Evolution of Protection Technologies in Metro Core Optical Networks

The market of metro optical networking has increased rapidly over the last few years. Traditional telecommunication infrastructure has an emphasis on long-haul optical transmission with ultra broadband capacity, relying mostly on large pure Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) systems. Today, however, metro core optical networks take the major role in provisioning local access services and interconnecting service points of presences (POPs) with long-haul transmission. This represents a pivotal point in business operations of data communication services for service providers and large enterprises. In addition, the upper layer data services completely leans upon the substrate wavelength communication, and hence the survivability and reliability issues in the optical domain are now becoming crucial topics. This paper provides a detailed discussion around the development process of protection technologies in metro core optical transport infrastructure

An Overview on the Integrated IP Optical Data Control Plane in the Optical Transport Network

In recent years, the Optical Transport Network (OTN) systems have been introduced widely, however, wide adoption has been limited due to the immature infrastructural issues. The OTN infrastructure takes the responsibility of data and signal transmission for substratal layer, as well as provides carrying and maintaining services (mostly the IP-based traffic today) through an optical data transport control plane. Thus, this paper focuses on the latest OTN data control plane and therefore gives a comprehensive introduction on the integrated IP Optical peer control plane

Symbolism matters: The effect of same-sex marriage legalization on partnership stability

Registered partnership (RP) and marriage in the Netherlands are identical in terms of rights and obligations but may differ in symbolism. Exploiting same-sex marriage legalization (SSML) in the Netherlands as a policy shock, we investigate the effect of marital symbolism on partnership stability. Applying a mixed competing risks model to administrative micro-data, we disentangle selectivity into marriage from the effect of getting married. Our main finding is that partnerships that transformed into marriage had a substantially lower separation rate. We take this result as evidence of the symbolic effect of marriage stabilizing partnerships. We discuss economic mechanisms of marital symbolism related to marriage premiums

Debunking Biases in Attention

Despite the remarkable performances in various applications, machine learning (ML) models could potentially discriminate. They may result in biasness in decision-making, leading to an impact negatively on individuals and society. Recently, various methods have been developed to mitigate biasness and achieve significant performance. Attention mechanisms are a fundamental component of many stateof-the-art ML models and may potentially impact the fairness of ML models. However, how they explicitly influence fairness has yet to be thoroughly explored. In this paper, we investigate how different attention mechanisms affect the fairness of ML models, focusing on models used in Natural Language Processing (NLP) models. We evaluate the performance of fairness of several models with and without different attention mechanisms on widely used benchmark datasets. Our results indicate that the majority of attention mechanisms that have been assessed can improve the fairness performance of Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit (BiGRU) and Bidirectional Long ShortTerm Memory (BiLSTM) in all three datasets regarding religious and gender-sensitive groups, however, with varying degrees of trade-offs in accuracy measures. Our findings highlight the possibility of fairness being affected by adopting specific attention mechanisms in machine learning models for certain datasets

The internationalization–environmental performance relationship: Does it differ between MNEs in advanced and less advanced economies?

The environmental performance (EP) of multinational enterprises (MNEs) has attracted increasing attention amid rising concerns over environmental problems such as climate change. However, questions remain about the relationship between the internationalization of MNEs and their EP. In this paper, we show that the relationship varies depending on the home country's economic development level. For MNEs from an advanced economy, there is a U-shaped relationship between the level of internationalization and EP of MNEs such that there is a negative relationship at low levels of internationalization but a positive relationship at high levels of internationalization. For MNEs from a less advanced economy, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship such that there is a positive relationship at low levels of internationalization but a negative relationship at high levels of internationalization

Is there a relationship between environmental performance and outward FDI? A study of Chinese MNEs

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the question, “How do firm-level, home-country and host-country environmental performance (EP) affect the outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs)?” Design/methodology/approach: The authors examine the relationships between EP and OFDI propensity and between EP and OFDI intensity using a sample of 359 Chinese firms in industries with a significant environmental footprint between 2009 and 2019 (2,002 firm-year observations) and a Heckman two-stage model. Findings: This study shows that the propensity for OFDI by Chinese MNEs is significantly and positively related to the firm’s prior EP and the country-level EP of China. However, the amount of FDI invested is significantly and positively related to the firm’s prior EP and negatively related to the EP of the host country. Research limitations/implications: The findings suggest that FDI in a country by an MNE is determined by a combination of firm-level EP, home-country EP and host-country EP. This study finds that the decision to undertake FDI (propensity) and the decision about how much to invest (intensity) are determined by different factors. The propensity for FDI is determined by the home-country EP and firm-level EP. However, the intensity of FDI is determined by a combination of the host country EP and firm-level EP. A limitation is that this study only examines MNEs in China, so the findings may not apply to other countries. Originality/value: This paper shows that MNEs’ EP is positively related to the propensity and intensity of their OFDI decisions. However, this paper shows that the home-country and host-country EP may also play an important role in determining the propensity or intensity of OFDI

Endothelial progenitor cells and pulmonary arterial hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a progressive disease characterised by lung endothelial cell dysfunction and vascular remodelling. A number of studies now suggest that endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) may induce neovascularisation and could be a promising approach for cell based therapy for PAH. On the contrary EPCs may contribute to pulmonary vascular remodelling, particularly in end-stage pulmonary disease. This review article will provide a brief summary of the relationship between PAH and EPCs, the application of the EPCs to PAH and highlight the potential clinical application of the EPCs cell therapy to PAH. © 2014

Trends in adherence to the 24-h movement guidelines among US adolescents from 2011 to 2019: Evidence from repeated cross-sectional cycles of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System

AbstractBackgroundAdherence to the 24‐h movement guidelines is associated with various health benefits, but given the novelty of these integrative recommendations, little is known about year‐to‐year trends in guideline adherence in adolescents. This study investigated trends of adherence to the 24‐h movement guidelines among US adolescents.MethodsData from 2011 to 2019 cycles of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System were used, which included 62 589 US adolescents aged 14–17 years (female: unweighted sample size = 31 876, 51%; weighted% = 50.1%). Participants self‐reported their demographic information (i.e., sex, age, race/ethnicity), physical activity, screen time and sleep duration. Meeting the 24‐h movement guidelines was operationalized as simultaneously engaging in 60 min or more of moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity, no more than 2 h of screen time, and 8–10 h of sleep per day. Trend analysis was used to examine the secular changes in adherence to the integrated guidelines from 2011 to 2019.ResultsDownward trends in adherence to the 24‐h movement guidelines were observed among adolescents from 2011 (3.6%) to 2019 (2.6%). After stratification by sex, age, and race/ethnicity, similar downward trends in the guideline adherence were observed in females and Black/African American adolescents. The lowest prevalence of meeting the individual guidelines was for the PA guidelines (25.6%). Movement guideline adherence was consistently lowest among females, older adolescents, and those who identified as Black/African American.ConclusionsAdherence to the 24‐h movement guidelines has declined among US adolescents over the past decade. Interventions should prioritize an integrative approach that could increase concurrent adherence to each of the 24‐h movement guideline, particularly among female, older and minority adolescents