Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Translating Monetary Inputs into Health Care Provision: A Comparative Analysis of the Impact of Different Modes of Public Policy

Abstract This article investigates different modes of public policy in health care and their impact on health care financing and health service provision. In order to investigate the relationship between health expenditure and health service provision, we construct an “index of health care providers”. The empirical analysis of expenditure and this index demonstrates that there is only a weak correspondence between the level of total health expenditure and the number of health service providers in OECD countries. Different modes of health policy can help to explain why some countries are more successful in translating monetary inputs into health care personnel than other countries. Our results indicate that policies which favor self-regulation by non-governmental actors (as in Germany) lead in general to high levels of health care providers at above OECD average health expenditure. Policies which favor direct state control (as in the United Kingdom), on the other hand, are characterized by lower levels of health care providers and below average health expenditure. Policies which favor market elements are more difficult to categorize. However, it is noteworthy that especially countries that give market mechanisms higher priority than other countries (as the United States) offer below average numbers of health care providers at comparatively high total health care costs.
Fatigue and Stress Monitoring with Magnetic Sensor Arrays

Background and selected applications of conformable eddy current sensor networks for monitoring fatigue damage in complex geometry regions of specimens, components and structures are presented. Also, capability to use the same sensors to monitor stress in ferromagnetic materials is described. These eddy current sensors, called MWM ® -Arrays, use model-based multivariate inversion methods to provide reliable early detection and monitoring of fatigue cracks and real-time monitoring of stress through paint or coatings. Proven capabilities are illustrated by results for aluminum alloy, titanium alloy, and high-strength steel fatigue specimens, with MWM-Arrays mounted inside holes and on other cylindrical surfaces. Linear and circular MWM configurations (MWM-Rosettes) also provide the capability to detect and monitor fatigue cracks in embedded (between layers) sensor formats and with sensors placed under bolt heads as “smart washers. ” This paper describes implementations of this capability for aircraft focused applications, including past and ongoing coupon, subcomponent, component and full-scale aircraft fatigue tests as well as for structural health monitoring.
Video tracking of dairy cows for assessing mobility scores

Lameness afflicts a large proportion of dairy herds, but could be considerably reduced by automated monitoring by CCTV. Key to this is reliable, robust detection and tracking of individual cows in crowded video sequences. We introduce a novel detection and tracking method, based on the Viola-Jones detector. We show that animals can be tracked and their overall gait patterns and speed automatically extracted from video sequences. Preliminary work on identification of individual animals through principal component analysis and SIFT feature matching is also described.
Determination of the Contact Angles of Kaolin Intercalates of Oleochemicals Derived from Rubber Seed (HeveaBrasiliensis) and Tea Seed (CameliaSinensis) Oils by the Capillary Rise Method

Pristine kaolin was organically modified by employing derivatives of oleochemicals namely rubber seed oil (SRSO) and tea seed oil (STSO). Intercalation was attained by the entrance of hydrazine hydrate as co-intercalate. Characterization of the pristine kaolin and modified kaolin was done using powder X-ray diffraction which revealed increase in the interlayer basal spacing d-001 for the SRSO-modified and STSO-modified kaolins, confirming intercalation process. The FTIR studies further revealed that the fatty acid salts of rubber seed oil and tea seed oil were effectively intercalatedin the kaolinite layers as per the bands at 1564 cm-1and 1553 cm-1for SRSO-modified and STSO-modified kaolins respectively. The contact angle measurement using capillary rise method was performed to confirm that the pristine kaolin with initial contact angle value of ~45° was effectively modified and ‘wetted’ from hydrophilic state to hydrophobic state of ~90° for the SRSO-modified and STSO-modified kaolin.The determination of the contact angles of the kaolin was performed to confirm intercalation of the modified kaolin with the oleochemical derivatives.
Chemical constituents comparison of essential oils of aerial parts of Conium maculatum L. growing wild in Iran by hydrodistillation, microwave assisted hydrodistillation and solid phase microextraction methods

The present report deals with the analysis comparison of the essential oils from aerial parts of Conium maculatum L. growing wild in Iran were obtained by hydrodistillation, microwave assisted hydrodistillation and solid phase microextraction methods and collected essential oils were analyzed by GC and GC-MS. The plant is a member of the Apiaceae family of rhizomal plant which are usually 120-180cm high. C. maculatum which is also called as Poison hemlock is refered to as one of the most toxic plants. The volatiles were isolated from dried aerial parts of the plant. Twenty two compounds were identified representing 73.8% of total volatiles obtained by HD and the major constituents of the essential oil were α-pinene(16.2%), camphene (9.9%), limonen(8.6%) and linalool(5.3%). Sixteen compounds were identified representing 74.6% of total oils obtained by MAHD and the main components were camphene(13.0%) , limonene(8.7%) , linalool(8.4%) and Fenchyl acetate(7.6%) . Nine compounds were identified representing 99.8% of total oils obtained by SPME and the main components were α-pinene(42.1%), sabinene(16.2%0), limonene ( 11.3%),camphene(9.5%) and myrcene(7.9%). DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.3126/ijls.v9i2. 12056 International Journal of Life Sciences 9 (2) : 2015; 48-50
Application of distance function and data envelopment analysis in efficiency evaluation of Islamic Azad University branches in East Azerbaijan province

The main aim of the study was to evaluate the efficiency of Islamic Azad University branches in East Azerbaijan using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and to compare the findings with the results of data envelopment analysis (DEA). In this respect, SFA and DEA techniques were applied to measure production efficiency of 28 branches of East Azerbaijan Islamic Azad University considering the following variables as either output or input: 3 variables as output (including the number of graduated students and students accepted for the further pursuit of their studies, as well as the number of articles, books, and research projects) and 6 variables as input (including the number of university faculty members, educational fields, current students, staff working in different sections of the university, and the total university campus in square meters as well as university costs). Estimation of DEA and obtaining of the units' efficiency indicated that the average efficiency of the universities under investigation were 0.66 and 0.80 in SFA and DEA techniques, respectively. In addition, efficiency distributions in SFA and DEA methods were tremendously different from each other so that in SFA method nearly 40% while in DEA method more than 60% of unit efficiency was between 0.8-1 intervals. The minimum level of estimated efficiency (0.14) was observed for Hadishahr using SFA method, and in DEA approach, the minimum level of efficiency belonged to Khoda Afarin branch (0.065). Finally, considering that non-parametric DEA tends to represent the units more efficiently and thus a decrease in the difference among the estimated efficiency values of the units, it is recommended that university authorities apply parametric SFA for performance evaluation and identification of less efficient units. Urmia University at
"Over Expression of Jatropha’s Dehydrin Jcdhn-2 Enhances Tolerance to Water Stress in Rice Plants"

Jatropha curcas’sdehydrin (JC-DHNS) has been previously shown to play a role during natural dehydration process associated with maturation of Jatropha curcasseed. In this study, we generated transformed rice plant (tp) over expressing JC-DHNSgene and examined the role of over expressed gene in improving the drought tolerance. The tp plants showed a stronger growth under water stress condition induced by addition 20% of PEG 6000. It also showed an enhanced water stress tolerance as indicated by growth parameters included, fresh and dry weight, chlorophyll content, maximum quantum yield, actual quantum yield of photosystem II and non-photochemical quenching. Also, tp plants showed higher membrane stability under drought comparing with non-transformed plant (wt) as indicated through determination of membrane electrolyte leakage, the values of malondialdehyde and, hydrogen peroxide content as indicator for oxidation level. The tp plant had higher content of osmoregulators substances such as proline, free amino acids and total soluble sugar. The tp plant showed higher content of enzyme activity such as and superoxide dismutase catalase and ascorbate peroxidase compared with wt. Our results clearly showed that tp rice plant with JC-DHNS better coped with drought stress due increasing photosynthetic efficiency and antioxidant enzymes activity.
Multi-User MISO for Visible Light Communication

The lighting is going through revolution. The use of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) has greatly increased during the last few years, meanwhile incandescent and fluorescent lamps have become obsolete. The LEDs, apart from being extremely high energy efficient, are able to switch to different light intensities at very high speed. This fact, along with the looming crisis of Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum, has given rise to an attractive communication technology known as Visible Light Communication (VLC) that uses the huge licensefree spectrum of approximately 400 THz, which is more than 1,000 larger than the RF spectrum. This technology offers a novel alternative to RF, enabling the development of wireless communications that make use of existing lighting infrastructure. This thesis studies multi-user multiple-input single-output (MU-MISO) visible light communications techniques for indoor broadcast systems. Particularly, we have proposed a railway wagon as scenario. Transmitters, configured as multiple LED arrays, and multiple users equipped with one single photodetector (PD) are considered. We tackle two relevant challenges in such broadcast systems: how to deal with the multi-user interference (MUI) and how to design the whole system in order to meet the requirement of having a real-valued and positive Visible Light (VL) signal feeding the LED. Unlike RF counterpart, the VL signal is modulated on light intensity and, consequently, is always positive. This critical constraint imposed by intensity-modulated/direct-detection (IM/DD) systems limits the direct application of the extended theory developed for conventional wireless communications. Apart from the non-negativity constraint, we examine the design with individual per-LED optical power constraints. This work presents four coordinated multipoint transmission techniques for MISO transmissions in VLC. Linear precoding schemes such as zero-forcing (ZF) have attracted a lot of interest in RF. Firstly, we consider the design of the ZF precoder giving special attention to a specific generalized inverse known as pseudo-inverse. Alternatively, a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) system is also studied. As neither of the two mentioned precoders are optimal in terms of sum-rate, we proceed with the design of ZF precoders through an optimization problem that maximizes the weighted sum-rate considering both the positivity constraint and the maximum optical power constraint per-LED. We present two approaches for solving this problem. In the first approach, we find a closed-form solution to the problem that despite being suboptimal achieves a good trade-off between lowcomplexity and performance. In the second approach, we rewrite the problem as a standard convex problem and we find numerically the solution. Finally, we demonstrate the improved performance offered by our approaches.
Estimating the contribution of microalgal taxa to chlorophyll a in the field--variations of pigment ratios under nutrient- and light-limited growth

Cellular concentrations of chlorophylls and carotenoids were measured in nutrientand light-limited cultures of marine microalgae to determine the utility of accessory pigments as proxies for the biomass of specific groups of microalgae in the ocean. In most species, concentrations of chlorophyll a (chl a) and photosynthetically active pigments varied linearly with growth rate in nitrate-limited continuous cultures or with the logarithin of the irradiance in 11ght-limited and light-sufficient batch cultures, as has been observed before. Rates of pigment-concentration change as a function of irradiance or growth rate did not covary with rates of maximum growth. Concentrations of carotenoids covarled with chl a in most species analyzed; intraspecies variations of chl a-carotenoid ratios were usually smaller than variations of chl a : b or chl a:cratios. These results were used to critically evaluate the assumptions underlying iterative methods used to determine the contribution of different algal taxa to chl a from ratios of chl a and accessory pigments. Estimates based on chl a : b or chl a c ratios are prone to error because these ratios can vary by up to an order of magnitude among species and within species as a function of irradiance, thus violating a n assumption of the iterative methods Instead, such methods should rely on ratios of chl a and photosynthetically active carotenoids. Using simple models and field data from the Chesapeake Bay, USA, we showed that iterative methods are either prone to error when different populations of microalgae CO-vary or do not give discrete solutions. As an alternative we suggest methods that rely more strongly on empirically determined pigment ratios.
Simple, fast, and cost-effective fabrication of wafer-scale nanohole arrays on silicon for antireflection

A simple, fast, and cost-effective method was developed in this paper for the high-throughput fabrication of nanohole arrays on silicon (Si), which is utilized for antireflection. Wafer-scale polystyrene (PS) monolayer colloidal crystal was developed as templates by spin-coating method. Metallic shadow mask was prepared by lifting off the oxygen etched PS beads from the deposited chromium film. Nanohole arrays were fabricated by Si dry etching. A series of nanohole arrays were fabricated with the similar diameter but with different depth. It is found that the maximum depth of the Si-hole was determined by the diameter of the Cr-mask. The antireflection ability of these Si-hole arrays was investigated. The results show that the reflection decreases with the depth of the Si-hole. The deepest Si-hole arrays show the best antireflection ability (reflection 600 nm), which was about 28 percent of the nonpatterned silicon wafer's reflection. The proposed method has the potential for high-throughput fabrication of patterned Si wafer, and the low reflectivity allows the application of these wafers in crystalline silicon solar cells.
Satellite-based estimates of sea-ice volume flux through Fram Strait

Abstract Sea-ice volume fluxes through Fram Strait, Arctic Ocean, are estimated for the two Icesat measurement periods in February/March and October/November 2003 by combining Sea-ice area fluxes, determined from Space-borne microwave observations, with estimates of the Sea-ice thickness distribution, inferred from measurements of Icesat’s Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAs) instrument. The thickness is derived from Icesat data by converting its Surface elevation measurements into an ice freeboard estimate. Combined with prior information about ice density and Snow depth and density, the freeboard is converted into ice thickness. Uncertainties in freeboard estimates due to geoid model errors are reduced through the use of the recent geoid from the Arctic Gravity Project. Missing information about the ocean circulation and ocean tides is approximated locally by interpolating the Sea Surface height linearly between open leads. Meridional ice volume fluxes estimated for 79˚N using ice drift observed by AMSR-E (QuiksCAT) amount to 168 km3 (236km3) and 62 km3 (77 km3) for 30 day periods in February/March and October/November 2003, respectively. These values lie in the range of previous results from Similar Studies, but are considerably Smaller than the average ice flux during the 1990s, most likely because of a Smaller ice-drift Speed during 2003.
Soil nitrogen oxide fluxes from lowland forests converted to smallholder rubber and oil palm plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia

Abstract. Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) and rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) plantations cover large areas of former rainforest in Sumatra, Indonesia, supplying the global demand for these crops. Although forest conversion is known to influence soil nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitric oxide (NO) fluxes, measurements from oil palm and rubber plantations are scarce (for N2O) or nonexistent (for NO). Our study aimed to (1) quantify changes in soil–atmosphere fluxes of N oxides with forest conversion to rubber and oil palm plantations and (2) determine their controlling factors. In Jambi, Sumatra, we selected two landscapes that mainly differed in texture but were both on heavily weathered soils: loam and clay Acrisol soils. Within each landscape, we investigated lowland forests, rubber trees interspersed in secondary forest (termed as jungle rubber ), both as reference land uses and smallholder rubber and oil palm plantations as converted land uses. In the loam Acrisol landscape, we conducted a follow-on study in a large-scale oil palm plantation (called PTPN VI) for comparison of soil N2O fluxes with smallholder oil palm plantations. Land-use conversion to smallholder plantations had no effect on soil N-oxide fluxes (P = 0. 58 to 0.76) due to the generally low soil N availability in the reference land uses that further decreased with land-use conversion. Soil N2O fluxes from the large-scale oil palm plantation did not differ with those from smallholder plantations (P = 0. 15). Over 1-year measurements, the temporal patterns of soil N-oxide fluxes were influenced by soil mineral N and water contents. Across landscapes, annual soil N2O emissions were controlled by gross nitrification and sand content, which also suggest the influence of soil N and water availability. Soil N2O fluxes (µg N m−2 h−1) were 7 ± 2 to 14 ± 7 (reference land uses), 6 ± 3 to 9 ± 2 (rubber), 12 ± 3 to 12 ± 6 (smallholder oil palm) and 42 ± 24 (large-scale oil palm). Soil NO fluxes (µg N m−2 h−1) were −0.6 ± 0.7 to 5.7 ± 5.8 (reference land uses), −1.2 ± 0.5 to −1.0 ± 0.2 (rubber) and −0.2 ± 1.2 to 0.7 ± 0.7 (smallholder oil palm). To improve the estimate of soil N-oxide fluxes from oil palm plantations in this region, studies should focus on large-scale plantations (which usually have 2 to 4 times higher N fertilization rates than smallholders) with frequent measurements following fertilizer application.
The Avatar in the Context of Intelligent Social Semantic Web

When the first articles about the SemanticWeb (SW) appeared, there were hardly any signals that the next revolution would be related to social networking. Social networking services (SNS) have grown after MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook were launched in 2003- 2004 and combine text, images, movies, music, animations and all sorts of lists to create personal presentation pages for users, means to connect to real or virtual friends from all over the world and recommendations based on trust. The rise of the Social Semantic Web and the convergence of different media to create rich experiences is one of the most interesting paradigm shift in the last decades because the probable effect of this movement is the fact that in one day virtual meetings will become legitimate in all aspects of our daily lives (if they are not already). The most important question in this context (the one that we try to answer in this paper) is related to how people will try to shape and use their avatars. In order to understand this, we will study the links between multimodal ontologies, affective interfaces, social data portability and other recent findings. This paper starts with a survey of the current literature of the field, examines some social semantic web mechanisms that changed the way we think about SNs and in the end discusses some methods of connecting emotions with the social semantic web which pose some interesting questions related to the use of avatars. Between conclusions, one of the most interesting is the one that states that the use of affective interfaces adds value to the multimodal ontologies, while another suggests that the avatar must be a mediator between different technologies.
Credible Redistributive Policies and Migration across US States

Does worker mobility undermine governments ability to redistribute income? This paper analyzes the experience of US states in the recent decades. We build a tractable model where both migration decisions and redistribution policies are endogenous. We calibrate the model to match skill premium and worker productivity at the state level, as well as the size and skill composition of migration flows. The calibrated model is able to reproduce the large changes in skill composition as well as key qualitative relationships of labor flows and redistribution policies observed in the data. Our results suggest that regional di¤erences in labor productivity are an important determinant of interstate migration. We use the calibrated model to compare the cross-section of redistributive policies with and without worker mobility. The main result of the paper is that interstate migration has induced substantial convergence in tax rates across US states, but no race to the bottom. Skill-biased in-migration has reduced the skill premium and the need for tax-based redistribution in the states that would have had the highest tax rates in the absence of mobility.
MANOJ SIVASUBRAMANIAPANDIAN THE EFFECT OF COATINGS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF THE MICROELECTRODE ARRAYS

TAMPERE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Master's Degree Programme in Biomedical Engineering MANOJ SIVASUBRAMANIAPANDIAN: The E ect of Coatings on the Performance of the Microelectrode Arrays Master of Science Thesis, 77 pages, 3 appendix pages December 2013 Major: Medical Instrumentation Examiners: Professor Jukka Lekkala, MSc. Tomi Ryynänen