Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NETWORK EFFECTS AND THE MEASUREMENT OF RETURNS TO SCALE AND DENSITY FOR U.S. RAILROADS. IN: RAILWAYS

Theoretical results found in Mundlak (1978) suggest that the failure to include unobserved network effects in regression analysis can seriously bias estimates of returns to density. This suggests that previous studies, being based on cross section data or very short time series of cross sections, has yielded biased estimates of returns to density but unbiased estimates of returns to scale. To obtain unbiased estimates of returns to density for the rail industry, the present study develops a panel data set consisting of observations on 43 carriers that operated for all or part of the 25-year period from 1951 through 1975. Statistical procedures developed by Mundlak are applied to this data set. Results show substantial increasing returns to density that persist over a larger range of output that has been found in any prior study. In contrast, returns to scale were found to be similar to estimates in prior studies. Application of typical regression procedures to the data fails to show substantial economies of density. This demonstrates the importance of appropriate econometric techniques in measuring returns to density.
URBAN AND RURAL ADOLESCENTS’ BEHAVIORAL REGULATION IN EXERCISE ACCORDING TO BODY WEIGHT STATUS

The purpose of this study was to examine urban and rural adolescents’ behavioral regulation in exercise according to their body weight status. The sample size consisted of 513 adolescents (51.5% males, 48.5% females) aged 15-18 ( M = 16.49 , SD = 1.11) years old and living in urban and rural areas in Turkey. The Turkish version of Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaires-2 was used as a measurement tool for the study. The study demonstrated a significant difference in the sub-domain of amotivation toward exercise between urban and rural groups ( p .05). Our results indicated that urban adolescents were less motivated to do exercise than rural adolescents . OB adolescents living in rural areas had higher amotivation to exercise than NW ones.
Biased Estimation of Adjusted Odds Ratios from Incomplete Covariate Data Due to Violation of the Missing at Random Assumption

We investigate the possible bias due to an erroneous missing at random assumption if adjusted odds ratios are estimated from incomplete covariate data using the maximum likelihood principle. A relation between complete case estimates and maximum likelihood estimates allows us to identify situations where the bias vanishes. Numerical computations demonstrate that the bias is most serious if the degree of the violation of the missing at random assumption depends on the value of the outcome variable or of the observed covariate. Implications for the analysis of prospective and retrospective studies are given.
Renal hemangiopericytoma secondary to refractory hypertension in a child: A case report

Hemangiopericytoma is a rare perivascular tumor that often involves the extremities, pelvis, head and neck, and meninges, but rarely occurs in the kidney. The differentiation from renal cancer prior to surgery is extremely challenging; therefore, almost all cases of renal hemangiopericytoma are diagnosed by pathological examination. The majority of cases are identified in patients between the ages of 20 and 50 years of age, and a considerable proportion of patients exhibit hypertension, hypoglycaemia or additional paraneoplastic syndromes. The current study reports a rare case of renal hemangiopericytoma with drug refractory hypertension in a 14-year-old female. Following the complete resection of the tumor, the patient’s blood pressure returned to normal. No evidence of recurrence or metastasis was observed during a follow-up of 12 months following surgery. The present case indicated that surgery provides satisfactory outcomes and appears to be the most effective modality of treatment for renal hemangiopericytoma. Furthermore, this case also demonstrated that secondary hypertension may also recover following tumor excision.
Managing Tax System Complexity: Building Bridges Through Pre-Filled Tax Returns

Despite being consistently stated as an important characteristic of good tax policy, tax simplicity has largely been ignored in actual tax reform. After so many years and attempts, the goal of tax simplification in Australia appears to be as elusive as ever. The central tenets of this paper are that tax policy simplification is virtually not possible and that tax law simplification has limited benefits. In practice, therefore, it is argued that reduced tax complexity can be achieved mainly through administrative (or procedural) simplification. The paper then focuses on pre-filled income tax returns in Australia as a recent example of administrative simplification. We perceive pre-filling as the government’s attempt to build a further bridge between the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and individual taxpayers, adding to the existing bridges between the ATO and taxpayers and tax practitioners. It is concluded that, at this early stage, the reactive and partial model in use in Australia (compared to Nordic and other initiatives) is a step in the right direction but has not yet led to significant operating cost savings. This may change if the recommendations of the Henry Review are fully accepted and implemented, possibly smoothing the pathway to total automation of tax return preparation.
New Teachers’ Perspectives on Continuing Professional Development: Accountability or Professional Growth?

This article explores new teachers’ views on the purpose and benefits of continuing professional development (CPD) and considers the resulting implications for a national framework. It is based on a study carried out during 1999/2000 in which a sample of new teachers were asked about their perceptions of teacher professionalism and their attitudes to CPD. The study was set within the context of the developing role of the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTC Scotland), although it also has implications for other educational bodies and institutions in Scotland. While the study provided some interesting insights into the views of this particular group, it also highlighted the fact that the new teachers involved had had few opportunities to engage with debate on professionalism and CPD. The article, therefore, concludes that if the post-McCrone education community is to foster a climate of trust, respect and collegiality that encourages talented new recruits to enter and stay in teaching, then access to, and participation in, professional debate must be seen as fundamental aspects of the professional role.
Turning gold into ‘junk’: transposable elements utilize central proteins of cellular networks

The numerous discovered cases of domesticated transposable element (TE) proteins led to the recognition that TEs are a significant source of evolutionary innovation. However, much less is known about the reverse process, whether and to what degree the evolution of TEs is influenced by the genome of their hosts. We addressed this issue by searching for cases of incorporation of host genes into the sequence of TEs and examined the systems-level properties of these genes using the Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Drosophila melanogaster genomes. We identified 51 cases where the evolutionary scenario was the incorporation of a host gene fragment into a TE consensus sequence, and we show that both the yeast and fly homologues of the incorporated protein sequences have central positions in the cellular networks. An analysis of selective pressure (Ka/Ks ratio) detected significant selection in 37% of the cases. Recent research on retrovirus-host interactions shows that virus proteins preferentially target hubs of the host interaction networks enabling them to take over the host cell using only a few proteins. We propose that TEs face a similar evolutionary pressure to evolve proteins with high interacting capacities and take some of the necessary protein domains directly from their hosts.
Role of PPARα in Hepatic Carbohydrate Metabolism

Tight control of storage and synthesis of glucose during nutritional transitions is essential to maintain blood glucose levels, a process in which the liver has a central role. PPARα is the master regulator of lipid metabolism during fasting, but evidence is emerging for a role of PPARα in balancing glucose homeostasis as well. By using PPARα ligands and PPARα −/− mice, several crucial genes were shown to be regulated by PPARα in a direct or indirect way. We here review recent evidence that PPARα contributes to the adaptation of hepatic carbohydrate metabolism during the fed-to-fasted or fasted-to-fed transition in rodents.
Association between Serum Ferritin Levels and Risk of the Metabolic Syndrome in Chinese Adults: A Population Study

Ferritin is a ubiquitous intracellular protein that can store and release iron and act as a buffer against iron deficiency and iron overload. Ferritin is widely used as a clinical biomarker to evaluate iron status. Increased serum ferritin concentrations have been reported to be associated with metabolic syndrome (MetS) features. However, serum ferritin concentrations differ significantly according to sex and ethnicity, and the data concerning the relationship between serum ferritin concentrations and MetS in Asian men and women are conflicting. This study aimed to explore the relationship between serum ferritin and MetS in Chinese population. Fasting blood samples and anthropometric data collected on 8,441 adults aged 18 and older in 2009 as part of the China Health and Nutrition Survey, a large-scale longitudinal, household-based survey in China. Data was collected by trained physicians and biomarkers were measured with Hitachi Clinical Autoanalyzer 7600 D model and P model. Median levels of serum ferritin were significantly higher in men compared with women (121.9 vs. 51.0 ng/ml, P < 0.001), and significantly lower in non metabolic syndrome population with MetS population (73.2 vs. 106.0 ng/ml, P < 0.001). The difference remained significant after further adjusted for age, nationality, Body mass index (BMI), smoking status, and alcohol consumption. For both men and women, the highest prevalence of MetS occurred in the highest quartile of serum ferritin. The odds ratios increased progressively across the ferritin quartiles (P<0.001 for trend). Increased serum ferritin concentrations are associated with the metabolic syndrome among men and women in China.
The Evolution of New Markets

How do markets evolve? Why are some innovations picked up straightaway whilst others take years to be commercialized? Are there first-mover advantages? Why do we behave with 'irrational exuberance' in the early evolution of markets as was the case with the dot.com boom? Paul Geroski is a leading economist who has taught economics to business school students, managers, and executives at the London Business School. In this book he explains in a refreshingly clear style how markets develop. In particular he stresses how the early evolution of markets can significantly shape their later development and structure. His purpose is to show how a good grasp of economics can improve managers' business and investment decisions. Whilst using the development of the Internet as a case in point, Geroski also refers to other sectors and products, for example cars, television, mobile phones, and personal computers. This short book is an ideal introduction for managers, MBA students, and the general reader wanting to understand how markets evolve.
The Radio Lifetime of Supernova Remnants and the Distribution of Pulsar Velocities at Birth

We have made VLA images of the fields around three young pulsars which have resulted in the discovery of two new supernova remnants and confirmation of a third. We argue that, in at least two cases and perhaps the third, the pulsars are physically associated with these supernova remnants. A review of all known young pulsars shows that the majority are associated with supernova remnants. We show that the typical density of the interstellar medium into which the supernova remnants are evolving has a density of 0.2 cm$^{-3}$ instead of the low value of 0.01 cm$^{-3}$ which had been calculated from other studies, and results in a considerably longer radio lifetime for supernova remnants. Both the morphology of the supernova remnants and the location of the pulsars imply that most of these young pulsars are born with large transverse velocities ($\sim$500 km s$^{-1}$). This high velocity mean in the distribution of pulsar velocities appears to be a general property of the pulsar population at birth, not seen in proper motion studies, due to selection effects. We explore the implications of this result as it relates to the origin of these velocities and the galactic distribution of pulsars. High velocity pulsars can escape their supernova remnant in a very short timescale, comparable to the lifetime of the remnant and may even play a role in extending the observable radio lifetime of the remnant. A significant fraction will be capable of escaping the disk of the Galaxy, producing an extended halo population.
Behavioral thermosensitivity after lesions of thalamic target areas of a thermosensory spinothalamic pathway in the cat.

The ability of 17 cats to discriminate floor temperatures 2-4 degrees C below the ambient temperature was tested before and after unilateral electrolytic thalamic lesions. The lesions were made contralateral to the paws showing better performance in the temperature discrimination task. They were aimed at one or more of the three main target areas of thermoreceptive-specific lamina I spinothalamic neurons [i.e., the nucleus submedius, the dorsomedial aspect of the ventral posterior medial nucleus, and the ventral aspect of the basal ventral medial nucleus (vVMb)], following microelectrode mapping of somatosensory thalamus. The thermosensory consequences of each lesion were measured in postoperative testing, beginning 6-8 days after the final preoperative test session. A mild but definite thermosensory deficiency was found in five cats, in which the response behavior on the contralateral side was reduced below the 69% criterion level for several sessions. Histological analysis indicated that these cats differed only by the inclusion in the lesion of all or part of vVMb. Consequently this area appears to be important for cats' thermosensory behavior. Nevertheless even large lesions of virtually all of the thermoreceptive lamina I spinothalamic projection areas produced only this mild thermosensory deficit in stark contrast with the massive defect observed previously after spinal lesions of the middle of the lateral funiculus, where lamina I axons ascend. Accordingly such spinal lesions were added at the C(4) level, on the same side as the thalamic lesions, in six cats 3 mo after the thalamic surgery. These lesions caused severe contralateral defects (i.e., chance level performance). Thus the present findings are taken to indicate that contralateral ascending projections to vVMb in the thalamus participate in cats' thermosensory discrimination but that ascending projections to the brain stem must play an important role in their behavioral thermosensitivity.
Motion matters: a novel framework for compressing surveillance videos

Currently, video surveillance plays a very important role in the fields of public safety and security. For storing the videos that usually contain extremely long sequences, it requires huge space. Video compression techniques can be used to release the storage load to some extent, such as H.264/AVC. However, the existing codecs are not sufficiently effective and efficient for encoding surveillance videos as they do not specifically consider the characteristic of surveillance videos, i.e. the background of surveillance video has intensive redundancy. This paper introduces a novel framework for compressing such videos. We first train a background dictionary based on a small number of observed frames. With the trained background dictionary, we then separate every frame into the background and motion (foreground), and store the compressed motion together with the reconstruction coefficient of the background corresponding to the background dictionary. The decoding is carried out on the encoded frame in an inverse procedure. The experimental results on extensive surveillance videos demonstrate that our proposed method significantly reduces the size of videos while gains much higher PSNR compared to the state of the art codecs.
Collect, compare, and score: a generic data-driven anomaly detection method for buildings

Buildings are one of the largest energy consumers around the world. Several studies show that degraded and misćonfigured devices waste upto 30% of energy in commercial buildings. In this paper, we propose Collect, Compare, and Score (CCS), a generic anomaly detection method that can be used across buildings following different energy usage patterns. CCS is a density based approach. We evaluate CCS using a real-world dataset, consisting of 16 weeks of data from commercial and residential buildings. We find average Area Under Curve (AUC) value of 0.92 for CSS and 0.78 for baseline method.
The Effect of Air Pollution on Mortality in China: Evidence from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

By exploiting exogenous variations in air quality during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, we estimate the effect of air pollution on mortality in China. We find that a 10 percent decrease in PM10 concentrations reduces the monthly standardized all-cause mortality rate by 8 percent. Men and women are equally susceptible to air pollution risks. The age groups for which the air pollution effects are greatest are children under 10 years old and the elderly.
Taper junction failure in large-diameter metal-on-metal bearings

Objectives An ongoing prospective study to investigate failing metal-on-metal hip prostheses was commenced at our centre in 2008. We report on the results of the analysis of the first consecutive 126 failed mated total hip prostheses from a single manufacturer. Methods Analysis was carried out using highly accurate coordinate measuring to calculate volumetric and linear rates of the articular bearing surfaces and also the surfaces of the taper junctions. The relationship between taper wear rates and a number of variables, including bearing diameter and orientation of the acetabular component, was investigated. Results The measured rates of wear and distribution of material loss from the taper surfaces appeared to show that the primary factor leading to taper failure is the increased lever arm acting on this junction in contemporary large-diameter metal-on-metal hip replacements. Conclusions Our analysis suggests that varus stems, laterally engaging taper systems and larger head diameters all contribute to taper failure.
Automatic Recognition of Fetal Facial Standard Plane in Ultrasound Image via Fisher Vector

Acquisition of the standard plane is the prerequisite of biometric measurement and diagnosis during the ultrasound (US) examination. In this paper, a new algorithm is developed for the automatic recognition of the fetal facial standard planes (FFSPs) such as the axial, coronal, and sagittal planes. Specifically, densely sampled root scale invariant feature transform (RootSIFT) features are extracted and then encoded by Fisher vector (FV). The Fisher network with multi-layer design is also developed to extract spatial information to boost the classification performance. Finally, automatic recognition of the FFSPs is implemented by support vector machine (SVM) classifier based on the stochastic dual coordinate ascent (SDCA) algorithm. Experimental results using our dataset demonstrate that the proposed method achieves an accuracy of 93.27% and a mean average precision (mAP) of 99.19% in recognizing different FFSPs. Furthermore, the comparative analyses reveal the superiority of the proposed method based on FV over the traditional methods.
ICT Investment and Economic Growth in the 1990s: Is the United States a Unique Case? A Comparative Study of Nine OECD Countries

Investment in information technologies has by no means been confined to the United States and yet, average European or Japanese growth experience has been quite different. The paper compares the impact of ICT capital accumulation on output growth in Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The analysis uses a newly compiled database of investment in ICT equipment and software based on the System of National Accounts 1993 (SNA93). Over the past two decades, ICT contributed between 0.2 and 0.5 percentage points per year to economic growth, depending on the country. During the second half of the 1990s, this contribution rose to 0.3 to 0.9 percentage points per year. The paper shows that, despite differences between countries, the United States has not been alone in benefiting from the positive effects of ICT capital investment on economic growth nor was the United States the sole country to experience an acceleration of these . Investissement en TIC et croissance economique dans les annees 1990 : Les Etats-Unis represent-ils un cas unique ? Une comparaison de neuf pays membres de l'OCDE L’investissement dans les technologies de l’information n’a pas ete confine aux Etats-Unis, toutefois la croissance en Europe et au Japon est assez different. On trouvera dans ce papier une comparaison de l'incidence de l'accumulation de capital de TIC sur la performance economique en Allemagne, en Australie, au Canada, aux Etats-Unis, en Finlande, en France, en Italie, au Japon et au Rouyame-Uni. Cette etude fait usage d’une nouvelle base de donnees sur l'investissement en logiciel et en equipement de TIC, fondee sur le Systeme de comptabilite nationale de 1993 (SCN 93). Au cours des 20 dernieres annees, les TIC ont contribue a la croissance economique entre 0.2 et 0.5 point de pourcentage par an, selon le pays. Au cours des 5 dernieres annees (1995-2000), cette contribution a atteint des valeurs annuelles comprises entre 0.3 et 0.9 point. On montre que, malgre les differences qui existent entre les pays, les Etats-Unis n’ont pas ete les seuls a beneficier de l'incidence positive .
Effect of Nicotine on the Coronary Blood Flow and Related Circulatory Parameters: CORRELATIVE STUDY IN NORMAL DOGS AND DOGS WITH CORONARY INSUFFICIENCY

The effect of intravenously administered nicotine (20 μg./Kg./min.) on the coronary blood flow and related hemodynamic parameters was studied in the normal intact dog and in the dog with chronic coronary insufficiency as produced either by coronary artery ligation or gradual coronary artery narrowing. Nicotine increases cardiac work markedly by an increase in the mean arterial blood pressure and cardiac output. The degree of this increase is similar in normal dogs arid dogs with chronic coronary insufficiency. The mean control coronary blood flow was moderately decreased in dogs with coronary artery ligation and markedly decreased in dogs with narrowing of the two main branches of the left coronaryatery. Nicotine produced an increase in coronary blood flow which in normal dogs was observed to be as high as 125 per cent on an average over the control value. The average increase was consider ably less in dogs with ligation of one coronary artery branch (82.5 per cent) and in dogs with narrowing of two main branches (83.3 per cent). The degree of coronary narrowing and/or occlusion was directly related to the response of the coronary flow; the greater the coronary impairment, the smaller was the increment in corollary blood flow frequently dropped below the control value in the postinfusion period, Coronary vascular resistance and myocardial oxygen utilization declined during the event of nicotine administration. The response of the coronary blood flow to nicotine resembled that of anoxemia in the presence of coronary insufficiency. These findings would appear to have a bearing on the clinical problem relative to the effect of nicotine in the human subject with coronary artery disease.