Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disability Trajectories at the End of Life: A "Countdown" Model.

OBJECTIVES Studies of late-life disablement typically address the role of advancing age as a factor in developing disability, and in some cases have pointed out the importance of time to death (TTD) in understanding changes in functioning. However, few studies have addressed both factors simultaneously, and none have dealt satisfactorily with the problem of missing data on TTD in panel studies. METHODS We fit latent-class trajectory models of disablement using data from the Health and Retirement Study. Among survivors (~20% of the sample), TTD is unknown, producing a missing-data problem. We use an auxiliary regression equation to impute TTD and employ multiple imputation techniques to obtain final parameter estimates and standard errors. RESULTS Our best-fitting model has 3 latent classes. In all 3 classes, the probability of having a disability increases with nearness to death; however, in only 2 of the 3 classes is age associated with disability. We find gender, race, and educational differences in class-membership probabilities. DISCUSSION The model reveals a complex pattern of age- and time-dependent heterogeneity in late-life disablement. The techniques developed here could be applied to other phenomena known to depend on TTD, such as cognitive change, weight loss, and health care spending.
Human Capital in History: The American Record

Human Capital in History brings together contributions from leading researchers in economic history, labor economics, the economics of education, and related fields. Building on Claudia Goldin's landmark research on the labor history of the United States, the contributors consider the roles of education and technology in contributing to American economic growth and well-being, the experience of women in the workforce, and how trends in marriage and family affected broader economic outcomes.
A Study of Internet Use in EFL Teaching and Learning in Northwest China

Internet has been researched and employed as an educational tool by teachers and researchers in many countries in recent years. This paper explores Internet use in EFL teaching and learning in universities in Northwest China. A quantitive research was conducted among college teachers and students. The result indicates that both teachers and students are not well prepared for the use of Internet in EFL teaching and learning. Based on the result, this paper presents three suggests: developing an EFL teaching and learning website; sharing the various English resources; cultivating teacher and learner autonomy.
The Influence Of Service Quality, Corporate Image And Interest Rate To Customer Purchase Of Micro Credit (Case Study At Bank Karyajatnika Sadaya Bandung)

This study was aimed to determine the effect of service quality, corporate image and credit interest rates to the decision-making of micro credit case studies inBank Prekreditan Rakyat Karyajatnika Sadaya (BPR KS) Bandung. Research was conducted using a descriptive and verivication studies. The samples used were 110 customers of the eight micro branches of BPR KS in Bandung. Hypothesis test using Structural Equation Model (SAM) to determine the effect of service quality, corporate image and credit interest rates on microcredit decision- either partially or simultaneously. The results showed that the quality of services rated as good by the respondent , BPR KS image is also considered to be good by the consumer. Meanwhile the interest rate offered is sufficient or deemed reasonable by consumer. The result of model testing showed a positive and significant effect between service quality and corporate image of the micro-credit retrieval, while interest rates have a negative effect on the development of decision-making on micro credit. For subsequent researchers can conduct the same research in the different area of environment and cultures characteristics or by changing the variables where loyalty and customer relationship management variables can be developed in future research models
An Empirical Examination of Conference Calls as a Voluntary Disclosure Medium

This paper provides evidence on the characteristics of firms that hold conference calls and on whether these calls provide information to market participants. We find that firms that hold conference calls are larger, more profitable, go to the capital markets more often, and are growing more rapidly than other firms. We also find that conference calls provide information to market participants over and above the information contained in the accompanying press release. We find that trading volume and, to a lesser degree, return variance, are elevated during the time of conference calls and that average trade size is higher during the time of conference calls. We believe that this evidence is important because it suggests that material information is being released during conference calls and that a subset of large investors trade on this information in real time.
Early Diet and Later Cancer Risk: Prospective Associations of Dietary Patterns During Critical Periods of Childhood with the GH-IGF Axis, Insulin Resistance and Body Fatness in Younger Adulthood

Early life, adiposity rebound, and puberty represent critical growth periods when food choices could have long-term relevance for cancer risk. We aimed to relate dietary patterns during these periods to the growth hormone-insulin-like-growth-factor (GH-IGF) axis, insulin resistance, and body fatness in adulthood. Data from the Dortmund Nutritional and Anthropometric Longitudinally Designed (DONALD) Study participants with outcome data at 18–37 years, and ≥2 dietary records during early life (1–2 yr; n = 128), adiposity rebound (4–6 years, n = 179), or puberty (girls 9–14, boys 10–15 yr; n = 213) were used. Dietary patterns at these ages were derived by 1) reduced rank regression (RRR) to explain variation in adult IGF-I, IGF-binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3), homoeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) and fat-mass index; 2) principal component analysis (PCA). Regarding RRR, the patterns “cake/canned fruit/cheese & eggs” (early life), “sweets & dairy” (adiposity rebound) and “high-fat foods” (pubertal boys) were independently associated with higher adult HOMA-IR. Furthermore, the patterns “favorable carbohydrate sources” (early life), “snack & convenience foods” (adiposity rebound), and “traditional & convenience carbohydrates” (pubertal boys) were related to adult IGFBP-3 (P trend < 0.01). PCA identified “healthy” patterns for all periods, but none was associated with the outcomes (P trend > 0.1). In conclusion, dietary patterns during sensitive growth periods may be of long-term relevance for adult insulin resistance and IGFBP-3.
Cerebrospinal Fluid Involvement in Mantle Cell Lymphoma

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is an aggressive neoplasm that is incurable by standard therapy. Patients often present with high-stage disease (Stages III–IV) and frequently have involvement at multiple extranodal sites. Although the gastrointestinal tract, spleen, lung, pleura, bone marrow, and peripheral blood are among the most commonly involved tissues, MCL may also disseminate to so-called sanctuary sites including the central nervous system. Despite this, current clinical evaluations do not routinely include assessment of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for lymphomatous infiltrates at presentation, and moreover, only few authors have specifically examined CSF involvement in MCL. In this study, we reviewed the medical records of 108 patients with MCL seen at three centers over a 5-year period to determine the rate of CSF sampling and the frequency of CSF involvement by MCL. The clinical and cytologic characteristics associated with CSF involvement were also studied. Central nervous system (CNS) signs and/or symptoms prompted CSF sampling in 25/108 patients (23%). Specific radiographic abnormalities were present in 9/25 patients (36%). CSF involvement by MCL was identified in 10 of the 25 CSF-sampled patients (40%) by morphology (3 patients), flow cytometry alone (1 patients), or both (6 patients). The CSF-positive cases included two blastoid variants. The CSF cytology of the nine morphologically positive cases was pleomorphic, and prominent cytoplasmic granules were observed in two cases. The overall rate of CSF involvement by MCL among the cohort was 9%, which is comparable to that reported in other selected studies examining this issue.
Impact of heterogeneity, bed forms, and stream curvature on subchannel hyporheic exchange

Advection through hyporheic zones (HZ) consisting of heterogeneous channel bend streambed deposits and their equivalent homogenous medium was investigated using finite difference groundwater flow and transport simulations and forward particle tracking. The top prescribed head boundary was varied in order to mimic various stream channel head distributions resulting from the presence of bed forms and channel curvature. Flux calculations show that heterogeneity causes significant additional HZ flux compared to an equivalent homogenous medium. However, the major cause of HZ flux is a spatially periodic (sinusoidal) head distribution along the boundary, representing the effect of bed forms. The additional influence of heterogeneity on the total channel‐bed exchange and the overall HZ geometry are increased when boundary head sinusoidal fluctuation is more subdued. We present dimensionless numbers that summarize these relationships. Heterogeneity's influence is further magnified by considering the effect of channel curvature on boundary heads. The simulations illustrate the dynamic influence of heterogeneity on the hyporheic zone since the various head boundaries employed in our modeling efforts are a proxy for different surface water conditions and bed form states that may occur during a single flood. Furthermore, we show that residence times (total tracking times) of particles originating from the streambed follow a lognormal distribution. In the presence of heterogeneity, residence times can decrease or they can increase compared to residence times for homogeneous conditions depending on the relative positions of the heterogeneities and the bed forms. Hence streambed heterogeneity and stream curvature, factors often neglected in previous modeling efforts, combine with bed form configuration to dynamically determine HZ geometry, fluxes, and residence time distributions.
Epidemiology of infectious keratoconjunctivitis in cattle in south-east Ethiopia.

The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of infectious keratoconjunctivitis on cross-breed dairy farms and to evaluate factors that influence its distribution. A total of 11 dairy farms and one cattle cross-breeding farm in different parts of Arsi region, south-east Ethiopia were clinically and bacteriologically investigated from February 1989 to December 1990. Out of 5221 local zebu and cross-breed dairy animals, 110 were found to have different degrees of infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis. Of these, 94 (85.5%) were unilateral and 16 (14.5%) were bilateral. The prevalence of the disease was significantly (P < 0.001) influenced by age and breed; high exotic blood level and younger age groups were mainly affected. However, severity of the disease was not significantly associated with age (P > 0.750). Moraxella bovis was isolated from 88 (80%) of the 110 bacteriologically positive cases. Of these isolates, 61 (69%) were haemolytic and 27 (31%) were non-haemolytic strains. Infection with M. bovis was unilateral. Concurrent infections with M. bovis included Actinomyces pyogenes 23 (21%), Staphylococcus aureus 17 (15%), Pasteurella haemolytica nine (8%), Escherichia coli eight (7%) and Proteus spp. four (3.6%).
Two Alternative Approaches to Modelling the Nonlinear Dynamics of the Composite Economic Indicator

The analysis and prediction of the short-run economic dynamics, or the evolution of the business cycle, often require a construction of the composite economic indicator (CEI). This indicator may be endowed with nonlinear dynamics to take care of the possible asymmetries between different phases of the business cycle. This paper suggests using the smooth transition autoregression to model the CEI. The performance of this model is compared to the already classical CEI with regime switching. Both models turn out to produce statistically equally good results in terms of forecasting the business cycle turning points.
AP1B plays an important role in intestinal tumorigenesis with the truncating mutation of an APC gene

Recent evidence has suggested that carcinoma is accompanied by the loss of cell polarity. An epithelial cell‐specific form of the AP‐1 clathrin adaptor complex, AP1B, is involved in the polarized transport of membrane proteins to the basolateral surface of epithelial cells. In our study, we investigated whether AP1B is involved in intestinal tumorigenesis. The cellular polarity of intestinal tumor cells was examined using APCMin/+ mice as an in vivo model and SW480 cells with a truncating mutation in the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene as an in vitro model by confocal microscopy. Next, the expression of AP1B in intestinal tumor cells was examined by real‐time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and Western blotting. The localization of β‐catenin and the expression of AP1B in the tumor tissue of patients with colorectal cancer were evaluated by confocal microscopy and real‐time PCR, respectively, and the relationships among cell polarity, AP1B expression and intestinal tumorigenesis were examined. Cellular polarity was lost in intestinal tumor cells, and the expression of AP1B was downregulated. In addition, the reduction in the expression level of AP1B correlated with the nuclear localization of β‐catenin in human colorectal cancer. Our study indicates the close associations between AP1B, intestinal tumorigenesis and mutations in the APC gene. This is the first report to reveal the relationships among AP1B, cellular polarity and intestinal tumorigenesis, and achieving a detailed understanding of AP1B will hopefully lead to discovery of therapeutic targets and novel biomarkers for intestinal cancer.
FDI, Trade, and Product Innovation: Theory and Evidence

This article investigates the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI, including outward FDI and inward FDI), imports and exports, and product innovation. Our theoretical model predicts that inward FDI, outward FDI, imports, and exports have positive influences on firm innovative activities, which would evaluate the effects of the relative magnitude of different sources on innovation. The empirical results based on the 2003 First Taiwan Technological Innovation Survey confirm three of the proposed hypotheses for the entire sample. However, when focusing on the manufacturing sector, outward FDI, inward FDI, imports, and exports all exhibit strongly positive effects on the determination of conducting product innovation (i.e., the four hypotheses are verified). A consistent trend is that outward FDI has the largest effect on innovation, regardless of the measurement of product innovation and the division of the entire sample, which may imply that in Taiwan a positive effect of "deindustrialization" is to innovate more.
The Impact of Profit Sharing on the Performance of Financial Services Firms

Relying on macro theories (agency and organizational control) as well as micro theories (goal setting and expectancy), this study investigates the impact of profit-sharing plan (PSP) adoption on the value creation process of financial services firms. The study relies on a comprehensive methodological approach that is both quantitative, with a dual cross-sectional/longitudinal (pre-post) design that compares PSP adopters with a control group of PSP non-adopter firms, and qualitative through interviews with some adopting firms' managing directors. Results show that firms adopting a PSP enhance their profitability in comparison to both their own prior performance and to firms that are not adopting a PSP. Results also show that the adoption of a PSP: (a) positively influences only profit drivers that are under employee control; and (b) is more likely to have a long term, positive impact on external profit drivers than on internal profit drivers. Qualitative data from field interviews corroborate and enrich these quantitative findings.
A neural network approach to the prediction of going concern status

The assessment of a firm's going concern status is not an easy task. To assist auditors, going concern prediction models based on statistical methods such as multiple discriminant analysis and logit/probit analysis have been explored with some success. This study attempts to look at a different and more recent approach—neural networks. In particular, a neural network model of the feedforward, backpropagation type was constructed to predict a firm's going concern status from six financial ratios, using a data set containing 165 non-going concerns and 165 matched going concerns. On an evenly distributed hold-out sample, the trained network model correctly predicted all 30 test cases. The results suggest that neural networks can be a promising avenue of research and application in the going concern area.
Antipsychotic medication adherence: is there a difference between typical and atypical agents?

OBJECTIVE Pharmacy refill records were used to compare medication adherence in outpatient veterans receiving typical versus atypical antipsychotic medications. METHOD Consecutive patients meeting selection criteria and receiving prescriptions for haloperidol (N=57), perphenazine (N=60), risperidone (N=80), olanzapine (N=63), and quetiapine (N=28) over a 3-month period were identified from a computerized database. The hospital policy at the time of this study required failure in trials of at least two typical antipsychotics before initiation of an atypical agent. Patients' adherence with the antipsychotic regimen was calculated by analyzing refill records for up to 12 months. The cumulative mean gap ratio (the number of days when medication was unavailable in relation to the total number of days) and the compliant fill rate (the number of prescription fills indicating adherence in relation to the total number of prescription fills) at 6 and 12 months were calculated. RESULTS Adherence rates at 6 and 12 months were moderately higher in patients who received atypical antipsychotics than in those who received typical agents. Cumulative mean gap ratios were 23.2% for typical and 14.1% for atypical antipsychotics at 12 months; thus, patients who received typical agents were without medication for an average of 7 days per month, compared with 4 days per month for those who received atypical agents. At 12 months, compliant fill rates were 50.1% for typical and 54.9% for atypical antipsychotics. CONCLUSIONS Interventions to improve adherence are warranted even for patients who receive atypical antipsychotic medications.
MAKING OR BREAKING INFORMAL VOLUNTEERING

ABSTRACT This article evaluates the relationship between welfare state institutions and informal voluntary activity. In particular, we wish to investigate the extent to which welfare state arrangements influence the individual's decision to volunteer informally. Focusing on informal volunteering – a vital, yet often neglected form of social capital – we reinvestigate the hypotheses on crowding in and crowding out. Our sub-national multilevel analysis of the Swiss cantons reveals that there is no significant effect of welfare statism on informal volunteering. Cantonal differences in individual propensity to volunteer informally can rather be attributed to different cultural-linguistic backgrounds as well as to the cantonal degree of urbanisation.
Framing in context: how interest groups employ framing to lobby the European Commission

ABSTRACT Framing plays an important role in public policy. Interest groups strategically highlight some aspects of a policy proposal while ignoring others in order to gain an advantage in the policy debate. However, we know remarkably little about how interest groups choose their frames. This contribution therefore studies the determinants of frame choice during the policy formulation stage in the European Union. We argue that frame choice is a complex process which is simultaneously affected by interest groups as well as contextual characteristics. With regard to interest group characteristics, we expect that frame choice varies systematically across actor type. With regard to contextual characteristics, we hypothesize that the frames that interest groups employ are specifically tailored towards the DGs in charge of drafting the proposal. Our theoretical expectations are tested based on a new and innovative dataset on frame choice of more than 3,000 interest groups in 44 policy debates.
Rainfall variability, food insecurity and migration in Cabricán, Guatemala

This article presents data and insights on rainfall variability, food insecurity and migration in four rural mountain communities in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. In mountain areas, climatic patterns and impacts change over short distances and no meteorological station is located within the range of a few kilometres from the selected communities. Therefore, rainfall patterns and impacts were investigated with local communities in a participatory way. Rainfall is crucial for local livelihoods because their most important source of food is the yearly harvest of a rain-fed corn-based crop sub-system called milpa. The great majority of survey respondents and participants in the participatory research approach sessions believe that climatic conditions have worsened in the last 20 years and are affecting their food production. They also remarked that the profitability of in situ diversification options is decreasing and associated with decreasing migration opportunities. These trends expose local populations to the risk of becoming trapped in the near future in a place where they are extremely vulnerable to climate change. In fact, no long-term risk-management and livelihood diversification strategy, including ex situ strategies, seems to be sustainable for people in the study area.
New applications of conformation trait data for dairy cow improvement

Understanding the relationship that dairy form has with health and fertility traits of cows can be aided by a review of its relationship with body condition score (BCS). Lassen et al. 2003 mentions that BCS can be used as a management tool to estimate energy balance at specific periods of a lactation or in a breeding program as an indicator of energy balance. They refer to BCS as “a subjective method of assessing the amount of metabolizable energy stored in fat and muscle”. They report “when dairy character (DC) and body condition score are recorded as in the present Danish conformation scoring system, observations on DC will add more information as a genetic indicator of disease resistance. ” The potential value of dairy form as an indicator trait for disease resistance was reported by Rogers et al. 1999. He found a genetic correlation of . 73 between dairy form measured in the United States and disease other than mastitis measured in Denmark.
Public versus Private Borrowing: A Theory with Implications for Bankruptcy Reform

A model is presented in which firms optimally finance investments with both public and private debt. The two instruments are perfect substitutes, except that private debt can easily be renegotiated in insolvency states while public debt cannot. The option to renegotiate is beneficial ex post, as it allows the firm to avoid inefficient liquidation, but ex ante it may worsen asset substitution. The welfare effects of alternative bankruptcy regimes are then compared, taking into account that firms modify their financing decision in response to the regime change. Some suggestions for reforming Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code are presented: