Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cluster Analysis of the Fabricated Metals Manufacturing Sector in Salem , Oregon

This study examines the potential for growth and development of a cluster of economic activity in the metal fabrication industry in the Salem, Oregon area. After surveying the literature to understand the factors that affect the size of a manufacturing cluster, we proceed to examine growth potential in Salem's metal fabrication sector from a number of perspectives. We first go through a series of benchmarking exercises to understand how Salem's metal fabrication sectors compare in various dimensions to other areas in Oregon and even nationally. This allows one to not only identify current strengths and weaknesses of the current sector, but also provide a perspective on how much the sector could realistically expect to grow and strengthen. The second part of our analysis takes a closer look at specific features of the Salem's fabrication metal sector that the cluster literature would suggest is important for evolving a healthy cluster. The first is linkages between upstream and downstream sectors. We undertake an input-output analysis of the metal fabrication industry to identify the importance of these vertical relationships for the sector. Second, the cluster literature stresses the importance of a specialized and trained shared workforce. We examine the current education and training programs in the Salem area to support the types of workers required by the metal fabrication sector. Benchmarking We begin by benchmarking the state of the Salem metal fabrication labor force at three levels: national, state, and county. We examine the data not only across regions, but also examine trends over time. Additionally, the wages of the highest concentrated occupations within the industry of these separate regions are examined to understand wage implications for potential employees in the Salem area. Finally, we undertake a statistical analysis of the size of fabricated metal sectors nationally to better understand how the Salem area compares, as well as inform us as to how much larger it could conceivably become. Oregon decreased by 27% and 20%, respectively. Over the same time period, the fabricated metals sector diminished by 61% in Marion Country, the largest drop of the top metal fabricating counties in the state. The next largest declines in fabricated metals employment in the state were Multnomah and Lane counties at 31.2% and 12.6%, respectively. • Metal fabrication employment as a percentage of manufacturing employment in the U.S. shifted from 10.7% to 12.1% over the same time period. In Oregon, this shift was from …
Massively parallel TDDB testing: SiC power devices

This paper presents a novel experimental setup to perform wafer level TDDB testing. The massively parallel reliability system is capable of testing a total of 3000 probes simultaneously. The system can perform tests at temperatures up to 400 °C for high temperature applications (SiC). We also present TDDB results of SiO2 on SiC showing higher TDDB lifetime and field acceleration compared to SiO2 on Si.
Comparison of Enzymatic Method Rapid Yeast Plus System with RFLP-PCR for Identification of Isolated Yeast from Vulvovaginal Candidiasis

Objective(s) To compare two identification methods, i.e., restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP)-PCR analysis and enzymatic method Rapid TM Yeast Plus System to identify different species causing vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC). Materials and Methods Vaginal discharges of women who had attended the gynecology outpatient clinic of Mobini Hospital in Sabzevar, Iran were collected using cotton swabs and were cultured on Sabouraud dextrose agar. Isolated yeasts were identified by germ-tube testing and Rapid TM Yeast Plus System (Remel USA). For molecular identification, the isolated DNA was amplified with ITS1 and ITS4 universal primers and PCR products digested with the enzyme HpaІІ followed by agarose gel electrophoresis. Epidemiological and clinical features of women with respect to identified species were also evaluated. Results Out of 231 subjects enrolled, 62 VVC cases were detected. The isolated species were identified as follows: Candida albicans, 24 (38.7%), C. glabrata, 15 (24.2%), C. kefyr, 13 (21.0%) C. krusei, 9 (14.5%), and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, 1 (1.6%) by RFLP-PCR method; whereas findings by Rapid TM Yeast Plus System were C. albicans, 24 (38.7%), C. glabrata, 5 (8%), C. kefyr, 11 (17.7%) C. krusei, 2 (3.2%), S. cerevisiae, 9 (14.5%), and C. tropicalis, 6 (9.6%) as well as other nonpathogenic yeasts, 4 (6.9%). Conclusion Statistical comparison showed that there is no significant difference in identification of C. albicans by the two methods; although, in this study, it was not true about other species of yeasts. A correlation between clinical and laboratory findings is important as it enables us to administer an appropriate treatment on time.
Perspectives on learning and economy - Reflections on the concept of learning in economic theory

This article is an attempt to refine the theoretical discussion of the concept of learning in economic models. The article introduces a series of critical reflections on the way in which the concept of learning traditionally has been applied in modern economic theory. Alternatively, elements of the classical learning theory are outlined as potential supplements in the development of economic models that operate with learning and understanding.
What Are We Teaching?: Automated Evaluation of CS Curricula Content Using Topic Modeling

Identifying the concepts covered in a university course based on a high level description is a necessary step in the evaluation of a university's program of study. To this end, data describing university courses is readily available on the Internet in vast quantities. However, understanding natural language course descriptions requires manual inspection and, often, implicit knowledge of the subject area. Additionally, a holistic approach to curricular evaluation involves analysis of the prerequisite structure within a department, specifically the conceptual overlap between courses in a prerequisite chain. In this work we apply existing topic modeling techniques to sets of course descriptions extracted from publicly available university course catalogs. The inferred topic models correspond to concepts taught in the described courses. The inference process is unsupervised and generates topics without the need for manual inspection. We present an application framework for data ingestion and processing, along with a user-facing web-based application for inferred topic presentation. The software provides tools to view the inferred topics for a university's courses, quickly compare departments by their topic composition, and visually analyze conceptual overlap in departmental prerequisite structures. The tool is available online at http://edmine.cs. gmu.edu.
Enhancing TB Case Detection: Experience in Offering Upfront Xpert MTB/RIF Testing to Pediatric Presumptive TB and DR TB Cases for Early Rapid Diagnosis of Drug Sensitive and Drug Resistant TB

Background Diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) in children is challenging due to difficulties in obtaining good quality sputum specimens as well as the paucibacillary nature of disease. Globally a large proportion of pediatric tuberculosis (TB) cases are diagnosed based only on clinical findings. Xpert MTB/RIF, a highly sensitive and specific rapid tool, offers a promising solution in addressing these challenges. This study presents the results from pediatric groups taking part in a large demonstration study wherein Xpert MTB/RIF testing replaced smear microscopy for all presumptive PTB cases in public health facilities across India. Methods The study covered a population of 8.8 million across 18 programmatic sub-district level tuberculosis units (TU), with one Xpert MTB/RIF platform established at each study TU. Pediatric presumptive PTB cases (both TB and Drug Resistant TB (DR-TB)) accessing any public health facilities in study area were prospectively enrolled and tested on Xpert MTB/RIF following a standardized diagnostic algorithm. Results 4,600 pediatric presumptive pulmonary TB cases were enrolled. 590 (12.8%, CI 11.8–13.8) pediatric PTB were diagnosed. Overall 10.4% (CI 9.5–11.2) of presumptive PTB cases had positive results by Xpert MTB/RIF, compared with 4.8% (CI 4.2–5.4) who had smear-positive results. Upfront Xpert MTB/RIF testing of presumptive PTB and presumptive DR-TB cases resulted in diagnosis of 79 and 12 rifampicin resistance cases, respectively. Positive predictive value (PPV) for rifampicin resistance detection was high (98%, CI 90.1–99.9), with no statistically significant variation with respect to past history of treatment. Conclusion Upfront access to Xpert MTB/RIF testing in pediatric presumptive PTB cases was associated with a two-fold increase in bacteriologically-confirmed PTB, and increased detection of rifampicin-resistant TB cases under routine operational conditions across India. These results suggest that routine Xpert MTB/RIF testing is a promising solution to present-day challenges in the diagnosis of PTB in pediatric patients.
Correlation Voting Fusion Strategy for Part of Speech Tagging

Having studied four corpus-based approaches to part of speech (POS) tagging, such as transform-based error driven, the decision tree, hidden Markov model and maximum entropy, we present in this paper a novel data fusion strategy in POS tagging - correlation voting. Theoretical analysis and contrastive experiments with other fusion strategies show that linguistic knowledge for POS tagging can be more completely described by applying data fusion, and better tagging result can be achieved. The correlative voting is proved to be more outstanding than other fusion methods with a decrease of 27.85% in average tagging error rate
Sub-lognormal size distribution of hospitals — An agent-based approach and empirical study

This paper studies the size distribution of hospitals and its underlying generative mechanisms. Based on the U.S. hospital data, we find that the size distribution is sub-lognormal (a leptokurtic distribution more skewed than normal but less skewed than lognormal). This distribution is different from those of firms and cities. We develop an agent-based simulation model to simulate the preference behavior of patients and the service processes of hospitals. The model can produce a sub-lognormal size distribution similar to the U.S. hospital size distribution. Sensitivity analysis shows that the patients' preference behavior and search distance are two key factors for the emergence of the sub-lognormal size distribution.
Measuring Luxation of Dental Implants In Vitro

Loading of dental implants immediately after placement is an important attribute for the patients receiving the implants, but may induce a failure in the osseointegration of the implant. Even though the loading required to induce such failures is currently unknown, it is estimated that the osseointegration may fail if an implant is luxated in bone by more than 50 μm. Therefore, the ability to measure this loading can provide the practicing dentist with critical information in estimating the functional life of a newly placed implant. This paper discusses the design and fabrication of a cost-effective test setup for measuring the amount of horizontal force required to displace a nonosseointegrated implant, and presents the results of our pilot in vitro load measurements for dental implants mounted in a bovine mandible. Although the sample size of our measurements is not statistically significant, the initial data show that the amount of horizontal force required to displace a 4.3 X 13 mm implant by 50 μm is in the order of 150 N, and therefore the implant may fail to osseointegrate for biting forces that are as low as 440 N, which is about half of the typical biting force of an adult in the molar area. One implication of our study is that implants having smaller diameters may move and fail to osseointegrate for even lower biting forces. Furthermore, our work represents the first steps in developing appropriate metrics to correlate the measured biting force generated by a patient with his or her candidacy for immediate functional implant loading.
Backbone colorings for networks: tree and path backbones

We introduce and study backbone colorings, a variation on classical vertex colorings: Given a graph $G=(V,E)$ and a spanning subgraph $H$ of $G$ (the backbone of $G$), a backbone coloring for $G$ and $H$ is a proper vertex coloring $V\rightarrow \{1,2,\ldots\}$ of $G$ in which the colors assigned to adjacent vertices in $H$ differ by at least two. We study the cases where the backbone is either a spanning tree or a spanning path.
Auto-generation of Model Visitor Frameworks

The visitor pattern, a well known Gang of Four design pattern, provides a suitable way to add operational behaviour to models. However, as soon as the number of metamodels and visitor implementations start to grow, some of the pattern shortcomings make its usage less convenient. This paper presents how the synergy between the Visitor pattern and MDE has been addressed by two open source projects: Eclipse OCL and QVTd. As a result, a visitors framework generator is proposed to alleviate some of the visitor pattern shortcomings.
Implementing the Wisdom of Waze

We study a setting of non-atomic routing in a network of m parallel links with asymmetry of information. While a central entity (such as a GPS navigation system) -- a mediator hereafter -- knows the cost functions associated with the links, they are unknown to the individual agents controlling the flow. The mediator gives incentive compatible recommendations to agents, trying to minimize the total travel time. Can the mediator do better than when agents minimize their travel time selfishly without coercing agents to follow his recommendations? We study the mediation ratio: the ratio between the mediated equilibrium obtained from an incentive compatible mediation protocol and the social optimum. We find that mediation protocols can reduce the efficiency loss compared to the full revelation alternative, and compared to the non mediated Nash equilibrium. In particular, in the case of two links with affine cost functions, the mediation ratio is at most 8/7, and remains strictly smaller than the price of anarchy of 4/3 for any fixed m. Yet, it approaches the price of anarchy as m grows. For general (monotone) cost functions, the mediation ratio is at most m, a significant improvement over the unbounded price of anarchy.
Endothelial function and cardiovascular disease: Effects of quercetin and wine polyphenols

Endothelial dysfunction is an early pathophysiological feature and independent predictor of poor prognosis in most forms of cardiovascular diseases. Epidemiological studies report an inverse association between dietary flavonoid consumption and mortality from cardiovascular diseases. In the present paper, we review the effects of flavonoids, especially quercetin and wine polyphenols, on endothelial function and dysfunction and its potential protective role in hypertension, ischemic heart disease and stroke. In vitro studies show that flavonoids may exert multiple actions on the NO-guanylyl cyclase pathway, endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factor(s) and endothelin-1 and protect endothelial cells against apoptosis. In vivo, flavonoids prevent endothelial dysfunction and reduce blood pressure, oxidative stress and end-organ damage in hypertensive animals. Moreover, some clinical studies have shown that flavonoid-rich foods can improve endothelial function in patients with hypertension and ischemic heart disease. Altogether, the available evidence indicates that quercetin and wine polyphenols might be of therapeutic benefit in cardiovascular diseases even though prospective controlled clinical studies are still lacking.
In vitro evidence for homologous recombinational repair in resistance to melphalan.

BACKGROUND The generation of DNA interstrand cross-links is thought to be important in the cytotoxicity of nitrogen mustard alkylating agents, such as melphalan, which have antitumor activity. Cell lines with mutations in recombinational repair pathways are hypersensitive to nitrogen mustards. Thus, resistance to melphalan may require accelerated DNA repair by either recombinational repair mechanisms involving Rad51-related proteins (including x-ray repair cross-complementing proteins Xrcc2, Xrcc3, and Rad52) or by nonhomologous endjoining involving DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK) and Ku proteins. We investigated the role of DNA repair in melphalan resistance in epithelial tumor cell lines. METHODS Melphalan cytotoxicity was determined in 14 epithelial tumor cell lines by use of the sulforhodamine assay. Homologous recombinational repair involving Rad51-related proteins was investigated by determining the levels of Rad51, Rad52, and Xrcc3 proteins and the density of nuclear melphalan-induced Rad51 foci, which represent sites of homologous recombinational repair. Nonhomologous endjoining was investigated by determining the levels of Ku70 and Ku86 proteins and DNA-PK activity. Linear regression analysis was used to analyze correlations between the various protein levels, DNA-PK activity, or Rad51 foci formation and melphalan cytotoxicity. All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS Melphalan resistance was correlated with Xrcc3 levels (r =.587; P =.027) and the density of melphalan-induced Rad51 foci (r =.848; P =.008). We found no correlation between melphalan resistance and Rad51, Rad52, or Ku protein levels or DNA-PK activity. CONCLUSION Correlations of melphalan resistance in epithelial tumor cell lines with Xrcc3 protein levels and melphalan-induced Rad51 foci density suggest that homologous recombinational repair is involved in resistance to this nitrogen mustard.
Image Restoration Using a Multilayered Quantum Backpropagation Neural Network

The problem of image restoration in presence of blur and noise has been a very important problem in the domain of digital image processing and computer vision. A quantum inspired back propagation neural network (QBPNN) architecture based on quantum gates (single qubit rotation gates and two qubit controlled-not gates) has been used and its back propagation learning formulae have been proposed in this article for the task of restoration of images from noisy and blurred perspectives. The superiority of the QBPNN architecture is clearly demonstrated in terms of convergence rate and speed as compared to the classical multilayer perceptron (MLP).
Interoception and Emotion : a Neuroanatomical Perspective

Introduction When someone asks, " How do you feel? " , your answer includes your bodily feelings as well as your emotional feelings. Influential models of emotion view the embodiment of emotions as fundamental; that is, many observers believe that interoceptive awareness has a crucial role in emotional awareness (Barrett et al. The neuroanatomical findings described in this chapter address the organization of pathways in the brain that engender feelings from the body, and they support the view that the neural substrates responsible for subjective awareness of your emotional state are based on the neural representation of your physiological state. These data show that there is a phylogenetically novel homeostatic sensory afferent pathway in primates, especially in humanoid primates, that provides the basis for a sense of the physiological condition of the body (" the material me ") in posterior insular cortex (Craig, 2002). A posterior-to-anterior progression of increasingly complex re-representations in the human insula provides a foundation for the sequential integration of your homeostatic condition with your sensory environment, with your motivational condition and with your social condition. Based on considerable evidence, I propose that this integration generates a unified penultimate meta-representation of the global emotional moment at the junction of the anterior insula and the frontal operculum (Craig, 2004a, 2005). Convergent functional imaging findings reveal that the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortices are conjointly activated during all human emotions (e.g., Murphy et al., 2003), which in my view indicates that the limbic sensory representation of subjective " feelings " (in the anterior insula) and the limbic motor representation of volitional agency (in the anterior cingulate) together form the fundamental neuroanatomical basis for all human emotions (Craig, 2002), consistent with the definition of an emotion in humans as both a feeling and a motivation with concomitant autonomic sequelae (Rolls, 1999). In this view, emotions are not simply occasional events, but rather are ongoing and continuous, and in this view emotional behaviors can occur without subjective feelings (as they do constantly in animals other than humanoid primates, or in unconscious human emotional acts). Thus, I concur with the idea that emotional behaviors evolved as energy-efficient means of producing goal-directed actions that fulfill homeostatic and social needs (Darwin, 1872), and I believe that our capacity for awareness of our emotional behaviors (that is, our subjective feelings) evolved because it enabled an enormous enhancement in the efficiency and complexity of …
NAND Gate Based QCA 2-to-1 Line Multiplexer

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is important technology to be replaced with CMOS. QCA is a new paradigm for digital computing that, theoretically, is expected to reach very high operating frequencies and significant reduction of power consumption. A multiplexer is an important element and it is used in many logic gates and functional circuits. A NAND gate is smaller, area-wise and faster than other circuits. In this paper we propose a new design of 2-to-1 line multiplexer using three NAND gates in QCA. We find an equation using De Morgan’s law and the equation can be presented by only AND and NOT logic. Thus we can implement a multiplexer by only NAND logics. Our structure reduced not only the number of cells but the required clock phases.
On the mechanization of Kleene Algebra in Coq

Kleene algebra (KA) is an algebraic system that captures properties of several important structures arising in Computer Science like automata and formal languages, among others. In this paper we present a formalization of regular languages as a KA in the Coq theorem prover. In particular, we describe the implementation of an algorithm for deciding regular expressions equivalence based on the notion of derivative. We envision the usage of (an extension of) our formalization as the formal system in which we can encode and prove proof obligations for the mechanization and automation of the process of formal software verification, in the context of the Proof Carrying Code paradigm.
The Role of Entry Costs and Heterogeneous Characteristics of Firms in the Decision to Export : Empirical Evidence from Firm-level Data in Vietnam Nguyen HIEP

This paper contributes to the examination of factors that affect the decision to export of firms. Using a panel of firm-level data in Vietnam’s manufacturing sector, we test for the role of sunk costs and heterogeneous characteristics of firms in determining firms’ probability of exporting. Under a framework that controls for unobserved heterogeneity among firms, we find that the sunk entry costs are important factor that makes export status highly persistent in Vietnam. Firm size, firm age and foreign ownership are positively related to export probability of firms, while total factor productivity has no statistically significant effect. Besides, firms with labor-intensive technology, more skilled labors or competitive labor service are more likely to export. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Acknowledgements: We thank The World Bank Group for allowing us to have access to the data used in this paper. All the analysis, interpretations and conclusions drawn from the data in this paper are entirely and solely those of ours.