Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EXAMINING THE UTILITY OF BEHAVIORAL ECONOMIC DEMAND IN ADDICTION SCIENCE

OF DISSERTATION EXAMINING THE UTILITY OF BEHAVIORAL ECONOMIC DEMAND IN ADDICTION SCIENCE The marriage of perspectives from behavioral economic theory and learning theory has the potential to advance an understanding of substance use and substance use disorder. Behavioral economic demand is a central concept to this interdisciplinary approach. Evaluating demand in the laboratory and clinic can improve previous research on the relative reinforcing effects of drugs by accounting for the multi-dimensional nature of reinforcement rather than viewing reinforcement as a unitary construct. Recent advances in the commodity purchase task methodology have further simplified the measurement of demand values in human participants. This dissertation project presents a programmatic series of studies designed to demonstrate the utility of using a behavioral economic demand framework and the purchase task methodology for understanding substance use disorder through basic and applied science research. Experiments are presented spanning a continuum from theoretical and methodological development to longitudinal work and clinical application. These experiments demonstrate three key conclusions regarding behavioral economic demand. First, behavioral economic demand provides a reliable and valid measure of drug valuation that is applicable to varied drug types and participant populations. Second, behavioral economic demand is a stimulus-selective measure specifically reflecting valuation for the commodity under study. Third, behavioral economic demand provides incremental information about substance use in the laboratory and clinical setting above and beyond traditional measures of reinforcer valuation and other behavioral economic variables. These findings collectively highlight the benefits of behavioral economic demand and provide an important platform for future work in addiction science.
The Development of a Comparative Appraisal of Perceived Resources and Demands for Principals.

DREW RORY MAERZ. The development of a comparative appraisal of perceived resources and demands for principals. (Under direction of DR. CLAUDIA P. FLOWERS) The purpose of this study was to develop the Comparative Appraisal of perceived Resources and Demands for Principals (CARD-P), which is used for appraising perceived stress in the elementary school principalship. An appraisal-based definition of stress was derived from literature and used as the theoretical framework for creating the instrument. The instrument was developed to capture the cognitive-transactional nature of stress as the differential between the subjective appraisal of demands and resources within the school/school district environment. The instrument was adapted from the Classroom Appraisal of Resources and Demands – School-aged Version developed by Lambert, McCarthy, & Abbott-Shim (2001). The CARD-P was developed in three stages. The first stage utilized a questionnaire given to a purposeful sample of six current principals stratified by grade level to determine characteristics (personal, school, and school system), demands, and resources perceived as most contributing to stress in the principalship. Due to the differences between perceptions of elementary and high school principals, the instrument was designed for elementary principals. The second stage aligned the characteristics, demands and resources with relevant literature to generate items and subscales for inclusion in a prototype. In the final stage, cognitive interviews with six elementary principals were used to improve the comprehension, structure, and clarity of the instrument.
A WWW-based digital library for antiquarian collections

Digital library technologies have benefited during the last years from the impressive increase of digital data capture, storage and transmission capabilities along with the consequent fall of their cost [7]. The widespread use of the World-wide Web (WWW) also enables digital libraries to meet a very large, international, population. Relying on digital resources for academic researches is now a reality for many scientists, but it is usually restricted to journals, acts or bibliographic databases. For humanistic studies, a step forward is the digitalization of the historical sources themselves. In France, the digitalization project of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) opened this trend. The BNF WWW server (http://gallica.bnf.fr) has demonstrated the feasibility of diffusing a large, image-based, digital repository over the internet and time has come now for smaller academic institutions to undertake a digitalization program and a public diffusion of a part of their own antiquarian collections.
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS AND FINANCE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND Dealing with Trading Thinness in Event Studies: An Improved Trade-to-Trade Model

This paper offers an improvement to the trade-to-trade model for event studies. While the trade-to-trade model of Maynes and Rumsey (1993) addresses the problem of thin trading by eliminating periods in which no trading is recorded, the proposed improvement addresses the influence of zero-value returns resulting from liquidity trading. This entails segmentation by the sign of company returns (positive, negative, zero). The approach allows for all levels of thinness in security trading. It is evaluated against the trade-to-trade methodology developed by Maynes and Rumsey (1993) and the Market Model using Monte Carlo simulations developed from the method of Brown and Warner (1980 and 1985). The improved trade-to-trade model is better at picking up the presence of very small levels of abnormal performance.
Energy and time optimization for wireless computation offloading

Computation offloading is emerging as an effective approach to extend the capabilities of mobile devices by offloading tasks from resource-poor mobile devices to resource-rich clouds. In this paper, we investigate the problem of energy and time optimization for wireless computation offloading under the scenario with multiple mobile device users. Firstly, for the case with energy minimization as the objective, we formulate the computation offloading decision problem among multiple mobile device users as a computation offloading game with random access. We analyze the structural property of the game and then devise an algorithm to achieve the Nash equilibrium by exploiting its finite improvement property. Secondly, for the case with time minimization as the objective, we derive the optimal portion of task to be offloaded for each mobile user. Numerical results validates our theoretical analysis.
A Distance Measurement Platform Dedicated to Electrical Engineering

This paper presents the remote laboratory eLab, dedicated to electrical engineering education. eLab is a flexible measurement platform that permits to run more than 130 experiments in the fields of electronics and microelectronics. The instructor can choose or create different types of pedagogical scenarios, covering teaching requirements from undergraduate to graduate levels. Furthermore, eLab implementation and use do not require any commercial software. Its reliability has been proven during many practical classes in France and other countries. eLab is now a key component of the Bordeaux University e-Learning material in electrical engineering. In the field of analog integrated circuits design, eLab offers a unique measurement solution, which can be combined to traditional circuit simulation sessions.
Fault tolerance with shortest paths in regular and irregular networks

Fault tolerance has become an important part of current supercomputers. Local dynamic fault tolerance is the most expedient way of tolerating faults by preconfiguring the network with multiple paths from every node/switch to every destination. In this paper we present a local shortest path dynamic fault-tolerance mechanism inspired by a solution developed for the Internet, that can be applied to any shortest path routing algorithm such as dimension ordered routing, fat tree routing, layered shortest path, etc., and provide a solution for achieving deadlock freedom in the presence of faults. Simulation results show that 1) for fat trees this yields the to this day highest throughput and lowest requirements on virtual layers for dynamic one-fault tolerance, 2) we require in general few layers to achieve deadlock freedom, and 3) for irregular topologies it gives at most a 10 times performance increase compared to FRoots.
The usefulness of overfitting via artificial neural networks for non-stationary time series

The use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) has received increasing attention in the analysis and prediction of financial time series. Stationarity of the observed financial time series is the basic underlying assumption in the practical application of ANN on financial time series. In this paper, we will investigate whether it is feasible to relax the stationarity condition to non-stationary time series. Our result discusses the range of complexities caused by non-stationary behavior and finds that overfitting by ANN could be useful in the analysis of such non-stationary complex financial time series.
Human capital investment, Signaling, and Wage differentials

In the real world, two types of education investment may exist. One of these contributes to labor skills, and the other does not, corresponding to human capital and signal invest- ment, respectively. The question is how individuals determine the ratio of these alternative investments. In response, we formulate an overlapping generations economy where the rich and the poor invest in both types of education. We argue that the ratio of human capital to signal investment is a U-shaped function of the wage differentials between the rich and the poor. Moreover, we identify three patterns of stable steady states for these wage differentials, namely, no-inequality, high-inequality, and multiple steady states. Using these results, we conclude that exogenous factors, such as skill-biased technical change, may switch the steady state from no-inequality to high-inequality, and as a result, the ratio of human capital to signal investment changes in a U-shaped form during the transition to the new steady state.
The association between arterial stiffness and carotid intima-media thickness in patients with known cardiovascular risk factors

Objectives The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between pulse wave velocity and carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) in patients with different cardiovascular risk factors. Material and methods This prospective study included 223 patients with at least 2 risk factors for atherosclerosis, divided based on the presence of coronary artery disease (CAD): 140 patients with angiographically documented CAD and 83 patients without CAD. The patients were compared with a control group of 74 healthy age-matched subjects (CON). We determined the following parameters: blood pressure, total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, fasting serum glucose and renal parameters: blood urea nitrogen, serum creatinine, and uric acid levels in all patients. Arterial stiffness was measured with non-invasive oscillometric Arteriograph device (Tensiomed Ltd., Budapest, Hungary) and carotid scan was performed with B-mode ultrasound. Results Patients with CAD had increased values of aortic PWV compared with patients without CAD and CON group (12.5±0.7 vs 10.9±0.6 vs 8.5±0.6 m/s, all p<0.001). The values of carotid IMT were significantly higher in CAD patients as compared to patients without CAD and CON group (1±0.05 versus 1.0±0.07 versus 0.7±0.08 mm, all p<0.001). The carotid IMT significantly correlated with aortic PWV (r=0.787, p<0.001). Conclusions Carotid IMT and aortic PWV are useful non-invasive methods for atherosclerosis detection in patients with known cardiovascular risk factors. Both determinations in the same patient will increase the clinical relevance.
Indications of a Large Fraction of Spectroscopic Binaries among Nuclei of Planetary Nebulae

Previous work indicates that about 10% of planetary-nebula nuclei (PNNi) are photometrically variable short-period binaries with periods of hours to a few days. These systems have most likely descended from common-envelope (CE) interactions in initially much wider binaries. Population-synthesis studies suggest that these very close pairs could be the short-period tail of a much larger post-CE binary population with periods of up to a few months. We have initiated a radial-velocity (RV) survey of PNNi with the WIYN 3.5 m telescope and Hydra spectrograph, which is aimed at discovering these intermediate-period binaries. We present initial results showing that 10 out of 11 well-observed PNNi have variable RVs, suggesting that a significant binary population may be present. However, further observations are required because we have as yet been unable to fit our sparse measurements with definite orbital periods and because some of the RV variability might be due to variations in the stellar winds of some of our PNNi.
Lipopolysaccharide-Binding Protein Critically Regulates Lipopolysaccharide-Induced IFN-β Signaling Pathway in Human Monocytes1

LPS binding to Toll-like receptor 4 induces a large number of genes through activation of NF-κB and IFN-regulatory factor-3 (IRF-3). However, no previous reports have tested the role of serum proteins in LPS-induced gene expression profiles. To investigate how serum proteins affect LPS-induced signaling, we investigated LPS-inducible genes in PBMC using an oligonucleotide probe-array system. Approximately 120 genes up-regulated by LPS were hierarchically divided into two clusters. Induction of one cluster, containing only IFN-inducible genes, was serum dependent. Real-time PCR analysis confirmed that IFN-inducible genes were induced only in the presence of serum, whereas inflammatory genes were induced both in the presence and absence of serum. Further analysis demonstrated that addition of LPS-binding protein (LBP), but not of soluble CD14 to the serum-free medium enabled the induction of IFN-inducible genes and IFN-β itself by LPS in human monocytes. The mRNAs for IFN-β and IFN-inducible genes were induced by LPS only in the presence of serum from LBP+/+ mice, and not in the presence of serum from LBP−/− mice. Blocking experiments also confirmed the involvement of LBP in this phenomenon. Immunoblotting analysis showed that phosphorylation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase, p38, IRF-3, tyrosine kinase 2, and STAT1 by LPS, but not of NF-κB and extracellular signal-regulated kinase was abrogated in the absence of LBP. This critical role for LBP implies the presence of possible mechanisms linking LBP to the intracellular signaling between Toll-like receptor 4 and IRF-3, leading to the induction of IFN-β by LPS.
Vaccination coverage and physician distribution in the United States, 1997.

BACKGROUND How many physicians are needed in the United States and how they should be allocated geographically and among specialties has been the subject of intense debate, a debate that has often focused more on costs to third-party payers and government than on benefits to health. Child health is a central aspect of public health, and immunization is one of its most cost-effective and easily measured interventions. OBJECTIVE To examine the association of immunization rates and delivery characteristics with the distribution of child health physicians in the United States in 1997. DESIGN Cross-sectional ecological study, using the state as the unit of analysis, immunization rates and delivery characteristics (from the National Immunization Survey) as the main outcome measures, concentration of the principal physician specialties providing routine care to children (pediatric, family, and general physicians from the American Medical Association Masterfile) as the main risk factor, while controlling for demographic and economic factors (from the Bureau of the Census and other sources). RESULTS Of the 96 689 physicians providing routine care to children, 37% were pediatric, 49% family, and 14% general physicians. Higher rates of vaccination, private sector vaccination, and increased numbers of public and private vaccination sites were all associated with the concentration of pediatricians but not of family or general physicians. The distribution of pediatricians was strongly associated with the distribution of residency positions. CONCLUSIONS Pediatrician distribution is a strong correlate to immunization rates and delivery characteristics. Opportunities to affect pediatrician distribution may exist with allocation of residency positions.
Surgery for endometriosis-associated infertility: do we exaggerate the magnitude of effect?

Objective: Surgery remains the mainstay in the diagnosis and management of endometriosis. The number of surgeries performed for endometriosis worldwide is ever increasing, however do we have evidence for improvement of infertility after the surgery and do we exaggerate the magnitude of effect of surgery when we counsel our patients? The management of patients who failed the surgery could be by repeat surgery or assisted reproduction. What evidence do we have for patients who fail assisted reproduction and what is their best chance for achieving pregnancy? Material and methods: In this study we reviewed the evidence-based practice pertaining to the outcome of surgery assisted infertility associated with endometriosis. Manuscripts published in PubMed and Science Direct as well as the bibliography cited in these articles were reviewed. Patients with peritoneal endometriosis with mild and severe disease were addressed separately. Patients who failed the primary surgery and managed by repeat or assisted reproduction technology were also evaluated. Patients who failed assisted reproduction and managed by surgery were also studied to determine of the best course of action. Results: In patients with minimal and mild pelvic endometriosis, excision or ablation of the peritoneal endometriosis increases the pregnancy rate. In women with severe endometriosis, controlled trials suggested an improvement of pregnancy rate. In women with ovarian endometrioma 4 cm or larger ovarian cystectomy increases the pregnancy rate, decreases the recurrence rate, but is associated with decrease in ovarian reserve. In patients who have failed the primary surgery, assisted reproduction appears to be significantly more effective than repeat surgery. In patients who failed assisted reproduction, the management remains to be extremely controversial. Surgery in expert hands might result in significant improvement in pregnancy rate. Conclusion: In women with minimal and mild endometriosis, surgical excision or ablation of endometriosis is recommended as first line with doubling the pregnancy rate. In patients with moderate and severe endometriosis surgical excision also is recommended as first line. In patients who failed to conceive spontaneously after surgery, assisted reproduction is more effective than repeat surgery. Following surgery, the ovarian reserve may be reduced as determined by Anti Mullerian Hormone. The antral follicle count is not significantly reduced. In women with large endometriomas > 4 cm the ovarian endometrioma should be removed. In women who have failed assisted reproduction, further management remains controversial in the present time.
Elucidation of Cross-Talk and Specificity of Early Response Mechanisms to Salt and PEG-Simulated Drought Stresses in Brassica napus Using Comparative Proteomic Analysis

To understand the cross-talk and specificity of the early responses of plants to salt and drought, we performed physiological and proteome analyses of Brassica napus seedlings pretreated with 245 mM NaCl or 25% polyethylene glycol (PEG) 6000 under identical osmotic pressure (-1.0 MPa). Significant decreases in water content and photosynthetic rate and excessive accumulation of compatible osmolytes and oxidative damage were observed in response to both stresses. Unexpectedly, the drought response was more severe than the salt response. We further identified 45 common differentially expressed proteins (DEPs), 143 salt-specific DEPs and 160 drought-specific DEPs by isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) analysis. The proteome quantitative data were then confirmed by multiple reaction monitoring (MRM). The differences in the proteomic profiles between drought-treated and salt-treated seedlings exceeded the similarities in the early stress responses. Signal perception and transduction, transport and membrane trafficking, and photosynthesis-related proteins were enriched as part of the molecular cross-talk and specificity mechanism in the early responses to the two abiotic stresses. The Ca2+ signaling, G protein-related signaling, 14-3-3 signaling pathway and phosphorylation cascades were the common signal transduction pathways shared by both salt and drought stress responses; however, the proteins with executive functions varied. These results indicate functional specialization of family proteins in response to different stresses, i.e., CDPK21, TPR, and CTR1 specific to phosphorylation cascades under early salt stress, whereas STN7 and BSL were specific to phosphorylation cascades under early drought stress. Only the calcium-binding EF-hand family protein and ZKT were clearly identified as signaling proteins that acted as cross-talk nodes for salt and drought signaling pathways. Our study provides new clues and insights for developing strategies to improve the tolerance of crops to complex, multiple environmental stresses.
The Impact of Information and Communication Technology on the Performance of Libyan Banks

The utilisation of a new technology became widespread in both developed and developing economies especially in the banking sector in the recent years. However Libya was still using traditional methods in commercial banking systems. This paper aims to demonstrate, through research, the possibility of the transformation of Libyan commercial banks from the traditional style of work to the modern style based on the idea of electronic banking, by recognizing the reality of the banks in Libya and the availability of the basic requirements for a shift towards modern banks. This paper relies on previous studies on the use of ICT within the banking sector, and the focus is on getting opinions on what was perceived as one of the main factors, that is, ICT, which can affect the performance and efficiency of commercial banks and the impact of banking reforms on the banking sector in Libya since 2005. The paper is presented from a practitioner's perspective, using raw data gathered from interviews with seventeen of Libyan employees working at a variety of top levels within the five largest commercial banks operating in Libya. The results confirmed the level of using ICT is low in Libyan commercial banks; in addition an analysis revealed that poor state infrastructure, especially within the fields of telecommunications and electricity, causes unattractive performance within Libyan commercial banking operation and government intervention was the main reason behind the lack implementation of ICT.