Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
REGIME LEGACIES AND DEMOCRATIZATION: EXPLAINING VARIANCE IN THE LEVEL OF DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA, 1978—2004

In this paper we analyze the level of democracy achieved by 19 Latin American countries after 1977, in the period between the transitions from authoritarian rule and 2004. Our study shows enduring regime legacies: despite authoritarian interruptions in the past, the best predictor of the current level of democracy is the country’s experience with competitive politics during the “first” (1900–44) and the “second” (1945–77) waves (and counter waves) of democratization. We document the impact of regime legacies using a fixed-effects vector decomposition model. Our finding resembles, but does not strictly confirm, theoretical claims about “path dependence” in democratization.
The average size of the 2-Selmer group of Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves having a rational Weierstrass point

We prove that when all hyperelliptic curves of genus $n\geq 1$ having a rational Weierstrass point are ordered by height, the average size of the 2-Selmer group of their Jacobians is equal to 3. It follows that (the limsup of) the average rank of the Mordell-Weil group of their Jacobians is at most 3/2. The method of Chabauty can then be used to obtain an effective bound on the number of rational points on most of these hyperelliptic curves; for example, we show that a majority of hyperelliptic curves of genus $n\geq 3$ with a rational Weierstrass point have fewer than 20 rational points.
Determinación de la diversidad genética de la paloma doméstica Columba livia (Columbidae) a partir de genes polimórficos asociados con el color del plumaje en San Antero, Córdoba, Colombia

El objetivo de esta investigación fue determinar la diversidad genética de la población de la paloma doméstica Columba livia empleando genes polimórficos asociados con el color del plumaje en San Antero, Colombia. Entre marzo y abril del 2017 se hicieron muestreos aleatorios en cuatro subpoblaciones del municipio de San Antero ubicadas en los sitios de Calle Abajo, Calle Central, Parque Central e Iglesia Central mediante excursiones urbanas, observación directay registros fotográficos, y se clasificaron fenotípicamente 235 palomas. Se estudiaron los marcadores autosómicos Grizzle (G); Spread (S); Checker (C) y Ash-Red (B). Los perfiles genéticos de las subpoblaciones de palomasdomésticas se establecieron con los siguientes índices genético-poblacionales: las frecuencias alélicas, la diversidad genética según Nei (1972), la heterocigocidad esperada (He), el coeficiente de diferenciación genética (Gst), el flujo génico (Nm) y las distancias genéticas entre las poblaciones utilizando el programa PopGene 1.31. Los índices de fijación propuestos por Wright, Fis, Fit y Fst, se calcularon mediante el programa FSTAT v 2.9. 3.2. Los marcadores más frecuentes fueron el Checker y el Spread, en tanto que el Ash-Red evidenció las menores frecuencias alélicas. En la población total hubo un alto porcentaje de homocigotos y la diferenciación genética fue baja. Se sugieren posibles efectos de selección en los marcadores Checker y Spread. © 2019. Acad. Colomb. Cienc. Ex. Fis. Nat.
Analysis and design of LCL filter with passive damping circuits for three-phase grid-connected inverters

In this paper, a design method of LCL and a generalized model with various types of passive damping circuits for the three-phase grid-connected inverter are proposed. Based on the generalized model, theoretical analysis is carried out to examine the performance of the designed LCL filter. The validity of the proposed filter model is verified by simulation and experimental results.
Correlation of plasma interleukin-18 concentration and severity of renal involvement and disease activity in systemic lupus erythematosus

Background: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a systemic autoimmune disease characterized by activation of T and polyclonal B lymphocytes. IL-18 was originally identified as a factor which enhances IFN-γ production and is a potent inducer of the inflammatory mediators by T cells, causing severe inflammatory disorders in SLE. Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the association of plasma interlukine-18 (IL-18) concentration and severity of lupus nephritis (LN) and disease activity in SLE patients. Patients and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 113 patients with SLE and 50 healthy individuals were examined. Serum level of IL-18 was measured. The severity and activity of the disease was determined by Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index (SLEDAI) score. The severity of kidney involvement was studied by renal biopsy, serum creatinine and 24 hours urine protein level. Results: The mean level of serum IL-18 was significantly higher in the patients than controls (577.67 ± 649.95 versus 60.48 ± 19.53 pg/ml; P < 0.001). In SLE patients with active disease level of serum IL-18 was significantly higher than chronic disease (622.77 ± 716.54 versus 182 ± 184.37 pg/ml; P < 0.001). The serum level of IL-18 was significantly higher in stage IV (P < 0.001) and V (P < 0.001) of patients with LN, than other stages. Conclusions: The current study showed that the serum IL-18 is significantly higher in the patients than controls and it significantly correlated with sever renal involvement and disease activity in SLE patients.
Mapping Epileptic Activity: Sources or Networks for the Clinicians?

Epileptic seizures of focal origin are classically considered to arise from a focal epileptogenic zone and then spread to other brain regions. This is a key concept for semiological electro-clinical correlations, localization of relevant structural lesions, and selection of patients for epilepsy surgery. Recent development in neuro-imaging and electro-physiology and combinations, thereof, have been validated as contributory tools for focus localization. In parallel, these techniques have revealed that widespread networks of brain regions, rather than a single epileptogenic region, are implicated in focal epileptic activity. Sophisticated multimodal imaging and analysis strategies of brain connectivity patterns have been developed to characterize the spatio-temporal relationships within these networks by combining the strength of both techniques to optimize spatial and temporal resolution with whole-brain coverage and directional connectivity. In this paper, we review the potential clinical contribution of these functional mapping techniques as well as invasive electrophysiology in human beings and animal models for characterizing network connectivity.
A Structure Extraction Technique for XML Query Languages

Querying in structure documents must be respect to content and structure. Since, the Extensible Markup Language(XML) documents have additional information; document representation of these might add up metadata to describe data in context respect to XML language design. Recently, the need for accessing the XML content has been focused on query languages and efficient evaluation algorithms. The structure is very rich and carries important information about contents and their relationships, e.g. e-Commerce data or data published from databases. To improve the result of the retrieval system by using the structure of user query. In this paper, we are proposed a novel structure extraction techniques over a strongly structured collection of XML documents with INEX collection with respect to NEXI query language. It has been discovered that these steps achieve up to 100% respect to our experiments.
Dual threshold voltage domino logic

Dual threshold voltage (DVT) domino logic utilizes dual V<inf>t</inf>'s to provide the performance equivalent of a purely low V<inf>t</inf>design with the standby leakage characteristic of a purely high V<inf>t</inf>implementation. DVT domino logic is an attractive circuit style compared to other dual V<inf>t</inf>techniques because there are no performance penalties, no difficult transistor sizing issues, and all gates (not just non-critical ones) can be compensated. In fact, any low V<inf>t</inf>domino design can easily be converted to a dual V<inf>t</inf>implementation with superior characteristics.
Customer Value Research and ServQual Surveys as Methods for Information Need Analysis - The Ubiquitous City Songdo as a Case Study

Introduction. This article introduces two methods of information need analysis to study the acceptance of so-called “ubiquitous services” (u-services) in a ubiquitous and “smart” city. Case study is New Songdo City in South Korea. Our research is motivated by questions like: (1) Do such cities really react to the information needs of people? and (2) How can one ascertain the success of a u-city in regard to the information needs? Methods . To capture both questions we applied a ServQual-like survey as well as Customer Value Research as methods of information need analysis and interviewed residents in Songdo in early 2013. Results. In regard to methodology, both methods proved to be very useful. The information needs of our residents are more or less satisfied with the offered u-services; the grade of irritation between developers and customers is rather low. Discussion. Our research in Songdo provides first results in regard to the information need of the customers and the usefulness of the u-services in Songdo. For the future work it is important to continue and expand the research.
Ageing and the prevalence and treatment of mental health problems

Background Ageing is an important factor in the development of mental health problems and their treatment. We assessed age trajectories of common mental disorders (CMDs) and psychotherapy utilization from adolescence to old age, and examined whether these trajectories were modified by time period or birth cohort effects. Method British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) with an 18-year follow-up between 1991 and 2009 (n = 30 224 participants, aged 15–100 years, with an average 7.3 person-observations per person). CMDs were assessed with the 12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Psychotherapy treatment utilization during the past year was self-reported by the participants. The modifying influences of time period and cohort effects were assessed in a cohort-sequential longitudinal setting. Results Following a moderate decrease after age 50, the prevalence of GHQ caseness increased steeply from age 75. This increase was more marked in the 2000s (GHQ prevalence increasing from 24% to 43%) than in the 1990s (from 22% to 34%). Psychotherapy utilization decreased after age 55, with no time period or cohort effects modifying the age trajectory. These ageing patterns were replicated in within-individual longitudinal analysis. Conclusions Old age is associated with higher risk of CMDs, and this association has become more marked during the past two decades. Ageing is also associated with an increasing discrepancy between prevalence of mental disorders and provision of treatment, as indicated by lower use of psychotherapy in older individuals.
The Use of WordNet Sense Tagging in FAQFinder

FAQFinder is a Web-based, natural language question-answering system. It answers a user’s question by searching the Usenet Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) files for a similar FAQ question, and displaying its answer to the user. To find the most similar FAQ question, FAQFinder measures similarity in part by using WordNet (Miller, 1990). To increase the accuracy of the similarity metric, we have incorporated an automated WordNet sense tagger into the process. In this paper, we show that the use of this sense tagger improves FAQFinder’s matching accuracy. We argue that WordNet sense tagging can also be used in more general Web search tasks.
Kinetic Modelling with the Systems Biology Modelling Environment SyBME

Summary Kinetic modelling and simulation is an important approach in systems biology. While the focus of current modelling tools is on simulation, model development is a highly iterative process which is currently only partly supported. To support the development of biochemical models, their simulation, and graphical understanding, we designed and implemented SyBME, the Systems Biology Modelling Environment. Here we present the architecture and the main components of SyBME and show its use by modelling sucrose breakdown in developing potato tubers.
Cloud Security with Virtualized Defense and Reputation-Based Trust Mangement

Internet clouds work as service factories built around web-scale datacenters. The elastic cloud resources and huge datasets processed are subject to security breaches, privacy abuses, and copyright violations. Provisioned cloud resources on-demand are especially vulnerable to cyber attacks. The cloud platforms built by Google, IBM, and Amazon all reveal this weaknesses. We propose a new approach to integrating virtual clusters, security-reinforced datacenters, and trusted data accesses guided by reputation systems. A hierarchy of P2P reputation systems is suggested to protect clouds and datacenters at the site level and to safeguard the data objects at the file-access level. Different security countermeasures are suggested to protect cloud service models: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, currently implemented by Amazon, IBM, and Google, respectively.
Sensor-based robot path planning using harmonic function-based probabilistic roadmaps

We present a new sensor-based robot motion planning framework for mobile robot navigation in unknown environments. The main idea of the proposed planning approach, inspired by our recent works on using harmonic function-based probabilistic roadmaps (HFPRM) for robotic navigation in known environments (model-based cases) (Kazemi et al., 2004, 2005), is to utilize a fluid dynamic (FD) paradigm based on potential flows to identify and prioritize critical regions, i.e. narrow passages and hard-to-navigate regions, at the scan planning stage of a sensor-based probabilistic roadmap (PRM). The PRM, which efficiently captures the connectivity of the free space, is incrementally expanded as the robot senses the physical workspace. Computer simulations and experimental results obtained using a mobile robot equipped with ultrasonic range finders are presented
Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 env Evolves toward Ancestral States upon Transmission to a New Host

ABSTRACT Selecting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) sequences for inclusion within vaccines has been a difficult problem, as circulating HIV strains evolve relentlessly and become increasingly divergent over time. We report an assessment of this divergence from three perspectives: (i) across different hosts as a function of time of infection, (ii) between donors and recipients in known transmission pairs, and (iii) within individual hosts over time in relation to the initially replicating virus and to the deduced ancestral sequence of the intrahost viral population. Surprisingly, we consistently found less divergence between viruses from different individuals sampled in primary infection than in individuals sampled at more advanced stages of illness. Furthermore, longitudinal analysis of intrahost divergence revealed a 2- to 3-year period of evolution toward a common ancestral sequence at the start of infection, indicating that HIV recovers certain ancestral features when infecting a new host. These results have important implications for the study of HIV population genetics and rational vaccine design, including favoring the inclusion of viral gene sequences taken early in infection.
Spring Meeting, Guy's Hospital, London 26 and 27 March 1976

Chiasmata, univalents, and production of trisomy. P. E. Polani and G. Jagiello. Paediatric Research Unit, Guy's Hospital London. In 1968 Henderson and Edwards put forward the 'production line' hypothesis for the origin of trisomic chromosome anomalies. The hypothesis was based on the observation in mice that the frequency of chiasmata at first meiotic division drops with advancing age, while the proportion of chromosome univalents increases. It is in keeping with the behaviour of univalents to malsegregate at first meiotic division and produce nondisjunctional gametes which can be responsible for the formation of trisomic zygotes. Because mammalian meiosis in general, including chiasma formation, takes place in utero, Henderson and Edwards postulated that oogonia that were committed to meiosis earlier in intrauterine life had more chiasmata than those that entered meiotic prophase later and, compared with them, were released from the ovary sooner after puberty. As a consequence of the fewer chiasmata more univalents were allegedly present in the ova released later, with the consequent production of unbalanced gametes and zygotes. If the hypothesis is correct, and accepting that the univalents are true univalents, subject to their customary abnormal behaviour, it is anticipated that the errors of first meiotic division would be reflected in chromosome abnormalities detectable at second meiotic division. Experiments were therefore done on this part of the hypothesis, namely to see whether the observed univalents were true or not. The results obtained suggest that the univalents observed at first meiotic division in older female mice are not true univalents though the reduction of chiasma frequency with age was confirmed.
Drought Stress Tolerance Screening of Elite American Breeding Rice Genotypes Using Low-Cost Pre-Fabricated Mini-Hoop Modules

Drought is a major abiotic stress factor affecting the growth and development of plants at all stages. Developing a screening tool for identifying drought stress tolerance during seedling establishment is important in the deployment of rice varieties suited to water-limited growing environments. An experiment was conducted to evaluate 100 rice genotypes, mostly belonging to the tropical japonica subspecies, for drought stress tolerance using low-cost, pre-fabricated mini-hoop structures. The rice seedlings were subjected to two different soil moisture regimes- control pots managed at 100% and drought pots at 50% field capacity, from 12 to 30 days after sowing (DAS). Several morpho-physiological parameters including root traits were measured to assess the response of genotypes to drought stress. Significant moisture stress × genotype interactions were found for most of the parameters measured. A cumulative drought stress response index (CDSRI) was developed by adding the individual response indices of all cultivars. Based on CDSRI and standard deviation values, 5 and 28 genotypes were identified as highly sensitive and sensitive to drought, respectively, and 45 as moderately sensitive. On the other hand, 16 and 6 genotypes were classified as tolerant and highly tolerant to drought, respectively. Cheniere, a released cultivar, and RU1402174, an experimental breeding line, were identified as the least and most tolerant to drought among the 100 genotypes tested. Significant linear correlation coefficients were obtained between CDSRI and root growth parameters (R2 = 0.91, n = 100) and CDSRI with shoot growth parameters (R2 = 0.48, n = 100), revealing the importance of root traits in studying and identifying drought tolerant lines during the seedling establishment stages in rice. The tolerant rice genotypes identified will be valuable for rice scientists in studying the mechanism for early season drought as well as for rice breeders for developing new genotypes best suited under growing environments prone to early-season drought.
Plato's Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals

In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation -- or "takes a picture" -- of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures.
Serum response factor is overexpressed in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and promotes Eca-109 cell proliferation and invasion

Recent studies indicate that serum response factor (SRF) is highly expressed in tumors such as hepatocellular, thyroid, esophageal and lung carcinoma. However, the expression and roles of SRF in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) are unclear. In this study, immunohistochemistry was used to compare the expression of SRF in ESCC cases (n=73) and normal controls (n=30). The RNA interference (RNAi) technique was used to knock down the expression of SRF in Eca-109 cells. Cell proliferation, cell cycle stage and invasion were measured with cell counting kit (CCK)-8, flow cytometry and Transwell assays, respectively. Western blotting was used to measure SRF, E-cadherin, β-catenin and cyclin D1 expression in Eca-109 cells treated with siRNA. The study demonstrated that human ESCC has increased expression of SRF. In addition, blocking SRF expression inhibited tumor proliferation and invasion. In conclusion, SRF has the potential to be a new marker for ESCC diagnosis and therapy.
Clock generation and distribution for the first IA-64 microprocessor

Increased functionality and performance in today's microprocessors has resulted in a trend toward larger die sizes and higher operating frequencies. These factors, coupled with larger on-die variations at reduced device geometries, call for special management of the clock distribution skew. The clock generation and distribution for the first IA-64 microprocessor achieves a low skew by using distributed programmable deskew units. Local skew control compensates for load mismatches and within-die process variations, as well as temperature and voltage gradients. In addition, this design supports debug features including on-die clock shrink and test access port (TAP) control of the deskew settings.
Reducing Agents Sensitize C-Type Nociceptors by Relieving High-Affinity Zinc Inhibition of T-Type Calcium Channels

Recent studies have demonstrated an important role for T-type Ca2+ channels (T-channels) in controlling the excitability of peripheral pain-sensing neurons (nociceptors). However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the functions of T-channels in nociceptors are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that reducing agents as well as endogenous metal chelators sensitize C-type dorsal root ganglion nociceptors by chelating Zn2+ ions off specific extracellular histidine residues on Cav3.2 T-channels, thus relieving tonic channel inhibition, enhancing Cav3.2 currents, and lowering the threshold for nociceptor excitability in vitro and in vivo. Collectively, these findings describe a novel mechanism of nociceptor sensitization and firmly establish reducing agents, as well as Zn2+, Zn2+-chelating amino acids, and Zn2+-chelating proteins as endogenous modulators of Cav3.2 and nociceptor excitability.