Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stanford Center for International Development the Integration of the Indian Wheat Sector into the Global Market the Integration of the Indian Wheat Sector into the Global Market

World food prices have risen rapidly in recent months. The trend has brought up concerns about how markets in developing nations respond to international conditions. In this paper, I try to determine whether the price of wheat in India converges to the world level. Using monthly prices from the and India over a period of thirteen years, I look for evidence of cointegration among the series. Cointegrated series follow a common stochastic process, and thus can be said to move together. I first test for cointegration without restrictions to identify the number of cointegrating vectors and common trends, and then impose restrictions to see how quickly markets adjust to disequilibria. I find evidence that the world wheat trading centers are integrated, with Australia being the most dominant. The Indian wheat price does not converge with the other four. I next use the Granger Representation Theorem to model the adjustment of the markets to shocks. I find that the Indian market adjusts more slowly to a new equilibrium, but the total magnitude of adjustment is greater. Possible explanations include poor infrastructure, regional segmentation within India, and high levels of government intervention. for their help in various stages of my research. Any errors that remain are solely my own.
Optimal GA based SMC with adaptive PID sliding surface for robot manipulator

Different types of robotic manipulator controllers are developed to acquire dynamic properties and improve the global stability. In this paper a control strategy for robotic manipulator based on the coupling of the Artificial Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) with sliding mode control (SMC) approach has been presented. Initially, the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller has developed for three different control strategies (IATE, ISE and ISTE) using GA. SMC has developed for best optimal criterion by using GA. The main objectives of these controller are to provide stability, good disturbance rejection and small tracking error. Finally, we have trained an ANFIS network, which can generate the adaptive PID control signal to the SMC of robot manipulator. The stability of the system is guaranteed by the checking of the Lyapunov stability theorem. Numerical simulations using the dynamic model of 2 DOF planner rigid robot manipulator with input torque disturbance shows the effectiveness in trajectory tracking problem and disturbance rejection. The simulation results of these controllers are compared with various torque disturbances in terms of path tracking and disturbance rejection. The proposed ANFIS adaptive SMC controller can achieve favorable tracking performance and it is robust with regard to disturbances in input torque.
Pure Dysarthria, Isolated Facial Paresis, or Dysarthria‐Facial Paresis Syndrome

Pure dysarthria, isolated supranuclear facial paresis, and their combination without somatic motor dysfunction are rarely encountered clinical syndromes and have not yet been clearly characterized. Methods Thirteen patients (9 men, 4 women; aged 33 to 72 [mean, 56] years) with unilateral strokes who developed dysarthria with or without facial paresis but without somatic motor dysfunction were reviewed in addition to case reports from previous literature. Results Computed tomographic scan and/or magnetic resonance imaging showed infarcts on the corona radiata in 4 patients, basal ganglia abutting the internal capsule in 3, basal ganglia-corona radiata in 1, pontine base in 3, and corticalsubcortical bulbar motor area in 2. The dysarthria and facial paresis were usually mild and transient, and either one was likely to be unnoticed. Conclusions It is suggested that pure dysarthria or isolated facial paresis syndrome be considered as an extreme continuum of dysarthria-facial paresis syndrome, which is likely to be a variant of dysarthria-clumsy hand syndrome.
A Specification Language for Coordination in Agent Systems

This paper introduces an executable coordination specification language, with which both pre-specified and more flexible and generic agent coordination approaches can be expressed. An iterative process was taken to define this language. First, useful language elements were defined, after which example coordination approaches were specified using this language. The language was extended incrementally with new language elements whenever new concepts were required to enable specification of the example coordination approaches. The approaches were simulated and tested using particular test cases. Finally, an evaluation of the coordination approaches was performed by means of formal verification.
Formation of Mono(ethylhexyl)phthalate from Di(ethylhexyl)phthalate in Human Plasma Stored in PVC Bags and Its Presence in Fractionated Plasma Proteins

Abstract. The formation of mono(ethylhexyl)phthalate (MEHP) from di(ethylhexyl)phthalate in human plasma stored in bags of polyvinychloride has been studied. Substantial amounts were formed and in ten bags from 4 to 56μg/ml were found. After 2 weeks at room temperature the concentration of MEHP had increased to values between 27 and 79 μg/ml. However, MEHP was also disappearing as shown in a recovery experiment. Of the fractionated proteins albumin contained MEHP in amounts from < 3 to 290 μg/g.
A rapid screen for lupus anticoagulant with good discrimination from oral anticoagulants, congenital factor deficiency and heparin, is provided by comparing a sensitive and an insensitive APTT reagent

Lupus anticoagulants (LA) are associated with an increased risk of thrombosis and laboratory detection is of major importance. Various tests are available for LA screening and confirmation, but they differ in sensitivity and specificity, frequently lacking the ability to discriminate between the presence of LA, heparin and oral anticoagulants. We noticed that a patient with LA who had a prolonged activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) by our routine method, gave a normal result with a different APTT reagent. This latter reagent, which contained soy bean phosphatides (SBP), was compared with a reagent containing rabbit brain phospholipids complexed with kaolin (RBK), for APTT measurement in a variety of patients. There was no significant difference in APTT ratio between the two reagents in plasma samples from healthy normal subjects. In LA samples, SBP gave consistently lower APTT ratios than RBK (mean × SEM, 1.04 × 0.05 and 2.08 × 0.19 for SBP and RBK respectively; P< 0.001). In LA patients receiving oral anticoagulants for antithrombotic prophylaxis or treatment, the APTT ratio was again significantly shorter with SBP (1.60 × 0.17 and 3.40 × 0.67; P< 0.05). In LA negative patients receiving oral anticoagulants, the relationship was reversed, and a higher APTT ratio was obtained with SBP than RBK (1.61 × 0.13 and 1.31 × 0.12; P< 0.001). In addition, there were no significant differences in APTT ratios for the two reagents when samples from patients receiving heparin therapy, or patients with acquired factor VIII deficiency or inherited deficiency of factor VIII or IX were studied. The use of the SBP reagent alongside a LA sensitive APTT reagent allows a rapid screening for LA, as well as a confirmation of the phospholipid dependency of the inhibitor.
Clay content drives carbon stocks in soils under a plantation of Eucalyptus saligna Labill. in southern Brazil

Soil carbon accumulation is largely dependent on net primary productivity. To our knowledge, there have been no studies investigating the dynamics of carbon accumulation in weathered subtropical soils, especially in managed eucalyptus plantations. We quantified the seasonal input of leaf litter, the leaf decomposition rate and soil carbon stocks in an commercial plantation of Eucalyptus saligna Labill. in southern Brazil. Our goal was to evaluate, through multiple linear regression, the influence that certain chemical characteristics of litter, as well as chemical and physical characteristics of soil, have on carbon accumulation in soil organic matter fractions. Variables related to the chemical composition of litter were not associated with the soil carbon stock in the particulate and mineral fractions. However, certain soil characteristics were significantly associated with the carbon stock in both fractions. The concentrations of nutrients associated with plant growth and productivity, such as phosphorus, sulfur, copper and zinc, were associated with variations in the labile carbon pool (particulate fraction). Clay content was strongly associated with the carbon stock in the mineral fraction. The carbon accumulation and stabilization in weathered subtropical Ultisol seems to be mainly associated with the intrinsic characteristics of the soil, particularly clay content, rather than with the quantity, chemical composition or decomposition rate of the litter.
Retinal Vessel Width Measurement at Branchings Using an Improved Electric Field Theory-Based Graph Approach

The retinal vessel width relationship at vessel branch points in fundus images is an important biomarker of retinal and systemic disease. We propose a fully automatic method to measure the vessel widths at branch points in fundus images. The method is a graph-based method, in which a graph construction method based on electric field theory is applied which specifically deals with complex branching patterns. The vessel centerline image is used as the initial segmentation of the graph. Branching points are detected on the vessel centerline image using a set of detection kernels. Crossing points are distinguished from branch points and excluded. The electric field based graph method is applied to construct the graph. This method is inspired by the non-intersecting force lines in an electric field. At last, the method is further improved to give a consistent vessel width measurement for the whole vessel tree. The algorithm was validated on 100 artery branchings and 100 vein branchings selected from 50 fundus images by comparing with vessel width measurements from two human experts.
In Vivo Transduction with Shiga Toxin 1-Encoding Phage

ABSTRACT To facilitate the study of intestinal transmission of the Shiga toxin 1 (Stx1)-converting phage H-19B, Tn10d-blamutagenesis of an Escherichia coli H-19B lysogen was undertaken. Two mutants containing insertions in the gene encoding the A subunit of Stx1 were isolated. The resultant ampicillin-resistantE. coli strains lysogenic for these phages produced infectious H-19B particles but not active toxin. These lysogens were capable of transducing an E. coli recipient strain in the murine gastrointestinal tract, thereby demonstrating that lysogens of Shiga toxin-converting phages give rise to infectious virions within the host gastrointestinal tract.
The PDP-11 virtual machine architecture: A case study

At UCLA, a virtual machine system prototype has been constructed for the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11/45. In order to successfully implement that system, a number of hardware changes have been necessary. Some overcome basic inadequacies in the original hardware for this purpose, and others enhance the performance of the virtual machine software. Steps in the development of the modified hardware architecture, as well as relevant aspects of the software structure, are discussed. In addition, a case study of interactions between hardware and software developments is presented, together with conclusions motivated by that experience.
Self‐Construal, Reference Groups, and Brand Meaning

We propose that consumers purchase brands in part to construct their self-concepts and, in so doing, form self-brand connections. We focus on reference groups as a source of brand meaning. Results from two studies show that brands with images consistent with an ingroup enhance self-brand connections for all consumers, whereas brands with images that are consistent with an outgroup have a stronger negative effect on independent versus interdependent consumers. We propose that this differential effect is due to stronger self-differentiation goals for consumers with more independent self-concepts. We also find greater effects for more symbolic than for less symbolic brands. (c) 2005 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc.
Using Partial Sensor Information to Orient Parts

Parts orienting, the process of bringing parts in initially unknown orientations to a goal orientation, is an important aspect of automated assembly. The most common industrial orienting systems are vibratory bowl feeders, which use the shape and mass properties of parts to orient them. Bowl feeders rely on a sequence of mechanical operations and typically do not use sensors. In this paper, we describe the use of partial information sensors along with a sequence of pushing operations to eliminate uncertainty in the orientations of parts. We characterize the shorter execution lengths of sensor-based plans and show that sensor-based plans are more powerful than sensorless plans in that they can bring a larger class of parts to distinct orientations. We characterize the relation among part shape, orientability, and recognizability to identify conditions under which a single plan can orient and recognize multiple part shapes. Although part shape determines the results of the actions and the sensed information, we establish that differences in part shape do not always lead to differences in part behavior. We show that for any convex polygon, there exists an infinite set of nonsimilar convex polygons that behave identically under linear normal pushes. Furthermore, there exists an infinite set of nonsimilar convex polygons whose behavior cannot be distinguished even with diameter sensing after each push. We have implemented several planners and demonstrated generated plans in experiments.
An Evolutionary History of Defensins: A Role for Copy Number Variation in Maximizing Host Innate and Adaptive Immune Responses

Defensins represent an evolutionary ancient family of antimicrobial peptides that play diverse roles in human health and disease. Defensins are cationic cysteine-containing multifunctional peptides predominantly expressed by epithelial cells or neutrophils. Defensins play a key role in host innate immune responses to infection and, in addition to their classically described role as antimicrobial peptides, have also been implicated in immune modulation, fertility, development, and wound healing. Aberrant expression of defensins is important in a number of inflammatory diseases as well as modulating host immune responses to bacteria, unicellular pathogens, and viruses. In parallel with their role in immunity, in other species, defensins have evolved alternative functions, including the control of coat color in dogs. Defensin genes reside in complex genomic regions that are prone to structural variations and some defensin family members exhibit copy number variation (CNV). Structural variations have mediated, and continue to influence, the diversification and expression of defensin family members. This review highlights the work currently being done to better understand the genomic architecture of the β-defensin locus. It evaluates current evidence linking defensin CNV to autoimmune disease (i.e., Crohn’s disease and psoriasis) as well as the contribution CNV has in influencing immune responses to HIV infection.
Adaptive bilateral filtering using saliency map for deblocking low bit rate videos

This paper proposes a novel approach to video deblocking which performs perceptually adaptive bilateral filtering by considering color, intensity, and motion features in a holistic manner. The method is based on bilateral filter which is an effective smoothing filter that preserves edges. The bilateral filter parameters are adaptive and avoid over-blurring of texture regions and at the same time eliminate blocking artefacts in the smooth region and areas of slow motion content. This is achieved by using a saliency map to control the strength of the filter for each individual point in the image based on its perceptual importance. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is effective in deblocking highly compressed video sequences and to avoid over-blurring of edges and textures in salient regions of image.
Sentence Similarity-Based Source Context Modelling in PBSMT

Target phrase selection, a crucial component of the state-of-the-art phrase-based statistical machine translation(PBSMT) model, plays a key role in generating accurate translation hypotheses. Inspired by context-rich word-sense disambiguation techniques, machine translation (MT) researchers have successfully integrated various types of source language context into the PBSMT model to improve target phrase selection. Among the various types of lexical and syntactic features, lexical syntactic descriptions in the form of super tags that preserve long-range word-to-word dependencies in a sentence have proven to be effective. These rich contextual features are able to disambiguate a source phrase, on the basis of the local syntactic behaviour of that phrase. In addition to local contextual information, global contextual information such as the grammatical structure of a sentence, sentence length and n-gram word sequences could provide additional important information to enhance this phrase-sense disambiguation. In this work, we explore various sentence similarity features by measuring similarity between a source sentence to be translated with the source-side of the bilingual training sentences and integrate them directly into the PBSMT model. We performed experiments on an English-to-Chinese translation task by applying sentence-similarity features both individually, and collaboratively with super tag-based features. We evaluate the performance of our approach and report a statistically significant relative improvement of 5.25% BLEU score when adding a sentence-similarity feature together with a super tag-based feature.
Attrition in Information Systems Courses: strategies from a new generation university

The Commonwealth Government has changed many of the funding models to universities in recent years. Additional funds from the Commonwealth Government are now tied to measures such as student outcomes particularly in areas such as teaching and learning, attrition and student progress. This has meant that many universities have been forced to reassess the way they teach and interact with undergraduate students. Moreover, in this climate of considerable change in the higher education sector, many schools of Information Systems are experiencing even more hardship compared to schools in other disciplines. The downturn in the local demand for IS courses has been exacerbated by external factors such as declining enrolments from overseas markets and a downturn in the employment market. This paper reports on the analysis of enrolment trends, student attrition and progress amongst IS undergraduates over a five year period at a New Generation University. It also reports on the measures that have been undertaken both at the university level and at the IS school level to address issues that have arisen from that analysis. The findings of the research provides some insight into the problems facing schools of IS within universities in the current climate and possible measures that can be undertaken to improve student retention.
Tbx3 represses bmp4 expression and, with Pax6, is required and sufficient for retina formation

Vertebrate eye formation begins in the anterior neural plate in the eye field. Seven eye field transcription factors (EFTFs) are expressed in eye field cells and when expressed together are sufficient to generate retina from pluripotent cells. The EFTF Tbx3 can regulate the expression of some EFTFs; however, its role in retina formation is unknown. Here, we show that Tbx3 represses bmp4 transcription and is required in the eye field for both neural induction and normal eye formation in Xenopus laevis. Although sufficient for neural induction, Tbx3-expressing pluripotent cells only form retina in the context of the eye field. Unlike Tbx3, the neural inducer Noggin can generate retina both within and outside the eye field. We found that the neural and retina-inducing activity of Noggin requires Tbx3. Noggin, but not Tbx3, induces Pax6 and coexpression of Tbx3 and Pax6 is sufficient to determine pluripotent cells to a retinal lineage. Our results suggest that Tbx3 represses bmp4 expression and maintains eye field neural progenitors in a multipotent state; then, in combination with Pax6, Tbx3 causes eye field cells to form retina. Summary: The transcription factor Tbx3 is required for eye formation. Although neither Tbx3 nor Pax6 alone is sufficient, together they can determine retina from pluripotent cells in Xenopus.
Effect of Anti-TNF Therapy on Resistance to Insulin in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Objective: To evaluate the effect of anti-TNF therapy on resistance to insulin in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) compared with patients with RA being treated with non-biological DMARDs. Methods: Inactive patients diagnosed with RA (ACR 1987 criteria) (DAS 28 2.6) were included, being treated with anti-tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (anti-TNF) (cases) and non-biological disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARD) (controls), without risk factors for insulin resistance (administration of steroids, body mass index > 25 kg/m2, diabetes mellitus or use of glucose lowering agents, systemic arterial hypertension or use of anti-hypertensive drugs, triglycerides > 150 mg/dl, hypercholesterolemia > 200 mg/dl, high-density lipoproteins 40 mg/dl in men and 50 mg/in women, or with lipids lowering agents, waist measurement > 88 cm in women and > 102 cm in men). We used HOMA (Homeostasis Model Assessment) to determine insulin resistance in both groups, HOMA being defined as >1 and sensitivity to insulin using QUICKI (Insulin Sensitivity Check Index), ≥0.38 being considered as normal. The Mann Whitney U was used for the statistical analysis. Results: A total of 28 patients, 15 being treated with non-biological DMARDs and 13 with anti-TNF therapy, were evaluated; 89.7%, of which were women. Average age: 43.5 (range 21 - 62); the average HOMA index of the non-biological DMARD group was 1.58 (range 0.7 - 5.4), compared with patients treated with anti-TNF therapy, 1.18 (range 0.2 - 4.3) (P = 0.5). The average QUICKI index was 0.36 (range 0.30 - 0.42) in patients treated with non-biological DMARD, compared with0.37 inpatients treated with anti-TNF therapy (range 0.30 - 0.51) (P = 0.8). Conclusion: Resistance to insulin manifested itself in both groups, although there was a greater trend of less insulin resistance and greater sensitivity in the anti-TNF group; this was probably not statistically significant due to the sample size.
Comparative Analysis of Begonia Plastid Genomes and Their Utility for Species-Level Phylogenetics

Recent, rapid radiations make species-level phylogenetics difficult to resolve. We used a multiplexed, high-throughput sequencing approach to identify informative genomic regions to resolve phylogenetic relationships at low taxonomic levels in Begonia from a survey of sixteen species. A long-range PCR method was used to generate draft plastid genomes to provide a strong phylogenetic backbone, identify fast evolving regions and provide informative molecular markers for species-level phylogenetic studies in Begonia.