Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transitioning From CRD to CDRD in Bayesian Retrieval of Rainfall From Satellite Passive Microwave Measurements: Part 1. Algorithm Description and Testing

In this Part 1 paper concerning a new Cloud Dynamics and Radiation Database (CDRD) algorithm, improvements in obtaining satellite retrievals of rainfall from multispectral passive microwave (PMW) radiometer measurements are obtained by transforming a conventional Cloud Radiation Database (CRD) algorithm. The improvements arise by combining parameter constraints derived from model-based dynamical-thermodynamical-hydrological (DTH) meteorological profile variables and additional geographical-seasonal (GS) factors, together with multispectral PMW brightness temperatures (TBs), into a specialized knowledge database underpinning a Bayesian retrieval algorithm. The so-called knowledge variables are produced by a high-resolution nonhydrostatic cloud-resolving model (CRM). The associated knowledge TBs are produced by a calibrated PMW radiative-transfer-equation model system (RMS) that relates CRM environments to expected satellite-view top-of-atmosphere TBs. By first applying the RMS to thousands of meteorological-microphysical situations simulated by the CRM and then by marshaling into the specialized database all the concomitant modeled microphysical profiles, TBs, and linked DTH/GS profiles/factors (from which optimal constraint tags can be derived), it becomes possible to use the database for the Bayesian interpretation of analogous measured TBs and tags. The main purpose of the new algorithm is to reduce ambiguity (nonuniqueness) effects that plague predecessor CRD algorithms. Such schemes restrict the interpretation of observed TBs by ignoring observable DTH/GS parameters that help constrain the influence microphysical profile sets (i.e., the associated hydrometeors, their size distributions, and their concomitant vertical distributions) that feed into the retrieval solutions. A Version 1 CDRD algorithm is tested against its CRD predecessor on two case studies of precipitation over Italy's Lazio region which were observed with various satellite PMW radiometers. The measured TBs and corresponding tags obtained from gridded operational global model analyses are used in juxtaposition to produce the final rainfall retrievals. The retrievals are verified against coincident precision polarimetric C-band radar measurements. Skillful improvement is found for a case of intense convective rainfall where even CRD-type algorithm accuracy should be expected, as well as for a case of mixed convective-stratiform rainfall where either algorithms might otherwise be expected to be somewhat inaccurate.
Economic austerity and healthcare restructuring: correlates and consequences of nursing job insecurity

The healthcare system underwent considerable restructuring and downsizing in the early to mid-1990s in several countries as governments cut costs to reduce their budget deficits. Studies of the effects of these efforts on nursing staff and hospital functioning in various countries generally reported negative impacts. Healthcare restructuring and hospital downsizing is again being implemented in North America in 2009/2010 as governments struggle to reduce their deficits at a time of worldwide economic recession. The present study examines the relationship of hospital restructuring initiatives in and their link with increased threats to job security with a variety of individual and hospital outcomes in a sample of nursing staff working in hospitals undergoing significant restructuring and downsizing. Data were collected from 289 nursing staff working in California hospitals. Nurses reported a relatively large number of restructuring and downsizing initiatives. Restructuring initiatives and threats to job security accounted for a greater increment in explained variance on every outcome measure than did personal demographic factors and work situation characteristics. Threats to job security were generally associated with negative work attitudes and satisfactions, levels of psychological well-being and perceptions of hospital functioning. Some suggestions for more successful approaches to cost reductions are offered.
Informed Trading around Acquisitions: Evidence from Corporate Bonds

This paper examines the prevalence of informed trading in corporate bonds prior to takeover announcements. We find significant pre-announcement trading activities and price movements in target bonds, in directions consistent with the nature of pending information. Improved transparency in the bond markets achieved by the implementation of the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE) system reduces the incidence of informed trading. Further, there is some weak evidence that dealers affiliated with merger and acquisition advisors sell in anticipation of negative news, pointing to a possible channel of information leakage. Such negative news seems to be incorporated into bond prices no slower than into the target stocks.
Association of medication adherence, knowledge, and skills with emergency department visits by adults 50 years or older with congestive heart failure.

PURPOSE The association of medication adherence, knowledge, and skills with emergency department (ED) visits by patients 50 years of age or older with congestive heart failure (CHF) was studied. METHODS The patients in this study were enrolled in the usual care group of an ongoing trial of patients with CHF to determine the effects of a pharmacy-based intervention on relevant outcomes. Participants' medication knowledge and skills were assessed during individual interviews. Medication knowledge assessed patients' knowledge of the dosage, frequency, and indication of each of their CHF medications. The medications skills assessment evaluated patients' dexterity (ability to open medication bottles), literacy (ability to read labels), and ability to distinguish colors of tablets and capsules. Medication adherence to CHF drugs was calculated from electronic monitors and prescription-refill records over a six-month period. The primary outcomes of this study were the numbers of all-cause cardiovascular and CHF-specific ED visits during a six-month period. Log-linear regression models were used to analyze the effects of medication knowledge, skill, and adherence on ED visits. RESULTS Sixty-one patients participated in this study. Multivariate log-linear models adjusted for demographic variables showed that lower medication adherence (p < 0.001) and an inability to read standard prescription and auxiliary labels (p = 0.002) were associated with an increased number of cardiovascular-related ED visits. Knowledge of the prescribed dose was associated with CHF-specific ED visits (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION Greater medication knowledge, skills, and adherence were associated with fewer ED visits among patients 50 years of age or older with CHF in an urban, teaching medical center.
Testing Solow's Implications on the Effective Development Policy

The core of the neoclassical growth theory is the capital investment. Solow proposed that the diminishing return is key to such growth process in establishing the stability of the equilibrium growth path. This key postulation has critical implications on the sustainable and effective development policy, suggesting the importance of productivity and human capital in both steady-state and capital-driven transitional growth. This paper suggests a novel way to test the diminishing return assumption and confirmed its strong presence using the Penn World Tables version 8.0 data, hence validates Solows implications on effective development policies.
Computing multi-scale organizations built through assembly

The ability to generate and control assembling structures built over many orders of magnitude is an unsolved challenge of engineering and science. Many of the presumed transformational benefits of nanotechnology and robotics are based directly on this capability. There are still significant theoretical difficulties associated with building such systems, though technology is rapidly ensuring that the tools needed are becoming available in chemical, electronic, and robotic domains. In this thesis a simulated, general-purpose computational prototype is developed which is capable of unlimited assembly and controlled by external input, as well as an additional prototype which, in structures, can emulate any other computing device. These devices are entirely finite-state and distributed in operation. Because of these properties and the unique ability to form unlimited size structures of unlimited computational power, the prototypes represent a novel and useful blueprint on which to base scalable assembly in other domains. A new assembling model of Computational Organization and Regulation over Assembly Levels (CORAL) is also introduced, providing the necessary framework for this investigation. The strict constraints of the CORAL model allow only an assembling unit of a single type, distributed control, and ensure that units cannot be reprogrammed - all reprogramming is done via assembly. Multiple units are instead structured into aggregate computational devices using a procedural or developmental approach. Well-defined comparison of computational power between levels of organization is ensured by the structure of the model. By eliminating ambiguity, the CORAL model provides a pragmatic answer to open questions regarding a framework for hierarchical organization. Finally, a comparison between the designed prototypes and units evolved using evolutionary algorithms is presented as a platform for further research into novel scalable assembly. Evolved units are capable of recursive pairing ability under the control of a signal, a primitive form of unlimited assembly, and do so via symmetry-breaking operations at each step. Heuristic evidence for a required minimal threshold of complexity is provided by the results, and challenges and limitations of the approach are identified for future evolutionary studies.
Category learning induces position invariance of pattern recognition across the visual field

Human object recognition is considered to be largely invariant to translation across the visual field. However, the origin of this invariance to positional changes has remained elusive, since numerous studies found that the ability to discriminate between visual patterns develops in a largely location-specific manner, with only a limited transfer to novel visual field positions. In order to reconcile these contradicting observations, we traced the acquisition of categories of unfamiliar grey-level patterns within an interleaved learning and testing paradigm that involved either the same or different retinal locations. Our results show that position invariance is an emergent property of category learning. Pattern categories acquired over several hours at a fixed location in either the peripheral or central visual field gradually become accessible at new locations without any position-specific feedback. Furthermore, categories of novel patterns presented in the left hemifield are distinctly faster learnt and better generalized to other locations than those learnt in the right hemifield. Our results suggest that during learning initially position-specific representations of categories based on spatial pattern structure become encoded in a relational, position-invariant format. Such representational shifts may provide a generic mechanism to achieve perceptual invariance in object recognition.
Timeline-based navigation for interactive narratives

Recent progress in narrative generation techniques for Interactive Storytelling supports increasingly longer stories. Consequently, the exploration of such automatically generated narratives for testing or evaluation purposes becomes increasingly difficult due to the many variants, even for stories of a few minutes' length. In this paper, we introduce a hypermedia method that supports the real-time navigation of 3D interactive narratives from their timeline description. The core idea behind our method is that it fully preserves the dynamic nature of the interactive narrative, unlike any form of visual replay or summarising. We illustrate the approach on a fully-implemented interactive narrative and show how it supports the exploration of different generated narratives in a way that assists testing and evaluation.
A Historical Perspective of Economic and Financial Stability in South East Europe

The paper offers a general overview of situation during the two crises, Great Depression and Great Recession for some of the South East European countries. It studies the linkage between financial issues and economic development by making a comparison of two periods. This paper provides a review of the theory behind the ties of these two components and the channels they affect each other. Both crises have had deteriorate effects in the SEE countries but often this group of countries have had symmetric hits, which leads to the idea of acting as a common region. As a main recommendation we emphasize the collaboration of countries by making similar reforms and moving together in standards achievement to the process of being part of EU, if it remains to be an objective, or constituting a “uniform” and compact competitive region. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013. v2n9p706
Identification and expression profiling of microRNAs during bovine oocyte maturation using heterologous approach

The accumulation of maternal mRNA and protein during oogenesis for supporting oocyte maturation and the newly fertilised zygote marks the beginning of developmental process in mammals. MicroRNAs (∼18–22 nt long) which are known for post‐transcriptional gene regulation are evidenced for their essential role during animal development. We, therefore, aimed to investigate the expression of miRNAs in immature and in vitro matured bovine oocytes, using heterologous miRNA array platform. To attain this, we used a mercury™ locked nucleic acids (LNA) array (Exiqon, Vedbaek, Denmark) microarray that consist of 454 capture probes for human, mouse and rat miRNAs as registered and annotated in the miRBase release 8.0 at The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Our result revealed the differential expression of 59 miRNAs, of which 31 and 28 miRNAs were found to be preferentially expressed in immature and matured oocytes, respectively. Here, we also report the identification of 32 orthologous miRNAs using a heterologous approach. Expression profiling of selected miRNAs during preimplantation stage embryos showed a distinct temporal expression pattern. After target prediction for selected candidate miRNAs high ranking target mRNA were quantified in immature and matured oocytes and showed a reciprocal expression pattern between the miRNA and the predicted targets suggesting a cause and effect relationship. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 76: 665–677, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Estimated Value of Increased Pricing Accuracy for Fed Cattle

To improve vertical market coordination beef packers have introduced fed cattle grid pricing systems that offer premiums or discounts for varying carcass quality and yield grades. This study calculates the value of cattle quality information for producers considering live, dressed, and grid pricing alternatives. The value of fed cattle quality and yield grade information is at least $15/head. When fed cattle are sold on a live weight basis, high-quality cattle subsidize low-quality cattle by an average of $30/head. Price signals that could improve beef market coordination are ignored when fed cattle are marketed using traditional live or dressed weight methods.
Antifungal activity of caspofungin in experimental infective endocarditis caused by Candida albicans

BACKGROUND Infective endocarditis is a disease characterised by heart valve lesions, which exhibit extracellular matrix proteins that act as a physical barrier to prevent the passage of antimicrobial agents. The genus Candida has acquired clinical importance given that it is increasingly being isolated from cases of nosocomial infections. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the activity of caspofungin compared to that of liposomal amphotericin B against Candida albicans in experimental infective endocarditis. METHODS Wistar rats underwent surgical intervention and infection with strains of C. albicans to develop infective endocarditis. Three groups were formed: the first group was treated with caspofungin, the second with liposomal amphotericin B, and the third received a placebo. In vitro sensitivity was first determined to further evaluate the effect of these treatments on a rat experimental model of endocarditis by semiquantitative culture of fibrinous vegetations and histological analysis. FINDINGS Our semiquantitative culture of growing vegetation showed massive C. albicans colonisation in rats without treatment, whereas rats treated with caspofungin showed significantly reduced colonisation, which was similar to the results obtained with liposomal amphotericin B. CONCLUSIONS The antifungal activity of caspofungin is similar to that of liposomal amphotericin B in an experimental model of infective endocarditis caused by C. albicans.
Childrearing and fertility.

The authors of this book chapter argue that fertility may increase if there is any relaxation or easing of the tension between work responsibilities and child rearing in industrialized countries. This article identifies a variety of factors that are likely to influence the extent to which mother and worker roles are compatible. The review suggests that improved child care arrangements may mediate between work and fertility but may not always result in increased fertility. Costs of child care average in the US about 10% of gross family income for families with children aged under 5 years and 20% for poor single parent families. The emotional costs of relying on an alternative caretaker may be high. Women in the US may be sensitive to the negative attitudes toward working mothers. Comprehensive maternal leave policies and cash benefits do not directly encourage fertility. Both men and women work for a variety of reasons. The article presents empirical evidence largely from the US although there are examples from Germany and France. There are methodological and data availability gaps in childbearing motivation that account for the limited analysis on US fertility-related effects of changes in the social organization of work and child care. It is assumed that there is a motivation to have children and that it varies with changes in the social organization of work and child care. Three types of work-child rearing contexts are distinguished: simultaneous work and child rearing tasks; incompatible work roles and child rearing; and simultaneous market work and other child care arrangements. The coordination of these roles and the impact on fertility are discussed in terms of job characteristics the sequencing of work and family roles costs access to child care attitudes toward working mothers norms on child care and diffusion.
Asset Returns, the Business Cycle, and the Labor Market: A Sensitivity Analysis for the German Economy

We review the labor market implications of recent real-business-cycle models that successfully replicate the empirical equity premium. We document the fact that all models considered in this survey with the exception of Boldrin, Christiano, and Fisher (2001) imply a negative correlation of working hours and output that is not observed empirically, while in their model, the equity premium does not result from variation in the firm value, but from changes in the relative price of two goods. In addition, we calibrate the models with regard to characteristics from the German economy and show that the equity premium is very sensitive with regard to the utility parameters.
Identification of a Hamster Epididymal Region-Specific Secretory Glycoprotein That Binds Nonviable Spermatozoa1

Abstract Even though the epididymis produces an environment promoting sperm maturation and viability, some sperm do not survive transit through the epididymal tubule. Mechanisms that segregate the epididymal epithelium and/or the viable sperm population from degenerating spermatozoa are poorly understood. We report here the identification and characterization of HEP64, a 64-kDa glycoprotein secreted by principal cells of the corpus and proximal cauda epididymidis of the hamster that specifically binds to and coats dead/dying spermatozoa. The HEP64 monomer contains ∼12 kDa carbohydrate and, following chemical deglycosylation, migrates as a ∼52-kDa polypeptide. Both soluble (luminal fluid) and sperm-associated HEP64 are assembled into disulfide-linked high molecular weight oligomers that migrate as a doublet band of 260/280 kDa by nonreducing SDS-PAGE. In the epididymal lumen, HEP64 is concentrated into focal accumulations containing aggregates of structurally abnormal or degenerating spermatozoa, and examination of sperm suspensions reveals that HEP64 forms a shroudlike coating surrounding abnormal spermatozoa. The HEP64 glycoprotein firmly binds degenerating spermatozoa and is not released by either nonionic detergent or high salt extraction. Electron microscopic immunocytochemistry demonstrates that HEP64 localized to an amorphous coating surrounding the abnormal spermatozoa. The potential mechanisms by which this epididymal secretory protein binds dead spermatozoa as well as its possible functions in the sperm storage function of the cauda epididymidis are discussed.
Knowledge management and the performing arts industry: The case of Australia's SCOPE initiative

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline one innovative Australian initiative to harness creative, often intangible, knowledge, and reap the benefits of the intellectual capital of dance artists both during and post performing careers – the project Securing Career Opportunities and Professional Employment (SCOPE) which has been running for the last three years in conjunction with the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). Design/methodology/approach – Unlike much of the work in the field of knowledge management that concentrates on individual organization knowledge management processes and practices, this paper takes an industry‐sector‐wide perspective, utilizing written, and oral data sources.Findings – International focus on innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity and knowledge management has led to a growing recognition of the role of the creative industries for our post industrial economic well being. Dance plays a central role as a unique way of knowing and learning, with both intrinsic and in.
Are Green Jobs Career Pathways a Path to a 21st-Century Workforce Development System?

This article examines policy reports that advocate for new green jobs career pathways to help grow the green economy and create new opportunity structures in the green labor market. The reports are based on a series of propositions about the nature of green jobs and the existence of the political will to invest in new green education programs to support the green economy. The purpose of this article is to introduce educators and practitioners to the policy frameworks and propositions that shape their work to deliver effective green education and certification programs. It offers practical advice on how to understand and influence the basic premises on which green education policies and training resources are based.
The 'X Component' in Shanghai's Social Security Reforms

In 2003, the Shanghai Bureau of Labour and Social Security launched the zhenbao (town insurance) programme, now widely known as 25 plus X. This scheme is regarded as an important experiment in social security reform and has been lauded for extending social security to areas where previously only segments of the population had mandatory coverage. Using data from 103,000 individuals enrolled in 25 plus X, we examine the extent to which the scheme represents an extension in social security coverage. Our analysis suggests that while it does represent an extension of benefits for some, for many it represents a considerable dilution in benefits.