Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correcting Position Error in Precipitation Data Using Image Morphing

Rainfall estimates based on satellite data are subject to errors in the position of the rainfall events in addition to errors in their intensity. This is especially true for localized rainfall events such as the convective rainstorms that occur during the monsoon season in sub-Saharan Africa. Many satellite-based estimates use gauge information for bias correction. However, bias adjustment methods do not correct the position errors explicitly. We propose to gauge-adjust satellite-based estimates with respect to the position using a morphing method. Image morphing transforms an image, in our case a rainfall field, into another one, by applying a spatial transformation. A benefit of this approach is that it can take both the position and the intensity of a rain event into account. Its potential is investigated with two case studies. In the first case, the rain events are synthetic, represented by elliptic shapes, while the second case uses real data from a rainfall event occurring during the monsoon season in southern Ghana. In the second case, the satellite-based estimate IMERG-Late (Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM ) is adjusted to gauge data from the Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) network. The results show that the position errors can be corrected, while preserving the higher spatial variability of the satellite-based estimate.
non-coding RNA (lncRNA) HOXA transcript at the distal tip (HOTTIP) regulates cell growth, differentiation, apoptosis and cancer progression. However, the expression and function of HOTTIP in the progression of renal cell carcinoma (RCC)

Emerging evidence has indicated that long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) HOXA transcript at the distal tip (HOTTIP) regulates cell growth, differentiation, apoptosis and cancer progression. However, the expression and function of HOTTIP in the progression of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) remain largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the role of the lncRNA HOTTIP in RCC. The expression levels of HOTTIP in RCC tissues and cell lines were determined by RT-qPCR. The association between HOTTIP expression and clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis was analyzed in patients with RCC from the TCGA database. Loss-offunction assays were designed and conducted to verify the oncogenic function of HOTTIP in RCC progression. Luciferase assay was performed to explore the mechanisms of the miRNA-lncRNA sponge. The results revealed that HOTTIP expression was upregulated in RCC. An increased HOTTIP expression in RCC was associated with a larger tumor size and a higher clinical stage, lymph node metastasis and vascular invasion. Additionally, patients RCC with a high HOTTIP expression had a significantly shorter overall survival (OS) and disease‐free survival (DFS). HOTTIP knockdown significantly inhibited cell proliferation, migration and invasion, and increased the apoptosis of RCC cells in vitro. Mechanistic analyses revealed that HOTTIP functioned as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) for hsa-miR-615-3p, and led to the derepression of its endogenous target, insulin-like growth factor-2 (IGF-2), which is a protein hormone that exerts a stimulatory effect on tumor cell growth. miR-615 inhibition reversed the suppressive effects of HOTTIP knockdown on RCC cell progression. HOTTIP regulated IGF-2 expression in a miR-615-dependent manner in RCC cells. In addition, IGF‐2 expression was significantly upregulated in the RCC specimens and a positive association between the expression of HOTTIP and IGF-2 in RCC tissues was detected. The effect of HOTTIP was abolished by the siRNA-mediated silencing of IGF-2 in RCC cells. On the whole, this study demonstrates, for the first time, at least to the best of our knowledge, that the HOTTIP/miR-615/IGF-2 axis plays an important role in RCC progression and potentially contributes to the improvement of RCC diagnosis and therapy.
Educational Mismatch, Skill Mismatch and Job Satisfaction

Most studies on overeducation focus on the relationship between overeducation and wages. The exploration of the overeducation-job satisfaction relationship remains largely uninvestigated due to the data limitations. However, the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2008, provides a range of job satisfaction measures, which enables us to explore the determinants of overall job satisfaction and specific aspects of job satisfaction, and especially investigate detailed links among educational and skill mismatch and job satisfaction in China. This study reports that overeducated people are more satisfied with workload, working conditions and facilities, their relationship with colleagues and housing benefits. When educational mismatch and skill mismatch are included simultaneously into the analysis of job satisfaction, skill mismatch demonstrates stronger negative effects on overall job satisfaction and all facets of job satisfaction than educational mismatch. Empirical results indicate that overeducation may not result in negative effects on productivity as a priori expectations and skill mismatch is a better indicator to explain job satisfaction, which can urge the firms and policy makers to put more emphasis on improving the match between job content and individuals’ skill levels. Moreover, the analysis of job satisfaction should focus on a relative perspective.
THE FREQUENCY OF THE CAUSES OF ACID BASE DISTURBANCES IN PATIENTS HOSPITALIZED IN THE TOXICOLOGY WARD OF BAHARLOO HOSPITAL IN 2009

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of arterial blood gases (ABGs) in determining the type of intoxication. Methods: Medical charts of all patients who had referred to the toxicology ward of Baharloo Hospital between January 2009 and December 2009 were evaluated. After excluding the patients with multi-drug toxicity, data, including age, sex, type of intoxication (the medication ingested), ABG options, including pH, pco2, Hco3, and the type of acidbase disturbance were collected and recorded in a self-made questionnaire. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 11. Results: Of the 1570 cases evaluated, 807(51.4%) were male and 763(48.6%) were female. Most of the patients were 20 to 29 years old (554 patients; 35.3%). Arterial blood gases were normal in 578 (36.8%) patients. Metabolic acidosis, respiratory acidosis, respiratory alkalosis, mixed acidosis, and mixed alkalosis were detected in 434(27.6%), 292(18.6%), 177(11.3%), 60 (3.8%), and 29(1.8%) patients, respectively. Pure metabolic alkalosis was not detected in any of the patients. The toxins were classified into 18 groups with opium/opioids, acetaminophen/NSAIDS, and antidepressants and anticonvulsants being the most common toxicities. Conclusion: Although metabolic acidosis may not be helpful in diagnosis of the type of intoxication, respiratory and mixed acidosis as well as mixed alkalosis may indicate special types of intoxication. This may help faster diagnosis and reduce the mortality and morbidity of the patients.
Sociodemographic and Biometric Factors Associated With Eating Behaviors Among African American Women Aged 18–74

Background: Obesity is a growing problem in the United States and is disproportionately increasing among African Americans. The objective of this study is to examine the sociodemographic and biometric factors associated with eating behaviors among African American women. Methods: We analyzed data from the 2009–2010 dietary screener and weight history questionnaire from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Multivariable analyses were used to estimate adjusted odds ratios (AORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) to determine the association between six specific eating behaviors and different sociodemographic and biometric factors. Analyses were conducted using SAS 9.4. Results: The analyses show that being middle aged (45–64) decreased the likelihood of consuming soft drinks (AOR: 0.48; 95% CI: 0.27–0.86); consuming red meat (AOR: 0.45; 95% CI: 0.25–0.82); and consuming processed meat (AOR: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.31–0.97). In addition, high school grads were over 3 times as likely to consume high amounts of soft drinks (AOR: 3.04; 95% CI: 1.33–6.94) and 65% less likely to consume high amounts of leafy/lettuce salads than college grads (AOR: 0.35; 95% CI: 0.15–0.82). Finally, single/widowed/divorced African American women were 13% less likely to eat high amounts of leafy green salads than married African American women (AOR: 0.82; 95% CI: 0.70–0.97). Conclusions: The results indicate that some sociodemographic factors have an association with certain eating behaviors. Further exploration of sociodemographic and biometric factors, with the inclusion of culture and its association with eating behaviors will help to expand the literature.
Viewpoint Entropy-Driven Simplification

In this paper, a new viewpoint-based simplification approach is proposed for polygonal meshes. This approach is driven by an information-theoretic metric, viewpoint entropy, which measures the amount of information from a scene or object that arrives at a certain viewpoint. Our algorithm applies the best half-edge collapse as a decimation criterion and uses the variation of viewpoint entropy to measure the edge collapse error. Compared to pure geometric-based simplifications, the models produced by our method are closer to the original model according to visual similarity. Our approach also achieves a higher simplification in hidden interiors, by being able to remove them all and to leave the visible areas of the mesh intact. Models generated by CAD applications can benefit from this feature, since these models are usually constructed by assembling smaller objects which can become partially hidden during joining operations. The main application of our method is for video games where models come from CAD applications and are geometrically not very complex, a few thousand polygons at the most, and in which visual similarity is the most important requirement.
Effects of Long Term Storage Factors on Nutritional Value of Conserved Barley Accessions in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is one of the world centers of genetic diversity and origin of barley crop. Now a day the country is conserve many cereal crops under cold room storage, gene bank. One of the conserved crops is barley. Barley is the cereal crop, that mainly grown in the central highland of Ethiopia. The samples of 45 barley accessions were used for the current analysis. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of long term storage factors on nutritional value of barley that tested in 1993 and compare the results with nutritional value of barley that tested after 25 years (2018). Sample preparation and nutritional values were determined by using appropriate standard official procedures, AOAC (Association of Official Analytical Chemists). Descriptive graphs and paired t-test were used to analyze the data obtained on nutritional values of barley crop from two test years. The nutritional value of barley crop after 25 years of storage time was decreased as compared with its nutritional value tested in 1993, except total carbohydrate. As a result, the study found statistically significant difference of average percentage content of crude protein, total mineral ash, moisture and total carbohydrate between 1993 and after 25 years of storage time. The current study concluded that, when the storage time increases, the nutritional values of barley crop were significantly decreased for all nutritional values except crude fat content and total carbohydrate.
HANNA DUDEK Szkoła Główna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego w Warszawie DETERMINANTS OF ACCESS TO THE INTERNET IN HOUSEHOLDS – PROBIT MODEL ANALYSIS Summary

The purpose of this study was to analyse statistically factors that affect household access to Internet. The analysis was conducted using the Polish household budget survey 2003. There were a variety of factors influencing Internet usage. From the perspective of ecommerce, there were studied the linkages of economic, psychological and demographic variables to Internet use. There were taken into account many attributes of the household head and characteristics referring to whole household. The household access to the Internet was modelled using a probit estimation approach. In order to evaluate the validity of the estimation techniques, statistical tests were performed. Obtained results may help in creation of information society policy in Poland.
1 Project title : Use of honey phytochemicals as honey bee “ nutraceuticals ” to boost pesticide detoxification

Background: Honey bees (Apis mellifera) provide important pollination services to the U.S. agricultural enterprise, valued at more than $15 billion per year. However, colonies have been declining due to multiple stressors, including parasites, pests, diseases, pesticides, diet quality, and modern beekeeping practices, acting individually and in combination. Pesticides are among stressors with adverse health effects known to be influenced by certain aspects of diet quality (e.g., pollen protein). Although honey substitutes are economically important aids for enabling beekeepers to maintain bees over the winter, the absence of key phytochemicals in these substitutes may compromise immunity and detoxification. Through a series of studies in our laboratory (Mao et al. 2009, 2013, 2015, 2017), we have demonstrated that consumption of pcoumaric acid and quercetin, ubiquitous constituents of honey and beebread, upregulates cytochrome P450 detoxification genes in worker adults and larvae. Of particular significance is the upregulation by phytochemicals of P450s in the CYP9Q subfamily implicated in pesticide detoxification. We requested and received funds for “Follow-up research on a project which demonstrated a potential for practical application, but further study is advised”—to test if the upregulation of detoxification gene expression by dietary phytochemicals results in enhanced survival and longevity in the presence of pesticides Objectives: To determine if ingestion of phytochemicals and concomitant upregulation of detoxification gene expression results in enhanced survival and longevity of honey bees in the presence and absence of pesticides.
A REGRESSION MODEL OF INFLATION IN MONTENEGRO 103 A REGRESSION MODEL OF INFLATION IN MONTENEGRO

A regression model of inflation in Montenegro is specified and estimated employing the technique of OLS on a monthly time series data for the three year period 2010-2013. The stationary and co-integratin tests were adopted to examine the data in order to establish whether there exist a long-run relation among the variables. Several diagnostic tests were used to check for the specification of the model and problems of heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation and multicolinearity in the estimated regression model. The regression model is used to test theory on empirical data in case of Montenegro. As expected, the estimated model is another empirical evidence of the Philips curve i.e. theoretical trade-off between unemployment and inflation in a short run. Moreover, the results of the regression analysis proved theory that there is a direct relation between inflation and import-to-export ratio, while the relation inflation GDP rate is an indirect one.
Intangible Capital and Growth – an International Comparison

Is there any pattern to be seen in the relationship between the share of expenditure on intangibles (and their components) for several economies and their economic growth performance? We develop estimates of intangibles for two large economies of continental Europe, namely France and Germany. We also use EU KLEMS data on human capital, tangible capital and multi factor productivity to analyze the relationship with intangible capital. We consider our work as contributing to a better understanding of the changes in productivity and, consequently, for a more thorough analysis of economic growth.
Molecular Detection and Optimization Production of an Alkaline Metalloprotease from Exiguobacterium sp. MSB42

Improvement of alkaline protease production, one of the most important types of industrial biocatalysts, is essential for commercial purposes. The present study’s aim was to increase alkaline protease production of MSB42, a newly isolated strain of Exiguobacterium sp. , through the rotatable central composite design (RCCD). In this regard, parameters affecting MSB42 enzyme production were chosen based on the results of preliminary one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) experiments. According to the results of RCCD, the enzyme production showed its maximum level (198.48 U/ml) in the presence of 3% w/v glucose, 3% w/v peptone, at 37 °C and pH 9. Overall, the enzyme production was 2 and 3.24 times more than OFAT experiments (98.69 U/ml) and unoptimized conditions (61.29 U/ml), respectively. A polynomial model of MSB42 alkaline protease production was obtained using the experimental date and based on the significant terms. The protease gene of this strain was also amplified using the designed primers (873 bp), and based on the sequencing results, was found to be closely related to the M6 family of metalloprotease domain.
IFRS, synchronicity, and financial crisis: the dynamics of accounting information for the Brazilian capital market

This study aims is to investigate the synchronicity levels of shares traded on the spot market of the São Paulo Stock, Commodities, and Futures Exchange (BM&FBOVESPA) in relation to the accounting convergence process towards International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Brazil. The term synchronicity refers to the amount that company-specific information and market information are reflected in stock prices. The more share prices reflect company-specific information rather than market information, the greater the informational content of these prices will be in terms of representing the economic value of a particular company. For this investigation, information on companies and shares from 2005 to 2015 was collected, excluding the financial sector. The data were analyzed using cross-sectional and panel regressions. The results indicate a reduction in the synchronicity levels of stocks in the period of full adoption of IFRS in Brazil from 2010 onwards. From 2008 to 2009, which includes the partial adoption of IFRS in Brazil, statistically significant results were not found for the synchronicity levels of shares. However, for times of financial crisis, evidence was found of a reduction in the relevance of accounting information even with the adoption of international accounting standards. The results obtained for the Brazilian context do not support the idea that the adoption of IFRS necessarily causes an increase in the informational content of financial statements and that relevant information is consequently reflected in stock prices.
Bacteria Biotope at BioNLP Open Shared Tasks 2019

This paper presents the fourth edition of the Bacteria Biotope task at BioNLP Open Shared Tasks 2019. The task focuses on the extraction of the locations and phenotypes of microorganisms from PubMed abstracts and full-text excerpts, and the characterization of these entities with respect to reference knowledge sources (NCBI taxonomy, OntoBiotope ontology). The task is motivated by the importance of the knowledge on biodiversity for fundamental research and applications in microbiology. The paper describes the different proposed subtasks, the corpus characteristics, and the challenge organization. We also provide an analysis of the results obtained by participants, and inspect the evolution of the results since the last edition in 2016.
Reducing Automated Scoring Training Set Size with Alternative Sampling Methods

The reliability of automated essay scoring (AES) is largely dependent on the size and quality of the training data used to build the models. This paper explores several methods for reducing the size of the required training data while increasing the reliability of the predictions. In particular, we explore whether unsupervised methods for selecting a training set from a large pool of unscored essays can lead to more reliable predictions on a holdout set than simply sampling with random selection. We also compare two active learning strategies, but focus our attention on fully unsupervised methods because of the operational difficulties of using active learning in the context of automated essay scoring. Our results show that maximum-minimum distance selection, an unsupervised method, can significantly improve prediction quality on some data sets. However, further research and development is needed to find a generalizable solution.
BLOOD GLUCOSE RESPONSE AND GLYCEMIC INDEX OF BREADS AND SOME WHEAT PRODUCTS IN NORMAL HUMAN SUBJECTS

Blood glucose response and glycemic Index (GI) for whole wheat loaf, white flour loaf and white flour bread "Tannour bread" and wheat products such as burghul, habbiyah, reshta and spaghetti in normal human subjects using glucose as standard were studied. Twenty one normal male human subjects (age 22-35 years and body mass index, BMI 22-26 kg/m2) were chosen as volunteers for this study. The subjects were divided randomly into seven groups where each three of the subjects could submit to the experiments. After 12 hours overnight fast, each subject was tested for blood glucose at zero time before given the test food or glucose standard in an amount to provide 50 g carbohydrate. Glycemic response, Incremental Area Under the Curve (IAUC) and Glycemic index (GI) were determined and calculated. The results showed that there were no significant (P<0.05) differences in GI between the three kinds of breads (61, 69 and 64 for each whole wheat loaf, white flour loaf and white flour Tannour bread, respectively), however, there were a significant (P<0.05) differences between each kind of bread and glucose standard (100). Further, the GI values of all kinds of bread were higher than that of other wheat products (41, 40, 26 and 40 for burghul, habbiyah, reshta and spaghetti, respectively). It was concluded that food processing method including changing in food components of the product resulted in variable blood glucose response. It was also concluded that the above wheat products could be used efficiently in diet management of Type II diabetes. INTRODUCTION Glycemic Index (GI) refers to the relative rise of blood glucose response after consumption a certain food containing a definite amount of carbohydrate (Jenkins et al., 1981 and Wolever et al., 1991). According to this concept foods were classified and ranked according to the glycemic response they produce for a given amount of carbohydrate when indexed to glucose solution or white bread (Jenkins et al., 1981). Different foods can have markedly different GI (Foster-Powell and Brand-Miller, 1995 and Foster-Powell et al., 2002) and the values may be useful in management or in planning therapeutic diets for diabetes. Since then, studies have shown that consumption of a diet with a low GI was associated with improvement of metabolic control of diabetes (Jenkins et al., 1988 and Wolever et al., 1992). One of the major justifications for the inclusion of cereals especially wheat in the diet of the human in the world is their ability to supply a wide variety of nutrients and moderate energy at low cost (Roderuck and Fox, 1987 and Smolin and Grosvenor, 2003). The most common and traditional product made from wheat is the principal one being baked leavened bread in the world and unleavened baked bread the more common form in developing countries (Johnson and Mattern,