Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Child Poverty and Family Transfers in Southern Europe

The drive to reduce child poverty is of particular interest in southern Europe, where the subsidiary role of the State in matters of family policy has implied that programmes of public assistance to poor families with children are often meagre or not available at all. The paper examines the effect of family transfers (used broadly to include contributory family allowances, non-contributory child benefits and tax credits or allowances) on child poverty in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Using the European microsimulation model EUROMOD, the paper first assesses the distributional impact of existing family transfers and then explores the scope for policy reforms. By way of illustration, the effects of universal child benefit schemes similar to those in Britain, Denmark and Sweden are simulated. The paper concludes with a discussion of key findings and policy implications.
Spatial Heterogeneity in Epidemic Models

Spatial heterogeneity is believed to play an important role in the persistence and dynamics of epidemics of childhood diseases because asynchrony between populations within different regions allows global persistence, even if the disease dies out locally. A simple multi-patch (metapopulation) model for spatial heterogeneity in epidemics is analysed and we examine conditions under which patches become synchronized. We show that the patches in non-seasonal deterministic models often oscillate in phase for all but the weakest between patch coupling. Synchronization is also seen for stochastic models, although slightly stronger coupling is needed to overcome the random effects. We demonstrate that the inclusion of seasonal forcing in deterministic models can lead to the maintenance of phase differences between patches. Complex dynamic behaviour is observed in the seasonally forced spatial model, along with the coexistence of many different behaviours. Compared to the non-spatial model, chaotic solutions are observed for weaker seasonal forcing; these solutions have a more realistic minimum number of infectives. 7 1996 Academic Press Limited
Core-Selecting Secondary Spectrum Auctions

In a secondary spectrum market, the utility of a secondary user often depends on not only whether it wins, but also which channels it wins. Combinatorial auctions are a natural fit here to allow secondary users to bid for combinations of channels. In this context, the VCG mechanism constitutes a generic auction that uniquely guarantees both truthfulness and efficiency. There also exists related auction design that relaxes efficiency due to perceived complexity issues, and focuses on truthfulness. Starting with new empirical evidences on the complexity issue, we propose to design core-selecting auctions instead, which resolve VCG's vulnerability to collusion and shill bidding, and improve seller revenue. While the VCG type of auctions are unique in guaranteeing both efficiency and truthfulness, we prove that our core-selecting auctions are unique in guaranteeing both efficiency and shill-proofness, and always outperform VCG auctions in terms of seller revenue generated. Employing linear programming and quadratic programming techniques, we design two payment rules for minimizing the incentives of bidders to deviate from truth telling.
Children and Career Interruptions: The Family Gap in Denmark

The effect of children and career interruptions on the family gap is analysed based on longitudinal data covering the years 1980-1995. The estimated model controls for unobserved time-constant heterogeneity. The results show that when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, the negative effect of children on mothers' wages disappear, but there are large differences between educational groups and the public and private sector. The main effect of children seems to be a loss of human capital accumulation during child-birth periods. Beside this, there is no indication that children have long term effects on the earnings potential of their mothers.
A Fraction of CD133+ CNE2 Cells Is Made of Giant Cancer Cells with Morphological Evidence of Asymmetric Mitosis

CD133 has been suggested as a broad-spectrum marker for cancer stem cells(CSCs). The present study investigated the expression of CD133 in biopsy tissues of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), NPC cell lines and the immortalized cell line NP69 by immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry and qRT-PCR. CD133+ cancer cells were isolated using magnetic-activated cell sorting technology. The study demonstrated that CD133+ cells are rare in NPC tissues and cell lines and that their self-renewal and proliferation abilities are stronger than those of CD133- cells and suggested that CD133+ NPC cells have characteristics of cancer stem cells. We further observed CD133+ cancer cells using a light microscope and scanning electron microscope. Generally, CD133+ cells are small, regular and round with small microvilli. On the other hand, CD133- cells are more polymorphic and larger with long micromicrovilli. Additionally, in some fields, several giant cancer cells (GCCs) in the CD133+ cell group were identified under the light microscope. Most of them were polynuclear cells. Under the scanning electron microscope, we found indefinite regular small bodies on the surface of or surrounding the giant cancer cells, some of which appeared to be creeping out the parental cells. This phenomenon was not observed in the CD133- cell groups. Through comparison with descriptions of apoptotic bodies in the literature and from the results of the acridine orange test, we propose that some of the small bodies are daughter cells of the GCCs. This phenomenon is a mode of division of cancer cells called neosis, or budding, which is a form of reproduction for simple organisms. Budding is satisfied with the rapid speed of tumor development. GCCs could be isolated by CD133 beads because the daughter cells have stem-cell characteristics and express stem-cell markers.
Evaluation Method of Electromagnetic Field Exposure Levels from Wireless Power Transfer System

—If the wireless power transfer system is located to a person; the magnetic fields produce by the wireless power transfer system will vary in the region occupied by the human body. According the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), the predicated or the measured values have to be spatially averaged in an area representing the dimension of the human body and compared with the adopted reference level of exposure. Although spatial averaging is better approximation compared to point measurement, the standard of how to perform such an assessment does not exist. This paper describes the method for spatial averaging magnetic field. We analyzed the difference of spatial averaging value (1-and 2-dimensional templates consists of different number of position) and compared it with the standard uncertainty for measurement drift. The proposed methods are given to present the effectiveness of the choice of measurement position.
AD HOC ROUTING FOR BLUETOOTH USING EPIDEMIC ALGORITHM

In an ad hoc network connection establishment is done to secure a path for routing packets from source to destination. This path is then maintained to secure further transmissions. In the case of Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) which are more flexible, this is not usable. Some constraints in Bluetooth demand a more flexible on-demand ad hoc network compared to other types of ad hoc network protocols. Initially found that creating a scatternet is not practically possible using Bluetooth version 1.1 as the slave/slave bridge is not implemented into the hardware. In this paper, we present an Epidemic Algorithm to make it better suited for Bluetooth routing. Distributing information within networks can be complicated if hosts have only limited knowledge of the properties of the network. This leads to problems when it is highly important that specific information has to reach one particular host or all hosts within the entire network. Epidemic algorithms follow the paradigm of nature by applying simple rules to spread information by just having a local view of the environment. According to this fact, these algorithms are easy to implement and guarantee message propagation in heterogeneous and not all the time coherent environments. I. INTRODUCTION The number of devices making use of Bluetooth technology has rapidly increased in numbers thanks to the amount of implementations in cellular telephones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), etc. Bluetooth is also very strong in secure communication as compared to other technologies used today. Instead of the point-to-point technique used today the wireless community demands more sophisticated solutions to transmit data between two devices, e.g. using a chat program within an ad hoc network. By an on-demand ad hoc network, we refer to a network in which the path of a packet is not known a priori, but must rather be discovered first and in order to sure for subsequent transmissions. Each established connections are disconnected directly after a packet has been transmitted because of the potential of the nodes. This is a pertinent issue in nomadic environment such as sensor networks or Bluetooth Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs). The Bluetooth technology suffers from connections times sometimes being quite long (in the order of several seconds). In order to consider Bluetooth a viable option for use in a nomadic routing scenario, it is therefore imperative to reduce the number of connections made, even if this would mean the introduction of some overhead …
The accuracy of two equations for predicting maximal oxygen uptake on individualized ramp protocol

Purpose. Valid protocols use nomograms based on standardized stages to calculate maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max). Although the maximal ramp exercise protocol offers advantages over traditional protocols, it is not known if the non-standardized stages approach affects the accuracy to estimate VO2max. the study aims to examine the accuracy of 2 equations for predicting VO2max in a maximal ramp exercise test. Methods. Overall, 11 men (age: 26 ± 5 years, height: 178 ± 7 cm, weight: 77.6 ± 9.9 kg) underwent 3 sessions of a maximal ramp test on a motorized treadmill; the speed increments were equal but with 0, 3, and 6% grades. Expired gases were analysed with a portable metabolic system. the VO2max measured was set as the highest mean value observed from 7 consecutive breaths and it was predicted from 2 equations: American college Sports Medicine (AcSM) and Myers. Results. VO2max predicted by AcSM equation (54.3 ± 6.7 mL · kg · min) was approximately 10 ± 10% higher and by Myers equation (30.6 ± 6.1 mL · kg · min) approximately 38 ± 11% lower than directly measured (49.6 ± 6.7 mL · kg · min, p < 0.05). Bland-Altman graphs indicate low and no agreement for AcSM and Myers equations, respectively. the calculated standard error of the estimates was 6.5 mL · kg · min for AcSM equation and 19.9 mL · kg · min for Myers equation. Conclusions. the AcSM and Myers equations significantly overand under-predict the VO2max of young adults, respectively. Although the former overestimated VO2max, we recommend its use with caution.
Action knowledge extraction from Web text

Action knowledge is an important type of behavioral knowledge and of vital importance to many applications in social computing, especially in behavior modeling, analysis and prediction. In this paper, we present a computational method to action knowledge extraction from online media. Our approach is based on mutual bootstrapping and combined with knowledge reasoning. Compared with the related work, our approach can acquire more types of action knowledge, and needs much less human labor. We evaluate the performance of our method using the Web textual data from security informatics domain. The experimental results show the effectiveness of our proposed method.
Local Broadband Access: Primum Non Nocere or Primum Processi? A Property Rights Approach

High-speed or "broadband" Internet access currently is provided, at the local level, chiefly by cable television and telephone companies, often in competition with each other. Wireless and satellite providers have a small but growing share of this business. An influential coalition of economic interests and academics have proposed that local broadband Internet access providers be prohibited from restricting access to their systems by upstream suppliers of Internet services. A recent term for this proposal is "net neutrality. " We examine the potential costs and benefits of such a policy from an economic welfare perspective. Using a property rights approach, we ask whether transactions costs in the market for access rights are likely to be significant, and if so, whether owners of physical local broadband platforms are likely to be more or less efficient holders of access rights than Internet content providers. We conclude that transactions costs are likely to be lower if access rights are assigned initially to platform owners rather than content providers. In addition, platform hardware owners are likely to be more efficient holders of these rights because they can internalize demand-side interactions among content products. Further, failure to permit platform owners to control access threatens to result in inadequate incentives to invest in, to maintain, and to upgrade local broadband platforms. Inefficiently denying platform owners the ability to own access rights implies a need for price regulation; otherwise, there will be incentives to use pricing to circumvent the constraint on rights ownership. Price regulation is itself known to induce welfare losses through adaptive behavior of the constrained firm. The impact on welfare might produce a worse result than the initial problem, assuming one existed. Much of the academic interest in net neutrality arises from the belief that the open architecture of the Internet under current standards has been responsible for its remarkable success, and a wish to preserve this openness. We point out that the openness of the Internet was an unintended consequence of its military origins, and that other, less open, architectures might have been even more successful. A policy of denying platform owners the ability to own access rights could freeze the architecture of the Internet, preventing it from adapting to future technological and economic developments. Finally, we examine the net neutrality issue from the perspective of the "essential facility doctrine," a tool of the common law of antitrust. The doctrine establishes conditions under which federal courts will mandate access by competitors to the monopoly platform of a vertically-integrated firm. Because local broadband Internet access is not today a bottleneck monopoly (there are several competitors and the market is at an early stage of development), the essential facilities doctrine would not permit reassignment of access rights from platform owners to competitors. We conclude that "net neutrality" is a welfare-reducing policy proposal.
pplying weakest t-norm based approximate intuitionistic fuzzy rithmetic operations on different types of intuitionistic fuzzy umbers to evaluate reliability of PCBA fault

This research addresses system reliability analysis using weakest t-norm based approximate intuitionistic fuzzy arithmetic operations, where failure probabilities of all components are represented by different types of intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. Due to the incomplete, imprecise, vague and conflicting information about the component of system, the present study evaluates the reliability of system in terms of membership function and non-membership function by using weakest t-norm (Tw) based approximate intuitionistic fuzzy arithmetic operations on different types of intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. In general, interval arithmetic ( -cut arithmetic) operations have been used to analyze the fuzzy system reliability. In complicated systems, interval arithmetic operations may occur the accumulating phenomenon of fuzziness. In order to overcome the accumulating phenomenon of fuzziness, this research adopts approximate intuitionistic fuzzy arithmetic operations under the weakest t-norm arithmetic operations (Tw) to analyze fuzzy system reliability. The approximate intuitionistic fuzzy arithmetic operations employ principle of interval arithmetic under the weakest t-norm arithmetic operations. The proposed novel fuzzy arithmetic operations may obtain fitter decision values, which have smaller fuzziness accumulating and successfully analyze the system reliability. Also weakest t-norm arithmetic operations provide more exact fuzzy results and effectively reduce fuzzy spreads (fuzzy intervals). Using proposed approach, fuzzy reliability of series system and parallel system are also constructed. For numerical verification of proposed approach, a malfunction of printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) is presented as a numerical example. The result of the proposed method is compared with the listing approaches of reliability analysis methods. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Retrieval of Brain Image Using Soft Computing Technique

CBIR in medical image databases are used to assist physician in diagnosis the diseases and also used to aid diagnosis by identifying similar past cases. Retrieval of brain in fast, accurate and an effective from the large data set needs pre-processing steps as novel approach. This approach contains two methods. One method is removal of artifacts in brain image and another one is extraction of fine brain portion using Fuzzy Expectation Maximization Algorithm (FEMA). For the feature extraction use shape feature like 2D-Zernike moment and finally for retrieval of brain image this paper proposes soft computing technique of Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) with four distance metric measures viz., Euclidean Distance, Quasi Euclidean, City Block distance, Hamming Distance. For the experimental results 1500 MRI images are taken from scan centre and some brain images are collected from web and these have been implemented with these methods. The experiments which show that the retrieval of brain image using ELM with hamming distance advice promising results are reported.
‘Nationalising’ and Transforming the Public Funding of Early Years Education (and care) in England 1996–2017

ABSTRACT The public funding of early years education and care in England has been transformed. Historically, local councils had the main responsibility for decisions regarding nursery education and child day care, but in 1996 the Conservative government introduced a nursery education voucher scheme. Parents of four-year-olds could exchange the voucher for three terms of part-time ‘preschool provision’ in a state maintained nursery or primary school, or in a private, voluntary or independent (PVI) provider of child day care; in 1998, the Labour government replaced the voucher with an entitlement to free part-time ‘early education’. The entitlement was expanded progressively and in 2017 the Conservative government introduced 30 h per week free ‘childcare’ for some children, together with an Early Years National Funding Formula. Funding goals and policy have shifted over time, underpinned by the idea of ‘a level playing field’ between providers in maintained and PVI sectors. However, there is no statutory requirement for PVI settings to employ qualified teachers, militating against a genuine ‘level playing field’ and the integration of education and care.
An fMRI Study of Neuronal Specificity in Acupuncture: The Multiacupoint Siguan and Its Sham Point

Clarifying the intrinsic mechanisms of acupuncture's clinical effects has recently been gaining popularity. Here, we choose the Siguan acupoint (a combination of bilateral LI4 and Liv3) and its sham point to evaluate multiacupoint specificity. Thirty-one healthy volunteers were randomly divided into real acupoint (21 subjects) and sham acupoint (10 subjects) groups. Our study used a single block experimental design to avoid the influence of posteffects. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired during acupuncture stimulation. Results showed extensive increase in neuronal activities with Siguan acupuncture and significant differences between stimulation at real and sham points. Brain regions that were activated more by real acupuncture stimulation than by sham point acupuncture included somatosensory cortex (the superior parietal lobule and postcentral gyrus), limbic-paralimbic system (the calcarine gyrus, precuneus, cingulate cortex, and parahippocampal gyrus), visual-related cortex (the fusiform and occipital gyri), basal ganglia, and the cerebellum. In this way, our study suggests Siguan may elicit specific activities in human brain.
Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) Regulator Cib1 Controls Expression of Genes Encoding Secreted Virulence Factors in Ustilago maydis

The unfolded protein response (UPR), a conserved eukaryotic signaling pathway to ensure protein homeostasis in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), coordinates biotrophic development in the corn smut fungus Ustilago maydis. Exact timing of UPR activation is required for virulence and presumably connected to the elevated expression of secreted effector proteins during infection of the host plant Zea mays. In the baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, expression of UPR target genes is induced upon binding of the central regulator Hac1 to unfolded protein response elements (UPREs) in their promoters. While a role of the UPR in effector secretion has been described previously, we investigated a potential UPR-dependent regulation of genes encoding secreted effector proteins. In silico prediction of UPREs in promoter regions identified the previously characterized effector genes pit2 and tin1-1, as bona fide UPR target genes. Furthermore, direct binding of the Hac1-homolog Cib1 to the UPRE containing promoter fragments of both genes was confirmed by quantitative chromatin immunoprecipitation (qChIP) analysis. Targeted deletion of the UPRE abolished Cib1-dependent expression of pit2 and significantly affected virulence. Furthermore, ER stress strongly increased Pit2 expression and secretion. This study expands the role of the UPR as a signal hub in fungal virulence and illustrates, how biotrophic fungi can coordinate cellular physiology, development and regulation of secreted virulence factors.