Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real Exchange Rate and External Balance: How Important are Price Deflators?

This paper contrasts real exchange rate (RER) measures based on different deflators (CPI, GDP deflator, and ULC) and discusses potential implications for the link—or lack thereof—between RER and external balance. We begin by documenting patterns in the evolution of different measures of RERs, and confirm that the choice of deflator plays a significant role in RER movements. A subsequent empirical investigation based on 35 developed and emerging market economies over 1995 to 2014 yields comprehensive and robust evidence that only the RER deflated by ULC exhibits contemporaneous patterns consistent with the expenditure-switching mechanism. We rationalize the empirical findings by introducing a simple model featuring nominal rigidity and trade in intermediate goods as the one in Obstfeld (2001) and Devereux and Engel (2007), which is shown to generate qualitatively identical patterns to empirical findings.
Influences of State and Trait Affect on Behavior, Feedback-Related Negativity, and P3b in the Ultimatum Game

The present study investigates how different emotions can alter social bargaining behavior. An important paradigm to study social bargaining is the Ultimatum Game. There, a proposer gets a pot of money and has to offer part of it to a responder. If the responder accepts, both players get the money as proposed by the proposer. If he rejects, none of the players gets anything. Rational choice models would predict that responders accept all offers above 0. However, evidence shows that responders typically reject a large proportion of all unfair offers. We analyzed participants’ behavior when they played the Ultimatum Game as responders and simultaneously collected electroencephalogram data in order to quantify the feedback-related negativity and P3b components. We induced state affect (momentarily emotions unrelated to the task) via short movie clips and measured trait affect (longer-lasting emotional dispositions) via questionnaires. State happiness led to increased acceptance rates of very unfair offers. Regarding neurophysiology, we found that unfair offers elicited larger feedback-related negativity amplitudes than fair offers. Additionally, an interaction of state and trait affect occurred: high trait negative affect (subsuming a variety of aversive mood states) led to increased feedback-related negativity amplitudes when participants were in an angry mood, but not if they currently experienced fear or happiness. We discuss that increased rumination might be responsible for this result, which might not occur, however, when people experience happiness or fear. Apart from that, we found that fair offers elicited larger P3b components than unfair offers, which might reflect increased pleasure in response to fair offers. Moreover, high trait negative affect was associated with decreased P3b amplitudes, potentially reflecting decreased motivation to engage in activities. We discuss implications of our results in the light of theories and research on depression and anxiety.
The relationship between leadership preparation and the level of teachers’ interest in assuming a principalship in Chile

ABSTRACT There is a vast body of knowledge supporting the critical role of principal for school improvement and improved students’ learning outcomes. While, there is increasing evidence addressing the lack of interest in the principalship, training and preparation has been identified as a potential enhancer for principalship interest. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyse the relation between teacher’s interest in assuming a principalship and leadership preparation using a quantitative approach. A sample of 220 school teachers with no formal leadership responsibilities responded an online survey and their answers were analysed with descriptive, Pearson correlation and analysis of variance statistics. The findings indicated that age, professional training and opportunities to exercise leadership were relevant variables in understanding the level of interest of teachers. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Patient’s Satisfaction with Health Care: a Questionnaire Study of Different Aspects of Care

Aim. To determine the influence of sociodemographic factors on patients´ satisfaction with health care system. Methods. In a cross-sectional study, 1,995 patients from 12 municipalities of Zenica-Doboj Canton were interviewed after a visit to the practice. Individual interviews were conducted and the questionnaire was made on the basis of EUROPEP (European Task Force on Patient Evaluations of General Practice Care) standardized questionnaire. Results: Out of the total number patients, 47.1% were females, 47.9% were from urban population and median of age was 42.0 years (IQR = 30.0 to 53.0 years). The rural population was more likely to buy drugs for medical treatment (p < 0.001) and parenteral injections in primary care practice (p < 0.001). Patients with lower level of education were more likely: to be ordered for physical examination (p = 0.001), to buy drugs for medical treatment (p = 0.001), to buy parenteral injections in primary care practice (p < 0.001); to pay unofficially to someone from medical staff (p < 0.001); to feel that they could be better treated (p = 0.032) and they had longer waiting for health service in primary care practice (p < 0.001). Older population had better assessment of secondary (p = 0.040) and tertiary health care practices (p = 0.034); needed more time is needed to reach health facilities (p = 0.016), longer waiting for health service in primary care practice (p < 0.001); more likely to have health problems in the past 12 months but they did not request medical treatment (p = 0.008); more likely to be ordered for physical examination (p < 0.001); more likely to buy drugs for medical treatment (p = 0.004); more likely to buy parenteral injections in primary care practice (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The following variables: gender, age, overall perception of health status and financial status appear to be predictors of patients´ satisfaction.
A theoretical artificial approach on reducing mitochondrial abnormalities in Alzheimer's disease

Considering the latest researches on the significant between mitochondrial disorders and human diseases, mainly on the nervous system, we propose a novel solution concerning the enriching of healthy mitochondrial population into cells. It is a totally theoretical proposal and refers mostly to mitochondrial encephalomyopathies which involve to brain disorders, like Alzheimer's disease.
Impact of insurance and supply of health professionals on coverage of treatment for hypertension in Mexico: population based study

Objective To examine the independent and combined contributions of insurance status and supply of health professionals on coverage of antihypertensive treatment among adults in Mexico. Design Population based study. Setting Mexico. Participants 4032 hypertensive adults (2967 uninsured and 1065 insured): 1065 uninsured adults matched with 1065 adults insured through Seguro Popular, a programme to expand health insurance coverage to uninsured people in Mexico. Main outcome measures Coverage of antihypertensive treatment and coverage of antihypertensive treatment with control of blood pressure. Results Rates of treatment for hypertension varied by insurance status and supply of health professionals. Hypertensive adults insured through Seguro Popular had a significantly higher probability of receiving antihypertensive treatment (odds ratio 1.50, 95% confidence interval 1.27 to 1.78) and receiving antihypertensive treatment with control of blood pressure (1.35, 1.00 to 1.82). Greater supply of health professionals in areas with coverage through Seguro Popular was a significant predictor of antihypertensive treatment after adjusting for covariates (1.49, 1.00 to 2.20). Conclusions Expansion of healthcare coverage to uninsured people in Mexico was associated with greater use of antihypertensive treatment and blood pressure control, particularly in areas with a greater supply of health professionals.
The influence of seasons and lunar cycle on hospital outcomes following ascending aortic dissection repair.

OBJECTIVES The effect of the lunar cycle and seasonal variation on ascending aortic dissection surgery outcomes is unknown. We investigated these temporal effects on risk-adjusted hospital mortality and then on the length of stay (LOS) following surgery for survivors. METHODS We examined prospectively collected data from cardiac operations at two major centres within a single state between January 1996 and December 2011. We first examined the relationship between the lunar cycle and seasonal variation, along with demographic and risk profile covariates, with mortality using univariate analyses, followed by multiple logistic regression modelling that controlled for demographic and patient risk variables including age, gender, risk profile (diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidaemia and renal failure), and two surgical groups: Group A, consisting of patients having repair of ascending aorta dissection repair only, and Group B, with those having ascending aorta repair plus aortic valve surgery or coronary bypass surgery or both. We further examined the relationship with LOS using both univariate and multiple regression analyses. RESULTS There were 210 patients who had repair of dissection in the study period, with 109 patients in Group A and 101 in Group B. The average age of this sample was 59.5 (standard deviation = 16.0), 65.7% were male and 18.1% died prior to discharge following repair. The greatest percentage of deaths occurred in winter (31.6%, n = 12), while the least were in summer (21.1%, n = 8) and fall (21.1%, n = 8). An overall χ(2) test found there was no difference in mortality for season (P = 0.55). Univariate analyses also found the age of patients who died vs lived was significantly higher (65.9 vs 58.1 years; P = 0.001), and a significantly greater (P = 0.029) percentage of patients with diabetes vs without diabetes died (41.7 vs 16.7%). Univariate analyses found all other covariates were not significantly related to mortality. In the multiple logistic regression model, there was no significant effect for season, while the odds of dying increased with age (odds ratio [OR] = 1.04, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] = 1.01-1.07, P = 0.012), and the odds of dying in the full-moon cycle vs the new moon cycle was significantly reduced (OR = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.05-0.81, P = 0.024). No other covariate significantly increased or decreased the odds of death, including diabetes risk, which had been significantly related to death in the univariate analysis. Within a linear regression model that examined the relationship with LOS, Group B (P = 0.020), male sex (P = 0.036) and the full-moon lunar phase (P = 0.001) were significantly related to shorter LOS. CONCLUSIONS Season had no effect on mortality or LOS following aortic dissection repair, while patient age significantly increased the odds of death. The full-moon cycle appeared to reduce the odds of death, and the full-moon cycle, along with being male and requiring a concomitant cardiac procedure, was associated with shorter LOS.
UVB-induced DNA breaks interfere with transcriptional induction of c-fos

Oxidative stress may play an important role in the carcinogenic action of UVB light (290 to 320 nm). UVB light induces the growth-related immediate-early gene c-fos in JB6 mouse epidermal cells, but at the same time it causes structural damage to DNA, in particular DNA strand breakage. We have studied the effect of the modulation of the frequencies of DNA breaks on the transcriptional induction of c-fos by changing the cellular antioxidant defense or by inhibiting break repair. Reduction of UVB-induced DNA breakage in a stable transfectant with an increased complement of glutathione peroxidase enhanced the induction of c-fos. In contrast, c-fos induction was diminished in stable transfectants with Cu,Zn-superoxide dismutase. Increasing the stationary concentration of UVB-induced DNA breaks by inhibition of repair in the presence of the adenosine diphosphoribose (ADPR)-transferase inhibitor 3-amino-benzamide suppressed the induction of c-fos. We conclude that DNA breaks which are induced by UVB via oxidative processes interfere with the transcriptional induction of c-fos. DNA breaks appear to exert a long-range effect on chromatin conformation which is incompatible with efficient transcription. This notion is supported by the observation that inhibition of break rejoining by 3-amino-benzamide suppressed the UVB induction of the endogenous c-fos gene and of a stably integrated construct containing the c-fos regulatory sequences linked to a reporter gene. In contrast, the induction of the same construct was not inhibited when it remained extrachromosomal in transient transfection experiments.
Performance Evaluation and Self-Designated Benchmark Indexes in the Mutual Fund Industry

Almost one-third of actively managed, diversified U.S. equity mutual funds specify a size and value/growth benchmark index in the fund prospectus that does not match the fund's actual style. Nevertheless, these "mismatched" benchmarks matter to fund investors. Performance relative to the specified benchmark is a significant determinant of a fund's subsequent cash inflows, even controlling for performance measures that better capture the fund's style. These incremental flows appear unlikely to be rational responses to abnormal returns. The evidence is consistent with the notion that mismatched self-designated benchmarks result from strategic fund behavior driven by the incentive to improve flows.
The Instrumental-Symbolic Framework: Organisational Image and Attractiveness of Potential Applicants and their Companions at a Job Fair

This study investigates perceptions of organisational image and attractiveness among 200 potential applicants for the Belgian Defense and the person (e.g. friend, parent) accompanying them to a job fair. The instrumental-symbolic framework is applied to conceptualise the key dimensions of an organisation's image as an employer. The results indicate that instrumental image attributes predict perceived organisational attractiveness for both potential applicants (social activities, structure, and advancement opportunities) and their companions (educational opportunities). Moreover, consistent with the instrumental-symbolic framework, symbolic image traits explain incremental variance in the attractiveness perceptions of potential applicants (sincerity, excitement, prestige, and ruggedness) as well as of companions (sincerity and ruggedness). Overall, instrumental and symbolic image predict attractiveness more strongly for potential applicants than for their companions, and potential applicants have a somewhat more positive view of the organisation. In addition, companions' perceived attractiveness positively predicts potential applicants' attractiveness beyond potential applicants' instrumental and symbolic image perceptions.
G-7 Inflation Forecasts

This Paper compares the forecasting performance of some leading models of inflation for the cross section of G-7 countries. We show that bivariate and trivariate models suggested by economic theory or statistical analysis are hardly better than univariate models. Phillips curve specifications fit well into this class. Significant improvements in both the MSE of the forecasts and turning point prediction are obtained with time-varying coefficients models that exploit international interdependencies. The performance of the latter class of models is independent of the sample, while it is not the case for standard specifications.
Hoplite

We can design an FPGA-optimized lightweight network-on-chip (NoC) router for flit-oriented packet-switched communication that is an order of magnitude smaller (in terms of LUTs and FFs) than state-of-the-art FPGA overlay routers available today. We present Hoplite, an efficient, lightweight, and fast FPGA overlay NoC that is designed to be small and compact by (1) using deflection routing instead of buffered switching to eliminate expensive FIFO buffers and (2) using a torus topology to reduce the cost of switch crossbar. Buffering and crossbar implementation complexities have traditionally limited speeds and imposed heavy resource costs in conventional FPGA overlay NoCs. We take care to exploit the fracturable lookup tables (LUT) organization of the FPGA to further improve the resource efficiency of mapping the expensive crossbar multiplexers. Hoplite can outperform classic, bidirectional, buffered mesh networks for single-flit-oriented FPGA applications by as much as 1.5 × (best achievable throughputs for a 10 × 10 system) or 2.5 × (allocating same amount of FPGA resources to both NoCs) for uniform random traffic. When compared to buffered mesh switches, FPGA-based deflection routers are ≈ 3.5 × smaller (HLS-generated switch) and 2.5 × faster (clock period) for 32b payloads. In a separate experiment, we hand-crafted an RTL version of our switch with location constraints that requires only 60 LUTs and 100 FFs per router and runs at 2.9ns. We conduct additional layout experiments on modern Xilinx and Altera FPGAs and demonstrate wide-channel chip-spanning layouts that run in excess of 300MHz while consuming 10--15% of overall chip resources. We also demonstrate a clustered RISC-V multiprocessor organization that uses Hoplite to help deliver the high processing throughputs of the FPGA architecture to user applications.
Discrimination projective dictionary pair methods in dictionary learning1

Recently, the projective dictionary pair learning (DPL) method has obtained better classification representation accuracy which learned a synthesis dictionary and an analysis dictionary to achieve the goal of signal representation. In order to obtain more discriminative ability of the dictionary pair, a new method based on DPL, called discrimination projective dictionary pair learning based dictionary learning method (DPDPL), will be proposed. In DPDPL, we will consider both the inter-class and intra-class incoherence constraints of the synthesis dictionary, and the analysis dictionary should be used to simultaneously maximize the total scatter and the between-class scatter of the signal after coding. Thus, the method ensures that the dictionary has better discriminative ability and the signals are more separable after coding. Experiments of sparse representation-based classification on several face databases show the good performances of the proposed dictionary learning method.
Pauses and the Temporal Structure of Speech 3

Natural-sounding speech synthesis requires close control over the temporal structure of the speech flow. This includes a full predictive scheme for the durational structure and in particuliar the prolongation of final syllables of lexemes as well as for the pausal structure in the utterance. In this chapter, a description of the temporal structure and the summary of the numerous factors that modify it are presented. In the second part, predictive schemes for the temporal structure of speech (“performance structures”) are introduced, and their potential for characterising the overall prosodic structure of speech is demonstrated.
Prospective in (Primate) Dental Analysis through Tooth 3D Topographical Quantification

The occlusal morphology of the teeth is mostly determined by the enamel-dentine junction morphology; the enamel-dentine junction plays the role of a primer and conditions the formation of the occlusal enamel reliefs. However, the accretion of the enamel cap yields thickness variations that alter the morphology and the topography of the enamel–dentine junction (i.e., the differential deposition of enamel by the ameloblasts create an external surface that does not necessarily perfectly parallel the enamel–dentine junction). This self-reliant influence of the enamel on tooth morphology is poorly understood and still under-investigated. Studies considering the relationship between enamel and dentine morphologies are rare, and none of them tackled this relationship in a quantitative way. Major limitations arose from: (1) the difficulties to characterize the tooth morphology in its comprehensive tridimensional aspect and (2) practical issues in relating enamel and enamel–dentine junction quantitative traits. We present new aspects of form representation based exclusively on 3D analytical tools and procedures. Our method is applied to a set of 21 unworn upper second molars belonging to eight extant anthropoid genera. Using geometrical analysis of polygonal meshes representatives of the tooth form, we propose a 3D dataset that constitutes a detailed characterization of the enamel and of the enamel–dentine junction morphologies. Also, for the first time, to our knowledge, we intend to establish a quantitative method for comparing enamel and enamel–dentine junction surfaces descriptors (elevation, inclination, orientation, etc.). New indices that allow characterizing the occlusal morphology are proposed and discussed. In this note, we present technical aspects of our method with the example of anthropoid molars. First results show notable individual variations and taxonomic heterogeneities for the selected topographic parameters and for the pattern and strength of association between enamel–dentine junction and enamel, the enamel cap altering in different ways the “transcription” of the enamel–dentine junction morphology.
Use of Continuous Glucose Monitoring in Subjects With Type 1 Diabetes on Multiple Daily Injections Versus Continuous Subcutaneous Insulin Infusion Therapy

OBJECTIVE To compare use of continuous glucose monitoring in subjects with type 1 diabetes on multiple daily injection (MDI) therapy versus continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) therapy for 6 months. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Sixty type 1 diabetic adults with similar baseline characteristics, using either MDI (n = 30) or CSII (n = 30) therapy, were enrolled in this 6-month prospective study. Subjects were instructed to wear the DexCom SevenPLUS continuous glucose monitor at all times throughout the study. All subjects were initially blinded from the continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) glucose data. After 4 weeks of blinded CGM use, the CGM was unblinded, making glucose data available to the patient. The CGM remained in the unblinded state for the remainder of the study (20 weeks). Clinic visits occurred every 4 weeks, at which time A1C values were collected and CGM data were downloaded. RESULTS Mean baseline (± SD) A1C was 7.61 (± 0.76) and 7.63 (± 0.68) for CSII and MDI, respectively (P > 0.05). Without any significant therapy change, A1C decrease at 12 weeks was similar in both groups (P = 0.03). When compared with the blinded phase, unblinded use of CGM was associated with similar but significant reductions in glycemic control and variability parameters. In addition, both therapy groups had similar changes in mean glucose and glucose variability indexes at 3 and 6 months (ITT analysis, P > 0.05). Predefined per protocol analysis (sensor use at least 6 days/week) showed greater improvement in time spent in target range glycemia, 3.9–10.0 mmol/L (70–180 mg/dL), in the CSII group. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that CGM provides similar benefits in glucose control for patients using MDI or CSII therapy.