Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ESTIMATING EULER EQUATIONS Orazio Attanasio Hamish Low THE INSTITUTE FOR FISCAL STUDIES WP 02 / 06

Executive Summary In this paper we consider conditions under which the estimation of a log-linearized Euler equation for consumption yields consistent estimates of preference parameters. When utility is isoelastic and a sample covering a long time period is available, consistent estimates are obtained from the log-linearized Euler equation when the innovations to the conditional variance of consumption growth are uncorrelated with the instruments typically used in estimation. We perform a Montecarlo experiment, consisting in solving and simulating a simple life cycle model under uncertainty, and show that in most situations, the estimates obtained from the log-linearized equation are not systematically biased. This is true even when we introduce heteroscedasticity in the process generating income. The only exception is when discount rates are very high (e.g. 47% per year). This problem arises because consumers are nearly always close to the maximum borrowing limit: the estimation bias is unrelated to the linearization and estimates using nonlinear GMM are as bad. Across all our situations, estimation using a log-linearized Euler equation does better than nonlinear GMM despite the absence of measurement error. Finally, we plot life cycle profiles for the variance of consumption growth, which, except when the discount factor is very high, is remarkably flat. This implies that claims that demographic variables in log-linearized Euler equations capture changes in the variance of consumption growth are unwarranted.
Invariant natural killer T cells suppress the neutrophil inflammatory response in a mouse model of cholestatic liver damage.

BACKGROUND & AIMS NK1.1(+) TCRalphabeta(int) CD1-restricted T (NKT) cells are a unique subset of T lymphocytes that are believed to have an immunoregulatory role in a wide range of diseases. Most mouse NKT cells express a T-cell receptor that contains an invariant Valpha14Jalpha18 chain and recognizes antigenic glycolipids presented in association with major histocompatibility complex class Ib (CD1d) molecules. These invariant NKT (iNKT) cells have been implicated in cholestatic liver injury. METHODS We examined the role of iNKT cells in liver injury associated with biliary obstruction in mice with ligations of the common bile duct. RESULTS The number of activated iNKT cells increased markedly in the livers of mice following bile duct ligation. Plasma alanine aminotransferase levels, an indicator of liver injury, were significantly higher in iNKT cell-deficient (Jalpha18(-/-)) mice compared with wild-type mice following bile duct ligation. Photo image analysis of histologic sections confirmed that more damage was present in the livers of Jalpha18(-/-) mice; liver damage correlated with increases in keratinocyte-derived chemokine (KC) and macrophage inflammatory protein-2 (MIP-2) production as well as neutrophil sequestration. Liver injury was significantly reduced in Jalpha18(-/-) mice treated with anti-KC and anti-MIP-2 or rendered neutrophil deficient before bile duct ligation. Similarly, Jalpha18(-/-) mice that were injected with iNKT cells before bile duct ligation exhibited significant decreases in neutrophil accumulation and liver damage. CONCLUSIONS These data document the role of iNKT cells in suppressing the neutrophil proinflammatory response and neutrophil-dependent cholestatic liver damage.
Evaluation of a Wearable Physiological Status Monitor During Simulated Fire Fighting Activities

A physiological status monitor (PSM) has been embedded in a fire-resistant shirt. The purpose of this research study was to examine the ability of the PSM-shirt to accurately detect heart rate (HR) and respiratory rate (RR) when worn under structural fire fighting personal protective equipment (PPE) during the performance of various activities relevant to fire fighting. Eleven healthy, college-aged men completed three activities (walking, searching/crawling, and ascending/descending stairs) that are routinely performed during fire fighting operations while wearing the PSM-shirt under structural fire fighting PPE. Heart rate and RR recorded by the PSM-shirt were compared to criterion values measured concurrently with an ECG and portable metabolic measurement system, respectively. For all activities combined (overall) and for each activity, small differences were found between the PSM-shirt and ECG (mean difference [95%CI]: overall: −0.4 beats/min [−0.8, −0.1]; treadmill: −0.4 beats/min [−0.7, −0.1]; search: −1.7 beats/min [−3.1, −.04]; stairs: 0.4 beats/min [0.04, 0.7]). Standard error of the estimate was 3.5 beats/min for all tasks combined and 1.9, 5.9, and 1.9 beats/min for the treadmill walk, search, and stair ascent/descent, respectively. Correlations between the PSM-shirt and criterion heart rates were high (r = 0.95 to r = 0.99). The mean difference between RR recorded by the PSM-shirt and criterion overall was 1.1 breaths/min (95%CI: −1.9 to −0.4). The standard error of the estimate for RR ranged from 4.2 breaths/min (treadmill) to 8.2 breaths/min (search), with an overall value of 6.2 breaths/min. These findings suggest that the PSM-shirt provides valid measures of HR and useful approximations of RR when worn during fire fighting duties.
Relationship between residual stress and strength of single lap joints made of Ti6Al4V alloy, adhesively bonded and treated using pneumatic ball peening

Abstract The possibility of improving the strength of single lap joints (SLJs) made of Ti6Al4V alloys and adhesively bonded using Araldite 2014-1 with the help of pneumatic ball peening was investigated. The effects of pneumatic ball peening conditions on the joint strength and residual stress of the plates were determined using mathematical models, i.e. second-degree polynomials. A clear correlation was observed between the joint strength and the post-machining residual stress. Moreover, the stress values could be controlled. Pneumatic ball peening was found to be an easy and effective method for improving the joint strength (up to 57%) of SLJs.
Peer Pressure, Psychological Distress and the Urge to Smoke

Background: Psychology and addiction research have found that cigarette smokers react with subjective and automatic responses to stimuli associated with smoking. This study examines the association between the number of cigarettes smokers consume per month and their response to cues derived from peer and psychological distress. Methods: We studied 1,220 adult past and current smokers drawn from a national face-to-face interview survey administered in 2004. We defined two types of cues possibly triggering a smoker to have a cigarette: peer cues and psychological cues. We used ordinary least square linear regressions to analyze smoking amount and response to peer and psychological distress cues. Results: We found a positive association between amount smoked and cue response: peer cues (1.06, 95%CI: 0.74–1.38) and psychological cues (0.44, 95%CI = 0.17–0.70). Response to psychological cues was lower among male smokers (−1.62, 95%CI = −2.26–−0.98), but response to psychological cues were higher among those who had senior high school level educations (0.96, 95%CI = 0.40–1.53) and who began smoking as a response to their moods (1.25, 95%CI = 0.68–1.82). Conclusions: These results suggest that both peer cues and psychological cues increase the possibility of contingent smoking, and should, therefore, be addressed by anti-smoking policies and anti-smoking programs. More specifically, special attention can be paid to help smokers avoid or counter social pressure to smoke and to help smokers resist the use of cigarettes to relieve distress.
Depressive Symptoms and Increased Visceral Fat in Middle-Aged Women

Objective: To examine whether depressive symptoms are differentially associated with visceral adipose tissue (VAT), which is more metabolically active and confers greater cardiovascular risk than subcutaneous fat (SAT). Prior research has shown an association between depression and central adiposity. Mechanisms underlying the association between depression and increased cardiovascular risk remain poorly understood. Central adiposity is one potential pathway. Methods: We investigated the cross-sectional association between depressive symptoms, assessed by the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and VAT and SAT, assessed by computed tomography, in a sample of 409 middle-aged women (44.7% African-Americans, 55.3% Whites; mean age = 50.4 years) participating in the Chicago site of the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN). Results: With adjustments for age, race, total percent fat, and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), each 1-point higher score on the CES-D was associated with 1.03-cm2 greater VAT (p < .001). Women with a CES-D score of ≥16, indicative of clinically relevant depressive symptomatology, had 24.5% more VAT than women with lower CES-D scores (p < .001). Further adjustment for Framingham Risk Score and physical activity did not alter the findings, and associations did not vary by race. Associations were strongest in obese and overweight women. Depressive symptoms were unrelated to SAT. Conclusions: Increased visceral fat may be one pathway by which depression contributes to excess risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Further research is needed to examine whether depressive symptoms influence accumulation of VAT over time. BMI = body mass index; CES-D = Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale; CT = computed tomography; CVD = cardiovascular disease; DXA = dual energy x-ray absorptiometry; FRS = Framingham Risk Score; Health ABC = Dynamics of Health, Aging and Body Composition; HDL-C = high-density lipoprotein cholesterol; HPA = hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal; KPAS = Kaiser Physical Activity Survey; SAT = subcutaneous adipose tissue; SHBG = sex hormone binding globulin; SWAN = Study of Women's Health Across the Nation; VAT = visceral adipose tissue.
EXISTENCE OF NONNEGATIVE SOLUTIONS TO POSITONE-TYPE PROBLEMS IN RN WITH INDEFINITE WEIGHTS

We study the existence of a nonnegative solution to the following problem in RN , N ≥ 3, in both the radial as well as in the non-radial case with an indefinite weight function a(x): −∆u = λa(x)f (u) u(x) → 0 as |x| → ∞. The nonlinearity f above is of “positone” type; i.e., f is monotone increasing with f (0) > 0. We show the existence of a nonnegative solution to the above problem for λ > 0 small enough. We also prove the existence of a nonnegative solution to the above problem in exterior as well as in annular domains. Motivated by the scalar equation, we further extend these results to the case of coupled system. Our proof involves the method of monotone iteration applied to the integral equation corresponding to the problem.
Pattern of brain blood perfusion in tinnitus patients using technetium-99m SPECT imaging

Background and Purpose: Tinnitus is associated with an increased activity in central auditory system as demonstrated by neuroimaging studies. Brain perfusion scanning using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) was done to understand the pattern of brain blood perfusion of tinnitus subjects and find the areas which are mostly abnormal in these patients. Materials and Methods: A number of 122 patients with tinnitus were enrolled to this cross-sectional study. They underwent SPECT and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of brain, and the images were fused to find the regions with abnormal perfusion. Results: SPECT scan results were abnormal in 101 patients (83%). Most patients had bilateral abnormal perfusion (N = 65, 53.3%), and most subjects had abnormality in middle-temporal gyrus (N = 83, 68%) and temporoparietal cortex (N = 46, 37.7%). Patients with multifocal involvement had the least mean age than other 2 groups (patients with no abnormality and unifocal abnormality) (P value = 0.045). Conclusions: Brain blood perfusion pattern differs in patient with tinnitus than others. These patients have brain perfusion abnormality, mostly in auditory gyrus (middle temporal) and associative cortex (temporoparietal cortex). Multifocal abnormalities might be due to more cognitive and emotional brain centers involvement due to tinnitus or more stress and anxiety of tinnitus in the young patients.
Dual Task Impairments in Vascular Dementia

Several studies have shown that people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) demonstrate difficulties in doing two things at once or 'dual-tasking' and that this dual task impairment is insensitive to normal ageing, chronic depression or prodromal conditions like Mild Cognitive Impairment. It is not known, however, if this impairment is specific to AD, or also present in other dementias, such as vascular dementia (VaD). In this study 15 people with VaD, 25 healthy age-matched and 25 healthy young controls were assessed using a paper and pencil dual tasking paradigm and several measures of working and episodic memory. Age had no effect on dual task performance, but the VaD patients demonstrated a significant impairment in dual tasking ability. Performance on the memory measures was instead affected by age with a further deterioration in the VaD patients. Both dual tasking and memory ability were significantly correlated with disease severity, as assessed by the MMSE. These results indicate that performance on the dual task could be a specific indicator of pathological ageing.
Nuclear factor kappa B subunit p50 promotes melanoma angiogenesis by upregulating interleukin‐6 expression

Nuclear factor kappa B (NF‐κB) signaling is deregulated in many tumor types, resulting in aberrant expression and/or activation of NF‐κB transcriptional complexes. We have previously reported that nuclear expression of the NF‐κB subunit p50 is strongly correlated with melanoma progression and poor 5‐year patient survival. In this study, we used cDNA microarray to analyze the gene expression profiles of melanoma cells overexpressing NF‐κB p50. We found that NF‐κB p50 expression strongly induced interleukin‐6 (IL‐6) upregulation in melanoma cells at both the transcriptional and translational levels and that IL‐6 production by melanoma cells enhanced the growth of endothelial cells in vitro. Expression of activating transcription factor 3 (ATF3), a negative regulator of IL‐6 gene transcription, inhibited p50‐mediated IL‐6 upregulation. Knockdown of p50 expression using lentiviral‐based shRNA abrogated IL‐6 induction in melanoma cells and inhibited its effects on endothelial cell growth. Finally, we used an in vivo matrigel plug assay to show that NF‐κB p50 overexpression promotes angiogenesis, while silencing NF‐κB p50 inhibits blood vessel formation. Our results demonstrate for the first time that the NF‐κB p50 subunit mediates melanoma angiogenesis by specifically upregulating IL‐6, highlighting a novel and important role for the NF‐κB p50/IL‐6 signaling axis in melanoma progression. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Effects on Physical Health of a Multicomponent Programme for Overweight and Obesity for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities.

BACKGROUND Overweight and obesity are major health risk factors in people with intellectual disabilities. The aim of this study was to test the effectiveness of a multicomponent programme (physical activity, diet and motivation) for overweight and obesity in adults with intellectual disabilities. MATERIAL AND METHODS A quasi-experimental design with repeated-measures and non-equivalent control group (n = 33, n = 31) was used. The programme was conducted over 17 weeks, with follow-up at 6 months in a sample of Spanish adults with a mild and moderate intellectual disability from a community occupational day centre, aged from 23 to 50, 40.6% of which were women. RESULTS A significant reduction in weight and diastolic blood pressure was obtained over time, and this reduction was maintained in the follow-up for weight. Reduction in heart rate was only marginally significant. CONCLUSIONS The treatment was effective in reducing overweight and obesity, improving cardiovascular capacity and therefore the physical health of the participants.
Modeling the Internet and theWeb Probabilistic Methods and Algorithms

4 Text Analysis Having focused in earlier chapters on the general structure of the Web, in this chapter we will discuss in some detail techniques for analyzing the textual content of individual Web pages. The techniques presented here have been developed within the fields of information retrieval (IR) and machine learning and include indexing, scoring, and categorization of textual documents. The focus of IR is that of accessing as efficiently as possible and as accurately as possible a small subset of documents that is maximally related to some user interest. User interest can be expressed for example by a query specified by the user. Retrieval includes two separate subproblems: indexing the collection of documents in order to improve the computational efficiency of access, and ranking documents according to some importance criterion in order to improve accuracy. Categoriza-tion or classification of documents is another useful technique, somewhat related to information retrieval, that consists of assigning a document to one or more predefined categories. A classifier can be used, for example, to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant documents (where the relevance can be personalized for a particular user or group of users), or to help in the semiautomatic construction of large Web-based knowledge bases or hierarchical directories of topics like the Open Directory (http://dmoz.org/). A vast portion of the Web consists of text documents – thus, methods for automatically analyzing text have great importance in the context of the Web. Of course, retrieval and classification methods for text, such as those reviewed in this chapter can be specialized or modified for other types of Web documents such as images, audio or video (see, for example, Del Bimbo 1999), but our focus in this chapter will be on text. In order to retrieve text documents efficiently it is necessary to enrich the collection with specialized data structures that facilitate access to documents in response to A manufacturer, importer, or seller of digital media devices may not (1) sell, or offer for sale, in interstate commerce, or (2) cause to be transported in, or in a manner affecting, interstate commerce, a digital media device unless the device includes and utilizes standard security technologies that adhere to the security system standards. Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford …
Biomedical applications of nisin

Nisin is a bacteriocin produced by a group of Gram‐positive bacteria that belongs to Lactococcus and Streptococcus species. Nisin is classified as a Type A (I) lantibiotic that is synthesized from mRNA and the translated peptide contains several unusual amino acids due to post‐translational modifications. Over the past few decades, nisin has been used widely as a food biopreservative. Since then, many natural and genetically modified variants of nisin have been identified and studied for their unique antimicrobial properties. Nisin is FDA approved and generally regarded as a safe peptide with recognized potential for clinical use. Over the past two decades the application of nisin has been extended to biomedical fields. Studies have reported that nisin can prevent the growth of drug‐resistant bacterial strains, such as methicillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Enterococci and Clostridium difficile. Nisin has now been shown to have antimicrobial activity against both Gram‐positive and Gram‐negative disease‐associated pathogens. Nisin has been reported to have anti‐biofilm properties and can work synergistically in combination with conventional therapeutic drugs. In addition, like host‐defence peptides, nisin may activate the adaptive immune response and have an immunomodulatory role. Increasing evidence indicates that nisin can influence the growth of tumours and exhibit selective cytotoxicity towards cancer cells. Collectively, the application of nisin has advanced beyond its role as a food biopreservative. Thus, this review will describe and compare studies on nisin and provide insight into its future biomedical applications.
Coronary artery wall imaging in mice using osmium tetroxide and micro‐computed tomography (micro‐CT)

The high spatial resolution of micro‐computed tomography (micro‐CT) is ideal for 3D imaging of coronary arteries in intact mouse heart specimens. Previously, micro‐CT of mouse heart specimens utilized intravascular contrast agents that hardened within the vessel lumen and allowed a vascular cast to be made. However, for mouse coronary artery disease models, it is highly desirable to image coronary artery walls and highlight plaques. For this purpose, we describe an ex vivo contrast‐enhanced micro‐CT imaging technique based on tissue staining with osmium tetroxide (OsO4) solution. As a tissue‐staining contrast agent, OsO4 is retained in the vessel wall and surrounding tissue during the fixation process and cleared from the vessel lumens. Its high X‐ray attenuation makes the artery wall visible in CT. Additionally, since OsO4 preferentially binds to lipids, it highlights lipid deposition in the artery wall. We performed micro‐CT of heart specimens of 5‐ to 25‐week‐old C57BL/6 wild‐type mice and 5‐ to 13‐week‐old apolipoprotein E knockout (apoE−/−) mice at 10 μm resolution. The results show that walls of coronary arteries as small as 45 μm in diameter are visible using a table‐top micro‐CT scanner. Similar image clarity was achieved with 1/2000th the scan time using a synchrotron CT scanner. In 13‐week‐old apoE mice, lipid‐rich plaques are visible in the aorta. Our study shows that the combination of OsO4 and micro‐CT permits the visualization of the coronary artery wall in intact mouse hearts.
Computational Aspects of Quasi-Classical Entailment

Quasi-classical logic is a propositional logic for reasoning under inconsistency pointed out recently in the literature [3] [21]. Compared with several other paraconsistent logics, it has the nice feature that no special attention needs to be paid to a special form of premises (the connectives behave in a classical manner). However, only few is known about its computational behaviour up to now. In this paper, we fill this gap by pointing out a linear time translation that maps every instance of the quasi-classical entailment problem for CNF formulas into an instance of the classical entailment problem. This enables us to (1) show that quasi-classical entailment for CNF formulas is “only” coNP -complete, (2) take advantage of all existing automated reasoning techniques for classical entailment in order to improve quasi-classical inference from the practical side. Especially, tractable classes of formulas for quasi-classical entailment are pointed out.
Trust from the past: Bayesian Personalized Ranking based Link Prediction in Knowledge Graphs

Estimating the confidence for a link is a critical task for Knowledge Graph construction. Link prediction, or predicting the likelihood of a link in a knowledge graph based on prior state is a key research direction within this area. We propose a Latent Feature Embedding based link recommendation model for prediction task and utilize Bayesian Personalized Ranking based optimization technique for learning models for each predicate. Experimental results on large-scale knowledge bases such as YAGO2 show that our approach achieves substantially higher performance than several state-of-art approaches. Furthermore, we also study the performance of the link prediction algorithm in terms of topological properties of the Knowledge Graph and present a linear regression model to reason about its expected level of accuracy.