Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Price and Time Competition for Service Delivery

Many service firms use delivery time guarantees to compete for customers in the marketplace. In this research we develop a stylized model to analyze the impact of using time guarantees on competition. Demands are assumed to be sensitive to both the price and delivery time guarantees, and the objective of each firm is to select the best price and time guarantee to maximize its operating profit. We first analyze the optimization problem for the individual firms and then study the equilibrium solution in a multiple-firm competition. Using a numerical study, we further illustrate how the different firm and market characteristics would affect the price and delivery time competition in the market. Our results suggest that the equilibrium price and time guarantee decisions in an oligopolistic market with identical firms behave in a similar fashion as the optimal solution in a monopolistic situation from a previous study. However, when there are heterogeneous firms in the market, these firms will exploit their distinctive firm characteristics to differentiate their services. Assuming all other factors being equal, the high capacity firms provide better time guarantees, while firms with lower operating costs offer lower prices, and the differentiation becomes more acute as demands become more time-sensitive. Furthermore, as time-attractiveness of the market increases, firms compete less on price, and the equilibrium prices of the firms increase as a result. Our findings provide important implications about firm behaviour under price and time competition.
Hysteresis Bands, Holding Period and Transaction Costs

In the presence of transactions costs, no matter how small, arbitrage activity does not necessarily render equal all riskless rates of return. When two such rates follow stochastic processes, it is not optimal immediately to arbitrage out any discrepancy that arises between them. The reason is that immediate arbitrage would induce a de finite expenditure of transactions costs whereas, without arbitrage intervention, there exists some, perhaps sufficient, probability that these two interest rates will come back together without any costs having been incurred. Hence, one can surmise that at equilibrium the financial market will permit the coexistence of two riskless rates that are not equal to each other. For analogous reasons, randomly fluctuating expected rates of return on risky assets will be allowed to differ even after correction for risk, leading to important violations of the Capital Asset Pricing Model. The combination of randomness in expected rates of return and proportional transactions costs is a serious blow to existing frictionless pricing models.
A modified high-order FDTD conformal technique for modeling perfectly conducting objects

In this paper, we have proposed a new high-order conformal method, in which we use two integral loops of Faraday's law to update H-field. We observe that the proposed method has low numerical dispersion error, and it can use large space cells so as to reduce the computer memory required. Using this modified method, numerical computations are performed to predict the RCS of a PEC object as well as the shielding effectiveness of a metallic enclosure, with good agreements achieved but with less computer memory required.
A novel method on optimal bit allocation at LCU level for rate control in HEVC

In this paper, we propose a new method, namely recursive Taylor expansion (RTE) method, for optimally allocating bits to each LCU in the R-λ rate control scheme for HEVC. Specifically, we first set up an optimization formulation on optimal bit allocation. Unfortunately, it is intractable to achieve a closed-form solution for this formulation. We therefore propose a RTE solution to iteratively solve the formulation with a fast convergence speed. Then, an approximate closed-form solution can be obtained. This way, the optimal bit allocation can be achieved at little encoding complexity cost. Finally, the experimental results validate the effectiveness of our method in three aspects: compressed distortion, bit-rate control error, and bit fluctuation.
An eye for cricket: Ocular injuries in indoor cricketers

Indoor cricket has become a popular form of recreation in Australia. Four cases of significant ocular trauma in indoor cricketers are reported. Three of the patients had diminished visual acuity in at least one eye before their injury. One patient may suffer long‐term consequences as a result of his injuries. These injuries could probably have been prevented by the use of appropriate eye protection. Indoor cricketers might well be advised to undergo ocular assessment before taking up this sport.
Good urodynamic practices: Uroflowmetry, filling cystometry, and pressure‐flow studies * *

This is the first report of the International Continence Society (ICS) on the development of comprehensive guidelines for Good Urodynamic Practice for the measurement, quality control, and documentation of urodynamic investigations in both clinical and research environments. This report focuses on the most common urodynamics examinations; uroflowmetry, pressure recording during filling cystometry, and combined pressure–flow studies. The basic aspects of good urodynamic practice are discussed and a strategy for urodynamic measurement, equipment set‐up and configuration, signal testing, plausibility controls, pattern recognition, and artifact correction are proposed. The problems of data analysis are mentioned only when they are relevant in the judgment of data quality. In general, recommendations are made for one specific technique. This does not imply that this technique is the only one possible. Rather, it means that this technique is well‐established, and gives good results when used with the suggested standards of good urodynamic practice. Neurourol. Urodynam. 21:261–274, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Analysis of Heavy Metal Content in Conventional and Herbal Toothpastes Available at Maltese Pharmacies

Although toothpastes are considered as topical cosmetics that are not normally ingested, it is evident that they may contribute to the introduction of heavy metals and xenobiotics through buccal and gastrointestinal absorption. The purpose of this study was to determine the potential presence of metals and polyphenols in conventional, children’s and herbal toothpastes. Metal analysis was conducted by using the Microwave Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectrometer and the total polyphenolic content was determined by using the Folin–Ciocalteu test. Results showed that cadmium and mercury were absent in all toothpastes while zinc and tin exhibited high values. This was because the latter two metals are incorporated as part of the ingredients. In the case of polyphenols, the highest value was obtained in one of the samples from the children’s toothpaste category while the lowest value was obtained from the conventional toothpaste category. Lead and nickel were two other metals that fell outside the limits for EU and US standards. Most of these limits are usually applicable to topical cosmetic products or food products. However, these may not adequately cover oral hygiene products, such as toothpastes.
Theoretical research and ADS simulation of tunable band-pass filter

In RF transceiver system, it is necessary to add a tunable band-pass filter in the system to solve the problem of frequency congestion and improve the system's anti-interference performance. The circuit structure with a continuous tunability for both the resonant frequency and bandwidth which is constant is presented theoretically in this paper, the resonance circuit is viewed as a resistance at the resonant frequency, T inductance coupling is adopted, ADS is used to simulate and verify. The simulation results show that the center frequency varies from 66 MHz to 72 MHz while the resonant capacitance changes from 60 pF to 50 pF and bandwidth keeps 5 MHz, the bandwidth reduces from 5 MHz to 3.5 MHz when the coupled inductance decreases from 58.186 nH to 40.532 nH, the filtering performance is good at the tuning frequency point, the insertion loss increases about 0.223 dB when tuning the bandwidth and it slightly reduces the system performance but meets the requirements of RF communication, the filter's analyses in the paper provides a theoretical basis for the practical production.
A neuro-adaptive inverse speed control mechanism for separately excited DC motor with nonlinearities

DC motors represent a large family of electromechanical actuators for rotary and rectilinear motion control applications. In this paper, we investigate the dynamic behavior of separately excited dc motor with Coulomb friction and dead-zone characteristics. A neuro-adaptive inverse controller is proposed to achieve smooth speed control by minimizing the effect of nonlinearities. The suggested neuro-controller has unique weight update mechanism that guarantees closed-loop system stability on the basis of Lyapunov stability theory. Computer simulations are performed to test the controller efficiency, and the results are compared with a conventional neuro-inverse controller for the sake of validation. The simulation results indeed demonstrate a superior speed control achieved by the proposed controller.
[Bacterial abscesses of the spinal cord. Review of the literature (73 cases)].

Intramedullary spinal cord abscesses are an uncommon entity with 73 cases reported in the literature; the first case was reported in 1830. Sixty-seven percent of abscesses occur in the first 4 decades of life. Staphylococcus and Streptococcus are the most common organisms; 25% of patients have negative intraoperative cultures. The primary source of the infection could be found, in only 45% of patients. Most of these infections are secondary to metastatic spread from infections of the lung, endocarditis, genitourinary tract; 10 reports have described an intramedullary abscess secondary to a dermal sinus. The signs and symptoms depend on the location of the lesion; the thoracic spine is the most commonly area involved. Patients are usually divided into three clinical groups; acute onset (symptoms less than 1 wk), subacute onset (symptoms up to 6 wk), and chronic course (symptoms more than 6 wk). Patients with the acute form are more likely to have a fever and an elevated white blood cell count and may show either a partial or complete transverse myelitis picture. The patients with chronic abscesses are less likely to have fever and leukocytosis, and their symptoms often mimic those of an intramedullary spinal tumour. The erythrocyte sedimentation rate tends to be elevated in all patients regardless of their clinical findings. CSF cultures are usually sterile. Plain x-rays of the spine are often normal. A myelogram in conjunction with a computed tomographic scan may show the intramedullary lesion. MRI studies usually demonstrate intramedullary lesions with exceptional clarity; the use of gadolinium with T1-weighted MRI studies enhances the abscess wall. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Stress Effects in Vowel Perception as a Function of Language-Specific Vocabulary Patterns

Abstract Background/Aims: Evidence from spoken word recognition suggests that for English listeners, distinguishing full versus reduced vowels is important, but discerning stress differences involving the same full vowel (as in mu- from music or museum) is not. In Dutch, in contrast, the latter distinction is important. This difference arises from the relative frequency of unstressed full vowels in the two vocabularies. The goal of this paper is to determine how this difference in the lexicon influences the perception of stressed versus unstressed vowels. Methods: All possible sequences of two segments (diphones) in Dutch and in English were presented to native listeners in gated fragments. We recorded identification performance over time throughout the speech signal. The data were here analysed specifically for patterns in perception of stressed versus unstressed vowels. Results: The data reveal significantly larger stress effects (whereby unstressed vowels are harder to identify than stressed vowels) in English than in Dutch. Both language-specific and shared patterns appear regarding which vowels show stress effects. Conclusion: We explain the larger stress effect in English as reflecting the processing demands caused by the difference in use of unstressed vowels in the lexicon. The larger stress effect in English is due to relative inexperience with processing unstressed full vowels.
Analysis of the Key Elements on the 2-D Electro-optic Modulation of BaTiO3 Crystal Thin-film Waveguide

As ferroelectric crystal, barium titanate (BTO) crystal with an ultra-high electro-optical (EO) coefficient and a special modulation mechanism has become the most popular research object to realize the ultra-high bandwidth EO modulator (over 100GHz). In this paper, we model/simulate the conditions of two different kinds of EO modulation for the aand c-axis grown BTO crystal thin-films through a new embedded waveguideelectrode structure. As a result, the mutual influences between the microwave electric-field and the light field in determining the optimal interaction overlap integral are found to determine the highest modulation efficienc. Meanwhile, we also see the influence of the BTO birefringence on the modulation efficiencies of the two different orientations of BTO crystal films. Under the optimized conditions, the device designs have the better performance and the more accurate electro-optical coefficient. It can be seen from the simulated data in this paper that under the quasi-linear electrooptical modulation of a-axis, when the optical axis and waveguide transmission direction are at a 45-degree angle, the EO interaction effect of the new embedded waveguide electrode structure is realized, and then the highest EO modulation is reached, which is about 1.47V·mm. In contrast, under the nonlinear modulation of c-axis, where a perpendicular electric field to the axis of BTO crystal is applied and then it reaches the lowest V-L performance of 4.38V2·mm. Keywords—barium titanate; coefficient; birefringence; refractive index variation; electro-optical modulation; embedded
Local List Recovery of High-Rate Tensor Codes & Applications

In this work, we give the first construction of high-rate locally list-recoverable codes. List-recovery has been an extremely useful building block in coding theory, and our motivation is to use these codes as such a building block. In particular, our construction gives the first capacity-achieving locally list-decodable codes (over constant-sized alphabet); the first capacity achieving} globally list-decodable codes with nearly linear time list decoding algorithm (once more, over constant-sized alphabet); and a randomized construction of binary codes on the Gilbert-Varshamov bound that can be uniquely decoded in near-linear-time, with higher rate than was previously known.Our techniques are actually quite simple, and are inspired by an approach of Gopalan, Guruswami, and Raghavendra (Siam Journal on Computing, 2011) for list-decoding tensor codes. We show that tensor powers of (globally) list-recoverable codes are approximately locally list-recoverable, and that the approximately modifier may be removed by pre-encoding the message with a suitable locally decodable code. Instantiating this with known constructions of high-rate globally list-recoverable codes and high-rate locally decodable codes finishes the construction.
Modulation of immunity to Borrelia burgdorferi by ultraviolet irradiation: Differential effect on Th1 and Th2 immune responses

Ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation suppresses the delayed‐type hypersensitivity (DTH) response to alloantigen by a mechanism involving interleukin (IL)‐10. It has been hypothesized, based on this result, that UV irradiation shifts the immune response from a Th1 to a Th2 response. We tested this hypothesis using Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) as an antigen under conditions where both DTH and antibody responses could be assessed. Mice were irradiated with a single dose of UV and then immunized with Bb in complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA). DTH was assessed by footpad challenge. At various time points thereafter, mice were bled, and the serum antibodies to Bb were quantitiated. Only IgG1, IgG2a, and IgG2b were produced in response to Bb. The IgG2a and IgG2b antibody responses, as well as the DTH response to Bb, showed UV dose‐dependent reductions after UV irradiation. The primary IgG1 response to Bb was very low and was unaffected by UV irradiation; however, the IgG1 secondary response was elevated in UV‐irradiated mice. Injection of anti‐IL‐10 antibody into UV‐irradiated mice within 24 h after UV exposure restored the DTH response, as well as the IgG2a and IgG2b antibody responses. In addition, injecting recombinant murine IL‐10 mimicked some of the effects of UV radiation. Our results support the hypothesis that in vivo, UV irradiation down‐regulates Th1 immune responses, while leaving Th2 responses intact, and suggest that IL‐10 is an important mediator of this effect.
Hip anatomic variants that may mimic abnormalities at MRI: labral variants.

OBJECTIVE Normal anatomic variants of the acetabular labrum are observed on MR images and include labral variants, several sublabral sulci, and perilabral sulcus. Because variants can be misidentified as labral abnormalities such as labral tears, the radiologist needs to avoid the pitfall of mistaking variants as abnormalities. CONCLUSION The hip has multiple anatomic variants that can mimic abnormalities at hip MRI. The labrum has several anatomic variants that can be confused with true labral tears.
A randomized trial on effects of hormone therapy on ambulatory blood pressure and lipoprotein levels in women with coronary artery disease.

OBJECTIVE To investigate 1-year effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) and lipoprotein levels in postmenopausal women with coronary artery disease (CAD). METHODS Sixty patients at a mean age (+/- SD) of 59 +/- 7 years were randomized into three groups: conjugated equine oestrogens (CEE) 0.625 mg daily (n = 20), 50 microg 17beta-oestradiol transdermally (TTSE) per 24 h (n = 20) or placebo (n = 20) for 18 days, then combined with medroxyprogesterone acetate 5 mg for 10 days. Each cycle of 28 days was repeated for one year. RESULTS Night-time systolic ABP had decreased by 9.6% (P= 0.0075) in 15 of 18 women in the CEE group and by 22% in 12 of 13 women (P = 0.0034) in the placebo group after 1 year. In the CEE group, a 4.6% rise in daytime systolic ABP (P< 0.05) and a 4.2% rise in night-time systolic ABP (P< 0.05) appeared from baseline to 6 months in 13 of 18 women. In the CEE group (14 women analysed), high-density lipoprotein levels showed a 15.8% increase (P= 0.0018) in 13 women, low-density lipoprotein levels a 15.2% decrease (P= 0.0129) in 12 women and total cholesterol levels a 7.5% decrease (P = 0.057) in 11 women after 1 year. Triglyceride levels showed no changes. In the TTSE group and in the placebo group, with 12 and 13 women analysed respectively, no significant changes appeared. CONCLUSIONS One year of HRT in patients with CAD does not influence ABP. Oral HRT induces beneficial effects on lipoprotein levels.
A workshop report on HIV mHealth synergy and strategy meeting to review emerging evidence-based mHealth interventions and develop a framework for scale-up of these interventions

mHealth is a term used to refer to mobile technologies such as personal digital assistants and mobile phones for healthcare. mHealth initiatives to support care and treatment of patients are emerging globally and this workshop brought together researchers, policy makers, information, communication and technology programmers, academics and civil society representatives for one and a half days synergy meeting in Kenya to review regional evidence based mHealth research for HIV care and treatment, review mHealth technologies for adherence and retention interventions in anti-retroviral therapy (ART) programs and develop a framework for scale up of evidence based mHealth interventions. The workshop was held in May 2011 in Nairobi, Kenya and was funded by the Canadian Global Health Research Initiatives (GHRI) and the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At the end of the workshop participants came up with a framework to guide mHealth initiatives in the region and a plan to work together in scaling up evidence based mHealth interventions. The participants acknowledged the importance of the meeting in setting the pace for strengthening and coordinating mHealth initiatives and unanimously agreed to hold a follow up meeting after three months.
Person perception from changing emotional expressions: primacy, recency, or averaging effect?

ABSTRACT Dynamic changes in emotional expressions are a valuable source of information in social interactions. As the expressive behaviour of a person changes, the inferences drawn from the behaviour may also change. Here, we test the possibility that dynamic changes in emotional expressions affect person perception in terms of stable trait attributions. Across three experiments, we examined perceivers’ inferences about others’ personality traits from changing emotional expressions. Expressions changed from one emotion (“start emotion”) to another emotion (“end emotion”), allowing us to disentangle potential primacy, recency, and averaging effects. Drawing on three influential models of person perception, we examined perceptions of dominance and affiliation (Experiment 1a), competence and warmth (Experiment 1b), and dominance and trustworthiness (Experiment 2). A strong recency effect was consistently found across all trait judgments, that is, the end emotion of dynamic expressions had a strong impact on trait ratings. Evidence for a primacy effect was also observed (i.e. the information of start emotions was integrated), but less pronounced, and only for trait ratings relating to affiliation, warmth, and trustworthiness. Taken together, these findings suggest that, when making trait judgements about others, observers weigh the most recently displayed emotion in dynamic expressions more heavily than the preceding emotion.
Loose Protein Packing around the Extracellular Half of the GABAA Receptor β1 Subunit M2 Channel-lining Segment*

GABAA receptors are ligand-gated ion channels formed by the pseudosymmetrical assembly of five homologous subunits around the central channel axis. The five M2 membrane-spanning segments largely line the channel. In the present work we probed the water surface accessibility of the β1 subunit M2 segment using the substituted cysteine accessibility method. We assayed the reaction of the negatively charged sulfhydryl-specific reagent, p-chloromercuribenzenesulfonate (pCMBS–), by its effect on subsequent currents elicited by EC50 and saturating GABA concentrations. pCMBS–, applied with GABA, reacted with 14 of the 19 residues tested. At the M2 cytoplasmic end from 2′ to 6′ only β1A252C (2′) and β1T256C (6′) were pCMBS–-reactive in the presence of GABA. We infer that the M2 segments are tightly packed in this region. Toward the extracellular half of M2 all residues from β1T262C (12′) through β1E270C (20′) reacted with pCMBS– applied with GABA. We infer that this region is highly mobile and loosely packed against the rest of the protein. Based on differences in pCMBS– reaction rates two domains can be distinguished on the putative channel-lining side of M2. A faster reacting domain includes the 2′, 9′, 12′, 13′, and 16′ residues. The slower reacting face contains the 6′, 10′, and 14′ residues. We hypothesize that these may represent the channel-lining faces in the closed and open states and that gating involves an 80–100° rotation of the M2 segments. These results are consistent with the loose packing of the M2 segments inferred from the structure of the homologous Torpedo nicotinic acetylcholine receptor.