Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Economic Theory in the Mathematical Mode

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The burden of spousal caregiving: A preliminary psychometric evaluation of the German version of the Zarit Burden Interview

Objectives: Despite a rapid increase in studies dealing with dementia caregivers in Europe, a valid German version of the most widely used measurement of caregiver burden (Zarit Burden Interview) has not yet been published. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the psychometric properties of the German Zarit Burden Interview (G-ZBI). Method: Twenty-eight community-dwelling older couples with the husband suffering from dementia and the wife being the primary caregiver participated in this study. The G-ZBI and related constructs were assessed in order to test for reliability and construct validity. Results: The G-ZBI revealed psychometric properties comparable with those of the original instrument and empirically validated translations. Results demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach's α 0.92) and good validity due to strong correlations with caregiver life satisfaction and depression, as well as patients’ dependency, neuropsychiatric symptoms, and dementia severity. Conclusion: The psychometric qualities of the G-ZBI indicate that it is both a reliable and valid instrument to assess caregiver burden and to detect highly stressed individuals.
Evolution and Horizontal Transfer of dUTPase-Encoding Genes in Viruses and Their Hosts

ABSTRACT dUTPase is a ubiquitous and essential enzyme responsible for regulating cellular levels of dUTP. The dut gene exists as single, tandemly duplicated, and tandemly triplicated copies. Crystallized single-copy dUTPases have been shown to assemble as homotrimers. dUTPase is encoded as an auxiliary gene in a number of virus genomes. The origin of viral dut genes has remained unresolved since their initial discovery. A comprehensive analysis of dUTPase amino acid sequence relationships was performed to explore the evolutionary dynamics of dut in viruses and their hosts. Our data set, comprised of 24 host and 51 viral sequences, includes representative sequences from available eukaryotes, archaea, eubacteria cells, and viruses, including herpesviruses. These amino acid sequences were aligned by using a hidden Markov model approach developed to align divergent data. Known secondary structures from single-copy crystals were mapped onto the aligned duplicate and triplicate sequences. We show how duplicated dUTPases might fold into a monomer, and we hypothesize that triplicated dUTPases also assemble as monomers. Phylogenetic analysis revealed at least five viral dUTPase sequence lineages in well-supported monophyletic clusters with eukaryotic, eubacterial, and archaeal hosts. We have identified all five as strong examples of horizontal transfer as well as additional potential transfer of dut genes among eubacteria, between eubacteria and viruses, and between retroviruses. The evidence for horizontal transfers is particularly interesting since eukaryotic dutgenes have introns, while DNA virus dut genes do not. This implies that an intermediary retroid agent facilitated the horizontal transfer process between host mRNA and DNA viruses.
Fiscal Adjustment in EU Countries: A Balance Sheet Approach

Several European Union countries have recently implemented or are envisaging fiscal operations which improve budgetary figures but have no structural impact on government finances. We evaluate some of these measures using a balance sheet approach. In particular, we examine the degree to which reductions in government debt in EU countries has been accompanied by a decumulation of government assets. In the run-up to Maastricht we find a strong correlation between changes in government liabilities and government assets, and larger declines in government assets in countries starting from higher public debt levels.
miR-34a: Multiple Opposing Targets and One Destiny in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract Background and Aims: The role of miR-34a in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is controversial and several unresolved issues remain, including its expression pattern and relevance to tumor etiology, tumor stage and prognosis, and finally, its impact on apoptosis. Methods: miR-34a expression was assessed in hepatitis C virus (HCV)-induced non-metastatic HCC tissues by RT-Q-PCR. Huh-7 cells were transfected with miR-34a mimics and the impact of miR-34a was examined on 84 pro-apoptotic/anti-apoptotic genes using PCR array; its net effect was tested on cell viability via MTT assay. Results: miR-34a expression was up-regulated in HCC tissues. Moreover, miR-34a induced a large set of pro-apoptotic/anti-apoptotic genes, with a net result of triggering apoptosis and repressing cell viability. Conclusions: HCC-related differential expression of miR-34a could be etiology-based or stage-specific, and low expression of miR-34a may predict poor prognosis. This study’s findings also emphasize the role of miR-34a in apoptosis.
POI Recommendation: Towards Fused Matrix Factorization with Geographical and Temporal Influences

Providing personalized point-of-interest (POI) recommendation has become a major issue with the rapid emergence of location-based social networks (LBSNs). Unlike traditional recommendation approaches, the LBSNs application domain comes with significant geographical and temporal dimensions. Moreover most of traditional recommendation algorithms fail to cope with the specific challenges implied by these two dimensions. Fusing geographical and temporal influences for better recommendation accuracy in LBSNs remains unexplored, as far as we know. We depict how matrix factorization can serve POI recommendation, and propose a novel attempt to integrate both geographical and temporal influences into matrix factorization. Specifically we present GeoMF-TD, an extension of geographical matrix factorization with temporal dependencies. Our experiments on a real dataset shows up to 20\% benefit on recommendation precision.
Introduction: Theorizing the civic turn in European integration policies

Many authors have written about the ‘civic turn’ in European immigrant integration politics and policies that began in the late 1990s, but few have focused on the conceptual or normative dimensions of this turn. The purpose of this special issue is to help correct this situation. In this substantive introductory article, we begin with a discussion of the ‘convergence or national models’ debate that dominated early work on the subject. The next section presents the argument that civic integration is best understood as an ideological turn. It expands ‘good citizenship’ into personal conduct and values, shifts the responsibility for integration from the state to individuals and institutionalizes incentivizing and disciplining integration processes, which are often really just a means of migration control. This is accompanied, we argue, by a civic nationalist conception of membership that appeals to shared political values but defines those values through the culture of the state’s national majority. We then move on to the mechanisms and effects of civic integration, followed by a discussion of its normative analysis, before finally summarizing the articles included in this special issue and how they address the concerns that we have raised.
Body Mass Index and Kidney Stones: A Cohort Study of Japanese Men.

BACKGROUND In Japan, the incidence of kidney stones has increased markedly in recent decades. Major causes of kidney stones remain unclear, and limited data are available on the relationship between overweight/obesity and the incidence of kidney stones. We therefore evaluated body mass index (BMI) and the incidence of kidney stones in Japanese men. METHODS Of the workers at a gas company, 5984 males aged 20-40 years underwent a medical examination in 1985 (baseline). This study includes 4074 of the men, who were free of kidney stones at baseline and underwent a second medical examination performed between April 2004 and March 2005. BMI was calculated from measured height and weight in 1985, and men were categorized into tertiles. The development of kidney stones during follow-up was based on self-reports from questionnaires at the second medical examination. RESULTS The average duration of follow-up was 19 years, with 258 participants developing kidney stones during this period. Using the lowest BMI (1st tertile) group as a reference, the hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals [CIs]) for the 2nd and 3rd BMI tertiles were: 1.26 (95% CI, 0.92-1.73) and 1.44 (95% CI, 1.06-1.96), respectively (P for trend = 0.019). After additionally adjusting for potential confounders, such as age, systolic blood pressure, cardiorespiratory fitness, cigarette smoking, and alcohol consumption, the hazard ratios were 1.28 (95% CI, 0.93-1.76) and 1.41 (95% CI, 1.02-1.97), respectively (P for trend = 0.041). CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that increased BMI is a risk factor for kidney stones in Japanese men.
AN EVALUATION OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF EARNING DETERMINANTS IN THE BANKING INDUSTRY: THE CASE OF NIGERIA

The objective of this paper was to ascertain the determinants of and to evaluate their implications. The study covered a period of 2005 were a total of twenty The study selected a sample of all eighteen of these banks quoted on t exchange as at 2010. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to identify the determinants of earnings management. The results showed that audit committee size (AUDCOM), audit fee (AUDFEE), bank asset quality (BANKQUA), bank size (BANKSIZ) and board size (BSIZE) were all negatively correlated with abnormal loan loss provisions (ABBL). Other variables including auditor change (AUDCH), bank complexity (BANKCOMP), bank performance (BANKPER), board composition (BCOMP), director shareholding (D correlated. The study recommended that audit committee size should be increased, bank inspector should focus on asset quality and leverage of the bank, and both bank size and board size should be increased. Fu unnecessary. Furthermore, non competence while directors’ shareholding should be balanced with other shareholdings.
Fast CU Size Decisions for HEVC Intra Frame Coding Based on Support Vector Machines

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) achieves themost significant coding efficiency compared with all the existingvideo coding standards. However, the Intra encoding complexityis increased dramatically since the complex recursive searchalgorithm for the coding unit (CU) size decisions. In this paper, afast CU size decision algorithm based on Support Vector Machines(SVM) is proposed to further alleviate the encoder computationload. Firstly, some effective image features are extracted to judgethe CU complexity. Then, a three-classifier structure of CU sizedecisions is established based on SVM. The experimental resultsshow that the proposed algorithm can reduce 53% intra codingtime on average with 1.2% BDBR loss on average
Evolution of Morphological Integration: Developmental Accommodation of Stress‐Induced Variation

Extreme environmental change during growth often results in an increase in developmental abnormalities in the morphology of an organism. The evolutionary significance of such stress‐induced variation depends on the recurrence of a stressor and on the degree to which developmental errors can be accommodated by an organism’s ontogeny without significant loss of function. We subjected populations of four species of soricid shrews to an extreme environment during growth and measured changes in the patterns of integration and accommodation of stress‐induced developmental errors in a complex of mandibular traits. Adults that grew under an extreme environment had lower integration of morphological variation among mandibular traits and highly elevated fluctuating asymmetry in these traits, compared to individuals that grew under the control conditions. However, traits differed strongly in the magnitude of response to a stressor—traits within attachments of the same muscle (functionally integrated traits) had lower response and changed their integration less than other traits. Cohesiveness in functionally integrated complexes of traits under stress was maintained by close covariation of their developmental variation. Such developmental accommodation of stress‐induced variation might enable the individual’s functioning and persistence under extreme environmental conditions and thus provides a link between individual adaptation to stress and the evolution of stress resistance.
Online Demand Under Limited Consumer Search

Using aggregate product search data from Amazon.com, we jointly estimate consumer information search and online demand for consumer durable goods. To estimate the demand and search primitives, we introduce an optimal sequential search process into a model of choice and treat the observed market-level product search data as aggregations of individual-level optimal search sequences. The model builds on the dynamic programming framework by Weitzman [Weitzman, M. L. 1979. Optimal search for the best alternative. Econometrica47(3) 641--654] and combines it with a choice model. It can accommodate highly complex demand patterns at the market level. At the individual level, the model has a number of attractive properties in estimation, including closed-form expressions for the probability distribution of alternative sets of searched goods and breaking the curse of dimensionality. Using numerical experiments, we verify the model's ability to identify the heterogeneous consumer tastes and search costs from product search data. Empirically, the model is applied to the online market for camcorders and is used to answer manufacturer questions about market structure and competition and to address policy-maker issues about the effect of selectively lowered search costs on consumer surplus outcomes. We demonstrate that the demand estimates from our search model predict the actual product sales ranks. We find that consumer search for camcorders at Amazon.com is typically limited to 10--15 choice options and that this affects estimates of own and cross elasticities. In a policy simulation, we also find that the vast majority of the households benefit from Amazon.com's product recommendations via lower search costs.
Transient Blockade of the CD11d/CD18 Integrin Reduces Secondary Damage after Spinal Cord Injury, Improving Sensory, Autonomic, and Motor Function

The early inflammatory response to spinal cord injury (SCI) causes significant secondary damage. Strategies that nonselectively suppress inflammation have not improved outcomes after SCI, perhaps because inflammation has both adverse and beneficial effects after SCI. We have shown that the selective, time-limited action of a monoclonal antibody (mAb) to the CD11d subunit of the CD11d/CD18 integrin, delivered intravenously during the first 48 hr after SCI in rats, markedly decreases the infiltration of neutrophils and delays the entry of hematogenous monocyte-macrophages into the injured cord. We hypothesized that this targeted strategy would lead to neuroprotection and improved neurological outcomes. In this study the development of chronic pain was detected in rats by assessing mechanical allodynia on the trunk and hindpaws 2 weeks to 3 months after a clinically relevant clip-compression SCI at the twelfth thoracic segment. The anti-CD11d mAb treatment reduced this pain by half. Motor performance also improved as rats were able to plantar-place their hindpaws and use them for weight support instead of sweeping movements only. Improved cardiovascular outcome was shown after SCI at the fourth thoracic segment by significant decreases in autonomic dysreflexia. Locomotor performance was also improved. These functional changes correlated with significantly greater amounts and increased organization of myelin and neurofilament near the lesion. The improved neurological recovery after the specific reduction of early inflammation after SCI demonstrates that this selective strategy increases tissue at the injury site and improves its functional capacity. This early neuroprotective treatment would be an ideal foundation for building later cell-based therapies.
The intertwined metabolism of Medicago truncatula and its nitrogen fixing symbiont Sinorhizobium meliloti elucidated by genome-scale metabolic models

Genome-scale metabolic network models can be used for various analyses including the prediction of metabolic responses to changes in the environment. Legumes are well known for their rhizobial symbiosis that introduces nitrogen into the global nutrient cycle. Here, we describe a fully compartmentalised, mass and charge-balanced, genome-scale model of the clover Medicago truncatula, which has been adopted as a model organism for legumes. We employed flux balance analysis to demonstrate that the network is capable of producing biomass (amino acids, nucleotides, lipids, cell wall) in experimentally observed proportions, during day and night. By connecting the plant model to a model of its rhizobial symbiont, Sinorhizobium meliloti, we were able to investigate the effects of the symbiosis on metabolic fluxes and plant growth and could demonstrate how oxygen availability influences metabolic exchanges between plant and symbiont, thus elucidating potential benefits of amino acid cycling. We thus provide a modelling framework, in which the interlinked metabolism of plants and nodules can be studied from a theoretical perspective.
TAUPE: towards understanding program comprehension

Program comprehension is a very important activity during the development and the maintenance of programs. This activity has been actively studied in the past decades to present software engineers with the most accurate and---hopefully---most useful pieces of information on the organisation, algorithms, executions, evolution, and documentation of a program. Yet, only few work tried to understand concretely how software engineers obtain and use this information. Software engineers mainly use sight to obtain information about a program, usually from source code or class diagrams. Therefore, we use eye-tracking to collect data about the use of class diagrams by software engineers during program comprehension. We introduce a new visualisation technique to aggregate and to present the collected data. We also report the results and surprising insights gained from two case studies.
THE COMPLICATED INTERSECTION BETWEEN AGE-RELATED EMOTIONAL MEMORY AND CULTURE : A REPLY TO “ WHEN YOUNGER ADULTS LOOK LIKE OLDER ADULTS . ”

In Sharifi and Chung (2014; see this present issue of JISS), we presented a study on emotional memory and culture conducted in US and Afghanistan. Our results showed the well-documented age-related positivity effect in the US, but not in Afghanistan. We explained our data using the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST), and provided a few other plausible explanations. In Sell’s (2014; see this present issue of JISS) commentary of our article, two more hypotheses were suggested, one consistent with SST and another drawn from an evolutionary perspective. In this reply, we tested these hypotheses with our data and offered a constructive critique on such approaches in cross-cultural cognition research.
Job satisfaction and locus of control in an academic setting

xiv CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND . 1 Background . 3 Problem Statement . 4 Purpose of the Study . 5 Research Questions . 5 Importance of the Study . 6 Study Limitations . 7 Definition of Terms.8 Social Learning Theory. 8 Expectancy-Value Framework. 8 Attribution . 9 Perception of Control . 9 Locus of Control . 9 Internal Locus of Control . 9 External Locus of Control . 10 Job Satisfaction . 10 Years Teaching in Higher Education . 10 Tenure . 10 Organization of the Study . 11 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW . 13 Human Motivation . 13 Need Reduction Theories . 14 Freud‘s Psychoanalytic Theory of Motivation . 15 Hull‘s Drive Theory . 15 Expectancy-Value Theories . 15 Kurt Lewin‘s Field Theory . 16 Achievement Theory . 16
Data Poisoning Attacks on Factorization-Based Collaborative Filtering

Recommendation and collaborative filtering systems are important in modern information and e-commerce applications. As these systems are becoming increasingly popular in the industry, their outputs could affect business decision making, introducing incentives for an adversarial party to compromise the availability or integrity of such systems. We introduce a data poisoning attack on collaborative filtering systems. We demonstrate how a powerful attacker with full knowledge of the learner can generate malicious data so as to maximize his/her malicious objectives, while at the same time mimicking normal user behavior to avoid being detected. While the complete knowledge assumption seems extreme, it enables a robust assessment of the vulnerability of collaborative filtering schemes to highly motivated attacks. We present efficient solutions for two popular factorization-based collaborative filtering algorithms: the \emph{alternative minimization} formulation and the \emph{nuclear norm minimization} method. Finally, we test the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms on real-world data and discuss potential defensive strategies.
INTENSITY AND RANGE IMAGE BASED FEATURES FOR OBJECT DETECTION IN MOBILE MAPPING DATA

Abstract. Mobile mapping is used for asset management, change detection, surveying and dimensional analysis. There is a great desire to automate these processes given the very large amounts of data, especially when 3-D point cloud data is combined with co-registered imagery – termed "3-D images". One approach requires low-level feature extraction from the images and point cloud data followed by pattern recognition and machine learning techniques to recognise the various high level features (or objects) in the images. This paper covers low-level feature analysis and investigates a number of different feature extraction methods for their usefulness. The features of interest include those based on the "bag of words" concept in which many low-level features are used e.g. histograms of gradients, as well as those describing the saliency (how unusual a region of the image is). These mainly image based features have been adapted to deal with 3-D images. The performance of the various features are discussed for typical mobile mapping scenarios and recommendations made as to the best features to use.