposure measures obtained using the analytical pricing formula and the roll-back approach for a single vanilla interest rate swap. Valuation of a simple American put option with different moneyness, volatility and maturities using the roll-back and Least Squares Monte Carlo are compared against Finite Difference method. The average and the standard deviation of the differences between the roll-back and Finite Difference method is promising. The author is seeking feedback. Please contact the author for an updated copy.
Disparities in Healthcare Access and Utilization among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder from Immigrant Non-English Primary Language Households in the United States

Background: The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in United State (US) has surged from 1 in 150 children in 2007 to 1 in 88 children in 2012 with substantial increase in immigrant minority groups including Hispanic and Somali children. Our study objective is to examine the associations between household language among children with ASD and national health quality indicators attainment. Methods: We conducted bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses using cross-sectional data from the publicly-available 2009-2010 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs (NS-CSHCN) to investigate the association between household language use and quality indicators of medical home, adequate insurance, and early and continuous screening. Results: Approximately, 28% of parents of children with ASD from non-English primary language (NEPL) households reported their child having severe ASD as compared with 13% of parents from English primary language (EPL) households. Older children were more likely to have care that met the early and continuous screening quality indicator, while lower income children and uninsured children were less likely to have met this indicator. Conclusions and Global Health Implications: Despite the lack of differences in the attainment of quality indicators by household language, the higher severity found in children in NEPL households suggests that they are exceptionally vulnerable. Enhanced early screening and identification for these children and supporting their parents in navigating the complex US health care delivery system would increase their participation in early intervention services. Immigration of children with special health care needs from around the world to the US has been increasing from countries with diverse healthcare systems. Our findings will help to inform policies and interventions to reduce health disparities for children with ASD from immigrant populations. As the prevalence of ASD has increased worldwide, understanding of the condition and care-seeking behavior in migrant populations is especially valuable.
Substance P Sensitizes P2X3 in Nociceptive Trigeminal Neurons

Peripheral inflammation produces pain hypersensitivity by sensitizing nociceptors. Potentiation of P2X3 receptor activity in nociceptors may play an important role in this peripheral sensitization. However, we do not fully understand how P2X3 activity is elevated in inflammation. Thus, we investigated whether P2X3 activity in trigeminal nociceptive neurons is regulated by the neurokinin-1 (NK-1) receptor that is activated by an inflammatory mediator, substance P. Single-cell RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry revealed that NK-1 in nociceptive neurons was mainly co-expressed with P2X3. Ca2+ imaging and whole-cell patch-clamp recordings indicated that both substance P and Sar-substance P, a selective NK-1 agonist, significantly potentiated α,β-meATP-induced currents and [Ca2+]i responses in nociceptive neurons. These potentiating effects were completely blocked by GR82334, a specific NK-1 antagonist. Our results demonstrate that substance P sensitizes P2X3 receptor through the activation of NK-1, thus warranting these receptors as possible targets for pain therapy in the orofacial region. Abbreviations: α,β-methylene adenosine 5′-triphosphate (ATP), α,β-meATP; neurokinin-1, NK-1; single-cell reverse-transcription polymerase chain-reaction, single-cell RT-PCR; [Sar9,Met(O2)11]-substance P, Sar-substance P.
Merge-based sparse matrix-vector multiplication (SpMV) using the CSR storage format

We present a perfectly balanced, "merge-based" parallel method for computing sparse matrix-vector products (SpMV). Our algorithm operates directly upon the Compressed Sparse Row (CSR) sparse matrix format, a predominant in-memory representation for general-purpose sparse linear algebra computations. Our CsrMV performs an equitable multi-partitioning of the input dataset, ensuring that no single thread can be overwhelmed by assignment to (a) arbitrarily-long rows or (b) an arbitrarily-large number of zero-length rows. This parallel decomposition requires neither offline preprocessing nor specialized/ancillary data formats. We evaluate our method on both CPU and GPU microarchitecture across an enormous corpus of diverse real world matrix datasets. We show that traditional CsrMV methods are inconsistent performers subject to order-of-magnitude slowdowns, whereas the performance response of our method is substantially impervious to row-length heterogeneity.
Treatment of Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma with Biweekly High-Dose Gemcitabine

Introduction: Until today, an optimal palliative treatment regimen has not been defined for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. Since the novel cytidine analog gemcitabine has shown strong antitumor effects in vitro in a human hepatoma cell line and its therapeutic potential seems well established in several different tumors including gastrointestinal adenocarcinomas, the present phase II trial using a dose-intensified biweekly administration schedule was initiated. Patients and Methods: 17 patients with histologically confirmed unresectable advanced or metastatic hepatoma were treated with gemcitabine 2,200 mg/m2 given as a 30-min intravenous infusion on days 1 and 15. Treatment courses were repeated every 4 weeks. Results: All patients were evaluable for response and toxicity assessment. No objective response was achieved, stable disease occurred in 8 patients (47%), and 9 progressed while on chemotherapy. The median time to progression was 4 months (range 1.5–14 months), and the median survival time was 8.5 months (range 2.5–16.0+ months). Treatment was well tolerated with mild or moderate leukopenia, thrombocytopenia and anemia representing the most common side effects. Gastrointestinal and other subjective toxicities were infrequent and also generally mild. Conclusions: In view of the disappointing treatment results, gemcitabine using this particular dose regimen should not be considered for further investigation in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.
The role of the assessor in the assessment of practice: An alternative view

Background: Traditionally, the assessment of the competent practical performance of student health professionals places a high level of confidence upon the ability of a second party to judge whether students are able to apply theory in practical contexts. More often than not, the specific assessment tool has a clear focus on the conduct of skills to explicit performance criteria. However, what has proven particularly problematic is the ability to devise a tool to assess the less overtly procedural qualities, such as professionalism, interpersonal skills, clinical reasoning and so forth. When such assessment tools are designed there is also particular challenge to counter the potential for conscious or unconscious bias on the part of the assessor. Aim: With direct reference to enactivist theory, and using illustrations from undergraduate medical, nursing and physiotherapy education, it is argued that in the conduct of any assessment the assessor is as much an integral part of the assessment as is the student. Conclusion: The enactivist perspective has clear implications for the role of the assessor in the preparation, conduct and outcome of the assessment of practice-related activities.
Raising Māori student achievement in the New Zealand primary sector: Principals perceptions and strategies for effective leadership

ii DEDICATION . iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . v TABLE OF CONTENTS . vi GLOSSARY OF MĀORI TERMS . x ABBREVIATIONS . xii LIST OF TABLES . xiii LIST OF FIGURES . xiv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Background of the researcher . 3 1.2 Purpose of study . 4 1.3 Research questions . 5 1.4 Thesis organisation . 5 1.5 Chapter Summary . 6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW . 7 2.
Combating Gram-positive pathogens: emerging techniques to identify relevant virulence targets

Recent progress in microbial genome sequencing, along with functional genomics technologies based on gene expression, proteomics and genetics have facilitated the identification of significant numbers of Gram-positive virulence genes. These genes represent a novel and heterogeneous class of targets for antimicrobial drug development. This review will concentrate of the contribution of two functional genomics technologies, in vivo expression technology (IVET) based on gene expression and signature-tagged mutagenesis (STM), a genetics based technology to the identification of virulence genes in Gram-positive pathogens.
Immunohistochemical characterization of TH13‐L2 spinal ganglia neurons in sheep (Ovis aries)

Spinal ganglia (SG) neurons are commonly classified according to various specific features. The most widespread classification based on morphological and ultrastructural features subdivides SG neurons into light and small dark neurons. Using immunohistochemical, histochemical and lectin methods, it is possible to further subdivide the small dark neurons into two subpopulations: peptidergic and nonpeptidergic neurons. The majority of studies on SG neurons were carried out on mice and rats; there are few or no studies on large mammals. In this study, some of the widely used neuronal markers, neurofilament 200 kDa (NF200), substance P (SP), calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP) and isolectin B4 (IB4), were employed to characterize neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS)‐immunoreactivity (‐IR) in sheep (Ovis aries) SG (Th13‐L2) neurons. The majority of the SG neurons were IB4‐labeled (79 ± 10%), followed by NF200‐ (45 ± 4%), NOS‐ (44 ± 10%), SP‐ (42 ± 5%) and CGRP‐IR (35 ± 7%) neurons. The triple staining experiments showed that a higher percentage (75 ± 16%) of NOS‐IR neurons bound both IB4 and CGRP, or both IB4 and SP (49 ± 6%). The IB4 marker showed an unexpected staining pattern; in fact, IB4‐labeled neurons largely colocalized with NF200, usually considered a marker of light SG neurons, and with CGRP and SP. For this reason, IB4 cannot be employed in sheep to differentiate between light and dark neurons, or between peptidergic and nonpeptidergic neurons. These results suggest the importance of being cautious when comparing data among different species. Microsc. Res. Tech., 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Political Economy of OECD Gasoline Taxes: Evidence from Pair-Wise, Panel Long-Run Causality Tests

Despite the current interest in using fuel taxes as an instrument for climate policy there has been little study of current automotive fuel tax regimes. We expand on two earlier cross-sectional studies on why fuel taxes differ across countries by using OECD panel data and employing panel cointegration and long-run panel Granger-causality techniques. We confirm those earlier studies’ conclusion that governments view gasoline taxes as simply another revenue source. Further, we find that governments that rely more on consumption-based taxes for revenues will have higher gasoline tax rates (than governments that rely on income and wealth/property-based taxes). But more significantly, we determine that higher gasoline demand among consumers “causes” democratic governments to set lower gasoline taxes — a finding with important implications for today’s climate/energy policy debate.
Performance comparison of wearable-based pedestrian navigation systems in large areas

Wearable devices are a key driver for the development of pedestrian navigation systems. In this work, we consider inertial navigation systems (INSs). There is a diversity of such INSs. Normally, the comparison of INSs is restricted to indoor environments, or to outdoor small areas. However, it is of interest to study the behaviour of INSs in large areas. To that end, we present a ground truth system with cm accuracy to evaluate navigation systems. The ground truth system is distributed in an area of 14380m2 approximately. The ground truth system is used to evaluate three INSs based on three different body locations: the thigh, which is denoted as pocket, the wrist and the foot. Additionally, the data from a glasses-mounted inertial measurement unit (IMU) are also collected. The data, as well as the ground truth, have been made available for download. The results of evaluating 995 ground truth points indicate that the foot INS outperforms the pocket INS in, at most, 2cm/s. The pocket INS has, in contrast, a better standard deviation of the position error, and a robust step detection. The wrist INS is the most sensitive system to outliers. Therefore, its average position error is the highest. All in all, there is still room for improvement in the performance of all evaluated INSs.
Haptic Rendering of Virtual Hand with Force Smoothing

In this paper, we present methods to generate a stable and realistic force rendering between virtual hand and object for a hand rehabilitation system. There are multi-contact regions between hand and object. For each contact region, the virtual contact force is modeled upon the spring-mass model. As direct rendering with spring-mass model in a large stiffness will induce instability of the haptic device, we apply a force-smoothing method by limiting the maximum force variation to guarantee the stability in the haptic rendering. The system experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method can provide satisfactory stable haptic display. And the maximum virtual stiffness that the system can simulate increases from 0.7 N/mm to 1.6N/mm by using force smoothing process.
Prevention of Acute Malnutrition During the Lean Season: Comparison of a Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplement and an Improved Dry Ration, South Darfur, Sudan. A quasi-Experimental Study

Objective: To assess the nutritional impact of a Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplement (LNS) and an Improved Dry Ration (IDR) in blanket supplementary feeding programs. Design: Longitudinal, quasi experimental non-randomized study Setting: Otash and Al Salaam internally displaced persons camps, South Darfur, Sudan Subjects: Children aged 6-36 months were randomly selected for inclusion in the study based on height cut-off of 95 cm and were anthropometrically assessed (weight-for-height z scores [WHZ] based on WHO standards, edema presence, and midupper arm circumference) monthly. IDR was distributed in Otash camp and LNS in Al Salaam. Main findings: At baseline, 658 and 893 children were enrolled and 159 and 187 children were assessed at all 4 distributions in Otash and Al Salaam camps, respectively; There was no significant difference in mean WHZ between the two groups at baseline, (Otash=-1.18 and Al Salaam=-1.03, p=0.17). Children receiving LNS had higher mean WHZ than those receiving IDR. Significant differences were detected at months 2-4, for the mean WHZ of the LNS cohort, and at 4 months, for the difference of the difference in mean WHZ (-0.23) between camps, p= 0.02. Conclusions: LNS may be an option for preventing acute malnutrition in humanitarian settings, however research is needed on the timing, duration of use and cost effectiveness.
Phenotyping animal models of diabetic neuropathy: a consensus statement of the diabetic neuropathy study group of the EASD (Neurodiab)

NIDDK, JDRF, and the Diabetic Neuropathy Study Group of EASD sponsored a meeting to explore the current status of animal models of diabetic peripheral neuropathy. The goal of the workshop was to develop a set of consensus criteria for the phenotyping of rodent models of diabetic neuropathy. The discussion was divided into five areas: (1) status of commonly used rodent models of diabetes, (2) nerve structure, (3) electrophysiological assessments of nerve function, (4) behavioral assessments of nerve function, and (5) the role of biomarkers in disease phenotyping. Participants discussed the current understanding of each area, gold standards (if applicable) for assessments of function, improvements of existing techniques, and utility of known and exploratory biomarkers. The research opportunities in each area were outlined, providing a possible roadmap for future studies. The meeting concluded with a discussion on the merits and limitations of a unified approach to phenotyping rodent models of diabetic neuropathy and a consensus formed on the definition of the minimum criteria required for establishing the presence of the disease. A neuropathy phenotype in rodents was defined as the presence of statistically different values between diabetic and control animals in 2 of 3 assessments (nocifensive behavior, nerve conduction velocities, or nerve structure). The participants propose that this framework would allow different research groups to compare and share data, with an emphasis on data targeted toward the therapeutic efficacy of drug interventions.
PRODUCTION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF ESCHERICHIA COLI ENTEROHEMOLYSIN AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE STRUCTURE OF ERYTHROCYTE MEMBRANES

Hemolysins are cell‐damaging protein toxins produced by pathogenic bacteria, which are usually released into the extracellular medium. Escherichia coli enterohemolysin is an intracellular toxin produced during the log phase of growth, with a maximal intracellular accumulation in the late log phase. In the present study, we have employed electron microscopy and SDS‐PAGE to assess the effects of enterohemolysin on erythocyte membranes from different species. The erythrocyte cell damage began immediately after exposure to enterohemolysin with chemically detectable changes in cell membrane permeability, and the formation of surface lesions which increased rapidly in size. This process resulted in complete cell destruction. Ring‐shaped structures with a diameter of 10nm were observed by electron microscopy after treatment of horse erythrocyte membranes with enterohemolysin. The ring structures were found clustered and irregularly distributed on the surface of the membranes. Following incubation of the toxin with horse erythrocyte ghosts and detergent‐solubilization, the enterohemolysin was isolated from the cytoplasm in its membrane‐bound form by sucrose density gradient. SDS‐PAGE and silver staining of deoxycholate‐solubilized target membranes revealed heterogeneous forms of the toxin. By using SDS‐PAGE and gel filtration, the molecular weight of the toxin was estimated to be 35kDa. With respect to species specificity, horse erythrocytes showed the highest sensitivity to the enterohemolysin, followed by human and guinea pig erythrocytes. The hemolytic sensitivity correlated with the toxin binding capacity of erythrocyte membranes of different animal species. The degree of hemolysis was unaffected by temperature in the range of 4°C–37°C and was optimal at pH 9.0. In contrast to pore‐forming cytolysins, the hemolytic activity of enterohemolysin was enhanced continuously in the presence of increasing concentrations of dextran 4 and dextran 8 within the range of 5 to 30mM. Trypsin sensitivity of membrane‐bound enterohemolysin indicates that the cell surface is the most likely target site for this toxin. Additionally, the fact that proteinase and phosphatase inhibitors failed to inhibit lysis suggests that enterohemolysin alters and disrupts cell membranes by a detergent‐like mechanism.
Shape adjustment based on optimization for cable mesh deployable antenna

To achieve the enough reflector precision of space antenna for accomplishment their missions with less adjustable cables, the optimization method is proposed in this paper. The mathematic model is built with the minimum adjustable cables and the highest surface accuracy as objectives, the adjustable cables and the increment cable length as design variables, the stresses and fundamental frequency as constraints. Obviously it is a nonlinear programming problem with two objectives and both continuous and discrete design variables. The numerical simulation of a 17 m cable mesh antenna with GA is carried out to demonstrate the methodology given in this paper.
Curriculum interpretation and policy enactment in health and physical education: researching teacher educators as policy actors

ABSTRACT Past research in Health and Physical Education has repeatedly highlighted that curriculum development is an ongoing, complex and contested process, and that the realisation of progressive intentions embedded in official curriculum texts is far from assured. Drawing on concepts from education policy sociology this paper positions teacher educators as key policy actors in the interpretation and enactment of new official curriculum texts. More specifically, it reports research that has explored four teacher educators’ engagement with a specific feature of the new Australian Curriculum in Health and Physical Education (AC HPE); five interrelated propositions or ‘key ideas’ that underpinned the new curriculum and openly sought to provide direction for progressive pedagogy in Health and Physical Education. The paper provides conceptual and empirical insight into teacher educators consciously positioning themselves as policy actors, motivated to play a role in shaping policy directions and future curriculum practices. As such, the teacher educators in this project are identified as policy entrepreneurs and provocateurs. The paper details a dialogic research process between the researchers that was designed to make curriculum interpretation a more transparent, collaborative and generative process. The data reported illustrates the research process supporting teacher educators to engage in productive debate about the possible meanings and enactment of the five propositions. Analysis reveals differing perspectives on the propositions and a shared investment in efforts to support their progressive intent. Empirically, the paper highlights the critical role that teacher educators will play in the ongoing enactment of a new curriculum that is overtly identified as ‘futures oriented’. Conceptually, the paper adds depth and sophistication to understandings of teacher educators as policy actors. Methodologically, we propose that the research process described can be usefully adopted by other teacher educators and teachers engaged in similar processes of curriculum development, interpretation and enactment.