Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cardiovascular risk factors associated with lower baseline cognitive performance in HIV-positive persons

Objective: To determine factors associated with baseline neurocognitive performance in HIV-infected participants enrolled in the Strategies for Management of Antiretroviral Therapy (SMART) neurology substudy. Methods: Participants from Australia, North America, Brazil, and Thailand were administered a 5-test neurocognitive battery. Z scores and the neurocognitive performance outcome measure, the quantitative neurocognitive performance z score (QNPZ-5), were calculated using US norms. Neurocognitive impairment was defined as z scores <−2 in two or more cognitive domains. Associations of test scores, the QNPZ-5, and impairment with baseline factors including demographics and risk factors for HIV-associated dementia (HAD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) were determined in multiple regression. Results: The 292 participants had a median CD4 cell count of 536 cells/mm3, 88% had an HIV viral load ≤400 copies/mL, and 92% were taking antiretrovirals. Demographics, HIV, and clinical factors differed between locations. The mean QNPZ-5 score was −0.72; 14% of participants had neurocognitive impairment. For most tests, scores and z scores differed significantly between locations, with and without adjustment for age, sex, education, and race. Prior CVD was associated with neurocognitive impairment. Prior CVD, hypercholesterolemia, and hypertension were associated with poorer neurocognitive performance but conventional HAD risk factors and the CNS penetration effectiveness rank of antiretroviral regimens were not. Conclusions: In this HIV-positive population with high CD4 cell counts, neurocognitive impairment was associated with prior CVD. Lower neurocognitive performance was associated with prior CVD, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia, but not conventional HAD risk factors. The contribution of CVD and cardiovascular risk factors to the neurocognition of HIV-positive populations warrants further investigation.
Rule Fitness and Pathology in Learning Classifier Systems

It has long been known that in some relatively simple reinforcement learning tasks traditional strength-based classifier systems will adapt poorly and show poor generalisation. In contrast, the more recent accuracy-based XCS, appears both to adapt and generalise well. In this work, we attribute the difference to what we call strong over general and fit over general rules. We begin by developing a taxonomy of rule types and considering the conditions under which they may occur. In order to do so an extreme simplification of the classifier system is made, which forces us toward qualitative rather than quantitative analysis. We begin with the basics, considering definitions for correct and incorrect actions, and then correct, incorrect, and overgeneral rules for both strength and accuracy-based fitness. The concept of strong overgeneral rules, which we claim are the Achilles' heel of strength-based classifier systems, are then analysed. It is shown that strong overgenerals depend on what we call biases in the reward function (or, in sequential tasks, the value function). We distinguish between strong and fit overgeneral rules, and show that although strong overgenerals are fit in a strength-based system called SB-XCS, they are not in XCS. Next we show how to design fit overgeneral rules for XCS (but not SB-XCS), by introducing biases in the variance of the reward function, and thus that each system has its own weakness. Finally, we give some consideration to the prevalence of reward and variance function bias, and note that non-trivial sequential tasks have highly biased value functions.
Optimum Design of Space Trusses with Buckling Constraints by Means of Spreadsheets

In this paper, an algorithm is developed for the optimum design of space trusses with the help of spreadsheets. The algorithm depends on the interactive computing capability of spreadsheets. A general purpose optimization tool in spreadsheets is used for the optimization procedures. The analyses of space trusses are performed by the matrix displacement method. Specific macros have been developed for matrix calculations related to the truss systems. The displacement, tensile stress, buckling stress and minimum size constraints are considered in the formulation of the design problem. A number of design examples are presented to demonstrate the application of the algorithm. The optimum designs obtained using the spreadsheets are compared with those where a classical optimization method is employed.
Phenobarbital at low dose exerts hormesis in rat hepatocarcinogenesis by reducing oxidative DNA damage, altering cell proliferation, apoptosis and gene expression.

Our recent research indicated that phenobarbital (PB) may inhibit the development of N-diethylnitrosamine (DEN)-initiated pre-neoplastic lesions at low doses in a rat liver medium-term bioassay (Ito test), while high doses exhibit promoting activity. This raises the question of whether treatment with low doses of PB might reduce cancer risk. For clarification, male 6-week-old F344 rats were treated with PB at doses of 0, 2, 15 and 500 p.p.m. in the diet for 10 or 33 weeks after initiation of hepatocarcinogenesis with DEN. In a second, short-term experiment, animals were given PB at doses of 2, 4, 15, 60 and 500 p.p.m. for 8 days. Formation of glutathione S-transferase placental form (GST-P) positive foci and liver tumors was inhibited at 2 p.p.m. Generation of oxidative DNA damage marker, 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), cellular proliferation within the areas of GST-P positive foci and apoptosis in background liver parenchyma were suppressed. Suppression of 8-OHdG formation by PB at low dose might be related to the enhanced mRNA expression of 8-OHdG repair enzyme, oxoguanine glycosylase 1 (Ogg1). Moreover, as detected by cDNA microarray analysis, PB treatment at low dose enhanced mRNA expression of glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD65), an enzyme involved in the synthesis of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), and suppressed MAP kinase p38 and other intracellular kinases gene expression. On the contrary, when PB was applied at a high dose, GST-P positive foci numbers and areas, tumor multiplicity, hydroxyl radicals and 8-OHdG levels were greatly elevated with the increase in CYP2B1/2 and CYP3A2 mRNA, protein, activity and gene expression of GST, nuclear tyrosine phosphatase, NADPH- cytochrome P-450 reductase and guanine nucleotide binding protein G(O) alpha subunit. These results indicate that PB exhibits hormetic effect on rat hepatocarcinogenesis initiated with DEN by differentially altering cell proliferation, apoptosis and oxidative DNA damage at high and low doses.
Students’ delinquency and correlates with strong and weaker ties : A study of students’ networks in Dutch high schools

The goal of the present study was to investigate three issues in the current debate on youth delinquency: (1) Whether the level of delinquency of adolescents is negatively correlated with the quality of her/his personal networks (as stated by the social inability model) or not (as stated by the social ability model); (2) Whether there is homophily in adolescents’ networks regarding degree of delinquency; and (3) Whether homophily regarding the degree of delinquency is more pronounced for strong relationships than for weak relationships. A network survey, the Dutch Social Behavior Study, was carried out on 1,317 students (aged 15 to 17 years) in 20 high schools. Students completed a self-report questionnaire about petty crime and nominated fellow students for ten different types of relationships, both positive and negative and varying from weak to strong. Results showed that (1) the quality of the personal networks of delinquents and non-delinquents did not differ over any positive relationship. Delinquents seemed to avoid others a little more than nondelinquents, but were not avoided more; (2) the level of delinquency of students involved in positive relationships was correlated. This was caused partially by sex segregation; and (3) Homophily in weak-tie networks was not smaller than in strong-tie networks.
Economics and regulation in China

1. Introduction Michael Faure and Guangdong Xu Part I: Regulation as a Tool of Economic Growth 2. Financial Repression, Economic Distortion and China's Growth Miracle Guangdong Xu 3. Affordable Housing in China: Can inclusionary zoning regulation work? Wenjing Li and Binwei Gui 4. Legal Regulation of China's Securities Markets: Recent improvements and competing advantages Tianshu Zhou Part II: Economic Analysis of Competition Policy 5. An Empirical Approach of Regulation on China's Pension Investment Jiye Hu 6. New Developments in China's Competition Policy against Monopolistic/Collusive Agreements Xinzhu Zhang and Vanessa Yanhua Zhang 7. Enforcing Antitrust Law in China: Is decentralization desirable? Roger Van den Bergh and Jingyuan Ma 8. Using Economics to Improve Professional Regulation Niels J. Philipsen 9. A Legal-Economic Analysis of the WTO's Agreement on Safeguards: China's policy choice on the trade safeguard mechanism Jie Hong Part III: Environmental Policy 10. Analysis of Policy Considerations for Developing Countries' Accession to GPA Xiaoping Zhang 11. Hybrid Emissions Trading Systems: What about efficiency? Stefan E. Weishaar and Fitsum G. Tiche 12. Designing and Implementing an Emissions Trading Market in China: The case of Tianjin Hao Zhang 13. Environmental Liability in China: Recent developments and case studies in an ex-post analysis Michael Faure and Weiqiang Hu 14. Economic Analysis of Chinese Regime on Marine Environmental Liability Hui Wang 15. Comparative and Concluding Remarks Michael Faure and Guangdong Xu
Effect of Mycoplasma hominis and cytomegalovirus infection on pregnancy outcome: A prospective study of 200 Mongolian women and their newborns

In Mongolia, diagnostic tests for the detection of the sexually transmitted mycoplasmas, ureaplasmas, Herpes simplex virus (HSV), and cytomegalovirus (CMV) are currently not routinely used in clinical settings and the frequency of these STIs are enigmatic. The prevalence of these STI pathogens were prospectively evaluated among 200 Mongolian pregnant women and their newborns and correlated with pregnancy outcome. TaqMan PCRs were used to detect bacterial and viral STI pathogens in pre-birth vaginal swabs of the pregnant women and in oral swabs of their newborns. A standardized questionnaire concerning former and present pregnancies was developed and linear regression analysis was used to correlate pathogen detection with pregnancy outcome. Ureaplasmas were the most prevalent of the tested pathogens (positive in 90.5% positive women and 47.5% newborns), followed by mycoplasmas (32.5% and 7.5%), chlamydia (14.5% and 7.5%), trichomonas (8.5% and 4.0%) and gonococcus (0.5% and 0%). CMV was found in 46.5% of the pregnant women and in 10.5% of their newborns, whereas HSV-2 was detected in only two mothers. Multiple regression analyses indicate that colonization of the mothers with U. urealyticum, M. hominis, T. vaginalis or CMV is associated with transmission to newborns and that transmission of M. hominis or CMV from Mongolian pregnant women to offspring is associated with reduced neonatal length and gestational age. Thus, diagnostic tests for their detection should be implemented in the clinical settings in Mongolia.
THE IMPACT OF ECONOMIC REFORMS ON INDIAN MANUFACTURERS: EVIDENCE FROM A SMALL SAMPLE SURVEY

Although there has been much theorising on the impact of Indias economic reforms of 1991 on Indian manufacturers, there is hardly any previous study that has taken up the task of actually asking the manufacturing firms as to what the true impact of economic reforms has been on them. In this paper, we report the findings of a small sample survey of manufacturing enterprises in the Delhi region regarding perceptions of the impact of economic reforms of 1990s. Most firms felt that the reforms were helpful by increasing access to foreign technology and making imports of capital and intermediate goods cheaper. They also felt that improvement in infrastructure and more flexible labour laws will facilitate further growth of Indias manufacturing sector.
A Deep Convolutional Auto-Encoder with Pooling - Unpooling Layers in Caffe

This paper presents the development of several models of a deep convolutional auto-encoder in the Caffe deep learning framework and their experimental evaluation on the example of MNIST dataset. We have created five models of a convolutional auto-encoder which differ architecturally by the presence or absence of pooling and unpooling layers in the auto-encoder’s encoder and decoder parts. Our results show that the developed models provide very good results in dimensionality reduction and unsupervised clustering tasks, and small classification errors when we used the learned internal code as an input of a supervised linear classifier and multi-layer perceptron. The best results were provided by a model where the encoder part contains convolutional and pooling layers, followed by an analogous decoder part with deconvolution and unpooling layers without the use of switch variables in the decoder part. The paper also discusses practical details of the creation of a deep convolutional auto-encoder in the very popular Caffe deep learning framework. We believe that our approach and results presented in this paper could help other researchers to build efficient deep neural network architectures in the future.
Venture Capital Investment Duration

This paper examines cross‐country evidence on the duration of venture capital (VC) investment. We formulate a theory of VC investment duration based on the idea that venture capitalists exit when the expected marginal cost of maintaining the investment is greater than the expected marginal benefit, and thereby relate VC investment duration to entrepreneurial firm characteristics, investor characteristics, deal characteristics, and institutional and market conditions. VC investment duration data in Canada and the United States lend strong support to the theoretical predictions developed herein.
The Gandhian Alternative To Western Socialism*

ANDHI was a most comprehensive but integrated G individual. There was hardly any aspect of lifepolitical, social, cultural, moral, religious or even international-that he did not touch and seek to illumine during his long life of speeches, writings and action. A votary of peace, his heart overflowing with love and compassion, an inveterate believer in man’s capacity for goodness, possessed of an indomitable will expressing itself in an iron discipline extending over the many decades of his life on earth, Gandhi was essentially a man of God. While he resuscitated and gave renewed expression to the traditional Hindu message of Truth and Non-violence, his own unique contribution lay in demonstrating that Truth and Non-violence were capable of mass understanding and, embodied in satyagraha, could be a potent instrument for bringing about a fundamental change in the ordering of human affairs. I propose to confine myself to two aspects of Gandhian thought: (i) his ideas in the realm of economic norms and economic activity; and (ii) the alternative that he offered to scientific socialism and communism sponsored by Western thinkers. Gandhi’s economic norms cannot be found in any economics textbook. Addressing a College Economics Society as far back as 1916, Gandhi asserted:
Constraining galaxy formation and cosmology with the conditional luminosity function of galaxies

We use the conditional luminosity function �(L|M)dL, which gives the number of galaxies with luminosities in the range L±dL/2 that reside in a halo of mass M, to link the distribution of galaxies to that of dark matter haloes. Starting from the number density of dark matter haloes predicted by current models of structure formation, we seek the form of �(L|M) that reproduces the galaxy luminosity function and the luminosity dependence of the galaxy clustering strength. We test the models of �(L|M) by comparing the resulting mass-to-light ratios with constraints from the Tully-Fisher (TF) relation and from galaxy clusters. A comparison between model predictions and current observations yields a number of stringent constraints on both galaxy formation and cosmology. In particular, this method can break the degeneracy between 0 and the power-spectrum normalization �8, inherent in current weak-lensing and cluster
The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations

Introduction: Making Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations 1 1 When Leaders Are at Their Best 9 The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership Leadership Is a Relationship Putting It All Together: Credibility Is the Foundation PRACTICE 1 MODEL THE WAY 41 2 Clarify Values 43 Find Your Voice Affirm Shared Values 3 Set the Example 71 Live the Shared Values Teach Others to Model the Values PRACTICE 2 INSPIRE A SHARED VISION 99 4 Envision the Future 101 Imagine the Possibilities Find a Common Purpose 5 Enlist Others 127 Appeal to Common Ideals Animate the Vision PRACTICE 3 CHALLENGE THE PROCESS 155 6 Search for Opportunities 157 Seize the Initiative Exercise Outsight 7 Experiment and Take Risks 185 Generate Small Wins Learn from Experience PRACTICE 4 ENABLE OTHERS TO ACT 213 8 Foster Collaboration 215 Create a Climate of Trust Facilitate Relationships 9 Strengthen Others 241 Enhance Self-Determination Develop Competence and Confidence PRACTICE 5 ENCOURAGE THE HEART 271 10 Recognize Contributions 273 Expect the Best Personalize Recognition 11 Celebrate the Values and Victories 301 Create a Spirit of Community Get Personally Involved 12 Leadership Is Everyone s Business 329 Look to Leaders Everywhere Know How Important You Are Practice Reflect Remain Humble and Human Seize the Moment Remember the Secret to Success in Life Notes 347 Acknowledgments 375 About the Authors 379 Index 383 For Tae and Jackie with all our love. Thank you for all you do and all that you have given us.
Ownership, Investor Protection and Earnings Expectations

This study examines the interactive influence of corporate ownership, corporate governance and investor protection on the incorporation of current value shocks in the accounting earnings of European companies. This influence is investigated not only by means of the association between current news and current earnings but also with respect to the association of the same news with expected future earnings, and its persistence. Consistent with the contractual explanation of accounting conservatism, it is shown that the accounting behaviour examined is a function of the demand created by shareholders, and that the institutional arrangements in force are of lesser significance in the presence of widely held ownership. On the other hand, greater separation between supervision and management and stronger investor protection are seen to be influential under close ownership, as these are shown to curb aggressive accounting in the form of a persistently lower recognition of bad news in earnings. Evidence is also provided that stricter corporate governance practices in Europe can substitute for weaknesses in investor protection provisions in law.
The antinociceptive effect of non-noxious sensory stimulation is mediated partly through oxytocinergic mechanisms.

The objective of the present study was to investigate whether oxytocinergic mechanisms may contribute to the antinociceptive effect of non-noxious, sensory stimulation. To test this hypothesis, oxytocin levels in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) were measured in control rats as well as in rats exposed for 30 min to electro-acupuncture (2 Hz), thermal stimulation (40 degrees C) or vibration (100 Hz). All modes of stimulation induced significant elevations of oxytocin levels in plasma and/or in CSF, 30 or 90 min after the end of stimulation. Secondly, the antinociceptive effects of these treatments were investigated in the tail-flick test with and without prior administration of the oxytocin antagonist 1-deamino-2-D-Tyr-(OEt)-4-Thr-8-Orn-oxytocin (1 mg kg-1 i.p.). All three modes of stimulation caused a significant delay of the tail-flick latency to the same degree as that caused by injection of oxytocin 1 mg kg-1 i.p. (electro-acupuncture P < 0.01, thermal stimulation and vibration P < 0.05). In all cases, the delay was reversed by administration of the oxytocin antagonist (1 mg kg-1 i.p.). These findings suggest that analgesic effects induced by non-noxious sensory stimulation may, in part, be mediated through activation of oxytocinergic mechanisms.
Stok206.tex Comments on Nancy Stokey, 'rules versus Discretion' after Twenty-five Years 1

Nancy Stokey's (2002) interesting and thought-provoking paper has two parts. Part I, " Ob-servability, " discusses the choice of monetary-policy instruments by relying on Atkeson and Kehoe (2001). This discussion is in terms of a tradeoff between observability and " tightness " (the correlation with the monetary-policy goal). Part II, " Robustness, " discusses the choice between discretion and commitment to a simple rule. This discussion is in terms of a tradeoff between flexibility and myopia on one hand and rigidity and farsightedness on the other. I believe part I is better described as concerned with the choice of an intermediate target for monetary policy rather than a monetary-policy instrument. The setting of the monetary-policy instrument (the Fed funds rate in the U.S.) is usually directly observable, whereas the relation between the instrument setting and the monetary-policy goals is complex, making it difficult to infer the central bank's intentions from its instrument setting. Thus, I interpret part I as a discussion of the pros and cons of either an exchange-rate target or a money-growth target as intermediate targets, when the final target (the goal) is inflation. The choice of an intermediate target is a classic problem in the design of monetary policy. An ideal intermediate target is (1) highly correlated with the goal, (2) easier to control than the goal, and (3) easier to observe than the goal. The idea is that, if such an ideal intermediate target can be found, it may be better to aim for the intermediate target rather than to aim directly for the goal, and this way indirectly achieve the goal. In current real-world monetary policy, the idea of intermediate targeting has largely been abandoned (except in a specific sense mentioned below). Instead, central banks nowadays aim directly for their goals, typically low inflation and (to some extent) stable output gaps, as in (flexible) inflation targeting. The main problem with inflation targeting is that the control of inflation (and the output gap) is very imperfect, due to the lags in, and different strengths of, the various channels in the transmission process from instrument adjustments to actual inflation and output. This makes it difficult to judge whether current policy settings are, and past policy 1 These comments were prepared for the NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2002, Cambridge, MA, April 2002. I thank Annika Andreasson for secretarial and editorial assistance.