Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Receipt of informal care in the Chinese older population

ABSTRACT This paper examines the factors affecting the receipt of informal care among older people in China. It uses the second wave data of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey, which collected ageing and health-related information on a nationally representative sample of 8,906 older people aged 60 and over in 2013. Apart from the factors that have been examined in the contexts of developed countries, the paper further investigates two factors specific to Chinese society: rural–urban residence and regular financial assistance from children. Based on binary and multinomial logit regression analyses, the research findings are threefold: the determinants of receiving informal care differ remarkably according to the sources of care; disability and living arrangements are the most important determinants; rural–urban residence plays a vital role in the Chinese context, but regular financial assistance from children makes little difference. It is estimated that 53 million older people are receiving informal care each year, a figure equivalent to the entire population of England. With continuous population ageing, Chinese society will face huge pressure to meet the demand for social care among older people in the future. The Chinese government needs to build a well-rounded welfare system that tackles this challenge from multiple dimensions. The formal care services should aim to complement informal care in the short run and reduce inequality in social care in the long run.
The Meaning of Work in Teachers’ Lives: A Qualitative Study

Abstract This paper, the first empirical study on Turkish teacher perspectives of work meanings, presents findings from a small-scale qualitative study. The meaning of work for teachers was analyzed through semistructured interviews covering a number of themes including the teachers’ reasons to continue working, times when work lost its meaning in the teachers’ lives and possible changes for a meaningful work life. Results indicated that working portrays a multidimensional sight with both its negative and positive sides in economical, social and psychological terms for teachers. Not being valued by society, parents, policymakers and their administrators are the main reasons why teachers lose their enthusiasm and motivation. The teachers’ desires for more satisfactory salary and well-equipped schools suggest that economic enhancements will make their working life more meaningful. Considering all the facts related to the teachers’ work lives, they are not highly satisfied, which can lead to a decrease in their performance.
A Bayesian Approach to Uncertainty Aversion 1

The Ellsberg paradox demonstrates that peoples belief over uncertain events might not be representable by subjective probability. We show that if a risk averse decision maker, who has a well de ned Bayesian prior, perceives an Ellsberg type decision problem as possibly composed of a bundle of several positively correlated problems she will be uncertainty averse. We generalize this argument and derive su¢ cient conditions for uncertainty aversion. JEL classi cation: D81
Calculation of the valence band structure in strained In0.7Ga0.3As devices with different surface orientation

Using the eight-band k·p Hamiltonian approach, the valence band structure of strained In0.7Ga0. 3As is calculated for (001), (110) and (111) orientation. The impact of biaxial strain and uniaxial strain on energy band splitting and warping is investigated. The dependency of the valence band structure on the surface electric field and body thickness is also studied in this work.
Perturbation Theory in Dierential Homological Algebra II

A multilayer wiring substrate composed of organic dielectric layers with wiring layers disposed therein supports large-scale integrated circuit chips and bonding pads. To prevent damage to the wiring layers when wires from the integrated circuit chips are attached to the bonding pads by thermocompression bonding, a metallic layer is interposed between the wiring layers and the bonding pads.
Prognostic and predictive markers in recurrent high grade glioma ; results from the BR 12 randomised trial

We evaluated the prognostic and predictive value of a range of molecular changes in the setting of a randomised trial comparing standard PCV (procarbazine, CCNU (1-(2-chloroethyl)-3-cyclohexyl-1-nitrosourea) and vincristine) chemotherapy with the standard temozolomide (TMZ) 5-day (200 mg/m/day) schedule and a 21-day (100 mg/m/day) schedule in chemo-naïve, high-grade glioma (non-oligodendroglial tumours; WHO (World Health Organisation) grades III and IV) patients at first progression following radiotherapy. 354 samples (79.2%) from the first operation of the 447 randomised patients provided enough tumour DNA for some or all parts of the study. Genome-wide array comparative genomic hybridisation (aCGH), mutation analysis of IDH1/2 and TP53 and methylation analyses of the MGMT CpG-island was done. 84% of grade III tumours and 17% of grade IV had IDH1 or IDH2 mutations that conferred a better prognosis in both; MGMT methylation (defined as average value across 16 CpGs ≥ 10%) occurred in 75% of tumours and was also associated with improved survival. Both were of independent prognostic value after accounting for clinical factors and tumour grade. None of the molecular changes investigated gave clear evidence of a predictive benefit of TMZ over PCV or 21-day TMZ over 5-day TMZ although power was limited and a role for MGMT methylation could not be ruled out. Loss of 1p and 19q was seen in only 4 patients although hemizygous loss of 1p36 occurred in 20%. The findings support reports that IDH1/2 mutations and MGMT methylation can be used in addition to tumour grade and clinical factors to predict survival in patients with recurrent high grade gliomas when treated with any of the therapy regimes used.
Modeling information-seeker satisfaction in community question answering

Question Answering Communities such as Naver, Baidu Knows, and Yahoo! Answers have emerged as popular, and often effective, means of information seeking on the web. By posting questions for other participants to answer, information seekers can obtain specific answers to their questions. Users of CQA portals have already contributed millions of questions, and received hundreds of millions of answers from other participants. However, CQA is not always effective: in some cases, a user may obtain a perfect answer within minutes, and in others it may require hours—and sometimes days—until a satisfactory answer is contributed. We investigate the problem of predicting information seeker satisfaction in collaborative question answering communities, where we attempt to predict whether a question author will be satisfied with the answers submitted by the community participants. We present a general prediction model, and develop a variety of content, structure, and community-focused features for this task. Our experimental results, obtained from a large-scale evaluation over thousands of real questions and user ratings, demonstrate the feasibility of modeling and predicting asker satisfaction. We complement our results with a thorough investigation of the interactions and information seeking patterns in question answering communities that correlate with information seeker satisfaction. We also explore personalized models of asker satisfaction, and show that when sufficient interaction history exists, personalization can significantly improve prediction accuracy over a “one-size-fits-all” model. Our models and predictions could be useful for a variety of applications, such as user intent inference, answer ranking, interface design, and query suggestion and routing.
Chemical analysis of carbon stars in the Local Group I. The Small Magellanic Cloud and the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy

We present the first results of our ongoing chemical study of carbon stars in the Local Group of galaxies. We used spectra obtained with UVES at the 8.2 m Kueyen-VLT telescope and a new grid of spherical model atmospheres for cool carbon-rich stars which include polyatomic opacities, to perform a full chemical analysis of one carbon star, BMB-B 30, in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and two, IGI95-C1 and IGI95-C3, in the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal (Sgr dSph) galaxy. Our main goal is to test the dependence on the stellar metallicity of the s-process nucleosynthesis and mixing mechanism occurring in AGB stars. For these three stars, we find important s-element enhancements with respect to the mean metallicity ([M/H]), namely [s/M] ≈ +1.0, similar to the figure found in galactic AGB stars of similar metallicity. The abundance ratios derived between elements belonging to the first and second s-process abundance peaks, corresponding to nuclei with a magic number of neutrons N = 50 (88Sr, 89Y, 90Zr) and N = 82 (138Ba, 139La, 140Ce, 141Pr), agree remarkably well with the theoretical predictions of low mass (M < 3 M� ) metal-poor AGB nucleosynthesis models where the main source of neutrons is the 13 C(α,n) 16 O reaction activated during the long interpulse phase, in a small pocket located within the He-rich intershell. The derived C/ Oa nd 12 C/ 13 C ratios are, however, more difficult to reconcile with theoretical expectations. Possible explanations, like the extrinsic origin of the composition of these carbon stars or the operation of a non-standard mixing process during the AGB phase (such as the cool bottom process), are discussed on the basis of the collected observational constraints.
An exploration of the marital preferences of heterosexual college-educated black women : a qualitative examination

The present study sought to examine the marital preferences of college-educated, heterosexual, Black women between the ages of 25 and 34. This sample of women had never been married but had a desire to become married in the future. Participants shared their marital preferences, their beliefs, attitudes, and experiences with finding a marriage partner and their perceptions of marriage difficulty. Data were analyzed using a grounded theory method in which several themes emerged. The results of this study outlined the key personal qualities that the participants desired in a marriage partner, in addition to their racial, educational, and socioeconomic preferences. Results also revealed the attitudes and views participants have about Black men and the various challenges and factors they believe impact their marital status. Implications and directions for future research are provided.
Book Reviews: Semantic Similarity from Natural Language and Ontology Analysis by Sébastien Harispe, Sylvie Ranwez, Stefan Janaqi, and Jacky Montmain

Artificial Intelligence federates numerous scientific fields in the aim of developing machines able to assist human operators performing complex treatments; most of which demand high cognitive skills (e.g. learning or decision processes). Central to this quest is to give machines the ability to estimate the likeness or similarity between things in the way human beings estimate the similarity between stimuli. In this context, this book focuses on semantic measures: approaches designed for comparing semantic entities such as units of language, e.g. words, sentences, or concepts and instances defined into knowledge bases. The aim of these measures is to assess the similarity or relatedness of such semantic entities by taking into account their semantics, i.e. their meaning; intuitively, the words tea and coffee, which both refer to stimulating beverage, will be estimated to be more semantically similar than the words toffee (confection) and coffee, despite that the last pair has a higher syntactic similarity. The two state-of-the-art approaches for estimating and quantifying semantic similarities/relatedness of semantic entities are presented in detail: the first one relies on corpora analysis and is based on Natural Language Processing techniques and semantic models while the second is based on more or less formal, computer-readable and workable forms of knowledge such as semantic networks, thesauri or ontologies. Semantic measures are widely used today to compare units of language, concepts, instances or even resources indexed by them (e.g., documents, genes). They are central elements of a large variety of Natural Language Processing applications and knowledge-based treatments, and have therefore naturally been subject to intensive and interdisciplinary research efforts during last decades. Beyond a simple inventory and categorization of existing measures, the aim of this monograph is to convey novices as well as researchers of these domains toward a better understanding of semantic similarity estimation and more generally semantic measures. To this end, we propose an in-depth characterization of existing proposals by discussing their features, the assumptions on which they are based and empirical results regarding their performance in particular applications. By answering these questions and by providing a detailed discussion on the foundations of semantic measures, our aim is to give the reader key knowledge required to: (i) select the more relevant methods according to a particular usage context, (ii) understand the challenges offered to this field of study, (iii) distinguish room of improvements for state-of-the-art approaches and (iv) stimulate creativity toward the development of new approaches. In this aim, several definitions, theoretical and practical details, as well as concrete applications are presented.
Total laparoscopic right hemicolectomy with 3-step stapled intracorporeal isoperistaltic ileocolic anastomosis for colon cancer

AbstractLaparoscopic right hemicolectomy with extracorporeal anastomosis is a widely used procedure; several authors have published their approach to intracorporeal anastomosis. In this paper, we present an approach developed by us and compare short-term outcomes with those of extracorporeal anastomosis in colon cancer patients.Retrospective review of colon cancer patients treated with laparoscopic right hemicolectomy either with intracorporeal anastomosis (TLG group) or extracorporeal anastomosis (LG group) at the Zhangjiagang Hospital Affiliated to Soochow University between January 2011 and October 2015. Operative and postoperative data are compared.Around 85 patients underwent laparoscopic hemicolectomy (56 TLG and 29 LG) during the reference period for this study. Age, gender, body mass index (BMI), stage of cancer, operation time, number of lymph nodes harvested, and length of hospital stay were comparable between the 2 groups. In the TLG group, the ileocolic anastomosis time was significantly shorter (9.9–15.5 minutes vs 13.5–18.2 minutes in LG; P < 0.001), the mean intraoperative blood loss was lower (83.2 mL [range, 56.5–100.5 mL] vs 93.3 mL [range, 75.8 – 110.3 mL]; P < 0.001), the recovery of bowel function was faster (P < 0.001), and the postoperative pain score was lower (P < 0.001) as compared to that in the LG group. Complications in the LG group included wound infection (4 patients), obstruction (1), and postoperative bleeding complications (1); however, only 1 patient developed complication (wound infection) in the TLG group.Total laparoscopic right hemicolectomy with 3-step stapled intracorporeal anastomosis for colon cancer is a safe and reliable procedure. Its advantages include short anastomosis time, less intraoperative blood loss, less postoperative pain, and early bowel function recovery.
A proposal for a sort-middle cluster rendering system

Cluster rendering systems often take a sort-first, sort-last, or a hybrid of these two approaches because it is generally assumed that the hardware pipeline cannot be split between the geometric and rasterization stages. These approaches often limit the scalability of the system because they introduce either load balancing problems or high contention for the communication network. We propose a novel approach for dividing up the pipeline and distributing work in a sort-middle fashion that has the promise to aid in the scaling of a cluster rendering system. We have shown, in preliminary experiments, that it is possible to implement this approach and, based on these results, we are proposing to extend an existing cluster rendering system (Chromium) to incorporate our approach
Ziprasidone and amisulpride effectively treat negative symptoms of schizophrenia: results of a 12-week, double-blind study

We compared the efficacy of ziprasidone and amisulpride in the treatment of negative symptoms and overall psychopathology in subjects who had chronic schizophrenia with predominantly negative symptoms. This multicentre, 12-week, double-blind study randomly assigned subjects with predominantly negative-symptom schizophrenia [i.e. Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) Negative Subscale score ≥6 points greater than Positive Subscale score] to ziprasidone (40–80 mg b.i.d.; n=60) or amisulpride (50–100 mg b.i.d.; n=63). The primary efficacy variable was the change from baseline in PANSS Negative Subscale score. Secondary efficacy variables included change in scores for PANSS Total, Global Assessment of Functioning, Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale derived from PANSS Total and Core, Clinical Global Impression (CGI)–Severity and CGI–Improvement. For the change in PANSS Negative Subscale score, a ratio to assess the equivalence of the treatment groups was calculated from the least squares mean changes from baseline, with equivalence claimed if the lower limit of the 95% confidence interval of the ratio exceeded 0.60. Mean daily dose, adjusted for differential numbers of subjects and differential days between visits, was 118.0 mg for ziprasidone and 144.7 mg for amisulpride. Mean PANSS Negative Subscale scores improved over the 12-week treatment period for intent-to-treat subjects, evaluable subjects (subjects with ≥4 weeks of double-blind treatment and no protocol deviations) and completers in both treatment groups. Ziprasidone demonstrated efficacy comparable to amulsipride in improving negative symptoms and global psychopathology. The groups demonstrated comparable improvements in secondary efficacy variables. Both agents were generally well tolerated, with comparably low incidences of movement disorders. In subjects with negative symptom–prominent schizophrenia, ziprasidone in mean daily doses of 118 mg was equivalent to amisulpride in mean daily doses of 148 mg in ameliorating negative symptoms and comparable in improving overall psychopathology and global illness severity.
An Empirical Evaluation of the Reversal Theory State Measure UsingThree Running Brand Video Commercials

This paper reports on the first known empirical use of the Reversal Theory State Measure (RTSM) since its publication by Desselles et al. (2014). The RTSM was employed to track responses to three purposely-selected video commercials in a between-subjects design. Results of the study provide empirical support for the central conceptual premise of reversal theory, the experience of metamotivational reversals and the ability of the RTSM to capture them. The RTSM was also found to be psychometrically sound after adjustments were made to two of its three component subscales. Detailed account and rationale is provided for the analytical process of assessing the psychometric robustness of the RTSM, with a number of techniques and interpretations relating to component structure and reliability discussed. Agreeability and critique of the two available versions of the RTSM – the bundled and the branched – is also examined. Researchers are encouraged to assist development of the RTSM through further use, taking into account the analysis and recommendations presented.
Spin asymmetries A1 and structure functions g1 of the proton and the deuteron from polarized high energy muon scattering

We present the final results of the spin asymmetries A(1) and the spin structure functions g(1) of the proton and the deuteron in the kinematic range 0.0008 < x < 0.7 and 0.2 < Q(2) < 100 GeV2. For the determination of A(1), in addition to the usual method which employs inclusive scattering events and includes a large radiative background at low x, we use a new method which minimizes the radiative background by selecting events with at least one hadron as well as a muon in the final state. We find that this hadron method gives smaller errors for x < 0.02, so it is combined with the usual method to provide the optimal set of results. [S0556-2821(98)07017-9].
p120-Catenin Is Required for Mouse Vascular Development

Rationale: p120-catenin (p120) is an armadillo family protein that binds to the cytoplasmic domain of classical cadherins and prevents cadherin endocytosis. The role of p120 in vascular development is unknown. Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine the role of p120 in mammalian vascular development by generating a conditionally mutant mouse lacking endothelial p120 and determining the effects of the knockout on vasculogenesis, angiogenic remodeling, and the regulation of endothelial cadherin levels. Methods and Results: A conditional Cre/loxP gene deletion strategy was used to ablate p120 expression, using the Tie2 promoter to drive endothelial Cre recombinase expression. Mice lacking endothelial p120 died embryonically beginning at embryonic day 11.5. Major blood vessels appeared normal at embryonic day 9.5. However, both embryonic and extraembryonic vasculature of mutant animals were disorganized and displayed decreased microvascular density by embryonic day 11.5. Importantly, both vascular endothelial cadherin and N-cadherin levels were significantly reduced in vessels lacking p120. This decrease in cadherin expression was accompanied by reduced pericyte recruitment and hemorrhaging. Furthermore, p120-null cultured endothelial cells exhibited proliferation defects that could be rescued by exogenous expression of vascular endothelial cadherin. Conclusions: These findings reveal a fundamental role for p120 in regulating endothelial cadherin levels during vascular development, as well as microvascular patterning, vessel integrity, and endothelial cell proliferation. Loss of endothelial p120 results in lethality attributable to decreased microvascular density and hemorrhages.
Multinational corporations’ economic and human rights impacts on developing countries: a review and research agenda

Developing countries are attracting a significant portion of global foreign direct investments. Governments of such countries often compete fiercely for attracting multinational corporations (MNCs) in the expectation of the advantages they will bring to their economies, often prioritising economic goals over fundamental human rights. For a long time, economists have analysed the economic impacts of MNCs, while a parallel strand of work in political science, business ethics and international law investigates the repercussions of MNC operations on human rights. Despite the significant relatedness and complementarities, these two bodies of literature have so far poorly interacted. This paper addresses this limitation and systematically analyses and integrates existing micro-level empirical evidence on the economic and human rights impacts of MNCs on developing countries. It provides a critical analysis of what is known and highlights what we do not know about the factors that mediate the positive and/or negative impacts of MNC operations on host developing countries. Based on a critical analysis of the literature, it discusses avenues for future research in this field and sets the grounds for a new interdisciplinary research agenda on this subject.