Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rising Food Prices and Household Welfare: Evidence from Brazil in 2008

Food price inflation in Brazil in the twelve months to June 2008 was 18 percent, while overall inflation was seven percent. Using spatially disaggregated monthly data on consumer prices and two different household surveys, we estimate the welfare consequences of these food price increases, and their distribution across households. Because Brazil is a large food producer, with a predominantly wage-earning agricultural labor force, our estimates include general equilibrium effects on market and transfer incomes, as well as the standard estimates of changes in consumer surplus. While the expenditure (or consumer surplus) effects were large, negative and markedly regressive everywhere, the market income effect was positive and progressive, particularly in rural areas. Because of this effect on the rural poor, and of the partial protection afforded by increases in two large social assistance benefits, the overall impact of higher food prices in Brazil was U-shaped, with middle-income groups suffering larger proportional losses than the very poor. Nevertheless, since Brazil is 80 percent urban, higher food prices still led to a greater incidence and depth of poverty at the national level.
A Density Evolution Based Framework for Dirty-Paper Code Design Using TCQ and Multilevel LDPC Codes

We propose a density evolution based dirty-paper code design framework that combines trellis coded quantization with multi-level low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Unlike existing design techniques based on Gaussian approximation and EXIT charts, the proposed framework tracks the empirically collected log-likelihood ratio (LLR) distributions at each iteration, and employs density evolution and differential evolution algorithms to design each LDPC component code. The performance of the dirty-paper codes designed using the proposed method comes within 0.37 dB of the theoretical limit at 1 bit per sample transmission rate, achieving an 0.21 dB gain over the best known result.
THE RATIONALE AND THE ROLE OF LEFT STELLECTOMY FOR THE PREVENTION OF MALIGNANT ARRHYTHMIAS

It has progressively become evident that the sympathetic nervous system plays a significant role in the genesis of many instances of life-threatening arrhythmia~l-~ Accordingly, there has been an extensive evaluation of betaadrenergic blocking agents in the prevention of sudden death, particularly in patients with a prior myocardial infarction. This approach reflects the traditional but oversimplified concept that the clinically important effects of augmented sympathetic activity are all mediated by beta-adrenergic mechanisms. It is now clear that also the alpha-adrenergic effects of catecholamines are important in altering the electrophysiologic substrate for cardiac arrhythmias and that right and left cardiac sympathetic nerves have a very different arrhythmogenic potential.7 In this chapter, I will review the rationale and discuss the potential role of a left cardiac sympathetic denervation in the prevention of malignant arrhythmias. Although, when applied to humans, the correct terminology would be “high thoracic left sympathectomy,”3 I will use here the more familiar expression “left stellectomy. ” It may be appropriate, however, to remember that, whereas ablation of the left stellate ganglion in experimental animals provides a sufficient left sympathetic denervation, achievement of the same result in humans makes it necessary to remove the first five thoracic ganglia.
Effect of bacterial inoculation of strains of pseudomonas aeruginosa, alcaligenes feacalis and bacillus subtilis on germination, growth and heavy metal (cd, cr, and ni) uptake of brassica juncea

ABSTRACT Bacterial inoculation may influence Brassica juncea growth and heavy metal (Ni, Cr, and Cd) accumulation. Three metal tolerant bacterial isolates (BCr3, BCd33, and BNi11) recovered from mine tailings, identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa KP717554, Alcaligenes feacalis KP717561, and Bacillus subtilis KP717559 were used. The isolates exhibited multiple plant growth beneficial characteristics including the production of indole-3-acetic acid, hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, insoluble phosphate solubilization together with the potential to protect plants against fungal pathogens. Bacterial inoculation improved seeds germination of B. juncea plant in the presence of 0.1 mM Cr, Cd, and Ni, as compared to the control treatment. Compared with control treatment, soil inoculation with bacterial isolates significantly increased the amount of soluble heavy metals in soil by 51% (Cr), 50% (Cd), and 44% (Ni) respectively. Pot experiment of B. juncea grown in soil spiked with 100 mg kg−1 of NiCl2, 100 mg kg−1 of CdCl2, and 150 mg kg−1 of K2Cr2O7, revealed that inoculation with metal tolerant bacteria not only protected plants against the toxic effects of heavy metals, but also increased growth and metal accumulation of plants significantly. These findings suggest that such metal tolerant, plant growth promoting bacteria are valuable tools which could be used to develop bio-inoculants for enhancing the efficiency of phytoextraction.
A Memory-Efficient CAVLC Decoding Scheme for H.264/AVC

This paper presents a memory-efficient CAVLC decoding architecture for H.264/AVC. In the proposed architecture, not only the memory space is reduced for decoding the syntax elements such as coeff token, total zero, and run before, but also the decode efficiency is improved. After the analysis of the decoding principle of the CAVLC, we simplify the coeff-token VLD table and propose a new coeff-token VLD based on arithmetic operation and the look-up table combination architecture. The run-before VLD can used the same principle as the proposed coeff-token VLD. Otherwise, the proposed scheme also adope the zero block skipping technique and multiple symbols decoding scheme when decoding SignTrail. The simulation results show that our system can run at I68MHz clock frequency and the average cycles for decoding one macro-block is 136 cycles. The proposed architecture can achieves an approximate 39-53% savings in memory access without video quality degrading.
A family of CMOS analog and mixed signal circuits in SiC for high temperature electronics

This paper describes the simulation and test results of a family of analog and mixed signal circuits in silicon carbide CMOS technology at temperatures of 300°C and above. As SiC and wide bandgap devices in general grow in popularity for efficient and stable operation in high temperature and harsh environment applications, CMOS SiC integrated circuits can open up a new frontier of opportunity for miniaturization and system dependability. The building block circuits presented here can serve as the basis of rugged SiC system-on-chips for extreme environment applications.
Elastic and Adaptive Resource Orchestration Architecture on 3-Tier Network Virtualization Model

SUMMARY Network virtualization environments (NVEs) are emerging to meet the increasing diversity of demands by Internet users where a virtual network (VN) can be constructed to accommodate each speciﬁc application service. In the future Internet, diverse service providers (SPs) will provide application services on their own VNs running across diverse infrastructure providers (InPs) that provide physical resources in an NVE. To realize both e ﬃ cient resource utilization and good QoS of each individual service in such environments, SPs should perform adaptive control on network and computational resources in dynamic and competitive resource sharing, instead of explicit and su ﬃ cient reservation of physical resources for their VNs. On the other hand, two novel concepts, software-deﬁned networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV), have emerged to facilitate the e ﬃ cient use of network and computational resources, ﬂexible provisioning, network programmability, uniﬁed management, etc., which enable us to implement adaptive resource control. In this paper, therefore, we propose an architectural design of network orchestration for enabling SPs to maintain QoS of their applications aggressively by means of resource control on their VNs e ﬃ ciently, by introducing virtual network provider (VNP) between InPs and SPs as 3-tier model, and by integrating SDN and NFV functionalities into NVE framework. We deﬁne new north-bound interfaces (NBIs) for resource requests, resource upgrades, resource programming, and alert notiﬁcations while using the standard OpenFlow interfaces for resource control on users’ tra ﬃ c ﬂows. The feasibility of the proposed architecture is demonstrated through network experiments using a prototype implementation and a sample application service on nation-wide testbed networks
Calcium channel mutations and migraine

&NA; An increasing number of mutations in the CACNA1A gene have been identified, which are associated with a broad clinical spectrum, including familial hemiplegic migraine. Transfection studies and mouse model analyses are currently being undertaken to study the correlation between CACNA1A mutations and disease. Curr Opin Neurol 15:311‐316. © 2002 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Olfactory bulb potentials evoked by electrical stimulation of the contralateral bulb.

A single, short-duration electrical stimulus delivered to one olfactory bulb evokes a potential in the contralateral bulb. As recorded with a unipolar electrode, the potential is negative central to, and positive peripheral to the external plexiform layer. Bipolar recordings from multiple sites show that the potential is not actively propagated. The potential summates in response to tetanic stimulation and is blocked by anoxia and dimethyl ether d -tubocurarine. In addition to confirming the existence of an interolfactory bulb system, the electrophysiological evidence in conjunction with known anatomical relationships strongly suggests that the evoked potential is a postsynaptic potential of the internal granular cells.
Development and Evaluation of an Oligonucleotide Ligation Assay for Detection of Drug Resistance-Associated Mutations in the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 2 pol Gene

ABSTRACT Human immunodeficiency virus type 2 (HIV-2) is naturally resistant to several antiretroviral drugs, including all of the non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors and the entry inhibitor T-20, and may have reduced susceptibility to some protease inhibitors. These resistance properties make treatment of HIV-2 patients difficult, with very limited treatment options. Therefore, early detection of resistance mutations is important for understanding treatment failures and guiding subsequent therapy decisions. With the Global Fund Initiative, a substantial number of HIV-2 patients in West Africa will receive antiretroviral therapy. Therefore, development of cheaper and more sustainable resistance assays, such as the oligonucleotide ligation assay (OLA), is a priority. In this study, we designed oligonucleotide probes to detect the Q151M mutation, associated with phenotypic resistance to zidovudine, didanosine, zalcitabine, and stavudine, and the M184V mutation, associated with phenotypic resistance to lamivudine and emtricitabine, in HIV-2. The assay was successfully developed and evaluated with 122 samples from The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, The Netherlands, and Sweden. The overall sensitivity of the assay was 98.8%, with 99.2% for Q151M and 98.4% for M184V. OLA results were compared with sequencing to give high concordances of 98.4% (Q151M) and 97.5% (M184V). OLA demonstrated a higher sensitivity for detection of minor variants as a mixture of wild-type and mutant viruses in cases when sequencing detected only the major population. In conclusion, we have developed a simple, easy-to-use, and economical assay for genotyping of drug resistance in HIV-2 that is more sustainable for use in resource-poor settings than is consensus sequencing.
A novel shape based batching and prediction approach for sunspot data using HMMs and ANNs

This paper introduces a novel approach which uses a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) for prediction of systems that are non deterministic, dynamical and chaotic in nature. The HMM is used for shape based batch creation of training data, which is then processed one batch at a time by an ANN. The weights and Learning Rate of the ANN are tweaked to predict the correct output for an input dataset. The novel Prediction method used here exploits the Pattern Identification prowess of the HMM for batch selection and the ANNs of each batch to predict the output of the system. The Standard application of the Sun-Spot Data (SSD) was used for testing the competence of this method.
On Johnson's (2000) Relative Weights Method for Assessing Variable Importance: A Reanalysis

This article provides a reanalysis of J. W. Johnson's (2000) “relative weights” method for assessing variable importance in multiple regression. The primary conclusion of the reanalysis is that the derivation of the method is theoretically flawed and has no more validity than the discredited method of Green, Carroll, and DeSarbo (1978) on which it is based. By means of 2 examples, supplemented by other results from the literature, it is also shown that the method can result in materially distorted inferences when it is compared with another widely used importance metric, namely, general dominance (Azen & Budescu, 2003; Budescu, 1993). Our primary recommendation is that J. W. Johnson's (2000) relative weights method should no longer be used as a variable importance metric for multiple linear regression. In the final section of the article, 2 additional recommendations are made based on our analysis, examples, and discussion.
Shoe collar height effect on athletic performance, ankle joint kinematics and kinetics during unanticipated maximum-effort side-cutting performance

Abstract Side-step cutting manoeuvres comprise the coordination between planting and non-planting legs. Increased shoe collar height is expected to influence ankle biomechanics of both legs and possibly respective cutting performance. This study examined the shoe collar height effect on kinematics and kinetics of planting and non-planting legs during an unanticipated side-step cutting. Fifteen university basketball players performed maximum-effort side-step cutting to the left 45° direction or a straight ahead run in response to a random light signal. Seven successful cutting trials were collected for each condition. Athletic performance, ground reaction force, ankle kinematics and kinetics of both legs were analysed using paired t-tests. Results indicated that high-collar shoes resulted in less ankle inversion and external rotation during initial contact for the planting leg. The high-collar shoes also exhibited a smaller ankle range of motion in the sagittal and transverse planes for both legs, respectively. However, no collar effect was found for ankle moments and performance indicators including cutting performance time, ground contact time, propulsion ground reaction forces and impulses. These findings indicated that high-collar shoes altered ankle positioning and restricted ankle joint freedom movements in both legs, while no negative effect was found for athletic cutting performance.
A Novel Design Methodology for a 1.5 KW DC/DC Converter in EV and Hybrid EV Applications

This paper presents a method for the efficient implementation of a unidirectional or bidirectional DC/DC converter. The DC/DC converter is used essentially for energy exchange between the low voltage service battery and a high voltage battery commonly found in Electric Vehicle applications. In these applications, apart from cost, efficiency of design is an important characteristic. A useful way to reduce the size of electronic equipment in the electric vehicles is proposed in this paper. The technique simplifies the mechanical complexity and maximizes the energy usage using the latest converter control techniques. Moreover a bidirectional battery charger for hybrid electric vehicles is also implemented in this paper. Several simulations on the test system have been carried out in Matlab/Simulink environment. The results exemplify the robustness of the proposed design methodology in case of a 1.5 KW DC-DC converter. Keywords—DC-DC converters, Electric Vehicles, Direct Current Control.
In the Pursuit of Intra-Voxel Fiber Orientations: Comparison of Compressed Sensing DTI and Q-Ball MRI

B. A. Landman, H. Wan, J. A. Bogovic, P. C. van Zijl, P-L. Bazin, and J. L. Prince Electrical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States, Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States, F.M. Kirby Center, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, United States, Radiology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States
Auto-Entrainment Risk Assessment in Heart Failure

Background—Risk assessment studies use a suite of nominally independent noninvasive heart rate metrics, often brought together in a statistical model to compute a risk score. The ongoing need to noninvasively identify the higher risk patients requiring more invasive investigations/interventions drives the search for better noninvasive predictive metrics, with increased sensitivity. Many varieties of autoregulatory malfunction occur within the cardiovascular system; thus, it seems a daunting challenge to build predictive models that account for all potential modes of failure. Auto-entrainment (AE) methodology was developed to help address this challenge. Methods and Results—AE methodology tests intrinsic capacity to maintain a stable and coherent oscillatory dynamic of autoregulatory control via respiratory entrainment of the blood pressure and heart period. Using cardiovascular death (n=18) at follow-up (1.5 years) as the end point, analysis of AE measurements from 148 patients with heart failure revealed 2 parameters significantly predictive of death. Using logistic regression, the magnitude of systolic pulsus alternans measured during AE had predictive sensitivity of 90% (confidence interval, 62%–100% and specificity of 62% (confidence interval, 49%–74%). The capacity to maintain a stable oscillatory dynamic was measured by the fraction of the total RR-interval spectral power contained within the AE-band. This capacity had predictive sensitivity of 73% (confidence interval, 47%–99%) and specificity of 55% (confidence interval, 43%–66%). Conclusions—AE methodology provides a noninvasive platform to assess the integrity of cardiovascular autoregulatory control systems for risk assessment in heart failure patients.
Cardiovascular effects of intracerebro‐ventricular bradykinin and melittin in the rat

Abstract— The cardiovascular effects of intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) bradykinin and melittin were investigated in the anaesthetized rat. Bradykinin, 30 μg, increased mean arterial pressure by 15 mmHg and this was the result of an increase in peripheral resistance; heart rate and cardiac output were unchanged. Tissue blood flow was lower in the skin and spleen in the animals given bradykinin than the controls. Significant increases in tissue vascular resistance occurred in the skin and several organs of the splanchnic region, the spleen, stomach, large intestine and the pancreas/mesentery. Melittin infusion gave a biphasic response in systemic blood pressure in which a depressor response was followed by a pressor phase; the pressor stage was accompanied by an increase in heart rate. Since melittin is a stimulant of membrane bound kallikrein, the results lend limited support to the hypothesis that there is a kallikrein‐kinin system endogenous to the central nervous system which is involved in cardiovascular regulation.
Luteinizing Hormone-Dependent Gene Regulation in Leydig Cells May Be Mediated by CCAAT/Enhancer-Binding Protein-β.

Leydig cells are located in the interstitium of the testis and function as the primary site for testosterone biosynthesis. Leydig cell development and steroidogenic function are dependent upon pituitary-derived LH. Circulating LH levels in prepubertal mammals are low but rise sharply during puberty, inducing terminal differentiation of immature Leydig cells into adult Leydig cells. The molecular mechanisms involved in LH action on differentiation specific gene expression and initiation of steroidogenic function in immature Leydig cells are poorly understood. Members of the CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein (C/EBP) family of basic region/leucine zipper transcription factors have previously been implicated as regulators of terminal differentiation in several cell types. In the present study we have investigated the possible involvement of C/EBP proteins in regulating LH-dependent gene expression in Leydig cells. We have detected the expression of one family member, C/EBPbeta, in Leydig cells. C/EBPbeta messenger RNA and protein levels were significantly higher in mature adult Leydig cells than in immature cells, displaying an expression pattern similar to those of other developmentally regulated genes in Leydig cells such as steroidogenesis acute regulatory (StAR) protein and 3beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase. C/EBPbeta messenger RNA and protein levels also increased when immature Leydig cells were treated with either hCG, a functional analog of LH (hCG/LH), or (Bu)2cAMP. To confirm that hCG/LH and (Bu)2cAMP were acting specifically on Leydig cells, we studied their effects on C/EBPbeta expression in an established Leydig cell line (MA-10). hCG and (Bu)2cAMP treatment also induced the expression of C/EBPbeta and StAR in MA-10 cells, coincident with stimulation of steroid production in these cells. (Bu)2cAMP treatment did not alter the subcellular localization of C/EBPbeta protein in MA-10 cells, suggesting that the increase is due to stimulation of C/EBPbeta expression. We conclude that expression of C/EBPbeta is regulated by hCG/LH in Leydig cells and that C/EBPbeta may play a significant role in LH-regulated Leydig cell differentiation and function.
Haemocompatibility of titanium and its alloys

This review outlines the current understanding of the interactions of titanium and its alloys with blood components, and the ways in which surface modification techniques can be used to alter the surface physicochemical and topographical features that determine blood–material interactions. Surface modification of the spontaneously formed titanium oxide surface layer is a highly attractive means of improving haemocompatibility without forgoing the advantageous mechanical and physical properties of titanium and its alloys. A number of surface modification techniques and treatment processes are discussed in the context of enhancing the haemocompatibility of titanium and its alloys, with a view to optimising the clinical efficacy of blood-contacting devices and materials.