Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How Fast Are Prices in Japan Falling

The consumer price inflation rate in Japan has been below zero since the mid-1990s. However, despite the presence of a substantial output gap, the rate of deflation has been much smaller than that observed in the United States during the Great Depression. Given this, doubts have been raised regarding the accuracy of Japan’s official inflation estimates. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent estimates of the inflation rate depend on the methodology adopted. Our specific focus is on how inflation estimates depend on the method of outlet, product, and price sampling employed. For the analysis, we use daily scanner data on prices and quantities for all products sold at about 200 supermarkets over the last ten years. We regard this dataset as the “universe” and send out (virtual) price collectors to conduct sampling following more than sixty different sampling rules. We find that the officially released outcome can be reproduced when employing a sampling rule similar to the one adopted by the Statistics Bureau. However, we obtain numbers quite different from the official ones when we employ different rules. The largest rate of deflation we find using a particular rule is about 1 percent per year, which is twice as large as the official number, suggesting the presence of substantial upward-bias in the official inflation rate. Nonetheless, our results show that the rate of deflation over the last decade is still small relative to that in the United States during the Great Depression, indicating that Japan’s deflation is moderate.
Warming delays the phenological sequences of an autumn‐flowering invader

Abstract Phenology can play an important role in driving plant invasions; however, little is known about how climate warming, nitrogen (N) deposition, and invasion stages influence the phenological sequences of autumn‐flowering invaders in a subtropical climate. Accordingly, we conducted an experiment to address the effects of experimental warming, N‐addition, and community types on the first inflorescence buds, flowering, seed‐setting, and dieback of invasive Solidago canadensis. Warming delayed the onset of first inflorescence buds, flowering, seed‐setting, and dieback; N‐addition did not influence these four phenophases; community types influenced the onset of first seed‐setting but not the other phenological phases. Seed‐setting was more sensitive to experimental manipulations than the other phenophases. The onset of first inflorescence buds, flowering, and seed‐setting was marginally or significantly correlated with ramet height but not ramet numbers. Our results suggest that future climate warming might delay the phenological sequences of autumn‐flowering invaders and some phenophases can shift with invasion stages.
What’s in a Picture?

We find evidence of significant racial disparities in a new type of credit market known as peer-to-peer lending. Loan listings with blacks in the attached picture are 25 to 35 percent less likely to receive funding than those of whites with similar credit profiles. Despite the higher average interest rates charged to blacks, lenders making such loans earn a lower net return compared to loans made to whites with similar credit profiles because blacks have higher relative default rates. These results provide insight into whether the discrimination we find is taste-based or statistical.
Learning Outcomes of African Engineering Students in a Chinese Context: A Qualitative Study

China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ national strategy has brought about both opportunities and challenges to its higher education system and that of neighbouring countries. Increased internationalisation of higher education has resulted in Chinese universities attracting a large number of international students, including those from Africa. However, few studies have been conducted to assess the learning outcomes of African students in a Chinese context. This article provides insight into African engineering students’ self-reported learning outcomes and experiences after studying in China. The fndings reveal that academic and cultural knowledge, cross-cultural communication skills, teamwork skills and changes in personalities and professional vision are common areas of development. The article concludes with recommendations for the design of eﬀective learning experiences. La strategie nationale chinoise “une ceinture, une route” a genere des opportunites et des defs pour son systeme d’enseignement superieur et celui des pays voisins. Avec l’internationalisation croissante de l’enseignement superieur, les universites chinoises attirent un grand nombre d’etudiants internationaux, y compris des etudiants en provenance d’Afrique. Cependant, peu d’etudes ont tente d’evaluer les acquis de l’apprentissage des etudiants africains dans le contexte chinois. Cet article oﬀre un apercu des acquis autodeclares des etudiants ingenieurs africains et de leur experience des etudes en Chine. Les resultats de ce projet exposent plusieurs domaines communs de developpement : les connaissances academiques et culturelles, les competences de communication interculturelle, la capacite a travailler en equipe et des changements de visions professionnelle et academique. Cet article conclut par des recommandations visant a creer des experiences d’apprentissage efcaces.
Exposure to chronic psychosocial stress and corticosterone in the rat: Effects on spatial discrimination learning and hippocampal protein kinase Cγ immunoreactivity

Previous reports have demonstrated a striking increase of the immunoreactivity of the γ‐isoform of protein kinase C (PKCγ‐ir) in Ammon's horn and dentate gyrus (DG) of rodent hippocampus after training in a spatial orientation task. In the present study, we investigated how 8 days of psychosocial stress affects spatial discrimination learning in a hole board and influences PKCγ‐ir in the hippocampal formation.
Cupid: Commitments in Relational Algebra

We propose Cupid, a language for specifying commitments that supports their information-centric aspects, and offers crucial benefits. One, Cupid is first-order, enabling a systematic treatment of commitment instances. Two, Cupid supports features needed for real-world scenarios such as deadlines, nested commitments, and complex event expressions for capturing the lifecycle of commitment instances. Three, Cupid maps to relational database queries and thus provides a set-based semantics for retrieving commitment instances in states such as being violated, discharged, and so on. We prove that Cupid queries are safe. Four, to aid commitment modelers, we propose the notion of well-identified commitments, and finitely violable and finitely expirable commitments. We give syntactic restrictions for obtaining such commitments.
The Evolution of the Peculiar Type Ia Supernova SN 2005hk over 400 Days

UBVRI photometry and medium-resolution optical spectroscopy of the peculiar Type Ia supernova SN 2005hk are presented and analyzed, covering the premaximum phase to around 400 days after explosion. The supernova is found to be underluminous compared to “normal” Type Ia supernovae. The photometric and spectroscopic evolution of SN 2005hk is remarkably similar to the peculiar Type Ia event SN 2002cx. The expansion velocity of the supernova ejecta is found to be lower than normal Type Ia events. The spectra obtained ≳200 days since explosion do not show the presence of forbidden [Fe II], [Fe III], and [Co III] lines, but are dominated by narrow, permitted Fe II, NIR Ca II, and Na I lines with P Cygni profiles. The thermonuclear explosion model with Chandrasekhar mass ejecta and a kinetic energy smaller (EK = 0.3 × 1051 ergs) than that of canonical Type Ia supernovae is found to well explain the observed bolometric light curve. The mass of 56Ni synthesized in this explosion is 0.18 M☉. The early spectra are successfully modeled with this less energetic model, with some modifications of the abundance distribution. The late spectrum is explained as a combination of a photospheric component and a nebular component.
The Inhibitor of Growth Protein 5 (ING5) Depends on INCA1 as a Co-Factor for Its Antiproliferative Effects

The proteins of the Inhibitor of Growth (ING) family are involved in multiple cellular functions such as cell cycle regulation, apoptosis, and chromatin remodeling. For ING5, its actual role in growth suppression and the necessary partners are not known. In a yeast-two-hybrid approach with human bone marrow derived cDNA, we identified ING5 as well as several other proteins as interaction partners of Inhibitor of cyclin A1 (INCA1) that we previously characterized as a novel interaction partner of cyclin A1/CDK2. ING5 expression in leukemic AML blasts was severely reduced compared to normal bone marrow. In line, ING5 inhibited bone marrow colony formation upon retroviral transduction. However, Inca1 −/− bone marrow colony formation was not suppressed by ING5. In murine embryonic fibroblast (MEF) cells from Inca1+/+ and Inca1−/− mice, overexpression of ING5 suppressed cell proliferation only in the presence of INCA1, while ING5 had no effect in Inca1−/− MEFs. ING5 overexpression induced a delay in S-phase progression, which required INCA1. Finally, ING5 overexpression enhanced Fas-induced apoptosis in Inca1+/+ MEFs, while Inca1−/− MEFs were protected from Fas antibody-induced apoptosis. Taken together, these results indicate that ING5 is a growth suppressor with suppressed expression in AML whose functions depend on its interaction with INCA1.
Application of local bidirectional language model to error correction in polish medical speech recognition

In the paper, the method of short word deletion err ors correction in automatic speech recognition is d e cribed. Short word deletion errors appear to be a frequent error type in Polish speech recognition. The propos ed peech recognition process consists of two stages. At the first stage the utterance is recognized by a typica l speech recognizer based on forward bigram language model. At the seco nd stage the word sequence recognized by the first stage recognizer is analyzed and such pairs of adjacent w ords in the recognized sequence are localized, whic h are likely to be separated by a short word like conjunction or prepo sition. The probability of short word appearance in co text of found words is evaluated using centered trigrams and back w rd bigram language model for short words prone to deletion. The set of probabilistic language properties used to co rre t deletions is called here Local Bidirectional L nguage Model (in contrast to purely forward or backward model used t ypically in speech recognition). The decision of sh ort word insertion is based on comparison of deletion error p bability of the first stage recognizer and the e rror probability of the decision based only on centered trigrams and ba ckward model. Despite its simplicity, the method p roved to be effective in correcting deletion errors of most fre qu ntly appearing Polish prepositions. The method w as tested in application to medical spoken reports recognition, where the overall short word deletion error rate wa s reduced by almost 45%.
Schizophrenia and Anxiety Disorders A. Associated Sedative Anxiolytic Treatment in Acute Psychotic Manifestations of Schizophrenia

MAGNITUDE OF THE PROBLEM Comorbid anxiety disorders or symptoms are common in schizophrenia although differences in reporting are observed across cultures (Dixon et al.). Panic attacks in schizophrenia occurred in 45% of schizophrenia patients in the ECA. These individuals also had a high comorbidity with other psychiatric conditions and a higher cost of care. (Goodwin et al.). Similar figures were found in the community (Labbate et al. 99) with 43% of panic attacks (57% in paranoid patients). Past or current PTSD was found in 33% of patients. Actually PTSD was present in 14.3% of first admission psychosis in a clinical cohort of 426 patients (Neria et al.) In a cohort of 100 consecutively presenting psychotic patients, Cosoff & Hafner found a prevalence of 45% for anxiety disorders, 13% for OCD, 17% for socialphobia in schizophrenia. No specific treatment of the anxiety disorder was provided in almost all cases. The existence of a comorbid anxiety disorder correlates with positive and negative symptoms but not depression (Huppert et al.). The correlation with positive symptoms is the strongest, suggesting that the majority of anxiety is related to the acute exacerbation of schizophrenia (Emsley et al.). Most of the time anxiety is considered secondary to the psychotic condition and is expected to improve in parallel with the Schizophrenic symptoms. [Benzodiazepines or sedative neuroleptics (Levomepromazine, Cyamemazine) with potent antihistaminic properties are often associated with the core antipsychotic treatment in schizophrenia presenting with an acute or sub-acute exacerbation for some weeks, as long as anxiety is present ](see below). Although anxiety impacts on the quality of life (Huppert et al.) and on the outcome (Emsley et al.) the existence of comorbid anxiety disorders is rarely explored. Such an evaluation should be systematic. Antipsychotic treatment may induce obsessive compulsive symptoms (OCS) (see below) and possibly social phobia symptoms (Pallanti et al.) that can be treated successfully with SSRI's. The treatment of agitation and OCD are presented separately. The treatment of choice for acute schizophrenia is one of the newer generation antipsychotic drugs which are well-tolerated in the medium-term and can thus be used as maintenance therapy. In particular, drugs with little sedative effect are desirable in order to optimize functioning and preserve quality of life. Sedation is also undesirable as it may compromise management of negative symptoms. However, in certain patients who present with significant agitation and anxiety, drugs with low sedative
Predicting performance measures using linear regression and neural network : A comparison

The need to make judicious use of organizational resources has put a lot of pressure on production managers and demand planners; thus, it is necessary to accurately predict what resources will yield what output. Well planned activities result in improved performance of organizational goals among which are productivity, price recovery and profitability. This work uses artificial neural network, Back Propagation Artificial Neural Network (BP-ANN), as an alternative predictive tool to multi-linear regression, for establishing the interrelationships among productivity, price recovery and profitability as performance measures. A 2-20-20-1 back propagation artificial neural network was proposed. Productivity and price recovery served as independent variables while profitability was used as the dependent variable in the BPANN architecture. It was observed that BA-ANN model has Mean Square Error (MSE) of 0.02 while Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) has MSE of 0.036. This study concluded that artificial neural network is a more efficient tool for modeling interrelationships among productivity, price recovery and profitability. This approach can be applied in predicting performance measures of firms.
Decreased Bone Mineral Density at the Femoral Neck and Lumbar Spine in South Indian Patients with Type 2 Diabetes.

BACKGROUND With prevalence of diabetes in India reaching epidemic proportions and increase in the population of geriatric age group and risks of falls, it is important to understand the effect that diabetes has on bone health. AIM The objective was to assess bone mineral density (BMD) of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and to study factors contributing to BMD in patients with T2DM. MATERIALS AND METHODS This was a prospective cross-sectional study on 150 patients with T2DM (diagnosed at age > 30 years) and an equal number (n=150) of age and sex matched healthy controls from September 2012 to July 2014 at a tertiary care center located in Southern India. BMD was measured at the femoral neck and lumbar spine (L2-L4) by dual energy absorptiometry (DXA) in cases and controls. Serum total calcium, phosphorus and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and 25-OH- vitamin D3 was measured in patient group. RESULTS Mean age (SD) was 51.29 (±8.05) and 51 (±8.3) years in cases and controls, respectively. The femoral neck and lumbar spine BMD was significantly lower in T2DM cases compared to controls. Also the femoral neck and lumbar spine T-score was significantly lower in T2DM cases compared to controls. Femoral neck BMD among male patients with T2DM was significantly lower compared to controls (men). Among women, BMD at femoral neck as well as lumbar spine was significantly lower in cases when compared to controls. Ninety six out of 150 (64%) T2DM cases had Vitamin D values <20 ng/mL. There was weak negative correlation between age of patient, duration of diabetes and HbA1C with femoral neck BMD. There was weak negative correlation between HbA1C and lumbar spine BMD. CONCLUSION Indian subjects with type 2 diabetes have significantly lower BMD at both femoral neck and lumbar spine compared to age and sex matched healthy controls. We conclude that osteopenia and osteoporosis are overlooked complications of diabetes. Longitudinal studies are needed to see for actual incidence of fractures among this high risk group.
Differential effects of Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease on the performance of mental rotation

The ability to spatially rotate a mental image was compared in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 18) and patients with Huntington's disease (HD; n = 18). Compared to their respective age-matched normal control (NC) group, the speed, but not the accuracy, of mental rotation abnormally decreased with increasing angle of orientation for patients with HD. In contrast, the accuracy, but not the speed, of rotation abnormally decreased with increasing angle of orientation for patients with AD. Additional analyses showed that these unique patterns of performance were not attributable to different speed/accuracy trade-off sensitivities. This double dissociation suggests that the distinct brain regions affected in the two diseases differentially contribute to speed and accuracy of mental rotation. Specifically, the slowing exhibited by HD patients may be mediated by damage to the basal ganglia, whereas the spatial manipulation deficit of AD patients may reflect pathology in parietal and temporal lobe association cortices important for visuospatial processing. (JINS, 2005, 11, 30–39.)
Perceived Parental Behaviors and Next-Generation Engagement in Family Firms: A Social Cognitive Perspective

Next-generation engagement is a key contributor to the success and continuity of family firms. Family relationships are an important factor in shaping such engagement. However, we know little as to how this engagement process unfolds, especially during the formative years of next-generation members. Using the principles of social cognitive theory and drawing on the career development, organizational behavior, and family business literature, we theorize the indirect influence of perceived parental support and psychological control on next-generation engagement in family firms through the mediating variables of self-efficacy and commitment to the family business. We discuss several possible avenues to test and extend this model in future research.
Iterative Alternating Neural Attention for Machine Reading

We propose a novel neural attention architecture to tackle machine comprehension tasks, such as answering Cloze-style queries with respect to a document. Unlike previous models, we do not collapse the query into a single vector, instead we deploy an iterative alternating attention mechanism that allows a fine-grained exploration of both the query and the document. Our model outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in standard machine comprehension benchmarks such as CNN news articles and the Children's Book Test (CBT) dataset.
The pros and cons of very-low-voltage testing: an analysis based on resistive bridging faults

Test application at reduced power supply voltage (or VLV testing) is a cost-effective way to increase the defect coverage of a test set. Resistive short defects are a major contributor to this coverage increase. Using a probabilistic model of these defects, we quantify the coverage impact of VLV testing for different voltages. When considering the coverage increase, we differentiate between defects missed by the test set at nominal voltage and undetectable defects (flaws) detected by VLV testing. In our analysis, the performance degradation of the device caused by lower power supply voltage is accounted for. Furthermore, we describe a situation in which defects detected by conventional testing are missed by VLV testing and quantify the resulting coverage loss. We report the numbers on the increased defect coverage, flaw coverage, and coverage loss for ISCAS circuits.
Geometry of polar wedges and super-replication prices in incomplete financial markets

Consider a financial market in which an agent trades with utility-induced restrictions on wealth. By introducing a general convex-analytic framework which includes the class of umbrella wedges in certain Riesz spaces and faces of convex sets (consisting of probability measures), together with a duality theory for polar wedges, we provide a representation of the super-replication price of an unbounded (but sufficiently integrable) contingent claim that can be dominated approximately by a zero-financed terminal wealth as the the supremum of its discounted expectation under pricing measures which appear as faces of a given set of separating probability measures. Central to our investigation is the representation of a wedge $C_\Phi$ of utility-based super-replicable contingent claims as the polar wedge of the set of finite entropy separating measures. Our general approach shows, that those terminal wealths need {\it not} necessarily stem from {\it admissible} trading strategies only. The full two-sided polarity we achieve between measures and contingent claims yields an economic justification for the use of the wedge $C_\Phi$: the utility-based restrictions which this wedge imposes on terminal wealth arise only from the investor's preferences to asymptotically large negative wealth.
Suicidal Behavior and the Labor Market Productivity of Young Adults

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the link between suicidal behaviors and human capital formation of young adults in the United States. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate the effects of suicide thoughts and attempts on the probability of engaging in work or school. The richness of the data set allows us to implement several strategies to control for unobserved heterogeneity and the potential reverse causality. These include using a large set of control variables that are likely to be correlated with both suicidal behavior and the outcome measures, an instrumental variables method, and a fixed effects analysis from the subsample of twin pairs contained in the data. The longitudinal nature of the data set also allows us to control for past suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts of the individuals from their high school years as well as the suicidal behavior of their family members. Results from the different identification strategies consistently indicate that both suicide thoughts and suicide attempts decrease the likelihood a young adult individual engages in work or schooling.