Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Arsenic May Play an Environmental Risk Factor to Give Birth a Down Syndrome Child

There are many different causes of mental retardation, both biological and environmental. Down syndrome occurs in one out of every 600-700 births worldwide. Arsenic is a naturally occurring metalloid that has been associated with increased incidence of different genetic anomalies in certain highly exposed populations. This present work aimed to study whether arsenic plays any role in the increased incidence of Down syndrome among residents of West Bengal, India, which is one of the worst arsenic-affected areas of the world. Our study group included thirty Down syndrome patients and their father and mother. We studied the arsenic concentration in the hair samples of our study group. We found in some area like Kolkata and Nadia higher arsenic concentration in the biological tissues of patients, which may correlate with their greater incidence of chromosomal aberrations. Thus, arsenic may act as a predisposing factor for giving birth of Down syndrome baby.
A Dual-Band Printed End-Fire Antenna with DSPSL Feeding

A novel dual-band printed end-fired antenna with double-sided parallel-strip line (DSPSL) feeding is presented. The DSPSL acts in wideband transition using balanced transmission. Two different modes of the parasitic patches allow the antenna to work in different bands. The printed antenna is designed as a quasi-Yagi structure to achieve directivity in the lower band, and the parallel rectangular patches serve as the parasitic director. These patches act as radiation patches with end-fire direction characteristics in the upper band. The measured bandwidths were 18.3% for the lower frequency band (2.28–2.74 GHz) and 12.6% for the upper frequency band (5.46–6.2 GHz).
Aid for War? An Empirical Assessment of Donor Interventions in Civil Wars

Since 1960 foreign aid to countries with civil war has exceeded $300 billion in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Using a global panel of more than 150 civil wars between 1945 and 2000, this paper evaluates the impact of diplomatic, military and economic interventions on conflict duration. Moreover, specific conditions are identified under which foreign interventions work best. The results suggest that diplomatic and military interventions can shorten civil wars, while economic interventions do not affect the duration of civil wars but may play a conditioning role. The findings are obtained by fitting a proportional hazard model for time-varying covariates. They are confirmed using a logit model, which is then expanded for additional robustness checks.
Rise of Unofficial Marriages in Cameroon: Economic or Socio-Demographic Response?

This study aimed at analyzing the link between spouses' socioeconomic status and cohabitation in Cameroon. It helped identifying the characteristics of couples according to the formal nature of the union, determining the link between spouses' socio-economic status and the non formalization of marriages in Cameroon, as well as its evolution from 1991 to 2004. Analysis from logistic regression show that women aged 15 - 24 years are more likely to be in an informal union than those aged 25 -34 years. This possibility is higher in 1998. Bantu and semi Bantu women are more likely to involve in cohabitation than the Sudanese ones. This possibility increases from 1998 to 2004. Urban women are more likely to involve in unofficial marriages than rural ones. This possibility increases in 1998 and decreases in 2004. Women from couple with 3-10 years age gap between spouses, who are more educated, whose spouse is not economically active, are more likely to be in informal marriage than those in well-matched one. Giving the influence of the women's ethnic group, as well as the socio-economic mismatching of spouses in the non-formalization of unions, governments and other development partners and NGOs should develop sensitization actions against practices likely to encourage dowry higher cost, permissive morals. They should also develop family and premarital education. Among other limitations, research on cohabitation cannot rely on longitudinal data. Therefore, further studies are needed to determine whether cohabitation is a step towards formalization of unions, and to identify the mechanisms of action of factors that may explain the said phenomenon.
An Extended Endochronic Theory Formulation of Plastically DeformedDamaged Indian Bamboo under Uniaxial Compression

This paper presents a series of uniaxial compressive loading tests carried out on cylindrical samples of Indian bamboo, together with a stress strain model. The bamboo species Oxytenantera abyssinica, from the Congo Basin forest is used for these tests. The non-linear behavior of Indian bamboo may be attributed to two distinct mechanisms, plasticity and damage. These two mechanisms are described by the endochronic theory of plasticity and continuum damage mechanics. A dissipative model, taken into account plasticity and damage through various parameters is proposed. The parameters of the model are deduced from monotonic and cyclic uniaxial compressive tests. The proposed stress-strain modelis compared to the tests results and it can be found that the model fits well with experimental results.
THE WORK OF JOSE LUIS RUBIO DE FRANCIA I

The aim of these pages is to give the reader an idea about the first part of the mathematical life of José Luis Rubio de Francia. José Luis was an undergraduate student at the University of Zaragoza from 1966 to 1971, and a graduate student from 1971 to 1974 . His advisor was professor Luis Vigil, who introduced José Luis to Harmonic Analysis . He began studying Fourier Analysis on groups . In fact, the goal of his thesis was to study in the Abstract Harmonic Analysis context Vigil's unpublished monograph "Series de Fourier en medida", Beca March 1957, see [V] . José Luis took two starting points : The first one, due to Kolmogorov, states that given a function f in L 1([0,1]), the functions
Corruption and Cross-Border Investment: Firm Level Evidence

This paper studies the impact of corruption on inward foreign direct investment using a unique firm-level data set. It examines two effects of corruption simultaneously: a reduction in the volume of foreign investment and a shift in the ownership structure. Corruption makes local bureaucracy less transparent and hence acts as a tax on foreign investors. Moreover, corruption affects the decision to take on a local partner. On the one hand, corruption increases the value of using a local partner to cut through the bureaucratic maze. On the other hand, corruption decreases the effective protection of investor? s intangible assets and lowers the probability that disputes between foreign and domestic partners will be adjudicated fairly, which reduces the value of having a local partner. The importance of protecting intangible assets increases with investor? s technological sophistication, which tilts the preference away from joint ventures in a corrupt country. Empirical evidence shows that corruption reduces inward FDI and shifts the ownership structure towards joint ventures. Technologically more advanced firms are found to be less likely to engage in joint ventures.
HOW SYMBOLIC MEANING INFLUENCES TIME PERCEPTION

The present study investigated how symbolic meaning affected time perception in school age children. Four groups took part at the study: Group 1 (n=16; mean age 4.88 yrs); Group 2 (n=13; mean age 6.38 yrs); Group 3 (n=16; mean age 7.31 yrs) and Group 4 (n=16; mean age=8.31 yrs). Participants were engaged in a time reproduction task. Stimuli employed could be static or moving vehicles (car and truck). The moving vehicles moved from one side to the other of the computer screen in 11 or 21 sec. Static stimuli were presented at the centre of the screen for the same durations as the moving stimuli. Significant differences between groups were found. Younger participants under-reproduced the duration more than did older participants. Effect of stimulus duration, vehicle and movement were also found. Particularly interesting is the interaction between vehicle and duration. When the movie lasted 21 sec, the car, that recalled the idea of fastness, was significantly under-reproduced compared with the truck, which recalled the idea of slowness. Younger children were more affected by the movement. The results suggested a meaning effect in temporal perception of school age children and that this effect was sensitive to age.
The UK wage premium puzzle: how did a large increase in university graduates leave the education premium unchanged?

Since the early-1990s the UK experienced an unprecedented increase in university graduates. The proportion of people with a university degree by age 30 more than doubled from 16% for born in 1965-69 to 33% for those born ten years later. At the same time the age profile of the graduate premium remained largely unchanged across cohorts. This paper first establishes the facts using a detailed analysis of micro-data on wage and employment patterns over the last two decades, benchmarked against the US economy. We then show that the stability of the age profile in the premium across different birth cohorts is unlikely to be explained by either composition changes or selection on unobservables. We also argue that it is inconsistent with skill-biased technical change affecting all advanced economies in the same way. We further rule out explanations based on factor price equalisation. Our resolution of the puzzle is a model in which increases in level of education induce firms to transit toward a decentralised technology in which decision-making is spread more widely through the workforce. We provide empirical support for this view.
Impacts Of Developing Countries Growth On Natural Resource Exporters: A Bop Constrained Growth Model

Since the 1990s, developing countries growth rates have been increasing whereas developed countries growth rates have been decreasing. Because countries have different demand structures (according to their income level), the demand for some products were boosted over others, and hence countries exporting such demand growing products tended to be positively affected. Based on a Kaldorian approach, in which exports’ dynamics play a crucial role to understanding the difference in growth rates across countries, countries’ growth rates is explained taking into account non-homogeneous growth across different groups of countries. This work renders these changes in the structure of world demand as endogenous in a balance-of-payments growth (BPCG) model. The results suggest that natural-resource exporters’ higher growth rates in the last decade were caused by a faster growth of developing countries demand for natural resources. Nevertheless, when other developing economies are considered, the outcomes show that an increase of growth rates based on natural-resource exports might be unsustainable in the long run, once the income elasticities of demand for imports and for exports are higher for more technological advanced sectors.
Floral Developmental Morphology of Persea americana (Avocado, Lauraceae): The Oddities of Male Organ Identity

A floral developmental series was determined for Persea americana (Lauraceae, avocado), and the floral morphology of this species was compared with available data for other members of Persea. We compared the structure of the inflorescence and flower with that of vegetative shoots with respect to phyllotaxy and leaf shape. The inflorescence is a determinate thyrse (panicle) with variable numbers of lateral branches. Staminal glands in Persea may represent abaxial‐marginal emergences rather than stamens. However, these glands are occasionally involved in transitions to pollen sacs and ovary margins. Stigmas, pollen sacs, staminal appendages, glands of staminodes, and margins of tepals share features that are subjectively associated with “androecia. ” In the innermost androecial whorl, staminodial glands appear united because of the reduction of the middle portion to a staminodial apex. The apex of staminodes is homologous to the filament and anther, as well as to the stigma of the carpel, and corresponds to the connective tip in other basal angiosperms. In Persea, the connective and the staminode apex also correspond to the body of the tepal (i.e., all but the margin). Above a constriction (stipe), the carpel forms a cross zone bearing the single ovule; this cross zone also corresponds to the thecae in stamens, similar to observations for other basal angiosperms.
Sedimentological characterization of the quaternary deposits in the region between Marília and Presidente Prudente, São Paulo State, Brazil (Caracterização sedimentológica dos depósitos quaternários da região entre Marília e Presidente Prudente, Estado de São Paulo, Brasil)

Sedimentologic characterization and provenance studies of quaternary colluvial deposits (9±1 to 980±100 ky B.P. dated by luminescence) were based on textural and mineralogical analyses. These deposits occur extensively between Marília and Presidente Prudente (São Paulo State, Brazil), superimposed on the Bauru Group sedimentary rocks or the Serra Geral Formation basaltic rocks, both of Cretaceous age. They are distributed irregularly throughout the study area and are studied by sedimentologic and morphologic methods. These deposits are composed of very fine to coarse-grained unconsolidated sands, mostly constituted by quartzose monocrystalline grains reddened by iron oxide and hydroxide impregnation. Analyses of grain sizes indicated that total granulometric distributions are richer in the clay fraction than in the sedimentary rocks located. Nonmicaceous transparent heavy minerals studied microscopically in fine-grained as well as in very finegrained sands showed that zircon, tourmaline, staurolite and rutile are present in all the samples. Differences in grain sizes among the colluvial deposits and the Bauru Group sedimentary rocks are attributable to pedogenetic processes.
Dynamical insight into dark matter haloes

We investigate, using the spherical Jeans equation, self-gravitating dynamical equilibria satisfying a relation ρ/σ 3 ∝ r −α , which holds for simulated dark matter haloes over their whole resolved radial range. Considering first the case of velocity isotropy, we find that this problem has only one solution for which the density profile is not truncated or otherwise unrealistic. This solution occurs only for a critical value of αcrit = 35/18 = 1.94, which is consistent with the empirical value of 1.9 ± 0.05. We extend our analysis in two ways: first, we introduce a par ,
Least Change Secant Update Methods for Nonlinear Complementarity Problem

In this work, we introduce a family of Least Change Secant Update Methods for solving Nonlinear Complementarity Problems based on its reformulation as a nonsmooth system using the one-parametric class of nonlinear complementarity functions introduced by Kanzow and Kleinmichel. We prove local and superlinear convergence for the algorithms. Some numerical experiments show a good performance of this algorithm.
Construction of coincident indicators for the euro area. 5th EUROSTAT Colloquium on Modern Tools For Business Cycle Analysis, Luxembourg, 29th September - 1st October 2008

The availability of timely and reliable information on main macroeconomic variables is considered both by policy makers and analysts as crucial for an effective process of decision making. Unfortunately official statistics cannot always meet adequately user needs. This is the reason why, using econometric techniques analysts try to anticipate or estimate in real time main macroeconomic movements. In this paper we compare several econometric models for the estimation of the period on period growth rate for the euro area Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Industrial Production Index (IPI). This comparison is made on the basis of real time results provided by these models over six years (2002-2007). Tests of absence of bias are performed and Diebold-Mariano tests help us to select among the models. The paper also presents a new indicator for euro area employment quarterly growth, which seems to perform rather well in the recent past, although this is still a preliminary assessment as we are only at an early stage of running the indicator.
Dynamic Characteristics of the Hippocampal Neuron under Conductance's Changing

The hippocampal CA1 pyramid neuron has plenty of discharge actions. In the thesis, the dynamic characteristics of the hippocampal neuron model are analyzed and discussed by the neurodynamic theory and methods. Under a certain amplitude current’s stimulation, the change of (the maximum conductance of the transient sodium channel) and (the maximum conductance of the delay rectification potassium channel) can cause different dynamic characteristics of the neuron model. The transient Na current( ) caused by is indispensable in the discharge’s formation process of the model. The model can generate the discharge process only when reaches a certain threshold. In the discharge process of the neuron model, ’s changing affects little and the ISIs approximate to a straight line. The delay rectification K current( ) caused by isn’t indispensable in the discharge’s formation process of the model. But ’s changing affects much in the discharge process of the neuron model. With ’s changing, the neuron model undergoes different dynamic bifurcation process, and has plenty of discharge patterns such as the chaos, period, and so on. This investigation is helpful to know and investigate the dynamic characteristics and the bifurcation mechanism of the hippocampal neuron; and it provides a certain theory assist to investigate the neural diseases such as the Alzheimer disease by neurodynamics. Na g
13 . 3 COMPARISON BETWEEN LES AND RANS COMPUTATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF CONTAMINANT DISPERSION IN THE M . U . S . T FIELD EXPERIMENT

Air quality is a growing concern in urban environment and accurate prediction of transport and dispersion of contaminants is needed. However, the complex surface topography (buildings and other obstacles) that forms the urban canopy makes difficult the study of such physical process. The interaction between the atmospheric turbulent boundary layer and the urban geometry generates complex flow patterns that determine the distribution of urban pollutant concentration. Measurements of the dispersion of pollutant in urban areas or around obstacles have been carried on in wind or water tunnel experiments by Meroney et al. (1996), Yee et al. (2006), Castro et al. (2006), Bezpalcová & Harms (2005) as well as in field experiments by Biltoft (2001). The traditional models based on Gaussian plume methods, widely used in application for simple terrain, perform poorly for the prediction of urban environment dispersion because the complex geometry formed by bluff bodies such as buildings has to be explicitly described to correctly represent the interaction between the urban canopy and the atmospheric flow. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach is more appropriate for the simulation of urban dispersion phenomena. An “exact” numerical approach would rely upon the use of direct numerical simulation (DNS), where all the scales of the turbulence motion are resolved, thus allowing for the obtention of very detailed informations on the flow field. However, due to its computational cost, DNS is still restricted to the study of turbulent flow around isolated buildings or around a limited number of obstacles (Yakhot et al. (2006), Coceal et al. (2006)). On the other hand, the Reynolds-average Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach integrates the whole turbulence spectrum so that turbulence modeling assumptions are required for the statistical closures. This approach does not require large CPU resources and has been used by Santiago et al. (2007) and by Milliez & Carissimo (2007), for the calculation of
Waste to energy for small cities: Economics versus carbon footprint

The main activities in Waste to Energy processing include waste generation, collection, separation, transportation, conversion, energy distribution, and ultimate waste disposal. Waste to Energy carries a trade-off between energy generation and the energy spent on collection, transport and treatment. Major performance indicators are cost, Waste Energy Potential Utilisation, and Carbon Footprint. This presentation analyses the potential of small cities to substitute part of their fossil fuels use by energy derived from Municipal Solid Waste. Several factors are considered in the study. The impact of waste logistics and the losses from energy distribution systems – natural gas pipeline and electricity grid are the most significant ones on the side of the supply chain. Further, the waste processing part, including the energy recovery from the waste involves the evaluation of a number of technologies linked with each other to form a distributed integrated processing system. In this study, the options for converting waste into thermal energy include (a) biogas digestion and burning and (b) waste incineration with off-gas cleaning. It is also possible to use the biogas in advanced cogeneration systems based on engines or fuel cells. The proposed procedure takes all these options into account and derives the optimal processing configuration from the waste generation to energy supply and residual waste deposition to landfill.
A NOVEL GEL ELECTROLYTE FOR VALVE-REGULATED LEAD ACID BATTERY

A novel gel electrolyte system used in lead-acid batteries was investigated in this work. The gel systems were prepared by addition different amount of Al 2 O 3 , TiO 2 and B 2 O 3 into the gelled system consisting of 6 wt% fumed silica and 30 wt% sulfuric acid solution. The anodic peak currents and peak redox capacities of the gel electrolytes were characterized by cyclic voltammetric method. They decreased by the time B 2 O 3 and Al 2 O 3 were used as additives in fumed silica based gel electrolyte system. However, these values increased by the adding 3.0 wt% of TiO 2 . The solution and charge transfer resistances of the gel electrolytes were investigated by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. While the solution resistances were lower in gel systems having different amount additives than pure fumed silica based gel, the charge transfer resistance was the lowest in gel electrolytes consisting fumed silica and fumed silica-TiO 2 . The battery performances were studied by obtaining discharge curves of prepared gel electrolytes. The performance of gelled systems were higher than that of non-gelled electrolyte at room temperature. The mixture of fumed silica-TiO 2 was suggested an alternative gel formulation for gel VRLA batteries.