Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Innovative milieu, micro firms and local development in Barcelona

An entrepreneurial environment is conformed by factors that play a favourable role in the development of entrepreneurship. Economic literature on innovative milieus identifies those elements that are decisive in improving the competitive performance of companies. We analysed whether Barcelona Activa's specific environment promotes the development of an innovative milieu, which favours entrepreneurial attitudes. The results show how the combination of incubation experience, development of ICT-based innovations and cooperation considerably improve the success probability of new firms. Moreover, participation in institutional activities that strengthen commercial and social networks also improves their chances. The local agency seems to be particularly suitable for entrepreneurs with labour experience and it plays a complementary role in the framework of the wide range of university spin-off centres in the metropolitan region.
Three-Year Clinical Outcomes of Resistance Genotyping and Expert Advice: Extended follow-up of the Argenta Trial

Objective To investigate the influence of genotypic resistance-guided HIV-treatment decisions on long-term clinical and virological outcomes in patients failing anti-retroviral therapy by a prospective 30-month observation following a 6-month randomized study (Argenta trial). Methods Patients (n=174) with virological failure on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) were initially randomized (1:1) to receive empirical therapy or guidance by genotypic resistance results. After month 6, all patients with HIV RNA >1,000 copies/ml received genotypic resistance tests and expert advice. Predictors of virological and clinical outcomes were analysed by logistic regression and Cox's regression models. Results There was a gradual increase in the proportion of patients with HIV RNA <400 copies/ml with 29.3% at 36 months (intent-to-treat) without differences between initial randomization arms. Independent predictors of 36-month virological response were the use of a salvage therapy with less daily doses and a more pronounced 3-month viral load drop. At 36 months, 84% survived without new AIDS events/death. Independent predictors of new AIDS events/death were previous AIDS events, higher baseline viral load, less pronounced 3-month viral load drop and, in a separate model, baseline protease substitutions K20M/R and I84V Conclusions The virological benefit of genotype-guided treatment decisions was continuously appreciable over time. Short-term virological response and viral cross-resistance were independent predictors of long-term outcomes.
Extreme wave activity during 2013/2014 winter and morphological impacts along the Atlantic coast of Europe

Studies of coastal vulnerability due to climate change tend to focus on the consequences of sea level rise, rather than the complex coastal responses resulting from changes to the extreme wave climate. Here we investigate the 2013/2014 winter wave conditions that severely impacted the Atlantic coast of Europe and demonstrate that this winter was the most energetic along most of the Atlantic coast of Europe since at least 1948. Along exposed open‐coast sites, extensive beach and dune erosion occurred due to offshore sediment transport. More sheltered sites experienced less erosion and one of the sites even experienced accretion due to beach rotation induced by alongshore sediment transport. Storm wave conditions such as were encountered during the 2013/2014 winter have the potential to dramatically change the equilibrium state (beach gradient, coastal alignment, and nearshore bar position) of beaches along the Atlantic coast of Europe.
Spectral Kurtosis Theory : A Review through Simulations

Kurtosis of a time signal has been a popular tool for detecting nongaussianity. Recently, kurtosis as a function frequency defined in spectral domain has been successfully used in the fault detection of induction motors, machine bearings. A link between the nongaussianity and nonstationaity has been established through Wold-Cramer’s decomposition of a nonstationary signal, and the properties of the so-designated conditional nonstationary (CNS) process have been analytically obtained. As the nonstationary signals are abundantly found in music, the spectral kurtosis could find applications in audio processing e.g. music instrument classification and music-speech classification. In this paper, the theory of spectral kurtosis is briefly reviewed from the first principles and the spectral kurtosis properties of some popular stationary signals, nonstationary signals and mixed processes are analytically obtained. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to support the theory.
Is Tocilizumab an Effective Option for Treatment of Refractory Uveitis Associated with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis?

To the Editor: I read a reply from Dr. F. Wolfe1. I did not misunderstand. I understand that modification of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) preliminary diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia (FM) are not the ACR criteria. I did not state that the modification of the ACR preliminary criteria were the ACR criteria1. Dr. Wolfe, et al stated as follows: ACR preliminary diagnostic criteria for FM in 2010 eliminated the tender point examination, thus making it possible to study FM in survey and clinical research2. A modification to the ACR criteria will allow their use in epidemiologic and clinical studies …
CLONING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF ENDOGENOUS RETROVIRUSES ASSOCIATED WITH POSTINJURY STRESS SIGNALS IN LYMPHOID TISSUES

Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) constitute a significant fraction of the mouse and human genomes, ∼10% and ∼8%, respectively, and they are transmitted to offsprings in a Mendelian fashion. Recent reports implicated that certain ERVs participate in a range of disease processes. In this study, we examined injury-elicited changes in murine ERV (MuERV) expression in lymphoid tissues and characterized biological properties of the putative MuERVs isolates. Female C57BL/6J mice were subjected to ∼18% total-body-surface-area burn injury. Four different lymphoid tissues (blood, bone marrow, spleen, and thymus) were collected at 24 h for reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction analysis of MuERV expression by amplifying the 3′ U3 regions. Within each tissue examined, there was a unique pattern of injury-elicited changes in MuERV expression. From the 17 unique MuERV U3 clones isolated from all four tissues, nine were derived from injury-induced MuERVs, four from injury repressed, and four from no change. A survey of the C57BL/6J genome using all 17 U3 clones as probes produced 26 pertinent putative MuERVs, of which five were presumed to retain intact coding potentials for essential polypeptides. Biological properties (genomic location, tropism, transcriptional potential, coding potential, primer-binding site, recombination, and integration age) of each putative MuERV were characterized, and their relevance to injury response was discussed. The findings from this study suggest that injury-elicited stress signals either induce or repress specific MuERV populations in a lymphoid tissue-specific and probably cell type-specific manner. It warrants a further investigation into the roles of the injury-responsive MuERVs in postinjury pathogenic processes of the immune system.
Introduction à l'estimation non-paramétrique

La theorie de l'estimation non-parametrique s'est developpee considerablement ces deux dernieres decennies, en se fixant pour objectif quelques themes principaux, en particulier, l'etude de l'optimalite des estimateurs et l'estimation adaptative. Ces deux themes occupent la place centrale dans le livre. Il s'agit de presenter, pour quelques modeles et exemples simples, les idees principales de l'estimation non-parametrique. Quelques sujets abordes sont: les methodes de noyaux, de projection et de polynomes locaux, vitesses optimales de convergence, le theoreme de Pinsker, les inegalites d'oracle, l'adaptation au sens minimax. Un chapitre est consacre a l'exposition detaillee des differentes techniques de minoration du risque minimax.
Concentrationsof Serum ProteinFractionsin White Women : Effects of Age , Weight , Smoking , Tonsillectomy , and Other Factors

We measured the concentrations of protein in electrophoretic fractions (albumin and a1-, a2-, 3, and yglobulins) of serum from 9547 white women to determine their relations to age, weight, smoking and other factors. Albumin concentration decreases with age, beta globulin concentration increases. Increasing weight is associated with a decrease in albumin, but with increases in all the globulins. Cigarette smoking is associated with highly significant differences in all the protein fractions. Surprisingly, very significantly lower concentrations of fiand y-globulins were also found in women who reported a history of tonsillectomy. Height, amenorrhea, education, and alcohol and coffee consumption have some small but statistically significant effects upon the various fractions. Diurnal variation was also slight.
Tree-Based Integration of One-versus-Some (OVS) Classifiers for Multiclass Classification

Motivated by applications such as gene expression analysis, binary classification has achieved notable success. (e.g., cancer samples versus normal samples) When comes to multiclass classification, the extension is not straightforward. There has been two main directions on such extensions: 1) via a sequence of nested binary classifiers in a classification tree or 2) via classifier ensembles that integrate votes from all oneversus all (OVA) classifiers or all all-pairs (AP) classifiers. In this article, we present a new way to combine both strategies in a multiclass classification.
Una interpretación crítica sobre el significado de una tasa de interés nula de equilibrio estacionario

un resultado fundamental de la teoría neoclásica es definir con precisión un equilibrio estacionario a través de una tasa de interés nula. Sin embargo, esta característica normalmente aceptada no parece ser evidente, ya que traduce la ausencia de remuneración para el propietario del capital. El objetivo de este artículo es presentar una reflexión crítica sobre la idea de una tasa de interés nula, tomando como punto de parida la definición del equilibrio monetario estacionario ofrecida por Schumpeter (1911). Nuestra reflexión se inscribe en el debate suscitado por algunos comentaristas de este autor, tales como Robbins (1930), Haberler (1951), Whitaker (1971) y Samuelson (1971). Se concluye que este debate dejó de lado el aspecto más interesante de la teoría de Schumpeter: el estudio del crecimiento como un fenómeno de desequilibrio.
Hereditary breast and ovarian cancer: new genes, new treatments, new concepts.

BACKGROUND Every year, 60,000 women in Germany are found to have breast cancer, and 9000 to have ovarian cancer. Familial clustering of carcinoma is seen in about 20% of cases. METHODS We selectively review relevant articles published up to December 2010 that were retrieved by a search in PubMed, and we also discuss findings from the experience of the German Consortium for Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer. RESULTS High risk is conferred by the highly penetrant BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes as well as by other genes such as RAD51C. Genes for breast cancer that were originally designated as moderately penetrant display higher penetrance than previously thought in families with a hereditary predisposition. The role these genes play in DNA repair is thought to explain why tumors associated with them are sensitive to platin derivatives and PARP inhibitors. In carriers of BRCA1 and BRCA2, prophylactic bilateral mastectomy and adnexectomy significantly lowers the incidence of breast and ovarian cancer. Moreover, prophylactic adnexectomy also lowers the breast-and-ovarian-cancer-specific mortality, as well as the overall mortality. If a woman bearing a mutation develops cancer in one breast, her risk of developing cancer in the other breast depends on the particular gene that is mutated and on her age at the onset of disease. CONCLUSION About half of all monogenically determined carcinomas of the breast and ovary are due to a mutation in one or the other of the highly penetrant BRCA genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2). Women carrying a mutated gene have an 80% to 90% chance of developing breast cancer and a 20% to 50% chance of developing ovarian cancer. Other predisposing genes for breast and ovarian cancer have been identified. Clinicians should develop and implement evidence-based treatments on the basis of these new findings.
Aproximaciones por mínimos cuadrados ponderados en el entorno de multirresolución, por valores puntuales

Estudio de los algoritmos de multirresolucion por valores puntuales. Estudio de las aproximaciones por minimos cuadrados ponderados. Incorporacion de estas aproximaciones como operadores de reconstrucci´on y prediccion en la multirresolucion de Harten. Programacion en Matlab de los algoritmos mencionados anteriormente. Analisis del comportamiento de las aproximaciones por minimos cuadrados ponderados cuando se usan como operadores de reconstruccion-prediccion en la multirresoluci´on de Harten. Aplicacion de los algoritmos resultantes a diferentes problemas en 1D y en 2D (compresion de senales)
Involvement of NMDA Receptors in Thiopental-Induced Loss of Righting Reflex, Antinociception and Anticonvulsion Effects in Mice

Potentiation of GABAA receptor-mediated inhibitory neurotransmission contributes to the anesthetic action of thiopental. However, the inhibiting action of general anesthetic on excitatory neurotransmission also purportedly underlies its effects. The aim of the study was to elucidate the role of glutamate receptors (NMDA and AMPA receptors) in thiopental-induced anesthesia. Intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) NMDA (50 ng) significantly increased the induction time of loss of righting reflex and decreased sleep time induced by intraperitoneal injection (i.p.) of thiopental (50 mg/kg). Furthermore, NMDA at 50 ng i.c. v. increased the 50% effective dose values for thiopental to produce loss of righting reflex and immobility in response to noxious tail clamp by 25% and 21% (p < 0.05), respectively. However, intrathecal (IT) administration of NMDA or both of i.c. v. or IT administration of AMPA did not show such antagonizing effects on thiopental action at subconvulsive dose. Finally, thiopental (25 mg/kg i.p.) inhibited convulsions induced by NMDA (0.4 µg i.c.v.) or bicuculline (0.6 µg i.c.v.). However, i.p. muscimol (1 mg/kg) blocked the convulsions induced by bicuculline, but not those induced by NMDA at 3 mg/kg. Similarly, i.p. MK-801 (0.1 mg/kg) antagonized NMDA-induced convulsions, but not bicuculline-induced convulsions at 0.3 mg/kg. Therefore, we suggest that the effects of the selective GABAA and NMDA receptors on convulsive behavior are special to their sites of action, and that the inhibitory action of thiopental on NMDA receptors is possibly not mediated by secondary effects of its GABAA receptors agonism. These results above indicate the involvement of NMDA receptors in thiopental-induced anesthesia in mice.
Interspecies Electron Transfer during Propionate and Butyrate Degradation in Mesophilic, Granular Sludge

Granules from a mesophilic upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor were disintegrated, and bacteria utilizing only hydrogen or formate or both hydrogen and formate were added to investigate the role of interspecies electron transfer during degradation of propionate and butyrate. The data indicate that the major electron transfer occurred via interspecies hydrogen transfer, while interspecies formate transfer may not be essential for interspecies electron transfer in this system during degradation of propionate and butyrate.
Call to needle times after acute myocardial infarction

Editor—We agree with the central message of Rawles et al’s article, that for patients with acute myocardial infarction the first medical attendant has the ideal opportunity to provide early thrombolysis.1 Rawles et al show the massive reduction in call to needle times achieved when thrombolysis is given by the general practitioner who first attends the patient.
El Portafolio como Herramienta de Evaluación en los Grados de Química y Ciencias Ambientales

RESUMEN Una de las mayores dificultades que presenta el modelo educativo de la Ensenanza en el Espacio Europeo de Educacion Superior es la evaluacion en la adquisicion y desarrollo de competencias. Esta dificultad radica en el hecho de que las competencias no son aspectos aislados y observables a simple vista que se puedan valorar de una forma objetiva y sencilla. Ahora se hace necesario una evaluacion preocupada por los procesos, orientada al aprendizaje, que permita constatar la calidad del mismo y con posibilidad de retroalimentacion. Consideramos que el empleo del Portafolio como instrumento basico de evaluacion puede ser utilizado por el docente para poder valorar el trabajo autonomo del alumno a la vez que permite evaluar las competencias adquiridas por el mismo. En el presente trabajo, se analiza la utilidad del Portafolio como instrumento de interpretacion del aprendizaje y de adquisicion de competencias. Este estudio se ha llevado a cabo con el alumnado de los Grados de Quimica y Ambientales durante el curso academico 2012-2013 en la asignatura de Quimica. Los resultados obtenidos ponen de manifiesto una buena correlacion entre los alumnos que elaboraron correctamente el Portafolio y el grado de adquisicion de competencias exigidas, facilitandoles el seguimiento de la asignatura.
Cardiac Amyloidosis: Typing, Diagnosis, Prognosis and Management

Amyloidosis is uncommon, with age-adjusted incidences of between 6.1 and 10.5 per million person-years,[1] and an estimated 1275 to 3200 new cases occurring annually in the United States. [1, 2] The contemporary understanding of amyloidosis points to a group of complex sys‐ temic disorders involving the extracellular deposition of misfolded proteinaceous material in many organs, most commonly the kidneys, heart, liver, central and peripheral nervous sys‐ tems. [2-4] The normal function of tissues is altered, and end-organ dysfunction usually ensues. Cardiac amyloidosis can be isolated to the heart, but it often coexists with disease elsewhere in the body. [4, 5] Cardiac manifestations may predominate the clinical presentation or may be subclinical and detected on routine investigation of a patient presenting with non-cardiac com‐ plaints. [5] The presence and relative prominence of cardiac involvement in the clinical picture is dependent on the type of amyloidosis and severity of amyloid infiltration in the tissue. [5]
Blind equalization of communication sequences based on optimization of cumulant criteria

Blind equalization draws a lot of attention. Several statistical objective functions such as kurtosis and constant modulus were based on the noise-free model and hence their ISI cancellers were sensitive to noise. In this paper, a unifying adaptive blind equalization method is proposed, which can be robust to noise than the current cumulant-based adaptive methods. Our new objective functions can be applied for wired or wireless i.i. d. communication symbols with noise. The simulation shows that our new method outperforms the kurtosis-based method when the background noise exists.
The Hybrid Performance of the Pierre Auger Observatory Pierre Auger Collaboration

The Pierre Auger Observatory detects ultra-high energy cosmic rays by implementing two complementary airshower techniques. The combination of a large ground array and fluorescence detectors, known as the hybrid concept, means that a rich variety of measurements can be made on a single shower, providing much improved information over what is possible with either detector alone. In this paper the hybrid reconstruction approach and its performance are described.
Circular 16-QAM modulation scheme for wavelet and Fourier based OFDM systems

In this paper, we have derived the circular 16-QAM constellation and apply it in Fourier and wavelet based OFDM systems. In order to derive the circular scheme, we first begin with the derivation of the square scheme as the scale of measurement for the purpose of comparisons. It is found out that the power consumption of the circular constellations is lower than the square signals by −2.71dB for a similar minimum distance of 2. To further claim our result, we extend the work using Fourier and wavelet based OFDM systems. The results showed that the circular constellation signals have performed slightly better than the square in terms of BER performance for different subcarriers in Fourier based OFDM system. When applying to the wavelet based OFDM, the circular scheme has also performed slightly less errors using different wavelet families.
Accuracy assessment of intra- and intervisit fundus image registration for diabetic retinopathy screening.

PURPOSE We evaluated the accuracy of a recently developed fundus image registration method (Weighted Vasculature Registration, or WeVaR) and compared it to two top-ranked state-of-the-art commercial fundus mosaicking programs (i2k Retina, DualAlign LLC, and Merge Eye Care PACS, formerly named OIS AutoMontage) in the context of diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening. METHODS Fundus images of 70 diabetic patients who visited the Rotterdam Eye Hospital in 2012 and 2013 for a DR screening program were registered by all three programs. The registration results were used to produce mosaics from fundus photos that were normalized for luminance and contrast to improve the visibility of small details. These mosaics subsequently were evaluated and ranked by two expert graders to assess the registration accuracy. RESULTS Merge Eye Care PACS had high registration failure rates compared to WeVaR and i2k Retina (P = 8 × 10(-6) and P = 0.002, respectively). WeVaR showed significantly higher registration accuracy than i2k Retina in intravisit (P ≤ 0.0036) and intervisit (P ≤ 0.0002) mosaics. Therefore, fundus mosaics processed by WeVaR were more likely to have a higher score (odds ratio [OR] = 2.5, P = 10(-5) for intravisit and OR = 2.2, P = 0.006 for intervisit mosaics). WeVaR was preferred more often by the graders than i2k Retina (OR = 6.1, P = 7 × 10(-6)). CONCLUSIONS WeVaR produced intra- and intervisit fundus mosaics with higher registration accuracy than Merge Eye Care PACS and i2k Retina. Merge Eye Care PACS had higher registration failures than the other two programs. Highly accurate registration methods, such as WeVaR, may potentially be used for more efficient human grading and in computer-aided screening systems for detecting DR progression.
Modified sliding mode observer for position and speed estimations in Brushless DC motor

This paper reports an adaptive gain sliding mode observer for Brushless DC (BLDC) motor for large variations in speed. BLDC motor based on sliding mode observer exhibits multiple zero crossing in back EMF which leads to commutation problem at low speed. In this paper a modified sliding mode observer incorporating the speed component in the estimation of back EMF is proposed. It is found that after incorporating speed component in the back EMF observer gain, multiple zero at low speeds and phase shift at higher speeds are eliminated. Detailed simulation results are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.