Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How to quantify exposure to traumatic stress? Reliability and predictive validity of measures for cumulative trauma exposure in a post-conflict population

Background While studies with survivors of single traumatic experiences highlight individual response variation following trauma, research from conflict regions shows that almost everyone develops posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) if trauma exposure reaches extreme levels. Therefore, evaluating the effects of cumulative trauma exposure is of utmost importance in studies investigating risk factors for PTSD. Yet, little research has been devoted to evaluate how this important environmental risk factor can be best quantified. Methods We investigated the retest reliability and predictive validity of different trauma measures in a sample of 227 Ugandan rebel war survivors. Trauma exposure was modeled as the number of traumatic event types experienced or as a score considering traumatic event frequencies. In addition, we investigated whether age at trauma exposure can be reliably measured and improves PTSD risk prediction. Results All trauma measures showed good reliability. While prediction of lifetime PTSD was most accurate from the number of different traumatic event types experienced, inclusion of event frequencies slightly improved the prediction of current PTSD. Conclusions As assessing the number of traumatic events experienced is the least stressful and time-consuming assessment and leads to the best prediction of lifetime PTSD, we recommend this measure for research on PTSD etiology.
Similarity Between Queries in a Mediator

Answering queries on remote and heterogeneous sources is a complex task. Mediators provide techniques that exploit a domain ontology. To propose a cooperative approach to repair queries without answers, we introduce the notion of solution which is a query close to the user's query. We describe how ontologies can be used to evaluate the similarity of two predicates and then of two queries. The work presented has been developed in the PICSEL2 project. Examples come from the domain of tourism, the experimentation domain chosen for this project.
Specific Dysregulation of IFNγ Production by Natural Killer Cells Confers Susceptibility to Viral Infection

Natural Killer (NK) cells contribute to the control of viral infection by directly killing target cells and mediating cytokine release. In C57BL/6 mice, the Ly49H activating NK cell receptor plays a key role in early resistance to mouse cytomegalovirus (MCMV) infection through specific recognition of the MCMV-encoded MHC class I-like molecule m157 expressed on infected cells. Here we show that transgenic expression of Ly49H failed to provide protection against MCMV infection in the naturally susceptible A/J mouse strain. Characterization of Ly49H+ NK cells from Ly49h-A transgenic animals showed that they were able to mount a robust cytotoxic response and proliferate to high numbers during the course of infection. However, compared to NK cells from C57BL/6 mice, we observed an intrinsic defect in their ability to produce IFNγ when challenged by either m157-expressing target cells, exogenous cytokines or chemical stimulants. This effect was limited to NK cells as T cells from C57BL/6 and Ly49h-A mice produced comparable cytokine levels. Using a panel of recombinant congenic strains derived from A/J and C57BL/6 progenitors, we mapped the genetic basis of defective IFNγ production to a single 6.6 Mb genetic interval overlapping the Ifng gene on chromosome 10. Inspection of the genetic interval failed to reveal molecular differences between A/J and several mouse strains showing normal IFNγ production. The chromosome 10 locus is independent of MAPK signalling or decreased mRNA stability and linked to MCMV susceptibility. This study highlights the existence of a previously uncovered NK cell-specific cis-regulatory mechanism of Ifnγ transcript expression potentially relevant to NK cell function in health and disease.
Una aproximación al sesgo de medición del precio de las computadoras personales en México

Changes in quality in information technology products provoke that compilation of their price indexes represent a major challenge. In this respect, this paper has three goals. In first place, to build price indexes for personal computers during 1990-2004. In second place, to compare our price indexes with those compiled by Mexican Central Bank, Spanish National Institute of Statistics, and Bureau of Labor Statistics. In third place, to make an exploration about the viability of hedonic functions transfer between countries. Our results show a 21% average decline of the PC price index during the analyzed period. In consequence, official price index related to computers has a measurement bias. The adjusted CPI implies that the inflation rate was 4.425%, and not 4.463% as established by the Central Bank between July 2003 and December 2004.
Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography

Here is a unique collection of fifty years of essays chosen to form an unconventional autobiography and capstone to his remarkable career as the conservative writer par excellence. Included are essays that capture Buckley's joyful boyhood and family life; his years as a conservative firebrand at Yale; the life of a young army officer; his love of wine and sailing; memories of his favourite friends; the great influences of music and religion; a life in politics; and exploring the beauty, diversity, and exactitude of the English language
Comparing issue salience in EU Profiler statements to issue salience in election manifestos and European citizenry

Due to their widespread use, internet-based Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) such as the Dutch ‘StemWijzer’ and the German ‘Wahl-O-Mat’ have become one of the most striking subjects in electoral politics (Rosema, Anderson, & Walgrave, 2014, p. 240; Walgrave, Nuytemans, & Pepermans, 2009, pp. 1163–1166). Such online tools help voters find the political party that best matches their political preferences by matching the answers of voters to policy-related statements with the positions of parties on the same statements. On occasion of the 2009 European Parliament (EP) elections, a consortium of European research institutions1 launched the pan-European VAA ‘EU Profiler’ in the 272 European Member States plus Turkey, Switzerland and Croatia. Until shortly after the elections, more than 2.5 million initiated and almost one million completed sessions had been registered (Trechsel & Mair, 2011, p. 5). In other words, the EU Profiler had provided almost one million European citizens with voting advice. The present thesis aims to assess the representativeness of that advice by analysing the EU Profiler statements’ issue concentration and distribution and comparing it to issue salience of election manifestos3 and issue salience of European citizens. The concept of issue salience is based on the assumption that political parties compete by emphasising issues and that electorates base their vote choice on personal issue prioritisation.
Aisb Journal Biologically-inspired Machine Vision, Theory and Application Editors' Introduction Perception of Human Periodic Motion in Movinglightdisplays: Amotion-basedfrequencydomainapproach

We present amotion-based frequency-domain technique for modelling and recognising human periodic movements in moving light displays (MLDs). Periodic motions are modelled by motion templates composed of a set of feature power vectors. Feature power vectors are extracted from unidentified trajectories of feature points using motion power spectral analysis. Motion recognition therefore is carried out in the frequency domain by finding a best match among pre-stored templates. Recognition is demonstrated through examples of human periodic motion with data obtained from a marker-based motion capture system. Experimental results prove that motion characteristics exist not only in the spatio-temporal domain, but also in frequency domain. This method contrasts with common spatio-temporal approaches and avoids a time consuming recovery of underlying kinematic structures in visual analysis.
International migration and the future of populations and labour force resources in Europe

Acknowledgements. - 1: Introduction: Marek Kupiszewski. - PART I: INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION - POLICIES, THEORIES, TRENDS AND ASSUMPTIONS. - 2: Migration policy in the European perspective: a primer for forecasters: Anna Kicinger. - 3: The use of international migration theories in migration forecasting - a practical approach: Marek Kupiszewski, Jakub Bijak, Anna Kicinger. - 4: Recent trends in international migration in Europe prior to 2002: Jakub Bijak, Marek Kupiszewski. - 5: International migration scenarios for 27 European countries, 2002-2052: Jakub Bijak, Anna Kicinger, Marek Kupiszewski. - PART II: PAST AND FUTURE OF FERTILITY AND MORTALITY IN EUROPE. - 6. : Fertility scenarios for 27 European countries, 2002-2052: Jakub Bijak. - 7: Mortality scenarios for 27 European countries, 2002-2052: Jakub Bijak. - PART III: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT AND ASSUMPTIONS ON LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION IN EUROPE. - 8: Models and factors of labour force participation - theoretical and empirical considerations: Katarzyna Saczuk. - 9: Historical trends in labour force participation in Europe (1985-2002): Katarzyna Saczuk. - 10: Scenarios of labour force participation for 27 European countries 2002-2052: Kararzyna Saczuk. - PART IV: FUTURES OF EUROPEAN POPULATIONS AND LABOUR FORCE. - 11: Population and labour force dynamics model: Dorota Kupiszewska, Marek Kupiszewski. - The futures of European populations and labour force, 2002-2052: Jakub Bijak, Dorota Kupiszewski, Marek Kupiszewski, Katarzyna Saczuk. - PART V: BEYOND OF REPLACEMENT MIGRATION: RESULTS OF POPULAITON AND LABOUR FORCE SIMULATIONS: 13: A development and critique of the concept of replacement migration: Katarzyna Saczuk. - 14: Population ageing, population decline and replacement migration in Europe (Jakub Bijak, Dorota Kupiszewska, Marek Kupiszewski, Katarzyna Saczuk. - PART VI: CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE RESULTS AND POLICY IMPACT: 15: Critical assessment of the labour force evolution in Europe: Elzbieta Krynska. - 16: Demography rules in pension systems: Marek Gora. - 17: Recommendations for European social and population policies: Jakub Bijak. - 18: References.
A Bitmap Compression Algorithm for Vertical Association Rules Mining

The vertical association rules mining algorithm is an effective mining method recently, which makes use of support sets of frequent itemsets to calculate the support of candidate itemsets. It overcomes the disadvantages that Apriori and its relative algorithms produce large amount of candidate itemsets and require scanning database many times. The vertical association rules mining algorithm needs to save support sets of frequent itemsets in the memory, and usually adopts bitmap to store frequent itemsets' support sets. This is the main space expense of the algorithm, and also a key factor that restricts algorithm's expansibility. Therefore, in this paper, we will present an improved algorithm which adopts compressed bitmap to improve on vertical association rules mining algorithm. It compresses the support sets which will be put into the memory to achieve the purpose of saving memory space. Our experimental results indicate that the bitmap compression algorithm for vertical association rules mining decreases memory space when the process is running.
Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth: A Study Relating to the United Arab Emirates

The aim of this paper is to study and hence establish stylized facts for the effects of fiscal policy on long-run economic growth for the small oil producing economy of the United Arab Emirates. Using multivariate cointegration techniques, this is done by decomposing total government spending into investment and consumption expenditures and assessing their intertemporal causal effects on output growth. Robust evidence from the analysis shows that government investment has a positive and significant effect on growth, while the effect of government consumption is negative and insignificant. Since in recent years the United Arab Emirates’ government is facing a substantially growing budget deficit, the paper recommends reducing the share of government consumption expenditures.
FOMatch: A Fuzzy Ontology-Based Semantic Matching Algorithm of Publish/Subscribe Systems

The amount of information is exponentially increasing over the Internet where information sources are autonomic, heterogeneous and dynamic. Thus, effective selective dissemination of relevant information is very essential for users. Publish/subscribe systems are gaining increasing popularity due to its loose coupling and scalability. However, traditional content-based pub/sub systems are crisp and limited. We put forward a new subscription model which could describe the userspsila fuzzy needs more precisely with similarity threshold and weight of each constraint. We also propose a semantic matching algorithm, which makes use of domain knowledge, described by fuzzy ontology, to solve the uncertainty problems. The experiment demonstrates the algorithmpsilas high efficiency, high effectiveness and good scalability.
Science Education as Conceptual Change

The respective literature on science and math learning provide many detailed analyses of the alternative conceptual frameworks that students bring to the classroom and of the conceptual changes necessary for students to learn the concepts that are the targets of instruction. Examples range from young students’ understanding of number, astronomy, biology, and matter to the high school and college students’ understanding of mechanics, chemistry, thermal phenomena, or evolution. This paper shows that, for the average student, the conceptual changes sketched here are not completed until well into the second decade of life.
An Adaptive Prosthetic Hand with Compliant Joints and EMG-based Control

In this paper some recent results about the experimental trials we are performing on a functional prosthetic hand characterized by an EMG-control and by a simple and low cost fabrication technology are shown. A compliant under-actuated prosthetic hand has been designed and fabricated. The five-fingered hand (both palm and fingers) is moulded as a soft polymeric single part with compliant joints and embedded tendon driven under-actuated mechanism for providing adaptive grasp. The maximum measured cylindrical grasping force is 30 N. The one DoF prosthetic hand is controlled using two pre-amplified EMG electrodes. The proposed EMG-based control is a Finite State Machine (FSM). A particular attention has been given to the calibration phase. In order to identify the end of the grasp, the intensity of the current is monitored. Moreover, the microcontroller stops the motor when the average current overcomes the value imposed. Compared to other EMG based controllers, the approach proposed is very simple but it presents a good robustness and needs a minimum computational cost. Ind ex Terms - Biomechatronics, Prosthetics, Compliant joints, Under-actuation, Rehabilitation.
Harmonic Impact on Distribution Transformer No-Load Loss

The losses in European Union distribution transformers are estimated at about 33 TW ·h/year, whereas reactive power and harmonic losses add a further 5 TW ·h/year. The reduction of distribution transformer no-load loss is particularly important as the ratio of no-load to load losses is nearly three. In this paper, the no-load operation of wound-core transformers under sinusoidal and distorted supply-voltage conditions is investigated. For that purpose, a 2-D nonlinear transient finite-element analysis taking into account hysteresis has been developed. The hysteresis model is based on a modified Jiles-Atherton representation, and the proposed analysis is compared to experimental data.
Macro Model of Advanced Devices for Parasitic Extraction

In order to perform accurate parasitic extraction, foundries must provide the cross section profile of devices, and IP vendors must provide sufficient layout information. However, foundries and IP vendors are increasingly reluctant to reveal such sensitive information, especially for advanced devices. Therefore, the industry is faced with the following challenges: 1) foundries/IP vendors need to protect their trade secrets; 2) electronic design automation vendors need to integrate foundry data into extraction tools; and 3) IC designers need to have the accurate parasitic data. In this paper, we propose an innovative and practical solution to these challenges, by building a macro model around any region in 2-D/3-D on a circuit where foundries or IP vendors wish to hide information, yet the macro model allows accurate capacitance extraction inside and outside of the region. We first give algorithms to construct the macro model. Then, we describe how existing extraction algorithms can interface with the macro model to perform extraction for the entire circuit at the same accuracy as if complete information was given. The macro model can be used in finite difference method/finite element method and floating random walk, due to an equivalence theorem we proved. Finally, we propose the concept of equivalent profile and describe how to find one based on the macro model. Experimental results show the macro model can be efficiently constructed and used to produce accurate capacitance extraction.
Multi-modal fall detection within the WeCare framework

Falls are identified as a major health risk for the elderly and a major obstacle to independent living. Considering the remarkable increase in the elderly population of developed countries, methods for fall detection have been a recent active area of research. However, existing methods often use only wearable sensors, such as acceloremeters, or cameras to detect falls. In this demonstration, in contrast to the state of the art solutions, we focus on the use of multi-modal wireless sensor networks within the WeCare framework. WeCare system is developed as a solution for independent living applications by remotely monitoring the health and well-being of its users. We describe the general structure of WeCare and demonstrate its fall detection method. Our set-up not only includes scalar sensors to detect falls and motion but also consists of embedded cameras and RFID tags and uses sensor fusion techniques to improve the success of fall detection and minimize the false positives.
Innovating Business Models with Co-Development Partnerships

OVERVIEW: Business model innovation is vital to sustaining open innovation. External technology partnerships allow open business models to accomplish even more. One important mechanism for innovating one's business model is through establishing co-development relationships. The proper character of these relationships varies, depending on the context for the relationship. To sustain co-development relationships, one must carefully define the business objectives and align the business models of each firm. One should also determine whether the various R&D capabilities are core, critical or contextual. The decision to partner externally will have different implications for each of these.
Convolutional Neural Network for 3D object recognition using volumetric representation

Following the success of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) on object recognition using 2D images, they are extended in this paper to process 3D data. Nearly most of current systems require huge amount of computation for dealing with large amount of data. In this paper, an efficient 3D volumetric object representation, Volumetric Accelerator (VOLA), is presented which requires much less memory than the normal volumetric representations. On this basis, a few 3D digit datasets using 2D MNIST and 2D digit fonts with different rotations along the x, y, and z axis are introduced. Finally, we introduce a combination of multiple CNN models based on the famous LeNet model. The trained CNN models based on the generated dataset have achieved the average accuracy of 90.30% and 81.85% for 3D-MNIST and 3D-Fonts datasets, respectively. Experimental results show that VOLA-based CNNs perform 1.5x faster than the original LeNet.
A 0.6v Ultra-High-Gain Ultra-Low-Power CMOS LNA at 1.5GHz in 0.18µm Technology

This paper describes a CMOS LNA utilizing a folded cascade architecture for GPS front-end receiver in a TSMC 0.18-µm process. The Major Problem in the LNAs with folded cascade architecture is low reversing isolation. In this paper this parameter is improved by adding a transistor. The power gain and the minimal Noise Figure (NF) are two important factors for the circuits. Besides those factors, good linearity, input impedance matching, low supply voltage and the lower power consumption are also desired. The proposed LNA achieves a small signal gain of 23.1 dB. The LNA acquires an NF of 2.1 dB with an input return loss of -14dB and an output return loss of -14 dB. Total Power consumption is only 2.6mW from a 0.6v supply voltage.
Repeated injections of orexin-A developed behavioral tolerance to its analgesic effects in rats

Objective(s): Reduction of pharmacological effectiveness or tolerance appears following repeated administration of many analgesic drugs. We investigated tolerance to anti-nociceptive effects of orexin-A, an endogenous potent analgesic peptide using the hot-plate test. Materials and Methods: Orexin-A was microinjected ICV (intracerebroventricular) with an interval of 12 hr for 7 continuous days and its anti-nociceptive responses were measured on days 1, 4 and 7 using the hot-plate test following the first day of administration. Orexin-A was used at a dose of 100 pmol to induce analgesic effects. Results: ICV administration of orexin-A produced an effective anti-nociception on the first day of experiment as measured by hot-plate 5, 15, and 30 min after the injection, in comparison with both baselines (hot-plate test one day before the beginning of orexin-A administration and control, saline-administrated group). However, repeated administration of orexin-A on the following days revealed a significant reduction in this analgesic effect during day 4 to day 7. However, to rule out any associative tolerance resulting from learning related to experimental procedures and/or environmental cues, a single injection of orexin-A was administrated to animals of control group (which were receiving saline during 7 days of experiments) and the analgesic effect was observed. Conclusion: These results, for the first time, indicated the appearance of tolerance to anti-nociceptive effects of orexin-A, following repeated administrations of this agent.
Evaluation of Two-level Dependency Representations of Argument Structure in Long-Distance Dependencies

Full recovery of argument structure information for question answering or information extraction requires that parsers can analyse long-distance dependencies. Previous work on statistical dependency parsing has used post-processing or additional training data to tackle this complex problem. We evaluate an alternative approach to recovering long-distance dependencies. This approach uses a two-level parsing model to recover both grammatical dependencies, such as subject and object, and full argument structure. We show that this two-level approach is competitive, while also providing useful semantic role information.