Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An improved EEMD-based hybrid approach for the short-term forecasting of hog price in China

Short-term forecasting of hog price, which forms the basis for the decision making, is challenging and of great interest for hog producers and market participants. Th is study develops improved ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD)-based hybrid approach for the short-term hog price forecasting. Specifi cally, the EEMD is fi rst used to decompose the original hog price series into several intrinsic-mode functions (IMF) and one residue. Th e fi ne-to-coarse reconstruction algorithm is then applied to compose the obtained IMFs and residue into the high-frequency fl uctuation, the low-frequency fl uctuation, and the trend terms which can highlight new features of the hog price fl uctuations. Afterwards, the extreme learning machine (ELM) is employed to model the low-frequency fl uctuation, while the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and the polynomial function are used to fi t the high-frequency fl uctuation and trend term, respectively, in a multistep-ahead fashion. Th e commonly used iterated prediction strategy is adopted for the implementation of the multistep-ahead forecasting. Th e monthly hog price series from January 2000 to May 2015 in China is employed to evaluate the forecasting performance of the proposed approach with the selected counterparts. Th e numerical results indicate that the improved EEMD-based hybrid approach is a promising alternative for the short-term hog price forecasting.
Increase the efficiency of DCT method for detection of copy-move forgery in complex and smooth images

Digital images are easy to manipulate and edit due to advances in computers and image editing software. Copy-move forgery is one of the most popular tampering artifacts in digital images that used by image forgers. In this paper, a DCT-based method is developed to detect image forgery considering the complexity of input image. To detect duplicate region, images are divided into two categories: smooth and complex. To extract features discrete cosine transform (DCT) is applied to each block. Experimental results show that our proposed method is able to precisely detect duplicated regions even when the image was undergone several image manipulations like lossy JPEG compression, Gaussian blur filtering and Gaussian white noise contamination.
Prevalence and cost of musculoskeletal disorders: a population-based, public hospital system healthcare consumption approach.

OBJECTIVE To use a population-level, public-hospital approach to compare the prevalence and cost of musculoskeletal diseases (MSD) with other clinical specialties. METHODS A healthcare utilization survey of 4 million individual records over 4 years, from all major public hospitals in the state of Victoria (estimated population 4.8 million residents in 2000/01) from 1997/98 to 2000/01. Main outcome measures were inpatient episodes of care, bed-days, and outpatient clinic encounters. MSD was defined as the combination of orthopedics and rheumatology. RESULTS After obstetrics, MSD was the most frequent outpatient service, with orthopedics accounting for 9.9% of all visits in 2000/01. The proportion of MSD outpatient encounters (on average 11.6% of the total) was constant over the study period. Among 26 medical specialties, MSD had the sixth highest number of inpatient episodes (6.2% in 2000/01), following renal dialysis (14.6%), general surgery (8.2%), obstetrics (7.6%), gastroenterology (7.1%), and general medicine (6.7%). MSD was the fifth highest consumer of bed-days, occupying on average 7.7% of all beds per annum in the period 1997/98 to 2000/01, behind psychiatry (10.1%), respiratory medicine (8.5%), rehabilitation (8.3%), and general medicine (7.8%). MSD was the third most-costly discipline in 2000/01, with total costs of over A dollars 169 million (9.7% of total inpatient costs that year), behind respiratory medicine (11.6%) and general surgery (11.5%). CONCLUSION Compared to other diseases, MSD consumes a substantial proportion of healthcare resources in Victorian public hospitals. These data have important implications for allocation of healthcare resources, clinical care pathways, and prevention strategies.
Optimal treatment of diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy (DRP) is a common complication caused by multiple biochemical abnormalities of the underlying metabolic disease. While the incidence of DRP appears to decline due to evidence-based changes in diabetes management, the predicted increase in patients affected in particular by type 2 diabetes may outweigh the positive trend. The diagnosis is based on the alterations of the vessels, usually indicating abnormalities of the blood–retinal barrier and increased vasoregression, but the neuroglial elements appear equally vulnerable to the diabetic condition. Control of blood glucose, blood pressure and timely identification of coincident nephropathy are important to prevent progression to vision-threatening stages. Guidelines give specific indications for laser photocoagulation, in particular when euglycemia is no longer effective in preventing progression to advanced stages. Intravitreal administration of antibodies directed against the single best characterized propagator of clinically significant macular edema, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), has become popular despite uncertainty about the patient subgroups which benefit best and the optimum administration schedule. Multifactorial intervention beyond glycemic control includes antihypertensive, lipid-lowering and antiaggregatory and is effective in type 2 diabetic patients with high-risk profiles, in particular coincident nephropathy.
Environmental Impacts of Sand Exploitation. Analysis of Sand Market

Sand is an indispensable natural resource for any society. Despite society’s increasing dependence on sand, there are major challenges that this industry needs to deal with: limited sand resources, illegal mining, and environmental impact of sand mining. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to present an overview of the sand market, highlighting the main trends and actors for production, export and import, and to review the main environmental impacts associated with sand exploitation process. Based on these findings, we recommend different measures to be followed to reduce negative impacts. Sand mining should be done in a way that limits environmental damage during exploitation and restores the land after mining operations are completed.
Competing Business Models and Two-Sidedness

This article provides a conceptual framework to help define relevant markets in the presence of two-sided intermediaries and competing business models. In particular, we argue that two-sidedness is not a feature of markets but of firms and, hence, that firms with different business models may compete within the same relevant market. We then apply the proposed framework to the Google Shopping case.
Histone deacetylase 6 plays a role as a distinct regulator of diverse cellular processes

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) 6 is the best‐characterized class IIb deacetylase that regulates many important biological processes via the formation of complexes with its partner proteins. HDAC6 is important both for cytoplasmic and nuclear functions. Unlike other deacetylases, HDAC6 has unique substrate specificity for nonhistone proteins. Such diverse functions of HDAC6 suggest that it serves a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of a wide range of diseases. This therapeutic interest in HDAC6 stems from the observation that HDAC6 may be overexpressed or deregulated in various cancers, neurodegenerative diseases and inflammatory disorders. Despite extensive efforts, however, very few HDAC6‐selective inhibitors have been identified and the precise structural determinants remain undefined. Future efforts aiming to better define the structure and function of HDAC6 should provide the basis for the discovery of novel effective inhibitors. In this review, we focus on recent studies that highlight the importance of HDAC6‐mediated biological processes, disease mechanisms and HDAC6‐selective inhibitors.
Up‐regulation of the dendritic cell marker CD83 on polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN): divergent expression in acute bacterial infections and chronic inflammatory disease

Upon cultivation with interferon‐γ (IFN‐γ ) and granulocyte/macrophage‐colony stimulating factor (GM‐CSF) polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN) acquire characteristics of dendritic cells, including expression of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II antigens, of the co‐stimulatory antigens CD80, CD86 and of CD83, the latter considered to be specific for dendritic cells. Dendritic‐like PMN were also able to present to T cells antigens in a MHC class II‐restricted manner. To assess whether dendritic‐like PMN are also generated in vivo, cells of patients with acute bacterial infections and of patients with chronic inflammatory diseases (primary vasculitis) were tested. During acute infection up to 80% of PMN acquired CD83, but remained negative for MHC class II, CD80 or CD86. PMN of patients with primary vasculitis expressed MHC class II antigens, CD80 and CD86, but not CD83, indicating that up‐regulation of MHC class II and of CD83 are not necessarily linked to each other. Indeed, parallel studies with PMN of healthy donors showed that while IFN‐γ and granulocyte/macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM‐CSF) induced both, MHC class II and CD83, tumour necrosis factor (TNF)‐α selectively induced de novo synthesis of CD83. The function of CD83 on PMN is still elusive. A participation in the MHC class II‐restricted antigen presentation could be ruled out, consistent with the segregation of MHC class II and CD83 expression. Regardless, however, of its function, CD83 expression could serve as a marker to differentiate between acute and chronic inflammation.
Spectrum and prognosis of neurologic complications after hematopoietic transplantation

Objective: To describe the neurologic complications after hematopoietic progenitor cell transplantation (HPCT) in order to design rules for their management. Methods: We reviewed 361 consecutive patients over 6 years, including 245 autologous and 116 allogeneic HPCT recipients for hematologic malignancies (87%) and solid cancers (13%). Results: Fifty-seven patients developed 65 symptomatic neurologic complications (16%), with a higher incidence in allogeneic than in autologous HPCT recipients (p = 0.01) and in chronic myelogenous leukemia (42%) than in Hodgkin disease (2.5%) (p < 0.001). CNS infections (4.2%) were the main complications, marked by an early onset (within the first 4 months) after HPCT (87%), diagnostic difficulties, and a high mortality rate (47%). They mainly included cerebral toxoplasmosis, fungal infections, and viral encephalitis. Their incidence was markedly higher in allogeneic than in autologous HPCT recipients (p = 0.002). However, two CD34+ selected autologous HPCT recipients developed cerebral toxoplasmosis. Other CNS complications included recurrent tumors (3.6%), metabolic encephalopathies (2.8%), and cerebrovascular events (1.7%). Seizures occurred in 5% of patients, most often associated with cerebral lesions. Peripheral nervous system manifestations occurred in 3.3%. Twenty-one patients (5.8%) died directly of neurologic complications. The 4-year probability of survival was markedly lower in the case of neurologic events than in the absence thereof (12% vs 58%, p < 0.0001). Conclusions: Severe neurologic complications after hematopoietic progenitor cell transplantations are common, vary according to the underlying disease and type of transplantation, and are associated with poor survival rates. Better prophylactic protocols and therapy for CNS infections are required in future studies.
Evaluating Personal Assistants on Mobile devices

The iPhone was introduced only a decade ago in 2007 but has fundamentally changed the way we interact with online information. Mobile devices differ radically from classic command-based and point-and-click user interfaces, now allowing for gesture-based interaction using fine-grained touch and swipe signals. Due to the rapid growth in the use of voice-controlled intelligent personal assistants on mobile devices, such as Microsoft's Cortana, Google Now, and Apple's Siri, mobile devices have become personal, allowing us to be online all the time, and assist us in any task, both in work and in our daily lives, making context a crucial factor to consider. Mobile usage is now exceeding desktop usage, and is still growing at a rapid rate, yet our main ways of training and evaluating personal assistants are still based on (and framed in) classical desktop interactions, focusing on explicit queries, clicks, and dwell time spent. However, modern user interaction with mobile devices is radically different due to touch screens with a gesture- and voice-based control and the varying context of use, e.g., in a car, by bike, often invalidating the assumptions underlying today's user satisfaction evaluation. There is an urgent need to understand voice- and gesture-based interaction, taking all interaction signals and context into account in appropriate ways. We propose a research agenda for developing methods to evaluate and improve context-aware user satisfaction with mobile interactions using gesture-based signals at scale.
cis-acting requirements for the replication of flock house virus RNA 2

To examine the cis-acting requirements for RNA replication, a cDNA clone of flock house virus (FHV) RNA 2 was transfected into baby hamster kidney cells and transcribed to yield RNAs that had terminal extensions of different lengths or that lacked internal regions of the molecule. These RNAs were tested for their ability to be replicated by FHV replicase that was provided by cotransfection of purified FHV RNA 1. The results showed that RNA replication was inhibited by terminal extensions, particularly those at the 5' end of the RNA, despite the fact that these extensions were corrected during RNA replication. A negative-sense transcript with a 12-nucleotide 3' extension was replicated to produce a positive-sense RNA that had the correct 5' end, showing that the replicase could select its correct initiation site from within a longer template. A uridine residue at the second position of the positive strand was an important determinant of template activity. RNA molecules with large internal deletions that amounted to almost 50% of the 1,400 nucleotides of RNA 2 replicated as efficiently as full-length molecules, but only if they contained an internal region that lay between nucleotides 538 and 616. Thirty-six spontaneous deletions of RNA 2 that arose during sequential replicative passages all conserved the same internal region of the molecule. These results establish that both terminal and internal regions of FHV RNA 2 play essential roles in making the molecule a competent template for replication.
Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1

Multiple endocrine neoplasia‐1 (MEN‐1) is an autosomal dominant inherited syndrome that occurs due to inactivating mutations of the MEN1 gene locus, coding for a tumor‐suppressor protein, menin. The components of MEN‐1 are hyperparathyroidism due to multiple parathyroid adenomas, pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, and pituitary adenomas, in addition to some less common neoplastic manifestations. Care of people with MEN‐1 requires knowledge of the problems that may arise, and the best approaches to detect and care for the manifestations of this incurable, but manageable, disease. J. Surg. Oncol. 2005;89:143–150. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Task‐related modulation of functional connectivity variability and its behavioral correlations

Two new directions of functional connectivity investigation are emerging to advance studies of the brain's functional organization. First, the identification of task‐related dynamics of functional connectivity has elicited a growing interest in characterizing the brain's functional reorganization due to task demands. Second, the nonstationarity of functional connectivity [i.e., functional connectivity variability (FCV)] within a single brain state has been increasingly recognized and studied. However, a combined investigation of these two avenues of research to explore the potential task‐modulation of FCV is lacking, which, nevertheless, could both improve our understanding of the potential sources of FCV and also reveal new strategies to study the neural correlates of task performance. In this study, 19 human subjects underwent four functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans including both resting and task states to study task‐related modulation of FCV. Consistent with the hypothesis that FCV is partly underpinned by unconstrained mind wandering, FCV demonstrated significant task‐related decreases measured at the regional, network and system levels, which was greater for between‐network interactions than within‐network connections. Conversely, there remained a significant degree of residual variability during the task scans, suggesting that FCV is not specific to the resting state and likely includes an intrinsic, physiologically driven component. Finally, the degree of task‐induced decreases in FCV was significantly correlated with task performance accuracy, supporting its behavior significance. Overall, task modulation of FCV may represent an important direction for future studies, not only to provide insight into normal brain functioning but also to reveal potential biomarkers of various brain disorders. Hum Brain Mapp 36:3260–3272, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Internationalization strategy and the home-regionalization hypothesis: The case of Australian multinational enterprises

In this study, we set out to, first, replicate the classification of multinational enterprise (MNE) types proposed by Rugman and Verbeke in the Australian context. Second, we explore how a firm’s international experience influences the degree of its home regionalization and how industry affects the international experience–home regionalization relationship. We find that while home regionalization is still a dominant regionalization strategy for Australian MNEs, the proportions are different from those of Rugman and Verbeke. In particular, the share of home-regional firms is less pronounced and the share of host-regional firms is higher than Rugman and Verbeke’s findings. We also find that a firm’s international experience is negatively related to home regionalization, and that this relationship is further moderated by the firm’s industry. Our findings suggest that more attention be devoted to uncovering both home-country effects and the differential impact of international experience on home regionalization across industries.
Impact of Exchange Rate on Trade and Gdp for India a Study of last Four Decade

This paper empirically investigates the impact of exchange rate volatility on the real exports and Imports in India. Using annual time series data, the empirical analyses has been carried out for the period 1970 to 2011. The study results confirm that real exports and imports are cointegrated with exchange rate volatility, real exchange rate, gross domestic product and foreign economic activity. Our results are implies that the exchange rate has significant negative impact on real exports imports, implying that higher exchange rate fluctuation tends to reduce real exports in India. The empirical results reveal that GDP has a positive and significant impact on India s real exports in the long-run, but the impact turns out to be insignificant in the short-run.
Optimal Policies for Selling New and Remanufactured Products

Because of environmental and economic reasons, an increasing number of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) nowadays sell both new and remanufactured products. When both products are available, customers will buy the one that gives them a higher (and non‐negative) utility. Thus, if the firm does not price the products properly, then product cannibalization may arise and its revenue may be adversely impacted. In this paper, we study the pricing problem of a firm that sells both new and remanufactured products over a finite planning horizon. Customer demand processes for both new and remanufactured products are random and price‐sensitive, and product returns (also called cores) are random and remanufactured upon receipt. We characterize the optimal pricing and manufacturing policies that maximize the expected total discounted profit. If new products are made‐to‐order (MTO), we show that when the inventory level of remanufactured product increases, the optimal price of remanufactured product decreases while the price difference between new and remanufactured products increases; however, the optimal selling price of new product may increase or decrease. If new products are made to stock (MTS), then the optimal manufacturing policy is of a base‐stock policy with the base‐stock level decreasing in the remanufactured product inventory level. To understand the potential benefit in implementing an MTO system, we study the difference between the value functions of the MTO and MTS systems, and develop lower and upper bounds for it. Finally, we study several extensions of the base model and show that most of our results extend to those more general settings.
A Randomized Case-Series Study Comparing the Stability of Implant with Two Different Surfaces Placed in Fresh Extraction Sockets and Immediately Loaded

Background. Hydrophilic and moderately rough implant surfaces have been proposed to enhance the osseointegration response. Aim. The aim of this study was to compare early changes of stability for two implants with identical macrodesign but with different surface topographies. Materials and Methods. In 11 patients, a total of 22 implants (11 bimodal (minimally rough, control) and 11 proactive (moderately rough and hydrophilic, test), Neoss Ltd., Harrogate, UK) were immediately placed into fresh extraction sockets and immediately loaded. The peak insertion torque (IT) was measured in Ncm at placement. Resonance Frequency Analysis (RFA) measurements were made at baseline and 2, 4, 6, and 12 weeks after surgery. Results. The two implant types showed similar IT and RFA values at placement (NS). A dip of RFA values after 2 weeks followed by an increase was observed, where the test implant showed a less pronounced decrease and a more rapid recovery than the control implant. The test implants were significantly more stable than the control ones after 12 weeks. Conclusions. The results from the present study indicated that the hydrophilic and rougher test implant was more resistant to immediate loading and showed a significantly higher stability than the smoother control implant after 12 weeks.
Positive selection and lineage commitment during peripheral B‐lymphocyte development

Summary: Although it is appreciated that the antigen receptor on B cells is required for peripheral B‐lymphocyte development and survival, it has been unclear whether this receptor interacts with self‐antigens during development or if it signals constitutively in an antigen‐independent fashion. The analysis of mutant mice in which antigen receptor signaling in B cells is either attenuated or enhanced has revealed the existence of a follicular versus marginal zone B‐lymphocyte cell‐fate decision. These analyses indicate that weak antigen receptor‐derived signals favor marginal zone B‐cell generation, and relatively strong signals favor the development of mature follicular B cells. Even stronger signals derived from the antigen receptor favor the generation of B1 B cells. This signal strength model for B‐cell development supports the notion that self‐antigens of varying affinity may mediate positive selection and lineage commitment. Direct evidence supporting such a view has been obtained from the analysis of antigen receptor knockin mice. Specific antigen receptors guide B cells to develop into specific lineages. Although Notch‐2, nuclear factor‐κBp50, and other genes are essential for marginal zone B‐cell development, instructive signals delivered by the antigen receptor represent the primary force driving positive selection and lineage commitment in B lymphocytes.