Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sensitivity Analysis for Instrumental Variables Regression With Overidentifying Restrictions

Instrumental variables regression (IV regression) is a method for making causal inferences about the effect of a treatment based on an observational study in which there are unmeasured confounding variables. The method requires one or more valid instrumental variables (IVs); a valid IV is a variable that is associated with the treatment, is independent of unmeasured confounding variables, and has no direct effect on the outcome. Often there is uncertainty about the validity of the proposed IVs. When a researcher proposes more than one IV, the validity of these IVs can be tested through the “overidentifying restrictions test. ” Although the overidentifying restrictions test does provide some information, the test has no power versus certain alternatives and can have low power versus many alternatives due to its omnibus nature. To fully address uncertainty about the validity of the proposed IVs, we argue that a sensitivity analysis is needed. A sensitivity analysis examines the impact of plausible amounts of invalidity of the proposed IVs on inferences for the parameters of interest. We develop a method of sensitivity analysis for IV regression with overidentifying restrictions that makes full use of the information provided by the overidentifying restrictions test but provides more information than the test by exploring sensitivity to violations of the validity of the proposed IVs in directions for which the test has low power. Our sensitivity analysis uses interpretable parameters that can be discussed with subject matter experts. We illustrate our method using a study of food demand among rural households in the Philippines.
Evolution of anuran brains: disentangling ecological and phylogenetic sources of variation

Variation in ecological selection pressures has been implicated to explain variation in brain size and architecture in fishes, birds and mammals, but little is known in this respect about amphibians. Likewise, the relative importance of constraint vs. mosaic hypotheses of brain evolution in explaining variation in brain size and architecture remains contentious. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, we studied interspecific variation in brain size and size of different brain parts among 43 Chinese anuran frogs and explored how much of this variation was explainable by variation in ecological factors (viz. habitat type, diet and predation risk). We also evaluated which of the two above‐mentioned hypotheses best explains the observed patterns. Although variation in brain size explained on average 80.5% of the variation in size of different brain parts (supporting the constraint hypothesis), none of the three ecological factors were found to explain variation in overall brain size. However, habitat and diet type explained a significant amount of variation in telencephalon size, as well in three composite measures of brain architecture. Likewise, predation risk explained a significant amount of variation in bulbus olfactorius and optic tecta size. Our results show that evolution of anuran brain accommodates features compatible with both constraint (viz. strong allometry among brain parts) and mosaic (viz. independent size changes in response to ecological factors in certain brain parts) models of brain size evolution.
Transient and steady-state selection in the striatal microcircuit

Although the basal ganglia have been widely studied and implicated in signal processing and action selection, little information is known about the active role the striatal microcircuit plays in action selection in the basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical loops. To address this knowledge gap we use a large scale three dimensional spiking model of the striatum, combined with a rate coded model of the basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical loop, to asses the computational role the striatum plays in action selection. We identify a robust transient phenomena generated by the striatal microcircuit, which temporarily enhances the difference between two competing cortical inputs. We show that this transient is sufficient to modulate decision making in the basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuit. We also find that the transient selection originates from a novel adaptation effect in single striatal projection neurons, which is amenable to experimental testing. Finally, we compared transient selection with models implementing classical steady-state selection. We challenged both forms of model to account for recent reports of paradoxically enhanced response selection in Huntington's disease patients. We found that steady-state selection was uniformly impaired under all simulated Huntington's conditions, but transient selection was enhanced given a sufficient Huntington's-like increase in NMDA receptor sensitivity. Thus our models provide an intriguing hypothesis for the mechanisms underlying the paradoxical cognitive improvements in manifest Huntington's patients.
The Mathematically Able as a Marked Category

Most literature on gender and mathematics is based on assumptions that the value of mathematical accomplishment is unquestionable and wholly good, and that any failures of women to achieve in mathematics are due to problems within her or the larger society, problems which should and can be resolved. This article argues that the situation is not so simple. Drawing on literatures of sociology, cultural studies, and education (among others), the article sets forth characteristics shared by 'marked categories' of persons as deviant. Drawing evidence from a wide range of sources, it is then argued that 'the mathematically able' share these characteristics and can therefore be considered as a marked category. Moreover, women in mathematics are doubly marked (as women and as mathematical), making their position doubly difficult socially. There are thus two discourses of mathematics in Western society, a discourse of power and a discourse of deviance. Drawing on the practices of other marked categories, I make a few recommendations for educators based on the analysis.
Are samples drawn from Mechanical Turk valid for research on political ideology?

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is an increasingly popular tool for the recruitment of research subjects. While there has been much focus on the demographic differences between MTurk samples and the national public, we know little about whether liberals and conservatives recruited from MTurk share the same psychological dispositions as their counterparts in the mass public. In the absence of such evidence, some have argued that the selection process involved in joining MTurk invalidates the subject pool for studying questions central to political science. In this paper, we evaluate this claim by comparing a large MTurk sample to two benchmark national samples – one conducted online and one conducted face-to-face. We examine the personality and value-based motivations of political ideology across the three samples. All three samples produce substantively identical results with only minor variation in effect sizes. In short, liberals and conservatives in our MTurk sample closely mirror the psychological divisions of liberals and conservatives in the mass public, though MTurk liberals hold more characteristically liberal values and attitudes than liberals from representative samples. Overall, our results suggest that MTurk is a valid recruitment tool for psychological research on political ideology.
Children's Dreaming: A Study Based on Questionnaires Completed by Parents

Objective: This paper reports an investigation on children’s dreaming based on questionnaires completed by parents. The purpose of the study was to collect data on a large group of subjects and evaluate their consistency compared to the traditional studies on children’s dreams (i.e., REM dreams, home-collected dreams and schoolcollected dreams). Method: The questionnaire (QSEE) used mainly considers questions about parents compliance with dreams and questions about children’s dreaming, particularly the last dreams they have had. The study was conducted in different schools of CenterNorth Italy. 1148 questionnaires were distributed to parents, 652 of these were returned to the experimenter (return rate = 57%) and 565 were usable (usability rate = 49%). The 565 questionnaires involved 565 children (255 female, 310 male) aged between 2 years;9 months and 9 years;4 months. Results and Conclusions: The questionnaire employed has proved to be useful in collecting data on several aspect of children’s dreaming in a relatively simple and costeffective way. Furthermore, the indications obtained on child dreaming matched with several data from studies that adopted more conventional dream collection methods. A large part of well-established knowledge about children’s dreams (e.g., short length, presence of animal characters and so on) was supported by the use of a large sample of children/dreams, that allow for a more certain generalization. The use of questionnaires of this kind may stand side by side with conventional methodologies allowing a valid opportunity of cross-checking their results. (Sleep and Hypnosis 2006;8(1):19-32)
The Cross-Cultural Study of Human Sexuality

Anthropology has long had a love-hate relationship with the study of human sexuality. Although the origins of anthropology were marked by concerns and debates over the topic (275, 356), contemporary anthropologists have gener­ ally moved away from consideration of the "erotic and exotic" into more respectable and less controversial kinds of topics. Meanwhile sexuality re­ mains an intrinsic, if rarely studied, aspect of human experience (124). This essay is a brief review of cross-cultural human sexuality and the typical concerns anthropologists have brought to the study of sexual practices. In order to present the range of areas that anthropologists have investigated, detail has been sacrificed for comprehensive coverage. Following discussions of history, methods, and ethics, the review is divided into a discussion of two major topics: heterosexual behavior and homosexual behavior. Although we have attempted to include examples of the wide-ranging concerns and in­ terests of anthropologists, it has been necessary to neglect equally important approaches. Excluded are discussions of human biology and evolution, repro­ ductive health and hygiene, gender role and status (297), the psychodynamic approach to understanding human sexual behavior, and historical surveys of Western sexual practice (65, 130). Instead we focus on cross-cultural studies of sexual practice that attempt to deal with human sexual arousal, attraction, and customary means of dealing with sexuality in non-Western cultures.
Do Voters Vote in Line with their Policy Preferences?—The Role of Information

In this article, I investigate how political information affects voting behavior. Specifically, I test (i) if more informed voters are more likely to vote for their closest politicians; and (ii) if this translates into a bias on the aggregate level. To do so, I use a set of Swedish individual survey data on the preferences for local public services of both politicians and voters, which provides an opportunity to investigate how information affects voters’ ability to match their preferences with those of their politicians. The results indicate that more informed voters are more likely to vote for politicians with similar preferences for local public services and, on the aggregate level, that the left-wing parties would have received 1–3 percentage points fewer votes if all voters had been equally well-informed. (JEL codes: D72, D80, H71)
Important Social and Academic Interactions in Supporting Gifted Youth in Non-Formal Education

This study investigated how 16-19-year-old international gifted youth felt that a non- formal educational program in math, science and technology, called the Millennium Youth Camp, supported them and what kind of long-term impact did it have on their lives. In the first part of the research, 88 international students answered an open-ended questionnaire about their opinions on the non-formal program. According to content analysis, the two most important aspects of the non- formal educational program were (i) social interaction between each other and the experts and (ii) academic activity and support. The second part of the research was conducted a year after the camp by an online survey, in which the attendees wrote an essay on how the experience had affected their lives. The content analysis of the essays indicated that the experience had a long-term impact on how the students saw themselves and their future. Based on the findings, it is outlined what principles should be implemented into non-formal learning in order to support the gifted.
Identification of Atherosclerotic Plaque Components With Intravascular Ultrasound Elastography In Vivo: A Yucatan Pig Study

Background—Intravascular ultrasound elastography assesses the local strain of the atherosclerotic vessel wall. In the present study, the potential to identify different plaque components in vivo was investigated. Methods and Results—Atherosclerotic external iliac and femoral arteries (n=24) of 6 Yucatan pigs were investigated. Before termination, elastographic data were acquired with a 20-MHz Visions catheter. Two frames acquired at end-diastole with a pressure differential of ≈4 mm Hg were acquired to obtain the elastograms. Before dissection, x-ray was used to identify the arterial segments that had been investigated by ultrasound. Specimens were stained for collagen, fat, and macrophages. Plaques were classified as absent, early fibrous lesion, early fatty lesion, or advanced fibrous plaque. The average strains in the plaque-free arterial wall (0.21%) and the early (0.24%) and advanced fibrous plaques (0.22%) were similar. Higher average strain values were observed in fatty lesions (0.46%) compared with fibrous plaques (P =0.007). After correction for confounding by lipid content, no additional differences in average strain were found between plaques with and without macrophages (P =0.966). Receiver operating characteristic analysis revealed a sensitivity and a specificity of 100% and 80%, respectively, to identify fatty plaques. The presence of a high-strain spot (strain >1%) has 92% sensitivity and 92% specificity to identify macrophages. Conclusions—To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that intravascular ultrasound elastography has been validated in vivo. Fatty plaques have an increased mean strain value. High-strain spots are associated with the presence of macrophages.
Objective-AoA norms for 175 names in Spanish: relationships with other psycholinguistic variables, estimated AoA, and data from other languages

There is a large body of evidence suggesting that words learnt early in life are recognised and produced faster than words learnt later in life, even when other variables are controlled. This is known as the Age of Acquisition (AoA) effect. However, there is an aspect of AoA that requires research of a greater depth, namely the method of obtaining the AoA measures. In the majority of studies, adult participants were asked to estimate the age at which they learnt a given word. Morrison, Chappell, and Ellis (1997) proposed a new method for obtaining objective-AoA data. They asked children to name some objects, and the age at which a given word appeared with 75% or more frequency was considered the AoA of that word. Although this method is more valid than adult ratings, it has only rarely been used. The main aim of this work is to provide objective-AoA norms in Spanish for a set of 175 object names following the procedures used by Morrison et al. The relationships among objective-AoA, estimated-AoA, and other psycholinguistic variables (name-agreement, familiarity, visual complexity, word length, etc.) obtained from a previous study are also analysed. Finally, the similarity of objective- and estimated-AoA measures was examined using data from several languages. A cluster analysis and a multidimensional-scaling analysis revealed that the estimated-AoA measures in a language correlated more with the estimated-AoA measures of the other languages than with the objective measures in the same language. The results suggest that it would be desirable to always use objective-AoA norms because they are less skewed by familiarity.
Small‐sample adjustments in using the sandwich variance estimator in generalized estimating equations

The generalized estimating equation (GEE) approach is widely used in regression analyses with correlated response data. Under mild conditions, the resulting regression coefficient estimator is consistent and asymptotically normal with its variance being consistently estimated by the so‐called sandwich estimator. Statistical inference is thus accomplished by using the asymptotic Wald chi‐squared test. However, it has been noted in the literature that for small samples the sandwich estimator may not perform well and may lead to much inflated type I errors for the Wald chi‐squared test. Here we propose using an approximate t‐ or F‐test that takes account of the variability of the sandwich estimator. The level of type I error of the proposed t‐ or F‐test is guaranteed to be no larger than that of the Wald chi‐squared test. The satisfactory performance of the proposed new tests is confirmed in a simulation study. Our proposal also has some advantages when compared with other new approaches based on direct modifications of the sandwich estimator, including the one that corrects the downward bias of the sandwich estimator. In addition to hypothesis testing, our result has a clear implication on constructing Wald‐type confidence intervals or regions. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
High-level automated driving on complex urban roads with enhanced environment representation

This paper describes a fully automated driving algorithm on complex urban roads with LiDAR, vision, and GPS/map based environment representation with guaranteed safety. The proposed algorithm consists of the following three steps: an environment representation, a safety driving envelope decision, and a motion optimization. An environment representation system consists of three main modules: object classification, vehicle/non-vehicle tracking and map/lane based localization. A motion planning modules derives an optimal motion as a function of time, from the environment representation results. A safety envelope decision module determines the complete driving corridor that leads to the destination while assigning all objects to either the left or right corridor bound. In the case of moving objects such as other traffic participants, their behaviors are anticipated in the near future. A motion optimization module uses the safety envelop as a constraint and computes a trajectory that the vehicle stays in its bounds. The vehicle control module feeds back the pose estimate of the localization module to guide the vehicle along the planned trajectory. The effectiveness of the proposed automated driving algorithm is evaluated via vehicle tests. Test results show the robust performance on an inner-city street scenario.
Just Enough Requirements Traceability

Even though traceability is legally required in most safety critical software applications and is a recognized component of many software process improvement initiatives, organizations continue to struggle to implement it in a cost-effective manner. This panel addresses the problems and challenges of requirements traceability and asks questions such as "How much traceability is enough? " and "What kinds of traceability provide cost effective solutions? " Traditional, automated, and lean traceability methods are all discussed.
Low-frequency ultrasound increases outer membrane permeability of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Low-frequency ultrasound has been investigated asan adjuvant to antimicrobial therapy, targeted at bothplanktonic and bioﬁlm (sessile) organisms. Our previ-ous work showed that ultrasound (US) effectively en-hances the bactericidal activity of certain antibioticsagainst planktonic cultures (Pitt et al., 1994; Rediskeet al., 1999) and in vitro bioﬁlms (Johnson et al., 1998;Qian et al., 1999) and in vivo bioﬁlms (Carmen et al.,2004b, 2005; Rediske et al., 2000) of gram-positiveand gram-negative bacteria. Ultrasound was shown toincrease the transport of antibiotics through bioﬁlms(Carmen et al., 2004a) which could account for some(or all) of the enhanced antibiotic activity against in-sonated bioﬁlms; but such a mechanism could not ac-count for US-enhanced antibiotic activity in planktoniccultures which have no extensive exopolymer matrix toretard antibiotic transport.Because this ultrasonic enhancement of antibioticactivity operates on both planktonic and sessile bacte-ria, we posit that US does more than simply increasethe transport of antibiotic to the cells; ultrasound ispostulated to increase uptake of antibiotic into the cellsby rendering the cell membrane more permeable tothe antibiotic. To examine this postulate, we must ﬁrstreview how ultrasound interacts with cells.Bacterial cells are fairly transparent to ultrasound;that is, ultrasonic waves go right through cells with littleabsorption, scattering or other interaction. However,the pressure oscillations of ultrasound produce sizeoscillations in any gas bubbles in the liquid (Brennen,1995). These bubbles range in size from approxi-mately 1mm to 100mm in diameter (Brennen, 1995). The oscillations of bubbles, called cavitation, are gen-erally divided into “stable” and “collapse” types of cavi-tation. Stable cavitation is the low intensity oscillationof the bubbles without complete collapse of the bub-ble, while collapse cavitation occurs at higher intensitylevels and lower frequencies wherein these bubblescollapse and violently accelerate the ﬂuid aroundthem. During bubble collapse, adiabatic heating of thegas produces very high temperature, produces freeradicals, generates very high liquid shear force, andgenerates a shock wave as the collapsing sphericalwall slams into itself (Brennen, 1995). With a sufﬁcientnumber of collapse cavitation events, cell membranes