Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
People Who Have Their Tickets But Do Not Use Them

We reexamine the effects of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) legislation on aggregate participation rates in the states. We approach NVRA as working directly on registration, and only indirectly on turnout, and we argue that the most appropriate way to evaluate NVRA is to examine how it translates increased registration into turnout. Using Federal Election Commission/Electoral Assistance Commission and census data, we find that an unanticipated impact of NVRA has been to alter the long-standing empirical relationship between registration and turnout. Further analyses suggest this failure to transmit registration into turnout may, ironically, be the result of another success of NVRA—an increase in the relative equality of registrants. By encouraging lower income citizens to register, NVRA has helped create a pool of registered citizens less likely to vote. These findings have implications for discussions of NVRA and for the participation literature that views registration as a primary catalyst for turnout.
Facial Expression Recognition Algorithm Based on CNN and LBP Feature Fusion

When a complex scene such as rotation within a plane is encountered, the recognition rate of facial expressions will decrease much. A facial expression recognition algorithm based on CNN and LBP feature fusion is proposed in this paper. Firstly, according to the problem of the lack of feature expression ability of CNN in the process of expression recognition, a CNN model was designed. The model is composed of structural units that have two successive convolutional layers followed by a pool layer, which can improve the expressive ability of CNN. Then, the designed CNN model was used to extract the facial expression features, and local binary pattern (LBP) features with rotation invariance were fused. To a certain extent, it makes up for the lack of CNN sensitivity to in-plane rotation changes. The experimental results show that the proposed method improves the expression recognition rate under the condition of plane rotation to a certain extent and has better robustness.
IKDC or KOOS? Which Measures Symptoms and Disabilities Most Important to Postoperative Articular Cartilage Repair Patients?

Background The relevance of knee-specific subjective measures of outcome to patients has not been evaluated for cartilage repair procedures. Purpose The aim of this study was to identify which instrument out of the Knee injury Osteoarthritis Outcome Score and the International Knee Documentation Committee Subjective Knee Form measures symptoms and disabilities most important to Postoperative articular cartilage repair patients. Study Design Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods Data were collected from 58 participants of an Internet knee forum via a self-reported online questionnaire consisting of demographic and surgical data, the Tegner activity scale, and 49 consolidated items from the Knee injury Osteoarthritis Outcome Score and the International Knee Documentation Committee Subjective Knee Form. Item importance, frequency, and frequency-importance product were calculated. Results Overall, the International Knee Documentation Committee Subjective Knee Form was the highest scoring instrument in all categories. However, 2 of the Knee injury Osteoarthritis Outcome Score subscales (“function in sport and recreation” and “knee-related quality of life”) scored higher on mean importance and frequency-importance product than the overall International Knee Documentation Committee Subjective Knee Form score. Conclusion The International Knee Documentation Committee Subjective Knee Form provided the best overall measure of symptoms and disabilities that are most important to this population of postoperative articular cartilage repair patients. This brings into question the validity of using the Knee injury Osteoarthritis Outcome Score in shorter-term—less than 10 years—studies. Issues related to sports activity appear to be highly valued and very pertinent to evaluation of outcomes for this patient group.
Workfare: Why Good Social Policy Ideas Go Bad

One of the greatest, as well as the most debated, social policy ideas of the 1980s and 1990s was workfare. In Workfare: Why Good Social Policy Ideas Go Bad, Maeve Quaid delves into the definition and history of workfare, and then continues with a critical and comparative analysis of workfare programs in six jurisdictions: three American (California, Wisconsin, New York) and three Canadian (Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick). Drawing from these case studies, Quaid develops an analytic model that illustrates how workfare falls prey to a series of hazards whereby good social policy ideas fail. Their demise, argues Quaid, begins with politicians with a zest for big ideas but little interest in implementation, continues with short-sighted policy makers, resistant bureaucrats, cynical recipients, flawed evaluations, and is completed by fleeting and fickle public attention for these news stories. Quaid's identification and analysis of these hazards is especially valuable because the hazards can also be applied to innovation in any area of social policy, such as health-care, education, pension plans, child-care, and unemployment insurance.
Batchwise Patching of Classifiers

In this work we present classifier patching, an approach for adapting an existing black-box classification model to new data. Instead of creating a new model, patching infers regions in the instance space where the existing model is error-prone by training a classifier on the previously misclassified data. It then learns a specific model to determine the error regions, which allows to patch the old model’s predictions for them. Patching relies on a strong, albeit unchangeable, existing base classifier, and the idea that the true labels of seen instances will be available in batches at some point in time after the original classification. We experimentally evaluate our approach, and show that it meets the original design goals. Moreover, we compare our approach to existing methods from the domain of ensemble stream classification in both concept drift and transfer learning situations. Patching adapts quickly and achieves high classification accuracy, outperforming state-of-the-art competitors in either adaptation speed or accuracy in many scenarios.
The Development of Opacity in U.S. Banking

An examination of U.S. banking history shows that economically efficient private bank money requires that information-revealing securities markets for bank liabilities be closed. That is, banks are optimally opaque, which is why they are regulated and examined. I show this by examining the transition from private bank notes, the predominant form of money before the U.S. Civil War, to demand deposits and show that markets endogenous closed. The opacity of bank money in the recent financial crisis is also briefly discussed.
HER2 As Therapeutic Target for Overcoming ATP-Binding Cassette Transporter–Mediated Chemoresistance in Small Cell Lung Cancer

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) easily acquires multidrug resistance after successful initial therapy. Overexpression of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters is important for the multidrug resistance. Among them, ABCB1 and ABCG2 are known to be upregulated in chemoresistant SCLC cells. We found that human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) expressions are also upregulated in chemoresistant SBC-3/ETP, SBC-3/SN-38, and SBC-3/CDDP cells, compared with chemosensitive SBC-3 cells. Lapatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor of HER2, could not suppress proliferation of these HER2-positive SCLC cells alone but successfully restored chemosensitivity to etoposide and SN-38 with a clinically applicable concentration. The reversal effect of lapatinib was thought to be caused by inhibition of drug efflux pump functions of ABC transporters, although lapatinib itself has been reported to be a substrate for them. Moreover, knocking down of HER2 by an short interfering RNA weakened the effect of lapatinib on ABCB1, indicating the involvement of HER2 in the inhibitory mechanisms. Notably, we showed that caveolin-1 and Src play key roles in modulating ABCB1 function via HER2 inactivation. In SBC-3/ETP cells, dephosphorylation of HER2 by lapatinib activates Src and successively leads to increased caveolin-1 phosphorylation. Through this process, caveolin-1 dissociates from HER2 and strengthens association with ABCB1, and finally impairs the pump functions. Furthermore, we showed that treatment by lapatinib in combination with etoposide or irinotecan significantly suppresses the growth of subcutaneous SBC-3/ETP and SBC-3/SN-38 tumors in mice, respectively. Collectively, these results indicate that combination therapy with lapatinib and cytotoxic agents could conquer ABC transporter–mediated chemoresistance especially in HER2-positive SCLC. Mol Cancer Ther; 11(4); 830–41. ©2012 AACR.
Scattering Transform of Heart Rate Variability for the Prediction of Ischemic Stroke in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation

Summary Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is an identified risk factor for ischemic strokes (IS). AF causes a loss in atrial contractile function that favors the formation of thrombi, and thus increases the risk of stroke. Also, AF produces highly irregular and complex temporal dynamics in ventricular response RR intervals. Thus, it is hypothesized that the analysis of RR dynamics could provide predictors for IS. However, these complex and nonlinear dynamics call for the use of advanced multiscale nonlinear signal processing tools. Objectives: The global aim is to investigate the performance of a recently-proposed multiscale and nonlinear signal processing tool, the scattering transform, in predicting IS for patients suffering from AF. Methods: The heart rate of a cohort of 173 patients from Fujita Health University Hospital in Japan was analyzed with the scattering transform. First, p-values of Wilcoxon rank sum tests were used to identify scattering coefficients achieving significant (univariate) discrimination between patients with and without IS. Second, a multivariate procedure for feature selection and classification, the Sparse Support Vector Machine (S-SVM), was applied to predict IS. Results: Groups of scattering coefficients, located at several time-scales, were identified as significantly higher (p-value < 0.05) in patients who developed IS than in those who did not. Though the overall predictive power of these indices remained moderate (around 60 %), it was found to be much higher when analysis was restricted to patients not taking antithrombotic treatment (around 80 %). Further, S-SVM showed that multivariate classification improves IS prediction, and also indicated that coefficients involved in classification differ for patients with and without antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions: Scattering coefficients were found to play a significant role in predicting IS, notably for patients not receiving antithrombotic treatment. S-SVM improves IS detection performance and also provides insight on which features are important. Notably, it shows that AF patients not taking antithrombotic treatment are characterized by a slow modulation of RR dynamics in the ULF range and a faster modulation in the HF range. These modulations are significantly decreased in patients with IS, and hence have a good discriminant ability.
Communication of corporate social responsibility by Portuguese banks: A legitimacy theory perspective

– The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether Portuguese banks use their web sites as a medium to disclose social responsibility information and identify what types of this kind of information they disclose, and compare such disclosure with similar disclosure in annual reports. , – Examines social responsibility information disclosure on the internet by Portuguese banks in 2004 and compares the internet and 2003 annual reports as disclosure media using content analysis. , – Banks with a higher visibility among consumers seem to exhibit greater concern to improve the corporate image through social responsibility information disclosure. Results thus suggest that legitimacy theory may be an explanation of social responsibility disclosure by Portuguese banks. , – The sample is small, although it is constituted by all the relevant Portuguese banks. , – Contributes to the scarce literature on social responsibility disclosure by financial institutions. A proxy for public visibility of banks which has not been previously used is proposed in this study.
Experiences from a Web-based Course in Software Testing and Quality Assurance

Fundamentally, computer science and its courses are considered difficult to learn, since so many concepts has to be grasped before anything worthwhile can be achieved. To make the things even more difficult, there also is a drive to cut costs on the teaching work, to minimize the amount of teaching staff and in general, steer the course modules towards web-based learning and assisted self-study. In this study, the objective is to assess the different tools and approaches available for constructing an online-enabled course on software testing and quality assurance (QA), based on two different course implementations to provide experiences and information. Based on our observations, the most important factors in teaching a course in software testing with an assisted self-study approach is to offer practical exercises using real software projects, discuss real-world scenarios in the lectures to maintain the student motivation, offer equal services to both online and offline students and discuss both the management and practical work aspects of the testing work.
The reciprocal relationships between changes in adolescent perceived prevalence of smoking in movies and progression of smoking status

Background Smoking in movies is associated with adolescent smoking worldwide. To date, studies of the association mostly are restricted to the exposure to smoking images viewed by 9–15-year-olds. The association among older adolescents is rarely examined. In addition, the reciprocal effect of smoking behaviour on subsequent reported exposure to smoking in movies has not been reported. Methods Data were from the Minnesota Adolescent Community Cohort Study collected every 6 months from 2000 to 2007 when participants were between the ages of 12 and 18 (n=4745). We estimated the prospective effect of the perceived prevalence of smoking in movies (four levels, from never to most of the time) on smoking stage (SS) measured 6 months later (six stages, from never-smoker to established smoker) and the reciprocal prospective association between the two factors. Estimates were adjusted for demographic factors. Results The perceived prevalence of smoking in movies measured between ages 13½ and 15½ consistently predicted subsequent SS. The association was inconsistent after the age of 15½. SS did not consistently predict subsequent perception of the prevalence of smoking in movies. Conclusions Perceived exposure to movie smoking primarily influenced teenagers' smoking behaviour at younger ages. If future studies confirm this finding, developing and evaluating interventions to improve young teenagers' resistance to these images may complement policies to reduce smoking in movies to reduce prevalence of adolescent smoking.
One-stage one-sided rearrangeable switching networks

Switching networks consisting of subscriber lines and crosswires connected by switches are considered. A connection between two subscribers is made along one crosswire via two switches. The minimum number of switches necessary for such a switching network to be rearrangeably nonblocking is determined and a switching arrangement which achieves this minimum for any (even) number of subscriber lines is constructed. Two procedures for assignment of crosswires to subscriber line pairs are described. One makes the correct choice of connection route without backtracking provided all connections are known beforehand; the other determines a rearrangement of existing assignments when a new connection is required. The switching networks which have the minimum number of switches for networks with up to eight subscriber lines and give nonisomorphic solutions for larger networks are characterized. >
Risk stratification for the development of venous thromboembolism in hospitalized patients with cancer

Essentials The Khorana score is validated for risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in cancer outpatients. We conducted a multicenter analysis of medically hospitalized cancer patients. Patients with a higher Khorana score on admission were more likely to develop VTE. The Khorana score is predictive of in‐hospital, symptomatic VTE development.
Reducing OLED Degradation Using Self-Compensated Circuit for AMOLED Displays

In this letter, the electric characteristics of the fabricated organic light-emitting diode (OLED) devices are analyzed after a bias stress. Experimental results demonstrate that when a constant voltage is applied to the OLED device, the OLED threshold voltage gradually increases, resulting in the driving current to decay. Therefore, a novel voltage driving scheme for active-matrix OLEDs using low-temperature polysilicon thin-film transistors (poly-Si TFTs) is proposed. This circuit uses three TFTs to increase the aperture ratio of panels and the driving current of the OLED device to ameliorate the luminance drop that is caused by OLED degradation. Simulation results indicate that the proposed pixel circuit has high immunity to VTH variations of the poly-Si TFTs and provides an extra compensation current against OLED degradation.
Does Government Debt Affect Bank Credit

This paper analyses 43 countries from 1970 to 2010 to investigate the effect that public debt has on bank loans. The study is motivated by the need to understand the consequences of high public debt, a condition many countries are already experiencing or will experience in the next few years. Looking at the 40-year period, we find that the ratio of government debt to GDP has a negative association with the subsequent growth of bank credit. Our results hold using different econometric methods and controlling for variables such as the lagged value of bank loans, the occurrence of banking crises, per capita GDP, the inflation rate, trade openness, international investment position, stock market capitalization and countries' legal origin.
Diagnosis and treatment of post‐transplantation lymphoproliferative disorder in pediatric heart transplant patients

Abstract: PTLD is a severe complication in transplant recipients. Detection of increased EBV load in the peripheral blood acts as a surrogate marker for increased risk of PTLD development. We analyzed the time course of the disease, its severitiy, the organs involved, and mortality rates in our institutional experience of pediatric heart transplantation. This paper identifies risk factors for PTLD and describes the different ways of diagnosing and treating the disease. PTLD was screened for in 146 pediatric heart transplant patients using a retrospective analysis in patients who received transplantation before 1998. Prospective determination was performed in 72/146 patients transplanted after 1998 within the post‐transplant follow‐up. The occurrence of PTLD with all interventions, including tapering of immunosuppression, surgery, viral monitoring, and antiviral interventions, was recorded. PTLD was diagnosed in 12/147 (8.2%) children at a mean age of 7.2 ± 3.3 yr after a mean post‐transplant period of 3.2 ± 2.2 yr. PTLD manifested in: lymph nodes (n = 4), intestine (n = 3), tonsils and adenoids (n = 2), eye (n = 2), and lung (n = 1). It was diagnosed in 7/12 as a monomorphic B‐cell lymphoma and in four patients as a monomorphic Burkitt lymphoma, a polymorphic B‐cell lymphoma, a T‐cell rich or angiocentric lymphoma (Liebow) and as reactive plasmacytic hyperplasia (early lesion), respectively. Histology was not possible in one patient with ocular manifestation. EBV association was 83%. Risk factors in the comparison with patients without PTLD were age at time of Tx, primary EBV infection after Tx, use of Azathioprine and ≥3 doses of ATG. CMV mismatch and CMV infection, rejection episodes and steroids were not risk factors. Despite reduction of immunosuppression, treatment consisted of surgical procedures to remove tumor masses (n = 6), Rituximab (n = 5), polychemotherapy (n = 3), antiviral (n = 1) and autologous T‐cell therapy (n = 1). All patients demonstrated full remission without death related to PTLD or treatment at 3.9 (1.3–6.2) yr median follow‐up time. The manifestation of PTLD in pediatric heart transplant recipients is associated with EBV infection and is predominantly in the form of a B‐cell lymphoma. A tight and specific follow‐up including early assessment of immunity status and specific therapeutic intervention to improve cellular immunity is warranted and may contribute to a significant reduction of PTLD‐related morbidity and mortality.
Factors regulating collagen synthesis and degradation during second-intention healing of wounds in the thoracic region and the distal aspect of the forelimb of horses.

OBJECTIVE To determine significant molecular and cellular factors responsible for differences in second-intention healing in thoracic and metacarpal wounds of horses. ANIMALS 6 adult mixed-breed horses. PROCEDURE A full-thickness skin wound on the metacarpus and another such wound on the pectoral region were created, photographed, and measured, and tissue was harvested from these sites weekly for 4 weeks. Gene expression of type-I collagen, transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta1, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-1, and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase (TIMP)-1 were determined by quantitative in situ hybridization. Myofibroblasts were detected by immunohistochemical labeling with alpha-smooth muscle actin (alpha-SMA). Collagen accumulation was detected by use of picrosirius red staining. Tissue morphology was examined by use of H&E staining. RESULTS Unlike thoracic wounds, forelimb wounds enlarged during the first 2 weeks. Myofibroblasts, detected by week 1, remained abundant with superior organization in thoracic wounds. Type-I collagen mRNA accumulated progressively in both wounds. More type-I collagen and TGF-beta1 mRNA were seen in forelimb wounds. Volume of MMP-1 mRNA decreased from day 0 in both wounds. By week 3, TIMP-1 mRNA concentration was greater in thoracic wounds. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Greater collagen synthesis in metacarpal than thoracic wounds was documented by increased concentrations of myofibroblasts, type-I collagen mRNA,TGF-beta1 mRNA, and decreased collagen degradation (ie, MMP-1). Imbalanced collagen synthesis and degradation likely correlate with development of exuberant granulation tissue, delaying healing in wounds of the distal portions of the limbs. Factors that inhibit collagen synthesis or stimulate collagenase may provide treatment options for horses with exuberant granulation tissue.
Building a winning culture

Purpose – The article seeks to show that companies should and can build winning cultures.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 365 companies in Europe, Asia and North America were surveyed for links between financial out‐performance and winning culture. Three dozen high performers were analyzed in in‐depth case studies; one from each region that has transformed its culture is presented.Findings – Findings were that building a winning culture – which fewer than 10 per cent of companies succeed in doing, despite broad recognition that culture provides the greatest source of competitive advantage – requires five key steps: setting expectations, aligning leaders, accountability for delivery, organization‐wide consistency and communication/celebration. Winning cultures tend to display six key behaviours: high aspirations, external focus (customers and competitors), attitude of ownership, bias to action, valuing collaboration and striving for the exceptional. These can be measured through the daily performan.