Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Maternal basking regime has complex implications for birthdate and offspring phenotype in a nocturnally foraging, viviparous gecko

ABSTRACT Maternal basking regime can affect gestation length in viviparous squamates, but effects on offspring phenotype in species with extended pregnancies and ability to delay the birth season are unclear. We investigated the effects of three maternal basking regimes on maternal thermoregulation, gestation length, pregnancy outcome and offspring phenotype in the gecko Woodworthia ‘Otago/Southland’. This long-lived (30+ years), nocturnal forager has field pregnancies lasting up to 14 months, with fully developed offspring maintained in utero over winter. Within regimes, we also compared outcomes for spontaneous (early) deliveries with those from induced (late) deliveries to test the ‘adaptive prolongation of pregnancy’ hypothesis. Although a cool regime significantly extended gestation, the effect was reduced by increased maternal basking, and embryonic development under the cool regime was just as successful. Offspring from spontaneous births (but not induced births) were smaller and grew more slowly when from the cool regime. However, induced offspring did not differ in consistent ways from those delivered spontaneously and offspring from all groups had high viability, similar use of warm retreat sites and similar sprint speeds. Thus, consistent evidence for adaptive prolongation of pregnancy was lacking. Unusually for squamates, pregnant females can begin vitellogenesis before giving birth, and a profound drop in maternal body temperature near the end of pregnancy (∼6.3°C, confirmed under the warm regime) may assist survival of embryos in utero. Female lizards that maintain fully developed embryos in utero have the potential to make complex trade-offs among birthdate, offspring phenotype and future reproduction. Summary: Basking opportunity strongly affects maternal thermoregulation and gestation length in a ‘nocturnal’ gecko; spontaneously born offspring from a cool regime are small, but consistent phenotypic effects from delayed parturition are lacking.
Should Smart Investors Buy Funds with High Returns in the Past?

Newspapers and weekly magazines catering to the investing crowd often rank funds according to the returns generated in the past. Aside from satisfying sheer curiosity, these numbers are probably also the basis on which investors pick a fund to invest in. In this article, we fully characterize the equilibrium in a game between a mutual fund manager of unknown ability who controls the riskiness of his portfolio and investors who only observe realized returns. We derive conditions under which (i) investors invest in the fund if the realized return falls within some interval, ie. , is neither too low nor too high, (ii) an informed fund manager picks a portfolio of minimal riskiness, (iii) an uninformed mutual fund manager will pick a portfolio with higher risk, 'gambling' on a lucky outcome and (iv), when the fee structure is endogenous, both types of manager choose the same fraction-of-fund fee structure. Our results are consistent with empirical evidence about the lack of persistence of top performance, and about the very wide use of fraction-of-fund fee structure among mutual funds.
The status of death statistics for the Hispanic population of the Southwest.

Mortality data for the Hispanic population of the southwestern United States are reviewed and compared with population data from the 1980 Census. Hispanic identifiers used in death records are described and compared with those used in the 1980 Census and recommendations are made as to the best combination of definitions for studying mortality. Until there is better consistency between definitions of Hispanic origin in the vital records and the census Spanish surname remains the best means of defining the Hispanic population of the Southwest. (EXCERPT)
Grit and Hardiness as Predictors of Performance Among West Point Cadets

The U.S. Military Academy has historically used an academically weighted composite of aptitude, leadership, and physical ability indices for selection of candidates and to predict their performance at the Academy. Researchers at West Point have begun to investigate the incremental contribution of a variety of less traditional nonaptitude or noncognitive factors in predicting performance. Particular focus has centered on hardiness and grit because they have been shown to predict persistence through Cadet Basic Training (CBT) and achievement in the first year at the Academy. In the current investigation, we further examined the predictive validity of grit and hardiness, and their subfacets, on retention and performance through the full 4-year West Point program with data from 1,558 cadets, comprising the West Point classes of 2009 and 2010. Results of regression analyses indicate that whereas grit interest and hardiness commitment were the sole predictors of attrition from CBT, only grit effort predicted persistence across the remaining 4 year period. College Entrance Exam Rank (CEER), a traditional measure of academic success, did not predict persistence. In terms of performance, grit interest, and hardiness control added to CEER in the prediction of 4-year academic performance. Although CEER continued to be the best predictor of military performance, grit effort and hardiness commitment were also important contributors. Finally, grit effort also added to the Athletic Activities Score and CEER in predicting physical performance. These results indicate that the noncognitive factors grit and hardiness are important predictors of success in military officer candidates. We discuss the implication of our findings for selection and prediction of performance of within military environments.
Relationship Capital and Competition in the Corporate Securities Underwriting Market

This paper examines how relationship capital drives competition among underwriting banks in the corporate bond underwriting market. The recent deregulation and subsequent re-entry by commercial banks into this market in the U.S. raises policy interest in measuring competitive e ect of the deregulation. The theories of relationship and reputation imply that (1) the entrants' products are di erentiated from those of incumbents due to their pre-existing relationships with issuers, and (2) the issuers' valuation of relationship capital in turn depends on their own reputation in the capital markets. I investigate these hypotheses by using the methods developed in the empirical industrial organization literature, which have not been applied to the nancial context. In doing so the paper also attempts to ll this gap between the two literatures. Using individual issuer data, I jointly estimate a discrete choice model of underwriter demand and a model of issue-speci c pricing by individual banks. I nd that there is a trade-o between relationships and price in the demand equation and that this trade-o is sharply higher for lowreputation issuers such as junk bond issuers and rst-time issuers. The lower is the reputation of the issuer, the more the demander is willing to trade o price for the relationship. This nding is consistent with the certi cation e ect of commercial bank underwriting. Commercial bank entry has increased competition in this market because their client-speci c relationship capital has increased product di erentiation in the market. And since issuers with low reputation value the relationship capital more, it is for this segment of the market that the competitive e ect of the deregulation has been most dramatic. I am indebted to Tim Bresnahan, Doug Bernheim, and Roger Noll for their invaluable guidance. I also thank Masa Aoki, Serdar Dinc, Ken Judd, Manju Puri, John Shoven and all the seminar participants at the Center for Financial Studies at Frankfurt, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Kellogg, HBS, IMF, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, Wharton, and the World Bank for many helpful discussions and comments. All errors are my own.
Identification of Phospholipid Scramblase 1 as a Biomarker and Determination of Its Prognostic Value for Colorectal Cancer

The purpose of this study was to examine the expression of phospholipid scramblase 1 (PLSCR1) in tumor tissues and plasma specimens of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC), as well as analyze its association with clinical parameters. The expression levels of PLSCR1 protein in 104 matched CRC and adjacent normal tissue sections and 50 pairs of CRC tissue blocks were determined by use of immunohistochemical and Western blot analyses, respectively. To evaluate the diagnostic potential of PLSCR1, the plasma levels of PLSCR1 were investigated in 111 additional subjects (59 CRC patients and 52 healthy controls) by Western blot. PLSCR1 was overexpressed in malignant adenocarcinoma tissues compared with normal colorectal mucosa (P < 0.001). In addition, the plasma level of PLSCR1 was not only significantly elevated in CRC patients compared with healthy individuals (P < 0.001), but it was also substantially increased in early stage CRC (P < 0.001). Importantly, the overall sensitivity and specificity of PLSCR1 for CRC detection were 80% and 59.6%, respectively. The area under the ROC curve of PLSCR1 for CRC diagnosis is 0.75, which increases to 0.8 if combined with the measurement of carcinoembryonic antigen. Univariate analysis with the Cox regression model revealed that elevated PLSCR1 expression indicated a poor prognosis for CRC. This study showed that PLSCR1 protein levels were significantly elevated in both the cancer tissue and plasma of CRC patients. Moreover, the plasma levels of PLSCR1 were significantly elevated in patients with early stage CRC compared with healthy individuals, suggesting that PLSCR1 might be used as a noninvasive serological diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for CRC.
Circulating tumor cells in pancreatic cancer patients: enrichment and cultivation.

AIM To investigate the feasibility of separation and cultivation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in pancreatic cancer (PaC) using a filtration device. METHODS In total, 24 PaC patients who were candidates for surgical treatment were enrolled into the study. Peripheral blood samples were collected before an indicated surgery. For each patient, approximately 8 mL of venous blood was drawn from the antecubital veins. A new size-based separation MetaCell technology was used for enrichment and cultivation of CTCs in vitro. (Separated CTCs were cultured on a membrane in FBS enriched RPMI media and observed by inverted microscope. The cultured cells were analyzed by means of histochemistry and immunohistochemistry using the specific antibodies to identify the cell origin. RESULTS CTCs were detected in 16 patients (66.7%) of the 24 evaluable patients. The CTC positivity did not reflect the disease stage, tumor size, or lymph node involvement. The same percentage of CTC positivity was observed in the metastatic and non-metastatic patients (66.7% vs 66.7%). We report a successful isolation of CTCs in PaC patients capturing proliferating cells. The cells were captured by a capillary action driven size-based filtration approach that enabled cells cultures from the viable CTCs to be unaffected by any antibodies or lysing solutions. The captured cancer cells displayed plasticity which enabled some cells to invade the separating membrane. Further, the cancer cells in the "bottom fraction", may represent a more invasive CTC-fraction. The CTCs were cultured in vitro for further downstream applications. CONCLUSION The presented size-based filtration method enables culture of CTCs in vitro for possible downstream applications.
[Prevalence and risk factors for periventricular leukomalacia in preterm infants. A systematic review].

INTRODUCTION There is a huge disparity in the description of the prevalence and risk factors of periventricular leukomalacia in preterm infants. AIMS To describe and compare, through a systematic review of the literature, the prevalence of periventricular leukomalacia in preterm infants, as well as to determine the main risk factors associated with its presentation. SUBJECTS AND METHODS A systematic review was conducted consulting multiple databases of the last 20 years. The search terms were: periventricular leukomalacia, prevalence, risk factors and premature birth. We included all studies that mention or led to the prevalence of periventricular leukomalacia and those that referred to its risk factors. RESULTS Of the 209 studies identified, we selected 107 studies in which the prevalence of periventricular leukomalacia was mentioned or the risk factors were described. A stratified analysis was performed for the diagnostic technique and gestational age, in addition to a narrative synthesis. Ultrasound detected a prevalence of 14.7% and magnetic resonance of 32.8%. Prevalence in children under 28 weeks was 39.6%; 27.4% in children under 32 weeks and 7.3% in children under 37 weeks. Risk factors include gestational age, intrauterine infection, premature rupture of membranes and chorioamnionitis. CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of periventricular leukomalacia in preterm infants is heterogeneous, increases according to the degree of prematurity and is better detected by magnetic resonance. There are multiple factors related to its presentation, the main factor is gestational age.
Talking about ‘An Accommodation’: The implications of discussion group data for community engagement and pedagogy

Community engagement is an important area of development both generally in Higher Education English departments and also in the disciplines of stylistics and cognitive poetics. Though claiming to be concerned with ‘real readers reading literature in the real world’ (Stockwell, 2002: 8), cognitive poetic and stylistic analyses could be biased towards the reading practices of academics (Miall, 2006). As a result, it is becoming increasingly popular for stylisticians to use empirical methods to investigate readers other than the analyst in their discussion of literary effect (e.g. Burke, 2010; Stockwell, 2009; Whiteley, 2011). This article examines extracts from group discussion data collected as part of the ‘Creative Writing in the Community’ project at the University of Sheffield. Five groups of readers were recorded discussing poems by contemporary British poet Simon Armitage. The groups consisted of cognitive poetic researchers, first-year undergraduate English students, and local reading groups respectively. I examine the style and content of their discussions in the light of existing research into the distinctions between ‘professional’ and ‘non-professional’ readers, and consider what the similarities and differences between their discourse could signal for university departments’ engagement with readers both within and outside of the classroom.
Third-world realities in a first-world setting: A study of the HIV/AIDS-related conditions and risk behaviors of sex trade workers in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Abstract The transmission and prevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) among those employed as sex trade workers (STW) is a major public health concern. The present study describes the self-reported responses of 340 STW, at-risk for contracting HIV. The participants were recruited by selective targeting between 2009 and 2010 from within the Saskatoon Health Region (SHR), Saskatchewan, Canada. As of 2012, the SHR has the highest incidence rate of positive test reports for HIV in Canada, at more than three times the national average (17.0 vs. 5.9 per 100,000 people). Additionally, the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS in the SHR is different from that seen elsewhere in Canada (still mostly men having sex with men and Caucasians), with its new HIV cases predominantly associated with injection drug use and Aboriginal cultural status. The purpose of this study was to (a) describe the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the STW in the SHR, (b) identify their significant life events, self-reported problems, knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, self-efficacy, and barriers regarding HIV, and (c) determine the significant independent risk indicators for STW self-reporting a chance of greater than 50% of becoming infected with HIV/AIDS. The majority of the study participants were females, who were never married, of Aboriginal descent, without a high school diploma, and had an annual income of less than $10,000. Using multivariate regression analysis, four significant independent risk indicators were associated with STW reporting a greater that 50% chance of acquiring HIV/AIDS, including experiencing sexual assault as a child, injecting drugs in the past four weeks, being homeless, and a previous Chlamydia diagnosis. These findings provide important evidence of the essential sexual and drug-related vulnerabilities associated with the risk of HIV infection among STW and offer insight into the design and implementation of effective and culturally sensitive public health intervention and prevention efforts. To be most effective, it is recommended that such intervention and prevention initiatives: (1) use specifically tailored community-based outreach to high risk STW who are drug users and link them with appropriate drug treatment and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment services, (2) provide free and confidential, routine HIV counseling and testing in substance abuse programs, and (3) build capacity among the local, Aboriginal NGOs so as to address with cultural sensitivity both the drug and HIV-related risk factors prevalent among this vulnerable population.
Demystifying Neural Style Transfer

Neural Style Transfer has recently demonstrated very exciting results which catches eyes in both academia and industry. Despite the amazing results, the principle of neural style transfer, especially why the Gram matrices could represent style remains unclear. In this paper, we propose a novel interpretation of neural style transfer by treating it as a domain adaptation problem. Specifically, we theoretically show that matching the Gram matrices of feature maps is equivalent to minimize the Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) with the second order polynomial kernel. Thus, we argue that the essence of neural style transfer is to match the feature distributions between the style images and the generated images. To further support our standpoint, we experiment with several other distribution alignment methods, and achieve appealing results. We believe this novel interpretation connects these two important research fields, and could enlighten future researches.
Cyclical Wage Movements in Emerging Markets Compared to Developed Economies : the Role of Interest Rates

This paper documents that, at the aggregate level, (i) real wages are positively correlated with output and, on average, lag output by about one quarter in emerging markets, while there are no systematic patterns in developed economies, (ii) real wage volatility (relative to output volatility) is about twice as high in emerging markets compared with developed economies, and (iii) real wage volatility, as a ratio of output volatility, decreases with the level of financial development across countries. I then present a model of contractual arrangements between workers and employers in a small open economy that helps explain this contrast. Only employers have access to financial and capital markets in the model, but they need to borrow working capital to pay for labor costs before production is carried out. The idea is that countercyclical interest rates and less developed financial markets in emerging markets make it less optimal for employers to provide workers with relatively stable wages, leading to more volatile and procyclical wages. This is further demonstrated by calibrating the model using data from Mexico and Canada.
Anticipated emotions and effort allocation in weight goal striving.

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate the influence of anticipated emotions on preventive health behaviour if specified at the level of behavioural outcomes. Consistent with predictions from a recently developed model of goal pursuit, we hypothesized that the impact of emotions on effort levels depended on the perceived proximity to the goal. DESIGN Participants with weight-loss intentions were randomly selected from an Internet panel and completed questionnaires at three points in time, baseline (T1; N= 725), 2 weeks later at T2 (N= 582) and again 2 months later at T3 (N= 528). METHODS Questionnaires assessed anticipated emotions (at T1) and experienced emotions (at T2) towards goal attainment and non-attainment. Goal proximity, goal desirability, and effort levels in striving for weight loss were assessed at both T1 and T2. Current and target weights were reported at all three assessments. RESULTS In line with predictions, we found that negative anticipated emotions towards goal non-attainment resulted in increased effort but only if people perceived themselves in close proximity to their goal. Effort, in turn, predicted weight loss and goal achievement. CONCLUSION The current data bear important practical implications as they identify anticipated emotions as targets of behaviour change interventions aimed to stimulate effort in striving for broad, health-related goals like weight loss.
Distributed Optimization of a Multisubchannel Ad Hoc Cognitive Radio Network

In this paper, we study the distributed-duality-based optimization of a multisubchannel ad hoc cognitive radio network (CRN) that coexists with a multicell primary radio network (PRN). For radio resource allocation in multiuser orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MU-OFDM) systems, the orthogonal-access-based exclusive subchannel assignment (ESA) technique has been a popular method, but it is suboptimal in ad hoc networks, because nonorthogonal access between multiple secondary-user links by using shared subchannel assignment (SSA) can bring a higher weighted sum rate. We utilize the Lagrangian dual composition tool and design low-complexity near-optimal SSA resource allocation methods, assuming practical discrete-rate modulation and that the CRN-to-PRN interference constraint has to strictly be satisfied. However, available SSA methods for CRNs are either suboptimal or involve high complexity and suffer from slow convergence. To address this problem, we design fast-convergence SSA duality schemes and introduce several novel methods to increase the speed of convergence and to satisfy various system constraints with low complexity. For practical implementation in ad hoc CRNs, we design distributed-duality schemes that involve only a small number of CRN local information exchanges for dual update. The effects of many system parameters are presented through simulation results, which show that the near-optimal SSA duality scheme can perform significantly better than the suboptimal ESA duality and SSA-iterative waterfilling schemes and that the performance loss of the distributed schemes is small, compared with their centralized counterparts.