Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inflation Rate Dispersion and Convergence in Monetary and Economic Unions: Lessons for the ECB

Using a set of regional inflation rates we examine the dynamics of inflation dispersion within the U.S.A. , Japan and across U.S. and Canadian regions. We find that inflation rate dispersion is significant throughout the sample period in all three samples. Based on methods applied in the empirical growth literature, we provide evidence in favor of significant mean reversion (? - convergence) in inflation rates in all considered samples. The evidence on ? -convergence is mixed, however. Observed declines in dispersion are usually associated with decreasing overall inflation levels which indicates a positive relationship between mean inflation and overall inflation rate dispersion. Our findings for the within-distribution dynamics of regional inflation rates show that dynamics are largest for Japanese prefectures, followed by U.S. metropolitan areas. For the combined U.S.-Canadian sample, we find a pattern of withindistribution dynamics that is comparable to that found for regions within the European Monetary Union (EMU). In line with findings in the so-called 'border literature' these results suggest that frictions across European markets are at least as large as they are, e.g., across North American markets.
Organic food in schools and kindergartensin Trondheim. A case study report.

In October 2007, the municipality of Trondheim, Norway decided to increase the public consumption of organic food. The share of public schools and kindergartens offering organic food should be increased by 20 % within 2011, as compared to 2007. Trondheim has for several years had an ambitious aim to increase the consciousness among children and youth about environmental issues, and the project “Children‟s Green City” had been an important tool in this work. The decision made it relevant for the research project “innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth” (iPOPY) to use Trondheim as a research case. This report describes the background for the municipal decision about organic food, and what has been done to implement it. Several employees in the municipality and other stakeholders have been interviewed. Even if the decision puts up a quite modest goal, there are several challenges to achieve it. The point of departure (how much organic food was served by kindergartens and schools in 2007) is unknown, and hence the progress is difficult to measure. In the public purchasing agreement, the municipality has obliged its appointed wholesaler to offer organic products. The intention was that the units (e.g. schools) would get easier access to organic food, and that the demand would increase, making it possible for more local farmers to convert to organic. Purchasing agreements are an important tool, but they have to be carefully designed and developed with time. The largest challenge to achieve the organic goal in Trondheim is to motivate actors who may influence the purchase of food, and to anchor the intentions in the decision in such a large organisation as the municipality is. A committed and continuous effort is required. Education and training of staff in charge of food serving in schools and kindergartens is a fruitful
Integration Costs: Are They Unique to Wind and Solar Energy? Preprint

Over the past several years, there has been considerable interest in assessing wind integration costs. This is understandable because wind energy does increase the variability and uncertainty that must be managed on a power system. However, there are other sources of variability and uncertainty that also must be managed in the power system. This paper describes some of these sources and shows that even the introduction of base-load generation can cause additional ramping and cycling. The paper concludes by demonstrating that integration costs are not unique to wind and solar, and should perhaps instead be assessed by power plant and load performance instead of technology type.
(CMV) may trigger idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in a susceptible host and/or that the presence of CMV may alter IPF in response to a well‐defined trigger of pulmonary fibrosis. A mouse model

The aim of the present study was to investigate the hypotheses that cytomegalovirus (CMV) may trigger idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in a susceptible host and/or that the presence of CMV may alter IPF in response to a well‐defined trigger of pulmonary fibrosis. A mouse model of murine CMV (MCMV) infection was established, and the mice were divided into a control group, bleomycin group and an MCMV+bleomycin group. Changes in the weights of the mice were determined in the three groups. Pulmonary fibrosis was detected using a histopathological method. The activity of transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 was measured, and the levels of E-cadherin, Vimentin and phosphorylated (phospho)-small mothers against decapentaplegic (SMAD)2 were determined using western blot analysis. MCMV was found to invade the lungs, however, it did not cause pulmonary fibrosis. The progression of fibrosis in the mice treated with MCMV+bleomycin was more rapid, compared with that in the control mice. The protein levels of Vimentin and phospho-SMAD2 were upregulated, whereas the level of E-cadherin was downregulated in the MCMV+bleomycin group,. The results suggested that latent MCMV infection aggravated pulmonary fibrosis in the mouse model, possibly through the activation of TGF-β1.
Surveys in Differential Geometry

The purpose of this article is to survey the recent progress made on estimating positive eigenvalues of Laplacian on hyperbolic Riemann surfaces in the case of congruence subgroups in connection with the Selberg conjecture, as well as certain related ones. The results are obtained as consequences of establishing certain important cases of Langlands’ functoriality conjecture.
Physical activity and sleep on the risk of overweight among Grade 5 students in Gampaha Medical Office of Health area, Sri Lanka

Background: Overweight in childhood is an emerging health problem in developing countries. The increasing trend in overweight is associated with three important factors; dietary habits, physical activity and socio-economic changes. Objective: To determine the risk factors for overweight among Grade 5 students in schools of Gampaha Medical Officer of Health area. Methods: A case control study was carried out. Cases were defined as Grade 5 students who were overweight, which was identified based on the age and sex specific body mass index (BMI) centile charts recommended by the International Obesity Task Force. Controls were those who were not overweight selected from the same class of cases. A pre-tested self-administered questionnaire was administered to the parent or guardian of the children to assess the physical activities, dietary pattern and socio-demographic characteristics of children. Multiple logistic regression analysis was applied. Risk factors for overweight were assessed using adjusted odds ratio (aOR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: Less physical activity during free times at home (OR=1.86; 95% CI=1.01, 3.42), less physical activity during weekends (OR=2.06; 95% CI=1.18, 3.61), less overall physical activity (OR=1.77; 95% CI=1.08, 2.9) and sleeping more than 8 hours per day (OR=0.46; 95% CI=0.29, 0.74) showed statistically significant associations with overweight in bivariate analysis. Of them, after adjusting for confounders, engaging in less physical activities during the weekend was a risk factor (aOR=2.17; 95% CI=1.22, 3.86) for overweight. Sleeping more than 8 hours per day was a protective factor (aOR=0.46; 95% CI=0.29, 0.74) for overweight. Other characteristics of physical activities, socio-demographic factors, high-fibre diet and fatty food did not show any significant association with overweight. Conclusions: Less physical activity especially during weekends showed a two-fold risk for overweight while sleeping more than 8 hours per day showed a similar protective effect for overweight among Grade 5 school children.
Climate and Water in the West: Science, Information and Decision-Making

The U.S. West is a place of varying and changing physical and ecological conditions that control regional climate, hydrology, and geomorphology. It is also a place of evolving social demographics, settlement, resource use and values. The factors conditioning present and future water resources management in the Western U.S. have been summarized as: increasing population and consumption, uncertain reserved water rights (in particular quantification of Native American rights), increasing transfer of water rights to cities, deteriorating water quality, environmental water allocation, ground water overdraft, outmoded institutions, aging urban water infrastructures, and the changing nature of federal, state and local interaction.
Small RNAs in Plant Response to Abiotic Stress

Small noncoding (nc) RNAs (sRNAs) are the important posttranscriptional regulatory factors in gene regulatory networks. They are involved in many important processes of plant development and stress responses. Increasingly research data reveal that micro‐ RNAs (miRNAs), heterochromatic small interfering RNAs (hc-siRNAs), trans-acting small interfering RNAs (ta-siRNAs), natural antisense small interfering RNAs (nat-siR‐ NAs), repeat-associated small interfering RNAs (ra-siRNAs), and the piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are involved in heat stress, salt stress, cold stress, and drought stress, which are found in metazoans. Some small RNAs are required for plant thermotolerance and salt tolerance. These findings facilitate our investigation of the genetic basis of plant adaptability to various environmental stresses and the genetic manipulation of plant tol‐ erance to many abiotic stresses. This chapter highlights the recent advances in under‐ standing the crucial roles of sRNAs in plant responses to heat, drought, salinity, and cold and proposes the potential technologies and strategies used to identify abiotic-stress- regulated sRNAs in addition to the recent advances and methods for validation and anal‐ ysis of their target genes.
DIAGNOSING THE VALORISATION OF UNIVERSITY -INDUSTRY INTERACTION BY INDUSTRIAL COMPANIES: EVALUATION BASED ON INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATIONS’ WEBSITES

This work aims to identify ways to which companies and universities relate to each other and the importance attributed by companies to this kind of interaction. Specifically, it seeks to understand the degree to which university-industry interaction is approached, comparing Brazilian industry to that of so-called developed countries. We use a qualitative and exploratory approach, specifically content analysis (Bazeley & Jackson, 2013; Krippendorff, 2003), and industrial associations’ websites as a data source. Results indicate that there is emerging conscience in Brazilian strategic industries about universities as a source of useful technology, but not about the role of university spin-off generation as an important element for technological and industrial development. Participation of Universities as members of industrial associations appears to be similar to benchmark associations. The promotion of university-industry interaction as core mission is uncommon either in benchmark associations nor Brazilian associations, but Benchmark associations, in more dynamic industries always mention universities as a source of technological service (by various technology transfer mechanisms), a situation which was not observed in the Brazilian reality. Hence, data shows that the connection between Universities and Brazilian universities has yet to be improved. The results also suggest that Brazilian Medical Industry Complex, Industrial Chemistry, Electronics, Materials, and Information Technology present less conscience and valuation of University as a potential source of innovation, in comparison to the international benchmark.
tudy on the characteristic points of boiling curve by using avelet analysis and genetic neural network

Local singularity of a signal includes a lot of important information. Wavelet transform can overcome the shortages of Fourier analysis, i.e., the weak localization in the local timeand frequency-domains. It has the capacity to detect the characteristic points of boiling curves. Based on the wavelet analysis theory of signal singularity detection, Critical Heat Flux (CHF) and Minimum Film Boiling Starting Point (qmin) of boiling curves can be detected by using the wavelet modulus maxima detection. Moreover, a genetic neural network (GNN) model for predicting CHF is set up in this paper. The database used in the analysis is from the 1960s, including 2365 data points which cover a range of pressure (P), from 100 to 1000 kPa, −2 −1 avelet analysis enetic neural network rediction mass flow rate (G) from 40 to 500 kg m s , inlet sub-cooling ( Tsub) from 0 to 35 K, wall superheat ( Tsat) from 10 to 500 K and heat flux (Q) from 20 to 8000 kW m−2. GNN mode has some advantages of its global optimal searching, quick convergence speed and solving non-linear problem. The methods of establishing the model and training of GNN are discussed particularly. The characteristic point predictions of boiling curve are investigated in detail by GNN. The results predicted by GNN have a good agreement with experimental data. At last, the main parametric trends of the CHF are analyzed by applying GNN. Simulation and analysis results show that the network model can effectively predict CHF.
Current issues in Ciphertext Policy-Attribute based scheme for cloud computing: A survey

The use of cloud computing has increased exponentially in data resources storage over the past few years. Cloud storage reduces the overall costs of server maintenance, whereby companies only pay for the resources they actually use in the cloud storage. Despite this, security concerns in cloud computing must be a top priority. One of the common encryption methods in cloud security is Attribute Based Encryption (ABE). ABE contains two types, namely, Ciphertext Policy-Attribute Based Encryption (CP-ABE) and Key Poli- cy-Attribute based Encryption (KP-ABE). CP-ABE is better than KP-ABE, especially in reduplication issues and fine-grained access. However, issues in CP_ABE need further improvement. Improvement for the CP-ABE scheme has been growing rapidly since 2010 to date, and five main issues need improvement. This paper reviews the proposed CP-ABE schemes during the past three years. These schemes focus on solving the five issues identified inherent in the CP-ABE scheme.
Research Article Influence of Whey Protein Drinks to Athletes: Taking Track and Field Athletes as Research Objects

According to the nutritional requirement of athletes during exercise, this study aims to invent a drink which mainly contains whey protein and is also added with saccharides and electrolyte, etc., to keep athletes' athletic ability and accelerate the recovery of physical ability. Athletes that were going to participate in a track and field sports meeting of province were asked to drink the whey protein drinks during training and the index of Red Blood Cell (RBC), Hemoglobin (HB) concentration, Hematocrit (HCT), Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV) of athletes' blood were measured. The blood sugar concentration of athletes in control group before and after the experiment was 4.06±0.55 and 3.25±0.58 mmol/L, respectively, which lowered about 17% (p<0.05) and the difference was statistically significant. However, the blood sugar concentration of athletes in experimental group before and after the experiment was 4.34±0.65 and 4.56±0.52 mmol/L respectively, which increased about 3.5% (p<0.05) and the difference had no statistical significance. The experimental results showed that whey protein drinks could effectively protect body's erythrocyte function, prevent decline of HB as well as strengthen physical ability, relieve fatigue and maintain the muscle microstructure. Therefore, whey protein drinks can effectively strengthen athletes' immunocompetence as well as the muscle strength and it is also antioxidative and can prevent body damage and relieve fatigue. What's more, whey protein's various sports nutritional properties enable it to be widely applied to sports nutrition.
Ceiling Panel Cooling Systems

Ceiling panel radiant cooling has been refined and used success fully in Europe for more than 15 years. Global consulting firms and their European engineers, have been frustrated when pre senting the option of panel cooling to U.S. engineers, architects, con tractors and owners. The three most common reasons in the United State for dismissing panel cooling are condensation, capacity, and first cost.
Perturbing phytoplankton : response and isotopic fractionation with changing carbonate chemistry in two coccolithophore species

Abstract. All species of coccolithophore appear to respond to perturbations of carbonate chemistry in a different way. Here, we show that the degree of malformation, growth rate and stable isotopic composition of organic matter and carbonate produced by two contrasting species of coccolithophore (Gephyrocapsa oceanica and Coccolithus pelagicus ssp. braarudii) are indicative of differences between their photosynthetic and calcification response to changing DIC levels (ranging from ~1100 to ~7800 μmol kg−1) at constant pH (8.13 ± 0.02). Gephyrocapsa oceanica thrived under all conditions of DIC, showing evidence of increased growth rates at higher DIC, but C. braarudii was detrimentally affected at high DIC showing signs of malformation, and decreased growth rates. The carbon isotopic fractionation into organic matter and the coccoliths suggests that C. braarudii utilises a common internal pool of carbon for calcification and photosynthesis but G. oceanica relies on independent supplies for each process. All coccolithophores appear to utilize bicarbonate as their ultimate source of carbon for calcification resulting in the release of a proton. But, we suggest that this proton can be harnessed to enhance the supply of CO2(aq) for photosynthesis either from a large internal HCO3- pool which acts as a pH buffer (C. braarudii), or pumped externally to aid the diffusive supply of CO2 across the membrane from the abundant HCO3- (G. oceanica), likely mediated by an internal and external carbonic anhydrase respectively. Our simplified hypothetical spectrum of physiologies may provide a context to understand different species response to changing pH and DIC, the species-specific ep and calcite "vital effects", as well as accounting for geological trends in coccolithophore cell size.
Introducing Combinatorial Testing to a Large System-Software Organization

This paper examines the introduction of combinatorial testing into a large aerospace corporation Lockheed Martin (LM) [1]. In a market based economy, to stay competitive, organizations and the methods and tools they use must improve. When Lockheed Martin’s interest in evaluating combinatorial testing (combinatorial test) started in 2009, combinatorial test was being used in pilot projects for US Air Force testing at the Eglin Air Force Base and was showing promise to reduce testing costs. Within the Department of Defense, the statistical Design of Experiments approach to testing was endorsed by the Office of Test and Evaluation in 2009 [2]. As discussed in more detail below, combinatorial test adapts DoE principles to software and aspects of system testing. A variety of commercial firms [3] had reported success with pairwise testing, which is a basic form of combinatorial testing that covers 2-way combinations of factors. Research by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [4] had shown that 2-way testing can consistently detect 70% to more than 90% of faults, depending on the application. However, many DOD and Aerospace applications have much more stringent assurance requirements. For example, the FAA requires that life-critical systems have a failure probability of no more than 10. Testing and assurance costs for aerospace systems are very high, so approaches to reducing this cost while maintaining or improving quality are particularly valuable.
Stable isotope and gas properties of two climatically contrasting (Pleistocene and Holocene) ice wedges from Cape Mamontov Klyk, Laptev Sea, northern Siberia

Abstract. This paper presents and discusses the texture, fabric, water stable isotopes (δ18O, δD) and gas properties (total gas content, O2, N2, Ar, CO2, and CH4 mixing ratios) of two climatically contrasted (Holocene vs. Pleistocene) ice wedges (IW-26 and IW-28) from Cape Mamontov Klyk, Laptev Sea, in northern Siberia. The two ice wedges display contrasting structures: one being of relatively "clean" ice and the other showing clean ice at its centre as well as debris-rich ice on both sides (referred to as "ice-sand wedge"). Our multiparametric approach allows discrimination between three different ice facies with specific signatures, suggesting different climatic and environmental conditions of formation and various intensities and nature of biological activity. More specifically, crystallography, total gas content and gas composition reveal variable levels of meltwater infiltration and contrasting contributions from anaerobic and aerobic conditions to the biological signatures. Stable isotope data are drawn on to discuss changes in paleoenvironmental conditions and in the temporal variation of the different moisture sources for the snow feeding into the ice wedges infillings. Our data set also supports the previous assumption that the ice wedge IW-28 was formed in Pleistocene and the ice wedge IW-26 in Holocene times. This study sheds more light on the conditions of ice wedge growth under changing environmental conditions.
Reply to Bhatt and Pancheva's Late Merger of Degree Clauses: The Irrelevance of (Non)conservativity

According to Bhatt and Pancheva (2004), two effects they attribute to degree constructions (obligatory extraposition effects and scope rigidity effects determined by the superficial position of degree phrases/clauses) can be given a unified analysis in terms of an extension of Fox and Nissenbaum's (1999) analysis of extraposition in conjunction with the nonconservativity of (certain) degree words. We show that, under full preservation of Bhatt and Pancheva's theoretical assumptions, their account faces at least three problems: (a) one of the phenomena they propose to unify, the one involving scope effects, does not exist; (b) (non)conservativity is irrelevant to obligatory extraposition effects; and (c) contrary to their tacit assumption, Trace Conversion is at most an optional procedure for DegP chains. We propose an alternative, nonsemantic treatment of obligatory extraposition effects, which subsumes them under an independently needed adjacency constraint on prehead modifiers. Furthermore, we note that the facts brought up here and in Bhatt and Pancheva 2004 call into question the quantificational approach to degree constructions.
An Intelligent Condition Monitoring Approach for Spent Nuclear Fuel Shearing Machines Based on Noise Signals

Shearing machines are the key pieces of equipment for spent–fuel reprocessing in commercial reactors. Once a failure happens and is not detected in time, serious consequences will arise. It is very important to monitor the shearing machine and to diagnose the faults immediately for spent–fuel reprocessing. In this study, an intelligent condition monitoring approach for spent nuclear fuel shearing machines based on noise signals was proposed. The approach consists of a feature extraction based on wavelet packet transform (WPT) and a hybrid fault diagnosis model, the latter combines the advantage on dynamic–modeling of hidden Markov model (HMM) and pattern recognition of artificial neural network (ANN). The verification results showed that the approach is more effective and accurate than that of the isolated HMM or ANN.