Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perspectives of Risk Sharing

In this paper we present an overview of the standard risk sharing model of insurance. We discuss and characterize a competitive equilibrium, Pareto optimality, and representative agent pricing, including its implications for insurance premiums. We only touch upon the existence problem of a competitive equilibrium, primarily by presenting several examples. Risk tolerance and aggregation is the subject of one section. Risk adjustment of the probability measure is one topic, as well as the insurance version of the capital asset pricing model. The competitive paradigm may be a little demanding in practice, so we alternatively present a game theoretic view of risk sharing, where solutions end up in the core. Properly interpreted, this may give rise to a range of prices of each risk, often visualized in practice by an ask price and a bid price. The nice aspect of this is that these price ranges can be explained by "first principles", not relying on transaction costs or other frictions. We also include a short discussion of moral hazard in risk sharing between an insurer and a prospective insurance buyer. We end the paper by indicating the implications of our results for a pure stock market. In particular we find it advantageous to discuss the concepts of incomplete markets in this general setting, where it is possible to use results for closed, convex subspaces of an L 2 -space to discuss optimal risk allocation problems in incomplete financial markets.
Fish Nutrition Additives in SHK-1 Cells: Protective Effects of Silymarin

In nutrition for productive species, additives play an important role in boosting physiological processes. Only in recent years studies include models of the effects on fish cells of these additives. We observed effects of silymarin, a compound highly utilized in aquaculture. The cell line SHK-1 was used derived from the upper liver of the Atlantic salmon as a biological model. Samples were exposed to silymarin in incrementing time and concentrations, to evaluate by MTT and number of cells, the effects on cell viability. Also, oxidative stress models were used to find the protector effects of silymarin against these agents. Our data indicate that a dose of 100 ppm of silymarin is sufficient to stimulate cellular proliferation. Cultures were exposed to high glucose (15 mM) or H2O2 (0.1 mM) in presence of or absence of silymarin at 100 ppm. We observed that the toxic effects of both compounds were blocked by the presence of silymarin. Our results indicate that it is important to evaluate additive effects at a cellular level. Also, silymarin does have proliferative effects, and protect against cellular injury in our models. Our study helps to generate more rational applications of additives in the industry and presents new challenges in order to better manipulate the model in the laboratory, allowing us to obtain new evidence regarding the microalgae’s biology through in vitro studies.
"Elderpersonas" adapting personas to understand the real needs of elderly people

The population aged 65 and above is the most diverse of the age groups. This diversity is also growing due to longer life expectancy. To provide them with the right assistive products it is crucial to understand the real needs and goals of these new groups of people. The design tools that exist to date work well when designers work with average users. Nevertheless, it is not proved that these tools are effective when working with extreme or special user groups. With this study we aim to review the existing models of “personas” and to adapt it in order to provide designers with more effective inclusive design research tools. As a result of this adaptation, we developed “elderpersonas” which includes an ethical code and a description of the aging development that are necessary to ensure the quality of the research using few resources. We preliminarily tested on the elderly population in the Basque Country by interviewing 36 people aged over 65. Based on the results, we conclude that the “elderpersonas” enabled us to better understand elderly people as well as their needs and goals. In the future the new tool will be applied on design case studies to prove its real value in practice.
Long-Term Survivors of Childhood Cancer: The Late Effects of Therapy

The overall cure rate for pediatric malignancies is significantly improved to over 75% with an estimated 270,000 survivors of childhood cancer in the United States currently. The achievement of high cure rates for most pediatric malignancies has been accompa- nied by a growing population of childhood cancer survivors who are at an increased risk for a myriad of health problems resulting from their cancer or its treatment. Some cancer-related complications do not become apparent until several years following can cer treatment. As the survivors of childhood cancers age, the effects of therapy may be exacerbated by effects of aging on organ function. Late effects encompass a variety of detrimental conditions including organ dysfunction, psychosocial complications, and subsequent malignancies that may negatively impact quality of life and may predis pose them to early mortality. In contrast to the multitude of publications describing treatment-related sequelae in childhood cancer survivors, relatively few provide spe cific recommendations for health screening and risk-reduction counseling to guide healthcare providers in monitoring this vulnerable population. In this chapter, we will summarize the evaluation and management of childhood cancer survivors who may be encountered across a wide variety of healthcare settings, salient issues influencing healthcare for childhood cancer survivors, of which guidelines currently available and limitations in current practice.
Impact of user characteristics on online forum classification tasks

We develop methods for describing users based on their posts to an online discussion forum. These methods build on existing techniques to describe other aspects of online discussions communities, but the application of these techniques to describing users is novel. We demonstrate the utility of our proposed methods by showing that they are superior to existing methods over distinct thread-level, post-level and user-level classification tasks, utilizing real world datasets. In all cases, we attain statistically significant improvements over baseline results. In post-level classification, we also see statistically significant improvements over state-of-the-art benchmark methods. Our major contributions in this work are • creation of a corpus with user-level annotations • detailed description and analysis of three relevant corpora • implementation of a data model for accessing forum data • implementation of feature extraction techniques • evaluation and analysis of user-level features over classification tasks Our work on preparing corpora and providing extensible implementations of feature extraction will be of particular value to researchers looking to work in this field.
Evaluation of brand competitiveness: regression analysis approach

Article aims to show an application of regression analysis for qualitative evaluation of companies’ brand competitiveness from a customer point of view. Presented methodology could be applied if only a certain level of competition is observed in the market. We assume that (i) brand competitiveness is embodied into commodities’, that companies are selling, prices and (ii) companies that have more competitive brand are able to sell their commodity at a higher price after controlling for other explicit factors potentially affecting price. For this purpose, we adapt classical linear regression model and provide an example with car companies’ brands in the Italian market. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3846/bm.2016. 40
Sequence Analysis of PMEL17 as Candidate Gene for Causing Rat-Tail Syndrome in Cattle

SEQUENCE ANALYSIS OF PMEL17 AS CANDIDATE GENE FOR CAUSING RAT-TAIL SYNDROME IN CATTLE Benjamin C. Hecht Department of Plant and Animal Sciences Master of Science Congenital hypotrichosis in cattle is commonly referred to as “rat-tail” syndrome and is characterized by a dilution of black coat color and morphological changes to the hair shaft and tail switch. Two loci are involved in the inheritance of the rat-tail phenotype, the “extension locus” (MC1R) and an unknown locus. In order to express the rat-tail phenotype the animal must inherit at least one black allele at MC1R and be heterozygous at the unknown locus. The rat-tail locus was previously mapped to an 8.7 cM region of Bos Taurus autosome (BTA) 5. Pmel17 is known to be involved in the expression of pigmentation and maps to the same region of BTA5 as the rat-tail locus. Cattle from a population segregating for the rat-tail syndrome were sequenced at Pmel17 in order to identify putative causative mutations. Two mutations were detected, a three base pair (bp) deletion in exon 1 at codon 18 removing a leucine residue, and a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at codon 612 resulting in an amino acid substitution (A E). The 3-bp deletion in exon 1 of Pmel17 is in 100% concordance with the rat-tail phenotype in this research population and may be causative of the rat-tail phenotype.
Universal Parametric Geometry Representation Method

andsimplemathematicalfunctionshavingeasilyobservedphysicalfeatures.Thefundamentalparametricgeometry representation method is shown to describe an essentially limitless design space composed entirely of analytically smooth geometries. The class function/shape function methodology is then extended to more general threedimensional applications such as wing, body, ducts, and nacelles. It is shown that a general three-dimensional geometry can be represented by a distribution of fundamental shapes, and that the class function/shape function methodology can be used to describe the fundamental shapes as well as the distributions of the fundamental shapes. Withthisveryrobust,versatile,andsimplemethod, athree-dimensional geometry isdefinedinadesignspacebythe distribution of class functions and the shape functions. This design space geometry is then transformed into the physical space in which the actual geometry definition is obtained. A number of applications of the class function/ shape function transformation method to nacelles, ducts, wings, and bodies are presented to illustrate the versatility of this new methodology. It is shown that relatively few numbers of variables are required to represent arbitrary three-dimensional geometries such as an aircraft wing, nacelle, or body.
First detection on prevalence of Anaplasma marginale in sheep and goat in Karak District, Pakistan

Mubashir Hussain, Asif Junaid, Rukhsana Gul, Muhammad Ameen Jamal, Irfan Ahmed, Mir Zulqarnain Talpur, Kashif Rahim, Madiha Fatima, Shahzad Munir Vector Borne Diseases Management Center, Department of Microbiology, Kohat University of Science and Technology, Kohat, KP, 26000, Pakistan Department of Chemistry, Kohat University of Science and Technology, Kohat, KP, 26000, Pakistan Department of Animal Breeding, Genetics and Reproduction, Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming 650201, Yunnan, PR China Yunnan Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Nutrition and Feed, Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming 650201, Yunnan, PR China Beijing Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering Drug and Biotechnology, Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, PR China
NUMERICAL MODEL FOR MICROPARTICLE AND LYMPHOCYTE MOTIONS IN DIELECTROPHORETIC MANIPULATION DEVICE

This paper describes the development of numerical model and scheme that can accurately solve the particle/cell motion dynamics in microchannels considering the physics of the AC electric field, dielectrophoresis (DEP) force, electrothermal flow, and hydrodynamic forces in three-dimensional form. This numerical model can be used to aid the designing of the microchip particularly intended for cell manipulation and separation. To demonstrate the performance of the model, a particle/cell manipulation device using semicircle electrode and microchannel flows was designed and evaluated experimentally.
EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDIES ON LOCAL HIGH EFFICIENCY AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM FOR OFFICE BUILDINGS

The effects of an air conditioning system for office buildings were studied experimentally and computationally. A displacement ventilation system was used as the main air-conditioning system, and a partition with a built-in circular fan was used to deliver the air-conditioned clean air near the floor supplied by the main displacement system to the occupant in the office directly. Experimental model tests and computational analysis that used the large eddy simulation (LES) have been carried out to obtain local air exchange efficiency, air temperature and air velocity distributions in a test chamber. The measured and simulated air velocities were compared. The results show that the partition's built-in circular fan has a great impact on the local air exchange efficiency in the immediate vicinity of the occupant. However, the thermal comfort of the occupant should be examined in more thoroughly.
Religious socialisation and the ongoing quest for a human rights culture in South Africa.

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of religious socialisation, approached from a social learning perspective, towards establishing a human rights culture in South Africa. On the basis of longitudinal survey research conducted among Grade 11 learners in the Johannesburg and Pretoria region, who in general report fairly high levels of religious socialisation, both from incidental and intentional learning, and despite some differences between learners from private (Anglican and Catholic) and public schools, we can conclude that religious socialisation and praxis relate positively towards some political (participation and interest in politics) and environmental rights attitudes. Religious socialisation and praxis, however, relate negatively towards a number of civil rights attitudes (including the freedom of religion) and the rejection of oppression. In comparison with the first survey in 1995/1996, more negative relations between religious socialisation and praxis and human rights attitudes are found in the second survey in 2000/2001.
Performance Analysis of Digital Modulation Techniques on Wireless Optical Channel

Free space optical transmission with its data speed has many potential in close range especially indoor communication. This paper compared the performance of FSO transmission on a number of modulation schemes. The observations are mainly made by comparing the bit error rate result for each scheme. Atmospheric turbulence and noise are introduced to the transmission channel in the form of log normal model on simulation. The basic modulations simulated are on-off keying as the classical techniue for FSO, and its spatial variation, the pulse position modulation. Exploring the baseband modulations for optic application, also implemented are the PSK of 2, 4, 8, 16, and QAM of 4 and 16. Simulation with short data-length resulted that BPSK dan 4-QAM gave best performance among all, with average BER of 10 in medium to high turbulence condition. While the error level of OOK and PPM are 10 at best.
Electron Thermionic Emission from Graphene and a Thermionic Energy Converter

In this paper, we propose a model to investigate the electron thermionic emission from a single-layer graphene (ignoring the effects of substrate) and to explore its application as the emitter of thermionic energy convertor (TIC). An analytical formula has been derived, which is a function of temperature, work function and Fermi energy level. The formula is significantly different from the traditional Richardson-Dushman (RD) law for which it is independent of mass to account for the supply function of the electrons in the graphene behaving like massless Fermion quasiparticles. By comparing with a recent experiment [Kaili Jiang et al., Nano Research 7, 553 (2014)] measuring electron thermionic emission from a suspended single layer graphene, our model predicts that the intrinsic work function of a single-layer graphene is about 4.514 eV with a Fermi energy level of 0.083 eV. For a given work function, a new scaling of $T^{3}$ is predicted, which is different from the traditional RD scaling of $T^2$. If the work function of the graphene is lowered to 2.5 to 3 eV, and the Fermi energy level is increased to 0.8 to 0.9 eV, it is possible to design a graphene cathode based TIC operating at around 900 K or lower, as compared with the metal-based cathode TIC (operating at about 1500 K). With a graphene based cathode (work function = 4.514 eV) at 900 K, and a metallic based anode (work function = 2.5 eV) like LaB$_6$ at 425 K, the efficiency of our proposed-TIC is about 45$\%$
Range border formation in a world with increasing climatic variance

Questions: How will a change in climatic conditions characterized by an increase in the variance of environmental conditions affect the distribution of species along spatial environmental gradients? How does the specific type of gradient influence their response? Features of the model: Spatially explicit individual-based simulation of a metapopulation. Logistic population growth and density-dependent emigration. Spatial gradients in habitat isolation, quality, and size. Ranges of the key variables: Environmental stochasticity was modelled as a variation of net reproductive rate (λ). For a mean reproductive rate of λ = 2, the standard deviation (σ) was varied in the range of 0 to 3. Conclusions: When the range margin was predominantly determined by a lack of colonizers, ranges initially expanded with increasing environmental fluctuations, but contracted again when these fluctuations became too strong (σ > 1). When extinction risk was more important for range formation, the initial expansion was damped or completely absent. When the climate changed too fast to allow for local adaptation of dispersal behaviour, the described patterns were less pronounced.
A Survey of Interactive Systems based on Brain- Computer Interfaces

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) enables users to interact with a computer only through their brain biological signals, without the need to use muscles. BCI is an emerging research area but it is still relatively immature. However, it is important to reflect on the different aspects of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) area related to BCIs, considering that BCIs will be part of interactive systems in the near future. BCIs most attend not only to handicapped users, but also healthy ones, improving interaction for end-users. Virtual Reality (VR) is also an important part of interactive systems, and combined with BCI could greatly enhance user interactions, improving the user experience by using brain signals as input with immersive environments as output. This paper addresses only noninvasive BCIs, since this kind of capture is the only one to not present risk to human health. As contributions of this work we highlight the survey of interactive systems based on BCIs focusing on HCI and VR applications, and a discussion on challenges and future of this subject matter.
AN IMPLEMENTATION OF DISTRIBUTED SOFTWARE AND PARALLEL PROCESSING TESTING LAB

This document aims to explain the optimization of tasks through a Grid-like Parallel Computing scenario using Blender 3D. It is too impractical a thought that a piece of software will use all the available hardware resources purchased for a project. In most cases the lack of software analysis ends up in a locked up hardware potential and a forced boundary data analysis. Hardware has evolved faster than software which has created a gap between the 2 pieces of the puzzle. This gap can be used as an advantage where computing virtualization could help in increasing computational power and consequently, improving the speed of common tasks. Keywords; Computacion paralela;Grid computing;analisis de datos, optimizacion de recursos.
Sexual Desire, Sexual Function, and Quality of Life in Married Women with Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder

Objectives: This study was performed to identify the relationship among sexual desire, other domains of sexual function and quality of life (QOL) and to describe the effect of sexual desire on sexual function and QOL in married women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). Methods: A total of 397 women with HSDD participated in this study. Data were collected through self-reported questionnaire which were constructed to include general characteristics items, Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), and QOL tool. Data were analyzed using SPSS/WIN20 for descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Duncan, partial correlation coefficients, and Hierarchial multiple regression. Results: There were significant correlations with sexual desire and other domains of sexual function. And also, sexual desire had a positive correlations with the psychological status and total QOL. The sexual desire was statistically significant predictors for sexual function and QOL. Conclusions: Health professionals should direct efforts toward developing sexual health-related counseling or education programs for women suffering from sexual dysfunction with the goal of helping them to achieve satisfying sex lives and improved quality of life.
AqquaStudy – enabling remote access to model-based software tools for supporting the design and operation of WWTPs

Making use of mathematical programming algorithms, a software library (AqLib) has been built for automatically optimising the design and operation of wastewater treatment plants. Currently, AqLib implements seven configurations for nitrogen removal (DN, DN2, RDN, SDN, DRDN, RSDN and DRSDN), five configurations for phosphorous removal (AO, Bardenpho, Johannesburg, UCT and MUCT), and the anaerobic digestion process. Moreover, an Internet-based service (AqquaStudy) has been deployed so that AqLib can be remotely accessed from any standard web-browser.
Nurturing Roles of Venture Capital Firms and the Sustenance of Technology Ventures

2 Abstract: In Malaysia and other part of the world, Venture Capital (VC) was acknowledged as being among the most vital technology financing mechanisms assisting Research and Development (R n D) activities, from encouragement of rudimentary scientific research to technology development and commercialization. The purpose of this research is to find out how the Nurturing Roles of Venture Capital Firms (VCFs) in Malaysia help in the sustenance of Technology Based Firms (TBFs). This study adopts a qualitative method of data collection, where 47 participants such as Business Angels (BA), Government Venture Capital Firms (GVCF), Banks Venture Capital Firms (BVCF), Academic Technopreneurs (AT) and Conventional Technopreneurs (CT) are interviewed. Data was transcribed, analyzed and coded using the Miles and Huberman Model for qualitative data analysis. Findings from this study reported how the roles of VCFs enhance the business performance of TBFs.