Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-term trends in solar radiation and the associated climatic factors over China for 1961-2000

Abstract. Long-term trends in downwelling solar irradiance and associated climatic factors over China are studied in the paper. Decreasing trends in global and direct radiation are observed over much of China. The largest decrease occurs in South and East China (east of about 100° E and south of about 40° N). The spatial pattern of observed trends in diffuse irradiance is complex and inhomogeneous. An intriguing aspect of trends in global and direct irradiance is the rather abrupt decrease in annual and seasonal mean values from 1978 onward. The decreasing trends in solar radiation in China did not persist into the 1990s. The spatial and temporal patterns of trends in sunshine duration are consistent with that of global and direct irradiance. A decreasing trend in rainy days is observed over much of China, which is in agreement with the secular trend in cloud amount. The fact that trends in cloud amount and solar radiation are quite similar suggests that the cloud amount is not the primary cause for the decrease in solar radiation. Visibility in the eastern part of China has deteriorated heavily as a result of the rapid increase in aerosol loading. The statistical analysis showed that atmospheric transmission under clear conditions decreased rapidly. These facts suggest that the rapid increase in aerosol loading should be one of the principle causes for the decrease in solar radiation. The observed diurnal temperature range decreases remarkably in China, which is closely related to the increase in aerosols. The effects of anthropogenic air pollutants on climate should be further studied and included in the simulation of climate and projection of climate scenario. Keywords. Atmospheric composition and structure (Aerosol and particles; General or miscellaneous) – Meteorology and atmospheric dynamics (Radiative processes)
An automated approach for testing the security of web applications against chained attacks

We present the Chained Attacks approach, an automated model-based approach to test the security of web applications that does not require a background in formal methods. Starting from a set of HTTP conversations and a configuration file providing the testing surface and purpose, a model of the System Under Test (SUT) is generated and input, along with the web attacker model we defined, to a model checker acting as test oracle. The HTTP conversations, payload libraries, and a mapping created while generating the model aid the concretization of the test cases, allowing for their execution on the SUT's implementation. We applied our approach to a real-life case study and we were able to find a combination of different attacks representing the concrete chained attack performed by a bug bounty hunter.
The Effect of Chronic Candesartan Therapy on the Metabolic Profile and Renal Tissue Cytokine Levels in the Obese Zucker Rat

The effect of candesartan, an angiotensin-II type-1 receptor antagonist, on the metabolic profile and renal inflammation is unclear. We evaluated this relationship by feeding male lean (LZ) and obese (OZ) Zucker rats chow or chow with candesartan (23.5 mg/kg · diet) for 14 weeks (n = 6–8/treatment/body type). Candesartan reduced serum triglycerides, plasma creatinine, urine albumin, and renal cortical collagen and glycogen deposition in the OZ. An ELISA-based cytokine array revealed that candesartan normalized elevated renal interleukin (IL) 1-β and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) levels in OZ. Nonetheless, candesartan impaired glucose tolerance, and did not lower blood insulin or glucose levels. Moreover, renal IL-1α, -2, -4, -6 and -10 tumor necrosis factor-α, interferon-γ, were significantly reduced in OZ relative to LZ, and increased by candesartan. Furthermore, candesartan increased growth-regulated oncogene, transforming growth factor-β1 and IL-18 in OZ kidneys to a level higher than LZ or untreated OZ. Candesartan did not affect renal cytokine levels in LZ. Overall, candesartan attenuated renal disease and improved renal function in OZ, despite mixed effects on metabolic factors and cytokines. Reduced plasma triglycerides and/or renal MCP-1 and IL-1β may have had a role in this protection. However, these effects were clearly independent of any improvement in glucose tolerance.
Higher-order delta modeling for software product line evolution

In software product lines (SPL), i.e., a family of similar software systems sharing common and variable artifacts, modeling evolution and reasoning about it is challenging, as not only a single system, but rather a set of system variants as well as their interdependencies change. An integrated modeling formalism for variability and evolution is required to allow the capturing of evolution operations that are applied to SPL artifacts, and to facilitate the impact analysis of evolution on the artifact level. Delta modeling is a flexible transformational variability modeling approach, where the variability and commonality between variants are explicitly documented and analyzable by means of transformations modeled as deltas. In this paper, we lift the notion of delta modeling to capture both, variability and evolution, by deltas. We evolve a delta model specifying a set of variants by applying higher-order deltas. A higher-order delta encapsulates evolution operations, i.e., additions, removals, or modifications of deltas, and transforms a delta model in its new version. In this way, we capture the complete evolution history of delta-oriented SPLs by higher-order delta models. By analyzing each higher-order delta application, we are further able to reason about the impact and, thus, the changes to the specified set of variants. We prototypically implement our formalism and show its applicability using a system from the automation engineering domain.
Health Care Financing Administration THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE ON HEALTH CARE COST SPENDING : AN EVALUATION OF THE LITERATURE

The impact of medical technology on growth in health care spending has long been a subject of vital interest, particularly in the context of long-term projections of health spending, which must address the issue of the applicability of historical trends to future periods. The objective of this paper is to estimate an approximate range for the contribution of technological change to growth in health spending based on a review of recent literature, and to evaluate factors which might modify this impact in the future. Based on the studies reviewed, we estimated that approximately half of growth in real per capita health care costs is attributable to the introduction and diffusion of new medical technology for the 1940-90 period, within an estimated probable range of 38 to 62 percent of growth.
An Interruptible Algorithm for Collision Detection between Deformable Objects

This paper presents an approach to performing time-critical collision detection for deformable objects. The deformable objects are represented by dense meshes and their deformations are steered by a coarser mesh (reduced model) based on explicit nite elements. To achieve an interruptible algorithm, we use a sphere tree constructed using an adaptive medial-axis approximation of the dense mesh. The bounding spheres are updated using the coarse mesh, thus balancing computational accuracy and speed.
Microbial Conversion of Glycerol to 1,3-Propanediol by an Engineered Strain of Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT In an effort to improve industrial production of 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PD), we engineered a novel polycistronic operon under the control of the temperature-sensitive lambda phage PLPR promoter regulated by the cIts857 repressor and expressed it in Escherichia coli K-12 ER2925. The genes for the production of 1,3-PD in Clostridium butyricum, dhaB1 and dhaB2, which encode the vitamin B12-independent glycerol dehydratase DhaB1 and its activating factor, DhaB2, respectively, were tandemly arrayed with the E. coli yqhD gene, which encodes the 1,3-propanediol oxidoreductase isoenzyme YqhD, an NADP-dependent dehydrogenase that can directly convert glycerol to 1,3-PD. The microbial conversion of 1,3-PD from glycerol by this recombinant E. coli strain was studied in a two-stage fermentation process. During the first stage, a novel high-cell-density fermentation step, there was significant cell growth and the majority of the metabolites produced were organic acids, mainly acetate. During the second stage, glycerol from the fresh medium was rapidly converted to 1,3-PD following a temperature shift from 30°C to 42°C. The by-products were mainly pyruvate and acetate. During this two-stage process, the overall 1,3-PD yield and productivity reached 104.4 g/liter and 2.61 g/liter/h, respectively, and the conversion rate of glycerol to 1,3-PD reached 90.2% (g/g). To our knowledge, this is the highest reported yield and productivity efficiency of 1,3-PD with glycerol as the sole source of carbon. Furthermore, the overall fermentation time was only 40 h, shorter than that of any other reports.
Role of image recognition in defining the user's in 3G phone applications: the AGAMEMNON experience

Recent advances in the availability of 3G-cellular phones with imaging and multimedia capability and in the development of the new mobile telephone networks opens completely new horizons for the development of innovative IT tools in the domain of cultural heritage, with particular emphasis to archaeological sites and museums. AGAMEMNON is a project, co-funded under the 1ST 6th Framework Program of the European Commission, which exploits mobile phones equipped with embedded cameras as the main input/output device to provide a visitor of an archeological site with a personalized, information enriched experience. In this paper we describe the image-based "attention awareness engine" which represents the main concept entrusted into AGAMEMNON's user interface a mechanism for querying multimedia cultural heritage contents based on the user's context. We shall also discuss the main issues underlying the addressed problem, and review the preliminary results obtained so far in the project development.
Route maintenance overheads in DHT overlays

Efcient route maintenance in DHTs is still an area of very active research due to its complexity and multitude of aspects to be considered. In this paper we propose novel correction- on-failure (CoF) and correction-on-use (CoU) approaches that support route maintenance more efciently than existing meth- ods even under highly dynamical network conditions. In con- trast to previous work which addresses static resilience, we apply the more realistic model of viewing changes in the net- work as a continuous Markovian process and demonstrate that the system can reach a dynamic equilibrium in the presence of continuous changes while remaining operational, efcient, and scalable. We devise a generally applicable method for an- alyzing the dynamic behavior of route maintenance and use it to proof the efcienc y of our approach. The equilibrium equations derived from the analytical model allow us to pre- dict a system's behavior over a wide range of parameters and demonstrate its scalability. Simulation results additionally ver- ify our analytical results. Our approach also introduces the principle of data independence into route maintenance which we demonstrate to be achievable at low cost. This separation of concern disentangles the overlay from the underlying network dynamics and is an important step towards semantic overlay networks as a basic constituent in distributed information man- agement. It specically facilitates the application of the P2P paradigm in mobile ad-hoc networks, identity management, tracking of past interactions (e.g., for reputation management), etc. which are of basic importance for overlay supported P2P commerce. Moreover, other domains, for example P2P based publish/subscribe systems, will also benet from this property of our approach.
Immunodiagnosis in cutaneous T cell lymphoma: how does gene expression of the variable region of the T cell receptor fit into the diagnostic and pathophysiological picture of T cell neoplasia

M y c o s i s fiinge)idcs ( M F ) is a c u t a n e o u s ' I ' c-ell l y m p h o m a ( C ' l ' C l , ) w h i e h c a n p r e s e n t a s locali/. e-d i n ( l o l c n l pa l c lu s anel plac(uc-s l h a l c-linic-alK re-se-niblci n l l a n i m a t e i r y ekr i i i a loses , s u c h a s | ) s o r i a s i s , o r a s r a p i d l y preigrc-ssivc luiiie)rs w i t h i n l i l l r a l i o n of l y m p h nocle-s a n d \'isce-ra (1 ) . Flui m m u n o l o g } ' of C r F C F h a s in\cilve-cl nuillil'ae-c-le-d sludie-s e)l ' 'F e-cll r e g t i l a l i o n . In lliis c-chlorial rc-\ie-w, wel ocus on ihelalc-sl a|)|:)lie-alioii of n e w tc-chnolony elcsigiie-el lo cxple i i t t h e s c i e u l i r i c a d v a n c e s r e l a l c d lo iluonte)ocMi)' e)l I cc-ll c l o n a l c -xpans ion in l i i i m a n d i s e a s e |)roce-ssc-s. In acKance-d M F case-s, s i n \ i \ a l h a s t;c-iie-iall\" b e e n | ) oo r (2 , 3 ) , Howe-vc-r, somerc-ports ha\Ts i igg e s l e d a c u r a t i v e p o t e n t i a l (dc-fiiic-d a s bc-iiig d i s c a s e fn-e e i g h t y e a r s aftc-r t rea ln ie -n l is disc-onlimic-d) in e-arly (Stage1) M F w i l h lo|)ic-al ni l roge-n mi i s la re l a i u l / e i r leila! sk in e-leclrein-be-ain ihe-rapy ( 2 8 ) , O l h e r s l ia\ere-porle-d eeimbine-d l u o d a l i l y a p pre iac lu-s w i t h c-nc-ouragiug rcs i i l l s iu ihce-aiK sla. ^e-s e)l M F, b u l n o sii ;nilic-aul i m p r e n c-mc-iils lii overall survixal ( , ' ) l l ) . Despite thefailure of these largeraiidomize-cl trials lo eurellunia |ori l \ ol palic-nts, llupote-utial for cure in some jialicnls with c-arly Ml' ' provides greal impc-lus for cslabl is lung this diagnosis as early in ils elcve-lopnu-iU as possible-. I Ie)we-\-ei, a palie-iil c-ousiderecl lo lia\-cM I ' c:liiiically may ree|iiiremany years and liumcreius biopsic-s be-lc)rellucliannoslichistology is ree-e)gnizc-d at llulight niie-ic)se-e)|)icIcve-l (12). Fluprinciple obstacle is the light microscopic asscssme-nt of early C'FC.L in thediirc-rc-ntialion hy the pathe)logist ot llulyniplie)pre)hlcrati\-e F cells of M F from benign, reactixe F cells associate'd with iullaiiimateiry skill disease-. In an c-HoiI lo ovc-rconullicsc liniilalie)ns in ree-ognizing early MF, several diHerent technique-s, i iul i iding T cell rece»pte)r ('FCK) gene rearraiigc-nu-nt studies and immunophenolyp i i ig of F cell markers , have been proposed as useful tools available lo helj) the diagnosis of M F ( IS . 14), M o Ic-culai-basc-d lc-clinic|iics ha\caltc-mptcd to disce-rn a elcinal popuial ion of 'F cells that was not a])parent on |-e-\icvv ol routine lu-nialoxylin/eosin-slainc-d sections.
The European Union as a Security Policy Actor: The Case of Counterterrorism

This article examines the actorness of the European Union in the security policy field. Applying and adapting criteria developed by Bretherton and Vogler – namely criteria regarding structure, effect and international status – the European Union is described as a ‘collective actor’. Collective actorness is dissimilar to that of a classical international unit, i.e. the state, but implies that some coherence, cooperation and a certain amount of collective action can be expected. Also, of relevance for the measurement of actorness is the extent of participation in global governance and recognition in international law. After testing the EU on seven criteria, it can be discerned that a certain collective actorness is present, even if problems regarding a ‘common voice’ and the coherence of internal policies still exist.
Author ' s personal copy Ecophysiological characteristics of invasive Spartina alterniflora and native species in salt marshes of Yangtze River estuary , China

Biological invasions represent one of the significant components of global change. A comparative study of invaders and co-occurring natives is a useful approach to gaining insights into the invasiveness of exotic plants. Spartina alterniflora, a C4 grass, is a widespread invader in the coastal wetlands in China and other regions of the world. We conducted a comparative study of S. alterniflora and native C3 species, Phragmites australis and Scirpus mariqueter, in terms of their gas exchange and efficiencies in resource utilization. We tested the hypothesis that S. alterniflora has growth-related ecophysiological advantages over the natives in its non-native range, which result in its rapid growth and enhance its invasiveness. Photosynthesis, leaf area index (LAI), specific leaf area (SLA), and the efficiency of resource use (light, water, and nitrogen) were examined monthly for eight months in 2004. Overall, S. alterniflora had greater LAI, higher maximal net photosynthetic rate (Amax), and longer growing season than those of the native species. On average, the efficiencies of S. alterniflora in light, water, and nitrogen utilization were respectively 10.1%, 26.1%, and 33.1% higher than those of P. australis, and respectively 70.3%, 53.5%, 28.3% higher than those of S. mariqueter. However, SLA of S. alterniflora was significantly lower than those of P. australis and S. mariqueter. Although there was no general pattern in the relationship between invasiveness and plant photosynthetic types, in this study, most of the ecophysiological characteristics that gave S. alterniflora a competitive advantage in the Yangtze River estuary were associated with photosynthetic pathways. Our results offer a greater understanding of the relationship between invasiveness and plant photosynthetic type. Our results also indicate that LAI and the length of the photosynthetic season, which vary with habitats, are also important in invasion success. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
VEGF165, but not VEGF189, Stimulates Vasculogenesis and Bone Marrow Cell Migration into Ewing's Sarcoma Tumors In vivo

We previously showed that bone marrow stem cells participate in the tumor vessel expansion that supports the growth of Ewing's sarcoma tumors in vivo. The purpose of this study was to determine the relative importance of two isoforms of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in tumor vessel expansion and recruitment of bone marrow–derived cells during tumor growth. We injected VEGF165-siRNA–transfected cells (TCsi/7-1), control siRNA–transfected cells (TC/si-control), or TC71 parental Ewing's sarcoma cells into nude mice. The TCsi/7-1 tumors were then treated with adenoviral vectors expressing VEGF165 (Ad-VEGF165), VEGF189 (Ad-VEGF189), or β-galactosidase (Ad-β-gal). Bone marrow cells labeled with fluorescent tracker dye were injected into the mice 3 weeks later. The TCsi/7-1 tumors were significantly smaller (P < 0.05), had decreased vessel density, and showed significantly lower bone marrow cell migration than did TC71 parental and TC/si-control tumors. Treatment with Ad-VEGF165, but not Ad-VEGF189 or Ad-β-gal, resulted in a significant increase in bone marrow cell infiltration, tumor vessel density, and tumor growth. Immunohistochemical staining revealed that the injected bone marrow cells migrated to and incorporated into the expanding CD31+ tumor vessel network. Taken together, these data show that VEGF165 is a chemoattractant that recruits bone marrow cells into the tumor area. These data provide a mechanism by which Ewing's sarcoma cells induce vasculogenesis. (Mol Cancer Res 2007;5(11):1125–32)
A Study on the Perception of Suppliers and Retailers on Transporters in the Corporate Retail Chains in Kerala

Many of the leading retail chains in the country have their outlets in Kerala. The success of retail chain largely depends on how customers are satisfied with the outlet. For satisfying the customer, the parties in the supply chain viz., supplier, retailer and transporters have to perform their activities with proper communication and collaboration among them. This study is aimed at understanding the perception of the retailers and suppliers about their transporters. The study was descriptive and the primary data is collected from samples of 126 and 28 for retailers and suppliers respectively using multistage sampling. The questionnaire used Likert scales for collecting expectations and opinions on performances. The gaps between the expectations and performances are calculated and tests are conducted to identify significant gaps. It was found that Big Bazaar is most satified with the transporters than other retail outlets and the suppliers of non-perishable products are more satified with transporters than suppliers of perishable products.
A Low Power and High Speed Design for VLSI Logic Circuits Using Multi-Threshold Voltage CMOS Technology

In CMOS logic circuits, the reduction in the threshold voltage due to voltage scaling leads to increase in the subthreshold leakage current and hence static power dissipation. Although power consumption is important for modern VLSI design, operation speed and occupied area are still the main requirements of the VLSI design. Multi threshold voltage CMOS (MTCMOS) technology is a good solution which provides a high performance and low-power design without any area overhead. MTCMOS technology provides the transistors that have low, normal and high threshold voltage. The low-threshold voltage transistors are used to reduce the propagation delay time in the critical path, the high-threshold voltage transistors are used to reduce the power consumption in the shortest path. This paper describes a low-power and high speed design for full adder, 4-bit ripple carry adder and 4×4 multiplier circuits with MTCMOS technology using 45nm technology. Keywords— Multi-threshold voltage CMOS (MTCMOS), static power consumption, propagation delay.
Bootstrap Conditional Distribution Tests in the Presence of Dynamic Misspecification

In this paper, we show the first order validity of the block bootstrap in the context of Kolmogorov type conditional distribution tests when there is dynamic misspecification and parameter estimation error. Our approach di®ers from the literature to date because we construct a bootstrap statistic that allows for dynamic misspecification under both hypotheses. We consider two test statistics; one is the CK test of Andrews (1997), and the other is in the spirit of Diebold, Gunther and Tay (1998). The limiting distribution of both tests is a Gaussian process with a covariance kernel that reflects dynamic misspecification and parameter estimation error. In order to provide valid asymptotic critical values we suggest an extention of the empirical process version of the block bootstrap to the case of non vanishing parameter estimation error. The findings from Monte Carlo experiments show that both statistics have good finite sample properties for samples as small as 500 observations.
A ug 2 00 7 Brown-York Energy and Radial Geodesics

We compare the Brown-York (BY) and the standard Misner-Sharp (MS) quasilocal energies for round spheres in spherically symmetric space-times from the point of view of radial geodesics. In particular, we show that the relation between the BY and MS energies is precisely analogous to that between the (relativistic) energy E of a geodesic and the effective (Newtonian) energy Eeff appearing in the geodesic equation, thus shedding some light on the reason for the difference between the two. Moreover, for Schwarzschild-like metrics we establish a general relationship between the BY energy and the geodesic effective potential which explains and generalises the recently observed connection between negative BY energy and the repulsive behaviour of geodesics in the ReissnerNordstrøm metric. We extend this connection between geodesics and quasilocal energy to general spherically symmetric metrics as well as to regions inside a horizon.