Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES AND EFFECTIVE TEMPERATURE SCALE OF O-TYPE STARS AS A FUNCTION OF METALLICITY. III. MORE RESULTS FROM THE MAGELLANIC CLOUDS

In order to better determine the physical properties of hot, massive stars as a function of metallicity, we obtained very high signal-to-noise ratio optical spectra of 26 O and early B stars in the Magellanic Clouds. These allow accurate modeling even in cases where the He i λ4471 line has an equivalent width of only a few tens of m Å. The spectra were modeled with FASTWIND, with good fits obtained for 18 stars; the remainder show signatures of being binaries. We include stars in common to recent studies to investigate possible systematic differences. The “automatic” FASTWIND modeling method of Mokiem and collaborators produced temperatures 1100 K hotter on average, presumably due to the different emphasis given to various temperature-sensitive lines. More significant, however, is that the automatic method always produced a “best” result for each star, even ones we identify as composite (binaries). The temperatures found by the TLUSTY/CMFGEN modeling of Bouret, Heap, and collaborators yielded temperatures 1000 K cooler than ours, on average. Significant outliers were due either to real differences in the data (some of the Bouret/Heap data were contaminated by moonlight continua) or the fact that we could detect the He i line needed to better constrain the temperature. Our new data agree well with the effective temperature scale we previously presented. We confirm that the “Of” emission characteristics do not track luminosity classes in exactly the same manner as in Milky Way stars. We revisit the issue of the “mass discrepancy,” finding that some of the stars in our sample do have spectroscopic masses that are significantly smaller than those derived from stellar evolutionary models. We do not find that the size of the mass discrepancy is simply related to either effective temperature or surface gravity.
Beyond modelling and evidence: Bridging the gap between drug policy research and drug policy practice.

A one-hand operable valve comprises a housing and an actuator which is mounted in the housing. The actuator includes a pair of driving members, and the housing includes a pair of support members. These members provide two pairs of pressure application surfaces oriented to permit the operational state of the valve to be changed using two fingers of one hand. The valve preferably includes a locking mechanism which selectively locks the actuator and housing to prevent relative rotation therebetween. In the preferred embodiemnt, a system of indicia is employed to designate the operational state of the valve.
Ownership Structure and Firm Value: New Evidence from the Spanish Corporate Governance System

In this paper we investigate the relationship between ownership structure and value in Spanish firms. We therefore provide new evidence on this relation, since the Spanish corporate governance system differs from the ones considered in previous theoretical and empirical research. According to financial literature on corporate ownership structure, we have focused on the concentration of ownership - in order to test the monitoring and expropriation hypotheses - and on insider ownership - looking for evidence in favour of the convergence-of-interest and entrenchment hypotheses. We have estimated our two empirical models using the same methodology so as to avoid several problems emphasized by previous literature. Specifically, we use the Generalized Method of Moments which allows us to eliminate unobservable heterogeneity - using panel data methodology - and to control for potential endogeneity - using instruments. Unlike previous studies, our empirical evidence supports a quadratic relationship between value and ownership concentration. This result confirms not only the monitoring but also the expropriation effect for the very highest concentration values in Spanish firms. The fact that Spanish majority shareholders manage to expropriate the wealth of minority shareholders, while in other countries - such as the UK, the US, Germany and Japan - this does not occur, confirms the idea that differences in corporate governance systems lead to different value-ownership relations. Additionally, the insider ownership model provides results that support a cubic specification for the value-insider ownership relation in Spanish firms. We interpret this evidence as consistent with both the convergence-of-interests and the entrenchment effects. Moreover, we find that Spanish insiders get entrenched at higher ownership levels than their UK and US counterparts. This result is also consistent with the argument that different value-ownership relations might be explained by differences in corporate governance systems across countries.
Relevance theory: A tutorial

This paper outlines the main assumptions of relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson 1985, 1995, 1998, 2002, Wilson & Sperber 2002), an inferential approach to pragmatics. Relevance theory is based on a definition of relevance and two principles of relevance: a Cognitive Principle (that human cognition is geared to the maximisation of relevance), and a Communicative Principle (that utterances create expectations of optimal relevance). We explain the motivation for these principles and illustrate their application to a variety of pragmatic problems. We end by considering the implications of this relevance-theoretic approach for the architecture of the mind.
Serum concentrations of TNF-α, sTNF-R p55 and p75 and post-traumatic stress in German soldiers

Growing evidence suggests involvement of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α system in the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. Research into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has investigated serum levels of TNF-α, but not to date its soluble receptors sTNF-R p55 and sTNF-R p75. We examined serum levels of TNF-α, sTNF-R p55 and sTNF-R p75 in 135 male German soldiers 70 of whom had been deployed abroad and 65 in Germany only. Post-traumatic stress symptoms were measured using the Post-traumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale (PDS) and the Trier Inventory for the Assessment of Chronic Stress (TICS). Correlational analysis controlling for multiple testing, showed no significant Spearman rank correlations between PDS or TICS scores and serum levels of TNF-α, sTNF-R p55 or sTNF-R p75, either in the full sample or in the group of soldiers who had been deployed abroad. ANCOVAs showed no significant differences between soldiers with or without a PDS-derived diagnosis of PTSD, or between soldiers with or without deployment abroad, after controlling for age, smoking and body mass index (BMI). These results suggest that the TNF-α system, as reflected by TNF-α, sTNF-R p55 and sTNF-R p75 serum levels, does not play a major role in the pathophysiology and development of PTSD symptoms as measured by the PDS and the TICS. However, several methodological and contextual issues have to be considered.
Bayesian biclustering with the plaid model

Biclustering is an active and promising research topic in unsupervised learning. With the aim of uncovering condition-specific similarities between objects, it may be applied in areas such as collaborative filtering and bioinformatics. The plaid model is amongst the most flexible biclustering models. However, its potential has not yet been fully explored. In this paper we extend the plaid model with a Bayesian framework and a collapsed Gibbs sampler. We show that the new method is useful in a gene expression study both in finding gene-specific associations between microarrays and condition-specific associations between genes.
Ion Concentration-Dependent Ion Conduction Mechanism of a Voltage-Sensitive Potassium Channel

Voltage-sensitive potassium ion channels are essential for life, but the molecular basis of their ion conduction is not well understood. In particular, the impact of ion concentration on ion conduction has not been fully studied. We performed several micro-second molecular dynamics simulations of the pore domain of the Kv1.2 potassium channel in KCl solution at four different ion concentrations, and scrutinized each of the conduction events, based on graphical representations of the simulation trajectories. As a result, we observed that the conduction mechanism switched with different ion concentrations: at high ion concentrations, potassium conduction occurred by Hodgkin and Keynes' knock-on mechanism, where the association of an incoming ion with the channel is tightly coupled with the dissociation of an outgoing ion, in a one-step manner. On the other hand, at low ion concentrations, ions mainly permeated by a two-step association/dissociation mechanism, in which the association and dissociation of ions were not coupled, and occurred in two distinct steps. We also found that this switch was triggered by the facilitated association of an ion from the intracellular side within the channel pore and by the delayed dissociation of the outermost ion, as the ion concentration increased.
Changes In Actual And Perceived Physical Abilities In Clinically Obese Children: A 9-Month Multi-Component Intervention Study

Objectives (1) To examine relationships among changes in physical activity, physical fitness and some psychosocial determinants of activity behavior in a clinical sample of obese children involved in a multi-component program; (2) to investigate the causal relationship over time between physical activity and one of its strongest correlates (i.e. perceived physical ability). Methods Self-reported physical activity and health-related fitness tests were administered before and after a 9-month intervention in 24 boys and 20 girls aged 8 to 11 years. Individuals’ perceptions of strength, speed and agility were assessed using the Perceived Physical Ability Scale, while body image was measured using Collins’ Child Figure Drawings. Results Findings showed that body mass index, physical activity, performances on throwing and weight-bearing tasks, perceived physical ability and body image significantly improved after treatment among obese children. Gender differences were found in the correlational analyses, showing a link between actual and perceived physical abilities in boys, but not in girls. For the specific measurement interval of this study, perception of physical ability was an antecedent and not a potential consequence of physical activity. Conclusions Results indicate that a multi-component activity program not based merely on a dose-effect approach enhances adherence of the participants and has the potential to increase the lifelong exercise skills of obese children. Rather than focusing entirely on diet and weight loss, findings support the inclusion of interventions directed toward improving perceived physical ability that is predictive of subsequent physical activity.
Improving the Efficiency of Retrieval Effectiveness Evaluation: Finding a Few Good Topics with Clustering?

We consider the issue of using fewer topics in the effectiveness evaluation of information retrieval systems. Previous work has shown that using fewer topics is theoretically possible; one of the main issues that remains to be solved is how to find such a small set of a few good topics. To this aim, in this paper we try a novel approach based on clustering of topics. We consider various algorithms, metrics, and various features of topics that can be helpful in identifying such a set.
Using a Neighbourhood Measure of School Readiness to Predict Academic Achievement in a Population of Children

This study investigates whether academic achievement in individual children can be predicted by the proportion of children with school readiness vulnerabilities within the school neighbourhood. The data analyzed came from: 1) an extensive administrative database on the EDI (Early Development Instrument) (Janus & Offord, 2007), which provided the measure of school readiness vulnerability; and 2) a large study of academic achievement and associated factors conducted in Latin American and Caribbean countries (SERCE, UNESCO/LLECE, 2008), which provided the measure of individual child achievement and demographics at the school level. These data were collected in 2006 (SERCE) and 2008 (EDI) in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. A two-level Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) approach was conducted to analyze the data, with individual SERCE student level predictors at level-1, and average EDI school neighbourhood vulnerability scores as predictors at level-2. The EDI records (n=50,400) were
Resumption or persistence of menstruation after cytotoxic chemotherapy is a prognostic factor for poor disease-free survival in premenopausal patients with early breast cancer.

BACKGROUND We investigated the relationship between resumption or persistence of menstruation after cytotoxic chemotherapy (RM) and disease-free survival (DFS) in premenopausal patients with early breast cancer. METHODS Medical records from 872 patients who received cytotoxic chemotherapy for stage I to III breast cancer were retrospectively reviewed. RESULTS The median patient age was 41 years (range, 21-54) and the median follow-up duration was 6.2 years (range, 0.7-10.4). Six hundred ninety-two patients (79.4%) were hormone receptor (HR) positive and the majority of these received tamoxifen therapy after completing chemotherapy. The chemotherapy-induced amenorrhea (CIA) rate was 76.7% (n = 669), and 51.8% (n = 452) experienced RM during the follow-up period. One hundred twenty-one (13.9%) patients had persistent menstruation without CIA. DFS was significantly affected by younger age at diagnosis (≤35 years) (P = 0.013), tumor size > 2 cm (P < 0.001), node positivity (P < 0.001), HR negativity (P < 0.001), HER2 positivity (P = 0.010), and RM (P < 0.001). HR negativity [hazard ratio 1.7, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.2-2.4, P = 0.006], tumor size > 2 cm (hazard ratio 2.1, 95% CI 1.4-3.0, P < 0.001), node positivity (hazard ratio 3.0, 95% CI 2.0-4.7, P < 0.001), and RM (hazard ratio 1.8, 95% CI 1.2-2.7, P = 0.004) remained significant factors for DFS on multivariate analysis. CONCLUSIONS A considerable proportion of premenopausal patients treated with chemotherapy experienced RM after CIA. RM was a poor prognostic factor for DFS in premenopausal patients with early breast cancer.
Global Trade Imbalances: A Network Approach

We study trade imbalances between world countries in the period 1960-2000 using a complex-network approach. We show that trade imbalances in absolute value are characterized by a hierarchical arrangement wherein few rich economies display high clustering and carry an important amount of global-trade imbalances. In contrast, trade imbalances in relative terms show a more fragmented topology, with less concentrated clustering which is particularly high for emergent economies. In addition, we find that traditional null random-network models and the gravity model poorly predict the topology of trade imbalance networks. Our main finding is that the evolution of the international trade has caused very heterogeneous imbalances in world economies, which may have important consequences for global instability and development
'Der Noth Gehorchend, Nicht Dem Eignen Trieb' - Nascent Necessity and Opportunity Entrepreneurs in Germany: Evidence from the Regional Entrepreneurship Monitor (Rem)

Using a large recent representative sample of the adult German population this paper demonstrates that nascent necessity and nascent opportunity entrepreneurs are different with respect to some of the characteristics and attitudes considered to be important for becoming a nascent entrepreneur, and that they behave differently. Given the lack of longitudinal data, however, we have no information about the performance of entrepreneurs from both groups in the longer run.
Cancer risks after radiation exposure in middle age.

BACKGROUND Epidemiological data show that radiation exposure during childhood is associated with larger cancer risks compared with exposure at older ages. For exposures in adulthood, however, the relative risks of radiation-induced cancer in Japanese atomic bomb survivors generally do not decrease monotonically with increasing age of adult exposure. These observations are inconsistent with most standard models of radiation-induced cancer, which predict that relative risks decrease monotonically with increasing age at exposure, at all ages. METHODS We analyzed observed cancer risk patterns as a function of age at exposure in Japanese atomic bomb survivors by using a biologically based quantitative model of radiation carcinogenesis that incorporates both radiation induction of premalignant cells (initiation) and radiation-induced promotion of premalignant damage. This approach emphasizes the kinetics of radiation-induced initiation and promotion, and tracks the yields of premalignant cells before, during, shortly after, and long after radiation exposure. RESULTS Radiation risks after exposure in younger individuals are dominated by initiation processes, whereas radiation risks after exposure at later ages are more influenced by promotion of preexisting premalignant cells. Thus, the cancer site-dependent balance between initiation and promotion determines the dependence of cancer risk on age at radiation exposure. For example, in terms of radiation induction of premalignant cells, a quantitative measure of the relative contribution of initiation vs promotion is 10-fold larger for breast cancer than for lung cancer. Reflecting this difference, radiation-induced breast cancer risks decrease with age at exposure at all ages, whereas radiation-induced lung cancer risks do not. CONCLUSION For radiation exposure in middle age, most radiation-induced cancer risks do not, as often assumed, decrease with increasing age at exposure. This observation suggests that promotional processes in radiation carcinogenesis become increasingly important as the age at exposure increases. Radiation-induced cancer risks after exposure in middle age may be up to twice as high as previously estimated, which could have implications for occupational exposure and radiological imaging.
A Labeling-Free Approach to Supervising Deep Neural Networks for Retinal Blood Vessel Segmentation

Segmenting blood vessels in fundus imaging plays an important role in medical diagnosis. Many algorithms have been proposed. While deep Neural Networks have been attracting enormous attention from computer vision community recent years and several novel works have been done in terms of its application in retinal blood vessel segmentation, most of them are based on supervised learning which requires amount of labeled data, which is both scarce and expensive to obtain. We leverage the power of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) in feature learning, in this work, to achieve this ultimate goal. The highly efficient feature learning of DCNN inspires our novel approach that trains the networks with automatically-generated samples to achieve desirable performance on real-world fundus images. For this, we design a set of rules abstracted from the domain-specific prior knowledge to generate these samples. We argue that, with the high efficiency of DCNN in feature learning, one can achieve this goal by constructing the training dataset with prior knowledge, no manual labeling is needed. This approach allows us to take advantages of supervised learning without labeling. We also build a naive DCNN model to test it. The results on standard benchmarks of fundus imaging show it is competitive to the state-of-the-art methods which implies a potential way to leverage the power of DCNN in feature learning.
Statistical modelling of the determinants of historical exposure to bitumen and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons among paving workers.

INTRODUCTION An industrial hygiene database has been constructed for the exposure assessment in a study of cancer risk among asphalt workers. AIM To create models of bitumen and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) exposure intensity among paving workers. METHODS Individual exposure measurements from pavers (N = 1581) were collected from 8 countries. Correlation patterns between exposure measures were examined and factors affecting exposure were identified using statistical modelling. RESULTS Inhalable dust appeared to be a good proxy of bitumen fume exposure. Bitumen fume and vapour levels were not correlated. Benzo(a)pyrene level appeared to be a good indicator of PAH exposure. All exposures steadily declined over the last 20 years. Mastic laying, re-paving, surface dressing, oil gravel paving and asphalt temperature were significant determinants of bitumen exposure. Coal tar use dictated PAH exposure levels. DISCUSSION Bitumen fume, vapour and PAH have different determinants of exposure. For paving workers, exposure intensity can be assessed on the basis of time period and production characteristics.
Public Understanding of and Support for the Courts: Survey Results

Using data from two nationally representative surveys, we examined public knowledge about the Constitution and courts: the impact of court exposure and news sources on perceptions of the courts, trust in the courts, perceptions of bias in the courts, and willingness to curb the power or influence of the courts. The surveys were conducted in the summers of 2005 and 2006 by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Each has a margin of error of plus or minus three percent (details can be found in the Appendix). Unless otherwise indicated, the reported results are drawn from the 2006 survey. Disciplines Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn. edu/asc_papers/352 Public Understanding of and Support for the Courts: Survey Results KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON AND MICHAEL HENNESSY*
SOCIAL SUPPORT AND PSYCHOSOCIAL DYSFUNCTION IN DEPRESSION

Influence of social support on psychosocial dysfunction was studied in fifty newly diagnosed patients with major depression, using Social Support Scale (SSS) and Dysfunctional Analysis Questionnaire (DAQ) to measure social support and psychosocial dysfunction respectively. Total score on SSS did not affect the dysfunction. A positive relationship was observed between items of SSS relating to care, concern and expectations from others and negative relationship observed between SSS items referring to socialization and dysfunction in social and familial areas. The relationship of social support and psychosocial dysfunction appears quite complex with certain elements of social support having a healthy and others having an unhealthy relationship. Since measurement of social support itself is accompanied by a number of methodological problems such as distorted perceptions of psychiatric patients about social support, this makes the relationship more complex.
World product and income : international comparisons of real gross product

The volume reports on the third phase of the United Nations International Comparison Project (ICP). The main results provide comparisons of real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for thirty-four countries in 1975. Quantity and price comparisons are given also for personal consumption, capital formation, and public consumption and further subdivisions of final expenditures on GDP are estimated.
Constitutions, Politics, and Economics: A Review Essay on Persson and Tabellini's The Economic Effects of Constitutions

In this essay I review the new book by Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, The Economic Effects of Constitutions, which investigates the policy and economic consequences of different forms of government and electoral rules. I also take advantage of this opportunity to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a number of popular empirical strategies in the newly emerging field of comparative political economy.