Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence of Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Cancer and Noncancer Stem Cells Associated with Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Both the hepatitis B virus (HBV) and cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been independently implicated in the pathogenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). To date, there have been no reports describing HBV infection within CSCs. In this report we describe HBV core (HBcAg) and HBx protein expression within CSCs associated with human HCC. HBV markers were also identified in nonmalignant stem cells present in adjacent nontumor tissue. These findings provide new insights into the pathogenesis of HBV-induced HCC and are potentially relevant to the treatment of both HCC and chronic HBV.
Single-stage Flyback converter for led driver with inductor voltage detection power factor correction

A constant current output Flyback converter with power factor correction used for LED driving is presented in this paper. The inductor voltage detection method is applied and acquired the inductor voltage to generate the control signal. Based on this design principle, the inner loop of input current shaping is eliminating, the input voltage sensing and multiplier are also not necessary. The simulation and experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the control scheme based on the lab prototype boards. The output load condition is set from full load to light load, and the results show that the system drives the LEDs with high power factor.
Spectral dating of high-redshift stellar populations

Age derivation techniques for unresolved stellar populations at high redshifts are explored using the near-ultraviolet (NUV) spectrum of LBDS 53W091 (z = 1.55) and LBDS 53W069 (z = 1.43). The photometry and morphology of these galaxies - which are weak radio sources -suggest they are early-type systems, a feature that makes them ideal testbeds for the analysis of their ages and metallicities with the use of population-synthesis models. In the analysis that is based on simple stellar population models, we find a significant degeneracy between the derived ages and metallicities both in optical+near-infrared (NIR) photometric and NUV spectroscopic analyses. This degeneracy is not so strong for LBDS 53W069. However, even in this case the stellar age cannot be constrained better than to a range roughly encompassing one-third of the age of the Universe at z = 1.43 (90 per cent confidence level). We have explored several independent population-synthesis models and consistently found similar results. Broadband photometry straddling the rest-frame 4000-A break is also subject to a strong age-metallicity degeneracy. The use of realistic chemical enrichment assumptions significantly helps in disentangling the degeneracy. Based on this method, we derive the average stellar age for both galaxies around ∼ 3.6-3.8 Gyr with better constraints on the youngest possible ages (∼3 Gyr at the 90 per cent confidence level). The comparison with simple stellar population models suggest subsolar metallicities (log Z/Z ○. = -0.2). A composite model using chemical enrichment gives slightly higher metallicities in both galaxies (log Z/Z ○. = - 0.1). Given that the stellar component in galaxies forms over times which are larger than a typical chemical enrichment time-scale, we conclude that composite stellar populations must be used in all photospectroscopic analyses of galaxies. From the observational point of view, the most efficient (and feasible) way to set limits on unresolved stellar populations comprises a combination of Balmer absorption lines along with either low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) rest-frame NUV spectroscopy or accurate optical and NIR photometry.
In vivo fluorescence lifetime tomography of a FRET probe expressed in mouse

Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) is a powerful biological tool for reading out cell signaling processes. In vivo use of FRET is challenging because of the scattering properties of bulk tissue. By combining diffuse fluorescence tomography with fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM), implemented using wide-field time-gated detection of fluorescence excited by ultrashort laser pulses in a tomographic imaging system and applying inverse scattering algorithms, we can reconstruct the three dimensional spatial localization of fluorescence quantum efficiency and lifetime. We demonstrate in vivo spatial mapping of FRET between genetically expressed fluorescent proteins in live mice read out using FLIM. Following transfection by electroporation, mouse hind leg muscles were imaged in vivo and the emission of free donor (eGFP) in the presence of free acceptor (mCherry) could be clearly distinguished from the fluorescence of the donor when directly linked to the acceptor in a tandem (eGFP-mCherry) FRET construct.
Codes on finite geometries

New algebraic methods for constructing codes based on hyperplanes of two different dimensions in finite geometries are presented. The new construction methods result in a class of multistep majority-logic decodable codes and three classes of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Decoding methods for the class of majority-logic decodable codes, and a class of codes that perform well with iterative decoding in spite of having many cycles of length 4 in their Tanner graphs, are presented. Most of the codes constructed can be either put in cyclic or quasi-cyclic form and hence their encoding can be implemented with linear shift registers.
Diferencias salariales asociadas a atributos ambientales en trece ciudades colombianas: una estimación de salarios hedónicos

This paper estimates people’s valuation for the sensation of physical well- being directly associated with the weather. In order to accomplish this, it identifies, using an estimation of a hedonic wage model, the wage differentials between thirteen of the largest and most important Colombian cities for 2003. It includes, among the variables, a human thermal comfort index related to average climatic conditions. The paper finds the existence of wage differentials associated with both weather conditions, and community and security characteristics. It also finds that climatic variables may impinge on labor market adjustments.
Energy saving scheme for data acquisition of WSN node

This paper analyzes the energy consuming characteristics of data acquisition in wireless sensor network node. The impaction of node's data acquisition subsystem design is addressed. Schemes to improve energy saving of data acquisition are presented with precondition of guaranteeing performance, which includes choosing and setting working parameters of sensors, setting working parameters of the DC/DC regulator, hierarchical sensing and adaptive sampling. The working parameters of regulator are important to the management for saving energy. The design applying some of the schemes to the sensor module of node with the same typical configuration as MICA2 shows that the schemes are effective to save energy.
Factor endowment, impatience and trade patterns in a small open economy of endogenous growth

The prediction of trade patterns is usually based on physical factor abundance. In a context of endogenous growth, however, physical factor richness does not always predict trade patterns in a reliable way. In a world where countries differ only in their factor endowment trade patterns can easily be such that a physically capital rich country exports the labour intensive good. Further, if the consumers' time preference rates are allowed to vary between countries, they influence trade patterns, too, which then do not reflect physical factor abundance for fairly general conditions.
Smartphone cloud storage anti virus detection and prevention using robust algorithm

Despite its prominent services and facilities that has provided to its users, Smartphone technology is still presenting various deficiencies that should be handled in order to satisfy its users' requirements. In particular, the lack of the storage space on the Smartphone device accounts for a critical issue. To this end, many factors could be behind the storage space's confining, in particular, viruses that reside on the device and have not been removed yet. In this case, a rudimentary solution consists of installing an antivirus. However, the former could be a heavy size program. Therefore, in this paper we have introduced a new system as well as an algorithm that consist of an automatic scanning of the Smartphone database in order to optimize the storage space. The proposed process is based on two concepts: Cloud computing and operating systems' concept. In addition, we have thoroughly depicted the relationship and the interactions between the two former concepts and how they can cooperate together in order to enjoying an efficient role in optimizing the Smartphone storage space.
Robust Detection for Additive Watermarking in the DCT-Domain Using Approximate Alpha-Stable Model

This paper presents a robust additive watermark detector in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain. The proposed approach uses the Approximate alpha-stable distributions to model AC DCT coefficients with distinct impulse distributional behavior. More specifically, the scale mixture of Gaussians as an analytical approximation of alpha-stable distribution is employed. Based on the theory of statistical inference and weak signal detection in non-gaussian noise, a robust blind detection algorithm is derived. And the validity of the detector is also tested.
The Four Cultures of the Academy: Insights and Strategies for Improving Leadership in Collegiate Organizations

1. Understanding the Cultural Dynamics of Academic Institutions Part One: The Four Cultures 2. The Collegial Culture 3. Living and Working in the Collegial Culture 4. The Managerial Culture 5. Living and Working in the Managerial Culture 6. The Developmental Culture 7. Living and Working in the Developmental Culture 8. The Negotiating Culture 9. Living and Working in the Negotiating Culture Part Two: Leadership Strategies for Academic Organizations 10. Engaging the Four Cultures in Organizational Improvement 11. Fostering Organizational Change and Innovation 12. Acknowledging Cultural Realities in Academic Leadership.
A Contraction Scheme for a Class of Feedback Policies

Dynamic optimization problems cover a great class of problems in theoretical and applied economics and technology. In this account the exploitation of a general renewable capital stock is modeled through an alternative formulation to the classical optimal control approach. We propose a very simple alternating iterative algorithm that is shown to converge very fast towards a solution, where the accuracy of the solution can also be determined. The algorithm can also produce approximate closed form (analytical) feedback solutions. By using a special simple seed in the iteration scheme we reproduce perturbation results (formulae) that are published in the last decade. Often only two or three iteration steps are necessary to produce sufficiently accurate approximations. JEL classification: C61; C63; Q00
The neural correlates of anomalous habituation to negative emotional pictures in borderline and avoidant personality disorder patients.

OBJECTIVE Extreme emotional reactivity is a defining feature of borderline personality disorder, yet the neural-behavioral mechanisms underlying this affective instability are poorly understood. One possible contributor is diminished ability to engage the mechanism of emotional habituation. The authors tested this hypothesis by examining behavioral and neural correlates of habituation in borderline patients, healthy comparison subjects, and a psychopathological comparison group of patients with avoidant personality disorder. METHOD During fMRI scanning, borderline patients, healthy subjects, and avoidant personality disorder patients viewed novel and repeated pictures, providing valence ratings at each presentation. Statistical parametric maps of the contrasts of activation during repeated versus novel negative picture viewing were compared between groups. Psychophysiological interaction analysis was employed to examine functional connectivity differences between groups. RESULTS Unlike healthy subjects, neither borderline nor avoidant personality disorder patients exhibited increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex when viewing repeated versus novel pictures. This lack of an increase in dorsal anterior cingulate activity was associated with greater affective instability in borderline patients. In addition, borderline and avoidant patients exhibited smaller increases in insula-amygdala functional connectivity than healthy subjects and, unlike healthy subjects, did not show habituation in ratings of the emotional intensity of the images. Borderline patients differed from avoidant patients in insula-ventral anterior cingulate functional connectivity during habituation. CONCLUSIONS Unlike healthy subjects, borderline patients fail to habituate to negative pictures, and they differ from both healthy subjects and avoidant patients in neural activity during habituation. A failure to effectively engage emotional habituation processes may contribute to affective instability in borderline patients.
Literacy and Numeracy Production and Education Sector Reform: Evidence from Ghana †

Few, if any, previous studies of the determinants of literacy and numeracy in Ghana and elsewhere have examined the impact of education reform on literacy and numeracy production and have mostly also been limited to considering the proficiency in only one language and numeracy and to considering only skills impacts from more traditional types of education. Examining the impact of traditional schooling, technical-vocational education and training, and adult literacy programs on literacy and numeracy in Ghana, this paper addresses all three issues. A comparison of outcomes before and after the 1987 Education Sector Reform indicates that, consistent with the objective of the Reform, the productivity of primary education in terms of literacy and numeracy increased, while the productivity of other levels and types of education decreased. Additionally, large skills differentials in Ghana related to gender, ethnicity, rural/urban location and region of residence are established. The results indicate that future education policy in Ghana should focus on strengthening the quality of both traditional education above the primary level and other types of education, including adult literacy programs. † I thank Bryan Boulier, Donald Parsons, David Ribar, participants at the Annual Meetings of the Southern
Can Social Safety Nets Alleviate Seasonal Deprivation? Evidence from Northwest Bangladesh

This paper examines the role of social safety-net programs in Bangladesh run by the government and nongovernmental organizations to mitigate seasonal deprivation in the country's highly vulnerable northwest region. Specifically, the paper explores whether social safety nets are limited to averting seasonal deprivation or can also address seasonality of income and employment more generally. Using a recent survey from the greater Rangpur (northwest) region, the paper finds that social safety nets have a positive effect on mitigating both seasonal and non-seasonal food deprivation. The results are robust, owing to the recent expanded coverage of social safety-net programs run by nongovernmental organizations active in the region. But given the annual recurrence of monga (seasonal food insecurity) in the northwest region owing to agricultural seasonality and an overwhelming dependence on agriculture for livelihoods, social safety nets are not a reliable tool for monga eradication. Programs are also needed to promote the income and productivity of the poor through diversification of income and employment.
The Gaming Involvement and Informal Learning Framework

Aim. This article presents a model of how gaming involvement and informal learning come together in practice. Method. Based on a series of interviews, case studies, and a wider survey, the Gaming Involvement and Informal Learning (GIIL) framework indicates how involvement with a variety of gaming practices can lead to a range of different learning experiences. Results. The framework is able to account for both how and what people learn from gaming while also highlighting the influence of player identity. Further, the iterative relationship between identity, involvement, and learning is emphasized: The more strongly someone identifies themselves as a gamer, the greater their micro- and macro-level involvement and the more likely they are to learn from their gaming experiences. Conclusion. The implications of the findings are discussed with regard to informal and formal learning.
A continuous time sigma delta modulator with operational floating integrator

This paper presents a new circuit realization for current mode continuous time sigma delta modulator. In this sigma delta convertor for implementation of integrators in loop filter, operational floating conveyors are employed. The modulator is designed in 0. 18μm TSMC CMOS technology and features low power consumption (<;3mW), low supply voltage (±1.8), and wide dynamic range (>;70db). The performance of the circuits was demonstrated using HSPICE at low voltage operation of ±1.8V.
Compactor: Optimization Framework at Staging I/O Nodes

Data-intensive applications are largely influenced by I/O performance on HPC systems and the scalability of such applications to exascale primarily depends on the scalability of the I/O performance on HPC systems in the future. To mitigate the I/O performance, recent HPC systems make use of staging nodes to delegate I/O requests and in-situ data analysis. In this paper, we present the Compactor framework and also present three optimizations to improve I/O performance at the data staging nodes. The first optimization performs collective buffering across requests from multiple processes. In the second optimization, we present a way to steal writes to service read request at the staging node. Finally, we also provide a way to "morph" write requests from the same process. All optimizations were implemented as a part of the Exascale FastForward I/O stack. We evaluated the optimizations over a PVFS2 file system using a micro-benchmark and Flash I/O benchmark. Our results indicate significant performance benefits with our framework. In the best case the compactor is able to provide up to 70% improvement in performance.
Fatigue reduces tonic accommodation

Ocular accommodation adopts a mean baseline response level of approximately 1.0 D in the absence of blur feedback (open‐loop state). This baseline or tonic accommodation (TA) can be elevated following a sustained monocular accommodative response to a dioptric stimulus (lens adaptation) that exceeds the baseline open‐loop level of TA. The accommodative response to the lens persists in the open‐loop state (accommodative hysteresis), and eventually decays to a stable end‐point. Interestingly, if the baseline TA is high, the monocularly adapted accommodative state can decay to an end‐point that is below the initial pre‐adapted baseline level of the TA (counter‐adaptive response) (McBrien, N.A. and Millodot, M., (1988). Differences in adaptation of TA with refractive state. Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci., 29, 460–469).
Learning a hierarchical image manifold for Web image classification

Image classification is an essential task in content-based image retrieval. However, due to the semantic gap between low-level visual features and high-level semantic concepts, and the diversification of Web images, the performance of traditional classification approaches is far from users’ expectations. In an attempt to reduce the semantic gap and satisfy the urgent requirements for dimensionality reduction, high-quality retrieval results, and batch-based processing, we propose a hierarchical image manifold with novel distance measures for calculation. Assuming that the images in an image set describe the same or similar object but have various scenes, we formulate two kinds of manifolds, object manifold and scene manifold, at different levels of semantic granularity. Object manifold is developed for object-level classification using an algorithm named extended locally linear embedding (ELLE) based on intra- and inter-object difference measures. Scene manifold is built for scene-level classification using an algorithm named locally linear submanifold extraction (LLSE) by combining linear perturbation and region growing. Experimental results show that our method is effective in improving the performance of classifying Web images.
Artificial Neural Networking as a Decision Tool for Natural Gas Investment Committee Membership Abstract Artificial Neural Networking as a Decision Tool for Natural Gas Investment Table of Contents

With the growing interest in the Marcellus Shale and its natural gas deposits, there are opportunities to purchase and hold land for investment purposes. A robust decision tool is needed to help guide investors towards the most profitable properties. Artificial neural networks have many unique benefits that make them an ideal candidate for this purpose. The artificial neural networks created in this study had nine independent variables. Combinations of these nine variables were created to describe 300 theoretical properties available for purchase. Each of these properties were then evaluated by an expert in the field and given a score from one to five to rate its investment potential, which was the dependent variable. Sixteen different network architectures were used to create over 200 neural networks. However, none of these networks met the criteria established to determine success. This is likely due to the unreliability in the data used to train the network, evidenced by the expert's inability to reproduce previously assigned scores.
Document Similarity Measurement Using Ferret Algorithm and Map Reduce Programming Model

Plagiarism of digital documents that happened frequently should be prevented and reduced. In order to measure the degree of document's similarity, Ferret Algorithm is used on MapReduce and Hadoop framework. This application program is tested using ten pair documents in English and ten pair documents in Indonesian to get the degree of document's similarity between document's pairs. In this experiment, it was also tested the accuracy of the system by using several kind of n- grams, that is 1-gram, 2-gram, 3-gram, 4-gram, 5-gram, and 6-gram. In addition, this experiment is conducted on stand-alone computers and Hadoop multi-node cluster system. In order to compare the time taken of the system, it is used nine pairs of documents with various size of documents.