Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
1 Uruguay , Options for Pensions Reform

We simulate the budget of the main pension institution of the country, the Banco de Previsión Social (BPS), from 1995, the year the reform was passed, to 2050, when the new system should be mature. We perform several sensitivity analyses to evaluate which are the key exogenous variables and parameters determining the financial performance of the BPS in the medium to long run. According to our simulations, the budget of the BPS will be highly sensitive to the ages of retirement and to the ability and willingness of the institution to control the fulfilment of the required conditions to receive a contributory pension. The flexibility with which the BPS granted these benefits in the past had significant effects on its financial performance, according to these simulations. In recent years, the BPS has tightened the controls, with potentially significant effects on both the budget and the number of individuals excluded from the contributory programs. We study the contingent fiscal liabilities that are associated to the risk that the number of applications to the assistance programs grows because of the tougher conditions in the contributory programs. We also evaluate some alternatives to reform the non-contributory programs that, among other things, would extend their current coverage. 1 Departamento de Economía, FCS-UDELAR. Alvarof@decon.edu. uy. Tel: (5982) 409 29 73, 401 77 07. 2 Anna Caristo, Natalia Ferreira-Coimbra and Gabriel Katz provided an invaluable assistance in this project. Gabriel Lagomarsino kindly helped us to better understand the PIT-CNT proposal to reform the noncontributory-old-age program. The World Bank financed the study. The author assumes full responsibility for its specific contents.
Parental anxiety and medical comprehension within 24 hrs of a child's admission to the pediatric intensive care unit*

Objective: Admission of a child to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) can create high-parental anxiety. The authors examined the factors that contribute to parental anxiety and the effect of parental anxiety on comprehension of medical information within 24 hrs of a child's admission to the PICU. The physician's recognition of parental anxiety related to their child's hospitalization was also evaluated. Design: Prospective cohort study with a convenience sample of primary caregivers of critically ill children. Setting: Twenty-bed PICU at an urban tertiary children's hospital. Subjects: The primary caregivers of 35 children with Pediatric Risk of Mortality III scores ≥7 admitted to the PICU as well as PICU fellows. Interventions: Parental anxiety was assessed with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, a validated tool used to measure both the temporary (State) and long-standing (Trait) anxiety in adults. Comprehension of medical information was assessed by an open-ended questionnaire. Physician assessment of parental anxiety was measured by multiple-choice questionnaire. Measurements and Main Results: Of the 34 parents completing the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, 21 (62%) had State Anxiety that was significantly higher than a validated sample of patients with generalized anxiety disorder. The child's need for mechanical ventilation was the only significant predictor of high-parental State Anxiety (p = .03). Among the 28 parents completing the questionnaire of comprehension of medical information, 26 (93%) demonstrated excellent or fair comprehension. Physicians had generally low recognition of parental anxiety but were significantly more likely to rate a parent's anxiety as high if the child was on mechanical ventilation. Conclusion: Parental anxiety is high following a child's admission to the PICU. Physicians failed to recognize high-parental anxiety in nearly one third of the parents. Despite the high anxiety associated with a child's admission to the PICU, parents seem to understand their children's medical issues within the first 24 hrs.
Blood loss and transfusion requirements in orthognatic surgery.

PURPOSE This study quantified the blood loss and transfusion requirements in orthognathic surgery. PATIENTS AND METHODS Three hundred sixty consecutive healthy orthognathic surgery patients were included in this retrospective study. The female:male ratio was 1.8:1, and the age range was 8 to 49 years (mean, 24). Estimated blood volume (EBV), estimated blood loss (EBL), and transfused blood were calculated. RESULTS EBL ranged from 50 to 5,000 mL (mean, 600) representing up to 73% of EBV (mean, 16%). In total, 24% (84 patients) were transfused, 8.7% (6 patients) after single-jaw surgery and iliac bone harvest and 26.7% (78 patients) after bimaxillary osteotomies. Forty-seven patients received 1 unit of transfused blood, 25 patients had 2 units, and 12 patients had more than 2 units. Most transfused patients lost 11% to 40% of EBV. CONCLUSIONS Transfusion is not necessary for single-jaw surgery unless a bicoronal flap or iliac bone harvest are required. Although only 27% of bimaxillary osteotomy patients required transfusion of 1 to 2 units, this group was not predictable based on the type of procedure involved, and a further subgroup (4% of the 291 patients) required a larger transfusion.
Virtual Embodiment: A Scalable Long-Term Strategy for Artificial Intelligence Research

Meaning has been called the "holy grail" of a variety of scientific disciplines, ranging from linguistics to philosophy, psychology and the neurosciences. The field of Artifical Intelligence (AI) is very much a part of that list: the development of sophisticated natural language semantics is a sine qua non for achieving a level of intelligence comparable to humans. Embodiment theories in cognitive science hold that human semantic representation depends on sensori-motor experience; the abundant evidence that human meaning representation is grounded in the perception of physical reality leads to the conclusion that meaning must depend on a fusion of multiple (perceptual) modalities. Despite this, AI research in general, and its subdisciplines such as computational linguistics and computer vision in particular, have focused primarily on tasks that involve a single modality. Here, we propose virtual embodiment as an alternative, long-term strategy for AI research that is multi-modal in nature and that allows for the kind of scalability required to develop the field coherently and incrementally, in an ethically responsible fashion.
Aspects of childhood deviancy: a study of young offenders in open centres in the Republic of Ireland.

Very little research has been done in this country on the personal profiles of young people who break the law. The aim of this research is to provide such information at a time when it is proposed to introduce new juvenile justice legislation. The research profiles the residents of four open centres for young offenders in the Republic of Ireland with regard to their health, family and social history, educational attainment, cognitive ability, behavioural and emotional characteristics, hopes, attitudes and ambitions, self-care skills and socialisation abilities. Results indicate that, in general, subjects in all four centres share common characteristics despite the different designations of the centres. However those subjects who were convicted of criminal charges were more likely to have abused alcohol, to have criminal family members, to have a negative attitude to judges and to expect to spend future time in jail, while those subjects who were not committed through the courts were more likely to have been rejected by a parent or to have a parent deceased. They were also more likely to have experienced a major trauma. For all subjects the highest, "at risk" indicators included involvement in law breaking whether convicted or not, living in public sector accommodation with an urban background, a history of truancy with poor academic attainment, poorly educated parents, underage smoking and behavioural characteristics which were aggressive, antisocial, rebellious and untrustworthy. An analysis of the profile variables highlights those areas where resources should be focused for the purposes of prevention and treatment and provides an "at risk" indicator. The research also provides a database for future longitudinal research. The study has implications for future approaches to the care and welfare of those young offenders currently in residential care and for those "at risk" of breaking the law at an early age.
Bully/victim problems and their association with Eysenck's personality dimensions in 8 to 13 year-olds.

BACKGROUND Previous research which has investigated the association between bully-victim problems and Eysenck's personality dimensions has shown an association between victimisation and introversion and an association between bullying and psychoticism (Slee & Rigby, 1993). AIMS The aim of the present study was to replicate these findings and to extend the investigation of the association between bully/victim problems and personality to children who are classified as both bullies and victims. SAMPLE AND METHOD One hundred and seventy nine children ranging in age from 8 to 13 years (mean age = 11 years) completed the Bullying-Behaviour Scale and the Peer-Victimization Scale (Austin & Joseph, 1996), the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC: Harter, 1985), and the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ Junior: Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975). RESULTS Forty-nine per cent of children were classified as involved in bullying either as bullies (11 per cent), victims (20 per cent), or bully/victims (18 per cent). Bullies scored lower on the lie scale, victims scored lower on the extraversion scale, and bully/victims scored higher on the neuroticism and psychoticism scales than children who were classified as not involved in bullying. CONCLUSION These data provide evidence that bully/victims are a distinct group from either bullies or victims and that they may be the group of children who are most readily distinguished in terms of personality.
A sequence of series for the Lambert W function

WC give a uniform treatment of several series expansions for the Lambert Iirfurrction, leading toaninfinite family of new series. Wealsodisrxrss standardization, cornplexbranches,a family of arbitrary-order iterative methods forcornputation of IT”,and give a theorem showing how to correctly solve another simpl~ and frequently occurring nonlinear equation.
The Mixture Transition Distribution Model for High-Order Markov Chains and Non-Gaussian Time Series

The mixture transition distribution model (MTD) was introduced in 1985 by Raftery for the modeling of high-order Markov chains with a finite state space. Since then it has been generalized and successfully applied to a range of situations, including the analysis of wind directions, DNA sequences and social behavior. Here we review the MTD model and the developments since 1985. We first introduce the basic principle and then we present several extensions, including general state spaces and spatial statistics. Following that, we review methods for estimating the model parameters. Finally, a review of different types of applications shows the practical interest of the MTD model.
Load-Dependent Interference of Deep Brain Stimulation of the Subthalamic Nucleus with Switching from Automatic to Controlled Processing During Random Number Generation in Parkinson’s Disease

Background: Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN DBS) ameliorates the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, some aspects of executive control are impaired with STN DBS. Objective: We tested the prediction that (i) STN DBS interferes with switching from automatic to controlled processing during fast-paced random number generation (RNG) (ii) STN DBS-induced cognitive control changes are load-dependent. Methods: Fifteen PD patients with bilateral STN DBS performed paced-RNG, under three levels of cognitive load synchronised with a pacing stimulus presented at 1, 0.5 and 0.33 Hz (faster rates require greater cognitive control), with DBS on or off. Measures of output randomness were calculated. Countscore 1 (CS1) indicates habitual counting in steps of one (CS1). Countscore 2 (CS2) indicates a more controlled strategy of counting in twos. Results: The fastest rate was associated with an increased CS1 score with STN DBS on compared to off. At the slowest rate, patients had higher CS2 scores with DBS off than on, such that the differences between CS1 and CS2 scores disappeared. Conclusions: We provide evidence for a load-dependent effect of STN DBS on paced RNG in PD. Patients could switch to more controlled RNG strategies during conditions of low cognitive load at slower rates only when the STN stimulators were off, but when STN stimulation was on, they engaged in more automatic habitual counting under increased cognitive load. These findings are consistent with the proposal that the STN implements a switch signal from the medial frontal cortex which enables a shift from automatic to controlled processing.
Establishing Waist-to-Height Ratio Standards from Criterion-Referenced BMI Using ROC Curves in Low-Income Children

The purpose of this study was to establish health-related waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) cut-points associating with FITNESSGRAM's body mass index (BMI) criterion-referenced standards in low-income children. A secondary aim was to examine the classification agreement between the derived WHtR cut-points and various cardiometabolic blood markers using current recommendations. Participants were 219 children from low-income schools (mean age = 10.5 ± 0.6 years). Waist circumference, height, weight, and cardiometabolic blood markers were collected in a fasting state before school hours. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to determine WHtR cut-points that associated with a child meeting FITNESSGRAM's age- and sex-specific criterion-referenced standards for BMI. The derived WHtR cut-point was 0.50 (AUC = 0.89, p < 0.001; sensitivity = 0.86, specificity = 0.82, and accuracy = 84.3%). Classification agreement using the derived WHtR cut-point with various blood marker standards was statistically significant but considered weak to fair (kappa 0.14–0.34, agreement = 59%–67%, and p < 0.01). The WHtR cut-point of 0.50 can be used with strong accuracy to distinguish low-income children who met FITNESSGRAM's criterion-referenced standards for body composition; however, the evidence was weaker for its use in distinguishing low-income children meeting specific cardiometabolic blood marker recommendations.
The elitist particle filter based on evolutionary strategies as novel approach for nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation

In this article, we introduce a novel approach for nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation based on a combination of particle filtering and evolutionary strategies. The nonlinear echo path is modeled as a state vector with non-Gaussian probability distribution and the relation to the observed signals and near-end interferences are captured by nonlinear functions. To estimate the probability distribution of the state vector and the model parameters, we apply the numerical sampling method of particle filtering, where each set of particles represents different realizations of the nonlinear echo path. While the classical particle-filter approach is unsuitable for system identification with large search spaces, we introduce a modified particle filter to select elitist particles based on long-term fitness measures and to create new particles based on the approximated probability distribution of the state vector. The validity of the novel approach is experimentally verified with real recordings for a nonlinear echo path stemming from a commercial smartphone.
Evolutionarily Novel Functional Networks in the Human Brain?

Primate evolution has been accompanied by complex reorganizations in brain anatomy and function. Little is known, however, about the relationship between anatomical and functional changes induced through primate evolution. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we assessed spatial and temporal correspondences of cortical networks in humans and monkeys. We provided evidence for topologically and functionally correspondent networks in sensory-motor and attention regions. More specifically, we revealed a possible monkey equivalent of the human ventral attention network. For other human networks, such as the language and the default-mode networks, we detected topological correspondent networks in the monkey, but with different functional signatures. Furthermore, we observed two lateralized human frontoparietal networks in the cortical regions displaying the greatest evolutionary expansion, having neither topological nor functional monkey correspondents. This finding may indicate that these two human networks are evolutionarily novel. Thus, our findings confirm the existence of networks where evolution has conserved both topology and function but also suggest that functions of structurally preserved networks can diverge over time and that novel, hence human-specific networks, have emerged during human evolution.
Application of directed transfer function and network formalism for the assessment of functional connectivity in working memory task

The dynamic pattern of functional connectivity during a working memory task was investigated by means of the short-time directed transfer function. A clear-cut picture of transmissions was observed with the main centres of propagation located in the frontal and parietal regions, in agreement with imaging studies and neurophysiological hypotheses concerning the mechanisms of working memory. The study of the time evolution revealed that most of the time short-range interactions prevailed, whereas the communication between the main centres of activity occurred more sparsely and changed dynamically in time. The patterns of connectivity were quantified by means of a network formalism based on assortative mixing—an approach novel in the field of brain networks study. By means of application of the above method, we have demonstrated the existence of a modular structure of brain networks. The strength of interaction inside the modules was higher than between modules. The obtained results are compatible with theories concerning metabolic energy saving and efficient wiring in the brain, which showed that preferred organization includes modular structure with dense connectivity inside the modules and more sparse connections between the modules. The presented detailed temporal and spatial patterns of propagation are in line with the neurophysiological hypotheses concerning the role of gamma and theta activity in information processing during a working memory task.
When Should the Central Europeans Join EMU?

The paper first considers why central European countries wish to join EMU soon. The main reasons are the risk of macroeconomic instability they face outside the euro zone if they wish to grow quickly. At the same time, Central Europe is highly integrated as regards trade with EMU, so it is little exposed to asymmetric shocks that would require a realignment of exchange rates. Finally, it is argued that there is no cost in terms of slower growth from EMU accession, so that there is no trade-off, as has been claimed, between nominal convergence to EMU and real convergence to EU average GDP levels. Second, the paper assesses whether Central European accession to EMU would be disadvantageous to current members. It concludes that accession cannot increase inflationary pressure on existing EMU members, as has been claimed, but that slow growing members of EMU might suffer increased unemployment, unless they increase the flexibility of their labour markets. Incumbent members may also be unwilling to share power with Central Europeans in EMU institutions.
Dabigatran use in Danish atrial fibrillation patients in 2011: a nationwide study

Objective Dabigatran was recently approved for anticoagulation in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF); data regarding real-world use, comparative effectiveness and safety are sparse. Design Pharmacoepidemiological cohort study. Methods/settings From nationwide registers, we identified patients with an in-hospital or outpatient-clinic AF diagnosis who claimed a prescription of dabigatran 110 or 150 mg, or vitamin K antagonist (VKA), between 22 August and 31 December 2011. HRs of thromboembolic events (ischaemic stroke, transitory ischaemic attack and peripheral artery embolism) and bleedings were estimated using Cox regression analyses in all patients and stratified by previous VKA use. Results Overall, 1612 (3.1%) and 1114 (2.1%) patients claimed a prescription of dabigatran 110 and 150 mg, and 49640 (94.8%) of VKA. Patients treated with dabigatran 150 mg were younger with less comorbidity than those treated with dabigatran 110 mg and VKA, as were VKA naïve patients compared with previous VKA users. Recommendations set by the European Medicine Agency (EMA) for dabigatran were met in 90.3% and 55.5% of patients treated with 110 and 150 mg. Patients treated with 150 mg dabigatran, who did not fulfil the recommendations by EMA, were >80 years, patients with liver or kidney disease, patients with previous bleeding. Compared with VKA, the thromboembolic risk associated with dabigatran 110 and 150 mg was HR 3.52 (1.40 to 8.84) and 5.79 (1.81 to 18.56) in previous VKA users, and HR 0.95(0.47 to 1.91) and 1.14(0.60 to 2.16) in VKA naïve patients. Bleeding risk was increased in previous VKA users receiving dabigatran 110 mg, but not in patients with 150 mg dabigatran, nor in the VKA naïve users. Conclusions Deviations from the recommended use of dabigatran were frequent among patients treated with 150 mg. With cautious interpretation, dabigatran use in VKA naïve patients seems safe. Increased risk of thromboembolism and bleeding with dabigatran among previous VKA users was unexpected and may reflect patient selection and ‘drug switching’ practices.
Simulations of the formation of stellar discs in the Galactic Centre via cloud–cloud collisions

Young massive stars in the central parsec of our Galaxy are best explained by star formation within at least one, and possibly two, massive self-gravitating gaseous discs. With help of numerical simulations, we here consider whether the observed population of young stars could have originated from a large angle collision of two massive gaseous clouds at R ≃ 1 pc from Sgr A*. In all the simulations performed, the post-collision gas flow forms an inner, nearly circular gaseous disc and one or two eccentric outer filaments, consistent with the observations. Furthermore, the radial stellar mass distribution is always very steep, Σ * oc R -2 , again consistent with the observations. All of our simulations produce discs that are warped by between 30° and 60°, in accordance with the most recent observations. The three-dimensional velocity structure of the stellar distribution is sensitive to initial conditions (e.g. the impact parameter of the clouds) and gas cooling details. For example, the runs in which the inner disc is fed intermittently with material possessing fluctuating angular momentum result in multiple stellar discs with different orbital orientations, contradicting the observed data. In all the cases the amount of gas accreted by our inner boundary condition is large, enough to allow Sgr A* to radiate near its Eddington limit over ∼10 5 yr. This suggests that a refined model would have physically larger clouds (or a cloud and a disc such as the circumnuclear disc) colliding at a distance of a few parsecs rather than 1 pc as in our simulations.