Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Imputation methods for handling item‐nonresponse in practice: methodological issues and recent debates

Nonresponse is a major problem often faced by social scientists when analysing survey data. A range exists to impute the missing responses but the choice between these methods may be difficult. This paper reviews advantages and disadvantages of a range of imputation methods and provides guidance on how to use such methods in practice. The paper introduces the reader new to the imputation literature to key ideas and methods. For those already familiar with imputation, the paper highlights some new developments and recent debates. The paper discusses an example from the social sciences, applying several imputation methods to a missing earnings variable. The objective is to illustrate in a real data example basic considerations when choosing between methods and to advise practitioners in the use of such methods.
Adolescents’ Implicit Theories of Maturity

Conceptions of maturity were explored among 170 adolescents in Grades 7 and 10. Adolescents were asked at what ages (and why) they expected to reach adulthood, experience the most freedom, and have the most fun. Adolescents expected to have fun at an earlier age than they expected freedom or adulthood. The majority of adolescents cited the acquisition of independence as critical to their expectations for the ages of adulthood (71%) and freedom (74%). Some chronological transitions, such as reaching driving age (41%) as well as acquiring independence (41%), were associated with the expected age for fun. Adolescents who felt older than their age and engaged in more problem behaviors but were low on psychosocial maturity, were more likely than other adolescents to cite chronological transitions as indicative of freedom. The importance of these conceptions for guiding adolescents through the transition to adulthood is discussed.
New cancer cachexia model 1 New cancer cachexia rat model generated by implantation of a peritoneal 1 dissemination-derived human stomach cancer cell line 2 3

1 New cancer cachexia rat model generated by implantation of a peritoneal 1 dissemination-derived human stomach cancer cell line 2 3 Kiyoshi Terawaki, Yumi Sawada, Yohei Kashiwase, Hirofumi Hashimoto, Mitsuhiro 4 Yoshimura, Masami Suzuki, Kanako Miyano, Yuka Sudo, Seiji Shiraishi, Yoshikazu Higami, 5 Kazuyoshi Yanagihara, Yoichi Ueta, and Yasuhito Uezono 6 Division of Cancer Pathophysiology, National Cancer Center Research Institute, 5-1-1 Tsukiji, 7 Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0045, Japan 8 Division of Translational Research, Exploratory Oncology Research & Clinical Trial Center, 9 National Cancer Center Hospital East, Kashiwa 277-8577, Japan 10 Laboratory of Molecular Pathology and Metabolic Disease, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 11 Tokyo University of Science, 2641 Yamazaki, Noda, Chiba 278-8510, Japan 12 Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, University of Occupational and Environmental 13 Health, Kitakyushu 807-8555, Japan 14 Tsumura Research Laboratories, Tsumura & Co., 3586 Yoshiwara, Ami-machi, Inashiki-gun, 15 Ibaraki 300-1192, Japan 16 17 Running head: New cancer cachexia model 18 19 Corresponding Author: 20 Kiyoshi Terawaki, Ph.D. 21 Division of Cancer Pathophysiology 22 National Cancer Center Research Institute 23 5-1-1 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0045, Japan 24 E-mail: kterawak@ncc.go. jp 25 Phone: +81-3-3542-2511, ext. 4453 26 Articles in PresS. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab (December 17, 2013). doi:10.1152/ajpendo.00116. 2013
Diversified Sensitivity-Based Undersampling for Imbalance Classification Problems

Undersampling is a widely adopted method to deal with imbalance pattern classification problems. Current methods mainly depend on either random resampling on the majority class or resampling at the decision boundary. Random-based undersampling fails to take into consideration informative samples in the data while resampling at the decision boundary is sensitive to class overlapping. Both techniques ignore the distribution information of the training dataset. In this paper, we propose a diversified sensitivity-based undersampling method. Samples of the majority class are clustered to capture the distribution information and enhance the diversity of the resampling. A stochastic sensitivity measure is applied to select samples from both clusters of the majority class and the minority class. By iteratively clustering and sampling, a balanced set of samples yielding high classifier sensitivity is selected. The proposed method yields a good generalization capability for 14 UCI datasets.
OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR AUTOSHAPING : FURTHER STUDY OF " NEGATIVE A UTOMAINTENANCE " 1

The key pecking of pigeons was autoshaped to three key colors paired with food in discrete trials. Then, the effects of three different color-correlated contingencies were compared: reward (presentation of food contingent on pecking), omission (presentation of food prevented by pecking), and extinction (no food). Two mieasures of performance were used: initial response (the number of trials with each color on which at least one peck was made) and multiple response (the total number of pecks per trial). In general, the reward color produced more pecking than the omission color, the omission color more than the extinction color, and the extinction color more than on blank trials with an unlighted key, although (relative to reward) omission produced a higher level of initial than of multiple responding. These results point clearly to the importance of stimulus-reinforcer continguity in the control of pecking.
Impact of the 13-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine on Clinical and Hypoxemic Childhood Pneumonia over Three Years in Central Malawi: An Observational Study

Background The pneumococcal conjugate vaccine’s (PCV) impact on childhood pneumonia during programmatic conditions in Africa is poorly understood. Following PCV13 introduction in Malawi in November 2011, we evaluated the case burden and rates of childhood pneumonia. Methods and Findings Between January 1, 2012-June 30, 2014 we conducted active pneumonia surveillance in children <5 years at seven hospitals, 18 health centres, and with 38 community health workers in two districts, central Malawi. Eligible children had clinical pneumonia per Malawi guidelines, defined as fast breathing only, chest indrawing +/- fast breathing, or, ≥1 clinical danger sign. Since pulse oximetry was not in the Malawi guidelines, oxygenation <90% defined hypoxemic pneumonia, a distinct category from clinical pneumonia. We quantified the pneumonia case burden and rates in two ways. We compared the period immediately following vaccine introduction (early) to the period with >75% three-dose PCV13 coverage (post). We also used multivariable time-series regression, adjusting for autocorrelation and exploring seasonal variation and alternative model specifications in sensitivity analyses. The early versus post analysis showed an increase in cases and rates of total, fast breathing, and indrawing pneumonia and a decrease in danger sign and hypoxemic pneumonia, and pneumonia mortality. At 76% three-dose PCV13 coverage, versus 0%, the time-series model showed a non-significant increase in total cases (+47%, 95% CI: -13%, +149%, p = 0.154); fast breathing cases increased 135% (+39%, +297%, p = 0.001), however, hypoxemia fell 47% (-5%, -70%, p = 0.031) and hospital deaths decreased 36% (-1%, -58%, p = 0.047) in children <5 years. We observed a shift towards disease without danger signs, as the proportion of cases with danger signs decreased by 65% (-46%, -77%, p<0.0001). These results were generally robust to plausible alternative model specifications. Conclusions Thirty months after PCV13 introduction in Malawi, the health system burden and rates of the severest forms of childhood pneumonia, including hypoxemia and death, have markedly decreased.
Big Data: New Tricks for Econometrics

Computers are now involved in many economic transactions and can capture data associated with these transactions, which can then be manipulated and analyzed. Conventional statistical and econometric techniques such as regression often work well, but there are issues unique to big datasets that may require different tools. First, the sheer size of the data involved may require more powerful data manipulation tools. Second, we may have more potential predictors than appropriate for estimation, so we need to do some kind of variable selection. Third, large datasets may allow for more flexible relationships than simple linear models. Machine learning techniques such as decision trees, support vector machines, neural nets, deep learning, and so on may allow for more effective ways to model complex relationships. In this essay, I will describe a few of these tools for manipulating and analyzing big data. I believe that these methods have a lot to offer and should be more widely known and used by economists.
A stability analysis for perturbed nonlinear iterative methods

This paper applies the asymptotic stability theory for ordinary differential equations to Gavurin's continuous analogue of several well-known nonlinear iterative methods. In particular, a general theory is developed which extends the OrtegaRheinboldt concept of consistency to include the widely used finite-difference approximations to the gradient as well as the finite-difference approximations to the Jacobian in Newton's method. The theory is also shown to be applicable to the LevenbergMarquardt and finite-difference Levenberg-Marquardt methods.
Cannabis Use and Associated Harms among Schizophrenia Patients in a Nigerian Clinical Setting: A Case–Control Study

Aim The overall aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of cannabis use among patients with schizophrenia with associated levels of harm in a Nigerian clinical setting. Method In this case–control study, consecutive 150 patients with schizophrenia were matched by age and gender with an equal number of patients that utilized the general outpatient department of the State Hospital, Ring Road Ibadan. The alcohol, smoking and substance involvement screening test (ASSIST) was used to obtain prevalence of cannabis use and level of health risk as determined by the ASSIST score. The positive and negative syndrome scale was used to determine the severity of psychosis. Results Prevalence of cannabis use among the cases and control group was 10.0 and 2.7%, respectively, p = 0.03. Mean ASSIST score was significantly higher among the cases compared with the control, p < 0.001. Respondents of male gender and those who were not married were significantly more likely to be cannabis users among patients with schizophrenia (p < 0.001 and p < 0.02), respectively. Conclusion Cannabis use was prevalent among patients with schizophrenia and was associated with health risks. Thus, routine screening for cannabis use and brief intervention is suggested to be integrated into care for adolescents and adults with schizophrenia.
[Expression of costimulator 4-1BBL and B7-1 on glioma cell lines].

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE Costimulatory molecules 4-1BBL and B7-1 have been proposed to be therapeutic targets to improve and sustain antitumor immune response. This study was to investigate the expression of 4-1BBL and B7-1 on several glioma cell lines. METHODS The expression of 4-1BBL and B7-1 on glioma cell lines T98G, MGR2, MGR1, SF767, SKMG1, SKMG4, and UW28 was detected by flow cytometry. The cytotoxic effects of vincristine (VCR) on the glioma cell lines were assessed with MTT assay. The correlation of 4-1BBL expression to drug resistance was analyzed. RESULTS The 7 glioma cell lines showed various levels of 4-1BBL expression, but none expressed B7-1. The positive rate of 4-1BBL was above 30% in T98G and MGR1 cells which were resistant to VCR; while it was below 10% in MGR2, SF767, SKMG1, SKMG4, and UW28 cells which were sensitive to VCR. CONCLUSIONS All of the detected cell lines express 4-1BBL, but none expresses B7-1. The glioma cells with high 4-1BBL expression are resistant to VCR.
Social-Emotional Learning Assessment Measures for Middle School Youth

Executive Summary Purpose: Children with strong Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) skills have been shown to excel in school, both socially and academically. SEL programs are imperative to address the social, emotional, and academic needs of students. However, reliable and valid assessment tools are necessary to conduct needs assessments and monitor the success of SEL programs over time. The purpose of the current review is to identify valid, reliable, and useable school-wide assessments for social/emotional well-being of youth and to help schools and districts identify tools that could be useful in determining the success of the programs created to improve student social/emotional well-being. Procedure: The current report reviews many existing tools and instruments used to measure social and emotional well-being of middle school youth. We conducted an extensive review of the literature on social and emotional learning in middle school students. We identified and evaluated 72 instruments and use the following criteria to determine whether or not to recommend them for school–wide assessment. In order to be recommended to be used with middle school students, an assessment needs to have sound psychometric properties, be suited for program evaluation, be readily available for schools to access and obtain information on, and not be designed to assess specific programs. Of the 72 instruments reviewed, 9 met our criteria for inclusion in this report. The following assessments met the review criteria and were included in this report: Future recommendations: Overall, the review yielded relatively few strong assessment choices for middle schools to choose from when conducting program evaluation that are not designed to be program specific. The assessments that met our criteria and included in this report contain many of the characteristics necessary to be useful for middle school interested in SEL program evaluation. However, none of these assessment tools we reviewed will meet every school's needs. For example, some of the assessments do not have standard procedures and software to create reports at the school level so some schools may need to have personnel who are capable of aggregating survey data and putting it in a report format. In addition, some of the assessments are teacher rating scales, which require more teacher time than self-report assessments. The DESSA is one example of a teacher rating assessment. An area of future development in the field of SEL assessment would be to turn the DESSA into a self-report assessment and conduct research on the psychometric properties …
Selective attention in schizophrenia: sparing and loss of executive control.

OBJECTIVE Auditory selective attention involves top-down modulation of sensory processing to selectively filter relevant from irrelevant information. Patients with schizophrenia have deficits in auditory selective attention, but whether these attention deficits are evident at the earliest stages of auditory processing or emerge later in the processing stream is unknown. METHOD Event-related potentials were used to assess the integrity and time course of auditory attention in schizophrenia during a cross-modal selective attention task. A random sequence of equiprobable loud and soft speech sounds and bright and dim checkerboard patterns occurred every 800 to 1200 msec. A button press was required in response to soft speech sounds in the auditory attention task and to dim checkerboards in the visual attention task. Event-related potentials were recorded from 15 patients with DSM-IV schizophrenia and 16 age- and gender-matched healthy comparison subjects. RESULTS As early as 50 msec, both patients and comparison subjects showed evidence of cross-modal selective attention. These attention effects were sustained until 300 msec in comparison subjects but were no longer evident in patients by 100 msec. CONCLUSIONS Schizophrenia patients implemented an early attentional filter but failed to sustain selective attention later in the processing stream. This suggests that initially intact executive control of auditory attention cannot be sustained in schizophrenia, perhaps implicating dysfunction in frontotemporal pathways.
The crosslinguistic study of sentence processing

Introduction 'The questions never change-it 's the answers that alter over the years' was originally said about student examinations. But it could apply to almost any area of psycholinguistics, especially child language acquisition. Here, the age-old content vs. process controversy still chugs along. Do children innately contain linguistic information ? Or are they simply able to process it by means of superior cognitive skills ? This book is the latest offering from the process supporters, an approach pioneered by Dan Slobin (1973). Slobin, as is now well known, proposed that children use a set of ' operating principles' for processing language, such as 'Pay attention to the ends of words'; 'Pay attention to the order of words'. As time went by, and new crosslinguistic data were incorporated, the operating principles proliferated (Slobin, 1985). They conflicted with one another to the extent that they became meaningless, as there were no clear guides as to how the principles related to one another. MacWhinney & Bates's Competition Model, which the 13 papers in this book expound and illustrate, is the natural successor to Slobin's operating principles as indeed Slobin notes in his preface.
Measurement and modelling of dark current decay transients in perovskite solar cells

The current decay in response to a sudden change of applied bias up to 1 V has been measured on a methylammonium lead triiodide perovskite solar cell with titania and spiro-OMeTAD transport layers, for temperatures between 258 and 308 K. These measurements are highly reproducible, in contrast to most other techniques used to investigate perovskite cells. A drift-diffusion model that accounts for slow moving ions as well as electrons and holes acting as charge carriers was used to predict the current transients. The close fit of the model predictions to the measurements shows that mobile ions in the perovskite layer influence transient behaviour on timescales of up to 50 s. An activation energy of 0.55 eV is inferred from fitting simulations to measurements made at room temperature.
Detecting API usage obstacles: A study of iOS and Android developer questions

Software frameworks provide sets of generic functionalities that can be later customized for a specific task. When developers invoke API methods in a framework, they often encounter obstacles in finding the correct usage of the API, let alone to employ best practices. Previous research addresses this line of questions by mining API usage patterns to induce API usage templates, by conducting and compiling interviews of developers, and by inferring correlations among APIs. In this paper, we analyze API-related posts regarding iOS and Android development from a Q&A Web site, stackoverflow.com. Assuming that API-related posts are primarily about API usage obstacles, we find several iOS and Android API classes that appear to be particularly likely to challenge developers, even after we factor out API usage hotspots, inferred by modelling API usage of open source iOS and Android applications. For each API with usage obstacles, we further apply a topic mining tool to posts that are tagged with the API, and we discover several repetitive scenarios in which API usage obstacles occur. We consider our work as a stepping stone towards understanding API usage challenges based on forum-based input from a multitude of developers, input that is prohibitively expensive to collect through interviews. Our method helps to motivate future research in API usage, and can allow designers of platforms - such as iOS and Android - to better understand the problems developers have in using their platforms, and to make corresponding improvements.
On Graduated Optimization for Stochastic Non-Convex Problems

The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms of theoretical convergence analysis. In this paper we describe a new first-order algorithm based on graduated optimiza- tion and analyze its performance. We characterize a parameterized family of non- convex functions for which this algorithm provably converges to a global optimum. In particular, we prove that the algorithm converges to an {\epsilon}-approximate solution within O(1/\epsilon^2) gradient-based steps. We extend our algorithm and analysis to the setting of stochastic non-convex optimization with noisy gradient feedback, attaining the same convergence rate. Additionally, we discuss the setting of zero-order optimization, and devise a a variant of our algorithm which converges at rate of O(d^2/\epsilon^4).
Gender Differences in Depressive Symptomatology and Egocentrism in Adolescence

The purpose of this study was to investigate gender differences in the relationship between depressive symptomatology and the imaginary audience and personal fable constructs in order to determine the manner in which these indexes of social cognitive development interrelate with depressive symptomatology during the adolescent age period. Sixty-one adolescents, ranging in age from 12 to 17 years, completed the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (RADS), the Elkind Imaginary Audience Scale (IAS), and the Lapsley New Personal Fable Scale (NPFS). Results indicated that adolescent females scored significantly higher than adolescent males on the Uniqueness subscale of the NPFS and the Transient Self subscale of the IAS. The IAS was positively related to depressive symptomatology for adolescent females but not for adolescent males. The NPFS was negatively related to depressive symptomatology for both adolescent males and adolescent females. Different patterns emerged for males and females regarding the interrelationships between NPFS subscales and depressive symptomatology. Findings are discussed with respect to recent research on depression during adolescence and Lapsley and Rice's (1988) "new look" at the imaginary audience and personal fable constructs. Suggestions for future research are put forth
Collective Reputation and Quality

Firms who sell regional or specialty products often share a collective reputation based on aggregate quality. Collective reputation can be approached as a dynamic common property resource problem. We show that for an experience good without firm traceability, individual firms have the incentive to choose quality levels that are sub-optimal for the group. These results support minimum quality standards. Trigger strategies are analyzed as an alternative solution to this problem. Finally, the implications of these results are discussed as they relate to the case study of Washington apples. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.