Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Literature review and model development

This milestone provides a broad overview of model development under Work Package 205 of the WWWforEurope project. It describes briefly the challenge of modelling combined economic, ecological and financial systems and sets out a series of objectives for modelling the socio-economic transition towards sustainability. It highlights modelling needs in relation to full employment, financial stability, and social equity under conditions of constrained resource consumption and ecological limits. The paper also provides a broad overview of the literatures relevant to the task in hand. It then describes two separate modelling approaches, developed by two different teams within WWWforEurope. One of these approaches, led by WIFO, uses a Dynamic New Keynesian (DYNK) model to explore the implications of different long-run equilibrium paths for energy consumption. The other approach, led by Surrey in collaboration with York University, is motivated primarily by the desire to integrate a comprehensive model of the financial economy into a model of a (resource and emission-constrained) real economy. This paper sets out the overarching structure of each of these approaches. It discusses the similarities and differences between the two approaches and makes some proposals for the management of subsequent milestones in relation to WP 205.
Beyond Arbitration: Innovation and Evolution in the United States Construction Industry

Disagreement among contracting parties has a rich tradition in the construction industry, which has been at the forefront of creating and experimenting with alternatives to litigation. In this article, Professor Stipanowich examines traditional alternatives to litigation utilized by the construction industry, including summary adjudication by design professionals, arbitration, mediation, minitrial, dispute review boards, early neutral evaluation, and partnering. After analyzing the results from the 1991 ABA-sponsored survey on dispute resolution in the construction industry, the author presents data from the 1994 Multidisciplinary Study on Dispute Avoidance and Resolution in the Construction Industry, a landmark study of which the author was an integral part. Based on the findings of the two studies, as well as the history of dispute resolution mechanisms in the construction industry, Professor Stipanowich concludes that the construction industry will likely continue to serve as the creative catalyst for alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.
Static output feedback control design with guaranteed cost of Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy systems

The paper is concerned with control design via static output feedback controller for fuzzy systems. Many results on the state feedback control design have been given in the literature. In the actual situation, however, the state of the system is rarely measured and the output feedback control design is desired. In this paper, guaranteed cost control via output feedback control for fuzzy systems is considered and a control design of stabilizing controllers with guaranteed cost is proposed. The stability analysis of the closed-loop system and controller design are given in terms of LMI conditions, which are less conservative than the existing results.
Reduction of infarct size by ischaemic post-conditioning in humans: fact or fiction?

This editorial refers to ‘Ischaemic postconditioning revisited: lack of effects on infarct size following primary percutaneous coronary intervention’ by X. Freixa et al. , doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehr297 Acute myocardial infarction continues to be a major cause of mortality and morbidity, and infarct size is the major determinant of patients' prognosis. The only way to reduce infarct size is to restore coronary blood flow; however, reperfusion not only salvages myocardium from infarction, but also brings about additional ‘reperfusion injury’. Ischaemic post-conditioning, i.e. the repeated mechanical brief interruption of coronary blood flow during early reperfusion, attenuates reperfusion injury and reduces the ultimate infarct size.1,2 Ischaemic post-conditioning was first characterized in dogs3 and confirmed in all species tested so far, provided they were young and healthy.4 Staat et al. in a landmark proof-of-concept study translated the experimental finding to a small cohort of select patients with acute myocardial infarction; the cumulative creatine kinase (CK) release during reperfusion was reduced by a protocol of four cycles of 1 min angioplasty balloon inflation/1 min deflation before full reperfusion. The cumulative CK release vs. the area at risk, as determined using ventriculography before reperfusion from the abnormally contracting myocardium, was also reduced.5 Reduction of infarct size by ischaemic post-conditioning in patients with acute myocardial infarction was subsequently confirmed in a number of small studies, using as endpoints CK6–9 or troponin release,9 ECG ST-segment resolution, …
Prediction and classification of protein subcellular location—sequence‐order effect and pseudo amino acid composition

Given a protein sequence, how to identify its subcellular location? With the rapid increase in newly found protein sequences entering into databanks, the problem has become more and more important because the function of a protein is closely correlated with its localization. To practically deal with the challenge, a dataset has been established that allows the identification performed among the following 14 subcellular locations: (1) cell wall, (2) centriole, (3) chloroplast, (4) cytoplasm, (5) cytoskeleton, (6) endoplasmic reticulum, (7) extracellular, (8) Golgi apparatus, (9) lysosome, (10) mitochondria, (11) nucleus, (12) peroxisome, (13) plasma membrane, and (14) vacuole. Compared with the datasets constructed by the previous investigators, the current one represents the largest in the scope of localizations covered, and hence many proteins which were totally out of picture in the previous treatments, can now be investigated. Meanwhile, to enhance the potential and flexibility in taking into account the sequence‐order effect, the series‐mode pseudo‐amino‐acid‐composition has been introduced as a representation for a protein. High success rates are obtained by the re‐substitution test, jackknife test, and independent dataset test, respectively. It is anticipated that the current automated method can be developed to a high throughput tool for practical usage in both basic research and pharmaceutical industry. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
An efficient fractal measure for image texture recognition

Fractal measures like fractal dimension (FD), lacunarity, succolarity measure the geometrical complexity of objects and could be used to describe texture information of the images. For this purpose different box counting algorithms were developed to estimate FD. However the existing box-counting methods usually suffer from under counting or over counting, introducing difficulties in obtaining the exact value of the FD. This paper focuses on the box-counting's power in uniquely identifying patterns and presents a new approach which considers the aggregate effects of all the gray levels in the boxes, rather than considering only two gray levels, (min and max) as in the case of traditional differential box-counting method. The proposed method uses new counting measure based on volume percentage of the gray levels inside the boxes. Results from experiments tabulated to depict the improved effect of the proposed method in recognition of the noisy test images from Brodatz Texture and normal test images from CASIA-V3 Iris Databases.
Dose-response effect of pioglitazone on insulin sensitivity and insulin secretion in type 2 diabetes.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the dose-response effects of pioglitazone on glycemic control, insulin sensitivity, and insulin secretion in patients with type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 58 diet-treated patients with type 2 diabetes (aged 54 +/- 1 years; 34 men and 24 women; BMI 31.5 +/- 0.6 kg/m(2)) were randomly assigned to receive placebo (n=11) or 7.5 mg (n=13), 15 mg (n=12), 30 mg (n=11), or 45 mg (n=11) of pioglitazone per day for 26 weeks. Before and after 26 weeks, subjects underwent a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). RESULTS Patients treated with 7.5 or 15 mg/day of pioglitazone had no change in fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and fasting plasma insulin (FPI) concentrations or in plasma glucose (PG) and insulin concentrations during the OGTT. Patients treated with 30 and 45 mg/day of pioglitazone, respectively, had significant decreases from placebo in HbA1c (delta=-2.0 and -2.9%), FPG (delta=-66 and -97 mg/dl), and mean PG during OGTT (delta=-84 and -107 mg/dl). Fasting plasma insulin decreased significantly in the 45-mg/day pioglitazone group, but the mean plasma insulin during the OGTT did not change. The insulinogenic index (delta area under the curve [AUC] insulin/deltaAUC glucose) during the OGTT increased significantly in the 30- and 45-mg/day pioglitazone groups (0.13 +/- 0.03 to 0.27 +/- 0.05, P < 0.05). From the OGTT, we previously have derived a composite whole-body insulin sensitivity index (ISI) that correlates well with that measured directly with the insulin clamp technique. Whole-body ISI [ISI=10,000/(square-root (FPG x FPI) x (PG x PI)) where PG and PI equal mean plasma glucose and insulin concentrations during OGTT] increased significantly in patients treated with 30 mg (1.8 +/- 0.3 to 2.5 +/- 0.3, P < 0.05) or 45 mg (1.6 +/- 0.2 to 2.7 +/- 0.6, P < 0.05) per day of pioglitazone. In the basal state, the hepatic ISI [k/(FPG x FPI)[k/(FPG x FPI)], which agrees closely with that measured directly with tritiated glucose, increased in patients treated with 30 mg (0.13 +/- 0.02 to 0.21 +/- 0.03, P < 0.05) and 45 mg (0.11 +/- 0.02 to 0.24 +/- 0.06, P < 0.05) per day of pioglitazone. Significant correlations between the dose of pioglitazone and the changes in HbA1c (r=-0.58), FPG (r=-0.47), mean PG during the OGTT (r=-0.46), insulinogenic index (r=0.34), hepatic ISI (r=0.44), and whole-body ISI (r=0.36) were observed. CONCLUSIONS Pioglitazone improves glycemic control through the dose-dependent enhancement of beta-cell function and improved whole-body and hepatic insulin sensitivity.
Scheduling and dropping policies for probabilistic routing in Delay Tolerant Networks

The Delay Tolerant Network employs a store-carry-forward paradigm to enable bundle delivery in intermittent connected environments. A router relays a message only when a proper contact opportunity occurs, which results in prominent congestion issues. An appropriate scheduling and dropping policy can alleviate this situation and maximize contact capacity. We investigate the impact of delivery probability and number of message replicas over the efficiency of scheduling and dropping policies in probabilistic routing, and present a new way to utilize contact probability and delivery predictability to direct the design of scheduling policies. We also design a simple and distributed method to approximate the global number of replicas. We integrate these results and present a new scheduling and dropping policy. Simulation based on map based movement has shown that the new policy gains a delivery rate very close to global knowledge based policies, and it outperforms all other existing scheduling and dropping policies.
Identification of spinal neurons in the embryonic and larval zebrafish

Previous studies indicated that the developing fish spinal cord was a simple system containing a small number of distinguishable neuronal cell types (Eisen et al., Nature 320:269–271, '86; Kuwada, Science, 233:740–746, '86). To verify this we have characterized the cellular anatomy of the spinal cord of developing zebrafish in order to determine the number, identities, and organization of the spinal neurons. Spinal neurons were labeled by intracellular dye injections, application of an axonal tracer dye to all or subsets of the axonal tracts, and application of antibodies which recognize embryonic neurons. We found that nine classes of neurons could be identified based on soma size and position, pattern of dendrites, axonal trajectory, and time of axonogenesis. These are two classes of axial motor neurons, which have been previously characterized (Myers, J. Comp. Neurol. 236:555–561, '85), one class of sensory neurons, and six classes of interneurons. One of the interneuron classes could be subclassified as primary and secondary based on criteria similar to those used to classify the axial motor neurons into primary and secondary classes.
Non-Proteinuric Diabetic Nephropathy

Diabetic nephropathy patients traditionally show significant macroalbuminuria prior to the development of renal impairment. However, this clinical paradigm has recently been questioned. Epidemiological surveys confirm that chronic kidney disease (CKD) diagnosed by a low glomerular filtration rate (GFR) is more common in diabetic patients than in the non-diabetic population but a low number of patients had levels of proteinuria above that which traditionally defines overt diabetic nephropathy (>500 mg/g). The large number of patients with low levels of proteinuria suggests that the traditional clinical paradigm of overt diabetic nephropathy is changing since it does not seem to be the underlying renal lesion in most of diabetic subjects with CKD.
Bayesian functional principal components analysis for binary and count data

Recently, van der Linde (2008) proposed a variational algorithm to obtain approximate Bayesian inference in functional principal components analysis (FPCA), where the functions were observed with Gaussian noise. Generalized FPCA under different noise models with sparse longitudinal data was developed by Hall, Müller and Yao (2008), but no Bayesian approach is available yet. It is demonstrated that an adapted version of the variational algorithm can be applied to obtain a Bayesian FPCA for canonical parameter functions, particularly log-intensity functions given Poisson count data or logit-probability functions given binary observations. To this end a second order Taylor expansion of the log-likelihood, that is, a working Gaussian distribution and hence another step of approximation, is used. Although the approach is conceptually straight forward, difficulties can arise in practical applications depending on the accuracy of the approximation and the information in the data. A modified algorithm is introduced generally for one-parameter exponential families and exemplified for binary and count data. Conditions for its successful application are discussed and illustrated using simulated data sets. Also an application with real data is presented.
Ethical challenges of researchers in qualitative studies: the necessity to develop a specific guideline

Considering the nature of qualitative studies, the interaction between researchers and participants can be ethically challenging for the former, as they are personally involved in different stages of the study. Therefore, formulation of specific ethical guidelines in this respect seems to be essential. The present paper aimed to discuss the necessity to develop explicit guidelines for conducting qualitative studies with regard to the researchers’ role. For this purpose, a literature review was carried out in domestic and international databases by related keywords. Health care providers who carry out qualitative research have an immense responsibility. As there is no statistical analysis in qualitative studies, the researcher has to both evaluate what he or she observes and to interpret it. Providing researchers with the necessary skills and applying stringent supervision can lead to better extraction of reliable information from qualitative studies. This article presents a debate in order to illustrate how researchers could cover the ethical challenges of qualitative studies and provide applicable and trustworthy outcomes. Researchers face ethical challenges in all stages of the study, from designing to reporting. These include anonymity, confidentiality, informed consent, researchers’ potential impact on the participants and vice versa. It seems of paramount importance that health care providers, educators and clinicians be well informed of all the different aspects of their roles when acting as qualitative researchers. Hence, these adroit roles need to be well defined, and the use of practical guidelines and protocols in all stages of qualitative studies should be encouraged.
System identification of circadian clock in plant Arabidopsis thaliana

The use of mathematical models in describing the dynamics of circadian clock in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana is gaining popularity. Models used to describe the plant circadian clock are usually derived from laws of physics and they comprise complex nonlinear ordinary differential equations. In this paper, we build mathematical models of the core loop of plant circadian clock using system identification techniques. This core loop involves two main genes (proteins), i.e. LHY/CCA1 and TOC1. Models obtained using system identification techniques are usually simple, sufficient to describe the relevant dynamics of the system and often are able to provide physical interpretation about the system. The obtained models through system identification can be useful for control design and prediction in the event for which we want to do phenotype manipulation and for understanding the behaviour of the system respectively.
Southern Stalemate: Five Years without Public Education in Prince Edward County, Virginia

In 1959, Virginia's Prince Edward County closed its public schools rather than obey a court order to desegregate. For five years, black children were left to fend for themselves while the courts decided if the county could continue to deny its citizens public education. Investigating this remarkable and nearly forgotten story of local, state, and federal political confrontation, Christopher Bonastia recounts the test of wills that pitted resolute African Americans against equally steadfast white segregationists in a battle over the future of public education in America. Beginning in 1951 when black high school students protested unequal facilities and continuing through the return of whites to public schools in the 1970s and 1980s, Bonastia describes the struggle over education during the civil rights era and the human suffering that came with it, as well as the inspiring determination of black residents to see justice served. Artfully exploring the lessons of the Prince Edward saga, "Southern Stalemate" unearths new insights about the evolution of modern conservatism and the politics of race in America.
Cranial shape evolution in adaptive radiations of birds: comparative morphometrics of Darwin's finches and Hawaiian honeycreepers

Adaptive radiation is the rapid evolution of morphologically and ecologically diverse species from a single ancestor. The two classic examples of adaptive radiation are Darwin's finches and the Hawaiian honeycreepers, which evolved remarkable levels of adaptive cranial morphological variation. To gain new insights into the nature of their diversification, we performed comparative three-dimensional geometric morphometric analyses based on X-ray microcomputed tomography (µCT) scanning of dried cranial skeletons. We show that cranial shapes in both Hawaiian honeycreepers and Coerebinae (Darwin's finches and their close relatives) are much more diverse than in their respective outgroups, but Hawaiian honeycreepers as a group display the highest diversity and disparity of all other bird groups studied. We also report a significant contribution of allometry to skull shape variation, and distinct patterns of evolutionary change in skull morphology in the two lineages of songbirds that underwent adaptive radiation on oceanic islands. These findings help to better understand the nature of adaptive radiations in general and provide a foundation for future investigations on the developmental and molecular mechanisms underlying diversification of these morphologically distinguished groups of birds. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Evo-devo in the genomics era, and the origins of morphological diversity’.
Income Convergence in Developing Countries

This paper investigates income convergence in 20 developing countries, including Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Gabon, Gambia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Togo, Turkey, and Uganda. This paper applies a battery of tests including the modified Dickey-Fuller, the Phillips-Perron, and the two-break minimum LM unit root procedures. The results suggest that the per capita income of each of the sample countries is stationary and therefore, mean-reverting. Most importantly, these results provide evidence in support of income convergence among the sample countries. Two important findings emerge from the study. First, contrary to the earlier studies on this issue, the present study finds evidence in support of income convergence among the sample developing countries. Second, the inability of most of the previous studies to find evidence in support of income convergence, especially among developing countries, can be attributed to their inability to account for structural breaks in the data.
Implementing e-government: widening the lens

In this paper progress toward e-government is perceived as contributing to the ultimate development of a Europe wide Information Society. We consider aspects of the development EU countries have made towards Information Society status. In the process we review current criteria and demonstrate their strong techno-economic characteristics. We suggest that broader perspectives should be adopted in implementing e-government. We identify some societal criteria necessary to attain the vision of the Information Society.
DyWT based copy-move forgery detection with improved detection accuracy

Copy-move forgery or region-duplication is a form of digital image forgery which copies some region(s) of an image, and pastes those onto the image itself, with an aim of obscuring important image objects. The last decade has seen rapid growth of research interest in the domain of copy-move forgery detection in digital images. Since in copy-move forgery, the duplicate regions come from the same image, this form of forgery is difficult to be detected by conventional image forgery detection techniques, which look for statistical inconsistency among different image parts. In this paper we propose a region-duplication detection technique which utilizes the Undecimated Dyadic Wavelet Transform for its operation. In the proposed approach, we divide an image into pixel sub-matrices or blocks and aim to find matches among different image blocks, so as to detect image region duplications. Similarity between blocks, with respect to features extracted using the DyWT method, is computed using the Canberra distance formula. Subsequently the detection accuracy of the proposed approach is optimized by reducing the number of false block matches. We evaluate and compare our proposed method through a comprehensive set of experiments. Our experimental results suggest that the proposed method attains considerably high detection accuracy as compared to the state-of-the-art.
Community-Based Learning: Engaging Students for Success and Citizenship.

Document Type Report Publication Date 2006 Abstract In recent years, national tragedies—both man-made and natural—have forced Americans to see how much we rely on strong neighborhoods, communities, and democratic institutions. We’ve seen how lack of attention to their well being affects us all. These events lay bare the moral imperative that underlies the mission of public education —to develop active, engaged citizens who are able to participate in and contribute fully to a democratic society. Recommended Citation Melaville, Atelia; Berg, Amy C. ; and Blank, Martin J., "Community-Based Learning: Engaging Students for Success and Citizenship" (2006). Partnerships/Community. 40. https://digitalcommons.unomaha. edu/slcepartnerships/40  Download