Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ravencoin : A Peer to Peer Electronic System for the Creation and Transfer of Assets

Thank you to the Bitcoin founder and developers. The Ravencoin project was launched based on the hard work and continuous effort of over 430 Bitcoin developers who made over 14,000 commits by the date of the Ravencoin code fork. We are eternally grateful to you for your diligence in making a secure network and for your support of free and open source software development. The Ravencoin project is built on the foundation you built.
A Comparison of ERP-Success Measurement Approaches

ERP projects are complex purposes which influence main internal and external operations of companies. There are different research approaches which try to develop models for IS / ERP success measurement or IT-success measurement in general. Each model has its own area of application and sometimes a specific measurement approach based, for instance, on different systems or different stakeholders involved. This research paper shows some of the most important models developed in the literature and an overview of the different approaches of the models. An analysis which shows the strengths, weaknesses and the cases in which the specific model could be used is made.
A comparison of the effectiveness between acupuncture and local injection for neck pain : a randomized controlled clinical trial

[Objective] The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of acupuncture and local injection for neck pain. [Methods] A randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted in which 33 patients with neck pain were randomly allocated to either an acupuncture group or a local injection group. For the acupuncture group (n = 16), a stainless steel needle was inserted to depths from 10 to 20 mm and manually stimulated (sparrow pecking method) for 20 seconds. While a 25 gauge needle was inserted to depths from 10 to 20 mm, neovitacain (dibucaine hydrochloride 0.1 percent, sodium salicylate 0.3 percent, calcium bromide 0.2 percent) and neurotropin (a non protein component extracted from the skin of rabbits treated with vaccinia virus) were injected for the local injection groups (n = 17). Both groups received each treatment at the most painful points weekly during four weeks. Primary outcome measurement was intensity of the pain evaluated with a visual analogue scale (VAS). Secondary outcomes were Neck Disability Index (NDI) and a standardized questionnaire of cervical root disease (developed by Tanaka et al. at Tohoku Univ.). The evaluations were independent from the therapists. [Results] The acupuncture group showed better results in all the outcome measurements than those in the local injection group for the effect immediately after the treatment, the effect of sequential treatment and the sustained effect after completion of treatment. [Discussion] The result of this study suggested that acupuncture can become a more useful treatment method compared with local injection. The difference of the effects between two treatment methods may be due to the difference of the mechanism to suppress pain.
Reconstructing habitat use by juvenile salmon sharks links upwelling to strandings in the California Current

The use of nursery areas by elasmobranchs is an important life history strategy that is thought to reduce juvenile mortality and increase population growth rates. The endothermic salmon shark Lamna ditropis uses the California Current System (CCS) as a nursery area, though little is known about how juveniles use this ecosystem. Juvenile salmon sharks consistently strand along the west coast of North America. Strandings in the southern CCS occurred throughout the year, while those in the northern CCS were limited to summer and autumn, when mean sea sur- face temperatures were warmest. Strandings primarily occurred when water temperature was between 12 and 16°C, suggesting that juveniles occupy a relatively narrow thermal niche. Stable isotope analysis (SIA) indicated that juveniles primarily feed on offshore meso- and epipelagic prey from the outer shelf, slope, and oceanic habitats as opposed to inshore and coastal habitats, although sharks appeared to move closer to shore prior to stranding. Generalized additive models indicate that the probability of stranding was greatest when mean water temperatures were rela- tively high (~14°C) and sharks were exposed to acute cold-water events (~9°C) during coastal upwelling. This suggests that juveniles are thermally limited and stressed by upwelling events, resulting in bacterial infections that are the proximate cause of the strandings.
Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease-Is It Always Benign ?

Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) represents a part of a wide spectrum of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which ranges from simple steatosis and steatohepatitis to advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis.1 Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common liver disease observed in the clinical practice of hepatology.2 NASH today is third most common cause of chronic liver disease in North America after alcoholics liver disease and hepatitis and the most common cause of raised transaminases more than six-months. Primary NAFLD is related to insulin resistance and thus frequently occurs as part of the metabolic changes that accompany obesity, diabetes and hyperlipidaemia. However, it is important to exclude secondary causes of hepatic steatosis by clinical assessment. Treatment of these conditions differs and revolves around correcting the underlying cause.3
A damped decadal oscillation in the North Atlantic climate system

A simple stochastic atmosphere model is coupled to a realistic model of the North Atlantic Ocean. A north–south SST dipole, with its zero line centered along the subpolar front, influences the atmosphere model, which in turn forces the ocean model by surface fluxes related to the North Atlantic Oscillation. The coupled system exhibits a damped decadal oscillation associated with the adjustment through the ocean model to the changing surface forcing. The oscillation consists of a fast wind-driven, positive feedback of the ocean and a delayed negative feedback orchestrated by overturning circulation anomalies. The positive feedback turns out to be necessary to distinguish the coupled oscillation from that in a model without any influence from the ocean to the atmosphere. Using a novel diagnosing technique, it is possible to rule out the importance of baroclinic wave processes for determining the period of the oscillation, and to show the important role played by anomalous geostrophic advection in sustaining the oscillation.
Preparation Of Charcoal Using Agricultural Wastes

Background: Wood charcoal has been the primary fuel for cooking in Ethiopia because it is cheap and easily avialable.However, using wood charcoal has consequences on health and pollution because of smoking. This study aims at providing a biomass as an alternative to wood charcoal using agricultural wastes (dry leaves, coffee husk, sugarcane trash, grass, etc) converted into charcoal briquettes to provide much needed source of cheap fuel that is cleaner in burning. Methods: Simple extruder machine is used as die to make the briquette charcoal.Moreover, an effective carbonizer to change the agricultural waste into charcoal and an effective stove to burn and use the charcoal for cooking is used. Results: The manual extruder machine has a capacity of pressing 30kg/hr and the carbonizer converts 15kg of input agricultural wastes into 5kg of burned charcoal with in 25 minutes. The stove is effective so that three meals are cooked at a time using 100g briquette charcoal. Conclusion: As compared to wood charcoal the charcoal briquette produced from agricultural wastes are economical, environmentally friendly, healthy (no smoke at all) and reduce impact of deforestation. Key words: Pollution, deforestation, extruder, carbonizer, wood charcoal, briquette charcoal, agricultural wastes, pyrolysis
Testing the Impact of the Central Bank ' s Support for the Experience of Converting the Conventional Banks into Islamic in Libya Multiple-Groups Analysis Using Structural Equation Modeling

This study aims to test the Influence of the central bank’s support as a Moderating Variable on the relationship between the independent factors model (the availability of the qualified human resources in Islamic banks, the availability of the Islamic capital market, the employees’ willingness to convert into Islamic banks and the success of the Islamic banking experience) and the dependent factor (the success of the experience in converting into Islamic banksin Libya). Structural equation modeling is used to test the impact of the Moderating Variable (central bank’s support). Where it is depended on the method of sampling or analysis of what is known as Multiple-Groups analysis. The paragraphs of the central bank variable are collected and divided into two groups according to the mean of the total paragraphs. In addition, according to the relative weights given to the paragraphs of the questionnaire the first group consisted of the grades less than the mean and it is considered as the group which is supporter of the existence of support. While the second group consisted of the grades higher than the mean and considered as the group which is not supporter of the existence of support. The study found that the model of success of converting the conventional banks into Islamic in the presence of the support of the central bank is appropriate for the first group and inappropriate in light of the lack of support by the central bank for the second
BerEP4 and AE1/3 are Reliable Markers of Epithelial Content for Biomarker Discovery Using Reverse Phase Protein Arrays (RPPA)

Background: Reverse phase protein array (RPPA) allows precise protein quantification. Use of homogenised samples confounds interpretation due to uncertainty of cellular content. We hypothesised that antibodies AE1/3 (Type I/II keratins) and BerEP4 (EpCAM) could help to quantify epithelium in tissue from colorectal cancers (CRC). Methods: AE1/3 and BerEP4 expression was quantified using RPPA and immunohistochemistry (IHC) in formalin-fixed paraffinembedded tissues from 19 CRCs. For RPPA, samples were tested in sextuplicate. IHC was quantified by transforming images into positive/negative pixels using ImageJ. Results: In RPPA, the BerEP4 expression was greater than AE1/3 (p < 0.001). There was excellent precision with a mean coefficient of variation of 5.9% for AE1/3 and 6.9% for BerEP4. Expression of AE1/3 and BerEP4 showed significant correlation (p < 0.0001). For IHC, antibodies showed specific epithelial staining. There was no difference in intensity of expression but there were slight differences in extent of expression with, on average, 3.5% more AE1/3-positive pixels than BerEP4-positive pixels (p = 0.016). Antibody expression (number of positive pixels) showed significant correlation (p < 0.0001). Comparison of RPPA with IHC showed significant correlation for each antibody, (BerEP4: p = 0.044; AE1/3: p = 0.037). Combining markers (using the geometric mean) improved the correlation between the assays (p= 0.028). Conclusion: Expression of AE1/3 and BerEP4 correlate with each other in both RPPA and IHC. For each antibody, the two assays show significant correlation. Either antibody can be used to quantify tumour epithelium in RPPA with improved performance if markers are combined. Normalising RPPA data to “epithelial housekeepers” may improve biomarker data interpretation.
Mixed Experimental and Numerical Approach to Evaluation of Material Parameters of Clayey Soils

The present contribution reports on a mixed numerical experimental study of the time dependent processes in saturated soils with reference to isotropic consolidation. Owing to its relative simplicity, isotropic consolidation is often viewed as a basic tool for inferring the material parameters of various constitutive models. Within this modeling framework, the paper advocates the use of critical state models for an accurate description of the time dependent deformation of clayey soils. Material models, in which the critical state model applies only to the subcritical region, have been also addressed. Examples include models where the supercritical region is cut off, e.g., by a Mohr-Coulomb surface. Starting with the modified Cam clay model, as a classical representative, the paper revisits a simple isotropic consolidation test. It is suggested that such a conventional laboratory experiment, when combined with a suitable optimization procedure, is sufficient in deriving the desired material parameters, including the initial void ratio, deformation dependent variation of the coefficient of permeability and the preconsolidation pressure representing here an important measure of the structural strength of soils. Several numerical and experimental results are presented to support the theoretical grounds.
Dynamic inverse problem in acoustic media

Solution of inverse problem is one of the most important questions in many fields of science and knowledge. Only a small range of simple inverse problems could be solved by mathematical means. In geophysics and other sciences there exist a number of kinematic and dynamic inverse methods which inherently assume preliminary knowledge of the reference medium. In order to construct the regular reference medium the author suggests Gelfand-Levitan-Moses method. The method is based on mathematical theory and allows reconstructing the solution of inverse dynamic problem for a simplest models. The model parameters are estimated from the recorded dataset. As far as such an estimation of a reference model has fully mathematical basis it is automatically more regular than empirical. Numerical examples for 2D case illustrate the potential of the method and give a direction for further investigations. The method could be used in applied geophysics or may have different applications in fields where one must deal with inverse problems.
Designing Better Allocation Policies for Influenza Vaccine

Influenza has been one of the most infectious diseases for roughly 2400 years. The most effective way to prevent influenza outbreaks and eliminate their seasonal effects is vaccination. The distribution of influenza vaccine to various groups in the population becomes an important decision determining the effectiveness of vaccination for the entire population. We developed a simulation model using the Epifire C++ application program [2] to simulate influenza transmission under a given vaccination strategy. Our model can generate a network that can be configured with different degree distributions, transmission rates, number of nodes and edges, infection periods, and perform chain-binomial based simulation of SIR (SusceptibleInfectious-Recovered) disease transmission. Furthermore, we integrated NOMAD (Nonlinear Optimization by Mesh Adaptive Direct Search) for optimizing vaccine allocation to various age groups. We calibrate our model according to age specific attack rates from the 1918 pandemic. In our simulation model, we evaluate three different vaccine policies for 36 different scenarios and 1000 individuals: The policy of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), former recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and new suggestions of the CDC. We derive the number of infected people at the end of each run and calculated the corresponding cost and years of life lost. As a result, we observe that optimized vaccine distribution ensures less infected people and years of life lost compared to the fore-mentioned policies in almost all cases. On the other hand, total costs for the policies are close to each other. Former CDC policy ensures slightly lower cost than other policies and our proposed in some cases.
The fluctuating nature of risk management models

This study discusses the credibility of using a fragmented approach to constructing risk management models. Current risk management models are based on the fragmentation approach which views inputs into the deterministic models as a single set of basic constituents, flowing through a model as a unit that spreads predictably throughout the whole process of predicting a particular perceived risk facing an entity. In most cases deterministic models are constructed based on the concept of measurement that is based on the measurement of structures having a natural concatenation that is representable by a sum and a weighted average. That is, current risk management models quantify social scientific phenomena through extensive measurement. However, studies in measurement indicate that extensive measurement has limited applications in social sciences due to the inadequate interpretation of the concatenation operation. This means that risk management models should be an insight into risk not an absolute truth to the notion that a specific risk is constituted of basic building blocks all working together towards its particular measurable absolute quantity. This study highlights that social scientific phenomena are not identifiable in terms of absolute truths but have properties that are in flux. For this reason, risk could be conditioned by other properties that the risk management model has not taken into account when measuring it. Hence, this study proposes a risk management perspective in terms of the universal flux of economic events and processes that move away from fixed measures of risk and towards a risk concept formulated in terms of multi-valued logics. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013. v4n13p211
“MigraineMonitor” – Towards a System for the Prediction of Migraine Attacks using Electrostimulation

Abstract Migraine attacks can be accompanied by many different symptoms, some of them appearing within 24 hours before the onset of the headache. In previous work, reduced habituation to an electrical pain stimulus at the head was observed in the pre-ictal phase within 24 hours before the headache attack. Based on these results, this work presents an application to track influence factors on migraine attacks and an Arduino-based control unit which replaces the traditional approach of manual electrical stimulation. The usability of both components of the project was evaluated in separate user studies. Results of the usability study show a good acceptance of the systems with a mean SUS score of 92.4. Additionally, they indicate that the developed control unit may substitute the current manual electrical stimulation. Overall, the designed system allows standardized repeatable measurements and is a first step towards the home-use of a device for establishing a new method for migraine prediction.
Lake Water Balance

This study was initiated to quantify the hydrologic components, assess the water balance and to provide bathymetric information of the lake. Data on change in volume of the lake, precipitation, stream flow and abstraction was recorded while evaporation and runoff were estimated. The net groundwater outflow was then determined from the water balance equation. The major components of inflow during dry season were direct precipitation and stream flow which contribute 66.7% and 33.3% respectively. Most of the outflow is in the form of evaporation constituting the highest portion (83.55%) followed by net groundwater outflow (16.19%). The rest 0.26% is the abstraction. Since the outflow was by far higher than the inflows, the lake level was decreased by 0.32 m over 135 days. The water balance analysis of the observation period revealed an inflow, outflow and decrease in volume of 2.19 million m3, 6.83 million m3 and 4.64 million m3 respectively. The annual water balance assessment also indicated an inflow and outflow of 24.25 million m3 and 21.89 million m3 respectively. The elevation-area-capacity relationship of the lake was developed in monitoring of amount of water and sedimentation.
Transcriptional analysis of olive flounder lectins in response to VHSV infection

Lectins play significant roles in the innate immune responses through binding to pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) on the surfaces of microorganisms. In the present study, tissue distribution and expression analysis of olive flounder lectins were performed after viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV) challenge. Fish egg lectin and serum lectin were found to be predominantly expressed in the gills and liver, these results indicate that the transcript expression of olive flounder lectins is concentrated in immune-related tissues. Following a VHSV challenge, an overall increase in the transcript levels of the genes was observed and the expression patterns were distinctly divided into early and later responses during VHSV infection. In conclusion, olive flounder lectins are specifically expressed in immune-related organs and induced in both the immediate and long-lasting immune responses to VHSV in the olive flounder. These results indicate that lectins may be play important roles in the host defense mechanism and involved in the innate and adaptive immune response to viruses in fish.
3D galaxy clustering with future wide-field surveys: Advantages of a spherical Fourier-Bessel analysis

Context. Upcoming spectroscopic galaxy surveys are extremely promising to help in addressing the major challenges of cosmology, in particular in understanding the nature of the dark universe. The strength of these surveys, naturally described in spherical geometry, comes from their unprecedented depth and width, but an optimal extraction of their three-dimensional information is of utmost importance to best constrain the properties of the dark universe. Aims. Although there is theoretical motivation and novel tools to explore these surveys using the 3D spherical Fourier-Bessel (SFB) power spectrum of galaxy number counts C-l (k; k'), most survey optimisations and forecasts are based on the tomographic spherical harmonics power spectrum C-l((i j)). The goal of this paper is to perform a new investigation of the information that can be extracted from these two analyses in the context of planned stage IV wide-field galaxy surveys. Methods. We compared tomographic and 3D SFB techniques by comparing the forecast cosmological parameter constraints obtained from a Fisher analysis. The comparison was made possible by careful and coherent treatment of non-linear scales in the two analyses, which makes this study the first to compare 3D SFB and tomographic constraints on an equal footing. Nuisance parameters related to a scale-and redshift-dependent galaxy bias were also included in the computation of the 3D SFB and tomographic power spectra for the first time. Results. Tomographic and 3D SFB methods can recover similar constraints in the absence of systematics. This requires choosing an optimal number of redshift bins for the tomographic analysis, which we computed to be N = 26 for z(med) similar or equal to 0.4, N = 30 for z(med) similar or equal to 1.0; and N = 42 for z(med) similar or equal to 1 : 7. When marginalising over nuisance parameters related to the galaxy bias, the forecast 3D SFB constraints are less affected by this source of systematics than the tomographic constraints. In addition, the rate of increase of the figure of merit as a function of median redshift is higher for the 3D SFB method than for the 2D tomographic method. Conclusions. Constraints from the 3D SFB analysis are less sensitive to unavoidable systematics stemming from a redshift- and scale-dependent galaxy bias. Even for surveys that are optimised with tomography in mind, a 3D SFB analysis is more powerful. In addition, for survey optimisation, the figure of merit for the 3D SFB method increases more rapidly with redshift, especially at higher redshifts, suggesting that the 3D SFB method should be preferred for designing and analysing future wide-field spectroscopic surveys. CosmicPy, the Python package developed for this paper, is freely available at https://cosmicpy.github. io