Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient Responses to Targeted Cash Transfers

We estimate and test the restrictions of a collective model of household consumption, using z-conditional demands, in the context of a large conditional cash transfer program in rural Mexico. The model can explain the impacts of the program on the structure of food consumption. We use two plausible and novel distribution factors: the random allocation of a cash transfer to women and the relative size and wealth of the husband’s and wife’s family networks. Our structure does better at predicting the effect of exogenous increases in household income than an alternative, unitary, structure. We cannot reject efficiency of household decisions.
Two prototypes of adaptive antenna receivers for mobile systems

An antenna system including antenna elements and a satellite tracking method is considered a key technology in implementing larid mobile satellite communications. This paper describes the development of two L-band satellite-tracking mobile-vehicular antenna systems for communications and navigation projects. The design and implementation of the different parts of both demonstrators, from stacked microstrip. patch array antenna to the signal processing circuits, including the microwave ICs and IF stages, will be addressed in this paper. Simulations and experimental data showing the performance of both demonstrators will be presented as well.
Quick‐and‐clean article figures with FigureJ

We created FigureJ a new ImageJ plugin dedicated to scientific article figures preparation. Building a convincing figure is a demanding task that covers different steps ranging from content acquisition to figure assembly in editing software. Notions of image processing are required when it comes to even simple tasks such as cropping or resizing images and assembling them in a single figure. Scientific images are typically well handled in dedicated software but poorly supported in software used for laying out the final version of a figure for submission to review process.
Spinal Cord Compression Caused by Multifocal Histoplasmosis Treated Conservatively: Case Report and Literature Review

We present the case of a 39-year-old patient admitted for a slow thoracic spinal cord compression syndrome associated with lumbar rachialgia. CT scan and MRI of the thoracic spine showed lysis of T4, T5, T6 and T7 vertebrae, an epiduritis and paravertebral abscesses. CT scan of the lumbar spine demonstrated osteolysis of the left iliac wing with skin invasion. This lesion infiltrated the sacrum and the body of L5. The iliac lesion was biopsied and the analysis revealed a granulomatous osteitis caused by Histoplasma duboisii. The treatment consisted of ketoconazole 400 mg daily for six months. Spinal decompressive surgery was not performed. Following antifungal treatment the patient had satisfying clinical and radiological outcome. After three years’ follow-up, the clinical course was uneventful. The patient had neither symptoms of spinal cord compression nor signs of further localizations.
Existence and Stability of Traveling Pulses in a Continuous Neuronal Network

We examine the existence and stability of traveling pulse solutions of a set of integro-differential equations that describe activity in a spatially extended population of synaptically connected neurons. These equations have been employed extensively to model wave propagation during normal and epileptic brain activity. Compared to previous studies, we make relatively weak assumptions on the pattern of spatial connectivity, namely, that it is positive, homogeneous, and symmetric and that it decays with distance. A Heaviside step function governs the activation of each neuron. We incorporate a relatively slow local recovery variable within each neuron but make no other assumptions about the recovery rate. Our results are guided by the local behavior of individual neurons. When neurons have a single stable state, we demonstrate the existence of two traveling pulse solutions in a connected network. When the neurons are bistable, we demonstrate the existence of a stationary pulse solution and, in some cases, a.
Influence of inner transistors working modes on DGMOSFET 1/f noise

Influence of weighting factors |A<sub>nd1</sub>|<sup>2</sup> and |A<sub>nd2</sub>|<sup>2</sup>, which describe contribution of inner DGMOSFET transistors to overall 1/f noise, has been discussed. Their importance in DGMOSFET modelling, noise optimisation and diagnostics is presented for a DGMOSFET working in the non-saturation regime.
O Desenvolvimento de Competências Organizacionais em Diferentes Modelos Gerenciais de Subsidiárias de Empresas Multinacionais Brasileiras The Development of Organizational Competences in Different Management Models of Subsidiaries of Brazilian Multinationals Companies

O objetivo deste artigo e entender quais sao os modelos gerenciais para desenvolver diferentes tipos de competencias em empresas multinacionais brasileiras. A premissa principal que sustenta o artigo e que as multinacionais brasileiras necessitam desenvolver competencias nao locais em suas subsidiarias, como forma de competir em igualdade de condicoes com multinacionais ja estabelecidas no mercado global. O artigo se baseia em pesquisa
Accurate quantification of within- and between-host HBV evolutionary rates requires explicit transmission chain modelling

Abstract Analyses of virus evolution in known transmission chains have the potential to elucidate the impact of transmission dynamics on the viral evolutionary rate and its difference within and between hosts. Lin et al. (2015, Journal of Virology, 89/7: 3512–22) recently investigated the evolutionary history of hepatitis B virus in a transmission chain and postulated that the ‘colonization–adaptation–transmission’ model can explain the differential impact of transmission on synonymous and non-synonymous substitution rates. Here, we revisit this dataset using a full probabilistic Bayesian phylogenetic framework that adequately accounts for the non-independence of sequence data when estimating evolutionary parameters. Examination of the transmission chain data under a flexible coalescent prior reveals a general inconsistency between the estimated timings and clustering patterns and the known transmission history, highlighting the need to incorporate host transmission information in the analysis. Using an explicit genealogical transmission chain model, we find strong support for a transmission-associated decrease of the overall evolutionary rate. However, in contrast to the initially reported larger transmission effect on non-synonymous substitution rate, we find a similar decrease in both non-synonymous and synonymous substitution rates that cannot be adequately explained by the colonization-adaptation-transmission model. An alternative explanation may involve a transmission/establishment advantage of hepatitis B virus variants that have accumulated fewer within-host substitutions, perhaps by spending more time in the covalently closed circular DNA state between each round of viral replication. More generally, this study illustrates that ignoring phylogenetic relationships can lead to misleading evolutionary estimates.
Human Resource Management in Acquisition Implementation

The research area of mergers and acquisitions has quickly risen to great popularity all around the globe. The worldwide M&A transaction volume in 2014 amounted to $ 3,200 billion USD, representing a fundamental increase in the value from 2013 at $ 2,300 billion USD, and only falling short by 12% of the all-time high in 2007 amounting to $ 3,600 billion. Still, most research pinpoints dramatic failure rates in the range of 50-70%. Most of the time there has been a grave discrepancy in research between financial elements and human aspects. Although the topic of Human Resource Management in the implementation phase was classified as critical for success, only little research has been done to understand people on the ground and their reactions on topics of M&A. This paper aims to provide more fine-tuned insight into the hitherto poorly understood field of study, by showing applicable integration measures related to Human Resource Management practices. Specifically, a study was conducted based on a South Tyrolean medium sized firm, which has been on an expansion course as of late, with transactions occurring in both South-America (2014) and Austria (2015).
A PWM SRT DC/DC Converter for 6.6-kW EV Onboard Charger

This paper suggests another candidate for a dc/dc converter in an electric vehicle onboard charger. Maintaining topological characteristics similar to those of conventional resonant converters, it is operated with a constant frequency PWM for charging control. Since the converter uses a secondary resonant tank, soft-switching and resonant operations can be separated. A practical design procedure is suggested to guarantee the normal operation, and the feasibility of the PWM SRT converter is verified with a 6.6-kW prototype charger designed by the procedure.
A Robust Voiced/Unvoiced Phoneme Classification from Whispered Speech Using the 'Color' of Whispered Phonemes and Deep Neural Network

In this work, we propose a robust method to perform framelevel classification of voiced (V) and unvoiced (UV) phonemes from whispered speech, a challenging task due to its voiceless and noise-like nature. We hypothesize that a whispered speech spectrum can be represented as a linear combination of a set of colored noise spectra. A five-dimensional (5D) feature is computed by employing non-negative matrix factorization with a fixed basis dictionary, constructed using spectra of five colored noises. Deep Neural Network (DNN) is used as the classifier. We consider two baseline features-1) Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), 2) features computed from a data driven dictionary. Experiments reveal that the features from the colored noise dictionary perform better (on average) than that using the data driven dictionary, with a relative improvement in the average V/UV accuracy of 10.30%, within, and 10.41%, across, data from seven subjects. We also find that the MFCCs and 5D features carry complementary information regarding the nature of voicing decisions in whispered speech. Hence, across all subjects, we obtain a balanced frame-level V/UV classification performance, when MFCC and 5D features are combined, compared to a skewed performance when they are considered separately.
Trust Restoration in Electronic Commerce

This paper proposes a model addressing the rebuilding of post-violation trust in B2C electronic commerce. The model uses expectation-confirmation theory and provides empirical verification for the factors affecting post-violation trust rebuilding and the association between them. The factors are perceived trustworthiness, confirmation by trust restoration, satisfaction and continuance trust intention. In accordance with exiting literature, perceived trustworthiness was found to have significant impact on continuance trust intention. The study also showed that confirmation by post-violation trust restoration activities had strong impact on satisfaction but satisfaction did not lead to post-violation continuance trust intention. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-577-3.ch003
Genetic Relationship between Blood and Nonblood Isolates from Bacteremic Patients Determined by Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis

ABSTRACT A total of 148 isolates from 55 bacteremic patients were examined by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. Genetically different nonblood strains were isolated from 13.9% of patients with bacteremia caused by gram-positive cocci and 42.1% with Pseudomonas aeruginosabacteremia, indicating that antibiograms of a single nonblood P. aeruginosa isolate are not always informative for treatment of bacteremia.
A Digital Game Maturity Model

Game development is an interdisciplinary concept that embraces artistic, software engineering, management, and business disciplines. The growth of the digital game industry is enormous and gaining importance day by day. This growth imposes severe pressure and a number of issues and challenges on the game development community. In addition to functional and technological requirements, game development includes other factors that are equally important to the success of any game project. Game development is considered as one of the most complex tasks in software engineering. Hence, for successful development of goodquality games, the game developers must consider and explore all related dimensions as well as discussing them with the stakeholders involved. This research facilitates a better understanding of important dimensions of digital game development methodology. The increased popularity of digital games, the challenges faced by game development organizations in developing quality games, and severe competition in the digital game industry demand a game development process maturity assessment. Consequently, this study presents a Digital Game Maturity Model to evaluate the current development methodology in an organization. The objective is first to identify key factors in the game development process, then to classify these factors into target groups, and eventually to use this grouping as a theoretical basis for proposing a maturity model for digital game development. In doing so, the research focuses on three major stakeholders in game development: developers, consumers, and business management. The framework of the proposed model consists of assessment questionnaires made up of key identified factors from three empirical studies, a performance scale, and a rating method. The main goal of the questionnaires is to collect information about current processes and practices. This research contributes towards formulating a comprehensive and unified strategy for game development process maturity assessment. The proposed model was evaluated with two case studies from the digital game industry.
Serotonin 5‐HT2A receptors are expressed on pyramidal cells and interneurons in the rat cortex

The distribution of 5‐HT2A receptors in rat cortex was evaluated using newly developed antibodies. Each of three antibodies tested identified an identical pattern of 5‐HT2A‐like immunoreactivity (5‐HT2A‐li) in rat cortex with 5‐HT2A‐li showing a widespread distribution. The majority of 5‐HT2A‐li cells displayed a pyramidal morphology. While a minority, some cortical neurons with a bipolar morphology displayed 5‐HT2A‐li as well. Dual‐label fluorescence confocal microscopic studies with a 5‐HT2A antibody and a mouse monoclonal antibody to parvalbumin, a marker of a subset of gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic interneurons in the cortex, demonstrated that although some cells expressing 5‐HT2A‐li were interneurons, most were not. Synapse 27:79–82, 1997. © 1997 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
In situ capped GaN-based metal-insulator-semiconductor heterostructure field-effect transistor

In situ grown AlGaN/GaN heterostructure field-effect transistor (HFET) capped by unactivated Mg-doped GaN was demonstrated. With 1-μm-long gate length at drain-voltage of 10V, the presented HFET exhibited a drain-source current in saturation (IDSS) of 735 mA/mm and a peak transconductance (gm(max)) of 170 mS/mm, while the current gain cut-off frequency (fT) and maximum frequency of oscillation (fmax) were 20.5 and 33.3 GHz, respectively. In addition, our HFET delivers 3.3 W/mm output power density with 10.3 dB power gain and 53% power-added efficiency. It is of great potential to high frequency and high power electronics applications.
Energy-Pivotal Solutions for Green Femtocell Power Control in Hybrid-Dense Deployments

With the ever-increasing demand for mobile traffic, it is important that telecom networks are modernized with all the capacity, quality and coverage extension technologies available. Due to the pressures of population and modern technology, the biophysical environment is being degraded, sometimes permanently. Energy efficiency and low carbon strategies have recently attracted a lot of concern. Solutions that help reduce greenhouse gases and make a less harmful environmental impact are required. Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets), comprising a mix of lower-power nodes (like Femtocells) and higher power Macro base-stations, provide the means to enhance quality and coverage and offer scalable networks towards 1,000 fold gains in capacity as per 5G technology vision. Femtocells increase the capacity of the Macro-only networks by moving high-data rate users to low-power Femto alternatives and are likely to proliferate in next-generation wireless systems. High-density Femtocell deployments are seen as future low-cost solution to significantly gain capacity compared to conventional deployments. However, in such deployments, the problem of interference appears between the Macrocells and Femtocells as well as among the Femtocells themselves. Expensive insights into Macro-Femto interference are researched and available, while Femto-Femto interference is only partially addressed. This research work Journal of Green Engineering, Vol. 6, 99–144. doi: 10.13052/jge1904-4720.615 c © 2016 River Publishers. All rights reserved. 100 M. Al-Haddad and M. A. Bayoumi outlines this problem and points to possible solutions to mitigate FemtoFemto interference, increase network capacity, decrease power consumption and likewise reduce the CO2 footprint.
Surgical Simulation: A Systematic Review

Objective:To evaluate the effectiveness of surgical simulation compared with other methods of surgical training. Summary Background Data:Surgical simulation (with or without computers) is attractive because it avoids the use of patients for skills practice and provides relevant technical training for trainees before they operate on humans. Methods:Studies were identified through searches of MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, and other databases until April 2005. Included studies must have been randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing any training technique using at least some elements of surgical simulation, which reported measures of surgical task performance. Results:Thirty RCTs with 760 participants were able to be included, although the quality of the RCTs was often poor. Computer simulation generally showed better results than no training at all (and than physical trainer/model training in one RCT), but was not convincingly superior to standard training (such as surgical drills) or video simulation (particularly when assessed by operative performance). Video simulation did not show consistently better results than groups with no training at all, and there were not enough data to determine if video simulation was better than standard training or the use of models. Model simulation may have been better than standard training, and cadaver training may have been better than model training. Conclusions:While there may be compelling reasons to reduce reliance on patients, cadavers, and animals for surgical training, none of the methods of simulated training has yet been shown to be better than other forms of surgical training.
Relationship between TLR 4 and CCL 2 expression and recurrent spontaneous abortion

The increasing incidence of recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA) severely affects women’s health. The involvement of the immune system during pregnancy and its contribution to RSA draw researchers’ attention. Both Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) and chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 2 (CCL2) have been linked to various pregnancy disorders. In this study, we quantified TLR4 and CCL2 levels in a case-control study in order to elucidate the correlation between these factors and RSA, and the potential to use them as disease markers. A total of 36 RSA patients and 36 healthy control individuals were recruited for the donation of decidual and chorionic tissues and venous blood samples. Fluorescent quantitative-polymerase chain reaction was used to measure mRNA levels and enzyme linked immunosorbent assay was used to quantify serum levels of TLR4 and CCL2. RSA patients had higher TLR4 and CCL2 mRNA levels compared to controls (P < 0.05). Serum levels of the two factors were also significantly higher in RSA patients than in the control group (P < 0.05). Positive correlations were found between
Communications Act 2003

An Act to confer functions on the Office of Communications; to make provision about the regulation of the provision of electronic communications networks and services and of the use of the electro-magnetic spectrum; to make provision about the regulation of broadcasting and of the provision of television and radio services; to make provision about mergers involving newspaper and other media enterprises and, in that connection, to amend the Enterprise Act 2002; and for connected purposes. [17th July 2003]
Do Mortgage REITs Reflect the Underlying MBS Market Performance

Equity REITs own and operate income-producing real estate properties, while mortgage REITs (MREITs) invest in mortgage loans and/or mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Since MBS are debt instruments created through securitization of mortgages, the MREIT and MBS markets should be closely related due to the similarity in their underlying asset claim. This study shows that MREITs and the underlying MBS market indices exhibit completely different return and risk characteristics. In addition, returns on MREITs are much more strongly driven by the stock market systematic factors than the underlying MBS market factors. The results are remarkably robust using either daily or monthly data, full sample or subsample data, and residential or commercial MREITs data. While these results suggest possible inefficiency of the MREIT market, we discuss the limitation of this study and implications for future research.
Relavance of measurement of hematological parameters in subjects with pregnancy induced hypertension

Background: The pregnancy induced hypertensive (PIH) mothers are at greater risk for intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and intrauterine death of foetus (IUD). But currently there are no suitable early indicators of PIH mothers at risk of IUGR and IUD. Aims/objectives: To assess the various routinely measured hematological parameters in assessment of PIH mothers at risk of IUGR and IUD. Methods: This was a retrospective study done in singleton mothers. Study Group: 75 subjects with PIH. They were divided in to: Group A (n=35): PIH subjects with IUGR and IUD. Group B (n=40): PIH subjects without IUGR and IUD. Controls: 62 normotensives. Blood parameters measured were: platelets, packed cell volume (PCV), hemoglobin, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), differential leucocyte count. Statistical analysis was done by ANOVA and Bonferroni test. P<0.05 was taken as significant. Results: Among the measured blood parameters, platelet count was lower in group A and group B compared to control (p<0.0001). Platelets were also lower in group A compared to group B (p<0.0001). Hemoglobin and PCV were lower in group A compared to controls and group B (p<0.001). Monocytes and ESR were lower in group A and group B compared to controls (p<0.05, p<0.001 respectively). Neutrophils were lower in group A compared to control (p<0.05). Other pairwise comparisons did not differ significantly. Conclusions: Platelet count may be a suitable marker in monitoring subjects with PIH at risk of IUGR and IUD. Anemia may be associated with IUD and IUGR in PIH patients.