Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Refractive errors in a black adult population: the Barbados Eye Study.

PURPOSE To describe the prevalence of refractive errors in a black adult population. METHODS The Barbados Eye Study, a population-based study, included 4709 Barbados-born citizens, or 84% of a random sample, 40 to 84 years of age. Myopia and hyperopia were defined as a spherical equivalent <-0.5 diopters and >+0.5 diopters, respectively, based on automated refraction. Analyses included 4036 black participants without history of cataract surgery. Associations with myopia and hyperopia were evaluated in logistic regression analyses. RESULTS The prevalence of myopia was 21.9% and was higher in men (25.0%) than in women (19.5%). The prevalence of hyperopia was 46.9% and was higher in women (51.8%) than in men (40.5%). The prevalence of myopia decreased from 17% in persons 40 to 49 years of age to 11% in those 50 to 59 years of age, but increased after 60 years of age. The prevalence of hyperopia increased from 29% at 40 to 49 years of age to 65% at 50 to 59 years of age, and tended to decline thereafter. A higher prevalence of myopia was positively associated (P < 0.05) with lifetime occupations requiring nearwork, nuclear opacities, posterior subcapsular opacities, glaucoma, and ocular hypertension. Factors associated with hyperopia were the same as for myopia, except for occupation, and in the opposite direction. CONCLUSIONS High prevalences of myopia and hyperopia were found in this large black adult population. The prevalence of myopia (hyperopia) increased (decreased) after 60 years of age, which is inconsistent with data from other studies. The high prevalence of age-related cataract, glaucoma, and other eye conditions in the Barbados Eye Study population may contribute to the findings.
The Split Personality of Planning

The international movement toward recognition of indigenous rights over the past thirty years has created a number of complex and compelling issues in planning for the use of land and natural resources. Planning should have much to say about many of these issues, given its concern for the use of land and resources, its focus on problem-solving, and its normative disposition. There is, however, only a modest literature on indigenous planning. Thus, we draw on the planning literature, but also call heavily on work from associated disciplines to introduce to planning scholars some of the problems and opportunities indigenous communities face with respect to land and resource management.
Does financial flexibility reduce investment distortions

The average U.S. firm has less leverage than one would expect based on the trade-off between tax shields and bankruptcy costs. We focus on firms’ financial flexibility and examine whether firms preserve debt capacity to reduce investment distortions in the future. We find that firms with high unused debt capacity invest more in future years than do firms with low unused debt capacity. Furthermore, firms that are reluctant to borrow in unconstrained periods are more likely to issue debt in periods in which access to capital markets is more constrained.
Sport programme implementation as translation and organizational identity construction: the implementation of Drive-in sport in Swedish sports as an illustration

This article outlines a theoretical framework to be used in the analysis of sport programme implementation. The need for such a framework resides in the increase in government interest in sport during the last decades, expressed in various top-down programmes positioning voluntary sports clubs as intended implementers, and in recent calls for a theoretical grounding of implementation analysis. The framework consists of two main parts. One is the translation perspective, proposed as an approach to understand sport programmes as open to (re)construction. The other is the organizational identity concept, proposed as a tool to understand how and why implementing organizations interpret and act upon, i.e., translate sport programmes. It is argued that the use of the framework, in tandem with the proposed methodological approach ‘follow the actor’, will provide new insights into the sport programme implementation analysis. An analysis of a national initiative on organized spontaneous sports, part of the Swedish government’s programme ‘The Lift for Sport’, is used to illustrate the proposed framework.
The European Timeshare Consumer in the Twenty‐First Century

This paper outlines the results of the most recent pan-European survey of timeshare and its owners. The paper begins by placing timeshare in context of the European leisure sector and outlining previous research on timeshare. It then goes on to examine the results of a major survey of timeshare owners and the industry. The results unveil the profile of timeshare owners in Europe, their purchasing behaviour and their future intentions; it also looks into the satisfaction of the timeshare experience. The survey demonstrates that timeshare represents a significant sector of the European accommodation market a d that in general, consumers have a high satisfaction rate with their use of timeshare.
Nitric oxide synthase activity and Doppler parameters in the fetoplacental and uteroplacental circulation in preeclampsia.

OBJECTIVE We investigated the hypothesis that changes in blood flow in the uteroplacental and fetoplacental circulation in preeclampsia are associated with an abnormality of placental or uterine placental bed nitric oxide (NO) synthesis. METHODS We measured pulsatility indices on Doppler waveform analysis from uterine and umbilical arteries in 20 patients with preeclampsia and 14 healthy pregnant controls before elective cesarean section. During cesarean section, biopsies from the uterine placental bed and the placenta were taken and the nitric oxide synthase (NOS) activity was measured by the [3H] L-arginine-[3H] L-citrulline conversion assay in these samples. RESULTS The NOS activity was significantly lower in the uterine placental bed in comparison to the placental tissue (p < 0.01). Placental NOS activity was similar between patients with preeclampsia and healthy controls and in the groups with either a pathological or a normal Doppler flow in the umbilical artery. In the uterine placental bed however, NOS activity from patients with preeclampsia was significantly lower (p < 0.01), whereas the blood flow resistance in the uterine arteries was elevated (p < 0.01) in comparison to healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS Our data show that pathological Doppler waveforms in the uterine arteries of patients with preeclampsia are paralleled by diminished NOS activity in the uterine placental bed. Therefore, the compromised NO production in the uterine placental bed may play an important role in the impaired uteroplacental blood flow and potentially in some pathological features of preeclampsia such as intervillous thrombosis formation and fetal growth retardation.
Energy, Environment, and Economic Growth

A closed dynamic input-output model is used to appraise the effects of specific pollution abatement and new energy technologies on the rate of economic growth and on the relative importance of sectors in the U.S. economy over the next 10 to 15 years. Three sets of structural changes are considered: (1) expected changes in technology for electric power generation, transmission, and distribution; (2) reliance on coal gasification for additional fossil fuel consumption; and (3) pollution abatement to meet stricter standards for six types of air, water, and solid waste pollution. All of these changes tend to reduce the long-run growth potential of the system. Taken separately, none of them has a striking effect on the capital and output proportions of the economy nor on its growth rate, but their combined effect could be substantial. However, the computations show that the effects of increased pollution abatement and energy costs could be offset by modest reductions in the growth of energy consumption or by increased rates of consumer savings.
Varieties of Asian welfare capitalisms and the influence of globalization

Asian welfare capitalisms as well as advanced economies face the risks associated with globalization. In order to understand how Asian welfare capitalisms respond to globalization, it is essential to describe the institutional diversity of Asian welfare capitalisms and the welfare–risk nexus. This paper defines four types of Asian welfare capitalisms based on social spending data and investigates the welfare–risk nexus by focusing on globalization risks, such as a globalized production process, trade openness, and financial integration. The empirical results based on multiple factor analysis and cluster analysis clearly show that Asian welfare capitalisms are heterogeneous and that four clusters can be found in the welfare–risk nexus based on the dimensions present in Asian economies in the 2000s. This analysis stresses that globalization has different effects on these types of Asian welfare capitalisms according to their welfare–risk nexuses.
Redesigning generation control in power systems: Methodology, stability and delay robustness

In this paper, we propose modifications in the generation control in power systems to improve the economic efficiency, stability and robustness of generator regulation in real time. We first present the state-space description of a conventional power network model describing system dynamics around a nominal operating condition. We then formulate an optimization problem describing system regulation under exogenous disturbances, following which the redesign methodology is presented. The optimality, stability and delay robustness of the redesigned dynamics are studied, where we also introduce controllable loads. The performance of the redesigned control scheme is illustrated by numerical examples.
Novel investigation of influencing factors for corrosive interface degradation in wire bond contacts

Wire bonding is still the dominating technology for realizing the first level contact of semiconductors. In the last decades miniaturization and increasing connection density resulted in new challenges in terms of reliability and long term stability. But now additionally the movement towards harsher application environments leads to new problems in automotive applications (also e-mobility) as well as in power applications for regenerative energy systems (solar, offshore, geothermal etc.). For example higher temperatures occur in the manufacturing process due to lead free soldering, in automotive applications close to the engine or in the exhaust area and in tracking systems of solar panels. Furthermore aggressive media like oily or salty atmosphere and moisture are a strain on the contact stability. Corrosion effects in especially Au/Al and Al/Cu wire bond interfaces are the interaction result of temperature, moisture, aggressive media and different electrical or electrochemical potentials. The paper presents the first step in a substantial investigation with the goal to get profound knowledge about the influencing factors for corrosive interface degradation in wire bond contacts. We tried to reproduce the corrosion mechanisms with different halides (e.g. iodine, fluorine, bromine) which are known as corrosion initiator. The halides concentrations were varied as well as the thermal aging conditions (e.g. high temperature storage, damp heat test, thermo cycling, biased high temperature storage). The interface morphology and micro structure of the samples were analysed after focused ion beam preparation (FIB) using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmissions electron microscopy (TEM) including energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS).
Immigrants' Complementarities and Native Wages: Evidence from California

As of 2004 California employed almost 30% of all foreign born workers in the U.S. and was the state with the largest percentage of immigrants in the labor force. It received a very large number of uneducated immigrants so that two thirds of workers with no schooling degree in California were foreign-born in 2004. If immigration harms the labor opportunities of natives, especially the least skilled ones, California was the place where these effects should have been particularly strong. But is it possible that immigrants raised the demand for California's native workers, rather than harming it? After all immigrants have different skills and tend to work in different occupations then natives and hence they may raise productivity and the demand for complementary production tasks and skills. We consider workers of different education and age as imperfectly substitutable in production and we exploit differences in immigration across these groups to infer their impact on US natives. In order to isolate the "supply-driven" variation of immigrants across skills and to identify the labor market responses of natives we use a novel instrumental variable strategy. Our estimates use migration by skill group to other U.S. states as instrument for migration to California. Migratory flows to other states, in fact, share the same "push" factors as those to California but clearly are not affected by the California-specific "pull" factors. We find that between 1960 and 2004 immigration did not produce a negative migratory response from natives. To the contrary, as immigrants were imperfect substitutes for natives with similar education and age we find that they stimulated, rather than harmed, the demand and wages of most U.S. native workers.
Cognitive Skills, Non-Cognitive Skills, and the Employment and Wages of Young Adults in Rural China

The objective of this paper is to examine whether noncognitive skills explain differences in employment status and hourly wages even after controlling for age, experience, schooling and cognitive skills. Of particular interest is to examine the relative magnitudes of the impacts of the cognitive and noncognitive skills on these labor market outcomes. Data used in this paper come from the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF), which followed a random sample of 2,000 children in rural areas of Gansu Province who were 9-12 years old in the year 2000. Three waves of surveys were completed in 2000, 2004, and 2007-2009. The GSCF is the first large-scale data collection on child and adolescent cognitive and noncognitive skills in rural China.
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

The End of Poverty may be a triumph. It fulfils the fairytale aspiration towards a better existence for the world’s poorest within the constraints of contemporary finance. Seldom has modern economics put forth a blueprint with so audacious a goal in mind. In The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs makes us believe, really believe that it is possible to overcome economic hardship in the developing world and achieve true prosperity. He shares his thoughts with eloquence and meticulous detail. With a foreword provided by Bono, we are immediately prepared for a script that is indeed larger than life, for a bold and daring plan, a mission seemingly impossible. It is suddenly hip to talk about poverty, permissible to question existing global economic policies and even forgivable to demand reform. Sachs allows us a glimpse into his own mind – the journey through his successes in Bolivia, Poland and Russia and now a passionate conviction to extrapolate these advances onto an African setting. However, his battles as an economic reformer historically have not been without defeat. The relative economic setbacks suffered in Bolivia and Poland are not the subject of this book. They are not in the spirit of The End of Poverty. Instead we are reassured by his familiarity with tenuous economic terrain. As a personal advisor to the United Nations’ Secretary General, Sachs affords us exposure to a classified frame of mind, off the beaten path. He allows us to see that it may be possible, by direct intervention, to select a Luo village like Sauri, ravaged by AIDS, poverty and tropical disease and offer hope for a brighter existence. Africa is by no means an easy topic, far less an easy economic arena to provide as a test ground. Sachs however, makes a brilliant argument even to the lay reader wading through some of the technical econo-jargon. The more one reads, the easier it becomes to believe that the cost of a better future for Africa is within affordable limits, certainly by western standards. The 120 billion dollars of aid that he demands would theoretically be used to establish better infrastructure, schools, roads, sanitation and disease control. The question forever begs, however, how easily will this translate into practical African terms? How successful has Africa been in the past at implementing globally contrived economic reforms? The End of Poverty does not answer these questions either. But one suspects that may never have been its mandate. Instead it proffers an alternative opinion about poverty with a pointed focus on eradication rather than mere elimination. The policies are complex and relatively controversial. Admittedly, any idea as radical as those in The End of Poverty can only be expressed in the esoteric parlance of revolution and never be slowed by the pedantic rules of evolution. How else could they ever achieve the triumph for Africa?
The Role of International Shocks in Australia’s Business Cycle

This paper examines the sources of Australia’s business cycle fluctuations. The cyclical component of GDP is extracted using the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition and a structural VAR model is identified using robust sign restrictions derived from a small open economy model. In contrast to previous VAR studies, international factors are found to contribute to over half of the output forecast errors, whereas demand shocks have relatively modest effects.
THE EFFICIENCY OF THE RUSSIAN STOCK MARKET: A REVISIT OF THE RANDOM WALK HYPOTHESIS

This study determines whether the Russian stock market is weak form efficient by examining if the stock returns follow a random walk. Following previous studies, we use autocorrelation, the Box-Ljung test statistics and the variance ratio test and find that the Russian stock market was not efficient in the weak form during the testing period. The results suggest that the stock prices in Russia do not reflect all the information from past stock prices and abnormal returns can be achieved by investors by capitalizing on market inefficiency. This is also brings into question of the Russian stock market ability to efficiently redistribute capital to the different segments of the Russian economy.
Tourism and Poverty Alleviation: An Integrative Research Framework

The past decade has seen an upsurge of interest from the governments and development organisations in a tourism-based approach to poverty alleviation. More specifically, poverty alleviation has been established as a major priority within the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) itself, as is evidenced by the launching of the concept of ST-EP (Sustainable Tourism as an effective tool for Eliminating Poverty). In contrast, the implications of tourism for poverty alleviation have been largely neglected by the tourism academic community. Relevant research to date is fragmented, limited in scope, and lacks a consistent methodological development. To address these deficiencies, this paper presents an integrative research framework, which synthesises multiple perspectives and can be used as an overarching guideline to stimulate and guide other future enquiries on tourism and poverty alleviation. Towards this end, a number of research needs and opportunities have also been identified and suggested along with the presentation of the framework.
Amplitude Spectra of Line-Motion Stimuli

The line-motion illusion has been regarded as the result of attention. An alternative interpretation is that the illusion is related to apparent motion which would predict the stimuli to contain motion energy associated with the direction of the illusory motion. In order to examine this possibility Fourier transforms of x – t plots of line-motion stimuli were generated under a variety of conditions. The sums of amplitudes associated with movement in the directions away from the cue relative to that towards the cue were compared to previously published psychophysical observations. It was found that the amplitude sums are largely consistent with the psychophysical results. In the few cases where there were discrepancies between results based on amplitude spectra and psychophysical findings, these discrepancies could be accounted for by making relatively simple and plausible assumptions. The present observations suggest that motion energy may be sufficient to account for the line-motion illusion.
Exploring MALDI‐TOF MS approach for a rapid identification of Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis field isolates

The aim of the study was to explore the suitability of matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionisation time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (MALDI‐TOF MS) for a rapid and correct identification of Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis (MAP) field isolates.
Euler Sparse Representation for Image Classification

Sparse representation based classification (SRC) has gained great success in image recognition. Motivated by the fact that kernel trick can capture the nonlinear similarity of features, which may help improve the separability and margin between nearby data points, we propose Euler SRC for image classification, which is essentially the SRC with Euler sparse representation. To be specific, it first maps the images into the complex space by Euler representation, which has a negligible effect for outliers and illumination, and then performs complex SRC with Euler representation. The major advantage of our method is that Euler representation is explicit with no increase of the image space dimensionality, thereby enabling this technique to be easily deployed in real applications. To solve Euler SRC, we present an efficient algorithm, which is fast and has good convergence. Extensive experimental results illustrate that Euler SRC outperforms traditional SRC and achieves better performance for image classification.
Are you being served

Do you ever know the book? Yeah, this is a very interesting book to read. As we told previously, reading is not kind of obligation activity to do when we have to obligate. Reading should be a habit, a good habit. By reading, you can open the new world and get the power from the world. Everything can be gained through the book. Well in brief, book is very powerful. As what we offer you right here, this are you being served is as one of reading book for you.
The returns of investment in tertiary technological education in greece

Abstract This study estimates the returns of investment in the Greek tertiary technological education from the student's and the society's point of view. The study uses earnings data from a stratified sample. The methods used for the estimation of the rates of return were the elaborate and the Mincerian. In the latter method we used both the actual experience from the sample and the potential experience. The estimated rates of return by implementing the two methods are similar. Additionally, the private rate of return by using the actual experience is smaller compared to that arising from the potential experience. The difference is bigger for females than for males. The final conclusion is that the social and private investment in tertiary technological education is an efficient investment.