Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
God’s Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights

In this timely and compelling account of the contribution to immigrant rights made by religious activists in post-1965 and post-9/11 America, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo provides a comprehensive close-up view of how Muslim, Christian, and Jewish groups are working to counter xenophobia. Against the hysteria prevalent in today's media, in which immigrants are often painted as a drain on the public coffers, inherently unassimilable, or an outright threat to national security, Hondagneu-Sotelo finds the intersection between migration and religion and calls attention to quieter voices, those dedicated to securing the human dignity of newcomers.Based on years of fieldwork conducted in California's major centers as well as in Chicago, this book considers Muslim Americans defending their civil liberties after 9/11, Christian activists responding to death and violence at the U.S-Mexico border, and Christian and Jewish clergy defending the labor rights of Latino immigrants. At a time when much attention has been given to religious fundamentalism and its capacity to incite violent conflict, "God's Heart Has No Borders" revises our understanding of the role of religion in social movements and demonstrates the nonviolent power of religious groups to address social injustices.
Training and evaluation corpora for the extraction of causal relationships encoded in biological expression language (BEL)

Success in extracting biological relationships is mainly dependent on the complexity of the task as well as the availability of high-quality training data. Here, we describe the new corpora in the systems biology modeling language BEL for training and testing biological relationship extraction systems that we prepared for the BioCreative V BEL track. BEL was designed to capture relationships not only between proteins or chemicals, but also complex events such as biological processes or disease states. A BEL nanopub is the smallest unit of information and represents a biological relationship with its provenance. In BEL relationships (called BEL statements), the entities are normalized to defined namespaces mainly derived from public repositories, such as sequence databases, MeSH or publicly available ontologies. In the BEL nanopubs, the BEL statements are associated with citation information and supportive evidence such as a text excerpt. To enable the training of extraction tools, we prepared BEL resources and made them available to the community. We selected a subset of these resources focusing on a reduced set of namespaces, namely, human and mouse genes, ChEBI chemicals, MeSH diseases and GO biological processes, as well as relationship types ‘increases’ and ‘decreases’. The published training corpus contains 11 000 BEL statements from over 6000 supportive text excerpts. For method evaluation, we selected and re-annotated two smaller subcorpora containing 100 text excerpts. For this re-annotation, the inter-annotator agreement was measured by the BEL track evaluation environment and resulted in a maximal F-score of 91.18% for full statement agreement. In addition, for a set of 100 BEL statements, we do not only provide the gold standard expert annotations, but also text excerpts pre-selected by two automated systems. Those text excerpts were evaluated and manually annotated as true or false supportive in the course of the BioCreative V BEL track task. Database URL: http://wiki.openbel. org/display/BIOC/Datasets
A Complex-Valued Firing-Rate Model That Approximates the Dynamics of Spiking Networks

Firing-rate models provide an attractive approach for studying large neural networks because they can be simulated rapidly and are amenable to mathematical analysis. Traditional firing-rate models assume a simple form in which the dynamics are governed by a single time constant. These models fail to replicate certain dynamic features of populations of spiking neurons, especially those involving synchronization. We present a complex-valued firing-rate model derived from an eigenfunction expansion of the Fokker-Planck equation and apply it to the linear, quadratic and exponential integrate-and-fire models. Despite being almost as simple as a traditional firing-rate description, this model can reproduce firing-rate dynamics due to partial synchronization of the action potentials in a spiking model, and it successfully predicts the transition to spike synchronization in networks of coupled excitatory and inhibitory neurons.
Extracting patterns from large movement data sets using hybrid spatio-temporal filtering: a case study of geovisual analytics in support of fisheries enforcement activities

The ubiquitous nature of location tracking technologies has resulted in an increase in movement data being collected. These data are used in many contexts, such as understanding animal migration, aiding in fisheries enforcement, or managing fleets of taxicabs. Such large volumes of data call for more efficient data visualization and analysis methods. This research provides a general approach to the analysis of movement data, named Hybrid Spatio-temporal Filtering (HSF), which allows analysts to filter data based on characteristics of movement within a geovisual analytics environment. Filtering signatures are defined by combining movement path complexity (fractal dimension) and velocity, to extract behavioural patterns from data sets. An evaluation within a fisheries enforcement case study (using VMS data), and comparison to other approaches, confirmed the approach is useful, easy to use, and superior to some other approaches. This research demonstrates the value of signature-building filtering approaches for large movement data sets.
Cost-effectiveness of glaucoma management with monotherapy medications in Egypt

Glaucoma is a serious chronic ophthalmic disease since it causes irreversible visual disability if untreated can lead to blindness. Treatment options include medications (classified into five major classes of drugs which are muscarinic cholinergic agonists, alpha-2 adrenergic agonists, beta-1 adrenergic antagonists, prostaglandins [PGs], and carbonic anhydrase inhibitors); use of laser therapy or conventional surgery. Pharmacoeconomic analysis helps in choosing among this variety of treatments. There is a great need for such analysis in Egypt since undergoing of it in different countries or societies may produce different results. This work aimed to compare cost-effectiveness of bimatoprost 0.03% once daily versus brimonidine 0.2% twice daily and timolol 0.5% twice daily as monotherapy treatment in Egyptian patients with open-angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension. Clinical data revealed that all treatments decreased intraocular pressure (IOP) significantly but bimatoprost 0.03% showed the highest efficacy (27.7% decrease in IOP from baseline), while timolol 0.5% reduced IOP by 22.5% then brimonidine 0.2% which decreased IOP by 20.8%. From the cost-effectiveness view, it would be preferable to initiate treatment with timolol in case of absence of any contraindications. PG analog can be used as add-on therapy in low responder patients or as alternative treatment in case of presence of contraindication to use of beta blockers.
DEVELOPING AN AUTONOMOUS ON-ORBIT IMPEDANCE-BASED SHM SYSTEM FOR THERMAL PROTECTION SYSTEMS

Deployment of structural health monitoring systems for permanent damage detection is limited by the availability of sensor technology. The development of a DSP based prototype is the focus for initial efforts in realizing a fully self-contained active sensor system utilizing impedance-based structural health monitoring. The active sensing system interrogates a structure utilizing a self-sensing actuator and the low cost impedance method, and all the data processing, storage, and analysis is performed at the sensor location. A wireless transmitter is used to communicate the current status of the structure. With this new low cost, field deployable impedance analyzer, reliance on traditional expensive, bulky, and power consuming impedance analyzers is no longer necessary. Experimental validation of the prototype is performed on a representative structure and compared to traditional methods of damage detection.
LORETO: a tool for reducing state explosion in verification of LOTOS programs

LOTOS is a formal specification language for concurrent and distributed systems. Basic LOTOS is the version of LOTOS without value‐passing. A widely used approach to the verification of temporal properties is model checking. Often, in this approach the formal specification is translated into a labeled transition system on which formulae expressing properties are checked. A problem with this verification technique is state explosion: concurrent systems are often represented by automata with a prohibitive number of states. In this paper we show how, given a set ρ of actions, it is possible to automatically obtain for a Basic LOTOS program a reduced transition system to which only the arcs labeled by actions in ρ belong. The set ρ of actions plays a fundamental role in conjunction with a temporal logic defined by the authors in a previous paper: selective mu‐calculus. The reduced system with respect to ρ preserves the truth value of all selective mu‐calculus formulae with actions from the set ρ. We act at both syntactic and semantic levels. From a syntactic point of view, we define a set of transformation rules obtaining a smaller program. On the semantic side, we define a non‐standard semantics which dynamically reduces the transition system during generation. We present a tool implementing both the syntactic and the semantic reduction. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Subtyping and protection in persistent programming languages

Information hiding or encapsulation is a protection mechanism which prevents users from directly accessing certain fields of an object. In many cases particularly in persistent systems, it may be desirable to provide varying degrees of encapsulation of an object. The paper presents the mechanisms for controlling the encapsulation of objects in the Mozzie programming language. Encapsulation is modelled using the language's structural subtyping mechanism and may be enforced by use of the language's capability mechanism. Capabilities allow for the dynamic control of encapsulation, including the ability to increase or decrease the amount of encapsulation enforced via a certain object reference.
On the E10/Massive IIA Correspondence

In this paper we investigate in detail the correspondence between E10 and Romans’ massive deformation of type IIA supergravity. We analyse the dynamics of a non-linear sigma model for a spinning particle on the coset space E10/K(E10) and show that it reproduces the dynamics of the bosonic as well as the fermionic sector of the massive IIA theory, within the standard truncation. The mass deformation parameter corresponds to a generator of E10 outside the realm of the generators entering the usual D = 11 analysis, and is naturally included without any deformation of the coset model for E10/K(E10). Our analysis thus provides a dynamical unification of the massless and massive versions of type IIA supergravity inside E10. We discuss a number of additional and general features of relevance in the analysis of any deformed supergravity in the correspondence to Kac-Moody algebras, including recently studied deformations where the trombone symmetry is gauged. Also at Centro de Estudios Cient́ıficos (CECS), Casilla 1469, Valdivia, Chile Also at Fundamental Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96, Göteborg, Sweden
Automatic Line Segmentation and Ground-Truth Alignment of Handwritten Documents

In this paper, we present a method for the automatic segmentation and transcript alignment of documents, for which we only have the transcript at the document level. We consider several line segmentation hypotheses, and recognition hypotheses for each segmented line. The recognition is highly constrained with the document transcript. We formalize the problem in a weighted finite-state transducer framework. We evaluate how the constraints help achieve a reasonable result. In particular, we assess the performance of the system both in terms of segmentation quality and transcript mapping. The main contribution of this paper is that we jointly find the best segmentation and transcript mapping that allow to align the image with the whole ground-truth text. The evaluation is carried out on fully annotated public databases. Furthermore, we retrieved training material with this system for the Maurdor evaluation, where the data was only annotated at the paragraph level. With the automatically segmented and annotated lines, we record a relative improvement in Word Error Rate of 35.6%.
On the Attacks over the Elliptic Curve-Based Cryptosystems

The aim of this paper is to a present survey of attacks on the elliptic curve cryptosystems. We propose a taxonomy for these attacks and a brief presentation for each type of attack and its complexity. The attacks' complexity demonstrates the high security level of the elliptic curve-based cryptosystems. Also, there are presented the most known elliptic curves-based cryptographic protocols: the Elliptic Curves-based Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange, ElGamal Public Key Cryptosystem and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm.
Antimicrobial susceptibility among organisms from the Asia/Pacific Rim, Europe and Latin and North America collected as part of TEST and the in vitro activity of tigecycline.

OBJECTIVES To describe antimicrobial susceptibility among bacterial isolates associated with hospital infections collected from 266 centres in Asia/Pacific Rim (n = 1,947), North America (n = 24,283), Latin America (n = 1,957) and Europe (n = 8,796). METHODS Isolates were collected from blood, respiratory tract, urine, skin, wound, body fluids and other defined sources between January 2004 and August 2006. Only one isolate per patient was accepted. In vitro MICs for the isolates were determined according to the CLSI (formerly NCCLS) guidelines. RESULTS Key organisms collected were Acinetobacter baumannii (n = 2,902), Enterobacter spp. (n = 5,731), Escherichia coli (n = 6,504), Klebsiella pneumoniae (n = 4,916), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (n = 5,128), Serratia marcescens (n = 2,313), Enterococcus faecalis (n = 2,701), Enterococcus faecium (n = 1,035) and Staphylococcus aureus (n = 5,753). Rates of methicillin resistance among S. aureus and of vancomycin resistance among enterococci were highest in North America (2,016/3,809, 52.9% and 571/2,544, 22.4%, respectively) and lowest in Europe (337/1,340, 25.1% and 36/916, 3.9%, respectively). Tigecycline was the only antimicrobial to maintain activity against all Gram-positive isolates (MIC(90) values of <or=0.25 mg/L). Overall, tigecycline and imipenem were the most active (>93% susceptibility in all regions) antimicrobials against the Gram-negative species, except for A. baumannii and P. aeruginosa. Piperacillin/tazobactam and amikacin were the most active against P. aeruginosa. Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase producers among K. pneumoniae occurred most frequently in Latin America (124/282, 44.0%). CONCLUSIONS Tigecycline is a novel broad-spectrum antimicrobial that is active against the common organisms associated with infections.
L’evoluzione della rendicontazione sociale nelle a.n.p.: teoria e prassi

Il variegato mondo dell’economia non profit sembra oggi assumere un posto di primo piano. I soggetti che ne fanno parte affrontano quei bisogni sociali che non sono piu o non possono proprio essere soddisfatti ne dall’impresa ne dal settore pubblico. Al di la di una funzione di mera supplenza, il ruolo del cosiddetto “Terzo Settore” e indubbiamente piu attivo, configurante un nuovo modo di essere dello Stato Sociale, che si basa sul principio della sussidiarieta, in conseguenza del verificarsi di una crisi del welfare. La spinta per il superamento della stessa e venuta dal basso, attraverso organizzazioni i cui fini primari esulano dalla sfera dell’arricchimento economico personale per elevarsi a valori solidaristici di carattere universale. Esse assumono tipicamente una funzione intermediaria finalizzata alla produzione di utilita sociale, raccogliendo risorse fra soggetti interessati alla promozione di tale finalita, per mezzo di transazioni che si pongono, in tutto o in parte, al di fuori del mercato. Queste risorse poi vengono ridistribuite ad un insieme di beneficiari titolari del bisogno al quale l’a.n. p. si propone di rispondere.Il modello non profit fonda la sua esistenza su rapporti di tipo fiduciario che richiedono, imprescindibilmente, un’adeguata definizione dei livelli di accountability1, nel senso della ricerca di strumenti informativi che permettano la comunicazione del grado di perseguimento della propria mission, in relazione al rispetto delle condizioni di vincolo alla gestione. Scopo del presente lavoro si propone, appunto, di analizzare, dopo un doveroso excursus sui modelli di rendicontazione sociale, un caso di bilancio sociale di una particolare a.n. p.: AVSI. Come premessa, c’e da dire che il suo bilancio sociale utilizza come riferimenti metodologici le “Sustainability Reporting Guidelines” elaborate dalla Global Reporting Initiative ed i “Principi di redazione del bilancio sociale” elaborati dal gruppo di studio per il bilancio sociale (GBS). Il caso risulta particolarmente interessante, inoltre, perche AVSI ha ottenuto nel 2004 l’Oscar sul bilancio sociale per la categoria non profit.
Theme: Local Government: Isomorphism Without Legitimacy? The Case of the Business Excellence Model in Local Government

The White Paper ‘Modern Local Government: In Touch with the People’ suggested the Business Excellence Model as a way for local authorities to demonstrate Best Value in service delivery. The author uses the concept of isomorphism, developed within institutional theory, to explain the progress of the Model in local government. She draws out some important lessons: first, central government needs to be beware of its ability to create coercive isomorphic forces, which can lead to unintended consequences. Second, local authorities should embark on new initiatives only if they are convinced of a practical benefit to the organization. Alternatively, where conferment of legitimacy is the desired result, they should wait until the bandwagon is well and truly rolling towards a named destination before they join it.
A Collaborative Approach for Spam Detection

Electronic mail is nowadays one of the most important Internet networking services. However, there are still many challenges that should be faced in order to provide a better e-mail service quality, such as the growing dissemination of unsolicited e-mail (spam) over the Internet. This work aims to foster new research efforts giving ground to the development of novel collaborative approaches to deal with spam proliferation. Using the proposed system, which is able to complement other anti-spam solutions, end-users are allowed to share and combine spam filters in a flexible way, increasing the accuracy and resilience levels of anti-spam techniques.
The Pine River Statement: Human Health Consequences of DDT Use

Objectives Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) was used worldwide until the 1970s, when concerns about its toxic effects, its environmental persistence, and its concentration in the food supply led to use restrictions and prohibitions. In 2001, more than 100 countries signed the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), committing to eliminate the use of 12 POPs of greatest concern. However, DDT use was allowed for disease vector control. In 2006, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Agency for International Development endorsed indoor DDT spraying to control malaria. To better inform current policy, we reviewed epidemiologic studies published from 2003 to 2008 that investigated the human health consequences of DDT and/or DDE (dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene) exposure. Data sources and extraction We conducted a PubMed search in October 2008 and retrieved 494 studies. Data synthesis Use restrictions have been successful in lowering human exposure to DDT, but blood concentrations of DDT and DDE are high in countries where DDT is currently being used or was more recently restricted. The recent literature shows a growing body of evidence that exposure to DDT and its breakdown product DDE may be associated with adverse health outcomes such as breast cancer, diabetes, decreased semen quality, spontaneous abortion, and impaired neurodevelopment in children. Conclusions Although we provide evidence to suggest that DDT and DDE may pose a risk to human health, we also highlight the lack of knowledge about human exposure and health effects in communities where DDT is currently being sprayed for malaria control. We recommend research to address this gap and to develop safe and effective alternatives to DDT.
Capital Structure and Interaction Among Firms in Output Markets - Theory and Evidence

I develop a simple model that examines the relations between the extent of competitive interaction among firms in output markets, their capital structures, and the aggressiveness of their operating strategies. A firm's optimal leverage is related to the degree to which its operating strategy affects its rivals' value functions and resulting optimal output market choices. This relation is positive, regardless of whether the competition in output markets is in strategic substitutes or in strategic complements. I test the model's prediction using two proxies for the extent of competitive interaction among firms. The empirical evidence provides support for the model.
An extension of the standard polynomial-time primal-dual path-following algorithm to the weighted determinant maximization problem with semidefinite constraints

The problem of maximizing the sum of linear functional and several weighted logarithmic determinant (logdet) functions under semidefinite constraints is a generalization of the semidefinite programming (SDP) and has a number of applications in statistics and datamining, and other areas of informatics and mathematical sciences. In this paper, we extend the framework of standard primal-dual path-following algorithms for SDP to this problem. Employing this framework, we show that the longstep path-following algorithm analogous to the one in SDP has O(N log(1/ε) + N) iteration-complexity to reduce the duality gap by a factor of ε, where N = ∑ Ni, where Ni is the size of the i-th positive semidefinite matrix block which is assumed to be an Ni × Ni matrix.
VENDOR TRUST INFLUENCING CRM STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

There is a significant body of evidence that many information systems (IS) implementation projects end in success. Despite numerous IS implementation project successes, there has also been a plethora of failures. This paper examines the impact of vendor trust on customer relationship management (CRM) implementation process. Grounded in available literature on vendor trust and IS implementation theory, a conceptual model was composed to examine the impact of vendor trust on peer influence, top management support, and user participation, which, in return, may impact the CRM implementation performance. Data were collected from interviews of Women Business Centers (WBCs) and Small Business Development Center (SBDC) consultants in North Dakota to test the hypotheses. The results show that vendor trust has a positive impact on peer influence and top management, which positively impact the CRM implementation success. However, the impact of vendor trust on user participation is different, as it has a negative impact on the CRM implementation success. This is due to the nature of CRM system which involves not only internal user participation, but also external user participation. The implications of the results for the study are discussed.