Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Common Currency and Determinants of Government Bond Risk Premiums

The problem of governments’ over-indebtedness is one of the most important challenges for today’s EMU governance. As numbers suggest, the problem of extensive deficits has appeared in the EMU long before the burst of the global financial crisis. We suspect that the membership in a currency area might be partially blamed for such progression of indebtedness. This paper examines the determinants of government risk premiums in the EU Member States to answer if the risk premium assigned by the market may give currency area Member States additional incentives for profligacy. Controlling other factors, we investigate the pattern in which fiscal deficits and GDP growth affect the yield of 10-year-maturity government bonds in the euro area and the non-euro area EU Member States. Our results are straightforward. The market penalizes EU countries that do not belong to the euro area for bad economic performance and extensive deficits from 4 to 7 times stronger. Our estimates confirm the strong impact of the common credibility problem in the EMU but also support the key role of financial stress in determining the cost of government debt.
Reduction of Interferences to Adjacent Networks by Combined Lattice Structures and Shrub Barriers - Experimental Work done at 5.8 GHz

The increasing number of wireless LANs using the same spectrum allocation could induce multiple interferences and it also could force the active LANs to continuously retransmit data to solve this problem, overloading the spectrum bands as well as collapsing their own transmission capacity. This upcoming problem can be mitigated by using different techniques, being site shielding one of them. If radio systems could be safeguarded against radiation from transmitter out of the specific network, the frequency reuse is improved and, as a consequence, the number of WLANs sharing the same area may increase maintaining the required quality standards. The proposal of this paper is the use of combined barriers constructed by bushes, supported by lattice structures, in order to attenuate signals from other networks and, so that, to defend the own wireless system from outer interferences. A measurement campaign has been performed in order to test this application of vegetal elements. This campaign was focused on determining the attenuation induced in the propagation channel by several configurations that combine six specimen of Ficus elastica and six structures made of four different materials. The wind effect on the canopies is also considered. Then, the relation between the induced attenuation and the interference from adjacent networks has been computed in terms of separation between networks. The network protection against outer unauthorised access could be also improved by means of the proposed technique.
The State of the Indian Economy 2009-10

Despite signs of recovery from the global financial crisis, the GDP growth rate for the Indian economy is likely to be between 5.8 to 6.1 per cent in 2009-10, below the 6.7 per cent recorded in fiscal 2008-09. While there has been an improvement in Indian industry, particularly the manufacturing sector, the adverse impact of the fall in kharif production due to a rainfall deficiency will act as a drag on the overall growth of the economy. In the current financial year, the major policy challenges for the government will come from the rather sharp rise in inflation and deteriorating public finances. The balance of payments situation may also require policy attention despite a narrowing of the current account deficit and a considerable capital account surplus because of the appreciation of the rupee.
Searching quranic verses: A keyword based query solution using .net platform

Information retrieval from Islamic scriptures has greatly increased in recent years. With the fast moving life of today, there is too much to read and very little time to prepare, therefore a system is required that complies all related information from authentic electronic source files and organizes it into a standard format that could be quickly printed and taken along to be referred to during any occasion or gathering. This paper reviews existing Quaranic search engines and highlight limitations in the design as well as in its data mining ability. To overcome these limitations this paper presents a search engine (i-lab.org.au/truth-search-now) which produces better data retrieval from an ASP.Net and C sharp platform using SQL queries with table union and join operators.
Development of visuo-haptic transfer for object recognition in typical preschool and school-aged children

ABSTRACT Object recognition is a long and complex adaptive process and its full maturation requires combination of many different sensory experiences as well as cognitive abilities to manipulate previous experiences in order to develop new percepts and subsequently to learn from the environment. It is well recognized that the transfer of visual and haptic information facilitates object recognition in adults, but less is known about development of this ability. In this study, we explored the developmental course of object recognition capacity in children using unimodal visual information, unimodal haptic information, and visuo-haptic information transfer in children from 4 years to 10 years and 11 months of age. Participants were tested through a clinical protocol, involving visual exploration of black-and-white photographs of common objects, haptic exploration of real objects, and visuo-haptic transfer of these two types of information. Results show an age-dependent development of object recognition abilities for visual, haptic, and visuo-haptic modalities. A significant effect of time on development of unimodal and crossmodal recognition skills was found. Moreover, our data suggest that multisensory processes for common object recognition are active at 4 years of age. They facilitate recognition of common objects, and, although not fully mature, are significant in adaptive behavior from the first years of age. The study of typical development of visuo-haptic processes in childhood is a starting point for future studies regarding object recognition in impaired populations.
The Agrarian Question in Mexico

LA BATALLA EN EL MEXICO RURAL. By GUSTAVO ESTEVA. (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1980. Pp. 243.) MEXICO'S AGRICULTURAL DILEMMA. By P. LAMARTINE YATES. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1981. Pp. 291. $19.95 cloth, $8.95 paper.) ;,ES MEXICO UN PAis AGRiCOLA? UN ANALISIS GEOGRAFICO. By ATLANTIDA COLL-HURTADO. (Mexico City: Siglo Veintuino Editores, 1982. Pp. 214.) EL FIN DE LA AUTOSUFICIENCIA ALIMENTARIA. By DAVID BARKIN and BLANCA SUAREZ. (Mexico City: Centro de Ecodesarrollo and Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1982. Pp. 207.) EL COMPLEJO DE FRUTAS Y LEGUMBRES EN MEXICO: TRANSNACIONALES EN AMERICA LATINA. By RUTH RAMA and RAUL VIGORITO. (Mexico City: Instituto de Estudios Transnacionales and Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1979. Pp. 344.) TABAMEX: UN CASO DE INTEGRACION VERTICAL DE LA AGRICULTURA. By JESUS JAUREGUI, MURILO HUSCHICK, HILARIO ITRIAGO, and ANA ISABEL GARCiA TORRES. (Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones del Desarrollo Rural and Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1980. Pp. 380.) MAiz: pOLiTICA INSTITUTIONAL Y CRISIS AGRiCOLA. By CARLOS MONTANEZ and HORACIO ABURTO. (Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones del Desarrollo Rural and Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1979. Pp. 249.)
An empirical study on generic multicopter energy consumption profiles

Unmanned Micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) enjoy high popularity in various application fields. They are capable of flying autonomously, following the instructions received from a controlling ground entity. One physical limitation of all mobile robotic vehicles is the restricted energy storage capacity they are able to carry. All processes in a robotic system, prominently in-air movements, consume energy and are thereby defining the overall operation time limit. This paper presents results of an analysis of the energy consumption in various discrete movement states of a multicopter, measured for two different systems. Findings regarding a systematic relation between system and movement parameters and the energy consumption levels are discussed. Furthermore, a generic energy consumption profile model is presented and validated.
Broadband printed monopole antennas

Microstrip patch antenna is generally the most popular antenna for portable devices. These antennas however are inherently narrow band. To obtain a wide bandwidth form a microstrip patch antenna the substrate thickness has to be increased and the dielectric constant of the substrate has to be kept as low as possible [1]. Long feed probes required for antennas with thick substrates introduce undesirable inductive effects. Novel feed methods such as L probe feeds and F probe feeds have been reported in [2] and [3], respectively, to eliminate such effects. In addition, as reported in [2] and [4], slot loading of the patch antenna has been successfully employed in enhancing the bandwidth. Another broadband antenna, designed for a thin substrate, includes a rectangular slot inside a rectangular metal patch [5].
Comorbid non-alcohol substance misuse among people with schizophrenia

Background Few epidemiological studies have assessed the extent and nature of comorbid non-alcohol substance misuse in people with schizophrenia in the community in the UK. Aims To study the extent and nature of comorbid non-alcohol substance misuse in people with schizophrenia in central London. Method Subjects were identified in an epidemiological census survey of South Westminster. Standardised assessment of each subject included demographic data, ratings of mental state and movement disorder and questioning about drug and alcohol misuse. Results Individuals with schizophrenia or related psychoses were identified (n=352) and 57 (16%) reported a lifetime history of non-alcohol substance misuse. Age and gender were the main variables relevant to the extent and pattern of misuse. Self-reported non-alcohol substance misuse showed no significant relationship with a range of outcome measures. Conclusions The high proportion of subjects reporting non-alcohol substance misuse is comparable with figures from the USA. The reports of lifetime misuse most commonly referred to cannabis, psychostimulants, LSD, opiates and anticholinergics. Misuse was concentrated in those younger than 36 years and was reported more often by males.
RETRACTED ARTICLE: Chrysin-loaded PLGA-PEG nanoparticles designed for enhanced effect on the breast cancer cell line

We, the Editors and Publisher of the journal Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology, have retracted the following article: Elham Anari, Abolfazl Akbarzadeh & Nosratollah Zarghami (2016) Chrysin-loaded PLGA-PEG nanoparticles designed for enhanced effect on the breast cancer cell line. Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology, 44:6, 1410–1416, DOI: 10.3109/21691401.2015. 1029633 Since publication, a reader alerted the Publisher that Figure 3 appears to have been duplicated with Figure 5 from Mirakabad et al., 2014 (https://doi.org/10.3109/21691401.2014.955108). The reused image has been described as originating from a new study with no reference to the previous study. We contacted the corresponding author and they responded to our initial queries, but failed to respond to our follow-up queries and did not provide the original data when requested. As this error directly impacts the reported results and conclusions, the Editor and Publisher have agreed to retract the article to ensure correction of the scholarly record. The corresponding author has been informed. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted. ”
Early‐life adversity, epigenetics, and visceral hypersensitivity

Abdominal pain is associated with many gastrointestinal dysfunctions, such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), functional dyspepsia, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Visceral hypersensitivity is a key reason for development of abdominal pain that presents in these gastrointestinal disorders/diseases. The pathogenesis of visceral hypersensitivity is complex and still far from being fully understood. In animal studies, visceral hypersensitivity has been linked to several early‐life adverse (ELA) events. In humans, IBD, functional dyspepsia, and IBS can have adult onset, though the adverse events that lead to visceral hypersensitivity are largely uncharacterized. In this issue of the journal, Aguirre et al. report the interesting finding that epigenetics underlies the effects of ELA events on visceral hypersensitivity. This mini‐review examines models of ELA events leading to visceral hypersensitivity and the potential role of epigenetics, as reported by Aguirre et al. and others.
Face Hallucination Via Weighted Adaptive Sparse Regularization

Sparse representation-based face hallucination approaches proposed so far use fixed ℓ1 norm penalty to capture the sparse nature of face images, and thus hardly adapt readily to the statistical variability of underlying images. Additionally, they ignore the influence of spatial distances between the test image and training basis images on optimal reconstruction coefficients. Consequently, they cannot offer a satisfactory performance in practical face hallucination applications. In this paper, we propose a weighted adaptive sparse regularization (WASR) method to promote accuracy, stability and robustness for face hallucination reconstruction, in which a distance-inducing weighted ℓq norm penalty is imposed on the solution. With the adjustment to shrinkage parameter q , the weighted ℓq penalty function enables elastic description ability in the sparse domain, leading to more conservative sparsity in an ascending order of q . In particular, WASR with an optimal q > 1 can reasonably represent the less sparse nature of noisy images and thus remarkably boosts noise robust performance in face hallucination. Various experimental results on standard face database as well as real-world images show that our proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of both objective metrics and visual quality.
Epidemiology of White-Matter Lesions

White-matter lesions (WML) detected on MRI may reflect different pathologies, but, in older persons, are thought to be mainly of ischemic origin. WML increase in prevalence with age. Several cardiovascular risk factors and cognitive, emotional, and physical function consequences of WML have been identified. These are reviewed briefly in this report.
Robotic Versus Laparoscopic Minimally Invasive Surgery for Rectal Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Objective:The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of elective rectal resection for rectal cancer in adults by robotic surgery compared with conventional laparoscopic surgery. Summary of Background Data:Technological advantages of robotic surgery favor precise dissection in narrow spaces. However, the evidence base driving recommendations for the use of robotic surgery in rectal cancer primarily hinges on observational data. Methods:We searched MEDLINE, Embase, and CENTRAL for randomized controlled trials (until August 2016) comparing robotic surgery versus conventional laparoscopic surgery. Data on the following endpoints were evaluated: circumferential margin status, mesorectal grade, number of lymph nodes harvested, rate of conversion to open surgery, postoperative complications, and operative time. Data were summarized as relative risks (RR) or weighted mean differences (WMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). Risk of bias of studies was assessed with standard methods. Results:Five trials were eligible, including 334 robotic and 337 laparoscopic surgery cases. Meta-analysis showed that RS was associated with lower conversion rate (7.3%; 4 studies, 544 participants, RR 0.58; 95% CI 0.35–0.97, P = 0.04, I2 = 0%) and longer operating time (MD 38.43 minutes, 95% CI 31.84–45.01: P < 0.00001) compared with laparoscopic surgery. Perioperative mortality, rate of circumferential margin involvement (2 studies, 489 participants, RR 0.82, 95% CI 0.39–1.73), and lymph nodes collected (mean 17.4 Lymph Nodes; 5 trials, 674 patients, MD −0.35, 95% CI −1.83 to 1.12) were similar. The quality of the evidence was moderate for most outcomes. Conclusion:Evidence of moderate quality supports that robotic surgery for rectal cancer produces similar perioperative outcomes of oncologic procedure adequacy to conventional laparoscopic surgery. Robotic surgery portraits lower rate of conversion to open surgery, while operating time is significantly longer than by laparoscopic approach.
Crop Nutrient Needs Potentially Supplied by Livestock in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana

Midwestern agriculture is moving toward large, specialized production units where harvested crops are shipped off the farm and livestock are raised on purchased feed. Many people are concerned that increased manure concentration from specialized livestock units poses an unacceptable environmental risk. The unequal distribution of livestock production across counties in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana suggests that a disaggregated analysis of crop nutrient use and manure nutrient supply is needed to estimate the risk of excess nutrient losses to the environment. The authors analyze nutrient use and supply at the county level.
Calcium Homeostasis and Sensitization in Pulmonary Arterial Smooth Muscle

The pulmonary circulation is a low‐pressure, low‐resistance vascular bed with little to no resting tone under normal conditions. An increase in the [Ca2+]i in PASMCs is an important determinant of contraction, migration, and proliferation. Both Ca2+ influx through plasma membrane Ca2+ channels and Ca2+ release from the SR contribute to a rise in [Ca2+]i. Additionally important in the pulmonary circulation are several kinase‐mediated signaling pathways that act to increase the sensitivity of the contractile apparatus to [Ca2+]i. Similarly, cytoskeletal processes resulting in dynamic remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton can further contribute to contractility in the pulmonary circulation. In addition to endocrine, paracrine, and autocrine factors, alveolar hypoxia is an important stimulus for pulmonary vasoconstriction. However, prolonged hypoxia is a critical pathological stimulus associated with the development of pulmonary hypertension and cor pulmonale. In this review, we will discuss recent advances in our understanding of how Ca2+ homeostasis and sensitization regulate PASMC contractility under both physiological and pathophysiological conditions.
Background and initial case studies into the effects of prospective memory training.

Two preliminary case studies are presented introducing the technique of Prospective Memory Training (PMT) as a potential means to manage severe memory impairments. PMT involves repetitive administration of prospective memory tasks in which the patient is asked to initiate a specific action at a future designated time. Background information relevant to the concept of prospective memory is presented. Possible theoretical foundations for PMT are also discussed.
Measurement properties of the Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale among individuals with stroke

Purpose: To examine the reliability and validity of the Activities-specific Balance Confidence (ABC) Scale among individuals with stroke. Method: Descriptive measurement study using a 4-week test – retest design. Data were collected at a tertiary rehabilitation centre from a community-dwelling sample of ambulatory older adults who sustained one stroke at least 1 year prior to the study. During the first measurement session, the total sample (n = 77) completed the ABC as well as the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) and gait speed. The reliability sample (n = 24), a subset of the larger data set, completed the ABC again 4 weeks later. Results: Internal consistency of the ABC was 0.94 and test – retest reliability was ICC = 0.85 (95% CI, 0.68, 0.93). A moderate significant positive, linear correlation with both the BBS (ρ = 0.36, P < 0.001) and gait speed (ρ = 0.48, P < 0.001) was observed. A factor analysis using principal component analysis indicated that the ABC measures two components of balance self-efficacy (component 1 = perceived low-risk activities; component 2 = perceived high-risk activities). Conclusions: The ABC has acceptable measurement properties as demonstrated in this sample of individuals with stroke. This study provides further support for the use of the scale.
Multidimensional analysis of suction feeding performance in fishes: fluid speed, acceleration, strike accuracy and the ingested volume of water

SUMMARY Suction feeding fish draw prey into the mouth using a flow field that they generate external to the head. In this paper we present a multidimensional perspective on suction feeding performance that we illustrate in a comparative analysis of suction feeding ability in two members of Centrarchidae, the largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) and bluegill sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus). We present the first direct measurements of maximum fluid speed capacity, and we use this to calculate local fluid acceleration and volumetric flow rate. We also calculated the ingested volume and a novel metric of strike accuracy. In addition, we quantified for each species the effects of gape magnitude, time to peak gape, and swimming speed on features of the ingested volume of water. Digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) and high-speed video were used to measure the flow in front of the mouths of three fish from each species in conjunction with a vertical laser sheet positioned on the mid-sagittal plane of the fish. From this we quantified the maximum fluid speed (in the earthbound and fish's frame of reference), acceleration and ingested volume. Our method for determining strike accuracy involved quantifying the location of the prey relative to the center of the parcel of ingested water. Bluegill sunfish generated higher fluid speeds in the earthbound frame of reference, accelerated the fluid faster, and were more accurate than largemouth bass. However, largemouth bass ingested a larger volume of water and generated a higher volumetric flow rate than bluegill sunfish. In addition, because largemouth bass swam faster during prey capture, they generated higher fluid speeds in the fish's frame of reference. Thus, while bluegill can exert higher drag forces on stationary prey items, largemouth bass more quickly close the distance between themselves and prey. The ingested volume and volumetric flow rate significantly increased as gape increased for both species, while time to peak gape had little effect on the volume. However, peak gape distance did not affect the maximum fluid speed entering the mouth for either species. We suggest that species that generate high fluid speeds in the earthbound frame of reference will commonly exhibit small mouths and a high capacity to deliver force to buccal expansion, while species that ingest a large volume of water and generate high volumetric flow rates will have larger buccal cavities and cranial expansion linkage systems that favor displacement over force delivery.