Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pricing and production strategies for fashion tech products with consumption externalities

With the rapid development of technology, more and more products tend to both meet customers' functional needs and provide stylish consumption experience at the same time. In this paper, we define these products as “fashion tech” products. In practice there exist two opposite consumption externalities associated with “fashion tech” products: some people are more likely to purchase the product if fewer customers can afford or have access to it to advertise their prosperity or good taste. In contrast, some other people's utilities increase with the rising number of other customers. The firm needs to consider such consumption externalities in their pricing and production decisions in order to appropriately position products and maximize profits. In such context, this paper studies equilibrium conditions based on the newsvendor model under rational expectations, then optimizes pricing and production strategies for the products. We finally propose a plan for further research with some open questions.
Weighty matters: balancing weight gain with cardiovascular risk among patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus on intensive insulin therapy.

Type 1 diabetes mellitus, characterized by a deficiency of insulin production owing to damaged pancreatic β-cells, is associated with a 10-fold increase in the risk of cardiovascular disease in comparison with the general population.1,2 Intensive insulin therapy, whether administered by multiple daily injections or continuous infusion via a pump, is the cornerstone of glycemic control in the patient with type 1 diabetes mellitus.3 Much of what we know regarding the benefits of intensive insulin therapy is derived from the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT), a trial of patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus who were randomly assigned to either intensive or conventional insulin treatment. Article see p 180 The DCCT enrolled a total of 1441 patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus, beginning in 1983, with final closeout in 1993, for a total of 6.5 years of follow-up. Conventional therapy consisted of 1 or 2 daily injections of insulin with daily self-monitoring and examinations every 3 months, whereas intensive insulin therapy consisted of at least 3 insulin injections per day or external pump therapy with target blood glucose concentrations of 70 to 120 mg/dL fasting, postprandial glucose values of <180 mg/dL, and a target hemoglobin A1c goal in the normal range (<6.05%). The primary trial results showed that intensive therapy achieved a statistically significant lower hemoglobin A1c, evident by the first 3 months of the study, with a closeout A1c of 7.0% in the intensive therapy arm in comparison with 9.0% in the conventional arm. Importantly, those in the intensive insulin therapy arm experienced delayed progression of nephropathy, retinopathy, and neuropathy.4 In the primary trial, the risk of major cardiovascular events trended to significance, although the young age of the participants (mean age, 27 years at enrollment) rendered it difficult to detect a statistically significant …
Exporting quality: is it the right strategy for the Italian manufacturing sector?

ABSTRACT: Recently, most European manufacturing firms have been engaged in a number of innovative activities to survive the growing competition coming from newly-industrialising countries. Italian manufacturing industry, which relies largely on SMEs, is struggling to regain competitiveness in global markets. In light of these stylised facts, we first investigate whether innovating activities and quality goods’ production enhance Italian SMEs’ probability to be exporter. Our findings suggest that both products’ quality and innovative activities affect considerably SMEs’ likelihood to export. Subsequently, using the Chow test, we find evidence for a structural break produced by quality, which results in substantial differences between high and low-quality firms. The former are more likely to export if they introduce product innovation, marketing innovation and/or organisational changes, the latter increase their chances of exporting when introducing process innovations and organisational changes.
DSCC 2018-9208 CHARACTERIZING COMBUSTION INSTABILITY USING DEEP CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORK

Detecting the transition to an impending instability is important to initiate effective control in a combustion system. As one of the early applications of characterizing thermoacoustic instability using Deep Neural Networks, we train our proposed deep convolutional neural network (CNN) model on sequential image frames extracted from hi-speed flame videos by inducing instability in the system following a particular protocolvarying the acoustic length. We leverage the sound pressure data to define a non-dimensional instability measure used for applying an inexpensive but noisy labeling technique to train our supervised 2D CNN model. We attempt to detect the onset of instability in a transient dataset where instability is induced by a different protocol. With the continuous variation of the control parameter, we can successfully detect the critical transition to a state of high combustion instability demonstrating the robustness of our proposed detection framework, which is independent of the combustion inducing protocol.
β‐Liddle mutation of the epithelial sodium channel increases alveolar fluid clearance and reduces the severity of hydrostatic pulmonary oedema in mice

Transepithelial sodium transport via alveolar epithelial Na+ channels and Na+,K+‐ATPase constitutes the driving force for removal of alveolar oedema fluid. Decreased activity of the amiloride‐sensitive epithelial Na+ channel (ENaC) in the apical membrane of alveolar epithelial cells impairs sodium‐driven alveolar fluid clearance (AFC) and predisposes to pulmonary oedema. We hypothesized that hyperactivity of ENaC in the distal lung could improve AFC and facilitate the resolution of pulmonary oedema. AFC and lung fluid balance were studied at baseline and under conditions of hydrostatic pulmonary oedema in the β‐Liddle (L) mouse strain harbouring a gain‐of‐function mutation (R566stop) within the Scnn1b gene. As compared with wild‐type (+/+), baseline AFC was increased by 2‐ and 3‐fold in heterozygous (+/L) and homozygous mutated (L/L) mice, respectively, mainly due to increased amiloride‐sensitive AFC. The β2‐agonist terbutaline stimulated AFC in +/+ and +/L mice, but not in L/L mice. Acute volume overload induced by saline infusion (40% of body weight over 2 h) significantly increased extravascular (i.e. interstitial and alveolar) lung water as assessed by the bloodless wet‐to‐dry lung weight ratio in +/+ and L/L mice, as compared with baseline. However, the increase was significantly larger in +/+ than in L/L groups (P= 0.01). Volume overload also increased the volume of the alveolar epithelial lining fluid in +/+ mice, indicating the presence of alveolar oedema, but not in L/L mice. Cardiac function as evaluated by echocardiography was comparable in both groups. These data show that constitutive ENaC activation improved sodium‐driven AFC in the mouse lung, and attenuated the severity of hydrostatic pulmonary oedema.
Combining Inclusion with Impact on the Decision

The Lisbon Treaty introduces a new form of participation at the European level: the Citizens' initiative, which allows one million citizens who fulfill a petition to call on the Commission to propose a legal act on a specific issue. Before this right came into force in April 2012, the European Commission ran a consultation, from November 2009 to January 2010, in order to define the procedure and the conditions required for such initiatives to work in practice. This consultation was hosted on the portal Your Voice in Europe, a website which has been used since the early 2000s by the Directorates-General in order to allow stakeholders to contribute to the drafting of legal acts. In comparison to most of online participative experiences at the EU level, Your Voice in Europe differs in several respects. It is rather a policy instrument that an e-participation tool: it is institutionalized and the consultations carried out on the platform have to respect strict rules. The link between the consultations and the legislative process is, if not binding, at least defined legally: the consultations have thus "potentially" a strong impact on the decision. Lastly, the platform does not provide any discursive area where participants could exchange and build common proposals. This implies that it does not foster the emergence of European publics around key issues, and neither does it promote a transnational political identity, as most e-participation experiences attempt to do. This case study is thus useful to evaluate to what extent a policy instrument that is open to the general public can promote the participation of "ordinary" citizens. In order to measure this link we will first focus on the impact of the consultation on the final decision, by assessing the features that enable the participants to be heard by the Commission. We will argue that the strategy of the consultation managers can be more decisive than the legal status of the mechanism. We will then focus on the inclusion issue: what are the conditions that must be gathered in order to foster the participation of "ordinary" citizens during these consultations? Finally, we will adopt a communicative approach in order to show how Your Voice in Europe embodies a specific conception of the political mediation between the Commission and the participants, which favours the participation of "strong" and "segmented" publics.
Conditional Choice Probability Estimation of Continuous-Time Job Search Models∗

This paper applies the insights of dynamic discrete choice models to continuoustime job search models. The proposed framework incorporates preference shocks into the search framework, resulting in a tight connection between value functions and conditional choice probabilities. Incorporating preference shocks results in constructive identification of all the model parameters. Our method also makes it possible to estimate rich nonstationary job search models in a simple and highly tractable way, without having to solve any differential equations. We apply our method to rich longitudinal data from Hungarian administrative records, allowing for nonstationarities in offer arrival rates, wage offers, and unemployment benefits. Longer unemployment durations are associated with worse wage offers, lower offer arrival rates, and negative selection, all of which result in accepted wages falling over time. ∗Preliminary version. We thank Victor Aguirregabiria, Xavier D’Haultfoeuille, Eric French, Elena Pastorino, Aureo de Paula, Ronni Pavan, Fabien Postel-Vinay, Thierry Magnac, Isaac Sorkin, and audiences in many seminars and conferences for useful comments and suggestions. We thank the Databank of the Center for Economic and Regional Studies for data access, and Zhangchi Ma for outstanding research assistance. Financial support from NSF grant SES-2116400 is gratefully acknowledged by Peter Arcidiacono and Arnaud Maurel. †Duke University, NBER and IZA. ‡Bank of Portugal and IZA. The views expressed in this article are of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of Portugal or the Eurosystem. §Amazon; Ekaterina Jardim worked on this paper prior to joining Amazon ¶Duke University, NBER and IZA
Cognitive reserve and TMEM106B genotype modulate brain damage in presymptomatic frontotemporal dementia: a GENFI study

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) shows substantial phenotypic variability. In a multicentre study, Premi et al. explore the effect of cognitive reserve and TMEM106B genotype in modulating grey matter volume in presymptomatic FTD. Environmental as well as genetic factors affect rates of brain atrophy, suggesting a possible strategy for delaying disease onset.
Landscape-Scale Disturbance: Insights into the Complexity of Catchment Hydrology in the Mountaintop Removal Mining Region of the Eastern United States

Few land disturbances impact watersheds at the scale and extent of mountaintop removal mining (MTM). This practice removes forests, soils and bedrock to gain access to underground coal that results in likely permanent and wholesale changes that impact catchment hydrology, geochemistry and ecosystem health. MTM is the dominant driver of land cover changes in the central Appalachian Mountains region of the United States, converting forests to mine lands and burying headwater streams. Despite its dominance on the landscape, determining the hydrological impacts of MTM is complicated by underground coal mines that significantly alter groundwater hydrology. To provide insight into how coal mining impacts headwater catchments, we compared the hydrologic responses of an MTM and forested catchment using event rainfall-runoff analysis, modeling and isotopic approaches. Despite similar rainfall characteristics, hydrology in the two catchments differed in significant ways, but both catchments demonstrated threshold-mediated hydrologic behavior that was attributed to transient storage and the release of runoff from underground mines. Results suggest that underground mines are important controls for runoff generation in both obviously disturbed and seemingly undisturbed catchments and interact in uncertain ways with disturbance from MTM. This paper summarizes our results and demonstrates the complexity of catchment hydrology in the MTM region.
Wait times for prostate cancer treatment and patient perceptions of care in Canada: a mixed-methods report.

BACKGROUND Access to cancer care is a significant concern for Canadians. Prolonged delays between cancer diagnosis and treatment have been associated with anxiety, stress, and perceived powerlessness for patients and their family members. Longer wait times can also be associated with poorer prognosis, although the evidence is inconclusive. Here, we report national wait times for radiation therapy and surgery for localized prostate cancer (pca) and the effect of wait time on patient perceptions of their care. RESULTS Treatment wait times showed substantial interprovincial variation. The longest 90th percentile wait times for radiation therapy and surgery were, respectively, 40 days and 105 days. In all provinces, waits for radiation therapy were longer for pca patients than for patients with breast, colorectal, or lung cancer. In the focus groups and interviews conducted with 47 men treated for pca, many participants did not perceive that wait times for treatment were prolonged. Those who experienced delays between diagnosis and treatment voiced issues with a lack of communication about when they would receive treatment and a lack of support or information to make an informed decision about treatment. Minimizing treatment delays was an aspect of the cancer journey that participants would like to change because of the stress it caused. CONCLUSIONS Although wait time statistics are useful, a review of cancer control in Canada cannot be considered complete unless an effort is made to give voice to the experiences of individuals with cancer. The findings presented here are intended to provide a snapshot of national care delivery for localized pca and to identify opportunities for improvement in clinical practice.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Hyperglycemia in bacterial meningitis : a prospective cohort study

Background: Hyperglycemia has been associated with unfavorable outcome in several disorders, but few data are available in bacterial meningitis. We assessed the incidence and significance of hyperglycemia in adults with bacterial meningitis. Methods: We collected data prospectively between October 1998 and April 2002, on 696 episodes of community-acquired bacterial meningitis, confirmed by culture of CSF in patients >16 years. Patients were dichotomized according to blood glucose level on admission. A cutoff random non-fasting blood glucose level of 7.8 mmol/L (140 mg/dL) was used to define hyperglycemia, and a cutoff random non-fasting blood glucose level of 11.1 mmol/L (200 mg/dL) was used to define severe hyperglycemia. Unfavorable outcome was defined on the Glasgow outcome scale as a score <5. We also evaluated characteristics of patients with a preadmission diagnosis of diabetes mellitus. Results: 69% of patients were hyperglycemic and 25% severely hyperglycemic on admission. Compared with nonhyperglycemic patients, hyperglycemia was related with advanced age (median, 55 yrs vs. 44 yrs, P < 0.0001), preadmission diagnosis of diabetes (9% vs. 3%, P = 0.005), and distant focus of infection (37% vs. 28%, P = 0.02). They were more often admitted in coma (16% vs. 8%; P = 0.004) and with pneumococcal meningitis (55% vs. 42%, P = 0.007). These differences remained significant after exclusion of patients with known diabetes. Hyperglycemia was related with unfavorable outcome in a univariate analysis but this relation did not remain robust in a multivariate analysis. Factors predictive for neurologic compromise were related with higher blood glucose levels, whereas factors predictive for systemic compromise were related with lower blood glucose levels. Only a minority of severely hyperglycemic patients were known diabetics (19%). The vast majority of these known diabetic patients had meningitis due to Streptococcus pneumoniae (67%) or Listeria monocytogenes (13%) and they were at high risk for unfavorable outcome (52%). Conclusion: The majority of patients with bacterial meningitis have hyperglycemic blood glucose levels on admission. Hyperglycemia can be explained by a physical stress reaction, the central nervous system insult leading to disturbed blood-glucose regulation mechanisms, and preponderance of diabetics for pneumococcal meningitis. Patients with diabetes and bacterial meningitis are at high risk for unfavorable outcome. Published: 8 May 2009 BMC Infectious Diseases 2009, 9:57 doi:10.1186/1471-2334-9-57 Received: 25 March 2009 Accepted: 8 May 2009 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral. com/1471-2334/9/57 © 2009 Schut et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Site‐specific DNA binding and bending by the Borrelia burgdorferi Hbb protein

The Borrelia burgdorferi Hbb protein shows sequence similarity to members of the Escherichia coli HU/integration host factor (IHF) family of DNA accessory factors. We have overexpressed the hbb gene product in E. coli and purified the protein to near homogeneity. Biochemical analyses have revealed that Hbb has unique properties and is neither a strict HU nor IHF analogue. Hbb was found to bind specifically to a site in the putative origin of DNA replication between dnaA and dnaN. DNA footprinting studies have shown that this site is unrelated to the consensus sequence recognized by IHF proteins. Hbb induces a dramatic bend (> 126°) at this site and was also shown to restrain negative supercoils efficiently upon DNA binding. These features of the protein suggest that Hbb may act as a DNA accessory factor that facilitates the assembly of higher order protein–DNA complexes, such as those involved in DNA replication, transcription, recombination, packaging and perhaps other DNA metabolic processes unique to Borrelia.
The prognosis of pregnancy conceived despite the presence of an intrauterine device (IUD)

Abstract Objective: Intrauterine devices (IUDs) are used for contraception worldwide; however, the management of pregnancies with an IUD poses a clinical challenge. The purpose of this study was to determine the outcome of pregnancy in patients with an IUD. Study design: A retrospective cohort study (December 1997–June 2007) was conducted. The cohort consisted of 12,297 pregnancies, of which 196 had an IUD. Only singleton pregnancies were included. Logistic regression analysis was used to adjust for potential confounders between the groups. Results: 1) Pregnancies with an IUD were associated with a higher rate of late miscarriage, preterm delivery, vaginal bleeding, clinical chorioamnionitis, and placental abruption than those without an IUD; 2) among patients with available histologic examination of the placenta, the rate of histologic chorioamnionitis and/or funisitis was higher in patients with an IUD than in those without an IUD (54.2% vs. 14.7%; P<0.001). Similarly, among patients who underwent an amniocentesis, the prevalence of microbial invasion of the amniotic cavity (MIAC) was also higher in pregnant women with an IUD than in those without an IUD (45.9% vs. 8.8%; P<0.001); and 3) intra-amniotic infection caused by Candida species was more frequently present in pregnancies with an IUD than in those without an IUD (31.1% vs. 6.3%; P<0.001). Conclusion: Pregnant women with an IUD are at a very high risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes. This finding can be attributed, at least in part, to the high prevalence of intra-amniotic infection and placental inflammatory lesions observed in pregnancies with an IUD.
IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ERP PACKAGE AND ITS EFFECT ON THE MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING SYSTEM – AUTHOR’S OWN RESEARCH INTO ENTERPRISES IN POLAND

The systems have revolutionized practically all aspects of business processes in enterprises. They improve the processes by ensuring their integration. Data are entered into an ERP system only once and immediately afterwards they can be accessed through any of its modules, which makes them a valuable source of information on the enterprise. Integrating the financial and non-financial data, an ERP package gives new quality to the management of enterprise value. These features make ERPs particularly useful for management accounting processes and for specialists providing management information. This article seeks to answer whether following the implementation of an ERP package the enterprise’s management accounting system becomes more innovative and whether new, modern management accounting tools and methods are introduced. The ERP impacts on management accounting and its practices will be evaluated using six case studies involving enterprises owned by multinational corporations.These are: risk associated with investing in small companies and risk connected with investing in companies undervalued by the market.
Agent RFM 횷 Teammate Action Prediction Egocentric Observations Action Reward Environment Environment Graph Teammate ActionStop Gradient Augmented Observations

The behavioral dynamics of multi-agent systems have a rich and orderly structure, which can be leveraged to understand these systems, and to improve how artificial agents learn to operate in them. Here we introduce Relational Forward Models (RFM) for multi-agent learning, networks that can learn to make accurate predictions of agents’ future behavior in multi-agent environments. Because these models operate on the discrete entities and relations present in the environment, they produce interpretable intermediate representations which offer insights into what drives agents’ behavior, and what events mediate the intensity and valence of social interactions. Furthermore, we show that embedding RFM modules inside agents results in faster learning systems compared to non-augmented baselines. As more and more of the autonomous systems we develop and interact with become multi-agent in nature, developing richer analysis tools for characterizing how and why agents make decisions is increasingly necessary. Moreover, developing artificial agents that quickly and safely learn to coordinate with one another, and with humans in shared environments, is crucial.