Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vertebrate Dissimilarity Due to Turnover and Richness Differences in a Highly Beta-Diverse Region: The Role of Spatial Grain Size, Dispersal Ability and Distance

We explore the influence of spatial grain size, dispersal ability, and geographic distance on the patterns of species dissimilarity of terrestrial vertebrates, separating the dissimilarity explained by species replacement (turnover) from that resulting from richness differences. With data for 905 species of terrestrial vertebrates distributed in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, classified into five groups according to their taxonomy and dispersal ability, we calculated total dissimilarity and its additive partitioning as two components: dissimilarity derived from turnover and dissimilarity derived from richness differences. These indices were compared using fine (10 x 10 km), intermediate (20 x 20 km) and coarse (40 x 40 km) grain grids, and were tested for any correlations with geographic distance. The results showed that total dissimilarity is high for the terrestrial vertebrates in this region. Total dissimilarity, and dissimilarity due to turnover are correlated with geographic distance, and the patterns are clearer when the grain is fine, which is consistent with the distance-decay pattern of similarity. For all terrestrial vertebrates tested on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec both the dissimilarity derived from turnover and the dissimilarity resulting from richness differences make important contributions to total dissimilarity, and dispersal ability does not seem to influence the dissimilarity patterns. These findings support the idea that conservation efforts in this region require a system of interconnected protected areas that embrace the environmental, climatic and biogeographic heterogeneity of the area.
Factors Contributing To Recidivism Among Youth Placed With The New York State Division For Youth

C This study examined recidivism among 9477 juvenile offenders (JOs), juvenile delinquents (JDs), and persons in need of supervision (PINS) who were discharged from the custody of the Division for Youth (DFY) from 1991 through 1995. C Most of the youth placed in DFY custody were proven recidivists with multiple personal risk factors facing difficult environmental circumstances. Case files were reviewed for a subsample of 2763 JDs and PINS. Nine out of ten of these had prior arrests or PINS petitions, prior probation terms, or prior out of home placements. Over 95 percent had problems in four or more of the following areas: mental health, substance abuse, behavior at school, academic performance, handicapping conditions, household characteristics, criminal or abusive family environment, or personal relationships with other family members. C 81 percent of males and 45 percent of females were arrested within 36 months of discharge from DFY custody. C PINS had substantially lower recidivism rates than JDs or JOs. There was little difference between recidivism rates for JDs and those for JOs. C Different factors were associated with the risk of recidivism depending on gender, adjudication, geographic region, and type of recidivism (e.g., violent vs. nonviolent). Across conditions, the three factors that were most consistently associated with the risk of recidivism were criminal history, age at discharge, and community characteristics. C After controlling for significant risk factors, most analyses found no consistent differences in recidivism by type of residential facility, residential movement pattern, type of first nonresidential service, or residential length of stay. However, for male JDs, an intermediate " step down " from residential centers to group homes was more effective in preventing short-term recidivism than direct release from residential centers to standard community care. C On-site interviews and existing literature suggested that the high recidivism rates may be attributable to (1) inconsistency of approach among program staff, (2) lack of program continuity in the transition from residential confinement to aftercare, and (3) lack of long-term support systems to carry youth successfully into young adulthood. These problems may also explain why differences in residential length of stay and nominal differences in residential program content did not produce consistent differences in recidivism rates. C Efforts to strengthen residential programs should be accompanied by development and rigorous evaluation of programs that provide a graduated transition from institutional care to independent living, insure continuity of programming across service settings, and place significantly …
Another Look at Quantum Neural Computing

The term quantum neural computing indicates a unity in the functioning of the brain. It assumes that the neural structures perform classical processing and that the virtual particles associated with the dynamical states of the structures define the underlying quantum state. We revisit the concept and also summarize new arguments related to the learning modes of the brain in response to sensory input that may be aggregated in three types: associative, reorganizational, and quantum. The associative and reorganizational types are quite apparent based on experimental findings; it is much harder to establish that the brain as an entity exhibits quantum properties. We argue that the reorganizational behavior of the brain may be viewed as inner adjustment corresponding to its quantum behavior at the system level. Not only neural structures but their higher abstractions also may be seen as whole entities. We consider the dualities associated with the behavior of the brain and how these dualities are bridged.
RECOVERY IN MAIN MEMORY DATABASESContact

With Main Memory DataBases (MMDB) the primary copy of the data resides in volatile main memory. Thus an MMDB is more vulnerable to failures than conventional Disk Resident DataBases (DRDB). This plus the fact that MMDB systems are targeted to high throughput applications, such as phone switching databases, complicates recovery. In this paper we provide an overview of the issues associated with MMDB recovery and brieey examine some of the solutions.
EuroHeart score for the evaluation of in-hospital mortality in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention.

AIMS The applicability of currently available risk prediction models for patients undergoing percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) is limited. We aimed to develop a model for the prediction of in-hospital mortality after PCI that is based on contemporary and representative data from a European perspective. METHODS AND RESULTS Our analyses are based on the Euro Heart Survey of PCIs, which contains information on 46 064 consecutive patients who underwent PCI for different indications in 176 participating European centres during 2005-08. Patients were randomly divided into a training (n = 23 032) and a validation (n = 23 032) set with similar characteristics. In these sets, 339 (1.5%) and 305 (1.3%) patients died during hospitalization, respectively. On the basis of the training set, a logistic model was constructed that related 16 independent patient or lesion characteristics with mortality, including PCI indication, advanced age, haemodynamic instability, multivessel disease, and proximal LAD disease. In both the training and validation data sets, the model had a good performance in terms of discrimination (C-index 0.91 and 0.90, respectively) and calibration (Hosmer-Lemeshow P-value 0.39 and 0.18, respectively). CONCLUSION In-hospital mortality in PCI patients was well predicted by a risk score that contains 16 factors. The score has strong applicability for European practices.
Glaucoma in Iran and Contributions of Studies in Iran to the Understanding of the Etiology of Glaucoma

Epidemiologic and genetic/molecular research on glaucoma in Iran started within the past decade. A population-based study on the epidemiology of glaucoma in Yazd, a city in central Iran, revealed that 4.4% of studied individuals were affected with glaucoma: 1.6% with high tension primary open angle glaucoma (POAG), 1.6% with normal tension POAG, and 0.4% each with primary angle closure glaucoma (PACG) and pseudoexfoliation glaucoma (PEXG), and other types of secondary glaucoma. Two notable observations were the relatively high frequency of normal tension glaucoma cases (1.6%) and the large fraction of glaucoma affected individuals (nearly 90%) who were unaware of their condition. The first and most subsequent genetic studies on glaucoma in Iran were focused on primary congenital glaucoma (PCG) showing that cytochrome P450 1B1 (CYP1B1) is the cause of PCG in the majority of Iranian patients, many different CYP1B1 mutations are present among Iranian patients but only four mutations constitute the vast majority, and the origins of most mutations in the Iranians are identical by descent (IBD) with the same mutations in other populations. Furthermore, most of the PCG patients are from the northern and northwestern provinces of Iran. A statistically significant male predominance of PCG was observed only among patients without CYP1B1 mutations. Clinical investigations on family members of PCG patients revealed that CYP1B1 mutations exhibit variable expressivity, but almost complete penetrance. A great number of individuals harboring CYP1B1 mutations become affected with juvenile onset POAG. Screening of JOAG patients showed that an approximately equal fraction of the patients harbor CYP1B1 and (myocilin) MYOC mutations; MYOC is a well-known adult onset glaucoma causing gene. Presence of CYP1B1 mutations in JOAG patients suggests that in some cases, the two conditions may share a common etiology. Further genetic analysis of Iranian PCG patients led to identification of Latent-transforming growth factor beta-binding protein 2 (LTBP2) as a causative gene for both PCG and several diseases which are often accompanied by glaucomatous presentations, such as Weill-Marchesani syndrome 3 (WMS3). The findings on LTBP2 have contributed to recognize the importance of the extracellular matrix in pathways leading to glaucoma.
A closed-form approach to acoustic source localization

Acoustic source location is determined by the intersection of a set of hyperbolic curves defined by Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA). Many researchers consider that the closed-form solution of the intersection is cumbersome as the equations are nonlinear, so few researchers focus on solving the equations. However, we find that the closed-form solution can be found easily and directly by Matlab. Three typical four-sensor arrays are mainly concerned in this paper. We find that in some special directions, the error of planar arrays raises sharply. For planar arrays and pyrometric cone array, there are some totally different attributes for their closed-form solutions. These differences are analyzed in detail. In practical applications, as the closed-form solution includes two possible sources, four-sensor array can't provide the unique source as the existence of ambiguity. Finally, we present a five-sensor array to exclude the ambiguous source.
The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence, Transformational Leadership, and Effectiveness in School Principals.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP, AND EFFECTIVENESS IN SCHOOL PRINCIPALS by Elizabeth Box Hebert In the rapidly changing school environment effective principals are needed to make necessary changes while also developing a culture of shared responsibility and community (Hallinger & Heck, 1998; Leithwood & Jantzi, 1999). The correlation between transformational leadership and emotional intelligence was investigated in this quantitative study of school principals. Also included in the research was the investigation of the relationship between each construct and effectiveness as perceived by their teachers. The research sample was composed of 30 elementary, middle, and high school principals and five to seven teachers who worked with each principal from schools within the United States. An emotional intelligence score for the principals was obtained by administering the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). Teachers who worked with each principal completed the rater form of the Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X). This yielded a mean transformational score, a leader effectiveness score, and scores for other non-transformational leadership styles. Correlations were analyzed to conclude that there is a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership, Pearson’s r(30) = . 37, p < . 05. A positive correlational relationship between effectiveness and both emotional intelligence, Pearson’s r(30) = . 38, p < . 05, and transformational leadership, Pearson’s r(30) = . 90, p < . 01, was also evident. Analyzing the relationship between emotional intelligence and different non-transformational leadership styles yielded mixed results. Findings indicate a relationship exists between emotional intelligence and contingent reward leadership, Pearson’s r(30) = . 38 , p < . 05, while no significant relationship was evident between emotional intelligence and other leadership styles. Based on the results of the study, it was concluded that principals and future principals could better develop effective leadership skills by becoming more aware of their strengths and weakness in the area of emotional intelligence, along with improving their transformational leadership behaviors. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP, AND EFFECTIVENESS IN SCHOOL PRINCIPALS by Elizabeth Box Hebert
Wage Bargaining when Workers Have Fairness Concerns

We analyze optimal labor contracts when the worker is inequity averse towards the employer. Welfare is maximized for an equal sharing rule of surplus between the worker and the firm. That is, profit sharing is optimal even if effort is contractible. If the firm can make a take-it-or leave-it offer, the optimal contract is also state-dependent but always suboptimal with respect to welfare. The reason is that the firm will always pay the worker less than half of the surplus, thereby leading to agency costs due inequity aversion. If the parties bargain over the optimal contract, the optimal division of surplus is more equitable compared to the case with a purely selfish worker. Moreover, the optimal contract with bargaining approaches the welfare-optimal contract as the parties' bargaining power converges. Our results help explain why workers are willing to accept lower wages in times of crisis but demand higher wages in times of economic rise. Moreover, our findings imply that raising the bargaining power of the less powerful party may increase welfare
Cooperative Inter-Vehicle Communication Protocol Dedicated to Intelligent Transport Systems

MANET marks the new age of the modern communication and it is a key technology to solve many applications such as telemedicine, environment monitoring, intelligent transport system (inter-vehicle communication) etc. In this paper a new MANET protocol dedicated to intelligent transport system: CIVIC (communication inter vehicule intelligente et cooperative) is described. CIVIC is a context aware routing protocol taking into account the location of each mobile node, road traffic, geographic environment (road map) etc. Moreover, CIVIC is implemented to support infrastructure and ad-hoc network, hybrid MANET protocol, and multi- support wireless access mediums. In this paper, we introduce the different worldwide leading research projects dedicated to inter- vehicle communication, the key features of CIVIC, the implementation of CIVIC on LiveNode sensor and the application project MobiPlus.
Companions, Codensity and Causality

In the context of abstract coinduction in complete lattices, the notion of compatible function makes it possible to introduce enhancements of the coinduction proof principle. The largest compatible function, called the companion, subsumes most enhancements and has been proved to enjoy many good properties. Here we move to universal coalgebra, where the corresponding notion is that of a final distributive law. We show that when it exists the final distributive law is a monad, and that it coincides with the codensity monad of the final sequence of the given functor. On sets, we moreover characterise this codensity monad using a new abstract notion of causality. In particular, we recover the fact that on streams, the functions definable by a distributive law or GSOS specification are precisely the causal functions. Going back to enhancements of the coinductive proof principle, we finally obtain that any causal function gives rise to a valid up-to-context technique.
Notes on Some Optimal Monetary Policy Rules : the Case of Poland

The paper contains results concerning theoretical and practical utility of a simple optimal control model describing monetary policy rules. Solving this model enables to find useful forms of optimal monetary rules for the two policy scenarios. They were derived for the given form of linear VAR(s) state model describing the time evolution of deviations of logarithmic values of GDP growth rates around its HP-filtered potential counterparts, empirical CPI inflation rates around NBP-target rates and expected inflation rates around long-term trend expectations, as well as, for the two forms of -cost functionals expressing two paths of optimal NBP target interest. Numerical values of these rates, obtained for Polish quarterly data, were the base both for calculating corresponding to them values of target inflation rates, GDP-growth rates, and also for making some remarks about their behaviour in comparison to their empirical counterparts.
Option pricing with stochastic volatility models

JUNGYEON YOON: Option Pricing with Stochastic Volatility Models (Under the direction of Chuanshu Ji and Eric Renault) Despite the success and the user-friendly features of Black-Scholes (BS) pricing, many empirical results in the option pricing literature have shown the departures from the BS model. The motivation of this dissertation starts from these departures. In the first part of dissertation, we take the popular approach of stochastic volatility and jump models that are known to give good explanations to the empirical phenomenon. In order to keep analytic tractability, we derive the Generalized Black-Scholes (GBS) formula by a proper conditioning in a general mixture framework. By taking advantage of this new version of option pricing formula, we propose an approximation scheme that is well suited for the conditional Monte Carlo method. The simulation study and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm give an evidence of a huge computational time reduction without much loss of accuracy. In the second part, we provide a new prospective on the forecasting ability and information content of the BS implied volatility in the presence of nonzero leverage effect. The leverage effect, which is the correlation between the return and volatility process, is introduced to model the observed Black-Scholes implied volatility (BSIV) smile and its skewness. We provide a simple theoretical framework that explains and justifies the use of BSIV from at-the-money option for the volatility forecast. Based on this and simulation study, which show the sensitivity of the concavity of option price with respect to the underlying stock price (the “gamma effect”), we propose a new approach to improve option pricing accuracy by a proper account for the gamma effect.
Antiproteinuric effects of angiotensin receptor blockers: telmisartan versus valsartan in hypertensive patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and overt nephropathy.

BACKGROUND Renin-angiotensin system blockade reduces proteinuria and prevents nephropathy progression in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D). Experimental evidence demonstrates that angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) possess anti-inflammatory potential, which might contribute to reducing proteinuria and providing renoprotection. METHODS We conducted a multicentre, double-blind, prospective, parallel-group non-inferiority study of 885 hypertensive [systolic blood pressure/diastolic blood pressure (SBP/DBP) >130/80 mmHg] patients with T2D, proteinuria (> or =900 mg/24 h) and serum creatinine (< or =3.0 mg/dl) who were randomized to once-daily telmisartan 80 mg or valsartan 160 mg; additional antihypertensive therapy was permitted. The primary endpoint was the change from baseline in the 24-h proteinuria after 12 months. Secondary endpoints included changes in 24-h albuminuria, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and inflammatory parameters asymmetrical dimethylarginine (ADMA), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP) and urinary 8-iso-prostaglandin F(2alpha) (8-iso-PGF(2alpha)). RESULTS Telmisartan and valsartan produced comparable reductions in 24-h urinary protein excretion rates: geometric mean reduction (95% confidence interval) [telmisartan, 33% (27-39%); valsartan, 33% (27-38%)]. No significant differences between treatments were seen in changes from baseline in 24-h urinary albumin excretion rate and eGFR at 12 months. With both treatments, greater renoprotection was seen among patients with better blood pressure control. No significant changes in ADMA or CRP were noted in either group after 12 months, but urinary 8-iso-PGF(2alpha) levels decreased by 14% with telmisartan and by 7% with valsartan (P = 0.040). CONCLUSIONS In patients with T2D, hypertension and overt nephropathy, the renoprotection afforded by telmisartan and valsartan appears similar, and the study was unable to show any effect beyond that due to blood pressure control. At doses used to treat hypertension, there is no evidence of inflammatory parameters being modified by ARBs in patients with more advanced kidney disease due to T2D.