Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A spatial analysis of land-use change and agriculture in eastern Canada

Publicly available statistics regarding rural demographics, rural society and land use are presented and analysed using Geographic Information System (GIS). Our aim was to provide a quantitative basis for discussion of rural policy issues such as urban encroachment. Productivity (tonnage) of crop agriculture has increased by about 230% over 40 years while that of livestock (expressed as livestock units) has remained constant. Agricultural consolidation and intensification seen in southern Ontario has not translated into economic sustainability where on-farm income declined from 1991 to 2000. However, on-farm income in southern Quebec and municipalities adjacent to Toronto increased, perhaps due to the niche markets created in these regions. The increases in agricultural activity throughout southern Ontario have occurred in regions that have been designated as sites for innovation clusters, thus providing a foundation of resources for bio-based industries to expand and innovate. Reflecting on trends of demographics and production systems we conclude that rural policy should orient its geographical delineation to regional and inter-provincial scales. Our analysis indicates that rural populations and communities are sustainable but agricultural enterprises have changed radically; they have maintained or increased productivity but lost profitability. Applying a rural landscape design to the entire region would help address the sustainability of agriculture and rural communities.
Role of Synaptic Plasticity and EphA5-EphrinA5 Interaction Within the Ventromedial Hypothalamus in Response to Recurrent Hypoglycemia

Hypoglycemia stimulates counterregulatory hormone release to restore euglycemia. This protective response is diminished by recurrent hypoglycemia, limiting the benefits of intensive insulin treatment in patients with diabetes. We previously reported that EphA5 receptor-ephrinA5 interactions within the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) influence counterregulatory hormone responses during acute hypoglycemia in nondiabetic rats. In this study, we examined whether recurrent hypoglycemia alters the capacity of the ephrinA5 ligand to activate VMH EphA5 receptors, and if so, whether these changes could contribute to pathogenesis of defective glucose counterregulation in response to a standard hypoglycemic stimulus. The expression of ephrinA5, but not EphA5 receptors within the VMH, was reduced by antecedent recurrent hypoglycemia. In addition, the number of synaptic connections was increased and astroglial synaptic coverage was reduced. Activation of VMH EphA5 receptors via targeted microinjection of ephrinA5-Fc before a hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemic clamp study caused a reduction in the glucose infusion rate in nondiabetic rats exposed to recurrent hypoglycemia. The increase in the counterregulatory response to insulin-induced hypoglycemia was associated with a 150% increase in glucagon release (P < 0.001). These data suggest that changes in ephrinA5/EphA5 interactions and synaptic plasticity within the VMH, a key glucose-sensing region in the brain, may contribute to the impairment in glucagon secretion and counterregulatory responses caused by recurrent hypoglycemia.
Observations on Disinflation in Transition Economies

The transition economies were remarkably successful in curbing the inflation that took place after the initial transition and shocks and, more recently, most of the countries have brought inflation down to the levels found in major developed countries. In this paper we review the experiences and show how fiscal discipline, monetary policy and exchange rate policy contributed to the outcome. In addition, we note that the influence of EU accession on institutions and policy may have played an important role. The paper also surveys the literature on the quality of the inflation data, the extent to which necessary relative price adjustments have occurred and the size of the Balassa-Samuelson effect. Case studies of disinflation in four countries are presented: Poland, Romania, Estonia and Russia.
Outcomes of minimally invasive valve surgery in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

OBJECTIVES We hypothesize that minimally invasive valve surgery in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is superior to the conventional median sternotomy approach. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed 2846 consecutive surgery performed at our institution between January 2005 and September 2010, and identified 165 patients with COPD who underwent isolated valve surgery. In-hospital mortality, composite complication rates, intensive care unit and total hospital length of stay of those who had undergone a minimally invasive approach were compared with a cohort that underwent a standard median sternotomy approach. RESULTS Of the 165 patients, 100 underwent a minimally invasive approach and 65 had a median sternotomy. Baseline characteristics did not differ between the two groups. The mean age was 71 ± 11 years for the minimally invasive group and 68 ± 12 years for the median sternotomy group, (P = 0.31). In-hospital mortality was 1 (1%) in the minimally invasive group and 3 (5%) in the median sternotomy group, P = 0.14. Composite postoperative complications were significantly reduced in the minimally invasive group (30 versus 54%, P = 0.002). The median intensive care unit length of stay was 47 h (IQR 40-70) versus 73 h (IQR 51-112), P < 0.001, and the median postoperative length of stay was 6 days (IQR 5-9) versus 9 days (IQR 7-13), P < 0.001, for the minimally invasive and the median sternotomy groups, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Minimally invasive valve surgery in patients with COPD is associated with excellent short-term results, and thus should be considered an option in these patients.
Computer-aided Diagnosis Scheme for Detection of Polyps at CT Colonography 1

Colon cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths in the United States. However, most colon cancers can be prevented if precursor colonic polyps are detected and removed. An advanced computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) scheme was developed for the automated detection of polyps at computed tomographic (CT) colonography. A region encompassing the colonic wall is extracted from an isotropic volume data set obtained by interpolating CT colonographic scans along the axial direction. Polyp candidates are detected with computation of three-dimensional (3D) geometric features that characterize polyps, followed by extraction of polyps with hysteresis thresholding and fuzzy clustering using these geometric features. The number of false-positive findings is reduced by extracting 3D texture features from polyp candidates and applying quadratic discriminant analysis to the candidates. This CAD scheme was applied in 71 patients who underwent CT colonography, 14 of whom had colonoscopically confirmed polyps (n 21). At by-patient analysis, sensitivity was 100%, with an average false-positive rate of 2.0 per patient. At by-polyp analysis, the scheme detected 90% of the polyps at the same false-positive rate. This CAD scheme permits accurate detection of suspicious lesions and thus has the potential to reduce radiologists’ interpretation time and improve their diagnostic accuracy in the detection of polyps at CT colonography. RSNA, 2002
Neutron-Capture Elements in the Very Metal-poor Star HD 88609: Another Star with Excesses of Light Neutron-Capture Elements

We obtained a high-resolution, high-signal-to-noise UV-blue spectrum of the extremely metal-poor red giant HD 88609 to determine the abundances of heavy elements. Nineteen neutron-capture elements are detected in the spectrum. Our analysis revealed that this object has large excesses of light neutron-capture elements, while heavy neutron-capture elements are deficient. The abundance pattern shows a continuously decreasing trend as a function of atomic number, from Sr to Yb, which is quite different from those in stars with excesses of r-process elements. Such an abundance pattern is very similar to that of HD 122563, which was studied in our previous work. The results indicate that the abundance pattern found in the two stars could represent the pattern produced by the nucleosynthesis process that provided light neutron-capture elements in the very early Galaxy.
What determines the credit spread

Although the swings in economic measures during the last recession and recovery were fairly modest, swings in financial markets were quite large. Once financial markets found their footing, after steep losses in 2000-2002, prices on virtually all traded financial claims rose as the economic outlook improved. This pattern was particularly true in the corporate bond market. In this Economic Letter I describe the significant narrowing of bond spreads across different sectors and ratings classes since the last recession. I also discuss recent research on the determinants of relative pricing in the corporate bond market.
THE MACROECONOMIC FRAMEWORK

This paper looks at the macroeconomic framework for financing urban public transport from a different number of perspectives. The paper considers macroeconomic rules covering fiscal policy in application at present and their implications for financing urban public transport, taking as examples the implications of the stability and growth pact rules that cover the eleven (11) countries of the euro-zone and those of the United Kingdom's Code for Fiscal Stability. The paper concludes that these rules limit the scope for using funds from government budgets for financing urban public transport. The paper considers the implications of alternative approach to funding. The paper also discusses the prospective regeneration benefits from appropriate urban public transport policies. The paper concludes that it is increasingly the case that the congestion penalties from misallocation of urban transport resource and mispricing in Europe's major cities, as well as elsewhere, mean that there is a considerable regeneration loss from inappropriate transport policies. The paper concludes by arguing that there is a need for a model-based approach to evaluating the 'least worst' strategy for financing urban public transport. The paper also demonstrates the approaches taken in three (3) projects that the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) is currently associated. The section considers macroeconomic rules covering fiscal policy in application at present and their implications for financing urban public transport.
Set-membership adaptive constrained constant modulus reduced-rank algorithm for beamforming

In this work, we propose an adaptive set-membership (SM) reduced-rank filtering algorithm using the constrained constant modulus (CCM) criterion for beamforming. We develop a stochastic gradient (SG) type algorithm based on the concept of SM technique for adaptive implementation. The filter weights are updated only if the bounded constraint cannot be satisfied. In addition, we also propose a scheme of time-varying bound and incorporate parameter dependence to characterize the environment for improving the tracking performance of the proposed algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed adaptive SM reduced-rank beamforming algorithm with dynamic bounds achieves superior performance to previously reported methods at a reduced update rate.
High speed CMOS circuits up to 40 Gb/s and 50 GHz

CMOS has demonstrated to be a suitable technology for wireless communications and very high bit-rate broadband circuits over 10 Gb/s. This paper presents advances in circuit design which fully exploit the high-speed potential of a 0.13 /spl mu/m standard CMOS technology up to 40 Gb/s and 50 GHz. The combination of advanced circuit techniques and state of the art fabrication process technology results in continuing the upward shift of frequency limits.
The Influence of Within-Category Structure on Stimulus Similarity and Stimulus Generalization

In Exp. 1, the authors report an influence of temporal contiguity in stimulus exposure on later judgments of similarity. Exposure to transformational information – that is, information that ‘connects’ two similar, but perceptually distinct stimuli – was found to have no influence on later judgments of similarity. In Exp. 2, exposure to transformational information was also found not to influence later property generalization; however, exposure to within-category structure that promoted a sense of ‘surprise’ (i.e., contained clear discontinuity) led to a reduction in later property generalization between two similar, but perceptually distinct stimuli. This latter effect was confirmed in Exp. 3 while ruling out any influence of temporal factors.
Protein Quality Control in the Nucleus

In their natural environment, cells are regularly exposed to various stress conditions that may lead to protein misfolding, but also in the absence of stress, misfolded proteins occur as the result of mutations or failures during protein synthesis. Since such partially denatured proteins are prone to aggregate, cells have evolved several elaborate quality control systems to deal with these potentially toxic proteins. First, various molecular chaperones will seize the misfolded protein and either attempt to refold the protein or target it for degradation via the ubiquitin-proteasome system. The degradation of misfolded proteins is clearly compartmentalized, so unique degradation pathways exist for misfolded proteins depending on whether their subcellular localization is ER/secretory, mitochondrial, cytosolic or nuclear. Recent studies, mainly in yeast, have shown that the nucleus appears to be particularly active in protein quality control. Thus, specific ubiquitin-protein ligases located in the nucleus, target not only misfolded nuclear proteins, but also various misfolded cytosolic proteins which are transported to the nucleus prior to their degradation. In comparison, much less is known about these mechanisms in mammalian cells. Here we highlight recent advances in our understanding of nuclear protein quality control, in particular regarding substrate recognition and proteasomal degradation.
The impact of supply chain management practices on performance of SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to determine the underlying dimensions of supply chain management (SCM) practices and to empirically test a framework identifying the relationships among SCM practices, operational performance and SCM‐related organizational performance with special emphasis on small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey.Design/methodology/approach – Data for the study were collected from a sample of 203 manufacturing SMEs operating in the manufacture of fabricated metal products and general purpose machinery (NACE codes 28 and 29) within the city of Istanbul in Turkey. The research framework was tested using partial least squares method, which is a variance‐based structural equation modeling approach.Findings – Based on exploratory factor analysis (EFA), SCM practices were grouped in two factors: outsourcing and multi‐suppliers (OMS), and strategic collaboration and lean practices (SCLP). The results indicate that both factors of SCLP and OMS have direct positive and significa.
TCP flow classification and bandwidth aggregation in optically interconnected data center networks

Optical functionality is being used to realize new data center architectures that minimize electronic switching overheads, pushing the processing to the edge of the network. A challenge in optically interconnected data center networks is to identify the large, bandwidth hungry flows (i.e., elephants) and efficiently establish the optical circuits. Moreover, the amount of optical resources to be provisioned during the network planning phase is a critical design problem. Flow classification accuracy affects the efficiency of optical circuits. Optical channel bandwidth, on the other hand, directly relates to the additive-increase, multiplicative-decrease congestion control mechanism of the transmission control protocol and affects the effective bandwidth allocated to elephant flows. In this paper, we simultaneously investigate the impact of two important mechanisms on data center network performance: traffic flow classification accuracy and optical bandwidth aggregation (i.e., the consolidation of several low-capacity channels into a single high-capacity one by employing advanced modulation formats for short-reach communications). We develop a discrete-event simulator for a hybrid data center network, enabling the tuning of flow classification parameters. Our simulations indicate that data center performance is highly sensitive to the aggregation level.We could observe up to a 74.5% improvement in network throughput only due to consolidating the optical channel bandwidth. We further noticed that the role of flow classification becomes more pronounced with higher bandwidth per wavelength as well as with more hot-spot traffic. Compared to a random classification benchmark, adaptive flow classification could lead to throughput improvements as large as 54.7%.
Wealth Distribution and Social Security Reform in an Economy with Entrepreneurs

This paper analyzes the effects of removing the unfunded social security in an economy where entrepreneurs play a critical role in replicating the dispersion of wealth observed in the U.S. data. The quantitative findings reveal that the wealth Gini falls from 0 : 804 to 0 : 521 indicating a more equal distribution of wealth after privatization. Unlike the models without entrepreneurs, the fall in entrepreneurial profits further contributes to the reduction in the wealth inequality. The wealth distribution among the entrepreneurs is initially more equal than the one among the non-entrepreneurs, and privatization leads to exactly the opposite case in the long run. Furthermore, the occupational composition is reported to change in favor of entrepreneurship. Even though the fraction of entrepreneurs increases by 29%, their share in total wealth and income falls by 39%, and 7%, respectively. Finally, the increase in aggregate consumption as a percentage of the rise in aggregate output is always significantly lower with entrepreneurs than without them underlining the importance of additional saving motive introduced by the entrepreneurship.
Odorant Deprivation Reversibly Modulates Transsynaptic Changes in the NR2B-Mediated CREB Pathway in Mouse Piriform Cortex

The olfactory system is an outstanding model for understanding activity-dependent neuronal plasticity in mammals. Olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) in the periphery project onto mitral/tufted cells in the olfactory bulb (OB) and these mitral/tufted cells in turn project to piriform cortex (PC). Numerous studies have examined changes in OB after a permanent OSN ablation, but little is known about “trans-transsynaptic” changes taking place in the PC. Permanent zinc sulfate lesion of the olfactory epithelium resulted in a selective loss of the NMDA receptor NR2B protein and mRNA expression in pyramidal cells in layer IIb of PC after 2–7 d. Regulatory elements affected by NR2B signaling, namely the phosphorylation of CREB, were also downregulated only in layer IIb neurons. These changes could be caused by OSN axon loss in the zinc sulfate lesion, or to a reduced activity. To test this hypothesis, we performed both permanent and reversible naris occlusion, which blocks odorant access to the nasal cavities and OSN activity. The expression of NR2B and phospho-CREB were downregulated 5 d after occlusion and this reduction was fully restored 10 d after reopening of the naris. Subsequently, we identified the subset of pyramidal cells in layer IIb that are especially sensitive to the loss of odor-evoked activity using double retrograde tracers. In summary, the present study provides an initial characterization of the molecular mechanisms associated with odor stimulation on second order neuronal plasticity and phenotype in the olfactory system.
Wavelet Transform and its Application to ICESat-GLAS Full Waveform Data

Based on wavelet transform (WT), this paper proposed an approach to extract ICESat/GLAS full waveform characteristics. Through wavelet decomposition of the full waveform data, setting the threshold function and reconstructing signal, the filtered waveforms were achieved. All comparisons were performed on simulated LiDAR full waveform signals with typical back scattering noise. In the simulation and comparison, the root mean square error (RMSE) of the coefficients dropped by 0.7188 in this way, and the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) increased by 16.17 dB. The results showed that the wavelet transform method was better than the Gaussian method on de-noising and the signal by wavelet transform reserved useful information of the echo waveform. In the filtering process, the wavelet transform can effectively suppress the waveform "overlay" problem.
Convergence of the Min-Sum Decoding Scheme for LDPC Codes from a Dynamical Systems Perspective

LDPC codes represent a class of codes for a wide variety of modern day coding applications including wireless communications and also some aspects of Cryptography. The general decoder for these codes, the Sum-Product algorithm can be viewed as a nonlinear dynamical system and has been shown to exhibit bifurcations and chaotic phenomena in the low and waterfall SNR zone in an AWGN channel. It has been attempted to investigate whether the Min-Sum decoder, a major approximation of the Sum-Product decoder, exhibits similar phenomena in its corresponding waterfall SNR zone for a particular Gallager code in the AWGN Channel. The results obtained indicate that the decoder does not show bifurcations and chaos in the waterfall SNR zone. Nevertheless, the decoder converges smoothly when the SNR stays above the waterfall region. This work guides how to find the convergent SNR zone for decoding any particular LDPC code with the Min-Sum decoder.
Foundations of fuzzy reasoning

This paper gives an overview of the theory of fuzzy sets and fuzzy reasoning as proposed and developed by Lotfi Zadeh. In particular it reviews the philosophical and logical antecedents and foundations for this theory and its applications. The problem of borderline cases in set theory and the two classical approaches ofpreeisifying them out, or admitting them as a third case, are discussed, leading to Zadeh's suggestion of continuous degrees of set membership. The extension of basic set operations to such fuzzy sets, and the relationship to other multivalued logics for set theory, are then outlined. Thefuzzification of mathematical structures leads naturally to the concepts of fuzzy logics and inference, and consideration of implication suggests Lukasiewicz infinite-valued logic as a base logic for fuzzy reasoning. The paradoxes of the barber, and of sorites, are then analysed to illustrate fuzzy reasoning in action and lead naturally to Zadeh's theory of linguistic hedges and truth. Finally, the logical, modeltheoretic and psychological derivations of numeric values in fuzzy reasoning are discussed, and the rationale behind interest in fuzzy reasoning is summarized.
Perceived uncertainty, networking and export performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test model depicting the relationships among perceived environmental uncertainty, domestic and foreign networking, and export performance.Design/methodology/approach – A sample of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from Finland, Sweden and Norway serve as the study setting. Data were collected via mail surveys from random samples of SME owners/managers. Usable responses were 75 from Finland, 111 from Sweden and 71 from Norway.Findings – Of the four dimensions of uncertainty, only uncertainty about supplier markets emerged as a significant driver of domestic networking activities of SMEs. While domestic networking did not have a significant influence, foreign networking showed a significant positive impact on SMEs' export performance. Firm size was found to have positive impacts on foreign networking and export performance.Research limitations/implications – The study was limited to manufacturing SMEs in a particular region. Replicati.