Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Misallocation and Productivity during the Great Depression

Aggregate productivity fell by 18% between 1929 and 1933. Existing explanations for this decline have focused on unobserved shifts in factor inputs such as labor hoarding. I develop a new hypothesis that focuses on the role of resource misallocation between heterogeneous plants. Using a novel plant-level dataset, I study two industries: manufactured ice and cement. I decompose the overall change in industry-level productivity into ecient productivity shifts and misallocation as in Hsieh and Klenow (2009). Increases in misallocation between 1929 and 1931 can explain at a minimum 50% of the decline in productivity for cement, around 20% between 1931 and 1933, and 10 to 15% for 1933 to 1935. I estimate that increases in misallocation can explain 50% of the total decline in industry productivity for manufactured ice between 1929 and 1935. In order to explain these ndings, I develop a model of nancial frictions that relates misallocation to dispersion in working capital interest rates. If banks are unwilling to take on additional leverage to fund the most productive plants, credit becomes misallocated resulting in factor misallocation and lower aggregate productivity. My model therefore explains the empirically observed increase in misallocation through an increase in the marginal cost of leverage. I argue that these empirical and theoretical results provide another role for the nonmonetary eects of the banking crisis during the Depression (Bernanke, 1983a): the collapse of aggregate productivity.
The Structure and Function of Social Networks of Mothers of Young Children With Disabilities

The current exploratory study examines the structure and function of social support for mothers of very young children (under 24 months) with a range of disabilities who are receiving Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part C early intervention services. The psychological well-being and social networks of 88 mothers in one state were assessed. Associations between network characteristics and maternal stress were found for the total network, along with a connection between lowered depression and concrete support from the spouse/partner and lowered stress and emotional support from professional helpers. This study mirrors some findings of similar studies of mothers with older children with disabilities but uniquely found spouse/partner support to be prominent. Implications for both research and early intervention practitioners are considered.
A Phylogenetic Analysis of Greek Isolates of Aspergillus Species Based on Morphology and Nuclear and Mitochondrial Gene Sequences

Aspergillus species originating from Greece were examined by morphological and molecular criteria to explore the diversity of this genus. The phylogenetic relationships of these species were determined using sequences from the ITS and IGS region of the nuclear rRNA gene complex, two nuclear genes (β-tubulin (benA) and RNA polymerase II second largest subunit (rpb2)) and two mitochondrial genes (small rRNA subunit (rns) and cytochrome oxidase subunit I (cox1)) and, where available, related sequences from databases. The morphological characters of the anamorphs and teleomorphs, and the single gene phylogenetic trees, differentiated and placed the species examined in the well-supported sections of Aenei, Aspergillus, Bispori, Candidi, Circumdati, Clavati, Cremei, Flavi, Flavipedes, Fumigati, Nidulantes, Nigri, Restricti, Terrei, Usti, and Zonati, with few uncertainties. The combined use of the three commonly employed nuclear genes (benA, rpb2, and ITS), the IGS region, and two less often used mitochondrial gene sequences (rns and cox1) as a single unit resolved several taxonomic ambiguities. A phylogenetic tree was inferred using Neighbour-Joining, Maximum Parsimony, and Bayesian methods. The strains examined formed seven well-supported clades within the genus Aspergillus. Altogether, the concatenated nuclear and mitochondrial sequences offer additional tools for an improved understanding of phylogenetic relationships within this genus.
Fine Spatial Scale Variation of Soil Microbial Communities under European Beech and Norway Spruce

The complex interactions between trees and soil microbes in forests as well as their inherent seasonal and spatial variations are poorly understood. In this study, we analyzed the effects of major European tree species (Fagus sylvatica L. and Picea abies (L.) Karst) on soil bacterial and fungal communities. Mineral soil samples were collected from different depths (0–10, 10–20 cm) and at different horizontal distances from beech or spruce trunks (0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5 m) in early summer and autumn. We assessed the composition of soil bacterial and fungal communities based on 16S rRNA gene and ITS DNA sequences. Community composition of bacteria and fungi was most strongly affected by soil pH and tree species. Different ectomycorrhizal fungi (e.g., Tylospora) known to establish mutualistic associations with plant roots showed a tree species preference. Moreover, bacterial and fungal community composition showed spatial and seasonal shifts in soil surrounding beech and spruce. The relative abundance of saprotrophic fungi was higher at a depth of 0–10 vs. 10–20 cm depth. This was presumably a result of changes in nutrient availability, as litter input and organic carbon content decreased with soil depth. Overall bacterial community composition showed strong variations under spruce with increasing distance from the tree trunks, which might be attributed in part to higher fine root biomass near spruce trunks. Furthermore, overall bacterial community composition was strongly affected by season under deciduous trees.
Investigation into the sources of superoxide in human blood vessels: angiotensin II increases superoxide production in human internal mammary arteries.

BACKGROUND Increased vascular superoxide anion (.O(2)(-)) production contributes to endothelial dysfunction and hypertension in animal models of cardiovascular disease. Observations in experimental animals suggest that angiotensin II (Ang II) increases.O(2)(-) production by activation of vascular NAD(P)H oxidase. We studied the sources of.O(2)(-) production in human blood vessels and investigated whether, and by what mechanism, Ang II might alter vascular.O(2)(-) production. METHODS AND RESULTS Internal mammary arteries (IMAs) and saphenous veins (SVs) were collected at the time of cardiac surgery. Vessels were incubated in Krebs buffer at 37 degrees C.O(2)(-) was measured by lucigenin chemiluminescence. Basal. O(2)(-) concentrations were greater in IMAs than SVs. Inhibitors of NAD(P)H oxidase (10 micromol/L to 200 micromol/L diphenyleneiodonium) and xanthine oxidase (1 mmol/L allopurinol) caused reductions in.O(2)(-) concentrations in both IMAs and SVs. Western blotting of superoxide dismutase proteins demonstrated similar expression in IMAs and SVs. Vessels were also incubated in the presence or absence of Ang II (1 pmol/L to 1 micromol/L). Ang II increased.O(2)(-) production in IMAs at 4 hours of incubation (control, 978+/-117 pmol. min(-1). mg(-1); 1 micromol/L of Ang II, 1690+/-213 pmol. min(-1). mg(-1); n=27, P=0.0001, 95% CI 336, 925) but not in SVs. This effect was completely inhibited by coincubation of IMAs with DPI (100 micromol/L), a nonspecific Ang II antagonist ([sar(1), thre(8)]-Ang II, 1 micromol/L) and a specific Ang II type 1 (AT(1)) receptor antagonist (losartan, 1 micromol/L). Conclusions-. O(2)(-) production is greater in human IMAs than in SVs. NAD(P)H oxidase and xanthine oxidase are sources of.O(2)(-) production in these vessels. The vasoactive peptide Ang II increases.O(2)(-) production in human arteries by an AT(1) receptor-dependent mechanism.
Plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition growth of Si nanowires with low melting point metal catalysts: an effective alternative to Au-mediated growth

Au nanoparticles are efficient catalysts for the vapour–solid–liquid (VLS) growth of semiconductor nanowires, but Au poses fundamental reliability concerns for applications in Si semiconductor technology. In this work we show that the choice of catalysts for Si nanowire growth can be broadened when the need for catalytic precursor dissociation is eliminated through the use of plasma enhancement. However, in this regime the incubation time for the activation of VLS growth must be minimized to avoid burying the catalyst particles underneath an amorphous Si layer. We show that the combined use of plasma enhancement and the use of a catalyst such as In, already in a liquid form at the growth temperature, is a powerful method for obtaining Si nanowire growth with high yield. Si nanowires grown by this method are monocrystalline and generally oriented in the direction.
Secure channel simulation

In this paper the Output Statistics of Random Binning (OSRB) framework is used to prove a new inner bound for the problem of secure channel simulation. Our results subsume some recent results on the secure function computation. We also provide an achievability result for the problem of simultaneously simulating a channel and creating a shared secret key. A special case of this result generalizes the lower bound of Gohari and Anantharam on the source model to include constraints on the rates of the public discussion.
Unfounded sets and well-founded semantics for general logic programs

A general logic program (abbreviated to “program” hereafter) is a set of rules that have both positive and negative subgoals. It is common to view a deductive database as a general logic program consisting of rules (IDB) sitting above elementary relations (EDB, facts). It is desirable to associate one Herbrand model with a program and think of that model as the “meaning of the program,” or its “declarative semantics. ” Ideally, queries directed to the program would be answered in accordance with this model. We introduce unfounded sets and well-founded partial models, and define the well-founded semantics of a program to be its well-founded partial model. If the well-founded partial model is in fact a model, we call it the well-founded model, and say the program is “well-behaved”. We show that the class of well-behaved programs properly includes previously studied classes of “stratified” and “locally stratified” programs Gelfand and Lifschits have proposed a definition of “unique stable model” for general logic programs. We show that a program has a unique stable model if it has a well-founded model, in which case they are the same. We discuss why the converse is not true.
Weekday Physical Activity and Health-Related Fitness of Youths with Visual Impairments and those with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Visual Impairments

Introduction Youths with visual impairments (that is, those who are blind or have low vision), as well as those who are visually impaired and have autism spectrum disorder (hereafter, autism), tend to be physically inactive and have low health-related fitness. However, little is known about individuals with dual disabilities, such as those with autism and visual impairments. Thus, the aim of this study was to perform an initial exploration of physical activity and health-related fitness for these students in comparison to students with visual impairments alone. Methods Twelve participants (six with visual impairments, six with autism and visual impairments) aged 8–16 years (Mage = 12.4) who came from a school for students with visual impairments were participants. Participants wore tri-axial accelerometers on their right hips for four consecutive weekdays, during waking hours, to measure weekday physical activity. Following that task, they completed four health-related fitness tests, including a half-mile walk or run to measure aerobic endurance, a push-up test to measure upper-body muscular endurance, a modified curl-up test to measure abdominal muscular endurance, and a sit-and-reach test to determine flexibility. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent sample t-tests to identify differences between groups. Results On average, the participants accrued 650.17 ± 141.44 minutes of sedentary time, 129.80 ± 66.78 minutes of light physical activity, and 19.78 ± 3.35 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per weekday. No participants met the 60-minute recommendations of daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Participants with autism and visual impairments were significantly less physically active (p = .02) and less likely to pass fitness tests (p = .01) than were their peers with visual impairments alone. Discussion This study provides the first empirical exploration of health-related variables for youths with autism and visual impairments. It is clear that developing and implementing interventions to help enhance physical activity and health-related fitness for those youths are needed. Implications for practitioners Additional training and resources to understand the unique needs of these youths are essential in providing opportunities to participate in physical activities and enhancing health-related physical fitness.
Smart Healthcare: Basic health check-up and monitoring system for elderly

Thailand has become an ageing society. The consequences of the situation appear to be an issue for health organizations to prepare efficient, safe and equitable health care for an aging population. Throughout the past decades, technology has been frequently utilized because it has provided new methods to support the facilitate health care services. In this paper, we studied the health situation of the elderly and proposed the Smart Healthcare system. It consists of a bio-signal measuring prototype (blood pressure, heart rate and temperature) and a web application for both doctors and the elderly. It also includes an alert button. Evaluation was performed in two parts, which were qualitative interviewing and quantitative survey. We interviewed three doctors for confirmation regarding their opinion of the system (i.e. usefulness, visualizing data, and suggestions). Doctors replied that the system is useful for the elderly who are unaware of their own health information; consequently, they may unable to control their own health. For visualizing data, doctors normally view the measured data in number format. For displaying result to the elderly, it should be explained in simple statements that are easy to understand or described using color. Moreover, provision of an alert button is a valuable idea for saving lives. For the quantitative survey, we used the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as the core model to measure the acceptance by the elderly. Thirty 60–80-year-old elderly people participated in the survey. The result indicated that the elderly is perceived the usefulness of the system and were willing to use it unless they found it difficult to learn or understand because of possible negative attitudes toward new technologies.
Task Allocation Optimization for Multicore Embedded Systems

In many domains of embedded systems, the increasing performance demands are tackled by increasing performance capacity through the use of multicore technology. However, adding more processing units also introduces the issue of task allocation - decisions have to be made which software task to run on which core in order to best utilize the hardware platform. In this paper, we present an optimization mechanism for allocating tasks to cores of a soft real-time embedded system, that aims to minimize end-to-end response times of task chains, while keeping the number of deadline misses below the desired limit. The optimization relies on a novel heuristic that proposes new allocation candidates based on information how tasks delay each other. The heuristic was evaluated in a series of experiments, which showed that it both finds better allocations, and does it in fewer iterations than two heuristics that we used for comparison.
A prospective 10 year follow up study of patients with neurofibromatosis type 1

OBJECTIVE To establish the prevalence and incidence of symptoms and complications in children with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and to assess possible risk factors for the development of complications. DESIGN A 10 year prospective multidisciplinary follow up study. PATIENTS One hundred and fifty children diagnosed with NF1 according to criteria set by the National Institutes of Health. RESULTS In 62 of 150 children (41.3%) complications were present, including 42 (28.0%) children with one complication, 18 (12.0%) with two complications, and two (1.3%) with three complications (mean (SD) duration of follow up 4.9 (3.8) years). Ninety five of the 150 children presented without complications (follow up, 340.8 person-years). The incidence of complications was 2.4/100 person-years in this group. An association was found between behavioural problems and the presence of complications. CONCLUSION This is the largest single centre case series of NF1 affected children followed until 18 years of age. Children with NF1, including those initially presenting without complications, should have regular clinical examinations.
Mutual Fund Tournament: Risk Taking Incentives Induced by Ranking Objectives

There is now extensive empirical evidence showing that fund managers have relative performance objectives and adapt their investment strategy in the last part of the calendar year to their performance in the early part of the year. However, emphasis was put on returns in excess of some exogenous benchmark return.In this paper, we investigate whether fund managers have ranking objectives (as in a tournament). First, in a two-period model, we analyze the game played by two risk-neutral fund managers with ranking objectives.We derive conditions on the set of possible strategies under which the aggregate amount of risk undertaken in the late period is larger than in the first period.In the second part of the paper, we provide evidence that (i) funds have risk incentives generated by ranking objectives, (ii) risk induced by ranking objectives is mainly idiosyncratic, and (iii) risk incentives generated by ranking objectives are stronger for funds ranked in the top decile after the first part of the year.
Image Quality Evaluation Model Based on Local Features and Segmentation

The perceived image distortion of any image is strongly depend on the local features, such as edge, flat and texture. A new objective no-reference (NR) image quality evaluation model based on local features and segmentation for JPEG coded image is presented in our previous paper, which is easy to calculate and applicable to various image processing applications. But the algorithmic thresholds investigation of the segmentation algorithm were not sufficient in the paper. Therefore in this paper, we want to investigate the suitable threshold values of our segmentation algorithm both for training and test images by the optimization method. Our experiments on various image distortion types indicate that its performs significantly better than the conventional model.
The Effects of Biofeedback on Neuromuscular Recruitment Patterns During Fatiguing Sets of Back Squat

This investigation analyzed neuromuscular recruitment patterns with and without the presentation of velocity-based biofeedback during a set of back squats to fatigue. This study followed a repeated-measures, randomized design in which each participant served as his own control completing all four experimental conditions. Subjects performed the back squat exercise to fatigue with and without biofeedback at 75% one-repetition maximum (1RM). During the biofeedback trials, a screen was placed in front of subjects during the exercise that provided realtime velocity feedback for each repetition. In these trials, participants were instructed to “explode out” of the bottom of the squat as to try and “beat” the previous velocity measurement with each subsequent repetition. Surface electromyography (EMG) was used to measure electrical activity during muscular contractions. Electrodes were placed along the bellies of the vastus lateralis (VL), gluteus medius (GM), and biceps femoris (BF) bilaterally. For the purpose of this paper, data pertaining to the subjects’ right side during the 75% 1RM trials will be analyzed and discussed. There was no main effect for condition for any of the muscles examined (p > 0.05). Further, no significant interaction with condition (biofeedback or no-biofeedback) was observed for any of the muscles examined (p > 0.05). A main effect for time of repetition (first, last) was observed for all three muscles (VL, p = 0.001; BF, p = 0.027; GM, p = 0.024). Results suggest that higher EMG values are observed during fatigue, but no differences exist with the presence of biofeedback.
Patterning of Virus-Infected Glycine max Seed Coat Is Associated with Suppression of Endogenous Silencing of Chalcone Synthase Genes

Most commercial Glycine max (soybean) varieties have yellow seeds because of loss of pigmentation in the seed coat. It has been suggested that inhibition of seed coat pigmentation in yellow G. max may be controlled by homology-dependent silencing of chalcone synthase (CHS) genes. Our analysis of CHS mRNA and short-interfering RNAs provide clear evidence that the inhibition of seed coat pigmentation in yellow G. max results from posttranscriptional rather than transcriptional silencing of the CHS genes. Furthermore, we show that mottling symptoms present on the seed coat of G. max plants infected with some viruses can be caused by suppression of CHS posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS) by a viral silencing suppressor protein. These results demonstrate that naturally occurring PTGS plays a key role in expression of a distinctive phenotype in plants and present a simple clear example of the elucidation of the molecular mechanism for viral symptom induction.
Event detection with social media data

Recent research has shown that a considerable fraction of social media streams are about “events”. Collectively, events serve as a succinct summary of social media streams. Individually, event and its sub-events, reveal the evolution of certain social phenomena over time. In addition, analyzing relationships between events and people’s responses to the events provides rich information on the masses’ opinions towards an event; this may further shed light on the impact of public policies dealing with the events. Event detection, therefore, is an important and practical task to identify and make sense of the overwhelming amounts of social media data. In this paper, we explore and summarize popular tasks in the domain of event detection. More specifically, we present four tasks: New Event Detection, Event Tracking, Event Summarization, and Event Association. We use these four tasks to illustrate main purposes for performing event detection in social media space, and further present their application domains. Keywords: event detection, social media, visualization. Index Terms: H.5. m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous.