Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF INFANT MORTALITY, POLLUTION, AND INCOME IN THE U.S. COUNTIES

OF THESIS AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF INFANT MORTALITY, POLLUTION, AND INCOME IN THE U.S. COUNTIES The concept of economic development has broadened to include environmental quality and population health. Interactions between income and pollution, income and health, and pollution and health have been studied separately by researchers from various disciplines. This study attempts to unify several different research strands and analyze simultaneous interactions between population health, measured by the infant mortality rate, pollution, and income in one endogenous system. Socioeconomic, racial, and rural – urban disparities in infant mortality, pollution, and income are analyzed. The simultaneous equation system, estimated using the two-stage least squares method, tests whether pollution effects on infant mortality are outweighed by income effects. The study finds that income is a stronger determinant of infant mortality than pollution. Evidence for the environmental Kuznets curve is ambiguous. Disparities in infant mortality, pollution, and income are correlated with counties’ rural-urban status, income inequality, and ethnic diversity. Regional patterns identify wide geographical differences in levels of pollution, income, and infant mortality. The Southeast region stands out as a region with the highest infant mortality rate, relatively high levels of air pollution and chemical releases, and low per capita incomes.
Modular Learning Systems for Behavior Acquisition in Multi-Agent Environment

There has been a great deal of research on reinforcement learning in multirobot/agent environments during last decades1. A wide range of applications, such as forage robots (Mataric, 1997), soccer playing robots (Asada et al., 1996), prey-pursuing robots (Fujii et al., 1998) and so on, have been investigated. However, a straightforward application of the simple reinforcement learning method to multi-robot dynamic systems has a lot of issues, such as uncertainty caused by others, distributed control, partial observability of internal states of others, asynchronous action taking, and so on. In this paper we mainly focus on two major difficulties in practical use : unstable dynamics caused by policy alternation of other agents curse of dimension problem The policy alternation of others in multi-agent environments may cause sudden changes in state transition probabilities of which constancy is needed for behavior learning to converge. Asada et al. (Asada et al., 1999) proposed a method that sets a global learning schedule in which only one agent is specified as a learner with the rest of the agents having fixed policies to avoid the issue of the simultaneous learning. As a matter of course, they did not consider the alternation of the opponent’s policies. Ikenoue et al. (Ikenoue et al., 2002) showed simultaneous cooperative behavior acquisition by fixing learners’ policies for a certain period during the learning process. In the case of cooperative behavior acquisition, no agent has any reason to change policies while they continue to acquire positive rewards as a result of their cooperative behavior with each other. The agents update their policies gradually so that the state transition probabilities can be regarded as almost fixed from the viewpoint of the other learning agents. Kuhlmann and Stone (Kuhlmann and Stone, 2004) have applied a reinforcement learning system with a function approximator to the keepaway problem in the situation of the RoboCup simulation league. In their work, only the passer learns his policy is to keep the ball away from the opponents. The other agents (receivers and opponents) follow fixed policies given by the designer beforehand. The amount of information to be handled in multi-agent system tends to be huge and easily causes the curse of dimension problem. Elfwing et al. (Elfwing et al., 2004) achieved the cooperative behavior learning task between two robots in real time by introducing the
Review of Acute Traumatic Closed Mallet Finger Injuries in Adults

In adults, mallet finger is a traumatic zone I lesion of the extensor tendon with either tendon rupture or bony avulsion at the base of the distal phalanx. High-energy mechanisms of injury generally occur in young men, whereas lower energy mechanisms are observed in elderly women. The mechanism of injury is an axial load applied to a straight digit tip, which is then followed by passive extreme distal interphalangeal joint (DIPJ) hyperextension or hyperflexion. Mallet finger is diagnosed clinically, but an X-ray should always be performed. Tubiana's classification takes into account the size of the bony articular fragment and DIPJ subluxation. We propose to stage subluxated fractures as stage III if the subluxation is reducible with a splint and as stage IV if not. Left untreated, mallet finger becomes chronic and leads to a swan-neck deformity and DIPJ osteoarthritis. The goal of treatment is to restore active DIPJ extension. The results of a six- to eight-week conservative course of treatment with a DIPJ splint in slight hyperextension for tendon lesions or straight for bony avulsions depends on patient compliance. Surgical treatments vary in terms of the approach, the reduction technique, and the means of fixation. The risks involved are stiffness, septic arthritis, and osteoarthritis. Given the lack of consensus regarding indications for treatment, we propose to treat all cases of mallet finger with a dorsal glued splint except for stage IV mallet finger, which we treat with extra-articular pinning.
Pore-blockade times for field-driven polymer translocation

We study pore-blockade times for a translocating polymer of length N, driven by a field E across the pore in three dimensions. The polymer performs Rouse dynamics, i.e., we consider polymer dynamics in the absence of hydrodynamical interactions. We find that the typical time for which the pore remains blocked during a translocation event scales as ∼N(1+2ν)/(1+ν)/E, where is the Flory exponent for the polymer. We show, in line with our previous work, that this scaling behavior stems from polymer dynamics in the immediate vicinity of the pore—in particular, the memory effects in the polymer chain tension imbalance across the pore. This result, like numerical results from several other groups, violates the lower bound ∼N1+ν/E suggested earlier in the literature. We discuss why this lower bound is incorrect and show, on the basis of the conservation of energy, that the correct lower bound for the pore-blockade time for field-driven translocation is given by ηN2ν/E, where η is the viscosity of the medium surrounding the polymer.
The Disproportionality of African Americans In Special Education

The research study addresses the overrepresentation of African American students in special education in an urban setting. This study analyzed the reasons why African American students were overrepresented in special education from the perspective of parents/guardians who have a child classified, as well as from the perspective of teachers and administrators, who work in an urban elementary school. To gather data for this study, I interviewed seven parents/guardians, three teachers, and two administrators. Based upon a careful analysis of the interviews, it was found that parents/guardians, as well as teachers and administrators, acknowledge that African American students are more greatly represented in special education than other groups; however, parents/guardians cited different reasons for the overrepresentation than teachers and administrators. The findings of this study has implications for urban districts as it is necessary for administrators and teachers to address student needs through varying options prior to classifying students. Document Type Thesis Degree Name MS in Special Education Department Education Subject Categories Education This thesis is available at Fisher Digital Publications: http://fisherpub.sjfc. edu/education_ETD_masters/256 THE DISPORTIONALITY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS IN SPECIAL EDUCATION 1 The Disproportionality of African Americans In Special Education
Phase Equilibria of Lattice Polymers from Histogram Reweighting Monte Carlo Simulations

Histogram reweighting Monte Carlo simulations were used to obtain polymer/solvent phase diagrams for lattice homopolymers of chain lengths up to r = 1000 monomers. The simulation technique was based on performing a series of grand canonical Monte Carlo calculations for a small number of state points and combining the results to obtain the phase behavior of a system over a range of temperatures and densities. Critical parameters were determined from mixed-field finite-size scaling concepts by matching the order parameter distribution near the critical point to the distribution for the three-dimensional Ising universality class. Calculations for the simple cubic lattice (coordination number z = 6) and for a high coordination number version of the same lattice (z = 26) were performed for chain lengths significantly longer than those in previous simulation studies. The critical temperature was found to scale with a chain length following the Flory−Huggins functional form. For the z = 6 lattice, the extrapolat.
Metamaterials and Negative Refractive Index

Recently, artificially constructed metamaterials have become of considerable interest, because these materials can exhibit electromagnetic characteristics unlike those of any conventional materials. Artificial magnetism and negative refractive index are two specific types of behavior that have been demonstrated over the past few years, illustrating the new physics and new applications possible when we expand our view as to what constitutes a material. In this review, we describe recent advances in metamaterials research and discuss the potential that these materials may hold for realizing new and seemingly exotic electromagnetic phenomena.
Ownership Structure and Risk-Taking: Comparative Evidence from Private and State-Controlled Banks in China

This study examines the impact of ownership structure on Chinese banks' risk-taking behaviours. We classify the Chinese commercial banks into three categories based on the types of controlling shareholder, and find that banks controlled by the government (GCBs) tend to take more risks than those controlled by state-owned enterprises (SOECBs) or private investors (PCBs). This is attributed to the severe political intervention and weak incentives to follow prudent bank management practices for GCBs. We also find that the results are more pronounced among banks with concentrated ownership presumably because the large controlling power helps to enhance the monitoring of the management and promotes prudent operating procedures. Our findings have important implications for the ongoing reform in the Chinese banking sector.
Functional Cerebral Reorganization for Auditory Spatial Processing and Auditory Substitution of Vision in Early Blind Subjects

Early blind (EB) individuals can recognize bidimensional shapes using a prosthesis substituting vision with audition (PSVA) and activate right dorsal extrastriate visual cortex during the execution of this task. The present study used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to further examine the functional role of this structure in the successful use of the PSVA. Moreover, we investigated which auditory parameter used in the prosthesis (pitch, intensity, or spatial location) might contribute to this occipital activation. Results revealed that rTMS applied to right dorsal extrastriate cortex in EB subjects interferes with both the PSVA use and the auditory spatial location task but not with pitch and intensity discriminations. By contrast, rTMS targeting the same cortical areas in sighted subjects did not affect performance on any auditory tasks. Early visual deprivation thus leads to functional cerebral cross-modal reorganization in the processing of auditory information and auditory-to-visual sensory substitution. The findings also point to the specific involvement of the dorsal visual stream for auditory spatial processing in blind subjects. Moreover, this suggests that sensory substitution prostheses can be developed using these additional neural resources to perform tasks that partially compensate for the loss of vision.
Agreement between clinical screening procedures for neuropathy in the feet

Introduction: The correlation between monofilament testing, symptom surveys, and electrodiagnostic studies for the diagnosis of axonal polyneuropathy has not been well studied. This investigation was done to assess the agreement between these procedures in a non‐random sample of volunteers. Methods: The procedures evaluated included electrodiagnostic tests of the sural nerve, monofilament testing of the great toe, a symptom survey, and a body diagram. Kappa coefficients and sensitivity and specificity, using nerve conduction as a “gold standard,” were used to determine the agreement between various combinations of procedures. Results: Poor agreement (kappa values −0.12–0.44) and sensitivity (sensitivity <30%) were found for all combinations of symptoms and monofilament results in comparison with sural peak latency and amplitude. Conclusions: Overall, the results demonstrated a low discriminatory power for the screening procedures for identifying persons with impaired sural nerve function. The results highlight the need for further development and evaluation of screening methods for distal neuropathy in population‐based studies. Muscle Nerve, 2012
Articulating identities – the role of English language education in Indian universities

ABSTRACT This paper analyses how community, national and ethnic identities are affirmed, negotiated, marginalized as a part of hegemony-making and resistance in the context of English education in Indian universities. We argue and demonstrate that a complex and ambivalent hegemony that has been operational since the colonial times, continues to shape English education in India. Today, English and English education play a major role in articulating, binding and dividing multiple identities and knowledge systems. In the first part of the paper, we critically review debates and discussions on the significance of English language education in institutes of higher education in India. Specifically, we focus on discourses on the rationale behind continuing and contesting English education. The second part examines how in the postmodern context, English is being taught differently to different groups and highlights how these contexts of teaching have been defining knowledge systems, patterns of dominance and also, articulating resistance.
Structural integrity of hepatocyte tight junctions

The significance of discontinuities frequently found in freeze-fracture replicas of the tight junction was evaluated using complementary replicas of hepatocyte junctions from control and bile duct-ligated rats. An extensive analysis of complementary replicas using rotary platinum shadowing indicates that discontinuities in the protoplasmic (P) fracture face do not represent structural breaks in the tight- junctional network. In no case did P-face discontinuities correspond with interruptions in the groove network on the complementary extracellular (E) face. Quantitative analysis of replicas shows that P- face discontinuities result in part from "transfer" of material to the complementary E face (approximately 7% of the junctional length). However, many P-face discontinuities (7-30% of the junctional length) are matched only by a groove on the complementary E face. This finding demonstrates that a significant amount of material can be lost during freeze-fracture. An analysis of junctions from bile duct-ligated rats, which are known to have an increased paracellular permeability, shows comparable transfer and loss of material. However, the number of junctional elements and the tight-junction network density was significantly reduced by bile duct ligation. These observations indicate that discontinuities in tight-junctional elements result during the preparation of freeze-fracture replicas and are not physiologically important features of the junctional barrier. Variation in the number of elements provides the best explanation for observed differences in tight-junction permeability.
Effect of School Feeding Programme on ECDE Pupils’ Class Participation in Kenya

World Food Programme (WFP) and the Kenyan Ministry of Education introduced school feeding programme in targeted pre-primary and primary schools in 1980. However, its effects in promoting pupils’ class participation in early childhood are not clear. The objective of the study was to assess the pupils’ class participation in ECDE centres with a school feeding programme and those without. The study also sought to test out the following null hypothesis (Ho1): There is no statistically significant difference in class participation of pupils in ECDE centres with feeding programme and those without. The study used descriptive survey research design. The total number of pupils was 54,629 from 1163 centres. Twenty centres were purposively selected based on high population. 380 pupils were sampled using Krejcie and Morgan’s table (1970). Twenty headteachers, 20 teachers and two county directors were sampled. This study was theoretically guided by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Data was collected by means of an interview schedule, questionnaires and an observation schedule. Data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics by using SPSS. The Major finding is that pupils in ECDE centres with SFP participate more than those in schools without SFP. The study recommends that SFP be implemented in all schools.
THE IMPACT OF ORGANIZATIONAL AND SUPERVISORY SUPPORT ON SURVIVORS? ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT AFTER DOWNSIZING IN TELECOM SECTOR OF PAKISTAN

The purpose of this research is to focus on supervisor support and organizational support factors that facilitate organizational commitment among downsizing survivors to reduce high attrition. This is a causal study in which data was collected from 300 employees of Telecommunication Sector of Pakistan who survived after downsizing. By using regression and correlation analysis, it was found out that both supervisor support and organizational support can help in organizational commitment among survivors. Further the supervisory support mediates the relationship between organizational support and organizational commitment.
Dynamic conditional independence models and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods

Abstract In dynamic statistical modeling situations, observations arise sequentially, causing the model to expand by progressive incorporation of new data items and new unknown parameters. For example, in clinical monitoring, patients and data arrive sequentially, and new patient-specific parameters are introduced with each new patient. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) might be used for continuous updating of the evolving posterior distribution, but would need to be restarted from scratch at each expansion stage. Thus MCMC methods are often too slow for real-time inference in dynamic contexts. By combining MCMC with importance resampling, we show how real-time sequential updating of posterior distributions can be effected. The proposed dynamic sampling algorithms use posterior samples from previous updating stages and exploit conditional independence between groups of parameters to allow samples of parameters no longer of interest to be discarded, such as when a patient dies or is discharged. We apply the .
General structured voting: a flexible framework for modelling cooperations

Data replication schemes and mutual exclusion protocols can be regarded as special instances of cooperation schemes, which describe the interaction of independent nodes within a computer network to achieve a common goal. The author presents a new mechanism called general structured voting for cooperation management and demonstrates its use for handling instances of these problem domains. The proposed approach is shown to be very flexible, covers a wide range of scenarios, and supports an easy tailoring. In particular, it supports the switching from one cooperation scheme to another, e.g., as a reaction to changing network characteristics, simply by modifying the parameters of the model, avoiding a time and money consuming modification of the implementation. <<ETX>>
Australia Telescope Compact Array Radio Imaging of the Proplyd-like Objects in the Giant H II Region NGC 3603

Three cometary-shaped objects in the giant H II region NGC 3603, originally found and identified as proto-planetary disks (proplyds) by Brandner and coworkers using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope in the optical and near-infrared, have been detected with the Australia Telescope Compact Array in the radio continuum at 3 and 6 cm. All three proplyd-like objects are clearly resolved with an extent of a few arcseconds. The integrated 6 cm fluxes are up to 1.3 times higher than the 3 cm fluxes with spectral indices averaged over the whole clump between α = -0.1 and -0.5 (Sν ∝ να), indicating the likely presence of nonthermal emission in at least some of the sources. We present spectral-index maps and show that the sites of negative radio spectral indices are predominantly concentrated in the direction of the tails in at least two of the three proplyd-like nebulae, while positive spectral indices are found in the region facing the ionizing star cluster. We propose that thermal bremsstrahlung and nonthermal synchrotron radiation are at work in all three proplyd-like sources. In at least one of the three objects, optically thin nonthermal synchrotron emission appears to dominate when averaged over its whole spatial extent, while the spectrum of a second source shows a marginal indication of a nonthermal spectrum. The average spectrum of the third source is in agreement with thermal bremsstrahlung. All measured fluxes are at least one order of magnitude higher than those predicted by Brandner and coworkers. Upper limits for mass-loss rates due to photoevaporation are calculated to be ~10-5 M☉ yr-1 and for electron densities to be ~104 cm-3. Due to the unexpectedly large radio luminosities of the proplyd-like features and because the radio emission is extended, a (proto-) stellar origin of the nonthermal emission from a dust enshrouded star appears unlikely. Instead, we propose that magnetized regions within the envelope of the proplyd-like nebulae exist.
Causal coding of multiple jointly Gaussian sources

We consider causal coding of three jointly Gaussian correlated sources, X1, X2, X3, with a given covariance matrix and determine an analytic closed-form formula for its total rate distortion function subject to Mean Square Error (MSE) distortion constraints when all sources need a positive rate to be represented. It is first shown that the optimal reproduction random variables are jointly Gaussian with the sources. A novel causal coding scheme is then proposed to achieve the total rate distortion function, in which each source is first whitened with respect to all previous original sources and then encoded via encoding a proper linear combination of the residues of the previous sources with respect to all available encoded sources and the residue of the current source with respect to all previous original sources. The more-and-less coding theorem in causal coding of correlated sources - when sources do not form a Markov chain as X1 → X2 → X3, under some conditions on sources and distortion, the more sources need to be encoded, the less total rate is required - is also investigated for Gaussian sources. For the underlying scenario in which all sources need a positive rate to be represented, it is proved that the more-and-less coding is always revealed for non-Markov chain Gaussian sources.