Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Marginal Cost of Public Funds in Africa

The authors use a computable general equilibrium model to estimate the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) for taxes on domestic goods, exports, imports, capital, and labor in 38 African countries. The resulting MCF estimates provide directions for tax reform in Africa. The authors investigate the MCFs of hypothetical taxes in the informal sector and the impact of administrative costs. Finally, they investigate the relationship between MCF dispersion and measures of tax system inefficiency.
Interpolating String Field Theories

A minimal area problem imposing different length conditions on open and closed curves is shown to define a one parameter family of covariant open-closed quantum string field theories. These interpolate from a recently proposed factorizable open-closed theory up to an extended version of Witten's open string field theory capable of incorporating on shell closed strings. The string diagrams of the latter define a new decomposition of the moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces with punctures and boundaries based on quadratic differentials with both first order and second order poles.
Owlgres: A Scalable OWL Reasoner

We present Owlgres, a DL-Lite reasoner implementation written for PostgreSQL, a mature open source database. Owlgres is an OWL reasoner that provides consistency checking and conjunctive query services, supports DL-LiteR as well as the OWL sameAs construct, and is not limited to PostgreSQL. We discuss the implementation with special focus on sameAs and the supported subset of the SPARQL language. Emphasis is given to the implemented optimization techniques which resulted in significant performance improvement. Based on a confidential NASA dataset and part of the DBpedia dataset, we show a typical use case for Owlgres, i.e. given a terminology and a dataset, Owlgres provides querying on a persistent knowledge base with reasoning at query time in the expressivity of DL-LiteR.
Distribution/abundance relations in a New Zealand grassland landscape

There are many examples in the literature of a positive correlation between the distribution of a species and its local abundance, i.e., widely occurring species tend to be more abundant locally when they do occur. Such relations have been documented over a wide range of taxa and spatial scales. There are five major hypotheses seeking to explain the relation: Random placement, Sampling error, Niche width, Demography, and Metapopulation dynamics. However, there is little evidence to distinguish between them, especially for plants. In this study, plant species presence in a short tussock grassland in inland Canterbury, New Zealand was sampled at three spatial scales (i.e. quadrat sizes; sizes of spatial grain): 0.2×0.3 m, 0.4×0.6 m, and 1.0×1.5 m, each divided into 0.1×0.15 m sub-quadrats for recording local frequency. The data were also analysed at different ranges of soil pH, water content, organic content and fertility (by bioassay). Significant positive correlations between species distribution and local abundance were found at the two larger spatial grain scales. There was no significant relation for native species, but the relation for exotic species was considerably stronger than that over all species. Reduction of environmental heterogeneity, by restricting the dataset to narrower ranges of soil factors, produced higher correlations at the two smaller grain scales. In contrast to reports in the literature, many species (most of them native) showed narrow regional distributions but high local abundance when they were at a site. It is concluded that the Sampling-error hypothesis cannot be an explanation of the results obtained here. Aspects of the results are inconsistent with the Random-placement, Demography and Niche-width hypotheses. The results are most compatible with the Metapopulation dynamics hypothesis. However, it is likely that several mechanisms are operating simultaneously. Whilst detailed analysis of empirical distributions at different spatial grains and over different ecological ranges can exclude some of the hypotheses, detailed studies of the autecology of species are the next necessary step.
Detection of hypernasality from speech signal using group delay and wavelet transform

One of the most common disorders in children with cleft palate is hypernasality that survives also after operation. To solve this problem, it is required to set many speech therapy sessions. Therefore, assessment of hypernasality is fundamental for speech therapists and could be done either by a nasometer equipment or an expert speech therapist. Recently speech processing methods are introduced as an efficient alternative tool. In this study, vowels (/a/) extracted from 392 utterances of disyllables (/pamap/) that were uttered by 22 normal subjects and 13 subjects with cleft palate have been used and are recorded by nasal and oral microphones. Some analyses are performed on Group Delay parameters as well as features of wavelet transform. The results show that extracted parameters from Group Delay spectrum of second (/a/) in (/pamap/) context, obtained from both nasal and oral signals, are better than that of the first (/a/), and in the best outcomes an accuracy of 94.1 % is achieved. In wavelet transform, statistical features are calculated from 5 sub-bands of Daubechies4 coefficients of two (la/) vowels and their transients. In the best results an accuracy of 97.1 % for transient (lma/) from combination of nasal and oral features is obtained.
Frequent expression of human leukocyte antigen class I and the status of intratumoral immune cells in alveolar soft part sarcoma

The prognosis of alveolar soft part sarcoma is poor, despite the slow growth of the tumor. A number of cases with spontaneous regression of this rare tumor have been reported. Although the mechanisms underlying spontaneous regression remain uncertain, local immune reaction may be a possible contributing factor. Immunohistochemical expression of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I, cluster of differentiation (CD) 3, CD4, CD8, CD20, CD45, CD56, CD68, CD138 and CD163 were assessed in a series of 10 alveolar soft part sarcomas, and the expression profiles were associated with patients' clinicopathological parameters. Expression of HLA class I was observed in almost all the tumor cells of all cases. CD8(+) cells were identified in all tumors with varying densities. Moderate infiltration of CD8(+) cells was detected in three patients; one of these patients survived with long-term tumor remission. Infiltration of CD10(+), CD20(+), CD56(+) or CD138(+) cells was not revealed in all tumors. Moderate-diffuse infiltration of CD163(+) cells was observed in all tumors. To the best of our knowledge, the present study represents the first report of intratumoral immune cells in alveolar soft part sarcoma. Frequent expression of HLA class I in tumor cells was observed. CD8(+) cells were identified at various densities and CD163(+) cells were observed in alveolar soft part sarcoma. Moderate infiltration of CD8(+) cells in patients with a good prognosis may indicate the antitumor effects of immune cells in alveolar soft part sarcoma.
Phase and Size Controllable Synthesis of NaYbF4 Nanocrystals in Oleic Acid/ Ionic Liquid Two-Phase System for Targeted Fluorescent Imaging of Gastric Cancer

Upconversion nanocrystals with small size and strong fluorescent signals own great potential in applications such as biomolecule-labeling, in vivo tracking and molecular imaging. Herein we reported that NaYbF4: 25%Gd, 2%Tm upconversion nanocrystals with small size and strong fluorescent signals were controllably synthesized by oleic acid (OA)/ ionic liquid (IL) two-phase system for targeted fluorescent imaging of gastric cancer in vivo. The optimal synthesis condition of NaYbF4: 25%Gd, 2%Tm upconversion nanocrystals by OA/IL two-phase system was established, adding more metal ion such as Na+ ion could facilitate the size control and crystal-phase transition, more importantly, markedly enhancing fluorescent intensity of beta-phase nanocrystals compared with traditional methods. Alpha-phase NaYbF4, 2%Tm upconversion nanocrystals with less than 10nm in diameter and beta-phase NaYbF4: 25%Gd, 2%Tm upconversion nanocrystals with 30 nm or so in diameter and strong fluorescent signals were obtained, these synthesized nanocrystals exhibited very low cytotoxicity. Folic acid-conjugated silica-modified beta-phase NaYbF4: 25%Gd, 2%Tm upconversion nanocrystals were prepared, could actively target gastric cancer tissues implanted into nude mice in vivo, and realized targeted fluorescent imaging. Folic acid-conjugated silica-modified NaYbF4: 25%Gd, 2%Tm upconversion nanocrystals show great potential in applications such as targeted near infared radiation fluorescent imaging, magnetic resonance imaging and targeted therapy of gastric cancer in the near future.
Rewarding Sequential Innovators: Patents Prizes and Buyouts

This paper presents a model of cumulative innovation where firms are heterogeneous in their research ability. We study the optimal reward policy when the quality of the ideas and their subsequent development effort are private information. The optimal assignment of property rights must counterbalance the incentives of current and future innovators. The resulting mechanism resembles a menu of patents that, contrary to the existing literature, have infinite duration and fixed scope, where the latter increases in the value of the idea. Finally, we provide a way to implement this patent menu by using a simple buyout scheme: The innovator commits at the outset to a price ceiling at which he will sell his rights to a future inventor. By paying a larger fee, a higher price ceiling is obtained. Any subsequent innovator must pay this price and purchase its own buyout fee contract.
Productivity in the Australian Dairy Industry

Although the Australian dairy industry has performed well it has also faced considerable pressure over the past twenty years. A decline in the terms of trade and major structural change has provided added incentives for the industry to improve productivity. This paper constructs Tornqvist index values to measure and analyse movements in inputs, outputs, total factor productivity (TFP) and the terms of trade for the dairy industry as a whole and for each state over the years 1979 to 1999. Overall, there is clear evidence of a significant increase in the TFP index in the 1990s relative to the 1980s. However, in terms of fitted annual growth rates, there is also evidence of a productivity 'slow down' in the 1990s, with the principal exception of New South Wales. Average annual growth in dairy total factor productivity in Australia over the entire twenty-year period is 1.5 per cent, but decreases from 1.8 per cent in the first to 0.9 per cent in the second decade. In Victoria, the largest dairy producer, the growth in TFP in the second decade of the study is virtually zero, with poor weather conditions in the second half of the decade partly to blame. Much of the impressive growth in dairy output in the 1990s can thus be simply attributed to a growth in inputs. Index values for the terms of trade, the share of input costs in total costs and potential drives of productivity change are also examined.
Face Detection with Mixtures of Boosted Discriminant Features

AbstractDetecting faces in images is a key step in numerous computer vision applications asface recognition for example. Face detection is a diﬃcult task in image analysis becauseof the large face intra-class variability which is due to the important inﬂuence of theenvironmental conditions on the face aspect. The existing methods for face detectioncan be divided into holistic methods and feature based methods. We propose a newmethod for detecting frontal faces in complex images featuring two main contributions:the use of a collection of highly discriminative anisotropic Gaussian features combined byboosting and the computation using a mixture of classiﬁers to improve the classiﬁcationcapabilities without aﬀecting the detection speed. The performances of the face detectorhave been evaluated on the CMU/MIT test set [1] database. This methods outperformsthe previous works in frontal face detection. keywords: face detection, AdaBoost, Gaussian features, mixtures of classiﬁers 1 Introduction
Brief report: glycemic control, quality of life, and school experiences among students with diabetes.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationships among perceived school experiences, diabetes control, and quality of life (QOL) in children with diabetes. METHODS Fifty-eight children with type 1 diabetes and their parents participated. The typical child was 12 years old, had diabetes for 5 years, and attended public, suburban, middle/junior high schools with 300-500 students. RESULTS Children whose parents reported that school personnel received diabetes training showed significantly better diabetes control than those who reported untrained school personnel. Children who reported their classmates received diabetes training had significantly better QOL than those who reported untrained classmates. Children who reported greater flexibility in performing diabetes care tasks at school had significantly better diabetes control than children who reported less flexibility. CONCLUSIONS Students with diabetes continue to face challenges at school. Training staff and classmates and allowing students the maximum appropriate flexibility in diabetes care appears beneficial for disease control and QOL.
Essays On Corruption And Economic Development

This thesis addresses two central questions in the field of corruption: the relationship between corruption and some of its main determinants and the effect that these relationships have on economic development. The research presented in this thesis extends the literature on corruption in several directions. The third chapter studies the empirical relationship between press freedom and bureaucratic corruption. As one of the main democratic checks and balances, press freedom is thought to impose a curb on corruption. We investigate two related aspects. The first considers whether there exists a robust empirical relationship between press freedom and corruption. The second investigates the detail, by exploring which types of restrictions to press freedom are robustly related to corruption. Using robust regression techniques on a panel of countries we conclude that restrictions to media freedom are robustly associated to higher corruption. Also we find that both political and economic restrictions to press freedom are strongly related to corruption while legal and administrative restrictions are not. The fourth chapter studies the relationship between decentralisation, corruption and development in a dynamic macroeconomic model. We assess whether corruption is always harmful to development, whether decentralisation is always beneficial for development and the effect that corruption produces on the relationship between decentralisation and development. Our main finding from this model is that if corruption is absent, decentralisation is the best alternative for development but may not be preferable to centralisation if corruption is widespread in the economy. The fifth chapter examines the empirical relationship between decentralisation and corruption. This chapter has two main goals. First, to reconsider the available evidence in light of some newly assembled data. The second goal is to incorporate into the analysis several dimensions of decentralisation simultaneously. We find that the inconsistencies in the empirical literature arise due to the frequent omission of multiple measures of decentralisation. Secondly, that both fiscal decentralisation and constitutional centralisation are simultaneously associated with lower corruption. Finally, we find that certain forms of political decentralisation -local elections- weaken the positive effect of constitutional centralisation -unitarism- on corruption.
Query-driven context aware recommendation

Context aware recommender systems go beyond the traditional personalized recommendation models by incorporating a form of situational awareness. They provide recommendations that not only correspond to a user's preference profile, but that are also tailored to a given situation or context. We consider the setting in which contextual information is represented as a subset of an item feature space describing short-term interests or needs of a user in a given situation. This contextual information can be provided by the user in the form of an explicit query, or derived implicitly. We propose a unified probabilistic model that integrates user profiles, item representations, and contextual information. The resulting recommendation framework computes the conditional probability of each item given the user profile and the additional context. These probabilities are used as recommendation scores for ranking items. Our model is an extension of the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model that provides the capability for joint modeling of users, items, and the meta-data associated with contexts. Each user profile is modeled as a mixture of the latent topics. The discovered latent topics enable our system to handle missing data in item features. We demonstrate the application of our framework for article and music recommendation. In the latter case, the set of popular tags from social tagging Web sites are used for context descriptions. Our evaluation results show that considering context can help improve the quality of recommendations.
The adoption of international accounting standards in Bangladesh: An exploration of rationale and process

Purpose – This paper seeks to evaluate the recent decision of the Bangladeshi Government and accounting profession to adopt international accounting standards (IASs). Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a variety of archival data and interviews with key actors, including preparers and users of annual reports, members of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and members of the professional accounting bodies: ICAB and ICMAB.Findings – The paper finds that institutional legitimisation is a major factor that drives the decision to adopt IASs because of the pressure exerted by key international donor/lending institutions on the Bangladeshi Government and professional accounting bodies. Such pressure results from not only the need to provide credibility to foreign investors but also the need for strong accountability arrangements with lending/donor agencies. However, the perceived undemocratic nature of the adoption process appears to be creating and enhancing conflict among various constituencies, re.
Calculating potential growth rates and output gaps: A revised production function approach

Any meaningful analysis of cyclical developments, of medium term growth prospects or of the stance of fiscal and monetary policies are all predicated on either an implicit or explicit assumption concerning the rate of potential output growth. Given the importance of the concept, the measurement of potential output is the subject of contentious and sustained research interest. All the available methods have "pros" and "cons" and none can unequivocally be declared better than the alternatives in all cases. Thus, what matters is to have a method adapted to the problem under analysis, with well defined limits and, in international comparisons, one that deals identically with all countries. This is the approach adopted in the present paper where it is stated clearly that the objective is to produce an economics based, production function, method which can be used for operational EU policy surveillance purposes.
Exact Lyapunov exponent for infinite products of random matrices

Despite significant work since the original paper by H Furstenberg(1963), explicit formulae for Lyapunov exponents of infinite products of random matrices are available only in a very few cases. In this work, we give a rigorous explicit formula for the Lyapunov exponent for some binary infinite products of random 2*2 real matrices. All these products are constructed using only two types of matrices, A and B, which are chosen according to a stochastic process. The matrix A is singular, namely its determinant is zero. This formula is derived by using a particular decomposition for the matrix B, which allows us to write the Lyapunov exponent as a sum of convergent series. The key point is the computation of all the integer powers of B, which is achieved by a suitable change of frame. The computation then follows by looking at each of the special types of B (hyperbolic, parabolic and elliptic). Finally, we show, with an example, that the Lyapunov exponent is a discontinuous function of the given parameter.
Plasma levels of interlukin-4 and Interferon-γ in patients with chronic or healed cutaneous leishmaniasis

Objective(s): In this study, the serum level of interferon-γ (IFN- γ) and interlukin-4 (IL-4) was evaluated as a marker of Th1 and Th2 immune response that influence the clinical course of cutaneous leishmaniasis . Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 44 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis (21 cases with healed lesions and 23 cases with chronic non-healing lesions. Thirty-two non-infected persons living in the area were considered as controls. Serum levels of IFN- γ and IL-4 were determined using ELISA, and the results along with clinical data were analyzed using SPSS 11.5. Results: Serum IFN-γ level was not significantly different between various patient groups and control (P=0.27), but the serum level of IL-4 in patient groups was higher than in healthy subjects, and it was higher in patients with non-healed chronic cutaneous leishmaniasis than those with healed lesions (P<0.01). Conclusion: Serum IL-4 level is a good marker for evaluation of the clinical course of cutaneous leishmaniasis.
Co-Introduced Functional CCR2 Potentiates In Vivo Anti-Lung Cancer Functionality Mediated by T Cells Double Gene-Modified to Express WT1-Specific T-Cell Receptor

Background and Purpose Although gene-modification of T cells to express tumor-related antigen-specific T-cell receptor (TCR) or chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) has clinically proved promise, there still remains room to improve the clinical efficacy of re-directed T-cell based antitumor adoptive therapy. In order to achieve more objective clinical responses using ex vivo-expanded tumor-responsive T cells, the infused T cells need to show adequate localized infiltration into the tumor. Methodology/Principal Findings Human lung cancer cells variously express a tumor antigen, Wilms' Tumor gene product 1 (WT1), and an inflammatory chemokine, CCL2. However, CCR2, the relevant receptor for CCL2, is rarely expressed on activated T-lymphocytes. A HLA-A2402+ human lung cancer cell line, LK79, which expresses high amounts of both CCL2 and WT1 mRNA, was employed as a target. Normal CD8+ T cells were retrovirally gene-modified to express both CCR2 and HLA-A*2402-restricted and WT1235–243 nonapeptide-specific TCR as an effector. Anti-tumor functionality mediated by these effector cells against LK79 cells was assessed both in vitro and in vivo. Finally the impact of CCL2 on WT1 epitope-responsive TCR signaling mediated by the effector cells was studied. Introduced CCR2 was functionally validated using gene-modified Jurkat cells and human CD3+ T cells both in vitro and in vivo. Double gene-modified CD3+ T cells successfully demonstrated both CCL2-tropic tumor trafficking and cytocidal reactivity against LK79 cells in vitro and in vivo. CCL2 augmented the WT1 epitope-responsive TCR signaling shown by relevant luciferase production in double gene-modified Jurkat/MA cells to express luciferase and WT1-specific TCR, and CCL2 also dose-dependently augmented WT1 epitope-responsive IFN-γ production and CD107a expression mediated by these double gene-modifiedCD3+ T cells. Conclusion/Significance Introduction of the CCL2/CCR2 axis successfully potentiated in vivo anti-lung cancer reactivity mediated by CD8+ T cells double gene-modified to express WT1-specific TCR and CCR2 not only via CCL2-tropic tumor trafficking, but also CCL2-enhanced WT1-responsiveness.