Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Twin Deficit or Twin Divergence? Fiscal Policy, Real Exchange Rate, and the Current Account in the U.S

In spite of the concerns about â€œtwin deficitsâ€ (fiscal and current account deficits) for the U.S., empirical evidence suggests that â€œtwin divergenceâ€ is a more regular feature of the data: when the fiscal accounts worsen, the current account improves and vice versa. We thus study empirically the effects of fiscal policy (government budget deficit shocks) on the current account and the real exchange rate mostly for the flexible exchange rate regime period. Based on VAR models, â€œexogenousâ€ fiscal policy shocks are identified after controlling the business cycle effects on fiscal balances. In contrast to the predictions of the most theoretical models, the results suggest that an expansionary fiscal policy shock (or a government budget deficit shock) improves the current account and depreciates the real exchange rate for the flexible exchange rate regime period. The private saving rises and the investment falls contribute to the current account improvement while the nominal exchange rate depreciation (as opposed to the price level changes) is mainly responsible for the real exchange rate appreciation. The twin divergence of fiscal balances and current account balances is also explained by the prevalence of output shocks; output shocks, more than fiscal shocks, appear to drive the current account movements and its comovements with the fiscal balance
Optimal adaption for Apache Cassandra

Apache Cassandra is a NoSql database offering high scalability and availability. Among with its competitors, e.g. Hbase, SympleDB and BigTable, Cassandra is a widely used platform for big data systems. Tuning the performance of those systems is a complex task and there is a growing demand for autonomic management solutions. In this paper we present an energy-aware adaptation model built from a real case based on Apache Cassandra and on real application data from Ericsson AB Sweden. Along with the optimal adaptation model we propose a sub-optimal adaptation algorithm to avoid system perturbations due to re-configuration actions triggered by subscription of new tenants and/or the increase in the volume of queries. Results shows that the penalty for an adaptation mechanism that does not hurt the system stability is between 20 and 30% with respect the optimal adaptation. Keywords—Autonomic computing; self-adaptation; energyawarness; optimization; Apache Cassandra; Big Data
Positioning a Node of Wireless Sensor Networks in 3 Dimensional Space

To know the location of nodes is very important and valuable for wireless sensor networks (WSN), we present an improved positioning model (3D-PMWSN) to locate the nodes in WSN. In this model, grid in space is presented. When one tag is detected by a certain reader whose position is known, the tag’s position can be known through certain algorithm. The error estimation is given. Emulation shows that the positioning speed is relatively fast and positioning precision is relatively high.
Desmin Is Essential for the Tensile Strength and Integrity of Myofibrils but Not for Myogenic Commitment, Differentiation, and Fusion of Skeletal Muscle

A null mutation was introduced into the mouse desmin gene by homologous recombination. The desmin knockout mice (Des −/−) develop normally and are fertile. However, defects were observed after birth in skeletal, smooth, and cardiac muscles (Li, Z., E. Colucci-Guyon, M. Pincon-Raymond, M. Mericskay, S. Pournin, D. Paulin, and C. Babinet. 1996. Dev. Biol. 175:362–366; Milner, D.J., G. Weitzer, D. Tran, A. Bradley, and Y. Capetanaki. 1996. J. Cell Biol. 134:1255– 1270). In the present study we have carried out a detailed analysis of somitogenesis, muscle formation, maturation, degeneration, and regeneration in Des −/− mice. Our results demonstrate that all early stages of muscle differentiation and cell fusion occur normally. However, after birth, modifications were observed essentially in weight-bearing muscles such as the soleus or continually used muscles such as the diaphragm and the heart. In the absence of desmin, mice were weaker and fatigued more easily. The lack of desmin renders these fibers more susceptible to damage during contraction. We observed a process of degeneration of myofibers, accompanied by macrophage infiltration, and followed by a process of regeneration. These cycles of degeneration and regeneration resulted in a relative increase in slow myosin heavy chain (MHC) and decrease in fast MHC. Interestingly, this second wave of myofibrillogenesis during regeneration was often aberrant and showed signs of disorganization. Subsarcolemmal accumulation of mitochondria were also observed in these muscles. The lack of desmin was not compensated by an upregulation of vimentin in these mice either during development or regeneration. Absence of desmin filaments within the sarcomere does not interfere with primary muscle formation or regeneration. However, myofibrillogenesis in regenerating fibers is often abortive, indicating that desmin may be implicated in this repair process. The results presented here show that desmin is essential to maintain the structural integrity of highly solicited skeletal muscle.
Older People and the Use of Mobile Phones: An Interview Study

Ageing populations are turning to technology in greater numbers than ever. New technology is being designed to help older people live independently for longer. Despite the usefulness of mobile phones especially older people, the current problems with its complex features and interface designs have intimidated some older people users from using the device. The authors wished to explore exposure to the real-world technology needs of older people by evaluating the mobile phones use among them. Although numerous studies have been reported on the various benefits of interviewing in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, little is known about preparatory interviewing in engaging with ageing population. The purpose of this study was to explore the interviewing technique in eliciting requirements from older people. A qualitative approach and semi-structured interviews were used with a sample size of seven Malaysian elders. This paper reports interview experience with the older people. The results suggest that the interviewing guidelines are recommended to be applied in the future research on HCI and older people.
Conflict management approaches under unclear boundaries of the commons : Experiences from Danau Sentarum National Park , West Kalimantan

Conflict in common pool resource management is ubiquitous. As a result, the call for conflict management has increased during the past decades. The “ideal” goal in conflict management is to achieve positive changes and avoid unnecessary escalation to destructive levels. While it has been argued that the role of local institutions in conflict management is central, little is known about how these institutions could actually deal with conflict. In this paper, we highlight how local institutions respond to the various inter-settlement conflicts over the issue of unclear resource boundaries in Danau Sentarum National Park (DNSP). We discuss conflict management approaches taken by the Dayak and the Malay ethnic groups in response to forestry and fishery conflicts and consider their effectiveness. We also demonstrate how customary laws are used in conflict management. We identify gaps in these approaches and discuss several possible ways forward. We argue that enhancing communication and developing a mechanism of exchange among various ethnic groups will allow better understanding of different and often contradicting customary laws. We also propose a kind of co-management arrangement among stakeholders (e.g., park management, local people, governments and NGOs) to ensure the sustainability of the park and to constructively manage the ever increasing conflict among these stakeholders.
Real-Time and Efficient Method for Accuracy Enhancement of Edge Based License Plate Recognition System

License Plate Recognition plays an important role on the traffic monitoring and parking management. Administration and restriction of those transportation tools for their better service becomes very essential. In this paper, a fast and real time method has an appropriate application to find plates that the plat has tilt and the picture quality is poor. In the proposed method, at the beginning, the image is converted into binary mode with use of adaptive threshold. And with use of edge detection and morphology operation, plate number location has been specified and if the plat has tilt; its tilt is removed away. Then its characters are distinguished using image processing techniques. Finally, K Nearest Neighbour (KNN) classifier was used for character recognition. This method has been tested on available data set that has different images of the background, considering distance, and angel of view so that the correct extraction rate of plate reached at 98% and character recognition rate achieved at 99.12%. Further we tested our character recognition stage on Persian vehicle data set and we achieved 99% correct recognition rate.
Essays in the evaluation of human capital investment policies

In this thesis dissertation, I study which factors drive human capital investments at different stages of the life-cycle by using structural dynamic behavioral models, and what we can learn from these models in order to design better labor and education policies in the long-term. Over the three chapters of this work I assess policy relevant questions that are either related to both developing and developed countries, and I show how these methodologies can be used in conjunction with other more traditional approaches to perform two types of policy evaluation: the assessment of existing policies, or ex-post policy evaluation, and the prediction of economic behavior under policies that have not been yet implemented, or ex-ante policy evaluation. My work has two main goals. The first goal is methodological. I show the gains of structural modeling in understanding the mechanisms behind human capital investments, for example the disentanglement of preferences, returns and expectations, and the importance of dynamics. I also show how these models can be complemented and even better identified when they are combined with experimental data. The second goal is to answer some relevant economic questions for which there are still no answers. On one hand, I study the determinants of labor informality and self-employment in developing countries disentangling the role of comparative advantage and labor market segmentation on labor informality. On another hand, I study the determinants of parental investments in children and their effects in child development, first emphasizing the role of parental income and financial constraints, and then focusing on less investigated factors like parental beliefs and attitudes towards child-rearing.
Differential fatigue of paralyzed thenar muscles by stimuli of different intensities

Muscles paralyzed by injury or disease fatigue excessively when stimulated. This study examined whether the first few paralyzed thenar motor units recruited by electrical stimulation of the median nerve were more fatigue resistant than the total thenar motor unit population. The paralyzed thenar muscles of four subjects with chronic cervical spinal cord injury were fatigued by a 2‐min intermittent 40‐HZ protocol on 2 days. One experiment involved submaximal stimulation, the other supramaximal stimulation. These stimuli resulted in activation of part and all of the thenar muscles, respectively. Relative force loss, force–time integral decline, and slowing of half‐relaxation time were always significantly less when only part rather than all of the muscles was fatigued. The part of the paralyzed muscles that was activated was also relatively fatigue resistant compared with control single thenar motor units. Thus, a reversal of recruitment order from fatigable to fatigue‐resistant units cannot explain the extreme fatigability of paralyzed muscles. Use of submaximal stimulation during functional electrical stimulation may therefore help to reduce muscle fatigue because it recruits the more fatigue‐resistant units. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Muscle Nerve 26: 122–131, 2002
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS

The study analyses the problem of financing the innovation that is one of the biggest problems facing the companies that want to be innovative. As a consequence, the paper reveals the main forms of funding the technological progress with their advantages and drawbacks. In particular, it is highlighted the role of innovation and research in the performance of SME and, in relation with them, the difficulties for this companies to access funding under crisis conditions.
Neuronal Activity Regulates Correlated Network Properties of Spontaneous Calcium Transients in Astrocytes In Situ

Spontaneous neuronal activity is essential to neural development. Until recently, neurons were believed to be the only excitable cells to display spontaneous activity. However, cultured astrocytes and, more recently, astrocytes in situ are now known to exhibit spontaneous Ca2+ transients. Here we used Ca2+ imaging of astrocytes from transgenic mice for the simultaneous monitoring of [Ca2+]ichanges in large numbers of astrocytes. We found that spontaneous activity is a common property of most brain astrocytes that is lost in response to a lesion. These spontaneous [Ca2+]i oscillations require extracellular and intracellular Ca2+. Moreover, network analysis revealed that most astrocytes formed correlated networks of dozens of these cells, which were synchronous with both astrocytes and neurons. We found that decreasing spontaneous [Ca2+]i transients in neurons by TTX does not alter the number of active astrocytes, although it impairs their synchronous network activity. Conversely, bicuculline-induced epileptic patterns of [Ca2+]itransients in neurons cause an increase in the number of active astrocytes and in their network synchrony. Furthermore, activation of non-NMDA and NMDA ionotropic glutamate receptors is required to correlate astrocytic networks. These results show that spontaneous activity in astrocytes and neurons is patterned into correlated neuronal/astrocytic networks in which neuronal activity regulates the network properties of astrocytes. This network activity may be essential for neural development and synaptic plasticity.
Foxj1 regulates basal body anchoring to the cytoskeleton of ciliated pulmonary epithelial cells

The forkhead box transcription factor Foxj1 is required for cilia formation and left-right axis determination. To define the role of Foxj1 in ciliogenesis, microarray analysis was performed to identify differentially expressed genes in the pulmonary epithelium of foxj1+/+ and foxj1-/- mice. In the absence of Foxj1, the expression of calpastatin, an inhibitor of the protease calpain, decreased. RNase protection confirmed the decrease in calpastatin expression and decreased calpastatin was detected in the proximal pulmonary epithelium of foxj1-/- mice by immunohistochemistry. No change was detected in the expression of calpain 2 in the pulmonary epithelium by western blot or immunohistochemistry. By western blot and immunofluorescence, ezrin, a substrate for calpain, was also found to decrease in the pulmonary epithelium of foxj1-/- mice. No change in ezrin gene expression was found by RT-PCR. A decrease in ezrin binding phosphoprotein-50 (EBP-50) was also detected by immunofluorescence in the foxj1-/- mouse pulmonary epithelium. Immunoelectron microscopy demonstrated ezrin associated with the basal bodies of cilia in the pulmonary epithelium. Treatment of tracheal explants from foxj1-/- mice with a calpain inhibitor resulted in a partial reappearance of cilia observed in these mice. Additionally, following treatment of foxj1-/- tracheal explants with calpain inhibitor, basal bodies were observed in an apical location along with relocalization of ezrin and EBP-50. Regulation of calpain activity by calpastatin thus provides a mechanism for regulating the anchoring of basal bodies to the apical cytoskeleton in ciliated cells. In the absence of Foxj1, decreased calpastatin expression with decreased ezrin and EBP-50 results in an inability of basal bodies to anchor to the apical cytoskeleton and subsequent failure of axonemal formation.
A comparison of interpolation algorithms for gramophone record sound reconstruction

Gramophone records were the main recording medium for half a century and regained widespread popularity over the past couple of years. Being an analogue storage medium, vinyl records are subject to distortions caused by scratches, dust, high temperatures and extensive playback. This paper discusses a number of well-known interpolation algorithms that can be used to reduce the noise by reconstructing the distorted gaps, which include the nearest neighbour, cosine, polynomial, spline, Hermite and Fourier interpolation. The reconstruction accuracy of these algorithms were determined by using a large dataset of songs from eight different music genres. It was found that cosine and polynomial interpolation have the best mean performance with regards to reconstruction accuracy and execution time. It was also found that certain genres can be easier reconstructed than others.
Short light–dark cycles affect sleep in mice

Environmental light has a strong impact on human physiology and behaviour, including cognitive functioning and alertness. Previous studies have shown that short light–dark (LD) cycles influence sleep in the albino rat. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep increases after the onset of darkness and increases after light onset. In the present study, we investigated whether light affects sleep in mice. To this purpose the electroencephalogram and electromyogram of nine adult male C57BL/6 mice was recorded under 12 : 12 h baseline LD conditions, followed by 24 h continuous darkness (DD) and 6 days with LD cycles of different durations (2 h, 30 min, 14 min, 10 min, 4 min and 2 min), presented in a randomized order. NREM sleep was evenly distributed over the light and dark intervals of all short LD cycles. REM sleep, however, was increased during the dark intervals of short (10–30 min) LD cycles. Analysis showed that in these LD cycles, the increment in REM sleep was maximal in the second minute after dark onset, where the percentage of epochs with REM sleep increased significantly to 175% of baseline values. This increase was attributable to an increase in REM sleep episode duration. The recorded responses show that sleep in mice is affected by photic stimulation. The results demonstrate that pigmented animals can show REM sleep induction after dark onset and indicate that light has significant effects on the regulation of sleep.
Diversity management strategies of global hotel groups: A corporate web site based exploration

Purpose – The study aims to explore major internationally operating hotel groups and their corporate diversity statements. An understanding of these statements is critical for the analysis of workforce diversity actions, as they shape the policy framework and basis for any diversity management (DM) program or initiative.Design/methodology/approach – The study applied a qualitative content analysis of corporate web sites. The analysis and evaluation of the data was not treated in statistical terms or in any quantifiable measures due to the study's rather exploratory and inductive nature. Moving away from traditional forms of validity and reliability, this study applied Denzin and Lincoln's authenticity criteria.Findings – Most of the selected hotel companies with diversity management strategies and policies need to communicate their diversity management activities and actions more extensively and clearly via their corporate web sites to help support employee recruitment efforts, attraction of talents with .
Supplementary Materials for “ Network Consistent Data Association ”

Overview This supplementary material contains the following: – Normalized Area Under Curves (nAUC) values of the CMC curves on the WARD and RAiD datasets. – Formulation of the optimization problems as standard Binary Integer Programs (BIP). – Equivalence of one-to-one and generalized NCDA problems (i.e., NCDA with same and variable set of persons across cameras) is proved. One-to-one NCDA can be derived from the generalized NCDA if the condition that the same set of persons appear in all the cameras is imposed on the latter problem.
Residual brain infection in relapsing-fever borreliosis.

BACKGROUND Neurological involvement is common in the spirochetal infection relapsing fever (RF) in both humans and experimental animals. RF is best known for antigenic variation caused by the sequential expression of variable outer membrane lipoproteins of 2 sizes, variable small (Vsp) and variable large (Vlp) proteins. Less understood is the persistence of RF borreliae in the brain after they are cleared from the blood, referred to as residual brain infection (RBI). Our goal was to investigate the phenomenon of RBI in RF. METHODS We studied RBI in immunocompetent mice by culturing blood and perfused brain samples 1 month after intraperitoneal inoculation with Borrelia turicatae serotype 1 (Bt1). Mice deficient in Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2-/-) or in B and T cells (scid) were included for comparison. RESULTS All scid mice had persistent infection in blood and brain. RBI was found in 3 (19%) of 16 immunocompetent and TLR2-/- mice. RBI was caused by either persistence of the original serotype (Bt1) or newly emerged Vsp (n=1, renamed Bt3) or Vlp serotypes. The Vsp of Bt1 (Vsp1) and Bt3 (Vsp3) were 75% identical. CONCLUSIONS RBI in RF is relatively frequent and can occur by persistence of the original or newly emerged serotypes.
Parallel de novo assembly of large genomes from high-throughput short reads

The advent of high-throughput short read technology is revolutionizing life sciences by providing an inexpensive way to sequence genomes at high coverage. Exploiting this technology requires the development of a de novo short read assembler, which is an important open problem that is garnering significant research effort. Current methods are largely limited to microbial organisms, whose genomes are two to three orders of magnitude smaller than complex mammalian and plant genomes. In this paper, we present the design and development of a parallel de novo short read assembler that can scale to large genomes with high coverage. Our approach is based on the string graph formulation. Input reads are mapped to short paths, and the genome is reconstructed as a superpath anchored by distance constraints inferred from read pairs. Our method can handle a mixture of multiple read sizes and multiple paired read distances. We present parallel algorithms for string graph construction, string graph compaction, graph based error detection and removal, and computing aggregate summarization of paired read links across graph edges. Using this, we navigate the final graph structure to reproduce large contiguous sequences from the underlying genome. We present a validation of our framework on experimental and simulated data from multiple known genomes and present scaling results on IBM Blue Gene/L.
RE-IDENTIFICATION RISK IN SWAPPED MICRODATA RELEASE

Many government agencies, research organizations, healthcare providers, and others release data for public use. This data is used by the public and policy makers and serves an important role in society. In many cases however, the organizations releasing the data are also required to protect the privacy of the respondents. Hence, these organizations adopt procedures that attempt to prevent disclosure of the identity of the data respondents. One popular statistical disclosure limitation approach is data swapping, where values of respondents with a specified proximity are exchanged, and the modified data is released to the public. In this study, we investigate the ability of a respondent to be able to re-identify themselves in the released data. Our results indicate that data swapping can be extremely vulnerable to re-identification.