Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Age on Rheumatoid Arthritis in a Black Senegalese Population

Objective: It was to compare the epidemiological, clinical and immunobiological aspects of a Senegalese RA population over 60 years, with a young RA population. Patients and Methods: This prospective study took place between June 1, 2007, and May 31, 2010. It covered the records of all RA patients admitted during this period. RA was diagnosed on the basis of ACR criteria. We conducted a comparative study of all cases. Patients were divided into two groups according to the age of symptom onset: below age 60 and above age 60. Results: One hundred ninety-two cases were collected from a total of 2134 patients seen in the rheumatology outpatient clinic. Our population included 174 women and 18 men, which identifies a sex ratio of 0.1. The mean age at diagnosis was of 40.5 years. In 181 patients, the age at symptom onset could be accurately determined. The group of young subjects included 162 patients, whereas 19 patients comprised the group of elderly subjects. The sex ratios in the two groups were respectively 0.08 and 0.33. The average DAS 28 score was significantly lower in the elderly group. Ulnar deviation was significantly more common in younger patients, unlike other deformations which were more common in the elderly. Conclusion: The elderly subjects’ RA represents 10.5% of the RA population with a sex ratio of 0.33 against 0.08 for young subjects. Joint deformations are more important on younger subjects, but with a lower activity at diagnosis.
Raman spectroscopy for Structural Biology on beamline ID 29 of the ESRF

Raman spectroscopy can probe the structure and conformations of specific chemical groups within proteins and may thus be used as a technique complementary to X-ray crystallography. This combined approach can be decisive in resolving ambiguities in the interpretation of enzymatic or X-ray induced processes. Here, we present an online Raman setup developed at the European Synchrotron that allows for interleaved Raman spectra acquisition and X-ray diffraction measurements with fast probe exchange and simple alignment while maintaining a high sensitivity over the entire spectral range. This device has been recently employed in the study of a covalent intermediate in the O2-dependent breakdown of uric acid by the cofactor-free enzyme urate oxidase and to monitor its decay induced by X-ray exposure.
Do Firms' Cash Holdings Differ Between Asian Countries? Theory and Empirical Validation

This work identifies the factors that explain firms cash holdings (Opler, Pinkowitz, Stulz, and Williamson, 1999). Empirical validation was calculated on two Asian countries: Chine and Japan. To measure of firms cash holdings, we use, alternatively, two measures: Cash ratio approximated as the ratio of cash and equivalents of cash to total assets, and Quick ratio calculated as cash and equivalents of cash to current liabilities. Our samples contain 119 firms from each country for a period of 8 years from 2006 to 2013. Descriptive statistics show that firms from Chine have higher debt and profitability ratios. However, firms in Japan are older than firms in Chine with a mean age of 38,357 years with a minimum of 4 years and a maximum of 121 years. the results report many differences in cash holdings policy between the two countries. Contrary to our hypothesis, firms in China that have higher capital structure ratios have more cash. We concluded to a difference in the effect of firm size and number of employees in the two countries. Older firms in Japan have more cash. Finally, we concluded to a negative and a statistically significant effect of growth opportunities for firms in Japan and China. Firm performance positively influence cash in the two countries.
Recovering Bandits

We study the recovering bandits problem, a variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where the expected reward of each arm varies according to some unknown function of the time since the arm was last played. While being a natural extension of the classical bandit problem that arises in many real-world settings, this variation is accompanied by significant difficulties. In particular, methods need to plan ahead and estimate many more quantities than in the classical bandit setting. In this work, we explore the use of Gaussian processes to tackle the estimation and planing problem. We also discuss different regret definitions that let us quantify the performance of the methods. To improve computational efficiency of the methods, we provide an optimistic planning approximation. We complement these discussions with regret bounds and empirical studies.
Lurking and Information Sharing on E-Commerce Sites

Lurking on online groups is a topic that is of interest to Internet researchers and organizations. Lurking refers to the act of joining an online community with the intention to consume information available within the community and not necessarily contribute information to the community (Bishop, 2007; Dennen, 2008). It is reported that about 90% of users on user-generated content sites like social media are lurkers (Suster, 2010). Several perspectives have been provided to explain users’ tendency to lurk on online groups. With increased incorporation of social media capabilities on enterprise web platforms, organizations are particularly interested in how to engage lurkers on their web platforms. Moreover, studies show that users, lawmakers, and organizations are increasingly concerned about how their personal information is collected, stored, and shared on social media sites (Xu & Bélanger, 2013). However, no study has examined the relationship between privacy concerns and lurking. This study therefore contributes to the literature as it seeks to empirically investigate the role of lurking as it relates to privacy concerns on social media platforms. Given the large populations of lurkers on online communities, organizations are interested in how to gather useful information about them and to eventually convert them to customers (Suster, 2010). As such, this article also explores the relationship between lurking, users’ concern for information privacy, and their future intentions to provide their personal information during online transactions. This study hypothesizes that given that social media sites require the voluntary provision of personal information in order to become a member and coupled with the aggressive collection, storage, and sharing of personal information on social media sites, it is plausible to expect users to be cautious on how they share information on those sites. This study uses social penetration theory as a theoretical framework to explore these hypotheses. The rest of the article is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the research approach taken in this study followed by the presentation of the study variables used to develop the research hypotheses and model. Section 3 describes the methodology used to conduct the study and the data analysis and results are presented in Section 4. Section 5 discusses the findings from this study and their implications.
The woodlouse (Isopoda: Oniscidea) fauna of steppe habitats in the Kostanay region of Kazakhstan

Abstract This paper presents first materials on the fauna and distribution of the terrestrial isopods - woodlice (Oniscidea) inhabiting the central and southern parts of Kostanay Region (Kazakhstan, Northern and Southern Turgai), located in the steppe zone. Most of the specimens of woodlice were collected in the territory of the National Nature Reserve “Altyn Dala”, a new protected area (established in 2012) and in the area of the Naurzum National Nature Reserve (established in 1931, World Heritage Site of UNESCO), on the Stipa lessingiana dry steppe. The list of woodlice includes six species (Crustacea: Isopoda: Oniscidea), belonging to five genera and three families in the study area. Four species are recorded for the first time in Kazakhstan - Desertoniscus subterraneus Verhoeff, 1930, Parcylisticus dentifrons (Budde-Lund 1885), Porcellio scaber Latreille, 1804, and Protracheoniscus major (Dollfus 1903). Distribution characteristics are provided for all of those species recorded in the study area. For the territory of Kazakhstan, according to a literature data, currently 16 species of terrestrial isopods have been recorded.
The Interaction between the Return And Buying Appetite of Investors

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between trading behaviors of individual investors and their previous day portfolio return. We try to find which one of the following two contradicting biases dominates the investor behavior: Namely, overconfidence and disposition effect. In order to explore the direction of this relationship, daily transactions of individual investors who trade in Borsa Istanbul between 2008 and 2012 (five years) are analyzed according to several variables such as portfolio size, gender, and age. To do this, we measure buying appetite with the widely used ‘buy-sell imbalance’ which is the ratio of net buying value to the total trading value of investors. Then we explore whether there is a relationship between buying appetite and the previous day portfolio return. The main finding is that there is a strong evidence on the dominance of disposition effect and buying appetite is found to be significantly smaller when the portfolio return increases. The other findings re as follows: (1) Large individual investors (individuals with high portfolio size) have higher buying appetite than that of small investors independent from portfolio returns. (2) Gender has a significant influence on the buying appetite. Male investors have higher buying appetite than their female counterparts. (3) The age and buying appetite are negatively correlated.
Contrast re-enhancement of Total-Variation regularization jointly with the Douglas-Rachford iterations

Restoration of a piece-wise constant signal can be performed using anisotropic Total-Variation (TV) regularization. Anisotropic TV may capture well discontinuities but suffers from a systematic loss of contrast. This contrast can be re-enhanced in a post-processing step known as least-square refitting. We propose here to jointly estimate the refitting during the Douglas-Rachford iterations used to produce the original TV result. Numerical simulations show that our technique is more robust than the naive post-processing one.
Flexible and Tough Cellulose Nanocrystal/Polycaprolactone Hybrid Aerogel Based on the Strategy of Macromolecule Cross-Linking via Click Chemistry

Cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) aerogel suffers from inherent brittleness, owing to the rigidity of crystals and the limited mobility between individual crystals. Conventional small molecule based cross-linking improves the toughness of CNC aerogel, but can hardly improve its flexibility. In this work, a macromolecule-based click cross-linking strategy with polycaprolactone diol as the cross-linker is employed to fabricate the CNC-PCL hybrid aerogel with enhanced toughness and flexibility. The molar ratio of CNC/PCL and the concentration of hydrogel are studied as the two key factors greatly affecting the mechanical performance of CNC-PCL aerogel. The resulted CNC-PCL hybrid aerogels show the highest compressive strength of 595 ± 100 kPa when the molar ratio of CNC/PCL is 1:0.1 (CP-0.1) and the highest shape recovery rate of 96.3 ± 2.5% when the molar ratio of CNC/PCL is 1:0.25 (CP-0.25). The surface polarity of CNC-PCL aerogel behaves as amphipathic due to the introduction of hydrophobic PCL. The thermal sta.
Mobile Phones, Financial Inclusion, and Growth

This paper assesses the impact of mobile phone rollout on economic growth in a sample of African countries from 1988 to 2007. Further, in light of the large financial infrastructure gap in African countries, we investigate whether mobile phone development fosters economic growth through better financial inclusion. In estimating the impact of mobile phone development on growth, we use mobile penetration rate as well as the cost of mobile local calls to capture mobile phone diffusion, while financial inclusion is measured by the number of deposits or loans per head. Using the System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to address endogeneity issues, the results confirm that mobile phone development contributes significantly to economic growth in African countries. Part of the positive effect of mobile phone penetration on growth comes from greater financial inclusion.
Validity Issues in Assessing Dispositions: The Confirmatory Factor Analysis of a Teacher Dispositions Form.

Critics against the inclusion of dispositions as part of the teacher education accreditation focus on the dearth of empirical literature on reliably and validly accessing dispositions (Borko, Liston, & Whitcomb, 2007). In this study, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to test the factorial validity of a teacher dispositions form (3 factors and 12 indicators) employed by a southern American university to assess teacher candidates from 2006 to 2016. The initial CFA results revealed highly unsatisfactory model fit statistics. Further model modifications were then implemented to remove two less relevant indicators (Diversity and Collaboration) which significantly improved the model fit.
Health care and social care: complements, substitutes and attributes

Ageing populations are a major challenge for most developed countries, where social security systems were developed in the post war period. It has been suggested that the costs of caring for the ageing population places a considerable strain on individuals, as well as on the public purse, and many countries are looking for ways to reduce costs. One of the major issues is the relationship between health care and social care. This paper considers health care and social care as complements and substitutes through a household production framework. We demonstrate how health care and social care are attributes that are valued by individuals and how in the presence of a perfect market individuals would choose combinations of these attributes. We highlight how, even with technical efficiency, sub-optimal combinations of health and social care may be chosen. We also show, through the introduction of a new good, how there may be opportunities to alleviate the costs of the ageing population.
Biosorption Characteristics of Zinc (II) from Aqueous Solution by Luffa Cylindrica

The biosorption of zinc ions from synthetic aqueous solutions using physico-chemically treated Luffa Cylindrica was considered, investigating the kinetics and equilibrium of the process batchwise. The biosorption characteristics of Zn (II) ions were studied with respect to well-established effective parameters including pH, temperature, biosorbent dosage, initial metal ion concentration and contact time. The uptake of Zn (II) increased with an increase of the pH and of the concentration. Biosorption equilibrium was established in about 90 min. The Zn (II) biosorption data were analyzed using the first and the second order kinetic models as well as intra-particular rate expressions. The second-order equation was the most appropriate to predict the biosorption capacities of the fungal preparation. The biosorption data obtained at pH =6 followed reasonably well both the Langmuir and the Freundlich isotherm models. The thermodynamic parameters, Gibbs free energy∆ °, enthalpy ∆ ° and entropy ∆�° changes, were also calculated, and the values indicated that the biosorption process was exothermic, spontaneous and feasible in the temperature range of 303–323 K. It was concluded that Luffa Cylindrica powder can be used as an effective, low cost, and environmentally friendly biosorbent for the removal of Zn (II) ions from aqueous solution.
parse spatial filter via a novel objective function minimization with smooth 1 egularization

Common spatial pattern (CSP) method is widely used in brain machine interface (BMI) applications to extract features from the multichannel neural activity through a set of spatial projections. These spatial projections minimize the Rayleigh quotient (RQ) as the objective function, which is the variance ratio of the classes. The CSP method easily overfits the data when the number of training trials is not sufficiently large and it is sensitive to daily variation of multichannel electrode placement, which limits its applicability for everyday use in BMI systems. To overcome these problems, the amount of channels that is used in projections, should be limited to some adequate number. We introduce a spatially sparse projection (SSP) method that exploits the unconstrained minimization of a new objective function with approximated 1 parse spatial projections ayleigh quotient nconstrained optimization penalty. Unlike the RQ, this new objective function depends on the magnitude of the sparse filter. The SSP method is employed to classify the multiclass ECoG and two class EEG data sets. We compared our results with a recently introduced sparse CSP solution based on 0 norm. Our method outperforms the standard CSP method and provides comparable results to 0 norm based solution and it is associated with less computational complexity. We also conducted several simulation studies on the effect of noisy channel and intersession variability on the performance of the CSP and sparse filters.
THIRD GENERATION BIODIESEL PRODUCTION FROM MICROALGAE Phormidium autumnale

Abstract - The aim of this work was to evaluate third generation biodiesel production by the microalgae Phormidium autumnale using sucrose as exogenous carbon source. The study focused on optimization of the different C/N ratios and on the analysis of biofuel quality. The results indicate that a C/N ratio of 40 improved the performance of the system, reaching single-cell oil productivities of 18.9 mg/L in steady-state conditions. This oil has a composition predominantly saturated (45.2%) and monounsaturated (34.7%) suitable for biodiesel synthesis (ester content of 99.8%, cetane number of 58.5%, iodine value of 67.2 gI 2 /100 g, unsaturation degree of 71.3% and a cold filter plugging point of 6.7 oC). Keywords : Microalgae/cyanobacteria; Heterotrophic cultivation; Sucrose; Biodiesel 3G. INTRODUCTION The last decade has seen an emergence of biofu-els due in part to social and political acknowledge-ment that fossil fuels are a finite resource. This is evidenced by a reduction in the discovery of new fossil fuel sources and the exploitation of more energy intense reserves such as shale gas and tar sands (Scaife
Evolution of methods for evaluating the occurrence of floods

A brief summary is given of the history of methods of expressing flood potentialities, proceeding from simple flood formulas to statistical methods of flood-frequency analysis on a regional basis. Current techniques are described and evaluated. Long-term flood records in the United States show no justification for the adoption of a single type of theoretical distribution of floods. The significance and predictive values of flood-frequency relations are considered. Because of the length of flood records available and the interdependence of flood events within a region, the probable long-term average magnitudes of floods of a given recurrence interval are uncertain. However, if the magnitudes defined by the records available are accepted, the relative effects of drainage-basin characteristics and climatic variables can be determined with a reasonable degree of assurance.
Laboratory and On-Road Evaluation of a GPF-Equipped Gasoline Vehicle

The introduction of a solid particle number limit for vehicles with gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines resulted in a lot of research and improvements in this field in the last decade. The requirement to also fulfil the limit in the recently introduced real-driving emissions (RDE) regulation led to the introduction of gasoline particulate filters (GPFs) in European vehicle models. As the pre-standardisation research was based on engines, retrofitted vehicles and prototype vehicles, there is a need to better characterise the actual emissions of GPF-equipped GDI vehicles. In the present study we investigate one of the first mass production vehicles with GPF available in the European market. Regulated and non-regulated pollutants were measured over different test cycles and ambient temperatures (23 °C and −7 °C) in the laboratory and different on-road routes driven normally or dynamically and up to 1100 m altitude. The results showed that the vehicle respected all applicable limits. However, under certain conditions high emissions of some pollutants were measured (total hydrocarbons emissions at −7 °C, high CO during dynamic RDE tests and high NOx emissions in one dynamic RDE test). The particle number emissions, even including those below 23 nm, were lower than 6 × 1010 particles/km under all laboratory test cycles and on-road routes, which are <10% of the current laboratory limit (6 × 1011 particles/km).
Long-run analysis of Environmental Kuznets Curve in the Middle East and North Africa

The main originality of this paper is to empirically investigate the long-run relationship between carbone dioxide (CO2) emissions, energy use and real GDP per capita in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during the last three decades. Using panel cointegration tests Westerlund, (2007) and DOLS estimation method, we validate the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the long run for the MENA region countries. Therefore, we conclude that oil producer countries have adopted several policy decisions in favor of CO2 emissions reduction. The estimated turning point of the EKC confirms our intuitions that only oil producer countries achieve CO2 emissions reduction goal.
A simple method for retrieval of dust aerosol optical depth with polarized reflectance over oceans

Abstract. Our previous study shows that the angle of linear polarization (AOLP) of solar radiation that is scattered from clouds at near-backscatter angles can be used to detect super-thin cirrus clouds over oceans. Such clouds are too thin to be sensed using any current passive satellite instruments that only measure light's total intensity, because of the uncertainty in surface reflection. In this report, we show that with a method similar to the super-thin clouds detection algorithm, dust aerosols may also be detected and differentiated from clouds. We also show that the degree of polarization of reflected light can be used for retrieving the optical depth of dust aerosols in the neighborhood of the backscatter angle, regardless of the reflecting surface conditions. This is a simple and robust algorithm, which could be used to survey dust aerosols over midlatitude and tropical oceans.