Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multicanonical ensemble: A new approach to simulate first-order phase transitions.

Relying on the recent proposed multicanonical algorithm, we present a numerical simulation of the first-order phase transition in the 2D 10-state Potts model on lattices up to sizes 100\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}100. It is demonstrated that the new algorithm lacks an exponentially fast increase of the tunneling time between metastable states as a function of the linear size L of the system. Instead, the tunneling time diverges approximately proportional to ${\mathit{L}}^{2.65}$. On our largest lattice we gain more than 2 orders of magnitude as compared to a standard heat-bath algorithm. As a first physical application we report a high-precision computation of the interfacial free energy per unit area.
Macroeconomics and Monetary Theory

Macroeconomics is an outgrowth from the mainstream of classical monetary theory following Keynes. Keynes changed the emphasis from the determination of the level of money prices to the determination of the level of output and employment. He also changed the key relationship from demand and supply of money as determining the price level, to the relationship between consumption expenditure and income, in conjunction with private investment expenditure, as determining the level of output and therefore employment demanded. The income multiplier replaced the velocity of circulation as the key concept of monetary theory.
Policies for Economic Take-Off

Political commitment is the key ingredient needed for economic take-off and long-term growth. Poor countries will be unable to escape the vicious circle of poverty unless they and the international community join forces. Inappropriate financial policies can lead to a decline in and poor allocation of savings, subsequently holding back growth. Trade liberalisation not only strengthens growth, but also enhances the effectiveness of other economic policies. Basic education is a prerequisite for economic take-off, just as the subsequent training of skilled labour is one of the keys to long-term growth. Policies aimed at fostering long-term growth must be complementary; mistakes in one area can totally undermine efforts made elsewhere.
Ten Years of Implementing Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT): Lessons Learned

The US Surgeon General recently issued a comprehensive report indicating that substance use is a major public health concern that must be addressed using a number of strategies. Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is one such strategy. SBIRT Colorado, funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), has implemented a statewide initiative for the past 10 years that has provided ample opportunities to identify key components for successful implementation. Successful implementation requires (1) strong clinical and management advocates; (2) full integration of services into practices’ workflow utilizing technology whenever possible; (3) interprofessional team approaches; (4) appropriate options for the small proportion of patients screening positive for a possible substance use disorder; (5) cannabis screening that accounts for legalization, and interventions that acknowledge differences between alcohol and cannabis use; (6) incorporating SBIRT into standard health care professionals’ training; and (7) addressing the significant issues regarding reimbursement through private and public payers for SBIRT services. Implementing and sustaining SBI as a standard of integrated care is essential to reduce the burden of substance use. Interdisciplinary approaches, technology, and training to increase practitioner confidence and skill are fundamental.
Construction of the segment Delaunay triangulation by a flip algorithm (Construction de la triangulation de Delaunay de segments par un algorithme de flip)

Etant donne un ensemble S de points du plan, une triangulation de S est une decomposition de l'enveloppe convexe de S en triangles dont les sommets sont les points de S. Une triangulation de S est dite de Delaunay si le cercle circonscrit a chaque triangle ne contient aucun point de S en son interieur. Dans cette these, nous etudions une generalisation de ces notions a un ensemble S de segments disjoints du plan. Nous commencons par definir une nouvelle famille de diagrammes, appeles triangulations de segments. Nous etudions leurs proprietes geometriques et topologiques et nous donnons un algorithme pour construire efficacement une telle triangulation. Nous generalisons ensuite la notion de triangulation de Delaunay aux triangulations de segments et nous mettons en evidence la dualite avec le diagramme de Voronoi de segments. Nous etendons egalement la legalite des aretes au cas des triangulations de segments en definissant, d'une part, la legalite geometrique qui caracterise la triangulation de Delaunay de segments parmi l'ensemble de toutes les triangulations de segments possibles et, d'autre part, la legalite topologique qui caracterise les triangulations de segments qui ont la meme topologie que celle de Delaunay. Enfin, nous decrivons un algorithme de « flip » qui transforme toute triangulation de segments en une triangulation qui a la meme topologie que celle de Delaunay. A l'aide de fonctions localement convexes, nous demontrons que la suite de triangulations construites par cet algorithme converge vers celle de Delaunay et nous prouvons qu'une triangulation de segments qui a la meme topologie que celle de Delaunay est obtenue apres un nombre fini d'etapes.
‘What I want to do is get half a dozen of them and go and see Simon Cowell’: Reflecting on participation and outcomes for people with dementia taking part in a creative musical project

This paper presents the findings from an evaluation of a creative musical project led by Scottish Opera. The project included people with dementia and their carers in the development, writing, design and performance of a musical production about their experiences of love. The project involved professional singers, artists and choreographers from the opera company. Activities involved practice sessions and performances. People with dementia and their carers reflected on positive outcomes from the project including improved confidence; being part of a group; improved physical strength and people seeing them in a new way. Within the evaluation framework they also reported on how the project had been run and gave ideas for future development. Key elements in the success of this project were the involvement of professionals, the kudos of working with a national organisation and the performances that, while daunting, provided unique and rewarding experiences.
THE DYNAMICS OF WEALTH INEQUALITY IN A SIMPLE RAMSEY MODEL: A NOTE ON THE ROLE OF PRODUCTION FLEXIBILITY

It has been shown that the Ramsey growth model with agents that differ in their initial wealth endowments is compatible with a wide range of distributional outcomes, yet it is difficult to characterize under which circumstances the distribution of wealth becomes more or less unequal. In this note, we characterize the steady state distribution of wealth and compare it to the initial distribution, obtaining analytical conditions for one to be more skewed than the other. We show that whether wealth inequality increases or decreases during the transition to the steady state depends on simple and intuitive conditions on parameter values. Standard values for these parameters indicate that it is more likely that wealth inequality decreases as the economy accumulates capital.
The Empirical Analysis of Liquidity

We provide a synthesis of the empirical evidence on market liquidity. The liquidity measurement literature has established standard measures of liquidity that apply to broad categories of market microstructure data. Specialized measures of liquidity have been developed to deal with data limitations in specific markets, to provide proxies from daily data, and to assess institutional trading programs. The general liquidity literature has established local cross-sectional patterns, global cross-sectional patterns, and time-series patterns. Commonality in liquidity is prevalent. Certain exchange designs enhance market liquidity: a limit order book for high volume markets, a hybrid exchange for low volume markets, and multiple competing exchanges. Automatic execution increases speed, but increases spreads. A tick size reduction yields a large improvement in liquidity. Providing ex-post transparency to an otherwise opaque market dramatically improves liquidity. Opening up the limit order book improves liquidity. Regulatory reforms that increase the number of competitive alternatives, move toward linking them up, and level the playing field between exchanges improves liquidity. High-frequency traders trade in both a passive, liquidity-supplying manner and an aggressive, liquidity-demanding manner. Their overall impact improves both liquidity and price efficiency, but concerns remain regarding occasional trading glitches, order anticipation strategies, and latency arbitrage at the expense of slow traders. The liquidity and corporate finance literature provides abundant evidence that liquidity is beneficial in many corporate settings: liquidity increases the power of governance via exit, reduces the cost of governance via intervention, facilitates the entrance of informed traders who produce valuable information about the firm, enhances the effectiveness of equity-based compensation to managers, reduces the cost of equity financing, mitigates trading frictions investors encounter when trading in the market to recreate a preferred payout policy, and lowers the immediate transaction costs and subsequent liquidity costs for firms conducting large share repurchases. Further, the influence goes both ways. There is evidence that firms influence their own liquidity through a broad range of corporate decisions including internal governance standards, equity issuance form and pricing, share repurchases, acquisition targets, and disclosure timeliness and quality. The literature on liquidity and asset pricing demonstrates that both average liquidity cost and liquidity risk are priced, liquidity enhances market efficiency, and liquidity strengthens the arbitrage linkage between related markets. We conclude with directions for future research.
Study on Mobile Data Offloading in High Rise Building Scenario

In recent years, data traffic over cellular networks has experienced an exponential rise, primarily due to the explosion of smartphones, tablets and laptops. This increase in data traffic on cellular networks has caused an immediate need for offloading traffic for optimum performance of both voice and data services. The paper focuses on the coverage improvements of high floor users by offloading these users to picos. Four antenna patters with different vertical half power beam width are applied in both outband and inband pico scenarios. The simulation results indicate that both outband and inband picos can offload the same amount of high floor users but the outband picos can provide a much better coverage than macros while inband pico cannot significantly improve the coverage performance.
Presence of the tunicate Asterocarpa humilis on ship hulls and aquaculture facilities in the coast of the Biobío Region, south central Chile

Non-native ascidians are important members of the fouling community associated with artificial substrata and man-made structures. Being efficient fouling species, they are easily spread by human-mediated transports (e.g., with aquaculture trade and maritime transports). This is exemplified by the ascidian Asterocarpa humilis which displays a wide distribution in the Southern Hemisphere and has been recently reported in the Northern Hemisphere (NW Europe). In continental Chile, its first report dates back from 2000 for the locality of Antofagasta (23°S). Although there was no evidence about the vectors of introduction and spread, nor the source, some authors suggested maritime transport by ship hulls and aquaculture devices as putative introduction pathways and vectors. In the present study, we report for the first time the presence of A. humilis on the hull of an international ship in a commercial port in Concepción bay (36°S), south central Chile. We also found one individual associated to a seashell farm, 70 km far from Concepción bay. Further individuals were subsequently identified within Concepción bay: one juvenile settled upon international harbor pilings and a dozen individuals along aquaculture seashell longlines. For the first specimens sampled, species identification was ascertained using both morphological criteria and molecular barcoding, using the mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) and a nuclear gene (ribosomal RNA 18S). The nuclear 18S gene and the mitochondrial gene COI clearly assigned the specimens to A. humilis, confirming our morphological identification. Two haplotypes were obtained with COI corresponding to haplotypes previously obtained with European and Northern Chilean specimens. The present study thus reports for the first time the presence of A. humilis in the Araucanian ecoregion, documenting the apparent expansion of this non-native tunicate in Chile over 2,000 km, spanning over three ecoregions. In addition we reveal the potential implication of the international maritime transport as a vector of spread of this species along the Eastern Pacific coast, and the putative role of aquaculture facilities in promoting local establishments of non-native tunicates.
Fusion of Low Frequency Coefficients of DCT Transform Image for Face and Palmprint Multimodal Biometrics

In this paper, we propose multimodal biometric feature fusion using alternating concatenation of DCT coefficients exist in face and plamprint images. Discrete cosine transform (DCT) is used to extract low frequency features which has high discrimination feature at the top left corner of the DCT transform image. The fuse feature vector is projected to the most principal component of eigenvector to produces low dimensional fused feature vector which contains important information about the face and palmprint images. Distance classifier is then implemented as a classifier to compute the nearest distance of test feature data point with a template to evaluate the recognition process. PolyU and FERET dataset is used to validate the propose method and the result shows fusion by using alternating concatenation of face and palmprint is able to produce a better recognition rates compare to concatenation method. The best recognition rate is 95%.
Afferent influences on brain stem auditory nuclei of the chicken: Changes in succinate dehydrogenase activity following cochlea removal

We have examined one of the metabolic consequences of unilateral cochlea (basilar papilla) removal in the chick brain stem auditory system. We assessed changes in succinate dehydrogenase (SDH), a mitochondrial enzyme involved in energy metabolism, in neurons of second‐order n. magnocellularis (NM) and third‐order n. laminaris (NL). Chickens undergoing surgery at 10 days of age were perfused 4 hours to 35 days postlesion. Chickens 6 or 66 weeks of age at cochlea removal were examined 1 or 8 days after surgery. In all groups, cryostat sections were prepared for SDH histochemistry or Nissl staining.
Path Sensitization, Partial Boolean Difference, and Automated Fault Diagnosis

A tool employed in automated fault diagnosis is emphasized: path sensitization by partial Boolean difference analysis. Motivated by the analogy between a test system and a communication system, a model for fault detection of a logic net is outlined from the standpoint of information theory. The classical ``path sensitizing'' technique is made systematic using the partial Boolean difference. This technique is based on a new theorem on the partial Boolean difference. Finally, a programmable fault detection algorithm is presented along with an example.
The Impact of sectoral development on natural forest conversion and degradation: the case of timber and tree crop plantations in Indonesia

This paper examines the conversion of Indonesia's natural forests to timber and tree crop plantations, notably oil palm. The principal aims are to understand the impact of this process on natural forest and on forest-dwelling people, and to establish whether past and present policies governing this process are meeting their objectives. The key findings of the study are: (1) timber plantation development policies legitimate the degradation of natural forests; (2) subsidies are ultimately unnecessary for the development of timber plantations; (3) tree crop plantation developers request more land than they need to obtain added profits from the timber on lands to be cleared; (4) overlapping and chaotic forest land use classification systems work to the benefit of private plantation developers at the expense of the rights and livelihoods of forest-dwelling people; and (5) resolution of these problems is hampered by the persistence of the government's top-down approach and non-recognition of traditional land use rights. It is recommend that: remaining natural forests on conversion forest lands be reclassified as permanent forests; plantation development take place only on unproductive production forest lands; and forest land use redistribution be devolved to the local level.
Acute coagulopathy of trauma: hypoperfusion induces systemic anticoagulation and hyperfibrinolysis.

BACKGROUND Coagulopathy is present at admission in 25% of trauma patients, is associated with shock and a 5-fold increase in mortality. The coagulopathy has recently been associated with systemic activation of the protein C pathway. This study was designed to characterize the thrombotic, coagulant and fibrinolytic derangements of trauma-induced shock. METHODS This was a prospective cohort study of major trauma patients admitted to a single trauma center. Blood was drawn within 10 minutes of arrival for analysis of partial thromboplastin and prothrombin times, prothrombin fragments 1 + 2 (PF1 + 2), fibrinogen, factor VII, thrombomodulin, protein C, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1), thrombin activatable fibrinolysis inhibitor (TAFI), tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), and D-dimers. Base deficit was used as a measure of tissue hypoperfusion. RESULTS Two hundred eight patients were studied. Systemic hypoperfusion was associated with anticoagulation and hyperfibrinolysis. Coagulation was activated and thrombin generation was related to injury severity, but acidosis did not affect Factor VII or PF1 + 2 levels. Hypoperfusion-induced increase in soluble thrombomodulin levels was associated with reduced fibrinogen utilization, reduction in protein C and an increase in TAFI. Hypoperfusion also resulted in hyperfibrinolysis, with raised tPA and D-Dimers, associated with the observed reduction in PAI-1 and not alterations in TAFI. CONCLUSIONS Acute coagulopathy of trauma is associated with systemic hypoperfusion and is characterized by anticoagulation and hyperfibrinolysis. There was no evidence of coagulation factor loss or dysfunction at this time point. Soluble thrombomodulin levels correlate with thrombomodulin activity. Thrombin binding to thrombomodulin contributes to hyperfibrinolysis via activated protein C consumption of PAI-1.
Retinal Microvascular Abnormalities and Cognitive Function in Latino Adults in Los Angeles

Purpose: Retinal vessels may provide a readily accessible surrogate approach to study vascular disease in brain small vessels. Previous epidemiologic studies of retinal microvascular abnormalities and cognition have not included large numbers of Latinos who have a high prevalence of diabetes and hypertension. Methods: We used data from 809 elderly Latino participants in the Los Angeles Latino Eye Study (LALES) to assess whether retinal vessel caliber and microvascular abnormalities are cross-sectionally associated with lower cognitive function. Cognitive screening was conducted with the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument-Short form (CASI-S) and in-depth testing with the Spanish English Neuropsychological Assessment Scales (SENAS). Retinal photographs were used to identify retinopathy signs and measure retinal vessel caliber. Results: A total of 65.8% had high blood pressure, 34.5% had diabetes; self-reported diagnoses of heart attack, heart failure, angina and stroke were rare. Retinal calibers and any retinopathy were not associated with the CASI-S, total SENAS or any SENAS cognitive factors assessed as continuous variables. The odds of a low CASI-S score were two times higher in subjects with generalized arteriolar narrowing (OR = 2.04, 95% CI = 1.14, 3.66), and one and half times as high in those with both generalized arteriolar narrowing and retinopathy signs (OR = 1.49, 95% CI = 0.47, 4.75) though this result was based on only four cases with both risk factors and confidence limits were wide and included the null. Conclusion: Retinal microvasculature imaging may provide insights into small blood vessel influences on cognition in Latino populations. Additional studies in diverse populations and prospective settings are needed.
Preserving the low‐income housing stock: What nonprofit organizations can do today and tomorrow

Abstract In recent years, nonprofit organizations involved in housing have multiplied in number and expanded the size and scope of their activities in low‐income housing preservation. Newly available data show that nonprofits now constitute a significant sector in the upgrading, maintenance, and management of affordable housing and continue to focus their efforts on serving those most in need. Analysis also indicates that the potential exists for significant further expansion of their activities in the short and medium term. While nonprofits cannot by themselves meet the enormous needs for preserving low‐income housing, they can be major contributors, particularly if carefully designed expansion of federal support for projects and operations comes to complement their current resources.
Effect of Exenatide on &bgr; Cell Function After Islet Transplantation in Type 1 Diabetes

Background. Islet transplantation can reduce or eliminate the need for insulin in patients with type 1 diabetes. Exenatide is a long acting analogue of Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) that augments glucose induced insulin secretion, and may increase &bgr; cell mass. We evaluated the effect of exenatide on insulin secretion after islet transplantation. Methods. Eleven C-peptide positive islet cell recipients with elevated glucose levels were treated with exenatide for three months. Response was assessed by insulin requirements, meal tolerance tests, and hyperglycemic glucose clamps. Results. Ten patients responded to exenatide. Two patients who had not restarted insulin achieved good glycemic control and one patient who had received 5500 IE/kg in first islet infusion was able to stop insulin. Seven other patients decreased their insulin dose by 39% on exenatide. Hyperglycemic clamp studies showed a rise in second phase insulin release (before exenatide: 246±88 pM; during exenatide: 644±294 pM, P<0.01). Meal tolerance studies before and one month after stopping exenatide did not show a difference in glucose or C-peptide values. Nausea and vomiting were the major side effects. Conclusions. Exenatide stimulates insulin secretion in islet transplant recipients. It reduces insulin dose in some patients and may delay the need to resume insulin in others. We did not find any evidence of a trophic effect on islets.
Short-Horizon Return Reversals and the Bid-Ask Spread

We show that the pattern of short-term negative serial covariances for stock returns over different return measurement intervals is consistent with the implications of inventory-based market microstructure models. We develop additional testable implications of these models and document supporting evidence. Our findings indicate that to a large extent the short-horizon return reversals can be explained by dealer-inventory-related market microstructure effects.