Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Scholarship in the Digital Age: Blurring the Boundaries between the Sciences and the Humanities (Keynote)

Author(s): Borgman, Christine L. | Abstract: As the digital humanities mature, their scholarship is taking on many characteristics of the sciences, becoming more data-intensive, information-intensive, distributed, multi-disciplinary, and collaborative. While few scholars in the humanities or arts would wish to be characterized as emulating scientists, they do envy the comparatively rich technical and resource infrastructure of the sciences. The interests of all scholars in the university align with respect to access to data, library resources, and computing infrastructure. However, the scholarly interests of the sciences and humanities diverge regarding research practices, sources of evidence, and degrees of control over those sources. This talk will explore the common and competing interests of disciplines for scholarship in the digital age.
Distribuição da renda e desenvolvimento econômico do Brasil

Esse trabalho e um resumo da pesquisa DISTRIBUICAO DA RENDA E DESENVOLVIMENTO ECONOMICO DO BRASIL, realizado atraves de um convenio entre o IPE e o Ministerio da Fazenda, a ser publicado pela editora APEC. Agradeco em especial a colaboracao do professor Isaac Kerstenetzsky, presidente do IBGE, por ter fornecido os dados do Censo Demografico de 1970, e ao professor Antonio Delfim Netto pelo apoio e estimulo ao longo de todo o trabalho. A realizacao desta pesquisa num prazo relativamente exiguo so foi possivel pela capacidade e dedicacao dos analistas Claudio Martagao Gesteira Neto e Luis Oscar Dantas do SERPRO. Eu me beneficiei extremamente das criticas e sugestoes dos professores Affonso Celso Pastore, Guilherme Dias e Ruben Almonacid do IPE, que acompanharam de perto a elaboracao desta pesquisa. Igualmente uteis foram as criticas feitas a uma versao preliminar deste trabalho, pelo professor Lancer Taylor da Universidade de Harvard. Desnecessario repetir que erros e omissoes sao de minha exclusiva responsabilidade.
Impact of prematurity and immigration on neonatal screening for sickle cell disease

Background Others have described a relationship between hemoglobin A levels and gestational age, gender and ethnicity. However, studies are needed to determine normal cut-off points considering these factors. To address this issue we designed a study to determine the percentiles of normality of neonatal hemoglobin A levels taking these factors into account. Methods This cross-sectional study involved 16,025 samples for sickle cell disease screening in the province of Alicante, Spain, which has a high immigration rate. The primary variable was hemoglobin A, and the secondary variables were gender, gestational age (preterm and full term) and maternal origin (Spain, the rest of Europe, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia). Percentiles of normality (1 and 99) were obtained by origin, gender and gestational age using quantile regression models and bootstrap samples. The association between these percentiles of normality and altered levels (≥1%) of hemoglobin E was analyzed. We obtained the percentiles of normality (1 and 99) for each maternal origin, gender and gestational age. Results Of a total of 88 possible E carriers, 65 had above-normal hemoglobin A levels (74%). The levels of normality for hemoglobin A varied greatly according to the maternal origin and gestational age. Conclusion With the levels of normality that we established it is possible to discard samples with unrecorded blood transfusions. Our methodology could be applied to other diseases in the neonatal screening.
Central kiloparsec of Seyfert and inactive host galaxies: a comparison of two-dimensional stellar and gaseous kinematics

We investigate the properties of the two-dimensional distribution and kinematics of ionized gas and stars in the central kiloparsec of a matched sample of nearby active (Seyfert) and inactive galaxies, using the SAURON integral field unit on the William Herschel Telescope. The ionized gas distributions show a range of low-excitation regions, such as star formation rings in Seyfert and inactive galaxies, and high-excitation regions related to photoionization by the active galactic nucleus (AGN). The stellar kinematics of all galaxies in the sample show regular rotation patterns typical of disc-like systems, with kinematic axes that are well aligned with those derived from the outer photometry and provide a reliable representation of the galactic line of nodes. After removal of the non-gravitational components due to, for example, AGN-driven outflows, the ionized gas kinematics in both the Seyfert and inactive galaxies are also dominated by rotation with global alignment between stars and gas in most galaxies. This result is consistent with previous findings from photometric studies that the large-scale light distribution of Seyfert hosts is similar to that of inactive hosts. However, by fully exploiting the two-dimensional nature of our spectroscopic data, deviations from axisymmetric rotation in the gaseous velocity fields are identified, which suggest that the gaseous kinematics are more disturbed at small radii in the Seyfert galaxies compared with the inactive galaxies. This provides a tentative link between nuclear gaseous streaming and nuclear activity.
Altered functional connectivity in default mode network in absence epilepsy: A resting‐state fMRI study

Dysfunctional default mode network (DMN) has been observed in various mental disorders, including epilepsy (see review Broyd et al. [ 2009 ]: Neurosci Biobehav Rev 33:279–296). Because interictal epileptic discharges may affect DMN, resting‐state fMRI was used in this study to determine DMN functional connectivity in 14 healthy controls and 12 absence epilepsy patients. To avoid interictal epileptic discharge effects, testing was performed within interictal durations when there were no interictal epileptic discharges. Cross‐correlation functional connectivity analysis with seed at posterior cingulate cortex, as well as region‐wise calculation in DMN, revealed decreased integration within DMN in the absence epilepsy patients. Region‐wise functional connectivity among the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobe was significantly decreased in the patient group. Moreover, functional connectivity between the frontal and parietal lobe revealed a significant negative correlation with epilepsy duration. These findings indicated DMN abnormalities in patients with absence epilepsy, even during resting interictal durations without interictal epileptic discharges. Abnormal functional connectivity in absence epilepsy may reflect abnormal anatomo‐functional architectural integration in DMN, as a result of cognitive mental impairment and unconsciousness during absence seizure. Hum Brain Mapp, 2011. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Macroeconomic Aspects of Ghana's Export Performance

This study examines the role of price competitiveness and foreign activity in Ghana’s export performance. Using an augmented VAR model in conjunction with modified Wald tests, causal relationships are tested between real effective exchange rates, foreign GDP and both total and agricultural export volumes. The results show that improvements in price competitiveness have been the principal driver of total export volumes. However, none of the traditional factors of export performance have had a significant effect on agricultural exports. In addition, using a VAR-MGARCH-in-mean model, we found that third-country exchange rates volatility have negatively affected Ghana’s export growth. These results confirm the effectiveness of Ghana’s market-oriented policies that started with the inception of the economic recovery program in 1983 but call for more policy efforts to offset the adverse impact of exchange rates volatility on the export sector.
Constructions of nontautological classes of moduli spaces of curves

We construct explicit examples of algebraic cycles in \bar M_g (for large g congruent to 2 mod 4) and in M_2,20 (no bar) which are not in the tautological ring. In an appendix we give a general method for computing intersections in the tautological ring.
ATXN2-CAG42 Sequesters PABPC1 into Insolubility and Induces FBXW8 in Cerebellum of Old Ataxic Knock-In Mice

Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 2 (SCA2) is caused by expansion of a polyglutamine encoding triplet repeat in the human ATXN2 gene beyond (CAG)31. This is thought to mediate toxic gain-of-function by protein aggregation and to affect RNA processing, resulting in degenerative processes affecting preferentially cerebellar neurons. As a faithful animal model, we generated a knock-in mouse replacing the single CAG of murine Atxn2 with CAG42, a frequent patient genotype. This expansion size was inherited stably. The mice showed phenotypes with reduced weight and later motor incoordination. Although brain Atxn2 mRNA became elevated, soluble ATXN2 protein levels diminished over time, which might explain partial loss-of-function effects. Deficits in soluble ATXN2 protein correlated with the appearance of insoluble ATXN2, a progressive feature in cerebellum possibly reflecting toxic gains-of-function. Since in vitro ATXN2 overexpression was known to reduce levels of its protein interactor PABPC1, we studied expansion effects on PABPC1. In cortex, PABPC1 transcript and soluble and insoluble protein levels were increased. In the more vulnerable cerebellum, the progressive insolubility of PABPC1 was accompanied by decreased soluble protein levels, with PABPC1 mRNA showing no compensatory increase. The sequestration of PABPC1 into insolubility by ATXN2 function gains was validated in human cell culture. To understand consequences on mRNA processing, transcriptome profiles at medium and old age in three different tissues were studied and demonstrated a selective induction of Fbxw8 in the old cerebellum. Fbxw8 is encoded next to the Atxn2 locus and was shown in vitro to decrease the level of expanded insoluble ATXN2 protein. In conclusion, our data support the concept that expanded ATXN2 undergoes progressive insolubility and affects PABPC1 by a toxic gain-of-function mechanism with tissue-specific effects, which may be partially alleviated by the induction of FBXW8.
The Relative Effectiveness of Monetary and Fiscal Policies on Economic Activity in Zimbabwe (1981:4-1998:3) 'An Error Correction Approach'

This paper examines the impact of monetary and fiscal policies on economic activity in Zimbabwe by employing a modified St Louis equation for the period 1981:4 to 1998:3. The main objective is to determine the relative effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policies on the economic growth process in Zimbabwe using the new econometric techniques of time series, cointegration and error correction approach. Secondary data was collected from various publications like, Government of Zimbabwe (1987): Annual Economic Review of Zimbabwe, Central Statistical Office (1998) National Accounts 1985-97 and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (various issues) monthly and quarterly bulletins. Quarterly data was used to make a total of 68 observations. LIMDEP Version 6.0 and PC GIVE Version 8 packages were used for data analysis. The regression results suggest that the monetary influence is relatively stronger and more predictable than fiscal policy in determining economic activity. These results suggest that monetary policy can be relied on as a successful macroeconomic stabilization tool in Zimbabwe. Fiscal policy should be streamlined as it is found to have an insignificant impact on economic activity in Zimbabwe. The impulse dummies which are included in the model in order to reduce the impact of outliers in the scaled residuals were also found to be significant. These impulse dummies are for the period when Zimbabwe experienced severe drought and also a bumper harvest. Exports had an insignificant impact on economic activity.
Mapping of the PhDs in the Private Sector. A Literature Review

This review maps out the labour market situation of PhDs employed in the private sector. To begin with, the theoretical motives for employing PhDs and the supporting empirical evidence are examined. The potential benefits of companies from employing PhDs can be divided into productivity and innovation effects as well as knowledge contributions from networking, and external effects. Next, the international empirical literature on PhDs in the private sector is surveyed. The mostly US based research focuses primarily on PhDs in the fields of science and engineering. It provides no synoptic picture of the employment situation of the PhDs in the private sector and leaves a need for further research. A more detailed review of the Finnish literature shows that the private sector employs only about 15% of all PhDs in the Finnish labour market. There is, however, large variation between different fields of study, genders and age groups. The rapid increase in graduating PhDs in recent years indicate that the employment patterns of PhDs might be changing. Further research is needed to answer questions like : How has the increased supply changed the labour market situation of PhDs? Has the role of the private sector as an employer of PhDs changed? And is the allocation of PhDs between fields of study efficient? Another issue that has earned only very little attention is the mobility of PhDs in the labour market. Mobility within and between sectors is very important for both the diffusion of knowledge in the economy and the development of the career and wage profiles of PhDs. Because of the recent development, the existing knowledge gaps and the rapidly ageing research conducted up to this day, there is, thus, an urgent need for further research in this field.
nonbinROC: Software for Evaluating Diagnostic Accuracies with Non-Binary Gold Standards

ROC analysis is a standard method for estimating and comparing diagnostic tests' accuracies when the gold standard is binary. However, there are many situations when the gold standard is not binary. In these situations, traditional ROC methods applied have lead to biased and uninformative outcomes. This article introduces nonbinROC, software for R that implements nonparametric estimators proposed by Obuchowski (2005) for estimating and comparing diagnostic tests' accuracies when the gold standard is measured on a continuous, ordinal or nominal scale. The results produced from these estimators are interpreted in the same manner as in ROC analysis but are not associated with any ROC curve.
Dimerization Is Responsible for the Structural Stability of Human Sulfotransferase 1A1

Cytosolic sulfotransferases (SULTs) are responsible for the metabolism of a variety of drugs, xenobiotics, and endogenous compounds. Most cytosolic SULTs are found to be homodimers. However, transformation between monomeric and dimeric SULTs can be achieved by a single amino acid mutation. The importance of quaternary structure for cytosolic sulfotransferase was investigated using recombinant human SULT1A1, a homodimer, and its monomeric mutant (V270E). The differences between dimeric and monomeric SULT1A1 were examined by size-exclusion liquid chromatography, enzyme kinetics, substrate binding affinity, thermal inactivation, conformational stability, and circular dichroism. Variations, especially on their secondary structures and stability, between homodimer and monomer of human SULT1A1 were observed. It was found that the active site of SULT1A1 was not significantly perturbed after the change of its quaternary structure according to SULT1A1 kinetics and substrate binding affinity. However, the stability of monomeric SULT1A1 is significantly decreased. We proposed that the importance of human SULT1A1 as a homodimer was to maintain its structural stability, and the change of secondary structure was responsible for alternating its quaternary structure.
Estimates of Private Wealth in Italy after Unification: Historiography and Statistical Method

From the 1880s to the outbreak of the First World War a good number of European scholars produced applied economic-statistical works estimating the wealth held by private individuals. The twofold aim of this body of literature was to compare countries' economic potential and measure the evolution of single national economies over time. Italian economists and statisticians had an especially strong interest in these topics. This essay deals with their writings. The design is strictly empirical. The idea is to test the possibility of supplementing and completing the efforts of those scholars in extracting useful information from a paucity of data, and ultimately to produce a preliminary estimate of the time series of private wealth from 1872 to 1913, which is the main result of the test. The data are those used by the scholars of the day: the value of assets inherited as ascertained by the tax authorities for the inheritance tax. This essay is motivated by our conviction that a well-founded effort to construct a time series for wealth in post-unification Italy must begin by coming to grips with the contemporary literature on the topic and with the data underlying it.
Competitive forces and the levers of control framework in a manufacturing setting: A tale of a multinational subsidiary

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to explore how the strategic change following a corporate takeover impacted the nature and extent of use of the firm's management control systems (MCS), in particular its performance measurement system (PMS). Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses Michael Porter's theory of competitive advantage and Robert Simons' levers of control framework to illustrate and interpret changes in the PMS within an Australian multinational subsidiary following its takeover by an overseas corporation. To provide empirical evidence on this issue, face‐to‐face interviews and archival data are used.Findings – The findings reveal that the takeover resulted in changes in the firm's competitive forces (threat of potential entrants, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitute products or services, bargaining power of suppliers, and rivalry among existing firms), and therefore the firm altered its strategy to change the rules of competition in its favor. Corresponding to the strat.
Near-Optimal Bisection Search for Nonparametric Dynamic Pricing with Inventory Constraint

We consider a single-product revenue management problem with an inventory constraint and unknown, noisy, demand function. The objective of the firm is to dynamically adjust the prices to maximize total expected revenue. We restrict our scope to the nonparametric approach where we only assume some common regularity conditions on the demand function instead of a specific functional form. We propose a family of pricing heuristics that successfully balance the tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. The idea is to generalize the classic bisection search method to a problem that is affected both by stochastic noise and an inventory constraint. Our algorithm extends the bisection method to produce a sequence of pricing intervals that converge to the optimal static price with high probability. Using regret (the revenue loss compared to the deterministic pricing problem for a clairvoyant) as the performance metric, we show that one of our heuristics exactly matches the theoretical asymptotic lower bound that has been previously shown to hold for any feasible pricing heuristic. Although the results are presented in the context of revenue management problems, our analysis of the bisection technique for stochastic optimization with learning can be potentially applied to other application areas.
On scaling transport networks for very high nodal degree ROADM nodes using state-of-the-art optical switch technology

ROADM nodes of both legacy and modern DWDM transport networks have fairly small nodal degrees, since in the majority of cases each node has only a fibre pair interconnecting it to a small set of neighbour nodes and only seldom there are two or more fibre pairs involved in the interconnection or the set of neighbour nodes is large (e.g., above 6). State-of-art optical switch technology is suitable to design ROADMs with the most demanding nodal degrees deployed today and support at least a two-fold increase of these values. However, despite the transmission capacity improvements over a single fibre provided by recent technologies such as advanced modulation formats and superchannels, capacity augmentation in future DWDM networks will likely rely on either simply using more fibres, increasing the nodal degree, or using fibres with multiples cores and/or exploiting multiple modes. This paper provides an outlook on how DWDM networks can scale to very high nodal degrees based on current optical switch technology, highlighting potential ROADM designs and their impact on upgrading network capacity.
Coincident, 100 kpc scale damped Lyα absorption towards a binary QSO : how large are galaxies at z ∼ 3?

We report coincident damped Lyα (DLA) and sub-DLA absorption at zabs = 2.66 and zabs = 2.94 towards the z ∼ 3, 13.8 arcsec separation binary quasar SDSS 1116+4118 AB. At the redshifts of the absorbers, this angular separation corresponds to a proper transverse separation of ∼110 h −1 70 kpc. A third absorber, a sub-DLA at zabs = 2.47, is detected towards SDSS 1116+4118 B, but no corresponding high column density absorber is present towards SDSS 1116+4118 A. We use high-resolution galaxy simulations and a clustering analysis to interpret the coincident absorption and its implications for galaxy structure at z ∼ 3. We conclude that the common absorption in the two lines of sight is unlikely to arise from a single galaxy, or a galaxy plus satellite system, and is more feasibly explained by a group of two or more galaxies with separations ∼100 kpc. The impact of these findings on single line-of-sight observations is also discussed; we show that abundances of DLAs may be affected by up to a few tenths of a dex by line-of-sight DLA blending. From a Keck Echellette Spectrograph and Imager spectrum of the two quasars, we measure metal column densities for all five absorbers and determine abundances for the three absorbers with log N(H I) > 20. For the two highest N(H I) absorbers, we determine high levels of metal enrichment, corresponding to 1/3 and 1/ 5Z � . These metallicities are amongst the highest measured for DLAs at any redshift and are consistent with values measured in Lyman-break galaxies at 2 < z < 3. For the DLA at zabs = 2.94 we also infer an approximately solar ratio of α-to-Fe peak elements from [S/Zn] =+ 0.05, and measure an upper limit for the molecular fraction in this particular line of sight of log f (H 2) < −5.5.