Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The need to integrate political science concepts with innovation systems approaches to bioeconomy

Bioeconomy is a concept that has many interpretations: it is something forming out based on the existing and new resources, existing and new technologies, and of the traditional production, such as the forest sector, as well as of the new industries emerging across old sector borderlines. How can we make sense of the developments if the accustomed classifications and metrics are becoming outdated? This paper reflects upon the NOVA course “Innovation Systems in the Bioeconomy” discussions visà-vis my own study field, i.e., forest sector foresight and the question of increasing role of services. It starts with food for thought on what we need foresight for in system transitions, summarizes examples from the course week how the increasing role of services relates to the evolving bioeconomy, and concludes ideas to connect the multi-level perspective (MLP) on socio-technical changes with the service-dominant logic (SDL) conceptualizations: innovations take place both in technological and market niches.
Prognostic value of heart rate variability on chronic congestive heart failure

Objective To assess the prognostic value of heart rate variability (HRV) in patients with moderate and severe degree chronic congestive heart failure (CHF). Methods 98 patients were studied by 4 years of follow up.HRV was analyzed with a Holter analysis system in the time domain.Prognostic analysis was performed with Cox proportional hazards model and Kaplan Meier survival analysis.Results Cox's univariate analysis identified the SDNN,SDANN,SDNN index to be predictors of cardiac death.The Kaplan Meier survival curves revealed that SDNN≤50 ms and SDANN≤40 ms were useful risk factors.Conclusion The depressed HRV measures is an independent risk factor for a poor prognosis in patients with CHF.Whether analysis of HRV can be recommended in the risk stratification for the better management of patients with CHF needs further investigation.
Design of a Bipolar Biphasic Voltage Stimulator for Cochlear Implant in the 0.18μm 1.8V/3.3V CMOS Process

Nowadays, due to the rapidly development of biomedical science and electronics, many System-on-Chips for biomedical application had been proposed to implant into human body. Cochlear implant is also one kind of medical application for the profound deafness. New type electrodes for cochlear implant had been proposed by our biomedical group, and these electrodes have to be driven by voltage. Thus, a stimulator can deliver voltage pulses to stimulate the auditory nerve in the cochlea is proposed. According the research of our biomedical group, the stimulator should be capable of providing biphasic voltage pulses with adjustable amplitudes and adjustable pulse widths. The well-developed CMOS processes had been attractive to realize implantable device for biomedical application, so the cochlear implant is implemented in the 0.18-um 1.8-V/3.3-V CMOS process. For the purpose of integration with other circuit
Applying Fully Convolutional Architectures for Semantic Segmentation of a Single Tree Species in Urban Environment on High Resolution UAV Optical Imagery

This study proposes and evaluates five deep fully convolutional networks (FCNs) for the semantic segmentation of a single tree species: SegNet, U-Net, FC-DenseNet, and two DeepLabv3+ variants. The performance of the FCN designs is evaluated experimentally in terms of classification accuracy and computational load. We also verify the benefits of fully connected conditional random fields (CRFs) as a post-processing step to improve the segmentation maps. The analysis is conducted on a set of images captured by an RGB camera aboard a UAV flying over an urban area. The dataset also contains a mask that indicates the occurrence of an endangered species called Dipteryx alata Vogel, also known as cumbaru, taken as the species to be identified. The experimental analysis shows the effectiveness of each design and reports average overall accuracy ranging from 88.9% to 96.7%, an F1-score between 87.0% and 96.1%, and IoU from 77.1% to 92.5%. We also realize that CRF consistently improves the performance, but at a high computational cost.
Polymeric compositions of medical devices account for the variations in Candida albicans biofilm structural morphology

The increase in the number of fungal infections has been associated with the prevalent use of medical devices. This study assessed the morphological structure of Candida albicans biofilms on the surfaces of medical devices using scanning electron microscopy and characterized the polymeric compositions of these medical devices using infrared spectroscopic study. Biofilms on the surfaces of these medical devices exhibited variations in morphological topographies ranging from the presence of ellipsoid and spherical yeast cells joining end to end, to the growth of pseudohyphae and hyphae formation with chains of cylindrical cells, and the formation of several microcolonies entrenched in a polymeric matrix. The differences in the spectroscopic profiles of the medical devices accounted for the variations in the structural morphology of these biofilms. Spectral studies on polyvinyl chloride endotracheal tube revealed sp3-CH stretching frequencies at 2959, 2926, and 2858 cm-1 with CCl stretching frequencies at 636 cm-1 and 693 cm-1. Silicone polymer containing medical devices had SiOSi and SiC stretching frequencies identified at 1096 cm-1 and 804 cm-1 for the silicone urinary catheter, while the stretching frequencies were identified at 1005 cm-1 and 862 cm-1 for the silicone nasogastric tube, respectively. Given the information on the variations in the morphological appearance of the biofilms on medical device surfaces, these differences on the polymeric compositions of the medical devices can provide explanations on the adhesion potential, biofilm formation, structural morphology, and subsequent susceptibility pattern of the sessile organism to
Block-Structured Optimization for Anomalous Pattern Detection in Interdependent Networks

We propose a generalized optimization framework for detecting anomalous patterns (subgraphs that are interesting or unexpected) in interdependent networks, such as multi-layer networks, temporal networks, networks of networks, and many others. We frame the problem as a non-convex optimization that has a general nonlinear score function and a set of block-structured and non-convex constraints. We develop an effective, efficient, and parallelizable projection-based algorithm, namely Graph Block-structured Gradient Projection (GBGP), to solve the problem. It is proved that our algorithm 1) runs in nearly-linear time on the network size, and 2) enjoys a theoretical approximation guarantee. Moreover, we demonstrate how our framework can be applied to two very practical applications, and we conduct comprehensive experiments to show the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed algorithm.
LATERAL PERFORMANCE OF DRILLED SHAFT CONSIDERING NONLINEAR SOIL AND STRUCTURE MATERIAL BEHAVIOR

In addition to nonlinear soil behavior has been assumed in conventional analytical method, performance of the laterally loaded drilled-shaft is also strongly influenced by possible concrete cracking, steel yielding, and shaft/soil separation and interaction. However, these factors are often neglected in the most of available methods and studied results. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of the above-mentioned effects on lateral performance of drilled reinforced-concrete shaft. The finite element code, ABAQUS, which is available in the three-dimensional analysis is adopted for taking into account the nonlinearity in shaft and soil materials, pilesoil interaction and nonlinear geometric properties of the shaft/soil system in the analysis. Also, infinite elements are used to simulate unbounded boundary condition. One of the lateral pile load tests results of high-speed railway system in Taiwan is used to simulate the real behavior of drilled shaft subjected to lateral load. The numerical results show that the nonlinearity of material and geometry strongly affects the shaft deflection, steel stress distribution, concrete cracking state, soil uplift in front of the shaft, and separation between shaft/soil interfaces that is behind the shaft and along its depth.
Unemployment Risks and Intra-Household Insurance ∗ (Preliminary draft)

We consider an economy with incomplete markets and intra-household risk sharing, where households are formed by a job-seeker and an employed spouse and differ by the productivity of the spouse. We study the constrained efficient private provision of insurance within the household through the labor supply of the spouse, and what unemployment risks should be publicly insured away. Unlike the spouse’s total income, neither productivity nor labor supply is observed. We characterize the directed search equilibrium, and show that the spouse’s labor supply is negatively affected by unemployment benefits regardless of the search outcome of the worker in line with the empirical evidence. We also show that the optimal unemployment benefits are contingent on the household’s total income as it affects the trade-off between consumption-smoothing and job search incentives. Moreover, we numerically explore the welfare gains of implementing a household-income-based unemployment insurance.
Grid Based Sequential Inference

Sequential inference and filtering methods often make approximations and simplifications to the system dynamics that they look at in order to be as efficient as possible. This leads to limits in accuracy and even wrong results when nonlinearities dominate the dynamics of said system. In this paper we acknowledge that computers have vastly improved since methods such as the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) were devised and create a new filtering method that takes full advantage of this fact. This is done by discretizing the system of interest and evolve the resultant continuity equation with a PDE solver while updating the state with observations by directly applying Bayes’ Theorem. We use a simple finite volume method on a square grid-discretized pendulum and show through comparison that this method is superior to the UKF, provided computational time is not an issue.
co‐culturing with exogenous transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 can induce the transdifferentiation of cultured rat MSCs into myofibroblasts in vitro. Treatment of the MSCs with tranilast [N‐(3',4'‐dimethoxycinnamoyl)‐anthranilic acid] attenuated this fibrotic process. Immunocytochemical staining, w

Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) transplantation is able to attenuate organ fibrosis; however, increasing evidence has indicated that MSCs may be an important cell source of myofibroblasts, which are vital pathogenic cells in fibrotic diseases. The results of the present study revealed that co‐culturing with exogenous transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 can induce the transdifferentiation of cultured rat MSCs into myofibroblasts in vitro. Treatment of the MSCs with tranilast [N‐(3',4'‐dimethoxycinnamoyl)‐anthranilic acid] attenuated this fibrotic process. Immunocytochemical staining, western blot analysis, reverse transcription‐quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis and cell viability assays were performed in order to evaluate the molecular mechanisms underlying the effects of tranilast on TGF‐β1‐mediated MSC‐to‐myofibroblast activation. The results demonstrated that TGF-β1 upregulated the expression of α-smooth muscle actin (α‐SMA) and collagen type I, and increased the phosphorylation of mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 3 (Smad3) and extracellular signal‐regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) in the rat MSCs; by contrast, tranilast pretreatment downregulated their expression. Furthermore, the proliferation of MSCs induced by TGF‐β1 was decreased by pretreatment with tranilast. In conclusion, the results of the present study demonstrated that tranilast treatment markedly suppressed the TGF-β1‐induced differentiation of cultured rat MSCs into myofibroblasts, potentially by inhibiting the Smad3 and ERK1/2 signaling pathways. Therefore, this may be a potential antifibrotic therapeutic strategy, serving as an adjuvant treatment following transplantation of MSCs.
EFFECT OF TRACTION OIL ON ROLLING CONTACT FATIGUE OF STAINLESS STEEL ROLLERS

Using a two-roller testing machine, the authors have examined the effect of traction oil on the occurrence of rolling contact fatigue or the surface distress of austenitic stainless steel (SUS304) rollers. In the present experiments, a high viscosity synthetic traction oil was used, and the test results were compared with the previous results obtained using a relatively low viscosity mineral oil. As a result, pitting occurred only on the slower side roller under rolling with sliding conditions, and there was a significant difference in the pitting life depending on the roughness combination of two rollers. Namely, in the combination of smooth rollers with a roughness of 0. 2μmRy, neither pitting nor surface distress occurred up to 2×10 cycles. On the other hand, in the combination of equally rough rollers or rollers with a large difference in the roughness, pitting was apt to occur at an earlier stage of running, and traction oil showed a fairly short life compared with mineral oil. In order to ascertain the reason caused such a difference, the situation of asperity contacts in the process of running-in was examined in detail.
Expression Analysis of XTH in Stem Swelling of Stem Mustard and Selection of Reference Genes

Accurate analysis of gene expression requires selection of appropriate reference genes. In this study, we report analysis of eight candidate reference genes (ACTIN, UBQ, EF-1α, UBC, IF-4α, TUB, PP2A, and HIS), which were screened from the genome and transcriptome data in Brassica juncea. Four statistical analysis softwares geNorm, NormFinder, BestKeeper, and RefFinder were used to test the reliability and stability of gene expression of the reference genes. To further validate the stability of reference genes, the expression levels of two CYCD3 genes (BjuB045330 and BjuA003219) were studied. In addition, all genes in the xyloglucan endotransglucosylase/hydrolase (XTH) family were identified in B. juncea and their patterns at different periods of stem enlargement were analyzed. Results indicated that UBC and TUB genes showed stable levels of expression and are recommended for future research. In addition, XTH genes were involved in regulation of stem enlargement expression. These results provide new insights for future research aiming at exploring important functional genes, their expression patterns and regulatory mechanisms for mustard development.
NEW METHODOLOGY FOR INDENTIFICATION OF THE DEAD ZONE IN PROPORTIONAL DIRECTIONAL HYDRAULIC VALVES

Abstract. This work presents a new methodology for indentification of the dead zone nonlinearity in proportional directional hydraulic valves, it is based on observing the dynamic behavior of the pressure in the valve gaps. In the hydraulic valves, the dead zone is common because its spool occludes the orifice with some overlap, so that for a range of spool positions there is no fluid flow. The dead zone nonlinearity is among the key factors limiting both static and dynamic performance of feedback control hydraulic systems. The main idea is to cancel the harmful effects of dead zone by implementing its fixed inverse inside the controller. The inverse is caracterized by a set of parameters that need to be estimated. The classic parameter indentification needs flow transducers that are expensive. In this paper, a new methodology for indentification of the dead zone parameters is proposed that needs only pressure transducers. Experimental results illustrate this methodology that is cheaper and faster.
“The Best of Both Worlds!”

Web pages are composed of different kinds of elements (menus, adverts, etc.). Segmenting pages into their elements has long been important in understanding how people experience those pages and in making those experiences “better. ” Many approaches have been proposed that relate the resultant elements with the underlying source code; however, they do not consider users’ interactions. Another group of approaches analyses eye movements of users to discover areas that interest or attract them (i.e., areas of interest or AOIs). Although these approaches consider how users interact with web pages, they do not relate AOIs with the underlying source code. We propose a novel approach that integrates web page and eye tracking data driven approaches for automatic AOI detection. This approach segments an entire web page into its AOIs by considering users’ interactions and relates AOIs with the underlying source code. Based on the Adjusted Rand Index measure, our approach provides the most similar segmentation to the ground-truth segmentation compared to its individual components.
Midwest Surgical Association : Presidential Address Team spirit

a i s t c B S m t r t s It has been an honor to be able to work for this association, with the team of officers, with Marsha Langstraat, the prior Clearinghouse Director, our current meeting planners at LPetc, and so on. I value this association immensely. I reasure the family-friendly atmosphere, and I knew from my rst meeting when I was a 2nd-year resident that this was oing to be a yearly tradition no matter where I was or what as going on in my life. I enjoy the scientific sessions, case resentations, opportunities for residents, and the lifelong riendships that have developed from the meetings. I really am westruck that I am giving an address to an association memership that I cherish so much and that has had so many great alented presidents who provided thoughtful and inspiring adresses. I hope that in this address I can pay due tribute to the ssociation by blending in the contributions from some of the idwest Surgery members who have inspired the components f leadership and team spirit. The team topic was introduced by Don Moorman’s adress in 2004 when he discussed the medical team training nitiative at Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston, MA. The oncept we heard at that time was not new to areas outside f medicine. Industry, military, aviation, air traffic control,
Comparing fertility forecasting methods: how do parametric mixture models perform?1

Recent comprehensive work by Bohk-Ewald et al. (2018) has found that few fertility forecasting methods perform better than the naive ‘freeze rates’ method, whereby the last observed fertility rate for each age is taken as the forecast for all future time-points. However, that paper is primarily concerned with the ability of methods to forecasting completed cohort fertility; while this is an important objective, many important applications of fertility forecasts rely on accuracy at the level of age-specific fertility rates. Forecasts of the number of births for future years require the timing of each cohort’s fertility and not just their ultimate level. In practice, models that perform well in forecasting completed cohort fertility may also be accurate at the lower level of aggregation. However, empirical tests are needed to confirm this.
Further information

Background: Sex and gender differences are often overlooked in research design, study implementation and scientific reporting, as well as in general science communication. This oversight limits the generalizability of research findings and their applicability to clinical practice, in particular for women but also for men. This article describes the rationale for an international set of guidelines to encourage a more systematic approach to the reporting of sex and gender in research across disciplines. Methods: A panel of 13 experts representing nine countries developed the guidelines through a series of teleconferences, conference presentations and a 2-day workshop. An internet survey of 716 journal editors, scientists and other members of the international publishing community was conducted as well as a literature search on sex and gender policies in scientific publishing. Results: The Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines are a comprehensive procedure for reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analyses, results and interpretation of findings. Conclusions: The SAGER guidelines are designed primarily to guide authors in preparing their manuscripts, but they are also useful for editors, as gatekeepers of science, to integrate assessment of sex and gender into all manuscripts as an integral part of the editorial process.
The Presence of Immature GV− Stage Oocytes during IVF/ICSI Is a Marker of Poor Oocyte Quality: A Pilot Study

Here we investigate whether the presence of germinal vesicle-stage oocytes (GV− oocytes) reflects poor oocyte developmental competence (or quality). This was a prospective, non-randomised, cohort pilot-study involving 60 patients undergoing in vitro fertilization/ intracytoplasmic sperm injection for whom complete pregnancy outcome data were available. Patients in whom GV− oocytes were retrieved (GV+) at transvaginal oocyte retrieval (TVOR) were compared with those from whom no GVs were retrieved (GV−). We found that GV+ (n = 29) and GV− (n = 31) patients were similarly aged (35.4 vs. 36.4 years; p = 0.446). GV+ patients had a mean of 2.41 ± 2.03 GVs and comparable yields of MII oocytes to GV− patients (11 ± 6.88 vs. 8.26 ± 4.84; p = 0.077). Compared with GV− patients, GV+ patients had markedly lower implantation rates (11.8% vs. 30.2%; p = 0.022) as well as oocyte utilisation rates for clinical pregnancy (2.3% vs. 6.8%; p = 0.018) and live-birth (1.9% vs. 5.7%; p = 0.029). DNA damage levels measured using γH2AX immunostaining were not different in oocytes from women <36 years versus those ≥36 years (p = 0.606). Thus, patients who have GV− stage oocytes at TVOR exhibit poor oocyte quality reflected in reduced per-oocyte pregnancy success rates and uniformly high levels of oocyte DNA damage.
ON THE EXISTENCE OF FLAT PLANES IN SPACES OF NON-POSITIVE CURVATURE

Let A' be a proper 1-connected geodesic metric space which is nonpositively curved in the sense that it satisfies Gromov's CAT(O) condition globally. If X is cocompact, then either it is ¿-hyperbolic, for some 6 > 0, or else it contains an isometrically embedded copy of the Euclidean plane; these conditions are mutually exclusive. It follows that if the fundamental group of a compact non-positively curved polyhedron K is not word-hyperbolic, then the univers? cover of K contains a flat plane.
Loan Partnerships with Intervention of Regulatory Bailouts: Evidence of TARP effect on Syndicated Loan Structure

In this paper we investigate the bailout effect on syndicated loan structure by investigating the TARP and Non-Tarp Loans. Some of the recent papers investigating the effect of TARP in terms of performance and efficiency show mixed results. To the best of our knowledge this is the first paper which investigates the bailout effect by looking at syndicated loan structure. We find that while TARP has provided low cost funding during the crisis, it has effectively prevented moral hazard behaviors of its participants as evidenced by more diversified syndicated loan structure of TARP loans. Furthermore our findings show that diversification of syndicated loan is strengthened for above median loan size group and loans whose lender banks have above median asset size and above median tier 1 capital ratio. * Bolortuya Enkhtaivan is a doctoral student at Texas A&M International University and her contact address is: 5201 University Blvd, WHTC-211, Laredo, TX 78041; Phone: 956-220-6502; E-mail: bolortuya_enkhtaivan@dusty.tamiu.edu † Siddharth Shankar is an associate professor of finance at Texas A&M International University and his contact address is: 5201 University Blvd, WHTC-203B, Laredo, TX 78041; Phone: (956) 326-2504; E-mail: sshankar@tamiu.edu Loan Partnerships with Intervention of Regulatory Bailouts: Evidence of TARP effect on Syndicated Loan Structure