Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A NONPARAMETRIC GOODNESS-OF-FIT-BASED TEST FOR CONDITIONAL HETEROSKEDASTICITY

In this paper we propose a new nonparametric test for conditional heteroskedasticity based on a measure of nonparametric goodness-of-fit (R2) that is obtained from the local polynomial regression of the residuals from a parametric regression on some covariates. We show that after being appropriately standardized, the nonparametric R2 is asymptotically normally distributed under the null hypothesis and a sequence of Pitman local alternatives. We also prove the consistency of the test and propose a bootstrap method to obtain the bootstrap p-values. We conduct a small set of simulations and compare our test with some popular parametric and nonparametric tests in the literature.
Lack of nonexcretory renal influences on hemodynamics and fluid volume distribution after the volume loading of conscious dogs.

I studied the nonexcretory influences of the kidney on hemodynamics and fluid volume distribution in six conscious dogs post-splenectomy. The dogs with intact kidneys were volume loaded with 100 ml/kg of lactated Ringer's solution in 1 hour; the left kidney was removed 2 days later. The volume infusion was repeated 12 days later, within 1 day after the sole remaining kidney was removed. Arterial pressure was elevated to hypertensive levels immediately after the infusion in the intact and anephric groups, but pressure in the intact group returned to control within 5 hours after infusion. Fluid volume expansion was evidenced by a sustained increase in blood volume and sodium space in the anephric group. Blood volume and sodium space of the intact group increased after the infusion but then decreased toward control. Total circulating protein mass increased only in the anephric group and reached a value of 107.5 ± 1.3% of control by 24 hours after infusion. Central venous pressure was elevated in both groups throughout the entire 25-hour period of measurements subsequent to infusion, with the greater elevations occurring in the anephric group. The regression lines relating blood volume to central venous pressure, and blood volume to mean arterial pressure, were not significantly different for the anephric and intact groups. Also, the ratio of blood volume to sodium space was not signficantly different for the two groups during the control and postinfusion periods. Thus, the increase in central venous pressure and mean arterial pressure after volume loading appears to be related to the increase in blood volume and not to a change in vascular compliance. I found no evidence indicating that removal of the kidney influences hemodynamics or fluid volume distribution, Circ Res 46: 880-886,1980
Augmented Wnt Signaling in a Mammalian Model of Accelerated Aging

The contribution of stem and progenitor cell dysfunction and depletion in normal aging remains incompletely understood. We explored this concept in the Klotho mouse model of accelerated aging. Analysis of various tissues and organs from young Klotho mice revealed a decrease in stem cell number and an increase in progenitor cell senescence. Because klotho is a secreted protein, we postulated that klotho might interact with other soluble mediators of stem cells. We found that klotho bound to various Wnt family members. In a cell culture model, the Wnt-klotho interaction resulted in the suppression of Wnt biological activity. Tissues and organs from klotho-deficient animals showed evidence of increased Wnt signaling, and ectopic expression of klotho antagonized the activity of endogenous and exogenous Wnt. Both in vitro and in vivo, continuous Wnt exposure triggered accelerated cellular senescence. Thus, klotho appears to be a secreted Wnt antagonist and Wnt proteins have an unexpected role in mammalian aging.
Graduate employability as a function of career decision in the Amhara State TVET System

The purpose of this research was examining the state of TVET students’ choice of occupation as potential factors of their employability. To that end, quantitative data was collected from 361 teachers and 361 students in six TVET colleges through stratified and simple random sampling techniques. Eight teachers and nine students selected through purposive sampling method were also involved in independently conducted focus group interview. Instead of employability and match of an occupation to talents and economic implications, level of occupational prestige, desire for higher qualification levels as well as resemblance to role models usually dictated the occupational choices of most TVET students. Besides, most students had negative perceptions for TVET. In contrast to the high attention paid by the government for self-employment, in addition, most students preferred paid employment to self-employment. At the same time, the TVET system is plagued by unemployment. Consequently, considering TVET as one of the solutions to the development challenges in the study area is certain to suffer from lack of employability if problems related to occupational choice are not adequately dealt with. This calls for vigorous vocational counseling practices by deploying competent and experienced counselors that ascertain the market orientation of students’ career decisions. Keywords: career decision, employability, occupational choice, self-employment, counseling
On the Spatial Correlations of Lyman Break Galaxies

Motivated by the observed discrepancy between the strong spatial correlations of Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) and their velocity dispersions, we consider a theoretical model in which these starbursting galaxies are associated with dark matter halos that experience an appreciable infall of material. Using numerical simulations, we show that selecting halos that substantially increase in mass within a fixed time interval introduces a "temporal bias" that boosts their clustering above that of the underlying population. If time intervals consistent with the observed LBGs' star formation rates of ~50 M☉ yr-1 are chosen, then spatial correlations are enhanced by up to a factor of 2. These values roughly correspond to the geometrical bias of objects 3 times as massive. Thus, it is clear that temporal biasing must be taken into account when interpreting the properties of LBGs.
Creencia e increencia desde las vivencias cotidianas. Una mirada desde Uruguay

En los ultimos anos la bibliografia internacional ha venido desarrollando intentos de comprension y caracterizacion de quienes se definen como creyentes sin afiliacion a ninguna institucion religiosa, asi como por quienes se definen como no creyentes. Varios estudios cuantitativos han dado cuenta de ese fenomeno en nuestra region que evidencia claras disparidades entre los diferentes paises de America Latina. Este articulo se centra en explorar las caracteristicas de esos dos grupos a partir de una investigacion cualitativa que pone su atencion en la forma en que cotidianamente, las personas viven su relacion con la trascendencia o con la no creencia en la ciudad de Montevideo, Uruguay.
Leaky intestine and impaired microbiome in an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis mouse model

Emerging evidence has demonstrated that intestinal homeostasis and the microbiome play essential roles in neurological diseases, such as Parkinson's disease. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease characterized by a progressive loss of motor neurons and muscle atrophy. Currently, there is no effective treatment. Most patients die within 3–5 years due to respiratory paralysis. Although the death of motor neurons is a hallmark of ALS, other organs may also contribute to the disease progression. We examined the gut of an ALS mouse model, G93A, which expresses mutant superoxide dismutase (SOD1G93A), and discovered a damaged tight junction structure and increased permeability with a significant reduction in the expression levels of tight junction protein ZO‐1 and the adherens junction protein E‐cadherin. Furthermore, our data demonstrated increased numbers of abnormal Paneth cells in the intestine of G93A mice. Paneth cells are specialized intestinal epithelial cells that can sense microbes and secrete antimicrobial peptides, thus playing key roles in host innate immune responses and shaping the gut microbiome. A decreased level of the antimicrobial peptides defensin 5 alpha was indeed found in the ALS intestine. These changes were associated with a shifted profile of the intestinal microbiome, including reduced levels of Butyrivibrio Fibrisolvens, Escherichia coli, and Fermicus, in G93A mice. The relative abundance of bacteria was shifted in G93A mice compared to wild‐type mice. Principal coordinate analysis indicated a difference in fecal microbial communities between ALS and wild‐type mice. Taken together, our study suggests a potential novel role of the intestinal epithelium and microbiome in the progression of ALS.
Basal Organelles of Bacterial Flagella

Liberated by enzymatic lysis of the cells, the flagella of Rhodospirillum rubrum, R. molischianum, and R. fulvum all have a similar structure. The hook at the base of the flagellum is connected by a short, narrow collar to a paired disc in the basal organelle. This paired disc is in turn connected to a second paired disc. The disposition of flagella to which fragments of the cell membrane still adhere suggests that the narrow collar at the base of the hook traverses both the wall and the membrane, and that the upper pair of discs in the basal organelle lies just beneath the surface of the membrane.
Origins of Growth Health Shocks , Institutions , and Human Capital in the Protestant Reformation ∗

We study the long-run impact of the legal institutions of the Protestant Reformation on growth across German cities. We compare Protestant cities that formalized the Reformation in municipal law to Protestant cities that did not and to cities that remained Catholic. Cities with reformed legal institutions grew significantly faster over subsequent centuries. We show that local exposure to disease epidemics in the immediate run-up to the Reformation generated exogenous variation in institutional change. Using these health shocks as an instrument for institutional change we find support for a causal interpretation of the relationship between municipal institutions and growth. These institutions established pioneering experiments in mass public schooling and narrative evidence strongly suggests the growth effects ran through a human capital channel. We use novel microdata to show that after the passage of legal reforms cities with Reformation laws began differentially producing more residents with upper tail human capital. Similarly, Protestant cities with new legal institutions attracted more high skilled migrants. JEL Codes:
Automated feature generation from structured knowledge

The prediction accuracy of any learning algorithm highly depends on the quality of the selected features; but often, the task of feature construction and selection is tedious and nonscalable. In recent years, however, there have been numerous projects with the goal of constructing general-purpose or domain-specific knowledge bases with entity-relationship-entity triples extracted from various Web sources or collected from user communities, e.g. YAGO, DBpedia, Freebase, UMLS, etc. This paper advocates the simple and yet far-reaching idea that the structured knowledge contained in such knowledge bases can be exploited to automatically extract features for general learning tasks. We introduce an expressive graph-based language for extracting features from such knowledge bases and a theoretical framework for constructing feature vectors from the extracted features. Our experimental evaluation on different learning scenarios provides evidence that the features derived through our framework can considerably improve the prediction accuracy, especially when the labeled data at hand is sparse.
More Than Shoot-Em-Up and Torture Porn: Reflective Appropriation and Meaning-Making of Violent Media Content

Media violence research has mainly focused on aggression effects so far. But are audiences' thoughts about violent portrayals actually confined to aggressive fantasies? This study examines more complex thought processes about violent portrayals that involve reflection, meaning-making, and truth-seeking about violence as a fact of social reality. We conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with 39 participants from different backgrounds, including professions at risk for exposure to violence, media professionals, and interviewees from the general population. The interviews revealed three main categories of reflective thoughts about violent media content, including thoughts about (a) the truth value, (b) the life-world relevance, and (c) the psychological and moral implications of the violence depicted. Participants also discussed unrealistic content features that interfered with meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Noradrenergic inhibition of synaptic transmission between mitral and granule cells in mammalian olfactory bulb cultures

Noradrenergic modulation of the glutamatergic-GABAergic synapses between mitral/tufted (M/T) and granule cells has been implicated in some forms of olfactory learning (Brennan et al., 1990). Norepinephrine (NE) has been shown to disinhibit mitral cells (Jahr and Nicoll, 1982), but its site of action is not well defined. The effects of NE on synaptic transmission between monosynaptically coupled pairs of mitral and granule cells have been examined using primary culture and whole- cell recording techniques. Intracellular stimulation of M/T cells evoked dual-component EPSPs in granule cells consisting of both NMDA and AMPA (alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazoleproprionic acid) receptor-mediated mechanisms. The EPSPs were reversibly inhibited by approximately 50% during application of 30 microM NE. NE had no effect, however, on the membrane current evoked by exogenous application of glutamate, indicating a presynaptic site of action. The effect of NE on EPSPs was mimicked by the alpha-adrenergic agonist clonidine but not by the beta-adrenergic agonist isoproterenol. NE had no significant effect on either accommodation or macroscopic currents in either M/T or granule cells. NE also inhibited spontaneous GABAergic IPSPs recorded in M/T cells, by a presynaptic alpha-adrenergic-mediated mechanism. These results support previous results suggesting a disinhibitory role for NE in the olfactory bulb. This action, however, is at least in part mediated by a reduction in mitral cell-mediated granule cell excitation.
3D reconstruction of structures using spherical cameras with small motion

In this research, a method for dense 3D reconstruction of structures from small motion of a spherical camera is proposed. Spherical cameras can capture information from all directions enabling measurement of the entire surrounding structure at once. The proposed technique uses two spherical images clicked at slightly displaced positions near the structure, followed by a combination of feature-point matching and dense optical flow. Feature-point matching between two images alone is usually not accurate to give a dense point cloud because of outliers. Moreover, calculation of the epipolar direction with feature point matching is susceptible to noise with small displacements. However, spherical cameras have unique parallax properties allowing use of dense, global information. Taking advantage of this, the global, dense optical flow field is used. The epipolar geometry is densely optimized based on the optical flow field for an accurate 3D reconstruction. A possible use of this research could be to measure large infrastructures (bridges, tunnels, etc.) with minimal robot motion.
New Insights into IDO Biology in Bacterial and Viral Infections

Initially, indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) has been introduced as a bactericidal effector mechanism and has been linked to T-cell immunosuppression and tolerance. In recent years, evidence has been accumulated that IDO also plays an important role during viral infections including HIV, influenza, and hepatitis B and C. Moreover, novel aspects about the role of IDO in bacterial infections and sepsis have been revealed. Here, we review these recent findings highlighting the central role of IDO and tryptophan metabolism in many major human infections. Moreover, we also shed light on issues concerning human-specific and mouse-specific host–pathogen interactions that need to be considered when studying the biology of IDO in the context of infections.
On the X-Ray Baldwin Effect for Narrow Fe Kα Emission Lines

Most active galactic nuclei (AGNs) exhibit a narrow Fe Kα line at ~6.4 keV in the X-ray spectra, due to the fluorescent emission from cold material far from the inner accretion disk. Using XMM-Newton observations, Page et al. found that the equivalent width (EW) of the narrow Fe Kα line decreases with increasing luminosity (EW ∝ L-0.17±0.08), suggesting a decrease in the covering factor of the material emitting the line (presumably the torus). By combining the archival Chandra HETG observations of 34 type 1 AGNs with XMM observations in the literature, we build a much larger sample with 101 AGNs. We find a similar X-ray Baldwin effect in the sample (EW ∝ L-0.2015±0.0426); however, we note that the anticorrelation is dominated by the radio-loud AGNs in the sample, whose X-ray spectra might be contaminated by the relativistic jet. Excluding the radio-loud AGNs, we find a much weaker anticorrelation (EW ∝ L-0.1019±0.0524). We present Monte Carlo simulations showing that such a weak anticorrelation can be attributed to the relative short timescale variations of the X-ray continuum.
DIURNAL VARIATIONS IN BOUNDARY LAYER WINDS OVER THE SOUTH-CENTRAL UNITED STATES IN SUMMER

Abstract Analysis of 1 week's data in August 1960 shows significant diurnal variations in surface geostrophic wind over the south-central United States. The oscillation in the southerly component (Vg) is driven by the response of the thermal wind to the diurnal temperature cycle over sloping terrain. A smaller oscillation in Ug derives from spatial variations in the amplitude of the diurnal pressure wave. The amplitude of the oscillation in Vg is about 3 to 5 m sec–1 at the surface, decaying exponentially with height to near 0 at 2 km. Examination of 11 yr of summertime rawinsonde data at Fort Worth, Tex. , shows a very regular diurnal variation in boundary layer wind with maximum amplitude of about 3 m sec–1 at 600 m above the ground. This oscillation is forced by periodic variations in both eddy viscosity and geostrophic wind. Using a simplified model of the boundary layer, we obtain solutions for the diurnally periodic wind resulting from “reasonable” variations in eddy viscosity and “observed” variatio.
The Alpha Factor Asset Pricing Model: A Parable

Recent empirical studies use the returns of attribute-sorted portfolios of common stocks as if they represent risk factors in an asset pricing model. If the attributes are chosen following an empirically observed relation to the cross-section of stock returns, such portfolios will appear to be useful risk factors, even when the attributes are completely unrelated to risk. We illustrate this result using a parable and argue that the moral of the story is important in practice.
The Relationship between Body Mass Index and Post-Cessation Weight Gain in the Year after Quitting Smoking: A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction There is wide variability in the amount of weight gained when quitting smoking, but little is known about key predictors of weight gain. We examined the impact of body mass index (BMI) category and sociodemographic variables on post-cessation weight gain. Materials and Methods We utilized National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data from five consecutive cycles of data collection from 2003–2004 to 2011–2012 to estimate post-cessation weight gain by BMI category among recent quitters (n = 654). We analyzed data on their “current weight” and their “past year weight”. We also compared the recent quitters with current smokers, in order to estimate the amount of weight that could be attributed to quitting smoking. Results Recent quitters gained 1.4 kg (95% CI: 0.8 to 2.0), while current smokers had a non-significant weight change (-0.01 kg (95% CI: -0.3 to 0.2). Weight gain was significant for those in the normal weight (3.1 kg, 95% CI: 2.3 to 3.9) and overweight BMI categories (2.2 kg, 95% CI: 1.1 to 3.2). Conclusions BMI category is a key factor in the extent of post-cessation weight gain, with normal and overweight recent quitters gaining significant amounts of weight.
Bridging Class and Field: Field Instructors’ and Liaisons’ Reactions to Information About Students’ Baseline Performance Derived From Simulated Interviews

ABSTRACT To strengthen students’ preparation for engaging in field learning, an innovation was implemented to teach and assess foundation-year students’ performance prior to entering field education. An Objective Structured Clinical Examination informed the final evaluation of students’ performance in two companion courses on practice theory and skills. The evaluation was used by field instructors and students to develop the field learning plan. This article reports on a qualitative study that examined field instructors’ and faculty field liaisons’ experiences and reactions to using this new approach and its impact in shaping students’ field learning goals. Implications for supporting adoption of innovations that strengthen the link between classroom and field teaching are offered, including new institutional policies that resulted from ongoing evaluation.
Identity aspirations, institutional complexity and legitimacy: towards innovation intermediation [Aspirations identitaires, complexité institutionnelle et légitimité : vers l'intermédiation pour l'innovation]

Le processus de concretisation d'une aspiration identitaire dans les environnements complexes restant largement meconnu, les auteurs etudient ici le role de la legitimite dans ledit processus. Cette recherche s'appuie sur une etude de cas comparative de trois centres de culture scientifique, technologique et industrielle (CCSTI) qui partagent une aspiration commune a devenir des intermediaires de l'innovation au sein de leurs territoires. Les resultats montrent que la construction d'une nouvelle identite organisationnelle oblige ces organisations a s'engager dans des activites de legitimation envers leurs parties prenantes. Ils permettent de mieux comprendre la maniere dont les organisations gerent la complexite institutionnelle.
Comparing Apples to Apples: Estimating Consistent Partial Effects of Preferential Economic Integration Agreements

Trade and trade policy such as the membership in preferential economic integration agreements (PEIAs; e.g., customs unions or free-trade areas) are jointly determined by the same factors. Therefore, work on the causal effects of trade policy on trade relies on the selection on observables, with propensity-score matching being the leading example. Conditional on some compact metric (the score) of observable joint determinants of PEIAs and trade flows, the causal average partial effect of PEIAs on trade is obtained from a simple (weighted) mean comparison of trade flows between members and non-members. A key prerequisite for this approach to obtain consistent estimates is that the score is balanced: similarity of country pairs in the score (the propensity of PEIA membership) means similarity in each and everyone of the observables behind it. Otherwise the effect estimates may be biased, and one would mis-ascribe nonparametric effects of differences in individual observables to PEIA membership. We demonstrate that there is a severe upward bias of PEIA effects on trade flows from lack of covariate balancing in real-world data, employ a remedy of this bias through entropy balancing, and quantify the bias for partial as well as general-equilibrium effects.