Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Government Data and the Invisible Hand

If the next Presidential administration really wants to embrace the potential of Internet-enabled government transparency, it should follow a counter-intuitive but ultimately compelling strategy: reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens. Today, government bodies consider their own websites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility. Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, we argue that the executive branch should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.
Automatic language identification using ergodic-HMM

Recently, we established the equivalence of an ergodic HMM (EHMM) to a parallel sub-word recognition (PSWR) framework for language identification (LID). The states of EHMM correspond to acoustic units of a language and its state-transitions represent the bigram language model of unit sequences. We consider two alternatives to represent the state-observation densities of EHMM, namely, the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and hidden Markov model (HMM). We present a segmental K-means algorithm for the training of both these types of EHMM (EHMM of GMM and EHMM of HMM) and compare their performance on a 6 language LID task in the OGI-TS database. EHMM of GMM has a performance comparable to PSWR and superior to EHMM of HMM; we provide reasons for the performance difference between EHMM(G) and EHMM(H), and identify ways of enhancing the performance of EHMM(H) which is a novel and powerful architecture, ideal for spoken language modeling.
Developing Country Exports of Manufactures: Moving Up the Ladder to Escape the Fallacy of Composition?

Abstract This paper tests for a ‘fallacy of composition’ by analysing the demand for exports of the 18 developing countries that are most specialised in manufactures in the markets of the 10 largest industrial countries. Estimated export equations (both time-series and panel data) suggest that most developing countries compete with other developing country exporters rather than with industrialised country producers. A smaller number of countries that export more high-technology products compete with industrialised country producers and also have higher expenditure elasticities for their exports. Thus, the fallacy of composition applies mainly to the larger group of countries exporting mostly low-technology products.
Non-Invasive Prostate Cancer Characterization with Diffusion-Weighted MRI: Insight from In silico Studies of a Transgenic Mouse Model

Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) enables non-invasive, quantitative staging of prostate cancer via measurement of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) of water within tissues. In cancer, more advanced disease is often characterized by higher cellular density (cellularity), which is generally accepted to correspond to a lower measured ADC. A quantitative relationship between tissue structure and in vivo measurements of ADC has yet to be determined for prostate cancer. In this study, we establish a theoretical framework for relating ADC measurements with tissue cellularity and the proportion of space occupied by prostate lumina, both of which are estimated through automatic image processing of whole-slide digital histology samples taken from a cohort of six healthy mice and nine transgenic adenocarcinoma of the mouse prostate (TRAMP) mice. We demonstrate that a significant inverse relationship exists between ADC and tissue cellularity that is well characterized by our model, and that a decrease of the luminal space within the prostate is associated with a decrease in ADC and more aggressive tumor subtype. The parameters estimated from our model in this mouse cohort predict the diffusion coefficient of water within the prostate-tissue to be 2.18 × 10−3 mm2/s (95% CI: 1.90, 2.55). This value is significantly lower than the diffusion coefficient of free water at body temperature suggesting that the presence of organelles and macromolecules within tissues can drastically hinder the random motion of water molecules within prostate tissue. We validate the assumptions made by our model using novel in silico analysis of whole-slide histology to provide the simulated ADC (sADC); this is demonstrated to have a significant positive correlation with in vivo measured ADC (r2 = 0.55) in our mouse population. The estimation of the structural properties of prostate tissue is vital for predicting and staging cancer aggressiveness, but prostate tissue biopsies are painful, invasive, and are prone to complications such as sepsis. The developments made in this study provide the possibility of estimating the structural properties of prostate tissue via non-invasive virtual biopsies from MRI, minimizing the need for multiple tissue biopsies and allowing sequential measurements to be made for prostate cancer monitoring.
(Mis)use of evidence in microfinance programming in the global south: a critique

This paper looks at the use of economic and social ‘evidence’ in debates on microfinance. Microfinance was originally inspired by small-scale women's savings and credit organisations. When its potential to become a financially sustainable, even profit-making, development intervention was recognised, microfinance underwent a ‘revolution’ that was to convert it into a much lauded development ‘panacea’. Microfinance's reputation has, however, been tarnished by reports refuting the evidential basis for claims made on its behalf. We trace the intervention's ascendance and the evidential basis on which microfinance was promoted. We argue, firstly, that the exclusion of qualitative evidence was not an epistemological imperative, but a political choice, and, secondly, that the large-scale quantitative evidence that did support the scaling up of microfinance was inadequate in terms of methodological rigour. In concluding, we place the example of microfinance within wider debates on evidence in development and argue that evidence can never be apolitical.
The Cytoskeletal/Non-muscle Isoform of α-Actinin Is Phosphorylated on Its Actin-binding Domain by the Focal Adhesion Kinase*

α-Actinin is tyrosine-phosphorylated in activated human platelets (Izaguirre, G., Aguirre, L., Ji, P., Aneskievich, B., and Haimovich, B. (1999) J. Biol. Chem. 274, 37012–37020). Analysis of platelet RNA by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction revealed that α-actinin expressed in platelets is identical to the cytoskeletal/non-muscle isoform. A construct of this isoform containing a His6 tag at the amino terminus was generated. Robust tyrosine phosphorylation of the recombinant protein was detected in cells treated with the tyrosine phosphatase inhibitor vanadate. The tyrosine phosphorylation site was localized to the amino-terminal domain by proteolytic digestion. A recombinant α-actinin protein containing a Tyr → Phe mutation at position 12 (Y12F) was no longer phosphorylated when expressed in vanadate-treated cells, indicating that tyrosine 12 is the site of phosphorylation. The wild type recombinant protein was not phosphorylated in cells lacking the focal adhesion kinase (FAK). Re-expression of FAK in these cells restored α-actinin phosphorylation. Purified wild type α-actinin, but not the Y12F mutant, was phosphorylated in vitro by wild type as well as a Phe-397 mutant of FAK. In contrast, no phosphorylation was detected in the presence of a kinase-dead FAK. Tyrosine phosphorylation reduced the amount of α-actinin that cosedimented with actin filaments. These results establish that α-actinin is a direct substrate for FAK and suggest that α-actinin mediates FAK-dependent signals that could impact the physical properties of the cytoskeleton.
Kone ajalise struktuuri modelleerimine eestikeelsele tekst-kone sunteesile

Traditionally, durational models of speech units have been developed without paying much heed to morphology and part-of-speech information while predicting speech temporal structure. The aim of the present study was to find out whether the rich morphology of the Estonian language could possibly provide some additional (beside the syntactic and part-of-speech) information that could be used in predicting durations. The project is a continuation of prosody studies for Estonian text-to-speech synthesis. Sound durations in the speech of radio newsreaders were modelled by means of different statistical methods (linear regression and neural networks). Model input consisted not only of descriptors of sound context and position, but also of information on part of speech, part of sentence and morphological features. The results indicated a decrease of error in the prediction of segmental durations. Such results were in good harmony with our expectations concerning a morphologically rich language.
In reply.

1. Sørensen R, Abildstrom SZ, Hansen PR, et al. Efficacy of postoperative clopidogrel treatment in patients revascularized with coronary artery bypass grafting after myocardial infarction. J Am Coll Cardiol 2011;57:1202–9. 2. Anderson JL, Adams CD, Antman EM, et al. ACC/AHA 2007 guidelines for the management of patients with unstable angina/non– ST-elevation myocardial infarction: a report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines (Writing Committee to Revise the 2002 Guidelines for the Management of Patients With Unstable Angina/Non–ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction). J Am Coll Cardiol 2007;50:e1–157. 3. Yusuf S, Zhao F, Mehta SR, Chrolavicius S, Tognoni G, Fox KK. Effects of clopidogrel in addition to aspirin in patients with acute coronary syndromes without ST-segment elevation. N Engl J Med 2001;345:494–502. 4. Fox KA, Mehta SR, Peters R, et al. Benefits and risks of the combination of clopidogrel and aspirin in patients undergoing surgical revascularization for non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome: the Clopidogrel in Unstable angina to prevent Recurrent ischemic Events (CURE) trial. Circulation 2004;110:1202–8. 5. Kulik A, Chan V, Ruel M. Antiplatelet therapy and coronary artery bypass graft surgery: perioperative safety and efficacy. Expert Opin Drug Saf 2009;8:169–82. 6. Kulik A, Le May M, Wells GA, Mesana TG, Ruel M. The clopidogrel after surgery for coronary artery disease (CASCADE) randomized controlled trial: clopidogrel and aspirin versus aspirin alone after coronary bypass surgery [NCT00228423]. Curr Control Trials Cardiovasc Med 2005;6:15. 7. Kulik A, Le May MR, Voisine P, et al. Aspirin plus clopidogrel versus aspirin alone after coronary artery bypass grafting: the clopidogrel after surgery for coronary artery disease (CASCADE) trial. Circulation 2010;122:2680–7.
REXEC : A Decentralized , Secure Remote Execution Environment for Parallel and Sequential Programs

Bringing clusters of computers into the mainstream as general-purpose computing systems requires that better facilities for transparent remote execution of parallel and sequential applications be developed. While much research has been done in this area, most of this work remains inaccessible for clusters built using contemporary hardware and operating systems. Implementations are either too old and/or not publicly available, require use of operating systems which are not supported by modern hardware, or simply do not meet the functional requirements demanded by practical use in real world settings. To address these issues, we designed REXEC, a decentralized, secure remote execution facility. It provides high availability, scalability, transparent remote execution, dynamic cluster configuration, decoupled node discovery and selection, a well-defined failure and cleanup model, parallel and distributed program support, and strong authentication and encryption. The system is implemented and is currently installed and in use on a 32-node cluster of 2-way SMPs running the Linux 2.2. 5 operating system.
Information theory and Gambling / Economics

Kelly showed that if the outcome of each horse race is represented by a random variable X and gambler has some side information Y relevant to the outcome of the race, then under some condition of odds, the mutual information I(X;Y ) is the difference in growth rates of the wealth with and without side information. The side information can be considered to be a set of symbols received over a communication channel that the gambler uses to make bets on the transmitted symbols. The growth rate is defined as
Oral conversations between hearing-impaired children and their normally hearing peers and teachers

Twelve hearing-impaired children (mean age 8;8 years) were videotaped as they each constructed Lego models with two partners: a normally hearing peer and a teacher. A comparison was made between their utterances and spoken turns with peers and teachers. The frequency of these did not differ between the two, although they took more total turns (verbal and nonverbal) with teachers than peers. With peers their turns contained more utterances and their contribution to the conversations was pro portionally greater in relation to length of turns and utterances. Teachers talked more than peers and used longer turns and utterances. These differences are examined through a qualitative analysis. The educational implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Near real time noise detection during heart sound acquisition

Heart sound is a valuable biosignal for early detection of a large set of cardiac diseases. Ambient and physiological noise interference is one of the most usual and high probable incidents during heart sound acquisition. It tends to change the prominent and crucial characteristics of heart sound which may possess important information for heart disease diagnosis. In this paper, we propose a new method to detect ambient and internal body noises combined with heart sound. The algorithm is based upon the periodic nature of heart sounds and physiologically inspired criteria. A small segment of clean heart sound exhibiting periodicity in time as well as in the frequency domain is first detected and applied as a reference signal in sorting noise from the sound. The achieved average sensitivity and specificity are 94% and 97%, respectively.
Data integrity in electric utility IT systems: a case study

Electric utilities are increasingly using IT applications, such as maintenance management and geographical information systems, in order to support their business processes, for instance repairs and construction, or asset management and network extension planning. However, performing these business processes efficiently often requires access to information from different sources, departments and IT systems. We have developed a concept for system integration for utilities, where the aim is to provide data integrity between operational automation and control systems and other information management systems. Guided by a use case, we demonstrate the interaction of a directory service, application adapters and a communication infrastructure on top a common data model and acting across application boundaries
Relationship-based social work : getting to the heart of practice

Introduction. Adrian Ward, The Tavistock Centre, UK, Gillian Ruch, University of Southampton, UK, and Danielle Turney, University of Bristol, UK. Section 1. Setting Out the Terrain: Historical Trends, Conceptual Models and Frameworks. 1. The Contemporary Context of Relationship-Based Practice. Gillian Ruch. 2. Theoretical Frameworks Informing Relationship-Based Practice. Gillian Ruch. 3. The Use of Self in Relationship-Based Practice. Adrian Ward. Section 2. Working with the Relationship in Practice. 4. Only Connect.Building Relationships with Hard-to-Reach People: Establishing Rapport with Drug Misusing Parents and Their Children. Brynna Kroll, ARTEC Enterprises Ltd, UK. 5. Brief Encounters: Working in Complex, Short-Term Relationships. Ravi KS Kohli, University of Bedfordshire, UK and Jane Dutton, NHS Trust, UK. 6. Sustaining Relationships: Working with Strong Feelings I: Anger, Aggression and Hostility. Martin Smith, Buckinghamshire Social Services, UK. 7. Sustaining Relationships: Working with Strong Feelings II: Hopelessness, Despair and Depression. Clare Parkinson, University of East London, UK. 8. Sustaining Relationships: Working with Strong Feelings III: Love and Positive Feelings. Danielle Turney. 9. Long-Term Complex Relationships. Linnet McMahon. 10. Working with Endings in Relationship-Based Practice. Robin Solomon, The Tavistock Centre, UK. Section 3. Sustaining, Supporting and Developing Relationship-Based Practice in a Reflective Context. 11. The Learning Relationship: Learning and Development for Relationship-Based Practice. Adrian Ward. 12. Service-User Perspectives on Relationships. Mark Doel, Sheffield Hallam University, UK. 13. Relating and Relationships in Supervision : Supportive and Companionable or Dominant and Submissive? John Simmonds, British Association for Adoption and Fostering, UK. 14. What Future? Organisational Forms, Relationship-Based Social Work Practice and the Changing World Order. Andrew Cooper, The Tavistock Centre, UK. Conclusion. Danielle Turney, Adrian Ward and Gillian Ruch. Bibliography. About the Contributors.
Retinoblastoma protein determines aggressiveness in triple-negative breast cancer

Evaluation of: Arima Y, Hayashi H, Sasaki M et al. Induction of ZEB by inactivation of RB is a key determinant of the mesenchymal phenotype of breast cancer. J. Biol. Chem. 287(11), 7896–7906 (2012). Retinoblastoma protein (RB) is one of the most important tumor suppressors and functions in multiple biological pathways that are deregulated during tumor initiation and progression. Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a reversible embryonic process by which epithelial cells lose cell–cell contact and polarity, and its aberrant activation can trigger tumor progression and metastasis. Previously, it has been shown that depletion of RB initiates EMT by downregulating the adhesion molecule E-cadherin. The evaluated article suggests that RB inactivation contributes to loss of cell cycle control and also leads to downregulation of the miR-200 family, thereby causing upregulation of ZEB expression and consequently EMT by downregulation of E-cadherin. RB inactivation could be a key event underlying the mesenchymal and aggressive phenotype of triple-negative breast cancer. Furthermore, exploring links between RB inactivation and EMT might reveal new therapeutic targets for triple-negative breast cancer.
Distributed Intrusion Detection using Mobile Agents

: - DIDMA (Distributed Intrusion Detection using Mobile Agents) is a novel architecture in the field of IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems), utilizing an agent-based approach in order to realize a distributed framework. The novelty in this architecture is the employment of mobile agents as its auditing components. This novel approach overcomes certain problems associated with traditional designs in IDS. In particular, problematic areas such as high-speed networks, not visible traffic, and fail-open architecture have been successfully managed. Moreover, the fault tolerant decentralized design of DIDMA clearly demonstrated resilience against active attacks.
Integrin-linked Kinase Regulates Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase and Cyclooxygenase-2 Expression in an NF-κB-dependent Manner*

Nitric oxide (NO) and prostaglandins are produced as a result of the stimulation of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and cyclooxygenase-2, respectively, in response to cytokines or lipopolysaccharide (LPS). We demonstrate that the activity of integrin-linked kinase (ILK) is stimulated by LPS activation in J774 macrophages. Inhibition of ILK activity by dominant-negative ILK or a highly selective small molecule ILK inhibitor, in epithelial cells or LPS-stimulated J774 cells and murine macrophages, resulted in inhibition of iNOS expression and NO synthesis. LPS stimulates the phosphorylation of IκB on Ser-32 and promotes its degradation. Inhibition of ILK suppressed this LPS-stimulated IκB phosphorylation and degradation. Similarly, ILK inhibition suppressed the LPS-stimulated iNOS promoter activity. Mutation of the NF-κB sites in the iNOS promoter abolished LPS- and ILK-mediated regulation of iNOS promoter activity. Overexpression of ILK-stimulated NF-κB activity and inhibition of ILK or protein kinase B (PKB/Akt) suppressed this activation. We conclude that ILK can regulate NO production in macrophages by regulating iNOS expression through a pathway involving PKB/Akt and NF-κB. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that ILK activity is required for LPS stimulated cyclooxygenase-2 expression in murine and human macrophages. These findings implicate ILK as a potential target for anti-inflammatory applications.
Circumstellar Emission from Type Ib and Ic Supernovae

The presumed Wolf-Rayet star progenitors of Type Ib/c supernovae have fast, low-density winds, and the shock waves generated by the supernova interaction with the wind are not expected to be radiative at typical times of observation. The injected energy spectrum of radio-emitting electrons typically has an observed index p = 3, which is suggestive of acceleration in cosmic-ray-dominated shocks. The early, absorbed part of the radio light curves can be attributed to synchrotron self-absorption, which leads to constraints on the magnetic field in the emitting region and on the circumstellar density. The range of circumstellar densities inferred from the radio emission is somewhat broader than that for Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars, if similar efficiencies of synchrotron emission are assumed in the extragalactic supernovae. For the observed and expected ranges of circumstellar densities to roughly overlap, a high efficiency of magnetic field production in the shocked region is required (ϵB ≈ 0.1). For the expected densities around a Wolf-Rayet star, a nonthermal mechanism is generally required to explain the observed X-ray luminosities of Type Ib/c supernovae. Inverse Compton emission is a candidate for the emission, if the observations are near optical maximum. In other cases we suggest that the mechanism is X-ray synchrotron emission in a situation in which the shock wave is cosmic-ray-dominated so that the electron energy spectrum flattens at high energy. More comprehensive X-ray observations of a Type Ib/c supernova are needed to determine whether this suggestion is correct.
Mechanisms and Clinical Consequences of Vascular Calcification

Vascular calcification has severe clinical consequences and is considered an accurate predictor of future adverse cardiovascular events, including myocardial infarction and stroke. Previously vascular calcification was thought to be a passive process which involved the deposition of calcium and phosphate in arteries and cardiac valves. However, recent studies have shown that vascular calcification is a highly regulated, cell-mediated process similar to bone formation. In this article, we outline the current understanding of key mechanisms governing vascular calcification and highlight the clinical consequences. By understanding better the molecular pathways and genetic circuitry responsible for the pathological mineralization process novel drug targets may be identified and exploited to combat and reduce the detrimental effects of vascular calcification on human health.