Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Decomposing the Gender Wage Gap in the Netherlands with Sample Selection Adjustments

In this paper, we use quantile regression decomposition methods to analyze the gender gap between men and women who work full time in the Netherlands. Because the fraction of women working full time in the Netherlands is quite low, sample selection is a serious issue. In addition to shedding light on the sources of the gender gap in the Netherlands, we make two methodological contributions. First, we prove that the Machado-Mata quantile regression decomposition procedure yields consistent and asymptotically normal estimates of the quantiles of the counterfactual distribution that it is designed to simulate. Second, we show how the technique can be extended to account for selection. We find that there is a positive selection of women into full-time work in the Netherlands; i.e., women who get the greatest return to working full time do work full time. We find that about two thirds of this selection is due to observables such as education and experience with the remainder due to unobservables. Our decompositions show that the majority of the gender log wage gap is due to differences between men and women in returns to labor market characteristics rather than to differences in the characteristics. This is true across the wage distribution, particularly in the top half of the distribution.
Improvement of survival in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: retrospective analysis of 835 patients

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is the most common muscle disease in children. Historically, DMD results in loss of ambulation between ages 7 and 13 years and death in the teens or 20s. In order to determine whether survival has improved over the decades and whether the impact of nocturnal ventilation combined with a better management of cardiac involvement has been able to modify the pattern of survival, we reviewed the notes of 835 DMD patients followed at the Naples Centre of Cardiomyology and Medical Genetics from 1961 to 2006. Patients were divided, by decade of birth, into 3 groups: 1) DMD born between 1961 and 1970; 2) DMD born between 1971 and 1980; 3) DMD born between 1981 and 1990; each group was in turn subdivided into 15 two-year classes, from 14 to 40 years of age. Age and causes of death, type of cardiac treatment and use of a mechanical ventilator were carefully analyzed. The percentage of survivors in the different decades was statistically compared by chi-square test and Kaplan-Meier survival curves analyses. A significant decade on decade improvement in survival rate was observed at both the age of 20, where it passed from 23.3% of patients in group 1 to 54% of patients in group 2 and to 59,8% in patients in group 3 (p < 0.001) and at the age of 25 where the survival rate passed from 13.5% of patients in group 1 to 31.6% of patients in group 2 and to 49.2% in patients in group 3 (p < 0.001). The causes of death were both cardiac and respiratory, with a prevalence of the respiratory ones till 1980s. The overall mean age for cardiac deaths was 19.6 years (range 13.4-27.5), with an increasing age in the last 15 years. The overall mean age for respiratory deaths was 17.7 years (range 11.6-27.5) in patients without a ventilator support while increased to 27.9 years (range 23-38.6) in patients who could benefit of mechanical ventilation. This report documents that DMD should be now considered an adulthood disease as well, and as a consequence more public health interventions are needed to support these patients and their families as they pass from childhood into adult age.
nitrosoguanidine N-nitro-′ N-Methyl-N Transformed with Progression to Immortality in Rat Tracheal Epithelial Cells Nonrandom Chromosome Alterations That Correlate with Updated

Primary rat trachea! epithelial cells can be transformed in vitro by V methyl-/V'-nitro-/V-nitrosoguanidine. The earliest recognizable morpho logical transformant is the enhanced growth variant (EGV), characterized by enhanced proliferative capacity. Transformed EGV colonies can pro gress to give rise to immortal cell lines. The purpose of this study was to determine if specific chromosome changes occur which correlate with immortalization. A total of 34 EGV colonies were isolated, of which five were able to progress in culture to become immortal (â€¢! ()()population doublings). Early passages of all fire immortalized cultures exhibited additional copies of chromosomes 4, 7, and 11 as a common or recurrent abnormality. These numerical alterations were rarely observed in the primary EGV colonies from which the cell lines were derived, suggesting that these alterations occurred during progression. Structural alterations involving chromosome 1 (resulting in a net gain of Iq) and chromosome 3 (3q) also occurred in four out of five immortalized cultures. In all cases, structural alterations involving Iq and/or 3q were detected in the primary EGV colonies from which the immortal cell lines arose. Comparison of the frequency of the structural and numerical alterations observed in the immortalized cultures with their frequency in the 29 EGV colonies which did not become immortal indicated that these changes correlated (/' : 0.005) with the ability to become immortal. These results suggest that structural alterations occur in primary EGV colonies which predispose cells to immortalization and that subsequent numerical changes occur during progression that correlate with acquisition of the immortal phenotype.
A Local Forecast of Land Surface Wetness Conditions Derived from Seasonal Climate Predictions

An ensemble local hydrologic forecast derived from the seasonal forecasts of the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction (IRI) is presented. Three-month seasonal forecasts were used to resample historical meteorological conditions and generate ensemble forcing datasets for a TOPMODEL-based hydrology model. Eleven retrospective forecasts were run at Florida and New York sites. Forecast skill was assessed for mean area modeled water table depth (WTD) and compared with WTD simulated with observed data. Hydrology model forecast skill was evident at the Florida site. Persistence of initial hydrologic conditions and local skill of the IRI seasonal forecast contributed to this local hydrologic forecast skill. At the New York site, there was no persistence of initial hydrologic conditions and local skill of the IRI seasonal forecast was poor; these factors precluded local hydrologic forecast skill at this site.
Tracking of deformable human hand in real time as continuous input for gesture-based interaction

Gesture input is a natural and effective interactive model. The tracking of deformable hand gesture is a very important task in gesture-based interaction. A novel real-time tracking approach is proposed to capture hand motion with single camera. It combines the characters of model-based and appearance-based method. The presented approach achieves auto-initialization by posture recognition and matching with image features. It solves the problem of interference among fingers successfully by the integration of K-Means clustering and Particle Filters. Moreover, tracking detection realizes resumption from tracking failure and automatic update of hand model. Experiments show that, the proposed method can achieve continuous real-time tracking of deformable hand gesture, and meets the requirements for gesture-based Human-Computer Interaction.
THE GOOD , THE BAD , AND THE UGLY

Since the first scientific observations on mining environments over 400 years ago, we have gained some phenomenal knowledge on mine, land and waterways degradation and related environmental protection issues. Yet today, we continue to be faced with numerous challenges, including the recurring failure of mine waste repositories, the unconstrained production of acid rock drainage and the widespread dispersal of contaminants from mine sites into the environment. More than ever, environmental scientists have important contributions to make as they provide the data necessary for rational decision-making in critical areas such as resource development, environmental protection, waste management and remediation, as well as mine, land and waterway rehabilitation. The most urgent problem facing environmental scientists working on mining environments is the quantification of the interactions that control the distribution of contaminants in rocks, soils, sediments, waters and biota. We must precisely describe the chemistry and mineralogy of contaminants and understand their long-term behaviour. We need to drastically improve our scientific efforts to explain environmental processes at mine sites on all scales, including micro and macro scales as well as in 3-D and 4-D. In addition, we must improve our predictions on mine drainage, aquifer and final void water quality. While the rehabilitation of many mine sites and waste repositories is pursued by using best practices, we must continue to search for innovative, cost-effective remediation technologies and sustainable rehabilitation practices. Evaluations of recently rehabilitated mine sites could produce data on the successes and failures of rehabilitation efforts. Such studies should sharpen our ideas on the factors leading to contaminant dispersal and the development of new remediation technologies. The rehabilitation of mine sites and secure disposal of mine wastes require a new precision in the total description of mine sites and an understanding whether our current rehabilitation practices are sustainable in the long term. There is reason for optimism that the required progress is possible. Such optimism is based on the phenomenal advances in our ability to observe and describe mining environments. However, detailed studies of natural, mined, contaminated and rehabilitated environments are necessary if we are to quantify the variables controlling the containment and dispersal of contaminants and if we are to develop innovative remediation protocols. Our efforts could ensure that the 21 century goes down in history as that of “green technologies”.
Multilayer Embedded Metamaterial Optimization for 3D Integrated Module Applications

This paper proposes a novel methodology to design and optimize a metamaterial structure for 6 GHz. Current design methods do not take into account the specific effect of each of the factors involved in the design process, the degree that these factors interact with each other, and which ones are not statistically significant and therefore can be eliminated from further analysis. The proposed methodology integrates full wave electromagnetic simulation and statistical tools and is applied for the optimization of a compact 6 GHz metamaterial structure on LTCC (low temperature cofired ceramic). The proposed methodology can be easily extended to a large number of design variables and optimized figures of merit
Investigating the Effect of HELLO Validity Time of OLSR in a MANET Testbed

Recently, Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) have an increased interest in applications for covering rural areas due to the possibility of usage of low-cost and high-performance mobile terminals, without having to depend on the network infrastructure. Because the terminals are mobile, the routes change dynamically, so routing algorithms are an important issue for operation of MANETs. In this paper, we investigate the behavior of OLSR Routing Protocol for different values of HELLO validity time. We conduct experiments in a MANET testbed. We design and implement two experimental scenarios in our academic environment and investigate their performance behaviour for different number of hops.
Continuum robot arms inspired by cephalopods

In this paper, we describe our recent results in the development of a new class of soft, continuous backbone ("continuum") robot manipulators. Our work is strongly motivated by the dexterous appendages found in cephalopods, particularly the arms and suckers of octopus, and the arms and tentacles of squid. Our ongoing investigation of these animals reveals interesting and unexpected functional aspects of their structure and behavior. The arrangement and dynamic operation of muscles and connective tissue observed in the arms of a variety of octopus species motivate the underlying design approach for our soft manipulators. These artificial manipulators feature biomimetic actuators, including artificial muscles based on both electro-active polymers (EAP) and pneumatic (McKibben) muscles. They feature a "clean" continuous backbone design, redundant degrees of freedom, and exhibit significant compliance that provides novel operational capacities during environmental interaction and object manipulation. The unusual compliance and redundant degrees of freedom provide strong potential for application to delicate tasks in cluttered and/or unstructured environments. Our aim is to endow these compliant robotic mechanisms with the diverse and dexterous grasping behavior observed in octopuses. To this end, we are conducting fundamental research into the manipulation tactics, sensory biology, and neural control of octopuses. This work in turn leads to novel approaches to motion planning and operator interfaces for the robots. The paper describes the above efforts, along with the results of our development of a series of continuum tentacle-like robots, demonstrating the unique abilities of biologically-inspired design.
IFN-γ-mediated negative feedback regulation of NKT cell function by CD94/NKG2

Activation of invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells with CD1d-restricted T-cell receptor (TCR) ligands is a powerful means to modulate various immune responses. However, the iNKT-cell response is of limited duration and iNKT cells appear refractory to secondary stimulation. Here we show that the CD94/NKG2A inhibitory receptor plays a critical role in down-regulating iNKT-cell responses. Both TCR and NK-cell receptors expressed by iNKT cells were rapidly down-modulated by priming with α-galactosylceramide (α-GalCer) or its analog OCH [(2S,3S,4R)-1-O-(α-d-galactopyranosyl)-N-tetracosanoyl-2-amino-1,3,4-nonanetriol)]. TCR and CD28 were re-expressed more rapidly than the inhibitory NK-cell receptors CD94/NKG2A and Ly49, temporally rendering the primed iNKT cells hyperreactive to ligand restimulation. Of interest, α-GalCer was inferior to OCH in priming iNKT cells for subsequent restimulation because α-GalCer–induced interferon γ (IFN-γ) up-regulated Qa-1b expression and Qa-1b in turn inhibited iNKT-cell activity via its interaction with the inhibitory CD94/NKG2A receptor. Blockade of the CD94/NKG2–Qa-1b interaction markedly augmented recall and primary responses of iNKT cells. This is the first report to show the critical role for NK-cell receptors in controlling iNKT-cell responses and provides a novel strategy to augment the therapeutic effect of iNKT cells by priming with OCH or blocking of the CD94/NKG2A inhibitory pathway in clinical applications.
Roaming charges for customers of cellular-wireless entrant and incumbent providers

In some countries, cellular wireless roaming charges are prohibitive possibly because the incumbent access-provider is actually or essentially state-run, unlike potential entrants, i.e., the regulator (state) is in a con ict of inter- est. In other countries, e.g., France, there is a lot of competition among Internet Service (access) Providers (ISPs). Recently, Free purchased a spec- trum license to compete in the 4G market. Free is an established discount broadband (wired) ISP likely intending to bundle its existing o erings with cellular wireless. The cellular-wireless incumbents such as Orange disputed Free's position on roaming charges for its customers while Free builds out its wireless infrastructure and o ers highly discounted access rates to attract customers (though Free's service is quota limited and considered of poorer quality and support, the latter particularly through physical store-fronts) [3]. Orange does lease some of its existing infrastructure to third-party discount providers such as Virgin Wireless (which does not o er bundled services in direct competition with Orange).
Structural Biology and Crystallization Communications Crystallization and Diffraction of an Isl1–ldb1 Complex

A stable intramolecular complex comprising the LIM domains of the LIM-homeodomain protein Isl1 tethered to a peptide region of Ldb1 has been engineered, purified and crystallized. The orthorhombic crystals belonged to space group P222 1 , with unit-cell parameters a = 57.2, b = 56.7, c = 179.8 A ˚ , and diffracted to 3.10 A ˚ resolution.
Contextual design considerations for co-located, collaborative tables

To date, digital tabletop research has predominantly focused on resolving fundamental software and hardware challenges introduced by this new interactive platform. Understanding not only what technical functionality a digital tabletop can provide, but also how appropriate that functionality is for different usage contexts is crucial in designing tables intended for use outside of the research lab. In this paper, we propose five contextual factors to consider in the tabletop design process - social and cultural, activity, temporal, ecological, and motivational - and discuss how these factors influence the design of three main aspects of tabletop systems: software interface, physical form, and connectedness. This work provides a means for tabletop designers to understand the factors that impact the applicability of existing and future design approaches for a given context of use.
Quantitative Comparison and Metabolite Profiling of Saponins in Different Parts of the Root of Panax notoginseng

Although both rhizome and root of Panax notoginseng are officially utilized as notoginseng in “Chinese Pharmacopoeia”, individual parts of the root were differently used in practice. To provide chemical evidence for the differentiated usage, quantitative comparison and metabolite profiling of different portions derived from the whole root, as well as commercial samples, were carried out, showing an overall higher content of saponins in rhizome, followed by main root, branch root, and fibrous root. Ginsenoside Rb2 was proposed as a potential marker with a content of 0.5 mg/g as a threshold value for differentiating rhizome from other parts. Multivariate analysis of the metabolite profile further suggested 32 saponins as potential markers for the discrimination of different parts of notoginseng. Collectively, the study provided comprehensive chemical evidence for the distinct usage of different parts of notoginseng and, hence, is of great importance for the rational application and exploitation of individual parts of notoginseng.
Complex place and place identity

OF THE DISSERTATION Complex Place and Place Identity by NICHOLAS STEPHEN DANIS Dissertation Director: Akinbiyi Akinlabi This dissertation proposes a unified theory of Place Identity to model interactions of phonological place features along local, long-distance, and input/output dimensions. Empirical support comes from reduction and agreement processes involving complex, or multiple, place on a single segment—processes previously reported to be unattested. Identity constraints (Ident and Agree) are those that demand two segments be alike with respect to the presence or value of some feature, and are constructed here following a schema of Generalized Identity. The resulting constraints vary both in the relation of the segments in question (input/output correspondence, surface correspondence, or strict adjacency) and in the location of place features in the geometry (within-category or cross-category). Sets of stringently-defined constraints are built via Constraint Summation, a constraint-building operation that sums the violation profiles of the original constraints. The resulting system of place identity captures partial class effects (based on Padgett 2002) of place along all identity dimensions, while augmenting the observations in de Lacy 2006 on markedness reduction and inventory structure with respect to complex segments. Empirical investigation of complex segments reveals place behavior unattested with simple stops. In Ngbaka, place co-occurrence restrictions are an example of long-distance major place harmony, which requires place identity over surface correspondence in the Agreement by Correspondence framework (Rose & Walker 2004, a.o.). The patterns are supported by a statistical analysis of a newly-digitized Ngbaka dictionary. Additionally,
Caveolin-1 is required for contractile phenotype expression by airway smooth muscle cells

Airway smooth muscle cells exhibit phenotype plasticity that underpins their ability to contribute both to acute bronchospasm and to the features of airway remodelling in chronic asthma. A feature of mature, contractile smooth muscle cells is the presence of abundant caveolae, plasma membrane invaginations that develop from the association of lipid rafts with caveolin‐1, but the functional role of caveolae and caveolin‐1 in smooth muscle phenotype plasticity is unknown. Here, we report a key role for caveolin‐1 in promoting phenotype maturation of differentiated airway smooth muscle induced by transforming growth factor (TGF)‐β1. As assessed by Western analysis and laser scanning cytometry, caveolin‐1 protein expression was selectively enriched in contractile phenotype airway myocytes. Treatment with TGF‐β1 induced profound increases in the contractile phenotype markers sm‐α‐actin and calponin in cells that also accumulated abundant caveolin‐1; however, siRNA or shRNAi inhibition of caveolin‐1 expression largely prevented the induction of these contractile phenotype marker proteins by TGF‐β1. The failure by TGF‐β1 to adequately induce the expression of these smooth muscle specific proteins was accompanied by a strongly impaired induction of eukaryotic initiation factor‐4E binding protein(4E‐BP)1 phosphorylation with caveolin‐1 knockdown, indicating that caveolin‐1 expression promotes TGF‐β1 signalling associated with myocyte maturation and hypertrophy. Furthermore, we observed increased expression of caveolin‐1 within the airway smooth muscle bundle of guinea pigs repeatedly challenged with allergen, which was associated with increased contractile protein expression, thus providing in vivo evidence linking caveolin‐1 expression with accumulation of contractile phenotype myocytes. Collectively, we identify a new function for caveolin‐1 in controlling smooth muscle phenotype; this mechanism could contribute to allergic asthma.
Modelling and Meta-modelling Issues in Agent Oriented Software Engineering : The AgentLink AOSE TFG Approach 2 . Modelling Languages and MAS Meta-models

AgentLink III is a coordination action for agent-based computing funded by the European Community; it aims at providing support for the network of Europe an researchers and developers with a common interest in agent technol ogy through the organization and support for a large number of events aimed at industry outr each, standardization issues, as well as providing support for academic dis semination and collaborations.