Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LDL Receptor Knock-Out Mice Are a Physiological Model Particularly Vulnerable to Study the Onset of Inflammation in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Background & Aims Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) involves steatosis combined with inflammation, which can progress into fibrosis and cirrhosis. Exploring the molecular mechanisms of NASH is highly dependent on the availability of animal models. Currently, the most commonly used animal models for NASH imitate particularly late stages of human disease. Thus, there is a need for an animal model that can be used for investigating the factors that potentiate the inflammatory response within NASH. We have previously shown that 7-day high-fat-high-cholesterol (HFC) feeding induces steatosis and inflammation in both APOE2ki and Ldlr−/− mice. However, it is not known whether the early inflammatory response observed in these mice will sustain over time and lead to liver damage. We hypothesized that the inflammatory response in both models is sufficient to induce liver damage over time. Methods APOE2ki and Ldlr−/− mice were fed a chow or HFC diet for 3 months. C57Bl6/J mice were used as control. Results Surprisingly, hepatic inflammation was abolished in APOE2ki mice, while it was sustained in Ldlr−/− mice. In addition, increased apoptosis and hepatic fibrosis was only demonstrated in Ldlr−/− mice. Finally, bone-marrow-derived-macrophages of Ldlr−/− mice showed an increased inflammatory response after oxidized LDL (oxLDL) loading compared to APOE2ki mice. Conclusion Ldlr−/− mice, but not APOE2ki mice, developed sustained hepatic inflammation and liver damage upon long term HFC feeding due to increased sensitivity for oxLDL uptake. Therefore, the Ldlr−/− mice are a promising physiological model particularly vulnerable for investigating the onset of hepatic inflammation in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.
The real-time facial imitation by a social humanoid robot

Facial expression imitation with applications in the design of human robot interaction (HRI) systems is an active area of research. In this study, we propose an approach for real-time imitation of human facial expression by a humanoid social robot “Alice”. Artificial neural network (ANN) and Kinect sensor are used for recognition and classifying of the facial expressions like happiness, sadness, fear, anger and surprise; with the Alice humanoid robot imitating the comprehended expressions. Results and experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.
The Socially Stable Core in Structured Transferable Utility Games

We consider cooperative games with transferable utility (TU-games), in which we allow for a social structure on the set of players, for instance a hierarchical ordering or a dominance relation.The social structure is utilized to refine the core of the game, being the set of payoffs to the players that cannot be improved upon by any coalition of players.For every coalition the relative strength of a player within that coalition is induced by the social structure and is measured by a power function.We call a payoff vector socially stable if at the collection of coalitions that can attain it, all players have the same power.The socially stable core of the game consists of the core elements that are socially stable.In case the social structure is such that every player in a coalition has the same power, social stability reduces to balancedness and the socially stable core coincides with the core.We show that the socially stable core is non-empty if the game itself is socially stable.In general the socially stable core consists of a finite number of faces of the core and generically consists of a finite number of payoff vectors.Convex TU-games have a non-empty socially stable core, irrespective of the power function.When there is a clear hierarchy of players in terms of power, the socially stable core of a convex TU-game consists of exactly one element, an appropriately defined marginal vector.We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of the socially stable core by two applications.One application concerns sequencing games and the other one the distribution of water.
Downregulation of Blood-Brain Barrier Glucose Transporter in Experimental Diabetes

Previous studies showing downregulation of bloodbrain barrier (BBB) glucose-transporter activity in vivo in experimental diabetes have recently been questioned. Therefore, our investigations examined both the BBB glucose-transporter activity in experimental diabetes in vivo, with the use of the in situ internal carotid artery perfusion technique, and the microvessel glucose-transporter concentration, with quantitative Western immunoblots. These studies show that BBB glucose-transporter activity in vivo is decreased 44% in experimental diabetes (blood glucose concn 443 ± 12 mg/dl), parallel with a 44% decrease in cerebral blood flow, a normal brain blood volume, and a 75% prolongation of capillary transit time. The glucose-transporter concentration is decreased 77 ± 9% in microvessels isolated from diabetic rat brain compared with controls, as measured by quantitative Western blotting. These studies confirm the original observations that the BBB glucose transporter is downregulated in experimental diabetes, in association with a parallel decrease in cerebral blood flow. In addition, these studies, in conjunction with other recent experiments from this laboratory showing elevated glucose-transporter mRNA in diabetic rat brain capillaries, suggest the primary mechanism underlying the downregulation is a posttranscriptional inhibition of glucose-transporter mRNA translation.
A Tale of Youth Graduates Unemployment

the United Nations defines youth as all individuals aged between 15 and 24(Bennell, 2007). There are 1.2 billion youth between the ages of 15 and 24 years that make up 18% of the world’s population. Of these, about 87% of these young people live in developing countries. For example, Africa alone has some 200 million youth. Ethiopia has the largest youth population in Sub-Saharan Africa. More than half of its population is under the age of 25 and 20% are between 15 and 24 (Nebil, Gezahegn and Hayat, 2010). The problem of youth unemployment particularly in urban areas has been a persistent concern of politicians and policymakers since the 1960s. Nonetheless, youth development has remained at the margins of national development strategies in most countries though there exists some growing interest towards the youth. And still youth are suffering from many untold problems emanating from unemployment which many called it ‘youth crisis’ (Bennell, 2007). These authors added that the number of unemployed youth world-wide has reached 88 million and the number of young people looking for work in Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to increase by 28% in the next15 years – an additional 30 million people joining the pool of job seekers. In Burundi, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Uganda, youth poverty exceeds 80%, whereas it is much lower in Ghana (Gyimah-Brempong and Kimeny, 2013). In Ethiopia, in 2005, youth (15-24 years old) recorded a 7.8% unemployment rate, higher than any other age group (Nebil, Gezahegn and Hayat, 2010).
Rates of Return to Schooling in China

This study uses data from a 1988 survey of Chinese individuals to estimate rates of return to schooling in China. The Mincer-type rate of return to schooling was estimated at 4.02 percent in rural areas and 3.29 percent in urban areas; these are fairly low estimates compared with similar estimates in other countries. The rate of return for schooling females was significantly higher than that for males in urban areas. In addition, members of the Communist Party in urban areas had significantly lower returns to schooling compared to non-members.
An effective feature-preserving mesh simplification scheme based on face constriction

A novel mesh simplification scheme that uses the face constriction process is presented. By introducing a statistical measure that can distinguish triangles having vertices of high local roughness from triangles in flat regions into our weight-ordering equation, along with other heuristics, our scheme can better preserve visually important features in the original mesh. To improve the shape quality of triangles, we adopt nonlinear face area sensitivity in the weight ordering. A learning and feedback mechanism is also utilized to enhance user controllability. The computations are simple, making our scheme time-effective and easy to implement. In addition to comparing our scheme with other mesh simplification algorithms empirically, we compare their performances by establishing a unifying ground among three basic simplification processes: decimate vertex, collapse edge, and constrict face. This unification allows us to analyze the intrinsic merits and demerits of simplification algorithms to help users make better selections.
Generalized Line Graphs: Cartesian Products and Complexity of Recognition

Putting the concept of line graph in a more general setting, for a positive integer $k$, the $k$-line graph $L_k(G)$ of a graph $G$ has the $K_k$-subgraphs of $G$ as its vertices, and two vertices of $L_k(G)$ are adjacent if the corresponding copies of $K_k$ in $G$ share $k-1$ vertices. Then, 2-line graph is just the line graph in usual sense, whilst 3-line graph is also known as triangle graph. The $k$-anti-Gallai graph $\triangle_k(G)$ of $G$ is a specified subgraph of $L_k(G)$ in which two vertices are adjacent if the corresponding two $K_k$-subgraphs are contained in a common $K_{k+1}$-subgraph in $G$. We give a unified characterization for nontrivial connected graphs $G$ and $F$ such that the Cartesian product $G\Box F$ is a $k$-line graph. In particular for $k=3$, this answers the question of Bagga (2004), yielding the necessary and sufficient condition that $G$ is the line graph of a triangle-free graph and $F$ is a complete graph (or vice versa). We show that for any $k\ge 3$, the $k$-line graph of a connected graph $G$ is isomorphic to the line graph of $G$ if and only if $G=K_{k+2}$. Furthermore, we prove that the recognition problem of $k$-line graphs and that of $k$-anti-Gallai graphs are NP-complete for each $k\ge 3$.
How does EU policy induce domestic policy changes? A comparison of renewable electricity policy changes in Europe

In the context of the progressive liberalization of the European electricity market and of the Kyoto commitments to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, renewable electricity (RES-E) came on the political agenda of most European countries as a paradoxical policy problem. Firstly, RES-E is hardly competitive on the electricity market compared to other technologies (nuclear, gas, coal etc plants), which makes it even more difficult to develop in a liberalized sector. Secondly, RES-E appears as one important solution to help reducing the GHG emissions in the electricity sector, since most RES-E technologies are GHG emissionsfree. Therefore, public support to RES-E is crucial for its development on the European market in the future. RES-E policies have been implemented in some member states for decades already, while others have only considered it recently. But in almost every country, the new context gave rise to modifications of the prevailing policies. The question of those RES-E policy changes, whether minor or major changes, is at the earth of this research. The empirical basis of the research includes five EU member-states with diverging RES-E policy change patterns: Belgium, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Great-Britain.
Learning Joint Stiffness Variations from Demonstration

Humans demonstrate an impressive ability to manipulate fragile objects without damaging them, graciously controlling the position of hands and tools while managing contact forces as necessary for the task. Robot control has been characterized by position control with the aim of producing fast, accurate and repeatable motion. These capabilities have reached a level where robots often outperform human workforce in repetitive assembly tasks. However, for extending the applicability of robotic manipulation outside this class of industrial tasks, pure position control is inadequate. In tasks which involve contact with objects whose position is not known with perfect certainty, the use of a pure position controller can cause unbounded rise of the contact force, ultimately leading to dangerous behaviors such as breakage or instability in the control system. To deal with the problems that arise in contact, a compliant controller can be used instead. However, determining the compliance parameters to suit the task is often difficult, and may require accurate models of the environment and robot. An attractive alternative is to use learning, replacing the need of model-based compliance planning with instructions from a teacher and/or experience. The problem of adapting the compliance to suit the need of the task was treated in a Reinforcement Learning (RL) setting in [1]. In that work, the robot adapted the gains of a feedback controller to maximize task performance while minimizing energy. Another approach based on reinforcement learning was presented in [2] in which reinforcement learning was used for learning task space stiffness and motor coordination for flipping pancakes. In Robot Learning from Demonstration(RLfD) the task model is derived directly from demonstrations without the use of a reward function describing the task as in RL. Calinon et al. [3] proposed an approach to extract stiffness variations from the variability of demonstrated kinematic data. This approach is based on the assumption that stiffness should be directly related to kinematic variability. In our previous work [4] and in this abstract, we relax this assumption by teaching motion and stiffness profiles independently. In this abstract, we contribute by presenting a novel interface for teaching varying joint stiffness, and show how this interface can be integrated in a learning system for teaching stiffness variations. The approach is illustrated by a task of lighting a match using the KUKA Lightweight Robot (KUKA LWR), see Figure 1. Instead, we will focus on the problem of teaching a robot how to vary the stiffness in a task for which it has already learned the positional profile. To this end, we present an interface which adapts the stiffness of the joints based on the Fig. 1: The figure shows the KUKA Lightweight robot lighting a match using a motion and stiffness profile learned from demonstration.
A new methodology for observer design and implementation

Observers are usually formulated as explicit systems of differential equations and implemented using standard ODE solvers. In this paper, we show that there can be advantages in formulating the observer as a differential-algebraic equation (DAE). We propose a canonical DAE observer and show that it can be implemented using standard DAE solvers. The DAE implementation of the observer can be considered regardless of the design philosophy used. We present a simple design strategy for this canonical DAE observer based on the extended linearization method.
The economics of animal health and production.

1. What Is Economics And How Is It Useful? 2. Livestock Production Economics 3. Economics Of Controlling Livestock Diseases: Basic Theory 4. Data Collection 5. Different Methods Of Livestock Data Collection Methods 6. Economic Analysis Tools 7. Modelling And The Generation Of Information 8. Optimisation Methods For Assisting Policy Decisions On Endemic Diseases 9. Tools That Going Beyond The Enterprise Farm Or Business Level 10. Tools For Assessing The Price And Market Impacts Of Livestock Policies 11. The New Institutional Economics And The Assessment Of Animal Disease Control 12. Social And Culture Factors 13. The Economics Of Zoonoses And Their Control 14. Livestock Populations And Production Systems 15. The Main Livestock Diseases 16. Diseases Of Large Ruminants 17. Diseases Of Small Ruminants 18. Diseases Of Pigs 19. Diseases Of Poultry 20. Livestock Policy And Poverty Reduction - Experiences From The Developing World 21. Economics In Animal Health Policy Making In Northern Ireland 22. Animal Diseases Management In A New Livestock Trade Environment: The Case Of Chile 23. Decision Making, Scales And Quality Of Economic Evaluations For The Control Of Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia (CBPP) 24. Animal Health Policy In South Asia: What Can Economic Analysis Contribute 25. Approaches To Economic Analyses And Implications For Policy Issues In South East Asia Results From Three Case Studies In Crop - Animal Systems.
Automatic Digital Image Stabilization

This paper presents an automatic digital image stabilization system that is able to handle large image displacements. The system has been implemented in a parallel pipeline image processing hardware (Datacube Max Video 200) connected to a SUN SPARCstation 20/612 via a VME bus adaptor. Our technique is based on a two-dimensional feature-based multi-resolution motion estimation algorithm, that tracks a small set of features to estimate the motion of the camera. Stabilization is achieved by combining all motion from a reference frame and subtracting this motion from the current frame. Preliminary experimental results using video sequences taken from a camera rigidly mounted on a vehicle moving on rough terrain demonstrate the robustness of the system when processing 15 frames per second.
An extended dust disk in a spiral galaxy; An occulting galaxy pair in ANGST

We present an analysis of an occulting galaxy pair, serendipitously discovered in ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST) observations of NGC 253 taken with Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Survey in F475W, F606W$ and F814W (SDSS-g, broad V and I). The foreground disk system (at z < 0.06) shows a dusty disk much more extended than the starlight, with spiral lanes seen in extinction out to 1.5 R\_25, approximately six half-light radii. This pair is the first where extinction can be mapped reliably out to this distance from the center. The spiral arms of the extended dust disk show typical extinction values of A\_F475W ~ 0.25, A\_F606W ~ 0.25, and A\_F814W ~ 0.15. The extinction law inferred from these measures is similar to the local Milky Way one, and we show that the smoothing effects of sampling at limited spatial resolution (<57 pc, in these data) flattens the observed function through mixing of regions with different extinction. This galaxy illustrates the diversity of dust distributions in spirals, and the limitations of adopting a single dust model for optically similar galaxies. The ideal geometry of this pair of overlapping galaxies and the high sampling of HST data make this dataset ideal to analyze this pair with three separate approaches to overlapping galaxies: (A) a combined fit, rotating copies of both galaxies, (B) a simple flip of the background image and (C) an estimate of the original fluxes for the individual galaxies based on reconstructions of their proper isophotes. We conclude that in the case of high quality data such as these, isophotal models are to be preferred.
Poverty in transition economies

1. Poverty in transition economies: an introduction to the issues 2. The Russian homeless: old problem - new agenda 3. Impoverishment and social exclusion in Russia 4.Social assistance in Uzbekistan: can the mahallas target state support on the most vulnerable? 5. Income, poverty and well-being in Central Asia 6. Poverty profiles and coping mechanisms in Ukraine 7. Poverty measurement and income support in Romania 8. Albania and Macedonia: transitions and poverty 9. Estimation of poverty lines based on Ravallion's method, application to the Republic of Macedonia 10. Income distribution and poverty in Slovenia 11. A comparison of poverty in the UK and Hungary 12. Child poverty: comparison of industrial and transition economies 13. Poverty and social policy in a period of political transition in Spain (1975 - 1995) 14. Targeting poverty benefits in Russia: reality-based alternatives to income-testing 15. Household budget and house conditions in two Russian cities 16. Coping in Central Europe
Toward letter recognition system: Determination of best wavelet and best rhythm using EEG

The paper describes the application of different wavelet analysis together with machine learning algorithm for the recognition of English alphabet from EEG signal. Decision making was executed in two stages. At first important features such as maximum, minimum, delta value, moment, kurtosis, skew, median, mean and standard deviation at different sub-bands are computed using the wavelet functions — Daubechies 8, Coiflet 6, Biorthogonal 4.4, Symlet 4. Finally, a learning-based algorithm like support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier is implemented for classifying letters. From the analysis, Daubechies 8 is found the most suitable candidate among the wavelet families in this proposed research for accurate recognition of different letters. So the focus of this work is to recognize different letters through SVM classifier. In this analysis, among different rhythms of EEG signal delta rhythm shows best performance in recognizing letters and the recognition rate is 80%.
Singular Modes of the Electromagnetic Field

Abstract. We show that the mode corresponding to the point of essential spectrum of the electromagnetic scattering operator is a vector-valued distribution representing the square root of the three-dimensional Dirac’s delta function. An explicit expression for this singular mode in terms of the Weyl sequence is provided and analyzed. An essential resonance thus leads to a perfect localization (confinement) of the electromagnetic field, which in practice, however, may result in complete absorption.
On the propagation of errors in the size of join results

Query optimizers of current relational database systems use several statistics maintained by the system on the contents of the database to decide on the most efficient access plan for a given query. These statistics contain errors that transitively affect many estimates derived by the optimizer. We present a formal framework based on which the principles of this error propagation can be studied. Within this framework, we obtain several analytic results on how the error propagates in general, as well as in the extreme and average cases. We also provide results on guarantees that the database system can make based on the statistics that it maintains. Finally, we discuss some promising approaches to controlling the error propagation and derive several interesting properties of them.
Spam filtering by semantic indexing and duplicate detection

Internet is becoming an integral part of everyday life and email has become a powerful tool to exchange ideas and information. Through email users connect socially and commercially. But mass mailing i.e. Spam has become one of the biggest worldwide problem. So there is requirement to develop a spam filter which can detect the spam and can stop the mass mailing. In this paper, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) approach is used for spam filtering. Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is an indexing and retrieval method which uses singular value decomposition (SVD) to find the relationships between the terms and unstructured collection of message. LSI is based on the principle that terms that are used in the same contexts tend to have similar meanings. Apart from this spam are obtained more or less abundant replications in a significant numbers. The detection of these duplicates is important because it allows to lighten email box and will improve the efficiency of spam filter. The Duplicate Message Detection Techniques (DMDT) has been used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of spam filter.