Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sea-going labour and Greek owned fleet: a major aspect of fleet competitiveness

This analysis aims to examine the current picture of maritime manpower in the Greek registered and owned fleet, as it has been formed during the post-war years. This objective entails the analysis of the current supply and demand for seafarers, the estimation of any shortfalls and their confrontation. Moreover, this study further investigates the contributory factors of the present employment trends, which simultaneously constitute special problems of the sea manpower of the Greek owned fleet and attempt some recommendations. In the context of the above mentioned objective, this analysis emphasizes issues such as recruitment, marine education and wastage. Furthermore, special consideration is given to the significance of labour costs for the development of the Greek owned fleet, particularly to subjects such as the various ways of reducing manning costs and their repercussions on the employment of Greek seamen. Finally, this analysis examines the trends of the state shipping policy concerning labour issues and proceeds to some recommendations.
Modbus/DNP3 state-based filtering system

The security of SCADA systems is one of the most pressing subjects in industrial systems, especially for those installation actively using the public network in order to provide new features and services. In this paper we present an innovative approach to the design of Filtering Systems based on the state analysis of the system being monitored. The aim is to detect attacks composed of a set of “SCADA” commands that, while licit when considered in isolation on a single-packet basis, can disrupt the correct behavior of the system when executed in particular operating states. The proposed firewall detects these complex attacks thanks to an internal representation of the controlled SCADA system. Furthermore, we detail the design of the architecture of the IDS for systems using the ModBus and DNP3 protocols, and the implementation of a prototype, providing experimental comparative results that confirm the validity of the proposed approach.
Pharmacokinetic Interactions between Buprenorphine/Naloxone and Raltegravir in Subjects Receiving Chronic Buprenorphine/Naloxone Treatment

Background: Interactions between human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) and opioid-dependence therapies can occur. Objectives: We sought to determine whether such interactions occurred between buprenorphine/naloxone and raltegravir. Methods: We performed a within-subject open-labeled pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic study in 12 HIV-seronegative subjects stabilized on at least 3 weeks of buprenorphine/naloxone therapy. Subjects underwent baseline and steady-state evaluation of the effect of raltegravir 400 mg BID on buprenorphine/naloxone parameters. Results: Compared with baseline values, buprenorphine AUC0–24 h (58.2 vs. 56.0 hr*ng/mL) and Cmax (7.37 vs. 6.60 ng/mL) did not differ significantly after achieving steady-state raltegravir. Similar analyses of norbuprenorphine, the primary metabolite of buprenorphine, demonstrated no significant difference after raltegravir administration. Naloxone concentrations were unchanged for AUC0–24 h (.595 vs. .581 hr*ng/mL), Cmax (.251 vs. .243 ng/mL) and Tmax (.75 vs.1.08 h). Objective opioid withdrawal was not observed. The AUC0–12 h and Cmax of raltegravir did not significantly differ from historical controls (5543 vs. 4428 h*ng/mL and 1070 vs. 1266 ng/mL), respectively. Conclusion: The addition of raltegravir to stabilized patients receiving buprenorphine/naloxone does not significantly affect buprenorphine/naloxone or raltegravir pharmacokinetic or pharmacodynamic parameters.
Toward Human-in-the-Loop Supervisory Control for Cyber-Physical Networks

This work proposes a novel approach to include a model of making decision in human brain into the control loop. Employing the methodology developed in mathematical neuroscience, we construct a model that accounts for quality of human decision in supervisory tasks. We specifically focus on adaptive gain theory and the strategy selection problem. The proposed model is shown to be capable of explaining the change of a strategy from compensatory to heuristics in different conditions. We also propose a method to incorporate the effect of internal and external parameters such as stress level and emergencies in the decision model. The model is employed in a supervisory controller that dispatches the jobs between autonomy and a human supervisor in an efficient way.
Managing Customer Support Knowledge

The management of customer support knowledge is increasingly important to organizations because of rapid product change and the growing need for service-based differentiation. This article describes how organizations, particularly in high-technology industries, are both managing their own support knowledge and extending its use to customers for self-service. Among the issues addressed are the key attributes of customer support knowledge, the technologies most commonly used to manage support knowledge, and the management issues most frequently faced by customer support knowledge managers.
The mechanism of the increase of tonic tension produced by caffeine in sheep cardiac Purkinje fibres.

The effects of caffeine were examined on contraction and membrane current in voltage‐clamped sheep cardiac Purkinje fibres. The photoprotein aequorin was injected into several cells in order to measure the intracellular ionized Ca concentration [( Ca2+]i). When the Na‐K pump was inhibited, depolarization produced a twitch followed by a tonic component of tension. Repolarization produced an after‐contraction. These components of tension were accompanied by corresponding increases of aequorin light. Caffeine (10 mM) decreased both the twitch and the after‐contraction while increasing the tonic component. The application of caffeine also produced a transient increase of aequorin light, both during depolarization and at rest, which was followed by a maintained decrease in all three components of the light signal. In particular, although caffeine decreased the rise of aequorin light during prolonged depolarization it increased the tonic tension. The possibility that the effects of caffeine on tonic tension could be due to suppression of spontaneous Ca oscillations was rejected for the following reasons. (i) Ryanodine (which also abolishes Ca oscillations) decreased the magnitude of the tonic tension. (ii) Caffeine still increased tonic tension when it was added to a fibre exposed to ryanodine (1‐10 microM). In the presence of ryanodine it was possible to measure [Ca2+]i and tonic tension without interference from Ca oscillations. The increase of tonic tension produced by caffeine could not be accounted for by a rise of [Ca2+]i. The results showed that, at a given level of Ca, caffeine increased tension. The results show that a large part of the increase of tonic tension produced by caffeine is due to an increase of the Ca sensitivity of the contractile apparatus rather than to changes of [Ca2+]i. The consequence of this observation for the experimental use of caffeine is discussed.
Access control method with variable retransmission probability in ad-hoc networks

Ad-hoc networks do not need infrastructures such as base stations and they are an interested technology. One of the important subjects of ad-hoc networks is a radio media access control method. A control channel is usually used with a TDMA based method. There is a big influence on the performance of ad-hoc networks when a frequency channel zone is used as a TDMA based method. We have already proposed an access control method that is called the two division back off algorithm (TDBA). This algorithm can solve collisions with few overheads. But, this method has the problem that the success probability that a node will acquire a channel decreases when the number of collision-nodes increases. This work introduces a variable retransmission probability instead of a fixed retransmission probability, and the performance characteristics are compared and evaluated.
Real Wages and Unemployment in the OECD Countries

AN ACTIVE DEBATE iS now under way in the United States, Europe, and Japan about the scope for expansionary macroeconomic policies in the near term. Although unemployment is at postwar historical highs in Europe and the United States and inflation has receded rapidly in the major economies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, there is remarkable reticence in advocating expansionary policies among the governments of OECD countries. One school of thought holds that much of the unemployment problem in Europe, and to a lesser extent in the United States and Japan, results from real wages at inappropriate levels and thus the problem cannot be ameliorated by adjusting demand-management policies. The West German Minister of Economics strongly enunciated this view. ' Nevertheless, our economies are still carrying the burden of an excessive real wage level from the seventies. A considerable part of current unemployment is due to the fact that labour has now become too expensive. However, correcting false distribution relations needs time. A start has been made in most of the major industrial countries. The course must be held over the medium term if a growth process which does not bring with it a danger of inflation is to be set in motion and sustained. Because this view has gained widespread currency, and because I took
Mergers and the Value of Antitrust Deterrence

While the U.S. has pursued a vigorous antitrust policy towards horizontal mergers over the past four decades, mergers in Canada have until recently been permitted to take place in a virtually unrestricted antitrust environment. The absence of an antitrust overhang in Canada presents an interesting opportunity to test the conjecture that the rigid market share and concentration criteria of the U.S. policy effectively deters a significant number of potentially collusive mergers. The effective deterrence hypothesis implies that the probability of a horizontal merger being anticompetitive is higher in Canada than in the U.S. However, parameters in cross-sectional regressions reject the market power hypothesis on samples of both U.S. and Canadian mergers. Judging from the Canadian evidence, there simply isn't much to deter. Copyright 1992 by American Finance Association.
Aerobic exercise and vascular cognitive impairment

Objective: To assess the efficacy of a progressive aerobic exercise training program on cognitive and everyday function among adults with mild subcortical ischemic vascular cognitive impairment (SIVCI). Methods: This was a proof-of-concept single-blind randomized controlled trial comparing a 6-month, thrice-weekly, progressive aerobic exercise training program (AT) with usual care plus education on cognitive and everyday function with a follow-up assessment 6 months after the formal cessation of aerobic exercise training. Primary outcomes assessed were general cognitive function (Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale–Cognitive subscale [ADAS-Cog]), executive functions (Executive Interview [EXIT-25]), and activities of daily living (Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study–Activities of Daily Living [ADCS-ADL]). Results: Seventy adults randomized to aerobic exercise training or usual care were included in intention-to-treat analyses (mean age 74 years, 51% female, n = 35 per group). At the end of the intervention, the aerobic exercise training group had significantly improved ADAS-Cog performance compared with the usual care plus education group (−1.71 point difference, 95% confidence interval [CI] −3.15 to −0.26, p = 0.02); however, this difference was not significant at the 6-month follow-up (−0.63 point difference, 95% CI −2.34 to 1.07, p = 0.46). There were no significant between-group differences at intervention completion and at the 6-month follow-up in EXIT-25 or ADCS-ADL performance. Examination of secondary measures showed between-group differences at intervention completion favoring the AT group in 6-minute walk distance (30.35 meter difference, 95% CI 5.82 to 54.86, p = 0.02) and in diastolic blood pressure (−6.89 mm Hg difference, 95% CI −12.52 to −1.26, p = 0.02). Conclusions: This study provides preliminary evidence for the efficacy of 6 months of thrice-weekly progressive aerobic training in community-dwelling adults with mild SIVCI, relative to usual care plus education. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01027858. Classification of evidence: This study provides Class II evidence that for adults with mild SIVCI, an aerobic exercise program for 6 months results in a small, significant improvement in ADAS-Cog performance.
Part One of the Employment Act 2008: ‘Better’ Dispute Resolution?

This article will analyse Part One of the Employment Act 2008 on employment dispute resolution and in particular the repeal of the statutory workplace dispute resolution procedures only four years after Regulations implemented them. It will begin by considering the background of increasing tribunal caseload that led to their introduction in the first place. Later sections will examine the replacement of these statutory procedures with what Ministers described as the triple package of a new Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (‘ACAS’) helpline, increased ACAS conciliation and a revised ACAS Code. The language of repeal and the Act's reintroduction of the Polkey line of cases might suggest that dismissal law is merely reverting back to its pre October 2004 position. This article will, however, conclude that Part One does not just ‘simplify’ dismissal law, or ‘return’ the law to September 2004 or indeed to any other time frame. Instead, it weakens key procedural protections for employees potentially by conflating the 2002 Act's different tests of ‘automatically’ unfair and ‘ordinarily’ unfair dismissals, for example. Lowering standards of procedural justice is significant in itself but this takes added importance for dismissed employees as tribunals rarely investigate the substantive fairness of dismissals.
Potential Effects of Global Warming on a Water Resources System in Korea

Abstract This study reports on an examination of the potential effects of global warming on a water resources system in Korea. Assuming a doubling in CO2 concentration (denoted 2CO2), basin-scale scenarios for precipitation and other hydrometeorologic variables were generated from the existing general circulation model (GCM) results. The generated temperature and precipitation scenarios were input to the NWS-PC model to generate the corresponding streamflow scenarios over the Geum river basin. A reservoir simulation model for Daecheong Dam in the Geum river basin has been developed using the object-oriented simulation environment, STELLA. For each streamflow scenario, the performance of the reservoir was assessed in terms of reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability. Although the simulation results are heavily dependent on the choice of climate change scenarios, the following conclusions can be made: the future streamflow over Daecheong Dam tends to decrease during the dry period, which seriously increases competitive water use issues; and flood control issues predominate under the 2CO2-High case.
Outage Probability of Zero Forcing Precoded Scheduling System for Multiple Input Multiple Output Broadcast Transmission

In this paper, we investigate an error performance issue of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast system with zero-forcing (ZF) precoder. We propose a ZF-precoded scheduling system for MIMO broadcast transmission which selects a user set with the maximum effective signal to noise ratio (SNR) through feedback information. The tight closed-form expression of the proposed scheduling system for outage probability is derived. We also present asymptotic analysis to quantify diversity order and SNR gain. This analysis results show that the proposed scheduling system provides error performance improvement by diversity order gain, which comes from multi-user diversity (MUD) over the conventional ZF-precoding system.
Effect of repeated freeze-thaw cycles on urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio

Abstract Background: Urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) is widely used for diagnosis of chronic kidney disease in population investigation surveys. It is recommended that urinary albumin should be measured as soon as possible after urine is collected. It is not clear whether freezing and thawing affect the value of UACR and it is very inconvenient to measure UACR quickly in a population survey. The current study tries to determine the effect of repeated freezing and thawing on UACR to explore the possibility of freezing urine samples. Methods: Fifty-three urine samples with abnormal urinary albumin (ranging from 22.9mg/L to 891.9mg/L) were selected. The albumin and creatinine were measured before freezing, then all sample were stored at −30°C. After being thawed at room temperature, the albumin and creatinine concentrations were measured again. The samples were frozen and thawed for five times, and albumin and creatinine were measured after each thawing. The measurements of albumin, creatinine, and UACR after each thawing were calculated and compared with its initial values using multiple comparisons of one-way ANOVA. Results: Compared with its initial value, urine albumin, creatinine and UACR all did not show any significant differences (p > 0.05). Conclusions: It is feasible to freeze urine samples for future measurement of UACR. Urine samples can be safely frozen and thawed at least five times.
Promoting International Humanitarian Law: Strong States and the Ratification of the ICC Treaty

The establishment of the International Criminal Court presents nation-states with a fairly novel opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to international humanitarian law, or to signal their displeasure with its development and the risks it poses to their sovereignty and foreign policies. The aim of this paper is to analyze the incentive structure of states to ratify the ICC treaty—the Treaty of Rome—in order to better understand the means by which some states promote the principles of international humanitarian law. We argue that economically powerful states with a normative commitment to and foreign policy interests in the advancement of international humanitarian law in general, and the ICC in particular, are their chief advocates and through their economic influence are able to persuade other nations to ratify the Treaty of Rome. We find that states with exemplary human rights records are the most supportive of the ICC, and that the more susceptible a nation is to economic pressure from stronger supporters of the ICC, the more likely it is to ratify the treaty.
Direct Marketing Promotion and Electronic Cigarette Use Among US Adults, National Adult Tobacco Survey, 2013–2014

Introduction The use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) among US adults has increased since 2007. The objective of this study was to investigate the prevalence of direct marketing promotion of e-cigarettes and its association with e-cigarette use among US adults. Methods We used using data from the 2013–2014 National Adult Tobacco Survey (NATS) to estimate prevalence of e-cigarette promotions received by mail or email. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine the associations between e-cigarette promotions and the prevalence and frequency of e-cigarette use among US adults. Results In the 2013–2014 survey period, 7.1% of adults (about 16.0 million) reported receiving mail or email e-cigarette promotions in the previous 6 months; 3.2% received mail promotions, and 5.1% received email promotions. A higher prevalence of promotions was found among men versus women, adults aged under 65 years versus those older, current e-cigarette users, current smokers, and people with no smoking restriction rules in their homes or vehicles. In the multivariable analysis, receiving mail or email e-cigarette promotions was associated with higher odds of being current e-cigarette users (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 2.0; P < .001) than being noncurrent e-cigarette users. Receiving promotions was also associated with higher odds of using e-cigarettes some days (aOR = 1.6; P = .006) or every day (aOR = 1.7; P = .008) than using e-cigarettes rarely. Conclusion Receipt of e-cigarette direct marketing promotions was prevalent among US adults. Receiving e-cigarette promotions was associated with increased odds of both prevalence and frequency of e-cigarette use. Future longitudinal studies are needed to measure causal effects of e-cigarette promotions on e-cigarette use among adults.
DynaTracker: Target tracking in active video surveillance systems

Active video surveillance systems provide challenging research issues in the interface of computer vision, pattern recognition and control system analysis. A significant part of such systems is devoted toward active camera control for efficient target tracking. DynaTracker is a pan-tilt device based active camera system for maintaining continuous track of the moving target, while keeping the same at a pre-specified region (typically, the center) of the image. The significant contributions in this work are the use of mean-shift algorithm for visual tracking and the derivation of the error dynamics for a proportional-integral control action. The stability analysis and optimal controller gain selections are performed from the simulation studies of the derived error dynamics. Simulation predictions are also validated from the results of practical experimentations. The present implementation of DynaTracker performs on a standard Pentium IV PC at an average speed of 10 frames per second while operating on color images of 320times240 resolution
Boolean Matrix Multiplication and Transitive Closure

Arithmetic operations on matrices are applied to the problem of finding the transitive closure of a Boolean matrix. The best transitive closure algorithm known, due to Munro, is based on the matrix multiplication method of Strassen. We show that his method requires at most O(nα ? P(n)) bitwise operations, where α = log27 and P(n) bounds the number of bitwise operations needed for arithmetic modulo n+1. The problems of computing the transitive closure and of computing the "and-or" product of Boolean matrices are shown to be of the same order of difficulty. A transitive closure method based on matrix inverse is presented which can be used to derive Munro's method.
Bureaucracy, Network, or Enterprise? Comparing Models of Governance in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand

Theories of democratic government traditionally have relied on a model of organization in which officials act impartially, accept clear lines of accountability and supervision, and define their day–to–day activities through rules, procedures, and confined discretion. In the past 10 years, however, a serious challenge to this ideal has been mounted by critics and reformers who favor market, network, or “mixed–economy” models. We assess the extent to which these new models have influenced the work orientations of frontline staff using three alternative service types—corporate, market, and network—to that proposed by the traditional, procedural model of public bureaucracy. Using surveys of frontline officials in four countries where the revolution in ideas has been accompanied by a revolution in methods for organizing government services, we measure the degree to which the new models are operating as service–delivery norms. A new corporate–market hybrid (called “enterprise governance”) and a new network type have become significant models for the organization of frontline work in public programs.