Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pseudoxanthoma Elasticum of the Skin with Involvement of the Oral Cavity

Pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE) is an inherited multisystemic disease of elastic fibers that primarily affects the skin and retina. A case of primary PXE of the skin with late involvement of the upper lip is reported. A 55-year-old woman with a previous diagnosis of PXE affecting her skin developed a lesion on her lower lip. An oral examination identified a yellowish macule of undefined limits. A biopsy from her lip was taken and both light and transmission electron microscopies confirmed the presence of fragmented elastic fibers and calcifications on her mucosa, which was compatible with the diagnosis of oral PXE. Since the manifestation of oral PXE is rare in this region, dental practitioners must be aware that this systemic condition may produce oral lesions, which sometimes may mimic other benign diseases of the oral cavity like Fordyce granules. So, the establishment of an appropriate diagnosis is necessary to provide adequate information and attention to the patient.
A Vision of the Growth Process in a Technologically Progressive Economy: the United States, 1899-1941

We develop new aggregate and sectoral Total Factor Productivity (TFP) estimates for the United States between 1899 and 1941 through better coverage of sectors and better measured labor quality, and show TFP-growth was lower than previously thought, broadly based across sectors, strongly variant intertemporally, and consistent with many diverse sources of innovation. We then test and reject three prominent claims. First, the 1930s did not have the highest TFP-growth of the twentieth century. Second, TFP-growth was not predominantly caused by four leading sectors. Third, TFP-growth was not caused by a ‘yeast process’ originating in a dominant technology such as electricity.
Financial self-efficacy: a mediator in advancing financial inclusion

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of financial self-efficacy (FSE) on the relationship between financial attitude, financial literacy and financial inclusion (FI) among individuals in Uganda. ,Using a quantitative approach and cross-sectional research design, a sample of 400 individuals from urban Central and rural Northern Uganda was drawn. Using SPSS and AMOS™ 21, structural equation models and bootstrapping methods were used to establish the hypothesized relationships and mediation effects between financial attitude, financial literacy and FI. ,The results suggested FSE as a mediator of the relationship between financial attitude, financial literacy and FI. Further, there was a significant and insignificant relationship between financial literacy, financial attitude and FI, respectively. ,The study was assessed using both potential and actual consumers of financial services collectively. However if separately assessed, possibly there would be a variation in perceptions or behavioural responses towards FI. ,There is a need to develop and sustain high levels of financial confidence among individuals to enable them use formal financial services. ,Possession of financial knowledge, skills, an evaluative judgement with high levels of financial confidence enable individuals make financial decisions that improve their integration into the formal financial system and improved welfare. ,The results contribute towards the limited empirical and theoretical evidence regarding the mediating role of FSE in explaining the financial behaviour.
Perceptually-Motivated Audio Morphing: Warmth

A system for morphing the warmth of a sound independently from its other timbral attributes was coded, building on previous work morphing brightness only (1), and morphing brightness and softness (2). The new warmth-softness-brightness morpher was perceptually validated using a series of listening tests. A Multidimensional Scaling analysis of listener responses to paired-comparisons showed perceptually orthogonal movement in two dimensions within a warmth-morphed and everything-else-morphed stimulus set. A verbal elicitation experiment showed that listeners’ descriptive labeling of these dimensions was as intended. A further ‘quality control’ experiment provided evidence that no ‘hidden’ timbral attributes were altered in parallel with the intended ones. A complete timbre morpher can now be considered for further work, and evaluated using the tri-stage procedure documented here.
Modeling Erotomania Delusion in the Laboratory With Hypnosis

Abstract Erotomania is the delusional belief that one is loved from afar by another person (the target). This study used hypnosis as a novel cognitive neuropsychological research tool to model erotomania. The authors developed 2 versions of a hypnotic erotomania suggestion and tested their impact by asking subjects to recall and interpret a story featuring ambiguous scenarios. They also challenged the delusion by asking subjects to justify their beliefs. The hypnotic erotomania suggestions successfully recreated the features of the clinical delusion for many high hypnotizable subjects. They believed that the target loved them, interpreted ambiguous information consistent with this belief and confabulated evidence in service of their delusion. Some also resisted all challenges to their delusion. These features are strikingly similar to clinical cases and highlight the value of using hypnosis to model clinical delusions. The authors also discuss some limitations of this approach.
The large sieve for

Let λ be a fixed integer, λ ≥ 2. Let s n be any strictly increasing sequence of positive integers satisfying s n ≤ n 15/14+o(1). In this paper we give a version of the large sieve inequality for the sequence λ sn. In particular, we prove that for π(X)(1 + o(1)) primes p, p ≤ X, the numbers λ sn , n ≤ X(log X) 2+ε are uniformly distributed modulo p.
The Influences of Perceived Managerial Discretion and Risk-Taking Behavior on Government Organizational Performance

ABSTRACT Purpose: This study investigates pertinent factors in perceived managerial discretion (PMD) in association with risk-taking behavior (RTB) and organizational performance within government organizations. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a mix of qualitative methods—using focus group discussions (FGDs) to select key variables affecting PMD and to validate the research findings—and quantitative methods—using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test eight hypotheses developed from FGDs and from a literature review. Out of 340 questionnaires sent out to potential participants, 260 were returned and deemed valid for SEM analysis, reflecting a satisfactory response rate of 76%. Findings: A total of six factors affecting PMD were identified: quasi-legal constraint (QLC), powerful outside forces (POFs), inertial forces (IFs), powerful inside forces (PIFs), power base (PB), and political acumen (PA). The SEM analysis indicated that QLC, PIF, PB, and PA enhance PMD, while IF tends to inhibit PMD. Stronger PMD was associated with weaker RTB on the part of government-official decision makers, while greater RTB was associated with more positive organizational outcomes. These findings are partially consistent with prior findings, with some notable contradictions. Research implications/limitations: The primary limitation of this study was its limited external validity, as these findings can only be extended to organizations with similar characteristics of those of the government institution used as the case study. These findings must be used with care for different types of public organizations. Practical implications: These findings support taking the following steps: (1) review and remove equivocal regulations that could restrain PMD, (2) streamline bureaucracy, (3) establish regulations that allow more space for innovation and discretion, (4) delineate the tasks and responsibilities of decision makers, and (5) discourage abrupt policy changes, promoting proper scrutiny and notice.
Imitation performance in toddlers with autism and those with other developmental disorders.

BACKGROUND The present study sought to examine the specificity, developmental correlates, nature and pervasiveness of imitation deficits very early in the development of autism. METHODS Subjects were 24 children with autism (mean age 34 months), 18 children with fragile X syndrome, 20 children with other developmental disorders, and 15 typically-developing children. Tasks included manual, oral-facial, and object oriented imitations, developmental measures, joint attention ability, and motor abilities. RESULTS Children with autism were found to be significantly more impaired in overall imitation abilities, oral-facial imitation, and imitations of actions on objects than children in all of the other groups. Imitation skills of young children with fragile X syndrome were strongly influenced by the absence or presence of symptoms of autism. For children with autism, imitation skills were strongly correlated with autistic symptoms and joint attention, even when controlling for developmental level. For comparison groups, imitation was related to other developmental abilities including play, language, and visual spatial skills. Neither motor functioning nor social responsivity accounted for a significant amount of variance in imitation scores, when controlling for overall developmental level, which accounted for much of the variation in imitation ability. CONCLUSIONS Simple imitation skills were differentially impaired in young children with autism, and lack of social cooperation did not account for their poor performance. In autism, imitation skills clustered with dyadic and triadic social interactions and overall developmental level, but were not related to play or language development. For comparison children, all these areas were inter-related. Hypotheses about a specific dyspraxic deficit underlying the imitation performance in autism were not supported.
State Owned Entity Reform in Absence of Privatization : Reforming Indian National Laboratories and Role of Leadership

The literature on state-owned entity (SOE) reform has been focused on privatization. We however show that even in the absence of property rights, SOEs may significantly improve performance and document 42 Indian state-owned laboratories over 1993-2006 starting from a base of negligible U.S. patents, being granted more patents than all domestic private firms combined. Patent licensing revenue increases from 3% to 15% as a fraction of government budget without negatively affecting publication quality and quantity. This follows incentive policy change and leadership change at labs, an event whose timing is plausibly exogenous being dictated by government employment rules. 1 Choudhury: Wyss Hall, Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163 (e-mail: pchoudhury@hbs.edu); Khanna: Morgan Hall 221 Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163 (e-mail: tkhanna@hbs.edu). We thank Juan Alcacer, Pierre Azoulay, Chirantan Chatterjee, Rafael Di Tella, Daniel Elfenbein, Fritz Foley, Nandini Gupta, Josh Lerner, Cynthia Montgomery, Ramana Nanda, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Ravi Ramamurti, Jordan Siegel, Jasjit Singh and discussants at the NBER Productivity Forum, and seminar participants at Harvard, MIT, UCLA and Washington University for useful comments on a previous draft. The usual disclaimer applies.
Diurnal Temperature Range is a Risk Factor for Coronary Heart Disease Death

Background Although the relation between day-to-day temperature change and coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality is well established, it is unknown whether temperature variation within 1 day, ie, diurnal temperature range (DTR), is an independent risk factor for acute CHD death. Methods We used time-series and case-crossover approaches to assess the relation between DTR and daily CHD mortality between 2001 and 2004 in Shanghai, China. Specifically, we used exposures averaged over periods varying from 1 to 5 days to assess the effects of DTR on CHD mortality. We estimated the percent increase in the number of daily deaths related to CHD that were associated with DTR, after adjustment for daily meteorologic conditions (temperature and relative humidity) and levels of outdoor air pollutants. Results Both time-series and case-crossover analyses showed that DTR was significantly associated with the number of daily deaths related to CHD. A 1 °C increase in 2-day lagged DTR corresponded to a 2.46% (95% CI, 1.76% to 3.16%) increase in CHD mortality on time-series analysis, a 3.21% (95% CI, 2.23% to 4.19%) increase on unidirectional case-crossover analysis, and a 2.13% (95% CI, 1.04% to 3.22%) increase on bidirectional case-crossover analysis. Conclusions Our findings suggest that DTR is an independent risk factor for acute CHD death.
Optimal Complexity Lower Bound for Polynomial Multiplication

We prove lower bounds of order n log n for both the problem of multiplying polynomials of degree n, and of dividing polynomials with remainder, in the model of bounded coefficient arithmetic circuits over the complex numbers. These lower bounds are optimal up to order of magnitude. The proof uses a recent idea of R. Raz [Proc. 34th STOC 2002] proposed for matrix multiplication. It reduces the linear problem of multiplying a random circulant matrix with a vector to the bilinear problem of cyclic convolution. We treat the arising linear problem by extending J. Morgenstern’s bound [J. ACM 20, pp. 305-306, 1973] in a unitarily invariant way. This establishes a new lower bound on the bounded coefficient complexity of linear forms in terms of the singular values of the corresponding matrix. In addition, we extend these lower bounds for linear and bilinear maps to a model of circuits that allows a restricted number of unbounded scalar multiplications.
Parents at their best: The ethopolitics of family bonding in France

In France, the concept of ‘parentality’ has become a key notion in the field of social work since the mid-1990s. This idea serves mostly as a basis for professional evaluations of parents’ ability. However, it does not only prescribe behaviors and implement norms; it has also transformed the way people consider their own family attachments, and adjust individually to new ethical definitions of selves. Based on two complementary ethnographic field studies – one looking at the administrative management of adoption and the other at medical care provision for maternal mental health – this article shows how discourses and practices about parentality serve a policy of self-reform. This article therefore questions how politics of control and regulation that are deployed in the privacy of the family sphere act on an ethical level by inviting subjects to reform themselves for their own good and for the good of others.
Implications and Measurement of Energy Poverty across the European Union

Energy poverty, or the inability of households to afford adequate access to energy services, is an issue that can have a significant effect on the quality of life and even the state of health of individuals and even the overall development of a nation. Since it was first brought into focus more than two decades ago in the UK, this topic has gradually gained the attention of academics and policy makers all across the EU and beyond. The current paper addresses the topic by providing not only a renewed discussion, but also an improved energy poverty indicator (with clear and relevant results at the EU level): the Compound Energy Poverty Indicator (CEPI). Moreover, knowing that the risk of poverty and social exclusion, efficiency of heating systems, total consumption of energy per household and rising energy prices tend to increase the severity of this problem in some countries, CEPI is then included into an econometric model so as to determine some possible factors that tend to put pressure on an already existing issue of energy poverty. The results of this research are expected to be relevant not only for academics (as it offers insights into the structure and severity of this topic within the European Union), but also for national and EU policymakers who are confronted in the field with the problem of sustainable development.
Particle Interference without Waves

After eighty years of Quantum Mechanics (QM) we have learned to live with wave functions without worrying about their physical nature. This attitude is certainly justifled by the extraordinary success of the theory in predicting and explaining not only all the phenomena encountered in the domain of microphysics, but also some spectacular nonclassical macroscopic behaviors of matter. Nevertheless one cannot ignore that the wave{particle duality of quantum objects not only still raises conceptual problems among the members of the small community of physicists who are still interested in the foundations of our basic theory of matter, but also induces thousands and thousands of physics students all around the world to ask each year, at their flrst impact with Quantum Mechanics, embarrassing questions to their teachers without receiving really convincing answers. Remember that Feynman once said \It is fair to say that nobody understands
Data lineage and information density in database visualization

Visual representations of data help users interpret and analyze information. We have identified two key issues in existing visualization systems: data lineage and information density. This dissertation defines these problems and details solutions for them. We show that our techniques can be applied in database visualization systems, and we discuss how they improve the usability of these systems. The data lineage problem occurs when users apply a sequence of processing steps to input data sources; when viewing the final result, these users may wish to trace certain elements in the result back to the original input items. We call these types of queries data lineage queries. Current systems, e.g., geographic information systems or scientific visualization systems, provide little support for this task. In the first part of this dissertation, we discuss techniques for allowing users to access intermediate results efficiently while performing data lineage queries. We then introduce weak inversion and verification and show how they can be used to reconstruct the (approximate) lineage of derived data. Because they eliminate much of the irrelevant source data, weak inversion and verification can greatly reduce the amount of source data the end user must examine while performing a data lineage query. Visualizations often display too much information, making it difficult for users to interpret them. Similarly, visualizations often display too little information, thereby underutilizing display space. In the second part of this dissertation, we describe the general principle of constant information density. We show how both semantic and spatial transformations based on constant information density can be applied to create visualizations with appropriate density, thereby minimizing clutter and sparseness in the display. We describe an end-user programming environment in which users can construct visualizations with constant information density.
Effect of Formula Feeding and Breastfeeding on Child Growth, Infant Mortality, and HIV Transmission in Children Born to HIV-Infected Pregnant Women Who Received Triple Antiretroviral Therapy in a Resource-Limited Setting: Data from an HIV Cohort Study in India

We describe a programme for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV that provided universal antiretroviral therapy (ART) to all pregnant women regardless of the CD4 lymphocyte count and formula feeding for children with high risk of HIV transmission through breastfeeding in a district of India. The overall rate of HIV transmission was 3.7%. Although breastfeeding added a 3.1% additional risk of HIV acquisition, formula-fed infants had significantly higher risk of death compared to breastfed infants. The cumulative 12-month mortality was 9.6% for formula-fed infants versus 0.68% for breastfed infants. Anthropometric markers (weight, length/height, weight for length/height, body mass index, head circumference, mid-upper arm circumference, triceps skinfold, and subscapular skinfold) showed that formula-fed infants experience severe malnutrition during the first two months of life. We did not observe any death after rapid weaning at 5-6 months in breastfed infants. The higher-free-of HIV survival in breastfed infants and the low rate of HIV transmission found in this study support the implementation of PMTCT programmes with universal ART to all HIV-infected pregnant women and breastfeeding in order to reduce HIV transmission without increasing infant mortality in developing countries.
Measurement equivalence in mixed mode surveys

Surveys increasingly use mixed mode data collection (e.g., combining face-to-face and web) because this controls costs and helps to maintain good response rates. However, a combination of different survey modes in one study, be it cross-sectional or longitudinal, can lead to different kinds of measurement errors. For example, respondents in a face-to-face survey or a web survey may interpret the same question differently, and might give a different answer, just because of the way the question is presented. This effect of survey mode on the question-answer process is called measurement mode effect. This study develops methodological and statistical tools to identify the existence and size of mode effects in a mixed mode survey. In addition, it assesses the size and importance of mode effects in measurement instruments using a specific mixed mode panel survey (Netherlands Kinship Panel Study). Most measurement instruments in the NKPS are multi-item scales, therefore confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) will be used as the main analysis tool, using propensity score methods to correct for selection effects. The results show that the NKPS scales by and large have measurement equivalence, but in most cases only partial measurement equivalence. Controlling for respondent differences on demographic variables, and on scale scores from the previous uni-mode measurement occasion, tends to improve measurement equivalence, but not for all scales. The discussion ends with a review of the implications of our results for analyses employing these scales.
Revisiting Dynamic Query Protocols in Unstructured Peer-to-Peer Networks

In unstructured peer-to-peer networks, the average response latency and traffic cost of a query are two main performance metrics. Controlled-flooding resource query algorithms are widely used in unstructured networks such as peer-to-peer networks. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm named Selective Dynamic Query (SDQ). Based on mathematical programming, SDQ calculates the optimal combination of an integer TTL value and a set of neighbors to control the scope of the next query. Our results demonstrate that SDQ provides finer grained control than other algorithms: its response latency is close to the well-known minimum one via Expanding Ring; in the mean time, its traffic cost is also close to the minimum. To our best knowledge, this is the first work capable of achieving a best trade-off between response latency and traffic cost.