Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Becoming and Being an African Scholar: A 15-Year Perspective on Capacity-Building Projects in Ghana

Universities in Africa are increasingly seen as key drivers for development and, hence, as a focus point for development agencies in the North. Through the ENhancement of REsearch Capacity (ENRECA) programme 1989–2009, the Danish Development Agency has facilitated Ph.D. education and research in partnerships with African higher education institutions. As other capacity-building projects, ENRECA has been evaluated by donor-initiated missions looking at research output, degrees awarded and interviewing heads and administrators. But how did the individuals who opted for an academic career experience the process? – are they still part of the university system or have they found other opportunities? – and what do their narratives tell us about long-term capacity building? These are relevant questions to address for understanding the role of African Universities as drivers and actors in development processes. Through two analyses of nine narrative interviews with former ENRECA Ph.D. students from the University of Ghana, we unfold their encounter with the transition into becoming and being an African scholar. The analyses show that the processes of becoming a Ph.D. are important not only at the time of the Ph.D. study but also for the informants’ experiences of present possibilities. Four different academic life approaches are found that frame the informants’ re-telling of who they are, how they became who they are, and how the ENRECA programme affected these processes. The article concludes that the ENRECA programme facilitated several kinds of empowerment for the participants, not only during their Ph.D. studies but also in their job positions 15 years later.
An Experimental Objective Method to Determine Maximum Output and Dynamic Range of an Active Bone Conduction Implant: The Bonebridge

Introduction Recently, a new active bone conduction implant, the Bonebridge, was introduced. This transcutaneous device is proposed as an alternative to previous percutaneous systems. The current study aims to determine the maximum output (MO) of the Bonebridge by making use of Bonebridge-generated sound pressure levels in the occluded ear canal of the unaided ear. Methodology The test setup consisted of audiometry and input-output measurements. These tests were performed on 3 Bonebridge users with conductive or mixed hearing loss (bone-conduction thresholds, ⩽45 dB HL) at least 3 months after implantation surgery. All the patients were implanted and were evaluated in the Antwerp University Hospital. The MO of the device was determined by measuring input-output functions with a microphone placed in the occluded contralateral ear canal using the Aurical REM system. During testing, the sound processor was fitted in linear amplification mode and with unlimited output to determine the MO and the input dynamic range of the Bonebridge. This experimental setup intends to evaluate the device in a fitting program without compression. Results The mean MO of the device was 55 dB HL (SD, 6 dB HL) at 0.5 kHz, 61 dB HL (SD, 18 dB HL), 71 dB HL (SD, 10 dB HL) at 2 kHz, and 60 dB HL (SD, 10 dB HL) at 4 kHz. The mean dynamic range of the Bonebridge was 41 (SD, 5) dB HL, 46 (SD, 10) dB HL, 46 (SD, 5) dB HL, and 37 (SD, 16) dB HL for 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz, respectively. Conclusion In summary, ear canal measures can effectively be used to assess input-output behavior of the Bonebridge. The present study indicates that the MO of the Bonebridge ranges from 55 to 71 dB HL, depending on frequency. Accepting a minimum dynamic range of 35 dB with the Bonebridge, fitting of the Bonebridge in a linear program is advocated in patients with a sensorineural hearing loss component of up to 30 dB HL.
Investment, Financing Constraints and the Euler Equation

In what follows, we show that financing constraints affects firm's investment decisions before the constraints is binding. This occurs because the firm anticipates at the current time the future bound. We argue that, even with imperfect capital markets, investment policy must be such that there are no arbitrage opportunities at any time. Contrary to the usual "expectations view", this forward looking behavior guarantees the respect of the Euler quation even when the restriction is binding, that is the optimality of the constrained investment decisions.
Dynamic Network Embedding by Modeling Triadic Closure Process

Network embedding, which aims to learn the low-dimensional representations of vertices, is an important task and has attracted considerable research efforts recently. In real world, networks, like social network and biological networks, are dynamic and evolving over time. However, almost all the existing network embedding methods focus on static networks while ignore network dynamics. In this paper, we present a novel representation learning approach, DynamicTriad, to preserve both structural information and evolution patterns of a given network. The general idea of our approach is to impose triad, which is a group of three vertices and is one of the basic units of networks. In particular, we model how a closed triad, which consists of three vertices connected with each other, develops from an open triad that has two of three vertices not connected with each other. This triadic closure process is a fundamental mechanism in the formation and evolution of networks, thereby makes our model being able to capture the network dynamics and to learn representation vectors for each vertex at different time steps. Experimental results on three real-world networks demonstrate that, compared with several state-of-the-art techniques, DynamicTriad achieves substantial gains in several application scenarios. For example, our approach can effectively be applied and help to identify telephone frauds in a mobile network, and to predict whether a user will repay her loans or not in a loan network.
Estimation of Opportunity Inequality in Brazil using Nonparametric Local Logistic Regression

Abstract This article measured opportunity inequality in Brazil by combining a series of theoretical and empirical tools. The database was built using a two-sample instrumental variable (TSIV), developed by Angrist and Krueger. After that, the axiomatic approach put forward by O'Neill et al. was used, in which the estimation of children's income distribution function is conditional on their fathers' wages. The inference process was based on nonparametric local logistic regression. The results indicate that Brazil has a high level of opportunity inequality. In other words, in the context of intergenerational mobility, those whose fathers belong to lower income strata have to expend greater effort in order to attain a certain income level.
UVB Induces a Genome-Wide Acting Negative Regulatory Mechanism That Operates at the Level of Transcription Initiation in Human Cells

Faithful transcription of DNA is constantly threatened by different endogenous and environmental genotoxic effects. Transcription coupled repair (TCR) has been described to stop transcription and quickly remove DNA lesions from the transcribed strand of active genes, permitting rapid resumption of blocked transcription. This repair mechanism has been well characterized in the past using individual target genes. Moreover, numerous efforts investigated the fate of blocked RNA polymerase II (Pol II) during DNA repair mechanisms and suggested that stopped Pol II complexes can either backtrack, be removed and degraded or bypass the lesions to allow TCR. We investigated the effect of a non-lethal dose of UVB on global DNA-bound Pol II distribution in human cells. We found that the used UVB dose did not induce Pol II degradation however surprisingly at about 93% of the promoters of all expressed genes Pol II occupancy was seriously reduced 2–4 hours following UVB irradiation. The presence of Pol II at these cleared promoters was restored 5–6 hours after irradiation, indicating that the negative regulation is very dynamic. We also identified a small set of genes (including several p53 regulated genes), where the UVB-induced Pol II clearing did not operate. Interestingly, at promoters, where Pol II promoter clearance occurs, TFIIH, but not TBP, follows the behavior of Pol II, suggesting that at these genes upon UVB treatment TFIIH is sequestered for DNA repair by the TCR machinery. In agreement, in cells where the TCR factor, the Cockayne Syndrome B protein, was depleted UVB did not induce Pol II and TFIIH clearance at promoters. Thus, our study reveals a UVB induced negative regulatory mechanism that targets Pol II transcription initiation on the large majority of transcribed gene promoters, and a small subset of genes, where Pol II escapes this negative regulation.
Optimized survival of hippocampal neurons in B27‐supplemented neurobasal™, a new serum‐free medium combination

We have systematically optimized the concentrations of 20 components of a previously published serumfree medium (Brewer and Cotman, Brain Res 494: 65‐74, 1989) for survival of rat embryonic hippocampal neurons after 4 days in culture. This serum‐freemedium Supplement, B27, produced neuron survival above 60% independent of plating density above 160 plated cells/mm2 For isolated cells (<100 cells/mm2), survival at 4 days was still above 45%, but could be rescued to the 60% level at 40 cells/mm2 by simply applying a coverslip on top of the cells. This suggests a need for additional trophic factors. High survival was achieved with osmolarity lower than found in Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium (DMEM), and by reducing cysteine and glutamine concentrations and by the elimination of toxic ferrnous sulphate found in DME/F12. Neurobasal is a new medium that incorporates these modifications to DMEM. In B27/ Neurobasal, glial growth is reduced to less than 0.5% of the nearly pure neuronal population, as judged by immunocytochemistry for glial fibrillary acidic protein and neuron‐specific enolase. Excellent long‐term viability is achieved after 4 weeks in culture with greater than 90%viability for cells plated at 640/mm2 and greater than 50 viability for cells plated at 160/mm2 Since the medium also supports the growth of neurons from embryonic rat striatum, substantia nigra, septum, and cortex, and neonatal dentate gyrus and cerebellum (Brewer, in preparation), support for other neuron types is likely. B27/Neurobasal should be useful for in vitro studies of neuronal toxicology, pharmacology, electrophysiology, gene expression, development, and effects of growth factors and hormones. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The ASK family kinases differentially mediate induction of type I interferon and apoptosis during the antiviral response

The relative abundance of two related kinases determines whether virus-infected cells die or trigger an antiviral response. Viruses ASK for it When a host cell is infected by a virus, cytosolic RIG-I–like receptors (RLRs) sense double-stranded RNA and stimulate the production of type I interferons (IFNs) to activate the immune response and also stimulate programmed cell death (apoptosis) to limit viral spread. Okazaki et al. found that in epithelial cells, the kinase ASK1 mediated RLR-dependent signaling in response to viral infection to activate the downstream kinases JNK and p38, resulting in both IFN production and apoptosis. However, experiments with influenza virus–infected mice showed that the related kinase ASK2 was required for ASK1-dependent apoptosis, but not IFN production. Together, these data suggest that the relative abundance of ASK1 and ASK2 determines the type of response that is elicited by viral infection. Viral infection activates host defense mechanisms, including the production of type I interferon (IFN) and the apoptosis of infected cells. We investigated whether these two antiviral responses were differentially regulated in infected cells. We showed that the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) kinase kinase (MAPKKK) apoptosis signal–regulating kinase 1 (ASK1) was activated in cells by the synthetic double-stranded RNA analog polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid [poly(I:C)] and by RNA viruses, and that ASK1 played an essential role in both the induction of the gene encoding IFN-β (IFNB) and apoptotic cell death. In contrast, we found that the MAPKKK ASK2, a modulator of ASK1 signaling, was essential for ASK1-dependent apoptosis, but not for inducing IFNB expression. Furthermore, genetic deletion of either ASK1 or ASK2 in mice promoted the replication of influenza A virus in the lung. These results indicated that ASK1 and ASK2 are components of the antiviral defense mechanism and suggested that ASK2 acts as a key modulator that promotes apoptosis rather than the type I IFN response. Because ASK2 is selectively present in epithelium-rich tissues, such as the lung, ASK2-dependent apoptosis may contribute to an antiviral defense in tissues with a rapid repair rate in which cells could be readily replaced.
SurfCut: Surfaces of Minimal Paths from Topological Structures

We present SurfCut, an algorithm for extracting a smooth, simple surface with an unknown 3D curve boundary from a noisy 3D image and a seed point. Our method is built on the novel observation that ridge curves of the Euclidean length of minimal paths ending on a level set of the solution of the eikonal equation lie on the surface. Our method extracts these ridges and cuts them to form the surface boundary. Our surface extraction algorithm is built on the novel observation that the surface lies in a valley of the eikonal equation solution. The resulting surface is a collection of minimal paths. Using the framework of cubical complexes and Morse theory, we design algorithms to extract ridges and valleys robustly. Experiments on three 3D datasets show the robustness of our method, and that it achieves higher accuracy with lower computational cost than state-of-the-art.
Complex protein binding within the mouse immunoglobulin heavy-chain enhancer

We have begun to purify and characterize several proteins which bind to the mouse immunoglobulin heavy-chain enhancer to understand the molecular interactions important for enhancer activity. Three proteins which bind to different sites on the immunoglobulin heavy-chain enhancer have been chromatographically separated and partially purified. One protein binds a site which has not been reported previously and does not bind to other reported protein-binding sites on the immunoglobulin heavy-chain enhancer. Binding-site boundaries for the three partially purified proteins have been precisely mapped by methylation interference, DNase I footprinting, and orthophenanthroline/copper chemical nuclease footprinting. We have also characterized these three proteins with respect to dissociation rate constants.
New managerial approaches in organizations’ human resources as a result of privatization

One of the main challenges encountered in the privatization process refers to the transformation of the former management of state enterprises into a new management system, able to meet the new demands of a market economy. This challenge is addressed not only to local organizations, but also to multinational companies seeking to expand into former communist countries. They are in a different socio-economic circumstance that conditions opportunities and limits transferability of management practices and concepts of organizational management in the West. These have to be reinvented and/or adapted locally.
Nomograms to estimate long‐term overall survival and tongue cancer‐specific survival of patients with tongue squamous cell carcinoma

The aim of this study was to construct nomograms to predict long‐term overall survival (OS) and tongue cancer‐specific survival (TCSS) of tongue squamous cell carcinoma (TSCC) patients based on clinical and tumor characteristics. Clinical, tumor, and treatment characteristics of 12,674 patients diagnosed with TSCC between 2004 and 2013 were collected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database. These patients were then divided into surgery and nonsurgery cohorts, and nomograms were developed for each of these groups. The step‐down method and cumulative incidence function were used for model selection to determine the significant prognostic factors associated with OS and TCSS. These prognostic variables were incorporated into nomograms. An external cohort was used to validate the surgery nomograms. Seven variables were used to create the surgery nomograms for OS and TCSS, which had c‐indexes of 0.709 and 0.728, respectively; for the external validation cohort, the c‐indexes were 0.691 and 0.711, respectively. Nine variables were used to create the nonsurgery nomograms for OS and TCSS, which had c‐indexes of 0.750 and 0.754, respectively. The calibration curves of the 5‐ and 8‐year surgery and nonsurgery nomograms showed excellent agreement between the probabilities and observed values. By incorporating clinicopathological and host characteristics in patients, we are the first to establish nomograms that accurately predict prognosis for individual patients with TSCC. These nomograms ought to provide more personalized and reliable prognostic information, and improve clinical decision‐making for TSCC patients.
A comparative approach for multiclass text analysis

This paper presents multiclass text analysis for the classification problem in Spanish documents. Even if Spanish language is considered as one the most spoken language, text classification problem has not yet been carried out for different problems in multiclass analysis. Two different approaches; Naive Bayes and Maximum Entropy were used as machine learning techniques. The corpus was created with 10 different categories. Smoothing parameters and three different document models were integrated to the study. During the comparative analysis, optimal parameters were determined using their sensitivity on the accuracy, the precision and the recall. Consequently, Maximum Entropy was found as the best technique even if both techniques were relevant in multiclass classification.
A framework for enriching lexical semantic resources with distributional semantics

Abstract We present an approach to combining distributional semantic representations induced from text corpora with manually constructed lexical semantic networks. While both kinds of semantic resources are available with high lexical coverage, our aligned resource combines the domain specificity and availability of contextual information from distributional models with the conciseness and high quality of manually crafted lexical networks. We start with a distributional representation of induced senses of vocabulary terms, which are accompanied with rich context information given by related lexical items. We then automatically disambiguate such representations to obtain a full-fledged proto-conceptualization, i.e. a typed graph of induced word senses. In a final step, this proto-conceptualization is aligned to a lexical ontology, resulting in a hybrid aligned resource. Moreover, unmapped induced senses are associated with a semantic type in order to connect them to the core resource. Manual evaluations against ground-truth judgments for different stages of our method as well as an extrinsic evaluation on a knowledge-based Word Sense Disambiguation benchmark all indicate the high quality of the new hybrid resource. Additionally, we show the benefits of enriching top-down lexical knowledge resources with bottom-up distributional information from text for addressing high-end knowledge acquisition tasks such as cleaning hypernym graphs and learning taxonomies from scratch.
Stairways detection and distance estimation approach based on three connected point and triangular similarity

Detecting stair region and estimating the distance from a camera to stair in a stair image is the fundamental step in the implementation of autonomous stair climbing navigation, as well as alarm systems for vision impaired people. In this paper, a framework is proposed for detecting the stair region from stair image utilizing some natural properties of stair. One unique property of them is, every stair step's beginning and ending horizontal edge point intersects with two vertical edge points creating three connected point. These vertical edges are stair step's height and its width edge. Another unique property is steps of a stair appear gradually increasing order from top to bottom of the stair in a parallel arrangement. For that initially, directional Gabor filter and Canny edge detector are employed on the stair image to eliminate the influence of illumination and for detecting stair edges. Non-candidate stair edges are removed by performing filtering operation. Then longest horizontal edges are extracted by using a proposed edge linking method on the edge image. After that, a search method is applied for finding stair step height and width edge point at the beginning and ending point of the longest horizontal edges. This operation is performed for detecting three connected points to validate the stair edges. In the next step, increasing longest horizontal edge segments are extracted by comparing x coordinate values of two consecutive edges end points to justify them as stair edges. Finally, from this set of horizontal edges, vanishing point is calculated to verify stair edges from other similar patterns and confirm the detection of stair candidate region. In addition, the triangular similarity is used for distance estimation from camera to stair. The proposed framework is tested using various stair images under a variety of conditions and results are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness.
Married Women in Part-Time Employment

This research deals with three aspects of the part-time employment pattern of working wives: (1) the wives' characteristics, (2) the level and structure of their earnings in part-time jobs, and (3) the duration of their employment when part-time jobs are available to them. This study improves upon previous research by using multivariate analysis to determine if the variation in the incidence of part-time work consistently found in other studies persists when earnings potential, fertility, family income, and other factors that may vary by age or race are held constant. It differs further by including a data source that contains direct measures of market wages and experience for a large sample of married working women. The authors find that husband's income, family size, and the wife's health, race, and previous work experience are among the variables that influence the probability that the wife works part time. They also find that the level of wages and returns to some investments in human capital are relatively lower in the part-time labor market but that there are similarities between the earnings structure of part-time and full-time jobs. They conclude that part-time work opportunities appear to increase the length of the working life of married women.
Wachsende Unsicherheiten: Arbeitslosigkeit und Einkommensverluste bei Wiederbeschäftigung

Dieses Papier befasst sich mit den Folgen von Arbeitslosigkeit fur das Erwerbseinkommen. Ziel ist es zu ergrunden, wie sich die Dauer einer Arbeitslosigkeitsphase und das Ausmas bisher erfahrener Arbeitslosigkeit im Erwerbsverlauf auf das Einkommen bei Wiederbeschaftigung auswirken und wie sich diese Einflusse mit der jeweiligen Arbeitsmarktsituation verandern. Die Analysen auf Basis von Langsschnittdaten des Forschungsdatenzentrums der Deutschen Rentenversicherung zeigen, dass eine Betrachtung individueller Bildungs- bzw. Suchanstrengungen in diesem Zusammenhang nicht ausreicht. Vielmehr muss das individuelle Arbeitslosigkeitsereignis in den Kontext der allgemeinen Arbeitsmarktbedingungen gestellt und die Nachfragesituation berucksichtigt werden. Die Ergebnisse deuten auf wachsende Unsicherheiten durch zunehmend instabile Erwerbskarrieren hin.