Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CURRENT ACCOUNT, CONSUMPTION AND CAPITAL MOBILITY:

This paper is an application of the consumption-smoothing current account theory the main principles of which appeared in the 1980s and gradually broadened to describe the intertemporal dynamics of important economic processes. In open economies, the consumption-smoothing current account process is related to the consumption behaviour of households. The effect on consumption choices and the current account is derived from the premise that households adjust their consumption expenditures according to the terms of trade. The process can be treated in an optimizing framework and originally was strictly connected to the permanent income hypothesis (PIH) and no restrictions to capital mobility. Both assumptions were successively relaxed and relationships allowing incorporation of the excess sensitivity hypothesis (ESH) and not perfect capital mobility have been introduced. Transformed into a VAR model with current account and national cash flow increments as endogenous variables, relevant conclusions are drawn on the basis of Granger causality, the equivalence of the current and predicted current account and an analysis of parameters of the model. Basic relationships and solutions are summarized and an application using the economies of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria follows.
The ability to perceive and process motion is central to everyday human function, and contributes strongly to the ability to decode a person’s emotion and intent based on facial expression (“face emotion

259 words Main text: 3,903 words (including Conclusions) References: 39 Figures: 4 Tables: 1 ******** Supplementary Material: 4 Tables, 2 Figures Impaired motion processing in schizophrenia and the attenuated psychosis syndrome: etiological and clinical implications. *Antígona Martínez, Ph.D., Pablo A. Gaspar, M.D., Ph.D., Steven A. Hillyard, Ph.D, Søren K. Andersen, Ph.D., Javier Lopez-Calderon, , Ph.D., Cheryl M. Corcoran, M.D., Ph.D. and Daniel C. Javitt, M.D., Ph.D. 1,2 1 Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY, USA 2 Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY 3 Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, ICBM, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile 4 Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA 5 University of Aberdeen, School of Psychology, Aberdeen, UK 6 Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Talca, 3460000, Chile 7 Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, Corresponding Author: Antígona Martínez Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research 140 Old Orangeburg Rd, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA martinez@nki.rfmh. org 845-398-6545 (fax) 845-398-5497 (voice)
Influence of principals’ performance in training teachers in Information Communication Technology on usage of ICT for teaching and learning in secondary schools

The focus of this study was to investigate how principals’ performance of leadership roles influenced usage of ICT for teaching and learning in secondary schools. The objective of the study was to analyze the influence that performance of principals in training teachers in ICT has on usage of ICT for teaching and learning in schools. Concurrent triangulation within mixed methods research design was used. Stratified random sampling was used to draw 99 principals from 132 distributed in seven sub-counties. Saturated sampling technique was used to sample 28 principals, 28 deputy principals and 35 Heads of Department (HODs) for interviews. Data were gathered using questionnaires for principals and interview schedules for principals, deputy principals and HODs. Questionnaire reliability was ascertained at (r) = 0.739 using the split-half technique. Results revealed that performance of principals in training teachers in ICT (α=.338 , p>.05) statistically significantly influenced usage of ICT for teaching and learning. It was concluded that performance of principals in training teachers in ICT had an impact on usage of ICT for teaching and learning in schools in Kisumu County. It was recommended that principals should complement the Government’s efforts by training teachers in ICT usage.
UF-LC-DAD-MSn for discovering enzyme inhibitors for nutraceuticals and functional foods

The technique of ultrafiltration liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (UF-LC-MSn) in screening enzyme inhibitors has emerged as an efficient tool for high-throughput screening of bioactives. The mini-review discusses about the principles of the UF-LC-MSn method and its applications in the discovery of bioactives in herbs and foods that are specific inhibitors of important proteins/enzymes related to human health. The advantageous and disadvantages of the method is critically assessed, and its potential use in functional food and nutraceutical research is addressed.
Verification of the Usefulness of Personal Authentication with Aerial Input Numerals Using Leap Motion

With the progress of IoT, everything is going to be connected to the network. It will bring us a lot of benefits however some security risks will be occurred by connecting network. To avoid such problems, it is indispensable to strengthen security more than now. We focus on personal authentication as one of the security. As a security enhancement method, we proposed a method to carry out numeral identification and personal authentication using numerals written in the air with Leap motion sensor. In this paper, we also focus on proper handling of aerial input numerals to verify whether the numerals written in the air are helpful for authentication. We collect numerals 0 to 9 from five subjects, then apply three pre-processing to these data, learn and authenticate them by CNN (convolutional neural network) which is a method of machine learning. As a result of learning, an average authentication accuracy was 92.4%. This result suggests that numerals written in the air are possible to carry out personal authentication and it will be able to construct a better authentication system.
A new cecidogenous species of many-plumed moth (Alucitidae) associated with Cordiera A. Rich. ex DC. (Rubiaceae) in the Brazilian Cerrado

Larvae of many-plumed moths (Alucitidae), especially in the world-wide genus Alucita Linnaeus, 1758 are known as borers or gall-inducers on flowers, fruits and shoots of a few dicotyledonous families, including Bignoniaceae, Caprifoliaceae and Rubiaceae. However, there is no study available on the biology of the monotypic, Neotropical genus Prymnotomis Meyrick, 1931 except for its original description that was based on a single male, the holotype of Prymnotomis crypsicroca Meyrick, 1931 from Espirito Santo, Brazil. We describe here a second species for this genus, Prymnotomis cecidicolasp. nov. whose larvae induce galls on Cordiera elliptica (Cham.) Kuntze (Rubiaceae), a dioecious plant with dimorphic inflorescences found in the Brazilian Cerrado, Planaltina City, Federal District. Adults, larvae, pupae and galls are illustrated under light and scanning electron microscopy. Galls are green, spherical, unilocular and develop individually on C. elliptica flower buds. During development they look like fruits in shape and colour but are larger, do not have style scars when on female plants, and are induced also in male inflorescences. Pupation occurs outside the gall within a silk cocoon, presumably in the litter. A preliminary analysis of DNA barcode sequences including putative members of other alucitid lineages and Neotropical BINs (Barcode Index Number) supports Prymnotomis cecidicolasp. nov. as an independent phylogenetic unit, with 12 to 18% divergence. Its nearest-neighbour was the BIN cluster 5 (BOLD:AAA0842) that includes specimens from Costa Rica.
Empirical Research on Pedagogical Dictionary Use in Recent 30 Years

Research on dictionary use is a relatively new field in lexicography. Among them, the empirical studies which were few before 1990s has gained ground over recent three decades. Using data of 35 articles from International Journal of Lexicography (1987–2017), this study renders an analysis of the empirical research trends in the field of dictionary use. The analysis mainly focuses on the research topics, research methodology, and the changes that have occurred in the field. The results show that while some hot topics (e.g., the effectiveness of dictionary use or of certain dictionary information) have remained popular over the past two decades, some topics, e.g., the exploration of dictionary using process have received an increasing attention, but some others, e.g., the investigation on habits and needs of dictionary use, have witnessed a decrease of interest recently. Furthermore, researchers have improved the methodological standards for recent studies. As for data analysis, more complicated statistic approaches, rather than pure descriptive statistics, have been adopted. Finally, based on the analysis on previous studies, this paper offers suggestions for further research trend.
Integrating reinforcement learning and automated planning for playing video-games

This paper describes a novel approach of creating multi-game agents for playing videogames that draws upon a mechanism that interleaves planning and learning. Planning is used for exploration of the search space and reinforcement learning is used to leverage past reward information. More specifically, the state-actions visited by the planner during search are fed to a learning algorithm that calculates policy estimates in the form of a Neural Network which are in turn used to guide the planning step. Thus, planning is used to carry out a search for the best move in the action space and learning is used to extract features from the screen and learn a policy in order to improve the search of the planning step. Our proposal relies on an Iterated Width-based planning algorithm along with a Convolutional Neural Network for implementing the Reinforcement Learning module. We come up with two enhancements over a base planning and learning (P&L) method. The first improvement uses the score of the game to lessen the pruning in the planning step, and the second one adds to the first one a fine-tuning of the hyperparameters and the modification of the neural network architecture to enhance the features extracted and increase the their number. Our enhancements are tested on Atari 2600 games from the Arcade Learning Environment using the OpenAI Gym toolkit. The results are analyzed and the strengths and weaknesses of this approach are discussed.
A Great Concern Regarding the Authenticity Identification and Quality Control of Chinese Propolis and Brazilian Green Propolis

Propolis (bee glue) is a natural resin mixture produced by honey bees and it is composed of substances collected from parts of plants, buds and exudates. The composition of propolis varies primary on the geographical locations of the ingredients obtained by the bees. A series of biological properties of propolis including anti-microbial, immunostimulatory, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor and anti-oxidation activities have been reported in relation to their chemical composition, plant origin and geographical area. This review collates the scientific literature regarding Chinese propolis and Brazilian green propolis, specifically focusing on their different constituents and biological activities. While there are known differences in composition of these two kinds of propolis, they share considerable similarity in their overall chemical composition. Importantly, techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA) and fingerprint are viable options for authenticity identification and quality control of propolis. Many of the molecular mechanisms driving various biological activities of propolis have been determined. We have also found that the biological activity of propolis mainly depends on its constituents, such as flavonoids or phenolic compounds. Each activity is regulated by a variety of biological pathways. The compounds in both Chinese propolis and Brazilian green propolis were found to participate in different biological pathways through distinct molecular mechanisms due to their diverse chemical compositions and unique structures. With the growing market interest of Brazilian green propolis in China, an evaluation between the chemical diversity and biological activity of Chinese propolis and Brazilian green propolis are in need of a review.
Gender related effects of music listening on aestethic appreciation of visual artwork

Introduction. In general terms, common sense tells us that classic music is a better fit for figurative artworks than jazz or “modern” (XXth century) classic music. It therefore appears reasonable to assume that admiring a painting while listening to music that matches in style the painting should increase its aesthetic appreciation. Past research has already focused on similar issues. In particular, Parrott (1982) reported additive effects of music and paintings on emotional judgements, however with a higher impact of paintings on music than vice versa. Limbert and Polzella (1998), instead, attempted to match paintings and music styles, finding that, with regards to paintings, matching music affected the level of aesthetic appreciation of paintings. However they also noticed that impressionist music incremented the appreciation of all paintings regardless of their style. While no gender effects were reported in their work, Polzella (2000) reported gender differences in painting appreciation related to artistic style, but not in relation to the simultaneous presentation of music and paintings. Finally, Koning and van Lier (2013) conducted a study in which they matched landscapes by William Turner to classical music and abstract paintings by Wassily Kandinsky to jazz, finding that matching music affected positively the aesthetic appreciation of both painting styles. No gender effects were reported.
Power System Reliability Assessment in a Complex Restructured Power System

The basic purpose of an electric power system is to supply its consumers with electric energy as parsimoniously as possible and with a sensible degree of continuity and quality. It is expected that the solicitation of power system reliability assessment in bulk power systems will continue to increase in the future especially in the newly deregulated power diligence. This paper presents the research conducted on the three areas of incorporating multi-state generating unit models, evaluating system performance indices and identifying transmission paucities in complex system adequacy assessment. The incentives for electricity market participants to endow in new generation and transmission facilities are highly influenced by the market risk in a complex restructured environment. This paper also presents a procedure to identify transmission deficiencies and remedial modification in the composite generation and transmission system and focused on the application of probabilistic techniques in composite system adequacy assessment
Analysis of the Aid, Fiscal Response and Growth Relationship in Ghana: A Cointegrating Var Approach

The literature on aid effectiveness is mired in controversy. Aid, purportedly given to supplement the domestic savings and foreign exchange earnings of a recipient country to enable it achieve some higher rate of growth, can lead to perverse results. Because aid is given to governments, the effectiveness of aid will depend crucially on the fiscal response of governments to aid. A preponderance of the available empirical studies are based on cross-country analysis, but cross-country analyses mask the peculiar experiences of individual countries that, for policy purposes, can only gainfully be captured in singlecountry time series studies. Most of those studies applying time series techniques on individual country data have analysed the relationship between aid and a set of fiscal variables in fiscal response models without explicitly incorporating rate of economic growth. The current study goes beyond the aid-fiscal variables focus of aid effectiveness studies on Ghana to simultaneously explicitly consider the economic growth rate, aid and fiscal variables and also use a larger dataset than those utilised in previous studies. Modern cointegration analytical techniques are employed. The results suggest that over the medium to long term, foreign aid boosts government consumption expenditure and the growth rate of the economy whilst it induces reductions in government investment expenditure and tax effort, displaces domestic borrowing by government and crowds out private investment. JEL Classification: F35, O40, O55.
Detection and classification of anomalies in road traffic using spark streaming

Road traffic control has been around for a long time to guarantee the safety of vehicles and pedestrians. However, anomalies such as accidents or natural disasters cannot be avoided. Therefore, it is important to be prepared as soon as possible to prevent a higher number of human losses. Nevertheless, there is no system accurate enough that detects and classifies anomalies from the road traffic in real time. To solve this issue, the following study proposes the training of a machine learning model for detection and classification of anomalies on the highways of Stockholm. Due to the lack of a labeled dataset, the first phase of the work is to detect the different kind of outliers that can be found and manually label them based on the results of a data exploration study. Datasets containing information regarding accidents and weather are also included to further expand the amount of anomalies. All experiments use real world datasets coming from either the sensors located on the highways of Stockholm or from official accident and weather reports. Then, three models (Decision Trees, Random Forest and Logistic Regression) are trained to detect and classify the outliers. The design of an Apache Spark streaming application that uses the model with the best results is also provided. The outcomes indicate that Logistic Regression is better than the rest but still suffers from the imbalanced nature of the dataset. In the future, this project can be used to not only contribute to future research on similar topics but also to monitor the highways of Stockholm.
MicroRNA-150 Modulates Adipogenic Differentiation of Adipose-Derived Stem Cells by Targeting Notch3

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) influence stem cell functions, including mobilization, proliferation, and differentiation. miR-150 is abundantly expressed in monocytes. Knockdown of miR-150 promotes bone marrow stem cell migration. The role of miR-150 in adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) is unclear. In this study, the effects of miR-150 on adipogenic differentiation and proliferation of ADSCs were investigated. ADSCs were isolated from the inguinal adipose tissue of wild-type (WT) and miR-150 knockout (KO) mice and were induced for adipogenic differentiation. The miR-150 level was detected by real-time PCR. ADSCs were transfected by miR-150 or small-interfering RNA (siRNA) of Notch3. MTT assay and colony formation assay were performed in miR-150 knockdown and control ADSCs. Real-time PCR showed that miR-150 was expressed in ADSCs. miR-150 knockdown significantly decreased the capacity of adipogenic differentiation of ADSCs, as compared with their counterparts from WT mice. It is intriguing that the overexpression of miR-150 significantly increased C/EBPα and PPAR-γ expression and lipid formation in ADSCs with adipogenic induction. Overexpression of miR-150 significantly decreased Notch3 expression in ADSCs compared with the control groups. Furthermore, Notch3 inhibition promoted the adipogenic differentiation in ADSCs. miR-150 also suppressed proliferation potential and the expression of Nanog in ADSCs. In summary, this study demonstrates, for the first time, that miR-150 promotes adipogenic differentiation and inhibits proliferation of ADSCs. miR-150 regulates adipogenic differentiation of ADSCs, likely mediated by the downregulation of Notch3.
Methylation of SLFN11 promotes gastric cancer growth and increases gastric cancer cell resistance to cisplatin

Background and Aim: Human SLFN11 gene encodes a protein with structural similarity to RNA helicases, which was reported to sensitize cancer cells to DNA-damaging agents. This study explored the epigenetic regulation and mechanism of SLFN11 in human gastric cancer. Methods: Eight human gastric cancer cell lines and 201 cases of primary gastric cancer were analyzed. Methylation specific PCR, flow cytometry, xenograft mouse model and siRNA technique were employed. Results: SLFN11 was methylated in 29.9% (60/201) of primary gastric cancer. The expression of SLFN11 was regulated by promoter region methylation. Methylation of SLFN11 was significantly associated with tumor size (p < 0.05). SLFN11 suppressed gastric cancer growth both in vitro and in vivo and enhanced the ability of cisplatin to induce S-phrase arrest and apoptosis in gastric cancer cells. Conclusions: SLFN11 is frequently methylated in human gastric cancer, and its expression is regulated by promoter region methylation. Our results demonstrate that SLFN11 is a tumor suppressor in human gastric cancer, and methylation of SLFN11 may serve as a cisplatin resistant marker in human gastric cancer.
Ecotoxicological assessment of biochar quality by using phytotoxicity bioassays 1 2

20 Soil amendment with biochar has been proposed as effective in improving agricultural land fertility 21 and carbon sequestration, although the characterisation and certification of biochar quality are still 22 crucial for agronomic acceptance. Described here are the effects of four biochars (conifer and 23 poplar wood, grape marc, wheat straw) at increasing application rates (0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50% 24 w/w) on both germination and root elongation of Cucumis sativus L. , Lepidium sativum L. and 25 Sorghum saccharatum Moench. Biochars varied in chemical properties, depending on the type and 26 quality of the initial feedstock batch; PAHs were high in conifer and wheat straw, while Cd and Cu 27 exceeded maximum permitted values for amendments in poplar and grape marc, respectively. With 28 our chars, electrical conductivity and Cu altered both germination and root elongation at 5% rate, 29 together with Zn at 10% and elevated pH at 20%. Germination decreased only at very high rates 30 of grape marc and wheat straw chars, whereas root length was affected already at 0.5% of conifer 31 and poplar in cucumber and sorghum, with marked impairment in all chars at >5%. As a general 32 interpretation, it is proposed here a robust root phytotoxicity logarithmic model in sorghum, based 33 on biochar Zn content, which explains 66% of variability over the whole dosage range tested. We 34 conclude that metal contamination is a crucial quality parameter for biochar safety, and that root 35 elongation represents a stable test for assessing phytotoxicity at recommended amendment rates 36 (<1-2%). 37 Key-words: Biochar, Feedstock quality, Germination bioassay, Metal contamination, Root 38 phytotoxicity 39