Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
5 Climate Variability and Population Health in China : Updated Knowledge , Challenges and Opportunities

With remarkable economic growth in the past three decades, China has already overtaken the USA as the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide since 2007 (United Nation Statistics Division, 2009) and encountered many environmental challenges such as climate change, which significantly affects population health. According to the latest assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Cruz et al., 2007), an evident clear warming trend has been observed in most areas of China during the last 50 years. Moreover, since the 1990s, China has experienced frequent extreme weather events, such as a 40-day episode heatwave in Shanghai in 2003, the longest heatwave being recorded for the last 50 years (Tan & Huang, 2004). The recent severe drought in Yunan Province of southwest China highlights the climate threat in China (Qiu, 2010). Under a medium–low greenhouse gases emission scenario, an annual temperature increase of 1.5°C by 2020 is projected in China (relative to the mean annual temperature of 1961–1990) and the figure will go up to 4.5°C by 2080s (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 2009). More extreme weather events will likely occur more frequently and intensively (Cruz et al., 2007). The impacts of such climate variability should be better understood in order to develop adaptation strategies at all levels of government as well as practice guidelines for service providers to build climate change resilience for citizens. Study of the association between climate variability and human health has been largely neglected among Chinese researchers in the past decades as argued in two recently published editorials (Kan, 2009, Wang & Chen, 2009). Given the largely affected population size, various regions with different climatic characteristics, and a diverse socio-economic status across China, it is necessary to understand and recognize the updated knowledge of health impact associated with climate variability in China, and to identity the opportunities available to meet further challenges. However, there has been no such complete picture presented in China to date. This study has systematically reviewed the research examining the association between climate variability and population health in China. The aim is to
Supporting Information For Layer by Layer Assembly of Ultrathin V 2 O 5 Anchored MWCNTs and Graphene on Textile Fabrics for High Energy Density Flexible Supercapacitor Electrodes

Layer by Layer Assembly of Ultrathin V2O5 Anchored MWCNTs and Graphene on Textile Fabrics for High Energy Density Flexible Supercapacitor Electrodes Imran Shakir1,2, Zahid Ali1 Jihyun Bae3, Jongjin Park3,*and Dae Joon Kang1* 1Department of Physics, Institute of Basic Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746, Republic of Korea, 2 Sustainable Energy Technologies (SET) Center, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia. 3Frontier Research Laboratory, Samsung Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology, Yongin, Republic of Korea,
Improving the GPU-based Collision Check Procedure for Distributed Crowd Simulations

The computing capabilites of current Graphics Processor Units (GPUs) have been used by many distributed applications for performing general purpose computations. In particular, the capabilites of many-core GPUs have been used in crowd simulations not only for enhancing the crowd rendering, but also for performing collision check and even for simulating the whole crowd. Nevertheless, these applications can still significantly increase their throughput if the GPU capabilities are fully exploited. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for GPU-based collision check in distributed crowd simulations. Unlike other collision check algorithms in the literature, the absence of both sorting procedures and atomic operations in the proposed method significantly reduces the computing workload of the collision check procedure, while keeping the crowd simulation consistent. The performance evaluation results show that the execution time required for the proposed method is significantly lower than previous methods based on sorting, increasing the crowd simulation throughput accordingly.
Discontinuities, competition, and cooperation: Coopetitive dynamics between incumbents and entrants

Research Summary: We advance an integrative model in which distinct types of technological discontinuities (core‐knowledge vs. complementary‐asset) are combined with different appropriability regimes (strong vs. weak) to predict competitive and cooperative dynamics between incumbents and entrants. We posit that incumbents ally with entrants following a core‐knowledge discontinuity when the appropriability regime is strong. When the appropriability regime is weak, incumbents are more likely to acquire entrants. We submit that the additional consideration of complementary‐asset discontinuities reveals a more integrated theoretical model of competition and cooperation between incumbents and entrants. In particular, incumbents tend to cooperate among themselves following complementary‐asset discontinuities, although we highlight theoretical nuances due to different appropriability regimes. We provide falsifiable propositions, and introduce contingencies such as firm‐level heterogeneity and time dynamics. Managerial Summary: Interfirm cooperation is one possible avenue for existing firms to address the challenge of responding to discontinuous technological changes. What is not clear, however, is who should the incumbent ally with: other incumbents or new entrants? We provide an integrative framework to help managers to decide when to cooperate with competitors and when to cooperate with new entrants. When the core knowledge of incumbent firms is made obsolete by technological advances and intellectual property is fairly well protected, managers of existing firms should search out collaboration with new entrants. If intellectual property protection is weak, managers of incumbents firms are better off acquiring new entrants. When the downstream complementary resources such manufacturing, distribution, and sales are replaced by radically new technologies, then incumbents best option is cooperate with other incumbents in order to compete against new entrants.
The relationship between Rheumatoid Arthritis and prevalence of Cytomegalovirus and Helicobacter pylori

The pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), related to a majority of inflammatory and autoimmune disease, is largely due to an inappropriate or inadequate immune response to external factors, among these factors, infectious agents (Cytomegalovirus and Helicobacter pylori)which are considered as candidates of triggering such disease. Method:40 RA patients and 20 healthy control individuals were recruited and tested for Rapid H.pylori and CMV IgG, all RA patients were also tested for quantitative RA IgG, IgM and IgA. Results: the results showed an elevated concentrations of RA IgG , IgM and IgA compared to the normal value of less than 20 U/ml , results also showed no significance differences in the percentage of positive result for H.pylori between RA patient 27.5% and control group 25% , whereas the concentration of CMV IgG in RA patient was significantly higher (110 U/ml) compared to control group (25 U/ml) at (p≤ 0.01 ) . In conclusion; CMV show more prevalence than H. pylori in the study population of some Iraqi patients .
Investigating the Psychological Well-Being and Job Satisfaction Levels in Different Occupations

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and psychological well-being levels of different occupational employees (education, security, health, justice, worker, engineer, and religious official) carrying on their duties in different institutions and organizations in a mid-scale provincial center of Eastern Anatolian region in Turkey. Furthermore, the research also discussed the differentiation between psychological well-being and job satisfaction in terms of occupational areas, income levels and service period of different occupational employees. The research group included totally 348 employees including 107 female and 241 males between 21 and 64 years old. Psychological Well-Being Scale, Job Satisfaction Scale, and Personal Information Form were used as data collection tools in the research. According to the research results, a positive mid-level relationship was proved between psychological well-being levels and job satisfaction levels of the employees. In terms of occupational areas and income levels, a significant differentiation was observed between psychological well-being and job satisfaction scores of the occupational employees. Finally, no significant difference was determined between psychological well-being and job satisfaction levels of the employees.
Microflow of fluorescently labelled red blood cells in tumours expressing single isoforms of VEGF and their response to VEGF-R tyrosine kinase inhibition

In this work we studied the functional differences between the microcirculation of murine tumours that only express single isoforms of vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF), VEGF120 and VEGF188, and the effect of VEGF receptor tyrosine kinase (VEGF-R TK) inhibition on their functional response to the vascular disrupting agent, combretastatin A-4 phosphate (CA-4-P). We used measurement of fluorescentlylabelled red blood cell (RBC) velocities in tumour microvessels to study this functional response. RBC velocity for control VEGF120-expressing tumours was over 50% slower than for control VEGF188expressing tumours, which may be due to the immature and haemorrhagic vasculature of the VEGF120 tumour. After chronic treatment with a VEGF-R tyrosine kinase inhibitor, SU5416, RBC velocities in VEGF120 tumours were significantly increased compared to control VEGF120 tumours, and similar to velocities in both VEGF188 treatment groups. Control and SU5416 treated VEGF188 tumours were not different from each other. Treatment of VEGF120 tumours with SU5416 reduced their vascular response to CA-4-P to a similar level to the VEGF188 tumours. Differential expression of VEGF isoforms not only affected vascular function in untreated tumours but also impacted on response to a vascular disrupting drug, CA-4-P, alone and in combination with an anti-angiogenic approach involving VEGF-R TK inhibition. Analysis of RBC velocities is a useful tool in measuring functional responses to vascular targeted treatments.
Comparison of physicochemical analysis and antioxidant activities of Nigella sativa seeds and oils from Yemen, Iran and Malaysia

The study was aimed to analyze the physicochemical properties and antioxidant activities in five batches of seeds and oils of Nigella sativa, obtained from Malaysia, Iran and Yemen. Proximate analysis showed that the seeds contained 20.63-28.71% crude fat, 11.35-14.04% crude protein, 5.37-7.93% total moisture, 4.15-4.51% total ash contents and 48.69-57.18% total carbohydrate contents. Physicochemical analysis showed a refractive index of 1.4697-1.4730, specific gravity of 1.369-1.376 g/cm3, peroxide value of 3.33-21.33 meq O2/kg, 184-220 mg/g in saponification number and unsaponifiable matter of 1.1-1.8% in the oil samples. The seeds showed high mineral content such as Ca (2242 mg/kg), K (6393 mg/kg) and Mg (2234 mg/kg). The oil sample from Kelantan, Malaysia contained the lowest saturated fatty acid (SFA) (1.42±0.29%) while Sudan, Yemen contained the highest content of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) (65.13±5.45%). Monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) were found the highest (20.45±2.61%) in the seed samples originated from Iran. Seeds from Iran showed the highest antioxidant activity (IC50 = 1.49 mg/mL) and total phenolic content (30.84 mg GAE/g) while oil sample from Sudan, Yemen has the highest antioxidant activity (IC50 = 4.48 mg/mL). Seeds from Iran have the highest quality among the seed samples while oil samples from Kelantan, Malaysia was the best among the oil samples in terms of low SFA, high PUFA, MUFA and antioxidant activities.
NT-proBNP – N-terminal brain natriuretic propeptide; PCT – procalcitonin; SIRS – systemic inflammatory response syndrome; SOFA score – sepsis-related organ failure assessment score Short communication N-TERMINAL BRAIN NATRIURETIC PROPEPTIDE LEVELS CORRELATE WITH PROCALCITONIN AND C-REACTIVE PROTEIN 

The aim of this study was to find the relationship between N-terminal brain natriuretic propeptide (NT-proBNP), procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein (CRP) plasma concentrations in septic patients. This was a prospective study, performed at Medical University Hospital No. 5 in Łódź. Twenty patients with sepsis and severe sepsis were included in the study. N-terminal brain natriuretic propeptide, procalcitonin and C-reactive protein concentrations, and survival were evaluated. In the whole studied group (128 measurements), the mean NT-proBNP, procalcitonin and C-reactive protein concentrations were,
f BGD : Learning Embeddings From Positive Unlabeled Data with BGD.

Learning sparse features from only positive and unlabeled (PU) data is a fundamental task for problems of several domains, such as natural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV), information retrieval (IR). Considering the numerous amount of unlabeled data, most prevalent methods rely on negative sampling (NS) to increase computational efﬁciency. However, sampling a fraction of unlabeled data as negative for training may ignore other important examples, and thus lead to non-optimal prediction performance. To address this, we present a fast and generic batch gradient descent optimizer ( f BGD ) to learn from all training examples without sampling. By leveraging sparsity in PU data, we accelerate f BGD by several magnitudes, making its time complexity the same level as the NS-based stochastic gradient descent method. Mean-while, we observe that the standard batch gradient method suffers from gradient instability issues due to the sparsity property. Driven by a theoretical analysis for this potential cause, an intuitive solution arises naturally. To verify its efﬁ-cacy, we perform experiments on multiple tasks with PU data across domains, and show that f BGD consistently outperforms NS-based models on all tasks with comparable efﬁciency.
ategic Learning inTeams

This paper analyzes a two-player game of strategic experimentation with three-armed exponential bandits in continuous time. Players face replica bandits, with one arm that is safe in that it generates a known payoff, whereas the likelihood of the risky arms’ yielding a positive payoff is initially unknown. It is common knowledge that the types of the two risky arms are perfectly negatively correlated. I show that the efficient policy is incentive-compatible if, and only if, the stakes are high enough. Moreover, learning will be complete in any Markov perfect equilibrium with continuous value functions if, and only if, the stakes exceed a certain threshold.
Title: Modelling studies on soil-mediated response to acid deposition and climate variability

The impact of acidifying atmospheric precipitation and climate variability on forest soil was studied using three approaches: (i) dynamic process-oriented modelling, (ii) static vulnerability assessment, and (iii) non-linear response pattern identification. The dynamic soil acidification model MIDAS is presented, with applications at the plot and catchment scale in Norway, Sweden and Finland, which show that growing vegetation contributes to soil acidification and which illustrate that the recovery phase is not symmetrical to the acidification phase. I report the results of an analysis using the SMART acidification model and the DEPUPT nutrient uptake model for selected deposition and forest growth scenarios at the Integrated Monitoring site of Hietajarvi, eastern Finland. The results show the importance of how the present day deposition is estimated. A combinatory matrix approach is described that uses regional data together with expert judgement to provide an assessment of groundwater sensitivity to acidification in Europe, without the need for detailed mathematical process formulations. I also demonstrate the variability that is introduced in the Finnish critical loads of sulphur for forest soils by using alternative criteria and by extending the critical loads model to include organic complexation of aluminium and the leaching of organic anions. The impact of climate variability on runoff water quality is illustrated with an empirical stream water model that builds on artificial neural networks for reproducing patterns in the observations of TOC, N tot and P tot at Hietajarvi, and also at Valkea-Kotinen, an Integrated Monitoring site in southern Finland. The stream water model is used to predict changes in element fluxes from these forested catchments in response to climate change.
Spoken Language Recognition using X-vectors

In this paper, we apply x-vectors to the task of spoken language recognition. This framework consists of a deep neural network that maps sequences of speech features to ﬁxed-dimensional embeddings, called x-vectors. Long-term language characteristics are captured in the network by a temporal pooling layer that aggregates information across time. Once extracted, x-vectors utilize the same classiﬁcation technology developed for i-vectors. In the 2017 NIST language recognition evaluation, x-vectors achieved excellent results and outperformed our state-of-the-art i-vector systems. In the post-evaluation analysis presented here, we experiment with several variations of the x-vector framework, and ﬁnd that the best performing system uses multilingual bottleneck features, data augmentation, and a discriminative Gaussian classiﬁer.
A numerical scheme for BSDEs

In this paper we propose a numerical scheme for a class of backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs) with possible path-dependent terminal values. We prove that our scheme converges in the strong L2 sense and derive its rate of convergence. As an intermediate step we prove an L2-type regularity of the solution to such BSDEs. Such a notion of regularity, which can be thought of as the modulus of continuity of the paths in an L2 sense, is new. Some other features of our scheme include the following: (i) both components of the solution are approximated by step processes (i.e., piecewise constant processes); (ii) the regularity requirements on the coefficients are practically "minimum"; (iii) the dimension of the integrals involved in the approximation is independent of the partition size.
Open Access book

Digital Signal Processing is not a recent research field, but has become a powerful technology to solve engineering problems in the last few decades due to the intro‐ duction by Texas Instruments in 1982 of the Digital Signal Processor. Fast digital signal processors have quickly become a cornerstone of high-performance electrical drives, where power electronic conversion systems have heavy online computation burdens and must be controlled using complex control algorithms. In this sense, multiphase drives represent a particularly interesting case of study, where the computational cost highly increases with each extra phase. This technology has been recognized in recent times as an attractive electrical drive due to its usefulness in traction, more-electric aircraft applications and wind power generation systems. However, the complexity of the required control algorithms and signal processing techniques notably increases in relation with conventional three-phase drives. This chapter makes a revision of the necessities of a high-performance multiphase drive from the digital signal processing perspective. One of the most powerful Texas Instruments’ digital signal processor (TMS320F28335) is used, and specific control algorithms, electronic circuits and acquisition processing methods are designed, implemented and analyzed to show its interest in the development of a high-performance multiphase drive.
Theory, Experiment and Computation of Half Metals for Spintronics: Recent Progress in Si-based Materials

Abstract Since the term “spintronics” was conceived in 1996, there have been several directions taken to develop new semiconductor-based magnetic materials for device applications using spin, or spin and charge, as the operational paradigm. Anticipating their integration into mature semiconductor technologies, one direction is to make use of materials involving Si. In this review, we focus on the progress made, since 2005, in Si-based half metallic spintronic materials. In addition to commenting on the experimental growth techniques, we review the computational models and the theory behind the non-spin-polarized and spin-polarized forms of density functional theory and the Kohn-Sham equations. Two software packages, associated with the computational methods, are also discussed. Both experimental and theoretical aspects, leading to recent design of half metallic quantum structures, will be reviewed.
Analysing the creep of mountain permafrost using high precision aerial photogrammetry: 25 years of monitoring Gruben rock glacier, Swiss Alps

Aerophotogrammetrical monitoring of Gruben rock glacier over the period 1970 to 1995 results in a unique time series documenting the three-dimensional surface kinematics of creeping mountain permafrost. In places, the area under study is aAected by historical fluctuations of the polythermal Gruben glacier. Changes in elevation and surface velocities were measured over five consecutive five-year periods using an advanced photogrammetric monoplotting technique of multitemporal stereo models. The measurements are based on a regular grid with a mesh width of 25 metres and have an accuracy of a few centimetres per year. Although surface lifting occurred in places and within individual time intervals, surface subsidence predominated at an average rate of a few centimetres per year in the ‘periglacial’ part of the rock glacier and of a few decimetres per year in the ‘glacier-aAected’ part of the rock glacier which still contains some dead glacier ice in permafrost. Fluctuations in horizontal surface velocities seem to correlate with temporal changes in surface elevation. Analysing flow along principal trajectories and interpreting the advance rate of the front leads to an age estimate of the rock glacier of a few millennia. Dynamic eAects of three-dimensional straining within the creeping permafrost as computed from the measured surface velocity field are estimated to potentially contribute to surface heave or subsidence in the same order of magnitude as the observed vertical changes. Temporal variations of surface altitudes at Gruben rock glacier show distinct similarities with mass balance and surface altitude variations determined on nearby glaciers but at a greatly reduced amplitude. This similarity may indicate that the same climatic forcing (summer temperatures? ) could possibly have a predominant influence on permafrost aggradation/degradation as well as on glacier mass balance in mountain areas. #1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Impact of Captioned Video Instruction on Nigerian Hearing-Impaired Pupils’ Performance in English Language

This study investigated impact of captioned video instruction on Nigerian hearing impaired pupils’ performance in English language. The study adopted quasi-experimental pretest, post test, control group design. The experimental group was exposed to captioned video instruction while the control group was taught using the conventional teaching method for the hearing impaired. Two hypotheses were raised and field validated Primary English Performance Test (PEPT) used as data collection instrument. The study concluded that both instructional strategies were effective in giving English language instruction to hearing impaired pupils, as performance of the two groups did not indicate any significant difference and gender did not influence their performance either. Consequently, it was recommended that teachers should be trained to design and develop captioned video, and infrastructural base for their use in the schools provided by Government. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014. v3n6p411