Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A study of clinical and echocardiographic profile of patients of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease helping in early diagnosis of Cor pulmonale

COPD is a major cause of chronic morbidity and mortality throughout the world. Cor pulmonale is a strong predictor of death in COPD. Early diagnosis of cor pulmonale in COPD plays a vital role. The present study was undertaken to make an early diagnosis of cor pulmonale in COPD and to correlate clinically the findings of echocardiography in presence or absence of pulmonary hypertension. One hundred patients with mild to moderate COPD who attended chest clinic of JNMC Hospital, AMU, Aligarh, were taken up for the study. A detailed history and investigations were carried out including X-ray Chest, spirometry, echocardiography etc.Out of the 100 patients, 49 had mild COPD; 51 had moderate COPD; 45 had RVH with normal PAP; 35 had RVH, TR, PR and mild PAH; and 20 had moderate PAH. On applying Chi square test, correlations between RVH and severity of COPD, between TR, PR and PFT and between PAH and PFT were found to be significant. A significant correlation was also found between RVH, TR, PR on echo and severity of COPD. A significant correlation was also found between severity of COPD and pulmonary artery hypertension on echocardiography. It was seen in the current study, that cor pulmonale is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in patients of COPD and a correlation was found between various echocardiographic parameters and severity of COPD, making it evident that echocardiography is an important and useful tool in detecting cor pulmonale early, before full clinical signs develop.
Phylogeography: retrospect and prospect

Phylogeography has grown explosively in the two decades since the word was coined and the discipline was outlined in 1987. Here I summarize the many achievements and novel perspectives that phylogeography has brought to population genetics, phylogenetic biology and biogeography. I also address future directions for the field. From the introduction of mitochondrial DNA assays in the late 1970s, to the key distinction between gene trees and species phylogenies, to the ongoing era of multi‐locus coalescent theory, phylogeographic perspectives have consistently challenged conventional genetic and evolutionary paradigms, and they have forged empirical and conceptual bridges between the formerly separate disciplines of population genetics (microevolutionary analysis) and phylogenetic biology (in macroevolution).
Ethnic Variation in the Prevalence of Visual Impairment in People Attending Diabetic Retinopathy Screening in the United Kingdom (DRIVE UK)

Purpose To provide estimates of visual impairment in people with diabetes attending screening in a multi-ethnic population in England (United Kingdom). Methods The Diabetic Retinopathy In Various Ethnic groups in UK (DRIVE UK) Study is a cross-sectional study on the ethnic variations of the prevalence of DR and visual impairment in two multi-racial cohorts in the UK. People on the diabetes register in West Yorkshire and South East London who were screened, treated or monitored between April 2008 to July 2009 (London) or August 2009 (West Yorkshire) were included in the study. Data on age, gender, ethnic group, visual acuity and diabetic retinopathy were collected. Ethnic group was defined according to the 2011 census classification. The two main ethnic minority groups represented here are Blacks (“Black/African/Caribbean/Black British”) and South Asians (“Asians originating from the Indian subcontinent”). We examined the prevalence of visual impairment in the better eye using three cut-off points (a) loss of vision sufficient for driving (approximately <6/9) (b) visual impairment (<6/12) and (c) severe visual impairment (<6/60), standardising the prevalence of visual impairment in the minority ethnic groups to the age-structure of the white population. Results Data on visual acuity and were available on 50,331individuals 3.4% of people diagnosed with diabetes and attending screening were visually impaired (95% confidence intervals (CI) 3.2% to 3.5%) and 0.39% severely visually impaired (0.33% to 0.44%). Blacks and South Asians had a higher prevalence of visual impairment (directly age standardised prevalence 4.6%, 95% CI 4.0% to 5.1% and 6.9%, 95% CI 5.8% to 8.0% respectively) compared to white people (3.3%, 95% CI 3.1% to 3.5%). Visual loss was also more prevalent with increasing age, type 1 diabetes and in people living in Yorkshire. Conclusions Visual impairment remains an important public health problem in people with diabetes, and is more prevalent in the minority ethnic groups in the UK.
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute the Real Exchange Rate in Sticky Price Models: Does Investment Matter?

This paper reexamines the ability of sticky-price models to generate volatile and persistent real exchange rates. We use a DSGE framework with pricing-to-market akin to those in Chari, et al. (2002) and Steinsson (2008) to illustrate the link between real exchange rate dynamics and what the model assumes about physical capital. We show that adding capital accumulation to the model facilitates consumption smoothing and significantly impedes the model's ability to generate volatile real exchange rates. Our analysis, therefore, caveats the results in Steinsson (2008) who shows how real shocks in a sticky-price model without capital can replicate the observed real exchange rate dynamics. Finally, we find that the CKM (2002) persistence anomaly remains robust to several alternative capital specifications including setups with variable capital utilization and investment adjustment costs (see, e.g., Christiano, et al., 2005). In summary, the PPP puzzle is still very much alive and well. many seminar and conference participants at the Midwest Macro Meetings 2008 for helpful discussions. We also acknowledge the excellent research assistance provided by Artis Frankovics, and the support of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and the Bank of England. All remaining errors are ours alone. The views in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bank of England, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System.
Information seeking behavior of scientists in Venezuela

Information is one the essential elements of science. It is an imperative condition that researchers review antecedent works as they advance and create new knowledge. Knowledge creation in science is a process of adding and refining new pieces of data, information, and knowledge to what has already been accomplished by others. Few scientific communities have unlimited access to scientific information sources. Most communities’ access to information is limited by economic, social, cultural, and technological conditions. This study investigates information seeking behavior and information dissemination practices of the Venezuelan scientific community. A model of scholarly communication in a context of dependency emerges from the following major themes: persisting interpersonal communication with the international scientific community; publication in international journals; prestige and name recognition; and contacting the authors to access full-text journal articles. A qualitative approach is used to illuminate the information seeking behavior of scientists in Venezuela, to discover the barriers experienced by the Venezuelan scientific community when accessing scientific information, and to explore their scientific information dissemination practices. Interviews were conducted in July 2009 with thirteen Venezuelan scientists from the fields of biology, chemistry, or physics. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed in Spanish. Coding, categories, data analysis, and theory building followed a general inductive approach.
Science Current Directions in Psychological on Behalf Of: Association for Psychological Science Motivational Salience: Amygdala Tuning from Traits, Needs, Values, and Goals

" We can tell how someone is feeling, and we can specifically identify responses associated with sociopathic tendencies. Here we determined that the defendant was racist [with] extreme accuracy. In this case, we showed Mr. Bass pictures of people from various races, and then we measured the response in the part of his brain that controls fear. It's called the amygdala. Officer Bass perceives Black men as threatening. " In anticipation of the 2008 presidential election, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to watch the brains of a group of swing voters as they responded to the leading presidential candidates. When we showed subjects the words " Democrat, " " Republican " and " independent, " they exhibited high levels of activity in the part of the brain called the amygdala, indicating anxiety. The quotes above articulate a dominant perspective concerning how emotion is represented in the brain. In this view, the brain is organized into modules that provide basic psychological processes, and particular brain structures give rise to different emotional states. This perspective is guided conceptually by basic emotion theories, which assume that there are a number of distinct, universal emotions—such as anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, or surprise (Ekman, 1992)—that elicit response patterns driven by specific neural response systems. From this perspective, the function of the amygdala is to govern fear, and thus, whenever we observe an amygdala response, we can make the reverse inference that a person is feeling fear or at the very least is processing a stimulus as being potentially threatening. Following this reasoning, studies over the past decade have shown an association between amygdala activation and the perception of social out-group members, leading to conclusions that provide the basis of how the neuroscience of prejudice can inform legal opinion. In this article, we review research on amygdala function that calls into question this threat-specific view and propose a more general view based on appraisal theory and psychological constructivism. Specifically, we review literature that suggests that the amygdala is involved in processing the relevance of a stimulus for the goals and motivations of the perceiver. Once a stimulus is deemed relevant through either bottom-up or top-down processes, the amygdala is well situated anatomically to enhance the salience of the stimulus and prepare an Abstract Based on a basic emotions perspective, a dominant view in psychology is that the primary function of the amygdala …
Relationship Between Organizational Injustice and Work Interference with Family: The Role of Social Support

Abstract This study investigates the moderating role of social support (i.e., supervisor, co-workers and the family) in the relationship between organizational injustice (i.e., distributive and procedural) and work interference with family (WIF; i.e., strain and behaviour based). Quantitative data were collected from employees working in public sector health-care organizations of Pakistan through survey questionnaires (N = 255). This study finds significant effects of distributive and procedural injustice in engendering the negative experiences of strain- and behaviour-based WIF, in the employees of health-care organizations. The moderating effect of co-worker and family support provided mixed results. The supervisory social support was not found as a moderator. Findings of this study suggest that health-care organizations should pay serious attention to the ineffective work family policies and procedure to develop a family-friendly work environment. The supervisors should be given a role in work family policies and procedure development. The mitigating effect of co-workers’ support showed that the employees should be provided with proper knowledge on the policies and procedures of their organizations. The support of family members can also be either benign or harmful.
Convergence and Europeanisation: The Political Economy of Social and Labour Market Policies

Social convergence has been an objective since the Treaty of Rome in 1957, but it was only in 1997 and 2000 that social and labour market policies were formulated at the European Union level. To what extent have national social and labour market policies in EU member states converged over time? What is the influence of EU policy initiatives and European economic integration on national welfare state reforms? Moreover, what factors can explain differences in the extent to which member states have changed their policies accordingly? Based on quantitative analyses of welfare state changes since the 1980s in EU and other OECD countries, this study provides a number of new insights into the research on the Europeanisation of welfare states. A wide range of indicators shows that welfare state policies, welfare state regimes and policy outcomes such as poverty rates have converged across EU countries. However, no pattern of convergence has been found for the group of countries that entered the EU in 2004. Furthermore, the study sheds light on the functioning of the open method of coordination in employment policy. It shows that the European Employment Strategy has contributed to an increased emphasis on activation in national labour market policy reforms. The study’s results indicate that European economic integration and globalisation have also affected welfare states. Based on an innovative approach that relies on data on private social security arrangements, it is shown that increased international economic integration triggers the demand for social protection. The insights gained in this study could improve the effectiveness of the EU social and labour market policies and, consequently, achievement of the goals of the Europe 2020 strategy.
1 . 1 The Regime Change Approach : Advantages and Disadvantages

At least since Schelling (1960), theorists have argued that mass uprisings are a coordination problem. As such, it is striking that much recent game theoretic work on mass uprisings focuses on models known as “global games of regime change”, which typically yield a unique equilibrium. This raises questions about the validity of important arguments—such as Schelling’s (1960) analysis of spontaneous revolutions or Weingast’s (1997) analysis of the foundations of accountability—which rely on equilibrium multiplicity. I argue that the assumptions driving equilibrium uniqueness in global games are not compelling for models of mass uprisings. I also show that it is possible to model mass uprisings in a way that retains the attractive features of global games while avoiding such assumptions. The analysis highlights the importance of introducing uncertainty into models of mass uprisings in substantively motivated ways that do not, inadvertently, rule out deep arguments about the strategic logic of such phenomena. ∗I have received helpful input from Scott Ashworth, Sandeep Baliga, Amanda Friedenberg, Cathy Hafer, B. Pablo Montagnes, Stephen Morris, David Myatt, Gerard Padro i Miguel, and Mehdi Shadmehr. †Associate Professor, Harris School, University of Chicago, e-mail: bdm@uchicago.edu
Physiologic Basis and Pathophysiologic Implications of the Diastolic Properties of the Cardiac Muscle

Although systole was for long considered the core of cardiac function, hemodynamic performance is evenly dependent on appropriate systolic and diastolic functions. The recognition that isolated diastolic dysfunction is the major culprit for approximately fifty percent of all heart failure cases imposes a deeper understanding of its underlying mechanisms so that better diagnostic and therapeutic strategies can be designed. Risk factors leading to diastolic dysfunction affect myocardial relaxation and/or its material properties by disrupting the homeostasis of cardiomyocytes as well as their relation with surrounding matrix and vascular structures. As a consequence, slower ventricular relaxation and higher myocardial stiffness may result in higher ventricular filling pressures and in the risk of hemodynamic decompensation. Thus, determining the mechanisms of diastolic function and their implications in the pathophysiology of heart failure with normal ejection fraction has become a prominent field in basic and clinical research.
Strategic Pricing, Consumer Search and the Number of Firms

We examine an oligopoly model where some consumers engage in costly non-sequential search to discover prices. There are three distinct price-dispersed equilibria characterized by low, moderate and high search intensity. The effects of an increase in the number of firms on search behaviour, expected prices, price dispersion and welfare are sensitive (i) to the equilibrium consumers' search intensity, and (ii) to the status quo number of firms. For instance, when consumers search with low intensity, an increase in the number of firms reduces search, does not affect expected price, leads to greater price dispersion and reduces welfare. In contrast, when consumers search with high intensity, increased competition results in more search and lower prices when the number of competitors in the market is low to begin with, but in less search and higher prices when the number of competitors is large. Duopoly yields identical expected price and price dispersion but higher welfare than an infinite number of firms. Copyright 2004, Wiley-Blackwell.
SinaPlot: an enhanced chart for simple and truthful representation of single observations over multiple classes

Recent developments in data driven science, in particular computational biology, have led scientists to integrate data from several sources, over diverse experimental procedures, or databases. This alone poses a major challenge in truthfully visualising data, especially when the amount of data points varies between classes. To aid the presentation of datasets with differing sample size we have developed a new type of plot overcoming limitations of current standard visualization charts. Plots like bar charts, violin plots, strip charts or box-and-whiskers plots may provide visual information about mean/median, variance of the data, number of data points or density distribution of data; still, only a combination of these plots may provide all relevant information. We have designed a new and simple plot inspired by the strip chart and the violin plot that operates by letting the normalized density of points restrict the jitter along the x-axis. The plot displays the same contour as a violin plot, but resembles a simple strip chart for small number of data points. In this way the plot conveys information of both the number of data points, the density distribution, outliers and data spread in a very simple, comprehensible and condensed format. The package for producing the plots is available for R through the CRAN network (https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sinaplot/index.html). In order to aid users without experience in R we also provide access to a web-server accepting excel sheets to produce the plots (http://servers.binf.ku.dk:8890/sinaplot/).
Changes in esophageal and lower esophageal sphincter motility with healthy aging.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Swallowing difficulties become increasingly prevalent in older age. Differences exist in lower esophageal sphincter (LES) function between older and younger patients with dysphagia, but the contribution of aging per se to these is unclear. METHODS Esophageal motor function was measured using high resolution manometry in older (aged 81+/-1.7 yrs) and younger (23+/-1.7 yrs) asymptomatic healthy adults. After baseline recording, motility was assessed by swallowing boluses of liquid (right lateral and upright postures) and solids. Basal LES pressure, integrated relaxation pressure, distal esophageal peristaltic amplitude, distal contractile integral and velocity were measured. Data are presented as mean +/- SEM. RESULTS Despite a trend for lower basal LES pressure (15.8+/-2.9 mmHg vs. 21.0+/-0.2 mmHg; P=0.08), completeness of LES relaxation was reduced in older subjects (liquid RL: P=0.003; UR: P=0.007; solid: P=0.03), with higher integrated relaxation pressure when upright (liquid: 6.9+/-1.1 vs. 3.1+/-0.4 mmHg; P=0.01; solids: 8.1+/-1.1 vs. 3.6+/-0.3 mmHg; P=0.001) and a longer time to recovery after liquid boluses (right lateral: P=0.01; upright: P=0.04). In young, but not older adults, esophageal peristaltic velocity was increased when upright (3.6+/-0.2 cm/sec; P=0.04) and reduced with solids (3.0+/-0.1 cm-s; P=0.03). Distal contraction amplitude was higher with solid cf. liquid in the younger individuals (51.8+/-7.9 mmHg vs. 41.4+/-6.2 mmHg; P=0.03). In elderly subjects, the distal contractile integral was higher with liquid swallows in the upright posture (P=0.006). CONCLUSION There are subtle changes in LES function even in asymptomatic older individuals. These age-related changes may contribute to the development of dysphagia.
Assessing the impact of mainstream vocational training in developing capabilities of people with and without disabilities

Disability issues have in the past been given less priority in development due to lack of supportive legal framework to encourage realistic intervention strategies. The development of the Convention of Rights for People with Disabilities places a demand on states to be more pro-active in inclusionary disability strategies. This paper tries to join in the middle of debate in literature on inclusion of people with disabilities through mainstream vocational training which is argued to be an effective way of developing economic and social capabilities for people with disabilities. Testimonies of students in disability mainstreaming learning at Danhiko Vocational Training Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe are analyzed using Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach, to assess how skills development takes place as well as the capabilities accrued to the students’ lives. This paper will argue that mainstream learning not only has human capital benefits for both students with and without disabilities but that it encourages the development of social capabilities through social interaction for both student categories. This social interaction changes attitudes and stereo-types that encourage exclusion, as students learn each other’s capabilities and get to appreciate that they are differently able.
HYERS-ULAM-RASSIAS STABILITY OF NONLINEAR VOLTERRA INTEGRAL EQUATIONS VIA A FIXED POINT APPROACH

By using a fixed point method, we establish the Hyers–Ulam stability and the Hyers–Ulam–Rassias stability for a general class of nonlinear Volterra integral equations in Banach spaces. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: Primary 45N05, 47J05, 47N20, 47J99, Secondary 47H99, 45D05, 47H10.
Scale-free network of earthquakes

The district of Southern California and Japan are divided into small cubic cells, each of which is regarded as a vertex of a graph if earthquakes occur therein. Two successive earthquakes define an edge or a loop, which may replace the complex fault-fault interaction. In this way, the seismic data are mapped to a random graph. It is discovered that an evolving random graph associated with earthquakes behaves as a scale-free network of the Barabasi-Albert type. The distributions of connectivities in the graphs thus constructed are found to decay as a power law, showing a novel feature of earthquake as a complex critical phenomenon. This result can be interpreted in view of the facts that the frequency of earthquakes with large values of moment also decays as a power law (the Gutenberg-Richter law) and aftershocks associated with a mainshock tend to return to the locus of the mainshock, contributing to the large degree of connectivity of the vertex of the mainshock. Thus, a mainshock plays the role of a "hub". It is also found that the exponent of the distribution of connectivities is characteristic for the plate under investigation.