Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Econometric Measures of Systemic Risk in the Finance and Insurance Sectors

We propose several econometric measures of systemic risk to capture the interconnectedness among the monthly returns of hedge funds, banks, brokers, and insurance companies based on principal components analysis and Granger-causality tests. We find that all four sectors have become highly interrelated over the past decade, increasing the level of systemic risk in the finance and insurance industries. These measures can also identify and quantify financial crisis periods, and seem to contain predictive power for the current financial crisis. Our results suggest that hedge funds can provide early indications of market dislocation, and systemic risk arises from a complex and dynamic network of relationships among hedge funds, banks, insurance companies, and brokers.
Longitudinale studie naar oorzaken en effecten van presenteisme [Longitudinal study on the determinants and consequences of presenteeism]

In a longitudinal cross-lagged study, the determinants and consequences were examined of presenteeism (going to work despite feeling unhealthy). All variables were measured with questionnaires in 2002 and in 2004 among a representative Dutch sample (N = 653), and these data were individually and longitudinally matched. In 2002 as well as in 2004, approximately 60% reported presenteeism. In this study, no effects of job demands were confirmed. Emotional exhaustion was found to be an important determinant of later sickness absence and later presenteeism, and sickness absence also had a direct effect on later presenteeism. However, the relationship between presenteeism and sickness absence was not found to be reciprocal. This implies that emotional exhaustion lies at the base of both sickness absence and presenteeism, and emotional exhaustion may serve as an important target to reduce sickness absence as well as presenteeism.
Short and long-term follow-up of nonablative 1320 nm Nd:YAG laser facial rejuvenation.

To the Editor: Every day we learn something . this time the lesson is one which we should have learned a long time ago, namely festina lente : ie, one should be very careful not to draw long-term conclusions from a comparatively short-term preliminary study. 1 However, although perhaps overenthusiastic, we did try to strike a balance between a reasonable follow-up period and the need to disseminate knowledge to our colleagues. Dr. Menaker in his commentary to our article is correct in pointing out that collagen remodeling without epidermal ablation has been clearly demonstrated in several independent trials using the 1320 nm Nd: YAG laser with dynamic cooling. However, the further comment that such collagen remodeling does not correlate with significant clinical improvement is not totally correct. Although Menaker 2 and Kelly 3
MOBBING AND BULLYING IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES ON HUMAN HEALTH

Organizations are often analysed as open systems interdependent, interconnected or interrelated with the referential environment, where the resources, results, processes are evaluated as organizational environment, structure, dynamics and culture. „In a workplace environment that is built on a narrative that values staff needs for identity, belonging, and social interaction, workers are humanized. Cooperation, compassion, empathy, and mutual aid are engendered and employees work together to meet mutual goals, becoming allies rather than threats. Instead of viewing each other as competitors for scarce resources, organizational members are seen as collaborators; and differences in work styles and skills are valued, not feared. Thus, the context, in general and the organizational context, in particular, lays its prints on the development of individuals in a situational frame they perceive differently, choosing the terms of adaptation, costs and benefits, social rituals and beliefs, the set of values, norms and status, the best modality of dealing with the others, with their leaders, the preference for a certain type of management appealing to the personality of the people involved. In such organizational context the existence of conflicts within organizations generates bullying practices that has now become identified as a serious issue in the workplace context.
Molecular Events Underlying Parkinson’s Disease – An Interwoven Tapestry

Although a subject of intense research, the mechanisms underlying dopaminergic neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease (PD) remains poorly understood. However, a broad range of studies conducted over the past few decades, including epidemiological, genetic, and post-mortem analysis, as well as in vitro and in vivo modeling, have contributed significantly to our understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease. In particular, the recent identification and functional characterization of several genes, including α-synuclein, parkin, DJ-1, PINK1, and LRRK2, whose mutations are causative of rare familial forms of PD have provided tremendous insights into the molecular pathways underlying dopaminergic neurodegeneration. Collectively, these studies implicate aberrant mitochondrial and protein homeostasis as key contributors to the development of PD, with oxidative stress likely acting as an important nexus between the two pathogenic events. Aberrations in homeostatic processes leading to protein aggregation and mitochondrial dysfunction may arise intrinsically in substantia nigra pars compacta dopaminergic neurons as a result of impairments in the ubiquitin-proteasome system, failure in autophagy-mediated clearance, alterations of mitochondrial dynamics, redox imbalance, iron mishandling, dopamine dysregulation, or simply from the chronic pace-making activity of nigra-localized L-type calcium channels, or extrinsically from non-autonomous sources of stress. Given the myriad of culprits implicated, the pathogenesis of PD necessarily involves an intricate network of interwoven pathways rather than a linear sequence of events. Obviously, understanding how the various disease-associated pathways interact with and influence each other is of mechanistic and therapeutic importance. Here, we shall discuss some key PD-related pathways and how they are interwoven together into a tapestry of events.
Chorégraphie dynamique de services basée sur la coordination d'agents introspectifs

Cette these presente une approche dynamique pour la choregraphie de services basee sur la coordination d’agents introspectifs. Elle propose ainsi une approche pour la composition dynamique de services web par la collaboration decentralisee entre une collection de services dont le but est de satisfaire les besoins complexes d’utilisateurs humains. Les capacites de collaboration des services sont modelisees moyennant des agents introspectifs capables de raisonner sur leurs propres actions (ou sur les services qu’ils offrent), de prendre dynamiquement part aux tâches a accomplir, et de se coordonner avec d’autres agents pour pallier leurs limites et couvrir les besoins a satisfaire. Un protocole de coordination a alors ete specifie pour permettre aux agents de composer les fonctionnalites des services qu’ils offrent. Il s’appuie sur des besoins formalises en un ensemble de requetes et de contraintes globales et est valide sur des scenarii d’intelligence ambiante et de services web.
A digit-set-interleaved radix-8 division/square root kernel for double-precision floating point

A common and very efficient approach to division and square root is the subtractive SRT algorithm combined with a redundant partial remainder representation like carry-save. A recently proposed modification of the SRT algorithm for division reduces the number of comparators inside the Quotient Digit Selection Function (QDSF) to the number necessary in a non-redundant implementation and derives partial remainders directly from comparison results calculated inside the QDSF. In this paper it is shown that this modified approach is also applicable to square root operations in an efficient way. A combined radix-8 division and square root kernel for double-precision floating point was synthesized using a 40-nm general-purpose cell library. The implementation comprises a critical path of only 20.8 fanout-4 inverter delays at worst case conditions which is comparable to 20.0 inverter delays published for a high-speed radix-4 SRT implementation. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm reduces the total area compared to equivalent SRT-based implementations.
Identification of candidate disease genes by integrating Gene Ontologies and protein-interaction networks: case study of primary immunodeficiencies

Disease gene identification is still a challenge despite modern high-throughput methods. Many diseases are very rare or lethal and thus cannot be investigated with traditional methods. Several in silico methods have been developed but they have some limitations. We introduce a new method that combines information about protein-interaction network properties and Gene Ontology terms. Genes with high-calculated network scores and statistically significant gene ontology terms based on known diseases are prioritized as candidate genes. The method was applied to identify novel primary immunodeficiency-related genes, 26 of which were found. The investigation uses the protein-interaction network for all essential immunome human genes available in the Immunome Knowledge Base and an analysis of their enriched gene ontology annotations. The identified disease gene candidates are mainly involved in cellular signaling including receptors, protein kinases and adaptor and binding proteins as well as enzymes. The method can be generalized for any disease group with sufficient information.
Computational aspects of dynamic surfaces

This thesis is concerned with various computational aspects of surface dynamics. By this I mean algorithms and data structures to support simulations of the physics taking place on or about two-dimensional manifolds. This includes internal dynamics (e.g. elastic forces) and external dynamics (e.g. collisions). The core of the thesis is simulating cloth motion, including the internal elastic dynamics, the external dynamics of contact and collision, and post-processing of the data for rendering. The contact and collision algorithm, based on the notion of a collision resolution pipeline where candidate trajectories are passed through several stages designed to resolve different classes of collisions, was subsequently adapted to rigid body simulation. Surface dynamics are also potentially the most important part of simulations of deformable objects, driving the deformation of the interior. Chapter 5 presents a tetrahedral mesh generation algorithm designed to support large surface deformations. Adaptivity is also discussed. Throughout the thesis implicit surfaces defined by level sets are used to represent geometry. Level sets are used in many other areas, especially computational fluid dynamics for simulations of the surface between distinct regions of flow (e.g. material boundaries). Their chief drawback is storage expense. Chapter 6 presents a data structure for efficiently storing level sets without needing to change algorithms designed for regular grids. An example application, an interactive sculpting tool, is presented to illustrate the structure.
Efficient modal sound synthesis on GPUs

Modal sound synthesis is a useful method to interactively generate sounds for Virtual Environments. Forces acting on objects excite modes, which then have to be accumulated to generate the output sound. Due to the high audio sampling rate, algorithms using the CPU typically can handle only a few actively sounding objects. Additionally, force excitation should be applied at a high sampling rate. We present different algorithms to compute the synthesized sound using a GPU, and compare them to CPU implementations. The GPU algorithms shows a significantly higher performance, and allows many sounding objects simultaneously.
Criminal Mobility Of Robbery Offenders

The current paper addresses the mobility and willingness to travel of robbery offenders. A five-sector robbery typology was constructed, consisting of: personal robbery, commercial robbery, carjacking robbery, home-invasion robbery, and robbery by sudden snatching. Defining mobility as the straight-line distance between the offender’s home residence and the location of the robbery offense, the extent of criminal mobility for each type of robbery offense was analyzed. Using geographical information system (GIS) technologies and, more specifically, geocoding software programs, the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of the offender’s home and offense’s location was determined. It was found that a subset of robbery offenders exhibit relatively high mobility across all five robbery types. However, distinct mobility patterns also emerged between the different types of robbery offenses. Policy and research implications from these findings are discussed.
Sequence‐specific interaction of U1 snRNA with the SMN complex

The survival of motor neurons (SMN) protein complex functions in the biogenesis of spliceosomal small nuclear ribonucleoprotein particles (snRNPs) and prob ably other RNPs. All spliceosomal snRNPs have a common core of seven Sm proteins. To mediate the assembly of snRNPs, the SMN complex must be able to bring together Sm proteins with U snRNAs. We showed previously that SMN and other components of the SMN complex interact directly with several Sm proteins. Here, we show that the SMN complex also interacts specifically with U1 snRNA. The stem–loop 1 domain of U1 (SL1) is necessary and sufficient for SMN complex binding in vivo and in vitro. Substitution of three nucleotides in the SL1 loop (SL1A3) abolishes SMN interaction, and the corresponding U1 snRNA (U1A3) is impaired in U1 snRNP biogenesis. Microinjection of excess SL1 but not SL1A3 into Xenopus oocytes inhibits SMN complex binding to U1 snRNA and U1 snRNP assembly. These findings indicate that SMN complex interaction with SL1 is sequence‐specific and critical for U1 snRNP biogenesis, further supporting the direct role of the SMN complex in RNP biogenesis.
Surface Reconstruction via Fusing Sparse-Sequence of Depth Images

Handheld scanning using commodity depth cameras provides a flexible and low-cost manner to get 3D models. The existing methods scan a target by densely fusing all the captured depth images, yet most frames are redundant. The jittering frames inevitably embedded in handheld scanning process will cause feature blurring on the reconstructed model and even trigger the scan failure (i.e., camera tracking losing). To address these problems, in this paper, we propose a novel sparse-sequence fusion (SSF) algorithm for handheld scanning using commodity depth cameras. It first extracts related measurements for analyzing camera motion. Then based on these measurements, we progressively construct a supporting subset for the captured depth image sequence to decrease the data redundancy and the interference from jittering frames. Since SSF will reveal the intrinsic heavy noise of the original depth images, our method introduces a refinement process to eliminate the raw noise and recover geometric features for the depth images selected into the supporting subset. We finally obtain the fused result by integrating the refined depth images into the truncated signed distance field (TSDF) of the target. Multiple comparison experiments are conducted and the results verify the feasibility and validity of SSF for handheld scanning with a commodity depth camera.
Postgastrectomy pharmacokinetic changes of S‐1 in patients with localized advanced gastric cancer

S‐1 is an oral 5‐fluorouracil agent containing tegafur, 5‐chloro‐2, 4‐dihydroxypyridine (CDHP), and potassium oxonate. This study explored the pharmacokinetics of S‐1 and pharmacokinetic changes after gastric surgery in patients with resectable gastric cancer who received pre‐ and postoperative S‐1 plus docetaxel. Serial blood was drawn before and after gastrectomy from 37 patients for pharmacokinetic analysis. The pharmacokinetics of tegafur, 5‐fluorouracil, and CDHP were analyzed by noncompartmental analysis (NCA) methods and by modeling. In modeling analysis, CHDP concentrations were incorporated in the model as a time‐varying covariate that inhibits the clearance of 5‐fluorouracil following an inhibitory Emax model. In NCA, the pharmacokinetics of tegafur and 5‐FU before and after gastric surgery were similar, although average maximum concentrations of 5‐FU were decreased with statistical significance after gastrectomy. Median Tmax of tegafur was shorter after surgery without statistical significance. In modeling analysis, tegafur was best fitted by mixed zero and first‐order absorption. The only difference in the final pharmacokinetic model around gastrectomy was the presence of an absorption lag of 0.23 hours before surgery. Incorporation of CDHP concentrations significantly improved the model. Although some pharmacokinetic results showed statistically significant changes after gastrectomy, these differences seem to be too small to have any clinical implication.
Effect of calcium with and without probiotic, lactose, or both on organ and body weights, immune response and caecal microbiota in moulted laying hens.

A total of 72 laying hens were used to investigate the effect of probiotic and lactose on body weight loss, tibia ash, antibody production against sheep red blood cell (SRBC), heterophile-to-lymphocyte (H/L) ratio and gut microbiota in a common moulting method for 14 d. Hens were randomly allocated to 6 experimental groups consisting of (i) full feed (FF), (ii) feed withdrawal (FW), (iii) FW with calcium (Ca), (iv) FW with Ca and offering 7 g/lit lactose in drinking water (CaL), (v) FW with Ca and offering 1 g/lit probiotic in drinking water (CaP), and (vi) FW with Ca and offering a mixture of lactose and probiotic in drinking water (CaLP). The results showed body weight loss in all FW groups were more than 25% that was significantly higher than FF group (p < 0.05). The relative organ weights of hens in FW groups were lower than FF group; especially, it was significant for liver and ovary (p < 0.05). No significant difference was observed between all groups for tibia ash. The highest H/L ratio was related to FW group and offering Ca and lactose numerically and probiotic alone significantly resulted in decrease of this ratio (p < 0.05). The results also showed no significant difference for antibody production against SRBC among experimental groups. The highest coliform bacteria numeration observed in FW group and lactose could significantly reduce this population (p < 0.05). Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) numeration demonstrated a significant difference among treatments, so that FF hens had higher LAB than others (p < 0.05). In addition, FW moulted hens had significantly lower LAB compared to other moulted hens (p < 0.05), except for Ca group. In conclusion, probiotic and lactose was effective in maintaining caecal microbiota balance and improving immunity in hens exposed to moulting.
Basic life support knowledge of first-year university students from Brazil

We aimed to evaluate knowledge of first aid among new undergraduates and whether it is affected by their chosen course. A questionnaire was developed to assess knowledge of how to activate the Mobile Emergency Attendance Service - MEAS (Serviço de Atendimento Móvel de Urgência; SAMU), recognize a pre-hospital emergency situation and the first aid required for cardiac arrest. The students were also asked about enrolling in a first aid course. Responses were received from 1038 of 1365 (76.04%) new undergraduates. The questionnaires were completed in a 2-week period 1 month after the beginning of classes. Of the 1038 respondents (59.5% studying biological sciences, 11.6% physical sciences, and 28.6% humanities), 58.5% knew how to activate the MEAS/SAMU (54.3% non-biological vs 61.4% biological, P=0.02), with an odds ratio (OR)=1.39 (95%CI=1.07-1.81) regardless of age, sex, origin, having a previous degree or having a relative with cardiac disease. The majority could distinguish emergency from non-emergency situations. When faced with a possible cardiac arrest, 17.7% of the students would perform chest compressions (15.5% non-biological vs 19.1% biological first-year university students, P=0.16) and 65.2% would enroll in a first aid course (51.1% non-biological vs 74.7% biological, P<0.01), with an OR=2.61 (95%CI=1.98-3.44) adjusted for the same confounders. Even though a high percentage of the students recognized emergency situations, a significant proportion did not know the MEAS/SAMU number and only a minority had sufficient basic life support skills to help with cardiac arrest. A significant proportion would not enroll in a first aid course. Biological first-year university students were more prone to enroll in a basic life support course.
Graph Summarization in Annotated Data Using Probabilistic Soft Logic

Annotation graphs, made available through the Linked Data initiative and Semantic Web, have significant scientific value. However, their increasing complexity makes it difficult to fully exploit this value. Graph summaries, which group similar entities and relations for a more abstract view on the data, can help alleviate this problem, but new methods for graph summarization are needed that handle uncertainty present within and across these sources. Here, we propose the use of probabilistic soft logic (PSL) [1] as a general framework for reasoning about annotation graphs, similarities, and the possibly confounding evidence arising from these. We show preliminary results using two simple graph summarization heuristics in PSL for a plant biology domain.
Involvement of the Mannose Receptor and p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Signaling Pathway of the Microdomain of the Integral Membrane Protein after Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli Infection

ABSTRACT The microdomain of the integral membrane protein (MIMP) has been shown to adhere to mucin and to antagonize the adhesion of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) to epithelial cells; however, the mechanism has not been fully elucidated. In this study, we further identified the receptor of MIMP on NCM460 cells and investigated the mechanism (the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase [MAPK] pathway) following the interaction of MIMP and its corresponding receptor, mannose receptor. We first identified the target receptor of MIMP on the surfaces of NCM460 cells using immunoprecipitation-mass spectrometry technology. We also verified the mannose receptor and examined the degradation and activation of the p38 MAPK signaling pathway. The results indicated that MIMP adhered to NCM460 cells by binding to the mannose receptor and inhibited the phosphorylation of p38 MAPK stimulated after EPEC infection via inhibition of the Toll-like receptor 5 pathway. These findings indicated that MIMPs relieve the injury of NCM460 cells after enteropathogenic E. coli infection through the mannose receptor and inhibition of the p38 MAPK signaling pathway, both of which may therefore be potential therapeutic targets for intestinal diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease.
Text Detection in Natural Images Using Bio-inspired Models

Textual information in images constitutes a very rich source of high-level semantics for multimedia indexing and retrieval. In this paper, a new approach is proposed for detecting text in natural images inspired by the properties of the Human Visual System (HVS). In particular, the detection is based upon the functionality of the OFF and ON center-surround cells of the HVS. Cells are combined at different scales to guide a both efficient and effective algorithm. Performance evaluation relies on the ICDAR 2011 Robust Reading Dataset.