Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Bounded Index Test to Make Robust Heterogeneous Welfare Comparisons

Fleurbaey, Hagnere and Trannoy (2003) develop a bounded dominance test to make robust welfare comparisons, which is intermediate between Ebert’s (1999) cardinal dominance criterion –generalized Lorenz dominance applied to household incomes, divided and weighted by an equivalence scale– and Bourguignon’s (1989) ordinal dominance criterion. In this paper, we develop a more complete, but less robust bounded index test, which is intermediate between Ebert’s (1997) cardinal index test –an index applied to household incomes, divided and weighted by the equivalence scale– and a (new) sequential index test –an index applied to household incomes of the most needy only, the most and second most needy only, and so on. We illustrate the power of our test to detect welfare changes in Russia using data of the RLMS-surveys.
When Does Gender Matter?: Women Candidates and Gender Stereotypes in American Elections

Acknowledgements List of Figures and Tables Chapter 1 - Candidate Sex and Gender Stereotypes in American Elections Chapter 2 - Studying Gender Stereotypes and Women Candidates Chapter 3 - Attitudes, Stereotypes, and Support for Women Candidates Chapter 4 - Do Stereotypes Shape Evaluations of Candidates? Chapter 5 - The Role of Stereotypes in Vote Choice Decisions Chapter 6 - Stereotypes in Other Places? Candidate Quality and Issue Campaigns Chapter 7 - The Landscape for Women Candidates Appendix A - Candidate Lists Appendix B - Variable Construction Appendix C - Campaign Ads and Websites Appendix D - Survey Instrument Appendix E - Additional Vote Choice Analysis Notes Bibliography Index
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Breast surgery : A problem of beauty or health ?

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Electron microscopic observations on the cytotrophoblast contribution to the syncytium in the human placenta.

The terms syncytium and plasmodium were introduced about 100 years ago (see Studnicka, 1929, for historical details) as names for multinucleated masses of protoplasm found in certain animal tissues. Although often used in the past as approximately synonymous the two terms have gradually come to possess quite distinct meanings. Syncytium is now properly used to designate the situation in which a multinucleate condition is established by the fusion of initially separate cells. Plasmodium, on the other hand, is the term applied to a mass of multinucleate protoplasm that has arisen as the result of repeated nuclear division without consequential partitioning of the associated cytoplasm. When the basic features of the histology of the mammalian placenta were becoming unravelled at the end of the nineteenth century it was realized by a number of investigators (see Kastschenko, 1885; Hubrecht, 1888; and van Beneden, 1888, for discussion) that the trophoblast was in part multinucleate. It was not, however, until the important contribution of Bonnet (1903), which brought order into what had become an exceedingly confusing nomenclature, that the terms plasmodium and syncytium, when applied to the placenta, were used in the stricter senses indicated above. In this paper and more specifically in his Lehrbuch der Entwicklungsgeschichte (1907), Bonnet described as syncytia those basophilic nucleated masses of protoplasm which he considered to be formed by the fusion of originally separate cells; plasmodia, in his opinion, however, are established as a result of repeated nuclear division unaccompanied by corresponding cell division. Different mammalian placentae may show one, or other, or both of the two multinucleate
Mean Deviation Similarity Index: Efficient and Reliable Full-Reference Image Quality Evaluator

Applications of perceptual image quality assessment (IQA) in image and video processing, such as image acquisition, image compression, image restoration, and multimedia communication, have led to the development of many IQA metrics. In this paper, a reliable full reference IQA model is proposed that utilize gradient similarity (GS), chromaticity similarity (CS), and deviation pooling (DP). By considering the shortcomings of the commonly used GS to model the human visual system (HVS), a new GS is proposed through a fusion technique that is more likely to follow HVS. We propose an efficient and effective formulation to calculate the joint similarity map of two chromatic channels for the purpose of measuring color changes. In comparison with a commonly used formulation in the literature, the proposed CS map is shown to be more efficient and provide comparable or better quality predictions. Motivated by a recent work that utilizes the standard DP, a general formulation of the DP is presented in this paper and used to compute a final score from the proposed GS and CS maps. This proposed formulation of DP benefits from the Minkowski pooling and a proposed power pooling as well. The experimental results on six data sets of natural images, a synthetic data set, and a digitally retouched dataset show that the proposed index provides comparable or better quality predictions than the most recent and competing state-of-the-art IQA metrics in the literature, it is reliable and has low complexity. The MATLAB source code of the proposed metric is available at https://dl.dropboxusercontent. com/u/74505502/MDSI.m.
Influence of Morphological Awareness on College Students’ Literacy Skills

The purpose of this study was twofold: to create a measure of morphological awareness with college students and to examine effects of morphological awareness on literacy abilities. Three morphological awareness measures, and spelling, word reading, and sentence comprehension tasks were administered to 214 undergraduate college students. Item Response Theory analyses generated a 24-item, validated morphological awareness measure. Path analysis revealed that morphological awareness was a strong predictor of spelling with a standardized path coefficient of . 77, and a moderate predictor of word reading and sentence comprehension, with standardized path coefficients of . 62 and . 58, respectively. Both spelling and word reading were partial mediators of relations between morphological awareness and sentence comprehension. The standardized indirect effect of morphological awareness on sentence comprehension was . 38 through spelling and . 13 through word reading. A valid morphological awareness measure now exists for use with college students. Morphological awareness is a stronger predictor for spelling than for word reading and sentence comprehension.
Parallel approaches to composite production: interfaces that behave contrary to expectation

This paper examines two facial composite systems that present multiple faces during construction to more closely resemble natural face processing. A ‘parallel’ version of PRO-fit was evaluated, which presents facial features in sets of six or twelve, and EvoFIT, a system in development, which contains a holistic face model and an evolutionary interface. The PRO-fit parallel interface turned out not to be quite as good as the ‘serial’ version as it appeared to interfere with holistic face processing. Composites from EvoFIT were named almost three times better than PRO-fit, but a benefit emerged under feature encoding, suggesting that recall has a greater role for EvoFIT than was previously thought. In general, an advantage was found for feature encoding, replicating a previous finding in this area, and also for a novel ‘holistic’ interview.
Metabolic fluxes, carbon isotope fractionation and respiration--lessons to be learned from plant biochemistry.

Post-carboxylation carbon kinetic isotope fractionation (KIF) is in the focus of interest because it alters the isotopic signal imprinted on newly assimilated organic matter by photosynthetic isotope discrimination in downstream metabolic processes (Badeck et al., 2005; Gessler et al., 2009). KIF during respiration and the dynamic change of the isotopic composition (i.e. dC) of respired CO2 is providing insight into the carbon flow through metabolic pathways (Ghashghaie et al., 2003; Pataki, 2005) and thus serves as an important tool to characterise plant physiological adaptations to environmental conditions. The isotopic signature of respired CO2 (d Cres) is determined by the following factors: (1) carbon source and its dC with (2) a heterogeneous intramolecular C-distribution and ‘molecule fragmentation’ (fragmentation fractionation; Tcherkez et al., 2004), (3) a possible C kinetic isotope effect (KIE) of respiratory enzymes in connection with (4) specific metabolic turnover rates (‘commitment values’) of respiratory substrates. The C-enrichment in respired CO2 as often observed in leaves is in general attributed to the release of CO2 from the ‘heavy’ (+ 4.1‰ relative to glucose mean dC-value) C3 and C4 positions of glucose (Rossmann et al., 1991; Gleixner & Schmidt, 1997) by the pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) reaction. In addition, the PDH reaction has a C-KIE on the C1 atom of pyruvate (former C3 ⁄ C4 of glucose; Melzer & Schmidt, 1987). Recently, an intensive and interesting discussion in the Forum of New Phytologist (Tcherkez, 2010; Werner, 2010) took place about the interpretation of respiratory isotope signals formed by metabolic fluxes and pathways and how to identify the factors determining dCres. In this correspondence the following main issues were discussed: KIF during respiration (cf. Schmidt, 2003; Tcherkez et al., 2005); and the phenomenon of light enhanced dark respiration (LEDR), both affecting dCres. With LEDR it is assumed that a change in dC is due to transient substrate switches and reorganisation of the tricarboxylic acid (TCA, citric acid or Krebs) cycle (Barbour et al., 2007; Gessler et al., 2009) when light-acclimated leaves experience darkness. This discussion shows the potential of respiratory isotope signals to identify plant metabolic responses, but also the need for a careful interpretation of such data combined with further specific research. Here, we want to draw the attention to the following biochemical facts, which have not been taken into account sufficiently in the general discussion of respiratory isotope fractionation: the impermeability of the inner mitochondrial membrane for acetyl-coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA), which influences the KIF of citrate synthase (CS) during respiration, and the interplay between mitochondrial malate dehydrogenase (mtMDH) and mitochondrial malic enzyme (mtME) during the light–dark transition, and its effects on LEDR.
Increased antibiotic use in Norwegian hospitals despite a low antibiotic resistance rate.

OBJECTIVES Although antibiotic use and resistance are low in Norway, the situation risks changing for the worse. We investigated trends in antibiotic use and assessed them in relation to antibiotic resistance in Norway. METHODS We drew on hospital pharmacy sales data to record antibiotic use from 2002 to 2007 in eight hospitals serving 36% of the nation's population. Antibiotic use was measured using different indices with defined daily doses (DDDs) as the numerator (WHO ATC/DDD classification). RESULTS Total antibiotic use increased from 1.02 to 1.30 DDDs/1000 inhabitants/day (DIDs) and from 61.7 to 72.4 DDDs/100 bed-days (BDs) (17.4%); related to the number of discharges, no significant DDD change was shown. Their use in core units (adult intensive care units, recovery/post-operative wards and departments of internal medicine and surgery with all subspecialties) increased from 64.1 to 80.8 DDDs/100 BDs (26.1%) and by 3.1% related to the number of discharges. The total use of broad-spectrum antibiotics increased by 47.9% when measured as DDDs/100 BDs, and by 19.1% based on the number of discharges; the corresponding figures for core units were 60.5% and 31.2%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS There was a substantial increase in total antibiotic use, and an even more pronounced increase in the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, which seems unjustified considering the current low antibiotic resistance in Norway.
The Buy-Sell Provision , Investigation Costs , and Preemptive Offers-Theory and Experimental Evidence ∗

This paper studies how a well-informed partner strategically dissolves a partnership by proposing a buy-sell provision preemptively and deters an ill-informed partner from investigating the business. Our experimental evidence shows that the presence of an investigation cost has a negative effect on the responders’ payoff as well as on social surplus and allocation efficiency. However, the proposers do not benefit substantially from this information asymmetry. We find that responders are more reluctant to buy than to sell: as a result, the proposers attempt to prevent investigation less frequently, less intensively and less successfully than predicted. Our estimates using a noisy best-reply model lead us to conclude that proposers follow a best-reply strategy given responder behavior.
A Monolithic CMOS Magnetic Hall Sensor with High Sensitivity and Linearity Characteristics

This paper presents a fully integrated linear Hall sensor by means of 0.8 μm high voltage complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. This monolithic Hall sensor chip features a highly sensitive horizontal switched Hall plate and an efficient signal conditioner using dynamic offset cancellation technique. An improved cross-like Hall plate achieves high magnetic sensitivity and low offset. A new spinning current modulator stabilizes the quiescent output voltage and improves the reliability of the signal conditioner. The tested results show that at the 5 V supply voltage, the maximum Hall output voltage of the monolithic Hall sensor microsystem, is up to ±2.1 V and the linearity of Hall output voltage is higher than 99% in the magnetic flux density range from ±5 mT to ±175 mT. The output equivalent residual offset is 0.48 mT and the static power consumption is 20 mW.
Rank Matching for Multihop Multiflow

We study the degrees of freedom (DoF) of the layered 2 × 2 × 2 multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel where each node is equipped with arbitrary number of antennas, the channels between the nodes have arbitrary rank constraints, and subject to the rank-constraints the channel coefficients can take arbitrary values. The DoF outer bounds reveal a fundamental rank-matching phenomenon, reminiscent of impedance matching in circuit theory. It is well known that the maximum power transfer in a circuit is achieved not for the maximum or minimum load impedance but for the load impedance that matches the source impedance. Similarly, the maximum DoF in the rank-constrained 2 × 2 × 2 MIMO interference network is achieved not for the maximum or minimum ranks of the destination hop, but when the ranks of the destination hop match the ranks of the source hop. In fact, for mismatched settings of interest, the outer bounds identify a DoF loss penalty that is precisely equal to the rank-mismatch between the two hops. For symmetric settings, we also provide achievability results to show that along with the min-cut max-flow bounds, the rank-mismatch bounds are the best possible, i.e., they hold for all channels that satisfy the rank-constraints and are tight for almost all channels that satisfy the rank-constraints. Limited extensions-from sum-DoF to DoF region, from 2 unicasts to X message sets, from 2 hops to more than 2 hops and from 2 nodes per layer to more than 2 nodes per layer-are considered to illustrate how the insights generalize beyond the elemental 2 × 2 × 2 channel model.
Naloxone Reversal of Morphine- and Morphine-6-Glucuronide-induced Respiratory Depression in Healthy Volunteers: A Mechanism-based Pharmacokinetic–Pharmacodynamic Modeling Study

Background:Opioid-induced respiratory depression is antagonized effectively by the competitive opioid receptor antagonist naloxone. However, to fully understand the complex opioid agonist–antagonist interaction, the effects of various naloxone doses on morphine and morphine-6-glucuronide (M6G)-induced respiratory depression were studied in healthy volunteers. Methods:Twenty-four subjects received 0.15 mg/kg morphine intravenously at t = 0 followed by placebo, 200 or 400 &mgr;g naloxone at t = 30 min. Thirty-two subjects received 0.3 mg/kg M6G intravenously at t = 0 followed by placebo, 25, 100, or 400 &mgr;g naloxone at t = 55 min. There were a total of 8 subjects per treatment group. Respiration was measured on a breath-to-breath basis at constant end-tidal Pco2. A mechanism-based pharmacokinetic–pharmacodynamic model consisting of a part describing biophase equilibration and a part describing receptor association–dissociation kinetics was used to analyze the data. Results:Naloxone reversal of M6G-induced respiratory depression developed more slowly than reversal of the respiratory effect of morphine. A simulation study revealed that this was related to the slower receptor association–dissociation kinetics of M6G (koff M6G = 0.0327 ± 0.00455 min−1 versus morphine 0.138 ± 0.0148 min−1; values are typical ±SE). Duration of naloxone reversal was longer for M6G. This was related to the three- to fourfold greater potency of naloxone as an antagonist against M6G compared with morphine. Increasing the naloxone dose had no effect on the speed of reversal, but it did extend reversal duration. Conclusions:Naloxone reversal of the opioid effect is dependent on the receptor association–dissociation kinetics of the opioid that needs reversal with respect to the rate of reversal. The pharmacodynamics of naloxone determines reversal magnitude and duration.
Electrode–Tissue Impedance Measurement CMOS ASIC for Functional Electrical Stimulation Neuroprostheses

The design of a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit that has the capability of evaluating the electrode-tissue contact and the lead functionality of implanted electrodes in neuroprostheses for functional electrical stimulation applications is presented. The system allows in a quite simple way the verification of the state of the electrode by the evaluation of its impedance. By using a 1-bit analog-to-digital converter, the voltage drop between the anode and cathode of the stimulating electrode is measured when a controllable amplitude current is delivered. The impedance that is associated with the electrode will be obtained from the ratio between the anode-to-cathode voltage drop and the delivered current. Final resolution for the impedance measurement system will depend on the range of available current amplitudes. Based on the same impedance measurement method, two different systems for two different CMOS integrated neuroprostheses have been implemented. Both measurement systems allow an impedance characterization range from a few ohms to several kilo-ohms. This resistance range is enough to evaluate if the electrode is working inside normal conditions or not; however, some damage has taken place, making the electrical stimulation using that electrode impossible. In vitro results of the impedance measurement systems are provided.
Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

You thought capitalism was permanent? Think again. David Harvey unravels the contradictions at the heart of capitalism: its drive, for example, to accumulate capital beyond the means of investing it, it's imperative to use the cheapest methods of production that leads to consumers with no means of consumption, and its compulsion to exploit nature to the point of extinction. These are the tensions which underpin the persistence of mass unemployment, the downward spirals of Europe and Japan, and the unstable lurches forward of China and India. Not that the contradictions of capital are all bad: they can lead to the innovations that make capitalism resilient and, it seems, permanent. Yet appearances can deceive: while many of capital's contradictions can be managed, others will be fatal to our society. This new book is both an incisive guide to the world around us and a manifesto for change.
Postoperative fluid retention after heart surgery is accompanied by a strongly positive sodium balance and a negative potassium balance

The conventional model on the distribution of electrolyte infusions states that water will distribute proportionally over both the intracellular (ICV) and extracellular (ECV) volumes, while potassium homes to the ICV and sodium to the ECV. Therefore, total body potassium is the most accurate measure of ICV and thus potassium balances can be used to quantify changes in ICV. In cardiothoracic patients admitted to the ICU we performed complementary balance studies to measure changes in ICV and ECV. In 39 patients, fluid, sodium, potassium, and electrolyte‐free water (EFW) balances were determined to detect changes in ICV and ECV. Cumulatively over 4 days, these patients received a mean ± SE infusion of 14.0 ± 0.6 L containing 1465 ± 79 mmol sodium, 196 ± 11 mmol potassium and 2.1 ± 0.1 L EFW. This resulted in strongly positive fluid (4.0 ± 0.6 L) and sodium (814 ± 75 mmol) balances but in negative potassium (−101 ± 14 mmol) and EFW (−1.1 ± 0.2 L) balances. We subsequently compared potassium balances (528 patients) and fluid balances (117 patients) between patients who were assigned to either a 4.0 or 4.5 mmol/L blood potassium target. Although fluid balances were similar in both groups, the additionally administered potassium (76 ± 23 mmol) in the higher target group was fully excreted by the kidneys (70 ± 23 mmol). These findings indicate that even in the context of rapid and profound volume expansion neither water nor potassium moves into the ICV.
Simultaneous clostridial fermentation, lipase‐catalyzed esterification, and ester extraction to enrich diesel with butyl butyrate

The recovery of 1‐butanol from fermentation broth is energy‐intensive since typical concentrations in fermentation broth are below 20 g L−1. To prevent butanol inhibition and high downstream processing costs, we aimed at producing butyl esters instead of 1‐butanol. It is shown that it is possible to perform simultaneously clostridial fermentation, esterification of the formed butanol to butyl butyrate, and extraction of this ester by hexadecane. The very high partition coefficient of butyl butyrate pulls the esterification towards the product side even at fermentation pH and relatively low butanol concentrations. The hexadecane extractant is a model diesel compound and is nontoxic to the cells. If butyl butyrate enriched diesel can directly be used as car fuel, no product recovery is required. A proof‐of‐principle experiment for the one‐pot bio‐ester production from glucose led to 5 g L−1 butyl butyrate in the hexadecane phase. The principle may be extended to a wide range of esters, especially to longer chain ones. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2013; 110: 137–142. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.