Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measurement of glycosaminoglycans in canine synovial fluid and its correlation with the cause of secondary osteoarthritis, age and body weight

Glycosaminoglycans are natural components of healthy joint cartilage and they also appear in healthy synovial fluid. An increased amount of glycosaminoglycans in synovial fluid is believed to be a marker of secondary osteoarthritis, regardless of its primary cause. The aim of our study was to define the relationship between glycosaminoglycans in the synovial fluid and joint disorders, age, and body weight. The samples of synovial fluid were obtained from dogs suffering from secondary secondary osteoarthritis (n = 35) and from control dogs (n = 18); control dogs had normal body weight. The results were compared among joints of dogs with secondary osteoarthritis divided into groups according to the criteria mentioned above and control dogs. Glycosaminoglycan concentrations in synovial fluid were measured using dimethylmethylene blue assay. The lowest mean value of glycosaminoglycans in synovial fluid was measured in the control group. Significantly higher glycosaminoglycan content (P < 0.05) was found in synovial fluid isolated from obese dogs compared to control dogs. Furthermore, we observed an agerelated trend, in which the highest mean values were reached either in old dogs or pups. Despite the absence of significant differences in glycosaminoglycan values among dogs suffering from various types of secondary secondary osteoarthritis, the highest mean values were measured in fragmented coronoid processus group. Our data suggest that abnormally increased body weight has an impact on glycosaminoglycan concentration in synovial fluid which may imply faster degradation and turnover of joint cartilage. Such observation has not yet been published in veterinary medicine. Dog, joint, obesity
Internationalisation of Retail Firms: State of the Art after 20 Years of Research

Prof. Dr. Prof. h.c. Bernhard Swoboda is Professor of Marketing and Retailing at Trier University, Universitaetsring 15, 54286 Trier, Germany, Phone: +49 (0) 651 201–3050, Fax: +49 (0)651 201–4165, EMail: b.swoboda@uni-trier.de. Prof. Dr. Joachim Zentes is Professor and Director of the Institute for Commerce and International Marketing at Saarland University, Campus Building A5.4, 66123 Saarbruecken, Germany, Phone: +49 (0)681 302–4475, Fax: +49 (0)681 302–4532, E-Mail: j.zentes@mx.uni-saarland.de. Dipl. -Kfm. Stefan Elsner is Ph.D. Student of Marketing and Retailing at Trier University, Universitaetsring 15, 54286 Trier, Germany, Phone: +49 (0)651 201–2630, Fax: +49 (0)651 201–4165, E-Mail: s.elsner@uni-trier.de. Internationalisation of Retail Firms: State of the Art after 20 Years of Research
TITAN'S TRANSPORT-DRIVEN METHANE CYCLE

The mechanisms behind the occurrence of large cloud outbursts and precipitation on Titan have been disputed. A global- and annual-mean estimate of surface fluxes indicated only 1% of the insolation, or ∼0.04 W m−2, is exchanged as sensible and/or latent fluxes. Since these fluxes are responsible for driving atmospheric convection, it has been argued that moist convection should be quite rare and precipitation even rarer, even if evaporation globally dominates the surface-atmosphere energy exchange. In contrast, climate simulations indicate substantial cloud formation and/or precipitation. We argue that the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiative imbalance is diagnostic of horizontal heat transport by Titan's atmosphere, and thus constrains the strength of the methane cycle. Simple calculations show the TOA radiative imbalance is ∼0.5–1 W m−2 in Titan's equatorial region, which implies 2–3 MW of latitudinal heat transport by the atmosphere. Our simulation of Titan's climate suggests this transport may occur primarily as latent heat, with net evaporation at the equator and net accumulation at higher latitudes. Thus, the methane cycle could be 10–20 times previous estimates. Opposing seasonal transport at solstices, compensation by sensible heat transport, and focusing of precipitation by large-scale dynamics could further enhance the local, instantaneous strength of Titan's methane cycle by a factor of several. A limited supply of surface liquids in regions of large surface radiative imbalance may throttle the methane cycle, and if so, we predict more frequent large storms over the lakes district during Titan's northern summer.
Reform of the Mortgage Interest Tax Relief System, Policy Uncertainty and Precautionary Savings in the Netherlands

We examined the mortgage interest tax relief (MIR) system in the Netherlands and reforms to this system, based on answers to direct questions in survey data for the period 2010-2012. As well as tracking individuals over time and at strategic moments in the process of the policy reform, this unique data set allowed us to isolate the effect of policy uncertainty on precautionary savings and, therefore, on consumption. We found that policy uncertainty alone could increase household buffers in the form of net worth. We estimate that this uncertainty ex ante induces households to increase their net worth by around 6% (EUR 8,000 on average). Although a MIR reform could mitigate this effect on accumulated savings, we also show that reforms that are not credible ex post could exacerbate rather than mitigate the effect on precautionary savings.
Assessment of Time-dependent Discriminative Ability

The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) is a commonly used measurement for the discriminative ability of a model. For the time to event variable in survival analysis the case and control sets will vary over time, thus a dynamic definition of AUC is required. We choose the dynamic AUC defined by incident true positive rate and dynamic false positive rate (I/D AUC) proposed by Heagerty and Zheng [6]. However, the difficulty to empirically obtain the incident true positive rate is hampering the estimation of dynamic AUC. Thus, several semi-parametric and non-parametric estimators are proposed. Heagerty and Zheng [6] proposed the semi-parametric estimation method based on Cox model. The non-parametric estimates using intermediate concordance measure with LOWESS smoothing is raised by van Houwelingen and Putter [14]. Based on the same intermediate concordance measure, SahaChaudhuri and Heagerty suggested to use locally weighted mean rank smoothing [10]. Recently, Shen et al proposed a semi-parametric method by adopting fractional polynomial to fit the dynamic AUC [12]. In this thesis, we compare the performance of these methods with different configuration in a series of simulations. The plain Cox methods is not recommended when the proportional hazards assumption is not satisfied. The Cox model with time-varying coefficients are relatively stable when the marker has a mediocre effect. For the non-parametric methods, a too wide span/bandwidth may lead to large bias, and a too narrow span/bandwidth may lead to unstable estimates, thus, the trade-off between the bias and the standard deviation has to be made. For fractional polynomial, adding extra fractional polynomial terms does not benefit the performance. In addition, many researchers observed a decreasing trend of I/D AUC over time in their empirical studies [10][12][6], yet Pepe et al. held the opinion that the I/D AUC may be an increasing function over time [7]. We investigate the trend of I/D AUC under a Cox model and binary marker setting. However, we observe that under certain Cox models, the I/D AUC curve first increases then decreases, thus I/D AUC is not necessarily a decreasing function of time. Acknowledgements I wish to express my deepest gratefulness to my thesis supervisors Dr. Ir. Nan van Geloven and Prof. Dr. Hein Putter. The insightful weekly discussions during these six months helped me a lot. Without their guidance, advise and encouragement before the presentation, this thesis would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Dr. Marta Fiocco for helping me with the graduation procedure. Finally, I wish to thank my internship supervisor Dr. Elise Dusseldorp for her support and encouragement throughout my final year. I want to thank my family and friends for accompanying me during my study.
Financial Conditions and Macroeconomic Volatility in Emerging Markets

This paper assesses the role of financial conditions in the business cycles in emerging markets. Evidence from nonlinear VAR relating macroeconomic variables to proxies of financial conditions suggest that: (a) stressful times occur with considerable frequency, about 30% of time; (b) second moments of the main macroeconomic variables are regime dependent, with consumption and investment being more correlated with GDP and with larger volatility for all variables considered under financial distress conditions; (c) consumption is more volatile than GDP both under a regular financial condition and in a financial distress period; (d) the duration of the financial instability period is about 5 quarters; (e) and there are strong amplification effects related to the tightening of the credit conditions.
Glutathione Peroxidase Activity Assay with Colorimetric Method and Microplate Reading Format and Comparison with Chemiluminescence Method

Glutathione peroxidase (GPX) has a key role in the protection of organisms from oxidative damage. Many diseases and disorders are associated with changes in GPX activity. Therefore, its activity assay can be crucial in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of them. Several companies produce GPX activity assay kit but it is being imported to Iran which is expensive and time-consuming. This research has been done to investigate a simple, rapid and inexpensive method for GPX activity assay. In this study, GPX reduced cumene hydroperoxide while oxidized glutathione (GSH) to GSSG. The generated GSSG was reduced to GSH with consumption of NADPH by glutathione reductase. The decrease of NADPH absorption which was proportional to GPX activity measured at 340 nm with microplate reading format. Sensitivity, precision and accuracy have been examined. The results obtained by the colorimetric method compared with chemiluminescence method and correlation coefficient has been determined. Sensitivity of this method was 15 mU/ml. The coefﬁcient of variation percent for intra and inter assay was less than 9.7 %. According to parallelism and recovery tests, ratio % and recovery % ranged from 91% to 112% and correlation coefficient between the two methods was 0.9898 (n=60). Data from this study showed that the method has an acceptable sensitivity, precision and accuracy and can be suitable for both clinical and research studies. Indeed, this study is the first step of domestic commercial kit production purpose.
Investigating the sources of synoptic variability in atmospheric CO2 measurements over the Northern Hemisphere continents: a regional model study

Continuous measurements of atmospheric CO2 over the continents are potentially powerful tools for understanding regional carbon budgets, but our limited understanding of the processes driving the high-frequency variability in these measurements makes interpretation difficult. In this paper we examine the synoptic variability (⊼days) of surface CO2 concentrations in four continental records from Europe and North America. Three source functions corresponding to the ocean, land biosphere and anthropogenic sources and sinks for CO2 have been implemented in a regional atmospheric transport model. In previous carbon studies, monthly biospheric fluxes have typically been used, but here high spatiotemporal (daily, 1¼×1¼) resolution biospheric fluxes are obtained from the NCAR Land Surface Model (lsm). A high-pass filter is used to remove atmospheric variability on time scales longer than 2 months, and the resulting simulated concentration fields replicates reasonably well the magnitude and seasonality of the synoptic variability across the four observation sites. The phasing of many of the individual events are also captured, indicating that the physical and biogeochemical dynamics driving the model variability likely resemble those in nature.The observations and model results show pronounced summer maxima in the synoptic CO2 concentration variability at the two stations located in North America, while a slightly different seasonality with high variability throughout fall and winter is observed at the European sites. The mechanisms driving these patterns are studied and discussed based on correlations between the concentration anomalies and the driving atmospheric physical variables and surfaces fluxes in the simulations. During the summer, the synoptic variability over the continents has a significant contribution from variations in regional net primary production, which in turn is modulated by regional, synoptic temperature variability. In winter the synoptic variability is partitioned about equally between biospheric and anthropogenic CO2 and is mainly driven by local vertical mixing and synoptic variations in atmospheric circulation working on the large-scale atmospheric gradient. This study highlights the importance for future modeling work of improved high temporal resolution (at least daily) surface biosphere, oceanic and anthropogenic flux estimates as well as high vertical and horizontal spatiotemporal resolution of the driving meteorology.
THE HOUSE-MONEY EFFECT, ESCALATION OF COMMITMENT AND TESTOSTERONE (2D:4D RATIO): AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH

This paper investigates the relationship between the 2D:4D biological marker and the psychological conception of house-money-effect (HME). Among the results obtained it was not possible to verify that the volunteers present a behavior according to the hypothesis of the House Money Effect hypothesis and escalation of commitment in both sexes. The results of the experiment, however, corroborate the hypothesis that, for volunteers with lower 2D:4D ratios, they bet more after a gain and also after a loss. This result is in agreement with the suggestion of the literature of (HME) and the biological marker, that is, volunteers with greater exposure to the hormone testosterone invest more, considering that they are less risk-averse. Regarding the robustness analysis the results indicated that the 2D: 4D biological marker was a significant predictor for the difference in behavior between men and women. keywords: Risk, Experiment, Testosterone. JEL Classification:C9, D81
Title Unsupervised Learning of a Probabilistic Grammar for Object Detection and Parsing Permalink

We describe an unsupervised method for learning a probabilistic grammar of an object from a set of training examples. Our approach is invariant to the scale and rotation of the objects. We illustrate our approach using thirteen objects from the Caltech 101 database. In addition, we learn the model of a hybrid object class where we do not know the specific object or its position, scale or pose. This is illustrated by learning a hybrid class consisting of faces, motorbikes, and airplanes. The individual objects can be recovered as different aspects of the grammar for the object class. In all cases, we validate our results by learning the probability grammars from training datasets and evaluating them on the test datasets. We compare our method to alternative approaches. The advantages of our approach is the speed of inference (under one second), the parsing of the object, and increased accuracy of performance. Moreover, our approach is very general and can be applied to a large range of objects and structures.
Volatility spillover effect from commodities to Brazilian stock markets in the period 2000 ‒ 2016 : is there a possibility of diversification ?

In 2002, a commodity prices boom in the international market began concomitantly with the trend of the main stock market index, especially in emerging stock exchanges. In Brazil, specifically, the main stock index (Ibovespa) presents a history of important composition of companies linked to the commodities sector, which suggests a relationship between the commodity prices and the stock market. Thus, the objective of the study was to evaluate the contagion of volatility between the commodity prices and the Ibovespa, through a multivariate GARCH model, to verify the possibility of diversification of investments. The research hypothesized that there is a strong relationship between the commodity prices and the Ibovespa index, with the presence of the contagion effect according to Forbes and Rigobon (2002), which inhibits the diversification of investments between the stocks that make up the index and the commodities on the international scene. The results partially corroborate the hypothesis formulated, since it was possible to observe a strong increase in conditional covariance between the two variables during the international financial crisis. On the other hand, the conditional correlation between the Ibovespa and the commodity prices showed that the relationship between the variables was relatively small in the periods before and after the 2008 crisis, which suggests that concomitant investments in commodities and the Ibovespa constitute a risk diversification strategy, contrary to what is commonly supposed.
DESIGN OF PMOLED DISPLAY SYSTEM BASED ON PAM

As the next generation of flat panel displays, OLED displays have a variety of outstanding features and advantages. At present, OLED display technology is a hotspot in the display technology research in the world. In addition, there are a large number of small and medium size OLED displays used in portable devices, and the manufacturing technology of large-size OLED display is maturing. An image display control system is designed for the PMOLED display. The system uses dedicated PMOLED display driver chip packaged by TAB and have advantages of easy driving and high reliability. Oxide TFT has advantages of better mobility, stability and uniformity, which is one of the most powerful competitors of active substrate technology. In this paper, a video display control system based on AMOLED display driver circuit of metal oxide TFT substrate is designed. The system uses TFT-LCD driver chip of COG package in place of AMOLED display dedicated driver chip, which has advantages of easy achievement and cheap and meets the needs of initial research and development of AMOLED display. The system takes DVI interface as the video signal transmission interface, and takes FPGA as a scan and data driver chip timing controller with reusable and flexible features. Video display control system has achieved a 7-inch 320x3x240 pixel AMOLED display real-time dynamic video display with 64 grayscale and 60Hz frame rate, and the display is good.
Modelling and Simulation of a Bubble Column Photobioreactor for the Cultivation of Microalgae Nannochloropsis Salina

The objective of the research is to obtain the valid model of a photobioreactor for the cultivation of microalgae Nannochloropsis salina. An axisymmetric two-dimensional model of internal-illuminated bubble column photobioreactors was developed by considering the gas and liquid mass balances and the light intensity. The validation of the model against experimental data with the inlet gas flow rate of 800 mL/min and enriched with 0.5 % and 2 % CO2 gives average errors of 5 % and 4 %. The simulation results show that the microalgae growth is marked by the increase in its concentration from 0.08 g/L on the first day to 0.51 g/L on the sixteenth day for CO2 concentration of 2 %. The inlet CO2 concentrations of 0.5 %, 1 %, 2 %, and 4 % give the maximum concentrations of microalgae of 0.421 g/L, 0.472 g L, 0.502 g/L, and 0.514 g/L. However, the effect is not significant when the CO2 concentration is above 4 %. Change in the gas flow rate does not give significant influence on the microalgae growth.
The Monetarist-Keynesian Debate and the Phillips Curve: Lessons from the Great Inflation

Since the early 1950s, debate between economists of the Cowles Commission and Milton Friedman macroeconomics has developed along two parallel but integrally interconnected tracks. The Cowles Commission track involves development of a model of the economy organized around a system of stochastic difference equations with research efforts directed toward providing microeconomic foundations for the individual equations. The Friedman track involves using changes over time in the systematic character of monetary policy and departures from a given policy as surrogates for controlled experiments in an attempt to distinguish between alternative models. The Monetarist-Keynesian debate of the 1960s and 1970s illustrates this ongoing dialectic within macroeconomics.
Regulatory function of stress in the process of leukemia patients’ recovery after bone marrow transplantation

The theoretical rationale was the author’s Functional Model of Health (FMH), where health is construed as a function of creative coping with stress. Participants in the study were 141 patients with blood cancer (80 men and 61 women) treated with bone marrow transplantation at the Hematology Clinic, Jagiellonian University Collegium Medicum. Besides a standardized interview the following instruments were used: STAI by Spielberger, CISS and CHIP by Endler and Parker, and SOC-29 by Antonovsky. Health status was operationalized using 10-point self-rating scales to assess the patients’ perceived health and sense of calmness, while their objective health was rated by a medical expert hematologist. In the statistical analyses significant correlations were found between stress level and the patients’ subjective health (-0.34, p<0.001). The following variables predicted stress intensity: anxious personality (.585), distraction coping strategy (-.202), female sex (.201), and sense of meaningfulness (-.190). Subjective health predictors of leukemia patients are: objective health (ß = .413), level of stress (ß = -.285), by the patient’s sense of meaningfulness (ß = .244) and focusing on negative emotions (ß = -.193). To promote patients’ health moreover, their sense of meaningfulness in life and in being active should be supported and enhanced.
Map-constrained Adaptive GNSS / IMU Fusion Scheme for Robust Urban Navigation

Abstract— Recent advances in Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and integration with high-rate sensors greatly enhance pose estimation performance in harsh environments. However, urban areas often lead to position errors due to multipath signals. Adaptive sensor fusion methods have been shown to handle GNSS outliers by adaptively estimating measurement noise covariance. However, existing methods depend on innovation sequences and, consequently, they fail if biased errors exist or insufficient redundant measurements are available. This paper proposes a map-aided adaptive fusion algorithm that uses map constraints to adaptively estimate GNSS position measurement noise covariance. The method estimates the currently active map segment using dead-reckoning and a robust map-matching algorithm that considers the vehicle state history, roads geometry, and map topology in a Hidden-Markov Model (HMM), and the Viterbi algorithm is used to decode the HMM model and select the most likely segment. By identifying the most likely map segment, the projection of vehicle states onto the map segment is used as a supplementary position update to the integration filter. GNSS covariance is then modeled as a subcovariance matrix of a multivariate Gaussian distribution which is estimated conditioned on map-constraints using Bayesian inference. The proposed solution framework has been developed in ANSI C and tested on a land-based vehicular platform in downtown Toronto using a 3 Space inertial measurement unit, a Ublox EVK-7 GNSS receiver kit, and digital maps from the province of Ontario. Results showed accurate map segment estimation in difficult roads intersections, forks, and joins. The adaptive GNSS fusion scheme proved to reliably mitigate biased GNSS position updates that are falsely reported as accurate by the GNSS receiver.