Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human Capital Externalities in India . ( First draft )

Human capital externalities play a central role in endogenous growth models. Many economists base their belief that Government intervention in provision of educations is essential, on those externalities. This paper tries to exploit the low levels of education and literacy rates in India, for measuring human capital externalities. Households' expenditures per capita are highly correlated with average education in their regions, even after controlling for HH own level of education and after controlling for regions ̄xed e®ect. These e®ects are much stronger for educated people, for not primary industries, for urban areas, and for women and older generations. These results are consistent with educated people being more in°uenced by their environment, and bene ̄t more from educated society. The results are also consistent with technological process increasing human capital externalities, andwith gender gap and age gap in environment
Development of a Real-Time Quantitative Assay for Detection of Epstein-Barr Virus

ABSTRACT With the use of real-time PCR, we developed and evaluated a rapid, sensitive, specific, and reproducible method for the detection of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) DNA in plasma samples. This method allowed us to screen plasma and serum samples over a range between 100 and 107 copies of DNA per ml using two sample preparation methods based on absorption. A precision study yielded an average coefficient of variation for both methods of less than 12%, with a coefficient of regression for the standard curve of a minimum of 0.98. We detected EBV DNA in 19.2% of plasma samples from immunosuppressed solid-organ transplant patients without symptoms of EBV infections with a mean load of 440 copies per ml. EBV DNA could be detected in all transplant patients diagnosed with posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorder, with a mean load of 544,570 copies per ml. No EBV DNA could be detected in healthy individuals in nonimmunosuppressed control groups and a mean of 6,400 copies per ml could be detected in patients with infectious mononucleosis. Further studies revealed that the inhibitory effect of heparinized plasma could be efficiently removed by use of an extraction method with Celite as the absorbent.
Transgenic strategies to confer resistance against viruses in rice plants

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is cultivated in more than 100 countries and supports nearly half of the world’s population. Developing efficient methods to control rice viruses is thus an urgent necessity because viruses cause serious losses in rice yield. Most rice viruses are transmitted by insect vectors, notably planthoppers and leafhoppers. Viruliferous insect vectors can disperse their viruses over relatively long distances, and eradication of the viruses is very difficult once they become widespread. Exploitation of natural genetic sources of resistance is one of the most effective approaches to protect crops from virus infection; however, only a few naturally occurring rice genes confer resistance against rice viruses. Many investigators are using genetic engineering of rice plants as a potential strategy to control viral diseases. Using viral genes to confer pathogen-derived resistance against crops is a well-established procedure, and the expression of various viral gene products has proved to be effective in preventing or reducing infection by various plant viruses since the 1990s. RNA interference (RNAi), also known as RNA silencing, is one of the most efficient methods to confer resistance against plant viruses on their respective crops. In this article, we review the recent progress, mainly conducted by our research group, in transgenic strategies to confer resistance against tenuiviruses and reoviruses in rice plants. Our findings also illustrate that not all RNAi constructs against viral RNAs are equally effective in preventing virus infection and that it is important to identify the viral “Achilles’ heel” gene to target for RNAi attack when engineering plants.
Expression of Trophoblast Cell-Specific Pregnancy-Related Genes in Somatic Cell-Cloned Bovine Pregnancies1

Abstract We compared the expression of bovine prolactin-related protein-1 (bPRP-1), placental lactogen (bPL), and pregnancy-associated glycoproteins-1 (bPAG-1) and -9 (bPAG-9) genes in artificially inseminated (AI) and nuclear transferred (NT) cows during the first trimester of gestation using real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and in situ hybridization. Placentomal (cotyledonary, caruncular) and interplacentomal (intercotyledonary, intercaruncular) tissues of AI and NT cows carrying either motile (M) or immotile (IM) fetuses were examined. Transcripts for bPL and bPAG-9 were lower (P < 0.01) in the fetal membranes of NT (n = 4) cows at Day 30 of gestation, compared with AI (n = 4) cows. There was no difference in the mean (± SEM) levels of expressions of bPRP-1, bPL, and PAG-1 in the placentomal and interplacentomal tissues of AI (n = 5) and NT (M, n = 4) cows at Day 60 of gestation. The mRNAs for bPRP-1, bPL, bPAG-1, and bPAG-9 genes were higher (P < 0.01) in the caruncular tissue of AI cows, compared with NT (IM, n = 4) cows at Day 60 of gestation. Expression of bPRP-1, bPL, bPAG-1, and bPAG-9 in the placentomal and interplacentomal tissues of the NT (n = 3) group varied considerably more, compared with the AI (n = 4) group at Day 100 of gestation. These findings suggest defective binucleate cell-specific gene transcriptional commands in NT cows.
The Emperor's New Password Manager: Security Analysis of Web-based Password Managers

We conduct a security analysis of five popular web-based password managers. Unlike "local" password managers, web-based password managers run in the browser. We identify four key security concerns for web-based password managers and, for each, identify representative vulnerabilities through our case studies. Our attacks are severe: in four out of the five password managers we studied, an attacker can learn a user's credentials for arbitrary websites. We find vulnerabilities in diverse features like one-time passwords, bookmarklets, and shared passwords. The root-causes of the vulnerabilities are also diverse: ranging from logic and authorization mistakes to misunderstandings about the web security model, in addition to the typical vulnerabilities like CSRF and XSS. Our study suggests that it remains to be a challenge for the password managers to be secure. To guide future development of password managers, we provide guidance for password managers. Given the diversity of vulnerabilities we identified, we advocate a defense-in-depth approach to ensure security of password managers.
Generation of homogeneous granular packings: Contact dynamics method with coupling to an external pressure bath

The contact dynamics method (CD) is an efficient simulation technique of dense granular media where unilateral and frictional contact problems for a large number of rigid bodies have to be solved. In this paper we present a modified version of the contact dynamics to generate homogeneous random packings of rigid grains. CD is coupled to an external pressure bath, which allows the variation of the size of a periodically repeated cell. We follow the concept of the Andersen dynamics and show how it can be applied within the framework of the contact dynamics method. The main challenge here is to handle the interparticle interactions properly, which are based on constraint forces in CD. We implement the proposed algorithm, perform test simulations and investigate the properties of the final packings.
Demonstration of fully Ni-silicided metal gates on HfO/sub 2/ based high-k gate dielectrics as a candidate for low power applications

We have fabricated fully Ni-silicided metal gate (FUSI) CMOS devices with HfO2-based gate dielectrics for the first time. We demonstrate that full silicidation eliminates the Fermi level pinning at the polySi-HfO2 dielectric interface in pFETs. For nMOS devices, a 5 orders of magnitude reduction in short channel sub-threshold leakage is obtained with similar drive current compared to the poly gate devices. In addition, the FUSI process does not degrade the hysterisis nor the dielectric breakdown. This result makes FUSI on high-K a strong candidate for scaled low power technologies.
Knockdown of desmin in zebrafish larvae affects interfilament spacing and mechanical properties of skeletal muscle

Skeletal muscle was examined in zebrafish larvae in order to address questions related to the function of the intermediate filament protein desmin and its role in the pathogenesis of human desminopathy. A novel approach including mechanical and structural studies of 4–6-d-old larvae was applied. Morpholino antisense oligonucleotides were used to knock down desmin. Expression was assessed using messenger RNA and protein analyses. Histology and synchrotron light–based small angle x-ray diffraction were applied. Functional properties were analyzed with in vivo studies of swimming behavior and with in vitro mechanical examinations of muscle. The two desmin genes normally expressed in zebrafish could be knocked down by ∼50%. This resulted in a phenotype with disorganized muscles with altered attachments to the myosepta. The knockdown larvae were smaller and had diminished swimming activity. Active tension was lowered and muscles were less vulnerable to acute stretch-induced injury. X-ray diffraction revealed wider interfilament spacing. In conclusion, desmin intermediate filaments are required for normal active force generation and affect vulnerability during eccentric work. This is related to the role of desmin in anchoring sarcomeres for optimal force transmission. The results also show that a partial lack of desmin, without protein aggregates, is sufficient to cause muscle pathology resembling that in human desminopathy.
Lower Bounds on Parameter Modulation–Estimation Under Bandwidth Constraints

The problem of modulating the value of a parameter onto a band-limited signal to be transmitted over a continuous-time, additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, and then estimating this parameter at the receiver, is considered. The performance is measured by the mean power-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha $ </tex-math></inline-formula> error (MP<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha \text{E}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>), which is defined as the worst case <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha $ </tex-math></inline-formula>th-order moment of the absolute estimation error. The optimal exponential decay rate of the MP<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha \text{E}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> as a function of the transmission time is investigated. Two upper (converse) bounds on the MP<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha \text{E}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> exponent are derived, on the basis of known bounds for the AWGN channel of inputs with unlimited bandwidth. The bounds are computed for typical values of the error moment and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and the SNR asymptotics of the different bounds are analyzed. The new bounds are compared with known converse and achievability bounds, which were derived from channel coding considerations.
Efficient object exploration and object presentation in TeleTA, Teleoperation system with Tactile feedback

In order to achieve awareness of collision during teleoperation and to support operator with valuable information (object stiffness and shape), we elaborated approaches to object parameter identification and delivering this information to the operator's skin through tactile display. The tactile sensory ability of the remote manipulator allows collision detection and exploration of contacting object. A new type of tactile display that accounts for effectiveness of the information presentation, power consumption, ergonomics, and usability for particular teleoperation task was developed. The experimental results of object shape and stiffness presentation to the human's forearm revealed the most efficient vibration patterns.
Inactivation of NMDA channels in cultured hippocampal neurons by intracellular calcium

Calcium-dependent inactivation of NMDA channels was examined on cultured rat hippocampal neurons using whole-cell voltage-clamp and cell-attached single-channel recording. An ATP regeneration solution was included in the patch pipette to retard current “rundown. ” In normal [Ca2+]o (1-2 mM) and 10 microM glycine, macroscopic currents evoked by 15 sec applications of NMDA (10 microM) inactivated slowly following an initial peak. At -50 mV in cells buffered to [Ca2+]i < 10(- 8) M with 10 mM EGTA, the inactivation time constant (tau inact) was approximately 5 sec. Inactivation did not occur at membrane potentials of +40 mV and was absent at [Ca2+]o < or = 0.2 mM, suggesting that inactivation resulted from transmembrane calcium influx. The percentage inactivation and tau inact were dependent on [Ca2+]o. The tau inact was also longer with BAPTA in the whole-cell pipette compared to EGTA, suggesting that tau inact reflects primarily the rate of accumulation of intracellular calcium. Inactivation was incomplete, reaching a steady state level of 40–50% of the peak current. At steady state, block of open NMDA channels with MK-801 ((+)-5-methyl-10,11-dihydro-5H- dibenzo[a,d]cyclohepten-5,10-imine) completely blocked subsequent responses to NMDA, suggesting that “inactivated” channels can reopen at steady state. Inactivation was fully reversible in the presence of ATP but was not blocked by inhibiting phosphatases or proteases. In cell- attached patches, transient increases in [Ca2+]i following cell depolarization also resulted in inactivation of NMDA channels without altering the single-channel conductance. This suggests that Ca(2+)- dependent inactivation occurs in intact cells and can be triggered by calcium entry through nearby voltage-gated calcium channels, although calcium entry through NMDA channels was more effective. We suggest that [Ca2+]i transients induce NMDA channel inactivation by binding to either the channel or a nearby regulatory protein to alter channel gating. This mechanism may play a role in downregulation of postsynaptic calcium entry during sustained synaptic activity.
Trabecular texture analysis in dental CBCT by multi-ROI multi-feature fusion

Variations in trabecular bone texture are known to be correlated with bone diseases, such as osteoporosis. In this paper we propose a multi-feature multi-ROI (MMFMRFMR) approach for analyzing trabecular patterns inside the oral cavity using cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) volumes. For each dental CBCT volume, a set of features including fractal dimension, multi-fractal spectrum and gradient based features are extracted from eight regions-of-interest (ROI) to address the low image quality of trabecular patterns. Then, we use generalized multi-kernel learning (GMKL) to effectively fuse these features for distinguishing trabecular patterns from different groups. To validate the proposed method, we apply it to distinguish trabecular patterns from different gender-age groups. On a dataset containing dental CBCT volumes from 96 subjects, divided into gender-age subgroups, our approach achieves 96.1% average classification rate, which greatly outperforms approaches without the feature fusion.
Classification , Implicit Segmentation and a Chronological Prediction Model for Cinematic Sound

This report presents work done on classification and segmentation of cinematic sound employing support vector machines (svm) with sequential minimal optimization (smo). Speech, music, environmental sound and silence, plus all pairwise combinations, are considered as classes. A model considering simple adjacency rules and probabilistic output from logistic regression is used for segmenting fixed-length parts into auditory scenes. Evaluation of the proposed methods on a 44-film dataset against k-nearest neighbor (knn), Naive Bayes and standard svm classifiers shows superior results on all performance metrics. A subsequent meta-study is presented, which proposes optimizations to the building of similar datasets with regard to sample sizes. Finally, it employs sound classes resulting from classification as descriptors in a chronological model for predicting period of production of a given soundtrack. Decision table classification is able to estimate the year of production of an unknown soundtrack with a mean absolute error of approximately 7 years (actual→ predicted correlation coefficient = 0.6.)
Surface-induced size-dependent Young's modulus in nanomaterials

Nanowires and ultra-thin films have wide applications in the quickly developed nanotechnology and nanoscience. However, their Young’s modulus varies with the size, which is seemingly contradictory to the conventional continuum elasticity. Investigating and understanding the underlying mechanism of the size-dependent elastic properties in nanomaterials is of both academic and practical significance. In this work, both theoretical modeling and virtual experiments have been made on this issue. A nanoelement, from the traction free bulk lattice, undergoes an initial relaxation, during which its morphology changes and energy reduces, which is an emphasis in this developed methodology and is a distinction from almost other existing models. With different definitions of surfaces and edges, two models for a nanomaterial – a nanowire or an ultra-thin film – are derived based on the same thermodynamics framework. Comparing with most of others’ treatment, Model I has an advantage to mathematically treat a surface phase to be two-dimensional and an edge phase to be one-dimensional. Under external loadings, the initial relaxed state is taken as the reference. Experimentally, relaxation and tension/compression tests in different loading directions have been conducted on SiC, Si and Cu crystalline nanowires with different cross-sectional sizes and ultra-thin films with different thicknesses by Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. This systematic study successfully illustrates the intrinsic mechanism of the size-dependent Young’s modulus in nanomaterials and the proposed methodology facilitate characterizing mechanical properties of nanomaterials to some extent when continuum concepts, such as, surface energy and surface elastic constants, are used.
[Effect of prosthesis type and size on the hemodynamic response of mitral valve prostheses to exertion].

BACKGROUND Doppler echocardiography is current tool for hemodynamic evaluation of mitral prosthetic heart valves. It's accepted that the area and the gradients by Doppler echocardiography are not influenced at rest by valvular type and valvular size. We evaluated the influence of valvular type, mechanical-biological, and size on exercise hemodynamic of normally-functioning mitral prosthesis. Thirty-seven patients with mitral prosthesis, mean age 56 +/- 10 years, underwent exercise Doppler echocardiography. Peak and mean prosthetic gradient were obtained at rest, during and at maximal exercise with a nonimaging transducer. Mechanical prosthesis were 23 and biological valves 14. Valvular size was less than 26 mm in 7 patients and more than 28 mm in 20 patients. Exercise increased the heart rate from 80 +/- 14 to 143 +/- 22 (p < 0.001), peak gradient from 11.4 +/- 4 to 26.1 +/- 7 mm Hg (p < 0.001) and mean gradient from 4.8 +/- 1 to 13.7 +/- 5 mm Hg (p < 0.001). We found similar peak (11.4 +/- 3 & 11.3 +/- 4) and mean gradient (3.4 +/- 1 & 2.9 +/- 0.7) at rest between mechanical and biological valves; at maximum exercise, peak (26 +/- 7 & 26 +/- 6) and mean gradient (13.9 +/- 6 & 13.2 +/- 4) were also similar. Prosthesis with > 28-mm-size compared with prosthesis < 26-mm-size showed minor peak gradient at second step (21.3 +/- 4 & 26.4 +/- 6, p < 0.05) and at peak exercise (25.4 +/- 7 & 29.8 +/- 8, ns). Hemodynamics on exercise using Doppler echocardiography was not influenced by valvular type (mechanical-biological) in normal mitral prosthesis. However, mitral prosthesis of small size showed worse on hemodynamics exercise than bigger ones.
Opportunistic Energy-Efficient Contact Probing in Delay-Tolerant Applications

In many delay-tolerant applications, information is opportunistically exchanged between mobile devices that encounter each other. In order to affect such information exchange, mobile devices must have knowledge of other devices in their vicinity. We consider scenarios in which there is no infrastructure and devices must probe their environment to discover other devices. This can be an extremely energy-consuming process and highlights the need for energy-conscious contact-probing mechanisms. If devices probe very infrequently, they might miss many of their contacts. On the other hand, frequent contact probing might be energy inefficient. In this paper, we investigate the tradeoff between the probability of missing a contact and the contact-probing frequency. First, via theoretical analysis, we characterize the tradeoff between the probability of a missed contact and the contact-probing interval for stationary processes. Next, for time-varying contact arrival rates, we provide an optimization framework to compute the optimal contact-probing interval as a function of the arrival rate. We characterize real-world contact patterns via Bluetooth phone contact-logging experiments and show that the contact arrival process is self-similar. We design STAR, a contact-probing algorithm that adapts to the contact arrival process. Instead of using constant probing intervals, STAR dynamically chooses the probing interval using both the short-term contact history and the long-term history based on time of day information. Via trace-driven simulations on our experimental data, we demonstrate that STAR requires three to five times less energy for device discovery than a constant contact-probing interval scheme.
Sources and Financial Consequences of Radical Innovation: Insights from Pharmaceuticals

Radical innovations are engines of economic growth and the focus of much academic and practitioner interest, yet some fundamental questions remain unanswered. The authors use theoretical arguments on the risk associated with radical innovations, and the resources needed for them, to answer the following questions on the sources and financial consequences of radical innovation: (1) Who introduces a greater number of radical innovations: dominant or nondominant firms? (2) How great are the financial rewards to radical innovations, and how do these rewards vary across dominant and nondominant firms? (3) Is it only a firm's resources in the aggregate or also its focus and leverage of resources that make its innovations more financially valuable? and (4) Which are more valuable: innovations that incorporate a breakthrough technology or innovations that provide a substantial increase in customer benefits? The authors pool information from a disparate set of sources in the pharmaceutical industry to study these questions. Results indicate that a large majority of radical innovations come from a minority of firms. The financial rewards of innovation vary dramatically across firms and are tied closely to firms’ resource base. Firms that provide higher per-product levels of marketing and technology support obtain much greater financial rewards from their radical innovations than do other firms. Firms that have greater depth and breadth in their product portfolio also gain more from their radical innovations.
Aerosol Jet Printed Electronic Devices and Systems

This work relates to the advancement and applicability of the aerosol jet printing technique for fabricating organic electronic devices and systems. It contributes to the identification of possibilities and benefits of using this technique, which entails unique operational capabilities, such as very small feature sizes ( 5mm) allowing for a contact-free local deposition of a vast variety of functional materials.