Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The obligatory contour principle in african and European varieties of French

This study provides evidence that the role of the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) in substrate languages is reflected in prosodic systems of contact varieties of French. We have compared two contact varieties: Central African French, a variety of French spoken by L1 speakers of Sango a lexical tone language where the constraint is not respected, and Burundi French, which is spoken by L1 speakers of Kirundi, a lexical tone language where the OCP plays an important role in the distribution of tones. Our data indicate that clashes are permitted in the former, but avoided in the latter.
How can Iran’s black market exchange rate be managed?

Purpose - The Iranian currency (rial) depreciated on average 12.2 per cent per annum against the US dollar during the period 1960-1998 but, despite continued two-digit rates of inflation, the rial has witnessed only a meagre 1.7 per cent fall in its value in the post-1998 era. This paper seeks to examine this perplexing issue by identifying the major long-run determinants of the black market exchange rate. Design/methodology/approach - This paper uses the multivariate cointegration test, a threshold regression model and annual time series data (1960-2008) to determine exactly at what exchange rate the effect of relative prices on the exchange rate has been subject to an asymmetry adjustment process. Findings - It was found that the relative CPIs in Iran and the USA, total stock of foreign debt and the price of crude oil are the major long-run determinants of the black market exchange rate. However, the impact of relative prices (as measured by the magnitude of its elasticity) has significantly diminished from almost unity in the pre-1998 period to less than one-fourth since 1998. Based on the results, if oil prices continue to plunge, liquidity and inflation are out of control and at the same time Iran accumulates more external debt, the exchange rate will eventually exhibit an unprecedented and explosive depreciation in the coming years. Originality/value - No previous study has examined this issue using a threshold regression model without splitting the entire sample into two sections according to an endogenously determined threshold for the exchange rate.
How Little is Enough? Implementation and Evaluation of a Lightweight Secure Firmware Update Process for the Internet of Things

With an ever growing number of devices connecting to each other and to the Internet (usually subsumed under the ”Internet-of-Things” moniker), new challenges arise in terms of keeping these devices safe, secure and usable. Against better judegment, a large number of such devices never gets updated after being deployed, be it from negligence, inconvenience or sheer technical challenges. And all that while a plethora of valid approaches already exists for secure wireless remote update processes for such devices. In this work, we present another approach to solve this problem, with a special focus on the ease of integration into existing systems: we try to provide the absolute bare minimum to enable a secure over-the-air update process, analyze the security of this approach, and evaluate the performance impact of the implementation. We show that our solution can deal with nearly 80% of the identified threats, with a negligible impact on practical performance in terms of processing power and energy consumption.
Hybrid Real-Time Matrix Factorization for Implicit Feedback Recommendation Systems

In this paper, we present a hybrid real-time incremental stochastic gradient descent (RI-SGD) updating technique for implicit feedback matrix factorization (MF) recommendation systems. Compared with explicit feedback evaluation scores, implicit feedback data are easier to obtain but pose challenges to MF recommendation systems because of the transformation procedures from raw data to user preference scores. Another challenge for MF recommendation systems is the accuracy issue when the speed of the new input data increases. The proposed RI-SGD is designed for computationally-efficient and accurate time-variant implicit feedback MF recommendation system, which consists of alternating least squares with weight regularization in the training phase and stochastic gradient descent in the updating phase. To demonstrate the advantages of the RI-SGD updating technique in terms of computational efficiency and accuracy, we implement the proposed updating techniques in a real-time music recommendation system. Compared with the method of retraining the entire model, our numerical results show that RI-SGD approach can achieve almost the same recommendation accuracy, but requires only about 0.02% of the retraining time.
Reduced Switching in SCID B Cells Is Associated with Altered Somatic Mutation of Recombined S Regions 1

Deoxyribonucleic acid double-stranded breaks act as intermediates in Ig V(D)J recombination and probably perform a similar function in class switch recombination between IgH C genes. In SCID mice, V(D)J recombination is blocked because the DNA-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunit (DNA-PKcs) protein is defective. We show in this study that switching to all isotypes examined was detectable when the SCID mutation was introduced into anti-hen egg lysozyme transgenic B cells capable of undergoing class switch recombination, but switching was significantly reduced in comparison with control B cells of the same specificity lacking the RAG1 gene. Thus, DNA-PKcs is involved in switching to all isotypes, but plays a lesser role in the switching process than it does in V(D)J-coding joint formation. The higher level of switching observed by us in SCID B cells compared with that observed by others in DNA-PKcsnull cells raises the possibility that kinase-deficient DNA-PKcs can function in switching. Point mutation of G:C base pairs with cytidines on the sense strand was greatly reduced in recombined switch regions from SCID cells compared with control RAG1−/− B cells. The preferential loss of sense strand cytidine mutations from hybrid S regions in SCID cells suggests the possibility that nicks might form in S regions of activated B cells on the template strand independently of activation-induced cytidine deaminase and are converted to double-strand breaks when activation-induced cytidine deaminase deaminates the non-template strand.
Pharmacological removal of serum amyloid P component from intracerebral plaques and cerebrovascular Aβ amyloid deposits in vivo

Human amyloid deposits always contain the normal plasma protein serum amyloid P component (SAP), owing to its avid but reversible binding to all amyloid fibrils, including the amyloid β (Aβ) fibrils in the cerebral parenchyma plaques and cerebrovascular amyloid deposits of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). SAP promotes amyloid fibril formation in vitro, contributes to persistence of amyloid in vivo and is also itself directly toxic to cerebral neurons. We therefore developed (R)-1-[6-[(R)-2-carboxy-pyrrolidin-1-yl]-6-oxo-hexanoyl]pyrrolidine-2-carboxylic acid (CPHPC), a drug that removes SAP from the blood, and thereby also from the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), in patients with AD. Here we report that, after introduction of transgenic human SAP expression in the TASTPM double transgenic mouse model of AD, all the amyloid deposits contained human SAP. Depletion of circulating human SAP by CPHPC administration in these mice removed all detectable human SAP from both the intracerebral and cerebrovascular amyloid. The demonstration that removal of SAP from the blood and CSF also removes it from these amyloid deposits crucially validates the strategy of the forthcoming ‘Depletion of serum amyloid P component in Alzheimer's disease (DESPIAD)’ clinical trial of CPHPC. The results also strongly support clinical testing of CPHPC in patients with CAA.
Prospective Applications of Microwaves in Medicine

Medical applications of microwaves (i.e. a possibility to use microwave energy and/or microwave technique and technology for therapeutical purposes) are a quite new and a very rapidly developing field. Microwave thermotherapy is being used in medicine for the cancer treatment and treatment of some other diseases since early eighties. In this contribution we would like to offer general overview of present activities in the Czech Republic, i.e. clinical applications and results, technical aspects of thermotherapeutic equipment and last but not least, prospective diagnostics based on microwave principals ant technology and instrumentation.
IGF2R Missense Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms and Breast Cancer Risk: The Multiethnic Cohort Study

IGF2R has been proposed to be a tumor suppressor gene given its antagonist role on cellular growth and evidence of loss of heterozygosity in several cancers, including breast cancer. To investigate whether inherited differences in potentially functional IGF2R variants influence the risk of breast cancer, we sequenced 46 exons of IGF2R to identify novel missense single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) and tested 12 missense SNPs for their associations with breast cancer risk among 1,614 breast cancer cases and 1,960 controls from the Multiethnic Cohort. None of these missense SNPs were significantly associated with breast cancer risk. Our findings provide no evidence that missense SNPs in IGF2R influence breast cancer susceptibility. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(6):1922–4)
ID based communication in Domain-Insulated Autonomous Network Architecture (DIANA)

Although the Internet achieved tremendous success in the recent decades, several limitations have emerged from recent technical advancement and challenging requirements of diverse applications. For overcoming these limitations, the future Internet can be redesigned in the “clean slate” basis. This paper proposes a novel architecture that considers both horizontal and vertical separations called, Domain-Insulated Autonomous Network architecture (DIANA). In this architecture, a network is composed of a set of basic building blocks, called “domains”, which can be defined recursively by topological, administrative, or operational grouping of communicating entities. In this paper, the design principles of DIANA and its distinguishing features are described. Then the inter-domain routing mechanism is described along with some use cases of DIANA.
Single-Agent Parallel Window Search

Parallel window search is applied to single-agent problems by having different processes simultaneously perform iteration of Iterative-Deepening-A* (IDA*) on the same problem but with different cost thresholds. This approach is limited by the time to perform the goal iteration. To overcome this disadvantage, the authors consider node ordering. They discuss how global node ordering by minimum h among nodes with equal f=g+h values can reduce the time complexity of serial IDA* by reducing the time to perform the iterations prior to the goal iteration. Finally, the two ideas of parallel window search and node ordering are combined to eliminate the weaknesses of each approach while retaining the strengths. The resulting approach, called simply parallel window search, can be used to find a near-optimal solution quickly, improve the solution until it is optimal, and then finally guarantee optimality, depending on the amount of time available. >
Determinants of glutathione efflux and biliary GSH/GSSG ratio in perfused rat liver.

Utilizing the isolated perfused rat liver, we examined several factors influencing efflux of glutathione [reduced glutathione (GSH) and glutathione disulfide (GSSG)] into perfusate and bile, including the effects of perfusate composition, oxygen delivery to the liver, and acivicin (AT-125), an inhibitor of gamma-glutamyl transferase activity. When livers were perfused with a recirculating Krebs-Ringer bicarbonate buffer only 7-26% of released glutathione was excreted into bile, mainly in its oxidized form (71-90% as GSSG). In contrast, when 20% bovine red blood cells or 20% fluorocarbon emulsion were utilized as perfusates, biliary glutathione accounted for a larger fraction of total hepatic efflux (16-41%), and only 39-65% was excreted as GSSG. To determine whether O2 delivery to the liver could explain some of these differences, biliary and sinusoidal efflux of glutathione were measured as O2 delivery was varied by 1) increasing the perfusion flow rate, 2) altering the concentration of fluorocarbon emulsion (5, 10, and 20%), and 3) changing the PO2 (95% O2-5% CO2 vs. 50% O2-5% CO2-45% N2). Under all experimental conditions, an increase in O2 delivery was accompanied by an increase in bile flow and in the concentration and rate of glutathione efflux into bile but no significant change in sinusoidal efflux of glutathione. Hepatic tissue GSH and GSSG levels were not affected by the various treatments. When gamma-glutamyl transferase activity was inhibited with AT-125, biliary glutathione increased to levels of approximately 50% of total hepatic efflux in fluorocarbon-perfused livers, and only 24-29% of the glutathione was excreted as GSSG. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Bilateral Shoulder Edge Adduction Contracture : Anatomy and Treatment with Axillary Adipose-Cutaneous Trapezoid and Quadrangular Flaps , a New Approach

Background: Bilateral shoulder edge adduction contractures are result of vast burns and scars, restricting the upper limb motion and its development in children. There is no published research pertaining specifically to the anatomy of bilateral axillary contractures. Therefore, the used techniques based on triangular and other flaps’ forms, local and regional, were not anatomically substantiated. The cause of scar contracture (scar surface deficit) was not explored. Therefore, the suggested flaps did not match the scar surface deficit, and the contracture was often released incompletely. For this reason, we researched bilateral contractures’ anatomy and proposed an adequate scar surface deficit compensation local flap method. Methods: Anatomy and scars’ surface deficit (contracture cause) of bilateral contractures were studied in 45 patients (children and adults), before operation, during, and after surgery. Results: Using the new evidence, a new approach to treatment of shoulder bilateral contracture was developed. The treatment lies in surface deficit compensation using the surface surplus of sheets of the fold and entire tissue of the axillary fossa in the form of trapezoid adipose-cutaneous and neighboring flaps and tissues displacement on the donor wound. The surface surplus of sheets of the fold and undamaged adipose-cutaneous layer of axillary fossa allows scar surface deficit compensation and contracture elimination with one or two-stage technique without skin transplants, triangular local flaps and regional complex traumatic regular and expanded flaps that are typically used in the original technique. The procedure significantly improves the outcomes of the bilateral shoulder contracture treatment. Conclusion: The understanding of the edge contracture formation, anatomy and contracture cause open a new approach to forming of a diagnosis, planning of operation, and successful reconstruction without skin transplants and complex flaps.
Plant volatiles and adult experience affect selection by Cotesia plutellae of host larvae on different plants.

Laboratory experiments were conducted to examine selection by Cotesia plutellae between host larvae feeding on two plant species: Chinese cabbage, Brassica campestris ssp. pekinensis and common cabbage, Brassica oleracea var. capitata. When C. plutellae wasps were provided with equal numbers of Plutella xylostella larvae on both species of plants in one arena, the parasitoid parasitised 4-15 fold more host larvae on the Chinese cabbage than on the common cabbage and this preference did not change with host density. However, an experience of oviposition or searching on a leaf of the less-preferred plant, the common cabbage, significantly increased the preference for parasitising host larvae on this plant. Plant volatiles from Chinese cabbage were more attractive to C. plutellae adult females than those emanating from common cabbage. Feeding by P. xylostella larvae increased the attraction of both plant species to C. plutellae, but the infestation and the presence of P. xylostella larvae on the plants did not affect their relative levels of attraction to the parasitoid. In parallel to the increased parasitism on common cabbage following experience, an oviposition in host larvae on this less-preferred plant significantly increased the response to volatiles emanating from the plant. These results indicate that host plants may strongly influence the foraging behaviour of C. plutellae, but their differential attractions to the parasitoid may be significantly offset by the learning behaviour of the insect.
Semantic Structure-Based Word Embedding by Incorporating Concept Convergence and Word Divergence

Representing the semantics of words is a fundamental task in text processing. Several research studies have shown that text and knowledge bases (KBs) are complementary sources for word embedding learning. Most existing methods only consider relationships within word-pairs in the usage of KBs. We argue that the structural information of well-organized words within the KBs is able to convey more effective and stable knowledge in capturing semantics of words. In this paper, we propose a semantic structure-based word embedding method, and introduce concept convergence and word divergence to reveal semantic structures in the word embedding learning process. To assess the effectiveness of our method, we use WordNet for training and conduct extensive experiments on word similarity, word analogy, text classification and query expansion. The experimental results show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods, including the methods trained solely on the corpus, and others trained on the corpus and the KBs.
Endogenous Product Boundary

This study analyzes the determinants of product boundary choice as discriminatory pricing. Specifically, we consider a model where a monopolist sells a base product with an add-on valuable only if it is consumed along with the base product. An important feature of this model is that this additional value is contingent on the valuation of the base product. We show that separation, in which case only the base product is sold, yields a higher profit than integration, where only a bundled package is sold, if and only if the range of the add-on value exceeds a threshold value and that separation is more likely to become optimal as the degree of positive contingency increases. As for welfare, consumer surplus in case of separation is always lower than that when the seller is constrained to sell the bundled package.
Journal of Translational Internal Medicine / Oct-dec 2015 / Vol 3 | Issue 4

INTRODUCTION Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most frequent causes of mortality in the world. COPD is usually associated with a number of secondary impairments such as cardiac, metabolic, peripheral muscle, and psychosocial dysfunction. A major problem among these co-morbidities is skeletal muscle dysfunction, which is typically characterized by reduced muscle strength and exercise intolerance. Muscular dysfunction in COPD patients mainly concerns the lower limbs [4] , but upper limb muscle function is reduced as well. Reduced muscle strength and endurance significantly deteriorate functional capacity, health-related quality of life, and even mortality in COPD patients. However, muscle weakness and increased fatigability are not the only limitations of skeletal muscle function. ABSTRACT Background and Objectives: Skeletal muscle dysfunction is a major problem among the co-morbidities associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, muscle weakness and increased fatigability are not the only limitations of skeletal muscle function. Motor–respiratory coordination (MRC) may occur even during movements at lowest workloads. MRC modifies the temporal pattern of motor actions, thus probably impairing motor performance and movement precision. Little attention has been paid to the question of whether motor functions may be compromised in COPD patients independent of workload and required muscle strength and endurance. The present pilot study was designed to investigate the effects of a simulated obstruction (SO) in healthy subjects on their breathing pattern and the timing of a rhythmical forearm movement. Methods: Twenty-one subjects performed flexion– extension movements with their right forearm at a self-chosen rate within a range between 0.2 and 0.4 Hz. After a control experiment with normal breathing, a plug with a narrow hole was inserted between face mask and pneumotachograph to simulate obstruction. Subjects were required to repeat the rhythmical forearm movement at the same rate as in the control experiment. Results: The condition of SO significantly prolonged breath duration but reduced tidal volume and ventilation. In addition, period duration of the forearm movement increased significantly under this condition while the movement-to-breathing frequency ratio remained almost constant. Increased breathing resistance was considered to cause prolonged breath duration accompanied by an increase in movement period duration. The constant near-integer ratio between movement and breathing rates indicates that the change in movement period duration resulted from MRC. Conclusions: The findings of this pilot study demonstrate that increased breathing resistance may compromise motor performance even at lower workloads. This means that in COPD patients, not only muscle …
Policy Advocacy in Hard Times: The Impact of Economic Performance on Gendering Executive Attention

Securing executive attention for new policy demands is notoriously difficult as governmental agendas are crowded by established or ‘core’ policy issues. This article investigates whether it is harder for new and costly policy issues to reach the government agenda when the economy is performing badly. It examines whether, and the extent to which, costly gender equality issues regarding women’s access to the labour market, equal treatment at work and care activities, are more likely to achieve executive attention when the economy is performing well. Using the Comparative Policy Agendas database, a systematic, quantitative analysis is conducted of when and why policies promoting sex equality in the division of labour reach executive agendas. The findings confirm that advocacy for costly gender equality measures is easier to make in times of economic growth. It is also found that female representation in parliament strengthens advocacy for executive attention and reduces friction on policy agenda change.
A review of cloned mobile malware applications for android devices

With the increased mobile applications popularity, fraud methods have become a big problem in this area. Every smartphone definitely has at least one mobile application. These applications, which are constantly connected to the Internet, can threaten our security. Unfortunately, mobile applications still have a lot of vulnerabilities. It has been determined that 96% of the security tests on mobile released applications fail at least one test. This paper focuses on the threat of malware cloned applications and the damage caused to the affected Android users. An explanation of how the cloned malware applications affecting Android users is provided. In addition, a presentation of the awareness steps that users can take to notice these applications is given.