Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Poverty Traps and Appalachia

In this chapter, I provide some general ideas on how to conceptualize poverty traps and speculate on their applicability to understanding Appalachian poverty. My goal is to stimulate thinking on Appalachia that exploits contemporary perspectives in economics on the sources of persistent poverty and inequality. To do this, I focus on both the theory of poverty traps as well as issues in the econometric assessment of their empirical salience. While I will describe different definitions of poverty traps below, all of these definitions have the common feature that poverty, be it for a family, a community, or a larger aggregate, is highly persistent. In other words, one cannot expect contemporaneous poverty to simply correct itself, except over very long time horizons, if at all. Why should poverty traps be of particular importance to policymakers? One reason for why poverty traps are of particular importance is that they can provide a prima facie justification for government interventions on equality of opportunity grounds. John Roemer has argued persuasively that equality of opportunity requires that individual socioeconomic prospects not be affected by factors of which an individual has no control; this perspective provides a way of integrating personal responsibility into the assessment of equality of opportunity. 1 By itself, the ethical case for government interventions implied by equality of opportunity or other considerations is inadequate for policy evaluation. A poverty trap generated by deficiencies in early childhood development calls for very different interventions than one Durlauf (1996b,2006) has applied Roemer's reasoning to provide a justification of government interventions when poverty traps are present. The ethical justification for interventions is most obvious if one considers the future socioeconomic prospects of its children. Following Roemer's logic; it is self-evident that children are not responsible for the environments in which they grow up, whether at a family or a community level. While some subtleties exist in translating this lack of responsibility into an ethical case for government intervention (for example one needs to address the rights of parents to provide differential opportunities for their children), it is fair to say that the presence of a poverty trap provides a prime facie case for government intervention. 1 See Roemer (1998) for an overview of his work. 2 caused by features of a regional labor market. Hence, a satisfactory theory of poverty traps needs to account for mechanisms as well as the basic facts of poverty persistence. 2 …
Wilson renormalization group study of inverse symmetry breaking.

For a large class of field theories there exist portions of parameter space for which the loop expansion predicts increased symmetry breaking at high temperature. Even though this behavior would clearly have far reaching implications for cosmology such theories have not been fully investigated in the literature. This is at least partially due to the counterintuitive nature of the result, which has led to speculations that it is merely an artifact of perturbation theory. To address this issue we study the simplest model displaying high temperature symmetry breaking using a Wilson renormalization group approach. We find that although the critical temperature is not reliably estimated by the loop expansion the total volume of parameter space which leads to the inverse phase structure is not significantly different from the perturbative prediction. We also investigate the temperature dependence of the coupling constants and find that they run approximately according to their one-loop {beta} functions at high temperature. Thus, in particular, the quartic coupling of {var_phi}{sup 4} theory is shown to increase with temperature, in contrast with the behavior obtained in some previous studies. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society. }
PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGYAND PRESCRIPTION Standard and intensive lipid-lowering therapy with statins for the primary prevention of vascular diseases: a population-based study

Purpose To describe the clinical profile of the patients that initiate statin therapy for the primary prevention of vascular diseases and to investigate the extent to which clinicians use intensive vs. standard regimens. Methods A cross-sectional analysis of nationwide individual data regarding individuals ≥11 years with a first prescription of statin, recorded between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2011. Subjects were defined as intensive therapy initiators if a statin dose superior to simvastatin 40mg (or equivalent dose if different statin) was first prescribed. Multivariable logistic regression models were built for dependent summary variables to evaluate the strength of the association between them and the use of intensive therapy. Results Overall, 69,737 patients receiving a first prescription of statin for the primary prevention of vascular diseases were identified. Predictors for intensive therapy initiation were male gender (adjusted OR: 1.28; 95%CI: 1.10–1.48), history of hypothyroidism (1.47; 1.17–1.85), current treatment of diabetes (1.18; 1.00–1.41), proteinuria (1.87; 1.12–3.12), age, and year of statin prescription. Modifiable risk factors associated with intensive therapy were elevated tryglicerides (1.63; 1.39–1.91), elevated LDL-C (1.96; 1.69–2.28), obesity (1.25; 1.07–1.47), smoking (1.32; 1.14–1.55), comedication with ezetimibe (3.76; 1.87–7.55), fibrates (1.96; 1.43–2.70) and calcium antagonists in women (1.42; 1.02–1.98). Conclusions The use of intensive therapy with statins in primary prevention was not very high in absolute terms, but is increasing considerably. The association between intensive therapy and previous hypothyroidism or its combination with fibrates may raise additional safety and tolerability concerns.
Appropriate research designs for evaluating community-level alcohol interventions: what next?

AIM The aim of this study was to explore the logistical and methodological strengths and weaknesses of some of the more common research designs which can be used to evaluate the impact of system- or population-level approaches for reducing alcohol-related harms. METHOD This paper identifies studies that have evaluated system or population approaches to reduce alcohol-related harms. It highlights the tension caused by a desire for the most rigorous research designs, such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the most potentially efficacious interventions and the practical problems in applying the RCT to population-level research. Alternative research designs, which possess methodological rigour and are more feasible, are identified and described. The design with the strongest methodological characteristics and feasibility in allowing the evaluation of population interventions is considered to be the multiple baseline. RESULTS The multiple baseline design addresses potential problems of sample sizes, selection bias, the suitability and baseline stability of outcome measures, statistical analyses and the practicalities of conducting rigorous research in system- or population-level settings. CONCLUSION The multiple baseline design has the capacity to allow methodologically and statistically stringent evaluations with relatively small sample sizes, low cost and fewer of the complications imposed by RCTs. Like all research designs it has limitations, but arguably represents the most practical and methodologically rigorous approach to the evaluation of system- or population-level strategies.
Pregnancy after Bariatric Surgery: A Review

Maternal obesity is a major cause of obstetric morbidity and mortality. With surgical procedures to facilitate weight loss becoming more widely available and demanded and increasing number of women becoming pregnant after undergoing bariatric surgery, it is important and timely to consider the outcome of pregnancy following bariatric surgery. This paper aims to synthesize the current evidence regarding pregnancy outcomes after bariatric surgery. It concludes that bariatric surgery appears to have positive effects on fertility and reduces the risk of gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. Moreover, there appears to be a reduced incidence of fetal macrosomia post-bariatric procedure, although there remains uncertainty about the increased rates of small-for-gestational age and intrauterine growth restricted infants, as well as premature rupture of membranes in this group. A number of case reports highlight that pregnancy following bariatric surgery is not without complications and it must be managed as high risk by the multidisciplinary team.
Whither the good wife? 2016 presidential candidate spouses in the gendered spaces of contemporary politics

ABSTRACT The rhetorical maneuvers of Heidi Cruz, Jane Sanders, Columba Bush, Melania Trump, and Bill Clinton in the preprimary phase of the 2016 race serve as entry points for a critical inquiry into the current cultural state of “the good wife” and the rhetorical implications of this role. The presences and absences of these four female spouses in the initial phases of their husbands’ campaigns reveal the power of the cultural scripts that functionally silence aberrant wives, while the case of Bill Clinton exposes the masculinist ideology that defines the proper role for this prospective “first gentleman” and the corresponding rhetorical traps that constrain Hillary Clinton. This essay demonstrates how the hegemonic values, ideals, and myths that define “the good wife” intersect with rhetorics of nativism, classism, and sexuality to constitute powerful boundaries governing speech and silence.
EIGENMODES OF THE DAMPED WAVE EQUATION AND SMALL HYPERBOLIC SUBSETS

We study stationary solutions of the damped wave equation on a compact and smooth Riemannian manifold without boundary. In the high frequency limit, we prove that a sequence of β-damped stationary solutions cannot be completely concentrated in small neighborhoods of a small fixed hyperbolic subset made of β-damped trajectories of the geodesic flow. The article also includes an appendix (by S. Nonnenmacher and the author) where we establish the existence of an inverse logarithmic strip without eigenvalues below the real axis, under a pressure condition on the set of undamped trajectories.
Mechanism and Optimization of Metal Deposition onto Vertically Aligned Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Arrays

Arrays of vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes (VASWNTs) were coated with thin films of Ti, Pd, Au, and Al by evaporative deposition. Scanning electron microcopy showed the Ti and Pd coatings were continuous or quasi-continuous, whereas Au and Al agglomerated into discrete deposits on SWNT bundles. The mechanism of metal film formation on VASWNT arrays was studied by observing the film at various stages of the deposition process. Uniformity of the deposition was found to be strongly dependent on the metal species and the deposition conditions, such as substrate temperature, deposition rate, and deposition thickness. The optimization of the deposition conditions was demonstrated for Pd. The results suggest that the deposition efficiency for a smooth coating layer is determined by the balance of two processes with significantly different speeds: the coating along an SWNT bundle and coating of an interbundle, which depend on the metal type and the deposition conditions. These findings may be useful regarding both fundamental and practical aspects of VASWNT applications in thermal and electronic devices.
Modelling the Spoon IRS diagnostic diagram

We explore whether our models for starbursts, quiescent star-forming galaxies and for active galactic nuclei (AGN) dust tori are able to model the full range of Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) spectra measured with Spitzer. The diagnostic plot of 9.7 μm silicate optical depth versus 6.2 μm polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) equivalent width, introduced by Spoon and coworkers in 2007, gives a good indication of the age and optical depth of a starburst, and of the contribution of an AGN dust torus. However, there is aliasing between age and optical depth at later times in the evolution of a starburst, and between age and the presence of an AGN dust torus. Modelling the full IRS spectra and using broad-band 25–850 μm fluxes can help to resolve these aliases. The observed spectral energy distributions require starbursts of a range of ages with initial dust optical depth ranging from 50–200, optically thin dust emission (‘cirrus’) illuminated by a range of surface brightnesses of the interstellar radiation field, and AGN dust tori with a range of viewing angles.
POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND THE INTERNET

The aim of this paper is to review the main questions dealt with by the literature on the effect of Internet on political participation. The paper distinguishes three relevant aspects: the estimation of the impact of Internet on the levels and types of political participation; the analysis of the causal mechanisms that lie behind the relationship between Internet use and participation; and the effect of the Internet on participatory inequalities. We conclude by identifying the aspects on which there is a relative consensus among scholars, the debates surrounding controversial conclusions obtained from different empirical analyses, and those questions where further research seems particularly necessary.
Responsiveness vs. basal activity of plasma ANG II as a determinant of arterial pressure salt sensitivity.

Infusion of angiotensin II (ANG II) causes salt-sensitive hypertension. It is unclear whether this is due to the body's inability to suppress ANG II during increased salt intake or, rather, an elevated basal level of plasma ANG II itself. To distinguish between these mechanisms, Sprague-Dawley rats were instrumented with arterial and venous catheters for measurement of arterial pressure and infusion of drugs, respectively. The sensitivity of arterial pressure to salt was measured in four groups with the following treatments: 1) saline control (Con, n = 12); 2) administration of the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor enalapril to block endogenous ANG II (ANG-Lo, n = 10); 3) administration of enalapril and 5 ng.kg(-1). min(-1) ANG II to clamp plasma ANG II at normal levels (ANG-Norm, n = 10); and 4) administration of enalapril and 20 ng.kg(-1). min(-1) ANG II to clamp ANG II at high levels (ANG-Hi, n = 10). Rats ingested a 0.4% NaCl diet for 3 days and then a 4.0% NaCl diet for 11 days. Arterial pressure of rats fed the 0.4% NaCl diet was lower in ANG-Lo (84 +/- 2 mmHg) compared with Con (101 +/- 3 mmHg) and ANG-Norm (98 +/- 4 mmHg) groups, whereas ANG-Hi rats were hypertensive (145 +/- 4 mmHg). Salt sensitivity was expressed as the change in arterial pressure divided by the change in sodium intake on the last day of the 4.0% NaCl diet. Salt sensitivity (in mmHg/meq Na) was lowest in Con rats (0.0 +/- 0.1) and progressed from ANG-Lo (0.8 +/- 0.2) to ANG-Norm (1.5 +/- 0.5) to ANG-Hi (3.5 +/- 0.5) rats. We conclude that the major determinant of salt sensitivity of arterial pressure is the basal level of plasma ANG II rather than the responsiveness of the renin-angiotensin system.
Phenomenological and Electron-Theoretical Study of the Electrodynamics of Rotating Systems

A phenomenological and electron-theoretical study of the electrodynamics of rotating systems is developed in the three- dimensional form. In the former part of the present paper, the elec- tromagnetic field equations in an isotropic and homogeneous medium performing arbitrary accelerated motion relative to an inertial refer- ence frame are derived from the phenomenological viewpoint, under the assumptions that the observer is at rest in the inertial or rotating reference frame and that the macroscopic properties of the material medium are not changed by the acceleration acting upon it. With the aid of the classical electron theory, the latter part of the present pa- per discusses the electromagnetic field equations in rotating media as viewed from the inertial or rotating frame, presenting an electron- theoretical basis for the electrodynamics of rotating media. In addi- tion, the electromagnetic effects caused by the inertial forces ac- companying the rotational motion, i.e., the centrifugal and Coriolis forces, are investigated in detail.
Learning to photograph

In this paper, we propose an intelligent photography system, which automatically and professionally generates/recommends user-favorite photo(s) from a wide view or a continuous view sequence. This task is quite challenging given that the evaluation of photo quality is under-determined and usually subjective. Motivated by the recent prevalence of online media, we present a solution y mining the underlying knowledge and experience of the photographers from massively crawled professional photos (about 100,000 images, which are highly ranked by users) of those popular photo sharing websites, e.g. Flickr.com. Generally far contexts are critical in characterizing the composition rules for professional photos, and thus we present a method called omni-range context modeling to learn the patch/object spatial correlation distribution for the concurrent patch/object pair of arbitrary distance. The learned photo omni-range context priors then serve as rules to guide the composition of professional photos. When a wide view is fed into the system, these priors are utilized together with other cues (e.g., placements of faces at different poses, patch number, etc) to form a posterior probability formulation for professional sub-view finding. Moreover, this system can function as intelligent professionalview guider based on real-time view quality assessment and the embedded compass (for recording capture direction). Beyond the salient areas targeted by most existing view recommendation algorithms, the proposed system targets at professional photo composition. Qualitative experiments as well as comprehensive user studies well demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the proposed omnirange context learning method as well as the automatic view finding framework.
Jacobi-Bernstein Basis Transformation

Abstract In this paper we derive the matrix of transformation of the Jacobi polynomial basis form into the Bernstein polynomial basis of the same degree n and vice versa. This enables us to combine the superior least-squares performance of the Jacobi polynomials with the geometrical insight of the Bernstein form. Application to the inversion of the Bézier curves is given.
The Climatic Origins of the Neolithic Revolution: Theory and Evidence

This research examines theoretically and empirically the origins of agriculture. The theory highlights the role of climatic sequences as a fundamental determinant of both technological sophistication and population density in a hunter-gatherer regime. It argues that foragers facing volatile environments were forced to take advantage of their geographic endowments at a faster pace. Consequently, as long as climatic shocks preserved the possibility for agriculture, differences in the rate at which foragers were climatically propelled to exploit their habitat determined the comparative evolution of hunter-gatherer societies towards farming. The theory is tested using both cross-country and cross-archaeological site data on the emergence of farming. Consistent with the theory, the empirical analysis demonstrates that, conditional on biogeographic endowments, climatic volatility has a non-monotonic effect on the timing of the transition to agriculture. Farming was undertaken earlier in regions characterized by intermediate levels of climatic volatility, with regions subjected to either too high or too low intertemporal variability transiting later.
Cultured Hippocampal Pyramidal Neurons Express Two Kinds of GABAA Receptors

We combined a study of the subcellular distribution of the α1, α2, α4, β1, β2/3, γ2, and δ subunits of the GABAA receptor with an electrophysiological analysis of GABAA receptor currents determine the to types of receptors expressed on cultured hippocampal pyramidal neurons. The immunocytochemistry study demonstrated that α1, α2, β2/3, and γ2 subunits formed distinct clusters of various sizes, which were colocalized with clusters of glutamate decarboxylase (GAD) immunoreactivity at rates ranging from 22 to 58%. In contrast, α4, β1, and δ subunits were distributed diffusely over the cell soma and neuronal processes of cultured neurons and did not colocalize with the synaptic marker GAD. Whole-cell GABA receptor currents were moderately sensitive to GABAA and were modulated by diazepam. The whole-cell currents were also enhanced by the neurosteroid allopregnanolone (10 nM). Tonic currents, measured as changes in baseline current and noise, were sensitive to Zn2+, furosemide, and loreclezole; they were insensitive to diazepam. These studies suggest that two kinds of GABAA receptors are expressed on cultured hippocampal neurons. One kind of receptor formed clusters, which were present at GABAergic synapses and in the extrasynaptic membrane. The α1, α2, β2/3, and γ2 subunits were contained in clustered receptors. The second kind was distributed diffusely in the extrasynaptic membrane. The α4, β1, and δ subunits were contained in these diffusely distributed receptors. The properties of tonic currents recorded from these neurons were similar to those from recombinant receptors containing α4, β1, and δ subunits.
The relationship between smartphone addiction predisposition and impulsivity among Korean smartphone users

Abstract Background: The smartphone ownership rate has been growing steeply worldwide, and there are various adverse effects of smartphone overuse. Previous studies suggest that adolescents are vulnerable to addiction because they lack the ability to control impulsive behavior. However, only a few studies have investigated psychological factors related to smartphone addiction predisposition (SAP) among adolescents. This study compared the prevalence of SAP in adolescents and adults and investigated associations between impulsivity and SAP. Methods: A total of 7003 participants answered the entire set of questionnaires. Participants completed self-report Korean questionnaires regarding demographic characteristics, level of SAP, and trait impulsivity. They were divided into three groups based on age: an adolescent group (14–18 years old), an early adulthood group (19–25 years old), and an adulthood group (over 26 years old). SAP was assessed with the Smartphone Addiction Proneness Scale (SAPS), and impulsivity was assessed with Dickman’s Impulsivity Inventory (DII). Results: The level of SAP was significantly different between age groups, with the adolescent group having the highest percentage of SAP. Dysfunctional DII score was highest in the adolescent group, and there was a significant difference between the adolescent group and the other two age groups. Moreover, the higher the level of SAP, the greater the dysfunctional impulsivity score. Conclusions: Result suggests that adolescents are vulnerable to SAP, which is similar to substance addiction and other types of behavioral addiction. In addition, impulsivity may be one of the factors contributing to this vulnerability, as it does to other addictions.