Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Theft of Affordable Housing: How Rent Stabilized Apartments are Disappearing from Fraudulent Individual Apartment Improvements and What Can Be Done to Save Them

One of the largest challenges facing the future of rent stabilization in New York City is the illegal theft of affordable housing through fraudulent individual apartment improvements (IAI). City Comptroller Scott Stringer audited the current system and found, “that fraudulent activity may have expedited the loss of an untold number of rent stabilized units from the City’s regulatory system. ” Rent stabilization is set to expire on June 15, 2015 which will force the New York State Legislature to renew debates on the importance of affordable housing as they vote to extend and potentially reform the law. It is the goal of this article to explain how the present system of rent stabilization occurred in the context of struggle between millions of middle and working class tenants and the real estate lobby and how that struggle has led to an affordable housing crisis. The article will then examine how the courts have reconciled the conflicting messages from the legislature in handling rent overcharges with a focus on unsupervised IAI fraud. Finally the article will recommend several changes in law and policy that would increase transparency to all parties, provide greater clarity in the law, and prevent the theft of affordable housing.
Investigation of magnetoelectric effect in novel multiferroic thin films for MEMS applications

In this paper, we report the room temperature magnetoelectric properties of Bi0.7Dy0. 3FeO3 (BDFO) thin films deposited on conducting p-type (100) silicon substrates using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. BDFO thin films on silicon demonstrated a saturated ferroelectric hysteresis and ferromagnetic hysteresis. More interestingly, we have observed a change in electric polarization with applied magnetic field which demonstrates the room temperature magnetoelectric (M-E) coupling in these films. The results suggest the potential application of multiferroic BDFO films in MEMS as sensors as well as actuators.
Alginate/hydrophobic HPMC (60M) particulate systems: new matrix for site-specific and controlled drug delivery

This study aimed to obtain site-specific and controlled drug release particulate systems. Some particulates were prepared using different concentrations of sodium alginate (Na-Alg) alone and others were formulated using different proportions of Na-Alg with hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) stearoxy ether (60M viscosity grade), a hydrophobic form of conventional HPMC, using diclofenac potassium (DP) by ion-exchange methods. Beads were characterized by encapsulation efficiency, release profile, swelling, and erosion rate. The suitability of common empirical (zero-order, first-order and Higuchi) and semi-empirical (Ritger-Peppas and Peppas-Sahlin) models was studied to describe the drug release profile. The Weibull model was also studied. Models were tested by non-linear least-square curve fitting. A general purpose mathematical software (MATLAB) was used as an analysis tool. In addition, instead of the widely used linear fitting of log-transformed data, direct fitting was used to avoid any sort of truncation or transformation errors. The release kinetics of the beads indicated a purely relaxation-controlled delivery, referred to as case II transport. Weibull distribution showed a close fit. The release of DP from Na-Alg particulates was complete in 5-6 hours, whereas from Na-Alg hydrophobic HPMC particulate systems, release was sustained up to 10 hours. Hydrophobic HPMC with Na-Alg is an excellent matrix to formulate site-specific and controlled drug release particulate systems.
Usando Modelos Para Apoiar a Especificação e Verificação de Requisitos de Ubiquidade

A computacao ubiqua e caracterizada como um novo paradigma onde o poder de processamento esta disponivel de forma onipresente e imperceptivel no ambiente do usuario. Explorar este paradigma em projetos de software permite tratar solucoes para problemas ate entao inviaveis devido a suas caracteristicas gerais de utilizacao e acesso. Assim, essa pesquisa visa evoluir uma abordagem de apoio a definicao e verificacao de requisitos de ubiquidade ao definir estruturas (atraves de um metamodelo chamado UbiModel) para guiar a geracao da especificacao. Nesse contexto foi desenvolvida uma ferramenta que usa UbiModel para apoiar a descricao dos requisitos de ubiquidade de forma mais robusta. Considerando que os requisitos sao usualmente definidos sob o ponto de vista das demandas e necessidades do usuario, a ferramenta permite a integracao das caracteristicas de ubiquidade com o ponto de vista do comportamento esperado do sistema, propiciando a descricao dos requisitos de forma abran-
Predatory Short-Selling and Covering Around Pre-Announced Deletions from Index Composition: Evidence from the Nikkei 225 Deletions

Focusing on pre-announced index deletions which induce liquidity needs by index funds and using daily short selling data, we show that short sellers employ front-running strategies in which short sellers sell stocks immediately after the announcements of deletions from index composition until the actual deletion days and buy back stocks after the actual deletion days. We find that, while short sellers can exploit profitable opportunities, their trading activities create temporary liquidity shortages and destabilize stock prices.
Angle consistency for registration between catadioptric omni-images and orthorectified aerial images

Registration between catadioptric omni-images and orthorectified aerial images is the key step to integrate them to achieve three-dimensional urban construction. This problem becomes very challenging because of the non-linearity of the imaging model of catadioptric omni-cameras. In this study, the authors attempt to address this problem. The authors first study the properties of horizontal line structure under catadioptric omni-cameras to prove and extend the theorem of catadioptric distance, and then present angle consistency of horizontal lines between a catadioptric omni-image and an orthorectified aerial image. The authors further employ them to achieve registration between catadioptric omni-images and orthorectified aerial images. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study has not been done before. Experimental results on both simulated data and real scene images confirm the effectiveness of this approach.
Potential usefulness of single nucleotide polymorphisms to identify persons at high cancer risk: an evaluation of seven common cancers.

PURPOSE To estimate the likely number and predictive strength of cancer-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are yet to be discovered for seven common cancers. METHODS From the statistical power of published genome-wide association studies, we estimated the number of undetected susceptibility loci and the distribution of effect sizes for all cancers. Assuming a log-normal model for risks and multiplicative relative risks for SNPs, family history (FH), and known risk factors, we estimated the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and the proportion of patients with risks above risk thresholds for screening. From additional prevalence data, we estimated the positive predictive value and the ratio of non-patient cases to patient cases (false-positive ratio) for various risk thresholds. RESULTS Age-specific discriminatory accuracy (AUC) for models including FH and foreseeable SNPs ranged from 0.575 for ovarian cancer to 0.694 for prostate cancer. The proportions of patients in the highest decile of population risk ranged from 16.2% for ovarian cancer to 29.4% for prostate cancer. The corresponding false-positive ratios were 241 for colorectal cancer, 610 for ovarian cancer, and 138 or 280 for breast cancer in women age 50 to 54 or 40 to 44 years, respectively. CONCLUSION Foreseeable common SNP discoveries may not permit identification of small subsets of patients that contain most cancers. Usefulness of screening could be diminished by many false positives. Additional strong risk factors are needed to improve risk discrimination.
Customer Expectations and Perceptions in Physical Fitness Service

With modern lifestyle that reduces opportunities for physical activity, especially in city based life, the need for organized physical fitness services is on the rise. This is also becoming relevant with the spread of lifestyle diseases. To be a successful physical fitness service provider, an organization will have to understand the customer expectations as well as periodically assess customer satisfaction. This paper, based on customer survey, makes an effort to understand the expectations of customers of a physical fitness centre in Kochi, in Kerala and where these customers are expecting improvement. Impact of demographic factors on satisfaction, and the areas where expectation perception gap is observed are identified.
Pension Provision: Government Failure Around the World

This monograph surveys the results of government intervention in the market for retirement income provision throughout the world. The authors begin by looking at high-income democracies in which governments have, to a large degree, taken over the function of providing pensions. They find that state provision crowds out private provision and places a considerable fiscal burden on developed country governments. This fiscal burden is then combined with complex regulatory systems that are imposed on the private sector and which make pensions incomprehensible. Furthermore, as the authors show, the ageing populations may make meaningful reform of government pensions programmes impossible, as 'grey' electors flex their muscles. The authors find the same patterns in middle-income and low-income countries. State pension systems are often found hand-in-hand with a lack of security, partly because of the problems of corruption and inflation. The state frequently does its best to crowd out private initiative, but, where they are allowed to, families make provision for retirement in all sorts of ingenious ways. The authors reject the World Bank blueprint of formal, structured pension systems. They suggest instead that governments focus on ensuring that the legal and financial infrastructure exists to allow people to make proper provision for their retirement. So-called 'market failure' will always ensure that the result is imperfect. But, by comparison, government failure around the world has had catastrophic effects.
Characterization of the RF ablation-induced ‘oven effect’: The importance of background tissue thermal conductivity on tissue heating

Purpose: To determine the effect of background tissue thermal conductivity on RF ablation heating using ex vivo agar phantoms and computer modelling. Method: Two-compartment cylindrical agar phantom models (5% agar, 5% NaCl, 3% sucrose) were constructed. These included a standardized inner compartment (2 cm diameter, 4 cm length, 0.25% agar) representing a tumour, surrounded by an outer compartment representing background tissue. The thermal conductivity of the outer compartment was varied from 0.48 W m−1°C (normal liver) to 0.23 W m−1°C (fat) by adding a fat-saturated oil-based solute (10–90%) to the agar. RF ablation was applied at 2000 mA current for 2 min. Temperatures were recorded up to 4 cm from the electrode tip at 1 cm intervals. Subsequently, a 2-D finite element computer model was used to simulate RF ablation of 2–24 min duration for tumours measuring 2–4 cm in diameter surrounded by tissues of different thermal conductivity with the presence or absence of perfusion (0–5 kg m−3 s−1) (n = 44). A comparison of results was performed. Results: In agar phantoms, the amount of fat in the background tissue correlated with thermal conductivity as a negative exponential function (r2 = 0.98). Significantly increased temperatures were observed at the edge of the inner compartment (1 cm from the electrode tip) as the fat content of the outer compartment increased (p < 0.01). Thus, temperatures at 2 min measured 31.5 ± 2.2°C vs 45.1 ± 3.1°C for thermal conductivities of 0.46 W m−1°C (10% fat) and 0.23 W m−1°C (90% fat), respectively. On the other hand, higher levels of fat led to lower temperature increases in the background compartment (0.2 ± 0.3°C for 90% fat vs. 1.1 ± 0.05°C for 10% fat, p < 0.05). Phantom thermal heating patterns correlated extremely well with computer modelling (r2 = 0.93), demonstrating that background tissues with low thermal conductivity increase heating within the central tumour, particularly for longer durations of RF ablation and in smaller tumours. Furthermore, computer modelling demonstrated that increases in temperature at the tumour margin for background tissues of lower thermal conductivity persisted in the presence of perfusion, with a clinically relevant 4.5°C difference between background thermal conductivities of fat and soft tissue for a 3 cm tumour with perfusion of 2 kg m−3 s−1, treated for 12 min. Conclusion: Lower thermal conductivity of background tissues significantly increases temperatures within a defined ablation target. These findings provide insight into the ‘oven effect’ (i.e. increased heating efficacy for tumours surrounded by cirrhotic liver or fat) and highlight the importance of both the tumour and the surrounding tissue characteristics when contemplating RF ablation efficacy.
Fixed-Income Arbitrage: Analytical Techniques and Strategies

A Repertoire of Arbitrage Techniques. The Global Fixed-Income Securities Markets. Analytical Tools for Fixed-Income Securities. Advanced Models and Algorithms. Fixed-Income Analytics on the Trading Floor. Relative-Value Trading in Short-Maturity Instruments. Yield Spreads in the Intermediate- and Long-Maturity Sectors. Relative-Volatility Trading in Bond Options. Critical Success Factors of an Arbitrage Trading Unit. Index.
Refractive Index Fiber Laser Sensor by Using Tunable Filter Based on No-Core Fiber

A novel refractive index fiber laser sensor based on a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) integrated with a section of no-core fiber (NCF) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The oscillating wavelength of the fiber laser is only decided by the central wavelength of the FBG that is insensitive to the surrounding refractive index (SRI). However, the output power of the fiber laser varies with the SRI because the laser output is filtered by the edge of the bandpass filter (BPF) formed by the multimode interference (MMI) effect in the NCF, which is sensitive to the SRI. By measuring the variation of the output power, a cost-effective power detection RI sensor could be realized. The fiber laser sensor has a linear relationship with SRI and a sensitivity of 113.73 dB/RIU in the RI range of 1.333-1.4076.
Techniques for Assessment of Heavy Metal Toxicity Using Acanthamoeba sp, a Small, Naked and Free-Living Amoeba

Heavy metals are natural component of earth crust that cannot be degraded and destroyed but accumulate through food chain and produce potential human health risks and ecological disturbances (Loka et al., 1990). Other than occur naturally, their quantity in the environment increased due to anthropogenic activities (Greger, 1999). Heavy metals are toxic to most organisms at specific concentrations; and often cause serious upset both at cellular and genomic levels of cells. Various organisms have been employed as indicator of the metal contamination; they are mainly multicellular organisms such as fishes and bivalves (Shazili et al., 2004) based on their suitability to accumulate the metals from the environment. Some of these organisms have ability to balance between bioaccumulation and depuration of contaminants in the their body (Chin, 2005), therefore the measurement of the metals in these organisms becomes inaccurate. This chapter describes the use of a single cell organism, Acanthamoeba, a small, naked and free-living amoeba to assess the toxicity of heavy metals that are commonly present in our aquatic ecosystem.
Radioimmunoassay of aldolase A. Determination of normal serum levels and increased serum concentration in cancer patients

A radioimmunoassay specific for human aldolase A subunits was used to measure human aldolase A (ALD‐A) in human serum. The double antibody competitive inhibition radioimmunoassay technique used radioiodinated purified ALD‐A as ligand, chicken antisera specific for human ALD‐A and rabbit antichicken IgG. The serum levels of ALD‐A in 42 normal healthy subjects ranged from 130 to 210 ng/ml (mean average, 171 ± 39 ng/ml). In 177 hospitalized patients without cancer, muscle diseases, or hemolytic anemia, the ALD‐A serum levels ranged from 125 to 220 ng/ml. In contrast, 82% of 260 patients with various types of malignancy had ALD‐A serum concentrations above the normal range. The CEA levels increased only 44% of the sera of 80 patients with cancer of the digestive tract, whereas the ALD‐A levels were increased in 86% of the patients. The AFP levels were greater than 100 ng/ml in only 70% of the sera of 33 liver cell carcinoma patients, whereas the ALD‐A levels were increased in 94% of these sera. The measurement of serum ALD‐A by radioimmunoassay may be a valuable adjunct in the clinical diagnosis of certain cancer patients.
A Taxonomy Built on Layers of Abstraction for Time and State Vulnerabilities

Software classifications have been created before with the purpose of keeping track of attack patterns as well as providing a history for the various vulnerable software packages. This article focuses on one single class of such attacks, conventionally known as â€œTime and Stateâ€ attacks. The authors offer a more fine-grained analysis of the anatomy of such attacks. They reason about vulnerabilities by using â€œswimlaneâ€ diagrams which are loosely derived from UML diagrams, annotated with semantics of concurrent programming, such as the notions of traces and stability. The authors offer a taxonomy based on abstraction layers, implying thereby some form of tree hierarchy where vulnerabilities inherit properties from the upper abstract layers and share code-level flaws on the lower layers. That allows them to classify attacks by what they share in common, which is a different approach than other related classification attempts.
A 10-GB/s SONET-compliant CMOS transceiver with low crosstalk and intrinsic jitter

A 4:1 SERDES IC suitable for SONET OC-192 and 10-Gb/s Ethernet is presented. The receiver, which consists of a limiting amplifier, a clock and data recovery unit, and a demultiplexer, locks automatically to all data rates in the range 9.95-10.7 Gb/s. At a bit error rate of less than 10/sup -12/, it has a sensitivity of 20 mV. The transmitter comprises a clock multiplying unit and a multiplexer. The jitter of the transmitted data signal is 0.2 ps RMS. This is facilitated by a novel notched inductor layout and a special power supply concept, which reduces cross-coupling between the transmitter and receiver. Integrated in a 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS technology, the total power consumption from both 1.2- and 2.5-V supplies is less than 1 W.
Urban air pollution and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease-related emergency department visits

Background: Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can have recurrent disease exacerbations triggered by several factors, including air pollution. Visits to the emergency respiratory department can be a direct result of short-term exposure to air pollution. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the daily number of COPD emergency department visits and the daily environmental air concentrations of PM10, SO2, NO2, CO and O3 in the City of São Paulo, Brazil. Methods: The sample data were collected between 2001 and 2003 and are categorised by gender and age. Generalised linear Poisson regression models were adopted to control for both short- and long-term seasonal changes as well as for temperature and relative humidity. The non-linear dependencies were controlled using a natural cubic spline function. Third-degree polynomial distributed lag models were adopted to estimate both lag structures and the cumulative effects of air pollutants. Results: PM10 and SO2 readings showed both acute and lagged effects on COPD emergency department visits. Interquartile range increases in their concentration (28.3 μg/m3 and 7.8 μg/m3, respectively) were associated with a cumulative 6-day increase of 19% and 16% in COPD admissions, respectively. An effect on women was observed at lag 0, and among the elderly the lag period was noted to be longer. Increases in CO concentration showed impacts in the female and elderly groups. NO2 and O3 presented mild effects on the elderly and in women, respectively. Conclusion: These results indicate that air pollution affects health in a gender- and age-specific manner and should be considered a relevant risk factor that exacerbates COPD in urban environments.
Audit Quality and Specialist Tenure

We argue that the association between auditor industry specialization and audit quality depends on how long the auditor has been a specialist. We measure audit quality using absolute discretionary accruals, income-increasing discretionary accruals, and book-tax differences. Our results, based on a sample of Big 4 audit clients from 2003–2015, indicate that auditors who have only recently gained the specialist designation produce a level of audit quality that does not surpass that produced by non-specialist auditors, and is generally lower than the audit quality produced by seasoned specialists. We estimate that the seasoning process takes two to three years. In contrast to prior research that finds no effect of specialization after propensity score matching, we find that seasoned specialists generally produce higher-quality audits than other auditors even after matching. This suggests that the audit quality effect associated with seasoned industry specialist auditors is not due to differences in client characteristics. JEL Classifications: M42. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources identified in the text.
Long-range surface plasmon-polariton waveguide biosensors for disease detection

We review recent progress on the application of long-range surface plasmon-polariton waveguide biosensors for disease detection. The biosensors are constructed from metal stripe waveguides cladded in Cytop with etched microfluidic channels to expose the stripe surface to the sensing fluid. The waveguides support long-range surface plasmons in integrated optics geometries when excited in an end-fire manner. Application to the detection of leukemia, dengue fever, and urinary tract infection is discussed.
Adopting a specific innovation type versus composition of different innovation types: Case study of a Ghanaian bank

Purpose – Although several types of innovation are identified in the extant literature, researchers have not resolved conflicting theoretical predictions about the implication of adopting innovation types. Following the conceptualization of Damanpour et al., this paper aims to distinguish between three innovation types (i.e. services, technological process, and administrative process) and make suggestions for banks on whether to focus their innovation efforts on a specific type or composition of different types in order to optimize the returns to innovation.Design/methodology/approach – Based on an empirical case study of a large multinational bank in Ghana (name withheld for anonymity), data were collected with questionnaire instruments from 51 bank managers. Two regression equations were estimated and analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Findings – The paper finds evidence that focus on adopting a specific innovation type seems to contribute more to performance than adop.