Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Turmoil in the Residential Mortgage Market, a Review and Compilation of Research and Policy

Although the 30-year fixed rate loan is the standard in the U.S. mortgage market the interest rate risk is borne by holder of the note. This risk, and myriad other motivations fostered the development of the subprime and Alt-A instruments that together have become the bane of the housing market. Neither is likely to return as viable instruments, but the need for risk based pricing will return as the housing cycle returns. For this reason it is valuable to examine the academic research on unconventional loans as policy and future research advances.
Predictive Value of Sp1/Sp3/FLIP Signature for Prostate Cancer Recurrence

Prediction of prostate cancer prognosis is challenging and predictive biomarkers of recurrence remain elusive. Although prostate specific antigen (PSA) has high sensitivity (90%) at a PSA level of 4.0 ng/mL, its low specificity leads to many false positive results and considerable overtreatment of patients and its performance at lower ranges is poor. Given the histopathological and molecular heterogeneity of prostate cancer, we propose that a panel of markers will be a better tool than a single marker. We tested a panel of markers composed of the anti-apoptotic protein FLIP and its transcriptional regulators Sp1 and Sp3 using prostate tissues from 64 patients with recurrent and non-recurrent cancer who underwent radical prostatectomy as primary treatment for prostate cancer and were followed with PSA measurements for at least 5 years. Immunohistochemical staining for Sp1, Sp3, and FLIP was performed on these tissues and scored based on the proportion and intensity of staining. The predictive value of the FLIP/Sp1/Sp3 signature for clinical outcome (recurrence vs. non-recurrence) was explored with logistic regression, and combinations of FLIP/Sp1/Sp3 and Gleason score were analyzed with a stepwise (backward and forward) logistic model. The discrimination of the markers was identified by sensitivity-specificity analysis and the diagnostic value of FLIP/Sp1/Sp3 was determined using area under the curve (AUC) for receiver operator characteristic curves. The AUCs for FLIP, Sp1, Sp3, and Gleason score for predicting PSA failure and non-failure were 0.71, 0.66, 0.68, and 0.76, respectively. However, this increased to 0.93 when combined. Thus, the “biomarker signature” of FLIP/Sp1/Sp3 combined with Gleason score predicted disease recurrence and stratified patients who are likely to benefit from more aggressive treatment.
No-reference image quality assessment through the von Mises distribution

An innovative way of calculating the von Mises distribution of image entropy is introduced in this paper. The von Mises distribution's concentration parameter and some fitness parameter that will be defined later have been analyzed in the experimental part for determining their suitability as an image quality assessment measure in some particular distortions such as Gaussian blur or additive Gaussian noise. To achieve such measure, the local Rényi entropy is calculated in four equally spaced orientations and used to determine the parameters of the von Mises distribution of the image entropy. Considering contextual images, experimental results after applying this model show that the best-in-focus noise-free images are associated with the highest values for the von Mises distribution concentration parameter and the highest approximation of image data to the von Mises distribution model. Our defined von Mises fitness parameter experimentally appears also as a suitable no-reference image quality assessment indicator for no-contextual images.
Spermidine Promotes Human Hair Growth and Is a Novel Modulator of Human Epithelial Stem Cell Functions

Background Rapidly regenerating tissues need sufficient polyamine synthesis. Since the hair follicle (HF) is a highly proliferative mini-organ, polyamines may also be important for normal hair growth. However, the role of polyamines in human HF biology and their effect on HF epithelial stem cells in situ remains largely unknown. Methods and Findings We have studied the effects of the prototypic polyamine, spermidine (0.1–1 µM), on human scalp HFs and human HF epithelial stem cells in serum-free organ culture. Under these conditions, spermidine promoted hair shaft elongation and prolonged hair growth (anagen). Spermidine also upregulated expression of the epithelial stem cell-associated keratins K15 and K19, and dose-dependently modulated K15 promoter activity in situ and the colony forming efficiency, proliferation and K15 expression of isolated human K15-GFP+ cells in vitro. Inhibiting the rate-limiting enzyme of polyamine synthesis, ornithine decarboyxlase (ODC), downregulated intrafollicular K15 expression. In primary human epidermal keratinocytes, spermidine slightly promoted entry into the S/G2-M phases of the cell cycle. By microarray analysis of human HF mRNA extracts, spermidine upregulated several key target genes implicated e.g. in the control of cell adherence and migration (POP3), or endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondrial functions (SYVN1, NACA and SLC25A3). Excess spermidine may restrict further intrafollicular polyamine synthesis by inhibiting ODC gene and protein expression in the HF's companion layer in situ. Conclusions These physiologically and clinically relevant data provide the first direct evidence that spermidine is a potent stimulator of human hair growth and a previously unknown modulator of human epithelial stem cell biology.
Financial Development and Economic Growth: The Role of the Stock Markets

The relationship between financial markets and economic growth has interested economists for decades. However, previous studies do not identify the unique role of stock markets in economic growth, nor do they test explicitly if stock markets affect the level or the growth rate of the economy. Several theoretical and empirical papers by Levine (1991), Levine and Zervos (1995), Kunt (1992), and Kunt and Levine (1996) have contributed to our understanding of how stock market development may affect economic growth, but the common problem with them all is that no channel through which stock markets can stimulate economic growth is explicitly identified. This thesis deals with two issues concerning the relationship between stock markets and economic growth. The study examines the nature of the causal link between stock markets and economic growth using Toda and Yamamoto (1999) technique in testing for causality relationship between the variables concerned. Focusing on the nature of causality between stock markets and economic growth, the study examines the endogenous growth hypothesis that fmancial markets enhance economic growth performance specifically through the level and productivity of investment. In the empirical part of the study, we analyze stock market data from seven countries over 1979-1995. We use time-series analysis, and find that the development of stock markets has a significant effect on the growth rate of real GDP. We also find evidence that supports the endogenous growth hypothesis, where the level and productivity of investment are important channels through which stock markets enhance economic growth.
Severe Disseminated Mycobacterium avium Infection in a Patient with a Positive Serum Autoantibody to Interferon-γ

We herein report a case of disseminated Mycobacterium avium infection that involved both optic nerves, the conjunctiva, the right lower lung, and multiple skin lesions, including a thoracic nodule. The patient was a 65-year-old man without any significant medical history. The pathogen was detected in the patient's eye discharge, sputum, bronchial lavage fluid, and thoracic nodule. Anti-mycobacterial chemotherapy, including clarithromycin, rifampicin, and ethambutol, was administered, and the thoracic nodule was resected. An autoantibody to interferon-γ was detected in the patient's serum. Bilateral swelling of his optic nerves and facial dermatitis improved after initiating anti-mycobacterial chemotherapy.
Retinotopic Mapping Requires Focal Adhesion Kinase-Mediated Regulation of Growth Cone Adhesion

Adhesion controls growth cone motility, yet the effects of axon guidance cues on adhesion site dynamics are poorly understood. Here we show that ephrin-A1 reduces retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axon outgrowth by stabilizing existing adhesions and inhibiting new adhesion assembly. Ephrin-A1 activates focal adhesion kinase (FAK) in an integrin- and Src-dependent manner and the effects of ephrin-A1 on growth cone motility require FAK activation. We also find that FAK is expressed in a high temporal to low nasal gradient in RGCs, similar to EphA receptors, and that balanced FAK activation is necessary for optimal axon outgrowth. Last, we find that FAK is required for proper topographic positioning of retinal axons along the anterior–posterior axis of the optic tectum in both Xenopus and zebrafish, a guidance decision mediated in part by A-type ephrins. Together, our data suggest that ephrin-A1 controls growth cone advance by modulating adhesive point contacts through FAK activation and that graded FAK signaling is an important component of ephrin-A-mediated retinotopic mapping.
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper Series Asymmetric Expectation Effects of Regime Shifts in Monetary Policy Asymmetric Expectation Effects of Regime Shifts in Monetary Policy Asymmetric Expectation Effects of Regime Shifts 2

The views in this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Abstract. This paper addresses two substantive issues: (1) Does the magnitude of the expectation effect of regime switching in monetary policy depend on a particular policy regime? (2) Under which regime is the expectation effect quantitatively im-portant? Using two canonical DSGE models, we show that there exists asymmetry in the expectation effect across regimes. The expectation effect under the dovish policy regime is quantitatively more important than that under the hawkish regime. These results suggest that the possibility of regime shifts in monetary policy can have important effects on rational agents' expectation formation and on equilibrium dynamics. They offer a theoretical explanation for the empirical possibility that a policy shift from the dovish regime to the hawkish regime may not be the main source of substantial reductions in the volatilities of inflation and output. an anonymous referee, and especially Michael Golosov and Richard Rogerson for helpful suggestions and discussions. Jean Boivin and Marc Giannoni kindly provided us with their Matlab code for computing MSV solutions. We are grateful to Joan Gieseke for editorial assistance. Liu wishes to thank the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Minneapolis for their hospitality. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and San Francisco or the Federal Reserve System. [Lucas (1976)] has expressed the view that it makes no sense to think of the government as conducting one of several possible policies while at the same time assuming that agents remain certain about the policy rule in effect. Explicit modelling of the connection of expectation-formation mechanisms to policy [regime] in an accurately identified model would allow better use of the data.
Customer-Oriented Benefit Segmentation: An Integrated Approach

Segmentation is a common and important task for most marketing departments. Besides, other marketing decisions are influenced by market segmentation results. Benefit segmentation is one of the best approaches for market segmentation among others. In this paper, we proposed a novel hybrid benefit segmentation approach which applied two-stage clustering, conjoint analysis, and Delphi technique to segment customers according to their benefits. More precisely, we used two-stage clustering based on main benefits derived from conjoint analysis to classify customers into different segments. Conjoint analysis was used to assess and balance dissimilar aspects of consumers' needs. Delphi method was used for the selection of the most important criteria and their levels which conjoint analysis required all of them for evaluation. This approach did not only help managers to segment customers but also to provide a way to analyse consumer behaviour, determine the marking strategy and extract the importance of each attribute in each segment.
The Knowledge of HIV Prevention and Sexual Reproductive Health among Papua Adolescent in a Health Promotion Counselling Using Friendly Module and Games

To engage the adolescents in Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) promotion counselling there is the need to innovate using new media that is more appropriate to their needs and acceptable to their daily life. A crossedsectional questionnaire survey was conducted among 66 randomly selected high school students aged 15-17year old, attending health promotion counselling in 3 schools in Jayapura, Papua province, Indonesia. The study aimed to assess the level of knowledge which Papua adolescents have about HIV prevention and general SRH before and after the intervention using new media of adolescent friendly module and games in a health promotion counselling. The result shown the increase of the mean knowledge score before and after the counselling program at the first school from 11.12 to 14.00, second school from 10.90 to 16.52 and the third school from 9.90 to 15.85. Overall, there was an increase of the mean knowledge of HIV prevention and general SRH before and after the health promotion counselling using new media 10.68 and 15.36, respectively. The survey demonstrated a great increase in the level of knowledge of HIV prevention and general SRH among adolescents in Papua after the health promotion counselling using new media of adolescent friendly module and games. Furthermore, there was a greater need to expand the research of using the adolescent friendly media for HIV prevention and SRH in health promotion counselling in other areas in Papua with a bigger and variety characteristics of sample. Keywords—HIV, Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH), knowledge, adolescent, health promotion counselling, media
Coded modulation with mismatched power control over block-fading channels

Communication over delay-constrained blockfading channels with discrete inputs and imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is studied. The CSIT mismatch is modeled as a Gaussian random variable, whose variance decays as a power of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We focus on the large-SNR behavior of the outage probability when transmit power control is used. We derive the outage exponent as a function of the system parameters, including the CSIT noise variance exponent and the exponent of the peak power constraint. It is shown that CSIT, even if noisy, is always beneficial and leads to significant gains in terms of exponents. It is also shown that when precoders are used at the transmitter, further exponent gains can be attained at the expense of higher decoding complexity.
Cluster Heating by Viscous Dissipation of Sound Waves

We simulate the effects of viscous dissipation of waves that are generated by active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity in clusters of galaxies. We demonstrate that the amount of viscous heating associated with the dissipation of these waves can offset radiative cooling rates in cooling flow clusters of galaxies. This heating mechanism leads to spatially distributed and approximately symmetrical dissipation. The heating waves reach a given distance from the cluster center on a timescale shorter than the cooling time. This means that this heating mechanism has the potential to quench cooling flows in a quasi-stable fashion. Moreover, the heating is gentle, as no strong shocks are present in the simulations. We first investigated whether a single continuous episode of AGN activity can lead to adequate dissipation to balance cooling rates. These simulations demonstrated that whereas secondary waves generated by the interaction of the rising bubble with the intracluster medium are clearly present, viscous heating associated with the dissipation of these waves is insufficient to balance radiative cooling. It is only when the central source is intermittent that the viscous dissipation of waves associated with subsequent episodes of activity can offset cooling. This suggests that the ripples observed in the Perseus Cluster can be interpreted as being due to the AGN duty cycle; i.e., they trace AGN activity history. The simulations were performed using the adaptive mesh refinement code FLASH in two dimensions.
Dividend Policy, Corporate Governance and the Managerial Entrenchment Hypothesis: An Empirical Analysis

This paper analyses the agency explanation for the cross-sectional variation of corporate dividend policy in the UK by looking at the managerial entrenchment hypothesis drawn from the agency literature. Consistent with predictions, a significant U-shaped relationship between dividend payout ratios and insider ownership is observed for a large (exceeding 600 firms) sample of UK companies and two distinct periods. These results strongly suggest the possibility of managerial entrenchment when insider ownership reaches a threshold of around 30%. Evidence is also presented that non-beneficial holdings by insiders can lead to entrenchment in conjunction with shares held beneficially. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2003.
THE MEASUREMENT OF SALES FORCE MOTIVATION REVISITED

Motivating salespersons is one of the most important aspects of sales force management. The prevalent sales force motivation research stream relies essentially on Vroom’s expectancy theory. In spite of its widespread use, this theory is shown to present a number of shortcomings when applied to many sales force situations. The purpose of this paper is to outline a mathematical formulation of a salesperson’s motivation to perform a certain type of activity, (1) that is in line with the compelling logic of Vroom’s motivation expectancy theory; (2) that includes relevant sales force concepts; and (3) that can potentially address typical sales force motivation situations.
Allicin: Chemistry and Biological Properties

Allicin (diallylthiosulfinate) is a defence molecule from garlic (Allium sativum L.) with a broad range of biological activities. Allicin is produced upon tissue damage from the non-proteinogenic amino acid alliin (S-allylcysteine sulfoxide) in a reaction that is catalyzed by the enzyme alliinase. Current understanding of the allicin biosynthetic pathway will be presented in this review. Being a thiosulfinate, allicin is a reactive sulfur species (RSS) and undergoes a redox-reaction with thiol groups in glutathione and proteins that is thought to be essential for its biological activity. Allicin is physiologically active in microbial, plant and mammalian cells. In a dose-dependent manner allicin can inhibit the proliferation of both bacteria and fungi or kill cells outright, including antibiotic-resistant strains like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Furthermore, in mammalian cell lines, including cancer cells, allicin induces cell-death and inhibits cell proliferation. In plants allicin inhibits seed germination and attenuates root-development. The majority of allicin’s effects are believed to be mediated via redox-dependent mechanisms. In sub-lethal concentrations, allicin has a variety of health-promoting properties, for example cholesterol- and blood pressure-lowering effects that are advantageous for the cardio-vascular system. Clearly, allicin has wide-ranging and interesting applications in medicine and (green) agriculture, hence the detailed discussion of its enormous potential in this review. Taken together, allicin is a fascinating biologically active compound whose properties are a direct consequence of the molecule’s chemistry.
It is a Small World of Management Accounting Practices

We argue that there currently is a global tendency for management accounting system designs and general ideas to converge. After offering examples of such homogenization, the drivers of this development are distinguished and analyzed. For this end a framework was developed including both economic and institutional perspectives. The basic explanation for the claimed tendency to converge appears to be that the drivers of convergence have started to dominate those of divergence. It also is argued that firms probably do not intend to gain unique competitive advantage through their management accounting systems, but instead intend to use them to improve their operational, not strategic, effectiveness.
Fairness and Ethics in Multiple Choice (MC) Scoring: An Empirical Study

One among the main concerns of language testers in the design and implementation of tests is selecting the method of scoring for the tool used to perform the evaluation. This attribute indirectly reveals the tester’s ethical beliefs and personal stance on testing pedagogy. This is another study challenging the typical 1-0 method of scoring in Multiple Choice Tests (MCT) and implements, for experimental purposes, a simple polychotomous partial-credit scoring system on official tests administered for the National Foreign Language Exam System in Greece (NFLES-Gr). The study comes in support of earlier findings on the subject by the same authors in analogous smaller-scale studies. The MCT items chosen were completed by a total of 1,922 subjects in different levels of the NFLES-Gr test for Italian as an L2 in Greece. Results clearly indicate that the tested scoring procedure provides refined insights into students’ interlanguage levels, enhances sensitivity in scoring procedures, and may provide significant differences for testees found to be close to the pass/non-pass borderline without jeopardizing test reliability.
Adaptive image interpolation based on local gradient features

This letter presents two adaptive interpolation methods based on applying an inverse gradient to conventional bilinear and bicubic interpolation. In simulations, the proposed methods exhibited a better performance than conventional bilinear and bicubic methods, particularly in the edge regions. In addition, the proposed methods can be used irrespective of the magnification factor (MF) and easily implemented due to their simple structure.
Cohomogeneity One Manifolds of Spin(7) and G2 Holonomy

In this paper, we look for metrics of cohomogeneity one in D = 8 and D = 7 dimensions with Spin(7) and G2 holonomy respectively. In D = 8, we first consider the case of principal orbits that are S 7 , viewed as an S 3 bundle over S 4 with triaxial squashing of the S 3 fibres. This gives a more general system of first-order equations for Spin(7) holonomy than has been solved previously. Using numerical methods, we establish the existence of new non-singular asymptotically locally conical (ALC) Spin(7) metrics on line bundles over CP 3 , with a non-trivial parameter that characterises the homogeneous squashing of CP 3 . We then consider the case where the principal orbits are the Aloff-Wallach spaces N(k, l) = SU(3)/U(1), where the integers k and l characterise the embedding of U(1). We find new ALC and AC metrics of Spin(7) holonomy, as solutions of the first-order equations that we obtained previously in hep-th/0102185. These include certain explicit ALC metrics for all N(k, l), and numerical and perturbative results for ALC families with AC limits. We then study D = 7 metrics of G2 holonomy, and find new explicit examples, which, however, are singular, where the principal orbits are the flag manifold SU(3)/(U(1) × U(1)). We also obtain numerical results for new non-singular metrics with principal orbits that are S 3 × S 3 . Additional topics include a detailed and explicit discussion of the Einstein metrics