Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Design of Triple-Wideband Triple-Sense Circularly Polarized Square Slot Antenna

In this letter, a microstrip-fed simple square slot antenna is proposed for triple-wideband triple-sense circularly polarized radiation. It consists of an L-shaped radiator and a frame lower ground structure with two rectangular strips at opposite corner. A rectangular slit, which is cut on the right side rectangular strip at the lower ground, is mainly used to broaden axial-ratio bandwidth (ARBW) at upper band. This antenna radiates right-hand circularly polarized wave at lower and upper bands, and radiates left-hand circularly polarized wave at middle frequency band. The antenna has been fabricated and measured. Good agreement is achieved between the simulation and measurement. The measured impedance bandwidths are 44.0% (2.34–3.66 GHz) and 70.9% (4.55–9.55 GHz). The measured 3-dB ARBWs for the triple bands are 35.9% (2.40–3.45 GHz), 44.0% (4.65–7.27 GHz), and 6.3% (8.13–8.66 GHz), respectively. The measured peak gains within the 3-dB ARBWs are 4.2, 3.7, and 3.5 dBic, respectively.
Improving Organizational Climate for Quality and Quality of Care: Does Membership in a Collaborative Help?

Background:The lack of quality-oriented organizational climates is partly responsible for deficiencies in patient-centered care and poor quality more broadly. To improve their quality-oriented climates, several organizations have joined quality improvement collaboratives. The effectiveness of this approach is unknown. Objective:To evaluate the impact of collaborative membership on organizational climate for quality and service quality. Subjects:Twenty-one clinics, 4 of which participated in a collaborative sponsored by the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement. Research Design:Pre-post design. Preassessments occurred 2 months before the collaborative began in January 2009. Postassessments of service quality and climate occurred about 6 months and 1 year, respectively, after the collaborative ended in January 2010. We surveyed clinic employees (eg, physicians, nurses, receptionists, etc.) about the organizational climate and patients about service quality. Measures:Prioritization of quality care, high-quality staff relationships, and open communication as indicators of quality-oriented climate and timeliness of care, staff helpfulness, doctor-patient communication, rating of doctor, and willingness to recommend doctor’s office as indicators of service quality. Results:There was no significant effect of collaborative membership on quality-oriented climate and mixed effects on service quality. Doctors’ ratings improved significantly more in intervention clinics than in control clinics, staff helpfulness improved less, and timeliness of care declined more. Ratings of doctor-patient communication and willingness to recommend doctor were not significantly different between intervention and comparison clinics. Conclusion:Membership in the collaborative provided no significant advantage for improving quality-oriented climate and had equivocal effects on service quality.
A warm-started homogeneous and self-dual interior-point method for linear economic model predictive control

In this paper, we present a warm-started homogenous and self-dual interior-point method (IPM) for the linear programs arising in economic model predictive control (MPC) of linear systems. To exploit the structure in the optimization problems, our algorithm utilizes a Riccati iteration procedure which is adapted to the non-standard system solved in homogenous and self-dual IPMs, and specifically tailored to economic MPC. Fast convergence is further achieved by means of a recent warm-starting strategy for homogenous and self-dual IPMs that has not previously been applied to MPC. We implement our algorithm in MATLAB and its performance is analyzed based on a smart grid power management case study. Closed loop simulations show that 1) our algorithm is significantly faster than state-of-the-art IPMs based on sparse linear algebra routines, and 2) warm-starting reduces the number of iterations by approximately 15-35%.
Returns to Schooling, Implicit Discount Rates and Black-White Wage Differentials

A simple econometric model of investment in schooling is developed and estimated. The measure of individual discount rates implicit in their educational investment decisions suggests no difference between individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Differences in individual speeds of educational attainment, which do vary with background, explain most of the variation in levels of attainment that is attributable to family background.
Insiders versus Outsiders

A growing literature examines the link between preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and peace among member states. However, despite the potentially competitive nature of these agreements, there has been little research examining whether and how PTAs could induce hostilities between members and nonmembers. In this article, I argue that dyadic conflict is more likely when one dyad member’s exclusive PTA with a third party results in lower exports for the dyad member that is excluded from the agreement. Importantly, I contend that trade creating as well as trade diverting PTAs can have this effect. I use a triadic extension of the gravity model of trade to estimate how an exclusive PTA influences the exports of nonmembers relative to PTA members. Using these estimates in statistical tests of dyadic militarized interstate dispute onset spanning 1961 to 2000, I find that PTA-induced trade distortions are associated with a higher likelihood of conflict between members and nonmembers.
Chasing a Dream: The Use of Tax Abatements to Spur Urban Economic Development

In this paper I develop a systematic framework for assessing the effectiveness of granting tax abatements to encourage urban economic development. This approach focuses upon the abatement's effect upon the firm's decision to invest and the impact of the investment upon the community. Current policy fails to take these considerations into account adequately. I use this framework to evaluate the potential revenue gain to the City of Detroit of offering variable abatement awards, and suggest a set of proposals to improve program performance.
Factors Related to Nerve Injury and Hypocalcemia in Thyroid Gland Surgery

To identify potential risk factors related to complications after thyroidectomy, a study was designed that included 675 patients. Recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) paralysis, hypocalcemia, serohematoma, wound infection, and postoperative hemorrhage were evaluated. The rate of paralysis of the RLN was calculated on nerves at risk for hypocalcemia (n = 890) in patients undergoing bilateral procedures or unilateral procedures if they had previously undergone a contralateral operation (n = 321). Multivariate analysis was used to identify the relationships between the variables included in the study. All statistical tests received the same level of significance of 0.05. Permanent hypocalcemia occurred in 2.2% of the patients, whereas unilateral paralysis of the RLN developed in 0.9%. Mortality was 0.1% in this series. The RLN paralysis had a significant relationship with preoperative diagnosis of malignancy (P < 0.03). Likewise, hypocalcemia was related to sex and surgical procedure (P < 0.03). Serohematoma was linked with age (P < 0.001), and hemorrhage was associated with previous radiation of the neck (P < 0.03). (Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg 2001; 124:111-4.)
Possible role of ovarian epithelial inflammation in ovarian cancer.

Ovarian cancer is a commonly fatal disease for which prevention strategies have been limited, in part because of a lack of understanding of the underlying biology. This paper reviews the epidemiologic literature in the English language on risk factors and protective factors for ovarian cancer and proposes a novel hypothesis that a common mechanism underlying this disease is inflammation. Previous hypotheses about the causes of ovarian cancer have attributed risk to an excess number of lifetime ovulations or to elevations in steroid hormones. Inflammation may underlie ovulatory events because an inflammatory reaction is induced during the process of ovulation. Additional risk factors for ovarian cancer, including asbestos and talc exposure, endometriosis (i.e., ectopic implantation of uterine lining tissue), and pelvic inflammatory disease, cannot be directly linked to ovulation or to hormones but do cause local pelvic inflammation. On the other hand, tubal ligation and hysterectomy act as protective factors, perhaps by diminishing the likelihood that the ovarian epithelium will be exposed to environmental initiators of inflammation. Inflammation entails cell damage, oxidative stress, and elevations of cytokines and prostaglandins, all of which may be mutagenic. The possibility that inflammation is a pathophysiologic contributor to the development of ovarian cancer suggests a directed approach to future research
Recovery Efficiencies of Anthrax Spores and Ricin from Nonporous or Nonabsorbent and Porous or Absorbent Surfaces by a Variety of Sampling Methods *

Abstract: The 2001 anthrax letter cases brought into focus the need to establish the most effective environmental sampling procedures. Results are presented from two studies aimed at establishing the best procedures for everyday surfaces likely to be contaminated after the release of environmentally stable bioaggressive agents, as exemplified by anthrax spores and ricin. With anthrax spores, contact plates, with mean retrieval rates of 28–54%, performed better than other methods by a wide margin for flat nonporous, nonabsorbent surfaces. They also proved best on flat porous, absorbent materials, although recoveries were low (<7%). For both agents, dry devices (swabs, wipes, Trace Evidence Collection Filters) had universally poor retrieval efficiencies with no significant differences between them. Among moistened devices (wipes, swabs, and Sample Collection and Recovery Devices), wipes were generally best, albeit with considerable cross‐over among individual readings (highest mean recoveries for anthrax spores and ricin 5.5% and 2.5%, respectively, off plastic).
Financial versus Monetary Mercantilism: Long-Run View of Large International Reserves Hoarding

The sizable hoarding of international reserves by several East Asian countries has been frequently attributed to a modern version of monetary mercantilism -- hoarding international reserves in order to improve competitiveness. From a long-run perspective, manufacturing exporters in East Asia adopted financial mercantilism -- subsidizing the cost of capital -- during decades of high growth. They switched to hoarding large international reserves when growth faltered, making it harder to disentangle the monetary mercantilism from precautionary response to the heritage of past financial mercantilism. Monetary mercantilism also lowers the cost of hoarding, but may be associated with negative externalities leading to competitive hoarding.
How to connect strategy research with broader issues that matter?

The financial crisis and its various episodes, the persistent use of child labour by multinational corporations, the global sex trade with its horrible implications, environmental destruction exemplified by BP’s accident in the Gulf of Mexico, drugs and their globally organized production and sales, Fukushima and the risks of contemporary energy policies, dictatorships and oppression sustained by military and economic power in North Korea and Syria. These are major strategic issues of global relevance that need to be better understood – and dealt with. What they and many others have in common is that they are all about the strategic management of complex, intertwined organizational structures and processes. Furthermore, both their causes and consequences are organizational, and they usually involve an economic dimension that greatly influences various actors’ interests and manoeuvres. These crises have been addressed by economists, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, military experts and others, but with few exceptions strategy scholars have kept silent. There are of course reasons (or excuses) for why this is the case: strategic management scholarship is considered to have its place in explaining firm behaviour and industrial dynamics, in-depth research takes time which often prevents researchers from being able to comment on crises as they happen, academic publishing practices prolong these processes (it gets years to publish a paper), we as scholars can provide explanations, but the practitioners seldom understand them, the media are not used to using strategy scholars as experts, and so on. In this essay, we don’t buy these excuses at face value. Our message is simple: strategy scholars should be bold enough to look beyond the management of business firms to address contemporary issues of broader societal relevance. Relevance is a key question for management scholars in general and strategy scholars in particular. While there are different views on what relevance means (Augier and March, 2007), most have been concerned about the lack of ability of management research to provide knowledge that is useful for managerial practice (McGahan, 2007; Walsh et al., 2007). For example, Hambrick (1994: 15) famously criticized management research for developing into an ‘incestuous, closed loop of scholarship’. More recently, Walsh (2011) provides an overview of the presidential addresses in recent years that all seem to indicate that management research has failed in its quest 452827 SOQ10310.1177/1476127012452827Vaara and DurandStrategic Organization 2012
Management Development in Ethnocentric Multinational Corporations

The first part of this article is based on a study of sixteen ethnocentric multinational corporations (MNC's) and discusses six major sources of morale problems that are characteristic of this type of firm. They relate to issues of promotion, adaptation, managerial patterns, rewards, and political factors. The findings reveal that existing management development programs do not equip the expatriates in such corporations with the proper tools to solve these problems. Thus, the author reviews various methods of management development that can limit—to a great extent—the negative impact of the ethnocentric staffing policy on organizational effectiveness.
Bio-inspired reverse engineering of regulatory networks

Regulatory networks are complex networks. This paper addresses the challenge of modelling these networks. The Boolean representation is chosen and supported as a suitable representation for an abstract approach. In in-silico experiments, two different bio-inspired techniques are applied to the reverse engineering of a Boolean regulatory network: as a search method a Genetic Algorithm is applied and an indirect method based on Artificial Development and tuned to this application, is proposed. Both methods are challenged at reverse engineering a known network - the yeast cell-cycle network model. Presented results show that they are both successful in reverse engineering the considered network.
Data Preprocessing and Model Design for Medicine Problems

Machine-learning disciplines including model design and data preprocessing are crucial in order to obtain a good performance in terms of accurate results and interpretability. However, they are not usually treated simultaneously and, when a model is evaluated, the origin and preprocessing of the data are ignored. Medicine and biomedical research provide a wide variety of problems where machine-learning can be very helpful in decision support, telemedicine, and the discovery of interactions. These facts motivated the elaboration of this special issue; therefore, it is focused on methods and applications where machine learning could be applied holistically encompassing all stages to solve the problem. The papers included in the special issue go through the intersection between the medical field of application and theoretical models. For example, generalized estimating equations which are a common approach are compared against quadratic inference functions when applied to a lipid and glucose study. It is common in the field of medicine to be suspicious to predictions made by models, so it is interesting also to read another paper presenting the application of machine-learning techniques as a support decision tool that will not replace the expert judgment. This special issue not only considers the application of the models to improve the classification or prediction accuracy but also presents papers where the data are analysed properly. In medicine problems, it is quite common to have continuous and discrete variables in order to show how to deal with these situations; the paper entitled “Let continuous outcome variables remain continuous” shows how to apply a popular regression method without dichotomising the variables as this procedure could end up in the lost information. We hope that the reading of this special issue will help medicine researchers to be aware of new methods and machine-learning techniques as well as to see how they could be applied. We also hope that the machine learning community can see here a wide variety of problems where the models and algorithms they create could be applied providing useful results. Alberto Guillen Amaury Lendasse Guilherme Barreto
The 'Actually Existing Smart City'

This paper grounds the critique of the ‘smart city’ in its historical and geographical context. Adapting Brenner and Theodore’s notion of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’, we suggest a greater attention be paid to the ‘actually existing smart city’, rather than the exceptional or paradigmatic smart cities of Songdo, Masdar and Living PlanIT Valley. Through a closer analysis of cases in Louisville and Philadelphia, we demonstrate the utility of understanding the material effects of these policies in actual cities around the world, with a particular focus on how and from where these policies have arisen, and how they have unevenly impacted the places that have adopted them.
Sporosarcina pasteurii can form nanoscale crystals on cell surface

Using a semi-solid 0.5% agar column, we study the phenomenon of microbially induced mineral (calcium carbonate) by the bacteria Sporosarcina pasteurii. Our platform allows for in-situ visualization of the phenomena, and we found clear evidence of bacterial cell surface facilitating formation of nanoscale crystals. Moreover, in the bulk agar we found the presence of microspheres, which seem to arise from an aggregation of nanoscale crystals with needle like morphology. Extensive chemical characterization confirmed that the crystals to be calcium carbonate, and two different polymorphs (calcite and vaterite) were identified.
Tenure, promotion and executive remuneration

Commentators frequently remark on the need to pay high levels of chief executive officer remuneration to attract, motivate and retain the best executives for Britain's leading companies. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation into tenure, promotion and executive remuneration. The remuneration of the chief executive officers at some of Britain's largest businesses is examined. In the majority of cases the CEO had not been lured away from rivals but had risen through the internal labour market, often after a long–term employment relationship. Moreover, long job tenure and internal promotion were associated with higher levels of pay. It is concluded that understanding of this controversial issue will be improved if it is recognized that a part of current executive pay may be a reward for previous successful performance.
Large Audit Firm Premium and Audit Specialisation in the Public Sector

The outsourcing of public sector audits to private sector auditors is an important public sector issue. This paper addresses the existence of an audit brand name premium in the public sector by comparing audit fees between the government auditor and Big 5 auditors. I also examine whether audit premiums exist for Big 5 industry, national and city specialists. The study contributes to prior research by (1) statistically adjusting for self-selection bias, and (2) allowing slope coefficients in the audit fee model to vary between the Big 5 and the government audit sector and estimating the counterfactual fee (i.e., the expected fee using the alternative auditor fee model). The Big 5 premium is around 23 percent. However, this depends on whether the Big 5 auditor is an industry specialist. An industry specialist passes on a discount of 17.4 percent to the client. There is no premium related to being a national leader. The evidence is mixed as to whether city specialists command an audit fee premium.
The Role of Baseline Cognitive Function in the Neurocognitive Effects of Electroconvulsive Therapy in Depressed Elderly Patients

Objective: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective biological treatment option for severely depressed elderly patients; however, it can cause cognitive side effects, including anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Elderly patients with “cognitive impairment no dementia” (CIND) are reported as being more vulnerable to the cognitive side effects of ECT compared with patients with “no cognitive impairment” (NCI). The few studies that have reached this conclusion can be criticized for using insensitive outcome measures. Method: The present study investigated cognitive side effects using standard neuropsychological tests before and after twice-weekly ECT. Patients were assessed at baseline (T1) and within one week after a course of ECT (consisting of a mean of 10 treatments) (T2), and were followed up for three months after T2 (T3). The sample included 54 patients with NCI (n = 36) or CIND (n = 18). For a control group, we recruited 17 healthy elderly persons. Tests of anterograde memory, information-processing speed, executive function, and retrograde memory were administered. We computed reliable change indices using simple regression methods. Results: Short-term side effects were detected at T2 in a large minority of patients, with no significant differences between NCI and CIND patients. Considerable improvement in global cognitive function from T1 to T3 was observed in 44% of the CIND patients. At the group level, information-processing speed improved significantly in CIND vs. NCI patients. Conclusions: CIND patients were not more vulnerable to amnesia than were NCI patients. Long-term cognitive side effects of ECT were not detected.
Myoclonic movements following induction of anesthesia with propofol: a case report.

OBJECTIVE To report a case of myoclonic movements during an induction of anesthesia using propofol. Abnormal movements resulting from propofol are uncommon but there have been a number of such cases since propofol was introduced. CLINICAL FEATURES An 1-year-old boy with a diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea was scheduled to undergo adenotonsillectomy. He demonstrated myoclonic movements during anesthetic induction using propofol. He was then given isoflurane and his airway was secured with an endotracheal tube after full muscle relaxation by succinylcholine. The anesthetic maintenance was uneventful as was the emergence. The patient recovered smoothly without neurological deficit. CONCLUSION Propofol, an intravenous anesthetic, with strong evidence of anticonvulsant property, could, in susceptible patients, under certain conditions, act as a proconvulsant, and should, thus, be avoided or cautiously used in some patients.