Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SPECIFICATION TEST FOR MISSING FUNCTIONAL DATA

Economic data are frequently generated by stochastic processes that can be modeled as realizations of random functions (functional data). This paper adapts the specification test for functional data developed by Bugni, Hall, Horowitz, and Neumann (2009, Econometrics Journal12, S1–S18) to the presence of missing observations. By using a worst case scenario approach, our method is able to extract the information available in the observed portion of the data while being agnostic about the nature of the missing observations. The presence of missing data implies that our test will not only result in the rejection or lack of rejection of the null hypothesis, but it may also be inconclusive. Under the null hypothesis, our specification test will reject the null hypothesis with a probability that, in the limit, does not exceed the significance level of the test. Moreover, the power of the test converges to one whenever the distribution of the observations conveys that the null hypothesis is false. Monte Carlo evidence shows that the test may produce informative results (either rejection or lack of rejection of the null hypothesis) even under the presence of significant amounts of missing data. The procedure is illustrated by testing whether the Burdett–Mortensen labor market model is the correct framework for wage paths constructed from the National Longitudinal Survery of Youth, 1979 survey.
Improved clinical outcome after intracoronary administration of bone-marrow-derived progenitor cells in acute myocardial infarction: final 1-year results of the REPAIR-AMI trial.

AIMS To investigate the clinical outcome after intracoronary administration of autologous progenitor cells in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). METHODS AND RESULTS Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled multicentre trial design, we randomized 204 patients with successfully reperfused AMI to receive intracoronary infusion of bone-marrow-derived progenitor cells (BMCs) or placebo medium into the infarct artery 3-7 days after successful infarct reperfusion therapy. At 12 months, the pre-specified cumulative endpoint of death, myocardial infarction, or necessity for revascularization was significantly reduced in the BMC group compared with placebo (P=0.009). Likewise, the combined endpoint death, recurrence of myocardial infarction, and rehospitalization for heart failure was significantly (P=0.006) reduced in patients receiving intracoronary BMC administration. Intracoronary administration of BMC remained a significant predictor of a favourable clinical outcome by Cox regression analysis, adjusting for classical predictors of poor outcome after AMI. CONCLUSION Intracoronary administration of BMCs is associated with a significant reduction of the occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events after AMI. Large-scale studies are warranted to confirm the effects of BMC administration on mortality and morbidity in patients with AMIs.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization You Cannot Gamble on Others: Dissociable Systems for Strategic Uncertainty and Risk in the Brain

This paper tests whether strategic uncertainty employs circuits in the brain that encode risk and utility, or circuits that are involved in Theory of Mind (ToM). We compare participants' decisions in a stag-hunt game with an equivalent choice between Bernoulli lotteries where the probabilities are equal to the mixed Nash equilibrium of the stag hunt game. Behavioral data suggests that most participants are more willing to choose the payoff-dominant option in a stag-hunt game than the equivalent lottery. Neuroimaging shows that activations in the regions of the brain commonly associated with ToM are correlated with a participant's propensity to choose payoff dominant. This suggests that individuals who mentalize the other person are more likely to be cooperative than those who do not.
Taxes and Trading Versus Intensity Standards: Second-Best Environmental Policies with Incomplete Regulation (Leakage) or Market Power

This paper investigates whether an emissions tax (equivalent to an emissions cap) is the best policy in the presence of incomplete regulation (leakage) or market power by analyzing an intensity standard regulating emissions per unit of output. With no other market failures, an intensity standard is indeed inferior, although combining it with a consumption tax eliminates this inferiority. For incomplete regulation, I show that under certain conditions an intensity standard can dominate any emissions tax (including the optimal emissions tax). This dominance persists even with the addition of a consumption tax, which ameliorates output distortions and can sometimes help the intensity standard attain the first best (when an emissions tax/consumption tax combination cannot). Comparing intensity standards to output-based updating shows that the latter dominates because of its additional flexibility. Finally, I show that with market power an intensity standard can dominate the optimal emissions tax. The intuition of these results is relatively straightforward. The weakness of an intensity standard is that it relies more on substitution effects than output effects to reduce emissions. With incomplete regulation or market power, this disadvantage may be helpful since leakage may offset gains from reducing output and since market power already inefficiently reduces output.
Distributed under Creative Commons Cc-by 4.0 the Origin of Widespread Species in a Poor Dispersing Lineage (diving Beetle Genus Deronectes)

In most lineages, most species have restricted geographic ranges, with only few reaching widespread distributions. How these widespread species reached their current ranges is an intriguing biogeographic and evolutionary question, especially in groups known to be poor dispersers. We reconstructed the biogeographic and temporal origin of the widespread species in a lineage with particularly poor dispersal capabilities, the diving beetle genus Deronectes (Dytiscidae). Most of the ca. 60 described species of Deronectes have narrow ranges in the Mediterranean area, with only four species with widespread European distributions. We sequenced four mitochondrial and two nuclear genes of 297 specimens of 109 different populations covering the entire distribution of the four lineages of Deronectes, including widespread species. Using Bayesian probabilities with an a priori evolutionary rate, we performed (1) a global phylogeny/phylogeography to estimate the relationships of the main lineages within each group and root them, and (2) demographic analyses of the best population coalescent model for each species group, including a reconstruction of the geographical history estimated from the distribution of the sampled localities. We also selected 56 specimens to test for the presence of Wolbachia, a maternally transmitted parasite that can alter the patterns of mtDNA variability. All species of the four studied groups originated in the southern Mediterranean peninsulas and were estimated to be of Pleistocene origin. In three of the four widespread species, the central and northern European populations were nested within those in the northern areas of the Anatolian, Balkan and Iberian peninsulas respectively, suggesting a range expansion at the edge of the southern refugia. In the Mediterranean peninsulas the widespread European species were replaced by vicariant taxa of recent origin. The fourth species (D. moestus) was proven to be a composite of unrecognised lineages with more restricted distributions around the Western and Central Mediterranean. The analysis of Wolbachia showed a high prevalence of infection among Deronectes, especially in the D. aubei group, where all sequenced populations were infected with the only exception of the Cantabrian Mountains, the westernmost area of distribution of the lineage. In this group there was a phylogenetic incongruence between the mitochondrial and the nuclear sequence, although no clear pattern links this discordance to the Wolbachia infection. Our results suggest that, in different glacial cycles, populations that happened to be at the edge of the newly deglaciated areas took advantage of the optimal ecological conditions to expand their ranges to central and northern …
Changes in Vegetation Proprieties under Short- and Long-Term Protection in North African Arid Land

The objective of this study was to quantify the effects of protection on herbaceous species composition, total plant cover, dry matter, plant density, floristic richness and diversity. Characteristics of vegetation under continued grazing and protected area for 10 and 65 years were examined in a degraded arid environment in South Tunisia. Our results show that protection enhances significantly (two times) different vegetation parameters. However, long-term protection was found to reduce biomass production, plant density and floristic diversity. Some palatable species such as Stipagrostis ciliata, Helianthemum sessiliflorum, Eragrostis papposa, Echiochilon fruticosum and Cenchrus ciliaris were frequently found in the protected sites. In the grazed site, these species were being replaced by less desirable species: Astragalus armarus, Peganum harmala and Artemisia compestris. This emphasized the importance of conservation stocking rates and proper pasture management.
Beauty in the Eye of the Holder: The Contribution of Body Appreciation to Sexual Health in Adult Women

Risk and protective factors are equally important to the promotion of sexual health. Yet, in body image and sexuality research, most of the focus has been placed on the deleterious effects of body dissatisfaction and body mass index (BMI) at the expense of more positive dimensions. Furthermore, although age can affect appearance and sexual function, little is known regarding the experience of older women. This study was aimed at comparing how positive body image (operationalized as body appreciation) and negative body image (operationalized as body dissatisfaction) each contribute to indicators of sexual health when controlling for BMI in a sample of age-varied women. Cross-sectional data were collected online from 215 heterosexual women aged 18 to 88. Results revealed that body appreciation contributes to sexual function, satisfaction, and distress, above and beyond the effect of BMI and body dissatisfaction. Body appreciation was not found to fluctuate with age. Further, body appreciation moderated the relationship between age and sexual satisfaction, but not sexual distress. Post hoc analyses revealed that high body appreciation serves as a buffer against age-related changes of sexual satisfaction only in women with clinically significant sexual function difficulties. Increasing body appreciation may be a promising clinical intervention in the treatment of sexual problems in older adult women.
Data Mining Pathogen Genomes Using GeneOrder and CoreGenes: Gene Order, Synteny, and Proteomes

- Genome sequence databases are growing at an exponential rate due to the “next generation” DNA analyzers. These include determining multiple sequences of serovars of previously sequenced organisms, particularly ones of consequence to human health and epidemics. The applications of these sequence data are limited by the tools available to mine them, particularly user-friendly tools that are available to the bench researcher. GeneOrder and CoreGenes are two web-based on-the-fly whole genome tools that can be used to examine gene order and synteny, as well as to catalog proteomes for comparative genomics. A new version of GeneOrder allows and expedites the analysis of genomes ranging up to 4 megabases. Many bacterial pathogens are of this genomic size; for example, validation of this version of the tool is provided by its application to E. coli serovars K12 and O157:H7. The original version already allows the analysis of virus-sized genomes and small bacterial genomes. Other updated options include the ability to enter proprietary and/or unpublished genome data. In addition, the tool is useful for genome annotation, with particular emphasis on the annotation of hypothetical proteins .
Comparison of Metabolic Pathways by Considering Potential Fluxes

Comparison of metabolic pathways is useful in phylogenetic analysis and for understanding metabolic functions when studying dis- eases and in drugs engineering. In the literature many techniques have been proposed to compare metabolic pathways, but most of them focus on structural aspects, while behavioural or functional aspects are gener- ally not considered. In this paper we propose a new method for comparing metabolic pathways of dierent organisms based on a similarity measure which considers both homology of reactions and functional aspects of the pathways. The latter are captured by relying on a Petri net repre- sentation of the pathways and comparing the corresponding T-invariant bases, which represent potential fluxes in the nets. The approach is im- plemented in a prototype tool, CoMeta, which allows us to test and validate our proposal. Some experiments with CoMeta are presented.
Addressing the Numbers Problem in Directed Evolution

Our previous contribution to increasing the efficiency of directed evolution is iterative saturation mutagenesis (ISM) as a systematic means of generating focused libraries for the control of substrate acceptance, enantioselectivity, or thermostability of enzymes. We have now introduced a crucial element to knowledge‐guided targeted mutagenesis in general that helps to solve the numbers problem in directed evolution. We show that the choice of the amino acid (aa) alphabet, as specified by the utilized codon degeneracy, provides the experimenter with a powerful tool in designing “smarter” randomized libraries that require considerably less screening effort. A systematic comparison of two different codon degeneracies was made by examining the relative quality of the identically sized enzyme libraries in relation to the degree of oversampling required in the screening process. The specific example in our case study concerns the conventional NNK codon degeneracy (32 codons/20 aa) versus NDT (12 codons/12 aa). The model reaction is the hydrolytic kinetic resolution of a chiral trans‐disubstituted epoxide, catalyzed by the epoxide hydrolase from Aspergillus niger. The NDT library proves to be of much higher quality, as measured by the dramatically higher frequency of positive variants and by the magnitude of catalyst improvement (enhanced rate and enantioselectivity). We provide a statistical analysis that constitutes a useful guide for the optimal design and generation of “smarter” focused libraries. This type of approach accelerates the process of laboratory evolution considerably and can be expected to be broadly applicable when engineering functional proteins in general.
The Mixed Nature of Incentives for Community Health Workers: Lessons from a Qualitative Study in Two Districts in India

Incentives play an important role in motivating community health workers (CHWs). In India, accredited social health activists (ASHAs) are female CHWs who provide a range of services, including those specific to reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child, and adolescent health. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 49 ASHAs and one of their family members (husband, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, or son) from Gurdaspur and Mewat districts to explore the role of family, community, and health system in supporting ASHAs in their work. Thematic analysis revealed that incentives were both empowering and a source of distress for ASHAs and their families. Earning income and contributing to the household’s financial wellbeing inspired a sense of financial independence and self-confidence for ASHAs, especially with respect to relations with their husbands and parents-in-law. In spite of the empowering effects of the incentives, they were a cause of distress. Low incentive rates relative to the level of effort required to complete ASHA responsibilities, compounded by irregular and incomplete payment, put pressure on families. ASHAs dedicated much of their time and own resources to perform their duties, drawing them away from their household responsibilities. Communication around incentives from supervisors may have led ASHAs to prioritize and promote those services that yielded higher incentives, as opposed to focusing on the most appropriate services for the client. ASHAs and their families maintained hope that their positions would eventually bring in a regular salary, which contributed to retention of ASHAs. Incentives, therefore, are both motivating and inspiring as well as a cause dissatisfaction among ASHAs and their families. Recommendations include revising the incentive scheme to be responsive to the time and effort required to complete tasks and the out-of-pocket costs incurred while working as an ASHA; improve communication to ASHAs on incentives and responsibilities; and ensure timely and complete payment of incentives to ASHAs. The findings from this study contribute to the existing literature on incentivized CHW programs and help throw added light on the role incentives play in family dynamics which affects performance of CHW.
Functional Frank-Wolfe Boosting for General Loss Functions

Boosting is a generic learning method for classification and regression. Yet, as the number of base hypotheses becomes larger, boosting can lead to a deterioration of test performance. Overfitting is an important and ubiquitous phenomenon, especially in regression settings. To avoid overfitting, we consider using $l_1$ regularization. We propose a novel Frank-Wolfe type boosting algorithm (FWBoost) applied to general loss functions. By using exponential loss, the FWBoost algorithm can be rewritten as a variant of AdaBoost for binary classification. FWBoost algorithms have exactly the same form as existing boosting methods, in terms of making calls to a base learning algorithm with different weights update. This direct connection between boosting and Frank-Wolfe yields a new algorithm that is as practical as existing boosting methods but with new guarantees and rates of convergence. Experimental results show that the test performance of FWBoost is not degraded with larger rounds in boosting, which is consistent with the theoretical analysis.
Loneliness and Health: Potential Mechanisms

Objective Two studies using cross-sectional designs explored four possible mechanisms by which loneliness may have deleterious effects on health: health behaviors, cardiovascular activation, cortisol levels, and sleep. Methods In Study 1, we assessed autonomic activity, salivary cortisol levels, sleep quality, and health behaviors in 89 undergraduate students selected based on pretests to be among the top or bottom quintile in feelings of loneliness. In Study 2, we assessed blood pressure, heart rate, salivary cortisol levels, sleep quality, and health behaviors in 25 older adults whose loneliness was assessed at the time of testing at their residence. Results Total peripheral resistance was higher in lonely than nonlonely participants, whereas cardiac contractility, heart rate, and cardiac output were higher in nonlonely than lonely participants. Lonely individuals also reported poorer sleep than nonlonely individuals. Study 2 indicated greater age-related increases in blood pressure and poorer sleep quality in lonely than nonlonely older adults. Mean salivary cortisol levels and health behaviors did not differ between groups in either study. Conclusions Results point to two potentially orthogonal predisease mechanisms that warrant special attention: cardiovascular activation and sleep dysfunction. Health behavior and cortisol regulation, however, may require more sensitive measures and large sample sizes to discern their roles in loneliness and health.
Using subtitles to deal with Out-of-Domain interactions

People that interact with dialogue systems often pose questions that cannot be handled by the system, either because the user does not know the limitations of the domain or because he/she just wants to test how “smart” the system is. These interactions are called Out of Domain (OOD). Recently a corpus built using interactions from movie subtitles, called Subtle, was built and used in Say Something Smart (SSS), a chatbot that deals with OOD interactions. When faced with a user question, SSS consults the knowledge base using Lucene, an information retrieval system, that returns a set of possible answers. Previously, SSS used two very simple metrics to choose one answer from this set: checking the similarity of the user input with questions in the knowledge base and the frequency of the answer in the set. Although simple, this approach does not always give good results, especially when dealing with more unusual questions. In this work we develop two alternative ways of selecting an answer from a list of possible ones, with the goal of improving the overall results of SSS: one is to combine several measures in a linear way and the other to use the learning to rank paradigm. With the same goal in mind, we also improved the Subtle corpus by adding new rules when pairing questions with answers, and making its creation more parameterizable. Finally we adapted SSS to work better for Portuguese, which, previously performed poorly. In our evaluations we were able to obtain 61.67% of plausible answers using a combination of four measures and we also got promising results with the Learning to Rank approach, achieving 35 percentage points more of suitable answers than with the linear combination of measures. We also conducted an evaluation comparing the current version of SSS with the previous and found that the current one is able to answer much more user requests suitably than the previous, especially for Portuguese.