Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Regressivity of Unemployment Insurance: Identification of the Income Effect Through the July 1999 Legislation

Program administrators face important trade-offs when setting up an (optimal) unemployment insurance (UI) system. For instance, they must strike for a balance between the possible positive impacts on consumption smoothing for liquidity constrained individuals and on increased match quality, and the undesired distortion to job search intensity caused by the provision of benefits. The first task is achieved by issuing unemployment insurance, which allows workers to keep a percentage of pre-unemployment income. But, it is precisely this insurance that, by changing the relative price of leisure, has a negative impact on the incentive to search for a job. UI decrease the cost of unemployment or, alternatively, makes employment less attractive in relative terms. This dimension corresponds to the substitution effect that the literature has highlighted. However, UI can also have an income effect that varies with the degree of liquidity constraints faced by the unemployed, generating a heterogeneous impact on unemployment duration. If this proposition is empirically relevant, than the UI system is fulfilling one of its primary objectives.
A Hybrid Modular Multilevel Voltage Source Converter for HVDC Power Transmission

HVDC transmission systems are becoming increasingly popular when compared to conventional ac transmission. HVDC voltage source converters (VSCs) can offer advantages over traditional HVDC current source converter topologies, and as such, it is expected that HVDC VSCs will be further exploited with the growth of HVDC transmission. This paper presents a novel modular multilevel converter hybrid VSC intended for the HVDC market. The concept of the converter operation is described based on steady-state ac-dc power balance. Techniques for dynamic voltage control, enabling the active and reactive powers exchanged with the grid to be controlled, are introduced. Simulation results further illustrate the theory of operation of the converter and confirm the viability of the proposed control approaches. Detailed predictions of the semiconductor losses confirm the potential to achieve very high efficiencies with this topology. Experimental results are provided to validate the presented converter operation.
Segmentation In Medical Resonance images to extract the cancerous nodule for early diagnosis on cancer

: Image segmentation plays a vital role in several medical imaging programs by assisting the delineation of physiological structures along with other parts. The objective of this research work is to segmentize human lung MRI (Medical resonance Imaging) images for early detection of cancer. „ Watershed Transform Technique‟ is implemented as the „Segmentation‟ method in this work. Some comparative experiments using both directly applied watershed algorithm and after marking foreground and computed background segmentation methods show the improved lung segmentation accuracy in some image cases.
Characterization of exopolymers of aquatic bacteria by pyrolysis-mass spectrometry

Exopolymers from a diverse collection of marine and freshwater bacteria were characterized by pyrolysis-mass spectrometry (Py-MS). Py-MS provides spectra of pyrolysis fragments that are characteristic of the original material. Analysis of the spectra by multivariate statistical techniques (principal component and canonical variate analysis) separated these exopolymers into distinct groups. Py-MS clearly distinguished characteristic fragments, which may be derived from components responsible for functional differences between polymers. The importance of these distinctions and the relevance of pyrolysis information to exopolysaccharide function in aquatic bacteria is discussed.
Numerical analysis of sharply bent waveguide with microcavity constructed by air-bridge type two-dimensional photonic crystal slab

An efficient sharply bent waveguide with a microcavity constructed by an air-bridge type two-dimensional photonic crystal slab has analyzed. The method of solution is the three-dimensional finite difference time domain (FD-TD) method. An input and an output waveguides are connected by a microcavity. The radius and position of six air-holes surrounding the microcavity are modified to lower the resonant frequency into the photonic band gap. We have confirmed that the optical power is transmitted efficiently into the output waveguide due to resonant tunneling caused by the microcavity.
Multiple Objective D-optimal Sensor Management for Group Target Tracking

A group target is moving in an area well covered by a network of passive sensor nods with known positions. Additionally, there are a number of mobile robots with active sensors. In order to obtain a robust estimate of the position of the target and decrease the amount of energy spent on active sensing and communications by the sensor network and the mobile robots a sensor management system optimises the spatial configuration of the mobile robots over time. A tracking algorithm predicts the position of the target over multiple steps. An estimate for the tracking accuracy for each possible sensor action is calculated based on a function of the expected resulting posterior inverse covariance (information) matrix given the position of the nodes of the sensor networks and the feasible position of the mobile robots in future time instants. We propose a novel approach for active sensor management that combines the Rao-Blackwellised particle filter/predictor and multi-objective D-optimal optimisation. The designed decentralised Rao-Blackwellised particle filter (RBPF) is composed of two parts: a decentralised Information or Kalman filter and a particle filter (PF). The sensor management framework that is based on the generalised D-optimal optimisation with slack variables is proposed.
The Role of Concussion History and Gender in Recovery from Soccer-Related Concussion

Background This study was designed to investigate differences in recovery in male and female soccer athletes. Hypotheses Soccer players with a history of concussion will perform worse on neurocognitive testing than players without a history of concussion. Furthermore, female athletes will demonstrate poorer performance on neurocognitive testing than male athletes. Study Design Cohort study (prognosis): Level of evidence, 2. Methods Computer-based neuropsychological testing using reaction time, memory, and visual motor-speed composite scores of the ImPACT test battery was performed postconcussion in soccer players ranging in age from 8 to 24 years (N = 234; 141 females, 93 males). A multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to examine group differences in neurocognitive performance between male and female athletes with and without a history of concussion. Results Soccer players with a history of at least 1 previous concussion performed significantly worse on ImPACT than those who had not sustained a prior concussion (F = 2.92, P = .03). In addition, female soccer players performed worse on neurocognitive testing (F = 2.72, P = .05) and also reported more symptoms (F = 20.1, P = .00001) than male soccer players. There was no significant difference in body mass index between male and female players (F = .04, P = .85). Conclusion A history of concussion and gender may account for significant differences in postconcussive neurocognitive test scores in soccer players and may play a role in determining recovery. These differences do not appear to reflect differences in mass between genders and may be related to other gender-specific factors that deserve further study.
Quality of Service in High Altitude Platform Networks : Study of a DVB-S 2 based Architecture

The purpose of this paper is the presentation of the wide range of applications available, that High Altitude Platform networks (HAP networks) can provide. HAP Networks have many advantages against satellites and terrestrial systems and there are also many supporting technologies/standards for the data transmission. We focus on the analysis of the new standard DVB-S2 and the possible ways that DVB-S2 can support IP services, beyond the classical Broadcast services. A crucial evaluation factor of these advantages is the key performance indicators of Quality of Service applying to possible traffic-mix scenarios. The central control unit is an adaptive radio resource management system which supports Quality of Service (QoS) and contains three main mechanisms: Buffer Management Queueing System, Call Admission Control and Congestion Control. For the inquiry of these means, a discrete event simulator based on DVB-S2 standard was developed by using OPNET Modeler. Emphasis was given to packet and frame scheduling. Thanks to the results analysis, useful conclusions were exported.
Challenges for Human Rights

Foreword I Introduction II A Study of Some of the Main Challenges Currently Presented to Human Rights 1 Multiculturalism and Human Rights 2 The International Criminal Court 3 Globalization and Human Rights 4 The Most Recent Generations of Human Rights 5 The Right to Peace and War Conflicts at Present 6 The Issue of "Gender" Table of Contents III Some Concluding Thoughts IV Bibliography Index.
MAC layer frame design for millimeter wave cellular system

The MAC layer will need to be significantly redesigned to support the highly directional transmissions, very low latencies and high peak rates featured in 5G millimeter wave communication. This paper analyzes the frame structure and beamforming choices for mmWave MAC layer design. In this work we illustrate simple analytical methods to quantify the resource utilization and physical layer control overhead for millimeter wave cellular systems. It is observed that certain flexible frame design choices may lead to dramatically improved resource utilization under various traffic patterns. Moreover, it is shown that fully digital beamforming architectures offer significantly lower overhead than analog and hybrid beamforming under comparable power budgets.
Operating system support for dynamic over-provisioning of solid state drives

Employing solid state drives (SSDs) can leverage the performance of persistent storage systems into a new dimension. However, in order to ensure a continuously high write throughput especially for small random writes, it is crucial to always maintain a substantial amount of free flash capacity. This can be achieved by additional over-provisioning or/and the TRIM command, which notifies an SSD of storage space no longer required. Since additional over-provisioning is disadvantageous as SSDs already have a higher cost per byte ratio compared to hard disk drives, using TRIM seems to be favorable. However, most intermediate software layers (e.g., filesystem encryption, software RAID drivers or a logical volume manager) but also hardware RAID controllers currently do not pass TRIM commands to the underlying devices making over-provisioning look like the only solution feasible now. In this paper, we tackle this problem by dynamic over-provisioning, allowing the OS to use additional storage capacity for a limited amount of time to supply more storage in peak demand situations. By doing this, we accept a temporarily degraded performance to be able to supply further storage capacity. After a peak situation, the utilized SSDs are notified using the TRIM command about allocated storage capacity that is no longer needed. By presenting experimental results, we show that dynamic over-provisioning is working and can be quite effective for both single SSDs and storage systems with multiple SSDs such as SSD RAIDs.
Preserving the Exception Handling Design Rules in Software Product Line Context: A Practical Approach

Checking the conformance between implementation and design rules is an important activity to guarantee quality on architecture and source code. To address the current needs of dependable systems it is also important to define design rules related to the exception handling behavior. The current approaches to automatically check design rules, however, do not provide suitable ways to define design rules related to the exception handling policy of a system. This paper proposes a practical approach to preserve the exception policy of a system or a family of systems along with its evolution, based on the definition and automatic checking of exception handling design rules, that regulates how exceptions flow inside the system -- which exceptions should flow and which elements are responsible for signaling and handling them. This approach automatically generates the partial code of JUnit tests to check such rules, and use the aspect-oriented technique to support such tests. The proposed approach was applied to define and check the exception handling rules of a software product line. Four different versions were evaluated (in both object-oriented and aspect-oriented implementations) in order to evaluate whether the exception handling policy was preserved during SPL evolution. Our experience shows that the proposed approach can be used to effectively detect violations on the exception handling policy of a software product line during its evolution.
Effects of Concanavalin A on intestinal brush border enzyme activity in broiler chickens

1. The effects of Concanavalin A (Con A) on enzymes from the intestinal brush border were studied using membrane vesicles (BBMV) prepared from 3- and 6-week-old broiler chickens. 2. Maltase, sucrase, phytase, alkaline phosphatase and leucine aminopeptidase activities were assayed in BBMV in the absence (T0) or presence (T1) of Con A, or in the presence of casein (T2). Disaccharidase specific activities were assayed in the presence of Con A that had been pre-incubated with the enzyme (T3) or with the substrate (T4). 3. Con A significantly affected maltase and sucrase activities in 3-week-old broiler chicken intestinal BBMV. Pre-incubation of the lectin with the maltase or its substrate had no effect on enzyme activity. Pre-incubation of Con A with sucrose reduced enzyme activity. 4. Con A did not affect phytase, alkaline phosphatase or leucine aminopeptidase activities. 5. Maltase, alkaline phosphatase and leucine aminopeptidase activities were lower in 6-week-old than in 3-week-old broilers.
α1-Antitrypsin reduces rhinovirus infection in primary human airway epithelial cells exposed to cigarette smoke

Human rhinovirus (HRV) infections target airway epithelium and are the leading cause of acute exacerbations of COPD. Cigarette smoke (CS) increases the severity of viral infections, but there is no effective therapy for HRV infection. We determined whether α1-antitrypsin (A1AT) reduces HRV-16 infection in CS-exposed primary human airway epithelial cells. Brushed bronchial epithelial cells from normal subjects and patients diagnosed with COPD were cultured at air–liquid interface to induce mucociliary differentiation. These cells were treated with A1AT or bovine serum albumin for 2 hours and then exposed to air or whole cigarette smoke (WCS) with or without HRV-16 (5×104 50% Tissue Culture Infective Dose [TCID50]/transwell) infection for 24 hours. WCS exposure significantly increased viral load by an average of fivefold and decreased the expression of antiviral genes interferon-λ1, OAS1, and MX1. When A1AT was added to WCS-exposed cells, viral load significantly decreased by an average of 29-fold. HRV-16 infection significantly increased HRV-16 receptor intercellular adhesion molecule-1 messenger RNA expression in air-exposed cells, which was decreased by A1AT. A1AT-mediated reduction of viral load was not accompanied by increased epithelial antiviral gene expression or by inhibiting the activity of 3C protease involved in viral replication or maturation. Our findings demonstrate that A1AT treatment prevents a WCS-induced increase in viral load and for the first time suggest a therapeutic effect of A1AT on HRV infection.
MIREX 2011 : AUDIO KEY DETECTION SYSTEM WITH STATISTICAL KEY PROFILES

This extended abstract details a submission to the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX) 2011 for the Audio Key Detection task. The algorithm named “cbmirex2011pdfs modes” is a novel method that performs the key and mode detection. The main innovation is the use of two set of probability density functions (PDFs), computed by the experimental data, to generate the statistical profiles major and minor.
Calibration of the L-MEB Model Over a Coniferous and a Deciduous Forest

In this paper, the L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB) model used in the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Level 2 Soil Moisture algorithm is calibrated using L-band (1.4 GHz) microwave measurements over a coniferous (pine) and a deciduous (mixed/beech) forest. This resulted in working values of the main canopy parameters optical depth (tau), single scattering albedo (omega), and structural parameters tt(H) and tt(V), besides the soil roughness parameters H R and N R. Using these calibrated values in the forward model resulted in a root mean-square error in brightness temperatures from 2.8 to 3.8 K, depending on data set and polarization. Furthermore, the relationship between canopy optical depth and leaf area index is investigated for the deciduous site. Finally, a sensitivity study is conducted for the focus parameters, temperature, soil moisture, and precipitation. The results found in this paper will be integrated in the operational SMOS Level 2 Soil Moisture algorithm and used in future inversions of the L-MEB model, for soil moisture retrievals over heterogeneous, partly forested areas.
Copredication , dynamic generalized quantification and lexical innovation by coercion ∗

We propose a record type theoretical account of cases of copredication which have motivated the introduction of dot types in the Generative Lexicon (Asher and Pustejovsky, 2005). We will suggest that using record types gives us a simple and intuitive account of dot types and also makes a connection between copredication and the use of hypothetical contexts in a record type theoretic analysis of dynamic generalized quantifiers. We propose a view of lexical innovation which draws both on Pustejovsky’s original work on the Generative Lexicon (Pustejovsky, 1995) and the notion of resource present in the Grammatical Framework (Ranta, forthcoming).
Towards Semantic Web Information Extraction

The approach towards Semantic Web Information Extraction (IE) presented here is implemented in KIM – a platform for semantic indexing, annotation, and retrieval. It combines IE based on the mature text engineering platform (GATE1) with Semantic Web-compliant knowledge representation and management. The cornerstone is automatic generation of named-entity (NE) annotations with class and instance references to a semantic repository. Simplistic upper-level ontology, providing detailed coverage of the most popular entity types (Person, Organization, Location, etc.; more than 250 classes) is designed and used. A knowledge base (KB) with de-facto exhaustive coverage of real-world entities of general importance is maintained, used, and constantly enriched. Extensions of the ontology and KB take care of handling all the lexical resources used for IE, most notable, instead of gazetteer lists, aliases of specific entities are kept together with them in the KB. A Semantic Gazetteer uses the KB to generate lookup annotations. Ontologyaware pattern-matching grammars allow precise class information to be handled via rules at the optimal level of generality. The grammars are used to recognize NE, with class and instance information referring to the KIM ontology and KB. Recognition of identity relations between the entities is used to unify their references to the KB. Based on the recognized NE, template relation construction is performed via grammar rules. As a result of the latter, the KB is being enriched with the recognized relations between entities. At the final phase of the IE process, previously unknown aliases and entities are being added to the KB with their specific types.
Who Gambles in the Stock Market?

This study shows that the propensity to gamble and investment decisions are correlated. At the aggregate level, individual investors prefer stocks with lottery features, and like lottery demand, the demand for lottery-type stocks increases during economic downturns. In the cross-section, socioeconomic factors that induce greater expenditure in lotteries are associated with greater investment in lottery-type stocks. Further, lottery investment levels are higher in regions with favorable lottery environments. Because lottery-type stocks underperform, gambling-related underperformance is greater among low-income investors who excessively overweight lottery-type stocks. These results indicate that state lotteries and lottery-type stocks attract very similar socioeconomic clienteles. Copyright (c) 2009 the American Finance Association.
Explaining company-level influences on individual career choices: evidence from Belgium

In the current career reality people not only make traditional career transitions such as entry into and exit from the labor market or upward in-company mobility, but also horizontal movements and transitions between employment and different social spheres such as household, care and leisure time. This broad perspective on career mobility that takes into account both traditional and new kinds of career steps is an important yet understudied area. Regarding the influences of making or not making a career transition, research has limited itself to individuals shaping their own career (i.e. micro level). Little research has examined the influence that organizations may exercise on the individual? s career decision making process by means of their policies and practices (i.e. meso level). Drawing on Schmid? s model of a transitional labor market (1998), this qualitative empirical research explores the factors at company level that individuals point to as obstructing or facilitating their career transitions. Results show that organizational policies and practices do play an important role in the individual? s career trajectory as to whether or not he or she decides to undertake a transition. Implications for practitioners and policy makers are discussed.
In vivo Importance of Homologous Recombination DNA Repair for Mouse Neural Stem and Progenitor Cells

We characterized the in vivo importance of the homologous recombination factor RAD54 for the developing mouse brain cortex in normal conditions or after ionizing radiation exposure. Contrary to numerous homologous recombination genes, Rad54 disruption did not impact the cortical development without exogenous stress, but it dramatically enhanced the radiation sensitivity of neural stem and progenitor cells. This resulted in the death of all cells irradiated during S or G2, whereas the viability of cells irradiated in G1 or G0 was not affected by Rad54 disruption. Apoptosis occurred after long arrests at intra-S and G2/M checkpoints. This concerned every type of neural stem and progenitor cells, showing that the importance of Rad54 for radiation response was linked to the cell cycle phase at the time of irradiation and not to the differentiation state. In the developing brain, RAD54-dependent homologous recombination appeared absolutely required for the repair of damages induced by ionizing radiation during S and G2 phases, but not for the repair of endogenous damages in normal conditions. Altogether our data support the existence of RAD54-dependent and -independent homologous recombination pathways.