Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microfinance and Poverty Reduction: Is Social Protection the Missing Link?

Abstract An ever-increasing body of literature points out that microfinance, despite being widely acknowledged as an effective strategy for poverty reduction, is not reaching a majority of poor households and is, thus, not effective in reducing their poverty. Our current theoretical understanding indicates that this is largely due to demand deficit on the part of poor households for microfinance products and services currently on the offer. Such products and services are observed to be more suitable to the financial needs of richer poor than those of the poor and very poor households. Literature suggests that microfinance outreach to poor may be improved by altering their external environment or by modifying the microfinance products to suit the needs of the poor. Literature, however, largely overlooks recent developments in the arena of social protection that are impacting financial needs of the poor. On the basis of empirical findings from three Indian states, I argue that demand deficit for microfinance may be corrected if provisions of microfinance are built upon social protection programmes that are increasingly becoming a significant aspect of the financial environment of the poor. Empirical evidence suggests that financial services may be more useful and acceptable to the poor, and, thus, may have more potential to reduce poverty if they are linked with social protection programmes. In addition, the availability of financial services that substantially meet the needs generated by the social protection measures may also contribute towards deepening of the impact of such measures.
Palliative Care Consults in U.S. Nursing Homes: Not Just for the Dying.

BACKGROUND Little is known about nursing home (NH) residents who receive palliative care (PC) consults in the United States. OBJECTIVE Separately by short versus long (≥90 days) stays, to describe NH residents with PC consults compared to a prevalent NH sample. DESIGN Descriptive longitudinal study. SETTING/SUBJECTS NH residents in 2008-2010 in 54 NHs. MEASUREMENTS Resident characteristics came from merged Medicare and NH data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and consult information from two PC organizations that were the sole PC consult providers in the study NHs. RESULTS Four percent of all NH residents received a PC consult during the study period. Two-thirds had short NH stays, and 81% of short- and 27% of long-stay consult recipients were on the Medicare skilled nursing facility (SNF) benefit at the time of initial consult. Short- and long-stay NH residents with PC consults differed not only, in many respects, from NH residents generally but also from each other. Despite these differences, half of short-stay and 57% of long-stay residents were alive six months after initial consults. Residents dead at six months died at 33.5 and 34.5 median days (respectively) after initial consults. At six months, 65% of surviving short-stay consult recipients were in the community without hospice, while 59% of long-stay residents were in the NH without hospice or Medicare SNF care. CONCLUSION The high rates of SNF care and six-month survival among NH recipients of PC consults demonstrate the utility of these consults before Medicare hospice eligibility or use.
Competitive intelligence and developing sustainable competitive advantage

Privatization, partial tariff liberalization and entrance of foreign insurance companies in Iranian market pose serious challenges to domestic insurance companies. This paper discusses competitive intelligence as a means of gaining competitive advantage for insurance companies and seeks to study its effects on creation of sustainable competitive advantage. A sample of 123 middle and senior managers working in Iran Insurance Company in Tehran were surveyed. Data were collected via questionnaire and analyzed using Structural Equation Model (SEM) in PLS software. Results showed that competitive intelligence had a positive effect on creation of competitive advantage based on two sets of process and contextual factors, with the former exerting greater effect in this regard. It was concluded that companies were required to gain competitive advantage by establishing a strategic unit to collect, analyze and share intelligent information derived from internal and external environment
Coherent pattern and timing of the carbon isotope excursion and warming during Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 as recorded in planktic and benthic foraminifera

Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 (ETM2; ∼53.7 Ma) occurred approximately 2 Myr after the Paleocene‐Eocene Thermal Maximum (∼55.5 Ma) and was characterized by a deep‐sea warming of >3°C, associated with massive release of carbon into the ocean‐atmosphere system. We performed single‐specimen stable isotope analyses of the planktic foraminiferal genera Acarinina (surface dweller) and Subbotina (thermocline dweller) from Ocean Drilling Program Sites 1265, 1267, and 1263 (Walvis Ridge, SE Atlantic Ocean) and compared high‐resolution planktic and benthic stable isotope records to constrain the surface warming and the bathymetric pathway of the carbon isotope excursion during ETM2. Tests of the thermocline dweller Subbotina are absent from sediment deposited during the peak of ETM2. The Acarinina carbon and oxygen isotope records of Sites 1263, 1265, and 1267 are strikingly similar, despite some test recrystallization and large differences in burial depths. Sea surface temperature (SST) estimates based on δ18O isotope values of Acarinina indicate a SST increase of ∼2°C, significantly less than the >3°C estimated for bottom water warming. The maximum negative carbon isotope excursion for Acarinina was ∼1.7‰, slightly more than in the deep sea (∼1.4‰). The planktic and benthic isotope records do not show time lags, indicating that during ETM2 the isotopically depleted carbon injected into the ocean‐atmosphere system was rapidly mixed within all oceanic carbon reservoirs.
Minimax Play at Wimbledon Redux

Initial tests of the predictive power of the mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium in the laboratory pointed to significant deviations. In response to the flat maximum critique, that incentives in the lab were not high enough to induce Nash behavior, researchers turned to the field, particularly sporting environments, where the monetary incentives were high. Field experiments overall, found predictions closer to the marginal distribution of actions predicted by the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium; however, evidence of deviations from the prediction of independent behavior across rounds have been mixed. I use a new dataset of tennis match serves that is two orders of magnitude greater than those used in previous tennis studies. Similarly to previous findings, the marginal distributions of professionals’ serves are not significantly different from the prediction of the normative solution, but there exists significant serial dependence across serves. This behavior is found even among players who at some point in their careers were ranked Number 1 in the world. The deviations of these top players cannot be explained as a strategic best response to expectations of lower-ranked players’ deviations from the Nash equilibrium.
Tobacco packaging and mass media campaigns: research needs for Articles 11 and 12 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

INTRODUCTION Communicating the health risks of smoking remains a primary objective of tobacco-control policy. Articles 11 and 12 of the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control establish standards for two important forms of communication: packaging regulations (Article 11), and mass media campaigns (Article 12). METHODS A narrative review approach was used to identify existing evidence in the areas of package labeling regulations (including health warnings, constituent and emission messages, and prohibitions on misleading information) and communication activities (including mass media campaigns and news media coverage). When available, recent reviews of the literature were used, updated with more recent high-quality studies from published literature. RESULTS Implementation of Articles 11 and 12 share several important research priorities: (a) identify existing consumer information needs and gaps, (b) research on the message source to identify effective types of content for health warnings and media campaigns, (c) research on how messages are processed and the extent to which the content and form of messages need to be tailored to different cultural and geographic groups, as well as subgroups within countries, and (d) research to identify the most cost-effective mix and best practices for sustaining health communications over time. CONCLUSION A unifying theme of effective health communication through tobacco packaging and mass media campaigns is the need to provide salient, timely, and engaging reminders of the consequences of tobacco use in ways that motivate and support tobacco users trying to quit and make tobacco use less appealing for those at risk of taking it up.
Advanced Sports Medicine Concepts and Controversies Lactate: Friend or Foe

Lactic acid has played an important role in the traditional theory of muscle fatigue and limitation of endurance exercise performance. It has been called a waste product of anaerobic metabolism and has been believed to be responsible for the uncomfortable “burn” of intense exercise and directly responsible for the metabolic acidosis of exercise, leading to decreased muscle contractility and ultimately cessation of exercise. Although this premise has been commonly taught, it is not supported by the scientific literature and has led to a great deal of confusion among the sports medicine and exercise science communities. This review will provide the sports medicine clinician with an understanding of contemporary lactate theories, including lactate’s role in energy production, its contributions to metabolic acidosis, and its function as an energy substrate for a variety of tissues. Lactate threshold concepts will also be discussed, including a practical approach to understanding prediction of performance and monitoring of training progress based on these parameters.
Gene Transfer of Stromal Cell–Derived Factor-1&agr; Enhances Ischemic Vasculogenesis and Angiogenesis via Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor/Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase–Related Pathway: Next-Generation Chemokine Therapy for Therapeutic Neovascularization

Background—Stromal cell–derived factor-1&agr; (SDF-1&agr;) is implicated as a chemokine for endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs). We therefore hypothesized that SDF-1&agr; gene transfer would induce therapeutic neovascularization in vivo by functioning as a chemokine of EPC. Methods and Results—To examine SDF-1&agr;–induced mobilization of EPC, we used bone marrow–transplanted mice whose blood cells ubiquitously express β-galactosidase (LacZ). We produced unilateral hindlimb ischemia in the mice and transfected them with plasmid DNA encoding SDF-1&agr; or empty plasmids into the ischemic muscles. SDF-1&agr; gene transfer mobilized EPCs into the peripheral blood, augmented recovery of blood perfusion to the ischemic limb, and increased capillary density associated with partial incorporation of LacZ-positive cells into the capillaries of the ischemic limb, suggesting that SDF-1&agr; induced vasculogenesis and angiogenesis. SDF-1&agr; gene transfer did not affect ischemia-induced expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) but did enhance Akt and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) activity. Blockade of VEGF or NOS prevented all such SDF-1&agr;–induced effects. Conclusions—SDF-1&agr; gene transfer enhanced ischemia-induced vasculogenesis and angiogenesis in vivo through a VEGF/eNOS-related pathway. This strategy might become a novel chemokine therapy for next generation therapeutic neovascularization.
A set-based discrete PSO for cloud workflow scheduling with user-defined QoS constraints

Cloud computing has emerged as a powerful computing paradigm that enables users to access computing services anywhere on demand. It provides a flexible way to implement computation-intensive workflow applications on a pay-per-use basis. Since users are more concerned on the satisfaction of Quality of Service (QoS) in cloud systems, the cloud workflow scheduling problem that addresses different QoS requirements of users has become an important and challenging problem for workflow management in cloud computing. In this paper, we tackle a cloud workflow scheduling problem which enables users to define various QoS constraints like the deadline constraint, the budget constraint, and the reliability constraint. It also enables users to specify one preferred QoS parameter as the optimization objective. A set-based PSO (S-PSO) approach is proposed for this scheduling problem. As the allocation of service instances can be regarded as the selection problem from a set of service instances, it is found the set-based representation scheme in S-PSO is natural for the considered problem. In addition, the S-PSO provides an effective way to take advantage of problem-based heuristics to further accelerate search. We define penalty-based fitness functions to address the multiple QoS constraints and integrate the S-PSO with seven heuristics. A discrete version of the comprehensive learning PSO (CLPSO) algorithm based on the S-PSO method is implemented. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is very competitive especially on the instances with tight QoS constraints.
Development of A Haptic User Interface for Surface Sensing and Nanomanipulation Based on Atomic Force Microscope

The standard application of atomic force microscope (AFM) is observation with subnanometer resolution. As development of nano-tech, AFM has also become popular as a simple manipulation tool. We have proved that developing a haptic user interface (HUI) can significantly improve these functions of AFM. When going on observation, under the assistance of HUI, the user can not only observe surface characters through the scanning image, meanwhile, he can also "touch" the surface with a force proportional to the imaging signal on his hand, which help to deepen people's understanding to surface characters. HUI can work for surface sensing online or offline, as long as the imaging signals could be obtained. Changing the observation mode of AFM from only imaging to both imaging and sensing. When going on nanomanipulation, through HUI the user can not only feel the real-time operation force, furthermore he can directly control the tip motion of AFM. this significantly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of AFM based nanomanipulation.
Images that Matter: Online Protests and the Mobilizing Role of Pictures

Do images affect online political mobilization? If so, how? These questions are of fundamental importance to scholars of social movements, contentious politics, and political behavior generally. However, little prior work has systematically addressed the role of images in mobilizing online participation in social movements. We first confirm that images have a positive mobilizing effect in the context of online protest activity. We then argue that images are mobilizing because they trigger stronger emotional reactions than text. Building on existing political psychology models, we theorize that images evoking enthusiasm, anger, and fear should be particularly mobilizing, while sadness should be demobilizing. We test the argument through a study of Twitter activity related to a Black Lives Matter protest. We find that both images in general and some of the proposed emotional attributes (enthusiasm and fear) contribute to online participation. The results hold when controlling for alternative theoretical mechanisms for why images should be mobilizing, and for the presence of frequent image features. Our paper provides evidence supporting the broad argument that images increase the likelihood of a protest to spread online while teasing out the mechanisms at play in a new media environment.
Neuronal organization of a fast‐mediating cephalothoracic pathway for antennal‐tactile information in the cricket (Gryllus bimaculatus DeGeer)

Crickets use their long antennae as tactile sensors. Confronted with obstacles, conspecifics, or predators, antennal contacts trigger short‐latency motor responses. To reveal the neuronal pathway underlying these antennal‐guided locomotory reactions we identified descending interneurons that rapidly transmit antennal‐tactile information from the head to the thorax in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus. Antennae were stimulated with forces approximating those of naturally occurring antennal contacts. Responding interneurons were individually identified by intracellular axon recordings in the pro‐mesothoracic connective and subsequent tracer injection. Simultaneous with the intracellular recordings, the overall spike response in the neck connectives was recorded extracellularly to reveal the precise response‐timing of each individual neuron within the collective multiunit response. Here we describe four descending brain neurons and two with the soma in the subesophageal ganglion. All antennal‐touch elicited action potentials apparent in the neck connective recordings within 10 ms after antennal‐contact are generated by these six interneurons. Their dendrites ramify in primary antennal‐mechanosensory neuropils of the head ganglia. Each of them consistently generated action potentials in response to antennal touching and three of them responded also to different visual stimulation (light‐off, movement). Their descending axons conduct action potentials with 3–5 m/s to the thoracic ganglia where they send off side branches in dorsal neuropils. Their physiological and anatomical properties qualify them as descending giant fibers in the cricket and suggest an involvement in evoking fast locomotory reactions. They form a fast‐mediating cephalo‐thoracic pathway for antennal‐tactile information, whereas all other antennal‐tactile interneurons had response latencies exceeding 40 ms. J. Comp. Neurol. 519:1677–1690, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Heat shock protein 70 is a useful marker for predicting colorectal cancer.

PURPOSE In colorectal cancer (CRC), as in most of other malignancies, heat shock proteins (HSPs) are overexpressed and are associated with apoptosis, cancer cell proliferation, differentiation, invasion, and metastasis. HSP70 is one of the HSPs and has a promising future in cancer studies for both diagnostic and therapeutic applications. In this study, we tried to evaluate the serum levels of HSP70 in CRC patients, and to evaluate its predictive value of detecting CRC. METHODS This prospective study was consisted of 33 patients diagnosed with CRC and 31 healthy subjects who were matched for age. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) were used to evaluate the serum levels of HSP70 in patients with CRC and in the healthy control group. A cut-off value for HSP70 was also determined using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. RESULTS Patients with CRC had significantly higher HSP70 concentrations compared with the control group (4.52 ± 1.83 vs 1.22 ± 0.48 ng/ml, p=0.001), the cut-off value was ≥2.25 ng/ml (95% CI 0.993-1.003, p<0.001). The sensitivity and specificity of elevated serum HSP70 in the CRC group were 96.77 and 96.96%, respectively. Also, HSP70 levels were significantly higher with rectal disease localization (p=0.01). CONCLUSION This study shows that the serum level of HSP70 is elevated in patients with CRC. HSP70 may be utilized as an adjunct to other diagnostic or screening tests.
Prediction of coenzyme specificity in dehydrogenases/reductases. A hidden Markov model-based method and its application on complete genomes.

Dehydrogenases and reductases are enzymes of fundamental metabolic importance that often adopt a specific structure known as the Rossmann fold. This fold, consisting of a six-stranded beta-sheet surrounded by alpha-helices, is responsible for coenzyme binding. We have developed a method to identify Rossmann folds and predict their coenzyme specificity (NAD, NADP or FAD) using only the amino acid sequence as input. The method is based upon hidden Markov models and sequence pattern analysis. The prediction sensitivity is 79% and the selectivity close to 100%. The method was applied on a set of 68 genomes, representing the three kingdoms archaea, bacteria and eukaryota. In prokaryotes, 3% of the genes were found to code for Rossmann-fold proteins, while the corresponding ratio in eukaryotes is only around 1%. In all genomes, NAD is the most preferred cofactor (41-49%), followed by NADP with 30-38%, while FAD is the least preferred cofactor (21%). However, the NAD preponderance over NADP is most pronounced in archaea, and least in eukaryotes. In all three kingdoms, only 3-8% of the Rossmann proteins are predicted to have more than one membrane-spanning segment, which is much lower than the frequency of membrane proteins in general. Analysis of the major protein types in eukaryotes reveals that the most common type (26%) of the Rossmann proteins are short-chain dehydrogenases/reductases. In addition, the identified Rossmann proteins were analyzed with respect to further protein types, enzyme classes and redundancy. The described method is available at http://www.ifm. liu.se/bioinfo, where the preferred coenzyme and its binding region are predicted given an amino acid sequence as input.