Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Long-Run Performance of Born Globals in Computing: The Role of Digital Platforms

Using data on all Swedish computing startups founded 2007–2015, we find a systematic positive relationship between the propensity of a computing firm to reach customers globally via digital platforms and its long-run employment growth relative to domestic-oriented computer firms. We also find positive, yet weaker, evidence that born globals in computing grow faster in terms of sales or value added. Our analysis also indicates that very few computing firms fit the profile of born globals; only 15% of the 250 largest computing employers in 2015 were born globals. Moreover, only 1.5% of computing startups founded 2007–2015 were computer game publishers, which arguably have the highest propensity to be born global. Thus, although we find positive born global effects at the firm level, policymakers must be aware that encouraging more born globals need not necessarily lead to large benefits for the overall economy.
Pt Cluster Modified h-BN for Gas Sensing and Adsorption of Dissolved Gases in Transformer Oil: A Density Functional Theory Study

Hexagonal-Boron nitride nanotubes (h-BN) decorated with transition metals have been widely studied due to their enhanced physicochemical properties. In this paper, Pt cluster-modified h-BN is proposed as a sensitive material for a novel gas sensor for the online malfunction monitoring of oil-immersed transformers. The inner oil is ultimately decomposed to various gases during the long-term use of oil-immersed transformers. Exposure to excessively high temperatures produces the alkanes CH4 and C2H6, whereas different degrees of discharge generate H2 and C2H2. Therefore, the identification of H2, CH4, and C2H2 gas efficiently measures the quality of transformers. Based on the density functional theory, the most stable h-BN doped with 1–4 Pt atoms is employed to simulate its adsorption performance and response behavior to these typical gases. The adsorption energy, charge transfer, total density of states, projected density of states, and orbital theory of these adsorption systems are analyzed and the results show high consistency. The adsorption ability for these decomposition components are ordered as follows: C2H2 > H2 > CH4. Pt cluster-modified h-BN shows good sensitivity to C2H2, H2, with decreasing conductivity in each system, but is insensitive to CH4 due to its weak physical sorption. The conductivity change of Ptn-h-BN is considerably larger upon H2 than that upon C2H2, but is negligible upon CH4. Our calculations suggest that Pt cluster modified h-BN can be employed in transformers to estimate their operation status.
Histopathology in the fish Channa punctatus, Heteropneustes fossilis and Anabas testudineus exposed to diazinon

Pesticides deteriorate the normal function of vital organs of fishes and in case of high concentrations, it totally damaged those organs. Histological changes in gills, liver, heart, intestine and kidney of three common fish species (Channa punctatus, Heteropneustes fossilis and Anabas testudineus) have been studies to observe the effect of Diazinon as it has become a very common pollutant in the aquatic environment. Six different concentrations (2.5. 5.0, 10.0, 15.0, 20.0 and 25.0 mg/l) of pesticide had been applied in the test aquaria (Chari) to experience the major alterations of the vital organs of the three treated species of fish. Lower concentrations (2.5 to 10.0 mg/l) had no remarkable effect on the treated organs, whereas, Curley gill lamellae, irregular blood vessels in the liver, muscle fiber destruction in heart, blended Submucosa and glomerular necrosis were found in C. punctatus from 15.0 to 25.0 mg/l doses. Lamellar fusion, sinusoid vacuoles, fused villi and hemorrhagic renal tubules were observed in H. fossilis and bent in secondary lamellae, irregular blood vessels in liver, fragmented muscle fiber in heart, ruptured villi as well as necrotic glomerular were noticed in A. testudineus in the same doses of Diazinon. The present study demonstrated that pesticide (Diazinon) disrupted the normal function of the sensible organs of fishes by damaging them in different ways.
Analysis of Protein–Receptor Interactions on an Example of Leptin–Leptin Receptor Interaction Using the Resonant Recognition Model

Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat may have a negative effect on health and lifestyle, and it is becoming an increasing problem within modern society. Leptin is the key protein that regulates body energy balance by inhibiting hunger, and it could potentially be used in treatment of obesity and overweight. Here, we applied our own Resonant Recognition Model, which is capable of analyzing the selectivity of any protein–receptor interaction on an example of leptin–leptin receptor. We have identified a specific characteristic parameter for leptin activity through the leptin receptor, and this parameter could be used in development of new treatments for obesity.
The effect of rabbit-warren ripping on the consumption of native fauna by foxes in the arid zone of New South Wales

The diet of foxes in an arid zone site in western New South Wales was analysed from the contents of scats collected every three months from October 1986 to July 1989. Fox diet comprised 27% invertebrates, 25% carrion, 17% rabbits, 16.5% reptiles, 10% dasyurids and 4.5% ground-dwelling birds after the digestibility of each category had been accounted for. There was no clear seasonal pattern in dietary composition although fewer rabbits were ingested in autumn and winter. Foxes ate rabbits in direct proportion to their availability while the ingestion of ground-dwelling birds and dasyurids was either independent of, or inversely proportional to, their abundance. There were no significant relationships between fox and prey densities. The impact of a decrease in rabbit density on the diet and abundance of foxes was investigated by ripping all rabbit warrens (n = 37) in one site and leaving all warrens (n = 38) undisturbed in an untreated site. Fox density did not change significantly in either site. Foxes significantly increased their ingestion of ground-dwelling birds, dasyurids and invertebrates while decreasing their ingestion of rabbits in the ripped site. The diet of foxes in the untreated site did not change significantly. The ability of foxes to switch their prey preferences while maintaining their density could be highly detrimental for secondary prey species and may be the mechanism by which foxes have contributed to the declines of native fauna in the arid zone.
Effect of Amphotericin B and Micafungin Combination on Survival, Histopathology, and Fungal Burden in Experimental Aspergillosis in the p47 / Mouse Model of Chronic Granulomatous Disease

Effect of Amphotericin B and Micafungin Combination on Survival, Histopathology, and Fungal Burden in Experimental Aspergillosis in the p47 / Mouse Model of Chronic Granulomatous Disease Carly G. Dennis, William R. Greco, Yseult Brun, Richard Youn, Harry K. Slocum, Ralph J. Bernacki, Russell Lewis, Nathan Wiederhold, Steven M. Holland, Ruta Petraitiene, Thomas J. Walsh, and Brahm H. Segal* Departments of Medicine, Biostatistics, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and Immunology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York; University of Houston College of Pharmacy, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas; and Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Immunocompromised Host Section, Pediatric Oncology Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
Hyperspectral Image Classification Based on Spectral and Spatial Information Using Multi-Scale ResNet

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) contains abundant spectrums as well as spatial information, providing a great basis for classification in the field of remote sensing. In this paper, to make full use of HSI information, we combined spectral and spatial information into a two-dimension image in a particular order by extracting a data cube and unfolding it. Prior to the step of combining, principle component analysis (PCA) is utilized to decrease the dimensions of HSI so as to reduce computational cost. Moreover, the classification block used during the experiment is a convolutional neural network (CNN). Instead of using traditionally fixed-size kernels in CNN, we leverage a multi-scale kernel in the first convolutional layer so that it can scale to the receptive field. To attain higher classification accuracy with deeper layers, residual blocks are also applied to the network. Extensive experiments on the datasets from Pavia University and Salinas demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves the accuracy in HSI classification.
A Keyless Approach to Image Encryption Using SDS Algorithm

Maintaining the secrecy and confidentiality of images is a vibrant area of research, with two different approaches being followed, the first being encrypting the images through encryption algorithms using keys, the other approach involves dividing the image into random shares to maintain the images secrecy. Unfortunately heavy computation cost and key management limit the employment of the first approach and the poor quality of the recovered image from the random shares limit the applications of the second approach. In this paper we propose a novel approach without the use of encryption keys. The approach employs Sieving, Division and Shuffling to generate random shares such that with minimal computation, the original secret image can be recovered from the random shares without any loss
Thai-Lao Machine Translation based on Phoneme Transfer 音素トランスファータイ・ラス機械翻訳

タイ語とラス語では文法、単語、文字コード体系化のスキームも非常に似ている。 そのた め、国境に住んでいる人たちはお互いの言葉が分る。 新聞、ラジオ、テレビおよびインタ ーネットの普及とともにタイの番組、情報がラス側で流通している。 タイ語のままで良さ そうだがやはり正確なラス語で流通することが望ましい。 一方、ラス語処理の研究そして 応用ソフトの開発するためにはラス語のコーパスは欠かせないもの。 ラス語コーパスの開 発、辞書も同様、ラス語より多く存在しているタイ語コーパスから変換してできればラス 語の資源として使えるであろう。 本研究では、基礎として音節単位での変換ルールを適応 する。 まずは、Grapheme to phoneme の段階でタイ語の入力を PGLR によって音素に変換す る。 PGLR の特徴を生かして読みのあいまい性が状態遷移の確立の値で解消される。 その後、 音素ごとの変換は一対一でラス語の音節を合成することができる。 いくつかの注意点があ るのだが、大抵の場合では、音節の合成ルールによって各音素に使用する文字が確定でき る。 以上のルール・ベースで変換できない単語か表現には、予め辞書に登録しておけばタ イ・ラス機械翻訳の実現ができる。 その結果、タイ語とラス語の対だけではなく、タイ語 と他の言語対の資源を基にしてラス語の言語資源を増設することができる。
DESIGN OF TEM CELL TO TEST THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SENSOR

Partial discharge in transformer insulation can be detected by the product produced during the PD event. Electromagnetic signal is one kind of the product that produces by the PD event. By using appropriate sensor, the electromagnetic signal can be captured thus detect the PD event in the transformer insulation. The method capturing the electromagnetic signals to detect PD event in transformer has advantage compare to other PD detection methods. The advantage mainly due the electromagnetic signal prone to the disturbance noise around the transformer. To be able to capture the electromagnetic signals, a sensor with capability to detect the electromagnetic signals is needed. The capability of a sensor can be tested using a TEM cell. In this paper discussed the design of TEM cell (Transverse Electromagnetic cell) which able to test a sensor such the sensor which use to detect the PD event in transformer. The TEM cell is an open cell type and construct using alumina as the material. The TEM cell has length of 1200 mm and height 105 mm. The TEM cell shown has a good capability to test the sensor which designed to detect the PD in transformer.
Political identities

Political identities are crucial for understanding electoral behavior: individuals who identify with a political party behave as loyal supporters who would hardly vote for competitors old or new. Although this is an obvious observation, it has received little attention in the study of populism—a set of ideas that not only portrays established political parties as corrupt and self-serving entities but also depicts “the people” as a homogenous and virtuous community that should run the government. In this contribution, we develop a novel theory that claims that populism can thrive only when an antiestablishment political identity exists. This identity denotes an emotional and rational repulsion toward all established political parties in a given country. We test our theory by analyzing original survey data from contemporary Chile. The empirical analysis reveals not only that a limited segment of the electorate holds an antiestablishment political identity coalesced by populism but also that there is a large segment of apartisans adverse to populism. These empirical findings have important consequences for the study of populism, particularly when it comes to analyzing its emergence and electoral potential.
Toxicity Study in Alzheimer's Disease Cell Model

age 65 and older. One of the most important neuropathological characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease is the aggregation and deposition of the protein beta-amyloid. Beta-amyloid is produced by proteolytic processing of the Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP). Production of beta-amyloid from APP is increased when cells are subject to stress since both APP and betasecretase are upregulated by stress. An increased beta-amyloid level promotes aggregation of beta-amyloid into toxic species which cause an increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) and a decrease in cell viability. Therefore reducing beta-amyloid generation is a promising method to control cell damage following stress.
Rheological Study of Cement Modified with a Lignin Based Admixture

Experiments involving the use of the dynamic shear rheology technique utilising a parallel plate configuration were conducted to investigate changes in the rheological properties of Trinidad Portland cement paste blended with Lignosulfonic acid, acetate sodium salt additive. The rheological properties of plastic viscosity (PV) and yield stress (YS) of the cement blend as defined by Bingham were calculated. Water/cement ratios of 0.40, 0.45 and 0.50 were used with a 0 0.50% additive at room temperature and the samples were tested at intervals of 10, 30, 60 and 90 minutes after mixing. The results showed maximum values of the PV between 0.05% and 0.10% admixture concentrations for the various water/cement ratios and time measurements. PV values were generally lower as water/cement ratios increased demonstrating improvements in the rheology. A PV value of 0.7 centipoise obtained with the control sample can be reproduced with the addition of approximately 0.05% admixture using 20% less water. Maximum values of YS generally occur between 0.05% and 0.10% admixture concentrations as a more compact, homogeneous paste system develops. Consistent with previous studies utilising this technique, YS data was generally sporadic. The ability to synthetically alter the rheological properties of Trinidad Portland cement adding a lignin based admixture can serve to optimise the strength, workability and shrinkage due to the reduced water-cement ratio.
Adsorption-Desorption Characteristics of Zinc and Copper in Oxisol and Ultisol Amended With Sewage Sludge

The process of adsorption-desorption of zinc and copper in highly weathered soils may affect their mobility and toxicity. In this study, we evaluated the effect of sewage sludge application on the adsorption-desorption behavior of Zn and Cu in highly weathered soils. Laboratory batch experiments were carried out to investigate the adsorption and desorption of Zn and Cu in an Oxisol and Ultisol amended with three rates of sewage sludge (T1=0% (control), T2=5% and T3 =10% sludge). The findings showed that sewage sludge application had significantly affected the processes of adsorption-desorption of the tested soils. This is shown by the systematic change of the distribution coefficients (Kd). Comparison between Kd values for both soils indicated the following selectivity of metals: Cu > Zn. It is clear that Zn adsorption was lower than that of the Cu. Generally, metals adsorption-desorption was higher in the Ultisol compared to that of the Oxisol which was due to Ultisol having higher CEC and OM content in comparison to those of the Oxisol. The adsorption isotherms of Zn and Cu of both soils were well fitted to linear Freundlich and Langmuir equations (with minimum R = 0.96 and maximum R = 0.99, respectively). The adsorption-desorption of metals was strongly correlated (p<0.05) with sewage sludge rates, CEC and OM.
Auditory Perception Based Anti-Spoofing System for Human Age Verification

Biometric systems are considered an efficient component for identification in the developing modern technologies. The aim of biometric systems is to verify or determine the identity of a user through his/her biological and behavioral characteristics. The threat of spoof attacks is always an important issue in biometric verification and authentication, which requires an updated and stronger protection system. In this article, we propose an anti-spoofing system based on auditory perception responses. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that an auditory perception based anti-spoofing system has been presented for age verification. The proposed auditory perception based anti-spoofing system was evaluated with 770 trials conducted by many subjects of each gender and age range (12–65 years of age). The results achieved are encouraging, as the auditory perception based system showed the lowest Equal Error Rate (EER) value of 5.5%.
An Empirical Study of Voting Rules and Manipulation with Large Datasets

The study of voting systems often takes place in the theoretical domain due to a lack of large samples of sincere, strictly ordered voting data. We derive several million elections (more than all the existing studies combined) from a publicly available data, the Netflix Prize dataset. The Netflix data is derived from millions of Netflix users, who have an incentive to report sincere preferences, unlike random survey takers. We evaluate each of these elections under the Plurality, Borda, k-Approval, and Repeated Alternative Vote (RAV) voting rules. We examine the Condorcet Efficiency of each of the rules and the probability of occurrence of Condorcet’s Paradox. We compare our votes to existing theories of domain restriction (e.g., single-peakedness) and statistical models used to generate election data for testing (e.g., Impartial Culture). Additionally, we examine the relationship between coalition size and vote deficit for manipulations of elections under the Borda rule. We find a high consensus among the different voting rules; almost no instances of Condorcet’s Paradox; almost no support for restricted preference profiles, very little support for many of the statistical models currently used to generate election data for testing, and very small coalitions needed to promote second-place candidates to the winning position in elections.
Impact of Habitat Loss and Mining on the Distribution of Endemic Species of Amphibians and Reptiles in Mexico

Mexico holds an exceptional diversity and endemicity of amphibian and reptile species, but several factors pose a threat to their conservation. Here, we produced ecological niche models for 179 Mexican endemic amphibian and reptile species and examined the impact of habitat loss and mining activities on their projected potential distributions, resulting in their extant distributions. We compared extant species distributions to the area required to conserve a minimum proportion of the species distribution. The combined impact of habitat loss and mining on extant species distribution was significantly higher than the impact of habitat loss alone. Only 40 species lost <30% of their distribution, while 83 species lost between 30–50%, 54 species lost between 50–80%, and 2 species lost more than 80% of their distribution. Furthermore, the size and configuration of the area required to conserve 20% of the extant species distributions changed considerably by increasing the number of fragments, with a potential increase in local population extirpations. Our study is the first to address the combined impact of habitat loss and mining on a highly vulnerable rich endemic species group, leading to a decrease in their potential distribution and a potential increase in the extinction risk of species.
Thermal, circulatory, and neuromuscular responses to whole-body cryotherapy

The purpose of this study was to examine thermal (body temperature, thermal sensation and comfort ratings), circulatory (blood pressure, heart rate variability) and neuromuscular performance responses to whole-body cryotherapy (WBC, -110 °C). Altogether 66 healthy subjects were exposed to WBC for two minutes. The acute and longterm changes were examined, when the subjects were exposed to WBC three times a week during three months. Skin temperatures decreased very rapidly during WBC, but remained such a high level that there was no risk for frostbites. The effects on rectal temperature were minimal. Repeated exposures to WBC were mostly well tolerated and comfortable and the subjects became habituated at an early stage of trials. WBC increased both systolic (24 mmHg) and diastolic (5 mmHg) blood pressures temporarily. Adaptation of blood pressure was not found during three months. The acute cooling-related increase in high-frequency power of RR-intervals indicated an increase in cardiac parasympathetic modulation, but after repeated WBC the increase was attenuated. The repeated WBC exposure-related increase in resting low frequency power of RR-intervals resembles the response observed related to exercise training. There are signs of neuromuscular adaptation, especially in dynamic performance. A single WBC decreased flight time in drop-jump exercise, but after repeated WBC these changes were almost vanished. This adaptation was confirmed by the change of the activity of the agonist muscle, which increased more and the change of the activity of antagonist muscle, which increased less/did not change after repeated WBC indicating reduced co-contraction and thus, neuromuscular adaptation.
Improving Distant Supervised Relation Extraction via Jointly Training on Instances

In this paper, we present the winning model for Bag Track in Inter-Personal Relation Extraction. We incorporate BERT, a large pre-trained language model with multi-instance learning for bag-level relation extraction. To further take advantage of the large pre-trained language model as the most advanced language understanding tool, we propose a multi-task learning scheme that learns bag-level representation together with sentence-level representation. Our results demonstrate that the auxiliary task of sentence-level prediction significantly benefits the model performance for bag-level prediction.
Camelids and Cattle Are Dead-End Hosts for Peste-des-Petits-Ruminants Virus

Peste-des-petits-ruminants virus (PPRV) causes a severe respiratory disease in small ruminants. The possible impact of different atypical host species in the spread and planed worldwide eradication of PPRV remains to be clarified. Recent transmission trials with the virulent PPRV lineage IV (LIV)-strain Kurdistan/2011 revealed that pigs and wild boar are possible sources of PPRV-infection. We therefore investigated the role of cattle, llamas, alpacas, and dromedary camels in transmission trials using the Kurdistan/2011 strain for intranasal infection and integrated a literature review for a proper evaluation of their host traits and role in PPRV-transmission. Cattle and camelids developed no clinical signs, no viremia, shed no or only low PPRV-RNA loads in swab samples and did not transmit any PPRV to the contact animals. The distribution of PPRV-RNA or antigen in lymphoid organs was similar in cattle and camelids although generally lower compared to suids and small ruminants. In the typical small ruminant hosts, the tissue tropism, pathogenesis and disease expression after PPRV-infection is associated with infection of immune and epithelial cells via SLAM and nectin-4 receptors, respectively. We therefore suggest a different pathogenesis in cattle and camelids and both as dead-end hosts for PPRV.