Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Forum What Constitutes Good ICTD Research ?

The emerging aeld of research that examines the link between information and communication technology and socioeconomic development (ICTD) has been carried forward by researchers mapping methods from their home disciplines onto this new terrain. With this journal logging six years of history (Best & Bar, 2003) and with the third International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Dias et al., 2009) behind us, we have arrived at a point where it is worth taking stock of the distinctive challenges we have encountered as a research community. This article intends to propose some common criteria for identifying high-quality and promising research in the aeld, a signiacant challenge in itself, given the diverse range of disciplines involved—from engineering to public policy, from the social sciences to development theory. The seeds of this article were planted in an exchange on a mailing list between its two authors over what standards were truly applicable across disciplinary and methodological distinctions (Toyama & Burrell, 2008). Despite our initial disagreements, we believe that an understanding of interdisciplinary commonalities and differences will inform how ICTD researchers conduct research, how authors write research papers, how they are reviewed, and how conferences and journals select those for publication. Some of these activities require collaboration or evaluation of work across disciplines, and an explicit recognition of their paradigmatic differences could help build bridges between disciplines by allowing disagreements to remain as such. Given the nature of the topic, some disclaimers are in order. First, we emphasize that the ideas put forth in this article will naturally reoect its authors’ particular educational backgrounds, research experiences, and personal perspectives. Burrell’s formal background is in computer science and sociology; Toyama’s in physics and computer science. Thus, our comments apply primarily to what we believe can be said about the disciplines of engineering (including computer science and the various engineering disciplines), the qualitative social sciences (including some, but not all, of anthropology, sociology, etc.), the quantitative social sciences (including some, but not all, of economics, public health, etc.), and aelds with mixed methodologies drawn from the above (including information science, communications research, etc.). Although we have made an attempt to think through what is important in other disciplines (e.g., social theory, public policy), we refrain from claiming to speak for them. With this in mind, we hope that readers will be persuaded by the arguments we present. As with any aeld of study, what work constitutes ICTD and how quality is judged remain open questions to be determined by the community as a whole. It’s a cause for celebration, on the one hand, that such a varied group of people should unite in the quest to understand how technology inter-
A Brief Introduction to Quadtrees and Their Applications

We briefly introduce the quadtree data structure, some of its variants (region, point, point-region, edge, polygonal map, and compressed), as well as some applications to problems in computer science including image processing, spatial queries, and mesh generation. This presentation is mainly a collection of selected materials from surveys by Aluru [1] and Samet [13, 14], as well as a textbook by Har-Peled [5].
Construction of Escherichia coli strains for higher plasmid production : Evaluation of lon gene knockout and implementation of a marker-free system

Plasmid DNA (pDNA) vectors offer considerable benefits over viral systems in gene-based therapy and vaccination applications, including higher shelf stability, low immunogenicity and toxicity, and simple manufacture in large scale. However, also shows low transfection efficacy, and requires milligram scale of pharmaceutical-grade pDNA per patient, which implies extensive production efforts. In order to fulfil high pDNA production requirements, genetically engineered strains specially designed to achieve high pDNA yields are required. With this purpose, a Lon-protease deficient GALG20 strain was created, in this study. However, contrary to expected, GALG20∆lon and GALG20 strains achieved similar volumetric and specific plasmid production yields. In order to fully evaluate lon gene mutation potential in pDNA production, large-scale cultivations using a fed-batch strategy, with reduced amounts of amino acids, and testing different temperature conditions should be performed.
FINITE ELEMENT MODELING OF SUSPENSIONED PARTICLE MIGRATION IN NON-NEWTONIAN FLUIDS

ABSTRACT Shear-induced migration of particles is studied during the slow flow of suspensions of spheres (particle volume fraction @=O.50) in an inelastic but shear-thinning, suspending fluid in flow between counterrotating concentric cylinders, The conditions are such that nonhydrodynamic effects are negligible. The movement of particles away from the high shear rate region is more pronounced than in a Newtonian suspending liquid, We test a continuum constitutive model for the evolution of particle concentration in a flowing suspension proposed by Phillips et al. (1992) by using shear-thinning, suspending fluids. The fluid constitutive equation is Carreau-like in its shear-thinning behavior but also varies with the local particle concentration. The model is compared with the experimental data gathered with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging,
Chemical Composition and Biological Activities of the Essential Oil from

The present study investigated the chemical composition of the essential oil obtained from the aerial parts of Aristolochia fordiana Hemsl (AF activities of the essential oil. Forty main constituents were identified as pinene (10.2%). Furthermore, the antibacterial activity of the essential oil of diffusion and micro-broth dilution assays. AF Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis indicated that the essential oil exhibited a moderate cytotoxic activity on HepG2 (liver hepatocellular cells) and MCF-7 (human breast adenocarcinoma cells) cell lines. However, the AF DPPH, ABTS and FRAP assays.
Lack of Cross-Reactivity between Human Placental and Rat Liver

IIJIMA, K. Lack of Cross-Reactivity between Human Placental and Rat Liver Glucocerebrosidases. Tohoku J. exp. Med., 1984, 144 (1), 63-67. The production of anti-human placental glucocerebrosidase antibodies in rabbits immunized with a mixture of human placental glucocerebrosidase and Freund's complete adjuvant was confirmed by the immunoprecipitation reaction, immunocompetition and Graber and Williams' immunoelectrophoresis. These immunochemical techniques also unvailed a lack of cross-reactivity between human placental and rat liver glucocerebrosidases against the rabbit antiserum, human placental glucocerebrosidase ; rat liver glucocerebrosidase ; cross-reactivity
1 1 A ug 2 01 5 Discontinuous Buckling of Wide Beams and Metabeams

We uncover how nonlinearities dramatically alter the buckling of elastic beams. First, we show experimentally that sufficiently wide ordinary elastic beams and specifically designed metabeams —beams made from a mechanical metamaterial— exhibit discontinuous buckling, an unstable form of buckling where the post-buckling stiffness is negative. Then we use simulations to uncover the crucial role of nonlinearities, and show that beams made from increasingly nonlinear materials exhibit increasingly negative post-buckling slope. Finally, we demonstrate that for sufficiently strong nonlinearity, we can observe discontinuous buckling for metabeams as slender as 1% numerically and 5% experimentally.
Title Efficacy and safety of methylprednisolone sodium succinate in acute spinal cord injury : a systematic review

Rights © 2017, the Authors. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work as published without adaptation or alteration, without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). http://www.creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
On the Limits of Monetary Policy∗

This paper provides theory and evidence that distorted long-term interest-rate expectations represent a fundamental constraint on monetary policy design. Permitting beliefs to depart from those consistent with rational expectations equilibrium breaks the tight link between policy rates and long-term expectations, even when long-term interest rates are determined by the expectations hypothesis of the yield curve. Because bond prices are excessively sensitive to short-term interest rates, the central bank faces an intertemporal trade-off which results in optimal policy being less aggressive relative to rational expectations. More aggressive policy leads to sub-optimal volatility in longterm interest rates and aggregate demand through standard intertemporal substitution effects. These effects are quantitatively important over the Great Inflation and Great Moderation periods of US monetary history.
小動物臨床における超音波診断 = Diagnostic ultrasound in small animal practice

Foreword. Acknowledgements. 1 Principles of Diagnostic Ultrasound - Paddy Mannion. 2 Ultrasound Artefacts - Johann Lang. 3 Indications and Technique - Paddy Mannion. 4 Imaging of the General Abdomen - Johann Lang. 5 The Liver and Spleen - Paddy Mannion. 6 Gastro-intestinal Tract including Pancreas - Mairi Frame. 7 Urinary Tract - Johann Lang. 8 Imaging of the Reproductive Tract - Alison Dickie. 9 Non-Cardiac Thoracic Ultrasound - Paddy Mannion. 10 Imaging the Heart - Johann Lang. 11 Doppler Ultrasound - Johann Lang. 12 Imaging of the Neck - Alison Dickie. 13 Imaging of the Muscoskeletal System - Alison Dickie. 14 Imaging of the Eye and the Orbit-Val Schmid. 15 Ultrasound of Exotic Species - Sharon Redrobe. Appendices. Glossary. Index
Eulerian Finite Volume Method for Musculoskeletal Simulation and Data-driven Activation

This thesis describes a solid simulation method and its application to musculoskeletal simulation. The presented solid simulation method features Eulerian discretization and avoids mesh tangling during large deformation. Unlike existing Eulerian solid simulation methods, our method applies to elastoplastic material and volume-preserving material. To further increase the utility of Eulerian simulations for solids, we introduce Lagrangian modes to the simulation and present a new solver that handles close contact while simultaneously distributing motion between the Lagrangian and Eulerian modes. This Eulerian-on-Lagrangian method enables unbounded simulation domains and reduces the time step restrictions that often plague Eulerian simulation. We also introduce a framework for simulating the dynamics of musculoskeletal systems, with volumetric muscles and a novel muscle activation model. Muscles are simulated using the solid simulator developed and therefore enjoys volume preservation which is crucial for accurately capturing the dynamics of muscles and other biological tissues. Unlike previous work, in our system muscle deformation is tightly coupled to the dynamics of the skeletal system, and not added as an after effect. Our physiologically based muscle activation model utilizes knowledge of the active shapes of muscles, which can be manually drawn or easily obtained from medical imaging data. Finally we demonstrate results with models derived from MRI data and models designed for artistic effect.
Title Detection of Time-Varying Structures by Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping to Aid

Objectives: To evaluate the accuracy of advanced non-linear registration of serial lung Computed Tomography (CT) images using Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping (LDDMM). Methods: Fifteen cases of lung cancer with serial lung CT images (interval: 62.2626.9 days) were used. After affine transformation, three dimensional, non-linear volume registration was conducted using LDDMM with or without cascading elasticity control. Registration accuracy was evaluated by measuring the displacement of landmarks placed on vessel bifurcations for each lung segment. Subtraction images and Jacobian color maps, calculated from the transformation matrix derived from image warping, were generated, which were used to evaluate time-course changes of the tumors. Results: The average displacement of landmarks was 0.0260. 16 mm and 0.1260. 60 mm for proximal and distal landmarks after LDDMM transformation with cascading elasticity control, which was significantly smaller than 3.1162. 47 mm and 3.9963. 05 mm, respectively, after affine transformation. Emerged or vanished nodules were visualized on subtraction images, and enlarging or shrinking nodules were displayed on Jacobian maps enabled by highly accurate registration of the nodules using LDDMM. However, some residual misalignments were observed, even with non-linear transformation when substantial changes existed between the image pairs. Conclusions: LDDMM provides accurate registration of serial lung CT images, and temporal subtraction images with Jacobian maps help radiologists to find changes in pulmonary nodules. Citation: Sakamoto R, Mori S, Miller MI, Okada T, Togashi K (2014) Detection of Time-Varying Structures by Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping to Aid Reading of High-Resolution CT Images of the Lung. PLoS ONE 9(1): e85580. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0085580 Editor: Zhaohua Ding, Vanderbilt University, United States of America Received June 7, 2013; Accepted November 28, 2013; Published January 13, 2014 Copyright: 2014 Sakamoto et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This study supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) through the Grant Number P41 EB 015909 to the co-author Susumu Mori and JSPS Grant-inAid for Challenging Exploratory Research Number 25670530 provided to the last author Kaori Togashi. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: susumu@mri.jhu. edu
MEN AND WOMEN IN HYPOXIA: THE INFLUENCE OF TISSUE OXYGENATION ON REPEATED-SPRINT ABILITY

The study examined the influence of cerebral (prefrontal cortex) and muscle (vastus lateralis) oxygenation on the ability to perform repeated, cycling sprints. Thirteen team-sport athletes performed ten, 10-s sprints (with 30 s of rest) under normoxic (FIO2 0.21) and acute hypoxic (FIO2 0.13) conditions in a randomised, single-blind fashion and crossover design. Mechanical work was calculated and arterial O2 saturation (SpO2) was estimated via pulse oximetry for every sprint. Cerebral and muscle oxy-(O2Hb), deoxy-(HHb), and total haemoglobin (THb) were monitored continuously by near-infrared spectroscopy. Compared with normoxia, hypoxia induced larger decrements in SpO2 and work (11.6% and 7.6%, respectively; P<0.05). In the muscle, we observed a fairly constant level of deoxygenation across sprints, with no effect of the condition. In normoxia, regional cerebral oxygenation increased during the first two sprints and slightly fluctuated thereafter. In contrast, this initial cerebral hyper-oxygenation was attenuated in hypoxia. Changes in [O2Hb] and [HHb] occurred earlier and were larger in hypoxia compared with normoxia (P<0.05), while regional blood volume (Δ[THb]) remained unaffected by the condition. Changes in cerebral [HHb] and mechanical work were strongly correlated in normoxia and hypoxia (R=0.81 and R=0.85, respectively; P<0.05), although the slope of this relationship differed (normoxia: -351.3 ± 183.3 vs. hypoxia: -442.4 ± 227.2; P<0.05). The results of this NIRS study indicate that O2 availability influences oxygenation of the prefrontal cortex during repeated, short sprints. By using a hypoxia paradigm, the study demonstrates that cerebral, unlike muscle, oxygenation imposes a limitation to repeated-sprint ability.
Effect of storage period on the quality of table egs

The research aim was to determine effect of storage period (measured on the 1 st day and 28 day) on the quality of conventional table eggs and omega-3 eggs. The research was carried out on 120 eggs, of which 60 were conventio nal and 60 were produced within omega-3 production system. Research results showed that the storage period of conventional eggs significantly affected (P<0.05) i ncrease of albumen and yolk pH, as well as aging rate, while reducing the values of al bumen height, HU, yolk color and value number. Analysis of external and internal qua lity of omega-3 eggs indicated that the storage period significantly affected (P<0.05) increase of albumen and yolk pH and aging rate, and reduced values for egg shell streng th and thickness, albumen height, HU, and value number of stored eggs. Lipid oxidatio n was significantly higher in eggs stored for 28 days at 4 °C if compared to fresh egg s (P<0.05). (
The Effect of Gender on Foreign Language Learning

Learners are affected by many factors in the foreign language learning process. The level of cognitive development, socio economic and cultural background, the ability to acquire a language, types of memory system, age and motivation can be expressed as the factors affecting foreign language learning. One particularly interesting factor is gender that runs in parallel with other factors. This factor can affect language use and learning as a result of biological differences between the two sexes . Having gone over a good number of works studied the impact of gender on foreign language learning, the present researchers found out that there were no clear distinction between male and female in learning a foreign language but the way of using a language and strategies used by learners in learning process were applied by them differently. These differences help them become successful in different areas of learning, whether in math, language arts, sciences or others.
A Modified Bow Tie Antenna for RFID Application

This paper covers the design and optimization of new antenna for RFID applications at microwave frequencies. The structure is designed to resonate at 2.45GHz one of the RFID frequencies. The new patch is inspired from Bow Tie antenna and it represents a reduction of the size by more than 80% comparing to monopole patch with an acceptable gain and directivity. An equivalent resonant model is presented based on a model of triangular antenna. Simulation results given by our approach, show that the antenna and its model have the same resonant frequency at 2.45GHz but with a little difference in Bandwidth.
Combining Machine Learning and Control to Manage Computing System Complexity and Dynamics ∗

Introduction As power and energy become rst-order concerns for computing systems, soware developers are increasingly tasked with meeting multiple, oen conicting goals; e.g., creating responsive mobile applications that maximize baery life. Developers faced with this problem must address two challenges: complexity and dynamics. Complexity arises as computer architectures increasingly expose resources to soware for management. Consider Samsung’s recent release of the Galaxy S9+ smartphone. is phone came with an upgraded multicore CPU—the rst “very large core” in a smartphone. A tech reporter, however, found that performance and baery life were much worse than expected because heuristics that did a good job of core and DVFS management for the S9, worked very poorly for the S9+ (click for link). e S9+ is just one example of how hardware complexity creates problems for soware: a resource management heuristic that worked well for one system (the S9) was extremely poor on another (the S9+). Dynamics arise from uctuating workloads and varying resource availability. us, even if soware developers nd a resource conguration that works well in one scenario, there is no guarantee that it will continue to meet goals as the environment changes. A video encoder represents a simple example. During low-motion scenes, the encoder’s performance requirements (keeping up with the camera) are easily met with low resource usage. In high-motion scenes, the encoder needs more resources to produce high-quality video. If soware always allocates resources for the lowmotion case, quality will suer in times of high-motion. If soware allocates for high-motion, energy (and thus baery life) is wasted during simpler scenes.
Stiffness of c subunit of F 1 -ATPase

F1-ATPase is a molecular motor in which the c subunit rotates inside the a3b3 ring upon adenosine triphosphate (ATP) hydrolysis. Recent works on single- molecule manipulation of F1-ATPase have shown that kinetic parameters such as the on-rate of ATP and the off- rate of adenosine diphosphate (ADP) strongly depend on the rotary angle of the c subunit (Hirono-Hara et al. 2005; Iko et al. 2009). These findings provide important insight into how individual reaction steps release energy to power F1 and also have implications regarding ATP synthesis and how reaction steps are reversed upon reverse rotation. An important issue regarding the angular dependence of kinetic parameters is that the angular position of a mag- netic bead rotation probe could be larger than the actual position of the c subunit due to the torsional elasticity of the system. In the present study, we assessed the stiffness of two different portions of F1 from thermophilic Bacillus PS3: the internal part of the c subunit embedded in the a3b3 ring, and the complex of the external part of the c subunit and the a3b3 ring (and streptavidin and magnetic bead), by comparing rotational fluctuations before and after cross- linkage between the rotor and stator. The torsional stiff- nesses of the internal and remaining parts were determined to be around 223 and 73 pNnm/radian, respectively. Based on these values, it was estimated that the actual angular position of the internal part of the c subunit is one-fourth of the magnetic bead position upon stalling using an external magnetic field. The estimated elasticity also partially explains the accommodation of the intrinsic step size mismatch between Fo and F1-ATPase.
revised for JGR March 14 2001 Convection in Io ' s Asthenosphere : Redistribution of Non-uniform Tidal Heating by Mean Flows

Numerical simulations of convection in a wide domain with spatially-varying internal heating intended to mimic tidal dissipation in Io's proposed asthenosphere are performed in order to better understand the convective dynamics, and in particular to quantify the relationship between surface observables (particularly the distribution of heat flux) and tidal dissipation. Two-dimensional calculations at high internal heating Rayleigh number RaQ of up to 10 10 indicate a mean, domain-wide flow with superimposed small-scale instabilities. The mean flow spreads out the tidally-dissipated heat, resulting in long-wavelength surface heat flux variations that decrease in proportion to RaQ . This scaling is shown to apply to different domain widths and also to three-dimensional geometry. Power-law scalings are also obtained for velocities and temperatures. These mean flow scalings are also derived analytically. Scaling to Io's asthenosphere, longwavelength heat flux variations of order several percent are predicted, with temperature variations of order 10s K and mean flow velocities of 50-5600 meters/year.