Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Control Theory and Deep Brain Stimulation for Relief from Neurological Diseases

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a neurosurgical technique in which microelectrodes, embedded in a closely specified target area of the brain, are stimulated by a periodic, rectangular, charge-balanced signal, generated by a stimulator embedded in the chest. It was serendipitously discovered by neurosurgeon Professor Alim-Louis Benabid in Grenoble in 1987 that "high frequency" (of the order of 130Hz) stimulation of the Basal Ganglia in the brain could eliminate the characteristic tremor (about 5 to 8 Hz) associated with Parkinson's disease and also release the associated "locking of gait. " Since then the idea has been applied to other neurological diseases such as epilepsy, depression and Tourette syndrome and the phenomenon of "essential tremor. " The mode of action of DBS is still incompletely understood. This paper presents attempts made by the authors to develop constructive models of the phenomenology of DBS, based on classical Control Theory tools such as the Nyquist Stability Criterion, the Describing Function, the Root Locus method, Liapunov's theorem of the First Approximation and, above all, the concept of the Equivalent Nonlinearity associated with injection of a "high frequency" wave into a nonlinear feedback loop to quench troublesome "low frequency" oscillations. These models have proved very successful in predicting the dependence of pathological oscillations, observed as Local Field Potentials (LFP), on amplitude and fractional pulse duration of the DBS signal.
The impact of nitrogen on yeast fermentation and wine quality

Wine aroma is composed of primary, or varietal, aromas that arise directly from the grapes; secondary, or fermentation aromas, aromas produced by yeasts during the alcoholic fermentation; and the tertiary, or maturation bouquet that results from chemical reactions during wine ageing. Organic acids, higher alcohols, low-volatile organic sulphur compounds and esters, with their fruity notes, are signifi cant sensorial components of wine and other fermented beverages and are the primary compounds that form a fermentation bouquet. At low levels, most of these compounds contribute to the perceived wine aroma, but at high levels, they can dominate the aroma, decreasing its complexity. The compounds are released during alcoholic fermentation in variable concentrations depending on the yeast strain, fermentation conditions, and nutrient concentration. The infl uence of nitrogen on alcoholic fermentation and aroma compound formation by yeast, and therefore its effect on wine quality, is discussed herein
Taking into account extreme events in European option pricing

According to traditional option pricing models,1 fi nancial markets underestimate the impact of tail risk. In this article, we put forward a European option pricing model based on a set of assumptions that ensure, inter alia, that extreme events are better taken into account. Using simulations, we compare the option prices obtained from the standard Black and Scholes model with those resulting from our model. We show that the traditional model leads to an overvaluation of at-the-money options, which are the most traded options, while the less liquid in-the-money and out-of-the-money options are undervalued.
CALLING SITES AND ACOUSTIC PARTITIONING IN SPECIES OF THE HYLA NANA AND RUBICUNDULA GROUPS (ANURA, HYLIDAE)

We analysed spatial and acoustic partitioning among four species of Hyla belonging to two species-groups: nana (H nana and H. sanborni) and rubicundula (H. elianeae and H. jimi). Field activities were conducted at three permanent ponds, from 1998 through 2001. Four attributes of the calling sites were analysed: perch height, distance of the perch from the edge of the pond, type of perch (vegetation) and the individual's position on the perch. There was extensive overlap in the four calling-site variables analysed. However, we found spatial segregation did occur in calling site height and the distance of perches from pond edges. Bioacoustic analyses revealed behavioural differences among species in calling activity, both time of onset and peak calling in chorus. There was acoustic partitioning among species the fundamental frequency of the advertisement calls, principally as a function of the temporal structure (e.g. note duration, rate of note repetition, duration and rate of repetition of the calling pulses). We propose that differences in physical attributes of calling site and in characteristics of calls allow these species to exist in sympatry.
Automated decentralized modal analysis using smart sensors

Understanding the dynamic behavior of civil engineering structures is important to adequately resolve problems related to structural vibration. The dynamic properties of a structure are commonly obtained by conducting a modal survey that can be used for model updating, design verification, and improvement of serviceability. However, particularly for large‐scale civil structures, modal surveys using traditional wired sensor systems can be quite challenging to carry out due to difficulties in cabling, high equipment cost, and long setup time. Wireless smart sensor networks (WSSN) offer a unique opportunity to overcome such difficulties. Recent advances in sensor technology have realized low‐cost smart sensors with on‐board computation and wireless communication capabilities, making deployment of a dense array of sensors on large civil structures both feasible and economical. However, as opposed to wired sensor networks in which centralized data acquisition and processing are a common practice, the WSSN requires decentralized algorithms due to the limitation associated with wireless communication; to date such algorithms are limited. This paper proposes a new decentralized hierarchical approach for modal analysis that reliably determines the global modal properties and can be implemented on a network of smart sensors. The efficacy of the proposed approach is demonstrated through several numerical examples. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Fine Scale Ethnotaxa Classification of Millets in Southern India

Abstract This research explores variation in minor millets in the context of traditional knowledge (TK) and scientific knowledge (SK), including ethnobotany genomics, in southern India. In order to perceive biodiversity, we need to take a closer look at the natural variation among species within the context of existing classifications using both TK and SK. Malayali informants of the Kolli Hills in India were surveyed using 174 millet samples. We also collected seeds and grew millets in greenhouse environments from which we recorded 96 morphological characters and extracted DNA for barcoding. Quantitative multivariate classification analysis of these plants revealed that the Malayali millet classification is hierarchical and recognizes considerable fine scale variation with high consensus. In the field, the Malayali classified and consistently identified 19 millet ethnotaxa (landraces). Variation in these same samples was analyzed using morphometric and molecular characters (DNA barcoding) but revealed fewer taxa. Some of the cryptic taxa identified by the Malayali, including a potentially drought tolerant millet ethnotaxa, have considerable nutritional, medicinal, and ecological value.
Corporate social responsibility and cause-related marketing: an overview

This article looks at the subject of corporate social responsibility and how companies use it in their marketing communication activities, a practice known as cause-related marketing (CRM). According to the definition of Angelidis and Ibrahim (1993), corporate social responsibility is ‘corporate social actions whose purpose is to satisfy social needs’. Corporate social responsibility requires investment and it yields measurable outcomes. It is commonly accepted that cause-related marketing is a communications tool for increasing customer loyalty and building reputation. The expected change in a company's image because of CRM campaigns appears to depend a great deal upon how customers perceive the reasons for a company's involvement in cause-related programmes and the amount of help given to the cause through a company's involvement (Webb and Mohr, 1998). Mohr et al. (1998) suggest that consumers with a high level of scepticism will be less likely to respond positively to CRM campaigns as opposed to consumers with a low level of scepticism.
Acute Psychosis: An Atypical First Presentation of Advanced HIV Infection

Primary presentation of HIV/AIDS can be greatly varied, with continued emphasis on primary prevention and early detection of infection; there should be a decreasing number of atypical initial presentations. It has been shown that chronic disease results in an increased risk of people developing depression, and that psychiatric features may be the only symptoms of non-malignant brain lesions. These two points combined shows that there is a possibility that HIV, a chronic medical condition, could have a psychiatric presentation. This is atypical though, and therefore is an interesting teaching point, especially in the importance of ruling out organic conditions in the presentation of psychiatric diagnosis.
The four phases of plant-arthropod associations in deep time

Vascular-plant hosts, their arthropod herbivores, and associated functional feeding groups are distributed spatiotemporally into four major herbivore expansions during the past 420 m.y. They are: (1) a Late Silurian to Late Devonian (60 m.y.) phase of myriapod and apterygote, hexapod (perhaps pterygote) herbivores on several clades of primitive vascular-plant hosts and a prototaxalean fungus; (2) a Late Mississippian to end-Permian (85 m.y.) phase of mites and apterygote and basal pterygote herbivores on pteridophyte and basal gymnospermous plant hosts; (3) a Middle Triassic to Recent (245 m.y.) phase of mites, orthopteroids (in the broadest sense) and hemipteroid and basal holometabolan herbivores on pteridophyte and gymnospermous plant hosts; and (4) a mid Early Cretaceous to Recent (115 m.y.) phase of modern-aspect orthopteroids and derived hemipteroid and holometabolous herbivores on angiospermous plant hosts. These host-plant and herbivore associations are mediated by seven functional feeding groups: a) external foliage feeding, b) piercing-and-sucking, c) boring (Phase 1 origins); d) galling, e) seed predation, f) nonfeeding oviposition (Phase 2 origins); and leaf mining (early Phase 3 origin). Within about 20 m.y. of each herbivore expansion, there is a biota that expresses the nearly full spectrum of later plant-arthropod associations. These four associational phases may be linked to the paleoclimatologic variables of greenhouse/icehouse cycles and atmospheric O2 and CO2 levels by uncertain causes, although some relationship probably is present. The 7 functional feeding groups persist through most of the sampled interval but harbor host-plants and arthropod herbivores that are spatiotemporally ephemeral. Poor understanding of associations in Phases 1 to 3 is attributed to disproportionate focus on the angiosperm and holometabolan insect associations of Phase 4.
Assessing the Political Economy Factors on Trade Integration : Rules of Origin under NAFTA

Rules of origin (RoO) are legitimate policy instruments to prevent trade deflection in a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) short of a customs union. Yet, when captured by special interest groups, RoO can restrict trade beyond what is needed to prevent trade deflection. By how much do political economy factors account for the stringency of RoO? This study quantifies the impact of both determinants, those deemed as “justifiable” on the ground of preventing trade deflection and those arising from “political economy” forces, on the restrictiveness of RoO under NAFTA. The main finding is that political economy forces, especially from the US, significantly raised the restrictiveness of the RoO. Thus stricter RoO are associated with higher production costs reducing the potential benefits of enhanced market access initially pursued by the agreement.
Linear Time Growth Collaborative Filtering Based on Caching Techniques

One of social networks features is to recommend some items for users suitable and their profiles and needs. One of the used techniques of item recommendation is to calculate the average rating of other users' ratings of that item. The calculated average can be used as a rank for that item. New users' ratings are made within the lifetime of social networks. This dynamic sized set of ratings can lead to a performance problem. Ranking is not fixed since new users are constantly evaluating items in networks. However, updating ranking by traditional averaging can have a quadratic time growth. This paper aims to convert this aggregation method into linear growth instead of quadratic. The suggested algorithm needed extra storage capacity. Caching is suggested to speedup ranking with preserving storage resources. Another target is to have a high hit-ratio with better utilization of small cache size compared to the traditional Greedy- Dual- Size-Frequency algorithm. At the end of this paper an evaluation of the proposed technique performance is provided based on simulated experimental results. The experiment results show that the proposed technique has better performance rather than traditional averaging recommender systems without caching.
Financial Markets Incompleteness and Inequality Over the Life-Cycle

This paper addresses the relevance of contemporary uncertainty under incomplete markets in explaining wealth and consumption inequality when preferences are homogeneous. We explore the role of illiquid saving (saving that cannot be used to buffer contemporary shocks) generated by contemporary uncertainty, and a cost of liquidating saving, in generating differences in saving behaviour between initially-rich and initially-poor in a numerically solved life-cycle model. We observe that the existence of a risk premium significantly increases the ability of the households to accumulate wealth to finance their consumption, even under high risk aversion. We find that there is increasing consumption inequality across the life-cycle between groups, and that this result is boosted by access to risky assets and higher values of the coefficient of risk aversion. Critically, the possibility to borrow against saving helps to prevent increased consumption inequality paths, which is the effect of illiquid saving under contemporary uncertainty. Our findings may help us to understand why the poor save so little, and therefore support social programmes that guarantee a minimum consumption for those below a certain level of wealth to allow them to catch up with wealthier individuals.
Using Joint Scaling Methods to Study Ideology and Representation: Evidence from Latin America

In this article, I use joint scaling methods and similar items from three large-scale surveys to place voters, parties, and politicians from different Latin American countries on a common ideological space. The findings reveal that ideology is a significant determinant of vote choice in Latin America. They also suggest that the success of leftist leaders at the polls reflects the views of the voters sustaining their victories. The location of parties and leaders reveals that three distinctive clusters exist: one located at the left of the political spectrum, another at the center, and a third on the right. The results also indicate that legislators in Brazil, Mexico, and Peru tend to be more “leftists” than their voters. The ideological drift, however, is not significant enough to substantiate the view that a disconnect between voters and politicians lies behind the success of leftist presidents in these countries. These findings highlight the importance of using a common-space scale to compare disparate populations and call into question a number of recent studies by scholars of Latin American politics who fail to adequately address this important issue.
PROTECTIVE EFFECTS OF PHYLLANTHUS POLYPHYLLUS EXTRACT ON CARBON TETRACHLORIDE - INDUCED HEPATOTOXICITY IN RATS

The study was aimed to investigate the hepatoprotective potential of Phyllanthus polyphyllus (whole plant) leaf methanol extract (PPLME) on CCl4-induced hepatotoxicity in male Wistar rats. CCl4 injection induced liver damage by a significant rise in serum marker enzymes. The hepatoprotection was assessed in terms reduction in histological damage, changes in serum enzymes (SGOT, SGPT, ALP) and metabolites bilirubin (BL). Pretreatment of rats with different doses of plant extract (200, 300 and 400 mg/kg) significantly lowered SGOT, SGPT, ALP and BL levels against CCl4-induced rats. Histopathological examinations showed extensive liver injuries, characterized by extensive hepatocellular degeneration/necrosis, inflammatory cell infiltration, congestion, and sinusoidal dilatation. Oral administration of the leaf extract at a dose of 200, 300 and 400 mg/kg body weight significantly reduced the toxic effects of CCl4. The activity of leaf extract at the dose of 300 and 400 mg/kg was comparable to the standard drug, silymarin. Based on these results, it was observed that P. polyphyllus extract protects liver from hepatotoxicity induced by CCl4 and thus helps in evaluation of traditional claim on this plant.
The Disappearing Middle: An Incumbency-Based Explanation For The Decline of Congressional Moderates

Why has Congress become more partisan? We offer and test an explanation for the rise of institutional partisanship. Relative to their peers, ideologically moderate House incumbents from electorally unsafe seats are more likely to attract quality challengers, have smaller vote shares, and have a higher defeat rate. A growing quality effect, though, has insulated these moderate members electorally over time allowing them to cast more ideological votes. We test this explanation using district and member-level data for House elections from 1952 to1998 and find evidence confirming our expectations.
Estimation of Elongational Viscosity Using Entrance Flow Simulation

A new elongational viscosity model along with the Carreau-Yasuda model for shear viscosity is used for a finite element simulation of the flow in a capillary rheometer die. The entrance pressure loss predicted by the finite element flow simulation is matched with the corresponding experimental data to predict the parameters in the new elongational viscosity model. For two different polymers, the predicted elongational viscosity is compared with the corresponding predictions from Cogswell’s analysis and K-BKZ model.
A study of angiographic severity in patients with coronary artery disease and hyperuricemia

Backgrounds: Hyperuricemia has not yet been established as cardiovascular risk factor. We aimed to study the angiographic severity in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and hyperuricemia. Materials and Methods: In this observational cross-sectional study we measured serum uric acid level in 82 patients of CAD who underwent coronary angiography in catheterisation laboratory of our Institution. Severity of CAD was determined on the basis of Gensini score, number of diseased vessels, critical lesions and total occlusions. Results: The prevalence of hyperuricemia in patients with CAD was 42.68% in our study. Hyperuricemia was associated with higher Gensini score (33.33±10.64 vs. 22.90±6.75, p value <0.001), number of critical lesions (1.03±0.84 vs. 0.63±0.72, p value 0.031), total occlusions (0.67±0.47 vs. 0.37±0.48, p value 0.007) and dyslipidemia (63.6% vs. 30.6%, p value 0.003) more frequently compared to normouricemic patients. And also the higher serum uric acid level was correlated with higher Gensini score (beta 0.418, t 4.430, p value <0.001, 95% CI 0.036 and 0.094) and frequent number of total occlusion (beta 0.338, t 3.589, p value 0.001, 95% CI 0.462 and 1.613). Conclusion: Hyperuricemia was associated with higher Gensini score, frequent total occlusions and critical lesions in patients with Coronary Artery Disease compared to patients with normal uric acid level and also it was significantly correlated with higher Gensini score and frequent total occlusions. Asian Journal of Medical Sciences Vol.7(2) 2015 1-4
Critical factors determining public transport access level in Abuja federal capital territory of Nigeria

This study aims to investigate the key factors which determine access to public transport service in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Nigeria. Data were collected based on ten public transport access levels indicators namely: Safety, transport fare, bus availability, comfort level, speed on transit, delays at parks, bus stops and on transit highway, adherence to estimated arrival time, adherence to estimated departure time, reliability of bus schedules and bus overloading. Data on these factors were collected from administration of questionnaires to 859 public transport commuters in 17 major road transport terminals across the FCT. The data were analysed using the factor analysis, correlation, and regression method. The result shows that three factors namely, adherence to estimated departure time, fare charged by the operators, and reliability of bus schedules on routes together explained about 54% of the cumulative total variance, leaving the remaining 46% to seven other factors and residuals. The Spearman’s rank correlation matrix for all the variables indicates that they were all positively correlated at various degrees. The standardized co-efficient of the regression analysis revealed that, bus service reliability is the major determinant of public transport access level in the study area. In order to raise the current access level of commuters to public transport in FCT, operators must improve on the level of service in line with the three critical factors which the study has identified. Key words: Factors, determination, public, transport, and accessibility.
Effect of Surgical Revascularization on QT Dispersion Time in Patients Who Do Not Have Necrotic / Fibrotic Myocardium in Transthoracic Echocardiography

Introduction: Prolonged QT dispersion time is known to be associated with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. It was proved previously that electrical heterogenity caused by myocardial ischemia, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, electrolyte imbalance, heart failure prolongs QT dispersion time. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of surgical revascularization on QT dispersion time in ischemic patients not having necrotic/fi brotic segments in transthoracic echocardiography. Patients and Methods: Data of patients treated with surgical revascularization due to coronary artery disease are evaluated retrospectively. 247 patients were enrolled into the study after application of exclusion criteria. Patients’ electrocardiographic records were evaluated and values of preoperative (QTcd0), postoperative fi rst (QTcd1), postoperative third (QTcd3) and postoperative seventh (QTcd7) day corrected QT dispersion time calculated and compared with each other. Results: There were statistically signifi cant differences between QTcd0 (83.6 ± 2.2) and QTcd1 (55.3 ± 1.7), QTcd3 (50.4 ± 1.2) and QTcd7 (45.3 ± 1.1) (p< 0.001, p< 0.001, p< 0.001 respectively). There was also statistically signifi cant difference between QTcd1 (55.3 ± 1.7) and QTcd7 Yazışma Adresi/ Correspondence