Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ambient Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Cardiopulmonary Diseases

Abstract Population exposures to ambient outdoor particulate matter (PM) air pollution have been assessed to represent a major burden on global health. Ambient PM is a diverse class of air pollution, with characteristics and health implications that can vary depending on a host of factors, including a particle's original source of emission or formation. The penetration of inhaled particles into the thorax is dependent on their deposition in the upper respiratory tract during inspiration, which varies with particle size, flow rate and tidal volume, and in vivo airway dimensions. All of these factors can be quite variable from person to person, depending on age, transient illness, cigarette smoke and other short-term toxicant exposures that cause transient bronchoconstriction, and occupational history associated with loss of lung function or cumulative injury. The adverse effects of inhaled PM can result from both short-term (acute) and long-term (chronic) exposures to PM, and can range from relatively minor, such as increased symptoms, to very severe effects, including increased risk of premature mortality and decreased life expectancy from long-term exposure. Control of the most toxic PM components can therefore provide major health benefits, and can help guide the selection of the most human health optimal air quality control and climate change mitigation policy measures. As such, a continued improvement in our understanding of the nature and types of PM that are most dangerous to health, and the mechanism(s) of their respective health effects, is an important public health goal.
Lectures on Financial Mathematics: Discrete Asset Pricing

Abstract This is a short book on the fundamental concepts of the no-arbitrage theory of pricing financial derivatives. Its scope is limited to the general discrete setting of models for which the set of possible states is finite and so is the set of possible trading times--this includes the popular binomial tree model. This setting has the advantage of being fairly general while not requiring a sophisticated understanding of analysis at the graduate level. Topics include understanding the several variants of "arbitrage", the fundamental theorems of asset pricing in terms of martingale measures, and applications to forwards and futures. The authors' motivation is to present the material in a way that clarifies as much as possible why the often confusing basic facts are true. Therefore the ideas are organized from a mathematical point of view with the emphasis on understanding exactly what is under the hood and how it works. Every effort is made to include complete explanations and proofs, and the reader is.
Traffic engineering for power efficient smartphone communications

Power management has increased its significance in mobile communications along with the growing population of mobile users and wireless connectivity. In this paper we propose a smart scheduling algorithm in Android network kernel to increase power efficiency. As periodically-updating applications start syn with a DNS query packet, we defer the packets in order to make these applications synchronize from smaller time difference to finally simultaneously. To implement the idea, we design the algorithm for two applications in this paper. This algorithm is composed of several mechanisms: approaching, aligning, and maintaining. By experiments we show the practicability and the comparison between the energy saving ratios in different scenarios.
On the Costs and Benefits of Price Stability

While there is broad-based agreement that the double-digit inflation of the 1970s is undesirable, there is much less agreement that very low inflation—price stability—is the appropriate goal for monetary policy. The literature on the welfare benefits of low inflation reflects this diversity of opinion, as individual researchers often come to different conclusions. These differences hinge on many factors, including the particular benefit of lower inflation that is being considered, whether the costs of reducing inflation are transitory or permanent, and the methodology used to quantify these effects.
Formation of Oligovesicular Vesicles by Micromanipulation

Cell-sized lipid bilayer membrane vesicles (giant vesicles, GVs) or semi-vesicles were formed from egg yolk phosphatidylcholine on a platinum electrode under applied electric voltage by electroformation. Micromanipulation of the semi-vesicle by first pressing its membrane with a glass microneedle and then withdrawing the needle left a GV in the interior of the vesicle. During the process, an aqueous solution of Ficoll that filled the needle was introduced into the newly formed inner vesicle and remained encapsulated. Approximately 50% of attempted micromanipulation resulted in the formation of an inner daughter vesicle, “microvesiculation”. By repeating the microvesiculation process, multiple inner GVs could be formed in a single parent semi-vesicle. A semi-vesicle with inner GVs could be detached from the electrode by scraping with a microneedle, yielding an oligovesicular vesicle (OVV) with desired inner aqueous contents. Microvesiculation of a GV held on the tip of a glass micropipette was also possible, and this also produced an OVV. Breaking the membrane of the parent semi-vesicle by micromanipulation with a glass needle after microvesiculation, released the inner GVs. This protocol may be used for controlled formation of GVs with desired contents.
Valorization of sunflower meal through the production of ethanol from the hemicellulosic fraction

Sunflower is among the major oil seeds crop grown in the world and the by-products generated during the seeds processing represent an attractive source of lignocellulosic biomass for bioprocesses. The conversion of lignocellulosic fibers into fermentable sugars has been considered as a promising alternative to increase the demand for ethanol. The present study aimed to establish the fermentation conditions for ethanol production by Scheffersomyces stipitis ATCC 58376 in sunflower meal hemicellulosic hydrolysate, through a 23 CCRD (Central Composite Rotational Design) factorial design. Under the selected conditions (pH 5.25, 29 oC and 198 rpm) the final ethanol concentration was 13.92 g L-1 and the ethanol yield was 0.49 g g-1.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Neurostimulation in alcohol dependence : The effect of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on cognitive functioning and craving

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The role of culture and cultural techniques in psychotherapy. A critique and reformulation.

This article examines the role of cultural knowledge and culture-specific techniques in the psychotherapeutic treatment of ethnic minority-group clients. Recommendations that admonish therapists to be culturally sensitive and to know the culture of the client have not been very helpful. Such recommendations often fail to specify treatment procedures and to consider within-group heterogeneity among ethnic clients. Similarly, specific techniques based on the presumed cultural values of a client are often applied regardless of their appropriateness to a particular ethnic client. It is suggested that cultural knowledge and culture-consistent strategies be linked to two basic processes— credibility and giving. Analysis of these processes can provide a meaningful method of viewing the role of culture in psychotherapy and also provides suggestions for improving psychotherapy practices, training, and research for ethnic-minority populations.
Advanced Fuzzy Control in Industrial Wastewater Treatment (pH and Temperature Control)

Wastewater reuse is being increasingly promoted as a strategy for conservation of limited resources of freshwater and as a mean of safeguarding the aquatic environment from contaminants present in wastewater. Waste water disposed of in the ground reduces the quality of ground water and surface waters. Untreated waste-water generally contains high levels of organic material, numerous pathogenic microorganisms which entails environmental and health hazards. In this project, a design of an automated control for industrial waste water treatment using fuzzy logic control is presented. Fuzzy control concepts have been adopted and control algorithms based on pH and temperature variations provided accurate and reliable treatment of waste water. Two inputs, pH and temperature, and four outputs, hot and cold water valve and acid and base valve were given to the system. The behavior of the system was observed whenever an input came in. the pH was to be kept at a neutral status of between 6.5 and 7.5 and the temperature had to be kept within a range of between 25C and 350C. The fuzzy rules managed to keep the system stable as was seen from the graphs.
Dissociating the Neural Correlates of Item Retrieval and Relational Retrieval in Between-domain Inter-item Associative Memory: An Event-Related Potentials Study

Binding is an important process in human episodic memory. On retrieval, dual process theory posits familiarity and recollection as two separated processes that contribute to recognition memory. It has been hypothesized that item retrieval bases on familiarity and recollection, whereas relational retrieval employs recollection. ERPs studies on recognition memory have identified two old/new effects that respectively correspond to familiarity and recollection. The mid-frontal old/new effect, occurring at approximately 300~500ms over frontal electrode sites, is attributed to familiarity. The parietal old/new effect, approximately 500~800ms maximal over parietal electrode sites, reflects recollection. According to Van Pettern et al. (2002), there was also an executive process which was reflected by an old/new effect over prefrontal scalp around 700ms after stimulus onset. took part in our experiment. They studied a series of face-verb pairs presented in sequence. In the test, some face-verb pairs were presented that were encoded together at study (intact), some were presented in which both items were studied but not together (rearranged), and the rest consisted of two new, unstudied items (new). Participants were instructed to determine whether a pair was “intact”, “rearranged”, or “new”. The ERPs for the three categories of correctly-judged responses in the test phrase were averaged separately. Thus we made our hypothesis that the differences between the ERPs of the “intact” and the “rearranged” pairs simply reflected relational retrieval. Also, in the early stage of item retrieval, item familiarity and relational recollection contributed to successful retrieval of the “intact”, whereas old/new effect only reflected the item familiarity of the “rearranged”. It was found that old/new effects indicating the “intact” and the “rearranged” were at anterior cortex around 200ms after the stimulus, more obvious at all cortex from 300ms to 500ms, but prominent at prefrontal and frontal cortex from 700ms to 1400ms. However, relational old/new effect distributed over frontocentral-central-parietal areas in each time windows. It could be inferred that item old/new effect and relational old/new effect occurred at the same time, the relational retrieval employing recollection occurred much later than item retrieval, and the late anterior item old/new effect could be related to executive processes of prefrontal cortex.
PRESERVING SURVEILLANCE AND THE TRACKING-PARADOX

Increasing capabilities of intelligent video surveillance systems impose new threats to privacy while, at the same time, offering opportunities for reducing the privacy invasiveness of surveillance measures as well as their selectivity. We show that aggregating more data about observed people does not necessarily lead to less privacy, but can increase the selectivity of surveillance measures. In case of video surveillance in a company environment, if we enable the system to authenticate employees and to know their current positions, we can ensure that no data about employees leaves the surveillance system, i.e., is being visualized or made accessible to an operator. In contrast, due to their lack of computer vision intelligence, conventional video surveillance systems do by design treat each person’s privacy equally, independent of whether one has to spend the whole work day under surveillance (e.g. personnel of an airport) or occasionally a limited amount of time (e.g. air passengers). We conceive our approach towards improving the selectivity of video surveillance measures as an interpretation of the principle of proportionality in law.
Effects of bevacizumab on the neovascular membrane of proliferative diabetic retinopathy: reduction of endothelial cells and expressions of VEGF and HIF-1α

Purpose Anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) agents have recently been used intravitreally during the perioperative period for proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). However, the mechanism of theraputic effects of the agents remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the effects of intravitreal bevacizumab (IVB) on retinal vascular endothelial cells and expressions of VEGF and hypoxia inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) in PDR. Methods Twenty-four patients with PDR were enrolled and randomized to two groups. Twelve eyes of 12 patients of each group received either an intravitreal injection of 1.25 mg bevacizumab or a sham injection 6 days before vitrectomy. Neovascular membranes (NVMs) were collected during pars plana vitrectomy. The numbers of vascular endothelial cells in the NVMs were counted after staining with hematoxylin and eosin and von Willebrand. The expressions of VEGF and HIF-1α in the NVMs were detected through immunohistochemistry. Ten epiretinal membrane specimens from patients with proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) without IVB treatment were set as an additional control. Results The number of vascular endothelial cells in NVMs of the IVB pretreated group was significantly lower than that of the sham group (21.5±3.94 versus 41.33±7.44, p=0.003). The IVB pretreated group also showed significantly lower levels of VEGF and HIF-1α in NVMs than those of the sham group (PHIF-1α=0.02, PVEGF<0.001). A stepwise regression analysis showed that IVB was a significant negative predictor for the numbers of vascular endothelial cells (β=–0.89, p<0.001) and the expressions of VEGF (β=–0.85, p<0.001) and HIF-1α (β=–0.64, p=0.001) in PDR patients. Epiretinal membranes of the PVR group showed negative staining of VEGF and HIF-1α. Conclusions Pretreatment with IVB in patients with PDR significantly decreased vascular endothelial cells and expressions of VEGF and HIF-1α, which further supports preoperative use of IVB in such patients.
Characterization and Implementation of Fault-Tolerant Vertical Links for 3-D Networks-on-Chip

Through silicon vias (TSVs) provide an efficient way to support vertical communication among different layers of a vertically stacked chip, enabling scalable 3-D networks-on-chip (NoC) architectures. Unfortunately, low TSV yields significantly impact the feasibility of high-bandwidth vertical connectivity. In this paper, we present a semi-automated design flow for 3-D NoCs including a defect-tolerance scheme to increase the global yield of 3-D stacked chips. Starting from an accurate physical and geometrical model of TSVs: 1) we extract a circuit-level model for vertical interconnections; 2) we use it to evaluate the design implications of extending switch architectures with ports in the vertical direction; moreover, 3) we present a defect-tolerance technique for TSV-based multi-bit links through an effective use of redundancy; and finally, 4) we present a design flow allowing for post-layout simulation of NoCs with links in all three physical dimensions. Experimental results show that a 3-D NoC implementation yields around 10% frequency improvement over a 2-D one, thanks to the propagation delay advantage of TSVs and the shorter links. In addition, the adopted fault tolerance scheme demonstrates a significant yield improvement, ranging from 66% to 98%, with a low area cost (20.9% on a vertical link in a NoC switch, which leads a modest 2.1% increase in the total switch area) in 130 nm technology, with minimal impact on very large-scale integrated design and test flows.
On The Secrecy of the Cognitive Interference Channel with Channel State

In this paper the secrecy problem in the cognitive statedependent interference channel is considered. In this scenario we have a primary and a cognitive transmitter-receiver pairs. The cognitive transmitter has the message of the primary sender as side information. In addition, the state of the channel is known at the cognitive encoder. So, the cognitive encoder uses this side information to cooperate with the primary transmitter and sends its individual message confidentially. An achievable rate region and an outer bound for the rate region in this channel are derived. The results are extended to the previous works as special cases.
Partially Evaluating Finite-State Runtime Monitors Ahead of Time

Finite-state properties account for an important class of program properties, typically related to the order of operations invoked on objects. Many library implementations therefore include manually written finite-state monitors to detect violations of finite-state properties at runtime. Researchers have recently proposed the explicit specification of finite-state properties and automatic generation of monitors from the specification. However, runtime monitoring only shows the presence of violations, and typically cannot prove their absence. Moreover, inserting a runtime monitor into a program under test can slow down the program by several orders of magnitude. In this work, we therefore present a set of four static whole-program analyses that partially evaluate runtime monitors at compile time, with increasing cost and precision. As we show, ahead-of-time evaluation can often evaluate the monitor completely statically. This may prove that the program cannot violate the property on any execution or may prove that violations do exist. In the remaining cases, the partial evaluation converts the runtime monitor into a residual monitor. This monitor only receives events from program locations that the analyses failed to prove irrelevant. This makes the residual monitor much more efficient than a full monitor, while still capturing all property violations at runtime. We implemented the analyses in Clara, a novel framework for the partial evaluation of AspectJ-based runtime monitors, and validated our approach by applying Clara to finite-state properties over several large-scale Java programs. Clara proved that most of the programs never violate our example properties. Some programs required monitoring, but in those cases Clara could often reduce the monitoring overhead to below 10%. We observed that several programs did violate the stated properties.
Developing business model for Geo-location Database for the operation of cognitive radio in the TV White Space bands

Wireless communications nowadays play a significant role in offering wide range of opportunities, which form a dynamic, “on-the-go” environment for personal and business communications, enhancing people's and systems' productivity and much more. On the other hand, due to the fact that radio spectrum is practically limited resource, emergence of new wireless systems enlarges the risk of different devices interfering with one another, or services being delivering with lower than expected quality (QoS). Spectrum scarcity can result in degrading performance, information loss or other unwanted issues. On the other hand, there is a lot of potentially available radio spectrum (TV White Space) due to the switchover from analogue to digital broadcasting and dissimilarities in the use of TV channels in different geographic areas - the spectrum, which can be used by the existing and new wireless communication systems. However, to balance the growing demand for the spectrum with its (more) efficient use, novel and more efficient spectrum management techniques are needed.
An analysis of corporate social responsibility communication on the websites of banks operating in Ghana

ABSTRACT CSR communication has received increased attention from researchers in recent times. The extant literature indicates that philanthropy dominates the CSR communications of most firms in Africa. Furthermore, the existing literature shows that state-owned firms’ CSR communication focuses more on environmental and community issues. Thus, this study examines the differences between local and foreign banks with regard to their CSR communications. It also examines which stakeholder groups banks pay great attention to, in their CSR communication. Data were collected from the websites of 26 banks operating in Ghana. using quantitative content analysis as analytical technique, it was found that foreign banks are better at communicating customer and employee CSR information than local banks. In addition, the findings show that state-owned banks report more information on donations and philanthropy.
Ribosome Biogenesis and the Translation Process in Escherichia coli

SUMMARY Translation, the decoding of mRNA into protein, is the third and final element of the central dogma. The ribosome, a nucleoprotein particle, is responsible and essential for this process. The bacterial ribosome consists of three rRNA molecules and approximately 55 proteins, components that are put together in an intricate and tightly regulated way. When finally matured, the quality of the particle, as well as the amount of active ribosomes, must be checked. The focus of this review is ribosome biogenesis in Escherichia coli and its cross-talk with the ongoing protein synthesis. We discuss how the ribosomal components are produced and how their synthesis is regulated according to growth rate and the nutritional contents of the medium. We also present the many accessory factors important for the correct assembly process, the list of which has grown substantially during the last few years, even though the precise mechanisms and roles of most of the proteins are not understood.
Statistics of signal-to-noise ratio and path-accumulated power due to concatenation of polarization-dependent loss

The authors present analytical expressions for the signal and noise statistics due to the concatenation of a large number of low-polarization-dependent loss elements. By solving the governing stochastic differential equations, using perturbation methods for the cases with and without power stabilization, they obtain important bounds on signal-to-noise ratio fluctuations and other quantities for the design of agile long-haul fiber communication systems.
Personality Characteristics as Predictive Factors for the Occurrence of Depressive Disorder

BACKGROUND: The depressive disorder is one of the most frequent mental disorders, which is often associated with severe dysfunctionality. Personality traits are considered as important factors for the occurrence of depressive disorder. AIM: To determine the specificity of personality dimensions as predictive factors of depressive disorder. METHODS: This research was conducted at the University Psychiatric Clinic Skopje as a “case-control” study. TCI-R (temperament and character inventory – revised) was used as the main research instrument. RESULTS: There are specific personality traits expressed through high scores of Harm Avoidance and low scores of Self –Directedness traits as predictive factors related to an incidence of the depressive disorder. CONCLUSION: The results of this study show that certain personal traits, and more specific HA and SD, are with a specific predictability of the depressive disorder.