Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
WIND SPEED AND AIR FLOW PATTERNS IN THE DALLAS TORNADO OF APRIL 2, 1957

Abstract A composite distribution of tangential and upward components of air flow is determined by tracing particles of debris and cloud tag movements in scaled movies of a tornado. The greatest tangential speed measured is 170 m.p.h. and the greatest upward speed derived is 150 m.p.h. A distribution of the convergent radial component of motion in the lower 600 ft. of the vortex is synthesized and used t o generate a vertical speed distribution which nearly duplicates the observed vertical speed distribution. The observed radial distribution of the vertical component of relative vorticity at three levels is shown and convergence at the 500-ft. radius is computed using the synthesized radial speed distribution. Three-dimensional trajectories of air parcels in the lower portion of the vortex are also shown.
Primary Care Quality among Different Health Care Structures in Tibet, China

Objective. To compare the primary care quality among different health care structures in Tibet, China. Methods. A self-administered questionnaire survey including Primary Care Assessment Tool-Tibetan version was used to obtain data from a total of 1386 patients aged over 18 years in the sampling sites in two prefectures in Tibet. Multivariate analysis was performed to assess the association between health care structures and primary care quality while controlling for sociodemographic and health care characteristics. Results. The services provided by township health centers were more often used by a poor, less educated, and healthy population. Compared with prefecture (77.42) and county hospitals (82.01), township health centers achieved highest total score of primary care quality (86.64). Factors that were positively and significantly associated with higher total assessment scores included not receiving inpatient service in the past year, less frequent health care visits, good self-rated health status, lower education level, and marital status. Conclusions. This study showed that township health centers patients reported better primary care quality than patients visiting prefecture and county hospitals. Government health reforms should pay more attention to THC capacity building in Tibet, especially in the area of human resource development.
The Camino Intracranial Pressure Sensor: Is it Optimal Technology? An Internal Audit with a Review of Current Intracranial Pressure Monitoring Technologies

OBJECTIVETo audit the reliability of the Camino intracranial pressure (ICP) sensor (Camino Laboratories, San Diego, CA) in our clinical practice as part of a continuing quality assurance program, and to assess its relative usefulness as compared with currently available ICP monitoring technologies that we reviewed. DESIGNProspective audit of ICP device reliability and function in 50 patients with head injuries. METHODSZero drift was recorded immediately after the ICP device was removed from the patient. Dynamic frequency response bench testing of each functioning catheter from 0 to 30 Hz and static calibration testing from 0 to 100 mm Hg during environmental temperature variation from 22 to 40°C were carried out. RESULTSZero drift (range, −13 to 22 mm Hg; median, −1 mm Hg) was recorded immediately after the devices were removed from patients. Seventeen (50%) of the devices tested for zero drift had absolute drifts of at least 3 mm Hg. There was no correlation between recorded zero drift and duration of monitoring (r = 0.154, P = 0.207). Five sensors (10% of those tested) failed during patient monitoring and were replaced. Static and dynamic calibration tests of the functioning sensors were within the manufacturer’s specifications. However, the sensitivity of the devices to environmental temperature remains a problem. CONCLUSIONThe Camino ICP sensor remains one of the most popular ICP monitoring devices for use in patients with traumatic brain injuries. However, our recent in-house assessment demonstrated the robustness of the device to be less than adequate during routine practice. In this study, more than 50% exhibited zero drift greater than 3 mm Hg, which is unacceptable in a catheter tip ICP monitoring device in which zero drift and calibration cannot be checked in vivo. A review of the literature revealed that other available ICP monitoring devices may prove to be more reliable and thus more appropriate for routine clinical measurement of ICP.
Effects of the timing of births on women's earnings - evidence from a natural experiment

This paper studies the causal effect of the timing of first birth on highly educated women’s career outcomes using exogenous variation in first birth timing induced by the occurrence of pregnancy loss before first birth. Contrasting previous findings, my results suggest that a one-year delay has a significantly negative effect on both income and wages. The negative effects might partly be explained by child spacing; motherhood delay induces women to have the second child more closely spaced (but not fewer or more Children altogether), and consequently to have a potentially longer consecutive parental leave, or more frequent transitions in and out of the labor market. The same findings hold true when I employ an individual-fixed effects estimator based on panel data, from which the results suggest a larger slope decline in the wage profile post birth for “late” mothers. The hypothesis that short birth intervals may be detrimental for career outcomes is then tested by analyzing the impact of spacing births, using miscarriages between the first and second births as an instrument for birth spacing. The results suggest that a longer birth spacing indeed has positive long-run effects on income and wage rates.
The Virtual Private Network Design Tree Routing Conjecture for Outerplanar Networks (extended abstract)

The VPN Tree Routing Conjecture is a conjecture about the Virtual Private Network Design problem. It states that the symmetric version of the problem always has an optimum solution which has a tree-like structure. have shown that the conjecture holds when the network is a ring. A shorter proof of the VPN Conjecture for rings was found a few months ago by Grandoni, Kaibel, Oriolo and Skutella (to appear in Oper. Res. Lett., 2008). In their paper, Grandoni et al. introduce another conjecture, called the Pyramidal Routing Conjecture (or simply PR Conjecture), which implies the VPN Conjecture. Here we consider a strengthened version of the PR Conjecture. First we establish several general tools which can be applied in arbitrary networks. Then we use them to prove that outerplanar networks satisfy the PR Conjecture.
Hybrid Bottom-up/Top-down Energy and Economy Outlooks: A Review of IMACLIM-S Experiments

In this paper we survey the research undertaken at the Centre International de Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Developpement (CIRED) on the combination of the IMACLIM-S macroeconomic model with ‘bottom-up’ energy modeling, with a view to associate the strengths and circumvent the limitations of both approaches to energy-economy-environment (E3) prospective modeling. We start by presenting the two methodological avenues of coupling IMACLIM-S with detailed energy systems models pursued at CIRED since the late 1990s’: (1) the calibration of the behavioral functions of IMACLIM-S that represent the producers’ and consumers’ trade-offs between inputs or consumptions, on a large set of bottom-up modeling results; (2) the coupling of IMACLIM-S to some bottom-up model through the iterative exchange of some of each model’s outputs as the other model’s inputs until convergence of the exchanged data, comprising the main macroeconomic drivers and energy systems variables. In the following section, we turn to numerical application and address the prerequisite of harmonizing national accounts, energy balance and energy price data to produce consistent hybrid input-output matrices as a basis of scenario exploration. We highlight how this data treatment step reveals the discrepancies and biases induced by sticking to the conventional modeling usage of uniform pricing of homogeneous goods. IMACLIM-S rather calibrates agent-specific margins, which we introduce and comment upon. In a further section we sum up the results of 4 IMACLIM-S experiments, insisting upon the value-added of hybrid modeling. These varied experiments regard international climate policy burden sharing; the more general numerical consequences of shifting from a biased standard CGE model perspective to the hybrid IMACLIM approach; the macroeconomic consequences of a strong development of electric mobility in the European Union; and the resilience of public debts to energy shocks. In a last section we offer some conclusions and thoughts on a continued research agenda.
On the performance of unitary models of household labor supply estimated on "collective" data with taxation

This paper compares collective and unitary models on the basis of simulated collective data with income taxation. We distinguish the cases of individual and joint taxation. Estimating a flexible unitary model, we obtain strikingly different “preference” parameters depending on the type of taxation. We also obtain substantial differences between predicted adjustments to labor supply following a switch between tax regimes. Our results show that even the design of revenue-neutral reforms may be heavily distorted by the use of a unitary model on collective data. Finally, we discuss distortions affecting the welfare analysis of reforms on the basis of unitary estimates when the model generating the data is a collective model. The results suggest that increased efforts should be devoted to the estimation of collective models with taxation.
Classifying Complex Mountainous Forests with L-Band SAR and Landsat Data Integration: A Comparison among Different Machine Learning Methods in the Hyrcanian Forest

Forest environment classification in mountain regions based on single-sensor remote sensing approaches is hindered by forest complexity and topographic effects. Temperate broadleaf forests in western Asia such as the Hyrcanian forest in northern Iran have already suffered from intense anthropogenic activities. In those regions, forests mainly extend in rough terrain and comprise different stand structures, which are difficult to discriminate. This paper explores the joint analysis of Landsat7/ETM+, L-band SAR and their derived parameters and the effect of terrain corrections to overcome the challenges of discriminating forest stand age classes in mountain regions. We also verified the performances of three machine learning methods which have recently shown promising results using multisource data; support vector machines (SVM), neural networks (NN), random forest (RF) and one traditional classifier (i.e., maximum likelihood classification (MLC)) as a benchmark. The non-topographically corrected ETM+ data failed to differentiate among different forest stand age classes (average classification accuracy (OA) = 65%). This confirms the need to reduce relief effects prior data classification in mountain regions. SAR backscattering alone cannot properly differentiate among different forest stand age classes (OA = 62%). However, textures and PolSAR features are very efficient for the separation of forest classes (OA = 82%). The highest classification accuracy was achieved by the joint usage of SAR and ETM+ (OA = 86%). However, this shows a slight improvement compared to the ETM+ classification (OA = 84%). The machine learning classifiers proved t o be more robust and accurate compared to MLC. SVM and RF statistically produced better classification results than NN in the exploitation of the considered multi-source data.
Comparison of 3 spectrophotometric methods for carotenoid determination in frequently consumed fruits and vegetables.

UNLABELLED Carotenoids are C-40 tetraterpenoid compounds with potential health beneficial effects. Major dietary sources include a variety of fruits and vegetables. Rapid screening methods are therefore desired, but their accuracy varies depending on the carotenoid profile and the matrix of the plant food. In the present study, 3 different methods were compared, all based on a rapid extraction protocol and spectrophotometric measurements to determine the total amount carotenoids present in fruits and vegetables (n = 28), either with or without chlorophyll. Published methods (a) Lichtenthaler and (b) Hornero-Méndez and Mínguez-Mosquera were compared with a newly developed method (method c) based on the average molar absorption coefficient (135310 Lcm(-1)mol(-1)) and wavelength (450 nm in acetone), for the 5 predominant carotenoid species (beta-carotene, zeaxanthin, lycopene, lutein, beta-cryptoxanthin) in the investigated foods. All results were compared to HPLC (method d). To avoid overestimating carotenoid concentrations due to chlorophyll A and B presence, the effect of saponification was studied for all methods. Overall, saponification led to significant carotenoid losses (12.6 +/- 0.9%). Methods a, b, c, and d yielded 5.1 +/- 0.4 mg/100 g, 4.6 +/- 0.5 mg/100 g, 4.3 +/- 0.5 mg/100 g, and 4.2 +/- 0.5 mg/100 g total carotenoids, respectively, with method a leading to significant higher mean concentrations compared to all other methods (P < 0.001, Bonferroni) with methods b and c being not significantly different and highly correlated compared to HPLC (> r = 0.95). Similar results were found when stratifying for chlorophyll content and fruits compared with vegetables, however, accuracy varied for individual fruits, highlighting the limitation to use the same method for all plant foods. PRACTICAL APPLICATION This study presents a comparison of various rapid spectrophotometric measurements to determine total carotenoid content in various fruits and vegetables and could aid in the selection of the appropriate method for individual plant foods with different carotenoid profile and matrices.
A synaptic organizing principle for cortical neuronal groups

Neuronal circuitry is often considered a clean slate that can be dynamically and arbitrarily molded by experience. However, when we investigated synaptic connectivity in groups of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex, we found that both connectivity and synaptic weights were surprisingly predictable. Synaptic weights follow very closely the number of connections in a group of neurons, saturating after only 20% of possible connections are formed between neurons in a group. When we examined the network topology of connectivity between neurons, we found that the neurons cluster into small world networks that are not scale-free, with less than 2 degrees of separation. We found a simple clustering rule where connectivity is directly proportional to the number of common neighbors, which accounts for these small world networks and accurately predicts the connection probability between any two neurons. This pyramidal neuron network clusters into multiple groups of a few dozen neurons each. The neurons composing each group are surprisingly distributed, typically more than 100 μm apart, allowing for multiple groups to be interlaced in the same space. In summary, we discovered a synaptic organizing principle that groups neurons in a manner that is common across animals and hence, independent of individual experiences. We speculate that these elementary neuronal groups are prescribed Lego-like building blocks of perception and that acquired memory relies more on combining these elementary assemblies into higher-order constructs.
THE ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF CONSUMER ANIMOSITY IN SLOVENIA: A QUALITATIVE STUDY

This study investigates the sources underlying consumer animosity in Slovenia and the effects of country-specific negative attitudes on foreign purchase behavior. The empirical data were collected via 82 semi-structured, face-to-face, in-depth interviews using maximum variation sampling. Transcripts of the interviews were then content analyzed in a two-stage approach applying within-case and cross-case evaluation. The top hostility-evoking countries identified included Hungary, Croatia, Italy and the US. The most important sources of animosity related to the dimensions of the people, politics and personal experience. Consumer animosity was found to influence purchase behavior in selected product categories. Based on these results, theoretical and managerial implications are offered.
The Dynamics of Power and Trust in the 'Slippery Slope Framework' and its Impact on the Tax Climate

According to the Slippery Slope Framework (SSF; Kirchler, Hoelzl, & Wahl, 2008), tax compliance depends on the power of tax authorities and trust in the tax authorities. The framework, however, remains silent on the dynamics between power and trust, i.e., how power and trust increase or decrease each other, and how this affects the tax climate between authorities and taxpayers. The aim of the present paper is to differentiate power into coercive and legitimate power and to differentiate trust into reason-based and implicit trust to explicate the dynamics between power and trust. As a consequence of the described dynamics, the SSF is extended by adding a confidence climate to the antagonistic and service climate and a respective third form of cooperation (committed cooperation). Insights into the dynamics between power and trust may be utilized to change the tax climate from an antagonistic climate into a cooperative climate.
The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas from the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom

Comparing math teaching practices in Japan and Germany with those in the United States, two leading researchers offer a surprising new view of teaching and a bold action plan for improving education inside the American classroom.For years our schools and children have lagged behind international standards in reading, arithmetic, and most other areas of academic achievement. It is no secret that American schools are in dire need of improvement, and that education has become our nation's number-one priority. But even though almost every state in the country is working to develop higher standards for what students should be learning, along with the means for assessing their progress, the quick-fix solutions implemented so far haven't had a noticeable impact.The problem, as James Stigler and James Hiebert explain, is that most efforts to improve education fail because they simply don't have any impact on the quality of teaching inside classrooms. Teaching, they argue, is cultural. American teachers aren't incompetent, but the methods they use are severely limited, and American teaching has no system in place for getting better. It is teaching, not teachers, that must be changed.In "The Teaching Gap, " the authors draw on the conclusions of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) -- an innovative new study of teaching in several cultures -- to refocus educational reform efforts. Using videotaped lessons from dozens of randomly selected eighth-grade classrooms in the United States, Japan, and Germany, the authors reveal the rich, yet unfulfilled promise of American teaching and document exactly how other countries have consistently stayed ahead of us in the rate their children learn. Our schools can be restructured as places where teachers can engage in career-long learning and classrooms can become laboratories for developing new, teaching-centered ideas. If provided the time they need during the school day for collaborative lesson study and plan building, teachers "will" change the way our students learn.James Stigler and James Hiebert have given us nothing less than a "best practices" for teachers -- one that offers proof that how teachers teach is far more important than increased spending, state-of-the-art facilities, mandatory homework, or special education -- and a plan for change that educators, teachers, and parents can implement together.
Sorting Out the Differences between Signaling and Screening Models

In this paper we analyze games in which there is trade between informed and uninformed players. The informed know the value of the trade (for instance, the value of their productivity in a labor market example); the uninformed only know the distribution of attributes among the informed. The informed choose actions (education levels in the Spence model); the uninformed choose prices (wages of interest rates). We refer to games in which the informed move first as signaling games - they choose actions to signal their type. Games when the uninformed move first are referred to as screening games. We show that in sequential equilibria of screening games same contracts can generate positive profits and others negative profits, while in signaling games all contracts break even. However, if the indifference carves of the informed agents satisfy what roughly would amount to a single crossing property in two dimensions, and some technical conditions hold, then all contacts in the screening game break even, and the set of outcomes of the screening game is a subset of the outcomes of the corresponding signaling game. In the postscript we take a broad view of the strengths and weakness of the approach taken in this and other papers to problems of asymmetric information, and present recommendations for how future research should proceed in this field.
Exploration and Exploitation in the Presence of Network Externalities

This paper examines the conditions under which exploration of a new, incompatible technologyis conducive to firm growth in the presence of network externalities. In particular, this study is motivated by the divergent evolutions of the PC and the workstation markets in response to a new technology: reduced instruction set computing (RISC). In the PC market, Intel has developed new microprocessors by maintaining compatibility with the established architecture, whereas it was radically replaced by RISC in the workstation market. History indicates that unlike the PC market, the workstation market consisted of a large number of power users, who are less sensitive to compatibility than ordinary users. Our numerical analysis indicates that the exploration of a new, incompatible technology is more likely to increase the chance of firm growth when there are a substantial number of power users or when a new technology is introduced before an established technology takes off.