Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Causes of Welfare State Expansion: Deindustrialization or Globalization?

An influential line of argument holds that globalization causes economic uncertainty and spurs popular demands for compensatory welfare state spending. This article argues that the relationship between globalization and welfare state expansion is spurious and that the engine of welfare state expansion since the 1960s has been deindustrialization. Based on cross-sectional-time-series data for fifteen OECD countries, the authors show that there is no relationship between globalization and the level of labor-market risks (in terms of employment and wages), whereas the uncertainty and dislocations caused by deindustrialization have spurred electoral demands for welfare state compensation and risk sharing. Yet, while differential rates of deindustri-alization explain differences in the overall size of the welfare state, its particular character—in terms of the share of direct government provision and the equality of transfer payments—is shaped by government partisanship. The argument has implications for the study and the future of the welfare state that are very different from those suggested in the globalization literature.
Potassium supplementation in kwashiorkor.

BACKGROUND Kwashiorkor is an edimatous form of severe malnutrition and is the predominant form of childhood malnutrition in Malawi. Potassium depletion is common and contributes to the high mortality. The aim of this study was to determine if high potassium supplementation improves the outcome of kwashiorkor treatment. METHODS We performed a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinical trial of high potassium supplementation in 99 children with kwashiorkor. Controls (n = 51) received a standard potassium intake of 4.7 mmol/kg/day. The intervention group (n = 48) received 7.7 mmol/kg/day. All cases (intervention and control groups) were treated in the hospital-based Nutrition Rehabilitation Center and received a standard treatment regime of mild feeds, mineral and vitamin supplements, and antibiotics. RESULTS There was no significant difference in length of hospitalization, or time for resolution of oedema between groups. The case-fatality rate was reduced by 33% in the high potassium intervention group (13/48) compared to controls (21/51). There was a significant reduction in late deaths (13 in controls vs 3 in intervention group; odds ratio 5.3, 95% confidence interval 1.2-31.0) but no difference in early deaths (0-5 days). The intervention group also had significantly fewer presumed septic episodes (3 vs 18, odds ratio 8.9, confidence interval 2.2-50.9), respiratory symptoms, and new skin ulcerations than controls. CONCLUSIONS The high potassium supplementation reduced mortality and significant morbidity in kwashiorkor. This may be due to improved myocardial and immune function from earlier repletion of intracellular potassium. We recommend that the standard potassium supplement for the initial phase of treatment of kwashiorkor be increased from 4 to 8 mmol/kg/day.
Mechanisms of Oxidative Stress Induced Increase in Salt Sensitivity and Development of Hypertension in Sprague Dawley Rats: P48

High salt intake produces vascular changes which contribute to development of hypertension in salt-sensitive individuals. The underlying causes for these alterations are not elucidated. There is evidence that oxidative stress plays a key role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases. We wanted to investigate whether oxidative stress is a contributing factor for salt sensitive hypertension. Male Sprague Dawley rats were divided into five groups and received tap water (vehicle), 30mM L-buthionine sulfoximine (BS, an oxidant), high salt (HS, 1% NaCl), BS plus HS, and BS plus HS with antioxidant tempol (1mM) in drinking water for twelve days. Compared to vehicle, BS treatment caused increase in renal tubular malondialdehyde and urinary excretion of 8-isoprostane and reduced renal glutathione but had no effect on nitric oxide (NO) levels. Phenylephinephrine (10 M) pre-constricted thoracic aortic rings from BS rats showed decreased response to sodium nitroprusside (SNP) dependent vasorelaxation. Animals treated with HS had significant decrease in NO levels despite normal oxidative state. Response to SNP was unaffected but acetylcholine (Ach) showed decreased vasorelaxation in these animals. Concomitant treatment of rats with BS and HS caused marked increases in oxidative stress, blood pressure and decreased NO levels. A rightward shift was observed to SNP and Ach dose dependent vasorelaxation with increase in EC50. In these animals angiotensin II (Ang II) caused increased and prolonged contraction with significant decrease in EC50. At cellular level the incubation of vessels from BS rats with SNP showed decreased cGMP accumulation while HS rats had decreased basal NO systhetase activity. Tempol decreased the oxidative stress, normalized blood pressure and restored responses to SNP, Ach and Ang II in BS plus HS rats. In addition tempol also restored NO levels, signaling and NO systhetase activity. We conclude that BS increases the oxidative stress and reduces NO signaling while HS reduces NO levels by decreasing the NO systhetase activity. These phenomena collectively contribute to reduced activity of both endothelium dependent and independent vasorelaxants and enhance vasoconstriction leading to development of hypertension.
Unlocking Blocked Communicating Processes

We study the problem of disentangling locked processes via code refactoring. We identify and characterise a class of processes that is not lock-free; then we formalise an algorithm that statically detects potential locks and propose refactoring procedures that disentangle detected locks. Our development is cast within a simple setting of a finite linear CCS variant \^a although it suffices to illustrate the main concepts, we also discuss how our work extends to other language extensions.
Family Impact of Neurodevelopmental Late Effects in Survivors of Pediatric Cancer: Review of Research, Clinical Evidence, and Future Directions

Children and adolescents who have survived childhood cancer are vulnerable to late effects of their disease and treatment experience, including both physical and psychological sequelae. The neurodevelopmental (ND) sequelae (e.g., difficulties with attention, memory, information processing, and other executive functions) faced by children surviving central nervous system (CNS) cancers or CNS treatments can have a range of effects on their psychological adjustment and quality of life as they reintegrate into school and social settings. Survivors facing such difficulties may be influenced by their family environment, and these struggles may in turn impact the perceived burden of their parents and family system, suggesting a bidirectional framework for understanding the impact of ND late effects within the family. The current study summarizes the following: Findings of family outcomes in children with ND late effects of cancer treatment; evaluation of methodological and measurement issues; the importance of examining bidirectional family–child influences; and implications for future survivorship research and clinical care addressing the role of ND late effects from a systems perspective.
Deterioration of Concrete Due to Combined Reaction of Carbonation and Chloride Penetration: Experimental Study

In most studies, deterioration of concrete due to carbonation or chloride penetration is investigated separately. However, the deterioration of concrete is normally caused by the combination. The purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction between carbonation and chloride penetration and their effects on concrete. This was examined experimentally under various boundary conditions. For concrete under the double condition, the risk of deterioration due to carbonation was not severe. However, it was found that the carbonation of concrete could significantly accelerate chloride penetration. As a result, chloride penetration in combination with carbonation can cause harmful deterioration of concrete.
Intelligent system of speech recognition using Neural Networks based on DCT parametric models of low order

This paper proposes the development of a Numerical Command Recognition System of Speech Signal based on Neural Networks and DCT models. Thus, two configurations of neural networks, the Multilayer Perceptron and Learning Vector Quantization are evaluated by their performance in speech signal recognition, whose encoding is made by the mel-cepstral coefficients that are used to generate a two-dimensional time matrix by Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). The selection of the best configuration of neural network for classification of the patterns was carried out by comparative analysis of performance of the MLP and LVQ networks through training, validation and test of the network topology and learning algorithms previously established. For demonstration of the performance of the proposed analysis methodology, the obtained results were compared with other methods of classification given by Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) and Support Vector Machines (SVM).
Quantum computing, postselection, and probabilistic polynomial-time

I study the class of problems efficiently solvable by a quantum computer, given the ability to ‘postselect’ on the outcomes of measurements. I prove that this class coincides with a classical complexity class called PP, or probabilistic polynomial-time. Using this result, I show that several simple changes to the axioms of quantum mechanics would let us solve PP-complete problems efficiently. The result also implies, as an easy corollary, a celebrated theorem of Beigel, Reingold and Spielman that PP is closed under intersection, as well as a generalization of that theorem due to Fortnow and Reingold. This illustrates that quantum computing can yield new and simpler proofs of major results about classical computation.
Oral Candidiasis

Histopathologically, a parakeratotie epithelium was heavily invaded by pseudohyphae, blastospores, and cblamydospores of Candida albicans. Tbese features were observed in histological sections and by transmission eleetron microscopy. ** Scanning electron microscopy was used to provide new information on the surfaces of the lesions and the two type of microorganistns associated with the surfaces. The larger microorganisms were yeasts, Candida albicans (Ca), whieh penetrated the scale-like epitbelial cells (Fig. 2). The smaller, more numerous microorganisms were bacteria (B) which did not penetrate the cells but remained on the surfaces of the scales(s).
A New Model Transformation of Discrete-Time Systems With Time-Varying Delay and Its Application to Stability Analysis

This technical note focuses on analyzing a new model transformation of uncertain linear discrete-time systems with time-varying delay and applying it to robust stability analysis. The uncertainty is assumed to be norm-bounded and the delay intervally time-varying. A new comparison model is proposed by employing a new approximation for delayed state, and then lifting method and simple Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional method are used to analyze the scaled small gain of this comparison model. This new approximation results in a much smaller error than the existing ones. Based on the scaled small gain theorem, new stability criteria are proposed in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Moreover, it is shown that the obtained conditions can be established through direct Lyapunov method. Two numerical examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness and superiority of our results over the existing ones.
USING MODULAR MODEL CHECKING

Medical guidelines and protocols are documents aimed at improving the quality of medical care by offering support in medical decision making in the form of management recommendations based on scientific evidence. Whereas medical guidelines are intended for nation-wide use, and thus omit medical management details that may differ among hospitals, medical protocols are aimed at local use within hospitals and, therefore, include detailed information. Although protocols are often constructed on the basis of medical guidelines, the question is to which extent a protocol conforms to the guideline. Formal methods are applied to shed light on this issue. A Dutch medical guideline regarding the treatment of breast cancer, and a Dutch protocol based on it, are taken as an example.
of Young Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats Persistent Reduction in Renal Nerve Growth Factor mRNA After Perindopril Treatment

Nerve growth factor (NGF) determines sympathetic innervation of target tissues, and NGF levels are increased in young spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Angiotensin can affect NGF levels, and the persistent reduction in blood pressure after brief angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibition in young SHR may involve long-term changes in NGF and sympathetic innervation. We measured the relative abundance of renal NGF mRNA by reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction in SHR during and after treatment from 6 to 10 weeks of age with vehicle, perindopril (3 mg/kg per day), the bradykinin B2 antagonist Hoe 140 (0.5 mg/kg per day), both perindopril and Hoe 140, or angiotensin II (Ang II; 200 ng/kg per minute). Glomerular filtration rates were estimated at 10 and 20 weeks of age. At 10 weeks of age, Ang II caused a significant (P,.01) increase and perindopril caused a significant (P,.01) decrease in renal NGF mRNA levels. Blockade of the bradykinin B2 receptor during perindopril treatment attenuated (P,.05) the reduction in NGF mRNA levels. Renal NGF mRNA (P5.005) and blood pressure (P,.001) remained significantly lower than control 10 weeks after perindopril treatment was stopped. The partial reduction in blood pressure at 20 weeks of age in rats that had received perindopril and Hoe 140 was not associated with any difference in renal NGF mRNA. Perindopril-induced long-term reduction in renal NGF mRNA levels may decrease sympathetic innervation and thereby contribute to the long-term posttreatment blood pressure reduction. (Hypertension. 1998;31:678-683.)
Reducing Data Transfer Time in User-Level Network Protocols

Emerging parallel applications require a significant improvement in communication latency. Since the time required for transferring data between host memory and network interface (NI) takes up a large portion of overall communication latency, the reduction of data transfer time is crucial for achieving low-latency communication. In this paper, a new data transfer mechanism called hereafter the DT, is proposed to reduce communication latency for latency demanding applications. The DT employs a cache coherence interface hardware to utilize an eager method for transferring data between the host and NI. Our simulation results show that the DT significantly reduces message latency up to 36 % compared to a Direct Memory Access (DMA) based approach.
Secure Human-Computer Identification (Interface) Systems against Peeping Attacks: SecHCI

It is an interesting problem how a human can prove its identity to a trustworthy (local or remote) computer with untrustworthy input devices and via an insecure channel controlled by adversaries. Any input devices and auxiliary devices are untrustworthy under the following assumptions: the adversaries can record humans' operations on the devices, and can access the devices to replay the recorded operations. Strictly, only the common brain intelligence is available for the human. In this paper, such an identi cation system is called SecHCI as the abbreviation - Secure Human-Computer Identi cation (or Interface). In the real world, SecHCI means the peeping attacks to widely-used xed passwords: an adversary can observe your password via his own eyes or some hidden device (such as mini-camera) when your input them on your keyboard or with your mouse. Compared with human-computer identi cations with the aid of trustworthy hardware devices, only a few contributions have devoted to the design and analysis of SecHCI. The most systematic works are made by N. J. Hopper & M. Blum recently: some formal de nitions are given and the feasibility is shown by several SecHCI protocols with acceptable security (but usability is not very good because of their inherent limitations). In this paper, we give comprehensive investigations on SecHCI, from both theoretical and practical viewpoint, and with both system-oriented and user-centered methods. A user study is made to show problems of xed passwords, the signi cance of peeping attack and some design principles of human-computer identi cations. All currently known SecHCI protocols and some related works (such as visual/graphical passwords and CAPTCHAs) are surveyed in detail. In addition, we also give our opinions on future research and suggest a new prototype protocol as a possible solution to this problem.
Improving the use of health data for health system strengthening

Background : Good quality and timely data from health information systems are the foundation of all health systems. However, too often data sit in reports, on shelves or in databases and are not sufficiently utilised in policy and program development, improvement, strategic planning and advocacy. Without specific interventions aimed at improving the use of data produced by information systems, health systems will never fully be able to meet the needs of the populations they serve. Objective : To employ a logic model to describe a pathway of how specific activities and interventions can strengthen the use of health data in decision making to ultimately strengthen the health system. Design : A logic model was developed to provide a practical strategy for developing, monitoring and evaluating interventions to strengthen the use of data in decision making. The model draws on the collective strengths and similarities of previous work and adds to those previous works by making specific recommendations about interventions and activities that are most proximate to affect the use of data in decision making. The model provides an organizing framework for how interventions and activities work to strengthen the systematic demand, synthesis, review and use of data. Results : The logic model and guidance are presented to facilitate its widespread use and to enable improved data-informed decision making in program review and planning, advocacy, policy development. Real world examples from the literature support the feasible application of the activities outlined in the model. Conclusions : The logic model provides specific and comprehensive guidance to improve data demand and use. It can be used to design, monitor and evaluate interventions, and to improve demand for, and use of, data in decision making. As more interventions are implemented to improve use of health data, those efforts need to be evaluated.
Semaphorin-3C signals through Neuropilin-1 and PlexinD1 receptors to inhibit pathological angiogenesis

Retinopathy of prematurity causes visual impairment due to destructive neoangiogenesis after degeneration of the retinal microvasculature. This study was aimed at analyzing whether local delivery of Semaphorin‐3C (Sema3C) suppresses pathological retinal angiogenesis. Sema3C exerted potent inhibiting effects in cellular models of angiogenesis. In an endothelial cell xenotransplantation assay, Sema3C acted primarily on immature microvessels by inducing endothelial cell apoptosis. Intravitreal administration of recombinant Sema3C disrupted endothelial tip cell formation and cell–cell contacts, which led to decreased vascular bed expansion and vessel branching in the growing retinal vasculature of newborn mice, while not affecting mature vessels in the adult retina. Sema3C administration strongly inhibited the formation of pathological pre‐retinal vascular tufts during oxygen‐induced retinopathy. Mechanistically, Sema3C signaled through the receptors Neuropilin‐1 and PlexinD1, which were strongly expressed on vascular tufts, induced VE‐cadherin internalization, and abrogated vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)‐induced activation of the kinases AKT, FAK, and p38MAPK. This disrupted endothelial cell junctions, focal adhesions, and cytoskeleton assembly resulted in decreased cell migration and survival. Thus, this study identified Sema3C as a potent and selective inhibitor of pathological retinal angiogenesis.
Joint Inference of Named Entity Recognition and Normalization for Tweets

Tweets represent a critical source of fresh information, in which named entities occur frequently with rich variations. We study the problem of named entity normalization (NEN) for tweets. Two main challenges are the errors propagated from named entity recognition (NER) and the dearth of information in a single tweet. We propose a novel graphical model to simultaneously conduct NER and NEN on multiple tweets to address these challenges. Particularly, our model introduces a binary random variable for each pair of words with the same lemma across similar tweets, whose value indicates whether the two related words are mentions of the same entity. We evaluate our method on a manually annotated data set, and show that our method outperforms the baseline that handles these two tasks separately, boosting the F1 from 80.2% to 83.6% for NER, and the Accuracy from 79.4% to 82.6% for NEN, respectively.
Electromagnetic absorption in anisotropic superconductors.

We calculate the absorptive part of the frequency-dependent conductivity for a large class of anisotropic superconductors. The effect of nonmagnetic impurity scattering is included at the level of a self-consistent t-matrix approximation. It is found that low-frequency absorption (0l\ensuremath{\Omega}l2\ensuremath{\Delta}) takes place for any superconducting state with nodes of the energy gap on the Fermi surface. We demonstrate that the limiting low-frequency dependence of \ensuremath{\sigma}(\ensuremath{\Omega}) on impurity concentrations can help to determine the structure of the order parameter in candidate systems such as heavy-electron compounds or high-${T}_{c}$ superconductors. We also discuss how strong scattering, similar to that observed in ordinary superconductors doped with Kondo impurities, may lead to absorption with a threshold of \ensuremath{\Omega}\ensuremath{\simeq}\ensuremath{\Delta} rather than 2\ensuremath{\Delta} as in quasiisotropic systems. Finally, we consider the contribution of order-parameter collective modes to the electromagnetic absorption, and show that this absorption may be substantial and depends sensitively on the impurity scattering rate.
JAWAMix5: an out-of-core HDF5-based java implementation of whole-genome association studies using mixed models

SUMMARY We present JAWAMix5, an out-of-core open-source toolkit for association mapping using high-throughput sequence data. Taking advantage of its HDF5-based implementation, JAWAMix5 stores genotype data on disk and accesses them as though stored in main memory. Therefore, it offers a scalable and fast analysis without concerns about memory usage, whatever the size of the dataset. We have implemented eight functions for association studies, including standard methods (linear models, linear mixed models, rare variants test, analysis in nested association mapping design and local variance component analysis), as well as a novel Bayesian local variance component analysis. Application to real data demonstrates that JAWAMix5 is reasonably fast compared with traditional solutions that load the complete dataset into memory, and that the memory usage is efficient regardless of the dataset size. AVAILABILITY The source code, a 'batteries-included' executable and user manual can be freely downloaded from http://code.google. com/p/jawamix5/.