Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Method or Madness? Inside the USNWR College Rankings

Excerpt] U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) shook up the college guide industry when it began publishing its annual rankings of colleges in 1983. The summary of its annual rankings of colleges as undergraduate institutions that appear in a fall issue each year is by far the best selling issue of USNWR each year and, together with its more comprehensive annual America’s Best Colleges publication, it has become the “gold standard” of the college ranking business. USNWR’s rapid rise to the top derives from its rankings’ appearance of scientific objectivity (institutions are rated along various dimensions with explicit weights being assigned to each dimension), along with the fact that USNWR then ranks the top 50 institutions in each category (for example national universities and liberal arts colleges). Each year immediately before and after the USNWR college rankings issue hits the newsstand, stories about the USNWR rankings appear in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. I begin my remarks by discussing why Americans have become so preoccupied with the USNWR rankings and why higher education institutions have become equally obsessed with them. Next I discuss how the rankings methodology allows colleges and universities to take actions to manipulate their rankings and the effects that such actions have on higher education. I then ask if the rankings are flawed, why do colleges and universities continue to participate in them and I discuss some of the major problems with the ratings. Finally, I offer some brief concluding thoughts about how USNWR could alter its rating formula in ways that I believe would be socially desirable. Disciplines Education | Other Education Comments Suggested Citation Ehrenberg, R. G. (2003). Method or madness? Inside the USNWR College Rankings (CHERI Working Paper #39). Retrieved [insert date], from Cornell University, ILR School site: http://digitalcommons.ilr. cornell.edu/workingpapers/42/ Required Publisher Statement Published by the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, Cornell University. This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: http://digitalcommons.ilr. cornell.edu/workingpapers/42 Revised Draft September 7, 2003 Comments Solicited “Method or Madness? Inside the USNWR College Rankings”
A Process Calculus for Distributed ObjectsJody

Distributed system speciication and veriication are active areas of research. Object technologies have shown great promise for managing the complexities of distributed systems. However, existing formal models for object systems do not capture the concurrency inherent in parallel and distributed systems, and available concurrency formalisms do not easily model objects. This paper describes the Robust Object Calculus (ROC) { a process calculus for modeling concurrent and distributed objects. ROC supports complex message-passing and promotes agent encap-sulation which make it ideal for modeling distributed object systems. A formal notion of behavioral equivalence is provided for ROC. This represents an important rst step in developing a practical veriication scheme for distributed object systems.
Behavior analysis of tasks and accountability in physical education

2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a round black mark, it is an indication of either blurred copy because of movement during exposure, duplicate copy, or copyrighted materials that should not have been filmed. For blurred pages, a good image of the page can be found in the adjacent frame. If copyrighted materials were deleted, a target note will appear listing the pages in the adjacent frame.
Cost-effectiveness and budget impact of adjunctive hyperbaric oxygen therapy for diabetic foot ulcers

Background: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has been proposed as an adjunct to standard methods of care for diabetic foot ulcers (DFU). Its use may decrease the risk of infection and lower extremity amputations (LEAs). As part of a Canadian assessment, we estimated the cost-effectiveness and budget impact of HBOT in this application. Methods: We developed a decision model comparing adjunctive HBOT with standard care alone. The population was a 65-year-old cohort with DFU. The time horizon was 12 years taken from a Ministry of Health perspective. The health states were a healed wound with or without a minor LEA, an unhealed wound with no related surgery, and a major LEA. Efficacy data were based on outcomes reported in studies included in a literature review. Cost and capacity needs for treating DFU patients in Canada were estimated using prevalence data from the literature, and cost and utilization data from government records. Results: The 12-year cost for patients receiving HBOT was CND$40,695 compared with CND$49,786 for standard care alone. Outcomes were 3.64 quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) for those receiving HBOT and 3.01 QALYs for controls. Estimated cost to treat all prevalent DFU cases in Canada was CND$14.4–19.7 million/year over 4 years. If seven-person HBOT chambers were used, a further nineteen to thirty-five machines would be required nationally. Conclusions: Adjunctive HBOT for DFU is cost-effective compared with standard care. Additional HBOT capacity would be needed if it were to be adopted as the standard of care throughout Canada.
Update on Controls for Isolation and Quantification Methodology of Extracellular Vesicles Derived from Adipose Tissue Mesenchymal Stem Cells

The research field on extracellular vesicles (EV) has rapidly expanded in recent years due to the therapeutic potential of EV. Adipose tissue human mesenchymal stem cells (ASC) may be a suitable source for therapeutic EV. A major limitation in the field is the lack of standardization of the challenging techniques to isolate and characterize EV. The aim of our study was to incorporate new controls for the detection and quantification of EV derived from ASC and to analyze the applicability and limitations of the available techniques. ASC were cultured in medium supplemented with 5% of vesicles-free fetal bovine serum. The EV were isolated from conditioned medium by differential centrifugation with size filtration (0.2 μm). As a control, non-conditioned culture medium was used (control medium). To detect EV, electron microscopy, conventional flow cytometry, and western blot were used. The quantification of the EV was by total protein quantification, ExoELISA immunoassay, and Nanosight. Cytokines and growth factors in the EV samples were measured by multiplex bead array kit. The EV were detected by electron microscope. Total protein measurement was not useful to quantify EV as the control medium showed similar protein contents as the EV samples. The ExoELISA kits had technical troubles and it was not possible to quantify the concentration of exosomes in the samples. The use of Nanosight enabled quantification and size determination of the EV. It is, however, not possible to distinguish protein aggregates from EV with this method. The technologies for quantification and characterization of the EV need to be improved. In addition, we detected protein contaminants in the EV samples, which make it difficult to determine the real effect of EV in experimental models. It will be crucial in the future to optimize design novel methods for purification and characterization of EV.
The Threat of Competition Enhances Productivity

State-owned enterprises tend to perform worse than privately owned firms. However, the reason for the poor results is unsettled, with some emphasizing ownership itself and others the market environment. We shed light on this debate by studying what happened when Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras lost its legal monopoly. Our main findings are the following: (i) After losing its monopoly rights, Petrobras’s productivity growth rate more than doubled. This gain was obtained through the reallocation of capital and labor towards more productive wells; (ii) Petrobras faced little immediate de facto competition. Indicators of market concentration has changed a little. Petrobras still produces 96% of total produced in Brazil. These finds suggest that changing the competitive environment can be a powerful force for improving productivity at state-owned firms. The threat of competition was sufficient to generate large productivity gains. Besides indicators of market concentration can be poor proxies of market competitiveness. ∗Preliminary. We thank Edward Prescott, James Schmitz Jr., Berthold Herrendorf, and Marc Muendler for comments and Patŕicia Moura da Silva for research assistance. Sergio Barros da Cunha, Demetrius Casteloes, and Marcelo Duque of Petrobras provided valuable technical background. Philip Beckett and Mike Earp of the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry kindly provided data. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis or the U.S. Department of Commerce. †Bureau of Economic Analysis, Benjamin.Bridgman@bea.gov. ‡Capixaba Research Foundation, victor@fucape.br. §Capixaba Research Foundation, arilton@fucape.br.
A Tale of Two Identities on the Optimal Work Location of the Internal Control Agent From a Principals Perspective

Drawing from and contributing to insights in both the auditing and organizational economics literature, this theoretical analysis considers the optimal work setting for the internal control agent from the perspective of the principal. Specifically, it highlights the trade-off in deciding whether to locate this agent close to the fraudsensitive activities or as separate entity. The crucial assumption of the applied model concerns the incentivizing effect of identity: if placed at the unit, the control agent is assumed to identify himself as a member of the unit and has an incentive to conceal fraud, while if located separately, his identity as an independent controller appears and he is assumed to gain utility from reporting fraud. Due to the “role-dilemma” rooted in the modern internal control profession, balancing these effects carefully is of large significance to the principal. The basic findings indicate that for relatively large expected losses of fraud, locating the internal control agent separately is optimal. However, when taking into consideration the interaction effect of the external auditor with the internal control agent and the potential fraudsters, the case for locating the internal control agent close to the fraud sensitive tasks strengthens.
The Returns from Rent-Seeking: Campaign Contributions, Firm Subsidies and the Byrd Amendment

This paper examines Congressional support of the Byrd Amendment, a new antidumping law that directs the U.S. Customs Service to distribute collected duties to protected firms. A critical feature of the Byrd Amendment is that it produces a highly transparent measure of how much each firm is rewarded for its rent-seeking efforts to secure the bill’s passage, specifically the dollar value its Byrd disbursement. Therefore, this policy provides researchers with a unique setting in which to study the link between campaign contributions, Congressional behavior, and the subsequent financial returns to firms. Our empirical results show that campaign contributions from potential beneficiaries increased the likelihood that lawmakers would sponsor the Byrd Amendment. We also show that political contributions from the law’s beneficiaries increased with the rewards that they expected to receive, although not by as much as predicted by some political economy models of trade policy.
Grassmannian Codes as Lifts of Matrix Codes Derived as Images of Linear Block Codes over Finite Fields

Let $p$ be a prime such that $p \equiv 2$ or $3$ mod $5$. Linear block codes over the non-commutative matrix ring of $2 \times 2$ matrices over the prime field $GF(p)$ endowed with the Bachoc weight are derived as isometric images of linear block codes over the Galois field $GF(p^2)$ endowed with the Hamming metric. When seen as rank metric codes, this family of matrix codes satisfies the Singleton bound and thus are maximum rank distance codes, which are then lifted to form a special class of subspace codes, the Grassmannian codes, that meet the anticode bound. These so-called anticode-optimal Grassmannian codes are associated in some way with complete graphs. New examples of these maximum rank distance codes and anticode-optimal Grassmannian codes are given.
The Economic Consequences of One-third Co-determination in German Supervisory Boards

Summary In Germany, the establishment of supervisory boards and, therefore, the board-level employee representation are mandatory, depending on the legal form and size of a company. However, the empirical analysis reveals that the bigger part of the companies observed (Limited liability companies with 500 to 2000 employees active in the West-German service sector) does not satisfy the law. This fact has strong impact on research questions in the co-determination field: Many studies have tried to analyze the economic consequences of the German co-determination laws (all examining the 1976 Co-determination Act). However, as the regulations are compulsory, compelling results are difficult to obtain. The bigger part of the studies compares companies that fall into the scope of different co-determination laws. This implies that mainly big companies are contrasted to smaller ones. It is not difficult to see that a comparison of such kind entails further irregularities. The study presented allows better analysis. The data is taken from two sources: the commercial Hoppenstedt Database and official German statistics. Due to the special kind of data it is possible to compare companies of same size, same legal form, active in the same sector that only differ in the existence or non-existence of a supervisory board. Therefore, the study at hand provides more accurate evidence of the economic consequences of the German 2004 Co-determination Act.
Implicit Interest Rates and Corporate Balance Sheets: An Analysis Using Aggregate and Disaggregated UK Data

Credit channel models emphasise the importance of financial variables in macroeconomic responses to unanticipated economic events. In this paper empirical models are developed that relate implicit interest rates paid by firms to measures of their financial health (principally capital gearing) using both aggregate data and information from individual company accounts. Both aggregate and disaggregated approaches confirm a significant influence on interest rates from changes in the financial health of companies. The aggregate relationship finds support for the hypothesis that implicit interest rates depend on the initial level of indebtedness in a non-linear way. The estimated equation is used within the Bank of England's macroeconomic model (extended to incorporate the balance sheets of the corporate and household sectors) to simulate the role of the credit channel mechanism in response to shocks.
Sliding mode extremum seeking control for linear quadratic dynamic game

The extremum seeking control has been proposed to find a set point and/or track a time-varying set point so that a performance index of the system reaches its extremum point. In this paper, the extremum seeking control with sliding mode is extended to solve the Nash equilibrium solution for an n-person linear quadratic dynamic game. For each player, a sliding mode extremum seeking controller is designed to let the player's linear quadratic performance index track a decreasing signal so that the Nash equilibrium point is reached.
Does Previous Intra-Articular Steroid Injection Increase the Risk of Joint Infection Following Total Hip Arthroplasty or Total Knee Arthroplasty? A Meta-Analysis

Background Joint infection might be one of the rare but serious complications following a total knee or hip arthroplasty (TKA, THA). A previous intra-articular steroid injection was considered as a risk factor. The purpose of present study was to access the effects of ipsilateral intra-articular steroid injection followed by TKA or THA on the incidence of infections later. Material/Methods Clinical studies reporting infection in THA or TKA after previous injection of intra-articular steroid were identified from the online database of PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, and additional manual searches until July 2013. The pooled effects were measured by risk difference (RD), together with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results A total of 11 related studies met our inclusion criteria. The final meta-analysis investigated 6 clinical studies designed as retrospectively created cohort studies with control groups, involving 1474 participants reporting 14 deep infections and 72 superficial infections. Compared with the control group, there was no significantly increased rate of infection among the participant with steroid injection prior to THA or TKA, with corresponding RD (95% CIs) of 0.01 (−0.01, 0.02) for deep infection, 0.01 (−0.02, 0.03) for superficial infection, and 0.02 (−0.02, 0.07) for total infection. The data from 3 prospective studies without control groups and 2 case-control studies were consistent with the results of our meta-analysis. Conclusions No increased risk of infection among patients who received steroid injections prior to the surgery was identified from the present evidence. A multicenter prospective study with more defined variables is needed further investigate this issue.
Characterization and Comparative Analysis of Small RNAs in Three Small RNA Libraries of the Brown Planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens)

Background The brown planthopper (BPH), Nilaparvata lugens (Stå;l), which belongs to Homopteran, Delphacidae, is one of the most serious and destructive pests of rice. Feeding BPH with homologous dsRNA in vitro can lead to the death of BPH, which gives a valuable clue to the prevention and control of this pest, however, we know little about its small RNA world. Methodology/Principal Findings Small RNA libraries for three developmental stages of BPH (CX-male adult, CC-female adult, CY-last instar female nymph) had been constructed and sequenced. It revealed a prolific small RNA world of BPH. We obtained a final list of 452 (CX), 430 (CC), and 381 (CY) conserved microRNAs (miRNAs), respectively, as well as a total of 71 new miRNAs in the three libraries. All the miRNAs had their own expression profiles in the three libraries. The phylogenic evolution of the miRNA families in BPH was consistent with other species. The new miRNA sequences demonstrated some base biases. Conclusion Our study discovered a large number of small RNAs through deep sequencing of three small RNA libraries of BPH. Many animal-conserved miRNA families as well as some novel miRNAs have been detected in our libraries. This is the first achievement to discover the small RNA world of BPH. A lot of new valuable information about BPH small RNAs has been revealed which was helpful for studying insect molecular biology and insect resistant research.
Thermal-aware system-level modeling and management for Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chip

Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chip (MPSoCs) are penetrating the electronics market as a powerful, yet commercially viable, solution to answer the strong and steadily growing demand for scalable and high performance systems, at limited design complexity. However, it is critical to develop dedicated system-level design methodologies for multi-core architectures that seamlessly address their thermal modeling, analysis and management. In this work, we first formulate the problem of system-level thermal modeling and link it to produce a global thermal management formulation as a discrete-time optimal control problem, which can be solved using finite-horizon model-predictive control (MPC) techniques, while adapting to the actual time-varying unbalanced MPSoC workload requirements. Finally, we compare the system-level MPC-based thermal modeling and management approaches on an industrial 8-core MPSoC design and show their different trade-offs regarding performance while respecting operating temperature bounds.
Progress and the Lack of Progress in Addressing Infant Health and Infant Health Inequalities in Ireland during the 20th Century

There is a growing literature which documents the importance of early life environment for outcomes across the life cycle. Research, including studies based on Irish data, demonstrates that those who experience better childhood conditions go on to be wealthier and healthier adults. Therefore, inequalities at birth and in childhood shape inequality in wellbeing in later life, and the historical evolution of the mortality and morbidity of children born in Ireland is important for understanding the current status of the Irish population. In this paper, I describe these patterns by reviewing the existing literature on infant health in Ireland over the course of the 20th century. Up to the 1950s, infant mortality in Ireland (both North and South) was substantially higher than in other developed countries, with a large penalty for those born in urban areas. The subsequent reduction in this penalty, and the sustained decline in infant death rates, occurred later than would be expected from the experience in other contexts. Using records from the Rotunda Lying-in Hospital in Dublin, I discuss sources of disparities in stillbirth in the early 1900s. Despite impressive improvements in death rates since that time, a comparison with those born at the end of the century reveals that Irish children continue to be born unequal. Evidence from studies which track people across the life course, for example research on the returns to birthweight, suggests that the economic cost of this early life inequality is substantial.
PARALLAXES OF SOUTHERN EXTREMELY COOL OBJECTS (PARSEC). II. SPECTROSCOPIC FOLLOW-UP AND PARALLAXES OF 52 TARGETS

We present near-infrared spectroscopy for 52 ultracool dwarfs, including two newly discovered late-M dwarfs, one new late-M subdwarf candidate, three new L, and four new T dwarfs. We also present parallaxes and proper motions for 21 of them. Four of the targets presented here have previous parallax measurements, while all the others are new values. This allow us to populate further the spectral sequence at early types (L0–L4). Combining the astrometric parameters with the new near-infrared spectroscopy presented here, we are able to investigate further the nature of some of the objects. In particular, we find that the peculiar blue L1 dwarf SDSS J133148.92−011651.4 is a metal-poor object, likely a member of the galactic thick disk. We discover a new M subdwarf candidate, 2MASS J20115649−6201127. We confirm the low-gravity nature of EROS-MP J0032−4405, DENIS-P J035726.9−441730, and 2MASS J22134491−2136079. We present two new metal-poor dwarfs: the L4pec 2MASS J19285196−4356256 and the M7pec SIPS2346−5928. We also determine the effective temperature and bolometric luminosity of the 21 targets with astrometric measurements, and we obtain a new polynomial relation between effective temperature and near-infrared spectral type. The new fit suggests a flattening of the sequence at the transition between M and L spectral types. This could be an effect of dust formation, which causes a more rapid evolution of the spectral features as a function of the effective temperature.