Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
National threat perception, dominance-submissive authoritarian syndrome and totalitarian socialist ideology

A structural model for prediction a totalitarian socialist ideology on a sample of Croatian population was developed and evaluated by using full information maximum likelihood estimates obtained from LISREL 8.52 computer programs. We have assumed that both national threat perception and dominance-submissive authoritarian syndrome would affect a totalitarian socialist ideology. The data reported here were obtained by standard survey methods on a sample of adult population (N=553) who were all of Croatian ethnicity. Totalitarian socialist ideology was defined by the latent variables labeled political totalitarianism, state economic interventionism, and egalitarianism and working-class ruling. National threat perception was defined by the latent variables labeled national siege mentality, European Union threat perception, and support for immigrant persecution. Dominance-submissive authoritarian syndrome was defined by the variables labeled authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission, and dominance orientation. A second-order confirmatory factor analysis yielded the latent construct of totalitarian socialist ideology, national threat perception, and dominancesubmissive authoritarian syndrome with acceptable fit indices. A structural model tested on the examined sample indicated that national threat perception and dominance-submissive authoritarian syndrome were significant predictors of a totalitarian socialist ideology, where national threat perception indicated a much stronger effect than dominance-submissive authoritarian syndrome. Goodness-of-fit indices suggested acceptable fit (RMSEA=0.06, NFI=0.97, CFI=0.98, SRMR=0.03, AGFI=0.94). The concept of threat perception, avoidance of uncertainty, and authoritarian personality were used in interpreting the findings and its political implications. Language: en
Electrochemical Bioencapsulation of Nanomaterials into Collagen for Biomedical Applications

Here we reported a novel electrochemical encapsulation method to encapsulate various nanomaterials and bimolecules into collagen. The electrochemical encapsulation process involves assembling of collagen along with Nano/bio materials using an isoelectric focusing mechanism. We have showed that a wide range of Nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes, polymeric nanoparticles, magnetic calcium phosphate nanoparticles and biomolecules can be encapsulated into collagen. These novel collagen-based composite materials possess improved electric, mechanical, antimicrobial, magnetic, bioactive properties. Thus, this novel electrochemical encapsulation process offers a means to fabricate novel biomaterials for various biomedical applications such as tendon/ligament, nerve, skin tissue engineering, tendon/ligament to bone grafts, and sutures, etc.
DESIGN AND IN VITRO CHARACTERIZATION OF FLOATING TABLETS OF METRONIDAZOLE

Objective: The objective of the present study was to formulate the effervescent floating matrix tablet of metronidazole and to evaluate the effect of varying concentrations of hydrophilic polymers on drug release. Methods: Drug excipients interaction was studied by Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer. The effervescent floating matrix tablets were prepared by direct compression technique using hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMCK4) and xanthan gum alone and in combination as release retardants. Microcrystalline cellulose was used as diluent. Sodium bicarbonate was used as effervescent agent. The prepared matrix tablets were evaluated for their physicochemical parameters such as weight variation, hardness, friability, content uniformity, buoyancy time, and in vitro dissolution. Results: Micromeritic properties and post-compression parameters were evaluated and all the parameters were found within the acceptable limit. The drug release data were subjected to different models to evaluate release kinetics and mechanism of drug release. The matrix tablets prepared with xanthan gum and a mixture of xanthan gum and HPMCK4 were retarded the drug release up to 12 h. The release mechanism of metronidazole was evaluated on the basis of release exponent n value in Peppas model. The n value of the formulations ranged from 0.46 to 0.89 which indicated Case II transport and zero-order release. Conclusion: Floating matrix tablet is the simple, efficient, and economic method to sustain the release of metronidazole to eradicate Helicobacter pylori in peptic ulcer disease.
Corporate propaganda: its implications for accounting and accountability

This paper examines the nature of propaganda and its use by corporations, particularly in the USA, over a period of nearly 100 years. It emphasises the invisibility of much of this activity and propaganda’s importance for shaping acquiescence in corporate hegemony. The role played by corporate propaganda in the development of different forms of capitalism is addressed. The inculcation of accounting and finance students with values that serve corporate interests is considered: in this context propaganda is inferred in both the longstanding misrepresentation of Adam Smith, and the sustained illusion of competitive “free markets”. The role and language of the business media as a form of propaganda is considered, particularly regarding colonisation of social market economies by Anglo‐Saxon capitalism, which takes as incontestable the maximisation of shareholder value as the proper and necessary aim of corporate activity. It is argued that corporate propaganda has contributed to the accounting measure of business success being justified as an end in itself at the explicit expense of wider societal considerations.
Disclosure, Institutional Investors And Pricing The Discretionary Accruals

This paper examines the impact of public disclosure level on market pricing of discretionary accruals of firms with high or low institutional ownership. Using Mishkin test (1983) and hedge portfolio test, this paper documents that for firms with low institutional ownership, the mispricing of discretionary accruals is less severe for firms with higher level of disclosure; for firms with high institutional ownership, there is no significant difference of market pricing of discretionary accruals between high and low disclosure level. The results are robust to alternative accrual measure under indirect balance sheet approach and alternative disclosure measure on a composite basis which includes the annual reports, the regulatory-driven 10-K and proxy statements.
VARIATION OF COMORBIDITIES IN ROMANIA AT THE LAU2 LEVEL, A CROSS-SECTIONAL ANALYSIS

Introduction: Romania is still lagging behind in regard to main health indicators when compared to average values of European Union countries with a disproportionate share of disability due mainly to chronic diseases. There are tools available to quantify the negative health outcomes due to comorbidities, and among them the Elixhauser Index was found to be the best to predict health care utilization and expenditures. Objective: To measure the extent of comorbidities at the LAU2 level using the Elixhauser Index. Methods: All relevant comorbidities at the local level were summed-up using the Elixhauser index. This was followed with standardization by population number and then by 10-year age group. Due to large oscillation from one year to another during the 2014-2016 period, the geometrical mean was computed, then few measures of the variation such as decile ratio and variation coefficient were also computed. Results: High variability of comorbidities is observed at the local level (LAU2). Clusters of comorbidities concentration are found near medical university centers and localities in non-MUC districts located at the furthest distance from the county residential center. Conclusions: Several factors such as proximity to referral hospitals, increased accessibility to these hospitals due to low control at primary healthcare levels, availability of diagnostic technologies and different diagnostic coding patterns, as well as isolation and unavailability of primary health care services are listed as possible factors that can explain these results.
A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of High Emitter Non-Compliance and its Impact on Vehicular Tailpipe Emissions in Atlanta, 1997-2001

A quasi-experimental evaluation is employed to assess the compliance behavior of high emitters in response to Atlanta’s Inspection and Maintenance (IM) program between 1997 and 2001 and to predict the impact of compliance behavior on vehicular tailpipe emissions of ozone precursors, such as carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC) and nitrogen oxide (NO). Remote sensing data of a sample of approximately 0.8 million observations of on-road vehicles are matched with IM program data and vehicle registration data to identify the compliant and non-compliant high emitters. A mixed-pool time-series regression analysis is carried out to predict changes in the vehicular tailpipe emissions due to the compliance and non-compliance of the high emitters in the Atlanta airshed.
Ethnic gaps in educational attainment and labor-market outcomes: evidence from France

ABSTRACT We use data from the Trajectoires et Origines survey to analyze ethnic gaps in education and labor-market outcomes between second-generation immigrants and their French-native counterparts. Our three main findings underscore the importance of family background in explaining lifelong ethnic inequalities. First, second-generation immigrants are on average less likely to experience education success than their native counterparts, with the education gap mainly being rooted in ethnic differences in family backgrounds. Second, while second-generation immigrants have on average a lower probability of employment and lower wages than natives, both gaps are mainly explained by the differences in education. Third, we find considerable heterogeneity across ethnic groups.
The Importance of the Instantaneous Phase in Detecting Faces with Convolutional Neural Networks

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have provided new and accurate methods for processing digital images and videos. Yet, training CNNs is extremely demanding in terms of computational resources. Also, for specific applications, the standard use of transfer learning also tends to require far more resources than what may be needed. Furthermore, the final systems tend to operate as black boxes that are difficult to interpret. The current thesis considers the problem of detecting faces from the AOLME video dataset. The AOLME dataset consists of a large video collection of group interactions that are recorded in unconstrained classroom environments. For the thesis, still image frames were extracted at every minute from 18 24-minute videos. Then, each video frame was divided into 9× 5 blocks with 50× 50 pixels each. For each of the 19440 blocks, the percentage of face pixels was set as ground truth. Face detection was then defined as a regression problem for determining the face pixel
PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT OF THE ADVANCED ENCRYPTION STANDARD VIA PIPELINED IMPLEMENTATION

Information and computer security become a key issue these days. This is due to rapid developments in data communications and computer technologies. Hence, there is a serious need for a secure transmission of both data and information between senders and receivers. Since there is no fully secured communication system for Web-based systems, communication systems rely heavily on complex and difficult cipher systems. Cipher systems usually consist of two main parts; Encryption and Decryption to hide and secure both transmitted data and information on long trunks. In addition, storing both important and sensitive data and information requires securing them from intruders, which can be handled by encrypting them. This paper studies one of the most important and widely used secret key encryption/decryption algorithms, namely the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The implementation of the AES algorithm involves complex computational steps that have made the implementation of these steps slow and time consuming. Using state of the art of multi-core architecture, we propose a pipelined implementation of the AES algorithm to reduce both computation complexity and elapsed computation time. Our contribution, the proposed AES implementation does not require dedicated equipment, it works with any kind of computers that are available to the public, such as Intel-based computers. A comparison of CPU performance is performed on both pipelined and sequential implementations on different file sizes. We have found that our pipelined implementation outperforms the sequential one, without the use of any special equipment. What distinguishes our work from the rest of the work done by several researchers is that the proposed AES implementation is designed for multi-core computers that do not have expensive equipment such as GPU or FPGA, such devices are widely available.
BIOFORTIFICATION OF WHEAT FLOUR WITH SELENIUM THROUGH FOLIAR APPLICATION OF WHEAT CROP

In Egypt, dietary selenium (Se) intake is below recommendation. Foliar fertilization with Se has been reported to increase the Se content in cereals. The main objective of this study was to increase the Se content in the wheat flour using Se foliar fertilization (as biofortification). Two field experiments were selected for the study (Station Farm at Mansoura and Kalabsho-Zayian region, Faculty of Agriculture, Mansoura University) during the winter season of 2010/2011. Sodium selenate were foliar-applied at two different growth stages and different concentrations. A randomized complete block design with four replications was used. Foliar Fertilization of wheat crop with sodium selenite increased the Se content in the whole wheat flour, depending on the level and time of the addition The maximum Se content (22.2 ± 0.43 μg/100g) was found in wheat crop after spraying at 50 and 70 days from the agriculture, which is higher than the control sample level (1.9 ± 0.41 μg/100g DM). There was a relationship between the amount of Se applied to the wheat crop and the carry through/retention of Se in the downstream flour approximately linear indicating efficient incorporation and retention of Se in the wheat crop through to grain harvest and flour production.
An on-Communication Multiple-TSV Defects Detection and Localization for Real-Time 3D-ICs

This paper presents "On Communication Through-Silicon-Via Test" (OCTT), an ECC-based method to localize faults without halting the operation of TSV-based 3D-IC systems. OCTT consists of two major parts named Statistical Detector and Isolation and Check. While Statistical Detector could detect open and short defects in TSVs that work without interrupting data transactions, the Isolation and Check algorithm enhances the ability to localize fault position. The Monte-Carlo simulations of Statistical Detector show ×2 increment in the number of detected faults when compared to conventional ECC-based techniques. While Isolation and Check helps localize the number of defects up to ×4 and ×5 higher. In addition, the worst case execution time is below 65,000 cycles with no performance degradation for testing which could be easily integrated into real-time applications.
Does the shariah index move together with the conventional equity indexes

Generally, Shariah (Islamic) indices are considered to have lower portfolio betas relative to conventional ones. The lower portfolio beta of Islamic indexes is a logical result of Shariah screening. As Shariah screening eliminates stocks with high financial leverage, the resulting portfolio beta ought to be lower because a stock’s beta is reflective of the underlying business risk and financial risk (leverage). With this motivation and background, we have tried to find out whether we can have diversification opportunities with combining Shariah index and conventional indexes. The results of analysis revealed the absence of cointegration between the DJIM index and three conventional indexes such as DAX, HangSeng, KL. This means that diversification opportunities exist for the mentioned indices. But for the S&P and DJIM, we found that they are cointegrated, which implies there exists long run theoretical relationship among the indices. Presence of cointegration indicates the absence of diversification opportunities in the concerned indices. So if we want to get diversification effect, we have to avoid setting up the portfolio with S&P and DJIM with the balanced weight. Because these two variables move together, the investors are not likely to get the positive portfolio effect particularly in the long term.
A REVIEW ON SPATIAL QUALITY ASSESSMENT METHODS FOR EVALUATION OF PAN-SHARPENED SATELLITE IMAGERY

Abstract. Nowadays, high-resolution fused satellite imagery is widely used in multiple remote sensing applications. Although the spectral quality of pan-sharpened images plays an important role in many applications, spatial quality becomes more important in numerous cases. The high spatial quality of the fused image is essential for extraction, identification and reconstruction of significant image objects, and will result in producing high-quality large scale maps especially in the urban areas. This paper introduces the most sensitive and effective methods in detecting the spatial distortion of fused images by implementing a number of spatial quality assessment indices that are utilized in the field of remote sensing and image processing. In this regard, in order to recognize the ability of quality assessment indices for detecting the spatial distortion quantity of fused images, input images of the fusion process are affected by some intentional spatial distortions based on non-registration error. The capabilities of the investigated metrics are evaluated on four different fused images derived from Ikonos and WorldView-2 initial images. Achieved results obviously explicate that two methods namely Edge Variance Distortion and the spatial component of QNR metric called Ds are more sensitive and responsive to the imported errors.
Impact Evaluation of Trade Interventions: Paving the Way

The focus of trade policy has shifted in recent years from economy-wide reductions in tariffs and trade restrictions toward targeted interventions to facilitate trade and promote exports. Most of these latter interventions are based on the new mantra of"aid-for-trade"rather than on hard evidence on what works and what does not. On the one hand, rigorous impact-evaluation is needed to justify these interventions and to improve their design. On the other hand, rigorous evaluation is feasible because unlike traditional trade policy, these interventions tend to be targeted and so it is possible to construct treatment and control groups. When interventions are not targeted, such as in the case of customs reforms, some techniques, such as randomized control trials, may not be feasible but meaningful evaluation may still be possible. Theis paper discusses examples of impact evaluations using a range of methods (experimental and non-experimental), highlighting the particular issues and caveats arising in a trade context, and the valuable lessons that are already being learned. The authors argue that systematically building impact evaluation into trade projects could lead to better policy design and a more credible case for"aid-for-trade. "
Asperathos: Running QoS-Aware Sensitive Batch Applications with Intel SGX

The massive amount of information being generated nowadays results in the need for efficient data processing frameworks. For sensitive information, concerns also emerge regarding data integrity and confidentiality. To address such concerns, we present Asperathos, a configurable framework to automate the execution of batch applications in cloud environments while complying with QoS goals and processing potentially sensitive data. Our demonstration leverages tools such as Kubernetes and Intel SGX in a smart grid scenario, computing the power consumption from a dataset containing detailed measurements of users. We illustrate Asperathos features through the integration with both a command line and a web-based interface.
Era of Genomic Medicine: A Narrative Review on CRISPR Technology as a Potential Therapeutic Tool for Human Diseases

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) provides acquired immunity in microorganisms against exogenous DNA that may hinder the survival of the organism. Pioneering work by Doudna and Charpentier in 2012 resulted in the creation of the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing tool on the basis of this concept. The aim of this was to create a rapid, efficient, and versatile genome-editing tool to facilitate genetic manipulation. The mechanism relies on two components: the RNA guide which acts as a sentinel and a Cas protein complex which functions as a highly precise molecular knife. The guide RNA can be modified to match a DNA sequence of interest in the cell and accordingly be used to rectify mutations that may otherwise cause disease. Within a few years following the development of the CRISPR/Cas9 tool, its usage has become ubiquitous. Its influence extends into many fields of biological sciences from biotechnology and biochemistry to molecular biology and biomedical sciences. The following review aims at shedding some light on to the applications of the CRISPR/Cas9 tool in the field of biomedical sciences, particularly gene therapy. An insight with relation to a few of the many diseases that are being tackled with the aid of the CRISPR/Cas9 mechanism and the trends, successes, and challenges of this application as a gene therapy are discussed in this review.
NDT_A_220349 2835..2841

Shuichiro Tachi 1,2 Miki Asamizu 2 Yoshihiro Uchida Shigemasa Katayama Mayu Naruse Jiro Masuya Masahiko Ichiki Takeshi Inoue 1 1Department of Psychiatry, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo 160-0023, Japan; 2Seijin Hospital, Tokyo 121-0815, Japan; 3Department of Psychiatry, Ibaraki Medical Center, Tokyo Medical University, Ibaraki 300-0395, Japan Background: Adverse experiences, such as low care, overprotection, or abuse in childhood increase the likelihood of depression via their effects on personality traits. Similarly, being victimized in childhood may affect the likelihood of depression via personality traits. In this case-control study, we hypothesized that being victimized in childhood is associated with depression in adulthood via its effect on neuroticism, and verified this hypothesis using path analysis. Subjects and methods: Eighty-two major depressive disorder (MDD) patients and 350 age-and-sex matched healthy controls completed self-administered questionnaires of demographic data, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, neuroticism, and victimization. The association between victimization, neuroticism, and depressive symptoms or having major depression was investigated by path analysis. Results: Multiple group path analysis, in which depressive symptoms were considered as dependent variables, showed that the direct effect of victimization in childhood on depressive symptoms was not statistically significant in either healthy controls or MDD patients (standardized path coefficient: 0.079 and 0.084, respectively), but their indirect effects via neuroticism were statistically significant (standardized path coefficient: 0.059 and 0.141, respectively). Path analysis, in which the distinction between healthy controls and MDD patients was a dependent variable, showed that both direct effects and indirect effects of victimization in childhood via neuroticism on the distinction between healthy controls and MDD patients were statistically significant (standardized path coefficient: 0.186 and 0.164, respectively). Limitations: Recall bias and the relatively small number of MDD patients are limitations of this study. Because it was a case-control survey, this study could not make any conclusions regarding causal associations. Conclusion: This study suggests the possibility of causal associations between victimization in childhood and depressive symptoms or MDD in adulthood, and the mediation of this association by neuroticism.