Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Conflict, War and Peace in Sri Lanka – Politics by Other Means?

textabstractAbstract: For decades, Sri Lanka has been a laboratory for research and scholarship on ethnic conflict, liberal peacebuilding and civil war. Methodologically, this pre-war academic work laments the risks of applying simplified “episode based approaches” and narrow theoretical frameworks leading to adventurous interventions with meager appreciation of the complexities of state-society relations. Although this has contributed significantly to a better understanding of the conflict, most of the resultant explanations have, in the aftermath of the official (or rather military) ending of the civil war in May 2009, become largely questionable. This paper relies upon materials collected during fieldwork during the first quarter of 2009 and 2011. In it, I explore the relevant state-in-society dynamics that have contributed to the co-existence of negative and positive peace, limited war and total war and to assess the capacities for violent conflict reproduction during the period from 1994 to 2009. In this period, using a Clausewitzian (1780-1831) problematique, I disentangle the political shifts, repositioning of public opinions and various policy measures implemented to address conflict, war and peace, and to explicate possible trajectories of state transformation and state building. This paper shows that in Sri Lanka, war, peace and violent conflict are in essence a “continuation of domestic politics by other means” and “triumph of the hegemony of the right” at local and global levels. Specifically, post-civil war Sri Lanka harbors an enormous potential for violent social conflict reproduction that will influence the future state building process and trajectories of state transformation. This paper suggests that these processes will be ignited by a domestic politics dominated by long standing factionalism within the ruling class that uses conflict, war and peace as instruments to sustain their hegemony, for obscuring their lack of political legitimacy and their fear of responding to the country’s deep democratic deficit.
Anti-obesity effects of Rapha diet® preparation in mice fed a high-fat diet

The anti-obesity activities of Rapha diet® preparation containing silkworm pupa peptide, Garcinia cambogia, white bean extract, mango extract, raspberry extract, cocoa extract, and green tea extract were investigated in mice with dietary obesity. Male C57BL/6 mice were fed a high-fat diet (HFD) containing 3% Rapha diet® preparation for 8 weeks, and blood and tissue parameters of obesity were analyzed. The HFD markedly enhanced body weight gain by increasing the weights of epididymal, perirenal, and mesenteric adipose tissues. The increased body weight gain induced by HFD was significantly reduced by feeding Rapha diet® preparation, in which decreases in the weight of abdominal adipose tissue and the size of abdominal adipocytes were confirmed by microscopic examination. Long-term feeding of HFD increased blood triglycerides and cholesterol levels, leading to hepatic lipid accumulation. However, Rapha diet® preparation not only reversed the blood lipid levels, but also attenuated hepatic steatosis. The results indicate that Rapha diet® preparation could improve HFD-induced obesity by reducing both lipid accumulation and the size of adipocytes.
Readmissions in Cancer Patients After Receiving Inpatient Palliative Care in Taiwan

AbstractFew studies have reported on readmissions among cancer patients receiving inpatient palliative care (IPC). This study investigated readmissions in cancer patients after their first discharge from IPC in Taiwan from 2002 to 2010.This study was a secondary data analysis using information from the National Health Insurance Database in Taiwan from 2002 to 2010. We included subjects ≥20 years old diagnosed with malignant neoplasms who were listed in the registry of catastrophic illness. Patients diagnosed with cancer before January 1, 2002 or who had ever been admitted to an inpatient hospice palliative care unit before the study period were excluded. Readmission was defined as hospital readmission at least once after discharge from first admission to IPC until mortality or the end of the study period.A total of 42,022 patients who met the inclusion criteria were identified. The majority of these patients were male (60.4%). The mean age of cancer diagnosis was 64.0 ± 14.4 years for men and 64.5 ± 14.7 years for women. The mean age at first hospice ward admission was 65.2 ± 14.2 years for men and 65.9 ± 14.9 years for women. During their first admission to IPC, 59.2% patients died, and the median stay of first IPC admission was 8.0 days. Among those discharged alive from their first admission to IPC, 64.9% were readmitted, and 19.4% of these patients were readmitted on the same day of discharge. From first IPC discharge until mortality, 54.8% of patients were readmitted once, 23.9% were readmitted twice, 9.9% were readmitted 3 times, and 11.5% were readmitted 4 or more times. Being male, having a higher insurance premium level, having a longer length of stay during first IPC admission, being admitted to a teaching hospital, or being admitted to a tertiary hospital increased the adjusted hazard ratio for readmission.We found that terminal cancer patients in Taiwan received relatively late referrals for first admission to IPC and experienced a high rate of readmission after first discharge from IPC. Policies to improve hospice palliative care referrals and decrease readmissions should be considered.
Driving ability in sleep apnoea patients before and after CPAP treatment: evaluation on a road safety platform

Sleepiness is considered to be the major cause of increased traffic accidents in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS). Until now, OSAS patients′ driving ability has been assessed using driving simulators, but no assessment in a more natural driving environment has been carried out to date. The aim of the present study was to evaluate driving parameters in OSAS and in controls on a road safety platform, and to compare them with attentional in-laboratory measures before and after continuous positive airway pressure treatment. The parameters measured were: reaction time; distance to stop and number of collisions on the platform; maintenance of wakefulness; and sustained, selective and divided attention in laboratory. Patients exhibited much longer reaction times than controls, leading to a lengthening of the vehicle′s stopping distance of 8.8 m at 40 km·h-1 and to twice the number of collisions. Patients did not demonstrate objective sleepiness or selective and sustained attention deficits. Divided attention deficits were found. However, they did not allow the prediction of real driving impairment. After CPAP treatment, there was no longer any difference between patients and controls regarding driving and attention performances. Driving abilities are significantly impaired in obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome. After continuous positive airway pressure treatment, deficits were normalised. This stresses the importance of evaluating attentional parameters in apnoeic patients and of offering continuous positive airway pressure treatment even to non-sleepy subjects.
S-integer dynamical systems: periodic points.

We associate via duality a dynamical system to each pair (RS,x), where RS is the ring of S-integers in an A-field k, and x is an element of RS\{0}. These dynamical systems include the circle doubling map, certain solenoidal and toral endomorphisms, full one- and two-sided shifts on prime power alphabets, and certain algebraic cellular automata. In the arithmetic case, we show that for S finite the systems have properties close to hyperbolic systems: the growth rate of periodic points exists and the periodic points are uniformly distributed with respect to Haar measure. The dynamical zeta function is in general irrational however. For S infinite the systems exhibit a wide range of behaviour. Using Heath-Brown's work on the Artin conjecture, we exhibit examples in which S is infinite but the upper growth rate of periodic points is positive.
A Brown Dwarf Companion for the Accreting Millisecond Pulsar SAX J1808.4–3658

The BeppoSAX Wide Field Cameras have revealed a population of faint neutron star X-ray transients in the Galactic bulge. King conjectured that these neutron stars are accreting from brown dwarfs with a time-averaged mass transfer rate ⟨⟩ ≈ 10-11 M☉ yr-1 that is low enough for accretion disk instabilities. We show that the measured orbital parameters of the 401 Hz accreting millisecond pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658 support this hypothesis. A main-sequence mass donor requires a nearly face-on inclination and a higher ⟨⟩ than observed, and can thus be excluded. However, the range of allowed inclinations is substantially relaxed, and the predicted ⟨⟩ is consistent with that observed if a hot 0.05 M☉ dwarf is the donor. The remaining puzzle is explaining the brown dwarf radius required (0.13 R☉) to fill the Roche lobe. Recent observational and theoretical work has shown that all transiently accreting neutron stars have a minimum luminosity in quiescence set by the time-averaged mass transfer rate onto the neutron star. We show here that the constant heating of the brown dwarf by this quiescent neutron star emission appears adequate to maintain the higher entropy implied by a 0.13 R☉ radius. All of our considerations very strongly bolster the case that SAX J1808.4-3658 is a progenitor to compact millisecond radio pulsar binaries (e.g., like those found by Camilo and collaborators in 47 Tuc). The very low ⟨⟩ of SAX J1808.4-3658 implies that the progenitors to these radio pulsars are long-lived (~Gyr) transient systems, rather than short-lived (~Myr) Eddington-limited accretors. Hence, the accreting progenitor population to millisecond radio pulsars in 47 Tuc could still be present and found in quiescence with Chandra.
Productivity Growth in the 2000s

A near-consensus sees the cause of the productivity speedup of the 1990s in the information technology (IT) sector. The pace of invention and innovation in that sector generated real price declines of between ten and twenty percent per year for decades. Increased productivity in the IT capital-goods-producing sector, coupled with real capital deepening as the quantity of investment bought by a dollar of nominal savings grows, has driven the productivity speedup. Will this higher level of productivity growth persist? The answer appears to be "probably. " The most standard of applicable growth models predicts that the social return to IT investment would have to suddenly drop to near zero for the upward jump in productivity growth to reverse itself. More complicated models that focus in more detail on the determinants of investment spending or on the sources of increased total factor productivity strengthen, not weaken, forecasts of productivity growth over the next decade.
Potentiated Interaction between Ineffective Doses of Budesonide and Formoterol to Control the Inhaled Cadmium-Induced Up-Regulation of Metalloproteinases and Acute Pulmonary Inflammation in Rats

The anti-inflammatory properties of glucocorticoids are well known but their protective effects exerted with a low potency against heavy metals-induced pulmonary inflammation remain unclear. In this study, a model of acute pulmonary inflammation induced by a single inhalation of cadmium in male Sprague-Dawley rats was used to investigate whether formoterol can improve the anti-inflammatory effects of budesonide. The cadmium-related inflammatory responses, including matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) activity, were evaluated. Compared to the values obtained in rats exposed to cadmium, pretreatment of inhaled budesonide (0.5 mg/15 ml) elicited a significant decrease in total cell and neutrophil counts in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) associated with a significant reduction of MMP-9 activity which was highly correlated with the number of inflammatory cells in BALF. Additionally, cadmium-induced lung injuries characterized by inflammatory cell infiltration within alveoli and the interstitium were attenuated by the pre-treatment of budesonide. Though the low concentration of budesonide (0.25 mg/15 ml) exerted a very limited inhibitory effects in the present rat model, its combination with an inefficient concentration of formoterol (0.5 mg/30 ml) showed an enhanced inhibitory effect on neutrophil and total cell counts as well as on the histological lung injuries associated with a potentiation of inhibition on the MMP-9 activity. In conclusion, high concentration of budesonide alone could partially protect the lungs against cadmium exposure induced-acute neutrophilic pulmonary inflammation via the inhibition of MMP-9 activity. The combination with formoterol could enhance the protective effects of both drugs, suggesting a new therapeutic strategy for the treatment of heavy metals-induced lung diseases.
Transgenic expression of the proneural transcription factor Ascl1 in Müller glia stimulates retinal regeneration in young mice

Significance The retina is subject to a variety of insults that lead to degeneration of one or more types of neurons and ultimate visual impairment and blindness. Although the retinas of nonmammalian vertebrates can regenerate new neurons after injury, mammalian retinas largely lack this potential. We have tested whether the expression of the proneural transcription factor Ascl1 may be a key difference between the fish and mouse by targeting this factor to the cells that provide new retinal progenitors in mature retina, the Müller glia. Our results show that at least one of the differences between mammal and fish Müller glia that bears on their difference in regenerative potential is the proneural transcription factor Ascl1. Müller glial cells are the source of retinal regeneration in fish and birds; although this process is efficient in fish, it is less so in birds and very limited in mammals. It has been proposed that factors necessary for providing neurogenic competence to Müller glia in fish and birds after retinal injury are not expressed in mammals. One such factor, the proneural transcription factor Ascl1, is necessary for retinal regeneration in fish but is not expressed after retinal damage in mice. We previously reported that forced expression of Ascl1 in vitro reprograms Müller glia to a neurogenic state. We now test whether forced expression of Ascl1 in mouse Müller glia in vivo stimulates their capacity for retinal regeneration. We find that transgenic expression of Ascl1 in adult Müller glia in undamaged retina does not overtly affect their phenotype; however, when the retina is damaged, the Ascl1-expressing glia initiate a response that resembles the early stages of retinal regeneration in zebrafish. The reaction to injury is even more pronounced in Müller glia in young mice, where the Ascl1-expressing Müller glia give rise to amacrine and bipolar cells and photoreceptors. DNaseI-seq analysis of the retina and Müller glia shows progressive reduction in accessibility of progenitor gene cis-regulatory regions consistent with the reduction in their reprogramming. These results show that at least one of the differences between mammal and fish Müller glia that bears on their difference in regenerative potential is the proneural transcription factor Ascl1.
A Takagi-Sugeno Fuzzy System for the Prediction of River Stage Dynamics

An algorithm for real-time prediction of river stage dynamics using a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system is presented in this paper. The system is trained incrementally each time step and is used to predict onestep and multi-step ahead of river stages. The number of input variables that were considered in the analysis was determined using two statistical methods, i.e. autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation between the variables. Effectiveness of the identification technique was demonstrated by a simulation study on the river stage of the Cilalawi River in Indonesia. The numerical results of the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy modeling method were compared with the results of a conventional linear regression model. Through inspection of the results it was found that the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy approach was more accurate in predicting one-step and multi-step ahead of river stage dynamics than the conventional multiple linear regression approach. The Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system was able to make a proper fuzzy rule from the training data set, which might be considered as one of the main drawbacks of the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system. Yet, more substantial improvement certainly should be pursued through further research to improve the forecast results at greater lead times. Discipline: Agricultural engineering Additional key words: linear regression, multi-step ahead, time series
On rate optimal local estimation in functional linear model

We consider the estimation of the value of a linear functional of the slope parameter in functional linear regression, where scalar responses are modeled in dependence of random functions. The theory in this paper covers in particular point-wise estimation as well as the estimation of weighted averages of the slope parameter. We propose a plug-in estimator which is based on a dimension reduction technique and additional thresholding. It is shown that this estimator is consistent under mild assumptions. We derive a lower bound for the maximal mean squared error of any estimator over a certain ellipsoid of slope parameters and a certain class of covariance operators associated with the regressor. It is shown that the proposed estimator attains this lower bound up to a constant and hence it is minimax optimal. Our results are appropriate to discuss a wide range of possible regressors, slope parameters and functionals. They are illustrated by considering the point-wise estimation of the slope parameter or its derivatives and its average value over a given interval.
The Value of User-Visible Internet Cryptography

Cryptographic mechanisms are used in a wide range of applications, including email clients, web browsers, document and asset management systems, where typical users are not cryptography experts. A number of empirical studies have demonstrated that explicit, user-visible cryptographic mechanisms are not widely used by non-expert users, and as a result arguments have been made that cryptographic mechanisms need to be better hidden or embedded in end-user processes and tools. Other mechanisms, such as HTTPS, have cryptography built-in and only become visible to the user when a dialogue appears due to a (potential) problem. This paper surveys deployed and potential technologies in use, examines the social and legal context of broad classes of users, and from there, assesses the value and issues for those users.
On the Measurement of Import Substitution

Most auithors have divided this number by the increase in doniestic production to obtain the percenttage of growth in the sector "accounted for," "due to," or "attributable to" import substitution.2 Because of its narrow definition of imports, however, Clhenery's original approach misses much of what can be meaningfully considered as import substitution. In this paper we examine the nature of this bias and attempt to correct it by expanding our concept of imports to include the intermediate demands generated by import substitutioin. We then compare our measure to one proposed by Chenery, Shuntaro Shishido, and Tsunehiko Watanabe which included intermediates in a rather different fashion. Finally, we present calculations for Brazil 1949-64 to give some idea of the magnitude of the bias of the original Chenery measure for a semi-industrialized LDC. These results, together with a brief examination of import substitution in other countries, suggest that for long periods of industrialization and/or for international cross sections, import substitution measures which do not incorporate intermediate demwands can be very misleading even as descriptive tools.
High food prices: the what, who, and how of proposed policy actions.

"The complex causes of the current food and agriculture crisis require a comprehensive response. In view of the urgency of assisting people and countries in need, the first set of policy actions— an emergency package—consists of steps that can yield immediate impact: 1. expand emergency responses and humanitarian assistance to food-insecure people and people threatening government legitimacy, 2. eliminate agricultural export bans and export restrictions, 3. undertake fast-impact food production programs in key areas, and 4. change biofuel policies. A second set of actions—a resilience package—consists of the following steps: 5. calm markets with the use of market-oriented regulation of speculation, shared public grain stocks, strengthened food-import financing, and reliable food aid; 6. invest in social protection; 7. scale up investments for sustained agricultural growth; and 8. complete the Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations. Investment in these actions calls for additional resources. Policymakers should consider mobilizing resources from four sources: the winners from the commodity boom among countries; the community of traditional and new donor countries; direct or indirect progressive taxation and reallocation of public expenditures in the affected countries themselves; and mobilization of private sector finance, including through improved outreach of banking to agriculture. Because of countries' diverse situations, the design of programs must be country driven and country owned. Accountability for sound implementation must also rest with countries. At the same time, a new international architecture for the governance of agriculture, food, and nutrition is needed to effectively implement the initiatives described, and especially their international public goods components. Global and national action is needed, through existing mechanisms, well-coordinated special initiatives, and possibly a special fund. " from Text
Mannan-Binding Lectin Inhibits Candida albicans-Induced Cellular Responses in PMA-Activated THP-1 Cells through Toll-Like Receptor 2 and Toll-Like Receptor 4

Background Candida albicans (C. albicans), the most common human fungal pathogen, can cause fatal systemic infections under certain circumstances. Mannan-binding lectin (MBL),a member of the collectin family in the C-type lectin superfamily, is an important serum component associated with innate immunity. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are expressed extensively, and have been shown to be involved in C. albicans-induced cellular responses. We first examined whether MBL modulated heat-killed (HK) C. albicans-induced cellular responses in phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA)-activated human THP-1 macrophages. We then investigated the possible mechanisms of its inhibitory effect. Methodology/Principal Finding Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and reverse transcriptasepolymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis showed that MBL at higher concentrations (10–20 µg/ml) significantly attenuated C. albicans-induced chemokine (e.g., IL-8) and proinflammatory cytokine (e.g., TNF-α) production from PMA-activated THP-1 cells at both protein and mRNA levels. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) and Western blot (WB) analysis showed that MBL could inhibit C. albicans-induced nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) DNA binding and its translocation in PMA-activated THP-1 cells. MBL could directly bind to PMA-activated THP-1 cells in the presence of Ca2+, and this binding decreased TLR2 and TLR4 expressions in C. albicans-induced THP-1 macrophages. Furthermore, the binding could be partially inhibited by both anti-TLR2 monoclonal antibody (clone TL2.1) and anti-TLR4 monoclonal antibody (clone HTA125). In addition, co-immunoprecipitation experiments and microtiter wells assay showed that MBL could directly bind to the recombinant soluble form of extracellular TLR2 domain (sTLR2) and sTLR4. Conclusions/Significance Our study demonstrates that MBL can affect proinflammatory cytokine and chemokine expressions by modifying C. albicans-/TLR-signaling pathways. This study supports an important role for MBL on the regulation of C. albicans-induced cellular responses.