Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exchange Rate Regimes and Economic Performance

This paper studies the impact of exchange rate regimes on inflation, nominal money growth, real interest rates, and growth performance. We find that, for non-industrial economies, "long" pegs (defined as those lasting for five or more consecutive years) are associated with lower inflation than floats, but at the cost of an inferior growth performance. A similar tradeoff between inflation and growth is still present in the case of "hard" pegs (economies with currency boards or without separate legal tender), whose growth performance, as opposed to what is often suggested, does not differ significantly from that of conventional pegs. In contrast, "short" pegs clearly underperform floats, as they grow slower without providing any gains in terms of inflation.
Batch and Adaptive PARAFAC-Based Blind Separation of Convolutive Speech Mixtures

We present a frequency-domain technique based on PARAllel FACtor (PARAFAC) analysis that performs multichannel blind source separation (BSS) of convolutive speech mixtures. PARAFAC algorithms are combined with a dimensionality reduction step to significantly reduce computational complexity. The identifiability potential of PARAFAC is exploited to derive a BSS algorithm for the under-determined case (more speakers than microphones), combining PARAFAC analysis with time-varying Capon beamforming. Finally, a low-complexity adaptive version of the BSS algorithm is proposed that can track changes in the mixing environment. Extensive experiments with realistic and measured data corroborate our claims, including the under-determined case. Signal-to-interference ratio improvements of up to 6 dB are shown compared to state-of-the-art BSS algorithms, at an order of magnitude lower computational complexity.
Numerical Simulations of Wave Generation by a Vertical Plunger Using RANS and SPH Models

The water wave generation by a freely falling rigid body is examined in this paper. Two different two-dimensional numerical approaches have been utilized to simulate the time histories of fluid motion, free surface deformation, and the vertical displacement of a rectangular-shape rigid body. While the first approach is based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes RANS equations, with the k- closure model to compute the turbulence intensity, the second uses the smoothed particle hydrodynamics SPH method. Numerical simulations using several different initial elevations of the rigid body and different water depths have been performed. The displacement of the moving rigid body is determined by dynamic equilibrium of the forces acting on the body. Numerical results obtained from both approaches are discussed and compared with experimental data. Images of the free surface profile and falling rigid body recorded from the laboratory tests are compared with numerical results. Good agreement is observed. Numerical solutions for the velocity fields, pressure distributions, and turbulence intensities in the vicinity of the falling rigid body are also presented. The similarity and discrepancy between the solutions obtained by the two approaches are discussed.
Targeted prostate biopsy: value of multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging in detection of localized cancer

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men, with 1.1 million new cases worldwide reported by the World Health Organization in one recent year. Transrectal ultrasound (TRUS)-guided biopsy has been used for the diagnosis of prostate cancer for over 2 decades, but the technique is usually blind to cancer location. Moreover, the false negative rate of TRUS biopsy has been reported to be as high as 47%. Multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mp-MRI) includes T1- and T2-weighted imaging as well as dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). mp-MRI is a major advance in the imaging of prostate cancer, enabling targeted biopsy of suspicious lesions. Evolving targeted biopsy techniques—including direct in-bore biopsy, cognitive fusion and software-based MRI-ultrasound (MRI-US) fusion—have led to a several-fold improvement in cancer detection compared to the earlier method. Importantly, the detection of clinically significant cancers has been greatly facilitated by targeting, compared to systematic biopsy alone. Targeted biopsy via MRI-US fusion may dramatically alter the way prostate cancer is diagnosed and managed.
Cholesterol in brain disease: sometimes determinant and frequently implicated

Cholesterol is essential for neuronal physiology, both during development and in the adult life: as a major component of cell membranes and precursor of steroid hormones, it contributes to the regulation of ion permeability, cell shape, cell–cell interaction, and transmembrane signaling. Consistently, hereditary diseases with mutations in cholesterol‐related genes result in impaired brain function during early life. In addition, defects in brain cholesterol metabolism may contribute to neurological syndromes, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Huntington's disease (HD), and Parkinson's disease (PD), and even to the cognitive deficits typical of the old age. In these cases, brain cholesterol defects may be secondary to disease‐causing elements and contribute to the functional deficits by altering synaptic functions. In the first part of this review, we will describe hereditary and non‐hereditary causes of cholesterol dyshomeostasis and the relationship to brain diseases. In the second part, we will focus on the mechanisms by which perturbation of cholesterol metabolism can affect synaptic function.
Leading Reform in Teacher Education: A Rocky Road.

This paper presents one educator's experiences at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, in leading teacher education reform from 1990-1996. It is written from her perspective as the head of a school of teacher education. The school is primarily concerned with preparing elementary educators, with smaller programs for secondary educators and a very small postgraduate offering. The author's role was to lead reform in a difficult financial climate in a recently amalgamated institution. She was the only woman in a senior management position in a new faculty of education. Teacher education was geographically isolated from the other two-thirds of the faculty concerned with adult education. The academic focus of the institution had been on teaching, while research was of minor importance. Following amalgamation, research assumed increasing importance, and a number of staff responded to the challenges by forming new identities embracing the research culture. This self-study contains the educator's reflections on how she worked to change the culture of staff in teacher education. She believes it was a rocky but rewarding road to travel and, as she relived the process in preparing this paper, she understood how she could make some changes in the way she worked as a leader. (Contains 19 references.) (SM) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ********************************************************************************
Global and local knowledge in SDN

It appears to be SDN dogma that middleboxes are bad. However middleboxes form near half the elements that comprise today's networks and at least three active research fields are exploring how to improve their functionality. Fifteen recent SDN survey papers were examined for evidence to support the SDN dogma and its assertion that all network functionality belongs in the control plane, without success. In fact many chose to ignore the subject. Consequently this paper critically examines what is almost an SDN article of faith and finds this dogma creates a number of interesting and avoidable problems. Three common middlebox types are examined: firewall, NAT and load balancer to highlight the preferred SDN architecture and generate critical thinking. Finally the concept of global and local knowledge is used in a framework to determine whether an application should reside in the control plane or data plane.
The EspD Protein of EnterohemorrhagicEscherichia coli Is Required for the Formation of Bacterial Surface Appendages and Is Incorporated in the Cytoplasmic Membranes of Target Cells

ABSTRACT The formation of EspA-containing surface appendages in pathogenicEscherichia coli strains, both enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) and Shiga toxin-producing E. colistrains, is essential for critical events in the infective process, e.g., localized bacterial adherence to host cells with formation of microcolonies and induction of attaching and effacing lesions. It has been reported that EPEC mutants deficient in the production of EspD, which is encoded by the esp operon, are unable to accumulate actin underneath adherent bacteria but exhibit an attachment similar to that of the wild type. Here, we report the construction and characterization of an in-frame espD deletion mutant of the enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) strain EDL933. In contrast to what was observed in EPEC mutants, the EDL933 espDmutant not only lacked the capacity to accumulate actin but also exhibited an impaired attachment to HeLa cells. The synthesis of the EspD protein was also essential for the formation of EspA-containing filaments. Finally, localization studies demonstrated that the EspD protein is transferred to the cytoplasm and integrated into the cytoplasmic membranes of infected cells. These results help to elucidate the underlying molecular events in infections caused by EHEC.
Adding user experience into the interactive service design loop: a persona-based approach

Approaches to service design share human–computer interaction's (HCI's) commitment to developing with and for people useful, usable and accessible services. However, there has been little explicit interaction between the emerging service sciences and the interaction design communities. This article explores HCI's actual position and opportunities to service design and requirements and vice versa. We propose a design framework for service-oriented interactive systems integrating the concept of persona. This enables to extract relevant elements towards deriving the design of the main functionalities of the user interface. This framework is applied to a case study of the e-maintenance of an agro-alimentary group.
Barriers for lateral diffusion of transferrin receptor in the plasma membrane as characterized by receptor dragging by laser tweezers: fence versus tether

Our previous results indicated that the plasma membrane of cultured normal rat kidney fibroblastic cell is compartmentalized for diffusion of receptor molecules, and that long-range diffusion is the result of successive intercompartmental jumps (Sako, Y. and Kusumi, A. 1994. J. Cell Biol. 125:1251-1264). In the present study, we characterized the properties of intercompartmental boundaries by tagging transferrin receptor (TR) with either 210-nm-phi latex or 40-nm-phi colloidal gold particles, and by dragging the particle-TR complexes laterally along the plasma membrane using laser tweezers. Approximately 90% of the TR- particle complexes showed confined-type diffusion with a microscopic diffusion coefficient (Dmicro) of approximately 10(-9) cm2/s and could be dragged past the intercompartmental boundaries in their path by laser tweezers at a trapping force of 0.25 pN for gold-tagged TR and 0.8 pN for latex-tagged TR. At lower dragging forces between 0.05 and 0.1 pN, particle-TR complexes tended to escape from the laser trap at the boundaries, and such escape occurred in both the forward and backward directions of dragging. The average distance dragged was half of the confined distance of TR, which further indicates that particle- TR complexes escape at the compartment boundaries. Since variation in the particle size (40 and 210 nm, the particles are on the extracellular surface of the plasma membrane) hardly affects the diffusion rate and behavior of the particle-TR complexes at the compartment boundaries, and since treatment with cytochalasin D or vinblastin affects the movements of TR (Sako and Kusumi as cited above), argument has been advanced that the boundaries are present in the cytoplasmic domain. Rebound of the particle-TR complexes when they escape from the laser tweezers at the compartment boundaries suggests that the boundaries are elastic structures. These results are consistent with the proposal that the compartment boundaries consist of membrane skeleton or a membrane-associated part of the cytoskeleton (membrane skeleton fence model). Approximately 10% of TR exhibited slower diffusion (Dmicro approximately 10(-10)-10(-11) cm2/s) and binding to elastic structures.
Mining GPS logs to augment location models

The availability of mobile computing and satellite technologies make it possible to develop applications that are aware of user location.However, as the amount of collected data grows quickly, coming up with techniques that ease interpretation of such data is essential. In this paper, we employ a data mining approach to infer regularly visited locations and the routes between them from GPS (Global Positioning System) logs captured in an incremental fashion by a PDA. In our implementation, outdoor locations can be detected as well indoor locations visited by the users. Once the list of locations is determined, this list is clustered to group locations in close proximity. After clustering and reduction, the original database is scanned for transitions between location groups to find the routes.If there are similar routes between origin and destination then these will be merged, and finally a list of different routes between two locations will be obtained. This technique could be used as part of a monitoring system for vehicles that are aware of their location and security as well as using logs from different users to create a dynamic map of the regions where digital maps are not available or not feasible
Workplace Health Promotion in Washington State

The workplace is a powerful setting to reach large numbers of at-risk adults with effective chronic disease prevention programs. Missed preventive care is a particular problem for workers with low income and no health insurance. The costs of chronic diseases among workers — including health care costs, productivity losses, and employee turnover — have prompted employers to seek health promotion interventions that are both effective and cost-effective. The workplace offers 4 avenues for delivering preventive interventions: health insurance, workplace policies, health promotion programs, and communications. For each of the avenues, the evidence base describes a number of preventive interventions that are applicable to the workplace. On the basis of the evidence and of our work in Washington State, we present a public health approach to preventing chronic diseases via the workplace. In addition to relying on the evidence, this approach makes a compelling business case for preventive interventions to employers.
Racial Attitudes and Racial Balance in Public Schools: A Case Study of Lynchburg, Virginia. Final Report.

A representative sample of Lynchburg, Virginia public school children were tested on racial attitudes in 1972 just as racial balance was instituted throughout the school system. In 1976, after four years of study racial balance, the 1972/was replicated in crder to find out if changes had taken place in racial attitudes. It was found that racial attitudes between the races (black and white) were more favorable, that social distance between the races had decreased slightly, and that there was greater racial self-acceptance and a more favorable own-race evaluat:l_on by both races in 1976. These findings gave limited support to the structuralnormative theory of prejudice and to the equal-status contact theory. They also suggested that racial attitudes were more likely to,become more favorable under racial balance if certain conditions were present.
INDIVIDUAL BASED MODELLING OF TEMPERATURE INDUCED AGGREGATION BEHAVIOUR

There are several species of animals from different phyla that are known to exhibit diverse forms of social behaviour. Certain insect species like honeybees implement an interesting form of emergent social behaviour, based on a simple set of rules for individual behaviour rather than on complex cognitive interactions between individuals or with a leader. A good example for the bees’ swarm behaviour is temperature induced aggregation. Young bees show a clear preference for temperatures around 36° C. If a group of bees is allowed to move freely on a ground exhibiting a two dimensional temperature gradient, their likeliness to come to rest in an area of preferred temperature is positively correlated to the number of interacting individuals up to a certain level. We suggested four different hypotheses to explain the basic mechanisms of this behaviour. In order to test them, we developed an individual based (bottom-up) NetLogo model which allows us to simulate a group of bees moving in a temperature gradient. By varying the influence of each of the four hypothetical mechanisms and comparing the result of the respective simulation to the results of real life experiments, we receive valuable clues to determine the likeliness of each hypothesis.
The redshift and scale dependence of the cosmic shear signal from numerical simulations

The weak lensing shear signal has been measured numerically in N-body simulations at 14 different redshifts (z s = 0.1 to 3.6) and on angular scales of θ = 2 to 32 arcmin. In addition, the data have been validated by analytical computations for an identical cosmology, with density parameter Ω m = 0.3 and vacuum energy density parameter λ 0 = 0.7. This paper reports on the scale and redshift dependence of the shear variance, (γ 2 ), which may be described by a simple formula of the form (γ 2 )(θ, z s ) = a(θ)z b ( θ ) s . The redshift dependence for source redshifts up to 1.6 is found to be close to z 2 s , which is a stronger dependence than earlier analytical predictions (<γ 2 ) z 1 . 5 2 s ), although, at higher redshifts, the Z s dependence of the shear variance is clearly less steep. The strong redshift dependence further emphasizes the need to know the precise redshift distribution for the galaxy sources in any given survey, so that they can be allocated to redshift bins accordingly, and the cosmic shear signal correctly interpreted. Equations are also given for the variance in the reduced shear, which is a more directly measurable quantity observationally.
Multi-Branch Configuration of Dynamic Wireless Cooperative Networks

The practical implementation of cooperative systems requires a suitable algorithm for the selection of relay terminals. In this paper, we investigate the performance of an optimal configuration strategy which is designed for multibranch amplify-and-forward cooperative networks. The algorithm is applied to a dynamic network where relay stations are added one at a time until a desired error rate is achieved. We present analytical and simulation results which compare the performance of the proposed algorithm to the case when the relay nodes are selected randomly. It is demonstrated that the proposed algorithm results in the selection of a minimum number of relay terminals to achieve the desired error rate performance.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) In vitro gentamicin release from commercially available calcium-phosphate bone substitutes influence of carrier type on duration of the release profile

Background: Polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA) beads releasing antibiotics are used extensively to treat osteomyelitis, but require surgical removal afterwards because they do not degrade. Methods: As an alternative option, this report compares the in vitro gentamicin release profile from clinically used, biodegradable carrier-materials: six injectable cements and six granule-types. Cement cylinders and coated granules containing 3% gentamicin were submerged in dH2O and placed in a 48-sample parallel drug-release system. At regular intervals (30, 90, 180 min. and then every 24 h, for 21 days), the release fluid was exchanged and the gentamicin concentration was measured. The activity of released gentamicin was tested on Staphylococcus aureus. Results: All combinations showed initial burst-release of active gentamicin, two cements had continuous-release (17 days). The relative release of all cements (36–85%) and granules (30–62%) was higher than previously reported for injectable PMMA-cements (up to 17%) and comparable to other biodegradable carriers. From the cements residual gentamicin could be extracted, whereas the granules released all gentamicin that had adhered to the surface. Conclusion: The high release achieved shows great promise for clinical application of these biodegradable drug-carriers. Using the appropriate combination, the required release profile (burst or sustained) may be achieved. Background Osteomyelitis is a refractory condition, potentially leading to amputation or even death; treatment often requires multiple surgical interventions and local or systemic antibiotic therapy [1]. It predominantly affects both extremes of age; acute hematogenous infection occurs mainly in children and chronic osteomyelitis in the elderly [2]. Chronic osteomyelitis often requires surgical debridement and local antibiotic treatment. Disadvantages of currently used non-biodegradable polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA) carriers include low antibiotic release by cements and the requirement of surgical removal in the Published: 26 February 2006 BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders2006, 7:18 doi:10.1186/1471-2474-7-18 Received: 11 May 2005 Accepted: 26 February 2006 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral. com/1471-2474/7/18 © 2006Stallmann et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Automatic language identity tagging on word and sentence-level in multilingual text sources: a case-study on Luxembourgish

Luxembourgish, embedded in a multilingual context on the divide between Romance and Germanic cultures, remains one of Europe's under-described languages. This is due to the fact that the written production remains relatively low, and linguistic knowledge and resources, such as lexica and pronunciation dictionaries, are sparse. The speakers or writers will frequently switch between Luxembourgish, German, and French, on a per-sentence basis, as well as on a sub-sentence level. In order to build resources like lexicons, and especially pronunciation lexicons, or language models needed for natural language processing tasks such as automatic speech recognition, language used in text corpora should be identified. In this paper, we present the design of a manually annotated corpus of mixed language sentences as well as the tools used to select these sentences. This corpus of difficult sentences was used to test a word-based language identification system. This language identification system was used to select textual data extracted from the web, in order to build a lexicon and language models. This lexicon and language model were used in an Automatic Speech Recognition system for the Luxembourgish language which obtain a 25\% WER on the Quaero development data.