Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cluster Entry: Are Those Right Who Expect a Negative Selection of Member Firms?

The entry of new actors is an important, but not sufficiently examined aspect of research about regional clusters. This paper contributes to the existing literature about cluster entry by extending prior research. It incorporates the possibilities of negative and positive selection of entrants into a theoretical framework, and analyzes empirically the characteristics of cluster entrants from the cluster- and the firm-perspective. Negative selection could be caused by contribution- and benefit-asymmetry between weak and strong entrants. Positive selection could be caused by the cluster characteristics of increased transparency, enhanced competition, and the necessity of absorptive capacity. Two data sets are analyzed in this paper. Expert interviews with cluster managers are transformed into numbers and analyzed regarding potential external influence factors of selection tendencies. Further, survey data from the Ger-man automotive industry is analyzed with the goal of comparing cluster-members and non-members. Our main finding is that an industry’s technology intensity significantly influences entry tendencies. While high-tech industries are characterized by negative selection, positive selection is prevalent in medium and low-tech industries. To recheck this result we exemplified it relating to the automotive industry (medium-tech). The recheck shows that automotive companies being members of clusters are endowed with significantly better human resources than non-members, which means that positive selection is prevalent in the analyzed industry.
Epidemiology of Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2 in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand: Systematic Review, Meta-Analyses, and Meta-Regressions

Over 10% of adults in these countries are infected, with no evidence for declining seroprevalence, unlike other global regions. Over 60% of genital herpes cases are caused by herpes simplex virus type 2 in these countries, yet herpes simplex virus type 2's role is declining by 2% per year. Background This study characterized the epidemiology of herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infection in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Methods Cochrane and PRISMA guidelines were followed to systematically review, synthesize, and report HSV-2-related data up to January 21, 2021. Meta-analyses and meta-regressions were performed. Results In Canada, pooled mean seroprevalence was 10.0% (95% confidence interval [CI], 7.8–12.4%) among general populations, 44.5% (95% CI, 20.0–70.5%) among sexually transmitted infection clinic attendees and symptomatic populations, and 60.7% (95% CI, 49.8–71.1%) among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive individuals and individuals in HIV-discordant couples. In Australia and New Zealand, combined, pooled mean seroprevalence was 15.4% (95% CI, 9.6–22.2%) among general populations, 27.8% (95% CI, 12.0–47.2%) among men who have sex with men, and 37.2% (95% CI, 23.7–51.8%) among sexually transmitted infection clinic attendees and symptomatic populations. Men had 0.64-fold (95% CI, 0.47–0.86) lower seroprevalence compared with women. No evidence was found for a decline in seroprevalence over time. Pooled mean proportion of HSV-2 isolation in laboratory-confirmed genital herpes was 62.1% (95% CI, 53.8–70.1%) in Canada and 71.9% (95% CI, 64.2–78.9%) in Australia and New Zealand. Proportion of HSV-2 isolation in genital herpes declined by 0.98-fold (95% CI, 0.97–0.99) per year. Pooled mean proportion of HSV-2 isolation in genital ulcer disease was 17.4% (95% CI, 4.0–37.1%) in these countries. Conclusions Over 10% of adults in these countries are infected, with no evidence for declining seroprevalence, unlike other global regions. Over 60% of genital herpes cases are caused by HSV-2 in these countries, yet HSV-2's role is declining by 2% per year.
Identification of circRNA Expression Profiles in BMSCs from Glucocorticoid-Induced Osteoporosis Model

Background Circular RNAs (circRNAs) contribute to the regulation of many diseases. However, little is known about the role of circRNAs in the development of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis (GIOP). The present study is aimed at systematically characterizing the circRNA expression profiles in GIOP and predict the potential functions of the associated regulatory networks. Methods A small animal GIOP model was developed in Sprague-Dawley rats given daily intraperitoneal doses of the synthetic glucocorticoid dexamethasone. Micro-CT and bone histomorphometry were performed to characterize the bone loss. Alizarin red S (ARS) staining and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity were assessed to determine the osteogenic differentiation potential of BMSCs. RNA sequencing was performed to identify differentially expressed circRNAs in BMSCs between the GIOP and normal groups, which were validated by qRT-PCR. siRNA interference experiments were used to demonstrate their function. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses were performed to predict the functions of differentially expressed circRNAs. The microRNA (miRNA) targets of the circRNAs and circRNA-miRNA interactions were predicted. Results Micro-CT and bone histomorphometry confirmed the rat GIOP model. Both ARS intensity and ALP activity were decreased in GIOP BMSCs. Seventeen circRNAs were identified by fold change = 2.0, p < 0.05, and false discovery rate < 0.05, of which 7 were upregulated and 10 were downregulated. The qRT-PCR results of the selected circRNAs were consistent with the RNA-seq results and showed that circARSB and circAKT3 were significantly upregulated, while circPTEN and circTRPM7 were downregulated in the GIOP group. Further functional experiments found that downregulation of circARSB and circPTEN expression resulted in a corresponding change in osteogenic differentiation, suggesting that circARSB negatively, while circPTEN positively, regulates BMSC osteogenic differentiation. Analysis of circRNA-targeted miRNAs predicted that miR-135a-5p was associated with circARSB and circAKT3, and miR-881-3p was associated with circPTEN and circTRPM7. Furthermore, the signalling pathways associated with these differentially expressed circRNAs were predicted. Conclusions The present study identified circARSB, circAKT3, circPTEN, and circTRPM7 as being associated with osteogenic differentiation during GIOP through a circRNA-targeted miRNA-mRNA axis, which might provide insight into the pathophysiological mechanism of GIOP.
Narratives of Maternal Action and Cultural Re-evaluation in Relation to the Transition to School

ABSTRACT The transition to primary school is widely seen as a period of multifaceted transformations and adoptions of different strategies for parents, yet relatively little is known about the lived transition experiences of parents from diverse (linguistic, cultural, socio-economic) backgrounds. This article explores the issue by examining maternal narratives in the context of having a child starting school in settings defined by family diversity through the lens of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Four rounds of semi-structured interviews were conducted with two mothers of children from diverse backgrounds during their first year of primary school in two neighborhoods in Reykjavík, Iceland. The findings show that, for these mothers, engagement with the Icelandic ECEC system before and during the transition to school triggered them to take action when they felt that their concerns about their child’s wellbeing were not taken seriously. The mothers’ experiences furthermore brought about critical re-evaluation of their cultural background.
The Effects of Green Roof on Heat Loss and Energy Consumption in the Buildings

Consumption, Roof. Thanks to the developing technology and building material science, while the roof is an element that usually causes heat loss, with the sustainable use of green roofs, it has become an area that provides living spaces outside the building and can also be used as an activity. Green roofs are critical systems that improve the energy performance, air quality, and urban ecology without additional equipment, produce innovative solutions to the problems caused by rainwater and are located in sustainable buildings with these features. Green roofs are divided into two groups as intensive and extensive green roofs. These systems, which vary according to the thickness of the soil, may have a negligible effect in preventing the heat loss of the building. In this study, the impact of green roofs on energy performance and their role in preventing heat losses were analyzed through a sample social building. As a result, it was determined that green roofs avoid heat loss by 83% compared to the terrace
Comparison of Switching Angle Arrangement Techniques in Single-Phase Boost Multilevel Inverter for Low-THD Operation

Multilevel inverters are one of the preferred inverter choices for solar photovoltaic (PV) applications. While these inverters are capable of producing AC staircase output voltage waveform, the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the output voltage waveform can become worse if the switching angle of each voltage level is not carefully chosen. In this paper, four switching angle arrangement techniques are presented and the switching angles generated by these techniques are applied to a new single-phase boost multilevel (SPBM) inverter. The performance of 3-, 5-, 7-, 9-and 11-level SPBM inverter having four different sets of switching angles derived using the aforementioned techniques have been evaluated and compared using PSIM software. Simulation results show that one of the techniques is able to produce an output voltage waveform with the lowest THD, whilst the other generates an output voltage waveform with the highest fundamental voltage component.
MT-Teql: Evaluating and Augmenting Neural NLIDB on Real-world Linguistic and Schema Variations

Natural Language Interface to Database (NLIDB) translates human utterances into SQL queries and enables database interactions for non-expert users. Recently, neural network models have become a major approach to implementing NLIDB. However, neural NLIDB faces challenges due to variations in natural language and database schema design. For instance, one user intent or database conceptual model can be expressed in various forms. However, existing benchmarks, using hold-out datasets, cannot provide thorough understanding of how good neural NLIDBs really are in real-world situations and its robustness against such variations. A key difficulty is to annotate SQL queries for inputs under real-world variations, requiring considerable manual effort and expert knowledge. To systematically assess the robustness of neural NLIDBs without extensive manual effort, we propose MT-Teql, a unified framework to benchmark NLIDBs against real-world language and schema variations. Inspired by recent advances in DBMS metamorphic testing, MT-Teql implements semantics-preserving transformations on utterances and database schemas to generate their variants. NLIDBs can thus be examined for robustness utilizing utterances/schemas and their variants without requiring manual intervention. We benchmarked nine neural NLIDBs using 62,430 inputs and identified 15,433 defects. We analyzed potential root causes of defects and conducted a user study to show how MT-Teql can assist developers to systematically assess NLIDBs. We further show that the transformed (error-triggering) inputs can be used to augment popular NLIDBs and eliminate 46.5%(±5.0%) errors made by them without compromising their accuracy on standard benchmarks. We summarize lessons from this study that can provide insights to select and design NLIDBs that fit particular usage scenarios.
DUAL BAND COMPACT SQUARE MICROSTRIP ANTENNA FOR GSM AND GPS APPLICATIONS

The design of a half U-slot loaded square microstrip antenna is proposed for the dual band response offering circular polarization in the second band. On a substrate with thickness of 0. 06λg, the half U-slot tunes the spacing in between TM10, TM01, and TM11 resonant modes of the square patch to achieve dual band characteristics. In the two bands, measured impedance bandwidths of 6.49% and 17.36% with a broadside gain > 7.0 dBi are achieved. Against the equivalent square patch, the proposed dual band antenna offers 8% reduction in the patch area. With the achieved antenna characteristics, the proposed configurations satisfy the requirements of GSM 750/GPS L5 band applications.
A non-holonomic, highly human-in-the-loop compatible, assistive mobile robotic platform guidance navigation and control strategy

The provision of assistive mobile robotics for empowering and providing independence to the infirm, disabled and elderly in society has been the subject of much research. The issue of providing navigation and control assistance to users, enabling them to drive their powered wheelchairs effectively, can be complex and wide-ranging; some users fatigue quickly and can find that they are unable to operate the controls safely, others may have brain injury re-sulting in periodic hand tremors, quadriplegics may use a straw-like switch in their mouth to provide a digital control signal. Advances in autonomous robotics have led to the development of smart wheelchair systems which have attempted to address these issues; however the autonomous approach has, ac-cording to research, not been successful; users reporting that they want to be active drivers and not passengers. Recent methodologies have been to use collaborative or shared control which aims to predict or anticipate the need for the system to take over control when some pre-decided threshold has been met, yet these approaches still take away control from the us-er. This removal of human supervision and control by an autonomous system makes the re-sponsibility for accidents seriously problematic. This thesis introduces a new human-in-the-loop control structure with real-time assistive lev-els. One of these levels offers improved dynamic modelling and three of these levels offer unique and novel real-time solutions for: collision avoidance, localisation and waypoint iden-tification, and assistive trajectory generation. This architecture and these assistive functions always allow the user to remain fully in control of any motion of the powered wheelchair, shown in a series of experiments.
Underwater Coatings Testing for INEEL Fuel Basin Applications

The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) is deactivating several fuel storage basins. Airborne contamination is a concern when the sides of the basins are exposed and allowed to dry during water removal. One way of controlling this airborne contamination is to fix the contamination in place while the pool walls are still submerged. There are many underwater coatings available on the market that are used in marine, naval and other applications. A series of tests were run to determine whether the candidate underwater fixatives are easily applied and adhere well to the substrates (pool wall materials) found in INEEL fuel pools. The four pools considered included (1) Test Area North (TAN-607) with epoxy painted concrete walls; (2) Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC) (CPP-603) with bare concrete walls; (3) Materials Test Reactor (MTR) Canal with stainless steel lined concrete walls; and (4) Power Burst Facility (PBF-620) with stainless steel lined concrete walls on the bottom and epoxy painted carbon steel lined walls on the upper portions. Therefore, the four materials chosen for testing included bare concrete, epoxy painted concrete, epoxy painted carbon steel, and stainless steel. The typical water temperature of the pools varies from 55 F to 80 F dependent on the pool and the season. These tests were done at room temperature.
Efficiency of roof and traditional water supply catchments subject to climate change

A preliminary analysis has been undertaken to compare the relative efficiencies of traditional centralised water supply strategies with decentralised rainwater harvesting approaches. It is shown that both respond differently to drought and climate change forcing, with decentralised rainwater harvesting systems exhibiting a more uniform performance across these stressors. Sufficient data has been generated to warrant ongoing research and strengthening of these results, and this work will form part of a broader research programme.
Determination of EMF Pollution in the Context of Urban Health: The Case of Safranbolu

Safranbolu, Historical environment. Significant developments in communication technologies are occurring day by day in the modern world. However, electromagnetic waves emitted by base stations emerging as a result of these developments and the resulting electromagnetic fields have effects on human health. International institutions are also agreeing that in case of exposure to base stations below a certain distance, human health, biotic populations, and buildings will be adversely affected. In this study, the electromagnetic field intensity in Safranbolu, a historical city in Turkey was determined and mapped on the city scale. In the context of the study, 4 base stations were considered at five different distances: 20m, 50m, 100m, 200m, and 500m. As a result of the total electromagnetic field measurements made in the frequency range of 50 MHz and 3.5 GHz, it was found that there was a decrease in the electric field at each base station inversely proportional to the distance. The study is the only one that deals with electric field pollution in Safranbolu, and it is expected that this study will create a basis for future studies in terms of measurements to be made after the arrival of the 5G application to the
A retrieval model family based on the probability ranking principle for ad hoc retrieval

Many successful retrieval models are derived based on or conform to the probability ranking principle (PRP). We present a new derivation of a document ranking function given by the probability of relevance of a document, conforming to the PRP. Our formulation yields a family of retrieval models, called probabilistic binary relevance (PBR) models, with various instantiations obtained by different probability estimations. By extensive experiments on a range of TREC collections, improvement of the PBR models over some established baselines with statistical significance is observed, especially in the large Clueweb09 Cat‐B collection.
Agent-Based Architectures and Algorithms for Energy Management in Smart Gribs : Application to Smart Power Generation and Residential Demand Response

Due to the convergence of several profound trends in the energy sector, smart gridsare emerging as the main paradigm for the modernization of the electric grid. Smartgrids hold many promises, including the ability to integrate large shares of distributedand intermittent renewable energy sources, energy storage and electric vehicles, as wellas the promise to give consumers more control on their energy consumption. Such goalsare expected to be achieved through the use of multiple technologies, and especially ofinformation and communication technologies, supported by intelligent algorithms.These changes are transforming power grids into even more complex systems, thatrequire suitable tools to model, simulate and control their behaviors. In this dissertation,properties of multi-agent systems are used to enable a new systemic approach to energymanagement, and allow for agent-based architectures and algorithms to be defined. Thisnew approach helps tackle the complexity of a cyber-physical system such as the smart gridby enabling the simultaneous consideration of multiple aspects such as power systems, thecommunication infrastructure, energy markets, and consumer behaviors. The approach istested in two applications: a “smart” energy management system for a gas turbine powerplant, and a residential demand response system.An energy management system for gas turbine power plants is designed with the objectiveto minimize operational costs and emissions, in the smart power generation paradigm.A gas turbine model based on actual data is proposed, and used to run simulations witha simulator specifically developed for this problem. A metaheuristic achieves dynamicdispatch among gas turbines according to their individual characteristics. Results showthat the system is capable of operating the system properly while reducing costs and emissions.The computing and communication requirements of the system, resulting from theselected architecture, are also evaluated.With other demand-side management techniques, demand response enables reducingload during a given duration, for example in case of a congestion on the transmissionsystem. A demand response system is proposed and relies on the use of the assets ofresidential customers to curtail and shift local loads (hybrid electric vehicles, air conditioning,and water heaters) so that the total system load remains under a given threshold.Aggregators act as interfaces between grid operators and a demand response market. Asimulator is also developed to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. Resultsshow that the system manages to maintain the total load under a threshold by usingavailable resources, without compromising the steady-state stability of the distributionsystem.
COMPUTER SIMULAITON OF RAIL VEHICLE-TURNOUT DYNAMIC INTERACTION WITH MECHANCIAL IMPERFECTIONS

This paper presents some aspects of modeling of dynamic interaction between conventional railway car and track, taking mechanical imperfections into consideration. The imperfections may relate to deviations of geometric parameters against their nominal values or shapes. In this approach, the deviations are described for the single standard turnout and for the wheelsets of the railway car. In order to appreciate the imperfections, the mathematical model and computer package have been elaborated. The package collaborates with the Matlab-Simulink environment. Several simulation results are presented to recommend the usability of the approach. They imply a conclusion that specific turnout parameters and analyzed deviations of some of them create a vital cause of the dynamic interaction growth between vehicle and track. Dynamic response to mechanical imperfections is shown with the aid of wheel-rail forces.
Progerin triggers a phenotypic switch in vascular smooth muscle cells that causes replication stress and an aging-associated secretory signature

Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome is a premature aging disease caused by LMNA gene mutation and the production of a truncated lamin A protein “progerin” that elicits cellular and organismal toxicity. Progerin accumulates in the vasculature, being especially toxic for vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC). Patients’ autopsies show that vessel stiffening, and aortic atherosclerosis is accompanied by VSMC depletion in the medial layer, altered extracellular matrix (ECM), and thickening of the adventitial layer. Mechanisms whereby progerin causes massive VSMC loss and vessel alterations remain poorly understood. Mature VSMC retain phenotypic plasticity and can switch to a synthetic/proliferative phenotype. Here we show that progerin expression in human and mouse VSMC causes a switch towards the synthetic/proliferative phenotype. This switch elicits some level of replication stress in normal cells, which is exacerbated in the presence of progerin, leading to telomere fragility, genomic instability, and ultimately VSMC death. Importantly, calcitriol prevents replication stress, telomere fragility, and genomic instability, reducing VSMC death. In addition, RNAseq analysis shows induction of a profibrotic and proinflammatory aging-associated secretory phenotype upon progerin expression in human primary VSMC. Our data suggest that phenotypic switch-induced replication stress might be an underlying cause of VSMC loss in progeria, which together with loss of contractile features and gain of profibrotic and proinflammatory signatures contribute to vascular stiffness in HGPS. Preventing the phenotypic switch-induced replication stress with compounds such as calcitriol might ameliorate CVD in HGPS patients.